Part 1 of 4 – The Problem

It is time to start thinking big about Halacha. Great opportunities are awaiting us and too much is at stake to let them pass by. For too long, Halacha has been jailed in compartmentalized and awkward boxes. It is time to liberate it.

Most religious Jews are not aware that Halacha has nearly become passé. They believe it is thriving. After all, Halacha is very “in” and there are more books on this subject than ever before. Despite this, it lacks courage. We have fallen in love with – and become overwhelmed by – an endless supply of all-encompassing but passive halachic information, which does not get processed but only recycled. We have access to a nearly infinite amount of information via the Internet, books, journals and pamphlets, providing us with all the knowledge we could ever dream of. The problem is that this easily accessible information has replaced creative thinking. It has expelled the possibility for big ideas, and we have grown scared of them. We only tolerate and admire bold ideas when they provide us with profit-making inventions – when we feel our empty pockets – but not when they dare challenge our hollow souls. We do not discuss big ideas because they are too abstract and ethereal.

Novelty is always seen as a threat. It carries with it a sense of violation; a kind of sacrilege. It asks us to think, to stretch our brains. This requires too much of an effort and doesn’t suit our most important concern: the need for instant satisfaction. We love the commonplace instead of the visionary, and therefore do not produce people who have the capacity to deliver true innovation.

It is only among some very small, secular elite groups that we see staggering ideas emerging (Hawking and black holes, Aumann and game theory). In the department of Halacha, with only few exceptions, we rarely find anyone who even comes close to suggesting something really new. This is all the more true within Orthodox Judaism. While in ages past, discussions within Halacha could ignite fires of debate, we are now confronted with an increasingly post-idea Halacha. Provoking ideas that would boggle our minds are no longer “in.” If anything, they are condemned as heresy. Since they cannot easily be absorbed into our self-made halachic boxes, and they don’t bring us the complacency we long for, we stick to the mainstream where we can dream our mediocre dreams and leave things as they are.

The Retreat of Creative Thinking

Most of our yeshivot have retreated from creative thinking. We encourage the narrowest specialization rather than push for daring ideas. We are producing a generation that believes its task is to tend potted plants rather than plant forests.

We offer our young people prepared experiences in which we tell them what to think instead of teaching them how to think. We rob them of the capacity to learn what thinking is really all about. The plethora of halachic works, which educate them in the minutiae of the most intricate parts of Jewish law, hardly generate the inspiration for new ideas about these laws. In fact, they stand in the way. There is no time for anyone to process all the information even if they want to. But instead of seeing this as a problem, they and their teachers have turned it into a virtue.

And that is exactly the point. We are faced with two extremes: either our youth walk out on or maintain a lukewarm relationship with Jewish observance, or they become so obsessed by its finest points that they are incapable of seeing the forest for the trees and they consequently turn into rigid religious extremists.

What we fail to realize is that this is the result of our own educational system. In both cases, young people have fallen victim to the disease of information for the sake of information.

Information is not simply to have. It is there to be converted into something much larger than itself; it is there to produce ideas that make sense of all the information gathered in order to move it forward to higher latitudes. Information is not there to be possessed, but to be comprehended.

Jewish education today is, for the most part, producing a generation of religious Jews who know more and more about Jewish observance, but think less and less about what it means. This is even truer of their teachers. Some are even Talmudic scholars, but these very scholars don’t realize that they have drowned in their vast knowledge. The more they know, the less they understand. Just as a young child may think it is an act of kindness to lift a fish out of an aquarium and “save” it, so these Rabbis may be choking their students while thinking they are providing them with spiritual oxygen. Doing so, they rewrite Halachic Judaism in ways that are totally foreign to the very ideas that it truly stands for. They are embalming Halacha while claiming it is alive, because it continues to maintain its external shape.

Fewer and fewer young religious people have proper knowledge of the great halachic arbitrators of the past. They know little of their weltanschauung. And even when they do, the ideas of these great thinkers are presented to them as information, instead of as challenges to their own thinking or as prompts to the development of their own creativity. This is a tragedy. Our current halachic, spiritual and intellectual challenges cannot be answered by simply looking backwards and giving answers that once worked, but are now outdated.

