אמר לו ר ‘חייא: כך היא גאולתן של ישראל, בתחילה קמעא קמעא, כל מה שהיא הולכת, היא רבה והולכת

In 1914 it seemed that the project to obtain a Jewish State of its own had failed (see here). The land of Israel was in the hands of the Ottoman Empire, which did not view with good eyes the increase of the Jewish population in “Palestine”. Nor did we have the minimal international political support needed to create a home for Jews. Immigration stopped and o make it worse: many immigrants who had arrived in Israel in the past decades returned to Europe or emigrated to the United States since the living conditions in old Israel were very precarious. It seemed that the Zionist dream was over. 

Then, on July 28, 1914, the First World War broke out. It was a terrible war that claimed the lives of some 40 million people, military and civilians. The war also brought unexpected changes in England and the Middle East. The most important of these changes from Israel’s point of view was that the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled the Middle East for more than 500 years, was now defeated. At the end of the war, in 1918, England was in control of what is today Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and of course, Israel.

THE CHURCH AND THE JEWS

In 1916 Herbert Henry Asquith resigned his post as Prime Minister of Great Britain and in his place came David Lloyd George. The attitude of these two leaders towards the Jews was completely opposite. Asquith, a catholic, opposed a Jewish State. Lloyd George, on the other hand, had a different religious upbringing. To understand his beliefs, I must briefly explain the main differences between the Catholics and Protestants, as to how each one perceived the Jews and their role for centuries. The Catholic Church was founded on the essential premise that the Church (Latin for “congregation”) is the “New Israel”. This New Israel REPLACES / DISPLACES ancient Israel – that is, the Jewish people – as the people of God. This New Israel also has a New Testament, that is, a new Covenant (as in Hebrew ברית החדשה) that replaces the Old Testament, which “expired with the imminent extinction of the ancient Israelites.” The main problem that this foundational dogma always faced was that “the stubborn Jewish people, in spite of being permanently in the verge of extinction, persisted in continuing to exist!”. The Church then changed its narrative and argued that the capricious existence of the Jewish people was a Divine Punishment for deicide (i.e., the killing of a god). And the evidence is that the Jews were now condemned to permanent exile (“The Wandering Jew”) and as a consequence, they will NEVER return to their homeland! Therefore, the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel was (and it largely remains) for the Catholic Church a huge fundamental theological challenge for their faith and religious principles. A good example is the Vatican’s hostile attitude towards acknowledging the right of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel, or the refusal of the Pope to recognize a Jewish Jerusalem (see this ).

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS AND THE JEWS 

The attitude of many Protestants towards the Jewish people is very different. There is a very big support for a Jewish Israel, and it is not something new. This historical attitude might have begun with Oliver Cromwell (1599 -1658), who supported the return of Jews to Israel, albeit, for their own religious views. Many Protestants today maintain that it is great merit in itself to support the Jewish people and their State since they believe in the blessing that HaShem granted to Abraham Abinu when He said “Those who curse you will be cursed and those who will bless they will be blessed. ” Many Christian Englishmen held this religious belief as well. Among them, were David Lloyd George and his Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour, who were enthusiastic supporters of the Jewish people and understood their aspirations to return home.

ACETONE, AND THE STATE OF ISRAEL

An important factor that enhanced the British predisposition to grant a national home to the Jewish people in the land of Israel was the contributions of the famous Jewish scientist Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) to the Commonwealth. Weizmann, born in Russia but nationalized British, was a chemist who discovered the formula to produce acetone from grain starch. Until then, acetone used to detonate dynamite was difficult to produce, increasingly expensive, and critical to winning the war. Dr. Weizmann was in charge of producing 30,000 tons of the critical chemical element through the process known as “ABE fermentation”. For this and for other discoveries Dr. Weizmann is known in the scientific world as the “father of industrial fermentation”. At the end of the war, the British were very grateful to Dr. Weizmann for his invaluable services and asked him how could they repay him for his contributions. It is said that Doctor Weizmann answered: “I do not want anything for me, but I want a home for my people.”  And so it was that in 1917 the Balfour Declaration emerged, and the British officially approved the creation of a national home for the Jewish people in the land of Israel. This was the beginning of what eventually culminated with the miracle of the birth of Medinat Israel in 1948.

THE JEWISH STATE OF UGANDA
Weizmann was born into an Orthodox family in Belarus, Russia, in 1874. He was one of 15 siblings. He studied chemistry in Germany and stood out as a gifted student. Aside from his great intelligence, Weizmann also had great charisma and a charming personality, something not very common among intellectuals and scientists. From his youth, Weizmann was interested in the Zionist movement and participated in the congresses led by Theodore Herzl. At the 1903 congress, Herzl made a very controversial statement, thinking that he had already exhausted all other options, he accepted the British offer to establish “a national home for the Jewish people … in Uganda, Africa; a territory that belonged to the British Crown”. When Herzl announced his acceptance of this plan, Weizmann left the congress in protest along with the entire Russian delegation.

