Shiur given on Parshat Beha’alotecha, 5786

Korach came back to his home without his payot.

Where did Korach’s payot disappear to?! Who took Koracha’s payot?!

His wife asked him: Where are your payot?![1] Maybe, did you forget them in the mikvah?

Maybe, he took them off in the mikvah, so that there wouldn’t be a hazitzah (barrier between the person and the water), so he took them off beforehand? And afterwards, he’d stick them back on again?

==

Like when I travelled on Purim, when I drew close to Breslov, because I’d been a Lelov chassid for two years.

I was Lelov. I used to travel every motzae shabbat to Lelov. This was on Shmuel Mohilever Street, #35.

R’ Shmuel Mohilever, he was a tremendous gaon. All the cities [in Israel] that are called ‘Shmuel’, these are called after his name – Givat Shmuel, perhaps also Har Shmuel.

He persuaded the Baron Rothschild to build yishuvim in Eretz Yisrael. The Baron Rothschild is buried in Zichron Yaakov, they exhumed him after 20 years.

==

So back then, I used to travel each motzae shabbat to Lelov.

I was a chassid of Rabbi Moshe Mordechai of Lelov. I used to learn with R’ Alter, his son. So then, each motzae shabbat I used to travel to there.

I used to travel with one person, he was called Ben Baruch. I used to go with him. Let’s say shkiyah (halachic twilight) was at 4.30pm, so by 5.05pm, I’d already said ‘Baruch HaMavdil’, and I was already on the busy, by 5.05pm.

And like that, I used to manage to get to Lelov for each shabbat. I was also a Vizhnitzer chassid, for a time.

==

So on Purim, I said to the Rabbanit: Today, I am going to uncover the truth.

Today, I will uncover where the truth really lies.

Because the Rabbanit always used to tell me to study the Breslov seforim. So then on the Shvi’i shel Pesach, i read Sippurei Ma’asiot, and I saw that Rabbenu said that it’s possible to make silver that is not silver, and it’s possible to make gold that is not gold.[2]

It’s possible to take this slice of cake, and to make gold out of it.

Afterwards, Rabbenu said that he could learn all the wisdom in the world within a single hour. So I said to myself: If there is someone like this, a person who can testify about himself something like this, so I am going to defer to him.

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Rabbenu was a redhead, average height, with long payot.

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So, I said to the Rabbanit on Purim: Today, I am going to reveal the truth!

I am going to find the place where there are prayers, there, on Purim, like there are on Yom Kippur. A place where they pray on Purim, like they pray on Yom Kippur, mamash – there, there is the truth.

==

So I went, I started walking around looking for this place, where they pray like on Yom Kippur.

Each place where I went, I saw drunks. Drunks who were wobbling around, vomiting. And me, I have an allergy to drunks. It’s an illness, I have an allergic reaction. I can’t stand seeing drunks.

I was in Ein Kerem now [at Hadassah], I should have told the Professor this, that I have another illness: I am allergic to drunks, I have an obsession with drunks.

And in each place that I went, I only saw drunks.

==

[Some is missing, the Rav now changes track.]

There was a woman who married some Arab.

So we went with Rav Grossman to rescue her. At the beginning, she didn’t want to come [with us], but he [the husband] used to give her murderous blows. She already had two children, and he used to beat her up.

And apart from the blows she used to get, he didn’t even used to fix the window in her room. She had a broken window, and this was in the North [of Israel], in the Galilee. This was in Sakhnin, and it’s cold there.

It can get to zero degrees at night. And even the window, he didn’t fix it for her. The wind used to blow in, at night. So we went, and we took her out in the middle of the night, and escaped with her.

==

At the beginning, we put her with my mother in Haifa, so she hid herself away with my mother, and she used to go down to the neighborhood park, and sit there.

They asked her, who is your husband? So she said, my husband is an Arab.

But it looks like he was making inquiries about her, and he found out that my mother was hiding her in her house. So then he got in touch with my mother, and he threatened her that if she continued to shelter her in the house, he was going to harm her [i.e. the Rav’s mother].

