Letter From Grandma

Got a letter from Grandma the other day. She writes...

Dear Friend,

The other day I went up to a local Christian bookstore and saw a "honk if you love Jesus" bumper sticker. I was feeling particularly sassy that day because I had just come from a thrilling choir performance, followed by a thunderous prayer meeting, so I bought the sticker and put it on my bumper.

Boy, I'm glad I did! What an uplifting experience followed!

I was stopped at a red light at a busy intersection, just lost in thought about the Lord and how good He is...and I didn't notice that the light had changed. It is a good thing someone else loves Jesus because if he hadn't honked, I'd never have noticed! I found that LOTS of people love Jesus!

While I was sitting there, the guy behind started honking like crazy, and then he leaned out of his window and screamed, "For the love of GOD! GO! GO! Jesus Christ, GO!"

What an exuberant cheerleader he was for Jesus! Everyone started honking! I just leaned out of my window and started waving and smiling at all these loving people. I even honked my horn a few times to share in the love!

There must have been a man from Florida back there because I heard him yelling something about a "sunny beach"... I saw another guy waving in a funny way with only his middle finger stuck up in the air. I asked my teenage grandson in the back seat what that meant, he said that it was probably a Hawaiian good luck sign or something.

Well, I've never met anyone from Hawaii, so I leaned out the window and gave him the good luck sign back. My grandson burst out laughing ... he was enjoying this religious experience, too!

A couple of the people were so caught up in the joy of the moment that they got out of their cars and started walking towards me. I bet they wanted to pray or ask what church I attended, but this is when I noticed the light had changed. So, I waved to all my sisters and brothers grinning, and drove on through the intersection. I noticed I was the only car that got through the intersection before the light changed again and I felt kind of sad that had to leave them after all the love we had shared, so I slowed the car down, leaned out of the window and gave them all the Hawaiian good luck sign one last time as I drove away.

Praise the Lord for such wonderful folks!

Love,

Grandma

Nice Story....NY Times

Back in the mid nineties a Jewish advertising executive in New Yorkcame up with an idea. What if the New York Times - considered the world's most prestigious newspaper - listed the weekly Shabbat candle lighting time each week. Sure someone would have to pay for the space. But imagine the Jewish awareness and pride that might result from such a prominent mention of the Jewish Shabbat each week. He got in touch with a Jewish philanthropist and sold him on the idea. It cost almost two thousand dollars a week. But he did it.

And for the next five years, each Friday, Jews around the world would see 'Jewish Women: Shabbat candle lighting time this Friday is...' Eventually the philanthropist had to cut back on a number of his projects. And in June 1999, the little Shabbat notice and stopped appearing in the Friday Times. and from that week on it never appeared again. Except once.

On January 1, 2000, the NY Times ran a Millennium edition. It was a special issue that featured three front pages. One had the news from January 1, 1900. The second was the actual news ofthe day, January 1, 2000. And then they had a third front page. Projecting future events of January 1, 2100. This fictional page included things like a welcome to the fifty-first state: Cuba. As well as a discussion as to whether robots should be allowed to vote. And so on. And in addition to the fascinating articles, there was one more thing. Down on the bottom of the Year 2100 front page, was the candle lighting time in New York for January 1, 2100. Nobody paid for it. It was just put in by the Times. The production manager of the New York Times - an Irish Catholic - was asked about it. His answer was right on the mark. And it speaks to the eternity of our people. And to the power of Jewish ritual. "We don't know what will happen in the year 2100. It is impossible to predict the future. But of one thing you can be certain. That in the year 2100 Jewish women will be lighting Shabbos candles.

Leftist Writer Asks Important Question

Pilar Rahola is a Spanish politician, journalist and activist and member of the far left. Her articles are published in Spain and throughout some of the most important newspapers in Latin
America. She writes:

Why don't we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona?

Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship?

Why aren't there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection?

Why aren't there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam?

Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan?

Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel?

Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism?

Why don't they defend Israel's right to exist?

Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism?

And finally, the million dollar question:Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet? The two most solid democracies, which have suffered the bloodiest attacks of terrorism, and the left doesn't care.


And then, to the concept of freedom. In every pro Palestinian European forum I hear the left yelling with fervor: "We want freedom for the people!"

Not true. They are never concerned with freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan, or other such nations. And they are never preoccupied when Hammas destroys freedom for the Palestinians.
They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom. The resulting consequence of these ideological pathologies is the manipulation of the press.

The international press does major damage when reporting on the question of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. On this topic they don't inform, they propagandize.

When reporting about Israel the majority of journalists forget the reporter code of ethics. And so, any Israeli act of self-defense becomes a massacre, and any confrontation, genocide. So many stupid things have been written about Israel, that there aren't any accusations left to level against her.

At the same time, this press never discusses Syrian and Iranian interference in propagating violence against Israel; the indoctrination of children and the corruption of the Palestinians.
And when reporting about victims, every Palestinian casualty is reported as tragedy and every Israeli victim is camouflaged, hidden or reported about with disdain.

And let me add on the topic of the Spanish left. Many are the examples that illustrate the anti-Americanism and anti-Israeli sentiments that define the Spanish left. For example, one of the
leftist parties in-Spain has just expelled one of its members for creating a pro-Israel website. I quote from the expulsion document:
"Our friends are the people of Iran, Libya and Venezuela, oppressed by imperialism, and not a Nazi state like Israel."

In another example, the socialist mayor of Campozuelos changed Shoah Day, commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, with Palestinian Nabka Day, which mourns the establishment of the State of Israel, thus showing contempt for the six million European Jews murdered in
the Holocaust.

Or in my native city of Barcelona, the city council decided to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel, by having a week of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Thus, they invited Leila Khaled, a noted terrorist from the 70's and
current leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization so described by the European Union, which promotes the use of bombs against Israel.

This politically correct way of thinking has even polluted the speeches of president Zapatero. His foreign policy falls within the lunatic left, and on issues of the Middle East he is unequivocally
pro Arab. I can assure you that in private, Zapatero places on Israel the blame for the conflict in the Middle East, and the policies of foreign minister Moratinos reflect this. The fact that
Zapatero chose to wear a kafiah in the midst of the Lebanon conflict is no coincidence; it's a symbol.

Spain has suffered the worst terrorist attack in Europe and it is in the crosshairs of every Islamic terrorist organization. As I wrote before, they kill us with cell phones hooked to satellites connected to the Middle Ages. An yet the Spanish left is the most anti Israeli in the world.

And then it says it is anti Israeli because of solidarity. This is the madness I want to denounce in this conference.

Conclusion:

I am not Jewish. Ideologically I am left and by profession a journalist. Why am I not anti Israeli like my colleagues? Because as a non-Jew I have the historical responsibility to fight against
Jewish hatred and currently against the hatred for their historic homeland, Israel. To fight against anti-Semitism is not the duty of the Jews, it is the duty of the non-Jews.

As a journalist it is my duty to search for the truth beyond prejudice, lies and manipulations. The truth about Israel is not told. As a person from the left who loves progress, I am obligated
to defend liberty, culture, civic education for children, coexistence and the laws that the Tablets of the Covenant made into universal principles.

Principles that Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. That is to say that as a non-Jew, journalist and lefty I have a triple moral duty with Israel, because if Israel is destroyed, liberty, modernity and culture will be destroyed too.

The struggle of Israel, even if the world doesn't want to accept it, is the struggle of the world.

An Open Letter To My Christian Friends

I am aware that many of you are unacquainted with our customs. Over the years, I have had the unhappy experience of hearing criticism and comments about our practices which you don’t understand. Is it because you read about Jewish people in the Bible, and criticize their actions that you think you can do the same with Jewish practices today? From my perspective, it’s problematic that you think you have the right to criticize Jewish people in the bible, since you were not in their situation, and frankly, the purpose of the writings is not to disparage them, but to teach you. I wonder if you learn from what you read or just criticize the people so you can feel superior to them like an arm chair quarterback. If you don’t understand what we do, ask us. Don’t jump to conclusions and criticize what you don’t understand.

