Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement. Now also a Blogger on the Times of Israel. Look for my column
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Grottos and Cable Car of Rosh Hanikra
Grottos and Cable Car of Rosh Hanikra
On a beautiful summer day, we take a leisurely 185 KM drive from Jerusalem to Rosh HaNikra, one of the most beautiful sites in Israel. This is the most Northerthy Easterly border of Israel.
Here are my pictures from the trip.
The geography of Israel is very diverse, with desert conditions in the south, and snow-capped mountains in the north. Israel is located at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea in Western Asia. It is bounded to the north by Lebanon, which is where Rosh Hanikra is, the northeast by Syria, the east by Jordan and the West Bank, and to the southwest by Egypt To the west of Israel is the Mediterranean Sea, which makes up the majority of Israel's 273 km (170 mi) coastline, and the Gaza Strip. Israel has a small coastline on the Red Sea in the south.
Israel's area is approximately 20,770 km2 (8,019 sq mi), which includes 445 km2 (172 sq mi) of inland water. Israel stretches 424 km (263 mi) from north to south, and its width ranges from 114 km (71 mi) to, at its narrowest point, 15 km (9.3 mi).
Rosh HaNikra or Hanikra (Hebrew: ראש הנקרה, lit. "Head of the Grotto"); is a geologic formation on the border between Israel and Lebanon, located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in the Western Galilee. It is a white chalk cliff face that opens up into spectacular grottos.
The Rosh HaNikra grottoes are cavernous tunnels formed by sea action on the soft chalk rock. The total length of the tunnels is about 200 meters. They branch off in various directions with some interconnecting segments. A tunnel was built by the British for the Haifa-Beirut railroad line, and in 1968 a second one was dug, both connecting the grottoes with each other and allowing access (currently: only exit) along the former route of the British railroad. For many years though, the only access to the grottoes was from the sea and the native swimmers and divers were the only ones capable of visiting. The 400 meters long tunnel dug in 1968 between the grottoes and slightly above sea level allowed easier access, and soon after a cable car was built to take visitors down from the top of the cliff to the tunnels. With a 60-degree gradient, this cable car is advertised as the steepest in the world.
A kibbutz, also named Rosh HaNikra, is located nearby. The Israeli city Nahariya is located about 10 km (6 miles) south of Rosh HaNikra.
Recognition of the potential offered by the unusual Rosh Hanikra grottoes led to the development of this beautiful site as a tourist attraction for Northern Israel. The project was spearheaded by Bawer Mizna as Mayor of one of the kibbutzim as well as an Arab town. He and his wife, Miriam, were among the original settlers of the area and of the nearby kibbutz, Matzuvah.
The Book of Joshua mentions "Misraphot Mayim" as a place south of Rosh HaNikra that was the border of the Israelite tribes of the time
Rosh HaNikra has served as a passage point for trade caravans and armies between Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Egypt, and Africa. During the Second World War, South African forces blasted railway tunnels through the nearby rocks for trains running along the Cairo-Istanbul line. The railway bridge at Rosh HaNikra was spared by the Haganah during the 1946 Night of the Bridges operation but, following a late-1947 British announcement that it would withdraw from Palestine months ahead of schedule, the bridge was destroyed by the 21st Battalion under the Palmach in late February 1948 to hinder Lebanese arms shipments to Arab forces opposing the UN Partition Plan. As repairs were prohibitively expensive, the tunnels were later completely sealed. The Lebanese railways have been largely dismantled while the Coastal Railway in Israel currently ends near Nahariya, several kilometers to the south.
Rosh Hanikra was the location where Israeli and Lebanese officials negotiated and concluded an armistice agreement in 1949 which ended the Lebanese-Israeli component of the 1948 War of Israeli Independence.
Nature reserves and national park The area around Rosh HaNikra includes a number of nature reserves:
The Rosh HaNikra islands - 311 dunams declared in 1965 The Rosh HaNikra reserve - 500 dunams declared in 1969, and an additional 765 dunams in 1996. Rosh HaNikra beach - 230 dunams, declared in 2003 The Rosh HaNikra national park also has jurisdiction of 220 dunams in the area.
