August 7, 2022
Tisha B'Av - Destruction of The Temple
June 27, 2021
From Passivity To Power
Over the course of our history, the Jewish people have grown from a passive and helpless people during 2,000 years of exile to become, once again, an assertive and strong nation in the Land of Israel as we once were in the days of Joshua, King David and the Maccabees.In the end, we need to be as faithful as “Jacob” and as strong as “Israel.” As we learn in the Torah and from the rest of Jewish history: inside every Jacob, who just wants to serve G-d in peace as the “People of the Book,” there is also a determined, strong, and brave Israelite fighter and innovator who can stand up for his people and his faith.
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
From Passivity To Power
June 5, 2021
G-d’s Redemption Is A Promise
The Jewish people’s exile was only temporary and that is what G-d promised us. But the anti-Semites of the world somehow want to make us believe that G-d has forsaken the Jew permanently, and thus they chant “Free, Free Palestine!” and call the Jews occupiers.
G-d’s Redemption Is A Promise
November 15, 2020
Humming The Hatikvah
But as I walk in the water, feeling both the softness and purity of the beautiful water as well as the buoyancy and resistance of it, I think to myself that no Jews should not be familiar and know The Israel national anthem. After 2,000 painful years in exile culminating in the concentration camps like Theresienstadt and The Six Million murdered Jews, we all must know that now G-d has kept his promise to our forefathers and returned us to The Holy Land.
Assuredly, we are living in the time of miracles, the redemption, and soon to be the coming of the Mashiach. Now is the time not just to hum The Hatikvah, but to bring every Jew back, including me and my family. It’s almost time to go home, where we will sing and dance, with hearts brimming over with Joy, before our L-rd, and once again go to worship at our holy Temple in Jerusalem. May it be His will! Amen.
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Humming The Hatikvah
July 19, 2020
PTSD Gets Around
The Jewish people are a nation recovering from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), where memories of trauma flood our national psyche and can trigger emotional (and even physical) symptoms. Whether fear of the next “evil decree” against the Jews, to another pogrom of crazed rapists and killers rampaging through a Jewish town, or even of genocide itself, the Jewish people have known plenty of deep-seated persecution and have to deal with the accompanying fear and anxiety of being the quintessential “strangers in a strange land,” almost everywhere in the world and over a very long period of history.
PTSD is very real not only for our suffering veterans, and for individual people that have been sexually abused or experienced physical violence, but it can also be a national psychiatric disorder based on collective trauma that affects our mood, anxiety levels, and behavioral reactions to events. Suffering from exile, persecution, and helplessness from thousands of years does not go away in a generation or even a century. It is a long road for our national recovery where we can learn to once again live healthy and productive lives absent from the fear and anxiety of another bad Tisha B’Av.
PTSD Gets Around
April 16, 2020
Our Journey To Freedom Is Almost At The End
Despite our redemption from slavery in Egypt (1312 BCE), we continue through cycle after cycle of enslavement and exile.
In Kabbalah, we learn that the Jewish soul reincarnates until it reaches its spiritual enlightenment and fulfills all the mitzvot. Similarly, the soul of the Jewish people is reincarnated and relives painful destruction, slavery, and exile until we learn, grow, and finally become what we are destined to be as servants only of Hashem and as a light unto the nations. This has been our fate, but also it is one that we are finally nearing the end of with the return to the Promised Land and perhaps even the arrival soon of Mashiach.
(Free Photo via Pixabay)
Our Journey To Freedom Is Almost At The End
January 2, 2020
'Uncut Gems' Cuts Deep
Yesterday, we went to see the new Adam Sandler movie, Uncut Gems....Ratner's life is full of shlemazel of his own making. While he has a good wife, kids, and extended family (maybe with the exception of his loan shark uncle), a fancy-schmancy home in the suburbs with a newly renovated pool, his own jewelry business that even caters to some big-league sports players, and a shiksa girlfriend on the side (who seems to love him), Ratner is never satisfied or happy and is always pushing for more!
