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Tisha B'av 2021 - Rabbi Steven Weil
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"A Covenant That has Transcended The Millennia"
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talk. How about now? Okay. We want to
thank Rabbi Bal and Howard Grunb
for for putting on the program and
setting up the shul. Not only are we
going to be learning and analyzing and
studying together on tishabove as we
relive and reexperience the tragedies
but throughout the day here at Keter
Torah there's going to be programming
and and you'll see that in in terms of
after we finish Mina there'll be a
program on Rabbi Shear who was with the
liberating troops of Bkhenvald and
trying to bring back to life the
survivors of Bkhenvald and later in the
day is a film on the life of Bakim began
particularly his whole career was driven
by the fact of what happened to his
family. He was one of those rare unique
individuals that decided to go east
into the Soviet land. And just to keep
in mind, you have to understand if
you're a Jew in World War II, your whole
perspective is World War I. The Soviet
soldiers were barbarians. They were
monsters. They were animals. The German
soldiers were dignified, were
respectable,
and most Jews stayed in Poland. Most
Jews stayed in White Russia, stayed in
Lithuania.
Bean
went east, and he survived. But he was
haunted, as all survivors were, by the
fact that he was unable to help his
family, to enable his family to survive.
And that drove him. It drove him as a
Jewish leader. It drove him as a Jewish
role model. And he impacted all of us.
So the film on his life will be taking
place here at Keter Torah later today.
I want to thank as well as Howard and
Rabbi Bal who really are our role models
to all of us. I want to thank the
sponsors for today from the shul Diane
and Dr. Michael Fineuk and their family
who are commemorating the yortsite of
Michael's grandfather David Lee Benmul
Zelig David Bman and we want to thank
our friends Relle and Phil Goldmitt Phil
as you know is the leader of the
pro-Israel community here at Keturin and
Tene and together with Michelle they're
commemorating the Yorksite of Phil's
mother Lana Bas Yehuda Hakohain
Elizabeth Goldmitt Zona Lraa
we also want to thank our good friends
Richard and Deborah Parkoff. Each and
every year they sponsor this program is
tens of thousands of of Jews on five
continents each and every year learn
study together the kinos with Rabbi
Winerin. This year in Israel it was
Rabbi R. And together with us at Keter
Torah here in America, we're studying
and learning and growing and hopefully
the experience of reliving and
reexperiencing the tragedies through
that cathartic experience. Tishabove
will be a day of growth. It will be a
catalyst for Chuva and ultimately will
come to an end. The suffering, the
sorrow that this nation has suffered
over the last two millennia.
You know, the way that we experience
Pesak
Seder night, it starts out about being a
history lesson about Aosenu,
about what our progenitors went through
in Mitzim, but there's a transition in
the mag where it's no longer about auvor
and each and every generation.
The Rambam says laaros to demonstrate.
We say los to relive to reexperience and
that's what we do. We relive and we
reexperience seder night is as if we
were leaving Egypt as if the the
liberation was happening to each and
every one of us. That's what happens
today. Today,
right now, we're not talking about
history.
We're reliving the tragedies.
We're at the funerals. Kazal have this
phrase
of the dead is lying before us.
Is that okay?
The dead is lying before us. What's
happening is we're reliving. Whether
it's the banaron of the six million,
whether it's what happened in 1648 to
1653 in the Ukraine, in Poland, in parts
of greater Poland, whether it's what
happened in Jerusalem in 70, in the
aftermath, the genocide of the aftermath
of the Barakba revolt in the 130s, or
whether it's it's what happened in the
Rishon.
And that's what we'll be doing
throughout the day. We're going to start
with the two kinos that we say from the
shawah from the and the reason why we're
starting there is many years we never
get there. We run out of time and it
would be inappropriate and wrong on this
day of tragedy of reliving and
reexperiencing the pain if we don't at
least reexperience the greatest tragedy
that happened in all of Jewish history.
So I have the Rabbi Salvich Kinos. It's
page 620 621. those who have the art
scroll. It's the kina of Rav Schwab.
It's at the end after Elitzion. The kina
that Rav Schwab wrote. If someone can
call out the page when you get there.
What page?
>> 386 in the art school
door.
From the time that we were chosen to be
a unique distinct nation. From the time
we were chosen to be the Almighty's
partners in a transformation in the
transformation of the destiny of
humanity.
Nothing has happened like to our people
like this.
That which happened in the last
generation. Oh yanu what befell us
that literally the deluge of blood over
those who sacrifice their lives
the depth of the tears.
Please God never ever forget that see
that before you.
Suapima
als
tribes of Israel Adosahilos
the communities arimilos the cities the
towns theos kavuros you know any of
you've been have any of you been to
Yadvashm to the valley of the
communities
what do you have there it's a maze
it's a maze in which the goal is to get
lost.
You have for instance western Galitzia.
So inscribed in the limestone you'll
have the large cities like Kraco and
Tarnov and then you'll have smaller
towns. Then you'll have little
you'll have that with Germany. You have
that with Lithuania. Sorry. Yep. You'll
have that with Latvia.
Eastern Galitzia, Poland proper where
the large cities like Lublin or Lodge or
Vars and then smaller towns Savvitz
Chenovia
and then villages
and what happens you get lost. Now
what's the experience supposed to
accomplish?
you realize
thousands of Jewish communities. In some
of those communities, there wasn't one
survivor who survived.
See, you and I, we have a very difficult
time relating to 6 million. It's a
number that is so uncomprehensible.
But if you know of a town or you knew of
a village or this city or this
community,
you take for instance Tarnov. Tarn was
central Galitzia.
There were probably about 65,000
residents of Tarnov
and some ofwhere between 40 and 45,000
of the 60 actually was 66,000
the 23 were Jews.
Our friend Jerry Wininrich is sitting
here someone that he grew up with a
survivor in Memphis by the name of Mr.
Diamond. Mr. Diamond he was good friends
with with Jerry's parents. He shared
with me there were Geridum,
Alexandra Hassidum, there were Misraim,
there were Litfish. When I say litfish,
I mean Polish litish.
There were every type of Jew you could
imagine,
every type of shul you could imagine,
every type of you could have imagined
and the tunes that they sang shalom to
or the tunes that they sang to. Tarnov
was it encapsulated to a great degree
European jewelry.
Less than 400
less than less than 1% of tarnov jewelry
survived.
It's all gone. That city that was so
rich and filled with every dimension and
aspect of Jewish learning, of Jewish
intellectual life, of Jewish cultural
life, gone.
You multiply that by a thousand.
That's what Rav Schwab is talking about
here. That's what Rshab is saying.
Adosilos arugilos
call mogay.
That that that my tear ducts would just
be a Niagara Falls. It would just pour
down
eld
alim. the thousands upon thousands upon
thousands goofing this ruffim. We don't
even have a grave to go to to say a
malim to say a kadesh to know their name
because they were all burnt. There's
nothing left but moes
the masters of the Torah.
Many of you have been to Kavna. Kavna
which was the capital of Lithuania
because Vilna at that time was po under
Polish control
and and in independent Lu Lithuania you
had Covena as the capital. You're doing
two incredible yeshivas there.
It was a suburb of Covenant by the name
of Slabatka.
Sabbatka was fascinating. It was a very
Jewish suburb. There wasn't one church
in all of Sabbathka.
And what were the two yeshivas? The
Kessus bas Israel named after Israel
Salanter, the altar of Sabbatka.
The survivors of that yeshiva built
Torah in America. Ravakov Kamitki,
Raarin Cutler,
Rav Hutner, Ravi Kutner, Kim Berlin,
Rutderman,
N Israel.
The majority of Torah that was created
in America came from the survivors of
that yeshiva. Those who had left early
enough, who had been able to get out.
There was another yeshiva
Kinesis base named after the great Rabbi
Yitskan Inspector Yeshiva University
Reitz Rabbi Khan Inspector Theological
Seminary. The base inspector was a Rev
of Kavna. He literally was the Pose
Kador and they named the yeshiva after
him and the great
beer Leovich the great student of Salvik
he was the rashiva of that yeshiva. So
you had these two great institutions
that would have shaped all of European
jewelry wiped out
because the communists took over in June
22nd. I apologize what I said is wrong.
September 1st, 1939.
There was a pack between Stalin and
Hitler. It's known as the Molotov Van
Ribbentrop pact. Van Ribbent Trap was
the foreign minister of the SS, I'm
sorry, of of the Nazi regime. He
actually was one of the defendants at
Nermberg and you had Molotov
representing Joseph Stalin. That's as in
the Molotov cocktail. And what they did
was because Hitler knew he couldn't have
a war on two fronts. He's going to have
a war from the French and the British.
He can't survive with the war against
the Russians.
So they made a deal. Russia to get out
of World War I had given up territory
that was part of Zar Zarist Russia,
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, what we call
the Baltic nations, White Russia,
Jacob, where your family is from, from
Bellarus. All of that the Russians took
and they took the Ukraine.
And what Hitler did was they took
eastern they took almost all of Poland.
The very eastern most part of Poland
went to Stalin and went to the to the
communist Russia. So that Russia now
became the great bear once again. Now
that it regained the three Baltic
nations, White Russia, Ukraine and
Hitler just expanded his empire by
conquering almost all of Poland.
Okay.
So during that time
now that the communists control the
Baltics in the white Russia, one of the
things they did was they prevented
Jewish education. They shut down all the
yeshivas.
And many of these Russia yeshiva and
many of the tamidim they literally were
on the run. They went to places where it
wasn't their building where they would
be a target. So for instance,
Baronovich, Baranovich, which is in
white Russia, was one of the greatest
high schools there ever were. The
greatest mass.
Who was the Russia Shiva? Rabbi Khan
Vaser.
He flees with his students to Kavna
and they're operating and functioning
and learning in Kavna.
In 1941, June 22nd, 1941,
after Hitler breaks the pack with
Stalin, they go into the Baltic nations.
They go into White Russia, they go into
Lithuania, they go into to Latia
and they conquer these areas.
There's a group in Lithuania,
radically radically anti-semitic.
It's known as the Lithuanian Free Army,
the LFA.
Today, they make these men into heroes.
There are statues named after them.
There are streets named after them, city
halls named after them.
They go town by town
and in the summer of 1941,
they literally eradicate all of
Lithuanian jewelry. Those of you who've
been to the Holocaust Memorial in
Washington know there's a permanent
permanent exhibit that was created by
Dr. Yafa Eliak Zron.
Dr. Yafa Eliak is from a town called
Asashuk. Asshuk had a Jewish community
for 800 years, a community in Lithuania,
and in two days was annihilated.
All that was left of Lithuanian jewelry
were three ghettos.
The VNA ghetto, the Kovna ghetto, and
the Shavel ghetto. The Shavel is was
those were three big communities. Many
of you know the name Rabbi Dr. David
Katz, an incredible historian. He's he
has a RV he's a RV. He has a shul in
Baltimore. Many of you listen to his
podcast. He's a professor at John
Hopkins. So his father was a was a
Tommed Kh was from Shavel
of the Vila ghetto of the Shavel ghetto
of the KNA ghetto you know maybe 10% of
those Jew not even maybe 8% of them
survived the ghetto what are the chances
of you surviving from 1941 to 1944 when
the Russians liberated Lithuania
maybe 10 maybe 7 8%. So we have very few
survivors.
At the beginning of the coven,
they were looking for rabbis. They were
looking for figures. And the greatest of
them all, Rabbel Khan Vasiman, they took
him out, him and his students, and they
took them to an area called the seventh
fort. And they shot him. They murdered
him.
And this was true of most of the Tamil
when the Germans would come out into a
town in Poland.
Remember the the the notion of of the
execution of Polish jewelry didn't start
till March of 1942.
Between 1939 when the Germans entered
Poland and March of 42, 22,000 Polish
Jews had been killed. Now that's an
exorbitant amount in our mind, but
relative to 6 million, that's nothing.
But you know of those 22,000 who was
killed, they took the rabban. They would
take the rabbi of the town. They would
take the rabbi and murder him.
Give you a simple example.
At that time in history,
at that time in history, there was no
such thing as a television or an iPhone.
How did anybody see the news?
1939. How did anybody see the news? So
if you were in America, you went to the
movie theater and between the two films,
it was always a double feature. There
would be something called movie tone
news. The way anyone would see the news
is they went to the movie theater to
watch the news. That's how you saw it.
In Germany
under Joseph Gobles, the minister of
propaganda, and his partner Dr. Julia
Striker,
they had a whole department of the Nazi
party. They took German filmmakers who
were Nazis and they conveyed the news.
That's how you would see those
pseudocientific experiments. The Jews
are and gypsies are not really human
beings. These are animals.
Just by the way, the speaker went off
and the the shul speaker went off. It's
good. Okay. They're animals.
They would compare them to rats. They
would show the hooknose of a Jew to the
hooknose of a rat. They would show the
spine of an Aryan and compare that to
the spine of a Jew, which was a in
German a boole like a hunchback. Jews
have fat guts, hooked nose. They're not
human beings. They're they're these
quasi human being. That's a cancer. Why
is it a cancer? Because when they breed
amongst us, that was remember the last
piece of legislation in Germany were the
Nermberg laws of 1934
which prohibited someone from marrying a
a Micheling, someone who who had Jewish
blood in them because it it's a cancer
that metastasizes throughout the German
people.
So you had these movies
in early in I'm sorry in late 39 after
the German invasion.
Okay. After the German invasion in late
they go to Lublin. We're going to talk
about him in a few minutes. Odilia
Odilio Glabbachnik. He was a monster.
This man was a a monster, not a human
being. He oversaw the Lublin district.
So they went to the yeshiva kakmeublin.
Many of you know what is the yeshiva
kakmeublin.
It was the greatest Torah institution in
all of Poland.
The chka the the famous mayor Shapiro.
He spent his life fundraising to give
them a yeshiva that would have a
dormatory that would feed the young men
so they wouldn't have to scrge around
finding families to feed them. you know,
this family will feed you on Tuesday and
this one on Wednesday. No, there was a
dormatory with a kitchen.
Jews from all over Europe dedicated
their libraries, their it was one of the
greatest Torah libraries in the history
of the Jewish people.
What did the Germans do? They shut down
the yeshiva,
the Russa, we call him the eritzvi
aryvmer, was a incredible.
We study his works till this day.
They murdered him. Most of the Talmid
were murdered.
They took out the library
and they created a bonfire in the
courtyard of the yeshiva and they had
the film crews.
They had the film crews and the Germans
in Germany and in Austria were watching
this on the news. They would see the
footage of this, the destruction of the
yeshiva. And why were they proud of
this?
Because this is the institution
that's going to produce the leadership
of world jewelry. This is the
institution that's going to produce the
Rabanim,
the rabbis, the educators who are going
to take the Jews to the future, to the
next generation. We have to stop that.
We have to prevent this cancer from
metastasizing. And how do we shut it
down? We destroy the educational
institution. Imagine today someone
shutting down Lakewood or shutting down
the Mir or shutting down the yeshiva
university or shutting down Nar Israel.
That's what it would in in taking all
the sarim in killing the students in
killing the Russia yeshiva.
This was their glory. And that's what
Rab Schwab is referring to.
Alsaz,
the misor, the tradition,
the what we call the young kohan, what
we and I would call the young students
in the yeshiva who are going to be the
future of the Jewish world. Al midrashos
moi mumoros, the ones who are going to
produce the teachers. Do you understand?
In Poland alone, there were 50,000 girls
attending Basakov schools all across
Poland
50,000 students in the Bayakov movement.
It was probably the greatest educational
movement that we have had until modern
day. But it's one thing today where
where you have governments funding
education
the Sarah Schneer what she started in
Krakow it spread
she just passed away this year in her in
her mid '9s fella Chappelle many of you
are familiar with the Chappelle family
from Daroom and Midash Rael yeshiva from
from the Holocaust Museum from Yadvashm
fella grew up in a town
is Jews. In Yiddish, we call it
Oshbitzine.
In Polish, Ashvin,
in German, Ashvitz.
It's a very significant Jewish town. A
very high Jewish percentage of of
residents there in in western Galitzia.
And when the Austrohungarian Empire
controlled Galitzia, they would go to
school, public school, learn in German.
And then after public school, the girls
would go to the Basanov
and the boys would go to the Kaider. And
then after World War I, when Poland
conquered when when there was a
reconstitution of Poland, which didn't
exist from the 1770s till till after
World War I, they went to public school
and learned in Polish. And then the
girls after public school would go to
the Basanov and the boys would go to the
Kaider.
So you had towns and villages and cities
like this all across Poland and they're
gone. It's all gone, wiped out. What do
I mean wiped out? Let me just use
numbers.
Professor Sal Freedellander.
He says you had in the early 30s, the
mid30s, you had three and a half million
Jews in Poland. It was the largest
concentration of Jews on Earth.
because of where things were going in
Europe.
When the war started in September 1st,
1939, when Hitler attacked Poland, there
were 3.3 million Jews in 39.
Around, we don't have the exact numbers,
but these are very fair assumptions.
Around 300,000
fled to the Soviet areas, fled east. Of
those 300,000,
close to half survived. Most most of
them just died of starvation in places
like Siberia, but half survived the war.
