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https://aish.com/the-kindertransport-what-really-happened/?src=ac
THE KINDERTRANSPORT: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED
KYLIE ORA LOBELL
A new book reveals the darker side of the operation that rescued 10,000 children from Nazi Germany.

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https://aish.com/hadas-loewensterns-ultimate-revenge/?src=ac
On December 13th, the Israeli army sent a tank to rescue several soldiers who were wounded in southern Gaza. Hamas hit the tank with an anti-tank guided missile. Master Sgt. (res.) Rabbi Elisha Loewenstern, a 38-year-old American-Israeli reservist, was killed. He left behind his wife Hadas and their six children, as well as his parents and siblings.

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Though devastated by her husband’s death, Hadas Loewenstern is determined to give her children the best life possible. In a video tribute to her late husband, Hadas said, “We plan on living such a wonderful life that the bad guys will never merit to live… This is true victory in my eyes.” Hadas’s strength and determination touched people around the world. Those who came to comfort her felt strengthened in her presence.

Exploring Her Jewish Identity
Hadas grew up in Netanya, Israel, in a warm, non-religious family. She is the ninth generation of her family to live in Israel. As a young adult, she got involved in politics and human rights activism. At age 24, while serving in the IDF, Hadas encountered a religious Jew for the first time.

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“We got into a big fight,” Hadas says. “I thought that he belonged to the past. I thought he was the kind of Jew that we don’t need anymore.”


The encounter led Hadas to ask herself some serious questions she had never considered. “What does it mean to be Jewish? What are my values as a Jew? Why do we have so many enemies? Why do they hate us so much?”

In search of answers, Hadas began exploring her Jewish heritage. She eventually left the army and spent three years studying in a post-high school institution of Torah learning for women. Impressed with the profound wisdom she discovered in Judaism and surrounded by inspiring role models, she decided, “I don’t want to just learn Torah; I want to live Torah.”



When Hadas first met her future husband, she experienced “a huge culture shock.” Not only did he grow up in a religious family, but he was American who spoke English at home and liked American snacks. Elisha had come to Israel from New Jersey at age 8, together with his parents, Tzvi and Sharon Loewenstern, and his siblings. He grew up among other English speakers in Beit Shemesh. Hadas was skeptical that they would have anything in common, but she was immediately impressed with Elisha’s interpersonal qualities.

On the first date, Elisha barely spoke. It took Hadas some time to realize that it wasn’t because he had nothing to say. Elisha was simply more interested in listening to others than speaking about himself. As Hadas learned over their 13-year-long marriage, he was an amazing listener.

As she got to know him better, their cultural differences felt insignificant. Within a few months, they were married. And with time, Hadas gained a special appreciation of Americans who move to Israel. “Now I understand how hard it is to make aliyah,” she says.

Hadas and Elisha had six children. Their oldest son is 12 and getting ready for his Bar Mitzvah. Their youngest is not even a year old.

A Good Man
Elisha was a wonderful husband and father, kind, caring, and very honest. “Such a good man,” says Hadas. “It showed in the little things. He would always let me sleep on Shabbat afternoons. After a Shabbat meal, he would always compliment the cook, but he didn’t just say, ‘the food was good.’ He would say, ‘The chicken was very good.’ Very specific. ‘Your apple crumble is the best apple crumble I’ve ever eaten.’ He wasn’t just saying it to be polite. He truly noticed and paid attention to other people and to what was going on in their lives. When he would meet someone on the street, he wouldn’t just politely ask, ‘How are you?’ He would ask about specific things, like, ‘How was your test last week?’ or ‘How is your sister who just had surgery?’ He would really pay attention, and you could feel that he really cares.”


Elisha cultivated a positive atmosphere in the home. He studied Torah with his children, conveying his own love for Judaism to them. Whenever a child reached a milestone, such as finishing a tractate of Talmud, Elisha would make him or her a special certificate of award, showering the child with compliments and words of appreciation. They would hang the certificate on the wall, for the whole family to see, and make a special party for the child.

“This was his thing, to compliment and to motivate them to learn,” says Hadas in an exclusive interview with Aish.com. “This is something I will really miss.”

Living Life to the Fullest
For Hadas, the loss of her husband is enormous, yet she manages not only to stay positive but to inspire others.

“Nobody stays in this world for more than 120 years. The question is: how did you live in the time that was allotted to you? I look at Elisha and I say to myself, he passed the test with flying colors. He lived an exemplary life. And this also gives me comfort, because I know that God was very happy with the way Elisha lived.”

Hadas has her difficult moments, but she doesn’t let them detract from her sense of purpose. “If I only focused on my grief, and focus on the fact that my husband and the father of my six children – my youngest is not even a year old – is gone – this is insane! That’s not something normal, for a 40-year-old woman to be left a widow with six kids. If I only think about how I have to go through all the Bar Mitzvahs and Bat Mitzvahs by myself, and how I have to marry off six kids, and how I will manage – if I would think just about that, I would probably become a very sad woman. But when I focus on what I can give, on what my mission is, on what God wants me to do right now, it gives me strength. This is how I cope. If I can see the purpose, then it will give me a reason to wake up tomorrow morning and make sandwiches for my six kids.”

On a Mission
How is Hadas able to see beyond her grief and her immediate difficulties? She says that when she first began learning about Judaism in depth, she understood that “Torah is all about not thinking about yourself, not putting yourself in the center, but putting God in the center, listening to Him, doing what He wants you to do.” This is the perspective that Hadas has lived with for many years.



Hadas compares life to a video game, where you go from one challenge to another, collecting prizes along the way, throughout your childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. “You meet the person you are going to marry, and you think you know why you are marrying him, and you think you know what kind of family you will have, and you think you know many things. But God has this big plan.” One day, your role in this plan is revealed to you, and “the minute it comes, you have a choice.”

Hadas quotes the words of Mordecai to Queen Esther, “If you keep silent at such a time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jewish people from a different place.” She adds, “If it won’t be you, it will be someone else. God wants to give this message to the world, and it’s really not about me. I mean, it is about me in the sense that I really worked hard my entire life to be a good person, to be someone who looks at the bright side of life – not as a cliché, but as something very hard, something to work on and to practice: looking at the bright side and seeing God’s kindness and how everything He gives you is a gift. Both Elisha and I worked very hard to become the people we became.”

Hadas explains that her husband was involved in introspection every single day. “I have so many of his notes that he wrote to himself: ‘I want to be a better person,’ ‘I want to be a friendlier neighbor,’ ‘I want to speak in a calm voice.’ Over 20 years of working on himself. It’s hard work! It’s not something that just happened. It’s something we’ve been working on our entire lives.”



Now Hadas is on a mission to share her husband’s legacy with the world. “God decided that Elisha should live in this world for 38 years. He could have died in any other way, like in a car accident, and nobody would have heard about him. I really feel that because of his special qualities and beautiful personality, God wanted the world to know about him. This is my mission. Nothing can bring Elisha back, but if I talk about him all day long then he is here. And if millions of people know who he was, then I have a little more of Elisha here in the world.”

Thank You, God
Hadas makes a conscious effort to focus on what she is grateful for rather than what she is missing. “Elisha had a heart of gold. He was the best man I knew. And I am so privileged to have been his wife for almost 13 years. I have so much to be grateful for! I know that the story ‘ended’ not the way I would have imagined, but that won’t stop me from saying thank you for what we had. Every time I want to break down and feel bitter, I say to myself, ‘Listen, you have six kids – say thank you!’ Next to my husband in the military cemetery are buried so many young men, 19 or 20 years old, who weren’t married and didn’t have children. So many people would give anything to have just one child, and I have six – say thank you! Elisha left me with so much – say thank you! And when I start saying thank you, it makes it easier, because I’m not only focusing on what I don’t have anymore; I’m focusing on what I do have, and I have a lot!”

Hadas’s mission isn’t easy, but she chooses to undertake it with her head held high. While Hadas is willing to work hard, she is also willing to accept help from family, friends, and caring community members.

Accepting Help
“I am getting so much help,” she says. “People are coming all the time and helping with laundry, dishes, grocery shopping. You need a lot of humility to get help. My husband and I helped a lot of people in our lives, and now it’s my turn to be helped. God willing, there will come a time when I’ll be the one who helps. Being humble, understanding that you really need help, and allowing people to help you and not feeling embarrassed is also something that helps me. There is no way I could do everything on my own. This is part of life – you get some, you give some. Acts of kindness take two sides – the one who gives and the one who receives. If no one was ever in need, there would be no kindness. So I tell myself that I’m still participating in acts of kindness – just on the receiving side, not on the giving side.



“And that is something women need to know – they don’t need to cope on their own. Ask for help! Even if you feel that this war is too much for you and you need mental health help, you need someone to listen to you because you’re going out of your mind – get all the help you need! Don’t be proud.”

In addition to being a mother, Hadas is a teacher and a public speaker. Even though she didn’t choose her circumstances, she chooses to use them to make a difference in the world. “I understand that I don’t understand. I understand that God has His own plan. And this is my deal with Him: You give me the strength, and I will try to make the entire Jewish world love You more, believe in You more. And this is what keeps me alive.”

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https://aish.com/the-german-jew-who-produced-a-secret-anti-nazi-magazine/?
The German Jew Who Produced a Secret Anti-Nazi Magazin
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
January 15, 2024
Hiding in an attic, Curt Bloch created anti-Nazi journals every week for nearly two years.
The man behind The Underwater Cabaret was Curt Bloch, a German Jew living in the Netherlands. Remarkably, he produced his weekly magazine as he hid in a tiny attic. Righteous Gentiles kept him and other Jews alive, brought Curt the materials he needed to produce his weekly journal, and disseminated it.
Fleeing Germany for the Netherlands
When Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Curt Bloch was a 24-year-old legal clerk in the western German city of Dortmund. Even before Hitler’s election, Dortmund was a hotbed of anti-Jewish hatred. Home to a little over 4,000 Jews (out of over half a million residents), Dortmund soon increased its anti-Jewish persecution after Hitler’s rise to power. Local authorities arrested hundreds of Jews, the city stopped doing business with Jews and ordinary shoppers shunned Jewish stores. Volunteers stood in front of Jewish-owned businesses making sure that no customers entered. Local authorities affixed posters on the walls of buildings accusing Jews of being “traitors, murderers, warmongers and defilers of women.”
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Battalions of Nazi street fighters salute Hitler during an SA parade through Dortmund. Germany, 1933
After a co-worker threatened to kill him, Curt knew it was time to leave. He gave up his legal career and moved to Amsterdam, intending to eventually leave Europe when he could. Unable to practice law, Curt took a job with a Persian rug salesman and plotted his escape, but Germany’s invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940 trapped him in Nazi Europe once again. Within months, all Jews in the country had to register with the new Germany authorities; Curt was one of 25,000 Jewish refugees from Germany who’d fled to the Netherlands hoping (and failing) to find safety there.
Resistance and Murder in The Netherlands
The Nazis’ antisemitic decrees were met with some resistance from ordinary Dutch people. After Nazis deported hundreds of Dutch Jews who brawled with Nazi officials, workers across the Netherlands went on strike to protest this terrible decree. The nationwide strikes lasted for three days before Nazis succeeded in breaking them up. When Dutch Jews were ordered to wear a yellow Jewish star on their clothing in April 1942, some Dutch people showed solidarity with their Jewish neighbors by wearing yellow stars with the names “Catholic” or “Aryan” them. For a while, some Dutch people made a point of treating yellow star-wearing Jews with particular kindness, speaking with them warmly in public settings or offering their seats to Jews on public transportation. Nazi authorities, including collaborating Dutch officials, responded forcefully, crushing dissent and enforcing anti-Jewish decrees.
The Netherlands started deporting Jews in 1942; by 1943 nearly all Dutch Jews – about 107,000 had been sent to concentration and death camps. Only 5,000 survived. In 1943, Dutch collaborators formed groups that searched for Jews hiding in homes and in the countryside. Of approximately 25,000 Dutch Jews who hid from the Nazis, about a third were discovered and sent to Nazi death camps.

Most Jews had to find their own hiding spots, but some incredibly brave non-Jewish Dutch people rose up to help as well. As Yad Vashem describes: “A few Dutch rescue groups of students and or church circles came into being spontaneously and sporadically and helped find shelter for Jews, especially children.” Yad Vashem has recognized 5,982 Righteous Among the Nations in the Netherlands, those who risked their lives during the Holocaust in order to save Jewish lives. That number dwarfs those in often larger neighboring countries such as Belgium (1,787), Germany (651), France (4,206), or Denmark (22).

One of those Righteous Among the Nations heroes was a Dutch Reformed Church priest named Leendert Overduin in the Dutch city of Enschede. Along with about 50 fellow resistance members, Leendert Overduin formed an organization called the Group Overduin which found local families willing to shelter Jews. They saved the lives of a thousand Jews.

Jews in Westerbork boarding the deportation train to Auschwitz (Yad Vashem)
Curt Bloch’s company transferred him to Enschede to escape anti-Jewish persecution in Amsterdam and The Hague. There, Curt began to work with the local Jewish council desperately trying to find ways to help Jews escape. He met members of the Group Overduin, who offered to help Curt “disappear”. A local couple, Bertus and Aleida Menneken, agreed to hide Curt, along with two other Jews, in their modest two-story brick house on Plataanstraat 15 in the western part of Enschede. It was very risky: their neighbors would have noticed any sign that the couple was shielding Jews.
Curt Block
In August 1943, Curt said goodbye to an ordinary existence in which he could walk around, go outside, or breathe fresh air. He crammed into a tiny crawl space under the Menneken’s roof, which he shared with 44-year-old Bruno Lowenberg and a 22-year-old woman named Karola Wolf, known as Ola. The small room had one tiny window. It was their home for the next two years. The Mennekens, and a radio, would be their only contact with the outside world.
Producing the “Underwater Cabaret”
Curt Bloch refused to be silenced even in his claustrophobic hiding place. He wrote copious verse, much of it dedicated to Ola, and songs which made fun of Nazis. The Mennekens brought him paper, glue, pens, and newspapers, and soon Curt was using these to fashion his own weekly publication, The Underwater Cabaret. The name was a play on The Sunday Afternoon Cabaret, a German-language show that played on Dutch radio every week. Curt’s magazine parodied Nazis, calling them “murderers and liars” and predicting their eventual defeat, an audacious move at a time when opposing Nazi rule could mean imprisonment, torture, and death. Each cover featured original artwork, usually in collage form using pictures from magazines the Mennekens brought him.
The Underwater Cabaret often mocked Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ chief propagandist. A typical poem is this poem titled The Way to Truth, about Goebbels:
If he writes straight, read it crooked.
If he writes crooked, read it straight.
Yes, just turn his writings around.
In all his useful words, harm is found.

(Translated by Gerard Groeneveld, author of The Underwater Cabaret: The Satirical Resistance of Curt Bloch, 2023)

Curt produced an issue every week, never missing a week. He shared his magazine with Bruno, Ola, the Mennekens, and others. Writer Gerard Groenveld, who researched Curt, believes that up to 30 resistance members and Jews in hiding read each copy before returning it to Curt. Eventually, he produced 95 weekly issues.

His final issue was produced in April 1945, after he was liberated by Allied soldiers. That magazine’s title was “Above Water” and sported a collage of two figures climbing out of a hiding place. In that final issue, Curt included his only English language poem, which looked forward to the liberation of Berlin by the Soviet army, which was fast closing in on the German capital, and Hitler’s eventual comeuppance:
At Berlin with our Russian friends,
The German Nightingale,
Herr Hitler, doesn’t sing today
He’s feeling, after some delay
A tie around his neck.
Cover of the final issue
A Magazine Forgotten and Rediscovered
After the war, Curt found that he was the only member of his family who was still alive. He married another Holocaust survivor, Ruth Kan, who’d been in Auschwitz. They moved to New York, had two children, and eventually built up a business as antiques dealers. Curt seldom talked about his wartime experiences; his daughter Simone remembers him sometimes reading from and showing dinner guests his precious collection of The Underwater Cabaret editions, which he always kept on his bookshelf.

Curt died in 1975 at the age of 67. For years his collection of magazines sat unread until his granddaughter Lucy began to learn German and did research about her grandfather in Germany. As she read her grandfather’s remarkable collection of magazines, she realized it was a significant history of the Holocaust. Lucy and her mother Simone began showing it to historians and spreading awareness of this special publication.


The Underwater Cabaret is finally getting the attention it deserves. In February 2024, the Judisches Museum Berlin will feature the collection in a special exhibition which takes its title from a line of one of Curt’s poems: “My Verses are Like Dynamite.” “Any time that an almost completely unknown work of this caliber comes to the fore, it’s very significant,” explains Aubrey Pomerance, the exhibit’s curator. “The overwhelming majority of writings that were created in hiding were destroyed. If they weren’t, they’ve come to the public attention before now. So, it’s tremendously exciting.”

Curt Bloch’s brilliant works buoyed his spirits and the moods of his fellow hidden Jews every week for years. His creativity and refusal to be cowed or silenced are an inspiration.

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HEZBOLLAH: 12 FACTS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW
DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER
https://aish.com/hezbollah-12-facts-everyone-should-know/?src=ac
Key facts to help you understand events today.

Since October 7, Hezbollah has launched over 1000 rockets into Israel from its bases in southern Lebanon. Here are 12 facts about Hezbollah that everyone needs to know.

1. Hezbollah was the brainchild of Iranian religious leaders.
Hezbollah was the brainchild of two Iranian clerics and close friends: Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini and Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur. Khomeini would go on to lead the Iranian Revolution of 1979, after which he became the Supreme Leader, or Ayatollah, of Iran, with Mohtashamipur as his loyal lieutenant (and later Iran’s Minister of the Interior).

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Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur
Since soon after its founding in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) maintained military training camps in Lebanon. In the early 1970s, Mohtashamipur forged links between the troops he and Khomeini were raising and PLO fighters, allowing Iranians to train alongside the PLO. This required a great degree of diplomacy since PLO leaders adhere to the Sunni branch of Islam, while Iranians are mostly from the Shi’ite branch of Islam. Normally bitter enemies, Mohtashamipur’s fighters and the PLO found a common enemy which united them: Israel.

2. Hezbollah was designed as a tool of Iranian domination.
From the beginning, Hezbollah’s founders viewed it as a way to extend Iranian influence into its southern neighbor Lebanon, and eventually to attack Israel.


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Journalist Ronen Bergman notes “At the training bases, PLO experts taught young men the arts of sabotage, intelligence operations, and terror tactics. For (PLO leader Yassir) Arafat, having Khomeini’s men train at his bases was a way to acquire support for the Palestinian cause and to make himself into an international figure. But for Khomeini and Mohtashamipur, it was part of a long, focused strategy: to eventually extend the Islamic revolution they were fomenting in Iran to Lebanon, a small country in the heart of the Middle East, with a large population of impoverished Shiites ripe for incitement. Khomeini wanted to stake out ‘a forward strategic position that brought us close to Jerusalem’ - Lebanon’s border with Israel.” (Quoted in Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman: 2018)

Hezbollah continues to be funded primarily by Iran, and to take most of its orders from Iran’s leaders. It is also supported by Syrian leader Bashar al Assad, who provides funding and fighters to the group. In the complicated world of Lebanese politics, Hezbollah is a powerful voice for Syria’s involvement in Lebanese governance and life.

