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Todah Rabba...Thank You

1) Pesach: Life choices
Moshe Kempinski,

2) Notre Dame and the Jews
Abraham Chicheportiche, , INN

3) The Last Seder in the Warsaw Ghetto
by Adam Ross

4) Gazans Blast Hamas for ‘Trading Children for Fish’
By: TPS

5) Killed a Jew? In France that makes you unfit for trial
Giulio Meotti, י

6) Priceless Jewels on Tattered Clothes
Rabbi Chanan Morisson

Moshe Kempinski,

Our Life Choices usually fluctuate between two seemingly opposite poles. On the one hand we are filled with a determination to achieve and to express ourselves completely. On the other hand we feel humbled and inadequate and truly comprehend the limits of our abilities.

The Torah teaches us that in fact the walk of life is a journey having both poles as our guide

Mount Sinai was the place that G-d revealed Himself before millions of people, and the choice of Hashem of using that mountain was critical. One would have thought that the revelation of G-d's word into the world would be done on a mountain of gigantic stature. On an Everest or some other mighty and impressive mountain.

The Midrash (Midrash Psalms 68:17) states that G-d chose Mt. Sinai for the “Giving of the Torah” because in fact it was “the smallest of all mountains.” This was to ensure that man would know that the key to receiving Divine revelation and inspiration necessitates a sense of humility.

The Sfat Emet then asks that if that is so, then why did G-d not give the Torah in a valley.

The Sfat Emet answers that G-d did not want the vessels of His revelation to be so completely self-effacing. The experience at Mount Sinai was meant to be a lesson. We need to be humble vessels and yet we cannot think of ourselves as totally unworthy. Otherwise we would not be able to achieve our individual and corporate purposes. Otherwise we could not be a useful vessel for the plan of destiny.

That same lesson is impacting us as we celebrate the festival of Pesach (Passover). It is there that we encounter the fascinating dialectic regarding the concept of Bread and that of Matza (unleavened bread).

To commemorate and spiritually relive the Exodus from Egypt, the Jewish people are commanded by the Torah to celebrate the holiday of Pesach and are prohibited to eat or even to possess any Chametz (leaven) in their home:

“During these seven days no leaven may be found in your homes. If someone eats anything of Chametz his soul shall be cut off from the community of Israel. This is true whether he is a convert or a person born into the nation. You must not eat anything leavened." (Exodus 12:19-20)

The word Chametz means fermented or leavened. The grains which can become Chametz are wheat, spelt, barley, oats, and rye. From the fourteenth day of the first month in the evening until the night of the twenty-first day of the month, only matzoth (unleavened bread) are eaten. The leavening and the yeast represent the arrogance and puffed up ego that leads us away from the Divine missions in our life. The yeast is simply the agent that causes the dough to rise and gives the impression that there is more than there really is.

“You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations shall you eat unleavened bread – matzoth.“ (Exodus12:20)

Matzah, on the other hand is the only form of flour and water mixture permitted on Pesach. It is baked under very rigorous conditions and strict time constraints to insure that it not become Chametz. Yet Matzah itself can only be made from the five grains that have the potential to become Chametz. The obvious question is , why use the very ingredients that if used incorrectly would invalidate the item?

This becomes one of the powerful messages of Passover and is a message that weaves throughout Jewish thought and ritual. The same leavening and yeast that represent arrogance and puffed up ego is used for a higher purpose.

The underlying message is that the secret to obtaining freedom from the things that enslave us is not to avoid those things but rather to elevate them. The very things that can entrap and enslave us can instead be elevated towards a higher purpose.

The bread we avoid is nothing more than puffed up matzah. Yet on the other hand “Bread” has it has its own purpose and Divine importance.

Wheat is classically termed the “staff of life” and is considered the staple of mankind’s existence. The creation of bread from wheat is also known as the apex of his creative abilities. As the verse says:

"He would feed him with the finest wheat." (Psalms 81:17)

That same fine wheat bread is the result of much effort, planning and yearning. Interestingly only 49 days after Pesach, it is in fact that finely prepared loaves of wheat bread that is brought to the temple as an offering on Shavuot.

If in fact the leavened bread is a symbol of arrogance and pride why bring it to the temple? Why not forbid it altogether?

