Category: Judaism

WORN DOWN BY WAR

A Jewish perspective of ‘anticipatory grief’, loss and mental health during war.

By Bev Moss-Reilly

(*To assist readers, a glossary appears at the end of the article)

War wounds people long before the final phone call, the funeral, the shattered building, or the unbearable silence. One of its deepest cruelties is anticipatory grief, that aching state of living in fear of loss before the loss is even confirmed. It is the dread that sits in the chest when a loved one is at the front, when a child is missing, when a siren sounds, when a family waits for news, when a mother keeps checking her phone, or when an elderly father looks at the door and wonders who will walk through it next.

It is grief in advance, and it is exhausting.

Anticipatory grief affects mental health profoundly. It keeps the nervous system on constant alert. People struggle to sleep, eat, think clearly, or regulate their emotions. The body remains tense, braced for impact. Anxiety and helplessness grow. So does guilt. People feel guilty for being safe when others are not, guilty for carrying on, guilty for moments of laughter, guilty for not having done more. In war, the mind rarely gets to rest. Even when tragedy has not yet struck, the soul is already trembling.

Then, when loss does come, it often arrives in layers. War does not only take one thing. It can strip a person of home, family, routine, livelihood, identity, faith in the world, bodily safety, and the simple expectation that tomorrow will look like today. This is why grief in wartime is not only about death, although death is devastating enough. It is also about every other form of loss that leaves a person disoriented, raw, and altered.

PHYSICAL LOSS

 A person may lose a limb, mobility, eyesight, hearing, strength, or independence. A child may lose the sense of safety that once came from being held by a parent in a familiar room. A family may lose a house filled with photographs, books, toys, mezuzot, candlesticks, wedding gifts, kiddush cups, and all the ordinary holy clutter of Jewish life. Possessions are not merely objects. They hold memory, tradition, continuity, and meaning. When they are gone, part of a person’s story can feel erased.

EMOTIONAL LOSS

People lose trust. They lose innocence. They lose the emotional energy required to keep showing up in the same way. They lose the version of themselves that existed before trauma. Some lose the ability to cry. Others cannot stop crying. Some become numb. Some become irritable, angry, frightened, withdrawn, or hypervigilant. Mental health in these moments is not a neat or tidy thing. It is often about survival. It is getting through the next hour, the next night, the next funeral, the next alert, the next memory.

SPIRITUAL LOSS

This can be especially painful because it is often invisible. War can shake a person’s relationship with Hashem, with prayer, with community, and even with meaning itself. Someone may ask, “Where was God?” Another may feel unable to daven. Someone else may go through the motions while feeling empty inside. Others may feel their emunah deepen, not because they understand suffering, but because faith becomes the only place left to stand. Spiritual grief is real grief. It is the mourning of certainty, of order, of the feeling that the world makes sense.

In Jewish life, however, grief is never meant to be carried alone. This is one of the great strengths of our tradition. Judaism does not deny pain, rush mourning, or ask people to be strong in a performative way. It creates structure around sorrow. It gives the mourner something solid when everything else feels unsteady.

When someone dies, Jewish mourning practices provide an emotional and spiritual container. Sitting shiva is one of the most compassionate responses to grief imaginable. The mourner does not have to host, perform, or explain. The community comes. People bring food. They sit low. They share silence. They tell stories. They cry. They pray. They remember. There is no pressure to be polished. Grief is allowed to be visible. It is witnessed. There is no timeline and it’s not linear, neither is it expected to be. That matters enormously for mental health.

Shiva says to the mourner, “You are not abandoned in this pain.” It acknowledges that loss is not something to “move on” from quickly. It slows life down and lets the heart catch up with reality. Shloshim continues that process, recognising that mourning does not end after one week. The rhythms of aveilut honour the fact that the soul needs time. In a world that often demands productivity and emotional suppression, Judaism insists on presence, tenderness, and community.

This is not incidental. It is the essence of emotional support. In many ways, it is the essence of mental health. To be held by others, to be seen, to have meals arrive without asking, to hear Tehillim being said, to be surrounded by people who understand the sacredness of memory, this is not small comfort. It can be life preserving.

SHAPING SURVIVAL

Jewish tradition also understands that grief belongs not only to the individual, but to the collective. We are a people shaped by memory, by exile, by destruction, by rebuilding, by mourning, and by survival. We know what it means to carry names, stories, and absences across generations. That collective memory can be heavy, but it can also be deeply connecting. Jews inherently know how to show up because we have inherited the language of showing up. Nichum aveilim, comforting mourners, is not an abstract value. It is lived chesed. It is practical love.

During war, that support becomes even more vital. Not everyone is mourning a death. Some are mourning a son who returned from battle alive but changed. Some are grieving a daughter who lost her home. Some are living with the anguish of a hostage situation, not knowing whether to hope or prepare their hearts to break. Some are mourning the loss of livelihood, community, safety, or country. Some are grieving while still in danger, which means there is no neat beginning, middle, or end to the process.

That is why compassion matters so much. People living through wartime grief may not look “grief stricken” in the expected way. They may be functioning, making meals, going to work, caring for children, even laughing at times. But beneath that, they may be carrying terror, heartbreak, and spiritual fatigue. We need to be gentle with one another. We need to understand that trauma and grief can coexist with faith, resilience, and even moments of gratitude.

The Jewish way does not promise that grief will disappear. It offers something truer. It teaches that sorrow can be honoured, shared, ritualised, and held with dignity. It teaches that broken hearts still belong in community. It teaches that when a person cannot stand alone, Am Yisrael stands with them.

In wartime, anticipatory grief, loss, and bereavement can shake mental health to its core. Jewish tradition reminds us that comfort is not found only in answers. Often it is found in presence, prayer, remembrance, community, and love. In the candle lit for a soul. In the hand on a shoulder. In the meal left at the door. In the whispered words, “HaMakom yenachem etchem.” In the quiet, enduring truth that even in unbearable loss, no Jew should ever have to mourn alone.

For when one Jew feels pain, every Jew feels pain, and in that shared sorrow lies the quiet, enduring strength of our people.



Glossary of Hebrew Words and Expressions:

Hashem
Literally “The Name.” A reverent way of referring to G-d.

Shiva
The first seven days of mourning after the burial of a close family member. During this time, mourners remain at home and are supported by family, friends, and community.
Note: “sitting sheva” is commonly intended to mean “sitting shiva.”

Shloshim
The thirty-day mourning period following burial. It includes the first seven days of shiva and continues as a gentler, extended phase of mourning.

Aveilut
Jewish mourning practices and the broader laws and customs of bereavement.

Daven
To pray.

Emunah
Faith, trust, or deep spiritual belief, especially in G-d.

Tehillim
Psalms. These are often recited in times of sorrow, danger, illness, or communal need.

Nichum Aveilim
Comforting mourners. This is considered a deeply important mitzvah, or sacred obligation, in Jewish life.

Chesed
Loving kindness, compassion, and acts of generosity or care toward others.

Am Yisrael
The people of Israel, or the Jewish people as a collective.

HaMakom Yenachem Etchem
A traditional phrase said to mourners, meaning:
“May the Omnipresent comfort you.”
It is part of the fuller condolence expression used during mourning.

Mezuzot
Plural of mezuzah. Small parchment scrolls containing sacred verses, placed in a case and attached to the doorposts of Jewish homes.