In the movie, Howard Ratner was driven by greed and made bad life choices, and to me, it was a shame that the he was portrayed as a Jew, which can feed the vicious cycle of discrimination and hatred that has often been anchored around money. With the vicious machete attack on Chanukah at a Rabbi's house in Monsey this week (after a slew of other anti-Semitic incidents, including an attack on a student for wearing a yalmulke on the NYC Subway to beatings and tire slashings of Jews in Brooklyn), we are reminded that there is once again a resurgence of prejudice and hate against Jews, but also that it's the light of Chanukah that "drives out the darkness," and that money and materialism are a mere shabby substitute to finding true security and success whether you work in the dense NYC Diamond District or live in the sprawling suburbs of America.
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
'Uncut Gems' Cuts Deep
October 15, 2019
The Coming Great American Aliyah
If you just open your eyes and have faith, you will know that you will be going to Israel–the question isn’t if, but when! What G-d has decreed, no man can annul. There are three types of ways things will unfold for American Jews: Some will go to Israel on their own,”nicely.” Others will be going only when they absolutely have to–“not so nicely.” The third group will not be going–unfortunately, as difficult as it is to say, they won’t make it. While this is all about the fulfillment of messianic times, and we don’t know when precisely it will all transpire, I pray that people (including myself) will choose to plan intelligently for the future to make aliyah in good times, and that their shouldn’t be pain and suffering for the Jewish people in getting there, but rather that it is an amazing experience filled with endless blessings.
May G-d bring us in peace, prosperity, and health to fulfill His promise of the ingathering and to rebuild the Temple and bring Mashiach to the world.
The Coming Great American Aliyah
October 2, 2019
Who's Fasting For Whom
Gedaliah had been appointed governor of Israel by the Babylonian conquers in 423 BCE. However, within the year, Gedaliah was assassinated. This resulted in the remaining Judeans fleeing to Egypt and the Babylonian exile being firmly established until the return from this exile in 371 BCE.
Literally for thousands of years the relatively small Israelite nation in the Holy Land was repeatedly attacked and conquered by the large surrounding empires of the Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans.
Despite this punishing history, when it came to the Fast of Gedaliah, my father used to inject a little light humor and say:
Gedaliah didn't fast for me, so I am not going to fast for him.
I can still hear his words in my head and even now it still brings a warm smile to my face and happiness inside me.
Upcoming next week is Yom Kippur--fasting and atonement. ;-)
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Who's Fasting For Whom
August 9, 2019
Speedily Rebuild The Temple
Tisha B’Av (the 9th day of the month of Av) is on Shabbat this year, so we conduct the day of mourning and fast on Sunday. The destruction of the Temple and our subsequents exiles from the Holy Land are deeply traumatic periods of Jewish history. Needless to say, this is a very sad and scary time of year. However, we are living in the time of redemption, when after 2,000 years, the Jewish people have been blessed to be returned to their biblical homeland, Israel. Next up is the rebuilding of the Temple VERY SOON, please G-d.
Let us hope and pray that we are deserving of Hashem’s blessings and mercy, and that sadness will be completely turned into joy, the world will be healed, and peace will prevail.
Speedily Rebuild The Temple
August 19, 2018
East Meets West In The Holy Land
The modern State of Israel is truly the embodiment of this oneness and this diversity. The Jewish Nation-State Law embodies this concept where Israel is defined as the national homeland for the Jewish People, yet it is democratic, open and welcoming to everyone. For Jewish people, there are Ashkenazi Jews and there are Sephardi Jews. And at the same time, there are people of faith, Christians, Muslims, Druze, and others from all over the globe.Hope you enjoy.
(Photo credit: Andy Blumenthal)
East Meets West In The Holy Land
March 22, 2018
Controlling The World, Really?
Often, I see, hear, or read lots of anti-Semitism.
People don't like what I write in my blog, that I eat Kosher, Keep Shabbat, or that I wear a head covering or whatever.
I get things like "Dirty Jew!"
Sometimes, "Get out! Go back to Israel!"
Or when I try to express myself, "Uh, the Jews control the world,"
The funny thing is if Jews control the world, why do I feel like I don't control anything!
I feel so small and insignificant in a way in the realm of G-d's great universe.
Where I am but a speck of dust.
I see tall skyscrapers.
Huge mountain ranges.
