History - Hitler’s Jewish Prophet

R' Avraham Broide

By writer/editor/illustrator

http://www.amazingjewishfacts.com/

Hitler and his Nazi henchmen were great believers in astrology. Such as when U.S.A. President, Franklin Roosevelt, passed away towards the end of WW2, on April 5705/1945. Upon hearing the news, Nazi Propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels, yelled out, “Bring out the best champagne! ...It is written in the stars that the second half of April will be the turning point for us. This is Friday, April the 13^th. It is the turning point!” Needless to say, he was wrong.

Early in the Nazi career, the Nazi craze for fortune-telling brought about one of the strangest symbiotic relationships in human history. During the 20's, Herschman-Chaim Steinschneider, had built up a career as a skilled magician and clairvoyant, covering his Jewish tracks by naming himself Hanussen. Suddenly, he reached the climax of his career by becoming one of Hitler's closest confidants.

This happened during March 5692/1932, when Hitler’s political future seemed doomed. The Nazis had lost seats in the Reichstag and their coffers were drained. Then Hanussen predicted that Nazi victory was just around the corner. Hitler would become Reichschancellor within the year. When Hanussen printed his startling “prophecy” in his weekly newspaper, the “Berliner Woshenschau,” Hitler became so excited that he invited the famous clairvoyant to meet privately with him at his headquarters in the Kaiserhof Hotel.

Hanussen met Hitler about a dozen times that year and became his favorite “hellseher” (clairvoyant). Hanussen used the Nazi power to raise his prestige and fame, while Nazi leaders used him as an endless source of private loans. He informed a fellow clairvoyant that his aim was to eventually convince Hitler that not all Jews were that bad.

On February 26, 5693/1933, Hanussen was displaying his fortune telling skills in front of a crowd including Nazi officials and VIPs, when he suddenly leapt to his feet and began screaming that he “saw a great house burning.” Not long afterwards, the Reichstag (German parliament) went up on in smoke. It is highly suspected that the Nazis had started the fire in order to declare a state of emergency and seize extraordinary powers.

Perhaps the Nazis resented Hanussen’s leaking of their secret plans. For one reason or another he was doomed, penning a note in invisible ink to a colleague, “"I always thought that business about the Jews was just an election trick of theirs. It wasn't." On the morning of March 25, 5693/1933, a car stopped next to him and he was ordered to get in. That was the last time anyone saw Hanussen alive. The Nazis seized his assets, IOUs recording debts of over 150,000 marks mysteriously disappeared, and Hanussen is remembered as one of Nazi Germany's first Jewish victims.

See the full-length story and more at:

http://www.amazingjewishfacts.com/

History - The Funeral Controversy

Jewish History No One Knows (But Should Know)

From articles written for the Yated Neeman (USA)

by Avraham Broide
(Jerusalem based translator and journalist.
phone: 02-5856133; email: broide2@netvision.net.il)

When is a corpse not a corpse? When it's still alive of course!

Determining the moment of death is a subject that has many doctors and rabbis at loggerheads. Doctors are anxious to push forward the moment of death in order to save lives with transplants, while rabbis argue that there is no point killing Peter in order to save Paul.

There was once a time when the rabbis fought a very different battle. During the 18th Century, many people thought it barbaric to bury a person too soon, as who knows, perhaps he was still alive. They preferred to wait for only certain determinant of death, physical decomposition, which generally begins after three days.

Rabbis, on the other hand, wanted to bury people before nightfall, due to the Torah's command regarding a criminal whose body was hanged up as a warning (Devarim 21:23), "Do not leave his body overnight on the gallows, for you shall certainly bury him on that day." As the Shulchan Aruch" (Yoreh Dei'ah 357:1) rules, "It is forbidden to leave the dead [unburied] overnight unless it was for his honor, to bring him a coffin and shrouds."

During 5532/1772 things came to a head when the Mecklenburg Province of Germany outlawed prompt burial and legislated that three days must pass beforehand. When German rabbis raised a protest, Moses Mendelssohn was called on to intercede and he promptly found sources that seemed to support the government measure.

For example, a mishnah in Masseches Semachos relates how someone recovered from a death like coma and lived for another 25 years. Because of this, the mishnah says, people buried their dead in catacombs, instead of burying them underground, so that they could visit them for several days afterwards and ascertain their death status. If the corpse yelled or tapped on the walls of his stone coffin, there was still a chance to yank him out. Practically speaking, Mendelssohn had a point, as it is not unheard of for people to suddenly wake up and find themselves in a morgue.