What about the 3 million Poland Polish
Jews that remained in Poland?
At most, he says, at most
35,000 survived. He thinks it was closer
to, we don't have exact numbers. He
thinks around 25 27,000 but he says at
most 1% of Polish jewelry survived.
Whole towns were annihilated.
Do you understand? 1% survived.
This was the heart of Judaism. This was
the heart of Ashkanazic jewelry. Gone.
Decimated.
Tino's basim,
the precious children, school children.
One and a half million of the six
million were children.
If you've ever read the biography
of Rudolph Hurst, he was a he was a
commandant of Avitz.
He was tried and he was executed
in a Polish court I think in 47
something like that. Now
after his trial while he was waiting for
his execution they were trying to appeal
it.
He wrote a biography. Now that biography
you understand an autobiography I
apologize. An autobiography you
understand it's biased because it's the
world according to him. But there's
there's a couple of
descriptions that he gives that are
extremely powerful.
One of them
when SS Odam Fur Adolf Aman
when he comes to Avitz
and Hurst describes to him they would
take literally groups of hundreds of
children and these little children are
crying and pleading for their life and
their the Germans with the butts of
their rifles are cramming them into a
gas chamber. Okay. And there's a term, I
apologize, I can't pronounce it properly
in German, but there's a term that's
called like where you're shaking at the
knees.
He says, "Even," he he turned to to
Aishman and he says, "Even we, the SS,
the most loyal of Nazis who are
overseeing this great enterprise of
Avitz Burka." Now, we get that state
where we shake at the knees hearing the
cries of the children.
And Aishman says to him, "Nonsense.
Don't even think that way." He says,
"What do you want? That you should have
compassion on the children?"
He says, "It would undermine everything
we're doing. What do you think will
happen? You let them live and they'll
grow up. They'll take vengeance on us.
The whole purpose is to annihilate this
people to to snuff out its future." The
greatest most holy component of this
mission is the eradication of the
children.
And Hurst writes this in his
autobiography as he's waiting to be
executed.
One and a half million children. That's
what Rwab's referring to when he talks
about tinino sha
albanos boi visavos. Savos are the the
elderly. There is no respect for the
Jewish elderly.
They were beloved in their life and in
their death they shall not be divided.
Ro please God seek out the blood.
And you count the number shall call
all those who were killed
during that time
6,000 times 10,000
one-third of the Jewish world.
These were the finest of your orchards.
Goladam please the one who redeems all
blood.
Please remember their pain, their
sorrow, their affliction
and never ever eradicate that. Never
ever erase that from the book that you
have written.
Remember each and every cry and moan
vashos
as they were brought to their murder.
Dem the rivers of their blood.
The rivers and streams of the tears that
they shed.
May that never ever be forgotten.
Call
any shriek, any groaned,
any cry.
from the barking of the dog for
please remember and count each and every
cry and each and every tear. Put them in
your vessel in your container elon until
the time will come for the the justice
and the vengeance of what happened to
them.
The camps of the barbarians,
the kind of pain and affliction,
the humiliation they were spit on.
Pakosum,
the beatings,
you know, it talks about starvation. You
know what that is?
Take take Matausen. Matausen was in in
Austria as you know. You know what the
average life expectancy was in Matausen?
6 weeks.
They had this incredible
deep quarry and they quarried stone
there. And as the Jews would would would
go up those steps, if you weren't
carrying the boulders from the quarry up
the steps fast enough, the Nazis pushed
you off the quarry and you fell to your
death. Most people they just they they
the caloric intake was maybe 4 or 500 at
most calories a day. In some cases it
was 300 calories a day and they just
worked them to their death. The average
life expectancy of a slave labor, a
Jewish slave labor in Matelin was 6
weeks. In Avitz Burkanau it was 10
weeks. Unless you were working in a bunk
like Canada where you could get food
from the the suitcases as you were going
through the packages. Unless you were
working in a place like Canada, in
Avitz, especially, think about in in the
winter in Poland in these work camps, 10
weeks was the life expectancy. And
that's why they fed you three 400
calories. They worked you to death.
Reone Simone Chigon. It It drove people
crazy.
the siman, the pillars of smoke,
the the ashes coming out of the chimney.
I want to read something to you.
This is a
an obituary
written by a friend, a mentor of mine.
His name is D Dr. Michael Burnernbound.
Michael Burnernbound is one of the
preeminent Holocaust historians today.
He's an incredible mench of a human
being, a wonderful Jew.
He's the one that created Survivors of
the Sha for Steven Spielberg. He was the
one who created the the Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington. Many of
you have been to Belgettes. He was the
creator of of the memorial in Belgettes.
And Michael last year, the very last
survivor of the Sunder Command. Now
understand the Sun Command, the special
forces, that was a euphemism that the
Germans used for this.
These were the eyewitnesses. These were
the Jews who escorted their fellow Jews,
helped them undress,
put them, brought them into the gas
chambers, took out the dead bodies, were
involved in the incineration and
cremation of the dead bodies. They're
the ultimate eyewitnesses. And you know,
every 3 months in Ashvitz, they were
replaced. There are very few survivors.
Only 1.5% of all members of the Sundaman
survived. And that's by each one is a
unique miracle.
The very last member of the sun command
this past year in 2020
he he was nifter Dario Gabbay was a
young Jew from Salonica. He was a kid
from Salonica who was deported to
Ashvitz. In some of the in Avitz some of
the um members of the sun command, a
very large percentage of them were Greek
Jews. You know why? because a Greek Jew
didn't understand German, didn't
understand Yiddish or Hungarian, any of
those languages. So, they couldn't
really speak. They didn't they wanted
that that they couldn't speak with the
people. Therefore, they couldn't tell
stories. And the other thing is they
can't speak with other members, other uh
inmates in Avitz, whether they're Jewish
or Gentile inmates, because who's going
to understand Greek?
the famous bombing and and destruction
of the second of the gas chambers in
Crematoria and Avitz gas chamber in
Crematoria 2 that was done by Greek
Jews. They knew they weren't going to
survive but they wanted to destroy the
the gas chamber so that it wouldn't kill
others.
So Dario's Gabby was the last survivor.
He died at 97 years old last year. And I
want to read just just one one piece of
of background.
You know when we suffered in Spain
before 1492
in 1391 in Spain there were these
terrible terrible poggrams
led by a a rapidly anti-semitic
Dominican frier. The Dominican friars
were the ones who really controlled
everything. His name was Vincent Fere.
They started in in March in in Sevilla,
you know, in Seville. civilas, southern
Spain, and they worked their way up
north and these puggrams through from
1391, they devastated Spanish jewelry.
You know, 1492 was the funeral of
Spanish jewelry. The death of Spanish
jewelry was 1391 was 100 years earlier.
So, I had the honor of being with
Nathan. We were in Barcelona.
There were no Jews in Barcelona the last
100 years of Spanish jewelry. After
1391, it was over.
Anyone who wasn't killed or forcibly
converted, they fled.
Where did most of the Catalonian Jews?
When I say Barcelona, when I say Jirona,
that whole northeastern Spain, the
dialect is different. I'll give you I'll
give you an example.
How do you pronounce a city Jirona? You
say Jirona or Herona. Depends if you're
a Spanish or you're a Catalonian. I'll
use an analogy like you have in in
Canada in Quebec, you know, they always
want to secede. They're always voting to
secede. Till this day, the Catalanians,
they look down. They view the Spaniards
as lazy. They view them as secondass.
The Catalonians, you know, they're the
you know, they're they're they're much
more educated, much more sophisticated.
So, they're always trying to secede from
Spain.
But you should know Bar the great Jewish
community Barcelona didn't exist after
1391.
Where did most of those Catalonian Jews,
Catalonian Jews go?
They found respit in the Ottoman Empire.
In the Ottoman Empire at that time, it
wasn't called the Ottoman Empire, but
that time Greece was under Turkish or
Ottoman control. And they settled in a
port city by the we call it Salonica.
You know, they used to refer to it as
Thessaloni.
Thessaloni or what what today in English
we call Salonica.
It was an incredible city. The Jews
controlled the ports, meaning the the
the import export merchants,
those were Jews. The steadors, the guys
who worked on the docks, those were
Jews. So you talk about vertical
integration.
The ports were closed on Chabas.
It was one of the world's largest port
city.
And it was the tunes the miro the miros
that you sang Friday night. Those were
the old Catalonian tunes the nusuk of
the it was Catalonian. It was how the
Jews would davin in Barcelona and
Jerona.
And it was a rich rich community.
It was a really special Jewish
community. You had gdole there. You had
a richness to the Jewish life.
things turned when Greece seceded and it
was no longer there was a breakdown
after World War I of even before World
War I of the Ottoman Empire and now you
you have a reconstitution of Greece.
So what happened was the Greeks were
very anti-semitic, extremely
anti-semitic
and life became very very difficult and
some of these people actually traveled
to Palestine and settled in Israel.
most of them stayed.
And in the year 1943 when the Germans
come and to Greece
and you talk about the the evil of the
Germans, you had these small little
islands, corwe and roads, all these
small little islands. It's not worth
their time. They spent huge amounts of
money, manpower going on to these small
Greek islands to find every little Jew
who's living in Corfu or every little
Jew who's living in roads or every
little Jew who's living on this island.
Do you know how many hundreds of Greek
islands there are? Santorini and this
one and that one
and they're gathering up all of these
Jews and shipping them to.
That's the backdrop of this of his
story.
Dario Gabby 97, the last of the sun
commando. And this was published in the
Los Angeles Times.
Who are the sun commando? Those
prisoners who were forced to work in the
vicinity of the gas chambers.
Born in Salonica on September 2nd, 1922,
Gabay was a son of an Italian father,
Victor Orim, and a Greek mother, Rosa
Baraka Gabay. His mother was
traditional, deeply immersed in the
intense spartic culture of the city.
Salonica, whose ports were closed on the
Shabas until World War I, was called the
Yushaim of the Balkans, a community of
some 65,000 Jews with over 40 different
shul synagogues, a Jewish hospital, and
even a Jewish fire brigade. As a boy, he
played the clarinet and began a lifelong
passion for athletics.
Shortly after the Nazis invaded in April
1941, the Jewish community was
ghettoized and most Jews were deported
to Achvitz in March of 43. Daario, he
was deported a year later in March of 44
along with his parents, his brothers
Jacob and Shuel. His younger sister had
died in infancy along with him for the
11 days journey from Greece to Avitz.
Can you imagine that? How much do you
think they fed these Jews, these Greek
Jews in 11 days?
You know, you understand why they went
to Avitz. Once you got onto mainstream
European territory, once you get into
the land, mainstream Europe, you could
reach Avitz from anywhere. That's why
they spent all this time in Norway
gathering. I don't I don't think there
were maybe 7,000 Jews in all of Norway.
They gathered them up and once they got
them on, they could by rail you could
reach Avitz from anywhere in Europe.
Okay.
That's why Awitz was not the death of
Polish jewelry that we'll talk about.
That was operation Reinhardt. That was
Soore that was Belgett and that was
Trebinka. Avitz was for the rest of
European jewelry because of its access
to rail.
And you know they referred to Aishikman
SS Obadam Fur Adaf is is the desk
murderer because his brilliance was he
literally
utilized the whole rail system of the
European continent to annihilate the
Jews. I mean by doing that he ended up
killing his own German soldiers because
they couldn't get provisions to the
German soldiers who were getting beaten
by the Russians you know and on the
Russian front because the most important
war was the annihilation of the Jews.
And and you know I think many many of
you may know this
originally the rail it went to the town
of Ashvitz and then they marched the
Jews from Avitz like many of you do on
the march of the living mitsim they
marched from the town of Avitz to to the
the chambers the gas chambers in Berk
canal
in in 44 they realize they're losing the
war and the Russians are gaining
territory and the Russians are closing
in at any moment.
So what did they do? They built tracks
from the town all the way up to the gas
chambers. And that's the tracks that
many of you have experienced. That was
not there originally. That was only
built in 44.
And then they built two more gas
chambers in crematoria. Gas chamber four
and gas chamber five with crematoria.
And it the the the the the construction
the engineering of those was much more
sophisticated than two and three could
kill many more people and it could
eradicate many more bodies at a faster
rate. You'll see why in a minute as we
read.
So he was shipped in 44.
By then Avitz had been in existence for
almost four years and Burkanowits
killing center had been operational for
more than a year. Yet Daario did not
know the name Ashvitz. Upon arrival he
faced selection. The old, the very
young, women with children, and those
who were weak were sent to their death,
and only the strong survived. His
mother, his father, his brother Shmoel
were sent to the crematory of Burkanau.
Daario was young, seemingly strong. For
Daario, that began his lifelong
obsession with physical fitness. He had
seen the weak die day after day, week
after week. After a short time, Daario
and his brother Jacob along with their
cousins were chosen to be members of the
Sund Commando. Chosen in part because
Greek Jews were raised in Latino, not in
Yiddish. Few spoke Yiddish, Polish, or
Hungarian.
Soon to become the largest population of
Berkanau, as during some six weeks
later, the Hungarian transports began.
437,400
Jews on 147 trains between May 15th and
July 8th, 1944.
An average of 2950
Jews per train. Some three trains each
and every day.
Eight of 10 of those 437,42
Jews were taken directly to the gas
chambers, which were then operating at
full capacity, even beyond capacity, as
on some days the Jews were burned in
open pits.
Daario had his baptism by fire.
The sun commando were intimate with the
act of killing. They observed the
murderers directly, closely, and over a
long period of time. They were in the
presence of the condemned in their last
moments, when they entered the
undressing room, when they lined up to
go into the gas chambers, and moments
after they were gassed. When their
bodies were removed from the chambers,
and they were processed, gold teeth were
pulled, inner cavities were searched for
hidden valuables, for wedding and other
rings. They were removed from fingers.
The hair was shorn and bundled. They
were the remains of the victims as the
victims were burned either in open pits
or in the ovens of the crematoria.
Daario was not without guilt over his
work. Daario said, "How can you have a
peace of mind? It is very, very tough.
Inside of us, there is somebody else."
Sunder commamando were slated to be
murdered after some two or three months.
As they have seen too much, they knew
too much. Yet because of the intensity
of the killing during the summer of 44,
Daario and his fellow sun commando were
kept alive. The chaos of the last period
at Avitz allowed him, Jacob, and his
cousin Schlommo and Maurice Venitzio to
escape all but certain death. Daario was
on the death march, what the Germans
euphemistically called forced
evacuations from Achvitz in 1945,
walking in the dead of winter with
temperatures well below zero and then
boarding a train that was to take him to
Matausen.
He developed an unusual strategy for
getting through the endless march when
if you stumbled, if you rested, or you
paused, you were shot. he said quote
unquote. I closed my eyes and said, "How
beautiful is Athens in the spring?" He
kept repeating it again and again. How
beautiful is Athens in the spring.
Soon he said, "I was sweating."
He was liberated from Ebony, a subcap of
Matausen by American soldiers on May
6th, 1945,
two days before the end of the war. He
weighed less than 100 pounds.
Only one and a half% of the sun commando
survived. Few of those deported from
Salonica survived. So he was truly in
the words of Yeshai in Udmales
a brand plucked from the fire
that's taken from his his eulogy.
Dario was featured in James Mole's
Academy Award film The Last Days.
Together with his cousins, his return to
Avitz was featured in a film called
Avitz: The Last Witness. And in a 2010
documentary, Finding Nico, which
reunited him with a roommate,
he married Dana Mitzman Gabby, in 1953,
and their daughter Roa was born in 1957.
Gabby is survived by his daughter.
Daario bore witness time and again. he
could not forget. Yet he fought those
memories. It's like a virus, he said. It
lies dormant and then it comes back.
He last returned to Avitz in 2015 on the
70th anniversary of its liberation. And
he walked to the crematoria with Warren
Reinold. He sang in Italian, "Mama," as
a tribute to those he had lost. As a
sunder commando he was with the remains
of those who were murdered as the bones
that had not been burned were crushed.
The ashes were accumulated and then
brought to the Vistula River where they
were deposited in the river to flow
downstream and be scattered. Among those
ashes were Daario's immediate and
extended family. Those he knew, those he
loved. So even in these difficult times,
he died during co
So, Professor Burbum says, "We were had
the privilege of burying Daario and
giving him a Kev Israel, something his
loved ones had never had. His body was
washed and placed in shrouds. We said
the Kelm Rahim in the Kadesh recited.
He was at peace at last."
I want to read to you one other
testimony.
Between the months of March 1942
and September 1943,
Polish jewelry was annihilated. The only
ones who survived Polish jewelry were
children that were raised in a Christian
family. And unfortunately, most of those
children we never ever got back. Most of
those children ended up being raised as
Catholics
and the only ones who survived were the
Jews in in the lodge ghetto. The lodge
ghetto under Morai Rumovski
wanted to to save those who were healthy
and strong.
He had hundreds of factories. Many of
them were textile factories because
Ludge was an incredible textile center.
It was a textile center for all of
Europe.
But these Jews were producing uniforms
for the Germans. They were producing
armaments. They were producing all kinds
of goods and materials for the Germans.
