First of all, I wish for everyone good health and excellent medical care in case needed. But why has Israel to be the bad one ? Why not pointing a finger to the rich Arab World? Why not complaining to the Palistinian Autorithy...why do they invest in programms for destruction in stead of first trying to work on building up an economy and healthcare? Is it because WE rather invest in the art of living and saving lives, focus on medical care, building hospitals and training docters to heal people? Unfortunately some influenced people in Gaza prefer to keep their inhibatants poor and unhealty, to prive them from basic healthcare, so they can blame Israel? They have other priorities for the financial assistance they receive from Europe and US or for the funds they receive from the Arab countries??Just to mention : paying allowances to families from kids who blow up themselves, killing and hurting other innocent people? How about the names and ages of the persons killed and hurt and of the families destroyed on the Israeli side ? Use money for teaching schoolkids to hate? The new Palestinian Authority schoolbooks, introduced in the end of 2006 by the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Higher Education apparatus, are a continuation of the tragic disappointment of the earlier books. Instead of seizing the opportunity to educate future generations to live with Israel in peace, the PA schoolbooks glorify terror and teach their children to hate Israel, vilify Israel's existence and define the battle with Israel as an uncompromising religious war. Instead of working to minimize the current hate, the new PA curriculum is ingraining it into the next generation’s consciousness, and packaging the war against Israel as existential, mandatory and religious. The new PA schoolbooks are guaranteeing that the next generation will grow up seeing Israel as an illegitimate enemy to be hated, fought, and destroyed, rather than as a neighbor to negotiate with and to ultimately live beside in peace.
I realise this is a black white comparision..But Israel tries to protect herself too.. And I really really wished that every one could just pop in and out of Gaza and Israel or any other country! For healthcare, or just family visits or fun...
We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us." ----- Golda Meir
This is rather long but it is a beautiful Jewish/feel good story.
On his way out from shul in Jerusalem, Dan approached a young man in jeans, backpack, dark skin, curly black hair -- looked Sephardi, maybe Moroccan. "Good Shabbos. My name is Dan Eisenblatt. Would you like to eat at my house tonight?"
The young man's face broke in an instant from a worried look to a smile. "Yeah, thanks. My name is Machi."
Together they walked out of the shul. A few minutes later they were all standing around Dan's Shabbos table. Dan noticed his guest fidgeting and leafing through his songbook, apparently looking for something. He asked with a smile, "Is there a song you want to sing? I can help if you're not sure about the tune."
The guest's face lit up. "There is a song I'd like to sing, but I can't find it here. I really liked what we sang in the synagogue tonight. What was it called? Something 'dodi.'"
Dan paused for a moment, on the verge of saying, "It's not usually sung at the table," but then he caught himself. "If that's what the kid wants," he thought, "what's the harm?" Aloud he said, "You mean Lecha Dodi. Wait, let me get you a siddur."
Once they had sung Lecha Dodi, the young man resumed his silence until after the soup, when Dan asked him, "Which song now?" The guest looked embarrassed, but after a bit of encouragement said firmly, "I'd really like to sing Lecha Dodi again."
Dan was not really all that surprised when, after the chicken, he asked his guest what song now, and the young man said, "Lecha Dodi, please." Dan almost blurted out, "Let's sing it a little softer this time, the neighbors are going to think I'm nuts." He finally said, "Don't you want to sing something else?"
His guest blushed and looked down. "I just really like that one," he mumbled. "Just something about it - I really like it." In all, they must have sung "The Song" eight or nine times. Dan wasn't sure -- he lost count. Later Dan asked, "Where are you from?" The boy looked pained, then stared down at the floor and said softly, "Ramallah."
Dan was sure he'd heard the boy say "Ramallah," a large Arab city on the West Bank. Quickly he caught himself, and then realized that he must have said Ramleh, an Israeli city. Dan said, "Oh, I have a cousin there. Do you know Ephraim Warner? He lives on Herzl Street."
The young man shook his head sadly. "There are no Jews in Ramallah."
Dan gasped. He really had said "Ramallah"! His thoughts were racing. Did he just spend Shabbos with an Arab? He told the boy, "I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused. And now that I think of it, I haven't even asked your full name. What is it, please?"