Kiddush Cup
A ceremonial cup used when reciting Kiddush, the blessing over wine, usually for Shabbat and festivals.




About the writer:

Bev Moss -Reilly is a Jewish freelance content writer living in South Africa with a deep and heartfelt focus on mental health, emotional wellbeing, trauma, grief, and the unseen struggles people carry every day. Through her writing and her Mental Health Packs, she aims to bring comfort, awareness, compassion, and practical support to individuals, families, workplaces, and communities. Her work is rooted in empathy, dignity, and the belief that nobody should feel alone in their pain, especially in times of crisis.









While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

THE TALMUD OF THE SURVIVORS

“Where was God during the Shoah ?’’ asked soul-searching survivors in DP camps. Three rabbis came together to provide some answers.

By Michel Levine

At the end of the Second World War, the defeat of Nazism was celebrated worldwide with outpourings of joy. At the same time, thousands of Jewish survivors of the Nazi camps were being gathered in Germany, Austria, and Italy in temporary structures known as “Displaced Persons” camps (DP camps). Their material situation there was deeply precarious, as evidenced by the letter that American President Harry Truman sent to General Dwight Eisenhower on August 31, 1945, addressing more specifically the DP camps located in the American occupation zone in Germany. The President expressed outrage at the deplorable living conditions of the Jewish residents — some of whom were even housed in the very places where they had suffered persecution, such as Bergen-Belsen.

While their material situation in these camps gradually improved, many suffered from isolation, a lack of any vision for their future, and ignorance of the fate of their loved ones. They were also burdened by the feeling that their own survival constituted an injustice toward the companions who had died at their side. The belief that God had abandoned them — which had tormented them during their detention — remained powerful. Some asked themselves:

What had God done throughout all these trials? Why had He remained so silent, so distant? And, more desperately: how could one still believe in His existence?

Confronted with this distress, three rabbis began to consider how they might help these troubled souls. Who were these three men of faith? Two were Lithuanian: the first, Samuel Abba Snieg, Chief Rabbi of the American occupation zone, had served as a chaplain during the war. His wife had died at Dachau, where he himself had also been deported.

Appointed by President Truman to work with U.S. Army commanders in post-war Europe to alleviate the conditions of Holocaust survivors, American Reform rabbi Philip Sidney Bernstein played a major role in the “Survivors’Talmud” project leading to its printing in Germany, the very country who had only a few years earlier burned all books relating to Jews.

The second, Samuel Jakob Rose, likewise a survivor of Dachau, held the delicate position of mediator between the Jewish populations of the DP camps and the American administrative authorities. Both men had persuaded a third, an American — Philip Sidney Bernstein — to join their project. This Reform rabbi of the American zone served as adviser to the Military Governor (Militar Gouverneur). During the war, he had overseen the activities of some 300 of his colleagues embedded within the armed forces. The guiding idea behind the three rabbis’ initiative was to invoke emunah — a Hebrew term expressing deep and living trust in God. It is less an abstract or dogmatic assertion than an inner conviction that guides the actions of daily life. And the best means of strengthening Jewish consciences was to reinforce their faith by offering them the reading of holy books (seforim).

Rabbi Samuel Jakob Rose, a survivor of Dachau, examines the galleys of the first postwar edition of the Talmud to be printed in Germany in 1947. (Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum via the National Archives and Records Administration),

But where were such books to be found?

Hundreds of thousands had been dispersed, destroyed, or burned. Contact was made with two organizations active in the camps: the JDC (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee), which, in addition to organizing the distribution of food and medicine, was contributing to the creation of Jewish schools; and the Vaad Hatzalah, an Orthodox organization founded in 1939 to assist rabbis and yeshiva students from Poland and Lithuania. One of its innovations had been the creation of “traveling synagogues” circulating through the displaced persons camps. Both organizations were already printing a modest number of prayer books, and their experience would prove valuable. During their meetings, the question arose:

Which work should be printed?

The answer came to them almost immediately: the Talmud.

Jewish displaced persons (DPs) put up signs demanding open immigration into Palestine in a DP camp in Germany after 1945.

Much as the Shoah represented a catastrophe of historic proportions, the Talmud — literally “study” or “learning” in Hebrew — was itself born of a catastrophe: the destruction by the Romans of the Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, marking the beginning of nineteen centuries of diaspora. The rabbinic authorities of the time decided, in the interest of the survival of their faith, to commit to writing the various laws and precepts that governed it, which had until then been transmitted orally. Thus, was constituted a “portable temple” in the form of a book, enabling the Jewish people — despite their dispersion and wherever they might find themselves — to continue living according to their religion.

The first complete edition of the Talmud was produced in Venice between 1519 and 1523 by the Antwerp printer Daniel Bomberg. It comprised 63 tractates across 2,711 double-sided folios, and was subsequently enriched by the Vilna edition (1880–1886), which established a universal standard.

Under Nazi rule, possession of such books was forbidden in Germany and in the occupied countries. They fed the bonfires, alongside the works of great thinkers deemed contrary to the dominant ideology — whether or not their authors were Jewish.

But where was a copy of the Vilna edition to be found that could serve as a model? After considerable searching, word came of two volumes printed in that city in the nineteenth century, said to have been hidden in 1945 in the Benedictine monastery of Sankt Ottilien, southwest of Munich. Upon investigation, it emerged that these two copies were now… in New York. Not without difficulty, they were eventually brought back to Germany. The work could now begin.

Paper had first to be found — vast quantities of paper — at a time when this commodity was rationed across Europe and in extremely high demand, particularly by governments seeking to resume the production of schoolbooks to replace those the Nazis had imposed. Special attention had to be paid to the quality of the paper that could be obtained, in order to ensure the quality of the printing. There was also a shortage of the materials required for printing — inks, and especially collodion. The latter was indispensable for the transfer of images onto zinc photographic plates, of which 1,800 were needed for each complete volume. Banned during the war, collodion was available only in the city of Zwickau, in the Soviet occupation zone. Since the Cold War had already begun, Zwickau refused all assistance, and the precious substance ultimately had to be ordered from the United States. At the same time, finding a printing house in Germany proved arduous. Those that had survived the bombing raids were few, closely monitored, and already prioritized — they too — for administrative and educational needs. Eventually, the American military authorities authorized access to a printing establishment — one of the rare facilities, complicating matters further, capable of producing large-format works. There was a certain irony in the outcome: this firm was located in Heidelberg, cradle of German culture but also a cultural stronghold of Nazism. As for the printing itself, it proved far from straightforward. Nearly one million Hebrew characters were required, obliging the typesetters — some of whom had worked on the production of antisemitic books — to undertake extensive searches for surviving old matrices, and in some cases to fabricate new ones. They also had to respect the distinctive layout of the Talmud — a central text surrounded by commentaries. Pagination, justification, spacing, and notes each presented their own set of problems.

At the bottom of the page is a depiction of a Nazi slave labor camp flanked by barbed wire; above are the palm trees and the landscape of the Holy Land. The legend reads: “From bondage to freedom; from deep darkness to a great light” (Hebraic Section, Library of Congress Photo).

