Holidays
In Every Generation: From Pharaoh to Hitler to Hamas
In his final moments, in a dimly lit bunker under a destroyed Berlin, Hitler y”sh, felt the deepest despair. His “Thousand Year Reich” had disintegrated before his eyes, shattered in little more than a decade. His despair was compounded by the realization that the people he sought to erase from the face of the Earth would outlive him and his empire. The thought that the Jews would survive and rebuild was the bitterest of all the bitter pills he had to swallow in his bitter final days.
Yet, Hitler was just one in a long line of tyrants throughout history with ambitions to wipe out the Jewish people. Again and again, enemies rose, promising to end the Jewish story. But each time, they themselves disappeared, becoming mere footnotes in the long history of a people who have faced many threats and emerged resilient.
The Historical Pattern
That, Rav Avigdor Miller says, is the most straightforward way to understand the famous question we ask at the Seder: “Pesach… al shum mah — Why do we call it Pesach”?
And the famous answer is: “Because Hakadosh Baruch Hu passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt.”
As the Malach Hamavess wended its way throughout the land of Egypt striking in every house and skipping over every home of the Bnei Yisrael, Rav Miller says, it was setting in motion an historical pattern for eternity. The Angel of Destruction may lay waste to nations, but it will pass over the Jewish people. The Bnei Yisrael are destined to continue forever. Empires will nations rise and fall, succumbing to destruction one after another, but the Bnei Yisrael endure.
This is an especially meaningful message today as the Jews the world over face a new existential threat. Enemies without and within are knocking at the door. Now, more than ever in recent history, the words of the Haggadah come into sharp focus: “In every generation, they rise against us to destroy us, but Hakadosh Baruch Hu saves us from their hand.”
It’s vital to have bitachon that Hashem completely controls and runs all events – and it’s even more important that it be not only intellectual trust in Hashem but a very real, tangible sense of His dominance in all matters. Therefore, let’s take a brief journey through history to drive home the point. And we’ll use the words of Rav Miller to do so. (The following is based on his lecture #954.)
The Legacy of Lost Civilizations
We have to know that the malach that passed over Egypt passes over all the nations.
If you’re an explorer and travel in Central America, into the rainforest, it’s so thick with vegetation that you have to have to hack your through. It’s hard to imagine that at one time the rainforest was home to a teeming civilization of roads, buildings and big cities. Yes, in Central America. Maybe there’s a clearing here and there where some backward tribes live but the big cities that once existed are no longer there.
Same in the Middle East. There was once a Hittite empire. Most people have never heard of the Hittite empire. We know about the Chitim in Eretz Canaan but they were only a small portion of a huge Hittite empire. Today, that empire is so far gone that people don’t even know it existed once upon a time.
There used to be an empire called Shinar. If you look on maps of very, very ancient history you’ll find an empire called “Sumer,” which is Shinar. Shinar is mentioned agav orcha, incidentally in the Chumash. What happened to them? Gone.
What happened to the great empire of Ashur (Assyria), the one that carried off the Ten Tribes into galus? Gone. What happened to Bavel, the empire that took over the land of Ashur? Bavel had tremendous cities, big buildings, walls, towers, roads, and an organized government. It’s under the ground now. You need shovels and bulldozers to discover what was once Bavel.
The destroying angel passed over ancient Persia, which ruled over 127 provinces once upon a time. Their wealth is described at the beginning of Megillas Esther. The extravagance of the great banquet of King Achashverosh gives us a glimpse of their power and wealth. But his palace has been underground for 2,000 years! They excavated it recently and were amazed to see that the description fits exactly with the details in Megillas Esther. How could anyone know that without being there? Nobody had seen it for 2,000 thousand years? They only discovered it recently.
We have to learn this with a serious frame of mind. Don’t say it’s a davar pashut. Don’t say, well it’s just the nature of ancient empires. We have to know that it’s a shitah, a derech of Hakadosh Baruch Hu that He sends a malach that destroys all the nations.