And that's why they were kept all the
way till August of 1944
because they had a value to the war
effort for the Germans. As the Germans
realizes the Russians are closing in,
the Russians are liberating Polish
territory by by the day they ship the
last remaining members of the Ludge
Ghetto. Jerry Weinrich's mother and
father were amongst those. They were
taken and deported to Ashvitz.
Now Jerry's parents survived. Most
didn't.
But my point is
no one
no one do we have as survivors of
Belgettes or soore. What do I mean?
Belgettes which annihilated Galitzian
jewelry, western Galitzia which is the
area around Krakow the all these small
communities that were influenced by the
Noamel Melik of Lujanskidum the rupt you
know the Nali ruptitzer all these towns
and villages eastern Galitzia where you
had in German they called it Lmberg the
Vienna of the east Lav today it's in the
Ukraine it's called Leviv but at that
time it was Poland Lev
all of Galitzia Tarnov and Krakow and
Lov annihilated
in Belgettes. Only two Jews survived
Belgettes of a quarter of a million.
There were only two survivors.
A man by the name of Kaim Hirshman
in 1946 as he's on his way to a Polish
court to testify.
He was murdered.
One of only two survivors of Belg. He
was murdered.
The survivor, Rudolph Rder.
Rudolph Rder was a chemist. He had a
soap factory in Lav.
He he was brought by some of the SS
because they were buying supplies.
And while the SS men were talking to
these pretty Polish girls, he he ran
away and he escaped. He's the only Jew
that survived. Most of what we know of
Belgettes which wiped out which
annihilated Galitzian jewelry. Most of
what we know comes from Germans
from Nazis who were there. The most
important testimony other than redder
that we have I want to read to you. It's
from a man by the name of Kurt
Gersstein. Kurt Gersstein was a chemist
in Germany
and the Nazis took him
to try to improve on Trebinka in soore
and in Belgettes to try to improve upon
that.
They wanted him to expedite to make it
more functional as a killing factory.
See you and I think of Avitz where
Zyclon B was used. Cyclon B killed
almost everyone. They they choked to
death
within 15 minutes.
But in Trebinka and Soore and in and in
in Belgettes,
they had these big diesel trucks. They
had big diesel engines and they pumped
the diesel fumes, the fumes, carbon
monoxide fumes from the diesel engines
into the into the gas chambers. It was a
much worse death. You're talking 30, 35
minutes till people literally gasping
for air. Can you imagine choking to
death for 35 minutes?
And they brought Gersstein there. Now,
Gersstein was so horrified by this, he
wrote down what he saw and he sent it
to the to the Vatican's emissaries
in in parts of Europe.
One of the studies that we're looking to
see now that the Vatican has been opened
up and that they're going into the files
of Pope Pius I 12th historians
his and we have documentation. I'm going
to read you his documentation that was
sent to them.
Was was it given to the pope? Did pope
pas know what was happening in 42?
What? It's clear that that that the
church officials had this information
that we know question is what did they
do with this
after the war
because you know he was conscripted into
the SS as a chemist. He was in
incarceration.
He was murdered by other Nazis who were
in jail with him before he testified. He
was going to testify and they murdered
him.
But we have his what he wrote and what
he sent to the world after experiencing
this. And I want this is the last piece
that I'm going to be reading probably
for the next four hours, but I'd rather
than me say it. I'd rather you hear it
in his words.
I made a thorough inspection of all
these camps referring to the three death
camps, Trebinka, so Belgettz accompanied
by Christian Worth. Christian Worth was
the commonant who oversaw Belgett's then
Trebinka
the head of all of these death
factories. Earlier Worth had been put in
charge by Hitler and by Himmler of the
murder of the mental cases at Hadamar
and Grafinik in various other places.
Odil Gablachnik, he's the monster who
was the head of the Lublin district. He
said the following. You will have to
disinfect large quantities of clothing,
10 or 20 times the quantity resulting
from the collection of clothing and
textile articles, which is only being
done to obscure the source of the
clothing taken away from Jews. Your
other duty will be to improve the
service of our gas chambers, which
function on diesel engine exhaust. What
is wanted is a much more toxic gas that
works faster, such as prusic acid.
Prussic acid is the main component in
cyclon B. The Furer and Himmler, they
were here on August 15th, that is the
day before yesterday, and they
instructed me to act as personal escort
to those who have reason to view these
establishments.
Professor Fensteel
then asked, "But what did the furer
say?" So, Gabbachnik replied, "The Furer
has ordered all action speeded up." Dr.
Herbert Lindner who's in charge of the
euthanasia program for the m ministry of
the interior. He was with us yesterday
and he asked me but would it not be
wiser to cremate the corpses rather than
burying them? Another generation may
perhaps judge these things differently.
I replied this is this is Lubachnik
speaking. Gentlemen, if there should
ever be after us a generation so
cowardly and so soft that they could not
understand our work, which is so good
and so necessary, then gentlemen, the
entire national socialist movement would
have been in vain. On the contrary, we
ought to bury bronze tablets, stating
that it was we who had the courage to
carry out this gigantic task. The furer
then said, "Yes, my goodnik, you are
right."
Nevertheless, Dr. Lner's opinion
subsequently prevailed. Meaning,
Gabbachnik wanted to keep the dead
there. He wanted to keep a remnant to
show all of the millions of Jews that
they had murdered. But in the end, whose
position won out? It was this Dr.
Lindner. And even the corpses that had
already been buried were burned by means
of gasoline or oil on grading erected on
rails. That's how they you know what
they did. Himmler had the SS and the
last slave laborers in places like Soore
and Trebinka. They took out they exumed
these corpses that had been buried and
they put them on these huge rails and
they burnt them. The reason that there
was a revolt in Soabore or there was a
revolt in Trebinka is because the sun
commando, the last Jews, knew that once
they finished eradicating and
incinerating the bodies of their loved
ones, their relatives, their fellow
Jews, they would be the last ones
killed. And that's what led to the
revolt in Trebinka and in Soibore.
So two days later, we left for Belgett,
a small special station with two
platforms. It was set up against a
yellow sandill. Immediately immediately
to the north of the Lublin Lav railway.
To the south near the road were some
service buildings and a notice saying
Vafen SS Belett's office. Gabbachnik
presented me to the SS Habamur Obermire
who showed great reserve when taking me
over to the installations.
We saw no dead that day, but a
pestilential odor blanketed the whole
region. Alongside the station was a
large hut marked cloak room with a
wicket inside marked valuables. Further
on, a hall designated hairdresser
containing about a hundred chairs. Then
came a passage about 150 yards long,
open to the wind and flanked on both
sides with barbed wire and notices
saying to the baths into the inhalation
rooms.
In front of us was a building of the
bath house type. Left and right large
pots of geraniums and other flowers. On
a roof, a car copper mug and David. The
building was labeled heckenhold
foundation.
That afternoon I saw nothing else.
However, the next morning, shortly after
7 a.m., I was told the first train will
arrive in 10 minutes. A few minutes
later, a train did in fact arrive from
Lmberg or today we the Ukrainians call
it Lviv. In Polish is called Lav with 45
wagons. You you understand one train had
45 cars holding more than 6,000 people
in total. Of these 1,450 were already
dead on arrival. You understand how they
packed the Jews into cattle cars.
were dead on arrival. Behind the small
barbed wire windows, children, young
ones, frightened to death, women and
men. As the train drew in, 200
Ukrainians detailed for the task. They
tore open the doors and laying about
them with leather whips, they drove the
Jews out of the cars. Instructions
boomed from a loudspeaker, ordering them
to remove all clothing, all artificial
limbs, and all glasses using small
pieces of spring string handed out by a
little Jewish boy. They were to tie
their shoes together. All valuables and
money were to be handed in at the
valuables counter, but no voucher or
receipt was given. Women and young girls
were to have their hair cut off in the
hairdressers unit. The SS Unifur told me
that's to make something special for the
Yubot submarine crews. Then the march
began. On either side of them, left and
right, barbed wire. Behind there were
two dozen Ukrainians, guns in hand. They
drew nearer to where Worth and I were
standing in front of the death chambers.
men, women, young girls, young boys,
children, babies, crippled, all stark
naked, filed in. At the corner stood a
burly SS man with a loud priest-like
voice. Nothing terrible is going to
happen to you, he told the poor
wretches. All you have to do is breathe
in deeply. That strengthens the lungs.
Inhaling is a means of preventing
infectious diseases. It's a good method
of disinfection.
They asked what was going to happen to
them. He told them, "The men will have
work to work building roads and houses,
but the women, they're not obliged to do
so. They'll do housework or they'll help
in the kitchen."
For some of these poor creatures, this
was a last small ray of hope, enough to
carry them, unresisting as far as the
chambers of death. However, most of the
Jews knew the truth. The odor in the air
told them what their fate was to be.
They walked up a fall a small flight of
steps and into the death chambers. Most
of them without a word. They thrust
forward by those behind them. One Jewish
of about 40, her eyes flaming like
torches, cursed her murderers. Urged on
by some whiplashes from Captain Worth in
person, she disappeared into the gas
chamber. Many were praying while others
asked, "Who will give us water to wash
the dead?"
I prayed with them. I pressed myself
into a quarter and I cried out to my God
and to their God.
How glad I should have been to go into
the gas chamber with them. How gladly I
should have died the same death as
theirs. Then an SS officer in uniform
would have been found in the gas
chambers. People would have believed it
was an accident and the story would have
been buried and forgotten.
But I could not do this yet.
I felt I must not succumb to the
temptation to die with the Jews.
I now knew a great deal about these
murderers. Worth had told me there are
not 10 people alive who have seen or
will see as much as you. When the whole
thing was over, all the foreign
auxiliaries, they would, meaning the
Ukrainian guards, would be executed. I
was one of the handful of people who had
seen every corner of the establishment
and certainly the only one to have
visited as an enemy of this gang of
murderers.
Inside the gas chambers, SS men were
crushing the people together. Fill them
up well, Worth had ordered. 7 to 800 for
every 270 square ft.
Now the doors were closed. Meanwhile,
the rest of the people from the train
stood waiting naked. "Naked even in
winter," somebody said to me. "But they
may catch their death." "Look, that's
what they're here for," was the reply.
At that moment, I understood the reason
for the inscription, "Heckenhalt."
Heckinhol was the driver of the diesel
truck whose exhaust gases were to be
used to kill these Jews. SS Sergeant
Heckenhalt was making great efforts to
get the engine running, but it refused
to start. Captain Worth came up. He was
obviously frightened because I was
watching a disaster. Yes, I saw it all
and I waited for 50 minutes. Then 70
minutes ticked away on my stopwatch, but
the diesel would not work. Inside the
gas chambers, people waited, waited in
vain. They would be heard weeping as
they do in the synagogue, said Professor
Fonsteel, his eyes glued to a window in
the wooden door. Furious at the delay,
the commonant Captain Worth, he lashed
out with his whip at the Ukrainian
assisting Heckenhalt. It was 2 hours and
49 minutes, all recorded by stopwatch,
before the diesel engine finally
started.
Right up to that moment, the people had
been shut up alive in those four crowded
gas chambers. Four times 750 persons in
four times 1590 cubic feet of space.
Another 25 minutes dragged by. Many of
those inside were already dead. They
could be seen through the small window
when an electric lamp in sign went on
for a few moments and lit up the
chamber. After 28 minutes, few were left
alive. Finally, at the end of 32
minutes, all were dead.
Some Jewish workers on the far side
opened the doors. In return for this
terrible service, they were fed. Inside,
the people were still standing erect
like pillars of basalt since there had
not been an inch of space for them to
fall or even lean. Families could still
be seen holding hands even in death.
It was a tough job to separate them as
the chambers were emptied to make way
for the next batch. The bodies were
tossed out, blew wet with sweat and
urine. The legs soiled with feces and
menstrual blood. A couple of dozen
workers checked the mouths of the dead,
which they tore open with iron hooks.
Gold to the left, other objects to the
right. Other workers inspected the anus
and the genital organs in search of
money of diamonds of gold, etc. The
dentist moved around hammering out gold
teeth, bridges, and crowns. In the midst
of them stood captain, the commandant
worth, Christian Worth, in his element,
showing me a large can full of teeth. He
said, "See for yourself. Just look at
the amount of gold there is." And we
collected this much only yesterday and
the day before. You can't imagine what
we find every day. Dollars, diamonds,
gold. You'll see.
He took me to a jeweler who was
responsible for all these valuables.
They then pointed me to a man who had
been one of the heads of the Kaf House
devestance, a large Berlin department
store and another little man. These two
were in charge of the Jewish works gods
work squads, meaning what we call the
sun commando. The little man was being
made to play the violin. He was a
captain in the Imperial Austrian Army
during World War I. Worth told me he
holds the Knight's Cross of the German
Iron Cross.
Then the bodies were flung into large
trenches, each trench about 100 yards by
20 by 12, which had been dug close to
the gas chambers. After a few days, the
bodies would swell, raising the top of
the mound as much as 6 to 10 feet as a
result of the gas formed inside the
corpses. A few days later, once the
swelling had subsided, the bodies would
shake down again. Subsequently, I was
told, the bodies were piled onto train
rails and burned to a cinder with diesel
oil.
The simanosim
piles and piles of stones and senus.
The cry the shrieks from the nation
as they were choking to death in the gas
chambers.
By the way, you see her here was told
something that never emerged. The plan
was to take the fat and use it to make
soap. You know, soap historically was
made from animal fat. They'll use the
fat of the Jews. You know why that never
happened? They didn't turn us into soap.
Think about where the Jews were coming
from
ghettos.
You you look at they they were nothing
when they got to Avitz. They were
nothing when they got to to to Belginka.
There was no fat left on them.
So you you you you don't make soap out
of human flesh. You make it out of human
fat. And there was no soap to make it
out of
expos the snap of the fingers shall rush
approach by the SS guards
per to the right would be slave labored
sal to the the death to the to the left.
How they shot
they shot us into pits.
By the way, many of you, you should read
the book
Holocaust by Bullets. And I forgot the
the name of his second book. The second
book is actually, if you had to read
one, you should read. He's a French
Catholic priest. His name is Father
Patrick Dubois.
He spent 18 years of his life with
primarily Christians, funded by Jews,
but primarily was Christians. That's why
they were allowed to do it. going town
by town, village by village in the
Ukraine, in Lithuania and in White
Russia,
finding the mass graves of in 1941 the
Jews that were killed. Now you
understand we assumed it was 1.25 1.3
million Jews who were murdered by the SS
by the ansat groupinat group in A B C
and D.
But his 18 years,
Father Patrick Dubois thinks it's closer
to 1.8 million Jews that were killed.
None of those Jews were gassed to death.
This is all before Voni. Vani happens
January 20th, 1942.
This is all Litvisha jewelry and
Ukrainian jewelry. You think about
Russia Shana 1941.
33,400
Jews were taken out to Babiar, a ravine
outside of Kiev. That was the
annihilation of Kiev jewelry.
And this was town by town, village by
village. The name of the book is called
in broad daylight. That's the book you
should read by Father Patrick Dubra. In
broad daylight
and that's what Rashwab here is
referring to. Theos
they they shot them one bullet at a
time.
They violated our sisters.
I watched it. Hasn't been published yet.
I watched it. There's a film done by a
very fine Israeli um producer.
And it's a film that many of those who
were interviewed for this film would
rather wait till they're dead till the
film is produced.
It's Jewish men and women who were
sexually violated
by Germans, by Poles, by Ukrainians
and the impact it had on them the rest
of their lives.
It's a documentary.
You watch that film
and there's just it takes all of your
heart and soul
because like many survivors,
what they saw, what they went through,
how they were tortured
and then to have to live with that the
rest of their lives.
Think about how many people were
castrated. Think about how many women
who were the objects of mangala and the
Nazi doctor's experimentation
were infertile the rest of their life
could never ever have children
the poison that they drank from the
German doctors
you know that haunts us we said less
than 1% of Polish jewelry survive but of
Those that survived, many of them never
even knew they were Jews. They were
raised their whole life as as Catholics.
The holy flock of God. Who can count the
number of those that were killed?
The fire that that devoured them should
never ever be extinguished. We should
never forget that
these are the ones that sanctified your
name
with the sound of Israel.
They gave over their life to God.
Only God will bring them
until the end of history. We have to say
we have to say a kadesh for them.
You're all familiar with that famous I
think it's a maj
of that they on on the the railways in
the cattle cars on the way to the to to
their extermination
they saying it and then one of them you
know wrote down the notes and threw it
out until this that's the An
[Music]
that is that tune that was written in
the cattle cars.
The nation is is an orphan.
There are no graves that we can go to
say a calm to say a kadesh
matas. There are no head tombstones.
Nowhere to cry.
All that's left is their blood that was
spilled and it should never stop
boiling.
Dishname is beak. All we have are the
very few scare scarce ashes that remain
in Belgettes in Trebinka
in Soibore
in Rambulus outside of Real Latafia in
Panari outside of VNA in Babyar
outside of Kiev
Malar Israel. Who could ever articulate
the pain of the Jewish people?
and the remnant
which is so few as we mentioned.
Please the living God please comfort and
console us. Have compassion on us.
We yearn for you.
Create a new light for us.
Elohim
going to ask everyone at this point to
turn to the 34th kina.
