Highly recommended by rabbi Nir is that he is of the opinion that all Jews should come and live in Israel. Have a look at the interview.
Watch Part of Live Broadcast with Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi
Maimonides in Mishnah Torah: "If a king will arise from the House of David who occupies himself with the study of theTorah and the performance of the MItzvos like David his ancestor, in accordance with the Written Law and the Oral Law; and if he will compel all of Israel to follow (the Torah) and strengthen its observance; and if he will fight the wars of G'd; than he is assumed to be the Messiah. If he does these things and is successful, and he builds the Temple on its place, and gathers in the exiles of Israel, then he is definately the Messiah."
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Soap of Jewish Victims from Holocaust
RIF Soap Handed To Misaskim For Burial – Rabbonim To Pasken What Should Be Done With It
(Tuesday, January 25th, 2011)
At Misaskim, unexpected and sad realities of life are unfortunately a daily occurrence. But last week, Misaskim was presented with an even more perplexing question than usual: what to do with a bar of soap that many Holocaust survivors believe contains human remains? This rare bar of soap, engraved with the letters RIF, was recently discovered by the Mermelstein family while cleaning up the apartment of their aging uncle, Yosef Weinberger.
Weinberger was a young adolescent who survived during the Holocaust by hiding in bunkers. Of a family of 13, only Yosef and 3 other siblings survived. However, it wasn’t only the chilling memories of his youth that shadowed Yosef each day. Tucked away in a faded green suitcase, he kept various items that were a testament to the inferno he survived. Among these objects was a tattered She’eris Hapleitah Siddur, books from the war era, legal immigration documents, and various wartime letters. Mr. Meremelstein, Yosef’s nephew, was startled when he also discovered a little package carefully wrapped in brown paper that contained a small, brownish, numbered bar of RIF soap.
Many Holocaust survivors believe that the RIF soap was made from the fat of Jewish victims during the Holocaust R’L. They have been told that RIF is the acronym for Reines Juden Fett. In fact, Nuremburg Trial judges, after accepting the testimony of a Polish national, Sigmund Mazur, ruled that the soap does indeed contain human remains,. Mazur told the judges that during the war he had worked as a laboratory assistant for Rudolf Spanner, a German professor, at the Gdansk Anatomical Institute. Mazur related that he had been involved in the production of soap from human fat.
In 2006, Poland’s IPN announced that it had completed an inquiry that confirmed that the soap had been rendered from human fat. Professor Andrzej Stolyhwo, who conducted the study for the IPN, obtained a sample of the soap that was presented at the Nuremberg trials and tested its contents. Stolyhwo declared that his study proves that the soap was made between 1945 and 1946 under the direction of Professor Spanner.
However, today it is universally accepted by historians and Holocaust experts that only a small amount of soap was produced by Spanner and that the soap was never mass produced. They explain that RIF stands for Reichsstelle Fur Industrielle Fettversorgung (Reich Center for Industrial Fat Provisioning). Yad V’shem, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, and other prestigious Holocaust museums all agree that since no hard evidence was ever uncovered that the soap was produced from human victims, it was most likely a cruel rumor that the Nazis spread in order to psychologically torture Jewish inmates.
Victims in the concentration camps were taunted by the SS and told that they would soon be turned into soap. Survivors, who had witnessed unspeakable horrors, firmly believed this to be true. Immediately after the war, public levayas were held in Austria, France, Germany, Romania, and Israel during which bars of RIF soap were buried. Metzeivos were erected at the burial sites memorializing those who were murdered by the Nazis and who had never received a proper burial.
Misaskim is currently consulting with its rabbinical authority to determine the appropriate way of treating the RIF soap, and whether it needs to be buried. It is Misaski’s sincerest hope — whatever the outcome — that this incident should serve to be m’kadeish shem Shamayim all those who perished in the Holocaust and who were never brought to kvuras Yisroel.
From The Yeshiva World
(Tuesday, January 25th, 2011)
At Misaskim, unexpected and sad realities of life are unfortunately a daily occurrence. But last week, Misaskim was presented with an even more perplexing question than usual: what to do with a bar of soap that many Holocaust survivors believe contains human remains? This rare bar of soap, engraved with the letters RIF, was recently discovered by the Mermelstein family while cleaning up the apartment of their aging uncle, Yosef Weinberger.
Weinberger was a young adolescent who survived during the Holocaust by hiding in bunkers. Of a family of 13, only Yosef and 3 other siblings survived. However, it wasn’t only the chilling memories of his youth that shadowed Yosef each day. Tucked away in a faded green suitcase, he kept various items that were a testament to the inferno he survived. Among these objects was a tattered She’eris Hapleitah Siddur, books from the war era, legal immigration documents, and various wartime letters. Mr. Meremelstein, Yosef’s nephew, was startled when he also discovered a little package carefully wrapped in brown paper that contained a small, brownish, numbered bar of RIF soap.
