Category: Judaism

FROM ‘BURNING BUSH’ TO BURNING QUESTIONS

How will Mount Sinai – the symbolic birthplace of the Jewish nation – being transformed into an Egyptian government megatourism project alter this sacred landscape?

By Motti Verses

Next month, around 190 kilometers from Eilat, at the place where, according to tradition, Moses received the Ten Commandments, Egypt plans to open the first phase of one of the country’s most ambitious tourism developments: the Great Transfiguration Project.

New hotels, eco-lodges, a Peace Square, cultural venues, hiking trails and extensive new infrastructure are all part of the ambitious development. The project represents an investment of approximately EGP 25 billion, or around half a billion US dollars. Once known primarily as a destination for hikers and pilgrims, the aim of Egypt’s Great Transfiguration Project is to transform the historic and sacred area surrounding Mount Sinai and Saint Catherine’s Monastery into a world-class global destination for spiritual, environmental, and cultural tourism.

The Great Transfiguration Project at Saint Catherine in the Sinai, around the sacred mountain landscape during the construction period. (Photo: Ben Hoffler)

The vision is being promoted at the highest levels of the Egyptian government with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi actively championing and directing the project framing it as Egypt’s “gift to humanity.”

The ambitions are considerable: Egyptian authorities have set a target of approximately one million tourists a year, more than three times the roughly 300,000 who visit the area annually.

For Judaism, it is difficult to overstate the symbolic significance of this place. According to biblical tradition, this is where the revelation at Mount Sinai took place and where Moses received the Tablets of the Covenant – one  of the defining moments in the identity of the Jewish people.

UNESCO, too, defines the Saint Catherine area as sacred to the three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – and explicitly refers to the tradition according to which Moses received the Tablets here.

Moses with the Tablets of the Law. Rembrandt strips away the crowd and the landscape around Mount Sinai and depicts only the prophet, Moses, lifting the two great stone tablets, their Hebrew letters glowing out of the gloom. (Rembrandt, Moses with the Tablets of the Law, 1659. Gemaeldegalerie, Berlin.)

For Egypt, the economic logic is clear. A tourist who arrives by bus from Sharm el-Sheikh, visits the monastery, perhaps climbs the mountain and then returns, contributes little towards the local economy.  On the other hand, a visitor who stays for two or three nights requires a hotel, restaurants, guides, transportation and activities. The vision is to create a tourism product combining nature, adventure and spirituality with high-quality accommodation, turning Saint Catherine from a destination visited for a few hours into a place where travelers stay for several days.

Saint Catherine’s Monastery, within its walls is also the site traditionally associated with the Burning Bush (Photo: Joonas Plaan)

In June, the Egyptian government reported that work on the megaproject had reached approximately 97.5% completion and that the current target is to open with the first phase in October.

What Does the Project Include?

The experience of arriving in the area is set to change completely. A new visitors center covering more than 3,000 square meters is intended to serve as an organized gateway to the destination. It will include a tourist information center, restaurant and café, shops and tourism services, as well as a dome designed for screenings and immersive visual experiences.

Nearby is the Peace Square, alongside a cultural complex featuring exhibition spaces, a theater and a conference hall. The objective is to present Saint Catherine not merely as a Christian site, or as the starting point for climbing Mount Sinai, but as a place of profound significance to all three monotheistic religions.

One of the most significant changes is the expansion of the area’s hotel offering. At its heart is the Mountain Hotel, a new five-star property with approximately 144 rooms and suites, designed to blend into the mountainous landscape. Alongside it, a new Eco Lodge is being developed, with 192 rooms and an additional 56 eco-suites. 248 accommodation units in total. At the same time, the existing Eco Lodge, comprising approximately 74 accommodation units and a restaurant, is being renovated. In addition, a Mountain Tourist Resort is being built on the high plateau, featuring villas and chalets, alongside a commercial district and bazaars. It is already known that one of the hotels in the project will be managed by Germany’s Steigenberger, which currently operates 16 hotels across Egypt. Among them is the Steigenberger Hotel & Nelson Village in Taba, originally built in the 1980s by Israeli hotelier Eli Papouchado.