So she got scared, and she said: OK, take her away.

So we hid her in South Africa.

==

Also in prison, there was some Arab who was next to me, who was also married to some Jewish woman.

An Arab with blue eyes, and his wife used to make kiddush and everything, because she didn’t want her parents to know [that she’d married an Arab]. So I told him: Convert! But he didn’t want to.

==

So how did we get to the whole story about Purim?

Because back then, when I travelled to Bnei Brak, so in the central bus station on Purim, they pulled on my payot. They wanted to check if they were were real, or fake. They told me:

These are real, or fake? We didn’t know if they were real.

Maybe, I’d just stuck them on [for Purim].

==

[Skipping some.]

So, in any case, Korach returned home without his payot.

And his wife screamed at him. She couldn’t accept this. He had a wife who was a monster. She said:

Where are your payot?! I knew that in the end, he [i.e. Moshe] would cut your payot off!

Also my wife wouldn’t have accepted this, if I would have come home without my payot. She wouldn’t have accepted me. Perhaps you, yes. You have a good wife.

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So, Korach came to scream at Moshe.

He also screamed at him, why did you send spies to Eretz Yisrael?! You knew that they were going to slander the land! So why did you send them?! Why did you send them?! You knew they were going to speak badly!

In another two weeks, we’ll be reading Korach, already. Next week, at minchah, we’ll already be reading Korach.

Excerpted and Translated from Shivivei Or # 459.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Tractate Sanhedrin 110.

[2] See Sippurei Maasiot Chapter 13.

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Elsewhere, the Rav also commented that the army simply isn’t ‘working’ any more, and that every day they are killing another soldier, with drones that can ‘see them’ via a camera and zone in on them.

I decided not to put up detailed comments from the Rav about that, because if you need the Rav to tell you the army is broken, at this point, you should probably go for a brain scan – to check it didn’t fall out, somewhere.

=

Well, this is getting more and more interesting.

First, let’s go back to the Rav’s comments from last week, which you can read HERE.

The relevant snippet:

There were no bridges, there were no train tracks, there was nothing [in Eretz Yisrael at the turn of the 20th century]. The Jews brought the train tracks, the bridges, they built houses. [The Bedouin] lived in tents, they lives in houses made of mud-brick.

The Jews… It’s a holy birthright… It’s the holy birthright of the firstborn son [i.e. the zchut of the firstborn that Eisav sold to Yaakov in return for a pot of lentils], the real Jews, the true sons of Eretz Yisrael.

All of this, Hussein Ali wrote.

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But they didn’t want to accept him, and then the Z…s saw that Dahan was already meeting with them [the Arab Heads of State].

He already had three letters. They ran off to Amman fast, to meet him, with Hussein Ali.

He said, no, I only want religious Jews [in Eretz Yisrael]. Here, there should only be chareidim.

This is what he said.

I don’t want you, I don’t want any agreement with you, no joint activities.

They [the Arabs] themselves wanted the Jews the ascend [to Eretz Yisrael]. They said, we will help to found here a national home [for the Jews].

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When I was typing this up last week, I thought the Rav was engaging in unrealistic hyperbole, to make a point.

It seems, I was wrong about that.

Here is the academic article where I found the text that proves what the Rav states, above:

https://www.academia.edu/43194874/From_Zionist_to_Anti_Zionist_The_Tragic_Fate_of_Jacob_Israel_de_Haan_in_Palestine_Reconsidered

This is the source he brings, where Emir Abdullah of Amman is quoted as saying the following to the Z-ist delegation who rushed out to meet him, to try to counter De Haan and Agudat Israel’s influence:

When they met again in Amman the next month, Abdullah unequivocally stated that the Zionists should better rid themselves of their illusions and expressed his favor for the Orthodox party:

“I do not see a Jewish majority in Palestine surrounded by Arab countries. One cannot live in peace, I mean true peace, with the Greater Arab Idea. From all sides there is suspicion.

