Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
the girl with the apple
The Girl With An Apple
(This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat. He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75)
August 1942. Piotrkow, Poland. The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.
'Whatever you do,' Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, 'don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen. 'I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be
deemed valuable as a worker.
An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, and then asked my age. 'Sixteen,' I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.
My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, 'Why?'. He didn't answer.
I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.
'No, 'she said sternly. 'Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.' She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.
My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. 'Don't call me Herman anymore.' I said to my brothers. 'Call me 94983.'
I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.
Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin.
One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. 'Son,' she said softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel.' Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream.
But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.
I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German. 'Do you have something to eat?' She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life.
She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, 'I'll see you tomorrow.' I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple.
We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me?
Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples. Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to There sienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.
'Don't return,' I told the girl that day. 'We're leaving.'
I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed.
On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over.
I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had
survived;
I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none.
My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my
brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years.
By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. 'I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.' A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma.
I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty, Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.
We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, 'Where were you,' she asked softly, 'during the war?' 'The camps,' I said. The terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.
She nodded. 'My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,' she told me. 'My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.' I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were both survivors, in a new world.
'There was a camp next to the farm.' Roma continued. 'I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.' What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. 'What did he look like? I asked. 'He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six
months.' My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be. 'Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?' Roma looked at me in amazement. 'Yes!' 'That was me!'
I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it! My angel!
'I'm not letting you go.' I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.
'You're crazy!' she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week.
There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her
go.
That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.
Herman Rosenblat of Miami Beach, Florida
This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.
This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people world-wide.
Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world. Please send this e-mail to other people you know and ask them tocontinue the memorial chain.
Please don't just delete it.
It will only take you a minute to pass this along. Thanks!
”Change is an illusion
because we’re always at
the place
where any future
can take us.”
~ Alan Watts
Live from Your Heart
www.beyondtheveil.ca
(This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat. He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75)
August 1942. Piotrkow, Poland. The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.
'Whatever you do,' Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, 'don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen. 'I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be
deemed valuable as a worker.
An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, and then asked my age. 'Sixteen,' I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.
My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, 'Why?'. He didn't answer.
I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her.
'No, 'she said sternly. 'Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.' She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.
My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. 'Don't call me Herman anymore.' I said to my brothers. 'Call me 94983.'
I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.
Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin.
One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. 'Son,' she said softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel.' Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream.
But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.
A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.
I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in German. 'Do you have something to eat?' She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life.
She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, 'I'll see you tomorrow.' I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple.
We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me?
Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples. Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to There sienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia.
'Don't return,' I told the girl that day. 'We're leaving.'
I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.
We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed.
On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over.
I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had
survived;
I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was none.
My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my
brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years.
By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me. 'I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.' A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma.
I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty, Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.
We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, 'Where were you,' she asked softly, 'during the war?' 'The camps,' I said. The terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.
She nodded. 'My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin,' she told me. 'My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.' I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were both survivors, in a new world.
'There was a camp next to the farm.' Roma continued. 'I saw a boy there and I would throw him apples every day.' What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. 'What did he look like? I asked. 'He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six
months.' My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be. 'Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?' Roma looked at me in amazement. 'Yes!' 'That was me!'
I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it! My angel!
'I'm not letting you go.' I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.
'You're crazy!' she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week.
There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her
go.
That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.
Herman Rosenblat of Miami Beach, Florida
This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.
This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people world-wide.
Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world. Please send this e-mail to other people you know and ask them tocontinue the memorial chain.
Please don't just delete it.
It will only take you a minute to pass this along. Thanks!
”Change is an illusion
because we’re always at
the place
where any future
can take us.”
~ Alan Watts
Live from Your Heart
www.beyondtheveil.ca
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
To Know Fear Is To Know God
Brain, Science, Spirituality, Religious Experience
SOULS, SPIRITS, DREAMS, AND POLTERGEISTS
TO KNOW FEAR IS TO KNOW GOD
“Fear the Lord your God.” -Deuteronomy 10:12.
Priests, prophets, shamans and many others who encounter “god” or His “angels” not uncommonly experience tremendous fear. Fear is the most common emotion associated with the amygdala
(Gloor, 1997; Halgren, 1992; LeDoux, 1996; Williams, 1956), with some patients experiencing horrifying, hellish, and nightmarish fear, sometimes coupled with hellish hallucinations.
We are repeatedly told in the Bible, that to know fear is to know god. Indeed, even a committed
atheist may feel compelled to cry out and pray to god if sufficiently terrified. Terror is also an emotion associated with the amygdala... as well as with the Lord God.
Yet others experience awe and rapture when confronted by the divine. As noted, amygdala
hyperactivation is also associated with feelings of extreme joy and ecstasy.
According to d’Aquili and Newberg (1993; p. 194) “a combination of the experience of both
fear and exhalation” is “usually termed religious awe.” These feeling states are “almost always associated with religious symbols, sacred images, or archetypal symbols” which flow “from the inferior
temporal lobe” and which “appear sometimes as monsters or gods”. Indeed, angels, demons, and
poltergeists may be experienced.
Most people find these experiences quite terrifying. They also frequently believe their perceptions are completely real and are not hallucinations.
SPIRITS AND POLTERGEISTS
“Cindy,” a 22 year old college student, was plagued by demons and ghosts for months until her
abnormal right inferior temporal lobe was surgically removed.
Prior to her brain injury, Cindy had never been very religious, and had certainly never seen a
ghost; that is, until following her auto accident. She had been thrown over 50 feet through the windshield of her car and suffered a fracture of the right temporal region of the skull and developed a
subdural hematoma, a blood clot, which was pressing on the temporal lobe inducing herniation. Burr
holes were drilled into her skull and the clot was surgically evacuated. Although her brain and temporal lobe had been injured, over the following weeks she seemed to quickly recover.
It was several days after her release from the hospital when she was startled while watching
television. The arms, legs, hands, feet, and heads of the various actors began protruding from the
screen into the living room where she sat.
Cindy said that at first she thought the television was broken and turned it off. But, as she
stared back at the blank screen she saw what looked like her dead father staring back at her (which
was probably her own reflection). As she backed away, the figure emerged from the television. He
beckoned to her, and then behind him ghostly spooks and wraiths began to stream from the picture
tube.
Terrified and crying for her mother she raced for the bathroom and locked herself in. Yet, even
as she hid within the inner sanctum of the washroom, spirits, sprites and poltergeists streamed from
the bathroom mirror and swirled about her. Crying and stumbling, she raced into the living room and
was horrified to see a spirit enter and take possession of her mother who was transformed before her
eyes. Panicked and terrified, Cindy ran into the street crying for help. A police officer, after investigating the scene, brought her to the local hospital and psychiatry unit. She was medicated and kept
there on a 72 hour hold.
Later she decided what she had experienced were ghosts and lost souls of people who had been
buried in an old, almost completely forgotten cemetery on the other side of the hill from where she
lived. She also thought they were the ghosts of Indians who had been entombed beneath her house as
there are numerous Indian burial grounds in the county.
Once she was released from her 72 hour psychiatric hold, she stopped taking her medication,
and over the course of the next several weeks, she claimed to see “animal spirits.” She reported that
the “secret souls” of her mother’s house plants were watching and observing her and that she could
sometimes see filmy, soul-like entities traveling to and fro across the room and between different
plants.
After several more hospitalizations, and an EEG, it was determined that she was suffering from
excessive activity, seizure activity in the damaged temporal lobe. The inferior temporal lobe and the
underlying amygdala were surgically ablated and destroyed, and she ceased to “hallucinate.”
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