Kristallnacht began on 12th April 1928. The event itself took place on November 9th and 10th 1938. No, this is not a typo. When I interviewed Moshe Feiglin, leader of Zehut, he asked me when WWII started. I told him the night hitler was born. He agreed with this viewpoint. So I would maintain that Kristallnacht started on the 12th of April 1928. That was when the Reich Law on Firearms and Ammunition was enacted. That law enacted weapons purchase permits, and only authorized persons were allowed to buy and possess firearms. Mandatory registration allowed the authorities the ability to access the weapon and or it’s owner at any time. No doubt to check for “mandatory safe storage”. Manufacture and sale of weapons was also allowed only by permission of the authorities. The carrying of weapons in public also required a permit. In 1930 bladed weapons were added in. All this was to maintain only trustworthy people had weapons. Trustworthy as determined by the authorities.
In April 1933 the nazis enacted laws that prevented Jews from being in civil service, universities and most professions. In September 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were enacted. These determined who was a Jew, who wasn’t, how much Jewish, and deprived Jews of their civil rights. In fact, Jews were no longer considered citizens of Germany. When hitler first came to power and started his anti-Semitic odure the German people wanted none of it. But after time, the media, the entertainment industry, the schools and the constant blaming had their desired effect, the German people began to despise the Jews and see them as other than humans.
It was easy to begin disarming the Jews, the authorities knew who had weapons, what they were and they could go into homes at any time to search for weapons, and their owners. Or anything else they took a notion to search for. By this time since Jews were perceived as less than human or trustworthy and helpful citizens and bureaucrats doing their job were happy to join in if needed.
In March 18th, 1938 came the German Weapons Act, which superseded the 1928 laws. These in general appear more lenient. Only handguns would be regulated now, not rifles, shotguns or ammunition, and it deregulated their purchase and transfer. The legal age at which you could acquire a gun was lowered from 20 to 18 years of age, and the permits were now good for 3 years instead of 1 year. Before the more lenient laws of 38 only officials of the government and states, and employees of the German Railways were excused from the mass of hoop jumping. The laxer laws of 1938 added to the privileged group, holders of annual hunting permits, government workers, and nazis were now deemed reliable and trustworthy enough not to need gun ownership restrictions. This was determined by the authorities, the nazis. Manufacture of arms and ammunition though still required a permit. And those permits would no longer be issued to Jews. Any company even partly owned by Jews could no longer manufacture arms, or ammunition or sell them. As determined by the ……authorities.
Under all regulations though, manufactures and sellers were required to maintain lists of who bought guns, and the serial number of the gun. These records were turn into the ATF police every year for inspection.
On October 27th of 1938 Hitler ordered 17,000 Jews of Polish origin to be shipped back to Poland. They were allowed one night to leave Germany with one suitcase. They were put on a train and taken to the Polish border at Zbaszyn. There they were dropped off. Poland would eventually allow 4,000 in, but the rest were trapped at Zbaszyn with no food, virtually no money, no place to stay and no clue what was going to happen.
One of the families affected was the Grynszpan family. Zindel had moved from Poland to Hanover and established a store in 1911. When they were stranded at Zbaszyn one of the daughters sent a postcard to her brother, Herschel, who was living with his uncle in Paris. Herschel was livid when he received the postcard on November 3rd . He bought a gun and some bullets on November 6th and headed to the German Embassy intending to kill the Ambassador. The German Embassy was fresh out of Ambassador that day, and he ended up settling for the third secretary in the German Embassy, Ernst von Rath. The secretary died 2 days later on November 9th. This provided joseph gerbils (yes, I do know it’s goebbels, but this seems more fitting for the rat-faced nazi) the excuse he needed to label the act a conspiratorial attack by “International Jewry” against the Reich and, against the Fuehrer. When gerbils and nazi party officials found out about the death, gerbils gave a speech that urged all good Germans to take to the streets and make the Jews pay for von Rath’s death. Reinhard Heydrich said business could be destroyed but not looted. CNN and MSNBC The German newspapers claimed the Jews were murderers, and blamed the Jewish people as a whole for the killing of von Rath. And so the all the propaganda, the disarming of the Jews, the dehumanization erupted in a conflagration of hatred.