When Dr. Weizmann says that Jews in Palestine do not have political privileges, do you think the Arabs believe him?

And if I say, that a constitutional government in Palestine will not harm the Jews, would the Zionists believe me?

My country is open for Jews. And the country of my brother [King Faisal of Iraq] is open. All Arab countries. But just one condition: no exclusive political rights.

Also not in Palestine.

You have the choice: peace or friendship with all Arab nations. Or hunting after something impossible in Palestine.

I do support Arab- Jewish cooperation on equal footing in all Arab countries, including Palestine. If the Zionists cannot or do not want to, let then the others, of Agudat Israel do it (..).”

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This is dynamite!

By putting secular political aspirations ahead of observance of Torah Judaism, the Z-ists here created the problem we have been dealing with, ever since.

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Of course, the Arabs are not blameless.

The Hashemite monarchs were double-dealing with everyone, and saying different things to different people, depending on what advantage they thought they could get. This is an extremely nuanced picture, that requires tons of research to actually avoid the pitfalls of ‘oversimplication’ – not easy, when you just write a blog post where people’s eyes glaze over after 5 seconds.

The official Z-ist delegation sent out from Jerusalem to counter de Haan is also interesting:

It was made up of the Zionist Commission’s local chief Colonel Frederick Kisch, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yaakov Meir and deputy mayor Yellin.

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Frederick Kisch is this guy, snippet from Wiki:

Frederick Hermann Kisch, CB, CBE, DSO (23 August 1888 – 7 April 1943) was a decorated British Army officer and Zionist leader. A Brigadier, he was the highest ranking Jew to serve in the British Army.

Political zionism was a British-military project, don’t forget. It required Jewish ‘puppets’ to front the movement, and those the Brits found in great numbers.

One researcher, Rubinstein, states that it was Frederick Kisch, and not Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (later second President of Israel) who actually gave the order to have De Haan murdered:

Rubinstein claimed that Kisch, rather than Ben-Zvi, was the instigator of the murder although there was no clear evidence in this direction.

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If the ‘Kisch’ name sounds familiar it’s because this guy is his grandson:

Yoav Kisch

Snippet:

Kisch was born and raised in Tel Aviv. His paternal grandfather was Frederick Kisch, the highest-ranking Jew ever to serve in the British Army. Through his mother, he is a descendant of Shmuel Salant, who served as Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem in the 19th century.

Kisch held British citizenship until having to renounce it in 2015 as a condition of being allowed to take up a seat in the Knesset.

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And the last thing to add, from THIS academic article, is that De Haan was possibly also gunned down because he was about to expose a massive financial scandal involving the Z-ists embezzling money for themselves, that was meant to buy land and solve Arab-Jewish tensions.

Snippet:

According to Giebels, the immediate motive to the murder was that De Haan was about to expose a large financial scandal related to the Zionist land purchase project, in which the administrator of the Rothschild settlements Chaim Kalvarisky was the leading figure.

De Haan probably found out that Kalvarisky embezzled money of a fund that was designated for the rapprochement of Arab-Jewish relations to solve his own financial problems, since his estate contained a receipt of Kalvarisky’s bank account.

Michael Berkowitz added that De Haan also planned to publicly accuse Zionist officials, including Kalvarisky, for attempting the murder of a Jew that refused to cooperate in a crucial land deal. This would have severely damaged the image and credibility of the Zionist leadership in Palestine.

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There is literally nothing new under the sun.

As it was then, so it still is today.

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What was the sin of the Jewish people, that led to King Saul being created the first Jewish king by the Prophet Samuel?

They wanted to be like everyone else around them, and to have a flesh-and-blood king, instead of relying on Hashem.

Here’s the relevant passage, from Shmuel I:12:11-17:

So Hashem sent Jerubaal [Gideon] and Bedan [Shimshon] and Jepthah and Samuel, and He rescued you from the hands of your enemies all around, and you dwelt in security. But when you saw that Nahash, king of the Children of Ammon, came upon you, you said to me, ‘No, but a king shall reign over us!