The Quest for Certainty Paralyzes the Search for Meaning

Instead of new theories, hypotheses and great ideas, we get instant answers to questions of the utmost importance, offered via a wide variety of self-help books, the authors of which seem to claim that their halachic information came directly from Sinai. Trivial, simplistic, and often incorrect information replaces significant ideas. The information is reduced to a catchline – thus too brief and unsupported by proper arguments – yet still presented as “the answer.” By delivering “perfect” answers, which fit nicely into the often underdeveloped philosophies of their authors, everything is done to crush the questioning of halachic conclusions. The quest for certainty paralyzes the search for meaning.It is uncertainty that is the very stimulus impelling man to unfold his intellectual capacity. Every idea within Halacha is multifaceted – filled with contradictions, opposing opinions, and unsolvable paradoxes. The greatness of the Talmudic Sages was that they shared with their students their own struggles and doubts and their attempts at solving them, as when Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, Rava and Abaye debated major halachic problems; their fierce disagreements rooted in their outlook on life and how they saw Judaism.(Eruvin 13b.) Students were made privy to their teachers’ inner lives, and that made their discussions exciting. The teachers created tension in their classes, waged war with their own ideas and asked their students to fight them with knives between their teeth. They were not interested in teaching their students final halachic decisions, but instead asked them to take them apart, to deconstruct them so as to rediscover the questions. These teachers realized that not all halachic paradoxes can be solved, because life itself is full of paradoxes. They also realized that an answer is always a form of death, but a question opens the mind and inspires the heart.

It is true that this approach is not without risk, but there is no authentic life choice that is risk free. Nothing is worse than giving in to the indolence and callousness that stifles inquiry and leaves one drifting with the current. Such an approach shrinks the universe of the Halacha to a self-centered and self-satisfying ideological ghetto, robbing it of its most essential component: the constant debate about the religious meaning of life and how to live in God’s presence and move to higher levels.

The Greatest Proof of Judaism’s Decline is the Prodigiously Large Number of Like-Minded Religious Jews

Outreach programs, although well intentioned, have become institutions that, like factories, focus on mass production and believe that the more people they can draw into Jewish observance, the more successful they are. That their methods crush the minds of many newcomers who might have made a major contribution to a new and vigorous Halacha is of no importance to them. The goal is to fit them into the existing system. That their outdated theories make other independent minds abhor Judaism and Halacha is a thought they do not seem to even entertain. To them, only numbers count. How many people did we make observant? Millions of dollars are spent to create more and more of the same type of religious Jew. Like the generation of the Tower of Babel, in which the whole world was “of one language and of one speech,” we are producing a religious Jewish community of artificial conformism in which independent thought and difference of opinion is not only condemned, but its absence is considered to be the ultimate ideal. We have created a generation of yes men. We desperately need to heed what Kierkegaard said about Christianity: “The greatest proof of Christianity’s decay is the prodigiously large number of [like-minded] Christians.” (M.M. Thulstrup, “Kierkegaard’s Dialectic of Imitation,” in A Kierkegaard Critique, ed. H.A. Johnson and N. Thulstrup (New York: Harper, 1962), 277.)

Insight has been replaced with clichés, flexibility with obstinacy, and spontaneity with habit. What was once one of the great pillars of Judaism – the esteemed value of spiritual, intellectual and moral dissent – has become anathema. Instead of teaching the art of audacity, we are now educating a generation of kowtowers.

There is social ostracism of any kind of healthy rebellion against the conventional. The famous Orthodox Rabbi, Eliezer Berkovits, was ignored when he argued that Halacha had become defensive; the master thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel’s understanding of Halacha is completely disregarded by Orthodoxy; Charedi yeshivot pay no attention to Rav Kook.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-problem-and-future-of-true-halacha/

Kabalat Shabat en el Shul – Guía paso a paso

Un poderoso rezo comunitario puede ponerte en sintonía.

por Lori Palatnik

Segun tomado de, http://www.aishlatino.com/sh/csh/Kabalat-Shabat-en-el-Shul–Guia-paso-a-paso.html?s=mm el viernes, 21 de julio de 2017

During the three weeks between 17 Tammuz and Tisha b’Av, as we recall the destruction of the Temples, we read three of the most searing passages in the prophetic literature, the first two from the opening of the book of Jeremiah, the third, next week, from the first chapter of Isaiah.