You know throughout tishabove
the rub used to say it's the one day of
the year that we question God. a Jew, a
human being with a finite intellect as
asshia says,
the the wisdom, the knowledge, the
thoughts of God are not the thoughts of
a human being. And who are we with a
limited frail intellect to understand
God's system?
Mosha Rabenu, that's the famous Gar
Manos when he saw what happened to
Rebaka, he said, "Zoo Torah,
this is someone who's integrated and
become a master of the Torah and this is
its reward." Come on. He couldn't
understand. Mosheru couldn't understand
it. The the mo intellectually perfected
human being that ever lived. The man who
had the greatest knowledge of God and of
God's ways of the rebon's ways he could
not understand the system God's system
of justice
all the more so we
and our response the rest of the year
the RV used to say is
when we're confronted by something that
perplexes us when we're confronted by
something that that that pains us that
we just don't understand it's Arun's
response to the death of his two young
sons.
He was silent.
One day a year, the ro said, "We have
the right to question God." And that's
today. It's tishabove.
Who gave us the mat? Who gave us the
license to question God Almighty?
Your Miyahu Hanavi, the Ramban quotes.
Many had the the the minhug. They would
say aha at night as we did last night
and they would read a why read a because
you need a mat. You need a a a license
to e have the the kutzbah to to to stand
and question God and his system and his
justice.
And that gave us the license on tishov.
Our menug is that we say at night and ki
read this morning the ha tora because
yahu in the ha questions god. That's
what gives us the license. It's done.
It's your ma hanavi under divine
premonition that had the right the
ability to say such a thing and that
gives us the license.
But what happens is throughout the day
when we question God we come back as
your mahu himself did in the third peric
of a last night
rovos don't come from God. We're the
ones who generate it. We have free will.
The rebon gave us free will. And when we
act in a corrupted way, in a perverse
way, there are consequences.
And that notion of kadin after we
question, we come back and we
acknowledge our flaws and we acknowledge
the corruption of our people. You see
that theme throughout tishab and one of
the areas you see that is Rabie Halevi
is the author of this ka is the 34th
kenna.
The story is this. Now, let me just give
a little bit of background.
You and I when we hear the word Zakaria,
Zachchariah the prophet, we think of the
Nvy of the Bay.
When the Persians gave us license to
rebuild Jerusalem,
so it was two great leaders, Ezra, who
was the leader, the religious leader,
and Nhema who was a governmental
official in the Persian Empire.
They came back and they led the people.
But to build the base of Mikdash, you
need nvua. You need the specific, what
do we call the measurements, the midot
as to where to put the misbak, where to
put the azara, where's the nashim,
who provided that?
Who provided that?
on behalf of the rebon. Three men,
Zakaria, and Mali. Malaki, Malachi,
Mali. The Gomar is not sure who that is
because the phrase Malaki means my
agent, my messenger. It's a euphe it's
it's referring to someone. So most of
Kazal believe that Malaki was Ezra.
There are those that want to say Malaki
was actually Mori.
There's a third opinion that his name
was Mali.
So there was Mali and the one who we
have the the largest body of Nvua is
Zakaria. Why? Because Zakaria not only
shares with us the experience of the Bay
Sheni but he has Nvuote that if the
people of the Bayeni live up to it could
be fulfilled by them if not will be
fulfilled in the Bay.
That's not who we're speaking about.
This ka is not about Zakaria the famous
zakaria that we know. Who is this kina
about?
Another is a hanavi but from the bias
rish.
Now go back for a second to the ha that
we read on para skullin. Okay it's the
story
of a very challenging time.
The daughter of Jezebel of Isel and Akav
her name was Atalyahu.
Atalia marries the melhuda. The logic
was that way there could be some form of
peace between the 10 northern tribes
Israel and the two southern tribes
Yehuda. She is a shrewd just like her
mother. And when her husband dies, she
runs the government of the two southern
tribes of Yehuda.
And one by one she has assassinated all
the Davidic descendants. She tries to
annihilate the whole line of the
Messiah, the whole Davidic and
Solommonic line. There's one little kid,
Yhoash,
the Kohanim, under the guidance of a
righteous Coen Guttle, Yho Yada. They
actually hide this little kid, and they
prevent him from being killed by Atalia.
Eventually, the Jews revolt and they
overthrow Atalyahu. You know what she
did? And that's that's the whole
background to Parcalin, the Haftto of
Pareskullin.
She knew if she would destroy the Ba
Mikdash, they'd kill her. It would
create a revolt. So she did something
called passive aggressive. It was an old
building. It was built by Schlommo.
She just let it fall into disrepair. If
you don't fix a house, think about our
homes here. You just go two years
without fixing your house and see what
happens to it.
Think about a structure that's that old.
It needs constant repair. The term is
bedabas.
So she through being passive aggressive
let it fall in disrepair. When they
overthrew her and they executed her,
they had a whole fundraising campaign to
reestablish the road so that people
could make aliyah come to your shalim at
least three times a year. They had a
whole campaign to rebuild the base of
mikdash. And that's the story of the
haftra of parashoen
yhash as it says in safer
as long as he had this regent the kohhen
yho yada kohhen as long as he had yo
yada guiding him and steering him he did
the right thing when yo yada dies yo
yada's son is zakaria that's this
zakaria
he becomes the next kingul
He is such a righteous pious sadic that
not only is he, not only is a cog, he
attains that level of intellectual
perfection that we call nva
and he becomes a na'vi
and the government unfortunately
is corrupt
and the leadership is corrupt and many
of the people are corrupt and Zakaria is
pleading with the people to change their
ways.
to do Tshoua
to to to make sure that the court
systems are honest that that an employee
or an employer who feels they've been
cheated has their day in court to
eradicate the avodara which was always a
challenge to remove the private altars
the bumos many many corruptions that
were taking place both financial on an
ethical and moral level and on a
theological level in terms of a vodora.
So what happened?
People didn't like it and they tried to
stifle him
and they tried to stifle him again and
again and it and he had an obligation.
Hashem was giving him nva.
So they put an end to him. You know what
happens when you don't like the message?
You kill the messenger, right? That's
what they did. They murdered. Listen to
this.
They murdered the Cohen Gud who was
their Nvi
on Yom Kipper that fell out in Shabas
in the Bameikdash. You hear that phrase,
you know, someone who hits for the
cycle.
This is a sin that hit for the cycle.
They murdered the Cohen Gudal Anum
Kipper that fell out on Shabas in the
base of Mikdash who wasn't just any
Cohen. He was a Nvi. He was the god
Alhador
and they murdered him
in the gar and parac in the garra and
paracisak in the fifth parak of gan and
the medish medish aa talk about this and
it describes this you could take this
euphemistically or you could take this
this literally either way you could
explain it says the spot that he was
murdered
they couldn't clean up the blood stains
the blood kept boiling and that's what
you'll Here you'll see here in Yoda
Levy's description, the blood kept
boiling. So again, does it mean they
couldn't clean off the spot or literally
the blood kept boiling? As if to say
there has not been justice done. See,
it's not just the people who committed
this murder. Something like that happens
amongst the Jewish people.
There has to be a catharsis.
There has to be a shock. and awe and a
sense of introspection in society has to
change. You just can't have olum kimo no
you know let's just keep going on okay
you know okay this happened okay well
well who's playing tonight in the double
header you know and who's playing in
who's given a concert here and and
what's happening there no there has to
be a trauma trauma but there was no
trauma
no one was traumatized
okay yeah maybe we got a little carried
away maybe he shouldn't have been so
tough on the people
is erup
the almighty has patience
but Hashem doesn't forget and he's a
shem he's a god of mishbat that's the
backdrop to this kenna
we're it's on page 540 and41 in the
rabbi salivic kinnos what's it in the
art scroll the 34th kenna what page 320
how this our sins, you know, he's
embodying the Jewish people. My sins
have become doubled
with the murder of the prophet Mikdash
in in the courtyard of the mikdash.
The earth would not cover up that blood
until the army of our oppressors came.
There was a what was that? That the
blood would not could not be erased. It
couldn't be wiped off.
Quoting the second perk of Aha. And
increase amongst the daughter of Yehuda
meaning increased amongst the Jewish
people was moaning pain and suffering.
Hay the soer. This blood it was like a
tempest at Bo Rav Tabahim. Who is Rav
Tabahim? The chief butcher. Who is that?
That of course is Nvu Zaredan. Nvu
Khanzar himself does not come from Bavl
from the Euphrates River to Jerusalem to
conquer it. It's his it's his chief
general that he sends Nvaradan who
defeats the Jews.
He comes to the Mikdash of God.
He sees the blood boiling.
What's the story?
to the kohanim who are working in the
mikdash.
Oh, oh, this must be an animal that was
freshly slaughtered. You know, the blood
is hot when it comes out of it.
He looked at them. He says, I think
you're telling me a story. I don't
believe that story.
He says, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Come on.
It's not goat blood. You You told me.
No. There. We just slaughtered a goat.
That's goat blood. This is not goat
blood. Uh-uh. This is not boine blood.
This is not the blood of a of a of a
bobcaf or a heer calf. Uh uh uh-uh. This
is not lamb blood or sheep blood. Come
on. Tell me the truth. What is it? Whose
blood is this? Where did this blood come
from?
Omaria.
This is your sin. And this is the fruit
of your sin.
Through all of this, the blood did not
subside.
It boiled over like a like a storm at
sea, a raging storm.
And finally they they told the kohanim
told what was the story?
This is the blood of the man of God who
was executed who was murdered by his own
people
in the base of Mikdash for no good
reason.
You know what? So we're going to his
blood we will seek out. There's going to
be justice after all of these many many
decades. There's going to be justice for
Zakaria's blood.
Gather for me all the kohanim. Come on.
I want him here.
Who does he start killing? The kohanim.
The kohhanim, as you know, they're our
educators.
They're the very people who are mentors.
You kill off the the rebum like we
talked about in Rwab's kina. You kill
off the mim the educators the rebum
you just undermine the whole system of
the misoraishimos
he killed adults by the hundreds.
You see this who do you kill more of
everyone? It's like it's the same thing
that Adolf Aman was saying to Rudolph
Hurse. You kill the young ones. You know
why? Because that's how you prevent the
future of the Jewish people. You murder
the young.
The sh the school children rose. You
see, he was sedicious. He made the
parents watch as he murdered the
children in front of the eyes of the
parents.
There was no silence for the blood of
the prophet.
It was a wander, a sign.
No,
there was the city was perplexed. the
the the sound of the shrieking of the
cries and the suffering of all those
being killed
with all of this. Now, how do you read
this line? Who who his anger did not
reside? Is it referring to Baraku
because the blood kept boiling? That's
how some read this is referring it's
referring to Nuvaradan. It's referring
to the anger of the of General Nuaran
in his outstretched hand because you and
I know Nuaran can't do anything unless
it's willed by unless Hashem allows it
to happen. And the point here is you
could read this either way. This line
mothers who were nursing their children,
they started murdering the the the
little babies
or mitzim. The blood spilled like the
like the raging river, like the Nile
River. It wasn't just a little bit of
blood. It was rivers of blood
until turns heavenward.
And he says,
I haven't killed enough. God, justice
hasn't been done. We haven't made up for
the killing of Zakari.
Hakal says Sheris Hashiba, do you want
me to totally eradicate and annihilate
all remaining Jews?
The Azaki
then the innocent blood, the spilled
blood of the the of the prophet Zakaria
was silenced.
Revaya and at that point the sword
stopped.
Now there's this extra paragraph. There
are two gears we have of this kina. One
has this paragraph. The other doesn't.
We're we're going to read it.
To you hashem have we sinned.
See this is we acknowledge our
corruption.
We murdered your prophet.
We know the evil that we did.
May Please, Hashem, comfort us.
We cry out to you from the depths of the
grave, from the depths of hell. We
the fruit of our sin.
How have we been satiated with it?
paraphrasing,
we are not comforted. We have no
comfort,
no sense of of of of being,
how do I translate it? There's no
compassion that we feel. We are still
afflicted and we are in the midst as if
we're being in a tempest.
her eyes meaning our eyes to you. We
turn we lift up
Sophia and we yearn for your salvation.
We yearn for your help and your aid.
If we could go to the third to the 11th
kenna
in the
Rabbi Salvetic in the Msaurus Harav it's
page 288 and 289.
What is that in the art scroll?
>> 282
>> 182
just um a brief introduction you know
I think it was that uh Steven Spielberg
won the Oscar for Schindler's List. It
was in 1992.
There was a study done in America. They
asked Americans how many Americans
believe that six million Jews were
killed in the Holocaust.
I think the number was something like
something like 64%
believe that actually six million Jews
were killed in the Holocaust.
Now you understand what Steven Spielberg
did was incredible. It was actually the
third screenwrite. It was the third
script. you know, he he he liked the
idea of doing this movie because he
thought it had an angle, you know, and
but he wanted the right screenwrite for
it. So, after the third script, he says,
"That will do it." And uh he produced
the film, but it was it was a Hollywood
production. I mean, it was filmed in
Poland. It was filmed in Crockdown,
but it was a Hollywood production.
They asked the same question two years
later.
I know Jason do you remember Rabbi Meyer
had everyone all the talidum from FR
taken to the movie theater to see
Schindler's List remember that so two
years later they asked the same question
and um
90 I think 4% of Americans believe that
6 million people died in the Holocaust.
How do you go from 64% to 94%.
Tell you why.
because people can relate to the story
of one man. The the person that Ben
Kingsley played was actually a composite
character. I don't know if any of you
know Alan Pines lives in Livingston.
Allan is is a son-in-law of of Murray
Pantier and the Panters and and as you
know Rea Feldman from Arshaw the
Levensteines her parents were were
survivors of Schindler
and um Ben Kingsley was a composite of
two Jews
but it was a story of one man Stern
who to a certain degree was a fictitious
figure because he was a composite of two
individual that people can do that. You
you think about the Holocaust, okay?
What do people how do people relate to
the Holocaust? The diary of Anna Frank,
Anna Frank and Frank
is not a significant part of the
Holocaust in no way, shape or form. It's
a tragedy. It's a terrible tragedy.
But what happens? People can associate
and people can relate to the story of
one young adolescent girl
and that is you have to understand that
you and I can't comprehend 6 million. We
can't comprehend the numbers of those
who've died throughout the tragedies.
These statistics are numbers that we
can't internalize them into our heart,
into our conscience, into our psyche.
And that's why the method of the khalier
many of the kinos
is to take the story of one individual
or two individuals that you and I can
feel that you and I can relate to and
that is what is done here with Yoshi
Hamelik
the famous the righteous one of the
greatest one of the greatest baluva we
ever had in our history Yoshiamelik
two times a year we study Yoshiu the
second day of Pesak because he's the
haft tora haft tora is about him from
safer malim
and today the khal's 11th kina
when the rv would introduce his kina
different times he introduced um there
was a a medish and
the revolt against
what we call the barakba revolt it was
supported by the kak and we'll talk
about it
and raika went places he he traveled to
north Africa to Jewish communities to
raise money for the revolt. So it was a
place in North Africa, Ganzac
and he spoke about you know devastation
of generations and it just didn't move
the people.
Then he decided to speak about EO one
man
and what happened what it was like as a
father to lose his children and have to
bury his own children.
what happened to him, his his estate to
lose everything he spent his life
building up, how he was suffering, the
bodily afflictions, the pain,
how people didn't respect him and they
turned on him and they said, you know,
his friends Leas and and Bildad and Sar
and it moved the people to tears
and it moved the people to you and I
would to write a check, to hand over the
American Express, to to be generous.
Why? Because people can feel and touch
and empathize with one individual.
And that is the story of what Rabika did
in Ganzac. And that again is the story
of what Steven Spielberg did of the of
the popularity of the diary of Anne
Frank. And that as well as the story
here of Yoshi Amelik.
Now keep in mind one piece of background
keep in mind and that is that he is
coming after
55 years of his grandfather Manasha a
terribly corrupt reign a terribly evil
reign even though Manasha himself does
Chuva later in life he doesn't have the
control over his people to undo much of
the bad that he did
you know it's Like some of these
politicians,
they say the the most stupid and and
corrupt things about the police, you
know, and then when their cities turn
into to anarchy and their cities are
destroyed and devoured by these animals
and these pigs who just rob, hurt, maim
people, you know, then they try to walk
back some of the things they said. Well,
it's a little too late. You've created
an an environment where people hate the
police, where they don't respect the
police, and innocents are killed,
you know, and and you think you're doing
this, you know, to defend the blacks in
your city. More blacks get killed than
anybody else by these animals and these
criminals.
So, it's a little too late.
You know, we had a similar thing with
Manasha, who was a failed politician and
a failed leader. all the corruption that
he created even as he's getting later in
life and getting closer to his meeting
his maker he himself starts to change
but he can't change the corruption he's
created in the society around him with
his terrible policies
after Manasha
Ammon becomes the king for seven years
so it's 62 years of terrible terrible
leadership
You know, it's like a bad
administration. You have a terrible
administration for eight years. It's
going to take 15 years to undo all the
bad things that an administration may
have done. I'm talking about whether
it's a mayor, whether it's a governor,
whether it could be an executive on a
national level. It takes a lot to undo
all of that which was done. And that was
probably the biggest mistake of Yoshi
Yahu
because people's mentality doesn't
change. And let me use an analogy. Think
about the Iranian Jews who came to
America.