On the nights of November 9th and 10th the mobs throughout Germany and the territories of Austria and Sudetenland attacked Jews in the street, in their homes and at their places of work and worship. At least 96 Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, more than 2,000 synagogues were burned, almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were vandalized, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The mobs knew that it would be easy, who could fight back? And just to make sure that peace remained in Germany, the next day on November 11th new laws were passed that forbade any Jew from owning any weapon.
I read a column in Salon on line that maintains that gun control is good and wonderful, and just because hitler misused it doesn’t mean it can’t be just peachy. That the very idea of Jews fighting back is absurd. Really? באמת
I only have two words for them, the idiots. WARSAW.GHETTO.
A fearful price was paid the 9th and 10thof November 1938, but it started long before that. People live and learn.
Sukkot is the last of the three pilgrimage festivals. The other two are Pesach and Shavuot. Those are the festivals that the Torah commands to travel to the Temple in Jerusalem.
Following Yom Kippur, which is a very solemn holiday, Sukkot is joyous. Sukkot is commanded in the Torah in Vayikra, Leviticus 23.
33 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 34 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the Feast of Booths 1 to the Lord. 35 On the first day shall be a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. 36 For seven days you shall present food offerings to the Lord. On the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present a food offering to the Lord. It is a solemn assembly; you shall not do any ordinary work.
And
39 On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the Lord seven days. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest. 40 And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your G-d seven days. 41 You shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year. It is a statute forever throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. 42 You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths, 43 that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your G-d.”
Now, about this business of dwelling in booths when G-d got brought the children out of Egypt. For a time, G-d also had a booth, the tent of meeting, the Tabernacle. It was during this time while they were dwelling in the Sinai that the Ark of the Covenant was created. After the children were in the land that G-d lead them, they set up the Tabernacle and the Ark. In Shiloh. And there it remained until the first Temple was built in Jerusalem. It was to Shiloh back then that the people journeyed three times a year with their offerings. It was there that for 369 years in the 11th and 12th century B.C.E. that Jewish spiritual life was centered.
In 957 B.C.E. King Solomon began construction of the Temple on the site chosen by his Father, King David. David has chosen the spot in Jerusalem where Avraham had been prepared to offer up his son. Before King David ruled from Jerusalem, he was anointed king and ruled from Hebron. For the next 400 or so years Jews were able to go to the Temple in Jerusalem. That ended in 597 B.C.E. when Nebuchadnezzar began the siege of Jerusalem. Little point of interest about Hebron, it is the site of the oldest Jewish community in the world
So, the command is to go to Jerusalem for the festival of Sukkot. The Temple, Beit HaMikdash has been there since 957 B.C.E. And it was on that spot that the Second Temple was built.
Islam was created in the 7th century. C.E.
And this concludes the history portion of our column.
Back-story is good though.
So it is with great shock, I tell you…..forget that. There is no shock on this end. Not a shred. But I will still tell you UNESCO has decided that there is NO connection to the Jewish people on the Temple Mount, Beit HaMikdash. And the Uninformed Nitwits Erroneously Spouting Complete Ordure, (UNESCO), wrote up their little proposal in which they said the Temple Mount AND the Western Wall are EXCLUSIVELY a muslim holy site. They put their Jewish Hebrew names in brackets, making it seem as though it was not valid, just a claim someone made.
Do you ever feel like you just woke up in the middle of a Twilight Zone episode?
The response was pretty quick from some. Most Israeli politicians responded at once. In America Senator Ted Cruz and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen were joined by Jerrold Nadler in sending a letter from many in Congress to the UNESCO executive board condemning the decision and urging opposition. And to get their heads out, never mind, to get their heads on straight. While most of the world was outraged the F.A., the Falestinian Authority expressed pleasure with the announcement. No shock there.
Let me ask a question here, if mohammerhead tied his horse to the Western Wall, which is a retaining wall from the JEWISH temple, where do muslims think the wall came from he tied his horse to? Apparently mohammerhead had never taught his horses to ground tie.
