CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Around the year 130 CE, 60 years after the destruction of the Second Bet haMiqdash, Emperor Hadrian’s horrific decrees included a ban on learning and teaching Tora. In this way, the evil Roman emperor sought to erase the Jewish Law from the minds and hearts of the Jews. Hadrian knew that as long as the Jews were faithful to God and obeyed His laws they would not regard him as the sovereign of the Jews. Now, Hadrian’s decree left the Jews with only one alternative: civil disobedience. The Jews rebelled against this decree and some of them paid for this act of faith with their own lives. However, not all Jews agreed that a Jew had to fight and risk one’s life to preserve the Tora. Just like today, there were Jews in those days who didn’t mind living like Romans. These assimilated Jews criticized the Sages for “provoking the Romans” and “increasing anti-Semitism” by promoting the Tora. The Gemara in Berachot 61b records a fascinating encounter between two Jews with opposing views on this subject. One of them was none other than Rabbi Aqiba, the most prominent rabbi of that time.

THE FIRST MEETING

 This story takes place during the year 134 or 135. Ribbi Aqiba was born in the year 50, so when this story happened he must have been around 80 years old. Defying the decree of the Romans, Rabbi Aqiba taught Torah in public. The Gemara tells us about an assimilated Jew named “Papos son of Yehuda” ( פפוס בן יהודה). The first thing we notice is that this individual had already adopted a Latin name, “Papos”, separating himself in this symbolic, but the very eloquent manner, from his Jewish past, represented by the iconic name of his own father: “Yehuda” (which means “from Judea” or “Jewish”). This person, with a Hebrew past and a Roman present, confronted Ribbi Aqiba when he was teaching the Tora and said, “Aquiba, aren’t you concerned that you are provoking the Romans? They will catch you and sentence you to death !”  For Papos, Jews living as Jews “provoked the wrath of the Romans.” And for him, the only way we Jews can live in peace, and avoid anti-Semitism, is by living like the Romans. It is amazing to see how relevant this story, which is 2000 years old, is not outdated. As unfortunately, millions of Jews in the United States and around the world think or act in much the same way as Papos did at the time.

FOX AND FRIENDS 

Ribbi Aqiba responded to Papos with an extraordinary parable: Once a fox was walking near the river and saw the fish running back and forth as if fleeing from some danger. The fox, hungry, and trying to trick the appetizing fish, asked them: What are you running from? The fish said: We are escaping from the fishermen’s nets. Then the cunning fox said to them: ‘Why don’t you come upon the shore together with me? Here we can live in peace and safe from the fishermen’s nets. The fish responded to the fox: We can’t believe that you’re considered the smartest of all animals: You don’t realize that if we fear for our lives while we are in the water, which is our natural habitat, do you think we will be able to survive out of the water?  Ribbi Aqiba then explained the metaphor to Papos: The Torah is to Jews what water is to fish. As long as we remain within our Tora, and live by it, even though we expose ourselves to danger, we can continue to breathe, survive and avoid being caught by the Romans who are after us. But if we accept the deceptive invitation of the fox and abandon the Tora, jumping out of the water, we will be committing suicide.

TWO KINDS OF ROMANS

Ribbi Aqiba clarified to Papos that there are two types of Romans: The fisherman and the fox. They both seek the same thing: to swallow the fish, dead or alive!  The only difference is that the fishermen do not hide their intention. The Roman army persecutes the Jews, spreads its nets in broad daylight, and does not try to hide its lethal intention. The fox, on the other hand, is more subtle. Roman politicians and intellectuals invite us to be one with them and live together as one people: ”the Romans”. Same as the Greeks did before – the Romans offered the Jews the “Pax Romana”, that is: being part of the powerful Roman Empire, but now with one condition: Get out of the water, leave the world of Tora.  Ribbi Aquiba concluded: “I teach Tora because I will rather be exposed to fishermen and get caught than commit spiritual suicide by jumping out of the water”. 

Eventually, Ribbi Aqiba was caught by the Romans and sentenced to death. But while he awaited his execution he had a second encounter with Papos ben Yehuda, but in a completely different place: prison.

To be continued 

Today is the 14th day of Iyar, 29 days of Omer (4 weeks, 1 day)

Thirty days after Pesach we commemorate Pesach Sheni or The Second Pesach. Pesach Sheni is not a formal holiday. No resting from melakha (work, etc) or Kiddush , etc is commanded today.

