Did Einstein Believe in God? 9781798599914, 1798599910

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‫ד‬″‫בס‬

Did Einstein Believe in God? A Collection of Essays, Short Stories and Anecdotes emanating from the Jewish Soul

Yitzhak Salomon

*** Did Einstein Believe in God? A Collection of Essays, Short Stories and Anecdotes emanating from the Jewish Soul

Yitzhak Salomon ***

Copyright © 2019 by Yitzhak Salomon King Solomon Publishing House All rights reserved

ISBN-13: 978-1-798599-91-4 All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof not covered under the “ fair use ” guidelines as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. 1378012720218731 KDP-27

*** Book Cover design by Alona & Nadav Salomon

Front Book Cover Images

Bottom Right image along with Bubble Einstein contemplating the question of whether he believes in God and His Ten Commandments

***

Acknowledgments Filling a blank page with words and phrases is not necessarily an act of creation. It is rather a process of reflecting an existing source of light emanating from the Creator’s infinite reservoir of creative energy. If I have succeeded in capturing even a tiny fraction of that light, I am grateful to the Creator for granting me the privilege; and for holding my hand as I plow and plant in literary fields.

Oh God, from the early days of my youth have Thou taught me and hitherto I declare Thy wondrous works, for they are beyond investigation. And unto old age and hoariness, O God forsake me not until I proclaim Thy strength to the generation and to all who may come, will I indeed recount Thy might. O God, who can compare to Thee!?![1]

Edna, my beloved wife, contributed much in shaping this manuscript and enhancing the quality of the narrative. Not only did she afford me the luxury of spending countless hours away from the family, as I dabbled in spinning tales on the word processor, but she also provided astute and invaluable feedback. But that is not all ─ it is thanks to my wife’s exhortations, encouragement, and accommodations that I went back to school at the age of fifty-seven. Three years later, I earned a Master’s degree in Jewish history from Touro College. The knowledge and academic skills I acquired from my erudite professors and rabbis there proved to be indispensable in composing this book and many other works. In recognizing the sacrifices and contributions of my lovely wife — paraphrasing Rabbi Akiva’s famous tribute to his wife — I defer:

“ Edna’leh, all that is mine and all that I share with my readers, is yours. ”

*** Much gratitude goes to my son Nadav for assisting in designing the book cover, front and back, as well as resolving heaps of intricate technical issues. But that is not all, Nadav also contributed academic substance to this narrative. Thanks also goes to my beautiful and talented daughter Alona for contributing insightful artistic feedback, which certainly enhanced the aesthetic quality of this book.

*** To all who contributed in the effort of bringing this book to light, I am grateful for your talents, creative contributions, and wise counsel. I am grateful to my loving wife and friend for life. I am grateful for Nadav and Alona, who have grown to be so tall…

And to the One Above Who created us all.

Author’s Note Does is really matter to us whether Einstein believed in God? Surely, you’ll be better equipped to answer the above question after reading the content of this book. So, indeed, what constitutes the essence of the Jewish Soul? Packed with more than two dozen Essays, Short Stories and Anecdotes, ranging from history, satire, philosophy, theology to gastronomy, the narrative of this book will surely help you discover the path leading to the essence of your Jewish soul.

*** “ Whether the Jewish people or the rest of the world, or both, like it or not — the Jews are God’s chosen people. However, as clearly illustrated by history, the Jewish people were NOT chosen for privileges, but rather for

challenges. ”

NOTE This book contains Fiction and Non‑Fiction material. However, all the stories in this book are true… it’s just that some of them did not yet happen.

*** And finally, a note about myself, the author. People often ask me: “Yitzhak, how did you ever get into writing books?“ Well, it all started with the routine in our home, in which invariably, my wife tells me to shut up. This went on for many years… until one day she stopped. However, by then our children grew up, and they started telling me to shut up. Unable to speak my mind, I commit all my thoughts and ideas to paper. There, I said it… there, you have it… All that is left for me… is to hope and pray that my readers will not ask me to shut up… ENJOY!

…..oh yeah, and one more thing, if after reading this book you decide that you hate it, please tell me about it.… however, if you love it, please feel free to tell the whole world!

***

Table of Contents Queen of the Jews Genesis and the Big Bang Adam & Eve A New World Global Warming In the Shadow of the Creator Did Einstein Believe in God? Yaldei Teheran Sarah Imeinu Morning Bread Fruits of Geinossar Demise of an Evil Empire The Ultimate Witness Are the Nazis Mentioned in the Torah? El Alamein Demise of a Mega Tyrant When Archaeology Meets Scripture The Printing Press and the Jews David & Moses The 165-Year Discrepancy Honor Your Parents The Perfect Gift The Man who Volunteered to Go to Hell Blame it All on God The Ten Commandments The Electric Company “Jamón Solo“ Top Gun Jews and Charity Creative Dental Technology Is there Life After death? A Note to the Reader About the Author Other Books by Yitzhak Salomon

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Queen of the Jews It seems that Jews and Spain go hand in hand all the way back from the endless fog of time. Some patriotic and proud Spanish Jews date the presence of their ancestors on the Iberian Peninsula as early as the Babylonian exile, which occurred about 2,500 years ago. Spanish Jewish history is rife with glory, splendor, bumps, setbacks, evil decrees, persecutions and strife. All the way from the harsh and ruthless decrees of the Visigoths to the Crusades, the Almohade invasion, the riots of 1391 and the Tortossa disputations — the loyal Jews of Spain tenaciously persevered to cling and prosper in a country they truly adored and loved. The Iberian Jewish experience came to a crushing halt with the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492, followed by the forced conversion of Portuguese Jewry in 1497. But did it really all end there and then? To answer this question, we need to focus on the attitude of Spain’s Catholic Christianity, which clearly dominated and defined the psyche of the Spanish masses during most of the millennium of the Middle Ages and beyond. For centuries, the Catholic Church and its henchmen stuck to the goal of penetrating Jewish armor and finding inroads to the conversion of the Jews. Unable to make a big dent in the resistance of the Jews to this scheme, frustrated monarchs and Church leaders, as well as the common folks were not about to relent. Initial failures did not discourage the Catholics of Spain. They eventually learned from their past errors and contrived new techniques in dealing with Jewish obstinacy. The breakthrough came with the riots of 1391. Intoxicated by the smell of

blood, the Church followed up with a knockout punch during and after the Tortossa disputations early in the 15th century. In 1492, once Spain was fully united under Christian domination, it no longer had any use for its Jews. A decree issued by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella gave the Jews of Spain two alternatives, either convert or get out! Many Jews chose to stay and accept Christianity rather than abandon their beloved homeland. Exact figures are not available, but realistic estimates suggest that as many as half of Spanish Jewry stayed behind, adopting a new religion and adapting to it. Tens of thousands of Spain’s most tenacious Jews — who, clung to their ancient religion against all odds — subsequently fled to Portugal. King John II of Portugal received a delegation of Spanish Jews who offered 60,000 cruzados for the permanent admission of 600 wealthy families to Portugal. The king also agreed to grant temporary admission to all other Jews for a fee of eight cruzados a head. These Jews were allowed to remain eight months, after which they were forced to board boats and sailed under horrific and crammed conditions to Tangier and Arzila in Morocco.[2] Many of the deported Jews were sold off as slaves. In 1493, King John II deported several hundred Jewish children to the newly discovered colony of São Tomé on the west coast of Africa, where many of them perished.[3]

*** Isabella, Princess of Asturias was the eldest daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Her first marriage was to Prince Afonso, who was five years her junior and the only son and heir of king John II of Portugal. The wedding, by proxy, took place in the Spring of 1490 in Seville. On the 19th of November of that year, Isabella arrived in Portugal where she was welcomed by Afonso’s uncle, Manuel. Though the marriage between Isabella and Prince Alfonso had been arranged by the Treaty of Alcáçovas, it quickly became a love match. Isabella also proved a popular figure with the Portuguese royal family, due to her knowledge of their language and customs acquired during the years she had spent in Portugal as a child. After eight months of marital bliss, Isabella’s happy life in Portugal came to an abrupt end when in July of 1491, her beloved Afonso was killed in a riding accident. For years

afterwards she remained a heartbroken woman. In later years, with the benefit of hindsight, she became convinced that Afonso’s death was punishment from God, who was furious at Portugal for providing refuge to the Jews that her parents had expelled from Spain.[4] The heartbroken Isabella was eventually sent back to Spain at the request of her parents. She returned to them devoutly religious, exhibiting radical ascetic tendencies. She exercised austerity by starving and scourging herself. This propensity remained intact for much of the rest of her life resulting from her intense mourning for her beloved Afonso. She also vowed that she would never marry again. Her parents seemed to have indulged her oath. However, matters took a dramatic turn in 1495 with the death of John II, the King of Portugal, who was succeeded by his first cousin, Manuel. Following John’s death, Manuel I, the new king of Portugal restored freedom to the Jews under his dominion. Soon after Manuel ascended the throne of Portugal, he sought Isabella’s hand. In deference to their daughter’s sensibilities, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain offered the Portuguese king the hand of one of their younger daughters, Maria. Manuel refused. The protracted stalemate between the Spanish and Portuguese royal houses lasted until Princess Isabella agreed to marry Manuel on one condition — that he expel all Jews from Portugal who would not convert to Christianity. Manuel conceded to her ultimatum, and they married in September 1497.[5] Though he was initially favorably disposed to the Jews under his dominion, after his marriage to Isabella, King Manuel I turned hostile. Under pressure from his new bride, the Church and large segments of the Christian populace, King Manuel I of Portugal decreed that all Jews must convert to Christianity or leave the country without their children. With the massacre of 2000 Jews in Lisbon in 1506, hard times followed for Portuguese Jewry. Additional forced deportations of Jews to São Tomé came on the heels of the bloody Lisbon massacre. But the worst was yet to come. In 1536, the Portuguese Inquisition was formally established with full authority to root out Jewish converts to Christianity, who did not adhere

to the strictures of Catholic orthodoxy. Since they were forced to undergo wholesale conversion to Christianity by King Manuel I back in 1497, the entire Jewish community of Portugal was subjected to the catastrophic decree. More than anyone else, it was none other than the wicked Isabella of Aragon, wife of King Manuel I of Portugal and daughter of King Ferdinand of Spain. This evil bitch was the ultimate culprit and the unstoppable force behind the horrific ruin that befell Portugal’s glorious Jewish community. Though this malevolent Queen of Portugal dropped dead in 1498, at the young age of 28, in hindsight, the demise of Isabella of Aragon came none too soon — nay, not soon enough! Alas, Portugal’s Jews were not spared Isabella’s venomous fires of hell. However, for the Jewish people of the era in general and the Jewish exiles of Portugal in particular, a consolation prize was in the works. The prize would soon emerge in the form of a blessed, generous and gracious lady of upright character, endowed with an iron will and God’s grace. The Jewish iron lady arrived in 1510, a dozen years following the demise of the nefarious Isabella.

*** Doña Gracia Nasi descended from a distinguished Spanish Jewish family bearing the name Nasi — Prince. Her parents were among the Spanish‑Jewish exiles who left Spain in 1492, only to be forcibly baptized in Portugal in 1497. As was the case with most of the Iberian Jewish exiles hounded by the Inquisition, the Nasi family also assumed a Christian surname — de Luna. Consequently, the child who was to become Doña

Gracia Nasi was born around 1510, and assigned a non‑Jewish name, Beatrice. In 1528, at age 18, Doña Gracia married Francisco Mendes Benveniste, a Jew, who had little choice but to assume the appellation, a New Christian. Living under the ever watchful eye of the ubiquitous Catholic Inquisition, the couple were ostensibly married in a public Catholic wedding. Afterwards, in a crypto‑Judaic ceremony, the young couple stood under the chupah and were married in accordance with all the Jewish rituals, which also included signing of a ketubah — a formal contract in a Jewish religious marriage. Francisco Mendes was a wealthy merchant in Lisbon, whose fortune derived from trade in the East Indies. Seven years later, with her husband’s death in January 1535, Doña Gracia was left a young widow with an infant daughter Anna, who was born in 1534. It is noteworthy, that in his will, Francisco divided responsibility for the administration of his fortune between his wife Doña Gracia and his brother Diogo, who was also his business partner. Fifty‑years‑old at the time, Diogo was a merchant in Antwerp, who since 1525, had been a leading figure in the Portuguese pepper and spice trade. By appointing Doña Gracia as an equal partner in managing his vast estate, Francisco evidently recognized his young wife’s intelligence, acumen and resourcefulness. These were qualities that, as fate would have it, Doña Gracia would sorely need. At the time of Francisco’s death, the very survival of the family was threatened by developments on the religio‑political scene. On May 23, 1536, Pope Paul III ordered the establishment of a Portuguese Inquisition, based on the Spanish model. For the previous four decades, the Nasi and Mendes families had managed to maintain crypto‑Jewish traditions while outwardly conforming to Catholicism. An arrest of its members by the Inquisition would probably have meant conviction and confiscation of the vast family fortune.

It was under these circumstances that, shortly after her husband’s death, Doña Gracia Mendes left Lisbon with her daughter Anna and her younger sister Brianda. After a brief stay in London, the Lisbon emigres joined Diogo Mendes in Antwerp, which at the time was the leading financial center of Europe. It was also, however, under Spanish rule, and thus within the jurisdiction of the Spanish Inquisition. Indeed, by then, Diogo had been harassed by the Inquisition. He was arrested in 1532, and released only after intervention by the king of Portugal, João III. The resettlement in Antwerp was of a temporary nature, as the family sought a more secure place to transfer the family fortune. Ties between the Mendes and de Luna families were reinforced in 1539, when Brianda de Luna — Doña Gracia’s younger sister — married Diogo Mendes. A daughter born to them the following year was named Gracia after her aunt. Four years later, Diogo died in the summer of 1543, greatly complicating matters. In accordance with his brother’s will, half the family property remained in Doña Gracia’ hands. But Diogo, too, must have recognized Doña Gracia’s merits and business acumen, for he appointed her the administrator of his own half of the fortune, on behalf of his widow Brianda and their daughter. This decision was no doubt intended to provide the wisest administration of the estate, but it led to a personal rift between the two sisters — Doña Gracia Mendes and Brianda Reyna Mendes — that would trigger great strife and difficulties in years to come. Doña Gracia Nasi’s ability to navigate dangerous political waters was soon tested. Charges of crypto‑Judaizing were levelled against her deceased husband — Francisco Mendes, undoubtedly with the aim of relieving the family of the bulk of its enormous fortune. Doña Gracia succeeded in having the charges withdrawn by negotiating the payment of a large bribe, along with the loan of an enormous sum, to Emperor Charles V, who, at the time, reigned as the ruler of both the Holy Roman Empire and the Spanish Empire. But other threats appeared as well, in the form of aggressive suitors seeking, with imperial support, her daughter Anna’s hand — the prize, of course, being her inheritance. Doña Gracia adroitly withstood pressures from court on this matter, until in 1544 she was able to organize the family’s flight to Venice. The imperial government, angered by the family’s flight, retaliated by accusing the Mendes sisters of apostasy and placing an embargo on both the property they left behind in Antwerp and the debts owed to them. Doña

Gracia’s nephew João Micas — Don Joseph Nasi, on whom Doña Gracia Mendes increasingly relied, entered into lengthy negotiations to arrive at a settlement. With skillful maneuvering, Joseph Nasi was able to retrieve much of the embargoed property, though much was also lost. Then he, too, departed suddenly for Venice, arriving there in early 1546. In Venice, the family took up residence on the Grand Canal. While Doña Gracia and her family kept practicing Judaism clandestinely, they continued to maintain a Catholic façade for strategic reasons as well as out of self‑interest. At the time, the Jews of Venice were confined to a crowded and insalubrious ghetto. They must have been reassured by the fact that the liberal Venetian authorities tended to turn a blind eye to the religious apostasy of converso émigrés from Spain and Portugal, except in rare cases when they were stirred to action. But this was a rare case, given the family’s great wealth. An opportunity for intervention presented itself when a dispute erupted between Brianda and her older sister over Doña Gracia’s control of the family fortune.

The quarrel was brought before the Venetian Giudici al forestier — tribunal for the affairs of foreigners. Probably aware of the possibility of the family’s flight to Constantinople, the tribunal ruled in two decisions, of September 1547 and December 1548 respectively, that Doña Gracia was to hand over half the Mendes fortune to the public treasurer of Venice, to remain there until her seven‑year‑old niece turned eighteen. By the time of the decision, however, Doña Gracia Mendes had already organized to move her family and property to Ferrara. The ruler of Ferrara, Ercole II, Duke of Este, was more than eager to incorporate the Mendes family and their commercial assets in his territory. He therefore agreed to accept the terms of Diogo Mendes’s will, leaving Doña Gracia in control of the entire fortune. He received Doña Gracia and her daughter with honor in 1549; Brianda had no choice but to follow.

In Ferrara, the family lived openly as Jews for the first time. Up to this point, for fear of the long arm of the Inquisition, Doña Gracia had consistently identified herself by her Catholic name, Beatrice. Finally, upon her arrival in Ferrara, she became openly known as Doña Gracia Nasi. No longer fearful of flaunting their Jewish names in public, Brianda likewise adopted the name Reyna. Bewilderingly, Doña Gracia’s daughter Anna was also given the name Reyna, and Brianda’s daughter was given the name Gracia. However, this act of interwoven familial designations did not prevent the sisters’ feud over the family fortune from fermenting.

At the time of Doña Gracia Nasi’s settlement in Ferrara, the city boasted a distinguished Sephardi colony, which included many ex‑conversos from Portugal. In addition to managing the sprawling family business empire, Doña Gracia was soon an active supporter of the remarkable burst of Judaica literary and printing activity among Ferrara Jews. In 1553, the most influential work to emerge from the Judaica enterprise was the famous Ferrara Bible, a vernacular Spanish translation of the Hebrew Bible produced by Abraham Usque and Yom Tov ben Levi Athias. Two versions of this work were printed for different markets. The version intended for the Jewish market was dedicated to Doña Gracia Nasi, bolstering the stature and influence which she had already attained. The same year saw the publication in Ferrara of Samuel Usque’s epic work in Portuguese, Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel, intended for a Portuguese‑speaking ex‑converso public. It, too, was dedicated in honor of Doña Gracia, whom Usque called the heart within the body of our Portuguese ex‑converso nation. A lengthy passage of the book describes Gracia Nasi’s dedicated efforts to aid conversos fleeing Portugal and resettling in Italy or the Ottoman Empire. According to Usque, Gracia Nasi was instrumental in financing and organizing transportation and basic necessities for those in need. Presumably she made use of her network of commercial agents in Portugal and northern Europe to gather information and transmit funds. By the time the landmark Judaica works sponsored by Doña Gracia actually appeared in print, however, Gracia Nasi had already left Ferrara and returned to Venice. There, a visiting Turkish emissary mediated between the sisters and negotiated an agreement in June 1552, which was ratified by the Venetian Senate. According to the agreement, Gracia Nasi handed over one hundred thousand gold ducats to the Venetian public

treasurer, for safekeeping until Brianda’s twelve‑year‑old daughter Gracia reached the age of fifteen. Brianda received a relatively modest sum as a dowry and compensation.

*** With the atmosphere in Counter‑Reformation Italy turning increasingly hostile, the resolution of the sisters’ conflict came none too soon. Gracia Nasi and her daughter took the long‑anticipated step of departing from Italy in August 1552, accompanied by a large entourage. They arrived the following spring in Constantinople. Gracia Nasi, who had long since succeeded in transferring a substantial part of the family fortune to the Ottoman capital, took up residence not amid the large Jewish population of that city, but in the fashionable European quarter of Galata, where she lived in grand style. Intensely committed to Judaism and the Jewish community, Gracia Nasi quickly assumed a role of leadership in the Sephardi world of the Ottoman Empire. Generously dispensing charity, she continued her relentless efforts on behalf of Jewish fugitives from the Iberian Peninsula; providing relief to Jewish captives and Jews in distress elsewhere, and supporting rabbinic scholars, hospitals, and synagogues throughout the Ottoman Empire. In the Ottoman capital, Gracia Nasi established the Academy of the Geveret, which housed a yeshiva and synagogue. She became famously known by the epithet, Geveret — La Señora. To this day, Synagogue of the Señora is still functional in Izmir, Turkey. Gracia Nasi held Jewish scholars in high esteem and generously supported these talmidei chachamim and their academies.

*** Meanwhile Brianda, who had chosen not to leave for Constantinople, remained in Venice with her daughter. However, Doña Gracia Nasi and her nephew Joseph were not content with this arrangement. They both sensed that due to her immense wealth, Brianda’s daughter is considered a coveted prize among the noble circles of Venice. To forestall the possibility that Brianda’s daughter would end up married to a member of the non‑Jewish Venetian nobility, Joseph Nasi took the daring step of abducting the girl in January 1553, and hastily marrying her in Ravenna. Thereupon, the Venetian authorities intervened and succeeded in retrieving the abducted girl. She was promptly reunited with her mother in Venice. Joseph Nasi embarked on diplomatic efforts to have his wife and her fortune restored to him, but to no avail. Meanwhile, after lengthy proceedings, the Venetian authorities banished Joseph Nasi from Venice. Doña Gracia Nasi dispatched a ship from Ragusa to Ancona to fetch Joseph and his brother Bernardo. After his arrival in Constantinople, Don Joseph Nasi married Reyna, daughter of Doña Gracia Nasi. In Constantinople, Doña Gracia Nasi continued to manage the family’s commercial and shipping empire. She established an extensive network of agents acting on her behalf in major commercial centers all over Europe. Joseph Nasi, who became a trusted partner in this enterprise, quickly secured a powerful place at the court of Sultan Suleiman I. In time, Joseph’s wife, Reyna Nasi attained prominence, as she became a forceful figure in her own right, known for her support of charitable works. All along, Doña Gracia Nasi maintained a unique

reputation as the very embodiment of passionate solidarity and generosity among the ex‑converso Iberian Jewish exiles.

*** The most ambitious of Doña Gracia Nasi’s interventions on behalf of Jews was the boycott of the port of Ancona in 1556 — one of the rare acts of organized Jewish resistance to persecution in the pre‑modern period. For two decades, ex‑conversos from the Iberian Peninsula had lived as openly practicing Jews in Ancona, an Italian port city under papal rule, with explicit papal consent and protection from Inquisitorial prosecution. These Jews were technically liable to such prosecution because, having been forcibly baptized way back then in Portugal, their practice of Judaism made them apostates and heretics in the eyes of the Church. The popes who granted them protection did so in order to encourage trade between Ancona and the Ottoman Empire, a task for which the Portuguese Jews were particularly well‑suited. Not surprisingly, four agents of Gracia Nasi were counted among the Jewish merchants active in the city. However, in May 1555, a fateful change of the guard at the Vatican bode ill tidings for the Jews of Ancona. The first of the militant Counter‑Reformation popes, Paul IV ascended to the papacy. Only two months later, the new pope took sudden action against the ex‑conversos in Ancona. Overriding the guarantees granted them by his predecessors, he initiated inquisitorial proceedings against them. The entire community of Portuguese Jews in Ancona was placed under arrest. When news of the arrests reached Constantinople, Doña Gracia Nasi was among the influential Jews who persuaded the Sultan to intervene diplomatically. The Sultan dispatched an envoy with a letter demanding the release of the

arrested Jews, whom he claimed to be under Turkish protection. The pope, however, agreed to turn over only their confiscated property. Some of the prisoners managed to escape, apparently through bribery of an official, but more than fifty were tried and convicted. In the spring and summer of 1556, twenty‑four of the arrested Jews were burned at the stake, including Jacob Mosso, Doña Gracia Nasi’s agent in Ancona. As a protest and punitive measure, some of the arrested merchants, who had escaped to Pesaro, initiated the idea of a Jewish commercial boycott of Ancona and a diversion of the Ancona commerce to Pesaro. But to carry out such an enterprise required organization, and it was the Nasi family that had the means and the activist spirit to spearhead it. Doña Gracia Nasi and her nephew Joseph exerted pressure for compliance with the boycott by Ottoman Jewish merchants and sought rabbinic support. However, there were delicate issues involved, and the risks were difficult to assess. The question of whether the boycott should be supported soon bitterly divided the Ottoman Jewish rabbis and communities, and, under these circumstances, the boycott fizzled out. In June 1555, shortly before papal action was taken in Ancona, Doña Gracia Nasi’s niece, still living with her mother on the Grand Canal in Venice, came of age. Only months later, the two were banished from Venice after an inquisitorial investigation revealed that Brianda was harboring in her home a crypto‑Jewish agent of the Mendes commercial firm. In early 1556, Brianda and her daughter Gracia moved with their possessions to Ferrara; but shortly thereafter, Brianda died unexpectedly, leaving young Gracia — after so many other tribulations — orphaned. It was at this point that Joseph Nasi’s brother Bernardo — who had by then changed his name to Samuel Nasi — arrived in Ferrara. At the end of the year’s mourning for Brianda — in June 1557, at the height of the split in the Jewish community over the Ancona boycott — Samuel Nasi and the young Gracia tied the knot in Ferrara, celebrating the occasion with a grand Jewish ceremony. The famous medal of Gracia Nasi — engraved in Hebrew letters — struck by the Ferrarese artist Pastorino de’ Pastorini, depicts not Doña Gracia Nasi, as has often been assumed, but her niece at the age of eighteen; the occasion for minting the medal was apparently her

marriage. In 1558, new negotiations and pressure from the Sultan were required before the Duke of Ferrara permitted Samuel and Gracia to depart for Constantinople with the bride’s fortune intact.

*** During the 1560s, Doña Gracia Nasi together with her nephew Don Joseph Nasi emerged as fervent Zionist activists way before Theodore Herzl launched his Zionist Congress back in the 19th century. The duo ardently engaged in a bold and strikingly forward‑looking project in the Holyland. Investing immense wealth and leveraging political clout, they managed to establish a self‑sufficient Jewish settlement on the site of the ancient city of Tiberias, as a sanctuary for conversos fleeing from Spain and Portugal. In an initiative that foreshadows later efforts, Don Joseph Nasi obtained a charter from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, granting him the ruins of Tiberias with seven surrounding villages. By 1566, despite local Arab opposition, a thriving Jewish settlement existed. It was short‑lived, however. A generation later only a handful of families remained. Doña Gracia Nasi was among the most formidable figures of the Sephardi Jewish world in the sixteenth century. Her dramatic — indeed melodramatic — life began in Portugal, where she was born into a Jewish family whose members had recently been forcibly baptized. It ended in Constantinople after a career that brought her renown as a shrewd and resourceful businesswoman, a leader of the Sephardi diaspora, and a generous benefactor of Jewish enterprises. She became known among her contemporaries simply as La Señora. Reflecting on the remarkable life of this iron‑willed woman — who dared defy popes and kings — one might rightly wonder, what prevented Doña Gracia Nasi from re‑marrying? In this context, it’s important to keep in mind that she was a woman of her time, and was fully versed in the

compulsory rules of the day. During the Renaissance, Doña Gracia Nasi could not remarry and bear more children without making grave sacrifices. The laws of those days would have immediately handed control of her immense wealth to her new spouse.

We have little knowledge of Doña Gracia Nasi’s last years. When she died in 1569, the loss was deeply and widely felt. Her death spelled the loss of a legendary personality — a Grande Dame who, along with her sense of privilege and imperious behavior, symbolized triumph over great adversity, and intense devotion to Jewish life, values and tradition.[6]

*** In his series on Jewish heroes entitled, Heralds of Destiny, Rabbi Berel Wein captures the essence of Doña Gracia Nasi’s role in Jewish history: Doña Gracia Nasi is our Queen Esther of the Middle Ages. Originally baptized as a Catholic, Doña Gracia escaped the Inquisition in Portugal and rose to become the first international banker and confidant of royalty — all the while retaining her Jewish identity and observance. In the sixteenth century, she purchased the city of Tiberias from the Ottoman Sultan. This hard‑won charter, encouraged a wave of Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. Long before Montefiore and Rothschild, Doña Gracia Nasi is the prototype of the loyal Jew who played a sweeping role on the world stage.[7]

Epilogue In 1992, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of Spanish Jewry, King Don Juan Carlos of Spain issued a heartfelt apology on behalf of the Spanish nation to the Jews. He apologized for the pain inflicted upon the Jews as a result of the expulsion, and for the abuses of Christian Spain towards the Jews in the Middle Ages. I very well recall the occasion. At the time, the apology of the Spanish king piqued my curiosity, yet this act of royal contrition seemed to me as an irrelevant and futile exercise of apologizing for an injustice that took place millions of years ago on a distant planet. Projected through the prism of time and space, the pain and suffering of this cataclysmic episode is blurred and diminished. While the Spaniards may be mired in their torpor and burdened by unbearable historical baggage, the Jews moved on to thrive in the land of their forefathers, and in greener pastures of the Diaspora. Long centuries of suffering endured by the Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal is no longer palpable in the 21st century, as the Iberian Peninsula has been rendered virtually Judenrein … or is it? Jewish life in Spain is thriving in the 21st century. Surely not on the scale of the Medieval heyday of Spanish Jewry, but a vibrant traditional Jewish community flourishes unhindered — buoyed by official Spanish government incentives — in the very same place where the dark forces of the Inquisition reigned supreme for centuries. In the 21st century — though

no one knows for sure who harbors Jewish ancestry — it has become fairly popular for Spaniards to flaunt their Converso pedigree!

*** Medieval Christian Spain and Portugal, backed by all the powers of state, were not the first — and most likely not the last — powers attempting to obliterate Jewish existence from their soil. They certainly managed to attain a large measure of success in decimating the largest and most prosperous branch of Medieval Judaism… but as Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin declared during a gathering of Holocaust survivors back in 1977: Mir zeinen doh! — We are still here! Spain, encumbered by a cargo of impure Converso blood flowing in its veins, is no longer an empire. Neither is Egypt nor Babylon nor Greece nor Rome. Stalin and his oppressive Communist aspirations are languishing on the periphery of world history… even the mighty and brutal Third Reich is a mere tamed puppy. And what about the feeble flock of the Talmud? Against all odds, them Jews are still around and intact to this very day and beyond — Am Yisrael Chai!

Behold, the Guardian of Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep![8]

Postscript The ancient Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula date back to Biblical times. By the time the Jews were brutally expelled from Spain and later from Portugal at the end of the 15th century, these communities experienced ups and downs during their extended sojourn in those lands. Though they faced adversity throughout their protracted tenure on the Iberian Peninsula, mostly these Jewish communities flourished. During extended periods especially under the Moorish rule, Jews enjoyed what came to be known as the Golden Age of Jewish culture in Spain. Though, later on, the Iberian Jewish communities faced much adversity and persecution under Catholic rule, mostly, the Jews flourished economically, culturally and at times even wielded extensive political influence in various royal courts both in Spain and Portugal. The question that comes to mind is: During the periods in which the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula accumulated great wealth and wielded extensive political influence, why did they never take the initiative to plant a foothold in their God‑given Homeland in Eretz Yisrael? As far as we know, the first and only attempt of Spanish Jewry to settle in Eretz Yisrael took place after the expulsion. During the 1560s, Doña Gracia Nasi together with her nephew Joseph became intensely engaged in a bold and strikingly forward‑looking project — a monumental effort to establish a self‑sufficient Jewish settlement on the site of the ancient city of Tiberias ― in the Holyland, as a refuge for conversos fleeing from Spain and Portugal. Unfortunately, this effort failed to reclaim Eretz Yisrael for the Jewish people. Still, the question remains, why did the Jews

of Spain and Portugal NOT initiate a collective communal effort to return to the land of their forefathers during the long centuries of their sojourn on the Iberian Peninsula?

*** If anyone could shed light on this debate, it is Rabbi Yissachar Shlomo Teichtal. Born in Hungary in 1885, Rabbi Teichtal was scion to a family of prominent rabbis and Jewish leaders. In 1921, at age 36, Rabbi Teichtal was appointed Av Beit Din ― head of a rabbinical court, and Rabbi of Pishtian, a city famous for its mineral baths, in Czechoslovakia. Remaining in Pishtian for 20 years, he established the Moriah Yeshiva. While Teichtal was still residing in Pishtian, Czechoslovakia was invaded by Germany in 1938. As the Nazi oppression intensified, Teichtal found himself, along with ten other family members hiding at the local beit midrash ― a Torah study hall. From his hiding place, Teichtal witnessed many atrocities, including the mass deportation of colleagues and neighbors. When he learned of Rabbi Teichtal’s condition, the rabbi of Nitra in Hungary sent messengers offering refuge for Rabbi Teichtal and his family. Just before the Jewish New Year of 1942, Rabbi Teichtal and his family escaped to Hungary and went into hiding in Nitra. After much wandering, Rabbi Teichtal finally ended up in Budapest, where he remained for nearly two years. In Budapest, he completed his seminal work, Eim Ha’Banim Semeicha, after working on it for a little over one year.

Rabbi Teichtal’s original view fell in line with the majority of the Hungarian Orthodox Jewish world at the time, which fiercely opposed an active movement for a return of Jews to the Land of Israel. The prevalent view at that time was that God would bring about a return to Zion without the need for human intervention. As a result of the Holocaust, Teichtal changed his position on the Land of Israel, as he struggled to make sense out of the chaos raging around him. His carefully constructed arguments are outlined in his book, Eim Ha’Banim Semeicha. In that work, first published in 1943, Rabbi Teichtal makes a compelling case for the rebuilding of the Land of Israel as a prerequisite for ushering in the ultimate redemption of the Jewish people. To be sure, it was the Holocaust that prompted Rabbi Teichtal to re‑think his approach. He soon arrived at the unambiguous conclusion that the reason the Jewish people had not been redeemed in the past two thousand years was because they had not initiated any effort to return to their God‑given ancestral homeland, Eretz Yisrael. Moreover, Rabbi Teichtal emphasized that the return to Zion must be undertaken for the explicit purpose of resettling the land and restoring the Jewish commonwealth to its former glory.

***

In 1944, Hungary was invaded by Nazi Germany. With the hope that Slovakia might be safe by now, the Teichtal family departed from Hungary and returned home to wait out the end of the war. However, just then, the Nazis ramped up their efforts of hunting down the remaining Jews of Czechoslovakia. Rabbi Teichtal and his family were captured and transported to Auschwitz. In January of 1945, as the Soviet army advanced through Poland, Teichtal and his family along with other Auschwitz inmates were herded into cattle cars and transported deeper into Germany to the Mauthausen concentration camp. After starving their victims for a number of days, the Nazi guards tossed each of them a meager crust of bread, with the intent of having them fight pathetically for their paltry allotment. Indeed, one of the Ukrainian prisoners grabbed the portion of a Jew, who was desperate for his crust of bread. This action enraged Rabbi Teichtal, who demanded the return of the theft. The other travelers on the transport train pleaded with Rabbi Teichtal not to get involved, since it might cost him his life. But he said, “How can I stand by when the wronged man’s life depends on this food?“ As the rabbi insisted on taking a stand, a bunch of Ukrainian prisoners abetted by Nazi guards rose against Teichtal and mercilessly tortured him to a gruesome death.

*** Perhaps, we will never get to the bottom of deciphering the ultimate conundrum of Jewish history. However with insights from Rabbi Teichtal’s book, Eim Ha’Banim Semeicha, we may shed some light on why the Jews of the diaspora suffered the horrors of expulsions, pogroms and evil decrees, eventually culminating with the horrors of the Holocaust: On that bitter day when the pogroms against our people broke out in all their fury, and the perpetrators trampled upon all that was holy, yeshivah students were dragged out from their study halls. I remained alone, absorbed in my thoughts about the destruction of our people and communities of Israel. Why did God unleash His fury and wrath upon His people? Hence, I decided to examine the 2,000‑year‑old chronicles of our people during their exile and persecutions among the nations. My students have been forcibly removed from my presence. No one remains with whom I can engage in halakhic study. Thus I have been compelled to question, as in the Book of Daniel: How long will this suffering last? [Daniel 12:6] There must surely be some impediment upon us which obstructs our redemption. It is, therefore, imperative upon us to identify and understand this obstacle so that it can be removed from our midst. The purpose of all the plagues with which we were afflicted during our extended periods of exile were mainly intended to impel us to return to our Holy Land. Indeed, the great Yaavets, Rabbi Yaakov ben Tzvi Emden, in the preface to the Siddur [prayer book] Sulam Beit El laments the dereliction of our duty to resettle and dwell in Eretz Yisrael. We continue to live complacently and comfortably outside the Land as if we have discovered another Eretz Yisrael and another Jerusalem. Accordingly, having dwelt for many centuries in comfort and tranquility, the Jewish community of Spain eventually met a disastrous fate. Predictably, they were expelled. Hardly a Jew remains in that country. This causal nexus provides insight into the endless cycle of tragedies that befell our people in the diaspora.[9]

Genesis and the Big Bang

Our forefather Abraham grew up in a society steeped in paganism and polytheism. What were it then that brought little Abraham to the realization that the universe was created and monitored by a single invisible deity? As a little boy, Abraham was endowed with a keen sense of awareness. As he grew up, he carefully studied his surroundings. Intensely and methodically observing the world around him, Abraham arrived at the conclusion that the ultimate defining characteristics of the universe are its infallible orderliness, harmony, equilibrium and consistency. Abraham marveled at the world and its environs. He was awed and succored by the reliability of this immense and versatile apparatus, much as an infant derives unlimited comfort in the presence of his mother. The world is so dependable, thought Abraham; you can always count on it to be there. You can count on the sun to rise every morning and you can count the days of the month by the cycle of the moon. Going against the grain of all that he was taught, Abraham arrived at the conclusion that it was inconceivable that this impeccably functional and complex machine was created by inanimate gods of wood and stone. Moreover, he also dismissed outright the notion that this orderly universe resulted from an accident or a coincidence.

Diametrically opposed to the conventional wisdom of his depraved generation, an intrepid and defiant Abraham dismissed the prevalent notion that the world was created and nurtured by a gallery of figurines chiseled out of clay or carved out of timber. This led him to the belief that the force guiding the universe is the very same that created it and set it in motion. For Abraham, the Creator’s presence was palpable in all that he observed and touched. With all his being, Abraham eagerly sought out the Creator and when he heard voices coming out of nowhere, he could sense that the Creator was talking back to him. Thus, was forged the everlasting bond between humanity and a single invisible Creator. The concept of monotheism, as introduced to humanity by Abraham, is certainly the greatest and most remarkable revolution ever launched in the annals of mankind. This colossal breakthrough was unleashed by a curious little boy, who was so profoundly affected and inspired by the impeccable order of the universe. Though the world that Abraham observed, and the one we inhabit to this very day, is defined by order, that’s not the way it begun. As the good book says[10]: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the surface of the waters. Clearly, the author of Genesis recounts for us that at its inception, the universe was one big clump of chaos enveloped by ominous darkness — in short one big scary mess. How then did the inert and chaotic substance of the universe acquire its functionality, energy and harmony?

We would hope that the next verse in Genesis, And God said: “Let there be light.“ And there was light,[11] might shed some light on how God molded a defined and orderly universe out of an ultimate state of entropy. Instead, we come across a veritable disconnect in the text as depicted by the story of a curious Yiddishe boychick named Moishele. During the first year that Moishele attended Cheider,[12] the Rebbi taught the Book of Genesis. Moishele loved the stories in Genesis and hung on to every word uttered by his Rebbi, as he described to the class the Creation of the universe. The Rebbi taught the class about the sequence of Creation and what God created during each of the seven days of Creation. When they reached the fourth day of Creation, the Rebbi informed the class that it was a very special day in which God created the source of light, the sun. Moishele, who paid close attention, immediately raised his hand. After permission was granted by his Rebbi, asked Moishele, “Rebbi, if the sun is the source of all light, then where did the light come from in the very beginning of the Genesis story in which we learned that God said: ‘Let there be light! And there was light.’ That was way before the sun was created?“ Right on Moishele! Excellent question. We know from the account of Genesis that the sun, the moon and other celestial bodies were only created on the fourth day of Creation. We live in a world in which the source of light comes from the sun, yet the sun was still three days away from making its debut. So, what exactly was the nature of the light introduced here on the first day of Creation?

*** Back in 1974 I joined a group of my former army buddies on a desert trek. For five days we hiked on foot throughout the Sinai Desert. To avoid any blunders, we hired a local Bedouin to serve as our guide. This native of the desert was familiar with every rock and bush of the desolate terrain. Blindfolded, he could lead us to any watering hole and cistern in the parched desert landscape. On the third day of the trek our Bedouin guide invited us to dine at his village. The tradition of Bedouin hospitality is the stuff of legends. The guide escorted us into his family tent where his wife cooked dinner. In front of our eyes she kneaded dough and baked pita bread on a clay stove that was widely in use for thousands of years before General Electric invented the gas and electrical home ovens. The pita bread baked in the primitive clay stove had the aroma and taste of paradise. Never since do I recall biting into a more appetizing morsel of bread. Our group of visitors raised many a curious inquiry regarding the clay stove. Ever anxious to serve as the ultimate host, our Bedouin guide offered to introduce us to the village veteran clay stove manufacturer. The following morning, he led us to the outskirts of the encampment to a makeshift clay stove workshop. The manufacturer of clay stoves opened his shop in the morning and invited us for a tour. On the floor lay the raw materials — piles of earthen clay and dried straw next to a barrel of water. For hours he molded the pile of clay mixed with straw and water into the shape of a stove. Then he baked the raw mold in a kiln. After removing the stove from the kiln and letting it cool off, the craftsman hauled the finished product home to his wife and

surprised her with a brand‑new clay stove as a gift for their wedding anniversary. The elated woman placed embers in the pit of the stove and cooked happily ever after.

When God Created the universe, informs us the Book of Genesis in its opening statement, the world floated in a chaotic state, much like the pile of clay and other raw materials in the stove‑maker’s workshop. Though the raw materials of the universe were consequently shaped by the Creator, much as the stove molded by the stove‑maker, they could achieve neither functionality nor purpose. The inert building blocks of the universe were all dressed up but there was still something missing. Then God said: Let there be light! This brings us back to the very first conundrum in the opening verses of the Bible. The story of Genesis barely took off and we are already faced with a colossal puzzle. Certainly, the text that follows — and there was light — does not refer to the light emanating from the sun, which was only created three days later; therefore, the nature of this light was universal rather than confined to the solar system. Since the initial bolt of light came into existence so close to the very first act of Creation, let us refer to it as Universal‑Creation‑Light. From this point on we’ll refer to it simply as Creation-Light. What then was the function of the mysterious Creation-Light introduced by the Word of God into the state of chaos? Why would one universe need two different sources of light? What was the purpose of the Creation-Light? We wonder! Did this Creation-Light simply disappear after it was unleashed? And if it didn’t, where is it today? The answer to all of these questions is to be found in the story of the Bedouin clay‑stove craftsman. To suffuse his Creation with enduring functionality, the stove‑maker baked it in a kiln. That is precisely what God did with the raw universe. The Creator zapped the feeble and unstable universe with the fire of Creation-Light. This infusion of energy into the

universe brought it to life. The Creation-Light did not disappear; it was absorbed by universal matter yielding the forces of gravity and electro‑magnetism. Moreover, the initial bolt of Creation-Light permeated and energized every single grain of matter throughout the universe.

*** In more recent times, a genius by the name of Einstein postulated the phenomenon of convertibility of matter and energy, as represented in his eternally brilliant equation: E = mc². Now we know the origin of this incredible phenomenon; it is none other than Creation-Light. Since Creation-Light is fully incorporated into universal matter, it therefore follows that matter and energy are one and the same. Creation-Light also supplied the energy, which propelled the universe into motion. While the universe was catapulted into motion by a burst of energy emanating from Creation-Light, it maintains its stability from the forces of gravity embedded in all universal matter. In Chapter 104, the Psalmist sheds light on the mechanism deployed by the Creator: How abundant are your works, God; with wisdom You made them all.[13] The consensus among the faithful is that divine wisdom is supreme. In that case, why is the Psalmist telling us that God created the universe with His wisdom? That goes without saying. In essence, what the Psalmist is informing us, is that the substance of the universe was nothing but chaotic dumb matter prior to the injection of Creation-Light. Soon after

the divine command Fiat Lux was issued, this dumb matter turned into smart matter permeated with the wisdom of the Creator.

With the advent of modern science, we learn more and more how every atom is even smarter than we can imagine. Each atom is defined by its own tiny nucleus, which possesses infinite wisdom. All the immense scientific knowledge and progress notwithstanding, we are yet to decipher the entire extent of the functionality of the atomic nucleus. Every object in the universe is made up of billions and trillions of atoms and each one of these atoms knows exactly, at any given time and position, how to relate to the rest of the atoms in the universe. As dumb as an inanimate piece of rock may seem to us, it is smart enough to constantly recalculate its gravitational pull‑and‑tuck in relation to the rest of the world. The infinite wisdom of the Creator is reflected in every object, organism, molecule and atom. That is what the Psalmist is informing us, that the Creator has imbued every grain of the substance of His Creation with inherent wisdom. Since every particle in the universe knows how to behave in relation to every other particle, the entire universe functions in perfect harmony and order. As our understanding of the universe progressed, it became clear that all four essential elements of the universe — matter, energy, space and motion — are indeed one and the same. Creation-Light is the force which launched the dumb and chaotic substance of the universe into a functional harmonious orbit saturated with divine wisdom and energy, but there was still something missing… Following the storyline of Genesis, the next verse states: And God saw the light that it was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, day one. What’s going on in here? The plot thickens. Once again, Creation-Light is playing tricks with

our perception. Not only did Creation-Light infuse universal matter with stabilizing physical properties, but also with the abstract.

We all know that the boundaries of time — namely day and night — are framed by the trajectory of the sun. Yet here we are still three days away from Creation of the sun, and the Bible is telling us that there was day and night. The Bible is not known to be in the habit of squandering its text in vain. If we are informed that God set day and night in motion prior to the arrival of the sun, this verse is revealing to us an event of paramount magnitude — the Creator wound the universal clock to start ticking from the very beginning of day one. To the existing four essential physical elements of the universe — matter, energy, motion and space — God now introduced the abstract dimension of time. It is evident from the text that the time element, as well, emanates from Creation-Light. Moreover, time is not an independent agent, but rather part and parcel of every grain constituting universal matter. Then there is a school of thought that offers the following argument: O.K., so let’s say that the Bible is right and indeed there were only six days of Creation, who says that these days are not really protracted epochs consisting of billions of years? This argument is further enhanced by the fact that the sun in the Biblical script does not appear until the fourth day of Creation. Surely no one disputes the fact that once the sun was up in the sky, the duration of one day is only a 24‑hour event. But, argue the savants, what about the three Days of Creation preceding the arrival of the sun?

Surely these could not mean 24‑hour days but rather billions of years in which span Darwin, along with his bag of tricks, can easily and neatly sneak in his Origin of Species.

To those who wish to stuff billions of years into the Six Days of Creation, beware of the lure. The Bible, which is the very source for the story of the Six Days of Creation, has a built‑in mechanism to inform us of the span of a single day from the very beginning of the process of Creation. As we follow the text of the first chapter in Genesis we notice a bizarre redundancy. After each of the Creation Days, the narrator stipulates as if by rote: And then there was evening and there was morning… What a waste of text?!? Couldn’t the author of the Bible state this only once at the end of the process with a hint of an associative clause projecting on the rest of the previous Days of Creation? For a document that purports to be the embodiment of parsimonious scripting, the Bible wastes awful lots of text on repeating a seemingly meaningless and childish verse ad nauseam. A closer scrutiny of this pattern reveals that this redundancy is not at all superfluous! It is in fact a statement of paramount importance in understanding the workings of the universe as viewed from the process of Creation. This repetitive text establishes a clear and unequivocal pattern resulting in the principle that a day… is a day… is a 24‑hour event from the very beginning of time. The Bible instructs us in no uncertain terms that just as there was evening and there was morning — a 24‑hour period — following the very day the sun was created and thereafter, there was evening and there was morning from the very first day of Creation.

***

We indeed live in very auspicious times. Only with the advent of Einstein’s Laws of Relativity can we begin to decipher some key passages in the Creation script as outlined in Genesis.

Way back then, when I studied physics in college, our professor was of the opinion that: Einstein’s Law of Relativity is the single most original, profound and brilliant scientific concept ever perceived by the human mind. Furthermore, expounded the professor — unlike most other scientific discoveries, which sooner or later would have been deciphered in any case — had Einstein not unearthed the tortuous mysteries of Relativity, there is no guarantee that another genius would eventually stumble upon it… perhaps not ever. To this day scientists still marvel at the daring behind General Relativity. “I still can’t see how he thought of it,“[14] said Richard Feynman, who won the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics for fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics. For those of us who think that Einstein’s greatest breakthrough has to do with the laws of relativity, think again. Relativity pales in comparison to the discovery he made about footwear. In his own words, this is the way Einstein explained the greatest and most complex of his discoveries: When I was young, I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in the sock… so I stopped wearing socks.[15] Jokes aside, it was no other than my good old college physics professor, who also revealed to our class that: There are probably no more than three‑dozen people in the world who truly understand the Law of Relativity. This mystical statement compelled me to mount a superhuman effort in pursuit of membership in this exclusive club. I failed miserably. However, I found consolation in the fact that I was in good company.

In the spring of 1921, Chaim Weitzmann, who eventually became the first President of the State of Israel, joined Einstein on a cruise from Europe to New York. Before assuming the presidency, Weitzmann was

already an accomplished scientist and a world-renowned doctor of biochemistry. “During the voyage across the Atlantic,“ recounted Weitzmann, “Einstein explained his theory to me every day and on my arrival, I was fully convinced that he understood it.“[16] Einstein, who was of the belief that, if you can’t explain it to a sixyear-old, you don’t understand it yourself[17], constantly reminded the world that anyone could easily grasp the Law of Relativity. Upon his arrival in New York in 1921, Einstein was asked by a reporter, “Dr. Einstein, can you explain Relativity in a few sentences in a language that the man in the street could understand?“ Ever anxious not to disappoint, Einstein formulated a response that turned into a classic: If you will not take this answer too seriously, and consider it only as a kind of joke, then I can explain it as follows. It was formerly believed that if all material things disappeared out of the universe, time and space would remain behind. According to the Relativity theory, however, time and space disappear together with things.[18]

Isaac Newton interpreted the statement in Genesis, and there was evening and there was morning,[19] as proof that God had also created time. [20] Though time is a separate entity, nonetheless, as Einstein defines it in his Theory of Relativity, time is inseparable from the other four fundamental elements — matter, energy, space and motion. Armed with this knowledge, we are ready to move on to the next conundrum. Now that the Creator endowed the universe with all its essential components, including the dimension of time, why then are we still not ready to move forward? Because there was still something missing. Now that the element of time was created… what was missing is the physical clock itself. On the fourth day of Creation the Creator presented the world with an eternal timekeeper. As with all conventional clocks, so too the global timekeeper is aided by two clock hands — the sun and the moon. This imagery is well reflected in the Genesis account: And God said, “Let there be luminaries in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years.“[21] Sounds like a prescription for devising a perfectly synchronized Jewish calendar, in which the sun marks the seasons along with the

festivals, while the moon determines the monthly cycle. It really does work that way in real life with remarkable precision and without fail. For thousands of years now the sun and the moon are working in tandem dancing a celestial tango in perfect harmony like the two hands of an infallible timekeeper. But there is still one more piece missing from this colossal puzzle… To complete the puzzle, we revert once again to our story about the clay stove. Once it was pulled out of the kiln, the fully baked stove was rendered a functional unit ready to serve its purpose, nonetheless, it could not fulfill its functionality without the embers in its pit. The heat generated by the embers is needed to maintain the stove’s functionality of baking and cooking, as opposed to the kiln fire that rendered the stove functional and purposeful. To provide the functional universe with the source of energy required for maintenance, God presented it — on the fourth day of Creation — with solar energy by kindling the orb of the sun, which serves much the same function as the embers in the pit of the clay stove. Much as it would never occur to a baker to bake bread in a kiln, the Creator would never subject his creatures to the intensity of Creation-Light. The energy emitted by Creation-Light was of such intensity that no living creature could survive its smoldering onslaught; it was of a nature unfathomable to humans.

*** Echoes from the mega‑eruption of super high‑energy heat — which transpired nearly 6,000 years ago — resulting from the infusion of Creation-Light into our universe, can still be detected to this very day. Two Bell Labs scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, using a powerful antenna in 1978, managed to pick up cosmic radiation signals coming at them from all directions. Evaluation of this data led them to conclude that these signals represent cosmic microwave fallout emanating from the divine command, Fiat Lux going all the way back to the days of Creation. Penzias and Wilson — who shared a Nobel Prize for this discovery — surely, true‑blue scientists that they are, heaven forefend that they would utter sacrilegious jargon, the likes of: Divine, Genesis or Creation. Instead they attributed the emissions of cosmic radiation to the Big Bang — a theory initiated in the late 1940s by astrophysicist, George Gamow. Ironically enough, the term Big Bang was not coined by Gamow, but rather by a vehement opponent of the theory — Astronomer Fred Hoyle. While discussing his own Steady State Universe Theory, Hoyle derisively referred to Gamow’s theory as the Big Bang stuff. This snide sound‑bite made a big splash and soon enough made its way into the official scientific jargon of the day, and beyond. Incidentally, later in life, Hoyle abandoned his own Steady State Theory in light of mounting scientific evidence on the subject. The time gap between Gamow’s Big Bang and the Biblical script of Creation is only 14 billion years. Interestingly enough, the theorists — Darwin and Gamow — must have had their eyes fixed on the first chapter of Genesis as they weaved their fantasies. Darwin’s script describing life progressing from the primitive to the complex is torn right out of the pages of Genesis. Gamow’s Big Bang is indeed the jolt the universe experienced as the Creator zapped it with the Creation‑Light. Incidentally, the big difference between the theorists and the Biblical account is that the latter provides us with the source behind the origin of matter and life. While the Bible clearly states who lit the match that ignited the Big Bang, science furtively evade this phase of universal history with the hope that no one will notice the omission. Then there are scientists, like Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, who wistfully ponder

the premise of a clinical universe. In 1977, Dr. Weinberg sounded almost morally despondent when he wrote that the more the universe has become comprehensible through cosmology, the more it seems pointless.[22] Notwithstanding Dr. Weinberg’s lament, most professors exhibit little patience for sentimental philosophical musings when it comes to physical phenomena. The academic community as a whole is rather smug about the notion that this whole immense and complex universe came into being through a coincidental hiccup. Amazingly enough, most people are comfortable with the concept that everything started with the Big Bang. I once attended a lecture by a professor who explained in excruciating detail the events that transpired right after the Big Bang. At the end of the lecture one fellow raised his hand and asked, “And who lit the match that started the whole process?“ The professor replied with a sneer, “And who really cares?“ Well, my friends, no need to panic. After all these years of research and theorizing, the savants have brought you as far back as the Big Bang. Give them a couple billion years and they’ll eventually figure out who ignited the match. Now that we know what the professors have to say in this matter, let’s take a breather and listen to what the good old clay‑stove has to teach us. Much as the clay‑stove — upon removal from the intense heat of the kiln — needed a cooling off period before it could be placed into service, so the universe had to first congeal before it could serve its purpose. It would be difficult for the human mind to fathom the overheated state of the universe after it was baked with the energy of Creation‑Light. The only natural phenomenon that comes close to demonstrate this primal event is molten lava spewing from the mouth of an eruptive volcano, and the congealing process that follows.

In the Biblical account of Creation, the whole process lasted six days; this left the Creator with little time to procrastinate. Processes were

accelerated to fit into the aggressive schedule. In describing the events of the first day of Creation, the text of the Bible — to say the least — is shrouded in a veil of obscurity. This is not a coincidence. As reflected in the nebulous text of Genesis, indeed, at the beginning of the first day, the universe, recoiling from the jolt of Creation-Light — resembling flaming plasma — was still in a chaotic and feeble state of flux. As the first day of Creation progressed, aiming to achieve stability and functionality, the universe coalesced. On the second day of Creation, the Creator erected and stabilized the firmament of the heavens via His terse command: Let there be a firmament! The function of the firmament is to serve as a mantle, which forms a protective atmospheric dome enveloping our planet. This bubble resulted in a greenhouse that would soon enable life to proliferate with no interference of harmful celestial agents. Within two days, this protective mantle would shield the Earth and its precious cargo of life from the deadly rays of the sun about to emerge, allowing only for the necessary and constructive measure of solar energy to filter through for the preservation and maintenance of life. This entire production took place in advance of introducing the earthly bodies of water, which will very soon sprout forth with teeming aquatic life.

On the third day of Creation, the Creator drew the demarcation line that formed the boundary between land and oceans on planet Earth. Just imagine if you will, what fate the waters would encounter as they were discharged into the receptacle called Earth. Keep in mind that just less than two days earlier God bombarded the universe — including the Earth — with the blazing bolt of Creation-Light. Upon coming into contact with the smoldering surface of the Earth, water would instantly evaporate to the very last drop. But we do know that the waters were accorded a cordial reception and are still around to this very day. This could only mean one thing — the process of curing the universe from the overheated state was fully accomplished by the end of the second day of Creation. By Tuesday morning the surface of our planet was nice and cool ready to welcome the waters without which life on Earth could never be sustained.

*** In describing the process of Creation, the text in Genesis remains deliberately cryptic and vague on most accounts. This is no coincidence. The author of this bestseller did not find it necessary to disclose abundance of detail. Einstein once observed that God is subtle, but He is not malicious. [23] This is an allusion to the reality that the secrets of the universe are available to us only upon perseverant scrutiny and incessant research. The Creator in fact infused the universe with a certain harmony and predictability, so as to enable humans to decipher its mysteries. But the same principle does not apply to the secrets of Creation. For reasons known only to Him, the Creator does not wish to share with us the blueprints of Creation. Having said that, however, ample information and hints are embedded within the text of Genesis to help us grasp and extrapolate the basics of Creation.

The appearance of Creation-Light marks the very beginning of the universal timeline. While Creation-Light is the cosmic time‑clock and accurately keeps track of the passage of time since it first appeared, it does not necessarily register the age of matter. Let’s for a moment focus on Planet Earth during its formative stages. Soon after the universe was zapped with Creation-Light, all universal matter was in the throes of a super overheated state. In describing the events that were triggered by the Big Bang, scientists support the premise that the intense heat of energy, which launched the initial universal matter, was at temperatures equivalent to ten trillion degrees Celsius above absolute zero. This description very well conforms with the script of the super intense high‑energy heat unleashed by the jolt of Creation-Light to which the feeble initial universal dark matter was subjected. Following the milestones in the script of the Big Bang Theory, the cooling off of the universe was accomplished through expansion. Theorists claim that within the first few seconds of the Big Bang, the universe expanded billions of miles outward into space. Certainly, expansion of matter has a cooling effect, but for the universe to have expanded to its current‑day dimensions, much more time was consumed than a mere few seconds. Scientists calculated that anywhere between 15 to 18 billion years were needed to accomplish expansion of the universe to its current state. Both scientific theory and the text of Genesis are in agreement that the initial condition of the universe is best described by a superheated state of matter. Speeding up the rate of rotation of all celestial bodies within the universe during the initial phases of Creation seems to make much sense in this context. Most likely this was necessary to speed up the curing process — cooling and molding of the overheated universal matter. One thing we

know for sure, that a 24‑hour day is marked by a full rotation of Earth on its axis.

We now have two clocks. The first one is the Creation-Light clock, which tracks universal time from the moment it appeared. The second one is the rotational chronometer, which registers time based on the number of rotation of Planet Earth. If indeed — during the cooling period following the introduction of Creation-Light — the Earth rotated around its axis much more rapidly than it does today, then the rotational clock, which registers the age of Planet Earth would have clocked that much more time than the Creation-Light chronometer. This could handily explain the large timetables suggested by scientific hypotheses. To best demonstrate the relationship, between the two clocks tracking universal time, is by recounting the story of Irv Gordon and his Volvo.[24] Mr. Gordon purchased his brand‑new Volvo back in 1966. He now owns his car for 46 years. During those 46 years, he has driven a staggering 3 million miles on his Volvo — an official Guinness record. If we take into account that an average car clocks about 15,000 miles during the course of one year, then Mr. Gordon’s Volvo has accumulated the equivalent of about 200 years’ worth of driving. By just looking at the odometer of Mr. Gordon’s Volvo, we would assume that he owns a 200‑year‑old car. This illusion stems from the misguided notion that what determines the age of Mr. Gordon’s Volvo is the enormous mileage piled up on his car’s odometer. However, we do know that his Volvo was manufactured only 46 years ago. Before we go on with our business, let’s pause for a moment and

wish the 72‑year‑old Mr. Gordon and his Volvo many more happy miles together.

To many people, who are in the business of studying the age of our planet, the Earth seems billions of years old. This assessment, which is mostly gauged through radiometric dating techniques, is not necessarily a terribly misguided observation. The radiometric dating techniques are basically looking at the Earth’s odometer, which indeed clocked an enormous amount of mileage on the universal rotational clock, specifically during the initial phases of Creation. However, according to the Genesis account, the Earth was manufactured only about 6,000 years ago, as measured by the universal clock of Creation-Light. Now, why would the Creator resort to spinning the Earth and all other spherical objects in the universe at an accelerated pace during the initial phase of Creation? Many of us have witnessed craftsmen at work manufacturing clay pottery at country fairs. The craftsman anchors the chunk of malleable viscous clay onto a spinning wheel. Using various techniques, the artisan molds the raw chunk of clay into aesthetically beautiful shapes with smooth and symmetrical curves. The end product, in the shape of delectably attractive clay pottery or utensils, is achieved by spinning the pottery wheel at relatively high speeds. Certainly, it is very plausible that the Creator might have applied the same simple technique in order to mold a universe populated by spherical celestial objects in a feeble and malleable state. By spinning the Earth at high speeds around its axis the Creator molded it into a smooth and even sphere. The benefit our planet accrued resulting from the high‑speed rotation during its formative period would quickly turn into a deadly weapon aimed at the precarious and precious cargo of life that was soon to appear on Earth. Once again, let’s keep in mind that this whole premise is founded upon speculation. But even if we

assume — leveraging the license granted by the text in Genesis — that the Creator kicked into fast forward the rotational time‑clock during the first two days of Creation, this accelerated spinning will work against the flow of Creation beginning with the third day.

On the third day of Creation, vegetation — followed by other forms of life — is introduced to the surface of Earth, as outlined in the Genesis account. Once life resides on Earth, spinning it at high speeds would render our planet into an extremely hostile environment for living organisms. Given the parameters of natural forces and mechanics of our existence, accelerated spinning would turn every particle into a deadly missile. An intense multiplication of motion, specifically the speed at which the whirling electrons buzz around the nucleus of the atom, would render all radiation lethal. Life on earth could have only prospered once the accelerated motion of Earth had slowed down to a normal rate. From this point going forward, both universal time clocks are synchronized on the basis of a 24‑hour day. Due to stressful circumstances, anxieties and demands of life on earth, many people may appear much older than they really are. A man of forty subjected to the grind, harsh realities and ordeals of life may at time seem like seventy. This is a clear example of the abysmal difference between aged and old. When a scientist presents a specimen to the public and declares it to be billions of years old, he is at best misguided and at worst broadcasting an outright lie. In reality, what he truly wishes to convey is that the specimen is only thousands of years old, but indeed may be aged billions of years! The same principle applies to all universal matter; hence

the pervasiveness of the misguided perception of a universe billions of years old.

***

Radiometric dating methods are contingent on events occurring inside the nucleus of the atom, which is not prone to interference stemming from environmental or circumstantial conditions. Consequently, the prevailing notion in the scientific community is that radioactive isotopes are reliable clocks. In his book, Genesis and Genes, Yoram Bogacz presents scientific research clearly demonstrating the fallibility of radiometric dating methods:[25] Ephraim Fischbach, a physics professor at Purdue University, was looking into the rate of radioactive decay of several isotopes as a possible source of random numbers generated without any human input. A lump of radioactive cesium-137, for example, may decay at a steady rate overall, but individual atoms within the lump will decay in an unpredictable, random pattern. The timing of the random ticks of a Geiger counter placed near the radioactive metal might be used to generate random numbers. The research began with a standard literature survey. As the researchers pored through published data on specific isotopes, they found disagreement in the measured decay rates — odd for physical constants which are supposedly immune to change. Checking data collected at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island and the Federal Physical and Technical Institute in Germany, they came across something even more surprising: long‑term observation of the decay rate of silicon-32 and radium-226 seemed to show a small seasonal variation. The decay rate was ever so slightly faster in winter than in summer. There were two possibilities: either the fluctuation was real, or it was merely a glitch in the equipment used to accompanying changes in temperature and humidity. “Everyone thought it must be due to experimental mistakes, because we’re all brought up to believe that decay rates are constant,“ said Peter Sturrock, Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics and an expert on the inner workings of the Sun. On December 13, 2006, the Sun itself provided a crucial clue, when a solar flare sent a stream of particles and radiation toward Earth. Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins, while measuring the decay rate of manganese-54, a short‑lived isotope used in medical diagnostics, noticed that the rate dropped slightly during the flare, a decrease that started about a day and a half before the flare. The decay-rate aberrations that Jenkins noticed occurred during the middle of the night, meaning that something produced by the Sun had travelled all the way through the Earth to reach Jenkins’ detectors. What could the flare send forth that could have such an effect? Jenkins and Fischbach guessed that the culprits in this bit of decay-rate mischief were probably solar neutrinos, the almost weightless particles famous for flying at almost the speed of light through the physical world — humans, rocks, oceans or planets — with virtually no interaction with anything.

In a series of papers published in the journals Astroparticle Physics, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research and Space Science Reviews, Jenkins, Fischbach and their colleagues showed that the observed variations in decay rates were highly unlikely to have come from environmental influences on the detection systems. The team then discovered that

the fluctuations in decay rates were correlated with the Earth’s varying distance from the Sun, with the decay rates oscillating as the Earth came closer to the Sun (where it would be exposed to more neutrinos) and then moving away.[26] Could this correlation be proved? Enter Peter Sturrock. While on a visit to the National Solar Observatory in Arizona, Sturrock was handed copies of the scientific journal articles written by the Purdue researchers. He knew from long experience that the intensity of the barrage of neutrinos the Sun continuously sends racing towards Earth varies on a regular basis as the Sun itself rotates on its axis of rotation, like a slower version of the revolving light on a police car. His advice to Purdue: Look for evidence that the changes in radioactive decay on Earth vary with the rotation of the Sun. The researchers went back to the decay data from the Brookhaven laboratory, and found a recurring pattern of 33 days. It was a bit of a surprise, given that most solar observations show a pattern of about 28 days — the rotation rate of the surface of the Sun. The explanation seems to be that the core of the Sun — where nuclear reactions produce neutrinos — spins more slowly than the surface we see. The Sun is not a solid body, like the Earth. It is a gaseous giant, and different regions of it have significantly different densities. So even though the Sun, as a whole, rotates on its axis, different parts of it may rotate at different speeds. All of the evidence points toward a conclusion that the Sun is “communicating“ with radioactive isotopes on Earth, said Fischbach.

So far, so terrible. Wasn’t radioactivity supposed to be the ultimate immutable process? And of course, there’s one rather embarrassing question left unanswered. No one knows how neutrinos could interact with radioactive materials to change their rate of decay. As Fischbach stated: “It doesn’t make sense according to conventional ideas.“ Jenkins captured the conundrum beautifully: “What we’re suggesting is that something that doesn’t really interact with anything is changing something that can’t be fully changed.“

“It’s an effect that no one understands“, agreed Sturrock. “Theorists are starting to say, ‘What’s going on?’ But that’s not what the evidence points to. It’s a challenge for the physicists and a challenge for the solar people too.“ If the mystery particle is not a neutrino, “It would have to be something we don’t know about, an unknown particle that is also emitted by the Sun and has this effect, and that would be even more remarkable,“ concluded Sturrock. In an interesting essay on randomness and probability, the late Stephen Jay Gould compared radioactive dating to the process of flipping a coin. Given a fair coin, it’s impossible to predict the outcome of a particular throw; we are reduced to guessing heads or tails. But given a large enough set of throws, things change. We can give precise estimates and ranges of error for the frequencies and lengths of runs — heads in a row — all based on simple probabilistic models. But there is a crucial caveat: each event — flip of the coin… i.e. disintegration of an atom — must be indistinguishable from any other. Gould died in 2002 before any of the results discussed in this chapter surfaced. Consider his words: Coin flipping permits no distinctive personality to any time or moment; each toss can be treated in exactly the same way, whenever it occurs. We can date geological time with precision by radioactive decay because each atom has an equal probability of decaying in each instant. If causal individuality intervened — if 10:00 A.M. on Sunday differed from 5:00 P.M. on Wednesday, or if Joe the Uranium atom, by dint of moral fiber, resisted decay better than his brother Tom, then randomness would fail, and the method would not work.[27] [Emphasis added.]

Clearly, radiometric dating methods are destabilized when atomic nuclei are subjected to neutrinos emanating from the Sun’s core. If indeed, during the early stages of Creation, the celestial spheres — including the orb of the Sun — rotated at higher speeds than current rates, planet earth

would have been bombarded with a torrent of neutrinos; forever compromising the reliability of radiometric dating techniques.

*** One of the few rigorous methods of dating is counting tree rings. This physical evidence is incontrovertible and not subject to any interpretations or speculations. Most people are familiar with the majestic California Sequoia trees whose site has long been a tourist attraction. The Sequoia trees are believed to be the oldest on earth. Not according to Dr. Edmund Schulman,[28] of the University of Arizona, who died in 1958 and devoted the last thirty years of his life to dendrochronological[29] research. In the White Mountains of eastern California one can find a collection of desolate trees known as Bristlecone pines. This tree — by any stretch of the imagination — is no match for the grace and grandeur of the stately Sequoia. It is slow to grow — only one inch in diameter per 100 years — and rises up to 30 feet tall. However, the Bristlecone pine beats the Sequoia in one respect — age. During his last season of research — summer of 1957 — Dr. Schulman stumbled upon the oldest Bristlecone pine of his career. He nicknamed this 4,789 year‑old tree, Methuselah.[30] At the time, it was noted as the oldest known living thing on Planet Earth. Perched high on the desolate White Mountains braving strong dry winds, Methuselah stands in silence overlooking Death Valley as it bears witness to the real age of our young planet. For those of us who subscribe to the account of Creation in the Book of Genesis, I have a sentiment to share with you. Do you realize that the Bristlecone pine, Methuselah, actually witnessed Noah’s Great

Flood and survived it? Methuselah was already an old tree — 727 years old — at the time the Creator unleashed the torrents of the Floodwaters.

Methuselah, you have survived for so long, can you hold out a little longer? In the next couple of years, I plan to visit California, could you please wait just a little bit longer so that we can meet face to face? I promise that when we meet, I’ll say not a word. Humbled by your presence, I’ll stand next to you and patiently hang on to every word you utter and every tale you tell… because I know you have quite a story to tell. Unlike the guesswork of evolutionary geologists and biologists… your story is genuine!

*** The Creator presented the world to His subjects as a mature product ripe for habitation. There was no need to wait for improving conditions. By the time Adam arrived, he found the world a product fully functional and purposeful. Adam himself was the only human in the annals of mankind who was spared the tormenting diaper and teething phases of growing up. The first human was created as a mature man with a full set of teeth, much as the universe he inhabited was fully matured at the end of the process of Creation. This also explains why the Creator did not need to resort to billions of years in order to deposit the distant galaxies in their proper position. This is part and parcel of a mature universe, much in the same vein as Adam appeared on earth with a fully matured set of teeth. Just as most scientists relate to the story of Adam appearing on the world stage with a full set of teeth as a fairy tale, so do they totally deflect the concept

of a mature universe delivered to the hands of our primal progenitor. They prefer to follow the instincts of their accurate radiometric measuring techniques. It is by far a superior and more enlightened approach to hide behind the smoke and mirrors of billions of years of emptiness than to cling to a living Creator.

Invariably, all dating methods contrived by scientists are based on assumptions of conditions that existed in the deep past, leading to speculation and gross miscalculation. Events of singularity such as the Great Flood and congealing of Earth’s crust following Creation, more than likely, aged matter beyond recognition. Evolutionists need billions of years to serve as a smokescreen for their wild scripts. Interestingly enough, any event that can be truly and rigorously corroborated by archaeology, tree rings or historical documentation does not exceed 6,000 years… no matter of the nature of the event or its geographic location. Whether in China, Africa or the Middle East — or anywhere else on the globe — no recorded historical event exceeds 6,000 years. Invariably, museum exhibits highlight the invention of writing as the demarcation line between prehistory and history. Today when we refer to writing, we naturally think of alphabet. But writing did not start out this way. The initial written mode of communication was composed of pictographs. Gradually, over a span of centuries, pictographs developed into cuneiform, which is a set of over 600 wedge‑shaped symbols used in ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian writing. The assessment of archeologists is that the initial pictographs are between five and six thousand years old. Anything preceding these finding is in the realm of prehistoric guesswork and extrapolations.

So many bright and talented people are expending so much energy and skill on retrodicting the past. So many bright and talented people are expending so much energy and skill on retrodicting the past. Retrodiction is a real term in the English language, it means: The explanation or interpretation of past actions or events inferred from the laws that are assumed to have governed them, in plain English, you can say: The act of making a “prediction“ about the past…. Good luck with that, my friends! Complex and futile theories — laced with fantasies bordering on insanity — are endlessly spun in an attempt to rationalize and explain the origin of matter and the phenomenon of life. When dealing with the subject of what transpired before our arrival on this planet, it is best to keep in mind the closing statement in the dialogue between God and Job. As Job failed to grasp the concepts and meaning behind the Creator’s design, God admonished Job by concluding the debate with a rhetorical question: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?[31]

***

Cosmogonies is the plural of the term cosmogony. The concept is derived from the Greek kosmogonia, which is constructed from cosmo + gonos meaning cosmos + genesis or in plain English the origin/creation of the universe. Since nobody really has a clue how the universe came into being, people of every society and affiliation concocted their own creation myth. When relating to the act of Creation, the traditional default position is to invoke the storyline of Genesis as a yardstick for cosmic origins. Why is it that the Genesis account has become the focus of Creation legends when many other myths abound? There are literally hundreds of cosmogonies from every culture, religion and tribe ranging all the way from ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece to Mongolia and China. Why indeed is it that the Genesis account turned into the standard‑bearer of all cosmogonies? It’s a legitimate question that deserves to be treated in depth. Myths, legends and accounts of Creation are as numerous as the variety of cultures, civilizations, nations and religions of the world. Furthermore, most of the world’s cultures boast a multitude of accounts for the origin of the world. A whole book can be written on this topic, but this is not the place to indulge. What I believe is worth musing about is the fact that of all the accounts and myths of Creation, only the account in Genesis has been accorded a serious treatment by the scientific community and the world at large. Why? Before we tackle this question, it is worthwhile — if for comparison purposes only — to list here but a dozen of Creation legends and myths from around the globe and the depths of history. If nothing else, it makes for a colorful and entertaining reading. Egyptian Creation Myth: The only Egyptian gods that had the power to create were Atum and Ptah, whose temples lay close to each other at Heliopolis and Memphis, although separated by the width of the Nile. Their methods of Creation were different. Atum lived alone and brought forth the first divine pair of children from his own semen or sputum, whereas Ptah made use of all the organs of the body: the heart which is the seat of knowledge, the tongue which repeats everything that has been thought by the heart, and the limbs which execute all actions. Khnum fashioned men and their protective geniuses on his potter’s wheel, while Hekat, his wife in Middle Egypt, helped women in childbirth.

Babylonian/Persian Creation Myth: Out of an eternal divine swamp emerged three gods. The initial dominant gods were Apsu, the sweet water ocean, Tiamat the salt‑water ocean, and Mummu, a

third figure. The first two commingled their waters with one another to manufacture a gallery of new gods. It is clear that this introduction reflects the natural circumstances in the delta region of Mesopotamia, where sweet and salt-water meet, and swamps were common along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. From the new generation of gods, one was assigned to govern over land, another over the sky and one for the earth. As the younger gods vie for power and glory, disunity erupts. The younger gods start killing off the older ones. The first‑round ends with Ea vanquishing Apsu and Mummu. The Eridu temple is built over Apsu. Ea’s son Marduk is born and is immediately recognized as a god destined for glory. Tiamat takes the offensive to avenge Apsu. She brings forth eleven enormous monsters, and sets the god Kingu at the head of their ranks, and fixes upon his breast the ‘tablets of destiny,’ symbol of absolute authority. Neither Anu nor Ea dares to challenge him. Marduk undertakes the task on the condition that he receives the position of leadership within the assembly of the gods, along with unlimited authority. The gods agree to his terms and acclaim him with the cry, “Marduk is king.“ After vanquishing Kingu, Marduk fastens the tablets of destiny to his breast, and sets out to do battle with Tiamat. But being that Tiamat was one of the first generation of gods, Marduk encounters difficulties to subdue her. When Tiamat opens her mouth to swallow him, he sends a terrible wind into her open mouth, so she cannot close it. He then shoots an arrow into her bloated belly. As she lay wounded, he manages to ensnare Tiamat in a huge net and with a massive club, crushes her skull. Marduk cuts her carcass into two halves. The upper half of Tiamat’s corpse he lifts up from which he suspends the firmament of heaven as protection against ‘her water.’ Marduk then renders the lower half of her corpse into the earth and ocean below. To extract the most mileage from Tiamat’s carcass, Marduk creates a cocktail, of her divine blood mixed with earth, from which humans are subsequently formed. The intention behind this grotesque godly mud is the portrayal of man as a blend of heaven and earth. Greek Creation Myth (earlier version): Eurynome, the goddess of all Creation, arose from Chaos and separated the sea from the sky. Then, dancing naked upon the waves, she created the wind and rubbed it in her hands to create the serpent Ophion, who made love to her. Pregnant, Eurynome laid the World Egg, and Ophion coiled around it and hatched it. This egg brought forth the cosmos and everything in it. Eurynome and Ophion settled on Mount Olympus, and here, soon, Ophion was proclaiming himself creator. Eurynome, angry, banished him to the netherworld. Then she established the seven planets, each with a Titan and Titaness to rule it. When man appeared, he sprang from the soil, and the first man, Pelasgus, taught the others to eat acorns, build huts, and make clothes.

Chinese Creation Myth: In the beginning there was a huge egg containing chaos and a mixture of yin‑yang — female‑male, cold‑heat, dark‑light, wet‑dry, etc. Also, within this yin‑yang was Phan Ku, who broke forth from the egg as a giant and separated the yin‑yang into many opposites, including earth and sky. With a great chisel and a huge hammer, Phan Ku carved out the mountains, rivers, valleys, and oceans. He also made the sun, moon, and stars. When he died, after 18,000 years, it is said that the fleas in his hair became human beings. In summation, the Chinese say that everything is Phan Ku and everything that is Phan Ku is yin‑yang. Aztec Creation Myth: Quetzalcoatl, the light one, and Tezcatlipoca, the dark one, looked down from their place in the sky and saw only water below. A gigantic goddess floated upon the waters, eating everything with her many mouths. The two gods saw that whatever they created was eaten by this monster. They knew they must stop her, so they transformed themselves into two huge serpents and descended into the water. One of them grabbed the goddess by the arms while the other grabbed her around the legs, and before she could resist they pulled until she broke apart. Her head and shoulders became the earth and the lower part of her body the sky. The other gods were angry at what the two had done and decided, as compensation for her dismemberment, to allow her to provide the necessities for people to survive; so, from her hair they created trees, grass, and flowers; caves, fountains, and wells from her eyes; rivers from her mouth; hills and valleys from her nose; and mountains from her shoulders. Still the goddess was often unhappy, and the people could hear her crying in the night. They knew she wept because of her thirst for human blood, and that she would not provide food from the soil until she imbibed. So the gift of human hearts is given her. She who provides sustenance for human lives demands human lives for her own sustenance. So it has always been; so it will ever be. Mongolian Creation Myth: Long ago Father Heaven had two sons, Ulgen Tenger and Erleg Khan. Ulgen became the lord of the upper world and Erleg Khan became the lord of the lower world. At that time the earth was covered with water, there was no land. Ulgen Tenger asked the loon to bring up mud from below the water to create land, he was not able to do so, and he was punished by having his legs broken so he could not walk, and the goldeneye duck was called next to bring up land. The duck created a small piece of land that Ulgen was able to lay on. Erleg Khan seeing that his brother had fallen asleep on the new land, tried to pull the land out from under him, but instead the land stretched out in all directions as he pulled it. Next, Ulgen Tenger created animals and humans out of mud and he spread them out to dry. He created the dog to keep watch over the bodies of the new humans while he was gone. Erleg Khan, unhappy to see that his brother was creating humans, came to see the new bodies. The dog would not let him come close, at that time the dog could talk but had no fur. It was cold, and snowing, so Erleg Khan tempted him, saying that if the dog allowed him to see the humans’ bodies he would give him a beautiful fur coat. The dog agreed, and was given a shiny beautiful coat. Erleg Khan then spat on the bodies so that humans would have diseases and not be immortal. When Ulgen returned he saw that the dog had fur and that the humans had been damaged, so he punished the dog by making his coat smelly, taking away his voice, and by making the dog follow humans in order to get its food.

Hindu Creation Myth: The Dhammai are from northern India. They are a non‑Hindu people. Before there was anything, there existed Shuzanghu and his wife, Zumaing‑Nui. In time she gave

birth to a girl (earth) and a boy (sky). Sky and earth mated and gave birth to the mountains. Then they produced two frogs that married and made the first humans. These humans were covered with thick hair, but when they mated they produced people as they are now. African Creation Myth — The Dogon tribe version: At the beginning of time, Amma created the Earth and immediately joined with it. But the Earth’s clitoris opposed the male penis. Amma destroyed it, circumcising his wife Earth, and they had a child, Ogo, and the twins, the Nommo. Ogo had no partner and was barren, so he introduced disorder into the world by committing incest with his mother, Earth. The first menstrual blood came from this union, as well as Yeban and Andumbulu, the spirits of the underworld. Amma created the stars by throwing pellets of earth into space. He created the sun and moon by modeling two white earthenware bowls, one encircled with red copper, the other with white copper. Black people were born under the sun and white people under the moon. Nordic Creation Myth: At first there was only a great void, Ginnungagap. Eventually a region of mist and ice, Niflheim, was formed in the North and a region of fire, Muspellsheim, was formed in the South. The great world‑tree, Yggdrasil, reached through all time and space, but was perpetually under attack from Nidhogg, the evil serpent. The fountain of Mimir, source of hidden wisdom, lay under a root of the tree. Niflheim came into contact with Muspellsheim, and the fires melted the ice, which yielded Ymir, the Frost‑Giant with a human form. From Ymir’s sweat came a race of Giants, so that a huge cow —Audhumla — was created to feed them. One day the cow licked the ice and hair emerged, on the next day a head, and on the third day Buri emerged, fully formed. Buri begot a son, Bur, who in turn had three sons: Odin, Vili, and Ve. These three were a new race, not Giants but gods. They banded together and murdered Ymir. Most of the other Giants drowned in Ymir’s blood, which created a great sea. From Ymir’s body the three gods made solid land, the earth, and from his skull they made the heavens. They then created a race of dwarves from the maggots that fed upon Ymir’s body. This was followed by the Creation of the first man and the first woman. They shaped the man from an ash tree and the woman from a vine. Japanese Creation Myth: In the beginning the earth was a shapeless mass. Then the god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami were given the job of stirring this mass with a long, jeweled spear. As they stirred, the mixture thickened and dropped off the spear point and hardened into an island. On the island the god and goddess were married and had children. These offspring included the eight islands of Japan, many gods and goddesses, and finally the sun‑goddess Amaterasu. From her descended the emperors of Japan.

American Indian Creation Myth (Apache version): In the beginning there was only darkness. Suddenly a small‑bearded man, the One Who Lives Above, appeared rubbing his eyes as if just awakened. The man, the Creator, rubbed his hands together and there appeared a little girl, Girl‑Without‑Parents. The creator rubbed his face with his hands and there stood the Sun‑God. Again, Creator rubbed his sweaty brow and from his hands dropped Small‑boy. Now there were four gods. Then he created Tarantula, Big Dipper, Wind, Lightning‑Maker and Lightning‑Rumbler. All four gods shook hands so that their sweat mixed together. Then Creator rubbed his palms together from which fell a small round, brown ball. They took turns kicking it and with each kick the ball grew larger. Creator told Wind to go inside the ball and blow it up. Then Tarantula spun a black cord, which he attached to the ball and went to the east pulling as hard as he could. He repeated this exercise with a blue cord to the south, a yellow cord to the west and a white cord to the north. When he was done the brown ball had become the earth. The Creator again rubbed his hands and there appeared Hummingbird. “Fly all over this earth,“ said Creator to Hummingbird, “and tell us what you see.“ When he returned, Hummingbird reported that there was water on the west side. But the earth rolled and bounced, so Creator made four giant posts in four different colors: black, blue, yellow and white. Then he commanded the Wind to position them at the four cardinal points of the earth. The earth was now still. The Creation of the people, animals, birds, and trees, etc takes place hereafter. American Indian Creation Myth (Cherokee version): Long, long ago, a great island floated in a giant ocean. This island hung from four thick ropes from the sky, which was solid rock. There were no peoples and it was always dark. The animals could not see so they got the sun and put it in a path that took it across the island from east to west each day. The animals and plants were told by the Great Spirit to stay awake for seven days and seven nights, but most could not rise to the challenge and fell asleep. Those plants that did stay awake, such as the pine and cedar and those few others were rewarded by being allowed to remain green all year. All the others were made to lose their leaves each winter. Those animals that did stay awake, such as the owl and the mountain lion and few others were rewarded with the ability to go about in the dark. Then the people appeared. That is another story.

Please keep in mind that the above selection of Creation legends and myths is but a mere dozen out of the heap of cosmogonies. The American Indians alone concocted dozens of myths, at least one for each tribe. Out of Africa many colorful legends sprung forth of which only one is presented here. I hope you found it entertaining and enjoyed the parade of Creation myths, because I sure as hell did. Now, to the serious stuff. After reading this sampler you might still wish to ask: Why is it that the Genesis account is the only one that transcended all others? The model of Genesis not only transcended all other cosmogonies, but also still — after 3,300 years — tops the bestseller lists all around the globe. More importantly, the Biblical cosmogony is the model adapted as a basis for the world’s greatest and most populous monotheistic religions. So, you might ask, what is the magic behind the perennial text of Genesis? Now that you have read a representative cross section of the rest of the other stories, I’ll let you be the judge. Having said that, here is additional perspective on the subject. As one delves into the contents of the myths of Creation, aside from the Genesis version, they all seem to resort to infantile graphic images on one hand and grotesque, violent, lewd, brutal scripts on the other. My favorite one is the cosmogony of the Babylonians that was later adopted by the Persians; the one where the almighty god, Marduk clobbers the hell out of the goddess Tiamat, and splits her carcass in two halves. Marduk then recycles her battered remains to create the heavens and the earth. It certainly contains all the gory ingredients necessary for a graphic Hollywood horror movie. In the 21st century we tend to dismiss such horrific images as a childish script that lingers in our minds but a few moments before they are displaced with images of the evening newscast.

Let’s, however, for a moment consider the impact of the Persian cosmogony upon the generation that concocted this cocktail. For centuries, the Marduk horror script was taught to millions of school age children as gospel. Infants sucked in the gory myths with their mother’s milk. But not only generations of children regurgitated and lived and died by this script. Philosophers of the era along with the most serious scholars spun a whole value system and religion built around this blood drenched and barbaric cosmogony. This bloody script was part, parcel and foundation of the religion of an enlightened society. Indeed, the Persians were an enlightened, liberal and progressive society in comparison to many of the oppressive and barbaric regimes of antiquity. To our generation, the deities of the ancient cosmogonies seem like grotesque and vulgar comic book characters. Yet, in their heyday, these deities were anything but comical. They commandeered legions of faithful and zealot followers willing to sacrifice their life for the benefit of defending the reputation of these grotesque and obscene comic book legends. Huge temples and shrines were erected to celebrate their glory. Books, poems, songs, rituals were faithfully composed to their worship. Armies went to war defending the honor of these voodoo myths. Sacrifices were offered to appease the angry phantom gods; in many instances — such as in the Aztec culture — human sacrifices. To this day, a multitude of African tribes mutilate their women in barbaric public rituals inspired by the act of the supreme deity Amma in the Dogon Creation myth. The barbaric practice of female genitalia mutilation is a venerated ritual in Mali, where the Dogon tribe resides. This is certainly not a marginal or vestigial ritual perpetrated in secrecy at the periphery of society; rather, this gruesome brutality is celebrated with much pomp and pride in the mainstream. The practitioners of this barbaric rite are much sought after, venerated and affluent dignitaries. In Mali alone, a country of about 10 million people, more than three million women were subjected to mutilation.

All the other cosmogonies were, at one time or another, foundations of religions and societies across time and space. Countless people

throughout history were nurtured upon these graphic and grotesque Creation legends. The ancient Greeks and Romans, who were considered sophisticated, progressive and technologically advanced societies couldn’t come up with scripts that are any more meaningful or profound than the early Egyptians and Babylonians. Even more amazing is the fact that kings and commoners alike adhered to their cosmogonies with loyal zeal that often translated into major wars in the cause of defending the childish and vulgar heroes emanating from their Creation mythology. Yet, all of these deities evaporated into nothing more than comical folk legends, curiosities and museum exhibits, while the text of Genesis is the only one that is still relevant and the one that warrants serious attention by the scientific community. While most of the cosmogonies paved way for social infrastructures based on barbaric, incestuous, violent and lewd values, the Biblical premise promoted modesty, morality and the dignity of the individual human being. As opposed to the cult of the morgue venerated by the ancient Egyptians, the Torah celebrates the sanctity of life granted by a living God. Morbid pagan pessimism fueled by polytheism mired early civilizations in stagnation and disunity, as opposed to the order and harmony projected in the Biblical monotheistic premise that promoted human progress and scholarship based on the Ten Commandments. This is not an attempt to prove the divine authorship of Biblical text; divinity is a direct function of faith. Divinity aside, it is the effectiveness and pragmatism of the Books of Moses that left all the other cosmogonies in the dust.

Once again, resorting to Einstein’s axiom that, if you can’t explain it to a six‑year‑old, you don’t understand it yourself,[32] we may begin to make some sense of why the Genesis storyline transcended all other cosmogonies. All Creation myths amount to nothing more than an incoherent sticky convoluted mess. They are drenched in mud, blood, licentious gore and a gallery of grotesque gods caught up in an endless bloody loop going nowhere fast. These cosmogonies project neither direction nor purpose, which might shed light on the meaning of life or the workings of the universe. By contrast, the Genesis saga emerges as clean, simple, consistent and dependable. One invisible God — no images, no mess, no struggle only harmony. A Sole Creator — Monitor and Supervisor of the universe. A living God, exuding compassion and goodwill towards His Creatures and Creation. A benevolent God forging for the world and its inhabitants a clear path leading to a good, beneficial, creative and meaningful life. Simple, pristine and purposeful… Divine! That is what the account of Genesis is all about. The cosmogonies of the Persians, the Greeks, the Mongolians, the Nordics, the Aztecs and many others are packed with multitude of gods vying for power and control. Brutal, obscene and gruesome struggles serve as backdrop to the power struggle among the warring gods. In most of these legends, different elements of nature are controlled by different deities. One of the reasons that none of those myths prevailed is attributed to the fact that while science converged on revealing the truth about the physical nature of the universe, it moved further away from disunity and ever closer to harmony of the forces of nature in concordance with the Genesis premise. In light of the latest advances in the sciences, it stands out clearly that the script of Genesis is the only cosmogony in which events resemble the acceptable scientific accounts for cosmic origins. Rather than debunk the premise of Genesis, science, as it moves ever closer to the truth, the closer it aligns itself with the Biblical narrative. Darwin’s evolutionary concoction, as well as Gamow’s theory of the Big Bang, is torn right out of the pages of Genesis.

It is now 153 years after Charles Darwin advanced his Theory of Evolution. To this day, neither Darwin nor his cohorts down the generations presented a credible rigorous proof to evolutionary hypothesis. Nonetheless, the basic premise of Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory is laced around the contours of the Genesis narrative. The chronology of Genesis starts with dark chaotic matter from which subsequently the heaven and the earth were formed. Only after the introduction of celestial bodies does the earth begin to sprout vegetation followed by primitive forms of life. Then came the animal kingdom followed by the crown of Creation — man and woman. As Creation unfolds, it progresses from the primitive and inert to the dynamic and complex. That is the very model co‑opted by Mr. Darwin, who in 1827 studied divinity at Christ’s College in Cambridge with the intent to become an Anglican Parson. He eventually dropped out of the divinity program. Two years earlier, Darwin flunked out from the University of Edinburgh Medical School. Though he dropped out of the ordination program, as a student of theology, Darwin acquainted himself with Biblical text and certainly acquired ample introduction to the Genesis account of Creation. The grand sweep of Darwinian evolution — from bacterium to baboon — mirrors the script of Genesis in which the sequence of Creation introduces organisms ranging from the primitive to the complex. Mr. Gamow corroborated the Genesis model by scientifically proving that the universe indeed has a beginning. Gamow’s Big Bang amounts to nothing less than the jolt the universe experienced as the Creator zapped it with Creation‑Light.

The following etymological acrobatics may amount to nothing more than an exercise in futility and a mere curiosity, but still a haunting mirage worthy of note. Though it all ties in very neatly, certainly, this is not the kind of stuff with which one goes to the farm to buy eggs… but, while we are on the subject, the symbolism behind this piquant tidbit of trivia is simply too juicy and too good to let it slip between the cracks: Interestingly, the term Big Bang contains two words, both of which start with the letter “B.“ The first two words in Genesis also start with the letter “B“ — Bereshit Bara, which translates as: In the beginning God created. Furthermore, the singular event known as Beginning, which is the very first concept in the Bible, also begins with the letter “B.“ As shocking as it may sound, rather than undermine or supplant the Biblical story of Creation, the Big Bang is the agent of deconstruction of the entire gamut of theories and cosmogonies that clash with the Genesis account.

*** By introducing the theory of the Big Bang science has come a long way to converge upon the storyline of Genesis. Alas, not far enough. After all, Biblical premise tenaciously clings to a young universe not older than 6,000 years. Most scientists estimate the age of the universe anywhere between 10 and 20 billion years. On the surface this may seem like an unbridgeable gap. Indeed, it seems irreconcilable, does it not? Lest we lose heart, let’s for a moment consider where we came from and how far we have progressed. For thousands of years and up to about sixty years ago, when the theory of the Big Bang was introduced, philosophers and scientists unequivocally postulated that the Earth existed since eternity and, therefore, was infinitely old. The theory of the Big Bang reduced the age of the universe from infinity to a mere 20 billion years. Perhaps the Bible and science are no longer as far apart as one might suspect.

The timeless struggle of philosophers and scientists to establish the age of the universe is reminiscent of the murky theme running like a thread throughout the ancient cosmogonies, in which a multitude of gods are locked up in a protracted struggle for control. The storyline in Genesis emerges with a simple clear picture on both accounts. Out of the multitude of gods populating the fantasies of the ancient cosmogonies, Genesis emerges with One invisible Creator, clean and simple. Out of the wild, incoherent guesswork placing the universe all over the chronological map, Genesis establishes a clear and distinct timeline of Creation marked by Creation-Light. Herman Branover is a Russian Israeli physicist and Jewish educator. He is best known in the Jewish world as an inspiring author, translator, publisher, and educator. Branover is known in the world scientific community as the leading pioneer in the field of magneto hydrodynamics — MHD. His research and development company, Solmecs, developed a non‑conventional environmentally safe energy generator which has led to many useful spin‑off technologies.[33] Back in 2002, I had the privilege of dining in a Manhattan restaurant with Professor Branover. During the evening, I expressed my concern over the huge gap between science and Genesis regarding the age of the universe. Professor Branover beamed with a fatherly smile while attempting to assuage my anxiety: Look here, Reb Yitzhak. No need to lose sleep over this seemingly irreconcilable contradiction. Science has already taken the biggest step in narrowing the gap from infinity to 20 billion years. The gap between 20 billion and 6,000 is by far easier to reconcile. Give them a little more time… the day is not far when scientists will come full circle to embrace the Genesis timeline.

For over 3,300 years, Genesis has been patiently waiting for science to close ranks with its version of events. By admitting a beginning, scientists already made a colossal concession towards reconciling cosmology with the Genesis narrative. The rest of the journey of narrowing this gap will certainly seem like a cakewalk when compared with the mitigation of the gap advanced by the Big Bang Theory. The unswerving text of Genesis is not going anywhere; it is patiently waiting for science to come its way… all the way… to complete the loop of closure. People who view the world through the prism of theology tend to deride the Big Bang Theory. At best, they dismiss it as misguided folly, and

at worst as a bad joke in poor taste. Yet, under further scrutiny, this theory is one of the greatest testimonials corroborating the Genesis account of Creation. Unlike Darwin’s misguided evolutionary conjecture, the Big Bang Theory is not a source of contention. Way back in the 1940s when it was first introduced, the Big Bang Theory was met with fierce resistance and derision by many scientists, among them Albert Einstein. However, as incontrovertible evidence poured in from observatories, resistance to the theory quickly faded; today there are no scientists that contest the Big Bang Theory. For thousands of years, since the times of Aristotle, philosophers and scientists tenaciously clung to the notion that — going forward or backward — the universe is eternal. This was a very convenient platform upon which the unspoken atheistic character of science could rest comfortably. Clearly, for Cosmology to admit that the universe is anything but eternal, would leave room for the abhorrent and blasphemous concept of a beginning to creep into the hallowed halls of science. A universe that has a beginning is a concept that borders on blasphemous theology. Since science and theology are mutually exclusive, this approach was totally rejected by scientists. One of the first giants of science to grapple with this sticky issue was no less than Albert Einstein. Way back in 1917 Einstein dabbled in developing equations that would define the condition of the universe. His work was based on the General Law of Relativity, which Einstein introduced only two years earlier. The more he researched the universal phenomenon, the more Einstein became convinced that his mind was playing tricks on him. The cosmological equations Einstein developed pulled in a direction that was totally not acceptable to the mindset of this

colossal genius; they persistently portrayed a universe in a dynamic state of flux!?! Why did Einstein fiercely resist the notion that the universe is expanding? Because a universe that is expanding with the passage of time is also a universe that shrinks if the clock is turned back. Based on this premise, the more we regress, the smaller the universe gets. This logic inevitably led Einstein to shudder at the thought that this dynamic process would bring him face to face with a universe that had a beginning. That was totally unacceptable to a man steadfast in his atheistic and logical worldview. At the time, Einstein corresponded with Vesto Slipher, the director of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Just to make matters worse for Dr. Einstein, he received data from Vesto Slipher that in fact supported the thesis of an expanding universe. Slipher, applied guidelines outlined in Einstein’s General Law of Relativity to observations he conducted at the Lowell Observatory. Mr. Slipher’s conclusion was that there is no escaping the outcome that indeed the universe is constantly expanding. Too strongly anchored to his intuition that this is simply not an alternative, Einstein could not let go of his preconceived notions. He rationalized and dismissed Slipher’s evidence. To pacify his scientific conscience, Einstein massaged the equations with his famous cosmological constant later known as a fudge factor. Driven by pure atheistic instincts and against his better scientific judgment, Einstein fudged the General Theory of Relativity to ensure that it remains within the confines of a static universe. Officially, it was these set of castrated cosmological equations he published.[34] Poor Einstein was made to swallow his own cosmic debris. When confronted with the ever‑growing body of evidence that indeed the universe was dynamically expanding, a contrite Einstein confessed to Max Born that denying his initial findings regarding an expanding universe was the biggest blunder of my life. [35] Though the genie of an expanding universe was certainly out of the bottle by now, this baby was yet to be named.

