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(Some excerpts from an article by Rav Yishai Sofer in this week’s Hamodia. Any typos are mine. It is a good piece for anytime, but is especially relevant with the “news” from Eretz Yisroel lately.)
Rav Amram Blau ZT’L, A Fusion of Forces; On his 35th Yahrtzeit, 15 Tammuz, 5734
Reb Amram’s father was HaRav Yitzchok Shlomo, a close talmid of HaRav Yeshoshua Leib Diskin, ZY’A, who established and led the Yeshiva Ohel Moshe. Reb Yitzchok Slomo’s father was Rav Amram Blau, a talmid of the Ksav Sofer, who served as a Rav in several towns in Slovakia. Rav Yitzhok Shlomo’s father-in-law was the well-known gaon from Yerushlayim, HaRav Yehoshuyah Orenstein, who was a talmid of the Maharil Diskin.
Steely Strength
Following his marriage, Reb Amram joined a group headed by HaRab Shmuel Deitch that was at the fore of defending Torah Jewry against the Zionists. Rav Shmuel foresaw the potential in Rav Amram, and him becoming a leading figure in Torah Jewry.
Reb Amram’s activities began as a member of the Tzeiri Agudas Yisroel. He was one of the founders of the Agudah newspaper Kol Yisroel and served as its editor for 13 years. Within the framework of Tzeiri Agudas Yisroel, Reb Amram launched other chinuch organization such as Chanoch Lenaar and Pirchei Torah Veyirah.
In 5693/1932, following the petirah of HaRav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld ZT’L, Reb Amram established a movement called Irgun Chaim, which later evolved into Neteurei Karta, and began publications in Yiddish including Dos Torah Leben and Di Yiddishe Shtime, as well as the weekly Hachomah. He also was a member of the Moetzes Hashivim of the Eidah Hachareidis city council. In 1945 the Neteuri Karta won the elections for the city council of the Eidah Hachareidis, putting Rab Amram at the helm of the Eidah’s activities in Yerushlayim.
Reb Amram’s self-sacrifice in defense of Shabbos Kodesh was legendary. He would do anything and everything in defense of Shabbos. One Shabbos he showed up at a theater where tickets for a movie where being sold and positioned himself in front of the ticket counter thwarting the sale of tickets. The secular theater director responded with brutal beatings, but Reb Amram refused to surrender, and all attempts to remove him were futile. His goal was achieved: tickets could not be sold.
Close ties with the Chazon Ish
Rav Amram passed away on Erev Shabbos Parshas Pinchus, 21 Tammuz, 5734/1974, at Shaare Zedek Hospital. He was 74. Scores of Yidden escorted his aron that Friday afternoon from his house to Har Hamenuchos.
My dear DarcheiNaom, if you want to know what real mesirus nefesh is it is people like Dov Gruner and the Olei Gardom (those who went to the gallows) for the sake of Klal Yisroel and hakamas Medinas Yisroel. After he was captured, he wrote to his leader Menachem Begin not to worry, and that he has no regrets and would gladly have done it all over again. They took their tefilin to jail, and proudly sang Hatikvah as they were being led to their execution. Reb Aryeh Levin was their Rov, and shed bitter tears over them. On Rosh Hashana one year while he was the baal tefila, he broke down crying and repeating the names of each one of these kedoshim. These were people who gave it all so we can have our own state and a safe haven for Jews anywhere. On the ashes of the holocaust (some of whom were survivors) these people refused to be broken, and turned their efforts towards building up our nation, once again.
And of course this mesirus nefesh has gone on right up until today with so many boys including many hesder boys who went proudly and bravely to fight any time their nation called them up. Many paid the supreme sacrifice R”L. The most beautiful picture ever taken is the one of a soldier on top of a tank in the 1973 war, his head wrapped in his tallis, and holding a Lulav and Esrog with his eyes closed, as he makes the bracha. Such a person knows what it is to ask the RBSH for mercy on him and the klal. A person who is facing pachad mavves but envelopes himself in dveikus to the Borei Olam as he pours his heart out bsimcha on yontof.