The truth is both realities are critical in our walk in this world. The Baal Shem Tov teaches that bread represents Mochin DeKatnut (small mindedness) while matza represents Mochin DeGadlut (enlarged mindedness).

Small mindedness focuses on the details and small steps of reality. This is critical for getting things done right but it can easily get bogged down and lose sight of the vision.

The “Enlarged Mindedness” is simplified like the matza and as a result it sees the whole picture and understands its purpose.

That is the reason that the fine wheat offering can only be offered after the experience of the Matza based Passover festival. Only after the corrective experience of eating Matza and contemplating its lessons, will we be ready to bring the gift representing the partnership between the G-d and man with the bread offering of Shavuot. Only when we become simplified like a matza will we develop the vision of Divine purpose and destiny. It is following the acquiring of this broad sense of direction that we can then begin to focus on the small details of building and growing.

Pesach is about rebirth, empowerment and re-finding our purpose. Shavuot and the experience at Mount Sinai is about focusing on the details of our life and aligning it with the vision.

May we enjoy a happy and soul building Pesach and thereby make us ready for the soul nourishment of the Shavuot festival that follows.

Chag Kasher Ve sameach

Lerefuat Yehudit bar Golda Yocheved and Yehudit bat Esther

Abraham Chicheportiche, , INN

The flames at Notre Dame Cathedral should remind Jews of the burning by that very same church of tens of wagonloads of the Talmud in the Middle Ages.

The mainstream media, even in Israel, is featuring in headlines “The Crown of Thorns and tunic of St Louis saved from Notre Dame fire.”

I do not like to do it, but sometimes it is necessary to remind some Jews of historical facts about antisemitism in France.

Many of you have certainly visited Paris or The Notre Dame Cathedral, but how many of you have seen the two statues at the main entrance of the Paris Cathedral?

These statues, known as "Ecclesia" and "Sinagoga", represent the Christian theological doctrine of "Verus Israel" according to which the Jewish people are fallen and replaced by the "new Israel" represented here by a woman who stands with her head crowned facing the other woman represented who has her head bowed, blindfolded by a snake and holding in her hands the tables of the Law ...you know, the Jewish people's Torah.

Every year, millions of tourist flock to admire and photograph these statues, but do they really realize what they represent?

Theft, crimes and persecutions - those were committed in the name of Christianity?

We have entered the final phase of the redemption of Israel and of all humanity and it is truly regrettable to see some of our Jewish brothers saddened by this fire when this building represents in all its strength the exile of Israel and the will to replace us.

The Catholic Church became the official state religion of France at the conversion to Christianity of Clovis I, leading to France being called "the eldest daughter of the Church."

The construction of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris began in 1160. Construction was largely completed in 1260.

In 1240, in Paris, it was the same Catholic Church which had built the cathedral that held the famous Paris controversy in which the Talmud was tried for blasphemy against the church. There was no way the Jewish rabbis debating the Christians could win. Held at the instigation of Nicolas Donin, an apostate Jew converted to Christianity, he and clerics debated four rabbis, led by Rabbi Yehiel of Paris in the presence of King Louis IX of France.

Begun in 1240, the trial ended with the decree, out of the Notre Dame Cathedral, ordering seizure of all copies of the Talmud, that is tens of wagonloads, at least 10,000 handwritten voumes of holy texts (the printing press had not yet been invented) and then burning them on nearby Place de Greve in 1242.

Two of the rabbis, Rabbi Shmuel of Falaise and the Maharam Rottenberg, who participated in the debate are well known to us today through the prayers they composed and the elegies about the burning of the holy books which are still part of our liturgy.

But who was that Louis, King of France, who cooperated so willingly with the church?

Louis IX (1226-1270), grandson of Philip Augustus and King of France, was a king of the Middle Ages: a knight, religious, ascetic and hostile to the Jews.

In spite of the fact that this opposition worked to its own disadvantage, he opposed the lending activity of his Jewish subjects; he decreed laws against them and even finally ordered their expulsion.

Known today as St. Louis, he was very anxious to convert the Jews and encouraged the discussions between the synagogue and the Church to this end. At these theological disputes, it was hoped that some Jews would be converted, or at least shamed, and thus convinced unresolved Christians of the truth of Christianity and the baseness of Judaism.

