Everybody wants spirituality. To be a good person means to walk in G-d's ways. How does that translate to reality? The only guidebook to spirituality that has stood the test of time is the Hebrew Bible. The Bible says that the Jews will be a light onto the nations. But if you are not a born Jew, you have to convert, which is not so easy!! If you do convert, it is a lot of work to be a Jew (three times a day prayer, keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath).
This blog will show you how to be Jewish without the work!!
Monday, April 18, 2022
Breaking news: Coalition Member Mansour Abbas: Non-Muslims Must Stay Out of Temple Mount By David Israel and Muslims destroy ancient artifacts to try to block Jewish visits to Temple Mount Part XXIII: Acknowledging the Truth About the Final Solution By Alex Grobman PhD. and What's My Line? - James Garner; Tony Randall [panel] (Oct 25, 1964) [CORRECTED] and It’s Demography, Stupid! By Mitchel G. Bard and sailing the ancient seas-what did the people eat and the third day of Chol Ammoed Passover
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 Jordanian Foreign Ministry Condemned Israel, stating 'these acts are a blatant, reprehensible and unacceptable violation,' April 15, 2022.
The Ra'am party, which is part of Naftali Bennett's coalition government, issued this message in Arabic on Friday, following Arab clashes with police on the Temple Mount: "We reject any invasion of Al-Aqsa Mosque and do everything we can to prevent the violation of its sanctity."
The announcement also states that Ra'am MKs have been working for many weeks to prevent any damage to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. According to the statement, "the real solution lies in preventing any non-Muslim from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque under one pretext or another."
Now, mind you, while in Hebrew and English, the name "Al-Aqsa Mosque" usually refers only to the mosque at the southern end of the Temple Mount compound, since 1948 and certainly since 1967, many Muslims refer to the entire complex of mosques and structures on the Temple Mount, including the Dome of the Rock, as the "Al-Aqsa Mosque." Therefore, when an Arab speaker mentions in Arabic the name "Al-Aqsa Mosque," he or she refers to the whole thing, and when Abbas says non-Muslims should never be allowed in Al Aqsa, he relies on years of Muslim Brotherhood references to the holy compound in its entirety as Al-Aqsa Mosque, which they used to call Beit Almakdas – literally the Holy Temple.
Ra'am party Chairman Mansour Abbas, October 4, 2021. / Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90
Ra'am's statement also reads: "We will do our duty for the Al-Aqsa Mosque and defend it from all aggression. There is no room for political considerations when the sanctity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is violated."
Close to a thousand Arabs clashed with police Friday morning and threw stones from the Temple Mount area down on the heads of Jews in the Kotel Plaza (Arab Rioters on Temple Mount Threw Stones on Jews at the Kotel, Police Breached, 90 Arabs Injured). Before the riots began, a thousand Arabs slept in the compound to prevent what they imagined would be a Jewish Passover sacrifice. Dozens of young people, some of them masked, held a procession in the Temple Mount area at night with Hamas and Fatah flags. The rioters collected stones and wooden planks in preparation, and as soon as the morning prayer had ended, the violent riot began.
Police forces entered the Al-Aqsa mosque to evacuate the rioters and arrested hundreds of them. Police finally cleared the entire compound from people. The Red Crescent reported 152 were injured from gas inhalation and Police sponge bullets. At least two of them were injured seriously. Police said three officers were slightly injured. The clashes lasted about six hours, at the end of which the police allowed the Muslims to reenter the Temple Mount.
Homeland Security Minister Omer Barlev said Friday: "We have no interest in the Temple Mount becoming a hotbed of violence that will harm both the Muslim worshipers there and the Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall."
Was he depicting an image of Jewish rioters in the Kotel plaza throwing rocks up at the Muslims on the Temple Mount?
Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai said: "A handful of people can't violate the peace and freedom of worship."
Someone call Merriam-Webster people and tell them the new definition of a handful of people is a thousand Arabs.
Ra'am MK Mazen Ghanaim sent a letter to Prime Minister Bennett threatening to resign from the coalition: "If the security forces' activity in the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque is not stopped immediately, I see myself outside the coalition," he insisted.
Please, God, help MK Ghanaim make good on his threats…
The Jordanian Foreign Ministry Condemned Israel, stating: "These acts are a blatant, reprehensible and unacceptable violation. The Israeli authorities must remove the police and special forces from the compound immediately."
