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Friends, I stand before you as a Rabbi, which means not just as an individual, but as a representative of my people.
And as I prepared this short message of condolence and hope, within my soul were the tears of my ancestors.
I could not stand here today in total openness, and not mention that book of Jewish tears. But I stand here today united with you in your time of suffering for your beliefs and your righteous actions stemming from those beliefs .
And I have asked myself, what would our ancestors want of us today?
And the answer to that lies in the scene that brings the book of Genesis to a climax and a closure. You remember: after the death of Jacob, the brothers fear that Joseph will take revenge. After all, they had sold him into slavery in Egypt.
Instead, Joseph forgives -- but he does more than forgive. Listen carefully to his words:
''You intended to harm me,
but God intended it for good,
to do what is now being done,
to save many lives.''
Joseph does more than forgive. He says: out of bad has come good.
'' Because of what you did to me, I have been able to save many lives.''
Which lives? Not just those of his brothers, but the lives of the Egyptians, the lives of strangers.
''I have been able to feed the hungry.''
By honoring a covenant of love between him and the Egyptians, Joseph is able to mend the broken covenant of love between him and his brothers.
In effect, Joseph says to his brothers: we cannot unwrite the past, but we can redeem that past – if we take our tears and use them to sensitize us to the tears of others.
And now we see a remarkable thing. Although Genesis is about the covenant of faith between God and Abraham, it begins and ends with the covenant of love between humans: first in the days of Noah, and later in the time of Joseph.
Both involve water: in the case of Noah, there is too much, a flood; in the case of Joseph, too little, a drought.
Both involve saving human life. But Noah saves only his family. Joseph saves an entire nation of strangers.
Both involve forgiveness. In the case of Noah, God forgives. In the case of Joseph, it is a human being who forgives.
And both involve a relationship with the past. In the case of Noah, the past is obliterated. In the case of Joseph, the past is redeemed.
And now we must extend that friendship more widely. We must renew the global covenant of love, the covenant that began with Noah and reached a climax in the work of Joseph, the work of saving many lives.
We must turn this tragedy of last week into a movement of hope, forgiveness and love.
John Donne said : 'Every man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.'
Friends, if we look at Genesis 50, we will see that just before Joseph says his great words of reconciliation, the text says: 'Joseph wept.'
Why did Joseph weep?
He wept for all the needless pain the brothers had caused one another.
And shall we not weep when we see the immense challenges with which humanity is faced in the 21st century -- poverty, hunger, disease, environmental catastrophe.
And what is the face religion all too often shows to the world? Conflict -- between faiths, and sometimes within faiths.
And we, people of many faiths, who have worked so hard and so effectively at reconciliation, must show the world another way.:
honoring humanity as God's image,
protecting the environment as God's work,
respecting diversity as God's will,
and keeping the covenant as God's word.
Too long we have dwelt in the valley of tears.
Let us walk together towards the mountain of the Lord,
Side-by-side,
Hand in hand,
bound by a covenant of love that turns strangers into friends.
In an age of fear, let us be agents of hope.
Together let us be a blessing to the world.
My condolences. Amen.
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Rabbi Arthur Segal
Hilton Head Island, SC
Bluffton, SC
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Ukrainian Jews Attacked; Israel Increases Flights to Ukraine
Anti-Semites attacked the local office of the Torah study program "Stars" in Lviv, Ukraine and beat up two teachers last week.
The assailants broke windows and beat the teachers with metal rods, screaming "Kikes, leave Ukraine!" and "Ukraine is occupied by Kikes!" according to the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (U.C.S.J.),
U.C.J.S. spokesman Meylakh Sheykhet said, "There is no doubt that this is an act of anti-Semitism, and those attackers do not want to see observant Jews meeting at the building. It is possible because some Ukrainian leaders promote xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideas in society."
It is possible because some Ukrainian leaders promote xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideas in society.
Less than a month ago, Ukrainian politician Oleg Tyagnybok reportedly called for "a purge of Jews." A former member of the "Our Ukraine" party, he called in his speech for "merciless action" against Jews and Russians, who he said had "seized power" in Ukraine, according to the S. Louis Jewish Light.