At perhaps no other time of the year are we so acutely aware of the enduring force of ancient Israel’s great visionaries. The prophets had no power. They were not kings or members of the royal court. They were (usually) not priests or members of the religious establishment. They held no office. They were not elected. Often they were deeply unpopular, none more so than the author of this week’s haftarah, Jeremiah, who was arrested, flogged, abused, put on trial and only narrowly escaped with his life. Only rarely were the prophets heeded in their lifetimes: the one clear exception was Jonah, and he spoke to non-Jews, the citizens of Nineveh. Yet their words were recorded for posterity and became a major feature of Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. They were the world’s first social critics and their message continues through the centuries. As Kierkegaard almost said: when a king dies, his power ends; when a prophet dies his influence begins.[1]

What was distinctive about the prophet was not that he foretold the future. The ancient world was full of such people: soothsayers, oracles, readers of runes, shamans and other diviners, each of whom claimed inside track with the forces that govern fate and “shape our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” Judaism has no time for such people. The Torah bans one “who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead” (Deut. 18:10-11). It disbelieves such practices because it believes in human freedom. The future is not pre-scripted. It depends on us and the choices we make. If a prediction comes true it has succeeded; if a prophecy comes true it has failed. The prophet tells of the future that will happen if we do not heed the danger and mend our ways. He (or she – there were seven biblical prophetesses) does not predict; he or she warns.

Nor was the prophet distinctive in blessing or cursing the people. That was Bilaam’s gift, not Isaiah’s or Jeremiah’s. In Judaism, blessing comes through priests not prophets.

Several things made the prophets unique. The first was his or her sense of history. The prophets were the first people to see God in history. We tend to take our sense of time for granted. Time happens. Time flows. As the saying goes, time is God’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. But actually there are several ways of relating to time and different civilisations have perceived it differently.

There is cyclical time: time as the slow turning of the seasons, or the cycle of birth, growth, decline and death. Cyclical time is time as it occurs in nature. Some trees have long lives; most fruit flies have short ones; but all that lives, dies. The species endures, individual members do not. Kohelet contains the most famous expression of cyclical time in Judaism: “The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course … What has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Then there is linear time: time as an inexorable sequence of cause and effect. The French astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace gave this idea its most famous expression in 1814 when he said that if you “know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed,” together with all the laws of physics and chemistry, then “nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present” before your eyes. Karl Marx applied this idea to society and history. It is known as historical inevitability, and when transferred to the affairs of humankind it amounts to a massive denial of personal freedom.

Finally there is time as a mere sequence of events with no underlying plot or theme. This leads to the kind of historical writing pioneered by the scholars of ancient Greece, Herodotus and Thucydides.

Each of these has its place, the first in biology, the second in physics, the third in secular history, but none was time as the prophets understood it. The prophets saw time as the arena in which the great drama between God and humanity was played out, especially in the history of Israel. If Israel was faithful to its mission, its covenant, then it would flourish. If it was unfaithful it would fail. It would suffer defeat and exile. That is what Jeremiah never tired of telling his contemporaries.

The second prophetic insight was the unbreakable connection between monotheism and morality. Somehow the prophets sensed – it is implicit in all their words, though they do not explain it explicitly – that idolatry was not just false. It was also corrupting. It saw the universe as a multiplicity of powers that often clashed. The battle went to the strong. Might defeated right. The fittest survived while the weak perished. Nietzsche believed this, as did the social Darwinists.

The prophets opposed this with all their force. For them the power of God was secondary; what mattered was the righteousness of God. Precisely because God loved and had redeemed Israel, Israel owed Him loyalty as their sole ultimate sovereign, and if they were unfaithful to God they would also be unfaithful to their fellow humans. They would lie, rob, cheat: Jeremiah doubts whether there was one honest person in the whole of Jerusalem (Jer. 5:1). They would become sexually adulterous and promiscuous: “I supplied all their needs, yet they committed adultery and thronged to the houses of prostitutes. They are well-fed, lusty stallions, each neighing for another man’s wife” (Jer. 5:7-8).