BECOMING BRITISH
In 1904 Weizmann was invited to teach at the University of Manchester, in England. Later, and after obtaining British citizenship, he met Lord Arthur Balfour, a very influential English politician. Balfour tried to persuade Weizmann to support Uganda’s offer. But far from changing his opinion, Balfour was persuaded by Weizmann that Israel (then called “Palestine”) was the only national and spiritual home of the Jewish people: “If I offered you to go to Paris, you would not go there, because London is your home, “ Weizmann told Balfour, ” Jerusalem has been our home when London was still a swamp. ” So passionate and contagious was Weizmann’s conviction that from that moment Lord Balfour became a great ally of the Zionist movement and supported for the rest of his life the return of the Jews to Jerusalem.

WAR AND ACETONE
In 1914 England declared war on the German Empire and its allies. This was the First World War. England had a very serious technical problem: did not have acetone, an essential solvent to activate artillery fire and dynamite. For many years England imported acetone from Germany, something that was not possible now. Winston Churchill came to Weizmann urgently and asked him to work on a formula to produce acetone locally, fast, and in large quantities. Acetone was normally made from wood, and it took hundreds of tons of wood and a very difficult process to distill it. Weizmann, who was already known in scientific circles as “the father of industrial fermentation” began working day and night on his mission until he finally developed the formula to produce the precious solvent from corn and potatoes, materials that were much easier to obtain. If Chaim Weizmann had not discovered the formula for producing acetone, England would not have won the First World War. This was well known to Lloyd George, who was the Minister of Defense during the First War and later became Prime Minister of Great Britain.

WHAT CAN THE CROWN DO FOR YOU?
Towards the end of the war, and when England had already displaced the Ottomans from the Middle East, Lloyd George thanked Chaim Weizmann for his services and asked him: “What can England do for you?” Chaim Weizmann replied: “I don’t want anything for myself, but my people need their own land.” And that is how in 1917 Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour drew up the document known as the Balfour Declaration, granting the Jewish people “the first national home”, neither in Uganda nor in Entre Ríos, but in the Holy Land of Israel!  This was the beginning of what eventually culminated in the miracle of the birth of Medinat Israel in 1948, where, as we will see now, Chaim Weizmann also played a decisive role.

THE AMERICAN VOTE
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to divide Palestine and create two states, one Arab and one Jewish. But neighboring Arab states warned that they would not accept a Jewish State and they will declare war on Israel. They also did everything possible in the political arena to prevent the nations from accepting a Jewish State. The British chose to remain neutral. And the US government, which had voted in favor of a partition, began to have its doubts and was planning to vote for delying a final resolution. This meant that if the Jewish State declared its independence, the United States, its most important ally, would oppose or at best abstain from voting, and thus the creation of a Jewish State could be suspended or canceled. The US vote was in the hands of President Harry Truman. In the first months of 1948, Truman refused to meet with any American Zionist leaders because he wanted to maintain America’s neutrality in light of the tremendous pressure he had from the oil-rich Arab countries. May 15th, the date on which the British were to leave the territory of Israel, was approaching, and Truman’s support for the future declaration of independence was absolutely necessary. Chaim Weizmann was in the United States to guarantee the US’s support, but Truman refused to receive him.

MILLIONAIRES LOOKING FOR COINS
On March 12, 1948, Dewey D. Stone of Brockton spent the day in New York City with his friend Chaim Weizmann, who expressed concern about Truman’s refusal to meet with him. Stone was a passionate American Jew and that night, he returned to Boston and met with Frank Goldman, president of B’nai B’rith. Stone shared with him his concern that there was no way that President Truman would agree to meet with Weizmann. Goldman said that by coincidence, he recently saw Eddie Jacobson in Kansas, who received an award from the B’nai B’rith, and that Jacobson shared with him that he was a personal friend of President Truman and his partner in some businesses. Goldman offered to call Jacobson right then and there and ask him to see Truman as soon as possible. But they ran into a problem: they didn’t have enough coins to make a long-distance call. It is told that the two millionaires, Stone and Goldman, went table by table asking for quarters until they had enough coins to call Jacobson. Jacobson was not very enthusiastic. He said that convincing the President was going to be impossible. Stone then invited Jacobson to New York and took him to see Chaim Weizmann. Like Balfour and so many other people before him, Jacobson was absolutely captivated by Weizmann’s personality and passionate arguments, and at the end of the meeting, he accepted to talk to Truman. Stone told him “all you have to ask President Truman is that he would agree to meet with Weizmann. Weizmann will take care of the rest.”

CAN YOU SAY NO TO A FRIEND?
When Jacobson arrived at the White House, “unannounced”, President Truman was very happy to see him but warned him that he would not agree to talk about Palestine or the partition plan. Jacobson nodded and said to Truman, pointing to a bust of Andrew Jackson: “I’m not going to talk about Palestine. I just want to ask you to meet Chaim Weizmann, a national leader with the same values and temperament as Jackson”, whom Truman revered. Truman laughed because he fell into the trap of his friend and had no choice but to give in. Truman and Weizmann finally met in Washington and by the end of the meeting, Truman was so convinced of the Jewish cause presented by Weizmann that he promised to recognize the State of Israel when the British would leave.