There is reason to believe that Louis took no action to protect the Jews persecuted by so-called crusaders in 1236 in several provinces (Anjou, Poitou, Mançois, Touraine, Berry). When, in 1239, Pope Gregory IX asked the kings of France and Portugal to order the seizure of Jewish books for examination, Louis was the quickest and most zealous to obey. So 24 loads of Jewish books were burned in 1242.

The Talmud's trial, also called the Talmud's Burning, Paris Dispute or Talmud Controversy1 (Hebrew: ויכוח פריז Vikouah Pariz) is a major event in the history of the Jews and their relationship to Christianity.

So is King St. Louis a Saint? And what about his anti-Semitic measures?

King 'Saint' Louis was marked by a profound anti-Judaism of essentially religious nature. Louis IX, deeply Christian, did not like those Jews who refused to recognize Christ.

He condemns the Talmud! King St. Louis, moreover, does not like these people who constitute a foreign body inside the kingdom of France that he seeks to unify.

'Saint' Louis goes further. "Christians have a chief," he said to himself, "it's the bishop. The Jews have no one, so I must be the bishop of the Jews and punish them when they behave badly, but also protect them when they are unjustly attacked ... "

Still, Saint Louis was instead a persecutor of the Jews to the point of imposing on them, in 1269, the wearing of the rouelle (a piece of red felt or cloth cut in the form of a wheel, four fingers in circumference, which had to be attached to the outer garment at the chest and back), advocated by the Church which took this decision at the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215. Saint Louis did not hesitate to apply it, especially for the sake of integration and forced conversion of Jews to the national community.

King St Louis was the instigator of the last crusades and massacre of Jews in the Holy Land.

France is in state of shock, the Christian world is outraged while muslims are rejoicing on social media.

Jews have northing to mourn.

And by way of comparison, was the world shocked when on Kristallnacht November 9-10-1938, 1000 synagogues were destroyed in flames by Nazi Germany, begining of the annihilation of the Jews of Europe?.

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by Adam Ross

Survivors testify about an epic Seder held in underground bunkers as the Nazis sought to liquidate the last Jews of Warsaw Ghetto.

In April 1943, at the height of the Final Solution, with the sounds of tank rounds and gunfire around them, the last remaining Jews of Warsaw huddled together in bunkers under their besieged ghetto to live their final hours as proud Jews, reading the Passover Haggadah. In the hours that followed, they would rise up in one of history’s most iconic feats of resistance.

The handful of Jews who survived the Nazi’s final onslaught on Warsaw, once a major center of Jewish life, have this Seder night more than any other etched in the memories as a testament to Passover’s powerful calling to connect to family, history, tradition and hope.
The Jewish Capital of Europe

Every Passover during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, which began in October 1939, the Jewish community did its best to celebrate the holiday. Even after being forced into a ghetto measuring just 2.5% of the city, subject to terrible starvation and disease, additional non-leavened foods were smuggled into the ghetto in the weeks before Passover. Several matzah factories were set up, ensuring the community, at its height numbering almost half a million, could eat the bread of freedom Seder night. Despite the hunger, typhus and dysentery, Jewish life in the ghetto continued.

Passover in April 1943 would be the last for the Jews of Warsaw Ghetto, although by then the community was already unrecognizable. Almost a year earlier Adam Czierniakow, the Head of the Judenrat, the Jewish council appointed by the Nazis, had committed suicide after hearing of the Nazis plans, leaving a note to his wife that he “Would not be the hangman of Israel’s children.” The Nazis had since begun a terrifying program of ‘liquidation’ deporting between 5,000 and 6,000 Jews daily to the Treblinka death camp where they were murdered within an hour of their arrival.

On January 18 1943, the Nazis attempted to take another 8,000 Jews but this time members of a newly formed Jewish resistance fired shots at the SS guards and the Nazis rethought their plans, bolstering their military presence, delaying the final liquidation of ghetto to Passover which would fall in three months’ time.
“That’s what we felt in our hearts”

On the 18th of April 1943, when news arrived that the Germans had stationed an army in Warsaw ready to empty the ghetto, members of the underground resistance movements went into high alert. While the rooftops were stationed with Jews keeping track of the enemy’s every move, below the ghetto, Jews were busy embracing the story of the exodus from Egypt as a symbol of their own fight for dignity, pride and hope.

