Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual
teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law.
He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their
search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money,
and spiritual engagement.
The
Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and
former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar
blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12
gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal
the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in
living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find
interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't
always agree with all the points of each article but found them
interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It
is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about
life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the
Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend
to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in
advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle
I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want
to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah
is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what
I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
ROSH HASHANAH IN ISRAEL. SEPTEMBER 25-27, 2022.
Rosh Hashanah in Israel is one of the most special and meaningful times of the year – Happy new year to those who celebrate! The Jewish New Year is called Rosh Hashanah and usually falls during September or early October. Rosh Hashanah is a two-day holiday that celebrates the start of the new year according to the Jewish calendar. Businesses across Israel will be closed on both days, so bear this in mind if you are in Israel during the period. In 2022, Rosh Hashanah will begin at sundown on September 25th and end at sundown on September 27th. In many ways, being in Israel during Rosh Hashanah is like Shabbat where most businesses are closed.
ROSH HASHANAH & COVID 19
Covid-19 has brought with it many safety and health concerns, but hopefully, by this holiday synagogues, events and festivals will be up at running again! This time of year is when we focus inward and consider what change and renewal this season may bring, and with such a chaotic year, maybe some time to refocus on what’s most important to us is what we all need.
BEING IN ISRAEL DURING ROSH HASHANAH
If you are in Israel during the Rosh Hashanah holiday, one of the best ways to experience the holiday is by visiting a synagogue to hear the prayers. Jews attend quite lengthy synagogue services and recite special prayers and liturgical songs written over the centuries. These vary between Jews who have developed different prayers based on where they were living for hundreds of years.
The blowing of the shofar (ram’s horn) is an iconic symbol of Rosh Hashanah – 100 (or 101) shofar blasts are sounded in the synagogue to symbolize God’s sovereignty over the world and remind Jews of the giving of the commandments on Mt. Sinai and of Abraham and Isaac’s devotion to God. They arouse people to repentance and to herald the Day of Judgment and the coming of the Messiah. If you aren’t able to attend synagogue, it is special just to hear the sound of the shofar. Often, it can be heard from outside the temple. You may see crowds gathered outside the synagogue, this is a special time to hear the shofar.
Visiting Jerusalem during Rosh Hashanah is a very spiritual and meaningful experience. Join our Jerusalem tours, which depart daily and operate throughout the holidays. Our tours visit the Western Wall and other important religious sites.
SYMBOLS OF ROSH HASHANAH IN ISRAEL
Other symbols of Rosh Hashanah include apples and honey. They are customarily eaten along with other sweet foods to symbolize a sweet new year. During Rosh Hashanah, and just before the holiday begins, you will see round challah (braided sweet bread), often with raisins, inside in many bakeries. The round shape of the bread is symbolic of the circle of life and the yearly cycle. Along with other sweet baked goods, one of the most popular treats for Rosh Hashanah is honey cake. This can also be found in many bakeries. It is also traditional to eat fruit, like pomegranates, that have not yet been eaten during the season. Since they are ripe this time of year, they taste extra sweet and delicious.
Tashlich is a Rosh Hashana custom in the afternoon where Jews walk to a river or another flowing body of water. Here, you shake out your pockets and symbolically cast your sins into the water. If you come to Israel during this period, it is interesting to see religious Jews performing this custom. You can visit many of the beautiful beaches in Israel, where you can practice Tashlich or observe it.
If you want to wish people a happy new year, you can say “Shanah Tovah”. This means “Have a good year” in Hebrew. The period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is called “The Ten Days of Repentance”. This is when people have the opportunity to atone for their sins. Yom Kippur is a day when Israel grinds to a halt.
Yemenite Jews flee their homes Kluger Zoltan/Public Domain
When
addressing the defining moment of the 20th century in terms of man’s
inhumanity to man, we often reflect on the sheer barbarism of the
Holocaust and the genocide committed by the Nazis on six million Jews.
Throughout the annals of the blood-stained pages of Jewish history, many
other massacres of Jews have been committed.
Tragically, what is
often neglected and summarily dismissed is the forced expulsion,
evacuation and flight of 921,000 Jews of Sephardi and Mizrahi background
from Arab countries and the Muslim world, primarily from 1948 to the
early 1970s.
