Modern Chanukah Miracles with another Yehuda

We have a tradition in our local synagogue here in Yavne’el on the first night of Chanukah.

The “patriarch” in our Shul, Yehuda Baidetz is invited up just before the evening services to light the Chanukah Menorah.

Yehuda Baidetz lighting the menorah. Rabbi Sinai Frankel, the Rav of the community for over 40 years is on the right.

Yehuda is an octogenarian sheep farmer who was born here in Yavne’el. He’s the first one to unlock the synagogue doors in the morning, and you can find him patiently reciting psalms every day while he is waiting for a minyan (quorum of 10) to assemble.

The village of Yavne’el was established by a small group of orthodox Jewish families from Romania. They originally tried to set up a village on the Golan heights in the 1890’s but they were continuously looted by the local Arabs and they could not survive at that location. After temporarily disbanding, Baron Edmond (Binyamin) Rothschild bought up the entire Yavne’el valley and donated it as a place to build a new farming village. Moshava Yavne’el was founded in 1901 and is one of the oldest “modern” villages in Israel.

Shraga Faivel Baidetz

Shraga Faivel Baidetz, Yehuda’s grandfather, was one of those daring pioneers who chose to help fulfill the biblical prophecy of the Jews returning to their land, and helping the land bring forth her fruits. The early years were a struggle against famine when the country was under control of the Ottoman Turks.

With the end of WWI the Ottoman Empire collapsed. The League of Nations gave the Land to the Jews but put it under British Mandate until the Jews could build the institutions of a State. Yehuda Baidetz as a youngster remembers chasing British soldiers when they came into town searching for Jews from the underground militant Stern Gang. The Stern Gang, called Lechi in Hebrew  were at the forefront of forcing the British out of the country. This was primarily because the British had stopped Jewish immigration in 1939 which helped seal the fate of millions of stranded European Jews. The soldiers shooed away Yehuda and his buddies before they seized the hiding Stern Gang members to take them to be shot.

Sheep grazing in 1937

As a young man, Yehuda inherited the family farm and developed it and built his own young family. He was frequently called up to fight in Israel’s wars when we were attacked by our Arab neighbors. Yehuda, as a paratrooper, was in a decisive battle in the 1967 “6-day” War when Israel captured the strategic Golan Heights from Syria.

Whenever I encounter an Israeli Jew of Yehuda’s vintage, I make it a point to ask him or her about their life story. Simply by listening to them reminisce, you’ll be hearing first-hand testimony about the miracle of Jewish survival and the fulfillment of God’s biblical promise to His children.

Chanukah Samayach – Happy Chanukah… may we all publicize the miracle of God’s hidden hand in history… whether it is in the victory of the Macabbees over the Greeks in the Chanukah story, or in the miraculous modern return of the Jews to their Land.

Main street of Yavne’el in the early 1900’s taken from the approximate location of the Baidetz home where Yehuda and his wife still live today!