But Hashem, your God, is your King!

And now, here is the king whom you have chosen, whom you have requested….

I shall call to Hashem and He will set forth thunder and rain; then you will recognise and see that your wickedness is great…in requesting a king for yourselves.

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The first ‘kingdom’ of Shaul ended badly.

Shaul turned away from God, and from doing what the Prophet Samuel told him, including killing off all the Amalekites, and even  ended up resorting to witchcraft to try to ‘predict’ what was going to happen on the battlefield.

They coined the phrase ‘he who will be kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind’ after Shaul.

He refused to kill the Amalekite King, Agag, out of misplaced pity; but then happily murdered a whole town of righteous Kohanim and their families in Nov, for the ‘sin’ of giving the refugee David some bread to eat.

The parallels with what are going on here today, in our failed State, are too obvious to require stating.

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But after Shaul, and his failed kingship, came David, the ancestor of the Moshiach.

Let’s not forget that.

The story does have a happy ending.

We just have to hang on, turn to God, and carry on working on overcoming our own bad middot and lack of emuna, until we finally get there.

Well, it’s never dull, is it?

After almost two weeks of hosting my parents, made homeless by that massive Golders Green fire, this morning as they were on the way to the airport, we got ‘bombed by Iran’.

As far as I can tell, they managed to fly back to the UK. I’ll know for sure by this evening.

In the meantime, the whole world is in a bit of a pickle, and wherever Jews live, it’s getting kinda hot for them.

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In the meantime, I was doing more digging on the Rav’s statement about the letter from the Arabs, welcoming the Z-s to Eretz Yisrael.

And I dug up more info on it, which you can see a lot of HERE, on the Wiki page called this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal–Weizmann_agreement

Here’s a few relevant snippets:

The Faisal–Weizmann agreement was signed by Emir Faisal, the third son of Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, King of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz, and Chaim Weizmann, President of the Zionist Organization on 3 January 1919. Signed two weeks before the start of the Paris Peace Conference, it was presented by the Zionist delegation alongside a March 1919 letter written by T. E. Lawrence in Faisal’s name to American Zionist leader Felix Frankfurter as two documents to argue that the Zionist plans for Palestine had prior approval of Arabs.^[3

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These are the boundaries of the future ‘Jewish State’ submitted to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 by the Zionist Organisation – that Faisal agreed to, upon condition that the British would be withdrawing from the whole of the Middle East, and that the Arabs would also have political autonomy in the area:

“The boundaries of Palestine shall follow the general lines set out below: Starting on the North at a point on the Mediterranean Sea in the vicinity South of Sidon and following the watersheds of the foothills of the Lebanon as far as Jisr el Karaon, thence to El Bire following the dividing line between the two basins of the Wadi El Korn and the Wadi Et Teim thence in a southerly direction following the dividing line between the Eastern and Western slopes of the Hermon, to the vicinity West of Beit Jenn, thence Eastward following the northern watersheds of the Nahr Mughaniye close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway. In the East a line close to and West of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba. In the South a frontier to be agreed upon with the Egyptian Government. In the West the Mediterranean Sea.

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But bottom line, many of the Arab leaders did write letters, publically, welcoming the Jews to Eretz Israel- and even, welcoming the Z-ists.

But then, it all started to go terribly wrong.

Really getting down to the brass tacks of why that really happened is probably a whole PhD in itself, and it’s not something I plan on writing myself, at this point.

But, there’s some interesting scholarly information to add to this.

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Isaiah Friedmann wrote a book in 2000 called: Palestine: A twice-promised land.

If you go HERE, you can read a summary of the main arguments. This is the bit that caught my eye:

Central to Arab claims on Palestine was a letter dated 24 October 1915, from Sir Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, to King Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, pledging Arab independence.

Friedman shows that this letter was conditional on a general Arab uprising against the Turks.

Predicated on reciprocal action, the letter committed the British to recognize and uphold Arab independence in the areas of the Fertile Crescent once it was liberated by the Arabs themselves.