In the late 1940s, a scientist named George Gamow toppled the applecart with the revelation that indeed the universe had a beginning. BINGO! Unwittingly, it was none other than Fred Hoyle, who called the newborn baby by its real name… in the beginning there was a Big Bang. Against all scientific tradition and sensibilities, scientists admitted that indeed the world had a beginning, much like in the Genesis fairytale. This earth‑shattering revolution in scientific philosophy introduced hair‑raising questions about the direction of science. An event of singularity, such as the Big Bang, is discordant heresy and an alien flavor to the fine palate of philosophers of science. Singularity introduces baggage that could smack of miracles and the supernatural. There is absolutely neither room nor tolerance for such adulterated voodoo rubbish in the pristine world of the laboratory. Yet in spite of the inherent and abhorrent resistance to this Trojan Horse, the Big Bang has planted a firm foothold in the rigorous world of science. What caused the scientific community to buy into the Big Bang Theory with its anti‑scientific baggage of a beginning? Simply speaking — the cold hard facts. After all, in the world of science, opinions do not count… facts do! If all the big shots already admitted to a universe that expands as it moves forward into the future, then by the same logic it must shrink as we zoom into the past. The only logical conclusion is that it must have started somewhere in the deep past from nothing. Hence the Big Bang!

A more recent admission by a Nobel Laureate in high‑energy physics, Dr. Steven Weinberg, highlights the excruciating birth pangs of a dynamic universe in the scientific community. In his classic book, The First Three Minutes, in which Dr. Weinberg describes the initial events following the Big Bang, he writes: Some cosmologists are philosophically attracted to the oscillating model of the universe, especially because, like the steady‑state eternal model, it nicely avoids the problem of Genesis.[36]

Now, we all too well know what the problem with Genesis is all about. How did scientists ever blunder into this mess where the borderline between science and theology is so fuzzy that it is nearly imperceptible? Gerald Schroeder is a former professor of nuclear physics at M.I.T. and member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. In his book, Science of God, Dr. Schroeder neatly captures the stupendous contradictions exposed by modern physics: Bizarre as it sounds, miracles, once beyond the pale of an enlightened society, now have a scientific basis. Quantum Mechanics has changed our understanding of nature. Not only are miracles theoretically possible according to QM, but they are also observed regularly in physics labs. In the pristine air of academia, they are referred to as insufficiently caused events, events that can be observed but that cannot be explained by the conditions that preceded them. That’s the age‑old Biblical definition of a miracle.[37]

The Big Bang Theory is the ultimate admission by the scientific community that the universe has a distinct beginning. Though it is the most logical corollary to the theory, scientists are still coy to associate a Beginner with the beginning. The Big Bang Theory is the first meaningful scientific leap casting a shadow of dissolution over worn‑out and unsubstantiated theories based on events that can never be repeated or recreated, nor were ever observed.

Could this magical and ethereal world — where light warps; time is a relative function of space, matter, gravity and velocity; our dynamic universe is ever expanding; matter and energy are convertible, and the eternal yielded a beginning — eventually give birth to a Beginner? God forbid! The day is not far when evidence will nudge the scientific premise, on the subject of the age of the universe, ever closer to the Biblical position. Much as the Big Bang Theory admitted to a beginning and shrunk the estimated age of the universe to less than 20 billion years, new breakthroughs will move science ever closer to the Genesis storyline. Science will eventually corroborate the Biblical premise that each of the six days of Creation amounted to nothing more than a 24‑hour period. Moreover, as science is moving ever closer to align itself with the Genesis script, it is inevitable that the scientific community will sooner or later arrive at the conclusion that universal timeline is accurately marked by the cosmic time‑clock of Creation-Light. While the universe may be aged billions of years, it is not very old. Chronicled by the cosmic time‑clock of Creation-Light, as depicted in Genesis, indeed the universe we inhabit is very young… less than 6,000 years old!

Adam & Eve It all started under a tree. The history of mankind began with intrigue unfolding under the enchanting shade of an exotic tree. This bigger-thanlife drama set the course for humanity to this very day and beyond. The tiny cast of players consisted of Adam, Eve and the serpent, and of course God who created them all. The tree which provided the backdrop to this earliest of all human experiences was like no other vegetation we have ever encountered since, nor is our limited human imagination capable of grasping its elusive reflection. There under the mysterious Tree of Knowledge stood the beautiful, and newly formed, Eve contemplating its qualities and mystique. Of all the exotica, which the Garden of Eden had to offer, it was this one single tree, which riveted Eve’s whole attention to the point of obsession. She stood in front of the tree for long hours, spellbound by its iridescent egg-shaped fruit, basking in the sunshine of Eden. Enter the serpent. This was not just any snake. This was the snake that roamed around Paradise with Adam and Eve. This original snake was not part of the animal kingdom nor was he human, but in a class all by himself. He was more elevated than any of the animals and only a notch inferior to humans. This was the Mother of all snakes! Not only was this original snake of a creature shrewd and cunning but also as smart and intelligent as Albert Einstein and Henry Kissinger put together. This primeval serpent was not like anything we encounter in the wilderness or observe through a glass cage in the Bronx Zoo. The serpent of Paradise

walked like a gentleman on slender feet. He possessed the face of a wise owl and the seductive voice of an enchanting sorcerer. This Mother of all Snakes strolled gingerly around the Garden of Eden puffing on his pipe like he owned the place. His neck was adorned with a glittering gold necklace and a chunky gold ring topped with a red ruby was wrapped around the pinky of his right hand. A shimmering peacock feather glittering with all the colors of the rainbow was neatly tucked into the ribbon of his stylish fedora. Stealthily, the debonair snake walked over to Eve and said, “Good afternoon Eve. How are you doing on this beautiful Friday?“ Eve was so startled by the sight of the serpent that she nearly bumped into the tree. This suited the snake just fine. To provide his scheme with a final touch, the serpent moved closer to Eve and toppled her. Eve let out a shriek of panic, which was heard all over the Garden of Eden as her feminine torso lost its balance and landed right on the trunk of the mysterious and formidable Tree of Knowledge. “Have you hurt yourself, my fair lady?“ calmly inquired the cavalier serpent as he helped Eve to her feet. Pale and shaken to the core of her bone marrow, Eve mumbled in fear, “Oh my God, I am doomed!“ “Don’t be so foolish, little girl,“ soothingly responded the serpent, “You’ll be just fine. All you need to do is relax by the shade of the tree. Sit down, take a deep breath and in a moment or two you’ll be fine.“ “No…no… no,“ cried Eve hysterically, “Where is Adam? Please tell him to come here urgently! I need to see him before I die.“ “Stop talking nonsense,“ exhorted the serpent, “you are the furthest thing from death. Just look at you. You are a beautiful nymph in full blossom overflowing with the juices of paradise.“

“But… but…“ mumbled a frightened Eve, “My death is near… because I touched the Tree of Knowledge… which God commanded us not to even touch… Please go and call Adam. I must see him before I die.“ “Calm down, my beautiful maiden,“ responded the snake as a puff of aromatic smoke ring gently wafted from his pipe, “not only are you not going to die, but you are about to experience the ultimate in life, if you just listen to me.“ “But we will die if we touch this tree,“ persisted a panic-stricken Eve in a morose tone of voice. “Or so says God… I have a little more experience in life than you do, my little girl,“ spoke the serpent in a soothing voice, “I arrived at this garden a while before you and Adam showed up. I can assure you that you have done nothing wrong. You misread the intentions and will of our Creator. You claim that He commanded you not to touch this beautiful tree upon the pain of death. You just touched it. Are you dead? Far from it! Don’t be so frightened by the word of God. It should be the other way around. If you play it right and listen to my advice, God has more to lose in this game than you.“ “What you just said is despicable and blasphemy,“ protested an outraged Eve, “Don’t forget that God is the one who created us. If we violate His commands, He will punish us.“ The words spoken by Eve were music to the serpent’s ears. This was exactly what he was scheming for, to engage Eve in a debate. Once the dialogue started, the rest was easy. Eve was no match for the Mother of all Snakes. To keep the momentum going, the serpent replied, “Before you and Adam arrived on the scene, I already had a few encounters with God, and I can tell you from experience that He is not quite what you make Him out to

be. Believe it or not, He has His limitations, and I know that from experience.“ “How dare you speak like that?“ shouted Eve back, “Don’t forget for a moment that God has created you as well.“ “Indeed, you are right,“ replied the serpent, “but this latest episode that you had just witnessed with your own eyes proves my point.“ “How do you mean?“ asked Eve, her voice calm by now. “You yourself told me that God will strike you dead if you dare as much as touch this beautiful tree,“ argued the serpent as he pointed to the Tree of Knowledge, “Well, look at you, are you dead? Your whole body just made contact with this tree and you are as alive and effervescent as the sparkling waters of Eden. Believe me Eve, I stand to gain nothing from all this. It is for your sake that I am going through with this exercise. You are the one who can benefit most because you have a great potential.“ As the serpent had planned, Eve’s curiosity was about to do the rest of his work. “What do you mean when you say that I have a great potential?“ “You have the potential to become a creator much like God himself,“ replied the serpent. “Nonsense,“ objected Eve, “you and I know very well that only God possesses the capability to create.“ “Eve,“ argued the serpent, “look at me, I am just a lowly snake. I can never rise above my status. But you are totally different. You are the pinnacle of Creation.“ “How could that be?“ countered Eve, “Adam was created before me, I always look up to him. And besides, he is God’s favorite son.“ “Things are not what they seem, my dear Eve,“ the snake paused to puff on his pipe, and then resumed, “The fact that you were created after Adam, is the ultimate indication of your supremacy.“ “That does not make any sense,“ responded a befuddled Eve. “Again, let me remind you that I was created before Adam and Eve. Which means that I harbor a better understanding of the hierarchy in this world. Take a look around you and you might notice that the progression of Creation moves up the level of complexity and sophistication. Initially, God

created the inanimate object. Then, He created a garden variety of vegetation, starting with the simple to the complex. Then the more primitive forms of life, followed by complex animals. Only after creating the animals, God created Adam. Behold, God saved the best for the last – Eve, you are the crown of Creation!“

Spellbound by this revelation, a demure Eve, blinked her long eyelashes; she eyed the serpent with admiration, as she said, “You are really brilliant, my friend. Not only have you educated me, but you also made me feel very special. Indeed, I am obliged!“ The snake was swiftly moving on the road to victory. He offered the bait, turned the corner and was unstoppable. Momentum on his side, the serpent took his quest to the next step. “Eve,“ he spoke in soft measured tones, “Moreover, keep in mind that you and Adam were created in the image of God Himself. This means that your potential is unlimited. You see, when God created the two of you, He endowed you with the ability to create your own worlds. But God doesn’t want you to exercise this capacity. That is why he has commanded you not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. He knows very well that the moment you consume from the fruit of this tree you will compete with Him, and pose a serious threat to His absolute dominion.“[38] Without any advance warning, the serpent reached out his long manicured paws and plucked the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. He then graciously positioned the succulent and irresistible fruit right under Eve’s inquisitive eyes.

Eve was stricken with paralysis. She was awed by the serpent’s daredevil action and at the same time overwhelmed at the potential embedded in this fruit. For a long moment she studied the iridescent oval produce of the enchanting tree. Could it be, she contemplated, that the serpent is right in his assessment? If it is indeed true, then I am really fortunate that I learned about this before Adam. If I will eat of this fruit first, then I will be superior to Adam and all the other living creatures, and an equal to God Himself. The temptation was too much to resist. Much like Vitamin C is derived from the citrus fruit, so did The Tree of Knowledge impart wisdom. With the very first bite, Eve took a leap of maturity and understood for the first time what life is truly all about. Cognizant of the sensation that she was about to expire threw her into a frenzy of panic. It was not so much the fear of dying as much as jealousy, which struck her with terror. The jealousy she experienced stemmed from the fact that with her demise God will find a new bride for Adam. This thought occupied all her senses. Before she died she had to do something about it — immediately! Eve would go to any length to ensure that Adam will never end up with another woman. We all know the outcome of this episode, but have we learned its lessons? The Creator had issued but one command to the newly formed humanity and it was violated. Paradise was lost. Adam failed his very first test. God did not lose any time. He immediately took all the guilty parties to task. God plucked Adam out of his hiding place and presented him with the evidence. The whole world gathered to watch the first man in his moment of shame. The first tribunal in history was set up in the open garden nestled in the bifurcation of the two mighty rivers that flowed out of Paradise. God sat on the throne of justice facing the guilty parties. The monkeys observed the proceedings dangling from the trees while the birds hovered above. The lions had a front row seat followed by the rest of the animal kingdom. The giraffes alongside the elephants occupied the rear standing room. The whale and the other marine species watched the proceedings by the riverside.

“Adam,“ God opened the trial, “have you eaten from the tree which I have commanded you not to eat?“ Adam was not just any man. He was the very first man, the only man in the history of mankind not born of a woman. He was designed and created expressly by the hand of the God, with no middleman or midwife involved in the process. We expected more from such an original specimen, but this gallant man let us down. Standing accused, Adam resorted to his most base instincts when he replied to the charges leveled at him by his Creator. “God,“ mumbled a trembling Adam, “the woman you have given me, she has lured me into this trap.“ In one short statement Adam gravely disappointed his Creator, and the rest of humanity that was to spring forth from his loins. He shirked from any form of responsibility and blamed everyone else for his shortcomings. Primarily, he laid all the responsibility upon his wife and indirectly implicated God for having imposed the woman upon him in the first place. But perhaps the more severe aspect of his poor defense was the fact that Adam violated the cardinal rule of marriage. Of all the advice I received when I got married, the most important wisdom was whispered in my ear by the officiating rabbi. “Young man,“ the rabbi turned to me, “whatever you do, don’t you ever incriminate or humiliate your wife in public.“ Unfortunately for Adam, the same rabbi did not conduct his marriage ceremony. Not only did Adam humiliate his new bride in public, but he did it in front of the whole world. This was something God did not take lightly and He ultimately sentenced Adam to a life of hard labor in order to provide for the woman he so blatantly disparaged on the world stage. Based on Adam’s accusations, God then turned to Eve, “And what have you got to say for yourself?“

Eve did not fare much better than Adam. She blamed all her problems on the Mother of all Snakes. At this point the verdict was handed down by The Supreme Judge as the first courtroom drama in history came to a close. All three parties were found guilty and Paradise was lost forever. Anyone who wishes to find out more about the verdict can look it up in the opening chapter to the Book of Genesis. Reading between the lines of this chapter, one soon comes to grip with the very first courtroom puzzle in history. When Adam threw the blame on Eve, God turned to Eve to inquire what she had to say in her defense. Eve in turn shifted the responsibility to the snake. A close and extensive scrutiny of all court archives from that historical trial reveals that The Judge did not present the serpent with the opportunity to defend himself in front of the tribunal. The snake was severely punished for his part in this historical crime while being denied due process of the law. What ever happened to the enlightened concept of equal rights? In the least, the serpent should have been given the right to be represented by an attorney. Should we not come to expect fairness and justice from the Judge of all judges? Didn’t the poor primeval serpent deserve his day in court? Since my childhood I heard many folktales portraying the fact that one can never and should never trust a snake in any form or shape. I guess that if this is a fact of life so obvious even to children, then it was also known to the One who created and programmed the snake. The primordial snake paid the price for instigating the first revolt in the annals of history. As for Adam and Eve, they were promptly expelled from the Garden of Eden. As soon as they tasted from the tree of knowledge, the two of them quickly sobered up to face a new reality staring them in the face. To be sure, paradise was lost, but Adam feared a worst fate for the folly they committed against the Creator. Shaking with fear, Adam turned to Eve and uttered in a quivering voice, “I now fear the worst. Didn’t the Creator warn us that we would surely die once we taste from the forbidden tree?“ Eve moved closer to Adam and uttered while sobbing uncontrollably, “My dear man, Adam… please hug me… I feel so lost… and guilty. My God, what have I done? What are we going to do now?

Surely we will soon both be dead. After all, we both know that the Creator will do good on His threat…“ The imminent death that Adam and Eve feared did not arrive. Instead, they heard the soothing voice of their Creator saying: “Adam, it is already late in the day. The sun will soon set and the glorious day of the Sabbath is about to descend upon my Creation. The Sabbath is a day of rest and supreme spiritual elevation; it is the essence of Creation. I have specifically created the seventh day so that my whole Creation will experience the true meaning, serenity and purpose of this world. Though you have sinned, still I wish that you both spend the very first Sabbath with Me in Paradise.“ And so it was. Adam and Eve spent the best Sabbath of their life basking in the glory of Paradise and in the company of the Creator. Only after the sunset that marked the end of the Sabbath, did God present Adam and his wife with special garments and booted them out of Paradise. Certainly, that was one of the saddest and most tragic moments in the annals of mankind, but Adam and Eve found a measure of comfort in two things. First and foremost, they were simply happy just to be spared from the angel of death. On top of that, no less than the Creator Himself presented them with designer fur coats as they exited paradise. Furthermore, God handed the first two humans with one more gift, and only then did He show them the door. The gift that God gave them was the secret of kindling fire.

***

Adam and his wife soon faced the harsh realities of eking out a living on their own. These were the days of autumn, as Adam and his wife learned to cope with the challenge of producing food from the ground. From sunrise to sunset, day in and day out, they toiled in the fields to earn a living. At night they would light a fire and cook dinner. As the days turned colder, Adam turned to his wife in a panic, “Have you noticed, that not only is the weather getting colder, but the days are getting shorter?“ “Adam,“ replied a perplexed Eve, “I am so exhausted from working this barren land that I have no mind left to pay attention to what’s going on in the world. But if you are right and indeed the days are getting shorter, what does that mean, is that that a bad omen for us?“ “Eve,“ spoke Adam with caution, “less daylight means that we have less time to work the fields… but besides the fact that it means less food, there is something much more ominous that I fear…“ “What is it Adam? … Please tell me… are we in big trouble?“ Cried Eve in a shrieking tone of voice. “Eve,“ elaborated Adam attempting to keep his composure, “Do you remember that God warned us that we will die because we ate from the forbidden tree?“ “Adam, don’t you think that God has forgiven us by now?“ “Judging by the fact that daylight is shrinking every day,“ replied Adam “I am suspecting that God is determined to hold us accountable?“ “How do you mean?“ asked Eve in a panic. “For weeks now I have noticed that every day brings with it more darkness, more bitter cold and less sunlight. If this pattern persists, I fear

that God is soon going to engulf us in total darkness and ice until we perish along with the rest of Creation.“ Aside from the current crisis staring them in the face, Adam and Eve had much to be depressed about. For a brief period, they lived a carefree existence in paradise in the glorious presence of the Creator. They forfeited that privilege by a foolish act, which should have not been too difficult to avoid. Ever since, they had to work, and work hard, eking a living from the unyielding earth. They experienced great delight when their children were born. However, this short‑lived happiness soon gave way to a colossal tragedy, as their firstborn son, Cain, rose up on his unsuspecting brother, Abel, and bludgeoned him to death in cold blood. Not only did they mourn for the murdered Abel, but they also mourned for the stigmatized Cain, with whom they practically lost touch due to the tragic murder. But even during the rare moments when they overcame their rage and had the urge to meet with Cain the murderer, he was hardly accessible. Cursed by the Creator, Cain roamed around the fields and the jungles like a hunted animal for the rest of his days. On top of all their misery and tragedy, Adam and Eve now had to contend with a torturous impending death. They were gripped by the paralyzing fear of an encroaching and tormenting doom. They still worked the fields and cooked their food on the fire, but both were enveloped by a deep depression as they watched the days grow shorter and shorter, and the weather colder and colder. They barely talked to each other as the gloom and doom of darkness and a bitter frost closed in on them. But then something happened… as the months passed by, both were in for the surprise of their life. In total disbelief, they took notice that in due time the process had been reversed, as each day brought with it just a tiny bit more sunlight. It soon dawned upon the first two humans that the pattern of encroaching darkness had reversed itself.[39] Each day they closely watched for the sunset. Their mood quickly shifted from gloom to elation as they soon ascertained that the pattern of longer and shorter days is indeed a cyclical natural phenomenon rather than a result of God’s wrath. Aware that they no longer faced the prospects of death by darkness, Adam and Eve popped a bottle of champagne and celebrated their deliverance with unbound joy. They declared the winter solstice a

celebration of the victory of light over darkness, and a period of merriment and felicity. Year after year, the season when darkness yields to increased daylight was celebrated by Adam and Eve and their descendants as a festival of joy and light. Since Adam and Eve are the progenitors of all humanity, this tradition permeated most cultures and religions, in one form of celebration or another, all the way to our very own times.

*** Most of the ancient pagan cultures and societies marked the period around the winter solstice with some kind of major ritual or festival. Solstice comes from two Latin words: sol meaning sun and sistere, which means to cause to stand still. The winter solstice signals closure of the winter season and birth of the new season resplendent with sunshine and hope. This new season is a celebration of light and the rebirth of the sun. In old Europe, the solstice was known as Yule, from the Norse Jul, meaning wheel. It is linked to holidays in various religions, past and present. The Celts and Germanic peoples also celebrated a season called Yule by decorating their halls with evergreens — the only greens to be found at that time of year! They celebrated in remembrance of the spring that would surely return. The homage to chaos continued in the medieval custom of choosing a Lord of Misrule, as it was known in England; in the Scottish tradition this lackey assumed the appellation, Abbot of Unreason. Regardless of the title, this dubious character dominated the season by ordering everyone around during the festivals.

Newgrange is a stone structure in Ireland that is older than Stonehenge or the Egyptian Pyramids. Estimated to have been built around 5,000 years ago, this mound was carefully constructed so that at dawn on the winter solstice a bright ray of sunlight would shine deep into its dark inside chamber. The sunlight reveals beautiful circular carvings. Even though we don’t know what the builders of Newgrange did on the solstice, this building makes it clear that it was a very important day. As long ago as ancient Egypt, people celebrated the rebirth of the sun at this time of year. The ancient Egyptians worshipped a god called Ra, who had the head of a hawk and who wore the sun as a blazing disc in his crown. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from the illness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palm rushes which symbolized for them the triumph of life over death. The Mesopotamians believed in many gods, and as their chief god — Marduk. Each year as winter arrived it was believed that Marduk would do battle with the monsters of chaos. To assist Marduk in his struggle, the Mesopotamians held a festival for the New Year. This was known as Zagmuk, the New Year’s festival that lasted for 12 days. The Persians and the Babylonians celebrated a similar festival called the Sacaea. Part of that celebration included the exchanging of places — the slaves would become the masters and the masters were to obey. Shabe-Yalda (a.k.a. Shab-e Yaldaa) is celebrated in Iran by followers of many religions. It originated in Zoroastrianism, the state religion which preceded Islam. The name refers to the birthday or rebirth of the sun. People gather at home around a korsee — a low square table — all night. They tell stories and read poetry. They eat watermelons, pomegranates and a special mix of dried fruit and nuts. Families keep vigil through the night

around brightly lit bonfires in order to help the sun (Goodness) battle darkness (Evil). The ancient Greeks celebrated Lenaea, the Festival of the Wild Women, at the time of the winter solstice. Originally, this ritual involved human sacrifice, in which a gang of women tore apart and ate a man representing the harvest god Dionysos. By classical times, a goat was instead sacrificed, with women acting only as funeral mourners and observers of the symbolic rebirth of Dionysus. In the Roman Empire they really knew how to throw a party. And it was during the period of the winter solstice that the Romans threw the biggest party of all. In Roman mythology, Saturn is the ancient god of agriculture. In later legends he was identified with the Greek god Cronus, who, after having been dethroned by his son Zeus (in Roman mythology, Jupiter), fled to Italy, where he ruled during the Golden Age, a time of perfect peace and happiness. Beginning on December 17 of each year, during the festival known as the Saturnalia, the Golden Age was restored for seven days. All business stopped; executions and military operations were postponed. It was a period of goodwill, devoted to banquets and the exchange of visits and gifts. A special feature of the festival was the freedom given to slaves, who during this time had first place at the family table and were served by their masters. With cries of Jo Saturnalia! the celebration would include masquerades in the streets, big festive meals, visiting friends, and the exchange of good-luck gifts called Strenae — lucky fruits. They decorated their houses with garlands of laurel and green trees lit with candles and exchanged gifts. The Saturnalia was a special time of peace and equality when wars could not be declared, when slaves and masters could eat at the

same table, and when gifts were exchanged as a symbol of affection and brotherhood. They gave coins for prosperity, pastries for happiness, and lamps to light one’s journey through life. They also decorated trees with small pieces of metal.

The Saturnalia, as the Romans called the days of the winter solstice, was marked by revelry in honor of Saturn, god of seeds. Great feasts were held and parades filled the streets. Everybody gave and received presents. Normal rules of conduct were suspended. Children were in charge of parents and masters served their slaves. Grudges were forgotten and wars were postponed. Lamps were lit to chase away the darkness. Best of all, a fake king called the Lord of Misrule was crowned to lead all the merriment. Basically, for the Romans, the winter solstice was just one good time. Under Emperor Constantine the Great, the Roman Empire en masse converted to Christianity, which became the official state religion. In the year 325 Emperor Constantine officially introduced Christmas as the holiday celebrating the birth of Christ. Since no one knows for sure when he was born, Constantine took the liberty of positioning Christmas during the time of the Saturnalia festival. This was a clever and convenient scheme. Although it took centuries before the tradition was accepted worldwide, the positioning of Christmas towards the end of December comes as no surprise since celebrations already occurred throughout the Roman Empire at that time for pagan gods. Many symbols and practices associated with Christmas, including holly, ivy, mistletoe, yule logs, gift‑giving, and tree‑decorating, are of pagan origin. A note of interest is the

fact that because of the strong ties to the pagan festivals Saturnalia and Bacchanalia, certain Christian groups do not even celebrate Christmas.

***

The Jewish holiday of Chanukah, which marks the victory of the Jews over Hellenism is celebrated in the proximity of the winter solstice with the lighting of candles. For most cultures and religions, the winter solstice was a time for imploring the sunlight to return and celebrating its readiness to do so. Keeping with the spirit of the season, the Syrian Greeks celebrated by desecrating the Temple with their sacrifices and pagan rituals. When they liberated the Temple from the Greeks, the Maccabees appointed the 25th day of the month of Kislev to celebrate the rededication. This was done with the intent to provide the Jews with a holiday of their own in proximity to the winter solstice, in order to ward off the irresistible allure of pagan celebrations and influence during winter season.[40]

*** Even in cultures of the Far East the winter solstice is not overlooked. Dong Zhi is Chinese for arrival of winter, originally an agricultural festival, which was written about by Xu Shr Hong during the Chang Dynasty. It is the Chinese Festival for the winter solstice. As the winter season can be harsh in these regions, this is traditionally the time when workers gathered food to sustain their families through the cold season. The winter is the season of the Yin and summer the season of the Yang; Dong Zhi marks the turning point of Yin and heralds the coming of the Yang season. Dong Zhi, like the other winter solstice festivals is marked by hope and optimism as well as wonder and joy.

Dong Zhi is celebrated with merriment, family gatherings, gift‑giving and feasting. During Dong Zhi, the importance of family and community are central, as is honoring the ancestors of the family. Dong Zhi is the time when it is believed the oldest of ancestors return to come together with the family. Folks carry out rituals and performances for the Gods not only thank them for the harvests but to insure future prosperity. Traditional foods include: Tang Yuan (translated: family reunion) which are warm balls of sticky rice and rice flour. Also traditional is Hun Dun, which is stuffed dumplings. Another tradition was to give the animal stables and household utensils a thorough cleaning, to prepare them for the coming new season. Diwali, the Festival of Lights is a group of five days of Hindu winter celebration, which begins in November and run through December. The importance and grandeur of these festivals makes them quite spectacular. Each day has its own particular significance, with its own myths and rituals. It marks the close of one year and the beginning of the New Year. During Diwali, diyas (oil lamps) are lit to drive away the darkness and evil spirits. They were placed in homes, in windows, on the roofs, in courtyards, along road and river ways. It is hallmarked by the exchange of sweets and fireworks. Of all the festivals celebrated in India, Diwali is by far the most glamorous and important. Enthusiastically enjoyed by people of every religion, its magical and radiant touch creates an atmosphere of joy and festivity. In the Japanese Shinto calendar, the winter solstice is sacred to the Sun Goddess Amataseru‑no‑Mikuni, heroine of one of the world’s great and typical festivals of the retreat and return of the Sun.

Various Native American tribes celebrated the rite of the winter solstice. Sun images have been found on rock paintings of the Chumash,[41] who occupied coastal California for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived. Solstices were tremendously important to them, and the winter solstice celebration lasted several days. In some Native American calendars, the Month of the Snow Goose begins on this day. Among the Hopi, Zuni and other native peoples of the American Southwest, this day is the feast of Soyala, the annual festival of purification and renewal. Native Americans also have ceremonies to ensure that light wins over darkness and the sun comes back. The Hopi have a month of rituals, called Soyal. During this month they feast, make prayer sticks, and conduct a rabbit hunt. Pueblo Indians also have ceremonies, which differ from tribe to tribe. In more recent times, African Americans launched their own festival of lights called Kwanza. It was established in 1966 to provide an opportunity for the African American community to celebrate their heritage and reinforce positive community values. Kwanza is celebrated for 7 days beginning on December 26th and ending on January 1st. On December 31st a feast is prepared for family and friends The grand party thrown by Adam and Eve to celebrate their deliverance from the doom and gloom of darkness during the winter solstice turned into quite an international bash permeating all cultures throughout history. Even as darkness closed in on them, Adam and Eve never lost their awareness of the Creator. When they noticed darkness receding to yield more daylight after the winter solstice, they were grateful to the Creator for the sun’s triumph over the forces of darkness.

However, in future generations the theme surrounding these seasonal celebrations was dominated by reverence for the sun, leaving the Creator out of the equation. This shift opened up a window growing ever‑larger, setting the stage for worshipping celestial bodies rather than the One that created and controls them. With the passing of Adam and Eve, worshipping idols became the norm rather than the exception. Bucking the trend, the Maccabees celebrated their victory over Greek paganism by infusing the winter festival with ever-increasing Torah light; accordingly, they rededicated the Temple in the service and glory of God.

A New World Over four thousand years ago Noah and his family lived as a small clan in a bustling metropolis in the Middle East. When Noah turned 600 years old he witnessed the most disastrous cataclysmic event ever experienced by mankind. Forty days and forty nights of incessant torrential rains flooded the surface of the earth and eradicated all forms of life. The only ones to survive the Great Flood were Noah and the passengers on his ark. When the waters of the Flood finally receded, Noah, his three sons and their wives, along with all the animals in their floating zoo, disembarked from the ark to restart life on earth. In the years before the Flood, Noah was a unique individual among the people of his time. Recognizing that the world around him spiraled downwards into the abyss of corruption and debauchery, Noah withdrew into his corner. In the midst of a society steeped in evil, Noah did all he could to remain a decent and honest citizen. While maintaining his sanity and equilibrium in a lawless society, Noah made no serious attempt to influence his surroundings. Now that the evil society was washed away in the Great Flood, Noah experienced immense pangs of remorse that perhaps he hadn’t exerted enough influence to reverse the immorality that sprouted around him. Deeply saddened by the devastation, Noah mused that had he attempted to inject a measure of morality into the sea of evil that permeated his generation, then maybe the world would have been saved. He was determined not to repeat this mistake again. With the strength left in his old bones, he resolved to utilize his morality and energies to preach the

teachings of the forces of benevolence. He practiced his newfound philosophy on a daily basis around the dinner table.

Being the only family left on the face of the earth, Noah kept his clan closely knit. Every evening following a long day of labor in the fields, Noah instituted the tradition of gathering the whole clan around his dinner table. His three sons, Yephet, Shem and Ham were seated to his right and the women across the table to his left. Seated at the head of the table, Noah addressed the clan. His goal was to imbue his family with values that would steer them clear of the direction and practices of the pre‑flood civilization, which brought God’s wrath upon the world. Before breaking bread, Noah stretched out his hands. His wife connected with his left hand while his firstborn son, Yephet held on to his right hand. The rest of the clan picked up the cue and held hands around the table. Noah then raised his eyes upwards and prevailed upon his family to join him in reciting a prayer of gratitude to God for having sustained them and provided them with the plenty of the earth. After dinner Noah poured wine for everyone. Mellowed by ample nutrition and sweet wine, the family listened as Noah delivered his daily sermon. Every day he elaborated upon a distinct topic. This evening as Noah rested his cup of wine on the table, he declared, “We must always keep in mind that there is only One God. He is the God who created this world. To worship idols carved out of stone and wood is an affront to the One and only Creator. Not only is it an act of rebellion against God who created us, but in fact it is a self‑defeating practice, which leads to a distorted view of life and the physical world in which we thrive. Needless to mention that worshipping idols invokes the wrath of God as we have

witnessed it in our own lifetime, but no less important, it robs us of leading a constructive and meaningful life.“

Noah spoke for over half an hour on the subject. With one exception, his family sat in silence and awe as the patriarch delivered his discourse. The only dissenter was the youngest of the boys, Ham. An angry and rebellious young man, Ham looked deridingly at his father during the daily sermons. He considered the old man to be a hypocrite and a fool for preaching the word of a God who could do no better than unleash the fury of an annihilating flood upon his helpless and defenseless subjects. Ham never forgave God for wreaking the havoc of the Flood upon humanity, nor could he feel anything but scorn towards his self‑righteous father who appointed himself as the spokesman of an evil God. Though the rage and venom overflowed in Ham’s system to the point of an uncontrollable explosion, he did all he could to restrain himself in front of his elder brothers. The dinner scene repeated itself the following evening. As he gently stroked the long strands of his silvery beard, Noah opened his discussion by posing a question to the assembled: “What in your opinion was the trait which led to the downfall of the generation before the flood?“ “The people weren’t so bad that they deserved to die so viciously in the boiling waters of the Flood!“ Ham hastened to register his vehement protest. With disdain in their eyes, both Yephet and Shem simultaneously turned to look at Ham as if to reprove him for his impudence. An uneasy silence ensued as Noah and his youngest son Ham exchanged glances that portended anything but harmony. “Jealousy,“ uttered Yephet in response to his father’s question. “Thievery“ Shem immediately volunteered his response in an attempt to further dispel the hostile atmosphere, which settled upon the

family following Ham’s outburst. Deferring to his brothers’ sensibilities, Ham restrained himself from any further caustic commentary. Rather than inflame the combustible situation, Noah did his best to ignore his youngest son as he continued to embark upon his theme. Directing his comments at his older sons, Noah expounded, “Thievery and jealousy were only the symptoms of the real disease which placed our lost generation on its evil path. The underlying trait of the generation was that of ingratitude. It started with people displaying an attitude of ingratitude towards their fellow men. From there it was extended and aimed at the Creator.“ Noah cautioned his family, “We must not fall into the same trap. We must start by behaving civilly and respectfully towards each other. Recognizing the good bestowed upon us by people will also increase the awareness of being constantly grateful to God who created us and sustains us. Please, my children, I implore you to always remember to give thanks to God. Don’t forget that God is merciful and the source of all blessings and by blessing Him we are blessed in return.“ Ham could not let what in his worldview seemed like a gross distortion go unchallenged. In a furious outburst, he counterattacked. “I will not sit here and listen to this phony propaganda about your Merciful God. A God, who viciously sentenced all of His creatures to the most torturous death of strangulation in boiling water, is not merciful. No sin, no matter how foul, warrants this cruel and collective punishment!“ Ham ended his statement with a shriek of pain and anger that echoed for long moments. Noah made an attempt to respond to this attack by his youngest son, but Ham wasn’t paying any attention. Livid and shaking with anger, Ham was being subdued by his two older brothers as the family gathering gradually dispersed. This was not the first clash between father and his youngest son, and surely not the last. Though Noah imbued his family with values of morality that were foreign to their milieu, Ham was attracted to the ideals of the lawless mob. From early childhood Ham exhibited an uncontrollable temper and rebellious attitudes towards anything espoused by his father. The clash between Noah and Ham reached a climax while traveling for long months on the Ark during the Flood. Upon entering the Ark, Noah gathered his family and warned them against engaging in frivolity of any kind during these fateful times when the rest of humanity was being sentenced to doom. Specifically, Noah urged his

clan to refrain from any sexual intercourse during their long stay on the Ark. The family seriously abided by the patriarch’s edict, except for Ham who used his wild imagination to turn “Noah’s Ark“ into a “Love Boat.“ It was none other than Noah himself who accidentally barged in upon his son, Ham while the young man was fornicating with the goat he was sent to feed. By comparison, tonight’s outburst was mild. Despite the outcome of last night’s session, Noah was not to be discouraged, and he forged ahead with his mission. The following evening Noah addressed the clan about the business of murder. “It is absolutely forbidden to spill human blood,“ Noah spoke sternly, “we must remember that we were all created in the image of God. While it is a great privilege to reflect the image of God, it is also at the same time our greatest responsibility to guard the sanctity of human life. Our Creator does not tolerate brutal behavior of one man to another and will always exact a terrible price of anyone who dares to spill innocent human blood. Let us not forget what took place in front of our eyes before the Great Flood. Human life became cheap in the society we inhabited. God then took it one step further and nearly wiped out all of humanity in retaliation for the brutal norms of our society. Thank God, we were spared. Hopefully, we will learn the lesson to respect and value human life above all.“ In an attempt to impress upon his offspring the severity of the subject at hand, Noah resorted to a dramatic legend. “Adam, the first man created by God, was an old man when my father, Lemech was privileged to meet with him. At the time, my father was still a young man, and I wasn’t born yet. What my father learned from Adam stayed with him for the rest of his days. This is the account that I heard directly from my father about his encounter with the first man of Creation.“ The family sat in silence with bated breath in anticipation of the impending scoop. “Adam related to my father,“ continued Noah, following a brief pause, “that soon after he was created, God walked with him in the Garden of Eden. The Creator took Adam on a grand tour of the universe. God showed him the magnificent design of His Creation, from the foundations of the universe to the minutest detail of every creature. Following the comprehensive tour, God turned to the first man and pleaded: ‘Adam, as you just witnessed firsthand, I took great care to design my Creation. I know that in your mind you assess it to be a good design, but I need to correct you Adam. Behold, Adam, my design is better than good, it

is VERY GOOD. I beg of you Adam, don’t do anything to disrupt or destroy my precious world!’ “ Now that he had everyone’s attention, Noah honed his conclusion, “My children, by design of God, you have been selected to uphold His world. You will be the forerunners of the new world order. I plead with you to preserve this world. Do not punch any holes in God’s Creation by spilling innocent human blood!“ At dinnertime of the following day Noah expounded upon the topic of sexual discipline. “One of the great sins of our generation was the degenerated sexual behavior. We stooped lower than the animals and crossed all boundaries of lewd behavior. It came to a point where not only humans were violated, but the animals were also imported into this vile debasement. Our neighbors, as you remember, conjugated with their flocks of sheep and donkeys. This was a flagrant violation of God’s design for a separation of the species. Humans are the most elevated of all Creation and must not be mingled with animals. No less important, we must remember that the first two humans on earth were Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve. God designed us in such a way that we must not cross the boundary of the bond between the opposite sexes. It is an absolute abomination in the eyes of God to commit homosexual acts. Such behavior is certain to ignite the ultimate fury of our Creator.“ While Ham managed to contain himself the evening before, listening to the “old fool“ pontificating about sexual morals was too much for the hedonistic hot‑blooded Ham. “It is all nonsense,“ interjected Ham raging against his father, “it is nothing more than a cruel game this God of yours is playing with us!“ Even the aspersions cast upon him by the whole clan were not enough of a barrier to block the venom about to be spewed by the young rebel. “First this God programs us with uncontrollable sexual desires,“ harangued Ham who was gripped in the throes of an enraged fury, “then he punishes us for exercising our God‑given pleasures. This is all part of the evil conspiracy of your God against us. This is no way to live our short

lives, encumbered with all these ridiculous restrictions. I will not sit idly by while you rant about your holy God and his mission to eviscerate us and deprive us of the little pleasure left in this stinking life breathed into us by your evil God!“ If bloodshed was averted that evening, it was thanks to the savvy handling of this squalid affair by Yephet and Shem who emerged between the warring parties to diffuse the first war after the Great Flood. Ham’s impudence did not distract Noah from his mission. The next day he was once again preaching to his clan. To minimize the outbreak of hostilities, Ham was seated between his two elder brothers. This time the subject was less volatile than the previous evening. “We witnessed how a human society was reduced to shambles by theft,“ preached Noah. “Let us learn from this and be honest in our financial and business dealings. People who steal do not perform their act in the public view. Mostly theft is carried out in the darkness or hidden from other people. But while people may not catch us in the act of stealing, God always has His eyes on every one of us at any given moment. And if you are not afraid of God,“ it seemed inevitable that this supposition was aimed at Mr. Ham, “keep in mind that theft is society’s most damaging force, which sets in motion its own destructive mechanism even without the intervention of God.“

Noah urged his children to be ever wary of theft, and then he spoke about justice. “Above all God expects of us to do justice. With God’s help, this small clan will one day flourish into densely populated societies. You, my children, will become the fathers of those civilizations. It is incumbent upon each one of you,“ Noah exhorted his progeny, “to imbue your children and the coming generations with a system of good and civilized values.

This means that not only must we refrain from murder and theft, but we must also set up courts of law to uphold these cardinal rules, which God prescribed. Human society cannot flourish and prosper,“ cautioned Noah, “without redressing the victim and punishing the perpetrator of nefarious behavior.“ On the seventh day, Noah brought up an unexpected subject. Technology was not yet advanced in the days before the Great Flood. Noah himself was a man of great invention and technical skills. He invented the first mechanical horse drawn agricultural plow known to man. This invention, which was likely to be the greatest breakthrough in agriculture, brought great relief to humanity from the backbreaking labor of tilling the earth by hand. Noah’s name foretold the relief he would provide to humanity with his historical invention. The name Noah literally means “comfort.“ As innovative as Noah was, he did not yet come up with an effective technique for refrigeration. The lack of refrigeration technology posed a great problem for the ancients. The damage was particularly taxing on meat storage. When someone slaughtered an animal in those days, the meat had to be consumed on the same day. Leftover meat could result in food poisoning for which there was no cure, and proved fatal in most cases.

To address the problem of refrigerating meat, Ham proved no less innovative than his aging father. He was the first human to contrive a scheme of pseudo‑refrigeration. Ham observed that as long as the animal is alive its meat does not rot. Putridity only set in with the death of an animal. The solution that Ham came up with was to nibble at the animal while it was still alive. This practice caught on and was so widespread in the days before the Great Flood that thousands of animals with missing limbs were limping along the countryside of the Middle East. This exercise was known as “eating a limb torn from a live animal“ or for short “limb of the living.“ This cruel method of “refrigerating“ meat made God very angry and that was the subject of tonight’s discourse by Noah. “God does not take lightly unnecessary cruelty to animals,“ Noah opened his sermon for this evening. “Though at Creation God forbade the consumption of animal meat, there is a reason why God changed his mind and permitted us to eat the flesh of animals. It was done in order to protect us from the evil temptation of being sexually attracted to animals. It was designed in order to erect a social boundary between the human and animal kingdoms because God looks very harshly at human attempts to cross the species. Let us not forget how rampant cohabitation with animals was before the Flood. God, therefore, decreed that we may eat the flesh of animals with the hope that this will discourage us from jumping into bed with them.“ While Noah was speaking Ham was seething. Being seated between his two elder brothers prevented his animosity towards the old man from gushing during the last two sessions, but to sit and listen to offensive pontification from the “old fool“ on this subject was more than the ill‑tempered Ham could live up to. Rather than explode with a violent outburst, Ham protested in an uncharacteristic, restrained tone of voice, “I don’t see why you are making so much noise about this. I have no problem with obtaining sexual pleasure from an animal while it is alive and then enjoying the benefit of its delicious meat once I killed it.“

Angry and accusative eyes were all focused on the rebellious son from both the men’s and women’s benches. Yephet and Shem warned Ham that if he does not shut up they would throw him out to the dogs. This seems to have quelled the cowering Ham. As Ham sat with head bowed down in shameless silence, an enraged Noah picked up the discussion. “It is important that we all learn the lesson that it is God’s word that must prevail and not the nefarious echoes of the pre‑Flood generation. Though God permits us to eat the flesh of animals, we must respect the dignity of all living creatures. Never again must we ever contemplate ‘tearing limbs of a living animal’ for our personal benefit!“ With this statement Noah concluded his first series of sermons on the seven themes as he had heard them from God. These are known as the “Seven Noahide Laws.“ Noah had just outlined to his household, and to all of humanity down the generations, the sound foundations of a society based on justice and morality. Till the end of his days, Noah relentlessly and passionately preached these Laws to his children. He urged them to imbue these values in their progeny all the way into the future. As he concluded the first series on those themes, Noah rose to give a prayer of thanks to God. Having completed the first round of sermons, Noah sat to reflect on the past and future of humanity. Looking back at the rotten society from the midst of which he sprang, Noah was little surprised that his son, Ham turned to be a product of that evil society. What indeed puzzled him was the fact that two of his sons bucked the trend of the immorality with which they were enveloped in their youth.

Though two out of three sounds like auspicious statistics, Noah was gripped by a sense of doom that the rotten third might prevail and bring down with him his two well‑intentioned and moral sons. Noah did his best to pass on to his sons the blueprint, as conveyed to him by God, of a society that can live in harmony with itself and its Creator. In his optimistic mind, Noah envisioned a prosperous and just world in the making, but a nagging intuition told him otherwise. He lamented the fact that the roots of an evil society had not been eradicated with the waters of the Great Flood, but rather resonated with a re‑invigorated life in his own seed – his youngest son, Ham. Yephet, Noah’s oldest son was 100 years old at the time that his father delivered the first series of sermons after the Flood. He was an extremely handsome man with strong features. He was a man blessed with intellect and a diligence bordering on the neurotic. His industrious attitudes were only exceeded by his legendary logical mind. Though Yephet spent most of his youth assisting his father in designing and constructing the Ark in preparation for the Great Flood, he still managed to build a thriving business. Yephet designed and constructed the first public bath house in the land. To this already successful enterprise, he added a gymnasium and a massage parlor. Being the only such enterprise in the world, Yephet prospered beyond any expectations. Having just listened to the new world order as presented by his loving father, Yephet analyzed the substance of the material presented to him. The spiritual side of God’s decrees did not appeal to him as much as the aesthetic aspects. He particularly liked the concept of “building courts of law“ which he heard about from his father only a day earlier. He was

determined to erect the most magnificent edifice to house the courts of law, soon after rebuilding his lost business.

Yephet was spellbound by the idea of erecting huge courthouses with marble columns at the front entrance. The intricacies of the legal aspects of a court system did not so much fascinate him, as did the aesthetic implementation. Aesthetics was everything to Yephet. Even his very name stood for the concept of aesthetic beauty. Yephet was not only endowed with beautiful physical features from birth, but he also spared no effort to preserve and ameliorate his body and environment. His obsession with physical fitness was the envy of his peers. In the days before the Flood he founded the first physical fitness club in history. Yephet had a successful business going in the early days and though it was wiped out, he was determined to redouble the grandeur of his enterprise as soon as a sprawling society would sprout around the devastated plains of a world recovering from being submerged in the floodwaters. As Yephet looked at his wise father, he was determined to do good and live by the moral code laid out for him in this past week. He was mostly focused on his vision of the grandeur of the courts of law he and his descendants would one day establish in their dawning empires. Yephet gave birth to seven sons. He diligently taught them the wisdom he inherited from his beloved father. The seven sons of Yephet forged towards the west and settled the European continent. Each of them excelled and built his own empire, but none more so than his middle son Yavan who became the father of the Greek Empire.

***

Shem, Noah’s second son was 98 years old at the time that he heard his father champion the “Seven Noahide Laws.“ Unlike his elder brother, Shem was gripped by the spiritual substance of his father’s wisdom rather than the aesthetic. Based on the blueprint laid down by his legendary father, he envisioned a world of ideas nourished by the living God — a world where the just word of God would prevail above all other considerations. To Shem it mattered little whether a court of law will be housed in a tent or even in the open marketplace, as long as it meted out justice emanating from the word and wisdom of God. As Shem heard his father preach the word of God, he was inspired to continue in Noah’s footsteps. He was determined to dedicate his whole life and existence to fully understanding God’s intentions and propagating them to his peers and his children. The first order of priority for Shem was to erect a house of worship where people could sit and discourse the glory of the living God. This tent was a house of prayer and learning and a ray of light and hope in a society that was fast declining in its spiritual and moral inclinations. Shem begot five sons who proliferated and inhabited the Middle East. They formed the Semitic tribes who eventually provided the spiritual infrastructure to all of the world’s major religions. Shem built the first Yeshiva in the world. Many students walked through the gates of his school, but very few were inspired to follow in his footsteps. As the descendants of Ham and Yephet prevailed and dominated the sprawling humanity, Shem and his Yeshiva went underground in order to survive.

Shem lived for a total of six hundred years. His grand efforts to perpetuate the word of God were totally frustrated and undermined by the evil kingdoms that sprung all around him. His Yeshiva was all but decimated when Eber was born. Eber was the great grandson of Shem who grew up to be a spiritual giant. For a while Shem, with the help of Eber, restored the Yeshiva to its grandeur of early days only to be crushed by the ruthless descendants of Ham. Shem lived long enough to see more than ten generations spring forth from his loins. His lifelong enterprise was not in vain. In their old age, Shem and Eber did see the light in one of their offspring. Following many generations of total spiritual darkness and rebellious upheaval, a fellow by the name of Abraham showed up on the world stage. Abraham, who was a tenth generation descendant of Shem, successfully rebelled against the notions of the godless and idol‑worshipping society in which he was drowning. Abraham prevailed, and his son Isaac and grandson Jacob were enrolled in the Yeshiva of Shem and Eber, who were still alive and vibrant at the time.

*** Ham, whose very name suggests the embodiment of a flagrant and spicy temperament, nervously fidgeted in his seat as Noah’s concluding statement echoed in his ears. Flanked by his two elder brothers, a livid Ham kept his silence for the fear of his brothers’ wrath. While his mouth was kept shut, Ham’s convoluted thoughts could not be suppressed. Ham, the youngest of Noah’s sons, entertained ideas totally in the opposite direction

from those espoused by his brothers as he assessed his father’s distorted new world order.

Ham’s favorite practice was “tearing limbs off living animals.“ Ham considered this invention to be his crowning achievement and did all he could to promulgate this brilliant concept of “preservation of meat.“ Now that too was going to be denied him by his evil father who claimed that this is another decree of God. “Why is it,“ questioned Ham in his enraged mind, “that everything that feels good and sounds like fun is unconstitutional?“ Ham concluded that he had a long account to settle with his evil father. He was not going to let this senile “spokesman of God“ deprive him and his descendants from the little pleasure left on the menu of this miserable existence. An infuriated Ham made up his mind there and then to exact revenge upon his father at the first opportunity. Such an opportunity arrived sooner than he expected. It was during the season of the harvesting of the fruit of the vine. As Ham labored in the fields, his youngest of four sons, Canaan, excitedly ran over to deliver the good news to his father. “Dad,“ Canaan spoke in a whisper so as not to be overheard by the adjacent laborers, “our great day has arrived. The ‘old fool’ is prostrated dead drunk and naked in his tent.“ Ham and his son furtively left their posts at the vine and with a rush of excitement bolted to do justice to the “old fool.“ For all his demure qualities, Noah was possessed by a vice, which did him in. His passion for imbibing knew no limits. On this day when the fruit of the vine was in full blossom, Noah drunk himself to oblivion. That was precisely the occasion for which Ham was waiting. Much to their delight, Ham and Canaan found Noah in the throes of drunken stupor, prostrated in his tent all by himself. Ham lost no time. While Canaan held Noah down, Ham mounted the old man from behind. The 600‑year‑old Noah reeking with alcohol made an attempt to resist but was no match for his brute descendants. As Ham raped his father, he yelled into the old man’s ears, “Take this old fool. It may not be the will of your wicked God, but it feels good, and that’s what really counts in this miserable life.“

After Ham was done, he exchanged places with Canaan. As Ham forced the wriggling Noah down with his powerful legs, Canaan took his

turn. Displaying a salacious animal pleasure, Canaan raped his grandfather time and again. Flushed with the excitement of a mission accomplished, Ham and Canaan put themselves together as a nearly lifeless Noah lay on the ground bleeding with pain and crying with shame. Once they were fully robed, Canaan noticing the blade in his father’s hand, stammered with bewilderment, “No, dad! You are not really going to do it to the ‘old fool,’ are you?“ Acting upon his father’s commands, Canaan tossed Noah on his back revealing his nakedness. As Canaan once again pinned Noah down to the ground, Ham, firmly clutching the blade in his right hand, castrated his own father. As Ham and Canaan were about to exit Noah’s tent, Ham bent over his mutilated father and harangued, “You should have never been granted the privilege of producing children. All you know is how to poison the mind of the youth with your antiquated and distorted notions. Though you managed to corrupt the minds of my brothers, as you can see, you haven’t fooled me one little bit… you ‘old fool!’“ To drive in the dagger of humiliation deeper, Ham unloaded a mouthful of phlegm squarely into his father’s contorted face. Only then did he deliver the closing statement of this historical speech. “You only know how to pontificate morality to others. What about getting stoned‑dead drunk, where does that fit with your moral values? Look at you now; you are nothing but a self‑righteous bum. You keep on preaching sexual restraint and modesty. Now you won’t ever have to worry about being overcome by your passions. You can finally live the clean life you have been preaching about!“

Besides Canaan, Ham had three other sons. While his three older boys inherited the African continent, the youngest son, Canaan ruled in the Middle East. Ham’s second son, Mitzrayim and his descendants settled in the fertile delta of the Nile River. Mitzrayim was to become the father of the mightiest of all the ancient societies – the Egyptian Empire.

*** While Ham was a nefarious hotheaded rebel, his oldest son Cush was made of quite a different mettle. Cush was a diligent, intelligent specimen possessed with a discipline of mind and body. Had Cush employed his attributes to change the world for the better not much could have stood in his way. But such was not the fortune of the world. Cush leveraged all the skills and industry in his arsenal to perpetuate his father’s designs. While Ham was considered a failure, the torch of his legacy of evil was effectively passed on to the next generation through his son, Cush. Ham’s hedonistic instincts dictated to his limited mind that to adhere to the whims of Noah’s God worked contrary to his pleasure‑seeking ambitions. His rebellion was a primitive campaign to shake loose of the restrictions imposed by the stifling commandments inherent in the “Seven Universal Laws“ of his father, Noah. Cush, rather than rebel, analyzed and reasoned that to live by the rules laid down by his grandfather was counterproductive to a life of prosperity, intellectual enlightenment, technological progress and the enjoyment of life to its fullest capacity. Rather than be driven by Ham’s animal‑like instincts, Cush turned his

father’s theories into a science. This is what Noah feared more than anything else – the disciplined evil of the intellect.

Though Shem was exerting his best effort to preach the word of God, he was no match for the allure of Cush’s irresistible value system. While Shem’s teachings offered future credit in the bank of Paradise and an eternal after‑life in the presence of the Creator, Cush’s new science dispensed the more attractive currency of instant gratification. For the survivors of the Flood who truly appreciated how ephemeral life could be, Cush’s theories possessed a much greater sex appeal. God through his agent Shem was losing the battle of the mind of the post‑Flood generation. As aggressive and successful as Cush was in disseminating his new world view, Shem still managed to influence and convert many souls to see the light in adhering to the will of the Creator. Cush was not to be intimidated or outdone by Shem’s limited success. With relentless vigor and intellectual skills, Cush provided his offspring with all the tools they would ever need to inherit the future. In this arena Cush by far outweighed Shem and his tactics. The future, or at least the near future was to be dominated by Cush and his descendants. Cush’s greatest ally in winning the battle of the future was the youngest of his six sons, Nimrod. If Cush had turned Ham’s animal instincts into a science, Nimrod took it one step further and promoted it into a religion. Nimrod was graced with all of his father’s skills and then some. Not only was Nimrod industrious, aggressive, cunning, intelligent and handsome, he was charismatic and possessed of a bigger‑than‑life courage and bravery. In the early days, Cush was quite disappointed with Nimrod. The lad did not display the patience needed for maximizing his intellectual potential. Rather than develop his intellect, Nimrod exhibited a propensity for the wild and the adventurous.

Though Cush did not discourage his children from practicing the art of theft, it was quite a different matter when this weapon was directed at him. Cush’s most precious garment was missing from his wardrobe and he mourned over it for many days. He suspected that one of his sons purloined it, but could never press charges for the lack of evidence. The garment that Cush was bemoaning was the most unique piece of sportswear ever procured by mankind. The reason it was so unique was that it was not manufactured by any human or animal. It was the handiwork of God Himself. The story of Genesis reveals to us that soon after God expelled Adam and Eve from Paradise, in His great compassion, He clothed them with leather garments. These legendary leather garments possessed many unique qualities. In addition to their handsome appearance, these garments never soiled and at the same time always gave off a pleasant aroma, which no one could duplicate. These leather garments had built‑in climate control, which kept their owner warm and toasty in the cold winter months, and air‑conditioned in the hot summer climate. But it wasn’t for their aroma, appearance or climate control that these garments were coveted by all. Above all other qualities, these garments were endowed by a Godly spell, which hypnotized and warded off all beast and predators. While donning his leather garment made by God, Adam could hunt or subdue any animal with the greatest of ease. This was a most desirable commodity in days of antiquity.

Before his death, Adam bequeathed his inheritance to his son, Seth. Adam’s leather garment meandered its way down ten generations and ended up in Noah’s possession. Ham, who fully recognized the immense value of the leather garment in his father’s possession, was not going to lounge patiently waiting for his father’s demise in order to inherit the precious garment. Furthermore, Ham fully recognized that, of the three siblings, he was the least likely candidate to inherit his father’s possessions. To secure the divine leather garment, Ham purloined it from his father way before anyone else could get his hands on the precious cargo. Cush who inherited Ham’s values, in turn stole the garment from his father. Currently the garment was safely tucked away in Nimrod’s possession who pilfered this most prized possession from Cush. This third‑generation thief was cunning enough to own Adam’s garment to the end of his glorious days. Of all the men who owned Adam’s leather garment, it was Nimrod who got the most mileage out of it. Armed with masterful hunting skills and the magic garment, Nimrod roamed around the countryside amassing wealth. Using the magical powers of Adam’s garment, Nimrod subdued beasts, and with his wealth and cunning he brokered power and control over his kinsmen. Nimrod was the first human to control and manipulate hordes of his fellow men. Nimrod astutely recognized that strength was in numbers. Hunting alone is a lonely affair and could only get me so far, mused Nimrod, as he schemed to benefit from harnessing the power of the masses. He started by organizing a hunter’s guild. Nimrod was not only a skilled hunter of animals but also a brilliant orator and a hunter of human minds. It was Nimrod who first coined the term “head hunter“ as he successfully

cajoled his fellow hunters to form a hunter’s guild, of which he was the natural leader. Though Nimrod achieved greater designs later in his career, it was the milieu of the hunting days that shaped his character more than any period in his long and illustrious life. Leading a Spartan life in the jungle, Nimrod and his fellow hunters forged a brotherly bond. Enduring a precarious existence under harsh conditions bred an intimacy among Nimrod’s men. Nimrod who was the grandson of Ham did not discourage homosexual tendencies exhibited by his fellow hunters. Even while raping his own father to vent out his anger, Ham derived great sexual pleasure from this barbaric act. Much like his grandfather, Ham, Nimrod’s main goal was to hunt for the carnal pleasures of life no matter how they were derived. It was Ham’s legacy, which Nimrod implemented under any circumstances. Just because he was isolated in the belly of the jungle surrounded only by men, this was not going to stop Nimrod from enjoying life to the fullest. Nimrod desired the company of women, but for now men and animal would fill the gap. Once he gained the loyalty of his fellow hunters, Nimrod set his sights on a larger enterprise. He taught his men that hunting wealth is much more profitable than hunting animals. Thus was born the first band of pirates in human history. Nimrod’s pirates foraged into the towns, villages and farms plundering the defenseless citizens. In his quest for wealth and power, Nimrod ordered his loyal pirates to drain the townsfolk of their wealth and property. The spoils were amassed at Nimrod’s headquarters in a clearing in the forest, which was his little kingdom, protected by his loyal guards. To his stupefied audience, Nimrod’s order — to amass as much salt as they could get their hands on — sounded like the bizarre whim of an arbitrary tyrant exercising his newfound reins of power. What this bunch of lemmings did not realize was that their leader possessed more business acumen than John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates put together. While his subjects could barely see as far as their noses, Nimrod’s vision extended into the far reaches of the future of money.

Since farming was relatively underdeveloped in Nimrod’s days, the main dish on the menu of the day was game. For the lack of refrigeration, slaughtered livestock could not be efficiently stored. The only relatively effective preservation method of meat was a heavy sprinkling of salt. Alas, salt was a rare commodity, as the technology to mass‑produce this substance was not yet contrived. After amassing large quantities of livestock stolen from the populace, Nimrod arrived at the brilliant conclusion that this was a cumbersome way of making a living. He preferred the possession of salt, which needed much less storage room and virtually no maintenance. As they like to say in the capitalistic lands, Nimrod’s assessment “was on the money“ and way ahead of his times and the limited minds of his hordes of bandits. As Nimrod concentrated more and more of the salt deposits in his possession, the demand for it rose more acutely. Salt shortages made the daily headlines. Since there was no currency standard in those days, people were willing to barter their most prized possessions for a cube of salt. It was Nimrod who cornered the market for this hottest of all commodities. With his huge stockpile of salt cubes, Nimrod could get his hands on anything his little heart desired. Most of all, he desired the sensual and sexual pleasures life had to offer. Thus, Nimrod, the inventor and innovator of many ideas, became the first man to command a harem. The pleasures of the flesh exercised in Nimrod’s harem were only limited by the imagination. The agenda at the harem was not confined to the sexuality between men and women. The shenanigans that took place in Nimrod’s wild den of carnal obsessions violated most of the “Ten Commandments“ and “The Seven Noahide Laws“ every moment of every day… and then some. Nimrod personally presided over the daily rituals of

the harem, which included bestiality, homosexuality and communal conjugations of every shape and form. A harem was not Nimrod’s greatest invention. His vision of the centrality that salt would play in the marketplace led to the phenomenon of “credit cards.“ Salt gradually turned into chips for bartering goods. The “salt standard“ in effect became the currency of the day and the very first form of monetary coins in the annals of mankind. It is no coincidence that our paycheck is called “salary“ derived from the term “salt.“ Nimrod’s fiduciary vision transcended the ages. Nimrod did not wish to go down in history as the bandleader of a ragtag army of renegade pirates. His sights were aimed all the way at the summit of the Olympus. Once he monopolized the main source of wealth, Nimrod took it one step further. The natural extension of wealth is easily translated into power. Nimrod loved power and thus was born the first form of government on the face of the earth. Nimrod assumed the natural role of the leader of his tribe, the sons of Ham. But as soon as somebody starts a successful business, competition is surely not far away. Recognizing that Nimrod — a descendant of Ham — organized a government, the sons of Yephet attempted to do the same in their own backyard as a defense against the formidable Nimrod. Nimrod was a born tyrant and dissent was most distasteful to his delicate dictatorial palette. In a brilliant and unprecedented move, Nimrod assembled and organized a fighting force of 500 brave men from his tribe. His army, which was equipped with sophisticated weaponry and well trained, was the most formidable force ever assembled up to that point in history. In fact, it was the very first army ever. It was Nimrod who staged the first war in human history. In a “blitzkrieg“ maneuver, Nimrod’s troops

ruthlessly vanquished the tribe of Yephet and incorporated the survivors under his exclusive command. He was now the sole uncontested powerbroker on the face of the earth. Thus, was born the very first emperor in history – the Emperor of Babylon.

Though he was a tyrant, Nimrod displayed profound skills of governing by wisdom, diplomacy and tact rather than ruthlessness. To those who cooperated with him awaited nothing but bounty and plenty. Nimrod was a born Capitalist who understood the language of money above all others. This philosophy drove him to seek tranquility in the land. For he, more than anyone else, lucidly understood that upheaval leads to impoverishment. Notwithstanding this axiom, Nimrod ruthlessly butchered any dissenters and tolerated no discord to the undisputed authority of his government. Once Nimrod secured an all‑encompassing command of humanity and the unbounded support of his loyal troops, he was ready to rise to his higher calling in life. He felt powerful and cocky enough to take on God. Being the clever man that he was, Nimrod was the last one to deny the existence of God. Surely, he knew that there was a God who created the world; even his own father taught him this basic fact. The concept of a Creator was further re‑enforced in Nimrod’s mind by Noah who spent much time with the lad in his youth. It was the same God who wrought the Flood. All this Nimrod was fully aware of, but his arrogance led him to believe that God was no longer as powerful as He was in the past. Nimrod sensed that the control he commanded over humankind served as an omen that he now shared power with God. Logically Nimrod was right. He had risen all

the way from a commoner and a lone hunter to an emperor. The only room for promotion, mused a euphoric Nimrod, was to become either a god or at least an equal partner.

Nimrod recognized that to take on God was by far a greater challenge than to command humans. After all it was God who triggered the Great Flood. While Nimrod feared the possibility of another flood as punishment for challenging God, he was more imminently alarmed by a shortage of water. Nimrod calculated that it took God 1656 years from Creation to put together an enormous project like flooding the whole globe with boiling sulfuric waters. In his mind, Nimrod clearly understood that even if God decided to flood the earth once again it would take Him at least another 1656 years to stage such a cataclysmic event. After consulting with top advisers, Nimrod concluded that another flood would not be as devastating as the previous one for two reasons. First of all, he and his collection of brilliant counselors would have the comfortable margin of 16 centuries to devise a defense against such a calamity. Secondly, Nimrod entertained the arrogant thought that, between his genius and the innovative skills of his panel of scientists a plan could be devised in time to stave off an oncoming flood altogether. But a flood was not Nimrod’s single issue with God. Much to his chagrin, Nimrod knew that it was no other than God who controlled the rain waters. Rain, contemplated Nimrod, was the source of all Capital. If there is no rain, there is no vegetation, no livestock, no food… in such an instance even all the stockpiles of salt would do me no good, ruefully reflected a sobered Nimrod. Nimrod was willing to cut a deal with God for the provision of abundant rainfall. But there was a catch. In the forefront of his thoughts, Nimrod always focused on the ridiculous “Seven Noahide Laws“ as laid down by the “old fool“ – his great‑grandfather, Noah. Nimrod was cognizant of the fact that surely these seven commandments were conveyed to Noah by no other than God Himself. Still, to comply with them would

make for a miserable existence. Nimrod constantly rummaged through the “Seven Noahide Laws“ in his inquisitive mind, looking into any possibility of co‑existing with their inherent restrictions. Some of the Noahide Laws, or even most of these decrees he could somehow come to terms with. But there were lingering nags about one of God’s decrees that would not go away. Nimrod correctly deduced that the Noahide Law prohibiting sexual transgressions would definitely call for him to dismantle his most coveted toy – his harem. Try as hard as he could, Nimrod could never come to terms with the remotest possibility of living a life without a harem. Life without a harem would not be worth living. Such an existence was out of the question and therefore, the only recourse was to put up a fight against a “killjoy“ God who would place such an unreasonable demand upon His creatures. Nimrod’s inevitable impending battle with God placed him on the path to the ultimate hubris. A monumental showdown with the Creator seems to have been Nimrod’s destiny from birth. His father, Cush, set him on this collision course from day one. The very name Nimrod, which Cush cleverly and appropriately assigned to his favorite son literally means, “Let’s rebel.“ In reality Nimrod fulfilled all of his father’s expectations on this subject. Once Nimrod made up his mind that a compromise with God was not on the menu, he worked tirelessly to replace the Living God with a religion he ingeniously concocted. Nimrod’s scheme was so clever that within a short time not only did he brainwash humanity to worship his designated idols, but also netted his empire an enormous windfall. Nimrod’s new religion was founded on the concept that God is not yet dead, but certainly He is no longer in touch with His Creation. Nimrod issued philosophical decrees, which stated that God is no longer actively involved in administrating the daily affairs of the world. He introduced his subjects to the pagan concepts of polytheism. The multitude of gods that were about to replace the “retired God“ were carved out of wood and stone. Nimrod’s new religion was compartmentalized into a variety of functions. Each department will be governed by a different real‑to‑life and tangible idol‑god. The idols naturally were manufactured and distributed solely by Nimrod’s agents. Counterfeiters were mercilessly marched to the gallows.

Nimrod introduced his populace to a gallery of gods of every size and shape. Each god was in charge of its own domain. Nimrod’s new religion was divided into 120 departments each with its own personal god. Manka, the god of water resources did not interfere with Ilanka, the god of the trees. There was a god assigned to fertility, wealth, health and even a separate god in charge of bowel movements. Emperor Nimrod appointed a privileged class of priests who were in charge of the government’s department for religious affairs. Nimrod set up a distribution system of his manufactured idol‑gods whereby his most loyal subjects were awarded franchises. Everybody was happy with this newfound religion. The masses tripped over themselves to purchase the beautifully designed idols. The distributing agents and the priests made a lucrative living off this new enterprise. At the top of this pyramid scheme stood Nimrod himself who reaped the largest profits and the blind zealous adherence of his subjects to boot.

*** The prosperity in Nimrod’s empire triggered a bustling trade in spices. One of the beneficiaries of the thriving economy was a young man by the name of Terah. Endowed with entrepreneurial acumen, Terah started trading in spices from his boyhood days. By the time Terah was 23 years old he commanded a proliferating business in the spice trade. He owned a half a dozen camels and donkeys to ferry the merchandise from as far away south as Egypt all the way up to Babylon.

On one of his journeys down to Egypt, Terah lost most of his fortune. His caravan was ambushed by a band of pirates. Terah’s camels, donkeys and tons of spices were stolen during this vicious attack. Three of Terah’s men were also brutally killed in this calamity while attempting to defend the caravan from the bandits. Terah himself was injured and lay bleeding by the roadside with little hope. A man mounted on a horse passed by, as Terah lay half dead. The man dismounted and offered Terah water. The stranger also bandaged Terah’s wounds and placed him comfortably under a shady tree. Once he was revived, Terah profusely thanked the cavalier who saved his life. Terah then turned to the man and asked, “What is your name, kind soul?“ “My name is Dormin,“ replied the man. “Mr. Dormin, I hope one day to return the immense kindness which you have done for me this day.“ “Don’t even mention it,“ responded Dormin, “it is the duty of a good citizen to come to the help of people in need.“ Looking up to heaven, Terah said, “I thank the sun and the moon and all my lucky stars for having sent you to save my life this day.“ “Why would you thank the sun, the moon and the stars,“ questioned Dormin, “when every little child knows that they exert no control or influence over our destiny.“ “But, good Sir, it is very obvious that our sustenance comes from the sun, which is the source of all light and energy. The moon provides us with light and guidance during the dark of the night, and the stars dictate our personal fortune and destiny.“

“My good man,“ responded Dormin, “this was all very true in the past. While it is true that millions of years ago the celestial bodies were the supreme gods of the universe, they no longer exercise this control over our lives. The progressive civilization is quickly distancing itself from these old notions. Today the modern man knows that the heavenly bodies have relinquished their grip on our civilization and handed this job to the idols and gods.“ Terah raised his eyebrows in wonderment at this statement and asked, “But I thought the world does not exist more than a few thousand years. How do you account for millions of years?“ “You are right. The earth is only thousands of years old, but the celestial bodies have been around for millions of years. Indeed, that explains the whole phenomenon. Before our earth came into being, the sun, the moon and the stars were in full control of the universe. Now the gods and idols have gained the upper hand and it is to them that we owe our allegiance.“ “But, good sir,“ responded Terah diffidently, “I grew up with these beliefs. Since I was born, I pray to the sun, the moon and the stars.“ “Forgive me if I insult your gods,“ responded Dormin, “but it seems quite obvious that when you needed them most, your gods did not come to your rescue.“ “That is not a fair statement,“ protested Terah, “you can’t always expect the gods to fulfill all our needs. We pray as much as we can and hope for the best.“ “The gods that I worship,“ boasted Dormin, “never fail me. If you would like I can provide you with proof.“

“I find that to be an incredible statement, sir. Could you be kind enough to provide me with an example of the infallibility of your gods.“ Dormin pulled out two small, colorful wooden statues from his traveling bag. He displayed them to Terah and explained. “You see this god with the red hat? This is Dranka, the god benefactor of the wayfarers. And this one,“ Dormin pointed the other idol, “is Saganka, the god of prosperity. I guarantee you that if you pray to these two gods, your prayers will be answered. Dranka will restore the wealth you lost in this criminal raid by the bandits, and Saganka will bless you with unbounded prosperity in the future.“ Though he did not believe one word uttered by the foolish and kind stranger, Terah found this challenge irresistible. “How can I go wrong?“ reacted Terah with a snicker. Dormin handed Terah the two statues and taught him what prayers to recite. Terah went through the motions and profusely thanked the stranger as they departed. Following this incident, Terah set up camp for the night in order to rest his weary bones prior to making the long journey back home. When he woke up the next morning, Terah was astounded at the sight that greeted his sleepy eyes. His camels and donkeys, which were abducted in the ambush of yesterday, were peacefully grazing in front of him. Alongside the animals were piled up bales laden with all the spices that were robbed from him by the pirates. With a rush of excitement, Terah dashed to inspect the merchandise and the animals. Indeed, as Dormin had predicted, his prayers to the idol‑gods were answered. Terah was an intelligent man and could not easily bring himself to associate his prayer to a wooden idol as the arbiter of this reversal of fortune. But neither could he ignore the fact that the wooden

idol‑god had succeeded where his celestial gods had failed him. The debate raging in Terah’s mind considered a multitude of scripts that could account for his redeemed fortune, except for the real one – that both Dormin and the bandits were Nimrod’s agents. Terah’s life and attitudes were forever affected by this episode. He gradually turned into a zealous worshipper of the idol‑gods. More importantly, with some cajoling from his savior, Dormin, Terah was inducted as an agent into Nimrod’s Secret Service Agency. Terah eventually developed a personal relationship with Nimrod the Emperor. In lieu of his loyal service to the SSA, Nimrod awarded Terah with a lucrative franchise distributing idol‑gods. This line of business was by far a better livelihood than ferrying spices down to Egypt. Terah gradually rose in the ranks of government and was promoted as an adviser to the Emperor’s court. Terah was not the only one whom Nimrod turned into a believer in his newfound religion. Through the creative talents of his assiduous agents, Nimrod “answered“ many a prayer to the idol‑gods much as he succeeded with Terah. The rest of the job was done through the rumor mills flaring like wildfire through the superstitious masses. Paganism was fast becoming a way of life for most of humanity. Idol worshipping as introduced to the world by Nimrod was to remain a dominant religious force for thousands of years.

*** The valley of Shinar was a most spectacular site. It was comprised of a huge verdant plateau overlooking the meandering Euphrates and surrounded on all the other three sides by majestic green mountain ranges. This is the site that Nimrod personally selected to erect one of his favorite projects – a campus for “The College of Divinity.“ This university would satisfy the ever‑increasing demand for priests of Nimrod’s contrived religion. Though this school was established as a theological seminary for priests, Nimrod had a bigger scheme for this project. He envisioned a huge learning campus that would encompass philosophy and science departments as well. To head this venerable institution Nimrod handpicked an extremely educated and intelligent individual, a man possessed of a revolutionary, intellectual, inquisitive and brilliant mind much like his own.

The man Nimrod picked as the Dean of the University of Babel was no less than his own favorite son, Dormin, who was but one of the more than 300 offspring sired by the aging Emperor. At birth Nimrod named his son Babel for his empire. As the lad with the mind of an independent thinker grew into adulthood, he elected to change his name to reflect his unique identity and grand status. Being the son of an emperor, he so deeply admired, Babel strove to forever be identified with his idol — his father, Nimrod. He chose not to name himself Nimrod Junior so as not to encroach upon his father’s supremacy. Ingeniously, the young man kept all the letters in his father’s name but reversed them, thus was born the legendary name Dormin. The very same Dormin who coaxed Terah to jump on Nimrod’s bandwagon and turned him into a fervent “believer.“ Dormin realized all of his father’s expectations in assuming the presidency of the University of Babel. Under Dormin’s brilliant leadership, the school of divinity churned out a cadre of loyal priests. He also built an impressive science and philosophy departments much as his father had dreamt. The university supplied the empire with the thinkers and innovators so essential for the foundation of a sound intelligentsia. Dormin’s school provided the cerebral fuel required for the effective operation of the engines of a dynamic and progressive government. Just when Emperor Nimrod was at the peak of his glory, his worst nightmare threatened to undo his whole career. A drought, which lasted more than three consecutive years, had left the land so devastated that Nimrod’s popularity and even his very survival were at stake. Unlike most of his subjects who were praying to the idol‑god Manka for rain, Nimrod knew better. He knew that the angry God perpetrated the drought upon his kingdom. The same God whose memory Nimrod labored so hard to eradicate, came back to haunt him.

Rather than beg for forgiveness and mercy from the God who would deny him his harem, Nimrod turned to his favorite adviser, Professor Dormin. The professor did not let his father down. He drafted an ambitious and brilliant plan to induce rain through a revolutionary scientific process. The scheme Dormin outlined for his father was so grand that even Nimrod was staggered at its awesome magnitude. The plan called for erecting a mammoth tower that would extend into the heavens. On top of the tower a huge bonfire would burn around the clock. The thick smoke billowing from the fire would form immense clouds that would in turn produce the rain for which Nimrod and his empire were so hungry. Emperor Nimrod’s love and admiration for his professor son had just multiplied tenfold upon hearing the daring and brilliant plan of erecting the tower. While Professor Dormin’s design of the tower was limited to the production of rainwater, Nimrod’s vision for this grand project penetrated much farther. Nimrod recognized that a mighty tower visible from hundreds of miles would serve as an uncontestable symbol of his mighty empire and the hallmark for his power and achievements. Furthermore, Nimrod visualized another practical use for the tower. Just in case the angry God ever contemplates another flood, the tower will be built high enough to serve as a safe haven for Nimrod and his entourage. Besides serving as symbol, and an escape hatch from a potential flood, Nimrod grasped the ultimate destiny for this monumental tower. A tower that extended into the heavens, gloated an excited Nimrod, could serve as a platform from which battle can be waged against the God he so despised. The God of my great‑grandfather, Noah, who sought refuge in the heavens would no longer be safe from a human challenge, boasted Nimrod.

Along with this grandiose plan, Professor Dormin presented his father with an obstacle that could undermine the whole project. Dormin recognized that the clay building materials which was the standard in those days was good enough for constructing huts and low structures, but not strong enough to withstand the pressure of a skyscraper. Disheartened but not discouraged, Emperor Nimrod was determined to find a solution. The Emperor laid aside most of his government duties in order to concentrate all his cunning and energies on solving the problem of the building materials. The genius of invention ran like a golden thread in Noah’s family. As we know, it was Noah himself who invented the first mechanical agricultural plow. Nimrod inherited this creative affinity from his great‑grand father. For the ingenious inventor of an impressive array of truly brilliant and innovative ideas, this was to Nimrod by far the greatest challenge of all. The man who invented government, an organized army, war, currency, a new religion and the harem took personal charge of the ambitious agenda to come up with a building material for his ultimate project – the tower. As he succeeded in all the goals that he set for himself in the past, this challenge as well was overcome. After months of sleepless nights and intensive labor of experimentation, Nimrod personally came up with one of the greatest inventions ever contrived by humans. It was Nimrod who invented the idea that clay baked in a kiln would harden to form a solid brick, which could serve as building blocks for tall and small structures alike. This technique is so brilliant and fundamental that with slight variations it is still in use worldwide to this very day. But the advent of baked bricks introduced another dilemma. Bricks by themselves do not a house make. For without a substance to glue them together, bricks tend to collapse. Professor Dormin invented the solution to this problem after toiling long and hard at the problem in the laboratories of his University of Babel. It was in the laboratory that Professor Dormin discovered the glue‑like and water‑resistant quality of bitumen, which was to serve as mortar for bonding bricks. With the newfound technology and unbounded zeal, Emperor Nimrod mobilized his whole empire for the task of building the tower. The site he chose for the construction of the tower was the valley of Shinar adjacent to the University of Babel. Nimrod named this massive construction project, “The Tower of Babel.“

*** The construction of the Tower of Babel lasted for many decades. Nimrod personally supervised the construction while Dormin was appointed as the chief engineer for this most ambitious project ever undertaken by human society. Dormin effectively utilized his university’s engineering faculty to the benefit of the project. Though the “Tower“ project kept Professor Dormin busy on a full‑time basis, he did not relinquish his duties as the head administrator of the greatest university on earth. While Dormin’s days were fully engaged, his nights were not squandered on long hours of sleep. In fact, the dean slept only an hour or two during the nights. The rest of his nights he spent steeped in profound research. Having stuffed his brilliant mind with a solid mix of science, theology and philosophy, Dormin was about to launch his greatest work. The voluminous book he produced following a long decade of hard work and sleepless nights was called “The Origin of the Gods.“ In his historical book, a guide for many generations, Dormin outlined his evolutionary and revolutionary theory of how all beings evolve including God. Professor Dormin theorized that God had evolved from being a Creator and a sole proprietor of the universe to a silent bystander. Dormin postulated that after creating the world, God had retired to busy Himself with other hobbies and relinquished the control of the universe to the celestial bodies. The heavenly bodies that ruled for millions of years eventually found a better occupation for themselves and turned over the reign of divinity to the idol‑gods. This theory spread like wildfire among the post‑Flood generations that had no use for an angry God who perpetrated the horrible Flood. In his book, Professor Dormin described in the minutest detail the range of power of each one of the 120 idol‑gods he and his father concocted. He also provided the reader with all the rituals one should exercise in order to maximize the output and blessings of each idol. “The Origin of the Gods,“ by Professor Dormin turned into an instant bestseller and the bible of his day. Did Professor Dormin really subscribe to the nonsense he espoused in his voluminous work? An imposter he was, but not a fool. Besides raking it in for cranking out a bestseller, Professor Dormin effectively accomplished the main goal of his life’s work – to

secure the success and prosperity of the religious enterprise established by his father, Nimrod. For this service to the empire, Dormin was awarded with abundant wealth and unlimited access to Nimrod’s harem.

*** The Great Flood, which wiped out humanity 350 years earlier, was all but forgotten from most of this generation’s memory. Humanity under the charismatic leadership of Emperor Nimrod was busy and excited about building the mighty Tower of Babel. Ten generations have elapsed since the days of the Great Flood. The Earth was inhabited by a sprawling humanity. This whole population sprung forth from the loins of one man, and he was still around to witness this dynamic growth, but he was not happy with the direction in which his descendants have steered the Creator’s enterprise. Following the earth‑shattering trauma inflicted upon him by his youngest son, Ham soon after the Great Flood, Noah was still alive three centuries later. In spite of his monumental efforts to change the world for the good, not only did Noah not bear any fruits for his labors, but also his worst‑case scenario nightmare unfolded right in front of his very own aging eyes. His son, Ham gained the upper hand over the forces of benevolence and gradually restored the world to the same evil chaos, which the Great Flood was intended to reverse.

For long decades following the Flood, Noah was still engaged in preaching the Word of God to anyone that would listen. That practice was radically changed once Nimrod came to power. Nimrod tolerated no dissent and even his great grand‑father, Noah was not exempt from the edict. Nimrod’s agents assiduously scoured the countryside for dissenters and summarily executed any rebels. Noah no longer preached in the open. He went underground to propagate his message to a select few.

Noah still had a few allies in his cause of disseminating the Word of God. His son, Shem was still the main force behind the effort to preserve morality in the midst of a society steeped in depraved corruption and the worship of idols. Facing overwhelming odds, Noah and Shem were aided by two younger men endowed with great intelligence, energy and resourcefulness. Eber was the fifth‑generation offspring and Abraham, the son of Terah, was an eleventh‑generation offspring from Noah. These four gallant men risked their lives every moment of every day by defying Nimrod’s decrees. In order to better understand the mindset of their adversaries and to gain advantage in repudiating their arguments, the Yeshiva of Shem and Eber purchased a copy of Professor Dormin’s book, “The Origin of the Gods.“ Noah and the rest of the Yeshiva staff read the book and then sat down to discuss strategy. They sat in a tent removed from the main centers of population. The Yeshiva of Shem and Eber were housed in a string of tents nestled deep in a valley far away from human sight so as to avoid the watchful eye of Nimrod’s secret service agents. The four sages along with a handful of brave souls populated these tents. Even during daylight not enough sunlight penetrated inside. The four sages sat and discussed Dormin’s book by candlelight.

“I really thought that memories of the Great Flood would drive some fear and sense in humanity to abide by the will of the Creator,“ stated Noah in exasperation, “but looking at this nonsense by Dormin, I am beginning to suspect that if anything, people have regressed since my youth. This Dormin had placed God in a nursing home. They really are convinced that God is old and feeble and cannot strike back at those who challenge Him. These clowns are busy building a tower to physically put up a fight against the Creator. Can you fathom their chutzpah?!“ “Many years have passed since, but my recollections from the days before the Flood,“ observed Shem, “suggest that there is a major difference between this generation and the ancients. Nimrod, as evil as he is, seems at least to have introduced unity among his subjects. If my memory does not fail me, the pre‑Flood generations were not only evil but fragmented as well.“ “That is very true, my son,“ affirmed Noah, “as much as I despise their idols and the Tower, I must admit that unity and harmony lend a saving grace to this decadent society. God is known to bless the trait of unity, and for that alone the Creator may not eradicate them as He had inflicted upon my generation.“ “Surely the Creator is too compassionate to ever bring annihilation upon the world for a second time,“ remarked Abraham who was almost 900 years younger than Noah. “Well, my son,“ Noah addressed Abraham, “God has only vowed never again to wipe out humanity with a flood, but surely He doesn’t lack other means should they bring Him to a kindling point with their corrupted ways.“ “Heaven forbid,“ exclaimed Abraham, “that we should seek to bring people closer to faith in the Creator by means of intimidation. We should lure people to understand how merciful God truly is. I say that we should be bold and imaginative in our methods. Why don’t we all go out tomorrow to the Valley of Shinar and turn the people around right where they err the most – at the very construction site of the Tower? Let’s all go out there and make some souls right at the epicenter of heresy.“

Shem and Noah were wary about such a bold approach. “You want us to go out to the site of the Tower of Babel? The place is crawling with Nimrod’s agents,“ argued Shem. The four deliberated for a long time upon Abraham’s proposal. The decision was to forge ahead with the bold plan, but only after drafting a document refuting the propaganda embedded in Dormin’s book, “The Origin of the Gods.“ The four sages of the Yeshiva contributed to this effort. The book was written by Abraham and it was titled, “The Book of Creation.“ In this work, which took three months to compile, Abraham focused upon the principle of the predictable order and harmony prevailing in the universe – a pattern pointing to the existence of a Universal Creator and the intelligent design behind the marvel of Creation. Furthermore, the book emphasized the paramount principle that not only did God Create the universe, but also, He is constantly and actively engaged in its maintenance and supervision to eternity. Once the masterpiece was reviewed and fully approved by the sages of the Yeshiva, the four leaders of the faithful disguised themselves beyond recognition. Posing as petty merchants, they headed for the Valley of Shinar the following day early in the morning. The Tower of Babel was near completion. Its spiraling peak enveloped in the clouds, the Tower soared more than a mile above the ground. Men toiled incessantly, hauling bricks mortar and supplies, scaling the steep spiral stairway wrapped around the vast exterior of the cylinder‑shaped Tower.

With the pretense of peddling their wares to the patriotic proletariat, the four merchants were granted permission, from the guards, to scale the Tower. Abraham who at 58 was the youngest of the four exhibited signs of strain as he laboriously made his way up the steep spiral stairway of the formidable Tower in the scorching sun. Eber was 283 years old at the time and his great great‑grandfather, Shem was a vigorous 448 years old. Noah was still in good shape but at the age of 950 years, his age was showing as he negotiated his way up the Tower of Babel. Shem turned to his father and said, “Dad, maybe this is too much for us. What’s the use killing ourselves scaling up this Tower of Evil?“ Noah, who had opposed this trip in the first place, was now more than ever determined not to be the first one to quit. “If it’s the last thing I ever do in my life,“ heaved Noah as the burden of the steep climb took a toll on his aging body, “I want to go all the way up to the top of the Tower to be a witness as to what this wicked bunch is up to.“ Supported on either side, by Abraham and Eber, Noah managed the ascent. To accommodate the old man, the group rested at intervals and then scaled until they reached the peak five hours later. By the afternoon, the clouds dispersed, and it was a clear day with nothing but blue skies under the scorching Babylonian sun. Once they reached the peak they all stood, leaning over the edge of the parapet, mesmerized by the breathtaking view. The blue waters of the Euphrates could be seen for miles meandering in both directions against the backdrop of the fertile Shinar Valley. Further to the south they could clearly see the verdant valley and the surrounding lush green mountain range yielding to the desert dunes. It was an awesome view and they could not get enough of it. Pointing to the banks of the Euphrates

River below, asked Eber, “Do I see ants at the river’s edge?“ His colleagues looked down searching for the ants Eber observed. “These are not ants,“ elaborated Abraham, “These are palm trees, but from this height they sure seem like ants.“

Only after an hour of absorbing the spectacular vistas, did the four settle down in a shaded area to break bread. From their sacks they produced a towel and spread it on the floor. On top of the towel they laid out bread, a water jug, olives, dates, figs and dried salted fish. They washed their hands and face before sitting to dinner. Noah dipped a morsel of bread in the salty fish. Then lifting the bread up, he was joined by all as they recited in unison, “Blessed art Thou Our God, King of the Universe for the plenty of the land, which You have bestowed upon us.“ They feasted for a long time and then again recited another benediction at the end of the feast, thanking God for their sustenance and health. Noah was visibly fatigued but much inspired to reminisce about days of old. “Nimrod grew up on my knees. He was the most talented young man I ever laid my eyes upon. He had so much energy, grace and immensely charismatic. Being the son of my grandson, Cush, that comes as no surprise. Cush himself was an exceedingly accomplished man. Though Cush deviated from the good path, I had hopes that his youngest son, Nimrod would make up for his father’s misgivings. I personally invested much energy and emotions to direct Nimrod in the path of faith and justice.“ Noah released a deep and meaningful sigh and then continued, “But strange are the ways of the world.“ Pointing to the Tower and the surroundings, remarked Noah, “Whoever suspected that Nimrod’s energies and intelligence would be

consumed by this evil enterprise? Nimrod is not oblivious to the Creator. I know that because I personally coached him on the subject. He displayed great knowledge and faith in his youth. That makes it even worse, that he knows his Creator and chose to rebel vehemently against his Maker.“

Raising his head heavenward with a look of nostalgia registered upon his face, sighed Noah, “How different this world would have been, had Nimrod followed his benevolent God given instincts. However, he could not overcome the temptations of the flesh and gave in to them instead of following the faith he exhibited in his younger days.“ Noah paused briefly in order to take in the view. Pointing to the horizon, observed Noah, “Look at the banks of the Euphrates. Look carefully and you’ll clearly see the signs of devastation still imprinted on the landscape from the impact of the Great Flood. No one can deny that these immense scars are a symbol of God’s wrath, which drowned humanity in boiling sulfuric waters about 350 years ago. Is it not plainly visible? I ask you.“ His companions nodded in silent agreement. “Well, then you would think that as the construction of this Tower progressed and these fools climbed higher and higher, the sight of these horrible scars would drive some sense of remorse and repentance in their evil hearts. You would think that someone would whisper to his colleagues that perhaps it would be a good idea to reflect on their ways and reconsider. Have you taken a good look at the people we witnessed on our ascent here laboring on the construction of this mammoth project? Nimrod’s suckers are toiling like jackasses under the inclement sun, and yet with zeal laborers rarely exhibit. They are united and excited about this project of evil.“ Noah bowed his head in exasperation. Abraham, Shem and Eber stared intently at Noah, hoping the old sage would proceed. Noah did not disappoint his interlocutors as he once again raised his head and forged with renewed vigor. Pointing to the surroundings, Noah stated, “Not for this kind of nefarious society did God grant humanity another chance to rebuild the

world after the Great Flood.“ Then in a surprise motion, pointing at Abraham, proclaimed Noah, “It is for the likes of you, my dear Abraham, that God did not lose faith in the future of humanity. I personally definitely failed my Creator!“ Bemoaned Noah.

“Shem and Eber are making a superhuman effort and sacrifice to promulgate the Word of God to a hostile environment. They have succeeded to some extent, but the darkness of evil seems to triumph.“ Turning to Abraham, Noah raised his voice, “But you are young and fearless, the future belongs to you, Abraham. It is your type of energy and spirit that will prevail over the Nimrods of this world. Your tenacious and bold stance in the face of this idol‑worshipping society will, with the help of God, prevail and restore the light of faith to mankind. Where I have failed… you will, God Willing, succeed. You and your seed shall inherit the earth and be a light unto the nations!“ Having said that, Noah leaned back. His head gently rested on the wall behind him. His eyes were shut closed as serenity permeated every feature of his luminous face. It seemed that the grace of God rested upon his countenance. Long moments passed, and the peaceful expression of nirvana registered upon Noah’s face did not budge, as if begging not to be disturbed. Abraham gently took Noah’s hand in his palm. “Our venerated and beloved old sage is no longer with us. The righteous Noah is back in the loving hands of his Maker!“ declared Abraham as tears welled up in his

eyes. In a somber tone of voice, Noah’s three living companions recited: “God has given… and God has taken. May the Name of God be Blessed unto eternity!“

Global Warming In hot of pursuit of politically correct science fiction agendas and gripped by fanatic religious fervor, the progressive element of our society is possessed by a penchant for embracing fake ideologies. This is the same group of people that did not yet meet a crackpot science with which it did not instantly fall in love. Enter Global Warming — the new religion of the Marxists and the twin sister of evolutionary voodoo.

*** Irena Sendler was born as Irena Krzyzanowska on the 15th of February 1910, to Dr. Stanislaw Krzyzanowski, a physician, and his wife, Janina. She grew up in Otwock, a town about 15 miles southeast of Warsaw, where a vibrant Jewish community thrived. Her father died in February 1917 from typhus contracted while treating patients. After his death, Jewish community leaders offered the widow to pay for Irena’s education, though her mother graciously declined the offer. Irena studied Polish literature at Warsaw University, and joined the Polish Socialist Party. In the mid‑1930s, the Ghetto‑Bench system was a form of official segregation in classroom seating arrangement for Jewish students, introduced in some of Poland’s universities. Under this system, Jewish university students were forced, under threat of expulsion, to occupy benches assigned exclusively reserved for Jews at the left side of university lecture halls. This official policy of enforced segregation was often accompanied by acts of violence directed against Jewish students. Irena Sendler fiercely opposed the Ghetto-Bench system. In protest, she defaced her grade card in public. In retaliation for this protest, she was suspended from the University of Warsaw for three years.

***

At this point, looking up at the bleachers, I can see many a puzzled face. They are all gazing squarely into my face, and wondering whether the author strayed from the course of the narrative. After all, what is the story of Irena Sendler doing in the middle of a discussion about Global Warming? Does it really belong in this context? One cannot help but wonder. Dear reader, please sit back, relax and keep on reading. Sooner than later, you will see that all the pieces of the puzzle neatly fall into place. Keep on reading my friend, the best is yet to come!

*** Irena moved to Warsaw prior to the outbreak of World War II. She obtained a position as senior administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Department, which was in charge of soup kitchens, located in every district of the city. The department distributed meals and provided financial assistance and other services to the poor, elderly, and orphans. Soon after the German invasion in 1939, Irena began aiding the Jewish population by acquiring forged documents, registering thousands of Jews under Christian names so they could receive these services. Sendler’s work was done at huge risk, as providing any kind of assistance to Jews in German-occupied Poland was punishable by death, not just for the person who was providing the help but also for their entire family or household. Poland was the only country in German-occupied Europe in which such a death penalty was applied.