As Jews and as a Jewish community, the
Persians have done pretty well. Think
about the Jews who came from the former
Soviet Union.
You know, 70 years of communism
where it's been ingrained for 70 years
that anyone who believes that there's a
creator of the universe, those are the
stupidest fairy tales that any
could believe.
And they undermine and they attack and
they knock anything that's associated
with religion. And they set it up in
simplistic categories like it's a straw
man argument.
You can't undo.
That's how people look at the world. And
that's how people don't understand that
there's a
there's there's a primal creator that
drove science that what they refer to as
the big bang was was was created. That
initial energy was comes from the Bria,
the creation of aes. And it's through
that big bang is the is the emergence
and the formulation of a universe.
When you when there's no God Almighty in
the equation,
when you look at the development of the
species that the ultimate the most
perfected species is homo sapien, that's
the species created by Celameloim that
can perceive that it's the only species
that has an abstract knowledge
when they can't see that there's a
there's a system to God's creation. All
they see is chemistry, biology, and
physics
wi without a context.
It's very hard for them to become
sincere Jews. It's very hard for them to
become engaged Jews
in the failures that we've had
integrating Jews from the former Soviet
Union
relative to other Jews who have come to
America. Like the example being the
Iranian immigrants.
In one area, we've done very, very well.
In the other area, we've failed
miserably. I'm not talking about the
exceptions. I'm talking about the large
numbers.
those who came under Brev, those who
came after Brev
already at the time of Gorbachev,
religion was tolerated to a certain
degree in Russia and there was a certain
religious revival happening. But I'm
talking about the Jews who came in the
60s, the 70s, the 80s. We did very
poorly with them.
So what happened?
It's analogous to the world that Yoshiu
inherited. He inherited 62 years of
corrupt government of rampant aazara
of rampant
dishonesty
and corruption in terms of ethical and
moral corruption. That's the backdrop
aloshi.
Yer meow himself says the kina over king
yosha. Now just understand one thing.
The fourth perk of Aha, the fourth
chapter of Aha, Aha Yuamv is the eulogy
that Yerma gave upon the death, the
murder, execution of Yoshiu. But let's
read the story.
He was a young man, a very mature young
man. He started to seek out God at the
age of eight.
Carlo
who what happened? It was the people the
descendants of meaning the Egyptians who
encamped from the word against him and
all of his good deeds didn't come to his
benefit
amongst all the leaders the kings of the
Jewish people who what does it mean who
had stood up to to to fence in to
meaning to create a fence for the Jewish
people to protect the Jewish people
no one was as Great is Yoshi Yahu from
the time of Avikdor. Who's Avdar? Moshe.
You and I know his name is not Moshe.
His mother and father Amrad did not name
him Moshe. Who named him Moshe?
>> That's right. Bita the the the righteous
gentile uh princess. She named him Moshe
from the word minimu
as the Arabs say mus in Arabic. Musa or
Mosha. You know I I've drawn him out of
the water. So we
being the one who gave us his guidance
is the rebon. We the Jews have eternal
gratitude
to this righteous princess to his
stepmother.
And we don't call him by his name. We
call him by the name that she named him
Moshe.
But his name was a vikdor. What does
that mean? That amongst all the great
Jewish leaders losd.
What exactly does that mean?
The idea is this,
you know, David Hamelik is coming after
Sha and Schmolhanavi. Schlommo is coming
after David. So imagine that you inherit
a nation that gets a score of 85 and you
take them from 85 to 90. Okay, it's very
nice. But going from 85 to 90 is taking
them five points up the ladder. What
happens if you're Mosha Rabenu a Vikdor
and you inherit a group of pagan
illiterate slaves? The only ones who are
ethical monotheists are shet ley and a
few exceptions.
So if you take them from one to 20,
you've done a lot more than someone who
took them from 85 to 90. You understand?
Or if you take them from 1 to 30, that's
an incredible jump.
That's exactly what Yoshiu did.
when he shut down all the private
altars, when he took down all of the
statues, when he removed the the wicked
the corrupt kohanim, when he started
changing over who would sit on the
courts and who would be the dionim,
he transformed he totally transformed
the nation. Now, was this on the same
madrega as it was in the time of David
and Schlommo? No, we're not saying that.
It says asheramu lid anyone who tried to
transform to build to to increase to
improve in terms of chuva that's what
we're talking about ashar kamuikdor
no one was the no one had accomplished
what he accomplished from the time of a
vikdor from the time of mosher raeno
so what does it say the daled
a sanador those who just walked in were
in the 11th kina
what that stuck to him. The the cynics,
all the mockers, all the people who you
know what
couldn't stand that he's got his from
police coming to our house searching for
idols and getas who couldn't stand the
fact that he took down the idol that we
worshiped or that he removed these
judges who, you know, we could pay these
guys off and they would give us a good
decision on the court decision. They
hated him. They mocked him. They
attacked him.
door. What do they have? Imag, let me
just see if I can show this. Imagine you
have two doors that open, right? It's
not one door. It's two doors. So, they'd
open the door to police. They'd come and
they would be looking around.
The idol, you could only see if the two
doors were closed because it would be
half on one door, half on the other. You
couldn't make out the idol on half a
door.
That was what they did. That was the
kind of shtick they did to keep their
their aodora going in hide it so to
speak from his. It was the the the
minations that they did to hide it from
the religious police that would come in
to try to remove this
zeros, right? Those who eat the the the
uh vegetation, the food from the Nile,
meaning the Egyptians,
his gorgeous complexion,
they darkened.
in a second.
Think about in paras
the description of the covenant that the
new generation is going to make. Not the
generation of Mosher Rabenu, but the
generation that crosses the Jordan
River, comes into the Holy Land, comes
into Israel, and is there with what?
is is there under Yoshua's leadership.
The first thing they're going to do is
they're going to travel into the heart
of the country to center of the land to
the area of Shem. Now, as though all of
you who have been to Shrem know, there's
two big mountains that envelop Shrem,
Hargarisim and Hara and a covenant is
going to be made where it's, so to
speak, it's it's the Mount Si. It's the
Hari of the new generation. They're
making their own covenant with Hashem.
And there's
11 specifics and then a 12th
bar is the person that does this and
auror in cursed is the person that does
that.
What's the last one? Auror I believe the
language is a loyos
doesn't say lo cursed is the person that
does not fulfill. That's not what it
says. It says Yakim, it's the heield
causes others to fulfill. Who's
responsible
for the observance of the nation? Who's
responsible for so to speak the smitzvos
of the nation of the people? It's the
executive.
We know from David the role of the
executive is melik bishbadar.
He's responsible to make sure that
there's enough tax dollars to have
educators in every town, village, and
city. He's responsible that there's a
network of courts of but they didn't to
make sure that people conduct themselves
properly and that they can adjudicate if
someone doesn't conduct themselves
properly.
So they said, "Young man, young man,
young Yoshi Yahu,
this is you.
Do you know that your grandfather is not
just Manasha
but you had other grandparents? You had
Yahu Hanavi, the righteous Hezekiah and
he came after a a period of corruption
after Akaz.
There was a Schlommo Hamel
and you should read his works. Shirim
and Cohelis and Mish
you had David Hamel. You come from
Nashon Medaminadav. You come from
Yehuda.
These are your ancestors.
This is the mantle that you bear. This
is the opportunity that the rebono shaam
is giving you
and this is the responsibility that you
are is placed upon your shoulders.
And not only does he become a balashua,
he starts an incredible chuva movement.
Not only is it alluded to here in this
kina, but that's the story of the ha
that we read on the second day of pes.
So it continues.
What happened? You have to just a little
understand a little bit of politics.
There were always two great empires.
The great southern empire known as
Mitsraim. Now Mitsryim is not just the
modern country of Egypt, a north African
country. Mitsyam is the northern third
of the the African continent. It's the
whole Nile River basin. It's a huge
power.
It embodies today's Sudan, today's
Libya,
Algeria. It goes way south of today's
Egypt. And in the north, there's always
a great empire. First it was Aram, the
Mesopotamian Empire of Syria. Then it
was Ashure. What's Ushure? That embodied
today's Syria, large swaths of today's
Turkey,
uh, all of Western Iraq, a massive,
massive empire.
And then there was BL,
Babylonia.
Correct.
And BL as you know conquered all of
Mesopotamia.
So there's a b a fight between the great
northern empire and the great southern
empire that's about to take place. Who
is in the middle? Who is smack in the
middle of these two great empires?
Poor little Israel. To quote the Latin
phrase the viais. If you want to get
from Africa to Asia and Europe or if you
want to get from Asia and Europe to
Africa, you have to take the via Maris.
You have to come through Israel.
Now, if you're an individual or you're a
small caravan and it's the winter, you
could take the what we call Bikatiard
that's known as, you know, the Deramel.
If you're an individual, there's a small
little caravan, you can take what's
known as today highway 60, which is the
path that Abraham Aavinu took. It's a
path that Yakovina took. But if you're a
military, if you're a whole army, you
can't use either of those. There's only
one way, the via. You have to come from
Egypt up the Gaza Strip through Ashkalo,
Ashto, Tel Aviv, until you get to the
Megiddo junction.
And then you make a right at the Megiddo
junction and you travel through the
Amech until you get through Israel into
Mesopotamia.
That's the only way you can go. It's the
only flat area that you can traverse
the via.
Any of you guys been to the
archaeological site? Anyone here been to
the archaeological site at in Megiddo?
It's worth going to. Yeah, has been. So,
what was there? Initially, Schlommo
Hamelik built stansions. You'll go
there, you're going to say at the
beginning, you're going to be
disappointed. You're going to see
thousands and thousands of horse
stansions.
So what what if I want to go to a horse
farm, I can go to Kentucky. I don't have
to go to Israel to Megiddo. What What do
you mean thousands of horse stansions?
Keep in mind
their horse.
Their horse was our tank. Their horse
was our humve
and Akav expanded those horse stansions
that Schlommo originally built. And
that's what we have. It goes back all
the way to the time of Akav. Why are
they at Megiddo?
Because again, if you're going to have
an invading army either coming from the
north or coming from the south, the
junction is always going to be Megiddo.
And I know we're Sunday morning
tishabove in keter tora, but if we were
Sunday morning at a church down the road
or at one of these evangel evangelical
or baptist churches, what will they talk
about? Armageddon.
Where does the word Armageddon come
from? Armageddon is from Megiddo.
The famous esqueological battles, right?
Is the preachers way go and me or gag
and magog or we say go magog. But right,
why is it megiddo? because that's where
that's the that's the juncture.
Well, that's where Yoshiu is waiting for
the Egyptian army of Paro,
the leader of the Egyptian army, that
Pharaoh, his name is Parro,
and he says to Yoshi Yahu, "Hey, I'm
coming through your land, buddy. I got
nothing against you. It's not personal.
I'm on my way to to to Mesopotamia to
fight Usher.
Well, Yoshi Yahu
makes the following calculation.
If I don't stand up to Pharaoh, to
parro,
that's another way of saying that I'm
supporting him. You know the phrase,
it's a way of that I'm supporting him in
his battle and I don't think he's going
to defeat the Mesopotamians and I think
it's going to put Israel in a terrible
light. Number one, just by the way,
those who are listening at home, right
now we're just getting a bit of a
rainstorm. So if you hear noise in the
background, it's the rain on the roof.
What else do you have? The famous
from Parasui.
What does the to say?
Describes that if the Jewish people lead
a perfected life and they conduct
themselves properly, there's going to be
shalom.
But then it says,
"The sword shall not traverse your land.
If you're going to have peace in shalom,
why do you have to tell me that the
sword is not going to traverse my land?
That's sort of repetitious." And the
Torah doesn't is not repetitious for no
reason. So Rashi jumps in. It says
shalom. Not only will you have peace,
but not only that, you will not even
have foreign nations traversing your
army to get to other places. I mean,
imagine this. I'm just looking around.
Is there anybody here from Detroit? No.
So imagine that the the the Canadian
military, you got the sounds of these
Caterpillar diesel engines on the tanks
of the Canadian military coming through
the Windsor Tunnel taking Route 75 on
its way down south as the Canadians are
going towards Mexico to to defeat the
Mexicans. If you're living in the city
of Detroit or you're living in
Cincinnati or you're living in
Louisville as they're going down Route
75, you're not going to feel very
comfortable seeing thousands and
thousands of armed soldiers coming
through your city and the sounds of
those diesel tanks, you know, that they
they shake the ground. It vibrates, you
know, when they traverse your land.
Well, that's he said, "We're now on
Madrega. We've not only eradicated a
vodara, we've eradicated the bumos, the
the private altars. We've changed the
court systems.
We're on that madrega, the madrega that
we shouldn't have the Egyptians
traversing our land.
That's the backdrop. Let's keep reading.
What happened?
The Jewish soldiers were slaughtered at
Megiddo at the place of Armageddon at
the Megiddo junction as the Egyptian
army was traveling to Aram Naharim into
Mesopotamia. Leman because of the
mistake that Yoshyahu made. He says
loavim
the area that they they they traversed
the area that they traveled through is
is the area of Ephraim. It shouldn't
have to happen. Loar
your mahu begged him. Jeremiah said
don't do this. Don't start up with
parro.
You're doing great things. Now remember
one thing.
Yahu is younger at this point. Yoshiel
is not an old man. Yoshiu is an
established king, but this is the
beginning of Yao's prophecy.
And like Yoshiel is saying, you know,
you know who are you to come and be my
uh secretary of state? Is your name Mike
Pompeo?
Is your name Henry Kissinger? Don't
don't tell me, you know, I respect you
as a rabbi. No one respects rabbis more
than I do. But a secretary of state is
nished. You're not the foreign adviser.
And he doesn't listen to him. And he
says, "You're making a mistake. We
cannot be passive because if we remain
passive, that's going to be translated
as support for the Egyptian regime and
the Egyptian military."
So he didn't
the meatus
the sin of what we talked about you know
they kept the they kept up the vodora
you know between the two opening doors
it was behind the doorpost that no one
could see it
who's the vision of the man from anatu
is from anat today I think we would call
that French hill you know it's the
northern suburbs of yushalai
Tragically, he persisted
on continuing the battle. And in the
end, we ended up being maspid him
because it cost him his life and
hundreds of Jewish soldiers their lives.
When the battle happened,
There was no, it didn't help him. It
wasn't to his avail.
And the archers, they shot arrows into
the body of Yoshia.
As his eyes were closing, you know,
before he died,
what the Egyptians did was they made a
mockery of him. They made a point of it.
Nobody messes with parro Neo. And they
set him up like a bullseye, as a matar,
as a target practice. And boom, boom,
boom. Those those archers started
pumping their arrows into his body. The
man's going to die already. No, they're
going to make a mockery of him.
They trapped him and they set him up as
a is a bullseye for the archers.
300 different arrows pierce his body.
What is this saying?
Think about when you're parched, you
haven't had anything to drink. What
happens? You can't your your vocal cords
can't even get out the sound. You talk,
it's like this, right? You talk like
this. It's just it's just air sound. So,
he was dying and all that could come out
was the air. What did they hear? What
were the last things on his lips? His
eyes are closed already. He's moving his
lips. The last words on his breath as
he's dying.
Hashem is truly righteous. I have
rebelled against Hashem. Meaning what?
Meaning what?
He didn't listen to your ma'am. As Rabbi
Gatlib said, he he didn't listen to
Yervi.
Yao wasn't trying to be a political
advisor. He was saying this on behalf of
the rebon sha
in in to rebel against and that's what
he says. I rebelled against the words of
the Nav'vi and it cost me my life. It
cost it cost our nation hundreds of
lives of young men.
CC no of course is is is Egypt. It's a
city in in Egypt. It's Memphis. Rejoice.
flame.
That's what your meow referred to him
as. This beautiful, you know, shining
young man, it's come to an endasham
called
what happened.
The very Jeremiah,
he is the maspe. He's the one that gives
the eulogy at the funeral of Yoshi.
What? What? By the way, what is today?
This summer, we're the summer
right before the Shmita year.
Yoshia was killed in the summer of the
Shmita year.
What happens? It only happens once every
seven years. What happens on sukkot on
sukus after the shmita year? What
happens exactly Nathan Lindam Hakel
and and you know normally you'll get a
huge crowd of Jews coming for Pesak for
aliasgo because everyone has to partake
of Corbin Pesak. You don't get as many
people coming back seven weeks later for
shuis. You'd love it. It would be nice
but you usually don't get as many people
coming back for shuis because it's you
know it's a long trip home and a long
trip back.
Sukus is in between. Sukus you get more
than you would for shabu less than for
pes. I'm not telling what should be.
What should be is we should everybody
should come alias three times a year.
I'm talking about what happened. But one
sukus per cycle they all came. It was
like pesak. It was like everybody was
there. And that was of course the suka
following the shmita year. The suka.
Why? Because a special mitzvah of hakl.
What's hak? The Torah says anushim
nashim
little kids who it's past their bedtime,
right? It's it's 7:30, 8:00 at night.