3. Hezbollah means “Party of God”.
Hezbollah formed during Lebanon’s brutal civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. Before its civil war, Lebanon’s governance was carefully divided between three ethnic groups: Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Shiite Muslims. In order to gain allegiance from Shiites and others, Iranian clerics set up a network of Islamist schools and charities, establishing what some observers called a “state within a state”. It was particularly active in the south of Lebanon, where there is a large Shiite population. Hezbollah was formally established in 1982, though much of its infrastructure had been in place for years.

4. Hezbollah seized power after the PLO left Lebanon.
The late 1970s was a violent time along Israel’s northern border as the PLO staged a series of audacious raids into Israel. On the morning of March 11, 1978, PLO terrorists docked a boat they’d piloted from Lebanon along Israel’s coast. The terrorists shot a passerby whom they asked for directions, then killed the occupants of a taxi and used their car to drive along Israel’s coastal road. They hijacked two public buses, amassing 70 hostages, and shot at and lobbed grenades at cars on the highway. By the end of the day, 38 civilians were dead and 71 wounded.



The following year, the PLO again invaded Israel from Lebanon, landing a boat in the Israeli city of Nahariya. After shooting a police officer, terrorists entered an apartment building and kidnapped and later killed a young father named Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter Einat. Hiding from the terrorists, Danny’s wife Smadar hid with the couple’s two-year-old daughter Yael in a storage cabinet - where Smadar accidentally smothered Yael to death trying to quiet her whimpering cries lest the terrorists hear them.

After these and other attacks, Israel launched an attack on PLO bases in southern Lebanon in 1982, eventually driving the PLO out of Lebanon. (It quickly re-established its headquarters in Tunisia.) With a power vacuum in southern Lebanon, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini sent 1,500 soldiers to the region in 1982 to train local Hezbollah fighters and organize the group’s military headquarters and soldiers.

At first, Hezbollah’s stated aim was to drive Israeli soldiers out of Israel's self-declared buffer zone along Lebanon’s border with Israel. After Israel withdrew all of its troops from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah continued to build up its army and attack Israel.

5. Hezbollah soon established itself as one of the world’s most deadly terror organizations.
The year after its formation, Hezbollah began attacking not only Israeli but also American targets. On April 18, 1983, Hezbollah terrorists attacked the US Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. Six months later, on October 23, 1983, a Hezbollah suicide bomber detonated a massive bomb outside US military barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American servicemen and women. Moments later, another Hezbollah bomber targeted a French military base, killing 58 French paratroopers.

Rescuers probe the wreckage of the U.S. Marine barracks near the Beirut airport, a day after a suicide truck bombing

Other Hezbollah attacks include: the 1984 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut (63 killed); a 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight from Egypt to the United States (1 American soldier killed); the bombing of Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 (29 killed, 242 injured) and the massive bomb that destroyed the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires two years later, in 1994 (85 killed, over 300 injured); the 2007 attack on a US military base in Iraq (killing 5 soldiers); and an attack on a tour bus carrying Israelis in Bulgaria in 2012 (killing 6 and injuring 32).

The United States declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization in 1997. Canada did the same in 2002. The EU declared Hezbollah’s “military wing” a terrorist group in 2012.

6. Hezbollah sits in Lebanon’s Parliament.
Under the terms of the ceasefire of Lebanon’s civil war, Hezbollah was the only militia group allowed to keep its weapons. Since then, Hezbollah has maintained both a massive standing army, as well as operated a Lebanese political party.

Hezbollah first ran for - and won seats in - Lebanon’s parliament in 1992. Today, it holds 13 seats in Lebanon’s 128-seat parliament. In addition to its political activities, Hezbollah provides a vast array of social services, replacing the Lebanese state in some areas of the country, and buying public support with its largess.

7. Hezbollah is worth billions of dollars and much of it comes from criminal enterprises.
In a 2021 report, the US State Department noted “Iran continues to provide Hizballah with most of its funding, training, weapons, and explosives, as well as political, diplomatic, monetary, and organizational aid.” The State Department estimates that Iran gives Hezbollah “hundreds of millions of dollars annually”.

That’s only part of Hezbollah’s extensive funding network. Syria’s leader Bashar al Assad gives Hezbollah extensive support, as do Shiite Muslims around the world. Hezbollah is funded by “profits from legal and illegal businesses. These include smuggling contraband goods, passport falsification, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and credit card, immigration, and bank fraud.”

8. Hezbollah has built up a massive army.


Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, boasts that Hezbollah has an army of 100,000 soldiers. (That number dwarfs the size of Lebanon’s standing army.) Experts estimate that Hezbollah maintains an arsenal of 130,000 rockets, including precision missiles, armed drones, and anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and anti-ship missiles. Hezbollah claims they have the capability to send rockets to all parts of Israel.

9. Hezbollah is dedicated to Israel’s destruction.
Hezbollah is an intensely hostile enemy on Israel’s northern border. It has sent thousands of rockets into Israel through the years, and has attempted ground invasions of the Jewish state. In September 2006, Hezbollah fighters crossed into Israel and attacked Israeli forces, killing eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two. That sparked a limited war, which saw Hezbollah send over 3,000 rockets into Israel, killing over 130 people.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has sent arms, including bombs, guns, and anti-tank missiles to terrorist groups bedeviling Israel, including the Palestinian Authority, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. In June 2002, Nasrallah praised suicide bombings inside Israel for “creating a deterrence and equalizing fear.”

In 2019, Hezbollah fired antitank missiles at an Israeli army base near the Lebanon border. In 2020, Hezbollah attacked an Israeli military base in the Israeli town of Menara. The following year, Hezbollah once again sent a volley of missiles into Israel. Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, Hezbollah has been attacking Israel daily, sending thousands of missiles into Israel.

10. Hezbollah maintains close ties with Hamas.
Hezbollah officials have boasted of their close ties with Hamas, and have said they were in contact with Hamas organizers of the massive October 7 attack which saw 1,200 Israeli murdered and about 240 taken hostage.



Reuters explains that “Hezbollah has been a source of inspiration and support for other Iranian-backed groups across the Middle East. It has trained armed groups in Iraq and taken part in fighting there.” Iran maintains proxy armies in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Iraq (various groups, including Kata’ib Hizballah), Yemen (Houthis), and Gaza and the West Bank (Hamas).

11. Hezbollah has a special unit dedicated to invading Israel.
Hezbollah maintains a special 2,500-man unit called Radwan force that is dedicated to plotting against the Jewish State. Radwan fighters wear all black - even blacked out goggles - and are highly trained and motivated to invade Israel and wreak mayhem, much as Hamas did in Israel’s south on October 7. Radwan has even built a huge network of tunnels from Lebanon into Israel; the Israeli Army monitors them and blocks them when they detect them.



A month before Hamas’ attack, Radwan forces staged their own practice, “simulating attacking Israeli communities, capturing prisoners and shooting Israeli symbols, including the Star of David. With motorcycles, unmanned aerial vessels, well-stocked weaponry… You name it, they displayed it,” explained Orna Mizrachi, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “The unit’s aim is to infiltrate Israel and conquer swaths of the Galilee.”

On January 7, 2024, Israel assassinated Wissam Hassan al-Tawil, the deputy head of a unit inside Radwan’s forces. According to Hezbollah, he had “led several operations targeting Israeli military sites and deployments near the border since Oct. 7.”

12. Hezbollah is popular around the world.
Inside Lebanon, Hezbollah is widely popular. Roughly a third of Lebanese people want Hezbollah to declare war on Israel. (80% of people in Lebanon support Hamas’ October 7 attack.)

In the West, Hezbollah has plenty of supporters as well. Former British Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn invited Hezbollah (and Hamas) representatives to Britain’s Parliament and once called them his “friends”. (He has recently apologized for doing so.) In London, anti-Israel marches have featured Hezbollah flags and chants of “We are all Hezbollah”.

In the days and weeks to come, it is likely that we’ll be hearing more about this terror group. If the recent past is any guide, much of what we will read on social media and in the news will be inaccurate. It’s crucial we each educate ourselves about Hezbollah’s bloody history and speak out about this brutal terror organization.

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https://aish.com/finding-love-in-auschwitz/?src=ac

by Kylie Ora Lobell
January 14, 2024
8 min read
Finding Love in Auschwitz

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January 14, 2024
8 min read

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A new book uncovers the almost-lost story of hope during the darkest of times.

David Wisnia, a clean-shaven, 17-year-old, stood in the building the SS called the Sauna, where he disinfected the clothing of new arrivals. It was the only warm place in the entire camp. It was winter in Poland, and David’s thin, striped uniform was not enough to shield him from the brutal temperatures outside.

Across the room, he saw a girl. She was petite, at 4 feet, 11 inches, with thick chestnut colored hair and deep-set brown eyes. She moved with confidence and self-assurance that was rare in these parts.

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David felt a fluttering in his stomach. She held her glance on him, and he knew: she liked him, too.

The girl, Zippi Spitzer, didn’t know that love was possible in this place. They were surrounded by darkness – two Jews rounded up and sent to Birkenau, the deadliest camp in Auschwitz, the place where hope dies.

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But now it was coming back to life.

“Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story”

This is the beginning of “Lovers in Auschwitz: A True Story” (Little, Brown), a new book by author Keren Blankfeld, the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors. The author, who teaches at Columbia Journalism School, wrote a piece called, “Lovers in Auschwitz, Reunited 72 Years Later” for the New York Times in 2019; that piece went viral, and now, the full story is in book form.

David Wisnia

The new book details the true story of David Wisnia and Zippi Spitzer, two young people who met in Auschwitz and were instantly enamored when they saw each other at the sauna, one of the worksites at the camp.

The two embarked on a secret romance, passing each other notes and arranging private meetings with one another. Miraculously, both of them survived, but they were separated after the camp was liberated.

At Zippi’s deathbed, they were finally reunited 72 years later. There, David asked Zippi: Did you save my life?

Uncovering the True Story
Blankfeld first met David researching refugees who’d arrived in the U.S. around World War II in unusual circumstances. She sat down to interview him and learned his fascinating story. The young man survived a death march and Auschwitz, where he sang for the Nazis as part of his job, and he was adopted by an American military unit.

David and Zippi reunited after 72 years.

“He joined the unit toward the end of the war, was given an American uniform and took on an informal role as an interpreter,” the author said. “He’d transformed from being a Nazi prisoner to a soldier interrogating Nazis.”

As Blankfeld was wrapping up the interview with David, he casually mentioned that he had a girlfriend in Auschwitz.

“A girlfriend in Auschwitz? I was stunned,” she said. “How was this possible? I sat back down as he recalled the days when he fell in love with Zippi, a fellow Auschwitz prisoner, an extraordinary woman.”


Zippi had been the only woman stationed in the prisoner intake area, where she met David. While David was a Polish Jew from the Warsaw Ghetto, Zippi was a Jew from Slovakia. She was a great talker and had made connections with all sorts of prisoners and guards as her plan to survive the tragic situation. Her job was to paint the stripes on the women’s uniforms, and eventually, she worked her way up to being an assistant and graphic designer for those in charge of the women’s camp.

She used her position of power to help others, including hiring unhealthy prisoners to work in her office so she could save them, and making copies of camp diagrams and rosters in secret to hopefully utilize them to persecute the Nazis after the war was over. She was unofficially a member of the underground resistance, but she would try to keep a distance so as not to be caught.

Zippi had many brushes with death. One time, she accidentally stumbled upon Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” who was making a selection and choosing his next victims. Blankfeld writes:

“Zippi saw Mengele before he noticed her. She came to a halt and quickly averted her gaze. By the time he spotted her, she had already started to inch away.

Hey, you! he called. Where are you going?

Zippi looked straight ahead, continuing to exit the room. She was well-dressed; she wasn’t a common prisoner, she told herself. Surely he saw that; surely she’d be safe. But she also knew that this was someone who casually castrated boys and drugged children, leaving them to writhe in pain until their deaths. Zippi told herself to remain calm. No matter what, she couldn’t betray her fear.

Hey! Mengele called again.

She had to get out of there. As she hastened away, she heard someone tell Mengele that she worked at the camp office. Mengele had been running; now, he gave up the chase. Once again, she’d survived by a slender thread of chance.”

In between cheating death, Zippi and David would pass each other notes and meet once a month in secret. David, who was captivated by Zippi, said he felt special: “She chose me,” he told Blankfeld.

At these meetings, which were guarded by fellow prisoners, they didn’t talk very much, but they did give each other a glimpse into their life before the camp. David’s father loved the opera, and this sparked a love of singing in David. Everyone in David’s family died in the Warsaw Ghetto. Zippi played the mandolin and piano and loved music, just like David. She only had one surviving family member, a brother.


David and Zippi’s relationship lasted several months; at their last meeting, they knew that death might be imminent. It was 1944, more than two years since they were first sent to Auschwitz. The Nazis were sending the last of the prisoners on death marches and getting rid of all the evidence of their crimes. David and Zippi survived much longer than most prisoners but they felt the end was near.

They promised to meet up in Warsaw once the war was over, just in case they made it out.

Lost Time and Reuniting
David was sent to Dachau concentration camp where he was put on a death march. He saw a hand shovel, used it to knock out a Nazi guard, and ran to hide in a barn. The next day, the Americans liberated him.

He started working for the Army and was determined to go to America to sing opera. The dream of meeting Zippi in Warsaw, who also evaded a death march, faded away. Still, they had near encounters, as Zippi was placed in Feldafing, the first all-Jewish displaced persons camp, and David was delivering supplies to the camp.

Helen Spitzer, from Mr. Wisnia’s copy of the book of interviews with the woman he knew as Zippi.

Zippi ended up marrying a man she met at the camp and settled in New York. She would talk about her experience with historians over the years but never mentioned David. David also married and had four children and six grandchildren. Sporadically, he tried to make contact with Zippi, but it wasn’t until she was on her deathbed that they reunited.

He drove from Levittown, Pennsylvania, where he lived and worked as a cantor, to Manhattan, to see her. They talked for two hours, and even though Zippi was going blind and deaf and suffering from illness, she lit up when she saw David. He finally had the chance to ask her: Did you save me?

“I saved you five times from bad shipment,” she told him, including removing his name from the crematorium list.

Then, she told him, “I was waiting for you.” She had gone to Warsaw to see David, but he never came. She told him she loved him; he told her the same. He sang a song, a Hungarian tune she had taught to him in Auschwitz, and held her hand. Then, the meeting ended.


She died at age 100 in 2018, and David died in 2021 at the age of 94.

Blankfeld has a message of hope for readers. “David and Zippi’s story is also a lesson in human resilience and optimism,” she said. “Even in the midst of terror, we have the capability to find love, to develop friendships, and to look for the best in the world. We hold the power to create art, to express love and kindness. It’s important to remain optimistic about the future and never give up hope.”

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https://aish.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-genocide-case-against-israel/?src=ac
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE GENOCIDE CASE AGAINST ISRAEL
DR. YVETTE ALT MILLER
Israel stands accused of genocide in the International Court of Justice. The accusation is baseless and wholly unfounded.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
January 14, 2024
11 min read
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Israel stands accused of genocide in the International Court of Justice. The accusation is baseless and wholly unfounded.

Israel is currently defending itself from accusations of genocide in the International Court of Justice. With much of the world uninformed about the many intricate details of the accusations, many are left with the general impression that Israel somehow must be guilty of the odious charges leveled against it. It’s a classic case of the question, “When did you stop beating your wife?” It is an absurd situation to find the victim of attempted genocide being accused of this heinous of all crimes.

Here are the answers to 5 common questions about the current trial, and advice for staying up to date with latest developments.

1. What is the International Court of Justice?
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The International Court of Justice (ICJ), sometimes known as the World Court, is the United Nations’ supreme court. It dates to 1945, when the UN was established and is located in the coastal Dutch city The Hague. The ICJ has many functions, including hearing disputes between states.

Jurisdiction

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The ICJ doesn’t rule on individual behavior or criminality: that is the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is also based in The Hague. Unlike the ICJ, the ICC only has jurisdiction over people living in countries which have signed a treaty giving the ICC power to try its citizens. Fearing politically motivated prosecutions, Israel has chosen not to be a signatory to the ICC. (Lack of jurisdiction hasn’t stopped Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros, Djibouti, and South Africa asking the ICC to begin investigating Israel for potential crimes.)


The ICJ has jurisdiction over Israel because Israel, like nearly every country around the world, signed the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (explained in more detail below). It’s this convention that the ICJ is now charged with deciding whether or not Israel violated.

Who are the Judges?

There are 15 ICJ judges who are elected by a majority of all UN members for nine-year terms. The current judges hail from Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Jamaica, Japan, Lebanon, Morocco, Russia, Slovakia, Somalia, Uganda, and the USA. Four of the judges (from Jamaica, Morocco, Russia, and the USA) are slated to end their terms in February 2024, in the midst of Israel’s trial, and will be replaced by new judges from Mexico, Romania, South Africa, and the USA.

2. Why is South Africa bringing this case against Israel?
Support for Hamas

South African President Cyrial Ramaphosa, suffering from dismal poll numbers, is seizing on this case as a way to distract South Africans from the country’s internal problems. “The war in Gaza is an opportunity to turn (Ramaphosa’s low approval rating) around,” notes The Economist. It quotes South African analyst Ronak Gopaldas: “The ANC (Ramaphosa’s party) is trying to elevate this into an election issue, to potentially try and distract from some of the core economic issues.”

Hamas is very popular in South Africa. When South Africa officially marked the 10th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s death on December 5, 2023, a Hamas delegation was given pride of place in the official parade; Hamas official Bassem Naim laid a wreath at the official statue honoring Mandela along with South Africa’s Social-Development Minister, Lindiwe Zulu. This alliance goes back decades, when the African National Congress (ANC), the current governing party, identified with the PLO, Hamas, and other violent anti-Israel groups as a model of political insurgency.

Protesters wave flags and pictures of the hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, outside the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, Friday, Jan. 12, 2024.

Immediately after Hamas’ brutal October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which saw 1,200 people tortured and killed, thousands injured, and approximately 240 people taken hostage, South Africa’s Foreign Minister, Naledi Pandor, telephoned Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and expressed her support for the terrorist group. She later traveled to Tehran, where she met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Hamas’ sponsor. In November 2023, South Africa recalled its Ambassador and all diplomatic staff from its embassy in Israel, and demanded that Israel shut down its embassy in Pretoria as well.

Moral Bankruptcy

South Africa’s self-professed concern with genocide rings hollow in light of its government’s recent actions. On January 4, President Ramaphosa hosted a state visit with one of the world’s most notorious war criminals who’s been accused of genocide: Sudanese warlord Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo, whole fearsome Arab-led Janjaweed militia is killing thousands of Black Africans with impunity. Exactly one week later, on January 11, South Africa filed an official case with the ICJ accusing Israel of genocide.

Precedent

It’s notable that the case against Israel is being brought by South Africa, a nation over 5,000 miles away from the Middle East with seemingly few ties to the region, besides an ardent support for Israel’s most violent enemies.

In 2022, the ICJ accepted a claim from the African nation of Gambia to investigate charges of genocide in Myanmar, a country with which Gambia has few ties. The court accepted this case, setting the precedent that any nation that is a signatory to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide can bring charges against any other signatory.

3. What is South Africa charging?
The South African legal team is being led by John Dugard, a Trustee of the British activist group Law4Palestine, which seeks to prosecute Israel in courts around the world. He is charging that Israel has violated the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The term genocide was coined in 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish jurist who’d managed to escape from Poland to the United States.

By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word…is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and Latin cide (Killing)...It is intended…to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group. (Quoted in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe by Raphael Lemkin: 1944.)

