28 Nissan 5782 13 Days of the Omer Parashat Kedoshim - Mevarchim
"Hashem spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the entire assembly of the Children of Israel and say to them: You shall be kadosh, because I, Hashem your God, am kadosh."
This expresses very succinctly how we become kadosh - by becoming more and more like HaKadosh Baruch Hu. When our souls imbibe the kadosh words of our Torah HaKadosh, they take on, more and more, the midot of our Father in Heaven. "Coming close to Hashem" means to be ever more like Him. Every mitzvah we perform recreates us closer to His image as Adam was at the beginning of time.
27 Nissan 5782 12 Days of the Omer Holocaust Remembrance Day
"NEVER AGAIN!"
"It can't happen again thanks to the existence of the State of Israel!"
"It can't happen again thanks to the IDF!"
Think again! If it doesn't happen again, it will only be thanks to HKB"H's infinite mercy.
Muslims gathering at the Temple Mount on Wednesday night for the Laylat al-Qadr events marched while calling for the massacre of Jews, as the State of Israel commenced with events marking Yom HaShoah, its national Holocaust remembrance day.
Waving Hamas and PLO flags, the thousands of marchers chanted slogans in support of the Hamas terror organization, called “in spirit and in blood we will redeem Al-Aqsa,” and “Khyber, Khyber al-Yahud” – an explicit call for the massacre of Jews as occurred in the Khyber battle in 629.
The police, who deployed some 3,000 officers to secure the event, did not respond.
The police stated that its boosted deployment “to maintain public peace and security” enabled tens of thousands of Muslim worshipers to reach the Temple Mount to perform the night prayers safely, and the various prayers were held in order. It estimates that some 150,000 Muslims visited the Temple Mount. (Continues here.)
The 10th of Nissan, 2448 (1312 B.C.E.). For generations, the Jews have been enslaved in Egyptian exile, conditioned to accept the Egyptians as their immutable masters. They suffer slavery, humiliation, torture, the murder of their sons, in mute despair. And now, after centuries of this conditioning, Moshe arose and commanded them: Take a lamb – the god of your Egyptian masters; tie it to your bed-post for four days; at the end of that time, slaughter it in public; roast it whole, ensuring that the Egyptians will see it and smell it and identify it! Defy Egypt, the mightiest power in the world!
Four days later, the 14th of Nissan, 2448. The Jews, smashing the conditioning of centuries, indeed slaughtered the lambs, the god of the Egyptians, in public. The next day, the 15th of Nissan, they leave Egypt with a high hand.
It was “a night when Hashem Himself guarded them, bringing them out from the land of Egypt; and that same night Hashem Himself will guard all the Children of Israel throughout their generations”. This is the night which is fore-ordained for Israel to fight mightily against its future oppressors.
This nation of slaves left the world’s undisputed superpower ravaged and depleted and defeated, like a fish-pond without fish, like a bird-trap without grain – useless without its bait.
2: Eclipse of a nation
Almost a millennium later: the 13th of Nissan 3404 (356 B.C.E.). Israel lies desolate under Persian occupation. In the Persian capital, Shushan, the second most powerful man in the world, Haman, sends out directives throughout the mighty Persian Empire “to exterminate, to kill, and to destroy all the Jews, from youngest to oldest, in a single day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, and to plunder all their possessions”. The situation for the Jews looks hopeless: the mightiest empire in the world has calmly and legally decided to exterminate them – and how can a defeated nation, scattered in exile, with no unified leadership and no army, even hope to resist?
The next day, the 14th of Nissan, Queen Esther – who until now had hidden her Jewish identity even from her own husband – begins her scheme to save her fellow-Jews. That night was the night of the 15th of Nissan – the night when Hashem Himself stood guard over all the Children of Israel. Three days later, on the 17th of Nissan, Haman was hanged; and eleven months later, on the day that Haman had schemed to exterminate all the Jews, “everything was overturned, that the Jews overpowered their enemies”.
3: Forging the nation’s destiny
Almost twenty-three centuries later: a bright sunlit morning of the 14th of Nissan 5703, 19th of April 1943. At 3:00 in the morning, Nazi forces had surrounded and sealed the Warsaw Ghetto, preparing to annihilate the Ghetto and all the Jews in it – almost half a million in all – in time for the Fuehrer’s birthday the following day, 20th of April.