As usual, the typical headlines of any of these stories go along the line of "it all started when Israel retaliated." Still, if there's new violence on the Temple Mount and the police, being an agency in charge of law & order, goes in, maybe Ra'am would go away and take with it the nightmare known as the Lapid-Bennett government.
Muslims destroy ancient artifacts to try to block Jewish visits to Temple Mount
Ancient artifacts blocking a path taken by Jews on the Temple Mount. (Shalev Shalom/TPS)
Archaeological finds of great historical and cultural significance "are thrown into the field without any treatment, abandoned to terrorists on the mountain."
By Aryeh Savir, TPS
Early Sunday morning, Muslim vandals blocked the paths on the Temple Mount where Jewish visitors usually traverse with rocks, metal poles and ancient artifacts, some dating back to the Second Temple era some 2,000 years ago.
Police securing the holy site did not clear the paths after they were blocked, and the Jewish visitors who came to the holy site on Sunday and Monday, during the Passover holiday, were forced to take a different route.
Activists from the "Beyadenu – for the Temple Mount" organization reported that some of the materials used to block the paths included parts of ornamented columns that were apparently once used to adorn the Temple site.
Tom Nisani, CEO of Beyadenu, told TPS that "this is another disaster and the destruction of the Jewish heritage on the Temple Mount. Antiquities are thrown into the field without any treatment, abandoned to terrorists on the mountain."
The Islamic Waqf, conducting illegal renovations on the Temple Mount, routinely and systematically dumps artifacts unearthed on the Temple Mount, some thousands of years old with paramount significance to archaeology, history, and the Jewish connection to the site.
In an attempt to salvage some of these findings, the Temple Mount Sifting Project was established in 2004 in response to the illegal removal of 5,210 tons of antiquities-rich earth from the Temple Mount by the Waqf.
About half a million artifacts have been pulled from the rubble so far, including 5,000 ancient coins.
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
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.
It's Demography, Stupid! By Mitchel G. Bard
Photo Credit: WDR Free
Let's be clear. There is one reason and one reason only why Palestinians have not achieved independence and no peace agreement has been reached with Israel. The Palestinians are not interested and have rejected every opportunity to achieve both. Still, U.S. officials and others continue to squawk like parrots about a "two-state solution" as if their mere vocalization would make it so.
In his letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004, President George W. Bush wrote what should be obvious, that given "new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final-status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." Any final-status agreement, he said, "will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."
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Sadly, President Joe Biden is following in the footsteps of Bush's successor, former President Barack Obama, in refusing to acknowledge those realities.
Pointless as it may be given their myopia, let's remind the president and his diplomats of life as it is rather than as they would like it to be in Israel and the "disputed territories."
Yaakov Katz has recently published his annual collection of statistics on Jewish communities in the West Bank (and, yes, he calls it the West Bank) based on Israeli government data. According to his report, the Jewish population is now nearly half a million (490,493 to be precise), an increase of nearly 17 percent over the last five years. This does not include 330,000 Jews living in parts of Jerusalem that are in "disputed territory."
If you put your head in the sand and ignore the Palestinian objective of creating a state from the river to the sea and believe they will settle for a Judenrein state based on the 1949 armistice lines with eastern Jerusalem as their capital, more than 820,000 Jews would have to be removed from their homes—nearly 12 percent of the Jewish population of Israel. Apparently, the Palestinians believe the Jews will march like lemmings into the sea for their benefit.
Now for those who insist that settlements are the obstacle to peace, I refer you to paragraph one. Also, a historical reminder: If the Palestinians had accepted autonomy in 1979, the number of settlers would have likely been frozen around 10,000. If the Palestinians had fulfilled their Oslo obligations, the number would have been roughly 170,000. Had PLO head Yasser Arafat not rejected Ehud Barak's peace offer, the figure would have been 200,000. When Bush wrote his letter to Sharon and unsuccessfully sought Palestinian support for his Road Map, there were 246,000 settlers. The last time the Palestinians engaged in serious negotiations, in 2008, they walked away from an independent state and left 260,000 Jews on "their land." In the succeeding 13 years, that number has increased by nearly 90 percent.