Pesach Sheni is mentioned in the Torah in Bamidbar 9:1-14 when Moshe announced that the Korban Pesach (Pesach sacrifice, a lamb) may only be offered by people who are ritually pure. Some men came to Moses, claiming that there were people, who came into contact with a dead body and became ritually unclean, unfit to participate in the Korban Pesach. God then indicated Moshe that anyone who was unable to offer the Korban Pesach on its due time, the 14th of Nisan, due to defilement or inability to journey to the place of sacrifice in time, should perform the sacrifice on the 14th of Iyar, a full month later.

In modern times, there is no practical observance of Pesach Sheni because, after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem we are unable to perform the original Pesach sacrifice anyway.

We remember Pesach Sheni by:

1. Eating Matza, which symbolizes the Korban Pesach, sometime during the day. The Sephardic custom is saying mezonot not hamotzi for Matza. There is no minimum requirement of Matza to eat and we can also eat Chametz regularly.

2. Saying yehi shem instead of the regular viduy (or confession, a prayer which is suspended on joyous occasions) from Mincha of the previous day.

HAFTARAT VAYIQRA

HAFTARAT EMOR

(This article is the continuation of the article found at this link).

ורדפו מכם חמשה מאה ומאה מכם רבבה ירדפו ונפלו אויביכם לפניכם לחרב

THE WORST FOUR WEEKS IN THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL

Israel’s War of Independence was the most critical battle for the survival of the Jewish State. It began on the evening of May 15th, 1948, when the British army withdrew from their region. Throughout the first few weeks of the war, the United Arab armies were defeating the newborn State of Israel, despite a heroic resistance. But Israel was not able to stop the advance of five strong armies with planes, ammunition, and counting with the implicit support of the rest of the world. Before beginning their attack, the Arabs, confident in their impending victory had said that “what Hitler did was nothing compared to what they would do with the Jews living in Israel.” It was a horrible dejavu of the Shoa, to see that the world remained silent. But HaShem was with us. And the unimaginable occurred. Israel not only survived the invasion of five Arab armies but against all odds, won the war in a way no one could have anticipated.

THE MIRACULOUS CEASE-FIRE

According to Dr. Hagai Ben Artzi- professor of history at Bar Ilan University (and brother-in-law of former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu) the greatest miracle of this war was that the Arab armies accepted a ceasefire. The proposal came from the Swedish  Folke Bernadotte, who had been designated as a mediator between the Arabs and Israelis by the United Nations. The ceasefire proposed to stop all military activity for four weeks and stated that the armies would remain in control of the positions they had conquered. Israel, which conquered nothing and was cornered everywhere, immediately accepted the proposal. The unexplainable, however, is that the Arab armies also accepted the proposal. I quote Ben Artzi from his (Hebrew) book- Megillat Hatequma VeHaAtzmaut: “…but why did the Arabs accept the ceasefire …? …they had almost reached all of their military objectives: Jerusalem was surrounded and besieged; Tel Aviv, a very short distance [from falling]; southern Israel [the Negeb] disconnected from the rest of the country, and the Galil, the North, was already conquered. A little more effort on the part of the Arabs and they were already in the heart of Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Petah Tikva, Netania, Hadera, and Afula. … ” Ben Artzi does not hide his conviction that this ceasefire was indeed a miracle of Biblical proportions. The enemies of Israel retreated as if possessed by an imaginary panic.

A BIBLICAL FEAR

Among other examples of this sort of Providential intervention, Ben Artzi mentions what happened on May 30th, 1948. Israel went to war without a single military plane. While the Arabs had over 75 active warplanes. The only country which dared to break the embargo and sold weapons to Israel was Czechoslovakia. By the end of May, four unarmed German “Messerschmidt” military planes arrived in Israel inside a transport plane. The planes were quickly assembled and on May 30th, and without even a test run, were sent on their first operation: trying to stop the Egyptian forces that were only 30 Kilometers away from Tel Aviv. These new Israeli planes took the Egyptians by surprise but did not cause severe damage, because the weapons did not function very well. Nevertheless, the Egyptian commander sent an urgent message to his headquarters saying that they could go no further because they were heavily bombarded “by a force far superior to them”. This “military assessment” was based more on imagination than reality. Ben Artzi also cites the reports of an Egyptian officer who fought in that battle and was taken prisoner by the Israelis in the 1956 war. When asked why the Egyptians did not continue their advancement towards Tel Aviv in ’48, when they had the whole area open to them, he said, “In the two Israeli attacks … we saw something that shook us: even after being hit by direct fire and suffering large losses, the Israeli soldiers continued to advance as if they were “crazy” (mej’nunin). And we said to ourselves: it is impossible to defeat these madmen. Better [accept the ceasefire and] settle for what we have conquered. ”