Echoes of the Fallen Empires
Greece conquered Persia or a big part of it and it ruled in great power. It had beautiful cities, culture, education — but the Greek gods are dead forever. The Greek temples no longer have any offerings; they don’t even exist. Archaeologists find columns still standing but they’re only ruins. The old Greek culture has disappeared from the face of the Earth. If you would have told that to people in those days they would have laughed in your face.
When Yeshaya Ha’navi foretold, “V’ha’elilim kalil yachalofun — The idols will depart entirely” (Yeshaya 2:18) it was thought to be ridiculous at that time. Now, looking back we see that’s what happened — all the great forms of worship, the pageantry, the wealth, the priesthood, the power, the beautiful temples, and the masses in the millions that participated in their religion, all have disappeared. Nothing is left of the old Persian religion, of the Greek gods.
And the same with Rome. Everybody knows that Rome even ruled over Europe as far as Scotland. The Romans built roads in England. They had their government everywhere. Romans laws were implemented all over Europe. Everybody thought Rome would last forever and ever. And the Jews? Who are they? Nobodies. They’re just a wandering nation. They were sent into exile.
But we are still here — and the Romans are not. We walk on the ruins of our oppressors.
The Soviet Union’s Unexpected Collapse
We’ll take a more recent example to save time. Most of you people are very young. You don’t know that until recently communist Russia was one of the very big oppressors of our people. You couldn’t keep Torah openly in communist Russia. You couldn’t circumcise your son. If you did you’d be sent to prison. You couldn’t teach your child Judaism. They said that when the child turns eighteen let him choose but until eighteen don’t teach him anything. If you taught him Torah they would take him away, hand him over to some peasant in remote Siberia and the parent would never see him again. Sometimes they sent the parent to Siberia and put the child in a communist orphanage. Sometimes they killed the parent.
That’s what happened. We don’t know how many frum Jews perished in Siberia, lost their lives or were imprisoned in insane asylums. Why? Because they baked matzos, they circumcised their sons, they taught them a little Torah. We don’t know how many perished from cold, starvation and beatings.
It seemed there was no way out except to escape Communist oppression. Nobody dreamed the day would come when the Communist empire would collapse. It was a miracle when it did. Of course, people looking back now say it had to happen. They point to internal dissention, it was never built on solid foundation — all kinds of excuses.
But at the time Communist Russia was one of the most organized and powerful militaries in the world. They supplied arms to countries all over the world, from South America to Asia. They instigate revolts everywhere in the world. They had plenty of money and plenty of weapons to supply to everybody. They were America’s foremost competitor in everything, even in the Space Race.
Who would have dreamed that one day the bubble would burst and they’d completely crumble.
Beyond the Shadow of Nations
That’s what the word “Pesach” means. The Destroying Angel destroys nations but “passes over” our houses. We’re still around. The fact is that we’re sitting here with yarmulkas or hats on our heads. The fact is that we have tzitzis hanging from our garments. We still learn and keep the Torah. The fact is that we are organized, not merely individual congregations; we’re united as a nation. Whether you’re Sephardi or Ashkenazi, Litvak or a Galitzianer, everybody subscribes to the Torah. We’re one people and we’re still here.
Of course, it wouldn’t be harmful to have a little more unity, a little more harmony. Certainly, it wouldn’t harm. But we’re one people and we should keep it in mind. That’s what the korban Pesach is saying. Asher pasach al batei bnei Yisrael — He skipped over. He passed over us as He destroyed all the other nations.
The afikomen is only a zecher l’korban Pesach today. We don’t have the privilege of the korban Pesach. It’s good to keep in mind. But keep in mind its symbolism that we are forever and ever. That’s what “Pesach” says. Our nation is going to exist, we are the eternal people — only our nation.
America will someday disappear. It’s breaking up today too, I’m sorry to say. I don’t want to say bad news. England is disappearing slowly. England once covered the map. Wherever you looked you saw England’s possessions. Spain used to control a big part of the world, but it’s a small country today.
I guarantee you every nation will disappear — unless Mashiach comes quickly before the nations have a chance to disappear. But they did so much disappearing historically that the prophecy of the korban Pesach is already justified.
