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

AUDIO FILES

YALKUT SHIMONI 171

ויאמר אנכי אלהי אביך נגלה עליו בקולו של עמרם אביו כדי שלא יתירא. באתה שעה שמח משה ואמר עמרם אבי. אמר ליה הקב”ה אתה אמרת שאני אביך ואיני אלא אלהי אביך באותה שעה ויסתר משה פניו.

El Rab Abraham Zacuto y Cristóbal Colón

Hay muchas historias fascinantes sobre la contribución del Rabino Abraham Zacuto a las expediciones de Cristóbal Colón. Sabemos que Colón conoció y utilizó las tablas marítimas de Zacuto en su expedición a las Indias (=América ). El Rabino Zacuto también fue instrumental en la obtención de los fondos para las expediciones de Colón y fue él quien introdujo al desconocido Colon a Rabí Don Isaac Abarbanel, quien arregló la primera audiencia entre el famoso navegante y los reyes de España. 

Las tablas astronómicas de Rabí Zacuto salvaron la vida de Colón. Durante el último viaje de Colón a America, en febrero de 1504, su pequeña flota quedo abandonada en Jamaica, donde los nativos no querían darle alimentos ni a él ni a sus marineros. Las tablas predecían que el 29 de febrero 1504 habría un eclipse lunar. Colón reunió a los caciques nativos y los amenazó diciendo que si no le entregaban alimentos él haría desaparecer la luna.  El eclipse asustó a los nativos y desde entonces respetaron a Colón  y le dieron todo lo que necesitaba

https://youtu.be/ws8-RmyjUTM

Sources for class with rabbi Bitton at Shaare Rachamim,   Monday October 11, 2021 / 5782

BENE ELOQIM , NEFILIM  

MALAKHIM:

A problem of language:

THE BURNING BUSH: 

ELIYAHU HANABI:

MAIMONIDES . MISHNE TORA: Yesode haTora  1: 2.

HOMEWORK

Get Familiar with

FLATLAND

GET FAMILIAR WITH JACQUES VALEE:

The Physics of information : You will need this to better understand Maimonides.

Material and sources for the class given June 1, 2021

BRIEF HISTORY OF JEWISH PALESTINE

The “Mandate for Palestine,” an historical League of Nations document, laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, a 10,000-square-miles3 area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The legally binding document was conferred on April 24, 1920 at the San Remo Conference, and its terms outlined in the Treaty of Sèvres on August 10, 1920. The Mandate’s terms were finalized and unanimously approved on July 24, 1922, by the Council of the League of Nations, which was comprised at that time of 51 countries,4 and became operational on September 29, 1923.5
Great Britain [i.e., the Mandatory or Trustee] did turn over its responsibility to the United Nations as of May 14, 1948. However, the legal force of the League of Nations’ “Mandate for Palestine” [i.e., The Trust] was not terminated with the end of the British Mandate. Rather, the Trust was transferred over to the United Nations.

Recognition of the Historical Connection to Palestine

Fifty-one member countries – the entire League of Nations – unanimously declared on July 24, 1922:
“Whereas recognition has been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”6
Unlike nation-states in Europe, modern Lebanese, Jordanian, Syrian, and Iraqi nationalities did not evolve. They were arbitrarily created by colonial powers.
In 1919, in the wake of World War I, England and France as Mandatory (e.g., official administrators and mentors) carved up the former Ottoman Empire, which had collapsed a year earlier, into geographic spheres of influence. This divided the Mideast into new political entities with new names and frontiers.7
Territory was divided along map meridians without regard for traditional frontiers (i.e., geographic logic and sustainability) or the ethnic composition of indigenous populations.8
The prevailing rationale behind these artificially created states was how they served the imperial and commercial needs of their colonial masters. Iraq and Jordan, for instance, were created as emirates to reward the noble Hashemite family from Saudi Arabia for its loyalty to the British against the Ottoman Turks during World War I, under the leadership of Lawrence of Arabia. Iraq was given to Faisal bin Hussein, son of the sheriff of Mecca, in 1918. To reward his younger brother Abdullah with an emirate, Britain cut away 77 percent of its mandate over Palestine earmarked for the Jews and gave it to Abdullah in 1922, creating the new country of Trans-Jordan or Jordan, as it was later named.

