Tikkun Olam

I love cats.  My immune system doesn't, but I do.  When I was a child I had a strange fascination with the felines, often visiting our strange neighbor 'cat ladies' just to be with their multiple animals (one living near us had 17 in her little apartment in New York).  Then, waaaaay later, as an adult, I suddenly developed adult-onset-cat-allergy.  Just like that.  All I had done was visit a neighbor with 2 dogs and 7 cats.  And that's it--that's all it took.  Started constricting and had to leave, fast.  Ran home, turned on AC, lay on my bed, and tried to breathe. This guy should have seen it coming; from The Times of Israel : Purrfect grounds Couple splits over 550 house cats Wife was willing to lose husband, but not her pets ...

In honor of the reunification of Jerusalem in the miraculous 6-Day War of June,1967, and also to show that it is and always has been a JEWISH city, I present three videos. View them.  Be enlightened.  Act accordingly. (this video is from Israel's 60th Independence Day. Israel just celebrated its 63rd.) A Jewish city, from then to forever...courtesy Honest Reporting . (Hat tip, my D.H. I told him he'd better start posting on his blog again, now that he has his new DSLR...) And finally, here are 4,000 years of history.  In 5 minutes (courtesy of The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs ).

We have always been taught to question, in Judaism.  Jews love pilpul , by definition: love to talk, analyze, discuss, sharply critique.  You may have heard the joke about walking down the street and seeing coming towards you three men in Hassidic dress (as opposed to three obvious Muslims in Muslim dress).  What would you fear? That they'd physically attack you? Be terrorists? No, you'd be afraid they'd debate you to death .  So that's us, the People of the Book (as opposed to the so-called "religion of peace," who are really the 'people of the sword'). Here comes a Jew, educated in England and recently retired from The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Dr. Norman Solomon, who poses the ultimate, most controversial question: is the Torah really Divine in origin?  In his book, Torah from Heaven , he explores the idea that, in light of our more modern knowledge of science and historical critique, can the notion of the Torah being divinely i...

I am so proud of my daughter, recently interviewed by The Huffington Post about her company, Baby K'tan , which she started with a friend after inventing a unique product unlike any on the market, that I decided to repost the beginning of the interview right here on Tikkun Olam .  Please click on the links to read the entire piece. Michal Chesal, Baby K'tan: A Baby Carrier Born From Necessity Follow: Baby K'Tan , Entrepreneur Spotlight , Michal Chesal , Michal Chesal Baby K'Tan , Success Stories , Babies , Baby Carriers , Baby Products , Baby Stores , Best Baby Carriers , Small Business News After two baby showers, Michal Chesal owned a ton of baby gear and felt fully prepared for the birth of her first baby. But then something happened that she wasn't prepared for: Her baby, Coby, was born in December 1999 with Down synd...

Thanks to Arlene Kushner for spreading the word about this new documentary on Israel, called "Israel Inside," streaming free for only one week starting today.  In other words, this post will self-destruct in 7 days, or 168 hours, 10,080 minutes, 604,800 seconds.  View it NOW, and pass it along: this is the true Israel.  Not the negativity you get from reading the media or strolling down your average college campus.

In difficult times, we humans, when confronted with evil, an overwhelming enemy, or an uncertain, frightening future, sometimes secretly long for a super-human savior, someone who is stronger than mankind, and is able to fight for us and protect us-like, say, Superman, or Batman. We, as well as the rest of the world,  are living in times like these at least since the atrocity of 9/11, but really much earlier than that: recall the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing , the 2000 USS Cole bombing , just to name a few.  We were in a long, drawn-out war in Iraq and are still in a long, drawn-out war in Afghanistan, neither of which have completely defeated the Taliban or Al Qaeda.  We are still threatened by terror attacks and suicide bombers globally, on our subways, in our malls, at our bases.  Maybe this is why the new Marvel (remember Marvel Comics and Captain America? Iron Man?) movie  just released, Th...

Wild Bill for America , as he calls himself, A former law enforcement officer who grew up in the Colorado Rockies has figured out  the difference between Israelis and "Palestinians" after having dealt with Islamic terrorist activities, and learning about stories such as this one, below.                                                                            He has figured out who the enemy is.  Have you?

These are Pat Condell video from perhaps a year or so ago.  I must have missed it the first time around.  No better time than...now (you might say he's rather blunt).  Here is what the truth sounds like.  You know which truth: the one everybody is afraid to say, but secretly in their hearts, believe. 

An Israeli young lady, disabled from age 24, wins the gold medal in a rowing competition for the disabled in Italy.  Unbelievable, but they forgot (!) to bring the CD with the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah.  So Moran Samuel took the microphone, and sang it herself.  Solo.  Watch and listen to what she says about having a disability. Can you imagine a country, hosting a sports competition, 'forgetting' to bring a participant country's national anthem?  Can you imagine them forgetting a different country's national anthem CD, say, the United States'? Or maybe even Saudi Arabia's? Now, I don't know whether or not Saudi Arabia participated--oh wait, they couldn't have; at the very least, they couldn't have sent a woman ; women probably aren't allowed to row in Saudi Arabia, I mean, they're not allowed to drive, so...? So the competition organizers didn't think that Israel stood a chance to win (let alone the gold medal)? Well,...

Most of us are familiar with the expression, " a picture is worth a thousand words ," and these days there is a new trend employing that maxim: the illustrated lecture, in today's technology often expressed as animated videos. How often in the past have you sat through a lecture taking notes, suddenly becoming aware that your mind has wandered? How many times have you sort of 'jerked' yourself back to the subject of the lecture--to where you are physically sitting on your rear end in that uncomfortable seat, because for a few seconds--or worse, minutes--you were mentally actually somewhere else? Well, folks, that does not have to be the case anymore.  There is a modern solution to this problem: the animated lecture!  We're not talking about a talk accompanied by a slide show, although that, too, is more attention-grabbing than someone droning on and on in front of a bored audience, most of whom are nodding off.  Rather, we're talking about a lecturer s...