In the case of Jewish people today, it is inappropriate for anyone outside the Jewish community to criticize our traditions. It’s like a guest coming into your living room and criticizing the décor and trying to rearrange the furniture. We don’t come into churches and tell you what we think you are doing wrong. Accord us the same consideration. Rudeness is not acceptable when cloaked under the guise of theology. Mutual respect for the traditions of others is more reflective of spiritual maturity.
When I have discussions about Scripture with you, your presuppositions regarding the texts you quote are usually basic Evangelical concepts regarding Rabbis, Pharisees and Law, versus Yeshua and Grace. I believe those presuppositions to be wrong because they are based on what I believe to be a faulty theological grid, and therefore, your understanding of those texts is skewed. The reasons for my belief are as follows:

In the first place, Yeshua was completely Torah observant. If he was not, he could NEVER have been the Messiah, and any discussion of his being the Messiah of Israel would be moot. If he did not fully obey the Law, he was not without sin. He could not provide atonement for sin if he had sin of his own. Rabbinic traditions in the first century were not codified at that time, and their permutations were not set in stone. Yeshua letting his disciples rub grains of wheat on Shabbat did not constitute a violation of the Torah, only a violation of one interpretation of the Torah. When the tradition in question was codified, what the disciples did and Yeshua allowed was permitted by the rabbis. To build a theology of Yeshua not fully embracing the Torah around that instance is irresponsible theologically. Everything Yeshua taught about the Torah was supportive of it. Yeshua said in Matthew 5:17-19 "Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches [them], he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” The word for fulfill can mean to complete, which is the meaning most Christian interpreters choose, because it fits their theology. The word plereo can equally be understood to mean to fill out to its fullest meaning. For those who would like to believe God’s law is done away with, this is not the plain meaning of the text, but something that supports rather than informs their theology, so they choose the former meaning. For those who understand the Messiah bringing the Torah to its fullest meaning, something one would expect a Messiah to do, without having the de facto effect of ending it, the latter meaning seems correct.

For us, the Torah has not been done away with, but is Holy Scripture that speaks to us today, guiding us toward the life Yeshua lived. This was Paul’s meaning when he wrote: “For Messiah is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” The word “end,” telos, can be translated end as in finished or terminated, or it can just as well be translated goal. If your theology is such that the Messiah came to end the Law of God, you go with the first meaning to support what you already believe. If you understand that the Messiah’s life is the goal at which the Torah points, then it also makes sense that the Torah is the schoolmaster that leads us to a more Messiah-like life. For us, “Messiah is the goal of the Torah for righteousness to everyone who believes.” New Testament translators interpret in light of their theological proclivities. Their choices are not necessarily inspired.
In the second place, you interpret the scriptures with the Law vs. Grace Dichotomy, i.e., Faith in Yeshua is the basis for salvation by grace, while Judaism, Rabbis, and Torah constitute in your view, salvation by works, or works righteousness. The main problem with this view is that it is not Judaism in any form at any time. Judaism does not now nor has it ever believed in works righteousness. It has always been and continues to be a religion of grace, based on the mercy of God toward his children. The purpose of Torah observance according to Judaism is to live a godly life reflecting the values of our God, not to gain entrance into heaven. A basic reading of the Jewish prayers in any Jewish prayer book would show this to be true, and as you know; the prayers of a people reflect their deepest held values. Judaism is a living religion that continues to worship the God of Israel, who is called in the New Testament, the God and Father of the Lord Yeshua the Messiah.” Jewish faith is real, and it is faith in the One true God. It cannot be dismissed as a second hand religion, or as God’s stepchild.
As you read Galatians, Acts, and other so called “anti-Law” passages of the New Testament, considering the above, it becomes clear that whatever Paul was addressing, it was not Judaism. The Jerusalem Council’s of Acts 15 and Acts 21 were addressing the question of how do pagan gentiles come to the Messiah of Israel. In that time period, a gentile coming to the God of Israel did so through conversion (referred to as circumcision and keeping the commandments). The apostolic discussion was concerned with gentiles coming to the Messiah of Israel without the need for conversion to Judaism. It makes Peter’s argument even more poignant, that Cornelius and his family received the immersion of the Holy Spirit without conversion, so they need not require it of gentiles to come to Yeshua. His statement that “this is a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear,” was not referring to the Torah as the yoke, but conversion, because God said the Torah is a blessing, and something we can do, and has never seemed to be a burden to Jews. The yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear is the yoke of being Jewish. When you are Jewish, you may endure severe persecution. Look at the last 2000 years of Jewish history for proof of this. According to Jewish tradition, when a gentile seeks to convert, he must be deterred three times, because it is not easy to be a Jew. Even in the first century, under the Greeks and Romans, Jewish life was a struggle. Peter was saying they need not convert to Judaism to embrace Yeshua, and therefore become Jews in order to embrace the Jewish Messiah.

This becomes especially important when seeking to understand Galatians. The Galatians lived in a Roman province where Judaism was a legal religion, but Christianity was not. Jews were exempted from sacrificing to the emperor, while others were obligated to do so. In the first century, many Gentile Christians were worshiping in synagogues because Christianity was still considered to be a sect of Judaism. It stands to reason that Gentile Christians wanted the same exemption from emperor worship as the Jews, among whom they worshiped. The Jewish community would normally say to any gentile coming to them that if they wanted a Jewish privilege, they would need to fully come into their community by the normal way of entrance; i.e., conversion, which would require circumcision and Torah observance. I believe Paul was arguing against those gentiles who chose to convert, thinking they were holier because they converted and therefore didn’t have to sacrifice to the emperor. They thought they had gone further and were therefore more legitimate and acceptable than their fellow gentiles, instead of considering themselves fully legitimate in Yeshua.

Jewish people don’t walk around feeling superior because we are circumcised. It’s just not a Jewish thing to do. I have seen gentiles who adapt Jewish customs act that way toward their fellow gentiles, but Jews don’t do it. It makes more sense for Paul to be addressing gentiles who were selling out for the sake of legitimacy in a Roman world rather than suffering for being a believer. It also makes more sense that Paul would not be addressing Jews keeping the Torah but instead addressing gentiles seeking to justify themselves in one way or another. Paul would have understood the Torah to be a unique covenant with the Jewish people, of whom he went at length to stress that he was currently a part, and did in fact, according to Acts, follow himself. It is far easier to believe Paul honestly went to the temple to show that he fully observed the Law, then to believe that he, as a faithful apostle of Yeshua was intentionally making a false show of ritual adherence that he himself did not support.
I accept the concept of a bilateral ecclesiology. In other words, Jews and Gentiles are not the same even though both follow Yeshua. While Paul says there is “neither Jew nor Greek, Man or Woman, Slave nor Free,” it is foolish to take that concept in an absolute sense. If it were absolute, no one should have a problem with gay marriage. Men and women are surely not the same, but they are loved the same by God. So it is with Jews and gentiles, slaves and free people. Everyone is not the same in Scripture. There were different laws for the King than for others, different law for the Priests, and different laws for men and women. Each had his own responsibilities based on those laws. Scripture does not say we are to be uniform. Jews are obligated to the Torah, but with some exceptions, it is optional for non-Jews. As I said earlier, this obligation is not a soteriological obligation in that soteriology was not the intent of Torah, although it records it. It is a lifestyle obligation. Gentiles may observe Torah, but since it is a covenant between God and the descendants of Jacob, it is more than optional for us. It may be seen as having changed in Jeremiah, but its change is not in content only that it is written on our hearts.

