Today is Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. My parents were both Holocaust survivors. If my father were alive today he would be 109 years old. My mother would be 99. My two brothers who were in the early teens when they were freed from their bunkers are today in their mid 80s.

The fact is that the survivor population is aging. Many survivors are now gone having lived to ripe old ages. Some have retained their faith and some have not. Most have renewed their lives; had families and seen much nachas from the children, grandchildren and great grand-children. They have seen the birth of a Jewish State, a rebirth of Judaism, and an unprecedented growth of Torah observance.

But the memory of what happened to them and their loved ones who did not survive stays with them. How can it not? We need to recognize that. This was once again pointed out by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel who this morning was interviewed on CBS’s Sunday morning news show in a Holocaust memorial segment.

When he was asked to describe his experiences, he said it is not possible. He said that there were no words in any language that could describe the pure evil of what Nazi Germany did. The Nazis managed to perpetrate acts that were so evil that they were beyond human description. How, he asked, does one describe what it’s like to stand naked in a line on your way to be murdered (along with everyone else in that line) in a gas chamber disguised as a shower?

I think he is right. Yes, there are genocides taking place in the word even to this day in some uncivilized societies. But never like the systematic and scientific murder machine that was Nazi Germany. They saw murdering Jews as an ideal to be worshipped. Hitler considered it his “sacred” duty to annihilate the Jewish people.

I know that the religious right objects to observing a memorial to the Holocaust during the month of Nissan in the Jewish calendar. We are not allowed to eulogize the dead during this month. But this has never stopped even the most right wing rabbis from doing so at a funeral that takes place during Nissan. They simply say something like – since we may not make Hespedim (eulogies) during Nissan they will just say a few words of praise about him – and then dive right into an elaborate eulogy.

But I understand their objection to making an official day of remembrance during this month. I wish it were not on that day but at a date where eulogies are permitted. But it isn’t. Unfortunately their anti-Zionist rhetoric has spilled into Holocaust Remembrance day even if they have not said anything specific publicly about it. A lot of disrespect of that day persists – some of it public. And that is a Hilul HaShem.

It is also disrespectful to edit out women from photos from that era as was recently done. While I don’t approve of the practice of editing out pictures of tzanua (modestly dressed) women under any circumstances, I understand that there are some members of the right wing – mostly Hasidim – who feel that any picture of a woman is not appropriate for men to look at.

Much as I disagree with them, they are entitled to their opinion. But there are times when it should be inappropriate even for them. Such as the time the Secretary of State was photo-shopped out of a widely distributed “iconic” picture of the President and members of his administration watching the “Navy Seal Team’ assassination of Bin Laden as it was happening.

However, when it comes to tampering with Holocaust images it should cross every line of human decency. There is no way to justify that. The picture in question has blurred out the images of women in a famous photo. How in heaven’s name can anyone claim that viewing the women in that picture is in any way inappropriate?!

It is an insult to them memories of all 6 million Jews to decide that because a victim in such a photo is a woman it should be somehow blurred out of it. The reason for eliminating photos of women is so that there won’t even be the remotest chance of their eliciting an improper though on the part of a man. In this photo? Are they kidding?!

This is what happens when you stop thinking and see everything in linear fashion. They say that a photo of a woman is always a possible source of indecent thoughts in men. No difference here. If they don’t hadn’t shown this picture at all, that would have been one thing. But they obviously felt it was important enough to publish it as part of their message. But the message they sent was not one of the horrors of the Holocaust. It was how ridiculously far their views about showing a woman in a photo goes.

I truly do not understand how anyone can be an adherent of a movement that thinks like this, no matter how warm and fuzzy it otherwise is.

I am not one to make a religion of the Holocaust. Unfortunately there are some people who do. The Jewish people are not defined by the Holocaust. We are defined by God’s mandate for us as expressed through written and oral Torah law. Even so, God forbid that we minimize what happened by using it to promote various agendas (as have animal rights activists)… or dishonor survivors by ignoring Holocaust Remembrance Day entirely – in some cases even thumbing our noses at it… or by injecting the most extreme interpretation of modesty for women into it.

Here is my message to these people: get a clue. The Holocaust was not about your agenda. It was not about tznius. Do not dishonor the memory of the victims or mock the sensitivity of the survivors by using the Holocaust for your own purpose or injecting your unreasonable tznius standards by photo-shopping women out of Holocaust pictures.

And to those who in other ways dishonor Holocaust Remembrance Day… Stop it! All you end up doing is dishonoring yourselves and bring mockery upon the Torah!

Visit Emes Ve-Emunah.

Yet another fake “Gaza” photo has incited a flurry of comments on Facebook against Israel during the fifth day of Israel’s Pillar of Defense operation in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. An Arab news site called Alarab Net released the photo, which shows a family who was allegedly ‘massacred’ in Gaza on its Facebook page on Sunday, November 18. The caption in Arabic roughly translates into English as “martyred massacred family in Gaza shortly before…”

Thanks to Tazpit News Agency’s investigative work, it was found that the photo had been originally published on a news site based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates called Moheet one month earlier on October 19. On the Moheet website, the photo was titled “Syria killed 122 Friday…Assad Used Cluster Bombs.”

