*Yom Ha'atzma'ut ha-60 Sameach!

I have not posted for a while because many things were happening. First of all, Pesach knocked me for a loop (-my mother used to say that; where did that expression come from and what the heck does it mean?!) Finally having recovered from Pesach (it took the two of us three days to convert back to chametz--you Yidden know what I mean), I had intended to post over this past weekend, but we had a rather difficult one: I had to take my husband to the E.R. on Shabbat, because of an infected facial cyst which began spreading. We left motzai Shabbat with an IV in place, and had to return to the E.R. twice on Sunday (still with the IV) and once Monday morning. I returned to work exhausted after staying with my husband in the hospital all morning, and then driving him back home.
My great plans of blogging about the history and connection of the Jewish People to the Land of Israel, and of the founding of the State, and the miraculous circumstances surrounding Israel's victory in the June, 1967 so-called Six-Day War, didn't come to fruition--after Pesach, my job and this weekend I just don't have the energy for it.

Instead, I posted a few short videos to commemorate Israel's 60th Birthday which takes place on the 5th day of the month of Iyar, corresponding this year to May 10th on the secular calendar. Because that day is Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, Israel will be celebrating it on Thursday (as well as our city here in the States, with our local celebrations).
With all it's flaws, Israel is the only homeland for the Jewish People, and I strongly believe that, for the rest of the world, Israel is the proverbial "canary in the coal mine."
As people better than I have said: "As it goes for Israel, so will it go for the World."
*Happy 60th Independence Day Israel!

This Isn't Hand Shmurah, But. . .

I just felt like adding something light, since my previous post was heavy (I'm from the 60s). I myself have made kosher for Pesach matzah in our former shul's kosher-for-Pesach-matzah-baking-sessions, many years ago--as have my husband and kids--but I've never been in a commercial matzah factory.
Quick, before it's too late: grab a piece of matzah (wash first),sit down, and crunch!

Mei Hashilo'ach and Islamic Jihad

Pesach is half over and I haven't blogged since before the chag. It's that kind of a holiday: it takes over your life. It is your life, for eight days. And that is as it should be.
I wanted to tell you how wonderful our sedarim (plural for 'seders') were, even without the kids being with us (sorry, kids!); it's really because our minhag (custom) is to sing, sing, and sing some more. We also have divrei Torah and discuss yetzi'at Mitzrarim of course, but we also sing it. And to me, song is prayer: that is what makes our seder different (mah nishtanah ha-seder hazeh, mi-kol ha-sedarim...?).
It instills a mood of beauty - of elevation, of kedushah--somehow (thank you, Abba and Eema, z"l, for teaching me in your ways. I hope I've taught it to my children as well. . .)
So down to the nitty gritty: our first seder officially "ended" (after Nirtzah) at 3:30 a.m., when our guests slowly and surreally began falling away from the table, floating (-or was it 'flopping') onto the living room couch, and crawling up the stairs to bed in slow motion (where wonderful old and good friends of ours were staying over for the 3 day YomTov).
That was the official end, before the songs at the end of the Haggadah. I wasn't going to let the seder end without them, so while humans were falling all around me (it was a battlefield!), I continued to sit and sing every song 'till the end, all by myself; I even continued and read Shir Hashirim, and sang the verses and phrases to which I knew melodies, which were several.
By the time I finished, it was 5:30 a.m. The second seder started earlier by a bit, but we had more discussion and questions and divrei Torah. The timing was not much better: I got to bed around 4:30 a.m. (Did I say I'm too old for this? I'm too old for this!)
I've decided I like a "talking" seder as well as a "singing" seder; but it must have the singing, or it can be a crashing bore, especially when one has guests who have not a clue as to what is going on--as we did on the first night.
I learned a little as well, together with our friends, who had printed out a Torah from the Mei Hashiloach about the word "Pesach," meaning 'skipping over,' to coincide with G-d's ineffable name; basically, it showed Kabbalistically how the skipping over when the Israelites weren't yet refined, in Egypt, is a parallel to the final redemption: how G-d will 'skip' over the Jewish People again, as He did just before Yetzi'at Mitzrayim, because we will not yet be refined enough--and He will bring the Redemption anyway.
So what in tarnation does all this have to do with Islamic Jihad, which should not even be mentioned in the same BREATH, let alone written on the same PAGE as the Mei Hashiloach, or any Torah for that matter?

