Tikkun Olam

My son did not vote for him, but when he read Yair Lapid's (of Yesh Atid) platform, he thought it sounded reasonable . 'There is a future' The Hebrew Yesh Atid means 'There is a future.' The party's platform is decidedly domestic: Reforming government, seeking affordable housing, improving a "failing" education system, and the biggest hot-button issue, putting an end to the exemption from mandatory military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews who have traditionally been legally allowed to avoid military service in order pursue religious study.  I agree with much of this as well.  Housing in Israel is out of sight: I don't know how the average Israeli can afford to live comfortably--not excessively, but comfortably. I agree that most Hareidi young men should be required to serve in the Israeli army, but that only the most learned, or geniuses-- iluim , if you will, can have that exemption to learn Torah.  I think there's a need for that...

  * this post was begun two hours before midnight on Nov. 14th; therefore it covers the 14th and the 15th . I have spoken. America is in deep trouble.  We have few viable candidates for president, neither Republican nor Democrat. On the Democratic side, our current President in my opinion pays lip service to supporting Israel's need for 'security' as he rails against building "settlements".  He is no lover of Netanyahu*, as evidenced by his little conversation with French President Sarkozy with the mike he didn't think was open (*but we sort of knew that before, didn't we, when Bibi visited the White House and was publicly snubbed by Obama); he embraces Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan instead, who has been bad-mouthing Israel and supporting Hamas and Hezbollah, with nary a word from our illustrious President, even though the aforementioned groups are on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations --more his type, I guess. And on the other si...

Thank you to Arlene Kushner for alerting us to this video.  Visit her website for comprehensive and thoughtful information on Israel and the related political climate in the United States. You might also want to go to this site (thanks again to Arlene Kushner) and see how the Arabs treated the Jewish residents of the Jewish Quarter in the old city in 1948--oh, and that was before the "Israeli occupation" of 1967.  Try Arab Occupation of 1948 .

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. -Sir Winston Churchill. It's about time we had a leader of the state of Israel who doesn't pussyfoot around, doesn't worry about "political correctness," but rather spits out the truth, and tells us his view of the U.N. and their 'Human Rights Commission.' I agree with him on all points, except I am not a proponent of the "two state solution," although I believe he had to say that. My view is, the Arabs have 22 sovereign states, and at least one of them is Palesinian in territory and population. The Jews have only one: Israel. And so it shall remain, one JEWISH state of Israel, eventually between its Biblical borders , forever. Amen, ken yehi ratzon .

I saw this first on Rafi's blog, and it cracked me up. Nothing like rap to get out the popular vote, eh? Especially since nothing rhymes with "FEIGLIN." Vote BIBIBI for PM (what's his middle name again?).

This Rahm Emanuel seems to be a very interesting character, who according to Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish doesn't mince words . He has a tough reputation but was also (can you believe it) a dancer. His father is a pediatrician and a former member of the Irgun . He has two brothers, one, Yehezkel (in Hebrew) who is a "noted oncologist" and Bio-ethicist , the other a talent agent in L.A. who apparently inspired the HBO production Entourage . What does RahmE's appointment mean for the United States? What does it mean for Israel? Here is RahmE's website . I await your comments. . .

I love soup. I've always loved soup. It is a staple in the kitchen of my mind's eye. Soup symbolizes for me, love, security, warmth and family. This is probably fairly universal, and soup is fairly old in the history of mankind: Soup dates back to the beginning of cooking, when people noticed fat and other nutrients falling off meat being roasted over an open fire, Segan says. Archaeologists have discovered vessels dating back to prehistoric times, capable of holding water, meat and fibrous root vegetables that would soften during boiling Whenever I'm feeling low, or needy, or missing my kids & lonely, I think of making homemade vegetable soup. Notice I didn't say 'I make homemade vegetable soup,' but I do think about it (remember, my hubby's the Chef). Like today. It's been a rough two weeks. . . which culminated in that election --and I'm feeling particularly miserable (I also am physically under the weather a little and have the chi...

President-elect Barak H. Obama has appointed Rahm Emanuel as his Chief-of-Staff. From The Jerusalem Post : President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday offered the job of White House chief of staff to Democratic Congressman Rahm Emanuel, who reportedly accepted the offer. Emanuel is the Chicago-born son of a former Israeli . Obama, right, smiles as he listens to US Rep. Rahm Emanuel, during an unscheduled stop at the Chicago Sister Cities International Rally in Chicago in June 2008. The 48-year-old Emanuel is a member of the Orthodox Jewish community of Chicago and grew up speaking Hebrew with his father, a pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun , the Jewish resistance group in Palestine, before the War of Independence in 1948. From Haaretz : A day after winning an historic election to become the first black American p...