Cable car Doppelmayr Cable-car in Rosh Hanikra, claimed to be the steepest cable car in the world, with a gradient of 60°
The Rosh HaNikra cable car is a cable car serving tourists wishing to visit the grottoes The Cable car is situated very close to the Lebanese border. The site is popular with tourists, and is one of the facilities available for tourists in Kibbutz Rosh HaNikra. The cable car was manufactured by Austrian manufacturer Doppelmayr Garaventa Group, and claims to be the steepest cable car in the world, ascending at a gradient of 60 degrees.] Inasmuch as its lower base station is located on the sea, the cable car is occasionally affected by stormy weather
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The man who brings 50,000 Americans to Israel every year What does the future hold for Birthright? And did the project achieve any actual results? Gidi Mark, the CEO of Taglit gives the answers.
6,744 miles. That's the distance between Israel and America. Together, the two countries are home for 90% of Jewry around the globe.
But while in Israel Jewish identity is obvious to almost everyone, from the moment they are born to the moment they punch their ticket - in America, things are a bit different.
As the years progress, some young Jewish Americans feel more and more detached from their Jewish identity. Some are only half Jewish, or quarter Jewish, some don't even know about their Jewish roots. It is feared, therefore, that within a few generations, not much will be left of the American Jewish, non-haredi community.
To battle this possibility, an initiative named Birthright was established in 1994. The idea was simple - bringing young Jews from all around the world to Israel, so that they can understand their roots, get to know the country, and hopefully, fall in love. Since then, more than 600K people participated in the project, 80% of which are Americans and Canadians. It was a wild success.
But now, as Corona emerged in our life, the future of the entire operation is being put to the test. So what does the future hold for Birthright? And did the project achieve any actual results?
To answer these questions, we have Gidi Mark on the show today. Gidi is the CEO of Taglit. He started his career as a diplomat, and he served the country of Israel in many embassies, including Istanbul, Bonn and New York. He's been serving as CEO since 2008, and let is to impressive success. We're happy to be joined by Gidi Mark to discuss Taglit, American Jewry, and much more.
We cannot banish the darkness, but we can light our inner candles and be beacons of love for those with whom we come in contact. We can influence those who are capable of being influenced. It doesn't really matter if there are many who pass by and do not even notice our light; the important thing is that are hearts are aflame with faith.
The Revolution Is Winning By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
Thousands of demonstrators march across the Golden Gate Bridge blocking traffic during a protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in San Francisco, Calif., June 6, 2020. (Kate Munsch/Reuters)
Radicals from the 1960s and 1970s now hold powerful positions in government and academia
This is what the revolution looks like.
Weather Underground terrorists, who made no secret of being anti-AmeriKKKan "small-c" communists, are having more success than they could have dreamed of in the 1960s.
They are dominating the language. You know that whole "white privilege" nostrum that we're paying universities $60K per year to drum into our children's brains? It is derived from their lamentation of "white skin privilege." In their ideology, the revolution to overthrow the capitalist, racist, imperialist system summoned them — lily white radicals — to abandon their privilege and embrace the armed struggle.
Among their most influential thinkers was Bill Ayers. He got a windfall from the government's failure to prosecute him for the bombings he carried out and the mass murders he planned but was insufficiently competent to execute. It was a second career as a "Distinguished Professor of Education" at the University of Illinois. As Sol Stern relates in a 2006 City Journal essay that should be required reading today, this entailed designing curricula used by today's hard-Left academics, based on what Ayers saw as a moral imperative to convert schools into social-justice indoctrination labs.
It worked.
Of course, in the days before they brought the revolution into the classroom, they pursued it on urban streets, prioritizing war on cops. To the avant-garde, the police are the pointy end of the oppressive government spear, enforcing its laws and imposing the racist society's caste system. For the revolution to succeed, the police have to be discredited, defunded, and defanged. For the Weather Underground, that meant branching into such radical offshoots as the May 19 Communist Organization and conspiring with black separatists.
