Friday, January 29, 2016

Parsha Yisro, Holocaust Stories, news




The following free book is for the healing of Rabbi Chaim Yisrael ben Chana Tziriel: http://www.hakhel.info/archivesPublicService/RBelskyPiskeiHalachos.pdf


Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky is no longer in danger. His name can be removed for prayers for the ill. Shmaryahu Yosef Chaim ben Pesha Miriam.


This issue is dedicated to the memory of my father and Derek Eretz teacher Felix ben Yitzchak Pauli who passed away on the light of the 23rd of Shevat 5729.


Parsha Yisro


Yisro was one of the three advisors to Pharaoh. He advised Pharaoh to be good to the Bnei Yisrael. Bilaam advised to be bad and Iyob fled for he feared that Pharaoh would listen to Bilaam and he did not want to be cursed. Iyob loses out for HASHEM deals with him for his cowardice. Yisro gets Moshe as his son-in-law and Bilaam gets his just reward towards the end of Moshe’s life.


Iyob got his own book but never made the Torah. Both Bilaam and Yisro are mentioned in the Torah but Yisro gets his own Parsha and his setting up of the courts and advice in the ranks of Yisrael would continue on for generations.


 Since I have tackled the aspects of Yisro and his influence in the last few years, I would like to go into the preparations for the Asera Dibros and Matan Torah more.
We are uncertain as to which place is which in the Sinai. We take the Arab tradition of where Jabbel Musa and the stones that can be broken in half to produce a portrait of a bush seems to be our Har Sinai in the southern area of Sinai. Rephidim today is almost in the middle of the Sinai wilderness. It is a 3 day journey with the animals according to the Torah which seems to match our distances today but again geographically we are not certain of the ancient spots.    


18:1 Now Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses' father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel His people, how that the LORD had brought Israel out of Egypt. 2 And Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after he had sent her away, 3 and her two sons; of whom the name of the one was Gershom; for he said: 'I have been a stranger in a strange land'; 4 and the name of the other was Eliezer: 'for the God of my father was my help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.' 5 And Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the wilderness where he was encamped, at the mount of God; 6 and he said unto Moses: 'I thy father-in-law Jethro am coming unto thee, and thy wife, and her two sons with her.' 7 And Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, and bowed down and kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and they came into the tent.


The camp is large and there are guards posted outside so he had to identify himself as being Moshe’s father-in-law bring his wife and children. Otherwise why do we Pasuk 6 and 7. We also learn in this section what was known in the world of the Asera Makkos and the splitting of the Yam Suf. We see too why the names were chosen for the two children.


… 13 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to judge the people; and the people stood about Moses from the morning unto the evening. 14 And when Moses' father-in-law saw all that he did to the people, he said: 'What is this thing that thou do to the people? why do you sit alone by yourself, and all the people stand about thee from morning unto even?'


First of all you will exhaust yourself with over work and on top of that people are waiting a long time on line to see you.


15 And Moses said unto his father-in-law: 'Because the people come unto me to inquire of God; 16 when they have a matter, it comes unto me; and I judge between a man and his neighbor, and I make them know the statutes of God, and His laws.' 17 And Moses' father-in-law said unto him: 'The thing that thou do is not good. 18 Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee; for the thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.


There is too much wear and tear on the both you and the people.


19 Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God be with thee: be thou for the people before God, and bring thou the causes unto God. 20 And thou shalt teach them the statutes and the laws, and shalt show them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do. 21 Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating unjust gain; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.


This way simple Halachos like the laws of pungent materials on a milk or meat utensil takes on that state. Pepper, Garlic, Mustard, Horseradish, Radish, Onion etc. takes on the nature of the milk or meat. Thus if I have plain Humus Beans that I put on a clean meat or milk spoon there is no transfer of the status to the Humus. However, a Falafel Ball or prepared Humus with garlic and onions inside the ingredients would bring about making the whole Humus edible only on a meat or milk utensil. However, if I spooned out some with a pareve spoon or knife onto a plate then the rest of the Humus remains pareve. The more complicated laws would then go to the rulers of fifties, hundreds or thousands and on up to Moshe. Now the lines in the courts or disputes are settled on a lower level.


Up to this day we have Rabbanim, Roshei Yeshivos, Dayanim and Beisei Dinim that deal with this. So that the leading Rabbis only deal with the most pressing problems between man and wife or in Halacha. 


22 And let them judge the people at all seasons; and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge themselves; so shall they make it easier for thee and bear the burden with thee. 23 If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people also shall go to their place in peace.' 24 So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he had said. 25 And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. 26 And they judged the people at all seasons: the hard causes they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves. 27 And Moses let his father-in-law depart; and he went his way into his own land.

The advice of a Tzaddik is well taken and Sefer Iyob is because the lack of advice of a Tzaddik. (1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was whole-hearted and upright, and one that feared God, and shunned evil.

Yes he shunned the evil of Bilaam but did not confront the evil as he should have.

… 6 Now it fell upon a day, that the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.

These are the angels who too are judged and question on the first day of the seventh month which is Rosh Hashanah.

7 And the LORD said unto Satan: ‘From where do you come?' Then Satan answered the LORD, and said: 'From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.'…)

Now we are about to see the beginning of real Torah for up until now we have only the 7 Commandments of Moshe, Bris, taking out of the sinews, the month and calendar, redeeming the first born and Korban Pessach. On Har Sinai we will receive the Asera Dibros and the rest of the Torah.


19:1 In the third month after the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. 2 And when they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the wilderness of Sinai, they encamped in the wilderness; and there Israel encamped before the mount.


This is Rosh Chodesh Sivan. Actually it was 2.5 months’ time-wise but it was the physical start of the third month.


3 And Moses went up unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain, saying: 'Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel:


We see that Yacov is used for foundation and the Bnei Yisrael is the Nation.
.

4 Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto Myself. 5 Now therefore, if ye will hearken unto My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be Mine own treasure from among all peoples; for all the earth is Mine;


You are my treasured people of all mankind.


And now: If now you accept upon yourselves [the yoke of the commandments], it will be pleasant for you in the future, since all beginnings are difficult. — [from Mechilta] And keep My covenant: which I will make with you concerning the observance of the Torah. A treasure: Heb. סְגֻלִֵֶַָָָּה, a beloved treasure, like “and the treasures (וּסְגְלִֵּת) of the kings” (Eccl. 2:8), [i.e., like] costly vessels and precious stones, which kings store away. So will you be [more of] a treasure to Me than the other nations (Mechilta). Now don’t think (lit., and do not say) that you alone are Mine, and [that] I have no others besides you. So what else do I have, that [My] love for you should be made evident? For the whole earth is Mine, but they [the other nations] mean nothing to Me. For the whole earth is Mine: but they [the other nations] mean nothing to Me.