Farhud’ pogrom in Baghdad, Iraq, 1941 (public domain)
For
over 2,500 years, Jews lived continuously in North Africa, the Middle
East and the Gulf region. The first Jewish population had already
settled there at least 1,000 years before the advent of Islam.
Throughout
the generations, Jews in the region were often subjected to various
forms of discrimination — and in many cases, ranked lower on the status
of society than their Muslim compatriots — but they were nevertheless
loyal citizens who contributed significantly to the culture and
development of their respective countries.
Yemenite immigrants in a camp near Ein Shemer in 1950. (Pinn Hans/GPO)
Despite
the positive influence that Jews brought to the places where they
lived, more than 850,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Egypt,
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and several other Arab
countries in the 20 years that followed the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.
Another major forced migration took place from Iran in 1979–80,
following the Iranian Revolution and the collapse of the shah’s regime,
adding 70,000 more Jewish refugees to this number.
In 1947, the
Political Committee of the Arab League (League of Arab States) drafted a
law that was to govern the legal status of Jewish residents in all of
its member states. This Draft Law of the Arab League provided that “…all
Jews – with the exception of citizens of non-Arab countries – were to
be considered members of the Jewish ‘minority state of Palestine’; that
their bank accounts would be frozen and used to finance resistance to
‘Zionist ambitions in Palestine; Jews believed to be active Zionists
would be interned as political prisoners and their assets confiscated;
only Jews who accept active service in Arab armies or place themselves
at the disposal of these armies would be considered ‘Arabs.”
In
the international arena, Arab diplomats pretended to ignore the Arab
League’s collusion in encouraging state-sanctioned discrimination
against Jews in all its member states, seeking publicly to attribute
blame to the Arab “masses” – and even the United Nations itself – for
any danger facing the Jews across the region. This covert move was part
of the Arab states’ attempt to divert attention from the official
discriminatory practices of their governments against the Jewish
citizens.
Two hundred and sixty thousand Jews from Arab countries
immigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1951, accounting for 56% of the
total immigration to the newly founded state. The Israeli government’s
policy to accommodate 600,000 immigrants over four years, doubling the
existing Jewish population, encountered mixed reactions in the Knesset
as there were those within the Jewish Agency and government who opposed
promoting a large-scale emigration movement among Jews from Arab lands.
Currently,
it is estimated that only around 15,000 Jews remain in Arab countries.
This mass expulsion and exodus is part of modern history, but
inexplicably, it’s neither taught in schools nor remembered within the
context of the conflicts in the Middle East. But more on that later in
this editorial.
Edwin Black, the award-winning, New York Times
bestselling international investigative writer of 200 editions in 20
languages in 190 countries and the author of the 2016 book, “The Farhud”
wrote in December 2021, “Today, we speak of a largely forgotten ethnic
cleansing largely unparalleled in the history of humanitarian abuses.
Recall the coordinated international expulsion of some 850,000 Jews from
Arab and Muslim lands, where they had lived peaceably for as long as 27
centuries. As some know, in 2014, the Israeli government set aside
November 30th as a commemoration of this mass atrocity. It has had no
real identity or name like “Kristallnacht.” But today, from this day
forward, the day will be known as Yom HaGirush: “Expulsion Day.” It has
been a years-long road to identify and solidify this identity.”
On
September 21, 2012, a special event was held at the United Nations to
highlight the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Then Israeli
ambassador Ron Prosor asked the United Nations to “establish a center
of documentation and research” that would document the “850,000 untold
stories” and “collect the evidence to preserve their history”, which he
said was ignored for too long. In Israel alone, there are approximately 4
million descendants of these Jews from Arab lands and a few million
around the world. Then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said
that “We are 64 years late, but we are not too late.” Diplomats from
approximately two dozen countries and organizations, including the
United States, the European Union, Germany, Canada, Spain, and Hungary
attended the event. In addition, Jews from Arab countries attended and
spoke at the event.
In
2019, Rabbi Eli Abadie, MD, formerly of the Edmond J. Safra synagogue
in New York City said in his eloquent address at a day-long seminar held
at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan and entitled, “The End of
Jewish Communal Life in Arab Lands” that:
“The issues surrounding
the Palestinian refugees are frequently addressed at the UN, in the
news media and in legal journals. Very little has been written about the
Jews displaced from Arab lands. Out of almost 1120 UN resolutions on
Israel and the so-called Palestinians, almost 200 resolutions deal
specifically with Palestinian refugees, by contrast, not a single one
deals exclusively with Jewish refugees displaced from Arab lands.
