Hamas Hatred For Jews Boils Over

Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Gaza's March of Return-Actually a Demonstration
The Great March of Return, a six-week campaign of protests in Gaza for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, commemorated Prisoners’ Day on April 20.  It's been 71 years since this happened.
Very few people on both sides are alive today.
Living in UN refugee camps, their understanding of their own history
has been swaddled in distortion and lies.

Palestinian refugees are those Arabs who sided with the Arab army in 1948

who followed their own leadership's advice who were attacking Israel.  It turned out to be Israel' War of Independence starting before statehood on November 29, 1947 with attacks on unarmed Jews -whose protection was to be from the English holding the mandate, but wasn't.  This violence had started with the UN resolution on Palestine recognizing Israel as a state, something they had been working on since the 1920s,  and lasted until the signing of the Armistice Agreements in 1949. All the surrounding Arabs were in on it.  Units of Arab irregulars came before Israel's statehood announcement in April 1948 from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt to reinforce local Arabs attacking Jewish localities and in an attempt to block the main roads.  

On the very announcement of May 14, 1948, Israel was invaded by the regular armies of Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and a Saudi-Arabian contingent.  

Their leaders told them to leave and when they had won the attack, the Arab people could return and take over the Jews' homes and land.  One catch:
they did not win.  The Jews miraculously won against this horrid attack which commenced minutes after announcing their statehood.  Their leadership then decided to use them as pawns against the Jews by keeping them in refugee centers and never allowing them citizenship and a life in their own Muslim majority countries.  

That day of rest set aside for G-d's day, Shabbat, or the Sabbath for
 Jews falls on Saturday, and Sunday for Christians.  Muslims chose Friday.  It's a nice arrangement in Israel, and everyone can feel free to use this day as it was chosen to be.

Now Hamas, that extension of the PLO's hit men who rule Gaza, have a political bureau member, Fathi Hammad, who used their special day of Friday to attend a rally, a "March of Return" and make a speech.  It aired over Al- Aqsa TV saying that Israel had until Friday, July 19th, to lift the siege on the Gaza Strip and cowtow to Hamas.  If Israel didn't do what Hamas wanted (implement its understandings with Hamas) the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and ALL OVER THE WORLD will use the MANY METHODS AND MEANS that are up their sleeves to powerfully explode in Israel's face.  

Jabalia, home to Palestinians: Jabalia also Jabalya is a Palestinian city located 4 kilometers north of Gaza City. It is under the jurisdiction of the North Gaza Governorate, in the Gaza Strip.Jabalia had a population of 82,877 in mid‑2006. The Jabalia refugee camp is adjacent to the city to the north. The nearby town of Nazla is a part of the Jabalia municipality. The city is currently ruled by a Hamas administration.

                                                        

Qaradawi of Egypt, now living in Qatar, broadcasts killing of Jews-a Fatwa
and has been for years.  He's been buddies with the leaders of Qatar.  

Fathi Hammad
Fathi Ahmad Hamad is a political leader of Hamas, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, In April 2009, he was appointed Interior Minister in the Hamas administered Gaza Strip, replacing Said Seyam who had been killed by  during 208-209 Gaza War with Israel.  "Seyam was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia.

Speaking like an ISIS leader, said that if Gazans, who are not rational people like Israel thinks, die, they will do so while cutting off the heads of Jews and kill them with explosive belts.  He let it be known that Hamas has been actively manufacturing these belt weapons.

He called on the millions of Palestinians abroad who have been warming up and preparing for such a moment.  Enough warming up, he stated in the march.  "WE MUST ATTACK EVERY JEW ON PLANET EARTH AND SLAUGHTER AND KILL THEM."

He also encouraged the West Bank Palestinians to buy knives in order TO CUT THE NECKS OF JEWS AS THE KNIVES ONLY COST 5 SHEKELS."  

Below are marchers who had been doing this for the past 6 months.  

                                                     

So it's a call like other similar calls by religious Muslim leaders for Palestinians to kill Jews, Jews, not Israelis.  All of us Jews are at risk and hope that our Palestinian immigrants in our land will realize they'd better not follow such deadly advice.  

The Peace talks commence with US spokesman, who is President Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, and stays on the course of offering the old 2 state solution.  Having the Palestinians as neighbors in Gaza, a piece of land that Israelis left for the sake of having peace, has not brought peace but constant bombardment so bad that the nearby hospital, who takes in all injured parties regardless of race, creed or color, had to go to the basement to safely save lives.   

