Nisan/ Iyyar 5773
Nisan/ Iyyar 5773
Jewish Family Congregation Shofar
Jewish Family Congregation www.jewishfamilycongregation.org
Page
April 2013
From the Rabbi’s Desk Every year since 1953, the State of Israel has observed Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. The original intent was to hold this observance on Nisan 14, which was the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April 19, 1943. But that is the day before Pesakh, and so the occasion was deferred to Nisan 28, which places it one week before Israel Independence Day. The proximity of the two occasions begs the question of the relationship between the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. The State of Israel came into being following a dramatic vote in the United Nations to partition Palestine into two separate entities, one a Jewish homeland and the other an Arab state. The vote took place on November 29, 1947, which accords with the prediction made by Theodore Herzl in 1897, that the Jewish people would have a homeland of their own within 50 years. But how did that happen? There was no hope of such a thing during Herzl’s lifetime (he died on July 3, 1904). The Jewish people enjoyed very little sympathy in Europe and even in North America, to the degree that Hitler could whip his followers into a frenzy with his diatribes against the Jews, and American leaders could feel no need to rescue them. If you read Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, about the American ambassador to Germany in the early and mid-30s, you encountered the subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, anti-Semitism expressed amongst the diplomats and State Department officials with whom Ambassador Dodd corresponded. A new book about to be published raises interesting questions about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s place in the history of the Holocaust. It has been conventional wisdom to charge Roosevelt with, at best, indifference to the fate of the Jews in Europe. But the new book, Refugees and Recue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald 1935-45, volume two in a projected three-volume work, presents new information that shows Roosevelt not only sympathetic to the plight of Europe’s Jews, but also actively working behind the scenes to arrange to rescue Europe’s Jews from Hitler. McDonald was the High Commissioner for Refugees at the League of Nations, then chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Refugees, and later still, the first American ambassador to Israel. Service Schedule--------------Page 3 Executive Committee---------Page 4 Religious School--------------Page 5 ECC-----------------------------Page 7 April Calendar-----------------Page 8 Kids ask the Rabbi-----------Page 12 Ask the Rabbi----------------Page 16
Cantor’s Corner--------------Page 18 Sisterhood--------------------Page 18 Ritual Committee------------Page 22 Social Action Committee---Page 23 Youth Group------------------Page 24
Please support our Advertisers