Jesus was not a suicide bomber

Jesus was WHAT??? By: Paula Stern Published: December 24th, 2013 PRINT TELL A FRIEND Christmas and I have an understanding. I’ll smile and wish my Christian friends the merriest and happiest of holidays, white and laden with decorated trees. Jesus and I have an understanding too. He was born a Jew; died a Jew and was a Jew every day in between those dates. Whatever was done to him, whatever was done in his name in the centuries that followed, doesn’t change who he was, what he believed in. No, I don’t believe he was the son of God…well, anymore than my sons are sons of God, my daughters, the daughters of God. But, like Jesus, I never claimed to be a Christian; never claimed to believe that God is more or less than what He has always been. I believe Jesus was a man of deep thought, but only a man. And I think somewhere, his neshama, his soul, remains Jewish to this day and I assume would accept not only his Christian followers, but the Jewish people to which he belonged. I believe he would condemn Muslim suicide bombers…even if the Christian church often fails to do that. I just read that Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal is going to be condemning Israel on Christmas night in Bethlehem. He won’t condemn the Arabs that took the Church of the Nativity hostage; the Arabs who urinated in the church and apparently sexually abused the priests and nuns they held for days. He won’t condemn Syria or Egypt or Iran or Hamas or Hezbollah. I can deal with that because no matter in whose name he thinks he speaks, I’m going to believe that God knows the truth and the rest of us are smart enough not to listen. But one comment finally got to me…the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas has decided, once again, to float the idea that Palestinians have a history that lasts more than a century or less. Despite conclusive archaeological proof that not a single Palestinian relic has been found dating back 200 years, never mind 2,000 years, Abbas has decided that Jesus was a Palestinian. The truth, as we all know, was that Islam didn’t exist at that time, nor did Palestine. Jesus lived and died as a Jew – not a Christian and certainly not as a Muslim. He had the honor, as I do today, of living in the Jewish land – then called Judea, today called Israel. Like millions of others, Jesus was murdered by those who hated us, who wanted to kill us. No, Jesus was not a Palestinian…nor was anyone else for another 1,800 years after he lived. There were no Palestinians according to the current use of the term until, at most, 100 years ago. Before 1948, there were Palestinians – they were Jews and Arabs who lived in this land, ruled by the Turks, then the British. And then, as today, when the Arabs wanted to go to their holy of holy places…they turned their backs to Jerusalem and prayed to or went to Mecca. And yet, later tonight, as this Archbishop stands up in Bethlehem, among a dwindling Christian population that is often harassed by its Muslim neighbors and seeks refuge among its Jewish neighbors, Jesus may well watch from above and wonder why in his name, the only people he ever knew, remain standing alone, as we have always been…as he was once… Jesus, a Palestinian? Not by a long shot. Not now, not then, not tonight and not in any of the tomorrows to come. Visit A Soldier’s Mother.

Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/a-soldiers-mother/jesus-was-what/2013/12/24/

Can we get new sanctions vs Iran passed Obama?

Schumer’s Iran Sanctions Test

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary12.24.2013 - 10:30 AM

Is there hope for passage of new sanctions on Iran? If there is, it will be thanks to New York Senator Charles Schumer, who is defying President Obama and other members of the Senate Democratic leadership by supporting the bill proposed by fellow Democrat Bob Menendez and Republican Mark Kirk. Schumer spoke up for the bill on Meet the Press on Sunday with some blunt talk about Iran:

Well, look, there are many of us, Democrats and Republicans, in this Senate who believe the best way to avoid war and get around to give up nuclear weapons is by ratcheting up sanctions, not by reducing them. The Iranians didn’t come to the table out of the goodness of their heart. This administration still labels them a terrorist organization–the supreme leader Khomeini is still pulling the strings. And only tough sanctions will get them to give up. Now, look, I give the president credit for talking. I don’t agree with some on the hard line who say no talking until they give up everything. But the bottom line is very simple. It’s pretty logical that it’s sanctions, tough sanctions that brought them to the table. If they think they can ease up on the sanctions without getting rid of their nuclear capabilities, they’re– they’re going to do that. So we have to be tough. And the legislation we put in says to the Iranians, if you don’t come to an agreement after six months and the president can extend it to a year, the sanctions are going to toughen up. … I think that will make them negotiate better and give up more.