The March of the Jewish Nation
But not only do they disappear. That’s only part of it. “V’es bateinu hitzil — He rescued our houses.” We’re going to be forever. That’s the important lesson. We have no korban Pesach but we celebrate Pesach and eat the afikomen zecher l’korban Pesach. We eat the afikomen at the end, which means we’ll be there at the end. We’ll be forever and ever no matter what. That’s why we’re called Yaakov. Yaakov means from the word ekev, the “heel.” Yaakov is the one who comes out alive at the end.
We’re also called Yitzchak, the one who will “laugh at the end.” We’re going to laugh at the whole world at the end. Today we have enough of a track record that if people aren’t convinced that we’re an eternal nation, there is little hope for them.
The Kuzari was written about eight hundred years ago and he said that if you wish to see something resembling the great miracles of the ancient times, look at the fact that we’re still in existence today. If that was a miracle, then today we should be even more convinced. For the past eight hundred years there’s been many great attempts to annihilate us.
The Greatest Miracle
Until here is Rav Miller’s lecture. We can update the Kuzari’s idea with the words of Rav Yaakov Emden from some 200 years ago:
“Who is so blind as not to see the Hand of Providence in the preservation of the Jewish people — the exiled nation, the scattered flock — to this very day. How many waves of persecution have come crashing down on us, more than any other nation in history! How numerous and how powerful have been our enemies, who have endeavored to destroy us, to uproot us, because of their hatred that is rooted in jealousy? But they have not succeeded in destroying us. All the powerful nations of antiquity have faded into nothingness. But we who have clung to Hashem are alive and vibrant today, with our Written and Oral Torahs intact, untarnished by the inexorable march of time!
“Can the brilliant philosopher really think that all this has been the result of random chance? Why, I swear by my life that when I contemplate these extraordinary wonders, I consider them to be greater than all the miracles and wonders that the Holy One, Blessed is He, did for our ancestors in Egypt and the Wilderness and the Land of Israel! And the longer this exile endures, the more evident is the miracle of our survival and the greater is the display of God’s might and power.”
Twain and Tolstoy on Jewish Eternity
And it’s not only Jewish sources. Some of the more honest non-Jews have noted the same thing. When Frederick the Great asked his physical for proof of God he replied, “The Jews.”
Mark Twain famously wrote:
“The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose filled the planet with sound and splendor, and then faded to dream stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal, but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” (“Concerning the Jews” Harper’s Magazine in 1899)
Twain was not the only well-known and respected non-Jew who recognized the greatness of the Jew. Leo Tolstoy, considered by many as the greatest novelist, authored an article entitled “What is a Jew?”
“What is a Jew? This question is not at all so odd as it seems. Let us see what kind of peculiar creature the Jew is, which all the rulers and all the nations have, together and separately, abused and molested, oppressed and persecuted, trampled and butchered, burned and hanged, and in spite of all this, is yet alive. What is a Jew, who has never allowed himself to be led astray by all the earthly possessions which his oppressors and persecutors constantly offered him, in order that he should change his faith and forsake his own Jewish religion.”
At the end of the article, he concludes:
“The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He who neither slaughter nor torture of thousands of years could destroy. He who neither fire nor sword nor inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth. He who was the first [last and only one] to produce the oracles of G–d. He who has been for so long the guardian of prophecy and who transmitted it to the rest of the world. Such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as everlasting as is eternity itself.”
Twain and Tolstoy were dead by the early 1900s. One can only wonder what they would have written about Jewish eternity after the persecutions and pogroms in Czarist Russia. What would they have said after World War I and the Holocaust? What would they have said after all the wars in Eretz Yisrael? And what would they say after learning how even 70 years of living under oppressive Communist rule in Russia could not squelch the Jew and his spirit?
That’s the eternity of the Jew. There are other examples, but the point is made. Anyone who is honest will have to admit that the Jews are eternal.
