Love of the Land: Money (1984)

Money (1984)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done 25 years ago this month in 1984.

It was a time of economic pressure. Folks didn't know how they'd make it to the end of the month. Which is why this cartoon resonated so well with local fans at the time.

Happy Hanukka!

Love of the Land: Money (1984)

Love of the Land: Chanukah 5770

Chanukah 5770

Hannuka, Chanukah, Chanukkah . . . however you spell it, it stands for our eight-day "Festival of Lights".

And it begins tonight!

Have a Happy!!

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Love of the Land: Chanukah 5770

For Zion's Sake: The Road to Assimilation

The Road to Assimilation

Every American Jewish establishment leader is aware that the rate of intermarriage among American Jews is at 50%. Every second Jews that gets married opts to marry out of the tribe. They accept that assimilation is widespread and that the Jewish people is disappearing as a distinctive entity in the United States. Even as they frantically try to keep Jews Jewish, apathy and indifference remain and more Jews are lost. Despite billions of dollars spent on bringing Jewish teenagers to Israel for free on Birthright, most Jews are disconnected from Israel. Jewish organizations invest tons of money into new Holocaust Museums even as young Jews suffer from Holocaust fatigue and overload. Why is it that the brightest leaders and thinkers of the Jewish establishment cannot find a way to sustain the newest generation of Jews?

The simple reason is because these people who are completely alienated from Torah and Jewish values have nothing to offer young Jews. Their ideology is completely bankrupt, with not a shred of spirituality or meaning. Bagels and lox provide no answers for a Jew seeking truth. The "Judaism" that these Jewish establishment leaders are peddling is a mixture of Holocaust victim syndrome, lame Jewish jokes and cultural quirks, knishes and kugel, with some watered down Zionism, cemented by getting Jewish teens drunk on the beaches of Tel-Aviv.

The modern zeitgeist is one of bringing people closer, of breaking down walls and barriers. The new world is one without tribal identity or religious affiliation. In such a world, one need only be a good person. What reason does this "Judaism" give to young Jews for setting up false obstacles and differences between themselves and the rest of society? These youth are given no positive reason to be Jewish, and a myriad of reasons why they should simply be human beings. The "Judaism" that they are taught is emptiness and vanity, devoid of G-d and His commandments, empty of commitment and devotion, without any holiness or reverence. The establishment leaders emphasize the "Jewish" qualities which we share with the larger society: democracy, tolerance, pluralism, etc. Little do they realize that what these assimilation-bent Jews need is to know what makes us different than, not the same as, everyone else. If being Jewish is only about being a good person, why not marry a nice Catholic or Chinese or Greek girl?

The essence of Judaism is that G-d publicly revealed Himself before the entire nation of Israel at Mount Sinai and made an eternal covenant with us. He became our G-d and we became His nation. At Sinai, G-d gave us His plan for life, the Torah, which contains His commandments. These commandments have been the mainstay and foundation of Jewish life for thousands of years. When the situation seemed hopeless, when the desperate Jew in Spain or in Russia was ready to break, it was G-d's promise to Israel that gave him strength. Living in terrible conditions, in the ghettos of Europe or the mellahs of Morocco, the Jew clung fiercely to his G-d and to his faith, with complete trust in G-d's revelation at Sinai and believing fully in the coming of the Redemption.

When Jews keep the Torah, they can overcome Crusades and Inquisitions, pogroms and Auschwitz. When they stray from G-d's Torah, they are left without a basis and are lost. It is time for the Jewish leaders to admit that "cultural Judaism" is a dead end. We have tried to raise a generation on nostalgia, Holocaust guilt and Seinfeld and have found that this is a path to assimilation and spiritual destruction. Without a solid foundation in Judaism, forget about getting Jews excited about Israel. The Jewish pride and identity that these leaders so hope to instill in young Jews must have a basis in Jewish belief, values, ritual and practice.

A whole generation of Jews have been robbed of their heritage. Tragically, they are completely ignorant of the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and of the countless millions of Jews who have preceded them. It is time to return the core of Judaism to what it always was- the Torah and mitzvot. Otherwise, we march down the road to assimilation singing and dancing to the tunes of Fiddler on the Roof.

For Zion's Sake: The Road to Assimilation

Love of the Land: Simhat Torah

Simhat Torah

Love of the Land: Simhat Torah

Orato: How I Became Jewish

How I Became Jewish

By Matthias Erlandsen

I was born in March 1977 in a city of central Portugal.

I was raised in a normal Portuguese catholic family. My father, who died when I was thirteen years-old, even studied in a catholic seminary for some years, maybe to become a priest or maybe just to have a free education, I don't know. My mother was for some time a catechism teacher for children. Since my early years I used to go to the church on Sundays, attended the catechism classes for eight years after the Sunday religious service and afterwards I joined a catholic youth group. Most of the members of the youth group are still very close friends of mine. I can say with no shame, that I was very committed to the catholic faith. I really enjoyed singing with the group at the church, for instance. I was always interested in God and spirituality in general, despite that I was not very deeply connected to the ritual side of religion. Till the age of twenty I lived in a village close to the town of Batalha, famous for its big gothic monastery. Then I moved to Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, to study journalism at the Universidade Ti©cnica (Technical University).

After I finished my studies I worked as a trainee for 4 months at a news' radio station in Lisbon. I also worked for about a month in a catholic newspaper which was the only job I got at the time!. Most of the time after I finished university, I was unemployed because all the available jobs demanded me to work on Shabbat (the holy day for Jewish people). Despite that I wasn't Jewish and still didn't know many Jewish laws, I knew that I couldn't work on Shabbat. It was a bit complicated to depend for so long on my mother for living... but even though she was not happy with the situation, she was always very helpful.

Despite being raised in a very catholic family, I know that in my house there was a kind of "Jewish-friendly" environment - if we can say it like this. Although we didn't have Jewish friends, I can remember there were never anti-Semitic remarks in our talks, taking in mind that in the Portuguese language there are many anti-Semitic expressions.

It's hard to know the exact moment that I first thought about converting myself to Judaism. To some people, the "spark" can be the fact their ancestors were Jewish. In my case, I'm sure there are no Jews in the last generations of my family. Despite of that, if I search further back in the history, I'll certainly find some Jews among my ancestors. That's impossible not to have, due to the fact that most of the Jews that lived in Portugal until the Jewish Expulsion of 1496 actually never left the country and mixed with the non-Jewish population. So, I might have Jewish ancestors as much as any regular Portuguese person. But that's not important to me.

My first approach to Judaism was through an interest for the Jewish history. For instance, I remember during my 9th grade at school, I was very impressed for the way my history teacher taught us about the Shoa (Hebrew word for the Holocaust). How she tried to make us see ourselves as if we were in those times and what might have happened to each one of us. It's ironic that she looked to all of us and said: "If you all would have lived in the Hitler's Occupied Europe back then, probably only Gabriel and Susana - a blond girl - would survive. They're the only ones who are Aryan-looking." Of course, at the age of sixteen I had already read some things about the Shoa and had seen documentaries, but the teacher's words made me look for more information and I started to look for every book on the subject that I could get. And I guess that was the start. Maybe that was the spark for me. My interest then spread to the Jewish History in general and then to the whole Jewish Culture. Then the spiritual side came out.

When I was about seventeen or eighteen years-old I think I started to have some doubts about my Catholic faith. I had always been a very interrogative person and I made many questions about God, the world, and the purpose of man's existence or God's role on reality. I never got satisfied with the answers I found in the Catholic Church and Christianity in general. It didn't make sense to me.

At the beginning, when I made myself the million-dollar-question: "Should I convert to Judaism?" I wasn't aware that conversion was even possible. I truly thought I was the only person in the world with this kind of ideas. It was a hard time, because I didn't dare to talk to anyone about this, including friends or family. I felt completely alone in this sense. I had no one to help me or simply to understand me.

