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Double Fill Up, Part 2

2008-09-15T06:00:34Z

Like I said in my previous blog, I was convicted about the festivals of the Lord as written in Leviticus 23, but not so much from a legalistic point of view, as from a more practical point of view. So my husband (who is, btw, a Gentile and a member of another church altogether) and I had been observing the festivals in our house, and for Passover, had invited friends from our church for the seder, and they were very much impressed with it.

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Then a very rough time in my life, which I won�t go into, occurred during the time of the 7 days of the feast of unleavened bread, one where I had almost become an atheist. I prayed, like Moses, for the Lord to show me His glory, saying that I�d be able to handle the burdens of these trials, if I could just see that He is indeed real. (Little did I know at the time, that there is a song that Paul Wilbur sings on his Lion of Judah CD (Show Me Your Face) that has those very words!)

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Then even worse things happened. False accusations came against me which landed me in the legal system, and while I was going through that ordeal, it was then that the Lord had again laid Beit Simcha on my heart. I decided to go and check the website again, and think of maybe the possibility of checking it out this time. Well, when I got to the website, here I saw an announcement on the site, �that they were going to have the singers of Liberated Wailing Wall sing at services. When I saw that, I was like, �Ok, I HAVE� to go now!!� I had heard a lot of their songs on an online Messianic radio station, so I couldn�t pass up this opportunity to hear them live, and only travel about a half hour.

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It was a huge accomplishment for me to venture out on my own to meet new people. Throughout my school years, it had been hammered into my mind, �Don�t talk to strangers!� Well, who were strangers? �People you don�t know.� Why, what will strangers do to you? �They�ll hurt you or kill you!� (Terrorism was huge part of the American psyche long before 9/11!) So even calling people in a supermarket on the phone to ask when their hours are, was to me, talking to strangers, and even to this day, it takes me about a half hour to get up the nerve to call �strangers� on the phone.

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Well, when I walked through the door, it was as if I had been welcomed home! Then, there I heard those awesome two words, words which people in my former church essentially deemed �an affront to God�: ��Shabbat shalom�. To hear those words in person was as if I was dreaming! Strangers so heartily embraced me (a far cry from what I had been taught in school), and someone from the congregation had even offered to sit with me during the service to explain how the service worked. Some of the songs that were sung during the regular service were what I had heard on CD�s or radio stations. Another amazing thing that happened was that the songs that I didn�t know, I sang as if I had known them my whole life! Liberated Wailing Wall was, of course, a blessing to hear live. They did a wonderful (even comical) take on Romans 11, acting out the parts of the wild and natural branches. Then I noticed another unique part of the service that I had never experienced before: �the time of waiting upon the Lord� for prophecy or prayer, where the whole congregation is quiet and still before the Lord, and if He lays on anyone�s heart a message to give to the congregation, they are allowed to (that is, if they are obedient to the Lord�s command to give the message) speak forth that message. The message that was consistently brought forth from the Lord, by at least three different people was, �Fear not. Do not be afraid. I am with you.� That spoke directly to my heart, with the situation that I was in, and I was brought to tears.

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Then after services, I also noticed that there was a Hebrew class being conducted, and I went to look for the person who taught it. Then when I met her, she showed me the visitor�s card I had filled out. (I had indicated on it that I was in need of prayer, that my faith in God would not fail during this difficult time in my life.) She asked if she could pray for me right then and there, and she even put anointing oil on my forehead. After she had prayed for me, she had lunch with me, and then talked with me some more. She then invited me to a Havurah. It was a �meeting of ��friends�, where we meet in each other�s houses to pray for each other, sing praise and worship songs and read and discuss Scriptures, and then hold the traditional Jewish havdalah service to conclude the Shabbat. I told the people there of my present situation, and they all gathered around me to pray and lay their hands on me, and one by one, they all prayed for me.

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Again, this was something I had never experienced before. Until this time, my overall relationship with brothers and sisters in the body of Messiah, was that of seeing them at weekly services, greeting them, sitting down to the service, and when the service was over, telling each other, �have a good week�, and that�s all. This depth of connection between each other, I had never seen! I thought, �Wow, now THESE are Yeshua�s disciples! They actually love one another!!� Plus this was the first time I had ever seen a congregation live up to its name.

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Over time, I would get to know these very unique people, one by one. Many of them would invite me personally to their houses, and I had come to experience something, albeit in a very different manner, that I hadn�t experienced in years: falling in love! I would come home from their houses, and would sit on my couch with a sigh of contentment, praising and thanking God for such wonderful, beautiful people! I belonged to a real living mishpocha! The burden of my daily mundane workdays during the week became sooo much lighter. It felt like I was floating through those days instead of trudging through them. I then knew what Ya�acov (Jacob) felt like when the first seven years that he worked for Rachel felt like days (B�reshit/Genesis 29:20)! Thus began the best year of my life�

�More to come in part 3�.

Double Fill Up, Part 1

2008-09-07T07:28:35Z

I�ll never forget the first day I walked through the door. For the first time, I heard, in person, words that for months I had heard online from listening in on live streaming services of Messianic congregations: �Shabbat shalom.� For some of you who may have attended a synagogue or shul regularly before, this is nothing more than a common weekly greeting you hear from fellow congregants at service, something you would take for granted. But you need to understand that up until this point, I had never attended a synagogue or temple (unless it was one of my third cousins� bar mitzvahs), be it rabbinic or Messianic. With the exception of lighting the Chanukiah (sp?) at Chanukah, my parents never taught me anything about my Jewish heritage. We never attended any synagogue or temple. It wouldn�t be until I was 26 years old, that the Lord would start me on this long journey of a natural olive branch being grafted back into its tree.

