Celebrating Passover with Pesach Funk

What an exuberant way for Jews to celebrate their freedom for their bonds in Egypt!

Aside from the ritual Passover meal, observant Jews keep kosher by cleaning their kitchens of anything that is hametz (the fermented product from five grains: wheat, rye, spelt, barley and oats).  

 Many Ashkinazi Jews will also avoid eating kitniyot, foods that include corn, beans and lentil, as they expand when they are heated  Conservative rabbis overturned the kitniyot prohibitions in 2015. 

Such dietary conscientiousness stems from following the Torah and remembering that Jews needed to flee their slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt in haste with no time to allow for leavened bread to rise.

Matzah is kosher because it is a quickly baked cracker and has no time for fermentation leavening to occur.  

Some find keeping kosher for Passover to be more of a crunch than others. 

Honoring Jan Karski, the Messenger from Hell

Today in a ceremony in Manhattan, academics posthumously honored longtime Georgetown University professor Jan Karski, a man who tried to prevent the Holocaust by sharing the truth. Alas, politicians among the Allies were tardy to act of the news from Karski as the Messenger from Hell.

During the Second World War,I Karski was a Second Lieutenant in the Krakow Valvary Brigade who was captured after the battle of Tomaszow  (1939) by the Russians. But due to Karski's birthplace, the Russians handed him over to the Germans, thus he avoided being a victim of the Katyn massacre of 1940. 

Karski escaped his German POW train in 1939 and escaped to Warsaw where he joined the Polish Resistance movement. Larslo  organized courier missions to the Polish Government in exile headquartered in Paris andhe himself made several secret trips to France and Britain. Karski was eventually captured by the Gestapo and tortured in Slovakia but was later smuggled out and rejoined the Polish Resistance. 

In 1942, Karski was selected by Polish Prime Minister in exile  Władysław Sikorski to go on a secret mission to gather first hand information about the Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland.  Karski was smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto. Karski also sought to infiltrate the Belzec death camp as an Estonian guard.  Although Karski only managed to see a transit station, the horror that he witnessed first hand was appalling.  

After briefing the Polish Government in exile upon his return to London in 1942, Karski met with other exiled Polish politicians and British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden about his first hand testimony about the Holocaust.  In June of 1943, Karski traveled to the United States to personally brief President Franklin Roosevelt, as well as other American civic and government leaders, including Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Associate Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, without much effect. Karski published his recollections Courier from Poland: The Story of a Secret State (1944) which sold more than 400,000 copies. 

Eventually Jan Karski settled at Georgetown University, eventually earning a Ph.D in 1952 and taught there for over forty years. Georgetown remembers Jan Karski as many things — a beloved professor, writer, and colleague, to name a few — but to the world, he was known as one of the first to warn Western powers of the horrors of the Holocaust.

Jan Karski at Yad Vashem (circa 1982)

Although Karski was a Roman Catholic, he felt a profound connection with the people whose lives he attempted to save from the Holocaust.  In 1981, Karski said: “All murdered Jews became my family. I am a Christian Jew.” In 1982 Karski was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.  

In 1991, he received the Wallenberg Medal from the University of Michigan for his outstanding humanitarian efforts.  In 2012, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Jan Karski the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his heroic witness to the ugly truth of the Holocaust.  Mr. Obama proclaimed: "Jan Karski -- a young Polish Catholic -- who witnessed Jews being put on cattle cars, who saw the killings, and who told the truth, all the way to President Roosevelt himself."   

"Whoever does not condemn, consents" mural in Warsaw

Karski's faithful witness has been remembered from murals in Warsaw to a series of five bronzes of Karski sitting on a bench playing chess created by Krakow sculptor Karol Badyna which are located in Georgetown, Manhattan, Lodz, Warsaw, Keilce and Tel Aviv University in Israel. 

Henny Youngman on Suffering

Henny Youngman, the Catskills Comedian, quip about Jewish suffering might bring some levity to the commemoration of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Yom Kippur marks the end of the High Holy Days on a Jewish Calendar, which began at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

Yom Kippur is a solemn day on which practicing Jews spend most of the day in synagogue as the the fate of each person' is sealed in the book of life.  It is 25 hours of prayers and fasting.