So, if this piece of ordure resolution had been allowed to stand, let me tell you what it would look like. Currently on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, Jews and Christians are not allowed to pray. Only muslims are allowed to pray there. There are ten gates for muslims to enter. Only one for Jews and Christians, and you will stand in line to be allowed in, you can be thrown off for any or no reason. Because the Al Aqsa mosque is located there. Why?
Over the centuries, the Muslims who eventually took control of Jerusalem built two mosques on the Temple Mount, the site of the two Jewish Temples. (This was no coincidence; it is a common Islamic custom to build mosques on the sites of other people’s holy places.) Since any attempt to level these mosques would lead to an international Muslim holy war (jihad) against Israel, the Temple cannot be rebuilt in the foreseeable future.
Now you understand a bit more why the muslims wanted to build a mosque on the site of the twin towers, at ground zero?
Now, at the Western Wall, which is under Israeli control, Jews, Christians and muslims are allowed to just walk up and pray. You might have to wait for a spot to get to the wall, but that is determined by how many people are there, and how long it takes them to walk away from a spot. People just kind of line up behind people standing far enough back as to be respectful.
But let us go back even a bit further. Let’s take a look at Hebron, shall we? Where King David ruled before he relocated to Jerusalem. In Hebron you will find the Cave of Machpelah.Itis the world’s most ancient Jewish site and the second holiest place for the Jewish people. The cave is divided into three rooms, Jews and Christians have no access to the largest room except 10 days a year. Would you like to go to the cave? You will only be able to go with armed Israeli guards to protect you. You see, the muslims, the pieceful Falestinians have control of this site as well.
Now let’s go back a little further, to Shiloh. Shiloh is located in Shomron. And Shomron and Judea are what some people call the “West Bank”. It is not the West Bank, it is Judea and Shomron, or Samaria if you will. It is not “occupied territory”. It is in Israel, and there are Jews living in Israel, and some of them live in Judea and Shomron, Samaria. Caroline Glick had a column out recently regarding, basically, Israeli sovereignty. I don’t know of any other country in the world that has to justify building homes in their country. They do not have to justify to the UN, the US, the EU or anyone else when they build homes, they just do so. Part of Caroline’s column pointed out that Israel is going to have to change how it looks at things, and how it approaches solutions.
For a generation Israel’s governments have rejected the idea that we can succeed if we resist the UN. It is time that we abandon this defeatist attitude and work diligently to broker deals with member states to reduce the room for Obama and Clinton, if she is elected, to maneuver against us in the Security Council.
And
Over the past eight years of the Obama Administration, US condemnations of Israeli construction beyond the 1949 armistice lines, including in Jerusalem, have become steadily more obsessive.
This has been part of an unambiguous policy to delegitimize Israel in America. Until Obama entered the White House in 2009, there was a clear difference between the attitudes of Europe and the attitude of the United States towards us. Under Obama we have witnessed the Europeanization of American attitudes towards the State of Israel.
So far, Obama’s efforts have only been successful in the Democratic Party. Party activists have worked hand in hand with anti-Israel movements, most notably the BDS movement. In addition, several Democratic lawmakers have shown their willingness to abandon Israel, and that number is growing.
And it’s working. I recently worked a Ethnic event where many countries come together in a park, we have food sometimes, and sometimes our dance group comes and performs, usually some goodies from Israel to sell, maps, brochures and other information we give out and we answer questions. This was our first time to have some of our goods from Lev HaOlam. I was sitting there minding the table and watching people when a lady came up to the table, took a look at me, and our table and asked “how many mooooslims go to your church”? You ask the girl with the big Magen David on her shirt how many mooooslims (that’s how she said it, drawing out the ooooo) go to her “church”? Lady, you are a bit confused on your religions aren’t you? Told her none, moooooslims go to mosques. I explained this is a cultural event, not a religious event. There were people there from many countries. The point is the country the culture, our table was sponsored by the JCC, not a particular Synagogue. She then informed me that Israel is a mooooslim country. I kid you not. I informed her “It is the ONE JEWISH state in the world, and it IS JEWISH”. I perhaps was a bit adamant. She said there were more moooooslims living there than Jews. No, there aren’t.