The “recycled” massacre, transplanted to Gaza.

Uploaded to Facebook on Sunday evening by Alarab Net, the newly captioned Syrian photo, which depicts three bloodied children and their mother lying on a floor, quickly attracted over 1,200 likes, close to 500 comments and 420 shares within an hour.

Alarab Net appears to be a news website based in Israel that offers a wide range news coverage from pop culture to politics and anti-Israel coverage.

It is not the first time that photos from the Syria massacres have been recycled into Gaza tragedies during the recent rocket escalation. Last week, Hamas’s military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades uploaded a photo on their Twitter page of a dead child in his weeping father’s arms, which the terror group alleged had happened in Gaza during an IDF strike.

The American news syndicate Breitbart found that the photo was a month old and had originally appeared in a slideshow about the Syrian conflict back in October on the UK Guardian. The photo had in fact been taken in the Dar al Shifa Hospital in Aleppo, Syria.

Hamas’s photograph, which had been tweeted as a taunt to the IDF spokesperson, has now been removed from the terrorist group’s Twitter page.

Winter is almost here and nothing says comfort like a rustic Italian dinner.

Pasta e Fagioli (Bean Soup)
(serves 4-6)

Ingredients

1 quart hot water
2 or 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
½ onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, slightly crushed
1 celery stick, chopped
1 small carrot, chopped
1 cup of dried beans
1 small ripe tomato, seeded, peeled and diced (or you can use canned peeled tomatoes, drained)
Salt and pepper to taste
1½ tablespoon freshly chopped parsley or rosemary
2 cups fresh egg pasta, or you can use dried egg pasta (broken down pappardelle), or regular dried pasta.

Directions

1. Soak the beans overnight in a bowl of cold water.
2. Dice the carrot, thinly slice the celery, and chop the onion finely.
3. Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add the onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and sauté for 2 or 3 minutes.
4. Add the tomato, beans, and salt, and cook for another 2 minutes.
5. Cover with hot water, bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for one hour or until the beans are cooked.
6. Add the pasta and allow to simmer until the pasta is also cooked (for fresh pasta, usually 3 to 5 minutes; for dried pasta, follow the instructions on the package).
7. Sprinkle with black pepper, adjust the salt, drizzle with a little more olive oil, decorate with the parsley and serve hot.

Potato Salmon Terrine

Ingredients

3 medium/large potatoes
1 fillet of salmon (about 2 lb), baked or steamed
2 scallions or a medium onion
½ cup Chardonnay
1 lemon
3-4 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh chives and parsley, to taste

Directions

1. Boil the potatoes until soft, drain, peel and mash with a fork or potato masher.
2. Add the salt, pepper, wine and about 2 tbsps of the oil.
3. In the meantime boil the salmon for 15 minutes with the peeled and sliced scallions (you can also cook it in the microwave in 5 minutes).
4. Then drain it and chop the whole mixture in a food processor along with the juice of ½ a lemon, salt, pepper, and about ½ tbsp of chopped chives.
5. Combine with the mashed potatoes and pour into a loaf pan (9 x 5 x 3″), previously lined with plastic wrap.
6. Press the puree into the pan with your hands or a wooden spoon, cover and refrigerate for at least 12 hours before serving.
7. Unmold and serve decorated with more chives, and (if you like) some mayo.
* If you are in a rush, replace the fresh salmon and scallions with canned salmon and a touch of onion powder, but the result is less delicate.

Chicken Stew (Ezekiel’s Chicken)

Ingredients

1 chicken, cut into serving pieces
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic, slightly pressed or minced
1/3 cup green or/and black olives, pitted
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons mix of freshly chopped herbs (sage, rosemary, plus basil, mint or parsley)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 or 3 peeled tomatoes
1/3 cup dry wine, red or white

Directions

1. Rinse the chicken and pat dry.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large pot, add the chicken and sauté until golden.
3. Add the salt, pepper, olives, garlic, and herbs, and the chopped (and drained) tomatoes.
4. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring, add the wine, then lower the flame and cook covered until tender (about 30 minutes), stirring occasionally, and adding a little water if it tends to dry out.
5. Uncover, and if the sauce is too liquidy turn up the heat to thicken it.
6. You can serve it with a side of polenta, potatoes or rice as a main course.

Chocolate Hazelnut Whole Grain Cake

Ingredients

3 medium/large eggs
2/3 cup brown sugar
4 oz parve dark, bittersweet chocolate
¼ cup olive oil or vegetable oil
½ tsp vanilla extract or 1 tbsp DiSaronno liqueur
1/8 cup almond or soy milk, or more if needed
1 cup hazelnut meal (or almond meal)
4/5 cup whole grain flour (oatmeal or spelt or other; for a GF version, try buckwheat flour)
1 package baking powder
1 pinch salt
Confectioner’s sugar to decorate

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F.
Beat the eggs with the sugar for a couple of minutes or until light and frothy.