Destined for the Dustbin
This year, the words “in every generation they rise against us to destroy us” holds amplified meaning. Hamas, their Islamist sponsors in the Middle East, the mealy-mouthed Western press and academic and political leaders who enable them are only the most recent expression of that ancient theme. Of course, the threat is very real but the latter part of the phrase is more real: “But Hakadosh Baruch Hu saves us from their hand.”
These words echo down the generations and resonate deeply in every Jewish heart. They remind us that through every trial and tribulation, Hashem has been our shield and savior. It is His hand that has guided our survival. Our ancestors in Egypt were saved by His directive for the destroying angel to “pass over” their homes — and that same directive still operates today.
One day, Hamas and the vast body of Islamist powers will join the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians and Greeks, as well as the mighty Roman Empire and all the other tyrannical regimes throughout the ages that sought to oppress or annihilate the Jewish people. And after they disappear the Jewish people will live on — “Am Yisrael chai!” This is not just a proclamation of survival but a declaration of the profound relationship between the Jewish people and Hashem. It is a testament to the fact that our endurance is not a mere accident of history but the result of Hashem’s promise and protection.
The navi says, “I, Hashem, have not changed, and you the bnei Yaakov will never come to an end” (Malachi 3:6). Empires come and go but the Jewish people will never come to an end. No matter how great the might and pomp of our adversaries, they are destined for the dustbin of history.
My Mother-in-Law: Jewish Heroine and Nazi Killer
This was published on Aish.com
It was a daunting assignment: speaking to 120 eighth grade girls about the Holocaust in the last hour of the last day of their school year. Compounding my challenge, it was gloriously sunny outside. The girls would be anxious to take leave for their summer vacation.
In my favor, I was going to tell them a remarkable story: that of my mother-in-law, Rachel Blum, may her soul rest in peace – a story I have told to spell-bound audiences and have recently published in book form under the title Nothing Bad Ever Happens.
I told these teenage girls that my mother-in-law was roughly their age during the war years, beginning in June 1941 when the Nazis invaded her town, until July 1944 when the Russians liberated Lublin where she had been hiding with a non-Jewish family.
Then I dove into the story, which is truly incredible and gripping – including a Hollywood-worthy climax as Rachel rides in the caboose of a speeding train transporting a thousand SS soldiers to Germany. Fearful an SS officer is about to discover she is Jewish, she convinces the conductor – Ivan Roluk, husband of the non-Jewish couple who took her in – to overturn the train by speeding up around a sharp bend and blowing the horn just beforehand to allow her and his family to jump. (It worked, the family survived and many Nazis were killed; 15-year-old Rachel was responsible for the death of more SS Nazis in one shot than the combined efforts of all the legendary fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising!)
Despite the dramatic nature of that story, I will save the details for the book and instead share another story, one which is in some ways even more incredible.
Rachel’s childhood town, Ludmir, was home to about 22,000 Jews before the war. On Rosh Hashanah 1942, the Nazis, with the help of local collaborators, began marching columns of bedraggled Jews to a spot outside town and machine-gunned them to death into open pits. Between 15,000 and 18,000 Jews lost their lives that way. And Ludmir was just one of countless Jewish towns in Eastern Europe; all told, some million-and-a-half Jews suffered a similar fate under Nazi domination (even before the gas chambers started operating).
Rachel and her family survived thanks to an ingenious attic hideout. And for the next year, she survived by staying in hiding, smuggling in food for her family and ultimately joining the few thousand survivors in the Ludmir ghetto who had been conscripted into brutal slave labor battalions. Over the year, though, each family member was killed or died of starvation.
Finally, on December 25, 1943, the Nazis came to finish off everyone left in the ghetto. In miraculous fashion – Rachel found a hiding place beneath a wooden porch. A few days later she emerged and made her way to a Polish woman her family knew before the war.
This woman risked her life to keep Rachel – until one day when an anti-Semitic neighbor discovered her. Frightened for her own life now, the Polish woman told her she had to leave by the early morning.
It was January 1944. A fresh layer of deep snow lay on the ground. The air was biting cold. And a little girl, improperly dressed, was alone and on the run again.
