King Louis IX of France forced the Jewish communities under his control to give up their copies of the Talmud and in 1242 had 24 cartloads worth of Jewish books burned in the square in front of the Louvre in Paris. For his efforts, the Church canonized him as a saint in 1297.

One of the surest patterns in Jewish history is that Jews who convert to Christianity become the worst enemies of the Jews.

Around 1240, a Parisian Jew named Nicholas Donin, who had converted to Christianity, convinced the king of France, Louis IX, that he would be able to prove the truth of Christianity through the Talmud. This is the same claim that Pablo Christiani, another converted Jew, would make in Spain in 1267 in his famous debate with Nachmanides.

The Church was always partial to converted Jews. Donin was very ambitious and had visions of rising high in the Church. Convincing the authorities that you could prove Christianity through the most authoritative book unique to the Jews was a sure path up the ladder to success in the Church for a Jewish convert. By winning such an argument, all the Jews would convert it was believed.

King Louis’s actions were not lost on future generations. Wherever the Nazis came to power they burned Jewish books (and later Jewish people). For instance, the great library of the academy in Lublin, Poland, which had over 55,000 volumes and was one of the great Jewish libraries of the world, was burned by the Nazis immediately upon their arrival in Lublin.

Louis ordered the rabbi of Paris, Rabbeinu Yechiel — mentioned many times in the Tosafos commentary of the Talmud — to debate Donin. All of the debates in Europe were losing propositions for the Jews. If they won they lost and if they lost they lost. There was no freedom of speech. Only Nachmanides succeeded in winning the right to free speech, and even after he won the debate he and his community faced intensified persecution for his efforts. In all other debates, one could say nothing that would be critical of the Church or Christianity, effectively making it not a debate at all.

Nevertheless, Rabbeinu Yechiel made such a skillful defense that the king agreed that it was true that one could not prove Christianity through the Talmud. Nevertheless, he said that the Talmud was an insult to the Christianity.

Therefore, in 1242, he ordered the burning of 24 cartloads of priceless Hebrew manuscripts. We have to bear in mind that in the Middle Ages each book to be hand-written. The Talmud alone is, in today’s format, about 2,300 pages. They wrote using quill pens and manufactured ink on parchment (or vellum paper that then began to be produced). The pure physical labor of sitting and writing that volume of words alone boggles the mind.

The 24 cartloads amounted to some 12,000 volumes. Louis had all the copies of the Talmud he could get his hand on collected and burned them. For his efforts, the Church canonized him as a saint in 1297. (He is the famous Louis after which the American city and baseball Cardinals are called after.)

That event effectively marked the end of the Jewish community in France. The king followed it up with an expulsion of the Jews from France — after despoiling them, and taking away their money and property, of course. The Jewish community in France never really recovered. It never again became the great seat of learning or even the great seat of Jewish tradition as it was in the 11^th through 13^th centuries.

Today, the majority of Jews in France are Sephardic Jews who came from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco within the last century. It is not a scholarly or a particularly strong Jewish community. It certainly never again looked like Rashi’s community, after they burned the Talmud.

Nazi officials in attendance at the opening of "The Eternal Jew" exhibition in Munich, view a segment entitled, "Jewish dress was a warning against racial defilement." To the left is a segment entitled, "Usury and the fencing of goods were always their privilege."

Barbara Tuchman, in her book, A Distant Mirror, has an excellent chapter about the difficulties of the Church during the “calamitous” Middle Ages. In short, the core problem was that the Church set up ideals that had no relationship with reality.

For example, the Church said celibacy was an ideal. The higher person needs no sexual life whatsoever, it claimed. It was very hard to sell that, especially to the medieval world, which was much more filled with licentiousness than many people realize.

The Church was always on the side of peace. The ideal is to “turn the other cheek” and “the meek shall inherit the face of the Earth.” Yet, the Pope had the largest standing army in Europe. The Church rarely, if ever, turned the other cheek. (It was your cheek that had to turn, not theirs.)

This disparity between the ideal and the real was not lost upon the populace. In it lay the seeds of the eventual destruction of the Church.

