A Damaged Mirror
   HOME
*





A Damaged Mirror
''A Damaged Mirror'' is a 2014 "novelized" memoir by Yael Shahar and Ovadya ben Malka. The book explores the moral dilemmas of a former member of the Birkenau Sonderkommando, Ovadya ben Malka. The book was reissued in 2015 with a new Foreword by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo. Plot summary The book opens with Yael reaching out to a rabbi for a rabbinic judgement for “Alex”. In subsequent correspondence with the rabbi, Rav Ish-Shalom, we learn that Alex's real name is Ovadya. He was deported to Birkenau from his home in Salonika, Greece at the age of 17. His mother and sister were gassed on arrival and Ovadya was sent to the Sonderkommando, the group of prisoners responsible for running the machinery of murder. Ovadya wants the rabbi to serve as a rabbinic judge—essentially to put himself on trial for what he did in Birkenau. “The fact that good people can be forced to do wrong doesn’t make them less good,” he says. “But it also doesn’t make the wrong less wrong.” ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Yael Shahar
Jael or Yael ( he, יָעֵל ''Yāʿēl'') is the name of the heroine who delivered Israel from the army of King Jabin of Canaan in the Book of Judges of the Hebrew Bible. After Barak demurred at the behest of the prophetess Deborah, God turned Sisera over to Jael, who killed him by driving a tent peg through his skull after he entered her tent near the great tree in Zaanannim near Kedesh. Name The Hebrew ''ya'el'' means ibex, a nimble, sure-footed mountain goat native to that region. It literally translates to "he shall ascend or go up". As of 2016, ''Yael'' was one of the most common female first names in contemporary Israel. Family Jael has often been understood to be the wife of Heber the Kenite.Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. " ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ovadya Ben Malka
Obadiah (; he, עֹבַדְיָה  – ''ʿŌḇaḏyā'' or  – ''ʿŌḇaḏyāhū''; "servant of Yah", or "Slave of Yah HVH) is a biblical prophet. The authorship of the Book of Obadiah is traditionally attributed to the prophet Obadiah. Biblical account Dating The Interpreters' Bible states that: Rabbinic tradition According to the Talmud, Obadiah is said to have been a convert to Judaism from Edom, Translated by Michael L. Rodkinson a descendant of Eliphaz, the friend of Job. He is identified with the Obadiah who was the servant of Ahab, and was chosen to prophesy against Edom because he was himself an Edomite. Obadiah is supposed to have received the gift of prophecy for having hidden the "hundred prophets" from the persecution of Jezebel. He hid the prophets in two caves, so that if those in one cave should be discovered those in the other might yet escape. Obadiah was very rich, but all his wealth was expended in feeding the poor prophets, un ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Kasva Press
Kasva ( fa, كاسوا, also Romanized as Kāsvā) is a village in Qahan Rural District, Khalajestan District, Qom County, Qom Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 143, in 62 families. The 14th-century author Hamdallah Mustawfi Hamdallah Mustawfi Qazvini ( fa, حمدالله مستوفى قزوینی, Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī Qazvīnī; 1281 – after 1339/40) was a Persian official, historian, geographer and poet. He lived during the last era of the Mongol Ilkhanate, and ... listed Kasva as one of the main villages in the district of Aveh. References Populated places in Qom Province {{Qom-geo-stub ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Hardcover
A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occasionally leather). It has a flexible, sewn spine which allows the book to lie flat on a surface when opened. Modern hardcovers may have the pages glued onto the spine in much the same way as paperbacks. Following the ISBN sequence numbers, books of this type may be identified by the abbreviation Hbk. Hardcover books are often printed on acid-free paper, and they are much more durable than paperbacks, which have flexible, easily damaged paper covers. Hardcover books are marginally more costly to manufacture. Hardcovers are frequently protected by artistic dust jackets, but a "jacketless" alternative has increased in popularity: these "paper-over-board" or "jacketless" hardcover bindings forgo the dust jacket in favor of printing the cove ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with adhesive, glue rather than stitch (textile arts), stitches or Staple (fastener), staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, leather, paper, or plastic. Inexpensive books bound in paper have existed since at least the 19th century in such forms as pamphlets, yellow-backs, yellowbacks, dime novels, and airport novels. Modern paperbacks can be differentiated from one another by size. In the United States, there are "mass-market paperbacks" and larger, more durable "trade paperbacks". In the United Kingdom, there are A-format, B-format, and the largest C-format sizes. Paperback editions of books are issued when a publisher decides to release a book in a low-cost format. Lower-quality paper, glued (rather than stapled or sewn) bindings, and the lack of a hard cover may contribute to the lower cost of paperbacks. Paperb ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question. After Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles for whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years. In May 1940, German criminals brought to ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sonderkommando
''Sonderkommandos'' (, ''special unit'') were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust. The death-camp ''Sonderkommandos'', who were always inmates, were unrelated to the ''SS-Sonderkommandos'', which were ''ad hoc'' units formed from members of various SS offices between 1938 and 1945. The German term was part of the vague and euphemistic language which the Nazis used to refer to aspects of the Final Solution (e.g., ''Einsatzkommando'', "deployment units"). Death factory workers ''Sonderkommando'' members did not participate directly in killing; that responsibility was reserved for the SS, while the ''Sonderkommandos'' primary duty was disposing of the corpses. In most cases, they were inducted immediately upon arrival at the camp and forced into the position under threat of death. They were not ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Nathan Lopes Cardozo
Nathan Lopes Cardozo (born 1946) is a Dutch-Israeli rabbi, philosopher and scholar of Judaism. A sought-after lecturer on the international stage for both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, Cardozo is known for his original and often controversial insights into Judaism. His ideas are widely debated on an international level on social media, blogs, books and other forums. He writes for the Times of Israel', ''The Jerusalem Post'' and other news websites. Cardozo believes that the biblical prohibition against two men engaging in homosexual acts only applies to those whare purely heterosexual which puts him in direct opposition to mainstream Rabbinic Judaism. Early life and family Nathan Lopes Cardozo was born on 26 July 1946 in Amsterdam. Nathan was named after his father's youngest brother who was killed in the Holocaust. His father was a secular Jew who was proud of his Portuguese Jewish origin. His mother was an orphan who, when her Christian parents died, was raised by his father ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Birkenau
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (''Stammlager'') in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question. After Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles for whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years. In May 1940, German criminals brought to the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Salonika
Thessaloniki (; el, Θεσσαλονίκη, , also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece, with over one million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, and the capital of the geographic region of Macedonia, the administrative region of Central Macedonia and the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace. It is also known in Greek as (), literally "the co-capital", a reference to its historical status as the () or "co-reigning" city of the Byzantine Empire alongside Constantinople. Thessaloniki is located on the Thermaic Gulf, at the northwest corner of the Aegean Sea. It is bounded on the west by the delta of the Axios. The municipality of Thessaloniki, the historical center, had a population of 317,778 in 2021, while the Thessaloniki metropolitan area had 1,091,424 inhabitants in 2021. It is Greece's second major economic, industrial, commercial and political centre, and a major transportation hub for Greece and south ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]