Moshe Feiglin, head of the Manhigut Yehudit faction within the Likud party ascended up to the Temple Mount (Har Habyit) on Tuesday, as he does every month, and was arrested by the Israeli police along with Hagai Weiss for the crime of praying on the Temple Mount.

Feiglin had gone up to the Temple Mount with 30 other people. Halfway through his usual walk around the site, the police claim they saw him praying and escorted him off the mountain.

Feiglin denied he was praying at the time.

Police questioned Feiglin for 5 hours, and then upgraded his status to “arrest”. The charge was, “Actions that could have led to the endangerment of the public.”

Police demanded that Feiglin sign a guarantee that he would not visit the Temple Mount for the next 15 days, but he refused to sign it.

Feiglin told the police, “I am a free citizen, and I will not willingly suspend my liberty.”

The police brought a request to the court to extend Feiglin’s remand in jail for a few days to “investigate” the matter, but the court refused to grant it, and the police were subsequently forced to release Feiglin unconditionally.

The Israeli Police do not allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount because the Waqf forbids it, and threaten mass violence if they catch a Jew praying.

Photos of Moshe Feiglin and company on the Temple Mount. Accompanying Moshe is his son David who had been seriously injured in a car accident:

15,000 Ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered at Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem on Tuesday night to celebrate the completion of this 7.5 year cycle of learning the Talmud.

Hong Kong’s Ohel Leah Synagogue recently celebrated the dedication of a new Sefer Torah. Britain’s Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Lady Elaine Sacks joined Rabbi Asher Oser and Assistant Rabbi Ariel Zamir of Ohel Leah at the festivities. Also present were Rabbi Mordechai Avtzon of Chabad of Hong Kong, Rabbis Meir Azarzar and Avner Cohen from the Shuva Israel community, and the sofer, Rabbi Yehonatan Yitzhak-Halevy. Hundreds of members of the Hong Kong Jewish community participated as well.

While the unveiling of the new Torah was itself special, it was also deeply personal for many longstanding community members. It was dedicated in memory of five men (in Rabbi Sacks’s words, “one for each book”) – each of whom were deeply committed to the Ohel Leah community. All of these stalwarts – Ezekial Abraham, Edouard Esses, Cecil Ezra, David Sassoon and Karel Weiss – died without heirs; thus, this Torah represents their legacy. This was a most fitting way to pay homage to men who helped secure the community’s future.

These men’s stories are the community’s stories. Each came from diverse backgrounds and carried with them family histories and customs. For example, Cecil Ezra’s family was deeply tied to the Shanghai Jewish community, rising to great wealth and prominence before having to flee in the mid-1900s. Though forced to leave the family’s wealth behind in Shanghai, Ezra continued his family’s legacy by greatly contributing to the Jewish community.

Community members funded the writing of the Torah, and individual parshiyos were dedicated in memory of, as well as in honor of, their loved ones – linking past, present and future. Each contributing family was invited to help Yitzhak-Halevy, the sofer, complete the writing of the Torah. Children proudly held onto his arm while he completed writing the letters corresponding to the first letter of their names.

This Torah dedication was greatly significant to the sofer as well. Having previously served as the community’s mashgiach, carrying the Torah with him from Israel truly felt like he was bringing it home. In fact it was his close relationship with the aforementioned Esses that initially inspired the Torah dedication project.

In conjunction with the dedication ceremony, Hong Kong’s Jewish Historical Society displayed images from the photography collection of Karel Weiss, one of the posthumous honorees. His sepia images of old Hong Kong represented the Hong Kong that these men loved.

Michael Green, chairman of the Ohel Leah Synagogue Trust, said at the ceremony that ultimately all five of the honored men would have asked only that, “as a community we behave the way they would have liked us to behave.” He spoke of the inspiration these men provided in their own time and for the community’s future. For Green, having known these men personally, this dedication was particularly moving as he was able to offer his own insight into their lives.

Rabbi Sacks, the program keynoter and regarded by many in the Hong Kong Jewish community as their spiritual head, told the throng in the Garden Room of Hong Kong’s Jewish Community Centre, “No people have ever loved a book as we love this book.” He called the phrase “People of the Book” the ultimate understatement and reminded everyone that, “While we are the people who have carried the Torah with us … the Torah has actually carried us.”

The symbolism of placing this new Torah in the 110-year-old Ohel Leah Synagogue was a powerful statement of continuity. The ornate beauty of the case, in a Sephardi style reflective of the community’s roots, spoke to the reverence the community has for its heritage.

Following the ceremony and a celebratory meal, the group paraded the new scroll into its home in the synagogue’s aron kodesh. The crowd danced and sang outside the synagogue, undeterred by the Hong Kong heat and humidity.

“Our Sephardic Torahs are read upright, standing ready to honor those who come to give them honor. It’s as if the memory of these men, embodied in this Sefer Torah, are greeting us each time we enter the synagogue,” said Rabbi Oser of the Ohel Leah Synagogue.

Photos of the victims of the Toulouse, France terror victims.

Miriam Monsonego

Jonathan Sandler

Arieh Sandler

Gabriel Sandler