...Naftoli Smolyanksy...died in a boating accident Aug. 25.
...Smolyansky had taken his 9-year-old son and 5- and 7-year-old daughters out on the lake Monday afternoon when the youngest daughter fell off the boat. All of the children were wearing life vests. Smolyansky immediately leapt into the water to rescue the girl. As she clung to him, his two other children, who witnessed the tragic event, could see their father quickly losing strength. In a final bout of strength, Smolyansky was able to get his daughter onto the boat as it drifted away. Smolyanksy was unable to swim to the boat and did not resurface. Several reports say that his children heard him say he would not make it.
A massive search was conducted by the community as people threw their support to the family. Ventura County Sheriff’s Department responded instantly with helicopters, a dive team and a rescue swimmer...Sources say that on Monday, Sept. 1, a group of 10 rabbis gathered on a boat in the lake and recited prayers in hopes of finding the body. A lit candle mounted on a flat piece of bread was set afloat as the group waited for it to stop moving. The rabbis then dropped a stone into the water, and within a few hours, reports say, the body allegedly rose to the surface.
then read this:-
In light of the recent drowning of Los Angeles's Naftoli Smolyansky A"H, much discussion has ensued about the segulah performed to recover his body. This same segulah, which involves floating a loaf of bread and candle in the water to locate the missing corpse, last year when Toronto Rabbonim considered performing it in order to locate the missing body of Eli Horowitz A"H, who had drowned the previous year. There is much skeptism regarding this segulah, some consider it witchcraft and claim that it has no basis in Judaism, deriving instead from non-Jewish sources. In this article, I will outline the development of similar segulot used throughout the ages and discuss how these methods were practiced by Jews and non-Jews alike...
Interested?
Read on.
Posts
3 comments:
I find practices like this very disturbing.
Some Jewish communities are very big on these types of segulahs. Reading tea leaves, wearing protective amulets, eating certain foods meant to ward off the evil eye, and other similar practices are not uncommon, particularly in Israel. When you investigate
the sources of these beliefs, you usually find that they are derived from non-Jewish superstitions.
I Samuel 28:7 -
Then said Saul unto his servants: 'Seek me a woman that divineth by a ghost, that I may go to her, and inquire of her.' And his servants said to him: 'Behold, there is a woman that divineth by a ghost at En-dor.'
Actually, this "segula" comes from the Torah - Moses used it to raise Josephs bones from the river Nile when they left Eygypt.
Post a Comment