The stand has earned Schumer fulsome praise from supporters of Israel as well as those in the media who are reading from the foreign-policy establishment’s appeasement hymnal on the subject. The New York Daily News rewarded Schumer with an editorialtitled “Hang Tough Chuck” in which they rightly lauded such “stout-hearted Democrats” for “defying” President Obama. I agree with both Schumer and the News but those pinning their hopes for the sanctions bill on Schumer’s intrepid stand may wind up disappointed. If Schumer is serious about really standing up to the president the bill may have a chance to pass and set up a dramatic confrontation with the president that could influence the outcome of the negotiations with Iran. But it’s also entirely possible that he is counting on the president’s veto threat and the opposition to the proposal from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Banking Committee chair Tim Johnson and other leading Democrats to save him from any real danger of a serious battle with Obama.

Let’s first state that Schumer’s willingness to at least speak up on the need for more Iran sanctions is a valuable contribution to the debate on the issue. He’s entirely right that a new bill with tougher measures would actually strengthen the president’s hand in negotiations with Iran. If the administration really wants to hold Tehran’s feet to the fire, the bill would, along with the existing sanctions and the considerable military and economic leverage the West holds over the Islamist regime, be more than enough to force them to give up their nuclear ambitions. The fact that the president is so angry about the prospect of putting more pressure on Iran during talks that Tehran’s envoys are already stalling is highly suspicious. The anxiety in the White House and the State Department about even raising the question of Iran’s missile programs, support for terror, and its demonizing of Israel raises the question that Washington’s intent may be to promote détente with Iran rather than to bring it line.

But our applause for Schumer’s stand needs to be tempered by the knowledge that his statements may be more for show than substance. So long as Reid and Johnson are backing Obama’s play on Iran, the odds are against getting a vote on the Menendez-Kirk bill. And if Obama is really determined to veto it, it is highly unlikely that there are 67 votes available for an override in the Senate (though there may well be a two-thirds majority for more sanctions in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives). Safe in the knowledge that the measure has no chance, all Schumer may be doing is a little grandstanding in order to shore up his reputation as a friend of Israel that was damaged by his support for Chuck Hagel last winter.

However, if Schumer were as determined as he would like us to believe on this issue, he could cause a great deal of trouble for the president. As the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Schumer could call in some markers from his colleagues and maybe even persuade Reid, who has strong ties to the pro-Israel community, to allow a vote that would force Obama to make good on his veto threat. Perhaps the president isn’t bluffing about the veto, but he would also be loath to defend the Iranians in this manner.

If Schumer does help put the president in the corner on Iran, he will have earned the praise he’s currently getting. But if not, his talk about on Iran will turn out to be just that. “Hanging tough” means more than saying something on Meet the Press.

List of Universities rejecting academic boycott of Israel

List of Universities rejecting academic boycott of Israel

   

Posted by William A. Jacobson    Sunday, December 22, 2013 at 8:00pm

The universities and colleges below are confirmed to reject the academic boycott of Israel passed by the American Studies Association.

This list is based on positions expressed by the Presidents of such Universities or others in a position to state a university’s position (e.g., communications staff). We are aware of no university in the U.S. endorsing the boycott.  See University statements rejecting academic boycott of Israel.

This is a list in progress and will be updated as more announcements/confirmations are made. If you have additions, please post in comments with source link or forward confirming emails to me.

These are in addition to the Association of American Universities, the umbrella organization for62 major universities and university-systems, and the Association of American University Professors, both of which reject the boycott.

Reject Boycott

Boston University
Bowdon College
Brandeis University
Brown University
Cornell University
Dickinson College
Duke University
George Washington University
Hamilton College
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Kenyon College
Indiana University
Michigan State
Middlebury College
New York University
Northwestern University
Princeton University
Purdue University
Smith College
Stanford University
Trinity College (CT)
Tufts University
Tulane University
University of California-Irvine
University of California-San Diego
University of Chicago
University of Cincinnati
University of Connecticut
University of Kansas
University of Maryland
University of Maryland – Baltimore County
University of Miami
University of Michigan
University of Pennsylvania
University of Pittsburgh
University of Southern California
University of Texas-Austin
Washington University in St. Louis
Wesleyan University
Willamette University
Yale University

Termination of memberships – Many if not most Universities are leaving the decision to terminate Institutional Membership up to individual American Studies Departments. We can confirm that the following have terminated or will not renew membership:

Brandeis University
Indiana University
Kenyon College
Penn State Harrisburg

Deny Membership – The following are listed by ASA as Institutional Members, but deny that they are in fact members:

Brown University
Hamilton College
Temple University
Trinity College (CT)
Tufts University
University of Alabama (source)
University of Southern California
Willamette University

Contact information for many ASA Institutional Members is located in the comments at Reader crowdsourcing project to fight American Studies Assoc anti-Israel boycott.