Taken together, these developments represent a dramatic change in both the scale and character of accommodation in an area that for years has been associated mainly with guesthouses and relatively modest hotels. It was not confirmed yet whether the new accommodation complexes will begin receiving guests as part of the October soft opening. My assessment is that they will not.

An AI-generated illustration depicting the comprehensive development plan in Sinai, including luxury hotels, an expanded airport and commercial complexes alongside Saint Catherine’s Monastery and Mount Sinai.

I have visited the monastery many times in the past and even climbed Mount Sinai when I was younger. Saint Catherine’s Monastery, founded in the sixth century, is considered one of the world’s oldest continuously functioning Christian monasteries. Within its walls is also the site traditionally associated with the Burning Bush. And therein lies an almost biblical irony. According to tradition, the bush burned without being consumed. As Egypt embarks on its Great Transfiguration, the question is:

Can Saint Catherine undergo a transformation of its own without consuming the very qualities that have made this sacred landscape so extraordinary?

Yet for me, much of the power of the experience has never been confined to the religious sites themselves. It lies equally in the immense mountain landscape, the isolation and the silence. All of these are inseparable from the character of the place.

And this is precisely where the controversy surrounding the project begins.

Burning Bush. Moses is depicted here before the Burning Bush as described in the Book of Exodus (3: 1-21). The bush was on fire, but was not consumed by the flames, hence the name. (Credit: History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Saint Catherine is a UNESCO World Heritage Site not only because of the monastery and its religious landmarks. UNESCO also emphasizes the surrounding mountainous landscape, remoteness and isolation as integral elements of the site’s universal value. As early as 2023, the World Heritage Committee, together with numerous enviromental organizations, expressed concern about the scale of the development and requested that Egypt conduct a Heritage Impact Assessment.

This is the great paradox of the new Saint Catherine: the very transformation Egypt is seeking to achieve – greater accessibility – is also what could fundamentally alter the character of the place.

Upscale hotels will facilitate more visitors to stay overnight, but they also increase the number of tourists. New roads make the destination accessible to families and older travelers, but they also bring more buses. A Visitor Center can tell the story of Saint Catherine more effectively, but it could also transform a place that once felt wild and intimate into a planned and managed tourism experience.

Saint Catherine already possesses something that wellness hotels around the world spend millions trying to manufacture artificially:

genuine silence, desert, mountains, isolation, and thousands of years of history and spirituality.

If Egypt succeeds in combining high-quality hotels, modern infrastructure and international tourism without erasing the qualities that made the place special in the first place, the Saint Catherine project could become one of the most fascinating tourism destinations in the Middle East.

One question, however, remains unanswered:

How will Judaism be represented in the project?

Around three years ago, the Abrahamic Family House opened in Abu Dhabi as a symbol of coexistence among the three Abrahamic faiths. When I visited shortly after its opening, I was deeply impressed by this extraordinary project. Within the complex, a mosque, a church and a synagogue stand side by side, equal in size and status. The synagogue, named after Maimonides, is an active Jewish house of worship and is oriented toward Jerusalem. In Abu Dhabi, Judaism is presented not simply as part of history, but as a living faith granted a visible and dignified presence.

An Emirati Muslim guide explains the essence of Judaism at the synagogue in the Abrahamic Family House complex in Abu Dhabi  (Photo: Motti Verses)

The timing of Egypt’s megatourism project for Jews is poignant. Soon, Jews around the world will celebrate Simchat Torah, rejoicing in the very Torah that, according to Jewish tradition, was first given to their people here, at Mount Sinai. As they dance with Torah scrolls thousands of years later, how will Judaism find its place in Egypt’s ambitious new development facing the mountain where that extraordinary relationship began, if at all?