A SEFER TORA IN THE WHITE HOUSE
On May 14th, 1948, when the British were about to leave, Ben-Gurion declared the creation of the State of Israel. President Harry Truman, keeping his promise to Chaim Weizmann, recognized the newly created Jewish State just 11 minutes after its founding. Chaim Weizmann was appointed as the first President of the State of Israel, a position he held until his death in November 1952. One of the first things Weizmann did after being elected President was to visit Washington DC. On May 25, 1948, Chaim Weizmann visited the White House, he thanked president Truman for recognizing the Jewish State and presented to him a Sefer Tora (see picture above) for his friendship and support for the People of Israel.

Rabbi Yosef Bitton

THE ONLY THING NECESSARY FOR THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL IS FOR POWERFUL MEN TO DO NOTHING 

WHEN JEWS WERE OBSESSED TO BE GERMANS…

Many times I wrote about the problem of conceiving Judaism as a “religion”, instead of understanding it as the legacy that unites the Jewish people: the Jewish People’s Laws, history, and land. 

This may seem like a simple and superfluous game of words: are we a nation or a religious group? But when we understand the origin of this distinction; and even more so, the terrible consequences of taking away the National Aspect from Judaism, we can better appreciate the magnitude of this nuance.

The division between “the Jewish people” and “the Jewish religion” began in the early 19th century in Western Europe, when stimulated by the idea of ​​emancipation, the first reformer Jews deliberately renounced any values and ideas that could connect them to the land of Israel, a fundamental element of our Tora. The reform religious leaders explicitly declared that they renounced the Messiah who would take them back to Israel and rebuild the Bet haMikdash. They also renounced praying for their return to Jerusalem and mourning its destruction. All these elements, which constitute the “national” aspect of Judaism were deliberately eliminated from the prayer books and from the new Reform ritual. The message stood very clear: These European Jews saw and showed themselves as “patriotic” French or Germans, an integral part of their homeland’s heroic history and destiny. And as an act of loyalty to their “mother country,” they openly and explicitly renounced everything that could be perceived as an expression of “double loyalty”. The early reformers proudly called themselves French or Germans professing “the Mosaic religion” (they tried to use the word “Jew” or “Jewish religion” as little as possible). They sought to compare themselves with other religious groups, such as Catholics or Protestants who had no other alternative allegiance, national or geographic.

I’M NOT MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

The terrible consequences of this seemingly innocent paradigm shift were not long in coming. For example: In 1840 there was a blood libel in Damascus, Syria. The Jewish community of that city was falsely accused of killing a Christian child to use his blood in the Matzot of Pesah (sic!). Several community leaders were imprisoned, tortured and forced to “confess” to this ridicule accusation. The Jewish leaders of Europe (like Sir Moises Montefiore of London, Adolphe Crémieux of France, Eliyahu Picciotto of Austria and many others) moved heaven and earth to help free these poor Jews, and managed to get them out of prison after an inexhaustible struggle. There was an exception to these efforts: Abraham Geiger, one of the most prominent leaders of the Jewish community in Germany. Geiger, considered by many historians as the “founder of the reform movement”, refused to help because he claimed to have nothing in common with those “Arabs” as he called them. This has nothing to do with Sephardi/Ashkenazi distinctions. Rather, Geiger saw himself as belonging exclusively to the German people, and for him, consequently, there was no national (or emotional) link with any other Jew outside of Germany. The fact that these “Syrians” practiced the same creed as him, was totally circumstantial and unimportant. Geiger, loyal to the new ideology that he was first and foremost German, owed them nothing. Surely, Geiger was not the first Jew who refused to help other Jews. But as far as I know, he was the first Jew to use this new argument; renouncing the idea of a “Jewish people” to disassociate himself from “Israel”- the land and the nation And in this way, justifying his lack of action, his apathy and his indifference towards other Jews. All this was done, with extremely naive imagination, in pursuit of being perceived by the gentiles as an exemplary and patriotic German citizen, and being accepted as equal in the illuminated German society (the rest of the story need not be told…).

ALL THAT YOU NEED FOR THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL 

But what does this have to do with the Shoah and the New York Times?

Unfortunately, very much.  As painful as it is to talk about this matter, it teaches us a very important lesson, extremely relevant to our days. Between 1939 and 1945 there were about 5 million Jews living in the US. Many of them were very influential in the government and in American culture. However, there was very little that the American Jews actually did to influence president Roosevelt and try to save their brothers and sisters in Europe when they needed it most. European Jews were desperately asking the Americans to bomb the railroad tracks that led millions of Jews to death. Or to bomb the concentration camps. And as we know, none of this was done … not until after six million Jewish lives were taken.

But why? One of the reasons to explain this lack of action and this deafening silence responding to the endless cries is that the vast majority of American Jews (and non-Jews) DID NOT KNOW what was happening: they had no idea of the magnitude of the massacre that was taking place in European soil … How did this happen? A book called “Buried by The Times” by Laurel Leff, explains this enigma. Leff concludes that the man responsible for this deliberate misinformation was one of the most influential men in the USA at that time: Arthur Hays Sulzberger, editor in chief and owner of the New York Times (his family still owns this newspaper), the most important newspaper in the world. In the 1940s the New York Times, especially, was not only the most important newspaper in the world but also the “leading” newspaper; in the sense that thousands of other newspapers and newscasts in the US and around the world got their information from the Times and followed its leadership (this, obviously, is changing in the modern news-media-world).

