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!!
Thursday, November 16, 2023
Hamas Says All The AK-47s Found In Gaza Hospital Were Strictly For Medicinal Use and “Why my generation hates Jews” by Dr. Alex Grobman and Rabbi Schwartz jokes and Jews amaze me by Ruben Honigmann and You Can’t Hurry LoveIn Tractate Kiddushin, the Talmud reminds us that in love—as in life—inspiration follows preparation BYDOVID BASHEVKIN and Finding the Joy in ShabbatIn difficult times, Jews are finding comfort in familiar things: challah, candles, and Friday night dinner BYJAMIE BETESH CARTER and The Portion of ToldotA Blessing from Heaven
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.
The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
Jews amaze me by Ruben Honigmann
One thing never ceases to amaze me about Jews—their ability to marvel at the hostility directed against them. With every anti-Semitic murder, attack, massacre, or pogrom, we're stunned.
We are offended by the lack of empathy of our usual affable greengrocer; we are outraged by the reaction of the UN Secretary-General; we cannot stand the semantic contortions of Jean-Luc Mélenchon[1], worthy of the best Yeshiva students; we are revolted by the radical loneliness of the persecuted Jewish people. We rub our eyes every time, as we did the first day when we saw Harvard daddy's boys denouncing the "genocide underway in Gaza" or the Queers for Palestine tearing down posters of Israeli hostages. It's suffocating to hear the four clamps of the Tsedek collective take over from the clownish French Jewish Union for Peace to serve as useful Jews for the antisemitic Houria Bouteldja. We feign astonishment to discover that all intersectionalities become a zero-sum game as soon as the Jewish coefficient is invited in.
But why are we surprised? What messianic expectation is revealed by such naïve disappointment? Why do we expect that what has always been will miraculously cease to be?
By what miracle would those who burned the Jews of Strasbourg in 1349, murdered their neighbors in Barcelona in 1391, or set fire to Jewish dwellings in Baghdad in 1948, not have successors in 2023? Who can believe that the Cossacks, the Einsatzkommandos, Stalin's agents, or the Almohad troops acted only with motives and circumstances specific to a particular time or group? What kind of collective schizophrenia do we suffer from that makes us wave the flag of the Jewish people when the slightest antisemitic tweet from the latest trendy influencer shakes us to our core? What is the point of commemorating Haman's archetypal genocidal project on Purim, singing about the darkness of exile on Chanukah, and solemnly recalling "that in every generation they (the nations) rise up against us to destroy us" at the Passover Seder? What kind of charade is it to read throughout the year Moses' prescient visions of "women eating their children," Isaiah's imprecations against his unfaithful people, Jeremiah's lamentations about Israel's decadence, if we are unable to embrace them when reality collides with the texts? We cannot legitimately give credence to these texts. But we can't say that our ancestors, the very people who made us who we are and who are the architects of the "4,000 years of history" of which we are so proud, didn't see sense in them.
To sum up, I'm amazed that the oldest and most banal thing in the world continues to surprise us. But there is an even greater astonishment—it's the one that arouses in me those discreet and noble people who, with tiny words and gestures, defy the antisemitic law of history. The dignity of a parent at my children's public school, with whom we had never gone beyond the bare minimum of small talk, and who, after several days of reflection, wrote me a letter of compassion in very simple words, apologizing for not having written sooner because "all words are awkward." The elegance of that Arab friend who, during a long-planned lunch, took care not to discuss "the situation," knowing full well that this would lead to a dialogue of the deaf that could only change a friendship that we both cherish. Finally, the courage of the non-Jewish companion of a friend, an eminent artist circulating in an exclusively pro-Hamas milieu, who chooses to suffer in silence and to live in his flesh the Jewish solitude of his loved one.
These people are by no means overflowing with Zionism or philosemitism. They simply feel, in the intimacy of their being, the mystery of Israel.
Jewish tradition refers to this type of person as chassid oumot haoloam. Oumot haolam are the nations of the world. Chessed, the root of chassid, trivially means generosity or piety (hence the chassidim). But its primary meaning is excess, an overflow, something that blows up the natural, and therefore cruel, order of things. An intrusion, in short, that upsets the coordinates of reality. Hatred of Jews is the rule, no wonder. What's surprising is the opposite, those who disrupt the inviolable order of history.
And then there was the crushing blow, the one that scrambled all our moral and mental radars. I'm referring to the unbelievable, unbearable gesture of 85-year-old hostage Yocheved Lifschitz being released by her Hamas jailer to the Red Cross. Before leaving the masked, armed henchman, the old lady makes a point of greeting him. She turns and gives him her hand. The terrorist takes it and pats it with something unmistakably warm.
We can comfortably invoke the Stockholm syndrome, the dementia of the old woman, or the cynical communication strategy of Hamas and move on. But no one can deny that for two seconds this man was animated by a shudder of humanity.
The scene reminded me of a passage from Maus, in which Spiegelman recounts how, in Auschwitz, he "befriended" one of his SS guards, who was a little less cruel than the others, and with whom he sometimes talked about the weather in moments stolen from the infernal routine of the death camp.
