Trump Seeking Rebbe's Blessing.....

Photo: COLLive

Blink and you'll miss it.... but here is a video of Ivanka and husband Jared Kushner visiting the Ohel of the Lubavitcher Rebbe seeking a blessing days before the election.

The Misery of Life Without Faith

Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi returns after the holidays.

The Miraculous Torah Scroll

Danny Avidan, Rabbi Levi Wolff, Susan Avidan
Central Synagogue Sydney

Text by John Lyons, The Australian - 

After being buried in a Jewish cemetery in Nazi-occupied Hungary, a family Torah is about to complete a remarkable journey to Sydney.

The Central Synagogue, at Bondi Junction, in Sydney’s east, will soon receive its first pre-­Holocaust Torah, the final leg of a journey managed by property ­developer Danny Avidan.

The Torah will be flown from Israel to Sydney by his sister, Dorit Avidan Eldar, and her husband, leading Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar.

Before it is taken on to the plane it will have been carefully wrapped under the guidance of a rabbi.

In 1934 in Budapest, Mr ­Avidan’s grandfather, Haim Yacov Meir Bialazurker, was given a Torah by his 10 children to mark his 60th birthday.

But in 1944, amid the chaos of the Nazi invasion of Hungary, someone, without the family’s knowledge, buried the Torah in a Jewish cemetery in the hope it would survive.

As the war was ending, a man disguised as a Nazi soldier knocked on the family’s door — he had brought back the Torah, hidden in a potato sack.

Today, Yacov’s youngest daughter Susan lives in Sydney and is about to turn 90.

To mark her birthday, Mr Avidan — her son — will present the Torah to her at the synagogue on November 7.

Asked if she thought the Torah would survive the war, Mrs Avidan said: “We didn’t even think that we would survive.”

After the war, the Torah was taken to Israel, but it deteriorated to the point where it was no longer considered Kosher — which meant it could not be read from in a synagogue.

With the aim of presenting it to his mother, Mr Avidan had it ­restored, letter by letter, over many months. The Torah, which contains the five Books of Moses, is considered the central document of Judaism.

Mr Avidan began the project after reading a book by Susan Gordon, called Finding Eva, about his grandfather and the Torah.

“I had to find out more and I had to see that Torah,” Mr Avidan said. “I followed my feelings, went to Israel and found it.

He said that for his family, who came to Australia in the 1960s with little family and money, bringing the Torah was “a way of bringing and planting our heritage in our country, Australia”.

“Having my mother still with us to be able to embrace that, and feel the satisfaction of knowing that for me, my children and great-grandchildren in years to come will always know the story of where we came from — and the Torah will be our family root, our family tree, and hopefully keep us practising Judaism in the manner that my grandfather did and the manner that we try to do, and hopefully future generations in our family will do,” he said.

“In 1944 people were worried about surviving, eating, and my grandfather was very active with the Wallenberg movement and the whole Swedish movement in saving his family’s lives and as many people’s lives as possible by handing out Swedish papers.

“I don’t think the Torah was a concern. As the war was ending in Hungary, a person disguised as a Nazi brought him the Torah and, as far as I understood it, my grandfather was overwhelmed that the horror, the dark night of the last couple of years, had come to an end.

“He died a couple of days later.”

The Chief Rabbi of the Central Synagogue, Levi Wolff, said even if one letter of a Torah was cracked it was deemed not to be Kosher.

Asked how he saw this story at a human level, Rabbi Wolff said: “At first glance, it may seem like a stretch to find common ground between Danny’s Hungarian grandfather, his mother who resided in Israel and his Aussie children,” he said.

“Different language, different culinary tastes and vastly different recreational activities and sporting teams.

“Yet it is a microcosm of the Jewish experience ... Often, by necessity, we’ve been scattered and nomadic. At its core, our unity is based on one truth: the Torah. The values and moral compass found within teach us life lessons that are lovingly passed down from generation to generation.”

Click on the source to see video: The Australian

Mekubal Predicts Trump

Donald Trump holds a question-and-answer session with Jewish reporters at his offices at Trump Tower, New York, April 14, 2016. (Uriel Heilman/JTA

HT: Yaak

The head of the Republican Party’s branch in Israel, attorney Marc Zell, told an ultra-Orthodox website that an unnamed but “great” Jewish mystic told him Judaism’s major mystical work predicts an election victory for Donald Trump. 

''....a mekubal, or sage steeped in the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, had informed him that according to the tradition’s seminal text, the Zohar, Trump will be the next president of the United States.

 “Two days ago, a great mekubal came to me — I don’t want to say his name — with all his entourage from Bnei Brak, just to give me this message for Donald Trump,” Zell reportedly said. 

“According to the rabbi, the Zohar says Donald Trump will win next week. The rabbi didn’t ask for anything, but just wanted to send this message.”

Source and more at:  Times of Israel

Spreading the Knowledge of the 7 Laws of Noah

Could G-d's blueprint for creation exclude over 99% of the world's population?

In this video from 1986, the Lubavitcher Rebbe is talking about the obligation of the Jew to teach the Seven Laws of Noah to the non-Jews.  I have not previously seen this video, I discovered it after searching for an hour, trying to find a different video which I subsequently could not embed. 

I know there has been discussion on other blogs that Jews are NOT obligated to teach these laws to the nations, but here is the Rebbe on video clearly stating the opposite.  