Let’s see some examples that illustrate the biased attitude of the New York Times in reporting the atrocities occurring in Europe.

YOUR BROTHER’S BLOOD CRIES OUT TO ME FROM THE ASHES

A New York Times article of July 2, 1942, reports the killing of 700,000 Jews, one-fifth of the entire Jewish population of Poland. The article does mention concentration camps and gas chambers. The article also says: “Children in orphanages, elderly in hospices, sick in hospitals, and women were killed in the streets. In many places, Jews were detained and deported to undisclosed destinations or massacred in nearby forests ” The article continues to list how many Jews had been killed in each province, and then says that “the massacre still continues in Lwow.” However, the American public was largely unaware of the magnitude of what was happening. And this is why. These news stories were deliberately buried in the middle of the newspaper. The article of July 2, 1942 appeared on page 6 under a small subtitle reserved for insignificant material.

Another article of June 27, 1942 that describes the same massacre as “probably the biggest mass slaughter in history”, was on page 5 and had no title! This horrific downpayment of the Shoah did not occur because the front page of the newspaper was full of momentous news. The day this horrific story appeared in the New York Times, the front page featured articles about tennis shoes and canned fruit.

How did this happen?

Because Arthur Sulzberger, who was Jewish felt no connection at all to the threatened mass of European Jews. On the contrary, he did everything he could to ignore them. To disconnect from them. Because he was an American, of mosaic relgion.   

Sulzberger wrote the following: “There is no common denominator between the poor and unfortunate Jew led [to death] in Poland and I. Certainly, in Poland, this Jew is part of a persecuted minority. … fortunately, I’m not in that category. “

WHEN WE DON’T SEE OURSELVES AS A UNITED NATION

According to Leslie Leff Sulzberger’s silence and minimization of the information on the Shoah and his lack of empathy towards European Jews were due to his reformist ideology. Sulzberger’s political grandfather, Isaac Wise, was the founder of the Jewish reform movement in the US, who continued promoting the idea that Jews are not a nation, but simply followers of a creed. Sulzberger was an assimilationist Jew. For him, Jews are not a people, in the same way, that Catholics or Protestants are not a people. In December 1942, in a note to the staff of the New York Times he wrote: “I have been trying to instruct the people of my newspaper on the subject of the word ‘Jews’; that they are not a race or a people.… “

Former New York Times journalist Ari Goldman, in his review of Leff’s book, writes:” There is no doubt that Sulzberger’s views on Judaism influenced what he did in his newspaper. “

Again and again, the views of Sulzberger are reflected in the editorials of the New York Times- in which the difficult situation of the Jews is not mentioned, rather it is deliberately ignored.

On the German refugee children, almost all of them Jews, the New York Times generalized: “[those children] are of any race and faith.”

On the Hitler regime, the New York Times wrote: “It is decency and justice that are being persecuted [by Hitler], not a race, nor a nationality, nor a faith.”

On the millions of Jewish refugees, the New York Times said: “They have nothing to do with a specific race or creed. It is not a Jewish or a Gentile problem. “

And notably, in an editorial on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943, the New York Times did not mention Jews at all. 

Leff concludes: Sulzberger’s bias was shared by other Jewish staffers who decided to minimize, bury and downplay the news about the killings of Jews: “…the imperiled Jews of Europe had no advocate in the NYT’s newsroom.”

WATCH

How the NYT ignored the Holocaust

LISTEN TO THIS AMAZING AUDIO

Downplaying the Holocaust — Sulzberger & NY Times TED Talk by Anna Blech .mp3

שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת לְדָוִד לוּלֵי ה ‘שֶׁהָיָה לָנוּ יֹאמַר-נָא יִשְׂרָאֵל לוּלֵי ה’ שֶׁהָיָה לָנוּ בְּקוּם עָלֵינוּ אָדָם

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Once the First World War was over, the League of Nations was created. It was the first international organization in history, created to maintain world peace and prevent the emergence of other armed conflicts.

This League was headed by the nations that triumphed in the First World War: Great Britain, France, Italy, etc.

On April 23, 1920, almost 100 years ago, the League of Nations met in the Italian city of San Remo to reorganize the “world order” and promote peace. One of the issues they discussed was the division and administration of Middle East lands. Until 1918 the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire, which gave the local mandate to different heads of ethic grupos, clans or Arab tribes. There were no states like Syria, Iraq, Jordan or Saudi Arabia. The League of Nations sought to establish a political order to replace the governing structure of the Ottoman Empire. The Middle East was divided into a few areas, like Syria and Lebanon, were under the french mandate; Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine, what today is Israel and Jordan, were under the British mandate.  

Why were the great superpowers interested in investing their efforts in the Middle East?  Before the end of the First World War, no one had much interest in these deserted lands, with little water, and useless for agriculture.

However, towards the end of the War it was discovered that these lands were rich in oil reserves, and thus interest in the Middle East increased.

