Everybody wants spirituality. To be a good person means to walk in G-d's ways. How does that translate to reality? The only guidebook to spirituality that has stood the test of time is the Hebrew Bible. The Bible says that the Jews will be a light onto the nations. But if you are not a born Jew, you have to convert, which is not so easy!! If you do convert, it is a lot of work to be a Jew (three times a day prayer, keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath).
This blog will show you how to be Jewish without the work!!
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Tel Aviv to get its own Empire State building and what is a full load
"How can I do even better?" is a question that can help you improve all areas of your life, especially after making a mistake. Asking this question is much better than excessively obsessing over mistakes, because it will help you improve.
Develop the habit of consistently asking, "How can I do even better?" Even after a tremendous success, we can ask ourselves, "How can I do even better next time?" Those who constantly ask this question will constantly improve.
There is a well-known saying: "We learn from experience." Let's reword this slightly: "We have the potential to learn from experience."
Some people have a lot of experiences, but they don't learn from them. They just repeat the same patterns over and over again. However, a person who keeps asking himself, "How can I do even better next time?" will learn from each experience.
Love Yehuda Lave
Tel Aviv is about to get her own Empire State Building
The Non Stop City keeps on getting taller all the time! The company to construct the tower, "Bein Arim", just got permission to build. It will be located between Tel Aviv and its very close suburb, Ramat Gan. It is expected to be the tallest building in Israel, standing at 400 meters. Can you believe it?
At the beginning it was supposed to be only 75 stories tall, but after some changes, it will stand 100 floors of offices tall, featuring hotels and malls inside the giant. The municipality accepted the project to build the tallest tower of Israel, 100 meters higher than the Eiffel Tower.
As we celebrate Purim, the holiday of redemption from a holocaust and revenge against our enemies, terrorists attacked a soldier in Hevron. Thankfully, the soldier was only slightly wounded before his buddies took out the two assailants.
Quite appropriately, the annual Purim costume parade began just where our enemies were felled.
Flash. One of the attackers was down when a soldier finished him off.
The self appointed judges of what it moral, humane and authentically Jewish are raising the usual howl. That soldier and others who were in the area iarein deep trouble today.
How do these concepts apply to us and our situation? What does the Torah say about what is humane and authentically Jewish?
After over two years of incessant Arab terror and Israeli restraint, with hundreds of Jewish victims, the IDF finally was given the green light. In 2002, during the "Defensive Shield" operation (launched to uproot the Arafat terrorist infrastructure built since Oslo - 1993), IDF troops halted before a building in Jenin. Jenin was a viper's nest of terror and terror support A building was reported to be occupied by a bunch of terrorists with the possibility of enemy civilians inside
The options were:
1- Shell the building 2- Bomb the building from the air. 3 - Send in our men to seek and destroy the enemy while making every effort to avoid civilian causalities..
If it was your son, brother or father waiting outside the building,, which would you prefer?
The "purity of arms" policy that the IDF is so proud of, determined that only the last choice was an option; and so a dozen Jewish families were destroyed. But the good news is that a dozen Arab families were not. We win the moral victory. The question is, whose morality?
In the latest Gaza round we lost soldiers following the same IDF moral rule book. And didn't the world applaud our morality?
This has everything to do with Purim and what our tradition teaches us about morality and how to fight an hostile enemy.
In the Megilla we read (Chapter 8:11) Mordechai instructs the Jews to," gather in every city to all the forces that would assault them(the enemy) along with their children and women.." 8:13, "..the Jews should be ready to avenge themselves on their enemies.." 8:16, "The Jews had light and gladness , and joy and honor.."
Chapter 9:8 "And the Jews smote all their enemies..and treated those that hated them as they pleased.."
9:16 ..seventy five thousand were slayed on that day.. "Mmmm, doesn't sound like the IDF "purity of arms.."
In the entire history of the IDF, approximately 85,00 enemy have been killed.
Chief of staff, Gen Eisenkot recently said," the IDF does not operate according to slogans such as (the biblical injunction) "Rise up to kill those who come to kill you" Defence minister Ayalon said , "it is forbidden to forget our "humanity" and get out of control just because our blood boils.."
We need to decide what is the moral high ground here. Is it moral to send our people in harms way so as to keep the enemy out of it?.Or is that precisely the pinnacle of immorality? And who is "the enemy" according to our tradition and Torah?
Our greatest leaders such as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Saul, David never sacrificed our people to protect any member of the enemy nations they fought. And they new Torah and Jewish values fairly well. Reminds me a little of how the allies fought the war against Germany and Japan...