Just last year, there are pictures of the boys fighting in Gaza making minyanim in the field near their tanks. The Rosh Yeshiva of Sderot gave his boys a shmuz before they left to be mechazek them so they would overcome their natural fear. (He himself has served in the army.)
When the boys are not in service, they are learning Torah bsimcha and giving chizuk and doing chesed of all types to the frightened town of Sderot. In his recent speech at the Sderot dinner, Dov Hikind said if not for the Yeshiva’s chizuk and reaching out to all the members of the town and personally befriending each and every person, the town would not exist today, as they all would have left.
This is true Torah mesirus nefesh, that of ahavas yisroel and building and appreciation for the work of every other yid and idealism that we will have an even better tomorrow, as we fulfill yishuv haaretz and work with the medinah to build and create and establish more and more and continue to improve the lives of all its citizens and spread torah warmth so that people will on their own want to learn torah more and more because they will see it as the source of all this chesed and love and caring for this town and the entire klal. Vheishiv lev avaos al banim vlev banim al avosam.
Thank you PY for those thoughts.
While discussing mesirus nefesh, we should never forgot the most literal mesirus nefesh of Ro’i Klein hy”d who jumped on a hand grenade during the 2006 Lebanon war to save his fellow soldiers. He said Shema Yisrael as he died al kiddush HaShem.
DD, that is a beautiful story. There is a similar story about a hesder boy who locked the door between the kitchen and dining room, so only he would get shot by the terrorist in the kitchen, not the entire yeshiva which was eating in the dining room.
Pashuteh Yid-
His name was Noam Apter.
Here is the story, excerpted and modified from other articles:
On erev Shabbos, Dec. 27, 2002, more than 100 Israeli teenagers and young adults sat down for the Shabbos meal at the yeshiva of Otniel. These are people who study in yeshiva before and sometimes during their army service. Four of the students whose turn it was to be the evening’s waiters went into the kitchen adjoining the dining room to serve the main course. They were Noam Apter, 23; Yehuda Bamberger, 20; Zvi Ziman 18; and Gabriel Hoter, 17.
Outside the kitchen, two terrorists, members of the Islamic Jihad organization, were wearing IDF army uniforms and toting M 16’s, ammunition, and hand grenades. The two terrorists burst into the kitchen and sprayed the four waiters with fire from their M-16s. Hit by the bullets and mortally wounded, Noam managed to run to the door connecting the kitchen and the dining room and close it from the kitchen side. He locked the door and threw the key into a dark corner. He then collapsed and died, lying against the door. The terrorists tried to open the door. Seeing it locked, they tried to spray fire through a small glass window into the dining room. After realizing that this fire was inaccurate and wild (it only wounded six more students) and having already murdered the four student waiters, the terrorists fled the kitchen, later to be hunted down and killed by the Israeli army.
According to 18-year-old Yaacov Ohana, a wounded survivor of the attack who was quoted in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, “Our great luck was that Noam succeeded in locking the door to the dining room and throwing the key into a dark corner, otherwise the terrorists would have massacred dozens.”
It is worth remembering his name and his actions.
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ICOT: Thanks for the beautiful article.
DarcheiNoam: There is an obvious self-contradiction in your article about Rav Amram. His thesis is that the Arabs were always friendly and it was the Zionists that made the Arabs bloodthirsty via the Balfour Declaration. He says that there is no difference between the Arabs and other non-Jewish nations.
And that is exactly why his whole thesis falls. Because the Germans butchered six million of us for no reason it shows that the non-Jews start with us totally unprovoked. Rav Amram equates the Arabs with say the Swiss. Therefore there is no reason not to equate them with the Germans and any other anti-semitic governments throughout our history, because what is the difference between one non-Jewish nation and any other. Since we know that the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Holocaust were completely unprovoked, it follows that the Arab pogroms and terror attacks are equally unprovoked. So his hashkafah falls to pieces in a complete self-contradiction.