Only for the summer of 1997, before I entered the university, when I started to work in an office that had internet access, I had the chance to search for information about conversion to Judaism. I finally realised it was actually possible! It was such a relief when I found testimonies of other people, from all over the world, that were in the same situation as I was. I didn't know them personally, but I immediately understood their feelings, their problems and their uncertainties with the conversion process and the burden of telling it to other people. I even started to talk by email with a few of them. It was a great help.

A few months later, in November 1997, when I went to the university in Lisbon, I decided to contact the Jewish community. I knew how the community was "denied" to outsiders, so I didn't go knocking on the synagogue's door. I phoned. There was no Rabbi at the time, so I was given a number of the person responsible for the religious education. I called him right away. He said "there are no conversions right now, call me in two months." It didn't seem to me a big problem. I was already thinking about it for about two years, so more two months wouldn't make much of a difference, would it? Two months passed and I called back the man. For more than a month I tried to talk to him.

Finally by the end of February 1998 I could to talk to him. He asked me to meet him the next Saturday at 12 AM, on the synagogue, after the morning prayers. I felt such a big hope after I talked to him - even if the phone call by itself hadn't decided anything of my situation.

I decided to write letters to finally tell my family and friends about my decision of conversion. I wrote letters to my mother, to my two best friends and to the youth group. Yes, there was still the problem of the youth group. Even with the idea of converting to Judaism, I kept meeting with the group. Slowly, I started to avoid doing some things and found excuses to tell my friends, so they wouldn't have suspicions.

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Orato: How I Became Jewish

For Zion's Sake: The Cairo Obamination

The Cairo Obamination

Before the eyes of billions of people worldwide, the leader of the free world munched happily on Mohammedan tuches. In what is without a doubt the largest example of appeasement before terror and fascism since Chamberlain, Obama brought his message of love, peace and reconciliation to the Islamic world, in Cairo. Crying "peace, peace in our time", he repeated ad nauseum myths and revisionist history about "civilization's debt to Islam", his hope for peace between "all the children of Abraham", and apologized for America upsetting the Islamic world. This speech is extremely significant in light of the declaration of jihad against the United States and the Western world, since the victim of aggression cannot even recognize that he is at war. Here are parts of Hussein Obama's speech, with my comments interspersed.

I am honored to be in the timeless city of Cairo, and to be hosted by two remarkable institutions. For over a thousand years, al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning, and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement.

Such higher learning is manifested in Al-Azhar's Grand Sheikh's approval of suicide bombings on Islamic grounds.

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For Zion's Sake: The Cairo Obamination

HEBRON - A JEWISH COMMUNITY - NOW , AND FOREVER

HEBRON - A JEWISH COMMUNITY - NOW, AND FOREVER!

HEBRON JEWS: A COMMUNITY OF MEMORY

Hebron Jews: A Community of Memory
Jerold S. Auerbach

Israel recently marked two momentous events in its brief history: two years ago it observed the fortieth anniversary of the Six-Day war, followed last year by the sixtieth anniversary of independence. Although each offered an appropriate occasion for celebration of a stunning historic achievement, both provoked prolonged lamentation by many Israelis, first over Israel’s shameful responsibility for “Naqba,” the Palestinian dispersion in 1948 that accompanied the rebirth of a Jewish state; and then over the “Pyrrhic” victory and “occupation” of “Palestinian” land since 1967. Two anniversaries this year, if noticed at all, are likely to attract even sharper criticism. Hebron Jews will commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the horrific 1929 massacre, which led to the expulsion of a 400 year-old Jewish community from the City of the Patriarchs. But they also celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of their return to inhabit abandoned Jewish property after five decades of forced exclusion from Hebron. Together, these commemorative occasions will demonstrate the power of Jewish memory in a community of Jews committed to preserving the historical links between biblical antiquity and modern Israel, between Judaism and Zionism.

Yet no Jews are as reviled as the Jews of Hebron. Vilified as “zealots,” “fanatics” and “fundamentalists” who illegally “occupy” someone else’s land, they are the Jewish settlers whom legions of critics love to hate. It is seldom noticed that their most serious transgression, settlement in the Land of Israel—the return of Jews to their historic homeland— defines Zionism.

Living in the ancient biblical city south of Jerusalem, Hebron Jews are clustered near Me’arat HaMachpelah, the Cave of Machpelah, the oldest Jewish holy site in the world. There, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham purchased the first parcel of land owned by the Jewish people in their promised land to bury Sarah. There, too, the other patriarchs and matriarchs were entombed. Since biblical antiquity Jews have lived and prayed in Hebron and made pilgrimages to the Machpelah shrine. Conquered, massacred, expelled and exiled over the centuries, they have always remembered Hebron and they have always returned. One of the four ancient holy cities, Hebron was honored with designation as a city of refuge and a priestly city. It became King David’s first capital, an important administrative center for King Hezekiah in his eighth-century war against the Assyrians, and a crucial battleground during the Maccabean and Bar Kokhba uprisings. There, at the beginning of the Common Era, King Herod built the massive stone enclosure around the burial tombs that remains the oldest intact structure in the entire Land of Israel.

But Jews were not alone in finding sacred meaning and inspiration in Hebron. Over the centuries, Christians and Muslims attempted to make Hebron exclusively theirs.

Beginning in the mid-thirteenth century, Muslim rulers prohibited Jews (and other “infidels”) from entering Machpelah to pray at the tombs, permitting them to ascend no higher than the seventh step outside the enclosure. But itinerant Jewish travelers persisted in making pilgrimages to the ancient burial site and some elderly Jews moved to Hebron to be buried near their biblical ancestors. Following the expulsions from Spain at the end of the fifteenth century, a small group of pious Jews built a community of study and prayer in Hebron on land purchased for them by a wealthy benefactor. Sephardic Jews trickled in from villages and cities in the Middle East, subsequently joined by Hasidim from Eastern Europe. Gathered around the Avraham Avinu (“Our Father Abraham”) synagogue, in a dark and cramped quarter adjacent to the market in the center of town, they clung tenaciously to their precarious foothold, dependent for economic survival largely on emissaries dispatched to benefactors scattered throughout the Jewish world.

During much of the nineteenth century, a time of impressive community expansion, Hebron Jews maintained relatively harmonious, if largely subservient, relations with their Muslim neighbors, who treated them as dhimmis. Hebron became widely known for its Talmudic scholarship and learning.

Yeshivas sprouted, a medical clinic opened, and the first paved road from Jerusalem linked Hebron to other Jewish communities in Ottoman Palestine.

But there was little connection between Hebron Jews and the nascent Zionist movement. The secular Jews who rode the swift currents of nineteenth-century nationalism largely abandoned the religious Judaism that had framed Jewish life during 2,000 years of statelessness and exile. At the founding Zionist convention in Basel in 1896, Max Nordau insisted “Zionism has nothing to do with religion.” Like other emancipated modern Jews, these iconoclastic Jewish nationalists were prepared to cast off a religion that looked backward to the past and inward to divine revelation and sacred texts. Only Zionism, stripped of religious content, could provide an answer to the Jewish Question—the place of Jews in modern society—by relocating them within the boundaries of their own homeland.In 1929, after nearly a decade of British rule in Palestine following World War I, Hebron Jews suffered another of the horrific pogroms that had long punctuated Jewish history. Incited by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, Arab rioting swept through Palestine. The venerable Hebron Jewish community was suddenly attacked. Sixty-seven Jews were murdered; scores were assaulted, severely wounded, even mutilated. After British soldiers removed traumatized survivors from their homes and evacuated them to Jerusalem, Hebron became Judenrein. Two years later an attempt to rebuild the community failed. During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Hebron was conquered and absorbed within the Kingdom of Jordan. In the old Jewish Quarter remnants of its past— synagogues, yeshivas, even the ancient cemetery—were desecrated and virtually obliterated.