Four years later, an international Convention on Genocide was drafted, signed by most nations in the world, which Israel is now accused of violating. The Convention is broad. It defines genocide as: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

South Africa contends that Israel has violated the terms of the 1948 Convention by killing large numbers of people, particularly children; evacuating Gazans from their homes; imposing blockades on food, water and medicine; and preventing Gazan births by forcing hospitals in Gaza to close. The facts that Hamas embeds itself in civilian populations in Gaza; uses hospitals, schools, mosques, and apartment buildings as military centers; and that Israel instructed civilians to flee from war zones in northern Gaza for their own safety went unsaid.

In its initial three-hour presentation, South African lawyers charged Israel with systematically killing and maiming civilians with genocidal intent. Lawyer Adila Hassim asserted that Israel’s “first genocidal act is mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza,” adding that Israel spared nobody, including newborn babies in its murderous killing sprees. She contended that Israel also engaged in genocidal behavior by inflicting “serious bodily or mental harm” on Gazans by fighting Hamas.

A second South African lawyer, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, described inflammatory comments made by Israeli leaders speaking about Hamas. He pointed especially to words said by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to soldiers about to enter Gaza to locate Hamas members to “remember what Amalek has done to you” (Deuteronomy 25:17), referring to an ancient tribe which tried to wipe out the people of Israel and whom the Israelites were commanded to destroy. “This refers to the biblical command by God to Saul for the retaliatory destruction of an entire group of people,” Ngcukaitobi argued.

Shielding Hamas

South Africa has also emphasized that Hamas is not a signatory to the 1948 Convention, and so cannot be tried for genocide, circumventing efforts to bring the terrorist group which is still attacking Israel to justice.

Other Nations Joining the Case

Since filing its case, South Africa has been joined by other countries and organizations, including Bolivia, Columbia, Brazil, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Turkey, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Belgium's Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter has encouraged Belgium to formally support South Africa’s case.

4. What is Israel’s Defense?
Israel’s legal team responded to South Africa’s accusations on Friday, January 12, pointing out that Israel is engaged in the legitimate military goal of rooting out Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that has vowed to repeat October 7-style attacks “again and again”, which continues to fire deadly rockets at Israeli civilian populations, continues to hold over 130 Israelis captive in Gaza, and embeds itself in population centers, turning all of Gazans into human shields. As it fights this relentless foe, Israeli troops, far from trying to maximize civilian casualties or commit genocide, are risking troops’ lives by engaging in surgical strike and careful urban warfare, trying to eliminate Hamas while minimizing civilian casualties.

Israeli lawyer Dr. Tal Becker dismissed South Africa’s case as “a grossly distorted story” with “curated” accusations. “If there were acts of genocide, they have been perpetrated against Israel,” he noted, as Israel hunts for Hamas fighters who are hiding in a civilian population while continuing to lob missiles at Israel and promise to carry out future mass attacks. Israel has a right to defend itself, he asserted: “The appalling suffering of civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, is first and foremost the result of Hamas strategy.”

Dr. Becker continued: “If the claim of the applicant is that Israel must be denied the ability to defend citizens, the absurd upshot is that under guise of genocide claims this court is trying to stop Israel defending its civilians against an organization which pursues a genocidal agenda against them.” He emphasized that Israel is dedicated to following international agreements on the rules of war, “but it does so in the face of Hamas’ utter contempt for the law.”

Speaking for Israel’s team, another lawyer, Prof. Malcolm Shaw, asserted that South Africa’s claim seemed to preclude any and all military action. “Not every conflict is genocidal,” he argued. “The crime of genocide in international law and under the Genocide Convention is a uniquely malicious manifestation and stands alone among violations of international law as a zenith of evil, the crime of crimes, ultimate in wickedness.”

The Israeli team argued that individual inflammatory statements, such as Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calling Hamas attackers “human animals” in announcing a blockade on goods entering Gaza two days after the October 7 attack, or the calls of some individual Israeli politicians to reestablish Israeli settlements in Gaza (Israel ordered all Jews to leave Gaza - even removing Jewish graves - in 2005) do not represent an official Israeli policy of dehumanization and genocide.

United States’ National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called the genocide allegations “unfounded,” saying, “That’s not a word that ought to be thrown around lightly, and we certainly don’t believe that it applies here.”

US State Department spokesman Matt Miller said, “It is those who are violently attacking Israel who continue to openly call for the annihilation of Israel and the mass murder of Jews…

Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas’s terrorist acts — acts that Hamas has vowed to repeat again and again until Israel is completely destroyed.”

5. What happens next?
South Africa and Israel have presented their arguments. South Africa has requested that the ICJ impose emergency measures to stop Israel’s military engagement with Hamas. The Court does have this ability - in practice, it could conceivably instruct the UN to intervene to stop Israel from fighting - but in practice the Court will take many years to issue a ruling.

Recognizing this, South Africa has requested Provisional Measures, also called Emergency Measures, ordering Israel to stop all military activity in Gaza. A ruling on this could come within a few weeks. If the ICJ issues these Measures, Israel would have no right to appeal. The ICJ has no way of enforcing Provisional Measures, but violating them would weaken Israel’s standing in the international community.

In the coming weeks, we all will hear more about this outrageous, baseless case. It’s imperative to stay informed so that you can speak out when you hear Israel being slandered.

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Dear Elaine

You recently signed the petition “Delay the ban on rehoming and owning XL Bully dogs for 18 months”:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/650474

The Petitions Committee (the group of MPs who oversee the petitions system) has considered the Government’s response to this petition. They felt that the response explains the Government’s policy on banning XL Bully type dogs, but does not respond directly to the request of the petition, for the Government to delay the ban on rehoming and owning XL Bully dogs for 18 months and have therefore asked the Government to provide a revised response.

When the Committee receives a revised response from the Government, we will publish this and share it with you.

Thanks,
The Petitions team
UK Government and Parliament

https://aish.com/the-best-response-to-antisemitism/?src=ac
The Best Response to Antisemitism
Brian Keating
by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman
January 7, 2024
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An open letter to an American Jewish college student.

You were very excited about being admitted to a famous Ivy League university, and you eagerly looked forward to the coming intellectual journey.

And then, almost overnight, there was an explosion of anti-Semitism on your campus and on many other prestigious campuses. Ostensibly, this was in connection with Israel’s strong response to the October 7 massacre in which Hamas terrorists murdered and mutilated 1200 innocent Israelis in cold blood. When you read about the slaughter, you were horrified, as were most civilized people. Although you do not have a strong Jewish background, you were nevertheless proud that Israel responded forcefully to the horror.

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But your pride turned into shock when, instead of condemning the October atrocities, many students demonstrated and chanted anti-Israel slogans. Your shock turned to fear as marauding gangs of students taunted you for being a Jew, drew swastikas on Jewish frat houses, called for an intifada against Jews, chanted the genocidal “from the river to the sea.” You actually were worried about your personal safety — especially when the university president refused to clearly condemn the racist behavior of the students.

What, you ask, should be your response?

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The awful truth is that there is no lasting response to prejudice and hatred, and especially not to that disease called antisemitism. Whether you cite Biblical proof of Jewish rights to Israel or you appeal to morality or logic, it will have no long-term effect. When we abandoned our Judaism and assimilated, we were still rejected. When we maintained our distinctiveness and remained separate from the outside world, we were called clannish and holier-than-thou. We have been derided as communists and as capitalists, ridiculed for our intellectual bent and condemned for our fighting abilities, accused of manipulating the world’s finances on Wall Street even while we were making the desert bloom in the Negev.

I fear that antisemitism is a part of the DNA of the world, a pestilence for which there is no cure.

I fear that antisemitism is a part of the DNA of the world, a pestilence for which there is no cure. Here and there we find some righteous Gentiles who come to our defense, but for the masses, the disease is inborn. The most we can hope for is that this endemic antisemitism is limited to hate speech and slogans, and does not go beyond that — though history shows that it rarely stops at the mouth but proceeds to the fist and physical violence and even to murder. We can hope for periods of quiet when the hatred stays subsurface, we can pray for extensions of the quiet and continue kicking the can down the road, but Jew-hatred seems to be a fact of Jewish life.


Even before the contributions of billions of Arab petrodollars prostituted our finest universities, the hatred was present; how much more so today. Only a naïf would deny that the Arab billions came with a price tag: Islamic Studies departments with anti-Israel agendas and kid-glove treatment of anti-Semitic pro-Hamas students.

Some Jewish thinkers suggest that, transcending all mundane theories about anti-Semitism, this is G-d’s mysterious way of reminding us who we really are. When we forget that we are the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the heirs of Moses and Rabbi Akiva and Rambam and the Gaon of Vilna (of whom some Jews have never even heard); when we dismiss the fact that we are Heaven’s deputies to remind mankind that there is a God Who demands morality and self-discipline and love for the neighbor — when we tend to abandon all this in order to assimilate into the outside world and become just like them, then perhaps God taps us on the shoulder and reminds us in His own hidden ways.

There is one truly powerful response that is often overlooked: to become more Jewish.

You ask what should be your response. My suggestion: Although campus counter-demonstrations are fine, and mass rallies in Washington are helpful, and contact with legislators is effective, there is one truly powerful response that is often overlooked: to become more Jewish. That does not mean to eat more gefilte fish or to tell Yiddish jokes. It does mean to defy the hatemongers by looking inward at oneself and to begin behaving more Jewishly. Which means, for example, to turn Friday night into Shabbat, with kiddush, special meals, informal discussions, group singing, and no distracting Smartphones. Or: To take five minutes every morning and don tefillin and read the first paragraph of the Shema in any language in the privacy of your own room. Or: Do some reading on your own of any classic Jewish text. Or — and this will take some courage — to wear a kippah/yarmulke on campus as a sign of your Jewish pride and your defiance of the haters. (Of the thousands of Jewish students, are there ten young men who have the guts to do this?)

I am not suggesting that you suddenly become an Orthodox Jew. I am suggesting that in addition to the obvious steps against antisemitism, you and your Jewish friends take a step out of the box, do something different and heroic: become a more Jewish Jew — even if this has not been your lifestyle. They wish to destroy all vestiges of Judaism; you don’t cringe, but stand tall as a member of our holy, eternal people.

A version of this article originally appeared in Mishpacha magazine.

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https://aish.com/the-awakening-of-liberal-jewish-americans/?src=ac
The Awakening of Liberal Jewish Americans
October 7 has spurred many disengaged Jews to revitalize their Jewish identity. We need to embrace them with support and openness, not condescension and political infighting.

If there is a silver lining to the events that have unfolded in Israel and around the world since October 7th, it is that American Jews are finally waking up. For some, it was the overt glorification of Hamas’ atrocities at protests around the world, and the genocidal calls of “from the river to the sea” by crowds holding posters of Nazi symbols. For others, it was the testimony of ivy league administrators who firmly and proudly affirmed their students’ right to call for genocide against Jews, under the guise of defending free speech.

A growing number of liberal American Jews have been forced to reckon with unprecedented levels of antisemitism emerging from political and intellectual institutions they have long supported, and many are drawing the conclusion that Jewish identity - and support for Israel – needs to play a larger role in their lives.

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The Awakening of Liberal Jewish Americans
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Based on my own observations, this group shares a few key characteristics in common: they are largely secular, but culturally Jewish, and do not currently engage with Jewish life in any major way. Privately they are pro-Israel, but have historically refrained from publicly supporting Israel due to fear of social repercussion. They have generously supported progressive causes such as LGBT rights and Black Lives Matter, but feel abandoned by progressive institutions on issues of rising antisemitism.

If the overflowing attendance at my local synagogue is to be taken as evidence, this group’s newly realized engagement with Jewish life represents a revitalization of Jewish identity at a spiritual, social, and cultural level - but only if these individuals are properly received and supported.

Instead of embracing these young Jews, some people are mocking, belittling, and castigating them, caving into the ancient human impulse to say, “I told you so.”

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Instead of embracing these young Jews, some people are mocking, belittling, and castigating them, caving into the ancient human impulse to say, “I told you so.” And a heated discourse surrounding the political future of American Jewry has added additional friction within the community.


Since October 7th, some of the most flagrant antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric has come from individuals affiliated with the progressive left, under leadership from the so-called “squad.” The political reaction from left-leaning Jews since October 7th has been split, with some claiming to have left the Democratic party, and others vowing to reform the antisemitic elements of the group. There is a vocal group of Jews promulgating views that conservative political allegiance - particularly to Donald Trump - is an obligation for all Jews who truly care about Israel, given the historical pro-Israel support from that side of the aisle. Efforts to mobilize Jewish voters, born out of a desire to protect and defend, have devolved into a sort of political litmus test which creates barriers to entry for left-leaning Jews. As some friends have confided to me, many Jews feel caught between a rock and a hard place - unaccepted by the radical anti-Israel elements of the left, but equally rejected by Jews on the right.

Such political infighting serves only to divide our community. A better course of action would be to extend a welcoming hand to all those with the courage to speak up for Israel, and to recognize that support for Israel on both sides of the aisle is politically advantageous.

A second, equally crucial priority should be for Jewish educational and cultural institutions to develop a long-term strategy focused on embracing a new cohort of non-religious Jews with no current foothold in Jewish life. This means increasing the availability and accessibility of Jewish day schools, religious programs, and camps. For the first time, secular parents alarmed by the growth of anti-Zionist narratives in American public education will consider placing their children in Jewish schools, but the current preponderance of orthodox institutions will not meet the unique needs of this community. Institutions will need to bridge the gap between secular “cultural” and orthodox expressions of Judaism if they are to properly integrate this new community. So too should synagogues extend new community groups and classes for newcomers joining the fold, who may be unsure of where to begin.

Now more than ever, there is also a need for fresh leadership within the Jewish community which can identify with this community. The time is ripe for emerging leadership from Jewish influencers, professionals, celebrities, and students - individuals both inside and outside the religious sphere who can provide guidance on how to get in touch with one’s Jewish identity, as well as how to meaningfully support Israel.

Fifteen years ago, my bat mitzvah speech focused on Pharaoh's fear of a strong Jewish nation, and how this concern has led to repeated persecution of the Jews throughout history. Looking at this same text again, one line from the Torah stands out to me in light of recent events. “The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.” That Jews are embracing their Jewish identity even under intense pressure is a testament to the resilience of our people and not something that should be taken for granted. Extending a welcoming hand to all those in our community is a small but crucial step towards the continued flourishing of our people.

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https://aish.com/underground-jews-during-the-dark-reign-of-communism/?src=ac
Underground Jews During the Dark Reign of Communism
by Kylie Ora Lobell
December 31, 2023
After fleeing the Nazis, many Hasidic Jews settled in Samarkand, alongside the centuries-old Bukharan Jewish community when the communists ruled the region.

In the 1940s, as World War II raged on in Europe and Hitler was sending Jews to the death camps, many members of the Hasidic Lubavitch community found a place of refuge: Samarkand, a city in Uzbekistan. They settled alongside Bukharan Jews, one of the oldest ethno-religious groups in Central Asia.

Though these Jews were safe during the war, when the Soviets took over afterwards, communism forbade people from practicing their religion. If they were caught, they could be sent to prison, a forced labor camp, or worse.

That didn’t stop the Hasidic Lubavitch community there, who continued to practice their Judaism under the ever-present eyes of the KGB at a time when a majority of Jews were forced to give it up.

In Rabbi Hillel Zaltzman’s new book, “The Jewish Underground of Samarkand: How Faith Defied Soviet Rule,” readers can learn about how the Jewish community continued to survive – and even thrive – in the face of possible persecution.

Being secretly Jewish in Samarkand
In 1943, Zaltzman, then only four years old, fled Ukraine with his family when the Germans were invading. Like many fellow Lubavitchers, they found safety in Samarkand, but it wouldn’t last long.
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Students of the underground yeshiva in Samarkand: From left to right: Avrohom Zerach Notik, Tanchum Boroshansky, Yosef Yitzchak Zaltzman, Benzion Goldschmidt, Shmuel Notik

When the communists took over, they infiltrated and controlled every aspect of life, from the synagogues to the schools, where Jewish boys and girls would typically learn about Jewish rituals.

In his book, Zaltzman writes, “The war for Jewish education was both offensive and defensive: Parents struggled to keep their children from attending the Soviet schools, or at the very least to keep them home on Shabbos and holidays, if they were forced to attend at all. At the same time, they tried to provide their children with an authentic Jewish education at home.”

The fathers would go to work and the children would stay home with their mothers and receive a Jewish education. But it wasn’t so simple.

“[Mothers] were the ones who were left alone with their children while their husbands went to work, and every knock on the door brought with it a rush of fear and anxiety,” Zaltzman writes. “Unfortunately, the tremendous stress had a detrimental effect on the health of many of these heroic women.”

Zaltzman’s family, as well as other Jews, had special codes for communicating, like how to knock on a door or ring a bell to signal that it wasn’t the KGB. The codes were used when Jews were learning or conducting any sort of religious activity.

Eventually, Zaltzman himself had to go to public school because of threats from a local principal. “If my father did not send me to school, warned the principal, his rights as a parent would be revoked,” he writes. “I would then be sent to a government orphanage.”

Jewish boys who studied Torah in the Underground classes

His father registered him in a school in a mostly Muslim district where he hoped nobody would notice when he wasn’t in school on Shabbat or the Jewish holidays. In school, the students had to sing songs praising Father Stalin, Lenin, Mother Russia, and the Communist Party, but he didn’t want to.

Once, his teacher noticed and asked him why he didn’t sing. Without thinking, he replied, “I don’t like your songs.”

He then realized that he had made a huge mistake. The teacher said, “What do you mean by ‘your songs’? Which songs are ‘ours’ and which songs are ‘yours’? Go over to the blackboard and sing one of ‘your’ songs!”

Zaltzman recalled some Azerbaijani music that a neighbor played in his housing district. He’d heard these songs so many times that he knew them by heart.

“As I began to sing, the teacher opened her mouth wide in surprise,” he writes. “She had not imagined that I was able to sing so nicely! She enjoyed it so much that she completely forgot my faux pas, or perhaps she thought that I had been referring to Azerbaijani music all along.”

Revisiting Samarkand: The author and his brother, Berel, in Registan Square, Samakand's main tourist attraction, in the heart of the Old City

“The Jewish Underground of Samarkand: How Faith Defied Soviet Rule” is full of stories about close calls and the obvious miracles the Jews of Samarkand experienced.

For instance, only a few elderly Jews would go to the official synagogues of Samarkand because there were always KGB spies there. Children weren’t allowed to go, and most adults were afraid of the government and wouldn’t attend, either. Secret services were held without Torah scrolls.

“Our greatest challenge was obtaining a Torah scroll,” Zaltzman writes. “We did not possess one of our own, and had no way to get hold of one. Asking the gabbai of the shul would no doubt be our undoing, as the authorities would thereby instantly discover our activities. Taking one without authorization was also risky; sooner or later the ‘burglary’ would be discovered and the ensuing commotion would quickly lead the government to our activities. Often enough, we had to suffice with reading the weekly Torah portion from a printed Bible, if only to preserve the structure of the service and not forego the Torah reading altogether. That was the best we could do.”
Finding refuge elsewhere
After World War II ended, some Jews in Samarkand snuck out of Uzbekistan and went back to where they came from, like Poland. But it was very risky to leave – if the KGB caught one of them trying to flee without the government’s permission, it could mean a harsh punishment like imprisonment (or worse). Zaltzman’s family didn’t want to take any chances. (The Soviets almost never granted permission for people to leave until 1990, after Gorbachev came to power and he instituted the policy of glasnost, which allowed for some Jews to finally get out.) After 15 years of waiting to obtain a visa, in 1971, his wish was finally granted, and Zaltzman went to Israel, where he had relatives.

