Remember the Pesach Felafel Fund (It’s Not Too Early)
Since post offices have gotten very slow, we’re reminding you earlier that it’s that time of year again.
You remember our Felafel Fund, where entire poor, fine, religious families are sent to our neighborhood falafel store so harried mothers get a break from cooking one meal for their 10-15 kids the week before Pesach.
Remember how it started? I saw an eight-year-old with long peyos clutching three loaves of unwrapped bread against his sweater the day before bedikas chometz. It made me realize that mothers of large, poor families are cooking meals till erev Pesach because they can’t afford to go to restaurants or get takeout food the days before Pesach, as I do.
So, with your help, again this year, for 30 shekels ($11.00) per person, we can again send families for a felafel, a portion of French fries, and a canned drink to our neighborhood felafel store. Thus, one meal for an average family (12 children and 2 parents) costs approximately 420 shekels ($154) – an amount way beyond even the dreams of these families. The older children and the parents eat the extra half falafel not needed by the little children.
All the families are carefully chosen and every penny of all money goes directly to the felafel store owner.
The children are thrilled beyond belief since they rarely get to eat store-bought felafel, and the mothers are thrilled since they don’t have to cook one meal before Pesach, and the felafel store owners are also thrilled since, due to Corona, their business has suffered a lot.
Last year we were able to send quite a few families to the local falafel store. But the project is so appreciated that people are already asking to get on the felafel list.
Please, again this year join this unusual mitzvah by sending checks made out to Tzvia Klein, Arzei Habira 49, apt. # 32, Jerusalem, Israel. And include your email address if you have one so I can personally thank you. Please do NOT make checks out to Felafel Fund as I’m not able to cash such checks. And money orders cannot be cashed here.
Help make life happier for these families, and easier for the wives and mothers.
Be well, thank you in advance, and have a happy, healthy, kosher Pesach.
Tzvia Ehrlich-Klein
49 Arzei HaBira, apt. 32
Jerusalem
Ukrainians Still Revere Chmelnitzky
My late bubby, Henya-Bluma, a’’h, who arrived in the U.S. from Ukraine in 1909, often used a Yiddish expression, lachen mit yashterkis, which means, literally, “laughing with lizards,” and is sarcastically used to describe one’s reaction to some horrific tragedy that has no logical explanation and causes the victim to laugh bitterly out of desperation.
Sophia Adler’s article, “Compassion for the Ukrainians” in the March 4 issue caused me to “laugh with lizards.” She writes: “We Jews do not hold descendants of evil people accountable for their ancestors’ crimes.”
The absolute worst antisemite in world history was Adolph Hitler, yimach shemo. Following World War II, however, the successive German government denounced Hitler and prohibited the public display of anything to do with Nazism or the Third Reich. Survivors of the Holocaust received a monthly pension from the German government for the rest of their lives. Perhaps Ms. Adler’s contention that we, Jews, do not hold descendants of evil people accountable for their ancestor’s crimes can somehow be applied to contemporary Germany, but more competent poskim should have the last word.
The second worst antisemite in world history was the Ukrainian nationalist, Bogdan Chmelnitzky, yimach shemo. In the 17th century, he and his henchmen led a horrifically savage pogrom throughout Ukraine that murdered over one hundred thousand innocent Jews, including men, women and children. Now, my question is, “What has the Ukrainian response been to the savage deeds of Bogdan Chmelnitzky?
The answer: Bogdan Chmelnitsky was, and still is, the National Hero of the Ukrainian people. His statues are found in all major Ukrainian cities where the population continuously lays wreaths of flowers. Countless Ukrainian cities have major streets named after him. Not one Ukrainian patriot, either past or present, has ever denounced Chmelnitzky’s barbaric liquidation of Ukrainian Jews.
We cannot hold Ms. Adler’s contention that descendants of evil people are not held accountable for their ancestor’s crimes valid since Chmelnitzky is as revered today as he was four hundred years ago.
One contribution, however, from the Ukrainian language that has spread to every single world language is the word “pogrom” or “pohrom.” Need I say more?
No, I have no compassion for the Ukrainians. If some Jews still choose to live there, that is their personal decision.
Pesach Yonah Malevitz
Miami Beach, FL
Ukrainian Antisemitism
While our people are extraordinarily proud of one of our own, Vlodymyr Zelensky, in his championing the fight for democracy against the neo-tsar putrid Putin, we are commanded, especially in the weeks before Purim, to “remember Amalek.”
In two horrific periods of Jewish history, that is exactly what Ukraine was – Amalek at its destructive worst. I refer to the Ukrainian uprising against Poland from 1648 to 1657, led by Bogdan Chmelnitsky, and the 1941 massacres at Babi Yar, in which Ukrainians participated with as much enthusiasm as the Nazis, yimchu shmoteyhem v’zikhrom.”
In the first year of my doctoral work at Brandeis in 1966-1967, I was privileged to take two courses with Dr. Erich Goldhagen, father of noted Shoah historian-to-be Daniel Goldhagen. The first course was on the Shoah; the second was on Eastern European Jewish history.
I have never forgotten a key emphasis of Dr. Goldhagen’s – it rings in my ears as if I heard him expressing it yesterday. It was that Ukrainian antisemitism was the most virulent of all antisemitisms, excluding Nazism, and that its cause was “frustrated nationalism.”
While the State of Israel will now be committed to helping the Ukrainian people in the war against Russia – and its help will be very significant indeed – its not wishing to burn all bridges with Russia for its own geopolitical considerations may also be due to the factor I mentioned above: the Jewish historical memory of the extreme Ukrainian antisemitism of the past.
Ed Yitshaq Levenson
Oaxaca, Mexico