6 and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.'


This is what will be in the future we shall set examples to the Goyim and 2800 Non-Jews will cling to each Jew for spiritual guidance like Chassidim to a Rebbe. The true “Peace on earth and good will to men” will exist. Not the order of today.


7 And Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the LORD commanded him. 8 And all the people answered together, and said: 'All that the LORD has spoken we will do.' And Moses reported the words of the people unto the LORD.


Correct translation is “We will do and we will listen” this is the most wonderful thing. First commit to doing what G-D wants and then listening to what there is to do without question.


9 And the LORD said unto Moses: 'Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever.' And Moses told the words of the people unto the LORD. 10 And the LORD said unto Moses: 'Go unto the people, and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their garments,


They had to have clean physically and ritually the garments to receive the Torah.


11 and be ready against the third day; for the third day the LORD will come down in the sight of all the people upon mount Sinai.


This will be on the 6th of Sinai but in the meantime husbands and wives will separate and purify themselves.


12 And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying: Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it; whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death; 13 no hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live; when the ram's horn soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.' 14 And Moses went down from the mount unto the people, and sanctified the people; and they washed their garments. 15 And he said unto the people: 'Be ready against the third day; come not near a woman.' 16 And it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a horn exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled. 17 And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. 18 Now mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. 19 And when the voice of the horn waxed louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him by a voice. 20 And the LORD came down upon mount Sinai, to the top of the mount; and the LORD called Moses to the top of the mount; and Moses went up. 21 And the LORD said unto Moses: 'Go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the LORD to gaze, and many of them perish. 22 And let the priests also, that come near to the LORD, sanctify themselves, lest the LORD break forth upon them.' 23 And Moses said unto the LORD: 'The people cannot come up to mount Sinai; for thou didst charge us, saying: Set bounds about the mount, and sanctify it.' 24 And the LORD said unto him: 'Go, get thee down, and thou shalt come up, thou, and Aaron with thee; but let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto the LORD, lest He break forth upon them.' 25 So Moses went down unto the people, and told them.


When Adam sinned, the Shechina left the heaven on earth complex in Gan Eden and moved up to the second spiritual height in heaven further away from earth. Mankind could hear the voice of the L-RD and knew when HASHEM traversed Gan Eden. Kayn murdering Hevel made the Holy Matron go up one more level. Idol Worship in the time of Enosh still higher and in the days of Tuval Kayn even higher until the Shechina was farthest away from earth in the 7th level of heaven. Avraham and the Avos brought down the Shechina again until finally Moshe made it possible for the DIVINE SPIRIT to be between the Cherubim on the Aharon. Also sparks of the Shechina can rest upon each and every person who deserves such merit.

Rabbi Yehuda opened up the conversation when reflecting upon these words: 20:1 And God spoke all these words, saying: And Rabbi Yehuda stated: 106:2 Who can express the mighty acts of the LORD, or make all His praise to be heard? Said he: “In how many ways does the Torah testify to the glory of G-D and admonish man not to sin! How many are the Forums that counsel the man not to sin or turn to the right or to the left! And how numerous are the signs which scatter in his way to lead him back to the true path that he may return to the L-RD to receive forgiveness.”

The speaking of the words uses the Hebrew Aleph Tav or ET. This indicates that this proclamation come from Gevurah or Severity. Gevurah was joined through the ET with the right hand of the L-RD and the voice of the L-RD was heard knocking the souls out of the body. (Adam did not have this problem from his original high spiritual level in Gan Eden) Angels had to coax the soul back into the body after each utterance. The Torah was given to the Bnei Yisrael by fire and darkness to warn them of the fire of Gehenna and the darkness of Galus among the nations of the world. Nobody gave them a lecture on fire and brimstone they could literally see what would happen.  

Rabbi Chiya stated that the two Luchos (Tablets) were of Sapphire in appearance with letters that went through to the other side. In the space there was white fire and covered or outlined with black fire. (This is a physical appearance but has such deep spiritual meaning that it went right over my head) The truth is that the power of the Luchos emanated from the left side within the right side and the white fire was from Chessed (mercy) and the black fire was from Gevurah. The Luchos with their full power went through the Sefiros until they raised the nation to Chachma (father) and Bina (mother) from Ayn Sof (never ending).  

20:1 And God spoke all these words, saying:

As we say in the Pessach not by an Angel or a Seraphim but the L-RD HIMSELF spoke the words – the first two to the whole world but when Yisrael was so terrified they asked Moshe to get the rest. A year or two ago I brought down the whole Talmud Bavli Shabbos 88.

2 I am the LORD thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

I am the prime cause of everything. There is nothing without ME. I am THE CREATOR there are no partners in creation. When the Medrash talks about let us make man in our image the Medrash is talking about the Attributes of Justice and Mercy arguing over the creation of man and the Sefiros of G-D. Giving man Chachma, Bina, Daas, Chessed, Gevurah, Netzach, Hod, Yesod and Malchus in this world within mankind and his own emotions which gives him the potential to do good or evil. Thus man is an earthly creature with heavenly attributes. He is capable of a dialogue with HASHEM Yisborach. 

3 Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;

The prohibition starts here for if one makes an image of the best or worst man, one may end up worshipping him. The USSR was filled with images of Stalin and Lenin and Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Things could get out of hand with the Statues of Lincoln and Washington or Mt. Rushmore if the US wasn’t a monotheistic Republic. When my grandchildren were in Washington DC my grandchildren thought it fun to run around and play on the statue of James Monroe and the little park they being Israeli viewed the Statue as some sort of children’s play thing in the park.

4 thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me;

You will lose the Shechina, Tiferes, Hod, Yesod, etc. from your soul and be just a thinking animal. Jews were killed on Kiddush HASHEM over the centuries from the times of the Greek occupation through close to modern times for not bowing down to Statues of the gods of the powers that be in the host countries.

5 and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments.

This is essentially a pledge for all time for people who uphold the Mitzvos. As along the line some Jews will observe Torah and Mitzvos which will keep the world functioning. (Legends of the 36 Tzaddikim)

6 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that takes His name in vain.