The exit visa for which the author waited fifteen years
From Israel, he worked with the Jews in Samarkand from afar through his organization Chamah. He helped to provide services to the community there, such as a soup kitchen for the needy, meals-on-wheels for the elderly, and therapy for children with special needs. In 1973, he moved to the U.S. to start a branch of Chamah there, and today, he resides in Brooklyn, continuing his work.

Today, there are almost no Jews in Samarkand. Many of them made aliyah to Israel, while others immigrated to the U.S. and elsewhere when the Iron Curtain finally fell. Zaltzman has been back three times since he left because his mother is buried there.

Zaltzman hopes his book will inspire a generation of younger Jews. “It is crucial for the younger generation to understand that observing Judaism is not solely about freedom, but also about persevering through hardships,” said Zaltzman. “I hope this story encourages people to uphold their Jewish identity in all circumstances.”

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https://aish.com/science-religion-and-a-cosmologists-return-to-judaism-an-interview-with-dr-brian-keating/?src=ac
Science, Religion and a Cosmologist’s Return to Judaism: An Interview with Dr. Brian Keating
RABBI ADAM JACOBS
A leading cosmologist, Dr. Keating was a Catholic altar boy before he discovered his Judaism later in life.
Dr. Brian Keating is one of modern cosmology’s greatest luminaries. He has a gift for taking extremely complex ideas and articulating them in a way that we regular people can easily digest, and he does it with wit and humor. It’s no wonder his books have been so widely read and his social media following is so robust. Dr. Keating is also a proud Jew who discovered his Judaism later in life. I was fortunate to recently interview him for Aish.com.

Adam Jacobs: There's a famous statement by evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould that science and religion are, as he put it, “non-overlapping magisteria,” the idea that everyone should stay in their lane. Religion might have what to contribute to the world, but it's in its own arena, and science is in its own arena. Do you agree with that approach, or do you feel that there is room for either collaboration or exploration or is there any point of connection between those two areas for you?

Adam Jacobs: How did you discover your Jewish roots, and how did you come to embrace them? Was there some catalyzing event that took place?
Brian Keating: I had a fairly tortured path to Jewish observance. I always knew I was born Jewish, whatever that means. Biologically speaking, my mother is Jewish. My father is Jewish, but like many children of the seventies, I experienced divorce. I lived with my mother's second husband, my stepfather, and he and my mother adopted us legally, changing our names to match her new last name when she remarried. That was a significant moment in my life because, at that time, I became religious for the first time in my life (I mean practicing Catholicism, not necessarily believing), but certainly practicing religion for the first time. Before that, it had been occasional sets of matchbox cars on the first night of Hanukkah, maybe a Passover dinner here or there. And that was it for the first seven years of my life.

As a kid, my mother married an Irish Catholic and I took to the church's rituals and practice.

Then, immediately following my mother's marriage, I became immersed in Catholicism and converted and was confirmed baptized within the span of just a few years to the Catholic Church of Chappaqua, New York. Having always had a curious and probably spiritual side, even as a kid, I just took to the Catholic church's rituals and practice. And the warmth of not only my family, my adopted family, but my stepfather's family, which was a huge Irish Catholic family of 10 brothers and sisters and millions of cousins and grandparents and great-grandparents.

Contrasting that with my biologically Jewish relatives, more or less shunning us after the marriage, then adopting us into their family and really almost believing that we were genetically biologically their kids. And I loved Christmas and Easter, just a huge pageantry and the food and drinking and everything else. I decided I wanted to learn more and become more serious about it at age 12 and became an altar boy in the Catholic church. Not too many Orthodox members of boards or directors of orthodox synagogues have former altar boy on their CV.

After 9/11, I had a notion that I better learn at least something about why Israel is at the center of the world's hatred and ire and the Western kind of hegemony and schisms and so forth. I had always had a bias towards Judaism, and a lot of my friends were Jewish. I was dating someone who wasn't Jewish at the time, but I felt like this was the time for me to wake up and learn more about it. At the same time, my older brother moved out west and lived with me in California. Thankfully, he had moved from Manhattan a year before 9/11. Then, he encountered an Orthodox Jew at his law firm in LA.

And they had taken him in and been very warm and supportive of him. He got involved in the Jewish community of Los Angeles, which is very different from the Jewish community of New York City, where he had lived and gone to Cardozo Law School. He had friends who were rabbis who never once invited him for Shabbat dinners. By the time he moved to LA, the first day he was in his law firm he was getting invitations everywhere. It was a very warm and welcoming community there.

As he started to learn more, I began to learn more and meet with the same kind of rabbis and folks that he was involved with. And I slowly began to learn and decided to read the Torah. I've never read it before.

I got involved with the community there, attended Shabbat services, and taught myself to at least pronounce words in Hebrew. Even if I did not know the language, I just went to services, learned and participated in holidays, and so forth. That was about 20-plus years ago. I then really resolved to grow, get married, and have a family in a Jewish Orthodox setting. So that's where I'm now, always trying to learn more and not sit content with either my scientific expertise or my religious learnings, so-called expertise.

Adam Jacobs: Why do you regularly learn the Torah, and do you recommend it to others?

Brian Keating: You have to have a certain level of understanding; otherwise, you're just a klutz asking klutz questions. But there are just so many platitudes about religion that scientists like Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss do, and what I think undergirds their reasoning and their statements and their confidence (or arrogance) is that they had a bar mitzvah. I mean, I think it really comes down to that.

They're left in a permanently stunted premature state by virtue of their arrogance that because they learned to chant some meaningless tunes as a 13-year-old, and had a bad experience, that somehow they’re done with Judaism.

And universally (and this was true of my biological father), and it's true of Lawrence Kraus, and it was probably true of Carl Sagan and Stephen J. Gould all the way up and down the ladder is that their bar mitzvahs marked the graduation from ever thinking about the Torah again. And this has left them and those like them in a permanently stunted state with respect to their understanding of Judaism. They may be very smart, and there may, in fact be logical fallacies and scientific untruths, although I've looked for them, but I can't really find them, and it's hard to find them, but they would never accept the refutation of a physical law of a mathematical theorem—they would never accept the falsification and undermining of that from a 12-year-old boy.

And yet that's what they're doing with their understanding. They're left in a permanently stunted premature state by virtue of their arrogance that because they learned to chant some meaningless tunes as a 13-year-old, and had a bad experience, that somehow they’re done with Judaism. It was challenging to do my bar mitzvah last month at age 52. So I can only imagine what it's like at age 13. But to see them basically present just completely trivial objections that really amount to excuses based on a malformed prematurely developed understanding of religion is almost laughable if it wasn't often used in a really derogatory hostile format.

Adam Jacobs: What are your thoughts on the rise of antisemitism in the wake of 10/7? How do you understand the support for Hamas?

Brian Keating: I think it’s linked to the conflation of Western leftist hatred of America, which always comes concomitant with hatred of Israel. Ironically, the most progressive countries in the world, the US and Israel, are hated by the folks who call themselves progressive. I think there’s an element of self-hatred combined with nihilism that I last witnessed before 9/11, but not as much as after 10/7.

Adam Jacobs: As an academic and a Jew, how do you feel about the Harvard/MIT brouhaha and Harvard's president?

Brian Keating: I wrote about it many times on Twitter and spoke about it on YouTube. I’ll say that academia has long been a form of idol worship for our secular society, which is especially prevalent among liberal/secular Jews. This mindset often found young Jews feeling like failures because their parents prize college—and especially prestigious colleges like the Ivies—as the stamp of approval indicating they did a fantastic job. Neglecting their character and focusing on the five non-professor members of an admissions committee is pathetic and worthy of concern.

It’s no surprise the ethically compromised presidents of these universities would also find themselves investigated for other ethical lapses, which, sadly, are more widely condemned than their inexcusable reaction to antisemitism rampant on their campuses long before 10/7 but amplified immensely since.

Visit Dr. Keating’s website at https://BrianKeating.com and his Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1.

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FROM SUPERSTAR ACTRESS TO SUPER JEW
SARAH PACHTER
Sarah Mintz, a household name amongst Spanish-speakers in the US and Latin America, converted to Judaism and now lives in Israel.
Sarah Mintz, a household name amongst Spanish-speakers in the US and Latin America, converted to Judaism and now lives in Israel.

Sarah Mintz, aka Maritza Rodríguez Gómez, is a Colombian actress and household name amongst Spanish-speakers in the US and Latin America. The former Catholic converted to Judaism and today lives in Israel as an Orthodox Jew with her husband and twin boys.

For over two decades she led a successful career as a television host, actress, model, and a fixture on the red carpets and magazines. But while walking the red carpet and flashing a smile for the cameras, in her heart she was thinking, “Did I come into this world just to do soap operas and strike poses? There has to be more.”

Aish
Underground Jews During the Dark Reign of Communism
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Sarah was born in 1975 to a devout Catholic family. She attended church every Sunday with her family and was told to pray to the statues of Jesus placed throughout the sanctuary. Sarah often wondered: “Why do I have to pray to them? Why can’t I have a direct relationship to God?”

She also wondered why one can only connect with God while in church, once a week. Shouldn’t a relationship with God be constant?

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Sarah was never chastised for her curiosity. In fact, her mother urged Sarah to always be authentic and have the courage to be truthful. Her mother also taught her that transformation is always possible. She would say, “We are reborn every day and you can transform yourself to be the best you.” Her parents’ dedication to Catholicism set the stage for her eventual, greatest transformation—becoming a Jew.


As an aspiring actress, Sarah landed her first gig as an MC, which led to small television roles. Over time her repertoire grew and she eventually became a leading actress in Colombia. She worked for Telemundo (part of NBCUniversal), where she had an exclusive contract. Today, she is considered one of the most iconic villains in Spanish-language television.

By the time Sarah was 26, she had established an international career, which required intense travel. By 2001, she was feeling overworked and needed a vacation. One of her best friends, Marcela Pezet, a fellow actress, was acting in a soap opera in Los Angeles and invited Sarah to join her in LA while she filmed.

Once in LA Marcela urged her to go with her to the studio. She joked, “You want me to go to a studio? I’m on vacation!” She reluctantly complied, despite wanting to tour the city of LA instead. While Marcela prepped in her dressing room, Sarah explored the studio. “Suddenly, in front of my eyes I saw a marvelous guy.”

The star of a popular Spanish soap opera

He asked, “Oh, hey there. Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Smitten, she told him she was a friend of Marcela’s. He introduced himself as Joshua Mintz.

Sarah excitedly ran back to her friend’s dressing room and told her, “I know this sounds crazy, but I think I just met my future husband and father of my children.” That moment, they heard a knock on her dressing room door.

Joshua stood there stammering, “Oh… Hi! I…was checking to see if everything was okay.” He stayed briefly, and then left.

Joshua later confided that he had knocked on Marcela’s door to find out more about the beautiful blonde, Sarah.

It was love at first sight and divine intervention that began their relationship. Joshua was working as an Executive Producer in Mexico and was just in LA by chance. The TV show Marcela acted in had fired the original producer, and Joshua replaced him. It was his first time in LA, and he was only there for that specific project.

Sarah and Joshua were opposites. Sarah was loud, fiery, seductive, and was the life of the party. Joshua was reserved, serious, and professional. Sarah was Catholic and Joshua was Jewish, but that didn’t matter to them. Joshua was so far removed from Judaism, even though he always remained a Zionist, the fact that she wasn’t Jewish never interfered or came up as a topic of conversation in their relationship.

Until it was time to get married.

After Joshua proposed, Sarah said, “I envision getting married in a Catholic Church, wearing a beautiful white dress.”

He paused and said, “I’m sorry, I can’t do that because I’m Jewish.”


Stunned by his response, she said, “Okay, then why don’t we get married according to your religion in your synagogue?

“No, we can’t get married in a synagogue because you have to be Jewish.”

They decided to have a civil wedding because Sarah didn’t want to incorporate both Judaism and Catholicism under one roof. She wanted to be respectful and authentically follow one religion or another, not a convenient combination of both. “I didn’t want to make a mockery or have a circus at my wedding.”

They got married in 2005 and lived in Miami. Sarah began taking English courses at night with a professor. He noticed that she was very spiritual and suggested that she go to the Kabbalah Center in order to learn English and spirituality simultaneously. Even though she was interested, she felt her English wasn’t sufficient to understand the courses offered and didn’t go.

One day, Sarah and Joshua took a walk after a hurricane had passed through Florida. They saw a piece of paper lying on the sidewalk. It was a flier that offered Kabbalah classes in Spanish. Sarah thought it was a sign from God. She attended her first class and was thirsting for more. She felt restless and unsettled but wasn’t sure where the feeling was coming from. “Something was changing within me, but I didn’t know what.”

Sarah and Joshua Mintz

Sarah had a thriving and successful career at that point. She had an exclusive contract as one of the main actresses with Telemundo. Her face was all over billboards and advertisements. She attended award shows and walked all the red carpets. She loved her career, but still felt something was missing. Jewish mysticism fed her spiritual side. Without ever mentioning the word ‘Judaism,’ they introduced her to Torah, Shabbat, and the concept of family purity.

“When I found myself reading the Torah I thought, this is it. This is what I was looking for. I had such a wonderful life story, but I finally found what I was looking for. It’s not like I was looking for a big change. Judaism was simply the change my heart was looking for.”

Sarah started to keep Shabbat and all holidays, even though she was not yet Jewish. She stopped shooting on Friday evenings and Saturdays and would make excuses as to why she couldn’t be there. Before signing new contracts, she would explain that she was not available on Saturdays. She began to dress more modestly and started keeping portions of the laws of family purity. The Kabbalah Center had a class called “Sex and Kabbalah,” which was about family purity. Sarah said she started to live this way without even knowing it was Judaism.

She was making small changes and was enjoying the learning at the Kabbalah Center, but at a certain point, she felt she needed more. She began to take classes with an Orthodox Rabbi, but her husband felt this was too extreme and asked her to change course.

As a compromise, she started to learn with a Conservative Rabbi in 2014. At that time, she was expecting twins, and the Rabbi explained that if she wanted the children to be born Jewish, she needed to convert before giving birth. She undertook a quick conversion, and she and Joshua remarried in a Conservative ceremony before giving birth to twin boys, Akiva and Yehuda.

At that point, Joshua was offered a new position for a TV Network in Mexico called TV Azteca. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and their family moved to Mexico. Sarah began looking into Jewish schools for the children and was again introduced to another Orthodox Rabbi. She was drawn to his classes and this time she shared what she was learning with Joshua. The more she learned, the more she shared with her husband, who found the concepts intriguing and meaningful. Sarah wanted to begin incorporating Jewish practices in her life and no longer wanted to be kissing other men as an actress.


Joshua realized how happy Judaism was making his wife, so he got onboard. With Sarah leading the way, together they decided that Sarah would convert as an Orthodox Jew. She traveled to Jerusalem in 2016 and completed her conversion that year. With a new religious identity, she decided to change her name from Maritza to Sarah.

“Since I was a young girl, I never liked the name Maritza that my mom gave me.” She prayed that God would help her find the right Jewish name for herself.

While visiting Jerusalem, she connected to the name Sarah when praying by the grave of Sarah the Matriarch at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, but didn’t want to have a difficult life like she did, with trouble bearing children, among her other challenges. So she pointedly ignored the fact that she was drawn towards the name.

When she went back to work at the Telemundo studio, she got several texts from someone asking to speak with Sarah. She called the guy to tell him he had the wrong number. “I think you are texting the wrong person,” she told him. “I’m Maritza.”

He responded, “Are you sure you are not Sarah?”

That moment gave her goose bumps and she knew her name had to be Sarah.

Remarried in Israel after Sarah’s Orthodox conversion

The first person who started using her new name was her mother, Eva, who accepted and supported her conversion wholeheartedly.

Even though Sarah now lives happily as a full-fledged Jew in Jerusalem, it is not always easy to balance her career, home life, and Jewish commitment. She said, “It is easier to make a decision than to maintain it.”

Today, Sarah still acts, but is selective in what she agrees to film. She is currently part of a successful reality show that portrays the six most iconic villains of Latin American television in a show called, Secrets of the Villains. The six “villains” spend a week together with no kids or family in various mansions around the globe. On the show they get to be their real selves and are no longer acting as villains. They share their secrets and reveal things that happen in their lives. It’s all authentic, and there are no scripts. Sarah was allowed to be herself and show the world who she is now and all of the beautiful aspects of Judaism.

Barbara Hidalgo, production manager shared, “Sarah inspired me, and inspires so many people. We are not even Jewish. She teaches me things about respect to others, to your husband, to God. So many things make a lot of sense that I never, never thought about before. We must respect her Shabbat. When Sarah goes anywhere, she’s like a light walking. She is always so wise and sweet and so able to connect with people. She really touches our hearts. Even people who don’t know her love and respect her a lot.”

Sarah is the only actress on the show who is still married today. Most of the actresses in the industry are divorced or single. It’s very hard to have a healthy family with such a career. Her priority has always been her family. She knew she wanted to have a successful career, but realized when she got married that her husband and kids were going to come first.

In addition to acting, Sarah is also a fashion and lifestyle influencer, boasting two million social media followers. She uses her platform to teach others about Judaism and is also a spiritual coach.
Sarah has been able to successfully integrate all parts of herself and is able to lead a full, inspirational life. “I’m working with a Chassidic channel. We are working on Chassidic stories, acting out a narrative that feeds the soul with Jewish stories. I’m also a teacher at a Jewish seminary in Spanish, where women study Torah and girls also study for conversion. I’m also a life coach, and I work a lot with the Minister of the Diaspora to connect Judaism with different communities. I love to study and learn, to inspire my family…including my husband, who has grown so much. I am very happy to have completed my dream, and to have an impact on society, not only for the Jews, but also to the non-Jewish public to inspire people to have a genuine connection with God. To be an influencer is to be a positive role model.”

When asked how she felt about living in Israel during the recent war between Israel and Hamas, she said, “I wasn’t scared. The first thing I said to myself was, ‘This is the best place to be. I’m in God’s hands.’ And that’s how I have felt from the moment I stepped foot in Israel.”

Sarah has some words of encouragement for people around the world who are currently fearing for safety, given their Jewish-born status. “We must recognize the jewels that we are. God loves us so much and has given us the task to do good in this world. We have to know that we are so small and yet we are protected by the Infinite God. With faith and trust, we can build a beautiful life with whatever God brings our way. Our greatest weapon is our connection to God.”
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https://aish.com/the-psychology-of-jewish-conspiracy-theories/?src=ac
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JEWISH CONSPIRACY THEORIES
ILENE S. COHEN, PH. D.
A deep dive into the intricate psychology behind mass antisemitism.
Throughout history, conspiracy theories have often been the spark that ignites fear, discrimination, and violence. Among these, Jewish conspiracy theories hold a unique place, often involving unfounded claims of global control, manipulation of economic systems, or secretive plots. These theories are rooted in antisemitism and have been used to propagate an "accepted" hate and conduct against Jewish people.

Conspiracy theories generally arise from a need to make sense of complex world events. They appeal to our cognitive biases, such as the tendency to see patterns where none exist or to attribute intent to random events. They offer a simple explanation for complex phenomena, bringing comfort to some.