Their third great insight was the primacy of ethics over politics. The prophets have surprisingly little to say about politics. Yes, Samuel was wary of monarchy but we find almost nothing in Isaiah or Jeremiah about the way Israel/Judah should be governed. Instead we hear a constant insistence that the strength of a nation – certainly of Israel/Judah – is not military or demographic but moral and spiritual. If the people keep faith with God and one another, no force on earth can defeat them. If they do not, no force can save them. As Jeremiah says in this week’s haftarah, they will discover too late that their false gods offered false comfort:

They say to wood, ‘You are my father,’ and to stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ They have turned their backs to me and not their faces; yet when they are in trouble, they say, ‘Come and save us!’ Where then are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them come if they can save you when you are in trouble! For you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah. (Jer. 2:27-28)

Jeremiah, the most passionate and tormented of all the prophets, has gone down in history as the prophet of doom. Yet this is unfair. He was also supremely a prophet of hope. He is the man who said that the people of Israel will be as eternal as the sun, moon and stars (Jer. 31). He is the man who, while the Babylonians were laying siege to Jerusalem, bought a field as a public gesture of faith that Jews would return from exile: “For this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Houses, fields and vineyards will again be bought in this land” (Jer. 32).

Jeremiah’s feelings of doom and hope were not in conflict: there were two sides of the same coin. The God who sentenced His people to exile would be the God who brought them back, for though His people might forsake Him, He would never forsake them. Jeremiah may have lost faith in people; he never lost faith in God.

Prophecy ceased in Israel with Haggai, Zekharia and Malachi in the Second Temple era. But the prophetic truths have not ceased to be true. Only by being faithful to God do people stay faithful to one another. Only by being open to a power greater than themselves do people become greater than themselves. Only by understanding the deep forces that shape history can a people defeat the ravages of history. It took a long time for biblical Israel to learn these truths, and a very long time indeed before they returned to their land, re-entering the arena of history. We must never forget them again.

As taken from, http://rabbisacks.org/prophetic-voice-matot-masei-5777/ on July 20, 2017

Some of these will surprise you.

by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller

As taken from, http://www.aish.com/jw/s/The-Meaning-of-Some-Common-Jewish-Last-Names.html?s=show  on July 19, 2017.

La vergüenza oculta del Velódromo de Invierno: «Francia deportó a miles de niños a los campos de concentración nazis»

El 16 y el 17 de julio de 1942, el gobierno de Pétain detuvo a más de 13.000 judíos y trasladó a muchos de ellos hasta París. La mayoría fueron llevados luego hasta Auschwitz

Emmanuel Macron, el presidente de la República Francesa, instó durante el aniversario del triste suceso a sus compatriotas a afrontar su pasado: «Es Francia la que organizó la redada y la deportación»

El historiador Mario Escobar, autor de la popular obra «Los niños de la estrella amarilla», cuenta a ABC cómo fue esta tragedia

La Historia suele tener una característica: los autores nunca se ponen de acuerdo con las cifras. Esta premisa, sin embargo, no se cumple en el que fue uno de los actos más vergonzosos cometidos por la Francia del mariscal Philippe Pétain: la redada del Velódromo de Invierno sucedida el 16 y el 17 de julio de 1942. En ella, el mismo político que fue condenado tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial por colaborar abiertamente con la Alemania nazi hizo que los gendarmes galos arrestaran exactamente a 12.884 judíosafincados en el país. De ellos, 4.051 eran niños, 5.802 eran mujeres y 3.031 eran hombres.

Tras varios días de encierro en el recinto (y de pasar por varios «campos de tránsito» ubicados en las fronteras del país) la mayoría de ellos fueron trasladados hasta Auschwitz.

La redada del Velódromo de Invierno fue la cara más amarga de un país que, desde entonces, ha intentado excusarse ante el mundo exacerbando la imagen de «La Résistance» (el mítico grupo de combatientes que se enfrentó a Adolf Hitler y ayudó a los aliados a reconquistar París tras el Desembarco de Normandía). Por desgracia, aquel deplorable hecho fue el culmen de una extensa lista de políticas antisemitas que, tras la invasión germana, fueron instauradas por el gobierno colaboracionista francés. El cenit de un pueblo que aceptó de buen grado las exigencias de la Alemania nazi y cuyo triste legado ha sido ocultado durante décadas.

