Elvis a Jew? Where is the documented proof?

When I got onto the computer to work this morning and was browsing the "Social Media". I got sidetracked when I noticed posts stating that; 

"Elvis Presley was "Jewish".

These posts that I saw, and the responses, where multiplying like snow in an avalanche.

Few of the readers note that ALL the evidence given by the authors of the claim are all based on hearsay and innuendos.

And laughable of ALL is  the "proof" that; "He occasionally sported necklaces bearing the Star of David and the Hebrew word “chai” (meaning “life”).

I saw where these posts were based on books and articles by author's like; 

Rabbi Barbara Aiello, who penned books based on the hearsay statements of people and NOT on true documented facts. 

According to Roselle Kline Chartock in her book “The Jewish World of Elvis Presley”, "Elvis’s Jewish connections were more than just a series of coincidences"

"Nancy Burdine, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, settled in Memphis in the 19th century and raised a family, including sons named Sidney and Jerome and a daughter named Martha.

Martha had a daughter, Octavia, who gave birth to Gladys, who married Vernon Presley and who, in 1935, gave birth to twin boys, Jesse Garon and Elvis Aron (who as an adult would change the spelling of his middle name to the more conventional and Jewish-looking Aaron). Jesse was delivered stillborn, which would feed the strong emotional codependency between the overprotective Gladys and her surviving son, Elvis."

Okay if Nancy Burdine, were a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, then why are we not presented with her naturalization records? I have found the naturalization papers of my great grandfather's  maternal side from a Jew born in Riga, Lithuania ancestor from 1861.

For example Dan Fellner in his article published by Aish HaTorah states:

"Elvis’ maternal great-great grandmother, Nancy Burdine, was believed to be Jewish. Her daughter gave birth to Doll Mansell, who gave birth to Elvis’ mother, Gladys Smith. That, according to a Jewish law, which confers Jewish lineage by way of the mother, makes Elvis technically a Jew." 

Okay so WHAT is wrong with this? 

What is wrong is the statement: "was believed to be Jewish"  which means in simple English UNPROVEN as in NO documented  proof.

Yet, in Pamela Clarke Keogh's book from (2008). Elvis Presley: "The Man. The Life. The Legend." Simon and Schuster. she cites;

"His mother, Gladys, and the rest of the family, apparently believed that her great-great-grandmother, Morning Dove White, was Cherokee; and this was confirmed by Elvis's granddaughter Riley Keough in 2017.

In her book "Elvis and Gladys", Elaine Dundy also states that Presley's great-  great-grandmother Nancy Burdine Tackett  was Jewish, citing a third cousin   of Presley's, Oscar Tackett.  However, there is no evidence that the Presley   family shared this belief and the syndicated columnist and Jewish genealogist Nate Bloom has challenged the cousin's account, which he calls a "tall tale".

Presley was not Jewish. 

Yes, some sources repeat a tall tale that Presley's third cousin told 20 years ago to a Jewish biographer of Presley. This cousin said that he and Presley shared a very remote Jewish maternal ancestor (a woman who lived in the early to mid 1800's)

This biographer did no further checking on this cousin's story. She just reported it as "fact."

Why would a Jew from Lithuania have a family name of Burdine which comes from that Medieval landscape of northwestern France known as Brittany.  

Even fewer have checked to see that there was a well-known Burdine family in North East Mississippi in Verona, Mississippi and that Nadine may have been one of them.

According to Seth Rogovoy in his January 7th, 2021 article in the Forward entitled; "Was Elvis Presley actually the Jewish Elvis?" 

"At the same time that Gladys told Elvis of his Jewish lineage, she also warned him to keep it to himself, because “some people don’t like Jews.” Among those to whom Gladys was referring was her husband, Elvis’s father Vernon, as well as to the members of the extended Presley clan, all of whom were Jew-haters."