The American Studies Association TAG is the link for all of our posts on the current boycott.

(Featured Image – Jerusalem Shrine of the Book, home of Dead Sea Scrolls)

  

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Chinese on Christmas

FOOD

Why Eating Chinese Food on Christmas Is a Sacred Tradition for American Jews

Brooklyn’s hip Mile End deli modernizes the traditional meal once again

By Marc Tracy|December 25, 2012 7:00 AM|Comments: 0

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(Mitch Aidelbaum.)

Mile End opened in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, at the beginning of 2008, a deli specializing in Montreal Jewish cuisine: smoked meat instead of pastrami; poutine instead of cheese fries; those flat, sweet things they serve up there instead of what New Yorkers call bagels. Foodies loved the sandwiches. Hipsters loved the Brownstone Brooklyn setting, the Stumptowncoffee, and the brunch, which is just exotic enough to be adventurous and just familiar enough to be, well, brunch.

Then, Mile End began to offer an ambitious dinner menu that took your Eastern European Jewish grandmother’s evergreens and ran them through up-to-the-minute, fat-happy trends: shmaltzed radishes, veal cholent, kasha varnishkes with confit gizzards. What was this cool Canadian place doing serving traditional food? “To me, this is what deli is,” Montreal-born Noah Bermanoff, the place’s founder and co-owner, said earlier this week. “I’m not trying super-hard to be Montreal. I’m trying super-hard to serve food as I know it.”

So take a guess what Mile End is serving on Christmas Day. That’s right: Chinese food.

Titled a “traditional Jewish Christmas,” the prix fixe—served to two seatings on Christmas Eve and four on Christmas Day and made right in the kitchen—will start with wonton eggdrop soup, continue to roast duck with smoked-meat fried rice and Chinese broccoli, and end with fortune cookies and orange wedges. It’s your traditional Chinese meal, made hip, and—with that crucial addition of smoked meat—brushed gently with Mile End’s idiosyncrasy.

But it’s not a twee hipster affect or a one-chuckle joke; it’s a stark claim—almost a polemic. You will not go to Mile End on Christmas because you happened to feel like fried rice. You will go to proudly proclaim your Jewish-American identity. And yet even as the meal is mining this phenomenon, it also recognizes that, more than ever before, Jews are justanother brand of white person, and so, especially, for young Jews, simply going to the local lo mein joint may not be enough.

***

The Hebrew year is 5774 and the Chinese year is 4710. That must mean, the joke goes, that against all odds the Jews went without Chinese food for 1,064 years. In fact, Jewish love for Chinese food is neither hallucinated nor arbitrary. It is very real and very determined, and it originates roughly a century ago, in a place about four miles away from Mile End: the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The predominant groups in the area were Eastern European Jews, Italians, and Chinese. According to Matthew Goodman, author of Jewish Food: The World at Table, Italian cuisine and especially Italian restaurants, with their Christian iconography, held little appeal for Jews. But the Chinese restaurants had no Virgin Marys. And they prepared their food in the Cantonese culinary style, which utilized a sweet-and-sour flavor profile, overcooked vegetables, and heaps of garlic and onions. Sound familiar?

Additionally, argued Gaye Tuchman and Harry G. Levine in a 1992 academic paper titled“Safe Treyf,” Chinese food featured the sort of unkosher dishes you could take home to your mother, or at least eat in front of her. For one thing, there is no mixing of dairy and meat, for the simple reason that there is no dairy. (Think about it!) Of course, there is trayf aplenty, chiefly pork and shellfish. But it is always either chopped and minced and served in the middle of innocuous vegetables all covered in a common sauce, or it is wrapped up in wontons and egg rolls—where you can’t see it. Goodman notes that the purveyors of Chinese restaurants eventually picked up on this: “They would advertise wonton soup as chicken soup with kreplach,” he told me.