To the Jews trapped there, the situation was hopeless: they were untrained in warfare, and the Armia Krajowa, the Home Army (the Polish resistance) refused to aid the Jews or even to recognise them as part of the Underground. Consequently, the Allies (primarily Britain) refused to supply the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto with weapons or ammunition (as they armed other underground resistance and partisan forces across occupied Europe).
Months and years of Nazi brutality have left the vast majority of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Jews desperately weakened, often without even the physical strength to stand, let alone fight: the official food ration allowed was 300 calories per person per day – perhaps one-seventh of what an adult needs to survive.
Yet in spite of all, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto managed to cobble together a ragtag army of sorts – without uniforms, almost without weapons. They mustered some 750 fighters and another 750 non-combatants; the fighters were armed with 1 revolver, 5 grenades, and 5 Molotov cocktails each. Additionally, there were 3 rifles in each area, as well as 2 mines and 1 machine pistol in the whole Ghetto.
Attacking them was a force of well over 2,000 Nazi soldiers – highly trained, heavily armed. These included over 850 officers and men of the Waffen-SS – one of the most elite military forces in the history of warfare.
The attack on the Warsaw Ghetto began at 6:00 on the morning of 19th of April, with a force of 16 officers and 850 men of the Waffen-SS 7. With their heavy machine-guns, tanks, aircraft, artillery, and other machines of modern warfare, they expected the operation to be over in a day or two.
In fact, it would be almost a month before the commander of the operation, SS Brigadefuehrer (Major General) and Generalmajor der Polizei (Major General of the Police) Juergen Stroop y”sh could report on the 16th of May, “The Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no more! The grand operation terminated at 2015 hours when the Warsaw synagogue was blown up”.
Stroop’s report concludes with an almost pathetic account of the arms captured from the Jews: 9 rifles, 59 pistols, several hundred Polish and home-made hand grenades, a few hundred incendiary bottles (petrol bombs or Molotov cocktails), home-made explosives, and ammunition.
Yet with these few weapons, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto held the Nazis off for as long as Poland had done in September 1939, longer than Greece (which was reinforced with British Commonwealth forces).
On April 12, 1951, the Knesset proclaimed the 27th of Nisan as “Yom ha-Shoah U’Mered HaGeta’ot” (Holocaust and Ghetto Uprising Memorial Day). This was enshrined in law in 1959, when it was officially called “Yom haZikaron le-Shoah ve-liG’vurah” (Memorial Day for the Holocaust and Heroism). The 27th of Nisan has twin significance: first, it is a week before the Memorial Day for fallen Israeli soldiers, which is itself the day before Israel Independence Day. But more than this: from the start, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was to be the focus of memorializing the Holocaust; and 27th of Nisan was the date of one of the fiercest battles of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – the battle of 2nd of May, commanded by Marek Edelman, the commander of the bunker at Franciszkanska 30.
(A week later, when Mordechai Anielewicz, the commander of the Jewish Combat Organisation, died, Edelman became commander in his place. Edelman survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and participated in the Polish resistance Home Army-led city-wide Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation in spring 1944. He remained in Warsaw after the Second World War, became a cardiologist there, and later politically resisted the Soviet-backed Communist regime. He died on 2nd October 2009, the last survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters. By a curious twist of history, the revolt that Edelman led began the day before Passover, and the day he died was the day before Succot.)
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was fought so tenaciously, so bravely, that it inspired Jews (and others) throughout the Reich to take up arms against the seemingly invincible Nazi war machine. Over the next year, the Nazis faced uprisings in the Jewish ghettos of Brody, Lvov, Vilna, Kletzk, Cracow, Tarnow Czehstochowa, Bendin, Bialystok…the list went on.
And these inspired even Jews already in extermination camps with the determination to fight. On Rosh Chodesh Av 5703 (2nd August 1943), the Jews of Treblinka death camp revolted. On the first day of Succot, 14th of October 1943, it was the turn of Sobibor. The flame of rebellion was spreading: on 19th May 1944 the Jews of Ponary death camp fought, on 7th October the Jews of Auschwitz rebelled.
