by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis
The world has once again become a barbaric jungle. Ferocious wild beasts are ready to pounce on the little lamb – Israel. I am a survivor of the Holocaust, and for a long time now, I have smelled the noxious fumes that engulfed pre-Holocaust Europe.... but no one paid heed. No one wanted to put a pin into the balloon of our so-called “good life”. It is always easier and more convenient to dismiss such warnings as unfounded paranoia or products of the scarred minds of those who survived that hell on earth.
Yes, I am one of those survivors, and it is true that my heart and mind are forever scarred, but despite these very deep scars, my soul soars upward; my soul is imbued with faith – faith in our G-d, faith in His guiding Hand, and faith in our people; faith in our ability to re- invent ourselves and re-create the bastions of Torah that once dotted the shtetlach and cities of eastern Europe.
Not long after our liberation from Bergen Belsen, my saintly father, HaRav HaGaon, HaTzaddik Avraham HaLevi Jungreis, Z’tl, received the unspeakable, tragic news that, with the exception of his sister, the life of his entire family had been snuffed out in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. My Zeide, my Bubba, my aunts and uncles, and their innocent babes who never had a chance to live, were all gone. My father remained the ben yachid, the only living son of the glorious rabbinic dynasty of my Zeide. Whenever I took a group to Auschwitz, the skies were always ominously dark... Most often, it also rained. Time and again it has occurred to me that, behind those dark clouds are the holy souls that refuse to be comforted, and the raindrops are their tears that will continue to flow until Hashem brings His children home. And now, the tears streamed down my father’s holy face....tears that could have filled rivers and oceans, but even in the midst of those tears, my father’s voice rang out loud and clear: “Lichtige kinderlach – my precious lights, we will rebuild the Torah of our Zeides.” and from that very moment, my father never rested. Wherever life’s journeys took him, he created new enclaves of Torah and Yiddishkeit, and he charged us, his children, with the same mission.
My vision of creating Hineni was not born in a vacuum. It had deep roots, roots that spanned the centuries,,,, roots that took me back to the ladder of Jacob. On a ladder you cannot rest, but have to keep moving. “Never stop,” my father charged. “Keep building Torah!
People have often asked me, “Rebbetzin, where do you find the energy to travel from country to country, to teach and speak without stop, to go on three hours of sleep. Don’t you get tired?”
But even as they ask, I hear my father’s voice, “Never stop!”
The word “tired “ is not in our vocabulary. In the Torah, it is only mentioned in connection with Esau. So, as long as Hashem permits, I will never stop.
So yes, while my mind and heart were scorched by the torturous inferno of Hitler’s Europe, those flames could never penetrate my soul which was illuminated by the light of Sinai. So when I say that today, I once again smell the noxious fumes of pre-Holocaust Europe, it is not my tortured memories that evoke the deadly fumes, but rather, it’s my soul that cries out, that knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that Hashem will never abandon us, that for all eternity, our people will be here. However, that same soul, imbued with faith, also knows that although we are here, we paid a terrible price – a price that no human mind can comprehend ..... 6 million, and it is that knowledge that gives me no rest and prompts me to cry out.
Let us just look around and absorb that which is unfolding before our very eyes. The entire world is engulfing Israel with one common aim – to wipe her off the map. Now I know that there will be those who will protest, “That’s ridiculous! Such statements have no basis or foundation in fact. It’s only Achmadinejad , and he’s a madman”
Those words have a familiar ring: “It’s only Hitler, and he’s a madman!”
Early on, I learned that madmen have to be taken seriously. Precisely because they are mad, they carry out that which they threaten. When Achmadinejad proclaims that he will wipe Israel off the map, they are not empty words. Nor is he the only one who is possessed by that very same obsession. All of Israel’s neighbors, every one of them, is obsessed with this same goal, and mind you, they are open about it. Not for a moment do they feel a need to hide their agenda – they shout it to the world and poison their children and children’s children with it. From Hizbollah to Hamas, to the Moslem Brotherhood, their shouts of “Kill the Jews!” resound throughout the world
“ Yes, they are all united in that one goal – killing Jews!
"They too, are madmen”, you protest, “in the 21st century the world would never countenance such evil.”
I too would like to believe that, but have you heard a word of protest from any nation? Has there even been a murmur? The world climate has become so poisoned that in the present atmosphere, it’s quite acceptable to demonize Israel and plot her end. Of course, these “civilized, freedom-loving people” would never dare to articulate their malevolent intent, or perhaps they dupe themselves into believing that that is not their intent. They just want to bring peace to a war-torn neighborhood, and of course, it is the cause of the down-trodden Arabs (read barbaric killers) that motivate their protest: It is because of them that they have no choice but to point to Israel and call her to task for her “oppressive, Nazi-like tactics, and if that means that they have to sacrifice little Israel, the only genuine democracy in the region, well, so be it.
What we are witnessing today is not the so-called “Arab Spring” but the Arab storms, storms of volcano and tsunamis set to wash Israel off the planet. There are endless examples of this, but I will cite just one: Consider the uprising of the masses in Egypt which all the lovers of democracy agree was a huge success. But even as they championed their cause in Tahrir Square, shouts of “Jews! Jews! – kill all the Jews!” reverberated everywhere. Not surprisingly, the world turned a deaf ear to this. When Jewish blood flows, the policy has always been, , “Don’t ask – don’t tell!” Even when this same mob, these “lovers of freedom” attacked its Christian residents and their churches, even then, the ominous silence prevailed.
I remember during the war in Lebanon, I went there with a film crew. We came to a Christian village which the Arabs had ransacked while slaughtering all its residents. The skulls of Christians that had been decapitated were used as footballs by “freedom-loving” Arabs, and still, Rome remained silent. Now try to imagine what would have happened if Israel had perpetrated such satanic evil. The whole world would have been on fire! The U.N. would have convened for a special session demanding the condemnation and the ousting of Israel.
Now, Israel is once again called upon to return to her suicidal 1967 borders. Of course, this comes with assurances that Israel will never be abandoned, that American will always stand behind the Jewish state. These promises have a hollow ring. Our tortured history of the past 2,000 years has taught us well although only some of us choose to remember.
It is of no avail for Israel to cite the sacrifices she has made for the sake of peace only to be rewarded by bloodshed.. In vain would she remind the world that when she gave up the land on the Lebanese border, International Peace-Keeping Forces in Lebanon were supposed to help secure those very borders, but instead of protecting Israel, they closed their eyes while wild hordes attacked our people, forcing them from their homes and rendering them refugees in their own land.
In vain would Israel point to Gaza and its environs. In vain would she remind the world that she called upon her own soldiers to forcibly evacuate their brethren. Yes, Israeli citizens were forcibly evacuated from the homes they had built, the gardens they had planted, the wasteland they had redeemed through blood and sacrifice.
The beauty of Gush Katif is no more....the flowers are no more. They were replaced by launching pads of terror from whence day and night, deadly rockets and missiles rain down upon Israel. Yes, every inch of the land that Israel has given away has been converted into jungles of evil where Satan reigns. All of Israel’s sacrifices have been for naught...the Arabs have made it clear that they will not rest until every Jew is killed and that tiny little Jewish state is theirs.
As it was in the past, so it is today. The nations of the world gave the green light to Hitler. History repeats itself today. As the French say, Plus can change, plus c’est la meme chose.” – the more things change, the more they are the same.
[To be continued]
Source:
Hineni