SAN REMO AND THE TWO SIDES OF JORDAN RIVER

In the Balfour Declaration, 1917, England committed to the creation of a National Home for Jews in the Land of Israel, which back then was known as “Palestine”. The Balfour declaration was also legally validated by France (February 14, 1918), Italy (May 9, 1918), and the United States (August 31, 1918).

Now in San Remo the Balfour declaration was given its definitive international recognition.

I think the most remarkable thing of the San Remo resolution is that the Jewish Home in Palestine included what is now the state of Israel, with Gaza, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, etc. and it also included the entire territory of what is today Jordan (officially: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan).

As you can see in the map above, that was the territory conceived by the League of Nations in San Remo, 1921, to establish the Jewish State.

In San Remo, the nations also assigned to Great Britain the mandate to implementing the establishment of a Jewish Homeland. For this, England assigned a Jewish British High Commissioner  for Palestine: Sir Herbert Samuel (1870-1963), who was also the first observant Jew to become a member of the British cabinet (see this)

CHURCHILL and THE WHITE PAPER

But the Arab leaders were not happy. They did not accept the decision of the League of Nations and began to attack and kill Jewish civilians in Tel Hai, Yerushalayim and Yafo, etc. This terrorist tactic unfortunately worked out for them: on June 3, 1922, Britain wrote the White Paper. 

This document was signed by Winston Churchill, who visited Jerusalem in 1921 and met with Arab and Jewish representatives (see video below). Churchill decided that “Palestine” was going to be divided into two states: one, on the Eastern side of the Jordan River, which would be ceded to the Hashemite Arab clan to establish its kingdom there, and rule over the Arabs of the region. And the other state, on the Western margin of the Jordan River, would be the territory destined for all the Jews of the world.

The Zionist Organization complained to the English authorities who had yielded to Arab violence, establishing a dangerous precedent (whose echoes continue to this day). One of the voices that denounced this betrayal was that of the famous Jewish leader Zeev Jabotisnky. In those days they sang the famous BETAR movement song : שתי גדות לירדן, זו שלנו זו גם כן “The Jordan River has two banks (the eastern and western territories), one is ours and the other one too. “

This division that ceded to the Arabs two thirds of the territory promised to the Jews, was finally ratified by the League of Nations, as a way to reach a “peaceful compromise”, which would allow the two peoples, the Arab and the Jews, to live peacefully next to each other.

The Jews had no choice but to accept “the two states solution”, with the (naive!) hope that we would finally live in peace and harmony with our Arab neighbors ….

I hope we have learned the lesson!

To be continued…

[To clarify, “Palestine” is the name given at that time to the land of Israel and to the Jewish National Home under the British mandate. There never existed an Arab Palestinian State, a Palestinian nation or a Palestinian people, or anything like it. In any case, according to what we wrote today, “the designated land for Arabs in Palestine is ‘Jordan'”].

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JERUSALEM 1921

In this video you can see the Great Rabbis of Israel coming out of a conference with Winston Churchill. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazi community in Israel (with a fur hat); Rabbi Yosef Chaim Zonnenfeld, Rabbi of the Eidah Haridit (with long white beard); Rabbi Yaacob Meir, Chief Rabbi of the Sephardic community (with a traditional turban).

חג שמח

In a few days we will celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel’s independence. In the next few days i would like to share with you a little about the history of modern Zionism, and how it happened that many Jews, despite not being observant, were part of the miraculous establishment of the State of Israel. As we learn more about what happened in the past, we will become more aware of our incredible privilege, and we will hopefully celebrate with greater gratitude to HaShem the miracle of the existence of the Jewish State.

NAPOLEON AND THE JEWS

To understand the impact of Zionism on modern Jewish history we must go back to the times of the French revolution in 1789. In the famous “Declaration of the Rights of Men and Citizens” France declared for the first time the freedom of worship, something that might seem natural to us today, but in those times it was an unprecedented event. A few years later the famous Napoleon Bonaparte designated Judaism as one of the official religions of France, and officially granted the Jews the right to French citizenship. Until then, Jews were “tolerated” as a non-grata minority, were discriminated against and had no access to education or to the exercise of the most common professions.

This great gesture of Napoleon, however, was not free of charge. Jews had to make some compromises. Jews had to commit to adopt the laws and the French constitution, as their highest authority, just as all other citizens did. To make this statement official by all Jews, Napoleon ordered the creation of a new institution, the Sanhedrin, which would become the official spokesman for the 40,000 French Jews.

THE GREAT SANHEDRIN

This Sanhedrin was com posed by 71 notable European Jews, most of them rabbis. The Sanhedrin had its first official meeting on February 9, 1807. The Sanhedrin had to make very difficult decisions to avoid any conflicts between Jewish law and French law. For example, in civil matters. A few illustrations: Polygamy, which anyways not longer applied since Rabenu Gershom, was formally prohibited. A Jewish man or woman that got divorced by a rabbinical court (get) was required to have a civil divorce in order to remarry. Civil marriages would be recognized, even mixed marriages. But most important to our subject, and to Napoleon, Jews now declared France as their only motherland, whom they would love and protect, even with arms if necessary. The Jews, now emancipated, “were no longer part of a nation” apart from France; and by accepting French citizenship “they renounced to their aspiration of a collective exodus that will take them back to the promised land”.