I understand the grafting in of the Gentiles to be similar in concept to the British Commonwealth. All members of the commonwealth have the British monarchy as their queen or king, but not all are British. Canadians and Australians understand this very well. In the same way, Gentiles in Yeshua are grafted in to the Israel commonwealth. Yeshua is the King of Israel, and the Gentile peoples have Yeshua as their sovereign, but they are not Jews, spiritual or otherwise. The fact that Yeshua returns to a regathered Israel and is to reign over the world from Jerusalem is witness to this continuing truth.
I do not accept the notion that the church is a “new Israel.” That is no more than theological identity theft. When Abraham spoke with God about his descendants in Genesis 15, he was not concerned with “spiritual” seed, but with physical seed, and that is what God gave him, birthing the Jewish people in a miraculous way. The Jewish people are the physical presence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob on the earth. Paul wrote in Romans 9:3-5 “For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Messiah for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Messiah came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen. “From Paul’s perspective, they have not been replaced by anyone.

The Christian tradition tends to separate the physical from the spiritual, an idea that was borrowed from Greek philosophy, but our tradition views man in a more holistic way, holding that you cannot totally separate the physical part of man from the spiritual. What affects us physically has an impact on the spiritual part of us as well. This is the reason our tradition forbids desecrating the body after death. It’s a reminder of this belief and of the hope of resurrection. We believe His promises remain for his physical seed. While yes, Yeshua is that seed, Yeshua is not cut off from his people. Without the Jewish people, there is no Yeshua, and without Yeshua, there is no Israel. His sufferings continue to be filled up in the Jewish experience over the last 2000 years. Israel and Yeshua are inseparable. Just as the patriarch Joseph did not disown his brothers, but received them, blessed them, and took care of them, so it is in the relationship between Yeshua and Israel. The covenants made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and to Israel through Moses have never been abrogated. God’s promises to Israel are eternal. In Jeremiah 31:36-37 it says "If those ordinances [ i.e. the sun, moon and stars] depart From before Me, says the LORD, [Then] the seed of Israel shall also cease From being a nation before Me forever." Thus says the LORD: "If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel For all that they have done, says the LORD.” In other words, God’s love for Israel is not based on Torah performance, not on works, but on God’s promise. We call this grace. You do as well.

The reason we seem to be talking past one another is an inverse view of our values. Christian values focus on Beliefs, then Belonging, and finally Behavior. You first want to make sure you believe the same things and go down a checklist of beliefs, then you look at where a person belongs, i.e., what church they attend. Behavior is not heavily stressed, because it is not as important to you as Beliefs and Belonging. You don’t stress behavior as much because you consider yourselves “forgiven.

For Jewish people, our values system is reversed. Behavior is what we look at first. We don’t talk that much about belief, because talk is cheap. How a person lives, expresses their values and treats other people is what matters most to us. Belonging is also important to us. Where we relate, and with whom we associate also matters to us. Belief matters as well, but we don’t throw our beliefs in everyone’s faces. They are deeply held convictions we share only when we know someone well.

The problem in our communication is that you want to talk about your beliefs as soon as we meet, and we don’t know you well enough to have that kind of conversation. We want to see your behavior. We want to know what kind of person you are. What effect your beliefs have on your actions. If you are kind and ethical, we have something upon which to build a friendship. If you only want to share your beliefs and challenge ours, you are invading our privacy and showing disrespect for our beliefs. I don’t believe that is your intent, but it is the result of your actions. If you want our friendship, learn to communicate with us. Respect our values. We don’t talk so much about faith, but we express our faith in giving to charity, helping others, and acts of kindness. To us, that is doing Torah.

The synagogue I used to belong to had holocaust survivors as members. When I would go to morning prayers, they were there. They didn’t always pay attention to the Torah reading, but instead would be chattering quietly in the back of the synagogue. On first glance, it would seem disrespectful of the Torah, and even faithless. Yet when you stop to consider that they were teens when they were in the concentration camps, when their parents and siblings were killed before their eyes, you have to wonder what kind of effect that would have on a person. Even the seemingly strongest believer might lose his faith over something like that. Yet these elderly men came every morning at 6:30 and prayed, blessing God’s Name. I have to say, they had more faith than anyone I know. Their coming and blessing God’s Name in spite of what they went through and lost is in itself a deep expression of faith. It cost them something that mere words cannot approach.

The bottom line is, take the time to know and understand us. Whether or not we accept your beliefs is not the issue. If you make us your friends, you have gained a friend. In this world, that’s a good thing to have. When we try to respect one another, is not God pleased with that?

Subject: Netanyahu at his best.

Subject: Netanyahu at his best.

Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television during the retaliation against Hamas' shelling of Israel.

The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?" (A nasty question if there ever was one!)

Netanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?"

Interviewer: (Falling into the trap) Why not?

Netanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of
people killed in Hiroshima.

Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen , some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children. Perhaps you have another question?"

Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu gave an interview and was asked about Israel's occupation of Arab lands.
His response was, "It's our land". The reporter (CNN or the like) was stunned - read below "It's our land..." It's important information since we don't get fair and accurate reporting from the media and facts tend to get lost in the jumble of daily events.

"Crash Course on the Arab Israeli Conflict."

Here are overlooked facts in the current & past Middle East situation.
These were compiled by a Christian university professor:
BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY...(It takes just 1.5 minutes to read!)

It makes sense and it's not slanted. Jew and non-Jew -- it doesn't matter.
1. Nationhood and Jerusalem.
Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE, Two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian
people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of
Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE, the Jews have had dominion over the
land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past
3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 CE lasted no more than 22
years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has
never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians
occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders
did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures.
Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave
Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent
left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

10 The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab
brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be
around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be
the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab
lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the
100,000,000 refugees since World WarII, theirs is the only refugee group in the

world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands.
Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than
the state of New Jersey ..

13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: the Arabs are represented by eight separate
nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The
Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time
and won.

14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.
Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the
Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were
denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian
sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council
resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were
directed against Israel.

18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the
Jordanians.

19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient
Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy
of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

These are incredible times. We have to ask what our role should be. What will
we tell our grandchildren about what we did when there was a turning point in
Jewish destiny, an opportunity to make a difference?

This is why I love being a Jew

Written by an Israeli named Dan Sporn

Our condition, in Israel , has never been better than it is now! Only the television and the media make people think that the end of the world is near.. Only 65 years ago, Jews were brought to death like sheep to slaughter. NO country, NO army Only 60 years ago, seven Arab countries declared war on little Israel , the Jewish State, just a few hours after it was established. We were 650,000 Jews against the rest of the Arab world. No IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) or Air Force. We were only a small group of stubborn people with nowhere to go. Remember: Lebanon , Syria , Iraq , Jordan , Egypt , Libya , and Saudi Arabia, they all attacked at once The state that the United Nations "gave" us was 65% desert We started it from zero. Only 41 years ago, we fought three of the strongest countries in the Middle East , and we crushed them in the Six Day War. Over the years we fought different coalitions of Arab countries with modern armies and with huge amounts of Russian-Soviet ammunition, and we still won. Today we have a beautiful country, a powerful Army, a strong Air Force, an adequate Navy and a thriving high tech industry. Intel, Microsoft, and IBM have all developed their businesses here. Our doctors have won important prizes in the medical development field. We turned the desert into a prosperous land. We sell oranges, flowers, and vegetables around the world. We launched our own satellite! Three satellites at once! We are in good company; together with the USA (280 million residents), Russia (220 million residents), China (1.3 billion residents) and Europe ( France , England and Germany 35 million residents), we are one of the only countries in the world that have launched something into space! Israel today is among the few powerful countries that have nuclear technology & capabilities. ( We will never admit it, but everyone knows.) To think that only 65 years ago we were disgraced and hopeless. We crawled out from the burning crematoriums of Europe . We won in all our wars. With a little bit of nothing we built an empire. Who are Khaled Mashal (leader of Hamas) or Hassan Nasrallah (leader of Hezbollah) trying to frighten us? They are amusing us. As we celebrate Independence Day, let's not forget what this holy day is all about; we overcame everything.. We overcame the Greeks, We overcame the Romans, We overcame the Spanish Inquisition, We overcame the Russians pogrom, We overcame Hitler, we overcame Germany and overcame the Holocaust, We overcame the armies of seven countries. Relax chevray (friends), we will overcome our current enemies. Never mind where you look in human history. Think about it, the Jewish nation, our condition has never been better than now. So let's lift our heads up and remember: Never mind which country or culture tries to harm us or erase us from the world. We will still exist and persevere. Egypt ? Anyone know where the Egyptian empire disappeared to? The Greeks? Alexander Macedon? The Romans? Is anyone speaking Latin today? The Third Reich? Did anyone hear news from them lately? And look at us, the Bible nation – from slavery in Egypt , we are still here, still speaking the same language. Exactly here, exactly now. Maybe The Arabs don't know it yet, but we are an eternal nation. All the time that we will keep our identity, we will stay eternal. So, sorry that we are not worrying, complaining, crying, or fearing… Business here is beseder (fine). It can definitely be much better, but it is still fine. Don't pay attention to the nonsense in the media, they will not tell you about our festivals here in Israel or about the people that continue living, going out, meeting friends. Yes, sometimes morale is down, so what? This is only because we are mourning the dead while they are celebrating spilled blood. And this is the reason we will win after all. Please forward this message to all of your Jewish friends everywhere in the world. You are all part of our force to keep our existence. May this help us lift our heads up and be proud to say: I AM A JEW