Irena soon felt that she was not doing enough. She joined the Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, organized by the Polish underground resistance, operating out of London with the help of many British Jews. Irena helped smuggle food, medicine, and clothing into the besieged Jewish Ghetto. Over 450,000 Jews had been forced into the small 16-block area that was the Warsaw Ghetto; 5,000 were dying each month. Irena felt that her efforts were helping only to prolong the suffering, but doing nothing to save lives. She decided that the most that could be done was to try to save the children: “When the war started, all of Poland was drowning in a sea of blood. But most of all, it affected the Jewish nation. And within that nation, it was the children who suffered most. That’s why we needed to give our hearts to them.“ During the war, Irena, known by her nom de guerre Jolanta, was appointed by Zegota to head its Jewish children’s section. As an employee of the Social Welfare Department, she had a special permit to enter the Warsaw Ghetto to check for signs of typhus, a disease the Germans feared would spread beyond the Ghetto. During these visits, she wore a yellow Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people. Irena and her network of twenty-five, organized a system to smuggle out as many children as possible from the Ghetto. Ten members were to smuggle children out, ten were in charge of finding families to take the children, and five were in charge of obtaining false documents. Under the pretext of conducting inspections of sanitary conditions within the confines of the Ghetto, Irena and her team set up an operation to save the life of Jewish children. After sedating babies and small children, they smuggled them out in ambulances and trams; hiding them in burlap bags, coffins, packages and suitcases. Irena and her co-workers also used the network of sewers, common to the ghetto and the rest of Warsaw, as a conduit for transporting babies out of hell. In this manner, from 1940 to 1943, Irena’s operation spirited thousands of Jewish children to safety. The hardest part was convincing parents to part with their children. Even the many secular Jewish parents shrank from the thought of surrendering their children into Catholic homes or convents, where they might be baptized or taught Christian prayers. Many chose to die with their children instead. Irena, herself a young mother, found it almost impossibly painful to have to persuade parents to part with their children, entrusting

them to a non-Jewish stranger. The only thing that gave her strength to withstand this pain was the knowledge that there was no other hope for survival. Sometimes, she would finally convince the parents, only to be met with the grandparents’ adamant refusal. She would be forced to leave empty-handed, returning the next day to find that the entire family had been sent to Treblinka. For Irena, a daily heartbreaking routine sounded like this: She takes the crying infant into her arms, turns her back on the hysterical mother, and walks off into the night. If she’s caught, she and the baby will die. “Promise me my child will live!“ the mother cries desperately after her. She turns for a moment. “I can’t promise that. But I can promise that if he stays with you, he will surely die.“[42] Jewish children spirited out of the Ghetto were placed with Polish Christian families, orphanages and Roman Catholic convents. The children were given fake Christian names and taught Christian prayers in case they were tested. Irena was determined, however, to prevent the children from losing their Jewish identities. She kept careful documentation listing the children’s fake Christian names, their given Jewish names, and their current location. Irena listed the name and new identity of every rescued child on thin cigarette papers or tissue paper. She hid the list in glass jars and buried them under an apple tree in her friend’s backyard. Her hope was to reunite the children with their families after the war. Indeed, though most of their parents perished in the Warsaw Ghetto or in Treblinka, those children who had surviving relatives were returned to them after the war.

According to American historian Deborah Dwork, Irena Sendler was “the inspiration and the prime mover for the whole network that saved those 2,500 Jewish children.“ About 400 of the children were directly smuggled out by Irena herself. Then, on the 20th of October 1943, the Gestapo caught up with her. She was arrested, imprisoned in Warsaw’s notorious Pawiak prison, and tortured. Her feet and legs were broken. She still needs crutches and a wheelchair as a result of those injuries, and still carries the scars of those beatings. Despite this, she refused to betray any of her comrades or the children they rescued. Irena was sentenced to death by firing squad, a sentence she accepted with pride. Zegota saved her life by bribing the guards on the way to her execution. After cheating death, Irena hid from the Germans. Relentlessly pursued by the Gestapo, she returned to Warsaw under a fake name and continued her involvement with Zegota, by then the Warsaw Ghetto had been liquidated. In the summer of 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising, Irena worked as a nurse in a public hospital, where she hid five Jews. She continued to work as a nurse until the Germans left Warsaw, retreating before the advancing Soviet troops. After the war, Irena and her co-workers gathered all the records with the names and locations of the hidden Jewish children, and handed them to over their Zegota colleague Adolf Berman and his staff at the Central Committee of Polish Jews. However, almost all of the children’s parents had been killed at the Treblinka extermination camp or had gone missing. Though the Church was actively involved in much of Irena’s efforts, she stresses that the goal was not to convert Jewish children to Catholicism, but rather to save lives. Each family entrusted with Jewish children, had to pledge to return them to any surviving family members after the war. Unfortunately, this commitment was not always kept. Mrs. Sendler spent years after the war, with the help of her lists, trying to track down missing children and reconnect them with surviving family members.

Though the war ended, Irena’s tribulations were far from over. She was imprisoned from 1948 to 1949 and brutally interrogated by the Communist secret police due to her connections with Poland’s principal resistance organization, the Home Army, which was loyal to the wartime Polish government in exile residing in London. As a result, she gave birth prematurely to her son, Andrzej, who did not survive. Although she was eventually released and agreed to join the Communist Party, her ties to the Home Army meant that her heroic exploits did not receive their due honor and recognition. To the contrary, in 1965, when Irena was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous among the Nations, Poland’s Communist regime did not permit her to travel abroad at that time to receive the award in Israel; she was able to do so only in 1983. Irena later worked as a teacher and deputy-director in several Warsaw medical schools, she was officially employed by the ministries of Education and Health. She was also active in various social work programs. Irena helped organize a number of orphanages and care centers for children, families and the elderly, as well as a center for prostitutes in Henrykow. However, she was forced into early retirement resulting from her public declarations of support for Israel in the 1967 Israeli-Arab War, as Poland and other Communist bloc countries broke off relations with Israel in the aftermath of the Six-Day War.

During March 1968, students’ organizations launched massive protests against the Communist government of the Polish People’s Republic. The crisis resulted in the suppression of student strikes by security forces in all major academic centers across the country and the subsequent repression of the Polish dissident movement. This political crisis was also accompanied by mass emigration, as the majority of surviving Polish citizens of Jewish origin left the country following an anti-Semitic — internally branded antiZionist at the time — campaign waged by the minister of internal affairs, General Mieczyslaw Moczar, with the approval of the head of the Polish government, First Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka. The protests coincided with the events of the Prague Spring in neighboring Czechoslovakia — raising new hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia. The unrest culminated in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on the 20th of August 1968. In protest of suppression of human rights by the Polish government, Irena resigned her Communist Party membership. In 1980, she joined the Solidarity movement.

*** In 1965, Irena Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous among the Nations. A tree was planted in her honor at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous. However, in her own homeland, there was no further public recognition of her wartime resistance and humanitarian work until after the end of Communist rule in Poland in 1989.

In 1991, Sendler was made an honorary citizen of Israel. On the 12th of June 1996, Irena was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. She received a higher version of this award, the Commander’s Cross with Star, on the 7th of November 2001. Nevertheless, Irena Sendler’s achievements remained largely unknown to the world until 1999, when students at a high school in Uniontown, Kansas, along with their teacher Norman Conard, produced a play based on their research into her life story, which they called Life in a Jar. It was a surprising success, staged over 200 times in the US and abroad. The play significantly contributed to publicizing Sendler’s story worldwide. In March 2002, B’nai Yehudah Temple of Kansas City awarded its annual Tikkun Olam Award — contributions made to saving the world — to Irena Sendler and Norman Conard along with the students who produced the play Life in a Jar. In 2009, the play was adapted for television as The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, directed by John Kent Harrison, in which Sendler was portrayed by actress Anna Paquin. In 2003, Pope John Paul II sent Sendler a personal letter praising her wartime rescue efforts. On the 10th of November 2003, she received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest civilian decoration. That same year, the American Center of Polish Culture in Washington DC bestowed upon Sendler the Polish-American award — Jan Karski Award for Courage and Heart. In 2006, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Life in a Jar Foundation established the Irena Sendler’s Award for Repairing the World, which is awarded to Polish and American teachers. The Life in a Jar

Foundation is an organization dedicated to promoting the attitude and message of Irena Sendler.

On the 14th of March 2007, Sendler was honored by the Polish Senate, and a year later, on the 30th of July, by the American Congress. On the 11th of April 2007, she received the Order of the Smile — an international award given by children to adults distinguished in their love, care and aid for children. At that time, she was the oldest recipient of the award. In 2007, she became an honorary citizen of the cities of Warsaw and Tarczyn. In April 2009, she was posthumously granted the Humanitarian of the Year award from The Sister Rose Thering Endowment, and in May 2009, Sendler was posthumously granted the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award. Around this time, American filmmaker Mary Skinner filmed a documentary, Irena Sendler, In the Name of Their Mothers, featuring the last interviews Sendler gave before her death. In 2013, the walkway in front of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw was named after Irena Sendler. In 2010, a memorial plaque commemorating Sendler was posted on the wall of 2 Pawinskiego Street in Warsaw — a building in which she worked from 1932 to 1935. In 2015, she was honored with another memorial plaque at 6 Ludwiki Street, where she lived from the 1930s to 1943. Several schools throughout Poland have also been named after her.[43] In 2007, one year before she died, Irena Sendler, known to many as the female Schindler, was officially honored as a national heroine by the Polish parliament, in a ceremony attended by some of those she had rescued. Too frail to attend herself, Irena drafted a letter to be read at the ceremony. Elzbieta Ficowska, who was a six-month-old baby when she was spirited out the ghetto by Irena’s resistance group, read out the heroine’s letter: Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its spectre still hangs over the world and doesn’t allow us to forget the tragedy. Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.[44]

*** In her personal life, Irena experienced turbulence as well. At the age of 21, she married Mieczyslaw Sendler in 1931, but they divorced in 1947. She then married Stefan Zgrzembski, a Jewish friend from her university days, with whom she had three children: Janina; Andrzej, who died in

infancy; and Adam, who died of heart failure in 1999. In 1959, she divorced Zgrzembski and remarried her first husband, Mieczyslaw Sendler; however, they eventually divorced again. In 2007, in recognition of her heroic exploits during the dark days of World War Two, Irena Sendler was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. A decade earlier, a fellow named Al Gore — a fervent advocate of the Global Warming hysteria — concocted a slide show, warning of an impending apocalypse that will result from an overheated globe. In 2006, based on his slide show, Gore released a doomsday blood-and-thunder documentary entitled An Inconvenient Truth, which was branded a blatant intellectual fraud[45] by critics. In January 2006, soon after releasing his boogeyman documentary, Al Gore declared that unless we took drastic measures to reduce greenhouse gasses, the world would reach a point of no return in a mere ten years. He called it a true planetary emergency! As the years go by, hysterical climate activists and other false prophets, the likes of Al Gore, are constantly forced to postpone the apocalypse. For lack of credible evidence, the bogeyman of Global Warming was later re‑casted as the Climate Change scarecrow. Maybe Al Gore knows something that evades the rest of us, but, where I come from the Climate is constantly Changing, as it does all over the globe since time immemorial… and the world has not yet bumped into a point of no return. Once and for all, let’s put it all in context. Climate Change is not a problem. The climate has been changing for thousands of years, and the universe is still intact. Rather, the problem is pollution. All civilized societies, to one extent or another, institute regulations to protect the environment and resources from the hazards caused by pollution. Certainly, we all need to be good stewards of our planet and act responsibly with respect to our impact on the environment. Patently, it is nothing less than an abomination to claim that humanity exercises control in either destroying or fixing the planet, but it does have at its disposal the tools to prevent and remedy environmental damage caused by pollution.

In an attempt to shed light on the Global Warming mania gripping the enlightened left‑wing progressives, a political science aficionado and an astute observer of social fads, my son Nadav posits the following thesis: A worldview is comprised of various components, including notions of good and evil, as well as eschatology. The struggles that people promote as worth fighting for in society derive directly from the content of their worldview. A traditional religious affinity can inform an individual’s sense of morality and lead one to believe that the nuclear family is worth preserving, while embracing monotheism as an enlightened belief system that liberated the world from old pagan cultural practices. Secular progressives, likewise, derive their morality, conception of struggle and societal direction from their notions of good and evil. To them, what preserved societal order in the past must be discarded. The new struggles for multiculturalism, sexual liberation and anarchy— a completely new pantheon of gods discovered only in the past two centuries — necessitate a transformation of society’s old hierarchies and structures. The taboos of racism, sexism, nationalism, chauvinism, outdated family values, xenophobia and homophobia have replaced the Ten Commandments of the old pecking order. Eventually, any semblance of order must be jettisoned as restrictive and anachronistic; but like any fervent religionist, the progressive hankers for a grand cause which warrants a supreme sacrifice to fend off an impending apocalyptic cataclysm that will destroy the world if not forestalled. Global Warming perfectly fills this void for the progressive, a role reserved for end‑of‑times prophecy under a religious worldview. Humans have a need to feel that they are working as part of something larger than themselves. Your average liberal living in California doesn’t have a clue about the intricacies of climate science, but virtue signaling that he is a compassionate lover of nature who cares about the future, imbues him with a sense of purpose where religion cannot.

In the autumn of 2017, as a spate of devastating hurricanes hammered the US, a hysterical Barbra Streisand blamed it all on Climate Change.[46] Oy gevalt![47] Watch out Barbra… the sky is falling! What’s next? Soon, they will attribute the swine flu epidemic to the root of all evil — Climate Change. The emotions, zeal, hysteria, passions and rancor raging around the Global Warming debate demonstrate that it is more about theology than science. This phantom religion assumed dimensions way beyond its scope. It’s time to cut it down to size... the Global Warming hysteria is a far cry from a cataclysmic apocalypse, stupid! If anything, it’s about pollution, a manageable menace. The politically correct progressive left wing of our society fashioned a utopia in which everybody is special and where terrorists can be neutralized with a hug and a decent paying job. A world turned upside down, in which women aspire to displace men, and men are not sure what hit them. A world where all men are portrayed as bumbling idiots and women as tortured saints. A world in which the Gender Pyramid has been turned upside down and inside out; where the demarcation line between men and women has been blurred to the extent that one can no longer distinguish between the sexes. A universe in which nobody is judged… not even criminals. A world without borders where multiculturalism rules the day, and everyone lives in peace and harmony. In short, a perfect Disneyland packed with fantasies and anarchism — Tower of Babel re‑invented. The author of this book is old enough to remember when schools were entrusted with the task of imbuing students with values, discipline and education. In our day and age, schools and especially universities are no longer in the business of education, but rather indoctrination. In the 21st century, most graduates of higher education system are infected with the virus known as Obssesivus Progressivus Marximus Debilitatos. Yet even in this Marxist utopia of shared wealth and safe spaces, people need a cause to rally around. In the fantasy world, in which Islamic terrorists were tamed long ago, and nobody is special because everyone is; progressive humanity is exhorted to charge up the windmills of a boogeyman named Climate Change. In this new and improved universe, anyone who consumes fossil fuels or any of its derivatives is the ultimate

enemy of humanity. The witch‑hunt is out in full force — Fascism reincarnated! The politically correct gurus advocate a world where such attributes as merit, diligence, invention, effort, excellence, initiative and competition are considered cardinal sins. Striving to excel in a society where everybody is special, amounts to nothing less than a federal offense. In that same world, the crime of unleashing carbon emissions into the atmosphere is tantamount to committing a Holocaust‑sized genocide against humanity. That is the same phantasmagorical world in which Al Gore reigns supreme. It is the same world in which a musical psychologist named Richard Parncutt — after declaring his fundamental opposition to capital punishment in all cases including mass murderers — proposed restricting the death penalty to individuals who cause more than one million deaths. Consequently, concludes Mr. Parncutt, influential Global Warming deniers could fall into that category, if they impede progress toward reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and thereby cause the deaths of millions of future people.[48] Ironically, based on the verdict issued by Mr. Parncutt, Al Gore is likely the prime candidate to dangle from the gallows in the public square. Flying in the face of his own gospel, Mr. Gore consumes vastly more electricity in his home than the average American household[49] — a particularly Inconvenient Truth given his hypocritical and hysterical calls for all Americans to reduce their home energy use in order to save the planet from an impending Armageddon resulting from Global Warming. Clearly, based on his own doomsday script, greenhouse gas emissions unleashed by Mr. Gore’s massive carbon footprint will surely trigger the

demise of millions of future people — an unforgivable mega‑crime punishable by death, as prescribed by Mr. Parncutt’s decree! However, Al Gore will not dangle from the gallows in the public square all by himself. He will be in good company of his Hollywood cronies, who are in the habit of flying their private jets to Global Warming conferences, endangering the lives of millions of future human beings. Next in line is former president Barack Obama, one of the ultimate champions of the Global Warming mania. Back in May of 2017, Mr. Obama flew in a private jet to attend a Climate Change conference in Milan, where he was ferried to town in a 14‑car convoy of gas guzzlers.[50] Take that Mr. Climate Change! The gang of Hollywood and Manhattan fat cats — zealous Climate Change Crusaders — are exhorting the hoi polloi to sacrifice by paying more for energy or using less of it. But while we’re urged to sacrifice, they’re riding high and flying in style. Shall we call it hypocrisy at its finest?... asking the common folks to give up something while their extravagant lifestyle gobbles up an ever‑increasing tonnage of fossil fuels. The leader of this pack of hypocrites is none other than Mr. Global Warming — Al Gore. Believe it or not, back in 2007, instead of handing the Nobel Peace Prize to Irena Sendler, the politically correct Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded it to Mr. Al Gore for concocting a slide show on the crackpot science of Global Warming. Ostensibly, the Nobel Prize Committee could not resist, but award the prize to promote the ephemeral and trendy hot button issue of the day.

Apparently, Global Warming could not wait for another day, Irena’s prize was placed on a back burner; perhaps, for the following year. Alas, at the age of 98, Irena Sendler died on the 12th day of May 2008… she did not live long enough to receive a Nobel Prize, rather she was awarded the highest prize of them all — an eternal seat next to the throne of God!

*** Dear reader, just in case you did not yet gobble up enough of Mr. Al Gore’s Global Warming stew, stay tuned, the best is yet to come: Thursday, December 13, 2018, marks the 10th anniversary of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore’s prediction that within five to seven years, it was likely that the North Polar Ice Cap would be completely free of ice during some months of the summer. “Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice‑free within the next five to seven years,“ predicted Mr. Gore. However, according to the Danish Meteorological Institute, there has been no trend in Arctic sea ice for the past 12 years. In January 2006, Gore promoted warnings of a “true planetary emergency“ due to Global Warming, stating that “within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return.“ Gore’s 2006 Oscar-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth“ spread his message of impending global cataclysm. But a decade after it debuted, The Blaze found that eight of his key dire predictions didn’t come to pass: Gore’s Dire Prediction No. 1 — Sea levels could rise 20 feet with the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets Reality Check: Twelve years have already passed since Mr. Gore predicted massive global floods; however, sea levels have increased at the same rate as when they were first recorded. The South Pole is gaining more ice than it’s losing. Furthermore, Greenland’s melting cycle appears to be regular. Gore’s Dire Prediction No. 2 — CO2 is the control knob for temperature. Reality Check: Satellite data have shown no increase in average global temperature for two decades despite a constant increase in CO2. The Sun, meanwhile, appears to be a more likely cause, with scientists noting the Sun has been “quieter“ over that period of time.

Gore’s Dire Prediction No. 3 — Hurricane Katrina was man-made and the new normal Reality Check: After Hurricane Wilma in 2005, the U.S. experienced the longest stretch ever recorded of no Category 3 hurricanes landing on its soil. Gore’s Dire Prediction No. 4 — Severe tornadoes are increasing Reality Check: F3+ tornadoes have been declining for more than 60 years. The overall number of tornadoes had been unusually low in the previous three years. Gore’s Dire Prediction No. 5 — Polar bears are dying Reality Check: There are more polar bears now than when Al Gore was born way back in 1948. Gore’s Dire Prediction No. 6 — The Arctic is melting Reality Check: Quite the contrary, the Arctic is actually gaining ice, and 2015 saw the largest refreezing in more than a decade. Gore’s Dire Prediction No. 7 — The Sahel in Africa is drying up Reality Check: The region south of the Sahara Desert had gained the most flora density since the advent of satellites. Gore’s Dire Prediction No. 8 — CO2 is pollution Reality Check: Agriculture benefits from CO2, which acts as an airborne fertilizer that increases plant growth while reducing the amount of water consumed by plants. Torqued-up Gore recently admitted in an interview with PBS that the latest claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are “torqued up“ to “get the attention of policymakers around the world.“[51]

Dear reader, please go back and read that last paragraph over again. With a straight face, Mr. Al Gore is informing the global public that in order to save the planet from oblivion, he deliberately Torqued Up his dire doomsday predictions just to get our attention to reduce the global carbon footprints. While this false prophet of doom urges the hoi polloi to turn down the heat in the dead of winter, Mr. Global Warming burns vastly more fossil fuels to heat his palatial estate than the average American household. Hear ye, hear ye… Al Gore’s own home electricity use has hypocritically increased to more than 21 times the national average this past year with no sign of slowing down.[52] One could argue that Al Gore’s hypocrisy, in and of itself, is not necessarily solid grounds for negating Global Warming’s mortal threat to humanity. Humbly, I urge y’all to turn the heat back on in your homes during the cold winters. While Mr. Gore’s Global Warming boogeyman is not necessarily discredited by his criminal use of fossil fuels, ample evidence is available to topple this scarecrow ideology. For starters, compare Mr. Gore’s dire doomsday predictions versus reality. In case y’all forgot, Mr. Al Gore clinched a Nobel Prize for discovering a fake science founded upon the premise of hysterical fearmongering, forecasting voodoo global disasters that never materialized. To be sure, our planet is not disintegrating resulting from Global Warming, not now and not ever. If anything, humanity’s demise will surely be enhanced by a world populated with crackpot ideologues toting Nobel Prizes, the likes of Al Gore & Company.

***

Under the Paris Climate Agreement — which was signed by most of the world’s nations on April 22, 2016 — each country must determine, plan, and regularly report on the contribution that it undertakes to mitigate Global Warming. Armed with a crystal‑clear vision that the body and spirit of the Paris accords will engender severe economic stagnation and at the same time accrue little, if any, benefit to the environment; in June 2017, President Donald Trump decided to pull the U.S.A. out of the Paris Climate Agreement. At the other end of the spectrum stands French President Emmanuel Macron. Swift, smart, young and typically self‑assured, Mr. Macron firmly and zealously believes that the Paris Climate Agreement will not only save our planet’s environment, but also that the accords amount to nothing less than the ultimate panacea for all of humanity’s woes. In response to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accords, French President Emmanuel Macron — in an unprecedented address from the Elysée Palace, partly in English — recycling Trump’s own slogan, exhorted the world to “Make our planet great again!“ Soon after his historically defiant speech, the accolades rolled in. “It was adroitly done,“ said Thomas Gomart, the director of the French Institute for International Relations. “It showed a self-confidence, even a form of insolence … In terms of foreign relations, the early stages of Macron’s presidency have undeniably been a success.“[53] Macron’s brisk and bold in‑your‑face defiance, won him praise on social media both abroad — where he was compared favorably to Trump — and at home, where it was widely and only half‑jokingly suggested Macron should change his title to “leader of the free world.“

In 2018, during Donald Trump’s Bastille Day visit to Paris, French President Macron flashed a smug grin followed by a beaming smile, as he extended his big palm for a friendly handshake with the American president. The historic handshake evolved into anything but friendly. The arrogant French leader gripped Trump’s hand with such forceful ferocity that he nearly cracked Trump’s knuckles, leaving the American president with visibly white marks on his hand long after the episode. As handshakes go, it was unusually intense; a fierce and protracted mano a mano of white knuckles, crunched bones, tightened jaws and fixed smiles that sent the internet and the world’s media into a spin. Beaming with pride and youthful vigor, Macron flaunted his style of macho politics, when he later revealed that the bone‑crushing handshake was entirely intentional. At his first major appearance on the world stage, the 39‑year‑old French president displayed a relaxed confidence and steely purpose that altogether belied his youth and inexperience. “My handshake with President Trump — it wasn’t innocent,“ Macron boasted during an interview with the Journal du Dimanche newspaper: “It’s not the be‑all and the end‑all of a policy, but it was a moment of truth.“ From his muscular handshake with Trump to his “extremely frank and direct“ exchange with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Versailles, the French president, less than a month into his mandate, has shown “boldness … agility and timing“, said the daily Libération. Strategically, in a world of Trump and Putin, with ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and the EU weakened by Brexit, Macron aims to restore and amplify France’s global voice at the heart of a stronger Europe based on a revival of the critical postwar relationship between Paris and Berlin.

When Emmanuel Macron rose to power, he underscored the environment as the epicenter of his agenda. And now — a defiant Macron with the burst of a vigorous thrust of wind at his back — it seemed that the youthful and energetic French President was heading for at least a Nobel Prize, if not for world leadership, or both. Bolstered by favorable popular ratings and unprecedented political momentum, Macron, a diplomatic novice not yet 40, was ready, able and willing to put his nation’s money where his mouth is. To save the world from carbon suffocation, Macron advanced an initiative that would once and for all tame the ominous challenge posed by the evil forces of Global Warming. With the intent to save humanity from the horrors of a carbon infested planet, during November 2018, in a classic French chivalrous gesture, Macron announced the imposition of a package of new taxes upon the French people. This was not just any old tax, it was targeted as a very specific kind of tax — namely, carbon tax. The proposed environmental fuel tax, directly inspired by the Paris Climate accords, under which France committed to cut its carbon emissions by 75 percent. The package of carbon taxes was scheduled to go into effect beginning January 1, 2019. The January tax increases would have been the equivalent of 30 cents a gallon for diesel — around half of cars in France are diesel. Cars running on regular gasoline were to be taxed at about 10 cents per gallon. This is on top of tax increases already enacted for 2018, and with additional tax increases scheduled into the future. These tax increases have been explicitly billed by Macron as a means to meet France’s commitments under the Paris Climate treaty, spiking the price of fossil fuels in an effort to reduce consumption and the carbon dioxide emissions associated with that consumption.

The problem is that outside the density and mass transit of Paris and other large cities, in substantial swaths of rural France there is virtually no option of getting around but to drive a car. Sales taxes already make up 60% of the price of fuel in France, which ranks among the highest fuel prices in Europe. To add insult to injury, most of the main trunk roads in the country exact steep tolls. Piling up even more costs on these car‑dependent regions, which are also less financially well off than glittering urban centers like Paris, has finally pushed the bulk of French citizenry to the breaking point. Macron must have been deafened and blinded by the applause the French people thundered at his exhortations to launch a global crusade aimed at ridding the planet of carbon emissions, to the extent that he lost touch with reality. Now, on the surface it seemed that the French people enthusiastically supported action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions — not surprising, considering the media’s relentless and hysterical depiction of CO2 as evil and dangerous — but when the hoi polloi was asked to foot the bill for this lofty crusade, the 21st century Napoleon was in for the shock of his life. The protests began on November 17, 2018, when French drivers led a demonstration protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s gas taxes, which were meant to minimize France’s reliance on fossil fuels. Following two weeks of controlled protests against the fossil fuel tax, violent riots erupted at the end of November, which lasted for more than four weeks. The demonstrations against President Macron went down in history as the Yellow Vest protests. Right from the start, the Gilets Jaunes — who take their name from the high‑visibility Yellow Vests that drivers must wear if they step outside the vehicle on the roadside, and thus a symbol of being a car owner — were a symptom of a wider resistance to the presidency of Emmanuel Macron. Much as the president himself — a former banker who served in a center‑left government, steered a slippery course — so have his opponents come from the entire political spectrum, coalescing around an issue to create the biggest pushback since he was elected in May 2017. In the big cities, groups of masked men clad in Yellow Vests spilled into the streets, ripping up benches and traffic lights, all the while hurling bits of paving stones from roadworks. Chants aimed at Macron included “Macron resign!“ and “Go home, bourgeois!“ Bolting out from the G20 summit in Argentina, Macron flew back home and went straight to inspect damage at the Arc de Triomphe. Graffiti all over the base of the 19‑century

monument read: “We’ve chopped off heads for less than this“ and “Topple the Bourgeoisie!“ As the riots spread to the countryside, demonstrators continued to stage small roadblocks in towns around France. Other cities saw violent clashes between protesters and police, notably in Toulouse where 48 police officers were injured. In the town of Puy‑en‑Velay, the prefect’s office briefly caught fire after it was petrol‑bombed. More than 130,000 people demonstrated across France in the Gilets Jaunes movement, as they set up more than 580 roadblocks around the country. Heaps of used teargas canisters filled the gutters. Caught in a state of shock, initially, Macron flexed muscles and urged the police to use brute force to subdue the rioters. That only triggered more violent riots throughout France. As the country raged out of control, a subdued Macron took to the national airwaves to address the spiraling crisis. Sounding a conciliatory tone, he announced an increase in the minimum wage, tax cuts for retirees and other concessions aimed at calming the streets. Emboldened by their success in twisting Macron’s arm, the rioters redoubled their efforts. Out‑of‑control riots intensified throughout the countryside, as protestors torched cars and barricades, uprooted park benches and traffic light, shops were looted, and banks vandalized. Invariably, rioters chanted slogans deriding the Paris Climate agreement. A leader of the Yellow Vest movement indicated that the demonstrations would forge ahead. Christophe Chalencon, a blacksmith from southern France who has become a leader of the protest movement, told the Reuters news agency that Macron’s peace offering was not enough. The crisis, which began as protests against a planned fuel tax hike — which Macron abandoned by now — quickly mushroomed into a broad and visceral demonstration of anti‑government resentment aimed squarely at the president, who is seen by many as being out of touch with the working French. Tens of thousands of rioters fanned out all over France setting fires and destroying property. Moreover, a poll taken at the time, found more than 75% of the French population support the protests.

As the riots raged on, the Yellow Vest movement gained new support from another group of disgruntled French citizens angry over changes introduced by Macron’s government — students. Fierce reaction from high school and university‑aged students was vented against the new standardized testing policies, a lack of college enrollment spots available to graduates, and new requirements for graduates to secure those places. One student protesting in Paris, who gave only his first name, said he saw a “link“ with the Yellow Vests over what he called “despair in French society.“ Groups of students set fires and blockaded schools from Paris to the south of France. Thousands of high school students gathered in central Paris and elsewhere across the nation, and knelt on the ground with their hands behind their heads in front of police — a symbolic gesture of solidarity with fellow students arrested last week at another school protest. President Macron, who enjoyed a 62 percent approval rating at the start of his term in May of 2017, witnessed his ratings dive as riots persisted. By the first week of December 2018, Macron’s approval ratings plummeted to a low of 18 percent. Hello Mr. Macron Napoleon, the Bastille is burning, and your derriere is on fire. Dear Macron, that is where you end up when you try so hard to fix something that is not even broken… and one more thing President Macron, it’s never a smart idea to recklessly sacrifice the toil, sweat, blood and tears of your nation’s taxpayers’ hard‑earned money on the altar of an ideological fake science! During the earlier days of the violent French riots protesting Macron’s CO2 fossil fuel tax hike, on December 4, 2018, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted: I am glad that my friend Emmanuel Macron and the protestors in Paris have agreed with the conclusion I reached two years ago. The Paris Agreement is fatally flawed because it raises the price of energy for responsible countries while whitewashing some of the worst polluters in the world. I want clean air and clean water and have been

making great strides in improving America’s environment. But American taxpayers – and American workers – shouldn’t pay to clean up other countries’ pollution.

Four days later, on December 8, 2018, at the height of the violent French protests, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted: The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France. People do not want to pay large sums of money, much to third world countries — that are questionably run, in order to maybe protect the environment. Chanting “We Want Trump!“ Love France.

Later that same day, President Trump’s initial Tweet was followed by another zinger: Very sad day & night in Paris. Maybe it’s time to end the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement and return money back to the people in the form of lower taxes? The U.S. was way ahead of the curve on that and the only major country where emissions went down last year!

While President Trump is forging ahead to “Make America Great Again,“ Macron seems to answer to a higher authority as he vows to “Make our Planet Great Again!“ As his agenda of saving the world from the Global Warming boogeyman went bankrupt, a deflated Macron Napoleon folded his tail between his legs and disappeared in a puff of CO2 smoke. During December of 2018, while Paris was burning, Donald Trump was tweeting. As President Trump’s tweets flashed across the globe, a pompous Macho Macron aka Mr. Global Warming, hopefully learned the lesson of his young life — that Money Talks… while Bullcrap Walks!

*** Recently, scientists overcome with an abysmal case of paranoia about the cataclysmic consequences of Global Warming, have come up with a new scheme to thwart this ominous threat. Basically, the concept of

Geo‑Engineering advocates a deliberate large‑scale intervention in the natural systems of the cosmos to counteract the evil forces of Global Warming. Also known as Solar Radiation Management — SRM for short — the mind‑boggling scheme calls for climate engineering, which seeks to reflect sunlight back to its source, namely the Sun, and thus reduce Global Warming on planet Earth. Sounds brilliant… eh? Believe it or not, on the bright side, SRM is a magical scheme that doesn’t involve cutting back on our CO2 emissions. If all goes well, SRM will dim the Sun’s rays by dispersing fine droplets of sulfuric acid into the lower stratosphere. The sulfates would be airlifted into the atmosphere as high as 20 kilometers above Earth’s surface. Once spread across the stratosphere, the massive infusion of sulfuric aerosols will reflect about 1 percent of sunlight hitting Earth back into space. Increasing what scientists call the planet’s albedo, or reflective power, will partially offset the warming effects caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases. Proponents of this pie‑in‑the‑sky pipe dream refer to SRM as a Cheap and Easy Plan to Stop Global Warming.[54]

Right now, one big hitch in this plan is that no existing aircraft is capable of deploying material of this magnitude into the high heavens. To overcome the challenge of deployment, a massive fleet of purpose‑built high‑altitude supertankers with substantial payload capabilities would deliver the colossal tonnage of sulfates to the stratosphere. Moreover, please keep in mind that this SRM remedy is not a quick fix. If the woes of Global Warming are to be effectively eradicated from the world’s landscape, the infusion of sulfates into the heavens must be maintained on an ongoing basis unto eternity. We might yet be hit with a special Solar Radiation Management Tax to finance the maintenance of this gargantuan pie‑in‑the‑sky. Does this begin to sound like Macronism reincarnated? Though SRM stirs great excitement in the scientific community, proponents of this lunacy did not yet even begin to consider the potential hazards of the daring scheme. For starters, much more research is needed to determine whether injecting massive tonnage of sulfur into the stratosphere would have dangerous consequences, such as disrupting precipitation patterns or further erosion of the ozone layer that protects us from damaging ultraviolet radiation. Even thornier, in some ways, are the ethical and governance issues that surround Geo‑Engineering — questions and issues about who should be allowed to do what and when. Have any of the geniuses, who conjured up this mad stratospheric pipe dream, ever consider the 3rd World War that would erupt over stratospheric real estate rights? And who exactly is going to foot the bill for this fantasy? Just imagine the cost of maintaining an enormous flotilla of airborne super mega tankers ferrying mountains of sulfates right under the Creator’s pupik.[55]

Mad scientists obsessed with the quest of recklessly implementing Solar Radiation Management schemes are frantically busy with the relentless pursuit of fixing a phantom problem that exists only in their wild imagination. Much like the priests of evolutionary crackpot science, proponents of SRM might yet secure vast funds to launch Geo‑Engineering solutions to a problem that does not exist. The big difference between evolutionary aspirations and those who seek to re‑engineer the cosmos, is that while Evolutionary Priests squander billions of taxpayer revenues on their fantasies, SRM schemes will end up costing the treasury trillions of dollars; not to mention the irreparable cataclysmic mutilation of nature that will likely result from tinkering with the harmony of the cosmos. And all this to what end? To satisfy the lunatic cravings of a 21st century fake science!

***

The Solar Radiation Management adventure is beginning to sound more and more like a replay of an ancient theme. A similar experiment of this magnitude was already attempted thousands of years ago and ended up in a total chaotic disaster. The episode is known as the Tower of Babel, in which an ancient civilization was totally convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that by tinkering with the heavens, they will bring salvation to humanity down here on Earth. The last time humanity tried to ascend up to the stratosphere and launch a pie‑in‑the‑sky pipe dream did not exactly meet with a happy ending. The more we hear from the pundits of Global Warming Geo‑Engineering, the more it’s beginning to echo the sounds and smells of another crackpot voodoo science — Darwinian descent with modification.

And they — Al Gore & Company — call this lunacy, a rigorous science.

***

While we are still on the subject of Global Warming, allow me to share with you a scientific revelation that researchers stumbled upon in their quest to explore the primordial roots of Climate Change. In advance, I beg your forgiveness if you find this episode a bit distasteful. Whether this scientific exploration offends your sensibilities or not, one thing for sure, you could hardly ask for a better story, I kid you not. This report was published in the science section of a very respectable publication — the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC for short. Personally, after I read the article, I was not sure whether to laugh or to cry. While I sort out my sentiments, I’ll let you judge for yourself. Ready?... here it comes: Giant dinosaurs could have warmed the planet with their flatulence, say researchers. British scientists have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus. By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs — as a whole — produced 520 million tons of gas annually. They suggest the gas output could have been a key factor in the warm climate, which prevailed 150 million years ago. Dr. David Wilkinson from Liverpool John Moore’s University and colleagues from the University of London, as well as the University of Glasgow published their results in the journal Current Biology. Sauropods, such as Apatosaurus Louisae — formerly known as Brontosaurus — were super‑sized land animals that grazed on vegetation during the Mesozoic Era. For Dr. Wilkinson, it was not the giants that were of interest but the microscopic organisms living inside them. “The ecology of microbes and their role in the working of our planet are one of my key interests in science,“ he told BBC Nature. “Although it’s the dinosaur element that captures the popular imagination with this work, actually it is the microbes living in the dinosaurs’ guts that are producing the methane.“ Methane is known as a greenhouse gas that absorbs infrared radiation from the sun, trapping it in the Earth’s atmosphere and leading to increased temperatures. Previous studies have suggested that the Earth was up to 10C0 warmer in the Mesozoic Era. With the knowledge that livestock emissions currently contribute a significant part to global methane levels, the researchers used existing data to estimate how sauropods could have affected the climate. Their calculations considered the dinosaurs’ estimated total population and used a scale that links biomass to methane output for cattle. “Cows today produce something like 50‑100 million tons per year. Our best estimate for Sauropods is around 520 million tons,“ said Dr. Wilkinson. Current methane emissions amount to around 500 million tons a year from a combination of natural sources, such as wild animals, and human activities including dairy and meat production. Expressing his surprise at the comparative figures, Dr. Wilkinson added that dinosaurs were not the sole producers of methane at the time. “There were other sources of methane in the Mesozoic Era, so total methane level would probably have been much higher than now,“ he concluded.[56]

The first observation that comes to mind after reading this masterpiece is that the honorable Dr. Wilkinson along with a cadre of his esteemed scholarly colleagues, unwittingly, stumbled upon a blockbuster resolution to the elusive riddle that has been weighing heavily on the minds of scientists from time immemorial: What killed the dinosaurs? The profound and creative scholarly study spearheaded by Dr. Wilkinson leaves us with little doubt that most of the mammoth behemoth population dropped dead of heat exhaustion generated by their own massive production of flatulents. Those who survived the scorching flatulent Global Heat Wave surely succumbed to suffocation by methane. There you have it, a classic thesis shedding definitive light on the ultimate cause that led to the disappearance of the dinosaurs from the face of the planet. Surely, a Nobel Prize is in the works.

What next?... I sure hope y’all got a hefty chuckle from this travesty. However, this charade is no laughing matter. One cannot but wonder, whence did this cadre of brilliant British scientists secure the funds to finance this monumental research project bloated with heaps of hot air? We shall all not be too shocked if it turns out that this team of British scientists raided public coffers, dipping deep into taxpayer funded grants to finance this requisite scientific research. Now, seriously, I ask myself and my audience, this esteemed assemblage of aristocratic British scientists have nothing better to do with their time and resources than to spew out this bunch of useless bloody bollocks in the public domain? Goes to show you that they will stop at nothing until they achieve their goal of imposing their convoluted politically correct crackpot science agenda upon an unwitting herd of lemmings. Wondering out loud, I ask myself and the rest of the world, how did a substantial portion of humanity — especially the youth — become so duped, as to allow this balderdash crackpot stew to evolve into acceptable mainstream scientific research? Dear reader, you may have noticed that this narrative is structured as to appeal mostly to opponents of Darwin’s crackpot science. However, having said that, I will be remiss if I fail to mention that just in case you belong in the camp that reveres Darwin and his theory — in exploring this episode about dinosaurs coupled with their aeriform impact on the primordial climate — you will surely get the ultimate bang for your buck. The brilliance of this BBC masterpiece authored by Ella Davies is that it hit upon the epicenter of the intersection between the two main disciplines of

crackpot science — Evolution & Global Warming. That’s what I call, the epitome of double the pleasure!... Enjoy!

***

As an accomplished geologist who has been investigating the Earth’s processes for more than 35 years, Gregory Wrightstone posits that contrary to the apocalyptic forecasts of the Global Warming prophets of doom, the Earth and humanity are flourishing. In 2017, Mr. Wrightstone authored a book entitled, Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know. For all those who truly wish to get to the bottom of this acrimonious debate, Gregory Wrightstone’s book is a must read. In his book, Wrightstone has conducted a thorough scientific and historical research, which bares every element of fraud concocted by the false prophets of the Global Warming hoax. In the next couple of pages you will get a taste of his premise. As a preamble to this discussion, let’s clear up the confusion resulting from the interchangeability of the two appellations assigned to one of the greatest fraudulent manufactured global crises in the annals of fake science. Beginning with the 1990s, in the early days of the climate alarmist campaign, the emphasis was nearly entirely focused on Global Warming — on effects directly related to a warming climate: heat waves, droughts, rising sea levels and the like. In 2007, Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based on warnings of future events — the same future events that have not happened. Oops, soon after Al Gore won the Nobel Prize, global temperatures declined for eight years straight.[57] With the realization that global warming had mysteriously dissipated or at least paused, a new group of climate hobgoblins was conjured up under the designation of man‑made Climate Change.

Now, anything at all unusual or harmful could be demonized and linked to our sins of carbon emission. And demonize them they have. A whole host of climate myths have been advanced to further the notion that humankind is not only changing the climate, but that those changes are devastating the planet and dragging down the human condition with it. Supposed climate calamities linked to man’s actions run the gamut, from forest fires to the spread of poison ivy. The linkage has one goal: to instill fear so that we will welcome the imposition of radical, costly regulations on our lives.[58] In his book, Gregory Wrightstone posits that rather than being at unprecedentedly high levels, CO2 is at one of its lowest concentrations in the long history of the Earth. What has been called a miracle molecule,

CO2

in

greater amounts is nothing short of a blessing in greening the Earth with an astonishing increase in the productivity of plants and trees worldwide — an increase so dramatic that it can been seen by satellites from space. Clearly, our planet is prospering and improving, not in spite of increasing

CO2

and

rising temperature, but because of it. As usual, this good news is just the opposite of what we are being fed by those who call themselves “green.“

Recent CO2 measurements point to concentration above 400 ppm — parts per million. The attempt to demonize CO2 as dangerously high at more than 400 ppm is nothing more than another legend of gremlins invading our planet. It is conveniently calculated to instill fear, so that people will docilely accept drastic and economically destructive policies. So far, the Global Warming boogeyman has been extraordinarily effective. Most governments

now have in place economically damaging regimes of taxation and regulation intended to curtail the use of fossil fuels. The policies themselves are scientifically baseless and economically senseless, and their cost — in lives and treasure — is heavy.[59] Nils‑Axel Mörner is the former head of the paleo geophysics and geodynamics department at Stockholm University. Professor Mörner labels scare tactics employed by Climate Change charlatans, The Greatest Lie Ever Told.[60] In future generations, what historians will definitely wonder about is how deeply flawed logic — obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda — actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that carbon dioxide from human industry was a dangerous, planet‑destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world — that carbon dioxide, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a cataclysmic deadly poison. Contrary to what the promoters of climate doom would have us believe, extensive historic and scientific studies document that the temperature increase over the last one hundred or so years is neither unusual nor unprecedented. We have also seen that, rather than a pending climate apocalypse, the modern warming cycle should be viewed as a welcome respite from the setbacks triggered by a spate of cold spells of the previous centuries. The contemporary climate warming trend is remarkably similar to many previous cyclical trends in our current interglacial period.

One of the primary caveats raised by those agitating for a reduction in CO2 emissions is that the weather has become warmer since the Industrial Revolution. Although it goes unstated, climate alarmists apparently believe that the ideal temperature for today would be that of the time before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. That would put us squarely in the middle of the temperatures of the Little Ice Age. History does not support any such belief. Frigid weather, death and pestilence is what history tells us accompanies lower temperatures. Is that what the scientists, politicians and environmental alarmists agitating for less CO2 want? Do they really want to return to the temperatures of the Little Ice Age, the Dark Ages or the Greek Dark Ages? We have seen how poorly our civilization fared during those cold periods. A return to lower temperatures likely would result in a decimation of the human population. But then, isn’t that what many of the climate zealots really want? A return to the temperature at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution would lead to famine and death.[61]

*** Agnotology is defined as the study of how ignorance arises via circulation of misinformation calculated to mislead. Indeed, agnotology has the strong potential for misuse whereby a manufactured consensus view can be used to stifle discussion, debate, and critical thinking. Sounds familiar? If the shoe fits… then it’s the manufactured crisis of Global Warming/Climate Change we are talking about.

Beginning on the next page is a list of 54 Inconvenient Facts compiled by Gregory Wrightstone, which completely demolish the house of cards and deceptions constructed by Al Gore & Company.

List of Inconvenient Facts[62] Inconvenient Fact 1 — Carbon dioxide is not the primary greenhouse gas. Inconvenient Fact 2 — The warming effect of CO2 declines as its concentration increases. Inconvenient Fact 3 — First and foremost, CO2 is plant food. Inconvenient Fact 4 — In the last four ice ages, the CO2 level was dangerously low. Inconvenient Fact 5 — Long term history clearly depicts a trend of dangerously decreasing CO2 Inconvenient Fact 6 — Our current geologic period has the lowest average CO2 levels in the history of the Earth. Inconvenient Fact 7 — More CO2 means more plant growth. Inconvenient Fact 8 — More CO2 helps to feed more people worldwide. Inconvenient Fact 9 — More CO2 means moister soil. Inconvenient Fact 10 — Recent Inconvenient Pause of 18 years in warming,

despite rise in CO2 Inconvenient Fact 11 — CO2 rose after the Second World War, but temperature fell. Inconvenient Fact 12 — Modern warming began long before SUVs or coal‑fired plants. Inconvenient Fact 13 — Melting glaciers and rising seas confirm warming predated increases of CO2.

Inconvenient Fact 14 — Temperatures have changed for thousands of years. It wasn’t us! Inconvenient Fact 15 — Each of the four previous inter-glacial warming periods were significantly warmer than our current temperature. Inconvenient Fact 16 — The last interglacial, was 8°C warmer than today. The polar bears survived. Greenland didn’t melt. Inconvenient Fact 17 — Today’s total warming and warming rate are similar to earlier periods. Inconvenient Fact 18 — Our current warming trend is neither unusual nor unprecedented. Surprisingly, the world is still alive and well. Inconvenient Fact 19 — We are living in one of the coldest periods in all of Earth’s history. Inconvenient Fact 20 — The only thing constant about temperatures is

that ever since the fog of time, they have been constantly changing. Inconvenient Fact 21 — For most of Earth’s history, it was about 10 °C (18 °F) warmer than today. Inconvenient Fact 22 — For human advancement, warmer is better than colder. Inconvenient Fact 23 — A return to the temperature at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution would lead to famine and death. Inconvenient Fact 24 — Only 0.3% of published scientists stated in their papers that recent warming was mostly man‑made. Inconvenient Fact 25 — Science is not consensus and consensus is not science. Inconvenient Fact 26 — More CO2 ⇒ fewer droughts

Inconvenient Fact 27 — Higher temperature ⇒ fewer droughts Inconvenient Fact 28 — Forest fires across the northern hemisphere are decreasing. Inconvenient Fact 29 — More CO2 » CO2 fertilization » more soil moisture » faster tree growth » fewer forest fires. Inconvenient Fact 30 — More CO2 in the atmosphere means more food for everyone. Inconvenient Fact 31 — The Earth is becoming greener, not turning into desert. Inconvenient Fact 32 — Growing seasons are lengthening. Inconvenient Fact 33 — More CO2 and warmer weather mean more world food production. Inconvenient Fact 34 — Heat waves are not becoming more frequent. Inconvenient Fact 35 — Extreme heat events are declining. Inconvenient Fact 36 — Cold kills far more people every year than heat. Inconvenient Fact 37 — Warmer weather means many fewer temperature‑related deaths. Inconvenient Fact 38 — Warmer weather prevents millions of premature deaths each year. Inconvenient Fact 39 — More CO2 and warmth mean shorter, less intense heat waves. Inconvenient Fact 40 — Number of tornadoes is declining. Inconvenient Fact 41 — The number of tornadoes in 2016 was the lowest on record.

Inconvenient Fact 42 — Deaths from tornadoes are falling.

Inconvenient Fact 43 — There has been no increase in frequency of hurricanes in recent data. Inconvenient Fact 44 — We have seen 250 years of declining hurricane frequency. Inconvenient Fact 45 — No significant increase in hurricane intensity due to warming. Inconvenient Fact 46 — The population of polar bears is growing. Inconvenient Fact 47 — There are more polar bears than we’ve had for 50 years. Inconvenient Fact 48 — Polar bears are thriving even where sea ice is diminishing. Inconvenient Fact 49 — There is no historic correlation between CO2 and oceanic pH levels. Inconvenient Fact 50 — The oceans did not become acidic even at 15 times modern CO2 levels. Inconvenient Fact 51 — Sea-level increase began thousands of years ago. Inconvenient Fact 52 — Recent sea-level rise began 150 years before the increase in CO2. Inconvenient Fact 53 — Melting the northern polar ice cap would not increase sea level. Inconvenient Fact 54 — Most of Antarctica is cooling and gaining ice mass.

***

The latest twist in the climate travesty is the indoctrination of grade school children. As if indeed Global Warming was a real science and the impending manufactured apocalypse, a fait accompli; kids in elementary school are now poisoned with the toxic mass hysteria that the world is coming to an end in a mere dozen years if nothing is done to eradicate fossil fuels from the face of our planet. Sowing terror into juvenile minds and hearts, the perpetrators of this diabolic scam shove their convoluted ideology into the throats of defenseless children. As children often do, they take this bullcrap seriously. Many of them go home panic‑stricken; some wet their beds at night. Invariably, children indoctrinated with impending doomsday scripts feel that they have nothing to live for. If indeed the world is coming to an end, why bother with textbooks, homework, industry, innovation, creativity and diligence; might as well chew on Instagram and Cracker Jack till kingdom come. While liberal politicians in Washington D.C., as well as those in our state capitols, are using fear of the Global Warming boogeyman to justify higher taxes, new regulations, and huge subsidies to insiders and major donors to their political campaigns; children end up as pawns in this deadly game, yielding mostly losers and hardly any winners, except for cynical political exploiters. Children are extremely gullible. They will swallow whatever balderdash their teachers dump in the classroom. Consider the polar bear ruse. Most likely, these 4th graders fell prey to the polar bear ruse in an earlier grade when Global Warming ideology was first injected into elementary school curriculum. Images of imperiled cute little polar bears — bears can swim mind you! — sinking into arctic seas because of melting

polar ice caps, have become an iconic symbol of the devastating consequences of so‑called Global Warming alarmist mania.

Had a serious government investigation been launched into the clownish science surrounding this now‑infamous urban legend, it would surely reveal that the Climate Change scarecrow amounts to nothing more than a pseudoscientific hoax propagated by faulty math and perfunctory observations. Should the plotters of this dangerous scheme succeed in imposing their fake science agenda upon elementary school children, they will eventually unleash a monster that can never be bottled up; the loony world we will inhabit down the road will charge up the windmills of crackpot science to a point of oblivion. It’s never a smart idea to recklessly sacrifice our youth on the altar of an ideological fake science! Recently, Ms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a young US Congresswoman and a firebrand climate warrior, urged young parents to think twice before bringing children into a world doomed by Global Warming. No children… no indoctrination… problem solved! As we bring this chapter about Global Warming to a happy ending, allow me to leave you with comforting words courtesy of Dr. Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. The gifted Dr. Brown holds a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Seattle University, an M.A. in International Law and

Organization from Georgetown University and Ph. D. in International Relations from Yale University. He also holds a diploma in International Law from the Hague Academy of International Law. Quite an impressive litany of accolades… eh?

On top of the heaps of titles and accomplishments tucked under his belt, Dr. Brown is also endowed with the gift of clairvoyance. Thirty years ago, back in 1989, the Honorable Dr. Brown made the following predictions: Entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the Global Warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000! Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of eco‑refugees, threatening political chaos. Mr. Brown warned that governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control. As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by up to three feet, enough to cover the Maldives and other flat island nations. Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded, cutting off its food supply, according to a joint UNEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study. Ecological refugees will become a major concern, and what’s worse is you may find that people can move to drier ground, but the soils and the natural resources may not support life. Even by the most conservative scientific estimates, the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years. We have to start thinking about the significant rise of the sea levels... we can expect more ferocious storms, hurricanes, wind shear, dust erosion. Dr. Brown concluded: There is time to act, but there is no time to waste![63]

It’s now 2019, thirty years after Dr. Brown issued his ominous doomsday predictions. My dear friends, please take a look around the doomed planet we are inhabiting. Did I not pledge in the opening verse of this very page that I am leaving you with comforting words courtesy of the Honorable Dr. Noel Brown?… well, there you have it! Thanks to the great and gracious God of the universe, the world is none the worse for the phantom boogeyman of Global Warming. If anything, this world will be a better place without fake doomsday ideologues the likes of the Honorable Nobel prize winner Al gore and his distinguished colleague, the Honorable Dr. Noel Brown; along with their sponsors: The United Nations and the Nobel Prize Committee!

Then there is more of the same. Daniel Turner is the executive director of Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. When confronting the Global Warming hysteria, one should not leave home without Mr. Turner’s insights on the subject:[64] I’m not quite old enough to remember the “Global Cooling“ scare of the 1970s and the media’s drumbeat of the coming ice age that would end mankind. But I have been told many times “the end is near“ by doomsday prophets, who have frightened people into green orthodoxy better than any cult leader. As an 8-year-old kid I was particularly jarred by an episode of the TV show “Diff’rent Strokes“ in which acid rain caused Kimberley’s hair to turn green. I lived in New York City just like the TV character, I believed my rain was poison. Throughout high school I was told that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and aerosols were tearing a hole in the ozone layer, and that it could never be repaired. Deadly UV rays would give us all cancer because I used spray deodorant. I switched to roll-on. Then came the mother of all doomsday scenarios: Global Warming. It blew away other environmental issues like candles on a cake. Deadly heat and floods. Ice caps melting. Polar bears dying. Alligators and sharks invading. TV shows. Movies. Books. Former Vice President Al Gore warned we were all going to die from Global Warming. Thirty years ago this week, the United Nations issued a Global Warming report that I distinctly remember. It predicted worldwide disaster. According to the report, the Great Plains of America would return to the Dust Bowl. The oceans would rise by several feet, causing low-lying countries like the Maldive Islands and Bangladesh to be underwater. The report said North Africa would bake into wastelands. Rainforests would be gone, as would much animal life. And it was all because of fossil fuels. American greed. Us. Me. Switching deodorant did nothing to stop it. Tough lessons for a 15-year-old high school sophomore. And here we are 30 years later, and I look back at that 1989 report, I think only this: What happened? The predictions in the report were not just a bit “off“ — like my calculations in my high school math class, my understanding of Shakespeare, or my failed attempt to high jump. The U.N. report was flat-out wrong. It was 100 percent, complete opposite, 180-degree wrong. Can I get an explanation, please?

The report claimed “even the most conservative scientists“ said there was nothing we could do to stop the Earth from warming three degrees. But Earth didn’t warm that much. The report claimed we had a 10-year window to fix this or it would be irreversible. It wasn’t. The report claimed the Soviet Union would have a bumper crop harvest because of shifting weather patterns. The Soviet Union collapsed months later.

I’d be OK if this were a one-time mistake, but the U.N. continues to issue such hyperbolic reports. It’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued the latest one last December, and it, too, triggered a countdown clock. The phrase “we have 12 years to fix this“ is parroted by almost every 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and their party’s de facto leader, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. On the bright side, we were told we had 10 years in 1989, so at least the prognosis is better this time. Why issue another report without correcting the first one? That’s not the scientific method. Can we ask for a correction? Here’s a simple question: What did the U.N. report get wrong in 1989? After all, this is “science,“ and one is expected to believe in science. So let’s lay out the facts dispassionately and objectively, as any unbiased scientist would. Please identify the error and methodological change or formula or data point that has been corrected. Show your work. Otherwise, why should we believe you got it right 30 years later? Surely the IPCC has the means to do an after-action review. Since the report was issued the IPCC has raked in over $150 million. Looks like there’s a prophet making a profit. No presidential candidate, and practically no politician, would ever say he or she is skeptical of these U.N. predictions. “Climate denier“ is an accusation akin to “war criminal,“ and with a leftist movement that is growing more violent and assaulting and doxing journalists, it’s almost imprudent to voice an alternative view. But the U.N. has a 30-year track record of being wrong on this issue, so I take its reports on Climate Change and “we have 12 years left“ with a grain of salt the size of the Maldives. In 30 more years, I’ll be 75. I can’t wait to read the U.N. report.

In the Shadow of the Creator Deprived of his mother’s love in early childhood, Isaac blossomed into a resentful, anti‑social introvert. Growing up, he shunned the world around him and eyed all with hostile suspicion. Early on in life he developed a me against the world mentality. This attitude enveloped him for the rest of his long life. His only true friends were books, which he devoured by the hundreds before he was even a teen‑ager. Isaac’s father died before he was born. Hannah, his despondent young mother soon found financial security and comfort by marrying a man thirty years her senior. She married a man too set in his ways to take into his home a toddler he did not sire. To accommodate her new husband, Hannah deemed it best to dump the three‑year‑old Isaac into the lap of her mother. From the age of three till he turned eleven, Isaac was raised by his grandmother, and rarely saw his mother in the intervening years. The emotional scars little Isaac incurred during these eight years shaped his worldview to the end of his life. Though he eventually made a loving peace with his mother, he never forgave the rest of this cruel world for the deprivation inflicted upon him in his youth. While the world viewed him as an anti‑social pariah, this was the very trait which catapulted him to greatness beyond immortality. The trauma resulting from the loss of Hannah to another man so early in his life played a decisive role in the development of Isaac’s sensitive temperament and reticent enigmatic character. He ended up spending the bulk of his life as a lone wolf enclosed in his own chambers with not much more than pen, paper and an endless supply of candles.

Isaac was born nearly two‑thousand years after Aristotle died. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher of paramount stature who unleashed a barrage of lofty hypotheses, which formed mankind’s scientific worldview for many centuries. By the time Isaac was born, little if any progress was made — to decipher the mysteries and workings of the physical universe — beyond the theories advanced by Aristotle thousands of years earlier. Even as a teenager, Isaac already grasped the profound barrier that stymied humanity in the quest for scientific progress. While a freshman at Cambridge University, Isaac penned at the head of the first page of each of his notebooks an expression, which set the tone and direction of his unshakeable commitment to a new world order: Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles, magis amica veritas.[65] This Latin idiom translates into English as follows: I am a friend of Plato, I am a friend of Aristotle, but truth is my greater friend. To further underscore his break from the old school of philosophy in regard to scientific research, Isaac coined the immortal phrase, which changed the world forever: Hypotheses non fingo![66] This supreme statement turned into an anthem by which Isaac Newton’s whole life was guided and from which he never strayed. Faithful to his motto, Newton published only those hypotheses, which yielded to airtight demonstration. Hypotheses non fingo! is the very paradigm which set humanity on a course to free itself from the bondage of worn out and unsubstantiated norms in the quest of true scientific endeavors. It is a Latin idiom that does not easily lend itself to accurate translation in the English. Loosely translated, it states: “I frame no hypotheses.“ Regardless of the direct translation, the powerful message embedded in this maxim presents scientists with the colossal caveat — hypotheses by themselves hold no water unless backed by rigorous proven scientific experimentation. The incontrovertible axiom: Hypotheses non fingo! profusely littered the countless documents Isaac Newton left behind at the end of a life packed with boundless accomplishments.

*** The year was 1666 A.D. nearly two thousand years since Aristotle has come and gone. Humanity was poised at the threshold of a new era. This magical era, portending the greatest thrust in the sciences, began with an

episode under a tree. The sole player in this superhuman drama was a young man named Isaac, guided by his invisible Creator. In September of 1665 London experienced one of the worst calamities in its history. By the time this catastrophe of near cataclysmic proportions was over two years later, more than 100,000 of London’s inhabitants met a cruel and senseless death. One out of every five Londoners died in the bubonic plague of 1665‑1666. Prior to the advent of antibiotics, the only effective weapon against this vicious death — carried by rodents — was quarantine. Quarantine was mostly accomplished by mass exodus of London’s citizenry to the countryside. By the hundreds of thousands, the city’s populace fled to the mountains and remote villages. All forms of public entertainment and feasting were strictly banned for fear of contagion. All schools were closed during this reign of the angel of death. The closure extended to colleges as well. Cambridge University, except for a minimum maintenance staff, sent all its students and faculty packing. Among those fleeing for the countryside was a fellow by the name of Isaac Newton, an undergraduate philosophy student. Isaac fled to a small village by the name of Woolsthorpe. He spent over two years in seclusion at the estate where he was born with only his mother, Hannah and members of his immediate family by his side. It was during his two years of isolation at Woolsthorpe Manor, under Hannah’s lone apple tree, that Isaac Newton cooked up the greatest scientific stew in the history of mankind. It should be noted that though Isaac and his mother made a remarkable comeback considering the early separation, it was not thanks to Hannah’s guidance that Newton turned out to be the scholar that we know. Quite the opposite is the truth. Isaac Newton was born in an agrarian countryside to a family of farmers. Agriculture was the tradition in Newton’s family for generations. Isaac was an aberrational sore in a yeoman[67] society. His peers and family viewed him as a lazy outsider for his total lack of interest in farming. More than anyone else, it was his pragmatic mother that leaned on her son incessantly to abandon his lazy dreams of becoming a man of books. She worked against the advice of his teachers who sensed Isaac’s scholastic potential from very early on in his educational career.

When all her lobbying efforts failed, Hannah threatened to cut off all financial assistance to her son should he proceed with his ambitious plans to attend Cambridge. She made good on her ultimatum, and Newton was forced to work as a waiter in the Cambridge cafeteria to help finance his academic ambitions. Had his father been alive, he would have most likely joined forces with Hannah on her crusade. Newton’s father, an illiterate yeoman, died at the age of 37 just months before Isaac was born.

*** On a rainy and foggy day in April of the year 2000, along with my wife and four‑year‑old son, Nadav, we paid a visit the town of Grantham. We were informed by the local museum curator that both Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana were born in Grantham. But we ventured out there seeking a higher authority. It was in the town of Grantham that little Isaac Newton attended grade school. We were the only visitors in the haunted schoolyard, which is annexed to a modern school complex. The old stone structure was still intact as it originally stood there for over four hundred years. A small oval bronze plaque, stained by the elements, was dedicated by a delegation to mark Newton’s 300th birthday, way back in 1943. We snapped many pictures and sadly departed from the sight where little Isaac took his first scholastic steps. We then settled into a cab and headed for Woolsthorpe, as a persistent rain struck at the cab’s windshield straining the wipers to the limit. Woolsthorpe is a godforsaken village in the Lincolnshire region of England. It is so insignificant and remote that it was difficult to reach by bus. In spite of centuries of abandonment and utter neglect, Hannah’s estate miraculously survived more or less intact in its original format. Some work has been done on the house to turn it into a modest landmark museum. Care has been taken to restore its contents and furnishings to lend a 17th century ambience to the place. The room where Isaac Newton stayed during the plague of 1665‑1666 has been retrofitted with a simulation of the optical experiments he conducted with prisms during those fateful years when he was a mere lad in his early twenties. It’s quite an amazing and sad statement that so few people venture out to visit the birthplace of the greatest Englishman that ever lived. On the rainy day that we spent in Woolsthorpe, I could easily count all the visitors on the fingers of one palm. I heard that, in contrast, an Englishman of much smaller

stature — by the name of Shakespeare — sees more visitors to his Stratford‑upon‑Avon landmark in one day than Woolsthorpe in a whole year. And of course, we must say something about the world’s most famous apple tree. Hannah’s apple tree — under which a youthful Isaac is purported to have been inspired to crystalize the force of gravity — is sort of still there in front of the estate. Very few people would believe me if I made a statement that an unattended apple tree would survive for centuries. Newton’s original apple tree was apparently uprooted in a fierce storm many years ago, but something remained. The original tree fell to the ground; its seeds tenaciously clung to the fertile Lincolnshire soil and blossomed into a healthy and robust apple tree. The tree that sprouted from the original is in a painful state of demise… but not all is lost. Saplings from the scion of the original tree have been replanted in a more central location of Hannah’s garden and that is the symbol of Newton’s eternal symbol of gravity for today’s visitors to Woolsthorpe. Another sapling has been planted in the backyard of the Grantham grade school where Newton was enrolled in his early childhood. Cambridge University also proudly hosts a clone of Hannah’s apple tree on the campus that Isaac Newton called home for decades. Needless to mention, we snapped countless pictures in front of Hannah’s historical apple tree from every which angle. We also paused in front of the current tree’s ancestor. The old and decrepit tree — upon which Isaac Newton conferred eternal fame — lies in a mangled state at the edge of Hannah’s garden. Leaning towards the grassy knoll, the old tree seems ready to depart this world and reunite with the young man who sat under its ancestor’s shadow centuries earlier as he contemplated the enigmatic and magic force that balances God’s universe.

*** It is extremely difficult to discern reality from myth regarding the legend of the apple tree that ignited the spark for the discovery of the force of gravity. In the case of the reticent and introverted Isaac Newton, the task of deciphering at exactly what point in his career he unearthed the laws of gravity is all the more difficult. In his later years, however, Sir Isaac Newton himself disclosed on a number of occasions that the seeds of gravity were indeed sown under the apple tree in Hannah’s garden at Woolsthorpe. Still,

we can never be certain how much of this legend was retrofitted with romantic nostalgia. All this notwithstanding, the facts pieced together by Newton’s biographers indeed lend credence to a formula in which at least as much reality as myth converged to give birth to this legend. While sitting under the apple tree for long hours every day and many a night, Isaac contemplated the pattern and orbits of celestial objects. Being the devout believer in God that he was, Isaac’s scientific hypotheses frequently intermingled with the theistic view of the universe. His intense focus on a single almighty Creator who not only created the universe but also nourishes it on an ongoing basis was the foundation upon which he predicated his brilliant assumption. Newton’s hypothesis suggested that the same mechanism, which keeps the moon in orbit, must also apply to a falling apple in Hannah’s garden.

Newton lived in an age where spacecrafts were stuff not yet envisioned even in books of science fiction. Nonetheless, he postulated that if the apple resting in his hands could somehow be deposited in the orbit of the moon, then it too would be subjected to the same forces. The apple, therefore, would be rendered a celestial satellite in perfect harmony and balance with the other planets. Isaac Newton, who was to become the father of the deterministic school of thought — laying the foundation to the mechanical theory of the universe — never lost sight of what is the driving force behind this enormous and complex machine. His relentless focus on the divine aspect of our physical world enabled Newton to visualize so lucidly that the one and only Creator endowed the universe with a uniform set of rules, which govern all objects ranging from a distant galaxy to an apple to a grain of sand. It is safe to say that it was Newton more than any other scientist in the annals of mankind who touched the soul of our mechanical universe. Though this beautiful concept put Newton on the right path, still he had a huge and nagging gap to reconcile. He incessantly searched for an explanation to settle the vast difference in intensity with which the force of gravity acted upon the falling apple in contrast to the gentle pull this same force exerted on the moon. Sounds like an insurmountable entanglement. For all of you out there breaking out in a sweat, let me reassure you that Newton eventually pieced it all together and thus was born the revelation of the universal force of gravity. Rather than bore you with the fine technical aspects of the complex concept of gravity of which I myself understand very little, suffice be it to say that it took nothing less than the mind of a believer like Isaac Newton to dislodge God’s invisible secret force embedded deeply in the vast and silent universe. Any human able to envision and decipher the nature of the

invisible cosmic glue, which keeps God’s universe intact, handily deserves the appellation the greatest scientist of all time.

Newton envisioned the Creator as a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite space, as it were in His sensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly by their immediate presence to Himself. Newton perceived the vast empty space of the universe as the Sensorium of God. In essence, Gravity is the force with which God touches us.[68] Newton’s vision of God’s invisible force of gravity is definitely considered the greatest single scientific breakthrough of all time. Over three centuries later, Newton’s universal law of gravity and his three laws of motion stand as firm as the day he postulated them. Newton taught us that the gravitational forces acting on a moving object are constantly changing. More recently, Einstein, in his Theory of Relativity, enlightened us with a mind-boggling observation. He postulated that the mass, which attracts a moving object, registers the change of the gravitational forces acting upon the moving body only when this information — traveling at the speed of light — physically arrives at the attracting mass. The profound observation of this phenomenon eluded Newton, but it is inferred in his basic premise of gravitational forces acting upon moving bodies. All this notwithstanding, and for all practical purposes, Newton’s formula for gravitational attraction stands correct as he stated it.

In the wake of Einstein’s relativistic universe, many credible scientists have rushed to eulogize Newton’s mechanical universe as obsolete. Before jumping to such hasty conclusions, I would advocate the headline grabbers first consult with Mister Relativity himself. Albert Einstein, who had achieved the greatest scientific breakthroughs since Newton, knew very well who provided him with the solid platform from which he was able to leap to new heights. “The four men who laid the foundation of physics on which I have been able to construct my theory are Galileo, Newton, Maxwell and Lorentz.“[69] Einstein said during his visit to the United States in 1921. In a brilliant essay entitled, Observer and the System of Reference, the world‑renowned physicist and mathematician, Professor Herman Branover posits that: Einstein’s principle of special relativity is an inevitable logical completion of Newtonian theory… It is important to note that Einstein’s special relativity theory does not cancel the nature of dynamics introduced by Newton, since only inertial motion is relative, while acceleration is considered absolute.[70] As the dust settles on this debate, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Newton’s vision of the invisible universal force of gravity and his three laws of motion had paved the way for NASA to send a manned spacecraft to the moon and back. That’s quite impressive considering that Newton postulated his theories over 300 years ago. The precision, vitality and practicality of Newton’s view of the universe has not faded but is rather enhanced by Einstein’s Law of Relativity.

As the parade of progress in the physical sciences marches forward, it becomes abundantly clear that the primary and ultimate goal of physics is to demonstrate and explain how the various forces and events in nature work in unison. This harmony provides our universe with the underlying stability without which the world we live in would collapse into chaos. Isaac Newton was the first philosopher in the annals of science ever to envision this supreme objective. He introduced us to the force of gravity, which unites and explains the motion of all objects in the universe — from a grain of sand to a falling apple to the trajectory of planets and galaxies — under one umbrella. This trailblazing breakthrough opened the door for James Clerk Maxwell to leverage Newton’s model for gravity and apply it to unite the forces of electricity and magnetism. Rushing through the same door, Albert Einstein took a major leap forward by neatly placing in one single bucket the elements of time, space and gravity. But Einstein was not quite satisfied with this arrangement. His intuition and insight told him that all the natural forces, elements and events should and could coalesce under the roof of a single formula. The supreme law — which Einstein envisioned would unite all the natural forces — he labeled, The Unified Field Theory. For the last thirty years of his life Einstein occupied himself with little else but this colossal challenge. In pursuit of this effort, he labored incessantly and mobilized the greatest physicists and mathematicians of the day… but came up empty.

In addition to time, space, gravity and electromagnetism, two more forces are known to exist in nature. These forces have little bearing on our daily routines, but they do govern the microscopic world of atoms and as a result the rest of our physical existence. These are the weak and strong nuclear forces. The strong nuclear force is the one that binds the protons and neutrons in the nucleus together. The weak forces enable hydrogen to transform into heavy hydrogen also known as deuterium. Though this definition means little to me or most people, yet it is so critical to our existence that without this force there would be no solar energy. In essence our whole world hangs in the balance of the weak nuclear force. Had this force been any weaker, the energy emitted by the sun would not be sufficient to sustain life. Had it been any stronger, the orb of the sun would burn out at a very quick pace. In 1979 three brilliant physicists — Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Lee Glashow and Abdus Salam — shared the Nobel Prize in physics. Following in the footsteps of Newton, Maxwell and Einstein, the trio discovered the common denominator for unifying the weak nuclear force with electromagnetism. Their electroweak theory constitutes the core of the Standard Model of high‑energy physics. In the beginning we had five distinct forces of the universe ranging from gravity, electricity, magnetism to the weak and strong nuclear forces. These forces operate in a theatre of two frameworks — time and space. Altogether we have seven basic elements of Creation distributed into seven different buckets. Thanks to great breakthroughs in physics, we now have three distinct buckets that are waiting to be united under one supreme unifying physical law. In one bucket we have the elements of time, space and gravity united by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. The second one contains the unified forces of electromagnetism along with the weak nuclear force introduced by Weinberg, Glashow and Salam. In the third bucket we have the single strong nuclear force sitting all by its lonely self. And on top of this whole pyramid sits Isaac Newton who triggered this ingenious and magnificent scientific paradigm. Even as these words are being written thousands of the most brilliant and creative minds around the world are constantly and incessantly engaged in the attempt to unite the three remaining buckets into a single bundle. One glorious day when a genius will come along and decipher the grand mystery

of the Unified Field, let us never forget that it was no other than Isaac Newton who charted this bold and imaginative course for humanity. In light of all this, we can safely view Einstein’s brilliant relativistic observations as a complementary refinement of Newton’s Laws of Gravity and Motion. Not only did Newton provide the solid foundations upon which Einstein crafted his Laws of Relativity, but the roots for Einstein’s famous formula of the interchangeability of mass and energy — E=mc² — can also be traced to principles, about the behavior of light, launched by Isaac Newton in his magnum opus, Opticks. Today we almost take it for granted that Newton’s formulation of the laws of gravity are set in concrete. There was a time back in 1820 when Newton’s theory was hanging in the balance and in grave danger of being seriously challenged. In the early 19th Century it was thought that Uranus was the furthest planet from earth. Close monitoring of Uranus clearly showed that it was not moving in the orbit prescribed by Newton’s laws of gravity. This observation placed Newton’s theories in jeopardy of being invalidated. While the world was celebrating the demise of Newton’s mechanical view of the universe, two astronomers who had great faith in Newton’s theories did not give up so quickly. They were the French astronomer, Urbain Jean Joseph Leverrier and the German astronomer, Johann Gotfried Galle. These two working quite independently of each other, feverishly searched for a Newtonian solution to the deviation observed in the trajectory of the planet Uranus.

The suspense lasted for nearly three decades. Once again, we can breathe a sigh of relief. Newton’s vision triumphed. In 1846 the two

astronomers almost simultaneously discovered the existence of a new planet. This planet is today known as Neptune and when its mass is introduced into the equation, the orbit of Uranus behaves in perfect harmony with Newton’s universal laws of gravity. Another challenge to Newton’s gravitational laws surfaced as recent as 1930. The deviation this time was detected in Neptune’s trajectory. Rather than topple Newtonian mechanics, this episode led to the discovery of yet an additional planet. Thanks to the perseverance of Newtonian physics we now own an additional piece of real estate in our solar system — the planet Pluto. The mechanical universe, argued Isaac Newton, must not be separated from its Creator.[71] He also zealously adhered to the conviction that science must be employed to demonstrate the continuing presence of the Creator in the world of nature.[72] Newton put his faith in God and in return God blesses his theories. So far, so good! Newton’s vision of the universe passed all the tests of time, scientific progress and events of the past three hundred years. Even more significantly, Newton’s theories provided the scientific community with the confidence to predict and postulate fundamental laws for other phenomena. This ultimately led to Maxwell’s equations, which define electromagnetic behavior. The leap into quantum physics, which refines the gravitational laws for small distances, also arrived through the door opened by Sir Isaac Newton.

***

Isaac Newton was an obsessive documenter of his research papers and correspondence. Following his death, crates full of documents were hauled from his apartment — a plethora of meticulous financial records among them. A close look at those receipts reveal that the staple for which Sir Isaac Newton incurred by far the greatest expenditure was… candles. Isaac Newton rarely went to sleep in the conventional sense of the word. Surely no human can survive for very long without sleep, and Newton was no exception. During the decades in which he conducted the bulk of his intense scientific research at Cambridge, Newton never donned pajamas in preparation for a night’s sleep. He was known to work incessantly for twenty, thirty and at times forty hours at a stretch. Only when his body ran out of fuel did he collapse upon his desk or on the floor and sleep for four or five hours. He then rose to wash and refresh himself, and then proceed with the next marathon of research and study. Newton burned candles and more candles and then even more… until one day candles got the better of him. In 1670 while putting the finishing touches on a work, which consumed years of his life, Newton briefly left his desk to attend chapel services. On the way back from chapel he bumped into a colleague who kept him pinned down in conversation for much longer than he anticipated. By the time Isaac Newton returned to his room he encountered the enemy scholars fear most. Thick acrid smoke enveloped his room and its most precious contents. Once the fire had been extinguished, Newton’s worst nightmare materialized.

Newton had toiled on countless experiments and profound study of the behavior of light and colours since his teenage years. It was Newton who shattered the myth of the nature of rays of light. Since the days of Aristotle, a ray of sunlight was considered nothing more than white. Newton proved through rigorous experiments backed by mathematical substantiation that a ray of sunlight consists of the seven colors of the rainbow.[73] Newton’s experiments with a prism prove that white light was composed of differently refrangible rays of coloured light, forming a spectrum from purple to red. To some of us this phenomenon is more easily recognizable through the good offices of Roy G. Biv — Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Newton’s massive work on light and optics was near completion when fire turned more than a decade of ingenious scientific labor into ashes. In order to restart the project, Newton desperately attempted to retrieve documents, experiments and letters he corresponded with colleagues on the subject, but to no avail. The Opticks project was doomed, and its author descended into a bitter and deep depression for a long time… but not for too long. Newton was soon back at work with the same incessant pace burning tons of candles… but not on the Opticks project. Only in 1704 — more than thirty years after the devastating fire — did Newton finally publish his magnum opus, Opticks. It indeed was a masterpiece that redefined humanity’s view of light and its properties. The wording of Alexander Pope’s tribute to Newton is not accidental: Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said, Let Newton be! And all was light.[74]

Though Newton is known as the father of the mechanical universe worldview, his research extended beyond the physical. In his far‑reaching experiments on the subject of optics, he stepped out of the boundaries of the physical into the surrealistic territory of the metaphysical. Newton kept a neat account of his experiments on optics in a notebook titled, Of Colours. In his own words — referencing a supporting diagram — here is Newton’s description of an experiment he conducted: I tooke a bodkine GH & put it betwixt my eye & [the] bone as neare to [the] backside of my eye as I could: & pressing my eye [with the] end of it (soe as to make [the] curvature A, BCDEF in my eye) there appeared severall white darke & coloured circles R, S, T, & C. Which circles were plainest when I continued to rub my eye [with the] point of [the] bodkine, but if I held my eye & [the] bodkin still, though I continued to presse my eye [with] it yet [the] circles would grow faint & often disappeare until I removed [them] by moving my eye or [the] bodkin. If [the] experiment were done in a light roome so [that] though my eyes were shut some light would get through their lidds There appeared a greate broade blewish darke circle outmost (as TS), & [within] that another light spot SRS whose colour was much like [that] in [the] rest of [the] eye as at K. Within [which] spot appeared still another blew spot R espetially if I pressed my eye hard & [with] a small‑pointed bodkin. & outmost at VT appeared a verge of light.[75]

It’s truly hard to fathom the extent that a lunatic the likes of Newton would venture to get to the bottom of a scientific curiosity. In the above experiment Newton took a bodkine — a dagger in old English — stuck it in his eye‑socket and wiggled it about just to find out what would happen. And he did this more than once to see if the results — that is, spots in his vision — differed when he did it in a lit room from when he thus experimented in a dark room.

One would surmise that Newton sticking a bodkine into his eye and wiggling it entailed a certain risk of accidentally popping his eyeball from its socket. Have you ever wondered if this is something that can happen? Just ask around the locker room of medical first aid responders. Indeed, it could very well result in dislodging the eyeball from its socket. Apparently, a hard‑enough impact to the back of the head, or the right kind of flick from a branch can cause the eyeball to dislodge from its socket and dangle right above the cheek. Newton’s objectives in conducting experiments of this bizarre and dangerous nature went beyond the scope of exploring optical or anatomical objectives. His goal was nothing less than to probe the twilight zone where the mechanical meets the spiritual. Newton strove to touch the raw nerves of the physical world as it synthesizes with the human soul and ultimately the divine. Newton would not rest until he brought the mechanical universe to a soft landing in the palms of the Creator. Newton’s perilous experiments with his own eyes, as well as his investigation of the anatomy both of the human eye and that of a sheep, are better understood when interpreted in the context of the synthesis between the physical and the metaphysical. In another entry in his notebook, Newton describes an eerie experiment. Newton had been considering the question of whether the porosity of bodies may have some effect on the colours that they give off, perhaps by hindering the motion of rays of light. To investigate this, Newton experimented with the effects of putting pressure on his own eyeball: If I presse my eye on [the] left side (when I looke towards my right hand) as at A, [then] I see a circle of red as at C but [within the] red is blew for [the] capillamenta are more pressed at N & O & round about [the] finger [than] at A towards [the] midst of [the] finger. [That parte] of [the apparition] at Q is more languid because [the] capillamenta at O are duller & if [the] finger move towards E two much it vanisheth at Q & appeareth semicircular. but if I put my finger at E or S [the] apparition wholly vanisheth. By putting a brasse plate betwixt my eye & [the] bone nigher to [the] midst of [the] tunica retina [than] I could put my finger I [made] a very vivid impression. But of an ellipticall figure because [the] edge of [the] plate [with which] I prest my eye was long & not round like my finger.[76]

If Newton’s eyes survived these abusive experiments, one wonders how he retained his perfect eyesight to the end of his days when we read

about another of his daring and reckless adventures. On more than one occasion, Newton forced himself to stare into the blazing sun for long periods. He claimed that he could replicate what he saw subsequently by imagining that he had looked at the sun whence I gather that my fantasy and the Sun had the same operation upon the spirits in my optic nerve.[77] Although these experiments seem to us bizarre and risky, to Newton they were a natural extension of the investigative process. Like Mozart, Newton was a freak and a mutant more so than he was human. Unlike Descartes, Newton’s ultimate goal was to harness the cold scientific mechanical world in the service of a living Creator, and at the same time to wield scientific rigor as a weapon against laconic atheism. Though he once in a while stepped out of his domain to stare directly into the sun, Newton conducted most of his research in a closed room with no view. Above all, it was his grand vision, which opened the floodgates of ideas to catapult human society to the threshold of a new era of unprecedented scientific momentum and progress.

*** Isaac Newton spent most of his adult life as either a student or professor in the Trinity College at Cambridge. This is quite an irony in light of the fact that the concept of Trinity was most abhorrent to Newton. He was clever enough not to espouse his views on this subject in public so as not to disrupt his brilliant academic career at Cambridge. In the multitude of documents he left behind, however, Newton minced no words regarding his vehement opposition to the principles of the Anglican Church and its strict adherence to the Trinity structure. Trinitarianism to Newton constituted a colossal corruption of the Scriptures — a form of idolatry, and therefore the

sin of sins. Posthumously, once Newton’s views became public knowledge, he was labeled a heretic by many of his countryman. Newton warned of the wrath and fury of an angry God that will be borne by the persecutors of the chosen among which he unequivocally counted himself. Newton owed his obedience to a God that was intellectual rather than emotional. The God that commanded Newton’s lifelong allegiance was not the all‑loving and forgiving Christian redeemer, but rather an omnipotent Creator, harsh Taskmaster and imperious Judge of the Old Testament. I have a sneaking suspicion that had Isaac Newton lived longer he would sooner than later be davening in a Bnei Braq Shtieble — a euphemism of devout Jews enraptured in prayer. Seek the truth and ye shall find it… Isaac Newton did! Absolute truth is as universal, unshakeable and eternal as the one and only God in which Isaac Newton put his faith. With unbounded zeal and to the end of his days, Newton defended the Mosaic account of Creation. In his very own words, here is the way Isaac Newton summed up his vision of the Creator: We must believe that this is the God of Moses & the Jews Who created heaven & earth & the sea & all things therein as is expressed in the Ten Commandments.[78]

*** At the University of Cambridge, where, at age of 19, Newton launched his academic career back in June of 1661, aside from Latin and Greek, study of the Hebrew language was mandatory.[79] Hebrew was in fact the most crucial language after Latin. Newton’s eventual mastery of the Hebrew language proved indispensable in advancing his Biblical scholarship, which claimed as much of his time as investigation of science and mathematics combined.[80] Aside from his obsessive pursuit of science and Biblical scholarship, Newton also launched an exhaustive investigation into the chronology of ancient kingdoms in his seminal treatise: The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended. Not only in his scientific endeavors did Newton apply

the method of rigorous investigation and empirical analysis. Prior to presenting his groundbreaking work on the empires of antiquity, Newton conducted a thorough and comprehensive research from every which angle, all the while crossing, matching and comparing all his findings with a variety of sources. Ever in quest of pristine truth, Sir Isaac Newton’s verdict regarding timeframes of antiquity is noteworthy. Newton’s epic work, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended was posthumously published in 1728. The Chronology shed light on Newton’s method of historical computation. In Greek mythology we learn about an expedition of a band of heroes — headed by Jason — who set sail on the ship, Argo to steal the Golden Fleece from the king of Colchis. Apparently, this Golden Fleece must have been of sacramental value to the ancient Greeks. The voyage of Jason and the nobleman on this occasion is a milestone of ancient Greek history known as the Argonaut Expedition.

Greek historians dated the Argonaut Expedition as having taken place about thirteen centuries B.C. Isaac Newton took exception to the calculations of the Greek historians. Resorting to his method of computing time based on the principle of the procession of the equinoxes, Newton calculated the Argonaut Expedition to have occurred in 936 B.C. Using this event as a benchmark, Newton lopped off extensive chunks of time from the chronologies of all the ancient empires — all the way from Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Media to the Greeks. Newton accused all the ancient empires of vainly attempting to extend their antiquity. The ancient chronologies calculated the average reign of their kings and emperors to a span of over thirty years. Newton corrected the figure to anywhere between eighteen and twenty years. Newton took all

the ancient empires to task on their presumptuous historical fabrications. The only ancients to evade Newton’s wrath, on the subject, were the Hebrews. The Jewish record, the Old Testament, Newton treated as the immovable text, and therefore the ultimate yardstick by which to measure historical timeframes. Recognizing that the Jewish Bible was the earliest record of any civilization, he admonished all the others to conform to the one and only true account of history — the Old Testament.[81]

*** What comes to mind when we hear the name, Isaac Newton? My five‑year‑old son, Nadav, whenever he hears the name Isaac Newton immediately complements it with “An apple fell on his head and he discovered gravity.“ In fact, most people associate Newton with discovering the Laws of Gravity. Many are also aware that he invented Calculus and formulated the Laws of Motion. Few people, however, are aware of the fact that Isaac Newton presented the world with a most amazing breakthrough regarding the principles of light, colours and optics. That’s not all folks! Newton’s greatest contribution to science is completely obscure to most people — the rigorous method of scientific experimentation. Before Newton showed up on the world stage, scientists hypothesized. Newton never presented any of his many hypotheses or theories to the scientific community until he backed it up with exhaustive, rigorous experimentation and proof. This approach to

science provided the scientific community with the confidence to herald a new era of scientific discovery that led to the accelerated knowledge of our universe and opened the doors wide to usher in the Industrial Revolution.

*** Newton was not the first scientist ever to introduce the standard of scientific experimentation. Galileo and others before him have resorted to experimental procedures. Newton, however, was the first to persistently define and systematize the practice. His explicit methodology produced a smart and efficient balance between theoretical and experimental inquiry. Newton broke away from the old school of thinkers. More than anyone else, Newton introduced the mathematical instrument to resolve mechanical problems.

This approach is succinctly symbolized by the title he chose for his grand masterpiece. While Descartes — representing the old school of thinkers — had entitled his great work, Principia Philosophiae, Newton entitled his masterpiece, Principia Mathematica. This was a deliberate gesture by Newton to pay homage to a universe premised upon precision, harmony and quantitative order. Isaac Newton’s synthesis of mathematics with the physical sciences elevated their combined study to a rigorous, universal, and rational procedure that ushered in the Age of Reason. A hint to that effect is also implied in the Zohar — a foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought, known as Kabbalah.[82] The timeless principles of scientific investigation promoted by Newton, transcended the ages. With minor alterations, the model molded by Newton is the one to which scientists resort — to this very day — in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and research. Furthermore, the genie that Newton unleashed casts a shadow upon issues and events that far exceeded anything even Newton could have foreseen. His ideas form the foundation upon which the technological civilization of today rests. One could safely state that ideas and principles promulgated by Newton influenced more than just pure science. By engendering a revolution far beyond the boundaries of science, Newton’s contributions permeated and influenced economic and social sciences as well. It is therefore no exaggeration to identify Newton as the single most important contributor to the development of modern science.

***

Among the mountains of books Newton read and researched in his lifetime, he was intrigued by a concept developed by a contemporary scientist, James Gregory. In his book, Optica Promota, Gregory is credited with inventing the reflecting telescope. Though the general idea of the reflecting telescope dates back more than a century prior to Gregory, he is credited with clinching the invention. Oddly enough, nobody — not even Gregory himself — succeeded in constructing a working reflecting telescope. Surely this was not for the lack of trying. Records show that Gregory made numerous attempts of implementing his invention, but failed for a variety of reasons. Newton was strongly attracted to the idea of a reflecting telescope. An avid astronomer, he was thrilled with the possibility of eliminating the phenomenon of chromatic aberration, which was a common occurrence in the then existing technology of the refracting telescope. The perennial tinkerer and a proficient lens grinder that he was, Newton incorporated his own unique principle of light and colours to Gregory’s premise. Within eight months, Newton presented the Royal Society with the first working reflecting telescope in human history. Though Newton was not the absolute inventor, his creation stirred quite a sensation in England and throughout the international scientific community. Charles II, King of England at the time, took a personal interest in Newton’s telescope. By the end of 1671, the king was favored with a personal demonstration of Newton’s latest accomplishment.

*** As his monumental scientific discoveries and earthshattering breakthroughs came to the fore, Sir Isaac Newton emerged as the greatest mathematician, physicist, authority on optics and experimentalist the world has yet known.[83] Each of Newton’s discoveries is so colossal that it would take many lifetimes to accomplish. Isaac Newton lived to the age of 84. For any individual to accomplish even a single item on Newton’s list, would be considered a lifetime of great achievement and reward. Had he lived today, Newton would handily clinch at least a dozen Noble Prizes for his scientific accomplishments. With an impressive résumé of this magnitude, one would surmise that Isaac Newton spent every moment of his life steeped in the pursuit of scientific research. Amazingly enough that is far from the truth. In fact, science was not Newton’s paramount endeavor in life, definitely not his primary passion. At the time of his death in 1727, Newton left behind crates stuffed with manuscripts totaling four million words. More than sixty percent of these documents were comprised of profound and passionate theological discourse and research. Never to be the one to resort to second hand information, Isaac Newton taught himself the Hebrew language and mastered it to perfection. He undertook this effort so that he could delve into the study of the Bible in the original text unhindered by biased translators and tainted interpretations.

Isaac Newton grew up in a society steeped in Christian piety. He later attended the Trinity College at Cambridge where the appellation Trinity stood for much more than a symbolic icon; all students were expected to take holy orders[84] in the tradition of the Church of England. Though a devout Christian, it was during his tenure at the Trinity College that Newton began to question many tenets of his faith. As a young man imbued with an independent and inquisitive mind, Newton took nothing for granted nor for its face value. He drilled deep into sacred texts, history and scripture in pursuit of the truth. In this quest, he literally left no stone unturned. Ever careful not to jeopardize his employment as a professor at Trinity College, Newton did not flaunt his theological findings during his lifetime. Much like the zealous prophets of old, resorting to razor sharp scathing rebukes that left no doubt as to his views, Newton committed his theological analyses and conclusions to paper, in great detail. When Newton’s theological research was published posthumously, his scornful verdict turned the Christian world on its head. The New Testament, contended Newton, had been intentionally corrupted by scheming power brokers who would stop at nothing to achieve their temporal ends. He accused emperor and pope alike of complicity in this heinous rebellion against the Creator.[85] Christian scripture, bristled Newton, was fraught with conspiracy and fraud; it had to be mercilessly expunged, root and branch.[86]

Punctuated by blistering accusations, Newton unleashed fire and brimstone upon those who dared preach the blasphemous and idolatrous worship of the Trinity. To Newton, trinitarianism constituted a blatant form of idolatry — the sin of sins — the ultimate rebellion against God. Newton would let no one forget that this prohibition was underscored by God in the very first of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt have no other Gods before me![87] The trinitarian credo, argued Newton, has no basis in scripture. Moreover, the principle that three equals one and one equals three is no more applicable to rationalist theology than to the fields of physics and mathematics, concluded Newton.[88] The Old Testament remained Newton’s bedrock scripture; the chief and ultimate focus of his studies.[89] Consequently, he regarded the Hebrews — the guardians of the original Bible — as God’s favorite tribe. Newton viewed the Jewish people and their early patriarchs not as another secular kingdom but the progenitors of the true and everlasting religion, an ancient people apart from all others.[90] That is not all Newton observed about the Jewish people. He also admonished the enemies of the Jews that the wrath of the angry God will forever hound the persecutors of the chosen through all eternity.[91] To Newton, the Prophet Moses epitomized the ultimate manifestation of the fusion between the material and the spiritual. Moses emerged as a pivotal figure not only in Newton’s theology, but also in his conception of science. [92]

Consequently, he was a staunch defender of the Mosaic account of

Creation.[93]

Of all his theological pursuits, one topic riveted Newton’s attention more than any other. He spent countless hours researching Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Newton considered King Solomon, the greatest philosopher that ever lived.[94] Moreover, he observed, that much like God’s universe, Solomon’s Temple was a model of simplicity and harmony. Consequently, Newton deduced that decrypting the intricacies of the Temple’s design and rituals will surely shed new light on the mysteries of the world we inhabit. Moreover, he was imbued with a premonition that the Divine embeds His mysterious plan of future events in the scenes of Solomon’s Temple, its service, ceremonies and rites.[95] Toiling incessantly on the book of Ezekiel and a plethora of other Biblical sources, Newton recreated the blueprint[96] of the Temple from the Hebrew text.[97] Whether this cryptogrammic pursuit will ultimately yield supplemental secrets of the universe is yet to be established. However, unquestionably, his persistent investigation of Solomon’s Temple and its rituals went a long way in inspiring Newton’s quest to decipher the workings of God’s universe.

Anyone interested in viewing Newton’s rendition of the Temple blueprints can head for Boston and see the exhibit in the Dibner Library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Whether these blueprints are truly a microcosm of God’s universe — as Newton claimed — is not yet established, but surely it is very close to the truth. Was Newton a scientist or a clairvoyant or both? In any case he was the harbinger of the truth as few people in the annals of mankind ever heralded. Isaac Newton viewed Gravity as: God’s invisible cosmic glue, which holds His universe together and in harmony.[98] No words can better describe gravity than the words crafted by the genius that discovered these laws. Only a man of profound insight could pronounce a statement of this magnitude and vision. In the case of the Temple in Jerusalem, Newton was as close to the truth as can be. The Talmud corroborates this approach. While Isaac Newton focused on the structure of the Temple, the Talmud recognized that the source to all the secrets of the universe are embedded in a rock forming the foundation of the Temple. This rock is called, Even Hashtiya. Literally translated as: The Rock of the Infrastructure. Many have erred in believing that this is the rock, which supports the infrastructure of the Temple; the reference, in this case, is to the infrastructure of the entire universe. We all understand the concept of a seed. Humans, apple trees, elephants and whales all emanate from a tiny seed or sperm. A seed, though microscopic in scale, contains the genetic blueprint for the plant or animal that will proliferate from its humble beginnings. This all makes sense to us with respect to either fauna or flora. But we all know that this rule — of

springing forth from a tiny seed — does not apply to inanimate objects. Surprise… that’s not what the Talmud thinks! The Talmud reveals to us that the universe, which is predominantly composed of inanimate matter, came into existence from a tiny seed. The seed is the Rock of the Infrastructure which lies beneath the centrum of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Embedded in the belly of this magical rock is the genetic code of the structure of the entire universe. The Talmud describes that God first Created the Rock of the Infrastructure and then expanded it to become the universe we inhabit.[99] I have a sneaking suspicion that someone out there, after reading this mind-boggling revelation, will hire a crew armed with jackhammers and attempt to crack open the Rock of the Infrastructure into smithereens in order to retrieve the genetic code to our mystified universe. I beg of you not to undertake such a project. God is not about to surrender His secrets to a crew of lumberjacks wielding jackhammers and sticks of dynamite. Isaac Newton focused all his intellect, energies and faith to extricate but a few of the secrets encrypted in the bowels of the Rock of the Infrastructure, but he fully deferred to the man who got there before he did — the PhilosopherKing Solomon. God relinquishes his secrets to the probing human mind attached to a believing heart. Isaac Newton came to the conclusion that it was God Himself who handed the blueprint of the Temple to the wisest of all men. Had Newton also troubled to study the Talmud as well as the Bible, he would be much closer to the truth. What Newton overlooked is the fact that on the same platter upon which God handed to King Solomon the blueprints to the Temple was also stacked the entire scheme of the genetic code of the universe embedded in the Rock of the Infrastructure. Any wonder why there

is such a buzz around the issue of the Temple Mount and why it arouses conflagrant passions.

*** Today the art of idol‑worshipping is nearly extinct. Though some societies still practice polytheism and are steeped in idolatry to this very day, most of humanity gradually shifted to monotheism — in one form or another — in the last two millennia. But for thousands of years idolatry was not only in fashion but a human passion. The polytheistic Greeks with their pantheon of gods made progress in many areas, but only sunk deeper and deeper into the quagmire of idolatry. More recently, the Roman Empire with all its technological sophistication was nothing more than a collection of pagan nations bowing down to statues of bronze and stone. As incredulous as it may sound, let it be known that there is indeed a direct and incontrovertible linkage between idol‑worshipping and the lack of scientific progress. Polytheism and idol‑worshipping are driven by the need to worship a multitude of gods. One god controls the seas while another reigns high over the mountains. There is one god who determines the flow of rain and another who blesses fertility. One god is the minister of agriculture while another is assigned to be the patron of the rivers. Surely there was one god for the sun and a different one who commanded the moon. In an idolatrous society there is a god for whatever ails you. There is one patron god for the Yankees and one for the Dallas Cowboys. The variety of gods and idols was only limited by the imagination of the misguided worshipper.