This is a battle, and it’s not about “co-existing”. If you think it is re-read the part about how other religions that have ties to the Temple Mount, Har HaBeit, are allowed to worship there. They aren’t. Read the part about Hebron again, how others can go see the holy sites without armed guards, they can’t. You can not “co-exist” with someone that wants to wipe you out.
So here it is, Sukkot, one of the three pilgrimages when we are suppose to go to Har HaBeit. And UNESCO says it’s not Jewish.
UNESCO chairman Michael Verbes said, “I am aware of the connection between Israel and Jerusalem, and I will never deny it. Jerusalem’s Old City and its walls are a UNESCO world heritage site since 1982, and have been recorded as being holy to three religions. This is our stance on the issue, and it trumps all decisions that the principal committee has recently made.”
But in this article lies a key to part of the problem.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett was unimpressed by Bokova’s statement, however, saying it was not enough.
“The Al Aqsa Mosque [or] Al-Haram al-Sharif, the sacred shrine of Muslims, is also the Har HaBayit – or Temple Mount – whose Western Wall is the holiest place in Judaism,” Bokova said in a statement Friday, according to Haaretz.
No, no it isn’t Naftali. Har HaBeit is. The Western Wall is just the closest we can get to Har HaBeit right now because Moshe Dayan handed it over to the muslims. And that’s why we can’t go there for Sukkot.
But this is about far more than Sukkot, this is about a world that is buying a historically false narrative that Jews didn’t live in Israel. It’s about erasing the past so it’s easier to erase the present. It’s about attacks on Jews living in their historic homelands of Judea and Samaria and those attacks being excused by the world, the mainstream media and the democrat party as “justified” or perhaps understandable because they lived in “settlements”. They lived in the “occupied territories”. So, democratic party, liberals, media, UN, EU and UNESCO, where exactly is it you think Jews should be allowed to live. Because the same attacks in Judea, Shomron and Hebron are being carried out in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Yafo. Where is it that you think we should be allowed to build our Sukkah?
Crickets.???
Well, here’s the deal. Sukkahs are up, prayers are being said, meals are being eaten and conversation is taking place. It’s a joyous festival. So as far as UNESCO, US liberals and democrats, EU and UN? Chag Sukkot Samach, now get out of my Sukkah!
The Nazis (and their helpers) were just learning then how to be efficient at the art of genocide. A few victims survived to describe their experiences.
You may not know about Babi Yar. But if you’re part of the gun-rights world, you’ve seen at least a few of the photos the proud murderers took.
Just a reminder of why we never disarm, why we never trust those who seek the power to make us helpless.
I watched the documentary Claire told us about, Defying the nazis: The Sharps’ War. Fascinating show and fascinating couple! At first glance, they would seem to be a rather ordinary couple, but they were far from it. They had smarts, intuition, courage and could think on the move. Those attributes saved their lives and the lives of many others. I would say that they were rare people. Interestingly, to me, they did not think they were rare at all, and that anyone in their position would have done the same things, according to their daughter Martha. They are now listed in Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.
And Claire also pointed out that the NY Slimes article article is an attempt to get people to see the refusal of Americans to embrace those fleeing the middle East as the same situation as the refusal of many nations to accept Jews fleeing the holocaust.
It is not.
It is not at all. The mindset is the critical factor here. Actually the mindset of different groups.
In this video talking about Zionism and Theodor Herzl, about 11 minutes, 30 seconds in the lecturer talks about how Jews handle attacks against them, first is the fee or flee, they attempt to pay off the officials persecuting the communities. If that is unsuccessful they flee. At this point he talking mainly about the Jews of Russia and the persecution they faced under different Czars. But the part I want to bring out comes at 14:08 in, the difference between immigrants and refugees. The first of the Russian Jews to come were the immigrants. Yes, they were fleeing the pogroms of Russia, but some fleeing went to South America, some to Europe, some to Canada and some to the U.S. Those chose to come here, and they wanted to assimilate to some degree. They wanted to understand and fit into the culture of the U.S. Some of those chose not to speak Yiddish, to not teach it to their children. They said we’re Americans now, we will speak English and we will learn how they live and do things in America. Not to say they gave up their Judaism, but just that they chose to make a place for themselves in American society. The refugees on the other hand, those that came after WWII had a different mindset. They did not so much chose to come here as flee the devastation after WWII. I resent coming to America, it’s a safe haven for me, but I didn’t want to come here. They believed I won’t change for America, America is going to have to change for me. The lecturer said he was painting with a broad brush, but in general, that was the difference in attitudes and mindset. It only goes to about 16 minutes in, so it’s not a long part, but I do think it’s crucial to realize that there is quite possibly a different mindset in the “refugees” coming to America than what you would think.
