Rabbi & Community: A Memorial to Eli Wiesel....

Rabbi & Community: A Memorial to Eli Wiesel....: The news of Eli Wiesel’s death was painful beyond words. A hero to many of my generation and a spokesman for all Holocaust survivors. He ...

A Memorial to Eli Wiesel....

The news of Eli Wiesel’s death was painful beyond words. A hero to many of my generation and a spokesman for all Holocaust survivors. He was the voice of the silent. The one million children, the six million Jews along with and the seven million Gentiles all considered by the Nazis to be “untermention” or subhuman. The people labeled as subhuman were taken to death camps to be worked to death by starvation, or gassed to death with Ziklon B and then cremated. Their ashes mashed together with so many others as to be indistinguishable as individuals. Even “untermention” are deserving of a name and an ability to be recognized by their families. Hitler had a plan to eradicate the History of the Jews and those who were classified in the same subhuman category. The mentally disabled, the gypsies, anyone who opposed Hitler’s plan all were treated to the label of “untermention” and their destiny was also to be identical to that of the Jews. Eli Wiesel dedicated his life to resurrecting the lives of those people unable to speak for themselves.

The perpetrator of this unspeakable and manycle plan were to have a destiny more gracious then his victims. Hitler has his place in History while his victims are lost to history by their destiny. Eli Wiesel was their voice in a world that would have otherwise not known what that destiny was like. The loss of Eli Wiesel is the lost of a quiet but powerful voice that gave the millions of victims of the Shoah a voice of life, in a world that would have otherwise forgotten them. Eli Wiesel gave other survivors the strength and courage to tell their stories and many of them were emboldened enough to record their stories so that the slogan “never again” would be a testimonial to the thirteen million lives lost in the crematoria of Hitler’s Germany. Eli Wiesel was the pebble high on the hill that began to roll down and instigated an avalanche which would caused Jews and non-Jews all over the world to remember and call out for all to hear “Zachor” and the Shoah took on new meaning. Eli Wiesel’s impact was profound and while thirteen million were lost in the crematoria of Europe millions were awaken to the truth of Nazi Germany. 

 

More attention was given to the coming Olympics than this giant of a humanitarian. It speaks more about us and our values. I picked up the New York Times the Sunday after Eli Wiesel’s death expecting full well a large article about Eli Wiesel’s life and his gift to humanity but instead silence. As a student of theology, many of my teachers in the private schools in the Jewish community were Holocaust survivors since they were hardly able to do anything else they became teachers in parochial religious schools throughout the Northeast. Later in life, I considered it a blessing. I understood the opportunity that I had been given to be by their side. However, while their bodies survived many of them were so wounded spiritually, so alone, so haunted, that their survival was hardly a gift but rather a torment. I’m sure they asked themselves every day “why me”! Why did I survive? 

 

Many of them have lost entire family's brother’s, sister's, mother’s and father’s, some even lost spouses and children grabbed from the safety of their homes trained across Eastern Europe in cattle cars, like animals, ultimately lead to reach their destination, a death camp where they would be starved and work to death. and worked to death They watching loved ones die and friends turned into skin and bone.

After I graduated from yeshiva high school I was visiting with a friend and we began to talk about a common teacher of ours, Rabbi R for the purposes of this writing, I said Rabbi R’ was a very special man and I remember him with fondness. My friend responded, “did you know that Rabbi R lost his entire family wife and six children in the Holocaust”. I did not know. My friend went on, “after coming to America he remarried started a new family and began again”. I shook my head in disbelief. “How does someone begin again after watching their family murdered and surviving the death camp that took their family”? Then I uttered the words;" how do you start over after watching that”? My friend responded " that is why he so admired by all of his colleagues! It is because of his faith, deep and abiding faith! Eli Wiesel often questioned his faith having seen the horror of mans inhumanity to man but he always returned to instruct his students that it was fine to question faith but not to abandon faith.

Once we abandon faith in God, we also abandon faith in man. I, for one, don’t want to be that kind of cynic.

Enemies of Israel

August 3, 2015
7:37 am

The Jewish Community wastes far too much time worrying about the thoughts of the Supremeless leader of Iran, Ayatollah... what’s his name.

Much more thoughtful antagonists of Israel have plotted our destruction and failed. We would be more productive looking at the real threat to our future, by this I mean, the disintegration of commitment within the Jewish community.

Studies have show the ongoing and consistent loss of commitment to the welfare the Jewish community at every level; From the local Synagogue, to the National interests of the Jewish community, right on up to the needs of the State of Israel, apathy has become our greatest enemy.

