Year: 2022

Travelling Late Erev Shabbos Means Forcing the Driver to Desecrate Shabbos!

Slabodka Rosh Yeshiva Blasts Those Who Travel Late On Friday, Forcing Drivers To Desecrate Shabbos

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Rabbi Dov Landau, the head of the Slabodka yeshiva in Bnei Brak, criticized those who travel on public transport late on Fridays and before holidays, since they are causing the secular drivers to desecrate the Shabbos.

In a talk given this week, Rabbi Landau said that it is better even to stay home without Shabbos meals rather than cause a driver to desecrate the Shabbos due to his arriving at his destination just before Shabbos.

.”If people find that they are late for the trip – they should stay at home even though they will miss a Shabbos ‘Sheva Brachos’ or other family event, ” Rabbi Landau stressed. “Indeed, they have challah and wine at home and that is enough, so long as they do not leave late and cause, G-d forbid, a Shabbos desecration for the driver,” he said.

Rabbi Lando related: “One of the bus drivers recently told me that he wants to keep Shabbos and wanted to drop people off at an early stop so that he could get home on time. But the passengers insisted on driving to the end of the route.

“The driver begged in tears that he wants to keep Shabbos and that he would not be able to return home on time, but was sadly ignored. The driver told me in tears that ‘the haredim did not allow me to keep Shabbat.’

“Some people know how to shout ‘Shabbos’ ‘Shabbos’ on the streets for those who desecrate Shabbat, but those who drive late on Friday and cause the desecration of Shabbos for a driver, ‘Shabbos’ needs to be shouted at them.

“Taking in Shabbos early is a big deal, and if people are early in bringing in Shabbos, then all this will be avoided. Just as it is forbidden to desecrate Shabbos, it is forbidden to cause someone else to desecrate Shabbos.

“Do not shout ‘Shabbos’ only when the mayor institutes public transportation on Shabbat, for when people travel late [on Friday] they are themselves instituting public transportation on Shabbos, and they are not being ‘haredim’ (fearful) towards the word of G-d,” Rabbi Lando concluded.

From VIN News, here.

Avraham Rivkas: Riddle Solved!

Avraham Rivkas

הא לחמא עניא… השתא הכא, לשנה הבאה בארעא דישראל. השתא עבדי, לשנה הבאה בני חורין.

We wondered in the past how to read this word in the Haggada: Is it Hashta (colloquial: now) or Hashata (this year)?

So, here’s the Rambam’s Nusach:

בבהילו יצאנו ממצרים. הא לחמא עניא דאכלו אבהתנא בארעא דמצרים: כל דכפין ייתי וייכול, כל דצריך לפסח ייתי ויפסח. שתא הכא, לשנה הבאה בארעא דישראל. שתא הדא עבדי, לשתא דאתיא בני חורי.

Problem solved then; HASHATA it is (unlike the Maharal).

And, as I wrote last time:

Plenty more can be said on the dating and authorship of the various segments of the Haggada, and on the mixing of Hebrew and Aramaic and seeming repetition of this specific paragraph. Refer to “Iyun Tefillah” as well.

Have something to say? Write to Avraham Rivkas: CommentTorah@gmail.com

This Looks Like a Great Chol Hamo’ed Book for Teens (Mom??)

My Mother-in-Law: Jewish Heroine and Nazi Killer

POSTED ON  UPDATED ON 

This was published on Aish.com

It was a daunting assignment: speaking to 120 eighth grade girls about the Holocaust in the last hour of the last day of their school year. Compounding my challenge, it was gloriously sunny outside. The girls would be anxious to take leave for their summer vacation.

In my favor, I was going to tell them a remarkable story: that of my mother-in-law, Rachel Blum, may her soul rest in peace – a story I have told to spell-bound audiences and have recently published in book form under the title Nothing Bad Ever Happens.

I told these teenage girls that my mother-in-law was roughly their age during the war years, beginning in June 1941 when the Nazis invaded her town, until July 1944 when the Russians liberated Lublin where she had been hiding with a non-Jewish family.

Then I dove into the story, which is truly incredible and gripping – including a Hollywood-worthy climax as Rachel rides in the caboose of a speeding train transporting a thousand SS soldiers to Germany. Fearful an SS officer is about to discover she is Jewish, she convinces the conductor – Ivan Roluk, husband of the non-Jewish couple who took her in – to overturn the train by speeding up around a sharp bend and blowing the horn just beforehand to allow her and his family to jump. (It worked, the family survived and many Nazis were killed; 15-year-old Rachel was responsible for the death of more SS Nazis in one shot than the combined efforts of all the legendary fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising!)

Despite the dramatic nature of that story, I will save the details for the book and instead share another story, one which is in some ways even more incredible.

Rachel’s childhood town, Ludmir, was home to about 22,000 Jews before the war. On Rosh Hashanah 1942, the Nazis, with the help of local collaborators, began marching columns of bedraggled Jews to a spot outside town and machine-gunned them to death into open pits. Between 15,000 and 18,000 Jews lost their lives that way. And Ludmir was just one of countless Jewish towns in Eastern Europe; all told, some million-and-a-half Jews suffered a similar fate under Nazi domination (even before the gas chambers started operating).

Continue reading…

From Yaakov Astor’s Blog, here.