One example of such pseudo-death may be Alexander's passing in 3439/323 BCE, when his body reportedly remained fresh several days afterwards. Some medical men theorize that he may have been suffering from a paralyzing disease.

The Yaavetz rejected Mendelssohn's proofs. Regarding the fear that Jews who determine death as the moment a person ceases breathing might determine someone as dead when he is really alive, the Yaavetz insisted that Moshe Rabeinu received this criteria of death at Sinai or that it is revealed in the verse, Kol asher ruach chayim be'apo (Whatever has the breath of life in its nose), from where the rabbis derive that before digging someone out of a ruin on Shabbos, we check whether he is breathing or not.

As for Mendelssohn's proof from masseches Semachos, the Yaavetz writes that such things happen so rarely that we need not be concerned about them on a practical basis. It is as rare, he says, as the case of Choni Ha'eme'agel who slept for seventy years!

This controversy led to one of the first formal move of Jews away from Jewish custom and law.

When the Berlin Chevra Kaddisha refused to succumb to the Maskilim's demands, some Maskilim, including Mendolssohn's son, Josef, opened up their own burial organization called the "Gesellschaft der Freunde" ("Society of Friends") in Berlin, with branches in Breslau and Konigsberg, which delayed burying the dead and eventually adopted many other non-Jewish funeral customs as well.

History - The Serious Side of Chelm

Jewish History No One Knows (But Should Know)
From articles written for the Yated Neeman (USA)

by Avraham Broide
(Jerusalem based translator and journalist.
phone: 02-5856133; email: broide2@netvision.net.il)

The Chelm people laugh at was a parallel universe of a real Chelm where Jews lived, learned, prayed, kvetched and died much the same as Jews everywhere else.

You want to know the truth? Chelm was really a perfectly normal town, practically indistinguishable from hundreds of similar shtetls peppered over Poland and Russia. So how did that vibrant little community become buried beneath a mountain of jokes? The Chelm Memorial Book published after World War II devotes some pages analyzing this weighty question.

According one opinion, the Chelm humor tradition, like so much Jewish humor, was rooted in tragedy.

The story began with an Easter Church procession in 1580 that degenerated into an anti-Semitic riot. Ruffians attacked the Jews in the middle of their Passover prayers and a number of them barricaded themselves with shutters on the shul's roof. Afterwards, people joked that the Chelm Jews had installed shutters on their roofs instead of in their windows and, for better or worse, the town's reputation was sealed.

According to another theory, people picked on Chelm because in Slavic cholem means a fool.

Most likely, however, people picked on Chelm for the same reason other nations picked on particular towns as the butt of their jokes. The ancient Greeks picked on Abdera, the Syrians picked on Sidon, the English picked on the village of Gotham, the Dutch picked on Compen, the Arabs picked on Chevron, and Germany picked on number of towns including Shilburg. In fact, the 1597 publication of a Yiddish book titled, “Shilberg, a Short History,” provided much of the raw material later utilized for Chelm jokes.

For a while, Chelm jokes were an oral tradition. They first appeared in print after a small booklet printed in Vilna in 1867 included a chapter titled “the Wisdom and Witticism of a Certain Town Ch.,” and from then on Chelm jokes were fruitful and multiplied.

In the fullness of time, the real Chelm morphed into a full-fledged parallel universe.

Chelm was once a regular town, it was said, until one day when the angel that dishes out men's souls winged over the place hauling a sack of foolish souls on his back. Now, as everyone knows, Chelm lies adjacent to a sharp peaked mountain. This ripped open the sack, the souls plunged downwards, and ever since the town was never quite the same.

Despite their intellectual shortcomings, the Chelm Jews were of a different stamp than run-of-the-mill fools. Their idiocy stemmed not from lack of intelligence but from their insistence on being over clever, a trait known in Yiddish as being an uber chacham.

For example, the town's charity box was hung high beneath the shul's ceiling as a precaution against theft. When people complained that they could not reach there to drop in their donations, the town's wise men hit on the solution of propping up a ladder beneath to enable people to climb there. Chelmites always knew how to leap between the horns of dilemma.

When the town sexton complained that he was getting too old to make his early morning rounds rapping on people's shutters to wake them for prayers, the city elders collected the populace's shutters and piled them up in his house. Now he could rap them without having to stir outdoors. In his earlier years, when he complained that his shoes got filthy trudging through the town's muddy alleyways in execution of his duties, the town had appointed four strapping youngsters to carry him around the streets on a door.

