Kibbutz Be'eri is one of 22 Israeli towns and villages that were attacked on October 7, 2023. At the kibbutzim and surrounding areas, a total of around 1,200 people were murdered (including 36 children), thousands more wounded, and more than 250 other abducted (including 30 children) -- Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and foreigners, males and females, young and old, civilians and soldiers. It was purposed slaughter, a repeat of the massacres in the shtetls of Europe. "As word came that murderous hordes were approaching, the Jews attempted to flee. Those who could not, barricaded themselves indoors and prayed for a miracle."
This moving narrative describes not the shocking events of October 7, 2023, at Kibbutz Be'eri and other communities in Israel, but the massacre of eastern European Jews nearly 400 years earlier by Cossacks during the 1648 Khmelnitsky pogroms, in what is now Ukraine.
Although Jewish settlements in the greater Kievan Rus region, Ukraine and Crimea included, can be traced to the 8th -10th centuries, a record of pogroms took some time to emerge. Not limited to the Rus region, pogroms were widespread in middle ages Europe as a whole. In the Rhineland area, the First Crusade of 1096 led to mass slaughter of Jews who had settled there, and the same later in Palestine when the Crusaders arrived. In England, the York pogrom of 1190 resulted in the expulsion of Jews from the land for nearly 400 years.
The long and woeful history of eastern European pogroms: the massacre of innocent, peace-loving Jews in their small villages, their shtetls, commenced about a thousand years ago and continues today. Out of these pogroms came the words of Rabbeinu Gershom, who in the 10th century wrote in his work, Zechor Brit Avraham (Recall the Covenant of Abraham):
"Wounds, bruises, and fresh blowsare inflicted on the daughter of Israel - She is pained and embittered in a foreign landhunted like a bird from Mt. Moriah."
The year 1391 witnessed the infamous Spanish pogrom in which Sephardic Jewish communities were destroyed, and those who refused to convert to Catholicism were murdered. By 1492, the date of final expulsion, there were few, if any, openly practising Jews left in Spain.
Nearly 400 years later, in 1881, a continuous four-year pogrom occurred in southern Russia, when thousands of shtetls with their Jewish occupants were eliminated. With numerous pogroms in between, some 40 years thereafter, between the years of 1918 and 1920, major pogroms were instigated throughout Ukraine, in which more than 250,000 Jews were murdered. The mass migration of Ashkenazi Jews from Ukraine and Russia to America can be traced to those events.
Only one day after Israel's declaration of Independence in 1948, "murderous hordes," like the Cossacks of before, once again sought to purge Jews in the region through an existential attack by five Arab armies. This time was different, however: the Jews had weapons and successfully fought back against the intended massacre.
In 2021 at the city of Lod, Israel, an intended pogrom of "violence and terror" by contemporary "murderous hordes" was attempted, but fortunately with limited success. In a repeat of history, and despite relocation to their ancestral homeland of Israel, Jews were forced once again to "barricade themselves in their homes in fear of the rampaging mobs while others chose to flee the city until calm was restored." Still, this was not yet the Be'eri pogrom of 2023.
Just as the Jewish community in the European diaspora was typified by the shtetl, so the early Jewish community in Israel was characterised by a kibbutz, again a little village, established by displaced Jews from Europe in the enduring concept of communal shtetls. Shtetls were located in foreign lands, among alien cultures but not seeking assimilation, and near people invariably hostile to Jews. In his earnest way, the Russian Zionist, Ze'ev Jabotinsky (1880-1940), described this situation: the Jew, he said, "is accustomed to living by a culture while another is inaccessible to him, and he has nowhere to go."
Notwithstanding their location within Israel, most kibbutzim are little different. Kibbutz Be'eri, for instance, is situated near Gaza -- home of jihadists determined to eradicate Jews from their promised land. Likewise, Kibbutz Nahal Oz is only some 900 yards from the Gaza border.
The kibbutzim might be regarded as modern-day versions of early shtetls. Their close-knit communities have similar characteristics to shtetls of the past, but with the possible exception of the strong religious component so dominant in those of eastern Europe. It is from the latter that the Hasidic movement originated.
This 6 page article ends with these words:
The final words here belong to two prominent Jews.
The 11th President of Israel, Isaac Herzog (whose Irish-born father, Chaim Herzog, was Israel's 6th president), on January 14, 2024, after one hundred days of the Gaza war:
"Together, as one nation, we will overcome the darkness, rise from the ashes, rebuild, replant, affix mezuzahs on homes, turn each hell into a paradise, as we have always done. The spirit of the people of Israel will always overcome."
The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who was Chief Rabbi of the UK from 1991 to 2013:
"The fate of Haman has been throughout history the fate of individuals and nations: that those who try to destroy the Jewish people end by destroying themselves."
Am Yisrael Chai [the People of Israel Live].
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Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A Lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, a faculty member at Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Retired from law, his particular field of interest is political theory interconnected with current events. He holds a Ph.D. in Apologetical Theology.
Dr. Haug is author of 'Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity'; and 'Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age.' His work has been published by First Things Journal, The American Mind, Quadrant, Minding the Campus, Gatestone Institute, National Association of Scholars, Israel Hayom, Jewish News Syndicate, Anglican Mainstream, Jewish Journal, Document Danmark, and others.
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