Al menos, hasta este año. Y es que, como ya empezó a hacer el presidente de la República Francesa Jacques Chirac en los años noventa, Emmanuel Macron ha señalado durante el 75 aniversario de este infame suceso la importancia que tiene para su país aceptar su pasado colaboracionista: «Es Francia la que organizó la redada y la deportación y, por tanto, la muerte de las 13.152 personas de confesión judía arrancadas de sus domicilios el 16 y el 17 de julio de 1942. No hubo un solo alemán que ayudase en la redada».

A su vez, el político ha hecho hincapié en la necesidad de admitir la pasividad de algunos ciudadanos ante la deplorable actuación del gobierno colaboracionista de Vichy. El mismo que fue establecido al sur de Francia después de que Adolf Hitler conquistara el país tras un mes de invasión. «Es muy cómodo ver en Vichy una monstruosidad venida de la nada. Nada de aquello nació con Vichy. Pero nada de aquello murió con Vichy», ha confesado estos días.

La Francia antisemita

La triste historia de Francia en la Segunda Guerra Mundial comenzó a mediados de mayo de 1940, cuando los panzer germanos traspasaron la línea Maginot y dieron comienzo a la conquista del país galo. La invasión se extendió en el calendario poco más de un mes. Tiempo tras el cual la nación de la libertad, la igualdad y la fraternidad se vio obligada a capitular frente a la esvástica.

El 25 de junio de 1940, con el ejército local arrodillado ante el apabullante poderío de la Wehrmacht, Hitler dividió «la France» en dos zonas. La primera, al norte, ocupada por las tropas germanas. La segunda, al sur, liderada por un gobierno que colaboraba con el «Führer» bajo el régimen de la ciudad de Vichy (donde se asentó la capital).

«Los alemanes ocuparon el norte, la región más rica y productiva de Francia», explica en declaraciones a ABC el historiador y escritor Mario Escobar (autor de «Los niños de la estrella amarilla», una novela histórica que narra la resistencia de un pequeño pueblo galo ante el nazismo). En palabras de este experto, el poderío alemán hizo que el gobierno de Vichy (y Philippe Pétain, el militar al frente del mismo) se mostrara totalmente dócil durante toda la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Las razones para ello fueron una mezcla de antisemitismo, miedo y ansias de poder. «A Pétain le prometieron que la ocupación iba a ser muy breve, y que tras ella podría recuperar Francia. El mariscal pensó que, cuando acabara la guerra, podría gobernar todo el país sin oposición. Además, el miedo a perder las colonias frente a la España de Francisco Franco hizo que colaborara en todo con los alemanes para que estos le apoyaran», añade.

De esta guisa, y a partir del 17 de junio de 1940 (cuando se le dieron plenos poderes a Pétain), la Francia de Vichy hizo algo que no se había visto en el país desde antes de que la revolucionarios de 1789 ascendieron al poder: imponer una serie de ideas ultraconservadoras que solo sobrevivían en las zonas más rurales del país. A partir de ese momento, en la «France» proliferaron decenas de leyes antisemitas que secundaron la locura nazi.

Así lo afirmó, entre otros, Jorge Kirszenbaum (ex presidente de la Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas) en un discurso pronunciado en 2006 con motivo de un homenaje a los supervivientes de la Holocausto: «Desde octubre de 1940 todos los judíos debían registrarse en dependencias policiales, donde se les agregaba la palabra judío en su documento de identidad». El experto también explicó entonces que, a partir mayo y agosto de ese mismo año, se les obligó también a portar la estrella amarilla, se les confiscaron sus radios, y se les exigió viajar en el último vagón del metro de París.

Esas leyes, de la primera a la última, fueron instauradas por galos. «Toda esa humillación, esa degradación, esa persecución y esa depuración fueron perpetradas por los franceses», añadió Kirszenbaun. Francis Lott, embajador de Francia en Buenos Aires, hizo hincapié en esta idea durante el mismo evento: «La verdad es cruda. El Estado francés secundó la locura nazi, organizando razias y deportaciones. Un cuarto de los judíos de Francia han perecido en los trenes y los campos de concentración».

