They Had No Idea - Rabbi Shlomo Horwitz

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Hidabroot - Torah & Judaism’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

[chanting and singing] [music] >> How can somebody mourn something that happened over 2,000 years ago? I'd like to share with you a story that happened in Israel just a few decades ago. There was a young Hebrew teacher, we'll call him Yacov, who taught near Gedera in Israel. Around that time, thousands of Jews had just arrived from Ethiopia >> [music] >> [music] >> in the dramatic airlift known as Operation Solomon, Mivtsa Nearly 15,000 Ethiopian Jews were brought to Israel. Permanent housing was not yet available, so many families lived in temporary trailers known as Caravanin. >> [music] >> Yacov taught children of those families. Now, these Ethiopian Jews had been separated from the rest of the Jewish people for centuries, but they were unmistakably Jewish. They observed Shabbat. They knew Jewish. They observed Shabbat. They knew the [music] major biblical holidays. They had faithfully preserved many ancient Jewish traditions. But, there were also enormous gaps. They had never heard of Hanukkah. Never heard of [music] Purim. Those events took place after their community had been wrenched away from us. So, those chapters of Jewish history had never reached them. And Yacov realized that if these children were ever going to integrate into Israel, they needed to integrate into Israel, they needed more than Hebrew. They needed to understand the Jewish life that had developed while their community was separated from the rest of the Jewish world. So, he made it his mission to help fill in those missing pieces. One day, on Rosh Chodesh Nisan, the first [music] of the Hebrew month of Nisan, he began teaching about Pesach, Passover. He tells the class, "Passover is one of the three pilgrimage festivals. [music] In ancient times, the Jewish people would travel to Jerusalem to Jerusalem

Jump to a moment

1. 0:01[chanting and singing] [music] >> How can somebody mourn something that happened over 2,000 years ago?…
2. 0:31>> [music] >> in the dramatic airlift known as Operation Solomon, Mivtsa Nearly 15,000 Ethiopian Jews…
3. 1:33to integrate into Israel, they needed more than Hebrew. They needed to understand the Jewish life…
4. 2:03would travel to Jerusalem to Jerusalem and celebrate at the holy temple, the Beit Hamikdash. But…
5. 3:08was never there. My father was never there. My grandfather was never there." The room fell…
6. 3:39but the security guard at the school stops him and says, "Teacher, do you know what's…
7. 4:41Shebeit Hamikdash necherav? I just told them that Beit Hamikdash was destroyed." The older [music] man…
8. 5:11air. A man on the side simply collapsed. Others fell to the ground weeping uncontrollably >>…
9. 6:13>> at the temple, but nobody had ever told them what had happened. And when they…
10. 6:43earlier. So they weren't just crying because the Beit Hamikdash had been destroyed 2,000 years ago.…

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