So it was that such Weather confederates as Susan Rosenberg, Kathy Boudin, and David Gilbert, among others, teamed with the Black Liberation Army to carry out the infamous 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored truck at the Nanuet Mall near Nyack, N.Y. At the time, Rosenberg was already a suspect in the 1979 New Jersey jailbreak of Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, a Black Liberation Army leader who had been convicted of murdering New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster. Chesimard fled the country and was given asylum by Fidel Castro's Communist regime in Cuba, where she has lived ever since.
In robbing the Brinks truck, the terrorists shot at the security guards, murdering one of them, Peter Paige. In a firefight with Nyack police while trying to escape, they killed Sergeant Edward O'Grady and Officer Waverly Brown — the latter a Korean War veteran who had joined the force in 1966, the first African American to serve in Nyack's police department. Rosenberg went on the lam, finally captured three years later in possession of over 700 pounds of explosives she and her fellow radicals were planning to use in additional mayhem. A federal judge in New Jersey sentenced her to 58 years' imprisonment.
Boudin and Gilbert had left their 14-month-old son, Chesa, with a sitter in order to participate in the Brinks heist. But unlike Rosenberg, they were captured right after the bloody shootouts. Boudin was sentenced to a minimum 20 years' imprisonment (with a maximum life sentence), and Gilbert to 75 years' imprisonment.
With his parents in custody, young Chesa Boudin was raised by their confederates, Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Like Ayers, Dohrn was a Weather Underground leader who became an academic after eluding significant prosecution for their bombings and mass-murder conspiracies — though she did do a short stint of jail time for contempt after defying a grand-jury subpoena to testify about Rosenberg.
In addition to his American academic work, Ayers became a supporter of the late Communist dictator Hugo Chávez's education programs in Venezuela. There, in a 2006 speech with the strongman looking on, Ayers proclaimed, "Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educación es revolución! " Later, Chesa Boudin would follow in Ayers's footsteps, working as a translator and think-tank researcher for Chávez's regime.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, Ayers and Dohrn seamlessly became prominent in Democratic Party politics. At their Hyde Park home in 1995, they held a coming-out party for an ambitious political unknown, a community organizer named Barack Obama. Two years later, the future president breathlessly endorsed Ayers's polemic, A Kind and Just Parent? , as a "searing and timely account." The book is an indictment of the U.S. criminal-justice system, which Ayers likens to South Africa under apartheid. As Stanley Kurtz has recounted , Ayers helped pave Obama's way into the radical Left's extensive fundraising networks; the two collaborated as board members of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, doling out more than $100 million to community organizers and education "reformers."
Susan Rosenberg's terrorism sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton in 2001, part of the scandalous array of clemency grants on his last day in office. (I was then a senior federal prosecutor and had just spent months successfully arguing against her release .) Instantly, she was offered teaching positions at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and, later, Hamilton College, though protests by parents and alumni forced the first to be short-lived and the second declined.
Not to worry, though. By 2020, she was recruited to become vice-chair of the Board of Directors at Thousand Currents, after years as an "activist" in the thriving fields of criminal-justice "reform" and prisoners' rights. (In the media-Democrat complex and on the campus, former terrorists who've found new ways to march the revolution through our institutions are transmogrified into "social-justice activists"). Like the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Thousand Currents is a grant-making foundation of the radical Left, similarly tapped into its fundraising networks — such groups as the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (a deep-pocketed non-profit that promotes racial causes and also supports the Tides Foundation and George Soros's Open Society Foundations, among other heavyweight donor organizations) and the NoVo Foundation (funded and controlled by the Buffett family).
Currently, Thousand Currents' signal project is Black Lives Matter.
The principal organizational framework for BLM is the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, run by three women: Opal Tometti, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Cullors — the last of whom, in a 2015 interview, observed , "Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories."
Since George Floyd's killing by Minneapolis police in late May, BLM has been flooded with donations. Its operations are opaque, however, and it has not qualified for non-profit status. To navigate around this inconvenience, the BLM Global Network Foundation is sponsored by Thousand Currents, which has non-profit status — meaning donors can make tax-deductible contributions to Thousand Currents, which, in turn, supports BLM. The arrangement appears to trace back to 2016, when the Kellogg Foundation provided Thousand Currents with $900,000 for "building the infrastructure and capacity of the national #BlackLivesMatter to support and strengthen their local chapters' organizing capacity."