Nineteen years later, when the Israel Defense Forces swept into biblical Judea and Samaria near the end of the Six-Day War, Hebron—along with Jerusalem—was restored to Jewish control after 2000 years. For the first time since 1267, Jews could pray inside the Machpelah enclosure. Israelis visited Hebron by the thousands, and then tens of thousands. On a single June day, 70,000 Jewish visitors flooded the city.

Inside the venerable shrine a Yemenite man blew repeated blasts on his shofar while a Moroccan woman, wailing Ima, Ima (“Mother, Mother”), kissed the cenotaph marking Sarah’s tomb.

The return to biblical Judea and Samaria was the unanticipated consequence of an unwanted war. Determined to erase the lingering humiliation of 1948 and annihilate the Jewish state, Israel’s Arab neighbors—Egypt, Syria, and Jordan—had inadvertently compelled secular Zionists to confront their Jewish past and future. The sudden presence of Israeli soldiers and tourists in Hebron provoked vigorous debate in government circles over the fruits of victory, the rights of conquest, the claims of history and possibilities for peaceful co-existence—a debate that continues to divide Israeli society.

The Labor government acted with alacrity in Jerusalem. It bulldozed the Arab neighborhood abutting the Western Wall and annexed the Old City and east Jerusalem. In the Old City, where the Jewish Quarter had been abandoned since 1948, ancient Jewish history and modern Zionism converged in an outpouring of nationalist and religious enthusiasm.

There was virtually no question, either in government circles or in an exultant nation, but that the Western Wall would remain under Israeli sovereignty and the historic Jewish Quarter would be rebuilt.

But the government remained ambivalent, at best, about Hebron. A symbol of the old religious yishuv that secular Zionists spurned, Hebron was problematic in ways that Jerusalem was not. Yet former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, meeting with Israeli Cabinet members, insisted: “On Jerusalem we must not budge. We have to quickly establish a large Jewish settlement there. The same with Hebron.” And in a ceremony at the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives two months after the war, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan boldly proclaimed, “We have returned to all that is holy in our land….We have returned to the cradle of our people, to the inheritance of the Patriarchs….We have returned to the Mountain [the Temple Mount], to Hebron and to Nablus. We will not be parted from the holy places.” Not all Israelis appreciated the encounter with their ancient heritage. A promising young writer, Amos Oz, confessed: “I don’t have any feeling that Hebron’s part of my homeland. But I do feel this about Holon,” the dreary town outside Tel Aviv where he first fell in love. Archaeologist Yigal Yadin sharply denounced the embrace of national and religious relics as “idolatrous.” As passionately (and publicly) as he had previously celebrated his own discovery of the bones of nine hundred suicidal Jewish Zealots at Masada, he now ridiculed Jews for praying inside Machpelah, which he dismissed as the likely site of tombs of Arab sheikhs. In the spring following the Six Day War, a group of predominantly religious Zionists, led by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, came to Hebron to celebrate Passover. Levinger, born in Jerusalem in 1935, had attended a Bnei Akiva yeshiva, served in the army, and studied at the Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem. Then he joined Kibbutz Lavi, near the Golan Heights, where he combined rabbinical duties with shepherding.

Shortly after the 1967 war, Levinger visited Hebron to explore the possibility of rebuilding the community. In the desecrated Jewish cemetery, he experienced “an awakening of tempestuous spirits.” The visit, he recalled, created “an internal turmoil that left me restless for days and weeks.” He decided to return to Hebron and restore a Jewish community there. Early in the spring of 1968, he contacted the military governor of Hebron to request permission to hold a Passover Seder and spend the night there.

In recognition of the historic Jewish presence in Hebron, Labor Minister Yigal Allon had already floated a proposal for a Jewish neighborhood nearby, perhaps an “upper” Hebron on a hill overlooking the Arab city (modeled on Upper Nazareth in the Galilee). But the government did not respond to Levinger’s inquiries. Meeting with Hanan Porat, who had led the return to Gush Etzion after the war, and Elyakim Haetzni, a maverick lawyer, the decision was reached to go to Hebron without government permission.

Rabbi Levinger negotiated a rental arrangement with the owner of the Park Hotel for Passover week in April 1968. The hotel, a nondescript two-story stone building, had fallen on hard times, losing nearly its entire clientele now that prosperous Jordanians no longer vacationed there. Posing as Swiss tourists, the Levinger group negotiated a rental agreement for one dollar nightly for each guest. Levinger left a substantial deposit for “an unlimited amount of people for an unspecified period of time.” The hotel owner assured Levinger that they could extend their stay if they wished.

Some Israeli government authorities learned of the plan, but they did not interfere. Central Command General Uzi Narkiss told Levinger, “What do you want? To settle in Hebron? I don’t care. I know nothing. Rent a hotel, put up tents….I know nothing.”

A sizable group of Israelis—estimates range between sixty and eighty—arrived in Hebron to celebrate Passover and restore a Jewish presence in the city. The Levingers, clearly intending to stay, brought their four children, a refrigerator, and a washing machine. The kitchen was made kosher, and mezzuzas were attached to door-frames. “We never told anyone that we were going only to celebrate Passover,” Rabbi Levinger recalled. “The government authorities knew that we wanted to settle.” Rabbi Chaim Druckman, another graduate of the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, led the Seder. Hanan Porat attended. Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, a recent immigrant from France who would lead Ateret Cohanim, the movement to restore a Jewish presence throughout Jerusalem’s Old City, joined the celebration. So did veteran Irgun fighter Shmuel Katz and Maariv journalist Yisrael Harel. Elyakim Haetzni, accompanied by his wife, mother, and four children, described the Seder nearly forty years later as “a once in a lifetime experience.” Miriam Levinger sensed “an historical breakthrough, and we all felt deeply moved and excited.” After the festive meal, exulting participants, joined by a Druze soldier who was guarding the hotel, danced and sang v’shavu banim l’gvulam (“your children shall return to their borders”).

The next morning the celebrants, singing and dancing through the streets of Hebron, carried Torah scrolls to Me’arat HaMachpelah. That evening, after the end of the Jewish Sabbath, some of the older participants left the hotel to return to their homes, but younger Israelis and yeshiva students remained behind, soon to be joined by newcomers. The next day, in their exuberance, they sent a telegram to Labor Minister Allon: Blessings for festival of our freedom to you from Hebron City of Patriarchs from first of those returning to it to settle in it in the name of 30 families Rabbi Moshe Levinger.

The new settlers remained in the Park Hotel for six weeks while the government debated what to do about them. In a compromise solution, they agreed to be relocated to the former British and Jordanian police building, now under Israeli military control, on a hill overlooking the city. There they remained, in miserably cramped quarters, while the government debated their future. After two years of hesitation that ended only after a terrorist attack wounded dozens of Jews awaiting entry to Me’arat HaMachpelah during Sukkoth, government ministers finally decided to decide. The new settlement of Kiryat Arba was built on a twenty-two-acre tract overlooking Hebron on an empty hill that had been seized after the war by Israeli military authorities.

But Kiryat Arba was not Hebron. Despite Levinger’s fiery insistence that “no government has the authority or right to say that a Jew cannot live in all parts of the Land of Israel,” the time was not right, the issue was too sensitive, or there were security problems, budgetary constraints, or American pressures to consider. The Likud government of Menachem Begin, in principle at least, seemed to favor the expansion of Kiryat Arba until it reached the size of Hebron, thereby creating separate Jewish and Arab cities. But exploratory discussions went nowhere. Then, in 1978, the government stunned settlers when it signed the Camp David accords with Egypt, committing it to return the entire Sinai Peninsula and grant “autonomy” to West Bank Palestinians. Settlers sensed that opportunities were slipping from their grasp.

