Some chose the latter, but others, for their own reasons, chose the former and remained in Poland, living as Polish gentiles. Many married and had children, and often, even when marrying a fellow Jewish survivor, they did not tell their children who they really were.

By doing so, many were repeating a pattern that had been established in previous generations. After particularly severe pogroms, some Jews would just “opt out,” escaping their village to live in a big city like Warsaw, where they could attempt to assimilate. They, too, never told their children the truth about their backgrounds, and in some cases, they themselves had children and even grandchildren who had hidden Jewish roots. But the indomitable Jewish spirit is difficult to stamp out, even generations later.

On Holocaust Memorial Day eve, dozens of the “hidden Jews” of Poland gathered in Oswiecem, better known as Auschwitz, the town adjacent to the most notorious of Poland’s concentration camps. The gathering, a Shabbat celebration, was organized by the Shavei Israel organization, which has helped people young and old around the world get back in touch with their Jewish identities.

Jews first settled in Oswiecem in the 1500s (the village was known to Jews as Oshpitzin), and contained dozens of synagogues until the very eve of the Holocaust. In 1939, 14,000 people lived in the town, 8,200 of them Jews. Nearly all were murdered by the Nazis. By September 1945, only 186 Jews were left in the town and by November 1946 there were just 40, most of whom had left for Israel or the U.S. by the mid-1950s.

In recent years, a growing number of young Poles have begun researching their Jewish roots, those roots that Hitler and his Nazi regime sought to stamp out. Shavei Yisrael CEO Michael Freund stated, “I cannot think of a better way to express the victory of the Jewish people than to celebrate Shabbat with young Poles who wish to learn about their Jewish roots at the edge of the valley of death in Auschwitz.” The seminar, held over Shabbat, featured traditional Shabbat meals, discussions and symposia on Judaism and Jewish history, and events to encourage the youths to reach out to others with the same concerns and desires as their own. The event was held in the Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue, the only active synagogue in the area.

The 2,000-year-old house of worship was perched upon the cave according to ancient tradition that was used by the Biblical prophet Elijah to conceal himself from those who would arrest and prosecute him. The synagogue, allegedly built by the Biblical prophet Elisha, and subsequently repaired during the first century CE by the Torah sage, Rabbi Elazar ben Arach, is one of Syria’s oldest. It stands at the site where Elijah anointed Elisha as a prophet, to follow him.

There had been almost no structural changes whatsoever to the synagogue since it was built, making it especially unique architecturally as well as historically. That is until the savage civil wars prompted by the region wide “Arab Spring’ launched in March 2011 arrived in Syria. It is clear nevertheless that the preservation of the holy site has been a rare miracle at best.

A video posted online by the Syrian opposition showed the same synagogue,  one of Judaism’s holiest sites severely damaged in shelling by Syrian government forces in the Damascus district of Jobar earlier this month. The video, which appeared on the pan-Arabic Al Arabiya news website, showed a clear photo of the marble plaque indicating the “Shrine and Synagogue of Prophet Eliahou Hanabi since 720 B.C.

Writer Jack Koury added a “Note” to his March 2 post about the incident on the “War in Iraq” blog, showing that the synagogue’s destruction and related attacks on Jews are being encouraged by outside forces as well as those within Syria. “Dear Al-Assad, please destroy any sign of Jewish existence in your country, this maybe the only chance you have right now. After rebellion is dead you will not able to do that. Do not waste the crisis “as jews say” And Rebels are only tools in Jewish hands! May God Bless you”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opposition forces are each blaming the other over the destruction, according to a report in a Hebrew-language daily newspaper.

The Inquisition was active in the area for centuries in which Marranos and conversos were tortured until 1700 and possibly later. But the Bnei Anousim of the area clung to their Jewish identity handing it down from one generation to the next. It is their descendants who are beginning to return to their roots of their Jewish past. In southern Italy, much like Spain and South America, descendants search for their Jewish ancestral history.

The Jewish presence in Sicily dates back some two thousand years. Some historians state the first Jews in Sicily were brought there as slaves by the victorious Roman legions during the Second Temple period. The community steadily grew in the ensuing centuries despite various periods of persecution, and produced an array of great scholars and rabbis. There were 52 Jewish communities spread out across Sicily, numbering at least 37,000 people.

Many left by December 31, 1492, but large numbers of forcibly-converted Jews were compelled to remain behind, where they suffered under the heavy hand of the Inquisition. The first auto-da-fe in Sicily took place in Palermo in June 1511, when the Inquisitors executed nine Sicilian Bnei Anousim for secretly practicing Judaism. Towards the end of the 14th century, Sicily’s Jews were confined to ghettos and faced increasingly harsh decrees as well as massacres and forced conversions to Catholicism. At the time, Sicily was under the control of the Spanish crown and in 1492, the anti-Semitic measures reached their peak with the Edict of Expulsion, which ordered the remaining Jews to leave.