And this is exactly the rationale of the Zionists. We will no longer trust other countries to protect us and be forced always to live under foreign rule, since that has led to tragedy after tragedy. We have the right to one little place in the world that we can call our own. And we will make our own state there that will be run by Jews and be a safe haven for all Jews everywhere.
And BTW we are not conquering and taking over anybody else’s land, as Rav Amram seems to say. Did we ever try to take over Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Iraq? Eretz Yisroel is our land that was given to Avraham Avinu and has belonged to us from time immemorial. We have every right to go back home. We needn’t concern ourselves with any nation exerting false claims over our own home. They occupied our land, not the other way around.
py i agree with you 99.99% but be careful of mosherose is gonna put u in cherem!!!
Reb Amram meant to say that the Arabs weren’t worse than other goyim, not that they weren’t better.
BS”D
Reb Amram ZYA tried to prevent the horrible desecration of kedushas Eretz Yisroel that was perpetrated by the so called Zionist heroes, which includes followers of the extremely secularist Jabotinsky* as well as the leftists of Mapai.
Those heroes then forcibly tore hundreds of thousands of Jews from their Torah roots, learning and values. They turned tehorim into tmeim, proud Jews into deracinated and despised “frenkim” – and the result is seen in the increasingly vicious and internationalized organized crime gangs that stem from E”Y. Surnames of the gedolim of previous generations, preceded by some artificial “Israeli” name like Lior, are often found on police blotters in the US, Europe and beyond.
I have been in Morocco. While life for Jews in golus is never perfect, there was no violence in the modern era against Jews until Zionist agitation caused same. Iraq? The Zionists themselves started riots. Egypt? Lavon affair, anyone.
We were never promised a state by any party. A homeland is not a sovereign state – and the medine is not sovereign in any case, it exists at the whim and direction of the US State Department and is the epitome of the golus ma yoffis Jew, the innkeeper who begs for better terms from his landlord.
I proudly awaken every morning to Reb Amram’s nigun, sung by the son of a victim of Zionist secularization who has returned to Torah. Her name was Bracha Zefira, an orphan from Teiman who was basically stolen from her community by the secular Lemel orphanage. His name is Ariel Zilber and he was once a secular culture hero.
And the secular Lemel orphanage is today the Boyaner yeshiva. It is diagonally opposite from the site of a new Satmar housing development.
That site was the Edison Theatre, where Reb Amram ZYA protested every Shabbos!
Hashem Hu Malkenu! Nelech be’esh ubamayim lekadesh shem Shamayim.
*(Rehavam Zeevi HYD, the rightest of the rightists and the heir of the “olei hagardom”, once predicted that Mea Shearim would disappear. His granddaughter was educated in the Beis Yaakov haYoshon, in Yiddish.)
Thank you, kilobear, for your beautiful, informative post.
BS”D
“We will no longer trust other countries to protect us and be forced always to live under foreign rule, since that has led to tragedy after tragedy.”
LOL. Without US support, which is really tolerance that is wearing thin, the medine would not survive. I personally am expecting a flood of refugees from “Israel” the moment the economic bubble breaks and ridiculous real estate prices go back in der erd.
“We have the right to one little place in the world that we can call our own.”
LOL. So long as we don’t call the really important parts of it our own, it is fine and good – and so long as it is a secular, leftist state that is not too Jewish the goyim will tolerate it – barely.
“And we will make our own state there that will be run by Jews and be a safe haven for all Jews everywhere.”
LOL. Which is why more FSU Jews come back to the FSU than go to the medine – unlike the Mizrahim whose homelands became forbidden to them, they have a better place to live and they don’t want to be despised “Russians” when they can be proud Jews in flourishing new communities back home. Instead, you will be left with the 400,000 non Jews, including anti-Semites, missionaries and other fifth columns.