It's you making they're already put. No,
we keep them up. We bring them because
this indelible image where the Melik
reenacts Mhammad Harena like we
described at Harrien and Haral, they
would reenact Mhammad Hari for that
generation. Every generation reenacts
Mhammad Hareni.
When do they do that? Every seven years
after the Shmita year. And these kids, I
I think I've shared this in the past.
You know, I grew up on a we're little
farm, you know, was goodsized farm, but
it was a little town. We had maybe 700
people in the town. And
the most people I ever saw in my life
was July 4th parade. I think it was the
most beer I ever saw consumed in my life
also. But it was a July 4th parade.
Everybody came from two towns around and
the fire trucks and you know the the
Girl Scout cookies with I mean the Girl
Scouts and the Cub Scouts and you know
everybody you know very a lot of people.
And then my great uncle and great aunt
lived in West Hemstead. They were one
the founders of the Young Israel West
Hemstead.
So they took us, we came there
and they took us into the city to
Rockefeller Center. They were going to
light the Labavichers have the monora,
you know what I mean? They they had at
that time it was a beam. He was the
mayor of New York to light the labavich
monora in where in the backdrop, you
know, in front of the Christmas tree in
Rockefeller Center.
And I never, my brother and I, we were
little kids. I mean I maybe I was seven
and he was five. We never knew there
were this many people alive on the
globe. I mean we never could imagine
there were this many people and we were
getting whiplash just looking up at
these massive building. You couldn't see
the end of the building. We'd never seen
anything like this. You know the biggest
building we saw was our farm was the hay
stack and top end of our barn and a
silo. What's a silo? silo in those days,
a big silo, a huge massive silo was 80
ft in those days. And we're just looking
at this.
So these little kids,
they're coming from the Negv desert.
They're coming from the diaspora.
They're coming from a little town in the
Galilee. They're coming from a fishing
village on the Kerat.
and they see all of these people
and they're all learning Torah and
they're all listening to the the
projection of the voice. You know, he's
up on a platform. You you know this the
mitzvah of Hakal they would build they
would mount a platform and he would
speak and project from there.
They'll never ever forget this the rest
of their lives. It leaves an indelible
impression.
So that was going to be three months of
uh you know three months from now we're
all going to be coming to Jerusalem and
we've get we've got a whole chva
movement the roads have been repaired
and we can all come and travel and and
and we're going to listen to the Torah
and reenact Mad Hari and who's going to
play that role? Yosha the righteous
king. Yeah. No.
No.
Because he was killed. because he's dead
because he was executed by the archers
of the Egyptians
and instead
we all come to his funeral.
The anushim nashim vaf all come to the
funeral.
And who says the hesadei
cogto
tragically he had to drink the the the
poison cup from Megiddo.
It was a time when we would have all
come together to live in Torah from him
during hell.
But instead we did this.
Roas.
What's the eulogy?
We read it last night
here. Ellie Kinchis read it here at
Ketora.
It's 22 lines.
Each line is from a letter of the olive
bays. Olive bays. Gimmel daled. Hey.
What's the idea? What what Yeryahu was
saying? What your mahu was saying is
that there is no way we can appreciate
or encompass the loss.
I could use every letter of the alphabet
from olive to tough and the devastation
of losing Yoshiu. I could never ever
encompass it. So I'll use every letter
and it's it's I'll give you an analogy.
What is Ashray? We acknowledge God. We
praise God with everything that makes us
human with every letter of the alphabet.
But we can't. We acknowledge that we
can't. We use everything in our ability,
every dimension, every aspect from olive
to tough and we still can't acknowledge
aeshu
hear the same idea. You can't appreciate
and acknowledge the devastation and
destruction of the loss of him.
But because the very cynics, you're all
familiar with the phrase aareos kadoshim
memoir, you know the three partials,
right? After someone dies, that's when
they appreciate him. You know, after
you're dead, they say you're cut. While
you're alive, they rip your kishkas out,
right? But after you're dead, that's
when they finally appreciate you. Well,
after he was dead, all the cynics, the
late son had that we read about, that's
when they finally acknowledged who he
was, what he is.
when it was too late.
But because of that chuva, because of
that here, her chuva for 22 years,
it delayed the bases mikdash
in the aftermath of Yoshi Yahu. He was
young. No one was there was no secession
plan at that point. Who replaced him? He
had a son by the name of Yhoyakim. a
disaster. Yahim was just a a wicked
wicked man. In the end, the Babylonians
got rid of him.
What was the story?
Yhoyakim
couldn't handle Yermyahu. He couldn't
handle the fact that there's a prophet
challenging him. He knows that he can't
kill Jeremiah. That's what he'd like to
do. So, what does he do? He incarcerates
him. He puts Yur Meow in the Hamat. We
actually think we know where the place
is. It's in the the Mazin quarter of
Ushalai. It was an underground dungeon,
you know, damp, terrible conditions.
Most people if you stayed there too
long, you just died from the conditions.
So, Yermyahu sends a nva through his
Talmet, his student Barak Benia. What is
the Nva that he sends?
The first, the second, and the fourth
chapters of Aka. The first, the second,
and fourth chapters of Aka were actually
written before the Kurba. And as they're
giving this to yoyakim to read, he
sticks it. He burns it. He doesn't want
to continue reading it. He burns it.
So the that we have, chapters 1, 2, and
four were rewritten after the and then
chapter 3 and chapter 5 was added to it.
Just to give you, you don't have to be a
Freudian to appreciate this.
Kazal say that Yho Yakim tattooed onto
his male genitalia. He tattooed Yudke V,
the ineffable name of God.
So we went from Yoshi Yahu Hamel to Yho
Yakim.
You talk about a disaster.
With the loss of Yoshiu,
it basically is a matter of time till
you have.
One of the great tragedies was his loss.
Turn if you don't mind to the gimmel the
13th ka which in the um the msorus of
the rebel of is 314 315 and in the art
scroll what page is it?
we mentioned
that there's the ability
according to the RV not everyone agrees
with this by the way I want to make this
very clear that not everyone agrees with
this but according to the RV
it's the one day a year a Jew can
question God
a
is meant to be translated as why why did
you do
Now the shot of is it's a rhetorical
question. How could it be?
How could it be that this city that was
teeming with millions of Jews for Alias?
This city that is so alive is now just
sitting here desolate. It's a it's a
rhetorical question.
So Rabbi Israel Chait is the Russa of
Yeshiva Benet Torah the Talmet.
Fascinating fascinating Russa. He's a
tom of Aaron Cutler. And then the last
for probably about a 15-year period in
his life. He was a tom of Mosha
Feinstein. So on Friday were the Dibbrus
Mosha Shirum. The Shirum that we call
Dibbus Mosha. But Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday he and his brother Rabbi
Mosuchet and a number of other talum
they would travel to and they would
attend Rabbi Salvich. So they were
talkedum of the Rav and Ra Mosha at the
same time. The RV on Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday the Shirim at yeshiva and in
MTJ at Mata Ferris with the Dis Mosha
Shirim on Friday.
So he says he learns a the way that most
reonim learn it. It's a rhetorical
question. You never ever have a right to
question God. We can question each other
because we're we're not perfect. We're
we're flesh and blood. But even on
tishabove we don't have a license to
question God. So aha can be why? It's
the ravate.
How could it be? It's a rhetorical
question.
And here
the kalier says aha. We're reading it as
a co. We're breaking up the word. Where
is the co? Now what is the word co mean?
I know in the King James Bible it gets
translated as like coem. Thus sayaith
the lord. You know
it's not thus.
Co is a term that's associated with the
destiny of the Jewish people. Whenever
you have the word co, it's a term
associated with Jewish destiny. Now, it
has many manifestations.
What do I mean by that? See, because in
Hebrew, translate for me the word here
into Hebrew. H E R E. What would you
say? Po. Right here. What is there? T H
E R E. Sham.
So very often you'll see instead of
saying po or instead instead of saying
sham there'll be this term co
means it's a term of Jewish destiny. So
what the khal here does is brilliant. He
takes all of the codes
that that that Hashem communicated
either himself directly or through a
Na'vi
and he says where is that co where's the
hashka
where is the hand of God protecting us
nurturing us it's it's crying out to God
and saying where is that co let's let's
see the contrast and the use that the
khal uses is one of the saddest of the
psalms of the it's
that talks about what our enemies do to
us.
Where is it that you said to
when he said
that you said there would be an eternal
Jewish people and we would be like the
stars of the heaven. Where is that
covenant that you would protect us
throughout the long vicissitudes of
Jewish history?
In contrast now,
why is it God that it seems you've like
abandoned us forever?
Where is the co
that you said to Abraham and Yeitzak
when Yeitzak like a lamb being brought
as a a carbanola came to appease you?
What did they say?
You know the famous story
they're traveling. Hashem does not tell
him where. He just says, "I want you to
travel to the place that I will show
you.
our eka
and as they're going north from Kvron
taking highway 60 that that that
traversing that and they see a beautiful
summer day it's it's been a beautiful
summer day all the time but there's one
mountain the medish says an koshure
that's enveloped by a cloud
like the ana co and he says there's a
there's a contingency there's Abraham
Ishmael and Eleazar. He turned to
Ishmael and says, "Do you see what I
see?" He says, "What?" Do you see
something strange? No. Eleazar? No.
Turns to do you see anything? He says,
"Yeah, there's one mountain there that's
enveloped by a cloud. There's no clouds
in the sky. And yet this one mountain is
enveloped by a cloud."
That's when Aram says turns to his
you stay here with the with the donkey.
I and the as Joe Peshi would say the
youth right I and the youth I I and my
son we are going to go ado
doesn't say ad sham until they're adco
because that is the place see a gentile
has an obligation to have a relationship
with God a gentile has an obligation to
be an ethical monotheist mitzbah
a gentile is not obligated to give up
their life
the mitzvah
is that Mishna from mitzvah I'm sorry
from paras and more that's not in the
for
elazzar and Ishmael were great people
they were righteous people
but that
miraes
as the said
that only is
so we we have sacrificed for you God we
sacrifice for your values we nephesh
where where's the
when we're being afflicted
where's a sacrifice to protect us
Du kell you like you remember John
Belaluchcci with the samurai he would
chop everything right the like the like
like a a remon you know like chop the
pomegranate you know
dakru ray what a ray you could translate
it as your flock or your friends your
beloveds
mel the Jewish people have the
friendship of the king and there's we're
defined as yadid his friends is of the
ribon.
And what's happened? We talked about the
the raging fire that is just ripping
apart the the the sheep of your flock.
Where's the next coin?
Do you understand what love did to him?
He tricked him after working for seven
years.
Raul was not given to him. He had to
work another seven years. That's 14
years. And finally he says, "When am I
going to take care of my own?" So what
does he do? He says, "Stay with me. I'll
pay you." And in those last six years,
years 15 to 20, working for love,
love changed the conditions, changed the
rules, changed the contract
100 different times in six-year period.
And every time that he tried to
manipulate him,
God through hashkah was there so that
Jacob would succeed financially.
The providence was there enabling us to
succeed.
Now what happens?
What happened?
You have the prince of Egypt. I'm
borrowing a term from Steven Spielberg.
He's being raised in the royal palace,
but he knows that there's something
different about him, that he's a Jew.
And it says that he has this desire to
look after his people.
So, what does he do? He leaves the
wealth of the palace and he goes into
the slums where the slaves live. He goes
into the slums where the slaves live.
And there is an Egyptian government
official
who has a fantasy, more than a fantasy.
He wants to engage this beautiful Jewish
woman. So what does he do? He sends her
husband out at night on some work duty.
It's at night. There's no electric
lights. They're poor people. They can't
afford even oil lamps. He comes in the
Egyptian. She thinks it's her husband.
And he starts
to violate her. Her not knowing that
it's not her husband. The husband comes
back and walks in on this.
The Egyptian realizes he can't let word
get out that he did something like this
because it's beneath the dignity of an
Egyptian to do this to a Jewish slave.
So what does he do? He starts beating
the Egypt the Jew to death. The Jewish
slave laborers, he starts beating him to
death. And after he's going to finish
killing the Jew, he'll turn on the Jews
wife who he was about to violate and
he'll kill her. There won't be any
witnesses.
Who sees all this?
The prince of Egypt, Moshe.
And what does Moshe do?
It says
varo.
He looked he doesn't say poam. Doesn't
say here and there. It says kovako.
Varish.
I'm sorry. Ven. He turned kaish.
Why didn't it say poam?
So the med says,
he says, I'm going to kill this
Egyptian.
When you kill a man, you kill everything
he ever was and everything he ever will
be.
What's going to come out of him? It
means I'm murdering
the children. He won't have the
grandchildren. He won't have the great
great grandchildren. Do you remember
what Hashem said to Cayenne after he
murdered Heather
Demeay? The bloods
of are calling out the bloods of your
brother. Meaning the bloods of his
blood, his child's blood, his
grandchild's blood, his a whole universe
that he would have produced.
There's another vaifen kovako.
What is that?
You know, no one knows I'm here. I'm
camouflaged in the dark. If I'm just
silent and do nothing,
who knows in 20 years from now or 10
years from now, I might be the next
Pharaoh. And then I can save not 10
Jews, not one Jew and his wife. I can
save tens of thousands of Jews.
Just quiet and don't do anything. And
and and you won't be exposed. And and
you know what? I can help all the Jews.
But he looked at himself.
But today, this is an innocent man
that's going to be killed. This is an
innocent woman that's going to be
killed.
Kovako. He looked at himself
and he had no choice and he stood up and
he defended and he saved their lives
and he saved their lives and he killed
the Egyptian.
So that sensitivity to each and every
life, to each and every human life, to
each and every Jewish life,
where is it?
Hashem
now
this month that we relive and
reexperience the slaughter and the death
of our people.
when with the term that that Hashem said
to Moshe with co it's time for the
redemption.
It's time for the redemption.
God, after 86 years of slavery, after
210 years of living in exile, you
redeemed them.
We've been in exile close to 2,000
years.
2,000 years.
And now, you know, I I happened to look
I wanted to see, you know, get nervous.
Tishabove if anything happened in
Israel. So, they're rioting. Why?
Because a few Jews prayed on the
Harbias. The Harbayas. We have one holy
site. You and I know that is not a holy
site to the Muslims.
Muslim scholars would tell you al axa
is in a small town called Jabala in
Saudi Arabia. There's two mosques. Al
Adna, the closer mosque, Al Axa, the
farther mosque. And the Muslims have a
tradition that the last place that
Muhammad was seen alive, he so to speak
went to heaven from the father m al axa
which is in a town just it was a town do
do you understand during his life
Muhammad never came to Jerusalem
they hadn't conquered Jerusalem it
wasn't even under the control of his
followers
and and this is you if you go to the
theological schools in Egypt. If you go
to the theological schools in Morocco,
in Saudi Arabia, in Yemen,
they all have this.
To say that this is the Alaka where he
transcended to heaven. It's just bad
Islamic theology. There's no basis for
it. It's politically motivated.
And what happens? A few Jews want to
pray to God in their holy sight.
The Jews allow the Christians to have
their holy sites. The Israeli
government, they allow the Muslims to
have their holy sights. That a Jew on
the holiest place on earth can't even
pray. And now we have riots today. So
when I came to Shul at 8:00 for
Dominion, no one had been no one had
been injured or wounded.
But this is what we have to deal with.
Okay,
we're Hashem after 2,000 years. We think
we're back. You know that phrase, so
close but yet so far. We're not back.
You can't even say up there.
You can't even forget forget about pray
to God. You can't even say
up there.
And you saw what happened in May with
this last war.
They use this as an excuse. You know,
all the talking heads and all the
politicians, they want to spin this as a
political issue. Don't be stupid. No one
in this room is. But I say to them,
don't be idiots and don't be fools.
You're lying. You You're such a bad
liar. Do you even believe your own lies?
This is a religious war. This is a holy
war because they're threatened that the
people that authentically represent the
will of God, that authentically
represent ethical monotheism,
which is a threat and challenges
their brand of ethical monotheism.
They're scared to death that these
Jewish infidels, the Jewish demies are
growing
and are building a nation that is a
light into the nation that's impacting
the universe and that there's a kibbut
galos that there's an in gathering of
Jews from all over the world fulfilling
the prophecies of Yesha and Zakaria
and Yermyahu. It scares them to death
because what really bothers them?
Maybe their theology is wrong.
Maybe their philosophy is corrupt. Maybe
God is not a god of rage.
Maybe God is not a god of vengeance.
He's a god of justice, but not a god of
rage and vengeance.
Kel Nicamos Hashem, Kel Nikamos Sophia
is a god of justice. and it scares them
to death.
And now that we're on holy sites that
that that one by one they controlled and
no longer control. And now that it's
happening to Jerusaleim, to what they
referred to as Al Axa,
which is not the real Alaka,
it's getting them very scared
and they and in their rage
they lash out.
But the truth hurts and the truth is
scary.
But Hashem
after two millennia, please allow us to
come back.
Please say kamar hashem and let there be
a fulfillment of the words of the na'vi
those treacherous enemies they sit.
What are the diet tribes you hear every
Friday from the temple mount from the
shrine of Omar?
of Moadea. They rage and they roar.