Rabbi Pinchas Punturello, has been appointed to serve as the new emissary for the Shavei Israel organization in southern Italy and Sicily. In his new position, Rabbi Punturello will serve as the area’s chief rabbi, and will work to strengthen the local Jewish community in regions such as Puglia, Campania, Sicily, and Calabria, while also reaching out to the Bnei Anousim (whom historians refer to by the derogatory term Marranos) throughout the area, many of whom are looking to reconnect with the Jewish people.

Rabbi Punterello will work to expand Shavei Israel’s activities throughout Italy, which will include: convening seminars and symposiums for the Bnei Anousim, organizing prayer services and regular classes on Jewish subjects, publishing newsletters and other Italian-language material on Jewish topics and distributing them among various communities in southern Italy; as well as providing assistance with the aliyah, conversion and absorption processes for those members of the community who choose to immigrate to Israel. He will also head the “Sud Italia” project organized by Shavei Israel and UCEI, Union of Italian Jewish Communities, aims to recover traditional, spiritual and religious rights of all groups, families and individuals, in Puglia, Sicily, Calabria and Campania who are rediscovering their origins and need help.

Shavei Israel, which reaches out to communities of “hidden Jews” and helps them to reconnect with the Jewish People and State of Israel, is undertaking this project in conjunction with the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, the official umbrella organization of Italian Jewry. It marks the first time that a rabbi has been appointed to work specifically with the Bnei Anousim of southern Italy and Sicily. In recent years, a growing number of Bnei Anousim in southern Italy have begun rediscovering their Jewish roots and expressing a desire to draw closer to Israel and the Jewish people. It is incumbent upon us to reach out to them and help them to do so.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor stated, “Varian Fry stood up to say ‘no’. Others did too, but too few.” “And we know that whenever and wherever good people stood up to say ‘no,’ Jews lived, Catholics lived, and others lived. Imagine what would have happened if there were more people like Varian Fry.” The ADL ‘Courage to Care’ Award is named in honor of one of its first recipients, Jan Karski, a Polish diplomat and righteous Gentile who provided the West with one of the first eyewitness accounts of Hitler’s Final Solution. It is made possible through a generous grant from Eileen Ludwig-Greenland. The award was presented in the form of a plaque with bas-reliefs that was designed by noted sculptor Arbit Blatas and depicts the horrifying context, the Nazis’ persecution, deportation and murder of millions of Jews that served as a backdrop for the rescuers’ exceptional deeds.

Bnei Menashe waiting to come home, with Shavei Israel

The government of Israel allowed immigration from Manipur to resume last October after a five-year freeze. Since then 275 members of the Bnei Manashe community have come to Israel as new citizens. The latest arrivals will live in an absorption center in Givat Haviva, and are then expected to move to Akko and Migdal Haemek in northern Israel.

Israel marked an aliyah (immigration) milestone January 17, 2013, with the arrival of the 2,000th member of the Bnei Menashe community. Eighteen-year-old Mirna Singsit arrived in Israel along with 53 other members of the community, including her parents and three siblings.Mirna Singsit stated, “It’s hard to express in words how excited and happy I am right now.” “This isn’t just my dream from the day I was born, it’s been my community’s dream for thousands of years, and now it’s finally coming true.” Singsit plans to complete a degree in political science that she began in India, and then work as a teacher. Her family will start its life in Israel in an absorption center, but Singsit hopes to someday move to Jerusalem, “the holiest place on earth.”

Shavei Israel director Michael Freund gave Singsit a certificate naming her the 2,000th arrival. Singsit told him that her arrival in Israel is the fulfillment of a life-long dream. Freund stated, “the arrival of the 54 new immigrants was “unforgettable.” “After 2,700 years, the tribe of Menashe is coming home.”

Cellular organisms use messenger RNA, called mRNA, to convey genetic information that directs synthesis of specific proteins. In this process, the information needed for the production of a mature protein is encoded in segments called exons which are needed in a specific sequence in order to understand them. In the splicing process, the non-coding segments of the RNA (unimportant) are spliced from the pre-mRNA and the exons are joined together.

Alternative splicing is when a specific exon is either inserted or deleted from the (mRNA). Over 90 percent of the genes in our genome undergo alternative splicing of one or more of their exons, and the resulting changes in the proteins encoded by these different mRNAs are required for normal function. In cancer, the normal process of alternative splicing is altered, and “bad” protein forms are generated that aid cancer cell proliferation and survival.

In a study published in the online edition of Cell Reports, conducted by Ph.D. student Vered Ben Hur in the lab of Dr. Rotem Karni at the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada of the Hebrew University, the researchers found that breast cancer cells change the alternative splicing of an important enzyme, called S6K1, which is a protein involved in the transmission of information into the cell.