"The Presleys were churchgoers, and Elvis’s sincere belief in Christian teachings seems also to have predisposed him to be fond of Jews. Chartock quotes Larry Geller — one of the Jewish members of the Memphis Mafia and the one who served as Elvis’s “spiritual advisor” — paraphrasing Presley thusly:

“Man, it used to confuse the hell outta me as a kid. In church all they talked about was how great all the Jews were, Abraham, Moses, Ezekiel, and all those other prophets. They were all Jewish. But outside of church, they would talk about ‘those damn Jews.’ They would put them down. I just couldn’t understand it.”

A detailed check of ALL available records has shown that this maternal ancestor was not Jewish. What was true was that Presley and his parents did share a two-family house in Memphis, Tenn. with a poor Orthodox rabbi and his family in the early '50s.

Memphis native Harold Fruchter, son of the late Rabbi Alfred Fruchter, reminiscing about his family’s relationship with Elvis Presley. Stated in a Podcast that Elvis lived downstairs from the Fruchter's as a teenager and had befriended them and occasionally served as their Shabbos goy performing certain types of work that religious law prohibits Jews from doing on the Sabbath, like turning lights on and off. 

The rabbi, in turn, did things like lend Presley his record player and arrange for a summer camp trip for Presley. When Presley hit it big, he made a major donation to the rabbi's religious school.

Elvis’s and Harold’s mothers were friendly and Mrs. Fruchter sometimes helped the impoverished Presley's with the grocery bills.... they weren’t aware that Elvis was himself Jewish. 

Harold Fruchter was quite adamant that if his Orthodox Rabbi father had know in the least that Pressley was Jewish the rabbi would have let him serve as Shabbos goy. It would have amounted to suborning chilul Shabbos.

“My parents never had even an inkling that Elvis may have been Jewish,” says Harold. “If they would, they would never have considered asking him to be a ‘Shabbos Goy.’”

"I spoke to the daughter of this rabbi. Her mother, the rabbi's wife, and Presley's mother, Gladys, were close friends. Gladys, her mother told her, never said a word about any Jewish ancestry. Her mother said that if Gladys had any knowledge of any Jewish ancestor, the mother was sure Gladys wouldn't have hesitated to mention it. 

If anything Gladys was friendly and out going and as a Church going Evangical Christian she "honored" Jews. 

As I often tell people, the true story of the lovely relations between this rabbi's family and the Presley family is a more important and meaningful story than a story about Presley having a remote Jewish maternal ancestor." 

Nate Bloom, "The Jews Who Wrote Christmas Songs". 

I am aware of the "tales" that Elvis’ maternal great-great grandmother, Nancy Burdine, was an immigrant from Lithuania and was BELIEVED to be Jewish. But it is ONLY a story. 

It is true that some of the first Ashkenazic Jewish families in the "Deep South" were immigrants from the Baltic Sea region specifically Lithuania I know because there are some in my family. So "IF" Nancy Burdine -HAD been "one of us" my family would have known. 

In my extensive research I have never encountered proof at all to her Jewishness. 

As we know according to Jewish law, the matriarchal lineage by way of the mother, would have made Elvis technically a Jew.

It is TRUE that Nancy Burdine gave birth to Doll Mansell, who gave birth to Elvis’ mother, Gladys Smith. But NONE of them ever revealed any Jewishness. 

My great  Aunts-the Cherner twins- Sadie and Fannie Levy literally knew EVERY Jewish family in the area. And I can tell you that Elvis was NOT Jewish! 

There is a Joke among the Jews that. "the Torah was originally "Baal Pe" memorized and repeated by mouth" and our Yentas were our record keepers and fore runner to the Mossad in Intelligence gathering!

Part of my Momma's family have lived from the 1860 in the area of North western Alabama  and when I say All the "Old Time" families -ESPECIALLY the Yentas they KNEW every Jew in the area of Mississippi, Tennessee (Memphis), Arkansas and Missouri you can bet THEY DID!!

Believe me when I say we LONG time Southern Jews KNOW who married WHO. 

Consider -think on this as I did. 

Do as I, research of ALL of Elvis Pressly's talks. interviews and quotes where and try to find one quote where he MENTIONs his Jewish roots or that of his mother.

Elvis was by no means a "simple' person and it is frankly quite mystifying that even though there is tons of interviews and recordings, at NO time even when recording was available specifically regarding his wearing the "CHAI" does he state that it related to his being a Jew. 