Beyond the trappings and the cuisine, Chinese restaurants offered poor Eastern European Jewish immigrants the opportunity to feel cosmopolitan and sophisticated (food of the Orient!). It also let them feel superior, a truism that has achieved the most definitive canonization available: its own Philip Roth quotation. “Yes, the only people in the world whom it seems to me the Jews are not afraid of are the Chinese,” Alexander Portnoy tells us. “Because one, the way they speak English makes my father sound like Lord Chesterfield; two, the insides of their heads are just so much fried rice anyway; and three, to them we are not Jews but white and maybe even Anglo Saxon. No wonder they can’t intimidate us. To them we’re just some big-nosed variety of WASP.”

The final part of this story is the one you already know: Most Chinese people are not Christian. Therefore, on Christmas, Chinese restaurants are open.

***

OK, you say, but since the Lower East Side’s glory years, and even since the Baby Boomers’ halcyon suburbia, many more options have cropped up—Indian, Korean, Thai. But, still, as Rabbi Joshua Plaut, who is putting the finishing touches on a book about Jews and Christmas (it has a chapter on Chinese food), says: “For Jews, the decision to go to a Chinese restaurant on Christmas is conscious and intended.”

“It’s a love affair and a sacred tradition to partake of Peking duck,” Plaut quips. He argues that to eat Chinese on Christmas is a ritual, not unlike the rituals that traditional Judaism—which has always valued observance where Christianity has valued faith—requires. For some, the Chinese-on-Christmas experience is a replacement for traditional rituals: A prayer you can eat.

But more than standing in for religion, going to Chinese restaurants on Christmas as a Jewish person is an elective assertion of your culture. “As ridiculous as it is, there’s something kind of wonderful about it, that you’re paying homage to what has come before you,” said Goodman, the Jewish Food author. Bermanoff, of Mile End, has a nearly identical take: “If there is a culture that revolves around eating pork wontons on Sunday evenings,” he insisted, “then fine, that’s a legitimate culture, and therefore I’m allowed to recreate it.”

(The only time I can remember not eating Chinese on Christmas was several years ago, when my family was vacationing in Rome. No doubt we could have gone to the place that stays open for the American tourists, which surely exists, or stocked up on sandwiches the day before. But instead, we traveled to a kosher place located where the ghetto used to be. The restaurant was the only lighted thing on the street, and it was crowded and cozy. It served Italian food, not Chinese, but the night felt just like Christmas.)

Whether they have fully thought it through or not, Jews who eat Chinese food on Christmas are proclaiming that, for them, Jewishness is what philosophers call a second-order value. In contrast to valuing Judaism on the first order—enjoying the rituals themselves, sincerely adhering to the tenets themselves—they value the fact of their Jewishness. They go out of their way to do it. They may or may not enjoy General Tso’s Chicken, but if they are eating it on Christmas, their prime motivation is not the general’s sweet, spicy deliciousness, but rather the knowledge that they are doing something that in some adapted way reinforces their Jewishness. They are moved by their hearts, not their tastebuds.

***

Which brings us back to Mile End. Despite Bermanoff’s partaking in a well-worn tradition, he represents something markedly different: Jews are making their own Chinese food now. Bermanoff—who is, perfectly, a law school drop-out—encapsulates a younger Jewish culture. It is more aimless, less rooted—Boerum Hill, not Borough Park—and it sees its tradition less as a comfortable inheritance and more as a starting point. Perhaps it is the fact that Bermanoff is not American and therefore somewhat alienated to begin with that enabled him to more clearly perceive that assimilation and co-optation had ground what it meant to be a “New York Jew” down to little more than a nub with Woody Allen glasses.

Because let’s face it: Jews are not outsiders anymore. It’s not only to Chinese people that we can seem, at times, like “just some big-nosed variety of WASP.” Only among ourselves, on a special day that comes only once a year, can our commonalities and our distinctiveness become apparent.

This story was originally published on December 16, 2010.