About the writer:

The author, Motti Verses is a seasoned hotel expert, traveler, writer, and videographer, and formerly served as Head of Public Relations for Hilton Hotels & Resorts in Israel. Today, as a travel writer and hospitality trends analyst, his insights and experiences are regularly featured in leading Israeli media outlets.








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).

THEY CAME, THEY BUILT, THEY LEFT – JEWS AND ZIMBABWE

How plausible is Matabeleland in present day Zimbabwe –formerly Rhodesia – of ever gaining independence?  How plausible is it for Jews to find genuine acceptance in Africa or anywhere else for that matter? Both questions were addressed – if not answered –  by the founding President of the Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP) Mqondisi Moyo in a statement dated 22 August 2026 where in his quest for self-determination of the peoples of Mthwakazi,  laments the loss to  Zimbabwe of its Jewish community.
Unique amongst political leaders anywhere in the world today, Moyo’s core question throughout his statement is in the Matabeleland of the future:
 “How do we persuade the Jews to come back?”
See statement below and imagine a European leader asking the same question with any genuine sincerity.

David E. Kaplan
Editor Lay of the Land



ASK WHAT IS HAPPENING TO YOUR COUNTRY

Statement by Mqondisi Moyo

President, Mthwakazi Republic Party

Date: 22 August 2026

Jewish history in this land did not begin with Rhodesia.

Daniel Montague Kisch was in Lobengula’s kingdom in the early 1870s and served as an adviser to King Lobengula, two decades before the colonial state existed. Whatever else may be said about the relationship between Jews and this land, it did not arrive with settlers. It preceded them.

I begin there deliberately, because the rest of this history has too often been filed under somebody else’s story.

There were never many

At its height, the entire Jewish population of this country numbered just over seven thousand people. The national population was then approaching four million. Jews therefore accounted for about two people in every thousand. In Bulawayo, where Jewish life was strongest, the community reached a little more than three thousand at its peak.

And yet consider what they did.

The Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation was established in 1894. Jews became merchants, industrialists, doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, teachers and civic leaders. They established industries. They were prominent in furniture, farming and clothing. They employed people. They built businesses and institutions.

Bulawayo’s first mayor was Jewish. Isidore Hirschler took office on November 25, 1897, serving from 1897 to 1898. Several later mayors were Jewish. Bulawayo’s first newspaper  – The Matabele Times and Mining Journal – was owned and edited by a Jew – William Francis Wallenstein.

Rev. Moses Isaac Cohen, the spiritual leader of the Bulawayo Jewish community, helped shape the development of public education and served as a mediator in industrial disputes.

Jewish families built schools, synagogues, welfare organisations, sporting institutions, businesses and factories. They put down roots, raised families and helped build the place they called home.

Their numbers were tiny.

Their contribution was not.

We should be capable of saying that plainly.

We should also be capable of saying what follows.

I will not romanticise Rhodesia in order to honour them. The colonial order inflicted profound injustice on the indigenous peoples of this land. Honouring what Jewish families built here does not require anyone to forget conquest, racial discrimination or dispossession. A mature country must be capable of holding more than one truth at the same time. We can condemn the injustices of the colonial period. We can condemn the failures and abuses that followed it. We can recognise the ordinary human beings, including a very small Jewish minority, who nevertheless built lives, professions and institutions that became part of the fabric of this country.

There is a harder thing still, and I would rather say it myself than have somebody else say it for me.

In the 1930s, while Jews in Europe were searching desperately for countries willing to receive them, the authorities of Southern Rhodesia placed barriers in their way. People fleeing a catastrophe were treated as an immigration problem.

We know now where that catastrophe led.

There is something painful about remembering that from Bulawayo today. Governments here once asked how many Jews they should allow in.

I want the Matabeleland of the future to ask a different question.

How do we persuade them to come back?

