My friend Stuart Gherman's photo exhibit Oct 3-11 and After enduring expulsions and pogroms, Jews from Arab lands ignored by Israel & the UN and 15 Hidden Gems That You Can Find In Italy and ROSH HASHANAH IN ISRAEL. SEPTEMBER 25-27, 2022.
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
ROSH HASHANAH IN ISRAEL. SEPTEMBER 25-27, 2022.
Rosh Hashanah in Israel is one of the most special and meaningful times of the year – Happy new year to those who celebrate! The Jewish New Year is called Rosh Hashanah and usually falls during September or early October. Rosh Hashanah is a two-day holiday that celebrates the start of the new year according to the Jewish calendar. Businesses across Israel will be closed on both days, so bear this in mind if you are in Israel during the period. In 2022, Rosh Hashanah will begin at sundown on September 25th and end at sundown on September 27th. In many ways, being in Israel during Rosh Hashanah is like Shabbat where most businesses are closed.
ROSH HASHANAH & COVID 19
Covid-19 has brought with it many safety and health concerns, but hopefully, by this holiday synagogues, events and festivals will be up at running again! This time of year is when we focus inward and consider what change and renewal this season may bring, and with such a chaotic year, maybe some time to refocus on what's most important to us is what we all need.
BEING IN ISRAEL DURING ROSH HASHANAH
If you are in Israel during the Rosh Hashanah holiday, one of the best ways to experience the holiday is by visiting a synagogue to hear the prayers. Jews attend quite lengthy synagogue services and recite special prayers and liturgical songs written over the centuries. These vary between Jews who have developed different prayers based on where they were living for hundreds of years.
The blowing of the shofar (ram's horn) is an iconic symbol of Rosh Hashanah – 100 (or 101) shofar blasts are sounded in the synagogue to symbolize God's sovereignty over the world and remind Jews of the giving of the commandments on Mt. Sinai and of Abraham and Isaac's devotion to God. They arouse people to repentance and to herald the Day of Judgment and the coming of the Messiah. If you aren't able to attend synagogue, it is special just to hear the sound of the shofar. Often, it can be heard from outside the temple. You may see crowds gathered outside the synagogue, this is a special time to hear the shofar.
Visiting Jerusalem during Rosh Hashanah is a very spiritual and meaningful experience. Join our Jerusalem tours, which depart daily and operate throughout the holidays. Our tours visit the Western Wall and other important religious sites.
SYMBOLS OF ROSH HASHANAH IN ISRAEL
Other symbols of Rosh Hashanah include apples and honey. They are customarily eaten along with other sweet foods to symbolize a sweet new year. During Rosh Hashanah, and just before the holiday begins, you will see round challah (braided sweet bread), often with raisins, inside in many bakeries. The round shape of the bread is symbolic of the circle of life and the yearly cycle. Along with other sweet baked goods, one of the most popular treats for Rosh Hashanah is honey cake. This can also be found in many bakeries. It is also traditional to eat fruit, like pomegranates, that have not yet been eaten during the season. Since they are ripe this time of year, they taste extra sweet and delicious.
Tashlich is a Rosh Hashana custom in the afternoon where Jews walk to a river or another flowing body of water. Here, you shake out your pockets and symbolically cast your sins into the water. If you come to Israel during this period, it is interesting to see religious Jews performing this custom. You can visit many of the beautiful beaches in Israel, where you can practice Tashlich or observe it.
If you want to wish people a happy new year, you can say "Shanah Tovah". This means "Have a good year" in Hebrew. The period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is called "The Ten Days of Repentance". This is when people have the opportunity to atone for their sins. Yom Kippur is a day when Israel grinds to a halt.
Yemenite Jews flee their homes Kluger Zoltan/Public Domain
When addressing the defining moment of the 20th century in terms of man's inhumanity to man, we often reflect on the sheer barbarism of the Holocaust and the genocide committed by the Nazis on six million Jews. Throughout the annals of the blood-stained pages of Jewish history, many other massacres of Jews have been committed.
Tragically, what is often neglected and summarily dismissed is the forced expulsion, evacuation and flight of 921,000 Jews of Sephardi and Mizrahi background from Arab countries and the Muslim world, primarily from 1948 to the early 1970s.