***

Military force only remaining option to stop Iranian nukes

Military force only remaining option to stop Iranian nukes

Iran is unlikely to take seriously any red line Obama might lay down now on building nuclear weapons. Contact: David Drimer, 212-481-1500    The interim nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran is a disaster. US President Barack Obama has said that this deal dramatically reduces the likelihood of war. Ironically, it increases it. It certainly dramatically increases the likelihood that Iran will develop nuclear weapons. The Geneva interim agreement permits Iran to retain intact all the essential elements of its nuclear weapons program: Continued construction of its Arak plutonium plant; Continued uranium enrichment to 5% (which, with 18,000 centrifuges, can enable swift enrichment to weapons-grade level, allowing Iran to become a break-out nuclear state in a matter of months); Its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) programs (which, according to US intelligence, will enable Iran to strike the US itself by 2015); its enriched uranium stocks (Iran being simply required to reduce them to an oxide which can be restored in weeks to weapons-grade uranium). The interim agreement also grants Iran substantial sanctions relief totaling some $20 billion; not the $6-7 billion originally forecast by the Administration. Thus, the P5+1 opted for an interim agreement which lets Iran off the sanctions hook. If we could not obtain a final agreement with Iran that terminates its nuclear weapons program when international sanctions are at their height, how likely are we to obtain a final agreement that accomplishes that, now that sanctions have been relaxed? This is a regime whose leadership has stated frequently that it intends to destroy Israel. The notion that this is a fallacy stemming from repeated mistranslations has been debunked by anauthoritative study by the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs. Indeed, during the Geneva negotiations, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking before a mass rally in which militiamen were chanting 'Death to America,' obscenely declared that "Zionist officials cannot be called humans ...The Israeli regime is doomed to failure and annihilation." Worse, Tehran probably cannot be deterred from using nuclear weapons, because, as the doyen of scholars of Islam, Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton Bernard Lewis, noted years ago, "MAD, mutual assured destruction ... will not work with a religious fanatic. For him, mutual assured destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement." Indeed, the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, did declare, "We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah ... I say, let this land [Iran] go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world." Destroying Israel is central to its vision of Islamic triumph. What could have been done? Continuing and increasing sanctions alone might have induced Tehran to abandon its nuclear program. Intent on obtaining nuclear weapons and becoming a regional superpower, Tehran might have yielded nonetheless on the nuclear issue if the preservation of the regime -- and thus its ability to advance the radical Shia Islamist cause that animates it -- was endangered. We cannot be certain, but Tehran's yielding, rather than risking a run to the bomb, was a possibility. However, now that sanctions have been relaxed, Tehran will refuse to sign them away. When that happens, contrary to President Obama's contention that the deal leaves us 'no worse off,' we will find that the tough sanctions that we abandoned in Geneva cannot be reinstated, let alone strengthened. Indeed, this is the end of the sanctions regime. But even assuming that the sanctions regime does not break down, it takes time for new contracts to be halted. Even if, with hard work and good luck, certain sanctions are reinstated, it would take many months for this to occur and many more months for them to take their toll on Tehran. In other words, at best, we have lost a year -- if not two or three -- to bring the regime around to the hard choice of abandoning its nuclear weapons program. Given Iran's ability to become a 'break-out' nuclear power in a matter of mere months, we no longer have a year to spare. Perhaps a credible threat of US military action even now might suffice: the only time Iran halted its nuclear program was during 2003-5, when the US-led coalition dismantled Saddam Hussein's regime. This was also the time that Libya voluntarily relinquished its nuclear program. This clearly demonstrated US willingness to use force produced results. It will, however, be extremely hard now for President Obama to credibly threaten military action: if he failed to honor his red line and take military action when Syria actually murdered thousands with chemical weapons, Iran is unlikely to take seriously any red line he might lay down now on building nuclear weapons. Yet he should do so without delay. But even if he does, there is now probably no way Iran can be prevented from going nuclear, except through military action.  Morton A. Klein is National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Dr. Daniel Mandel is Director of ZOA's Center for Middle East Policy and a Fellow in History at Melbourne University.

Reincarnation and the Holocaust

Why some Jews suspect they've returned.

by Sara Yoheved Rigler

 

Finding an article about reincarnation in Scientific American is as unlikely as finding a recipe for pork chops in a kosher cookbook. How surprised I was, therefore, to read “Ian Stevenson’s Case for the Afterlife: Are We ‘Skeptics’ Really Just Cynics?” in Scientific American’s online issue of November 2, 2013.

Its author, Jesse Bering, a former professor of psychology, is a self-proclaimed skeptic. “If you’re anything like me, with eyes that roll over to the back of your head whenever you hear words like ‘reincarnation’ or ‘parapsychology’ …” he writes. And his article is a wrestling match between his own inveterate skepticism and his intellectual honesty in daring to examine the research done by the late Prof. Ian Stevenson, who held the Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia.