The experiment of Zionism, like that of Communism, is dead. You now have post Zionism, which is really the logical outgrowth of Zionism – where now that the Jews are a nation like any other, they can just as soon give up the land and eat falafel in New York or Amsterdam as “Israelis” who live abroad.
If the Reb Amrams and R’ Yaakov de Haans had prevailed, there may have been a peaceful frum yishuv, and the US would have been forced to accept more displaced persons, to the benefit of all concerned.
Instead, the medine is now THE NUMBER ONE cause of ANTI-SEMITISM throughout the world. And why should the goyim not despise a surrender monkey valueless state in a land that they too consider holy BECAUSE OF US?
Instead, the medine is now THE NUMBER ONE cause of ANTI-SEMITISM throughout the world.
Not the cause – it is the lightning rod.
very true yet often misunderstood distinction, squeak
BS”D
No, I stand by my words. The shlimazel, ma yoffis medine, that threw back the nissim of 1967 and cannot wage decisive war or make real peace, is the root cause of anti-Semitism today.
Kiev was hit by anti Semitic vandalism when the shuls in Gaza were dismantled? Why? Because the shkootzim see that Yidden are weak, and they act accordingly.
There is anti-Semitism in Budapest because it is teeming with criminals from E”Y who control every illegal field of business in town as well as semi-legal gambling. I was ashamed to let on that I speak Ivrit, because when I walked where I should not have walked one night, it was the language of ben-Yehuda OLBM that I heard near every casino and worse that I passed.
If the medine would stand up and be Jewish, and would propagate Jewish values, anti-Semites would keep their feelings to themselves out of fear.
But it cannot. A secular state in our eretz hakedoisha is the same as a loaf of bread on the Seder plate.
And without Moshiach there is no legitimate Jewish government in E”Y. “Listim atem” applies to those who live in E”Y without recognizing Who gave us the right to the land, and that secular state is indeed being told “listim atem” by the world – because the state does not serve Hashem but rather cowers in a corner whenever the US State Department tells it what to do.
“Kiev was hit by anti Semitic vandalism when the shuls in Gaza were dismantled? Why? Because the shkootzim see that Yidden are weak, and they act accordingly.”
But this was the opposite of Zionism! Please explain, you seem to have a broad worldview.
BTW why oh why did you get such a scary screen-name?
BS”D
Ah, but Zionism has failed. That is because it negated Torah as the basis for our right to the land.
For all the tough talk, it was based on Jews becoming a people like any other – and any other people could care less about the concept of holiness. True Jewish strength is standing up and proclaiming that Hashem runs the world and we are His am segula whose roots in the Land are strictly from His Torah.
But we are the am segula who are in this world to spread holiness. Therefore, the state is a total repudiation of ratzon Hashem!
And at the end of the day, Hashem Hu Malkenu – Hashem rules the world – and since the state does not realize that it instead looks to the nations not as a leader, but as a little innkeeper wanting to keep his cold little inn on a freezing Polish estate.
In any frum neighborhood, you will see tiny, bent old men, now in their 90’s KAH, who have survived either the Nazis or the Communists or both. And if you speak with them, you will find out that even if they had lost their entire first families during the churban, they rebuilt and are now great grandfathers, in some cases to triple digit numbers of ehrlicher descendants ken yirbu.
These elterer Yidden are the real Jewish heroes. They may now be bent, but they stood up and rebuilt Torah families. The braggart Zionists took our land and turned it into a Sdom of corrupt politics, toeva parades and utter lack of gaon Yaakov.
A600KiloBear is scary? I think it was a trademark I came up with for a promotion I was handling for a group of supermarkets in Moscow. We then had a graphic artist design a much smaller and friendlier bear than I had originally envisioned, but I had a 600KiloBear e-mail and AIM account that remained.
