Our Ancestors

Excerpted from a paper by Philip Levens

Why Study the Past?

In America, history is a subject often slept through in school. Valuing the past and tradition goes against the grain of our national mind set. We are a nation whose collective memory views the Second World War as a black and white documentary and anything before that as ancient history. After all, who has time for the past? What matters is the present, the here and now. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's why our ancestors immigrated to America in the first place. They wanted a chance to live in freedom, unencumbered by tyranny and prejudice.

So why should we take time out from our fast paced lives to be concerned with ancestors we never knew? Because to a large degree the past determines the future. If we don't know where we came from, how will we know where we're going?

There is something within us that says life is more than just us. We are part of a puzzle that can only be understood over time or perhaps from an infinite vantage point, the view that G-d has. If we could step back far enough and see the strands of destiny we might understand the purpose for everything.

Who Were They?

Our immigrant ancestors were working class. They spoke Yiddish at home and more often than not worked sun up to sun down. They had large families to feed and didn't have money or time for vacations; sometimes barely enough money for food, but they got by, nobody starved. They weren't heroic or famous men and women but they were exceptionally good parents who loved and cared for their children. In fact, if there is a common theme that runs through their descendants memories, it is how good their parents were to them.

They didn't keep comprehensive records of their ancestors. The record ends with the immigrants, their parents names just vague memories. Any further research would have to continue in Europe. If we could go back further it would most likely be more of the same, good, hard working people trying to make the best of their lot in life, which was sometimes incredibly difficult. So difficult in fact, with pogroms, poverty, war, the Depression, and the perils of emmigration, that we can hardly imagine how we would have managed... or even survived.

We owe them a great debt for entering into the unknown, for traveling to a new world, a blank page where they dreamed of writing a new script for their futures, and for the future of their children... and we are, all of us, their children. Their memories are perpetuated in the lives of their children and grand-children, through the generations into the stream of history that flows into the ocean of eternity.

How Are We Connected?

We are these people in so many ways; in the obvious: eye color, height, weight, all of which are determined by genes, a circulating pool where certain traits might not re-surface for several generations. We are a mind boggling combination of DNA from an army of ancestors.

But we are not just connected through biology, we are also linked in nearly imperceptible ways, certain gestures, mannerisms, a way of walking, the timber of a voice, even the way we view the world... the subtle things that spell the mystery of uniqueness.

Body vs. Soul: Differing Perspectives

An intriguing lecture by Rabbi Manis Friedman from the Bais Chana Women International website.

There’s the reflexive way we look at life – the way the body perceives life – and then there’s the way the soul looks at life. To view the world through Jewish eyes is to view the world through the perspective of the soul. Time 9:46
Click on the arrow to listen

The Soul

Lyrics of the song Neshama from the album of the same name by Mordechai Ben David

A stranger adrift in an unfriendly land
Of mountains, tundras, and sand
To enrichen the lives in that wasteland is his goal
His name is Neshama, soul

From a mountain came a gift of the only true life
Sinai now stands for bloodshed and strife
When rifles fall silent and tanks cease to roam
The victor will then be the soul

Blackened and charred like a synagogue burned
Lies a tank lifeless and overturned
Four heroes within snuffed out like a coal
But forever and ever and ever alive is their soul

Are PETA the new Nazis?

History repeats itself with anti-Jewish propaganda.

How Genocide Was Made Acceptable to the Masses

On November 10th, 1938, the Führer made an important speech to the German press. Although he made no direct reference either to the Reichskristallnacht itself or to Jews in general, the whole speech can be regarded as his comments upon the lack of support for the pogrom he was getting from the German public. Hitler rebuked the propaganda makers for not having understood his strategy - aiming at war - and he made it unmistakably clear to his audience what exactly he expected them to do in the future:

Coercion was the reason why for years I only talked about peace. But gradually it became necessary to condition the German people psychologically and slowly make it grasp that there do exist things that one has to solve with violent means when they cannot be solved by peaceful means. To do so, however, it was necessary not to make propaganda for violence as such, but to elucidate certain events of foreign policy to the German people in such a way that the inner voice of the people by itself slowly began to call for violence. Accordingly, it meant to elucidate certain events in such a way that totally automatically the conviction would gradually evolve in the brains of the broad masses: What one cannot solve with fair means, one has to solve with violence, because it cannot go on like this.

The rebuke was certainly understood by Joseph Goebbels, who for the first time decided to use the film medium as a tool for inducing anti-Semitism into the German people. Being responsible for Nazi film production he had, however, earlier preferred other topics (including easy entertainment and more "positive" presentations of Nazi world view) , but immediately after Hitler's speech he called upon the production companies to present scripts for anti-Semitic feature films. His wish for a "documentary" could only be fulfilled after the Campaign in Poland in September 1939, because he lacked footage of Jews actually looking like the Nazi stereotype of the Jew, of services in the synagogue and of ritual slaughtering.

From his diary as well as other sources we can follow the production of this particular propaganda film - "Der ewige Jude" - which right from the beginning was intended to become the ultimate public legitimation of anti-Semitism, in accordance with Hitler's afore-mentioned demand.