The work was carried out under the watchful eye of a rabbinical committee. During the proofreading of the galley proofs, numerous errors were corrected; those that remained would be eliminated in subsequent editions. As for the photogravure reproduction, it too proceeded with difficulty, not least on account of the incessant power cuts. Approximately 500 complete folio sets, each comprising 19 volumes, eventually came off the presses.

This Talmud would henceforth bear the Hebrew name Talmud She’erit ha-Pletah, which might be translated as the “Talmud of the Survivors.” The cover page of each volume depicts a Nazi labor camp surrounded by barbed wire alongside an idyllic Mediterranean landscape evoking the Land of Israel. A few words in Hebrew give meaning to these images: “From slavery to freedom, from darkness to a great light.” The Joint Distribution Committee, bringing together the various organizations that had participated in the endeavor, decided — with the agreement of the German government — to allocate 40 copies to German Jewish libraries and institutions, and to send the remainder to those throughout the world, including in Mandatory Palestine. Paradoxically, those for whom it had originally been intended numbered no more than 10,000 to 15,000 by 1950, as the displaced persons camps had gradually emptied.

The “Survivors’ Talmud” (or U.S. Army Talmud) is a 19-volume edition of the Babylonian Talmud published in Germany (1946–1949) for Holocaust survivors in displaced person (DP) camps. Initiated by survivor rabbis and funded by the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), it was printed in Bavaria on presses that formerly produced Nazi propaganda, symbolizing the triumph of Jewish resilience. 

Today, the standard reference Talmud (nussach, or authoritative text) remains the Vilna edition of the nineteenth century. It is readily accessible to all, benefiting from the contributions of scholarly research and the most modern techniques, including digital technology. The “Talmud of the Survivors,” by contrast, is now found only in a handful of museums and private collections. And yet the memory of the work accomplished remains vivid. This transmission of knowledge embodies the resilience of the “People of the Book” in the face of the Shoah, and stands as a testament to its rebirth from the very ruins of its suffering.


A DP camp in Vienna with survivors from across Eastern Europe.




About the writer:

Michel Levine is a historian of Human Rights and the author of a work dedicated to the major cases of the League of Human Rights (Unclassified Cases. Unpublished Archives of the League of Human Rights, Paris, Fayard, 1973).
Further publications include a historical investigation on the repression of Algerian demonstrations in Paris in October 1961 (The October Ratonnades. A Collective Murder in Paris in 1961, Paris, Ramsay, 1985; reissue Jean- Claude Gawsewitch Publisher, 2001.)





While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

AN UNEXPECTED FIFTH SON

A first encounter at a Passover seder left this Capetonian enriched by the experience.

By Tim Flack

This year, I found myself at a Passover Seder table for the first time in my life. I hadn’t planned on it. A kind friend asked if I had ever been to one – not being Jewish – and when I said no, she quietly arranged for me to attend the annual Seder at the Gardens Shul.

I knew that the Gardens Shul – also known as the Great Synagogue – had been established in 1841, making it the oldest Jewish congregation in South Africa.

The Garden Shul in Cape Town, South Africa with Table Mountain to the right.
 

I went alone, and to be honest, I was nervous. I had never been to a synagogue before. I went through the necessary security checks and felt completely out of place. I’m a big guy in a white kippah sruga (knitted yarmulke/skullcap) and a star of David on it, (I picked this kippah because I’m an unashamed Zionist, but that’s another story) with a yellow ribbon pinned to my shirt and a full Japanese tattoo sleeve. I knew I stood out.

I made my way up the stairs to the Seder Hall and sat at the first table I saw with open seats. There were two couples sitting there, around my age, and they welcomed me warmly. Just as I sat down, my blood sugar dropped sharply. I’m diabetic, so I explained what was happening. Someone quickly handed me grape juice and some water, and I managed to stabilize. That small act of kindness set the tone for the entire evening.

The Seder was led by Rabbi Osher, and I listened and took part in a tradition that has been observed for more than 3,000 years. I was quietly taking it all in and trying my best to follow, we had gotten to the 4 sons, someone leaned over during the reading and said something that stopped me in my tracks. They said, “You’re the Fifth Son.” I didn’t know what that meant entirely, I do now.

Inside the Gardens Shul, Cape Town.

If you know the Passover Haggadah, you’ll know it speaks of four sons. The wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask. But there is also a powerful teaching from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. He spoke of a Fifth Son, the one who is not at the table at all.

He may be disconnected, unaffiliated, uncertain if he belongs, or unaware there’s even a place for him. The Rebbe taught that it is not enough to engage with those already present. That there is a responsibility to reach out to those who are absent, to find the Fifth Son and bring him in, regardless of background or circumstance. It is an act of inclusion, of compassion, and of spiritual responsibility.

That night, I was that son. Not because I was missing, but because someone made sure I was invited. It truly was special.

Preparing the tables for a Passover seder at the Gardens Shul.

Rabbi Osher and his wife introduced themselves to me and were incredibly welcoming. So was everyone else I met. There was no suspicion. No hesitation. Just warmth and generosity. I came in quietly, and I left quietly, but I will never forget being welcomed into something so meaningful and sacred.

To the couples that allowed me to sit with them, thank you for making me feel like I belonged. To the Gardens Shul community, thank you for allowing me to be part of such an important tradition.

I may have slipped in and out of the room quietly. But I will always stand with the Jewish people. Your story, your values, and your courage have left a mark on me.

You have a friend in me. Always.



*Feature picture: The Garden Shul in Cape Town, South Africa with Table Mountain to the right.





About the writer:

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Tim Flack is the CEO and Head of Comms and Public Relations and founder of Flack Partners PR, a boutique public relations firm in Cape Town, South Africa. Tim specialises in providing tailored communication strategies for businesses in the political, safety and security, and small business fields.






While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO)

YIDDISH SPEAKER – TEACH YOURSELF ENGLISH

The story of a book, its journey and the people it enlightened

By Stephen Schulman

Some time ago, an interesting book came into my possession. English Home Teacher: Practical Lessons in English by Alexander Harkavy had reached me via a circuitous route and with an interesting history. My wife Yona‘s family: her father Meir and mother Tsila together with her mother’s mother and a brother, all Holocaust survivors, had come to Israel in 1949 while the eldest sister remained in Russia. Meir’s entire nuclear family had not survived. A few years later, her uncle and grandmother left for the United States to join her other uncle, also a Holocaust survivor, living there. In 1956, her aunt, Gesia, succeeded in leaving the Soviet Union and spent some years in the States staying with her brothers helping to look after their young children before finally settling in Israel and bringing the book with her.

Man of Words. The Russia-born writer, lexicographer and linguist Alexander Harkevy who after the antisemitic pogroms of 1880 in Russia, joined the Jewish Am Olam (Eternal People) back-to-the-land movement. Unlike Bilu, which directed its activities towards Palestine, Am Olam saw a Jewish future in the United States. In 1882 he emigrated to the US but rather than fulfilling back-to-the-land aspirations, he gravitated to the written word.

Aunt Gesia was fluent in Yiddish, Polish and Russian but the pressing need was to learn English. Caring for her nephews and nieces left little time for formal study. It was then that she acquired the English Home Teacher: Practical Lessons in English. A New Method for Home Instruction: that had been expressly written for Yiddish speakers to learn English.