As we advance in our scientific discoveries, it is becoming blatantly apparent that one set of laws governs the universe. This was an extremely difficult concept to visualize in a society steeped in worshipping a multitude of gods. In the limited mind of an idol‑worshipper the norm was that power and control of the universe was divided among many gods leading to many scientific theories contradicting each other. This naturally stemmed from the premise that each god in his own sphere of influence played by different rules. This splintered and chaotic worldview certainly did not spur human focus upon the harmonic universal patterns — the bedrock of scientific principle. If anything, it is obvious that science was stuck in the backwaters of polytheism for thousands of years. Isaac Newton’s tenacious belief in one and only one Creator‑God led him on a path — to visualize the uniformity of the universe and its functions — where no one else before him dared to tread. For scientists, even the believers among them, it is an abhorrent practice to mix religion with science. What sets Newton apart from most other scientists is his perspective that religion and science — not only do they not clash, but also — are indeed congruent entities. When Newton discovered the theory and formulae of gravity, he attributed this enigmatic force to divine influence and guidance. Today we don’t make such a big deal of the laws of gravity. We hardly give it much thought and tend to take it for granted. But consider the timeless search by many brilliant people to explain gravity before Newton clinched it. Way back from the time of the Ancient Greeks, philosophers grappled with this mysterious force. A garden variety of misguided theories were posited among them that gravity was enforced by a substance or a medium. Isaac Newton stood the scientific community on its head when he proved that gravity resorts to NOTHING in order to balance the physical objects in our universe. This is a most mindboggling concept that the universe is suspended upon NOTHING… do you all hear me out there? Our universe is suspended upon absolutely NOTHING! God’s scheme is so overwhelmingly clever and simple; the Creator utilized a non-substance to glue his universe together. How efficient, how effective, how clever, how simple… how divine!

What’s more amazing, is that Jewish scriptures hint at this in a book composed nearly three thousand years ago. In the Book of Job[100] it states: “God suspends His universe upon NOTHINGNESS!“ The dictionary defines NOTHINGNESS as: Something that is nonexistent. It took thousands of years until Isaac Newton came along and picked up on this hint and forever changed our thinking and our approach to science. Isaac Newton claimed that all objects in the universe, from a grain of sand to the planets, are subjected to the same rules of gravity, which he postulated. In a wistful moment — just prior to his death in March 1727 — Isaac Newton reflected on his life’s accomplishments to a friend: “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the sea‑shore, and diverting myself, in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.“ Quite peculiar that Newton chose the metaphor of a child on the beach to encapsulate his life’s mission and accomplishments. In reality there was precious little boy in this man… even when he was a child. Yet, even as he lay upon his deathbed, Newton’s farsighted instincts did not fail him. The metaphor and images Isaac Newton leveraged to summarize his life are a crystal‑clear representation of the contradiction within all of us that can lead to greatness. All along it was the dichotomous combination of the perennial childish ponderings within the adult Newton that engendered the greatest and most profound scientific breakthroughs in the history of humanity.

Isaac Newton is also known as the rising sun of modern science.[101] The new light that Newton shed upon so many major fields of science, literally extricated humanity from the age of darkness to the light of a new era. Before the days of Newton, humanity existed in a mysterious world it was groping to understand, but had little knowledge of the engine that drives its mechanics. Newton’s discovery of the Laws of Gravity, the Laws of Motion, Calculus along with the Principles of Light and Optics provided the momentum to pry open the gates of knowledge for many scientific discoveries that followed. Newton’s laws paved the way for a new world order — an era of unprecedented rigorous scientific progress and industrialization.

*** The Royal Society of England was founded as an institution to promote and proliferate scientific knowledge, ideas and experiments. It was a place where British and world‑renowned scientists and philosophers convened to present, exchange and discuss theories and demonstrate their experiments. A fellow by the name of Robert Hooke served as the Society’s Curator of Experiments for long decades. A contemporary of Newton, Robert Hooke was an ambitious scientist blessed with shrewd political skills. In spite of his various minor scientific accomplishments, he would most likely have been expunged from human memory had it not been for his skirmish with Isaac Newton. As the Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society, Hooke was in a pivotal position to promote the science of Newton, but being envious of true genius, Hooke leveraged his office to obstruct Newton’s path. Though Hooke managed for long years — by exercising ingenious and malicious schemes — to keep Newton at bay, thus blocking the Laws of Gravity and Optics from seeing the light of day, it was Newton who prevailed at the end of the day. While Isaac Newton was busy stealing fire from the gods, Robert Hooke focused all his creative energies on stealing the show from the great luminary.

If Isaac Newton is the rising sun of modern science, Robert Hooke is not even its fading sliver of the moon. The equation that best defines the

interaction between Newton and Hooke was that of genius versus the mundane. Much like Salieri’s efforts to extinguish the genius of Mozart, Hooke did all he could to frustrate Newton’s efforts to publicize his works. Newton’s introverted and reticent state of mind greatly contributed to the success of Hooke’s schemes to bury Newton’s accomplishments. Wishing not to waste his energies on trivial political escapades, Newton exhibited little fervor in battling Hooke and chose to stay tucked in his cocoon. Yet through a miraculous twist of events and fate, Newton’s sun rose and shone while Hooke turned into a historical footnote marked only by his obsession to block Newton’s light from shining. If not for the intervention of an altruistic friend, Newton’s contributions may have forever been obscured from humanity. Today the name Halley is associated with a celestial comet, but few recognize his greater contribution to our world. Blessed with a measure of genius, Edmund Halley an associate of Newton, recognized the enormous leap of knowledge embedded in Newton’s Principia Mathematica, which introduced the concept of Gravity to an unsuspecting humanity. If the world today is blessed with Newton’s contributions, it is mostly thanks to Halley’s tenacious and altruistic lobbying efforts with an entrenched Newton vehemently opposed to publish his greatest work. In light of Hooke’s relentless efforts and machinations to obstruct Newton from submitting the Principia to the scrutiny of members of The Royal Society, Halley’s victory in overcoming Newton’s obstinacy is truly a miraculous twist of fate. Halley’s contribution in this historical episode goes far beyond babysitting an Isaac Newton injured by Hooke’s manipulations; he also edited Newton’s Principia and was engaged in every detail of the effort to publish this immortal work.

*** It was hailed as the instrument that can square the circle. That is the acclaim accorded the new math of fluxions — aka calculus — introduced by Isaac Newton. But to Newton’s shocking surprise, a German savant by the name of Leibnitz, who resided on the other side of the English Channel, laid claim to the same title. A battle of the giants ensued over who was the original inventor of the calculus. Voluminous books have been written on the colossal and bitter feud between these two giants of mathematics. This event took place over three hundred years ago in an age before the advent of the Internet and CNN Headline News. It was therefore quite difficult to establish who got there first. After sifting through the mountain of evidence it would be cautiously safe to state that indeed both claimants — independently of each other — invented the math of calculus. Surely that is not what you would hear if you spoke to either one of the fathers of the new math. Leibnitz died a heartbroken man unable to decisively prove that he was the first to clinch it. Surely a man of Newton’s obstinacy would never let his German opponent claim the title. With the benefit of historical hindsight and the compilation of mountains of documents resulting from centuries of probing into this mathematical feud, strong indications are that Newton squared the circle about ten years before Leibnitz got there. Due to his aloof and introverted attitudes, Newton’s historical achievement was not duly brought to the attention of the scientific community. Yet, once the savant sensed that Leibnitz tried to wrest the title of first inventor away from his hands, Newton waged a resolute and bitter battle that transcended Leibnitz’s death in 1716. In response to claims of ownership by Leibnitz, Newton launched a scathing and vicious attack upon his foe. In a letter titled, Commercium Epistolicum Newton presented the case against his unyielding adversary. Newton thunderously concluded his defense with an acerbic punch: Second inventors count for nothing!

Newton outlived Leibnitz by more than a decade. But even after Leibnitz was safely tucked away in his grave, Newton would not let the poor man rest. Long after Leibnitz was dead, it was recounted by Samuel Clarke that Newton displayed great pleasure when he boasted: “I had broken Leibnitz’s heart with my Reply to him!“ Newton also lived long enough to eventually taste the sweet flavor of revenge upon his archrival Hooke. Not too long following Robert Hooke’s death, Newton was elected as the President of the Royal Society, an office he occupied for over two decades until his death in 1727. To Newton, revenge was a goal no less to be savored than a scientific breakthrough. It was in the course of events like his bitter battles with Robert Hooke and Leibnitz, which revealed the ruthless and dark side of Newton. A fellow by the name of Whiston who happened to quarrel with the inimitable genius, described Newton as being in possession of “the most fearful, cautious, and suspicious temper“ he had ever encountered. Surely Hooke and Leibnitz would concur. Isaac Newton and his two main adversaries — Leibnitz and Hooke — were to a lesser or greater degree men of enormous stature and genius. All three rose to prominence from humble social and intellectual backgrounds. All three were great thinkers, scientists and scholars of the first rank. All three were dedicated individuals who spared no effort or sacrifice in pursuit of knowledge. All three exclusively devoted their entire life to the cause of science and philosophy. Alas, all three died a solitary death never having sired an offspring, taking their precious seed with them to the grave.

The world‑renowned giant could not let go of the haunting grip of his vulnerable childhood, which overshadowed his glorious life to the very end. To Newton, the world was a hostile arena — a desolate place bereft of love and friendship. No degree of success or glory would change this sentiment in the man who was destined for immortality. Individuals in possession of invincible genius and supremacy are likely to exhibit magnanimous gestures even towards adversaries. Certainly, that was not the case with Isaac Newton. Not only did he not display a forgiving and compromising attitude when dealing with rivals, but also stalked them with ruthless ferocity. Nonetheless, he was truly one of the greatest mortals to walk the face of this earth. In spite of his foibles and shortcomings, Newton was the one chosen by God to reveal the fires of knowledge for the benefit of humanity. He was endowed with an astute intuition rarely possessed by any other human. Once he espoused an idea or theory, it was hardly ever wrong or misguided. The Latin inscription on Newton’s tomb, albeit a bit lurid, is thus fully justified in proclaiming: Mortals! Rejoice at so great an ornament to the human race! Upon his resignation from the Lucasian Professorship at Cambridge, Newton was succeeded by Whiston. Here is what Professor Whiston observed about his predecessor: “Sir Isaac, in mathematics, could sometimes see almost by Intuition, even without Demonstration… and when he did propose Conjectures in Natural Philosophy, he almost always knew them to be true at the same Time.“ In 1936 a scholar by the name John Maynard Keynes acquired the bulk of the original Newton manuscripts at an auction. He devoted countless hours studying and

researching Newton’s papers. Keynes echoed Whiston’s sentiments: Newton’s experiments were always, I suspect, a means, not of discovery, but always of verifying what he already knew![102]

*** While Newton’s intuition hardly ever failed in regard to scientific scholarship, certainly the same cannot be said as to his fiscal instincts. It should be noted that Newton exercised prudence and sound fiscal skills in managing public funds in his capacity as Master of England’s Mint. Yet when it came to his own finances, he didn’t perform nearly as well. The South Sea Company was founded in 1711. This new enterprise was granted extensive trading concessions with the islands of the South Seas and South America. Speculators were abuzz with anticipation of a huge windfall potentially resulting by investing in stock of the South Seas Company. In January of 1720 the company stock stood at £ 128. The frenzy peaked in August of 1720 when the stock reached a value of £ 1000. A month later, in September of 1720, the South Seas Company bubble burst sending the British economy into turmoil. The ensuing panic resulted in widespread bankruptcies and bank failures. Investigations of the affair unearthed gross misconduct and fraud in the highest echelons of the South Seas Company management and government officials. Thousands of investors in the South Seas Company were left holding the bag, among them the genius, Sir Isaac Newton. The discoverer of the Laws of Gravity and Master of the English Mint started investing in the South Seas Company as early as 1713. He purchased additional shares over the years. In April of 1720, Newton sold off some of his holdings. In the pitch of the August frenzy, however, greed kicked in prompting Newton to

purchase much more stock. The poor investors who were not happy with what they had, that too was taken away from them. Newton is said to have lost more than £ 20,000 in the debacle — a staggering amount even for a man of his standing in the British hierarchy. In the Book of Ecclesiastes, proclaims King Solomon: “The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the heroes. Neither is bread to the wise nor riches to men of knowledge!“[103] Solomon’s judgment transcends the generations. Isaac Newton who was well versed in the Bible might have paid heed to the Wisdom of Solomon. Yet, even the old savant with his bigger‑than‑life propensity for philosophy, his supreme command of Biblical verse and an unshakeable faith in One God, failed to summon ample prudence in order to rise above the elements of avarice. When men of scholarship and wisdom dabble in the art of fiscal speculation they are not immune from the wrathful consequences of Solomon’s decrees. Indeed… bread is neither to the wise nor riches to men of knowledge! Scientists — even the greatest among them — should stick to the business of science. Reflecting back on the South Seas Company debacle to a friend, remarked Newton: “I could not calculate the madness of the people!“ Surely, he did not fail to count himself among the mad throng in the throes of avarice. If fiscal speculation cost Isaac Newton dearly in the form of monetary loss, his obsession with alchemy exacted a price of a far more precious commodity. Alchemy is an ancient art that goes back to the days of the early Egyptians. Its practice reached a peak in the Middle Ages. Alchemists believe that by applying enough fire — through various processes and techniques — they can transmute inferior metals into gold or silver. More bizarre than that is the alchemist’s belief that via similar techniques they can find the substance and means of indefinitely prolonging human life. Newton’s obsession with alchemy bordered on the brink of insanity. He spent countless years of intensely searching for the Philosopher’s Stone — the magical substance that alchemists have been chasing for thousands of years, and which they believe is the panacea for all that ails humanity. Although its purposes and techniques amount to a heap of balderdash, alchemy was in many ways the predecessor of modern science, especially

the science of chemistry. The alchemy that Newton pursued did not lead to any breakthroughs in chemistry. Whether Newton was in search of a shortcut to procuring gold or to clinch the magical potion for an eternal life, the consensus among his contemporaries and those of later generations is that he wasted long and valuable years of research dabbling in magic and sorcery. Even those who held Newton in the highest esteem were astonished at the amount of time and energy he had squandered in pursuit of witchcraft. All this information only became available after his death as his manuscripts were thoroughly scrutinized. Just goes to show you that nobody is perfect. Among the pile of original Newton papers acquired by John Maynard Keynes was a sizeable batch of his alchemy experiments. After an extensive and thorough scrutiny, Keynes wrote a paper on his disturbing findings. Among other observations noted Keynes: “Newton looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which can be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues, which God had hidden about the world to allow a sort of philosopher’s treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood… He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty… By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.“[104] Keynes crowned Newton as: “The last of the magicians!“ As for Newton’s obsession with alchemy, concluded Keynes: “Interesting, but not useful. Wholly magical and wholly devoid of scientific value.“ One could not help but lament the secrets and beneficial knowledge Newton could have unearthed had he constructively leveraged the demonic energy and countless years he wasted barking up the tree of alchemy. Certainly, this is the sentiment shared by most experts on Newton throughout the ages. However, humbly, yours truly, Yitzhak Salomon, dares to posit that: He strongly believes that there is ample reason to suggest that Newton’s protracted experimentation with alchemy was not merely an exercise in witchcraft. Newton, like all mortals, was not beyond the realm of greed, superstitions or any other human foible; nor was he immune from practicing

witchcraft. But when it came to science, few scientists in the annals of this art could lay claim to a razor‑sharp intuition bordering on infallibility such as Isaac Newton possessed. In light of the developments in the field of nuclear physics, I humbly suggest that Newton’s alchemical pursuits were fueled by scientific objectives rather than voodoo or witchcraft. Speculations on atomic theory were launched thousands of years ago as a philosophical concept. However, only in the 19th century did atomic theory achieve widespread scientific acceptance. During Newton’s day, understanding of nuclear particles amounted to a mere vague notion with no practical or commercial applications in sight. Like most of his colleagues, in his work on Opticks, Newton was aware of atoms, as expressed in his observation that: at the beginning God created matter in the form of hard, massy, impenetrable, moveable particles... And those primary particles are such a hard‑bodies that they never wear and never crumble...[105] In current times, scientists have succeeded in deciphering the atomic riddle. This knowledge has been translated into a formidable industry of lethal weapons and energy. Today, nuclear fission is no longer a mystery or a fantasy. We know exactly what it’s all about; it is a process in nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei as fission products, and usually some by product particles. Hence, fission is a form of elemental transmutation. Now let’s compare this to an ancient practice, which we tend to dismiss as voodoo. The similarities are astonishing!

The dictionary defines alchemy as a form of chemistry and speculative philosophy practiced in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and concerned principally with discovering methods for transmuting baser metals into gold and with finding a universal solvent and an elixir of life. Given Newton’s nearly infallible scientific intuition, it is very likely that what drove him to dabble in alchemy was a scientific intuition and curiosity to explore these primary particles and their behavior during elemental transmutation. Since he was neither in possession of a nuclear reactor nor a high‑energy particle accelerator, Newton settled for a couple of stoves to achieve the desired effect. In the confines of his apartment, Newton heated substances to the highest temperatures he could muster with the hope of engendering an atomic reaction resulting from transmutation of substances. As was the case in all his other scientific pursuits, here as well, Newton saw the future. In this effort, however, he leapt too far into the future for his own good. Consequently, Newton was stumped in his premature attempt to usher in the notion of nuclear physics. Even if his intuition were on track, it would take many layers of scientific developments over a period of centuries for the age of nuclear and quantum physics to emerge. Isaac Newton was indeed a very capable and brilliant individual, but not even he could clinch the formula that would catapult a vague theory of primary particles into the reality of triggering a nuclear fission back in the 17th century. All said and done, the world is probably better off that in this endeavor he hit a dead end. Just imagine if Newton indeed succeeded in setting off a nuclear reaction in his humble abode while tinkering with his

overheated stoves; what a sad ending that would have been to an otherwise brilliant career!?!

*** We would not do justice to Newton if we didn’t mention two more chapters of his illustrious life. In recognition of his achievements he was knighted by Queen Anne of England in April 1705. From that point to the end of his life he was thus addressed as Sir Isaac Newton. During the last three decades of his life Newton was primarily occupied with two positions. As we mentioned earlier, he held the office of President of the Royal Society. This was certainly not as bizarre as his ministerial appointment to the position of Master of the Royal Mint of England. A whole book can be written just in portraying the adventures Newton encountered in this closing chapter of his long and eventful life. As Master of the Royal Mint, Newton introduced major innovations to the coinage process. He was also involved in numerous investigations into forgery, and he turned out to be quite a sleuth at this cat‑and‑mouse game. In his ministerial position he singed not a few execution orders that sent thieves and counterfeiters to the gallows. As occupied as he was with two prestigious full‑time jobs, Newton was still hooked up to his scientific oxygen tank. Though he busied himself with scientific exploration in the waning decades of his life, Newton came up empty of any major breakthroughs. He was too preoccupied with the business of government and administration to burst out with scientific brilliance. It was more scientific trivia that kept Newton’s mind busy than anything resembling the fires he kindled during his scientific heyday at Cambridge. In his old age, it was his beautiful and favorite niece, Lady Catherine Barton who afforded Isaac Newton a measure of comfort against the tribulations and adversity that enveloped the old savant. She served as a buffer against the vicissitudes of old age to which Newton was not immune. Having lived with Newton during his later years, Mrs. Barton was privy to many aspects of her uncle’s life and affairs. In her memoirs, Mrs. Barton

recalls an incident that exemplifies the extent of Newton’s scientific endeavors in his last decades. The episode started with an ingenious scheme set up by a famous professor of mathematics at Basel by the name of Johann Bernoulli and his accomplice Herr Leibnitz. This event took place during the height of the calculus controversy and not long after Newton assumed the office of Master of the Royal Mint. To bait Newton into a trap and thus provide evidence that the savant lacked basic knowledge of the new math — differential calculus — Bernoulli devised a set of profound complex and difficult mathematical riddles, which he published in a professional publication, Acta Eruditorum. It was camouflaged as a challenge open to all who wished to take a crack at it, but in essence it was quite obvious that the bait was set up for Mr. Newton. The first of Bernoulli’s challenges dealt with a heavy body falling under the force of its own weight. The contestant was required to determine the curve in which the heavy object will descend most rapidly from a given point to another given point. The second riddle consisted of finding a curve having the same property such that the sum of any two segments of a straight line drawn to intercept it, and raised to any power, will remain constant. To mathematicians this is known as a brachistochrone; as for the laymen amongst us, let’s just sit back, relax and enjoy the rest of the story. Bernoulli and Leibnitz were greatly encouraged when six months elapsed, and no one stepped forward with the solution — surely not for the lack of trying. It is amply recorded that the greatest mathematicians of the era extensively grappled with the riddles but to no avail. Interpreting the absence of any response to the riddle as a clear indication that no one — including Newton — could solve the mathematical conundrum was a source of great comfort to Bernoulli and Leibnitz. To tighten the screw on this scheme, Bernoulli proceeded to publish the riddles in two more publications — Philosophical Transactions and Journal des Sçavans. To be sure that the bait would not bypass the Englishman’s attention, an innocent circular was mailed out by Bernoulli to all the top mathematicians on the continent — including Newton, of course — with a copy of the journals.

Here is how Mrs. Barton describes the outcome of this episode. “Sir I. Newton opened Bernoulli’s letter late in the afternoon. Newton was in the midst of the great recoinage — a project of immense proportions with urgent governmental priority at the Mint. That day he arrived at four in the afternoon very much exhausted from his office at the Tower of London, which housed the Mint. Rather than rest and catch up on his sleep, Newton immediately set to work on the mathematical riddles, which he fully resolved by four o’clock in the morning.“ Mrs. Barton goes on to inform us that rather than get some rest before drafting the official results, Newton immediately formulated his response with meticulous solutions to both problems and sealed the document in the envelope. On one hand, Newton was truly loathsome to get involved in such trivial affairs. Yet, he sensed that leaving Bernoulli’s challenge unanswered jeopardized his reputation as England’s preeminent mathematician. In order to avoid seeming anxious in this matter, Newton mailed his response not directly to Bernoulli, but rather to Montague, President of the Royal Society. The letter was dated January 30, 1697 — one day after he received Bernoulli’s challenge. It is well known that during his Cambridge days Newton was well versed in problems of the sort devised by Bernoulli. The fact that in this stage of his life he required a full twelve hours to solve them is testimony to how far removed Newton was from the engines of science and math, which were the driving force in his life only a few years earlier. Still, as rusty as Newton was, he managed overnight to solve mathematical mysteries, which the most prominent mathematicians of his generation couldn’t accomplish in a lifetime. Isaac Newton’s solutions were published anonymously in the Philosophical Transactions. Bernoulli who reviewed the solutions in the scientific journal was left with hardly a shade of a doubt as to their author. Despite his ulterior motives in this affair, Bernoulli was awed by Newton’s quick response to the supreme mathematical challenge. He could hardly suppress his admiration. In a letter to a friend, Bernoulli wrote: “The precision and quality bore the distinctive mark of Isaac Newton.“ Bernoulli concluded his letter with: Ex ungue Leonem! — From the claws of the Lion!

***

Newton lived to the ripe old age of eighty-four. In an era that did not enjoy the benefits of antibiotics and modern medical treatments, Newton’s longevity is an accomplishment all its own. Given that most of Newton’s contemporaries did not live past the age of fifty, one could say that Newton packed two lifetimes in one. That is on the physical plane; judging by his accomplishments Newton lived to achieve what even the most competent among the mortals do not attempt in numerous lifetimes. The unloved boy, Isaac of Woolsthorpe, had become an object of veneration and international pilgrimage in his senior years. Newton turned into an English icon whose person was sought, not only by scientists, but also diplomats, politicians and heads of government. Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, paid homage to the great Englishman in February 1698. But not all who desired the company of the British oracle got their wish. Prominent figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire were denied the introduction they sought. Stukeley, a physician and a regular visitor at the Newton residence, attributed the savant’s longevity to his great prudence and naturally good constitution. Stukeley — a native of Lincolnshire — met Newton in 1718 and remained a close associate of the President of the Royal Society for the last decade of his life. A composite of the aging Newton can be derived from descriptions articulated by Stukeley and others that witnessed Newton in his last years: Though not tall in stature, yet strong and sinewy, Newton was well made with a deep but pleasant voice. He had great strength and good constitution. His large chest was way out of proportion for a man of his height.[106] In 1725 — two years before Newton’s death — Stukeley watched in awe as Newton added up a sheet of figures without the aid of spectacles or pen. Here is how John Conduitt — husband of Newton’s half‑niece, Catherine Barton — described the old savant in his last year of life: His eyes were lively and piercing. His silver hair remained thick and full. To his last illness he had the bloom and colour of a young man. He never wore spectacles, nor lost more than one tooth to the day of his death.[107] Isaac Newton died a painful death of a bladder disorder aggravated by kidney stones in the spring of 1727.

Newton was interred with full honors in Westminster Abbey. Also interred in the Abbey was Lord Halifax who was Catherine Barton’s first husband. Her second husband, John Conduitt died in 1737 — a full decade after his hero, Newton, whom he succeeded as Master of the Royal Mint. He too was interred in Westminster Abbey. Thus, the three men who loved Catherine the most lay waiting in the Abbey for their fair lady to join them. The beautiful Catherine did not keep the trio waiting long; she joined them in 1739 when she died at the age of sixty.

*** Isaac Newton’s greatest accomplishment and one that immeasurably eclipses all others is a revelation that came to him while still a young man. Early on in life, Newton discovered that an inverse function best defines the interaction between the brain and the rest of the human body. The brain cannot exist in a vacuum by itself; therefore, it is tethered to a physical supporting plant. While the torso nourishes the brain and sustains it, by the same token it exerts a drag on its capacity. Thus, the more one caters to the needs of the body the more the mind is hindered from wielding its Godgiven potential. Newton regarded time as the arch‑enemy of man — it must never be squandered but devoured, lest it devour you. Consequently, it is not on record that Isaac Newton ever took a vacation or lounged in social halls. Newton was thoroughly focused upon one mission in this life — to extract the utmost mileage out of the brain God deposited between his ears, as he was constantly racing against time. He was not going to let any worldly matters interfere with this goal. Newton had a clear vision that the human body was created merely to serve as a support system for the mind, which is the only eternal and infinite God‑given substance in the realm of our earthly existence. At the expense of denying his physical plant from worldly aspirations, Newton facilitated his brain to roam freely in an orbit of

perpetual state of aggressive scholarship. Newton was once asked how he made his discoveries, he responded: Truth is the offspring of silence and unbroken meditation.[108] True to his mission, Newton placed his worldly needs in their proper perspective. His food consumption discipline was limited to sustain the faculties that support the brain. For Newton there was no such thing as the natural end of the workday. He labored till exhaustion took over; and yielded to only the bare minimum of sleep needed for the body to function. His social life was almost non‑existent. He did spend money lavishly on four staples. Newton’s mind seemed to never run out of ideas; consequently, he was always stocked with the fuel needed to facilitate the output of his legendary mind — candles, paper, ink and quills. In his room he kept next to his desk a cabinet full of candles, a barrel of ink, a huge crate stacked with high-grade writing paper, and a box full of quills. In Greek mythology, Prometheus was a demigod that stole fire from the gods and shared the top-secret commodity with the rest of humanity. In the fairy tale Greek legend, Prometheus was severely punished. The gods chained him to a rock and watched with great pleasure as the eagles shredded the flesh off his bones.

Isaac Newton did not need to steal fire from the gods; he had a much better arrangement. He sat all alone in his room in the middle of the night assiduously attempting to decipher the enigmatic force of gravity. Just when he was about to clinch it, a roadblock stood between him and immortality. To accelerate his output and inspiration, Newton reached for his desk drawer and reverentially fetched a roll of large documents. He unfolded the blueprints on his desk. These were the blueprints of Solomon’s Temple, which Newton had painstakingly drafted over long years of intense research. Newton divorced his mind from any residual thoughts and focused thoroughly on the magnificent divine structure that housed the dwelling of God in this world. Newton closed his eyes, stretching his imagination to the limit in an attempt to connect with the greatest philosopher of all times — King Solomon. Realizing that he was still short of clinching what he yearned for, Newton renewed his focus on the structure of God’s Temple in Jerusalem. He was convinced that the secrets to God’s universe lay hidden somewhere in the intricacies of the Temple’s design. Still unable to clinch the greatest mystery of all, Newton walked around his room in order to ventilate his mind and start afresh. A frustrated and restless Newton then sat for long moments and stared at the flickering candle on his desk, but to no avail — the mental block would not go away. When all else failed, Newton raised his head heavenwards and beseeched God for inspiration. Steeped in prayer in the midst of a haunting dark night surrounded only by paper, ink and a flickering candle, Newton heard knocks on the door. Far from being startled, an unhurried Isaac Newton calmly, as a thin smile of relief registered across his face, walked over to the door. Much as he expected, the presence of God appeared at the entrance to his room. “Isaac,“ commanded God, “get back to your desk and take notes.“ In the dark of night with only a flickering candle, Isaac Newton took notes… in the shadow of the Creator!

*** Before we bid farewell to Isaac Newton, one final footnote on the genius and his vision. Last but not least, here are some thoughts of Isaac Newton on life, its origins and essence. Though Isaac Newton died nearly a century before Charles Darwin was born, the prophet that he was, Newton foresaw the propensity of people to ascribe the phenomenon of life to happenstance. Early on, Isaac Newton had determined what his life’s method of scientific investigation would be. He had already fused the two major strands of science, the rational and the empirical. This resulted in replacing the classical medieval world of Aristotelian hierarchies with a substratum of yet undefined particles and mathematically determinable laws. At the same time, the clockwork precision with which the universe functions is for Newton anything but the result of blind circumstance. For behind it all, he sensed the presence of intelligent planning and purposeful direction. Addressing the complexity, mystery and consistency of living organisms, observed Newton: Were men and beasts & c made by fortuitous jumblings of the attomes, there would be many parts useless in them, here a lumpe of flesh there a member too much. Some kinds of beasts might have but one eye some more yn two.[109]

For Newton — a genius endowed with an infallible scientific intuition, rarely possessed by any other human — the above statement about living organisms, amounted to far more than a passing observation. It served as a reminder to himself that the underlying unity in nature — revealed to man through rational inquiry and observation — is a product of the Divine Mind. Atoms there are, and mechanical laws, but when measured against the wisdom and knowledge of the Creator they are as nothing. Hence from the very beginning of his magnificent quest, Newton held that no matter how rational the world may appear to us, there is nothing below a certain depth that is truly explicable in human terms. Few things would have angered or dismayed Isaac Newton more than the Enlightenment assertion that his Principia Mathematica contained the framework of a universe in which God is no longer a vital — or even necessary — part.

Indeed, both Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin were born and bred in England. Aside from their British nationality, these two individuals are worlds apart. While Darwin’s theory sowed nothing but discord, rancor, controversy and chaos, Newton’s coherent and fully established scientific discoveries unleashed a barrage of benefits upon humanity in the form of unprecedented industry, scholarship, exploration and spiritual enlightenment. While Darwin lost his faith in the Creator early on in life, Newton’s raison d’être was not only to extoll God, but to observe and explore His wonderous Creation. In the process of investigating God’s universe — imbued with faith and foresight — Newton encountered the great fortune of discovering the principles of the physical foundation of the universe. Newton’s scientific endeavors and accomplishments — wholly inspired by the Divine — bestowed the greatest bounty of God’s blessings upon humanity since the advent of monotheism promulgated by our Patriarch Abraham. Before Newton showed up on the world stage, scientists — i.e. philosophers — hypothesized. Newton never presented any of his many hypotheses or theories to the scientific community until he backed it up with exhaustive, rigorous experimentation and proof. This approach to science, afforded the scientific community the confidence to herald a new era of scientific discovery that led to the accelerated knowledge of our universe and opened the gates wide to usher in the Industrial Revolution. Newton’s discoveries of the Laws of Gravity, Calculus, Astronomy, Optics and Motion not only opened the door to industry, but also pried open the floodgates of God’s bounty derived from rigorous knowledge of the pulsating soul embedded in the Creator’s mechanical universe. Darwin, on the other hand introduced humanity to a convoluted theory, which not only hurled humanity back to the dark ages of paganism, but, in the process, inflicted brain damage upon the gullible masses. At the same time — in the guise of science — priests of Darwinian crackpot science imposed the subject of evolution upon the global community of school‑age youth, at the expense of revenues generated by the toil, sweat, blood and tears of taxpayers’ hard‑earned currency.

Did Einstein Believe in God? As the twentieth century came to a close, a debate opened up about who was who in the century that capped 2,000 years of the Common Era. Surely, the face of Albert Einstein will forever remain etched upon the front page of our recollections from the final chapter of the second millennium. Was Einstein a genius or a philosopher? Perhaps both, but no less was he a master in the art of subtle comedy at its finest. Ever the absent‑minded professor, Einstein was a befuddled individual who lost control of the course he charted for his personal life. Also derailed was the destiny Einstein envisioned for his brilliant discoveries. Plagued with severe learning disabilities in childhood, Einstein eventually evolved into the ultimate symbol of genius. He was a man who wanted a quiet life and in 1919 was catapulted into the center of the world stage, as he had become the most famous scientist on the planet. He was a loner possessed by an intimate bond to humanity; a rebel suffused with reverence. He was a German who had nothing but disdain for German mentality, and detested all things German. He was an ultra‑pacifist, who unwittingly opened the door that ushered in the development of the most destructive weapon in the annals of warfare. He was a Zionist who detested guns. He signed a letter to President Roosevelt urging the development of nuclear weapons and could never forgive himself for doing it. He regarded all war as evil and murder, but was instrumental in pushing the buttons that annihilated 120,000 people. No one could have hit the nail on the head of this oxymoronic weltanschauung[110] more punctually than the man himself, when he proclaimed: “I am militant pacifist!“[111] Einstein was a European gentleman who could not treat his first and second wife with dignity. He was an atheist who could not find an explanation for the workings of the universe without resorting to God. In the words of his biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk, who became the mind reader of the Creator of the cosmos.[112] In light of his schizophrenic résumé, it seems that the thread of

dichotomy was woven into Einstein’s fabric from birth; it followed him throughout his life. Nonetheless, it will most likely be the image of the bumbling professor with the tussled hair that will overshadow most other towering figures of the 20th century.

*** Albert Einstein once stated that there are only two things that might be infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And, he confessed, he wasn’t sure about the universe.[113] Having said that, this self-effacing man surely hinted that he was endowed with his own share of inadequacies. As a child, he was slow in learning how to talk. “My parents were so worried,“ he later recalled, “that they consulted a doctor.“ Even after he had begun using words, sometime after the age of 2, he developed a quirk that prompted the family maid to dub him der Depperte, the dopey one. Whenever he had something to say, he would try it out on himself, whispering it softly until it sounded good enough to pronounce aloud. “Every sentence he uttered,“ his worshipful younger sister recalled, “no matter how routine, he repeated to himself softly, moving his lips.“ It was all very worrying, she said. “He had such difficulty with language that those around him feared he would never learn.“

In his younger days, aside from being unconventional of habit, Einstein’s demeanor was framed by a happy-go-lucky absentmindedness. “When I was very young,“ he once confided to an old friend, “I visited overnight at the home of friends. In the morning I left forgetting my valise. My host reported the incident to my parents, and, for good measure, topped it off with, ‘That young man will never amount to anything because he can’t remember anything.’“[114] His slow development was combined with a cheeky rebelliousness toward authority, which led one schoolmaster to send him packing and another to declare that he would never amount to much. These awkward traits made Albert Einstein the patron saint of distracted schoolkids everywhere. But they also helped mold him — or so he later surmised — into the most creative scientific genius of modern times. His cocky contempt for authority led him to question customary wisdom in ways that well‑trained acolytes in the academy never contemplated. And as for his slow verbal development, he thought that it allowed him to observe with wonder the everyday phenomena that others took for granted. Instead of puzzling over mysterious things, he puzzled over the commonplace. “When I ask myself how it happened that I in particular discovered the Relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstance,“ Einstein once explained. “The ordinary adult never bothers his head about the problems of space and time. These are things he has thought of as a child. But I developed so slowly that I began to wonder about space and time only when I was already grown up. Consequently, I probed more deeply into the problem than an ordinary child would have.“[115]

*** A revolutionary and nonconformist, even as a young man, Einstein boycotted classes of professors he found tedious and rejected the standard, experimental approach to physics in favor of thought experiments, the most notable of which — asking what light would look like if you rode beside a beam — led to The Special Theory of Relativity, which amended the Newtonian dogma that space and time are absolute and fixed entities. Instead, he showed mathematically that what you observe depends on where you stand in space and time, with the result that to a stationary observer, a clock moving at high velocity slows down and objects shrink. A quartet of papers in the annus mirabilis — miracle year of 1905 proposed the Special Theory of Relativity, provided proof of the existence of atoms, put Quantum Mechanics on a solid empirical foundation and unveiled what would become the most famous equation in science, E = mc², any one of which would have secured his reputation in the physics pantheon.[116] With his mental ability of restructuring the universe, Einstein became the emblem not only of the desire to know the truth, but also of the capacity to know the truth. Einstein did not promote the image of man at the center of the cosmos, controlling the stars by thought. But, quite by accident, he was that image. Merely by being, he corroborated the Romantic view that people were 10 feet tall, capable of knowing heaven, and in the Byronic mode, of speaking directly to God. Simply by gazing into existence, he concluded that time and space could be warped, that mass and energy were interchangeable. He understood that the world was a puzzle created for deciphering and, moreover, that a person’s place in the order of things was to solve as much of the puzzle as possible. This is what makes human human; this, and the governing elements of morals and humor. Einstein’s friend and fellow physicist Abraham Pais called him the freest man I have known, by which he meant that by the pure act of thinking, Einstein controlled his destiny. His mind was utterly fearless, and by its uses he diminished fear in others. “It stands to the everlasting credit of science,“ Einstein wrote, “that by acting on the human mind, it has overcome man’s insecurity before himself and before nature.“ And so, he became the model of what humans might do if they put their mind to it.[117]

*** Aside from his fixation with scientific thought-experiments, Einstein developed a couple of obsessions earlier on in life, which greatly complemented his quest for scientific exploration. A proficient violin player, music evolved into an extension of Einstein’s thinking process, which assisted him in solving particularly tricky problems. “Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or a difficult situation in his work,“ Hans Albert — his elder son — has said, “he would take refuge in music, and that would usually resolve all his difficulties.“ Einstein himself once remarked that: “Music has no effect on research work, but both are born of the same source and complement each other through the satisfaction they bestow.“ [118] Though he never learned how to swim, as a young student at the Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein developed an affinity for sailing. Switzerland’s myriad of small lakes offered Einstein endless sailing opportunities. His hands responded instinctively to the demands of the breeze. As he let the boat sail itself, his mind was free to drift without fear of interruption. Even unto old age, Einstein was spellbound by the serenity of water and the surroundings. “He needed this kind of relaxation from his intense work,“ says his elder son. His second wife Elsa pertinently observed, “He is so much on the water that people cannot easily reach him.“[119] Back in his glorious days of Berlin, a group of admirers, including the American banker Henry Goldman, had a sailboat built for him as a present for his 50th birthday. The boat, 23-foot-long and equipped with a 5hp engine, was named Tümmler — German for Porpoise. The Tümmler was confiscated by the Nazis in 1933. Dr. Janos Plesch, a close friend of Einstein during his years in Berlin, wrote: “The Tümmler was the one thing that hurt him to have to leave behind when the time came to shake the dust of Germany from his feet.“[120] Sailing, like music, was with Einstein not so much a hobby as an extension of himself in which the essentials of his character and temperament were revealed. During the summer of 1934, Einstein shared a cabin with Dr. Bucky and his family at Watch Hill on the Rhode Island shore. Bucky, who often sailed with Einstein, observed: “The natural counterplay of wind and water delighted him most. Speed, records, and

above all competition were against his nature. He had a childlike delight when there was a calm and the boat came to a standstill, or when the boat ran aground.“ Einstein never studied navigation and never looked at a compass when in a boat, making up for this with a good sense of direction, which he rarely showed on land. He had the ability to forecast a storm with uncanny accuracy. Wind, weather and water had an obvious link with stress and strain, action and reaction, and the basis of physics. Consequently, Einstein’s long theoretical experience clearly afforded him an intuitive knowledge of how to handle a boat.[121] An American yacht designer, aviation pioneer, and naval architect, William Starling Burgess sought Einstein’s advice on a new yacht design. Burgess met up with Einstein while the latter was vacationing at Newport. He presented Einstein with a number of drawings from which to determine the best configuration for the hull of the new American yacht. In addition, Burgess handed Einstein several pages of computations and equations. Einstein patiently listened as Burgess outlined his notes, ideas, questions and concerns. After he carefully studied the documents for a few minutes, Einstein grabbed pencil and paper and presented Burgess the answer he was seeking.[122]

Two other traits were revealed to friends who sailed with Einstein. One was his indifference to danger or death, reflected in such fearlessness of rough weather that more than once he had to be towed in after his mast had been blown down. Another was his perverse delight in doing the unexpected. Leon Watters — a scientist, teacher and historian of Judaism — was a close friend of Einstein for many years. They spent many a time sailing together. “Once when out sailing with him,“ writes Watters, “and while we were engaged in an interesting conversation, I suddenly cried out Achtung! for we were almost upon another boat. Einstein veered away with excellent control. When I remarked what a close call we had, he started to laugh and sailed directly toward one boat after another, much to my horror;

but he always veered off in time, and then laughed like a naughty boy.“ On another occasion, Watters pointed out that they had sailed too close to a group of projecting rocks; Einstein replied by skimming the boat across a barely submerged shelf. In his boat, as in physics, he sailed close to the wind.[123]

*** A man of strong constitution, vigor and good health — a dedicated alpine hiker into his eighties — Max Planck was a distinguished intellectual, as well as an enlightened man endowed with an upright character and vision. In recognition of Planck’s fundamental contribution to a new branch of physics, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1918 for his work on quantum theory.

Aside from his brilliant contributions to the world of science, Planck was also a wise man imbued with religious morals and faith. Though he was a devout member of the Lutheran Church in Germany, Planck was very tolerant towards alternative views and religions. The consummate professor of physics that he was, Planck regarded the scientist as a man of imagination and faith, in his own words: “Both Religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view.“[124] Planck was also an altruistic and open‑minded man, who was the first credible scientist to promote Einstein’s bizarre theories. There is little doubt that had Planck not recognized Einstein’s greatness early on, it is very likely that the world would be deprived of Einstein’s genius. The major shift in Albert Einstein’s career began in 1905, when he submitted a number of revolutionary papers to the leading physics journal, Annalen der Physik — The Annals of Physics. Max Planck, the lead editor for theoretical work, was among the first to read them. At the time, Einstein, the young patent clerk, a novice and an eccentric with neither a PhD nor even a university post, was truly an outsider. But Planck recognized the work’s innovative genius, and decided to publish the articles, including two that outlined what we now call the Special Theory of Relativity. At the time that Einstein launched his earthshattering concept, he published it under the designation, Invariance Theory. It was Max Planck, who immortalized Einstein’s hypothesis as the, Relative Theory. At the scientifically ripe age of 47, when many minds no longer bend, Planck embraced Einstein’s radical new notions of motion, in which rulers changed their length and events changed their order depending on the observer’s own motion.

It is no exaggeration to say that Planck discovered Einstein, and he helped shepherd the squarest peg of Einstein’s genius into the round hole of the science establishment. Max stood with young Einstein and advocated they stick together against waves of skeptics. In 1914, Planck persuaded Einstein to join his physics powerhouse, as a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin.[125] Later, not only did the two geniuses work closely together in promoting the greatest advances in quantum physics, but were also close and dear friends. Planck’s friendship and admiration for Einstein was put to the test with the rise of Hitler to power. Planck’s Prussian nationalistic instincts got the better of him when, at the dawn of 1933, Einstein issued political and moral condemnations of the Nazi regime. Einstein was stunned when he received a communiqué from Planck warning him that by your efforts, your racial and religious brethren will not get relief from their situation. That was only the beginning. As Einstein’s verbal attacks on the Nazi regime only intensified, the president of the Prussian Academy of Sciences asked Max Planck to urge Einstein to resign. Astoundingly, Planck complied. On March 1st of 1933, Planck wrote to Einstein in Princeton: If the content of foreign press reports of your statements is correct, I am forced to say to you in all honesty that it appears to me that the only way out of your thoughts is that which on the one hand assures you an honorable dissolving of your relationship with the Academy, and on the other hand spares your friends an immeasurable amount of sorrow and suffering. I believe I write this to you as an imperative duty. Above all, it is in my heart to express to you my strong confidence that despite the deep chasm that divides our political points of view, our personal friendly relations should never change.[126]

As it happened, Einstein already resigned, but the Prussian Academy of Sciences wanted to have the last word by issuing the following statement: Our members have always felt themselves bound by the closest ties to the Prussian State, and while abstaining from all political partisanship, have always stressed and remained faithful to the national idea. The statement ended with the arrogant phrase that the Academy has no reason to regret Einstein’s withdrawal. An outraged Max von Laue — a close associate of Einstein from the Berlin days — vehemently protested this farcical statement... but to no avail. Later that year the Prussian Academy of Sciences issued an additional statement directed at Einstein: Many years of membership in our society must have made you familiar with the German character and German habits of thought, yet you chose this moment to damage our German people by disseminating erroneous views. Einstein retorted that he deeply deplored the attitude displayed in your communication. A few weeks later, in a letter to Max Born, Einstein wrote: You know, I think, that I have never had a particularly favorable opinion of the Germans — morally and politically speaking. But I must confess that the degree of their brutality and cowardice came as something of a surprise to me. Undoubtedly, it was Planck whom Einstein had in mind when speaking about cowardice.[127] Later, Planck made an attempt to moderate his views by stating that: It is deeply to be regretted that Einstein has by his own political behavior made his continuation in the Academy impossible. Planck ended this communication with an acknowledgement of Einstein’s greatness as a physicist. This was the point of no return for the two scientists. Thenceforth, Einstein refused ever again to write to his old friend. Not surprisingly, when Einstein asked a Princeton colleague traveling to

Germany to convey his greetings to Max von Laue, he pointedly negated an offer to carry them also to Planck.[128]

*** To be sure, Einstein’s meteoric rise brought him much fame and recognition; it also mired his already unsettled private life into a deeper orbit of chaos and disarray. Einstein’s serene contemplation of the universe contrasted sharply with the chaos of his private affairs. He met his first wife, a Serbian physics student, Mileva Maric while studying at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute. Initially it seemed like the perfect match. Though Mileva, a woman of grotesque features, was three years older than Albert and afflicted with a limp to boot, the two were soul mates in many ways. Together, they rhapsodized about music and science. Against his mother’s wishes, Einstein married Mileva; a union plagued by abuse that eventually ended in disaster. The professor eventually paid a dear price for years of domestic abuse, and for essentially abandoning his two sons when he separated from their mother. Einstein suffered immensely when his older son rejected him.[129] If indeed the old cliché suggesting that familiarity breeds contempt is true, then a man’s ultimate litmus test is how he treats his wife and children. Einstein was a big player on the universal stage, but did not fare very well in dignifying or respecting his domestic domain. His first marriage ended in disaster and tragedy. After divorcing Mileva, Einstein set up camp with his cousin Elsa, who was also divorced. Unlike Mileva, Elsa afforded Einstein the space he needed. Plagued by fame, Einstein lived a schizophrenic existence; he was a popular man in the street, but remained aloof at home. Later in life he embodied the avuncular caricature; the benevolent uncle with unshorn hair,

who helped little girls with their math homework, and a soft touch for every worthy cause. Einstein was and remains the embodiment of pure intellect, the bumbling professor with the heavy German accent, a comic cliché in a thousand films. Instantly recognizable, like Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp. His shaggy‑haired visage was a familiar image to ordinary people as well as to aristocrats and royalty. Yet he was unfathomably profound — the genius among geniuses who discovered, merely by thinking about it, that the universe was not as it seemed. Einstein’s galvanizing effect on the popular imagination continued throughout his life, and beyond. Fearful his grave would become a magnet for curiosity seekers and other mischief makers, the executors of Einstein’s estate secretly scattered his ashes. His brain, however, was pickled in a jar for posterity.[130]

*** Many of the people I interviewed on the subject, associated Einstein directly with the development of the atomic bomb. This image of Einstein is very far from the truth. After winning the Nobel Prize early in this century, Einstein went on a speaking tour around the globe. In 1921 he delivered a speech at the University of Prague. One of the students who attended the session, a brilliant young man who saw the future, secured an audience with Einstein following the lecture. The student presented Einstein with research documents and posed this question: Based on your mass‑energy equation, would it not be possible to use the energy locked up in the atom to produce a new and immensely powerful explosive?

“Calm yourself,“ Einstein dismissed the student, “You haven’t lost anything if I don’t discuss your work with you in detail. Its foolishness is evident at first glance. You cannot learn more from a longer discussion.“[131]

*** Einstein’s ideas reverberated beyond science, influencing modern culture from painting to poetry. At first even many scientists didn’t really grasp Relativity. British astrophysicist, Arthur Eddington was the first scientist to provide experimental evidence in support of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. In 1919, during an eclipse, he photographed the stars around the sun. In this historic photograph one can clearly see, as predicted by Einstein, that light emanating from the stars bends when intercepted by the Sun’s gravitational pull. The occasion in which he was asked if it is true that only three people understood Relativity, prompted Eddington’s celebrated wisecrack: I wonder who the third person is…[132] When I studied physics in college, our professor was of the opinion that: Einstein’s Law of Relativity is the single most original, profound and brilliant idea ever generated by the human mind. Furthermore, expounded the professor — unlike most other scientific discoveries, which sooner or later would have been deciphered in any case — had Einstein not unearthed the mysteries of Relativity, there is no guarantee that another genius would eventually stumble upon it… perhaps not ever. To this day scientists still marvel at the daring behind General Relativity. “I still can’t see how he thought of it,“ said Richard Feynman, who won the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics for fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics.[133] For those of us who think that Einstein’s greatest breakthrough has to do with the laws of relativity, think again. Relativity pales in comparison to the discovery he made about footwear. In his own words, this is the way Einstein explained the greatest and most complex of his discoveries: When I was young, I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in the sock… so I stopped wearing socks.[134] More generously disposed than the British astrophysicist Eddington, it was the same college professor, who also revealed to us that: There are probably no more than three‑dozen people in the world who truly are capable of grasping the Law of Relativity. This mystical statement

compelled me to mount a superhuman effort in pursuit of membership in this exclusive club. I failed miserably. However, I found consolation in the fact that I was in good company. In the spring of 1921, Chaim Weitzmann, who eventually became the first President of the State of Israel, joined Einstein on a cruise from Europe to New York. Before assuming the presidency, Weitzmann was already an accomplished scientist and a world-renowned doctor of biochemistry. “During the voyage across the Atlantic,“ recounted Weitzmann, “Einstein explained his theory to me every day and on my arrival, I was fully convinced that he understood it.“[135] Einstein, who was of the belief that, if you can’t explain it to a sixyear-old, you don’t understand it yourself[136], constantly reminded the world that anyone could easily grasp the Law of Relativity. Upon his arrival in New York in 1921 Einstein was asked by a reporter, “Dr. Einstein, can you explain Relativity in a few sentences in a language that a man in the street could understand?“ Ever anxious not to disappoint, Einstein formulated a response that turned into a classic: If you will not take this answer too seriously, and consider it only as a kind of joke, then I can explain it as follows: It was formerly believed that if all material things disappeared out of the universe, time and space would remain behind. According to the Relativity theory, however, time and space disappear together with things.[137]

If anything goes far enough in portraying Einstein’s genius, it is the above analogy. Only Einstein could take a convoluted and mystified concept like relativity and break it down into simple terms comprehended even by a six‑year‑old.

*** One of the great ironies resulting from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is that it nullified the historic debate between the Church and Galilee Galileo. The Church charged Galileo with heresy for claiming that the Sun is at the center of the world. In light of the universal acceptance of Einstein’s relativistic universe, neither the Church nor Galileo were either

right or wrong. Einstein’s General Relativity Theory clearly demonstrates that when two systems are in motion relative to one another, scientifically, it is impossible to determine which of the systems is stationary and which is in motion, or whether both are in motion. But, could Earth be truly considered the center of the solar system? It is universally accepted that the orb of the sun, which is the largest celestial body in our solar system, is considered the center for all practical purposes. Even if for no other reason but for the sake of a universally accepted referential convention, the sun should be considered the center of the solar system. Yet if we apply the letter of the law of Einstein’s concepts of Relativity, there exists in the physical reality of the solar system, or for that matter the entire universe, no true center. Since all universal bodies are in constant motion relative to each other, no fixed center can truly ever be established. This debate is not quite over until we consider another pivotal factor in our universal equation. With the advent of Quantum Mechanics, it has been firmly established that the intelligent observer is an essential and central component of measuring and corroborating physical phenomenon. As far as we can tell, the only location in this vast universe where an intelligent observer resides is right here on our planet Earth. Certainly, through this merit alone, Earth is indeed the center, not only of the solar system, but also of the entire universe! Take that universe! Between Einstein and QM, this world has been virtually turned on its head.

***

For years Einstein was associated with the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, which was instrumental in corroborating his theory. On a visit to the observatory, Einstein and his wife Elsa were chauffeured by the director up a long circuitous road which winds out above Pasadena and then back to the top of the Sierra Madre, from one of whose summits the Mount Wilson Observatory looks down. Awed by the sight of the giant structure, Elsa inquired, “What is the purpose of such a monster telescope?“ The director, beaming with pride, replied, “It is required for deciphering the structure and workings of the universe.“ “Well, well,“ remarked Elsa, “my husband can do all that on the back of an old envelope.“[138] Einstein possessed a canny ability to simplify the most complex matters. He did not need to resort to the implements of sophisticated laboratories or mammoth telescopes; his genius could shine forth in the most humble of settings. The space between his ears was all that Einstein needed to stir a scientific revolution. Einstein could sit in his study, or at his desk at the Swiss Patent Office, with only a notebook and a pencil, and, through pure thought, discern the mysteries of the cosmos. As we can see, Einstein possessed an affinity for simplicity. Asked once by a reporter, what kind of car her husband drives? Replied Elsa, “The professor does not drive, it is too complicated.“[139] Dr. Einstein handled a camera for the first time when he was already past the age of fifty. Typewriters frightened him, and he barely learned to use one.

Forced to quit Germany when the Nazis came to power, Einstein accepted an appointment at the new Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, a scholarly retreat largely created around him. Asked what he thought he should be paid, Einstein — a mathematical genius but a financial novice — suggested $3,000 a year. It was only thanks to the timely intervention of the hardheaded Elsa that the offer was promptly increased to $16,000.[140] Was Einstein really a subtle comedian or just a klutzy professor? Shortly after he had arrived at Princeton, someone called the office of the dean and asked, “May I please speak with the dean?“ When the caller was told that the dean was out, he asked, “Perhaps you can tell me where Dr. Einstein lives?“ To protect Einstein from intrusive visitors, the request was politely denied. The persistent caller did not give up, dropping his voice to a near whisper, he pleaded, “Please don’t tell anybody, but I am Dr. Einstein. I am on my way home and forgot where my house is.“[141] Many people sought the novelty of Einstein’s company, and his personal doctor was no different. The doctor used any excuse as a pretext to visit the legendary professor. Rather than send Einstein to the pharmacy to buy medicine, his doctor dropped by his house on Mercer Street in Princeton to deliver the potion. A colleague who was present when the doctor showed up describes the occasion. “I still remember the doctor standing there, counting the drops into a water glass and handing it over to Einstein who swallowed the whole thing. He then turned green in the face, and started to throw up. A pathetic looking Einstein with vomit still

dripping from his legendary moustache, turned to the doctor and asked: Do you feel better now?“[142]

*** In retrospect, it may seem logical to infer that a combination of awe and rebellion molded Einstein into an exceptional scientist. But what is less well known is that those two traits also combined to shape his spiritual journey and determine the nature of his faith. The rebellion phase emerges at the early stages of his life. Initially, little Albert rejected his parents’ secularism. Later in life, he dismissed the concepts of religious ritual and of a personal God who intercedes in the daily workings of the world. But the element of awe comes into play in his 50s when Einstein settled into a deism based on what he designated as the spirit manifest in the laws of the universe and a sincere belief in a God who reveals Himself in the harmony of all that exists. The pudgy first child of a bourgeois couple, Einstein was descended, on both parents’ sides, from Jewish tradesmen and peddlers. For the preceding two centuries, his ancestors eked out a modest living in the rural villages of Swabia located in southwestern Germany. With each generation, they had become increasingly assimilated into the German culture they loved — or so they thought. Einstein was strongly influenced by his domineering, musically inclined mother, who encouraged his passion for the violin and such classical composers as Bach, Mozart and Schubert. Although Jewish by cultural designation and kindred instinct, the Einstein family exhibited little interest in the religion itself. In his later years, Einstein would tell an old joke about an agnostic uncle who was the only member of his family who went to synagogue.

When asked why he did so, the uncle would respond, “Ah, but you never know.“ Einstein’s parents, on the other hand, were entirely irreligious. They did not keep kosher or attend synagogue, and his father Hermann referred to Jewish rituals as ancient superstitions, according to a relative.

Consequently, when Albert turned 6 and had to go to school, his parents did not care that there was no Jewish one near their home. Instead he was enrolled in a prestigious Catholic school in their neighborhood. As the only Jew among the 70 students in his class, he took the standard course in Catholic religion and ended up enjoying it immensely. He attended the Catholic school until he turned ten years old. Despite his parents’ secularism, or perhaps because of it, Einstein rather suddenly developed a passionate zeal for Judaism. “He was so fervent in his feelings that, on his own, he observed Jewish religious strictures in every detail,“ his sister recalled. He ate no pork, kept kosher and obeyed the strictures of the Sabbath; going so far as to chide his assimilated family for eating pork. He even composed his own hymns, which he sang to himself as he walked home from school. Einstein’s greatest intellectual stimulation came from a poor student who dined with his family once a week. It was an old Jewish custom to take in a needy religious scholar to share the Sabbath meal; the Einsteins modified the tradition by hosting instead a medical student on Thursdays. His name was Max Talmud, and he began his weekly visits when he was 21 and Einstein was 10. Talmud brought Einstein science books, including a popular illustrated series called People’s Books on Natural Science, “a work which I read with breathless attention,“ said Einstein. The 21 volumes were written by Aaron Bernstein, who stressed the interrelations between biology and physics, and reported in great detail on scientific experiments conducted at the time, especially in Germany. A story in volume 16 of this book about riding along with the electricity travelling through a telegraph wire is often credited with inspiring the 16‑year‑old Albert to think about travelling along with a beam of light and seeing it stationary. Such thought experiments eventually led to Einstein’s earth‑shattering theory of Special Relativity.[143] Talmud also helped Einstein explore the wonders of mathematics by giving him a textbook on geometry two years before he was scheduled to learn that subject in school. When Talmud arrived each Thursday, Einstein delighted in showing him the problems he had solved that week. Initially, Talmud was able to help him, but he was soon surpassed by his pupil. “After a short time, a few months, he had worked through the whole book,“

Talmud recalled. “Soon the flight of his mathematical genius was so high that I could no longer follow.“

*** It would not be inaccurate to state that nearly 100% of our planet’s inhabitants, one way or another, are familiar with Einstein’s exploits. Yet there are very few people who heard or know anything about Max Talmud — Einstein’s mentor. While we are on the topic of Einstein, it would amount to poetic injustice not to pay tribute to the man who played a pivotal role in unleashing the genius of Einstein. Max Talmud was born in Poland to a Jewish family in 1869. He later changed his name to Talmey. An accomplished Ophthalmologist, Talmey is best known for his association with Albert Einstein and his success in treating cataracts. Talmey published an account of Einstein’s early life, Personal Recollections of Einstein’s Boyhood and Youth. He also authored a laymen’s guide to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Throughout their life, Einstein and Talmey met numerous times and enjoyed an intimate, meaningful and congenial rapport. Talmey moved to Mount Sinai Hospital in 1895, where he served as an Ophthalmologist. He published scholarly works on cataracts and infant paralysis. In addition to his medical career, Talmey was a harsh critic of Psychoanalysis. He supported the development of the ineffectual international Esperanto language. He also constructed his own language, which he called Gloro. Talmey performed public readings of works translated into Gloro — a concoction of Latin and Spanish. Max Talmey died in 1941.

*** Einstein’s scientific curiosity sparked by Max Talmud unwittingly blunted little Albert’s affinity to Judaism. It did not have to end on a collision course between science and theology. In those early days, the scientific feedback that exerted the most profound influence on Einstein came from Bernstein’s books, in which the author clearly envisions

harmony between the two disciplines: “The religious inclination lies in the dim consciousness that dwells in humans that all nature, including the humans in it, is in no way an accidental game, but a work of lawfulness that there is a fundamental cause of all existence.“[144] Nonetheless, Einstein’s exposure to science and math produced a sudden transformation at age twelve. Just as he would have been readying for a bar mitzvah, Einstein suddenly gave up on Judaism. Though Einstein’s departure from religious fervor does not appear to have been drawn from Bernstein’s books, since the author made clear he saw no contradiction between science and religion, still, the timing of the displacement cannot be dismissed as a mere coincidence. Einstein would later come close to the sentiments espoused by Bernstein. But at the time, his leap away from faith was a radical one. “Through the reading of popular scientific books, I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy of free thinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression.“[145] Earlier in his life, an event that occurred while Einstein attended Catholic school certainly left a lasting impression on him. His teacher walked into class one day and, holding a large rusty nail in front of the class, explained, “The nails with which the Jews nailed Christ to the cross looked like this.“[146] More than any other, it was this episode, which most likely accounts for Einstein’s distaste towards religion. Aside from occasional deviations, little Albert’s atheistic sentiments stayed with him unto old age. Einstein did, however, retain from his childhood religious phase a profound faith in, and reverence for, the harmony and beauty of what he called the mind of God as it was expressed in the creation of the universe and its laws. Though Einstein had little room for a God in his life, yet he could not completely divorce himself from living in His shadow. The assault, to which Einstein’s Jewish sensibilities were subjected in Catholic school, was a minor bump compared to a vituperative barrage of virulent anti-Semitism he faced as a prominent scientist. With the rise of

Nazism, he began to hear his colleagues speak in discordant voices about science. In the 1930s Nobel Laurette in physics, Philipp Lenard established the Deutsche Physik, literally meaning German Physics or Aryan Physics — a nationalist movement in the German physics community. He voiced adamant opposition to the work of Albert Einstein and other modern theoretically based physics. Joining forces with another physics Nobel laureate, Johannes Stark, Lenard began a core campaign to label Einstein’s Relativity, Jüdische Physik — Jewish Physics.[147] Director of the Institute of Physics at Dresden University, Professor Rudolf Tomaschek, an ardent supporter of the Deutsche Physik movement, had this to say about Einstein: “Modern physics is an instrument of world Jewry for the destruction of Nordic science. True science is the creation of the German spirit. In fact, all European science is the fruit of Aryan, or better, German thought.“[148]

In 1905, Philipp Lenard won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on cathode rays and the discovery of many of their properties. One would expect better from a dignified Nobel Prize Laurette, but the sworn anti-Semite and active proponent of Nazi ideology that he was, Lenard could not contain his vitriol when it came to the Jew Einstein: “Jewish science soon found many industrious interpreters of non-Jewish or practically non-Jewish blood. One may summarize them all by calling to mind the probably pure-minded Jew, Albert Einstein. His theories of relativity seek to revolutionize and dominate the whole of physics. In fact, these theories are ausgespielt — now down and out! They were never intended to be true.“ That’s not all folks, Lenard saves his best for the last: “German physics? One asks. I might rather have said Aryan physics or the physics of

the Nordic species of Man. The physics of those who have fathomed the depths of Reality, seekers after truth, the physics of the very founders of science. But, I shall be answered, ‘Science is and remains international.’ It is false, Science like every other human product, is racial and conditioned by blood.“[149] Bruno Thüring was an accomplished German physicist and astronomer. On September 4, 1936, during a lecture to the Heidelberg Association of Students of Science, he declared: “Einstein was not a pupil of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, but their determined opponent. His theory is not the keystone of a development, but a declaration of total war waged with the purpose of destroying what lies at the basis of this development, namely, the world view of German man!“[150]

The samplings above were not voices of a lunatic fringe in Germany under Hitler, but rather the ultimate expression of a new Germany speaking loud and clear with robust overtones about a convoluted and nefarious ideology gone out of control. This voice of Germany was not lost on those whom it targeted; many of them simply packed their bags along with their Nobel prizes and fled. The most famous among them: Albert Einstein, Max Born, Otto Stern, Eugene Wigner, Hans Bethe, James Franck, Felix Bloch, Erwin Freundlich, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Rudolf Peierls, Otto Frisch, Victor Weisskopf, Max Bergmann, Otto Loewi, Fritz Haber, Arno Penzias, John Polanyi, Jack Steinberger, Richard Willstätter, Konrad Bloch, Ernst Chain, Bernard Katz, Hans Krebs, Fritz Lipmann, Otto Meyerhof, Robert Aumann and Nelly Sachs. This list is comprised of famous Jewish scientists and scholars, who fled Nazi Germany with the rise of Nazism, among them no less than 21 Nobel Prize winners.[151] Many of them soon found employment with the Manhattan Project. They played their part in the work that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The grotesque Nazi interpretation of the new physical theories contrived during the first third of the 20th century coupled with the expulsion of the Jews formed the background against which Einstein settled into his work at the Institute of Advanced Technology at Princeton in New Jersey.[152]

*** Einstein never came to terms with the notion that the way one particle impacted another was a function of probability rather than certain and deterministic. It is poignant to read his prediction in 1929, that quantum physicists would reach the limit of their mania for statistical fad, and return full of repentance to the space time picture. It has yet to happen![153]

To underscore his opposition to the probabilistic interpretation of Quantum Mechanics formulated by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, Einstein coined the expression: God does not play dice with the universe; to which Bohr responded with, “Einstein, quit telling God what to do.“[154] Though he resorted to the term God — der Alte or the Old Man — occasionally, Einstein was not quite comfortable with the concept. After stating that God is subtle, but He is not malicious,[155] Einstein found it necessary to resort to an explanation. “What I meant,“ he clarified, “is that nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning.“[156]

***

For thousands of years, since the times of Aristotle, philosophers and scientists tenaciously clung to the notion that — going forward or backward — the universe is eternal and static. This premise was a very cozy refuge in which the unspoken atheistic character of science could hide unhampered. Clearly, for cosmologists to admit that the universe is anything but eternal would create a breach into which the abhorrent and blasphemous concept of a beginning could creep, and corrupt the hallowed halls of science. A universe that has a beginning is a concept that borders on theology. Since science and theology are mutually exclusive, this approach was totally rejected by scientists. One of the first giants of science to grapple with this sticky issue was no less than Albert Einstein. Way back in 1917 Einstein dabbled in developing equations that would define the condition of the universe. His work was based on the General Law of Relativity, which Einstein introduced only two years earlier. The more he researched the universal phenomenon, the more Einstein became convinced that his mind was playing tricks on him. The cosmological equations Einstein developed pulled in a direction that was totally not acceptable to the mindset of this colossal genius; they persistently portrayed a universe in a dynamic state of flux! Why did Einstein fiercely resist the notion that the universe is expanding? Because a universe that is expanding with the passage of time is also a universe that shrinks if the clock is turned back. Based on this premise, the more we regress, the smaller the universe gets. This logic inevitably led Einstein to shudder at the thought that this dynamic process

would bring him face to face with a universe that had a beginning. That was totally unacceptable to a man steadfast in his atheistic and logical worldview.

At the time, Einstein corresponded with Vesto Slipher, the director of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. Just to make matters worse for Dr. Einstein, he received data from Vesto Slipher that in fact supported the thesis of an expanding universe. Slipher, applied guidelines outlined in Einstein’s General Law of Relativity to observations he conducted at the Lowell Observatory. Mr. Slipher’s conclusion was that there is no escaping the outcome that indeed the universe is constantly expanding. Too strongly anchored to his intuition that this is simply not an alternative, Einstein could not let go of his preconceived notions. He rationalized and dismissed Slipher’s evidence. To pacify his scientific conscience, Einstein massaged the equations with his famous cosmological constant later known as a fudge factor. Driven by overriding atheistic instincts and against his better scientific judgment, Einstein fudged the equations of the General Theory of Relativity to ensure that it remains within the confines of a static universe. Officially, it was these set of castrated cosmological equations he published.[157] Within a decade after the introduction of the cosmological constant, evidence began to mount that the universe wasn’t static after all. At first, Einstein was resistive. In 1927, Belgian physicist and Catholic priest Georges Lemaître developed a model of an expanding universe, which clearly implied a singular event — a beginning! Lemaître’s thesis was advanced two years before Edwin Hubble published his landmark paper documenting the recession of galaxies. Lemaître later recalled being admonished by Einstein, “Your calculations are correct, but your physics is abominable!“ Eventually, Einstein came around. He went to visit Hubble and looked through his telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, near Pasadena, California. Poor Einstein was made to swallow his own cosmic debris. In 1933, Einstein reportedly praised Lemaître’s cosmological theory: “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.“[158] When confronted with the ever‑growing body of evidence that indeed the universe is dynamically expanding, a contrite Einstein confessed to Max Born that denying his initial findings regarding an expanding universe was the biggest blunder of my life. Though the genie of an

expanding universe was certainly out of the bottle by now, this baby was yet to be named.

*** In the late 1940s, a scientist named George Gamow toppled the applecart with the revelation that indeed the universe had a beginning. BINGO! Unwittingly, it was none other than Fred Hoyle, who called the newborn baby by its real name… in the beginning there was a Big Bang. Against all scientific tradition and sensibilities, scientists admitted that indeed the world had a beginning, much like in the Genesis fairytale. Earlier in his life, as a young researcher, Gamow witnessed a rare moment in scientific history. While working under the tutelage of the famed Russian astronomer Friedmann, Gamow describes what took place when his mentor caught a bug in Einstein’s General Law of Relativity: Friedmann noticed that Einstein had made a mistake in his alleged proof that the universe must necessarily be stable and unchangeable in time. It is well known to students of high‑school algebra that it is permissible to divide both sides of an equation by any quantity, provided that this quantity is not zero. However, in the course of his proof, Einstein had divided both sides of his intermediate equations by a complicated expression, which, in certain circumstances, could become zero. In the case, however, when this expression becomes equal to zero, Einstein’s proof does not hold, and Friedmann realized that this opened an entire new world of time‑dependent universes; expanding, collapsing, and pulsating ones. Thus, Einstein’s original gravity equation was correct, and changing it was a mistake. Much later, when I was discussing cosmological problems with Einstein, he remarked that the introduction of the cosmological term was the biggest blunder he ever made in his life. But the blunder rejected by Einstein, and the cosmological constant, denoted by the Greek letter λ, rears its ugly head again and again and again.[159]

George Gamow’s earth‑shattering revolution in scientific philosophy, introduced hair‑raising questions about the direction of science. An event of singularity, such as the Big Bang, is discordant heresy and an alien flavor to the fine palate of philosophers of science. Singularity introduces baggage

that could smack of miracles and the supernatural. There is absolutely neither room nor tolerance for such adulterated voodoo rubbish in the pristine world of the laboratory. Yet in spite of the inherent and abhorrent resistance to this Trojan Horse, the Big Bang has planted a firm foothold in the rigorous world of science. What caused the scientific community to buy into the Big Bang Theory with its anti‑scientific baggage of a beginning? Simply speaking — the cold hard facts. After all, in the world of science, opinions do not count… facts do! If all the big shots already admitted to a universe that expands as it moves forward into the future, then by the same logic it must shrink as we zoom into the past. The only logical conclusion is that it must have started somewhere in the deep past ex nihilo. Hence the Big Bang! In light of the latest advances in the sciences, it stands out clearly that the text of Genesis is the only cosmogony in which the events resemble the acceptable scientific accounts for cosmic origins. Rather than debunk the premise of Genesis, science, as it moves ever closer to the truth, the closer it aligns itself with the Biblical narrative. Gamow’s theory of the Big Bang is closely modeled after the script of Genesis.

The following etymological acrobatics may amount to nothing more than an exercise in futility and a mere curiosity, but still a haunting mirage worthy of note. Though it all ties in very neatly, certainly, this is not the kind of stuff with which one goes to the farm to buy eggs… but, while we are on the subject, the symbolism behind this piquant tidbit of trivia is simply too juicy and too good to let it slip between the cracks: Interestingly, the term Big Bang contains two words, both of which start with the letter “B.“ The first two words in Genesis also start with the letter “B“ — Bereshit Bara, which translates as: In the beginning God created. Furthermore, the singular event known as Beginning, which is the very first concept in the Bible, also begins with the letter “B.“ As shocking as it may sound, rather than undermine or supplant the Biblical story of Creation, the Big Bang is the agent of deconstruction of the theories and cosmogonies that clash with the Genesis account.

Enough voodoo; back to science. A more recent admission by a Nobel Laureate in high‑energy physics, Dr. Steven Weinberg, highlights the excruciating birth pangs of a dynamic universe in the scientific community. In his classic book, The First Three Minutes, in which Dr. Weinberg describes the initial events following the Big Bang, he writes: Some cosmologists are philosophically attracted to the oscillating model of the universe, especially because, like the steady‑state eternal model, it nicely avoids the problem of Genesis.[160] Now, we all too well know what the problem with Genesis is all about. As suggested by the title of his book, the brilliant Nobel laureate, Dr. Weinberg portrays what happened immediately after the Big Bang. Much like Dr. Weinberg, the Genesis account also covers the events following the Big Bang. Then Genesis takes a step backward charting territory where Dr. Weinberg, Dr. Einstein and their colleagues would not dare tread — it also reveals who lit the match that triggered the Big Bang. How did scientists ever blunder into this mess

where the borderline between science and theology is so fuzzy that it is nearly imperceptible? Gerald Schroeder is a former professor of nuclear physics at M.I.T. and member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. In his book, The Science of God, Dr. Schroeder neatly captures the stupendous contradictions exposed by modern physics: Bizarre as it sounds, miracles, once beyond the pale of an enlightened society, now have a scientific basis. Quantum Mechanics has changed our understanding of nature. Not only are miracles theoretically possible according to QM, but they are also observed regularly in physics labs. In the pristine air of academia, they are referred to as insufficiently caused events, events that can be observed but that cannot be explained by the conditions that preceded them. That’s the age‑old Biblical definition of a miracle.[161]

With the advent of Quantum Mechanics, it has been rigorously proven, through countless repeated experiments, that identical initial conditions do not produce identical end results. Quantum Mechanics, mind you, is a veritable and rigorous science. If indeed, your cellphone, remote control, wireless Internet and a host of other electronic gadgets function as expected, then blame it all on QM. This can only mean one thing — we reside in a world where reality is fuzzy, and fuzziness is real… a world where miracles are mundane events… a world where the unpredictable is indeed the predictable! Heavens! The world has gone mad! First it was Einstein who threw us into a spin with his mind‑bending notion that light, is not only capable of bending around corners, but that it is also comprised of both waves and particles at the same time. Not having had a chance to catch our breath and recover from Einstein’s lightning rod, we are hit by the Quantum Mechanics curve ball with its fuzzy unpredictability. Still stunned by the cascade of ethereal events and groping our way through the thick fog of

surrealism, we are recoiling from yet another boomerang — against all odds, the Big Bang Theory is universally accepted by an overwhelming majority of respectable and traditional scientists. So where do we go from here? Before we go any further with this surrealistic script, we must once again return to Einstein the magician. More than anyone else in this era, it is Einstein who opened our eyes to the realization that the universe we inhabit is not what we thought it was. With his famous formula, E = mc², Einstein demonstrated for us the principle of interchangeability of mass and energy. His Law of Relativity exposed the eerie property of light in which it is capable of bending around corners. He won the Nobel Prize for introducing the concept of photons — mediator between the wave and particle nature of light. With the magic of photons, Einstein the magician ushered us into the twilight zone where light is comprised of both particles and waves at the same time. That’s not all folks! The best is yet to come, if we only give it enough time. This brings us to the most elusive element of all the magic embedded in Einstein’s Law of Relativity — time. Einstein postulated that time is not the good old innocent constant we perceived it to be. Time, according to Einstein is relative to space, gravity and motion and not an independent free agent. If this sounds too crazy, then let me assure you that time and again this has been proven to be the reality in which we live. Indeed, Einstein literally turned the world on its ear. Most people failed to grasp the esoteric scientific innovations advanced by the absent‑minded professor, which redefined the world they inhabited. Nonetheless, the hoi polloi embraced him wholeheartedly and could not get enough of the genius, who opened a window into a bizarre and haunted

universe. Few episodes illustrate this absurd reality more than the premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. While the cameras on the red carpet flashed, Charlie Chaplin turned to Einstein and whispered in his ear: “The people applaud me because everybody understands me, and they applaud you because no one understands you!“[162]

*** Around the time Einstein turned 50, he began to articulate more clearly — in various essays, interviews and letters — his deepening appreciation of his belief in God, although a rather impersonal affinity. One particular evening in 1929, the year he turned 50, captures Einstein’s middle‑age deistic faith. He and his wife were at a dinner party in Berlin when a guest expressed belief in astrology. Einstein ridiculed the notion as pure superstition. Another guest stepped in and similarly disparaged religion. Belief in God, he insisted, was likewise a superstition. At this point the host tried to silence him by invoking the fact that even Einstein harbored religious beliefs. “It isn’t possible!“ the skeptical guest said, turning towards Einstein to ask if he was, in fact, religious. “Yes, you can call it that,“ Einstein replied calmly. “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.“ Shortly after his 50th birthday, Einstein also gave a remarkable interview in which he was more revealing than he had ever been about his

religious sensibility. It was with George Sylvester Viereck, who had been born in Germany, moved to America as a child and then spent his life writing gaudily erotic poetry, interviewing great men and expressing his complex love for his fatherland. Einstein assumed Viereck was Jewish. In fact, Viereck proudly traced his lineage to the family of the Kaiser, and he would later become a Nazi sympathizer who was jailed in America during World War II for being a German propagandist.

Viereck began by asking Einstein whether he considered himself a German or a Jew. “It’s possible to be both,“ replied Einstein. “Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.“ Should Jews try to assimilate? “We Jews have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies in order to conform.“ Do you believe in God? “I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.“ Is this a Jewish concept of God? “I am a determinist. I do not believe in free will. Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes

his own life. I reject that doctrine. In that respect I am not a Jew.“ Is this Spinoza’s God? “I am fascinated by Spinoza’s pantheism, but I admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things.“ Do you believe in immortality? “No. And one life is enough for me.“

Einstein tried to express these feelings clearly, both for himself and all of those who wanted a simple answer from him about his faith. While spending time in his country estate at Caputh in the summer of 1930, amid his sailing and ruminations, Einstein composed a credo, “What I Believe,“ that he recorded for a human‑rights group and later published. It concluded with an explanation of what he meant when he called himself religious: The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed‑out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly — this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.“[163]

*** In response to a letter from a child, who asked if scientists pray, Einstein wrote: Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of a man.[164] In 1929, Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein sent Einstein a telegraph: Do you believe in God? Einstein replied: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God, who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.“[165]

Though Einstein was known to harbor no affinity towards religion, he did not think that religious faith was a sign of stupidity, nor unbelief a sign of intelligence. He was quoted describing religious thought as, an attempt to find an out where there is no door.[166] The first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben‑Gurion, was once asked if he believed in God, he replied: I once talked to Einstein. Even he, with his great formula about energy and mass, agreed that there must be something behind the energy. [167]

In the 1920s during a stint with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, Einstein organized seminars of young talent. A young student named Esther Salaman was one of the participants. She recalls a conversation with Einstein from those days in which he stated: I want to know how God created the universe. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.[168] It was the same Einstein who later in life remarked that the riddle, which riveted his attention more than any other, was whether God truly exercised any choice in the creation of the universe. While the very essence of such deliberation denotes tenuous religious affinities, it nonetheless connotes Einstein’s underlying persistence in search of a deity commanding the cosmos. The famed author Upton Sinclair spent time with Einstein and his wife during their extended visit to California in the winter of 1931. Sinclair recalls a brief but rather momentous exchange when the Einsteins visited Professor Graham Laing and his wife. Mrs. Laing summoned enough chutzpah to query Einstein about his views on God. Elsa, Einstein’s wife intercepted this curved ball with a declaration: “My husband has the greatest mind in the world.“ “Yes,“ replied Mrs. Laing, “but even he doesn’t know everything!“ From the look upon Einstein’s face, it was quite apparent to those present that he heartily agreed.[169]

*** On many occasions throughout most his life, Einstein was consistent in rejecting the charge that he was an atheist. In fact, Einstein tended to be more critical of debunkers, who seemed to lack humility or a sense of awe, than of the faithful. “The fanatical atheists,“ he wrote in a letter, “are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who — in their grudge against traditional religion as the opium of the masses — cannot hear the music of the spheres.“ Einstein later explained his view of the relationship between science and religion at a conference at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. The realm of science, he said, was to ascertain what was the case, but not evaluate human thoughts and actions about what should be the case. Religion had the reverse mandate. Yet the endeavors worked together at times. “Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding,“ he said. “This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion.“ The talk got front‑page news coverage, and his pithy conclusion became famous. “The situation may be expressed by an image — science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.“[170] But there was one religious concept, Einstein went on to say, that science could not accept — a deity who could meddle at whim in the events of his creation. “The main source of the present‑day conflicts between the spheres of religion and of science lies in this concept of a personal God,“ he argued.

Einstein was steadfast in his deterministic views. “Human beings in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions,“ Einstein declared in a statement to a Spinoza Society in 1932. It was a concept he drew also from his reading of Schopenhauer. “Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity,“ he wrote in his famous credo. “Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills,’ has been a real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance.“ This determinism appalled some friends such as Max Born, who thought it completely undermined the foundations of human morality. “I cannot understand how you can combine an entirely mechanistic universe with the freedom of the ethical individual,“ he wrote Einstein. “To me a deterministic world is quite abhorrent. Maybe you are right, and the world is that way, as you say. But at the moment, it does not really look like it in physics — and even less so in the rest of the world.“ For Born, quantum uncertainty provided an escape from this dilemma. Like some philosophers of the time, he latched onto the indeterminacy that was inherent in Quantum Mechanics to resolve “the discrepancy between ethical freedom and strict natural laws.“ Born explained the issue to his wife Hedwig, who was always eager to debate Einstein. She told Einstein that, like him, she was “unable to believe in a dice‑playing God.“ In other words, unlike her husband, she rejected Quantum Mechanics’ view that the universe was based on uncertainties and probabilities. But, she added, “nor am I able to imagine that you believe — as Max has told me — that your complete rule of law means that everything is predetermined, for example whether I am going to

have my child inoculated.“ It would mean, she pointed out, the end of all moral behavior.

But Einstein’s answer was to look upon free will as something that was useful, indeed necessary, for a civilized society, because it caused people to take responsibility for their own actions. “I am compelled to act as if free will existed,“ he explained, “because if I wish to live in a civilized society I must act responsibly.“ He could even hold people responsible for their good or evil, since that was both a pragmatic and sensible approach to life, while still believing intellectually that everyone’s actions were predetermined. “I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime,“ he said, “but I prefer not to take tea with him.“ The foundation of morality, he believed, was rising above the merely personal to live in a way that benefited humanity. He dedicated himself to the cause of world peace and, after encouraging the U.S. to build the atom bomb to defeat Hitler, worked diligently to find ways to control such weapons. He raised money to help fellow refugees, spoke out for racial justice and publicly stood up for those who were victims of McCarthyism. And he tried to live with humor, humility, simplicity and geniality even as he became one of the most famous faces on the planet. For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God’s existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence. The fact that the world was comprehensible, that it followed laws, was worthy of awe.[171]

***

As the parade of progress in the physical sciences marches forward, it becomes abundantly clear that the primary and ultimate goal of physics is to demonstrate and explain how the various forces and events in nature work in unison. This harmony provides our universe with the underlying stability without which the world we live in would collapse into chaos. Isaac Newton was the first philosopher in the annals of science ever to envision this supreme objective. He introduced us to the force of gravity, which unites and explains the motion of all objects in the universe — from a grain of sand to a falling apple to the trajectory of planets and galaxies — under one umbrella. This trailblazing breakthrough opened the door for James Clerk Maxwell to leverage Newton’s model for gravity and apply it to unite the forces of electricity and magnetism. Rushing through the same door, Albert Einstein took a major leap forward by neatly placing in one single bucket the elements of time, space and gravity. But Einstein was not quite satisfied with this arrangement. His intuition and insight told him that all the natural forces, elements and events should and could coalesce under the roof of a single formula. The supreme law — which Einstein envisioned would unite all the natural forces — he labeled, The Unified Field Theory. For the last thirty years of his life Einstein occupied himself with little else but this colossal challenge. In pursuit of this effort, he labored incessantly and mobilized the greatest physicists and mathematicians of the day… but came up empty.

*** The world renowned paleontologist, Professor Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University once observed: Science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God’s superintendence of nature.[172] Einstein’s instincts, however, led him on a different path than the one traversed by Gould. Though both were known to exercise austere atheism, Einstein’s scientific brilliance did not hinder his ethereal instincts and pursuits. No matter how fascinating and awe‑inspiring the plumbing of the universe may be, most scientists who explore the nuts and bolts of nature either fail or ignore to recognize purpose in God’s handiwork. The same does not quite apply to Albert Einstein. The more Einstein probed into the plumbing of the universe, the more he recognized purpose and intelligence behind the workings of nature. In an essay entitled, Science Resurrects God, that saw light in the Wall Street Journal on December 24, 1997, Jim Holt quotes Albert Einstein as having stated: “The more I study science, the more I believe in God.“[173] Most likely it is not precisely the Biblical God of Abraham Einstein had in mind; probably not even the God of Mother Teresa. Nonetheless, in the course of his brilliant pursuit of scientific truth, the atheist Einstein indeed found God. From all that is known about this genius, it is beyond a doubt that he arrived at the inevitable recognition of a Supreme Being, who pulls the strings that made our universe what it is. Expressing a sentiment similar to that of Einstein, albeit richer in prose, declares the Psalmist:

The heavens declare the Creator’s glory and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.[174]

Have we arrived at a bend in the road where we find Einstein and the Psalmist humming the same tune? In his Wall Street Journal article, Jim Holt addresses this issue: If the scientific findings of the 19th century eroded belief in God, those of the 20th century have had just the opposite evidential force, although few intellectuals outside science have come to terms with this. Traditional arguments for the existence of God, which seemed outmoded a century ago, have had new life breathed into them. In this century, however, it has been discovered — much to the surprise of scientists like Einstein — that the universe hasn’t always been around. Rather, it suddenly exploded into being some 15 billion years ago in a flash of light and energy. The abrupt emergence of a world out of nothingness with the big bang bears an uncanny resemblance to the Genesis command: Fiat lux. Contemporary physics thus proves that indeed, the universe had a beginning.[175]

In his article, Jim Holt concludes that advances in the sciences at the end of the 20th century brought scientists back to the fold of faith. In a recent survey conducted by Nature magazine, 40% of all scientists very much believe in a personal God — and not just some metaphysical abstraction, but a deity who takes an active interest in our affairs and hears our prayers: The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.[176]

With the advent of the Big Bang Theory along with other recent scientific breakthroughs, God seems to enjoy a big boost in ratings at the dawn of the 21st century. While Einstein’s God may not be quite the same God with whom Abraham cavorted, another giant of physics of the 20th century, Stephen Hawking, seems to defer to a higher authority. In the closing statement of his masterwork, A Brief History of Time, the renowned British physicist, Stephen Hawking, dares to dream about a time in the future when the Unified Field Theory will no longer remain a mystery. The day when man deciphers the unifying elements of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, prophesied Hawking, will be the day when we will have the answer to the ultimate question: Why is it that we and the universe exist? Concludes Hawking: If we find the answer to the Unified Field Theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for we would know the mind of God.[177]

*** In the 21st century, the Unified Field Theory — which eluded Einstein’s toil and wits — seems to point in the direction of a Creator. When all is said and done, what is the essence of the elusive Unified Field Theory? The idea that all the various entities of the universe coalesce under ONE umbrella, as Hawking perceived — it all emanates from the mind of ONE God! Would Einstein concur? We might never find out… but we can only hope that Einstein’s quest to unify all the forces, elements and events of nature will sooner than later come to fruition… for then…

We will know the mind of God!

*** On April 17, 1955, a 76‑year‑old Albert Einstein experienced internal bleeding caused by the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm,

which had previously been reinforced surgically by Dr. Rudolph Nissen in 1948. As he checked into the hospital, Einstein took along the draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the State of Israel’s seventh anniversary, but he did not live long enough to complete it. By the time of Einstein’s death, surgical abdominal aortic aneurysm repair was technically possible but still very uncertain. The surgeon who saw Einstein in Princeton, Dr. Frank Glenn of New York Hospital, proposed surgery. Einstein was in his seventies and he elected to die peacefully rather than undergo surgery. “I want to go when I want,“ Einstein told his physicians. He told his secretary Helen Dukas, “I can die without the help of the doctors.“ He also told her that it was “tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share. It is time to go. I will do it elegantly.“[178] Einstein died in Princeton Hospital early the next morning at the age of 76, having continued to work until near the end. During the autopsy, the pathologist of Princeton Hospital, Thomas Stoltz Harvey, removed Einstein’s brain for preservation without the permission of his family, in the hope that the neuroscience of the future would be able to discover what made Einstein so intelligent. Einstein’s remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered at an undisclosed location. In his lecture at Einstein’s memorial, nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness... There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn.“[179]

*** A note, dubbed the God letter and penned a year before Einstein’s death, contains the famed physicist’s views on religion, the Bible and the concept of God. In a letter Einstein wrote to the Jewish philosopher Erik Gutkind, he expresses thoughts far removed from his balanced and objective opinions on theology expressed heretofore: The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. For me, no interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything chosen about them. [180]

In light of Einstein’s numerous favorable observations on theology throughout his life, could this broadside aimed at the Bible, religion, Judaism and God be the defiant musings of an embittered old man facing the angel of death, or truly his final verdict on the subject?

The caustic diatribe uttered in old age stands in sharp contrast to the convictions Einstein exhibited in a conversation with one Prince Hubertos of Lowenstein before the Second World War: “There are people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.“[181] Unlike Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell or George Bernard Shaw, Einstein — except for the views vented in the God Letter just prior to his death — never felt the urge to denigrate those who believed in God; instead, he tended to denigrate atheists: What separates me from most so‑called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos, which I with my limited human mind am able to recognize.[182] Only an absent‑minded professor can unleash heaps of bamboozled obfuscations and perennially remain an object of veneration and adulation. As for the rest of us, thank God that some of us still believe in God; otherwise we would all be as discombobulated as Herr Professor Dr. Einstein.

Postscript on Einstein’s conception of God Dr. Andrew Goldfinger has a PhD in theoretical physics and a Master’s degree in counseling. He is a principal staff physicist at the Applied Physics Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Goldfinger has lectured internationally on the interface of science and Judaism and is the author of a book entitled, Thinking About Creation: Eternal Torah and Modern Physics. The discussion about Einstein and God would not be complete without the excellent essay[183] by Dr. Goldfinger entitled, Why am I not Bothered? The great physicist Albert Einstein was a very smart man. Yet there was a part of physics he could not understand, and this bothered him to the end of his days. I am not nearly as smart. But this same aspect of physics doesn’t bother me at all. Why is this? The late 19th century was a very interesting time for physics, as it was for the world in general. Most scientists felt that almost everything in the world was understood, and many other great thinkers thought the same. Mankind was about to perfect the world and the future would be one of universal peace and prosperity. Then came the 20th century and with it events like the Titanic — it couldn’t sink! and World War I — what was that about anyway? Ever since the Tower of Babel, whenever mankind gets too haughty the Master of the Universe lets us know Who is in charge. While mankind as a whole was getting shaken up by realities beyond its control, the world of physics was experiencing its own similar revolution. Ironically, the revolution was started by Einstein himself in 1905, and greatly accelerated in the 1920s. It changed scientists’ picture of the world so deeply that all knowledge in the field of physics before this time belongs to what is called the Classical Era, to distinguish it from Modern Physics. The theory that initiated the era of Modern Physics is called Quantum Mechanics! It describes the behavior of very small things, and physics students learning it for the first time find it as disturbing as did Einstein.

Here is the problem. Suppose I have a rifle and I am shooting at a target. I am not doing very well. Nearby is a Navy SEAL sharpshooter who takes over for me, and he hits the bullseye every time. The reason is simple: He aims better. My classical intuition tells me that the direction of the rifle barrel should determine precisely where the bullet will go. So far so good — there is nothing disturbing here. But suppose instead of a rifle and a bullet we use a tiny gun that fires the submicroscopic particles called electrons. Physicists can actually do this in a laboratory. In this case, we find that our classical intuition does not work at all. No matter how precisely we aim, we cannot get the bullet to go where we want. In fact, the more precisely we know where the gun barrel is pointing, the less we are able to predict where the bullet will go! Does this sound crazy? In Classical Physics, behavior is determined by what we know about the situation. The more we know, the better we can predict what will happen. This is not true in Quantum Mechanics. In the world of very small things, events are random. No matter how much we know, we can NEVER predict what will happen. In fact, the more we know, the less we can forecast about where the electron will go. This disturbing fact is given a rather fancy name: The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Einstein could not accept this. He famously complained: “I cannot believe that God plays at dice!“ He saw physics as the ultimate reality with God Himself subject to the laws of Nature. As he once put it: “I study physics to see how much freedom God had in creating the world. How could the laws of physics not determine what will happen?“ This indeterminacy did not fit Einstein’s worldview. To a Torah Jew, however, things are quite different. Physics is a creation of the Master of the Universe and bends to His Will, not the other way around. This is why Quantum Mechanics does not disturb me. Just because man cannot predict what will happen, does not mean that things aren’t under the control of the Creator. Dr. Einstein was correct that God does not play at dice, but God does decide what happens when man plays at dice. The fact that neither I nor any physicist in the world can predict the future is not new to me nor is it in any way disturbing. I recognize Who the Master is. Does this make me feel humble and incomplete? Absolutely! But I am happy to be totally dependent upon my Father in Heaven rather than an uncaring physical world.

A debate about whether Einstein believed in God would not be complete unless we recounted the following episode: Einstein biographer Ronald Clarke quoted Einstein as saying the one historical figure he would have loved to meet is the Prophet Moses, so he could ask him the following question:

“ Have you ever thought that your people would obey your law for so long? ”[184]

Yaldei Teheran Over one and a half million Polish citizens, about a third of them Jews, streamed into the Russian countryside soon after Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland in the autumn of 1939. About a million of these Polish refugees were deported to do penance in the form of slave labor in the Soviet Gulag. Another half a million either fled or were deported in the direction of the Asian lands under Soviet control — Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.[185] Those who fled south sought lands with warmer climates so as to increase their chances of survival. What these refugees did not realize is that while the southern regions may shield them from freezing, lands with warmer climates were plagued by epidemics that were no less devastating than the Siberian frost. The Polish refugees crowded in the big cities like Tashkent, Samarkand and Ashkabad. Many of these refugees found labor in factories and farming collectives known as kolkhoz. Though their lot was not as bitter as their brethren incarcerated in the Gulag, still they did not end up as happy campers in their places of refuge. Thousands died of malnutrition and the devastating plagues raging in that part of the world during the war years. Children were the most vulnerable group among the refugees. Boys and girls in tatters begging for food and alms was a common sight in the big cities of Soviet Asia during the war years. Many of the children were orphaned, stranded at the mercy of the streets and the goodwill of the locals.

In the summer of 1941, a second wave of Polish refugees — considerably more massive than the one that arrived towards the end of 1939 — swarmed into Soviet Asia. After the surprise German offensive on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Stalin joined the Allied camp in the fight against Hitler. As part of a deal brokered by Churchill, Stalin agreed to cooperate with the Polish Government‑in‑Exile residing in London headed by General Sikorski. The agreement resulted in a general amnesty for all Polish subjects incarcerated in the Soviet Union. About one third of the million Polish prisoners in the Siberian Gulag died of malnutrition, frost and horrific slave labor conditions during twenty months of incarceration. Upon their release, more than half a million freed Poles — among then a substantial number of Jews — trekked south in search of warmer climates in the regions of Soviet Asia. One of the provisions in the Polish‑Soviet agreement was to set up a Polish Army on Soviet territory comprised of Polish nationals. General Anders was appointed to command the Polish Army in exile. The Soviets also agreed to assist Polish officials in launching a relief effort for the multitude of Polish refugees roaming the countryside following the amnesty. As part of the relief effort, a network of 139 orphanages was established for Polish refugee children. Admission to an orphanage did not guarantee a ticket to happiness nor safety. Food and medicines were scarce, and many children died even after being admitted. To be sure, conditions prevailing in these orphanages were dreadful, but the abandoned children clawed their way in. All the drawbacks notwithstanding, an orphanage was by far a more appetizing option than roaming the streets exposed to disease famine and predators.

Though a large number of the orphans were Jewish, most of them were rejected by the orphanages for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was for purely anti‑Semitic sentiments. The few lucky Jewish children who managed to gain admission faced a hostile environment, in which they were frequently bullied, taunted, harassed and beaten by their peers; in many cases, their life was threatened. In order to alleviate this condition, an orphanage for Jewish children was established in Samarkand, but it could hardly accommodate the flood of needy Jewish orphans. Desperate for a lifeline, many of the Jewish children soon learned to bypass the barriers and managed to gain admission to the Polish orphanages by posing as Christians with crosses dangling from their necklace.[186] Once they posed as Christians, Jewish orphans were left with little choice but to blend and participate in mass and other Christian rituals. Coming from a strict Orthodox Jewish tradition, these kids resorted to subtle but effective tactics in a desperate attempt to cling to the faith of their forefathers in an alien and hostile milieu. At twilight, a handful would gather clandestinely to conduct the Mincha & Maariv afternoon and evening services. When participating in mass, Jewish kids were subjected to a profound trauma praying to foreign gods. To get around this impasse, they pretended to pray along, but faked it with a mumbo‑jumbo of spicy Yiddish aphorisms. In one Samarkand orphanage, emulating a Catholic Christian prayer, Jewish children mumbled: Oy Tatiana. Kachke Marina. Schmendrick kaduchess. Kish mir in tuchess.[187] Loosely translated from the Yiddish, the mock prayer sounds something like this: Oy Tatiana. Old duck Marina. Fat old Lass. Kiss my ass.