One of the unrealistic ideals had a direct impact upon the Jews: a strict ban against taking interest. In a purely agrarian economic system it is conceivable to exist without charging interest. However, once Europe discovered that money could be printed it changed the economy of Europe forever, and it was no longer possible to run a sophisticated commercial system without interest.

It was Marco Polo who brought the idea of paper money back from the Far East to Europe. Indeed, paper money is one of the greatest discoveries in the history of civilization. Until then, one had to carry his money around with him — and there was a limit how much one could carry. There were only so many cows and sheep, gold and silver, one could bring with him to the market. However, when paper was used to represent wealth it was literally a life-changing invention. It was nothing less than the turning point of the economic system of the Western world.

A businessman once described economics as follows: There is one box that gets shipped around the world, one person selling it and another buying it. Then the buyer ships it to the next location and becomes a seller, making a profit. If anyone stops the box and opens it the business is finished. You have to keep it moving.

To a certain extent that describes modern economics. The perception of value is every bit as important – even more important – than the actuality. It is what keeps the box moving.

Moving the box creates buyers and sellers — and buyers rely on borrowing money. In a system that forbids lending on interest the box does not move.

And the Catholic Church forbade usury. Without the ability to lend with interest there would be no trade, no merchandise, no commerce.

That was where the Jew came in and solved the problem for Christian Europe. Both the Church and the nobleman needed an intermediary. Since the Jew was going straight to Hell anyway, according to Church doctrine, why not use him while he was on this Earth.

Consequently, the nobleman lent money to the Jew at 25% interest and the Jew in turn lent it to the merchants or common people at 33-40% interests, which were normal rates in the Middle Ages.

It was a catch-22, however. The non-Jews forced the Jews into being the middlemen in usurious contracts, but since it was against the law the Jews could always be prosecuted for doing so. Inevitably, there would be kings who spent more than they could get and who were always borrowing. They also needed Jews to borrow from. When the time came to call a moratorium on one’s debts, and one did not have the money, an easy solution was to kick the Jews out or kill them.

That happened with regularity. Spain was the place where this pattern first took form.

In 1948 the Jordanian Legion captured the entire Old City of Jerusalem and leveled the Churva synagogue together with all of the other Jewish houses of worship in the Old City. The Jordanian commander boasted that he had permanently ended a millennium of Jewish presence in the Old City with the destruction of the Churva synagogue. However, as all of the enemies of Israel have been prone to do over the ages, he spoke too soon.

In 1701 a number of Eastern European Jews risked all to return to Jerusalem and join the small Jewish community then living in the Holy City in humiliating and dire circumstances.

They were led by the great sage and saint Rabbi Yehuda Hachasid. He died almost immediately upon his arrival in Jerusalem, but his followers persisted and built a modest synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. That synagogue was later destroyed and was reestablished modestly. It was known as the Churva (the ruins) named after Rabbi Yehuda Hachasid.

With the advent of a larger immigration of Eastern European Ashkenazic Jews to Jerusalem in the nineteenth century it was rebuilt again, this time in a much larger and more imposing fashion. Its imposing dome and soaring window arches became the landmark of the time for Jewish Jerusalem.

Much of the funds necessary to build such an imposing structure were donated by Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris, the premier Jewish philanthropist of that time. The Churva synagogue became the official home of all Jewish functions in Jerusalem in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Chief Rabbis of the then Palestinian Jewish yishuv were installed there as well as the welcoming Sabbath ceremony for the first British High Commissioner for Palestine, the Jew, Sir Herbert Samuel. Theodor Herzl and Baron Rothschild visited the synagogue as did numerous other dignitaries, both Jewish and non-Jewish. Its towering dome became the symbol of Jewish presence in Jerusalem for over eighty years.

In 1948 the Jordanian Legion captured the entire Old City of Jerusalem and leveled the Churva synagogue together with all of the other Jewish houses of worship in the Old City. The Jordanian commander boasted that he had permanently ended a millennium of Jewish presence in the Old City with the destruction of the Churva synagogue.