THE only mention I found was in his remembrances of his "Jewish Pals" from Memphis. Nowhere does he state; "I am a Jew" or that his MOTHER or grandmother were Jewish!!!!

In conclusion:

Hearsay is NOT proof!

Wearing jewelry with a Chai or Star of David does not a Jew make!

Nor does engraving a "Star of David on a tombstone with a cross does not a Jew make!

Unless the only child of singer and actor Elvis Presley, actress Priscilla Presley, gets a DNA test to prove it, only then will Presley's real link to Judaism be factually proven! 

Until then. I personally will believe what my old Aunts Fannie and Sadie would say on the matter!

No, he was not Jewish. A Mensch yes, but Jewish NO. 

 

Color Blindness And Hatred

 Going through the headlines and stories of the American Media this morning I saw just how amazing and utterly biased the Liberal Media is. Tis truly amazing how quickly their all day 24/7 spewing of vile putrid hatred, "Orangemanbad", has changed to one so sugar coated and misty eyed for the return of Kumbaya to the swamp.

Reading the recent articles and comments of the MSNBC CNN NYT herd of mindless sheep against those who do not follow THEIR selective myopia rose colored glasses view of the world. Those who are "woke" and not bamboozled can see just how much THEY control and allow you to see.

As I read the stories, I read how the Mass media is gushing over the "New" Vice President Kamala Harris as a "Black" PC "person of color as opposed to a person of the ever so despicable persons of "White Privilege" heritage.

Personally, as a historian who bases my POV on historical documents and facts I find this totally hysterical Liberal BLM whipping point of "White Privilege" absurd because they freely use it to defame anyone who does NOT tow their line. When it comes to the "Black privilege" they are selectively blind when it comes to one of "theirs".

Case in point, two questions:

How much of Kamala Harris is truly "black"?

And why is it so important to scream this all over the press since we already had a two term "Black" president in Barack Hussein Obama?

I ask why are the journalists and newsmen /newswomen of Kumbaya of the "Rose colored glasses", NOT focusing on lauding the fact that Kamala Harris is the first woman to be the Vice President of the United States, "a heartbeat away" from being the President?

Well, we ALL know the answer do we not? It is all part of the “new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance” in its role in defaming white supremacy and it's institutionalization of anti-blackness ever since the backlash in the killing of George Floyd

Regarding Blacks, BLM and the issue of "White privilege".

I would like to remind everyone of the many incidents of insane and crazed destruction of memorials and statues of historical American figures because of "Slavery" during the "OMB" (Orangemanbad) presidency of Donald J Trump.

Protesters pulled down the statue of Washington in Northeast Portland on June 18,2020 wrapping the statue in the American flag, setting it on fire and spray painting “Genocidal Colonialist” on it.

 I specifically remember the crazed Antifa, BLM and brainless Millennial's who tore down a statue of our third President Thomas Jefferson because he was a slave owner who claimed ownership over 600 enslaved people.

As a wealthy landholder, Thomas Jefferson kept them in his household and on his

plantations. Since Jefferson's time, controversy has revolved around his relationship with Sally Hemings, a mixed-race enslaved woman and his late wife's half-sister. -Which means Sally Hemings herself was a “mulatto” of "Mixed heritage" of white European and black African roots.

According to DNA evidence from surviving descendants and oral history Jefferson probably fathered at least six children with Hemings, including four that survived to adulthood.

Kamala Harris's father Donald Jasper Harris and mother Beryl Christie were of "Afro-Jamaican heritage" meaning that they too were “mulattos” of "Mixed heritage" from white European and black African roots. 

Donald Harris believes--in accordance with statements made by his grandmother-he is the descendant of-Hamilton Brown (1776 – 18 September 1843) who was an Irish-born British sugar planter and slave owner in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica. Hamilton Brown owned 1120 slaves most of them on sugar plantations in Saint Ann Parish.