For all the abuse they suffered at the hands of their Polish peers, the orphaned Jewish kids experienced profound comic relief venting out in this manner. Their resourcefulness, cunning, keen survival instincts and resilience notwithstanding, most of the Jewish children embedded within the network of Polish orphanages succumbed to assimilation and are forever lost to the Jewish tribe. The kids who tenaciously clung to their Jewish traditions and identity against the odds, eventually found their way back to the fold in one of the most bizarre twists of World War II. As agreed later between Stalin and Sikorski, the Polish Army in exile, under the command of General Wladyslaw Anders, eventually evacuated to Iran. The initial contingent of about 31,500 soldiers, which left in March‑April 1942, was evacuated along with some 12,500 civilians. The rest of the Polish Army was evacuated in the summer of 1942.[188] Thousands of children from the orphanages were evacuated in the summer transports.[189] Certainly, the Poles did all they could to bar Jews from evacuating with the Polish Army. As news of bias against the Jews rang in the western press throughout England and America, General Anders got an earful about this anti‑Semitic attitude from his superiors at the Polish Government in London. Only with his superiors and the western press breathing down his neck, did the Polish General hasten to intervene and include nearly a thousand Jewish orphans among the civilian evacuees, who left in the summer of 1942.[190]

Boarding ships at the Soviet Caspian port of Krasnovodsk, the evacuees sailed to the Iranian port city of Pahlavi. A camp for 24,000 evacuated Polish citizens was set up in Teheran. A separate camp was allocated to accommodate the Jewish refugees. With the help of the Jewish Agency in Teheran, an orphanage for Jewish children was established, in which all of their health, welfare and educational needs were addressed. As a gesture of goodwill, the Anders’ Polish Army loaned seven Jewish soldiers to assist with the organization and management of the Jewish orphanage.[191] David Launberg, a former officer in the Polish Army, who was appointed director of the Jewish orphanage, describes the human debris that was placed in his care: Their condition was pathetic. The children looked like walking skeletons. They were famished, pale and frightened. Their eyes reflected the terror of hunted animals. Many of them were still stricken with the terrible diseases that took a devastating toll on their family and friends back in the Soviet Union. They were transported in cattle cars to locations and cities, whose names they never heard and could not pronounce. Barely teenagers, these living corpses have witnessed the ravages of war, horrible deaths of so many of their friends and relatives, the terror of persecution, a sequence of expulsions and endless wanderings across Siberia all the way to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.[192]

One of the urgent tasks of the Jewish counselors at the Teheran Jewish orphanage was to seek out the hidden Jewish children among the Polish refugees. Their mission was aggravated by the Polish clergy; whose agenda was to convert as many Jewish souls to Christianity as possible; they were not about to give up the treasure of Jewish souls that fell into their lap like a ripe plum. The hostile attitude of the Polish authorities, counselors and children at the orphanages further frustrated this already difficult effort. The Polish authorities placed the needs of the Teheran Jewish orphanage at the bottom of the list of their priorities. The Jewish children

received the leftovers. At times packages received from American Jews were deliberately not delivered to their destination, but rather distributed among the Polish children. The Jewish children, however, were not denied; they were pampered by a gallery of Jewish organizations that looked after all their needs and then some. In this effort the Jewish Agency was aided by the JOINT, Youth Aliya and Hadassah. Last but not least was the warm and loving care doted upon the orphans by the Teheran Jewish community. The Jewish orphans arrived in Teheran in the midst of preparations for the High Holidays of 1942. On the Eve of Yom Kippur, the Jewish community of Teheran welcomed the children at the synagogue. As the orphans arrived they were greeted with loving hugs and then showered with gifts, which warmed their hearts following the bitter adventures in Russia and Soviet Middle Asia. Members of the community then accompanied the children to their seats and as one big integrated family they sat through the Kol Nidrei service. Mr. Nissimtov, a Jewish pharmacist from Teheran, supplied the Jewish orphanage with all their pharmaceutical needs free of charge.[193] Many of these children owe their eyesight to the generosity of Mr. Nissimtov, who donated an abundant supply of the precious ointment to treat trachoma, a devastating contagious eye disease that reached near epidemic proportions in those days. Pharmaceuticals were only one of the benefits bestowed upon the Jewish orphans by their Persian brethren. The Jews of Teheran under the leadership of the philanthropist, Aziz El‑Kanyan, enthusiastically enlisted to the aid of the orphans. Carloads of food, blankets and clothes made their way daily from the Jewish Community of Teheran to the orphanage.

A twelve‑year‑old orphan, Elimelech Kanar fell ill and was hospitalized in Teheran. Representatives of the Jewish community paid daily visits to his bedside and pampered him with all the goodies his little heart desired. More than any other visitor, it was Mr. El‑Kanyan, who looked after Elimelech as he would after his own son. After settling in Eretz Yisrael, Kanar rose in the ranks and eventually was appointed deputy mayor of the city of Petah Tikva. On January 25, 1981, Kanar rewarded Aziz El‑Kanyan for his good deeds by naming a street in the city of Petah Tikva in his honor.[194]

*** Tzipporah Sharett, the wife of the future Prime Minister of Israel, Moshe Sharett, arrived directly from Eretz Yisrael to the aid of the Jewish children in Teheran. She took immense personal interest in each one of the nearly thousand children. Tzipporah worked tirelessly to upgrade their living conditions and boost their morale, which was shredded by bitter, degrading and dehumanizing ravages of war. She made a great effort not only to look after the welfare of the children, but also to provide them with schooling, cultural activities, entertainment, and above all, an atmosphere of respect and dignity. As representative of the Jews of Eretz Yisrael, Mrs. Sharett imbued the hearts and minds of the young refugees with a sense of mission, pride and love for the land of their forefathers. With the help of Henrietta Szold, Tzipporah lobbied diligently for the transfer of the group to Eretz Yisrael. Their efforts bore fruit. Mrs. Sharett departed Teheran at the end of January 1943, only after seeing off the group of nearly a thousand Jewish orphans on their long journey to Eretz Yisrael.

The simplest and shortest way to travel to Eretz Yisrael from Iran is by bus via Iraq, but the life of the Polish Jewish orphans was anything but simple. The Jewish Agency via the good offices of the British authorities lobbied with the Iraqi government to grant passage for the transport of Jewish orphans through its territory. The Iraqi government was not about to encourage Aliya of nearly a thousand Jewish children to Eretz Yisrael. Unable to budge the Iraqi government from its position, the Jewish agency decided to arrange the transfer by boat. The 871 children were escorted by their counselors and a contingent of adult Polish Jewish refugees. All together the transport consisted of about a thousand Jewish refugees. The transport was about to depart from Teheran on January 1, 1943, when a last‑minute snag nearly scuttled the whole project. The Polish military authorities demanded that the seven counselors loaned to the Jewish orphanage return to duty. Shaul Avigur — director of Aliya institutions — acted with alacrity and whisked the seven Jewish orphanage counselors to Baghdad via Basra. In Baghdad the seven were received by Enzo Sereni, who in cooperation with the Baghdad Jewish Underground Movement arranged to smuggle them into Eretz Yisrael.[195] The 871 Jewish orphans along with their escort traveled by train to the city of Ahvaz where they lodged overnight in the Persian Army stables. From Ahvaz the children were ferried by trucks to the port city of Abadan, where they were warmly received by the Jewish employees of the Solel‑Boneh British Army construction complex. Those who witnessed the event were not likely to ever relinquish the precious memory of a unique moment in Jewish history.

***

The oldest, largest and most famous Jewish community of India resided in the city of Cochin. Initially, Jews settled in Cochin as early as 3,000 years ago during the times of King Solomon.[196] The local Cochin community was established by merchants King Solomon dispatched to India to purchase precious gems for the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem.[197] Since 1948, most of the Cochin Jews have emigrated to Israel; today less than 30 Jewish souls reside in the once teeming and vibrant community that numbered in the thousands. Throughout their long sojourn in India, rarely have the Jews encountered anti‑Semitism, strife or violence from their Hindu neighbors. However, beginning in the year 1500, Cochin came under Portuguese occupation, which lasted for 163 years. That was the darkest period for the Jews of Cochin. Under the oppressive Portuguese occupation, the Jewish quarter was plundered and destroyed; synagogues were ransacked, and sacred Jewish books were burned.[198] In more recent times, the most violent incident in which innocent Jewish blood was shed on Indian soil occurred in November 2008, when Moslem terrorists wreaked havoc on the city of Mumbai. Among other major sites, the terrorists also stormed into the local Chabad House and murdered the director, Rabbi Gabi Holtzberg and his pregnant wife Rivky, along with four of their guests.

About 250 years ago, a sizeable and thriving Jewish community emerged in the city of Bombay, today known as Mumbai. This flourishing cosmopolitan port city offered the Jews new economic and trading opportunities. Most of the 4,000 Jews residing in India today are centered in Mumbai. In 1832, the president of the Jewish community in Baghdad, David Sassoon,[199] fled from the tyranny and oppression of Daud Pasha, the last Mamluk ruler of Iraq. David Sassoon along with a large following settled in Bombay, India. Within a few years, the Baghdadis, as they came to be known, were called the Jewish Merchants of Arabia, Inhabitants and Residents in Bombay. The Sassoons traded in cotton, yarn, and opium with China; they also set up cotton mills and other industries in Bombay. The Sassoons became the Rothschilds of the East and donated huge funds for philanthropic causes. Many of today’s famous Mumbai landmarks can be attributed to David Sassoon and his descendants. In the mid‑nineteenth century, David Sassoon constructed the David Sassoon Mechanics Institute, the David Sassoon Library and Reading Room, the David Sassoon Industrial and Reformatory Institution, the Clock Tower at the Victoria Gardens, and the Statue of the Prince Consort at the Victoria and Albert Museum — now the Bhau Daji Lad Museum.

In 1875, David’s son, Albert, built Bombay’s first wet dock — the Sassoon Docks at Colaba. In 1884, Sir Jacob Sassoon, David’s grandson, built the Knesseth Eliyahu Synagogue at Fort, in close proximity to today’s Oberoi and the Taj Mahal hotels. Even more significant — and a fact rarely known — is that in 1911 Sir Jacob Sassoon was the largest individual donor to the Gateway of India, the landmark of India, which is just a few steps away from the Taj Mahal hotel. The Gateway of India was constructed to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to India in December 1911.[200] Victor Sassoon (1881-1961), a great‑grandson of David Sassoon, in the tradition of his forebears, contributed greatly to the development of industry and trade in India. He was also a renowned philanthropist and served as leader of the Jewish community of India. After 1933 Victor Sassoon worked tirelessly in aiding Jews fleeing from Nazi atrocities.[201] In the 1940s Victor Sassoon controlled a vast real estate empire in the Chinese port city of Shanghai. At the time he was known as the king of real estate in Shanghai.[202] It was mostly thanks to Victor Sassoon’s ardent efforts and generous philanthropy that more than 20,000 European Jews were spared the horrors of the Holocaust and successfully resettled in Shanghai during the war years.

***

Now back to the saga of the 871 orphaned refugee Jewish children attempting to make their way from Persia to Eretz Yisrael. After the heartwarming welcome they received from their Jewish brethren in Abadan, the children were transported to the port city of Bander Shahpour in the Persian Gulf, where they boarded the freighter Donora. On January 23, 1943, after two weeks of sailing, they reached Karachi, which at the time was part of India. In Karachi, the transport was warmly greeted by a delegation from the Jewish community of Bombay. The head of the delegation, the wealthy philanthropist, Victor Sassoon requested of the organizers a list of all the Jewish orphans and their age. Three days later, ten trucks packed with new garments, including shoes and all accessories, for each one of the children reached the encampment. A festive morale‑boosting atmosphere prevailed as the garments were distributed on the spot. As the Jews from Bombay took leave of the children, the director of the orphanage, David Launberg profusely thanked Mr. Sassoon and his delegation for their kindhearted generosity. In his acknowledgement, Victor Sassoon invoked the age‑old Talmudic wisdom that all Israel stand surety for each other — kol Yisrael areiveim zeh la’zeh. These were not merely empty words, noted David Launberg, the wonderful Jews of Bombay traveled a thousand kilometers to bestow their loving‑kindness and generosity upon a collection of orphaned Jewish children from another part of the world, whom they never before met.[203]

Two weeks later, the children left Karachi heading into the Indian Ocean, which was crawling with German submarines and mines. To maximize the defensive posture against an assault by German submarines, Allied boats were ordered to travel in convoys. On numerous occasions, sirens were sounded; the children were rushed up to the deck and strapped to lifeboats while the captain sailed in zigzag to dodge enemy submarines. Once it cleared the Indian Ocean, the Donora then sailed around the Arabian Peninsula and through the Red Sea to the Egyptian port city of Suez. The children arrived at Suez on February 17, 1943, where they were greeted with great fanfare and enthusiasm by Jewish soldiers serving in the Palestinian divisions of the British Army. The soldiers were contacted in advance by officials in the Jewish Agency to prepare for the arrival of the orphans. The soldiers worked feverishly arranging a grand welcome for the orphans who knew nothing but misery since they fled Poland to Russia and then made their way from Soviet Middle Asia to Persia and now headed for Egypt on their way to Eretz Yisrael. The Jewish officers secured a huge warehouse and decorated it with blue‑and‑white flags and large banners welcoming the orphans. As the children disembarked from the boat, they were greeted by the Jewish soldiers, who embraced them with open arms. The smaller children were ferried upon the shoulders of the Jewish troops and all sang and danced their way to the grand welcoming ceremony at the decorated warehouse where the orphans were showered with love, gifts and sweets. One of the Jewish soldiers describes the event: Throughout the whole night we prepared bags of sweets and the canteen was emptied clean. The most touching moment was when the children appeared singing a Hebrew song whose words say that we are all children of our mother.[204]

***

To be sure, news that Jews were persecuted and hounded by Hitler’s invading armies reached the Yishuv in Eretz Yisrael. Yet, the information was fragmentary and at times contradictory. While the news aroused profound anxiety among the Jews of Eretz Yisrael, it failed to convey the true nature of the horrors facing European Jewry. After all, persecution and pogroms were not a rare occasion in Jewish history. Only in the latter half of 1942, reports transmitted to London from the Polish underground made it very clear to inhabitants of the Yishuv and the rest of the world that Hitler’s war against the Jews was no ordinary wave of pogroms. As more news and evidence streamed in from the continent, the full extent of the mass murder of European Jewry was no longer in doubt. Mass demonstrations and rallies were held by various organizations of the Yishuv with the hope of shaking the world’s conscience. The protests, hunger strikes and appeals, however, had little bearing on influencing Allied leaders to come to the aid of European Jewry. Jewish powerlessness was highlighted by the fact that even the minimum goal of lifting British restrictions on Jewish immigration into Eretz Yisrael could not be achieved by actions of the Yishuv on behalf of their brethren in Europe. In this atmosphere of helplessness, doom and gloom gripping the Yishuv, news of the arrival of hundreds of Jewish children from Poland, aroused profound emotions among the Jews of Eretz Yisrael. This collection of orphans became a symbol of the orphaned Jewish nation.

*** On February 18, 1943, after more than three years of persecution, wandering and exile, this crowd of emaciated tormented children reached the land of their forefathers. News of their arrival reverberated throughout Eretz Yisrael and electrified the Yishuv with a tremendous surge of emotions. When

the train carrying the children arrived in Rehovot, they were greeted at the train station by thousands of cheering people bearing flowers and colorful posters all the while waving blue and white flags. Among the crowds were delegations from schools, women’s organizations, and the rabbinate. The children were enchanted by the exotic landscape of Eretz Yisrael and marveled at the aroma of oranges.

In each settlement their train stopped along the way, the orphans were greeted warmly and showered with gifts and love. When the children reached their final destination at Atlit, they were interviewed by the full spectrum of the Yishuv’s political and religious hierarchy vying to adopt them. Aside from a couple of toddlers carried in the arms of their mothers, most of the 871 orphans were teenagers with some as young as seven and a few over twenty. The older ones were questioned about their background, upbringing, homes and family to determine whether to place them in a religious or secular environment. Though all of these children were born in Poland of Ashkenazi stock, they were forever branded as Yaldei Teheran — The Children of Teheran.

Over the years, Yaldei Teheran integrated into Israeli society and contributed more than their share to the homeland that adopted them back in February 1943. Many of them excelled and rose to positions of prominence in academia, the rabbinate, the military, business and the arts. Like members of a huge clan, the group remained a cohesive unit over the years and maintains active social contact. At a 1993 reunion in Jerusalem to mark the 50th anniversary of their arrival in Eretz Yisrael, one of these children addressed the gathering: Today, we have grown‑up children and grandchildren of our own… but we will always remain Yaldei Teheran.[205]

*** When Yaldei Teheran arrived in Eretz Yisrael, a pale, sad and frightened seven‑year‑old Avigdor Goldblut stepped off the train at Atlit escorted by his sister Ilana. The emaciated seven‑year‑old boy clung to his older sister, as he had done for the past four years during their travails in the steppes of Russia and the cities of Soviet Asia. However, as the story of his life unfolded, this frail and timid orphaned Polish Jewish boy eventually played a pivotal role in ensuring the existence of the Jewish State at a very perilous moment in its history.

Avigdor was born in 1936 in Lodz, Poland. When he was three years old, World War II broke out. With the advance of the Nazi invasion, his family fled to Russia. As they streamed eastward, German planes swooped down, unremittingly strafing them with machine gun fire; all the while raining down bombs on the columns of fleeing refugees. The Goldblut family along with 100,000 Jewish refugees from western Poland initially found refuge in Lvov[206] — a major Jewish center in the Soviet occupied part of Poland. All refugees were instructed to register with the Soviet authorities. In the summer of 1940, the Soviets ordered all refugees in the vicinity of Lvov to pack their bags and board trains that will take them to locations deep inside Russia. The directive explained that the refugees will be assigned to labor battalions in which they will be gainfully employed with full pay, benefits and excellent accommodations. Whether the refugees bought into the Soviet propaganda was of little consequence; they were ordered to head eastward and exercised little choice in the matter. The entire refugee population in Lvov was herded into freight trains and shipped to labor camps all over the Soviet Union. Though freight cars offered few frills, Soviet authorities were kind enough to pad the harsh and cold metal floors with a layer of hay for the comfort of the passengers. Avigdor and his family were shipped off to the northern regions of Russia beyond the Ural Mountains. For more than two months they traveled aboard freight trains covering more than 3,000 miles until they reached Sverdlovsk Oblast, located in the middle of the Eurasian continent.

The Goldblut family was assigned to a logging labor battalion in the vicinity of Yekaterinburg, an important railway junction on the Trans‑Siberian‑Railway, with lines reaching all parts of the Ural Mountains and the rest of Russia. Situated on the border of Europe and Asia, 1,036 miles east of Moscow, on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains, Yekaterinburg[207] is surrounded by thick forests and wooded hills — an ideal site for harvesting lumber. While the parents were engaged in long days of backbreaking labor as lumberjacks, Avigdor and Ilana along with a group of neighboring children roamed around the barracks of the labor camp with little to do. All workers in the labor battalion were entitled to food vouchers with which they could at best purchase rotten cabbage soup and bread. That is how they lived an entire year. In August 1941, the Goldblut family along with more than half a million Polish refugees were released from the Gulag and labor battalions following the amnesty granted by Stalin. Heading south towards Soviet Asia, they trekked over 1,900 miles by freight train in alien and hostile territory. Throughout the grueling journey, which lasted nearly two months, they were subjected to the elements, abuse, thieves, anti‑Semitism, malnutrition, frost, disease and deprivation. They huddled together and slept on train platforms or in the open frozen tundra. At a train station along the way, Avigdor’s father managed to secure a piece of stale bread for his five‑year old son. Always in fear that someone might snatch his morsel of food, Avigdor retired to a deserted corner of the train station and nibbled on the brittle bread. Out of nowhere, a Russian soldier appeared. He headed straight for Avigdor, who was still munching. Even as he kicked and screamed, the soldier forced Avigdor’s mouth open and extricated the chewy mess still dripping with saliva and swallowed it.[208]

After the protracted journey, Avigdor along with his father Yakov, mother Yonah and sister Ilana arrived in the city of Samarkand. Impoverished, famished and blighted by the arduous journey from Yekaterinburg, they roamed around in search of food and shelter. Alas, they had to compete with hundreds of thousands of other hungry refugees who flooded into the warmer regions of Soviet Asia. The colorful and sizzling marketplaces of Samarkand flowed with the plenty of the land. Avigdor and Ilana salivated as they passed by market stalls laden with heaps of rice, plums, bread, peaches and apricots. The sight and smell of the produce only exacerbated their raw hunger, as the means at their disposal did not suffice to acquire even a bag of beans. Once they settled down in Samarkand, the parents found work in a nearby kolkhoz from which they barely earned enough to cover their own nutrition. To supplement the family’s paltry breadbasket, Avigdor and Ilana scavenged for scraps of food in the streets, which were littered with corpses of refugees, mostly with stomachs bloated from hunger. Malnutrition was not the only killer in these parts. Uzbek farmers irrigated their crops with sewage effluent, which resulted in outbreaks of typhus and malaria epidemics. Avigdor’s mother died of typhus shortly after arriving in Samarkand. After the death of his wife, Yakov Goldblut was faced with a terrifying ordeal of choosing the lesser of two evils. Either remain as a family unit in a rotten dilapidated hovel and languish collectively, or say goodbye to his children and entrust them to an orphanage where they at least stood a slim chance of survival. Avigdor’s father was not alone in grappling with this fateful predicament. It was an ordeal which confronted most parents in the refugee community.

As their situation hopelessly deteriorated to a point of no return, Yakov decided to gamble his bottom ruble in an attempt to save the lives of his children. He managed to bribe a Polish official, who in turn intervened to place Avigdor and Ilana in a military compound that also housed civilians, most of them relatives of military personnel. The encampment was situated on the outskirts of Samarkand, staffed by a contingency of the Polish Army in exile under the command of General Anders. The children in the camp were housed in separate barracks. Their routine was dictated by Spartan military discipline. The first night in the camp, an orderly arrived with a truckload of mattresses and dumped them in one big pile in the children’s barracks. The children scrambled to grab a mattress. Those who did not act with alacrity were left to sleep on the bare floor. The same was with food, which was left in piles on a first grab first eat basis. Early every morning a bugle sounded the wake‑up call summoning the children to stand in military formation and salute the Polish flag as it was hoisted up the pole. The children were outfitted with military uniforms and assigned to various housekeeping duties. Avigdor, who was only five and half years old at the time was handed a bucket of whitewash and ordered to clean and paint the latrines. He soon developed a severe eye infection. Ilana spared no effort in watching over her little brother, applying ointment regularly to save his eyesight.[209]

In April 1942 the camp folded up. The entire unit along with the civilians boarded trains headed for Iran. As soon as he learned of the evacuation, Yakov Goldblut rushed over to the Samarkand train station to bid farewell to his children. Avigdor was thrilled to reunite with his father after the protracted separation. He clung to his dad for dear life. With Avigdor still gripping his hand, concealing all emotions, Yakov instructed his son, “Now, let go of my hand and board the train with your sister. I have posted signs around your necks with your name, as well as information about your parents.“ Before departing, Yakov turned to his children and said, “Hopefully, all will go as planned.“[210] Even under the relative safety of the Polish Army in exile, the plight and misery of the children was far from over. It was only thanks to Ilana’s resourcefulness, wit and street smarts that Avigdor survived the ordeal. After countless adventures and cliffhangers, the two arrived in British Mandatory Palestine along with Yaldei Teheran. Like many other European refugees escaping the Holocaust, most of the Yaldei Teheran orphans were absorbed by various kibbutzim. Despite the initial discord engendered by culture shock and language barrier, most of the orphans were more than happy to have arrived at a safe haven. After years on the run in hostile lands suffering constant hunger and deprivation, finally they arrived at a nurturing setting that offered them a home, stability, a warm bed, three hot meals a day and a second lease on life. They were now amidst their own kind, members of the same tribe, Jews who embraced them and looked after all their needs — physical and mental. Most of the orphans quickly adapted to the kibbutz lifestyle and blended with its mode of camaraderie and sense of community. Alas, as in every interaction of clashing cultures there were always the few that fell between the cracks.

Avigdor and his sister found refuge in Kibbutz Givat Brenner, where they were adopted by a host family. Though the kibbutz and the host family spared no effort in accommodating the orphans, Avigdor and Ilana could not overcome the trauma of alienation. They were taunted by their peers for speaking a broken Hebrew with a funny accent. Avigdor did not integrate very well. He developed an inferiority complex when dealing with the well‑to‑do and spoiled children of Givat Brenner. He was envious of the fact that they all had parents and relatives and he had to fend for himself. They all sported a tanned and athletic physique while he paled next to them both in looks and demeanor. They were confident and exuberant, while he was diffident and defensive. Avigdor and Ilana along with all the refugees had another big gap to overcome. While the kids at Givat Brenner received a superb education from early on, he and his sister spent their childhood roaming the hostile steppes of Russia and Uzbekistan scavenging for scraps of food under horrific conditions. It was seemingly an insurmountable challenge to keep up with their classmates. Even during lunch while the kibbutzniks frolicked around the table, Avigdor could not join in the fun. After being subjected to famine for most of his young life, Avigdor was conditioned to guard his morsel of food against predators. Even here in the kibbutz where food was plentiful, Avigdor could trust no one with his lunch. He would quietly slip away hugging his plate and hide in a corner while quickly devouring his food lest someone snatch it from his mouth. Surely, this strange behavior did not curry favor with his peers. Viewed as a paranoid oddball, he was mocked and harassed. Avigdor was frequently bullied and on occasions beaten by his Sabra peers.

A year after their arrival, Avigdor and Ilana left the kibbutz and headed for Tel Aviv where they stayed at the home of a distant cousin. Life in Tel Aviv was no picnic. On many occasions, Avigdor spent the night on the backseat of a bus. To supplement his meager diet, he would frequently sneak into catering halls and feast at weddings to which he was not invited. [211]

In 1956 Avigdor joined the tank corps of the Israeli Army. Oddly enough, it was in the army where Avigdor finally found a warm and stable home; it was the first time in his life where he had friends, food and shelter all under one roof. Though he loved army life, Avigdor planned to enter medical school after the service, but it never happened. During an interview later in life, he confided: “I never intended to turn the army into a career, but I remained because I liked it. I loved the Negev, the desert, the fields. I loved speeding in jeeps. Later I got used to the army, and it became a part of me. And maybe also, I was afraid to make a new start in life.“[212] Avigdor did not have to wait long to see action; soon after he was drafted, the 1956 Sinai Campaign erupted in which he served as a tank commander. In 1967, during the Six‑Day‑War he served as Chief of Operations in a tank brigade, which smashed through the Egyptian fortifications in the Sinai Peninsula. It was in the same campaign in which he lost half of the right foot when his jeep struck a landmine. The years that followed the stunning Israeli victory of the Six‑Day‑War were marked by a period of prosperity, glory, euphoria and complacency. Emerging from a brilliant victory over massive Arab armies on all three fronts, Israeli military brass was idolized not only as heroes but saviors. The generals rested on their laurels. The high command was busy issuing self‑deceptive pompous press releases and publishing glorious war albums. Flaunting starched uniforms and shining medals, the top brass

basked in the sunshine of accolades and frequenting fancy restaurants at the defense ministry expense accounts. Flattered, wined and dined, Israeli generals began taking liberties with their rank, cultivating newly expensive tastes in clothes and automobiles; allowing their soldier‑chauffeurs to run errands for their families. Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, did not go out of his way to stem the tide of laxity, chicanery and crumbling discipline, he himself set the pace.[213] The Israeli leadership and military were sliding down a slippery slope spiraling towards a thunderous hubris. Avigdor shied away from the pomp and circumstance that followed the Six‑Day‑War. He never recovered from the scars of his youth and deep inside remained a lone wolf; a sad and pessimistic individual. While the pampered Israeli generals wined and dined, Avigdor stayed focused on his military career, and in 1972 was promoted to the rank of colonel. In that capacity he was appointed commander of the 7th Armored Brigade. While the Israeli Generals and leaders basked in the sunshine of glory, the Arabs quietly beefed up their armed forces and planned the ultimate revenge against the arrogant foe. Six years after the Six‑Day‑War, Israeli intelligence persistently and accurately reported the massive buildup of troops and arms on both the Egyptian and the Syrian fronts. The Israeli leadership, still deeply entrenched in overconfidence stemming from the last glorious war, tended to dismiss the threat. The pessimistic Avigdor, still mired in the bitter struggle of survival during his years of wanderings as a helpless Jewish child in the steppes of Russia, was the only high‑ranking Israeli officer to see the dark clouds on the horizon.

After long years on the run with only his protective seven‑year‑old sister separating between him and oblivion, Avigdor developed a keen sense of awareness to the pitfalls of life. The horrors of a youth and a life constantly hanging by a thread haunt him to this very day. The adversity of his childhood hardwired Avigdor to never let his guard down. Consequently, the grim intelligence reports streaming from the Egyptian and Syrian fronts gnawed at him to the extent that all his senses set off a resounding alarm. At odds with the rest of the IDF command, Avigdor was convinced that the enemy is at the gate ready to pounce. At the risk of being mocked as a lunatic and labeled a warmonger, he was determined that this time the Jewish people will not be caught unawares. When he was born in Poland, aside from Avigdor, his parents also assigned him a Polish name — Yanush, which he retained, but changed his surname to reflect his Israeli identity. To this day he is widely known to the whole world as Yanush Ben‑Gal. Back in 1972, Yanush started preparing his unit for war. He made many enemies up and down the ranks, as he imposed a series of live fire maneuvers coupled with rigorous discipline. Since assuming command of the prestigious 7th Armored Brigade the previous year, Yanush insisted that training exercises emulate war conditions as closely as possible. He drilled his men intensely in gunnery and held maneuvers lasting a week or more in which the brigade operated only at night. Frequently, in the midst of an exercise, he would announce a change in mission, requiring rapid decisions by commanders and movement through unfamiliar terrain.[214] Both his subordinates and superiors mockingly labeled him a Napoleon, a swashbuckling cowboy and a madman. Then came October 1973 and Yanush’s 7th Brigade was the only unit in the entire Israeli Army that was battle ready — armed to the teeth… and then some.

On Friday October 5, 1973, Yanush and his armored brigade were rushed to the Golan Heights. The 7th Armored Brigade was attached to the division that was charged with the defense of the Golan Heights under the command of General Rafael “Raful“ Eitan. The 7th Armored Brigade was assigned to cover the northern sector of the Golan Heights. The southern portion was defended by the 188th Armored Brigade, also known as the Barak Brigade, under the command of Colonel Ben‑Shoham. The two brigades combined were in possession of approximately 170 tanks. Late on Friday night the commanders gathered at division headquarters and raised a toast in honor of the impending war. Anticipating a Syrian attack in the evening of the following day — Saturday October 6 — General Raful assembled his staff for a briefing during the early afternoon at his headquarters in the town of Nafakh. At 2:00 PM, as Raful was about to address his staff, waves of enemy planes shrieked overhead unleashing torrents of lead accompanied by a massive artillery barrage that lasted for about an hour. Yanush along with the rest of the commanders dashed out and scrambled towards their positions. As soon as he reached his unit, Yanush ordered the entire brigade to assume battle positions. Aside from the two armored brigades under the command of Yanush and Ben‑Shoham, which fielded about 170 tanks and 60 artillery pieces, the Israeli defenses also included 17 fortifications. Spanning a 45-mile front‑line, each of these fortifications was manned by 20 troops backed by three tanks. The Syrian forces about to assault the Golan Heights were comprised of three infantry divisions backed by more than 1,500 tanks and a thousand artillery pieces including heavy mortars and a surface‑to‑air missile system defending Damascus. Furthermore, the Syrian Army was

later reinforced with two Iraqi divisions, a Jordanian armored brigade along with a Saudi and Moroccan task force, a brigade each.

Under the cover of intensive air strikes accompanied by a massive artillery barrage, helicopter‑borne Syrian commandos appeared out of the smoke and mist on a mission to capture the most coveted prize on the Golan Heights. They headed directly towards the radar‑surveillance fortification situated 2,200 meters atop Mount Hermon, popularly known as “Israel’s eyes.“ After the massive bombardment, most of the Israeli troops on Mount Hermon hunkered down in the concrete and steel bunker, assuming it to be impregnable. As the Syrian commandoes alighted from helicopters, realizing that they were heavily outnumbered, a handful of Israeli troops managed to escape through a secret back tunnel. The remaining defenders were either captured or killed. It was the Syrians who now overlooked the entire Golan plateau. What lay before them was a flimsy picket of seventeen Israeli fortifications backed by only a few tanks, two infantry battalions and four artillery batteries. The main armored brigade of some 150 tanks was positioned much further in the rear. Had there been advance warning, the tank brigade, would have been in forward position and reinforced with thousands of infantry troops. Alas, Israeli intelligence had failed. Most of the Israeli armor and troops were not even mobilized when the Syrian attack began.[215] It was an earthquake of an assault. After a fifty‑five‑minute artillery barrage, two Syrian armored divisions comprised of 800 tanks and three infantry divisions mounted on armored personnel carriers rumbled across the cease‑fire line. The tanks easily bypassed the advance Israeli positions, pouring through gaps in the defenses and smashing relentlessly through the Golan settlements from which civilians were evacuated in the nick of time.

The Israeli front was breached in two sectors. In the north on the approaches to al‑Quneitra, 200 Syrian tanks burst through in the first wave. In the central‑south sector, by Rafid, an even larger breakthrough advanced in two prongs. One Syrian division seized the Rafid junction, and then probed toward the Nafakh base camp where the Golan commander Raful set up his headquarters. Clearly, the Syrians were aiming for the B’not Ya’akov Bridge over the Jordan River, leading down to the heartland of Israel. The second column turned south toward the settlements of Ramat Magshimim and El Al. From there the column moved toward the Jordan estuary and Arik Bridge. Fully 600 tanks were engaged in this sector. Throughout the remaining hours of daylight, the Syrians forged ahead. The Israeli 7th Brigade, an elite unit, had fought hard since the beginning of the war. Nights had been particularly challenging, lacking night‑vision equipment the Israeli tankers had to resort to a primitive strategy in order to identify friend from foe. On signal they would simultaneously shut down their engines; by default, any tank with its engine running was an enemy and had to be engaged. It was a rinky‑dink tactic of conducting a war.[216] While Israeli tanks were not furnished with night‑vision gear, Syrian tanks equipped with the latest infrared devices did not slow down even after dark. By dawn they battered headlong into the final Israeli defenses on the south‑eastern Golan manned by the Barak Brigade, which was by now left with only a single tank company. Hopelessly outnumbered, the Israelis fought as if berserk inflicting heavy losses on the Syrians.

From the Nafakh bunker, General Eitan grimly orchestrated his diminishing resources, deploying isolated tank units at breakthrough points, struggling with every resource of determination and cunning to block the Syrian tidal wave until reserve units arrived. But already Syrian columns were approaching within gunnery range of the B’not Ya’akov Bridge and the main pumping station of Israel’s National Water Carrier north of Kibbutz Geinossar. Syrian shells and SCUD missiles were exploding along the west bank of the Sea of Galilee. At the foot of the Golan, in the Chula and Jordan valleys, kibbutzim were hastily evacuating women and children. The men stayed behind preparing to resist the invasion with light arms. In the northern sector of the Golan, adjacent to Quneitra, the battle still hung in the balance. Outnumbered by about ten to one, the 7th Brigade, under the command of Yanush Ben‑Gal, managed to knock out scores of enemy vehicles in the valley between Hermonit and Masada. Indeed, by the early light of October 8, the battered remnants of the 7th Brigade looked down on 130 destroyed Syrian tanks along with hundreds of demolished armored personnel carriers. The Syrians nevertheless continued pouring in fresh armor throughout the day, including the latest model T‑62 tanks. After two days and two nights of uninterrupted fighting, Yanush was down to less than 40 tanks; hardly a single tank commander remained alive or unwounded. Waves of Syrian tanks kept on charging, as each enemy attack surpassed its predecessor. While the Syrian Army steamrolled towards the Israeli heartland from the north; in the south, the Israeli Army was desperately attempting to fend off a massive invasion from Egypt. The Egyptian Army fielding 600,000 troops, 2,000 tanks, 2,300 artillery pieces, 160 SAM missile

batteries and 550 combat planes staged a surprise attack that caught the Israelis completely off guard.

Outnumbered by better than 50 to 1, the Israeli forces along the Suez Canal and further inland were mauled by the incoming Egyptian invaders. On both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts, Israel’s vaunted air force was kept at bay by a wall of surface to air missiles and a tight‑knit network of anti‑aircraft guns. Israeli armored columns were rendered vulnerable by a barrage of held hand anti‑tank missiles. Back on the Golan Heights, throughout the unrelenting attack that lasted for more than 72 hours, Yanush calmly directed his dwindling forces, maintaining a reserve, which he moved from ambush to blocking position to battle position. The 7th Armored Brigade, though down to a handful of operational tanks, never gave up its primary positions. On the evening of October 8, the Syrians unleashed yet another devastating artillery barrage, which inflicted devastation and scores of casualties within the ranks of the 7th Armored Brigade. A new Syrian armada of hundreds of tanks emerged from the smoke, followed by a tsunami of armored personnel carriers. Even as the 7th Brigade was at the verge of total disintegration, it fired back at the waves of incoming enemy armor, tenaciously holding its ground. By now the Barak Brigade was all but decimated; its intrepid commander, Colonel Ben‑Shoham died while fighting against all odds. The handful of tanks and units, remnants of the Barak Brigade, now came under Yanush’s command. The 7th Brigade was also augmented by sporadic fresh scratch units that made their way up from Israel. On the dawn of October 9, the Syrians launched a new and formidable attack, which started with the heaviest artillery bombardment of the war. The artillery barrage included a torrent of Katyusha rockets accompanied by massive aerial bombing and strafing. In a major assault,

hundreds of modern Arab tanks began moving up from the bottom of the valley north of Quneitra with the aim of taking the higher ground. Yanush, attempting to regroup, observed to his horror that only six of his original tanks remained in fighting condition… only six tanks standing between the enemy and Northern Israel. At this point, the nerveless Raful, following the battle by radio, decided to risk everything on a final gamble. He ordered Yanush to counterattack and take the high ground. In compliance with Raful’s order, Yanush headed over to the tank commanded by his deputy, the intrepid Lieutenant Colonel Meshulam Ratess, commander of the 71st Armored Battalion. Not only did Ratess cut a striking figure, but he was also a debonair gentleman with a profound sense of humor. Overlooking the Valley of Tears, Yanush pointed out to Ratess the position his unit must assume in order to effectively tackle the Syrian onslaught coming over the ridge. Observing the bloody battleground, Ratess turned to his commander in disbelief, “Yanush, you are sending me to my death. If it were anybody else ordering me to head in that direction, I would disobey. But you never failed me yet.“ Yanush dismounted from his deputy’s tank and headed to his command post. After walking a few paces, Yanush was jolted by an ear‑piercing explosion. When he turned around, all he saw was the huge ball of fire that consumed Ratess along with his tank and crew.[217]

*** The urgency was palpable. The lone barrier standing between the Syrians and Israel’s impending destruction was the remnants of the IDF’s 7th

Armored Brigade. Yanush had no time to lose. He turned to Colonel Avigdor Kahalani, the commander of the 77th Armored Battalion.

The 29‑year‑old Kahalani was the son of immigrants from Yemen. In 1962, as Kahalani was about to join the Israeli Army, his father turned to him and said: “Listen my dear son, serving in the army means carrying the blue and white flag with pride. Make sure that during your service to our nation your hand does not quiver, get a solid grip on that flag and bring honor to your people.“ Back in June of 1967, during the Six‑Day War Kahalani’s tank took a direct hit. He managed to bolt from the crippled tank; his entire body engulfed in flames. After frantically rolling in the sand for a couple of minutes, he managed to extinguish the flames. Twelve months in the hospital and sixteen surgeries later, Kahalani volunteered to stay in the Tank Corps and rose to the rank of Battalion Commander. When the Yom Kippur War broke out on October 6, 1973, Kahalani assembled his battalion for an urgent briefing. “Our first priority is to break the fast,“ he announced, “even though today is Yom Kippur, I order all of you without exception, get something to eat immediately!“ When the troops looked at him in disbelief, Kahalani said: “Look fellows, on Yom Kippur I always recited my prayers and fasted, but this is war, we must face the enemy on a full belly.“ As commanders in the Israeli Army lead by example, Kahalani pulled an apple out of his pocket and devoured it in front of a bemused rank‑and‑file. And off to war they went. On the fourth day of the war, Israeli forces in the northern Golan, along with sporadic reinforcements, were outnumbered by better than 15 to 1. Like their forerunners, the Maccabees, the troops of Yanush’s 7th Armored Brigade constituted a handful fighting against legions. Had the Syrians gained access to the plateau, they would have been able to spread

out their forces and control the central Golan Heights. From there, it would have been a hop and a skip to penetrate even deeper into Israel and potentially cut the tiny country in two.

Accompanied by relentless artillery barrages, the massive Syrian offensive intensified with each wave of fresh armor. The ever‑shrinking forces of the ravaged 7th Armored Brigade were quickly enveloped in a nightmare of enemy fire, as the Syrian tanks closed in for a decisive breakthrough. Yanush was at the end of his wits. He radioed Raful that his battered and exhausted remnants were unable to fight any longer. Immediately, the Golan commander radioed back, pleading with Yanush to hold on only a half‑hour longer. The appeal reflected psychology more than tactics. There was no assurance that reinforcements would be arriving in a half‑hour or in three hours. The shadow of a new Holocaust descended upon Israel. In a desperate attempt to preempt the enemy and take the high ground, Yanush dispatched Kahalani to the valley in a last-ditch effort to stem the Syrian onslaught. As he signaled his men to join the rush towards the enemy, a commander’s worst nightmare had materialized for Kahalani — he was moving forward alone. Physically and emotionally at the end of their rope, the men had simply not responded. After desperate exhortations, the few remaining tanks joined in with Kahalani as he led the charge standing exposed in the turret. Exhibiting superhuman bravery, cunning and superior gunnery, Kahalani with the last vehicles at his disposal reached the crest of the hillocks where he found himself face‑to‑face with three Syrian tanks. Incredibly, his crew managed to destroy the first one then another a mere fifty meters away. Attempting to knock out the third tank, Kahalani’s cannon jammed. He watched in horror as the Syrian tank aimed its gun squarely in his face. In what seemed like forever, the tank crew desperately scrambled to clear the jammed gun barrel… and then it happened; they managed to dislodge the dud shell and replaced it with another. In a blink,

the third Syrian tank burst into flames. Seconds later a fourth Syrian tank appeared out of nowhere. It too took a direct hit from Kahalani’s cannon.

About a dozen Syrian tanks managed to sneak past the defense line formed by the 77th Brigade. Kahalani was shocked to learn that ten enemy tanks were on his tail. He ordered his troops to shoot at anything that moves. All the enemy tanks to his rear were soon destroyed, but not without taking a toll on Kahalani, who was wounded, but refused to be evacuated. Yet, with all the superhuman heroism and combat skill Kahalani and his battered unit exhibited during the fateful Valley of Tears battle, they did not stand a chance in hell to persevere against what was coming on the horizon. Swarms of fresh Syrian armor — about 150 Soviet made T-62 tanks — came at Kahalani from every which direction. It would take nothing less than the intervention of divine providence and the serendipitous arrival of Yossi Ben‑Hanan on the scene to avert a catastrophe. An armored battalion commander, Ben‑Hanan was on his honeymoon in the Himalayas when war broke out. As soon as he heard the news, he bid farewell to his bride and frantically rushed to the nearest airport in Katmandu. It took him nearly three days of hopping all over the globe from one country to another and from one connecting flight to the next until he was back in his homeland. Prior to landing at Lydda Airport, Yossi contacted his family and urged them to meet him at the gate; he also requested that they bring along his uniform and dog tags. He quickly donned his uniform, and after departing from his family, Ben‑Hanan headed directly to the Golan Heights.

In classic crisis mode, Ben‑Hanan combed through hospitals and supply centers. Within less than 24 hours of his arrival, he managed to assemble crews to man thirteen hastily repaired tanks. General Raful was greatly relieved to learn of the arrival of one of his favorite officers along with reinforcements. Raful rushed Ben‑Hanan and his thirteen tanks to a sector in the front lines where the remains of the beleaguered 7th Brigade — seven tanks and a handful of exhausted battle‑weary men — were about to retreat. Ben‑Hanan and Kahalani joined forces. Together they formed a 20tank fighting unit that plunged head‑on into the advancing Syrian armored columns. Much as little David faced the mighty Goliath ensconced in an armored mantle, Kahalani with his seven battered tanks along with Ben‑Hanan’s reinforcements stood up to a tidal wave of Syrian armor and decimated the formidable Assad Republican Guard. This daring counterattack literally turned the tide of war. The heroic stand by a handful of intrepid Jewish fighters against all odds literally pulled the State of Israel back from the brink of oblivion. Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.[218]

***

After blocking the Syrian onslaught, the Israeli Army quickly reorganized; setting the stage to launch a counteroffensive. Later in the war, commanding a column of tanks, Yossi Ben‑Hanan stormed into the hilltop town of Tel Shams. Initially, he surprised the Syrian defenders and broke through the lines. Heading for the summit, his unit was ambushed by Syrian infantry armed with anti‑tank missiles; they knocked out four of his tanks. Yossi Ben‑Hanan himself was blown out of his turret seriously injured. The surviving crews summoned reinforcements while fending off the Syrian attackers. After dark, an Israeli commando unit headed by Yoni Netanyahu — elder brother of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu — forced its way into the hostile perimeter. Throughout the night, subjected to intense enemy fire and operating under adverse conditions, Yoni and his unit conducted the rescue operation. Before dawn they bailed out the tanks with their crews and evacuated the wounded back to safety. Later on, when Yossi’s wife gave birth to a daughter, they named her Yonit in honor of Yoni Netanyahu. For his daring exploits in rescuing Ben‑Hanan’s unit, Yoni Netanyahu was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service — Israel’s third highest military decoration. Yossi Ben‑Hanan’s intrepid leadership during the fierce battles of the Yom Kippur War won him the Medal of Courage — second highest decoration of the Israeli Army.

For his actions in the Valley of Tears and leadership in battle, the most fateful of all the battles of the Yom Kippur War, Kahalani was awarded the Medal of Valor, Israel’s highest combat decoration. Kahalani is the embodiment of an individual who, despite overwhelming odds, through sheer heroic courage, gritty determination and inspirational leadership moved himself and the soldiers under his command to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and emerge victorious. After the war, Kahalani rose in the ranks. Following a brilliant military career spanning thirty years, he retired from the IDF as brigadier general. He then served as a member of Knesset and a cabinet minister from 1996 to 1999. Avigdor Kahalani authored two best‑selling books. In Heights of Courage: A Tank Leader’s War on the Golan, he recounts his experiences during the Yom Kippur War. His other book titled, A Warrior’s Way, is an autobiography. Both books are mandatory reading in military colleges around the world, including West Point. Kahalani closes his autobiography with the following words: As a boy, I had heard much about Zionism, about building my country, and about defending it. Today, I feel I am a part of all these things — as every scar on my body will attest.

***

Lochamei Ha’Geta’ot — The Ghetto Fighters — is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located in the western Galilee, the kibbutz was founded in 1949 on the coastal highway between Akko and Nahariya. Its founding members include surviving fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as former Jewish partisans along with other Holocaust survivors. The kibbutz operates the Ghetto Fighter’s House, a history museum commemorating Jews who fought the Nazis. Tzvi Greengold, who was born in the kibbutz, was taught by his parents, Holocaust survivors who had fought the Nazis, that only a strong Israel could avert another holocaust. Tzvi enlisted in the armored corps and graduated from the military academy. As a lieutenant, his superiors recommended that he enroll in a company commander’s training. Prior to attending company commander’s course, 21‑year old Tzvi, nicknamed Tzvika, was granted a furlough. On furlough when the Yom Kippur War broke out, Tzvika was not attached to any unit. When he heard the sirens go off, he donned his uniform and headed for the Golan Heights. As he arrived at Raful’s headquarters in Nafakh on the afternoon of October 6, 1973, Tzvika witnessed the horrors of war, as crippled tanks were hauled in for repairs. Tzvika rolled up his sleeves, removed corpses of dead crewmen and scraped blood stains from damaged Centurion tanks. By 9:00 P.M. Tzvika was assigned command of two tanks, which were hastily repaired and prepped for battle.

The thin line of defense formed by the 7th Armored and Barak brigades barely covered the entire Golan front. Oddly enough the Israeli Army command allocated no troops to defend the northern segment of the border with Syria, in the vicinity of the Trans‑Arabian Petroleum pipeline. The Tapline, as it is abbreviated, originates in the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, and then extends through Jordan and Syria until reaching its oil export terminal in Sidon on the coast of Lebanon. The Syrian command, taking full advantage of the breach in the Israeli defenses, unleashed an armored brigade, comprised of more than hundred tanks, down the Tapline patrol road headed directly towards Raful’s headquarters in Nafakh. Tzvika was given orders to head out in the direction of the Tapline and destroy any enemy he encountered.[219] The mission seemed straightforward enough to the young lieutenant. His radio frequency was hooked up to the Barak Brigade command network; his two battered tanks were assigned the codename, “Force Tzvika.“ It took Tzvika some time to adjust to the darkness, but, as he was quite familiar with the terrain, he moved swiftly in the direction of the Tapline. Proceeding cautiously along the Tapline, Tzvika halted every time he topped a rise pausing briefly to examine the landscape. He ordered his gunner to load a shell into the breech while he kept watch up front and left. The other tank commander, thirty yards behind Tzvika’s tank, was responsible to cover the right flank and the rear.

Reaching the halfway point on the Tapline, Tzvika cautiously climbed up a crest and spotted a tank speeding towards him. “Fire!“ he shouted. Barely twenty yards in front of him, the Syrian tank exploded in a mighty ball of fire. Too close for comfort, the reverberations resulting from the thunderous explosion knocked out the electricity in Tzvika’s turret. Left with little choice, he switched tanks and instructed the other crew to drive the damaged tank back to Nafakh for repairs. Tzvika’s lone tank was now the only barrier standing between an armored Syrian brigade and Raful’s headquarters. Beyond the burning tank he just knocked off, Tzvika could make out a swarm of Syrian tanks. He quickly backed his tank downhill. Hugging the ridge for cover while keeping a low profile he headed in the direction of the enemy encampment. Slowing down and cautiously elevating the gun’s barrel over the crest, he spotted three tanks coming at him. In quick succession, Tzvika knocked out all three tanks before they could even open fire. Each hit was accompanied by a report back to base, “Force Tzvika knocked out an enemy tank.“ Once again, he descended downhill, only to ascend over the next rise to seek out additional targets. Half hour later, Tzvika spotted a convoy of about thirty Syrian tanks. He took aim and opened fire destroying a handful of enemy lead tanks; then quickly took cover downhill. The Syrian tanks returned fire, but he could sense that it was ineffective, as he kept shifting positions.

Ever so careful to keep his tank on rear slopes, Tzvika occasionally ascended with only his barrel and turret top projecting over the crest. In this fashion he ploughed back and forth constantly taking out enemy tanks. Resorting to this cat‑and‑mouse tactic time and again, Tzvika maintained two distinct advantages over his adversaries. He fired at every moving vehicle with full confidence that it was an enemy target. The Syrians, on the other hand, had difficulty identifying him. Moreover, as he kept on reporting, “Force Tzvika knocked out an enemy tank,“ the enemy was listening. These frequent reports had the Syrians convinced that they were confronting a formidable Israeli tank force. In this fashion, commanding a lone tank, Tzvika kept the Syrians in turmoil, effectively slowing their advance. Things were moving so fast that Tzvika had little mind to keep track of his kill. Yet, with all of his skill, advantages and bravery, Tzvika could not keep this game up for much longer, as he was quickly running short on ammo. He let go a huge sigh of relief when he learned that twelve tanks were dispatched to assist “Force Tzvika.“ As the reinforcements arrived along the Tapline, they were met by an anti‑tank Syrian ambush. Both sides fired indiscriminately. As the smoke settled down, eight Israeli tanks were up in flames. The four surviving tanks scrambled for cover, eventually linking up with “Force Tzvika.“ Resorting to Tzvika’s tactics, the reinforced unit kept up the pressure on the Syrians. After destroying more than twenty enemy tanks,

the Syrians finally caught up with Tzvika. In one of the skirmishes his tank took a direct hit. Tzvika jumped out of his burning tank and rolled in the dirt extinguishing the flames. He quickly climbed into another tank and reported, “Force Tzvika back in action!“

Burned and bruised, Tzvika kept on fighting inflicting heavy losses on the Syrians, throwing them into disarray. Just when he felt that he had the enemy on the run, “Force Tzvika“ was ordered to return immediately back to Nafakh. Raful’s headquarters was threatened by a fresh wave of Syrian armor, mostly T‑62 tanks. As enemy tanks closed in on the perimeter of Nafakh headquarters, Raful was left with little choice but to evacuate. Racing out of the northern gate past blazing vehicles, Raful and his staff rushed to set up shop five kilometers to the north. Prior to abandoning Nafakh, Raful ordered the deputy commander of the Brigade District, Lieutenant Colonel Pinie, to establish anti‑tank defenses around the camp. “Force Tzvika“ rolled into Nafakh to find the defenders in total disarray in face of the overwhelming Syrian offensive comprised of tanks aided by commando units. Lieutenant Colonel Pinie and his men fought valiantly in a desperate attempt to defend the headquarters with Bazooka anti‑tank weapons, in the process destroying a number of enemy tanks. Overwhelmed by tanks coming at him from every which direction, Pinie quickly ran out of ammo. Just then, a Syrian tank, coming over the fence, swung its turret towards Pinie and his men. Pinie prepared for death, when at the very last second “Force Tzvika“ appeared out of nowhere and blew up the Syrian tank.

“Force Tzvika“ was down to one tank, which was later damaged. Once again, Tzvika commandeered another tank and kept on fending off the incoming Syrian armor at the perimeter of the camp. Even in the confines of close camp quarters, Tzvika resorted to similar tactics he deployed along the Tapline. Constantly moving around and firing, once again, he succeeded in deceiving the Syrians into overestimating their opponent.

For the next several hours Tzvika maneuvered to various strategic points around Nafakh firing at approaching Syrian hordes with determination and deadly precision in a desperate last stand. Despite being down to a single tank, low an ammunition, and impossibly outgunned, Lieutenant Tzvika Greengold battled furiously knocking out as many as ten additional Syrian tanks. He managed to hold the fort until the arrival of fresh reinforcements. But there is only so much Tzvika could do. After fighting non‑stop for nearly 24 hours, he climbed out of his tank. His blonde hair and fair skin scorched and bloodied, Tzvika barely limped out of the turret. All beat up and exhausted he listlessly fell to the ground murmuring, “I can’t go on any longer.“ He then fainted. When he next came to himself, Tzvika was in a hospital ward in the city of Tzefat surrounded by doctors and nurses. Between his clever tactics, fearlessness and resourcefulness at the Tapline, and his intrepid relentless defense of Nafakh headquarters, Tzvika, singlehandedly, played a pivotal role in blocking the advance of two Syrian armored brigades. The 21‑year old Lieutenant, Tzvika Greengold, fought for nearly 24 hours with no respite, changing tanks six times as they were

knocked out from under him, and is credited with wiping out an astonishing forty enemy tanks, although he himself would claim only twenty.[220] For his supreme courage and superhuman exploits during the Yom Kippur War, Lieutenant Tzvika Greengold was awarded the Medal of Valor, Israel’s highest combat decoration.

After spending a week in the hospital, Tzvika rushed back to the Golan Heights to join in the ongoing battles against the Syrian invaders. After the war, Greengold served an additional year in the tank corps. Following his discharge, Tzvika returned to his kibbutz. After earning a degree in economics from the Rupin Academy, he functioned in the capacity of an administrator of various kibbutz enterprises. From 2008 until 2013, he served as mayor of Ofakim, a city in the northwestern Negev. Married with three children, Greengold regularly addresses audiences in and out of Israel, mainly high school children, about his exploits during the Yom Kippur War. In 2008, recapping his 24 hours of incessant battles against massive Syrian armor, Greengold published his memoirs in a book titled, Force Tzvika. Greengold is often confronted with the question: What kept you going during those relentless long hours of fighting virtually singlehandedly against two Syrian armored brigades? Tzvika, who grew up on a kibbutz populated by Holocaust survivors, responds: “I persevered by thinking about my parents and the Warsaw Ghetto.“ To Tzvika the horrors of the Holocaust were palpable; they permeated his system along with his mother’s milk. Here is another Jew driven mad by history, because every enemy is the Nazis. “This is what I kept telling myself,“ said Greengold. “It’s just me between the Syrians and the annihilation of the Jews.“[221]

***

It was high noon on Tuesday October 9, 1973. The surviving tank crews of the 7th Armored Brigade had been engaged in fierce combat for nearly four days with no respite. Their superhuman heroism and sacrifice notwithstanding, the brigade was on the verge of capitulation. Along with all the reinforcements that recently joined his brigade, Yanush was left with only 17 tanks at his disposal and quickly running out of ammo and fuel. The Syrian armor was still coming on strong in unstoppable waves. Surveying the battlefield, Yanush could not possibly see a favorable outcome of this battle. At that very moment, just when Yanush was contemplating issuing a retreat order to his ravaged brigade, something happened. The Syrians, it seemed, in this last Herculean effort had shot their bolt. For the first time since the war started, a thin smile of infinite satisfaction and relief appeared on Yanush’s face. That was the moment when the voice of Major Yair Nafshi, situated on top of Booster hill, crackled over the radio, “The Syrian armor is retreating.“[222] Their supply convoys mauled by pinpoint Israeli gunnery, the Syrian armor suddenly turned tail and headed back from where they came. Astonished by the miraculous reprieve, Yanush shook off his exhaustion, rounded up some twenty tanks and immediately began pursuing the Syrians. His crews now had little difficulty in making mincemeat of the fleeing enemy armor and personnel carriers. Within hours, the Quneitra‑Masada road, Israel’s last major artery in the central Golan, was opened again. At this point, General Eitan radioed Yanush a succinct and heartfelt message: “You have saved the People of Israel!“[223] It was hardly an exaggeration.

***

In the mind of Dado Elazar, the Israeli Chief of Staff, there was little doubt that to settle for a local victory in the Golan would constitute a grave historical and strategic error. He urgently urged Moshe Dayan, the Defense Minister, to move ahead with a plan to push the Syrian aggressor all the way to the outskirts of Damascus. Elazar believed that establishment of a defense line that would threaten Damascus by long range artillery would not only punish the Syrians for their bloody aggression, but also keep them at bay for many decades to come. Dayan immediately ushered Elazar along with a cadre of senior officers into the office of Prime Minister Golda Meir. Following an intense discussion, the Prime Minister decided in favor of continuing the push into Syria. Acting with alacrity, General Elazar issued orders to the Northern Command accordingly. The counterattack would commence on Thursday, 11 October.[224] Meanwhile the 7th Brigade was feverishly being refitted, tanks were being repaired, replacement equipment was being absorbed, and reinforcements were joining the units. As a result, two days after he was down to his last reserves, Yanush was ready to move into battle with a re‑equipped and reinforced brigade. On Wednesday evening, following the Command orders group, Yanush addressed all his assembled commanders. Looking at them and recalling the horrors they had been through in the past four days — many with difficulty managing to keep their eyes open — men to whom he knew the country owed so much, a strange emotion came over Yanush. He launched into a sentimental address. In their logical sequence, the dry and brittle recital of an operation order, instinctive to every officer in the army, turned into a moving and emotional pronouncement. Yanush was inspired as he faced the red‑eyed, weary officers who had led their men so valiantly in so fateful a battle. [225]

The emotions, pent up in Yanush since the beginning of this bloody war, burst out full blast, as he told his officers that the impending assault on Syria would afford them the opportunity to avenge the blood of their comrades, who had fallen in the desperate defense of Israel.[226] He then outlined the operational plan for the campaign to push the Syrian Army all the way to the gates of Damascus. At eleven in the morning of the eleventh of October, the reinforced and re‑equipped Barak Brigade with the 7th Brigade in tow led the charge into Syria. Facing Ben‑Gal’s forces was the Moroccan Expeditionary Force in brigade strength, backed by some 40 tanks covering the approaches to Mazrat Beit Jan. To the south of these forces was a Syrian infantry brigade reinforced with anti‑tank weapons and some 35 tanks. The advance forces identified the breaches through the Syrian minefields, and backed by artillery and air support, smashed through the Syrian defenses. The 7th Brigade northern effort clambered through the rough terrain of rocky wooded ridges and, in bitter fighting, gradually gained the high ground. After capturing the Hadar crossroads, Ben‑Gal’s unit forced the Syrian 68th Brigade to withdraw. The northern advance continued against Mazrat Beit Jan. The lightning advance of the 7th Brigade was held up by a Syrian armored counterattack backed by air support. The Israeli forces finally broke into the village on Friday October 12. For six hours, heavy fighting raged on inside the village. By five o’clock in the afternoon of that day, Mazrat Beit Jan, Tel Shams and the surrounding hills were in Israeli hands. The Israeli Army was positioned 40 miles from the Syrian capital, which was now within Israeli artillery range.

On the 22nd of October, a United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect. A day earlier, the Golani Brigade, at the steep price of 55 killed and 79 wounded, wrested the monitoring outpost atop Mount Hermon away from the Syrians. Once the hostilities died down and the 7th Armored Brigade secured the ceasefire lines forty miles from Damascus, Yanush faced the biggest challenge of the war — how does one break the news to his favorite battalion commander? Yanush turned to Kahalani and asked him to come along for a ride in his Jeep. After a short while Yanush pulled aside. Placing his arm over Kahalani’s shoulder, he said, “Unfortunately, I have some very sad news to report.“ The news that he was now sharing shocked Kahalani. His beloved brother, Emmanuel, met a hero’s death during a battle in the Sinai desert. That was not all Yanush had to impart; he also informed Kahalani that his wife’s younger brother had been killed while crossing the Suez Canal. Avigdor Kahalani broke out in tears and rushed home to sit Shivah[227] for his brother and brother‑in‑law.

***

The Yom Kippur war took place in 1973, when sophisticated weaponry and advanced technology existed in abundance. In the final analysis, what saved the Jewish State from the brink of oblivion was not the high‑tech stuff, but the guts, sweat, blood, sacrifice, perseverance and resourcefulness of its defenders. In 1973, the raw courage and determination of Kahalani and Greengold along with thousands of other intrepid Jewish fighters turned the tide against the invaders. In the days of the Maccabees the battle cry to shake off the yoke of Hellenism did not emanate from the elite or the leadership but from a handful of farmers. During the days leading up to the Yom Kippur War, Israeli leadership and high brass fell asleep at the wheel. Like in the days of the Maccabees, salvation came not from the top, but from the heroism and resourcefulness of soldiers in the field. Often, history repeats itself. Over two thousand years ago mighty Greek legions dispatched by the Seleucid Empire in Syria invaded the Land of Israel from the north. They occupied the Holy Land and mercilessly suppressed the Jewish people. Stricken with fear and despair, most Jews succumbed and submitted to their Hellenist oppressors. Against all odds, a small band of intrepid Jews, the Maccabees, put up a fight. The Maccabees were the few that defeated and expelled tidal waves of mighty Greek legions. Twenty-one centuries later, in October 1973, once again mighty Syrian legions backed up by a tsunami of armor charged into the Land of Israel from the north. Much like their ancient counterparts, against all odds, a handful of intrepid Jewish soldiers dared to defy the mighty Syrians and they prevailed. They are the five glorious brothers, who, like their Maccabean forerunners, saved the Jewish nation from a cataclysmic catastrophe. Kahalani, Greengold, Raful and Ben‑Hanan are the Maccabees

of our days. The greatest Maccabee of them all, the indomitable Avigdor Yanush Ben‑Gal, is Judah Maccabeus of the twentieth century.

*** Fleeing the Holocaust, the meek, pale and frightened little Polish Jewish boy, who arrived with Yaldei Teheran thirty years earlier in the Land of Israel, had come full circle. In the Yom Kippur War, Yanush, more than any other Israeli, played the ultimate pivotal role in saving his people from another Holocaust. As hostilities subsided, echoing Raful’s words, the Israeli Chief of Staff, Dado Elazar along with the Chief of the Israeli Army Northern Command, Yitzhak Hofi and the Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan approached Yanush with these words: “You have saved the State of Israel!“[228] Under the courageous and iron‑willed leadership of Yanush, a handful of dazed and flagellated Israeli youngsters in a scattering of battered tanks had lifted the shadow of certain catastrophe from the Jewish nation in its homeland. After the war, addressing the soldiers of the armored corps who fended off the massive Syrian onslaught, General Rafael Eitan said: If we had not stopped the Syrians on the Golan Heights, then the State of Israel would have been destroyed…This division saved Israel from defeat, from catastrophe…I want to stress and make it clear to you; you saved the People of Israel. First and foremost, you![229]

*** The heroic stand of the 7th Armored Brigade and Yanush Ben-Gal’s personal heroism and leadership are believed by many to be decisive factors in the Israeli victory over the Syrians in October 1973. Had he not persisted in his conviction that war is imminent and prepared his brigade for the worst, the outcome of the 1973 Yom Kippur War would look very different than it did. In 1977, Yanush was appointed head of the Northern Command. He served in this position until late-summer 1981. Unlike most Israelis, Yanush is not traumatized by the debacle of the first days of the Yom Kippur War. Unlike most Israelis, Yanush does not believe that we lost the war or that it ended in disaster. To the contrary, a boisterous Yanush hails the outcome of the Yom Kippur War as Israel’s finest moment and greatest victory. At the 30th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Yanush invited his colleagues to raise a toast and celebrate the victory at his seaside home in Caesarea. Avigdor Kahalani, Yair Nafshi, Yossi Ben‑Hanan and Raful were among the guests, as well as a lively mix of friends, dignitaries and politicians. Naturally, he also invited the surviving chain of command of the 7th Brigade. The year is now 2013. Seventy years earlier, Yanush arrived in Eretz Yisrael as a refugee escaping the Holocaust. At age 77, a vibrant and energetic Yanush is preparing the swimming pool in his backyard for a celebration of the impending 40th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Married to Avital, who is seventeen years his junior, Yanush is a father of 8‑year‑old twins — Ili and Tohar. He has five other grownup children from his first two marriages along with seven grandchildren. He married Avital

after his second wife, Galia died of cancer. After retiring from the military in 1985 to this very day, at 77, Yanush leads an active life as a thriving entrepreneur.

When asked in a recent interview[230] whether he feared death during the battle on the Golan, Yanush replied: “In the heat of battle I did not. Now, however, as a father of 8‑year‑old twins in my advanced age, I do fear death.“ Yanush is of the opinion that, all said and done, the Yom Kippur War constitutes a stunning victory. Yet, even forty years on, he cannot fathom how the Israeli Army turned a colossal debacle into a stunning victory in that fateful war. To be sure, Yanush is not shy about taking full credit for his foresight in preparing the 7th Armored Brigade a year before hostilities broke out. He never stops reminding his interlocutors how great his brigade performed back in October 1973 against the Syrian onslaught; in his own words: “The 7th Armored Brigade is the best brigade in the Israeli Army!“ Yanush is not oblivious to the fact that without the tenacious, heroic and skillful stand of the 7th Armored Brigade, Israel would have been on the verge of a grave existential threat. He is never at a loss for accolades when it comes to the glorious and valiant troops of the 7th Armored Brigade, but in the final analysis, like his forerunners — the

Maccabees — he defers to a higher authority when he asserts: “God loves the 7th Armored Brigade!“[231]

***

When Yaldei Teheran arrived in Eretz Yisrael back on February 18, 1943, a pale, sad and frightened seven‑year‑old Avigdor Goldblut stepped off the train at Atlit escorted by his sister Ilana. The emaciated seven‑year‑old boy clung to his older sister, as he had done for the past four years during their travails in the steppes of Russia and the cities of Soviet Asia. However, as the story of his life unfolded, this frail and timid orphaned Polish Jewish boy eventually played a pivotal role in ensuring the existence of the Jewish State at a very perilous moment in its history. A Dutch legend has it that there once was a small boy, who upon passing a dyke on his way to school noticed a slight leak, as seawater trickled in through a small hole in the dyke. The boy poked his finger into the hole and stemmed the flow of water. Sometime later a passerby saw him and went to get help. This came in the form of other men who were able to effect repairs on the dyke and seal up the leak. If not for the little boy, who poked his finger in the leaking hole, the trickle of water would soon turn into a stream and the stream a torrent and the torrent a flood that would inundate the entire city. The name of that little boy is Yanush. By plugging up the path of the onslaught of Syrian armor, he preempted the enemy from flooding the entire Jewish State. Thank God for Yaldei Teheran, and for a pale, sad and frightened seven‑year‑old boy named, Yanush, who dared to poke his finger through the hole in the dam and stem the flow of Syrian tanks, affording the Israeli Army just enough time to mobilize and seal the leak… and then some.

***

During his life, Yanush fought many battles and prevailed. Even unto old age, he led a robust and productive life, while raising 11-year old twins. Then, as he approached the age of eighty, something happened. He felt enervated and lost appetite, both for food and for life. His wife and friends took note of the dramatic change that came over their hero. Extensive medical tests revealed that Yanush is facing the most challenging battle of his life — pancreatic cancer. For many months Yanush put up a heroic fight against the lethal tumor. During these long months, his battle-hardened comrades, friends, family, his children and grandchildren, government officials, military brass and politicians stopped by to encourage their hero to fight on. He did. His sister Ilana, who shielded her baby brother from early on and throughout his life’s ordeals, stood by him once again. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called to bolster the spirits of the ailing general. He urged Yanush to seek the best available medical care for his condition, anywhere in the world. “The State will underwrite all expenses,“ the Prime Minister vowed.[232]

Kahalani, his blood-brother, and most faithful partner in the Yom Kippur War victory, spent countless hours with the legendary commander. Kahalani kept on urging, “Yanush, just like in the old days at the battle of the Valley of Tears during the fateful hours of the 1973 War on the Golan Heights… you will win this round, as well. Give it your best fight, Yanush… we love you and we need you!“ Yanush did give it his best fight… but on Saturday, February 13, 2016, he lost the battle against the unrelenting illness. Yanush was 80-years-old when he died. With full military honors, in the presence of his family, high military commanders and government officials, Yanush was interred at the Kiryat Shaul Military Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Aside from a glorious legacy of Jewish valor, Yanush left behind his older sister Ilana, his wife Avital, as well as seven children and grandchildren from three different marriages. May his memory be a blessing, a light and a shield for the nation of Israel.

Sarah Imeinu Since the commandment of Torah study is not incumbent upon women, there had not been a tradition of formal schooling for girls within the Jewish community. Instead, they were trained at home, usually by their mothers and other female relatives, for the largely domestic roles they would be fulfilling as adult Jewish women. By the second half of the nineteenth century, as economic conditions in Eastern Europe deteriorated, partly due to the rise of yeshivot for men, an economic need arose to send girls to school to acquire the linguistic and vocational skills necessary to support a family. With government laws mandating compulsory education, more and more Jewish girls were enrolled in secular public schools. Some Orthodox Jews considered it preferable that women should spend the time acquiring secular skills, so they could later use them to help support the continued learning of the men in their family. One rabbi, in search of a shidduch for his sister, boasted that she knew how to write Hebrew, Polish and German fluently and had knowledge of Russian as well. These were qualities that could secure a woman a good shidduch in those days.[233]

As the trend intensified, many more observant Jewish parents began to send their daughters to non-Jewish schools, where they were often influenced by anti-traditional cultural and social trends, including a nascent form of feminism. This exposure caused many of them to question and even abandon the traditional structures of family and community within which they lived. In an effort to stem the tide, this pressing issue dominated the agenda of the rabbinical conference convened in Krakow in 1903. A proposition was advanced to establish Orthodox schools for girls, in order to keep them “within the fold,“ but this proposal was rejected as too radical an innovation. It took fourteen years, World War I along with a courageous and dedicated seamstress named Sarah Schenirer to turn the rigid Orthodox establishment on its ear. Sarah Schenirer was born in Krakow, Poland on July 15, 1883. In her memoirs, she describes herself as the unassuming and withdrawn daughter of Belzer Chassidic parents. She was intelligent and had a strong desire to learn. Born into a prominent rabbinic family, Schenirer, who attended a Polish elementary school for eight years, envied her brothers the opportunities they had to learn Torah. Recognizing her interest in Torah study, Schenirer’s father began to provide her with a steady stream of religious texts translated into Yiddish. She attended school until the age of thirteen, but could not continue because her family was poor. She became a seamstress. A young woman, her mind as nimble with Hebrew texts as her fingers with the needle. The Jewish wives and daughters who enter her shop for fitting turn to her for advice, chatter about fashions, silhouettes, their never-adequate figures; the seamstress kneels quietly, stretching her measuring tape, pinning a fold, securing a hem.

When one client was unusually exacting about the measurements of her dress, Schenirer wrote in her diary: “People are such perfectionists when it comes to clothing their bodies. Are they so particular when they address themselves to the needs of their soul?“

The state of Jewish education in the Polish Jewish community was experiencing a drastic divide between the genders, with young boys sent to study in cheiders and then yeshivas, while girls ─ previously home with their mothers ─ began attending Polish state schools, eventually turning away from religion. They could not resist the pull of the false ideologies of the early decades of the 20th century: Communism, feminism, secularism. Not shying away from addressing the dissonance in the Chassidic community Schenirer wrote: And as we pass through the days before the High Holy Days, fathers and sons travel, and thus they are drawn to Ger, to Belz, to Alexander, to Bobov, to all those places that had been made citadels of conceited religious life, dominated by the figure of the Rebbe’s personality. And we stay at home, the wives, daughters, and the little ones. We have an empty festival. It is bare of Jewish intellectual content. The women have never learned anything about the spiritual meaning that is concentrated within a Jewish festival. The mother goes to the synagogue, but the services echo faintly into the fenced and boarded-off women’s galleries. There is much crying by elderly women. The young girls look at them as though they belong to a different century. Youth and the desire to live a full life shoot up violently in the strongwilled young personalities. Outside the synagogues, the young girls stay chattering; they walk away from the synagogue where their mothers pour out their vague and heavy feelings. They leave behind them the wailing of the older generation and follow the urge for freedom and self-expression. Further and further from the synagogue they go, further away, to the dancing, tempting light of a fleeting joy.

Working as a dressmaker, Schenirer stayed up late at night after work to study the weekly portion and the prophets: “I enjoyed it tremendously,“ she wrote, “as it enriched my understanding of the Jewish heritage and its beauty and depth of thought. But I also took a great interest

in secular knowledge: education, history and literature. I especially admired the classical works of Polish and German writers. I loved reading them.“

Schenirer wrote in her autobiography that she became concerned about assimilation in her community. She recounted attending a meeting of a Jewish girls’ organization on a Friday night. She expressed her alarm at seeing girls, who had grown up in Chassidic families like her own, violating Shabbat and blurting out heretical remarks.[234] The assimilation of her girlfriends troubled her and they began to call her “the little pious one,“ not necessarily out of admiration. During World War I, the family relocated to Vienna, where Schenirer was influenced by the Western European movement known as Neo-Orthodoxy, whose founder, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, had started schools for girls in Germany in the nineteenth century. While in Vienna, Schenirer was greatly inspired by Rabbi Flesch, a disciple of Hirsch. Addressing the community during Chanukah, Rabbi Flesch described the glorious role women had played in Jewish history. During the sermon, the rabbi spoke at length about the Apocryphal heroine Judith, and the power of Jewish women to continue her legacy. This lecture in particular left an everlasting impression upon Schenirer, who began attending Flesch’s lectures regularly, studying Torah through the lens of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the neoOrthodox rabbi of Frankfurt.

***

Towards the end of the war, Schenirer returned to Krakow with her family. Upon her return to Poland she began organizing lectures and a lending library for women, which served as a springboard to attain a higher goal. Armed with both a German Jewish education and a Hasidic fervor, Schenirer was determined to launch a new movement ─ a school for young Jewish girls. Her brother, a prominent member of the Belzer Hasidic community, tried to discourage her, insisting that her chances were slim, but finally agreed to take her to meet with the Belzer Rebbe in Marienbad, today in the Czech Republic. Upon hearing Schenirer’s idea of a school for Jewish girls, the old rabbi offered her two words: “Mazel u’brocha ─ good luck and a blessing!“ Though the Belzer Rebbe gave his blessing and sanction to the endeavor, nevertheless, he forbade his own Chassidim to send their daughters to this radical innovation. And thus, with the blessing of the Belzer Rebbe and eventually others ─ including that of the Gerrer Rebbe and the Chofetz Chaim, Rav Yisrael Meir Kagan of Radin ─ Schenirer set out to establish her school. As her pilot program ─ lecture series for women ─ did not yield the results she hoped for, Schenirer soon realized that the only way to affect a grassroots revolution in educating Jewish women is to spread the message through the younger generation. In 1917, Schenirer opened a kindergarten with twenty-five pupils and named the school Bais Yaakov.

It is quite obvious why Sarah Schenirer named the school she established Bais Yaakov. The Torah records the interaction between Moses and the Creator during the Revelation at Sinai. “And Moses ascended up to God, and Hashem called out to him from the mountain, saying: So shall you say to the House of Jacob (Bais Yaakov) and convey to the Children of Israel.“[235] Rashi informs us that Bais Yaakov are the ladies. So far so good, but there is more to it. In this verse, God ─ through Moses ─ addresses the ladies before the men thus establishing the concept of ladies first! The revelation at Sinai is certainly the ultimate defining moment in the annals of the world. Was there ever a more suitable occasion to have established the egalitarian principle between men and women? Surprisingly, God exhibits deference to the ladies. There is a very good reason why God instructs Moses to first inform the women. The Creator of humans knows their nature best. Therefore, God knew very well that if Moses can market the Torah to the ladies, the men will quickly fall into line. Reinforcing the central role of women, King Solomon articulated: Wisdom of the woman is the foundation and pillar of the household.[236]

*** The young girls in the Bais Yaakov school were taught mostly Jewish studies. Furthermore, Schenirer instilled in her students a love for Torah and imbued them with excitement in performing mitzvos. Her sensitivity and care for others were something her students strove to emulate. The lessons in that cramped room ─ featuring a Lithuanian-style study of Hebrew texts coupled with a Hasidic emphasis on character development ─ were wildly successful. Within five years, Schenirer’s single kindergarten class had grown to seven entire schools, numbering 1,040 students. Despite the stunning accomplishments, the road to success was fraught with obstacles, challenges and detractors. To many entrenched elements in the insular ultra-Orthodox community, Bais Yaakov was seen as an assault on the foundations of Yiddishkeit and a threatening departure

from tradition, to the extent that some of the opponents of the movement disparagingly called it House of Esau. As the movement grew, its major power base was established within the confines of the Gur branch of Hasidism. The head of the yeshiva in Radin, Lithuania, Rabbi Israel Meir Ha-Kohen — better known as the Chofetz Chaim — furnished rabbinic approval to the deviation from tradition represented by the establishment of girls’ schools within the Orthodox community. He saw this as a way of strengthening the traditional observance of girls in the face of changing social conditions. By 1921 the movement was adopted by Agudath Israel in Poland as its educational arm for girls and women. By 1933, in Poland alone, there were 265 schools in the Bais Yaakov network with an enrollment of about 38,000 students. Schenirer’s idea had taken Jewish Europe by storm. It was also the year that Schenirer stepped down as titular head of the movement, but remained the symbolic head until her death. By the eve of World War II, Bais Yaakov had grown into a diverse movement of its own with a large administrative board. Some schools offered Polish and German literature, pedagogy and psychology in addition to Jewish courses. Throughout Eastern Europe, youth groups, summer seminars and camps had cropped up within the Bais Yaakov system. Schenirer’s presence, her charisma and conviction remained at the center of the movement long after her death. She married late in life and died childless, though the thousands of women who had studied in her schools would later speak of themselves as her children, the adopted daughters of Frau Schenirer. Schenirer evolved into a mythical icon, the stuff of legends for thousands of Orthodox girls attending Bais Yaakov schools worldwide. Her work has been credited as instrumental in ensuring Orthodoxy’s survival. It

is said that the great Rav Meir Shapira of Lublin once told a Bais Yaakov teacher, “If not for your work in educating Jewish daughters, I would have to close down my yeshiva.“ On a rainy Sunday morning in March of 1935, the streets of Krakow, Poland filled with mourning girls. They joined other Orthodox Jews in paying their respects to Sarah Schenirer, who had passed away the day before. After the funeral, the girls went back to their school building. There, they sat until late that night, lamenting and mourning the loss of “our dear mother“ … retelling stories and anecdotes about their noble mentor’s great acts of piety and loving-kindness.[237] These girls’ reaction to a teacher’s death might seem a little extreme, but to them, Sarah Schenirer was not just a teacher. She had become their spiritual leader, and she remains a spiritual leader to this day and beyond.

*** In addition to education, Bais Yaakov offered women leadership opportunities that have enhanced Orthodoxy. Sarah Schenirer saw a need for girls to have female leaders with whom to forge a connection. Her movement trained women to be those leaders and educators for the next generation. The Bais Yaakov school system’s primary goal was to create qualified women leaders to run new Bais Yaakov schools. And it did. Then those women’s students went on to start schools. Bais Yaakov helped create new Torah personalities that continue to influence ensuing generations.[238]

The movement grew to include many types of institutions: supplementary afternoon and weekend programs; religious schools for girls

who attended non‑Jewish schools during the day; all-day schools where the pupils were taught both Jewish and secular subjects; teacher training seminaries, the first of which was established in Krakow in 1924; a publishing house for textbooks, other educational materials and a monthly journal in Yiddish; summer camps, youth clubs ─ “Batya“ for girls and “Bnos Agudath Israel“ for teenagers, as well as international conferences for Jewish women. The first Bais Yaakov conference was held in Warsaw in 1924. In the teacher training programs much emphasis was placed on modern pedagogy. In some of the larger cities the schooling extended through high school, offering business and vocational training. Although, as part of Agudath Israel, the movement took a non-Zionist stance. Agudath Israel’s opposition to Zionism notwithstanding, a number of Bais Yaakov schools offered a curriculum in agriculture to religious Zionist girls, who planned to emigrate to Palestine. In Eastern Europe the language of instruction in the movement was Yiddish, with some exposure to Polish and German language and literature. The curriculum in Jewish studies included Bible and traditional commentaries, Jewish philosophy, moral and homiletical literature and those laws incumbent on women, but it stopped short of Talmud. Secular subjects were taught through the prism of religious faith. Much emphasis was placed on hiring women teachers who had a strong educational background and who could serve as role models for their pupils. The ultimate role model was Sarah Schenirer herself. A sophisticated system of stories, symbols, songs, slogans and rituals was leveraged to bolster Bais Yaakov as a social movement, as well.

Bais Yaakov schools were furnished with state-of-the-art facilities. In addition, under the influence of Agudath Israel, both male and female administrators with modern training from Western Europe ─ among them Dr. Judith Grunfeld ─ were incorporated into the system. Though the movement utilized contemporary pedagogical methods, the content remained strictly traditional. Bais Yaakov teachers taught girls not only the specific prayers and duties which Jewish women were expected to know but presented secular subjects as if they, too, were part of Judaism. Literature was a venue for teaching the values of Jewish living. The wonder of God’s creation was the underlying theme for science classes. The study of German was deemed necessary for studying Hirsch’s biblical commentary in its original language.

*** By the early 1930s, the Bais Yaakov movement planted a foothold in Eretz Yisrael with the establishment of the country’s first Bais Yaakov in 1934. There, the language of instruction was Hebrew, rather than Yiddish, for two instrumental, rather than ideological, reasons: in order to better prepare the girls to enter the labor market and in order to be able to absorb pupils from Sephardi and Oriental backgrounds. In Palestine and later in the State of Israel, therefore, the appropriate name would be Bait Yaakov. Centers were established in Tiberias and Jerusalem and later in other cities.

In 1937 the first Bais Yaakov school was set up on American soil of what generally came to be known as the Beth Jacob schools, which today also exist in Britain and Western Europe, South Africa, Australia and South America.

*** After Schenirer stepped down as titular head of the movement in 1933 she was succeeded by a German Neo-Orthodox academic educator, Dr. Leo Deutschländer. In the 1940s the world head of the movement was Po’alei Agudat Israel ideologue Rabbi Yehudah Leib Orlean, who perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. While its growth clearly was arrested during the Holocaust, there are impressive stories ─ both historical and apocryphal ─ of the heroic behavior of students and teachers in the face of Nazi persecution.[239] In the United States, Bais Yaakov or Beth Jacob schools were developed by Orthodox Jews who had immigrated during and after World War II. Supported by Agudath Israel, the first American Bais Yaakov school was an elementary day school established in 1937 in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The movement also offered after-school Bais Yaakov programs for girls who attended public schools. Following the European model of training its own teachers, Bais Yaakov established a seminary in 1945, a parochial high school in 1948, and another high school in Borough Park in 1958. Schools spread from Brooklyn to Washington Heights and the Lower East Side, with a curriculum of Bible, Jewish history and Jewish laws and customs. By the early 1960s there were eighteen Bais Ya’akov elementary and secondary schools, all but two in New York.

In America, where so many Jews focused on living the “American dream,“ Bais Yaakov schools contributed to the endeavor within certain Orthodox Jewish communities to protect their girls from assimilating influences. While other Orthodox Jewish parents sent their daughters to colleges and universities, Bais Yaakov parents discouraged theirs from pursuing secular education. As other Orthodox Jews created a particularly American version of traditional Judaism by combining contemporary popular culture and dress with the observance of Jewish law, the families associated with Bais Yaakov schools struggled to hold on to a pristine, traditional world, free of the assimilating influences of American society. Today, Bais Yaakov schools are associated with the traditionally, or strictly, Orthodox Jews in the United States. The educational ideal of the Bais Yaakov girl was an Orthodox Jewish woman, married and the mother of children, who nevertheless developed a career outside the home and continued being involved in Torah study along with fulfillment of mitzvos and acts of chessed. The economic necessity of work outside the home seemed to give way to a more positive view of work as something to be affirmed in and of itself. The kinds of occupations for which the girls were trained ─ including teaching, secretarial work, bookkeeping and, later, even medical and legal secretaries ─ were held up as models. Academic degrees were generally frowned upon, even in the U.S. After World War II, the world center of the movement shifted to Israel, where the movement has grown to encompass fifteen thousand students in over one hundred institutions. The network of Bais Yaakov schools throughout the world has come to be associated with uncompromising standards of Orthodoxy, modest dress and ritual practice.

*** Sarah Schenirer, a seamstress who lacked formal qualifications in either the Judaic or general academic-pedagogic realm, thus became the head of a worldwide movement with tens of thousands of pupils in hundreds of institutions. Apparently she was a charismatic figure about whom legends began to spread. The girls within the movement called her Sarah Imeinu ─ Our Matriarch Sarah. Under her leadership, the Bais Yaakov movement developed a sophisticated strategy for giving legitimacy to the innovation it introduced into the traditional community. Perhaps a clue lies in a speech given by Sarah Schenirer herself. Schenirer taught her students that they must learn to balance two important concepts: the idea of turning inward — for the traditional Jewish concept of modesty, and the need for turning outward — for extraordinary action. Schenirer did not believe tradition and innovation were mutually exclusive. You could be a traditional revolutionary — which is exactly what she was. Like Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Chofetz Chaim, Sarah Schenirer demonstrates that innovation is an integral part of the halachic process.[240] Sarah Schenirer remained alone for most of her life, till her marriage to Rabbi Landau. They had no children. Schenirer died of cancer on March 1, 1935 at the age of fifty-two. To this day, her name and legend remain as part of the heritage of Bais Yaakov girls. In 2005, the seventieth anniversary of Sarah Schenirer’s death, an archival repository was established at the Central Bais Yaakov in Jerusalem to document the early history of the Bais Yaakov movement. Schenirer herself had refused to be photographed during her lifetime. “I don’t need anyone to remember what I look like,“ she was quoted as saying. “I want them to remember my vision.“ The only extant image of the legendary founder is a passport photo brought to Israel by one of her pupils. But numerous women, Holocaust survivors who had attended the first wave of Bais Yaakov schools, contributed both memories and mementos towards the establishment of the Bais Yaakov historical society. That same year, a dedicated cadre of women set out to achieve another goal ─ the restoration of Schenirer’s tombstone. They traveled to Poland and replaced the tombstone at Sarah Schenirer’s grave in Krakow’s

Jewish cemetery, which had been razed when the Plaszow concentration camp was built. A large contingent of Bais Yaakov students and teachers from the United States and Israel attended the rededication ceremony. Eulogizing the founder, to whom all assembled had come to pay their respects, the director of the Central Bais Yaakov proclaimed: “Frau Schenirer, we are not merely placing a memorial on your grave site. We are placing it upon our hearts; for us, and for all the generations who will come after us.“[241]

*** Vichna Eisen, scion to a prominent rabbinical family, was born in Slonim, Russian Empire, around 1913. Her parents died before her eleventh birthday. She and her brother Dovid were raised by their aunt and uncle, who were childless. Vichna applied to the Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary in Krakow at the age of sixteen. Her application was rejected because she lacked a government‑recognized high school diploma; her uncle had not allowed her to attend the non-religious gymnasium school. She wrote to Sarah Schenirer and was accepted to the seminary after taking private lessons to earn her diploma. Since her family could not afford to pay tuition, she also received a scholarship from the school. Lauded for her “superb intelligence, phenomenal memory, and unblemished character“, she epitomized what Schenirer was trying to achieve in a Bais Yaakov student and became Schenirer’s closest disciple and confidante.

After completing the two-year course of study, she was sent to Brisk, Poland, where she served as the sole religious studies teacher at the Bais Yaakov school in that city for the next five years. Her teaching skills were noticed by Rabbi Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rav, who praised her ability to imbue students with Torah knowledge and fear of Heaven. In 1936 she was introduced to Rabbi Boruch Kaplan, an American student who had studied at the Mir, Kaminetz, and Brisk yeshivas. After

they met, Kaplan returned to America during Hanukkah 1936 and they corresponded by mail. As a condition for the shidduch, his family insisted that the couple live in America. At that time, the American lifestyle was perceived as detrimental to families wishing to live according to Torah values. Though Vichna’s uncle was opposed to her departure for America, he advised her to consult with the Brisker Rav. The Rav assured her, “With Rav Boruch, you can go wherever he wants“. The couple was engaged by mail in 1936 and married on August 8, 1937, eleven days after Vichna arrived in New York City. They eventually had nine sons and four daughters. Before leaving Poland, Vichna received permission from Rabbi Yehuda Leib Orlean, head of the central Bais Yaakov office, to open a Bais Yaakov school in New York. While Bais Yaakov elementary schools did exist in New York at that time, hers was the first religious high school for Jewish girls. She started the school with seven students around her diningroom table in Williamsburg in 1938. Two of her first students were the daughters of Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz of Mesivta Torah Vodaath, who told her, “Take my daughters and build a seminary around them“. The Mendlowitz girls brought five friends, and classes began.

The school outgrew Kaplan’s home and occupied several rented locations before settling into its own building at 143 South 8th Street in Williamsburg. In 1944 it became an all-day high school. A dormitory was opened for out-of-town American students, as well as girls from Canada, and European refugees. At that point, Rabbi Boruch Kaplan, a successful maggid shiur at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, left his position to become school administrator. The Kaplans also opened a summer learning camp at Engel’s

Farm in Connecticut, in the tradition of the summer camps Schenirer had run in Poland. Unlike today’s Bais Yaakov students, Kaplan’s early high-school students were not all from religious homes. Concepts like modesty had to be taught with warmth and sensitivity. Besides general and Torah studies, the girls were encouraged to take their education to the next level and become teachers in the Bais Yaakov movement. Bais Yaakov also inspired Jewish girls to forego a materialistic lifestyle and marry young men dedicated to full-time kollel study, which would necessitate a lower standard of living than that commonly accepted in America. Kaplan hired many graduates of the Krakow seminary to teach in the first Bais Yaakov high school. These included Rebbetzins Chava Pincus, Basya Bender, Chava Wachtfogel, Rivka Springer, Chana Rottenberg, Rochel Cizner, Shifra Yudasin, Batsheva Hutner, and Leah Goldstein. These teachers forged a connection between their American students and the founder of Bais Yaakov, Sarah Schenirer, by speaking often about their mentor and her lessons. Kaplan herself recalled Schenirer at every Rosh Chodesh assembly. Before she made any decision for her school, Kaplan asked herself, “What would Sarah Schenirer say to this? “

In 1958 the Kaplans opened a Boro Park branch of Bais Yaakov, which eventually superseded the Williamsburg location. The school continued to expand into elementary, high school and seminary programs. All other Bais Yaakov schools that later opened in America and Israel trace their history to Kaplan’s original school, through the teachers Kaplan sent to staff them and the advice she gave to found them. The fiftieth yahrtzeit gathering for Schenirer in Madison Square Garden in 1985, which Kaplan organized, was attended by thousands of students of Bais Yaakov schools established in Hasidic, yeshivish, and Modern Orthodox communities with staff members drawn from the Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary. Seven thousand girls converged on the sixtieth yahrtzeit gathering at the Brooklyn Armory in Williamsburg in 1995.

*** During World War II, when the Bais Yaakov movement in Poland was decimated by the murder of teachers and students in the Holocaust, the Kaplans applied for thousands of student visas for war refugees. Despite the skepticism of United States immigration officials, who could not believe that one institution could support so many refugees, the Kaplans rescued more European Jewish girls than any other American institution. Still active as dean of the Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary, Vichna Kaplan died on August 20, 1986. Her daughter, Rebbetzin Frumie Kirzner, succeeded her as dean of the Bais Yaakov Teachers Seminary. Rabbi Boruch Kaplan died on April 7, 1996.

Rabbi Aharon Kotler, rosh yeshivah of Beth Medrash Gavoha in Lakewood, credited the Kaplans and their Bais Yaakov enterprise for ensuring the growth of Torah in America. Kotler said: If not for Rav Boruch and Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan who started large scale Bais Yaakov on these shores, there would be no true appreciation for a Ben Torah; for an aspiring Talmid Chacham; for a life consecrated to Torah. There would be no willingness to forego material comfort for the sake of Talmud Torah. There would be no Kollelim in America!

Similarly, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, said that his girls’ school, Bais Ruchel, would not have succeeded without the graduates of Bais Yaakov, who served as its first teachers. The Rebbe also sent a message to Rabbi Boruch Kaplan thanking him for making it easier for his boys to find suitable shidduchim ─ marriage partners.[242]

*** Today, hundreds of Bais Yaakov schools and seminaries with a student population in the tens of thousands span the globe. Branches thrive in most North American cities with large populations of Orthodox Jews such as New York, Montreal, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, St. Louis, Toronto, Lakewood, Passaic, Monsey. With branches in most Israeli cities, the Land of Israel boasts the largest network of Bais Yaakov schools and seminaries. Bais Yaakov-type schools are also found in major Jewish centers in Europe, such as London, Manchester, Antwerp and Moscow, and in other Jewish centers around the world, including Johannesburg, South Africa.

*** Sarah Schenirer became more than her students’ teacher, she became their rebbe and Bais Yaakov their Chassidus. Her story demonstrates that change happens on the ground. One woman, with little fanfare, just did what needed to be done. She didn’t wait for the big organizations to get involved, or let herself get mired in the politics. She started her school, its success spoke for itself, and the organized community followed suit. In this respect, Bais Yaakov is a model grassroots movement. Starting Bais Yaakov was not the only example of Sarah Schenirer initiating grassroots change. In Schenirer’s community, it was not socially accepted for single girls to attend shul on Shabbat. However, Schenirer felt that it was essential to her students’ spiritual development that they daven with a minyan. Schenirer simply began taking her students with her to shul and thereby changed another societal norm.

In 2015, the Orthodox world marked the 80th yahrtzeit of Sarah Schenirer and events commemorating the occasion attest to the continued centrality of Sarah Schenirer in Orthodox Jewish life. On a brisk Tuesday morning in March of 2015, over 14,000 women and girls gathered together in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center from all over North America — with many more watching via satellite hook-up. They came to commemorate the life of a woman they had never met, but who impacted their lives profoundly. Sarah Schenirer turned the socially unacceptable idea of girls learning Torah in a Jewish school into a way of life for Jews all over the world, providing a model of how to successfully balance tradition and innovation. On the occasion of Schenirer’s 80th yahrtzeit commemoration event, Rabbi Paysach Krohn recounted a story about Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna, former rosh yeshivah of Yeshivas Chevron, who told a crowd of people that the person who had done the most for Am Yisrael in the past 100 years was not the Chofetz Chaim, the Alter of Slabodka or any of the great Chassidic rebbes of the previous generation. It was Sarah Schenirer. She fought assimilationists, she fought community leaders, she fought threats of excommunication. She fought le’shem Shamayim and she persevered![243]

Morning Bread Invariably, most people, even before opening their eyes in the morning, dash over to turn on the coffeemaker. Ooh that first cup of coffee in the morning… an eye opener and a lifesaver… or is it? The sages of the Talmud[244] beg to differ. Not that they have anything against coffee, but they do make a big deal of the benefits that accrue from eating bread in the morning. Our Rabbis taught, thirteen benefits are gained from eating the morning bread: 1. It is an antidote against heatstroke and chills 2. It is an antidote against winds and other ill effects 3. It instills wisdom into the mind of the simpleton 4. It helps one to triumph in a lawsuit 5. It enhances the study of Torah 6. It enables one to teach Torah 7. It helps one to have his words heeded 8. It helps retain scholarship 9. He who partakes thereof is less likely to perspire 10. It promotes harmony between husband and wife 11. He who partakes thereof does not lust after other women 12. It kills intestinal parasites and tapeworms 13. Some say, it also exorcizes jealousy and induces love

Furthermore, the Rabbinical dictum, arise early and eat — in summer, on account of the heat, in winter, on account of the cold, is a reference to the benefits that result from the consumption of bread early in the morning. If all of the above 13 perks along with the magical Rabbinical dictum did not yet win you over to partake of the morning bread, perhaps the following metaphor in the Talmud will tip the scales: Sixty runners speed along, but cannot overtake him who breaks bread in the morning.[245] Long before the term breakfast was coined, the initial meal of the day was known as the morning bread. For those who are not yet convinced of the whopping advantages that accrue from the morning bread, hopefully this one will clinch it for you: An imbalance in the bile[246] can result in, as many, as 83 different maladies; all of them can be prevented by consistently eating the morning bread![247] Also known as gall, bile is a dark green to yellowish brown fluid, produced continuously in the liver. It is stored and concentrated in the gallbladder. Bile assists in the digestion of lipids. On the other hand, gastric acid is a digestive fluid formed in the stomach. It is composed mainly of hydrochloric acid, and plays a key role in digestion of proteins. Working in tandem, bile and gastric acids along with digestive enzymes assimilate and digest the foods we consume. Since the functions of gastric acids and bile are intertwined ― in order to avoid confusion ― henceforth, we’ll refer to the confluence of bile and gastric acids simply as either, bile or alternately as, acids.