ISRAEL’S EXCEPTIONALISM
The manner in which European colonial powers carved out political entities with little regard to their ethnic composition not only led to this inter-ethnic violence, but it also encouraged dictatorial rule as the only force capable of holding such entities together.9
The exception was Palestine, or Eretz-Israel – the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, where:
“The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country [ Palestine] under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.”10

Appropriation of the Name “Palestine”

The Palestinian Talmud,  according to Oxford University

before local Jews began calling themselves Israelis in 1948 (when the name “Israel” was chosen for the newly-established Jewish State), the term “Palestine” applied almost exclusively to Jews and the institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before the state’s independence.

Some examples include:

The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called The Palestine Post until 1948.

Bank Leumi L’Israel, incorporated in 1902, was called the “Anglo-Palestine Company” until 1948.

The Jewish Agency – an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewish settlement since 1929 – was initially called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

Today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was originally called the “Palestine Symphony Orchestra,” composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.¹⁷

The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fund-raising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.

Encouraged by their success at historical revisionism and brainwashing the world with the “Big Lie” of a Palestinian people, Palestinian Arabs have more recently begun to claim they are the descendants of the Philistines and even the Stone Age Canaanites.¹⁸ Based on that myth, they can claim to have been “victimized” twice by the Jews: in the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites and again by the Israelis in modern times – a total fabrication.¹⁹ Archeologists explain that the Philistines were a Mediterranean people who settled along the coast of Canaan in 1100 BCE. They have no connection to the Arab nation, a desert people who emerged from the Arabian Peninsula.

As if that myth were not enough, former PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat also claimed, “Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the Jebusites,” who were displaced when King David conquered Jerusalem.

Arafat also argued that “Abraham was an Iraqi.” One Christmas Eve, Arafat declared that “Jesus was a Palestinian,” a preposterous claim that echoes the words of Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian Arab who, in an interview during the 1991 Madrid Conference, said: “Jesus Christ was born in my country, in my land,” and claimed that she was “the descendant of the first Christians,” disciples who spread the gospel around Bethlehem some 600 years before the Arab conquest. If her claims were true, it would be tantamount to confessing that she is a Jew!

“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’”

VIDEOS: who are the Palestinians? A Nation ? Or an invented ethnicity to appropriate the name “Palestine” and eventually displace the Jewish people from Israel?

Palestinians come from many countries in the Middle East.

Dr Mordechai Kedar on Palestinians origins

BLM and PALESTINIANS

Los Angeles Real Estate Mogul Mohamed Hadid Apologizes for Post Linking Israel to Police Brutality in United States

Los Angeles Real Estate Mogul Mohamed Hadid Apologizes for Post Linking Israel to Police Brutality in United States

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/blm-leaders-get-rich-by-exploiting-black-community-attacking-israel/.

“We at the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel have been asking this question for years now, and still have not received an answer: If Black Lives Matter is supposed to be about police killings of unarmed Black people, why is part of its focus on Israel thousands of miles away–as opposed to, for example, the African slave trade in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania or Qatar? “

SIMILARITIES

1. Police brutality : Israel brutality. Selective victims.
2. Only those who killed by police. Only those killed by Israel.  In both case, the initial act of  violence is premeditated. The death of the victim is not.

3. Directing the blame to the wrong party: teach not to resist arrest!!! La Hage court: blames Israel for the Gaza conflict. And so does the United Nations Human Right committee.

4. Final goal: defund police.  Defund Israel. To increase chaos, anarchy and enabling criminals to do their job undisturbed.