Motivational speaker Charlie Harary offered a different take on suffering from one's mess for Yom Kippur .


This reflection on Coming Clean on Yom Kippur requires repentance of heart but allowing God to go beyond our frailties so all is right with the world (shalom). This has the suffering make sense.

On Rosh Hashanah

Rosh Hashanah ("the head of the year") is the commemoration of the creation of Adam and Eve. Rosh Hashana serves as a day of reflection on deeds over the past year and to set the tone for the new year.

For Rosh Hashanah, symbolic foods are bread and apples dipped in honey to signify sweet wishes for the new year.  A shofar (a hollowed out ram's horn) is blown up to 100 times as sins are symbolically cast off by emptying one's pockets into a body of water.

Justin Timberlake does a mitzvah with a video celebrating the Jewish New Year. Happy 5777! 

L'shana tova. 

Cardinal Kurt Koch on Sabbath Culture

Commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day

 Note how all traffic stops on ten lanes of the busy Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv, Israel when the sirens sound marking the moment of silence to remember victims of the Holocaust.

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Rabbi's Polemic Progressive Prayer Blesses White House Hanukkah Celebration

On the third day of Hanukkah in the year 5776 (per the Jewish calendar), President Barack Obama hosted the President of Israel Reuven Rivlin and Rabbi Susan Talve, a founder of the Central Reform Congregation from St. Louis, Missouri. 

Rabbi Talve gave a sui generis  "blessing" in which she weaved in Black Lives Matter, immigration, fluid sexuality, Islamophobia, homophobia, justice for Palestinians with barely an allusion to anything in Jewish scripture.  In fact, the only time that Susan Talve mentioned God it was the Islamic Arabic expression "Ins'Allah" (meaning God willing).

It is remarkable that President Obama was more clear in invoking the origins of the Jewish festival of lights than Rabbi Talve.  Perhaps this proves Mr. Obama's excited utterance from last year's Hanukkah celebration, when he declared "I am [Jewish] in my soul." 

As to an outsider, it sounds like Rabbi Talve is more dedicated to leftism than the the Torah.  But such a progressive bent is currently being mirrored in other creeds, as the Vatican has been prominently pushing the Paris Climate Change agreement under the debatable auspices of Laudato Si.

Moses Hess on Judaism

Moses: Let Them Go

At least a Passover parody of the breakout track from Frozen which gives the Disney earworm new meaning.

Happy Passover. 

Natan Sharansky on the European Exodus

Long before the Charlie Hebdo Paris Shooting, former Russian refusenik Natan Sharansky voiced skepticism to the viability of a Jewry in Europe.

Obama:"I am Jewish, in my soul"

On the third day of Hanukkah for year 5775 (according to the Jewish calendar), President Barack Obama hosted Jewish leaders to celebrate the festival of lights.  

After the President made his Hanukkah remarks and there was prayer and the ceremonial lighting of the menorah, it was time for the President to glad hand the greeting line.  A gentleman with a booming voice proclaimed: "Mr. President, when I told my Christian friend that I was coming to a Hanukkah party at the White House, he told me: 'I didn't know that the President was Jewish!'".

After Mr. Obama had a good belly laugh, he said as he was walking away: "I am [Jewish], in my soul."  This sotto voce utterance impressed Jewish Journal writer  David  Suissa.  This does jibe with a New York Magazine proclamation in 2011 that Mr. Obama was America's first Jewish President.  

But to my goy ears, the quip sounded like pandering pleasantries which mean about as much as "If you like your health care plan then you can keep it."  However, there are some similarities.  Mr. Obama had  a secular and politically progressive secular upbringing which showed Marxist sympathies.  That definitely parallels sensibilities on Manhattan's Upper West Side.  

So maybe he is what he says, but a self hating one who harbors little affinity towards the state of Israel.

Pope St. John XXIII on the Holocaust

Seth Meyers on Being Jew-"ish"

While Seth Meyers' paternal grandfather was Jewish and Seth has performed at some Jewish community centers, he does not consider himself Jewish.  

