Thursday, March 3, 2022
Heroic Chief Rabbi of Odessa Rescues 250 Orphans by Traveling on Shabbos
Now! That's a real hero!
This past Shabbos, the Chief Rabbi of Odessa heroically rescued 250 orphan children from potential tragedy. Rabbi Shlomo Baksht determined that it was permissible to travel on Shabbos in order to flee the country.
The terrifying drama began Thursday evening, when heavy Russian bombings rocked the area near the orphanage.
“We just received an update that there were three terrible explosions near the orphanage. The girls were very anxious, sitting and crying. We are trying to move them to the city center next to us. The situation is becoming more dangerous from one moment to the next,” said Rabbi Baksht.
After speaking with senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Jewish community decided to flee westward.
On Friday morning, eight buses set off, with all of the orphans onboard, as well as the orphanage staff, Rabbi Baksht, his daughter Shira and his partner Rabbi Rafael Kruskal.
A few hours after they fled Odessa, Russian missiles landed near the Jewish community where they had been located hours earlier.
“We had a great miracle that we got out of there on time,” said Rabbi Baksht, “a really great miracle.”
The journey lasted through Friday night into Shabbos morning, and the Rabbi decided that the proper decision was to continue traveling for pikuach nefesh.
“I told them that we are here to fulfill God’s will, and on this Shabbat, His will is for us to escape to save lives,” he said
On Friday the Rabbi told community members, “We will continue to travel on Shabbos because it is a matter of mental supervision. Everyone will turn off their mobile phones, but on every bus there will be one mobile left open in case of an emergency.”
At one point they stopped in the dark and Rabbi Raphael Kruskal recited Kiddush, adding a taste of the Shabbos atmosphere during an unthinkably difficult time.
Rabbi Baksht described the superhuman effort of the staff.
“The babysitters on the baby bus held the toddlers in their arms for many hours. It was not easy.”
Gedolim Point to Signs of Mashiach’s Arrival Amid Ukraine Crisis
BNEI BRAK: The Gadol Hador, Hagaon Reb Chaim Kanievsky Shlita was asked by many what should one be Mechazek in due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
His Response was – to Daven and learn Torah B’Hasmada.
Reb Chaim also pointed out to a Medrash in Parshas Lech Lecha which says – “If you have seen kings provoking one another, expect the footsteps of Moshiach.” — “אם ראית מלכיות מתגרות אלו באלו צפה לרגלו של משיח”.
Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel, Rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Gedolah Zichron Moshe of South Fallsburg, as well echoed the message of R’ Chaim last week once the invasion had began.
R Elya Ber had put on Shabbos clothing last week when he heard news of the movement of Russian warships. The response of the rosh yeshiva is based on a Kabbolah that he has that when the Russians will cross the Dardanelles River, it will trigger the start of a series of events before Moshiach comes, and therefore, in his words, “Men ken shoin untun Shabbosdike kleider.”
5 TownsCentral Editors Note: There have been many points in history when Gedolim informed of the imminent arrival of Mashiach and it didn’t happen. However, that does not mean we should become skeptical, rather it truly could have been the right time, only that Klal Yisroel was not deserving. Hashem runs the world with cheshbonos that we can not understand.
We hope that this time our generation is worthy and that this current period of conflict ushers in the Geulah Shleima.
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
A fascinating but little-known chapter in the history of a campaign by a Brooklyn Housewife to help create the State of Israel.
"Irish, sympathetic, hates British, will definitely help.” So read an entry in the diary of Brooklyn housewife Esther Kaplan, after meeting with Rep. John J. Rooney, an Irish-American congressman from New York City, seventy-five years ago this week.
Mrs. Kaplan had no background in lobbying or political activism, but when her son David was arrested by the British for trying to smuggle Holocaust survivors into Palestine in 1947, she reinvented herself as a Zionist lobbyist and took her case straight to Capitol Hill.
The arrest of David Kaplan and other crew members of the S.S. Ben Hecht, and the protests that ensued in the United States, comprise a fascinating but little-known chapter in the history of the campaign by Americans to help create the State of Israel.
On a chilly morning in late February 1947, six hundred Holocaust survivors trudged up the gangplank of the S.S. Ben Hecht in the French harbor of Port de Bouc. The ship was sponsored by the activist Bergson Group, and named in honor of the journalist and Hollywood screenwriter who authored the group’s most controversial newspaper ads denouncing British rule in Palestine (the name of the region and not connected to a specific people).