How about this: the enemy should be aware that if he plans to strike a Jew, he will never survive the attempt..
Maimonides in the laws of kings. teaches that in a war that is thrust upon Israel, there is no distinction between combatants and enemy civilians.
The soldier who finished off the snake this morning has more Jewish morality in his little trigger finger than all the IDF manuals based on anything but Jewish morality. tradition and law.
I fear we are about to witness once again how, "he who is merciful to the wicked will be wicked to the merciful"
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IDF Soldier Jailed for Killing Terrorist
IDF Soldier Jailed for Killing Terrorist
By: Jewish Press News Briefs Published: March 24th, 2016
Soldier shoots terrorist in Hebron - March 24, 2016
An IDF soldier from the Kfir Brigade was jailed today after he killed one of the two terrorists in Hebron that wounded an IDF soldier on Thursday morning.
The wounded terrorist, wearing a jacket, despite the warm weather, was lying on the ground, as soldiers and medics were busy dealing with the wounded soldier and terror scene.
As the ambulance began to leave, one soldier then shoots and kills the terrorist.
The soldier was thrown in jail, and his actions were criticized by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ya’alon and others in the Knesset – saying the soldiers actions didn’t represent the ethos of the IDF.
Only MK’s Oren Hazan (Likud), Betzalel Smotrich (Bayit Yehudi) and Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) defended the IDF soldier.
Peace Now’s Yariv Oppenheimer went as far as to criticize the MDA medical personnel who did not endanger their lives to physically examine and treat the terrorist.
Family members of the soldier said he feared the terrorist was wearing a suicide belt under his jacket.
There is an ongoing debate in Israel as to whether or not terrorists should be killed at the scene of their terror attack, or if wounded, be allowed to live, to eventually be released from jail.
Dear Family and Friends...Please take 3.5 minutes and watch this video and then pass it on to those you know with the question....This is what Israel and Israeli's do...What do their enemies do???
HERE'S WHO ISRAELIS. YOU KNOW, THE ONE THAT MANY OFTHE FANATIC MUSLIMS WANT TO DESTROY.
WATCH THIS 3 1/2 MINUTE VIDEO AND I PROMISE YOU'LL BE GLAD YOU DID. THEN SEND IT AS FAR AND WIDE AS YOU CAN. HELP SPREAD THE STORY OF WHO ISRAELIS.
Donald Trump spoke at AIPAC's policy conference March 21, 2016.
Photo Credit: screen capture
Donald J. Trump, who said months ago that he intended to be "neutral" in the dispute between Israel and the Arabs who live in her midst and at her borders, spoke to the American Israel Political Action Council early this evening and sounded anything but neutral. In fact, he specifically denounced what he called "moral equivalence" between "Palestinian murderers" and their Israeli victims.
Trump fed the AIPAC audience pure red meat from the beginning of his speech to its end; this time there was no mistaking which side of the dispute between Arabs and Israelis the candidate was on.
The JewishPress.com will give you Trump's words below, and they matter. But perhaps what is most important in this Trump address, and maybe any of them, is not the words but the theater. The atmosphere. The subtext. The body language. The tone of voice. All of those things convey Trump's promise that, at last, we're going to hear something from a politician that he actually means. Or at least the kind of thing one does not normally hear from a politician.
Nothing shows this better than the space between the text of Trump's speech as released – the text written by his people, saying the things his people want him to say — and the text as Trump actually delivered it. That's the one Trump held out to his audience as a revelation of what he really thinks. Not insignificantly, some of the biggest applause lines were the extemporaneous Trumpulations that came from the very bottom of his ego.
All the Trump tics were there in force – he repeatedly exhorted the audience to "believe me, buleeeeeve me," and told them many times that he was winning. And he's the best. And the most. Of whatever.
Trump even had the chutzpah, in a room filled with chutzpadik Jews, to inform his audience that — well, it depends on whether you want the prepared text or the text as delivered. The prepared text, up there on a teleprompter for the first time in recent memory for a Trump speech – was a claim surprising enough as written by his peeps: it had the candidate saying that "I've studied [the Iran deal] issue in greater detail than almost anybody."
But as delivered, Trump's claim was even less modest than that: Trump confidently told AIPAC that he, Donald Trump had, personally, studied the Iran deal "greater than anybody." Okay then.
Trump began by telling his audience he wasn't going to pander to them, as politicians do, but instead would "speak to you about where I stand on the future of American relations with our strategic ally, our unbreakable friendship, and our cultural brother, the only democracy in the Middle East, the State of Israel."
After he got finished saying all of that non-pandering, Trump got down to business.