Another difference is, when the Jews came to America whether as immigrants or refugees, their aim was not to force Americans to accept their religion or pay jizya and live as dhimmis but to live and practice their religion in safety. This is a whole different mindset. I am not saying every muslim that comes into this country has that goal in mind, only the devout ones as that is what the Koran commands.
The European countries are seeing quite an increase in sexual violence towards women and children, they think it can be stopped with wristbands and posters that say “Don’t touch me”. And that is working out about as well as one would expect. I wanted to get a bullet company to engrave “Don’t touch me” on the bottom of a bullet because I thought that would be more effective than the wristband. But I digress, the mindset and the way muslims are raised is that women are property and if they aren’t dressed modestly according to muslim standards they are fair game because they are sluts and asking for it. Daniel Greenfield does an excellent job of explaining how this works in this article. Your mindset and what you’ve been taught all your life doesn’t change because you are now living in Baltimore and not Baghdad. The leftists dangerously misunderstand that mindset.
Denial reigns supreme. After the latest round of bombing on the East Coast headlines from the defunct media read things like “motive a mystery”. To who? Only the American media, not anyone else.
A letter signed by 43 rabbis in Texas called on the state’s governor to remain in the U.S. refugee resettlement program.
“At this moment, with the number of refugees and displaced persons at its highest in recorded history, it is more important than ever for Texas to protect and welcome refugees,” read the letter sent Wednesday, hours after Gov. Greg Abbot announced that he was withdrawing his state from the program over concerns about the lack of effective security screening of the refugees.
And that is a very dangerous miscalculation of the mindset. Because it is entirely possible, if not likely that the mindset of those “refugees” is very different than what the Rabbis think it is.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the Deputy Homeland Security Secretary, speaking Wednesday to the Orthodox Union’s annual leadership mission to Washington, said rising extremism in the United States and its threat to the Jewish community keeps him awake at night.
Now while he is talking about people becoming radicalized, he does also talk about incoming threats.
And the incoming may be more than you think. While obama’s goal for this year was 10,000 “refugees” he has already exceeded that, and the year isn’t over.
It also might be worth considering the effect of their mindset on the American voting outcome. The New American program of barry’s has been in effect for a almost a year now. Neither of these articles are long, but both are worth reading.
I realize the concept is kindness for those in need, to help the less fortunate. But in a April 2016 column by Dr. Tsvi Sadan in Israel Today titled “Love Your Enemy?” he points out the flaw in this.
And yet, nowhere does it suggest that one is supposed to aid an enemy whose intention is to kill you. The reason behind G-d’s order to to kill the Midianites (Numbers Bəmidbar, 25:17) is found in their desire to annihilate Israel. In this case, loving these people, or helping them in any way, would have amounted to collective suicide for Israel.
He then points out that while Syria is a sworn enemy of Israel, Israel provides free medical care to wounded Syrians. This is “loving your enemy”. But it is only possible because Syria no longer proposes a significant threat to Israel. He states
“The same kind of help could not be given if Syria was killing Israelis on a daily basis. In such a case, Israel would be obligated to kill those who were attempting to kill her. This is the basic human right of self-defense. “
There are a lot of different mindsets in play here. Those that just want to help the “poor refugees” may be dangerously naïve thinking that they will be grateful and assimilate into American society. That has not proven to be the case in Europe or Great Britain at all. That’s the “it can’t happen to me” or “it can’t happen here”. Yeah, it can. Then there’s the political mindset, of not caring what it does to the country as long as it helps my party no matter who it hurts. Not in terms of finances, crime, culture, living conditions, or unemployment. Companies get tax breaks I understand, to hire immigrants instead of US workers. Just import them and register them to vote.