 

In 1948, when Arabs had to decide to remain in their homes or leave, there were 126,000 Palestinians living in Israel.  By 1972, when they attacked again in the Yom Kippur War, they had multiplied to 458,000.  They went from a culture without electricity to where 92% had electricity, but their leaders never paid their electricity bills to Israel.  Today their Great March has turned into weekly protests.  

"The number of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has risen from 2,895,683 in 1997 to 4,780,978 in 2017, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday." Their culture is based on having more than one wife at a time.  PCBS President Ola Awad, who announced the preliminary results of the census during a press conference in Ramallah, said that the total number of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip was 1,899,291 with 435,000 in East Jerusalem.  The Palestinian Authority considers several villages and neighborhoods located outside the Jerusalem municipal boundaries in Area B as being part of its “Jerusalem District.”

Hamas has also been trying to pose as Israeli soldiers and contact troops through using WhatsApp in order to give sensitive information.  The IDF is aware of this.  This year marks the anniversary of "Operation Heartbreaker" where IDF exposed Hamas activity against their IDF soldiers on social media.  Now they are trying the same trick, only masquerading as women.  Hundred of reports of suspicious individuals attempting to make contact with Israeli soldiers have been made.  

Resource: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/palestine-march-return-protests-gaza-defy-deadly-israeli-bullets

The Jewish Press, Friday, July 19, 2019, page 40-Senior Hamas Figure calls on Palestinians worldwide to kill Jews

facts about Israel:  Division of information, ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem 

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/palestine-march-return-protests-gaza-defy-deadly-israeli-bullets

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabalia

Holland's Jews Developing a Jewish Haven, Curacao

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Nadene Goldfoot                                       

Anne Frank b: June 12, 1929, a very young German-born  Jewish Dutch diarist
who died after being hidden by the Dutch from the Germans
in a concentration camp.  She wrote about her experience in her diary.

She was Ashkenazi, but many of her Jewish friends were Sephardis being Marranos (Anusim) as well as practicing Sephardim.
and it is they that had ancestors involved in Curacao.  Holland
had both lines of Jews living both in Holland and in Curacao.
Like Anne Frank, the majority of Dutch Jews perished.  Westerbork, the main transit-camp for extermination, was the place of death.  She
died from Typhus.  Had there been an Israel already established,
this would not have happened.

 "From July 1942 until September 3, 1944, the Germans deported 97,776 Jews from Westerbork: 54,930 to Auschwitz in 68 transports, 34,313 to Sobibor in 19 transports, 4,771 to the Theresienstadt ghetto in 7 transports, and 3,762 to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 9 transports. Most of those deported to Auschwitz and Sobibor were killed upon arrival.Communities wiped out were from Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam.  "
The area now known as the Netherlands was once part of the Spanish Empire but in 1581, the northern Dutch provinces declared independence. A principal motive was the wish to practice Protestant Christianity.  

                                                                     

In 1492, in an Alhambra castle in Granada of Moorish splendor, two Jewish men of the highest rank,  pleaded in vain before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to end their edict decreeing that all Jews of Spain had to choose between baptism or face expulsion from Spain.  They were Don Isaac Abravanel and Don Abraham, Sr.They were trusted counsellors (advisors of the laws-like a lawyer of today) of the royal court of Spain. 

These royal rulers were not of that mind.  They were prodded by the cruel Inquisitors and elated by their recent final victory over the remaining Moorish king of southern Spain.  Visions of gold and riches from the newly discovered continent by Christopher Columbus, himself possibly a Jew, danced in their heads.  So the exodus of many Jews of Spain began, those that were young enough and possibly with small children were willing to leave their homeland instead of their older parents and grandparents who were too old and had too many investments and reasons to remain.
                                                  

All they had to do was to cross the border and seek refuge in Portugal.  The dastardly Inquisition followed them there, and they had to emigrate again.  The majority fled to the countries of the Mediterranean, with a large number found a friendly and safe haven in far away Amsterdam, Holland.  There, under the enlightened rule of the Princes of Orange-Nassau, religious liberty was guaranteed to all faiths.
                                                         

 Holland, and its once glorious Sephardic Spanish-Portuguese community ofAmsterdam,  was able to grow and develop.   From that great center of Jewish life and learning, the Jewish community of Curacao was colonized and developed.  Curacao was colonized, guided, counseled and provided with rabbis.  It was an island  in  theDutch West Indies. 
                                                     

Mikve Israel

David Nassy received the charter for it and encouraged Jewish settlement there.  Refugees from Brazil arrived in 1654.  A Jewish congregation was organized.  A Sephardi synagogue was built in 1732, the oldest in the Western Hemisphere.  A Reform was established in 1863.  They were united in 1964. There is a 2nd synagogue on the island.  In 1990 there were 600 Jews living here.  