(Ok, I admit this is a stretch, but...) well, you've heard about the new ruling by our illustrious administration, have you not? It seems there is a new front in the war on terrorism. We are just not permitted to use the words "jihadists," "mujahadeen," or even "Islamo-fascism" anymore. Interdit. Verboten. Assur. It seems that, according to our Brilliant Bushie & cohorts, using those terms might give legitimacy to their claims, or (even worse) cause offense to Muslims. And we wouldn't want to do that, would we? After all, look how upset they were after the Muhammad's-turban-is-a-bomb-cartoons. We wouldn't want more riots or firebombings, would we?
So, here we see that the whole world is continuing on its downward slide-through Political Correctness-to oblivion.
So, is Israel any different? Well, since Israel is still delivering fuel and supplies to Gaza, still discussing dismantling settlements, giving back the Golan (?!) and dividing Jerusalem, it seems that Israel is sliding along down the slippery slope with the rest of the world.
That is why the Torah from the Mei Shiloach gave me some hope. It states that, just as Hashem 'skipped over' the houses of the Jews--meaning the lack of refinement and readiness of the Jewish People for the Exodus from Egypt and slavery--and took them out of Egypt anyway, so He will 'skip over' the letter 'vav' (I told you it was Kabbalistic) in the Ineffable Name, which corresponds with human choice--and redeem the Jewish People, regardless of the fact that they may not be 'refined' nor ready, from all the centuries living among the nations in galut, in exile. Because we surely, as a people, do not seem to be going in the right direction of standing up for our heritage and birthright, of confronting Islamic Jihad terrorism (omigawd I said it!) and the threat against the State of Israel head on, with force.
So even if we choose poorly, or don't choose at all: this Torah gives us hope; G-d will come, finally, and redeem us anyway, even if it is the hard way.
Mo'adim le-Simchah.

Obama's Hebrew Blog?

I just learned--yes, I stopped in the middle of Pesach cleaning and sneaked over to the computer when no one was looking, heheh--just don't tell anyone (...but too late for the Pesach Hevel Havalim, I'm afraid) from reading a JTA article that Senator Barack Obama from Illinois, in his campaign efforts to 'inform' the Israeli public (?) (read=garner the Jewish vote), has launched a blog in Hebrew, the first post being a translation of his Chicago speech of March 2nd, 2007, followed by the original in English .), hosted by the website Tapuz.

Now, that's an unusual thing to do, isn't it? As far as I know, none of the other candidates for President have blogs in the Hebrew language. Barrack Hussein Obama is apparently making a big PR attempt to promote the idea that he is very pro-Israel (again, read=very pro courting the Jewish vote).
In having this blog, he seems to want to express to the Israeli public (read=and their American counterparts) his strong support of Israel as a Jewish State with defensible borders. To this end, he believes in 'The Two State Solution." Not very original, is it (sigh...)
Let's add another Arab (read=anti-Israel, terrorist) state to the twenty-two already existing--within the heartland of Israel, yet--and that would solve Israel's problems.

There is also on his blog a letter written by his Middle-East Affairs Advisor, Eric Lynn thanking Tapuz for hosting this new blog and emphasizing Obama's support of Israel.
So why hasn't he broken his ties with the perhaps-secret-Muslim-anti-American-anti-Semitic-ostensibly-Christian Reverend Wright?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. . .