The real Chelm was a different place altogether where perfectly regular Jews lived, learned, prayed, kvetched and died much the same as Jews in other towns.

Jews first arrived in this small Polish town that lies 40 miles south-east of Lublin in about 1300, in order to wheel and deal with traders passing through on international trading routes between the Black and Baltic seas. Come to think of it, Chelm wasn't such a miserable place after all. By the middle of the 16^th Century it boasted a population of 371 at a time when even the capital of Cracow only had 1,800 Jews. It also had its own yeshiva and a cadre of prominent rabbis and sages.

By the outbreak of World War II, Chelm had a population of about 15,000 Jews, including refugees. Most of them perished. Although the Chelm district lies right on the Eastern border of Poland next to Russia, and was the first Polish district liberated from the Nazis in 5704/1944, by then it was too late; most of Chelm's Jews had perished in the nearby Sobidor Extermination Camp and those who struggled back were greeted with hatred.

But the legacy of Chelm humor lives on, helping to soften the hard bumps of life's road.

History - What is a week?

NEVER ON A TUESDAY

By journalist/translator/illustrator

R' Avraham Broide,

email - broide2@netvision.net.il;

New website http://www.amazingjewishfacts.com/

At first glance, the "week" seems the odd-man-out of our calendar.

Because unlike the year that is measured by earth's yearly spin round the sun, or the month that is measured by the moon's journey round earth, the week seems disconnected from astronomical phenomenom. Its significance stems from Hashem creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh.

Is this why Shabbos is more sacred than other other day of the Jewish year?

THE CELESTIAL CONNECTION

Digging a little deeper, however, one soon discovers that the week has a celestial connection after all. This is evident from a couple of Gemaras where Rashi points out a clear correlation between the heavenly bodies and the seven days of the week.

For thousands of years, stargazers, astrologers, and astronomers noticed that almost the stars of the heavens are nailed in place against the backdrop of outer space. They march in unison across the heavens, never daring to make a misstep.

But gaze into space for consecutive nights and you might notice five rogue stars that disobey the rules, inching slowly between the stars. Some of them even backtrack during the process. The ancients named these stars planets, ancient Greek for "wanderers." The rabbis called them kochvei leches, wandering stars.

In fact, they are not stars at all, but planets circling their way around the sun as we do.

Add the sun and moon to these five planets and you get seven heavenly bodies. Chazal and the ancients arranged them in this order:

1. Shabtai (Saturn). 2. Zedek (Jupiter). 3. Maadim (Mars). 4. Chammah (the sun). 5. Kochav Nogah (Venus, the shining star). 6. Kochav (Mercury). 7. Levanah (the moon).

The Gemara (Berachos 59b) states that G-d created the heavenly bodies at the beginning of Wednesday night during the hour of Shabtai (Saturn). Rashi explains:

At this moment, when G-d placed the sun, moon and stars in the firmament, the seven heavenly bodies began their rule. And forever after they rule in the following order:

Saturn rules during the 1st hour, Jupiter the 2nd second, etc. Once the seven planets have run their course, the cycle starts again. Shabtai takes the 8th hour, Zedek the 9th, and so on.

It takes exactly a week for the cycle to work through all its permutations. After one week, Shabtai returns to the first hour of the day on Wednesday evening and the cycle repeats itself exactly like the week before.

Yet another Gemara connects the weekdays to the seven heavenly bodies.

The Gemara (Shabbos 129b) warns people never to perform bloodletting on Tuesdays, because on Tuesdays, Mars rules during an "even" hour. What does that mean?

Rashi explains:

If you calculate which heavenly body rules during the first hour of each weekday, the order is as follows:

Sunday - the sun. Monday - the moon. Tuesday - Mars. Wednesday - Mercury. Thursday - Jupiter. Friday - Venus. Shabbos (Saturday) - Saturn. (Do you see a pattern?)

Since Mars, symbol of the sword, pestilence and tribulation, falls during the first hour of Tuesday, seven hours later it will automatically fall during the eighth hour of the day. Eighth is an even number. Since even numbers are dangerous (as explained in the Gemara Pesachim 110b), one must avoid bloodletting the whole of Tuesday in order to avoid this planet-promoted hazard.

We see from all this that the names Sunday, Monday, and Saturday are no coincidence. They are named after the heavenly bodies that have ascendancy during their first daylight hour!

In fact, the Babylonians named every day of the week after gods associated with these "first hour" heavenly bodies, as follows:

Shamash (Sunday), Sin (the moon, Monday), Nergal (Mars, Tuesday), Nebo (Mercury, Wednesday), Marduk (Jupiter, Thursday), Ishtar (Venus, Friday), Ninurta (Saturn, Saturday).