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Jewish conspiracy have been used as a way to demonize the Jewish people so that any violence against them could be justified and dismissed.

But Jewish conspiracy theories differ from regular conspiracy theories. While most conspiracy theories are created to explain unexpected or shocking events, Jewish conspiracy theories are often designed to propagate hate speech and justify discriminatory actions. They have been used as a way to demonize the Jewish people so that any violence against them could be justified and dismissed. We have seen it throughout history, and this very same tactic to create global hate against the Jewish people is being used again today.

Historical Examples of Jewish Conspiracy Theories
The archives of history are filled with examples of Jewish conspiracy theories, each more damaging than the last.

International Jewish Conspiracy: This theory, suggesting a coordinated global effort by Jews to control the world, is perhaps the most widespread and pernicious. Despite having no basis in fact, it has been used to justify various forms of discrimination and persecution. For example, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1903 is a fabricated anti-Semitic text that was widely circulated during the early 20th century. It proposed a global conspiracy by Jews to control the world. Even though it has been widely debunked, it contributed significantly to the spread of the International Jewish Conspiracy theory.

The Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906): This was a prominent example in France where a Jewish military officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely accused of treason. The event was fueled by antisemitic sentiments and conspiracy theories about Jews having dual loyalties.

In the Nazi era (1933-1945), Adolf Hitler and his party propagated the idea of an International Jewish Conspiracy as a part of their antisemitic propaganda. This theory played a crucial role in justifying the genocide of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

Hitler openly propagated the trope of an International Jewish Conspiracy in his book, Mein Kampf, where he blamed Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I and the subsequent economic hardships. This damning narrative was further exacerbated by Joseph Goebbels, the Reich's Minister of Propaganda, through his skillful use of media, including newspapers, radio broadcasts, and films. The Nazi's portrayal of Jews as the enemy behind Germany's troubles effectively dehumanized them, facilitating their systematic persecution.

The Rothschild Conspiracy: Originating in the 19th century, this conspiracy theory insinuated that the Rothschild family, a prominent banking dynasty of Jewish descent, possessed the power to manipulate global events for their monetary gain. This false narrative primarily stemmed from the family's substantial wealth and influence in finance during the 1800s. The antisemitic stereotype embedded in this conspiracy painted Jews universally as greedy, power-hungry, and corrupt, extending the harmful trope far beyond the individual family.

White Genocide Conspiracy Theory (Late 20th Century - Present): This theory, which emerged prominently in the late 20th century and continues to persist today, falsely suggests that Jews are orchestrating the replacement of white populations with non-white populations. The narrative is often associated with extreme right-wing ideologies and white supremacist movements, which view cultural diversity and immigration as threats to the white ethnic identity.

They propagate the baseless idea that a shadowy Jewish cabal is masterminding these demographic changes to undermine white societies. This theory is often tied to anti-Semitism, with Jews being accused of orchestrating these changes to undermine white power.

It is important to stress that all of these historical Jewish conspiracy theories lack any factual grounding. These theories have been widely dismissed by scholars and are recognized as a manifestation of hate speech.

Current Conspiracy Theories: Anti-Israel Narratives
In recent times, misinformation about the Israel-Hamas War has been rampant, further perpetuating Jew hatred. Jewish people are often categorized as the "white oppressor" and "occupier," an unfounded stereotype that breeds acceptable hate and violence towards them.

Post-October 7th, the anti-Israel narratives have been gaining increasing traction, leading to widespread repercussions amongst Israel supporters and global Jewish communities. The act of categorizing Jewish people as the "white oppressor" and "occupier" has fueled an environment conducive to hostility and aggression, often manifesting as hate crimes and antisemitic attacks. This has created a climate of fear and uncertainty among Jewish people and Israeli supporters worldwide.

In the United States, for instance, a marked increase in the number of antisemitic incidents has been reported. Jewish synagogues, schools, and community centers have been targeted, forcing institutions to heighten security measures and individuals to conceal their Jewish identity. Such a hostile environment has the potential to erode the sense of communal solidarity and individual self-assurance fundamental to the Jewish way of life.

This has also affected the worldwide support for Israel, a cornerstone of Jewish identity for many. Supporters of Israel, irrespective of their Jewish heritage, are finding themselves under scrutiny and, at times, direct threat. This atmosphere of intimidation can deter open support for Israel, undermining democratic values of free speech and association.

The Psychology Behind Jewish Conspiracy Theories
Fear, ignorance, and the human tendency to scapegoat others are critical factors behind the traction gained by these theories. Scapegoating provides an outlet for frustration and a target for displaced anger. The search for patterns or explanations, even where none exist, can lead to creating and propagating conspiracy theories.

We must be open to holding multiple perspectives and evaluating sources or methods to understand this phenomenon comprehensively. When understanding Jewish conspiracy theories, a complex interplay of societal, psychological, and individual factors contributes to their spread.

For instance, in modern times, a sociological perspective might highlight the role of social media in facilitating the rapid dissemination and normalization of these theories. A psychological lens might focus on cognitive biases predisposing individuals toward conspiracy thinking, such as a propensity for pattern recognition and a tendency toward scapegoating. Meanwhile, analyzing individual testimonies could reveal personal factors, such as feelings of disenfranchisement or fear, that make specific individuals more susceptible to conspiracy theories.

A systemic approach to viewing why conspiracy theories spread and happen emphasizes the importance of multifaceted responses addressing the societal, psychological, and personal factors propagating conspiracy theories. These theories have significant societal and individual impacts. They contribute to a climate of fear and suspicion, and they can incite violence and discrimination against Jewish communities.

Understanding the psychological mechanisms behind these conspiracy theories is crucial in combating their spread. By becoming more critical of the information we consume, people can become more aware of the harmful effects of such unfounded beliefs.

Education and awareness are crucial to counteracting these harmful narratives. Encouraging critical thinking, promoting media literacy, and fostering empathy and understanding can help reduce the influence of these damaging conspiracy theories. In the face of hate, we must stand together, challenge misinformation, and strive for a world where acceptance and understanding prevail over prejudice and discrimination.

References
Anti-Defamation League. (2020). Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. https://www.adl.org/audit2020
Bilewicz, M., Winiewski, M., Kofta, M., & Wójcik, A. (2013). Harmful ideas, the structure and consequences of anti-Semitic beliefs in Poland. Political Psychology, 34(6), 821-839.
Bruder, M., Haffke, P., Neave, N., Nouripanah, N., & Imhoff, R. (2013). Measuring individual differences in generic beliefs in conspiracy theories across cultures: Conspiracy Mentality Questionnaire. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 225.
Van Prooijen, J. W., & Acker, M. (2015). The influence of control on belief in conspiracy theories: conceptual and applied extensions. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(5), 753-761.
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Four Women Who Are Changing the World
Mother Tells Israeli Soldiers: Don’t Blame Yourselves for Accidentally Killing My Son
by Sarah Pachter
December 24, 2023
These four incredible women — Sarah R’bibo, Dr. Deborah Axelrod, Miri Robin, and Galit Horowitz — are moving mountains.

Sarah R’bibo
Sarah R’bibo and her family

In 2017, Sarah R’bibo helped to create Maor, the only Jewish special needs school in Los Angeles. Sarah’s youngest daughter, Iva, was born in 2012. Early on, Sarah noticed developmental delays and began the search to access services for her daughter. When Sarah embarked on a journey to pave a path for her daughter she had no idea it would create one for hundreds to follow.

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As Iva grew, Sarah and her husband were shocked to learn that there were no Jewish schools in the city for their daughter. Sarah searched for a viable option and was told, “There must be a Jewish school here in LA, you just did not look hard enough.” “Those kids get what they need in public school.”

Students at Maor

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Seven years ago, Sarah met Chaya Chazanow, another mother who was dealing with similar issues. They started a Whatsapp group that still exists today, boasting over 100 participants. “The chat helped us find others. We were determined to build a community to help everyone navigate this challenge.” This was the beginning of the vision for Maor.


“We got the advice to get a couple kids, a teacher, and just go. I thought, Okay, that’s doable.”

Maor Academy opened in 2017 with just Sarah and Chaya’s children. Today, Maor is home to 36 students and 20 staff members. “Maor is a school that thinks differently by focusing on our students’ strengths, not deficits. We do not put limits on what they can accomplish,” Sarah says.

Maor believes in individualized education, creating personalized learning plans for each student, addressing the entire child, all in a warm and loving Jewish environment that helps our students succeed.

Sarah explains, “People have a narrow view of what they think special needs means. Many assume it is only children with severe disabilities. But there are many neuro-diverse children who think and learn differently, and who struggle in traditional school settings. We teach them that thinking differently can lead to greatness. At Maor, we are breaking down this limited belief system and giving our students a new story of what they can accomplish and achieve in life.”

Sarah receives many calls from parents whose children are only three years old and have already been labeled as the “difficult” or “problem” child because of learning differences and behaviors.

“We had one mother who said that her five-year-old was already saying things like, ‘I’m not smart’ and ‘I hate being Jewish.’ This child had an amazing year at Maor. She flourished, and now loves school and Judaism.”

Sarah and Chaya are now leading an entire community of parents who desperately need them. “What I am most proud of is that we created a community space where students and families feel welcome and supported. We had the opportunity to be trailblazers and to create something that has far surpassed our expectations.”

Dr. Debora Axelrod
Dr. Axelrod, who has studied under top surgeons and renowned doctors, has treated breast cancers in over 10,000 patients over 35 years.
“I was lucky because during the early days of general surgery there weren’t many students interested in breast cases so I got the surgeries and the office hour exposure. When I told the chief surgeon that I wanted to be a breast surgeon, he replied, ‘I didn't train you all these years just to be a breast surgeon.’”

Dr. Axelrod didn’t mind that it wasn't the popular choice. She was drawn to it and became the chief of surgery at Beth Israel Hospital, in 1988. But she didn’t always want to be an oncologist. She originally wanted to be a comedian. Although she felt she wasn’t funny enough to become one, she used her love of comedy to write a book with Rosie O'Donnell, who was a patient of hers.

Dr. Axelrod reached out to her about writing a book together. The result was Bosom Buddies: Lessons and Laughter on Breast Health and Cancer. All the proceeds from the book are donated to charity. Every last dollar has gone to deserving organizations and breast cancer research.

“The most rewarding aspect of my job is receiving feedback from my patients.

“When I turned 50 I decided to make a birthday book with entries from my patients. I asked them to send pictures and to share about their current life after cancer. I told them, ‘I’m not dying, but when I retire I want to look back at the book and show it to my grandkids. It was so astounding what people wrote, and so heartfelt to read their words. I have this book until today.”

Dr. Axelrod is confident that one day the medical community will win the war against breast cancer. “Make no mistake—it will go away. Finding the solution won’t be easy, but as physicians and researchers we must be persistent.”

Miri Robin
Miri Robin began an organization called Love N Groceries, which assists widows and widowers in the Los Angeles Jewish community. It officially began in March 2020, but the seeds were planted 15 years ago when Miri and her mother helped feed a local widow anonymously.

Miri Robin and her family

In 2020 a group of six women convened in Miri’s backyard. The husband of a friend of theirs had passed away, and they wanted to do something to help. “Instead of just nodding and saying, ‘We should do something,’ we took initiative and created the organization.”

Each family has an ambassador who is aware of that family's specific needs. “This is not a generic organization that just randomly donates things to people. It takes into account what each person in each family really needs at that moment.”

In addition to addressing immediate food needs, the organization pays for medical and dental bills, rent, and mortgage shortages when needed. They also make sure to help celebrate birthdays and milestones, and make each holiday special for their recipients.

The goal of Love N Groceries is long-term support. When someone’s spouse dies, in the beginning everyone is there for them. But over time, people tend to forget and life goes on. Years down the line, when these widows and their orphans really need help, they often don’t have anyone to turn to. Love N Groceries is here to fill that gap.

Members of Love N Groceries team

“This organization is crucial because of the much-needed support it provides. Our promise is that we will support each other in a time of need.”

Miri explains, “Not only do we provide these widows and their families with basic needs, we provide these women, men, and their children with comforts other families and children have so they don’t feel the shame of appearing deprived.”

Love N Groceries also serves as the liaison for individuals to give anonymously to specific families. One man bought his own wife a piece of jewelry before the holidays. He donated the same amount to Love N Groceries in order to gift a widow jewelry, as well. This was the first piece of jewelry this woman received in six years, since her husband's passing. Today, she wears the piece with pride, never knowing who the donor was.

Love N Groceries asks members to donate $25 a week to help the widows in the community. “The goal is that everyone gets involved to do something collectively, on a weekly basis. There is power in numbers and these small donations add up to make a huge difference.

“When a lonely widow receives a gift at her door, that gift reminds her, ‘We love you and we are here for you.’ Together, our community fills a deep void. The widows know that the community is there right by their side, holding them and carrying their burden alongside them. That makes all the difference in the world.”

Galit Horowitz
Galit Horowitz founded LevLA, an organization that provides a hospitality home for those undergoing medical treatment in Los Angeles. Galit and her husband, Shlomi Horowitz, have used their savings, and even taken out loans, in order to provide this space for those who cannot afford accommodations near the L.A.-area hospitals where they are receiving treatment.

What motivated them to do so?

The Horowitz Family
Galit’s personal story began ten years ago with her first husband, Noam Capri who, one month after Galit gave birth to twins, was diagnosed with heart failure and needed an immediate heart transplant. Galit lived in the Valley and she traveled back and forth from Cedars Sinai twice a day until his release. Afterwards, her husband was re-hospitalized after contracting West Nile Virus, and went into a coma.

Galit and her twins traveled back and forth, relying on the hospitality of her friends, and even sleeping at the hospital at times. She felt like a nomad, enduring this intense challenge for more than three years.

After Noam passed away, a vision was born. Galit and Shlomi are on a mission to host families of patients in surrounding hospitals, for free. They work tirelessly to give families, who fly in from around the world, a sense of comfort and home. They are provided with home-cooked meals, and their every need is anticipated and taken care of. Galit does not want anyone to go through what she went through. The Horowitz family doesn’t take any compensation for the incredible kindness they bestow, the epitome of true volunteering.

These four women took a moment of challenge and inspiration to transform the world around them. May their personal examples of everyday heroism inspire you to leave your mark on the world.

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Antisemitism Forced My Family to Flee Colombia
by Jessica Ghitis
December 25, 2023
For generations Cali, Colombia was my family’s home. Then the President of Colombia verbally attacked my father because he’s a Jew.

I grew up with my family's stories, like my great-grandfather Jaime who crossed the Atlantic, got off at the wrong port in Barranquilla, and made his way to the Valle del Cauca, Colombia in a small boat on the Magdalena River.

That's how my abuelito, Spanish for grandfather, Chicole Ghitis was born in Cali, along with my father, David, and finally me. I used to think about everything my ancestors had done to escape the pogroms in Russia and the Nazis in Romania so that I could sit and drink coffee on my abuelita’s balcony and feel the breeze that comes into Cali from the Pacific at five in the afternoon. I was sure that Cali was the promised land for me and my family, even though life and the pursuit of a career in screenwriting had taken me to Los Angeles, California. I would go back at least twice a year to be with my family and feel that breeze from the Pacific.

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Antisemitism Forced My Family to Flee Colombia
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My great-grandfather on a horse in Colombia

The president of Colombia called my father a Nazi and an Israeli criminal, putting a target on my father’s back and ultimately forcing him and my mother to flee from Colombia.

But there are moments that bind you to history. Your name gets tangled up with events and dates, and you become one more Jew in a long history of discrimination and displacement. In March 2022, the president of Colombia, President Gustavo Petro, called my father a Nazi and an Israeli criminal, and then published my father’s work history with Israel on Twitter. His comment put a target on my father’s back and ultimately forced him and my mother to flee from Colombia.

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My father is an activist who gained popularity on Twitter back in 2012 when Gustavo Petro was only the mayor of Bogotá. He fought to get the then mayor impeached, and this enraged him. Petro had previously belonged to a terrorist group called the M-19. Many didn’t believe someone who had taken up arms against Colombia should run the capital, especially someone who had been accused of killing those who disagreed with their views. My father also openly accused Petro of corruption because of the way he fast-tracked city contracts.


I was 19 at the time and felt horror rush through my veins as my last name, which had been foreign and difficult for non-Jews to pronounce, began to roll off people’s tongues with recognition. Most people believed that Petro’s disdain was personal, not antisemitic. At the time, even I didn’t view it as antisemitic.

In 2022, during a contentious presidential race, Gustavo Petro attacked and defamed my father because he published an opinion column criticizing Petro for wanting to use pension funds for government expenses. Petro had to say something big to turn attention away from him, and bringing attention to my father’s Jewishness was just the trick.

Since Petro’s remarks came just a year after President Vladimir Putin called Jewish president Volodymyr Zelensky a Nazi as his justification for invading Ukraine, the media paid attention and my family name was in the news again. Putin ignored thousands of years of history to attack Zelensky and justify his war, and Petro, who has repeatedly refused to condemn Russia’s war on Ukraine, followed in his footsteps to attack a person who belonged to an ethnic minority. (The population of Colombia is around 51 million inhabitants. Jews in Colombia number less than 14,700.)

The attack also touched old wounds for us as Colombians. The Colombian people have worked tirelessly to overcome their violent past, and this was a rude reminder that we hadn’t gotten far. Stories of kidnapped or murdered activists were swirling, and as a nation we feared that we were moving toward dark times once again.

Jessica Ghitis

My father began to receive kidnapping threats that reeked of antisemitism. They ranged from the unoriginal “Maldito Judio”, damned Jew, to “Israeli criminal”, feeding off Petro’s rhetoric and publication of my father’s work history where the world could see he had almost exclusively worked with Israeli companies, making him seem less Colombian and more “other”.

My father and mother, along with their four dogs, had to flee before threats became actions. Many other Jews have since followed, fearing the poisonous seeds planted by Petro are spreading.

It's not the first time that Colombia has witnessed a Jewish exodus. Back in the 90s, my family and many others decided to leave Colombia out of fear of the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. This group was responsible for bombings, murders, drug trafficking, and kidnappings all in the name of gathering funds for their so-called “revolution”. When I was four years old, the FARC threatened our school. I remember seeing soldiers with guns escorting us onto buses to take us home. My parents told me that this was the last straw. I was five years old when we left Colombia for the first time and moved to Israel. Ten years and two presidents later, my parents finally felt it was safe enough to return.

We don’t talk about Colombian antisemitism, but the history buff in me rebels against this pajaso mental, a Colombian saying that refers to the strawman-like lies we tell ourselves. Unsurprisingly, many government officials were against “the Hebrew race” immigrating to Colombia during World War II and asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to prevent it. In the years that followed, anti-Jewish propaganda was posted on the streets and outside Jewish-owned shops as right-wing leaders supported Hitler’s fascism. They viewed it as a form of resistance. In 1944, after Alfonso Pardo Ruiz attacked Jacobo Fisboim, 44-year-old Jewish Colombian, businesses were vandalized, and Jews were beaten in the streets. These incidents were swept under the rug by my ancestors, perhaps so they could go on feeling that Colombia was welcoming to Jews.

When Gustavo Petro attacked my father, I thought about my ancestors. Those who brought the first Torah to Colombia, those who helped found my synagogue, proclaiming it should be made of iron so nothing could ever demolish it. The synagogue where my grandfather would be the rabbi for many years. I thought about my grandparents and great-aunts, who were mistreated by nuns in Catholic schools until the Jewish community built its own school.