Shabbat Mevarchim HaChodesh

It is very close to Shabbat; I will need to light candles in approximately 15 minutes, but I wanted to express to you, my reader(s), that I thank G-d every minute of every day (a figure of speech) for Shabbat Kodesh; it is truly a taste of "The World to Come," or as we say in our zmirot, "mey'en olam habah."
I haven't yet fully 'recovered' from our trip to Israel & our son's wedding; it was quite a stressful, if happy, time. And after an awful week, my feeling sick and coughing and my starting a new work project, I am grateful for the respite of Shabbat.
There is nothing like it: we are commanded (yup!) to lay our stressful work-week aside, and devote our attentions to spiritual matters, to 'resting from creation,' to emulating Ribono-shel-Olam (as much as we humans can), and remembering the Holy One and from whence we came...we study the Torah, read holy works and stories, express our love of Hashem in prayer and song.
This Shabbat is even more special, because it blesses the new coming month of Nissan, the month in which the Jewish people became a nation. It also commemorates the very first mitzvah, or commandment, which the Children of Israel were told to do by G-d. As it is written on the Chabad.org site:

Shortly before sundown on the 29th of Adar, G-d commanded Moses regarding the mitzvah of sanctifying the crescent new moon and establishing a lunar calendar. This is the first mitzvah the Jews were given as a nation.
Moses had difficulty envisaging the moon's appearance at the exact moment of its monthly rebirth. After the sun set, G-d showed Moses the crescent new moon of the new month of Nissan, showing him the precise dimensions of the moon at the moment the new month is to be consecrated.
For the generations that followed, each new month was ushered in when two witnesses testified before the Sanhedrin (rabbinic supreme court) that they had seen the molad, the new moon. In the 4th century CE, Hillel II foresaw that the Jews would no longer be able to follow a Sanhedrin-based calendar. So Hillel and his rabbinical court established the perpetual calendar which is followed today -- until Moshiach will come and reestablish the Sanhedrin

There isn't anything like it, and I am thankful I am able to celebrate it with family and friends. Just wish my kids were here, together with us. . .
Shabbat Shalom.

My Foreign Policy: A Synopsis

My last post was long (and probably long-winded as well), so I am now posting a considerably shorter one. I wrote previously about Israel needing to be strong and unafraid. Thank G-d I am not a "lone voice in the wilderness."
Here is Tovia Singer (my hero!) with a synopsis:


This will be My Foreign Policy (...if elected as PM...or President...or...)
( כמו שכולם עם שכל כבר יודעים, כהנא צדק)

Dayenu: A Rant

(This post is rather long, but bear with it-there's a movie at the end, children!)
Pesach is just around the corner. It was my most favorite chag as a child; different dishes, utensils and pots and pans; different tablecloths, kiddush cups and beautiful embroidered matzah covers instead of challah boards. Even different bedspreads on the beds; a scrubbed and polished apartment: I was entering a new universe, olam habah on this earth.

My new and shiny surroundings set the stage for the important message of that holiday: That the Jewish People were delivered from slavery to freedom, to form a nation under the one G-d, who chose us for a higher purpose, to be a higher civilization; perhaps to give the world The Law, the Torah that Hashem gave us-to set the standard for ourselves and to raise the world to that standard as well.

But I think we Jews have lost our way. Two thousand plus years in galut, and we are still having growing pains and identity crises. These were not so prevalent before, or maybe just not so noticeable, because we were always under the thumb of some nation or other.
We are not a warlike people; the Torah has raised us to a level where we do not live by the sword. All those liberal leftists may not know it (-or may not want to know it) but their humanitarian sentiments have their source in our ancient Torah, which among many other humanitarian laws entreated us to relate to the stranger among us with kindness, for we were once strangers in the land of Egypt.

We have always followed the rules of our countries of residence and tried to be good citizens--which Jews were for the most part, contributing to the betterment of the societies in which we lived--while trying (some of us more, some of us less) to follow our religion and our halacha at the same time.

