Wed - September 7, 2005
Famous 'Palestinian'
makes aliya
By JASON SILBERMAN
Tuvia Grossman, who was dragged out of a taxi in east Jerusalem and nearly beaten to death by a crowd of Palestinians at the start of the intifada in 2000, is making aliya today.
At the time of the attack, his story received international media attention, because a photo of a bloody Grossman, taken by a freelance photographer and mislabeled by the Associated Press, said Grossman was a Palestinian being beaten by an Israeli soldier. The caption also mistakenly placed the incident on the Temple Mount, when in fact it was at a gas station outside the Old City.
Grossman, along with 200 others, is to arrive Wednesday at Ben-Gurion Airport on the North American aliya assistance group Nefesh B'Nefesh's final summer flight.
"I knew that I wanted to be here, in Israel," Grossman said as he prepared to leave his hometown of Chicago for his flight. "Nothing was going to stop me."
Grossman, now 25, recently completed a law degree in Chicago, and he worked at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem last summer. He will be working as legal intern at a Gornitzky & Co., an international commercial law firm in Tel Aviv. He plans to take the Israeli bar next year. While he knows that he will have to tackle the challenges facing any new immigrant, nothing can compare to the horror felt during the attack.
He remembers the details of the incident like it was yesterday.
It was the day after then opposition leader Ariel Sharon entered the Temple Mount plaza in September 2000.
It was also, Erev Rosh Hashana. Grossman, then a third-year yeshiva student in the Beit Yisrael section of the capital, was in a taxi on his way to the Western Wall with two friends. Along the way, the driver took a shortcut through Wadi Joz. As the car turned a corner just outside Lions Gate, dozens of Palestinians surrounded the taxi and smashed the windows with rocks.
Dragging Grossman out of the front seat, the rioters begin kicking him in the ribs and face, repeatedly smashed him on the head with a large rock and stabbed him in the back of the leg.
Slipping in and out of consciousness and unable to move because of the attackers holding him down, Grossman, perhaps on the verge of death, had a vision.
"It was right before Rosh Hashana and I was thinking of the shofar a lot at the time. Perhaps because of that, I suddenly remembered the story [from Judges] of Gideon being surrounded by the Midianite armies and how he blew on the shofar to scare the armies away."
Grossman, in what he says was not an instinctual move but a strategic decision, decided to take inspiration and hope for the best. Suddenly, he screamed and the rioters jumped back for a second, and with a surge of sheer adrenaline, he ran away as fast as he could.
"I don't remember feeling any pain, even though I was severely beaten and still had a knife in my leg. I just went as fast as I could. I was screaming Shema Yisrael," Grossman recalled, alluding to the prayer said by a Jew before he dies. "So here I am, running up a hill with about 40 Palestinians chasing after me and throwing rocks. But somehow I outran them and got to a gas station on the other side of the hill, where Israeli soldiers were."
The soldiers, seeing that Grossman was badly beaten and still being chased, surrounded his body and held up clubs and guns to ward off the mob. It was also, at that exact moment, that a freelance photographer took a shot of one of the soldiers, his club in the air, standing over a bloody Grossman.
The Associated Press, in giving a caption for the photo, identified the gas station, outside the Old City, as the Temple Mount and the victim as a Palestinian. The posting of the photo in The New York Times a day later caused a heated controversy, including a harsh letter from Grossman's father and eventually an apology from both the newspaper and AP.
After spending 10 days in two Jerusalem hospitals, Grossman was brought back against his will to Chicago.
"I was afraid that if I left Israel, I would have been too afraid to return after what happened. I was literally screaming 'no' as I was brought on the stretcher into the airplane, and I made my parents promise that as soon as I could walk again, I would go back to Israel."
After reconstructive surgery in Chicago, his broken nose treated and leg stitched from the knife wound, Grossman spent five months in a wheelchair and in physical therapy. He says now that physically, everything was perfect, although he still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder when he comes near the area where the attack took place. The headaches return, the images come back.
Grossman, who said he would proudly serve in the army if drafted, has never been able to contact the soldiers who saved his life. The attackers were also never found. Grossman hopes to give back to help other victims of violence.
"You don't realize how many people's lives are affected forever from terrorist attacks. Some people are wounded for the rest of their life. Once I get settled in, I would love to assist victims of terror in anyway I can."
For now, he is just content at finally being back home.
"It's a very emotional experience, yet a conflicting experience at the same time," he said.