Like Rosenberg, Kathy Boudin has landed on her feet. David Gilbert remains in custody serving his murder sentences (though, as his Wikipedia bio indicates, he has achieved the coveted "activist" status), but Boudin was granted parole in 2003. I know you'll be stunned to learn that Columbia University quickly rolled out the red carpet for her to pursue a doctorate at Teachers College. She is now not only an adjunct professor at Columbia's School of Social Work, but also a co-founder and co-director of its, yes, "Center for Justice."
Meanwhile, Chesa Boudin, the son of Boudin and Gilbert raised by Ayers and Dohrn, is a rising political star. Just 39, he has authored the memoir Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America , studied at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, gotten a law degree from Yale, completed a stint in a big-city public defender's office, and, just last year, been elected that city's chief prosecutor — district attorney for San Francisco.
Boudin's candidacy was backed by the Left's financial network, BLM, and such luminaries as Communist icon Angela Davis and Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), the avowed socialist, who appears to be the most influential supporter of the Joe Biden presidential campaign. At the victory party the night of Boudin's election, ecstatic supporters chanted "F*** POA!" (i.e., the Police Officers Association). He had run on a platform of ending what he sees as undue law-enforcement focus on people of color, thwarting federal action against "undocumented" immigrants, and prioritizing investigations of — not by — the police.
He's making good on these promises. For example, he has stopped bringing charges that include a sentencing enhancement California's legislature enacted to curb gang violence, fretting that it is disproportionately applied to people of color.
Just a few weeks ago, moreover, he announced a new initiative : The district attorney's office will no longer charge cases that rely on information from police officers said to have engaged in misconduct — including excessive force or racial bias. Of course, while police must on occasion use superior force in order to subdue criminals, we've seen in recent months that any law-enforcement use of force is now liable to be condemned as excessive. And racial bias, even in the absence of proof of conscious discrimination, is claimed to be "unconscious"; it is derived from statistical voodoo that scrutinizes the race and ethnicity of suspects in police encounters while studiously ignoring the offensive behavior that may have prompted police action. Boudin explained that his office has established a "Trial Integrity Unit," which is compiling a list of cops as to whom there have been misconduct claims. The list is to be updated regularly.
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That is, it is an ongoing, open-ended investigation of the police department, for the benefit of criminals.
The goals of the revolution have never changed. It has simply airbrushed its terrorist leaders into prominent public scholars and "activists" with a passion for "change" and "justice." The revolution has lots of money, organization, control of the schools, support from one of the nation's two major political parties, and the media megaphone. That is why the revolution is winning. The 1960s never ended, they just paved the way for today.
ANDREW C. MCCARTHY BALL OF COLLUSION: THE PLOT TO RIG AN ELECTION AND DESTROY A PRESIDENCY @andrewcmccarthy
EVERY Sports Team Needs a Name Change By Daniel Greenfield
The Washington Redskins agreed to change a name that offended no one except white leftists, but the media, which always speaks with forked tongue, is demanding more sports scalps.
The Cleveland Indians have issued a statement whining that "the recent social unrest… has only underscored the need for us to keep improving as an organization on issues of social justice."
Remember when the Indians were just known for being cursed with the second-longest championship drought in sports, now they can be cursed for their commitment to social justice.
The curse used to be known as the Curse of Chief Wahoo, but he's already been purged for political incorrectness. And now the Indians announced that they're "committed to engaging our community and appropriate stakeholders to determine the best path forward with regard to our team name." Those stakeholders won't be their fans or anyone who knows what baseball is.
But the purge of Indian names from sports is just getting started.
The Kansas City Star ran a piece declaring that, "It's time for the Chiefs to defuse the cultural offenses they enable and reflect". The editorial though quickly goes beyond blasting the Chiefs, to declaring that America is genocidal and that the Declaration of Independence is racist.
Spoiler alert. They're not just coming for the Kansas City Chiefs, they're coming for America.
Remember when American newspapers didn't entirely consist of headlines that looked like they were badly translated from Chinese Marxist rants? Maybe it would be easier to rename the Chiefs, the Kansas City Marxists. We could call them the Reds, but that name is taken.