The first to come was a Dutch Jew with the Portuguese name of Joao d-Ilhan.  He brought with him a charter from the Dutch West India Company to establish a Jewish agricultural settlement on Curacao.  50 Jewish colonists, most likely young and eager to start a new life on this lovely island, established a congregation and called it Mikve Israel (the Hope of Israel), in the year of 1651.  
                                                     
"The Dutch government instated the explorer Peter Stuyvesant as governor of the island in 1642. Stuyvesant soon began establishing plantations on the island with the famous landhuizen structures, which were the popular plantation houses of the 18th and 19th centuries. 
                                                

Amsterdam's House of West India Company

Curaçao became involved in the slave trade in 1639 when the Dutch West India Company requested to import slaves from Africa. " Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company (known as the "WIC") of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors.."In 1732, the Dutch West India Company granted private merchants the right to participate in the slave trade. During the slave trade, the Papiamentu language took form. This dialect is a mixture of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and African languages, and was the primary means of communication between slaves and slave owners.

The slaves endured harsh treatment and inhumane living conditions on Curaçao. From 1750 to 1751, the slaves at Hato Plantation established an uprising against their masters, but the slave population on Curaçao peaked at 12,804 in 1789. By 1795, the island saw the largest slave revolt at the Kenepa Plantation."

                                                        

Hotel Hilton on Curacao Island 

Jump ahead 322 years and you will see the present members of this same congregation, some being direct descendants of the 1st pioneers there who had kepat with pride at their same family names, giving thanks for the choice their forebears made when they chose Curacao to live.  

"Sailors during the 16th and 17th centuries on long voyages would often come down with scurvy. Legend has it that the island which was to become Curaço became a sanctuary for ill sailors, and when their ships returned, as a result no doubt from the Vitamin C-rich fruit found on the island, they had fully recovered from their scurvy. From then on the Portuguese referred to the island as Ilha da Curação (Island of Healing)."

Today, this paradise has a population of 163,468 happy people.  It's its own country within the Netherlands.  " It is classified as a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands," an interesting concept.  

 Besides the continuous Jewish community established there, they also have " About 73% of people in Curaçao are Roman Catholic but other major religions include Pentecostal (6.6%), Protestant (3.2%), Adventist (3%), Jehovah's Witness (2%), and Evangelical (1.9%).  The people are made up of The racial and ethnic composition of Salinas is estimated as:

• 75.4% Curaçaoan
• 6% Dutch
• 3.6% Dominican
• 3% Colombian
• 1.2% Surinamese
• 1.2% Haitian
• 1.1% Aruban
• 1.1% Venezuelan
• 0.9% Unspecified
• 5% Others                                  
  

The people who live here today are quite a mixture, with prostitution being rampant and allowed for foreigneers only.  They are much more open about it like Holland.  "Prostitution in Curaçao is legal only for foreign women who get a temporary permit to work in the large open-air brothel called "Le Mirage" or "Campo Alegre."  

 "Owing to the island's history of slavery, most Curaçaoans are of Black African descent. There are also sizable minorities of Dutch, Latin Americans, French, South Asians, East Asians, Javanese, Portuguese and  Arabs from the Middle East. Additionally, there are both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish communities."

To think that an island first populated by the freedom of religion for Jews has turned into a miniature Holland is not far-fetched, I suppose.  It took a calm and non-judgmental Dutchman to hide the Jewish family of Anne Frank in WWII.  

They had anti-Semitism in 1798.  A 2- page letter has been found written by Victor Hughes, the French Colonial Representative in the Caribbean, calling the Jews "the scum of the entire people and universally despised".   It was written to Jewish Community leaders David Cohen Henriquez and Jacob de Castro.  The letter was auctioned off in New York.  This was contrary to political changes since France in 1791 was the 1st country in the world to give Jews equal rights.  Old prejudices hang on for a long time as this shows.  