5. RICH CORRUPT LEADERS:


RECOMMENDED: The Americanization of the Israeli Palestinian Debate
Israel’s Problems Are Not Like America’s
When many Westerners peer out at the world, what they’re really looking for is a mirror.
By Matti Friedman

PALESTINIAN REFUGEES

Palestinian exceptionalism is just a function of the world embracing systemic antisemitism. Palestinian  exceptionalism is not about Palestinians but about “treating exceptionally the enemies of the Jews”. If the Palestinians were fighting Turkey instead of Israel, no one would care about Palestinians. And if the Kurds will be fighting Israel, they will, be treated exceptionally well. 

Why are Palestinian refugees different from all other refugees?
Aug 30, 2018
The unique status afforded to Palestinians is the single biggest stumbling block to achieving peace

Recommended articles:  https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-are-palestinian-refugees-different-from-all-other-refugees/

Recommended books: Myths and Facts, a guide to the Arab Israeli Conflict 

DOWNLOAD FREE PDF HERE  : https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/mf2017.pdf

THE CASE FOR ISRAEL,

by Alan Dershowitz: 

DOWNLOAD FREE PDF HERE: https://veritas5777.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/alan-dershowitz-the-case-for-israel-2003.pdf

Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth   April 6, 2021 by Noa Tishby 

THE BOURLA FAMILY

“Bourla” (also spelled “Burla”) is the surname of a famous Sephardic family from Spain. After the expulsion in 1492 we find this family in Salonika (Thessaloniki), Greece, and in Smyrna, Turkey. Over time, part of the Bourla family migrated to Erets Israel, where they lived for centuries. Some examples: Rabbi Israel Burla (d. 1798) was one of Jerusalem’s leading scholars at that time. He is famous for his mission in Europe to enlist the help of European Jews for the benefit of Jerusalem by creating a special voluntary tax. Among his books are “Mekor Yisrael.” His son was Rabbi Yehuda Burla, author of Nachalat Yehuda. The son of Yehuda was the celebrated Rabbi Yosef Nissim Burla (1828-1903) who participated in the construction and settled in Mishkenot Shaannim, the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls of Jerusalem. He was the author of Leqet Yosef, a collection of Halachot arranged alphabetically; Va-Yeshev Yosef, Rabbinical Responsible; Od Yosef Chai, Olat Shabat and others. Yehoshua ben Bekhor Burla (1852–1939), was a bookbinder by trade, and was in charge of Qeber Rachel in Bet Lechem and the grave of Shimon ha-Tsadiq in Jerusalem. He was the father of one of the most famous Israeli writers, Yehuda Burla (1886 – 1969), who wrote on Sephardic history and culture and especially on Yehuda Halevi. Yehuda Burla was awarded the PRAS ISRAEl (Israel Prize), the most prestigious award given by the State of Israel.

SALONIKA and AUSCHWITZ

Yesterday I mentioned that Thessaloniki was probably the largest Sephardic community in the early 20th century (see here). After the 1917 fire, the Jewish population decreased. Many Jews left the city, and fortunately many of them emigrated to Israel. At the beginning of World War II there were approximately 60,000 Jews in Thessaloniki. When the Nazis arrived in Thessaloniki, many tragic events occurred: a possible act of betrayal by a prominent member of the community (it is not easy to judge what actually happened in those times from our post-Holocaust perspective, so we better leave it there…). The Jews of Thessaloniki, practically the entire community, were deported to concentration camps in March 1943. The Bourla family and all their sons and daughters also boarded the terrible cattle cars that led to Auschwitz. Ninety-five percent of the Jews in Thessaloniki, 54,000 Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, or died during the terrible “Death March” from January to May 1945 (see more here). A member of the Bourla family survived the inferno. He married another Holocaust survivor, and in 1961 they had a son, his only child, Israel Abraham Bourla, also known as Albert Bourla.