Congratulations, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Your intransigence is really paying off. You are the true father of the settlements.
So, here's a reality check for the parrots.
Most two-state proposals envision that Israel will annex Betar Illit (pop. 67,000) and five settlement blocs—Ma'ale Adumim (50,000), Modi'in Illit (91,000), Ariel (65,000), Gush Etzion (37,000) and Givat Ze'ev (37,000) —encompassing 37 communities. That is roughly one-third of all the settlements and 71 percent of the total Jewish population. At Camp David in 2000, Israel insisted that 80 percent of the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria be under Israeli sovereignty.
An agreement to dismantle the settlements outside the blocs would require the removal of more than 140,000 people. The expectation during the Camp David talks was that roughly one-third of the Jews living in other settlements would agree to move into these blocs or other parts of Israel. This assumption has never been tested, and that number could be larger or smaller. If it is accurate, the percentage in the blocs would reach 80 percent but still require Israel to evacuate nearly 100,000 people or the equivalent of the entire city of West Palm Beach. This assumes that Israel was not forced to remove any of the thousands of Jews in eastern Jerusalem to make way for a Palestinian capital.
How many Americans remember the cost and trauma that was involved in evacuating 9,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip? Do the parrots seriously believe any Israeli government is going to send in the army to remove 100,000 or more Jews from their homes?
Oh, but won't they voluntarily leave in the interest of peace?
Given decades of Palestinian incitement, terror, intransigence and the indoctrination of children with hatred, what do you think it will take to convince Israelis that Palestinians are seriously prepared to live in peace? Another handshake like the one to seal the Oslo accords?
OK, the settlers are not fools, but they'll leave for money.
Many settlers would give up their homes if compensated and they believed it would contribute to peace. The United States has said it won't pay for the removal of settlers, so it would cost the government of Israel billions of dollars to pay thousands of Jews to leave their homes. The true believers that the Land of Israel is more important than the State of Israel will not move at any price. All the settlers also know that even with the money they received, the lives and livelihoods of many Jews from Gaza were ruined.
Demography doesn't work for the Greater Israel enthusiasts either. I know there is a school of thought that all the Palestinian demographic statistics are inflated, that the Jewish birthrate now exceeds that of the Arabs, and that Jews will immigrate in large numbers in the coming years. Still, if we look at the demographics today, the picture is not favorable for annexationists. Despite the million Jews who came from the former Soviet Union, the percentage of the Israeli population that is Jewish has fallen from 85 percent in 1975 to 74 percent today.
If you add Israel's current population of 9,450,000 (6,998,000 Jews) with the disputed territories (4.9 million, according to CIA data, compared to 5,164,173, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics) you get an entity with nearly 14.4 million people, and the percentage of Jews would fall under 50 percent. Even if the CIA figures were off by a million, a bare majority would be Jews.
Some argue that Israel should not annex Gaza—what would happen to it then is unclear—in which case the Jewish population would increase to 56 percent of the population, but the Palestinians would still make up a significant minority (44 percent compared to 21 percent today).
The traditional argument is that Israel would then face the dilemma of whether to deny the Palestinians the right to vote and cease to be a democracy, or allow them equal rights and lose its Jewish character. The people who deny the dilemma exists typically argue that the Jews will remain the majority and downplay or ignore the impact of a significantly larger Arab population than the one today.
Consider, however, that unlike most of the Israeli Arabs today, the Palestinians in the territories would be a potential hostile fifth column. If they decided to participate in the political process, they would undoubtedly alter the character of the state. With just 21 percent of the population, the Arab parties hold 10 seats in the Knesset, the third most, and the Ra'am Party is holding the coalition together. If the population doubled and their Knesset representation did as well, the Arab parties would be the second-largest faction if the election outcome was similar to the last one.
Israel could freeze settlements tomorrow and the demographic reality wouldn't change, and the population would still continue to have natural growth.