However, as all of the enemies of Israel have been prone to do over the ages, he spoke too soon.

Nineteen years later the Jordanians were driven out of the Old City in the Six-Day War that they initiated into Jerusalem and a new bustling and vibrant Jewish quarter was rebuilt in toto – except for the Churva synagogue. A window arch of the building was restored and rose above the city as a reminder of the great synagogue that once stood there.

After over forty years of neglect, world Jewry, especially from Ukraine and Eastern Europe, rallied to the cause of rebuilding the Churva synagogue. The project was successfully completed and on March 15, 2010, the grand rededicated synagogue was opened for prayer and meeting.

The building is more magnificent than ever, though it is a closely accurate reconstruction of the building that was erected in 1864. It glistens with majesty and is suffused with Jewish nostalgia and pride. Its rededication ceremonies were emotional and inspiring. Just as the Jewish people has risen from the ashes of the last century so has the Churva synagogue.

Naturally, the reconstruction and rededication of the Churva synagogue does not sit well with our Palestinian Arab cousins. All sorts of hysterical pronouncements that we were about to destroy the al-Aqasa mosque were publicized throughout the Moslem world. The king of Jordan, who certainly knows better and whose grandfather’s army destroyed the Churva, described its rededication as a provocation. And his country is officially at peace with Israel! It is the presence of Jews in Jerusalem that so disturbs the Arabs.

The rededication of the Churva synagogue serves as a reminder to the eternal Jewish connection to Jerusalem. It declares the Jewish steadfastness to remain and build and thrive in its eternal capital city no matter what.

The disaster of 9/11 caused people to pray who previously were not counted among those that pray regularly.

Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)

During the First Temple it is not clear if the Jewish people had synagogues or not, because the whole system was Temple-oriented. What did they do when they did not go to the Temple, which was most of the year? And if they did have synagogues what did they do there? For example, much of the prayer service today is made up of the chapters in Psalms. What did they do before King David?

Nevertheless, most authorities believe that some type of community services did exist.  However, even these opinions agree that at these services likely included little more than the paragraphs of the Shema (the declaration beginning, “Hear O’ Israel…”).

The need for formalized prayer only first arose when the Jews went into exile in Babylon. The missing experience of community that went part and parcel with the three-times-a-year pilgrimage to the Temple (for Passover, Shavuos, and Succos) left a vacuum. Without the Temple, essential nutrients in the peoples’ religious diet were lacking. Therefore, the leaders in Babylon codified a system of prayer that substituted the Temple service. They based this on the prophetic verse, “Our lips will substitute for sacrifices” (Hosea 14:3).

When the Jews returned from Babylon to the Land of Israel and rebuilt the Temple they brought along with them the prayers they had learned in Babylon. The Men of the Great Assembly ordered, edited, and formulated the words of the Amidah, the centerpiece of every service, as well as its surrounding prayers. This arrangement continued through the entire Second Temple era and remains today.

Although the individual synagogue system was inferior, it successfully compensated for the shift in Jewish life away from the centralized Temple system. Now, with the stamp of approval from the Men of the Great Assembly, Jewish prayer became possible in each community, in each individual, no matter how far away he/she was. Instituting prayer this way not only substituted for the Temple service but compensated for the loss of center in Jewish life.

True devotion in prayer, otherwise known as kavanat halev, “devotion of the heart,” is a great challenge to maintain on a regular daily basis. But it is this devotion that allows our hearts to open up to ourselves and to our Creator. It can bring people the true inspiration and serenity of spirit that is essential to living a successful and meaningful life.

One of the obligations of Jewish living is daily prayer. The rabbis described true prayer in terms of kavanat halev, “devotion of the heart.” Such devotion is a great challenge to actually achieve and an even greater challenge to somehow maintain on a regular daily basis. But it is this devotion that allows our hearts to open up to ourselves and to our Creator and can bring people the true inspiration and serenity of spirit that is an essential ingredient and result of true prayer.