When the Sharps brought and sent the Jews from Prague to America they had a system in place. They matched those they smuggled out with people and jobs in the US. They knew the people they were dealing with and the people they were sending here. This in no way can be compared to barry’s massive invasion of people for which there is no effective vetting process. But in the mindset of the liberal NY Slimes reporter, it is the same.
This is one of those things like the handing over of the internet that is irreversible. The toothpaste ain’t going back in the tube, the bell can’t be un-rung. And for the record? My mindset is I am not wearing a burka, hijab or niqab! Isn’t it interesting that at this time the democratic party is increasing their howls for gun control? I wonder what their mindset could be?
It’s Time to Ban Guns. Yes, All of Them.
Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police. Not just because of San Bernardino, or whichever mass shooting may pop up next, but also not not because of those. Don’t sort the population into those who might do something evil or foolish or self-destructive with a gun and those who surely will not. As if this could be known—as if it could be assessed without massively violating civil liberties and stigmatizing the mentally ill. Ban guns! Not just gun violence. Not just certain guns. Not just already-technically-illegal guns. All of them.
Is Ms. Bovy volunteering to come down from Kanuckistan to kick in doors and steal the weapons?
Maybe she’s just a radicalized human extinction proponent who favors genocide over voluntarism.
I digress. Her motivations aside, back to the original question.
A remarkably silly, non-peer reviewed “study” asserts that there are a mere 55 million American gun owners in possession of just 265 million firearms. Oddly, as much as twenty years ago, the CDC put those numbers — very conservatively — at 66 million and 250 million respectively. Others, with a more more realistic understanding of firearms lifespan, estimated 80-100 million gun owners in possession of as many as 750 million firearms.
Consider the past 16 months of record breaking gun sales, on top of two decades of occasionally more sedate sales.
My guess is north of 120 million gun owners, and in the neighborhood of three quarters of a billion guns. More than a third of the country armed. Trained.
When California started getting rabid about “assault weapons” back the ‘900s, I predicted the world’s largest outbreak of “blue flu” if the outright ban passed and the police were ordered to enforce it. Shortly after — purely by coincidence — a police union spokesman made the same prediction. And the victim-disarming legislators changed tactics to slower, incremental restrictions.
So… 55 million, 66 million, 80-100 million, or 120+ million…
The police in California considered it. Have you, Bovy?
Will you personally put your money where your foaming mouth is? Will you come down from Canada to kick in doors of heavily armed citizens, and bell that cat?
We all think we would. But the reality of WWII tells us that defying deadly power, especially for the sake of those we’ve been taught to think of as “other,” is an act of rare and admirable courage.
The linked article has an agenda. That agenda is not about helping Jews. That agenda is, in fact, a bait-and-switch. The article tells the tales of brave, principled individuals who saved hunted Jews from death. Then it shames us over the issue of what today’s governments should do about Islamic refugees.
My main reason for linking that article is the stories of individual courage and an upcoming Ken Burns documentary you may want to watch: Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War. Who were the Sharps?
Unto the breach stepped a 33-year-old woman from Massachusetts named Martha Sharp.
With steely nerve, she led one anti-Nazi journalist through police checkpoints in Nazi-occupied Prague to safety by pretending that he was her husband.
Another time, she smuggled prominent Jewish opponents of Naziism, including a leading surgeon and two journalists, by train through Germany, by pretending that they were her household workers.
“If the Gestapo should charge us with assisting the refugees to escape, prison would be a light sentence,” she later wrote in an unpublished memoir. “Torture and death were the usual punishments.”
Sharp was in Europe because the Unitarian Church had asked her and her husband, Waitstill Sharp, a Unitarian minister, if they would assist Jewish refugees. Seventeen others had refused the mission, but the Sharps agreed — and left their two small children behind in Wellesley, Mass.
The documentary about the Sharps comes out this Tuesday.
I’ve decided to try to be creative. I made ya’ll a movie. The reading was part of a radio program and then I spent time collecting pictures I thought would go well with each part and tried to make the timing on the photo and the reading come out right. Yeah, I love ya’ll that much. So this is my first, and possibly only, multimedia video column.