Fifty years after the 1929 massacre, Kiryat Arba residents decided that the time had come to return to Hebron. By community consensus, the issue would be forced by women and children, who were least likely to provoke a harsh response from the government or military. One week after Passover, at 4:00 A.M., ten women led by Miriam Levinger and Sarah Nachshon, joined by thirty-five children, eight of whom were Nachshons, arrived by truck at the rear of Beit Hadassah, the former medical clinic in the heart of Hebron. Assisted by teenage boys from Kiryat Arba, they quietly climbed ladders, cut wires to the windows, and unloaded mattresses, cooking burners, gas canisters, water, a refrigerator, laundry lines, and a chemical toilet.

Safely inside the dilapidated building, the excited children sang v’shavu banim l’gvulam, God’s promise that children would return to Zion. Hearing their voices, an astonished Israeli soldier came down from his observation post on a nearby roof to investigate. When he inquired how they had entered the building, a four-year-old girl responded, “Jacob, our forefather, built us a ladder and we came in.”

In their first message from Beit Hadassah the women declared, “When we went to live eight years ago in Kiryat-Arba . . . it was because of compromise and going towards the government. Our wish was and still is Jewish settlement within Hebron.” At the end of their first Shabbat in Beit Hadassah, yeshiva students from Kiryat Arba came to dance and sing outside. Miriam Levinger described that moment: “We felt as if the souls of the murdered of this place had come and gathered with us at the window...to rejoice with us at the sight of Jews dancing on Saturday evening in the streets of Hebron. I wanted to calm them and say to them, ‘You can rest, you have waited for many years, now we have returned. What was in the past in Hebron is what will happen in the future.’”

“With the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other,” wrote journalist Amos Elon disapprovingly, Hebron settlers had the temerity to insist that “deeds contracted in the late Bronze Age are the legal and moral basis for present claims”—as though biblical roots in the Land of Israel were not the deepest source of Zionism itself. Hebron became the ideological vanguard of the Jewish settlement movement that has embedded nearly 300,000 Israelis in Judea and Samaria.Seven hundred Jews, joined by 200 yeshiva students, now live in Hebron, surrounded by 160,000 Palestinian Arabs. For thirty years, the government of Israel has stifled growth in the Jewish Quarter, obstructed property purchases by Jews, and constricted population enlargement. With their impassioned blend of Zionist nationalism and religious Judaism blamed for undermining Israeli democracy and jeopardizing Middle Eastern peace efforts, Hebron Jews may be the only Jews in the world whose critics can viciously malign them without incurring the taint of anti-Semitism.

Their determination to remember, in the very place where Jewish memory may be said to have originated, places them at the epicenter of a polarizing conflict within contemporary Israel—as acrimonious as the struggle between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs—over the identity and future boundaries, both external and internal, of the Jewish state.

A year ago, the sole surviving member of a Jewish family that had owned property in Hebron since the 15th century Spanish expulsion, appeared before the High Court of Justice with registration records to document his claim. Yosef Ezra was the seventy-five-year-old son of Yaacov ben Shalom Ezra. Father and son had been the only Jews to remain behind in Hebron between 1936 and 1947. Yosef praised Hebron Jews as “true pioneers, among the last who are putting Zionism into practice.”

Jerold S. Auerbach is professor of history at Wellesley College. This essay is drawn from his forthcoming book, Hebron Jews: Memory and Conflict in the Land of Israel, to be published in July by Roman & Littlfield.

taken from: B'NAI ELIM (http://bnaielim.blogspot.com/)

For Zion's Sake: The Loyalty Fallacy

The Loyalty Fallacy

In the recent Israeli elections, Avigdor Lieberman's party, Yisrael Beiteinu, won 15 seats in the Israeli Knesset. The party slogan of "no citizenship without loyalty" resounded with Israelis after they saw Israel's Arab citizens cheering on Hamas during the latest conflict in Gaza. Lieberman capitalized on the treasonous words and actions of "Israeli"-Arab MKs and on the general perception of Israel's Arab population as a fifth column. Speaking about Arab MKs, among them one who fled to Syria trying to escape charges of treason, Hamas and Fatah supporters and sympathizers, and several who have repeatedly met with Israel's enemies, while receiving salaries from the state, he said:"At the end of the Second World War, not only criminals were executed in the Nuremberg trials, but also those who collaborated with them. I hope that will be the fate of the collaborators in this house."

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For Zion's Sake: The Loyalty Fallacy

Yom HaAtzmaut - - Israel is 61 !

Yom HaAtzmaut -- Israel is 61!

On the 5th of Iyar, 5708 (1948), G-d's Name was sanctified. For the first time in two thousand year, the Jewish people had a state in their homeland. Two millenium after the Roman emperor Hadrian burnt our Temple, razed Jerusalem, sold the Jews into slavery and arrogantly declared 'Judea capta! (Judea is captured), the Third Jewish Commonwealth was established. After centuries of oppression and persecution, Crusades and pogroms, Inquisitions and Holocausts, the Jewish people had finally returned home to the land of their forefathers

When the Romans crushed the Jewish rebellion in 70 CE and destroyed the Temple, they carried out the majority of the Jews into exile. They built a huge victory arch in Rome showing the Temple utensils being taken as spoil. The Romans minted coins depicting a conquered a mourning Jewess, along with the words 'Judea capta'. In their minds, the Jewish people had been crushed. The Roman Catholic Church, which became the official religion of Rome, taught as doctrine that the Jews had been replaced and rejected by G-d, never to return to Israel. The Church, along with the scholars of Islam, mocked the Jews and taunted them over their abasement, claiming that their continued exile was proof of their replacement in G-d's eyes. Incredibly, while the Roman empire today is nothing but dust, Jews are once again living in the Jerusalem, the city of King David, in Judea and Samaria, where the Patriarchs lived and in the Galilee, where Bar Kochba and his brave Zionist rebels fought for liberty.

"A song of ascents. When the Lord returned the captivity of Zion, we were like dreamers. Then our mouths were with laughter and our tongues with songs of praise; then they will say among the nations, "The Lord has done great things with these."" (Tehillim 126) Truly, we were like dreamers. Is there any clearer proof of G-d's sovereignty and majesty, of His guiding hand in history, than in the survival of the Jewish people in graveyards of the exile and in our return to the Land of Israel? Has there ever been such a thing in the entire annals of mankind, for a nation to have survived the sword and the stake, the racks of the Inquisition and the Crusading lance, the Cross and the Crescent, the killing fields and the gas chambers, to be returned home? Only by the might and mercy of G-d, through the brave pioneers and committed Zionist leaders, were we able to revive our ancient language, Hebrew, to re-settle the desolate cities, drain the swamps and make the deserts bloom. "For the Lord shall console Zion, He shall console all its ruins, and He shall make its desert like a paradise and its wasteland like the garden of the Lord; joy and happiness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and a voice of song." (Yishayahu 51:3) The land, empty and desolate, bereft of her children, which called out longingly for them for over two thousand years, now blossoms and is settled. For too long did Zion cry out for her sons and daughters in captivity, trampled on by a foreign oppressor.