One can curse mankind with no problem as a man does not know what you say or do behind his back. However, the CREATOR, ALL HEARING, ALL SEEING, ALL UNDERSTANDING able to check a mind, kidney and heart at any given time. HE knows what you are thinking and most likely will do without even having to look into the future as HE can read our minds and souls like one reads a large billboard. The most interesting aspect of this command is that your very subatomic particles through atoms to the complemented systems such as nerves, digestive, circulatory, etc. all emanate from HASHEM. In fact they are held in place by the will of the L-RD and could not exist a Pico-second or a trillionth of that without HIS WILL. 

7 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

Shabbos here is a Remembrance and in Devarim it is guarding. The custom among Kabbalist is do take a bunch of myrtle branches or two types of spices and smell them one as opposed to remembering and the other as opposed to guarding. (We take the spices as per Rabbi Shimon and Elazar in Shabbos 33 when Eliyahu HaNovi ran Erev Shabbos with the myrtle branches ‘Knegged Zachor v’Shamor’.) The addition of spices on Shabbos is a help for the second soul that we get only on Shabbos.


8 Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; Melacha and not the definition of physical work (W = F x D) 9 but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work,

Melacha which is changing usually a state of affairs – plowing, shearing, burning, sewing, etc.; or doing something that was done in the Mishkan like carrying form one section to another, erasing or even taking apart.

thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates;

You are not supposed to have in your house any guest who is Jewish that will use an electronic device on Shabbos (outside of medical or security people involved in saving or guarding lives.) However, if you have as a guest a person who does not follow the Torah, one should be very careful and avoid inviting people who will violate the Shabbos over on Shabbos. However, if you have an obligation to invite a relative such as mother, father, child, spouse, etc. one should try to explain to them if they are will to observe even temporary. Many non-Jews recognize the Shabbos so where are my brethren who violate it? http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=250689

Why would one want to destroy his second soul’s glory and a defending Angel? We don’t need a weaken regular soul with a lower grade of Tiferes, Netzach etc.

10 for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Here is the first national connection to the act of creation. Shabbos is Kodesh (holy, sanctified, glorified). When one first becomes observant it is hard because of the negative commands of each of the 39 Melachos but as one gets used to the observance the rest, glory, intensity of one’s soul expands. It does not matter to me as far as the rest and refreshing go if I am out as a lonely Jew in Cody, SD or with a Minyan at the Kotel the holiness and the joy of Shabbos Kodesh penetrates and enlightens my soul. As is written, “A fool does not understand this.” Shabbos not only refreshes the physical body but refreshes the spirit. That is why on Motzei Shabbos when our second soul leaves us we need spices, wine and light to restore ourselves from a holy level to a mundane level. If one does not feel this way there is something wrong with his/her Shabbos observance.


Last year I wrote: Remember: Heb. זָכוֹר [The words] “remember (זָכוֹר)” and “keep (שָׁמוֹר)” (Deut. 5:12) were pronounced with one utterance. Similarly [the statements], “Those who profane it shall be put to death” (Exod. 31:14) and “And on the Sabbath day, two lambs” (Num. 28:9) [were said in one utterance], and similarly, “You shall not wear shaatnez,” and “You shall make tzitzith for yourself” (Deut. 22:11, 12). Similarly, [the phrases] “The nakedness of your brother’s wife [you shall not uncover]” (Lev. 18:16), [and] “Her brother-in-law shall come in to her” (Deut. 25:5) [were said in one utterance]. This [occurrence of God saying two phrases simultaneously in one utterance] is the meaning of what is said: “God spoke one thing, I heard two” (Ps. 62:12) (Mechilta). [The word] זָכוֹר is in the פָּעוֹל form, an expression of ongoing action, like “[Let us engage in] eating and drinking אָכוֹל וְשָׁתוֹ) )” (Isa. 22:13), [and] “walking and weeping הָלוֹוָּבָכֹה) )” (II Sam. 3:16), and this is its interpretation: Pay attention to always remember the Sabbath day, so that if you chance upon a beautiful thing, you shall prepare it for the Sabbath (Mechilta).

This day is holy unto you. You and your family and even the Ger who visits you will enjoy the holiness and the pleasure of the day. However, only you and the Ger Tzeddek can have an extra Neshama, the Yechida which is bound directly to HASHEM as Shabbos is “between ME and the Bnei Yisrael” forever. If you observe you will be at peace with yourself and your family will be at peace. If you violate it, your soul will be restless and strife will occur. Guard the Shabbos is written in Devarim but here it is to remember the Shabbos. How do we remember? Sunday is Rishon for the coming Shabbos and Monday is the second day counting towards the next Shabbos. We do this through our purchase of food or clothing for the Shabbos. The observance of Torah is our life and length of our days.

11 Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God gives thee.

Sometimes it is more than rebellious teens who don’t do this. The spiritual damage that they do to their souls in the next world I don’t want to go into as the vast majority of the population of the world do honor their parents.

12 Thou shalt not murder.

I repeat myself again that the Torah was not given to Angels but to very, very Orthodox Jews who witnessed the 10 Plagues and the DIVINE CHARIOT as the sea parted on their right and their left and they walked through on the dry land. This week a member of the Haifa Chevra Kaddisha (burial society) was murdered gangland style as people want to have access to the land rights and grave rights of the Haifa area. I hope that it is more criminal people than a religious group.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

I am always the last to know what happens even in my small neighborhood as I don’t look for or listen to Lashon Hara. However once a couple is divorced certain things become public knowledge. I could not figure out how such a lovely pair just when they wanted to marry off their daughters would get divorced. It turns out that the man worked in the same area as the wife of a professional who was a Talmud Chacham. Whether they physically committed adultery or mentally fell in love I kept my nose clean. He divorced his wife and she the G-D fearing man. They then got married.

Thou shalt not steal.

Ever heard that business is business and the Yetzer can teach a man to make excuses for his actions.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

Again from this week’s news: Some ultra-Orthodox Jews trying to take over a hospital in Yerushalayim hired an actress to pretend to be the daughter of a wealthy donor. She asked the head of the collections for the hospital to come to her hotel room to get a check she then went to the bathroom stripped and put on her act. The treachery and blackmail involved had hidden cameras. Five people were arrested the girl was let go as she was only putting on an act and was not involved in the blackmail or the filming. She is State’s Witness. This scandal is a real Chillul HASHEM as it desecrates THE NAME before the non-religious Jewish World.

13 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.

