Tikkun Olam

Did you know that in Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called "Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the Heroism?"  In transliteration it is: Yom Zikaron HaShoah ve-HaGevurah. We Jews are the only people who have constantly , in every generation through the centuries been vilified, persecuted, murdered, and victims of genocide--and for whom the world has done very little to nothing--basically looked the other way.  The United States did not allow Jewish refugees desperately trying to escape Nazified Europe on rickety ships to enter the country. Britain didn't allow Jews who tried to escape their future murderers by entering the ancient land of their people, then still called Palestine (an insulting name given it by the Romans after their conquest of Judea).  These aforementioned refugees were sent back into hell and returned to be murdered. That is why we have a State of Israel.  Because Nazism and anti-Semitism aren't dead, and they aren't even dormant: ...

In addition to being there to protect the Jewish People, another reason for Israel's existence--for those who have the audacity to question it--is that it serves as the the world's conscience. Hat tip, A Soldier's Mother .

As seen on Undhimmi : for all of us, for all time. For the sake of life on this Earth. We are the shoes, we are the last witnesses We are shoes from grandchildren and grandfathers From Prague, Paris and Amsterdam, And because we are only made of fabric and leather And not of blood and flesh, Each one of us avoided the hellfire – Moshe Szulsztein, Yiddish Poet Never, ever forget. (And I add: NEVER AGAIN .) *Yom Zicharon HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day

I was totally dismayed when I read on the first day of chol ha-mo’ed Pesach, an article entitled Offensive Liturgy in the Passover Seder: Take It Out , by Joshua Stanton. In the article he described his personal seder and highlighted a passage in the Haggadah which he termed “offensive,” and at which (he wrote) the Jewish guests winced. He made a point to say that the non-Jewish guests were not the ones who were offended, but that the Jewish participants cringed at reading those words. And then, he proposed removing this “offensive” passage from the Haggadah entirely. What is this special paragraph, and why was it considered so offensive? This behooves a little historical background : the Haggadah* which has the order of the Seder* and is read on Seder night, was codified into booklet form around the thirteenth century. Before then, it had been appended to the Hebrew prayer book, the siddur. It itself dates back to the period of the Tannaim, who compiled the Mishna part of the Talm...

So it turns out that my daughter was chosen to sing, not only the two songs I mentioned in my post of April 18th, Yom haShoah-Never Again (scroll down), but also a third one called in Hebrew Punar . I am ashamed to say that I had never heard of it. So I looked it up. It seems that between July 1941 and August 1944, near the railway station of Paneriai , a suburb of Vilnius, where the Nazis, (yimach shemam*) in their goal of murdering every living Jew in Lithuania, massacred 100,000 people, mostly Jews, along with Poles and Russians. The site--to which tours are brought to learn the history of what ensued there-- is referred to as the site of The Ponary Massacre . And we are oh so grateful that Ahmadinejad might have 'dropped' the Holocaust denial from his speech vilifying Israel. So grateful. . . Punar. *may their name be erased.

First, let me announce that Haveil Havalim #213 is up at The Real Shliach, here . This has been going around the email circuit. I have received it several times, and decided it is worth posting now, in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The cartoonist is Wiley Miller , producer of the cartoon strip Non Sequitur . Never forget. *Copyright alert: No infringement of any text or graphic copyright is ever intended on this blog. If you own the copyright to any original image or document used for the creation of the graphics or information on this site, please contact the blog administrator with all pertinent info so that proper credit can be given. If you wish to have it removed from the site, just say the word; it shall be, ASAP

The 27th of the month of Nissan is celebrated as Yom Hashoah , or Holocaust Remembrance Day in English, which falls this year on April 21st, 2009. The full name of this day in Hebrew is much more apt: Yom haZikaron la-Shoah ve'la-Gevurah , or The Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the Heroism . In Israel it is a National Memorial Day, which is opened by a State ceremony at Yad Vashem , the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. At 10:00 in the morning, sirens sound, and everyone stops in their tracks, no matter what they are doing--to remember, and pay their respects to the six million Jews who were systematically murdered in the gas chambers and concentration camps and streets just a little over 60 years ago. At home, you can light a yahrtzeit candle, read passages from books about the Shoah, and remember the innocent victims of what the world does NOT want to admit was an attempt by the Nazis at ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Jewish People. Yes, Jews--and the world--shoul...