Letter of Support for Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi

Shavuot starts on Thursday evening. For those of you lucky enough to understand dutch, we are pleased to share with you this deeply inspiring message from our esteemed EJA Board Member, Chief Rabbi Jacobs from the Netherlands, for those of you that don’t, we had it translated for you. Wishing you all a Blessed and Happy Shavuot Holiday.
Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs shares his vision in these complicated times from the synagogue in Amersfoort.
Judaism has many traditions and laws.
But there is one law that remarkably doesn’t fall under the 613 commands and prohibitions.
It just doesn’t exist and that is the prohibition on being depressed.
What I mean is there are people that see everything darkly. They see everything in a negative way and don’t look for the positives. They always focus on the negative side. So why is there no law against this?
The answer to that question is, being depressed is not a violation but it stands higher (or lower) in a way than a regular law. Because it leads to the biggest of violations.
This perspective looks at everything that can go wrong. It’s like only looking at the negative potential side-effects of medicines and forgeting that the purpose of the medicine is to cure.
Such a way of life is not only one violation but is also the root for a lot of misery in mental health.
And because body and mind are connected, it also has effects on your body.
A negative and depressed attitude is a source of misery, mental and physical.
I wrote a column once about a tightrope walker. A tightrope walker shouldn’t look only upwards and blindly trust in the Eternal that all ‘it will be alright.‘ But equally only to look down into the abyss is not good.
There is a happy medium. A balance between up and down. Otherwise the tightrope walker will never make it to the other side.
In a way we are all tightrope walkers. All the time we need to find a balance between the Eternal and the fact that there is indeed an abyss.
Another point: A man grows up in the jungle. He knows nothing of the civilised world.
His view never got further than the trees and the jungle. His jungle. This man gets lost and arrives in a city.
He looks at everything. He walks around surprised. He walks into the door of a big building into the hallway, walks up the stars and goes unto the balcony. Below him he sees a large room. In that room men and women walking around with face masks on. On the wall he sees tools, saws, drills and more intruments.
In the middle of the hall stands a high long table. On that table lies a white sheet. Under that sheet a human foot stick out. A nod is given, and some men and women start to cut into it.
Blood sprays out and our man from the Jungle passes out. He has never seen something so sadistic. Of course, he ended up in the operating room of a hospital. The person on the table, in the hospital bed, was sick and was being cured by the doctor and the nurses. Our man sees only the painful operation. He does not know the context that that the patient was sick and is being cured by this operation.
Life is like an operation. There is something before and something after. But if we only witness the operation then that’s the only thing we see. What there was before and what comes after, removes itself completely from our vision.
More than ever, today we all feel that we are undergoing an operation.
Is it a punishment? A reward? Meaningful? Meaningless? It’s always good to keep a mirror in front of yourself. But to firmly embed yourself into feelings of guilt, putting yourself into a depressed condition, that should never happen.
We cannot understand life like our man from the Jungle.
Serve G-d with joy. Are we able to do that? Or a better question: can I do that?
A parable is told of 2 strong cool guys (someone like me). Both are standing at the foot of a mountain. Both have an empty burlap sack on their shoulders. The contest can start.
The starting gun is fired and both guys need to, while climbing, fill their sacks with rocks.
After 3 hours they have a same amount of rocks in their sacks. Both climbed to the same height. But one is pale and cannot clime any higher.
The other is singing with joy and walks with big steps. How is this possible? That one is so heavily burdened but the other does not feel it? Both have the same health and strength. Both have the same amount of rocks in their sacks. But the guy that cannot climb a single step further thinks he is carrying kilos of stupid rocks. The more rocks he is collecting, it gets heavier and heavier.
His buddy knows that it is not just rocks. Its precious stones and diamonds. The more diamonds he gets into his sack, the lighter and lighter it gets.
How do I choose to look at all the things that I am enduring in my life?
When I’m speaking to a lot of people as a rabbi, I learn a lot. People are in situations that are heavier than mine. But they take every load as a diamond. I learn from their strength and self-control.
They hold a mirror in front of me.
That is Judaism.
To learn from someone else.
And it’s also Judaism to see the heavy load not as it is.
It’s also Judaism that when you notice an unexpected a shortcoming in someone else, you are aware that it also can be present in you.
If you did not know that this shortcoming was what it is, you would not recognize it in yourself.
And at the same time, alertness.
Alertness of the rise in antisemitism that is far from vanished and vanquished.
Our minister of Justice and Security is also Minister of Worship.
And when I spoke to him about restarting our worship, he warned me about the lone wolf.
Especially during the pandemic. But it is also, alertness to the physical rules that should protect us against that terrible virus.
When we can go to shul, the church or the mosque, we shouldn’t just trust that everything will come from above.
Because when that tightrope walker only looks up, he won’t make it.
On Thursday we start the holiday of Shavuot. The Jewish people stood as one at the foot of the Sinai to receive the 10 commandments, the 613 mitzvot and the Torah in its totality.
They saw G-d. There was something in common and that brought them together. There was unanimity. For division, fights and tensions there was no room.
In this time of Coronavirus, it is not only the Jewish people that have something in common, but the whole of humanity: a common enemy. From it we should liberate ourselves. But it’s an enemy of everyone, without any form of discrimination.
Let us pray that that enemy will be beaten in our days, exterminated and that the unanimity that the virus has made, will stay.
May there be speedily in our days eternal shalom – peace – for the whole of humanity, real peace for everyone.
You can hear the words of Rabbi Jacobs in dutch HERE

