Mumbai: Repaying Carnage with Kedusha

A moving tribute and call to action from R' Tzvi Freeman of Chabad:

"We're all in pain. We're all stunned. But you are asking questions you know you cannot answer. Why? How will that help anyone? What we need now is strength and courage. What we need now is to regather our forces and to rebuild.

"We knew beforehand that we are at war with an enemy. We knew that the world needs to be healed, that it oozes with a venomous darkness, and that darkness will not sit passively as we steal away its dominion. We knew that the more we fight this darkness, the harder it will fight back. We didn't fool ourselves. We decided we will fight and we will win. That is why Gavriel and Rivky went where they went. They went not as tourists, but as fearless soldiers.

Once you are at war, you don't stop to ponder all over again—can we win? Is this worth it? Maybe they're worse than we thought? That's deadly. If you would rather stay home and enjoy comfort while the rest of the world sits out in the cold, you should have decided that a long time ago. Now you are out there on the field of battle, you have already awakened the bear from its den, now there is no turning back.

They are darkness. We are light. They storm the shores with death in their eyes. We come to teach compassion and acts of beauty. They carry assault rifles and grenades. We carry candles for Friday night, a Torah of wisdom, joy and beauty.

Are we to surrender before them? Are we to stop and cry and ask, "maybe we're fighting the wrong battle"?

This Saturday night, a young couple is leaving Israel to take the place of the Gavriel and Rivky. We, all of us, will help them. The Chabad House of Mumbai had five stories. We will build a ten-story Chabad House in Mumbai, with greater light, with greater joy, with even more voices singing the Shabbat songs and children kissing the Torah scroll. We will build with a vengeance. We will fill the world with light and wisdom and the spirit of darkness in men's hearts shall forever perish. They come with their guns and their might, with a god of destruction and terror, but we come in the name of the Eternal, the source of all life and healing. They and all memory of them will vanish from the face of the earth and our lamp will burn forever.

May the Almighty G‑d hear the cry of their blood from the earth and put an end to all sorrow. May it be very soon, sooner than we can imagine.

Amen.

Kristallnacht: Then and Now

(Click on the image to read the headlines)

Two items from Aish for The 70th commemoration of Kristallnacht:

This November Jewish communities throughout the world will again gather to recall Kristallnacht -- and will unwittingly allow themselves, in some measure, to verbally embrace the very heresy that abetted the Holocaust.

Kristallnacht is German for "the night of crystal." And 70 years after the horrible events of 1938 should have given us by now sufficient perspective to expose the lie of a horrible WMD -- Word of Mass Deception -- that epitomizes the key to the most powerful methodology for murder perfected by the Nazis.

How, after all, were the Nazis able to commit their crimes under the veneer of civilized respectability? Upon analysis, the answer is obvious. They glorified the principle of murder by euphemism.

Read the rest.
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If you were a Jew in Europe in 1941, and you actually knew that Hitler was developing the means to carry out his threat to exterminate the Jews, what would you do? Dismiss the danger as overstated? Try to arouse the nations of the world to stop him? Or take upon yourself to employ every means possible -- both physically and spiritually -- to avert the catastrophe?

A must read.

Yitzhak Peretz of Mahane Yehuda (original photography)

Yitzhak Peretz of Mahane Yehuda 1 (Dave Bender)

Yitzhak Peretz is a devout Moroccan Jew who immigrated to Israel in the 1980's. He owns a small tailor shop across the street from Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda open-air market. I stopped in one day, looking to repair my backpack.

Peretz's pride and "old-world" manner, innate respect for his lifelong profession, and his clientele impressed me as I waited for him to finish the repair.


Yitzhak Peretz of Mahane Yehuda 2 (Dave Bender)

I was rapt, watching his hands and eyes as he worked on his ancient sewing machine. He said he'd brought it with him from Morocco to Israel.


Yitzhak Peretz of Mahane Yehuda 3 (Dave Bender)

As I waited for him to complete the work on my pack, another customer came in. Peretz proudly displayed his completed repairs on a handbag she'd brought in earlier.

Caption Contest: 'American Change in Jerusalem' (original photography)

"American Change in Jerusalem" (Dave Bender)

Any connection to the presidential elections is strictly coincidental...

This is one of my favorite shots.

The elderly man is waiting for a city bus on a freezing, drizzly Friday morning in downtown Jerusalem. The red neon sign behind him is blinking on and off. He's holding fresh flowers and even fresher baked challah bread, to honor the oncoming Sabbath, coming in that evening st sunset.

Looking back on the photo several years after shooting it, for me, he's come to symbolize patience, serenity and calm hope in the face of inclement weather, the vicissitudes of time, and the roaring pace of modern life epitomized by the loud "CHANGE" AMERICAN CHANGE."

I "grabbed" the scene with my first DSLR, a Fuji S5000, soon after purchasing from a shop in town. I shot it from across the street, with the camera mounted on a small tripod, and pressed against a wall to steady it.

Comments are welcome.