Get to Heaven Keep the Seven

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!!

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

How big is G-d? And why bother being Jewish by Caroline Glick and final chance to sign up for tours. Sacrifice on Thursday has been moved to 5:00 Pm at  Horva  Shul in Jewish Quarter

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Rabbi Yehuda Lave

Change Your Focus

 There is a common tendency for people to focus on what they don't want.

 Repeating that we don't have self-confidence, or that our self-confidence is low, directs our focus on what we don't want. Instead, when we say, "My goal is to continually keep upgrading my self-confidence," we are focusing on what we do want.

I just got word that the Kohenim organizations are doing with classes has been moved on Thursday to 5:00 Pm to the Horva Shul In the Jewish Quarter with classes, instead of at the Davidson Center. So I have to not only change my focus but the location we will be. If you want to come, meet me in the Rova at 4:30.  I have included the news story below.

I have also included your final chance to sign up for the great tours I am helping to organize during Chul Hamoed. Please review and let me know asap.

Love Yehuda Lave

 

Pesach Sacrifice to be reenacted in Jewish Quarter Supreme Court refuses to allow Pesach reenactment near Temple Mount, organizers will stage it in center of Jewish Quarter

The Temple organizations will stage their reenactment of the Pesach offering in the central square of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. The organizations sought to stage the event at the southern entrance to Temple Mount but it was not approved by police and the Supreme Court, so it was relocated to the alternative location.

The spokesman for the organizations, Assaf Fried, said that from their point of view the new location represents an improvement over previous years where it was not allowed to take place inside the Old City.

The event, which will take place on Thursday, five days before Pesach, has become a tradition in recent years with the Chief Rabbis, members of Knesset and thousands of people attending.

The Temple organization headquarters reported that the public has continued its positive response to the event. Many people called to give support and to donate towards the event. Donors are promised a portion in the Pesach sacrifice which will be slaughtered on the 14th of Nissan if the government will permit this to happen. Other presents available for donors are a portion of the meat from the reenactment lamb, the skin of the lamb, a Haggadah with the original version of the Seder which includes the Pesach sacrifice, medallions depicting the Sanhedrin and books which explain the commandment to offer the Pesach sacrifice even in our time when there is no Temple.

The organizers of the event stated that "this event is meant to revive the colors, smells and sights that accompanied the Temple Service and that were lost to us throughout our long exile .It is meant to breathe new life into our current Passover celebrations.

"With this reenactment, we hope to offer a peak into the authentic Jewish experience of Passover as it was worshipped in ancient times and as it is meant to be.

How big is G-d?

A boy asked his father "Dad, how big is GOD?" Looking up at the sky his father saw an airplane and asked his son, " How big is that airplane?" The boy responded," it's small Dad! You can hardly even see it!" 
Then the father took his Son to an airport hanger. Standing in front of one of the airplanes, the father asked, " and now how big is this airplane?" The boy responded," Oh Daddy, this plane is enormous!" At this point, the father said to him," that's how it is with GOD!
"How big HE is, depends on the distance between you and Him!" The closer you are to Him, the bigger HE is in your life!"

Last chance for trips during Chul Hamod

Two trips for Passover Chul Amoud --April 12, 13


Because of long davening--we are not leaving until 9:30 but I need you there by 9:15
Special Pesach tour Wednesday April 12. Depart from the Inbal hotel at 9:30 Return at 5:30 Cost 150 shekels Includes all entrance fee, transportation, guiding.bring a picnic lunch
Itinerary:We will travel to the coast enjoying the blossoming spring landscapes along the way with its biblical history.In Ashkelon we will visit the famous national park with its recently ancient remains of this biblical port city.We will enjoy a picnic next  to the sea.
On our way back to Yerushalayim we will visit a Jewish town from the Bar Cochba period with its varied and impressive remains.
Finally , we will visit the tomb of the prophet Samuel which was denied Jewish entrance for nine hundred years.. From the roof of the Crusader fortress we will see the best view of Yerushalayim and  beyond. We shall visit the tomb in the crypt below the building  and hear the biblical and historical stories  associated with this special site.
April 13th

Second Great Trip on Thursday April 13th With Ruti

DAY VISITING VITAL OUTPOSTS – CHOL HAMOED

PESACH, yud-zion Nisan – THURSDAY, APRIL 13, '17

 

Come, join us in what promises to be another unforgettable, very worthwhile, enjoyable & meaningful experience in the vitally strategic, gorgeous, Shomron mountains -- a full-day Pesach tiyul. By our very visit, we will be bringing chizuk & encouragement, at the same time as getting to know parts of our Precious Land.

This time our day will concentrate on bringing support to those families whose homes have been senselessly and cruelly destroyed by our evil, anti-Jewish establishment, in the context of its constant harassment of our wonderful people trying to live their lives in Yesha & with a pitiful IDF, bereft of all Jewish Halachic principles..