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It was when I was a missionary in South Korea, that the Lord Himself revealed the Jewish roots of the Christian faith to me. Sure, I had brushed over this fact many times before, being conditioned in Christianity to believe that since the Jews had rejected Jesus as the Messiah, they were no longer God�s chosen people, just another nation among the rest of the world. Of course I knew that �Jesus was a Jew�, but again, it was something I simply brushed over. I only knew that in order to fulfill Bible prophecy, He had to be Jewish. At that point, if the prophets had said that Jesus had to be African, Asian, or whatever other nationality, I would have believed it, said ok, and left it at that. It wouldn�t be until a little after I started sharing this new revelation from the Lord with people from my church, that I really realized the awesome significance of this fact, that Jesus, (now known to me by His Hebrew Name Yeshua) was Jewish.

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I started telling them the revelation the Lord gave me, through studying the book of Revelation (Wow, a revelation from the book of Revelation! What a concept!) about the festivals of the Lord, such as Passover, Shavuot, Yom Teruah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Most people, when they receive this revelation about the festivals, are convicted more on a strictly legal level, that they sense a calling from the Lord, be they Jewish or Gentile, to observe these festivals, because He commanded it, and to abandon Christian festivals because they were never commanded by Yeshua or the apostles. �I, on the other hand, was convicted on simply a practical level. I saw the profound impact that the festivals could have on my children in communicating the plan of salvation to them. This was the only approach I used in telling this revelation to the people from my church, and they reacted in such rage that I had never heretofore sensed from them. Their accusation against me was, �If you keep the feasts, you deny Christ!! They only pointed forward to His coming. If you keep the feasts, you are saying He hasn�t come yet!� I knew, from my own study, that these arguments were far from factual, but more than that, I was amazed at the rage with which they communicated these false accusations. In my mind, I thought, �But Yeshua was Jewish! HE kept these festivals! Did He deny that He came in keeping these festivals?� I then went over that argument again: �Yeshua was Jewish. He kept the festivals...� Hold on a minute. Yeshua was Jewish. He kept the festivals. I�M Jewish! If I�m Jewish, then I have just as much a right, no, a calling, to keep the festivals as did Yeshua. Then it dawned on me further: Yeshua was Jewish!! (No, this is not redundancy!) Yeshua, the Savior of the world, is a part of MY family!!! I�m related to Him!!! What an awesome honor!!

That began my journey of discovering not only my Jewish roots, but also discovering that there are thousands of believers in Yeshua, Jew and Gentile, who worship God in the same manner as He and His talmidim (disciples) did. I started listening online to live streaming services of Messianic congregations, listened to online streaming Messianic music, and went into Messianic chatrooms with people also discovering the Jewish roots of the faith for about two years, while continuing to attend the same church, (and remaining quiet about my observance of the festivals). Then one day, I went to an online Messianic directory, and as always, expected that the Messianic congregations would be states on the opposite coast of the USA, or in the nation�s mid-section. Much to my surprise, I came across Beit Simcha�s website stating its location, which was only a 30 minute drive from my house. I checked out the site, and saw that it didn�t agree with all my beliefs at the time, so, disappointed, I laid Beit Simcha to the side.

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Part 2 to follow soon�

Running on Empty

2008-08-29T06:39:17Z

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In the beginning of this month, the worship team of Beit Simcha was apart of an outreach event sponsored by a church in a neighboring city here in PA. Every year, Bethlehem, PA hosts an event called Musikfest, where famous and not so famous musicians from all styles and backgrounds come together for 10 days of music food and fun. However, a local church in Bethlehem had been inspired with the idea of holding a parallel event, only in a Christian context, inviting musicians of various churches and congregations to perform. They called it, �Mannafest�. So our worship team made the decision to make an appearance there for outreach purposes.�Now, as you may have read in my last post (done over a month ago, I know�) I�ve had the insane schedule this summer of having jam-packed days of working at a day camp, only to come home and not even sit down, but go right to the kitchen and start dinner, and drag myself to get the girls ready for bed, and fight to keep myself awake for at least some time to myself. Well, since our performance was to take place at 9PM, imagine how I felt physically going to this event. Add to that the stress of unforeseen events happening at the time, and you�ve got a very unfocused, exhausted, burned out mind.�

Well, the first little preview happened when, on the way to the performance site, some of us had to go and pick up some of the equipment we needed for the performance. The weather was not looking that promising. There were a lot of clouds, and even some rain occurring, but we saw the sun in the opposite direction. As we finished packing the van with the equipment, a gorgeous double rainbow appeared right in front of us! And, as if it were like the pillar of could leading the children of Israel by day, that rainbow never left our sight on the journey to the performance site, and it seemed to stop right above the tent that we were to perform under. Now you need to understand that I�m a rainbow chaser. I get excited like a little kid when I see rainbows. So that was a nice little boost to my spirit for the evening.�

So right before we went on stage, the intercessors for the event brought us into the prayer room of the church building, and there, they prayed for us as we prayed. I had the hardest time entering into worshipping God, with all the issues on my mind. Now please understand, I absolutely live for those times of worship, getting away from the daily grind and hassle of life, but, like I�ve said in a previous post, my past habits of �being so heavenly minded that I�m no earthly good�, and the trouble I�ve gotten into because of it, haunt me and scare me away from truly resting and �being still� before God. I�m just afraid I�ll slip back into old patterns. But this time, I sensed something telling me, �You�re running on empty.� I believed this was the Lord talking to me, and so I said, �I know, I know. I sooo miss those times of intense study and intense worship.� He then gave me a vision of two vehicles: a regular four door car, and a tractor trailer. He then asked me, �What is the difference between these two vehicles?� Confused, I simply answered, �Well, one is large and one is small�.?� He then said, �Come on. Keep going.� I then answered, in context of His first word to me, that one requires a lot more gasoline than the other. He said, �That�s right. YOU, are that tractor trailer. You require a lot more time with Me than others do, to be refueled and get back out there on the road. Now what�s another difference between the two?� I said, �One carries a lot more weight than the other.� He said, �That�s right. You have been carrying a lot of weight around that I have never intended for you to carry. I made you to carry a far greater measure of My glory than others. After all, you do sing �Let the Weight of Your Glory Fall�, don�t you?� Befuddled, I hesitantly answered, �I guess�.is this really You I�m hearing, or is it just my own insane, crazy thoughts???� Now keep in mind that this whole exchange between me and the Lord took the whole of two minutes, far quicker than you have been reading this, and all the while the intercessors were praying over the worship team, and while the worship team was also praying. So it was as if God finally said, �You don�t believe it�s Me talking? Well how about this, then?�� I tell you, not even 1 minute after that little exchange between me and the Lord, Rabbi Glenn started singing that very song, �Let the Weight of Your Glory Fall�!!! And I tell you, the awesome harmony between the worship team members was so incredibly amazing, that it was as if angels were singing with us! I then broke down in tears and almost fell over! We all then said, jokingly �Ok, we�re having the performance in here!!!�� I was just sooo wowed by the whole experience, and now I was indeed �tank full� by this time, to go onstage and perform.�

The experience behind all this that made it so incredible was this: This past Shavuot, one of the members of my congregation did a teaching on the impartation of the gifts of the Ruach hakodesh, and she has been blessed with the gift of prophecy, so the Lord laid on her heart words to give to people, words that spoke of their giftings and callings in the body of Messiah. She was giving the people these vivid word-picture identities in the Lord, like one being a �blood-hound�, and another being a �Tender Heart Bear� The thing that got me was, she didn�t have any words to give for me or for three other people in the congregation. She was apologizing to me for not having any word, but I quickly responded with, �Hey, if that�s what the Lord told you to say to people, and it didn�t include me, then you say what HE tells you to say, even if it didn�t include me.� Later the Lord simply told me. �Hey, you can hear Me just fine. What do you need her for?� I accepted that word from Him, but still said, like a child still wanting that sweet dessert, �I know, but it would still be nice to hear it through another person.� Well, little did I know that He had an even more powerful word to give to me, through more than just one person, and via the avenue which is my gifting/calling in the body of Messiah: music. And I now have the word picture identity that He gave me. I�m a tractor trailer called to bear a far greater weight of His glory than the others, so spending that time with Him is needed.�

Have you heard from Him lately like this? You CAN. Just do what I was afraid for a while to do again: be still before Him, and know that He is God, and do what the greatest commandment is, according to Yeshua: Shema! Hear! Listen! All too often we do far more talking in our prayer life than listening, but that wouldn�t go over too well in a relationship with another person. So if it doesn�t work with our fellow man, what makes you think that you talking and not listening at all, is to going to work in a relationship with the Creator of humanity? Don�t be afraid to simply be quiet and still before Him. He will show up in His time, and will speak to you. And His spoken word, since the beginning, creates life. May He �fill you up� and recreate life in you today!��

Back again!

2008-07-22T06:30:18Z

Well, it�s been quite the roller coaster ride for me in the past month. I�ve experienced a massive overhaul in my schedule since I started a job as a music teacher for a day camp. I haven�t had a schedule like this since my college days, and the last of my college days was ten years ago! I�m going nonstop from 6AM to 10PM, and for the first time in many years, I feel myself running out of steam by 10:30. For those of you who know me, I�ve been a night owl for years, so dozing off by 10:30 for me, is somewhat of a foreign concept.

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Speaking of foreign concepts, I�ve experienced something else that I�d never thought I�d fall into. For years, I could never understand the mindset of what�s traditionally termed the �type A� personality. You know, the strict scheduler armed with a daily to-do list, from the time they arise to the time they lay down, with no room for any kind of spiritual activity. So I had heard the woeful pleas and calls to �type A�s� from radio preachers: �Oh we must always set aside time in our day to pray and read the Bible.� I, as a new believer back then, could not understand the need for these pleas from pulpits. If the Christians claimed to believe that �that which is seen is temporal, but that which is unseen is eternal� (2 Cor 4:18) and claimed to follow the command from scripture to �set your minds on things above, and not on things on the earth� (Colossians 3:2), why is there the need for these pleas and cries from the preachers? Why didn�t their congregations have the same love for the word of God that I had? I thought, (and still think), that the Bible was the best thing since�.well�.its Author! I sure had a lot to learn.

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Even when I went to prayer meetings or Bible studies, I would share with the people the amazing insights that God would give me, which I thought were just basic things they knew, but they would give me these blank stares. I then started realizing why the pastors were pleading with their congregations. Their congregants were most likely very well-off. Not super-duper Wall Street-rich tycoons, but enough to have their minds overly concerned with the temporal side of life, thus neglecting that which is eternal. As for me, I, who barely made enough money to get by, (and still do) was compelled to not put place my desires on temporal, earthly things, being that I could barely afford any of them. So I found my greatest treasure in this Book �whose every detail I was drinking in like a baby takes to milk. I even came to the point where I was labeled as �so heavenly minded that I�m no earthly good� which I have to confess, was true to a point. I neglected doing laundry, giving my children the necessary care they need, and doing other housework. It became a source of guilt and shame for me, as my problem was not too little time for prayer and Bible study, but too much time for it.

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Am I saying, then, that �the abundance of money is the root of all evil�? Hardly! First of all, that�s not what the scripture says, and second, many servants of God experience abundant resources, and they are blessed with the wisdom to discern how He desires them to spend those resources, and with the spirit of being content with what they have. But there are also plenty of us �working poor� out there, who work the same crazy hours as the better-off people, as I�ve been experiencing in the past few weeks. I barely have enough energy to make dinner by the end of the day, never mind studying His word, and I have a hard time getting up in the morning. See? These are common excuses heard from those �type A�s�. Me? A �type A� personality?? Hardly!! But now I can understand their plight a lot more, with all the extra hours I now must put in for work. I sometimes sense that the little time I do put in for daily devotions is not enough. As king David put it, �my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water� (Psalm 63:1) But yet, a part of me now feels guilty for even having that longing. Even after 14 years of being a believer, I still have a lot to learn.