Because we lost them.

Current community estimates suggest that only about eighty Jews remain in Zimbabwe. A community that had been here for more than a century, and that had contributed far beyond its size, has almost disappeared. Families whose names were part of the life of this city are now in South Africa, Israel, Britain, the United States, Australia and elsewhere.

I will not pretend every family left for the same reason. Political instability played its part. War played its part. Economic destruction played its part. Insecurity and uncertainty played their parts. At times there was hostility and antisemitic rhetoric as well. History is more complicated than a single cause – but the result is not complicated.

They are almost gone.

And here is what I want to say to my own people first, before I say anything to anybody else.

We understood that departure as a Jewish story. We treated it as a demographic fact about somebody else. That was a failure of comprehension, and it was ours.

The conditions that make a country unliveable for a small and historically vulnerable minority are usually conditions that will not remain confined to that minority. Scapegoating, arbitrary power, expropriation, lawlessness and the collapse of equal citizenship do not stop at the edge of a minority. What reaches the vulnerable first eventually reaches others.

The country did not decline because its Jews left. Their departure was instead evidence of pressures that would later become impossible for the wider society to ignore.

When Jews begin to ask whether their children have a future in a country, that country should treat the question as an early warning about the condition of its institutions.

We did not treat it that way. We should have.

I do not presume to lecture countries richer, older or more powerful than ours. I have no standing to do so and no intention of trying. I can only tell them what this looks like from the other side, because we have already made that mistake and we are still living inside the result.

We once had a small Jewish community here. We watched it become smaller. We treated that as a Jewish demographic fact.

Only later did we understand that the forces making them uncertain about their future were also damaging ours.

So when Jews begin asking whether their children have a future in your country, do not ask only what is happening to the Jews.

Ask what is happening to your country.

This is not only our history.

Baghdad once had a Jewish community numbered in the tens of thousands. So did Cairo and Alexandria. Jewish communities that had lived for centuries in Tripoli, Algiers and Sana’a are now shadows or memories. They left, fled or were expelled under differing combinations of persecution, dispossession, insecurity and political pressure. Their histories differ, and I do not pretend otherwise.

Governments should notice when an ancient minority concludes that it no longer has a future among them.

I speak about this as the leader of a people whose own mass killing by the state remains unresolved, whose dead still await full accounting, and whose history has too often been treated as an inconvenience to the national story. I do not compare our suffering with the Holocaust. I say only that we know something about what happens when a state decides that memory itself is negotiable.

If we are prepared to be honest about the failures of the past, we must be equally ambitious about the future.

We are trying to recover from decades of bad governance, economic decline and institutions that too often failed the people they were supposed to serve. We do not have the luxury of recreating those failures under a different flag.

A new country has one advantage that an old political system often does not. It can ask, from the beginning: What works?

We should look around the world without embarrassment. Where another country has found a better way to protect property, educate children, encourage enterprise, attract investment, develop technology, administer justice or protect minorities, we should study it. Where an institution works, we should learn from it. Mthwakazi should take the best ideas we can find and adapt them intelligently to our own circumstances.

Mthwakazi should not aspire merely to become another state. It should aspire to become an exceptionally well-governed one.

That is why I am prepared to say now, before we hold power, what a free Matabeleland will guarantee.

A movement that possesses no sovereign state can still declare in advance the terms on which it intends to govern. I would rather be held to a promise made in advance than praised for one made after the fact.

Equal citizenship. Irrespective of ethnicity, religion or language, as a founding constitutional principle and not a later amendment.

Equal protection of religious institutions. The synagogue, the church, the mosque and the traditional sacred place, protected on identical terms, without hierarchy among them.

Rejection of scapegoating. A free Matabeleland will not tolerate the scapegoating of any community for the failures of the state. That includes antisemitism in all its forms, whether expressed as religious hatred or ethnic hostility, or repackaged for political convenience — because a country that permits hatred of its smallest community has already begun permitting hatred of everybody else.