“Jews
constituted a stable and historic community in these countries dating
back at least 3,000 years, centuries before Muhammad. The Aleppo Syrian
Community dates back to King David 3,000 years ago, the Yemenite
community to King Solomon 2,900 years ago, the Iraqi and Iranian
community date back to the first Babylonian exile 2,500 years ago, and
the Egyptian Community over 1,000 years ago.”
“Jews were known as
believers and as such were not given the choice to either adopt Islam or
death, but they were given the third choice–that of submission.
Therefore, coexistence between Jews and Muslims required that the Jews
be submissive to the Muslims. This coexistence dated back from the time
of Caliph Omar.
People
subjected to Muslim rule were given protection from death and
conversion as the Dhimmis. This protection required that the Dhimmis pay
a poll tax known as Jiziya or fine. The Dhimmis were forbidden from
testifying against Muslims, owning a home, holding office, bearing arms
or drinking wine in public, they could not build their houses higher
than Muslim houses, they could not ride on saddles, they could not
display their Torah except in their synagogues, neither could they raise
their voice when reading or blowing the Shofar, and were required to
wear a special emblem on their clothes, yellow for Jews (the yellow star
was not a Nazi invention). It was their duty to recognize the
superiority of the Muslim and accord him honor.”
Rabbi Abadie also
offered a multi-faceted plan for concretely addressing the crimes that
were committed against Jews from Arab lands.
He said: “Asserting
rights and redress for Jewish refugees is a legitimate call to recognize
that Jewish refugees from Arab countries, as a matter of law and
equity, possess the same rights as all other refugees.
The first injustice was the mass violation of the human and civil rights of Jews in Arab countries.
Today,
we must not allow a second injustice – for the international community
to continue to recognize rights for one victim population – Arab
refugees–without recognizing equal rights for other victims of that very
same Middle East conflict – Jewish refugees from Arab countries.”
Rabbi
Abadie concluded his captivating and informative address by sparking
the collective conscience of all humanity: “Let there be no mistake
about it. Where there is no remembrance, there is no truth; where there
is no truth, there will be no justice; where there is no justice, there
will be no reconciliation; and where there is no reconciliation, there
will be no peace.”
In a December 4, 2021 interview with the
Institute of Jewish Experience, Professor Tarek Heggy, an Egyptian
thinker and author of 35 books on the MENA politics & cultures,
spoke of Egypt’s relationship with its Jewish population. “At one time,
Egypt had 100,000 Jews, among other ethnic groups living all over the
country. This cosmopolitan, Mediterranean Egypt started to come to an
end at the same time that the Jews were forced to leave Egypt”
In
a March 2020 article by Sarina Roffe, an expert genealogist, historian,
and founder of Sephardic Heritage Project that appeared in Brooklyn’s Community Magazine,
she speaks of students from Yeshivah of Flatbush who shared stories of
what happened as their families left Syria, some of them with their
passports stamped: “Never to Return.”
Joshua Zebak spoke of his
father’s life in Damascus, as well as family members who tried to
escape. “Mazal, Lulu, and Fara Zebak, and their cousin Eva Saad planned
an escape. Unfortunately, they didn’t make it. They were brutally killed
and their remains were left in a cave. They did not see Israel but
Israel sees them. Mazal, Fara, Lulu, and Eva did not reach the border,
but they have reached our hearts and our history forever.’’
Danielle
Tawil spoke of her mother’s family, the Antebys, and their escape from
Syria. It was 1980 and people who tried to revolt were killed. Jews were
not allowed to keep their customs or study Torah. Arab kids threw
stones at Jews. Even so, the Jewish children were still able to get an
education. Born in 1971, Danielle’s mother had no birth certificate, so
even to this day she is not sure of her birthday. Danielle’s grandfather
was arrested and thrown into jail and was accused of being Russian spy;
her grandmother was also arrested a few times.
At
a certain point, half of the family was allowed to leave the country,
so Danielle’s two uncles and grandmother left in 1980. Her grandfather
and mother were left behind. They obtained false passports with fake
Arab names. Danielle’s mother’s Arab name was Mahah Dakak. They managed
to get to Paris, but they had to leave everything behind. Eventually
they got visas and were able to enter the United States. Danielle says
it is important to appreciate and “take advantage of religious freedom
we have today.”