***

Indeed, what is all the Talmudic rage about morning bread? And how is all this connected to the bile in our intestines? It all starts the night before. While we doze off, our entire physical plant kicks into “sleep mode.“ So that our body would not completely shut down, the brain regulates all the mandatory biological functions at very low idle. This includes a very slow trickle of bile and gastric acids into our digestive system. After seven or eight hours of sleep, our intestines are coated with ample bile in anticipation of the impending nourishment about to enter the digestive system. If the caustic acids are not tamed, over the long run, they can inflict a variety of ailments on our digestive system. Some of you might have noticed that when we accidentally drop a slice of bread on a wet kitchen counter, the fluids are quickly absorbed by the sponge‑like dough. This is exactly what takes place when we drop the morning bread into our tummies. It quickly absorbs the excess bile in our intestines. Conversely, if instead of morning bread we flush down a cup of coffee into our system, it triggers a flow of additional acids, increasing the already elevated levels that accumulated in our system during the night. But there is even more to it. As food comes down the esophagus, the intestines secret acids in order to assist in digesting the new arrivals. Though coffee itself is not necessarily acidic, it contains caffeine, which is a stimulant. As coffee flows down the chute, the intestines are stimulated by the caffeine, secreting heaps of fresh bile on top of the buildup of acids from the night before. Unlike bread, coffee is not solid food, it is a fluid. As it enters the intestines, the pile of coffee is greeted by an ocean of acids. Consequently, as people get into the habit of gulping down a couple of cups of coffee in the morning and then dashing off into a busy day at the office, the next meal they eat is at lunchtime. By then the uncontested excess bile has caused irreversible damage to the digestive tract. As this bad habit is perpetuated day in day out, over time, it eventually results in one or more of the 83 maladies[248] ― ranging from ulcers and diabetes to cancer.

***

An old folk wisdom states: Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. Had people consistently acted in accordance with this golden rule, not only would it bestow upon them health along with all the blessings wrapped up in the morning bread, but this practice could also go a long way in abolishing the curse of excess weight. Moreover, this convention is also instrumental in neutralizing sleep disorders. Here is what Subha Sivakolundu, a Biologist by profession has to say about all this:[249] Breakfast is the first meal of the day, and it is the meal that the body uses to top up its glucose levels after eight to twelve hours of fasting. Glucose is vital for the brain and it’s the main energy source for the body. As well, it also fuels the muscles that are necessary for physical activity through the day. If you skip breakfast, you will have a shorter attention span, be less alert, take longer to react, have low blood sugar, and decreased productivity. At lunch time, eat a substantial meal to fuel you for the afternoon but make sure that it isn’t too heavy. Essentially, it should be a medium-sized meal — smaller than breakfast but larger than dinner. If you eat a large meal at dinner, which is traditional in most homes, weight gain can occur as the body cannot use all the energy in the food and thus stores it as fat instead. A heavy meal at dinner can also cause sleep disturbances. We need the most energy at the beginning of the day, and the least energy at the end, when most daily tasks are over and we are relaxing. Eat according to the needs of your day. If you have an office or other sedentary jobs, eat lighter meals. If your job is more active, eat foods that provide sustained energy. If you are very athletic and train hard, then you will need more nourishment towards the end of the day, to sustain your training needs.

Unfortunately, most people are not in the habit of eating dinner like a pauper, but rather more like a king. By the time they rise in the morning they still feel stuffed. No wonder then that they are averse, too lazy or too rushed to consume the morning bread. Their world is turned upside down, resulting in a vicious cycle of hefty dinners followed by mornings bereft of solid foods. Those who eat dinner like a king, invariably, end up eating breakfast not fit even for a pauper; it usually consists of gulping down a cup of coffee or two, occasionally topped off with a serving of yogurt. Even for those of us who don’t drink coffee, leaving the excess levels of bile unchallenged is a habit that, over the long run, wreaks devastation on our digestive tract in particular and our health in general. Clearly, the Talmud is on target in alerting us to consume the morning bread every day in order to avert a torrent of physical maladies. Moreover, the sages of the Talmud aim beyond the physical, as well. They assert that the morning bread induces a delectable package of spiritual, social and didactic benefits. While discussing the matter with Art Miller, our adept and amicable old‑timer family doctor, he brought to my attention a survey that was conducted among school age pupils. The results of the study clearly indicate that kids who regularly eat breakfast (i.e. morning bread) perform — scholastically and athletically — far better than their peers, who skip breakfast. Indeed, a healthy body also maintains a robust, focused and sound mind. Moreover, the scope of benefits resulting from consuming the morning bread, extends beyond scholarship. A sound and responsive mind is fertile ground for an auspicious and balanced attitude, resulting in harmonious coexistence, with our spouses, friends and business colleagues, as well as the rest of the world.

Still, I am not quite sure how the morning bread can bail us out from ending up on the losing side of a lawsuit. Not that I doubt the wisdom of our sages, but it will take a while till I make the connection. Having said that, shall it come to pass that I am slapped with a lawsuit — just to be on the safe side — I’ll make sure to devour an extra morsel of morning bread before I head out to defend myself in court. Facing a lawsuit in court on an empty stomach could easily slap the defendant with a bleeding ulcer. When all is said and done, the morning bread packs quite a punch even before we reach the courthouse. Just imagine, what a slice of bread in the morning can do for our health, success, harmony and contentment in life. Never did so little have such vast potential to do so much good for so many. Taken on a regular basis, the morning bread can make all the difference in the world; it will engender the greatest positive impact on your mental and physical state for life. Try it and see for yourself.

So, before you reach for that cup of coffee in the morning — do your intestines and the rest of your existence a huge favor that you’ll never regret — dig into a slice of bread first. To make it more palatable, you may coat it with peanut butter, cheese, honey, butter, jelly, or top it off with schmaltz herring; or any combination thereof. Have it your way, as long as you sneak that morsel of dough into your tummy, it will neutralize your body’s worst enemy — the swamp of bile raging in your intestines; and at the same time restore the exhausted glucose levels. Now, armed with confidence that the morning bread replenished your depleted reservoir of glucose and tempered the harmful excess acids floating around in your system, go ahead, sit back, relax and enjoy that cup of coffee… or two or three! Have a great day!

*** As soon as we wake up in the morning, we are already in possession of a huge advantage — an empty and clean small intestines. During the course of the day, what we deposit into our empty intestines, when and how we do so, will determine our health, happiness, as well as our mental and physical well-being!

***

When it comes to food consumption, the Golden Rule is: Eat only what your body needs; not what you crave!

Fruits of Geinossar In his opening statement on health care and vitality, Maimonides[250] highlights the link between the physical and the spiritual: Maintaining a healthy and sound body is among the ways of God. An ill person’s mind is clouded and troubled to the extent that he can neither perceive nor possess knowledge of the Creator. Consequently, one must avoid that which harms the body and accustom himself to that which fortifies his physical constitution and assists the body in healing itself. A key element contributing to a robust mental and physical health is to ensure a consistent smooth flow of food through our system. In the words of the legendary healer, Maimonides:[251] A person should always strive to maintain loose bowels. This is a cardinal principle in medicine ─ persistent constipation or irregularity of bowel movement results in numerous severe diseases. Indeed, how does one maintain a supple and consistent flow of the digestive tract? Well, it is no big secret that fiber is the consummate grease of our digestive system. The best source of fiber comes from fruits, and the best fruits come from Geinossar. However, gobbling up succulent fruits haphazardly is not sufficient to keep the system moving fluidly. One must also be aware of the most suitable and beneficial timing of introducing fiber into the system. Consuming fruits after solid foods such as bread and meat is likely to cause an intestinal traffic jam, in which the fruits are trapped up the line. Thus confined, the agitated potent fruit grows restless letting off steam in the form of noxious gases; unleashing a potentially painful, blaring and discomfiting reaction.

Though fruit is the ultimate agent facilitating a smooth intestinal flow, it is wise to keep in mind that timing is everything. Once again, Maimonides comes to the rescue, as he sheds light on how to schedule fruit consumption:[252] Fruits ─ rich in fiber ─ should be eaten first, before the meal. One should not eat them together with his main meal. Rather, he should wait until they have descended from the upper stomach and then eat his meal. Since fruits are rich in fiber, they flush through our system relatively fast and pave the way for solid foods. While it takes at least three hours for our small intestines to process a meal consisting of solid foods, high-fiber fruit zips through the same path in about thirty minutes. It’s important to keep in mind that enzymes, which catalyze fruits are different than the ones utilized in assimilating solid foods. Consequently, it’s not a good idea to consume solid foods together with fruits or immediately after eating fruits. This is a bad habit, which leads to a clash within our intestines; it often results in turmoil followed by uncontrollable explosions. For best results, fruit should be taken at least half hour before mealtime. And, of course, since solid foods clear the intestines three hours[253] later, it’s not a bad idea to take in a round of fruit into the vacated intestines to pave the way for the next shipment of solid food. This rhythm keeps the system functioning smoothly like a well-oiled machine. Happy tummy, happy people!

Lest we consume fruitage solely for the benefit of its rich fiber content, let it be known that, indeed, there is much more to it. Fruits are also naturally and organically packed with heaps of numerous minerals, vitamins and nutrients. Moreover, fruits are rich in antioxidants, which play a major role in detoxifying our system. Unlike processed and packaged foodstuffs infused with an array of chemicals and preservatives, fruits are freshly plucked right off the tree branches over our heads. If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, just imagine what a basket loaded with succulent fresh fruit can do for you! It packs the potential to put all doctors out of business. Oooohhh, the sight and sound of “Succulent Fresh Fruit!“ How natural… how healthy… how refreshing… how invigorating… how sanguine… how heavenly… how divine!

*** During the end of the third century, Rabbi Abbahu,[254] a celebrated Jewish sage lived in the city of Caesarea in the Holy Land. His rabbinic education was acquired mainly at Tiberias, in the academy presided over by Rabbi Yochanan, with whom his relations were almost those of a son. He frequently made pilgrimages to Tiberias, even after he had become well known as rector of the Cæsarean Talmudic Academy. Wise, handsome, and wealthy, Abbahu became not only popular with his coreligionists, but also influential in interceding on behalf of the Jewish community with the proconsular Roman authorities.

The Talmud[255] relates that Rabbi Abbahu was a real fruit junkie. He gobbled up heaps of Geinossar fruit. So much so, that he was one happy man ─ the owner of a perfectly synchronized digestive system. This resulted in much more than just a healthy physical plant; it also afforded him tranquility, which leads to nirvana. The bliss resulting from the abundant consumption of Geinossar fruits uplifted Rabbi Abbahu’s spirits to the extent that his countenance radiated with a spiritual sheen. Happy body, happy mind! No stress, no wrinkles! Though not a youngster, Rabbi Abbahu’s complexion was silky smooth to the extent that a fly who happened to land on his face had nothing to hold on to and slipped off. If we wish to avoid a fly in our ointment and at the same time develop a sound body and gain peace of mind, we would be wise to internalize the wisdom of Rabbi Abbahu. After all, the fruits of Geinossar are not out of our reach.

*** As soon as we wake up in the morning, we are already in possession of a huge advantage — empty and clean small intestines. During the course of the day, what we deposit into our empty intestines, when and how we do so, will determine our health, happiness, as well as our mental and physical well-being!

***

When it comes to food consumption, the Golden Rule is: Eat only what your body needs; not what you crave!

Postscript Born in 1138 C.E., Maimonides was dubbed, The Prince of Physicians. His literary ability was incredible and his knowledge encyclopedic. He mastered nearly everything known in the fields of theology, mathematics, law, philosophy, astronomy, ethics, and, of course, medicine. As a physician, he treated disease by the scientific method rather than the contemporary conventions of guesswork, superstition, or rule of thumb. His attitude towards the practice of medicine came from his deep religious background, which made the preservation of health and life a divine commandment. His inspiration lives on through the years, and his position as one of the medical giants of history is indelibly recorded. He served as physician to Sultans and Princes. The heritage of his great medical writings stood the test of time; his medical savvy is more and more appreciated in light of the progress of modern-day medicine and science. In the medical works of Maimonides, one can discern his holistic approach to healing, which calls for treatment of the whole ill patient — Body, mind, psyche and soma. This tradition allowed him to be both a practicing physician and teacher. As a healer, Maimonides emphasized the untold benefits of preventive medicine. His descriptions of many diseases such as hepatitis, pneumonia, diabetes, asthma, and many others are remarkably modern given that he lived and functioned as a healer during the early medieval era. His legacy as a physician, healer, theologian, philosopher, and astronomer lives on for posterity. Maimonides was a

physician of whom modern medicine would be proud if he were alive today. [256]

Serving by example, Maimonides treated his patients with optimism, joy and utmost kindness. This is an extraordinarily powerful and foresighted message for a 12th century physician. Indeed, Maimonides lived in a stifling era of constant war and oppressive church edicts. What people knew in the 12th century was all derived from classical sources. At the time, new insights and new research were not encouraged by the church. People didn’t ask questions. Despite medieval restrictions on free thought, Maimonides invoked the scientific method in his medical practice, insisting on personally observing his patients, providing bedside care, and relentlessly pursuing knowledge that improved treatments.[257] While we are on the subject of health and nutrition, here are a few additional pearls of wisdom courtesy of Maimonides. A person should never eat unless he is hungry. He should never put off relieving himself, even for an instant. Rather, whenever he feels the urge to urinate or move his bowels, he should do so immediately. [258]

One should not overload his belly to full capacity. Rather, he should stop when he has eaten close to three quarters of full satisfaction.[259] One should drink only a small amount of water during the meal, and temper it with wine. While food is digested in his intestines, he may drink what is necessary. However, one should not drink much water, even when the food has been digested.[260] One should not eat until he is thoroughly convinced that he does not need to relieve himself. He should not eat until he has taken a stroll

which is sufficient to raise his body temperature.[261] When fruits are not sufficiently ripe, they act like daggers to the body.[262] In summer, one should eat two-thirds of what he eats in the winter.[263] As long as one exercises, exerts himself greatly, does not eat to the point of satiation and has loose bowels, he will not suffer sickness and he will grow in strength. This applies even if he does not maintain the healthiest of diets.[264] Conversely, whoever is idle and does not exercise, or does not move his bowels when he has the urge, or is constipated, even if he eats the proper foods and takes care to follow the rules of medicine, he will be plagued with pain for all his days and his strength will fade away.[265] Overeating is like poison to anyone’s body. It is the main source of all illness. Most illnesses which afflict people are caused by harmful foods or by overloading their bellies, even with healthful foods. This was implied by King Solomon in his wisdom: “Whoever guards his mouth and his tongue, guards his soul from distress“[266]; i.e. “guards his mouth“ from eating harmful food or overeating, and “his tongue“ from speaking about matters other than is absolutely necessary.[267] One must not engage in intercourse on a full stomach; only after the food has been digested.[268]

Dr. Gil Yosef Shachar acquired a reputation as an authority on Maimonides’ medical teachings. He authored an exhaustive research on

how to apply the farsighted healing and preventive measures advocated by Maimonides in light of the latest advances in medicine and science. He posits that Maimonides’ approach to medicine is holistic in nature. Based on a list compiled by Dr. Shachar,[269] here are the highlights of Maimonides’ essential principles of curing and preventing diseases: Aside from rare instances, the body is adept at healing itself, all we need to do is get out of the way and let our physical plant perform its magic. Maimonides was a great believer in the principle that the ultimate function of the healer is not to heal, but rather teach patients how to heal themselves. The essence of healing is the focus on reinforcement of the body and its immune system through quality and healthy nutrition, tailored for the individual. Educating the patient about dietary discipline and arming him with knowledge of the benefits of the different types of healthy nutrients is a central pillar of the art of healing. Proper nutrition is not limited to nutrients and foodstuffs. No less important are the following factors of our eating habits: timing, deportment, pace, coordination of nutrients in each meal, quantity, intake of fluids with solid food. According to Maimonides, beyond the physiological, every malady is rooted in an emotional-mental state, as well. It is incumbent upon the healer to drill down to the bottom of the emotional-mental cause of the ailment, even if he is thoroughly convinced that he detected the physiological root of the disease.

Maimonides identifies contentment as the ultimate foundation of sound health. Aside from all his other duties, it is essential for the healer to imbue his patients with hope, optimism and joy. A healthy diet by itself is not sufficient in preventing illness. The ultimate weapon in the quest for a healthy body is to maintain a daily regimen of physical activity and exercise. Furthermore, one needs to maintain a balanced attitude along with realistic expectations of life. Maimonides attributes great relevance to quality sleep, quality air and water intake, personal hygiene, measured exposure to sunlight, sexuality and social interaction as factors that greatly influence our health. Maimonides emphasizes that our body reacts adversely to radical changes and fluctuations. Consequently, one should take great care to make gradual changes in life, even if it’s of a favorable nature.

Demise of an Evil Empire

Judging by the evils of Communism, which peaked during Stalin’s reign of terror, one cannot but wonder and ponder: How did such a powerful system of government in which the dictatorial State exercised absolute control over the body, mind, soul and thought of every individual citizen at any given time; a system, which enslaved hundreds of millions of people… come to an abrupt end after 70 years? Like most pivotal events in human history, there may very well be more than one explanation for the collapse of the evil Bolshevik Empire. All this notwithstanding, the reader will likely be left in shock and awe when informed of the ultimate pivotal element responsible for ushering the collapse of the mighty Soviet Evil Empire. Brace yourself… here it comes. A perennial old cliché informs us that “the ultimate constant in our life is change.“ Indeed, in this ephemeral existence, we are constantly challenged by change. Those who adapt to change prevail and transcend… those who don’t cope well with change, fall by the wayside. Yet, there is one constant in our universe that never goes away and still transcends all challenges. That constant is the Jewish people. Ever since the original Hebrew, our Patriarch Abraham, first observed that our universe is guided and sustained by ONE invisible Creator, the Jewish people launched a monumental revolution that turned the world upside down and inside out. To this very day, the greatest of all human revolutions is known as monotheism.

The monotheistic revolution forged by Abraham did not come without a hefty price. The polytheistic pagans of antiquity were so appalled, offended and traumatized by this unfathomable innovation that they declared an all‑out war on Abraham and his Hebrew descendants down the generations. Even after most of the world’s inhabitants eventually woke up from their torpor and realized that paganism is out and monotheism is in, they could still not forgive the Jews for getting there first. Consequently, not only were the Jewish people along with their monotheistic religion threatened by the pagan evil empires of antiquity, but also challenged by the sword wielded by the two monolithic junior monotheistic religions — Christianity and Islam. While everything around them constantly shifts and evolves, the Jews remain a constant in God’s universe. This underlying axiom is ever so astutely captured in the prophetic and eternal observation by Mark Twain: All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?[270]

While all other nations and religions come and go, and constantly transform, the existence and destiny of the Jewish people are steered by four underlying principles: 1.) Whether the Jewish people or the rest of the world, or both, like it or not, the Jews are God’s chosen people. 2.) As clearly illustrated by history, the Jewish people were NOT chosen for privileges, but rather for challenges. 3.) As long as Jews remain faithful custodians of the Word of God — the Torah, the destiny and future of the Jewish people are guaranteed by our Father in Heaven. 4.) Sooner or later, our Father in Heaven settles all accounts with our foes… this recurrent theme — running like a thread throughout the length and breadth of Jewish history — is best summed up in the words of a wise Englishman, Thomas Newton:[271] We see that the great empires, which in their turn subdued and oppressed the People of God, are all come to ruin... and if such hath been the fatal end of the enemies and oppressors of the Jews, let it serve as a warning to all those, who at any time or upon any occasion are for raising a clamor and persecution against them.[272]

God chose the Jews as the vehicle to disseminate His Law among the nations of the world. Gradually, the Torah’s message and energy permeated considerable segments of humanity. In reality, this magical divine influence tipped the scales just enough to make a huge difference in human destiny.

Eventually, most of the world’s Peoples and nations have adopted norms, which are not very far removed from Torah values and principles. This trend is poignantly and concisely depicted by the words of an Irish scholar and author named, Thomas Cahill: The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside — our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact — new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, justice — are the gifts of the Jews.[273]

Once God deposited His prized possession — the Torah — at the hands of man, He relinquished control over guiding its destiny. That is where the Jews stepped in. It is their duty and mission to preserve the Word of God, and propagate it for the benefit of all mankind for all times. As much as the Jews cannot go it alone in this grand mission, neither could God bring this project to a happy ending without the aid of His chosen flock. That is why the Creator forged a partnership with the Jewish people to guard and promulgate His Torah unto eternity. This partnership is analogous to a marriage between man and woman in which neither party can go it alone, but together they forge a bond that forms the backbone of the human enterprise, and by extension, of the entire universe. Consequently, the design by which Jews are scattered all over the globe is far from coincidental. This is ordained by a divine scheme to ensure that no matter how many Jewish communities will be decimated, the original text of the Word of God will always be preserved by other Jews ensconced safely elsewhere on the planet.

***

Above all, the Books of Moses are the Word of God. All objects created by the Word of God, such as heaven, earth or the laws of gravity are eternal and are programmed with a built‑in feature of indestructibility. All this notwithstanding, the paramount achievement cannot be taken away from the People, who were charged with safekeeping God’s treasure; adhered to this sacred mission at all cost and prevailed. We are the same Jewish people that we were a thousand, two thousand and three thousand years ago. Our unwavering faith in One God has been steadfast since the days of our Patriarch Abraham. The descendants of the mighty empires — that incessantly attempted to obliterate the Jewish people and religion — are imbibing from the fountains of the living wellspring of monotheism preserved against all odds by their benefactor, the Jewish people. It would take nearly two thousand years from the time Abraham launched the monotheistic revolution until the concept would permeate into the mindset of other cultures, nations and religions. For the first two thousand years of the revolution, the Jewish people carried the torch of faith in One God all alone and unwaveringly stuck to the program against all odds, and prevailed. We clung to our faith in One God and to His Torah despite all our detractors, external and internal. The Jewish people traversed the globe under the most oppressive and trying circumstances, while facing the most formidable and powerful adversaries. In the annals of this protracted exile we were nearly wiped out many times. Badly bruised and bloodied, we prevailed and will continue to transcend our challengers unto eternity. All this was accomplished by the merit of the eternal divine document in our safekeeping.

The evil empires of antiquity, as well as our adversaries during the Christian and Islamic era, attempted to decimate the Jewish people through an array of: exiles, evil decrees, pogroms, Inquisitions, persecution and taxation. All of these diabolic schemes failed to achieve their ultimate goal — the disappearance of the Jewish people. Then came along an inclement Amalekite nation under the leadership of a brazen tyrant, who believed that he would succeed where all other evil empires failed. Germany under Hitler was determined to physically exterminate all Jews from the face of the planet. They almost succeeded. God, however, needed the stiff‑necked Jewish people — the only trustworthy custodians of His Torah — and therefore He spared us from doom. The Jews transcended Hitler and his cohorts. Moreover, the remnants of the Jewish people rose from the ashes of the Holocaust to reclaim the God‑given land of their forefathers. Even after the demise of Hitler, the Jews found little respite. Millions of Jews croaked behind the Iron Curtain under the iron‑fisted rule of a Bolshevist atheistic regime, determined to eradicate all and any forms of religion under its dominion. There was little hope of Jewish revival under the godless Communist regime. Then came along Yosef Mendelevitch, a frail and pale Jewish youth. Along with a handful of friends, Yosef was determined to put up a fight against the mighty and evil Soviet Empire. To bring the plight of Soviet Jewry to the attention of the world, the band of Jewish dissidents decided to hijack a Soviet passenger airplane. Even as they were planning the hijacking, Yosef and his colleagues were fully aware that the mighty KGB will most likely preempt them. Moreover, they knew that once in KGB custody, they will surely face a firing squad. Despite their impending doomed fate, the group of sixteen refusniks[274] decided to sacrifice themselves with the hope that this desperate act will shake up world opinion, and hopefully result in alleviating the plight of their brethren. Sure enough, on the 15th day of June 1970, the sixteen Jewish hijackers were arrested by KGB agents prior to boarding the plane. They were all accused of High Treason. Two were sentenced to death and the rest to long‑term prison sentences. The affair received extensive coverage in the western media, which led to international condemnation of Soviet oppression. Mounting international pressure forced the Soviets to commute

the death sentences handed out to two of the hijackers. Yosef Mendelevitch was incarcerated eleven grueling years in the Soviet Gulag. The affair was followed by a crackdown on Jewish and other dissident movements throughout the USSR. Activists were arrested, makeshift centers for studying the Hebrew language and Torah were closed, and more trials followed. At the same time, strong international condemnations shook up the Soviet authorities to significantly increase emigration quotas. In the years 1960 through 1970, only 4,000 people legally emigrated from the USSR. In the 1970s — soon after the First Leningrad Hijackers Trial — 163,000 Jews were allowed to emigrate. In subsequent decades, the floodgates opened, as over one and a half million Jews left Mother Russia.[275] The first nail was driven into the coffin of the mighty Soviet Evil Empire. After his release from Soviet prison in the winter of 1981, Yosef immigrated to the Land of Israel. On May 28, 1981, Yosef Mendelevitch was invited to meet with US President Ronald Reagan at the White House. Rather than rest on his laurels, Yosef became involved in aggressive activism on behalf of his brethren behind the Iron Curtain. In quick succession, the heroic acts of Yosef Mendelevitch and his colleagues unleashed a domino effect, triggering a sequence of events, which unraveled the mighty Soviet Empire. The godless Evil Communist Empire came crashing down in 1989.

*** Yosef Mendelevitch’s path to freedom was brokered by the good offices of US President Ronald Reagan, who personally intervened to secure his release. However, as Yosef was about to depart from Mother

Russia, a hard‑nosed KGB official, speaking on behalf of the Soviet Union, informed Mendelevitch that due to his criminal behavior, he is no longer entitled to Soviet citizenship. Moreover, the zealous KGB officer read out loud an edict, which proclaimed that Yosef Mendelevitch is forever banished from the Soviet Paradise! The official Soviet edict was music to Yosef’s ears. He was more than thrilled to comply. Yosef had no plans to ever return to the arms of Mother Russia. But then something happened, which made him think twice about his godforsaken country of birth. On December 22, 2017 — 36 years after he was released from the Soviet Gulag — Yosef Mendelevitch received a personal invitation from the Head of the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin of Russia. He was invited to Moscow to receive a “Jewish Heroism Award.“ For what? For the heroic act of opposing the oppressive Soviet regime by attempting to hijack a Soviet airplane back in June of 1970; as well as for his tenacious struggle to retain his Judaism under horrific labor camp conditions during his protracted incarceration in the Soviet Gulag. As he traveled to Moscow to receive the award, Yosef was accompanied by family, and friends who had helped him in his long struggle to gain an exit visa from behind the Iron Curtain. The ceremony took place in the Kremlin with more than 6,000 in attendance. The “Jewish Heroism Award“ was handed to Yosef Mendelevitch by the Chief Rabbi of Russia, Rabbi Berel Lazar, who presented him with the award under the auspices of President Vladimir Putin.

The following is an excerpt from Mendelevitch’s acceptance speech at the awards ceremony in the Kremlin: Who am I that I should receive an award for Jewish heroism? Some of the activists paid with their lives in KGB dungeons. I am standing here to represent them. For me, heroism is not only our struggle to open the gates and let our people go. Such heroism can be temporary and fleeting. True heroism is to remain a Jew under any circumstances, even in prison, and even after release from prison and to be vigilant to retain your identity. After I made Aliya,[276] the Lubavitcher Rebbe commanded me to continue being a hero and to serve as an example for the Jews in Russia and in the free world; and to be involved in Aliya and education. It is especially meaningful for me to be here in Russia at this time of the year because we were sentenced to prison during Chanukah. I remember that, after several years in prison, I lit a Menorah made out of slices of bread and wicks made from flax. When we make the bracha[277] at candle lighting “in those days, at this time“ we are referring to this time, in our days.

Upon his return to Israel, Yosef Mendelevitch reflected, “In Russia, specifically during Chanukah, we celebrated the victory of the forces of light over the forces of darkness, in the very hall where the Communist Party Politburo used to meet.“[278] In the very spirit of the Maccabees, Yosef and his partners in the botched hijacking, sacrificed all, and brought salvation to millions of imprisoned Russian Jews. In the process, they also freed the Russian nation from the yoke of Bolshevik tyranny. They accomplished all this and, against all odds, lived to tell the heroic tale of modern‑day Maccabees.

An old adage has it that one could fool the whole world, as well as his own heart and mind, but not his intestines. Bolshevik leaders could delude their comrades, their subjects, the media, the United Nations, Mother Theresa and even themselves that Communism is the ultimate utopia; but they could not fool their own intestines — the Soviet economy. The economy of a political system founded upon lies, intrigues, agitations,

abuse of power, conspiracies, fraud and deceptions will eventually implode, and die by its own machinations. Ultimately,

Bolshevism

caught up with Communism and no one could ever put Humpty‑Dumpty

back

together again. Undeniably, the

crumbling

economy

Soviet

constituted

a

major factor in the collapse of Communism. But that is not the whole story; there is another side to the equation — the moral bankruptcy of a

fake

ideology.

Consequently, it begs the question: Who lit the match that unleashed a firestorm, which consumed Bolshevik ideology, along with the Evil Soviet Empire? Astoundingly as it may sound, it was the faith, courage, tenacity and sacrifice of Yosef Mendelevitch along with a handful of resolute Jewish dissidents.

The disastrous Bolshevik Communist ideology along with its nefarious system of government was diametrically opposed to all that is inherent to human nature; and discordant to the very fabric of the God‑given human soul. It was only a matter of time that either the evil Bolshevik Empire, the subjects croaking under its yoke, or both, would eventually implode. We can only thank God for Yosef Mendelevitch and his intrepid colleagues, who ignited the spark that would sooner than later lead to the demise of the evil Bolshevik Empire!

The Ultimate Witness It was a Sunday in May 1942. Struggling through the early morning mist, a fitful spring sun shone on the yard of Block 11 where some 500 prisoners had lined up in rows of ten so that they might enjoy their Sunday rest according to established Auschwitz tradition. The sound of a hoarse voice barking orders rang across the yard — it belonged to Vacek, the block clerk, who was standing at the top of a flight of stairs. From this vantage point he was able to survey every corner of the yard below and bellow out his commands: Attention! Caps on! Caps off! Get a move on! According to the green triangle on his uniform, Vacek was a former professional criminal — in this microcosm of absolute hellish evil, he ruled supreme. With eagle eyes, he watched to see that his orders were carried out meticulously. At the command “Caps off!“ the Jewish prisoners whipped their flat caps from their shaven heads and slapped them against their right thighs with the flat of their hands. Unless this produced the whip‑cracking sound to Vacek’s satisfaction, the exercise would be repeated until he was satisfied. On this occasion it had already been repeated more than a hundred times. At first glance, this tedious drill, not unlike the drilling of army recruits, might appear to be perfectly harmless and nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it merely served to provide Vacek with the desired pretext for putting prisoners to death. On this particular Sunday his first victim was a father of four whose right hand was paralyzed. It was, of course, quite ludicrous to expect a man with his handicap to execute the “Caps off! Caps on!“ drill correctly. Vacek grabbed the disabled man and dragged him across the yard. There he stood him with his face to the wall. His next victim was a deaf tailor who had been a fraction of a second late in snapping to attention.

The drill continued. Everybody was longing for this monotonous exercise to stop, especially since at long last the remaining slaves followed

his commands like clock‑work. But Vacek was not satisfied with only two victims. From out of the ranks of slaves he fetched several more, no longer bothering to look for pretexts. Anything trivial that displeased or irritated him, such as a man’s long nose or an ill‑fitting cap was sufficient reason for him to pounce on one unfortunate prisoner after another and line them up against the wall. For in this place the lame, the blind and the weak would look in vain for mercy or pity. The Ten Commandments, those principles of human conduct, did not prevail here — Auschwitz had its own laws and macabre values. At Auschwitz gold teeth might buy a bowl of turnip soup; at Auschwitz a camp orchestra would play cheerful military music, not only in the morning when the prisoners marched off to work, but also at night when, bruised and battered, they straggled back hauling their dead comrades. At Auschwitz Kapos were given rewards and privileges for reducing the number of men in their working party; how they did this was their own affair. At Auschwitz, in Block 10, women were sterilized while in another block men were castrated. Auschwitz was a place where every European language was spoken; it was also a place where people died, not only from starvation, sickness and epidemics, but from being battered to death, killed by having phenol injected into their heart, or driven into the gas chamber. This wretched piece of land in eastern Europe was under the sway of the SS, whose members regarded themselves as the elite of the German nation, a nation which had given to the world not only great writers and composers, but also beasts like Adolf Hitler.

The little Polish town of Oswieczim, which the Nazis called Auschwitz, had been turned into an inferno, and anyone taken there by an unkind fate might regard himself truly forsaken by God and his fellow men. By now thirty unfortunates had been stood against the wall. Vacek and his underlings ordered them to line up in ranks of five. And now, behind the backs of the condemned Jewish prisoners, began what in Auschwitz went under the name of sport. At the double! Lie Down! Get up! Lie down! Crawl! Get up! Jump! On the double! About turn! Like hunted animals the wretched prisoners were harried and chased across the yard. They flung themselves on the ground; crawled on their bellies; leapt up; jumped with arms held out in front; ran about panting and pushing each other in a vain attempt to avoid the blows which were hailing down on them non‑stop. They were flushed with exertion, sweat mixed with blood streaming down their faces and necks. Anyone who failed to get up was lost. A blow from a truncheon, followed by several more if necessary, finished him off. Many had already given up — more than half the prisoners were lying motionless on the ground although only twenty minutes had gone by. On the double! Lie down! Get up! Jump! Lie down! Get up! Crawl! Remorselessly command followed command. On the verge of complete exhaustion, the remaining prisoners still tried to carry out the orders shouted at them. But before long they too lay still in their zebra‑striped uniforms; and were then bludgeoned to death with truncheons. Vacek’s bloodthirsty gaze surveyed his harvest of death. Then he wiped the sweat from his forehead, his face distorted by a terrible sneer, his eyes still

flashing menacingly. He was visibly pleased with his achievement. No doubt he would have enjoyed finishing off the rest of us in the same way. Meanwhile the dead bodies had been collected and laid on their backs side by side. Their hands were crossed on their chests and their unseeing eyes seemed to stare questioningly up into the sky. Vacek and his block orderlies turned away, their job well done. All this time Schlage, the SS‑Rottenführer on duty, behaved as though the whole gory proceedings did not concern him. A few times he disappeared into the building only to take up his place at the top of the stairs again from where he watched to make sure that his block clerk was not flagging in the execution of his duty. In that event he would have abandoned his seeming non‑intervention in order to give a demonstration of the true meaning of sport, as practiced in Auschwitz. From somewhere among the ranks, Filip Muller could hear the sound of muttering. Somehow he only half‑registered it because he was wholly preoccupied with trying not to attract attention. Muller was then still sufficiently naive to believe that prompt execution of commands would help to reduce the diabolical torment to which the Jewish slaves were subjected. The mumbling now evolved into a clearly audible monologue: “My God, what on earth is going on here? Prisoners are being killed by fellow prisoners! I’m sure the people in charge know nothing whatever about this. I protest…“ A fresh flood of commands were then heard: “Attention! Caps on! Caps off! Get a move on!“ Vacek collected another four prisoners. This time it did not take long before they, too, were laid out with the other corpses.

Then again the same voice resumed his complaint, “This is intolerable! These are innocent people who are being put to death!“ Surreptitiously, Filip Muller tried to find out who the speaker was. The man talking to himself was in fact from Filip’s hometown of Sered, where he had been known as a respected citizen, an excellent lawyer, an authority on Jewish writing, and a man who had consistently sought to soften the harshness of the law for the weak. Much like Filip Muller, this gentleman had arrived at Auschwitz about a month earlier, but unlike Filip he was one of those who were too slow in coming to terms with the harsh realities of life in a concentration camp. He had failed to realize that in Auschwitz the values and laws which formed the basis of civilization were obsolete. He was firmly convinced that murders were committed by prisoners put in charge of their fellows without the knowledge of SS leaders. It simply did not fit in with his concept of the law that prisoners should be allowed to kill fellow prisoners, and to do this for no reason whatever. He still had not grasped the fact that Jewish slaves were now in a place where there were no laws for prisoners. At long last, the drill of that dreadful Sunday was coming to an end. The prisoners began to fall in for counting. Vacek came down the stairs, barking commands. Then he proceeded to count, first the prisoners who were standing in line, and then the dead who were lying in a corner of the yard. He jotted the result on a slip of paper which he handed to the block senior, at whose command “Caps off!“ the prisoners whopped off their filthy caps and banged them against their right side. For Vacek the simultaneous whip‑crack sound, which followed was proof that his murderous rehearsal had produced the desirable results.

SS‑Rottenführer Schlage, who all this time was standing in the doorway, now descended the steps with stiff dignity. He received the block senior’s report and began to check the figures by stepping up to the left flank of prisoners who were lined up in perfectly straight rows and counting them. The utter silence was disrupted only by the twittering swallows darting back and forth above the prisoners’ heads. Suddenly, accompanied by a wave of whispering, the Jewish lawyer pushed his way through the ranks and stopped three paces in front of Schlage. Standing smartly at attention, the Jewish lawyer looked the SS man straight in the eye and declared with sincere indignation: “Herr Kommandant, as a human being and a lawyer, I wish to report that the block clerk“ — pointing at Vacek — “has arbitrarily killed several innocent people. Their corpses are laid out over there. I am convinced that the block clerk has killed these prisoners without the knowledge of either his immediate superiors or the authorities. We have been sent here to work and not to be killed. Monsignor Tiso, President of Slovakia, has himself vouched for our safety. I would therefore request you to have this morning’s events investigated and to see that the guilty are duly punished.“ When he had finished uttering his complaint, one could have heard a pin drop. Astounded at his courage and determination, the prisoners caught their breath and stared at Schlage. He, too, was so surprised by the unexpected conduct of this prisoner that for a time he stood rooted to the spot facing the lawyer. His neck and face grew livid with rage and agitation. The muscles in his face were twitching as he tried to speak. It took a few seconds before he was able to bawl: “Vacek, come here!“ “At once, Herr Rottenführer Schlage.“ replied Vacek and stood to attention before his master. “Did you hear what this verfluchte Jude has been blathering about?“ “I did, Herr Rottenführer,“ Vacek replied eagerly. “Then give him what he deserves!“ ordered Schlage. Vacek ran to pick up his truncheon from where he had left it and rushed up to the lawyer. He began to batter him with the truncheon and continued until finally the man dropped dead. Then he hurriedly dragged the body over to the heap of corpses in the corner. As the result of this

morning’s sporting activities, thirty‑five bludgeoned bodies of Jewish slaves now lay in the yard of Block 11. Schlage, who had observed Vacek’s action with satisfaction, now turned to us and asked cynically: “Anyone else want to make a complaint?“

*** Filip Muller was born in Sered, in the Czechoslovak Republic. In April 1942, at the age of twenty, he arrived with one of the earliest Holocaust transports to Auschwitz. He was given prisoner number 29236 and assigned to work on the construction of crematoria and the installation of the gas chambers. As member of the Sonderkommando, he witnessed the families, the townships and the cities of Jewish people come. He was ordered to burn the dead bodies in ovens. His ability and efficiency in executing the task of cremating corpses was the only reason the Germans kept him alive. The daily arrivals of men, women and children at Auschwitz were met by Muller’s Sonderkommando unit in the so‑called cleaning area. On the pain of death, Muller and the rest of the Sonderkommando team were instructed by SS guards to tell the new arrivals that they were somewhere safe, as they worked around the prisoners getting the gas chambers ready. After the Jews had been suffocated to a gruesome death by toxic gases, Muller’s role was to enter the gas chambers with other workers to search and sort the corpses by size and fat content, in order to maximize the rate of bodies burned per hour. SS guards took notice that he excelled in this capacity, a skill that surely contributed to prolong Muller’s lifespan in the valley of death. Once the bodies were dully sorted, Muller and other unit members would move and load the corpses into the crematorium chamber and stoke them as they burned, so as to maximize efficiency of the

extermination assembly line. Clothes of the victims were also collected and disinfected; any valuables found in them were either taken by SS officials or used by skillful prisoners who had pilfered them to barter with SS officials for food or other supplies. Muller often stuffed himself on food he found among the belongings of the condemned. This access to the staff of life also enhanced his survival.

*** The continuous operation of the Auschwitz crematorium and, most of all, overloading the ovens — an aspect not taken into account during their design and construction — gradually crumbled fire‑bricks lining the inner walls of the chimney, which was in danger of collapsing. Consequently, in the summer of 1942, a new square chimney with a double lining of fire-bricks was added. However, operations in the crematorium continued without interruption while this work was carried out. A team of about thirty slaves was assigned to the task of constructing the new chimney, the majority of them Jewish prisoners. A fellow, who arrived from Slovakia informed Filip that his father was in a transport which had recently arrived from the concentration camp of Lublin. At once, Filip began a hectic search for his father. When Filip had found out in which block his father was housed, he managed — with the help of dollars and diamonds he had had stashed away — to bribe the Kapo of the bricklayers’ team, who agreed to include Filip’s father in the team working on the chimney. One morning, as Filip was busy removing cinders on a wheelbarrow, he bumped into his father in the Kapo’s tittle wooden hut. The father neither knew nor suspected what kind of work his son was engaged in. In a state of happy excitement, at the sight of his son, the father embraced him, and stroked Filip’s cheeks. His voice trembling

with emotion, Filip’s father kept on repeating over and over: “My dear boy, I was looking for you all over the place and felt sure I would find you among the musicians of the camp orchestra. I knew that’s where you’d be.“ Then he turned to a prisoner standing next to him, and added with satisfaction tinged with a certain pride: “What a good thing that my Filip is such a splendid fiddle player. At least that’ll save him from the worst.“

Filip could not bear to stay any longer. What could he have said to his dad, this good and honest Jew who still placed his trust in the truthfulness of his fellow men? What could he say to the man, who, sickened by the plots of the fascist Hlinka Guards of Slovakia, had volunteered for one of the transports to the East as early as February 1942? And why had he done so? In order, as he said with the true ring of conviction, to help create a new life for his family there. And now, as son and father reunited, Filip did his best to stifle his deep disappointment. Striving to ignore evil and wickedness, his father forced himself to go on believing in his ideas which, alas, were no more than pious wishes. Filip felt like shouting: You are mistaken, father! Your son Filip, the promising grammar‑school boy, the budding violinist, is not a musician but one who cremates corpses. Do you hear me, father! Your son Filip is a stoker in the crematorium! Overcome by intense emotions, Filip’s throat tightened, he could not utter a word. His eyes brimming with tears, Filip bolted from the dark hut. Grabbing the empty wheelbarrow, Filip dashed towards the crematorium gate. He arrived back at his work detail none too soon; the Kapo was already frantically looking for him. Filip orchestrated a couple of additional reunions with his father. Despite all the help and assistance he managed to give his dad, Filip perceived that the old man was hardly able to keep on his feet. He noticed that his father turned feverish. From his unnaturally bright eyes and cracked lips it was easy to diagnose that his father contracted typhus. A few days

Later when the trolley arrived from the hospital, the lifeless corpse of his father was among the dead.

Filip’s fellow prisoners bore his father’s corpse to the crematorium and placed it on the trolley in the cremation room. In front of the blazing ovens, a team‑mate recited the Kaddish. Steadfast in his belief, calm, imperturbable and true to the ancient tradition of his forefathers, Filip echoed the sacred words in praise of his God: May the great name of the Lord be exalted and hallowed throughout the world which He has created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom in your days, and in the days of all the House of Israel speedily! And say ye, Amen! At this point in life, Filip had come to believe that there were no human emotions left inside his system. But while his team‑mate recited the Kaddish, Filip’s soul mourned in pain and grief. As the flames busily devoured the mortal remains of his father, the words of the traditional Kaddish prayer afforded him solace in this hour of unbearable sorrow.

*** Franceska Mann was a young dancer residing in Warsaw before the Second World War. She studied dance in the dance school of Irena Prusicka. In 1939, she was placed 4th during the international dance competition in Brussels among 125 other young ballet dancers. She was considered one of the most beautiful and promising dancers of her generation in Poland, both in classical and modern repertoire.

A group of about 1,700 Polish Jews managed to obtain entry visas to Paraguay and other South American countries, at a premium. The privileged group of Jews boarded a passenger train, which they were told will transfer them to a camp called Bergau near Dresden, from where they would continue on to Switzerland to be exchanged for German POWs. Instead, the train was diverted to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where it arrived on October 23, 1943. At this point, Franceska Mann, who also arrived with this transport, sensed that there was little chance that the inmates would get out of this place alive. Realizing that her fate was sealed, Franceska was determined not to go down without a fight. Filip Muller was one of 18 prisoners assigned to the crematorium to help process the incoming transport of privileged Jews. The new arrivals were assembled in the yard outside Kreme II and were told by Franz Hossler, acting as a representative of the Foreign Ministry, that this was their last stop before their departure for Switzerland. They were taken into a changing room next to the gas chamber and ordered to undress for disinfecting. Half of the prisoners who had already undressed were hurriedly herded into the gas chamber. The others became suspicious and were hesitant to undress. At this point two SS guards on duty, Schillinger and Emmerich, entered the dressing room to instill fear and ensure that the uncooperative new arrivals follow orders. The two guards were distracted by the sight of a strikingly handsome woman with blue‑black hair, as she was removing her garments. The woman was Franceska Mann. While undressing, Mann tantalized the two leering guards with a striptease, lifting her skirt to expose her thigh to Josef Schillinger and Wilhelm Emmerich while seductively moving aside her blouse. In a quick and unexpected move, Franceska then grabbed one of her shoes and slammed its high heel violently against Schillinger’s forehead. As he covered his face with both hands, the woman grabbed his pistol and shot Schillinger twice in the abdomen. Another shot was aimed at Emmerich, who was wounded in the leg. As panic broke out, the SS men scrambled to exit the changing room.

Schillinger, who was notorious for committing the cruelest imaginable atrocities at Birkenau, later died of his wounds. In a story entitled, The Death of Schillinger, Tadeusz Borowski describes the final moments of the cruel Nazi SS guard. As his SS comrades hauled a bleeding Schillinger to a waiting ambulance, he was wailing and screaming with unbearable pain. As they placed him in the vehicle, all could hear Schillinger pleading bitterly with no other than his maker: O Gott, mein Gott, was hab’ ich getan, dass ich so leiden muss? — O God, my God, what have I done to deserve such suffering? After the departure of the SS guards, the lights quickly went out in the changing room and the door was bolted from the outside. In the darkness, one of the prisoners in the changing room addressed Filip Muller: “I don’t understand what this is all about. After all, we have valid entry visas for Paraguay; and what’s more, we paid the Gestapo a great deal of money to get our exit permits.“ The doors to the undressing room were then flung open and the Sonderkommando prisoners, Filip Muller among them, were ordered out. Outside the door to the changing room, two machine guns had been set up. At this point, Commandant Rudolf Höss — commander‑in‑chief of the entire Auschwitz‑Birkenau concentration and extermination complex — showed up, just in time to enjoy the fireworks, as the Jewish prisoners bottled up in the undressing room were sprayed with a torrent of bullets. By the time the fusillade was over, heaps of shredded corpses were laying in a pool of blood, including the beautiful woman, who killed Schillinger. While all this was going on, SS men had dropped Zyklon‑B pellets into the gas chamber and gassed the 500 privileged Jews already locked up inside.

Reflecting on the Franceska Mann mutiny, concluded Filip Muller: The promises of the SS, ranging from work inside the camp to emigration to Switzerland, were nothing but barefaced deception, as they had proved to be for these wretched people who had wanted to emigrate to Paraguay.

*** In March 1944, after having cremated thousands of Jewish corpses daily for nearly three years, Muller lost his will to remain alive. He decided to commit suicide by attempting to enter the gas chamber himself. He joined a group of Czech Jews, his own countrymen, who were singing the Jewish Ha’Tikvah and the Czech national anthem before they entered the gas chamber. As he moved in to join the condemned, a girl named Yana came up and spoke to him: We understand that you have chosen to die with us of your own free will, and we have come to tell you that we think your decision is pointless — for it helps no one. We must die, but you still have a chance to save your life. You have to return to the camp and tell everybody about our last hours. You have to explain to them that they must free themselves from any illusions. They ought to fight, that’s better than dying here helplessly. As for you, perhaps you’ll survive this terrible tragedy and then you must tell everybody what happened here. Muller came to believe that he had to stay alive so that he and other survivors could tell the story behind the Holocaust. Muller was evacuated from Auschwitz in January 1945, and was ordered by SS guards to march west. He ended up in Matthausen concentration camp. In May 1945, Filip Muller was liberated from Gunskirchen, a sub‑camp of the Mauthausen complex.

After the war, Muller first testified during his recovery in a post‑liberation hospital. His statement was originally published in an obscure Czech collection; it was then reprinted in the 1966 book, The Death Factory, written by two other Holocaust survivors, Erich Kulka and Ota Kraus. Filip Muller also authored a book about his experiences at Auschwitz, entitled, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers.[279]

*** Filip Muller’s memoir is a unique document indeed — it is the testimony of possibly the only man who witnessed the Jewish people die and lived to tell what he saw. It is not known exactly how many people were murdered at Auschwitz, but continuing research has led scholars to refine the estimates. Most now agree that the Auschwitz concentration camp complex claimed the lives of approximately 1.1 million people, close to 1 million of whom were Jews. Muller came to Auschwitz with one of the earliest transports from Slovakia in April 1942, and began working in the gassing installations and crematoria in May. He managed to stay alive until November 1944, when the gassings ceased. By a stroke of sheer luck coupled with an iron will, he survived. He saw multitudes come and disappear. He saw the families, the townships and the cities of the Jewish people come, enter the house of death and burn to ashes. He saw a civilization being destroyed by devils in ordinary human form. He not only saw the martyrs, but also spoke to Satan.

He tells his story in a simple, straightforward language. There is no embellishment, no deviation. This is not a work of art. It is a testimony. It is a testimony also of a human being who decided, at one point, not to suffer any longer and to choose death. In the same simple, matter‑of‑fact way that he relates the scenes of hell and fire that he witnessed, he tells the story of his attempted suicide; he tells of the beauty of Yana’s death in the horror of the mass murder, perhaps the most poignant story of any Holocaust testimony. Muller is neither a psychologist nor a historian. His story is of tremendous importance to historians, psychologists, and generations of vicarious survivors, Jewish and non‑Jewish — for we are all the survivors of man’s madness. Some will notice the lack of successful resistance; some will notice the fact that the author does not mention any case of Jews begging for their lives; some will emphasize the fact that most of the Jews going to the gas chambers had no inkling of what was happening to them; others will analyze the behavior of the SS murderers. This is a vital testimony, and it will undoubtedly serve as an element in attempting to approach an understanding of the dread that was Auschwitz. The Jewish people, some thousands of gypsy people and many others were murdered in the gas chambers. Thousands of others were shot. This unembellished telling is a terrible accusation against God and humanity. He was moved to write by the effect of his testimony at the Auschwitz Trial at Frankfurt, in 1964. Afterwards he began writing up what he had jotted down, had it translated into German, then looked for a publisher. The result is before us — a shattering, centrally important testimony of the sole survivor of the entire span of the murder operations at the Auschwitz‑Birkenau killing machine.[280]

Once we begin to perceive and internalize the horrific circumstances to which Jewish inmates were subjected in German concentration camps, it is beyond comprehension that thousands dared to survive the inferno. It is a tribute to the indomitable and unbreakable Jewish spirit, and a testament to heroism and fortitude of a magnitude beyond human reach. To the survivors, we owe eternal gratitude for having endured and triumphed. To Filip Muller we are profoundly indebted not only for surviving, but also, for the courage he exhibited in recording for future generations the horrific destruction of European Jewry, of which few witnessed to the extent that Filip had. Filip’s heroic legacy will surely echo down the generations unto eternity. May his memory be an eternal merit, inspiration, a light

and a blessing for his People!

Are the Nazis Mentioned in the Torah? In order to extract the most nuance and meaning out of each and every word, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch had a penchant for squeezing Biblical text like a lemon. This intricate and hairsplitting analysis resulted in some fascinating revelations about the hidden meanings within the Hebrew language, which is also known as Lashon Kodesh – the Holy Tongue. Though he has authored numerous books, Rabbi Hirsch never compiled this specific endeavor into a systematic body of work. However, his unique insight into the Hebrew text inspired Rabbi Matityahu Clark, who, in 1999, launched a publication titled, Etymological Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew based on the commentaries of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. In essence, this work is best described as words that sound similar are not only interconnected, but also are likely to have similar meanings. As it turns out, Biblical text is not only comprised of unique structural and comparative properties along with hidden meanings, but also infused with prophetic insights. Words that are derived from other words ― or have similar roots ― and have a similar meaning are known as paronyms or cognates. If we take this one step further, words that sound the same across different languages can also shed light on their similar meaning… and destiny.

In the Artscroll Chumash, the words ‫ ― ינאצוני‬yena’atzuni[281] and

‫נאצימ‬

―

mena’atzai[282] are correspondingly translated as despise and

despisers. It is both irresistible and inevitable to ultimately stumble upon the association between these two terms and the hauntingly heinous designation… ‫ — נאצים‬natzim or Nazis. The term ‫ ― הנאצ‬na’atza is the noun form of yena’atzuni and mena’atzai. The Alcalai Hebrew‑English Dictionary attributes the following garden variety of meanings to the word

‫ הנאצ‬: contempt, reviling, blasphemy, abuse, contumely, scorn, invective and vituperation. Is this collection of accolades not reminiscent of the central theme right out of Goebbels’ playbook? In a nutshell, does this jargon not echo Hitler’s harangues against the Jews, as he exhorted the German hordes to wreak havoc, extirpation and destruction upon God’s chosen people? Does this gallery of aspersions not resonate the venomous Nazi worldview and propaganda repertoire, especially as it relates to their abhorrence of anything Jewish? Does it not sound like the Torah portended, well in advance, what’s in store for us from a beastly nation that will one day rise and brazenly inscribe the appellation “ ‫ — םנאצי‬Nazis“ on its banner? And then there is more of the same; two more words in Hebrew that sound like ‫נאצים‬

— natzim or Nazis. The word ‫יציםנ‬

― nitzim,[283]

which means pugnacious or bellicose, revolves around the raison d’être of Nazism ― brutal naked aggression. Furthermore, in Hebrew, thumbtacks are called ‫ ― נעצים‬ne’atzim, which derives from the root ‫ ― נעץ‬na’atz meaning to stab, as in stab in the back.

Could all these comparative etymological acrobatics amount to nothing more than a futile exercise? Could it all be attributed to mere coincidence? Unlikely, since nothing is coincidental or incidental about the Torah, which constitutes the Word of the Living God. The sacred Hebrew language ― within the framework of the Torah ― has been hinting all along that a diabolically evil creed, the Nazis of Germany, will one day rise to inflict a calamitous and devastating catastrophe upon Am Yisrael. Despite the glaring ominous caveats and prophesies embedded in Biblical text, and woven into the intricacies of the Hebrew language, in the final analysis, Judaism is not a religion of doom and gloom, but rather a light unto the nations. Ultimately, the Torah and the prophets highlight the supreme glorious mission and destiny of the Jewish people. Time and again, the Torah iterates that all the pitfalls, cataclysms, expulsions, disasters and persecutions that befall the Jewish people notwithstanding, Am Yisrael Chai[284] unto eternity! As history unfolds, the Torah remains infallible on both accounts… and then some.

El Alamein As Hitler steamrolled from one conquest to the next, the Jews of Europe were methodically mowed down. The tremors of Nazi aggression reverberated all the way to the Middle East, as Jews of Eretz Yisrael went through a radical shift of priorities resulting from the outbreak of World War II. Up to the war, they were mostly focused upon accelerating the rate of Jewish immigration and preoccupied by the constant anxiety of striving for economic independence. To be sure, neither of these priorities faded away by the winds of war blowing in every which direction, but more ominous and pressing issues loomed on the horizon. In the summer of 1941, the Jews of Eretz Yisrael watched with trepidation and horror as the Nazis invaded North Africa trailblazing a path towards the Suez Canal. In the meantime, in November 1941, Amin al-Husseini ― the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem ― met with Hitler in Berlin. Al-Husseini, a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine, urged the Führer to declare the illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. During that same meeting, the Mufti sought an accord to grant Palestine and other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in their lands in accordance with the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.[285] Ever eager to accommodate the enemies of the Jews, the Führer responded in kind to the Mufti’s requests.

Convinced that Germany will win the war, the Mufti cast his lot with Hitler. He was imbued with fervent blind faith that a moment will come when a triumphant Führer will deliver a Judenrein Palestine into his hands on a silver platter. In North Africa, the Afrika Korps under the command of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel gained ground, scoring victories at every turn against the British. By June 1942, as Rommel’s forces drove the British all the way to El Alamein in Egypt, which is located only 250 miles to the west of the Suez Canal, it seemed as if Amin al-Husseini might soon get his Judenrein Palestine. The Jews of Eretz Yisrael shuddered at the thought that in a matter of only a couple of days, the Nazi expedition force may be at their doorstep. The entire Yishuv aided by England was now preoccupied with little else than planning a joint strategy for deflecting the impending Nazi invasion… and for good reason! In 1942, the Nazis created a special Einsatzgruppe — a mobile SS death squad, which was to carry out the mass slaughter of Jews in Eretz Yisrael. In the early years of the Second World War, the Nazi Einsatzgruppen, aided by local collaborators, had successfully conducted the mass execution of more than a million Jews in Eastern Europe. In the summer of 1942, the unit assigned to exterminate the Jews of Eretz Yisrael, Einsatzgruppe Egypt, was standing by in Athens ready to embark. The commander of the SS unit, Obersturmbannführer Walther Rauff coordinated his plans with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel of the Afrika Korps. Walther Rauff, commander of Einsatzgruppe Egypt, was the consummate ruthless bloodthirsty Nazi murderer. His major contribution to the German war effort was the invention and implementation of mobile gas chambers.

Personally, Rauff is credited with the wanton murder of more than 100,000 innocent victims, mostly Jews. Not only did he never express remorse for the rivers of innocent blood he shed, but in fact, was very proud of his wartime accomplishments. Like most of the era’s German butchers, he too got away with murder. Though he was arrested at the end of WWII by the Allies in Italy, he managed to escape. To a ripe old age, the ruthless and bloody murderer Rauff lived out the rest of his life mostly in South America, in comfort and bliss, under the iron-fisted protection of the infamous Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. In 1960, Rauff traveled to Germany in order to claim pension benefits for his dedicated and heroic military service to the Fatherland. He encountered no obstacles in dealing with the German authorities.[286] Let’s be very clear about this, the authorities in Germany were fully aware of Rauff’s wartime exploits, yet he was not arrested. Something to think about, Deutschland… to this very day, your entire nation is an accessory to the mass murder of millions of innocent people! Given Rauff’s proven murderous track record and zeal for exterminating Jews, much was at stake for the Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael, had this monster made it to the shores of the Holy Land. At the time, about 400,000 Jews resided in Eretz Yisrael. Einsatzgruppe Egypt was comprised of only 24 SS guards. Preparations for exporting the Holocaust to Eretz Yisrael were well coordinated in advance with Arab collaborators.

The plan anticipated that once Rommel’s Afrika Korps entered Palestine, the Wehrmacht would provide all the logistical support for Einsatzgruppe Egypt to immediately set up shop and begin its work. The German occupiers would then enlist local Palestinian Arabs operating under the leadership of the SS to ensure the speedy and uninterrupted extermination of Jews in the Holy Land.[287] As Rommel coasted swiftly and aggressively from one victory to the next, the British Army was battered and demoralized by a long string of defeats and debacles. Who would or could stop the advance of Nazi troops as they steamrolled due east across the North African coastline in a lightning Blitzkrieg that brought gloom and doom to every Jew under the Nazi boot? Had Rommel managed to wrest Egypt away from British control, the Nazis would not only maul European Jewry, but also export the horrific specter of extermination to the gates of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

*** As a policy, the British Mandatory authorities in Palestine were highly resistive to draft Jewish fighters for the Allied war effort against Germany; the realities of war changed their minds. Desperate for reliable manpower, the British acquiesced and formally permitted the creation of the Jewish Brigade Group. The Arabs protested loudly, but the British needed quality fighters. Of the 460,000 Jews residing in Mandatory Palestine, 30,000 served with the British armed forces. In stark contrast, of the 1,600,000 Arabs in Palestine, only 9,000 joined. Fifteen Jewish battalions were authorized in 1940. Five thousand Jewish Brigade volunteers fought under the flag of Zion. Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, a Canadian‑born British Jewish officer led the Jewish Brigade in the fight against the Germans in Italy from March 1945 until the war ended in May 1945. Early on, smaller Jewish Palestinian battalions had been actively fighting for Britain in North Africa since 1941. The war was not going well for the British in early 1942. Relentlessly, Rommel and his Italian allies were pushing back the British. Losses for the British were staggering. They were being decimated in Libya and forced to retreat, to regroup, rest and resupply. British loss, after loss, British defeat after defeat, the ability of retreating in order, without disaster, was very questionable. If the Allied forces could not retreat in an orderly manner, the North African war would be lost. It did not look good. A delaying action was ordered by the British high command.

In a remote area of the Libyan Desert, near an old Turkish fort, the Free French Forces were ordered to stand and fight. The fort was built near an oasis. It was called Bir Hakeim and was a key defensive line leading to the great port city of Tobruk. A line was drawn ahead of the advancing German forces. The First Free French Division, led by legendary General Marie‑Pierre Koenig was ordered to halt Rommel’s advance. Forming a defensive perimeter, French troops dug in. Thousands of individual fox holes were excavated. Mines were laid in dense formation to slow the Germans. The French troops waited. A British unit, unknown at the time to General Koenig, was hastily dispatched to hold the far end of the French line near Bir‑el Harmat. It was a battalion of mine layers, poorly armed and provisioned, lacking heavy weapons, or anti‑aircraft equipment but with a grim, teeth clenched determination. The battalion was comprised of 400 Jewish soldiers from Eretz Yisrael under the command of Major Liebmann from Tel Aviv. It was May 26, 1942. The Jewish fighters dug in. A German tank column advanced towards the heavily outnumbered and out gunned Jewish position. Raising a flag of truce, a German officer approached the Allied position and demanded they surrender or be annihilated. Noticing the strange flag flying, the German asked who they were. To the amazement of the German officer, Major Liebmann told him they are free Palestinian Jews fighting for the British government. They would not surrender. The flag in question was the flag of the Jewish people. It was June 2, 1942.

German 88 mm canon opened up with devastating impact. German Stukas bombed and strafed from the air, and bombed and strafed. Hundreds of sorties were eventually flown. German tanks advanced and attacked ferociously. Several were destroyed in the mine fields. A few penetrated the center of the lightly armed Jewish position. Jewish soldiers jumped on the tanks destroying them with Molotov cocktails, incinerating the German tank crews inside. Without even a radio to contact the French troops fighting a few miles up the line, the Jews held their position. Heavy black smoke billowed from the burning German tanks as the Germans retreated; their dead left on the hard, dry desert. Repeated German and Italian armor assaults were launched on June 5 and June 6. The Jewish position held. Daily, the Stukas bombed the Jews. German artillery was unrelenting, eventually destroying the Jewish water source. Still, the Jewish position held refusing to surrender, even without water. Astonished, the Germans continued attacking with no success. The Jews refused to surrender or be conquered. On June 10, 1942, orders issued from the British 8th Army headquarters reached the French detachment at Bir Hakeim and the battered Jewish battalion at Bir‑el Harmat: Retreat! The British 8th Army was safe. It had retreated in good order with most of its troops, equipment and supplies intact. The delaying action could be called off. On June 11, in the dark of night, the French and Jewish troops slipped away, unbeknownst to the Germans. They had accomplished the impossible.

General Koenig watched as the ragged, unknown Allied survivors from the far end of the line staggered towards the French command center at Gasr‑el‑Abid. They dragged their wounded as best they could. Major Liebmann reported to a concerned General Koenig. Speaking in perfect French, he told General Koenig they were Jewish Palestinian soldiers. Of the 400 men who made up the battalion, over three hundred had been killed or wounded. They were the survivors. The General observed their flag flying proudly. It was then taken down and folded by a very tired Jewish soldier. “What is that man doing?“ Koenig demanded of Liebmann, who informed the French General that British regulations did not permit them to fly the blue and white flag with the Star of David. An instant command was barked. General Koenig ordered the soldier to stop folding the flag. Koenig then ordered it placed on the front of his Jeep, flying next to and equal to the flag of France. Turning to his officers, General Koenig ordered all his soldiers to stand at attention and salute as the flag of the future State of Israel went by. Born in 1898, General Koenig died in 1970. Ever since the 1942 campaign in Africa and for the rest of his life, Koenig remained a staunch advocate on behalf of Israel. As defense minister of France, Koenig authorized shipments of advanced weaponry to the Israeli Army prior to the 1956 Sinai Campaign, a strategic asset that paved the way for the ensuing Israeli victory. In the lower Galilee, near Nazareth, trees grow in the soil of a free Israel ‒ the Marie‑Pierre Koenig Grove. Streets are also named in honor of General Koenig in three major Israeli cities ‒ Jerusalem, Netanya and Haifa.

In June of 1942, under the command of General Koenig, at great sacrifice and exhibiting superhuman heroism under extremely challenging circumstances, a handful of Jewish soldiers from Eretz Yisrael turned the tide. The Jewish mine layers blocked the advance of Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps just long enough, enabling the British 8th Army to retreat in an orderly manner with most of its troops, equipment and supplies intact. This brief pause, courtesy of the Jewish battalion, made all the difference in preparation for what was to come. It was the beginning of the end for the Germans and their Italian allies in North Africa.[288]

*** As luck or Divine Providence would have it, the Jews of the Holy Land were spared the fate of their European brethren. Fortunately for the Jews of Eretz Yisrael in particular and Jewish destiny in general, Einsatzgruppe Egypt never made it out of Greece. In October 1942, during the battle of El Alamein, an Allied task force headed by British General Montgomery turned the tide of war in North Africa. In one of the fiercest and largest tank battles in history, at the cost of tens of thousands of casualties, the Allies routed the Germans and eventually expelled the Afrika Korps from the African Continent.

Two important World War II battles were fought in the area of El Alamein. At the First Battle of El Alamein, which took place in July 1942, the advance of Axis troops on Alexandria was blunted by the Allies, when the German Panzers attempted to outflank the allied position. At the Second Battle of El Alamein, which raged between October 23 and the 4th of November 1942, Allied forces broke the Axis line and pushed Rommel’s troops all the way back to Tunisia. Winston Churchill said of this victory: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.“ After the war, he wrote: “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein, we never had a defeat.“[289] With the luxury of hindsight at our disposal, it does not take a fertile imagination to decipher what would have happened had Rommel’s troops overcome the Allies at El Alamein and advanced to invade Eretz Yisrael. For starters, the entire fledgling Jewish community would have been massacred by the Nazi invaders in collaboration with local Palestinian mobs. The State of Israel, as we know it today, would remain a distant Zionist pipe dream. Aside from the Jewish angle, once in control of the Middle East, Hitler would gain access to unlimited oil reserves. This vast energy windfall would certainly keep the Nazi war machine going at full throttle for years if not decades longer. How grateful, awed and indebted must all future generations remain for the colossal miracle that transpired at El Alamein in November 1942?

Indeed, what was the magic of El Alamein that brought the Rommel juggernaut to a halt and turned the tide of war against the Nazis? Military analysts and historians posit any number of factors and circumstances that shed light on the auspicious outcome of this fateful battle. Some claim that what blew the wind out of Rommel’s masts was the fact that his supply lines could not keep up with the speed of his conquests. Others attribute the British victory at the Battle of El Alamein to the genius of Field Marshal Montgomery, who was propitiously appointed as the commander of the British Eighth Army just prior to the campaign. Invariably, military pundits argue that the topography of El Alamein afforded the British a strategic advantage, which Rommel could not easily overcome. To be sure, volumes were written about this pivotal battle along with countless strategic analyses, assessments and explanations. Thanks to my learned friend, Adam Tal from the Land of Israel, I gained an ethereal dimension apropos the epic battles at El Alamein in which an invisible hand guided the Allies to victory. This mysterious intervention transcends military strategy, topography and geopolitical considerations. Superhuman heroism and countless sacrifices borne by the soldiers of the Allied task force notwithstanding, a bigger‑than‑life agency ordained El Alamein as the ultimate point of no return for the forces of evil. In his book[290], my friend Adam strikes a brilliant association between the historical turning point of 1942, and the remarkable symbolism behind the name of the battleground — El Alamein. In Aramaic — from which Arabic languages are derived — Alamein means world or universe. El means God or Master. Ultimately, El Alamein translates into, Master of the Universe.

At El Alamein, the Master of the Universe personally intervened to slay the Nazi dragon. The fateful Battle of Al Alamein indeed made all the difference in turning the tables on the armies of the devil. That is where God put His foot down to thwart Rommel’s stampede en route to the Land of Israel. In El Alamein, the Master of the Universe cut the Nazis down to size, eventually leading to their ultimate downfall. Mount Sinai, situated about 500 miles southeast of El Alamein, was the site where God descended from the heavens to deliver the Ten Commandments to the Jewish people, as they roamed the Sinai desert on their way to the Promised Land after the Exodus from Ancient Egypt. Fast forward 3,255 years after the Revelation at Sinai to November 4, 1942; God appears once again in the Egyptian desert — this time at El Alamein. Putting Hitler on notice, thus spoke El Alamein — Master of the Universe: “This madness has gone too far for too long… you were granted free rein to unleash your ruthless reign of terror over the European continent, but do not dare lay your bloody Nazi claws upon My Holy Land!“

***

From 1936 until his death in 1959, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog served as Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine and of Israel, after its independence in 1948. In the summer of 1941, the Jews of Eretz Yisrael watched with trepidation and horror as the Nazis invaded North Africa trailblazing a path towards the Suez Canal, subsequently aiming for the Holy Land. Stricken with panic, a group of Jews approached Rabbi Herzog desperately seeking his counsel. Reflecting upon the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians and of the Second Temple by the Roman Empire, unflinchingly, Rabbi Herzog stated: “We are back in our Homeland to remain here forever. In the Bible, our prophets foretold the destruction of the First and Second Commonwealths, the Third Commonwealth will never be destroyed!“[291] It took nothing less than the mammoth Battle of El Alamein to ensure that indeed, the Third Jewish Commonwealth will never be destroyed!

Behold, the Guardian of Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep! [292]

Demise of a Mega Tyrant

Recently, a flurry of reports surfaced claiming that Hitler survived the end of World War II. When it comes to Hitler’s demise, one thing is for sure, all accounts of his death are not conclusive. Consequently, the latest sensational revelations are in the realm of the possible. Some of the reports that surfaced recently claim that Hitler died in 1971.[293] As she read an article to that effect, aghast and livid with disbelief, my wife cried out, “Yitzik, can you believe what it says here… that Hitler lived all the way until 1971… I always thought that he committed suicide in his Berlin bunker at the end of the war, in 1945?!?“ After we calmed down and discussed it at length, I actually managed to convince my distraught wife that if indeed Hitler lived until 1971, it is rather a cause for celebration. After all, a bullet in the head would have been the easy way out for someone who cooked up the bloodiest mess in history.

Personally, I retire to bed at night with a smile etched on my face basking in the knowledge that Hitler lived long enough to witness the Jews reclaiming their God‑given ancestral homeland in 1948. If that were not enough to give Hitler an upset stomach, just consider the torment to which this depraved madman must have been subjected when he learned that half of his beloved Germany is croaking under the Bolshevik boot. This was followed by the sensational news back in 1960 that Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of the Holocaust, was captured in Argentina by Israeli Mossad agents. After he was put on a grueling public trial, Eichmann was hanged in Jerusalem. Living in fear of his own arrest, Hitler must have been plagued by chronic insomnia for the rest of his life. Then came the Six‑Day War of June of 1967. Surely, Hitler must have sustained a near‑fatal heart attack when he learned that an inferior Jewish army singlehandedly defeated seven massive Arab armies in less than one week. For the rest of his life, Hitler’s existence must have been hell on earth, as he witnessed that Jews evolved into valiant warriors while his glorious Germany devolved into a nation of petty cowardly merchants. By far, the worst nightmare that haunted Hitler for the rest of his miserable life must have been triggered in August of 1945, when he was informed that America defeated Japan with a nuclear weapon. Moreover, the weapon Hitler so coveted was developed by a cadre of Jewish scientists, which he personally expelled from Germany back in 1933. If these ruminations did not kill him, surely, what must have done him in for good was the news that Israeli scientists, armed with Jewish Science, developed nuclear weapons for the Jewish State. If, by then, he was still in possession of his Nazi hat, a dejected Hitler must have been chewing on it all the way down to his grave — a dethroned and defeated despot. Poor Adolf, his Reich of a Thousand Tears went up in smoke, and now, he too is gone.

Indeed, the world is better off without a depraved, unemployed mad little tyrant! Good riddance!!!

When Archaeology Meets Scripture A holocaust‑sized cataclysm befell the Jewish people about 2,600 years before the Nazi genocide during WWII. It was a classic setup in which two goyim slugged it out and the Jew got clobbered. Two giant empires vied for control of the Middle East ― Assyria in the north and Egypt due south. Geographically located on the crossroads connecting two continents, the people of the Land of Israel were caught in the crossfire between these two mammoth empires. Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, issued a warning to Hoshea, the king of Israel, to steer clear of an alliance with Egypt or face the consequences.[294] King Hoshea did not heed the warning. Consequently, in A.M. 3202 the Land of Israel was invaded by the Assyrian Empire from the north. The mighty Assyrian legions laid siege to the Land of Israel. The siege lasted three years after which the Assyrian King Sancheriv[295] stormed into Samaria and dragged into exile the Ten Tribes of Israel.[296] All traces of the ten exiled tribes have been lost in the fog of time. To this day they have not resurfaced.

The other two tribes, Judah and Benjamin remained holed up in the mountains of Jerusalem resisting the Assyrian siege behind fortified walls. Seven years later, in A.M. 3212 King Sancheriv of Assyria forged ahead with a siege of all the remaining cities of Judah. Hezekiah, king of Judah, took stock of the dire situation and quickly arrived at the conclusion that, but for the grace of God, the last vestige of Jews is about to disappear from the face of the earth. He rent his clothes, sank to his knees and cried out to God: “O Lord, the God of Israel that dwells upon the cherubim. You alone are the God of all the kingdoms of the world; You created heaven and earth. Incline Thine ear, O God, and hear; open Thine eyes, O God, and see. Hear

the words of Sancheriv in which he has dared to insult the living God. Indeed, God, the kings of Assyria have laid waste the nations and their lands; and have cast their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone; therefore, they have destroyed them. Now therefore, O Lord our God, save us, I beseech Thee, from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that You alone are the Lord God.“[297] No sooner did Hezekiah finish his supplication, a word arrived from the Prophet Isiah that God hearkened the king’s prayers and vowed that: From Jerusalem shall emerge a remnant, and survivors from Mount Zion. The zeal of God, master of Legions, shall accomplish this! Therefore, thus says God regarding the king of Assyria: He will not enter the city, and will not shoot there an arrow; he will not approach it with a shield nor erect a ramp against it… And I shall protect this city, to save it, for My sake and for the sake of My servant David.[298]

Packed with tightly woven Assyrian cuneiform script, three of Sancheriv’s Prisms found in archeological sites near Ninveh, depict the annals of the Assyrian king Sancheriv. They are found inscribed on a number of artifacts, and the final versions were found in three clay Prisms inscribed with the same text: The Taylor Prism is in the British Museum, the Oriental Institute Prism in the Oriental Institute of Chicago, and the Jerusalem Prism is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. With only minor variants, the inscription on these three known complete relics is nearly identical.[299] On the six inscribed sides of the clay Prism, King Sancheriv recorded his military campaigns undertaken against various nations who

refused to submit to Assyrian domination. In all instances, Sancheriv boasts of glorious victories. In his campaign against Judea, he besieged Jerusalem and imposed heavy tribute on King Hezekiah. The Prism echoes the biblical account of Assyria’s invasion of Judea, and subsequent siege of the city of Jerusalem as recorded in Kings II, chapters 18 and 19. The siege took place during the reign of King Hezekiah. The Prism depicts in detail how Sancheriv destroyed many of the cities of Judea: As for Hezekiah the Judahite, who did not submit to my yoke, forty‑six of his strong, walled cities, as well as numerous smaller towns in their vicinity have I defeated. I besieged and conquered them by levelling with battering‑rams and by bringing up siege‑engines, and by attacking and storming on foot, by mines, tunnels, and breeches. This claim corresponds to the Biblical account: And in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sancheriv King of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judea and captured them.[300]

Sancheriv then goes on to describe the siege he laid on Jerusalem: Hezekiah himself, like a caged bird I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city… I added to the former tribute, and I laid upon him the surrender of their land and imposts — gifts for my majesty. As for Hezekiah, the terrifying splendor of my majesty overcame him… To pay tribute and to accept servitude, he dispatched his messengers. Again, the inscription on the Prism corroborates the Biblical account: Then Hezekiah king of Judea sent envoys to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, ‘I have done wrong; turn away from me; whatever you impose on me I will pay.’ And the king of Assyria assessed Hezekiah king of Judea three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold.[301] Throughout the entire extent of the Prism, Sancheriv is portrayed as a mighty warrior, who pursued his adversaries with fire and brimstone; he would not let up until he hammered them into submitting to unconditional subjugation. Sancheriv does not spare the details of his glorious victories in which he pulverized his enemies one after another. Naturally, a powerful dictator and megalomaniac like Sancheriv is loath to admit failure. However, in his own depiction, clearly, Sancheriv did not bring the siege he laid on Jerusalem to a happy ending. Instead, he exacted tribute from Hezekiah, and withdrew. The Prism does not disclose the nature of Sancheriv’s withdrawal. It is from Biblical narrative that we learn the rest of the story: That very night, an angel of God struck 185,000 Assyrian troops even as they lay in siege of Jerusalem. The handful of Assyrian survivors rose in the morning stunned at the sight of massive heaps of corpses. Sancheriv along with the survivors turned tail and fled back to the land from which they came.[302] When a defeated Sancheriv arrived at Ninveh, his sons were stunned to learn about the utter destruction of the mighty Assyrian legions. Not paying heed to their displeasure, Sancheriv headed for the temple of his god Nisroch to worship. His two sons, Adrammelech and Sharetzer, followed him into the sanctuary. As he prostrated himself in front of the statue of his god, Adrammelech and Sharetzer drew their swords and hacked Sancheriv to pieces.[303]

At the time, the Jewish nation was young. Throughout the eight centuries that elapsed since they became a nation, the Hebrews were constantly challenged, harassed and threatened by a multitude of adversaries. Yet this was the first time that they were faced with the specter of extinction. Sancheriv was the first dictator in history, who had the will, the might and the plan to eliminate the Jewish people. Had Sancheriv’s siege of Jerusalem gone according to his plan, the Jewish people would cease to exist. At the time, the only Jews left on the planet were the tribes of Judah and Benjamin holed up in the hills of Jerusalem. The mighty Sancheriv with his indefatigable legions was but a stone’s throw away from wiping the Jewish people off the face of the planet, but the God of the Jews foiled his plot. The shredded corpse of Sancheriv now lay prostrated in front of the statue of his god Nisroch ― both lifeless. Under the patronage of the Living God, the Jewish people transcended Sancheriv and his mighty Assyrian Empire. Vulnerable, beaten and bruised, the Jewish people lived to fight another day… and then another.

Postscript At one point in the script of the famous play, Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye turns to his wife Golde and inquires: Goldie, do you love me? Tevye: Do you love me? Golde: Do I what? Tevye: Do you love me? Golde: Do I love you? With our daughters getting married and this trouble in the town, You’re upset. You want out. Go inside. Go lie down. Maybe it’s indigestion. Tevye: Golde, I’m asking you a question. Do you love me? Golde: You’re a fool! Tevye: I know. But do you love me? Golde: Do I love you? For twenty-five years, I’ve washed your clothes, Cooked your meals, cleaned your house, Given you children, milked the cow. After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now? Tevye: The first time I met you was on our wedding day. I was scared. Golde: I was shy. Tevye: I was nervous. Golde: So was I. Tevye: But my father and my father said we’d learn to love each other. So, now I’m asking, Golde... do you love me? Golde: I’m your wife! Tevye: I know. But do you love me? Golde: Do I love him? For twenty-five years, I’ve lived with him, Fought with him, starved with him. For twenty-five years, my bed is his. If that’s not love, what is? Tevye: Then you love me? Golde: I suppose I do. Tevye: And I suppose I love you, too. Tevye & Golde together: It doesn’t change a thing, but even so,

after twenty-five years, it’s nice to know

…so, you may ask, why is the author interjecting here with a love song from Fiddler on the Roof? For the believers amongst us, it does not really matter whether archaeology, science or history corroborates scripture. Those of us who believe in the word of God, as stated in the Torah, need no proof from external sources to corroborate its veracity. Having said that — akin to the consensus between Tevye & Golde regarding love, as articulated in the final verses of the lyrics above — when archaeology happens to corroborate Biblical script…

…it doesn’t change a thing, but even so, after more than two‑thousand years… it’s nice to know

The Printing Press and the Jews

It’s not too difficult to imagine how painful and traumatic it must have been for many people to part with their beloved quill and parchment back in the 15th century with the advent of the printing press… well, it’s now nearly six hundred years later, and it is time for our generation to say goodbye to print. Just last week the iconic Encyclopedia Britannica announced that after 244 years it’s switching from print to an online website.[304] To be sure, not only is this sensational headline news, more than that, it is the ultimate defining moment in the annals of dissemination of information and human communication. This scoop is not just about Britannica, but rather an event on the magnitude of a historical turning point. The endless parade of ornate, authoritative and illustrious Britannica volumes has been washed down the digital sea by the onslaught of the virtual information highway tsunami. And what with the Kindle, iPad and Nook… the reality of a paperless society is just around the bend. The day is not far when print will disappear from the shelves only to be replaced by the virtual digitized media.

The only people on earth that transcended the printing press revolution back in the 15th century are the Jews. To this day, the Hebrews have not parted with parchment, quill and scribes, which is still – and forever will be – the sacred rite and convention for recording the Five Books of Moses on Torah scrolls. Once again, it looks like history is about to repeat itself. For the diehards amongst us — those who just cannot live without the printed word – a consolation awaits at the end of the rainbow. Observant Jews are forbidden to use electronic gadgets on the Sabbath. For religious Jews, studying the sacred books on the Sabbath using a Kindle, an iPad or the Internet is not an option. Consequently, bookshelves will only be found in Jewish homes. The only books available in print to future generations will be the Hebrew Scriptures and commentaries. As for the rest of the world, Jews not excluded, print might not disappear altogether; it will most likely come back to haunt us to the end of days… in the form of junk mail.

Postscript For all print lovers and addicts, do not yet despair. Though the king is dead… long live the new king. Even as print is fading away from our landscape, a new and improved print technology is emerging on the horizon, which may yet prove to be a boon to our civilization no less than the revolution engendered by the advent of Guttenberg printing press. Perhaps not exactly what you were hoping for… still it is print… it’s known as Three Dimensional Printing, and it is evolving into the latest and greatest technological frontier. While the new printing beast may not print your favorite textbooks and comic strips, it is capable of printing commodities all the way from knives, forks and teddy bears to cars, furniture and even buildings and airplanes. Also known as Additive manufacturing or 3D printing, it is a process of manufacturing a three‑dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process, where successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes. 3D printing is considered distinct from traditional machining techniques, which mostly rely on the removal of material by methods such as cutting or drilling.[305] Though print as we know it may soon disappear from our universe, let’s not despair… the best is yet to come!!!

David & Moses Thus spoke King David:

I rejoiced when they said to me:

“ Let us ascend to the House

of God “[306] Soon after the death of King Saul in A.M.[307] 2885,[308] King David took over the helm. For seven years, King David reigned in Hebron over Judea. He then established his seat of power in Jerusalem, where he ruled over the entire Land of Israel. If there was one obsession that ran like a thread throughout the life of King David, it was to build the House of God in Jerusalem. Emerging victorious from numerous struggles and wars, King David secured the land from all its enemies. After God had granted him respite from all his detractors,[309] King David felt assured that he is ready to take on the ultimate mission of his life. King David gathered 30,000 elite young men from among the Israelites and invited them to join him as he ascended with the Ark of God to Jerusalem. Along with a huge congregation of Israelites, David danced and sang with unbridled joy accompanied by the joyous sounds of the shofar. When the procession reached the City of David, the Ark of God was placed in a tent designated by David for that purpose.[310] David then turned to Nathan the prophet and said: “Is it appropriate that I dwell in an elegant palace of cedars while the Ark of God rests in a tent of fabric?“[311]

Nathan clearly understood that this loaded question was David’s poetic way of seeking permission from God to build a Temple that will permanently house the Ark of the Covenant. “Go ahead, do all that your heart desires,“ responded the prophet, “for God is with you!“[312] Alas, the prophet spoke too soon. It happened that night that the word of God came to Nathan. “Go, tell My servant David: ‘This is what the Lord says: Do you really intend to build a house for My dwelling? For I have not dwelt in a house from the time I brought the Children of Israel up from Egypt to the present day. Instead, I travelled with them in a tent and a Tabernacle. Wherever I moved among the Israelites, did I ever instruct any of the leaders whom I appointed over My people Israel, “Why have you not built for me a house of cedar?’“ “So now, convey this to My servant David: ‘This is what the Lord of hosts says: I took you from the pasture and elevated you from a shepherd boy to appoint you leader over My people, over Israel. I was with you wherever you went, and I cut down all your enemies before you. I made you as prominent as the great men of the world. I shall yet establish a place for My people, for Israel and plant them there; they will reside there and nevermore be unsettled. Never again shall they be oppressed by villains, as in the days of yore ─ from the days that I appointed judges to lead My people Israel. Instead, I shall grant you respite from all your enemies.’ Moreover, declares God that He shall establish a dynasty for you: ‘When the time comes for you to lie down with your forefathers I shall raise up your descendant, one of your own sons, to succeed you, and I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for My sake.’“[313]

Ruefully, a humbled David submitted to the will of God. Then with renewed vigor, he set out on a mission that was second only to building the House of God. He launched an unrelenting campaign to expand the borders of the Jewish kingdom. While conducting wars of expansion, King David conquered many lands, among them Edom, which also incorporated within its boundaries the tribe of Amalek. Edom was conquered after a decisive defeat in Gey Melach ― Valley of Salt, in which King David slew 18,000 Edomites.[314] After vanquishing Edom and Amalek, King David abolished the Edomite monarchy. He converted Edom into an Israelite province ruled by appointed governors.[315] King David subjugated the Edomites primarily for economic reasons, as Edom controlled the overland and maritime trade routes from the north due south to the Red Sea port of Etzion Gaver ― Eilath. At the time, King David also waged war against Aram in the north, Ammon in the east, Moab in the southeast, Philistines in the southwest. He vanquished them all. The heaps of spoils he secured from Amalek and Edom along with the massive quantities of gold, silver and copper he confiscated from all his other conquests, King David consecrated for the construction of the future House of God in Jerusalem.[316]

In his old age, David turned to his son, Solomon, and said: “My son, throughout my life, I yearned to build a Temple for the sake of God. But God said to me: ’You have spilled a great deal of blood and fought many battles. You must not build a temple to honor Me, for you have shed much blood on the ground before Me. Behold, a son will be born to you, who will be a man of peace. I will grant him respite from all his enemies on every side. Indeed, Solomon will be his name; during his reign, I will bestow peace and tranquility upon Israel. He will build a Temple in My Name’s sake.’ Now, despite my inadequacies, I have made every effort to supply the resources needed to build God’s Temple. I have gathered 100,000 talents of gold, as well as a million talents of silver, and inestimable heaps of bronze and iron, as well as timber and stones. Feel free to add more ! Rise up to the monumental task and may God be with you ! “ Soon after entrusting his son with the task of building the Temple, King David assembled in Jerusalem all the leaders of Israel, including the princes of the tribes, the commanders of the army, and members of the royal family, along with the mighty men of valor.

King David rose to his feet and said: “Hear me, my brothers and my people ! My ultimate ambition in life was to build a Temple where the Ark of God’s covenant could be placed as a footstool for our Creator. I have made all the preparations for building it. But God said to me, ‘You must not build a Temple to honor My Name, for you are a warrior, who shed blood.’ The God of Israel chose me out of my father’s entire family to become king over Israel and establish an eternal dynasty. From the numerous sons with which God had blessed me, He chose Solomon to sit on the throne of the kingdom of Israel. He said to me, ‘Solomon your son is the one who will build My Temple and My courtyards. I will eternally establish his kingdom, if he remains committed to obeying My commands and My Laws.’ So now, in the sight of all Israel, the congregation of God, and in the presence of our Creator, I say this: Observe and seek out all the commandments of God, so that you may possess this good land and bequeath it as an eternal inheritance for your children down the generations.“[317] After delivering his momentous speech, King David confided to his closest aides: “It has come to my attention that my own people wish for my death. They are fully aware of the will of God that in my days the Temple will not be built. They crave so badly for the day when they can ascend to Jerusalem during the festivals to worship in the House of God. They walk around saying, ‘when will the old man die, so that his son Solomon could rise to the throne and build the Temple.’[318] As God is my witness, I sincerely rejoice when I hear the people say, ‘Let us ascend to the House of God.’[319] All my life I hankered to build and worship in the permanent and

glorious House of God, I can fully empathize with the yearning of the people; I’ll gladly get out of the way to fulfill their wish.“

*** About Moses it is said: “No prophet ever again arose in Israel like Moses, whom God had known face to face.“[320] About David, God said: “He is a man after My own heart.[321] I have made a covenant with My chosen one; I have sworn an oath to David, My servant: ‘I will grant you an eternal dynasty and establish your throne throughout future generations.’ I have empowered a warrior; I have raised up a young man from amongst the people. I have discovered David, My servant. With My holy oil have I anointed him as king. My hand will support him, and My arm will strengthen him. No enemy will be able to exact tribute from him; villains will not afflict him. I will crush his tormentors from before him; I will smite his enemies. He will merit My faithfulness and loyal affection, and by My Name he will emerge victorious. I will establish his rule over the seas and his right hand will I cast upon the rivers. He will call out to Me, ‘You are my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’ I will appoint him My firstborn son, the most exalted among the kings of the earth. Forever shall I preserve My kindness for him, and My covenant with him is secure. His descendants will eternally flourish, and his throne shall endure as the heavens above. I shall neither abrogate My covenant nor alter My oath. Once and for all, I have vowed by My own holiness ─ I shall never betray David. His dynasty will

last forever. His throne will endure before me like the sun. Like the moon, it will forever be established as a faithful witness in the heavens above. Selah!“[322]

With a résumé like that, surely, Moses and David are the greatest leaders the Jewish people had ever known. Moreover, in a manner of speaking, they are also God’s two favorite mortals. Alas, much as David was denied his ultimate ambition to erect the House of God in Jerusalem, so too was Moses denied his supreme goal in life – to lead the Jewish people into the Promised Land. Don’t go away… the story is not over… the book about “God’s two favorite people“ is not sealed. The last chapter of the book is yet to be written; it will be about a glorious day in the future when Moses will return to lead the Jewish people, scattered all over the globe, to the Promised Land. At the same time, David will be entrusted with the coveted and sacred task of rebuilding the third, eternal and glorious House of God in Jerusalem ─ the eternal capital of the Jewish people!

The 165-Year Discrepancy According to Jewish sources, the Purim story takes place in Ancient Persia, about 2,400 years ago. If only life were that simple. The Persian Empire was established by Cyrus the Great. Conventional historians posit that Cyrus ruled over Persia circa 560 B.C.E. Consequently, conventional chronology situates the Persian Era more than 160 years earlier than the timetable of about 2,400 years ago, which is based on traditional Jewish sources. This chronological gap precipitated the perennial debate about the missing 165 years on the Jewish calendar.

*** Invariably, conventional historians posit 587 B.C.E. as the year in which Babylonian legions stormed into Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon’s Temple ─ also known as the First Temple. This date contradicts the accounts of history depicted by the sages of the Talmud, which claim that the First Temple was destroyed 3,338 years after Creation[323] ─ equivalent to 422 B.C.E. These two divergent chronological accounts open up a gap of 165 years between the accepted conventional historical chronology and the traditional Jewish system of dating.

According to Talmudic sources, the Second Temple was built 70 years after the First Temple was destroyed and it stood for 420 years. Consequently, 490 years elapsed between the destruction of the First and Second temples. However, both Talmudic sources and secular historians are in full agreement that the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. Based on Talmudic calculations, if we turn the clock back 490 years from 70 C.E., then the First Temple was destroyed in 422 B.C.E. (not 421 B.C.E. ― on the Gregorian calendar, there is no year zero between 1 B.C.E. and 1 C.E.), resulting in a net difference of 165 years.[324] Conversely, 490 years onwards from the benchmark milestone of 587 B.C.E. would suggest that the Second Temple was destroyed in 97 B.C.E. rather than the consensus of 70 C.E. Hence, the persistent conundrum of the missing 165 years on the Jewish calendar. Over the years, volumes were written on the subject. A garden variety of theories and explanations have been advanced in an attempt to bridge the harrowing 165-year gap on the Jewish calendar. A gallery of scholars, historians, rabbis, mystics, apologetics and even laymen have performed academic acrobatics, and brandished hairsplitting casuistries in order to extricate traditional Jewish accounting of history from the trauma of a catastrophic pitfall when confronted by the infallible chronology of the savants.

Historical Fog of the Persian Era In essence, the root of the 165-Year Discrepancy stems from the divergent timekeeping methods of the Persian era by Greek historians versus the account of the sages in the Talmud. It is important to bear in mind that historical records of the Persian era are sketchy at best. During the heyday of the Persian Empire, much of Europe and Greece lived under the formidable shadow of Persian supremacy. Shortly henceforth, the tables turned. Greece was on the rise. Under the aggressive, reckless, and intrepid leadership of the youthful Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Greek legions, in less than a decade, conquered the entire civilized world. Alexander extended little mercy towards the vanquished Persians. In a lightning global stampede, Greek legions recklessly destroyed everything in their path. This is the chief reason precious little historical and archeological evidence is available to reconstruct the events of the Persian era.

Only two sources are available to us when reconstructing the historical chronology of the Persian era ─ Greek historians and Jewish traditions. Conventional historians base their knowledge exclusively on the works of Greek historians who lived between nineteen and twenty-three centuries ago. Greek accounts name at least eleven[325] Persian kings who ruled over a span of 208 years, from 539 to 331 B.C.E. Traditional Jewish accounts name only four Persian/Median emperors reigning over a span of fifty-two years, from 370 to 317 B.C.E. Greek historians of antiquity obtained their accounts primarily by recording the folk traditions they heard from inhabitants of the lands they traversed. This method hardly guarantees accuracy. Herodotus admits to having heard four different tales about Cyrus the Great and recorded only the accounts that best suited his vision of history. Roman historians harbored little regard for their Greek counterparts and often dismissed their accounts as fraudulent.

Greek accounts of Mesopotamian history prior to the fall of Babylon are rejected by modern scholars almost in their entirety. Why then would it surprise anyone that they were wrong about the Persian period, as well? The large number of Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions makes it clear that the Greeks had no grasp of the actual history of this region. But due to the fact that Alexander the Great destroyed the bulk of Persian records when he conquered Persia, the only records remaining of the Persian era are the Greek stories and Jewish tradition. Even if historians were willing to give Jewish tradition an unbiased examination, the Greek stories provide a wealth of detail about Persian society and are frankly much more dramatic and colorful, making the choice inevitable.[326]

Conventional historians totally ignore the accounts of the Persian era advanced by the sages of the Talmud. For Jews, who possess blind faith in Torah and Jewish traditions, there is no question that the sages of the Talmud are more trustworthy than Herodotus and company. But even on a more empirical level, there is much reason to see Jewish historical traditions as more reliable than the Greek histories. The Greek historians picked their stories up as they passed through the lands of Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor. Sometimes they heard the stories at home in Greece from Persian immigrants. No wonder that they got their facts confused. But the Jewish traditions regarding this period originated in the organic Babylonian and Persian communities and were passed down directly until they found their way into the Babylonian Talmud. Local history is much less likely to be misunderstood than stories, often taken out of context, about somebody else ’ s history.[327]

*** The reason that conventional chronology of antiquity is deemed foolproof by most people arises from the notion championed by scholars who study and research the history of the period. They have convinced themselves that historical chronology, as reported by Greek historians, is tantamount to an exact science. Moreover, they have inculcated this misconception in the minds and hearts of their students and by extension brainwashed the rest of the world. There is nothing further from the truth. Alas, though history may be a rigorous discipline, an exact science it is not! A slew of reasons attest to this truism, just to name a few: 1.) Invariably, history is open to interpretation. 2.) History is not an empirical discipline. 3.) History can easily be distorted by tyrants. 4.) Events fade away with the fog of time. 5.) Unless you can cross the facts via eyewitnesses or corroborative documents from numerous viewpoints then the best you can do is resort to deductions based on shreds of evidence at your disposal. 6.) Last but not least, history is written by the victors, all the more so in times of antiquity. Indeed, if history in general is not an exact science, how much less so are the murky historical accounts of antiquity. In the final showdown between the Persians and the Greeks of antiquity, the latter emerged victorious. Most of what conventional historians know about the Persian Empire is derived from various accounts of the victorious Greeks.