Not long after I heard this recitation as part of Walter Bingham’s radio show I heard about some Jewish leaders in Rhode Island who are lobbying some of the pro-self defense legislators in the state to make it easier for criminals to attack defenseless people. They felt that if good, law-abiding citizens did not have the means to defend themselves and criminals were aware of that, then crime rates would surely drop. That children would be safer as they watched their parents attacked, unable to have the means to mount an effective defense of themselves and their children. Well, perhaps I’m paraphrasing a bit, a little.
But I was sad to hear this. Like I said, after having heard the recitation, and hearing the cries for more defenseless victims I can only shake my head. There are those that think they can find logic in why some are attacked. Dafna Meir was attacked because she lived in Otniel. No, she was attacked because she was Jew living in Israel. The horrible photos are from the Har Nof Synagogue massacre. Not to mention Hevron. There have been attacks on Churches, Synagogues and Jewish Community Centers in the U.S. And law enforcement have managed to stop some before they happen. I read a column that says ISIS now has a hit list of 15,000 people in the U.S. One entire church is on it. Some of the people have been notified by the FIB FBI that they are targets, many have not and the list is not publicly available. I guess what with covering for Hillary and all, it takes away from the time available to let people know they are targeted by ISIS. In the article it talks about an attack that was recently thwarted at a large church in Detroit.
But as I listened to the speaker, and thought about the images I could put with the reading I can’t help but wonder if those community leaders calling for defenseless victims shouldn’t do a brief review of history, at the least a brief review of Israeli history. Seems like there is an old saying. Something about “Those who ignore the past….”
“Hebron. The media loves to talk about Hebron. Just this afternoon, as I strolled through Manhattan, Hebron flashed before my eyes. The fire engine red news ticker on the Fox News building displayed an urgent story about Hebron. Something about settlers, building permits, casualty counts. I quickly turned the corner. Hours away from the 87th anniversary of the 1929 massacre and ethnic cleansing of the ancient Jewish community of Hebron, faux controversy over building permits for Jews seemed pretty grotesque.”
“The stories of Arabs storming Jewish homes while police casually watched has been written many times over and I won’t elaborate on the details, but the barbaric savagery which left 67 murdered and dozens injured is beyond belief. Over a couple of days, the Hebron community was wiped out and Jews in Jerusalem, Safed, Tel Aviv, Haifa and moshavim were attacked, maimed, raped, robbed, looted and murdered in a variety of creative ways. The casualty list is a lengthy one.”
Aaron may not have known what a meme was, but he created an indelible one. We just added our own sticker version to the store, and as far as we’re concerned, the more this meme gets around, the better.
But it’s the comments on the Instagram page that are notable — and chilling.
The poster repeatedly has to defend himself against accusations of everything from plain bad taste to absurd overstatement.
One comment in particular, from sierraechotangohotel (Seth), a self-identified proud American Jew, reminds us of the famous dictum that the only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history. He writes, in part:
Just remember there is in no way shape or format any iota of comparison of the current state of firearms laws to the holocaust! I am a proud Jewish American and I just don’t understand what makes you think these two subjects are in any way comparable. If we lived in Venezuela where they are currently crushing firearms and making its citizens register it’s ammunition, I might understand then but we live in the greatest country this world has to offer!
You’ve got to wonder, don’t you, how many people in early 20th-century Germany, including Jews, thought their own country was the “greatest the world has to offer.” After all, it was a grand center of civilization and had been for centuries. It was the land of Goethe and Beethoven and Schiller. Of Schopenhauer and Kant and E.T.A. Hoffman and entire hordes of Bachs. Men of the mind. Men of the arts. Thriving in Germany’s orderly civil society.
What could possibly go wrong?
Except we all know what did go wrong — and how quickly.
(“Gun control” was an integral part of what enabled things to go bad. That and … that big Egyptian river.)
Still, Seth has a point. Nobody’s crushing firearms in America. Yet. Or at least it’s not being done widely. No one — well, hardly anyone — plans to register ammunition. Not here in the greatest country this world has to offer.
But what about Venezuela? They’re busily crushing guns there, terrified of violence in the streets. Never mind that most criminals in that desperate country are buying their firearms from equally desperate or simply corrupt police. Never mind that the problem isn’t so much guns as an economy in ruins beyond anything we prosperous first-worlders can imagine.