THE LAST ANTIDOTE TO ASSIMILATION?

Rabbi and historian Berel Wein explains that Napoleon was primarily interested in seeing Jews assimilating. Napoleon’s external tolerance and impartiality towards Jews was actually based on his grand plan for Jews to disappear entirely through assimilation, mixed marriages and conversion. And Napoleon’s plan seemed to be working perfectly. In fact, thousands of Jews abandoned religious practice, assimilated, and in many cases converted to Catholicism. And all to be fully accepted by the Gentile society.  But there was one element that Napoleon did not take into account in his plan: the depth of European anti-Semitism. For more than a thousand years Jews were accused of being the deicidal people (those who killed Yeshu); poisoning water wells to kill innocent Christians, and being parasites (since they didn’t work one day a week), etc. These anti-Semitic prejudices were not erased with the French revolution. And in this sense, as Rabbi Kook explained , anti-Semitism represented the last “Providential” barrier that avoided assimilation and the total disappearance of the people of Israel.

THE DREYFUS AFFAIR

One of the best examples of the social rejection of the Jews, however loyal they were to their homeland, is represented by the case of Captain Dreyfus. Alfred Dreyfus was a patriotic, loyal French Jew. From a young age he entered the French army where he made a great military career. In 1894 the French discovered that certain classified information was reaching the enemy side: Germany. The accused was Dreyfus. The evidence against him was very weak, but Dreyfus had already been found guilty because of his Jewish status. The French people had already condemned him in the streets shouting: Death to Dreyfus! Death to the Jews! Colonel Georges Picquart discovered that the real spy was Ferdinand Esterhazy, and that Dreyfus was innocent. But the High Command already got the “perfect culprit”, which French society easily accepted. Picquart was ordered to remain silent and upon his refusal he was sent to a military base in Tunis. Dreyfus was accused of treason, degraded militarily, humiliated and sent to the famous “Devil’s Island”, a penitentiary where prisoners were sent to die. Dreyfus was eventually exonerated. But the Dreyfus case left its mark.

It took practically a century for Western European Jews to learn the painful lesson: Abandoning Judaism or the idea of ​​”Jewish people”, or leaving aside the aspiration to return to the promised land, did not help Jews to be accepted as ordinary French citizens. No matter how much they did to become more French than the French, in the eyes of the Gentiles, they did not belong.

The Dreyfus affair had a very strong impact in a young Austrian Jewish lawyer, who realized that assimilation did not work to eliminate anti-Semitism. And he had a vision that, while secular, was prophetic. Biblical. That young man was Theodore Herzl. And his vision: a Jewish State.

To be continued

This is a very special  Shabbat. One that marks the transition between two very important historical milestones, diametrically opposed, that affected and profoundly changed the Jewish people.

On the one hand, this past Thursday we commemorated Yom HaShoah, the day of the remembrance of the Holocaust. On the other hand, this coming Wednesday night (May 4th), we will celebrate Yom ha’Atzmaut, the day of the Independence of the State of Israel.

We Jews have suffered countless persecutions, massacres, and pogroms. In all lands and at all times. But we never experienced anything as sinister as the Shoah. Both in absolute and relative terms, there was never such a devastating massacre of Jews, as the Holocaust that took place in Europe between 1940 and 1945.

Remember when no one dared to oppose the Third Reich, and the hesitations of Winston Churchill and the Allies who were about tom give up. Or when the Nazis exterminated half a million Hungarian Jews in just 6 months. Or when the Nazis were preparing the gas chambers in Tunisia to transport there and gas the Jews of North Africa, Palestine, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. The Jewish people never saw their end so close. We never ever had lost our hope so much. We never felt so clearly that we were irremediable, hopeless, and condemned to die.

Or already dead…

And then, in just 3 years, which in terms of the millennial Jewish history is less than the blink of an eye, the greatest miracle that the Tora (Debarim 30) and all our prophets had promised so long ago finally happened. The KIBBUTS GALUYOT – the return of the people of Israel to our land – began. HaShem, literally, opened our graves, He took us from below the ground, and brought us back home – to the beautiful land of Israel.

More than 2500 years ago, the prophet Ezekiel (Yehezqel) had a very special prophetic vision (nebua). In this vision Yehezqel finds himself transported to a valley. As he looks around him, he sees that the valley is filled with bones – dry, human bones.

Ezekiel sees it and remains silent. HaShem then asks him: “Son of a man: Do you believe that these bones can come back to life?”

