In the wake of the frightening events in Texas, shul members planning to attend Shabbat services in person are asked to arrive by 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and by 9:30 a.m. on Saturdays. The doors will be locked when services begin. Latecomers must knock and identify themselves before the door will be opened.

Shul president Judith K. Weiner, Rabbi Gadi Capela and several board members attended a Zoom meeting on Jan. 18 to hear U.S. government officials discuss security measures to foil antisemitic activity. Speakers included Attorney General Merrick Garland, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray, White House Director of Faith Partnerships Melissa Rogers, and others. The shul will follow up on recommendations, and with local law enforcement.

A cold case team that combed through evidence for five years in a bid to unravel one of WWII’s mysteries has reached what it calls the “most likely scenario” of who betrayed Jewish teenage diarist Anne Frank and her family in the summer of 1944. A possible answer is outlined in a new book titled The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation, by Canadian academic Rosemary Sullivan.

The Franks and four other Jews hid in the annex of a warehouse at Prinsengracht 263 in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. The annex, reached by a secret staircase hidden behind a bookcase, served the family from July 1942 until they were discovered in August 1944 and deported to concentration camps. The diary Anne wrote while in hiding was published after the war and became a symbol of hope and resilience that has been translated into dozens of languages and read by millions. Only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survived the war. But the identity of the person who gave away the location of their hiding place has always remained a mystery, despite previous investigations.

Shaped like a procedural or a whodunit, the book examines possible informants, and eventually wends its way to — spoiler alert — Arnold van den Bergh, a prosperous Jewish Dutch notary who may have traded information for the safety of his own family. The theory is convincing, reviewers say, but not conclusive. However, the book does reveal how the horror of the Nazi occupation forced some members of a once close-knit Amsterdam community to turn on one another.

Ever mindful of our fascination with weather (well, maybe only The Shofar editor, nevertheless…) and consternation when weather doesn’t cooperate with outdoor plans, we bring you the official storm names for 2022, announced by the National Weather Bureau. Thanks to The Shofar’s crack research department, you can amaze your friends with this inside information at your next swanky cocktail party (masked, of course).       By the way, the final name for the 2021 hurricane season was Wanda, which transitioned into Tropical Storm Wanda on Dec. 27 after roaming the Atlantic as a subtropical storm. Whew! Wanda was the last name on the list. In the past, after the alphabet was exhausted, the weather bureau would turn to the Greek alphabet. But that system of naming storms has been abandoned because so many of the Greek letters sound too much alike (Zeta, Beta, Theta…) Now, the World Meteorological Organization has developed a supplemental list of names to use when the standard list is exhausted in a given season.

Here now, the standard list for 2022: Alex, Bonnie, Colin, Danielle, Earl, Fiona, Gaston, Hermine, Ian, Julia, Karl, Lisa, Martin, Nicole, Owen, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tobias, Virginie (not Virginia), Walter.

Shul member Elizabeth Senigaglia submitted this story to The Shofar. “The story is especially dear to me,” she said. “When we first started sharing stories, Anna and I realized we had the same birth date — but with a huge difference. When I was born, she was 15 years old, and had been in the camp for more than a year.

“The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto is one of the most well documented acts of Jewish resistance in modern Jewish history. Conversely, an equally significant act of rebellion and, in some ways more heroic, was the revolt of the Sonderkommando (units of Jewish slave laborers forced to burn corpses of gas chamber victims) in Crematorium IV in Birkenau. On Oct. 7, 1944, under a blue and cloudless sky, the most remarkable uprising within a Nazi extermination camp took place when the Sonderkommando succeeded in sabotaging a crematorium and igniting a rebellion.

“I first heard the story in 1980, told to me by my beloved friend and colleague, Anna Rosenthal, an eyewitness to the uprising. Anna was a 14-year-old Jewish girl, born in Preshov, Slovakia, when she was deported to Auschwitz on March 25, 1942. She was part of the first transport of 997 young Jewish girls to be entered into the slave labor force at the recently completed complex of Auschwitz ll, known as Birkenau.        “The following narrative represents the way Anna related the events to me. The awareness that it could have been any of us is never far from my thoughts.”

On Oct. 7, 1944, the Sonderkommando assigned to Crematorium lV, having learned they were to be killed, revolted against the SS. The uprising was not a spontaneous outburst of anger against the SS, but was a carefully thought-out plan that overcame incredible logistical odds.

The key players were a group of young Jewish women, among them, Ester Wajcblum, Ala Gärtner, and Regina Safirsztain, who for months had been smuggling small amounts of gunpowder from an ammunitions factory within the Auschwitz complex to men and women in the camp’s resistance movement. The girls wrapped the gunpowder in bits of cloth or paper, hid the small packages on their bodies, and passed them along the chain to Róza Robota, a leader of the movement. Sonderkommando used the gunpowder to create makeshift bombs and grenades. Preparations came to a head on Oct. 7, when one of the prisoners walked calmly up to a Nazi officer and struck him with a hammer.

Chaos followed. The SS were attacked by prisoners with knives, hammers and explosives.  Some prisoners cut the barbed wire, hoping to flee into the woods. Three SS men were killed, another dozen injured. Inevitably, the Nazis crushed the revolt: The escaped men were        captured and executed; nearly 250 prisoners died in the fighting, and guards killed an additional 200 once the uprising was suppressed.

Shortly after the event and its aftermath, the SS identified the four women instrumental in supplying the explosives: Ester, Ala, Regina and Róza. Tortured for several weeks, the girls were hanged on Jan. 6, 1945: Two were hanged at the morning roll call, two at evening roll call, in the women’s camp, an example for all to witness. As they were dying, the women shouted “Revenge.” Three weeks later, Auschwitz Birkenau was liberated by the advancing Red Army.

“The revolt at Birkenau was born of years of enslavement, degradation, frustration and hopelessness.  There was nothing at all to lose. What must be remembered today is the courage of the girls and the dignity of their deaths. They have been memorialized in a monument at Yad Vashem. It is for us, the living, to pass on their story as I had promised Anna I would — so that this, too, will become part of our more than 3,000 years of collective Jewish history.”

—Elizabeth Senigaglia

A rare 2,000-year-old coin was found by an 11-year-old girl in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority said. The coin was likely minted by a priest who had joined the Jewish rebels in the revolt against the Romans, shortly before the Temple was destroyed.

“This is a rare find, since out of many thousands of coins discovered to date in archaeological excavations, only about 30 of those coins are made of silver, from the period of the Great Revolt,” said Dr. Robert Kool, head of the IAA Coin Department.

The coin is made of pure silver and weighs about 14 grams. On one side, it features a cup and the inscription “Israeli shekel” and “second year” — referring to the second year of the revolt (67-68 CE). On the other side, another inscription reads “Holy Jerusalem” in ancient Hebrew script and is accompanied by another word, which according to the experts refers to the headquarters of the High Priest in the Temple.

“When I got to Emek Tzurim, I thought there must be simple coins in the buckets, but I did not think I would find a coin myself, and certainly not such a rare coin from pure silver, said 11-year-old Liel Krutokop from Petah Tikva, who came with her family to do archaeological sifting at the City of David.