From the four corners of the Earth, the Jews have begun to return home. "Fear not for I am with you; from the east I will bring your seed, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, "Give," and to the south, "Do not refrain"; bring My sons from afar and My daughters from the end of the earth."" (Yishayahu 43:5-6) Out of the mellahs of Morocco and Tunisia and the shtetls of Russia and Poland, Jews came home. The same Jews who declared year after year their fervent hope and desire of 'Next Year in Jerusalem!' were privileged to see their dream become a reality. From the farthest and most remote reaches, the Land of Israel beckoned Jews home. Jews from Yemen and Ethiopia walked thousands of miles, trekked through dangerous deserts and hazardous terrain, braved intense dangers because they senses the impeding Redemption. When the Iron Curtain fell, the cry of 'Let my people go!' saw fruition as millions of Russian Jews fled the prison that was the Soviet Union and came to Israel to live lives of dignity and freedom. The Ingathering of the Exiles has begun as Jews from Iran and Turkey, Greece and Lithuania, Ukraine and Hungary, India and Afghanistan now live, mix and mingle, in peace together in the State of Israel.

In fire and blood Judea fell and in fire and blood Judea arose. In 1948, and again in six spectacular days in 1967, the myth of the passive Jew whose life was cheap and blood was the gentile's for the taking, was forever crushed. The nation that for so long had been associated with sheep to the slaughter, with massacres and weakness, had arisen like a lion and fought for its life. In 1948, one million crack Arab soldiers, dedicated to driving the Jews into the sea and destroying the fledgling state, were attacked the 600 000 inhabitants of the Jewish yishuv. Just as in the days of David and Goliath, the defenders drove the enemy out. The defenders were outnumbered, farmers and citymen, Holocaust survivors given a rifle as they got off the boat. Some come with horses and some come with chariots but we invoke the name of HaShem our G-d! As the ovens and furnaces of Europe were still giving off their horrible stench, as the smoke was still emerging from the chimneys of Auschwitz, the Jewish state had arise with strength and power. The dry bones that had been murdered and annihilated in Europe had been reborn in the Land of Israel. ""Son of man, these bones are all the house of Israel. Behold they say, 'Our bones have become dried up, our hope is lost, we are clean cut off to ourselves.' Therefore, prophesy and say to them, So says the Lord God: Lo! I open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves as My people, and bring you home to the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and lead you up out of your graves as My people. And I will put My spirit into you, and you shall live, and I will set you on your land, and you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and have performed it," says the Lord." (Yechezkel 37:11-14

61 years after the awesome day in Tel-Aviv, we can sit back and feel pride over our many accomplishments. The Jewish language, Hebrew was revived, a feat never before accomplished. Cities and settlements were created. A vibrant and modern democratic state was built. Israel has one of the best and most powerful armies in the world. Close to half of the world's Jewish population now lives in the Jewish state. Israel is a world leader in science and technology and contributed a disproportionate amount to high-tech, medicine and science worldwide. Despite all of Israel's many problems, it has accomplished more in its mere 61 years of existence than most other countries around the world. The State of Israel is far from the fulfillment of the Prophets and there is a long journey to the Ultimate Redemption. Yet, in the words of Herzl: "If you will it, it is no dream." Just as it seemed impossible for there to be a sovereign Jewish state, as it seemed impossible for Jerusalem to be reunited as the capital of the Jewish people, so too will we reach all of our goals. A nation that waited two thousand years to return home is not afraid of a long and difficult struggle.

"Behold days are coming, says the Lord, that the plowman shall meet the reaper and the treader of the grapes the one who carries the seed, and the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will return the captivity of My people Israel, and they shall rebuild desolate cities and inhabit [them], and they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their produce. And I will plant them on their land, and they shall no longer be uprooted from upon their land, that I have given them, said the Lord your God." (Amos 9:13-15) May we see the complete fulfillment of the Jewish Dream, of the Prophets of Israel, of a world where "out of Zion will go forth Torah, and the word of HaShem from Jerusalem", very soon. May we merit the day when "nations will not lift up swords against each other, neither shall they learn war anymore". May the Complete and Final Redemption come speedily in our days, in mercy and love, amen!

Posted by Bar Kochba at 4:32 PM

This text was originally posted by Bar Kochba in the blog For Zion's Sake . To him my thankfulness.

THE GUARDIAN OF ISRAEL DOES NOT SLEEP

The Guardian of Israel does not Sleep

A major terrorist attack was thwarted Saturday night, motzaei shabbat. Security found explosives in a parked car outside of a crowded Haifa mall, when one of the explosives malfunctioned.

If the bombs would have gone off, many Jews would have been injured or killed, G-d forbid. It is a miracle that one of the devices malfunctioned and that authorities found and disabled the bombs. This is testimony to HaShem's amazing love and mercy for His people. HaShem is constantly protecting and guarding over His nation. During the recent war in Gaza, we were privileged to see so many tremendous miracles, of rockets falling on empty schools, empty homes and kindergartens, of rockets hitting synagogues moments after the congregants had exited. During 8 years of bombardment and 10 000 rockets, there have been only a handful of casualties. Why? Is it because of Hamas' poor aim or the superiority of Israel's defense system? No! It is all thank to our Father in Heaven.

Every Jew must say: THANK YOU HASHEM! Thank You for Your many miracles and kindnesses that You perform every single day to Your people Israel, the numerous ones that we are aware of, and the thousands of miracles that we are unaware of.

"Behold, the Guardian of Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers." (Psalm 121:4) There is no clearer proof of G-d's existence and sovereignty than the continual preservation and survival of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Israel is surrounded by a sea of blood-thirsty anti-semites longing for is destruction, cruel enemies who want nothing more than the death of the Jewish people. In 6 separate wars, they have attacked Israel and been defeated, by HaShem's loving grace. They have launched numerous assaults, attacks, bombardments and strikes against Israel, all to no avail.

"Plan a conspiracy and it will be annulled, speak your peace and it will not stand, for HaShem is with us." (Isaiah 8:10) To the enemies of Israel, you will never succeed in destroying the people of Israel. The Jewish return to Zion is a miracle, a divine decree and cannot be prevented. G-d promised in His Torah that those who bless us will be blessed and those who curse us will be cursed. The choice is up to you: whether to aid and support the return to Zion or to oppose HaShem and His will. Either way, our existence and prosperity is assured. Neither the Arabs, nor the US, EU or UN will ever succeed in uprooting us from our land. They are powerless before the G-d of Israel.

The Passover Hagaddah says that "there are those who rose up against our fathers and against us. It was not one alone that stood up against us to wipe us out, but in every generation they arise to annihilate us. But the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands." The fate of Hamas and Fatah, Hizbullah and Ahmadinejad, will be the fate of Pharaoh and Haman, Hitler and Stalin. And Am Yisrael will live for ever and ever!

THANK YOU HASHEM!!


taken from:For Zion's Sake

NO PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE

No Peace Without Justice

Speaking at a convention for American Jewish leaders, Tzippi Livni said that "we need to give up half of the Land of Israel". She claims that in the interest of peace, Israel must surrender Judea and Samaria to the Arabs. For the sake of a peace, it is necessary to create a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel.

The Left is fond of saying that there is no peace without justice. There is no greater truth to that statement that in this case. An unjust peace is no peace at all. Peace is valuable yet it cannot come at an unreasonable price. Uprooting Jews from their land is too high a price to pay for peace.

To make Judea and Samaria jundenrein is the greatest perversion of history. These lands form the homeland of the Jewish people, where our ancestors, Patriarchs, prophets and kings dwelled. To uproot hundreds of thousands of Jews from their rightful homes and destroy flourishing communities is a betrayal of history and of the generations of Jews who yearned for the dream of Zion. Although we were forcibly removed from our land, we never vacated it in our hearts and souls. We continued to look longingly to the day when "our eyes will behold Your return to Zion in mercy", despite the oppression and degradation of exile. The Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people by every conceivable historical, religious and political right. The Jewish people are the only nation to have roots in that land. Abraham is buried in Hebron, Jacob lived in Beit El and Joseph tended his sheep in Shechem (Nablus). When a certain prophet had his first revelation in Arabia, the Jewish people already had thousands of years of roots in the Land of Israel.