As it turns out, Jews were also complicit along with Gentiles in the slave trade.  Everyone wanted to make money from  them.  "“Money was earned by Jewish communities in South America, partly through slavery, and went to Holland, where Jewish bankers handled it,  Non-Jews were also complicit, but so were we," said some Dutch Jews.   Need readers be reminded that people then had different views and had  not developed the realization of what they were doing like people of today, but Jews should have, for the Torah speaks about slavery and how slaves are to be treated.  These money-makers just hadn't paid attention to laws of their own religion.  

I see people haven't really changed much.  Failing to be aware of their own religious rules, they neglected to learn that the Torah lays down such facts as "Okay, they're not really slaves. Slaves are people owned by other people. In Torah law, you never have complete ownership over anything. These slaves of Jews rest on the seventh day and Jewish holidays, cannot be physically or sexually abused and are obligated in many mitzvot. So they are really more like indentured servants".  This was the difference between Jewish slaves and slaves of others way back in biblical days.
                                                             

Visitors Zalman Notic and Moshe Lifshitz with  the Prime Minister of Curacao
in what resulted as a bar mitzvah 

Curacao, begun by Jews wanting to live by the laws of Moses, though it has changed much by others' morality and what that has brought into their lives, still remains a home to some of the children of the original pioneers.  

Resource:

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/curacao-population/

Jewish Digest, January 1976, The New World's First Jewish Congregation by Charles Gomes Casseres, from bulletin of Congregation Mikve Israel-Emanuel. 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura%C3%A7ao#Demographics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_West_India_Company

https://forward.com/fast-forward/388320/when-caribbean-jews-stood-up-against-anti-semitism-in-1798/
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/305549/jewish/Torah-Slavery-and-the-Jews.htm
https://www.chabad.org/blogs/blog_cdo/aid/2577288/jewish/Meeting-the-Prime-Minister-of-Curaao.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Netherlands

Facts About Israel Not Understood

Nadene Goldfoot

The Palestine The League of Nations spoke of when they voted
for a Jewish National Homeland and gave England the mandate to fulfill this decision. 

                                             

Israel is 1/800 the size of the Arab world.

Israel is 9 miles wide at its narrowest point and 290
miles long.

Israel's territory is about 8,019 square miles.
                                

Israel is smaller than New Jersey, which is 8,729 square miles. New Jersey here is shown with more sq.mi, and Israel is shown with more.  Let's say they are almost the same size.    
                                                     

NJ is New Jersey on the east coast.  It's so small in comparison to the other
49 states.  

              
Israel can fit into the state of California 19 times.
                                                                       

The Jewish history goes back to Abraham, who both Jews and Arabs consider as the father of Judaism.  Jews have kept a continuous presence for over 3,000 years in the land of Israel 
according to archeological and historical evidence and Biblical text.  Consider the mosaic floor depicting King David playing his lyre, found in the ancient synagogue of Gaza.  This is now seen in the Israel Museum.  This is evidence of the truth in the Torah.  
                                                                     

Note that King David's name is in top right corner in Hebrew.  
David is clean shaven so must be young, with mustache. 
On his head is a crown.  Note his lyre is played with a tool,
not the fingers like a harp.  

"It is manifestly right that the scattered Jews should have a national center and national home and be reunited, and where else but in Palestine, with which for 3,000 year they have been intimately and profoundly associated?"  So sayeth Winston Churchill in 1920.

 Yet England turned around when oil was discovered there and helped Arabs enter Palestine but not the Jews who they had sworn to help to create a JEWISH HOMELAND.
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had more to offer than the Jews.
He got land  called Trans-Jordan.

Resource:

StandWithUs:  www.standwithus.com 

RUSSIAN JEWS And Their Trying Experiences

Nadene Goldfoot
                                               

The Great Grand Duke of Kiev
St. Vladimir 1st
1st Czar of Russia Originally a follower of Slavic paganism, Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988 and Christianized the Kievan Rus'.He is thus also known as Saint Vladimir.

In the beginning of Russia's history in the year of 988, Duke Vladimir converted to Christianity.  Jews participated in a disputation (debate)  on this occasion. 
                                                                           

We've had disputations throughout history.  We've even debated with G-d himself in Genesis.  