I am a tightrope walker
With fear of heights

You probably know those images of a tightrope walker who has strung a rope between two gigantic high-rise buildings In Manhattan and walks on the tightrope with a stick in his hands. One slip and the show is over! It is vital that the tightrope walker constantly concentrates, does not get distracted, keeps his goal in mind and is not afraid of heights. In this week’s Sidra as well as in the Pirkee Awoth – Proverbs of the Fathers that we will learn this Shabbat, I meet myself as the tightrope walker. And on the eighth day he must be circumcised on the foreskin of his body (Leviticus 12: 3). In the Halaga, Jewish law, it is stated that although the Brit Mila, the circumcision, can be performed during the whole eighth day, it is nevertheless better to fulfill this mitzvah early in the morning. Keeping a commandment or any good deed should not be delayed! We learn this lesson from patriarch Awraham. When he was ordered by G’d to sacrifice his son Yitzchak, he did not postpone thatorder, but he got up early to do what was required of him.
Knowing this, the question arises: Why didn’t Awraham circumcise himself in the morning, but delayed his Brit Mila until later that day? One of the answers I found was that Awraham didn’t just think about himself. He wanted others to hear what he was doing. He wanted the entire society to stop idolatry. He hoped that everyone would realize that there is only one G’d and that He demands of the men to be circumcised. He understood that if he fulfilled this mitzvah early in the morning, hardly anyone would notice. And so, for the sake of publicity, he decided to do it later that day. So that others would be inspired.
In the Proverbs of the Fathers (chapter 2:1) we read: What is the right way for man to choose? Any way that honors him who follows him and at the same time honors him by the people.
From this we see that Awraham’s position is a general rule. In everything we do we have to look at the context. What is the influence of my behavior on my environment? Judaism is not black or white. On the one hand you always have to walk the right way, but on the other hand, depending on the situation, you sometimes have to choose an alternative route to achieve the same goal.
So life is a continuous tightrope walk. If you only look up, you lose sight of the road you have to walk. If you only look down, you will be overwhelmed by the fear of the abyss. Especially in this difficult period in which we all find ourselves, it is vital
not to think black and white. It will be fine and I will ignore all the adapted rules that the Government and the physicians require from us, is a one- sided and therefore completely wrong position. It is like that tightrope walker who has no eye for reality and only tries to reach the other side with his head up. But also just looking into the depths, seeing everything
black, letting your thoughts be determined solely by screaming terrifying media reports, is a wrong position.
I feel like a tightrope walker. I make sure that I am not getting sick by alarming headlines on FB, newspapers, radio and TV. At the same time I have to consciously observe new rules and good advice. I must not shut myself off from reality. I also have to realize that I am constantly observed and that my unstable behavior can also instill fear or indifference in others.
Dear people. Do not take this column personally. I just wanted to show you how I am constantly balancing. I am a tightrope walker who refuses to look down due to fear of heights. But I also know that only my view upwards is not the Jewish and right way. I try to keep my balance. Do you do that too!
Binyomin Jacobs, Chief Rabbi

The massacre at Babyn Yar was remembered by community leaders on Tuesday at the site near Kiev where more than 33,000 Jews were murdered in 1941.
The chief rabbi of the Netherlands, Binyomin Jacobs spoke, reading the kaddish.
The assembled dignitaries bowed and clasped their hands in otherwise silent mourning, standing entirely still despite the minus-eight cold.
Earlier, an Israeli man who is thought to be the last survivor of Babyn Yar, Michael Sidko, spoke by video link to delegates of the European Jewish Association symposium in Kiev’s Hilton.
Mr Sidko was six years old when a neighbour reported his family to the Gestapo three times as being Jewish, and they were arrested and brought to Babyn Yar.
The family were directed to “the pit” where Nazi officers supervised the killings.
As his mother held her baby son Volodya in her arms, his three-year-old sister Clara walked beside tugging at her skirt, and he and his older brother Grisha brought up the rear.
Clara ran up to Mr Sidko, he said, and asked to be carried in his arms. A policeman hit the girl in the head, knocking her to the ground.
He stamped on her chest until she stopped breathing. Mr Sidko’s mother saw this and fainted, dropping Volodya.
The policeman stamped on Volodya until he was dead.
Mr Sidko’s mother came round and screamed. She was shot, and all three bodes were hauled by the legs thrown into the pit.
The two brothers were selected for medical testing or forced labour and so permitted to live, Mr Sidko said, before a Russian or Ukrainian guard allowed them to run away.
“Hitler’s greatest mistake was making Auschwitz,” said Father Patrick of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, because the camp became evidence of Nazi crimes against humanity.
But at Babyn Yar there was “no train, no railway, just a mass grave”.
Mr Sidko long refused to talk about the massacre or even mention his Jewish identity to even his own children.
It was only in 2000 that he told his children they were Jewish and the family made aliyah.
“People should study history,” he added.“Students should be taught to love not hate.”
https://www.thejc.com/news/world/last-survivor-of-massacre-reveals-the-horror-of-babyn-yar-rHBFu0qobRGTTFoyk3GRm