Roma Frey was 24 that Passover, recalling how she and her family had tried their best to make the basement as nice as possible for the holiday, “We tried to put the candles on the table, and a white table cloth,” she adds, “the table was made of a wooden board resting on a few things underneath.”

Surviving the Holocaust and moving to Melbourne Australia after the war she added. “We acknowledged to ourselves and to God and to ourselves that we want to keep the traditions. That’s what we felt in our hearts, we remembered our grandfathers, the hard times, slavery and our slavery, and here we have, hardly a hope to survive even just one day or night.”

With families decimated by the deportations, the remnant Jews came together, relying on those who knew the Haggadah by heart to lead them. Many flocked to the home of the 60-year-old venerated Rabbi Eliezer Yitzchak Meisel, who had left his hometown of Lodz along with his followers years earlier when the Nazis invaded. In Warsaw he had become immediately involved in maintaining religious life amid the hardships; it was in his basement that many of the Jews active in the resistance joined for the Passover Seder.

Tuvia Borzykowski was 29 at the time. “No one slept that night,” he recalled. “The moon was full and the night was unusually bright.” Along with the other fighters he joined Rabbi Meisels for the Seder.

“Amidst this destruction, the table in the center of the room looked incongruous with glasses filled with wine, with the family seated around, the rabbi reading the Haggadah.” Throughout the night, despite the increasing sounds of enemy fire, Tuvia and the other fighters held fast, engrossed in the retelling of the Jewish people’s redemption from Egypt. He recalled, “The Rabbi’s reading was punctuated by explosions and the rattling of machine-guns; the faces of the family around the table were lit by the red light from the burning buildings nearby.”

“Now is a good time to die,” Rabbi Meisels said, buoyed by the feeling of pride, courage and faith, as he blessed one of the fighters who came to deliver a report. He died later that night in the flames of the ghetto. Tuvia Borzykowski survived the war and helped establish Kibbutz of Ghetto Fighters near Akko. He is one of several fighters who testified about the Passover Seder they took part in as the uprising began.
“I had never missed a Seder”

Born in Warsaw, Itzchak Milchberg was the leader of a group of Jewish boys posing as non-Jews outside the Ghetto walls, selling cigarettes on the black market to survive. On the eve of Passover in 1943 he was just 12 years old but wise beyond his years. He had seen his father shot before his eyes, his mother and two sisters had already been deported and the only family he had left was an uncle named Fievel who was still in the ghetto.

When rumors spread that the Nazis were planning their final deportations, he returned to the ghetto to be with his uncle for Passover. “I had never missed a Seder,” he said. “It was in my blood.”

With the sound of shooting around him, he entered his uncle’s candle lit bunker where 60 people were crowded. “The building was shaking,” he said, “People were crying.” His uncle Feivel embraced him in Yiddish, “Ir vet firn di seder mit mir - You’ll perform the Seder with me.” However some were too distressed to think about running a Seder. He recalls people crying, “God led us out of Egypt. Nobody killed us. Here, they are murdering us.”

Pulling him close, whispering into his ear, Feivel told his nephew, “You may die, but if you die, you’ll die as a Jew. If we live, we live as Jews.” He added, “If you live, you’ll tell your children and grandchildren about this.”

The Seder began. Feivel Milchberg had managed to organize matzah, “I don’t know how he got it,” Itzchak recalls, although he remembers there were no bitter herbs, “There was plenty of bitterness already,” he says.

Together with his uncle he read the Haggadah from memory and soon most of the bunker joined in. “We did most of the prayers by heart,” he says. “The Seder went very, very late.”

He left the ghetto in the early hours of the morning through the sewer system, risking his life as he had done to be there in the first place. In the days that followed he worked as a runner, smuggling arms through the sewers to the Jewish fighters until he was caught on the sixth day of the Uprising. He would later jump from a train taking him to Treblinka and survive the Holocaust thanks to a Catholic family in Warsaw. After the war, he moved to Canada, raised a family of his own and made good in his promise to his uncle to tell his children and grandchildren about that Seder night he had led with his uncle in 1943.
The Uprising

As promised a large SS unit entered the ghetto attempting to deport the remaining Jews to their deaths. But they were met instead by fierce fighting from the Jewish resistance and a barrage of Molotov cocktails, grenades and gun-fire. With renewed strength and pride, this fledgling Jewish fighting force killed 13 Nazis, wounded many more and sent them panicked, retreating out of the ghetto. They held out for almost a month as the Germans set to work painstakingly burning each building in the ghetto to the ground. 13,000 Jews died in the fighting and the flames while thousands more were arrested and deported to the east.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising will always be remembered as the greatest physical resistance throughout the Second World War, inspiring underground movements and partisan units across Nazi occupied Europe. Spiritually, the Seder service that took place below its charred streets that night can continue to inspire generations of Jews who refused to be broken even at the darkest of times.