The Atlanta Braves have said that they aren't changing the name, but will consider getting rid of the tomahawk chop. But the only thing appeasement half-measures accomplish is putting blood in the water. And once social media piranhas smell blood, they'll never stop until they drink it.
The Black Hawks are currently refusing to change their name, but are promising to, "expand awareness of Black Hawk and the important contributions of all Native American people."
As if that will protect them from a mob of angry white leftists who couldn't care less.
The culture war isn't hitting sports because white lefties, some of whom claim to be Native American activists even though they have the blood quantum level of Elizabeth Warren, care about the feelings of American Indians, but because it gives them the power to terrorize people.
The movement has already moved north of the border to Canadian football where the Edmonton Eskimos announced that after "an extensive year-long formal research and engagement program with Inuit leaders", they're currently keeping the name.
Boston Pizza, among other sponsors, is pulling out because a Canadian pizza chain founded by a Greek immigrant named after something it's not, doesn't want to be associated with Eskimos.
The lefty media has already moved beyond Indian names, sensing that well might soon run dry.
The Washington Post's Karen Attiah, best known for helping turn Osama bin Laden's old pal, Jamal Khashoggi, into a martyr, quickly put out a piece demanding that the Texas Rangers change their name because they're symbols of white supremacy and law enforcement.
They're "not so far off from being called the Texas Klansmen", Attiah huffed.
That's big coming from a Jeff Bezos employee who had tweeted that, "White women are lucky that we are just calling them 'Karen's' and not calling for revenge."
Maybe the team can move to D.C. and change its name to the Washington Post Racists.
"While we may have originally taken our name from the law enforcement agency, since 1971 the Texas Rangers Baseball Club has forged its own, independent identity," the Texas Rangers responded. As if anyone had confused the team with the law enforcement agency.
Not that it's going to stop there.
Statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Columbus are under attack. CNN is denouncing Mount Rushmore as a symbol of white supremacy. It's only a matter of time until the Patriots, the Cowboys, the 76ers, 49ers, the Trailblazers, Nuggets, Spurs, and any names that reference American history, settlement and westward expansion, will also be banned.
That includes the Yankees and the Knicks, whose names are already forgotten national slurs.
The two New York City teams got their names from the slurs that the English settlers used to hurl at the Dutch settlers who wore short pants, or knickerbockers, and the slur John Cheese or Yan Kees, that the Dutch hurled back at the English usurpers. That won't be the issue for the culture war mob, which doesn't care about the slurs that different groups of white people called each other, but they both 'problematically' reference the European settlement of New York.
Both teams could change their names to those of local Indian tribes, but that's already off-limits.
Some media editorialists will, eventually, link the Cleveland Cavaliers to the Southern cavalier mythos and accuse them of white supremacy. The English Civil War would seem to have little to do with a Cleveland team, but King Charles I was involved in the African slave trade.
"The name Cleveland Cavaliers represents a group of daring fearless men, whose life's pact was never surrender, no matter what the odds," the fan who won a contest to name the team wrote.
We'll see how long that lasts.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will come under fire once someone realizes that their namesakes were involved in the slave trade in ways that were far more brutal than anything in Virginia.
And if you're going to get rid of them, the Pittsburgh Pirates will probably have to go too.
The Minnesota Vikings might seem safe, since the Vikings largely focused on European slaves, but they did deal in at least some African slaves, which would also put them off limits.
What names would still be safe? Birds, animals, colors, and the climate. Just avoid history.
And the safest names will be corporate brands. The Washington Redskins are trying to figure out what to rename their team because FedEx gave the Redskins an ultimatum. They might as well just call them the Washington FedExes to celebrate the new politically correct corporate oligarchy which enforces political discipline through firings, indoctrination, and ad campaigns.
A nation with no history, no mythos, and nothing to take pride in except for the million-dollar losers at the local stadium is a lot easier for all sorts of people and organizations to rule over.
The simplest solution might be for every team to change its name to Black Lives Matter.
And when the Pittsburgh Heinz Black Lives Matters play the New York MetLife Black Lives Matters, it'll be a little bit confusing, but that's okay because no one will be watching.
See you tomorrow
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