ALL ROADS LEAD TO JERUSALEM

Another providential event that occurred was that a young soldier, Moshe Eshed, discovered, “by coincidence” an alternative path to Jerusalem through the mountains, which was named “Derekh Burma.”  Through this path, the Israeli fighters were able to send food, medicine, weapons, and reinforcements to the city. There were about 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem at the time, especially concentrated in the Western area, the “Jewish Jerusalem.” They were completely isolated and trapped by the Jordanians, who had blocked all entrances to Jerusalem to avoid any supplies sent in.  If this mysterious path- which shockingly neither the Arabs nor the United Nations discovered for six months- had not been found, Jerusalem would’ve collapsed and the war would have had a very different ending. 

WHEN WHAT DOES NOT HAPPEN IS A GOOD THING

Despite all efforts, the Old City of Jerusalem (where the Kotel and the Temple mountain are) could not be conquered. By the end of the 1948 war, the Old City still remained in the power of the Jordanians. Until the Six Days War in 1967. Even in this failure, we can see the Divine Hand because if Israel had conquered Jerusalem in 1948, the United Nations would have demanded the internationalization of Jerusalem, a holy city “for the three Biblical religions”. International pressure would have been unsustainable and Israel, which was not strong at that time, would have surely relented. Jerusalem, with international status, would have been impossible to recover. And the long-term consequences for Israel would have been terrible. In the end, the Old City was not conquered by the Jews in 1948 and came under Jordan’s sovereignty. And as expected, no one imposed an “International status” on the city, and there were no complaints to the Jordanians for not allowing the Jews to visit the Western Wall.

Therefore, when in 1967 Israel conquered the Old City, the U.N. could no longer demand from Israel what they did not demand from Jordan for 19 years…

Israel’s victory in the War of Independence, which began on May 15, 1948 and lasted for 10 months, is unprecedented in the annals of military history. This is due, on the one hand, to the incredible courage, ingenuity, and sacrifice of our leaders and fighters, who gave it all to succeed, and mainly to Divine intervention that, battle after battle, miracle after miracle, made it possible.

To understand it better, it is important to remember the following.

ISRAELI ARMY vs ARAB ARMIES

On the day that Israel declared its independence, British troops who had been there since 1922, left Israel. Immediately afterward, that same night of May 15, the Arab armies launched an attack to destroy the newborn state of Israel. The Arabs had absolutely everything in their favor, politically and militarily. Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan had become independent states a few years earlier, and both England and France had sold weapons to them so that they could have an organized army.  Israel, on the other hand, was on its way to becoming an independent State. And no country was supporting the Jewish state. Moreover: England, France, and the United States had declared a strict weapon embargo that prohibited the entire world from selling weapons of any kind to Israel.

At the beginning of the armed conflict, the difference between the military power of Israel and that of the unified Arab armies could not be more unequal.

For example.
The Arabs had 50 tanks. Israel had 1.
The Arabs had 200 artillery vehicles. Israel had 2.
The Arabs had 140 cannons. Israel had 5.
But the most important difference was in the air force. The Arab armies had 60 attack aircraft and 14 transport aircraft. Israel, at the start of the battle, did not have one single plane.

THE LOGIC OF WAR
Before continuing, I would like to stop here and reflect for a few seconds. First of all, it is completely understandable that the Arabs launched a full-force attack against Israel because the chances of destroying Israel, with their absolute military advantage, were 100%. It is also understandable that the Arabs themselves broadcasted by radio to all Palestinians living in Israel –who were not taking an active part in the war– to leave Israel. Assuring them that they would return very soon when the short war was over, and the Jews were “thrown into the sea” (a euphemism for: “murdered”). Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left Israel. In this way, the Arab countries created the “Palestinian refugee problem” for which they never took charge, and to this day, they continue to blame Israel.