"On the one hand I'm leaving something behind, both in terms of my family and the place in which I grew up. But I'm returning to my homeland. What's truly great and uplifting is that I'm doing it with so many other people, all different people but all coming home."
Posted at 11:56 AM Permalink |
Jews & non-Jews:
Dual Roles in Preparing the World for Moshiach
In this age of egalitarian and liberal thinking, how can Jews still promote what is to many intellectuals a shameful and vainglorious sentiment of being the chosen nation? How can Jews preach to the world that they are better than everyone else?
Understanding the concept of chosen nation as arrogant behavior on the part of the Jews is a gross misrepresentation. On the contrary: it is a humbling motif. The Jews were not merely chosen as G-d's special people, as if the Almighty was playing favorites. They were chosen for a mission. And that mission was to spread the knowledge of the creator and His expectations of man to all nations. Thus, G-d's choosing the Jewish people was a calling that would forever remind them that alone they are insufficient. If the Jews wanted to believe for even a moment that so long as they served G-d justly and lovingly, G-d would be satisfied, He made the purpose of their being on this earth to tell the other nations that they arc important, too. G-d is not satisfied with the contribution of the Jews alone, but desires the service and participation of all nations.
This is what being chosen means and the responsibility it entails. Can anyone think of a greater humbling device than a nation whose whole existence is dedicated to teaching the other nations that G-d loves and needs them, too?
Please read the whole article at: Moshiach Online
Posted at 01:09 AM Permalink |
Tue - September 6, 2005
A Tanya for Professor
Wheeler
Via: Moshiach.tv
By the grace of G-d
Tanya for Professor Wheeler
By Dr. Aryeh Gotfryd
Back in the spring of 1987, I was called aside one morning by Rabbi Dovid Schochet, the senior Rabbi of the Lubavitch community in Toronto, with an odd request:
"You should get a copy of this month's Reader's Digest. There is an article about a physicist, John Wheeler. You should get in touch with him."
"Share with him some Chassidus (chassidic teaching), the Seven Noahide Laws, that kind of thing."
My curiosity was piqued. Rabbi Schochet is a man who lives and breathes Torah from morning until night. Yet apparently not only does he read Reader's Digest, he is using it to single out a non-Jewish scientist to get close with. But once I read the article, it started to make sense.
Wheeler is one of the world's leading physicists. At the time, he was putting out some very religious sounding statements in the name of hard-nosed science. "Is man an unimportant bit of dust on an unimportant planet in an unimportant galaxy somewhere in the vastness of space?" asks Wheeler. "No! The necessity to produce life lies at the centre of the universe's whole machinery and design....Without an observer, there are no laws of physics... Why should the universe exist at all? The explanation must be so simple and so beautiful that when we see it we will all say, 'How could it have been otherwise?...' Still needed today is a thinker... who can lead the way surefootedly through this world of mystery to insights overlooked or deemed impossible. I don't know how to. I don't know anyone who does. I can only say that when you see one who does, treasure him or her."
So a scientist is reporting the discovery of a supernatural plan, the centrality of mankind in that plan, and the expectation that some individual will soon lead us to realize the purpose of creation. And all this is the rational conclusion of a physicist who collaborated with Niels Bohr to lay the groundwork for atomic energy, coined the phrase "black hole", and served as mentor for several Nobel laureates.
I drafted a letter to Professor Wheeler and set out to look for where to deliver it. I called Reader's Digest. They couldn't help me. I looked for the author of the article, John Boslough, but I couldn't find him. I checked at the University of Texas at Austin where Professor Wheeler was reportedly working. They hadn't seen him for months. I tried tracking him through Europe and numerous other campuses, but no luck. And after a couple of days of this, I gave up.
I decided to call several physicists and put them on the trail. I finally found Wheeler's personal secretary at Princeton. "I'm sorry sir, he's very busy for the next few months... Yes, I understand that your message is very important, but he's researching It From Bit and he's not taking any but the most urgent calls. You see he spends six months a year on a little island off Maine contemplating the creation of something from nothing."
Bingo!
I packaged up a Tanya, the blueprint of Chassidic philosophy containing several chapters discussing the process and nature of creation ex nihilo. I included a letter explaining a little about the Rebbe, and how Chassidus has the answers to his questions regarding the origin, mechanism and purpose of the continuous creation of "something from nothing."
