Archbishop of Jaffa, who said that father Gregor helped thousands always asking the same question how can I serve? No, I'm here for lazard. Eventually, right to our administered and a third bowl of incense was produced and then something extraordinary happened priests in dark brown habits hoisted father Gregor pavlovsky's coffin and carried it out to the courtyard of the church where, according to Maul, the head of the amita ishiba in Ashton. They had been to see other people in the traditional green traditional certainly there was an astonishing sight of Christian priests on the one hand and Jews with CT and capote on the other saying cot over him. This, according to rav Maul after pavlovsky's family asked the diocese to take into account that there were people mourning father Gregor's death who because they are orthodox shoes could not enter a church and the leaders of the church agreed to hold a second service in the yard. Father Gregor pavlovsky was born 90 years ago in August 1931 in the most Poland near lublin, the name he was given at birth was Jacob's fee greener, son of Mendel and Miriam, though he was called hirsch yiddish for SV. His much older brother was high him and his somewhat older sisters were his father traded in wood and coal. The language of the house was yiddish, hirsch studied in a heter, the war started when hirsch went into first grade. And soon after that, the greener house was bombed. I am escaped, he headed to Russia and was not heard from again. The Jews of the most were forced into a ghetto and then the ghetto was liquidated. Mendel greener, here's his father, was deported and never heard from again. Then his mother and sisters were arrested caught hiding in a basement and her escaped living on the run for a while and for a time he was taken in by a Polish family who raised him as a Catholic pole. After the war, he was transferred to an orphanage, where he took his first communion in June 1945 when he was still 13. He was baptized. After high school, he went to a seminary in lublin, where, in time, he told the rector that he was Jewish, and the rector consulted the bishop, who ruled that there was no reason why a Jew could not be a priest. In 1958, hirsch now, Gregor pavlovsky was ordained, working in the diocese of lublin. In 1966 to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of Christianity in Poland, pavlovski wrote an essay telling his story in a Catholic newspaper in Kraków. And this newspaper somehow made it to Israel, where it was seen by someone in batam, who phoned up Gregor's brother, I am greener, who had survived the war in Russia, and then made aliada Haifa, who, upon hearing the story, he said, yes, this is my brother. With the discovery that his brother was in Israel, a realization dawned on Gregor pavlovsky that may be his place too, was in Israel. He consulted with father Daniel rufin, another Polish Jew who became a priest in the carmelite order and moved to Israel trying to do so at first under the law of return until in 1962 Israel Supreme Court ruled four to one that a Jew becoming a cleric of another religion forfeited his right for automatic Israeli citizenship in time, pavlovski decided to come before he did though he had unfinished business in Poland. He decided to build a monument in his beta Poland near where his mother and sisters were murdered, and to mark somehow the mass graves there. And this became his project, after raising money and convincing Polish bureaucrats, pavlovski built his memorial at the old Jewish cemetery in his bita with an inscription in Polish and Hebrew reading in part to the eternal memory of our dear parents Mendel son of zev and Miriam, daughter of Isaac greener of blessed memory and our sisters shindell and Sarah of blessed memory and also of all the Jews murdered and buried in this cemetery in the month of kislev 57 O three by the Nazi murderers and profane of God's commandments with gratitude to God for being saved. We established this monument father Gregor pavlovski, Jacob SV greener Poland and highland greener, Israel. Abutting the mass grave father pavlovski, who was then in his mid 30s bought a burial plot for himself already than having made to his specifications a headstone that reads, quote, father, Gregor pavlovsky, Jacobs fee greener, son of Mendel and Miriam a blessed memory. I abandoned my family in order to save my life at the time of the show. They came to take us for extermination. My life I saved and I've consecrated it to the service of God and humanity. I've returned them to this place where they were murdered for the sanctification of God's name made their souls beset in eternal life. With that done father Gregor moved in 1970 to Israel. He said, quote, my place is here among the Jewish people. I sense the call to common serve Christians living in my country, his country being Israel, the state of the Jews. Father, Gregor was welcomed that load airport by father Daniel rufin and my father, Alfred delmi, a priest in Saint Peter's and by his brother haim and by nieces and nephews after taking a Hebrew upan in batam, he agreed to replace father Alfred at Saint Peter's father Gregor met rob shalom malloy when Maul was leading a trip to Poland and noticed his empty grave at the memorial site in east beta and learned his story and got his number and phoned him saying, quote, I am standing at your grave, will you tell my students your story, then putting the priest on speaker? So the Shiva kids could hear. Later, rob Maul brought father Gregor a mazza for his home in yafo, taking the keeper off his own head and putting it on the priests as he said the prayer for fixing a mizu on one's door frame. Father Gregor once wrote, quote, I did not want to live a lie. I did not want to deny my roots. My mother, my father, my people, I want to be truthful, thus I have a homeland and that is Poland, and I belong to the Polish people. However, I have a nation that is first. The Jewish people, I was circumcised on the 8th day and I belong. I belong both to Poland and to Israel. I can not speak against polls because they saved me and I can not speak against Jews because I am one of them end quote. And that is how it happened that last week exactly as Martin davidovich's remains were being flown from Prague to Jerusalem so they could be buried on mount herzl in a ceremony attended by nieces and nephews from around the world 73 years after David Ovid was killed in a training accident in the Czech brigade, which he joined to become an Israeli paratrooper after surviving Auschwitz. Father Gregor pavlovsky's body was flown from Jaffa to his bitter, where yesterday, as we record, he was laid to rest in a grave he acquired 55 years ago under a stone he bought and had carved with an epitaph he wrote in a ceremony attended by old friends and colleagues and also by a delegation of kids from the ami ishiba and Ashton and their rabbi, raf shalom maloo, who flew from Israel to Poland to say kaddish over father Gregor's grave as he wanted them to do. And as they promised to do each year from now forward stretching toward eternity, it is easy to think that people are one thing or another. But often we aren't, as we saw last week with Martin davidovich and Gregor pavlovsky, Jacob's feet here, greener, who in death as in life shuffled and shuddered to find their place in a world complicated by cruelty and chance and a world that also blessedly holds so many different answers to the question how can I serve? He's ikram, baruch. Today, two topics, both of which, in a way, together ask the larger question of what and how the Knesset is doing in this week when crucially as we speak a budget bill is being debated that must pass for this Knesset to survive. The first topic you say corruption as though it were a bad thing as the coalition government approves almost 3 billion new Israeli shekels in quote unquote coalition funding or earmarks to this or that pet cause of the 61 members of the coalition from aid to addicts to the academy for the Hebrew language to neutering stray cats. And all sorts of other good causes, but which allocations foreign minister and alternate prime minister la pee just last year called corruption and the workings of thieves in the night should members of canessa be able to hand out large sums of government funds to favorite causes will ask. And the second topic, death taxes and traffic as one of the pigovian taxes contained in the budget being debated as I speak is a congestion tax on all cars and trucks coming into Tel Aviv, which will cost commuters from Allison's round Ana up to 800 new Israeli shekels a month, which is a lot. Someday inshallah, there will be a good commuter train, but until there is is it fair to charge people lots of money for not taking the train that does not yet exist. And for our most unreasonably generous Patreon supporters in our extra special special extra discussion, the link to which you can find in our show notes on your podcast app or at Patreon dot com slash promised podcast on the World Wide Web, we discuss an interesting new poll that finds that if elections were held today, the Likud would grow still stronger to 36 seats, but that neither today's coalition nor today's opposition would be able to form a government. What does this poll tell us about where we are today and what it is to tell us about where we might beat tomorrow? But before we get to any of that, you lucky people listen to this..