Surveys regarding individual prayer in the United States reveal that Jews are the one religious group in the United States that does not pray regularly. Except for the Orthodox section of Jewish society in America, prayer is almost unknown to ninety percent of American Jews.

Even though American Jewry is pretty much organized according to synagogue and temple affiliation, when it comes to prayer, most of the membership of these synagogues and temples are perennial no-shows. And not only are they no-shows as far as public prayer services are concerned, but the concept of private, regular, individual prayer is almost non-existent in this section of Jewish society. The secular Jew, who is non-observant of Jewish traditional practices, and most of all, painfully ignorant of any knowledge of Judaism, its core ideas and value system, its history and struggle for survival, is therefore almost unable to pray. The entire concept of prayer has become irrelevant in modern Jewish secular life. Therefore, even the three-day-a-year synagogue attendee is rapidly disappearing from the American Jewish scene. In spite of all the public claims to the contrary by organization honchos, the synagogues and temples are steadily losing membership and influence in non-Orthodox Jewish life in America. Even bar and bat mitzvahs, celebrated in synagogues and temples, are declining in popularity. This alienation from participation in public and/or private prayer is a very sad situation. It does not bode well for the future strength of the American Jewish community.

The truth is that prayer, for someone who is not accustomed or trained to pray, can be a terrifying and wrenching experience. Enormous pressure caused by changed circumstances in a person’s life, circumstances that may be internal or external, must be exerted on such a non-prayer to bring that person to pray.

The current mood of apprehension and fear that grips much of the Western world — especially since the disaster of 9/11 — has, according to many published surveys, led to an upsurge in the participation of individuals in public and private prayer. Aside from the popular axiom that there are no atheists in the foxhole, the current turn to prayer may have a much deeper meaning. For prayer is not only an appeal to the Divine to deliver us from evil and pain. It is just as importantly an attempt at self-discovery and an opportunity for rethinking previously long held opinions and lifestyles. For prayer allows one to read words that transcend current circumstances and to speak to the eternal nature of human life and its relationship to the Creator.

It is not that God requires our prayers. Rather, prayer strengthens our ability to confront ourselves and achieve an inner serenity and a necessary balance to our lives and emotions. It is never too late to pray and never too early to begin.

“In a century that also featured Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedung, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and other such mass murderers, Josef Stalin still remains the champion killer of all the twentieth century and thus probably of all time.”

Stalin died suddenly on the first day of the Hebrew month of Adar (Adar I), in the middle of perpetrating the “Doctor’s Plot,” a conspiracy to have prominent Jews arrested, sent to Gulag, or executed. His death effectively ended the plot and the new Soviet leadership admitted that it was entirely fabricated.

Robert Conquest is one of my favorite authors. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute in California. He is an historian, poet, literary critic, political writer and the author of a number of marvelous books about the dreadful years of Stalin’s rule over the Soviet Union. One of them, The Great Terror, depicts Stalin’s reign of terror in the 1930’s that swallowed up old of his old Bolshevik comrades plus millions of other hapless Russians.

Another work of his, The Harvest of Sorrow – The Great Famine – details the fate of the millions of Russian peasants killed by him through starvation and other means in the 1920’s as part of his mad Marxist scheme of agricultural collectivization. Conquest writes with insight, clarity, brevity and the necessary sardonic view that allows one to read on without retching in disgust at the barbarity of the “progressive, peace-loving” forces headed by Stalin. Only by reading these books, can one begin to appreciate the Divine gift granted to the rest of humanity by Stalin’s unexpected death in 1953. In a century that also featured Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedung, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and other such mass murderers, Josef Stalin still remains the champion killer of all the twentieth century and thus probably of all time.

Only by reading these books, can one begin to appreciate the Divine gift granted to the rest of humanity by Stalin’s unexpected death in 1953

Conquest also wrote a biography of Stalin entitled Stalin –Breaker of Nations. Conquest details Stalin’s virulent anti-Semitism.

Stalin, from his earliest days as a seminary student in Tiflis, hated “yids.” In 1906 he stated that the hated Mensheviks were a “Jewish organization” but that the Bolsheviks were a truly Russian group. He therefore, ‘in jest’ recommended a pogrom against the Mensheviks.