Invariably, historical accounts written by the victors are fraught with bias, self-aggrandizement, deception, distortions and forgeries. In contrast, traditional Jewish accounts are based on reports emanating from the field in real time. The organic Jewish community of exiles, who resided in the midst of the Persian Empire fully integrated into its rich and diverse culture. Unbiased, they served as first hand eyewitnesses to the unfolding saga of the splendor and demise of Persia. As long as the savants insist on deliberately dismissing traditional Jewish sources of the Persian era, their account of the chronology of antiquity will never converge on the truth. This brings us full circle to the reconstruction of the chronology of antiquity by conventional historians. To begin with, history written by the victors is deliberately distorted. This distortion is compounded by the premise that research of the conventional chronology of the Persian era is based mostly upon Greek historians, writers and poets, who were far from reliable and often contradicted each other. In order to bridge the gaps and reconcile the contradictions inherent in Greek sources, historians in later generations contrived patches and fixes as they saw fit. To this day, historians invariably base their assessment upon conclusions of researchers from earlier generations, perpetuating their assumptions and preconceived notions.

Only a handful of scholars defied conventional academic wisdom and investigated the subject thoroughly, independently and fundamentally without recourse to existing research. Among the cadre of original thinkers, the majority ─ among them Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead, Immanuel Velikovsky, Jacob Hoschander and Henry Rawlinson ─ dissent from the academic herd. After conducting exhaustive research, these academic scholars actually dared to acknowledge the validity of Biblical, Talmudical and traditional Jewish chronology. The contention, that most current day historians and scholars are singing the same tune regarding the chronology of antiquity, does not necessarily mean that the tune is not off key. A majority opinion in academic disciplines is not tantamount to a rock solid proof; only in a democracy or the court of law does the majority determine the winner.

*** All the major empires of antiquity were gobbled up by their successors. The Assyrians were ravaged by the Babylonians. The Babylonians were toppled by the Persian Empire. The Persians were eventually decimated by the Greeks. In their own turn, each one of these empires was the victor. In their struggle to survive under the shadow of these four formidable empires, the Jews were never the victors, but rather the oppressed underdog. All of these empires vanquished the Jews, dominated them and posed an imminent threat to their existence.

Nearly 600 years elapsed from the rise of the Assyrian Empire to the demise of the Greek Empire. During this protracted period, the Jewish people were subjected to an endless loop of defeats, exiles, destructions, subjugations, catastrophes, evil decrees, oppression, expulsions, slavery and degradation by the four empires of antiquity. Yet, in one of the most puzzling and bizarre ironies of history, the Jews have seen them all and transcended them all, as depicted in the prophetic, poetic and immortal words of Mark Twain: If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one per cent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star‑dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world ’ s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream‑stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, and no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?[328]

While each of the four empires of antiquity documented its own version of history during its tenure as the victor, the exiled and downtrodden Jewish people kept their own log of the unfolding events. They passed it along down the generations through the Mesorah ─ transmission of Jewish tradition. Under the most adverse conditions, the inextinguishable Mesorah was kept alive, consistent, continuous and coherent. Obviously, the Mesorah was recorded from a Jewish vantage point. However, since the Jewish people constantly traveled in the eye of the storm, Jewish history was intertwined with that of the dominant empires. Consequently, the Mesorah also reported on the grand worldly events of antiquity in an unbiased manner, unlike any of the contrived, convoluted and contradictory accounts promulgated by their subjugators. Without a doubt, Jewish traditional accounts are the primary and most reliable source in untangling the clutter of ancient chronology. It is through this prism that we also might attempt to reconcile the various contradictions and inconsistencies inherent in the Greek mélange. Granted that history is not an exact science ─ compounded by the thick fog enveloping the Persian era ─ we may never be able to retrace the precise timeline of antiquity. However, constructing a chronological house of cards exclusively upon the flimsy and unreliable foundations of Greek historians, to the total exclusion of Jewish sources, is certainly not the way to go about clearing up the murky historical fog of antiquity.

***

Treatment of the 165-year discrepancy would not be complete without the input of a legendary 17th century scholar and scientist. The mechanical universe, argued Isaac Newton, must not be separated from its Creator.[329] He also zealously adhered to the conviction that science must be employed to demonstrate the continuing presence of the Creator in the world of nature.[330] Newton interpreted the statement in Genesis, and there was evening and there was morning, as proof that God had also created time.[331] Newton ’ s vision of a mechanical universe was later supplanted by Einstein ’ s relative universe. Still, his conceptualization of time as an integral component of Creation demonstrates how farsighted Newton was a full two centuries before Einstein ’ s brilliant discovery of relativity. In summing up the essence of relativity, in his own words, here is Einstein ’ s depiction of Newton ’ s premise that time is part and parcel of the substance of the universe: It was formerly believed that if all material things disappeared out of the universe, time and space would remain behind. According to the Relativity theory, however, time and space disappear together with things.[332]

Einstein ’ s most dramatic breakthrough was the formulation of the concept of interchangeability of mass and energy, expressed by his eternally famous equation E = mc². This phenomenon was also foreseen by Isaac Newton in his work, Opticks, in which he posed the question:[333] Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, and may not Bodies receive much of their activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition? Answering his own question, Newton observes: The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light into Bodies, is very comfortable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations. Newton’s conclusion is nothing short of constituting the foundation upon which Einstein erected his monumental formula E = mc². It was only by standing on the shoulders of giants the likes of Newton that Einstein eventually arrived at relativity and principles of nuclear physics.[334] Isaac Newton was born nearly two‑thousand years after Aristotle died. Aristotle was a Greek philosopher of paramount stature who unleashed a barrage of lofty hypotheses, which formed mankind ’ s scientific worldview for many centuries. As late as the 17th century, little if any progress was made ─ to decipher the mysteries and workings of the physical universe ─ beyond the hypotheses advanced by Aristotle

thousands of years earlier, which were all debunked by Newton ’ s scientific discoveries.

Science is a modern term that was coined only in the last two centuries. Prior to that and hailing all the way back to the days of classical antiquity, exploration of natural phenomena as a branch of knowledge came under the rubric of philosophy. By the 17th century, Newton simply broke the mold of the old school and reinvented the study of nature by introducing the method of rigorous investigation and empirical analysis. Going forward, hypotheses had to be backed by observation, facts and repeatable exhaustive experimentation. Dismantling the chains that stifled scientific exploration, Newton pried open the gates ushering in the era of empirical science. This breakthrough launched the concept of natural philosophy, which is currently known as natural science and classified as a separate branch of philosophy. Over the course of the 19th century, the terms science and scientist became increasingly associated with the scientific method encompassing the disciplines of physics, chemistry, geology and biology, which constituted the tools of exploring the natural world. As Newton advanced a tsunami of scientific innovations and discoveries, heaps of worn out unproven philosophical theories of the past two thousand years were removed off the shelf and consigned to the graveyard of useless junk.

Even as a teenager Newton astutely identified the barrier that stymied humanity in quest of scientific progress. To underscore his break from the old school of philosophy in regard to scientific research, Newton coined the immortal axiom, which changed the world forever: Hypotheses non fingo! This supreme mantra constituted a guiding light by which Newton ’ s whole life was conducted and from which he never strayed. Faithful to his motto, Newton published only those hypotheses, which yielded to airtight demonstration. Hypotheses non fingo! is the very paradigm which set humanity on a course to free itself from the bondage of unsubstantiated philosophical postulations. It is a Latin idiom that does not easily lend itself to accurate translation. Loosely translated, it states: I frame no hypotheses. Regardless of its literal translation, the message embedded in this maxim projects a colossal caveat ─ hypotheses by themselves hold no water unless backed by rigorous proven scientific experimentation.

*** A number of factors converged to launch the industrial revolution in 18th century England, not the least of which was the gallery of Newton ’ s rigorous scientific innovations. His Laws of Motion, Optics, Gravity and Calculus armed humanity with the confidence to manufacture precise, predictable and reliable machines, tools and equipment without which the industrial revolution would have to wait for another day.

Today we don ’ t make such a big deal of the laws of gravity. We hardly give it much thought and tend to take it for granted. But consider the timeless search by many brilliant thinkers to explain gravity before Newton clinched it. Way back from the time of the ancient Greeks, philosophers grappled with this mysterious force. A garden variety of misguided theories were posited, among them that gravity was enforced by a substance or a medium. When Isaac Newton finally clinched the Laws of Gravity, he described it as: God ’ s invisible glue, which keeps His universe together and in harmony.[335] Isaac Newton stood the scientific community on its head when he proved that gravity resorts to NOTHING in order to balance all objects in our universe. What a revolutionary concept?!?… Do you all hear me out there? The world we live in is suspended upon absolutely NOTHING! God ’ s scheme is overwhelmingly simple; the Creator utilized a nonsubstance to glue his universe together. How efficient, how effective, how clever, how simple… how divine!

What ’ s more amazing, is that Jewish scriptures hint at this in a book authored nearly three thousand years ago. In the Book of Job[336] it states: God suspends His universe upon NOTHINGNESS! It took thousands of years until Isaac Newton came along and picked up on this Biblical hint and forever changed our thinking and our approach to science and to the universe we inhabit. Isaac Newton claimed that all objects in the universe, from a grain of sand to the planets, are subjected to the same rules of gravity, which he postulated. His Theory of Universal Gravitation also led to a remarkable breakthrough on the phenomenon of oceanic tides. Newton was the first scientist to explain tides as the product of the gravitational attraction of cosmological masses. His thesis of tidal waves was published in the Principia. Newton leveraged his laws of gravity to demonstrate that tides result from the gravitational forces exerted by lunar and solar attractions.[337] Newton had toiled on countless experiments and profound study of the behavior of light and colors during his teenage years. He shattered the myth of the nature of rays of light. Since the days of Aristotle, a ray of sunlight was considered nothing more than white. Newton proved through rigorous experiments with a prism backed by mathematical substantiation that a ray of sunlight is comprised of the seven colors of the rainbow.[338]

***

For a period of time encompassing Newton ’ s working life, the discipline of analysis was a subject of controversy in the mathematical community. Although analytic techniques provided solutions to longstanding problems, including problems of quadrature and the finding of tangents, the proofs of these solutions were not known to be reducible to the synthetic rules of Euclidean geometry. Instead, analysts were often forced to invoke infinitesimal, or infinitely small, quantities to justify their algebraic manipulations. Some of Newton ’ s mathematical contemporaries were highly skeptical of such techniques, which had no clear geometric interpretation. Although in his early work Newton also used infinitesimals in his derivations without justifying them, he later developed something akin to the modern definition of limits in order to substantiate his work.[339]

To resolve this mathematical predicament, as early as 1665, Newton devised the ingenious concept of fluxions, which later became more commonly known as derivatives. He referred to a varying quantity as a function and to its instantaneous rate of change as a fluxion. Newton stated that the fundamental predicament of resolving infinitesimal derivations is: Given a function, to find its fluxion and given a fluxion to find a corresponding integral.[340] Newton ’ s revolutionary mathematical breakthrough in resolving this conundrum is today known as calculus.[341] It was hailed as the magical utensil that can square the circle. That is the acclaim accorded the new math of fluxions introduced by Isaac Newton.

Newton advanced the method of leveraging the mathematical instrument to resolve mechanical problems. This approach is succinctly symbolized by the title he chose for his grand masterpiece. While Descartes ― representing the old school of thinkers ― titled his great work, Principia Philosophiae, Newton called his masterpiece, Principia Mathematica. This was a deliberate gesture by Newton to pay homage to a universe premised upon precision, harmony and quantitative order. Newton ’ s synthesis of mathematics with the physical sciences elevated their combined study to a rigorous, universal, and rational technique that ushered in the Age of Reason. A hint to that effect is also implied in the Zohar — a foundational work in the literature of Jewish mystical thought, known as Kabbalah.[342]

*** As his monumental scientific discoveries and earthshattering breakthroughs came to the fore, Sir Isaac Newton emerged as the greatest mathematician, physicist, authority on optics and experimentalist the world has yet known.[343] To this very day, he is considered the most original, influential and remarkable scientist of all times. Had the Nobel Committee been in business during Newton ’ s tenure, his scientific accomplishments would easily clinch him a dozen Nobel Prizes, and then some.

For any individual to accomplish even a single item on Newton ’ s list of scientific discoveries, would be considered a lifetime of great achievement and reward. With a résumé of this colossal magnitude, one would surmise that Isaac Newton spent every moment of his life steeped in the pursuit of scientific research. Amazingly enough that is far from the truth. In fact, science was not Newton ’ s paramount endeavor in life, definitely not his primary passion. At the time of his death in 1727, Newton left behind crates stuffed with manuscripts totaling more than four million words. More than sixty percent of these documents were comprised of profound and passionate theological discourse and research. Never to be the one to resort to second hand information, Isaac Newton perfected his command of the Hebrew language. He undertook this effort so that he could delve into the study of the Bible in the original text unhindered by biased translators and tainted interpretations.

Isaac Newton grew up in a society steeped in Christian piety. He later attended the Trinity College at Cambridge where the appellation Trinity stood for much more than a symbolic icon; all students were expected to take holy orders[344] in the tradition of the Church of England. Though a devout Christian, it was during his tenure at the Trinity College that Newton began to question many tenets of his faith. As a young man imbued with an independent and inquisitive mind, Newton took nothing for granted nor for its face value. He drilled deep into sacred texts, history and scripture in pursuit of the truth. In this quest, he literally left no stone unturned. Ever careful not to jeopardize his employment as a professor at Trinity College, Newton did not flaunt his theological findings during his lifetime. Much like the zealous prophets of old, resorting to razor sharp scathing rebukes that left no doubt as to his views, Newton committed his theological analyses and conclusions to paper, in great detail. When Newton ’ s theological research was published posthumously, his scornful verdict turned the Christian world on its head. The New Testament, contended Newton, had been intentionally corrupted by scheming power brokers who would stop at nothing to achieve their temporal ends. He accused emperor and pope alike of complicity in this heinous rebellion against the Creator.[345] Christian scripture, bristled Newton, was fraught with conspiracy and fraud; it had to be mercilessly expunged, root and branch.[346]

Punctuated by blistering accusations, Newton unleashed fire and brimstone upon those who dared preach the blasphemous and idolatrous worship of the Trinity. To Newton, trinitarianism constituted a blatant form of idolatry —the sin of sins — the ultimate rebellion against God. Newton would let no one forget that this prohibition was underscored by God in the very first of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt have no other Gods before me![347] The trinitarian credo, argued Newton, has no basis in scripture. Moreover, the principle that three equals one and one equals three is no more applicable to rationalist theology than to the fields of physics and mathematics, concluded Newton.[348]

The Old Testament remained Newton ’ s bedrock scripture; the chief and ultimate focus of his studies.[349] Consequently, he regarded the Hebrews — the guardians of the original Bible — as God ’ s favorite tribe. Newton viewed the Jewish people and their early patriarchs not as another secular kingdom but the progenitors of the true and everlasting religion, an ancient people apart from all others.[350] He admonished the enemies of the Jews that the wrath of the angry God will forever hound the persecutors of the chosen through all eternity.[351] To Newton, the Prophet Moses epitomized the ultimate manifestation of the fusion between the material and the spiritual. Moses emerged as a pivotal figure not only in Newton ’ s theology, but also in his conception of science.[352] Consequently, he was a staunch defender of the Mosaic account of Creation.[353]

Of all his theological pursuits, one topic riveted Newton ’ s attention more than any other. He spent countless hours researching Solomon ’ s Temple in Jerusalem. Newton considered King Solomon, The greatest philosopher that ever lived.[354] Moreover, he observed, that much like God ’ s universe, Solomon ’ s Temple was a model of simplicity and harmony. Consequently, Newton deduced that decrypting the intricacies of the Temple ’ s design will surely shed new light on the mysteries of the world we inhabit. Moreover, he was imbued with a premonition that the Divine embeds His mysterious plan of future events in the scenes of Solomon ’ s Temple, its service, ceremonies and rites.[355] Toiling incessantly on the book of Ezekiel and a plethora of other Biblical sources, Newton recreated the blueprint[356] of the Temple from the Hebrew text.[357] Whether this cryptogrammic pursuit will ultimately yield supplemental secrets of the universe is yet to be established. However, unquestionably, his persistent investigation of Solomon ’ s Temple and its rituals went a long way in inspiring Newton ’ s quest to decipher the workings of God ’ s universe.

***

As a young student at Cambridge, Isaac Newton kept a log of comments and questions. On top of the first page in his notebook, he penned a line, which set the tone for his attitude towards philosophical inquiries and investigations: Amicus Plato, amicus Aristoteles, magis amica veritas, ─ I am a friend of Plato, I am a friend of Aristotle, but truth is my greater friend.[358] So, why am I telling you all this? Indeed, one may justifiably wonder, why is it necessary to interject heaps of seemingly unrelated information in the context of a discussion about the chronology of antiquity? Because it ’ s pretty fascinating stuff, isn ’ t it? However, there is more to it. In this instance, I introduced the backdrop, primarily, to establish Isaac Newton ’ s formidable résumé portraying his tenacious and relentless pursuit of the ultimate truth, as a preamble to what is coming next. Stay tuned!

***

Greek historians do not have a monopoly on falsification of historical accounts. As highlighted by Sir Isaac Newton, in ancient times, it was the rule rather than the exception: All Nations, before they began to keep exact accounts of Time, have been prone to raise their Antiquities; and this humour has been promoted, by the Contentions between Nations about their Originals. [359]

Indeed, while the art of fabrication and deception was commonly practiced by historians of antiquity, in that pantheon, Newton reserves a place of honor for Greek historians: The Greek Antiquities are full of Poetical Fictions, because the Greeks wrote nothing in Prose, before the Conquest of Asia by Cyrus the Persian… So then a little after the death of Alexander the great, they began to set down the Generations, Reigns and Successions, in numbers of years, and by putting Reigns and Successions equipollent to Generations, and three Generations to an hundred or an hundred and twenty years (as appears by their Chronology) they have made the Antiquities of Greece three or four hundred years older than the truth. And this was the original of the Technical Chronology of the Greeks. Eratosthenes wrote about an hundred years after the death of Alexander the great: He was followed by Apollodorus, and these two have been followed ever since by Chronologers. [360]

Citing one example after another of historical events that were fabricated retrospectively by Greek historians, Newton drives home his point: The Artificial Chronologers, have made Lycurgus, the legislator, as old as Iphitus, the restorer of the Olympiads; and Iphitus, an hundred and twelve years, older than the first Olympiad; and, to help out the Hypothesis, they have feigned twenty-eight Olympiads older than the first Olympiad, wherein Coræbus was victor. But these things were feigned, after the days of Thucydides and Plato…[361]

***

Additional evidence of Greek distortions and manipulations of history arises from the shocking dearth of historical accounts following the rise of Alexander the Great. Certainly, the century following the ascent of Alexander the Great was one of the most glorious and prolific periods in the history of the Hellenistic era. Much has been written about the period by a gallery of Greek historians and scholars. Intriguingly, as reported by The Cambridge Ancient History, all contemporary accounts have been lost:

From the hundred years following Alexander ’ s death the work of no single contemporary historian has survived other than fragmentarily. Yet the period had been fully covered both in universal histories and in specialized works dealing with particular kings, peoples or regions. In the latter category there are forty-six authors known to have written about the Hellenistic period ‒ all are lost. On the causes of this holocaust one can only speculate.[362]

Ironically ─ mirroring the pattern of early Greek historical deceptions ─ the mysterious disappearance of historical accounts after Alexander ’ s conquest of Persia is conveniently reported centuries after the fact. With the benefit of hindsight, it is from Roman and Greek historians of a much later era ─ Flavius Arrianus[363] (c. 86 — 160 C.E.) and Quintus Curtius Rufus,[364] who lived in the first century C.E. ─ that we learn about the events, which allegedly transpired during the first century of the Hellenistic empire. As noted above, in his Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, Sir Isaac Newton highlights the consistent and persistent litany of ex-postfacto deceptions and distortions concocted by Greek historians during the period of antiquity prior to the rise of Alexander the Great. In light of the obliteration of historical records after the rise of Alexander the Great, evidently, Newton ’ s condemnation of Greek deceptions is applicable to that epoch, as well. The disappearance of all historical documentation from the initial century of the Hellenistic era is scandalous to the extent that The Cambridge Ancient History brands this omission as nothing less than a

“ holocaust “ of literary works. Clearly, the surreptitious evaporation of massive literary works is neither accidental nor inadvertent, but rather a concerted effort exerted by Greek historians and scholars to blur the events of the Persian era, and by extension, a deliberate attempt to distort the chronological fabric of world history.

In an attempt to rewrite history, the Greeks manipulated the historical time line by hundreds of years. Evidently, this was a deliberate effort to push back the entire span of the Persian era in order to align its demise with the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. This clever manipulation of history could easily account for the 165-year discrepancy. This thesis is widely discussed in The Challenge of Jewish History authored by Alexander Hool.[365] The conundrum of the 165-year gap between the accounts of conventional historians vs. Jewish traditions is certainly one of the most vexing chronological mysteries. Over the years, various serious attempts have been made to reconcile this discrepancy, none of which match the daring, erudite and original approach projected by Alexander Hool.[366] His research is packed with vast knowledge of history, archaeology, astronomy, mathematics and scripture. The author ’ s thesis is substantiated by rigorous, satisfying and convincing academic arguments augmented by heaps of conclusive evidence. Since history is not an exact science, we may never drill to the bottom of this riddle. However, the colossal, exhaustive and creative academic effort launched by Alexander Hool is not only plausible, but might very well turn out to be the golden standard and ultimate resolution to this timeless puzzle.

*** At the University of Cambridge, where, at the age of 19, Newton launched his academic career back in June of 1661, aside from Latin and

Greek, study of the Hebrew language was mandatory.[367] Hebrew was in fact the most crucial language after Latin. Newton ’ s eventual mastery of the Hebrew language proved indispensable in advancing his Biblical scholarship, which claimed as much of his time as investigation of science and mathematics combined.[368] Aside from his obsessive pursuit of science and Biblical scholarship, Newton also launched an exhaustive investigation into the chronology of ancient kingdoms in his seminal treatise: The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended. Not only in his scientific endeavors did Newton apply the method of rigorous investigation and empirical analysis. Prior to presenting his groundbreaking work on the empires of antiquity, Newton conducted a thorough and comprehensive research from every which angle, all the while crossing, matching and comparing all his findings with a variety of sources. Ever in quest of pristine truth, Sir Isaac Newton ’ s verdict regarding timeframes of antiquity is noteworthy: When the chronology was published posthumously in full by John Conduitt in 1728 as The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, Newton ’ s method of computation became clear. Basing his system on the principle of the precession of the equinoxes, he calculated that the Argonaut expedition had taken place around 936 B.C., fully four or more centuries later than the traditional record of Greek history allowed. Using that data as a benchmark, Newton lopped off even greater chunks of time from the chronologies of ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Media. All ancient empires, he observed, vainly extended their antiquity. While their chronologers had calculated the average reign of a king or emperor at something over thirty years, the correct figure is eighteen to twenty. Only one ancient people, the Hebrews, escaped Newton ’s sword. Their written record, the Old Testament was to him the earliest left by any civilization. Those compiled by other peoples had to be amended to conform to it. [369]

*** During the era of antiquity, dates were NOT marked as B.C.E. or counted by any meaningful scientific method but rather by years of kings ’ reign. This is well documented in the Biblical Book of Esther where events are marked by the year of the reign of King Achashverosh. There are two problems with this method. When kings died, the count was reset and calendars truncated. Secondly, most kings of antiquity possessed a propensity for self‑aggrandizement and inflated their tenure by years and sometimes by decades. To further complicate the problem, ancient rulers in many parts of the world assumed regnal names or throne names, which were different from their personal name. Historians of antiquity often intermingled individual kings with regnal names, such a Pharaoh in Egypt and Artachshasta or Artaxerxes in the royal Persian hierarchy. This misguided practice introduced additional layers of phantom monarchs and inflated the passage of time leaving us with an unreliable chronology.

The resulting confusion reinforces Isaac Newton ’ s notion that the only reliable system of establishing the chronology of antiquity is the one indicated by Jewish tradition and sources. In Newton ’ s Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, beginning with the text, The sacred history of the Israelites…[370] one senses the reverence and superiority Newton ascribes to Jewish scriptures over Herodotus & Company and all other sources of antiquity including those of the ancient Egyptians, Persians and Romans.[371] Throughout the extensive records he left behind, Newton clearly exhibits reverence for and deference to Jewish traditional sources. Countless sources and quotes from Jewish scriptures permeate Newton ’ s massive manuscripts.

***

Much like Isaac Newton, the author of this work is also a staunch and faithful believer in the authenticity of Jewish traditional sources when it comes to marking historical timeframes of antiquity. This conviction, along with an unshakeable faith in the collective memory of the Jewish people, prompted the author to adopt the Jewish calendar in marking all chronology throughout this manuscript. Throughout its protracted history, in good times and bad, the collective memory of the Jewish people remained intact. It neither wavered nor faltered nor blinked. Unlike the accounts of Greek historians ─ which are fraught with gaps, distortions, fables, falsifications, fantasies and forgeries ─ Jewish traditional sources are consistent, contiguous and unbiased. In the final analysis, traditional Jewish sources are by far more reliable than Greek fables! Moreover, in comparison to all other dating systems, the Jewish calendar is simple, convenient, accurate, user-friendly and streamlined. The Jewish calendar keeps count of the years since Creation[372] of the world based on the text of Genesis. Currently, in the year 2016 C.E. the count of the Jewish calendar stands at A.M. 5776. In Latin, this format is annotated as: A.M. — Anno Mundi, which is loosely translated as, Year of the World or Year after Creation.

***

‫נֵצ ַח יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא יְשַׁקֵּר‬

[373]

The Eternity and Glory of Israel shall neither deceive nor falter!

***

Conversion from Hebrew calendar to Gregorian & Vice versa When it comes to converting any given year on the Hebrew Calendar to the Gregorian equivalent and vice versa, the magic number is 3760.[374] The Hebrew calendar keeps count of the years since Creation of the world, based on the text of Genesis. Currently, in the year 2016 C.E., the count of the Hebrew calendar stands at A.M. 5776. In Latin this format is annotated as: A.M. — Anno Mundi, which is loosely translated as, Year of the World or Year after Creation. By adding 3760 to any given year on the Gregorian calendar, we obtain the equivalent year on the Hebrew Calendar — Anno Mundi. For example, by adding 3760 to the year 1948 on the Gregorian calendar, we arrive at A.M. 5708. Of course, it also works vice versa. If we wish to convert A.M. 5708 to the Gregorian year, we subtract 3760 from 5708, resulting in the year 1948 on the Gregorian calendar. To obtain the equivalent of any year prior to the beginning of the Gregorian count (Before Common Era or B.C.E.) as a representation of Anno Mundi, we subtract the Before Common Era (B.C.E.) year from 3760. However, here is the caveat: since there is no year zero between B.C.E. and C.E., we must compensate by adding one year to the initial result. For example, take the Year 70 B.C.E. By subtracting 70 from 3760, we arrive at A.M. 3690. We now need to compensate for that missing year zero by adding 1 to 3690 resulting in A.M. 3691 on the Hebrew calendar.

Honor Your Parents Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord God commands thee; so that you will be blessed with longevity and a good life…[375] As a child, when I first learned of this biblical commandment, it was clear to me that in return for honoring our parents the Creator above clicks on a magic button… and bingo, out comes a grant of longevity along with blessings for a life full of bliss. As the years went by I never heard a better explanation for the built‑in benefits resulting from complying with the Fifth commandment; nor did it occur to me that any additional elucidation was warranted other than its face value, as reflected in the text. It was only after I had children of my own and well into my sixties that I was struck with an epiphany on the topic. This happened while listening to the Ten Commandments read out loud from the Torah on Shabbat morning of Parshat Va’Etchanan[376] on July 24, 2010. On the way home from the shtieble[377] I shared my thoughts with 14‑year‑old Nadav, my firstborn. It occurred to me that by obeying the biblical commandment to honor our parents, which is probably the most difficult mandate on the Decalogue menu, one is rewarded doubly — by God and by the bounty resulting from adherence to this Torah commandment radiating common sense and wisdom.

Invariably, what do our parents really ask of us? To eat healthy foods; to floss and brush our teeth regularly; to exercise restraint and pre‑marital abstinence; to eat an apple a day; to exercise great caution when crossing the street; to consume piles of broccoli; to become competent swimmers; to eat abundant fruits prior to meals; to chew food slowly and thoroughly and to perform aerobic exercise daily. Moreover, until they got married and begot children, all parents without exception have committed heaps of mistakes; taken many a wrong turn in life; fell into countless pitfalls; faced many a nightmare of their own doing. Surely, they will share all these mishaps with their children. The smart ones will pay attention to their parents’ hell and hopefully avoid these pitfalls. Most young people walk around with the feeling that their parents are dumb. Most of those who think otherwise, are still thoroughly convinced that they are by far smarter than their parents. The real smart kids, nonetheless, are aware that their parents have acquired heaps of life’s experience… and that counts for a lot. Consequently, the smart child quickly grasps that his parents’ guidance and instructions amount to nothing less than a manual for a safe and healthy lifestyle — a surefire prescription for longevity. And the foolish child… chooses the path of obstinacy and rebellion.

Furthermore, our parents exhort us to do homework before fun and games; to exercise humility; to avoid procrastinating; to go to bed early and rise early; to acquire a profession; to play more chess and less computer games; to return things to their proper place; to read lots of books; to be diligent; to achieve excellence in school in order to clinch generous scholarships and thus avoid a future burdened with debt and loans; to watch our money carefully so that when we need it, our money will be there to watch over us; to practice… practice…practice; not to be a bully; to clean your room; to share with others; to work hard; to exhibit fine manners; to tell the truth; to be kind and considerate to others and to exercise patience in all walks of life. This batch of instructions is clearly designed to instill in us discipline and imbue us with civility from early on. A child smart enough to implement this additional set of directives will surely acquire the traits to set him or her on the path that leads to a good and successful life packed with fulfillment, prosperity, meaning and quality — in short a good life. There you have it, longevity and a good life all bundled up in one magical package. To be eligible for this monumental gift, all we need to do is … honor our parents. Of all the 613 Biblical commandments only ten made it to the top of the hit parade — the Ten Commandments. With the colossal rewards in store for obeying this single commandment, it is no coincidence that “honor your father and your mother“ has found its way to the top ten. It is also no coincidence that invariably we all find it almost impossible and unbearable to pay attention to our nagging mothers and demanding fathers.

Oh, and one more thing… God is always watching. Surely, He will be more than happy to bestow upon us untold blessings for honoring and listening to our parents. That is on top of all the other goodies that are listed above. Not a bad deal… two for the price of one. Does it get any better than this? In that case, why is it so difficult to observe the commandment to honor thy parents… simply put… because parents possess a great talent for not missing an opportunity to embarrass us in front of friends, teachers, classmates and neighbors; they talk to us in clichés — constantly reminding us that “haste make waste“ and “there is no such thing as a free lunch;“ and they are old fashioned and a pain in the… Then there is the other side of the coin — the obligation of a parent to educate their children, who in most cases will do everything to obstruct and scuttle the efforts exerted by their parents to make a mentch[378] out of spoiled little brats. Unless we are talking about abusive parents, no father is eager to punish his own child. It goes without saying, that once a child is punished, his suffering seems unbearable; but not nearly as painful as the anguish experienced by the father, who was left with no choice other than to discipline his offspring.

From this earthly father‑son‑interaction, we can gain a glimpse into the relationship of our Father in Heaven to His children. Like a merciful father, God is very patient with transgressors and sinners. Due to the unbounded love a father harbors for his children, the little darlings usually get away with murder. However, as the child pushes the envelope beyond the boiling point, punishment is inevitable. As the Children of Israel piled up egregious sins to the point of no return, God struck back. The Midrash informs us that once God settled the account with the Jews, He was overcome with immense and unbearable grief at the sight their suffering: Even as Solomon’s Temple lay in smoldering ruins, wrapped in grief, our Father in Heaven looked down and lamented: “Woe is to Me that my home lay in ruins! Where are my children? Where are my priests? Where are my beloved people? Why have you not heeded the repeated warnings of my prophet? Why have you not repented?“[379]

It is also stated in the Zohar that following the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews were subjected to horrific suffering in the Babylonian exile. Crushed under the bitter yoke of a ruthless oppressor, the exiled Jews were convinced that their Father in Heaven had completely abandoned them. Right there and then, God called out to all the hosts of Heaven and to all the angles: “Are we going to stand idly by, ensconced in our comfort zone, and watch while my beloved children are suffering in captivity? Let us all descend into exile and share their fate!“[380]

God then descended down to Babylon to comfort His children, the Israelites in the Babylonian captivity. As the Psalmist points out, God never completely abandons His chosen flock: In times of distress, I shall be with him.[381] Just as God empathizes and commiserates with His children when they suffer pain resulting from His own punishment; so does a father of flesh‑and‑blood grieves when his child suffers in the course of reprimand or discipline. One final note to all those who are privileged to have living parents. Don’t miss an opportunity to hug your parents, even if it’s unwarranted. I have never met anyone who regretted hugging their parents excessively, but I sure have met countless tormented and remorseful souls who would give their right arm for one more opportunity to hug their parents. Alas, it’s too late… their parents are resting in peace in Gan Eden![382]

‫כרחם אב על בנים כן מרחם הק ב “ה על עם‬ [383] ‫ישראל‬ ‫כתוב באיכה רבה )פתיחתא כ “ ד( באותה שעה שנחרב בית‬ ‫ אוי לי על‬,‫המקדש הראשון היה הקדוש ברוך הוא בוכה ואומ ר‬ ‫ מה‬,‫ אוהבי היכן את ם‬,‫ כהני היכן את ם‬,‫ בני היכן את ם‬,‫בית י‬ ‫ אמר הקדוש‬.‫ התריתי בכם ולא חזרתם בתשוב ה‬,‫אעשה לכ ם‬ ‫ “אני דומה היום לאדם שהיה לו בן יחידי ועשה‬:‫ברוך הוא לירמי ה‬ [384]“‫לו חופה ומת בתוך חופת ו‬ ‫ שאחרי החורבן היו‬,(‫כתוב גם בזוהר )בתחילת פרשת שמו ת‬ ‫ היו סבורים שהק ב “ה נטש‬,‫ישראל נתונים במצב כה קשה בגלו ת‬ ‫ אותה שעה קרא‬.‫אותם לגמרי והסיר השגחתו מהם חס ושלו ם‬ ‫ “מה‬:‫הקדוש ברוך הוא לכל צבאות השמים ולכל המלאכים ואמ ר‬ ‫אעשה לבני החביבים שהם בגלות ואנו כא ן? אלא נרד ונלך לגלות‬ [385].‫יחד עימה ם“ ירד הק ב “ה לבב ל‬

The Perfect Gift A seven‑day week is a convention that transcends all cultures, religions, nations, races, tribes and societies. A day or two of rest per week is also a universal norm. Rarely, do we come across a concept or a tradition which unifies the entire human race. In the days before iPhones, internet, telegraph or semaphore, how indeed did the convention of a seven‑day week permeate all societies and cultures on earth? The answer is very simple. Since all the inhabitants of the earth stem from Adam & Eve, and these two primal humans received the idea from the Creator, it then trickled down to the rest of humanity throughout the globe and down the generations. Though a seven‑day week is a unique common denominator embraced by the entire rainbow of humanity, the weekly day of rest, however, does not meet with a unanimous consensus. Though all monotheistic religions are founded upon Biblical text, which clearly defines the Sabbath as the Seventh Day, except for the Jews and a handful of fragmented Christian sects, none of them observe the Seventh Day. The overwhelming majority of Christianity’s numerous denominations observe Sunday. Muslims picked Friday as their Sabbath.

Stemming from Jewish traditions, the early Christians adhered zealously to seventh‑day Sabbath observance. It was only during the 4th century that Christians gradually switched to Sunday as their weekly day of rest. The turning point occurred on March 7, 321, when the Roman Emperor Constantine issued the Deis Solis ─ Day of the Sun ─ decree establishing Sunday as the official day of rest from labor throughout the Roman Empire.[386] Constantine’s Deis Solis decree coupled with the deep rooted Christian tradition that Christ’s resurrection occurred on Sunday prompted the shift away from the Jewish Sabbath. Within decades of Constantine’s decree, most Christians switched to keeping Sunday as the weekly day of rest. Constantine’s decree notwithstanding, sizeable pockets of resistance within Christianity tenaciously clung to the Saturday Sabbath. Many others celebrated both Saturday and Sunday. However, as Christianity moved away from its Jewish roots, it became very unfashionable and more of a disgrace to cling to the vestiges of Jewish trappings within Christianity. By the 5th century, Christians unanimously embraced Sunday as their Sabbath, honoring the first day of the week as the Lord’s Day.

*** In our days several Christian denominations still cling to one form or another of seventh‑day Sabbath observance. The largest among them is the Seventh‑day Adventist Church affiliated with the Protestant branch of Christianity. As of October 2009, the church boasts 16,049,101 baptized members.[387] The General Conference of the Church of God Seventh Day, or simply CoG7, is a breakaway faction from the Christian Seventh‑day Adventist Church. While adhering to a seventh‑day Sabbath observance,

the CoG7 represents a line of Adventist Christians rejecting the visions and teachings of Ellen G. White ─ the spiritual engine and co‑founder of the Seventh‑day Adventist Church. As of 2012, the CoG7 commands a network of over 200 congregations in North America with an estimated 11,000 members. Worldwide, the CoG7 operates under its International Ministerial Congress with affiliated ministries in more than 40 countries encompassing over 200,000 members.[388] Seventh Day Baptists are Christian Baptists, who observe the Sabbath on the seventh‑day of the week. The Seventh Day Baptist World Federation today represents over 50,000 Baptists in 22 countries.[389] Subbotniks ─ Sabbatarians ─ is a Russian hybrid Christian sect comprised of Judaizing Christians. Its origins hail back to the 18th century during the reign of Catherine the Great. Though there are a number of strains within the Subbotniks sect, most of the followers keep brit milah ─ circumcision ─ believe in absolute Unitarianism rather than the Christian Trinity and accept most of the tenets of the Jewish Bible. Above all, Subbotniks of all persuasions zealously observe the Sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday; hence the appellation Subbotnik.[390] Regarding dress and lifestyle, apart from their religious rites, the Subbotniks are indistinguishable from Russian Orthodox or secular Russians. Over the years, Subbotniks converted to Judaism in droves. At the end of the 19th century, thousands of Subbotniks settled in Israel along with the early Zionist pioneers. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, many Subbotniks left Russia for Israel and blended with the Jewish population. Only several thousand still remain in Russia, and, of course, they still zealously keep the Sabbath on the seventh‑day.

Aside from the above list of denominations, the Christian landscape sprouts a garden variety of additional sects that observe the seventh‑day as their Sabbath. Their followers are too negligible to tip the scales. Given that the body of Christianity constitutes a third of humanity ─ over two billion

adherents ─ the handful of denominations that observe the seventh‑day as Sabbath are a mere drop in the bucket of this mammoth monotheistic religion.

*** The likely genesis of the Friday “Sabbath“ goes back to the earliest days of Islam. Most historians acknowledge that Islam was heavily influenced by Muhammad’s borrowing from Judaism and Christianity. Muhammad formulated his new religion mixing both traditions as well as establishing his particular distinctions. Though illiterate himself, Muhammad was well acquainted with a variety of Jewish tribal communities in Arabia. He astutely perceived that a key element to their unity was The Book. Muhammad was inspired to create one of his own to galvanize unity among the scattered Arab pagan tribes. Moslem doctrine maintains that the Koran is a divine scripture; its content conveyed to Muhammad by Allah via the angel Gabriel. Many non‑Islamic researchers, however, believe that Muhammad commissioned Jewish scholars to draft his book. It evidences many revisions and edits in spite of claims to the contrary.

Muhammad was also acquainted with the traditions of the several Christian settlements in Arabia and their Sunday Sabbath tradition. He freely incorporated certain Christian elements into his book. Hence the Koran is a concoction of Judeo‑Christian influences. In the city of Medina Muhammad often participated in the Friday market day. Friday was a busy business and market gathering day for seventh‑day Sabbath observant Jews. He ordained that Friday would make a practical choice for communal assembly and prayer for his followers. By establishing a Sabbath different from Jews and Christians he avoided their Sabbaths and took practical advantage of Friday’s commercial market day assemblies. He declared Friday as the day for congregational noon prayer for his followers. It was no more spiritual than that. The Koran mentions the seventh‑day Sabbath in relation to the Jews on several occasions — usually in a critical or negative context. The Koran also creates space from the Jews by teaching that Allah does not get tired and didn’t need to rest after six days of toil in creating the world. Islam erroneously interprets the biblical account of Genesis as depicting a fatigued God in need of rest to recover from the backbreaking labors of Creation. Moreover, Islam and its Koran maintain that the seventh‑day Sabbath has been abrogated by the new revelation of Muhammad.[391]

***

Since the roots of both Christianity and Islam stem from Jewish scriptures and tradition, it would only be natural that they maintain some sort of Sabbath observance. Miraculously, the Saturday Sabbath was circumvented by the mammoth monotheistic religions. An invisible force intervened to guarantee that they steer clear of the Saturday Sabbath, which is the inheritance and domain of the Jewish people. This invisible force is the hand of God, as stated in the Book of Exodus:[392] Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. Unto eternity, it is a sign between Me and the children of Israel; for in six days God created the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He ceased from work and rested.

1This exclusive perpetual covenant apropos the Sabbath between God and the Jewish people is echoed in the liturgy: [393] The holy Sabbath, our God, You did not grant to the nations of the earth, nor did You, our King, make it the inheritance of idol worshippers. In its contentment the uncircumcised shall not dwell. Inasmuch as to Israel, Your people, have You given it with love, to the seed of Jacob whom you have chosen. The people that sanctify the Seventh Day will rejoice in Your Kingdom ─ emanating from Your bounty, they will all be fulfilled and delighted. And the Seventh Day ─ in it You found favor and sanctified it! Most coveted of days did You proclaim it, a testament to the act of Creation.

With profound insight, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on the above liturgical passage sheds light on the essence and purpose of the Sabbath: If the Sabbath were nothing more than a day of rest, it could be the equal property of all nations. But the Sabbath is a day of holiness and, as such, it could be given only to the nation that accepts the mission of sanctity. God did not give the Sabbath to such unworthy nations who worship earthliness and materialism nor to the worshippers of idols, who ascribe mastery of the world to such natural forces as the celestial bodies, fertility and nature, which they symbolize by means of idols; nor to the uncircumcised people, who are unwilling to curb their lusts for the sake of a higher spiritual goal.[394]

Clearly, it is no coincidence that the nations of the earth were diverted from invading the space of the Seventh‑Day. It was ordained by the Creator — unto eternity, a sign between Me and the children of Israel — that the Sabbath remain the sole possession of the Jewish people. Had the Sabbath been eclipsed by a tsunami of Moslem and Christian masses, its

brilliance would be dimmed. Mass observance of the Sabbath would taint its pristine sanctity, dilute it of original divine flavor and content as prescribed in the Torah. It would quickly turn mundane, divested of its essence and uniqueness. Only Jewish observance based on Biblical teachings suffuse the Sabbath with its original and authentic flavor as ordained by the Creator. Though a handful of Christian denominations recently re‑discovered the seventh‑day Sabbath, they are marginal within the larger framework of Christianity and negligible in the context of the sea of humanity. Moreover, the observance and honor accorded the Sabbath by the various Christian sects is superficial at best — a mere set of variations on a theme of the original Biblical prescription. The only group that sacrificed all for the sake of the Sabbath and consistently observed it at all cost, throughout the ages since antiquity, as it was intended by the Fourth Commandment, are the Jewish people. So, my friends, now that we made it to the major league and, against all odds, own the Sabbath, it’s time to sit back, relax, enjoy the chulent and toast a Le’Chayim. Halleluya! Not so fast, hold that toast. Alas, the very Sabbath we honor at the end of every week may be out of sync with the original Sabbath of Creation. Following six days of Creation, God sanctified the seventh day as the very first Sabbath. Consequently, somebody had to keep count each day down the generations to ensure that the Sabbath we celebrate today is a multiple of seven days removed from the initial Sabbath of Genesis. Initially, being the only people on the planet, Adam and Eve were entrusted with the task of marking time. Soon after their appearance on earth, the first couple inherited paradise and then botched it all up. Paradise

was forever lost. The trauma and turmoil that ensued the banishment of the first couple from paradise could ruin anybody’s day. Their lifestyle on the other side of paradise afforded little job satisfaction. These two dejected homo sapiens now had to toil for a living with little respite. For years afterwards, they could not recover from the shock of the acute transition from princes to paupers. Engaged in endless days of backbreaking labor, they were constantly stressed out; gasping for breath as they rushed to meet insurmountable daily deadlines of eking out a living from the cursed earth. Haunted by faint memories of paradise, Adam and Eve were submerged in a chronic state of depression and gloom as they toiled the unyielding land with the sweat of their brows. Not only did they lament their personal misfortune, but were also burdened with the unbearable guilt of inflicting the curse upon their progeny down the generations. Could we really count on the miserable and pathetic first couple to maintain a reliable calendar under these tormenting circumstances? Could we rely upon them to accurately keep track of the passing days and weeks without stumbling even once? I wouldn’t bet on it, would you? The Bible informs us that Adam lived to the ripe old age of 930 years. Their firstborn, Seth, came into the world when Adam and Eve were 130 years old. Once their children came along, Adam and Eve might have received some help from their progeny, but for the first 130 years of their life they were the sole timekeepers for humanity. Their tenure in this capacity is but a small spec on the landscape of a calendar that extends for almost six thousand years. But even if a single link in this temporal chain fails, the distortion is amplified unto eternity. Consequently, a reasonable possibility exists that, for thousands of years, we are celebrating the Sabbath on the wrong day of the week.

Humanity’s precarious origins notwithstanding, good news awaits all Sabbath observers; rest assured that your day of rest is perfectly synchronized with the original Sabbath projecting all the way back to Genesis. How do we know this? The Creator Himself confirmed for us through Moses that for all their faults, blunders and travails Adam and Eve did not fail us — they held the fort and managed to stay on track. When and where did God reveal this to Moses? During the episode of the Manna, also known as bread from heaven, which God supplied the Hebrews during their wanderings in the Sinai desert following the exodus from Egypt: Then said God unto Moses: Behold, I will rain down bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day... and it shall come to pass on the sixth day that they shall prepare that which they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.[395]

The Manna which was delivered directly by God from heaven arrived in double portions on Friday in honor of the Sabbath. The Creator is clearly confirming for the entire Jewish nation that indeed this is the very Sabbath, a multiple of seven days removed from the initial Sabbath of Genesis. From that point going forward, based on the infallible premise of collective national memory, we can be fully confident that every Sabbath we celebrate is the seventh‑day as God intended. Problem solved! On this account, Adam and Eve did not fail us — they kept the correct count.

Why do Jews place two loaves of Challah bread on the Sabbath table, why not one or three or any other number? The answer is very simple ─ to commemorate the double portion of Manna God bestowed upon the Jews every Friday during their journey through the Sinai desert. But there is more to it than that. In matters of life and death, a judge in a Jewish court of law cannot hand down a verdict unless the evidence is based on the account of two credible witnesses.[396] Just like the double portion of Manna in the desert, the two loaves of Challah bread on the Sabbath table bear witness to the fact that indeed the people seated around the table are observing the Sabbath on the day intended by the Creator.

*** Observance of the Sabbath is embedded in the Ten Commandments. Here is the full text of the Fourth Commandment:[397] Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto Hashem thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man‑servant, nor thy maid‑servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days God made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is contained in them, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore God blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

The essence, spirit and symbolism of Sabbath observance is in honor of the act of Creation by God, as stated in Genesis:[398] Thus the heaven and the earth along with all their legions were completed. On the seventh day God completed His work which God had made, and He abstained on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it He rested from all His work which God created to make.

On the seventh day, the Sabbath, the Creator ceased from creating, or is that really what happened? Sabbath in Hebrew means to cease from doing any work, in its more aggressive sense it would mean to strike, repose

or refrain from work. The technical root of the word stems from the Hebrew word to sit idle. In fact, the text of Genesis suggest that God rested on the seventh day. But that is not all it says. We also read that God sanctified the seventh day. This sanctification did not create anything new or physical, nonetheless it is an event as important as any that took place during the preceding six days of Creation. The act of sanctification of the Sabbath highlights this special day as a marker for eternity to serve as a day of rest, and testimony to the fact that the Creator had created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh. No less important, the very first Sabbath served as a demarcation line marking the beginning of the harmonious function and purpose of a completed universe handed over to its inhabitants intact. The Sabbath is a day of rest and supreme spiritual elevation; it is the pinnacle of Creation. The Creator specifically created the seventh day so that the whole Creation will experience the true meaning, serenity, harmony and purpose of this world.

*** Though Jews throughout history sacrificed all material temptation and on occasions their lives in defense of the Sabbath, in America many observant Jews failed the ultimate litmus test. At the turn of the 20th century millions of Jews entered the gates of America. The masses of Jewish immigrants brought the shtetl with them into the new world as they disembarked at Ellis Island. The men sported long beards, dark hats and long black caftans. The women stepped off the boat bedecked in body‑length dresses with long sleeves, and heads capped with kerchiefs. In their luggage the Jews hauled with them artifacts of faith such as Teffilin, Tallith and sacred books. Why then did Orthodox Judaism quickly unravel in the New World? Decline of Sabbath observance serves as an indicator of spiri tual collapse within the Jewish immigrant community. Many Jews, to be sure, felt that they had no choice when it came to Saturday work; numerous jobs in the clothing trade, the cigar trade, and even on farms and in peddling made working on the Jewish Sabbath a condition of employment. With the six‑day work week commonplace and Sunday blue laws strictly enforced, unsympathetic employers decreed that if you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Monday. The percentage of Jewish immigrants who violated the Sabbath at some point

in their lives is unknown, but undoubtedly it is large. Even a Boston Orthodox synagogue named Shomrei Shabbos — Observers of the Sabbath — was packed with Sabbath‑violators! Some pious Jews, of course, continued to preserve their Sabbath at all costs. The courageous tales they told about themselves years later, however, strongly suggest that in an earlier day they stood forlornly in the minority. In this regard, a case in point is the predicament a new émigré named Harry Fischel faced not long after he arrived in America in 1885. Looking back on his early struggles over Sabbath observance, Fischel perceived it as the defining spiritual conflict of his life. He recounted its climactic scene in words that suggest that his experience was as rare as it was life‑changing. After weeks of searching for work as a new immigrant, Fischel recalled that he found the job of his dreams in an architecture firm. He worked happily for five days and then requested to take Saturday off at no pay so he could observe the Sabbath. His request was firmly denied, and he was ordered to come into work or lose his job. “It seemed, “ he recounted, “as though God had decided to give him another test of his devotion to his religious principles and his ability to withstand temptation.“ After a sleepless night, he resolved to compromise: “He would not give up his position, but before going to work he would attend services in the synagogue.“ The very existence of early‑morning Sabbath services for those who needed to work is, of course, deeply revealing.

His worship complete, Fischel prepared to go to his office, but the sight of other Jews observing the Sabbath and the shock that he knew his parents would experience ─ could they but know the step he contemplated ─ gave him pause. Suddenly, although the day was in mid‑August and the heat was stifling, he trembled as with the ague. A chill went through every fiber of his being, as though he were con fronted with the biting winds of January. At the same time a strange sensation attacked his heart and he was unable to move. It seemed as though he were paralyzed and he would have fallen, had not his body

been supported by a friendly wall. When with difficulty he recovered himself, his decision had been reached. Thanks to this mysterious manifestation of the Divine Power, he felt able to resist what he described as the greatest temptation he had ever known. In the clarity of the moment, he knew that neither then nor later would it ever be possible for him to desecrate the Sabbath.[399] Fischel lost his job but subsequently prospered. Harry Fischel was born in Russia in 1865 and immigrated to America in 1885; settling in New York City. After losing his job at the architectural firm, Fischel attempted to enter into the real estate business. He built a successful company and amassed great wealth in a relatively short time. His company employed largely Jewish builders, to whom he granted both Saturday and Sunday as paid days off at a time when the six‑day work week was the universal standard in the field. All along he was intensely and passionately involved in philanthropy, mostly in the cause of Jewish Orthodox organizations. Beginning in 1932, he retired from his business activities in order to devote himself entirely to philanthropic endeavors.[400]

In 1890, early on in his business successes, Harry Fischel became treasurer of the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society – HIAS. Given the difficulties he underwent as a new immigrant to the US, it is no surprise that he became involved with this organization. In 1919 he played a crucial role in the relocation of HIAS to its new home in the former Astor Library. In 1889 Mr. Fischel began what was to become a longtime association with Beth Israel Hospital. He played a key role when the hospital erected a new building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He later supported the construction of the hospital’s larger facility on Livingston Place, between 16th and 17th Streets. Mr. Fischel has always underscored the religious advantage of Beth Israel Hospital. He was of the opinion that special healing properties are embedded in kosher nutrition, which greatly enhances the welfare of patients. The kosher Jewish dietary standards of Beth Israel, which Fischel instituted, are in practice to this day. In 1889, three years after Etz Chaim ─ the first ever Jewish day‑school in America ─ was established, Mr. Fischel became the director of the Yeshiva. When Etz Chaim was forced to vacate its premises, it was Mr. Fischel’s expertise in real estate that helped in finding a new home for the Yeshiva. In 1892 Mr. Fischel became the director of Machzikei Talmud Torah, the oldest Talmud Torah in New York. In 1894, after becoming the institution’s vice president, he advanced what was considered by many a revolutionary proposal, that the Talmud Torah open a school for girls. The idea was at first bitterly opposed, but Mr. Fischel’s vision prevailed, and turned out to be a great success. Fischel was aggressively involved in establishing and assisting various organizations in Eretz Yisrael. Long before it became fashionable, Harry Fischel became interested in the settlement of Jews from Russia and other European countries in Eretz Yisrael. He first sailed to Eretz Yisrael in 1910. Over the years he visited the Holy Land at least seven more times. This was before the advent of air travel. Travelling by boat was at the time an arduous journey that took weeks. Mr. Fischel became involved in a wide range of projects designed to foster Jewish immigration to Eretz Yisrael and to assist those who settled there. During his second visit, in 1921, he learned that, while the chief representatives of other religions occupied residences befitting their position, the chief rabbi, Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook, lived on the

second floor of an old and dilapidated building, where reception of visitors could not be properly accommodated. Mr. Fischel decided to build a home for Rav Kook suitable for a chief rabbi, entirely at his own expense. The dedication of the Home of the Chief Rabbi of Eretz Yisrael took place on May 27, 1923. A successful real estate investor, Mr. Fischel was personally involved in overseeing and coordinating the massive construction effort of Yeshiva University. For the entire four years during which the Yeshiva College construction effort was underway, Fischel practically divorced himself from every other activity, both his business and communal interests. Not only was Mr. Fischel the main engine behind this project, but he also contributed much of his personal fortune towards meeting this super‑ambitious goal.[401] The building was completed in 1928. Soon after opening its doors, Yeshiva University evolved into an institution which marked a major turning point for Orthodox Judaism in America. In 1931, he founded the Harry Fischel Institute for Talmudic Research known as Machon Harry Fischel in Jerusalem. For decades, half of all the religious court judges in Eretz Yisrael were graduates of this elite institution. To this day, Machon Harry Fischel is one of Jerusalem’s leading Talmudic academies. At the age of 69 he dedicated much of his time to serious study of Talmud ─ Gemara. At the age of 75 he wrote, “I am now in a position to state that the Talmud became a part of my life, and is the best relaxation for the mind in times like these. I can safely state that it is the studying of the Talmud that has broadened my mind, and given me a clear vision and understanding of how to solve difficult problems.“

Yisrael Aharon (Harry) Fischel, died on January 1, 1948 in Jerusalem, where he spent the final year of his life.[402] Throughout his life, Fischel attributed his success and the fruits of his labor to his lifelong principle of Sabbath‑observance.

*** Way back in the 1880s, the story of Harry Fischel and his resolve to adhere to Sabbath‑observance in the face of a hostile milieu, however, gives every indication of being atypical. More commonly in America, men who needed to feed themselves and their families did compromise their Sabbath observance. Sixty percent of the stores located in the heart of New York’s Lower East Side, according to a 1913 survey, remained open on the Sabbath. A heartrending Yiddish prayer ─ techina ─ written in America for women to recite privately when they lit their Sabbath candles, and printed in a widely distributed women’s prayer book, explains why. Speaking in the first person to God, the prayer laments that in this Diaspora land where the burden of making a living is so great, resting on Sabbath and holidays had become impossible, and it pleads for divine compassion. Grant a bountiful living to all Jewish children, it entreats, that they should not… have to desecrate Your Holy Day.[403]

The first five-day workweek in the United States was instituted by a New England cotton mill in 1908 to afford Jewish workers the ability to adhere to Sabbath observance. To say the least, Henry Ford was not known to be a friend of Jews or Jewish causes. Unwittingly, in 1926 it was no other than Henry Ford who began shutting down his automotive plants for all of Saturday and Sunday. In 1929 the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Union was the first union to demand a five‑day workweek and receive it. After that, the rest of the United States slowly followed, but it was not until 1940, when a provision of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards mandating a maximum 40-hour workweek went into effect, that the two‑day weekend was adopted nationwide.[404] These developments removed a major obstacle in opening the door to Sabbath observance in America. God must have listened to the heartfelt prayer of Jewish women begging God to Grant a bountiful living to all Jewish children, so that they should not… have to desecrate Your Holy Day.

*** When asked to describe the benefits of the Sabbath, the Israeli satirist Kobi Arielli replied: “The ultimate purpose of the Sabbath is dedicating oneself to the family. On the Sabbath we turn off our cell phones and enjoy each other to the fullest with no distractions. The greatest gift the observant Jew received in the 21st century is the mandate to shut down all cell phones for the duration of the Sabbath.“[405]

As perfect a gift as the Sabbath is, even among the Jews, most do not observe it. Worldwide, only about twenty percent of the Jews observe the Sabbath, but the numbers are growing. My friend Steve once confronted me, “How can you keep the Sabbath, you are so restricted. It’s almost like being in prison… you can’t even check your email; how can you live like that?“ The best response I could come up with was, “Look at it this way, it’s one day a week in which I don’t have to check my emails.“ Steve came right back with, “My God, you can’t even drive your car on Sabbath, how can you live like that?“ Once again, my response was, “It’s a perfect day of rest in which I don’t have to drive my car… try it, you’ll love it!“

*** “I have a very precious gift in my treasury,“ God revealed to Moses, “its name is Shabbat. I wish to bestow this very special gift upon the Jewish people; go and announce it to them.“[406]

The Man who Volunteered to Go to Hell Witold was born on the 13th of May 1901, in Olonets east of Lake Ladoga in Karelia, Russia. His ancestors had been forcibly resettled in that region by Imperial Russian authorities after the suppression of Poland’s January Uprising, which began in January 1863 and lasted until the last insurgents were captured in 1864. Witold’s grandfather, Jozef, had spent seven years in exile in Siberia for his part in the uprising. In 1910, Witold moved with his family to Wilno — Vilnius in Lithuania, where he completed Commercial School and joined the secret ZHP Scouts organization. In 1916, he moved to Orel, Russia, where he founded a local ZHP chapter. During World War I, in 1918, Witold joined a ZHP Scout section of the Polish self-defense units under General Wladyslaw Wejtko in the Wilno area. When that sector of the front was overrun by the Bolsheviks, his unit, for a time, conducted partisan warfare behind enemy lines. Witold then joined the regular Polish Army and took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920, serving under Major Jerzy Dabrowski. He fought in the Polish retreat from Kiev as part of a cavalry unit defending Grodno, which is in present-day Belarus. On the 5th of August 1920, Witold joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the crucial battle of Warsaw and at Puszcza Rudnicka — Rudniki Forest. He also participated in the liberation of Wilno. Witold was twice awarded the Krzyz Walecznych — Cross of Valor, for gallantry.

After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921 with the Peace of Riga, Witold successfully completed his matura high-school graduation exams in Wilno. Soon after, he passed the exam, which qualified him to serve as a non-commissioned officer in the Polish Army. He also studied at the Stefan Batory University in Wilno and rebuilt his family estate, which was ruined during the war. He then signed up for the officer training academy, from which he graduated with honors. Witold was then assigned to a cavalry regiment in 1926, as an ensign — second lieutenant of the reserves. While in the reserves, he actively participated in local paramilitary training activities. During the interbellum — the period between the two world wars — he worked on his family’s farm in the village of Sukurcze and was known as a social work activist and an amateur painter. On the 7th of April 1931, he married Maria Pilecka (b. 1906 – d. 2002), née Ostrowska. They had two children, born in Wilno: Andrzej, born on January 16, 1932, and Zofia, born on March 14, 1933. In 1938, Witold received the Silver Cross of merit for his involvement in community and social work.

*** Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, on the 26th of August 1939, Witold was mobilized as a cavalry-platoon commander. He was assigned to the 19th Infantry Division under Jozef Kwaciszewski, part of the Polish Army Prusy. His unit took part in heavy fighting against the advancing Germans during the invasion of Poland and was partially destroyed.

The remnants of Witold’s platoon withdrew to the southeast, toward Lwow — now Lviv, in the Ukraine. He was then incorporated into the recently formed 41st Infantry Division, in which he served as deputy to Major Jan Wlodarkiewicz. During the ensuing battle, Witold and his men destroyed seven German tanks, shot down one aircraft, and destroyed two more on the ground. On September 17, 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Eastern Poland pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Involved in heavy fighting on two fronts, Witold’s division was disbanded by the 22nd of September, parts of it surrendering to their enemies. Witold returned to Warsaw with his commander, Major Wlodarkiewicz. On the 9th of November 1939, the two men founded the Secret Polish Army — Tajna Armia Polska, TAP for short. It was one of the first underground organizations in Poland. By 1940, the ranks of TAP swelled to nearly 8,000 men, more than half of them armed. It also managed to procure some 20 machine guns, along with several anti-tank rifles. Later, the organization was incorporated into the Armia Krajowa — the Polish Home Army.

*** Married to a beautiful wife and father of two kids he loved dearly, Witold decided to leave them behind and volunteered to go on a most harrowing mission. In 1940, Witold presented his superiors with a plan to infiltrate Germany’s Auschwitz concentration camp in order to gather intelligence on the camp from the inside, and organize inmate resistance. Until then, little had been known about the Germans’ operation

of the camp, which was thought to be an internment camp or large prison rather than a death factory.

Witold’s superiors approved the plan and provided him with a false identity card in the name of “Tomasz Serafinski.“ On the 19th of September 1940, he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup and was arrested by the Germans, along with some 2,000 innocent civilians. After a two‑day detention in the Light Horse Guards Barracks, where prisoners suffered beatings with rubber truncheons, Witold was sent to Auschwitz where he was assigned inmate number 4859. At Auschwitz, while working in various kommandos and surviving pneumonia, Witold organized an underground Union of Military Organizations — Zwiazek Organizacji Wojskowej, ZOW for short. Many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW. The tasks of ZOW were to improve inmate morale, provide news from outside, distribute extra food and clothing to members, set up intelligence networks, and train detachments to take over the camp in the event of a relief attack by the Home Army, arms airdrops, or an airborne landing by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, based in Britain. ZOW provided the Polish underground with invaluable information about the camp. From October 1940, ZOW sent reports to Warsaw, and beginning in March 1941, Witold’s reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London. In 1942, using a radio transmitter that was assembled by camp inmates, Witold’s resistance movement was also broadcasting details on the number of arrivals and deaths in the camp, as well as inmates’ conditions. The secret radio transmitter, assembled over seven months using smuggled parts, was

broadcasting from the camp until the autumn of 1942 when it was dismantled by Witold’s men after concerns that the Germans might discover its location because of “one of our fellow’s big mouth.“

These transmissions, famously known as Witold’s Report, were a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. The reports included detailed descriptions of unspeakable atrocities, as well as mass executions of Jews in gas chambers. It stated that there were three crematoria in Birkenau able to burn 8,000 Jews daily. Witold hoped that either the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp or that the Home Army would organize an assault on it from outside. Such plans, however, were all judged impossible to carry out. Meanwhile, the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them. At this point, Witold decided to break out of the camp, with the hope of personally convincing Home Army leaders that a rescue attempt was an attainable option. When he was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, Witold and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the phone line and escaped on the night of the 26th of April 1943, taking with them documents stolen from the Germans. Though the plan worked well, Witold took a bullet during the escape.[407] After several days, Witold established contact with the Home Army units. On the 25th of August 1943, Witold reached Warsaw and joined the Home Army’s intelligence department. The Home Army, after losing several operatives in reconnoitering the vicinity of the camp, decided that it lacked the resources to effectively capture Auschwitz without Allied support. Witold’s detailed accounts, Raport Witolda, were sent to London,

where the scale of Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz was thought to be grossly exaggerated. The British authorities refused the Home Army air support for an operation to help the inmates escape.

Volunteering to infiltrate Auschwitz and remaining there for almost three years was the most daring exploit carried out by Witold, perhaps one of the most courageous ventures anyone has ever endeavored. But it was not his only deed of bravery. In August 1944, Witold participated in the Warsaw Uprising, an attempt to free the Polish capital from German occupation before the arrival of the Red Army. He was one of its heroes, holding on to Aleje Jerozolimskie — Jerusalem Alley, one of the principal East-West thoroughfares of the city of Warsaw. For two weeks, against superior German forces including heavy armor, Witold and his men held on to the City Centre, causing considerable difficulties for the German supply lines. Meanwhile, the Soviets, within striking distance from Warsaw, halted their offensive, allowing the Germans to slaughter more than 200,000 Poles. Most of them civilians, many of them Polish citizens who would have resisted Soviet rule much as they struggled against the German occupation. After the uprising was crushed and Warsaw destroyed, Witold hid some weapons in a private apartment, after which he was taken into captivity. He spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp.

*** On the 9th of July 1945, Witold Pilecki was liberated from the POW camp. Soon afterwards he joined the 2nd Polish Corps under the command of General Wladyslaw Anders, which was stationed in Italy at the time. Encouraged by General Anders, Witold Pilecki drafted a monograph on Auschwitz, which was later published as a book bearing witness to the horrors of the notorious death factory.

In September 1945, the soured relations between the Polish Government‑in‑Exile and the Communist Polish Committee of National Liberation culminated in an all‑out rift. Witold Pilecki’s allegiance remained with General Anders, who, against all odds, worked assiduously to free Poland from Communist domination. Upon orders from General Anders, Witold Pilecki was assigned to return to Poland under a false identity and gather intelligence for the Polish Government‑in‑Exile in London. Witold Pilecki returned to Poland in October 1945. Soon after his arrival, he proceeded to organize his intelligence network. In early 1946, the Polish Government‑in‑Exile decided that the postwar political situation afforded no hope of Poland’s liberation from the Communist stranglehold, and ordered all partisans still in the forests either to return to their normal civilian lives or escape to the West. In July 1946, Witold Pilecki was informed that his cover was blown and ordered to flee; he declined. In April 1947, he began collecting evidence on Soviet atrocities and persecution of Poles, which mostly culminated in executions or imprisonment in Soviet Gulag camps. These excesses were mostly leveled against members of the Home Army and the 2nd Polish Corps.

*** On the 8th of May 1947, Witold Pilecki was arrested by the Ministry of Public Security. Prior to trial, he was repeatedly tortured. The investigation on Pilecki’s activities was supervised by Colonel Roman Romkowski. He was interrogated by Colonel Jozef Rozanski, and

lieutenants: Lyszkowski, Krawczynski, Kroszel, Slowianek, Eugeniusz, Chimczak and Alaborski — men who were notorious for their savagery.

Notwithstanding the brutality and torture he endured during the interrogations, Witold Pilecki stood his ground in the quest of protecting other prisoners and revealed no sensitive information. On the 3rd of March 1948, a show trial took place. Testimony against him was presented by a future Polish prime minister, Jozef Cyrankiewicz, himself an Auschwitz survivor. Pilecki was accused of illegal border crossing, use of forged documents, failing to enlist with the military and possession of illegal arms. He was also charged with espionage for General Wladyslaw Anders, who then served as head of the military contingency of the Polish Government‑in‑Exile. The long list of accusations also included: espionage for “foreign imperialism,“ namely, the British Intelligence, and plotting assassination of several officials from the Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Pilecki denied the assassination charges, as well as espionage. He admitted to passing information to the 2nd Polish Corps of which he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws. On the 15th of May 1948, along with three of his comrades, Witold Pilecki was sentenced to death. Ten days later, on the 25th of May 1948, Pilecki was executed at the Warsaw Mokotow Prison on Rakowiecka Street. The execution was performed by the notorious Staff Sergeant Piotr Smietanski, nicknamed by prisoners the Butcher of the Mokotow Prison. During Pilecki’s last conversation with his wife, he told her, “I cannot live. They killed me. Auschwitz compared with them was just a trifle.“ Pilecki’s final words before his execution at the Rakowiecka Prison in May 1948,

were: “Long live free Poland.“ Pilecki’s place of burial has never been found but is thought to be somewhere within Powazki Cemetery. In 1989, after the fall of Communism in Poland, a symbolic gravestone was erected in his memory at Ostrowa Mazowiecka Cemetery. In 2012, Powazki was partially excavated in an effort to find Pilecki’s remains. Pilecki’s conviction was part of a concerted campaign conducted by the Communist regime to prosecute Home Army members and others connected with the Polish Government-in-Exile in London. In 2003, the prosecutor, Czeslaw Lapinski, and several others involved in the trial were charged with complicity in Pilecki’s murder. Cyrankiewicz escaped similar proceedings, having died; Lapinski died in 2004, before the trial was concluded. Witold Pilecki and all others sentenced in the staged trial of 1948, were rehabilitated on the 1st of October 1990. Posthumously, the following honors were bestowed upon Witold Pilecki: in 1995, the Order of Polonia Restituta; in 2006, the Order of the White Eagle — the highest Polish decoration; on September 6, 2013, he was promoted by the Minister of National Defense to the rank of Colonel.

*** Witold Pilecki was a farmer infused with passion for working the land. As a patriot, he was also imbued with a sense of duty, honor and responsibility. Had he lived in more peaceful times, he would have spent his life tilling the land he loved and saluting the flag. But history carved out for him a different path. Born at the turn of the 20th century, Witold was hurled into the fray of war, strife, blood sweat and tears. Caught between two

world wars, followed by an oppressive Communist domination of his homeland, Witold had little time to work the land. Instead, he was subjected to bone-crushing brutality inflicted upon him and his nation by two evil empires ― Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Communist Soviet Union. Singlehandedly and fearlessly, he stood up to evil, looked it in the eye and did not blink. A number of books have been written about Pilecki. In addition, Pilecki’s comprehensive 1945 report on his undercover mission at Auschwitz was published in English for the first time in 2012, under the title The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, and was hailed by the New York Times as “a historical document of the greatest importance.“[408] As a result of his heroic exploits during and after the war, Witold Pilecki is considered one of the greatest wartime heroes. In a foreword to the book, The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, Michael Shudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, wrote as follows: “When God created the human being, God had in mind that we should all be like Captain Witold Pilecki, of blessed memory.“ In his introduction to the same book, Norman Davies, a British historian, wrote: “If there was an Allied hero who deserved to be remembered and celebrated, this was a person with few peers.“ At the commemoration event of International Holocaust Remembrance Day held in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on the 27th of January 2013, Ryszard Schnepf, the Polish Ambassador to the US, described Pilecki as a “diamond among Poland’s heroes“ and “the highest example of Polish patriotism.“ In 21st century Poland, Pilecki is a national hero. More than thirty schools bear the name: Witold Pilecki. Countless streets all over Poland are named after him, as well as numerous scout teams. The countryside and cities of Poland are peppered with monuments and plaques bearing testimony to his intrepid exploits and sacrifices. In his honor and memory, the values he cherished — God, altruism, sacrifice, honor and homeland — are widely taught in all schools throughout Poland.[409]

Blame it All on God In October of 1973, the Arabs and Jews fought a bloody war known as the Yom Kippur War. Neither side won this war, which lasted for nearly a whole month. The cessation of hostilities was followed by long months of cease‑fire negotiations between Israel and Egypt. During those months I was stationed with my unit in a drab desert town east of the Suez Canal. It was a period of waiting and tension while we faced the trigger‑happy Egyptian forces. Our bland existence in the overheated desert on the front lines was briefly interrupted when a group of Lubavitcher Hasidim paid a visit to our base during the Hanukkah holiday in December of 1973. The Hasidim treated the troops to latkes and vodka blessed by the Rebbe. Then they pulled out bags of tefillin from their luggage and lined up the troops for an assembly line session of prayer. Many soldiers opted to don the tallith and tefillin and mumbled the Shema aided by the Lubavitchers. A tall, angry young man of our unit stood a distance away and watched with disdain as the soldiers mingled with the Hasidim. Addressing his comrades, he sneered, “I can’t believe these primitive Hasidim come all the way out here to minister voodoo to the troops.“ The pronouncement was loud enough to be heard by all who were present. One of the Lubavitcher Hasidim turned to the angry man and introduced himself with a warm smile, “Shalom Aleichem, soldier. I am Rabbi Volpe. Please come and join us. This is the happy holiday of Hanukkah. Come have some latkes and vodka; it’s a beautiful way to celebrate the holiday.“

“This is the Israeli army,“ retorted the acrimonious young man at the rabbi, “there is no room for such nonsense here. Take your latkes and tefillin and go peddle them in B’nei B’rak!“ The rabbi was not discouraged. Still smiling, he moved even closer to the petulant man. “But, my good fellow,“ said the rabbi, “of course this is the Israeli army. We are all Jews here and we should all celebrate Hanukkah together and be grateful to God.“ “Grateful to God?“ sneered the vexed soldier, raising his voice to a high pitch. “For what? For killing six million Jews during the Holocaust?“ “The Holocaust was a big tragedy,“ responded the rabbi sorrowfully, “but, thank God, today we have a strong Jewish state. We have an army with paratroopers and young pilots who shoot down the enemy planes.“ “And for all that, you want us to thank God?“ countered the vexed soldier, “What does God have to do with all this? We have a strong army, not because of your God. Our army is powerful because of our brave soldiers who risk their lives for this country!“ “My dear friend,“ responded the rabbi, “in the many years that I have served in the rabbinate, I have listened to thousands of people and noticed a pattern in human behavior. Most people instinctively take credit and boast about their achievements and successes. Yet, as soon as things go badly for them, they are quick to point a finger and blame God for their failures and misfortunes.“ The rabbi paused and then added, “I fail to understand your logic. You just blamed God for the tragedy of the Holocaust, yet regarding the success of establishing a strong Jewish state you take the credit for yourself

and your comrades. My friend, you can’t have it both ways… Now, please come join us for some heartwarming Chanukah latkes and vodka.“

The Ten Commandments In the 1980s, Yoram Ettinger served as a senior attaché to the Israeli diplomatic corps in Washington DC. During his first visit to the US, Mr. Ettinger toured Capitol Hill, seat of the American Congress. As soon as he entered the House Chamber, Mr. Ettinger noticed that the bust of the Prophet Moses is situated opposite the throne of the Speaker of the House. Moses is not alone in that gallery, he is flanked by 22 busts of distinguished Lawgivers to Humanity. However, while all the other 22 busts are etched in profile, Moses appears full‑face staring ahead. Gripped with curiosity, Mr. Ettinger turned to the curator and inquired, “Why is it that only the statue of Moses appears at the center full face?“ “You are a Jew from Israel,“ pondered the curator, “do you not know that the Law and moral values contrived by all other Lawgivers in the world emanate from the legacy of the Prophet Moses?“ Mr. Ettinger then crossed the street. As he climbed up the steps leading to the US Supreme Court, he took note of a frieze located near the top of the building’s exterior facade. It contained a row of figures depicting the world’s all‑time prominent Lawgivers; each one facing the figure in the center, who is facing forward with a full‑frontal view — here as well, it is the image of the Prophet Moses holding the Tablets of the Law!

Ettinger than entered the inner chamber of the Supreme Court. On the south wall, in full view of the nine Justices, Ettinger once again bumped into Moses. The frieze adorning the north and south walls of the courtroom depict a procession of 18 monumental Lawgivers. Clutching a Tablet of the Law, the Prophet Moses is situated third from the right, as he is staring the honorable Justices in the face while observing the proceedings from a front‑row seat. As he eyed the image of Moses on the south wall of the Supreme Court, Ettinger noticed a security guard standing next to him. He turned to the guard and inquired, “Excuse me, sir, what is our Moses doing here in your Supreme Court?“ Deferentially, replied the guard, “Sir, that is how we express our gratitude for the foundation of the American legal system, which is based upon the principles established by the ultimate Lawgiver, the Prophet Moses.“ Upon hearing this rather unconventional and reverential response from an American policeman, a rueful Ettinger reflected: When will we witness similar reverence for the Ten Commandments emanating from the Justices of the Supreme Court in Jerusalem; and perhaps even from the parliamentarians within the Israeli Knesset?[410]

What is it about the Prophet Moses, that he is so revered in America? Diligent adherents and students of the Bible that they were, the founding fathers of the United States internalized that in the entire history of mankind, it was no other than Moses, who spoke face‑to‑face with God. Accordingly, they concluded that the Ten Commandments, which were given to Moses at Mount Sinai constitute the Law of the Creator for the benefit of humanity. Ever since, the Ten Commandments serve as a bedrock for the American Constitution, judiciary and civility. Little wonder then that the American judicial system, as well the American mode of governance is the most enlightened in the world. Based on principles embedded in the Ten Commandments, the American model is the most coveted and emulated by most of the world’s democracies. Indeed, the Ten Commandments worked wonders for America and by extension benefited humanity, as well. For the Jewish people, tenaciously clinging to an existence based on God‑given Torah values served as a lifeboat that navigated our nation through the vicissitudes of history. Thus, by the grace of God, against all odds, we transcended our — external and internal — detractors throughout our journey on this planet… and… the best is yet to come!

The Eternity and Glory of Israel shall neither deceive nor falter![411]

The Electric Company

Back in the summer of 1987, Adam and his wife Alona spent more than two months vacationing in Israel. They leased a furnished one‑bedroom apartment in an excellent Tel Aviv location. The apartment included all amenities. One evening during the first week of their stay, the couple headed off in high spirits for the frolicking nightlife of the city that never sleeps. By the time they shuffled back to the apartment late on that sweltering night, they were already drenched in sweat. The first thing Adam did upon entering the apartment was to turn on the air‑conditioner. The A/C compressor sputtered briefly, before screeching to a stop, taking the power for the whole apartment down with it. Engulfed by pitch darkness in the stuffy apartment, Adam was lucky enough to find a candle, with which he managed to locate the fuse box. Tinkering with the fuses did not solve the problem. Fortunately, the telephone functioned. He placed a call to the electric company. The late night shift clerk on duty was very effective and sympathetic. A young technician on a scooter was dispatched to deal with the blackout. He arrived within twenty minutes and immediately busied himself searching for the cause of the problem.

First the technician checked the fuse box in the apartment. Realizing that the problem was elsewhere, he descended to the basement of the building where the main fuse box for the entire building was located. Within three minutes the technician restored electricity to the apartment. Sporting a smile, he announced to Adam, “Listen, the fuse that I replaced was in the main box. Since this fuse box is property of the electric company, there will be no charge for this repair.“ As he mounted the scooter, he added in a friendly tone, “The repair is on the house. Have a good night.“ Adam and Alona waved the technician goodbye and returned happily to a comfortable and brightly lit apartment. The following month Adam was dismayed to notice that the electric bill included a charge of 35 shekels for repair work. Since Adam’s rental agreement included a clause stipulating that the tenant is responsible for payment of all utility bills, he looked up the toll-free telephone number on the statement and immediately called the electric company. The woman on the other end courteously inquired, “Shalom, this is the Israel Electric Company. What can we do for you?“ It took Adam a couple of minutes to explain to her in detail why he called. He ended with, “Therefore I ask that the charge of 35 shekels for the repair be removed from my bill. Even the technician from the electric company who showed up on a scooter that night deliberately went out of his way to advise us that the repair is on the house.“ “Sir,“ asked the woman, “the bill that you have received for this repair — is it a handwritten note or the computerized monthly statement from the electric company?“

“I don’t see why it should make any difference,“ was Adam’s kneejerk reaction to this totally unexpected angle of attack, “but in any case, the repair charges appear on the monthly statement.“

“Well, sir, in that case I would recommend that you send in the payment immediately because our computer never makes mistakes,“ she stated emphatically. “But ma’am,“ persevered Adam, “that is impossible. I also work with computers and I can assure you that no computer is immune from error, not even the electric company data processing system.“ Losing her cool, she retorted, “I don’t know what kind of computers you work with, but don’t think that I am just going to sit by idly while you badmouth our supercomputer. I can guarantee that, unlike the computer you work with, our supercomputer has never made a mistake.“ “Ma’am,“ Adam tried very hard to sound polite, “this conversation is not going anywhere. Could you please transfer me to a manager... yes, I would very much like to speak with a manager.“ The receiver fell silent for a moment. Then a new voice took over on the other end. “Sir, this is the supervisor. How can I help?“ This time it took Adam nearly five minutes to recount his story from the beginning. The supervisor listened patiently and when Adam was done, she explained in an official tone of voice, “Sir, you are talking to the wrong people. Your grievance should be addressed to the department of complaints.“ She provided Adam with the appropriate telephone number and then hung up. For the third time in the span of a single hour, Adam found himself relating his sob story in excruciating detail. This time he reported to a woman in the complaints department of the Israel Electric Company. In fact, Adam informed her that this was the third time today that he had reported this pathetic episode to various representatives of the electric company. “Sir,“ she responded, “I regret that you had to spend so much of your time, but please

understand that for me this is the first time I have heard the details of your case.“

At once, Adam breathed a sigh of relief, truly believing that finally he had reached an intelligent and sympathetic bureaucrat who would probably resolve his problem in an instant. That is the reason why her next statement came down upon him like a ton of bricks. “Sir, I have listened to your story very carefully. Please understand that as much as I would like to help you, you are presenting a complicated case. I still cannot make much sense of most of what you have just told me. My advice to you is to pay the bill and avoid any further aggravation.“ Stunned at this ridiculous outcome, Adam responded angrily, “Ma’am, if you are truly concerned about my aggravation, then please deduct the repair amount from my bill and the whole complicated matter is over in an instant. There is nothing unreasonable about my request as far as I can see, just a simple adjustment to correct an injustice.“ “It’s not as simple as you make it sound. It would be much simpler if you just paid us what you owe. My God, we are not talking about a fortune of thousands. For 35 shekels you can spare yourself a lot of bureaucratic entanglements. Again, my advice to you is to pay and forget about the whole thing.“ Adam was now more determined than ever to fight for his money. “Ma’am,“ Adam tried very hard to control his rage, “I called because I believe in fighting for my rights. Please keep in mind that the electric company technician who showed up on a scooter the night of the blackout, went out of his way to make the point that the repair is on the house. I have no intention of paying for something that is absolutely not my responsibility. Even if I take this all the way to the chairman of the board to get my money back, I promise you that I will do just that!“

“Listen, young man,“ the woman seemed to have lost her cool and spoke harshly, “your story is too crazy and twisted. I guarantee you that you will make a big fool of yourself if you think that you can spin your whole case in this matter around the logic of a young technician on a scooter. This low level technician on the scooter who showed up in the middle of the night to repair your fuses is no match for the supercomputer we have employed at the electric company. Furthermore, I’ll have you know that I am in a position in life where I no longer have to deal with bullies like you. Please understand that I am already happily retired from my job. It so happens that I just stopped by at the office to pick up my retirement check. The only reason I even bothered to pick up the phone is because some of the girls are out to lunch and all I was doing was trying to be nice and help them out. Then I end up listening to your crazy story. And you still have the chutzpah to threaten and bully me... and all this for what? For a farkakteh 35 shekels. My God, how rude can people be?!?“ Adam could barely restrain himself from bursting into an uncontrollable laughter. Instead, he composed himself, took a deep breath and in a polite voice said, “Ma’am, forgive me if there is a misunderstanding here, but please believe me that the only reason I called is to wish you a happy retirement and a good life. But, please, before you head for retirement, could you just do me one small favor?“ Surprisingly enough, she calmed down by the time she responded, “If it’s not as unreasonable as your first request.“

“Ma’am, all I am asking is that you transfer me to someone in the office that is not yet retired.“

Bracing for another round of contentious litigations, a determined Adam took a deep breath, and for the fourth time today recounted the whole story to the next official of the electric company. She listened patiently. When Adam was finally done, she said, “Sir, I listened to your case very carefully. And I have to apologize to you.“ Upon hearing these kind words, Adam felt so relieved that he was about to break out in a dance and celebrate his hardwon victory right there and then. This euphoria lasted precisely 17 seconds when he heard, “Sir, I have to apologize to you for the fact that you were misled. However, the technician on the scooter had absolutely no right to dismiss the repair charges from your bill. I truly understand how you feel, but my advice to you is not to fight this any further and pay the 35 shekels that you owe the electric company.“ Since he had come this far, Adam wasn’t about to give up quite yet, “Ma’am, if I have to, I’ll take this matter all the way up to the president of the electric company because I feel that the technician on the scooter was absolutely right in his assessment. After all, don’t forget that the repair was performed on equipment under the jurisdiction of the electric company. It makes all the sense in the world that I should not be the one to pay for it.“ The woman on the other end of the line was as adamant as Adam, “Sir, let’s be reasonable about this. Let’s take the telephone company for example. If they send a technician to your house to perform a repair on your telephone, wouldn’t it then be your responsibility to pay for that repair?“ “Ma’am, let’s say a telephone company technician comes to my house to repair my telephone. Then it turns out that the problem is not inside my house but on top of the pole carrying the telephone company lines from the street into the building. I am certain that in such a case the telephone

company would definitely have the common sense not to bill me for repairing their own equipment.“

“Sir, please keep in mind that you are not dealing here with the telephone company! This is the Israel Electric Company! And please don’t give me any examples from the telephone company. I have no patience for such nonsense. Again, my advice to you is to pay the repair charges. Otherwise we will have to start charging you interest on your debt.“ “Ma’am,“ Adam responded firmly, “I am not convinced that it is I who should be held responsible to pay for this repair. I am asking you to transfer me to a high level manager.“ Surprisingly, she did not dismiss his request. Instead she said, “Sir, you are fighting a futile battle. If you insist on talking to higher management, that is your privilege. Please keep in mind, however, that the odds are stacked against you. First and foremost, your bill was generated expressly by the Israel Electric Company supercomputer, which cannot possibly ever make a mistake. Second of all, you are constructing your entire case upon the evaluation of a low-level technician who paid you a visit in the middle of a sweltering summer night. Any lowlevel technician, who makes important decisions in the heat of a summer night is hardly a match for the supercomputer we have here at the Israel Electric Company. Sir, once again I advise you to pay your repair charges and not contest the superiority of our supercomputer.“

“Ma’am,“ Adam responded firmly to her pile of nonsense, “if it is not too difficult, please transfer me to your manager.“ “Sir, since you opted to question the integrity of our supercomputer, the only option left for you is to plead your case in front of Mr. Ben Bassat. He is the only one in the whole Israel Electric Company who is authorized to deal with customers who wish to challenge the accuracy of our supercomputer. Unfortunately, you cannot meet with him soon. He is currently attending a conference in Switzerland. Please keep in mind that this is not just any conference, but rather a global super‑convention for high-level management information science experts from all the electric companies in the entire world. Mr. Ben Bassat is representing us in this forum. If after all that you just heard, you still wish to contest the 35 shekel charge with Mr. Ben Bassat, then I can schedule an appointment for next Tuesday at 9:00 AM in his office on the 3rd floor of the Israel Electric Company headquarters. Good luck, sir... you’ll need it.“ Adam wrote down the appointment info, then scribbled the name Ben Bassat three times with such ferocity that the tip of his pen drilled through the notepad and scratched the furniture. When Adam got off the phone, his wife Alona looked at him pityingly, “Honey, go to the mirror and have a look at yourself. You look like you have just escaped from a hurricane. Is it really worth killing yourself so much over a lousy 35 shekels?“ Alona then moved closer to comfort her husband with a hug and a kiss. “Please darling, don’t forget that even though this is the Middle East, we are not here to fight a war but to enjoy a long awaited summer vacation. Come on, let’s go down to a restaurant by the

beach and a have a good salmon steak. I’ll call up my sister and her husband and we’ll have some fun together.“

For the fifth time today Adam was recounting his story. This time, he was replaying the entire episode in a restaurant on the Tel Aviv beach in front of his wife, her sister and her sister’s husband. Upon hearing Adam’s plight, his brother‑in‑law remarked, “You must understand that the bureaucrats in this country are like nowhere else in the world. Here in Israel, the bureaucrats not only have a prompt response to stump all and any of your arguments, but they also know the question you are about to pose before you even ask it. I think you have had enough of it by now. It seems to me that this mess is ruining your vacation. It’s time to forget about the whole episode, send them the stinking 35 shekels and start enjoying your vacation.“ Alona nodded her head in agreement with her brother‑in‑law. “Darling,“ she turned to her exasperated husband, “he is absolutely right. Send them the few shekels and let’s enjoy ourselves.“ “Are you guys on my side or on the side of Mr. Ben Bassat?“ asked Adam, half joking and half serious. As the evening progressed, all they talked about was Adam’s encounter with the electric company. As Adam recounted the details of his phone conversations, everyone except for him was laughing hysterically. Resigned to his corner, Adam was seething with the thought that it would be a full week yet before he could get his hands on this Mr. Ben Bassat.

***

The night before Mr. Ben Bassat was scheduled to return from his conference in Switzerland, a restless Adam was not able to sleep much. All night long he tossed and turned in bed planning the strategy of his impending encounter with Ben Bassat. Adam figured that if his petition with Ben Bassat failed, he would then have to do battle with the president and CEO of the electric company. As much as this potential encounter troubled him deeply, at this point Adam saw no other recourse. He was now more determined than ever to go all out in defense of his just cause. Still unable to fall asleep, Adam rose from bed and made his way to the balcony. In the not too distant horizon, he could see the Tel Aviv beach bathing in all its dreamy nocturnal splendor. No use going back to bed, figured Adam, let me get out of the stuffy apartment and ventilate my faculties with some fresh Mediterranean Sea breeze. Adam hoped that a peaceful walk along the beach would probably clear up his weary mind. The refreshing sprinkle of salty sea breeze did wonders for Adam’s troubled mind as he strolled leisurely along the Tel Aviv beachfront. After a half hour of walking, Adam craved a beer. Along the beachfront were a number of pubs that never close. He entered a tavern, which was decorated in the fine British maritime tradition. The few lonely souls ensconced in this godforsaken tavern greeted him with indifference. Adam walked over to the counter and ordered a beer. The cool and soothing sounds of Jazz wafting from the PA system blended well with the misty ambience. For a long moment, all worries and tensions departed from Adam’s overburdened brain. Basking in the sunshine of contentment he hadn’t experienced since his encounter with the electric company, a smug Adam smiled as he hugged his jug of beer with both hands.

The nirvana Adam momentarily experienced came to a screeching halt as the soothing Jazz music was abruptly interrupted by an official announcement on the PA system. “Mr. Ben Bassat, please pick up the phone in the office, you are being paged.“ To be sure that he was not hallucinating, Adam heard the exact same message repeated twice more. There was no mistake here. Adam distinctly heard the name Ben Bassat. His heart racing, Adam wondered: could this possibly be the same Mr. Ben Bassat from the Israel Electric Company with whom he was scheduled to meet later this morning? Looking straight ahead, Adam took note that a man seated at a table all by himself got up from his seat and headed for the tavern’s office. This must be Mr. Ben Bassat, he deduced. But is this guy the real McCoy? Adam was possessed by an urge to resolve the bizarre mystery. Unable to make much sense of the hauntingly surrealistic universe into which he was plunged, Adam anxiously eyed the jug of beer on the table in front of him, and gulped it down at once; he then ordered a second round. Gazing down at his sweaty and itchy palms, Adam noticed that they were shaking out of control. Adam’s mind — which had earlier regained a semblance of serenity, as he peacefully strolled up and down the Tel Aviv shoreline — was once again ablaze with turmoil. Of all places, is this the venue I was destined to come face to face with Mr. Ben Bassat?… and in the wee hours of the night, of all times? Pondered Adam nervously, even as he counted the seconds until Ben Bassat would return to his seat.

Mr. Ben Bassat stayed on the phone for what seemed like an eternity. His face framed by a benevolent grin, Ben Bassat hung up the phone and walked stridently back to his table. The more Adam scrutinized Ben Bassat’s face, the more it struck him that the man very much resembled the image of his own grandfather. If indeed it turns out that this is the real Ben Bassat, then I have nothing to worry about, figured Adam; how could anyone who resembles my grandfather do me any harm? A warm and fuzzy feeling came over Adam as he rose from his seat and walked in the direction where Ben Bassat was seated. With an outstretched arm, Adam approached the man, “Mr. Ben Bassat, please forgive my insolence of taking the liberty to introduce myself...“ “That’s quite fine,“ Ben Bassat interjected, and with a warm fatherly smile added, “There is no need for an introduction. I know exactly who you are. We have a date today at 9:00 AM, don’t we?“ Still smiling, he winked at Adam as he posed the question. As stunned as Adam was, he managed to blurt out, “I sure am glad you showed up early for our meeting.“ Exuding a congenial demeanor, Ben Bassat said, “Have a seat, please, I want you to feel at ease in my company. Just because I know who you are does not mean that I have been spying on you.“ “But how did you know who I am?“ was all a stupefied Adam could say. It was obvious that as calm as Ben Bassat was, Adam was a complete wreck. Ben Bassat noticed it as well; in an attempt to disarm his interlocuter, he spoke warmly and in a soft tone, “Do not be overwhelmed, my friend. I am not the enemy. The only reason that I happen to know your identity is because you have been on my mind this whole past week. Your case is indeed very interesting.“ Ben Bassat paused briefly to let Adam digest his most bizarre

introduction. Realizing that Ben Bassat would soon inform him of all that he needed to know, Adam did not interrupt his speech. Gripped by suspense, Adam was anxious to hear the rest of this shocking revelation.

“As you may well be aware,“ Ben Bassat continued, still smiling, “I just returned from a visit to Switzerland, where I attended a convention dealing with the issue of artificial intelligence in supercomputers. This stateof-the-art technology is designed to render the supercomputer fail-safe. At the Israel Electric Company we have already developed a similar design. I traveled to Switzerland just to compare notes with the rest of the world. It turns out that our design is superior to any of the other countries, including those from Japan and America.“ As anxious as Adam was to unleash a barrage of questions, he bit his lip and uttered not a word. Adam quickly grasped that if he just listened intently, Ben Bassat was going to eventually unfurl the whole riddle for him. “While I was in Switzerland,“ Ben Bassat continued his oration, “a colleague from the office dispatched a detailed report of your predicament with the electric company. First, let me inform you that I sincerely empathize with your grievance. This does not mean that your case is a simple one and I definitely don’t treat it lightly. I have spent countless hours weighing the facts very carefully. Though facts are stubborn animals, we must not fail to take into consideration the human emotions invested in this complicated matter. Just to be sure that I don’t rush into a foolish or biased verdict in your case, I presented it to Mr. Svensungen. In my opinion, this refined Swedish gentleman is the world’s highest authority on the subject of artificial intelligence as viewed from an ethical angle relating to the dominant force that the supercomputers have come to play in our ever-diminishing quality of

life.“ At this point, Adam wasn’t sure anymore what the hell Ben Bassat was blathering; yet he paid close attention, just in case his interlocuter did compromise information relevant to the outcome of his own grievance against the electric company.

Adam pretended to be patient and attentive even as Mr. Ben Bassat rambled on: “I spent hours with Mr. Svensungen debating the various aspects of your entangled case long into the night. Before retiring to bed at four o’clock in the morning, Mr. Svensungen seemed totally confounded. Throwing his arms up in the air, he flatly stated, ‘This case is too big for my size.’ Such a statement coming from Mr. Svensungen made me realize that the whole burden of deciding your case is resting squarely on my shoulders. I truly cherish a challenge of this magnitude. Within minutes I arrived at a decision.“ Upon hearing this, Adam’s ears perked up in order not to miss even a single syllable of Ben Bassat’s verdict. “My decision is based on the premise that at the end of the day, it is human emotions and sensibilities that override all other considerations. This must be the case even at the expense of any opinions or sentiments generated by the highest level of sophisticated artificial intelligence embedded in the bowels of our supercomputer.“ Adam wasn’t quite sure whether to start celebrating his victory or prepare his neck for the guillotine. Judging by the look on Ben Bassat’s face, Adam felt that he would probably be exempt from paying the 35 shekels to the Israel Electric Company. Just to play it safe, he left plenty room for surprises, but for now Adam was compelled to believe that he was off the hook. Again, Adam was tempted to ask Ben Bassat if this were an official verdict or if he would still have to call him later to settle the case. Instead, a confounded Adam smiled and remained silent. Ben Bassat was not quite done, “Now, to put your mind at ease regarding how I obtained your identity at the moment you walked into the pub, the answer is right here.“ He pointed to a tiny instrument attached to his belt, “This sensor can detect the DNA code of people who are within a 20 meter radius. It is also hooked up to our supercomputer. If that individual is in

our data base, then the DNA sensor immediately notifies me via this tiny display,“ which he identified for Adam with the tip of his pen. At this point Ben Bassat rose to his feet and announced, “I think we have been cooped up indoors for too long. You are more than welcome to join me for a walk on the beach.“ As they walked along the oceanfront, Ben Bassat pointed towards the sea and then said, “You see the light on the horizon? That is a huge boat under the command of a large naval fleet in the service of the Israel Electric Company. In less than five minutes the boat will approach us and deliver a package. This package is for you. It is a voluminous batch of documents detailing all aspects of your case with a conclusive summation. I am truly honored to be present to deliver it to you in person.“ Before Adam had a chance to thank him, the huge boat pulled up very close to the beach. A bearded captain stood on the deck holding a sizeable package in his right hand while waving his left arm. Adam was overwhelmed by the agility with which the massive boat was able to maneuver in the shallow waters so close to the sandbar. He couldn’t take his eyes off the boat, which kept moving closer and closer. What came next was so unexpected that Adam was jolted out of his wits. With no advance warning, the captain pulled a lever, which blew the marine air horn on the boat at the highest decibel level imaginable. The sudden and ferocious blast blaring from the marine air horn knocked Adam off his feet; he hit the ground full force. As Adam attempted to rise back on his feet and make some sense of what was going on, he heard his wife yell, “Darling, are you all right? What was that loud noise?“

Alona then reached for her husband. Noticing that he was not in bed next to her, she screamed in a panic, “Adam, where are you, my love?“

Enveloped by pitch darkness and prostrated helplessly on the floor, Adam called out to his wife in alarm, “What on earth are you doing here on the beach?“ “What beach are you talking about?“ she retorted, “Poor baby, you must have had a bad dream and fallen off the bed.“ Alona then turned on the lamp and came over to comfort her husband, as he attempted to rise to his feet. Still lethargic, he called out “Honey, if we are not on the beach than why is the boat blowing its horn at us?“ Alona dashed over to the balcony and announced, “It’s not a boat, silly man, it’s a huge garbage truck stuck between two cars down in the street below.“ She then turned to Adam, “Darling, you didn’t get hurt, did you? You poor thing. Come back to bed and let’s make sure that you are still in one piece.“ Once they were back in bed, Alona hugged her jolted husband and looked close into his eyes. In a soothing voice, she whispered, “Darling, you look terrified. What kind of a horrible nightmare did you have?“ Adam wanted very badly to share all the details of his dream with his loving wife. Instead, he hugged her and whispered, “Honey, let’s get some sleep. This garbage truck nearly killed me. I can’t believe the chutzpah of these sanitation workers blowing their horn like this in the middle of the night.“

***

Sure enough, traumatized by his nocturnal ordeal, Adam woke up late the following morning. Looking at the clock, he realized that he will not be able to make it on time for his appointment with Mr. Ben Bassat. Frantically, Adam jumped out of bed. Even as he got dressed, Adam made an attempt to replay the mental tapes of the mad dream about the tavern on the beach and Ben Bassat. If this episode with the electric company does not come to a closure quickly, mused Adam, sooner than later, I will most certainly lose what’s still left of my sanity.