The Land of Israel is the inheritance of every single Jew around the world, and only the Jews. Every nation has its own land and no one would demand that it carve itself up to appease those who covet it. It would be unreasonable to expect the United States to offer Texas or Massachusetts to al-Qaeda in the hopes of peace. The United Kingdoms would never surrender London and France would never give away Paris. Similarly, Israel can never give away parts of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was, is and always will be a uniquely Jewish city. Catholicism is centered in Rome, Islam in Mecca and Judaism in Jerusalem. Jerusalem forms the basis of our national psyche. 3 times a day, looking eastward, a Jew pleads for the rebuilding of Jerusalem, as well as after he has had a meal and says Grace. We have ended our Passover seders and Yom Kippur fasts for 2000 years with the fervent prayer of "Next Year in Jerusalem!" At every Jewish wedding, the groom breaks a cup to remember the destruction of Jerusalem and pledges "if I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning."

The early Zionist pioneers had a slogan: "With fire Judea fell, and with fire Judea will arise." The dream of Zion could only be realized through the sweat and toil of the pioneers and settlers. The Jewish state only exists by virtue of the over 20 000 Jews who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of their people. Thousands of good Jews fell defending and liberating Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Only 40 years ago, tears streamed down the cheeks of even the most alienated and assimilated Jews as we were reunited with our Holy Temple Mount, with the Western Wall and with the Old City of Jerusalem. A nation that held faith for two millenia does not forget so quickly the pain that we felt when we were denied access to our most holy sites. We have not forgotten how the Jordanians forbade us access to the Western Wall, desecrated synagogues and study halls and used ancient Jewish cemeteries as latrines. Only a lunatic would advocate a return to this terrible and dark time.

The basis of peace is self-respect. A Jew with a modicum of Jewish pride would never part with his homeland for anything in the world. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan, Galilee, Negev and coastal plain all are an integral part of the Jewish homeland. A condition for peace cannot be the amputation of half of the Land of Israel and denial of the right of the Jewish to settle freely in their country. What is being challenged is the basic Jewish right to their own land as the world tries to herd the Jews of Israel into the Greater Tel-Aviv ghetto. What we fail to understand is that our right to Tel-Aviv, to Herzliah, to Be'er Shevah, is our right to Jerusalem, to Hebron, to Shechem, to every inch of the Land of Israel.

The Arabs have more than enough land for themselves. They occupy 99.5% of the Middle-East, and no one is challenging their claim to it. Yet Jews must stand up and assert our right to less than a percent of the land in the Middle-East. This is not a conflict over land as much as ideology. The Islamic supremacist ideology which demands that Jews be second-class citizens opposes Zionism, the most basic desire for a Jew to control his own destiny in his own sovereign state. If Tzippi or the Left were able to carry out their nefarious plans, G-d forbid, to expel the Jews of Judea and Samaria, it would mean the virtual end of the Zionist enterprise, of the building and settling, of the Ingathering of the Exiles, of the return of the Jewish people to its home and the hope for the Ultimate Redemption, may it be speedily in our days. I could think of no greater tragedy than for the Jews to come home after such a long exile and re-establish themselves only to be uprooted by corrupt leaders at the behest of anti-semitic governments.

This is a struggle of an indigenous people against the forces of a cruel occupation. Islamic imperialism cannot succeed in driving the Jews from our soil. The Jewish nation has survived far more powerful empires and powers. A nation with such deep roots cannot surrender before a non-entity, a pseudo-nation bent on its destruction. Peace will come one day in the Middle-East, but only when Arabs and Jews respect each other and each other's boundaries and borders. There are 22 Arabs countries and one Jewish country. That Jewish country exists and survives only by resting on the shoulders of our grandparents, good Jews who, in the ghettos and shtetls of Eastern Europe, in the mellahs of Morocco, exiled in Arab countries or under Christian rule, never forget that one day they would return to their home. To betray them would be a travesty, the height of injustice and cruelty. Every people is entitled to its own country, not least of which are the Jewish people, who have felt the pain and burn of being guests in a foreign land. There can be no negotiations, no compromise, no surrender on this most elementary point, our national aspirations and dreams. Such injustice cannot be tolerated. I hope for peace, but not for the fake "peace" promised by the Left, bathed in the blood of Jews. Peace will only come when the Jewish people are firmly planted in their land, as a Light unto the Nations. May that day come speedily in our days, amen.