In Perkei Avos there is a question and answer: Who is wealthy? – One who is happy with his lot. One who is sitting in Africa by a hut next to pig style with the stench and flies an lack of more than one garment and just a morsel to eat but is satisfied in his lot is better off than a billionaire who is not satisfied and wants more and more power, wealth and political control.


Rabbi Yacov Yosef Jacobson Shlita of Chabad wrote an essay with a web broadcast this week: Two Versions


The rabbis in the Midrash proposed a novel answer. The Ten Commandments, they suggested, were engraved on two tablets, five on each stone,  so that they would be read in two directions -- from top to bottom, and from side to side (2).


The simplest way of reading the Ten Commandments is, of course, from top to bottom:


On the first stone:

1) I am the Lord your G-d who has taken you out of Egypt...

2) You shall have no other gods...

3) You shall not swear in G-d's name in vain...

4) Remember the Sabbath...

5) Honor your father and your mother...

And the five commandments engraved on the second tablet:

6) You shall not murder.

7) You shall not commit adultery.

8) You shall not steal.

9) You shall not bear false witness against your fellow.

10) You shall not covet your fellow's house; you shall not covet your fellow's wife ... nor anything that belongs to your fellow.


This was the way of reading the Ten Commandments vertically.
Yet due to the fact that the first five commandments were engraved on one stone and the second five on a separate stone, there was another way of reading the commandments -- horizontally instead of vertically, from commandment No. 1 directly to No. 6; from No. 2 to No. 7; 3 -- 8; 4 -- 9; 5 -- 10.

This version of the Ten Commandments would then read like this:

1) I am the Lord your G-d/You shall not murder. 2) You shall have no other gods/You shall not commit adultery; and so forth with the rest of the commandments.


Yet this explanation begs the question: Why is it necessary to read the Ten Commandments horizontally? What insight can we gain from this alternative reading of the commandments?

 
In this essay we will discuss the juxtaposition of the first and sixth commandments: "I am the Lord your G-d/You shall not murder." The significance of this "horizontal" reading from a historical, political and religious standpoint cannot be overstated. It embodies one of the most stunning aspects of Judaism. What is at stake in this juxtaposition is nothing less than the future of human civilization.


Two Historical Attempts


Two groups have made an attempt to divorce commandment no. 1 from commandment no. 6 -- to sever the idea of a Creator, who conceived the world for a moral purpose, from the imperative to honor the life of another human being. The first group was comprised of the philosophers of the Enlightenment during the 18th and 19th centuries, the second of religious leaders in many and diverse ages. The result for both was moral defeat.

 

The thinkers of the Enlightenment ushered in the Age of Reason and the modern secular era, founded on the belief that the great ideal of "You shall not murder" did not require the prerequisite of "I am the Lord Your G-d" in order to be sustained. Religion was not necessary to ensure moral behavior; reason alone, without G-d, would guide humanity into an age of liberty and to the achievement of moral greatness. The sixth commandment could operate successfully independent of the first.


While religion embodied the vision of man standing in a continuous relationship with G-d, the essence of the Enlightenment represented the vision of man without G-d. It was a vision already introduced during the first days of creation near the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, by the most sophisticated animal of the time, the serpent. "You shall be like G-d," it promised Eve (3). Man could, and ought to, replace G-d. Left to his own vices, the thinking went, the human being will achieve moral greatness.


But the Holocaust spelled the end of this grand faith in the promise of progress based on human reason. In Auschwitz, the belief that modern man felt a natural empathy for others was ruined forever.

 
The gas chambers were not invented by a primitive, barbaric and illiterate people. To the contrary, this people excelled in sciences and the arts, but nevertheless sent 1.5 million children, and 4.5 million adults, to their deaths solely because they had Jewish blood flowing in their veins. SS guards would spend a day in Auschwitz, gassing as many as 12,000 human beings, and then return home in the evening to pet their dogs and laugh with their wives. As the smoke of children ascended from the crematoriums, these charming romantics would enjoy good wine, beautiful women and the moving music of Bach, Mozart and Wagner. They murdered millions of innocents in the name of a developed ethic, and they justified genocide on purely rational grounds.


In "Schindler's List," there is a scene during the liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto where a little girl hiding in a piano is shot dead by an SS guard. As her little angelic body lay in a river of blood, another guard sits down to play the piano.


First SS guard: Was ist das? Ist das Bach?


Second SS guard: Nein. Mozart.


First SS guard: Mozart?


Second SS guard: Ja. And they both marvel at the exquisite music.


This was Nazi Germany at its best.


Elie Wiesel who gripped the world's imagination with his book "Night," a personal testimony of life and death in Auschwitz, once asked the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who himself lost many members of his family in the Holocaust, how he could believe in G-d after Auschwitz. If G-d existed, Wiesel asked, posing the single greatest challenge to faith, how could He ignore 6 million of His children de-humanized and murdered in the cruelest of fashions?


The Rebbe replied, "In whom do you expect me to believe after Auschwitz? In man?"


This must remain one of the lasting legacies of Auschwitz. If there is any faith at all left after the extermination of 6 million people, it must glean its vitality from something transcending the human rationale and its properties. If morality is left to be determined exclusively by the human mind, it can become a morality that justifies the guillotine, the gulag and the gas chamber. As Dostoevsky famously put it in "The Brothers Karamazov," "Where there is no G-d, all is permitted."


The atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote: "I cannot see how to refute the arguments for the subjectivity of ethical values [resulting from atheism], but I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don't like it." Russell's point is critical. Without G-d, we cannot objectively define any behavior as good or evil. As difficult as it is to entertain, no one can objectively claim that gassing a mother and her children is any more evil than killing a mouse. It is all a matter of taste and opinion. The validity and effectiveness of "You shall not murder" can be sustained only if it is predicated on the foundation of faith in a universal moral creator who gave humanity an absolute and unwavering definition of what constitutes good vs. evil.


Professor Abraham Joshua Herschel, who escaped Warsaw a few weeks before it was invaded and lost most of his family in the Nazi Holocaust, captured this sentiment succinctly: "If man is not more than human, then he is less then human." Either we climb to a place beyond ourselves, or we are likely to fall to a place below ourselves. When the vision of the sacred dies in the soul of a person, he or she is capable of becoming a servant of the devil.


Religious Evil


But this is far from the whole picture.