The book’s author Alexander Harkavy was a most noteworthy gentleman, both talented and industrious. Born in 1863 in Novogrodek, Belorussia, the grandson of the town rabbi, he showed an early interest in languages acquiring knowledge of Hebrew, Russian, Syriac, German and Yiddish. Moving to Vilna at the age of fifteen, he wrote his first work in Yiddish and three years later after the pogroms of 1881, immigrated to the United States.

Beginnings in Belorussia. The town of Nowogródek in Belorussia where Alexander Harkavy was born in 1863. (Photo Shtetl Routes Teatr NN.PL)

Harkavy’s love of Yiddish together with his gift for languages soon crystallized into a vocation. Before making New York his permanent home in 1890, he had led a peripatetic life alternating between Europe and North America helping to found a Yiddish newspaper and a periodical. Once settled in the Big Apple, his literary output was prodigious. With many Jews from Eastern Europe arriving and not having time or opportunity to formally learn the new language, he published Der Englishe Learer (The English Teacher) 1891 and Der Englisher Brivnshteler (The English Letter Writer) 1892 in the “English self taught” genre expressly written for Yiddish speakers and that became immensely popular.

Posing with Peers. Representing the American organization HIAS during a visit to Europe in 1920, Alexander Harkavy (seated, center) posing at a table with fellow representatives from Jewish communal organisations

His talents were not confined to textbooks and in his prolific career, Harkavy translated Don Quixote into Yiddish, revised the King James English Bible, translated it into Yiddish for a dual language version and compiled and contributed to many Yiddish anthologies and publications. Amongst his many other activities, he taught U.S. history and politics for the New York Board of Education and Yiddish literature and grammar at the Teacher’s Seminary in New York. However, his lasting contributions were in lexicography where he compiled Yiddish-English and English-Yiddish dictionaries and the crowning achievement: the Yiddish-English-Hebrew Dictionary (1925) that played an important role in educating East European Jewish immigrants and is in use today.

Yidden Gems. It is partly due to Harkavy’s work that Yiddish today is regarded as a language. His Yiddish dictionaries show that its vocabulary is as ample as that of the average modern language, and that, if lacking in technical terms, it is richer in idiomatic and characteristic expressions.

The English Home Teacher: Practical Lessons in English first published in 1921 and reprinted in 1929 is both a fascinating and enigmatic book. The 272 pages contain 50 lessons each of which commences with a short passage in English, each word accompanied by its translation and a pronunciation guide. It is then followed by a grammatical exposition very often having no connection to the passage itself. Naturally, all the explanations and pronunciations are in Yiddish in Hebrew script.  

To put it mildly: didactically, the book is no great shakes. In fact, it would make the eyebrows of a modern and trained English teacher curl! There is no logically graded structure and progression, no revision or reinforcement. In the very first lesson, the neophyte English learner is served a heady brew of past simple active and passive and present perfect tenses plus comparison of adjectives! Moreover, as the pronunciation guide for each English word in the text is written in Yiddish, it would have been interesting to hear someone’s first attempts at enunciation. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that this book was written over a century ago when the science of language teaching had barely emerged from its swaddling clothes.

After four decades in the USA, Harkavy was well versed in the contemporary culture, fluent and well read in the vernacular. With his home in New York, he was thoroughly conversant with the current trends of American society. Moreover, he was also on intimate terms with the immigrant experience of his co-religionists and knew full well the basic English required in order to survive and make a living in this new and daunting land.

Well-traveled Book. Expressly written for Yiddish speakers to learn English, Alexander Harkavy’s ‘English Home Teacher’ found its way into the writer’s wife’s family and finally ended up in Israel.

Logic dictates that the English be modern, the passages be relevant and the vocabulary be practical and utilitarian to enable the user to interact and communicate with his/her surroundings. Therefore, it is most puzzling to read the contents of the introductory reading passage in each lesson where the writer has chosen to take the opposite tack. The majority of them are anecdotal, often piquant and pithy with a moral attached whilst others are homiletic. Furthermore, their contents are mainly drawn from early Victorian England with the corresponding vocabulary. It demands a great stretch of the imagination see how archaic terms such as: “a droll fellow, to dine, a duke, an incision, the latter, a witty idler, a tankard, a draught, taken counsel, took lodging, a roguish companion, whereupon” etc. etc. could be put to daily use or even understood in the Bronx.

What were Harkavy’s motives in choosing the texts?

Was he trying to show off and impress his readers with his erudition and grasp of English? This doesn’t seem likely as he was well known and highly regarded in the community and his learned reputation went before him.

Harkavy, having grown up in the world of Talmud studies, was familiar with the tradition of exegesis, wit, pilpulim (hair splitting argumentation and debating) and knew that many new immigrants from Eastern Europe had a similar background. Possibly, he chose the reading passages to appeal to their tastes for most of them are witty, humorous and thought provoking. The introductory passage to the third lesson begins:

A lunatic in an insane asylum was asked how he came there, and he answered: “The world said I was mad, I said the world was mad and they outvoted me.”

Much food for thought!

The English Home Teacher: Practical Lessons in English was first published in 1921, a year that boded ill for the millions of Jews wishing to flee the persecution, pogroms and mass murders of Eastern Europe and the Baltic states and seek a haven on safe shores. There had been a shift in American public opinion and sympathy for all those displaced and stateless had become a fear of being swamped by a wave of impoverished immigrants, feeble in body that would cause the growth of slums, expose workers to cut throat wage competition and endanger American standards of living. That same year, with the passing of the Emergency Quota Act, the United States had declared a moratorium on its immigration policies and had begun to drastically restrict the number of newcomers with Australia, Canada, South Africa and other countries following suit.

Food for Thought. The first lesson in Harkavy’s book – first published in 1921 – is about eating dinner.

With his finger on the pulse, Harkavy was no doubt painfully aware that the Jewish newcomers from Eastern Europe fitted the popular and biased stereotype of the unskilled and indigent immigrant with his/her broken or non-existent English. Maybe he felt that his book offering reading passages on a ‘high level’ would enable its students to acquire a more sophisticated vocabulary with better communication skills to dispel this negative image, ease integration and aid their entry into the work market.

In the archives of ANU (the Museum of the Jewish People) situated on the campus of the Tel Aviv University, there is a film of his visit to Novogrodek in the early 1930’s. The atmosphere was festive for here was a native son who had made good in the Goldene Medina returning as a celebrity to pay his respects to his birthplace. The feted guest was escorted around town and proudly shown the Jewish institutions: the mikveh (ritual bath), the synagogue, the yeshiva and the Talmud Torah with the little children studying diligently at their tables.

Covers a lot of Ground. The cover of Harkavy’s book that must have prepared so many Yiddish speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe to the USA.

The film is bittersweet and very sad and serves as yet another testimony to Jewish presence wiped out during the Holocaust. In 1941, the German army occupied the town and the 10,000 Jewish inhabitants – men, women and children – who comprised half of the town’s population, were ultimately murdered with the assistance of local collaborators. Harkavy was spared the agony of hearing this terrible news.

He had passed away in New York in 1939.



About the writer:

Stephen Schulman is a graduate of the South African Jewish socialist youth movement Habonim, who immigrated to Israel in 1969 and retired in 2012 after over 40 years of English teaching. He was for many years a senior examiner for the English matriculation and co-authored two English textbooks for the upper grades in high school. Now happily retired, he spends his time between his family, his hobbies and reading to try to catch up on his ignorance.