Airlines Believe in Breslov Flights to Ukraine:
While Ukrainian Jews are struggling with rising anti-Semitism, Ukraine and Israel have signed an agreement to allow more flights to operate between the two countries.
The move comes in anticipation of the annual trek by Breslover Hassidim ahead of the Rosh HaShanah holiday to visit the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, the founder and late leader of the movement, who is buried in Uman. El Al Airlines and Aerosvit Airlines currently operate the route.
Israel had requested a limited number of flights to carry passengers to Uman, but Ukrainian officials replied that they do not want the city of Uman to be taken over by Breslov followers. Approximately 20,000 - 30,000 pilgrims go to visit Rabbi Nachman's grave every Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year.
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A bit of History from Rabbi Arthur Segal:
Many Jews, many people, do not realize that the Ukraine was the site of the "Holocaust the preceded the Holocaust."
Bohdan Khmelnytsky a Ukrainian nationalist in 1648 led a massive uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian government that controlled the Ukraine. Unfortunately for the Jews, who helped run the estates in the Ukraine and other areas the Poles owned, they were slaughtered in mass Pogroms by Khmelnytsky's Cossacks. These Jews were called arendators. (lease holders, from the Polish word for rent, arenda)
In 1653 to keep the Poles at bay, he signed a union agreement with Tsarist Russian putting the Ukraine under Russian control. This lasted all the way until the break up of the USSR.
Today, regardless of the massive numbers of Jews that he and his army killed, Khmelnytsky is considered the Father of Modern Ukraine, and in Russia is highly regarded as he brought Ukraine into the Russian sphere. This view was expressed in a monument commissioned by the Russian nationalist Mikhail Yuzefovich, which was installed in the center of Kiev. The original variant of the monument (created by sculptor Mikeshin) appeared too xenophobic even for the Russian authorities, as it was to depict a vanquished Pole, Jew, and a Catholic priest under the hoofs of the horse.
Early twentieth-century estimates of Jewish deaths were based on the accounts of the Jewish chroniclers of the time, and tended to be high, ranging from 100,000 to 500,000 or more; in 1916 Simon Dubnow stated:
The losses inflicted on the Jews of Poland during the fatal decade 1648-1658 were appalling. In the reports of the chroniclers, the number of Jewish victims varies between one hundred thousand and five hundred thousand. But even if we accept the lower figure, the number of victims still remains colossal, even exceeding the catastrophes of the Crusades and the Black Death in Western Europe. Some seven hundred Jewish communities in Poland had suffered massacre and pillage. In the Ukrainian cities situated on the left banks of the Dnieper, the region populated by Cossacks... the Jewish communities had disappeared almost completely. In the localities on the right shore of the Dneiper or in the Polish part of the Ukraine as well as those of Volhynia and Podolia, wherever Cossacks had made their appearance, only about one tenth of the Jewish population survived.
The entire Jewish population of the Commonwealth in that period (1618 to 1717) has been estimated to be about 200,000 to 500,000. Most Jews lived outside Ukraine in the territories unaffected by the uprising, as the Jewish population of Ukraine of that period is estimated at about 50,000. However virtually all sources agree that Jewish Ukrainian communities were devastated by the uprising. It should be noted that in two decades following the uprising the Commonwealth suffered two more major wars (The Deluge and Russo-Polish War (1654–1667); during that period total Jewish casualties are estimated at least 100,000.
''In 1648, under the leadership of Khmelnytsky, they ravaged the land with fire and sword. Their hatred of the Jews was boundless and they rarely attempted to persuade the unfortunate to convert. These persecutions were characterized by hitherto-unknown atrocities. Children were torn apart or thrown into the fire before the eyes of their mothers, women were burned alive, men were skinned and mutilated. People must have thought hell had let loose all the tormenting monsters that medieval painters had portrayed dragging the condemned to eternal punishment. The roads were choked with thousands of refugees trying to escape the murderous hordes. The famous rabbis of the Talmud schools died by the hundreds as martyrs for their faith. The total number of the dead was estimated at about one hundred thousand." Hannah Vogt The Jews: A Chronicle for Christian Conscience, Association Press, 1967, p. 72.