There are strong reasons to believe that the film and its production history should be characterized as a mirror of the decision-making process to launch the Holocaust itself, because the final version of the film can only be interpreted as a deliberate call for annihilation, through it's juxtapositioning of ritual slaughtering - staged as cruelty to animals - and Hitler's notorious prophecy of January 30, 1939.

In order to create the strongest effect on the public as possible Joseph Goebbels had ordered ritual Jewish slaughtering to be filmed in the Lodz ghetto, and when he saw the rushes of these scenes on October 16, 1939, he wrote in his diary:

Scenes so horrific and brutal in their explicitness that one's blood runs cold. One shudders at such barbarism. This Jewry must be annihilated.

He showed the scenes at Hitler's dinner table on October 28, 1939, and those present "were all deeply shocked." Two days later, Goebbels himself went to the ghetto of Lodz - and commented on his impressions in his diary:

It is indescribable. They are no longer human beings, they are animals. It is therefore no humanitarian task, but a task for the surgeon. One must make cuts here, and that in a most radical way. Or Europe will one day collapse from the Jewish disease.

Goebbels pursued this idea of a genocidal solution during the whole production of a film which can only be seen as his personal advocacy for prevailing on Hitler himself to draw the "natural" consequence of his own - exterminist, yet still theoretical - ideology. The film was recut, rephrased and tested several times in accordance with Hitler's wishes before the Führer finally approved the film for public screening, probably on May 20, 1940.
- An excerpt from a paper presented at the 27th Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA, March 2-4, 1997 by Stig Hornshøj-Møller, Copenhagen, Denmark http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/tampa-19970302.shtml

PETA Accuses the Jews of Cruelty

After receiving complaints alleging violations of kosher and federal law at AgriProcessors, a massive Iowa slaughterhouse that produces Rubashkin's, Aaron's Best, and Iowa's Best meats, PETA wrote to company officials and asked them to take steps to make certain that cruelty was not occurring. We suggested that the plant hire Dr. Temple Grandin, the country's leading slaughter expert, who has helped advise on matters of kosher slaughter systems, to advise them on how to avoid some of the worst abuses. AgriProcessors had its attorney, Nathan Lewin, write back to us asserting, "Kosher slaughter is being conducted in accordance with the letter and spirit of Jewish law, which prescribes the most humane treatment of animals that has been known throughout human history." The tone of the letter was not persuasive, so we took a look ourselves.
-From PETA's GoVeg website http://www.goveg.com/feat/agriprocessors/index.asp

PETA claims the video, posted on its Web site Tuesday afternoon, shows repeated acts of animal cruelty at AgriProcessors Inc. in northeastern Iowa. The organization filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday that alleged improper slaughtering practices. "They're ripping the tracheas and esophagi out of fully conscious animals, dumping them out of pens into pools of their own blood. The animals stand and bellow and attempt to escape for up to three and even four minutes in some cases," Bruce Friedrich, a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said late Tuesday.

But Rabbi Chaim Kohn, the plant's supervising rabbi, told The New York Times in Wednesday's editions that the tapes were "testimony that this is being done right." In kosher slaughter, the animals' throats are sliced with a razor-sharp blade, intended to cause instant and painless death. Jewish law forbids stunning them first. Federal law considers properly conducted religious slaughter as humane, and allows Jewish and Muslim slaughterhouses to forgo stunning. But the rules outlaw leaving animals killed that way conscious for an extended period of time.

The PETA Web site describes the videos as showing AgriProcessors workers ignoring "the suffering of cows who are still sensible to pain after having their throats slit by the ritual slaughterer." In it's complaint, PETA said its investigator filmed the slaughter of 278 animals, 25 percent which remained conscious "for a significant period of time." "I think we should attempt to ponder how we would feel in similar situations. The level of cruelty is absolutely outrageous," Friedrich said. PETA told the Times that a volunteer was hired at the plant last summer and used a hidden camera to obtain the footage.
- From an article by the Associated Press on Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140117,00.html

What the Officials Say

The United States Department of Agriculture, with which we have a very cooperative working relationship, supervises this slaughterhouse and has found nothing amiss in its practices. Its on-site inspector, Dr. Henry Lawson, has confirmed to us his opinion that the conditions there are humane and that the shechita method of slaughter employed there renders the animal insensate.
- Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, OU Executive Vice President http://www.ou.org/other/5765/shechita65.htm

PETA's "Holocaust on Your Plate" Campaign

When "Holocaust on Your Plate" was originally launched, we knew that it would be emotionally charged and intellectually provocative. Even if we had used more conventional tactics, people don't like to have it pointed out to them that they're causing unnecessary pain and suffering by eating meat. We did aim to be provocative. We did not, however, aim simply to provoke.

Hard as it may be to understand for those who were deeply upset by this campaign, I was bowled over by the negative reception by many in the Jewish community. It was both unintended and unexpected. The PETA staff who proposed that we do it were Jewish, and the patronage for the entire endeavor was Jewish. We were careful to use Jewish authors and scholars and quotes from Holocaust victims and survivors.
-PETA President Ingrid Newkirk http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/5475.htm

Scene from Nazi propaganda film of Jews being cruel to animals next to scene from PETA propaganda film of Jews being cruel to animals. Can you tell which is which?