Hamilton Brown was a member of the House of Assembly of Jamaica in 1820 and represented Saint Ann Parish in that assembly for 22 years. In 1832, he met Henry Whiteley on his trip to Jamaica to whom he argued that Jamaican slaves were better off than the poor of England and therefore the British government should not interfere with the way the Jamaican planters managed their slaves. 

Kamala Harris's father Donald Jasper Harris is NOT truly ALL black. He is a “mulatto” of "Mixed heritage" from white European and black African roots. 

Kamala Harris is the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan who arrived in the United States from Tamil Nadu in India.

 People forget that since the 2010 "person of color" has been adopted to describe any person who is NOT considered white. In the United States, people of color include: African Americans, Latino Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islander Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, and "multiracial Americans", though members of these communities may prefer to view themselves through their cultural identities rather than skin color. The term was created to emphasize the common experiences of systemic racism, which "people of color" have faced.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, there has been an indiscriminate labeling of all people as either "people of color" or those of "white privilege" underscoring the racialization of American society by those of the social justice movement and the Democratic Party specifically in their unbound hatred for those who supported ex-President Donald J Trump.

American Jews and Yiddishkeit

I see on Facebook how life is good in the "Golden Medina" for you my American Jewish brothers and sisters. I have seen the "Chanukah Bushes" and the epitomy of face palm in the "explanation of Chanukah video of vice-president Kamala Harris. 

It is so disheartening to see that too many of you have forgotten your own past, that of your grandparents and of OUR history.

Your children and grandchildren do not know, and because of this they do not care.

So let me ask you my brothers and sisters -my fellow "Baby Boomers" I ask you in all candor seriously who will say Kaddish for you? Will you be buried and have a headstone in Hebrew? How about your Shiva?

 As Hillel Neur of UN Watch called out and asked each Arab nation in the UN: "Where are your Jews?" many of you shrug and ignore it because you are NOT an Israeli nor are you a "Sephardic" Arab Land Jew.

Okay then as an "Ashkenazic" Yidden I ask where are the Jews of Babuchowie? Rohatyn? Lvov? Where are their graves? Where are our cemeteries? Do you care?

When you cleaned the homes of your parents when they passed where their old photos and mementos? When you look at their faces do you see them?

How many of you stop to contemplate or is the past to be forgotten. 

Meanwhile, we Jews here in Eretz Yisrael, we too can love and laugh. We try to raise our children to love life and peace. Regretfully though our lives come at a cost. We live in an area where we must sacrifice and be vigilant and constantly on guard. Here in our indigenous homeland, we live daily with threats of genocide and barbaric death which are VERY, very real. 

The threats we face are not separated by oceans from us, we literally see them. We can see the Hezbollah flags waving from their fortresses on our border. We hear them.

In the south our citizens live under the protection of the Iron Dome missile system from indiscriminate Katyusha and mortar fire and a special anti-Terror tunnel defense system.

Along the border of the areas controlled by the "Palestinian Authority", we were forced to built a solid wall meters high because of a reign of suicide bombers who brought death to our restaurants and our buses in our cities. We built the "Security Wall" not because we HATE our neighbors but because they brought us hatred and death. 

Our neighbors teach their children in schools, paid for by the blackmailed world to UNWRA, to hate and murder Jews-NOT just "Israelis". Our "Peace partners" PAY out money to those who commit atrocities and murder us from monies intended to improve the lives of the ordinary Palestinian.

When you gaze on the faces of our heroes note the words of one of the songs of the Six Day war Givat-HaTachmoshet (Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem) 

"I don't know why I received a decoration, all in all I wanted to get home safely."

This sentence expresses the sentiment of every soldier. Yet, for us in Israel we do not wear dress uniforms weighed down by medals. We are proud of our service but our service is not for the recognition, it is for the survival of our families and for our homeland which is but a very small sliver of land.

I will never forget when I finished basic training in the IDF and was assigned to my base. As the truck wound up the road from "Gesher B'not Yakov" the Bridge over the Jordan to the Golan Heights for the first-time evening was falling.

As we wound up to the "Beit HaMechus" -the old Ottoman Turkish Customs House" at the top of the rim of the Golan Heights I could see all the lights of the Jewish settlements of the Hula Valley spread out "like the palm of my hand" below me.

