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A frum paper recently ran an article on an American pilot, a hero, who invested time and money, and risked his job helping save thousands of Jews from Yemen shortly after the state was established. When asked why he did it he responded altruistically, thta these people needed help/
Yet i really had mixed feelings.
This person was undoubtedly a hero. In a way like Sugihara or others, he risked his career for a thankless unrecognized opportunity to help downtrodden people at a time when all the civilized countries – especially the UK – stood by.
Yet, unlike Sugihara merited playing a role in re establishing Yiddishkeit, this gentleman’s actions unfortunately brought about tremendous heartbreak as the Zionists forcibly removed 99.9 % from their traditions stemming back thousand of years, forcibly chopped peyos ….
How does one approach such a thing?
He risked so much yet he merited so very little.
And was it correct to interview someone, who although he acted altruistically nonetheless brought about a geferliche unimaginable horrific churban?
I’m not sure what the question is. How many American Jews sponsored Jews to come here or helped them when here & the kids ended up not Frum? This happened to many Rabbonims kids. How does that change that they did the right thing?
Sometimes the opposite is true. My Grandparents came after WWII (as a sponsored family) and moved to a very OOT community with a few Jews and even less Frum ones. My not Frum Grandparents needed to to go to work but the public school wouldn’t take my uncle because he was too young & missed the cut off date. So the small Jewish school said they’ll take him. He ended up becoming Frum & learning in Yeshiva many years. My Grandparents weren’t Frum but also weren’t Anti-Frum so they sent my uncles & aunts there as well. All the kids ended up Frum (mostly Yeshivish) which my Grandparents didn’t mind. My totally Secular grandmother would say how much she enjoyed seeing her son teaching her grandchildren Torah. (They we’re both Survivors who lost their entire families so even though they weren’t Frum they experienced a lot of nachas seeing their family rebuild.
So sometimes it works the other way.
A Rabbi who knew my family background said to me, “It’s a miracle you even know you’re Jewish!” If not for the day school where would my family be if the kids grew up in a not Frum home and attended public school? Probably as Secular Jews who would have no problem intermarrying.How does one approach this? he/she get a life and a job and would not be fixated with such stuff.
There are a lot of options in explaining this; megalglin zchus al y’ddi zachai, etc.. is one mahalach. Another is that we don’t know his intentions; why exactly did the Yemenite jews need help? Because they were poorer than Jews in tel aviv? Why did he take a sudden interest in their non-existent plight? Maybe he was a Christian zionist who believes that jews need to return to the land for their false messiah to return.
Maybe he actually meant well but should have looked into the cultural erasure (to use a woke term) that the zionists were doing to sefardim and everyone else (yaldei tehran, etc)
Let’s remember the fact that church people in europe put themselves in danger by fostering Jewish children (and shmading them), do you think they’ll be rewarded for that?
There were different nonJews, some would be motivated by proselytizing, others for saving lives … There are hard cases,.. one of my relatives left her blonde son with a neighbor, telling her that if something happens with the boy she’ll report the neighbors Jewish husband …. The boy survived
I’ve seen Teimeni Jews with peyos. And they are pronouncing Ayn, so they were not raised by chasidim. So, maybe those terrible stories had some Guzma ..
For those who lament Sephardim coming to Israel, think what would happen with them under Asad, Qaddafi, Saddam, Yemen civil war, ISIS… You want to see Jewish girls sold into slavery and boys learning to slit throats?
>>>Another is that we don’t know his intentions; why exactly did the Yemenite jews need help? Because they were poorer than Jews in tel aviv?
According to all neutral versions of history they needed because the Jews in Yemen were facing a difficult time. Over 80 Jews were killed in the 1947 Aden riots and many Jewish owned houses were destroyed, In 1948 there was an accusation that the Jewish community in Sa’ana had murdered two Muslim girls so all the community leaders were imprisoned. etc
Without going into the debates on the subject and even assuming the Zionist version of history is pure revisionisms, ask yourself the following question. Do you think that in the span of just one year over 95% of the Yemenite Jewish community (about 50,000 people) just picked themselves up and abandoned their homes and communities and country they had lived in for over 2,500 years to start a new life in a new country because a few (very , very few to be exact) Zionist representatives showed up and convinced them to move to Israel ? Or was there some other factors behind that decision?
“My thought was that today the papers shouldn’t be respecting someone who played a massive part in such a thing…’
Cancel culture….two sides that will be weighed differently in terms of potential harms had they been “left alone” knowing what we know today about subsequent Islamic radicalism in some of those countries
“My thought was that today the papers shouldn’t be respecting someone who played a massive part in such a thing…”
My thoughts are that you need to relax and take deep breaths and enjoy life
AAQ, there are Holocaust survivors; does that mean that the gas chambers were an exaggeration? Do you have any idea how insulting your statements are to the survivors of spiritual murder, who clawed their way back to Hashem despite every attempt to destroy them?
> Do you have any idea how insulting your statements are to the survivors of spiritual murder
the question is based on a premise that a Jew saved from Yemen had surely went to gehinom, effort wasted. I am saying this premise is wrong, I am not making fun of anyone. a de raba, he is treating people as abstract material for the political stories. Would you similarly say that it was not worth liberating Jews from Nazi camps or demonstrating for Soviet Jews because a sizeable number of those assimilated when freed?
You’ve missed my point. You’re questioning the stories of survivors of spiritual genocide because “well i see so many walking around with payos”, that’s exactly what Holocaust deniers would say – “well, i see a lot of jews walking around, must not have been 6 million”
Relax, deep breaths in thru nose out thru your mouth, close your eyes and pretend you hear the ocean or waterfalls
Avria, Zushy, I am not questioning any stories, all I am saying that the pilot story is questioned because some of Teimeni Jews ended with a tragedy. This is like saying that Netziv was wrong protesting Russian infiltration of the Volozhin yeshiva because Russian revolution would soon sweep away both the Czar and the yeshivos. “Oh, you know Talmidei Chachamim who survived and went to other countries?! So, you don’t care about all those Jews who were killed in Russia” This is clearly a silly argument because you can point to all yeshivos that came out of Volozhin derech, but as you don’t know many Teimenims and they all one big news-story for you. They are way above just a reason for your pity and attack weapon against your enemy. Follow Menachem Begin who when visiting Sephardim refugees, instead of pitying them (affirmative action style), appealed to their higher side – you are the people who came from Rambam, etc.
I don’t know what would have happened with Jews in Arab countries in 1930-50s, I agree that their fate became worse by a connection with Israel. But look a little longer -transformation of Middle East over the century is not much related to Jews. Yes, all these countries talk about Jews and Israel all the time, but mostly to keep population entertained and angry at someone else.
So, think how Jews would feel under any of the regimes of last 50 years – socialist murderers on Syria, Iraq, Libya; Iranian islamists, Yemen civil war. How many Jews will be paraded in orange jumpsuits by ISIS? Maybe they would be OK in Egypt, Morocco, Tunis, Jordan.
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