She wandered the streets of non-Jewish Ludmir for a while before entering a barn. Her entire body chilled to the bone, she found a spot at the far end and stuck her feet into a stack of hay to warm them up.
Suddenly, a woman walked in. Their eyes met. Rachel pleaded with her to be quiet, promising she would be gone by the next morning. The woman said nothing, gathered some items and left.
As the day turned into evening, Rachel prepared to leave. The night before she had experienced a powerful dream where her recently-deceased father appeared to her and told her everything would be alright. Drawing courage from the dream, she exited the barn and approached the house next to it.
She knocked on the door. The woman she had seen earlier in the day opened it and invited her inside. The woman then introduced husband and their seventeen-year-old son (who Rachel later found out worked in the local SS office!). They offered her a bowl of soup. During conversation it emerged that this family, the Roluks, knew Rachel’s father. They praised him for being a very righteous and honest man they had had business dealings with. If they did not have money to pay for the items he gave them on consignment, he did not pressure them to pay.
At this point in the war, both Rachel and the Roluks knew the Nazis would kill any family caught harboring a Jew. Understanding the predicament, Rachel asked Mrs. Roluk if she and her family were religious. She answered affirmatively. Rachel then asked her if they had a Bible. Again affirmative. Rachel next requested that she take the Bible and place it on the table. She did. Finally, Rachel said to the entire family, “I want all of you to place your hands on the Bible.” They complied.
“Now, promise me the following,” the 14-year-old recently orphaned Jewish girl said. “I have nowhere to run. I’m tired and I’m alone. After this, I will go outside to your backyard and lie down in the snow. There I will freeze to death. You will bury me. Now, promise me on this Bible” – and it is difficult to convey the quality of conviction in my mother-in-law’s voice even as she retold it decades later – “that after the war you will find Jewish people and tell that there is a little Jewish girl buried in the backyard. Promise me that you will tell them that her last wish was that she be reburied with other Jews in a Jewish cemetery.”
A deathly silence fell upon the room. The Roluks looked at each other. One by one, they rose from the table and walked into the next room. Rachel could hear them talking. After a while, they returned and said to her, “You will stay with us. We will tell people that you are our niece from another village.”
What the Roluks did not know at the time was that in saving Rachel they were saving themselves – not only in soul but in body too. (This is detailed in the book. Hint: it has to do with the train story above.)
By the end of my lecture, the 120 girls were mesmerized. The most amazing part of Rachel’s story is that – despite the fact that by war’s end she had no family, friends or money – she became the happiest, most active, most loving and helping human being; someone who regularly said with absolute sincerity, “Nothing bad ever happened to me.”
The story of my mother-in-law inspires on many levels. She is a genuine heroine. As Jews, her story impresses upon us an added message: the value of what it means to be Jewish. Perhaps most of all, we learn from her that even if very bad things happen to us, we have within ourselves an astonishing, mysterious, inextinguishable untapped capacity to love; to be truly happy, active, focused and a magnet of joy for others. God knows, the world needs more of that.
Nothing Bad Ever Happens (retitled: Run Rachel Run) tells the thrilling, true story of Rachel Blum’s struggle to survive in a world bent on destroying her. Click here to order.
New Zman: …And Mordechai Will Not Bow
Bowing To No Other
As background to this month’s cover story, let me share a thought told by Rav Shlomo Brevda, zt”l.
One of the key moments in the Purim story is when Mordechai refuses to bow to Haman (Esther 3:2). Haman was the second most powerful man in the Persian Empire, which ruled the entire civilized world, including all its Jews. Everyone bowed to him — except Mordechai. When Haman found out, he vowed to kill Mordechai.
That set in motion the events that led to the royal decree to exterminate all Jews – as well as the miracles that thwarted the decree, ending with the execution of Haman, his sons and thousands of other anti-Semites throughout the empire.
Rav Brevda, quoting the Vilna Gaon in his commentary on Aggados Megillah, says that Mordechai’s act served as a tikkun for an old communal transgression that had never been properly expiated. When the Jews were first sent into exile by Nevuchadnetzar he erected a huge statue and called all the leading dignitaries of all the peoples in his domain to meet in the valley where the statue resided. At the designated moment, everyone was supposed to bow. Those who refused would be thrown into a furnace.