While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT CHANUKAH BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

By Jonathan Feldstein

Recently, I was asked to teach about Chanukah with a church group in Dallas. I entered the conversation thinking it was really quite straight forward, that most Christians at least in America surrounded by a Judeo-Christian culture, know at least the basics about the holiday.

I began by relating a story about when I did a teaching two years ago with a group of pastors in Africa, who have no interaction with Jews or Jewish culture. One pastor stated excitingly that it seemed like such a great holiday, we should celebrate it more often. I always found that one of the most charming jumping off point for discussion, even with Christians in America who know much more, but typically don’t know as much as one would think.

Chanukah is the celebration of the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after its desecration by Greek enemies of Israel. Rather than destroying the Temple, again, they desecrated it, which left it unfit for ritual use.

The answer to my African pastor friend as to why we don’t celebrate Chanukah more often is because Chanukah is always celebrated on the 25th of the Biblical month of Kislev, the day that the Temple was rededicated, some 2200 years ago.

The restoration of the Temple was made possible by a military victory under the leadership of Judah Maccabi. The name Maccabi has become synonymous with strength and overcoming enemies. It has also been adapted for use in popular culture, among other things the name of a popular musical group and a line of frozen kosher foods in America, as well as the name of one of Israel’s largest health funds.

Most Christians know that Chanukah is an eight-day holiday commemorating the miracle that during the rededication of the Temple enough pure oil was found to light the menorah for one day, but which miraculously lasted for eight days. For eight days we light candles, increasing one candle each night. We eat traditional foods that are fried in oil commemorating the miracle of the oil. Not so healthy but decadent and tasty.

Chanukah is also a musical holiday during which it is customary to sing Psalms 113 to 118, called Hallel, thanking God for the miracles He has performed. There are also many songs celebrating the miraculous victory over Israel‘s enemies.

But even if you were a biblically literate Christian with a deep knowledge of Judaism, how would you know all this about Chanukah since it is not featured prominently in the Bible. For answers to this and other questions delving into the how and why of what we do, I hosted Rabbi Avi Baumol on my Inspiration from Zion podcast.

During my teaching in Dallas, I received questions relating to who lights the candles and why. There were questions relating to the giving of presents as well, with a popular misconception that every family gives every member a present every night. I explained that each family has its tradition.

Also, because Chanukah is not one of the Biblical pilgrimage festivals during which all forms of labor are prohibited as instructed in the Bible, it offers an opportunity for families to have larger social gatherings, employ different traditions. Especially in Israel where it is a public holiday and schools are closed, it’s common for people to travel throughout the country, or even overseas during our popular winter vacation.

I also related how in Israel, weeks and sometimes months before Chanukah, the whole culture begins to focus on the holiday. This includes Chanukah displays in stores, the increasing number of Chanukah delicacies on offer such as latkes and brisket to kugel and jelly doughnuts –  and more. And it’s as mundane as hearing Chanukah songs as background music in malls and other public places, replete with seasonal sales that also employ the holiday themes.  

As much as this was new information for many of the participants, I especially liked engaging them about the place in the New Testament where Chanukah is mentioned. It’s so subtle that if you don’t know what the first century Jewish culture is about, you wouldn’t necessarily know that John 10:22 is talking about Jesus celebrating Chanukah in Jerusalem. But if you don’t know what “the Festival of the dedication” is, you would have no idea that Jesus was in Jerusalem to celebrate the holiday.  

As an Orthodox Jew with less familiarity with the New Testament, this raised many interesting questions which we discussed, but many of which were still unanswered.

Since Chanukah is not a pilgrimage holiday like Passover, Shavuot (Pentecost), Sukkot (Tabernacles) when Jews were expected to worship and bring offerings to the Temple, I asked why Jesus was in Jerusalem anyway.

I wanted to understand why this one reference in all of the New Testament was there to begin with. Was it the only time that Jesus came to Jerusalem for the holiday and if so why and what was going on? Or is there something that was unique about this one particular visit, and it’s assumed that Jesus spent many winters celebrating Chanukah in Jerusalem. Unlike today when one can drive between Nazareth and Jerusalem in under three hours, making a pilgrimage by foot or donkey would take days, and days of planning. Forget the time off work.

While the conversation was going on, one person googled and shared some information which affirmed that it was customary for first century Jews to go to the Temple. After all, the military conquest and rededication of the Temple was relatively modern history to them.

This did not answer my questions, but did affirm something that should not be forgotten and that is that Jesus was a first century Jew, his life and culture were Jewish, and he worshiped in the Temple according to Jewish tradition. In a world where ‘Replacement Theology’ (i.e. that God has rejected the Jews and they are no longer his chosen people) remains widespread, and some try to erase the centrality of Jerusalem to Jews (and therefore Christians), it’s important that we remember this, and that Christians understand that everything Jesus did was essentially Jewish.



About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.





While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

THE OCTOBER I DIDN’T GET MARRIED

My bride-to-be was one of fewer than 900 Jews to be given permission to leave the USSR that year. Did my activism on her behalf rob me of a ‘wife’?

By Jonathan Feldstein

(*First published in “The Times of Israel“)

In July 1985, I got engaged. The plan was to get married in October 1987, or at least begin the process to get married.  Under the circumstances, I couldn’t have just eloped, gone to a local court, or organized a more traditional Jewish wedding as would have been my inclination.  My fiancé was a Soviet Jewish refusenick. I proposed marriage the day we met in July 1985. The idea was that I was going to marry Kate to get her US citizenship, bring her to the USA, and use her becoming an American to get the rest of her family out.

Given how Soviet Jews were persecuted daily in every facet of life, this was my little battle to seek the freedom of at least one family.

I was committed to this arrangement, albeit one that would have been fictious and illegal according to US law.  I referred to Kate as my fiancé for two years and made arrangements to try to learn what would be needed to initiate a Soviet civil marriage, at a time before the internet and when phone calls and even letters were monitored by the KGB.  So I couldn’t just google how to get married in the USSR, and I couldn’t write or speak about it in our communications, lest we get caught. 

I am not sure my fiancé fully understood how serious I was, considered me her fiancé, or had any grasp of what I was doing to raise awareness (and funds) to make this possible, albeit under the radar so neither the Soviets nor the American government would have been on to me.  I understood the US penalty for a fictitious marriage and was prepared to risk it, despite a hefty fine and possible jail time. As serious as I was, and my efforts were admired, sometimes people joked that it was a way to buy myself a Russian bride and other less PG-rated suggestions!

I suspect it’s still illegal for a US citizen to marry someone for the purpose of getting them US citizenship, and since I never did it I suppose it’s safe for me to talk now about a crime I didn’t commit 35 years ago. But it’s strange that hundreds of thousands cross the US border regularly, albeit illegally, for much less noble reasons, and filing any legal charges against anyone are unheard of. Yet had I been caught I could have spent my 20s in jail, and my “wife” deported.