ALBERT BOURLA

Albert grew up and was educated in Thessaloniki. He received his doctorate in reproductive biotechnology from the Veterinary School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. At 34 he left Greece and in 1993 he joined Pfizer in the US. He held many important positions and in January 2016 he served as president of the company’s Innovative Health Group. At the beginning of 2020 Bourla was the CEO of Pfizer International. In 2020, in light of the global COVID19 outbreak, Bourla ordered his team at Pfizer to act aggressively to develop a coronavirus vaccine. In November 2020, Pfizer announced that the vaccine they developed was effective in 95% of cases.

COVID19 and LA SHOAH

Simon Griver writes in «Globes» (January 4, 2021): “There is no mystery as to how Israel has already managed to vaccinate more than 1.25 million people. In just over two weeks, 13.5% of the population, including 52% of people over 60 will be vaccinated. Israeli health maintenance organizations are effective, highly digitalized and have been mobilized with enormous efficiency. What is not clear is how Israel received so many doses of the Pfizer vaccine so quickly… Israel had ordered millions of doses of the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccine, but did not order any doses of the Pfizer vaccine. When Pfizer announced that its vaccine was 95% effective against Covid-19 Israel’s top health officials were embarrassed that the country had bet on the wrong horse. So Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately spoke to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. It was the first of several calls. And ultimately Israel received four to five million doses of the world’s best vaccine in existence before the end of 2020,  enough to vaccinate and save the lives of at least two million people. “

WHAT DID THE NAZIS DO DURING THEIR LAST DAYS IN POWER?
One of the most shocking movies I have seen is called “The Last Days” by Steven Spielberg, a documentary where five survivors talk about the extermination of Hungarian Jews during the Shoah. In May 1944 the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began. In just eight weeks, more than 420,000 Jews were deported and killed. The figures and the speed at which this massacre was carried out is absolutely incomprehensible. On a typical day, there were three or four trains, with between 3,000 and 4,000 people on each train. Every day about 12,000 Jews arrived at the death camps. Winston Churchill said of the Hungarian Jews that they suffered “… probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the entire history of the world …”. Why is the movie called “The Last Days”? At the beginning of the documentary, an historian explains that Hitler wanted to carry out the extermination of the Jewish population of Hungary despite knowing the high probability that Germany would be defeated at that stage of the war; and instead of deploying more troops to reinforce the fronts where they were losing, in their last days in power the genocide of Jews was the priority for the Nazis.

ONLY IN YOUR DREAMS…
We Jews have been praying for peace since the beginning of time. Living in peace is our greatest aspiration. The Tora mentions “peace” as the ultimate goal of priestly blessing (Birkat Kohanim). “Bless us with peace” is the content of the final blessing of the most important prayer, the Amida. Our highest aspiration for messianic times is not “world domination” or “mass conversion” as it happens in other religions. The greatest miracle to which we aspire is to live in peace with neighboring nations, those that always saw Israel as a valuable prey to be destroyed. Maimonides explains that this is the meaning of the famous prophecy of the prophet Yesha’ayahu 11: 6: וגר זאב עם כבש ונמר עם גדי ירבץ. “The wolf will live [in peace] with the lamb; and the leopard and the goat will graze together …”. This means that the predators (= the nations that seek to destroy Israel) and the prey (= Israel) will live in peace. But peace with our predators / enemies always seemed like an unrealizable utopia. An imaginary ideal beyond our dreams.

YOU CAN FEEL IT IN THE AIR..
And yet now, miraculously, peace is here.
What is happening between Israel and the Arab countries is one of the greatest wonders of our time. We should be calling each other on the phone throughout the day in endless amazement and not talking about anything other than the new peace treaties between Israel and the Arab world. We should write it in the sky, with a flotilla of airplanes, and with a big exclamation mark saying “The peace for which we have prayed so much for centuries is finally here!!!” It seems to me that we, the privileged protagonists of this miracle, do not realize the scope of what is unfolding before our eyes. In perhaps one of the most profound insights that capture the complexity of human psychology our rabbis stated that “en ba’al hanes makor benisó,” our minds are not capable to appreciate miracles as they happen.” Perhaps because miracles, unattainable by nature, are processed with our imagination. But if they finally happen, then we process them with our logic, as part of an achievable reality, and not as a miracle.