The boy looked nervous for a moment, then squared his shoulders and said quietly, "Machmud Ibn-esh-Sharif." Dan stood there speechless. What could he say? Machmud broke the silence hesitantly: "I was born and grew up in Ramallah. I was taught to hate my Jewish oppressors, and to think that killing them was heroism.
But I always had my doubts. I mean, we were taught that the Sunna, the tradition, says, 'No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.' I used to sit and wonder, Weren't the Yahud (Jews) people, too? Didn't they have the right to live the same as us? If we're supposed to be good to everyone, how come nobody includes Jews in that? "I put these questions to my father, and he threw me out of the house. By now my mind was made up: I was going to run away and live with the Yahud, until I could find out what they were really like. I snuck back into the house that night, to get my things and my backpack.
My mother caught me in the middle of packing. I told her that I wanted to go live with the Jews for a while and find out what they're really like and maybe I would even want to convert.
She was turning more and more pale while I said all this, and I thought she was angry, but that wasn't it. Something else was hurting her and she whispered gently, 'You don't have to convert. You already are a Jew." I was shocked. My head started spinning, and for a moment I couldn't speak. Then I stammered, 'What do you mean?' 'In Judaism,' she told me, 'the religion goes according to the mother.
I'm Jewish, so that means you're Jewish.' "I never had any idea my mother was Jewish. I guess she didn't want anyone to know. She whispered suddenly, 'I made a mistake by marrying an Arab man. In you, my mistake will be redeemed.' "My mother always talked that way, poetic-like. She went and dug out some old documents, and handed them to me: things like my birth certificate and her old Israeli ID card, so I could prove I was a Jew.
I've got them here, but I don't know what to do with them. "My mother hesitated about one piece of paper. Then she said, 'You may as well take this. It is an old photograph of my grand-parents which was taken when they went visiting the grave of some great ancestor of ours.' "Now I have traveled here to Israel. I'm just trying to find out where I belong."
Dan gently put his hand on Machmud's shoulder. Machmud looked up, scared and hopeful at the same time. Dan asked, "Do you have the photo here?"
The boy's face lit up. ""Sure! I always carry it with me." He reached in his backpack and pulled out an old, tattered envelope.
When Dan read the gravestone inscription, he nearly dropped the photo. He rubbed his eyes to make sure. There was no doubt. This was a grave in the old cemetery in Tzfat, and the inscription identified it as the grave of the great Kabbalist and tzaddik Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz.
Dan's voice quivered with excitement as he explained to Machmud who his ancestor was. "He was a friend of the Arizal, a great Torah scholar, a tzaddik, a mystic. And, Machmud, your ancestor wrote that song we were singing all Shabbos: Lecha Dodi!"
This time it w as Machmud's turn to be struck speechless. Dan extended his trembling hand and said, "Welcome home, Machmud."
This true story, submitted by Nechama Goodman, is documented in "Monsey, Kiryat Sefer and Beyond" by Zev Roth.
The Gemoro in Eruvin 65a says, "Nichnas yayin yotzo sod" - When wine comes in our innermost secrets come out (Rashi explains that the numerical value of YAYIN-wine and SOD-secret are both 70.)
Purim is a time to thank Hashem for all he has done for us . It is also time to work on bein odom l'chaveiro - making peace with friends (or chas vsholom enemies) that can be seen in the mitzvah of Mishloach Manos. During the year we are embarrassed and have natural inhibitions against such actions. When we drink more than usual and reach a little higher spirit (no pun intended) we break through our inhibitions and it's much easier to accomplish these things.
The Shulchan Aruch (694:3) "When it comes to giving charity on Purim we are not selective. Whoever outstretches his hand to take you give him."Hashem also listens to the Shulchan Aruch and if we "put out our hand" and ask Hashem for whatever we need "He is not selective and He will give" He will listen.
May Hashem fulfill our heartfelt requests for the good. Amen, Selah.
Following is a messag of the Arab EUROPEAN league......What a disgrace for the name European....nobody reacts? We become numb here in Europe? What about European, western values, justice respect for HUMAN rights, HUMAN life....When we passed the red sea, G'd forbid us to sing and dance, because they were his creatures too that perished in the sea...
The Arab European League congratulates the resistance martyrs who carried out the successfull attack yesterday on the occupying enemy in Al Quds (Jeruzalem).
According to several sources, 8 zionists were killed and many others were injured.