While the Enlightenment abandoned commandment no. 1 in favor of no. 6, various religions over the ages abandoned no. 6 in favor of no. 1. Theirs has been the atrocious belief that as long as you believe in the Lord, or in Allah, you can kill and maim whomever you brand an "infidel." Whether it is a business executive in New York, or a teen-ager eating a slice of pizza in Jerusalem, or a child on the first day of school in Beslan, or a commuter in Madrid, or a tourist in Bali, or a Chabad couple in Mumbai, if the person is not a member of your faith, G-d wants him or her to die. For the religious fundamentalist, "I am the Lord your    G-d" has nothing to do with "You shall not murder." 


This is the greatest perversion of faith. Faith that does not inculcate its followers with the sanctity of every single human life desecrates and erodes the very purpose of faith, which is to elevate the human person to a state beyond personal instinct and prejudice. If you delete "You shall not murder" from religion, you have detached yourself from "I am the Lord your G-d." To believe in G-d means to honor the life of every person created in the image of G-d. What the juxtaposition of the two commandments is telling us is that you can't believe in G-d and murder (3*).


Conversely, if you truly believe that taking the life of another human is wrong -- not just because you lack the means or motive to do so or are afraid of ending up in jail, but because you recognize the transcendent, inviolable value of life -- that's just another way of saying you believe in G-d. For what confers upon human life its radical grace, its transcendent sanctity and its absolute value if not the living presence of G-d imprinted on the face of the human person?


More than 3,300 years ago, Judaism, in the most ennobling attempt to create a society based on justice and peace, established its principle code in the sequence of the two commandments - "I am the Lord your G-d/You shall not murder." A society without   G-d can become monstrous; a society that abandons the eternal and absolute commandment "You shall not murder" is equally evil. Both are capable of burning children alive during the day and then retiring to sleep with a clear conscience.


The Mountain


The Talmud captures this notion in a rather strange, but intriguing, fashion (4).


The Talmud cites a tradition that when Israel approached Sinai, G-d lifted up the mountain, held it over the people's heads and declared: "Either you accept the Torah, or be crushed beneath the mountain." (The Talmud bases this tradition on the verse in Exodus, "And they stood beneath the mountain (5).")
 

This seems ludicrous. What worth is there to a relationship and a covenant accepted through coercion (6)?


The answer is profoundly simple. What G-d was telling the Jewish people is that the creation of societies that honor life and shun cruelty is dependent on education and on the value system inculcated within children of the society. The system of Torah, G-d was suggesting, was the guarantor for life and liberty. If you reject the morality of Torah, if you will lack the courage and conviction to teach the world that "I am the Lord your G-d" and that I have stated unequivocally "You shall not murder," the result will be humanity crushed under a mountain of tyrants.

Sixty-five years since Auschwitz and after more than a decade of incessant Islamic terrorism, the mountain is hanging over our heads once again. Shall we embrace the path of divine-based morality? Shall we forget that religion must always be defined by "You shall not murder (7)?"


14 And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled, and stood afar off. 15 And they said unto Moses: 'Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.'

Upon hearing the voice of HASHEM the people became so full of fear and thought that they might die that they asked Moshe to be their messenger.

16 And Moses said unto the people: 'Fear not; for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may be before you, that ye sin not.' 17 And the people stood afar off; but Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was. 18 And the LORD said unto Moses: Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel: Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. 19 Ye shall not make with Me--gods of silver, or gods of gold, ye shall not make unto you. 20 An altar of earth thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings, and thy peace-offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen; in every place where I cause My name to be mentioned I will come unto thee and bless thee.

The Mizbayach shall be simple not hewn or super beautiful but of the same substance that man was created from.

21 And if thou make Me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stones; for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast profaned it. 22 Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto Mine altar, that thy nakedness be not uncovered thereon.

You should wear pants what we call under-pants today which the Cohain wore.

Chabad renders this as follows with an extra Pasuk compared to the standard translation and numbering and a more modern English: 19 The Lord said to Moses, "So shall you say to the children of Israel, You have seen that from the heavens I have spoken with you. 20 You shall not make [images of anything that is] with Me. Gods of silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves. 21 An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall slaughter beside it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. Wherever I allow My name to be mentioned, I will come to you and bless you. 22 And when you make for Me an altar of stones, you shall not build them of hewn stones, lest you wield your sword upon it and desecrate it. 23And you shall not ascend with steps upon My altar, so that your nakedness shall not be exposed upon it.' "


When I try to vet people for the Conversion to Judaism Group, sometimes I find potentially nice Neshamos pent up in people. One of the Mitzvos that we have is not to be a Baal Tashchis aka do not destroy things or resources. I am the fellow who will light a heater or air conditioner when I need it but also shut if off when I leave the room for a short period. I was looking at a lady “R” who had a photo of all that food that is thrown out by either lack of farming or does not make it to market to keep the prices up while poor people have to live on bread alone. I was looking at another person fighting for people who suffer from CF or Cancer or the heart association. The purpose of a Jew in this world is to bring the mundane creation up to the level of holiness and that is essentially the only reason why a DIVINE Soul must come down here = to make a dwelling for the Shechina in this world. In fact this sentence sums up the whole book of Tanya but one must read it through a few times to do things right and I read it through only once.


The following story came from Haim O. who lost a relative on this boat.