A600Kilobear, I basically agree with you, exept for a few points. What do you suggest, that the cheiyah ruahs on two feet, the Arabs should take over?
And I don’t think the Israelis will come running. America itself is on the verge of an economic collapse, the real estate bubble HAS collapsed, there are barely any jobs to be found, Sdom is here too in terms of immorality, and if the Mosque next to Ground Zero gets built then you can be sure the Muslim’s victory will become more than only symbolic.
Bear, if you keep on bringing up all the evils the Zionists did; I will remind you that there were some of the Old Yishuv who tried to encourage Britain to restrict Jews from entering the land.
In 1924 to speak any Loshon Hara to the British about the newcomers (even if true) was Mamash Shifichas Damim.
BSD
I am very aware of that, Josh.
And it was not shifchas damim.
It was instead pikuach nefesh that would have prevented the 1929 riots. The old yishuv wanted to preserve Jewish life by keeping the baryoinim out and thereby retaining good relations with the Arabs and British. If those baryoinim had been coming to join the old yishuv, it would have been a very different story. Note Reb Amram ZYA’s experiences as head of the land acquisition company as related above.
Philosopher, no, at this point, Moshiach is the only solution. Even Reb Yoilish ZYA made that clear.
However, I do not rule out the world forcing the medine to basically evacuate and turn out the lights. Unless there is a substitute for oil at least for transportation use, or somehow the medine wakes up and becomes Jewish, it is very possible that the world will acquiesce to Islamic demands and sacrifice the medine.
Nor does the US have to have the same kedusha as EY. Besides, refugees from the medine tend to be resourceful and can establish themselves quite well in India and China if need be.
Bear, we are talking of hundreds of thousands of Jews who immigrated from 1920 thru 1945. According to official British records 367,845 Jews immigrated during that period legally and probably another 50-60,000 illegally (according to British law).
If they had not immigrated, most of them would have been dead (R’L) by 1945. If immigration had been kept fully open during this time then hundreds of thousands more Jews could have been saved.
BS”D
The medine has killed far more than that number of Jews, both physically and spiritually.
What the Zionists, who unlike the old Yishuv did have power, did during the war killed far more than that number. Spiritually, the medine has killed probably 1/3 of its present population.
Those who died with Shma and Ani Maamin on their lips died al kiddush Hashem. Those who sing that song written by a drunkard who died in New York in the soccer stadium Shabbos morning are desecrating Eretz Yisroel. And anyone who touches the political system there past the municipal level is rolling around in the mud of Sodom.
At worst those who advocated stopping the immigration, and who had no power to do so anyway, were guilty of bad judgement. They rightfully feared for their own lives and for their community, and it happened in 1929. There was not exactly an Internet in those days and no one knew how bad things were getting in Europe.
The baryoinim were just plain reshoei amecho. They were not interested in saving lives of anyone other than their band of oisvorfen so that they could impose their alien ideology, a blend of Communism and the ramblings of a Viennese assimilationist who suffered from a brain infection, on the Jewish land and people.
The real fault lies with FDR ymach shmoi (and whoever ran Canada at the time, the name escapes me), who could have stopped both the Shoah and the medine had he allowed refugees into the US. That would also have ended the Depression, as an influx of talented, industrious individuals would have stimulated the economy. And had it happened, the US would not be facing as much of a challenge as it does today from the Far East.
Bear, you can not see any good in the Jewish State which for all its faults is the collective will of many Jews. Even when Jews are disconnected from G-d they maintain a connection to the Jewish people. In general, the Jewish State shows a concern for Jewish lives that no other State has. The first law passed was to guarantee open immigration to all Jews.
“And anyone who touches the political system there past the municipal level is rolling around in the mud of Sodom.”
Wow, bear, you have just condemned the vast majority of the Charedei world and their Torah leadership.
