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For Your Inspiration

Rabbi Yaakov Salomon, CSW, a prominent Flatbush psychotherapist and activist with Project Inspire, a kiruv division of Aish Hatorah, spoke on 22 Shevat/February 16th at a Hakhel Yarchei Kallah program at the Agudath Israel of Madison in Flatbush. He emphasized the vital need for all frum Jews to become involved in a pikuach nefesh effort to reach out to the millions of our brethren and sisters in America and throughout the world who are assimilated and in growing danger of being lost forever to the Spiritual Holocaust that is currently ravaging Klal Yisroel.

He began by reciting the names of Pusgow, Yailik, Voliksa, Flossenburg, Litemeritz, Dachow and Kofring - seven concentration and labor camps that were "home" to his father, a"h, during the years of the Second World War, 1939 - 1945. Rabbi Salomon recalled how he and his brother grew up on the West Side of Manhattan with their father and mother, zein gezunt.

His father never spoke of the Holocaust. Yet, of course, he and his brother knew that his father was a survivor because of the tattooed letters "KL" on his father's wrist (which stood for concentration lager). There was also the big bump under his father's yalmukah and the screaming nightmares of his father that woke the boys up in the middle of the night. But, his father never personally spoke of the horrors that he had experienced.

Three years ago, Rabbi Salomon took a trip to Poland that was led by the founder of Aish Hatorah - Rav Noach Weinberg, zt"l who was recently nifter in Yerushalayim. The group visited four concentration camps - Treblinka, Auschwitz, Birkenau and Madanek. Throughout the tour, Rav Weinberg voiced one theme: - "Learn from your enemies."

Rav Weinberg told the group to took around and see what these monsters had done and then learn from them. They (German Nazis) were meticulous. They kept records and when they realized that one of their diabolical methods to annihilate the Jews was not working, they innovated and switched plans. They had a mission (evil as it was) and they were motivated and dedicated to their cause.

We have, Rav Weinberg emphasized, to learn from our enemies. He quoted Rav Shach who declared, "If one man could kill six million Jews, one man can save six million Jews." With that, Rav Weinberg challenged Rabbi Salomon and others on the tour to realize that we all must have a mission to save our brethren who are in danger of being lost in a terrible spiritual holocaust. "Can we," Rav Weinberg asked "become as serious and motivated in our mission as those Germans (yemach shemam) were about their message?"

Rav Weinberg told the members of that tour to the Polish concentration camps that each year, we are losing 100,000 Jews a year to intermarriage and assimilation. There are (G-d forbid) a million and a half Jews in America along who are practicing other "religions."

Rabbi Salomon told the Hakhel audience that this current cultural and spiritual holocaust may even worse that the one perpetuated during the Second World War by the Germans. In that indescribable tragedy, Klal Yisroel lost six million kedoshim (martyrs) including most of the family of Rabbi Salomon's father. But, today, the millions of Jews who are going lost from Klal Yisroel in the spiritual holocaust are not kedoshim and they won't rejoin the Jewish nation after the coming of Moshiach and Techias Hameisim.

It is very difficult, Rabbi Salomon said, to arouse others in the frum community. Concerning the threat to our Jewish brethren today, we don't see the barbed wire or the trains loaded with victims traveling to the death camps. We don't see in today's catastrophe any images of crematoriums or gas chambers. All we see is nothing. People are just vanishing and many of us don't even see that.

Many of us only know places such as Flatbush, Boro Park, Monsey, Lakewood, Kew Gardens and Baltimore. We haven't been to the other places such Omaha, Nebraska, Des Moines, Iowa or Vancouver, Canada and other such places where hundreds of thousands of real Jews are just vanishing. That is what makes it so hard to give you a shocking snapshot like that of a concentration camp.

But, the reality is that even here in Flatbush, we do know other Jews who are not frum. It may be your cousin, a second cousin or even a sibling. Maybe it is your accountant or the person to whom you bring your dry cleaning. Rabbi Salomon said that we must learn from our enemies. We must become dedicated to our cause of saving these Jewish brethren from being annihilated in the spiritual holocaust that is quietly but ferociously ravaging Klal Yisroel.

If you believe the words of Rav Shach that just as an evil man can kill six million Jews, a good individual can join the cause to save six million Jews, today is the time to contact Project Inspire and inquire about a series of ongoing seminars that they are offering and which will train you in what to do, say and most importantly what not to say or do, in your efforts to help save fellow Jews from spiritual annihilation.

Rabbi Salomon said that the time is today and not tomorrow, for otherwise your inspiration will grow cold and die. If you can recruit ten or more fellow Yidden to join the cause, Project Inspire will bring the seminars to your house or to a place that is convenient for you. For more information, please call Project Inspire at (646) 291-6191 ext #201 or email info@projectinspire.com.