(The death of David Stoliar, in 2014, received little attention outside Oregon, where he lived. The New York Times, which had prepared an obituary, learned of his death on Friday.)
For more than a half-century, David Stoliar remained a silent witness to the worst civilian maritime disaster of World War II, the only survivor among nearly 800 Jews fleeing the Holocaust in Romania aboard a refugee ship that was barred from Palestine, interned by Turkey for months, set adrift without power and torpedoed by a Soviet submarine in the Black Sea in 1942.
The sinking of the overloaded ship, a 150-foot steamer called the Struma, was a calamity compounded by Britain’s refusal to admit the refugees into Palestine and by Turkey’s 71-day quarantine, ending with the vessel being towed out to sea. The coup de grâce was fired by the submarine as the ship lay dead in the water seven miles offshore.
The doomed voyage of the Struma might have been a forgotten footnote to Holocaust history had it not been for Mr. Stoliar’s survival and his willingness years later to attest to the indifference and brutal decisions that put Palestine out of reach and led to the deaths of hundreds at the hands of nominal allies against Hitler
Mr. Stoliar died on May 1, 2014, at his home in Bend, Ore., at the age of 91, his wife, Marda, said. News of his death was not widely reported, although a short item appeared in The Oregonian. The loss of the Struma, and Mr. Stoliar’s survival, were largely unknown until the turn of the century, when he spoke to a New York Times reporter.
The war in Europe had been underway for two years and Jews in Romania, their numbers swollen by refugees from Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary, were perishing under the nation’s fascist Iron Guard. Thousands hoped for passage out of Constanza, Romania’s port on the Black Sea, and through the Bosporus to Palestine. Their desperation was ripe for exploitation.
On Dec. 11, 1941, the Struma left Constanza with more than 790 Romanian, Bulgarian and Russian Jews — the number is still disputed — crammed into a squalid, leaky former cattle boat with bunks stacked 10 high, little food or fresh water, no kitchen and only eight toilets. There were no life preservers and just two small lifeboats. The crew of 10 were mostly Bulgarians.
Passengers paid up to $1,000 each, gouged by a charlatan who lied about the ship’s seaworthiness and visas, which were never provided. Mr. Stoliar’s father, a textile manufacturer, paid his passage. When the engine failed a few miles out, the captain of a passing tug repaired it in exchange for the passengers’ wedding rings, their last valuables.
Three days later, as the Struma limped toward Turkey, the engines failed again. Turkish tugs towed it into the Bosporus, the divide of Europe and Asia. Neutral Turkey, whose leaders feared angering either Britain or Germany, interned the Struma offshore while its fate was considered. Istanbul’s Jews donated food, but conditions onboard deteriorated as talks dragged on.
Britain, which had control of Palestine, limited Jewish immigration to avoid antagonizing the Arabs, and refused to let the passengers continue without visas. Ten were allowed to disembark in Istanbul: a woman who suffered a miscarriage, and nine others helped by an American oil executive, the Jewish Agency in Palestine and a Turkish Jew who aided refugees.
Finally, the Turks cut the Struma’s anchor, towed the ship back into the Black Sea and set it adrift. It was spotted the next day by a Soviet sub, identified years later as SC-213. Its commander had standing orders from Stalin to sink all neutral ships in the Black Sea to prevent supplies from reaching Germany.

Despite the target’s benign profile, a torpedo was fired at it dawn on Feb. 24, 1942. In a gray overcast, it struck amidships with an explosion that tore the Struma apart.
Most of the passengers and crew went down with the groaning ship in 250 feet of water. But scores more, including Mr. Stoliar, 19, who had been asleep in a deckhouse, were hurled into the sea with a rain of debris, mostly planking from the shattered deck.
After years of silence, Mr. Stoliar told the story in 2000 in an interview with Douglas Frantz, then a reporter for The Times.
“I was one of the lucky ones who was blown up into the air, and I fell into the sea,” Mr. Stoliar said. “When I came to the surface, there was nothing except a tremendous amount of debris and many, many people swimming in the water. It was very, very cold, and we had a hard time moving our feet and our hands.”
Mr. Frantz and Catherine Collins later recounted the sinking in a 2003 book, “Death on the Black Sea.” Mr. Stoliar told them he saw people screaming and thrashing in waves strewn with kindling. Many were clinging to a partly submerged section of the wooden deck, with cables and twisted metal from the ship’s railing attached to it.
He swam to the group, still clad in his heavy leather jacket, grabbed the railing and looked about at the terrified faces, shivering and sobbing in the cold. There was nothing to do but hang on. Hours passed and the cries gradually faded as people succumbed to hypothermia and exhaustion. Some floated off, others slipped into the deep.
One man lost his grip, grabbed Mr. Stoliar by the collar and dragged him under. But Mr. Stoliar broke free and regained his hold as the man sank out of sight. Soon birds appeared, flying over the corpses. As the dead drifted away, the decking grew lighter and rose in the water. Mr. Stoliar, a strong youth, dragged himself on top.
In the afternoon, the Struma’s first mate, Lazar Ivanof Dikof, floated by on a door. Mr. Stoliar pulled him onto his raft of wreckage. He told Mr. Stoliar of seeing the torpedo’s approach. In the numbing cold, they were surrounded by floating bodies. No one else appeared to be alive as night fell, and in the morning Mr. Dikof, too, was dead.
Alone now, Mr. Stoliar thought of giving up. He took out a jackknife to slit his wrists, but his fingers were too numb to open the blade. A short while later, about 24 hours after the Struma had sunk, a large ship appeared in the distance. He waved frantically, and saw figures on deck waving back.
Soon a rowboat approached. He was pulled aboard, wrapped in blankets and taken to a Turkish fishing village. His hands and feet were frostbitten. He was hospitalized in Istanbul, then jailed for six weeks, apparently to keep him from the news media. Referring to the Turks, he recalled, “I was the only witness to their inhumanity, really, from the beginning to the end.”
David Stoliar was born in Kishinev, Romania, on Oct. 31, 1922, the son of Jacob Stoliar, a Jewish textile manufacturer in Bucharest. His parents were divorced when he was 10, and he lived with his mother in Paris for several years.
In 1936, he returned to Bucharest and finished high school. He wanted to become an engineer, but the war intervened. He was taken for forced labor, digging trenches. As brutality against Jews spread, his father tried to save him by arranging his passage aboard the Struma.
For months the ship’s sinking became a rallying cry for Jews around the world. It generated protests, a general strike in Palestine, death threats against British officials and responses by Turkey and Britain that voiced regrets but denied responsibility.
Mr. Stoliar reached Palestine eventually and joined the British Army’s Jewish Brigade in 1943, serving in Egypt and Libya. He also fought with the Israeli Army in the 1948 war of independence. He became an oil executive in the early 1950s and lived in Japan for 18 years.
In 1945 he married Adria Nacmias. They had one son, Ronnie. His wife died in 1961. In 1968 he married Marda Emslie. Besides his wife, he was survived by his son and a granddaughter.
Mr. Stoliar moved to Oregon in 1971 and later retired. For decades he said nothing about the Struma, whose sinking was largely forgotten, noted mainly in scholarly books. But interest was revived in 2000, when Greg Buxton, a Briton whose grandparents had died onboard, organized a successful search for the vessel, which they photographed.
Mr. Stoliar spoke to newspapers and magazines and appeared in a 2001 documentary, “The Struma,” by the Canadian director Simcha Jacobovici. “For 58 years, no one asked me about the Struma,” he said, “and I felt that no one cared. I carried the memories in my head as if it happened yesterday.”

The Struma story nobody knew by Rachamim Pauli

On Dec. 11, 1941 Morris and Celia Singer had two tickets to travel on Der Struma. However, they had a 3.5-year-old boy with them, their son Yacov. The Captain demanded a full price ticket for the boy which Morris refused to pay. As a result they stayed behind. They wanted to get to the then Palestine and grandpa Singer had bought a whole apartment building on Rehov Tzvi Bruch in Tel Aviv but that would have to wait.