Oren comments on the Gaza Attacks

Dear family and friends,

I feel that events are such I should once again try and relay to you my thoughts, in order that you will be able to have a better understanding of the situation here. Again, as in many times before, I am dismayed at the lack of proportions in the in-depth information from Israel as opposed to that coming from other sources. Due to this unfortunate state of events, the international community is too frequently exposed to communications which are far from being "even-handed" or fair.

As in my former reports to you, I will try to be as fair as possible, in portraying the very sad situation here. This is the first report I will be sending you, and I would welcome any comments or questions, and would certainly be happy if you thought that this was something you would like to pass on to your friends.

First some questions:

• When was the last time you ran for your life to a shelter to avoid being bombed?
• When was the last time your children were terrorized to the point where they wet their beds even at ages of 6 and 7?
• When was the last time your child demanded that the light stay on all night, and even then told you of his nightmares the next morning - all this on a daily basis?
• When was the last time you realized that your child will need a psychologist to help overcome his/her fears of loud noises and sirens?
• When was the last time your house had a near miss of a rocket fired at you, or worse, had your house crumble under the impact of a mortar shell?
• When was the last time that you could not tend to your crops, because the last time you went out to your fields you were fired on by snipers?
• When was the last time you lost your job because you wanted to stay at home with your family when your town was under attack?
• When was the last time that your child saw your neighbor lying in a pool of blood?
• When was the last time you checked to see if your child's kindergarten had a bomb shelter, and if not you took the child to another kindergarten which had one?
• When was the last time you went with friends to have a drink at a pub and had a suicide bomber blow himself up in front of you?
• When was the last time you made sure your child had an armed escort when he/she went on a school outing?
• When was the last time your government decided to spend over 400 million dollars on bomb shelters for your town?
• When was the last time your neighboring country swore to wipe you off the face of the earth, and does not recognize your right to exist?
• When…..

Now some facts:

• For the last 8 years (yes… eight whole years, which are 96 straight months) , the southern part of Israel (population around 250,000) has had over 22,000 rockets and mortar shells fired into its cities and villages. This is an average of approximately 2500 per year (since January 2008, we have counted over 3000). This means an average of approximately 8 (!!) rockets a day. Can you even imagine such a number?
• There is no child in Sderot under the age of 10, who knows any other existence than that of daily fear of a bomb landing on his home, school, or shopping mall. How would you feel if this happened in your town and to your children?
• Over three years ago, we unilaterally left the Gaza Strip, removed all vestiges of our army, uprooted all the civilian population which lived there, and abandoned all the homes, fields, and industrial complexes. All this without a reciprocal agreement on the side of the Palestinians to cease all hostilities. This action was intended to allow the Palestinians to fulfill their own dream of a sovereign state, without any interference on our part.
• Since June 2008, there has been a "cease-fire" agreement brokered by the Egyptians. The only trouble is that we have "ceased" while the Hammas has "fired" an average of 6 rockets a week (this is their understanding of an agreement). Besides trying to spot the launchers, and pinpoint attacking them if we were able to do so with 100% certainty, and only then, we did not reciprocate in any other way.
• During this period, we restrained ourselves not to hit back. The only recourse we had, when words, agreements, unilateral restraint and requests did not work, was to warn the Hammas government that if they did not stop the rocket attacks which totally disrupted any sort of "normal" existence for our citizens in the region, we would reduce the entry of supplies to the Gaza Strip. However, out of humane considerations, we continued to send urgent supplies, even under fire.
• To this day, we supply 70% of all the electricity in Gaza , and have never stopped this supply, except for one day when the electric plant in Ashdod , which supplies the "juice" to Gaza , was attacked by a suicide bomber. There is no "darkness" in Gaza , whatever is said or shown to the contrary.
• During the three days prior to our attack in Gaza over 200 rockets were fired at southern Israel , mainly at the city of Sderot , but also to many of the agricultural settlements around the Gaza strip – all inside Israel 's international borders. This was the response of Hammas to our willingness to sit and discuss the continuation of the so-called "cease-fire" between us.
• Every such attack has had the entire civilian population of these towns and agricultural settlements running as fast as they can for a shelter - women, children, the elderly, sick people, in short, the whole civilian population.
• These rocket and mortar attacks are aimed specifically at civilian concentrations, to kill and injure as many innocent people as possible.
• Countless times over this period, and before, we have deliberated how to combat this situation, and each time we have opted for another concession towards peace, and have responded infrequently and even then at a very specific location from which the rockets were launched
• The fact is that of the hundreds of Palestinians killed over the past 2-3 years, 95% have been terrorists either setting up their rocket launchers , or on their way to an attack on one of the settlements in the region
• Sgt. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who was abducted to Gaza by the Palestinian terrorists over 920 days ago, has not been allowed to send or receive letters, the Red Cross has not been allowed to visit him, and he has spent the whole time, close to three years, in a hole somewhere in the Gaza Strip. This is outrageously inhumane.
• During the past ten years, we have signed at least five agreements, in which we requested the same demands that were initiated by the "Quartet" (The USA, Russia , the U.N., and the European Community), namely:

• Recognition of the State of Israel (which all countries of the world have done)
• Cessation of all terrorist activities

In return we would be willing to negotiate for a fair settlement to all the problems between us

• Even though the Palestinian leaders, first Arafat then Mahmoud Abbas (Abu-Mazen), signed the agreements, the attacks continued unabated

Now to some comments:

• When we left Gaza , with all the small industrial works and the very modern and sophisticated greenhouses intact, at the request of the world community so that the Palestinians will have the ability to support themselves, they destroyed all of these down to rubble. This has to mean that they had little intention of trying to help their population to self-reliance and the country to some income.
• How can the world sit back for so many years and look upon what was going on in our towns and villages around Gaza , and only become outraged when we finally say: "enough is enough" and hit back?
• What is this nonsense about "excessive force"? For years we have restrained ourselves, we have made every effort to find peaceful solutions, such as those we have in our peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan , while we are being shelled on a daily basis. How long can any country stand this? I bet not even Norway , which has grave concerns about our intentions, would stand for this for even one month without retaliating
• As to excessive force, should we send our kids out to throw stones at passing Arab vehicles, as Arab kids do on our roads? Should we sporadically shell cities in the Gaza Strip, just so that our response is "measured" against theirs? Should we recruit maniacs who are willing to commit ritual suicide in Arab restaurants? What are we, as a normal and democratic country, supposed to do? Continuously "understand" that the Palestinian demands should be met so that the world community can finally have some peace in the Middle East ? These "salami" tactics will find us in the Mediterranean within five years!
• No. As in any country you are familiar with will do, we will use whatever means we have to achieve peace and quiet for our citizens. If we do not, then are failing our duty as a country to its citizens.
• In addition, since we do not intend to carry out such actions on a regular basis, then on the one time we do strike back, we will do so until the Hammas does not have the will to continue its policy. We have attacked only Hammas installations, and if there was a fair reporting of the events, you would notice that over 90% of all the Palestinian casualties were wearing uniforms. We have tried to be as accurate as possible in our attacks so that we spare the civilian population. We have NEVER targeted civilians, as they have ours
• No one asked Joe Louis to fight all comers with one hand behind his back because he was stronger than his opponents, and no one has asked Michael Jordan to shoot only with his left hand, because he was so much better than all other basketball players.
• We are a country, and we have an army to protect its citizens. Our army has been carefully built so as to be able to answer any threat to our existence. We will use all measures necessary, once all other avenues have been blocked, to thwart this threat.