Yom haShoah Reflections

2008-05-02T19:18:15Z

Despite the long, hard years of the life of my grandfather, Henry Weiss, there are many happy and even amusing memories of �Grandpa� that I will forever be blessed by. I�ll always remember playing beside him on the piano, playing �Chopsticks�, his suffocating hugs that he always gave me and my sisters, his affectionate nicknames to me of �Kimala� and �Kimmer�, and especially his silly German/English poem to me that he always greeted me with: �Kimmer, you�re getting schlimmer (worse)! Geh auf dein Zimmer! (Get out of your room!)� (I was a very shy, timid child, growing up, often isolating myself.)�

During the 1980s and early 1990�s, every Thanksgiving, my family would use their timeshare to go to the island of Aruba for a week. One year, my father�s best friend Frank, and Grandpa himself, accompanied my parents, my sisters and me to Aruba. We were having dinner in a restaurant, and when it came time for dessert, the waiter asked people if they wanted coffee, and he looked at Frank, and in his native accent, said �Coffee also?� However, Frank didn�t quite understand his question, and thought the man had insulted him with, �Coffee, ***hole?� The waiter then quickly repeated himself, and Frank uncontrollably laughed at his misunderstanding, as did Grandpa, and from then on, whenever Frank and Grandpa got together at holiday times, they�d greet each other with �Coffee ***hole?� It was a blessing to me, to hear Grandpa laugh, as he rarely did.�

And then, in his final year of life, at the strong recommendation of one of the members of my congregation, I and another friend of mine went to visit him, to record him speaking about his experiences during the Nazi regime. It was on a Shabbat, and we took some of the remaining food from our Oneg luncheon, including a small loaf of zucchini bread, and poor Grandpa, who was always hospitable to people visiting him, was worried that he wouldn�t have anything for us to eat when we got there. We said we had plenty of food. So when we got there, and showed him the food and explained to him what the food was, including the zucchini bread, again, another case of not hearing a person correctly occurred. He responded with, �Oh, bikini bread?� My friend and I looked at each other with a smirk on our faces, and told him more clearly. Needless to say, he was thoroughly embarrassed, but he took it in good humor, because we didn�t let him live that one down!!��

The last 21 years of the life of Henry Weiss�were more influential� to me, to his family, and to the people around him, than he ever believed. He eventually moved into a senior citizens� apartment complex in Union, New Jersey, and, after much convincing and pushing by my father, did volunteer work in the emergency room in the local hospital, and much to his delight, received many awards and letters of achievement. He would live long enough to witness the weddings of his three granddaughters, and would welcome his four great grandchildren into the world. The people he would converse with in his apartment complex would tell him, and my mother, how much his outgoing, conversationalist mentality brightened their days and their own twilight years.In 2004, he had developed a case of shingles, and would never fully recover from it. The pain was extremely intense for him, and I often wondered, �Why, Lord, have You allowed him to live so long?�� After the passing of my great uncle Charlie, who was the late Gloria Weiss�s brother, Grandpa, as my sisters and I all called him, told me to not cry for him when he was gone, but to be glad for him, that all his pain will be over. After thinking about that for a while, I thought, how could I not cry for him when he is gone? He, like my Nana, as I called his wife Gloria, showed me such deep love and affection unlike my father. I�ll never forget his suffocating hugs he always gave me and my sisters. His deep love for classical music and playing the piano are part of what inspired me to become a musician. His silly German/English poem he always teased me with. �Kimmer, you�re getting schlimmer! Geh auf dein zimmer!�(Kim, you�re getting worse, so get out of your room!�) At this time, he was brave enough to now try email, in a fast-paced information age that has changed the world so dramatically from the days of Nazi Germany. I was still very shy at the time, still afraid to really share personal things face to face with members of my family. So since I knew he had an email account, I knew that I had to tell this to him in some way before it was too late. So I emailed him, telling him my reaction to him telling me not to cry when he is gone. He responded, and said, �I just read your remarks to me from an earlier email I send to you. It was really touching for me tosee you open up like that in your feelings. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the beautiful things you are saying about Nana and me.��

During the holidays, my mother would make the hour long trek to Union from her home in Hunterdon County to go and pick him up. In the fall of 2005, I knew I�d be passing through the area during the holiday time, coming back from the Northeast Regional Conference, so with the kindness of�the family I was riding with, they�went out of the way to pick him up, and, in their words, �Your grandfather touched our lives and we only met him that one time coming back from the Northeast Regional Conference!��We enjoyed the time to just chat with him during the ride.� At�their strong suggestion,�a friend�and I went to visit him, and record him telling us of his experiences.�My friend�then began a brief email relationship with him, and got the chance to witness to him about Yeshua through the email. In an excerpt, she wrote, �Yes, God loves us, but we have all done things our own way and are far from Him. Yeshua did things God�s way and gave His life an atonement for our sins on the tree. Now He is offering that new life to you. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived the things God has prepared for those that love Him. Please don�t let any life experience cloud your mind with misunderstandings of who God is and what He is like. Open your heart to him.� And his response to her was, �Your long letter touching many different subjects was a very fine presentation from you. I read it over many times because I liked the style of its content. You gave me a good idea about your former life of what you called �living in sin�, and the life you live now, in which you are happy with yourself and your �mishpocha�. Very touching. There is nothing else I can say to your very interesting letter.� What caught my eye in that response is, that he read her email over many times. Whether he accepted what she wrote, we�ll never truly know until eternity.

Then in May of 2006, my mother wanted to hold a joint birthday/anniversary celebration for me, and Grandpa, and my sister Renee and her husband Richard. That was really the last time he was in the best of health that he could be in for 86 years old. But even in his final years, he still was a blessing to me and to the people around him, even to two other blessed servants of the Lord whom many of us deeply love and cherish.

