Rachel Weeping for Her Children

In an Eilat mall, I saw a girl barely five foot tall in camouflage fatigues with the semiautomatic weapon suspended from her shoulder almost dragging the ground as she walked with her six-foot something boyfriend. In the Negev I saw young people on a Sunday picnic with side arms and automatic weapons in hand. In Jerusalem I literally saw the Daughters of Zion armed and paroling the city of peace.

Auschwitz, January 27, 1945.

And in the dark stone hewn chamber of Yad Vashem, a single candle’s eternal reflection, and a wailing not unlike the wind arousing the somber remembrance of “Rachel weeping for her children... because they are not” “… they have cast lots for my people and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink” (Joel 3:3).

Purim 2015

The White House’s unmitigated rage over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s acceptance of an offer to speak before Congress surfaced today despite customary diplomatic restraint. And the rescheduled date of March 3 is "coincidently" one every Jew will immediately recognize i.e., the day before Purim, the commemoration of events chronicled in the Hebrew book of Esther:

 “… in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces)” (Esther 1:1), i.e. Xerxes I King of Persia and Media (ancient Iran) whose Daiva Inscriptions record his title as the Great King, King of Kings (Shahanshah) and King of Nations (i.e., of the world)²,






Rock relief of Xerxes I¹

“… King Ahasuerus promote[d] Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes that were with him. And all the king's servants, that were in the king's gate, bowed, and reverenced Haman… But Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence…. And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath. And he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone; for they had shewed him the people of Mordecai: wherefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai…. And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king's laws: therefore it is not for the king's profit to suffer them. If it please the king, let it be written that they may be destroyed: and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver to the hands of those that have the charge of the business, to bring it into the king's treasuries. And the king took his ring from his hand, and gave it unto Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews' enemy. And the letters were sent by posts into all the king's provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey…. The posts went out, being hastened by the king's commandment, and the decree was given in Shushan the palace. And the king and Haman sat down to drink…. (Est 3:1-15).

¹This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

²Inscriptions of Xerxes Lines 6-13 (Roland G. Kent in "Language" Vol.

How can I be saved?

Three Minutes Before Midnight

Buenos Aires 2015

Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was to present evidence this afternoon of a cover-up of Iranian involvement in Argentina’s worst ever terrorist attack, evidence implicating President Cristina Kirchner and others in her administration was found dead this morning.

During an interview a few days earlier Nisman commented "I could end up dead because of this" referring to the comprehensive dossier he was to present today chronicling government complicity in a cover-up of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AIMA, a Buenos Aires Jewish center). A terrorist attack roughly equivalent in magnitude and execution to the 1995 Oklahoma City terrorist bombing. However, unlike Oklahoma City, the AIMA incident has yet to go to trial after two decades of pretrial deliberations amid a plethora of political and judicial irregularities.

Nisman submitted “findings in 2006, accusing eight senior officials of Iran and Hezbollah… of responsibility for the atrocity…. Nisman’s report… handed to the Mossad in July 2006… [was] described as ‘courageous and professional’ by Mossad officials, it is a highly detailed document that contains thousands of pages of surveillance reports, wire-tap transcripts, and analysis of intelligence data.” (Ronen Bergman Ph.D.), The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World, September 9, 2008).

“Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face. Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O LORD, in the light of thy countenance. In thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted” (Psalms 89:14-16).

How can I be saved?

The Vel' d'Hiv

Following Friday’s Paris terrorist attack killing twelve, a third terrorist took six people hostage in a Kosher market on the Jewish Sabbath killing three before police intervened. Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, linking the two massacres commented: “Every single French Jew I know has either left or is actively working out how to leave [France].” A trend both the presentiment of “the time of Jacob's trouble”³ and reminiscent of Axis Europe.





Vel' d'Hiv Monument (Quai de Grenelle)²

Shortly after Germany’s blitzkrieg invasion of France, Hitler summoned his favorite architect Albert Speer to inspect his trophy. Hitler and his entourage flew to an airport north of Paris, arriving before dawn on June 23, 1940. His Mercedes motorcade then proceeded through a silent and nearly deserted Paris. After the brief three hour tour, he commented to Speer “Wasn't Paris beautiful? But Berlin must be made far more beautiful. In the past I often considered whether we would not have to destroy Paris. But when we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. So why should we destroy it?”

Before dawn on July 16, 1942 Hitler initiated the Parisian phase of his solution to the Jewish Question, i.e., The Vel' d'Hiv Roundup¹

In May and June, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich (head of the SS Sicherheitsdienst, or SD), Fritz Sauckel (who organized the employment of forced labor for the German armament factories) and Adolf Eichmann (the SS official in charge of Jewish Policy), visited Paris. In June and July 1942 the French administration in charge of the Jewish question in France was replaced by a German one. As a result, French anti-Jewish policies were exacerbated. At dawn on the 16th of July, 1942, some 4,500 French policemen began a mass arrest of foreign Jews living in Paris, at the behest of the German authorities.

Over 11,000 Jews were arrested on the same day, and confined to the Winter Stadium, or Velodrome d’Hiver, known as the Vel’ d’Hiv, in Paris. The detainees were kept in extremely crowded conditions, almost without water, food and sanitary facilities. Within a week the number of Jews held in the Vel’ d’Hiv had reached 13,000, among them more than 4,000 children. Children between the ages of two and 16 were arrested together with their parents. Among those detained were Jews from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Though many Jews had been forewarned of the danger, they had assumed the deportation would only target men, as they had in the past; consequently, women and children did not go into hiding. In the week following the arrests, the Jews were taken from the Winter Stadium to the concentration camps of Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande in the Loiret region northeast of Paris, and to Drancy, near Paris. At the end of July and the beginning of August, the Jews who were being detained in these camps were separated from their children and deported. Before deportation, each prisoner’s head was shaved, and his or her body was subjected to a violent search. Most of the deportees were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. More than 3,000 babies and children were left alone in Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande. At the end of August and during the month of September these children were deported alone, among adult strangers, in sealed railway wagons, to Auschwitz, where they were murdered.

In the two months that followed the Vel’ d’Hiv arrests some 1,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz every two or three days. By the end of September 1942 almost 38,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz from France. In 1945 only some 780 of them remained alive.

The French reactions to the arrest and deportation of Jews varied between active collaboration with the Germans, indifference, and empathy toward the persecuted Jews. Most of the civil administration and the French policemen who had been allocated to conduct the arrest collaborated with the authorities. A minority, however, tried to aid Jews in escaping, either by turning a blind eye toward escapees, or by actively aiding such escapes and providing Jews with hiding places. Many elements within French society – leading figures in the Church, the press and the underground – expressed revulsion at the events and protested against them. Public condemnation of the arrest and deportation of Jews was primarily sparked by the difficult sight of women arrested along with their babies. This negative public sentiment found its way into the official reports of governmental authorities and even the police.

The Vel’ d’Hiv round ups, organized by the French authorities and carried out by French policemen, became engraved in French national memory as a symbol of the responsibility of the regime and the French nation for the Holocaust of the Jews of France.

¹The Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority (Copyright © 2014) (http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/france/vel_dhiv_roundup.asp)

²This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

³Jeremiah_30:7: “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.”

How can I be saved?