• The Hammas does not recognize us or our borders.
• The Hammas has sworn to continue to attack us until we drop
• The Hammas gets its weaponry and orders from Iran and the extremist Islam leaders of the world, and will not listen to anyone or any other voice

· We cannot allow this to happen, and cannot allow another Holocaust to our people

· What would you and/or your government do if your border towns were shelled on a regular basis? Sit and wait for the world community to give your neighbor a slap on the hand? I would venture to say that in any Western country, you would hit back after the second or third rocket attack, whether there were casualties or not, irrespective of what the world community says or requests. We have been holding ourselves in restraint for years!

· Barak Obama, when he visited Sderot a year ago, said that if his house, and his girls, were attacked by rockets, he would not stand for it and retaliate

· The Hammas, as part of the radical Islamic groups, is a serious threat not only to Israel , but perhaps even more so to the moderate Arab countries, as well as the Western world. It is inflaming the minds of the Islamic youths, teaching them to hate while not giving them any hope for a future

· During these last few days, we have heard the Egyptian foreign minister and the editor of the official Saudi newspaper, say that the Hammas can only blame itself for what is happening to it now. The other moderate Arab countries have the same sentiments. The Hammas, as the representative of the extremist Islamic groups, is a real and present danger to them and their countries

· What are the ultimate goals of the Hammas? If it is to establish a sovereign state, then three years ago when we left Gaza they had the opportunity to show themselves and the world, that they can do so. We opened all the crossing points to Palestinian workers, assisted Palestinian officials in all the professional activities that a country needs (agriculture, medicine, sanitation, education, etc), and what we got back were suicide bombers and rocket attacks. In this situation, what does any "normal" country do? It closes the border crossings and discontinues its open policy. Would you shake your neighbor's hand, if on a daily basis his dog attacks your child despite your requests from him to rein in his dog?

· If the goal is not to establish a state, then it seems as if is their only aim is the annihilation of Israel. We will not stand for this

In order not have this report become unwieldy and long, I will stop here for the moment, and I promise to continue.

With very best wishes,

Oren

"Crash Course on the Arab Israeli Conflict."

Here are overlooked facts in the current Middle East situation.
These were compiled by a Christian university professor.

BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY....
( It takes just 1.5 minutes to read!!!! )

It makes sense and it's not slanted. Jew and non-Jew -- it doesn't matter.

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem . Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E. Two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E., the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. Lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the cap ital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem , they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in th e Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem . Mohammed never c ame to Jerusalem .

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem . Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem .

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews . Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

10 The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into th eir own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel , a country no larger than the state of New Jersey .

13. The Arab - Israeli Conflict: The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.

14. The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel .

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel .

18. The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

19. The U.N. Was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives .

20. The U.N. Was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid- like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

These are incredible times. We have to ask what our role should be.
What will we tell our grandchildren we did when there was a turning point in Jewish destiny, an opportunity to make a difference?

the runner-up for the Nobel Peace Prize

Have you heard the story about the runner-up for the Nobel Peace Prize?



Irena Sendlerowa
1910-2008

May 12 marked the death of a 98-year-old lady named Irena.

During WWII, Irena received permission from the Nazis to work in the Warsaw ghetto as a plumbing/sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive...

Being German, she knew the Nazis' plans for the Jews and smuggled infants out in the bottom of the large tool box she carried. Larger children were placed in a burlap sack in the back of her truck. Also in the back was a dog that she had trained to bark each time the Nazi guards allowed her out of the ghetto and back in.

The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog, and its barking covered any noise made by the infants and small children Irena managed to smuggle out approximately 2,500 children before she was finally caught. When she was captured, the Nazis beat her severely, breaking both her arms and her legs.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the children she smuggled out of that Warsaw ghetto and kept them in a glass jar buried under a tree in her back yard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents who may have survived so she might reunite the child with its family. Most, of course, did not survive the Holocaust, and the vast majority of the surviving children were placed in foster homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, but she lost to Al Gore, who won the award for presenting a slide show on Global Warming.

From Auschwitz, a Torah as Strong as Its Spirit

From Auschwitz, a Torah as Strong as Its Spirit By JAMES BARRON

New York Times: April 30, 2008


The back story of how a Torah got from the fetid barracks of Auschwitz to the ark of the Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street is one the pastor of the Lutheran church down the street sums up as simply “miraculous.”

It is the story of a sexton in the synagogue in the Polish city of Oswiecim who buried most of the sacred scroll before the Germans stormed in and later renamed the city Auschwitz. It is the story of Jewish prisoners who sneaked the rest of it — four carefully chosen panels — into the concentration camp.

It is the story of a Polish Catholic priest to whom they entrusted the four panels before their deaths. It is the story of a Maryland rabbi who went looking for it with a metal detector. And it is the story of how a hunch by the rabbi’s 13-year-old son helped lead him to it.

This Torah, more than most, “is such an extraordinary symbol of rebirth,” said Peter J. Rubinstein, the rabbi of Central Synagogue. “As one who has gone to the camps and assimilates into my being the horror of the Holocaust, this gives meaning to Jewish survival.”

On Wednesday, the restored Torah will be rededicated in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which for more than 20 years the congregation of Central Synagogue has observed in conjunction with its neighbor, St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, at Lexington Avenue and 54th Street. The senior pastor, the Rev. Amandus J. Derr, said that next to Easter, the Holocaust memorial is “the most important service I attend every year.”

The Torah from Auschwitz “is a very concrete, tactile piece of that remembrance — of what people, some of whom did it in the name of Christ, did to people who were Jewish,” Pastor Derr said, “and the remembrance itself enables us to be prepared to prevent that from happening again.”

A Torah scroll contains the five books of Moses, and observant Jews read a portion from it at services. Its ornate Hebrew must be hand-lettered by specially trained scribes, and it is considered unacceptable if any part is marred or incomplete. For years, Jews around the world have worked to recover and rehabilitate Torahs that disappeared or were destroyed during the Holocaust, returning them to use in synagogues.

This Torah remained hidden for more than 60 years, buried where the sexton had put it, until Rabbi Menachem Youlus, who lives in Wheaton, Md., and runs the nonprofit Save a Torah foundation, began looking for it about eight years ago. Over two decades, Rabbi Youlus said, the foundation has found more than 1,000 desecrated Torahs and restored them, a painstaking and expensive process. This one was elusive. But Rabbi Youlus was determined.

He had heard a story told by Auschwitz survivors: Three nights before the Germans arrived, the synagogue sexton put the Torah scrolls in a metal box and buried them. The sexton knew that the Nazis were bent on destroying Judaism as well as killing Jews.

But the survivors did not know where the sexton had buried the Torah. Others interested in rescuing the Torah after the war had not found it.

As for what happened during the war, “I personally felt the last place the Nazis would look would be in the cemetery,” Rabbi Youlus said in a telephone interview Tuesday, recalling his pilgrimage to Auschwitz, in late 2000 or early 2001, in search of the missing Torah. “So that was the first place I looked.”