But we didn't have to make the kind of decisions a nation makes, because we weren't a sovereign nation. Until 1948. Now, with the existing Jewish State of Israel--a truly, hand-of-God-miraculous event when one thinks about it (so think about it: the oft-persecuted, diaspora-scattered Jewish people creating a State in their ancient homeland after 2,000+ years of exile?)--we seem to be a bit out of practice in governing ourselves.
We are afraid to step into a true world leadership position. I'm not saying that we have no leaders; there are lots of people in Israel who think they are leaders; most of whom are being led by their egos for their own personal power and self-aggrandizement. But we don't have smart leadership which protects us; we still seem afraid to make decisions supporting our sovereignty. The position of being 'sovereign' doesn't yet feel comfortable; we're just not used to it--yet. It's like the old slave mentality: we're afraid of being decisive, afraid of offending the world (read='our masters?') It all points to this: we are afraid of being adults making adult decisions, because we still want the world to love us (the original dependant mommy love: please, please accept us! Validate us!)

After all these years, and all the persecution, and even with having a strong Armed Forces in the IDF, we deep down are still a nation of ghetto-dwellers:
"you can take the Jew out of the ghetto but you can't take the ghetto out of the Jew."

We need to take a good look at ourselves in the proverbial mirror, and see who we are and who we really should be. Psychologists would tell you that this can be frightening, because once we do see who we should be, we will have to take a stand. Taking a stand means you have to leave your 'comfort zone' and face the consequences of your actions. And the disapproval of the rest of the world.

But hey, we're in good company, right? We are not alone in being afraid: look at Europe and the United States, who are right along there with us, afraid to take a stand against the Muslim threat. Just read on Arutz Sheva about what Network Solutions did, blocking access to an anti-Islamic site. Read it also on Klein Verzet as well.

Fear rules.

And it's still so politically incorrect for TSA and other security agencies to racially profile at airports, even though the vast majority of terrorists and hijackers are "Middle Eastern" (read: Muslim) types. We are just deathly afraid of being branded "racists." And look at much of Europe, bending over backwards to accept their Muslim citizens, even though they are sucking their adopted countries dry in welfare , and off and on violently rioting for really IMPORTANT reasons such as anti-Muslim cartoons (now there's a good example of a really mature people--hey, waddaya say we give 'em another country of their own, by golly!)

And of course, everybody knows the Jews didn't suffer and were not persecuted for thousands of years. Nope. We never suffered murderous pogroms, blood libels, serious discrimination in Europe, and in the United States even in the 20th century: university quotas, anti-Semitism and rejection when applying for jobs, barred from membership in country clubs, etc., just to name a few. Holocaust? What Holocaust?
Everyone knows that most of the Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe were filthy rich, controlled Hollywood, the diamond district and Wall Street and didn't have to struggle to feed their families, right?

But here's some information for those of you with your heads in the sand: throughout all the difficult years of poverty and persecution, we Jews valued a strong family life and taught our children respect for elders and teachers; we valued education-especially for our children, often to the parents' own personal sacrifices-and worked very hard to better ourselves, and make positive contributions to the society in which we lived. And we overcame poverty, and many of us did become wealthy (present company excepted)--through education and hard work.We earned it. Peacefully.

Compare that with how Muslims function in their adopted countries. Heck, look what they did to Gaza, when Israel handed it over to them (at the terrible expense of Israeli citizens) practically on a silver platter: they turned it into a dung heap.
Nice job.

I find myself repeating and repeating myself, so, why not one more time?:

Islam is not the 'religion of peace.' Islam is an intolerant, barbaric religion. If you disagree, read this article by Susan MacAllen, for starters. And here is a portion of a comment on an article on the site Islam watch, telling the West what it needs to do to stay alive and win this war of civilizations (emphases mine):

So long as the weenies in the West refuse to recognise that muslims love Death over Life, so long as they continue drinking multiculti fizzy, muslims will commit heinous crimes against natives, and make never ending demands till they achieve their goal of islamic caliphate. History teaches that the way to prevent such an enemy from fulfilling its cruel, merciless ambitions is to confront it with catastrophic and uncompromising force. Evil does not merely win when good men do nothing. It wins when the supposed good men do their utmost to fight fiercely on its behalf. Failure lies with the natives who allow evil to flourish and win. No one is safe until and unless islam is eradicated from earth and muslim annihilated.