Everyone bowed, including all the Jews, except for three brave youths, Chananiah, Mishael and Azariah, who were miraculously saved.
The Gemara (Megillah 7) tells us that those Jews who bowed to the idol of Nevuchadneztar did not intend it to be an act of avodah zarah. Rather, they acted out of fear of Nevuchadneztar. However, it had the appearance of avodah zarah, and thus was a chillul Hashem.
It was several generations after Nevuchadnetzar when Mordechai refused to bow to Haman. “Why are you defying the royal decree?” the royal servants asked him.
Mordechai informed them that he was a Yehudi (a Jew), and avodah zarah was forbidden; he would never bow down to Haman, who had made himself into an object of worship (Megillah 10b, 19a; Sanhedrin 6Ib).
Mordechai’s kiddush Hashem served as rectification, tikkun ha’chet, for the chillul Hashem of bowing to Nevuchadnetzar’s idol. In so doing, he undid the earlier wrong and thus set up the deliverance of the Jewish people.
Rav Brevda goes onto explain that the real sin here was that the Jews had come to rely on a power other than Hashem. They looked for help from foreign powers, from persons of great influence or on their own ingenuity and efforts. The tikkun was to absolutely disregard all powers on Earth; to turn only to Hashem for a salvation through prayer and teshuvah.
That is one of the great lessons of Purim: our reliance on Hashem and the primacy of tefillah and teshuvah.
The situation in our cover story was not exactly the same, but there are striking similarities. As such, perhaps it is meant to drive home the point that this lesson is still very current, and one of the primary challenges of our times.
Yaakov Astor, Editor-in-Chief
Paradise Found
“Rebbe, please pray for me not to be drafted into the army,” a young man beseeched the Viznitzer Rebbe in the years before World War I. Although non-observant, he knew the Rebbe to be a miracle worker, a man whose prayers were really answered.
The Rebbe’s method was to have the person in need tell him one mitzvah, one good deed, they had done; then the Rebbe would say in his prayers, “Master of the Universe, this person is keeping kosher… or Shabbat, etc. – in that merit please save him.”
The Rebbe looked at the young man now asking him to pray he not be drafted in the army. “Do you pray every morning?” he asked.
“No,” he said, “I don’t wake up till long after noon and then I go to play soccer.”
“Do you keep the Sabbath?”
“How can I? Saturday is reserved for the most important soccer games.”
“Do you eat kosher?”
“It’s cheaper to eat pork.”
The Rebbe persisted, but time and again received the same answer. The young man did not have one single point of merit. Finally, the Rebbe said to him, “I envy you.”
“You do?”
“Yes. Can you imagine, in one moment you can become a greater tzaddik (righteous person) than I.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. You see, anyone who does teshuva (repentance) out of fear of God has his sins erased. But anyone who repents out of love of God has his sins turned into merits. And you definitely have more sins than I have merits. In one minute, you can turn everything around and end up with more merits than I.”
A reflective, thoughtful look flashed across this young man’s face. Without batting an eyelash, he said, “Rebbe, wait another year and you will envy me even more!”
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The Liberating Experience of Judgment
According to Judaism,1 each of us undergoes three different types of Days of Judgment Days:
- Rosh Hashanah, which is an annual review of one’s actions over the previous year used to determine one’s material circumstances for the upcoming year;
- Day of death, which reviews the deceased person’s life and determines whether it is ready for Paradise;
- The Great Day of Judgment, which is an event in the future, at the end of history as we know it, when all who lived are resurrected, and are judged whether they are worthy of everlasting life in a spiritualized renewed physical world (according to most authorities) to frolic in the splendor of God’s Presence.
All this judgment strikes the contemporary mind as backward, even offensive. It only reinforces the stereotypic image of “Old Testament” Judaism as a religion of fear, not love.
Well, yes, judgment — whether on Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Death, or the “Great Day of Judgment” — contains the general air of awe and seriousness. There is no sense trying to sugarcoat or diminish the magnitude of these events.