As all evidence shows, few tribes rebelled against the Turks. The Arabs in Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia fought for the Ottoman Empire against the British.

In addition to its non-binding nature, McMahon’s letter has been misinterpreted with respect to the territories it covers.

Friedman’s archival discovery of the Arabic version actually read by Hussein indisputably shows that Palestine was not included in the British pledge.

Indeed, Hussein welcomed the return of the Jews just as his son Emir Feisal believed that Arab-Jewish cooperation would be a means to build Arab independence without the interference of the European powers.

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Bottom line, if our hasbara operation wasn’t totally bankrupt, this information would be explained all over the world.

Because different people can have different opinions and interpretations, but facts are still facts.

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Looks like I will now be reading Friedmann’s book…

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Bottom line, tho, is that the inhabitants of the Middle East were all killing each other for centuries before the ‘State of Israel’ showed up, to become the international scapegoat.

Part of the reason Britain and France wanted to create a Jewish State in the first place, was to act as a buffer zone between the warring inhabitants of the Middle East – including the Druze and the Christians.

Go look up what happened in 1845, a century and a half before ‘Sabra and Shatilla’, and many decades before Ariel Sharon was even a glint in his father’s eye.

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Here’s a few small snippets from HERE, just to get you started:

The Massacres of 1840-1860
Fueled by Ottoman Turkish machination and socioeconomic/ religious differences, inter-religious massacres ensued in Lebanon and reaped thousands dead with many cities, towns and villages obliterated.

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[In 1842] representatives of the European powers proposed to the sultan that Lebanon be partitioned into Christian and Druze sections.

On December 7, 1842, the sultan adopted the proposal and asked Assad Pasha, the governor (wali) of Beirut, to divide the region, then known as Mount Lebanon, into two districts: a northern district under a Christian deputy governor and a southern district under a Druze deputy governor. this arrangement came to be known as the Double Qaimaqamate…

This partition of Lebanon proved to be a mistake.

Animosities between the religious sects increased, nurtured by outside powers. The French, for example, supported the Christians, while the British supported the Druzes, and the Ottomans fomented strife to increase their control.

Not surprisingly, these tensions led to yet another conflict between Christians and Druzes. In April 1845, the long gathering storm burst with a Maronite attack on the Druze in the Shouf, burning fourteen villages and advancing as victors to Mukhtara.

All over the region similar engagements occurred with similar results. The Turks acted as a Druze reserve, and then came the old story of villages in flames and Christian fugitives pursued by Druze and Turkish troops were plundered, mutilated, and slain repeating the performance of 1842.

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Where was the ‘State of Israel’ in all this, in 1842 and 1845?

The answer is: absolutely nowhere.

And not even the greatest antisemite in the world, can pretend otherwise.

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The Middle East was burning for centuries before ‘the State’ came into being – that’s part of the reason ‘Palestine’ just couldn’t be settled and developed economically in any real way.

The Bedouin tribes even broke the ancient Solomon’s Aquaduct, to get water for their flocks, and stuffing everyone else who relied on the water downwind.

There was tribal killings and wars going on here 24/7 – that’s why no-one could really start growing food in Eretz Yisrael, on anything like an industrial scale, until well into the 1870s, when the Turkish Empire was already on the ropes and the Europeans had begun to take over ‘Palestine’ to advance their own interests.

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Under Turkish law, only established religions were recognised.

The French said they were protecting the Roman Catholic ‘Latins’ when they meddled in Turkish affairs.

The Russians said they were protecting the Greek Orthodox church.

And Britain… Britain was a nation of ‘new Protestants’, that had no pre-existing legal status in the Ottoman empire.

So, they cast around for a ‘client group’ they could go and ‘protect’ as an excuse for getting their boots on the ground in the Middle East, and who do you think they found?

If you said ‘the Jews’, award yourself a billion brownie points.

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The real history of the modern problems we are still facing in this area started with Napoleon’s conquest, around 230 years ago.

Even most historians don’t start looking that far back for the roots of today’s very real problems.