With a metal detector, because, if the story was correct, he was hunting for a metal box in a cemetery in which all the caskets were made of wood, according to Jewish laws of burial. The metal detector did not beep. “Nothing,” the rabbi said. “I was discouraged.”

He went home to Maryland. One of his sons, Yitzchok, then 13, wondered if the cemetery was the same size as in 1939. They went online and found land records that showed that the present-day cemetery was far smaller than the original one.

Rabbi Youlus went back in 2004 with his metal detector, aiming it at the spot where the g’neeza — a burial plot for damaged Torahs, prayer books or other papers containing God’s name — had been. It beeped as he passed a house that had been built after World War II.

He dug near the house and found the metal box. But when he opened it, he discovered the Torah was incomplete. “It was missing four panels,” he said. “The obvious question was, why would the sexton bury a scroll that’s missing four panels? I was convinced those four panels had a story themselves.”

They did, as he learned when he placed an ad in a Polish newspaper in the area “asking if anyone had parchment with Hebrew letters.”

“I said I would pay top dollar,” Rabbi Youlus said. “The response came the next day from a priest. He said, ‘I know exactly what you’re looking for, four panels of a Torah.’ I couldn’t believe it.”

He compared the lettering and the pagination, and paid the priest. (How much, he would not say. The project was underwritten by David M. Rubenstein, a co-founder of the Carlyle Group. Mr. Rubenstein was tied at No. 165 on the Forbes 400 last year with a reported fortune of $2.5 billion; in December, he paid $21.3 million for a 710-year-old copy of the Magna Carta, a British declaration of human rights that served as the foundation for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.)

The priest “told me the panels were taken into Auschwitz by four different people,” Rabbi Youlus said. “I believe they were folded and hidden.” One of the panels contained the Ten Commandments from Exodus, a portion that, when chanted aloud each year, the congregation stands to hear. Another contained a similar passage from Deuteronomy.

The priest, who was born Jewish, was himself an Auschwitz survivor. He told Rabbi Youlus that the people with the four sections of the Torah gave them to him before they were put to death.

“He kept all four pieces until I put that ad in the paper,” Rabbi Youlus said. “As soon as I put that ad in the paper, he knew I must be the one with the rest of the Torah scroll.” (Rabbi Youlus said that the priest has since died.)

Rabbi Youlus said that nearly half the Torah’s lettering needed repair, work that the foundation has done over the past few years. Thirty-seven letters were left unfinished: 36, or twice the number that symbolizes “life” in Hebrew, will be filled in by members of the congregation before the service on Wednesday, the 37th at the ceremony.

Rabbi Youlus called it “a good sturdy Torah, even if it hasn’t been used in 65 years.” The plan is to make it available every other year to the March of the Living, an international educational program that arranges for Jewish teenagers to go to Poland on Holocaust Remembrance Day, to march from Auschwitz to its companion death camp, Birkenau.

“This really is an opportunity to look up to the heavens and say, he who laughs last, laughs best,” Rabbi Youlus said. “The Nazis really thought they had wiped Jews off the face of the earth, and Judaism. Here we are taking the ultimate symbol of hope and of Judaism and rededicating it and using it in a synagogue. And we’ll take it to Auschwitz. You can’t beat that.”

Raider of the Lost Arks

HE TRAVELS TO STRANGE PLACES, MAKES DEALS WITH DANGEROUS CHARACTERS, SPENDS MONTHS DOING RESTORATIONS. HE’S THE RABBI WHO RESCUES TORAHS.

	With the aid of a magnifier, Rabbi Menachem Youlus refurbishes lettering on a 120-year-old Torah found hidden behind a panel in a church in Boboweig, Poland. Photo by Roy Howell

By Susan Seliger

Seated across from me in a noisy kosher restaurant in Wheaton is Rabbi Menachem Youlus, a man who goes around the world, like Indiana Jones, digging up Torahs that have been lost or stolen. Just before the 9/11 attacks on America, he rescued from a mass grave in the Ukraine the Torah that my small congregation now possesses.

He has been beaten up, thrown in jail, and gone $175,000 in debt to bring these holy scrolls out of less-than-friendly places back to safety and a new life. He has brought Torahs out of Syria, Iran, India, and China as well as Eastern Europe, often facing hostile people and governments along the way. He is now in the middle of another secret, potentially dangerous deal to recover hundreds of lost and stolen Torahs. Undaunted by long odds, he is, as he will tell you, “a man on a mission.”

He couldn’t look less like Indiana Jones. His black yarmulke glistens after our four-block walk in the rain from the bookstore—that’s his day job. His slender body and high, sweet voice make him seem more like a boy than a 43-year-old father of seven. But as he takes off his glasses to wipe away the droplets, his blue-green eyes sparkle with energy—a hint that looks don’t begin to tell the story.

“I rescue Torahs—that’s what I have been doing since 1985,” he says.

Between bites of a big lamb-pepper-and-onion sandwich doused in tahini oil, Rabbi Youlus (“No, it’s Menachem,” he insists repeatedly, and in fact everyone calls him by his first name) tells me about my congregation’s Torah. I’m having trouble understanding why he puts his life in danger to go after what looks like just a big book.

“It is not just a book,” he says. “A congregation without a Torah is a congregation without a bond between them and God.”

A Torah is also, in many of the Eastern European towns he visits, the only tangible remains of communities that were wiped out in World War II. So he is doing more than commemorating those whose lives were lost—he is bringing survivors back to life.

The Torah, also called the Tree of Life, consists of the five books of Moses—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—etched by hand in Hebrew on parchment derived from a kosher animal that has not been killed for its hide alone.

Each of the more than 300,000 ornate letters must touch the top of an almost-invisible line and be drawn with a kosher quill (usually a turkey feather) or reed, in a perfectly flowing hand.

The scribe must not be distracted from the singular thought of serving God as he writes each letter, lining them up in 245 columns of 42 lines each.

Each page, or panel, is hand sewn to the next and rolled up like a scroll. No one other than the scribe can touch the finished pages directly or use any metal that can be used to forge weapons of war, which is why Torah pointers often are made of silver or gold.

The scrolls are kept in a cabinet called an ark, as in the Ark of the Covenant. A full-size Torah, unrolled, will extend almost the length of a football field. It can take a scribe three years to complete one.

EVERY TORAH HAS A STORY

“The Torahs are all over the world,” Menachem says. “The Polish Catholic Church has some; some are buried or hidden in outhouses, garages, warehouses. The one your congregation has, which was rescued from a grave in the Ukraine just before 9/11; that one I found totally by accident,” he says, putting his sandwich down. His eyes begin to dance—you can tell he loves every twist and turn in the tale.

He had been negotiating for three months for a Torah with an “antiques dealer” in the Ukraine. “Let me tell you,” he says, “the difference between an antiques dealer and a thief is not much. It depends on which day of the week it is, which hat they are wearing. So this guy says I have to come to the Ukraine to do the deal.”

Menachem gets on a plane, hires a driver in Budapest, and drives three hours into the countryside, over the border to a town called Kamenets-Podol’skiy. After several hours of bargaining, the dealer says, “No deal.”

Menachem’s driver offers to roll up his sleeves and show the dealer how to close a deal, but the rabbi calmly tells the man with the Torah that he will be back in two hours to resume talks.

“As I was coming out of the house, this farmer in a horse and cart across the street is looking at me, looking at my yarmulke, and he comes over.

“ ‘Are you Jewish?’ he asks.

“ ‘Yes I am.’

“ ‘Then I have a map to sell you,’ he says.

“ ‘What is it?’

“He says, ‘I don’t know for sure, but my father said if I ever saw someone with a special hat like yours, sell him the map.’ ”

Menachem does some fast calculations and realizes that the man, now in his sixties, would have been very young during World War II. He probably didn’t know much of what happened.

“So I ask him, ‘How much?’