Quickly coming to grips that — even if he managed to board a helicopter — he would not make it to the nine o’clock appointment on time; then and there, Adam decided that his best bet at this juncture is to try and reach Mr. Ben Bassat by phone. He called up the electric company. Following tense moments of suspense, Adam managed to get Ben Bassat on the phone. “Good morning to you sir,“ a pleasant and disarming Mr. Ben Bassat greeted him cheerfully. At this point Adam began to lose faith that he would ever make any headway with the bureaucrats at the electric company. He was fully aware that this whole charade would inevitably lead him to seek an audience with the CEO of the accursed electric company. Adam would then need to prove to the CEO that he exhausted all avenues of appeal within the bureaucratic hierarchy of his outfit. With this caveat in mind, Adam went through the motions of appealing his case one more time. Mr. Ben Bassat heard Adam’s story with utmost patience and courtesy. Once in a while he would interject with a sympathetic chuckle or a sigh. He even uttered sweet nothings like, “I understand you very well,“ nonetheless, Adam was on his guard. He was determined not to fall prey to the trap this

cunning fox was setting up for him. It took Adam nearly half an hour to recount for Ben Bassat his entire saga with the Israel Electric Company. Maintaining a charming and pleasant demeanor, Ben Bassat responded, “Sir, you are absolutely right. On behalf of the Israel Electric Company, I apologize for all the horrible inconvenience you endured. But please understand that even as sympathetic as I am towards your sensibilities, I am powerless to override a definitive ruling issued by the supercomputer we employ here at the Israel Electric Company.“

Both in voice and style, Ben Bassat in real life sounded almost identical to his counterpart in the dream Adam had last night. Had I lost my mind? Is this for real, mused Adam, or am I forever condemned to waltz in tandem with Ben Bassat in an endless orbit of the twilight zone? Unlike in the dream — in which Adam let Ben Bassat do all the talking — as Adam spoke on the phone, he raised his voice in protest, but Mr. Ben Bassat ignored his input. Instead, concluded Ben Bassat, “Sir, once again, on my behalf and on behalf of the Israel Electric Company I sincerely thank you for calling. Please don’t hesitate to call me in the future should you need anything. Have a good day!“ Hoping that Ben Bassat did not yet hang up on him, Adam frantically yelled into the receiver, “Mr. Ben Bassat, please listen to me. I have something very important to tell you.“ For the first time, Ben Bassat spoke

sternly, “What you want to tell me better be very important because I spent too much time with you as is. I do have some urgent business to tend to, so make it quick. What is it you want?“ “Sir, can you please arrange for me to speak with the CEO of the Israel Electric Company?“ Adam pronounced his urgent plea firmly.

“Please stay on the line.“ This terse statement from Ben Bassat was followed by a long pause. Adam nervously clutched the receiver, anxiously waiting for a resolution to his request. A long moment had elapsed and still no sound was coming from the other end. Instead Adam felt a jolt. A stinging electrical current flowing from the receiver landed in his palm and rushed up his arm. Recoiling with intense pain, Adam frantically attempted to shake the receiver out of his perspiring palm. That effort was in vain. The harder he battled to rid himself of the receiver, the more tenaciously it clung to his drenched palm. The intensity of the shock was so painful that it forced Adam off his feet and he landed flatly on the couch. To his great relief, the electrical current suddenly subsided. Once again Adam clearly heard the voice of Ben Bassat emanating from the receiver, acknowledging that he had returned to speak with him. Adam exploded into the receiver, “Mr. Ben Bassat I think there is something terribly wrong with my phone.“ Ben Bassat replied forcefully, “Listen here mister, make no mistake about it! You are dealing here with the Israel ELECTRIC Company… not with the telephone company…“[412]

“Jamón Solo“

Back in 1980, I flew down to South America to visit family members I had never met before. These relatives are the descendants of my father’s two sisters who immigrated to Argentina after the First World War. The two sisters, who grew up in Poland, had long since died and left behind sprawling families. Though my two aunts had made an attempt to adhere to the Judaism they grew up with, their descendants blended very comfortably into the Argentinean culture and landscape without much regard to holding on to any aspect of their Judaism. My cousin Leon was very excited about my visit. His family threw a huge party. Since it was also New Year’s Eve, I could not be quite certain whether the lavish gastronomical display was prepared in my honor or for the birth of a new year on the Gregorian calendar. The house was packed with members of my South American family. My cousin Leon, who had some knowledge of English and a minimal command of Yiddish, was my official guide for the evening. He anxiously introduced me to a multitude of relatives. Everybody kissed and hugged me and asked many questions. All I could do was display a courteous dumb smile since I did not speak any Castellano nor did they speak my language.

The party was full of life and music. Some tangoed to the spicy Latino beat while others conversed. Everybody nibbled on the delicious spread. That is, everybody but me. Even in this remote land of Argentina I did my best to adhere to a kosher diet. The food was very inviting but I resisted. My cousin Leon took notice of the fact that I did not touch any of the food. “Why don’t you eat something?“ he gently inquired of me. “I am not really hungry,“ I shrugged my shoulders. Leon detected that I wasn’t quite sincere in my response. His eyes opened wide as if to suggest that he read right into my thoughts. In his broken Yiddish he said, “Are you not eating because you suspect that the food is not kosher?“ “That’s quite all right,“ I dismissed his allegation, “Please don’t worry about the food. I am just so happy to be here with my family.“ Leon appraised the expression on my face and correctly read into it that I was actually dying to devour the food but restrained from doing so due to my adherence to a kosher diet. He was lost for words and ideas as how to best accommodate my special needs. He grimaced and scratched his head. To me it seemed that he was straining to figure out what would constitute kosher food. Leon scanned the cornucopia spread on the tables in front of us in order to locate an item that could possibly be Kosher to the best of his limited knowledge on the subject. After all, he did not receive any formal Jewish education. The little that he had acquired at home had long been dormant. As Leon searched the laden tables, I followed along. I noticed that with no exception, all the dishes were laced with pink ham or as they call it

in Spanish, jamón. Leon picked up a tiny sandwich stuffed with Swiss cheese and ham and topped with olives and tomatoes. He raised the delicacy towards my face and uttered, “Here, try this. It looks like a deli sandwich.“

Viewing the ham so close to my face, I shuddered with disgust. Disguising my sentiments behind a smile, I said, “Please, don’t worry about the food. The important thing is that we are all having a good time.“ My cousin alternatingly viewed the sandwich and then looked at me. His eyes suggested that he was straining to fish something from distant memory. As the perplexed Leon studied the sandwich, he attempted to evaluate what exactly rendered it not Kosher. Is it the cheese, or perhaps the ham? Or maybe the combination of ham and cheese? Suddenly Leon’s eyes lit up. Excitedly, he called out to his wife, “Sonya.“ Enthusiastically, he blurted out a set of instructions, which sounded like he made an attempt to explain to her that I am on a kosher diet and that he figured out a way to modify this sandwich to meet my requirements. Still holding the sandwich high in the air, Leon handed it to his wife. He smiled with confidence as he triumphantly concluded, “Sonya,

jamón solo!“

Top Gun

The Israeli Air Force is probably considered the best in the world. Imagine how idolized the Israeli pilots were thirty years ago following the Six Days War. In that short war the Israeli Air Force was the key factor in the devastating defeat the Israeli army inflicted upon four major Arab armies. I was a mere paratrooper at the time. My unit was stationed in the Jordan valley near the town of Jericho. Heading for a weekend leave, I stood at the junction of the road near the base trying to hitch a ride home. As a military jeep stopped to pick me up, I noticed that the driver wore the blue uniform of the air force. A closer look revealed to me that the man sitting next to me was nothing less than a pilot. I was awed, sitting next to a superman. Unable to conceal my childish excitement, I barraged him with questions. When I found out that the superman next to me had actually flown a Phantom jet, I was at a loss for words. Mind you, at that time the Phantom jet was considered to be the world’s top fighter aircraft. Eyeing the pilot with admiration, I remarked, “Flying Phantom jets must be so exciting and rewarding that you can hardly wait to get up in the morning and enter the cockpit.“

“There is only one thing I dream about when I rise in the morning,“ responded the pilot. “What would that be?“ I interjected impatiently. “I dream about the day that I will be discharged from the service,“ replied the pilot. Stunned by this unexpected revelation, I uttered, “And I thought that pilots just love to fly forever and ever.“ “The glamour and the excitement wears off after a while,“ smiled the pilot, “I hope to do more exciting things in my civilian life.“ “For the life of me,“ I remarked, “I can’t imagine what could possibly be more exciting than flying the world’s most advanced aircraft.“ Without waiting for his response, I kept on rambling, “I bet you have plans to go to the university and study something like nuclear physics or rocket technology.“ “To be honest with you,“ smiled the pilot, “all I want to do is to be out of uniform and return to the Kibbutz.“ “You must have a big job waiting for you at the Kibbutz,“ I speculated, “They probably will ask you to manage one of their new and sophisticated technology plants.“ “That is not the case,“ responded the pilot with a serious look on his face, “a much more important job is awaiting me at the Kibbutz.“ “Such as?“ I anxiously asked. “Growing the best avocados in the Middle East.“

Jews and Charity Do people like to give charity? I doubt that anybody likes to part with his or her hard earned money. Next question. Do Jews give money to charity? Rather than address this question from a biased point‑of‑view, I’ll hand over the microphone to a non‑Jew. Here in his own words, is Mr. Mark Twain: When a Jew is well enough, he works; when he is incapacitated, his own people take care of him — and not in a poor or stingy way, but with a fine and large benevolence. His race is entitled to be called the most benevolent of all races of men… Whenever a Jew has a real need to beg, his people save him from the necessity of doing it. The charitable institutions of the Jews are supported by Jewish money, and amply. The Jews make no noise about it; it is done quietly.“[413]

At first it struck me that Mr. Twain may have overstated the case, but when I learned that the Talmud concurs, I quickly stepped back. In any case, thanks for the compliment, Mark. Indeed, one of the most striking characteristics of the Jewish people is the propensity to give when solicited. Soon after the Exodus from Egypt, when asked to hand over gold, silver and jewelry for erecting the Golden Calf, the Jews tripped over themselves and gave away all they owned. Later when Moses appealed to the Jewish people to contribute for the building of the sanctuary in the desert, they gave generously to the extent that the campaign met its goal and then some. While the Golden Calf is the ultimate symbol of paganism and idol worship, the Sanctuary amounts to nothing less than a dwelling for God in the physical world. As diametrically opposed as these two causes were, they had one thing in common — both were generously and enthusiastically supported by Jewish philanthropy. In the Talmud,[414] Rabbi Aba bar Achah summed it up succinctly: There’s no understanding the character of this people! They are solicited for the Golden Calf, and they give; they are solicited for the Sanctuary — they give.

Mark Twain was right; evidently, Jews are obsessed with giving. It certainly is a benevolent instinct to give; mind you, before writing that check make sure it’s for a good cause lest it ends up in the lap of the Golden Calf. Other nations and religions are also charitable. The Koran mandates that all Moslems must set aside no less than one percent of their earnings to charity. Islam applies a sliding scale of one to three percent depending on the means and ability of the giver. The Christians also have to step up to the plate. For the Jews, God has reserved a higher calling or shall we call it a higher rate? The Lord hit us with a minimum flat‑rate charity tax of ten percent. Up to twenty percent is optional. People find it much more pleasant to receive and be treated rather than to donate. This means that to actually stick our hands into our pocket and give of our hard‑earned money to others is an act, which works directly opposite to the forces of human gravity. Yet, many of us are compelled to give and volunteer. The Hebrew term for charity is tzedakah. However, paradoxically, the word tzedakah does not necessarily mean charity; it is derived from the Hebrew word tzedek — justice. From a Jewish perspective, the distribution of wealth to the needy is not only an act of kindness; it also constitutes an act of justice. Jewish tradition teaches that part of the wealth we own does not really belong to us; it is money God entrusted to us that we are required to pass on to those in need. Thus, to withhold charity is considered a subtle form of theft.[415]

But there is more to charity than plain old justice. Though reluctant to openly admit it, many contribute to charity with the hope that it will spare them from death. King Solomon in Proverbs states that charity delivers from death.[416] This is an oft‑quoted wisdom mostly promoted by fundraisers. In reality, however, we notice too often that even the greatest of philanthropists do not live forever. So what exactly did King Solomon mean to convey with this maxim? It is not necessarily physical death from which charity spares its proponents, but rather from spiritual demise. Donating generously to charity is an immensely uplifting experience, which keeps the benefactor connected to the greatest Giver of all – the Creator. There are two components of tzedakah. The first is offering financial assistance to someone in need. The second is ensuring that each person is granted the ability to enjoy a dignified existence. This two‑pronged approach sheds light on a rather bizarre ruling in the realm of Jewish law: A community must provide a poor person not only with the means to live, but also with enough money to be able to give to others.[417] Rationally this is difficult to comprehend. The money will be given to the poor anyway. Why give it to one poor man to give to another? Psychologically, however, it makes very good sense. Giving is an essential part of dignity. Judaism sees it as no less than a human need. That is why even those who have to receive also have to be able to give. The rabbinic insistence that the community provide the poor with enough money so that they themselves can give is a profound insight into the human condition. We each need to feel that we are needed. It is a desire to satisfy a

transcendent yearning, to be like God who is not only a receiver, but also a giver. It is a craving that emanates from the depths of our souls.[418]

Tzedakah, the Hebrew term meaning both charity and justice, is one of Judaism’s most majestic and powerful pillars. In the Talmud, Rabbi Assi declares: “Tzedakah is equal to all the other commandments combined.“[419] Resorting to dramatic Talmudic prose,[420] Rabbi Judah bar Ilai portrayed the power of Tzedakah: Iron is strong, but fire melts it. Fire is strong, but water extinguishes it. Water is strong, but the clouds carry it. The clouds are strong, but the wind drives them. The wind is strong, but man withstands it. Man is strong, but fear weakens him. Fear is strong, but wine removes it. Wine is strong, but sleep overcomes it. Sleep is strong, but death stands over it. What is stronger than death? Acts of generosity, for it is written, “Tzedakah delivers from death.“[421]

Being spared from death is not necessarily the ultimate dynamics fueling philanthropy. Many people donate a great deal to charity and it seems to work to their benefit in this earthly existence. The Bible even drops us a very strong hint that the more we give, the more we will be blessed in return. Scientifically speaking, this formula holds no water. Just ask the Wall Street gurus. They will tell you that the more you give, the quicker you will file for bankruptcy, or in other words, financial suicide. The adage on the street — I mean Wall Street — is: It does not matter how much you make, but how much you keep. Therefore, the more I give, the less I keep… so where is the beef?

Years ago, while standing in line at the post office, I witnessed a spectacle which helped me begin to grasp the mystical and recursive logic behind charitable donations. Standing in front of me was a country bumpkin holding a heavy parcel in both hands. The package was lined with an array of stamps and labels. He handed the package to the postal clerk, who placed it on the scale. “This is not going to fly; the package is too heavy,“ curtly announced the clerk. “What shall I do then?“ asked the country bumpkin. “It looks like you gonna have to add another stamp.“ “Another stamp?“ cried out the indignant simpleton in alarm, “but that is going to make the package even heavier.“ Right then and there I realized that this is exactly how charity works! The heavier you make the package the better it flies. This gravity‑defying axiom is where the beef is… the more you give the more you get back. If indeed it were so simple, why is it then that many more people aren’t tripping over themselves to give much more?

What’s even more amazing is that the more wealth people amass, the more difficult it is for them to depart from even the smallest portion of it. In the worst case scenario money corrupts, in most other instances the rich are imprisoned by their own wealth. Our forefather Abraham was an enormously wealthy man. He owned huge tracts of land, massive flocks of livestock, a thriving business and hundreds of servants. By today’s standards Abraham would be considered a billionaire. Abraham, however, was not corrupted by his riches nor was he a prisoner of his own wealth. On the contrary, Abraham rose above materialism to become a historical standard‑bearer of spirituality, Godliness and above all chessed – an oracle from which all future generations derive inspiration. How did he do it? By distributing his wealth to charity. Given the mercurial and transitory nature of money, the only wealth one truly owns and controls forever is the funds disbursed to charity. A sage once observed the two seas in Israel, the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee is full of life, the Dead Sea has none. How could two seas, fed by a single source — the river Jordan — be so different? His answer: The Sea of Galilee receives water at one end and gives out water at the other. The Dead Sea receives water but does not give, and if you only receive but do not give, you do not live. In Judaism, giving is part of life itself.[422] Have you ever noticed that poor folks are more inclined to generosity than the wealthy? This is not an illusion. It truly works that way. Could it be due to the fact that the poor have little to lose?

A banker, an associate of the Rothschilds, once asked the Baron, how much he was worth. The Baron pronounced the ridiculously low figure of fifty million francs. Upon hearing the flimsy amount, the banker who knew better, sneered, “No, seriously what is your real worth?“ “The money that I have in the bank and in investments is not how much I am really worth,“ replied the Baron, “that money can come and go overnight. My real worth is what I gave away to charity…“ “Is that all you gave to charity?“ cried out the banker. Just goes to show you that poor people depart with their money more easily than do the rich. A rabbi once told me a story about a billionaire who never gave of his hard‑earned money to charity. As the rich miser was lying on his deathbed the rabbi pleaded with him to give, before it was too late. Sensing imminent death, the tightwad exhibited largesse uncharacteristic of his nature and wrote out a check for 10,000 dollars. Shortly thereafter, he died. The rabbi who related this story to me, commented, “Can you imagine, the man owned more than a billion dollars and took with him only ten thousand?“ I said to the rabbi, “Where I grew up, there was a beggar who lived in squalor. Even though the people who lived in our neighborhood were not rich, they had compassion for this beggar and gave him alms. Years later, the beggar died. The police searched his hut and found close to a million dollars in cash stashed in a secret hideout under the floor. Perhaps,“ I argued to the benefit of those who hesitate to give, “people don’t want to be

taken for suckers and give of their hard‑earned money to those who don’t truly deserve it.“

Responded the rabbi, “Certainly, there are many of us who are reluctant to give to charity due to fear of fraud. Indeed, that is a very legitimate human emotion. However, before we adapt this attitude as a way of life, and as an excuse to eschew charity, I would strongly advocate to these folks to take a closer look at the immortal words of Rabbi Chayim of Tsanz, who died in 1786: The merit of charity is so great that I am happy to give to 100 beggars even if only one might actually be needy. Some people, however, act as if they are exempt from giving charity to 100 beggars in the event that one might be a fraud.“[423] The rabbi paused for a brief moment and then added, “And do we truly deserve all that we get?“ The day that I will pick up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and the headlines will scream in bold letters: The More You Give, the More You Take with You! I will know for sure that the biggest day of all has arrived… I will then drop whatever I am doing and run to greet the Messiah. Driving out of NYC last night, I was stuck for over half an hour in traffic leading to the Holland Tunnel. Not to let the time go to waste, I was scribbling some notes on a clipboard, putting the finishing touches on this article. A beggar who parked himself in front of my car distracted me from concentrating upon the subject at hand. He waved a placard in front of my windshield. The message on the placard read: What is the best NATION on earth? Aside from the fact that I was annoyed with the cruddy beggar for obstructing traffic and distracting me personally, I could not imagine what on earth the stupid question posted on the beggar’s placard had anything to do with his squalid existence or his goal in life.

The beggar did a little dance and flipped the placard around to display the answer to the question: DONATION!

Creative Dental Technology In 1928, Gershon Kleinman[424] was born in the city of Nowy Sach, Poland. Named Tsanz by its Jewish inhabitants, Nowy Sach was the seat of the Tsanz Chassidic movement. More than 25,000 Jews resided in Tsanz just before World War II erupted; only a handful survived the inferno. Gershon, a young man of robust constitution and a cheerful optimistic demeanor, was one of the few that endured it all and lived to tell about it. Gershon ended up spending the first five years of his adolescence as a slave in three different concentration camps, mostly in the notorious Auschwitz death factory. Christmas is celebrated by Christians around the world. For Gershon, who grew up sheltered in a tight‑knit Chassidic Jewish shtetl, this holiday went by unnoticed. Never in his wildest dreams did Gershon ever imagine that he would look forward to Christmas. But the Germans had changed all that. What drove his German tormentors to do so, was beyond Gershon’s understanding of the Nazi universe; but on Christmas day — aside from the daily bowl of ersatz soup comprised mostly from rotten potato peels, along with a stale morsel of bread laced with hay — even the Jewish inmates at Auschwitz were treated to a slice of bacon. As much as pork is anathema to Jews, under the circumstances in the camp, the annual slice of bacon they received on Christmas day was a major cause of celebration for the Jewish inmates. Following months of starvation diet, the slice of bacon Gershon received on Christmas day literally saved him from demise by malnutrition. How he wished that every day would be Christmas.

While most Jewish inmates at Auschwitz, even the more resilient among them, barely lasted a couple of months, Gershon and his best friend Mendel lived to see another Christmas. As the holiday approached, the Jewish inmates could not foretell whether this year their Nazi tormentors would exhibit the same spirit of generosity as they did last year, but they sure hoped and prayed for the coveted Christmas gift. Craving for the annual strip of bacon, the entire week prior to Christmas, the barracks were abuzz with excitement in anticipation of the impending Christmas treat. While the Jewish inmates obsessed about the bacon, the Nazi SS guards were busy cooking for them a night to remember; the night before Christmas was a night that Gershon will never forget. Volumes can be filled with the horrors, which Gershon endured during his tenure at Auschwitz. Since his arrival at this penal colony, Gershon has been to hell and back countless times… but the worst was yet to come! It happened on Christmas Eve, when thirty Jewish slaves were swept from their sleep for an unexpected roll call. They were soon ordered to line up at the plaza in front of the barracks. The setup in front of them seemed rather unusual. Facing them stood five chairs constructed of coarse timber, solidly anchored to the ground. A powerful projector lamp hung from a pole rising out of the back of each chair. Next to every seat stood a small lectern topped with a paper pad and an SS guard armed with a whip. The inmates were ordered to line up in formation of five columns, positioned directly across from the five anchored chairs. The first five Jews were then instructed to take a seat. A seasoned inmate of this purgatory, Gershon sensed that the horror-show about to unfold will not have a happy ending. Gershon shuddered as he made his way to take the assigned seat, his knees nearly caved in. He wanted to scream and run, but knew that this can

only lead to a fate far worse than what was coming. All thoughts of the Christmas bacon bolted out of his mind, displaced by horror and cold sweat.

The SS guards lost no time. They tied each of the first batch of Jews to the chairs in four different spots. Hands were tied behind the back. Feet were tied to the leg supports and the torso was fastened at the abdomen. Finally, the forehead was also strapped to the back support. The projector lights were aimed directly at the faces of the bound inmates. The guards ordered the condemned to keep their eyes fully open. The slightest violation of any order during this ceremony invited a vicious whip lashing. Once the first batch of five inmates was pinned to the chairs, the guards stuffed a small wooden peg into their mouths to prop it open. Now the real show could commence. Securely bound to his seat, Gershon watched in horror as the dentist dressed in white robe walked towards him with a flashlight in hand. A deafening silence prevailed as he scrutinized Gershon’s mouth with the flashlight and a probe. Every few seconds he jotted something on the chart resting on the lectern. He then proceeded to the next patient. As soon as the dentist was done examining Gershon, the dental assistant, a brute Nazi SS guard, marched in with a gleam in his eyes. He then pulled out a rusty plier out of his pocket. Speaking calmly, he looked directly at Gershon. “Listen Jude, here at the camp we tend to all your needs. You should be grateful for this service. I see that you haven’t been brushing your teeth lately. This negligence caused a lot of damage. But don’t worry we’ll fix you up good. If we don’t pull out your rotten teeth they will infect the good ones. By the time I am done with you, your mouth will be populated with

only good and healthy teeth. Since you didn’t pay for anesthesia we’ll have to do a live extraction. Are you ready?“

The wooden peg in Gershon’s mouth restricted his ability to respond. He wanted to nod his head, but that too was strapped. Instead he let out a groan. “Good boy,“ responded the dental assistant, still speaking in a gentle tone of voice, “Now say thank you before I begin.“ Again, Gershon responded with a groan. The Nazi flaunted the rusty plier with the angled prongs in front of Gershon’s eyes and said, “Relax now, enjoy the treatment and try not to scream.“ As the dental assistant inserted the plier into Gershon’s mouth, his knee jerked involuntarily in anticipation of the unbearable pain that would follow. The Nazi’s face lost its cheerful demeanor, as he cautioned, “Remember now, no moving and no screaming!“ The assistant studied the chart marked by the dentist and aimed for the first tooth to be extracted. Gershon was doing his best to remain calm under the circumstances. The assistant firmly clutched the tooth with the prongs and yanked hard. The tooth splintered into shreds but was not completely dislodged. As hard as Gershon tried not to move or scream, his faculties were no longer under his control. His body jerked and animal like sounds were streaming out of his throat, which was flooded with blood and dental debris. “Shut up, you filthy ungrateful Jude,“ shouted the assistant and landed a mighty fist blow right into Gershon’s nose. Blood was streaming from Gershon’s nose and mouth. This was only the beginning of the dental treatment. On the second attempt, the brute managed to dislodge the remainder of the first tooth. He held the bleeding root in front of Gershon’s eyes and

announced with a smile. “We did a pretty good job, didn’t we? Now we have only six more to go.“

Screams of the tortured patients choking on their blood filled the air, followed by a barrage of punches to their faces and brutal whip lashings. All the while, struck with terror, the rest of the Jewish inmates lined up for treatment were forced to watch and get a load of what awaited them. When the dental assistant was finally done extracting all seven teeth, he smiled at Gershon and said, “Merry Christmas, and congratulations, the treatment was a total success. All your remaining teeth are now healthy and in good shape.“ Within a half hour, the first five patients were done. The dentist returned to re-inspect each one of the treated patients; then ordered them released. Bleeding and horrified, they managed to get up and ran wildly in the direction of the barracks. It was way past midnight by the time all thirty patients were processed. Four of them did not survive the visit to the dentist; their hearts gave out during the treatment. Both Gershon and his friend Mendel were among the first set of five inmates to receive the dental treatment this Christmas Eve. From the dentist’s chair they dashed together for the trough to rinse the blood and debris from their faces and mouths. As Gershon rinsed his face, he gently ran his fingers over his damaged nose. Turning to Mendel, he asked, “Is your nose broken? I think mine is.“ “At this point, I don’t know if there is any part of my body that’s still intact,“ replied Mendel. The pain the two just endured was beyond human imagination. For the first time since his incarceration, Mendel was on the verge of crying. Gershon was the more resilient of the two. As they walked back to the barracks in the dark winter night, Mendel determined that he can no longer hold out. His body could possibly take a bit more punishment, but his mental resistance was decimated by the dental treatment.

Mendel slowed his march, turning to his best friend, he declared, “Gershon, there is nothing to live for any longer. I am heading for the fence.“ As the perimeter fence was electrocuted, the term fence was a euphemism for committing suicide. Sporadically, as inmates headed for the morning roll call, they would come across lifeless prisoners sprawled across the fence. The electrocuted fence was the easy way out of this inferno. Following the dental treatment, Mendel had reached the end of his rope. In Nazi death camps and penal colonies, Jews had neither rights nor privileges… except to expire, if they so wished. Suicides were the exception to the rule in this Gehenna. As vicious and hopeless as life was in this inferno, few inmates opted for the fence. This was not an easy night for Gershon, he was on the verge of total collapse, but suicide was absolutely out of the question. To hear his best friend pronounce a death‑wish, meant that in addition to his own unbearable burden, Gershon would now have to nurse Mendel’s mortally wounded spirits back to the domain of the living. Attempting the comic approach, teased Gershon, “If you want so badly to head for the fence, you should have done it before your appointment with the dentist.“ The chuckle that he was expecting from Mendel did not come, instead Gershon heard a whimper followed by an uncontrollable wail coming from his friend. Mendel collapsed and broke down crying. Gershon caught Mendel halfway and supported his best friend upon his emaciated shoulders. “I cannot go on any longer,“ cried Mendel, “please help me die.“ Gershon was determined to do just the opposite. “Mendel,“ he spoke in a caring voice, “did you ever notice that it always turns darkest just before dawn? You must hold out; the worst may soon be over! Do you understand?“

Mendel was not listening, he was wailing bitterly and uncontrollably. Gershon grabbed his friend firmly and said, “Calm down Mendel and listen to me very carefully. If you want to die, then you’ll have to kill me first!“ The expression of shock which registered across Mendel’s battered face was not so much in reaction to the admonition uttered by Gershon, it was rather the result of an unexpected uproar heard in the not too far distance. The commotion drew nearer and nearer, which triggered the frightening sensation that SS guards were at their heels. Instinctively, the two inmates fled into the relative safety of the barracks. As they settled into their regular spots on the coarse timber bunk bed, Gershon noticed that the dispirited Mendel was still trembling from the lack of resolve to go on fighting for his life. Gershon pulled Mendel closer to him and hugged him, all the while whispering words of comfort into his ear. As the tears in his eyes dried up, Mendel fell asleep in Gershon’s arms. The next morning, as inmates marched towards the plaza, they noticed three electrocuted corpses straddling the barbed wire fence. All three were from the roster of patients who paid a visit to the dentist last night. For the rest of the day Mendel was busy hauling heavy cement bags. The immense pain in his swollen mouth and battered nose was healing ever so slowly. All day long he tasted the residues of blood oozing from the newly formed craters in his jaws. His busy tongue gently caressed the new contours of his shredded and deformed gums.

If not for the slice of bacon Mendel received during lunch break, he would have surely forgotten that this was Christmas day. The glorious slice of bacon which was the substance of his dreams for a whole year, came at the wrong moment for Mendel. His shattered teeth and bruised gums could not muster enough strength to pulverize the rubbery meat. Every bite he attempted backfired with excruciating pain and yielded no results. Unable to chew on the meat, Mendel positioned the bacon between his palette and tongue and sucked on it for hours. He sucked the bacon dry, then in a single gulp, swallowed what was left of it. His intestines, unaccustomed to such rich food, struggled for a long time to digest the chunky substance. The burning pain lingering in his bowels and jaws, robbed Mendel from savoring his annual royal feast. When they once again met in the barracks after a day’s work, Gershon’s first words to Mendel were, “Last year they at least let us enjoy the Christmas chazer.“[425]

Though his pain was no lesser than that of his comrade, in his mind, Gershon gloated with immense satisfaction, emanating from the fact that his best buddy, Mendel lived to see another day. Considering what a miserable day it was, this may be a very small victory for the Jews, reflected Gershon, but it is a victory, nonetheless. With this thought lingering in his weary mind, Gershon was ready to retire for another night in hell. Before falling asleep, Gershon turned to God. Unlike Mendel, who constantly prayed and quoted from the scriptures — begging God to wreak devastation and vengeance upon the Amalekite German beasts — Gershon had a different approach to supplicating before God. Throughout his years of incarceration, Gershon focused on the positive. To alleviate the pain of torment, abuse, degradation and hunger, Gershon found solace in reciting whole chapters from the Book of Psalms and passages from the Siddur prayer book, which he memorized by heart from his days in Cheider.[426] But tonight, he was compelled to conduct a solemn monologue with his Creator. Looking up in the direction of Heaven, reciting from memory the eminent verse[427] in the book of Deuteronomy, Gershon quoted the words spoken by Moses in the name of God: “This day, I summon the heaven and earth to bear witness; I have placed before you, life and death, blessing and curse; and you shall choose life! So that you shall live!“

Once we begin to perceive and internalize the horrific circumstances to which Jewish inmates were subjected in German concentration camps, it is beyond comprehension that thousands dared to survive the inferno. It is a tribute to the indomitable and unbreakable Jewish spirit, and a testament to heroism and fortitude of a magnitude beyond human reach. To the survivors, we owe eternal gratitude for having endured and triumphed. To Gershon Kleinman we are profoundly indebted not only for surviving, but also for the optimistic faith in God and Jewish destiny he exhibited following his liberation and during his long years in hell on earth. Gershon’s heroic legacy will surely echo down the generations unto eternity. May his memory be an eternal merit, inspiration, a light and a blessing for his People!

Is there Life After death? Following the 1973 Yom Kippur War our unit was stationed on the cease‑fire lines facing the Egyptian army west of the Suez Canal. While the details of the permanent cease‑fire arrangements were being negotiated on the diplomatic level, our unit was assigned to maintain the status quo on the front lines. Our battalion was splintered into small units, which were to be spread out for long miles across the desert in order to defend the protracted interim cease‑fire lines. To implement this redeployment, the troops were lined up in a massive formation, each soldier with his duffle bag and gun ready for action. Our staff sergeant, Moshe, held the roster in his hands. Pacing back and forth in front of the troops, he called out names of soldiers in groups of ten. As he called out their names, the soldiers dashed off to the side to join their new team. The crews were to be shipped out to the various remote desert outposts. When Moshe read my name out, I protested vigorously, “Sir, something must be terribly wrong here.“ “What are you talking about?“ retorted the staff sergeant. “The people you have grouped me with are not from my company.“ That was a very urgent plea. We were about to be assigned to a very drab and remote outpost in the middle of nowhere. The only circumstance that could somewhat alleviate this miserable existence was the proximity of my good buddies. I served with some close friends whom I knew for years and, as bad as life could get on the front lines a familiar face could make a big difference.

None of the faces that were lined up in my group were familiar nor were they friendly. What made it even worse was the fact that except for myself the rest of the people in my new outfit were closely associated and seemed like a clique of old buddies. I dreaded being stuck in a remote outpost with a bunch of men who considered me an outsider. “There is no time for haggling or making any changes at this point,“ was Moshe’s response to my urgent plea. His comment elicited a roaring laughter of disdain from most of the soldiers lined up with me. This intimidated me even further. Realizing that I was soon to spend long weeks with a bunch of men that were not only unfamiliar, but who were most likely to turn hostile, prompted my panicky protest, “Sir, it is not fair to separate me from the guys in my company.“ “The army is not a fair game,“ responded the staff sergeant, “Stop whining. Just pick up your duffle bag and join the group!“ “Sir“ I protested further, “I will not head out unless I am grouped with people from my own company.“ “Well,“ the staff sergeant spoke firmly, “in that case just step aside and I will write you up for court martial!“ After having done a stint in the brig earlier in my military service, I decided that it was the less appetizing of my two options. A sorrow and defeated figure was I, as I dragged my feet and joined the group to which I was assigned. A week later, the staff sergeant showed up at our site. He called me over and said, “I did not forget how hard you lobbied to avoid being shipped out here.“ His stern face shifted to a smile, “I got good news for you. I can now switch you to another installation with your old buddies.“

My response caught the sergeant by complete surprise, “Sir, I really like it here. The guys in this outpost are a great bunch. I regret the hassle I created trying to avoid coming out here in the first place, but if it’s O.K. with you, I would rather stay here with this outfit.“ “Based on your aggressive protestations,“ announced the staff sergeant, “I have already made all the necessary arrangements for you to be transferred to an outpost with people from your original company.“ Again I protested, but to no avail. I packed my bags and hopped on the truck, which ferried me to my next destination. The reunion with my old buddies made the transition less painful. Within a few days, I was well adjusted and very comfortable among my friends. It seemed so natural for me to be where I was, that I had difficulties understanding why I resisted this latest move, as well.

*** It is human instinct to resist change. That is why I protested every time change came across my way. The Talmud teaches us that not only do we resist change during our lifetime, but also we exercise the same knee‑jerk reaction even before being born. Prior to being embedded in a body of flesh and blood, we exist as souls in a celestial environment. In that spiritual existence, the Creator Himself entertains our souls. Imagine if you will a huge setting, much like Yankee Stadium. The bleachers are populated with an endless stream of souls. Next to home plate stands the high and mighty throne of the Almighty, who majestically wields the divine baton.

“The soul in row Q seat 1054, report to home plate,“ God’s voice reverberates throughout the stadium. The soul being summoned rushes to obey the divine command. Smiling amicably at the soul, the Almighty proclaims, “A woman on the planet Earth below had just conceived. Another human is being formed in the flesh. I assign you the privilege of embedding yourself in the new body. It is your duty to provide that human, who is being created in my image, with a breath of life and spiritual guidance.“ “Your majestic holiness,“ humbly protests the soul, “but... but… I am already at the pinnacle of existence. Why subject me to this horrible degradation, to descend into the netherworld in order to couple up with a body of flesh and blood?“ “It is only to elevate you even further, “explains the Creator patiently. “Your majestic holiness,“ the soul perseveres, “right here we bask in Your divine light. In a body of earthly flesh, I will be subjected to the worst forms of temptations. Why can’t I stay here where there are no physical limitations on our spirituality?“ Still in a very patient and fatherly tone of voice, God responds, “It is for your benefit that I am assigning you to a human body. If you descend and complete your assignment successfully, then you will be able to rise to a higher spiritual sphere.“ The trembling soul pleads, “Your most holy highness, what level of spirituality can possibly exceed the divine presence? I dread facing the temptations and tests that I will be subjected to in a lowly earthly body of flesh. I beg of you my Lord not to remove me from Your divine presence

where the eternal light radiates and sustains us with the ultimate spiritual sustenance.“ At this point the Creator turns less tolerant. “It is my design and your destiny to couple up with a body of flesh down on earth. This is not a request. It is an order. Descend!“ Gripping tightly to home plate, the soul kicks, begs and screams, refusing to depart from its Creator. Majestically, the Creator rises from the throne. Wielding a baseball bat, the Lord strikes at the entrenched soul. The soul does not win. Following a hefty drubbing, the defeated soul descends to do its duty. I did not make up this scene. With some variations and embellishments, I portrayed as best I can a script from Talmud. Once on earth, the soul enters the womb to combine with the fetus. Quite a cozy place, reflects the soul, as it adjusts to its new environment. Before the soul gets too comfortable, it is time to make another acute transition. Again the soul begs and pleads not to depart from the warm and protective environment of the motherly womb. The screaming we hear when a baby exits from the womb is the wild protestations of the soul. Once again, the soul has to make an adjustment. It takes years for the soul to acquaint itself with the demands of the flesh and to accommodate the worldly mechanisms and norms. At the end of the road, it is not such a bad life after all, but all good things must come to an end. The Creator once again summons the soul. “You have done your time,“ proclaims God, “the opportunity you have been waiting for so long has finally arrived. You may now return to my presence.“ The soul, which had resided in the body of Mr. Septimus for over eighty years, is stricken with fear and horror. “Please God,“ begs the soul, “do not take me away

from the body of Mr. Septimus. The poor fellow will surely die if I leave him.“ Mr. Septimus and his soul put up a fierce fight against the will of the Creator. The soul is now mounting a desperate battle not to return to the celestial environs it fought so hard not to depart from. The cycle is about to be completed, but the soul and the rest of us never learn. We resist change with all our might at every twist and turn, much as I did at the beginning of this story. With the advent of the space age we are afforded a palpable allegory enabling us to grasp the true nature of our destiny and what is essential for our ultimate goal. When we watch the launch of a Space Shuttle we become aware that the massive bulk on the launch pad is the mammoth booster rockets and its fuel tanks. The Space Shuttle capsule is tiny in comparison to the booster rockets, yet it is the very essence of the mission. While the Space Shuttle mission may last a week or longer, the various stages of the booster rockets are jettisoned within the first few minutes of the mission. From this point forward the booster rockets are treated as ballast while the true focus of the mission is the tiny Space Shuttle cabin with its human cargo. Though the bulky booster rockets are jettisoned early in the game, the Space Shuttle would never attain the orbit needed to perform its mission if not for the boost it received from the massive disposable rockets during launch. The same applies to our mission in this life. Our soul, which is physically insignificant compared to our torso, is the ultimate essence of our earthly physical journey. The ephemeral phase in which the soul is ensconced in a body of blood, flesh and bones, is a preamble to the next stage. The physical human body, which is eventually discarded back to

earth, is the vehicle that catapults the divine soul into the heavenly orbit where the real mission begins. Immersed in our daily material existence, it is extremely difficult for us to perceive that it is only when our physical being ceases to exist that we begin the real journey of our destiny. Yet, only by recognizing this reality, are we afforded a measure of comfort in dealing with the impending death sentence imposed by the Creator upon all His creatures. The Jewish tradition of celebrating the Yahrtzeit, clearly demonstrates that that is how Judaism views life — an eternal voyage in which our earthly existence is but a mere spec on the radar screen.

A Jewish scholar and philosopher by the name of Menashe ben Yisrael who lived in seventeenth century Holland grappled with the dichotomy of the customs we employ to mark the Yahrtzeit. On the one hand we recite the somber and mystical mourner’s Kaddish while at the same time we celebrate with merriment the anniversary of our deceased parents. Here is what he had to say on the subject: The soul rises from one level to another in the world‑to‑come. While this transition constitutes an act of birth into a more elevated existence, it is at the same time a form of death from the lower level. Just as one has previously left this earth to enter one’s reward, so too one rises upward from one level to a higher level in the celestial environs.

If I understand him correctly, what Rabbi Menashe ben Yisrael is trying to tell us is that we recite the Kaddish on the Yahrtzeit of our beloved ones to mourn their death from the lower level. Right after reciting the Kaddish we sit down to a hearty breakfast of bagels, cream cheese and herring. We then raise a toast of brandy and call out: May the soul of the deceased ascend. This apparently is a reference to the ascension of the soul to the next level in paradise. I’ll drink to that. Le’Chayim!

Epilogue The eternal debate, of whether there is life after death, can never truly be settled within the context of our earthly existence. Ultimately, we’ll all have to wait till we get there and find out for ourselves. However, if we sift through the long span of Jewish history we might stumble upon a clue of what’s awaiting us up there. From its very origins in the Egyptian exile and all the way to the present day, we can discern a pattern of demise and revival experienced by the Jewish nation. Subjected to a protracted and bitter slavery in Egyptian bondage, it seemed inevitable that the nascent Jewish nation was doomed to a certain death in its birth canal. Yet, what followed was a miraculous revival that not only transformed the Jewish people, but also the entire world. The horrific punishment sustained by the Israelites, at the brutal hands of the Babylonians, during the destruction of the First Temple along with the ensuing exile amounted to nothing less than a death knell. Against all odds, the battered Israelite remnants in Babylonian exile experienced a rebirth followed by a spiritual flourishing that reached the height of scholarship and vitality culminating with the authorship of the Babylonian Talmud. The momentum of the revival of the Jewish people in the Babylonian exile paved the way to the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. Then came the long and dark oppression imposed by the Greek Empire, which all but extinguished Jewish existence in the Holy Land. Just when all seemed doomed, against all odds, the Maccabean revolt restored Jewish life and vitality for many generations to come.

The glorious Maccabean victory not only restored Jewish sovereignty and sparked a spiritual renaissance in Eretz Yisrael, but it also decimated the mighty Greek Empire to the extent that it was put out of business. But, if the Jews recovered relatively quickly from the challenge posed by the Greek Empire; the Roman Empire, after destroying the Second Temple in Jerusalem, propelled the Jews into slavery and exile that lasted for nearly two thousand years. By all accounts, few ever imagined that the Jews would ever recover from this cataclysmic setback. But they did. While the Jews were dispersed all over the globe and stuck in the quagmire of a protracted exile, they suffered an endless loop of pogroms, massacres, dispossessions and deprivations culminating in a Holocaust of a magnitude never before imaginable. Just when all seemed hopeless and doomed, the Jews clinched an unfathomable comeback to their ancient homeland following nearly two millennia in exile. A close scrutiny of history reveals that the Jewish people have been left for dead time and again, yet they always managed to rise from the rubble and ashes… and lived to fight another day. Indeed, for the Jewish people, perhaps there is life after death. More than that, each time they emerged from oblivion, the Jews came back to life carrying more punch and vigor than prior to their putative demise.

For the Jewish people, not only is death not the final station of our existence… but, Be’Ezrat Hashem,[428] the best is yet to come!

A Note to the Reader Of course, we would like to sell as many copies of the book as possible. However, above and beyond all commercial considerations, as the author of this work, I pray that you benefited from reading the narrative of Did Einstein Believe in God? Moreover, I would be greatly rewarded to find out that the reader gained knowledge and perspectives concerning the subject in discussion. But, how will I ever know your thoughts if I don’t hear from you? If the pen is mightier than the sword, then what is mightier than the pen? The answer is: feedback from my readers. Yes, my friends, your input is more valuable to me than any benefit I could derive from this work. Surely, like most of us, I enjoy receiving compliments. Yet, I sincerely believe that far greater benefit can be gained via constructive criticism than through applause. In any case, whether you wish to critique the contents of this book or comment upon any aspect of it, I would appreciate your taking a few moments to share your thoughts with me. I truly hope that you enjoyed reading this book. If in any way, it broadened your insights on the subject, I am grateful for the privilege of having been instrumental to that end. I look forward to hearing from you. Please e-mail your comments to: [email protected] Many thanks for your feedback. Finally, I leave you with a prayer for a bounty of God’s blessings upon all of us! Yitzhak Y. Salomon

Highland Park, New Jersey Purim 5779 March 21, 2019

About the Author Born in Israel in 1948, Yitzhak Salomon is a veteran of two wars. Early on in life he discovered that he would rather hold a pen than a gun. This revelation opened the door to a prolific writing career. A raconteur and a historian, Yitzhak Salomon writes extensive commentary and satire on a variety of topics ranging from history, philosophy and spirituality to tidbits of wisdom from the lives we live. His works include historical fiction, novellas, essays and short stories, as well as academic historical treatises. His style ranges from the picaresque to the satirical and beyond. He lives in the Holy Land with his wife and two children.

Other Books by Yitzhak Salomon All of the books listed below are available on Amazon.com both in Kindle and Print format 1.) Royal Challenge ─ Published in 2016 Historical Fiction – The Origin of Chess 2.) Tzadik in Sodom aka “ Righteous Men in Sodom ” ─ Published in 2017 Historical Non-Fiction – The ultimate Jewish response to the Holocaust 3.) Journey to the Promised Land ─ Published in 2018 Historical Non-Fiction – The saga of Jewish soldiers in General Anders Polish Corps during WWII 4.) Darwin’s Temple of Deceit ─ Published in 2019 Once and for all, this book informs the reader as to why Darwin’s Theory of Evolution amounts to nothing more than science fiction – the embodiment of: “ The Art of Crackpot Science ” 5.) TUITION ─ Published in 2019 Historical Non-Fiction – The History, Struggle and Triumph of Jewish Day Schools in America 6.) Did Einstein Believe in God? ─ Published in 2019 A Collection of Essays, Short Stories and Anecdotes emanating from the Jewish Soul 7.) Was George Washington Jewish? ─ Published in 2019 A Collection of Essays, Short Stories and Anecdotes 8.) The Global Warming Mythology! ─ Published in 2019 The fake “ ideology ” of human‑induced Global Warming 9.) Those who Don’t Know How to Laugh… CRY! ─ Published in 2020 The World According to Jewish Humor – A collection of satirical essays, short stories & anecdotes 10.) The Best is Yet to Come! ─ Published in 2020 A Collection of Essays, Short Stories and Anecdotes Nourishment for the Jewish Soul 11.) The Siberian Refugee, who “ re‑invented ” the Bible ─ Published in 2020 Historical Non-Fiction – The genius who invented the Biblical GPS 12.) Bonastruc ça Porta aka Nachmanides ─ Published in 2020 Historical Non-Fiction – The Life, Times & Adventures of Nachmanides aka Ramban 13.) The Queen who Saved a Nation… but could not Save Herself ─ Published in 2021 Historical Non-Fiction – The Purim saga from way back before it started all the way to the happy ending… and beyond

NOTES [1] An aggregate of verses from Psalms (145:3) & (71:17-19) [2]

Encyclopedia Britannica entry, John II, King of Portugal, http://www.britannica.com/biography/John-II-king-of-Portugal [3] Wikipedia entry, History of the Jews in Portugal, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Portugal [4] Wikipedia entry, Isabella of Aragon, Queen of Portugal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_of_Aragon,_Queen_of_Portugal [5] Wikipedia entry, Isabella of Aragon, Queen of Portugal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_of_Aragon,_Queen_of_Portugal [6] Portions of the material in this article about Doña Gracia Nasi are based on an essay in Jewish Women’s Archives by Professor Miriam Bodian, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/nasi-donagracia [7]

Rabbi Berel Wein, Heralds of Destiny, https://www.rabbiwein.com/about-us.php [8] Psalms (121:4) [9] Rabbi Yissachar Teichtal (1885-1945, Hungary), Eim Ha’Banim Semeicha, translated by Gershon Greenberg, Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust, S.T. Katz, edition, New York and Oxford, 2007, pp. 75-82 [10] The first two verses of Genesis [11] Genesis (1:3) [12] Cheider is a religious elementary school teaching the basics of Torah, Judaism and the Hebrew language [13] Psalm (104:24) [14] Fredric Golden, Person of the Century: Albert Einstein, Time Magazine, January 3, 2000, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,993017,00.html [15]

From the website Science A GoGo: http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980907140525data_trunc_sys.shtml, June 22, 2003. [16] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, (Avon Books, New York, 1984), p. 468. [17] Good Reads, Albert Einstein Quotes, http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/19421 [18] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, (Avon Books, New York, 1984), p. 469. [19] Genesis (1:5) [20] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 248 [21] Genesis (1:14) [22] Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, Basic Books, 1977, p. 154

[23]

Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 473 Tom Bayly, 1966 Volvo Has Driven Nearly 3 Million Miles http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18803064 [25] Yoram Bogacz, Genesis & Genes, Feldheim Publishers, 2012, pp. 166-169. [26] The Earth‘s orbit around the Sun is an ellipse, not a circle, so throughout the year, the distance between the earth and the sun changes slightly. [27] Stephen Jay Gould, The Richness of Life, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2006, p. 268 [28] Thomas J. Straka, Biographical Portrait of Edmund P. Schulman (1908–1958), Forest History Today, Spring 2008, pp. 46-49 [29] Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the scientific method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree‑rings, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology [30] Wikipedia entry, Methuselah, ,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_(tree) [31] Job (38:4) [32] Good Reads, Albert Einstein Quotes, http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/19421 [33] Wikipedia entry, Herman Branover, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Branover [34] Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God, Broadway Books, New York, 1997, p. 23 [35] Wikipedia entry, Static Universe, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_universe [36] Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God, Broadway Books, New York, 1997, p. 22 [37] Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God, Broadway Books, New York, 1997, p. 74 [38] In Midrash Rabbah on Ba’Midbar 13, our sages inform that the Torah can be viewed and interpreted from seventy differing perspectives. Just as white light ─ which appears monochromatic to the observer ─ diffracts into the seven colors of the rainbow when passed through a prism, so too the Midrashic elements of the Torah can be viewed from different angles and perceived differently, and yet remain within the fold of one tradition. Similarly, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden comes across simplistic on the surface, but like many other depictions in the Torah it can be interpreted on a multitude of different levels. Some of the Biblical commentaries were perplexed by the enigmatic serpent in the story of Adam and Eve. Rabbi Ovadia Sforno ─ a medieval Italian rabbi, Biblical commentator, philosopher and physician ─ is of the opinion that the snake was Eve’s alter ego or subconscious. The word for “snake“ in Hebrew is nachash and the word for “to guess“ or “to imagine“ is le’nachesh. Sforno integrates these two concepts. The “snake within“ or yetzer hara ─ the evil inclination, works through the imagination, which is triggered by what a person sees and thinks. Accordingly, the Torah is recording a debate raging in Eve’s mind ─ a dialogue with her subconscious desires and temptations. This phenomenon should not be a mystery to any of us humans;: we are constantly engaged in conducting dialogues with our subconscious desires. (David Bassous, The Key to a Successful Life, self-published, pp. 102-103) [39] Avodah Zara, 8a [40] Chidushei Aggadot — see Mahara‘l’s commentary on Tractate Shabbat 21b [41] Not to be confused with the Five Books of Moses, in this context, Chumash is a reference to an ancient Indian tribe. [42] Gavriel Horan, Irena’s Children, Aish.com, August 11, 2007, https://www.aish.com/ho/p/Irenas_Children.html [43] Much of the material about Irena Sendler is based on content from Wikipedia entry, Irena Sendler, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irena_Sendler [24]

[44]

Harry de Quetteville, “Female Schindler“ Irena Sendler, who saved thousands of Jewish children, dies, The Telegraph, May 12, 2008, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1948680/FemaleSchindler-Irene-Sendler-who-saved-thousands-of-Jewish-children-dies.html [45] Wikipedia entry, An Inconvenient Truth, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth [46] Barbra Streisand, Will The Trump Administration Ever Acknowledge Climate Change?, September 13, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/will-the-trump-administration-ever-acknowledge-climatechange_us_59b88498e4b0edff97176561 [47] Oy gevalt!... is a frequently uttered popular Yiddish expression, meant to express shock or amazement! [48] Wikipedia entry, Richard Parncutt, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Parncutt [49] Emily Atkin, Al Gore’s Carbon Footprint Doesn’t Matter, New Republic article, August 7, 2017, https://newrepublic.com/article/144199/al-gores-carbon-footprint-doesnt-matter [50]

By Ekin Karasin and Ariel Zilber, Barack Obama traveled to Milan for climate change conference in a private jet and was then ferried to town in a 14‑car convoy, Daily Mail article, May 11, 2017, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4493930/Obama-used-private-jet-14-car-convoy-attendsummit.html [51] Joseph Farah, Decade since Al Gore predicted ice-free Arctic in 5-7 years, WND — WorldNetDaily, December 13, 2018, https://www.wnd.com/2018/12/decade-since-al-gore-predicted-ice-free-arcticin-5-7-years/ [52] Emily Atkin, Al Gore’s Carbon Footprint Doesn’t Matter, New Republic article, August 7, 2017, https://newrepublic.com/article/144199/al-gores-carbon-footprint-doesnt-matter [53]

Jon Henley, ‘Make our planet great again‘: Macron‘s response to Trump is praised, The Guardian, June 3, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/03/make-our-planet-greatagain-macron-praised-for-response-to-trump [54] David Rotman, A Cheap and Easy Plan to Stop Global Warming, MIT Technology Review, February 8, 2013, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/511016/a-cheap-and-easy-plan-to-stop-global-warming/ [55] In Yiddish, pupik means bellybutton. [56] Ella Davies, Dinosaur gases warmed the Earth, BBC article from May 7, 2012, https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/17981393 [57] Joe Bastardi, Are global temperatures cooler in 2017 than 2007? https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/39193/are-global-temperatures-cooler-in-2017-than2007 [58] Gregory Wrightstone, Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know, Chapter: Apocalypse? No! — Climate Apocalypse Myths, Part II, Mill City Press, Kindle Edition, 2017 [59] Gregory Wrightstone, Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know, Summary of Chapter 2 in Part I, Mill City Press, Kindle Edition, 2017 [60] Cliff Ollier, Review of The Greatest Lie Ever Told, September 2007, New Concepts in Global Tectonics Newsletter, Mörner at pog.nu. 44:55–7, Retrieved 2012-05-17 [61] Gregory Wrightstone, Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know,

Summary of Chapter 3 in Part I, Mill City Press, Kindle Edition, 2017 [62] This list of “Inconvenient Facts“ appears at the end of Gregory Wrightstone’s book entitled: Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know, Mill City Press, Kindle Edition, 2017 [63] Peter James Spielmann, U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked, June 29, 1989, https://www.apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 [64] Daniel Turner, Decades ago, the UN promised climate disaster; so why hasn‘t it arrived? Fox News, July 5, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/daniel-turner-un-climate-disaster [65] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 255 [66] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 54 [67] A farmer, who cultivates his own small‑landed estate or one of a class of lesser freeholders, below the gentry, who cultivated their own land. [68] Isaac Newton, Opticks, Query 28, Appendix A, p. 174 [69] Alice Calaprice & Trevor Lipscombe, Albert Einstein: A Biography, Greenwood Press, 2005, p. 42 [70] Ruvin Ferber & Herman Branover, Observer and the System of Reference: A Unified View, B’or Ha’Torah, Volume 13, July 2002 [71] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 215 [72] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. xiv [73] Even before Newton’s discoveries, philosophers observed that when a prism is placed in front of a ray of sunlight it projects the seven colors of the rainbow. It never occurred to anyone that this phenomenon means that a ray of white light is comprised of all the colors of the rainbow, rather, they attributed this diffraction as property of the prism itself. Isaac Newton was the first one to prove that the seven colors of the rainbow are indeed embedded in a white ray of sunlight. He demonstrated that not only can a triangular prism separate a beam of sunlight into rainbow colors, but also that, when a second prism projects the diffracted colors together again, white light is once more obtained. Therefore, concluded Newton correctly, that white light is a combination of all the rainbow colors, and the prism separates its colors because the angle by which a beam of light is bent, when it enters glass, differs from one color to the next. [74] David Cody, Alexander Pope and Philosophy, http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/pope/phil.html [75] Anna Friedlander, A bodekin betwixt his eye and bone, Salient, September 28, 2009, http://salient.org.nz/2009/09/a-bodekin-betwixt-his-eye-and-bone/ [76] Scott Mandelbrote, Footprints of the lion, Cambridge University Library, 2001, p. 34, http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Footprints_of_the_Lion/scholar.pdf [77] Scott Mandelbrote, Footprints of the lion, Cambridge University Library, 2001, p. 35, http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Footprints_of_the_Lion/scholar.pdf [78] Drafts on the history of the Church ‒ Section 3. Yehuda Ms. 15.3, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel, 2006, Online Version at Newton Project [79] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 29 [80] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 49 [81] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 564 [82] In the Zohar, Parshat Va’Yera, 117a, it states that at the beginning of the 6th century in the 6th millennium since Creation, the well-springs of wisdom will be opened. The 6th century began just as Newton‘s works began to be disseminated. The Zohar derives this insight from the words in Genesis

(7:11). The first letter of each word of this passage: ,‫השָּׁמַיִם‬ ַ ‫ארֻבֹּת‬ ֲ ַ ‫ ו‬,‫תְהוֹם רַבָּה‬ ּ ‫מﬠְיְנֹת‬ ַ -‫נִבְקְעו ּ כ ָּל‬ ּ ‫תָחו‬ ּ ְ ‫נִפ‬, can be re‑arranged to spell out ‫המרך נותן‬, which translates as Newton, your Teacher. [83]

Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 216 In Christian churches, holy orders are ordained ministries such as bishop, priest or deacon, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton [85] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 253 [86] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 252 [87] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 252 [88] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, pp. 251252 [89] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 255 [90] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 567 [91] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 255 [92] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 257 [93] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 521 [94] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 257 [95] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 565 [96] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 257 [97] Isaac Newton, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, Chapter V – A Description of the Temple of Solomon [98] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 231 [99] Talmud, Tractate Semachot ‒ ‫מסכת שמחות ספר חיבוט הקבר פרק א הלכה א‬ [100] Job (26:7) [101] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 157 [102] John Maynard Keynes, Newton, the Man, March 2006, http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html [103] Ecclesiastes (9:11) [104] John Maynard Keynes, Newton, the Man, March 2006, http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Extras/Keynes_Newton.html [105] Heather Glen, Vision and Disenchantment, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 288 [106] William Stukeley, Memoir of Sir Isaac Newton’s Life, Royal Society Library, London, 1752, http://www.newtonproject.ox.ac.uk/view/texts/diplomatic/OTHE00001 [107] Thomas Chalmers, Biography of Sir Isaac Newton, 1812, Vol. 23, p. 123 [108] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 66 [109] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, pp. 59‑60 [110] A German term describing a particular worldview, philosophy, outlook or view of life [111] Brian Greene, Why He Matters ─ The Fruits of One Mind Shaped Civilization More Than Seems Possible, Scientific American Magazine, September 2015, p. 36 [112] Sharon Begley, Book Review: The Man Who Read God’s Mind, Newsweek, April 16, 2007 [113] Brian Greene, Why He Matters ‒ The Fruits of One Mind Shaped Civilization More Than Seems Possible, Scientific American Magazine, September 2015, p. 34 [114] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 50 [84]

[115]

Walter Isaacson, Einstein & Faith, Time Magazine, April 5, 2007 See website: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607298-3,00.html [116] Sharon Begley, Book Review: The Man Who Read God’s Mind, Newsweek, April 16, 2007 [117] Roger Rosenblatt, The Age of Einstein, Time Magazine, January 3, 2000 [118] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, pp. 140-141 [119] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, pp. 140-141 [120] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 634 [121] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 634 [122] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 635 [123] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 635 [124] Wikipedia entry, Max Planck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck [125] Brandon R. Brown, Max Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War, Oxford University Press Blog, 2015, p. 6 [126] Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, University of California Press, Los Angeles 1998, p. 252 [127] Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, University of California Press, Los Angeles 1998, p. 254 [128] Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, University of California Press, Los Angeles 1998, p. 254 [129] Sharon Begley, Book Review: The Man Who Read God’s Mind, Newsweek, April 16, 2007 [130] Fredric Golden, Person of the Century: Albert Einstein, Time Magazine, January 3, 2000 [131] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, pp. 331‑332 [132] Fredric Golden, Person of the Century: Albert Einstein, Time Magazine, January 3, 2000 [133] Fredric Golden, Person of the Century: Albert Einstein, Time Magazine, January 3, 2000 [134] From the website Science A Go Go: http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/19980907140525data_trunc_sys.shtml, June 22, 2003 [135] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 468 [136] Good Reads, Albert Einstein Quotes, http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/19421 [137] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 469 [138] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 526 [139] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 634 [140] Fredric Golden, Person of the Century: Albert Einstein, Time Magazine, January 3, 2000 [141] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 622 [142] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 737 [143] Wikipedia entry, Aaron Bernstein, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Bernstein [144] Aaron Bernstein, Volume 12, p. 54 as noted by Donald R. Howard in Einstein: The Formative Years, 1879-1909, Birkhäuser Boston, 2000 [145] Walter Isaacson, Einstein & Faith, Time Magazine, April 5, 2007 See website: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607298-3,00.html [146] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 28 [147] Wikipedia entry, Deutsche Physik, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Physik [148] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 638

[149]

Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, pp. 638-639 Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 639 [151] Of the 21 Jewish Nobel Laureates listed here, most had won the prize prior to fleeing Germany; a handful clinched the Nobel Prize after settling abroad. The irony of the Holocaust is that while the majority of Jews in lands occupied by the Nazis perished, in Germany more than half of the Jewish population managed to escape and survived. Resulting from Nazi racial laws and persecution of nonAryans, many of Germany’s Jews desperately sought to emigrate. Palestine was a popular destination for German Jewish emigration. Soon after the Nazis‘ rise to power in 1933, they negotiated the Haavara Agreement with Zionist authorities in Palestine, which was signed on August 25, 1933. Under its terms, 60,000 German Jews would be permitted to emigrate to Palestine and take $100 million in assets with them. More than 55,000 Jews from Germany, Austria, or Bohemia arrived in Palestine under this arrangement. The United States was another destination for German Jews seeking to leave the country, though the number allowed to immigrate was restricted due to the Immigration Act of 1924. Between 1933 and 1939, more than 300,000 Germans, of whom about 90% were Jews, applied for immigration visas to the United States. By 1940, only 90,000 German Jews had been granted visas and allowed to settle in the United States. Some 100,000 German Jews also moved to Western European countries, especially France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. However, these countries would later be occupied by Germany, and most of them would still fall victim to the Holocaust. Another 48,000 emigrated to the United Kingdom. Overall, of the 522,000 Jews living in Germany in January 1933, only 214,000 remained on German soil by the eve of World War II, most of them perished in the Holocaust. Wikipedia entry, History of the Jews in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany [150]

[152]

Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, pp. 639-640 Sharon Begley, Book Review: The Man Who Read God’s Mind, Newsweek Magazine, April 16, 2007 [154] An interview conducted on April 8, 2007 with Einstein’s biographer, Walter Isaacson on the ABCnews website: http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/Voices/story?id=3042883 [155] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 473 [156] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 513 [157] Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God, Broadway Books, New York, 1997, p. 23 [153]

[158]

Lawrence Krauss, What Einstein Got Wrong, Scientific American Magazine, September 2015, p

55 [159]

Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 524 Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God, Broadway Books, New York, 1997, p. 22 [161] Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God, Broadway Books, New York, 1997, p. 74 [162] Brian Greene, Why He Matters – The Fruits of One Mind Shaped Civilization More Than Seems Possible, Scientific American Magazine, September 2015, p. 36 [163] Walter Isaacson, Einstein & Faith, Time Magazine, April 5, 2007 See website: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607298-3,00.html [164] Einstein, Letter to a child who asked if scientists pray, January 24, 1936; Einstein Archive 42601 [160]

[165]

Sharon Begley, Book Review: The Man Who Read God’s Mind, Newsweek Magazine, April 16, 2007 [166] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 516 [167] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 516 [168] Esther Salaman, A Talk with Einstein, The Listener 54, 1955, pp. 37-371 [169] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, pp. 522-523 [170] Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Simon & Schuster, 2007, pp. 390‑391 [171] Walter Isaacson, Einstein & Faith, Time Magazine, April 5, 2007 See website: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607298-3,00.html [172] Stephen J. Gould, Impeaching a Self‑Appointed Judge, Scientific American, July 1992 [173] Jim Holt, Science Resurrects God, The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 1997 [174] Psalms (19:2) [175] Jim Holt, Science Resurrects God, The Wall Street Journal, December 24, 1997 [176] Ibid [177] Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, 1988, p. 191 [178] Wikipedia entry, Rudolph Nissen, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolph_Nissen [179] Wikipedia entry, Albert Einstein, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein [180] Huffington Post ─ October 4, 2012, Albert Einstein‘s ‘God Letter‘ To Be Auctioned On eBay with an Opening Bid of $3 Million, See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/albert-einsteingod-letter-ebay-auction-3-million-religion_n_1940726.html [181] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 516 [182] Albert Einstein to Joseph Lewis, April 18, 1953, https://www.spaceandmotion.com/albert-einstein-god-religion-theology.htm [183]

Andrew Goldfinger, Why am I not Bothered?, Mishpacha Magazine issue 435, November 21,

2012 [184]

Binyamin Rose, Happy Anniversary Albert Einstein, Mishpacha Magazine, Issue 762, May 29, 2019, p. 91 [185] Harvey Sarner, General Anders and the Soldiers of the Second Polish Corps, Brunswick Press, 1997, p. 6 [186] Dr. Shaul Sehayik, Parsha Aluma; An Unknown Episode, The Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center, Tel Aviv, 2003, p. 59 [187] This episode is recounted by Major General Chaim Erez — one of the children who arrived in Palestine with Yaldei Teheran — in a documentary produced by Dalia Guttman, entitled: The Children of Teheran [188] Yisrael Gutman, Jews in General Anders Army in the Soviet Union, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1977, p. 284. [189] Henryk Grynberg, Dzieci Syjonu, the Children of Zion, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1997, translated from Polish into English by Jacqueline Mitchell, p. 176 [190] Rabbi Pinchas Rosengarten, Mi-Yomano shel Rav Tzevai; From the Diary of a Rabbinical Chaplain in the Wladyslaw Anders Second Polish Corps During the Second World War, Jerusalem, 1998, p. 76 [191] Dr. Shaul Sehayik, Parsha Aluma; An Unknown Episode,

The Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center, Tel Aviv, 2003, p. 63 [192] Dr. Shaul Sehayik, Parsha Aluma; An Unknown Episode, The Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center, Tel Aviv, 2003, p. 59 [193] Dr. Shaul Sehayik, Parsha Aluma; An Unknown Episode, The Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center, Tel Aviv, 2003, p. 60 [194] Dr. Shaul Sehayik, Parsha Aluma; An Unknown Episode, The Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center, Tel Aviv, 2003, p. 62 [195] Dr. Shaul Sehayik, Parsha Aluma; An Unknown Episode, The Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center, Tel Aviv, 2003, p. 63 [196] Wikipedia entry, Cochin Jews, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochin_Jews [197]

Shimon Rosenberg, Visit to a City of Converts, Zman Magazine, June 2016, p. 58. Though no one disputes that the Jewish community of Cochin is thousands of years old, the claim that it was founded by King Solomon’s merchants is based on a local legend. Since the Jewish community was established around the time that King Solomon reigned in Jerusalem, the legend posits a very plausible source for the origins of the ancient Jewish community of Cochin. [198]

Shimon Rosenberg, Visit to a City of Converts, Zman Magazine, June 2016, p. 60. David Sassoon (October 1792 – November 7, 1864) was the treasurer of Baghdad between 1817 and 1829. He became the leader of the Jewish community in Bombay (now Mumbai) after Baghdadi Jews emigrated there. [200] Shalva Weil, Background: A rich history now stained with blood, The Jerusalem Post — November 30, 2008, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1227702365043 [201] Encyclopedia Judaica entry, Sassoon [202] Joshua Shi, Legend of the Sassoons, Shanghai Star Daily – May 10, 2001 Website: http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2001/0510/cu18-2.html [203] Dr. Shaul Sehayik, Parsha Aluma; An Unknown Episode, The Babylonian Jewish Heritage Center, Tel Aviv, 2003, p. 64 [204] Henryk Grynberg, Dzieci Syjonu, the Children of Zion, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1997, Translated from Polish into English by Jacqueline Mitchell, p. 177 [205] Henryk Grynberg, Dzieci Syjonu, the Children of Zion, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1997, Translated from Polish into English by Jacqueline Mitchell, pp. 177‑178 [206] Formerly the capital of the historic region of Galicia, Lvov has switched between many countries as a result of war and occupation. Currently, it is part of western Ukraine and its name was changed to Lviv. The Jewish community of Lvov can be traced back to the 14th century [207] The city is associated with a shocking milestone in Russian history. The Russian Czarist Imperial Romanov family, including their four daughters and son along with an entourage accompanying them into exile were all executed by Communist rebels in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918 [208] Yoav Birnberg, February 18, 2013, Yeladim shel ha‘Chayim, an article in the Yediot Achronot supplement, 24 Shaot/24 Leilot. [209] This episode is recounted by Ilana Refaeli — Avigdor‘s sister — in a documentary produced by Dalia Guttman, entitled: The Children of Teheran [199]

[210]

Yoav Birnberg, Yeladim shel ha‘Chayim, an article in the Yediot Achronot supplement 24 Shaot/24 Leilot, dated: February 18, 2013 [211] Eiran Navon, Lone Wolf, Israel Hayom, August 29, 2013: http://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/112979 [212] Wikipedia entry, Avigdor Ben Gal [213] Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989, p. 746 [214] Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur war: The Epic Encounter that Transformed the Middle East, Random House, 2007, p. 96 [215] Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989, p. 756 [216] Walter J. Boyne, The Two O’clock War, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2002, P. 70 [217] Eiran Navon, Lone Wolf, Israel Hayom, August 29, 2013: http://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/112979 [218] A quip from the wartime speech made by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 20, 1940. This statement was a reference to the ongoing superhuman efforts of the Royal Air Force pilots who were at the time engaged in fighting the Battle of Britain — the pivotal air battle against the German Luftwaffe with Britain facing an imminent German invasion [219] Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, Schocken Books, New York, 2004, p. 164 [220] Simon Dunstan, Centurion Vs T-55: Yom Kippur War 1973, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2009, p. 65 [221] Rich Cohen, Israel is Real, Picador, New York, 2009, p. 311 [222] Eiran Navon, Lone Wolf, Israel Hayom, August 29, 2013: http://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/112979 [223] Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989, p. 765 [224] Chaim Herzog and Shlomo Gazit, The Arab Israeli Wars, Vintage Books, New York, NY, 2005, p. 294 [225] Chaim Herzog and Shlomo Gazit, The Arab Israeli Wars, Vintage Books, New York, NY, 2005, p. 296 [226] Simon Dunstan, The Yom Kippur War: The Arab‑Israeli War of 1973, Osprey Publishing, London, 2007, p. 186 [227] Shivah is the week‑long mourning period in Judaism for first‑degree relatives: father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, and spouse. The ritual is referred to as sitting Shivah. [228] Eiran Navon, Lone Wolf, Israel Hayom, August 29, 2013: http://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/112979 [229] Tuvia Book, Avigdor Kahalani: The Power of One, Times of Israel article, January 27, 2013, http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/avigdor-kahalani-the-power-of-one/ [230] Eiran Navon, Lone Wolf, Israel Hayom, August 29, 2013: http://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/112979 [231] Eiran Navon, Lone Wolf, Israel Hayom, August 29, 2013: http://www.israelhayom.co.il/article/112979 [232] Ilan Kfir and Danny Dor, The Last Battle, Yisrael Hayom, Weekend Magazine, March 3, 2017, pp.42-47

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Leslie Ginsparg Klein, A Traditional Revolutionary: Sarah Schenirer’s Legacy revisited. The article appeared in the OU Jewish Action Magazine, Summer 5776/2016, Vol. 76, No. 4, p. 62 [234] Leslie Ginsparg Klein, A Traditional Revolutionary: Sarah Schenirer’s Legacy revisited. The article appeared in the OU Jewish Action Magazine, Summer 5776/2016, Vol. 76, No. 4, p. 63 [235] Exodus (19:3) [236] Proverbs (14:1) [237] Pearl Benisch, Carry Me in Your Heart: The Life and Legacy of Sarah Schenirer, (Jerusalem 2003), pp. 319-320 [238] Leslie Ginsparg Klein, A Traditional Revolutionary: Sarah Schenirer’s Legacy revisited. The article appeared in the OU Jewish Action Magazine, Summer 5776/2016, Vol. 76, No. 4, p. 65 [239]

To learn more about the bigger-than-life heroic exploits of Bais Yaakov girls and teachers during the Holocaust, read: To Vanquish the Dragon by Pearl Benisch. She also authored a biography of Sarah Schenirer entitled, Carry Me in Your Heart. [240] Leslie Ginsparg Klein, A Traditional Revolutionary: Sarah Schenirer’s Legacy revisited. The article appeared in the OU Jewish Action Magazine, Summer 5776/2016, Vol. 76, No. 4, p. 65 [241] If not otherwise noted, most of the material about Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov movement was gleaned from the following sources: 1.) Encyclopedia of the Jewish Women’s Archives, entry Sarah Schenirer; and entry Bais Yaakov Schools, http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bais-yaakov-schools 2.) Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, The ultra-Orthodox Seamstress Who Determined the Fate of Jewish Women, http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.553831 [242] Wikipedia entry Vichna Kaplan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichna_Kaplan [243] Leslie Ginsparg Klein, A Traditional Revolutionary: Sarah Schenirer’s Legacy revisited. The article appeared in the OU Jewish Action Magazine, Summer 5776/2016, Vol. 76, No. 4, pp. 6465 [244] All of the Talmudic quotes in this essay can be found in tractate Bava Metzia 107b [245] Bava Metzia 107b [246] Since the functions of gastric acids and bile are intertwined, it is obvious that in this Talmudic passage, the term bile is referring to the confluence of bile and gastric acids. [247] Bava Metzia 107b [248] Bava Metzia 107b [249] https://www.quora.com/Is-this-statement-true-Eat-breakfast-like-a-king-lunch-like-a-prince-anddinner-like-a-beggar [250] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 1; for an English translation of the works of Maimonides, see Chabad website: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/682956/jewish/MishnehTorah.htm [251] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 13 [252] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 6 [253] Maimonides urges not to retire to bed soon after dinner, but rather wait three to four hours, see Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 5

[254]

Jewish Encyclopedia website: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/164-abbahu Tractate Berachot 44a [256] Director of the Department of Medicine at Queens Hospital Center and Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Dr. Fred Rosner is also an authority on the medical works of Maimonides. These passages are quoted from his essay: The Life of Moses Maimonides, a Prominent Medieval Physician. See: https://www.einstein.yu.edu/uploadedFiles/EJBM/19Rosner125.pdf [257] Dr. Beni Gesundheit teaches Jewish Medical Ethics in the Department of Jewish Philosophy at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, as well as in the newly opened Bar Ilan medical facility in Tzfat. Concurrently, he is involved in stem cell research. He worked in the Unit of Bone Marrow Transplantation at the Hadassah Hospital Ein Karem in Jerusalem. He is also an authority on the medical works of Maimonides. This opinion of Dr. Gesundheit is quoted from an article written by Jeffery Barken in the Sun Sentinel: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-01-13/health/fl-jjpsmaimonides-0115-20140113_1_new-doctors-physician-patients [255]

[258]

Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 1 Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 2 [260] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 2 [261] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 2 [262] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 11 [263] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 12 [264] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 14 [265] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 15 [266] Proverbs (21:23) [267] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 15 [268] Maimonides, Hilchot De’ot, Chapter 4, Halacha 19 [259]

[269] [270]

See website: http://www.rambam-medicine.org.il/rambam-medicine.php#cmtx_form Mark Twain, Concerning the Jews, Point No. 6, p. 8

[271]

Thomas Newton was a renowned English cleric, biblical scholar and author. He served as the Bishop of Bristol from 1761 to 1782 [272] [273]

Wikipedia entry, Thomas Newton, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Newton

Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews, Anchor Books, New York, 1998, P. 240 Refusenik was an unofficial term for individuals, typically but not exclusively Soviet Jews, who were denied permission to emigrate by the authorities of the former Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc. The term refusenik is derived from the “refusal“ handed down to a prospective emigrant from the Soviet authorities. [275] Wikipedia entry, Refusenik, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refusenik [276] Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the Land of Israel. [277] In Hebrew, bracha means blessing. [274]

[278]

Material for the Yosef Mendelevitch story is based on the following three sources:

1.) Tzipi Golan & Shimon Rosenberg, Operation Wedding ─ The Dramatic Story of an Attempted Hijacking that Changed History, ZMAN Magazine Vol. 6 No. 62, February 2015, pp. 113145 2.) Eliran Aharon, “I dedicate the award to the Jews who gave their lives“ ─ Former Prisoner of Zion Rabbi Yosef Mendelevitch receives “Jewish Heroism Award“ from the Kremlin, Arutz Sheva article, December 22, 2017 3.) Sivan Rahav Meir, Jewish heroism: An award in Russia for Yosef Mendelevitch, Arutz Sheva article, December 31, 2017 [279] Most of the material in this article is based on excerpts from the memoir authored by Filip Muller, entitled, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers. [280] The last section of this narrative is extracted from a Foreword to the memoir authored by Filip Muller, entitled, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers. The Foreword was penned by Professor Yehuda Bauer, Director of the International Center for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. [281] Bamidbar (Numbers) — ‫( במדבר‬14:11) [282] Bamidbar (Numbers) — ‫( במדבר‬14:23) [283] Exodus ‫( —שמות‬2:13) [284] In Hebrew, Am Yisrael Chai, means the Jewish nation is alive and well! [285] Jewish Virtual Library, The Holocaust: The Mufti and the Führer, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/muftihit.html [286] Wikipedia entry, Walther Rauff, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rauff [287] The Epoch Times of April 10, 2006 – p. 1. This journalistic article is based on a study conducted by the director of the Nazi research center of Ludwigsburg, Klaus‑Michael Mallman in cooperation with the Berlin historian, Martin Cueppers. The two historians published their findings in a book titled, Germans, Jews, Genocide: The Holocaust as History and the Present. [288] Jerry Klinger, General Marie-Pierre Koenig and the Jewish Brigade, The Jewish Magazine, November 2009 http://www.jewishmag.co.il/138mag/koenig_jewish_brigade/koenig_jewish_brigade.htm#FOOTNO TE [289] Wikipedia entry, El Alamein, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Alamein [290] Adam Me’Yisrael, Ana Shmor al Ha’Chayim, Eretz Tova Publishing, 2008, p. 215 [291] Sivan Rahav‑Meir, Rabbi Yitzhak Herzog ‒ Three Sentences, https://www.sivanrahavmeir.com/‫הרצוג‬-‫יצחק‬-‫הרב‬/‫היומי‬-‫החלק‬/ [292] Psalms (121:4) [293]

Sara Nelson, Hitler Escaped Nazi Germany And Lived In Argentina And Paraguay Until His Death In 1971, Huffington Post, July 13, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/hitlerescaped-germany-and-lived-in-paraguay-until-his-death-in-1971_uk_5786109ce4b08078d6e78435 [294] Kings II (17:4) [295] The text of Kings II (18:9) clearly states that the Assyrian legions under the leadership of King Shalmaneser besieged the Kingdom of Israel in Samaria. In the next verse ― Kings II (18:10) ― the

text divulges that the Assyrian siege lasted three years, after which the Kingdom of Israel in Samaria was captured. In the subsequent verse ― Kings II (18:11) ― the text recounts that the King of Assyria exiled the people of Israel. However, the text does not reveal the identity of the Assyrian king who exiled the Ten Tribes of the Israelite kingdom. Upon close examination of the context of the three verses ― Kings II (18:9‑11) ― it is quite evident that Shalmaneser is the Assyrian king who besieged Samaria and exiled the vanquished Israelites. However, in his commentary on the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 110b and in Kidushin 72a, Rashi maintains that it was the Assyrian King Sancheriv who exiled the Ten Tribes. The appropriate spot for Rashi to introduce that assertion, would have been in his commentary on Kings II (18:11). Alas, in their commentary on Kings II (18:11), neither Rashi nor any other commentator shed light on the identity of the Assyrian king who exiled the Israelites. In Sanhedrin 94a, the sage Rav attempts to reconcile this paradox by advancing the premise that eight different names were ascribed to Sancheriv, one of which was Shalmaneser. Ralbag in his commentary on Chronicles I (5:26) concurs with the exposition in Sanhedrin 94a. As the dust Settles on this conundrum, the consensus among Jewish commentaries, scholars and historians posits that the Ten Tribes were exiled by the Assyrian King Sancheriv. [296] In Kings II (18:11), the Biblical text does not explicitly mention the “Ten Tribes“ in regard to the Israelites who were exiled by the Assyrians. This clearly leaves room for the possibility that not the entire populations of the Ten Tribes of Israel were exiled. During the three‑year Assyrian siege, many Israelites from Samaria escaped south towards the mountains of Jerusalem and integrated with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. [297] Kings II (19:15-19) [298] Kings II (19:31-34) [299] Wikipedia, entry Sennacherib’s Annals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sennacherib‘s_Annals [300] Kings II (18:13) [301] Kings II (18:14) [302] Kings II (19:35-36) [303] Kings II (19:37) [304] Julie Bosman, After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses, New York Times, March 13, 2012 http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stopsthe-presses/?ref=todayspaper [305] Wikipedia entry, 3D printing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printing [306] A quote from King David in Psalms (122:1); we recite this chapter during our Sabbath and festival morning prayer in the Pesukei De’Zimra portion of the service. [307] The Jewish calendar keeps count of the years since Creation of the world based on the text of Genesis. Currently, in the year 2015 C.E. the count of the Jewish calendar stands at A.M. 5775. In Latin this format is annotated as: A.M. — Anno Mundi, which is loosely translated as, “Year of the World“ or “Year after Creation.“ [308] For the chronology of the reigns of Saul and David, see: Eliezer Shulman, The Sequence of Events in the Old Testament, Israel Defense Ministry Publications, Tel Aviv, 1987, p. 117 [309] Samuels II (7:1) [310] Samuels II, Chapter 6 [311] Samuels II, (7:2) [312] Samuels II, (7:3) [313] Samuel II, Chapter 7

[314]

Samuel II (8:13); Chronicles I (18:12); Psalms (60:2); for a comprehensive purview of the wars King David conducted against Edom, Amalek and a gallery of other nations, see Eliezer Shulman, Mi’Sitrei Amalek, Pri Ha’Aretz Institute, Jerusalem 1986, pp. 105-113 [315] Samuels II (8:14); Chronicles I (18:13) [316] Chronicles I (18:11) [317] Chronicles I, Chapter 28 [318] See Rashi on Psalms (122:1) [319] Psalms (122:1) [320] Deuteronomy (34:10) [321] Samuel I (13:14) [322] Psalms (89: 4-38) [323] This account is in accordance with the chronology depicted in Seder Olam, which was compiled by Rabbi Yose ben Halafta — a 2nd century C.E. Tanna (A Tanna is one of the gallery of Rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah, from approximately 10-220 C.E.) [324] Obtaining a result of 165 years in this calculation may seem misleading. In actuality, turning the clock back 490 years from 70 C.E. would take us to 421 B.C.E. That would clash with Seder Olam, which, as noted above, places the destruction of the First temple in 422 B.C.E. This gap of one year, is reconciled as follows: According to Rashi, Rashbam and Tosafoth, the Second Temple existed 420 full years. Consequently, the destruction of the Second Temple actually occurred in the 421 st year of its existence, which is equivalent to 70 C.E. Accordingly, all the calculations in this essay, which position the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 C.E. are in line with the conventional sources and do not clash with the chronology of Seder Olam. For an exhaustive discussion on this topic, see: Alexander Hool, The Challenge of Jewish History, Mosaica Press, 2014, pp. 117-120 [325] While traditional Jewish sources speak of only four kings who ruled ancient Persia/Medea, general historians cannot seem to agree on the number of kings who ruled Persia during the same era. Their assessment is based on various accounts of ancient Greek historians. Most of these accounts speak of at least eleven Persian kings. Just to cite a few sources: 1.) Encyclopedia Judaica, see entry Persia — eleven Persian kings 2.) Wikipedia — fourteen Persian kings, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Persia 3.) Infoplease website — eleven Persian kings, http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0932248.html 4.) About Education website — thirteen Persian kings http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/persiatimelines/qt/080909TimelineAncientPeria.htm [326] Brad Aaronson, Fixing the History Books, Dr. Chaim S. Heifetz’s Revision of Persian History, see website: http://www.starways.net/lisa/essays/heifetzfix.html [327] Brad Aaronson, Fixing the History Books, Dr. Chaim S. Heifetz’s Revision of Persian History, see website: http://www.starways.net/lisa/essays/heifetzfix.html [328] Mark Twain, Concerning the Jews, Point No. 6, P. 8. [329] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 215 [330] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. xiv [331] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 248 [332] Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 469

[333]

Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 133 Ronald W. Clark, Einstein, The Life and Times, Avon Books, New York, 1984, p. 127 [335] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 231 [336] Job (26:7) [337] See Entry tide in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide [338] Even before Newton’s discoveries, philosophers observed that when a prism is placed in front of a ray of sunlight it projects the seven colors of the rainbow. It never occurred to anyone that this phenomenon means that a ray of white light is comprised of all the colors of the rainbow, rather, they attributed this diffraction as property of the prism itself. Isaac Newton was the first one to prove that the seven colors of the rainbow are indeed embedded in a white ray of sunlight. He demonstrated that not only can a triangular prism separate a beam of sunlight into rainbow colors, but also that, when a second prism projects the diffracted colors together again, white light is once more obtained. Therefore, concluded Newton correctly, that white light is a combination of all the rainbow colors, and the prism separates its colors because the angle by which a beam of light is bent, when it enters glass, differs from one color to the next. [339] Wikipedia, see entry Method of Fluxions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_Fluxions [340] Encyclopedia Britannica, see entry, Fluxion: https://www.britannica.com/topic/fluxion [334]

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Fluxions is Newton’s term for differential calculus. He originally developed the method as early as 1665 to 1667. However, due to his aloof and introverted attitudes, Newton’s historical achievement was not duly brought to the attention of the scientific community. A German mathematician, Gottfried Leibniz, however, published his discovery of differential calculus in 1684, nine years before Newton formally published his fluxions method. Consequently, a bitter and acrimonious battle of the giants ensued over who was the original inventor of the calculus. An incisive investigation of this protracted rivalry clearly established that both share credit for having independently developed the calculus in the 17th century. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/calculus-mathematics) Just for the record, Leibniz, developed his form of calculus independently around 1673 ― seven years after Newton advanced his method of differential calculus, is reflected in surviving documents like the method of fluxions and fluents... from 1666. Though Newton got there first, the more user-friendly calculus notation developed by Leibniz is in use today. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_Fluxions) [342] In the Zohar, Parshat Va’Yera, 117a, it states that at the beginning of the 6th century in the 6th millennium since Creation, the well-springs of wisdom will be opened. The 6th century began just as Newton’s works began to be disseminated. The Zohar derives this insight from the words in Genesis (7:11). The first letter of each word of this passage: ,‫השָּׁמַיִם‬ ַ ‫ארֻבֹּת‬ ֲ ַ ‫ ו‬,‫תְהוֹם רַבָּה‬ ּ ‫מﬠְיְנֹת‬ ַ -‫נִבְקְעו ּ כ ָּל‬ ּ ‫תָחו‬ ּ ְ ‫נִפ‬, can be re‑arranged to spell out ‫המרך נותן‬, which translates as Newton, your Teacher. [343]

Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 216 In Christian churches, holy orders are ordained ministries such as bishop, priest or deacon. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton [345] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 253 [346] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 252 [347] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 252 [348] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, pp. 251252 [349] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 255 [344]

[350]

Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 567 Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 255 [352] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 257 [353] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 521 [354] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 257 [355] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 565 [356] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 257 [357] Isaac Newton, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, Chapter V – A Description of the Temple of Solomon [358] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 54 [359] Isaac Newton, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, Chapter I – Of the Chronology of the First Ages of the Greeks [360] Isaac Newton, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, A Short Chronicle from the First Memory of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. [361] Isaac Newton, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, Chapter I – Of the Chronology of the First Ages of the Greeks [351]

[362]

The Cambridge Ancient History, p. 1

[363]

Born in Greece, Flavius Arrianus was a historian, public servant, military commander and philosopher of the Roman era. His work entitled Anabasis of Alexander is considered the best source on the campaigns of Alexander the Great (Wikipedia, see entry Arrian). [364]

Quintus Curtius Rufus was a Roman historian, author of his only known and only surviving work, Historiae Alexandri Magni – Histories of Alexander the Great, Wikipedia, see entry Quintus Curtius Rufus. [365]

Only after reading Alexander Hool’s work entitled, The Challenge of Jewish History, did I begin to grasp the intricacies and conundrum surrounding the missing 165 years on the Jewish Calendar; and, more importantly ─ the resolution. Certainly, I consider myself very fortunate to have made the acquaintance of Alexander Hool, who responded favorably to my request for guidance and feedback on this complex topic. He closely examined the contents of my essay on the subject and graciously contributed detailed corrections and comments, which eventually ironed out all the wrinkles. When I submitted to him a polished copy of my essay for a final review, Mr. Hool wrote back: Amicus Reb Yitzhak! This is what the world needs to hear. Splendid! All that is left for me to say is: Gratias tibi valde amicus Alexander! [366]

Alexander Hool, The Challenge of Jewish History, Mosaica Press, 2014 Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 29 [368] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 49 [369] Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, The Free Press, New York, 1984, p. 564 [370] Isaac Newton, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended, Chapter I – Of the Chronology of the First Ages of the Greeks [367]

[371]

Isaac Newton, Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended,

see last 2 paragraphs of Chapter VI – Of the Empire of the Persians [372] According to traditional Jewish sources, the first day of Rosh Hashanah is considered the world’s birthday. That is also the 6th Day of Creation — the day in which Adam was created. However, technically speaking, Adam’s birthday marks the beginning of the 2nd year of Creation. The first year of Creation is comprised of the first five Days of Creation — which preceded the birth of Adam — plus the 360 days that preceded Creation. Consequently, the first day of the first year, which preceded the birth of Adam, would be a “phantom“ day that marks the very first Rosh Hashanah. This “phantom“ Rosh Hashanah can only be obtained by extrapolation since it preceded Creation by 360 days. Admittedly, this is by no means a simple concept to grasp. That “phantom“ Rosh Hashanah is also known as Molad BaHaRad. Ultimately, the most important element of this discussion is to keep in mind that, for all practical purposes, the Jewish Calendar in use today keeps count of the years beginning with Molad BaHaRad. For an exhaustive discussion on Molad BaHaRad, see the essay entitled, Calendar – When Does It Start, which is based on entry BaHaRad in the Talmudic Encyclopedia http://strangeside.com/calendar-when-does-it-start/ [373] Samuel I (15:29) [374] Eliezer Shulman, The Sequence of Events in the Old Testament, Israel Defense Ministry Publications, Tel Aviv, 1987, p. 180 [375] Deuteronomy (5:15) [376] A weekly Torah portion in Deuteronomy [377] A small synagogue in Yiddish [378] Mentch in Yiddish means, a decent human being [379] Edited by Hersch Sperling, Midrash Rabah al sefer Bereshit, Eicha Rabba, Pesichta 24, See also, http://www.acheinu.co.il/?p=1571 [380] Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (1885–1954) also known as the Baal Ha’Sulam, Book of Zohar with Sulam Commentary, Volume IV, Commentary on the Book of Exodus, p. 3, verse 8 & p. 4, verse 11 Also see: http://www.breslevcarmiel.com/story/maoralaha/bein_ametzarim.html [381] Psalms (91:15) [382] In Hebrew, Gan Eden means The Garden of Eden otherwise known as Paradise. [383] The Hebrew text appearing on this page is reflected in the English text appearing on the previous 2 pages, which are simply a translation of the Hebrew text.. [384] Eicha Rabba, Pesichta 24, Edited by Hersch Sperling, Midrash Rabah al sefer Bereshit See also: http://acheinu.co.il/?CategoryID=390&ArticleID=1571 [385] Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag (1885–1954) also known as the Baal Ha‑Sulam, Book of Zohar with Sulam Commentary, Volume IV, Commentary on the Book of Exodus, p. 3, verse 8 & p. 4, verse 11 Also see: http://www.breslevcarmiel.com/story/maoralaha/bein_ametzarim.html [386] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_in_seventh-day_churches [387] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventists [388]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_God_(Seventh_Day)#Church_of_God_.28Seventh_Day.29 [389] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Day_Baptists [390] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subbotniks [391] http://www.godward.org/commentary/KW/islam‘s%20Sabbath.htm [392] Exodus Chapter 31 ─ verses 16 & 17

[393]

Sabbath morning Shmoneh Esrei ─ Amidah service Commentary on the Sabbath Amidah, The Complete ArtScroll Siddur, Mesorah Publications, Brooklyn, NY ─ 2007, pp. 424-425 [395] Exodus Chapter 16 ─ verses 4 & 5 [396] Deuteronomy (17,6) [397] Exodus Chapter 20 ─ verses 7 thru 10 [398] Genesis Chapter 2 ─ verses 1 thru 3 [399] Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2004), p. 163. [400] Encyclopedia Judaica: Entry Harry Fischel. [401] Dr. Yitzhak Levine, Glimpses Into American Jewish History (Part 15), June 1, 2006, Jewish Press website: http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18328/Glimpses_Into_American_Jewish_History_(Part_15).ht ml [394]

[402]

Dr. Yitzhak Levine, Glimpses Into American Jewish History (Part 15), June 1, 2006, Jewish Press website: http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/18328/Glimpses_Into_American_Jewish_History_(Part_15).ht ml, [403]

Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism, (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2004), pp. 159‑164.

[404]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workweek_and_weekend

[405]

Rivki Goldfinger, A personal interview with Kobi Arielli, Arutz Sheva, February 28, 2014, http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/271767 [406] Tractate Shabbat 10b [407] Timothy Snyder, The Auschwitz Volunteer, New York Times Book Review, June 22, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/books/review/the-auschwitz-volunteer-by-witold-pilecki.html [408] Most of the material in this chapter is based on content from Wikipedia entry, Witold Pilecki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki [409] An interview with Witold’s daughter, Zofia Pilecka on January 27, 2015, see website, https://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/news-zofia-pilecka-powinnam-byc-na-dzisiejszych-uroczystosciachw,nId,1596902 [410] Yoram Ettinger, Moshe Rabbeinu in the House of Representatives in Washington, Arutz Sheva article from August 30, 2018, https://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/381355 [411] Samuel I (15:29) [412]

In case you have not guessed by now, The Electric Company story is a work of fiction. However, some elements of the story are based on real life experiences. [413] Mark Twain, Concerning the Jews, Harper‘s Magazine, March 1898. [414] Jerusalem Talmud, Shekalim 2a [415] Rabbi Dov Greenberg, Your Personal Philanthropy, Le’Chayim Magazine, Fall 2012 issue [416] Proverbs (10:2, 11:4). [417] Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, Section 34 [418] Rabbi Dov Greenberg, Your Personal Philanthropy, Le’Chayim Magazine, Fall 2012 issue [419] Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 9a

[420]

Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 10a Proverbs 10:2 [422] Rabbi Dov Greenberg, Your Personal Philanthropy, Le’Chayim Magazine, Fall 2012 issue [423] Rabbi Chayim of Tsanz, Darkei Chayim (1962), p. 137 [424] This account was conveyed to the author by Gershon Kleinman. Born in 1928 in the Polish city of Nowy Sacz – Tsanz in Yiddish, Gershon Kleinman spent the war years incarcerated in Bergen‑Belsen, Auschwitz and Buchenwald Concentration Camps, where he was liberated in 1945. Gershon passed away in 1997. See Google Arts & Culture website, https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/buchenwald-germany-inmates-lying-on-bunksin-barracks-after-the-liberation-16-04-1945/CwGfHJSFXKlW-Q [425] In Yiddish, chazer means swine or pork [426] Cheider is a European‑styled Jewish children’s school. [427] Deuteronomy (30:19) [428] In Hebrew, Be’Ezrat Hashem means with the help of God [421]