My father was singled out for one simple reason: he is a Jew.

I also thought about my descendants, those who would never step inside my synagogue or school, those who would never feel the Cali breeze, and those who were going to be the first generation born in another country.

My father was not leading the charge against Petro. He’s not a politician. Many other people believe and say the same things my father said, and they have much more power and political standing than he ever had.

My father was singled out for one simple reason: he is a Jew.

Jews are the canary in a coal mine, warning the world of what’s to come. Since October 7th, the president of Colombia has spewed more antisemitic vile than just about any other world leader. He’s threatened to break political ties with Israel, stood silent as the Israeli Embassy is vandalized and threatened, and compared Jews to Nazis.

These signs cannot be ignored, and they are not only happening in Colombia.

I am a strong liberal feminist. I have marched in the United States for the rights of the Black community, LGBTQ+, reproductive rights, and for the rights of us immigrants. My friends share my ideals, but when it comes to my Jewish identity and what happened to my family due to antisemitism, they don’t take it seriously. Nobody is going to march for Jews except Jews.

Three generations of my family were born in Colombia. Three generations of my family have loved Colombia, but history obliges us to pay attention to the signs. The damage is irreparable. There is no Jewish future in Colombia, and Jews have been dehumanized to pave the way for hate and violence against them.

I refuse to sweep our pain under the rug. Violence begins with words, like the words of President Gustavo Petro. And when we needed support, none was found; we were abandoned.

Today, Jews around the world need support, and every citizen of the world needs to ask themselves: will I stand with the forces of darkness or with the forces of light?

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Stephen Fry Declares His Jewish Pride and Calls Out Antisemitism
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 26, 2023
The British actor’s alternative Christmas message broadcasted on BBC was a bold, courageous statement that is getting a lot of hate.
On December 25 he delivered Channel 4's Alternative Christmas Message to Britain. It’s a huge honor. Each year, King Charles (and before him, Queen Elizabeth) delivers a formal Royal Christmas Message, wishing all a happy holiday and highlighting important social issues and messages. For the past 30 years, a popular figure then delivers an alternative point of view.

Stephen Fry, a disengaged Jew, tackled antisemitism. “One truth about myself…that I never thought for one single second would ever be an issue about which I had any cause to worry in this country was that I’m a Jew,” he intoned. “Yes, you heard me correctly, I am a Jew.” Acknowledging that “that may surprise some people,” Fry described how his mother’s Jewish family fled Central Europe in the 1930s, finding refuge in England. Fry pointed out that something has profoundly shifted.
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“My Jewish grandparents loved Britain, believing that Jews were more welcome here than in most countries,” Fry told the nation. “I am glad they aren’t alive now to read newspaper stories that would have reminded them of the 1930s Europe that they left behind… Since October the 7th there have been 50 separate reported incidents of antisemitism every day in London alone, an increase of 1350%... Shop windows smashed, Stars of David and swastikas daubed on walls of Jewish properties, synagogues, and cemeteries. Jewish schools have been forced to close. There is real fear stalking the Jewish neighborhoods of Britain. Jewish people here are becoming fearful of showing themselves.”

Fry’s statistics are sobering. In London in December alone, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was punched in the head by someone who yelled “kill the Jews” at a London bus stop. An Orthodox woman was kicked and punched on a busy street in the middle of the afternoon until she lost consciousness in what London police are investigating as an anti-Jewish hate crime. Jewish schools in London have closed temporarily rather than have students and parents risk their lives by walking past angry mobs calling for the eradication of Israel which have sometimes demonstrated outside. And women putting up posters of Israeli hostages have been attacked, pushed to the ground, and kicked.

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The situation is similar in much of the world. In France, “the number of antisemitic acts has exploded,” announced Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. In Germany, the Israeli embassy in Berlin recently said that the rise of antisemitic incidents in that city is “reminiscent of the Third Reich” era. In the United States, FBI director Christopher Wray described the current climate of antisemitism as “reaching…historic levels.”


Backlash

While some have welcomed Fry’s beautiful Christmas message, many have excoriated him for daring to defend Jews and criticizing antisemitism. Soon after Fry was announced as this year’s deliverer of the Alternative Christmas Message, Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of Britain’s Holocaust Education Trust, wrote that both she and Fry were being inundated with hateful anti-Israel messages on social media every time they were linked to any criticism of antisemitism, no matter what the context.

Pollack explained that when the Holocaust Education Trust posted about the 85th anniversary of a group of Jewish children being brought to safety in Britain, they had to turn off the comment button on their Twitter account. Messages included “Holocaust is fake zionism (sic),” “From the River to the Sea…Israehell will never be,” “and Keep the world clean” along with a picture of a Jewish star being dumped into a garbage can. This sort of discourse has become commonplace on social media since Hamas October 7 attacks, she notes, identifying Stephen Fry as a particular target of online hate.

As soon as Fry delivered his message, Twitter was rife with vile anti-Israel rants and comments excoriating him for daring to complain about anyone hating Jews. The Express - a sensationalist Britain newspaper - immediately posted the headline “Stephen Fry sparks angry backlash to pro-Israel alternative Christmas message on Channel 4” - even though Fry’s message had nothing whatsoever to do with Israel. The newspaper reported that Fry is being accused of “spreading propaganda” about Israel and linked to some of the many anti-Fry messages flooding social media.

Ignorance about Jews and Israel

Confusion and ignorance about Jews and Israel allow these sorts of antisemitic attitudes to take root and grow.

Ignorance about Jews and Israel is growing. In 2020, a major study found that fully 63% of Americans did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Another survey that year found that 11% of Millennial and Generation Z Americans (19% in New York state) thought that it was Jews themselves who caused the Holocaust.

Ron Hassner, a political science professor and Chair of the Israel Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley, recently surveyed protestors yelling the well-known slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” asking them which river and which sea the slogan referred to. (The slogan is a way of saying that the entire territory which currently makes up Israel, the lands governed by the Palestinian Authority, and Gaza - all of which lie between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea - should be one entity. This would mean the eradication of Israel and likely the deaths of millions of Israeli Jews should an extremist organization like Hamas come to power.) In Prof. Hassner’s survey, a majority of demonstrators - 53% - couldn’t name which river and which sea they were talking about. “There’s no shame in being ignorant unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions,” Prof. Hassner notes. Another recent poll found that 50% of Americans between 18 to 24 support Hamas in the current Israel-Hamas war.

Stephen Fry’s Answer to Antisemitism

Given the horrible smears against Stephen Fry since his Christmas Address, his message of hope is more important than ever. Fry noted the importance of being proud to be Jewish. “I’m frankly damned if I’ll let antisemites be the ones who define me, and take ownership of the word Jew, injecting it with their own spiteful venom. So I accept and claim the identity with pride, I am Stephen Fry, and I am a Jew… At this time in the face of the greatest rise in anti-Jewish racism since records began, Jews should stand upright and proud in who they are…Standing upright means speaking up and calling out venomous slurs and hateful abuse wherever you encounter them. Knowing and loving this country as I do, I don’t believe that most Britons are ok living in a society that judges hatred of Jews to be the one acceptable form of racism. So speak up, stand with us, be proud to be Jewish, or Jew-ish - or, if not Jewish at all, proud to have us as much a part of this great nation as any other minority, as any of you.”

It took courage for Stephen Fry, long considered a quintessentially English national treasure, to identify himself so publicly as a Jew, and to use his Christmas Message to deliver such an unpopular speech. May his message inspire all of us to stand tall, be proud, and refuse to ignore the antisemitism that’s all around us.

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Elaine, peace is powerful!

Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

During World War I, in the winter of 1914, on the battlefields of Flanders, one of the most unusual events in history took place. The Germans had been in a fierce battle with the British and French. Both sides were dug in, safe in muddy man-made trenches six to eight feet deep that seemed to stretch forever… but it was Christmas, and what happened next was astonishing, writes Stanley Weintraub, author of the book, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce.

“The Germans set trees on trench parapets and lit the candles. Then, they began singing carols, and though their language was unfamiliar to their enemies, the tunes were not. After a few trees were shot at, the British became more curious than belligerent and crawled forward to watch and listen. And after a while, they began to sing.

By Christmas morning, the "no man's land" between the trenches was filled with fraternizing soldiers, sharing rations and gifts, singing and (more solemnly) burying their dead between the lines. Soon they were even playing soccer, mostly with improvised balls.”

Though the war had to continue, as commanders on both sides ordered their troops to restart hostilities, this interval of peace during war was extraordinary and unprecedented.

Elaine, this is the season of peace. And the Prince of Peace has commanded us to be peacemakers. May we become known for initiating peace -- in our homes, in our families, in our workplaces, in every which situation. And never forget to pray for the Peace of Jerusalem!

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George, Baht Rivka, Obadiah and Elianna (Dallas, TX)
(Baltimore, MD)

Editor's Note: During this war, we have been live blogging throughout the day -- sometimes minute by minute on our Telegram channel. Be sure to check it out!


Editor's Note: Would you prayerfully consider giving a year-end donation to Worthy Ministries? Your support will help us grow, allowing us to hire additional writers and staff for the coming year.

Editor's Note: We are planning our Winter Tour so if you would like us to minister at your congregation, home fellowship, or Israel focused event, be sure to let us know ASAP. You can send an email to george [ @ ] worthyministries.com for more information.

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Why Are So Many Christmas Songs Written by Jews?
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 24, 2023
From White Christmas to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Jews created much of the soundtrack of the holiday.

Many of the most beloved Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers who shaped Americans’ conception of the holiday. From White Christmas to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jews created much of the soundtrack of the holiday.
Why are so many of the most beloved Christmas songs Jewish creations?
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A Generation of Antisemites
Dutch Jewish composer Stephen Emmer (who’s written his own Christmas song, Sleep for England) posits that: “It is in the DNA of Jews to write melancholy music, and also to ingratiate themselves in a world in which they are outsiders, at a time of the year when people are feeling especially patriotic and rooted in the idea of home.”

For many of the Jewish composers mentioned below, it seems that writing Christmas music was a way of fitting into a non-Jewish American idea. They didn’t write about Jesus or religious aspects of the holiday. Instead, their songs invoke an idealized American life that was denied to them and their families.
“The Christmas songs that are popular are not about Jesus, but they’re about sleigh bells and Santa and the trappings of Christmas,” explains Jewish American singer Michael Feinstein, who has recorded Christmas music himself. “They’re not religious songs.” Perhaps writing comforting, largely secular-sounding Christmas songs was a way for these composers to allow Jews to take part in the season.
Jewish American composer Rob Kapilow believes these composers reinvented Christmas as a largely secular holiday and a time to invoke an idealized America.
They created some beautiful music that brought joy to millions of people – but perhaps in doing so, they lost something precious of themselves, as well.
The story of the Jewish songwriters who shaped Christmas music “is…really a story about pogroms, prejudice, poverty, immigration, assimilation, and the powerful creative imaginations of an extraordinary group of songwriters who are trying to find their way into an American culture,” Kapilow notes, pointing out that older and European Christmas music used to be much more religious in nature. That changed in the 1940s, he believes, with the Jewish-written song White Christmas. “You know…lots of roads into American culture were blocked for these Jews, but they wanted to become part of that American world. And so what they did was they looked around, they listened around and they created the soundtrack of a secular Christmas.”

The composers listed below aren’t known for songs celebrating Hanukkah or other Jewish festivals. (Though Irving Berlin did write a song called Israel after the founding of the State of Israel.) They created some beautiful music that brought joy to millions of people – but perhaps in doing so, they lost something precious of themselves, as well.
Christmas Classics Written By Jews
Here are a few classic songs written or co-written by Jewish musicians.
Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, by Jewish duo Mel Torme and Bob Levinson
Mel Torme was born in Chicago in 1925 after his parents immigrated from Russia. Mel remembered that after Shabbat dinner each week, he and his parents and siblings would sit on the front step of their building and serenade the neighbors with beautiful renditions of traditional Shabbat songs. Mel eventually left Jewish practice behind, became a composer, moved to California, and married four times. He teamed up with fellow Jewish musician Bob Levinson, who adopted the non-Jewish sounding name Wells. Bob penned lyrics to songs and Mel composed the music.

One summer day Mel walked into their Los Angeles studio to find a piece of paper propped on his piano reading: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at your nose / Yuletide carols being sung by a choir / And folds dressed up like Eskimos.” Bob walked in and explained that he was so hot, he’d tried to cool himself down by writing a song about winter. For his lyrics he drew on his childhood memories of wintertime in Boston.

Mel quickly came up with the now-famous song’s signature tune. Excited by how it sounded, Bob wrote more verses. The song was finished within 45 minutes. Nat King Cole recorded it the following year and a hit was born.

Mel Torme also wrote the song The Christmas Feeling in 1992.

Winter Wonderland, by Jewish composer Felix Bernard, words by Richard B. Smith
Felix Bernard
Richard B. Smith, the lyricist who wrote the beautiful words to this song, wasn’t Jewish, and they were among the last lyrics ever penned. He was hospitalized for tuberculosis in Pennsylvania in 1934 when he was 33 years old. Watching the snow fall outside his window, he wrote the words to Winter Wonderland and gave them to his business partner, the Jewish composer Felix Bernard (born Felix Bernhardt).

Knowing that his colleague was dying, Felix quickly wrote a beautiful melody for the work and ensured that it was released that year. Winter Wonderland was the biggest hit of 1934; Richard B. Smith died the following year.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow, by Jewish child prodigies Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne
This song was written during a major heat wave in 1945 in Los Angeles, when its composers found themselves longing for colder weather. Both of its composers were Jewish child protegees whose parents were refugees from Eastern Europe. They both changed their names, moved far away from their childhood homes, and gave up much of the Jewish ritual that marked their early lives.

Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne

Sammy Cahn was born Samuel Cohen in New York in 1913. He learned the violin and played in bar mitzvah bands as a teen. Jule Styne (born Julius Stein) was born into London’s impoverished East End in 1905; his parents hailed from Ukraine and owned a small grocery store. He played the piano on stage in London as a young child. When he was eight years old, Jule’s family moved to Chicago when Jule was eight. There, Jule played the piano with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He later transitioned to songwriting and moved to Los Angeles.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town, by John Coots and Haven Gillespie
Haven Gillespie (who was not Jewish) wrote the words to this 1934 hit and Jewish composer Fred Coots created the music. It took him only ten minutes to invent the core tune to this catchy melody.



Coots was born in 1897 in Brooklyn to a musical Jewish family. His father sang at bar mitzvahs and his mother was a concert pianist. In his long career, Coots wrote songs for dozens of musicals, as well as scores of stand-alone songs.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, A Holly Jolly Christmas and more, by Johnny Marks and his brother in law, Robert May
Johnny Marks was born in 1909 in Mt. Vernon, New York, into a distinguished, secular Jewish family. Eschewing a synagogue membership, he joined the “Ethical Culture School” in Manhattan, a largely-Jewish center that aimed to provide a religious-like framework outside the bounds of Judaism or any other religion. Marks became a musician and songwriter and eventually specialized in creating Christmas songs. Among the scores of Christmas songs he penned, some of the most famous are Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, and A Holly Jolly Christmas.

Johnny Marks
His most famous song, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, had a little-known family connection: it was based on a character created by Robert Lewis May, Johnny’s brother-in-law. In 1939, Robert was working for Montgomery Ward, the pioneering mail-order businessman and department store developer. It was a terrible time. Robert’s wife was very ill and he knew she didn’t have much more time left. Even though Robert was Jewish, Ward asked him to create a “cheery Christmas story” the store could give away with purchases during the Christmas shopping season.

Robert obliged and drew on his own experiences growing up as a “shy” and “small” Jewish boy who “had known what it was like to be an underdog.” He created a rhyming story about a little reindeer with a shiny nose named Rudolph. He is too small to help Santa deliver presents, but when the weather is foggy one Christmas Eve, Rudolph is the only reindeer who can help, illuminating Santa’s way with his glowing nose.

Years later, Johnny employed his brother-in law’s lyrics - written during the worst year of his life - in what is now a classic Christmas song.

White Christmas, by Irving Berlin
White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin, a Jewish composer for whom Christmas was always associated with deep sadness.

Born Israel Beilin in Russia, Irving Berlin moved with his family to New York in 1902, when he was five years old. The family was utterly impoverished. Irving’s father worked as a chazzan, or cantor, as well as in a meat plant as a Hebrew teacher. He died when Irving was 13 years old, throwing the family into penury. Irving and his seven siblings went to work as children, leaving school to help support their family. Irving sold newspapers and the snatches of songs he heard from bars as he walked New York’s streets was his first introduction to American music.

Irving Berlin
Irving’s first wife, Dorothy Goetz, contracted typhoid fever on their honeymoon and died soon after. He remarried and his son, Irving Berlin Jr., died when he was just three weeks old on Christmas Day 1928. From then on December 25 was always a day of sadness.

Despite these terrible personal feelings about December 25, Berlin wrote the nostalgic, beautiful song White Christmas in 1941, describing an idealized, all-American holiday, and it became a hit when Bing Crosby recorded it. It was included in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn, cementing White Christmas as an American favorite.

Sleigh Ride, Lyrics by Jewish New Yorker Mitchell Parrish and Music by Leroy Anderson
Swedish-American composer Leroy Anderson began composing Sleigh Ride during a 1946 heatwave. The tune conveys the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves and was initially performed without words. In 1950, Jewish songwriter Mitchell Parrish wrote words for the piece. It was eventually recorded by the Ronettes in 1963 and became a hit.

Mitchell Parrish
Born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky in 1901 in Lithuania, Mitchell Parrish’s family settled in New York where he learned to play the piano and got a job as a “songplugger,” traveling around New York music stores playing the latest popular songs in order to sell sheet music. He eventually wrote dozens of songs and worked on many musicals, though Sleigh Ride remained his most popular work.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, by Jewish duo George Wyle and Edward Pola
This 1963 hit describing a quintessentially American Christmas was written by two Jews: George Wyle (born Bernard Weissman in 1916 in New York) composed the music and Edward Pola (born Sidney Edward Pollacsek in 1907, also in New York) wrote the lyrics. The song isn’t the most popular hit that George Wyle composed; he also wrote the theme song to Gilligan’s Island.
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Why Are So Many Christmas Songs Written by Jews?
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
December 24, 2023
From White Christmas to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Jews created much of the soundtrack of the holiday.

Many of the most beloved Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers who shaped Americans’ conception of the holiday. From White Christmas to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jews created much of the soundtrack of the holiday.
Why are so many of the most beloved Christmas songs Jewish creations?
Aish
A Generation of Antisemites
Dutch Jewish composer Stephen Emmer (who’s written his own Christmas song, Sleep for England) posits that: “It is in the DNA of Jews to write melancholy music, and also to ingratiate themselves in a world in which they are outsiders, at a time of the year when people are feeling especially patriotic and rooted in the idea of home.”