The Arab European League congratulates the resistance martyrs who carried out the successfull attack yesterday on the occupying enemy in Al Quds (Jeruzalem).
According to several sources, 8 zionists were killed and many others were injured.
The successfull attack has to be seen in the light of 60 years of occupation, ethnic cleansing and starvation of the Palestinian people and the recent attacks on
Gaza and killing of the resistance hero and marty Moghniyeh.
The Arab European League wants also to emphasize the fact that the occupation Palestine is of a colonial and extremely brutal nature and which means
that in no way a "victim" of our resistance is an innocent victim.
As long as the zionist state is not dismantled and the palestinian can not return to their lands, the occupier shall never know peace.
Mar 13, 2008 7:03 am Mood: deep deep sadness, 644 Views
by Lynn Finson
It has been three days since the grisly murders at Merkaz Harav. I clicked on to the news sites and saw the faces of the beautiful young boys gunned down. Oh those faces, sweet young smiling faces. How they speak to me. All the stages you know they go through, all the hours and years put into raising them and building them, gone in a moment.
The funeral was something to behold. It was an experience filled with reverence and holiness. Thousands came. There should have been tens of thousands. It started with a kindness to the living. The day was hot, a dry desert wind blowing. People were closely packed. I felt a kinship with all the women standing next to me, although I did not know anyone. There was an announcement that they would be distributing water. I have never been at a funeral that did that.
This funeral was different in so many ways. This funeral, as the eight boys draped in talleisim lay before their yeshiva, was perhaps the saddest one I have ever attended. It wasn't only the youth of the boys; it was also a feeling that the Arabs had struck at our very essence. Our Godliness was challenged, our Torah was trampled. Like Amalek many years ago, they came to destroy it. They came to make us question God and His providence; they came to dismantle our emotional and spiritual core.
The ambulances stacked up, waiting to take them to their burial places. Seeing them lined up like that made me cry from a depth I didn't know I had.
Then I heard it, a wailing sound from thousands of people all happening at the same moment. The crowd was as one
Then I heard it, a wailing sound from thousands of people all happening at the same moment. The crowd was as one. I remembered the verse in the book of Exodus, "And it came to pass in the course of those many days, the king of Egypt died and the children of Israel sighed from the bondage, and they cried, and their cry went up unto God from the bondage."
Grown men, women and children all crying. We stood there and just wept as the desert wind gently blew. Many words were spoken, heartfelt, sincere and necessary words, but somehow it was the crying that cut to the core. The cry of the children of Israel.
This is no small thing. When it is sincere and very deep it reaches the uppermost heavens. It reaches the Almighty Himself: "And now behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me; moreover I have seen the oppression whereby the Egyptians oppress them."
We are at a point in history when as Jews we are being assailed from all sides. Even defending ourselves is cause for critique and condemnation. It is almost as if the world has reached a point where they would like to pretend that we did not give them the Ten Commandments. They would like to believe that it is they who have the moral upper hand. It is enough to make one scream in frustration and pain at the absolute falsity of it all.
But at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what they think. At the end of the day what matters is that there are eight beautiful and holy boys taken from us. What matters is that we cry, what matters is that we never stop caring, that we dare not forget Amalek .And ultimately what matters more than anything else in the world is that we know with absolute certainty that the cry of the children of Israel will be answered by God Himself.
yesterday I hit my little toe. Went into the room of my 19 year old son, to wake him up for going to school, not an easy thing to do..some days it's going more fluently then another... Yesterday was one of the not so fluently days... Since he ignored the normal yelling I went (well more stormed) into his room...tried to ignore the mess.. in my rush I hit my toe to one of the iron weights laying on the floor, under a pile of what seemed socks and so.....oi oi oioi ....wow that hurts... And now I look in astonishment to the range of colors this little toe can display.....it still hurts terribly..but I can move it so its not broken.. Any way...seeing me dancing around on one leg ....my son got out of bed very quickly that day
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
So another soekoth finished.We had some sunshine, we had some rain, we had some guest, we (my daughter) had a hotdog party. Just wondering how long it will take to get the soukka in the basement again ? Putting it up, it's a stress, but you know it has to be ready on time, bringing it back..that's another story. Once I had the souka outside till pesach. Shabath shalom to everyone !