All these uprisings were arguably inspired by the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – the Jewish fight against impossible odds which began the same day that, 3,255 years earlier, the Jews of Egypt had shaken off their fear of their erstwhile slave-masters – the day that was ordained all those millennia ago as the day when Hashem Himself would infuse them with the courage to fight mightily against their oppressors.
This is the day on which, in independent Israel, we remember the Holocaust.
The kever of Yosef HaTzaddik in Shechem has been vandalized twice over the past three days and in between those two attacks on the kever, there was an attack on two Jews who were trying to reach it for prayer. They were shot and are now in hospital with serious, but non-life-threatening, injuries.
Frustrated by their failure to significantly increase the body count in this newest wave of terror, they strike out in rage at what lies unprotected and in easy reach - our father Yosef's resting place.
Here, just days before Pesach, it brings to mind the kindness Moshe Rabbeinu did for Yosef HaTzaddik in remembering the promise to bring up his bones out of Mitzrayim and transport them to Eretz Yisrael when HKB"H would fulfill His word to Avraham Avinu to bring the nation up from there and settle them in His holy land.
Perhaps we of this generation are too poor in mitzvot to arouse the kind of mercy we require at this time. But, in attacking Yosef HaTzaddik, not once but twice, and then shooting two Jews exhibiting such mesirut nefesh, the Yishmaelite enemy has no doubt caused a storm to erupt in Shamayim. And especially at Pesach, the time of year that Yosef HaTzaddik's bones were brought up to accompany the nation out of Mitzrayim. These Yishmaelim have no idea the damage they have done to themselves as a consequence.
May Yosef HaTzaddik and Moshe Rabbeinu combine their voices and influence in Shamayim, along with all our holy mothers and fathers,to stir HKB"H's mercy towards deliverance and salvation once again to equal, or even exceed, that of Yetziat Mitzrayim.
"In Nissan they were redeemed, in Nissan they will be redeemed."
"Ana, Hashem, hoshia na, Ana Hashem hatzlichah na."
"Hashem, Hu HaElokim! Ayn od milvado!"
~ ~ ~
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One of the reasons given by Chazal for why the Shabbat just prior to Pesach is called Shabbat Hagadol is that this is the day the Hebrews brought the Passover lambs into their homes and the Egyptians did not take retribution against them.
Shemot 8:22~
Pharaoh summoned Moshe and Aharon and said, "Go - bring offerings to your God in the land." Moshe said, "It is not proper to do so, for we will offer the deity of Egypt to Hashem, our God - behold, if we were to slaughter the deity of Egypt in their sight, will they not stone us?"
As we all know, Pharaoh did not let the people go and the lambs were taken into the Hebrews' dwellings for four days until the time came to slaughter them and roast them whole over an open fire for all the world to see and know that Hashem is God over all.
Can you imagine the sound of the bleating up and down all the streets? This was quite an in-your-face insult to Egypt, but they bore it without repercussion and Chazal considered it a miracle. Hence - Shabbat Hagadol.
~~~
Remember this: Faith only becomes real when it is put to the test. SHABBAT HAGADOL SHALOM!
All who rebel against the King's sovereign rule are enemies and are deserving of punishment, if not death. The Torah shows us a pattern of how the King wages war against His enemies. Look to the generation of Noach, look to the inhabitants of Sodom and Amorrah, look to the plagues of Egypt...
There is a world war going on right now, but it has nothing to do with Ukraine. It's a war of mankind against the King of the Universe and His response to their rebellion. And like the pattern shows, He is acting through nature and natural events, the extremities of which indicate how much too far they have gone.
Weather events have become more and more extreme in recent years, just as the common culture is trending more extreme. Words like "apocalyptic" and "Biblical" have become commonplace in descriptions of extreme natural occurrences around the world. The events themselves have become so common that not a day goes by anymore that there is not a report of some natural phenomenon taking a toll on lives and/or property. The United States alone has been hit with severe back-to-back storms every week for months now, affecting tens of millions of people at a time. [For just the latest, see here as well as Shirat Devorah's post on what's been happening in Australia.]