If Hillary Clinton had been nominated as the Democratic party candidate, it would have made sense: you choose the tried and true, the experienced; if that had been done, I, as a voter, would have had more of a choice. But for some strange reason, Barack Hussein Obama was chosen. Why do I use Hussein (as some commenters have asked me in the past)? Because that is his full name, it indicates the religion to which he was born, that religion being generally intolerant towards any religion or culture other than itself--and he seems to want to hide it. Nothing, but nothing should be hidden about a potential candidate for the highest office of the land. Actually, the reason he was chosen was not 'strange,' as I mentioned above. It is understandable, when one considers a shallow, uninformed, disinterested public raised on television. I guess the average American doesn't care to research his candidate or analyze his findings. Mr. and Mrs. Average American are more interested ...

I first saw the link on Little Green Fo otballs and then on Jameel’s blog, which led me to the AP article , intimating “racism” on Governor Palin’s mention of Senator Obama’s affiliation with unrepentant-terrorist Bill Ayers, of Weathermen fame. The Associated Press article, (or is it really an editorial masquerading as a “news” story?), suggests that Obama’s connection with Ayers couldn’t have been deep but rather that they knew each other on an ‘acquaintance’ level only. This reminded me of something I had just finished reading last night in Commentary Magazine (to which I subscribe) by Joshua Muravchik , resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former socialist, now self-described neoconservative ) . Mr. Muravchik seems to disagree with the author of the AP story as to the extent of the Obama/Ayers relationship. Mr. Daniel, author of the AP story also implies that Palin's statement is 'racist' (emphasis mine): By claiming that Democrat ...

The Biden/Palin debate aired last Thursday. Last night (motzei Shabbat), SNL took the opportunity-and this campaign sure is giving them ample opportunity-to parody it. I just caught the tail end of it, but was reminded of it when I watched Meet the Press this morning. I think it's a *scream and therefore worthy of posting (and isn't Tina Fey almost a dead ringer for Sarah Palin?) Here it is in it's entirety:

(warning: I like long, run-on sentences.) I had already decided that my Thursday night, Oct. 2nd 2008 entertainment would be to sit down on my 26 year old sofa in the family room and watch the debate while chapping dinner (Rosh Hashana left-over chicken) on paper plates on the coffee table. And what a great night it was. In my opinion, Governor Palin did better than before (she must have practiced and rehearsed forever ), but her inexperience and fear of venturing out from behind her prepared talking points showed, while Senator Biden's many years of political experience showed too, as well as his ease of speaking extemporaneously, culling facts--albeit some wrong ones, notably about Hezbollah being kicked out of Lebanon (they weren't) and Palestinian elections in the West Bank (it was Gaza), as Daled Amos correctly points out--from memory, in sharp contrast to Palin's constantly looking down at her notes while he was speaking, and towing the party line while she was...

I wasn't going to post anymore before Rosh Hashana, but I received this in an email (from my research staff) and, after picking myself up off the floor, couldn't resist sharing it with you. You'll notice a certain vice-presidential candidate is missing (-hadn't been chosen yet); you know, the one who can see Russia from her house . Shabbat shalom, and Happy New Year . *Copyright alert: No infringement of any text or graphic copyright is ever intended on this blog. If you own the copyright to any original image or document used for the creation of the graphics or information on this site, please contact the blog administrator with all pertinent info so that proper credit can be given. If you wish to have it removed from the site, just say the word; it shall be, ASAP.

Been doing a little research (very little-Shabbat's in an hour!)and found some other pretty qualified people who could have been contenders for the vice presidential slot on the Republican ticket, namely: Olympia Snowe , Senator from Maine, and Linda Lingle , Governor of Hawaii. I hadn't heard of Sarah Palin before McCain's announcement, nor had I heard of Snowe and Lingle (I'm not so beki'ah on the governors and senators of all the states; I'd have to memorize them all). Snowe is considered a moderate Republican and apparently has a 79% approval rating from her constituents, so she must be doing something right. Lingle was elected as Governor of Hawaii in 2002 and is now serving her second term of office. She has an approval rating of 71% of her constituents. And she's Jewish . Wait, I know--Neither of them was Miss Maine or Miss Hawaii. That must be it. . . Shabbat Shalom.