Nevertheless, what’s often lost to the contemporary mind is the liberating experience judgment entails. Perhaps the best illustrations of this are found in a surprising place.
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Rosh Hashanah & the Art of Wanting
Three years ago a new self-help fad swept the world. Offering nothing less than everything from unimaginable wealth to happiness and finding one’s soul mate, the people behind the fad claimed they had discovered a very old “secret” that had been carefully guarded and handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, across many cultures. Presenting this secret to the masses for the first time, they called their film documentary and accompanying book, “The Secret.”
And they made a mint.
After one gets past the glitter, the underlying core of the “secret” is a powerful idea expressed in the Talmud that has special relevance to Rosh Hashana.
The operative dynamic behind “the secret” is a concept called the “Law of Attraction”:
Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life. And it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It’s what you’re thinking.You become what you think about most, but you also attract what you think about most….
Long ago, the rabbis of the Talmud said: “The way a person wishes to go is the way he will be led” (Makkos 10b). If a person really wants to do something — for good or bad — all the elements of the world surrounding him will help him go in that direction. The universe will conspire to help him achieve his burning desire.
What we truly want is where we are going to be led.
Zman – Warriors of a Different Breed
Light Makes Might
The story of Chanukah is made up of two radically different components. One is the war, the battles of the Chashmonayim and their ultimate victory over the Syrian/Greek oppressors. “You delivered the strong into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few…” we insert into our shemonah esrai during Chanukah.
The other component is the spiritual, miraculous event of the small pitcher that supplied oil for eight days even though it held enough only for one night.
At first glance these components — the military the spiritual — are diametrically opposed.
Indeed, there is no other holiday on the Jewish calendar that emphasizes military victory. The triumphs of Yehoshua, Shaul or Dovid HaMelech, magnificent as they were, are not commemorated. What makes the military victory on Chanukah different from all other victories?
It is not the permanence of the victory. The great pantheon of famous warriors in the distant past and the near present testify to this disappointing truth: there are only temporary victors in wars. All military victories are subject to reversal, destruction, decay and abandonment – and Chanukah’s is no different. After the Jews retook Yerushalayim and experienced the miracle of the menorah the war dragged out another five to seven years. Successive Greek emperors tried to take back Eretz Yisrael by force of arms and by orchestrating a coup among the Jews.
What makes a military victory more than a fleeting moment of glory? The spiritual truth behind it. How do we know that Chanukah was more than a military victory? The little flask of oil that miraculously burned eight days.
Only when the military victory is combined with and sublimated to spiritual accomplishment, only when Hashem is acknowledged as having fashioned the victory, only when there is symbolic religious ritual attached to the celebration of physical triumph, only then can that victory be seen as having some sense of permanence.
The memory of the victory of the Chashmonayim is glorified because of the Chanukah candles. With its spiritually uplifting message of eternal fuel and lights, Chanukah allows us to exult fully in the military victory of the Chashmonayim as well. For it is no longer just a triumph of arms and war but of the human spirit and hashgachah pratis.
How apropos, then, that our cover story this month is about four IDF soldiers who became baalei teshuva. The idea that military victory is rooted in spiritual causes is a difficult message to accept among those not raised in an environment of Emunah. Perhaps then the most miraculous aspect of our four soldiers is that they got the message. Despite their upbringing they figured out that, for a Jew, “sharing the burden” means sharing the yoke of Torah and mitzvos – and that it is not only a much more difficult yoke, but the root cause that best protects Jewish lives.
Therefore, the light that these four soldiers shine is a truly a miracle – one worth celebrating ba’zman hazeh, at this time.
Yaakov Astor, Editor-in-Chief
Light in the Kingdom of Darkness
Last month, I joined a group of 24 educators visiting the concentration camps in Poland. It was the culminating leg of a year-long fellowship program sponsored by Zechor Yemos Olam, the Holocaust education branch of Torah U’Mesorah. Its director, Rabbi Sholom Freidmann, and I worked all year with these highly experienced and accomplished teachers helping them to become in effect the vanguard of a new generation of Holocaust educators.