Yacov would go on to serve in the IDF and worked 42 years in Israel Aircraft Industries. He passed away in Aug. 2009 at the age of 72 survived by three daughters and his wife who died months later.




Forced Abortions and Medical Experiments told by the last survivors of the women’s concentration camp.

"There were lots of tears in the interviews," says author Sarah Helm of her meetings with last survivors of the Nazis' only concentration camp for women, Ravensbrück.

Your book "If This Is a Woman" about Ravensbrück, Hitler's concentration camp for women, is now being published in German after coming out last year in English - more than 70 years after the end of World War II. Only a few survivors are still alive today. Where you still able to speak to some of the former prisoners?

I was very lucky that I was able to find a lot of the survivors when I started the research for my book in 2007. Obviously most of them had been young women in the camp, but some of them hadn't been; they were already in their mid-90s. A lot of them were British women and some of them were my neighbors! I live in South London, where a lot of the Polish women lived. I also found a Dutch woman who lived a few streets away from me. That was a big surprise.

Some of them were of course also very far away. I had to go to Odessa, to Donetsk, St. Petersburg and Moscow to meet the Russian and Ukrainian women of Ravensbrück. But I am still surprised by how many I found. In total there 50 women that I met and, including the women I exchanged letters with, probably 60-70 women.

How did these last survivors react to your questions?

I reached some of the women when they were in the last days of their lives and they wanted their stories to be told. And even though they were so old, the stories they did tell were very fresh since they were telling them for the first time. Many had not been sharing their story at all - some did, but never in detail. It was very moving for them; there were lots of tears in the interviews.

There was a wonderful Polish survivor who lived in London, close to where I live. Maria Bielicka was already 90 and she told me that she had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and had only six months to live. She suggested that I came to her as often as I could because she had so much to say. She just wanted to have it out there before she died.

Ravensbrück was the only women's concentration camp. Still, its story is not as well known as the ones of Dachau, Bergen-Belsen or Buchenwald, not to mention Auschwitz. Why do you think that is?
I still don't totally know the answer. Part of it is that it was in the East. So for western historians, it was impossible to get to the GDR [Eds.: The German Democratic Republic was communist East Germany.] and the documents in Russia. In the GDR, they told very much - as they did with the male camps - the story of communist heroism and the anti-fascist fight.

Many other elements got hidden. Another reason is that in the 1960s and 70s, when the story of the Holocaust began to emerge in its full and unbelievable horror, it took a while to rebalance and realize that the Jewish Holocaust remains the biggest crime that humanity has ever known and still it wasn't a reason to obscure other aspects of the Nazi horror. But there is definitely a third reason: The mainstream historians today are still largely men. And these men were not interested in the nature of this women's camp. In doing so, they missed a great part of the Nazi cruelties: the crime against women.

In which sense did Ravensbrück differ from other concentration camps where men and women were held?

Heinrich Himmler, who was in charge of all the camps, believed, for example, that women were much more afraid of dogs than men. So instead of watchtowers and guns, they used a lot of dogs. There were also women guards, working underneath male SS officers [Eds.: The SS, or Schutzstaffel, was a paramilitary Nazi unit.] of course, but nevertheless the people who dealt directly with the women prisoners were the women guards. This may be surprising: Why should the SS care about women's privacy issues and women's need to have special treatment by women?

I think it was part of how it looked to the outside world. It looked more like a regular prison than a concentration camp. But as the camp evolved and got more overcrowded and the SS felt they had to ensure discipline, it became more and more like a regular men's concentration camp. The level of cruelty evolved rapidly, punishments began to increase. Ravensbrück then also became a death camp with a gas chamber.

The inmates of Ravensbrück were very diverse. Among them were communists, Jehova's Witnesses, prostitutes, resistant fighters, and Jewish women from all over Europe. But they all had one thing in common: They were women. Was the "atmosphere" somehow different than in the men's camps?

The women suffered in different ways. They suffered not so much by the physical torture but by what happened to their children who were taken from them or brought to the gas chambers. As the camp evolved and more and more women were coming, many of them were pregnant and they had to undergo abortions, they had to undergo mass sterilization in the cruelest circumstances; they were used as guinea-pigs. They felt completely violated.
In the last year of the camp, when the SS could not control the childbirth because there were so many women coming into the camp from various parts of Europe, they allowed children to be born. They allowed mothers to actually breastfeed their babies, knowing these babies would die. The mothers had no milk in their breasts. I find it hard as a woman to think of a torture or a cruelty that could be imposed that could match that in any of the male camps. Any sense in history that Ravensbrück was somehow a place that was less cruel, less evil is a complete deception.

In your book, you describe both the inmates and the guards. Is there anything that all of the female guards at Ravensbrück have in common?

You can say that a lot of the guards were ordinary German women who had taken the job for no other reason than that it was a job and could somehow increase their livelihood. They thought they would get a nice uniform, a slightly better salary; they had some security to their lives. They weren't well educated at all, but not badly educated.

None of them had any criminal record to think that they would behave in any particularly shocking manner. And significant numbers showed very quickly how willing they were to go along with the regime, to beat prisoners or worse; some showed very sadistic tendencies. The exception was those who showed signs of refusing. Some left their jobs, some tried to help the prisoners and get messages out.

Johanna Langefeld, the first chief guard at Ravensbrück, is a very interesting case. She came from the prison system; she had the most powerful job among women in the SS. She believed in collective punishment, but drew the line at beatings. When she became aware of the worst cruelties like the medical experiments, she opposed the commandant. So there were women guards who resisted at some point, but they were certainly the minority.

You say Johanna Langefeld was extraordinary as a guard. Is there one story of the prisoners that especially moved you?

One of the ones that really moved me was the story of Evgenia Klemm, who was a teacher from Odessa, an older women who found herself captured during the fall of Crimea with many very young Red Army trainees, doctors and nurses. Many of them were not older than 20 and had no idea to what happened to them. But Klemm had been in World War I as a nurse. She was actually a history teacher, and she told them that they would survive and continued to hold them together. She got most of them out of the camp.

By the time she got back to Russia, Stalin punished many of the Red Army members who had been imprisoned in Germany, because he thought they should have fought to the death. In this atmosphere, she lost her job as a history teacher, and she killed herself in 1953 by hanging. This is a human tragedy on an enormous scale and the most impressive of the stories that I came across.

How do you think it will be possible to keep the memory alive in the future - when all of the survivors will have died?