It was unpopular, but the Trump plan was the first to seriously take into account the demographics. Going back to the same old failed policies of the past, as Biden seems keen to do, will have as much success as convincing Polly to give him a cracker
Part XXIII: Acknowledging the Truth About the Final Solution
*Editor's Note: This is part XXIII in a series. You can read Part XXII, here
In his autobiography, Challenging Years: The Autobiography of Stephen Wise, Wise said as soon as he received Riegner's telegram, he immediately communicated with Sumner Wells, undersecretary of state, a personal friend of Roosevelt, who had always been "deeply understanding and sympathetic." Historians Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut explain Wells had "a humanitarian streak," and was friendly with Eleanor Roosevelt, who had for some time voiced her concern about the Nazi persecution of the Jews. In the end, Wells might not be disposed to do all of Wise expected, but he would clearly not ignore him.
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Welles asked Wise "not to release the information until an attempt had been made to confirm it." Breitman and Kraut said Wells agreed Riegner's report might be accurate but asked why would the Nazi murder mass numbers of Jews when they were required for slave labor. Wells also reminded Wise about the fake atrocity stories in World War I. Pending Wells return from vacation, and until the information could be investigated, he asked there be no publicity.
Wise contacted US Supreme Court Judge Felix Frankfurter to suggest he might share the information with Roosevelt. In Stephen S. Wise, Servant of the People, Wise wrote: "Perhaps he [Roosevelt] will not be able to avert the thing, but one somehow feels that the foremost and finest figure in the political world today should not be without knowledge of this unutterable disaster which threatens and may now be in process of execution."
Another Shocking Cable
Historian David Kranzler noted that on September 3, 1942, Recha and Yitzchok Sternbuch from St. Gallen, Switzerland, who founded the Relief Organization for Jewish Refugees Abroad, sent a cable to Jacob Rosenheim, president of the Agudath Israel World Organization in New York alerting American Jews about the mass slaughter of Jews in Europe. The cable arrived via the Polish Consulate in New York addressed to Dr. Isaac Lewin. Lewin delivered the cable to Rosenheim one day after he received it: The cable, which was delivered to Wise, read: "According to recently received authentic information, the German authorities have evacuated the last Ghetto in Warsaw, bestially murdering about one hundred thousand Jews. Mass murders continue. From the corpses of the murdered soap and artificial fertilizers are produced. The deportees from other occupied countries will meet the same fate. It must be supposed that only energetic reprisals on the part of America could halt these persecutions. Do whatever you can to produce such a reaction, stirring up statesmen, the press, and the community…."
The Sternbuch cable wrongly claimed that the Germans made soap and artificial fertilizer from the Jewish corpses.
In response to the request to alert the community, Breitman and Kraut wrote, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis called a meeting of the representatives of the leading American Jewish organizations: the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Labor Committee, B'nai B'rith, Agudath Israel, Mizrachi, Poale Zion, and others. Wise, who chaired the meeting, told the delegates about the Rieger and Sternbuch reports, and how the State Department requested there be no publicity at this point. The assembly recommended that Roosevelt appeal to Germany to cease murdering the Jews, warn German leaders they would be held accountable for their war crimes, urge neutral countries to intercede and have the US threaten Germany with retaliation against German aliens in America. The delegates would also request congressional and church assistance. But first, Wise had to meet with Wells, which he did as well as with Vice President Henry Wallace, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and presidential assistant David Niles. When Wise and his son James met with Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Morgenthau said when Wise read the "unbelievable cable about the crematoriums in Europe, I think that that day changed my life."
In The Personal Letters of Stephen Wise, Wise wrote a letter to John Haynes Holmes, a prominent Unitarian minister, pacifist, and co-founder of NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), informing him about the 100,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto "who have been massacred by the Nazis and their corpses have been used to make soap and fertilizer[the soap and fertilizer part is a myth], leaving him sleepless. "You will say it is all bound up with war. But do remember my dear Holmes, that this war against us began before there was a war, had nothing to do with war, was nor even a cause of war; and you and I and [Harry Emerson] Fosdick, one of the most prominent liberal ministers of the early 20th century] and any of us, who have some spiritual and moral power, had moved America and Britain and France really to intervene in behalf of slain innocents, the war might not have come. These things have led to war; they have not come out of war. Moreover, Jews, unarmed and defenseless, have been unable to do anything for themselves; and the world has done little, if anything, for them."
Two Letters from Richard Lichtenstein
Historian Dina Porat points out that on August 27 and 30, 1942, Richard Lichtheim, the Jewish Agency's delegate to the League of Nations in Geneva, (and one of the Zionists' most significant sources of information about the situation in Europe), sent two letters to Palestine providing more evidence significantly surpassing prior accounts of Nazi atrocities. The letters, which reached Palestine after a month, offered reliable evidence of Hitler's clandestine plan to annihilate European Jewry in death camps throughout Eastern Europe. Recognition of what these letters meant was still not appreciated.