 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DAY:

  • 8:45 am departure from Binyanei HaUma
  • In both Ivrit & English
  • Meet some of the wonderful people who are holding on to our Precious Land
  • Bullet-proof bus with us throughout the day
  • Licensed tour guide with us all day
  • Bring your Pesach lunch

     

    . Price : Only NIS 150. p/p

    Scheduled to visit: (subject to change):

    • Amona
    • Ofra
    • Kfar Tapuach
    • Neve Tsuf - people's homes were burned by our enemies
    • Yitzhar
    • Itamar or Elon Moreh

    NOTE: On the last "Pesach Ma'achazim Tour", the bus was completely full I was forced to turn people away, so make sure your reservations are paid for now! Avoid being disappointed!

    We all know how very precious ; vital these Outposts (Ma'achazim) are to our beloved Land and what wonderful people populate them. I am continuing my endeavor to put a variety of them on our map for our awareness. We'll be learning more about each one of them, first-hand, meeting some of their marvelous inhabitants.

Why Bother Being Jewish? by Caroline Glick

Most Jews lack basic Jewish literacy. You can't abandon what you never had in the first place.

Why should American Jews bother to be Jewish? According to a new Pew Research Center survey of the American Jewish community, more and more American Jews have reached the conclusion that there is no reason to be Jewish.

Outside of the Orthodox Jewish community, intermarriage rates have reached 71 percent. Thirty-two percent of Jews born since 1980 and 22% of Jews overall do not describe themselves as Jews by religion. They base their Jewish identity on ancestry, ethnicity or culture.

Whereas 73% of Jews say that remembering the Holocaust is an essential part of being Jewish, only 19% said that observing Jewish law is a vital aspect of Jewish identity. Fourteen percent say eating Jewish foods is indispensable for their Jewish identity. Forty-two percent say that having a sense of humor is a critical part of being a Jew.

Gabriel Roth, an intermarried Jewish author, welcomes these numbers. In a column in Slate, Roth claimed that the reason most cultural Jews keep traditions of any kind is a sense of guilt toward their parents and previous generations of Jews. He believes that it's time to get over the guilt. Keeping such traditions has "no intrinsic meaning."

"How much value can 'Jewish heritage' have if it signifies nothing beyond its own perpetuation?" he asked sneeringly.

Obviously, the answer is no value. To do something you feel is intrinsically meaningless just because your forefathers did the same meaningless thing is a waste of time. If Judaism has nothing to offer beyond lox and Seinfeld, then there is no reason to remain Jewish.

The findings of the Pew survey, and indeed, sentiments like those that Roth described are no surprise to those who have been following the downward trajectory of the American Jewish community.

Numerous initiatives have been adopted over the past decade or so to try to reverse the trend toward assimilation and loss of Jewish identity. These initiatives, including websites like JDate that help Jewish singles find and marry one another, and Birthright, which has brought tens of thousands of young, largely unaffiliated Jews to Israel, have had a positive impact in slowing down the trend. But the move away from Judaism for non-Orthodox American Jews remains seemingly inexorable.

"We have tried a lot of different things and created a lot of wonderful programs," explains political theorist Yoram Hazony, the founder of the Shalem Center and author of The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, published last year.

Hazony, who now heads the Herzl Institute, continues, "We've tried everything other than the central thing. Jews need to understand that there is an attractive and compelling idea that makes it valuable to be Jews."

That idea, as Hazony explained in his recent book, is found first and foremost in the Bible.

Roth wrote, "If you believe that Jewish traditions are part of a covenant with God, of course you want your children to continue them."

Yes, of course. But if you think that Judaism can be summed up so glibly, then you have no idea what it is that you are abandoning.

So in a sense, you are abandoning nothing. Because you cannot abandon what you never had in the first place.

And what Jews like Roth never had is basic Jewish literacy.

Hazony's excellent book explains in easy, approachable language that the wisdom and philosophy imparted by the Hebrew Bible was purposely denied by the anti-Semitic philosophers of the Enlightenment. Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Hegel and other leading philosophers of the Enlightenment were vicious Jew haters. They sought to cleanse modern philosophy of all references to the Bible in a bid to write Jews and Judaism out of the history of ideas and the contemporary intellectual world.

This they accomplished by subsuming the Hebrew scriptures (like the New Testament) under a broader criticism of "work of revelation." As a revealed text, (a divine covenant ordered by a deity with which none of us have direct dealings), the Hebrew scripture was then misrepresented as something that has no relevance for people trying to determine for themselves what it means to live a good, moral and just life. Those concepts, we were told, could only be learned from Greek philosophers, who, in turn, were falsely characterized as atheists.

Hazony does not simply expose the philosophical crime against the Jews undertaken by the Enlightenment philosophers. He demonstrates why the ideas found in the Bible are deeply relevant and important to our lives, and indeed, how they form the basis for man's quest to live a good, moral life.