PRESIDENT TRUMP
What President Donald Trump is doing is absolutely incredible, miraculous. I love reading history, and the history of our people is my great passion. And I can say with great confidence that there has never been a non-Jewish political leader who has done as much for the Jewish people as Donald J. Trump has done for Israel. When I remember the long list of things he did for Israel, I can’t stop thinking about the blessing we recite on Purim, after reading Megilat Esther: HARAB ET RIBENU in which we thank God for “fighting our fight; confronting our enemies and exacting justice with all those who seek to destroy us. ” Donald Trump has done exactly that: Like no one else in the past, he has defended the Jewish people at the United Nations; he has condemned the infamous international anti-Semitic groups masquerading as human rights defenders; he defunded those organizations that encourage terror against Israel such as UNRWA; he imposed economic sanctions to Iran who seeks our destruction; he unmasked the Palestinian leaders agenda, showing that they do not wish peace but conflict; etc, , etc. And he has forged real peace treaties with countries that were historically hostile towards Israel. And now, this past Friday, with Sudan.

SUDAN
Peace with Sudan is truly atypical. Why? Because the Emirates or Bahrain, although they did not maintain open diplomatic relations, they were never at war against Israel. Sudan, however 1. participated in the first war against Israel, in 1948, sending 6 divisions of its army to fight against our incipient Jewish state. 2. In 1967 the declaration of the “League of Arab Nations” with the 3 famous NOS: “NO negotiations, NO recognition and NO peace with Israel”, was signed in Khartum, the capital of Sudan. In 2106 Sudan was one of Israel’s most dangerous enemies. Sudan assisted Iran and helped smuggling weapons and terrorist to Gaza.

THE LAST DAYS OF TRUMP
According to the latest polls, it is possible that President Donald Trump will lose the presidential election. Personally, I don’t believe it (or I don’t want to believe it…). But either way, you have to accept the possibility that these might be “the last days” of Donald Trump as US president. And in recent days, when Trump has so many open fronts and so many enemies that rise against him, his diplomatic efforts toward finding partners for peace with Israel did not stop. He continues focused on getting more countries to sign peace with the Jewish State: Saudi Arabia, Oman, Morocco They are on a waiting list for peace.
This past Friday while I was reading about the new prospects of peace with Sudan and I was seeing the latest electoral polls, this sad idea came to mind: that these could be “the last days” of the best friend the State of Israel ever had since its inception. And I was moved to tears because the idea of the “the last days” brought to my memory the documentary and could not avoid the mental comparison between the two most radical extremes that can be conceived …
To better appreciate what President Trump is doing, I could not forget what President Obama did literally, in his last days as US president: he sent billions of dollars in cash to Israel’s worst enemy, Iran, the only nation that openly declared its intention to wipe Israel off the map. Or when in an unprecedented move, literally in his last days, he made sure that the United States would not veto a UN resolution that cynically accused Israel of being the “occupying power” in Jerusalem.

TRUMP AND CYRUS
The Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, concludes with the famous declaration of another great benefactor of Israel: Cyrus (Koresh), the first Persian emperor, who in the year 538 BCE supported the return of the Jews to Israel and helped financing the construction of the Second Bet haMiqdash in Yerushalayim. There the pasuq says: HASHEM HE’IR ET RUACH KORESH MELEKH PARAS “” HaShem, God, awakened / mobilized the spirit of Koresh, King of Persia … “. I have no doubt that as with Koresh, it is the Creator who animates the spirit of this great President. And that we should be infinitely grateful to Him for living these incredibly beautiful (messianic?) moments that anticipate “unprecedented” times of peace and prosperity for our beloved Medinat Israel.