«Toda esa humillación, esa degradación, esa persecución y esa depuración fueron perpetradas por los franceses»

Escobar va más allá y afirma que -en muchos casos- las leyes francesas fueron más antisemitas que las nazis. Todo ello, debido a que el sentimiento antijudío se había generalizado en el país. «El ascenso de la comunidad judía había provocado muchos recelos en países como el Reino Unido o Francia, además de en Alemania. Hay que tener en cuenta que, en apenas dos generaciones, los judíos franceses habían logrado ascender en el escalafón social y enviar a muchos de sus hijos a la universidad. Habían progresado mucho y, aunque muchos no practicaban la religión o se habían convertido al cristianismo para tratar de pasar desapercibidos, generaban muchos recelos», añade el autor de «Los niños de la estrella amarilla».En este país dominado por los nazis (y en el que había proliferado el antisemitismo) no tardaron en generalizarse las deportaciones masivas a los campos de concentración y exterminio germanos. El método que se empleaba tanto en la Francia de Vichy como en la zona norte solía ser siempre el mismo. En primer lugar, se llevaban a cabo varias redadas mediante las que se detenía a aquellos que, o bien estaban «fichados», o se creía que eran judíos. Posteriormente, los reos eran llevados hasta un centro de internamiento «intermedio» en el que esperaban para ser trasladados a su destino final: Alemania.

El plan

Y así, precisamente, fue como se sucedió la redada del Velódromo de Invierno en la Francia ocupada por los alemanes. Una deportación masiva que fue planeada en el verano de 1942 con la colaboración del gobierno de Vichy y que fue denominada «Operación viento primaveral». Como explica la socióloga Christine Fauré en su obra «Enciclopedia histórica y política de las mujeres: Europa y América», la deportación fue organizada por Darquier de Pellepoix, el comisario general de asuntos judíos del país. Este movilizó, nada menos, que a unos 9.000 gendermes, funcionarios y policías galos de todo tipo para perpetrar la mayor vergüenza de la historia de la «France» colaboracionista.

Estos agentes fueron los encargados, el 16 y el 17 de julio, de arrestar a más de 12.000 personas. La tarea no les resultó difícil pues, como explica el historiador Yehuda Krell en su obra «Páginas de odio. Historia del antisemitismo», «los judíos franceses habían sido registrados con anterioridad, desde 1940, por las autoridades locales».

A partir de las cuatro de la mañana este improvisado ejército francés sacó a hombres, mujeres y niños de sus casas. «Las órdenes eran que no se dejasen convencer por las súplicas de nadie y que todos fuesen apresados. Los franceses incluso se extralimitaron llevándose a los niños de entre dos y doce años. Algo que los nazis no querían porque les resultaba un estorbo tener que ocuparse de ellos», explica Escobar a ABC. Con todo, Escobar también señala que algunos adultos tuvieron la suerte de ser avisados por la Resistencia de la operación, lo que les permitió escapar de las garras de los nazis.

Fauré, por su parte, es partidario de que el gran número de mujeres y niños capturados se debió al «exceso de confianza» de los judíos hacia el Estado francés: «Cuando el rumor de la redada se precisó, solo habían huído algunos hombres. La comunidad judía estaba convencida de que las mujeres y los niños no corrían ningún riesgo. Pese a las advertencias y los rumores, la mayor parte de los franceses -empezando por los propios judíos- no podían imaginarse el destino increíble que les estaba reservado».

En palabras del historiador español, la mayoría de estos judíos eran extranjeros que habían llegado a Francia a partir de 1933, cuando Hitler ascendió al poder y empezó a poner en práctica sus políticas antisemitas. «Muchos habían tenido niños en Francia que, por tanto, ya tenían la nacionalidad francesa. El gobierno de Vichy les quitó antes de esta redada la nacionalidad para poder arrestarlos y deportarlos sin problemas», completa el autor de «Los niños de la estrella amarilla».

«Las órdenes eran que no se dejasen convencer por las súplicas de nadie y que todos fuesen apresados»

El resultado fue que, el 17 de julio, habían sido arrestados 12.884 judíos. De ellos 4.051 niños, 5.802 mujeres y 3.031 hombres. El día 20 las cifras eran todavía mayores: 13.152 detenidos (4.115 niños, 5.919 mujeres y 4.115 niños). «No fue la primera redada pero sí la más numerosa», completa el experto en declaraciones a ABC. Tampoco fue la última, pues posteriormente estas operaciones se replicaron por todo el país.La frialdad con la que se llevó a cabo la operación queda cristalina viendo el mensaje que, el 16 de julio, fue enviado a las 8 de la mañana por la prefectura de la zona: «La operación contra los judíos comenzó a las 4 horas de esta mañana. […] Muchos hombres abandonaron ayer el domicilio. Se quedaron las mujeres con uno o varios niños pequeños. Otros se niegan a abrir. Es preciso llamar al cerrajero».