For many of the Jewish composers mentioned below, it seems that writing Christmas music was a way of fitting into a non-Jewish American idea. They didn’t write about Jesus or religious aspects of the holiday. Instead, their songs invoke an idealized American life that was denied to them and their families.
“The Christmas songs that are popular are not about Jesus, but they’re about sleigh bells and Santa and the trappings of Christmas,” explains Jewish American singer Michael Feinstein, who has recorded Christmas music himself. “They’re not religious songs.” Perhaps writing comforting, largely secular-sounding Christmas songs was a way for these composers to allow Jews to take part in the season.
Jewish American composer Rob Kapilow believes these composers reinvented Christmas as a largely secular holiday and a time to invoke an idealized America.
They created some beautiful music that brought joy to millions of people – but perhaps in doing so, they lost something precious of themselves, as well.
The story of the Jewish songwriters who shaped Christmas music “is…really a story about pogroms, prejudice, poverty, immigration, assimilation, and the powerful creative imaginations of an extraordinary group of songwriters who are trying to find their way into an American culture,” Kapilow notes, pointing out that older and European Christmas music used to be much more religious in nature. That changed in the 1940s, he believes, with the Jewish-written song White Christmas. “You know…lots of roads into American culture were blocked for these Jews, but they wanted to become part of that American world. And so what they did was they looked around, they listened around and they created the soundtrack of a secular Christmas.”

The composers listed below aren’t known for songs celebrating Hanukkah or other Jewish festivals. (Though Irving Berlin did write a song called Israel after the founding of the State of Israel.) They created some beautiful music that brought joy to millions of people – but perhaps in doing so, they lost something precious of themselves, as well.
Christmas Classics Written By Jews
Here are a few classic songs written or co-written by Jewish musicians.
Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, by Jewish duo Mel Torme and Bob Levinson
Mel Torme was born in Chicago in 1925 after his parents immigrated from Russia. Mel remembered that after Shabbat dinner each week, he and his parents and siblings would sit on the front step of their building and serenade the neighbors with beautiful renditions of traditional Shabbat songs. Mel eventually left Jewish practice behind, became a composer, moved to California, and married four times. He teamed up with fellow Jewish musician Bob Levinson, who adopted the non-Jewish sounding name Wells. Bob penned lyrics to songs and Mel composed the music.

One summer day Mel walked into their Los Angeles studio to find a piece of paper propped on his piano reading: “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire / Jack Frost nipping at your nose / Yuletide carols being sung by a choir / And folds dressed up like Eskimos.” Bob walked in and explained that he was so hot, he’d tried to cool himself down by writing a song about winter. For his lyrics he drew on his childhood memories of wintertime in Boston.

Mel quickly came up with the now-famous song’s signature tune. Excited by how it sounded, Bob wrote more verses. The song was finished within 45 minutes. Nat King Cole recorded it the following year and a hit was born.

Mel Torme also wrote the song The Christmas Feeling in 1992.

Winter Wonderland, by Jewish composer Felix Bernard, words by Richard B. Smith
Felix Bernard
Richard B. Smith, the lyricist who wrote the beautiful words to this song, wasn’t Jewish, and they were among the last lyrics ever penned. He was hospitalized for tuberculosis in Pennsylvania in 1934 when he was 33 years old. Watching the snow fall outside his window, he wrote the words to Winter Wonderland and gave them to his business partner, the Jewish composer Felix Bernard (born Felix Bernhardt).

Knowing that his colleague was dying, Felix quickly wrote a beautiful melody for the work and ensured that it was released that year. Winter Wonderland was the biggest hit of 1934; Richard B. Smith died the following year.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow, by Jewish child prodigies Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne
This song was written during a major heat wave in 1945 in Los Angeles, when its composers found themselves longing for colder weather. Both of its composers were Jewish child protegees whose parents were refugees from Eastern Europe. They both changed their names, moved far away from their childhood homes, and gave up much of the Jewish ritual that marked their early lives.

Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne

Sammy Cahn was born Samuel Cohen in New York in 1913. He learned the violin and played in bar mitzvah bands as a teen. Jule Styne (born Julius Stein) was born into London’s impoverished East End in 1905; his parents hailed from Ukraine and owned a small grocery store. He played the piano on stage in London as a young child. When he was eight years old, Jule’s family moved to Chicago when Jule was eight. There, Jule played the piano with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He later transitioned to songwriting and moved to Los Angeles.

Santa Claus is Coming to Town, by John Coots and Haven Gillespie
Haven Gillespie (who was not Jewish) wrote the words to this 1934 hit and Jewish composer Fred Coots created the music. It took him only ten minutes to invent the core tune to this catchy melody.



Coots was born in 1897 in Brooklyn to a musical Jewish family. His father sang at bar mitzvahs and his mother was a concert pianist. In his long career, Coots wrote songs for dozens of musicals, as well as scores of stand-alone songs.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, A Holly Jolly Christmas and more, by Johnny Marks and his brother in law, Robert May
Johnny Marks was born in 1909 in Mt. Vernon, New York, into a distinguished, secular Jewish family. Eschewing a synagogue membership, he joined the “Ethical Culture School” in Manhattan, a largely-Jewish center that aimed to provide a religious-like framework outside the bounds of Judaism or any other religion. Marks became a musician and songwriter and eventually specialized in creating Christmas songs. Among the scores of Christmas songs he penned, some of the most famous are Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, and A Holly Jolly Christmas.

Johnny Marks
His most famous song, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, had a little-known family connection: it was based on a character created by Robert Lewis May, Johnny’s brother-in-law. In 1939, Robert was working for Montgomery Ward, the pioneering mail-order businessman and department store developer. It was a terrible time. Robert’s wife was very ill and he knew she didn’t have much more time left. Even though Robert was Jewish, Ward asked him to create a “cheery Christmas story” the store could give away with purchases during the Christmas shopping season.

Robert obliged and drew on his own experiences growing up as a “shy” and “small” Jewish boy who “had known what it was like to be an underdog.” He created a rhyming story about a little reindeer with a shiny nose named Rudolph. He is too small to help Santa deliver presents, but when the weather is foggy one Christmas Eve, Rudolph is the only reindeer who can help, illuminating Santa’s way with his glowing nose.

Years later, Johnny employed his brother-in law’s lyrics - written during the worst year of his life - in what is now a classic Christmas song.

White Christmas, by Irving Berlin
White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin, a Jewish composer for whom Christmas was always associated with deep sadness.

Born Israel Beilin in Russia, Irving Berlin moved with his family to New York in 1902, when he was five years old. The family was utterly impoverished. Irving’s father worked as a chazzan, or cantor, as well as in a meat plant as a Hebrew teacher. He died when Irving was 13 years old, throwing the family into penury. Irving and his seven siblings went to work as children, leaving school to help support their family. Irving sold newspapers and the snatches of songs he heard from bars as he walked New York’s streets was his first introduction to American music.

Irving Berlin
Irving’s first wife, Dorothy Goetz, contracted typhoid fever on their honeymoon and died soon after. He remarried and his son, Irving Berlin Jr., died when he was just three weeks old on Christmas Day 1928. From then on December 25 was always a day of sadness.

Despite these terrible personal feelings about December 25, Berlin wrote the nostalgic, beautiful song White Christmas in 1941, describing an idealized, all-American holiday, and it became a hit when Bing Crosby recorded it. It was included in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn, cementing White Christmas as an American favorite.

Sleigh Ride, Lyrics by Jewish New Yorker Mitchell Parrish and Music by Leroy Anderson
Swedish-American composer Leroy Anderson began composing Sleigh Ride during a 1946 heatwave. The tune conveys the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves and was initially performed without words. In 1950, Jewish songwriter Mitchell Parrish wrote words for the piece. It was eventually recorded by the Ronettes in 1963 and became a hit.

Mitchell Parrish
Born Michael Hyman Pashelinsky in 1901 in Lithuania, Mitchell Parrish’s family settled in New York where he learned to play the piano and got a job as a “songplugger,” traveling around New York music stores playing the latest popular songs in order to sell sheet music. He eventually wrote dozens of songs and worked on many musicals, though Sleigh Ride remained his most popular work.

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, by Jewish duo George Wyle and Edward Pola
This 1963 hit describing a quintessentially American Christmas was written by two Jews: George Wyle (born Bernard Weissman in 1916 in New York) composed the music and Edward Pola (born Sidney Edward Pollacsek in 1907, also in New York) wrote the lyrics. The song isn’t the most popular hit that George Wyle composed; he also wrote the theme song to Gilligan’s Island.
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https://aish.com/understanding-the-israeli-palestinian-crisis-a-comprehensive-historical-primer/?src=ac
UNDERSTANDING THE ISRAELI / PALESTINIAN CRISIS: A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORICAL PRIMER
DW DUKE
A clear, brief history of the Mideast conflict that is required reading to better understand what is happening today and a path forward in seeking a resolution.
The Backdrop
October 7, 2023, was a normal day for twenty-two-year-old Shani Louk. Shani, a tattoo artist from Germany was visiting a peace rally in Israel called the Supernova Festival which is a celebration of the end of Sukkot. As Shani danced with her friends, she failed to notice the thousands of Hamas militants who arrived without warning and began killing as many people as they could find. Shani was one of the victims. After killing Shani the Hamas militants stripped off her clothes and paraded her naked body through the streets of Gaza in the back of a pickup truck while cheering and shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Shani was one of the victims of the Hamas assault that resulted in the death of over 1,200 people in Israel with several thousand more injuries. The massacre brought immeasurable grief around the world. Many supporters of Palestinians were shocked and grieved that their champion, Hamas, would engage in such a brutal slaughter. Others doubled down and adopted the mantra “Free Palestine by any Means” and “From the River to the Sea.” On the Jewish side of the conflict were the questions why did this happen? Why do they hate us so much? What did we do to deserve this? Ironically, the Supernova Festival was intended to be a peace rally to support peaceful relations between Israel and Palestine, yet Hamas attacked the festival anyway killing hundreds of attendees. The question is why.

Aish
A Generation of Antisemites
Read More
Having closely observed the conflict between Israel and Palestine for decades it occurred to me that modern media provides very little information about the actual dispute between these people which results in widespread ignorance of the issues. For example, in listening to discussions about the conflict, it is apparent that few people are aware that the Palestinian Authority and its adversary Hamas, are branches of the militant groups of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammed Amin al-Huseini, who was the co-author, with Adolph Hitler, of the Nazi plan to concentrate and exterminate all Jews in Europe then in Palestine.

Prior to the October 7, attack, I had been assisting families in Palestine obtain food and medical care. During the course of our conversations, I had occasions to discuss their situation in depth. I learned that in one family the father was disabled due to an injury sustained in a military conflict with Israel. One of their sons was also disabled and the mother was the sole source of income. She sells fruits and vegetables from a fruit stand at the side of the road. The young woman explained that medical care is unavailable except to the wealthiest families and wealth is determined according to one’s rank within Hamas or within the sphere of Hamas’s influence.

UNDERSTANDING THE ISRAELI / PALESTINIAN CRISIS: A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORICAL PRIMER
DW DUKE
A clear, brief history of the Mideast conflict that is required reading to better understand what is happening today and a path forward in seeking a resolution.
The Backdrop
October 7, 2023, was a normal day for twenty-two-year-old Shani Louk. Shani, a tattoo artist from Germany was visiting a peace rally in Israel called the Supernova Festival which is a celebration of the end of Sukkot. As Shani danced with her friends, she failed to notice the thousands of Hamas militants who arrived without warning and began killing as many people as they could find. Shani was one of the victims. After killing Shani the Hamas militants stripped off her clothes and paraded her naked body through the streets of Gaza in the back of a pickup truck while cheering and shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

Shani was one of the victims of the Hamas assault that resulted in the death of over 1,200 people in Israel with several thousand more injuries. The massacre brought immeasurable grief around the world. Many supporters of Palestinians were shocked and grieved that their champion, Hamas, would engage in such a brutal slaughter. Others doubled down and adopted the mantra “Free Palestine by any Means” and “From the River to the See.” On the Jewish side of the conflict were the questions why did this happen? Why do they hate us so much? What did we do to deserve this? Ironically, the Supernova Festival was intended to be a peace rally to support peaceful relations between Israel and Palestine, yet Hamas attacked the festival anyway killing hundreds of attendees. The question is why.
READ MORE https://aish.com/understanding-the-israeli-palestinian-crisis-a-comprehensive-historical-primer/?src=ac

https://aish.com/anchorless-young-jews-need-to-learn-about-the-story-of-the-jewish-people/
Anchorless: Young Jews Need to Learn about the Story of the Jewish People
December 19, 2023
6 min read
The next chapter of the story of the Jewish People is being written and you play a role in it.

I grew up hearing from my parents about the open antisemitism that unleashed fear and eventually the hell of the Holocaust. My grandparents told me about the indifference of neighbors they had thought were friends. The vicious slogans, the boycotts, the beatings, the book burnings, and the laws against the Jews that all thought were impossible to occur in a cultured society.

No one thought it could happen. After all, to be highly educated means that you live with higher morals and clarity, right?
Wrong.

In just a few weeks we have seen the eruption of hatred unlike anything we have ever personally witnessed. Today we see the indifference of those who are sitting in the seats of authority. Hiding behind legalese they speak about “context” and close their eyes as rants calling for genocide against the Jews, “global intifada,” “resistance by any means, in all forms” shake the grounds of their campuses.

After beheading, raping, burning and kidnapping, you would imagine there would be widespread revulsion for their beastly behavior. Instead they are celebrated by professors, students, and mobs in the streets.

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Hamas, an openly anti-Jewish terrorist organization, has become the new superhero of the younger generation. Their 1988 founding charter endorses the murder of every Jew on earth. Their leaders have called for “Jihad against every Jew.” After beheading, raping, burning and kidnapping, you would imagine there would be widespread revulsion for their beastly behavior. Instead they are celebrated by professors, students, and mobs in the streets. “We are all Hamas” they shout. A week after the terrorists' hands were stained with the blood of our people, they declared their intention to repeat the murderous acts of October 7th again and again until Israel is wiped off the planet.


Instead of crying out at the injustice of innocent babies, women and civilians being taken hostage, body parts cut off, women violently violated as they plead for a quick death, the world is back to blaming the Jews for the massacre they bring upon themselves.

As the world simmers, Israel and the Jewish people, are called “colonizers”, “occupiers”, “murderers”, and an “apartheid state.” Shockingly, a majority of 18-24 year olds think that Israel should be ended and given to Hamas. They were the largest proportion of respondents who disagreed with the statement that Israel has the right to exist. Young Americans hold more anti-Jewish sentiment than any other group and agreed with a slew of antisemitic statements including “Jews have too much power in America,” “Israel exploits Holocaust victimhood for its own purposes”, and “Israel has too much control over global affairs.” One in five young Americans believe the Holocaust is a myth.

How dare the world forget!

I grew up with half my family missing. I never got to hear my grandmother’s sweet lullaby, never got to be held by my grandfather, feel their love or hear their voice. Cousins, aunts and uncles were shadows above us, whose names we carried. We lived because they could not. They were shoved into cattle cars, murdered, burned in ovens, gasping their very last breaths as the world remained silent. To call the Holocaust a myth is to deny their final dignity, their story, their very soul. To disbelieve the atrocities of that dark time allows us to turn a blind eye to what is happening today. Deleting the memories permits the world to erase the magical moment that brought us the gift of our land, of Israel.

Too many of our young generation lack the knowledge of Jewish history that provides essential context to the present conflict.

There was no country in the world who would take my parents in. The orphans, the broken hearted, the dry bones, had no where on earth to go. My parents had to sit in displaced persons camps while begging country after country for permission to begin life anew. The Israel that was born and sheltered the shattered nation is the Israel of today that continues to shelter us, and nurture our faith in tomorrow.

Too many of our young generation lack the knowledge of Jewish history that provides essential context to the present conflict. They protest, they scream, they speak out against the one place on earth that the Jewish nation calls home. For thousands of years we have dreamed of Jerusalem, we have called out its name as we faced the destruction of our Temples, were sold as slaves in the markets of Rome, crucified in the crusades, tortured in the Inquisitions, endured blood libels, gas chambers, and concentration camps. We never lost our hope of returning to our land, and to Jerusalem.

As we sat by the rivers of Babylon, we wept as we remembered Zion. Today, we cry again as we mourn those beautiful souls who were cruelly massacred and taken. We grieve for the young soldiers who are giving their lives defending our land. But here’s the difference. Miraculously, after thousands of years, we have come home. We stand before the Western Wall of our ancient Temple, a fortress of faith, testimony to the Divine promise of the Jew. We walk the very earth that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob walked. We, the Jewish people, will never forfeit our eternal legacy.

The hatred we see on streets around the world and on college campuses across America is intertwined with the canceling of our long history. My parents’ story began with intimidation, harassment, and revulsion of the Jew. As I watch the same story repeat itself, I know that we must be committed to hold onto our faith, our love for one another, and for the truth of our destiny.

The Torah warns us, after being attacked by the nation of Amalek, “Zachor! Remember!” Never forget those who try to wipe you off the face of this earth. Knowledge is power. The Jewish People do not have “history”; we have a “story” – a personal story about the Jewish family that speaks to us from the beginning of time until today. On Passover night we retell our story for each new generation to hear, strengthening the current link in the chain, and we recall, “In every generation they try to obliterate us, but God saves us from their hands.”

When you lose your memory, you surrender your story and become anchorless. Learn about your spiritual inheritance. Embrace your family’s story and deepen your understanding of what it means to be a Jew.
The next chapter of the story of the Jewish People is being written and you play a role in it. Stand strong.

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https://aish.com/madison-grant-the-american-eugenicist-who-inspired-hitler-to-eradicate-the-jews/
Aish
Madison Grant: The American Eugenicist Who Inspired Hitler to Eradicate the Jews
Wrong.
In just a few weeks we have seen the eruption of hatred unlike anything we have ever personally witnessed. Today we see the indifference of those who are sitting in the seats of authority. Hiding behind legalese they speak about “context” and close their eyes as rants calling for genocide against the Jews, “global intifada,” “resistance by any means, in all forms” shake the grounds of their campuses.

After beheading, raping, burning and kidnapping, you would imagine there would be widespread revulsion for their beastly behavior. Instead they are celebrated by professors, students, and mobs in the streets.

Hamas, an openly anti-Jewish terrorist organization, has become the new superhero of the younger generation. Their 1988 founding charter endorses the murder of every Jew on earth. Their leaders have called for “Jihad against every Jew.” After beheading, raping, burning and kidnapping, you would imagine there would be widespread revulsion for their beastly behavior. Instead they are celebrated by professors, students, and mobs in the streets. “We are all Hamas” they shout. A week after the terrorists' hands were stained with the blood of our people, they declared their intention to repeat the murderous acts of October 7th again and again until Israel is wiped off the planet.


Instead of crying out at the injustice of innocent babies, women and civilians being taken hostage, body parts cut off, women violently violated as they plead for a quick death, the world is back to blaming the Jews for the massacre they bring upon themselves.

As the world simmers, Israel and the Jewish people, are called “colonizers”, “occupiers”, “murderers”, and an “apartheid state.” Shockingly, a majority of 18-24 year olds think that Israel should be ended and given to Hamas. They were the largest proportion of respondents who disagreed with the statement that Israel has the right to exist. Young Americans hold more anti-Jewish sentiment than any other group and agreed with a slew of antisemitic statements including “Jews have too much power in America,” “Israel exploits Holocaust victimhood for its own purposes”, and “Israel has too much control over global affairs.” One in five young Americans believe the Holocaust is a myth.

How dare the world forget!

I grew up with half my family missing. I never got to hear my grandmother’s sweet lullaby, never got to be held by my grandfather, feel their love or hear their voice. Cousins, aunts and uncles were shadows above us, whose names we carried. We lived because they could not. They were shoved into cattle cars, murdered, burned in ovens, gasping their very last breaths as the world remained silent. To call the Holocaust a myth is to deny their final dignity, their story, their very soul. To disbelieve the atrocities of that dark time allows us to turn a blind eye to what is happening today. Deleting the memories permits the world to erase the magical moment that brought us the gift of our land, of Israel.