Our enemies are not those on the outside who curse us and call for annihilation but rather, those who don’t care about their brothers and sisters and the future of the people of Israel. Make no mistake about it, apathy is our enemy and also our newest and greatest challenge.

Rabbi & Community: Celebrate the State of Israel

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Respect for the Office of the President

I am appalled by the letter sent to the Iranian Government by Republican members of the United States Senate debasing the negotiations of the Obama administration for a reduction in sanctions against Iran and in favor of a nuclear freeze. It is noteworthy that the letter was composed by a freshman Senator from Arkansas rather than a veteran Senator from California, New York or even Texas. The letter presented as a civics lesson in the constitutional organization of our Government is replete with veiled threats about how the agreement could be revoked since, in their words, it is nothing more than “an executive agreement”.

The action is offensive and likely has no precedence in the history of our beloved Country. It is disrespectful to the office of the President and may cause irreparable harm to future President's. It violates a code of behavior expected of United States Senators, perhaps undocumented but surely expected. In the end, we all, especially Senators, pledge allegiance as one nation, indivisible and this act by these Republican Senators may very well be a violation of that pledge. If we cannot trust our Senators to live up to an unwritten code, perhaps it is time to canonize a code of ethics which includes respect for the “Office of the President”.

Funding our Government Selling Out the Middle Class

Soon there will be new motto for our country. “E pluribus Unum” will soon be replaced by “every person for themselves”.  

In one fell swoop this racist Congress turn back the clock on the poor and middle class by twenty years. There is no explanation for why blacks die at disproportionate rate when white cops engage with black men. Syndicated columnist, Nicholas Kristof, wrote that young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than young white men. If this is true of law enforcement it seems logical to me that the same attitude would be found in the legislature and the executive branch of our Government. Congress has been persistent in their defiance of President Obama’s agenda. The Republican’s have gone so far as to close down the government. Now we are faced with both Houses having a Republican majority.

Passage of the Omnibus Spending Bill which funded the Government for the next fiscal year has provision that should frighten most middle class and underprivileged Americans.

The bill includes language that would gut Union pension plans up to 40%. 

The Senior Journal reported; “This last minute backroom deal would, for the first time, amend the pension law to allow the earned vested benefits of retirees to be cut,” leaving millions of retirees negatively affected. The next pension check they receive could be $60 on every $ 100 they anticipated receiving. Driving this point home, if the average retiree already vested in their pension program, receiving $300 a month, can now anticipate that soon that same check will be $180 per month.  The Kline-Miller amendment is a disaster for millions of retirees according to the Los Angeles Times.

Low income families have also been target in the new funding bill.  The Huffington Post reported, “Congress did manage to trim a few areas of the budget. For example, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly referred to as WIC, was on the receiving end of a $93 million budget cut. WIC provides low-income mothers and children with vouchers that can be exchanged for food which meets certain nutrition guidelines, although I imagine they'll be handing out a few less vouchers after this deal goes through. If you're a family that depends on WIC to put food on the table, this is terrible news.

Congress found money to fund banks that make bad deals when using FDIC secured savings or we are once again in the business of guaranteeing gamblers that when they go to the roulette table their losses will be covered by taxpayers’ dollars. No surprise but this part of the bill was authored by Citibank the same people who brought us the last bank failure that cost the American taxpayer $600 billion dollars.

This is a different America from the one I knew as a child. For a long time we have been warned about the squeeze on the middle class and the growing division between the haves and the have not’s but we have ignored those warning and the last election cycle was proof of our indifference.

Today, we have a black President but he is crippled by the institutional racism found on the Hill. I feel ashamed for my Country.

Today, we have cops killing black men for selling cigarettes on the street and ignoring his cries; “I can breathe” a cry he made 11 times.

Today, we have a cop who shot and killed a preteen black boy carrying a toy gun. A cop who did not pass weapons training in his previous position but was put on the streets of Cleveland with a live weapon.

Racism is alive and well in this Country. I thought that with the Civil Rights Amendment and 50 years, we would elect a black president and trust him to guide this Country but I was wrong.

We are in trouble. The World is in chaos. The World cannot afford an America in turmoil. America must be the moral conscience for World leaders. Unfortunately, we look more like a dysfunctional family than leadership with a moral conscience.

If we are not careful, we will become a caliphate of the rich and the entitled.

What should we expect for the average person?

A Walmart existence with substandard salaries that when combined with government handouts will offer basic survival and no more. Who will lead the caliphate?  The Koch Brothers Sheldon Adelson, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros names you know because they are behind the charge to widen the dearth between the rich and poor.

Rabbi & Community: Abortion and Mental Health

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