You've seen the footage. You've seen the
video footage of how they act and how
they behave
on the holiest sight on earth.
Where is the co
of the new covenantos?
the RV when he would explain this line
there sensitivity at atos
at this very moment will be the moment
of liberation and we the Jewish people
we learn that time sensitivity the whole
notion of saying schma bisman if you
light the candles at this time you're
fulfilling according to the briskerv's
understanding of the ramam you fulfilled
two mitzvos the the mitzvah of of kavot
shabas because you're preparing for
shabas and the mitzvah of onab is
because you've created a a house of
illumination in a dark context.
If you do it at this time, you
fulfilled.
If you do it later, it's Shabas. If you
say this time, you're
if you do it later, you haven't. There's
this time sensitivity,
right? If you start the fast last night
at 8:24,
you're you're being mai the fast. If you
started at 8:26, you violated the fast.
Hashem,
where's the sensitivity? We're waiting
and yearning for that moment when you
will redeem us. The way you did in
Egypt, Dava, you said it would be at the
moment of midnight.
That's when it was.
This is referring to it. It's quoting I
ended capitol 74 but it's referring to
the the 16th kina when what happened
the lack of sensitivity to holiness you
know holiness what does God say to
Mosherenu
take the shoes off when when you have
shoes on you don't feel anything right
when when we're when you're wearing
boots you don't feel pebbles you don't
feel stones you don't feel anything
when you're when you're barefoot, you
know what happens? Then there's
sensitivity. Sensitivity to every little
pebble, every little stone. What else is
there? When you're wearing shoes, it
demonstrates our mastery over all the
different aspects of creation. Even the
most sophisticated creation, mammals, we
kill them and we make leather out of
their hides and we wear those hides on
our shoes. When you take it off, I have
ma when I'm in God's presence, I have
mastery over nothing.
It it is humbling, right? That that
experience of encountering the rebon
sholum is a humbling experience.
At that moment, you have mastery over
nothing. You are a frail
servant of the almighty. You take off
those shoes. But here at Benaleam, they
come with their their boots. You know,
think about the Nazi stormtroopers. They
come into the mikdash, the Roman
soldiers. The Germans come into our shs.
Allah.
What? What did What happened before Hari
co
Israel?
This is how you should say it to the
Jewish women. Tomar lashon raqa. Rashi
says meaning what? There's a way that
you communicate. The way you teach an
8-year-old is not how you teach a
5-year-old. The way you teach a
12-year-old is not how you teach an
8-year-old. The old The way you teach a
70-year-old is not the way you teach a
30-year-old.
There's a sensitivity. There's an
ability to articulate, to communicate it
the right way. Cotoarakov.
So, Hashem, we're waiting for that
sensitivity for you to communicate to us
in that soft, sensitive, meaningful way.
Because if the Jewish women are invested
in the theology, then the men and
children will follow. That's why the
women were first. They were the most
important. They were the foundation of
adopting the Misora.
Where is that soft way of speaking?
What do we hear? We hear the mockery. We
hear the blasphemy that comes from the
Bavla.
If you add up the letters of the
kohanim, which we did not say this
morning, right? How many letters is it?
60 letters. It's words. It's three,
five, and seven. It's 12 words, but it's
60 letters.
By the way, what what what is kohanim?
What is it? It's the hashka. It's God's
providential system. You have
is that financially we should be able to
survive. We should be able to maintain
our assets and function financially.
What's that? Or Torah. It's
intellectual. It's it's life is only
worth living if what? If you perceive
the knowledge of God. The or Torah or
the we perceive God's face. Meaning that
he communicates through providence. his
knowledge is the greatest blessing is is
the words of the Torah is the concepts
and the axioms and postulates of the
Torah. What's the third
shalom? Shalom is from the word. You
could be the most insightful bright
person. If you're emotionally frail, if
you're psychologically unhealthy, you're
not a human being. You're not a mench if
you're psychologically if you're
suffering. And we ask God for shalom,
for schlamos, for psychological,
emotional health.
That's the providence that he gives us.
And we're saying, "Hashem, take care of
us financially. Protect us. Take care of
us educationally, spiritually. Take care
of us psychologically, emotionally.
Give us
this is an illusion to how the BL broke
through the BC.
This is the co that that bum set. When
bum came to do what? To find areas where
he could find weakness of the Jewish
people and expose their weakness. In the
end, Hashem forced him to acknowledge
and to bless the Jewish people. Instead
of
from the word was switched from a curse
to a blessing.
Now instead of us being attacked
and it said instead of us being
protected
they they they attack us. They siege us.
They burn with fired.
What's the co here? When it came time to
taking the levim to substitute for the
boros, what happens? What happens there?
God gave us a system. If we're going to
be a mamlechas kohan, we're supposed to
be role models to the nations. We are
supposed to be kanoy kadosh. How can I
be a role model if if if I'm not
educated and I'm not developed and I'm
not nurtured? I can only be a role model
if I have something to give over.
So, Hashem gave us this beautiful
institution called Shvet Ley with the
kahuna
and throughout the length and breadth of
Israel, the 408 cities
arim
and the kohanim living throughout the
length and breadth of Israel.
They play the role through the tax
system that Hashem created, the system
of taxes that they don't have to work in
other fields. They can refine and
perfect themselves as educators as
master educators and they can educate
us. The primary role of the kohanim
is not to work in a basa mikdash that
the average cohen does two days a year.
One day out of a week and two weeks out
of a year. So they can so that means one
day this week and then 24 weeks later
one day out of that week. That's two
days a year. You're not going to give
them all those taxes for that. What do
they do the whole year? the whole year
they the adult education
early childhood education elementary
education high school education base
medish
they educate us they transform us so the
co that's described of taking sha ley in
making giving this this very very
significant role in cl of transforming
and educating us
to to purify them so they can play this
role.
Now the the heavens are thundering
with the destruction of the mikdasher.
This was the famous conquest of
is the first city in Israel that was
conquered. Each day of the week they
they they did a hakafa around. One time
on Shabas they did seven hakafos. They
blew the chauffeur after the nua and the
walls of came crumbling down. It
actually you know in the foundation sunk
in the ground.
Now instead
instead of the walls of Jericho
crumbling down and sinking in the
ground, what's now? Now it's the walls
of the base of Mikdash. Think about when
we go to the the Temple Mount, we only
see a bare remnant. Everything else was
destroyed.
Where is the kamarashem
that you see throughout is and your
and many of the nim these famous
esqueologgical visions about the yamosa
mashiach
where is the kamar hashem
aeros
that these words were were taken and
given to the the prophets who had that
great vision of the future and the glory
of the Jewish people.
Now what is there? My children, my
young, my future. They're they're lying
in their they weren't even brought to
burial and the bodies are bloated and
laying in the streets.
How long will this blasphemy? How long
will our oppressors and enemies continue
to do this?
If we could please turn to the 19th
kenna
in the Rabbi Salvage. It's page 393.
You understand? Let let me let me give
the following. This was an introduction
the RV gave a couple of times when when
people would come from all over America
to Boston and they would spend uh
tishabove at the Mymanity School, you
know, with the RV,
you know,
if if I asked you what would you say is
the most essential foundational
principle in Yiddish Kite in Yahadus
and there's many possible answers. that
we might give may be tomato.
We are a religion of wisdom unlike any
other. It's a religion of
and that's why tomato to know God is to
you can only love God as you know God.
And that is through delving seriously
and deeply into all of the principles of
our theology. You could say that. You
could say we're the the religion that
gave the world chabas that we
acknowledge that there's a creator of
the universe. There is a creator and
that this universe not only has a
creator but it has a goal and a purpose.
You could say sedaka, we are the ones
that the the great revolution of a
mavenu is that religion is manifest in
how you treat your fellow human being.
And not only how I treat them in terms
of mishbat and den, but also the notion
that my assets are not my assets. I'm
only a portfolio manager. I'm only
managing a portfolio that Hashem has
invested in me.
There's many different areas that you
could point to. We brought monotheism to
the world. You could give many answers
ibuda.
You there were three great philosophical
works that the Jewish people had.
Some would say the khuzari was the
fourth. But the three I'm referring to
were all written in Judeo-Arabic
because the Jews living amongst a
sophisticated Islam at that time had to
respond.
You know, you had you had great Islamic
philosophers, Averies, Alfarabi,
and they could describe Islam
in a context of a neo-orisilian world
and they could describe Islam in
Platonic and Arisatilian categories
and Jews who were thinking Jews who were
confronted by this, they reached out to
their to their mentors. So the first was
very early. in the 9th century was the
vidos of raen.
The second was the famous work by Baka
Iben Pakuda the Salabos the duties of
the heart and that duties of the
heartabos
was a forerunner to the great work the
marim which was the third of these works
to the guides to the perplexed
and you know what he says in the salabos
he says that the kanditioan
the most foundational fundamental
principle in our theology
is akara
A Jew
is a human being that is saturated
with gratitude. Whether it's gratitude
to the almighty, gratitude to our
parents, gratitude to our educators,
gratitude to those who open doors for us
in life. And gratitude doesn't mean
saying thank you. Hakkaratov means I
have a sheeput.
My existence is indebted to this person
because I am who I am as a function of
their investment in me.
That's very different than a person
saying thank you or being grateful. It's
not the American notion of great of
gratitude or grateful.
It's a radically different notion.
Hakarasov,
guys, if you can just keep the
whispering down a little bit, it the the
the Hakkaris hat
of of Judaism is radically different.
And when a Jew is an ingrate,
when a Jew is ungrateful,
that's the worst. Why is that the worst?
Because what happens is what happens is
that when a Jew is ungrateful, it
undermines everything we are, everything
we're supposed to be, and everything we
stand for. Now look at this back and
forth.
Quoting Denil to you
is true. We're being we're acknowledging
the various signs that you have done,
the wonders you've done for us from our
inception.
And we the ingrates
upon him. How humiliated are we?
Unfortunately, you know what what we
have done, how we've turned on you and
rejected you.
We're going to read in paras this week.
I'm sorry. Mit was a habarel. It was the
iron cauldron. No one ever came out of
Egypt.
No slave ever escaped. And God
extricated us a nation amidst another
nation.
And look at us. Instead of us being
appreciative, we end up in terms of
sexual morality, in terms of theological
problems. We ended up mocking and aping
those very Egyptians. You know that
phrase, you can take the boy out of
Brooklyn, you can't take Brooklyn out of
the boy. You could take the Jew out of
Egypt, but unfortunately you can't take
Egypt out of the Jew.
We became like them.
Hashem redeemed his people.
Seven days, one week later, and what
happens? We're already rebelling against
God.
Elohim at Sinai, at Hari, we become the
the the ones who who are the witness
people. We we are God's witnesses. He
spoke to us like no other nation. Like
no other nation, every man, woman, and
child. And what happens within 40 days?
The lanu is upon him. We turned our back
on him.
the the the blasphemy that we did by we
said Elohim come let us make ourselves a
god the golden calfash
[Music]
you gave us the man it could taste like
anything
it's something that we didn't have to go
travel and and humiliate ourselves by
having to defecate and having to dig
ditches which we defecate in. It gave us
nutrition.
It was there for us. We didn't have to
carry it. It's not like we had a shleet
every time we traveled in the desert.
What happens? Instead of us appreciating
that gift,
what did we do? We mocked that gift.
Manuan,
you provided us with food. You provided
us with the water source, the beer. You
provided us with protection
upon him. But we are we we the ingrates
are embarrassed in front of you, Hashem.
We called it, we mocked it. We said,
"What kind of you know, everybody likes,
not that we should, but people like that
feeling. You have a big steak, you know,
your belly is full. ah you know you undo
the belt you know you get out a cigar
and a drink afterwards you got to sleep
well that night because a
parasympathetic nervous system is
spending all your energy trying to
digest that juicy steak
but you can't learn Torah you can't be
sharp you can't be alert when that's
happening
with the man you could you didn't feel
like on Shabas lunch you know you didn't
feel bloated you didn't feel stuffed
you were you you had energy. You were
light on your feet. So, it gave you all
the energy and nutrition and it and at
the same time it didn't force you to to
to be
nonfunctional.
We lack nothing but yet we found so many
different places to rebel.
What are these all illusions to? Moshe
didn't want to stick it in their face.
So, he alluded to all the places that we
rebelled against the rebon. Whether it
was the sending of the Moragim, whether
it was because we had so much gold and
it was the issue with the golden calf.
Cananan.
What did Hashem do? He didn't just give
us from the river to the sea. He gave us
the east bank, all of today's Jordan,
most of today's Syria. The Bashan is the
Golan Heights, right? Melikabashan
Slamor is today's Jordan. He gave us the
east and the west bank of the Jordan
River. Okay? You know the wealth we had
from those conquests, we lacked nothing.
One little city, the first city of the
West Bank, the the the bikurim, the
truma of Israel,
we were told not to take of the spoils.
That's the truma.
So what happens?
What happens is
what did we do? one little city we
couldn't set up a system to prevent
taking from the spoils
in it wasn't just who took from the
spoils is the fact that we didn't care
enough to appreciate the word of God to
respect that certain things are off
limits
Hashem during those 369
years of Shilo of Mishkan Shilo now Just
stop for a second. Take a step back.
Look at the map of Israel. I'm not
talking about modern Israel. I'm talking
about the biblical Israel.
Shilo is the center of the country. When
you look at it from a north south point
of view,
that was a capital. You know, in
America, we've only we've only had
America for 250 years. Jews had Shilo
for 369 years. And sure enough, we
couldn't get our act together. We didn't
unify.
We couldn't unify as a people and you
know consistently we had problems. We
were corrupt and Hashem sent us a
message. Sometimes it was Midyan but
then he gave us the Arba Moshim. He gave
us Gidon to protect us from the
Midionites.
The Canananim that we were supposed to
drive out. We didn't. They reestablished
themselves in the northern Galilee in
Katsur and they came and attacked us.
Hashem gave us devorra. They polished
him from the Mediterranean coast. They
came and attacked us. What happens?
We had Shimshon and he protected us. And
this is again and again. the Ammonites
on the east bank of the Jordan River
throughout that whole period where
Hashem looked at us the 14 the 14
different guys guys if you if you can
just keep your voice you want to grab
them a second
I just it's it's hard to talk over you
got to whisper really quietly okay so it
says like this that by the way these are
wonderful people this is our our camera
crew And what they're doing is they're
they're working as we're broadcasting
across the world. So they get a pass.
I'm just trying to get them to whisper a
little bit less. Shouldn't think that
we're shouldn't think that we're yelling
at anybody. It's not the case. We're
very grateful. They're good guys. So it
says like this during that 369-year
period during those 14 Mosheim the 14
chaft that we were given what happened?
We were we had Jews worshiping. You had
a whole industry called Pes Mika and
they were going and worshiping this
idol. Hashem saved them 14 different
times. But throughout all of this, they
couldn't eradicate.
I mean, that's the most ungrateful. And
now upon him,
you gave us a place, a central
educational institution that would
transform our people. First, the 369
years of Shilo. By the way, how many of
you have been to Sheila? Should know. We
have to thank Ira Renard. He built a
shul in Shilo where we have an
incredible Jewish community. Ra Rapaort
who was originally from Brooklyn was the
mayor there. Wonderful. They they
produce incredible wine there. They have
you want an ATV, you can do that there.
They have great agriculture. They're
wonderful people. They have a yeshiva
Hezra Yeshiva. So Ira Renard
built them aul. He did that in
conjunction with Rafina. That's a like
it's a image of what Mishkan Shilo
looked like. It's beautiful. You can see
that sh on the mountaintop. It's it's
it's like what Mishkanila what we think
it looked like. And then the phallic
family, you know, from duty-free America
from down in Miami, they built an
incredible archaeological site with a
film there about the whole history in
Sheila, about Kana's Tila when she came
and she daved in her she poured her
heart before Hashem and about the events
that took place in Sheila. And you know,
you can see it today. There's like
there's there's like this imag it's it's
not it's real but there's like a ring
around Sheilo that's not symmetric
where we can find pottery going back to
the period of Tanakh of Chaftim and Shmo
but it's very interesting because it
stops you know it's it's a radius goes
out the radius goes out and it stops but
it's it's not it's not a completely
symmetrical ring. You know why? Because
the Mishna in
where could you have
any point you could see Shilo? Well, on
some on the east of Shilo, you can't see
Shilo the same way you can from the west
because it's enveloped by mountains,
right? And the mountains are not totally
symmetrical. It's not like it's an equal
radius,
but you can see at the point where you
no longer can see where Mishkan Sheila
was, that's where you stop finding the
pottery. It's incredible. So, we have to
thank the Renard family. We have to
thank the Phallic family. We have to
thank Gravina. And we have to thank the
those incredible Jews who live there.
You know, they they've suffered
under the hands of of Palestinians of of
Palestinian Muslim terrorism.
But but that is that that was the center
of our nation. That was the center of
our country. And thank God after
thousands of years we have Jews who have
reestablished Shiva
and then you had Nove and you had Gon
and you had the Basin. Hashem gave us
these national institutions
upon him. But how humiliated are we?
Because of our sins, we cause them to be
destroyed and wiped out.
What was the saddaka here?