Equal application of self-determination. Mthwakazi cannot demand recognition for itself while declaring the national self-determination of any other people uniquely illegitimate. A standard that applies to us must apply to everybody, and a standard that excludes one people alone is not a standard. It is a prejudice with paperwork.

Heritage and reconnection. The future state will establish a facilitated pathway to residence and citizenship for descendants of families with a documented historic connection to Matabeleland who wish to re-establish that connection, including descendants of the historic Jewish communities of Bulawayo and Matabeleland.

Nobody should have to be ethnically Ndebele to belong fully to Matabeleland.

Nobody should have to belong to the majority religion.

Nobody should have to surrender his history, her language, their faith or their identity in exchange for acceptance.

A Jewish child growing up in Bulawayo should be able to say, without qualification: this is my country too.

That is the standard. A future Matabeleland cannot demand justice for the Mthwakazi people while withholding it from anybody else. That would not be liberation. It would merely change who holds the power to exclude.

Today we possess no sovereign state, no national army, no treasury, no diplomatic service and no seat at the United Nations. But precisely because we are asking the world to judge whether we are capable of statehood, we should say in advance what we intend to do with state power if it is ever entrusted to us.

We intend to use it to protect belonging, not ration it.

I will go further, because a principle that costs nothing is not a principle.

A sovereign Matabeleland will establish full and resident diplomatic relations with the State of Israel from the beginning of its independence, and will apply to the Jewish people the same principle of national self-determination it claims for the people of Mthwakazi.

We do not make that commitment because we expect anything in return. We make it because one standard must mean one standard. A people asking the world to recognise its right to self-determination cannot ask the world to suspend that principle for somebody else.

Departure can tell a country something about itself. Return can tell it something too.

If one day Jewish families who left this country decide that their children once again have a future here, I will regard that not as a favour they have done for us, but as evidence that we have succeeded in changing what this country is.

It will tell us that we have begun to get the country right.

Now the part I have been building toward.

To the Jews whose grandparents lived in Bulawayo. To the families who remember the streets, schools, shops, synagogues and homes of this city. To those now living in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Tel Aviv, London, New York, Sydney and elsewhere.

Come home.

Come and see the city your families helped build. Come and show your children where their grandparents lived. And if we succeed in creating the free, democratic and lawful Matabeleland for which we struggle, come and consider building here again.

We ask you to return because you belong to this history.

We ask you to return because your departure diminished us.

We ask you to return because the country we intend to build must be one in which a small minority never again has to wonder whether there is a place for it.

Bring your children. Bring your traditions. Reopen institutions. Create new ones. Pray here if you wish. Build here if you wish. Teach here. Work here. Retire here. Raise your families here. Or simply come because this was once your family’s home and you wish to make it home again.

We will protect your synagogue as we protect the church, the mosque and the traditional sacred place.

We will protect your property because the law protects everyone’s property.

We will protect your freedom of worship because religious liberty belongs to everyone.

We will protect your equality because citizens do not require the permission of a majority to belong.

If that requires us to humble ourselves before families who once concluded that their future could no longer be here, then we should humble ourselves. If we must ask them to trust us again, then we should ask.

A country’s greatness is not measured by how powerful its majority becomes.

It is measured by how safe its smallest minority feels.

It is measured by whether people want to stay.

It is measured by whether those who left would ever trust us enough to return.

Come home.

Not to the country as it was.

Come home to the country we have learned that we must become.

A free country. A democratic country. A country governed by law. A country secure enough in its own identity that it has no reason to fear anybody else’s.

That is the Matabeleland worth fighting for.

That is the Matabeleland I hope will one day be worthy of welcoming its Jews home.