PASSION FOR STUDYING Today marks the seventh anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Obadia Yosef z”l, who died at the age of 93. Rabbi Obadia was not only the most illustrious Chief Rabbi of Israel (Rishon LeTsion) in modern times, but also the Rabbi who led the Sephardim in Israel and the diaspora to their original customs and traditions. Rabbi Obadia Yosef’s passion was the study of the Tora, in particular, the legal aspects of Judaism (halakhot). Jewish jurisprudence is a very complex discipline and one needs to read and remember many, many books, some encyclopedic in size, to become a master in this field. Rabbi Yosef was endowed with a prodigious memory that allowed him to quote thousands of rabbinical opinions and rulings by heart. But his exceptional mental talents would not have been enough without his uninterrupted dedication to Tora study. I remember his son, Rabbi Ya’aqob Yosef z”l, with whom I studied for 2 years in Yerushalayim, who told us that his own passion for studying Tora began when he saw his father gently rocking the cradle of one of his little brothers with one hand, while holding and reading a Tora book with the other.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD TEACHER

From a very young age, Rabbi Obadia Yosef displayed the two most important signs of a great Tora luminary: a passion for Torah study and an exceptional memory. But that was not enough in the 1930s in Israel. In those days of financial depression, the world’s economic situation was chaotic and Israel (in those days“Palestine”) was obviously no exception. The family could not afford to have a child outside the job market… For a time, young Obadia Yosef was allowed to study at the most prestigious Sephardic Yeshiba, Porat Yosef, in the Old City of Jerusalem. But soon after, he was forced to quit his studies and work in his father’s shop in “shekhunat habukharim” in Jerusalem. Porat Yosef was led by a great rabbi born in Aleppo, Syria, Ribbi Ezra Attie z ”l (1887-1970) who besides being a very pious man and one of the greatest Tora scholars of his generation also had the ability to identify the intellectual potential and leadership qualities in his students. During the short time that Rabbi Yosef studied at Porat Yosef, Rabbi Attie identified his charisma, bright mind, and positive character. And when he found out that the young Obadia had to leave his studies to go to work, he became very sad. But he didn’t give up and did the unexpected. Rabbi Attie approached Rabbi Yosef’s father and begged him to let the boy return to the Yeshiba. He told his father: “If you need help in the store, I will stay here and work for you for free. Keeping me away from Tora study matters less than keeping your son away”. Rabbi Yosef’s father couldn’t say no. And realizing his son’s potential as a great Tora scholar, he allowed him to return to his studies. This was probably the most important turning point in Rabbi Yosef’s life.

RETURNING THE CROWN TO ITS ORIGIN

What characterized Rabbi Yosef as the leader of Sephardic Jews was his courage to reclaim the halakhic Sephardic voices of the past as binding in the present. It was not an easy task, considering that at that time he had to openly challenge other rabbinic leaders who also claimed to represent the authentic Sephardic approach. Rabbi Obadia’s main contribution was the restoration of Rabbi Yosef Caro (1488-1575) and his Shulkhan ‘arukh as the highest authority for Sephardic Jews in Israel. “Quibalnu Horaot Maran“, historically Sepharadic Jews agreed to follow the rulings of Rabbi Yosef Caro and to do no less and no more than what is stated in his books.

BEN ISH HAI or SHULCHAN ARUKH?

