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."