Prof. Stevenson meticulously studied the memories of previous lives of some 3,000 children. For example, a toddler in Sri Lanka heard her mother mention the distant town of Kataragama and proceeded to tell her mother that she had drowned there when her “dumb” brother pushed her into the river. She went on to mention 30 details of her previous home, family, and neighborhood. Prof. Stevenson went to Kataragama and found a family that perfectly fit the child’s description. Their two-year-old daughter had indeed drowned in the river while playing with her mentally challenged brother. Prof. Stevenson verified 27 of the 30 statements made by the child.

“I must say… many are exceedingly difficult to explain away by rational, non-paranormal means.”

After reading Stevenson’s research reports, Jesse Bering grudgingly admits: “I must say, when you actually read them firsthand, many are exceedingly difficult to explain away by rational, non-paranormal means.”

Bering then declares: “Towards the end of her own storied life, the physicist Doris Kuhlmann-Wilsdorf—whose groundbreaking theories on surface physics earned her the prestigious Heyn Medal from the German Society for Material Sciences, surmised that Stevenson’s work had established that ‘the statistical probability that reincarnation does in fact occur is so overwhelming … that cumulatively the evidence is not inferior to that for most if not all branches of science.’”

The Jewish View

We Jews certainly never learned about reincarnation in Hebrew School. But if we dig, we discover that there are hints to reincarnation in the Bible and early commentaries ¹, while in Kabbalah, Judaism’s mystical tradition, overt references to reincarnation abound. The Zohar, the basic text of Jewish mysticism (attributed to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a 1^st century sage) assumesgilgul neshamot [the recycling of souls] as a given, and the Ari, the greatest of all Kabbalists, whose 16^th teachings are recorded in, Shaar HaGilgulim, traced the reincarnations of many Biblical figures. While some authorities, such as Saadia Gaon (10^th century) denied reincarnation as a Jewish concept, from the 17^th century onward, leading rabbis of normative Judaism, such as the Gaon of Vilna and the Chafetz Chaim ², referred to gilgul neshamot as a fact.

The Ramchal, the universally-admired 18^th century scholar, explained in his classic The Way of God: “God arranged matters so that man’s chances of achieving ultimate salvation should be maximized. A single soul can be reincarnated a number of times in different bodies, and in this manner, it can rectify the damage done in previous incarnations. Similarly, it can also achieve perfection that was not attained in its previous incarnations.” [3:10]

Still, many Jews feel that believing in reincarnation is like believing in Santa Claus. It violates two taboos: It’s irrational and it smacks of other religions.

My Holocaust-Obsessed Childhood

Born in 1948 in suburban New Jersey to second-generation American parents with no family connection to the Holocaust, my own disbelief in reincarnation marred my growing-up years in two ways: It left me devoid of any logical explanation for my obsession with the Holocaust and my seething hatred of everything German. And it filled me with anger against God at the suffering of innocent Jews whose final chapter ended in the gas chambers of Auschwitz or the pits of Babi Yar.

I well remember the day in third grade of Hebrew school, at the age of 11, when I realized that I was not “normal.” During recess I was sitting, legs dangling, on the desk of my favorite Hebrew school teacher, Mr. Feinstein. I told him how my father had just purchased a German camera, and of course I refused to let him take my picture with it. I myself refused to buy German products and never accepted a ride in a Volkswagen. Mr. Feinstein asked me if any members of my extended family had been killed in the Holocaust. “No,” I replied.

“Do your parents hate Germans?” he probed.

“I guess not. They never talk about the Holocaust,” I answered, clueless as to what he was getting at.

“Then why do you hate Germans so much?”

I stared at him as if he had asked me why I like chocolate milkshakes. “All Jewish kids hate Germans,” I replied, stating the obvious.

The bell announced the end of recess. My classmates filed in and took their seats, with me still sitting on the teacher’s desk. Mr. Feinstein threw out a question: “How many of you hate Germans?”

My hand shot up. Harry Davidov tentatively half-lifted his hand. No one else in the class moved.

Mr. Feinstein gazed at me without saying a word. I slithered down from his desk, feeling weird, estranged from my friends, a different species, an ugly duckling.

How could it be that my inner passions were not what all Jewish kids felt? Where did they come from? Who had given birth to them? I felt like I had just learned that I was adopted. My assumptions were false, the genealogy of my innermost passions shrouded in haze.