The ship’s captain was Robert Levitan, a burly six-foot-four former Merchant Marine who said he “jumped at the chance” to participate in the mission because he had "felt impotent in the 1930s and early 1940s, hearing about Hitler's persecution of the Jews and not being able to do anything about it.”
"We had twenty men, with twenty different reasons for joining up," Levitan remembered. "We had some very young boys who were reared in Zionistic homes and were gung-ho Zionists. We had an Irishman who hated the British, and he volunteered just because it was against the British. Our cook was a black man, one of the gentlest men you could ever meet, and he just liked helping out the underdog."
How Ukrainians Murdered 100,000 Jews 20 Years Before the Holocaust
 |
| Statue of Bohdan Chmelnytskyi Still Standing Kiev |
In the early 1920s, thousands of Jewish child refugees flooded into Moscow from Ukraine, fleeing a terrifying series of pogroms. Legendary Jewish artist Marc Chagall remembered giving art lessons to some of the refugees at a Jewish orphanage outside the Soviet capital. He recalled the horrifying atrocities they spoke about — their parents murdered, their sisters raped and slain, and the children themselves chased out in the cold, threadbare and starving.
Unlike the Holocaust, this earlier wave of antisemitic violence has largely been forgotten by history. Yet at the time, it was front-page news. From 1918 to 1921, more than 1,100 pogroms killed over 100,000 Jews in an area that is part of present-day Ukraine. Such large-scale violence led to fears that six million Jewish lives across Europe were at risk from antisemitic hate. Those who made such dire predictions included writer Anatole France; less than 20 years later, these fears were realized.
The story of these fateful pogroms is chronicled in a new book, “In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust,” by University of Michigan history and Judaic studies professor Jeffrey Veidlinger.
“I think right now they’re not very well-known at all, mostly because they’ve been so surpassed by the Holocaust,” Veidlinger told The Times of Israel in a phone interview. “In the interwar period, they were very well-known. In some ways, it seems like it was all anybody was writing about then.”
Rooted in a previous linguistic research project with elderly Yiddish-speaking Jews in Ukraine who told Veidlinger about surviving the pogroms, the book takes readers back to this disturbing moment in history during the Russian Civil War.
“It’s terrifying and horrifying,” Veidlinger said. “It takes a toll on you to write [down] that testimony. I’m sure it takes a toll on the reader… It was difficult for me to hear, and probably difficult for them to tell.”
The title phrase comes from France’s fears for the future of European Jewry. The French poet and journalist noted that some of the pogroms occurred at the same time as the peace talks at Versailles tasked with ending World War I. One was perhaps the largest single mass murder of Jews in modern history up to that point — the pogrom of Proskuriv on February 14, 1919, with 911 listed deaths, which Veidlinger estimates is one-third of the actual total.
“I think it was almost genocidal,” Veidlinger said of the Proskuriv pogrom. “It shows how the violence escalated during the very short period of time between November 1918 to February 1919.”
Chief Badatz Extortionist of Kosher Cell Phones Arrested and the Badatz Backs the Chareidie Mafia
This is pathetic.
The phones should be under “supervision,” not the stores. There is no reason to believe that a store owner would substitute a type-B phone or account for a customer requesting type-A service.
Maybe the situation on the ground will change when the shop owners organize themselves. Learn something from the Ukrainians.
Hours after the arrest of a senior leader of the Comunications Vaad on charges of extortion and harassment of cell phone stores, the BADATZ has released a letter, saying that kosher cell phone stores are currently not being supervised.
Following the detention of the Supervisor of Cellular Stores, the BADATZ Eidah Charedis issued a special warning to the public.
Under the headline “Warning to parents and educators”, the Rabbanim wrote that “After the authorities arrested the supervisor of cellular stores, and extended his detention for a week, there is currently no supervision of cellular stores in Yerushalayim.”
They added that it is incumbent upon parents and educators to supervise children regarding this matter.
The judge who extended the detention said at the hearing: “On numerous occasions the defendant extorted and threatened cell phone shop owners while asking them to pay him money to get kosher. The shop owners who did not pay were allegedly attacked.”
Single Mom forced to sell home after Bnei-Braker conman Copycat tricked her out of $100K
A mom was forced to sell her home after her own slippery “Tindler Swindler” conned her out of more than $100,650.
Jordan Alexander, 54, was left heartbroken when her whirlwind romance came crashing down — leaving her with a mountain of debt.
She thought she had met the man of her dreams after connecting with “millionaire” businessman James on a dating website.
The single mom-of-two, who lives in New Zealand, was duped by the cruel crook after signing up to the site in 2012.
James painted himself as a hardworking dad who traveled around the globe as a railway consultant while raising his teenage son.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)