The author (l), Kate (m), and her father Victor (r): July 1985, the day I met them and proposed marriage. (courtesy)

My plans to return to the USSR in October 1987 were well underway by the time I got a phone call from Kate that July, sharing the news that she and her family had just been freed from the USSR.  They became four of fewer than 900 Jews to be given permission to leave the USSR that year. Ted Koppel anchoring ABC News, telling part of the story in March 1998 summed up the situation well, “It’s hard to tell why the Soviets do what they do.” But conventional wisdom was that because of my activism and putting the spotlight on her family, they were released in order to avoid the continued headache of the publicity I had already generated.  Little did they know what I had in store!

I was committed to this fictitious marriage and knew it would change and complicate my life, though I don’t think I was aware of how much, even assuming I didn’t get caught. The Soviets granting Kate’s family their freedom was one of the best non-wedding presents I could have received.

I don’t think about this part of my past so often, but this year marks 35 years.  It’s a milestone.  A non-anniversary I celebrate alone. 

What made me really think about it most recently is the visit a few weeks ago of my ex-fiance’s 16-year-old son, Mehael, to meet my family and spend Shabbat with us.  Despite having never met Mehael, I felt a kinship to him immediately.  Mehael is studying on the Alexander Muss High School in Israel program.  It’s no little thing that he has a strong connection to Israel and the Jewish people.  Growing up in the US, he could just as easily assimilate into American society. But his Jewish identity and connection to Israel are so strong that he made it a priority to spend a semester of high school in Israel, not waiting for a gap year between high school and college.  Mehael talks about making Aliyah and serving in the IDF.  

Mehael (r) and the author (l) after a delightful Shabbat and first meeting which felt like a family reunion. He reminded me of myself at his age when I adopted his family, became pen pals, and committed to getting them free from the USSR, even through a fictitious marriage to his mother. (courtesy)

If one understands even a little about how the Soviets persecuted Jews and prevented them from practicing Judaism or connecting to their heritage, of course its understandable why Jews wanted to leave, and eventually did so en mass.  But it’s not to be taken for granted that as a first generation American, child, and grandchild, of people who identify as Jews but are not practicing, that he would proactively choose to undertake the path he has. 

His determination reminded me of myself at his age when I adopted his family, became pen pals with his mother, and committed to getting them free, even through a fictitious marriage if need be. While I felt connected and was able to share things about his family that he didn’t know, he was surprised to learn about my plans to marry his mother. For me, it was a huge undertaking and part of my life that still is relevant.  He couldn’t imagine that I would have done this. In retrospect decades later, there is something unimaginable about it. 

Mehael is tremendously bright and inquisitive, wanting to learn more about Israel and the Jewish people.  He’s fluent in Russian and was impressed I taught myself to read Russian to be able to get around Moscow on my own without calling attention to myself as a twenty-something year old tourist on my own, plotting to marry a Soviet citizen to get her free. As much as he knows about the history of the USSR and the Jews and his family there, there are many things he doesn’t know.  That’s all the more so among his peers who are fourth and fifth generation Americans and who have no idea of the history of persecution of Soviet Jews, or the complementary struggles both among Jews in the USSR and in the West to free them.

The history of the persecution and redemption of Soviet Jews is an essential chapter in our modern history as a people, the history of Israel, along the timeline of Jewish history in general. Whether they know Russian or not from speaking to their parents and grandparents, I hope that students like Mehael, in the US, Israel and everywhere else, will be able to learn about this, and take the story of someone once their age as a model to continue to be connected and do good for our people for generations to come.  

Forgetting the modern exodus of our people from the USSR would be as bad as forgetting the Biblical Exodus, both central to our history and where we are today. As much as my idea of marrying Kate was unimaginable, forgetting this chapter in our history would be much worse.




About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.



* (Feature picture: Justin Oberman/Creative Commons)





While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Celebrating Passover

From a people to a nation we relive the long journey to freedom

By Justin Amler

The greatest story in history is upon once again.

And oh… what a story it is.

It is a story about a people who went from slavery to freedom, from hopelessness to belief, from an uncertain future to one filled with destiny.

It is a story about courage, about faith, about belief and about miracles – one that took the natural order of life and flipped it around.

And even though many others will try to culturally appropriate it, as they do with everything else about us, and claim it’s about all humankind, it was and is and remains a quintessential Jewish story.

For it is our story – perhaps our greatest story – of a time when we grew from a people into a nation.

About 3500 years ago, we were slaves in Egypt, condemned to a life of hardship and bondage, a seemingly bleak existence. And if it wasn’t for the actions of one man, guided by God, the story of the Jewish people might have ended right there.

But it didn’t end.

Instead, it led to the greatest adventure in all of Jewish history – an adventure continuing today.

And through all the wanderings in the desert, the many miracles Hashem performed, the gift of the Ten Commandments, and of course the ultimate return to our land of Israel – where we remain today.

Pesach is a story of such inspiration, because although thousands of years have passed, we continue to celebrate it as if it just happened.

And in a way it did. Because every single moment of every single day, Jews continue to fight for their homeland, their identity, their culture, and their history. And we have to fight, because every single moment of every single day there are those who continue to try take it from us, to uproot us from our land, to appropriate our history as if it’s their own, to rob us of our past, of our stories, of our nationhood and of our identity.

We cannot afford to remain silent.

But the Jews, while few in number, are a strong people whose foundations are built on stronger things than crumbling empires and dusty buildings. Our foundations are built on almost 4000 years of a promise, of a mission, and of a shared destiny among us.

And even though there are some, even among us, who continue to try spread division through arbitrary things like skin colour and food, they will fail in the end, because we, as a people, are far stronger than the petty divisiveness they sow.

When we left Egypt, we were not white or black or brown and we were not Mizrachi or Ashkenazim or any other designated identity that some are overly obsessed about these days.

We were Israelites.

We were Jews.

We were a people forged in the sands of time and held together by a promise of a God we could not see – a promise without an expiry date. A promise that, despite the many differing views among us, has held us together.

 We don’t need to get ‘woke,’ because we’ve been awake for a very long time.

So, on this Pesach and on every other day, let’s celebrate our freedom, our history, our culture and all the things that make us who we are.

In this world in which we are constantly under attack, let’s stand together and keep our Jewish identity alive, for it is one we should all hold onto proudly.



About the writer:

Justin Amler is a noted South African-born, Australia-based writer and commentator on international issues affecting Israel and the Jewish world.






While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Tefillin against Terror

Jews around the world honour the memory of Eli Kay by doing good deeds in his name

By Michael Kransdorff

Eli Kay was 25 years old. He was deeply committed to Israel and the Jewish people. He made Aliyah from South Africa to Israel as a Lone Soldier. Eli worked as a tour guide at the Western Wall, guiding people through the sacred tunnels.

A few weeks ago, he was gunned down by a Hamas-affiliated terrorist on his way to pray at the Kotel (Western/Wailing Wall) with his Tefillin in his hand.

While this act of terrorism was an unimaginable tragedy for his family and friends, it was also an attack on Klal Yisrael (all of Israel). It was an attempt to deny the Jewish people’s right to pray at our holiest site.

Honouring Eli. A Young visitor to the Eli Kay family during the week of shiva hold up Eli’s Tefillin bag and lay his Tefillin that was recovered after the murderous attack in the Old City, Jerusalem

How would we respond?

Rabbi Ari Shishler, a Chabad Rabbi based in Johannesburg and a close friend of the Kay family, said in an online address after the attack:

 “We are all in shock over the heinous murder of our friend Eli Kay. This was not an attack on an individual. It was an attack on Jews, Judaism and the conscience of all civilised people“. 