taken from: For Zion's Sake

LETTER FROM BELMONTE

Letter from Belmonte

The Flame Of 26,000 Sabbaths
By Alan M. Tigay

http://www.hadassah.org/homenew.htm

In the mountains of northern Portugal a community of Crypto-Jews has reembraced Judaism after 500 years. But as they study the faith of their ancestors it’s not clear if they have more to learn or more to teach a Jewish world that is fascinated by their journey.
Friday night dinner in the synagogue, and the room is packed. Just a few years after emerging from the 500-year tunnel of secret observance, the Jews of Belmonte, Portugal, are engaged in what has become a fairly regular occurrence—hosting Jewish tourists from the United States. “This is the twelfth group we’ve had,” says Fernando Vaz, the community’s president.
About a dozen locals are dining with the Elderhostel party of some 35, and I am seated next to Vaz. Shortly after hamotzi he leans over and asks me, just above a whisper, “Are all the people in this group Jewish?”
When I tell him that they are, he asks with genuine puzzlement, “Then why are they traveling tomorrow morning instead of staying for Shabbat?”
The intimate way he puts the question signals that after struggling for several days to get people in the community to open up, I have gained a measure of trust. My pre-trip research had made one point clear—after five centuries, secrecy had become not only a survival tactic for Belmonte’s Jews, but an integral part of Judaism as they knew it. Even though their Jewishness is now proudly in the open, most of the town’s 180 Jews are still naturally reserved.
Another lesson in Vaz’s question is the community’s simplicity, its focused faith and tenacity. He seemed to be asking why, if he and his neighbors had sacrificed for so long to be able to fulfill the mitzva of Shabbat, would Jews who are totally free discard their observance? I had read everything I could find about Belmonte. All that remained was to talk to the people and let them tell their story. But when I first set foot in the synagogue, the comment I heard repeatedly when I introduced myself was, “People here won’t want to talk.” They will open up, I discovered, but the hurdle of confidence is high.
Breaking the ice is often a matter of a single contact. When I tell Francisco Diogo Rodrigo that I met his son at the synagogue in Lisbon a few days before, one of the first things he asks is, “Where are you eating lunch?” At a round table in his tiny living room, the amount of food competes with the number of Jewish books and objects he shows me—a siddur, a Haggada, the Five Books of Moses, a history of Belmonte, Passover products—most of which he has acquired over the past few years.
“The Jews here had a flame that never went out,” says Rodrigo, 56, “even though we passed through periods of great difficulty.” The flame he speaks of is both figurative and literal. When the subject turns to Shabbat his wife, Benvinda, brings out a candeia, a tin lamp, fueled with pure olive oil and lit with a long-burning twisted linen wick. It was the candeias that illuminated the homes of Belmonte’s Jews for 26,000 secret Shabbatot.
No one is sure when Jews first came to Belmonte, a town of 7,500 less than 30 miles from the Spanish frontier. The foundation stone of a synagogue dated 1297 proves the existence of a community before the expulsion from Spain. Two factors swelled the community’s numbers. Many Jews from Spain crossed the border and stayed in the first towns they reached. Later, many from Portugal’s main cities fled to the mountains around Belmonte and to the north to be as far as possible from the Inquisition.
Towns in the northeast filled with Jews. In Covilhã, just south of Belmonte, the Jewish “census” was uma casa sim, uma casa não (one house yes, one house no)—that is, 50 percent.
The Inquisition waned at the end of the eighteenth century and was abolished in 1821. When the Polish engineer Samuel Schwartz discovered the crypto-Jews in 1917, he estimated there were 10,000 Jewish families in the north.
He recognized them, but they didn’t recognize him. “The people here didn’t believe Samuel Schwartz was Jewish,” related Fernando Vaz, “But when he recited the shema and said the word ‘A-donai’ the women covered their eyes and said, ‘He is one of us.”
“A-donai” is the only Hebrew word Belmonte’s Jews kept, but they still preserved a great deal. Jewish lore is filled with people lighting candles on Friday nights without knowing why. Belmonte is the only place where secret Jews maintained many practices—Shabbat, Yom Kippur, Passover, the Fast of Esther, elements of kashrut and numerous prayers—and also their significance. And unlike virtually every other story of secret Jews, they came all the way back.
What they came back from is a story in itself. Egalitarian Judaism, it seems, came first to Belmonte, where Jewish practice was carried by women who said the prayers and passed them on to daughters and granddaughters. When the community adopted Orthodox Judaism, ritual leadership passed to the men. As the teachings of the rabbis took precedence, the old orações (prayers), despite richness and clear Jewish provenance, were consigned to the past.
Many close to the community bemoan the demise of the orações, and it’s hard to look at the history and not conclude that it’s a shame. One, a Belmonte Jew now living in Lisbon, told me he is sure some of the older women still recite the old prayers at home. “There used to be Crypto-Jews,” he says. “Now there are Crypto-Marranos.”
But if the women have strong feelings about their positions being usurped by men they show little resentment. “When I was a girl I learned the prayers with my mother and grandmother,” recalls Ana Morão, 64, a short, pretty woman with gray hair. “The families would gather in a house and the women’s job was to lead the prayers.” She says the orações are still in her heart—her eyes fill with tears when she talks about them—but she has no regrets about the direction Jewish practice has taken. “The arrival of the rabbis and the building of the synagogue were marvelous things, and the future will only be better,” she asserts. I hear similar comments from virtually every woman I speak to. What dissent I do hear is mixed with pride. “Of course I still say the old prayers,” says a woman who freely gives me her name but asks that it not be used in print. “The rabbis didn’t teach us anything. We taught them.”
“They came to open our eyes but our eyes were more open than theirs,” the woman adds, raising her eyelids like a Kabuki actor. But she also expresses great satisfaction that her son now prays in Hebrew and she says the building of the synagogue was the greatest thing that ever happened in Belmonte. “You know it’s the most beautiful synagogue in the world,” she says. When I suggest she might be prejudiced she looks at me as if I am a recalcitrant child. “No,” she asserts, “it really is the most beautiful.”
As I speak to women I imagine ultimately they will have it both ways. Some day a generation fully confident of its Jewishness will realize what the orações represented and will revive them. Or they might pick up a siddur from abroad and find their grandmothers’ words. “They are losing prayers that not only should be kept in their prayer books, but should be translated and put into ours,” says Schulamith Halevy, a Jerusalem poet who is close to the community and an advocate for anousim, as the descendants of forced converts are known in Hebrew.
History seems logical in hindsight, but like the rebirth of Israel the return of Belmonte’s Jews was not inevitable. It was more than 70 years from their “discovery” by Schwartz to the decision to embrace Judaism officially and openly. “I never imagined everything would change,” says Morão. “But my husband and I went through the conversion, got married again and now we go to synagogue on Shabbat.”
Like the events that drove Jews into secrecy, the return was spurred by events around them. From the 1920’s to the 1970’s, Portugal was ruled by a conservative dictatorship, desperately trying to hold on to its empire and past glory. It was an atmosphere in which change was not valued highly.
The revolution in thought flowed from the political revolution that restored democracy in 1974. “I was doing my military service when the idea of return started to advance,” says Fernando Vaz, now 39. “People of my generation began to develop new ideas, and we were supported by the older people.” The Jewish community in Lisbon—founded by Jews who arrived from Gibraltar after the Inquisition was abolished—offered more assistance. The first full-time rabbi came in 1990 and oversaw the conversion of 180 people, circumcision of men as old as 79 and the Jewish remarriage of dozens of couples. The synagogue was dedicated in 1996.
I ask everyone why Judaism survived in Belmonte and virtually nowhere else (there are many people in Portugal with knowledge of Jewish ancestry and some with vestiges of Jewish practice, but there is no parallel to the return of an entire community). “What allowed us to survive was that for all these years marriages were always arranged between Jews,” says Elias Nunes, a former president of the community and one of the prime instigators of the return.
Other than purity of Jewish descent, many agree that Jewish survival in Belmonte was aided by an absence of persecution. “The Inquisition never came here” is heard over and over. On another night in the synagogue dining hall I sit at a table with several members of the community and guests, including two historians. When someone asks what I have learned I mention Belmonte’s reputation for tolerance and Maria Antonieta Garcia, who has written extensively about the community, says it is a myth. “The Inquisition may not have been as strong here,” she says, “but it definitely came to Belmonte and the cases are documented.” Garcia, who also has Jewish roots, goes into a learned account of the Inquisition and the sociological explanations for survival. There are other guests present, including tourism officials, who listen attentively, but I notice the local Jews at the table tune out during her remarks.
The Jews of Belmonte are not intellectuals; most of the youngsters go into the family business and not to university. They survived as Jews not out of study but out of faith. One of the town’s indelible images is a love of Judaism that is impossible to describe. I’ve never seen such passion in the kissing of a mezuza—touching one’s head, heart and lips in a sweeping gesture—or in the way women throw kisses from the balcony as the Torah is carried around below them. As Antonio Henriques Vaz kisses his 20-year-old son Miguel after leading the service (the congregation has been without a rabbi for almost a year and is trying to raise the money to hire a new one) I imagine not only a father’s pride but 500 years of pent-up pride representing fathers who never had the experience.
Now that they are again an integral part of the Jewish people, I’m not sure Belmonte’s Jews have decided how to relate to the rest of us. Fernando Vaz’s question about Sabbath observance shows one more thing—once they reentered the fold they inevitably took sides. They want to know the Jewish world but there is an undercurrent of fear that too much exposure will jeopardize the heritage they kept.
Inácio Steinhardt, a Portuguese-born journalist who has been in Israel for 25 years, has known the community since the 1960’s. A few years ago the Jewish Agency asked him to spend a day with a group from Belmonte visiting Israel for the first time. Two weeks after leaving Belmonte I am with Steinhardt in a Tel Aviv café and he tells me the story. “My acquaintance with the people gave me the feeling that they would be shocked to meet the secular Israel,” he says. “So I insisted that I meet them at the airport and that my day with them should be their first day in the country.”
Belmonte’s Jews have much to teach us and show us—not just what we lost 500 years ago but things of such recent memory that we can almost touch them in our collective memory. Though everyone has a telephone and a few are already wired to the Internet, visits are mostly arranged by knocking on doors. On the day I went looking for Elias Nunes, neighbors pointed me to his house where his wife said he would be home shortly. Less than five minutes later he was walking up the cobblestone street. It was a scene repeated time after time. People are always home, or near home. On Shabbat, even the infirm take to the streets and stairways that crisscross their neighborhood to walk to synagogue. The area around the town’s old Jewish quarter is probably the only thriving shtetl I’ll ever see.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone with questions at all. The story is not for the Jews of Belmonte to tell but to live. The miracle is found not in their sound bites but in their existence. And perhaps more important than trying to probe the spiritual dimensions to figure out how they survived I should ask why we are so fascinated by them. In them we see evidence that even if our faith and our religious commitment wither, our grandchildren might still recapture it. There may have been concern in the question Fernando Vaz put to me on Friday night, but there was hope in the eyes of the visitors around him.