After sending it off, I called Wheeler's secretary, petitioning her politely to pass the package on promptly. She replied, "Dr. Gotfryd, you must understand, around here I must get a dozen manuscripts a week for Professor Wheeler's review and comment, and each one is labeled 'Don't take the next breath until you've read this!'" Nevertheless, within a few weeks I received Wheeler's "review" in the mail:
"It is for me a precious remembrance of the life and teachings of the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe to have as a kind gift from you the Tanya of the first Lubavitcher Rebbe. I thank you especially for marking passages that I might study with especial care. You will already have some notion of my sympathy for these general questions in what I have said or written about creation, for example, in the enclosed three pages of a paper of mine given at a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the American Philosophical Society."
The article he sent me, entitled "Delayed-Choice Experiments", is noteworthy: He points out that the elementary quantum process is an act of creation, the result of observer-participation. From this it follows that without man there is no universe and no laws of physics. Wheeler finds an original allusion to this notion in Midrash Rabbah, a compilation of Talmudic insights into the Torah, which he quotes:
G-d chides Abraham, 'You would not even exist if it were not for me!'
'Yes, G-d, that I know," Abraham replies, 'but You would not be known were it not for me.'
Dr Wheeler comments that, "In our time, the participants in the dialogue have changed. They are the universe and man. The universe, in the words of some who would aspire to speak for it, says, 'I am a giant machine. I supply the space and time for your existence. There was no before before I came into being, and there will be no after after I cease to exist. You are an unimportant bit of matter located in an unimportant galaxy.'"
"How shall we reply? Shall we say, 'Yes, oh universe, without you I would not have been able to come into being. Yet you great system are made of phenomena; and every phenomenon rests on an act of observation. You could never even exist without elementary acts of registration such as mine.'?"
This, in a nutshell, is the Jewish concept that "for my sake was the world created". Humanity was not created as part of the universe. The universe was created for humanity. Such a model requires the necessity of continuous creation, of humanity's unique role and purpose, and of a consciousness underlying the universe as a whole.
It's actually quite poetic. First Abraham finds G-d through science. Then, some 3,700 years later, quantum physics finds G-d through science. And now John Wheeler finds out that Abraham had it right all along.
As to Wheeler's search for a "thinker who can lead the way surefootedly through this world of mystery to insights overlooked or deemed impossible", I have done my small part by introducing the Rebbe and Chabad Chassidism to John Wheeler, with good results. What's left for us all is to follow Wheeler's concluding advice -- "Treasure him."
Dr. Aryeh Gotfryd was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, where he still lives. He has written on topics ranging from urban ecology to songbird habitat selection. He currently directs the Gotfryd Group of landscape architects and environmental scientists in North York
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Posted at 10:36 PM Permalink |
Wed - August 31, 2005
Building Noahides'
Ark
By KARIN KLOOSTERMAN
They can be found in small pockets around the world from small Russian villages to Palestine, Texas. They reach out to small lights in the fog as family, friends and communities chastise them for saying the unthinkable.
One of the lights collecting souls like moths flitting to a candle is Rabbi Yoel Schwartz, head of a Har Nof yeshiva and rabbi for the haredi unit of the Israel Defense Forces for seven years. Schwartz has become well-known as a source of answers for people who have questions that no other rabbi can ?Ĭ or wants to ?Ĭ answer. In March, he also became the chief rabbi of the newly formed Sanhedrin set up especially for the Bnei Noah movement.
Some of the people who turn to Schwartz from around the world are former Christians. While a few are seeking to convert to Judaism, others have accepted themselves as "Noahides" ?Ĭ that is, gentiles who keep the seven commandments proscribed by the Torah (see box).
A person can become a Noahide or "Bnei Noah" by making an official declaration in front of a Jewish court of law. In so doing, the person promises to keep the seven prohibitive commandments while limiting his belief in icons such as Jesus to no more than as a historical figure.
Schwartz knows of a story where frightened parents of two Muslim boys came to a Har Nof rabbi and asked the rabbi for an Arabic translation of Schwartz's book A Light Unto the Nations. After reading the book, the boys, Schwartz says, "understood that they didn't have to be Shi'ite suicide bombers to be close to God."
Like perhaps the Muslim boys, and Christians who struggle with the basic tenants of their religion, the Noahide movement offers an alternative approach to monotheistic belief and worship. For Schwartz, this work is an important part of Jewish practice. "It is a commandment for a Jew to teach Noahides... to make sure that everybody loves God, even if they are not Jewish."