“ ‘One thousand, five hundred dollars,’ the farmer says.

“I say, ‘That’s a lot for a map.’ I try to bargain, but he says, ‘Take it or leave it.’ ”

Menachem took it.

“I have been in Eastern Europe long enough to know to trust my gut,” he says. The farmer had been told by his father that this map was his inheritance and that it would be considered valuable by Jews.

The farmer handed over an old map of his farm, on which an X had been circled. Menachem handed over $1,500 from his money belt full of gold coins. “They don’t deal in dollars” in Eastern Europe, he says. Gold is nontaxable and untraceable.

When the farmer led them to the spot where they were supposed to dig, he told Menachem he could not dig.

“This map is no good unless I can dig,” Menachem said. “Well, it will cost you,” the farmer said.

“How much?” Menachem asked, knowing the answer.

“One thousand, five hundred dollars,” the farmer told him.

Menachem shakes his head and shrugs. “Thank God that was the highest he could count. So I gave him another $1,500 for the right to dig—for that, he threw in two shovels.”

With the deal sealed, Menachem and his driver began to dig. “My driver is a big guy—he can dig. I am no slouch either,” he says. “I work for two burial societies.”

At about four feet down, Menachem and the driver hit bones. After unearthing three bodies, Menachem knew what they had. He called a well-connected friend and rabbi in St. Petersburg—“and I don’t mean Florida,” he says. Within hours, the friend had sent two backhoes and arranged for the permits to dig.

“Everything you do in Eastern Europe requires a permit. It’s a nice way to say schmear money,” Menachem says with a laugh, explaining that he spreads gold as liberally as he smears cream cheese on a bagel. “We were supporting the local economy in a big way.”

They dug for the rest of the day and through the night. “I am not sure whether there were 262 or 263 bodies,” Menachem says. “It’s not because I can’t count—we found parts of bodies that we couldn’t put back together.”

Halfway through the unearthing of the mass grave, Menachem says, they found what looked like two small bodies wrapped in tattered clothes with Jewish stars on them. They were Torah scrolls.

“I could not save the covers on the Torahs—they had pieces of bone and hair. According to Jewish law, they had to be buried when we reburied all the bodies,” he explains. “But we could save the Torahs. One of those is the Torah your congregation now has,” he says, pleased to have finished the story and his sandwich at nearly the same time.

THE DEAL THAT CHANGED HIS LIFE

We walk back to the Jewish Bookstore of Greater Washington, formerly known as Abe’s Bookstore, nestled in a strip mall on Georgia Avenue in Wheaton. Menachem runs the store along with his father, Joshua Youlus; his brother-in-law Ayson, a Torah scribe; and other family members and friends.

The front room is filled with books on Jewish history, the Holocaust, Jewish humor—175,000 titles in all. The store’s motto: If it’s Jewish, we have it.

The rear part of the store is jammed with gifts of all sorts, menorahs, jewelry, prayer shawls, and more.

I notice what looks like a rabbi doll on a top shelf. Menachem takes it down, claps at it, and the doll starts dancing the hora and singing Hava Nagila.

In an alcove near the back of the store, floor-to-ceiling shelves are filled with Torahs, some waiting to be repaired, others to be sent out. The mailing labels reveal their destinations—France, Russia, Belarus, North Dakota.

There are Jews in North Dakota who need a Torah?

Menachem smiles and fills me in on a few other things—including how he got started rescuing Torahs.

“About 20 years ago I was a CPA working in New York,” he says. Even though he was ordained as a rabbi, his grandmother always told him to have a second degree as a fallback, and he was doing pretty well in the tax business.

“One Sabbath, my uncle tracked me down with news: ‘Come home now. There’s been a terrible accident.’ ”

Menachem’s father and his sister’s fiancé were coming out of a synagogue a few miles from the bookstore in Wheaton when they were hit by a car. The doctors did not believe the two men would live until morning. The relatives said, “Menachem, go buy burial plots.”

“But that night I made a deal with God,” he says. “It wasn’t a promise, it was a deal. If He would heal my father and brother-in-law, I would devote a year—my first year of marriage—to the study of the Torah, God’s word.” He shrugs.

“They lived. Baruch Hashem [thank God]. Nobody thought they would, but they lived. And when I got married three years later, I went to Jerusalem to study.”

Giving up a CPA career after five years of working his way “up the big ladder” wasn’t easy, Menachem acknowledges. Uprooting his life to study in a foreign country, with a new wife and no savings, was not what he had set out to do. But for Menachem, a deal is a deal.

His father told him if he was going to study, he might as well get a “real” ordination. So the CPA enrolled in two rabbinical programs, at two schools side by side. “They never allow that and probably would have excommunicated me if either had known,” Menachem says. He took a class in Torah writing at night.

“It was a gift from God that I was able to do the Torah writing,” Menachem says. It takes not only artistic talent to reproduce the calligraphy but also a kind of meditative spirituality.

“My teacher told me it was very good that I became a scribe—otherwise I could have made an excellent living as a forger,” Menachem says.

“Your heart must be pure when you write the Torah, each letter, you must be focused—only—on—serving—God,” he says, pronouncing each word distinctly, as if he has entered the trancelike state one must achieve to write the word of God. “You cannot lose your focus, or the Torah is not kosher, even if it looks perfect.”

There are rituals one must perform while writing. “We are required to immerse in the mikvah [the ritual baths] every morning before we write, and if you write four Hebrew letters of God’s name [YHVH, pronounced Yahweh], you have to get up and immerse again,” he explains. There is one section of the Torah in which the scribe has to write the name of God ten times close together—making the process of getting up, undressing, immersing in the water, getting dressed again, and returning to the text seem like an Olympic event.

“Others say the baths are for purity,” Menachem says, but he has his own take on the matter. “I think God makes you ritually immerse to remember you are human—you take off your clothes, you are like everyone else, naked. It is a humbling experience.”

When his evening classes let out, Menachem met many people doing night jobs in Jerusalem. He befriended Russians and Eastern Europeans who had emigrated as professionals but in Israel were performing menial jobs—flipping burgers and cleaning bathrooms.

“I decided—with the help of my whole family—to establish a teaching institute for these emigrants that would help them become Torah scribes.” To do so, a student must study to become a rabbi and then go on to see if they have the talent and temperament to become a scribe. Finding recruits required the right incentives. “We guaranteed that we would pay for the schooling and two years’ wages to anybody who graduated,” Menachem says. The school, Tikkun Sofrim [Fixing Scribes], was launched in Jerusalem in 1987 and has graduated more than 500 scribes.

As proof that no good deed goes unpunished, the success of the school put Menachem in a bind. “I had to support my habit—I had to find Torahs for these students to work on and restore,” he says. That’s when he began making trips to Eastern Europe. Today he has expanded his solo operation into a network that includes 20 spotters worldwide (for their protection, he keeps their identities secret) who investigate leads, maintain safe houses and access to money, take photos, and set up deals when Menachem cannot be there.

Rescuing Torahs did not come cheap. “For the first 18 years I used my own money to finance these trips and the school,” he says offhandedly, as if anyone else would have done the same. Much of the money he borrowed. Besides the costs of travel and acquisition, Menachem maintains a warehouse in northwest Baltimore where the chemical treatments involved in restoring damaged parchment are done, and he keeps five to seven scribes busy cleaning, lettering, stitching, rolling, and otherwise making the scrolls kosher, or usable, again.

He does not divulge financial details until pushed. Finding and restoring an old Torah can cost $17,000 to $20,000, including “schmear money.” A new Torah can run into the tens of thousands of dollars—if you buy it from others in the business. From Menachem’s scribes, committed not to make any profit from this enterprise, it can run from $10,000 to $20,000.

“If a congregation is poor, I often tell them it only cost me $6,000,” he says. That is what he told my tiny congregation when he offered us our Torah.

“I think it is a lie that God will allow me,” he says.

