"Kishinev thinks they are the best in the pogrom, please in the ear, Krushnik can teach them a thing or two" (Shalom Aleichem, "A Thousand and One Nights").
While a brutal war is raging in Ukraine, and our people there are tasting a chapter on the fate of the old Jew, I have returned to peace be upon you.
Shalom ben Menachem Nahum Rabinovich was born in the city of Friaslav in the Kyiv region, then southwestern Tsarist Russia, today Ukraine.
"Hidden covetousness," Bialik said of him.
The novella "Tales of a Thousand and One Nights" (I chose a version from "Stories of Chaos" translated and compiled by Dan Meron, published by Keter) describes the Jew in the face of the crash and destruction that history has inflicted on him, and also has a chilling prophecy.
This is the story of Yankel Janover, who meets the author Shalom Aleichem aboard an immigrant ship making its way through the waters of the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to America, in the midst of World War I.
Janover sails alone, after losing his family in a pogrom in which the Polish-Jewish town of Krusznik was also completely destroyed - along with another row of towns caught in the line of fire between the Russians and the Germans in the First World War.
What is enlightenment in her eyes?
Supreme Court President Esther Hayut, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
"I lost the woman, Blessed be God. The children are better arranged. Three children, two sons and a groom - the saint did a miracle: one son was about to be hanged, and the other was about to be shot, and the groom, some say, was killed near Lemberg, while others "It is said that he was captured and no one knows where his bones went. So the daughter went mad, and the woman, my wife, could not stand it."
Shalom Aleichem rolls in Janover's mouth a surprising, tragic story, but not one that is full of catastrophes and a melodramatic tone, but ironic, bitter, full of humor in the descriptions of the horror.
"The Polaks (Poles; AS) mated with the Cossacks, and together with them attacked Jewish houses in order to hold a joint Jewish pogrom team, as they say, for all its compilation ... Such a plot? - Haplaka only pointed out and showed where a Jew lived, that is, they were just the developers, and the Cossacks had already done the work, installed a pogrom order according to all its laws and constitutions, unfurled bedding, scattered feathers, robbed Jewish property and loaded carts, tied pious Jews "In wigs, they tortured the women in front of the husbands, raped the girls in front of the mothers ... and the Polaks stood aside and were pleased."
Only matzah will enter the bases ?, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
When the Russians hang the town rabbi in a square wrapped in tefillin and a tallit, and while the Jews run against their will to look in horror at his swaying body - Yankel, who was the town's lords, looks stunned, then scolds them: "What are you running? Beasts! Horses! What is it here that you did not see? hang man?".
I read the 14 chapters of the novel again.
They contain not only a concluding obituary for the Diaspora life of the Jews of Eastern Europe in the First World War, but also a chilling prophetic allusion to the terrible days to come.
Yankel says that on the eve of the German invasion, his son Yechiel was called up for service in the Russian army.
The new soldiers were taken to the forest to carry out a range.
Everyone shoots at targets, and only Yechiel shoots up, into the air.
"The sergeant," Yanover describes, "was filled with murder - Esau ran to an angry Yechiel and screamed, 'Seed of dogs, Jewish snout, where are you shooting, to heaven ?!'
But Yechiel continues on his own, shoots upwards and the sergeant gets even more angry, shouting at him, "Leshem! Leshem Tira! Where everyone is shooting! - and he shows him with his hands where he will shoot. "There are people there!"
After all, there are human beings there, says Yechiel, and the Jewish soul goes out to him.
So sweet, charming, humane, Jewish.
Rabbi Shach has already said: "We have confirmed that we are from the people of the murdered and not from the people of the murderers."
But we paid a heavy price for being serial killers, for firing our shots upwards.
There is not always a "name" in front of humans.
And that is perhaps, at the tip of the fork, the purpose of our country.
The balance between shooting and targeting and Jewish morality.
"Zionism is the most honest and successful idea that has come to the minds of the crooked Jews for thousands of years," Shalom Aleichem said on another occasion.
Yechiel from Shalom Aleichem's novel takes us to a High Court hearing a week ago in a petition filed by the Reform Rabbi Uri Regev, demanding that chametz be introduced into IDF bases on Passover.
For example, why is this similar?
To a Hindu Brahmin who wants to make a cow on the BBQ in Rishikesh on the banks of the Ganges.
The Supreme Court issued a conditional order ordering the IDF to justify within 60 days the existing sweeping ban on the introduction of chametz on Passover to military bases. Mrs. Esther Hayut even hinted at the proper result: "It is difficult to accept that there is no solution that can be found to address those who want to eat chametz on Passover, and that is their right," wrote Mrs. Hayut.
There is a will so need a solution, stated Animals.
really?
For if my memory is not charged, even Jews who want to pray on the Temple Mount have a desire, and they even have the basic right in a substantive democracy to freedom of religion and worship, which includes the right to pray on the Temple Mount.
Still, the Supreme Court prevents the realization of the Jewish desire to pray on the Temple Mount for the sake of public peace;
Because, according to the state, there is a danger that the prayers of Jews will lead to incidents of Arab violence.
So while President Hayut stated that "it cannot be that if there is a will, they will not find a solution" - but a fact, does not happen.
The reason why the Supreme Court did not reject the petition, or at least accepted the state's position, stems from the physical and ideological environment of most of the judges.
In their view, enlightenment and liberalism must allow the introduction of chametz into the army, and hence they fail to understand what enlightenment is.
This is because in the last 50 years, the Enlightenment has become a progressive troll show in which an extreme minority imposes its values on the majority.
In my opinion, enlightenment is fundamentally a conduct according to reason, reason, A.A. Kant. In our mind and reason, of the Zionist, national, conservative, Jewish camp - there is an understanding that in order to survive here, we need a sense of belonging, solidarity, community, nationalism, and common connection To our tradition and historical roots, one of which is Passover - the founding story of the Jewish people.
Today we have a Jewish army.
And in the Jewish army there is no chametz on Passover.
And if there is chametz, he will not be a Jew.
And if he is not a Jew, we will all return to the condition of Yankel Janover.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
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