Or better yet, we should do as the Danes are now finally doing to combat Muslim immigration to their country, in this article, here.

The bottom line is that the Pali and Hamas leaders are totally disinterested in founding a state of their own; radical Islam wants to restore the caliphate, and they are all very interested in the total destruction of Israel.

So it's time the Jewish People and Israel as a sovereign nation turned away from this need to have the world love us. The world never has, and never will. We cannot base our actions on that wish. We need instead to base our actions on what is necessary for our survival as a people, and on what is morally right.

But in order to do that, we have to love ourselves first, by believing in our inherent G-d given purpose, by disallowing terrorists and murderers to have rights and citizenship, and by forbidding them to have easy access to our shops, schools and places of worship. And yes, Israel will also have to overcome its past, as Yoni the Blogger writes:

Israel is not America with a Hebrew accent it is a third world country struggling to rid itself of it's Marxist roots and at times when it comes to keeping the elite in charge then the state doesn't fail to step down hard on freedom.

So let's all work together, to rid Israel of its "Marxist roots," get the "elites" out of power, and stand up for Israel's sovereignty, as a Jewish nation, over the whole land of Israel--its rightful inheritance and legacy. Amen.

Again, Mixed Emotions - But For Different Reasons

כשכתבתי את הכותרת "חתונות ויריות," לא צפיתי לרצח שיקרה בישיבת מרכז הרב בירושלים...באותו לילה של חתונת בני

Thank G-d, the wedding was wonderful. Many of our friends from our town in the States who had made aliyah over various years, attended the wedding: it was a kind of 'reunion.' It was a very happy evening, celebrating the marriage of our son to a wonderful person with old and new friends and family.

The one terrible event which marred it was the heinous, cowardly murder of eight young boys in the Mercaz Ha-Rav Yeshiva in Jerusalem; we found out something had happened, right after the chuppah ended. We were wending our way to the main hall for the dancing and dinner, when one of the kallah's (bride's) brothers went running in the opposite direction while looking at his cell phone. I asked him what happened; he said 'there was an attack in Jerusalem.'

That is all we knew at the time. As the evening wore on, I saw a very close friend who lives in Jerusalem, talking on the phone with (as I discovered later) her daughter, who was hysterical because she was hearing shooting outside her window. Her mother, my long-time friend from when we lived in Israel, said no, it must be just firecrackers or festive preparations for the holiday of Purim, which was arriving in two weeks (we just celebrated it yesterday.).
Well, unfortunately her daughter was correct: the atrocity was unfolding, as she was on the phone fearfully talking with her mother who was our guest at the wedding--right next door to her apartment building.

I know: Why am I writing about this now, you are asking? This is old news, isn't it? It happened on March 6th, 2008, the day our son was married. I should only think about his wedding, and be happy. Why should I care about kids I don't even know?
But I do know them. They are Jewish children. They are my people. They are like my children. The youngest was 14. They were unarmed, studying holy books in their yeshiva, gunned down by a vicious barbaric (yes, Virginia: there are vicious, barbaric people) animal.
I am numb.
First, the rage. Then, the disbelief in the lack of an adequate Israeli response. Then, the incredulity on the apparent lack of any significant media coverage in the U.S.?
But when Israel targets and assassinates Arab terrorists militants with innocent civilians' (including children's) blood on their hands, the UN and the rest of the world rise up to condemn Israel for its 'inhumanity,' and blah blah blah.

I am writing about this now because I just returned from Israel Thursday after 2:00 a.m., had very little access to a computer (because my husband had to work) while I was there and because of serious jet lag, have not been up to blogging.

All I can think of now, is unless we (=Israel, the Jewish People, the Free World) END these atrocities by military force, there will, G-d forbid, be more massacres and more atrocities, coming to a station near you. Is there no one who has the courage to speak out?

I am voting for Michael Savage for President.