You know this this capitol that we keep
quoting I endowed.
It's mism assaf
a song of assaf.
Assaf was one of the great um one of the
great authors of many of the Tahillim.
So the Gar says, "What do you mean? Go
look at that text. It's not a song.
It should be called a kina, a durge, a
lamentation of assaf, not a song of
assaf. Why is it called misaf?"
So the garra and this is also in the
medish says, you know why?
Because look at what it says. And that's
the line that we have here from the
kalieru.
The two mikt were destroyed.
Instead of hashem doing what? Instead of
hashem annihilating the Jewish people,
what did he do?
He destroyed the base of mikdash. The
midas haden was on the institution.
We can come back from destruction of
real estate. You can't come back from
annihilation.
Hashem enabled us to survive
despite our corruption. So he took a
very very hefty price because there are
consequences. Barry,
can I ask you this? Do you know the tune
to Betsi Mi?
I'm going to we're going to in just a
minute. Can I have you lead us come up
here and lead us in that?
I'm sorry.
And how humiliated are we that now at
this stage of we turn to you trying to
do chuva trying to correct the flaws of
2,000 years. The last stanza
900 years. It's been because the RV
learned. Now there are different ways of
learning this line, but the way the RV
learned it, it's been 900 years. The
Khalier was living in the 9th century.
He was a he was a uh contemporary of
some of the Gaonim unlike other opinions
in the tophas that that felt he was a
Tana Rabazer maybe Rabzer.
um the famous Shamuti Rebel Lazar Hagul
but there's a question as to who he was
the RV is taking the approach and this
you see in some of the earlier kinos and
you see this in the crow votes that
antishabove the German community say in
each braha of the amida it seems that he
was a contemporary of the goonim and
it's been 900 years that he's written
this and we still haven't done chuva all
the more so today where it's been 2,000
years and we haven't done chuva vanu bos
upon him
and we pray.
Please God, incline your ear to our
prayer. I'm just for this moment we're
going to ask Barryclar
who during the week amongst as well as
being a Dafomi learner an incredible
bentora gets a mazle on his daughter
Tova's engagement he is a manic director
leads a department at Goldman Sachs but
uh he also happens to be one of our sh's
not only greatest teachers in Tam
happens to be one of our sh's best
voices and I would like to ask him to
lead us in the 31st kenna. We'll explain
it afterwards, but let's say it first.
On the Rabbi Salvage, the Maurus Arakin,
it's page 515.
And in the art in the um art scroll
kenna, what where do you have what page
for the 31st kenna?
>> What?
>> 304.
>> You need the mic for the for the camera.
We'll need the mic.
Sorry. Come on up because for the
camera.
>> Oh, so I'll stand behind you. Okay.
Yeah, you're good. You stand in front.
>> Yeah.
[Music]
Give me
[Music]
the must
[Music]
Is it
the God
for
the
[Music]
single
record.
[Music]
The Pharaoh the Dish.
[Music]
The tasting
shall
hallelujah.
[Music]
They all
[Music]
of the gate
[Music]
of the tasting
[Music]
living.
[Music]
Tasting
[Music]
has now
been tasting
[Music]
the All
right.
Shall
[Music]
Foreign
[Music]
Thank you, Barry.
So, this is f this this kina is
following that same theme. Look at what
Hashem did for us. Look at the
incredible things that he did for us.
And now as a function of our corruption
and our sins, look at the terrible
plight that we're in. Look at the
miserable plight that we're in today.
And let's go through just a few of them.
Azy Moshe, right? A shar that will never
be forgotten. And instead, what are we
saying today? We're singing the khal's
kinosa
gal
gal the gimmel yamu.
the incredible hashkah of having the
situation of the creasyamsu
and now what happens they don't shatu
you know I'm reading I don't know that
we'll have time
this is something you should all have in
your library it's called yain mitsula
rabbi nasa hanover he was a survivor of
takatat takatat literally means um 1648
and 1649, but really the the Ukrainian
Kosak rebellion against the Poles, it
happened from 1648 through 1653.
And it's it was really what I would call
the watershed moment in Polish Jewish
history because from the time we came in
the aftermath of the bubanic plague and
the aftermath of the black death when we
were welcomed we were accepted into
Poland and we played a major role in
terms of their banking industry there.
It was really a 300 wonderful years. You
know for all intents and purposes you
you haven't had a large Jewish community
in America probably more than 130 years.
Right. The 1880s is when the real
immigration started
and you know they had a 300year ride
where it was really really good for the
Jews in Poland.
But in the aftermath of this Ukrainian
revolt and we'll get we if we have time
we'll get into the details.
So he describes you know how many Jews
the the Niper River in the Ukraine was
literally read with the blood of the
Jews and I've got descriptions here that
he gives of different, you know, he goes
through town by town as the Ukrainian
Kosaks went through these communities
with their um Tartar mercenaries, what
they did to the Jews in these
communities. And these Jewish women did
not want to be sex toys for the
Ukrainian cusaks.
and woman after woman, you know, they
they dove into these rivers and drowned
to death rather than to have to be
violated and abused by these men. So
this image that you have here in the
gimmel of what happened at the yamsuf as
opposed to zedenim shatafu arroitafu
think about I don't know that we'll have
time to get to it but it's on it's it's
on the list the tession when it
describes the shuya
those who were the captives who didn't
die in the battle against the Roman
soldiers
But they were taken out the Jaffa gate.
Today it's equivalent of highway one.
They were taken all the way to Jaffa
port and they put in ships and they were
going to be sold. Many of them were
going to be sold as sex slaves.
And that what happened these women
they they jumped into the Mediterranean.
they committed suicide than rather to
have to have to lead a life of you talk
about a hashem where that's what a Jew
is. A Jewish woman is a prostitute. A
Jewish woman is a tanua.
The kaducious Israel manifests itself
through the modesty and the humility and
the sincerity of the Jewish women. And
rather than to be violated like that,
they jumped off the ships into the
Mediterranean. And we have you know we
have that account in the Gumar and Giten
in the Medish Aha as well as in the
Khalier's 16th kina. But this is that
idea that he's alluding to here. The
idea of zedenimafu
the
mishka we had a mishkan and we had a we
ultimately built a basikdash with the
carbanos.
But what happened when we left Egypt?
The Romans Romans took it all. Skulas
ela. Many of you have been to the arch
of Titus. Those who haven't, you've seen
the images of the arch of Titus
who was being slaughtered not not the
lamb for the corbanola
and
the musabas but who slaughtered the Jews
were the lambs that were being
slaughtered.
We have holidays that commemorate these
great events, these great historical
providential events. But now what do we
have?
evil or doah, we end up having the fast
days and our life in the diaspora, our
life without a basa mikdash is pursuing
nonsense and and craziness.
What did Bum say?
We had a structure in the Mishkun around
the Mishkun and there was a modesty in
terms of how we conducted ourselves with
our neighbors and we were on our way. We
were the great march to the land of
Israel to the promised land. And what
happens?
You know the story of Alishma. The Jews
who who escaped Nvu Zaredan's armies.
What did they do? They went to their
relatives to our uncle to the Arabs. And
the Arabs, you know, feigned welcoming
us. In the end, they killed us.
Mos
yo, right? The whole notion the great
equalizer that after the yo everyone
comes back to their real estate they
come back to their position erit was a
beautiful quiet land and now makis
because we didn't observe properly the
yo and shmita and we didn't return it
now we are sold eternally and we've been
cut off eternally
lmedim varonim bashib zakanim the whole
education ational structure that enabled
our perfection. What was that
educational structure? We talked about
it. You've got Kohanaman Levim in every
town, village, and city in Israel.
You've got a whole educational class
that enabled us to become a people of
perfection. And then you've got the the
Sanhedrin Hagutel and they have this
whole network of of yeshivas. The
typical Sanhedrin of 23 very seldom
adjudicated a case. You know what it
was? It was meant to be the yeshiva of
the city. You have a Sanhedrin of 23 in
this town. Any town that's large enough
that has 23 with smika that have the
real ordination that way you have a a a
great educational institution for every
city. On top of that you had but they
didn't you had courts of three. So you
have this whole educational judicial
infrastructure that enables the
perfection of the nation. That's what we
used to have. Now what do we have? No
simmonium task masters. oppressors, Moch
and Vakon, people who sell Jews. Like,
you know, in in in our business, you
know, on Mondays we would bring cattle
to the cattle auction in Pavilion, New
York, and on Tuesdays we'd bring them to
the cattle auction in Calonia, New York.
And these cattle got shipped to
slaughter houses all over the the
country. You know, the the the old dairy
cows ended up becoming McDonald's
hamburger meat and Campbell soup meat.
You know, the much nicer animals. They
would be your prime and your choice
steaks and your prime and your choice
cuts of beef.
This is what becomes of the Jews. They
get sold in pavilion or sold in Calonia,
get sold to the slaughterhouse, get sold
to the to the oppressor. That's what's
become of us.
You know, I mentioned what
the Kimmelitzki Yamakimo, the Kimlitzki
revolution against the Polish Catholics.
Well, we were the brunt of their
animosity and their hatred.
Do you know how many? We don't know
exactly how many were killed. Now, we
think it was somewhere about 35,000 Jews
were murdered, but there were tens of
thousands of Jews, particularly those
under the control of the Tartars. The
Kosaks, the Ukrainians were the worst.
Supposedly, the Tartars were the
barbarians, but it turned out that the
barbarians were less barbaric than the
Ukrainians.
The the Ukrainians killed us.
and raped our women.
Not to mention the horrific things they
did to our women. They they took women
who were pregnant and they cut out the
fetuses
and they they they they they sewed cats
into the uterus that had been which they
had wrenched out the fetuses and then
they cut off they had swords and they
cut off the hands of these women. So
they didn't even have the I mean the the
the cruelty is unimaginable what they
did to us.
But the Tartars,
they would kill the elderly because
there was no sale price on them. The
young Jewish women, the young Jewish
men, they sold them. Tens of thousands
of Jews were sold as slaves.
the Jews in the um
Ottoman Empire. I'm talking about
Smeirna is also known as Ismir that
we talked about Thessaloni. Today it's
called Salonica.
Istanbul,
these famous port cities,
thousands of Jewish slaves were sold
there. And for more than a decade,
the Spharic Jews who had transplanted
themselves, who now were Jews of the
Ottoman Empire,
they spent their fortunes. They spent
their wealth redeeming us, doing
pidonuy,
doing pidonuy
first for the women, then for the men of
the Ashkanazic Jews who had been sold by
the Tartars as slaves. It was an
incredible act of
and an incredible mitzvah. But many Jews
would have been they would have died or
many Jews would have been lost to
Judaism had it not been for these
Sphartic Jews in in Ismir and in
Istanbul and Salonica and other places
that literally had huge huge massive
appeals. People would take mortgages on
their homes just to redeem the captives
just to free their Ashkanazic brothers
and sisters who they had never had met.
Listen to this one. The mesh.
When we left Egypt, we had the the two
greatest leaders possible, Mosha and
Aaron.
But when we left
and had
what's the problem with where's our lack
of symmetry? It should say what?
Nvadetszar and Vaspatian or Nvadetszer
and Titus. Why does it say Andaras
Hadrien?
Now there is a Gears that says Tus, but
most Gears have it like we have it in
the Msurus Sarav and we have it in the
art scroll. Say Hadria and this is a
very important point.
The suffering that we underwent, the
suffering that we underwent in the
aftermath of the Barakba revolt, it was
the worst tragedy in all of Jewish
history until the Shawah.
We suffered terribly with the loss of
the first bas loss of second bas. But
I'm talking about sheer volumes of men,
women, and children who were
slaughtered.
They per we'll talk about it when we get
to the 21st kenna. When we get to Ar
Leavan, we'll talk about it. But it it
it was a it was a genocide.
They eradicated they wiped out most of
Israeli jewelry.
And these were not people who were
soldiers in Barakba's revolt or in his
armies. These were innocent men, women,
and children.
It was a terrible genocide. The the
introductory medish to claims it was
800,000.
It was so bad
that
you were not allowed to write about this
or to record this. You know, the Romans
were very proud of their defeat of the
Jews 60 years earlier, 65 years earlier.
They had a chronicler, Josephus Flavius.
Yseph Ben Matisawa Cohen. Josephus
Flavius was a chronicler. And there's a
history. The war against the Jews, not
this. You know why?
There's no pride in butchering little
children. What? You going to brag to the
world? You know that you killed little
children? You killed elderly people?
That's not something to be proud of.
And it was they weren't allowed to talk
about it.
Jews weren't allowed to talk about it.
It was a capital offense.
The RV explained the famous gamarra
about the talid of rabaka says the
24,000
they died of agara dtheria
said they didn't die of dtheria they
were slaughtered they were butchered
what does it mean
what does mean antipressa it's like you
and I saying throughout the length and
breadth of Israel
the words
that Aramaic word is like The sword is
it can mean ascaria dtheria which is a
pulmonary disease. But no, it's talking
about it's talking about they were
slaughtered.
Okay, the the sword these these were
from the 800,000. They happened to be
the Bali Hamasura. Judaism was wiped
out. Had it not been for Rebecca and the
five students, there'd be no Judaism.
But they were amongst the 800,000 who
were killed by the Romans. That's why
Khazal referred to Rome as Malus Rashaw,
the evil empire. Before Ronald Reagan
used the term the evil empire, Khazal
used that. Why did they call Rome the
evil empire? Because of this.
That's why in the kina here he's putting
on not not vispatian and night titus
titus. He's putting Hadrien because
because of what happened under Hadrien's
rulership the worst before the
holocaust. If you would have woken up a
Jew 2 o'clock in the morning from their
deep sleep, a Sparty, a Persian, a
Syrian, a Yemenite, an Ashkanazi, I
don't care what you, you would have
asked them, "What was the greatest
tragedy in all Jewish history? What was
the most tragic event in all Jewish
history?" They would like that. They
would respond to you. The genocide in
the aftermath of the Barakba revolt.
That was the worst. So, we have a
Holocaust. The Holocaust trumps
everything.
But understand, before the Holocaust,
this was the worst. Here
the kusha
men and women attain that level of
you could perceive the hashka was
apparent. You could perceive God. You
could perceive the actions of God.
Now
it's just terrible. We're in a state of
fear. The the see the ruatum is manifest
when you can have, you know, the supreme
Ayatollah Kamei
and his band of of imams say the kind of
horrific things they say about Israel,
about Jews.
when you can have these it you see it
both in the Shia and the Sunni world see
after two millennia it's died down a bit
in the Christian world the Christian
world after they realized that they
perpetrated a shawah that that 2,000
years of hate and bedeviling the Jews
its ultimate manifestation is that you
end up incinerating and annihilating and
butchering a million and a half Jewish
children six million Jews
So right now in Christianity, there's a
bit of a pause. But in Islam, there's no
guilt and there's no pause. And again,
I'm not talking about all of Islam. I'm
not talking about the Islam that you see
in in in some of the Persian Gulf states
like the UAE.
I'm talking about this this rabid rabbid
hatred of anything other than
themselves.
And why do the Jews threaten them?
Because the truth hurts because they see
that's real ethical monotheism.
They see that Sharia is an attempt to
duplicate hala,
you know, and and they see
that that Muhammad was fascinated with
Schlommo
or fascinated with Alicia, but it's a
copy. It's not the real McCoy.
And it's very very scary to them. And
which is why the hatred is so so rabid
and so acute coming both out of both out
of the Sunni world and the Shia world.
If it weren't for their hatred for each
other, I don't know that we could
survive.
It's only because they they hate each
other so much that some of their energy
is not focused on the eradication of
Israel. It's a tiny tiny country. And
the other problem is they see how we
treat Muslim women. They see how we
treat them. Onethird of the physicians
of the medical doctors in Israel today
are Muslim.
Onethird of the medical students in the
medical schools are Muslim. We've got
Muslim women sitting on the Supreme
Court of Israel
with their gay and lesbians have to flee
the Palestinian territories because
they're killed and slaughtered not only
by kamas but by the Palestinian
territory. They have to come to Tel Aviv
to live.
They see how we treat women.
It's it's a society of women are objects
of spousal abuse.
The most severe anti-spousal abuse laws
of any country legislated ever were
legislated when BB was the prime
minister the first time in 96. I'm not
here to tell you that the government of
Israel is a Torah government. But the
Jewish values that manifest themselves,
particularly in the IDF, but also in in
the society in Israel,
it scares the Muslim world because they
see how we treat Muslims and and how we
respect in in the dignity we have for
all Muslims, Sunni, Shia, women, men,
children, elderly.
And it's a terrible, terrible mirror
that gets flashed in their face in terms
of how they conduct themselves.
So rather than dealing with the problem
and the cause of the problem, they deal
with the symptom. Which is why there's a
rage, a terrible, terrible rage against
the Jew, the Yahood, and against the
Zionists.
That's why you notice
Kamei
he never say Israel
calls him the Zion he can't even use he
doesn't even call us by our name he
won't even give the dignity of calling
us by our name
as opposed
And what do we pray?
We had the Torah.
We had the precious vessels and we yearn
for
the
with the in gathering of our exiles and
ultimately with the rebuilding of the Ba
ultimately with the rebui