About the writer:

*Mqondisi Moyo* is the founding President of the Mthwakazi Republic Party (MRP), which was formally launched in Bulawayo on 11 January 2014. Born in 1978 and raised at Gwandavale in Matobo, Moyo has spent more than a decade advocating for the political rights and self-determination of the peoples of Mthwakazi. He contested the Matobo North parliamentary constituency as the MRP candidate in Zimbabwe’s 2018 elections. Under his leadership, the MRP pursues the peaceful, democratic and internationally recognized restoration of Mthwakazi and has campaigned on Gukurahundi accountability, political and economic marginalization, cultural and language rights, migration, and regional and international engagement. Moyo advocates resolving Mthwakazi’s political status through lawful and nonviolent means.






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).

ELUL, REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS

Elul reminds us that repentance is not only about regret for past shortcomings but choosing a better direction for the future.

By Jonathan Feldstein

We are almost half way through the Biblical month of Elul during which Jewish communities around the world enter a sacred season of prayerful reflection. Elul is the time of cheshbon nefesh, the mother of all soul searching, an honest accounting before God. It is a season of repentance, of examining motives in our own hearts. Closely connected to repentance is forgiveness, and for both of which at this season there is a systematic approach.

Just as some couples might mark a significant anniversary with a renewal of their wedding vows, we turn to God annually to renew our commitment to Him with deep sincerity and actions. Part of that reverence for God is also a commitment to repair relations between people. We cannot revere Him, and be thoughtless or insensitive to one another with impunity. During Elul, the shofar is sounded each morning as a vivid wake-up call, reminding us to awaken and prepare for the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah – the New Year – and Yom Kippur – the Day of Repentance.

I wish you could hear the shofar outside my window each morning, from nearby synagogues and the balconies of people’s homes. It’s spiritually stirring and essential. Every day. It’s like a snooze button on an alarm clock that you can’t turn off, and shouldn’t want to.

This ancient rhythm of introspection and repentance speaks powerfully to us in many ways. Scripture calls us to examine ourselves, to repent, and to realign our lives with the purposes of God. In this season, we dig deep about not only what needs repair in our private lives, but also what faithfulness looks like toward one another personally, and toward God.

We can and should renew that at least annually. Through prayer, introspection, and action.

The interrelated theme of forgiveness also is actively present as we make a proactive commitment as part of the soul searching to assess who we might have harmed over the previous year, apologize, and seek their forgiveness. I am approached by Christian friends frequently to understand Jewish concepts. Recently forgiveness has been one of the more common themes. Forgiveness is a unique concept in Judaism and Christianity, yet Jews and Christians approach forgiveness differently. In Judaism, especially at this season, the obligation is to do a soul searching and ask for forgiveness. There’s a general notion that forgiveness is not to be dispensed like a product from a vending machine, but actively sought out with sincerity.

Three years ago, a rabbi friend shared with me words that have stayed with me since. “To ask for forgiveness involves a bit of embarrassment, a humbling of one’s ego, a recognition of the frailty of the human condition; so it pains us, but we do it, eventually. But this experience pales in comparison to the final level of forgiveness, bestowing it! Asking for forgiveness involves one set of character traits, using one’s ‘humility muscles’; giving forgiveness on the other hand involves a whole other area of human nature compassion, love, and respect.”

More succinctly, the simple truism “To err is human; to forgive, divine” is the rudder for this process this season. When there is a sincere plea for forgiveness, our response can be divine in nature, or it can be very human. It’s up to us.

Both traditions offer profound teachings on mercy, repentance, and reconciliation rooted in Torah, the Prophets, the Gospels, and centuries of interpretation. But many questions, nuances, and differences exist. How do Jewish concepts like teshuvah and divine pardon relate to Christian ideas of grace and atonement? How do we approach forgiveness from our respective traditions on an individual basis, and in relation to God? Where do the traditions converge, and where do they diverge in theology and in practice? As we enter the High Holiday season, on August 27 there will be a deep, honest, and thoughtful conversation on the Inspiration from Zion webinar series doing a deep dive into Jewish and Christian perspectives on forgiveness. Registration is free.