It has been nearly a decade since the Israeli
government has accepted culpability for neglecting the nightmarish
plight of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Arab lands, yet no
official curriculum has been established in Israeli schools to teach a
new generation about the history of this vital segment of the
population.
Even after two commissions were established which
concluded that the need exists to incorporate this history into their
curriculum and most recently, the Bitton commission, nothing has been
done to ensure that such an educational curriculum will become a
reality. Nor are there any official museums, seminars, memorials or
media centered productions that spotlight the expulsion of Jews from
Arab lands. Why is this so?
As
was mentioned previously, when Jews from Arab lands began streaming
into Israel after the United Nations officially declared it a Jewish
state in 1948, there were those in the Israeli government and the Jewish
Agency who went on record as opposing this wave of emigration to the
newly founded state.
The reality is that those who comprised the
leadership of Israel in its infancy were secular, left-wing Jews of
European ancestry. They were buoyed by the socialist doctrine that they
imbibed from the Zionist youth movements that they grew up with in
Europe. Their ultimate objective was to create a socialist haven for
Jews “of their own kind” that was predicated on the political theories
of Ber Borochov and his ilk.
As such, these Jews from Arab lands
represented a dangerous threat to their political agenda. These
Ashkenazi Jews in leadership positions were totally cognizant of the
fact that these Jews from Arab clung tenaciously to the dictums of their
faith and were deeply religious. The notion of hundreds of thousands of
them reproducing at record numbers was something that the secular
leadership could not swallow.
In
order to forcibly secularize these Jews from Arab lands, the Histradrut
(Israel’s national trade union, which became one of the most powerful
institutions in Israel) would interview newly arrived Sephardic Jews.
They would ask them if they were planning to send their children to a
religious school. If they responded in the affirmative, then they were
told that they would not be given a job and would remain in poverty for
their entire lives.
Because of the vehemently anti-religious
doctrine that the leadership of Israel was wedded to, they were hell
bent on ripping away the “Simanim” (signs of their commitment to Torah)
of the Sephardic Jews that emigrated to Israel. And that meant their
kashrut, their peyot, their manner of dress and religious observance.
During
the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, the jails in Israel were brimming over
with young Sephardic Jewish boys and men. They were the tragic
byproducts of an Israeli culture created by the European Jews who
founded the state. These socialist-zionists crafted a scheme to destroy
every last vestige of Sephardic religious life and to isolate these Jews
from Arab lands. This left them with no choice but to become outcasts
in a state that clearly resented their presence.
While
this is the cold, hard truth, the government of Israel has made
negligible contributions in terms of rectifying the misdeeds of their
original leadership by making sure the story is not forgotten..
So
many decades later, we are collectively raising our voices and calling
for the government of Israel to broadcast the plight of Jews from Arab
lands with a concrete education in the school system. And this means a
curriculum that is developed by experts in Sephardic Jewish history.
This also means year round seminars for members of the Israel Defense
Forces and a special college and university course structure. Speakers,
rabbis, teachers and the media must immerse themselves in disseminating
this information about Jews from Arab lands and what they endured while
living in their host countries and what they experienced upon arriving
in Israel, despite their eventual absorption and obvious success in
making their mark in the Jewish State..
We urgently need to rallyl
for an international effort representing all aspects of the Jewish
nation for the creation of a museum to teach all Israelis and foreign
tourists about the brutality that was foisted upon Jews from Arab lands
and their ancestors. And this global outreach should be focusing on
Latin America, the United States, Canada, France, England, Australia,
Italy, and many more such countries. This effort must be broad based as
we solicit the talents of scholars, teachers, artists, chefs, etc
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The
media in Israel must focus on professionally producing television
series, documentaries and books about the horrific catastrophes that
befell Jews from Arab lands.
One day a year that is dedicated to
remembering and memorializing the heartbreaking plight of Jews from Arab
lands is certainly not sufficient in terms of making amends for
devastation that was perpetrated against these people throughout the
course of history.
Now, before it is too late, all of us must come
together in unity to amplify this issue. We call upon each of you for
your help, guidance and determination to ensure that the world never
forgets the injustices meted out to Jews from Arab lands.
While
history may or may not recall our deeds on this earth, it is our moral
obligation to stand up for brethren and by doing so, we will have made
this world a better place for future generations.
Fern Sidman is senior news editor and David Ben Hooren publsher of The Jewish Voice. Reposted with permission.