Judaism is a religion which is dependent on matriarchal lineage. But based upon his quip, it seems that based upon his persona, he is considered a member of "The Tribe".

Abraham Herschell on Life

Roger Waters Taps Into Anti-Semitic Imagery

Inflatable Wild Pig prop for Roger Waters The Wall Live (2013) a.k.a. "Pig Drone"

Considerable controversy has been sparked by "Pig Drone" which Roger Waters used as an inflatable prop during a concert in Belgium. Olon Anifus Asif, an Israeli living in Belgium, attended the Roger Waters European concert and noted: 

“I had a lot of fun, until I noticed the Star of David, on the inflatable pig. That was the only religious-national symbol which appeared among other symbols for fascism, dictatorships and oppression of people. Waters crossed the line and gave expression to an anti-Semitic message, beyond all his messages of anti-militancy"

The Elder of Ziyon blog posted a video of this spectacle on You Tube labeled "Pig Drone"

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, labeled the Waters blow up  wild pig as a "grotesque display of Jew-hatred."  Cooper inveighed: “With this disgusting display Roger Waters has made it crystal clear. Forget Israel, never mind ‘limited boycotts promoting Middle East Peace.’ Waters is an open hater of Jews.”

Roger Waters fans would rightly point out that Pink Floyd's album "Animals" (1977) featured an inflated pig.  Moreover, the prop was used during the "Run Like Hell" song from "The Wall" (1979), which was written from the point of view of an anti-hero who  imagines himself turning into a Nazi dictator. 

Todd Gutnick, the director of media relations at the British Anti-Defamation League, seemed unconcerned that the Star of David on Water's inflatable pig had an anti-Semitic intent.  Gutnick noted that Waters has been doing the same thing for years.  Gutnick  observed: "For this most recent tour, the pig appears to have numerous symbols, including a hammer, dollar signs, and sickle and a small Star of David."  Moreover Gutnick noted that in the filmed version of The Wall (1982), mobs raid and destroy the homes of blacks and Jews, so the imagery is consistent with the intent of the song.

Roger Waters in fascist costume during  a live concert of "The Wall"

Delving into the intent of the imagery, the symbols are supposed to represent fascism, dictatorship and oppression of people.  Of course, the Star of David was the only religious-national symbol.  These images displayed on dirgibles have not been static.  One former fan complained when "Bush" was scrawled on the porcine balloon during a prior US tour.  So to keep current and live on the artistic edge, Waters might have included a crescent to depict the authoritarian impulses of Islamists who seek to impose a sharia compliant Caliphate on the world. But that would be at varience with Waters' stated political opinions.

Roger Waters  has released "A Song For Palestine", which shows where he stands on politics in the Holy Land. Waters has been a vocal proponent of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions effort against Israel.  During an interview with Electronic Intifada in March, Roger Waters claimed that:  "[T]he Israeli government runs an apartheid regime in Israel, the occupied territories and everywhere else it decides.”  He has encouraged other artists like Beyonce to boycott Israeli appearances. But if Roger Water's animus is only against Israel as one of the powers that be , this distinction seems to be lost on the general public.

Some comments on the You-Tube "Pig Drone" video felt into typical anti-semitic smears.  This sort of reaction is unsurprising.  Rabbi Cooper opined that: “Waters deployed a classic disgusting medieval anti-Semitic caricature widely used by both Nazi and Soviet propaganda to incite hatred against Jews.”  The imagery may be old in basis and nothing new for Waters' theatrical concert experiences.  But at a time when the world is in turmoil with war on several fronts in the Middle East and a shaky financial system, many may look for scapegoats and Jews are easy targets.

h/t: The Blaze
        International Business Times-UK

Understanding What We Must Never Forget

In the last quarter century, there has been a progressive  effort from intellectual iconoclasts to revise history about the Holocaust to besmirch the Catholic Church and particularly Pope Venerable Pius XII.  The criticism stems from charge that the Vatican did not do enough to save Jews during the Second World War, especially considering that the Giuseppe Cardinal Pacelli had been both the nuncio to Germany as well as the Vatican Secretary of State before assume the Chair of St. Peter.  In fact, historian John Cornwell charged that Pope Pius XII was Hilter’s pope, and the Vatican’s inaction weakened the Catholic Church and sealed the fate for the Jewry in Europe.