The Powers That Be are calling it climate change and insisting it is being brought about by human action. Well, basically, it is. The climate is changing and it's because of mankind's rebellion against their Creator. But the worst is yet to come. What we've seen up to now are only precursor events. What is coming is simply unimaginable. (And no, it's not Nibiru.) Our own Sun is the star of this show (pun intended) which I call The Coming Cataclysm. And if what's happening now on our Sun is an indication, and I believe it is, we are not far off the worst-case scenario for humanity. יש דין ויש דיין
(Apr 5, 2022) "...we have been facing multiple geomagnetic storms here. Just the previous week, Earth had, on average, been hit by one solar storm per day. These solar storms were due to non-stop solar flares setting off on the sun. Among the solar flares that erupted, one was an X-class solar flare that caused a temporary shortwave radio blackout on Earth. Yet, the majority of us link geomagnetic storms with something benign like the fantastic patterned lights called auroras. But, at a higher intensity, the same geomagnetic storms can become nightmarish...." (Source)
To survive this, you have to be like Noach and his family, like Lot and his daughters, like the one-fifth of the Jews who escaped Egypt. You have to be firmly disconnected and set apart from the rebels. You can't participate with them or even sympathize with them in any way, shape or form. You have to be 100% committed to and attached to HKB"H - our Master and King. Then, He will bring you safely through the storms, through the fire and brimstone, through the pathway in the midst of the sea towering on both sides. And we will reach to the other side where all is calm, and man and God are at peace with each other - the Messianic Era.
But, you enemies of God, beware!! יש דין ויש דיין There is Judgment and there is a Judge and Judgment Day is almost here.
Less than ten months after its establishment, the Bennett government is losing its majority in the Knesset and coming closer than ever to its demise, after Coalition Chairwoman Idit Silman has announced it is retiring from the coalition amid deep ideological disagreements with the leftist partners, N12’s Amit Segal reported Wednesday morning.
“I can’t do it any longer,” she told her associates, according to Segal.
On Tuesday, Silman issued an ultimatum regarding Meretz Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz’s directive to hospitals to permit visitors to bring in chametz over the Passover holiday. She received no backing from her party’s chairman, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who instead urged her not to give him ultimatums.
...According to Segal, Silman now said: I tried unity, as someone who came from the ideology of seeking the common good, I worked hard on behalf of the current coalition. Unfortunately, I will not be able to support undermining the Jewish identity of the State of Israel and the people of Israel. You don’t know everything I’ve done because I tried it quietly. But I can no longer continue on this path due to the values and the place from which I came. … The Jewish identity of the State of Israel constitutes our right to exist here, it is our heart, it is our essence. Harming it without any regard for the public and the values I represent is a red line for me.”
29 Adar Bet 5782 Erev Shabbat Kodesh Erev Rosh Chodesh Nissan Parashat Tazria - HaChodesh
"In Nissan they were redeemed and in Nissan they will be redeemed."
(Rosh Hashanah 11a)
It seems like every Rosh Chodesh brings us to yet another level in the redemptive process - "upping the ante" as they say, or if you prefer, ratcheting up the perceived threat/fear level.
Belgorod governor says enormous fire caused, injuring two employees, in first reported attack by Ukraine on Russian soil, some 40km over border
Or this...
The UNholy Month of Ramadan begins tomorrow for the local Arabs. They've been particularly hyped this year due to the proliferation of the following report...
Many Palestinians are expecting the “downfall” of Israel during the month of Ramadan which begins on Saturday
What they don't understand is that the downfall of "Israel" does not mean the end of the Jews and therefore, their own rise to power. It only signifies the end of the Erev Rav regime which prevents the revelation of our righteous Mashiach. That's an event which will bring joy to our hearts. Please God, it really will be in "Ramadan" (NISSAN) 2022!!
29 Adar Bet 5782 Erev Shabbat Kodesh Erev Rosh Chodesh Nissan Parashat Tazria - HaChodesh
What is Parshat HaChodesh?
Parashat HaChodesh is a special section of the Torah (Exodus 12:1-20) which is read on the Shabbat before the month of Nissan. Or, if Rosh Chodesh Nissan falls out on Shabbat, this section is read on that day. It is read as a preparation for Pesach, and discusses various commandments related to the holiday, including the Paschal offering, bitter herbs, Matzah, and the Seder.
This portion begins with the instruction to create a lunar calendar, (the first commandment given to the Jews as a nation,) giving the portion its name, Parashat HaChodesh, which means "the Portion of [the Torah which discusses] the Month."