We felt this required a response. With the help of Rabbi Ari Shishler, Rabbi Eitan Ash and Josh Maraney, we decided to launch the #TefillinAgainstTerror campaign. We began by calling on people to post selfies of themselves putting on Tefillin with the hashtag #TefillinAgainstTerror in Eli’s memory and as an act of defiance against terror and Antisemitism.

Honouring Eli. A Young visitor to the Eli Kay family during the week of shiva lay his Tefillin that was recovered after the murderous attack in the Old City, Jerusalem.

The response has been phenomenal.

The campaign has gone global. Thousands of people from all over the world including far flung places like Aruba and Mexico have responded on social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. In Israel, people have embraced this call by coming to the Shiva house and asking to put on Tefillin. The family has been overwhelmed by the love and support.

Honouring Eli. A Young visitor to the Eli Kay family during the week of shiva hold up Eli’s Tefillin bag and lay his Tefillin that was recovered after the murderous attack in the Old City, Jerusalem

Women also wanted to do something special to honour Eli’s memory because laying Tefillin is a commandment fulfilled by men.

The campaign was broadened to include candle lighting for the Sabbath in Eli’s memory. The recent festival of Hanukkah provided an opportunity to once against reaffirm our right to freely practice our faith. Just as the Maccabees were able to keep the oil burning in the Temple against all odds, we will not let terrorism deter us now from bringing light into the world.

Honouring Eli. A Young visitor to the Eli Kay family during the week of shiva hold up Eli’s Teillin bag and lay his Tefillin that was recovered after the murderous attack in the Old City, Jerusalem

To date, many around Israel and the world have done acts of kindness to share light against terror. A popular journalist based in Jerusalem and her husband donated sufganiyot (donuts) to soldiers on duty. A group called “Friends of WIZO” who support a WIZO (Women’s International Zionist Organisation) shelter against domestic violence, dedicated a Hanukkah party in his honour.

The most high-profile act of memorial was by popular hard rock band, Disturbed’s front man, David Draiman. Speaking to The Jerusalem Post from his home in Hawaii, Draiman said he wanted to make a statement by coming to Israel after seeing the coverage of the attack.

“The coverage was reprehensible in the vast majority of American and European media,” said Draiman. “It’s scandalous how they presented it. Headlines like ‘Palestinian shot dead.’ Well, why was the Palestinian shot dead? Because he was perpetrating a terrorist attack. I love how the context is always flipped around.”

Disturbing News. David Draiman  American singer and songwriter and lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Disturbed, was horrified by the international media coverage of the terrorist murder of Eli Kay, came to Jerusalem and lit a candle at the spot where Eli was brutally gunned down.

Draiman, who noted that he has some 200 relatives living in Israel, said that his candle-lighting ceremony is intended to say that:

 “we will not be intimidated, we’re not going anywhere. People need to learn to live with us [Jews].”

Remember Eli. Young pupils at King David School, Victory Park, Johannesburg lay Tefillin in memory of Eli Kay.

He made good on his word by coming to Jerusalem and lighting a candle at the spot where Eli was brutally gunned down.

The word Hanukkah means “dedication”. Eli was dedicated to his family and friends, Israel and the Jewish people. And many responded in kind by dedicated acts of kindness in his name.

Am Yisrael Chai!






About the writer:

Michael Kransdorff is a Harvard educated financial innovation consultant. In addition to crunching numbers, politics and Jewish history are his passions. He cut his teeth in Jewish activism as one of the SAUJS leaders at the infamous UN Durban Racism Conference and has remained involved in Jewish communal affairs. Michael is chairman of JNF SA, sits on the South African Zionist Federation EOB and also heads up a Litvak heritage research group for the Zarasai (North Eastern) region of Lithuania. 







While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

“From Slavery to Freedom”

Transformation is in the air! Do you feel it?

By Justine Friedman

Here in the northern hemisphere, the start of spring is tangible and with it comes a sense of shifting from a winter mindset which lends itself to cocooning and insulation, to the newness and openness to growth that comes with the advent of spring. Globally, we are still in the throes of the corona pandemic. What an interesting year it has been and so incredibly challenging on many levels.

When we first entered lockdown, the impression I had was of a temporary closure with return to normality after about a month or so. In fact, when the world first stopped, I was relieved. It gave me an opportunity to breathe and pause the usual rushing around that life had become. As lockdowns have extended and become part of regular life, the halt on a rushed life is still appreciated, however the new reality has opened the door to some introspection that I find myself experiencing as well as many of my clients.

Passover during a Pandemic. Medical personnel sit down for a Passover Seder at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba on April 8, 2020. (Health Ministry)

I would like to share some of the areas that my clients and I have spent time unpacking, which is particularly relevant to this time of year as we enter spring and move towards the Jewish festival of Pesach (Passover). This festival is marked in the Jewish calendar as the liberation of the enslaved Children of Israel in Egypt over 3000 years ago following some 200 years of slavery. Imagine what it must have been like to be enslaved for such an extended period.

Each year, we celebrate this freedom from slavery with a 7-day (8 days outside of Israel) festival where we are forbidden to eat bread. In its place, we eat the very flat and often tasteless matzah (unleavened bread seen as a symbol of our freedom from slavery. Many of my clients’ experience panic over the limitations of foods and the dread of what they are not able to eat over this time. I find it eases their concern to rather focus on what is still permissible (which is quite considerable when you start to list the foods).

Is the concept of freedom from slavery relevant to our daily lives? Are we able to use this as an analogy for our own lives? Could this shift in mindset and breaking of shackles be representative of self-transformation that can enhance the quality and very fabric of our lives?

How can we understand this slave mentality better? Another way of describing it is being locked into a fixed mindset which is synonymous with feeling constricted. In this frame of mind, there is a general feeling of experiencing obstacles and lack of flow in our lives that often seem insurmountable. It is a sense of being stuck in habits, thought patterns, belief systems and situations that we cannot see our way clear of. Often the feeling of being stuck presents itself repeatedly with similar situations coming to challenge us. Often, we feel a sense of frustration and helplessness in the face of them.

The opposite of this is a freedom or growth mindset. The nature of which immediately allows one to draw a deep breath, as with this comes a sense of expansion, flow, and a sense of being able to rise above challenge, accomplish and thrive.

Awareness of how this plays out in everyday life is the starting point to transformation. Setting an intention to move towards establishing habits that fit the freedom/ growth mindset model is really what gets the process going. It is very normal to be able to face certain situations in life from one mindset and others from the complete opposite.

An example of this is an esteemed businessman or woman who is soaring in their career but finds that they cannot break the pattern of bad eating habits and negative self-talk. Their own inner taskmaster/ critic runs like a radio in their mind analysing how they are handling eating experiences and their bodies. In their work life they thrive on challenge and work well to meet deadlines and stay focused, and yet in their private life they do not believe that they are capable of making the changes necessary to lead a life of health, vitality and wellness. What spurs them on in their work area, breaks them in their personal area.