"The Jewish idea is in the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible and the rabbinical commentaries on the Tanach," he explains.

"To the extent we care and see something worthwhile in these ideas then everything falls into place. When you take it all out, everything turns into a bagel – it all tastes good but there's a big hole in the center where the idea is supposed to be.

"The Jews were the people who brought the idea that an individual was responsible for discovering truth and right and for bringing it into the world."

That is the idea that freed mankind.

That is the biblical idea. The Bible is about the expectation that a human being is going to take responsibility for discovering the truth and what's right and devote his or her life to bringing what is right to the world.

"The fact that most Jews no longer study it, no longer remember it, means they stopped being part of the historic Jewish drama. It is being part of that great drama that makes people care whether their children receive a Jewish education and marry Jews, and that makes them support Israel. Without the great drama that we learn from the Bible, then Israel becomes meaningless and intermarriage becomes obvious," Hazony concludes.

Orthodox Jews feel that the Holocaust is less essential to their Jewish identity than Conservative and Reform Jews, (66% of Orthodox, versus 78% and 77% of Conservative and Reform Jews, respectively). On the other hand, 69% of Orthodox Jews believe that being part of a Jewish community is essential to their Judaism. Just 40% and 25% of Conservative and Reform Jews, respectively, feel this way. And this makes sense.

The Holocaust was the most recent attempt of an oppressor to annihilate the Jews. In the 4,000-year history of the Jewish people, there have been dozens of attempts to annihilate us. The Jewish story is the story not of others' attempts to destroy us, nor even of our capacity to withstand and survive these attempts. The Jewish story is the story of the lives we lived, the culture we developed, and the life of the mind that bound us together.

Jews who have learned the Bible know their history did not start in 1933. They know that the Jewish story is the story of a people that believes so strongly in its mission to bring the liberating idea of personal responsibility to choose good and life over evil and death that it refused to surrender to its oppressors.

The Jewish drama, as set out in the Bible, is the story of a nation that from the outset and until the present day chooses freedom over submission, while maintaining allegiance to a sacred trust, and an ancient people and a promised land.

When you understand this, remaining Jewish is a privilege, not a sacrifice.

And, alas, when you fail to understand this, leaving Judaism not a tragedy but simply a natural progression.

This article originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post.

This article can be read on-line at: http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Why-Bother-Being-Jewish.html

WISDOM & WIT OF SUPREME COURT JUSTICE LOUIS BRANDEIS

Anti-Semitism on
> the Campus: Past & Present Edited by Eunice G. Pollack
>
> Louis Brandeis graduated from the Harvard Law School at age 20 with
> the highest grade point average in that school's history and, after
> other academic triumphs, was appointed  Supreme Court justice. When
> Brandeis was studying law at Harvard, an anti-Semitic professor by the
> name of Peters always displayed animosity towards him.
>
> One day Prof. Peters was having lunch at the University dining room
> when Brandeis came along with his tray and sat next to him. The
> professor said,"Mr. Brandeis you do not understand. A pig and a bird
> do not sit together to eat."  Brandeis looked at him and calmly
> replied, "Don't worry, professor. I'll fly away," and he went and sat
> at another table.  Peters, decided to take revenge on the next test
> paper, but Brandeis responded brilliantly to all questions.
>
>
>
> Unhappy and frustrated,  Peters asked him the following question:  "Mr
> Brandeis, if you were walking down the street and found a package, a
> bag of wisdom and another bag with a lot of money, which one would you
> take?" Without hesitating, Brandeis responded, "The one with the
> money, of course." Peters, smiling sarcastically, said, "Just like a
> Jew. Unlike you I would have taken the wisdom."  Brandeis shrugged
> indifferently and responded, "Each one takes what he doesn't have."
>
>
> Prof. Peters hate for the Jewish student came to a finale when he
> scribbled on his student's final exam the word "idiot" and handed it
> back to him.  A few minutes later, Louis Brandeis got up, went to the
> professor and said to him in a dignified but sarcastically polite
> tone,"Prof. Peters, you autographed the exam sheet, but you did not
> give me a grade..."

Nauti Craft Marine Suspension Technology

Puns for higher IQ's

. Only discreet groaning please!

A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.

Practice safe eating - always use condiments.

Shotgun wedding - A case of wife or death.

A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.

Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.

A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.

What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead give away.)

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

In democracy your vote counts.

In feudalism your count votes.

 

She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg

but broke it off


A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

The man who fell into an upholstery machine

is fully recovered.


You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

Local Area Network in Australia - the LAN down under.

Every calendar's days are numbered.

A lot of money is tainted -Taint yours and taint mine.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

He had a photographic memory that was never developed.

A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison

is a small medium at large.


Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

Acupuncture is a jab well done.

Rule Britannia - Last Night of the Proms 2009

See you tomorrow Love Yehuda Lave

tell me today if you want to sign up for trips

Rabbi Yehuda Lave

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