The deep oceans.
The rolling plains.
The infinite stars in the sky.
I see a world with hundreds of countries.
And billions of people.
And I see me, and I am just a person.
And I see the Jewish people--a tiny minority.
One that has been subject of pogroms, inquisitions, exiles, destruction, and genocide--over and over again.
I grew up pretty poor and watching my parents work so hard trying their best to support the family.
I think Jews don't control the world.
I certainly don't think I control even my day.
The reality is only G-d is in control.
And for that, I am most humble and grateful to the L-rd above. ;-)
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Controlling The World, Really?
November 20, 2014
To Be A Free People
Two Palestinian cousins brutally hacked and stabbed to death 4 Rabbis's (3 American citizens) while at prayer and killed a policeman trying to stop them.
I read how one Rabbi actually had his arm wrapped in the holy Tefillin (phylacteries) completely severed from off his body.
By the time the attack was done, the synagogue was filled with pools of blood of those in the middle of prayer to the Almighty G-d.
I thought to myself of the Israel anthem, the Hatikvah, that speaks to the Jewish hope of being a free people in the land of Zion and Jerusalem (where this attack and many others have been happening):
"As long as the Jewish spirit is yearning deep in the heart,
I wondered where is the yearned for "freedom" of our people post slavery; jailings and torture; destruction, rape, murder, and exile; from Crusades to Auto-da-fes, Pogroms, and Holocaust.
Indeed, our history is not only punctuated by discrimination, blind hatred and anti-semitism, but also by extermination and genocide.
Now in a beautiful Middle East democracy called the State of Israel--where the deserts bloom and technological innovation thrives, where people of three major religions worship in their Holy places, how can so much terror still exist:
- Tens of thousands of missiles targeting population centers
- Tunnels streaming with terrorists trying to kidnap and murder the innocent
- Suicide bombers striking buses, cafes, pizzerias, and more.
- Terrorists driving into crowds of pedestrians, stabbing people with screwdrivers, hitting them with lead pipes, throwing stones and firebombs, slitting the throats of babies, taking and murdering children from the bus stops, and hacking to death Rabbis at prayer...
- Moreover, with Iran, there is a stated existential threat from them to annihilate Israel [via Nukes]...the clock is ticking down.
No nation on Earth would live with this, and neither should the Jewish people!
Israel cannot have Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad as well as nation state terrorists striking at their heart from near, far, and from within.
The immediate response should be a declaration of Jerusalem as the united Capital of Israel, period.
Subsequent decisions of borders, boundaries, and terms to be decided by the State of Israel to meet their security needs.
Freedom to live, work, play, and worship without terror, non-negotiable.
Peace underwritten with security by G-d's promise to the Jewish people...end of discussion.
Finally, as to Iran (and others) who openly threaten Israel with WMD--Israel and the U.S. must preempt and hit them staggeringly hard--the best defense is an striking offense.
The terror must end here and now, once and for all.
O' Lord, give us freedom from bigotry, hatred, and terror--O' Lord, give us peace.
(Source Photo: here with attribution to zeevveez)
To Be A Free People
August 29, 2014
From Holocaust To Nation State
Where the Jewish people went from the fiery depths of the Holocaust to the rise of a modern democratic nation state of Israel.
We are the same sons and daughters of Israel, but no longer exiled from the Holy Land and paraded like sheep to the slaughter from the hate mongers de jour.
On the right are represented generations, who with the rise of every crazy demagogue that needed to blame their religious, political, social, and economic problems on a scapegoat, the Jewish people suffered at their bloody hands, discriminatory expropriation and expulsion, tax and torture, rape, pogrom, and slaughter.
On the left are shown the Jews from a free democratic State of Israel who are proud to seek a life of peace and security from persecution and who can chart their own course for their people and be a light unto nations for doing what is right and moral and contributing to the world in every significant development and advance of humankind.
As the Jews went from slavery to freedom many thousands of years ago with the Exodus from Egypt and settlement of the land of Israel, so too today, we can count on the miraculous transition from exile to promised homeland and from persecution to self-determination. ;-)
(Source Photo: here with attribution to Eliyokim Cohen)
From Holocaust To Nation State