But it was not until after Hitler’s defeat in World War II and the beginning of the Cold War that this latent hatred turned into a public obsession. As Conquest writes:

Stalin’s attitude [towards the Jews] seems to have been based in part on what he took to be Hitler’s successful use of anti-Semitic demagogy. It was certainly also due to his increasing Russian nationalism, to which he felt, most, or many, Jews were not truly assimilable. And the idea of a special Jewish predilection for capitalism is of course to be found in Marx. He especially opposed Jews who were Bundists, or religious activists, or ‘cosmopolitans,’ or secessionists, or Zionists, or were agents of American-Israeli organizations.

In the autumn of 1948 Golda Meir arrived in Moscow as Israeli ambassador. A huge crowd of Jews turned out to greet her on Rosh Hashanah. On 8 November she was warmly welcomed at a diplomatic reception by Polina Molotov (the wife of V.M. Molotov, Stalin’s longtime foreign minister), herself a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. For Stalin this public and private demonstration of Jewish feeling seems to have been the last straw. …an open, full-scale campaign of attacks on Jewish culture and attitudes, and on Zionism, soon began in the press. The theme was that the country’s values were being undermined by ‘rootless cosmopolitans.’ There was a particularly vicious assault on [Jewish] theater critics, eventually described as ‘an anti-party group.’ When their Russianized names or pseudonyms were given, the original Jewish name was printed in brackets, and papers asked how anyone so named could understand Russian culture. Meanwhile unpublicized arrests [of Jews], especially of writers in Yiddish, continued, and there was a general growth of public anti-Jewish pressure. Among those arrested at the end of 1948 was Polina Molotov.

Her husband made no comment or protest to Stalin as his wife was carried off into the Siberian gulag.

About 10 years ago, Rabbi Wein described why Mubarak’s Egypt was “a disaster waiting to happen".

The December 2001 edition of Wein Press had this to say about Mubarak’s Egypt:

Egypt is the most populous of all of the Arab states. It is also desperately poor, with almost half of its population living below its already artificially low poverty line.

A majority of its population suffers from a variety of diseases, many of them mosquito-borne, a product of the Aswan Dam/Lake Nasser project of the 1950s, which created an enormous mosquito-breeding, disease-spreading ecosystem.

Egypt has been propped up for a number of decades by many billions of dollars of American aid, but the endemic corruption that wracks Mubarak’s authoritarian government has sapped, skimmed and misused a great deal of these funds, so that the average Egyptian has benefited little from the American generosity. Most of the officially accounted for American aid was spent and used to purchase enormous amounts of military equipment, a fact that is most disquieting to Israelis.

The Egyptian press is filled daily with the crudest form of anti-Jewish articles and cartoons. Egypt’s educational system is in shambles, though the strident anti-Jewish tone of its schools’ curriculum shows no sign of improvement or correction.

Egypt is a disaster waiting to happen.

Mubarak is in his seventies and what will happen next is open to discussion. Instead of being part of the solution, he has made himself part of the problem. Mubarak denounces American aid to Israel, makes dire predictions about the future of the Middle East if Israel does not agree to Arafat’s maximalist demands, and whistles past the graveyard of the pressing problems in his own government and country. Instead of his current obstructionism and militancy, he should initiate at the very least incremental changes for the better in Egyptian society and diplomacy and they should begin now while he still has the authority and prestige to carry them through.

When God told Moses to build a Tabernacle (shown), it was the culmination of everything the Jewish people had longed for, because now the Divine Presence was in their midst in a uniquely tangible way. When the Temple was destroyed many centuries later it looked like the end of the Jewish people, but in that destruction they rediscovered the true meaning of that first desert sanctuary.

Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)

The exact year of the destruction of the Temple is somewhat up to debate, but most historians agree that it took place in 586 BCE. In the spring of that year, Nebuchadnezzar came from the north and invaded the outskirts of Judea. By the early part of the summer his army had encamped around Jerusalem.