En el velódromo

Tras el arresto, el gobierno colaboracionista dividió en dos grupos a los presos. Una parte (principalmente los hombres solteros y sin familia) fueron llevados hasta campos de internamiento como el de Drancy, al norte del país. El resto (mayoritariamente mujeres y niños) fueron trasladados en autobuses hasta el Velódromo de Invierno de París. «Fue algo muy simbólico porque el lugar no era solo un edificio en el que se practicaba ciclismo. Era un emplazamiento muy popular en el que se habían celebrado desde corridas de toros, hasta pases de modelos. Era un sitio de reunión cercano al río Sena. Un edificio muy conocido», añade Escobar.

Aquel lugar de jolgorio se convirtió durante varios días en un auténtico infierno. «Aunque era un edificio público con baños, no estaba preparado para albergar a tanta gente. Las condiciones fueron penosas. Los presos pudieron llevar escasamente una manta y un par de camisas. Apenas recibieron comida o agua y, a su vez, tuvieron que soportar el calor extremo que hacía en julio», completa Escobar. Durante esos días también fueron fusilados todos aquellos que intentaron escapar. Otros se suicidaron. «Francia se saltó todas las leyes de la República para tener esa relación cercana con los nazis», completa.

No le falta razón a Escobar. Así queda corroborado en el informe que una asistente social que accedió al velódromo publicó en 1942 (y que aparece citado en el dossier de la Biblioteca Gerardo Diego «70 años de la Redada del Velódromo de Invierno París, 16/17 de julio de 1942»): «Los contados w-c que hay en el Velódromo (ya sabes qué pocos son) están atascados y no hay nadie que los arregle. Todo el mundo está obligado a hacer sus necesidades a lo largo de los muros. Abajo han colocado a los enfermos. Los barreños que tienen al lado rebosan porque no hay donde vaciarlos. […] La gente no bebe ni se puede lavar. El abastacemiento consiste en un cazo de leche por niño de menos de dos años (y tampoco llega para todos) y dos rebanadas de pan de 2 cm de grosor para todo el día (y no todos la consiguen). De momento se aguanta porque la gente ha traído provisiones de su casa, pero de aquí a pocos días no respondo de lo que pueda pasar».

Hacia Alemania

Finalmente, a partir del 18 de julio los presos empezaron a ser deportados hacia Alemania (en algunos casos) o hacia otros campos intermedios galos. Así lo determina el ensayista Emmanuel Lemieux en su obra «Edgar Morin: vida y obra del pensador inconformista». En la misma, señala este día como el primero en el que comenzaron a viajar trenes cargados de judíos hacia Auschwitz. Muchos de los reos no regresarían jamás a su tierra natal, pues su destino serían las cámaras de gas.

Escobar señala que esta situación fue especialmente cruda para los más pequeños. «Como los alemanes no sabían qué hacer con los niños, el gobierno se los llevó a un campo de internamiento al norte del país. Su situación fue doblemente traumática. Primero, porque tuvieron que despedirse de sus padres cuando estos fueron deportados. Y luego, porque fueron trasladados solos hasta Auschwitz en un convoy. Ese camino lo hicieron sin nadie que les cuidara, hambrientos y deshidratados. Fue algo terrible», añade.

Los datos de la redada del Velódromo de Invierono fueron traumáticos. En ella, se deportó aproximadamente a un cuarto del total de judíos que saldrían desde Francia en dirección a Alemania. Y lo más preocupante, según Escobar, es que posteriormente este horror trató de esconderse: «Todo fue indiferencia y silencio durante generaciones. Un ejemplo es que, en las elecciones francesas, Marine Le Pen llegó a decir que los franceses no habían colaborado con los nazis. Aunque lo de su padre fue peor. Él negó directamente el genocidio». Es precisamente por eso por lo que las palabras de Macron estos días han sido tan importantes.