When I see the children and grandchildren of my American "brothers and sisters" standing with placards "Not in my name" or "Another Jew against the Occupation" or "Zionism = White Supremacy" I realize just how lost they are. I cannot fathom just how easily they jump at the chance to be embraced for their "Liberalism" and to be lovingly accepted by those darlings of the socialist movement.

It is easy to speak of peace and of being "nice" to someone when one has been manipulated by mendacious lies. It is easy for many of them to accept their dezinformatsiya and lies because you have never felt homelessness nor experienced the threats of death JUST because your are a Jew.

Those - "Not My Country" -anti-Zionist Jews are misinformed and they have NOT been told the truth of the very real intentions of the "Palestinians". I see that many of them have joined with them in their demonstrations and scream about "Right wing Jews", "Apartheid" and "Occupation". You easily join with them chanting; "From the river to the Sea". 

As you blissfully chant their little ditty, I wonder has it ever dawned on you in the very least what is meant by the words?

 The historic truth behind the words is that the Arabs of the Mandated Areas the Palestinian REFUSED the UN Resolution 181 to "Partion" / Divide what REMAINED of the original "Future Jewish Homeland". They and Seven Arab countries launched a war of extermination to "Drive the Jews into the sea" and were castrated by the Jews. Ever since their self-inflicted debacle, they call the Nachba, they have held the world responsible for their hate. Their people who fled as refugees were never absorbed and integrated into the Arab lands they fled to. Yet, tiny Israel absorbed 650,000 homeless refugees of the horrors of the Holocaust and 900,000 Jews of Arab lands who were thrown out and all their property and belongings stolen. 

Their "Tragedy Tourism Bluff" was called in President Trump's "Deal of the Century" Peace Plan -which offered them real peace and prosperity but they refused but NO ONE in the "Mass Media" dared to ask Palestinian Leaders WHY?

We know to you that President Trump was the overly hated "Orangeman Bad" but for us he took the real stance of truth against those who perpetuated the "Big Lie" of the Palestinians. And because of his actions many Arab countries awoke to the truth and have declared Peace with us.

Lastly, I ask WHERE are your voices regarding the truth?

You scream of injustice in America yet you ignore the sufferings and discrimination against your own people. You are accused of "White Privilege" yet you do not remind your children of what it was like in America as a Jew at one time.

Your children who are out in the streets screaming and demonstrating against Israel and President Trump do not know how America has been controlled by "Gentlemen's Agreement's" that excluded Jews!

Yet, it was Donald J Trump who fought the city of Palm Beach for discriminating against Jews and blacks.

Today we are witnessing a frenzy of hatred and mass censorship. At onetime it was said "Truth cannot be ignored". However, today we are witnessing that there are "People don't want to hear the truth because they do not want their Illusions destroyed"

As for the Palestinians they; "have a habit of inventing fictional stories that they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they totally refuse to accept."

 

 

Clicking The Emoji

 A note if I may ...I want to be totally honest with everyone and I plead with you to read to the end to think, to comment and above all to share!

How many of us stop to contemplate just how Holocaust denial exists?

We all know about anti-Semitism but how many really care?

Facebook has a variety of types of posts:

The cute kids

The cute pets

The great music videos

The ever-present culinary successes -where we boast of our prowess in food preparations!

The family "get togethers" / weddings / anniversaries etc.

The ever-present Memes on ALL subjects!

There are the sexual ones of female bodies from the buddy of mine- still in the 10th grade locker room, eh Victor ;-)

Oh, and Gott Im Himmel I won't go dally on the "Politically" obsessed ones that cause one to be under the Community Standards heel of the feared Count Zuckerberg!

Or those conservative pro Trump posts that like blood in the water draw in the sharks of the banshees of hell and the "Fact Checkers" of censorship.

 How many do us do it?

We see posts made and labored on by our friends that we merely glance at them and rush to acknowledge by clicking on an Emoji.

Some of us MAY take the time to read short entries and may even leave comments.

Some begin reading and then see that the post is "long winded" and move on.

 I know I stand accused of doing this myself.