Which is a real shame, because then more people would understand way more about what really happened here, and why – and how these old issues are still resonating today.

Just today, no-one talks about Druze massacring Maronite Christians in Lebanon, and vice-versa, without somehow blaming it all on the Joooooos.

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Tov.

I will maybe pick this up again soon.

In the meantime, it’s never dull around here.

A couple of weeks ago, at the Rav, someone gave me this:

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It was a small card, in the memory of a fallen soldier called Yosef Yehuda Hirak.

He joined the army’s Engineering Corp.

He got married while he was still doing his army service.

And he was killed in Gaza, last year, after being married just seven months, aged 22.

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The heart bleeds, doesn’t it?

For sensitive people, for mothers, for parents, for wives, children, siblings, grandparents – the heart bleeds.

Here’s what the opposite side of that little card says:

מפנקסו של יוסף יהודה חיראק ז”ל

Here is the extracted Hebrew text:

אבא שבשמים אבא יקר ואהוב! תן לי כח להיות בשמחה תמיד ושלא לפאת את כל הסובבים אותי, תן לי כח להאיר פנים לכל אדם לראות מצלת חברי ולא חסרונם ח”ו, תן לי כח לראות בצין טובה כל דבר, שלא לדון לכף זכות את עצמי ואת חברי, תן לי כח להיות עם הרבה סבלנות וצנווה באיוחד אכשיו הפירונות, תן לי כח להיות קדוש וטהור לכל ארך השירות וגם אחרי, אבא שבשמים, תזכה אותי לפאור את הציניים את המחשבה את הבריות את הלשון ובמיוחד את אולני שיאצאו רק דברי קדושה בא”מ אבא, תן לי כח להיות אופיל ולא אומל עם ברחוני וגם הפסאני, ושלא לקדם שאק בעולם ולא יצא חילול ה’ ח”ו תחת ידי! אבא שבשמים, בבקשה אני אתחנן שתפלח לי את ויווני הקרובה פלי ציכופיים פלי מניאות ושהכל יהיה בנחת ובהבהירות!! אוהב ללא אבול אבדך ובנק הקטן יוסף יהודה

English Translation

From the notebook of Yosef Yehuda Chirak, of blessed memory

Dear Father in Heaven, my beloved Father!

Give me the strength to always be joyful and not to burden those around me. Give me the strength to greet every person with a warm face, to see my friends’ merits and not their faults, God forbid.

Give me the strength to see the good in everything, not to judge myself or my friends favorably only for my own sake. Give me the strength to have great patience and humility, especially now during times of conflict. Give me the strength to be holy and pure throughout my entire service and afterward as well.

Father in Heaven, may You merit me to purify my eyes, my thoughts, my actions, and my speech — and especially that only words of holiness come out of my mouth. Father, give me the strength to be uplifting and not to be a burden to those around me and to those who support me, and that I should not cause shame in the world, and that no desecration of God’s name should come from my hands!

Father in Heaven, I beg and plead with You — help me through my upcoming period, free of anxieties, free of worries, so that everything will go smoothly and clearly!!

With boundless love, Your servant and child, Yosef Yehuda

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I am tearing up a little, writing this post.

It’s a good sign, dafka, that maybe the emotional numbness I’ve been walking around with months is finally starting to melt a little.

It’s a hint, that maybe, just maybe, the end to this horrible nightmare that began on Simchat Torah three years ago is perhaps drawing to a close.

And that now, we can finally start to feel again, without being totally overwhelmed by the tears and the sadness, of what has happened here, and who has been lost.

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The Sanzer Rebbe, after the holocaust, said that the best Jews had been taken.

I think that’s playing out here again, to be honest.

I certainly wasn’t writing such awesome prayers to Hashem as Yosef Yehuda, when I was 22.

Anything but.

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At the same time, we know everything is a tikkun, a spiritual rectification, and that Yosef Yehuda’s soul is now in a very good place, having done what it came to do.

But still, for those of us down here on planet earth still.

It’s painful.