WHO IS NOT RELIGIOUS?
What is indeed inconceivable is that being aware of Israel’s military inferiority, the Jewish leaders made the decision to declare the Independence of Medinat Israel, having been warned of the imminent Arab attack. This decision made absolutely no sense, either from a military point of view or from a logical point of view. Looking at the numbers, it was a suicidal act! Although there is another possibility. An idea that might be viewed as mystical… Every Jew, even a secular Jew, has a “nitzotz”, a “hidden” spark of Emuna. A Divine connection, perhaps, an unconscious one, that is always there, latent, dormant, but lit, like a boiler’s pilot. And at critical moments, perhaps in matters of life and death, this spark ignites the Jewish soul and .    I believe that David Ben Gurion and all the “seemingly secular” Israeli leaders of that time, had an epiphany, or a moment of Divine Inspiration when they decided to declare the establishment of the State of Israel. A spark that ignited their Jewish faith and led them to act like Nachshon Ben Aminadab, the man enter into the sea, and when the water reached his nostrils, he continued “knowing” that the sea was going to open up for him. Israel’s leaders (miraculously, if you will) relied on a miracle that “had to happen”. And in the end, it happened.
I can’t find a better explanation.

THE DARKEST HOUR
The entire world was certain that Israel’s defeat was a matter of days, or perhaps a few weeks. And they were not very wrong. During the first four weeks, the Arab armies advanced significantly and reached Ashdod, 30 kilometers south of Tel-Aviv. From Ashdod, they reached Hebron and thus they divided the Negev from the rest of the country.

The powerful Jordanian legion, which had been trained by the British, managed to besiege Jerusalem from all sides. A frontal attack was imminent. Jordanians also captured Lod and the airport (today, Ben Gurion International) and were approaching Tel-Aviv from the east.

Iraqi forces had attacked the Shomron and were approaching the cities of Petach Tikva and Hadera, en route to Tel-Aviv.

The Syrians came from the north and were encircling the city of Tiberia. Together with Lebanon’s military forces, they were isolating the northern Galil from the rest of Israel. Their final destination was Tel-Aviv.

All efforts by the newly created Israeli Army to defend Jerusalem from Jordanians or to repel Egyptian, Syrian, or Iraqi forces failed.

During the first weeks of the war since May 15, 1948, all predictions about Israel’s brutal defeat were fulfilled. Despite the sacrifice and bravery of our soldiers, the military superiority of the Arab armies was insuperable. There was no way for the Israeli forces to withstand the enemy’s attacks for even a few more days…. it seemed that the end was imminent.

And then, the first great miracle of this war occurred. It was June 11, Sivan 4, 1948.

Today is Yom HaZikaron, the day we honor the memory of the soldiers of the Israeli Army who sacrificed their lives for the establishment of the State of Israel and its continued existence. The young soldiers who gave their lives in the wars of Israel are the great heroes of the Jewish State. “The silver plate” on which the State of Israel was delivered to us. As Rabbi Eliezer Melamed says in his book Penine Halakha: “These soldiers, most of them very young, sacrificed everything, so that we can have our land, where we can fulfill our greatest dream: returning to our land to serve HaShem and observe His Tora … we should be inspired by their sacrifice and devotion to dedicate our lives to sanctify the Name of HaShem (leqaddesh shem Shamayim). “

AHARON HERSHLER z “l
The Ministry of Defense considers that the first Jewish victim of Arab terrorism in Israel was Aharon Hershler.  Hershler was killed on January 1st, 1873 at the age of 23 years, and is buried on the Mount of Olives, הר הזיתים, the oldest cemetery in the world that is still in use.  Hershler was a student of the Kolel “Shomere haHomot”, and he studied Tora day and night. Hershler was born in Hungary in 1850, son of the prominent Rabbi Yosef Shmuel Hershler. The Hershler family lived in Mishkenot Shaananim, the first Jewish neighborhood built outside the Old City. Records indicate that in 1872 there was abundant rainfall, which meant that  Jews were not forced to buy water from the Arab residents of Shiloah (Silwan in Arabic). In response, the Arab residents decided to attack the Jews and plunder them. Several Arabs stormed the Hershler house on January 1. Aharon interrupted his studies of the Tora, confronted them and began to persecute them. The bandits opened fire on Hershler and shot him 12 times. Hershler was taken to the hospital where he died of his injuries, after four days of agony. Hershler left a wife and a daughter.

May HaShem treasure the souls of the heroes of Israel and the victims of terror, in Gan Eden.

May He bless their families and give them the strength to endure the insurmountable pain of the loss of their loved ones.

May He bless the soldiers of Israel and her inhabitants, and protect them from our enemies.

May He grant AM ISRAEL strength and victory, and bless Israel with peace. AMEN

Please light a candle today in memory (leiluy nishmat) of their souls 

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

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