Within a month they had destroyed all pockets of Judean resistance. Tens of thousands died in the siege, which brought on famine and pestilence, and then by sword and fire. Those who could do so fled. However, the Babylonians had anticipated that and were expert at herding escapees into giant slave camps, from where they were transported into exile in Babylon.

At sunset at the beginning of the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av the Babylonians set fire to the Temple, which was made primarily of stone, marble and similar substances, and should not have burned easily. Apparently, the accelerant used to set the fire made the stone so hot that even it burned. The building collapsed in the fire and burned the entire day of the ninth as well.

The destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE was, to that point, the most traumatic event in Jewish history. Accompanied with the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth, it looked like the end of the Jewish people (at least to outsiders).

Despite that, even in the land of their enemies the Jewish people were able to realize that the Temple could be rebuilt — if not in brick and stone, then in a spiritual sense through spiritual work.

Even though the Temple was destroyed, God could find a place in their synagogues, in their houses of study, in their behavior, in their hearts. They would be able to build a Temple of the spirit… until the time would come when God, in His own fashion, would rebuild a physical Temple.

Building a Temple of the spirit is much harder to do and a much greater accomplishment. It is much easier to build a building than what is inside the building. The modern world has some of the finest school buildings ever to exist, with all the modern accoutrements to educate the masses, but it is very hard to produce one human being. There are beautiful houses of worship all over the world that are glorious to behold, but it is hard to build a place where God is really welcomed and would want to be found, so to speak.

The Jewish people, to their everlasting credit, have been able to build miniature sanctuaries (Ezekiel 11:16) in different communities over the centuries in different continents. Although the physical Temple was destroyed the central idea behind it remained and took on greater meaning. It gave the Jewish people strength, courage and purpose. It spelled the difference between general history and Jewish history. No other people have sustained such a blow and not only survived to tell about it but have been able to carry on with their mission.

That is why the destruction of the First Temple has to be seen as the watershed in Jewish history. Nothing was the same afterwards. On the other hand, it created new opportunities to work on the inner dimension that had been neglected by so many. They took the lessons to heart, rolled up their sleeves and got down to the business of self-improvement and rebuilding from the inside out.

In the final analysis, the way the Jewish people ultimately reacted to the tragedy represented a triumph of the spirit. The outer loss created inner opportunities that they took advantage of to guarantee not only their survival and continuity, but their eternity.

A typical “blood libel” followed this pattern. First, the body of a non-Jew, usually a child, would be found dead. A Jew would then be accused of the murder, and the motive imputed to him was that he needed the child’s blood for ritual purposes, most typically for baking matzahs. The first such accusation came in 1144 in Norwich, England, but there were many more throughout history. In Spain in 1490, for example, six conversos and two Jews were accused, found guilty, and burned at the stake for the ritual murder of a child even though no body was ever found. Often these blood libels coincided with pogroms with the Church and government officials encouraging the mob violence.

Notably, this canard of Jewish ritual murder for blood was a strictly Christian invention. Though the Jews in Arab countries suffered in other ways, they did not face the blood libel until 1840 in Damascus, and then only when France had imperial control of what is today Syria and “imported” in the idea.

Congregation Adath Israel in Massena, New York

Neither was the United States immune. On Yom Kippur of 1928, after the disappearance of a little girl, Rabbi Berel Brennglass of Congregation Adath Israel in Massena, New York was forced out of services and questioned for four hours by the police. All the typical accusations of blood libel had been made by the townspeople who surrounded the synagogue, shouting and threatening. The girl was found alive and well in the woods where she had gotten lost.

Mendel Beilis being led away by police.

The last and perhaps most famous blood libel of Europe was the case of Mendel Beilis in 1911. It began when a Russian council of noblemen suggested to the Czar that he “purify” Russia by expelling its Jewish population. Mendel Beilis, an unfortunate and obscure Jew from Kiev was thus propelled into history. When a Christian child in Kiev was found dead, Beilis was accused of ritual murder. The police soon became aware of the identity of actual murderers, but, under instructions of the Minister of Justice, continued to gather “evidence” against the hapless Beilis. Protests against this travesty were lodged with the Russian government by agencies in Western Europe and the United States, but were ignored. Beilis was brought to trial at the end of 1913, found not guilty because of lack of evidence, though the presumption of the “blood libel” itself was never refuted.