Venezuela was once the most prosperous — one could say the greatest — country in South America. It’s got some of the world’s biggest oil reserves. It had a long, noble tradition. So how long did it take for Venezuela to go from greatness to such hell that people can’t even buy toilet paper? Seventeen years. From the ascension of Hugo Chavez, who vigorously began implementing utopian Socialist plans in 1999 (to the applause of the world’s celebrities) to the muddle of his hand-picked successor Nicolas Maduro. Seventeen little years.
Slightly less time than it took Hitler to go from demonization to destruction of Germany’s Jews. Slightly longer than it took for Germany to go from pre-WWI prosperity to hyperinflation to the Holocaust to bombed-out ruins.
Still, we’ve got nothing to worry about, right? As Seth says, there’s not a thing to be concerned about until the firearms are being crushed en masse and ammo being actively registered.
And by that impeccable logic, the Jews in Germany were perfectly sensible to stay put and stay happy until the boxcars started rumbling down the tracks.
August 13, 2016 was the 9th of Av, or Tisha B’Av 5776. Since nothing is to mar the joy of Shabbat, it was observed on the 14th of August.
I realize, that’s yesterday, but I can’t let it go without sharing a couple things.
The first is something wonderful I got from my teammate, Y.B. a wonderful true story honoring the spirit and commitment of Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam.
Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam
Defiance on a Death March
The Klausenberger Rebbe z’tl on 9 Av
Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam became one of the youngest rebbes in Europe, leading thousands of followers in the town of Klausenburg, Romania, before World War II. His wife, eleven children and most of his followers were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
In the summer of 1944 the Russian Army moved west and pushed the Nazis further and further back across Poland into Germany. The Germans, in an effort to cover their crimes forced thousands of slave labourers on death marches across Poland. The Rebbe had previously spent time in Auschwitz and on a work detail in Warsaw, sifting through the rubble of the now vacant Warsaw ghetto on his hands and knees, forced to look for anything that might be of value for the Nazi war effort.
As the Russians moved closer the Rebbe along with 6000 other prisoners were forced to march for twenty miles a day, in the scorching Polish summer. The death camp of Dachau in Germany was to be their final destination of which just 2000 made it.
On the march, the prisoners were starved of food and water and any stragglers were shot immediately. On the day of Tisha B’Av (9th of the Jewish month of Av), Jews mourn the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem as well as many other disasters that have happened on this painful day. One of the signs of mourning of Tisha B’Av is that Jews remove their leather shoes (leather shoes being an inappropriate sign of comfort and luxury on this solemn day).
On this day and on this march, the Rebbe removed his shoes. Despite all that had happened to him, he refused to give up on the Jewish observances that made him who he was. The Nazis saw this as a sign of rebellion and decided to have some fun at the Rebbe’s expense. They made him march alongside the column on broken stones and gravel. They joked as his feet became bloodied and bruised.
At one point they thought he was trying to escape down the embankment so they shot him. He was hit in the arm and tumbled down the embankment. In an effort to stem the bleeding, he took bark and leaves from a tree and wrapped it around the wound. It was at that point in his life, when faced with such unimaginable pain, hatred and adversity that the Rebbe demonstrated forever that there is no depth from which the human spirit cannot rise.
It was at that point that he swore to God that should he survive he would build an institution based on the Jewish values of love, peace, equality and tolerance, all of the values the Nazis despised. He swore that he would build a hospital in the land of Israel that would epitomise everything the Nazis tried to destroy.
Today, that hospital is Laniado in Netanya.The hospital was built in 1974. After the maternity unit was opened, the Rebbe asked the nurses and staff to call him immediately when the first baby was born. A few days later he received the call with the good news. Upon hearing, the Rebbe said in a broken voice, ‘zeh ha nekama sheli’, ‘this is my revenge’. This is my revenge – life will defeat death, hope will defeat pain, compassion will overcome hatred.
May this Tisha B’Av be the last before our mourning is turned into joy and celebration.
And this one I have for you.
And now if you’ll excuse me, I seem to have some dust in my eye.
Jews. Guns. No compromise. No surrender.
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