Sometimes we write entries regarding our concerns and we get "carried away" ...

I know it because I just recently wrote a very personal and emotional post to share on my feed. And it is the very basis for this "rant" of mine but please hear me out.

I recently wrote a post, to not only emphasize the highly emotional feeling I am experiencing as I wade through actual written records of my relatives in the "Pale of Settlement" Galicia. I wrote it because of the overwhelming evidence written physical proof of the beastiality of man and the genocidal mania in the calculated thoroughly planned "Die Endlsung der Judenfrage" the Final solution to the Jewish question.

I sit here in front of this mass of evidence in total astonishment as I try to understand how? How denial of the Holocaust can exist? 

The blithe use of the Emoji by a classmate on my post revealed just how easy it is. 

In my research I happened across a digitalized 8mm black and white home movie by a resident of the Shtetl of Babuchowie in Poland in 1938.

I was mesmerized!!

I was also shocked for I was watching a world that had been eradicated.

In the film I saw those three little smiling boys who could be my cousins from a home video made by a resident who had succeeded in life in the "Golden Medina" and had returned wealthy and well to do with an 8mm camera.

As I sat watching the video, I saw the residents - alive -smiling, the atypical home movie of a successful home town boy. The Yiddishkeit the life, the Joys of Simcha happiness  that once flowed from those hovels…..

In my post I had included a photo I made from screen shot from the video of the adorable faces of the three little boys smiling for the camera...

Ryan Bellerose was the person who saw the Laughing Emoji and queried: "how the hell did someone post a laugh emoji on this post?"

 I clicked on the Emoji and saw that it was done by an individual who had been a classmate of mine in High School.

I replied to Ryan citing the possibility of his seeing the photo of the smiling children which at a glance, without reading, you see the adorable faces of the three little boys smiling for the camera and that could have been the reason for his response.

To me the comment showed the average Facebook response of NOT reading the post. So, I sent him a private message:

"Hello Robert a question if I may it indicates here -see photo that you posted a laughing emoji to my post. May I ask -as my good friend Ryan Bellerose asks -WHY did you response by the Laughter Emoji? Did you read my post or simply "clicked on?

May I point out to you that the post was not about the joy in the children's faces. My post was about the beastiality hidden by this image.

I never receive a response

According to the after-action reports of the Einsatzgruppen C of the Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for the implementation of the so-called Final solution to the Jewish question (Die Endlsung der Judenfrage) in territories conquered by Nazi Germany. In the past I had read some of these reports so I know just how they were murdered in the Holocaust.

They were forced to strip off their clothing, whipped and beaten. Terrified by ruthless dogs into a line on the edge of a ditch -a mass grave and then shot. I force myself NOT to contemplate what were the last thoughts of these children as they fell onto the withering mass of their kinfolk in the mass grave.

Out of fears two years later the Nazi's came back and brought Sonderkommandos, work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners to exhume mass execution victims during the Holocaust. This was-also visualized in Schindler's List as in the scene of the two pushing a wheel barrel with the exhumed and lifeless little body of the young girl in the red coat.

A French Catholic priest Father Patrick Desbois has taken death bed confessions from those Ukranians and Poles who had participated as auxiliaries:

“We used to uncover the graves where there were people who had been killed during the past three years, take out the bodies, pile them up in tiers and burn these bodies, grind the bones, take out the valuables in the ashes, such as gold teeth, rings and so on, and separate them. After grinding the bones, we would throw the ashes up in the air so that they would disappear, replace the earth over the graves, and plant seeds so that nobody could recognize that there was once a grave there."

So, looking at the faces of these three little ghosts in heaven, few contemplate that a mere three years later they were murdered their little bodies exhumed and burned their bones crushed

They do not have a grave their ashes thrown to the wind

They were murdered simply because they were Jews just as Jews are murdered with ease today because we returned home.

Genealogy and Jews

After Spending hours going -wading through the deeply heart wrenching history of the life of the Jews in the "Pale of Settlement". One cannot fully comprehend just how immensely hard life was for our ancestors in Eastern Europe. 