By: TPS

Hamas’ use of children as human shields and as bait during the so-called March of Return weekly riots is facing mounting criticism in Gaza.

A Gaza-based reporter with connections to Hamas leadership described to TPS how the terror group lures children to approach the border with Israel and puts them in life-endangering situations, a tactic that is now causing locals to accuse the terror group of needlessly sacrificing their children for paltry “accomplishments.”

Hamas’ strategy involves sending buses to mosques, where children go for activities. The children are then sent out by buses to the border fence. Each cluster of mosques is assigned to a designated zone on the fence.

Hamas provides refreshments, food and entertainment to entice the children to join them. Hamas has recently added free Wi-Fi to the experience, which enables the children to surf the net while Hamas broadcasts live footage from the violence.

Hamas has complete control of the level of violence on the fence, and orders the number of buses each week in accordance with its leadership’s decision on how large and violent the demonstrations will be. The plans are finalized by Wednesday, and one can assess the size of the pending Friday demonstration based on the number of buses Hamas has ordered that week.

Hamas has control of the hostilities to the extent that it has issued a religious decree that anyone who approaches the fence on his own volition and is killed will not be considered a “shahid,” a martyr killed fighting infidels.

The reporter noted that Hamas is losing its support in Gaza, and therefore has added new ways to entice children to come to the border, including cash gifts.

He added that public criticism of Hamas’ usage of children is growing, and the phrase “trading children for fish” has spread, mocking Hamas for Israel’s recent decision to expand fishing zones off the coast of Gaza in exchange for modulating the weekly border violence.

Gazans say that even though several children have died during the riots on the fence, Hamas’ meager achievement a year later is broader fishing areas.

Finally, the reporter noted the irony in expanded fishing rights. The situation in Gaza is so bad that even though fishermen can bring in more fish, no one is buying them because they have no money, and the stalls remain loaded with their catch, due to the dire economic situation Hamas has created in the strip by diverting resources to its massive terror campaign.

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Giulio Meotti, י

Killing a Jew is due to "extenuating circumstances," the killer "criminally irresponsible." You don't understand because he shouted "Allahu Akhbar?" Ask the French courts.

Sarah Halimi was a 65 years old Jewish retired doctor. She lived in the 11th neighborhood of Belleville. She was murdered two years ago, at night, by her neighbor, Kobili Traore, who shouted “Allahu Akbar”.

A crime? Not at all!

Anti-Semitism? Don't joke around with me!

Islam? Don't make generalizations, you racist fear monger!

The “experts” have decided. Traore was crazy, therefore he is “criminally irresponsible”. Hence the shameful conclusion of not instituting a trial, as if Sarah Halimi had not been killed just because she was Jewish.

At the beginning, the judiciary’s omission of the aggravated element of a hate crime caused by anti-Semitism was a cover up of the anti-Semitic character of the horrible crime. Now anti-Semitism is denied by the lunatic nature of the terrorist.

The French media covered Halimi’s death only two months after it happened.

If you drink two glasses of wine before rolling someone up with your car, that is an “aggravating circumstance”. If you shout “Allahu Akbar” and “Satan” before throwing an old Jewish woman out of her apartment window, that's an “extenuating circumstance”, especially if you've smoked cannabis before the homicide!

Crazy - the French Muslim barbarians who tortured the Jew Ilan Halimi to death.

Crazy - the French Muslim barbarian who burned Mireille Knoll, a Holocaust survivor, to death in her bed.

Crazy - the French Muslim barbarians who slit the throat of the priest Jacques Hamel in his church.

Crazy - the French Muslim barbarian who shot to death the Jewish children in Toulouse.

All were insane, all were crazy. Crazy as the few brave ones who shouted the alarm in the West, those “crazy Islamophobes” who need to be isolated.

France has just given the green light to the next murder of Jews. But maybe we're just all crazy.

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