Soviet Leader Josef Stalin dismissed Papal power in the world by sarcastically quipping “How many divisions did the Pope in Rome have?”  Thus there is the reality that a Vatican condemnation stronger than Pope Piux XI 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (“On Burning Concern” originally released in German) condemning Nazi neopaganism and the “so called myth between blood and state”  would have only worsened the lot for Jews in the still publically obscured holocaust.  

This sensational charge of “Hitler’s Pope” flies in the face of contemporaneous praise of Pius XII as a righteous gentile by prominent Jewish leaders, as well as documentary evidence from the likes of historian Rabbi David Dalin that Pius XII ordered Vatican envoys to aid persecuted Jews in occupied Europe and the Catholic Church opened facilities in the Vatican and Rome to shelter thousands of Jews from the Nazis. 


In fact, it should be noted that there were prominent clergy who were aligned with Hitler–the grand mufti Hajj Amin al-Hussein.  At the Nuremburg trials of Nazi war criminals, there were allegations that the grand mufti  who advised and assisted the Nazis on carrying out Hitler’s Final Solution.  The Ba'athist party was a pan-Arab Socialist party which Ba'athist founder Michel Aflaq saw Nazi Germany as a model and were in power in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the Assads in Syria.   It seems as if these slanderous charges against Pius XII were borne from anti-catholicism as well as exploiting a tragedy by obscuring those truly culpable. 

Holocaust historian Rafael Medoff has published “FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith” which examines the action (or lack there of), attitudes and apathy that FDR and the American government had during the Second World War as it relates to saving Jews from the Shoah.  Medoff charges that the FDR Administration failed to do relatively simple measures which would have saved many Jews, because FDR’s vision of America only encompassed having a small number of Jews.  Medoff wrote that: “In his private, unguarded moments, FDR repeatedly made unfriendly remarks about Jews, especially his belief that Jews were overrepresented in many professions and exercised too much influence and control on society.”  Hence his Administration went out of its way to discourage and disqualify would be Jewish immigrants.  

Had FDR quietly permitted immigration quotas to be filled to the legal limit, it would have saved 190,000.   But the Administration opposed legislation which would have permitted the entry of 20,000 German Jewish childen, supposedly as it would set a precedent that would take away American jobs. 

Medoff also suggests that the US could have bombed concentration (extermination) camps like Auschwitz as the US Army Air Corps would not be diverted as they were  targeting sites that were only five miles away from that infamous death camp that were gassing 12,000 victims a day. 

This sort of nationalistic antipathy towards Jewish refugees is not surprising, considering the post-war antipathy towards Aliyah Alph and Aliyah Bet Jewish immigration as fictionally depicted in Leon Uris’ 1957 epic novel Exodus.  But Medoff’s evidence indicates that FDR was not the humanitarian and champion of the forgotten man myth that has developed, at least as applied to Jews in occupied Europe. 

Medoff’s  thesis needs to be scrutinized to validate its bona fides. Trying to corroborate the slanderous charges in Cornwall’s Hitler’s Pope” discredited it to fair minded historians, but  not before the damage was done in the mind of popular public opinion.  

Although Medoff is a prolific Holocaust scholar, but his interest is not simply in documenting what we should never forget.  Medoff has long postulated that the U.S. State Department has downplayed anti-Semitism in current diplomacy and feeds into a history of Foggy Bottom linguistic sleight of hand to achieve political objectives.  

Being informed by this critque may help pragmatic policy wonks understand the Benghazi bungling, blindness to Ba'-athist atrocities in Syria and ignoring the spontaneous 2009 Green Revolution in Iran.  It also gives context to the Janus treatment of Israel, where President Obama talks a good game about standing with our Israeli partner, but stabs Israel in the back on the Palestinian land issue  regarding the 1967 borders, existential threats from the Revolutionary government in Iran as well as quotidian provocations from the terrorist Gaza State.

h/t: The Daily Caller