I look at this overall topic definitely from the perspective of creating understanding, but I also think these are the cornerstones of what make me a better Jew and human being. There are specific Jewish customs that make the idea of forgiveness universal which make the topic relevant to us all whether we are specifically mindful of these during this season, or anytime.

As an overall theme, ideas surrounding forgiveness come up a lot in my regular engagement with Christians. But this year there was one unsettling experience, a message I received from a Pastor I used to respect and with whom I had not been in touch for many years after he did something terrible to me, the ripple effect of which I still feel. Out of the blue he wrote:

 “There is so much I need to share with you including a long overdue apology for horrible act of selfishness from many years ago I have never forgotten that cruel act that I have to confess to you and seek your forgiveness.”

Albeit without the details and context here, I will look forward to use this to illustrate the conversation, my response, and about which I will make myself vulnerable to open evaluation by the rabbi and pastor who will represent their respective traditions. Was his appeal to me sincere?

Should I have forgiven him?

Given him a hearing?

I’m interested in what the rabbi and pastor have to say.

Elul reminds us that repentance is not only about regret for past shortcomings. It is about choosing a better direction for the future. Both on a personal level and vis-à-vis God, forgiveness and repentance must be cornerstones of doing so. One might ask more than rhetorically what might appear to be a chicken and egg question of which comes first, or in this case which is the foundation for the other: can there be repentance without forgiveness or forgiveness without repentance.

None of us are perfect and I stand as personal testimony to that. If I am being honest, I need to acknowledge my shortcomings interpersonally and to and in relation to God. If I am being honest, I should dub myself King of the Imperfect because this season is about me and my behaviors, not about or judging others.

The alarm clock is sounding. Sounding the shofar each day is a good literal and figurative wake up call for each of us. Let me give you one.

Whether in personal prayer and introspection, or part of an important interfaith dialogue to explore the parameters, if only once a year this is a good time to take personal accounting of one’s behaviors and even if we don’t come out of it perfect, at least not to make the same mistakes again in the coming year.



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 Journal, 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).

MENSCHESKEIT, MITZVOT AND THE JEWISH SOUL IN TIMES OF WAR

A sensitive reflection on Jewish ethics, Derech Eretz, preserving life, and how living by Torah values can help protect mental health even in times of conflict.

By Bev Moss-Reilly

There is something deeply rooted in Jewish life that goes beyond law, ritual, or identity alone. It is menscheskeit, that instinctive decency, compassion, and moral accountability that shapes how a Jew is meant to move through the world. It is expressed through mitzvot, through Derech Eretz, and through the understanding that power must never cancel conscience. In times of conflict, when grief, fear, and rage can easily consume the human spirit, these values matter even more. They remind us that to be Jewish is not only to survive, but to remain anchored in holiness, restraint, and compassion.

The Torah teaches that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, and that life itself begins with divine breath. In Bereishit (Book of Genesis), Hashem breathes the breath of life into the human being, and the Talmud teaches that saving a single life is as if one has saved an entire world. These are not abstract ideas. They form the moral architecture of Jewish consciousness. They tell us that a Neshama is never trivial, never ownerless, and never outside the concern of Heaven. When Jews speak about life as sacred, it is because we believe that the soul within a person is entrusted by Hashem and ultimately belongs to Hashem – that we feed our Neshama to afford us a place in Olam Habah (the world to come).

That belief has consequences. It means that even in war, even under unbearable provocation, even when facing an enemy, the Jewish moral instinct is not meant to delight in cruelty or become casual about suffering. Jewish ethics calls on us not to stand idly by the blood of another, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. It also demands that we do not allow pain to turn us into people who no longer recognise the humanity of others. This does not mean abandoning self-defence. It does not mean becoming passive in the face of terror. It means that defence must still be held within a moral framework, because the soul of a people is tested not only by how it suffers, but by how it behaves when it has the strength to act.