Nothing is more dead than dry bones. Looking at them, with humility, perplexity, and common sense Yehezqel replied “HaShem, only You can know it “

Suddenly there was a deafening noise. The bones began to move. They joined with each other and formed skeletons. The skeletons then were covered with veins, then nerves, muscles, and flesh. And then they were covered by skin. Now they were not bones but human bodies. But without life. Corpses. HaShem told Ezekiel: “Prophesy so that these bodies will come to life … so a soul will enter these bodies and that they shall live again.” And so it was. “And a breath of life entered those bodies and they stood up. It was a great army, very numerous.” And HaShem said to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the house of Israel. They might say: ‘our bones have dried up, our hope is lost, we have been condemned [to disappear].’ Therefore, prophesy and tell [the people of Israel]: thus says HaShem, God: Behold, I will open your sepulchers, and I will raise you up from your graves and bring you to the land of Israel …

It is impossible not to connect this intense prophecy with 1945 and 1948.
In 1945 we were condemned to disappear. We were dry bones, or worse: ashes. And then, when everyone thought that we had disappeared for good; that we would never be a people again, and that all the ancient prophecies would never be fulfilled, the greatest miracle occurred: HaShem opened our graves,  our crematoriums, rescued us, and gave us back our lives. But His miracle did not end there. The inconceivable happened. HaShem fulfilled what He had promised us 3500 years ago: We returned to our land and established the State of Israel. We saw His Providence, and we become witnesses of His faithfulness to fulfill His promise. As Ezekiel had prophesied: “And when I open your graves, and take you out of them, My people, and lead you to your land, you will know that I, HaShem, I have promised, and I have delivered. “

SHABBAT SHALOM

Zionism= The return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel to found there a Jewish State.

While the term “Zionism” was coined by Nathan Birnbaum in 1890, Rabbi Yehuda Bibas (1776-1852) should be credited with the idea of ​​modern Zionism. Rabbi Bibas was born in Gibraltar (an English colony). From his mother’s side, he was the grandson of the famous Moroccan rabbi Rabbenu Hayim ben Attar, the Or-haHayim-haQadosh (1696-1743). His father belonged to the prestigious Bibas family of Rabbanim, Dayanim, and Shochatim in Tetuan, Spanish Morocco. He was for many years the rabbi of the prominent and affluent Jewish community of Corfu, a beautiful island that today belongs to Greece.

Rabbi Bibas saw the opportunity for the Jewish people to have their own State because many countries in those years (1820-1835) revolted against the ruling empires and thus gained their independence. Living in Corfu allowed the Rabbi the privileged perspective of being a direct witness to the revolution of the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire and the victory that led to the creation of the independent Greek State. Israel, then called “Palestine”, was also under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. in 1835, Rabbi Bibas believed that, like the Greeks, Jews could gain their own independence, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly weak politically and militarily. In his opinion:  “The Jews must conquer the land of Israel militarily from the Turks, just as the Greeks conquered their own land from the Turks.” Rabbi Bibas traveled through Europe and North Africa, visiting Turkey, the Balkans, Vienna, London, Germany, Hungary and Prague, and many more Jewish communities. The main message he preached to all the Jews of the world was “TESHUBA,” a call to return as a Nation to the land of Israel and founding a Jewish State.

Rabbi Bibas gave a broader meaning to the term Teshuba. Literally, “Teshuba” means “return.” But beyond the conventional meaning of the return of the Jewish individual to God, in the Tora, we find the idea of ​​”Teshuba / return” primarily as the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. In the book of Debarim, chapter 30, 1-11, “Teshuba” is mentioned eight times, first, as “collective repentance,” followed by a national “reconciliation” with HaShem. Then Teshuba defines the way that HaShem will “return” the Jewish people to their land. Just as the exile in the previous chapter (Debarim 29) resulted from the Jews abandoning HaShem, the return to the land of Israel is presented as the result of the reconciliation between Am Israel and HaShem, our God. Rabbi Bibas explained that by dwelling in the Diaspora: “We are turning our backs on HaShem (the opposite of “teshuba”, i.e., “facing” HaShem. YB), as our rabbis explained: A Jew living outside Israel is like a Jew without God. And why are we living in exile? To seek our sustenance? Did not the Tora say that the land of Israel is a land that HaShem constantly monitors, where bread will not be eaten with poverty? Is it not a land that will not lack anything? Day after day, when eating our bread, we thank HaShem for the land of abundance, Israel, that He has granted us …”

Rabbi Yehuda Alqalay (1798-1878) brought the ideas of Rabbi Yehuda Bibas to writing. Unlike Rabbi Bibas, who did not get to publish his ideas (or his books did not reach us) Rabbi Alqalay was a prolific writer. Like Rabbi Bibas, Rabbi Alkalay did not conceive the return of the people of Israel to the land of Israel just as a solution to the eternal problem of anti-semitism, but as the only way of fulfilling the Jewish aspiration for “normalization”: that is, the people Jewish, living in its land, Israel, ruled by its law, the Tora of Israel. Both rabbis,  Bibas and Alqalay, understood that the people of Israel did not need to wait passively for the arrival of the Mashiach to materialize this aspiration. Rather, Jews should actively seek the re-establishment of an independent Jewish State in the land of our ancestors as a way of advancing and facilitating the arrival of the Mashiach.

Inspired by Rabbi Bibas, Rabbi Alqalay formulated his plan and ideas for restoring the Jews in Israel in his book “Goral laHaShem,” published in Vienna in 1857. In this book he designed a comprehensive plan with the religious foundations and the practical steps to bring to fruition a national “TESHUBA”: The return of the Jewish nation to the land of Israel. The book was published in three different editions and translated into many languages, including English.

I present HERE the book of Rabbi Yehuda Alqalay, where you can see once and again that the word that defines “Zionism” is TESHUBA.