One sees just how those "Lucky" Jews of the enlightened and educated "Western Europe" who were "emancipated" from the Ghettos under the reign of Napoleon! 

Freed from the "Shackles" they rushed to be accepted and to "adopt" and assimilate. They did this but changing or "Reforming" their Judaism like their neighbors and by accepting modern ways, education and clothing.

Their neighbors who were "enlightened" as "Protestants" revoked the ways of the Roman Catholic Church saw the world "differently" and gave the Jews of "Western Europe" encouragement to seek lives differently.

  

The Orthodox religious Jews of the "Pale of Settlement"-  my Paternal Grandfather's family -lived their lives day by day under the oppression of the whim of the Czar and the evil backward Russian Orthodox Church that controlled the lives of their neighbors who constantly abused, robbed and on a whim murdered their neighbors.

As I read through the stories of desperation and the need for solace it is no wonder there were so many different Chassidic Movements who sought spiritual escapism. 

As you research you see how in the period from 1880, the beginnings of the movements of Zionism and of Haskala -Education. Like rays of sunshine penetrating the dark curtains of their homes. 

For the "Ohevi Zion"-Ḥibat Tsiyon (Love of Zion) the trek to Eretz Yisrael was hampered by Islamic hatred of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The life of a "Helutz"- Pioneer (settler) was fraught with danger and disease. 

To those Jews living in the "Pale of Settlement" who wished to leave to a "better place", the news these potential pioneers received was disheartening to say the least. The passage to Eretz Yisrael was not really open and there was imminent danger every step of the way. The area was very poor and most religious Jews who had reached Eretz Yisreal experienced servere hardships.

In this period of time, one by one, family and shtetl members are leaving fleeing to England, Canada or to the preferred goldene medina – “golden country” (in Yiddish, a phrase referring to America as a land of opportunity" were there was the "easier less threat of death) ability to succeed and to live a better life. After the years of extreme oppression and suffering the easy way of life called out to them.

In the west - England, Canada and America these "pioneer Jews" fleeing the "Pale of Settlement" found it easier to adjust. As soon as one would find employment, establish a business and built a home. He would send for his brothers and sistera to join him. They would also try to make matches between those who "had made it" with their relatives thereby expanding the circle of Jews in many locations in England, Canada and America. 

To me it is absolutely a no brainer that the words on the statue of Liberty come from "a member of the tribe" Emma Lazarus-The New Colossus:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” 

Just who was Emma Lazarus? 

She was born in New York City, July 22, 1849, into a large Sephardic Jewish family.  She was the fourth of seven children of Moses Lazarus, a wealthy Jewish merchant and sugar refiner,  and Esther Nathan. One of her great-grandfathers on the Lazarus side was from Germany;  the rest of her Lazarus and Nathan ancestors were originally from Portugal and resident in New York long before the American Revolution, being among the original twenty-three Portuguese Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam fleeing the Inquisition from their settlement of Recife, Brazil.

Coming back to the research on the Jews of "The Pale of Settlement" I see how the storm clouds in Europe and old hatreds arise from the cesspool during World War I and how in the intervening years of the Bolshevik revolution how death and destruction convulses over the already impoverished and decimated Jewish communities who continue to eek out and cling to life. How pitiful their meager existence.

And then when we have the rise of Hitler, once more the madness returns. Only this time it is a whirlwind of sheer madness with no chance of escape. 

I force myself to read the eyewitness testimony...my heart breaks with emotion...I cry. When I read the words I see them, I hear them they say to me; "Please say Kaddish for me."

I see the infants, I want to hold them and comfort them ...

I see the young children, like my children and grandchildren and I want to sweep them up into my arms and flee with them ...but alas....the doors of the world were slammed shut by that age old hatred.

Real witness testimony

“We used to uncover the graves where there were people who had been killed during the past three years, take out the bodies, pile them up in tiers and burn these bodies, grind the bones, take out the valuables in the ashes, such as gold teeth, rings and so on, and separate them. After grinding the bones we would throw the ashes up in the air so that they would disappear, replace the earth over the graves, and plant seeds so that nobody could recognize that there was once a grave there."