                                                     

By 8th to 10th centuries, Khazaria was a powerful state.
It was started by a Turkish or Finnish tribe that settled in the lower Volga region.  Russian chronicles called them White Ugrians as Hungarians were called the Black Ugrians.  Khazaria was so large that it extended into Kiev and its royal house intermarried with the Byzantium.  In the 8th century it had a powerful judaizing movement when King Bulan and 4,000 of his nobles accepted Judaism, helped by prince Obaiah.
  

"The story of a disputation on the question, Which is the best religion? is, however, very old. One is said to have taken place about 740, before Bulan, the king of the Khazars, who, uncertain whether to exchange his heathen religion, which he had come to abhor, for Mohammedanism or Christianity, summoned representatives of these two creeds, as well as of Judaism, for a disputation. None could convince him of the superiority of his faith, and Bulan resolved to espouse the Jewish, since both Christian and Mohammedan referred to it as the basis of their own, and each recognized it as superior to the others . Upon this story the religious disputations in Judah ha-Levi's "Cuzari" are based. The story of a disputation occurs in Russian legends regarding Vladimir's conversion, but with a different result."
                                                   

The once extensive power of the Khazarians was broken on the Volga by the Russian archduke Yaroslav in 1083.  

"Christianity spread to Russia through the Byzantine Empire. A churchman in Constantinople sent two monks to convert the Slavs to Christianity and the two monks (Cyril and Methodius) spoke the Slavonic language and used it to conduct mass rather than the traditional Greek. Use of the native language led to many conversions to Christianity. ... Within 100 years Christianity was established and claimed an important convert, Grand Duke Vladimir the 1st of Kiev. Some say his conversion was spurred by political and economic gains from the Byzantine Empire, but he did make Christianity the state religion of Kievan Russia. Christianity spread gradually and became popular in the cities long before it did in the countryside."  This was the start of Christianity in Russia.  
                                                          

This relationship has a long history: the rulers of the Turkic Khazars, powerful in southern Russia,  converted to Judaism in the 8th century.  They had chosen Judaism after having a debate or contest after listening to representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam because they were sitting in the middle of the Silk Road crossroads and had to deal with people of all 3 faiths. 

 According to the Russian chronicles, Jewish missionaries sought to convert the pagan Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev as early as 987.  Ultimately, however, Vladimir chose to accept baptism and become a Christian, adopting the Eastern Orthodox rite that his ambassadors had found to be so beautiful when they visited Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

By the 12th Century, a Jewish gate is mentioned in Kiev.  This would restrict Jews from other gates, evidently.  The Jewish quarter (restriction of Jews as to where they could live) in Kiev was looted in 1113, so such anti-Semitism was a part of the culture of Ukraine even then.  

However, in this period, Russian Jews were attending western yeshivot and were able to asked questions of German rabbis.  

In the late 15th Century, some Lithuanian traders found a Judaizing sect in Novgorod and Moscow which ticked off the Christians.  Christians could spread Christianity but Jews were not allowed to spread Judaism, and that was the end of Jewish learning to Christians.  The attitude of Christians toward Jews became more violent.  

In 1563, Jews in Polotsk and Vitebsk, Russia, 300 Jews were drowned  upon refusing to accept baptism.  This would have meant they were refusing to let go of Judaism and become Catholics.  

Russia didn't want Jews to enter their country.  They had clauses that prohibited Jews from even visiting Russia that were inserted in treaties in 1550 and 1678.  Any Jews that managed to stay were expulsed from Russia in 1727, 1738, 1742.                                              

As it was, in May 1727, the 2nd wife of Peter I, Catherine I from Poland,  the first empress born as Marta Helena Skowrofiska,  later known as Marta Samuilovna, b: April 5, 1684, who ruled from 1725 to 1727, expelled all Jews living in LITTLE RUSSIA.  This was ended after her death  on May 6, 1727.
Had her family ties in Poland caused her to be so against Jews?  

                                                           

Catherine the Great ruled from 1762 to 1796 and her Jewish policy was marked by a combination of liberalim and coercion. Only White Russians were allowe to register in the merhant and urban classes-with permission.  This act marked the beginning of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT.  During her last years, she prevented the extension of Jewish settlement and in 1795, prohibited Jewish residence in rural areas.

 Born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, this Catherine II  was Empress of Russia from 1762 until 1796, the country's longest-ruling female leader. She came to power following a coup d'état that she organised—resulting in her husband, Peter III, being overthrown. Under her reign, Russia was revitalized; it grew larger and stronger and was recognized as one of the great powers of Europe.  Of course she's a hateful ruler in the eyes of Jewish historians today.  