I make no comment about Sarah Palin’s use of this term. I merely want to educate people about the facts of Jewish history, which is something I will comment on. And I certainly can comment about what all this says about the Jewish people. The core of the Jewish people has remained steadfast in our identity and beliefs in spite of blood libels and persecutions. The “stiff- necked people” has indeed proven to be stubborn. Like the walnut, we’re a tough nut to crack. But even when we’re at our lowest, our kernel fruit remains whole and protected.

The old water mill at Decew Falls, Niagara Escarpment, St.Catharines, Canada

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; on the very first day you shall remove leaven from your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day to the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. (Exodus 12:15)

The centerpiece of Passover observance is that all forms of leavened bread – yeasted food made from the grains of wheat, oats, rye, spelt and barley – are to be removed from Jewish possession, consumption and enjoyment. Because of the biblical restriction even the minutest amount of leavened bread cannot be consumed or owned by Jews on Passover. Over the centuries this prohibition has been enforced intensively and great care is taken not to allow even a doubtful situation regarding leavened bread to arise in the Jewish kitchen or home.

Yet as technology relating to the production and milling of flour, the baking of matzot and the production of special food products for Passover has advanced and changed, numerous issues have risen in Jewish history and life regarding this constantly advancing technology.

The invention of the steam engine in the eighteenth century changed the process of milling wheat into flour. In Europe until then, milling was accomplished through the use of water driven power (flowing rivers, waterfalls and the like) or the harnessing of animals to the circular mill stones. In this respect, milling flour had not undergone a change in methodology for millennia. One can see the remaining relics of such mills today in the Land of Israel at all of its archeological sites. This is how wheat and other grain (barley, spelt, rye and oats) for matzo production was milled to produce the flour necessary to bake matzot for Passover. Under these primitive conditions there never was any likelihood that the flour or grain would itself become damp and wet during the milling process and raise a question of it becoming leavened bread (the flour or grain fermenting before baking which is forbidden for Passover production or consumption) before being actually baked as matzot.

Matzah being produced at the Manischewitz Matzah Factory. : The invention of the steam engine in the eighteenth century changed the process of milling wheat into flour and demanded a response by Torah authorities whether or not it could be used to make matzot for Passover.

The invention of steam driven power changed this situation. Flour mills now began to be driven by steam power and the steam upon cooling turned into droplets of water which if they fell somehow into the grain or flour being milled could raise the problem of leavened bread. Therefore the question arose how to treat these new mills that used steam power as far as the flour that they produced – should that flour be used for baking matzot for Passover? Almost every technological advance and new invention in the long history of civilization had become an issue of Jewish law and halacha as well. This is no less true in our time when the advances in the fields of computer science, medical technology and a digital virtual world have raised issues in Jewish law regarding a host of laws and rituals.

Usually it takes a generation or two to sort out the matters at hand and arrive at an acceptable halachic consensus.

In all societies the law lags behind the technological advances of that society. That is no less true in Jewish society as well. Thus this issue of the steam driven mills took almost a century to be resolved. From the onset of the matter there were important rabbinic decisors who forbade the use of flour produced in such mills for the baking of Passover matzot and equally as important and prestigious rabbinic decisors who permitted that flour for such use without hesitation.

The issue has been resolved over time allowing the use of such steam powered mills for the production of Passover matzo flour.

This is an example of how technology, far from a threat to Judaism, benefits religious observance and strengthens the popularization of its values amongst Jews. I feel that this is an important lesson for our current Jewish world as well.

Founder and first president of Czechoslovakia, Masaryk was a friend of the Jews at a dark time, and offered an enlightening insight into the Chanuka candles.