BELMONTE JEWS

Belmonte Jews

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Belmonte Jews are a community that survived in secrecy for hundreds of years by maintaining a tradition of endogamy and by hiding all the external signs of their faith. The Jewish community in the municipality of Belmonte, Cova da Beira subregion, Portugal, goes back to the 12th century and they were only discovered in 1917 by a Polish Jewish mining engineer named Samuel Schwarz. Their rich Sephardic tradition of Crypto-Judaism is unique.
Only recently[when?] did they contact other Jews and they now claim to profess Orthodox Judaism, although they still retain their centuries-old traditions.

BEN ELIAHU SYNAGOGUE - BELMONTE, PORTUGAL

THE PORTUGUESE JEWS OF NEWPORT (I)

To read this excellent text please click here : The Portuguese Jews of Newport (I)

THE REBBE WHO SAVED A VILLAGE

The Rebbe Who Saved a Village

For a while, it seemed that all was lost... then came a leader's bold response to the crippling tragedy


Editor's note: In light of the recent tragedy which struck the Chabad-Lubavitch community, we find the following account, penned more than fifty years ago, particularly poignant--and most relevant.What follows is a free translation of a story that appeared in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot on Iyar 4, 5717 (May 5, 1957). We have left the article basically as it was originally published despite the fact that it contains some factual inaccuracies, because of its vivid portrayal of the mood of the time and the Israeli reporter's impression of the people and the events he describes.

On the eve of Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day) last year, as the bonfires were being raised on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, the lights were burning also in Tzafrir (Kfar Chabad), the Chabad-Lubavitcher village in the Lod Valley.

For four days the village had been in deep mourning and grievous anguish, the likes of which the Lubavitcher chassidim had not known in many years. On that black and bitter night, a band of fedayeen entered the village. They made their way to the synagogue of the local agricultural school, where the school's young students were in the midst of the evening maariv prayers, and raked the room with fire from their Karl-Gustav rifles. They reaped a cruel blood-harvest: five children and one teacher were killed and another ten children wounded; their pure, holy blood soaking the siddurim that fell from their hands and splattering the synagogue's white-washed walls.

The village chassidim, brawny, broad-shouldered Russian Jews with thick black beards and bushy brows, stood dumbfounded before the terrible scene that met their eyes. A pogrom in Israel! A pogrom in Chabad! they whispered, and bit their lips in rage. The women stood there too, hefty, handsome Russian matrons, wringing their hands and murmuring to themselves in Russian and Hebrew, their eyes emitting an endless stream of tears.

This was not a common scene for the Lubavitchers. These Chassidim, who had survived the pogroms in Czar Nikolai's Russia and whom the Red Army could not intimidate, who had been banished to the frozen plains of Siberia, whose backs decades in Stalin's prisons and camps could not bow, now stood stooped and despairing. Now, that the blow had hit home in the heart of the Jewish state.

In the center of the village stood Rabbi Avraham Maayor who had been a high-ranking officer in the Russian Army. Avraham Maayor, of whom legend told that he calmly stood and sang chassidic melodies as a band of soldiers beat him with the butts of their rifles, now stood crying out at the heavens: "Master of the Universe, Why?! How have the children sinned?!"
Despair and dejection pervaded the village, and began to eat away at its foundations. There were some who saw what happened as a sign that their dream of a peaceful life in the Holy Land was premature. Perhaps we should disband, seek refuge in safer havens? The village was slowly dying.

The Village Waits But it was clear to all that before any decisive move would be made, the Rebbe had to be consulted. Nothing would be done without his knowledge and consent. All awaited the telegram from "there," from New York, but the telegram was inexplicably not forthcoming. Four days had passed since the terror had struck. A lengthy telegram had immediately been dispatched informing the Rebbe of all the details of the tragedy, and an answer was expected that very night. But the Rebbe was silent. What happened, many wondered, why doesn't he respond? Has he not a word of comfort for his stricken followers?

A telegram from the Rebbe, it should be clarified, is an integral part of Chabad-Chassidic life across the globe. Every problem, every decision pertaining to the communal or private life of the Lubavitcher chassid is referred to the Rebbe's headquarters in Brooklyn, and whatever the reply, that is what is done. And the answer is always forthcoming, whether by regular post, express mail, or emergency telegram-depending upon the urgency of the matter-and always short, succinct, and to the point.

Why, then, is the Rebbe's answer on such a fateful matter tarrying? The village elders had no explanation, and, as the hours and days went by, the question continued to plague their tormented souls, and their anguish and despair weighed increasingly heavier on their hearts.
The Telegram And then, four days after the tragedy, the telegram arrived. The news spread throughout the village: A telegram from the Rebbe! The telegram has arrived! The entire village, men, women and children, assembled in the village square to hear the Rebbe's reply.
And the Rebbe was characteristically succinct. The telegram contained a single sentence-three Hebrew words-but these three words sufficed to save the village from disintegration and its inhabitants from despair. Behemshech habinyan tinacheimu, wrote the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. "By your continued building will you be comforted."
The Chassidim of Kfar Chabad now had a firm grasp on their future: they knew what they had to do. They must build! The Rebbe said to build! And that by their continued building they will be comforted! That very night the village elders held a meeting to discuss how the Rebbe's directive might be implemented. After a short discussion, a decision was reached: a vocational school will be built where children from disadvantaged backgrounds will be taught the printing trade. On the very spot where the blood was spilled, the building will be raised.

The Rebbe Knew The next morning, all residents of the village gathered at the empty lot adjoining the agricultural school and began clearing and leveling the land in preparation for the building. The joy was back in their eyes.

In the weeks that followed, letters arriving from relatives and friends in New York described what had transpired there in those four endless days in which the village had awaited the Rebbe's reply.

For the entire month of Nissan, the month of the redemption, it is the Rebbe's custom to devote himself entirely to the service of the Creator, reducing his contact with his Chassidim to a minimum. Rare is the individual who is granted an audience with the Rebbe in this period, and all but the most urgent correspondence is postponed until the close of the auspicious month.
When the month of Nissan ends, a festive farbrengen (Chassidic gathering) is held at the Rebbe's headquarters on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, marking the Rebbe's resumption of his involvement with his thousands of followers across the globe. The Rebbe speaks for hours, his talks interspersed with bouts of song and l'chaims, often until the wee hours of the morning.
That year, the farbrengen marking the close of Nissan was also held. The tragic news from the Holy Land had arrived in New York moments before the farbrengen was scheduled to begin, but the Rebbe's secretaries decided to withhold the news from him until after the gathering. But what his assistants did not tell him, his heart seems to have told him. That night, the Rebbe spoke of Jewish self-sacrifice and martyrdom al kiddush Hashem (for the sanctification of G-d's name), about the rebuilding of the Holy Land, and the redemption of Israel. Tears flowed from his eyes as he spoke. All night he spoke and wept, sang and wept, and wept still more.
Why is the Rebbe weeping? Only a few of those present could guess-those who knew about the telegram from Kfar Chabad.

The farbrengen ended. The chassidim dispersed to their homes, and the Rebbe retired to his room. With great trepidation, two of the Rebbe's closest chassidim knocked on the Rebbe's door and handed him the telegram from Israel. The Rebbe sank into his chair. He locked his door and did not open it for three days. After three days of utter seclusion, he called his secretary and dictated his reply: Behemshech habinyan tinacheimu. By your continued building you will be comforted.

The chassidim of Kfar Chabad have fulfilled their Rebbe's request. Without the aid of philanthropists or foundations, they have raised 50,000 Israeli pounds, and today, one year after the tragedy, the new building of the vocational school is completed.
Tomorrow, as the citizens of Israel celebrate their eighth Independence Day, the chassidim of Kfar Chabad will hold a farbrengen and relate, again and again, the story of the three-word telegram that saved the village.

from : CHABAD.ORG (http://www.chabad.org/)