The researchers found that when this happens, breast cancer cells start to produce shorter versions of this enzyme and that these shorter versions transmit signals ordering the cells to grow, proliferate, survive and invade other tissues. On the other hand, the researchers found that the long form of this protein acts as a tumour suppressor that protects normal cells from becoming cancerous.

There are several medical implications emanating from the research. One of them is the use of the newly discovered short forms of S6K1 as a diagnostic marker for the detection of breast cancer. Several new anticancer drugs, which have entered the clinic recently, can inhibit the cancerous activity of the short forms of S6K1. Thus, the detection of these new forms can predict the efficacy of these drugs to treat cancer patients.

These implications were recently submitted as a patent application by Yissum, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University. Another future application will be to “reverse” the alternative splicing of S6K1 in cancer cells back to the normal situation as a novel anti-cancer therapy. The research group of Dr. Karni is actively engaged in this effort.

In July 2012, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported that they discovered the molecular basis for the breakage of DNA during the development of cancerous tumours. Though the three areas with the highest breast cancer rates are Western Europe, Australia/New Zealand and Northern Europe, Israel has taken a leading role in researching causes and treatments.

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s very first international research grant was awarded in 2001 to Sharre Zedek Medical Center’s Dr. Ephrat Levy-Lahad to do a comprehensive Israeli Breast Cancer Study, now an international model for genetic breast cancer prevention screening.

Jewish Temple Laver [giant copper wash basin]

The original laver which was constructed for the desert tabernacle in Moses’ time included two spigots for releasing the water. In the era of the Second Temple, the High Priest Ben Katin fashioned 12 faucets for the laver, so that the entire shift who participate in the offering of the daily sacrifice may sanctify themselves at once.

The Midrash relates that the original laver was made from the contributions of the righteous women of Israel, who donated their shiny mirrors towards this cause. These mirrors, made of highly polished copper, were melted down and it was from these that the laver was created. This act of sacrifice and the fact that the women cared more about fulfilling G-d’s word than about their own appearance was precious in the eyes of G-d. He declared that the laver must be of copper throughout the ages, to invoke the merit of these righteous women.

Ancient Shilo Vase Stolen

Israel suffered a crushing defeat in that war, which is believed to have been waged near present-day Afek. The two sons of Eli the High Priest were killed, and Eli himself died upon hearing the news. Worst of all, the Holy Ark, which the Israelites had brought to the battleground, was taken by the Philistines. With the vase, archeologists and scholars now had more evidence to back the assumption that after defeating the Israelites at Even Ha’ezer, the Philistines advanced upon Shilo and sacked it.

The dry climate of the cave preserved the papers, keeping them in excellent condition. This is the first ever documentation of the religious, cultural and commercial life of the Jewish community in a central location on the trade route between China and the West. It also contains unseen commentary by 10th century commentator Saadia Gaon on the book of Isaiah

Academic director of the National Library of Israel, Professor Haggai Ben-Shammai, stated that “until now, we had no documents testifying to the presence of Jews” in this part of the Persian cultural domain. This is the first time we have a large collection of documents representing the culture of the Jews who lived there” at the beginning of the 11th century. The collection is rich with documents, some in Arabic and some in Hebrew script in the Judaeo-Persian dialect, which was prevalent at the time, and also in Hebrew and Arabic.”

The Afghan “Geniza,” the Hebrew term for ritual Jewish disposal of documents with religious significance which cannot be thrown out but must be buried, contains hundreds of papers currently held by collectors and dealers around the world. The national library displayed the 29 items it had acquired from the cache to the media, after obtaining them from a dealer in Jerusalem. The library is preparing to make the documents available online in order to make them accessible worldwide.

The Hasmoneans came to power in 164 BCE, upon re-dedicating the Temple in Jerusalem. It is believed that the Maccabean Revolt relied mainly on farmers. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, “The farmers adhered closely to the Torah, especially to the precepts pertaining to the land, such as the year of release.

Archaeologists have found “a perfume bottle, wine press, bread oven and the remains of houses and agricultural buildings. Archaeologists also found a hand-made lead weight with […] the letter “yod,” the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the equivalent of the English letter “y.”” Daniel Ein Mor, the chief archaeologist for the site, has stated, “We discovered rock foundations in the buildings, pointing to a huge investment. The quality of the construction is excellent, so I wouldn’t be surprised if future findings reveal it is even something bigger.”

Mor stated, “Up to now we have discovered very few sites that date back to the early period of the Hellenistic era in this area, which served as the agricultural periphery of Jerusalem. Very little is known about the materials used and the history of the residents of Jerusalem and its environs during the third and fourth centuries before the Common Era and before the Hasmonean revolt took place. The site that was discovered recently will help us understand how residents lived in this area at that time.”