This Hamas guy will surely be liquidated by Tsahal in the next few days, like most of his accomplices, and I'll be the last to be moved by it. His deed neither saves nor exonerates him. There's not the slightest trace of Christ-like love for the enemy to be hunted down here. It's simply a sign that even those we call, for lack of a better term, barbarians and savages, can be crossed by something that unwillingly seizes us with astonishment.
And wonder is literally at the origin of the world. In the second verse of the Torah, the universe is "Tohu-Bohu," a biblical hapax whose meaning, by definition, no one knows. Rashi, in the first of thousands of glosses in medieval French that will punctuate his commentary on the Torah and Talmud, introduces insight into the semantic chaos: Tohu, he writes, means "estordison," or what happens when a person is struck with wonder and astonishment.
Maus, Art Spiegelman
Jews and their friends are the ones who wonder, the ones who never settle for the world as it is, and they themselves are amazed. The oldest people in the world are constantly astonished, like newborn babies, stunned by their surroundings. And this insatiability, this inability to be satisfied with meaning, is not forgiven to them.
"Why my generation hates Jews" by Dr. Alex Grobman
There was no comparable act of terrorism in Israel's 75-year history, but not for lack of trying - and yet, Gen Z sides with Hamas.
RABBI SCHWARTZ'S FUNNY GAZA MEMES/ JOKES OF THE WEEK
We switched the clock this week in Israel so anyone that thinks that we can have peace here with our neighbors has another hour to dream
25% of Liberals are on medication for mental illness. That's scary because that means that 75% are walking around untreated.
What happens when a fly falls into a coffee cup?
The Italian - throws the cup and walks away in a fit of rage
The Frenchman - takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee
The Chinese - eats the fly and throws away the coffee
The Israeli - sells the coffee to the Frenchman, the fly to the Chinese, buys himself a new cup of coffee and uses the extra money to invent a Device that prevents flies from falling into coffee.
The Palestinian - blames the Israeli for the fly falling into his coffee, protests the act of aggression to the UN, takes a loan from the European Union for a new cup of coffee, uses the money to purchase explosives and then blows up the coffee house where the Italian, the Frenchman, and the Chinese, are trying to explain to the Israeli why he should give away his cup of coffee to the Palestinian in exchange for peace
A drone that was sent in from Yemen to Eilat was just blew itself up when it realized how much a room costs for a night there.
I don't know what's wrong with Israeli intelligence these days. Any child could've told you that if the Teimanim- Yemenites were going to try to come into Israel they would come to Eilat first because of it's tax' duty free status
You could tell a lot about a woman by her hand motions. For example if she's holding a gun at you, it means she's angry.
Muhammed calls the Israeli Electric company: "Hello, this is Muhammed I live in the Riamel neighborhood in Gaza and it seems that we don't have any electricity"
Electric company ; "You still have a neighborhood?"
Good idea for Nasralla's speech tomorrow. Israeli hijacks the feed and plays Manny Matara instead the whole time…
The Wizard of Oz is 84 years old this week. If Dorothy were to meet creatures with no brains, no courage and no heart she wouldn't be in Oz. She would be in Harvard
Mother to Child in 2023- "If you don't stop lying all the time the only thing you will grow up to be is a BBC reporter.
The Iranian foreign minister has announced that Hamas is open to releasing all of the hostages and transfer them to Iran. Please tell him that we will as well release all of the Hamas prisoners and release them to the hill-top youth in Yitzhar.
For the last eight days the media has been reporting that there is only enough gas in Gaza to last for one more day. It's a modern Chanuka miracle.
In World War I when the men returned from battle they discovered that the women had taken their places in the factories and companies and the world changed never to go back. A similar phenomena will occur after this war when the men will return and discover that women know how to set the Shabbos clock by themselves!
OK so Bolivia has announced that they are cutting off all Diplomatic ties with Israel as a result of the war in Gaza. I'm happy to know if anyone has any recommendations where I can get salmonella, herpes, cholerea, and chlamydia from drinking water from?
You Can't Hurry Love
In Tractate Kiddushin, the Talmud reminds us that in love—as in life—inspiration follows preparation
The days of Yitzchak (Isaac) are numbered. He doesn't know when the day of his death will arrive. He decides to bless his eldest son Esau. He asks Esau to go out to the field, hunt and prepare a meal for him just the way he likes it "in order that my soul may bless you" (Genesis 27;4).
Esau is commanded to bring food for his elderly father to eat. By doing this act of kindness for his father, it will be Isaac's soul which blesses Esau- not a regular blessing but a blessing of the soul.
The blessing did not come from Yitzchak- it emanated from G-d Himself who funneled it through Yitzchak, through his soul. As David wrote in Psalms (104;35) "Bless the Lord my soul".
And therefore at the end of the blessing "And it came to pass when Isaac finished blessing Jacob (Genesis 27;30), the letter "lamed" in the word "kila" (finished) is written in the form of a stick from top to bottom, thereby telling us that Yitzchak's blessing came from heaven and passed through Yitzchak on its way to Jacob.
See you Sunday, bli neder, Shabbat Shalom
We need Mashiach now!
What is disliked by you, don't do to others. Be nice and kind and smile!
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