According to Breitman and Kraut, on October 22, Gerhard Rieger and Lichtheim met with Leland Harrison, the senior minister at the legation in Bern, at the request of Wells, to ascertain what additional evidence they had. "Wells repeated interest broke the logjam in Berman and Washington," asserted Breitman and Kraut. The next day, Harrison informed Wells that many reports from Jewish and non-Jewish sources, augmented by information from Paul Squire, the American consul in Geneva, revealed the Nazis were clearly dispatching Jews from Western Europe to an unidentified fate in the East. Polish diplomats verified the Jews in Warsaw Ghetto were being permanently removed. Harrison now agreed to help Riegner and Lichtheim and advised Squire they would be welcome at the legation. Counselor Jerome Klahr Huddle explained to Squire the urgency of the matter. In the meantime, Wells shared Harrison's ominous cable with Wise.
Porat said that as late as October 25, at a meeting of the Jewish Agency executive, Moshe Shapira questioned the justification for the fear expressed by Yitzhak Gruenbaum, chairman of the executive and one of the most prominent leaders of Polish Jewry, about the survival of the Jews of Europe. To all the rumors reaching Palestine, Shapira responded: "It seems to me that they all contain measures of exaggeration…."
In a letter of November 30, Martin Gilbert quotes Lichtheim criticizing the failure of the Jewish leadership in Palestine to heed his warnings of August 30, September 18, and October 10. There were Jews who had not yet been deported to the "unknown destination," and who were still restricted to living in ghettos, which was "certainly only a formal step to achieve their starvation and annihilation." With resentment, he added, "I am under the impression that some of our friends in Palestine have been unwilling to believe what I have to them in numerous reports written during the last six or eight months about the position in Poland and the rest of German-dominated Europe, while these same reports have been read with such attention and have been acted upon in London and New York."
Palestine Post Report
On November 23, 1942, the Palestine Post ran black-bordered columns to report the "harrowing accounts received by the Jewish Agency Executive in Jerusalem from reliable sources, on the mass murders and slaughter which have been carried out among Jews of Poland and among those from Western and Central Europe deported to Poland."
Wise Received Authorization from US State Department
Wise received authorization on November 24, 1942. Wise noted that during November, "four sworn statements" reached the State Department from Leland Harrison, the senior minister at the legation in Bern, Switzerland, "fully substantiating Riegner's reports." Welles then summoned him to come to Washington, D.C. Suspecting he "might hear the direst tidings," he asked his son, James Waterman Wise, who was involved with the World Jewish Congress, to accompany him. "Gentlemen," Welles began, "I hold in my hands documents which have come to me from our legation in Bern, I regret to tell you, Dr. Wise, that these confirm our dreadful apprehensions. For reasons you will understand, I cannot give these to the press, but there is no reason you should not. It might even help if you did."
Wise immediately called a press conference to report the "startling and ghastly news that had just been imparted to us, that in addition to the two to three million Jews estimated already to have been slain in the camps and their gas—and even gasless-ovens, the Nazi regime was resolved to annihilate the rest of the Jewish population." He was now authorized to acknowledge the State Department was the source of these "awful tidings."
Worldwide demonstrations of sympathy were held on December 2, 1942 as more news of the atrocities became known. In New York City, about a half a million Jewish workers stopped their work for ten minutes and many non-Jews joined in as well. Two-minute periods of silence were observed by several New York radio stations, and a special memorial service was broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Los Angles also held memorial services on December 2. Yiddish newspapers in all cities appeared with black borders and demanded the Unite Nations stop the liquidation of the Jews. Many Jewish organizations signed a proclamation summarizing the "extent of the tragedy that had overtaken Jewish life." The JTA, Der Tog, Forward, Congress Weekly, Jewish Frontier, Contemporary Jewish Record, and The New York Times.