IDOLATRY

If so, you might ask, how can Jews mention weekday names that are based on idolatry? Does the Torah not command (Shemos 23:13), "The names of other gods you shall not mention, they shall not be heard on your mouth?"

Discussing whether one is permitted to mention the names of coins named after idols, the Responsa Chavos Yair (chapter 1) mentions a few mitigating factors, including the permissibility of mentioning names of idols that are obsolete and no longer worshipped.

However, the Tzitz Eliezer (volume 8, chapters 8 and 14) objects to non-Jewish month-names due to their idolatrous connotations, and suggests writing 01, 02, etc., instead of their names. How he would get around the problem of saying weekday-names is unclear.

How did our modern weekdays develop? Some of them were altered by the Greeks and Romans when they substituted some of the Babylonian gods with their own, and later still the Teutons and Anglo Saxons threw out the Roman gods and substituted them with their own idols. As a result, the modern names of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, are named after obsolete Teuton and Anglo Saxon gods.

Wednesday, for example, started as Nabu in Babylon, became Mercurius in Rome, and ended up as Woden in Britain. Woden transmuted into modern day Wednesday.

Trump to Discuss Halting US Military Aid to Ukraine -

 https://www.newsweek.com/trump-discuss-halting-us-military-aid-ukraine-reports-live-updates-2038708

President Donald Trump is expected to discuss halting military aid to Ukraine in a meeting with key advisors on Monday, according to reports.

The flow of weapons and munitions has already slowed to a trickle since Trump took office as his administration has not announced any more shipments.

Now the Trump administration official said Trump might stop all military aid which includes intelligence sharing and training for Ukrainian troop.

Sukkah - Tourists

Igros Moshe (OC IIII #93) Question Is it permitted to go on a pleasure trip on Sukkos to a place that does not have a sukkah?Answer At first thought It seems that it should be prohibited since one is not supposed to leave the sukkah unless there is an actual need that would require he leave his house such as going to work. 

Igros Moshe (EH IV #32.8) Question You have doubts about what I wrote that it is prohibited to take a pleasure trip on Sukkos to a place without a Sukkah Answer Perhaps you mean that there might be s a difference between a trip in Israel for a visit of a short time or outside of Israel? You might think that since he is in Israel a short time that the travel to see the sights is considered an actual significant need as opposed to a pleasure trip outside Israel? It would seem in such a case it would be permitted if he can’t spend more time in Israel for touring. Actually this reasoning would also permit it outside of Israel if there is a mitzva associated with the trip. Even traveling to any foreign country  which has things people want to see and he would miss seeing them because of Sukkos it would be permitted. However taking a trip just for pleasure would be prohibited if there is no Sukkah to eat and sleep in. Also if he will be there a number of days after Sukkos in which to see the sights it would be prohibited if there is no Sukkah.  

Trump said Zelenskyy ‘does not have the cards’. But how well is he playing his own hand?

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/02/donald-trump-volodymyr-zelenskyy-us-ukraine-america

For Ukraine, the path forward remains difficult. This meeting did not cost it US support – that was set in motion by Trump’s re-election. Zelenskyy was right not to be bullied into a ceasefire on Russia-dictated terms. Without security guarantees, such an agreement would be disastrous for Ukraine. Trump would claim an easy diplomatic victory, using it as a justification to cut military aid and lift sanctions on Russia. But as Zelenskyy noted, Putin has a history of breaking ceasefires. With sanctions eased, Russia would simply rearm and prepare for another offensive against a weakened Ukraine. By resisting Trump’s pressure, Zelenskyy may still face the same outcome, but at least Ukraine remains unshackled from a one-sided truce.

The Post went inside a Ukrainian POW camp for Russian troops – who revealed why they signed up to fight in a war they don’t support

 https://nypost.com/2025/03/02/world-news/post-goes-inside-ukraine-pow-camp-for-russian-troops-and-youll-be-stunned-what-we-found/

Russia doesn’t seem to want them back, either: The Kremlin will publicly announce that it wants a prisoner exchange, then decline to take the men when Kyiv calls, Yatsenko said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pointed out this situation in his explosive exchange with President Trump and Vice President JD Vance at the White House on Friday, noting that his country has tried to make prisoner exchange deals with Russia, who has rejected such offers time and again.

Trump Wants Americans to ‘Spend Less Time Worrying About Putin’

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-wants-americans-to-spend-less-time-worrying-about-putin/

The president’s comment came after his former national security adviser accused him of “coddling” the Russian strongman.