It is fascinating to read the haskamot (letters of recommendation) that this book had from many prominent rabbis. In my opinion, the most interesting letter is that of Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885, originally written in Hebrew) the most famous philanthropist and leader of the Jewish people in the 19th Century.

THE CIRCLE CLOSES

The history of the Libyan Jewish community in the 20th century involves a lot of suffering. First under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, then under the Nazi regime, and at end of the Second World War, the Jews of Libya were also victims of attacks and programs by the local Arab population. Finally, in 1969 Libyan Jews suffered horrific discrimination imposed by General Muammar Gadaffi, which was exceptionally cruel to the few Jews who remained there.

On the other hand, the Libyan Jewish community had always a very important ally: the State of Israel, which even before it was born, was there to help. The brief history that I am about to tell you today represents a little of the spirit of these days in the Hebrew calendar: the transition from the Holocaust towards the creation of the Jewish State: Medinat Israel.

MUSSOLINI AND THE JEWS

There is evidence that Jews lived in Sirte, Libya, as early as the 13th century before the Common Era. This Jewish community was one of the oldest in the world. But we are focused now on the 20th century. From 1911 to 1951 when it gained its independence, Libya was an Italian protectorate. The early years of Mussolini were not so bad for the Jews of Italy and Libya. But their situation got worse in 1936 when Mussolini made a pact with Hitler. Anti-Jewish decrees were established in Italy and its protectorates. At the end of the 1930s there were more than 30,000 Jews in Libya, especially in the capital Tripoli, where Jews constituted 25% of the total population. They had 44 synagogues. Under Mussolini Jews were forced to open their businesses on Saturday, for the sake of “contributing to Italy’s economy”. Many objected, until the authorities, as an exemplary measure, executed two Jewish merchants. Italy’s infamous racial laws prohibited Jews from accessing high school or college education. Jews were also banned from working in government organizations, banks, or municipal offices. And all their official documents had to bear a stamp that said “Jew”.

In June 1940, Italy officially entered the war and sided with Germany. Thousands of Libyan Jews were sent to labor camps within Libya for construction work or to build military routes, just as had happened in Morocco and Algeria, and most survived. But Libyan Jews who had English citizenship were sent to death camps in Europe, such as Bergen-Belsen, where many died of starvation, typhus, or exhaustion.

A CONCENTRATION CAMP IN AN ISLAMIC COUNTRY

In February 1942 Mussolini ordered the establishment of a concentration camp in the city of Giado, 200 kilometers south of Tripoli, to take the Jews there. In June 1942, the Italians had already deported a total of 2,584 Jews to Giado. The conditions of life in the camp were impossible. The camp was crowded: dozens of families slept in a four-meter space and were separated only by bedding and blankets. The daily food rations consisted of a few grams of rice, oil, sugar, and coffee substitute. Men over the age of 18 were sent to forced labor every day. Water scarcity, malnutrition, overcrowding, and dirt intensified the spread of contagious diseases. And the Italian guards enjoyed humiliating the Jews. Of the nearly 2,600 Jews sent to Giado, 562 died of weakness and hunger, and especially of typhoid and typhus. The Giado concentration camp not only recruited workers but entire families. In this sense, this camp was the closest to a European concentration camp that could be found in North Africa. And it had the highest number of Jewish victims in Islamic countries during World War II.

THE BIG SURPRISE

In early 1943, British forces were defeating the Nazis and the fascists. The big surprise for Libya’s Jews was to encounter among the soldiers fighting to liberate Libya some “Israeli” soldiers, that is, young Jewish fighters coming from the Holy Land, then under British control, who had training in Jewish combat units, Lechi, Hagana, etc. After 1948 the fighters serving in those units formed the Israeli Army. The presence of these soldiers obviously created a great positive impact on the morale of the poor Jews of Tripoli and Benghazi. But the sufferings of the Libyan Jewish community did not end with the end of the Second World War.

In 1945, when the Jewish soldiers returned to Israel, there was a terrible pogrom carried out by the local Arabs in which close to 150 Jews were killed.

In 1948 some 3,000 Jews illegally escaped to Israel. This immigration started the redemption of the Libyan Jewish community towards a greater future!

In 1949, finally, England legalized immigration to Israel, and the remaining 30,000 Jews left. Only 700 Jews remained in Libya.

In 1967 during the Six-Day War 17 Jews were killed.

GADAFI BUILDS A CAMP

In 1969 when Muammar Gaddafi came to power, he decided to make life impossible for the few Jews who were still there. He did it the best Nazi-style. Jewish property was confiscated. The debts owed to the Jews were canceled. Jews were prohibited from leaving the country. And Gaddafi ordered the Jews to be taken to a detention camp where they were forced to stay for several months!

Yom HaShoah day of remembrance ended last night. However today I decided to write about what Libyan Jews suffered in the Holocaust and beyond because, despite all the pain and losses, the community had a happy ending. In the 1970s the Jews who remained in Libya were able to escape. Many settled in Rome, Milan, London, or New York. But the majority live nowadays in Medinat Israel.

Today, Baruch HaShem, there is not a single Jew left in Libya.