Farhud' pogrom in Baghdad, Iraq, 1941 (public domain)
For over 2,500 years, Jews lived continuously in North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf region. The first Jewish population had already settled there at least 1,000 years before the advent of Islam.
Throughout the generations, Jews in the region were often subjected to various forms of discrimination — and in many cases, ranked lower on the status of society than their Muslim compatriots — but they were nevertheless loyal citizens who contributed significantly to the culture and development of their respective countries.
Yemenite immigrants in a camp near Ein Shemer in 1950. (Pinn Hans/GPO)
Despite the positive influence that Jews brought to the places where they lived, more than 850,000 Jews were forced to leave their homes in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and several other Arab countries in the 20 years that followed the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. Another major forced migration took place from Iran in 1979–80, following the Iranian Revolution and the collapse of the shah's regime, adding 70,000 more Jewish refugees to this number.
In 1947, the Political Committee of the Arab League (League of Arab States) drafted a law that was to govern the legal status of Jewish residents in all of its member states. This Draft Law of the Arab League provided that "…all Jews – with the exception of citizens of non-Arab countries – were to be considered members of the Jewish 'minority state of Palestine'; that their bank accounts would be frozen and used to finance resistance to 'Zionist ambitions in Palestine; Jews believed to be active Zionists would be interned as political prisoners and their assets confiscated; only Jews who accept active service in Arab armies or place themselves at the disposal of these armies would be considered 'Arabs."
In the international arena, Arab diplomats pretended to ignore the Arab League's collusion in encouraging state-sanctioned discrimination against Jews in all its member states, seeking publicly to attribute blame to the Arab "masses" – and even the United Nations itself – for any danger facing the Jews across the region. This covert move was part of the Arab states' attempt to divert attention from the official discriminatory practices of their governments against the Jewish citizens.
Two hundred and sixty thousand Jews from Arab countries immigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1951, accounting for 56% of the total immigration to the newly founded state. The Israeli government's policy to accommodate 600,000 immigrants over four years, doubling the existing Jewish population, encountered mixed reactions in the Knesset as there were those within the Jewish Agency and government who opposed promoting a large-scale emigration movement among Jews from Arab lands.
Currently, it is estimated that only around 15,000 Jews remain in Arab countries. This mass expulsion and exodus is part of modern history, but inexplicably, it's neither taught in schools nor remembered within the context of the conflicts in the Middle East. But more on that later in this editorial.
Edwin Black, the award-winning, New York Times bestselling international investigative writer of 200 editions in 20 languages in 190 countries and the author of the 2016 book, "The Farhud" wrote in December 2021, "Today, we speak of a largely forgotten ethnic cleansing largely unparalleled in the history of humanitarian abuses. Recall the coordinated international expulsion of some 850,000 Jews from Arab and Muslim lands, where they had lived peaceably for as long as 27 centuries. As some know, in 2014, the Israeli government set aside November 30th as a commemoration of this mass atrocity. It has had no real identity or name like "Kristallnacht." But today, from this day forward, the day will be known as Yom HaGirush: "Expulsion Day." It has been a years-long road to identify and solidify this identity."
On September 21, 2012, a special event was held at the United Nations to highlight the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Then Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor asked the United Nations to "establish a center of documentation and research" that would document the "850,000 untold stories" and "collect the evidence to preserve their history", which he said was ignored for too long. In Israel alone, there are approximately 4 million descendants of these Jews from Arab lands and a few million around the world. Then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that "We are 64 years late, but we are not too late." Diplomats from approximately two dozen countries and organizations, including the United States, the European Union, Germany, Canada, Spain, and Hungary attended the event. In addition, Jews from Arab countries attended and spoke at the event.
In 2019, Rabbi Eli Abadie, MD, formerly of the Edmond J. Safra synagogue in New York City said in his eloquent address at a day-long seminar held at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan and entitled, "The End of Jewish Communal Life in Arab Lands" that:
"The issues surrounding the Palestinian refugees are frequently addressed at the UN, in the news media and in legal journals. Very little has been written about the Jews displaced from Arab lands. Out of almost 1120 UN resolutions on Israel and the so-called Palestinians, almost 200 resolutions deal specifically with Palestinian refugees, by contrast, not a single one deals exclusively with Jewish refugees displaced from Arab lands.