Uniting the Sephardic Jews of Israel around Shulchan Arukh was one of the main goals —and achievements— of Rabbi Obadia Yosef z”l. Sephardic Jews came to Israel from many countries (Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iran, etc.) and brought with them multiple local customs, and in many cases, these practices were stricter than what Jewish law requires. Pesach is a good example of these additional restrictions. Jews in Spanish Morocco, for example, used to cover the dining room table with seven tablecloths. Nobody dared to buy sugar or common oil for Passover. And many were using only cleaning products that were certified Kosher for Pesach, etc. Notably, the first book published by Rabbi Obadia Yosef was Jazon Obadia, a book on the laws of Pesach, which when first published in the 1950s was revolutionary. Because Rabbi Yosef directed his readers to renounce additional restrictions (dictated in Ben Ish Hay, or other local rabbinic authorities ) that in his opinion were not applicable in Israel, where Rabbi Yosef Caro was the ultimate authority. Something very similar happened with many laws of Nidda (family purity), Shabbat or Kashrut, just to mention a few examples. I remember once having a private meeting with Rabbi Yosef and I asked him about the Halakhic practical scope of the Ari haQadosh rules and he told me unambiguously that they are applicable “only in the field of liturgy (Tefila) or as a matter of private practice”, for everything else we should strictly follow Shulchan Arukh.

SEPHARADIM OR ASHKENAZIM?

 Another reason why many Sephardic had abandoned their millennial traditions was that the Jewish educational system at the time — Jewish schools and especially Rabbinical Academies – was predominantly Ashkenazi, and the Sephardic halachic tradition was literally in danger of extinction. In the 1950s Rabbi Obadia was criticized by many rabbis, Ashkenazim and Sepharadim, who rejected his halachic authority. Part of his vision was to facilitate the practice of Judaism, something he saw as a very necessary principle for our modern days. In the 1960s and 1970s, his views were considered by many Rabbis as too “liberal”. Decades passed until his voice became the highest and undisputed authority in Sephardic communities in Israel and around the world.

Rabbi Yosef Bitton

A man once heard of a marvelous blue bird that could be found only in one place in the entire world.  This man decided to try and find this unique bird.  He searched his town, he searched his country, and – obsessed with finding it – he looked for the special bird around the entire world.  After many years, this man decides to return home: defeated, exhausted and older.  Tired, he sat to rest in his balcony, let his gaze wander to his garden, and fell asleep.  As he woke up, he saw next to him the magnificent blue bird.  A bird that had always lived there.  In his own garden.

EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS

As a teenager, there were a few subjects and themes that captivated me, such as cosmology (how the universe began) and the theory of evolution, particularly, how life began in our planet.  Beyond their technical aspects, these fields touch upon the meaning of existence.  If the world appeared spontaneously, and if life was caused by a series of coincidences, then Creation as told to us by the Tora is not necessary to explain how we got here, or why.  And without Creation, one can question the existence of a Creator.

I was 16-17 years old at the time, and these questions tortured me. 

On the one hand, I felt confident about my Judaism.  My heart was full of Emuna – conviction.  I was very proud of everything Jewish: our People, our Land, our history.  But, on the other hand, I was also held back by many intellectual uncertainties.  Some of my friends and teachers tried to convince me to ignore these questions, since “they were the influence of the Yetser haRa,” the evil instinct.  They said so because they felt ignoring these questions would be for my own benefit, and because most people seemed to get by perfectly well without struggling with these issues. However, none of them was able to persuade me rationally how to defend the Tora’s version of Creation, or why to believe in a Creator when all scientists seemed to support the Big Bang and random evolution.

What was I to do?  Hide my head in the sand, at the expense of my critical thinking, or abandon my Jewish tradition for being incompatible with I had gathered from modern science?  I was at a loss.

So, in 1978, upon finishing high school, I decided to travel to Israel.  I enrolled in Bar Ilan University, hoping to find a place that would harmonize academic rigor with Jewish tradition.  Maybe there I could find answers to my questions.  My flight to Israel had a layover in New York, where my uncle Rabbi Yosef Faur (or Tío José as I called him) lived.  Tío José had graciously offered to host me at his house for a few days, and I accepted.  I had always heard of him, and I had seen him in Argentina a few times when I was a younger boy.  But this was going to be my first “serious” encounter with him.

THE BLUE BIRD

And it was a revelation.  My uncle had answers to all my questions.  Instead of encouraging me to forego my critical thinking, he taught me to make the most of it, and to actually apply it rigorously also to question the many dogmas assumed by science.  He introduced me to the philosophy of science, which was a field of study I had never even heard of before. 