I never got to actually say goodbye to him, and I then realized, that the silly poem he always told me, was something he was trying to tell me, no, something that the Lord Himself has been trying to tell me for years. I regret not calling him and saying goodbye to him, and often have wondered what Grandpa would have said to me, but while I was in mourning for him when he passed last summer, I strongly believe the Lord told me what my Grandpa would have told me: �Kimmer, don�t get any schlimmer. And stay out of your zimmer.� In a lightning flash of revelation, the Lord translated, into the language of the Ruach hakodesh, what that silly poem meant: Your sin is forgiven. Go and sin no more, lest a worst thing come upon you, and give up your fear and your spirit of isolation. Let your light so shine as your grandfather�s did. You have lost many opportunities. Don�t let anymore slip away.� And then afterwards, as I looked out on my small deck, there I saw a rare sight: Two mourning doves perched on the railing, pluming each other�s necks. I can only take it by faith now, that that was the Lord�s sign to me, that perhaps I will indeed see both Nana and Grandpa again one day.

But whenever I hear anyone ask the questions of �Why?� or �Where was God in all this?� or �Is there even a God?� when it comes to the Holocaust, I have a very simple answer, so simple, that most people may not even like my answer: The very fact that you ask that question, tells me that 1) God is indeed real, and 2) God is where He always has been, sitting on His throne, working out Where He has always been and always will be, working out His plan of human history from its inception to its very end, when Messiah finally arrives.�How does the very fact that people ask questions such as these prove that God is real? Because it shows that people still have, written on their spiritual �hard drives�, so to speak, a sense of good and evil, of right and wrong, of moral standards. Whether you agree with me or not, it is my deepest belief, that God allowed the Holocaust to occur to challenge the belief in atheistic evolution. �If we are nothing but material blobs of self-propelling chemicals, would we even be asking this question of where God was?�If I were a believer in atheistic evolution, I would say, with the coldest, most stony of hearts, who cares?! I would say, apparently it was another episode of the survival of the fittest, and those who died, apparently were not the fittest.��

This is why I can never understand why some people I know (including my late grandfather Henry Weiss) are fervent believers in evolution, yet at the same time question how something like the Holocaust could have happened, how people could have come down to such a low level of lining other people up and shooting them on the spot, whether they be children or elderly? If there is no God, and we all came about by millions of years of mutations and macroevolution, why do you present such an argument with the assumption that there are still moral standards? If you are to be a true atheistic evolutionist, then don�t bother asking the question! Believe that it�happened, and that it was neither right nor wrong, neither good nor bad.�

No matter how much people these days deny its history, no matter how fervently scientists hold to their �blind faith� in atheistic evolution, the �horrors of the Holocaust will forever be a testimony to the fact that humanity came from the hands of a personal Creator Who has created moral standards.��

(For a superb teaching of Jonathan Cahn on the hand of God throughout history, even the Nazi regime paralleling the story of Purim, go to:�http://www.bethisraelworshipcenter.org/tapearchiveList.asp�and type in �Yad Kedem� in the �Search Tapes by Keyword� box.)

Yom haShoah, Part 3

2008-05-02T18:26:54Z

Well, in 1955 my Arlene came along, and it didn�t take long before my troubles with her started. She was difficult when she was an infant, as a child, and worse as a teenager. I shouldn�t be mentioning all this, but Hertha and Yosef knew all the problems we had to go through with her. Hertha and Yosef gave plenty of advice on how to deal with Arlene, but to no avail. My Gloria was not mentally strong enough to handle her, and I was mostly out working for little money, so you see, times were not the best for us.��

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In 1956, Yosef sold the house on Dorchester Road. Yosef liked it there in spite of the few adversities I�ve mentioned. They moved into an apartment on 181^st Street, and they liked it very much. It was right by the Hudson River. You could watch the boats going by, and you had a view of the GW Bridge, which I think was impressive.��

Yosef also bought a grocery store on St. Nicholas Avenue. This was not far from the apartment, but Yosef worked many hours for 6 days a week, and did not seem to be happy with it. I remember when Passover came, Yosef made up all the orders for Pesach goods. I cam with my car, and Harry and I delivered all the merchandise. Poor Harry did most of the schlepping.��

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After the holidays, our parents came on the Queen Mary to visit us. Hertha and I went to pick them up from the pier, while yosef had to mind his stoe. It was a happy reunion, because we had an extra treat: Uncle Benno came from Israel, and for the first time in 21 years, the whole family was reunited. For some reason, our parents did not like America, and they went back to London in August of 1956. Our mother already was not well. The war years and uncertainties took a big toll on her health. Benno stayed until the end of October, and returned to Israel a few days later, only to have the Suez war break out. We all felt very bad that he was not in a safe haven anymore.��

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Yosef then decided to sell the grocery store. This was a bummer. They lost money on this enterprise.��

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In 1958, I and the Verstandig family met our parents in Bad Hall, Austria. I remember Harry was in Europe at the same time, but he chose to go with a youth group. There was one funny thing I remember from Bad Hall. The room which the Verstandigs had rented had, on top of their bed, a picture of� [Yiddish expletive for Yeshua] Mary, and the other guy (you know). [apparently Henry didn�t wish to dwell the fact that� his respected brother-in-law�s name was the same as that of the husband of Miriam the mother of Yeshua.]��

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We had one nice week in Bad Hall. We went to a Kurconcert, which Yosef loved. Once Brenda and Milton made noise, and Yosef gave Milton a slap in the face. That was the only time I ever saw Yosef hit any of his children.��

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Yosef and I went on my walks in Bad Hall. We were young and full of vigor. I left Bad Hall one day after our parents were back in London. We agreed to meet in Innsbruck, Austria a few days later, but the meeting mever matierialized, because some of our train connections did not work out right. It was a big disappointment for all of us.��

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I remember Harry became a youth leader for some Jewish organization, and was very seldom home. Yosef complained about that. I understand it was at his youth organization, that Harry met Dorothy, his future wife.��

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Unfortunately, we lost our mother in June 1960. She passed away in London. Her heart just gave out on her. She was 69 years old. Soon after that, our father came to New York and stayed until August of 1962. I think he was from the old European school, and never was happy here. He went to Israel from there to visit Benno. He died soon after coming back to London from Israel, just before Chanukah. This was only a few days before Harry and Dorothy�s wedding, so I was presented with a problem. I knew Hertha could not be informed on account of the wedding. I got in touch with Yosef while I was sitting Shiva, and he came to my apartment in Irvington. It was a bitter cold day. We agreed to keep the passing of my father a secret to Hertha until after the wedding, so she could have pleasure at her son�s wedding. I informed everyone that I had the flu and was not able to attend the wedding.��

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The years flew by. And Harry and Dorothy had three wonderful girls. Brenda met Eddie, and they had a big wedding up in Washington Heights. Soon after Aliza arrived, Gloria and I continued our visits on 181^st Street, and Yosef came to Irvington. There were years with nothing special happening. [better years with nothing special happening, than years being in hiding from one�s persecutors]. Hertha and Yosef spent almost every summer in Weggis, Switzerland, and my family rented a bungalow in the Jewish communities in the Catskills during the summers. Then Uri was born and Brenda and Eddie moved to Toronto, because Eddie had a good job offer.��

In the summer of 1972, I met Yosef and Hertha in Bad Gastein, Austria. It sure was beautiful there. We did a lot of walking and admired the scenery. One day we went on a walking trip to a place called �Zu dem gruenen Baum.� (to the green tree). A really funny thing happened on the way back. Yosef had to use a toilet which we passed by, and in there, he broke his zipper on his fly, and we kept on laughing all the way home. It was a riot looking at the funny way he had to walk to cover up his front. Old happy times!��

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Bad Gastein was expensive, so we went to Bad Ischel, Austria. It was a bad move, because that town had nothing to offer, and we left after three days, heading for London, to visit the grave of our parents.��

Before Yosef completely retired, he took a job as a messenger. I remember he told me he pretended to be six years younger in order to get the job. He seemed to enjoy this type of work.. It was so funny. One day he saw my daughter Arlene roaming around in midtown Manhattan when she was supposed to be in school. Arlene was hoping Yosef wouldn�t see her, but to no avail. Well, that was Arlene as a teenager for you. Yosef then told me, and of course I wasn�t thrilled to hear that. Who knows how many times she cut class. Now she regrets how she wasted time when she could have made something of herself. The old saying applies: youth is wasted many times on the young. The time was about 1973.�

Yosef and I seldom agreed on politics and many other subjects, but as time went by, Yosef mellowed on many subjects. Religion and the success or lack thereof in our children were two favorite subjects. I loved to have conversations with Yosef. He was a learned man. I do not think he ever missed reading the New York Times from beginning to end. We also discussed the State of Israel a lot. He always supported Israel financially, but I wondered why he never had the urge to visit Israel in person.

Yosef�s sleeping problem was another topic. It�s no fun when you�re a poor sleeper. I can tell you how agonizing it is to not have a good 6 hours of restful sleep, because I had the same problem for many years. However, it improved a little as I got older. E always exchanged notes about different types of sleeping pills, much to Hertha�s dismay.��

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Yosef was a �gnosher� like me, and he always enjoyed the rich cakes I used to come to New York with. Hertha would always say, �Yosef, that is enough cake already!�, but Yosef couldn�t resist another little piece. I got pleasure out of that.��

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My beloved wife (she shall rest in peace) tragically died in 2 minutes, of an aneurysm shortly after we came from Ellen�s house from a Thanksgiving dinner. It came like lightning from the blue sky. I was devastates and of course, so was every member of the family over her untimely death. In the beginning, I had no incentive to go to work or do anything else. It just felt like curtains came down on me too. Hertha and Yosef were a big help in those trying weeks, but frankly until this day, my quality of life was, and will not ever be the same again. It is no secret that Gloria and I were not compatible in many areas, but after being married to a person for 38 years, after having children and grandchildren together, there is always a deep-seated bond, which when interrupted, is hard to bear for the person who is left behind.��

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But back to my tribute to Yosef and his family.� Finally, Hertha and Yosef moved to Florida, a step which I am not able to judge as �good or bad�. There is no clear-cut consensus about that. I saw Yosef for the last time in Toronto at Aliza�s wedding. I was looking forward to seeing him again and having nice conversations with him due to Brenda and Eddie�s generosity [of paying for his trip to Toronto]. It was such a disappointment that Yosef would talk very little to me. I know he was angry at me for two things: My acceptance of Brenda and Eddie�s generosity, and the upcoming wedding of my granddaughter in a church [Renee Koegel�s marriage to Richard Weinreich]. I must say with my best and honest conscience, that I am not guilty of any wrongdoing on either part. Number one, Brenda and Eddie really wanted me to come to the wedding. It was a �simcha� to them. They are fine people, and I know they mean what they say. On my own, I could not have done it. And number two, I had about as much influence on Renee�s decision as I have on making the sun shine on any given day. My nephew Milton, who is not only my dear sister�s son, but also a good pal, has said to me, �Uncle Henry, my father is a sick man who is sometimes irrational and does not speak to many people. It is a part of his sad illness.� That explanation made me feel a lot better about the whole incident.��

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Yosef will be for the rest of my life, a role-model for his honesty, his dependability, and his excellent character. I will mourn for him for the rest of my life, just as you will. I did not write to you individually to express my condolences and my own sorrow over your late husband, father, father-in-law and grandfather. We all knew the sad day was coming, and a presentation like this would be in good taste of each and every one of you remembering and honoring the departed (including myself).��

�From now on, only good news.�

Your brother Henry

Yom hashoah Part 2

2008-05-02T18:11:10Z

Well, I came to Sweden and spent 3 days in jail for unlawful entry. Let me tell you something. Those days in jail felt better than the greatest hotel in the world. I knew I was going to live. The Swedish Red Cross helped me find the rest of my family. I learned to my greatest happiness, that our parents lived with Benno in Palestine, that Hertha was in England, and Yosef was, after terrible times, safe in Switzerland. It was in November 1943, that our parents learned that both Yosef and I saved our lives from those murderous Germans. Of course later on, I found out that my parents and Benno in Palestine had a big party of thanks that Yosef and I were alive. I also learned that Hertha and Yosef were married in 1939 before the war started, and then there was some mix-up so that Hertha got to London and Yosef , with his father, got to Brussels, where his father died soon after.

�� Hertha was alone and pregnant in London with her son Harry, who was born, I believe, in May 1940. I stayed in Sweden until the end of the war in May of 1945. In July of 1945, I went to Copenhagen, Denmark. After a little while, I landed a job with the American army, as they were looking for German Jews who had a little knowledge of English. I was hired as an interpreter for the American Army stationed in Berlin. My first thought was to see Hertha and Yosef and little Harry in London.��

Yosef was in London already, not that the British were particularly nice even after the war�s end. Harry had a terrible accident, being burned by an electric heater over half of his body, and that was the only reason the British let Yosef come in. I had a much harder time. In September 1946, I got as far as Paris, and the British consulate ould not grant me a visa, even though I was in American uniform. What a let down that was for me! However, I didn�t give up, and finally, in 1947, with the help of the US war department, I got to London. What a happy day that was. Our parents had already left Palestine for London to stay for good, and after 9 years of mostly hell, I was reunited with my whole family, except for Benno. For the first time, I saw my nephew and niece Harry and Brenda.��

The Verstandig family lived in a nice little house on Princess Road in Goldersgreen. Yosef already worked with his brothers and brother-in-law with his old craft. However, he still suffered from nightmares of what the Nazis did to his life. He wanted to stay in London, but the British didn�t give him the right to work. �� But then in January of 1948, I landed in New York, sponsored by an uncle named Nichtenhauser, and in February of 1948, the Verstandig family came to New York, sponsored by a diamond merchant whom Yosef had befriended in Brussels. I will never forget the day they arrived on the Queen Elizabeth at the Cunard line pier in midtown New York. The family who sponsored the Verstandig family (their name was Rottenberg) was also at the pier. The first thing I saw at that time was little Harry dragging his little sister along, who could hardly walk. Then I saw Hertha and Yosef. It was very cold that day. The winter of 1947/48 was extremely cold, starting with a 28 inch snowstorm the day after Christmas.��

� Anyhow, we finally got all that luggage unto a van and off we went to Far Rockaway, where the sponsor of the Verstandig family rented a little second floor apartment. It was very small. Apartments in those years after the war were at a high premium. I already had a job as a soda fountain man. Don�t ask me how I did all this. What did I know about making sundaes, soda, and all the other �chaserei�? The waitresses were mad at me because I never made their orders for the table right away, and therefore, they got poor tips or no tips at all. I got this job through a friend who went with me from Denmark to Sweden, and came to the US six months before me. The job was in Newark, NJ, and that made me stay in New Jersey to this day.��

On my day off, I would go to Far Rockaway every week. I was mostly looking forward to playing with Harry and Brenda. Brenda was such an adorable baby, and Harry, with all that heavy British accent. It was always a holiday for me to go out there. After all, Hertha always made me a good meal, and Yosef came home from work. He was not too happy with the fur business in New York, because it was too much rush, and Yosef was used to the slower pace and better workmanship back in Europe. The pay was good, but Yosef came back home from work exhausted, and on top of all that, he still had the physical and mental scars from his bad experiences in the war, and from the devilish Nazis. He was a poor sleeper.�� Well, in August of 1948, I got myself a cheap 1936 Chevy, and now I could drive out to Hertha and Yosef. In November of that year, Yosef and Hertha found a bigger apartment in Queens offs Dittmars Boulevard right next to a big tank of cooking gas. The smell was terrible, but the place was bigger, and they needed that since their third child Milton was soon to be born. I remember that I moved the hole family from Far Rockaway to Queens. We were all young and had plenty of strength.��

I then met my future wife Gloria (she shall rest in peace) at a dance in Newark, and I soon introduced her to Hertha and Yosef. As a matter of fact, Gloria and and babysat for Harry and Brenda while Hertha gave birth to Milton, and Yosef was with her in the hospital.��

In January of 1949, we had a visitor from London. It was Yosef�s brother Bernahrd from London. He was a lot of fun, but unfortunately, soon after he returned home to his family in London, he developed a brain tumor, and Yosef lost one of his brothers early in life. It was sad for all of us. I had met Bernhard and his family on my first visit to London. They were very well off, and had a beautiful house with a garden full of flowers, and I really had taken to them immediately.��

On June 11, 1949, Gloria and I got married. This was Yosef and Hertha�s wedding date ten years prior, and they were there to celebrate with us. Now we were two couples who visited each other a lot. At that time, our conversations focused a lot on the stinginess and pettiness of Gloria�s parents. (they shall also rest in peace) There were unbelievable incidents which occurred while we were living in Gloria�s parents� house. It was an upper unit with hardly enough room for one person to live. Well, again I am straying from my intended presentation, but I must add that most of those happenings came from Gloria�s own stories to Hertha and Yosef.��

Both Hertha and Yosef did not take these stories very lightly, and there was no love lost as far as Hertha and Yosef were concerned, between them and my in-laws. IN March of 1950, my little Ellen came along, and so we were a family of three, still living in the same mouse hole. The Verstandig family had enough of their apartment in Queens. It was really unhealthy to live around those tanks. It was also dangerous, because the tanks, fed by coal, had a history of exploding.��

Yosef and Hertha rented a nice house in Coney Island for one year. We came with Ellen, and she and Milton had many happy hours playing together. Brenda was the boss over those two. We often went to the amusement apark in Coney Island, which in those years, was a highly respected and safe place.��

Yosef and Hertha then decided to buy a house, which was in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, then an Italian neighborhood. I don�t think they were very happy there. First of all, it was no Jewish section, and I also remember that there was always a smell of fermented wine coming from the basement of the house. Yosef made himself a little workshop in the basement for furrier work. Among other things, he made a fur coat for my mother-in-law. Yosef and I sat a lot in the basement, and had many pleasant hours together with nice rational conversations. We talked politics, religion, and subjects which were acute at the time. I observed that after a while, Harry came down and showed lots of interest in our conversations. He also taught me to play Scrabble, and he already knew a little about the game of chess.��

The Verstandigs did not stay long in Bensonhurst. They sold the house and bought another one on Dorchester Road off Coney Island Avenue. This was a pretty neighborhood with plenty of trees and very clean. The only problem, especially for Hertha, was that all those one family homes were adjacent to each other, and you could hear people talking in the adjacent home. However, they still lived there from 1951-1956, and we saw each other a lot. Yosef was not only my broth-in-law, but he was a man for me with the finest character, reliable and honest second to none I had ever known.

Yom haShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Part 1

2008-05-02T18:00:21Z

Memoir of Yosef Verstandig, as told by Henry Weiss, to his sister Hertha Verstandig, the widow of Yosef.

�January 1996: This is a memoir of my highly respected brother-in-law, Yosef (who shall rest in peace), the loyal husband of my dear sister Hertha, for nearly 58 years, to whom I dedicate this legacy of Yosef in chronological order to the best of my recollection.�My first encounter with Yosef was in the month of February 1938 in the German town of Leipzig. At that time, Yosef was in the fur business with his father and brothers David and Bernhard. At this time the business was quite successful, in spite of the Nazis having been in power for 5 years. He has his own auto which at that time in Germany, only the upper class could afford. Hertha left Bamberg, the Weiss family hometown, for Leipzig, after our parents (they shall also rest in peace) moved from Nazi Germany to Vienna, Austria, in August of 1937, only to meet the Nazi murderers there 6 months later. A childhood friend, who had moved from Bamberg to Leipzig some time previously, convinced Hertha to go to Leipzig. Through this friend, Hertha was taken in by a well-to do Jewish family in Leipzig, named Adell. (Before Anschluss [the annexation of Austria by the Nazis] Viennese like my father could only move too Vienna with their wife, but not their children.)

Now our parents were in Austria, and since January of 1935, Benno was in Palestine. I was working on farms between 1935 and 1938, which were �Winkel� in Berlin, and �Gruessen� near Frankfurt. I was not even 15 years old yet when I left my home. I belonged to a Zionist youth organization, whose task it was to get young people like me into Palestine, which was still a British mandate at the time. My time was up on the farm, and I had to wait until may 1938 to get a visa to Denmark. This was in February 1938, and the Adell family invited me to stay there until my departure to Denmark. Well, it was a happy reunion with Hertha when I arrived with almost no clothing in Leipzig. Hertha was a little embarrassed to introduce me, looking like a bum. The Adell family understood.

Now Hertha told me she met a fine man, and she wanted me to meet him. Of course this was Yosef. Hertha took me along on a date with Yosef, and we went to a coffeehouse, which was a big deal at that time in Germany. There was a little trivial episode at this restaurant. Yosef had to go to the restroom, and while he was away for a few moments, Hertha summoned the waiter to pay for the food I ate. When Yosef returned and learned about that, he was visibly annoyed over the fact that Hertha already paid for my check. I just bring out that silly little story, because it always stuck in my mind, since it as the first time I met Yosef, and it was the beginning of a 58 year relationship.

Well, time went by, and in March 1938, Hitler invaded Austria, and our dear parents were again in Nazi hands. It was a sad day for Austrian Jewry. We in Germany already had the taste of Nazi barbarism. I did not see much of Yosef in Leipzig.

Because Austria was now a part of Germany, Hertha decided to visit our parents in Vienna before I would be able to go to Denmark. There was another funny episode before we left Leipzig for Vienna. Yosef took us to the railroad station and helped us get a seat on the train. He wore an elegant overcoat, and in order to reserve a seat, he put his coat on an empty seat. Well, to make this story short, the train took off in haste, and the coat took a trip to Vienna, and poor Yosef had no coat to go home with. I returned back to Leipzig before Hertha, because a few days later, I was scheduled to leave for Denmark on a farm. I said goodbye to Yosef, and I felt the same way as when I left Vienna, father, mother, and Hertha: God only knows if or when we are going to see each other again. Not to stray off the story, but� I will not go into my life in Demark from May 24, 1938, until I saved my life by escaping on a rowboat, which normally holds four people, with 6 friends over a body of water called the Oeresund separating Denmark from Sweden, about 12 kilometers. It was October 30, 1943, when the Gestapo rounded up all the Jews in Denmark (about 5000 people), to send them to the death camps in Germany and Poland.

At this point, all I knew was that my father was sent to Poland, my poor mother was alone in Vienna, Hertha was in Switzerland, and Yosef was with his father in Belgium. Denmark was occupied by the Germans on April 9, 1940. So of course the future of all the family ever being reunited again looked dim and extremely depressing.

Baruch habayim!

2008-04-29T05:22:05Z

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Beit Simcha is Messianic synagogue located in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania. We are a community welcoming Jews and Gentiles, rejoicing, worshipping the God of Israel, learning, and loving one another.

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2008-04-16T18:32:57Z

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