International humanitarian law reflects some of these same moral instincts. It prohibits attacks directed at civilians and requires effective advance warning of attacks that may affect civilians when circumstances permit. Whatever political arguments may rage around any specific conflict, the underlying principle is clear, civilians are not to be the object of attack, and precautions matter. For many Jews, that principle does not feel foreign. It resonates with a Torah shaped conscience that recoils from the deliberate targeting of innocents and insists that even necessary force must never become moral carelessness.

This is also why so many Jews feel deeply moved by examples of medical care given across lines of hostility. Israeli official sources have documented the coordination of medical aid and field hospitals for Gazan civilians, and Israeli hospitals have long described treating Palestinians and even patients from adversarial states. These moments matter far beyond public relations or politics. They express something enduring in Jewish moral life, namely that saving a life is not cancelled by enmity. When an injured person is treated, stabilised, or comforted, even if they come from the other side of a conflict, a line is being drawn in favour of life. A statement is being made that our values do not evaporate under pressure.

Driving across the Divide. Prior to the October 7 massacre in southern Israel, around 2,700 Palestinian patients were driven to Israeli hospitals every year by members of the ‘Road to Recovery’ group, breaking physical and language barriers. Seen here was Adam Abu al-Rob, a six-year-old Palestinian eye cancer patient, siting with his father Mamoun in a vehicle driven by Israeli ‘Road to Recovery’ volunteer Yael Noy. (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP)

From a mental health perspective, this matters profoundly. War always leaves emotional scars. There is fear, anticipatory dread, helplessness, grief, and often deep exhaustion. But another burden can enter as well, moral injury. Moral injury occurs when a person feels that a deep moral line has been crossed, whether by what they did, what they witnessed, or what they failed to prevent. It is associated with guilt, shame, disgust, anger, and severe psychological distress. When people feel they have betrayed their deepest values, the inner toll can be devastating. By contrast, acting in ways that remain aligned with conscience, compassion, and restraint may help protect the inner life, even when pain remains. That is an inference, but it is a meaningful one. If violating one’s moral core can wound the psyche, then remaining faithful to that core can help preserve it.

There is research too showing that helping others can reduce stress and improve mood, self-esteem, happiness, and a sense of connection. Kindness does not erase trauma, and compassion does not make war emotionally easy. But it can interrupt the hardening of the heart. It can protect people from becoming consumed by hatred. It can remind them, even in crisis, that they are still capable of good. In that sense, living by Torah values is not only spiritually elevating, but it can also be psychologically protective. It gives suffering meaning, keeps cruelty from colonising the soul, and creates a moral continuity between belief and action.

This is where Derech Eretz becomes more than a beautiful phrase. It becomes an emotional stabiliser. To act with dignity, to show mercy, to preserve life where possible, to warn civilians, to treat the wounded, and to refuse to surrender one’s humanity, these are not signs of weakness. They are signs of spiritual strength. They say that even under siege, even after trauma, even when the heart is broken, the Jewish people are still answerable to something higher than rage.

That does not mean Jews do not suffer. Of course we do. It does not mean Jews are not traumatised by terror, by war, by loss, by hostage crises, or by the constant psychological strain of living under threat. We are. When a people continue to act from mitzvot, from compassion, and from the awareness that every Neshama comes from Hashem, something important is preserved. The body may be exhausted, the heart may ache, and the mind may still need support, but the soul is less fractured when it has not betrayed itself.

Perhaps that is one of the deepest forms of Jewish resilience. Not merely surviving but surviving without letting brutality define us. Not merely fighting but fighting without worshipping force. Not merely mourning our own but recognising the sacredness of life itself. In that lies both holiness and protection. Because when Jews live by Torah, honour the Neshama, and save life wherever they can, they do not only help the other. They help guard their own inner world as well.



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).

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:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image-32.png

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).