From the remains of the Warsaw Ghetto to the death camps at Treblinka and Majdanek to the Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin (presently being rebuilt) to the kevarim of the Remah, Sfas Emes, Chozeh of Lublin, Maharal and others – none of us came back the same.
Undoubtedly, the most moving experience was Auschwitz…
Auschwitz – its name alone sends a chill down the spine.
Peering through the barbed-wire fence for the first time, the thing that struck me was its size. Nothing had prepared me to grasp the sheer expanse of Birkenau, Auschwitz’s main death camp. Besides the unimaginable numbers murdered there, it housed 80,000 slave laborers.
80,000!
That’s larger than most Jewish communities today; think of a medium-sized town.
Row after row of barracks stretched almost as far as the eye could see. Straight ahead, the infamous railroad tracks extended into the distance further than I had imagined until they veered off to the equally infamous disembarkation point where Dr. Mengele conducted the Selektion, deciding who would live and who would die….
A chilling thought as we head into the days of Elul and Yemei HaDin….
It took hours to tour the camp. Terrifying… horrifying… yet uplifting don’t properly convey the emotions… especially by the “Pool of Ashes,” a marsh-like area of human ash next to the tangled concrete and metal of the now destroyed gas chambers and crematoria, listening to Rabbi Shmuel Klein talk about Kiddush Hashem… which was followed by a rousing kaddish.
Kiddush Hashem – it’s hard to explain to the uninitiated the connection between Auschwitz and Kiddush Hashem. But, nowhere more than the depths of the deepest darkness can the brightest light of spiritual heroism emerge.
By day’s end, we were the only group remaining in this Empire of Evil. That was eerie enough. But then we were given special permission to ascend the main Nazi guard tower. And there, high above Hitler’s Valley of Death, we turned east, bowed and poured our hearts out to Hashem.
After mincha, the guard tower became engulfed in a supernatural orange glow of the now set sun. Spontaneously, we formed a circle and danced — silhouetted against heaven’s glow — singing Aleh Varechev, Ani Ma’amim and L’shana Habah b’Yerushalayim.
It was a flash of light in the Kingdom of Darkness. A moment of triumph. A proclamation! The Thousand Year Reich is dead… Om Yisrael chai….
Elul is a time for introspection… and inspiration… to make light, not darkness… to choose life… to live lives of Kiddush Hashem… for the six million kedoshim… for ourselves.
The Tenth of Teves
(Based on a lecture by Rabbi Berel Wein)
The Talmud (Megillah 9b) tells how King Ptolemy (died 246 BCE ) placed 72 Jewish scholars in different rooms and told them to translate the Torah. In an act of Divine Providence the 72 translations all matched each other.
The translation became known as the Septuagint, which means “the 70” in Greek – in reference to the general amount of scholars who translated it. This is the basic translation of the Bible that much of the non-Jewish world has today.
Despite advantages to teaching the non-Jewish world the Written Torah, the Torah Sages did not welcome the opportunity. “The day when the Torah was written in Greek was as unfortunate for Israel as the day of the Golden Calf” (Soferim 1:7). They even decreed that the day the Septuagint was completed, the eighth day of the month of Teves (in the winter), was to be marked on the Jewish calendar as “a day of darkness” (Megillas Taanis).
It was combined with two other tragedies around that date – the death of Ezra and the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem – and decreed a public fast day (Asara B’Teves, “the Tenth of Teves”). Perhaps the reason was because they saw that the translation would open the door for usurpers and new religions claiming to supplant or succeed the Torah.
Mistranslation of the “Virgin Birth”
History has proven the Sages right for their ambivalence about translating the Torah into a language that the masses could read. There are numerous examples, but perhaps the most famous is the mistranslation that led to the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth.
2 Chanukah articles
I have two online articles on Chanukah. You can read them by clicking the pictures below:
The menorah’s flames remind us that technology is but a gift from God.
Shoot for the stars or be more realistic? Two perspectives reflected in the Chanukah light.
Yaakov Astor's Blog 