Menachem’s mission to save Torahs and return them to their rightful owners or to deserving synagogues has put him and his family—this has always been a family affair—into serious debt. But in the last few years he has accepted the advice of a financial expert who shares his dream and launched a foundation, Save-a-Torah, to reduce his debt and perhaps expand his operations.

“He’s a true mensch, committed and dedicated,” says Rick Zitelman, cofounder of the Save-a-Torah foundation and president of the Zitelman Group, an investment and merchant banking firm in Rockville. “For all the wonderful things he’s doing, he only thinks about how much more there is to do. He’s not going to stop until it’s done.”

He’ll tackle jobs that others would give up on. A Torah dug up in a cemetery in Hungary was in poor condition—it had boot prints and a footprint on the back of it. “Some Nazi deliberately stepped on it,” says Sue Korman, a teacher in Goldsmith Early Childhood Education Center in Baltimore. Menachem was able to repair the Torah and get rid of the bootprint. “But you can still see the footprint—the toes, the heel, the whole foot,” adds Korman, a member of Chevrei Tzedek congregation in Baltimore that uses the Torah every week.

“This is not a for-profit business,” Menachem says, laughing at the understatement. “It is a labor of love.” Any profit goes to maintaining the cemeteries in which the bodies from the mass graves are reburied. “We have 12 cemeteries to maintain in towns with no Jews living there,” Menachem says. “And, of course,” he adds, “it is a mitzvah [a blessed act] to give the bodies in those graves a proper Jewish burial.”

FROM EASTERN EUROPE TO THE PENTAGON

Jewish laws about burial are strict and complex. Menachem became acquainted with them in his work abroad. So he was ready to help when he was called as a member of a Jewish burial society in Washington to go to the Pentagon after the attacks of 9/11.

He donned a protective suit and, because he was “a little guy,” he says he went into places others couldn’t go. “But it was so hot I could only go in for a couple of minutes at a time.” His mission was to collect every fragment of the Jews who were among the 189 people killed at the Pentagon. He had to call many funeral homes to come up with the 40 shrouds he thought would be needed, he says. It was later discovered that only eight or nine Jews perished.

“The first body I identified was actually a customer of my store,” he recalls.

By the end, he says, “everybody clicked in these emergency teams. Everybody pitched in—it didn’t matter which religion you were. Everybody rolled up their sleeves. We worked together.”

Everybody working together—that is part of Menachem’s dream.

“He has single-handedly helped to bring the Jewish people together—he is so nonjudgmental, he can talk to everyone,” says Judith Levy, executive director of the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in DC. “He recognizes how much different branches of Jews have in common and how much we can take part together. He makes a place for everyone in his heart.”

“He thinks about everyone else besides himself,” says Jill G. Epstein, director of education for B’nai Shalom of Olney. “It doesn’t make any difference what your religion is—his goal is much bigger than what synagogue you go to and how much money you have. You’ll never meet another person like him.”

NO STRANGER TO DANGER

Three years ago, “in a country I cannot name except to say it used to be divided by a famous wall that came down,” Menachem was rescuing a Torah that had been in Auschwitz. The Torah was being advertised over the Internet, and the seller wanted $17,000. “He said he would only offer this Torah for two weeks, and if it was not sold, he would put up pictures of it burning.”

From the pictures on the Web, Menachem did not think the Torah was worth $17,000. But he could not allow it to be burned. He arranged a meeting in the man’s country.

“This fellow was in his eighties—he had a mean look to him,” Menachem says. “He kept throwing epithets at me—he did not like me, and the feeling was mutual. He was a Nazi who showed no remorse.”

When Menachem pulled out his bank check for $17,000, the old man told him that it was no good—he would take only gold. “By the way,” he added, “you have only 24 more hours before the two weeks is up.”

He called a friend and got the $17,000 in gold the next day. “I asked the fellow who gave me the gold to remain at the bottom of the stairs of the building,” Menachem says. “The old man actually threw the Torah at me. And when I got downstairs, I literally flipped the Torah to my friend.” Menachem went his way, the friend went another—with the Torah.

On the way to the airport, Menachem’s car was pulled over. “Two men beat the living daylights out of me, and they kept asking me, ‘Where is the Torah?’ ” he says. “I lost two teeth and had to have bridgework when I came back.” But he and his friend got the Torah out of the country.

Now he is getting martial-arts training. “My teacher says I am not an easy student—I should probably just stick to the Talmud.”

Another trip—this one to the Soviet Union—early in his Torah-hunting career taught him some valuable lessons. “Before the Cold War was finished, I was taking out a Torah, but I didn’t grease the right palms.” That was lesson number one. He also tried to take the Torah out whole, which became lesson number two: Any country that does not want to cooperate in returning stolen artifacts can declare a Torah a “national treasure” and make it illegal to take it out of the country.

“I was thrown in a cell—a Soviet jail is not a pleasant place, even for 24 hours,” Menachem says. “You are guilty until proven innocent.” After getting money wired, he spread it around liberally. Then he found a loophole to lesson number two: If you unstitch the Torah pages and take them out individually, you no longer have a “national treasure.” It is a tactic he has used many times since.

THE LEGEND OF THE 36

Menachem is currently at work on a secret project that could be the most difficult of all. He has discovered an unprecedented cache of Torahs and other Judaica. So far discussions are cordial. But he is worried that if too many people get wind of the operation and try to get in on it, for profit or political motives, he might not be able to save the holy books and bring them out to be restored and used by living congregations.

“Just because you find them doesn’t mean you can get them out—some of these countries are resistant to having Torahs leave,” Rick Zitelman says. “The stars have to line up just right—to find it, buy it, see if they are repairable, and get them out.”

Will he do it? Avis Miller, a rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation in DC, echoes a sentiment I heard from Menachem’s friends over and over, each voiced with the same caveat: Menachem will be embarrassed by my saying this. “There is a Hebrew legend that there are 36 righteous people in every generation, the Lamed Vov, by whose merit the world is sustained,” Miller explains. As long as these righteous people do good in the world, God will continue to bless and sustain the Earth, the legend goes.

“Menachem is one of those righteous 36,” Miller says.

“Torahs cry out to be read and studied and used,” Miller says. “There is a divine hand, a divine voice, in the words in that scroll. Menachem hears those cries.”

ALL MENACHEM’S BABIES

At the bookstore Menachem takes me over to the floor-to-ceiling shelves of Torahs that are works in progress. He reaches up to pull down a tiny Torah, half the normal size. He unrolls it. “It’s soft and fuzzy, yes? Like a baby’s skin.” I touch it—yes, like a baby’s skin.

He found this Torah in a Polish Catholic Church. It is lambskin. He returns it to its place and casts his eye up and down the shelves.

“I consider all these Torahs to be my babies,” Menachem says. “I am finding them good homes. There is a special holiness to a Torah—it’s not just a book.” He repeats the same phrase he uttered when we first met, to make sure I absorb the message. In many communities, there is a tradition that when the group is one short of a minyan—the ten people required to constitute an official congregation—the Torah can be considered the tenth person. So finding Torahs in mass graves is akin to bringing something that was once living back to life, a symbol of resurrection in the face of war’s destruction.

There is not much time left in the Torah-rescue business, Menachem says. “The next five years is a turning point. If the disrepair continues, I would say that for 95 percent, the deterioration will not be reversible.” Parchment, which comes from an animal, cannot withstand too many years of exposure to cold and heat, rain and mildew, mites and rodents.

“There are many more mass graves to find,” Menachem says. “Toward the end of the war the Germans couldn’t kill them fast enough—they didn’t transport them to camps. They killed them where they lived.” Often the victims took the most valuable possession in the village, the Torah, to the grave with them. He believes there are more than 2,000 Torahs buried in Eastern Europe alone.

How does he expect to find so many graves?

“How do I find them? How do I find them?” he says.

“The answer is, it is really God’s work,” he says, giving his familiar shrug. “I don’t go looking for a mass grave. It finds me.”