Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz - The Institute for Ashkenazi Heritage

from the Machon's old website:

"Vision

"Machon Moreshes Ashkenaz - The Institute for Ashkenazi Heritage - is the leading institute dedicated to the research, preservation and transmission of the unique religious values, customs, and folklore of German Jewry, as they existed prior to the Holocaust.

"Background

"The history of German (Ashkenazi) Jewry dates back to the destruction of the holy Temple in Jerusalem. First in Roman Italy, later on in the Rhine Valley, these Jews developed their own remarkable tradition. That tradition is the cumulative product of two millennia of brilliant scholars and dedicated community leaders. It remains today one of the priceless spiritual legacies of our people.

"Rabbi Isaac of Vienna the 'Ohr Zarua' exclaimed nearly eight hundred years ago, "Do you not know what towering geniuses and men of holiness are the Rabbis of Mainz, Worms, and Speier? From them has the Torah gone forth to all of Israel!" After Rabbenu Asher (the 'Rosh') was forced to flee Germany for Spain, he wrote, "I keep to our tradition as we received it from our ancestors of blessed memory, the Sages of Ashkenaz. Their Torah was a legacy from their fathers from the time of the Temple's destruction."" continue

Wisdom from the Gentiles - Pressure

"The only pressure you get is what you put on yourself." Football legend Johnny Unitas who was known for being great under pressure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFmmDWK9hUc

What he means is that in the end a person has to control the faucet. You can't live you life with other people pressuring you to do this or that. You have to use your seichel to determine what you can handle and what you should handle. And if you allow others, particularly people you don't respect, to pressure you, then really you have pressured yourself.

Redemption and Iran

Generally, I stick here to the topics of Torah Im Derech Eretz and German Orthodoxy, however this travesty of a "deal with the devil" ie Iran is so momentous that I had to offer the following two pieces of information:

1) A passionate talk from political commentator Mark Levin about WWIII in the making via Iran.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axnbErAFw4o

2) Yalkut Shimoni on what appears to be the same topic:

MEDRISH “YALKUT SHIMONI” (Yeshiya 60):

“Rabbi Yitzhak said: The year that  Melech HaMoshiach will be revealed, all the kings of the nations of the world will provoke each other. The king of Persia [in modern times they changed the name of their country to “Iran”] will threaten the king of Arabia [today called “Saudi” Arabia] and because of this the king of Arabia will go to the king of Edom [USA] for advice.

Afterwards the king of Persia will destroy [most of] the world. The remaining nations will be hysterical and frantic and fall on their faces and will be seized as if by “birth pains”.

And the people of Israel will be frantic and hysterical and they will say, where will we come and go? Where will be come and go?

And Hashem will say to them: Do not fear my children, do not fear. All that I have done I did only for you. Why are you afraid? The time for your Redemption has come!

Ashkenazi Jews Descend from Jewish Families in Germany

from the Open Siddur Project -Tefiloh Sefas Yisroel, a nusaḥ Ashkenaz siddur dedicated to the memory of the Bad Homburg Jewish community. Bad Homburg is not to be confused with Hamburg in Northern Germany. Bad Homburg is near Frankfurt.

"Most descendants of European Jewry including Ḥasidim are descendants of Ashkenazi families (with the important exception of Jews descending from the Spanish-Portuguese communities expelled in 1492 — the Sepharadim, and some other ancient European Jewish communities diminished during the Holocaust — the Byzantine Romaniote Jews of Greece and the Jews of Italy)."



People often say to me, when they observe me keeping minhag Ashkenaz, oh I didn't know you are a yekke. And by that they mean, I didn't know your grandparents were from Germany. Well they weren't. But their ancestors were - perhaps their great-great grandparents or their great-great grandparents. Ashkenazi Jews trace back to Germany and before that to Italy. And before that to the Holy Land. In the Holy Land, Italy, and Germany the Ashkenazi minhagim were established under the guidance of the Sages of the Gaonim with whom the German and Italian communities were in close contact. In the time since, minhagim changed some except in Frankfurt and other German communities that held on to them. So the traditions in Frankfurt are not these oddball diversions from the mainstream. They were the mainstream and the practices of the ancestors of most Ashkenazim. They don't belong to the Yekkes. They belong to all of us.

From Hakira: R. S. R. Hirsch’s View of Secular Studies in the Thought of R. Joseph Elias

R. S. R. Hirsch’s View of Secular Studies in the Thought of R. Joseph Elias