Two days earlier, McMaster accused Trump and Vice President JD Vance of “coddling Putin” after the two berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office for what they saw as insufficient gratitude for U.S. assistance amid his country’s defense against an ongoing Russian invasion.

After writing that McMaster is a “A WEAK AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE LOSER,” Trump immediately posted a follow-up on his Truth Social platform suggesting Putin was of limited concern.

“We should spend less time worrying about Putin, and more time worrying about migrant rape gangs, drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our Country,” he wrote. “So that we don’t end up like Europe!”

Trump insists Putin wants peace. But the war is raging – and Ukrainian civilians are dying

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/03/europe/trump-putin-russia-ukraine-analysis-intl/index.html

As US President Donald Trump pushes for “a deal” to end the war in Ukraine – and dresses down Ukraine’s president in front of reporters at the White House – Moscow every day keeps launching deadly attacks against Ukraine.

And while Trump seemed to suggest Putin is ready to negotiate, the Russian leader has been busy reiterating demands that have long been unacceptable to Kyiv.

Putin has repeatedly made his goals clear: He wants to gain control over the entirety of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as hold onto the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014.

Trump Has Glossed Over High Prices. Republicans Worry It Will Cost Them.

 https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-lower-prices-inflation-republican-concern-a5bf923a?mod=hp_lead_pos1

President Trump promised during the campaign to lower prices on day one of his presidency. But with costs still high, Republicans are worried the same economic factors that helped Trump win the election could come back to bite him if inflation remains stubborn.

In his frequent public appearances and social-media posts, Trump is more likely to talk about federal workers, diversity programs and foreign policy than the price of eggs. That is a contrast from last year’s presidential campaign, when Trump, urged by his advisers, made high costs a centerpiece of his bid to retake the White House.

Tim Snyder’s warning: Israel depends upon a functioning US. Trump and Musk are destroying it

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/tim-snyders-warning-israel-depends-upon-a-functioning-us-trump-and-musk-are-destroying-it/

 The Israeli-American relationship has always depended upon the American state capacity to do various things. But the crucial story of the Trump administration so far is the self-destruction of American state capacity.

So if Israelis in the future are expecting things like arms deliveries in crucial times, or they’re expecting the ability to broker peace talks or whatever, the Trump administration has essentially fired everybody who has the confidence to do that kind of thing, and the prospects are for more of that.

Iran's Supreme Leader Reacts to Trump-Zelensky Clash

 https://www.newsweek.com/iran-supreme-leader-donald-trump-zelensky-clash-ukraine-russia-nuclear-2038589

Iran's Supreme Leader has seized on the fallout from the clash between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to step up his warnings against negotiating with the United States.

In the wake of the Oval Office clash, Ali Khamenei reposted remarks condemning Ukraine's trust in the U.S. as a mistake, stating, "Western support for its allies is a mirage." Meanwhile, banners showing images of the heated Trump-Zelensky exchange have popped up across Tehran, amplifying Khamenei's long-standing opposition to diplomacy with Washington.

Advice for his son Rav Reuven on becoming 20 years old

Igros Moshe (YD III 96.9) Advice for  his son Rav Reuven  on becoming 20 years old You  write that on the 11th of Elul you will be twenty years old – you should have a long life which is good and sweet –this is the age that there is punishment for sins also from Heaven. You ask  advice as to how to behave the rest of your life . The most important thing is being strongly working in studying the Torah.  Rashi notes that one can easily err and for a Torah scholar this is considered a deliberate sin. Therefore G-d should help you to grow in Torah and to know everything clearly and this will lead to doing the right thing. Thus your entire purpose and goal in this world is that your entire lifes’s effort are in Torah.  If you do this I am confident that G-d will help you and send you a generous parnossa and plentiful blessing which are presents from G-d according to one’s merit and they are not the result of a job. You should not accept this G-d forbid – as an oath which is prohibited – but it should be your mental commitment. You should also train yourself in good attributes. The main thing is to avoid anger which is to be greatly avoided as well as excessively pride  If you try hard G-d will help you Also this should not be accepted as an oath. You should also be very careful with honoring your mother. This is something which is extremely difficult  since you have been familiar since childhood and thus it requires great effort. Even if she is forgiving disrespect you should not rely on that. You also ask about fasting. It is not proper for you and those involved in Torah study because it might interfere.  Instead of afflicting yourself, you should increase your Torah study. You should be constantly aware of my words and G-d should help you always.