A friend of mine sent me an article published in an English synagogue bulletin 30 years ago, that I feel has interest and relevance to us at all times of the year. Here is that article:

The year was 1934. Adolf Hitler had been in power for a year in Germany and the beloved leader of Czechoslovakia, Thomas Masaryk was reelected for the third time as President of the small country neighboring Germany. The 84 year old Masaryk was a great friend to Czech Jewry and the Jewish people the world over.

On the last day of Chanuka, he visited the synagogue in Brno, the Moravian capitol. Masaryk inspected carefully the treasured ritual objects in the synagogue, some of them dating back many centuries. The tall menorah was aglow with a warm, golden light. He listened intently to the story of Chanuka and the symbolic significance of the lights. Then, turning to the rabbi, he asked: “Why is it, my friend, that eight of the candles are standing in one row, side by side, while the ninth stands alone, as if cast aside by the others?”

“This candle, Mr. President,” explained the rabbi, “has no real part in the actual celebration. It only serves to light the Chanuka candles. That is why it is called the ‘Shamash’ or servant candle.”

The answer left the President visibly puzzled and for a while he remained silent.

He finally remarked: “This ‘servant candle’ strikes me as the symbol of the Jewish people itself; and the other candles are the nations to whom your people have brought the worship of one God and the precepts of morality and justice. These nations now shine with your light that they now call their own, but they give you no thanks. Instead, you are treated as strangers, spurned and rejected, as if you had no claim to the gift of light that you have brought to this world.” He was again silent for a long moment and when he spoke again, there was a faraway look in his eyes. “You must stop being ‘servants,’” he said musingly, as if talking to himself.

A sudden hush fell over the congregation.

“Yes,” the old President said, “you must become masters in your own right, masters of your own destiny.” His eyes had lost their dreamlike expression and his voice was firm and strong.

“But, Mr. President… How?” ventured a young community leader, stuttering with emotion and some embarrassment.

Masaryk replied: “By helping rebuild the Land of Israel – the Land of the Bible which is a sacred heritage from your forefathers when it was an independent Hebrew state…”

An even deeper silence followed. The congregation was mute with shock and emotion. The Jews were just as deeply rooted in Czechoslovakia as were the Czechs and the Slovaks. And now the President was saying that they should leave, that they did not belong. They did not speak, but their eyes expressed their hurt and confusion as they furtively exchanged glances.

Masaryk, visibly distressed at the unhappiness his words had created, spoke once again with great kindness: “You are, my dear friends, among our best citizens, always willing to do your share, contributing to the country’s greatness and prosperity… But, with Hitler at our borders, you will be ever more exposed to hatred and persecution. Everywhere, even here in our own country, the anti-Jewish poison is an instrument of subversion and conquest. It is instilled everywhere and corrupts even the most generous souls… Terrible times may be in store for you and for us and it is with a heavy heart, my friends, that I must say to you: Go, leave Czechoslovakia before it is too late!”

Four years later, Czechoslovakia was abandoned by the Allies and dismembered by Germany. Unfortunately only a handful of Jews had followed Masaryk’s fatherly advice. The vast majority of Czech Jewry still clung desperately to the hope that the evil scourge raging in Germany would by some miracle bypass Czechoslovakia. The Jews stayed on and they hoped and then it was too late.

It is true that the function of the ‘servant candle’ has not changed – it still passes its flame to the other candles. It still remains bound to the task of passing the flame of Godliness to the nations of the world through our Book of Books, our love of justice and morality and our thirst for cultural, scientific and educational progress. But the ‘shamash’ candle, the ‘servant candle,’ is no longer limited to kindling the light of other nations and other peoples. It now also lights the road of its own destiny.

Modern Jewry has had a weakness for placing certain current societal ideals – democracy, pacificism, environmentalism, social activism, etc. – above the necessity for Jewish survival. It is a mistake that has proved very costly for us in the last terrible century.

Masaryk was a true friend of the Jewish people. Would that Czech Jewry would have listened to him and not have been deluded by bad leadership and false illusions. Our ‘shamash’ candle needs tending now as never before, not as a ‘servant candle’ alone but as a source of identity, pride and tenacity.