At the beginning of ninth grade, I had a dream that left me even more bewildered. Everyone in my ninth grade glass was required to select a language to study for the next three years. Our choices were: French, Spanish, German, and Latin. All my friends chose French or Spanish. I chose German. When my surprised friends asked me why, I replied with steely eyes, “’Know thine enemy.’ I want to read Mein Kempf in the original.”

At the end of my first week of German study, after two classes and a language lab repeating, “Guten tag, Freulein Hess,” I had a convoluted dream. I woke up in the middle of it, shaking. I and everyone else in the dream had been speaking fluent German.

Trying to understand myself without a concept of reincarnation was like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.

Dreams and Phobias

The clues that hint at a reincarnated soul from the Holocaust are recurrent dreams, phobias, and déjà vu experiences, especially by people born in the first decade or so after the Holocaust. In the 1950s and 60s, books and movies about the Holocaust were virtually non-existent and therefore could not account for these vivid phenomena.

Jackie Warshall was born in Brooklyn in 1950 to American-born parents. When she was four years old, at night after her mother tucked her in and left her to go to sleep, little Jackie would stare into her pillow as if it were a TV set, and see a vision. She saw herself inside the back of a truck filled with women. Some of them were collapsing to the floor. Then she saw herself fly out of the truck. There, above the truck, she would feel a sense of liberation, and say, “I got out. I’m free now.”

Only decades later did she learn that the Nazis’ earliest experiment in mass murder was to pack people into a truck and pipe the carbon monoxide gas from the motor into the back of the truck.

Many years later, Jackie was teaching a fourth grade class in a Jewish day school in Connecticut. In the library, leafing through a Holocaust book for young readers, she found a watercolor sketch of women standing inside the back of a truck. “Standing in the library,” Jackie recounts, “I felt like a lightening bolt of recognition hit me.”

---

Anna B. was born in 1957 in St. Louis to a traditional Jewish family with no direct link to the Holocaust. When Anna was five years old, she began to have a recurring dream that she was being tortured in a laboratory setting. Her torturers were a doctor wearing a white coat and, incongruously, a man in a military uniform. She had this recurring dream until she was ten years old.

When she later learned about the Holocaust, Anna felt, “The Nazis were the people in my dream.” Starting in third grade, she became obsessed with the Holocaust, reading whatever Holocaust books and seeing whatever Holocaust movies were available at that time. At some point, she concluded that she had been experimented upon in Mengele’s infamous twin experiments.

Years later, Anna was invited for a Shabbos meal in New York City. When she arrived, an elderly gentleman who was a fellow guest opened the door for her. She looked at him quizzically. She knew him, but she couldn’t place from where. He also stared at her with a perplexed recognition. Finally, still standing at the doorway, he said, “I think I know you.” Anna replied, “I think I know you, too.” Neither of them, however, could figure out from where.

The connection between Anna and this man, many decades older than she, was so strong that the man’s wife started to get upset. The man and his wife had been guests in this home many times before. Over Shabbos lunch, however, the elderly man, a Holocaust survivor, revealed something that his hosts had never before heard: He had been a subject in the Mengele twin experiments.

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I received the following correspondence from a Talmud scholar who detailed a recurrent nightmare he had as a child, six decades ago. He wrote: “I have never shared the following story with anyone, not even my parents, wife or closest friends.” At the end of his account, he added: “I wish to remain anonymous. Jerry Friedman was the first fictitious name that popped into my head.” So averse was he to being associated with a book about reincarnation that he even created a special Gmail account just to send me his story.

He described his recurring dream:

I was born in 1942 to American-born parents. As a young child I had a recurring nightmare. I was a child of about 7 years of age, lying on a well-worn wooden floor, my back propped up against a wall. The room was in my home, not my real home, but in my “nightmare home.” Somehow I knew that the home was in Europe, probably Poland ... . The room was dimly lit and filled with choking smoke. I could see people on the floor who had been shot. They were my “nightmare” family.

There were several uniformed men standing in the room- the perpetrators of the slaughter. I spotted a black gun on the floor next to me and picked it up, still lying on the floor with my back propped against the wall. I held it tightly in my two hands and aimed it at the upper chest of one of the uniformed men who was standing above me. The officer- I just assumed he was an officer of some sort because of his cap- just mockingly smiled at me as if to convey that he knew I would not have the courage to pull the trigger. I looked to the right and left of the officer and noticed the other men and their armbands with the strange symbols, X’s with the ends broken back, like a pinwheel. [At that point in his childhood he was totally unfamiliar with the swastika.]