By 1753, 35,000 Jews were driven out of Russia. Then Catherine II came along in 1762 who permitted all aliens to live in Russia except the Jews.  

Poland was partitioned in 1772, 1793, and 1795.  That's when the great Jewish masses of White Russia, (Ukraine), Lithuania and Courland became Russian subjects.  For over a century these Jews, including my maternal grandmother's family of Jermulowski, , were under the reactionary rule of the Czars.  

In 1786, Jews were restricted to towns, which was laying the foundation of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT.  By 1795, only the Karaites ( Jewish sect refusing the Oral Law from Moses) had equality of rights with the Christians.  Finally in 1802, There was created a Council for Jewish Affairs.  Two years later, it defined the Pale, restricted Jews in the villages and in 1807-1808 limited the activities of the KAHAL (Jewish leadership) in the areas of religion and charity, and prohibited the traditional Jewish costume.  

On the other hand, it took measures to promote agriculture, which for Jews, was a new endeavor for they hadn't been allowed to own land and had been urban people with trades.  The trades were limited as well, and mostly the only one available to Jews was money-lending, a trade that was unseemly to Christians.  

People usually are benevolent towards Jews at first and then turn on them because they have refused to convert.  Luther was like that.    Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 and was kind at first.  Later, he turned reactionary and about 20,000 Jews were expelled from the provinces of Vitebsk and Mohilev in 1824, and those remaining were forbidden to live near the frontier.  
                                                   

Nicholas I, Emperor of Russia, grandson of Catherine the Great II.
b: 1796 d: 1855
His reign was from December 1, 1825
to March 2, 1855. 

  About 600 oppressive enactments regarding Jews were published during the reign of Nicholas I who regarded Jews as an injurious element.  Military service was brutally imposed on young male Jews from age 12 on up by 1827.  Jewish boys were taken by force to serve in their army for 25 years.  They were put on the front lines.  " These boys were known as cantonists; derived from the term 'canton' referring to the word 'military camps' to which they were sent. Conscripts under the age of 18 were assigned to live in preparatory institutions until they were old enough to formally join the army. The 25 years of service required that these recruits be counted from age 18, even if they had already spent many years in military institutions before reaching that age."
Czar Nicholas strengthened the cantonist system and used it to single out Jewish children for persecution, their baptism being a high priority to him. No other group in Russia was expected to serve at such a young age, nor were other groups of recruits tormented in the same way. Nicholas wrote in a confidential memorandum, "The chief benefit to be derived from the drafting of the Jews is the certainty that it will move them most effectively to change their religion." Historian Simon Dubnov wrote, "The barrack was to serve as a school, or rather as a factory, for producing a new generation of de-Judaized Jews, who were completely Russified, and if possible Christianized."  I've heard of stories where mothers injured their son's fingers or feet to keep them from being taken.  My paternal grandfather was born in 1871.  Perhaps he had just missed this horrid ordeal somehow, living in Telsiai, Lithuania.  

 Jews then could not live near the frontiers of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT in 1835, effective until 1915.  Jewish books were censored in 1836.  Their Kahal was abolished by 1844.  This was the organized Jewish community having autonomous rights and it was their responsibility for taxation.  
                                                     

Golda Meir (1898-1978) born in Russia, was caught in a pogrom when a child.  She lived in the USA after that experience, then settled in Palestine in 1921.
In 1969 she became Israel's Prime Minister and served during Israel's
Yom Kippur War.  She retired in 1974. 

The PALE OF SETTLEMENT was the world's great center of talmudic study and Odessa was the center of Hebrew literary revival.  It's also where Zionists and contemporary Jewish history began.  In 1914, at the outbreak of WWI, 5,600,000 Jews lived in the Russian Empire, including almost 2 million in Poland.  Those Jews near war zones were deported en masse, and their community was made the scapegoat for the Russian defeats, even though 300,000 Jews were in the Russian army. 
                                                     

A Pogrom in the Ukraine
Pogrom in Russian means "DESTRUCTION."
It's an organized massacre for the annihilation of any body or class or people,
especially with governmental collusion;  more specially one directed against Jews.  The term was first used in 1905 at the time of the anti-Jewish outbreaks by the Black Hundreds in Russia.  It is often applied to earlier Russian outbreaks from 1881 onward.  Some pogroms killed thousands.  