"Under the leadership of the barbaric Bohdan Khmelnytsky, they exploded in a revolt of terrible violence in which their anger at their Polish lords also turned against Jewish 'infidels,' some of whom had been used by the Poles as tax collectors... In the ten years between 1648 and 1658 no fewer than 100,000 Jews were killed." David Bamberger. My People: Abba Eban's History of the Jews, Behrman House, 1978, pp. 184-185. "...set off bloody massacres, led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky,(1593-1657), in which nearly 300,000 Eastern European Jews were killed or uprooted." Gertrude Hirschler. Ashkenaz: The German Jewish Heritage, Yeshiva University Museum, 1988, p. 64.
Stories about massacre victims who had been buried alive, cut to pieces, or forced to kill one another spread throughout Europe and beyond. These stories filled many with despair, and resulted in a revival of the ideas of Isaac Luria and the identification of Sabbatai Zevi as the Messiah.
The irony of Jews still being persecuted in the Ukraine, while even Temple's are not having memorial services, or planning actions, makes the silence deafening.
Just the other day, I was at our local Island's Publix food market, and met three teen aged blonde blue eyed Ukrainians. Publix brings in students ''to learn'' the retail food business each summer. Since they all speak Russian, I spoke with them in Russian. I asked them who was Bohdan Khmelnytsky. They told me with great pride he was their ''victorious leader''. I asked about what he did to the Jews. They said ''he could not have done anything to Jews as no Jews live in the Ukraine.'' They did bag my groceries wonderfully and double bagged everything.
The news report mentions Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. What a saintly man!!! His grandfather maternally was the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidic Jewry. Nachman was born in 1772.
He loved life, God and his fellow man. He taught a simple love-filled Judaism.
- "It is a great mitzvah to be happy always."
- "If you believe that it is possible to break, believe it is also possible to fix."
- "It is forbidden to be old."
- "It is very good to pour out your heart to God like a child pleading with his father."
- "And know that a person needs to traverse a very, very narrow bridge, but the fundamental and most important principle is to have no hesitation or fear at all…"
" 'I have at home a Hebrew Bible printed in Venice. It's rather old, and I remember my father bringing me to a Karaite teacher who taught me to read it. I can still remember a few words of it, such as --' "
And Ben-Avi continues:
"He paused for a moment, his eyes searching for something in space. Then he recalled:
" 'Shema Yisra'el, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad!'
" 'That's our most important prayer, Captain.''
" 'And my secret prayer too, cher monsieur,' he replied, refilling our glasses."
Although Itamar Ben-Avi could not have known it, Ataturk no doubt meant "secret prayer" quite literally. Among the esoteric prayers of the Donmeh, first made known to the scholarly world when a book of them reached the National Library in Jerusalem in 1935, is one containing the confession of faith:
"Sabbatai Zevi and none other is the true Messiah. Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one."
It was undoubtedly from this credo, rather than from the Bible, that Ataturk remembered the words of the Shema, which to the best of my knowledge he confessed knowing but once in his adult life: to a young Hebrew journalist whom he engaged in two tipsily animated conversations in Jerusalem nearly a decade before he took control of the Turkish army after its disastrous defeat in World War I, beat back the invading Greeks and founded a secular Turkish republic in which Islam was banished - once and for all, so he thought - to the mosques.
So just as the Nazi Holocaust helped bring about the State of Israel, the Khmelnytsky Holocaust helped bring about false messiah Zevi. His fall and conversion brought about the Donmeh, and established an underground Judaism in the heart of the Ottoman Empire. This Donmeh Judaism influenced Kemal and had him form a new secular Turkey, which aligned itself with the Allies in World War Two, and has been a friend to Israel, and to its Jewish inhabitants, as well as to the USA, especially during the Cold War with the USSR.
''You intended to harm me,
but God intended it for good,
to do what is now being done,
to save many lives.''
Shalom,
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Hilton Head Island, SC
Bluffton, SC
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