Part XXVI
December 8, 1942 Meeting With Roosevelt
Arthur Morse, The New York Times, Congress Weekly, and the Forward reported that on December 8, 1942, President Roosevelt received a delegation of prominent Jewish leaders, where they handed him a 20-page country-by-country analysis of the annihilation entitled "Blue Print for Extermination." Roosevelt expressed his profound shock to learn that two million Jews had already died. The delegation appealed for action to stop the Nazi massacres and urged the US to appoint a commission to investigate the atrocities committed against civilian populations and shared with the conscience of the world. Roosevelt said the Allies were "doing everything possible to ascertain who are personally guilty." As the meeting came to a close, the question Wise asked "what would victory mean to the dead" was never answered.
Morse asked "but beyond the issue of human survival lay other fundamental questions. What would the effect of Allied disinterest be on the captive peoples of Europe who might shelter the oppressed at the risk of their own lives…on Axis troops weighing the commission of atrocities…or on churchmen in Nazi-occupied lands wrestling with consciences…or on German commanders contemplating their own futures?"
Having decided not to oppose Allied policy, the most American Jews could hope for was a joint statement by the Allies condemning the extermination of European Jewry and other declarations of support and sympathy. The Allied declaration was issued on December 17, 1943. Pope Pius the XII added his own prayer in his Christmas Message on December 24, 1942.
Jan Karski Meeting with President Roosevelt
Roosevelt should not have been surprised. On July 28, 1943, Jan Karski, a member of the Polish underground resistance movement, and Jan Ciechanowski, the Polish ambassador in exile, met with Roosevelt to inform him of his firsthand account of the Nazi effort to destroy the Jews of Europe. In Story of a Secret State, Karski said he was told Roosevelt "wanted to hear from me personally about the events in Poland and occupied Europe." The president was "amazingly well informed about Poland," Karski said, "and wanted still more information. His questions were minute, detailed and directed squarely at important points. He asked me to verify the stories about the German practices against the Jews."
Karski also provided information gained by visiting the Warsaw Ghetto twice and by posing as a guard at Izbica, a transit camp, where he witnessed masses of Jews being primed to be deported to concentration camps. Walter Laqueur said one of Karski's most significant points he made to Roosevelt concerned the Final Solution: "The unprecedented destruction of the entire Jewish population is not motivated by Germany's military requirement. Hitler and his subordinates aim at the total destruction of the Jews before the war ends and regardless of its outcome. The Allied governments cannot disregard this reality. The Jews in Poland are helpless. They have no country of their own. They have no independent voice in the Allied councils. They cannot rely on the Polish underground or population-at-large. They might save some individuals—they are unable to stop the extermination. Only the powerful Allied governments can help effectively."
This information was shared with many individuals and institutions in the US. This included the State and Justice Departments, writers, newspapermen and women, and Catholic and Jewish leaders including Nachum Goldmann, Stephen Wise, Samuel Margoshes, and many others. Karski also met with US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, accompanied by Frankfurter's friend, Jan Ciechanowski. Walter Laqueur writes that when Karski told Frankfurter of his experience, the judge responded, "I can't believe you." Ciechanowski told Frankfurter Karski represented the Polish Government, and he was telling the truth Frankfurter said: "I did not say this young man is lying, I said I cannot believe him. There is a difference." Either Frankfurter found the thought of Jews being killed in this fashion inconceivable or he knew that if he acknowledged the systematic destruction, he would have to act publicly in their defense.
The delegation appealed for action to stop the Nazi massacres and urged the US appoint a commission to investigate the atrocities committed against civilian populations and shared with the conscience of the world. Roosevelt said the Allies were "doing everything possible to ascertain who are personally guilty." As the meeting came to a close, the question Wise asked "what would victory mean to the dead" was never answered.
Morse asked "but beyond the issue of human survival lay other fundamental questions. What would the effect of Allied disinterest be on the captive peoples of Europe who might shelter the oppressed at the risk of their own lives…on Axis troops weighing the commission of atrocities…or on churchmen in Nazi-occupied lands wrestling with consciences…or on German commanders contemplating their own futures?"
Having decided not to oppose Allied policy, the most American Jews could hope for was a joint statement by the Allies condemning the extermination of European Jewry and other declarations of support and sympathy. The Allied declaration was issued on December 17, 1943. Pope Pius the XII added his own prayer in his Christmas Message on December 24, 1942.
The Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations against Extermination of Jews December 17, 1942
"The attention of the Governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Yugoslavia and of the French National Committee "condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They reaffirm their solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end."
Pope Pius the XII's Christmas Message on December 24, 1942
In the Pope's Christmas Message on December 24, 1942, he declared, "Mankind owes that vow [of bringing back society to the center of gravity, which is the law of G-d] to the hundreds of thousands of persons, who without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or a slow decline."
US State Department Annoyed by Public Pressure and Protest
In his autobiography Challenging Years, Wise wrote that Riegner continued to send information to the State Department, some of which was forwarded to him. On January 19, 1943, Riegner reported that Jews in Poland were being murdered at the rate of six thousand a day. After being inundated by public pressure and protests, the State Department decided to find a way to stop the harassment. Wise quotes Henry Morgenthau, Jr. secretary of the treasury, who wrote in his diary, how the State Department "tried to shut off the pressure by shutting off the source of the flow of information which nourished it." A few days after Riegner's cable arrived at the State Department on January 21, 1943, (cable 354)Leland Harrison was instructed, according to Morgenthau, "not to send back any more of Riegner's information—any more stories of atrocities which might provoke more mass meetings and more public protest."
The cable was signed by Welles, although it is clear he knew nothing about the request based on his "well-known record on the subject." Furthermore, on April 10, he cabled Leland Harrison for additional information from Riegner. Harrison replied that such critical information should not be subjected to the constraints imposed by cable 354.
Wise noted the "crime of the bureaucrats, however, was far more serious than the attempt to withhold information." In early 1943, Riegner informed them that approximately 70,000 Jews in France and Rumania could be saved, and a number of Polish Jews fled to Hungary, where the Germans had not yet begun a coordinated effort to destroy the Jews if funds could be sent to Switzerland. The money would be deposited in banks under the names of Nazi officials, where it could be withdrawn only after the war. Funds were available Wise said, however, they needed government approval and consent to transfer the money.
An initial approach had been made to meet Roosevelt, but it was not until July 22, that Wise went to the White House. "The President's immediate response astonished me and delighted me," Wise said. "Stephen," Roosevelt said, "Why don't you go ahead and do it?" Roosevelt picked up the phone and told Henry Morgenthau, Jr, "This a very fair proposal which Stephen makes…"
Not until December 18 did the State Department issue instructions that a foreign funds license be issued to Gerhart Riegner-"five full months after the same license had been approvedby the President of the United States, and theSecretary of the Treasury [italics in the original]. "Let history, therefore record for all time," Wise declared, "that were it not for[US] State Department and [British] Foreign Office bureaucratic bungling and callousness, thousands of lives might have been saved and the Jewish catastrophe partially averted."
Part XXVII Criticism of Rabbi Wise
Rabbis Wise's decision to delay publication of the Riegner report provoked severe criticism from his colleagues, contemporaries and scholars observed historian Zohar Segev. This caanAt the first international Jewish conference held since World War II began
Atlantic City, New Jersey November 1944,
From minutes of the
In Official Secrets,
Part XXVIII
Conclusion
When American Jews finally accepted that Jews in Europe were being systematically annihilated, it did not dampen their belief in the ultimate defeat of Hitler or in the inevitability of Jewish survival. In the Contemporary Jewish Record, The American Jewish Committee placed events in perspective: "no amount bad news from the battlefront can dim the hopes for the success of an eventual peace conference nor still the discussion of postwar problems and solutions." Until that time, most Jews believed their only recourse was to intensify their efforts for postwar preparations; increase their help to the and it Allies; extend more aid and relief to European Jewry; and remind the Nazis their atrocities against the Jew would be punished at the end of the war.
Although the American press gave only sporadic attention to the condition of Polish Jewry during the four months of war in Europe in 1939, this improved somewhat throughout the war. While space allotted reports of Jewish persecution varied, the American press provided some essential information, especially about the atrocities. Publicly acknowledging this information in the American press, was important, since many Jews became skeptical about the veracity of the reports, ii not published in the American press. The JTA, which reported on murders in Eastern Europe, and the Yiddish press provided almost daily accounts of Jewish suffering and information was also available in the Anglo-Jewish press. At times, reports were exaggerated and fragmentary, but enough data was available to form a general idea of the tragedy occurring the Jewish people, and information was neither limited to upper echelons not its dissemination restricted. The Jewish press continually admonished American Jews for failing to adopt a more aggressive response. The press did not believe this weak reaction was based on the ignorance of the facts.