"Jews constituted a stable and historic community in these countries dating back at least 3,000 years, centuries before Muhammad. The Aleppo Syrian Community dates back to King David 3,000 years ago, the Yemenite community to King Solomon 2,900 years ago, the Iraqi and Iranian community date back to the first Babylonian exile 2,500 years ago, and the Egyptian Community over 1,000 years ago."
"Jews were known as believers and as such were not given the choice to either adopt Islam or death, but they were given the third choice–that of submission. Therefore, coexistence between Jews and Muslims required that the Jews be submissive to the Muslims. This coexistence dated back from the time of Caliph Omar.
People subjected to Muslim rule were given protection from death and conversion as the Dhimmis. This protection required that the Dhimmis pay a poll tax known as Jiziya or fine. The Dhimmis were forbidden from testifying against Muslims, owning a home, holding office, bearing arms or drinking wine in public, they could not build their houses higher than Muslim houses, they could not ride on saddles, they could not display their Torah except in their synagogues, neither could they raise their voice when reading or blowing the Shofar, and were required to wear a special emblem on their clothes, yellow for Jews (the yellow star was not a Nazi invention). It was their duty to recognize the superiority of the Muslim and accord him honor."
Rabbi Abadie also offered a multi-faceted plan for concretely addressing the crimes that were committed against Jews from Arab lands.
He said: "Asserting rights and redress for Jewish refugees is a legitimate call to recognize that Jewish refugees from Arab countries, as a matter of law and equity, possess the same rights as all other refugees.
The first injustice was the mass violation of the human and civil rights of Jews in Arab countries.
Today, we must not allow a second injustice – for the international community to continue to recognize rights for one victim population – Arab refugees–without recognizing equal rights for other victims of that very same Middle East conflict – Jewish refugees from Arab countries."
Rabbi Abadie concluded his captivating and informative address by sparking the collective conscience of all humanity: "Let there be no mistake about it. Where there is no remembrance, there is no truth; where there is no truth, there will be no justice; where there is no justice, there will be no reconciliation; and where there is no reconciliation, there will be no peace."
In a December 4, 2021 interview with the Institute of Jewish Experience, Professor Tarek Heggy, an Egyptian thinker and author of 35 books on the MENA politics & cultures, spoke of Egypt's relationship with its Jewish population. "At one time, Egypt had 100,000 Jews, among other ethnic groups living all over the country. This cosmopolitan, Mediterranean Egypt started to come to an end at the same time that the Jews were forced to leave Egypt"
In a March 2020 article by Sarina Roffe, an expert genealogist, historian, and founder of Sephardic Heritage Project that appeared in Brooklyn's Community Magazine, she speaks of students from Yeshivah of Flatbush who shared stories of what happened as their families left Syria, some of them with their passports stamped: "Never to Return."
Joshua Zebak spoke of his father's life in Damascus, as well as family members who tried to escape. "Mazal, Lulu, and Fara Zebak, and their cousin Eva Saad planned an escape. Unfortunately, they didn't make it. They were brutally killed and their remains were left in a cave. They did not see Israel but Israel sees them. Mazal, Fara, Lulu, and Eva did not reach the border, but they have reached our hearts and our history forever.''
Danielle Tawil spoke of her mother's family, the Antebys, and their escape from Syria. It was 1980 and people who tried to revolt were killed. Jews were not allowed to keep their customs or study Torah. Arab kids threw stones at Jews. Even so, the Jewish children were still able to get an education. Born in 1971, Danielle's mother had no birth certificate, so even to this day she is not sure of her birthday. Danielle's grandfather was arrested and thrown into jail and was accused of being Russian spy; her grandmother was also arrested a few times.
At a certain point, half of the family was allowed to leave the country, so Danielle's two uncles and grandmother left in 1980. Her grandfather and mother were left behind. They obtained false passports with fake Arab names. Danielle's mother's Arab name was Mahah Dakak. They managed to get to Paris, but they had to leave everything behind. Eventually they got visas and were able to enter the United States. Danielle says it is important to appreciate and "take advantage of religious freedom we have today."