I had always assumed that science was objective, and that scientists were objective.  He taught me that scientists also have their own biases and ideologies, and that I had to learn to differentiate between real science and scientific theories, and that I should train myself to identify ideologically-bent theories. He helped me realize that my critical thinking, which had given me so much grief over the prior years, was in fact my key to finding my answers. 

From him, I also learned to read the book of Bereshit through the eyes and methodology of those Hachamim who had themselves wrestled with the intellectual challenges of their time. Maimonides, Rabbi David Nieto, Rabbi Moshe Hefets, Rabbi Benzion Frizzi, to name just a few. Hakham Faur showed me that dinosaurs were mentioned in the Tora (“HaTaninim HaGedolim”), and explained to me how to resolve the age discrepancies between science and Tora (billions of years, or less stan six thousand?).  And he did all of this without departing a single inch from the Tora or Rabbinic traditions, and without resorting to questionable tricks (which never appealed to me) like saying that each one day on the Tora in reality refers to a million years, or something of the sort.

It occurred to me then that my uncle must have had all these answers because he, too, had already dealt with the very doubts that were bothering me.  And now I didn’t have to start from scratch.  My privilege was that he had given me a head start and I didn’t need to figure things out on my own.  Things he already had. 

I thought I would have to travel around the world to find my blue bird.  But the blue bird was my very own uncle, and the Sephardic tradition he so well knew and represented.

TWO WAYS TO FACE AN ENEMY

I remember one of the first Tora insights that I learned from him, one which accompanied me and will continue to accompany me throughout my life.  It has to do with the Perasha that we read in two Shabbatot, SHELAH LEKHA.

When Moshe sent scouts to investigate the promised land, he instructed them: “Look at the inhabitants who live in that land… and the cities where they live—are they open, or walled?”  The spies return with a very pessimistic report to Moshe and the people.  Among other things, they complain that “the cities are walled up to the sky,” as if to imply that they are impenetrable.  But for Moshe walled cities would have been a sign of weakness.  He told me, “people who hide behind fortified walls are not trained for battle.  They draw their confidence from the strength of their walls.  And if these walls were to fall (say, miraculously), then they would be very easy to defeat in battle.  On the other hand, people living in open cities, without walls, must rely on their own skills to defeat the enemy.  They train for battle, and it is much more difficult to defeat them.”  Immediately afterwards, my uncle explained to me: “There are two ways to confront an ideology that is adverse to you.  The first way, is to build a wall, to surround yourself with cultural walls and take refuge behind them.  The wall will shield you, but only as long as it is there and as long as you don’t venture outside it.  But if it is breached, or if you leave the wall, then you are dangerously vulnerable.  The other strategy is to live in open cities.  But if you are open to being exposed to other ideas, you will make a point to learn how to face and overcome them.  After all, the Tora is the truth–and why then should we be afraid to confront other ideas?” (It is worth noting that the message of this parable is applicable only to the world of ideas, and not to the world of social assimilation.  The social “walls” demanded by the Tora and our sages creating distance between us and other cultures are meant to protect us from assimilation.)

Through my uncle, I discovered an intelligent Judaism.  Thanks to him, I was able to harmonize between my heritage and my intellect.  Because of his words, I fell passionately in love, more than ever, with our Tora and our Hakhamim; and I decided then to become a rabbi, and dedicate my life to teaching Tora.

My book Awesome Creation, in which I explore the tensions and commonalities between Tora and modern science, is in a way also an autobiographical account of my doubts, and the answers that I found over time.  And it was inspired by what I learned, directly or indirectly, from my dear uncle, Hakham Yosef Faur. 

צדיקים אין בונים להם נפש על קברותיהם שדבריהם הם זיכרונם

It is not necessary to erect a monument in the tombs of the just and wise men. The words and ideas they leave us are the true tribute to their memory (Maimonides).

In the Beginning (1746 – 1839):