Though it can be argued that only a small fraction of American Jews read the JTA, the Yiddish and Anglo-Jewish press, the editorials reflect the view that information was common knowledge in the American Jewish community. Reports of the mass murder of Russian Jews began to appear in July 1941. By late 1941, it was accepted fact that some Jewish communities were systematically and methodically murdered. S. Bertrand Jacobson, a JDC representative in Eastern Europe reported the use of poison gas in March 1942, and that it was Nazi policy to exterminate all the Jews under their control. Why was there such reluctance to believe these reports that were confirmed by Szmul Zygielbojm and Ignacy Schwartzbart, representatives on the Polish National Council of London?
Marie Syrkin, a Labor Zionist leader and editor of the Jewish Frontier explained how even when information became available, it took time to assimilate the dimensions of what was happening, and how American Jews, including Jewish journalists who since 1933 had been actively involved in the fight against Nazi persecution, were not psychologically prepared to accept the truth: "Today when genocide, gas-chamber, and mass extermination are the small coin of language, it is hard to reconstruct the more innocent state of mind when American Jews, like the Jews in Europe's ghettos, could not immediately grasp that the ascending series of Nazi persecutions had reached this apex." Further, she asked: "If such was the psychological unreadiness of sophisticated publicists whose … concerns … had been to expose each new phase of the Nazi terror, what could be expected from a less informed general public?"
Stephen Wise experienced another issue in the constant reports about atrocities, which took its toll. After the demonstration at Madison Square Garden on September 28, 1942, approximately a month after receiving the Riegner report, Wise wrote to a confidant in London right afterward: "in time of war it is very difficult to get people excited, generally speaking about atrocities. All of war is basically such an atrocity that it is difficult to move people with respect to special atrocities, even though they are special, and in the case of atrocities practiced against us, unbelievable."
In desperation, On 11 May, at his home in west London, Zygielbojm committed suicide to protest against the indifference and inaction of the Allied governments." I cannot continue to live and to be silent," he declared "while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave. By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people."
What could American Jewry have done differently? Writing to a friend in Jerusalem on December 9, 1942 Richard Lichtheim, the Jewish Agency's delegate to the League of Nations in Geneva, summed up the dilemma the Jews faced: "You cannot divert a tiger from devouring his prey by adopting resolutions or sending cables. You have to take your gun and shoot him." American Jews did not have to weapons needed to confront the Germans.
The story does not end here. The war ended two and a half years later. The attitudes American Jews maintained during the remaining war years
What's My Line? - James Garner; Tony Randall [panel] (Oct 25, 1964) [CORRECTED]
NOTE: This episode is being posted out of order, in tribute to the very recent passing of James Garner. The opening introductions come from an alternate copy provided by epaddon. Somehow, the opening for a later show was included in the first version I posted. Sorry for the error!
MYSTERY GUEST: James Garner PANEL: Dorothy Kilgallen, Tony Randall, Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf
Fish dislike being caught. You need good equipment, and even then, you will not always be lucky to catch some. I am a good fisherman and have caught a lot. But unfortunately not when I needed fish.
Here you are, catch of only 90 minutes. Wow! But sometimes I tried two weeks hard to get a single fish.
Another issue is that you are not always surrounded by fish. The wide ocean is rather a desert. The guys in the 1500s did not sail where the sea is full of nutrients, e.g. Norway. They had to pass tropical waters where even the corals need plants and sunlight in them to generate nutrition. The coral reefs in the North were discovered only few decades ago.
Starving was not the biggest issue, but lack of vitamin C. If you cannot find any fresh stuff for longer than a month, you are in real trouble. Scurvy is the name of a disease resulting from a lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid). Early symptoms of deficiency include weakness, feeling tired, and sore arms and legs. Without treatment, decreased red blood cells, gum disease, changes to hair, and bleeding from the skin may occur. As scurvy worsens there can be poor wound healing, personality changes, and finally death from infection or bleeding.
The first who managed a long trip without this issue was Captain Cook. He took lots of Sauerkraut on his voyages.
See you tomorrow bli neder on the fourth day of Chol Hammoad Passover
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