65,000 Jews became engaged in agriculture in Russia in 1864 when the judicial law contained no anti-Jewish discrimination.  Jews became prominent in such areas as economics, culture and left-wing politics.  That was the spark to start anti-Semitism which reinforced the former religious prejudices.

While 1st generation Russian born Jewry were abandoning  their traditional Jewish way of life, the Soviet government would not recognize the Jews as a nationality, so discouraged Hebrew and persecuted Zionism.   Not many Jews were involved in agriculture.  The government worked to discourage Jewish practices in the 1930s.  The annexation early in WWI of western White Russia, western Volhynia, eastern Glaicia, Northern Bkovina, Bessarabia, Lithuania and Latvia led to the mass-deportation of Jews, especially the intelligentsia, from these places.  The Nazis invaded Russia in 1941 and aimed at exterminating the Jewish population.  That meant that of the 500,000 Jews in white Russia, only half escaped to the interior and up to 200,000 were slaughtered.   
                                                     When Alexander II in 1881 was assassinated, anti-Semitism grew much worse.  Jews were the chief victims.  In the early 1880s many pogroms made people think of Jews as a foreign element to be kept apart from the village populations, so out came the MAY LAWS against Jews.  
                                                     

New York Russian Jewish immigration said to be the drivers of American culture

In 1891 Jews were expelled from Moscow and a NUMERUS CLAUSUS was introduced in high schools which caused Jews to turn to Zionism and Socialism.  This is when Jews really started immigrating to the USA. 
                                                           

Two little waifs who were born in 1906 an 1908
in the USA with parents from Lithuania and Poland who came over just before.  Our  Zada married Babba in Idaho in November 1905.
My father is on the right with his brother Charlie.
Dad became a kosher butcher and that led to owning Silver Falls
Meat Packing Co and owning a string of cattle trucks.  Under freedom
sprinkled with some Jewish anti-Semitism, Jews did pretty well in the USA.  

 That immigration flow was ended in 1924 with new rules in the USA.  Russia's census  of 1959 showed 2,268,000.  After Israel's 1967 War, many Russian Jews demanded the right to emigrate to Israel, and some did emigrate by 1970.   Then, 250,000 Jews were able to leave Russia with 150,000 of them going to Israel, and later, to the USA. In the 1980s the doors of emigration were almost virtually closed but the Jewish ferment continued inside the county. 
                                                         

We're learning Hebrew in an Ulpan in Israel,
Mostly all are Russian students.  For starters, I was in a class of 40 of us.
Russians were much faster learners, so I was placed in a gimel class and
had more individual attention sprinkled with some English.  Even
my husband, who taught boys Hebrew for bar-mitzva, was struggling. 
It's not easy when you are older.  

 I immigrated to Israel from the USA  in September 1980.  I had many Russians in my Hebrew class.  They were used to learning new language and my husband and I were not.  We went against the Russians who had a shvee-ta, a strike over the cost of our dinners in the program we were in.  It was our 1st disagreement with our fellow Russian Jews.  Our Hebrew teacher, Sarah, was a pen pal of Sharansky, who was in the Russian prison.  He was later able to get out and became involved in Israel's government.  He was there for trying to learn Hebrew.  His wife, somewhere safe in Israel, was a major power in getting him out, as I remember.  While I lived in Israel from 1980 to the end of 1985, I saw more Russians under President Gorbachev again being allowed widespread emigration.  Where anti-Semitism up to then was being suppressed, now this freed up such activity.

Israel's doors are open to Jews of the world under suppression; that's what it's for.  Israel took in almost 200,000 Soviet immigrants in 1990 alone after I had left, with the stream continuing into 1991.  

Diplomatic relations with Israel was re-established in 1991, shortly before the liquidation of the USSR.  

Resource:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5226-disputations
https://quizlet.com/8651225/kingdoms-and-christianity-questions-flash-cards/
The Jews of Khazaria 2nd edition by Kevin Alan Brook
https://asu.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/judaism-and-jewish-influences-in-russian-spiritual-christianity-t
https://www.aish.com/jl/h/h/48929772.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_I_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_I_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great
My Life, by Golda Meir
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2014/07/russia-ukraine-and-pale-of-settlement.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2019/03/russian-jews-their-background-and.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/01/when-600000-jews-were-exiled-by-russia.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2019/04/europes-pale-of-settlement-1914-and-jews.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/02/russia-and-jews.html