The images of young Israelis in the West Bank brandishing guns and clubs, killing Palestinian farmers, torching their crops and property, makes me think of my maternal grandparents. I can only imagine how Papa Sam and Grandma Bessie would respond to such hooliganism if they were alive today.

The two lived in the same village in Belarus, maybe three hours by car from the capital city of Minsk.  From what I understand, though they shared the same last name, Katznelson, they didn’t meet until after they immigrated to America. In their later years, they lived on the second floor of my parents’ New Jersey home, so they were fixtures in my world when I was a child.

Grandma and Papa didn’t talk much about their lives in the shtetl. I never heard them talk in Russian. However, it was from them that I learned the word pogrom, which is Russian for wreak havoc or destroy violently.

After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1818, pogroms against Jews became a fashion of sorts among gentiles. Ironically, they proved to be a blessing, as my grandparents fled the pogroms well before the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)