Trump spent quite a bit of time on Iran, saying he would dismantle the Iran deal; he would stand up to Iran's aggressive push back to destabilize and dominate the region, that Iran has seeded terrorist groups all over the world, in twenty five countries on five continents including in the Western hemisphere, but that he would "totally dismantle Iran's global terror network"; and "enforce the terms of previous deals" before the JCPOA came on the scene.
Trump's discussion of the United Nations began by saying things everyone knows and no-one will say about the UN: that it is "not a friend of democracy, freedom, not even of the U.S. and surely is not a friend to Israel."
Moving on to recently murmured threats from the Obama administration to support or even sponsor a Security Council resolution forcing Israel to yield to the Palestinian Arabs, Trump began by mentioning that this was happening "with President Obama in his final year." And then, — not in the prepared text but in reality — he paused, and he smiled.
With a single word, Trump told AIPAC what he thinks of the fact that President Obama's final year has finally come: "Yay." His hands gave a downbeat and his voice said the word they way your middle schooler would say it when delivering the news that the 7th grade bully had moved to Alaska. Yay – as in, we all know this should make us happy, RIGHT? What a relief, ok?; Bye, seeya, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
But even more significant than the lilting tone of Trump's yay was that, when he said those words – "President Obama in his final year" — the audience went absolutely wild. A shouting, standing O. And then Trump, taking his cue from the audience instead of the other way around, answered them: "Obama may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel. Believe me. Bulleeeeve me." None of that, by the way, was in the prepared text or in the teleprompter. It was just in Trump's "very good brain," as he described it just yesterday. This is the theater that matters, at least as much as, and maybe more than, the official words of the message.
And here was Trump's only mention of the woman he hopes to defeat in November: Hillary Rodham Clinton. He wasn't ambivalent on the subject, though he didn't spend anywhere near as much time on her as she had on him. He dismissed her with a single categorical sentence: "Hillary and Obama have been a total disaster and have treated Israel very very badly."
But now back to the official message. What President Obama was and is doing wrong with the UN, Trump told AIPAC, is allowing it, inviting it, helping it, "to impos[e] terms on Israel that Israel cannot and will not live with. Any agreement imposed by the United Nations would be a total and complete disaster, which the U.S. must oppose."
Trump's invocation of his deal-making skills is never far from the center of his sales pitch to America. But it is at the very heart of his discussion about the Middle East, because, he says whenever he discusses this subject, the peace agreement between Israel and the Arabs is "the hardest deal in the world to make."
Trump brings his negotiating skills to bear: "for any deal, you need two willing participants. We know Israel is willing and has been trying without preconditions for years." Here he recited the history, available for anyone who really wants to know, of the offers by various Palestinian Prime Ministers which the Arabs completely rejected. Even more humiliating to the U.S., Trump said, Secretary of State Kerry "tried to come up with a framework" and that acting Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Abbas "didn't even respond."
He then said "the days of treating Israel as a second class citizen will end on my Day One." Another wild standing O from AIPAC.
Trump also talked about what Arab "leaders" are teaching their children, and the impact of that education on the prospects for peace:
When you live in a society where the firefighters are the hero's little kids want to be firefighters. When you live in a society where athletes and movie stars are heroes, little kids want to be athletes and movie stars. In Palestinian society, the heroes are those who murder Jews – we can't let this continue. You cannot achieve peace if terrorists are treated as martyrs. Glorifying terrorists is a tremendous barrier to peace. In Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you've got a culture of hatred that has been fermenting there for years, and if we want to achieve peace, they've got to end this indoctrination of hatred. There is no moral equivalency. Israel does not name public squares after terrorists. Israel does not pay its children to stab random Palestinians.
More enthusiastic applause. And more after that, when he said that Hamas is the Palestinian ISIS.
Trump's welcome insistence that Arab education of Arab children to hatred of Jews and Israel isn't even good for the Arabs, never mind the Jews. If that's true, then "neutrality" can benefit both Arab and Jew, if it leads the Arabs to stop destroying themselves while they try (and fail) to destroy the Jewish state.
One last point is the left-wing dog that did not bark. Yesterday's news was the promise, or threat, by Rabbis for Human Rights, Eric Yoffe, and others to "shut down" Trump's speech to AIPAC. But they did no such thing. To this reporter, carefully watching a live video of the event, there was not an audible peep from such people inside the hall. Apparently the "shut it down" movement was itself shut down. AIPAC's record, of listening at least politely to the presentation by every serious candidate for President, remains intact. Polite Jews. Who'd a thunk it.
About the Author:Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the U.S. correspondent for The Jewish Press. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools. You can reach her by email: Lori@JewishPressOnline.com
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