Según tomado de, http://www.abc.es/historia/abci-verguenza-oculta-velodromo-invierno-francia-deporto-miles-ninos-campos-concentracion-nazis-201707172315_noticia.html el martes, 18 de julio de 2017.

MAKE ME A COHEN!

By Rabbi Kalman Packouz

The story is told of a man who came to his rabbi with a request. “Make me a Cohen!” The rabbi was puzzled because a person acquires the designation of Cohen through paternal heredity — only if his father was a Cohen. He replied to the man, “I am sorry; I can’t make you a Cohen.” Before the rabbi could explain, the man insisted, “You have got to make me a Cohen; I’ll give you $10,000!” The rabbi again apologized that he couldn’t help him and started to explain, but the man interrupted again to raise the offer $25,000. In exasperation the rabbi asks, “Why is it so important for you to be a Cohen?” The man replies, “Because my father was a Cohen, his father was a Cohen and my great-grandfather was a Cohen!”

Since not everyone is aware of tribal designations in the Jewish people, I will explain.

What is a Cohen, Levite and Israel?

When the Torah is read, a Cohen (or Kohen) is called to make the blessings over reading the first portion. Then a Levite is called for the second portion. A Yisroel (Israelite) may then be called for the remaining portions to be read. A Cohen is usually accorded greater honor or precedence before a Levite or an Israel. What do these titles mean and how did they come about?

Jewish history starts with our forefather, Avraham (Abraham). His son Yitzhak (Isaac) continued the traditions and passed them on to his son, Ya’akov (Jacob). Twelve sons were born to Ya’akov: Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, Zevulon, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, Yosef (Joseph) and Binyamin. These were the original 12 tribes of Israel. Because of a special blessing from Ya’akov to Yosef, his portion was given to his two sons, Ephraim and Menashe, who were then elevated to equal status with Yosef’s brothers — so there were really 13 tribes!

Until the transgression of the Golden Calf, the firstborn sons were the ones who were designated to do the holy service in the Mishkan, the Portable Sanctuary, in the Desert. No one from the Tribe of Levi worshiped the Golden Calf and, therefore, the Almighty replaced the firstborn with the Tribe of Levi to serve in the sanctuary (Numbers 3:11-12). Levi had three sons: Gershon, Kehath and Merari. The work of the Sanctuary — erecting, dismantling, carrying, singing, assisting the Cohanim — was divided amongst the three families.

Moshe (Moses) and Aharon (Aaron) were brothers — descended from Amram the son of Kehath. While Moshe was the leader of the Jewish people in the desert, the Almighty designated Aharon as the Cohen Gadol (High Priest). For all time, Aharon and his descendants would be Cohanim (also spelled “Kohanim“). The Cohanim were the priests who performed the actual service in the Mishkan and later in the Temple in Jerusalem.

Throughout the 40 years in the desert, the Jewish people traveled according to their tribe. When we entered into the Land of Israel (1273 BCE), each tribe received a specific territory (except the Tribe of Levi which was given specific cities to live in). After the split of the Kingdom into Israel and Judah following the death of King Solomon, the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE and exiled the Ten Tribes. Since then the Ten Tribes were not heard from and Jews can now only trace their lineage to the Cohanim and Levites. The rest of us reside under the designation of “Israelites” — not sure from which tribe we descend.

How does one find out if he is a Cohen or a Levite? If you can’t ask your father or your grandfather, then one can look through genealogical records for marriage certificates or official records. If one knows where his paternal forefathers are buried, he can check the tombstones for inscriptions. Sometimes on the tombstones of a Cohen are two hands with fingers spread as a Cohen would form his hands when blessing the Jewish people (Yes, Spock — Leonard Nemoy — as a boy in synagogue saw a Cohen blessing the congregants with the outstretched arms and hands with spread fingers …. and utilized the Cohen‘s “hand'” for the Vulcan “Live Long and Prosper” hand sign.) On the tombstone of a Levite there is sometimes an engraving of a pitcher symbolizing the service of the Levite in washing the Cohen‘s hands before the Cohen would bless the Jewish people.

Then again, one can always wait for Eliyahu (Elijah) the prophet who will precede the Moshiach (Messiah) and who will be able to inform us of our true tribal lineage!

Taken from, http://www.aish.com/tp/ss/ssw/434771743.html on July 17, 2017.