Many Holocaust survivors believe that the RIF soap was made from the fat of Jewish victims during the Holocaust R’L. They have been told that RIF is the acronym for Reines Juden Fett. In fact, Nuremburg Trial judges, after accepting the testimony of a Polish national, Sigmund Mazur, ruled that the soap does indeed contain human remains,. Mazur told the judges that during the war he had worked as a laboratory assistant for Rudolf Spanner, a German professor, at the Gdansk Anatomical Institute. Mazur related that he had been involved in the production of soap from human fat.
In 2006, Poland’s IPN announced that it had completed an inquiry that confirmed that the soap had been rendered from human fat. Professor Andrzej Stolyhwo, who conducted the study for the IPN, obtained a sample of the soap that was presented at the Nuremberg trials and tested its contents. Stolyhwo declared that his study proves that the soap was made between 1945 and 1946 under the direction of Professor Spanner.
However, today it is universally accepted by historians and Holocaust experts that only a small amount of soap was produced by Spanner and that the soap was never mass produced. They explain that RIF stands for Reichsstelle Fur Industrielle Fettversorgung (Reich Center for Industrial Fat Provisioning). Yad V’shem, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, and other prestigious Holocaust museums all agree that since no hard evidence was ever uncovered that the soap was produced from human victims, it was most likely a cruel rumor that the Nazis spread in order to psychologically torture Jewish inmates.
Victims in the concentration camps were taunted by the SS and told that they would soon be turned into soap. Survivors, who had witnessed unspeakable horrors, firmly believed this to be true. Immediately after the war, public levayas were held in Austria, France, Germany, Romania, and Israel during which bars of RIF soap were buried. Metzeivos were erected at the burial sites memorializing those who were murdered by the Nazis and who had never received a proper burial.
Misaskim is currently consulting with its rabbinical authority to determine the appropriate way of treating the RIF soap, and whether it needs to be buried. It is Misaski’s sincerest hope — whatever the outcome — that this incident should serve to be m’kadeish shem Shamayim all those who perished in the Holocaust and who were never brought to kvuras Yisroel.
From The Yeshiva World
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Behind the scenes look at conception
On the night that a couple have intimate relations, God calls the Angel of Pregnancy and informs him that Mr. A is about to fertilize the egg of Mrs. A. He tells him to go and gather the sperm in a cup and to disperse it on a threshing floor into 365 parts. The angel does this and brings it back to God whereupon the angel asks, “What will become of this drop of sperm?” Immediately God decrees whether it will be strong or weak, long or short, male or female, ignorant or wise, rich or poor, but concerning righteous or wicked God does not decree as it is up to each person to choose.
Next, God hints to the Angel of the Spirits to bring him a certain holy soul who resides along with many other holy souls in the Sanctuary of Souls in the afterworld. The soul appears before God and bows down before Him. God tells him to enter the drop of sperm whereupon the soul immediately responds by saying: “My God, I am satisfied in the world that I have been in since the day I was created, so please do not make me enter this impure droplet since I am totally pure and holy.” God responds by saying: “The world which you are about to enter is a better place than the one you are coming from.
Furthermore, when I created you, I had in mind for you to enter this particular droplet of sperm.” Immediately God escorts the soul into the droplet, whereupon the Angel of Pregnancy comes and implants it in the mother’s womb, commissions two other angels to guard it, and they place a candle on the droplet’s head. The droplet then sees things from the beginning of time until the end of the world. In the morning, the angel escorts him to the Garden of Eden and shows him all of the righteous people sitting in their full glory, and says to the droplet: “Do you know what sort of soul was in those righteous people?” The spirit says “No.” The angel then points to one of them and says: “That particular one had a soul very similar to yours, and if you lead your life on earth as they did, after moving into the afterlife, you shall join these righteous ones in the glory in which you now see them. However, if you choose not to follow their way, you will end up in a place that I will show you later.”
That night the angel takes the soul to visit Gehinom (Hell) and shows him wicked people who are constantly being beaten by the Angels of Destruction and proceeds to tell him: “This fire will be your fate if you do not follow in the Almighty’s ways. The next day the angel takes the soul on a tour of every step he will take during his lifetime on earth, where he will live, where he will be buried, and again shows him the good world and the bad one.
That night he returns the spirit to the mother’s womb, whereupon he remains for the next nine months. At the end of this period, the same angel appears and says, “Your time has arrived to come out.” The soul still does not want to come out but the angel reminds him that against your will you shall come into this better world. As he is being born, the soul begins to cry because of the world he is leaving behind. The angel strokes him under the nose and extinguishes the candle above its head, whereupon the soul promptly forgets all that he was shown.
(Source: Yellinek, A. [1967]. Sefer Bet Midrash Cheder Rishon. Third Edition, Jerusalem) Dr. Bernie Kastner's blog text to click on
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Wednesday, January 19, 2011
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