BS”D
Yes, immigration to anyone with a tenuous connection to Judaism means that EY will in one or two generations have only frum Jews, with most of the frei population being sofek Yidden at best. Epic fail. And from the Altalena to the expulsion in Gaza, we see how much that state cares about Jews, as opposed to “Israelis” who tow its line.
As I made it clear, I follow in the ways of Reb Amram ZYA. I also am a chossid of Chabad, and we do not serve in the Knesset with two very admirable exceptions, true Torah askonim who did not bend when offered money to do so and as a result were never elected again. (R’ Avraham Werdiger, who looked to the Rebbe ZYA for guidance while in Knesset and R’ Eliezer Mizrahi, the latter being my former neighbor’s father and therefore an acquaintance of mine). The whole system is rotten.
And all I have to say is that I hope the many innocent Jews, KAH BH many of them ehrlicher baalei tshuva, in Kiev do not suffer for the actions of the wonderful “Israelis” who were just caught trafficking in organs there. The small community in Budapest sure does suffer thanks to the pushtakim who control every illicit enterprise that infests the otherwise beautiful city.
As for the secularists who emigrated to EY, Argentina was more than willing to welcome them at the time. So was Brazil. They could have had their agricultural utopia there, rather than ruining the ecology of EY for their agriculture, most of which now operates at a loss and is subsidized.
“I follow in the ways of Reb Amram ZYA. I also am a chossid of Chabad.”
How could this be? Wasn’t chabad rebbe 100% behind the medina?
BS”D
The Rebbe Rashab and Rebbe Rayatz were vehemently anti-Zionist.
The Rebbe ZYA did not ever once utter the word medine. His only concern was for the safety of Jews living in EY and for the kedusha of the land. If he had believed that giving up even the Kosel would have saved Jewish lives, that is what he would have advocated. (The Qassams show what giving up land indeed does). He accepted that there was a state simply because it does exist, but he did not support its institutions or consider them holy in any way.
Many relatives of Reb Amram are Lubavitcher Chassidim. mostly of the “Yerushalmi” type.
“immigration to anyone with a tenuous connection to Judaism”
They are very machmir (stringent) in the Mitzvah of rescuing Jews and properly so. I agree that long term problems could arise, but we are obligated to look at the Mitzvah at hand of rescuing in the case of doubt and not be so worried about the long term in this case.
Those with a tenuous connection immigrating include hundreds of thousands of Russian shkotzim.
BS”D
Please. They do not care about rescuing Jews and never did. They started most of the anti-Semitism in the Arab world, and we all know what they said about one cow in EY being worth more than the Jews in danger during the Shoah.
They are interested only in secularized, deracinated Jews and those whom they can pass off as Jews so as to stop the trend toward tshuva, as well as to prevent a traditional to charedi Edot haMizrah majority from forming which is what happened until the FSU erev rav flooded EY.
NBN has to work privately with Xian sponsors because the left does not want American olim, and even the right knows that half of them are working abroad while taking advantage of subsidized schools for their children in EY (many of whom end up on Kikar Krack because they don’t fit in).
The French and Argentinians see EY just as a temporary stopgap, on their way to Montreal and Florida (or back to Argentina now that the economy is improving).
That is why they brought over who they brought over. NONE of those FSU shkootzim were or are persecuted as Jews. Many persecuted Jews during Soviet times and are doing the same in EY. They can’t find work here in the FSU so they go to E”Y for welfare designed to make sure they vote for the left that gives them handouts.
I now truly understand why “Zionism and Judaism are diametrically opposed”. However, Zionism is dead, and only the even deader post-Zionism remains.
Any settlement of Jews who are defiling the Land by their disdain for Torah uMitzvos is mitzvah sheba beavera. Any settlement of non Jews who will then marry Jews in EY, and then weakening conversion standards to pass them off as Jews, is tantamount to finishing the work of Hitler yemach shmoi, in artzenu hakedoisha.
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