ACCORDING TO tradition, Adam was the first Noahide. In the Garden of Eden, he was given prohibitive commandments such as not eating meat. Like Adam, non-Jews, too, can be Noahides and thus, they believe, enter into a partnership with the Jewish religion.
Schwartz says would-be converts to Judaism are often surprised to learn that this alternative option exists. It is, he says, an option which follows Jewish concepts of morality, but with many fewer restrictions.
"It is better to be a good gentile than a bad Jew," says Schwartz, who tells prospective converts to Judaism to remain as they are and to go and teach the world about Noahide law instead.
The historical growth of the Noahide movement is not clear, and today numbers are impossible to measure as people tend to teach themselves and generally lack spiritual leaders. One of the first Noahides in modern history is believed to be a Frenchman, Aime Palliere, 1868-1949, a former Catholic who spent all of his adult years in the study and teaching of traditional Jewish texts.
As Palliere may have learned, agreeing to abide by the seven laws of Noah opens up new sets of questions. "The minimum of not-to-dos are written as the seven commandments, but the Noahide soul needs something else ?Ĭ they can't only be passive, but need active commandments as well," says Schwartz.
For this reason he has helped them write a prayer book. Schwartz says the prayer book is "too long and too Jewish," but it is not clear if he is joking or not. He says that the basic prayers could be reduced to only a single page.
But this was not enough for the Noahides who consulted with him.
Schwartz understood that "the Noahides need ceremonies as well," as former holidays such as Easter, Christmas and Ramadan would no longer be celebrated. He turns to his wall of books where he points out guidebooks that help navigate the Noahide through Jewish holidays and observance as a non-Jews.
When all is said and done, Schwartz makes it clear however that he is not teaching a new religion. He is, he says, simply "providing a way for non-Jews longing for Torah-based values to partner with the existing Jewish religion without actually converting, since traditionally Judaism discourages conversion."
It hasn't been easy helping the Noahides with their questions on Noahide "Halacha" or laws, since unlike the Jewish laws which have been constructed over the centuries, the Noahides have no formal, written code of conduct.
"We are building their law from the beginning and must renew Halacha directly from the sources," he says. When questions get too tough, Schwartz turns to his superior, the great posek or "legal decider" Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv, the major halachic authority in the haredi world.
Still, with only handful of Torah-scholar rabbis like Schwartz found throughout the world, Noahides are often dissatisfied, since their former Christian friends find it difficult or even impossible to relate to the changes in their religious life, while Orthodox Jews are often suspicious, fearful that the Noahides are actually proselytizers in disguise.
Many feel very lonely.
"When you convert [to Judaism]," explains Andrea Leigh Woodward, 59, from Longview, Texas, "you are able to join a community with established authority, rites of passage, rituals, holidays, fellowship ?Ĭ a way to share your life and learn proper conduct in all things. None of those things exist for the Noahide."
She relies on cyberspace to find most of her Noahide friends; she has traveled hundreds and thousands of miles ?Ĭ even to Israel ?Ĭ to meet others or to take part in the rare conventions that are offered for her benefit.
She used to feel alone until a friend pointed out to her that when Noah was building the Ark for many years, no one understood what he was doing ?Ĭ that the people of Noah's time hadn't even seen rain.
"Are we pioneers in this restoration that Hashem [God] is bringing to the world? That is what we have been told," says Woodward.
Jason, a Noahide from Toronto, spent about three years preparing for an Orthodox conversion and in the process "lost most of my childhood friends" he says. At the time, even his father would not speak to him. Since he believes that conversion would have demanded an authentic attempt to keep the 613 Jewish commandments, he opted to be a Noahide.
"If I had to eat my mother's lasagna it was better to do so as a gentile then as a Jew," he quips.
Schwartz does not encourage Noahides to settle in Israel.
"Jerusalem and Israel is not the place for Noahides," he says. "They feel like they have nothing to do here," he explains, and encourages them to remain in their respective communities in Russia, the United States, Norway, England and Canada.
Will Noahides lead the world back to Israel and mankind's joint messianic destiny? Perhaps, Schwartz answers evasively. But in the meantime Noahides will have to overcome the basic problems "of being new," says Schwartz.
Until his dream of building Noahide universities, one in the United States and one in Jerusalem (where the laws and philosophies of Noahide tradition would be taught) is realized, the pockets of Noahides scattered around the world will mainly rely on the "virtual" community of the Internet instead.
Posted at 08:26 PM Permalink |