Passover Under Lockdown. Three siblings in Mevasseret Zion, near Jerusalem, wave to their grandmother in Haifa as she joins their Passover Seder via Zoom as Israel takes stringent steps to contain the coronavirus in April 8, 2020. (Photo Dan Williams/Reuter)
 

I often find that one of the greatest obstacles my clients face which keeps them stuck and enslaved to poor habits, is linked to negative self-talk and a feeling that on some level they are not worthy of wellness and taking care of themselves. Oftentimes, eating and food is used as a punishment and overindulgence. This can either be due to restricting intake as well as from overeating. It is so common to use food as a means of soothing emotions or repressing emotions, and situational triggers constantly keep one stuck in these negative cycles which leads to despair.

How does one move out of this mindset of enslavement, of behaving towards oneself as a cruel taskmaster?

Self-awareness is the first cog in getting the proverbial wheel to turn. This works best when locked into another forward moving wheel, that of an experienced practitioner who can mentor one each step of the way. There are many techniques available to assist in breaking the shackles of slave mindset and each is unique to the individual.

Where in your daily life do you find yourself feeling successful and rising to the challenge? Where do you feel the opposite? Stuck, enslaved and feeling blocked? How would you feel if the situations that you are currently feeling enslaved were to be removed? What would this mean for your daily life and for your future? Can you picture what that may look like?

This is a wonderful picture to have in one’s mind and despite your inner critic telling you otherwise it is very achievable to get there. All you must do is take that first step.

If given a choice between wellness and illness, I can confidently say that most people would opt for the former. It is this picture of wellness that can be used as the goal. How does one reach that goal? One micro-step and micro-achievement at a time. Try this on for size the next time you are faced with a choice involving food options that usually challenge you. Ask the question, is this moving me towards my goal or away from my goal?

I encourage you all to use the energy of this time of year to propel yourselves from feeling enslaved in your life, to experiencing freedom in those same areas.

May this bring a new meaning to your Pesach seder and allow for the usual recitation of a historical and biblical story, to spark the story of your own redemption.



About the writer:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Caveman-vs-Covid-man2.png

Justine Friedman (nee Aginsky), is a South African trained, Licensed Clinical Dietician and Mindset Mentor who has run a successful clinical private practise for over 20 years. She made Aliyah with her husband and two children in November 2019. Justine educates patients with the skills and tools of how best to develop a wellness mindset and adopt behaviours that lead to the integration and maintenance of healthier habits. She is based in Modi’in, Israel and is also available for online consultations via zoom.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavors to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO)

The Jews who fought back during the Holocaust

By Gabriel  Groisman, Mayor of Bal Harbour, Florida.

Our communal sense of history and peoplehood, and our ties to our religion and traditions, will continue to give us the strength to continue being a light unto the nations while our enemies fall by the wayside.

Last week, leaders from around the world commemorated those who perished at the hands of the Nazis during International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year, like most, there were statements recognizing and remembering those who were taken from us by people all over the globe. The recognition is critical and something appreciated by all from the Jewish community worldwide.

Much has been written about what needs to be done during the remaining days of the year to properly commemorate and educate the world about the horrors of the Holocaust, and what “never again” really means. A recent Pew Research poll proves that Americans’ Holocaust education is sorely lacking. For example, only 45 percent of Americans interviewed even knew that 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Even fewer knew that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany by a democratic political process.

Surely, what is far less known is how many Jews fought valiantly against the Nazis.

A group of female Jewish partisans. (Source: USHMM.)

But fight they did!

Jews fought back alongside resistance groups around Europe, organized uprisings in the ghettos, created partisan units and even fought back in the concentration camps, attempting to bomb a crematorium in Auschwitz. To properly commemorate the Holocaust, these stories must be told as well.

Group of Jewish partisan fighters in Soviet territories (Wiener Holocaust Library Collections)

To that end, I commemorate and honor the story of the following Jews who courageously fought back during World War II and the Holocaust. Their stories represent the thousands who fought to the end.

Mordechai Anielewitz

Mordechai Anielewitz

In April 1943, this leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising led 750 Jewish fighters armed with a handful of pistols, 17 rifles and Molotov cocktails  – all smuggled into the ghetto – in a clash with more than 2,000 heavily armed and well-trained German troops. They held off the Germans for 27 days.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Leader. Mordechai Anielewicz (top right) amongst with members of Hashoer Hatzair wanted to show the world that Jews could counter the German oppressors in open battle. He died along with his brave comrades, defending a basement in Mila Street on May 8, 1943.

Boris Lekach

Boris Lekach

This one is personal. My wife’s maternal grandfather, Lekach fought for the Russians against the Nazis. He enlisted at age 16 with doctored papers just so he could fight. He was also well-known to many in the Jewish community in Russia for helping Jews escape during and after the war.





The Bielski Brothers

Made famous in a number of books and in the 2008 movie “Defiance,” the Bielski brothers – Tuvia, Asael and Zus – fled their city in Belarus after their parents and two other siblings were murdered. The brothers found shelter in the forest, where they created one of the largest and most effective partisan groups during the war, focusing on guerrilla attacks against the Nazis and their collaborators, as well as on preserving Jewish life even in their hideout. In a little more than two years, the Bielski group grew to about 1,200 people.

The Bielski Partisans. Named after a family of Polish Jews who organized and led the organization,  ‘The Bielski Partisans’ rescued Jews from extermination and fought the German occupiers and their collaborators around Nowogródek and Lida in German-occupied Poland.

Tosia Altman

Tosia Altman. A courier and smuggler to Warsaw Gehtto. Tosia Altman was captured suffering severe burn wounds and handed over to the Gestapo where she died.

A young woman who used fake papers to smuggle weapons and information in and out of Poland’s ghettos. She was an active member of the social Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, active in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising alongside Anielewitz and the other brave fighters.








Eta Wrobel 

Eta Wrobel.  Eta’s exclusively Jewish partisan unit of close to eighty people, set mines to hinder German movement and to cut off supply routes.

A young woman in her 20s, Wrobel helped form an all-Jewish partisan unit in the Polish woods. Her unit attacked German troops as they traveled through the area and is credited for saving the lives of hundreds of Jews.




Rudolph Masaryk

Rudolph Masaryk. A prominent member of the Treblinka prisoner uprising, Czech prisoner Masarek was killed on 2 August 1943.

On Aug. 2, 1943, at the Treblinka extermination camp, Masaryk and other Jewish prisoners stole 20 grenades, 20 rifles and a few handguns. Together, they attacked the SS guards, while another doused a large part of the camp with gasoline and lit it on fire. Approximately 300 prisoners escaped and 40 Nazi guards were killed during the Treblinka uprising.



May their memories be a blessing.

While it’s critical for the world to remember on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and on every other day that the Nazis rose to destroy the Jewish people, it is equally important for all to remember that the Jewish people fought back, and ultimately, as a people, we survived.

Today, the Jewish people not only survive but thrive. Our communal sense of history and peoplehood, as well as our ties to our religion and traditions, will continue to give us the strength to continue being a light unto the nations while our enemies fall by the wayside, as did Hitler and all enemies before him.






*This article first appeared in the JNS.

About the writer:

Gabriel Groisman is the mayor of Bal Harbour, Fla., and an attorney at Meland Russin & Budwick, P.A., in Miami. He has been a leader in combating anti-Semitism and the BDS movement, having written and passed the first municipal anti-BDS ordinance, as well as the first codification of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. He is a co-founder of the Global Coalition of Mayors Against Hate and Discrimination.








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