Tikkun Olam

My last post was long (and probably long-winded as well), so I am now posting a considerably shorter one. I wrote previously about Israel needing to be strong and unafraid. Thank G-d I am not a "lone voice in the wilderness." Here is Tovia Singer (my hero!) with a synopsis: This will be My Foreign Policy (...if elected as PM...or President...or...) ( כמו שכולם עם שכל כבר יודעים, כהנא צדק)

( This post is rather long, but bear with it-there's a movie at the end, children !) Pesach is just around the corner. It was my most favorite chag as a child; different dishes, utensils and pots and pans; different tablecloths, kiddush cups and beautiful embroidered matzah covers instead of challah boards. Even different bedspreads on the beds; a scrubbed and polished apartment: I was entering a new universe, olam habah on this earth. My new and shiny surroundings set the stage for the important message of that holiday: That the Jewish People were delivered from slavery to freedom, to form a nation under the one G-d, who chose us for a higher purpose, to be a higher civilization; perhaps to give the world The Law, the Torah that Hashem gave us-to set the standard for ourselves and to raise the world to that standard as well. But I think we Jews have lost our way. Two thousand plus years in galut , and we are still having growing pains and identity crises. These were not so pre...

כשכתבתי את הכותרת "חתונות ויריות," לא צפיתי לרצח שיקרה בישיבת מרכז הרב בירושלים...באותו לילה של חתונת בני Thank G-d, the wedding was wonderful. Many of our friends from our town in the States who had made aliyah over various years, attended the wedding: it was a kind of 'reunion.' It was a very happy evening, celebrating the marriage of our son to a wonderful person with old and new friends and family. The one terrible event which marred it was the heinous, cowardly murder of eight young boys in the Mercaz Ha-Rav Yeshiva in Jerusalem; we found out something had happened, right after the chuppah ended. We were wending our way to the main hall for the dancing and dinner, when one of the kallah's (bride's) brothers went running in the opposite direction while looking at his cell phone. I asked him what happened; he said 'there was an attack in Jerusalem.' That is all we knew at the time. As the evening wore on, I saw a very close friend who lives in Jeru...

זה היום הגדול. הערב, הבן הגדול שלי מתחתן לבחורה נפלאה ממשפחה נהדרת. אנו בינתיים נשארים אצל האמא של הכלה. כתוב בפרקי אבות: "בן זומא אומר..." איזהו מכובד המכבד את הבריות..." וזה בדיוק מתאר את משפחתו החדשה של בני. אני מודה לרבונו של עולם שהוא מצא את בת זוגו,ממשפחה כזאת. I had to write in Hebrew. It fits, and acknowledges my new family in our ancient, beautiful language. I thank my parents (may their memory be a blessing) for speaking to me in Hebrew as a very young child, so that I would internalize it and it would be my second mother tongue. But not to worry, my non-Hebrew speaking friends: I will now loosely translate: Today is the 'big day.' This evening my older son is getting married to a wonderful girl, from a fine family. We are currently staying with the kallah' s* mother, at her house in Ashdod. As is written in Ethics of the Fathers, "Ben Zoma says...who is respected? He who respects others..." I thank G-d that my son found the love of his l...

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'...