My main intention was to give them a voice. Ravensbrück should be given its proper place in all accounts of the Nazi atrocities and the role it played in history where women were tortured and exterminated. And I think, the second, third and fourth generations of survivors and of Germans who find out their grandmothers or other relatives had worked in the camps, still have many accounts that we don't know yet. It's important that these are written and gotten out to the public by the third and fourth generation.

From 1939 to 1945, approximately 130,000 women from 40 different nations were held in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück. Tens of thousands of them were murdered or died of hunger, illnesses or medical experiments. Sarah Helm's book, "If This Is a Woman. Inside Ravensbrück: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women," was released in English in January 2015. The German version comes out in late January 2016.


On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade by Dr. Harry

Between 1861 and 1865, more than 50,000 civilians died as a direct result of the American Civil War.

In the years between 1914 and 1918, more than 7,000,000 innocent civilians died as a direct result of World War I.

From 1939 to 1945, more than 23,000,000 innocents died as a direct result of World War II. (This number includes the 11 million deliberately killed in concentration camps.)

Between 1905 and 1941, Stalin purged Russia of anyone whom he considered a threat or disloyal, murdering somewhere over 25,000,000 innocent people.

Mao Tse-tung murdered more than 45,000,000 people from his own country in his rise to power.

But on January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision that has resulted in the legalized murder of over 56,000,000 of the most innocent persons that could exist in the place that should be the safest place on earth. Roe vs. Wade is a horrible black mark on our country that we will be called to account for before God.

More Jewish babies have been aborted since 1973, than Hitler killed in the Holocaust. If this is what "Freedom of Choice" means, then these women have made a wrong, evil choice.

My son Joshua sums it up better than I can,

"All babies have a right to be born!"


Batya Medad on who invented Palestine but it was for Jews not Arabs! http://shilohmusings.blogspot.co.il/2016/01/who-invented-palestine-hadrian.html?spref=fb


When it snowed that one day in 1950 in Tel Aviv: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4756881,00.html



Something some running for office and the voters should consider.
There are really only 2 kinds of people in politics those that want to serve others or those that want power for self serving interests . Need a good way to tell the difference .... thanks to Lynette.




This blows Hezballah and Iran wide open: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4757777,00.html


I posted the article on my Facebook Page it is more about the punishment for all the years of antisemitism in Europe: A 17-year-old girl who was attacked by a man in a city center at night told police that he knocked her to the ground and unbuttoned her pants, trying to undress her, but she turned on him with pepper spray and was able to escape. Her assailant fled and hasn’t been caught, but the victim is facing legal consequences.
“It is illegal to possess and use pepper spray, so she will likely be charged for that,” local police spokesman Knud Kirsten of Sønderborg, Denmark, told TV Syd about the incident, which occurred at 10 p.m. on Jan. 20. Her fine will be around 500 kroner ($73), and many commenters on TV Syd’s story have offered to pay it for her.
The rules are:
1. If you are not wearing a burka, or have on perfume, the rape is your fault
2. Allow the rape, because you are an infidel woman out alone, and thereby must submit or be killed
3. Do not call for police, because they have been instructed not to interfere with Muslims committing crimes
The subjugation of Europe has begun, along with the boycotting and rejection of Israel. A good solution would be for Israel to pay all their Muslims to move to Europe too! – Dr. Harry



Inyanay Diyoma


Offensive Minister throws Jews out of houses that they bought from an Arab and press grows on Bennett to bring down the government as public opinion polls show that the Likud would lose at least 6 seats and a united center party with Kahalon, Lapid and former Chief of Staff Ashkenazi would get 29 seats with Bennett back up to 12. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/206879






Ed-Op about ‘Open Hillel’ and we see how left wing professors come out against Israel: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4756577,00.html



This is one of the reasons why for 45 plus years I have been working with and donating my “atonement” money to Yad LeAchim: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/188739#.VqWqMyp96M8

Where is all the aid to the Arabs in Eretz Yisrael and “Refugee” Camps of multi-story buildings going? http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/206987#.VqXvhCp96M8

It is just around 5PM on Monday I am a bit late to the Synagogue I hear ambulance after ambulance sirens blaring. I immediately thought with the wet weather of an accident. Up the hill where my niece lives there was a stabbing attack. It is where Menashe was last week when we were at the Dead Sea for a few days. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/207017

The young lady passed away as I spoke to the security chief of our area I showed him my shaky hand that I had to give up my gun – he told me we are in the Middle-East here. http://debka.com/article/25187/Another-Israeli-woman-is-dead-after-Palestinians-attacked-Beit-Horon-with-knives-They-also-carried-bombs






New Liberal Gov. of Canada is not friend like Harper but then only Allah Hu Akbar cares: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4757735,00.html


During the height of the cold spell, the Israel Electric Company came under Cyber-attack as Minister of Energy revealed the IDF Cyber-defense/offense is described here: http://debka.com/article/25189/The-new-IDF-Cyber-Defense-Brigade-divided-between-two-military-branches


How the Arabs deal with other Arabs who sell to Jews maybe troops should enter their jails and free these poor people. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/207091#.VqhVOip96M8


Possibility of war is raised from low to moderate threat level: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4758268,00.html



From Eliezer: German Imam blames rape victims ‘they wore perfume:  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/206828


More about the Tel Aviv Shooter and his escape: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/207120#.Vqi6Myp96M8


This man is as neutral on Israel as I am neutral on neo-Nazis: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4758162,00.html


From Stephanie T. Work accident - The Hebrew-language Walla website said seven people had been killed, and their bodies taken to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. According to Walla, the tunnel collapsed due to severe weather conditions, including heavy rainfall. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4758791,00.html


Civilians tackle terrorist during a stabbing incident. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4758805,00.html


From Miriam Esther a report of a triple attack in the Jewish Quarters of Boston: http://boston.cbslocal.com/2016/01/27/brookline-shooting-coolidge-corner/


Keystone cops of Israel. After the three boys were kidnapped the 100 number operators were told to be alert and check out calls. Not once, not twice but more and millions were spent searching Tel Aviv while this information on a flight of the terrorist to the north was ignored on Friday evening forcing fearful parents to take off from work and hibernate at home with their children cause more millions in productivity. BUT BUSINESS AS USUAL http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4758753,00.html


From Barry Shaw: Israeli Leftist inciting violence by Arabs caught on film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIOWhDHJD1A










Have a peaceful and blessed and healthy Shabbos,
Rachamim Pauli