Yom HaShoah

by Rabbi Yehudah Prero [excerpted from here]

Shoah is the Hebrew word for “whirlwind.” It is the term used to described the conflagration that swept up six million Jewish souls between 1938 and 1945. A war was waged against the Jews in which unspeakable atrocities were perpetrated against a defenseless people. Men and women, young and old alike, were butchered at the hands of the accursed Nazis, may their name be eradicated for all time. Every year, on Yom HaShoah, we remember the martyrs who sanctified the name of G-d in the camps, the ghettos, and in the gas chambers.

However, we find that many Rabbis, survivers [sic] of the Holocaust, do not refer to it as the “Shoah”. Rather, they use the term “Churban Europa.” In fact, they commemorate the destruction not on Yom HaShoah, but rather on Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av. Why do they do this?

While Hitler may have been the last great anti-Semite to plot to destroy us, he was hardly the first. As we read each Purim, Haman actually came just as close to genocide, but through a series of miracles no mass murder took place. Over the intervening millenia, thousands and millions have perished during two conquests of Israel and the destruction of two Holy Temples, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Chmielnicki Cossack Pogroms – a series of one destruction (Churban) after another that have befallen the Jewish people.

Therefore it is important that we recognize that events over the last 2000 years, though much further from our recollection, are just as much a part of the tragic element of Jewish history. When the Second Temple was destroyed, only swords were available – those who wished to murder us did not have modern tools of mass destruction at their disposal – and yet they still killed hundreds of thousands. In addition, that destruction reduced us from a sovereign nation to a scattered and lonely people, setting the stage for the other tragedies that followed. We still await restoration of a rebuilt Jerusalem, the City of Peace, may it come speedily in our days. None of this reduces the mind-bending tragedy of 50 years ago – but nor should we be guilty of forgetting those other tragedies that came before.

May the merits of six million martyrs rise before G-d, and may their merits – and those of the survivors – succeed in bringing an end to our long dispersion. May we see the building of the Third Temple, speedily in our days, Amen.

Persecution of the Day

via CBN News.

If you live in London, and you want to build the largest Mosque in Western Europe, that’s great. But if you want to build the largest church, forget about it.

London’s Kingsway International Christian Church, the largest church in Europe, no longer has a permanent home. Nor is there much prospect of it finding one in London.

This congregation of as many as 10,000 was forced off its property to make room for the 2012 London Olympics.

“KICC is the largest church in Western Europe, and I think that ought to have been celebrated,” Ashimolowo said. “Rather, I believe that we were victims of the fact that it was a Christian church that has succeeded. The megachurch growth of the large church is so unknown to them. In fact, they call KICC “the American style church led by a Nigerian pastor,” he added.

Alan Craig, a Christian city councilman running for London mayor, calls it “a perfect illustration” of the City of London’s “prejudice against Christianity.”

So while London city government has literally told the largest church in the city to take a hike, it’s still pushing the construction of the largest mosque in Europe.

Not far from Kingsway’s former church property is land that has been set aside for a huge mosque complex for as many as 70,000 Muslims. The City of London wants it to be an integral part of the 2012 London Olympic site. This despite the fact that the so-called mega mosque is widely controversial, because it is being built by a secretive group called Tablighi Jamaat, which some have tied to terror [e.g. the October 2002 Portland Seven and the September 2002 Lackawanna Six cases in the United States, as well as the August 2006 plot to bomb airliners en route from London to the United States, the July 7, 2005, London Underground bombings and the July 2007 attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, Scotland – GdB].

“Mayor Livingstone is actively courting the Muslim vote. That’s what he’s doing. I also think our secular authorities are actively writing Christianity out of the script,” Craig said.