Have you thought about how ridiculous this whole candidate-election-hoopla-thing is, when you think about how it fits in the 'Great Scheme of Things?' Let's see, one candidate has a murky past: parents might not have even been married when he was conceived (He has stated to the effect that he is 'not clear' on that issue), his father disappears; yon son goes to a third world country and attends an Islamic religious school for a while, raised by a single (read=divorced or unwed) mother, she sends him off to live with his grandparents, name somehow changes to 'Barak' from 'Barry' somewhere along the line; somehow he becomes a state senator but nobody's heard of him for four years; suddenly he comes out of nowhere and is famous . Then they find a long-lost half-sister (in a burka). And he grew up, out of all the states available in the entire country, in HAWAII. Other-side candidate runs three miles every other day for fun; owns a rifle (waddya ...

Although I don't agree 100% with Bulletproof Diction 's analysis of Mr. Obama's speech, it's worth reading. I left a comment on his post on Senator Obama's speech, and that, along with McCain's surprising but brilliant choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate for vice president prompted me to write yet again, about this suddenly really interesting race for President of the United States. I disagree with Bulletproof Diction's view that Bush's actions as President were 90% right (more like, 90% wrong). I don't think that Mr. Bush cares about nor can even relate to the average-income earning worker earning $55,000 a year or less. I don't think the current President really cares about the predatory lending by Big Banks and mortgage lending institutions which contributed to the recession the economy is in now. Plain and simple, I have my problems with Republicans, who are not noted for their social and economic reforms. But I will not be voting...

Found on the Gateway Pundit blog: "Barak Hussein O’bama meets with Imam Hassan Qazwini Qazwini, head of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn , is known to have close ties to Hizbollah. In 1998 the mosque hosted Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who delivered a long hate-filled rant against Jews and Christians (and in praise of Saddam Hussein). The above photo was taken on May 14, 2008 , at Macomb Community College . O’bama was there as part of his quest to win the Democratic presidential nomination. O’bama had a private session with Qazwini. A mosque spokesman, Eide Alawan, confirmed that the meeting took place. During the meeting, the two are said to have discussed the Presidential election, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Iraq war. Who said what remains unknown." And I just found out in reading Frank Gaffney's article in the Jewish World Review, which is delivered into my inbox daily, that one of the opening invocations of the DNC...

Leaving the high of participating in the Nefesh b’Nefesh JBlogger Convention, albeit cyberspace-illy, still behooves us to continue to try to make an impact on world events, beginning perhaps with local events (who was it who said, “think globally, act locally”?) In perusing some of the many blogs whose authors I was familiar with or had just met in the conference chat room, I came across this piece about Senator Obama (about whom I’ve written before, here , here and here ) by Daled Amos . As I’ve said previously, there is more than meets the eye behind the charismatic facade (for some--not for all) of Mr. Barak Hussein Obama, beyond the flip-flop he committed at the AIPAC conference this past June. This video hints just a little more about the hidden Obama; or do most Americans only care about the rhetoric? Hey, why be so serious after all? Isn't it a little like, say, the State Fair? Or Disneyland? Or Hollywood? Let's just play the game and have a grand old time (just...

I just saw this on Joe Settler , and it, well-- unsettled me. It seems that, according to this YNet article , some Negev communities are planning on taking matters into their own hands and organizing into an "independent Western Negev State," with its first act of defiance towards the government a tax strike. They are angry over the government's inaction in the face of daily rocket and terrorist attacks. The residents of Nir Arm, Kfar Aza and Miflasim are also distrustful of the cease-fire , believing that it will be ineffective and I would add, will probably be used by Hamas to re-arm and re-group, if last summer's war in Lebanon taught us anything. As far as the idea of 'seceding from the union' goes (they said): We are not the one's [sic] breaking away from the State, it is the government that has led us to this. They feel as if the government has abandoned them , not the other way around. I was wondering how long it would take before someone '...

Found this interesting little piece on Fox News on the 'net: it seems that, according to the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif , who starred in blockbuster Hollywood productions such as Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago--Arabs and democracy are not great bedfellows. The story, based on information on the MEMRI website, states that Mr. Sharif told President Bush that democracy will never take hold in the Arab countries, because they are made up of sects, and prefer to go to their sheik to handle disputes: "I said to Bush, even before he entered Iraq: Forget about all that. We, the Arabs... We are not like [regular countries]," said Sharif. "You will drown there." By gosh, if we only had known this before our president got us into the war in Iraq - I mean, who knew - about Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds ("-oh my!")? And who knew that people with no concept of and not prepared culturally for democracy - when Mr. Prez praised the "democratic" electio...