It has been nearly a decade since the Israeli government has accepted culpability for neglecting the nightmarish plight of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Arab lands, yet no official curriculum has been established in Israeli schools to teach a new generation about the history of this vital segment of the population.
Even after two commissions were established which concluded that the need exists to incorporate this history into their curriculum and most recently, the Bitton commission, nothing has been done to ensure that such an educational curriculum will become a reality. Nor are there any official museums, seminars, memorials or media centered productions that spotlight the expulsion of Jews from Arab lands. Why is this so?
As was mentioned previously, when Jews from Arab lands began streaming into Israel after the United Nations officially declared it a Jewish state in 1948, there were those in the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency who went on record as opposing this wave of emigration to the newly founded state.
The reality is that those who comprised the leadership of Israel in its infancy were secular, left-wing Jews of European ancestry. They were buoyed by the socialist doctrine that they imbibed from the Zionist youth movements that they grew up with in Europe. Their ultimate objective was to create a socialist haven for Jews "of their own kind" that was predicated on the political theories of Ber Borochov and his ilk.
As such, these Jews from Arab lands represented a dangerous threat to their political agenda. These Ashkenazi Jews in leadership positions were totally cognizant of the fact that these Jews from Arab clung tenaciously to the dictums of their faith and were deeply religious. The notion of hundreds of thousands of them reproducing at record numbers was something that the secular leadership could not swallow.
In order to forcibly secularize these Jews from Arab lands, the Histradrut (Israel's national trade union, which became one of the most powerful institutions in Israel) would interview newly arrived Sephardic Jews. They would ask them if they were planning to send their children to a religious school. If they responded in the affirmative, then they were told that they would not be given a job and would remain in poverty for their entire lives.
Because of the vehemently anti-religious doctrine that the leadership of Israel was wedded to, they were hell bent on ripping away the "Simanim" (signs of their commitment to Torah) of the Sephardic Jews that emigrated to Israel. And that meant their kashrut, their peyot, their manner of dress and religious observance.
During the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s, the jails in Israel were brimming over with young Sephardic Jewish boys and men. They were the tragic byproducts of an Israeli culture created by the European Jews who founded the state. These socialist-zionists crafted a scheme to destroy every last vestige of Sephardic religious life and to isolate these Jews from Arab lands. This left them with no choice but to become outcasts in a state that clearly resented their presence.
While this is the cold, hard truth, the government of Israel has made negligible contributions in terms of rectifying the misdeeds of their original leadership by making sure the story is not forgotten..
So many decades later, we are collectively raising our voices and calling for the government of Israel to broadcast the plight of Jews from Arab lands with a concrete education in the school system. And this means a curriculum that is developed by experts in Sephardic Jewish history. This also means year round seminars for members of the Israel Defense Forces and a special college and university course structure. Speakers, rabbis, teachers and the media must immerse themselves in disseminating this information about Jews from Arab lands and what they endured while living in their host countries and what they experienced upon arriving in Israel, despite their eventual absorption and obvious success in making their mark in the Jewish State..
We urgently need to rallyl for an international effort representing all aspects of the Jewish nation for the creation of a museum to teach all Israelis and foreign tourists about the brutality that was foisted upon Jews from Arab lands and their ancestors. And this global outreach should be focusing on Latin America, the United States, Canada, France, England, Australia, Italy, and many more such countries. This effort must be broad based as we solicit the talents of scholars, teachers, artists, chefs, etc
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The media in Israel must focus on professionally producing television series, documentaries and books about the horrific catastrophes that befell Jews from Arab lands.
One day a year that is dedicated to remembering and memorializing the heartbreaking plight of Jews from Arab lands is certainly not sufficient in terms of making amends for devastation that was perpetrated against these people throughout the course of history.
Now, before it is too late, all of us must come together in unity to amplify this issue. We call upon each of you for your help, guidance and determination to ensure that the world never forgets the injustices meted out to Jews from Arab lands.
While history may or may not recall our deeds on this earth, it is our moral obligation to stand up for brethren and by doing so, we will have made this world a better place for future generations.
Fern Sidman is senior news editor and David Ben Hooren publsher of The Jewish Voice. Reposted with permission.
