Tikkun Olam

I loved flying in my youth (no, I don't mean drugs). It was so rare that I did it, and such an adventure. Not the long hours constricted on a plane, the lack of leg room, the recirculating bacteria-laden, canned air, nor the(current) boredom - none of it bothered me. I wasn't bored, I was thrilled! Now, flying to me is an ordeal; and this was a short trip (relatively speaking), approximately four hours to New York, " deh oldt cahntree" - my hometown. We took the red-eye, taking off after midnight and landing at 6 a.m. I was exhausted, and had developed a sinus post-nasal drip two days before and hadn't slept the night before our flight. But at least I thought that I would be able to sleep a bit. No such luck-hey, are those seats getting narrower, or am I getting wider? (-that's a rhetorical question, buddy.) But then, we finally arrived in New Yawk City: The sights! The smells! The wet cold insinuating itself into one's bones! The dull gray monochromatic...

It is with mixed emotions that I begin preparing for our trip to Israel for our older son's wedding. Not that I am not happy to go: I am thrilled, incredulous, overwhelmed, grateful to Hashem. And flat broke. But, meshaneh makom, meshaneh mazal , right? Hey, does that apply to visits as well? Don't know; gotta ask a shailah . . . (actually I even applied online for a job in Rehovot. . . ) It's interesting, about in-laws. I hear such horror stories about very functional people marrying into dysfuncional families. I have very good friends whose son married a great girl with a dysfunctional mother. This girl, having met us just once for a short time at our friends' house, already invited us to stay with them while we're in Israel. Now, we're not talking about your average dysfunction, where you are mildly depressed, bicker with your better half, or have a syndrome, such as OCD or even agoraphobia. We're talking dysfunction, bigtime , where the mother of the bri...

In my post entitled The Reason to Support Israel I made certain statements about Arab culture. While they were not meant to offend anyone, I did intend to tell the truth, even if it was not politically correct. And that, by itself, could offend, if the offendee is not willing to see himself and his culture in bright light. Here is a portion of a comment left on that post: "... to call all Arabs barbarians is simply disgusting and outrageous. While there are more than certainly extremists, it is no excuse to belittle a nation who has contributed much to the world (have you not learned about the Islamic expansion not to mention the niceties they gave to the Jews and Christians living under their rule). I would look at our (Jewish) religious extremist too..." What can I say? Of course there are exceptions; the exceptions (as in most cultures) are mainly the ordinary people – the ‘little guys’- who just want to raise their families and live their lives in peace. But we don'...

Well, it looks as if the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is sweeping up the Democratic delegates. As of last count, he seems to be ahead of the Senator from New York, Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton; at the very least he is surely giving her a run for her money. There is no question that Obama is a good orator; but should that be the basis upon which we elect our next president? In the meantime, I've discovered more disturbing things about him and his possible affiliations. Here is an article I found on WorldNetDaily about a Che Guevara flag in Obama's volunteers' office. Is Che a role model? That's worrisome. Not enough? So here is another one to worry about, from a site called Project Islamic Hope . * Do you recognize that face , right smack in the middle of the heading? Obama's photo up there can only mean that he is one of the supporters of their causes (now, what might they be)? Well, here's just one of their causes , apparently; ...

Some time back I wrote about my daughter's new product, the Baby K'tan Baby Carrier. It is really unique, invented by her and her business partner because of their special needs kids (one of them being my wonderful grandson Coby, who has Down Syndrome). In case you were thinking about getting a baby gift or baby shower gift for someone, this is a great idea which will be much appreciated. Go check out the website, at http://www.babyktan.com/ to see all the possibilities. And take a quick look at this video from Mommy.TV, where my daughter is presenting the Baby K'tan (since this presentation, they found another position to use the carrier in, so now there are 8 positions--and she forgot to mention that you can also have it personalized with the baby's name !) Enjoy, and if you do decide to buy one, please mention that you learned about it from Lady-Light's blog:

I began responding to a comment by "joseph" on my previous post, when I realized I should just post about it--it was that important. So here it is: You say Senator Barack Obama is good for America, because he will stop America from financially supporting the Arabs or Israel. From what I know about him and his record, I don't think he will support Israel. In any event, I agree with the former: not supporting the Arabs, yes; but I totally disagree with not supporting Israel. The Arab rulers are multi-millionaires, who are not only keeping the power and money for themselves without regard to their own people, many of whom are impoverished and exploited, but they are also holding the United States and much of the rest of the world 'over a barrel' by their control of the price of oil, which they know that the USA desperately needs to function. They are cutthroat , authoritarian and barbaric (with some exceptions; can't think of any off the top of my head at this mo...

There was something that was nagging at the back of my brain while I was writing my previous post. It was saying, why are you writing about a Shabbaton when you should be writing about something seriously important, like Super Tuesday and the danger of Barack Obama winning the Democratic primaries? Ok, so I’m doing it now; this Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, worries me. We all have heard (or have we?) of his Muslim upbringing in his early childhood, his biological father and stepfather being Muslim, his attending a Muslim Wahhabi school there and of course, the middle name he never uses: Hussein: an Arab*, not African--name. And according to Islam, if one’s father is Muslim, ‘once a Muslim, always a Muslim.’ But isn't he a Christian? So he says. He is officially a member of the Trinity United Community Church, whose Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Jr. is a supporter of Louis Farrakhan --who is no supporter of Israel or the Jews—and Pastor Wright has equated Zionism with racism. Her...

I apologize profanely—I mean profusely--for not posting from January 6th until now (tell me that you care!). My son and daughter-in-law left this past Thursday night on the red-eye. I thought it would be an old, doddering visit: I was actually worried that they would be bored to tears because I know darn well that my son’s parents are sticks-in-the-mud who sit on their yashvanim all day long and don’t do a thing other than 1) work, 2) blog, 3) work and blog, and 4) blog. To my utter surprise, I’m still recovering from the most whirlwind 3.5 weeks I’ve had in a long time. And our young guests really had a good time, even though it didn’t snowstorm the way my son wanted it to, because he really misses snow and the mountains, even living in Yerushalayim (he should have been there this past week). We had, let’s see: Shabbat dinner at the Rav’s the first Shabbat they were here; same Shabbat’s lunch was a shul member’s huge (200+ people) sit-down bar-mitzvah affair at another shul about a...