I looked back at the officer as he was slowly raising his gun towards me. I tried real hard to pull the trigger of my gun. I knew if I didn't pull it, he would shoot me. I just stared at his eyes and his mocking grin growing wider and his gun raised, pointing to my head. I wanted so much to pull the trigger of the black gun. Then the dream ends.

Since early childhood, I have had an aversion to guns, especially black guns. I still get the chills when I see one.

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Nechama Bornstein, a Jewish woman from Denmark, born in 1963, had a dream as an adult:

In the dream, I was walking with a group of people, through a darkened passage. At the end of this hallway, there was a wall, made of brown wooden planks. The ceiling was low. The wall to the left was set with white-painted bricks. … I knew that we were being taken to be punished. We had done something terrible, according to the Nazis. We were herded on, close together. … Then right before the end of the hallway, on the right, a door was slightly open. We were pushed through it and entered a fairly large room. It was lit, but I didn't see any source of light. …

Years later, a traveling exhibition of children's photos from Auschwitz was held in The Architect Academy in Copenhagen.

A small photograph on the wall caught my attention. … The small photograph wasn't showing a face, but a low-ceiling hallway. My heart started pounding. I moved forward, every step seemed to take an eternity, unfolding in another time dimension. I knew this place. There it was - the wall made of wooden planks, then that of white-painted bricks. ... I was so upset, I could hardly breathe. I reached the small photograph. This was where we had been walking [in the dream]. There was the door to the right.

A small sign beneath the photograph read: "Entrance to the gas chamber at Auschwitz."

Perceiving God’s Love

Reincarnation turns the gas chambers of Auschwitz and the pits of Babi Yar into terrible chapter endings rather than the final conclusion of the soul’s story. Every great epic includes fearsome chapters where, for example, the heroine is abducted by the villain and subjected to torment. If that were the ending, the saga would indeed be dubbed a tragedy. But if there’s a subsequent chapter, where the villain is vanquished and the heroine—now wiser and kinder for her ordeal—is reunited with her family and goes on to live a salubrious, happy life, would you call that story a tragedy?

The most impactful words I ever heard came from the mouth of Batya Burd,widow of Gershon Burd, speaking at a recent event. After her husband drowned on his 40^th birthday, Batya was left a 39-year-old widow with five children under the age of ten. Some people have been asking Batya how such a tragedy could have occurred to her. Batya offered “a potential scenario just to quench the ‘Why?’”

What if, she asked hypothetically, she had been a religious girl in the Holocaust, and had seen someone very dear to her die in front of her. And her reaction had been to deny God, abandon Jewish practice, and rail against God to as many people as would listen. As Batya postulates in her hypothetical scenario:

“What if I spoke out very strongly to people around me that there must be no God, that He must have abandoned us, and I brought others down with me.” What if she then died, and in “the World of Truth,” where the soul goes after death, she recognized her mistake and asked for a chance to rectify it. And God gave her another opportunity to “get it right and fix what I had spoiled before.”

And what if she was born again into this world, and had “a good life, and, again, God had someone very dear to me die in front of me, and this time I was going to be given ample opportunity to stay strong in my faith, and I was going to be given a platform to strengthen other people to stay strong, and in that way not only would I rectify what I had done before, but I would go even higher.

"What a good, loving, caring, compassionate God, to allow me the opportunity to rectify and perfect myself and the world around me.”

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Reincarnation is a powerful lens through which God’s love and mercy can be perceived in the cataclysms of life.

I’m not asking you, dear reader, to start believing in reincarnation, only to be open-minded enough to examine the evidence. As Jesse Bering wrote in hisScientific American blog: “I’m not quite ready to say that I’ve changed my mind about the afterlife. But I can say that a fair assessment and a careful reading of Stevenson’s work has, rather miraculously, managed to pry it open. Well, attad, anyway.”

Sara Yoheved Rigler is collecting more stories for a possible book on this subject. Readers who have stories alluding to a Holocaust incarnation are invited to send them to the author at info@sararigler.com

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1. See Deut. 33:6, and Targum Onkeles and Targum Yonosson on that verse. Also see Isaiah 22:14.
2. Mishnah Berurah 23:5 and Shaar HaTzion 622:6