None of this in any way endorses any cults or groups attempting to latch on to the Jews by way of attempting to live as a Jew without either a kosher conversion or having a Jewish mother.  There is no midway point: just like a pregnancy.... you either are or you aren't.... you are either a Jew, or you are a Gentile, and that's it folks.

Related:  Reach Out To the Non Jews    United Nations  Torah for Non-Jews


The Sheva Mitzvot Bnei Noach - The Seven Laws of Noah
[Source: CreedofNoah]

1. The prohibition of worship of false Gods/idolatry [The essence of life is to recognize and believe in the Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe, accepting His laws with awe and love. There is only ONE God, God is ONE. Do not deny God. Acknowledge that there is ONE Almighty a timeless creator. God stands alone, He is infinite...The prohibition includes the prohibition against believing in a false prophet, false messiah and a false religion.]

2. The prohibition of blasphemy [Respect the Creator. As frustrated and angry as you may be, do not vent it by cursing your Maker]

3. The prohibition of murder [Respect human life. Every human being is an entire world. To save a life is to save that entire world. To destroy a life is to destroy an entire world. To help others live is a corollary of this principle. The act of murder includes the intentional killing of a human being, suicide, aborting a fetus except to save the mother’s life. The act of killing for self defense at any time or during times of war is not included in the prohibition against murder]

4. The prohibition of immorality and promiscuity [Do not engage in adulterous, incestuous, bestial or homosexual relations. Respect the institution of marriage. Marriage is a most Divine act. The marriage of a man and a woman is a reflection of the oneness of G-d and His creation. Disloyalty in marriage is an assault on that oneness.Wholesome families are a basis of healthy communities and societies. Immorality leads to inner decay. [Gen. 2:24].

5. The prohibition of theft  [The prohibition is inclusive of kidnap. Respect the rights and property of others. Be honest in all your business dealings. Since our sustenance comes from God, we should seek to earn it honestly, with dignity and not through deceit, we express our trust in Him as the Provider of Life. Theft is forbidden.]

6. The establishment of a judicial system.  [The establishment of courts of law to institute justice, truth, righteousness and morality over society is an essential institution. As well as to establish a police force and army as needed. A fair and effective legal system creates a society worthy of God’s blessing. It brings God’s ideals for our personal life into a formal order for society, and completes the other six laws.]

7. The prohibition of cruelty to animals. [Respect God’s creatures. Do not cause unnecessary suffering or pain to any creature, this includes not eating flesh removed from a living animal.]

The Post-Flood Era

Chassidic thought teaches that before the Flood, G-d sustained the world despite its low spiritual standing, due to His attribute of kindness.  There was a limit, however, to how long G-d was willing to sustain a world without merit - hence the Flood.

The waters of the flood were not merely a punishment.  They purified the world, making physicality in general more refined, and spiritually attuned. [see The Great Flood]

Consequently, in the post flood era, people were more predisposed to repentance.  This ensured that G-d would always sustain the world - not despite of, but - because of its spiritual standing.  For, even if man would become corrupt, people would inevitably repent, ensuring that the world itself would have sufficient merits for its continued existence.

With this in mind, we can explain the following details:

• Noach was unaware of the above, so he was scared to repopulate the world, fearing it would be destroyed again.  Therefore, G-d had to re-command him to ''be fruitful and multiply''. [Noach 9:1]
• The inner reason why Noach's generation failed to repent was because, before the Flood, the world was spiritually insensitive.
• Meat is an extremely coarse food that can lead a person to excessive physicality.  Thus, it was only permitted to the spiritually-attuned post-Flood generation. [Noach 9:3]
• Before the Flood, people had extremely long lifespans because the world was sustained by G-d's kindness which was bestowed disproportionately to people's merits.
• Before the Flood, physicality was more coarse.  This was true in a literal sense, to the extent that the clouds were too thick to refract light, so a rainbow never appeared.  After the Flood, physicality become more refined, so the clouds began to refract light.  Thus, the rainbow was not only a ''sign of G-d's promise not to destroy the world, it was also a physical consequence of the refinement of the world that ensured its permanent existence.

Source: Based on Sefer Hasichos 5751, Likutei Sichos vol. 15 - Lubavitcher Rebbe

Rainbow at Bondi Beach Sydney 31.10.2016 - Photo: Glick Photography

The Great Flood

Art: Jacek Yerka

The Flood came to purify the earth... because the earth had become filled with robbery and corruption to the extreme and required purification.  

It was for this reason that the flood waters came for forty days, like a mikveh [ritual bath] which must contain a minimum of 40 se'ah of rainwater if it is to purify the ritually unclean.

Thus, for the generation of the Flood, the waters were a punishment, but for the world itself, the waters were a blessing, since the world became blessed through them.

This sheds light on the Torah's statement that the waters were both mild ''rain'' [of blessing] [Noach 7:12] and at the same time torrential flood waters [Noach 7:17] for even though the floods destroyed all the inhabitants of the world, they still had the positive effect of cleansing and purifying physicality itself.

Source: Based on Likutei Sichos vol 25 pp 26-27 Lubavitcher Rebbe

The World is Going Crazy: Preparing for Moshiach

A new video from Rabbi Yuval Ovadia: Emergency call for all Humanity.  Why the world is out of control and how to cope with it.  An important message for all nations of the world.  ''The End of Days Is Here''.

HT:  AP