Too many of our young generation lack the knowledge of Jewish history that provides essential context to the present conflict.

There was no country in the world who would take my parents in. The orphans, the broken hearted, the dry bones, had no where on earth to go. My parents had to sit in displaced persons camps while begging country after country for permission to begin life anew. The Israel that was born and sheltered the shattered nation is the Israel of today that continues to shelter us, and nurture our faith in tomorrow.

Too many of our young generation lack the knowledge of Jewish history that provides essential context to the present conflict. They protest, they scream, they speak out against the one place on earth that the Jewish nation calls home. For thousands of years we have dreamed of Jerusalem, we have called out its name as we faced the destruction of our Temples, were sold as slaves in the markets of Rome, crucified in the crusades, tortured in the Inquisitions, endured blood libels, gas chambers, and concentration camps. We never lost our hope of returning to our land, and to Jerusalem.

As we sat by the rivers of Babylon, we wept as we remembered Zion. Today, we cry again as we mourn those beautiful souls who were cruelly massacred and taken. We grieve for the young soldiers who are giving their lives defending our land. But here’s the difference. Miraculously, after thousands of years, we have come home. We stand before the Western Wall of our ancient Temple, a fortress of faith, testimony to the Divine promise of the Jew. We walk the very earth that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob walked. We, the Jewish people, will never forfeit our eternal legacy.

The hatred we see on streets around the world and on college campuses across America is intertwined with the canceling of our long history. My parents’ story began with intimidation, harassment, and revulsion of the Jew. As I watch the same story repeat itself, I know that we must be committed to hold onto our faith, our love for one another, and for the truth of our destiny.

The Torah warns us, after being attacked by the nation of Amalek, “Zachor! Remember!” Never forget those who try to wipe you off the face of this earth. Knowledge is power. The Jewish People do not have “history”; we have a “story” – a personal story about the Jewish family that speaks to us from the beginning of time until today. On Passover night we retell our story for each new generation to hear, strengthening the current link in the chain, and we recall, “In every generation they try to obliterate us, but God saves us from their hands.”

When you lose your memory, you surrender your story and become anchorless. Learn about your spiritual inheritance. Embrace your family’s story and deepen your understanding of what it means to be a Jew.
The next chapter of the story of the Jewish People is being written and you play a role in it. Stand strong.

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https://aish.com/madison-grant-the-american-eugenicist-who-inspired-hitler-to-eradicate-the-jews/?src=ac
Madison Grant: The American Eugenicist Who Inspired Hitler to Eradicate the Jews
Jews in the Land of Israel #2: From Ottoman Conquest to the 18th
by Kylie Ora Lobell
December 19, 2023
7 min read
The prominent wildlife conservationist and friend of Theodore Roosevelt was a notorious racist who impacted Nazi ideology.

Madison Grant, a lawyer and wildlife conservationist, released his book “The Passing of the Great Race” in 1916. In it, he proposed the Nordic race from northwest Europe, who were white, were culturally and biologically superior to all other people.

He wrote, “Man has the choice of two methods of race improvement. He can breed from the best or he can eliminate the worst by segregation or sterilization.”

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Grant was racist towards all non-whites including Italians, Syrians, Blacks, and Jews. He was anti-immigration, anti-desegregation, and advocated for white people to only marry other white people. He called white Americans with Nordic ancestry the “native Americans,” discrediting anyone else who emigrated to the U.S.

“The man of the old stock is being crowded out of many country districts by these foreigners just as he is to-day being literally driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews,” he wrote. “These immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, they steal his name and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race.”

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Grant not only wrote about sterilizing non-whites and breeding more white people – he also advocated for these eugenicist policies in the U.S. government. Decades later, his dangerous ideas would catch on and inspire Hitler to pursue the Final Solution to get rid of the Jews altogether.

Who Was Madison Grant?
Madison Grant was born into a wealthy family in New York in 1865. His ancestors were some of the first immigrants to settle in New England colonies. His father, Gabriel Grant, was a surgeon and health commission who received a Congressional Medal of Honor for his work at the Battle of Fair Oaks during the Civil War.

Grant and his family would spend summers at their country estate in Long Island, where he explored the surrounding wildlife. He fell in love with hunting and was an early member of the newly formed Boone and Crockett Club. After studying at Columbia College (now Columbia University), he became a lawyer and spent much of his time going on big game hunting expeditions.

Madison Grant, second from left, councilor for the Save the Redwoods League, presented the dedication of the Bolling Grove in August 6, 1921, in honor of Colonel Raynal C. Bolling, the first American officer of high rank to fall in the world war.

Alongside Theodore Roosevelt, his friend and a fellow hunter, as well as some other colleagues, Grant worked to conserve parks and wildlife across the nation. As a result of their efforts, they protected the endangered bison in Oklahoma’s Wichita Mountains, which was one of the first national wildlife refuges in the U.S. He also fought to protect Glacier National Park in Montana, Olympic National Parks, and the redwoods in California’s sequoia forests.

Grant rose to fame and prominence through his conservation work. When he published his book “The Passing of the Great Race,” he tried to pass off racism as science. He advocated for eugenics, a scientifically inaccurate theory that human beings can be improved by selective breeding, and that white people are superior. The eugenics movement started in the late 1800s when Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton released his book “Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development” and argued that disease and health as well as social and intellectual characteristics were based on the concept of race.

U.S. eugenics poster advocating for the removal of genetic "defectives" such as the insane, "feeble-minded" and criminals, and supporting the selective breeding of "high-grade" individuals, c. 1926
Grant’s influence grew amongst those who were racist and against immigration around the turn of the 20th century. He served as president of the Eugenics Research Association, and he was a member of American Defense Society and the Immigration Restriction League, two anti-immigrant lobbying organizations. He also co-founded the Eugenics Committee of the United States of America to promote eugenics policies in the U.S., and he organized the second and third International Eugenics Congresses, which took place at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in 1921 and 1932.


It was there that Ernst Rüdin, a eugenicist, became popular; he served as the chairman of the Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists in the Nazi party and helped write the 1933 German Sterilization law. This law led to tens of thousands of people being forcibly sterilized in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands undergoing the same torture in Nazi Germany.

By the time Grant passed away in 1937, his book had sold 16,000 copies in the U.S. alone, and it was on the fourth edition of printing. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge were said to have been influenced by the book, and it was often quoted by politicians on the floor of Congress.

During that same time, the theory of eugenics had become popular worldwide, with Hitler leading the eugenics movement in 1930s and 1940s Germany to destroy the Jewish people – along with any other minorities or disabled people that did not fit the “superior” mold.

How Grant’s Book Impacted Nazi Ideology
“The Passing of the Great Race” was the first non-German book that the Nazis reprinted when they took over Germany. Hitler referred to it as “my Bible,” and referenced it in his autobiographical, antisemitic manifesto, “Mein Kampf.”


Along with sterilizing hundreds of thousands of non-white Germans, Hitler euthanized at least 70,000 adults and over 5,000 children in Germany, Austria, and additional occupied territories. Hitler used Grant’s theories to justify his systematic killing of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust and a number of other people, including individuals with disabilities and the Sinti and Roma, who were not white and did not fit into his idea of perfection, the “Aryan” race.

When the Nuremberg Trials were held after the war, the German side used “The Passing of the Great Race” in their defense, saying that Nazi eugenicists were inspired by this book and other U.S. based policies to carry out their evil plans.

Grant’s Disdainful Legacy
While Grant may have been an important figure during his life, he left behind a disgraceful legacy. Even though he worked towards conserving parks, it is his eugenicist, racist teachings that will define him. In fact, in 2021, California State Parks removed a memorial to Madison Grant from Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and ensured that he would be known for his racism and not for his environmental work.

“California State Parks and our partners recognize the dark truth behind some of the 20th century’s most prominent conservationists, including League founder Madison Grant,” said North Coast Redwoods District’s superintendent Victor Bjelajac. “Grant used his privilege to advocate for and influence the development of discriminatory laws impacting millions of people across the world.”

He continued, “While we value his contribution towards protecting ancient redwoods, we fully reject his racist ideology and are committed to creating a park system for all people, regardless of race, creed, or ethnicity. The Madison Grant Memorial has stood in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park for three quarters of a century. It is long overdue that we remove it.”

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THE SEARCH FOR KING DAVID’S TOMB
AVI ABRAMS
Is King David really buried on Mount Zion? The debate goes back as far as Talmudic times.
If you ask any tourist who has visited Jerusalem’s Old City, “Where is the Tomb of David located?” they’ll tell you, “On Mount Zion, on the ground floor underneath the Last Supper Room.” After all, it’s in all the guide books. The site is located just outside the boundaries of the Old City near Zion Gate, one of the seven entranceways into the ancient town.

But scholars and archaeologists throughout the ages have pondered if the current site of David’s Tomb is, in fact, the true location of where the Jewish king was buried some 3000 years ago.

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This is not just a question of modern archaeology but a debate that goes back as far as Talmudic times.

The entrance to the Tomb of David

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The Bible records the burial of King David as follows: “And David slept with his fathers and was buried in the City of David” (Kings I, 2:10). The implication is that David was buried in the City of David, not Mount Zion, and therefore the current location for David’s Tomb cannot possibly be where the Biblical king was actually buried.


Both sites, the City of David and the Tomb of David on Mount Zion, are located relatively close to each other, a distance of about 2500 feet. The City of David, however, is a ridge on a much lower elevation near the Kidron Valley, whereas Mount Zion is located on one of the higher points of the ancient town. They’re both technically outside the current walls of the Old City that were last rebuilt by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century, but in earlier historical periods, both areas were included within the boundaries of Jerusalem.

However, during King David’s lifetime, Jerusalem exclusively consisted of the City of David. Mount Zion, where David’s tomb is currently located, would have been outside the walls of the city at this time.

Zion Gate

On the one hand, it does make sense that David’s tomb would have been immediately outside Jerusalem and not inside the city itself. During this time period (the Iron Age), cities were the sizes of small neighborhoods by our standards. Only royalty, noblemen, administrators, and tax collectors lived in the cities. Space would have been extremely limited. The land mass of the City of David for example is only about 12 acres. There wouldn’t be much room for tombs. Burial outside the city would have been much more logical.

If that’s the case, why does the Bible specifically write that he was buried inside the city?

Another problem with David being buried inside the city is regarding ritual impurity. In Judaism, dead bodies impart ritual impurity. In ancient Jewish towns, we typically find graves outside the confines of the city to avoid physical contact with the source of impurity.

The Tomb of David on Mount Zion

In Jerusalem for example, tombs of historical figures can be found in the hills surrounding the Old City. The Talmud therefore asks the question how could David have been buried inside the city under these circumstances?

Rabbi Akiva claims a tunnel was constructed from David’s tomb in Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley that extracted the impurity from the king’s tomb. This piece of information actually gives us a clue as to the tomb’s location.

Mount Zion is too far away from the Kidron valley. Such a tunnel would have to slope down the hill into the Tyropean Valley and cut through the width of the City of David and out into the Kidron Valley. But if the tomb was in fact located in the City of David, only a very short tunnel would be needed, as the City of David overlooks the Kidron Valley.

Antique photograph of the Tomb of David

Given the Biblical and Talmud data, a French archaeologist by the name of Raymond Weill led excavations in the City of David in search of David’s historical resting place in the years leading up to World War I. His research did unveil nine burial caves in the southern portion of the City of David, which he felt could be good candidates, but it turns out they date to the Second Temple period based on Greek inscriptions found there. No tomb or any material evidence from the period of King David was ever discovered at the site.

If the City of David did not yield the expected results, only one option remained and that was to excavate the Mount Zion site itself.

Inside the Tomb of David

One of the few Israeli archaeologists who excavated under the Tomb of David on Mount Zion was Dr. Gabi Barkai. Below the sarcophagus, which was built in the Crusader period for symbolic reasons, a staircase was discovered that leads to a secret passageway. Following the tunnel brings you into an ancient burial cave, which was excavated by Dr. Barkai. Based on pottery finds, he was able to date the cave to the First Temple period.

While Dr. Barkai accepts the Biblical narrative as the City of David being the true burial place of King David, he claims the Mount Zion tomb may be associated with Biblical Judean kings from Menashe onwards. Being a rebellious king who embraced idol worship and burned Torah scrolls, it’s possible that the Jewish religious leadership denied him burial near David’s tomb. It is interesting to note that by Menashe’s time, the boundaries of Jerusalem had expanded to the area of Mount Zion. From his generation onwards, the Bible records the Judean kings as being buried in a place called Gan Uzzah, not the City of David. It’s possible that the tomb we typically associate with King David may actually be that of the last Biblical kings of the Davidic dynasty, but not David himself.

Archeological site in the City of David

I’m no archaeologist, but if you ask my opinion as a tour guide, I would say something rather unconventional, but perhaps a resolution to this mystery. In the City of David, we can clearly see the ancient wall of Jerusalem from the Biblical period, but only on the eastern side facing the Kidron Valley. We have never found a wall dating to Biblical times on the western side of the City of David facing Mount Zion. Furthermore, we have never done extensive archaeological excavations on Mount Zion itself. For that reason, perhaps our assumption that the City of David was limited to the ridge was incorrect and perhaps it did in fact extend to Mount Zion even during the lifetime of King David.

If that’s the case, then what we call Mount Zion today may have been a part of what the Bible calls the City of David. This would mean the traditional site of David’s tomb could in fact be where he was buried after all.

Inside the Tomb of David

In any case, the Tomb of David is a great place to visit on your next tour of Jerusalem. More important than where exactly he died is how he lived. You can read the story of King David in the Book of Samuel and read his personal prayers in the Book of Psalms.

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https://aish.com/the-search-for-king-davids-tomb/?src=ac
THE SEARCH FOR KING DAVID’S TOMB
AVI ABRAMS
Is King David really buried on Mount Zion? The debate goes back as far as Talmudic times.
If you ask any tourist who has visited Jerusalem’s Old City, “Where is the Tomb of David located?” they’ll tell you, “On Mount Zion, on the ground floor underneath the Last Supper Room.” After all, it’s in all the guide books. The site is located just outside the boundaries of the Old City near Zion Gate, one of the seven entranceways into the ancient town.

But scholars and archaeologists throughout the ages have pondered if the current site of David’s Tomb is, in fact, the true location of where the Jewish king was buried some 3000 years ago.

Aish
Loukoumades, Greek Donuts
READ MORE
This is not just a question of modern archaeology but a debate that goes back as far as Talmudic times.

The entrance to the Tomb of David

SUBSCRIBE
Our weekly email is chockful of interesting and relevant insights into Jewish history, food, philosophy, current events, holidays and more...

Enter your email address
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The Bible records the burial of King David as follows: “And David slept with his fathers and was buried in the City of David” (Kings I, 2:10). The implication is that David was buried in the City of David, not Mount Zion, and therefore the current location for David’s Tomb cannot possibly be where the Biblical king was actually buried.


Both sites, the City of David and the Tomb of David on Mount Zion, are located relatively close to each other, a distance of about 2500 feet. The City of David, however, is a ridge on a much lower elevation near the Kidron Valley, whereas Mount Zion is located on one of the higher points of the ancient town. They’re both technically outside the current walls of the Old City that were last rebuilt by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century, but in earlier historical periods, both areas were included within the boundaries of Jerusalem.

However, during King David’s lifetime, Jerusalem exclusively consisted of the City of David. Mount Zion, where David’s tomb is currently located, would have been outside the walls of the city at this time.

Zion Gate

On the one hand, it does make sense that David’s tomb would have been immediately outside Jerusalem and not inside the city itself. During this time period (the Iron Age), cities were the sizes of small neighborhoods by our standards. Only royalty, noblemen, administrators, and tax collectors lived in the cities. Space would have been extremely limited. The land mass of the City of David for example is only about 12 acres. There wouldn’t be much room for tombs. Burial outside the city would have been much more logical.

If that’s the case, why does the Bible specifically write that he was buried inside the city?

Another problem with David being buried inside the city is regarding ritual impurity. In Judaism, dead bodies impart ritual impurity. In ancient Jewish towns, we typically find graves outside the confines of the city to avoid physical contact with the source of impurity.

The Tomb of David on Mount Zion

In Jerusalem for example, tombs of historical figures can be found in the hills surrounding the Old City. The Talmud therefore asks the question how could David have been buried inside the city under these circumstances?

Rabbi Akiva claims a tunnel was constructed from David’s tomb in Jerusalem to the Kidron Valley that extracted the impurity from the king’s tomb. This piece of information actually gives us a clue as to the tomb’s location.

Mount Zion is too far away from the Kidron valley. Such a tunnel would have to slope down the hill into the Tyropean Valley and cut through the width of the City of David and out into the Kidron Valley. But if the tomb was in fact located in the City of David, only a very short tunnel would be needed, as the City of David overlooks the Kidron Valley.

Antique photograph of the Tomb of David

Given the Biblical and Talmud data, a French archaeologist by the name of Raymond Weill led excavations in the City of David in search of David’s historical resting place in the years leading up to World War I. His research did unveil nine burial caves in the southern portion of the City of David, which he felt could be good candidates, but it turns out they date to the Second Temple period based on Greek inscriptions found there. No tomb or any material evidence from the period of King David was ever discovered at the site.

If the City of David did not yield the expected results, only one option remained and that was to excavate the Mount Zion site itself.

Inside the Tomb of David

One of the few Israeli archaeologists who excavated under the Tomb of David on Mount Zion was Dr. Gabi Barkai. Below the sarcophagus, which was built in the Crusader period for symbolic reasons, a staircase was discovered that leads to a secret passageway. Following the tunnel brings you into an ancient burial cave, which was excavated by Dr. Barkai. Based on pottery finds, he was able to date the cave to the First Temple period.

While Dr. Barkai accepts the Biblical narrative as the City of David being the true burial place of King David, he claims the Mount Zion tomb may be associated with Biblical Judean kings from Menashe onwards. Being a rebellious king who embraced idol worship and burned Torah scrolls, it’s possible that the Jewish religious leadership denied him burial near David’s tomb. It is interesting to note that by Menashe’s time, the boundaries of Jerusalem had expanded to the area of Mount Zion. From his generation onwards, the Bible records the Judean kings as being buried in a place called Gan Uzzah, not the City of David. It’s possible that the tomb we typically associate with King David may actually be that of the last Biblical kings of the Davidic dynasty, but not David himself.

Archeological site in the City of David

I’m no archaeologist, but if you ask my opinion as a tour guide, I would say something rather unconventional, but perhaps a resolution to this mystery. In the City of David, we can clearly see the ancient wall of Jerusalem from the Biblical period, but only on the eastern side facing the Kidron Valley. We have never found a wall dating to Biblical times on the western side of the City of David facing Mount Zion. Furthermore, we have never done extensive archaeological excavations on Mount Zion itself. For that reason, perhaps our assumption that the City of David was limited to the ridge was incorrect and perhaps it did in fact extend to Mount Zion even during the lifetime of King David.

If that’s the case, then what we call Mount Zion today may have been a part of what the Bible calls the City of David. This would mean the traditional site of David’s tomb could in fact be where he was buried after all.

Inside the Tomb of David

In any case, the Tomb of David is a great place to visit on your next tour of Jerusalem. More important than where exactly he died is how he lived. You can read the story of King David in the Book of Samuel and read his personal prayers in the Book of Psalms.

Click here to comment on this article
https://aish.com/the-search-for-king-davids-tomb/?src=ac