Welcome! 200 New Olim From France Today!
Bringing Jews together under the umbrella of Eretz Yisrael, Jews who have spent thousands of years dispersed among the nations, is not any easy task. The challenges inherent in “leaving the Dispersal to return Home” to start life anew in our Biblical Homeland is what the Redemption is all about. But not everyone recognizes this as the ikkar (main issue) of our generation:
Bringing Jews together under the umbrella of Eretz Yisrael, Jews who have spent thousands of years dispersed among the nations, is not any easy task. The challenges inherent in “leaving the Dispersal to return Home” to start life anew in our Biblical Homeland is what the Redemption is all about. But not everyone recognizes this as the ikkar (main issue) of our generation:
'DON’T MAKE ALIYA,
ISRAEL MAKES JEWS NON-JEWISH'
The grand Rabbi of the Satmar hassidic group in Williamsburg, New York, Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum – now on a visit to France – told a gathering of Jews not to immigrate to Israel because the state is making their co-religionists non-Jewish.
“Don’t go up [make aliya] to the Land [of Israel], and don’t believe in all the good that they are promising you there, [. . .] It’s very hard, almost impossible to remain a faithful Jew who believes in G–d and his Torah there.”
There are thousands of observant and G–d fearing Jews that keep Shabbat,Yom Tovim, Kashrut, Family Purity etc. And ALL the traditional Jews who keep to the best of their ability, Shabbat, Kashrut etc. There is still hope. That’s better than the 4/5ths of *Americans professing to be Jews!Despite the rebbe’s alarming words, Robert Ejnes – president of the Jewish community in the Boulogne district of Paris and senior figure in the French Jewish community – said he believed almost no French Jews thinking of moving to Israel would pay attention to Teitelbaum’s warnings. “The Satmar Hassidic group doesn’t represent anything in France. Some communities are closer to their idea, but they are peripheral and they are very distant from the core of the community,” (JPost)
Jews are leaving France in record numbers amid rising anti-Semitism and fears of more ISIS-inspired terror attacks. More than 8,000 Jews left France for Israel in 2015 – a rate far higher than anywhere else in Europe (The Independent 2016)
“T[. . .]he Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme. . .is housed in a beautiful mansion built in 1650, which was later turned into a hotel once inhabited by Jewish immigrants from Poland, Romania, and the Ukraine [. . .] largely depopulated during the Nazi occupation but has been rejuvenated in recent years [. . .] features numerous Jewish Nobel prize winners, artists, writers, musicians, politicians, scientists, business people, actors, designers and inventors who have helped make France a worldwide bastion of high culture and innovation. But there is one enlarged photograph in the museum that offers an unforgettable portrait of French collaboration with the Nazis during the occupation of France during World War II. It shows the French police moving a long line of French Jews through the Marais on their way to collection centers that would start their journey towards death in the gas ovens of the concentration camps. “ (Times of Israel: Have Jews ever been safe in France?
In France, it's dangerous to be a Jew
Since the attack on the kosher supermarket in Paris, Jewish institutions in France operate under heavy guard, with commandos outside schools and patrols during prayers at the synagogue; meanwhile, 57% of French Jews want to move to Israel. (YNet news
No one says that making Aliyah is easy; that it does not take hard work, along with strengthening of one’s Emuna and Bitachon.
2017: Breakthrough as Israel Health Ministry Recognizes French Medical Degrees
The ministry previously did not recognize French medical degrees because the structure of higher education in France is different from the Anglo-American model followed in Israel. But, in a letter sent to attorney Meir Buchnik, deputy director of the Kohelet Policy Forum, on Sunday, the ministry said it will recognize students who have completed six years of medical school in France and hold the Diplôme de Fin de Deuxième Cycle Études Médicales (diploma signifying completion of the second cycle of medical studies). JPost
But in America, where the above Rabbi lives, the future looks bleak for Jews:
"The majority of American Jews, to put it bluntly, have repeatedly shown themselves more concerned about transgendered bathrooms than about the lives and safety of the Jews of Israel. (A product of the Emancipation and Enlightenment that Michael Michaeli speaks of.)
"Over four out of five marriages in America today involving a non-Orthodox Jew are intermarriages. And the offspring of those marriages are necessarily far more tenuously connected to the Jewish People than their grandparents and great-grandparents were.
"Worse, American Jewry has thrown in the towel. In response to a 2014 Pew “Portrait of Jewish Americans,” which showed non-Orthodox American Jewry headed rapidly toward extinction, a group of Jewish writers and scholars gathered to consider antidotes. But their suggestions — e.g., increased support of Jewish education and the formation of Jewish families — fell on deaf ears.” (Yonoson Rosenbloom, Mishpacha Magazine, Issue 667, p14)
Ha Roeh, Nir Ben Artzi:
"In the United States, the Muslims will disturb the Jews in a most frightening way, they have trouble and they hate the Jews. It will drag the Muslims into wars and problems with the Jews, they want to hurt and harass them. On earth, it is the Muslims. In Heaven, it is the Holy One, blessed be He, who tells the Jews to leave and go to the Land of Israel.
"There is nothing missing in the Holy Land of Israel, nothing; everything is good. There is a livelihood for everyone, real estate will not be stopped, lots, shops and roads, there should be twenty million Jews in the near future. There is another hundred million Jews in the world, in all kinds of places. When Messiah is divulged [made known], he will send people to bring them."
3 comments:
Just preparing to make Aliyah is an exhausting test, one I am currently undergoing right now. But despite all the challenges my husband and I are making Aliyah September 17th of this year. We are so excited to leave this spiritual quicksand and finally go home to live among our people.
~Emunah
Emunah, you should be blogging about your experience preparing for Aliyah and then your arrival. In the beginning its so exciting and one can feel a high that lasts for a while. Mine lasted a couple of years, until a difficult time. No matter how difficult, one can get through it. As I did. I no longer have that exhilaration from the first couple years, but when I want new arrivals and the excitement, I remember my first days. The challenges of every day living, wherever one is, but more so in Eretz Yisrael, brings one down to earth. But always that aliya excitement is with you, in your memories.
Oh, yes, I also remember preparing for the big event; and yes it was “hard work”, but later on it fades, like giving birth, but now you have the baby.
Much of all this has been obvious for the longest time. The Satmar never accepted the State of Israel and in a way, there's logic to their thinking, especially of late with the forcing of the draft for their youth. The IDF does have a reputation of corrupting the youth, especially these days. We know the leftism of its leadership. Also, no surprise with much of American Jewry, as most are so unaffiliated and have no inkling what Israel is about or its connection to the Jewish people, r'l. The reform has all of a sudden awakened to the existence of the Jewish state inasmuch as Israel has, unfortunately, become a modern mini version of the U.S. Just not too long ago, there was no mention of Jerusalem and Zion, etc., all omitted from their siddurim(?).
Traditional American Jews, on the other hand, do have a love for Eretz Yisrael but many have good reasons for not having made aliyah yet. That will come. Life is not simple. Believe it's all part of the Geulah process.
Post a Comment