Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu - Like Father Like Son

This is amazing! You may remember the story I told not too long ago about Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu zt"l: how he explained that Arabs, when told the truth, appreciate it.

Here his son, Rabbi Shmuel, the Chief Rabbi of Tzefat, writing in an Arab newspaper, tells the Arabs the truth and nothing but the truth! In the meantime the article is available only in Hebrew .

We are not Slaves

From an interview with MK Michael Ben-Ari:

Ben-Ari said Kahane should be remembered as a different kind of leader, one who, unlike those who saw Israel as a shelter, believed Israel existed to spread the message that God rules the world and that Jews must reiterate that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.

“This impacts everything we do,” Ben-Ari said. “For example, the letter to the UN secretary-general.

Some say, how can we fight the US when it’s so big? Kahane said God is great and America is nothing. I don’t mean to mock or harm the US, but we aren’t the slave of any empire.”

Compare this to what President Peres says:

President Shimon Peres said that Israel cannot survive without the help of the United States, at a Jerusalem conference of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute on Thursday.

Peres said that, "for our existence, we need the friendship of the United States of America."

Torat HaMelech - Part 5

I've finally finished reading Torat HaMelech Part 1, cover to cover, all 230 pages with the footnotes. In an earlier post I suggested that I would write a review of the book. So here it is:



Torat HaMelech Part 1
R' Yitzchak Shapira and R' Yosef Elitzur
230 pages
Yeshivat Od Yosef Chai

Torat HaMelech is the book that the Torah observant soldier has been waiting for. The books for religious soldiers up until now dealt for the most part with the private miztvah observance of the soldier: how to keep the Sabbath, dietary laws, etc. in the army. Finally, someone has taken the responsibility to clarify what is proper in time of war and what is not, relying on Torah sources and not from what he or she imagines to be "moral". We learn our morals from the Torah, and not from the Sabbath desecrating judges of the Israeli High Court of Justice.

The pedagogical technique of the book is fantastic. The authors take the reader step by step, teaching him the foundations of these laws before moving on to more complex situations. Everything they write is backed up by Rabbinic sources, which they quote in their original language and later explain in modern day Hebrew. This gives the reader the feeling that he is listening to a lecture. At the end of the book is a three page summary of the book's six chapters. You really feel that the authors are doing everything they can to make the deep halachic inquiries understandable to the average religious Jew who has a background in Jewish learning.

It is no secret that the book caused an uproar among the ignorant and among the learned as well. Personally, I could not care less what the ignoramuses have to say. They lack the tools to understand such a work. What's more, their desire to promote their warped version of reality often compromises any intellectual integrity they might have had. On the other hand, I am very interested in what the Rabbis have to say about the book. The gauntlet has been thrown down! Any Torah Scholar that does not agree with the book will have to pick up the gauntlet and show where the authors are mistaken, using Torah sources. Blanket condemnations that are not backed up with appropriate references to Rabbinic literature will not be accepted!

The relevance of the book is obvious. Immoral people spread their mistaken notions of morality through the mass media. Combat soldiers are sent to jail for using "nohal shachen", which Torat HaMelech teaches us is a completely acceptable practice according to the Torah. The IDF endangers the lives of its soldiers in order to protect the lives of the enemy's civilians, a practice which is against Jewish Law and common sense.

This book is not easy reading. It is not a novel. If you do not have a background in Jewish learning the book is not for you. However, if you do have a background, and you are interested in knowing what the Torah has to say about morality in war, the book is highly recommended. I cannot wait for Part Two.

109 MKs: Pardon Pollard!

From INN:

MK Uri Ariel (National Union) has given Prime Minister Binyamin Netenyahu a letter signed by 109 MKs calling on U.S. President Barak Obama to grant a pardon to Jonathan Pollard. The number of MKs who signed the letter means that MKs from all the Jewish parties signed on and only the Arab MKs refused.

Pollard will soon mark his 25th year in American prison. Recently several former senior U.S. defense officials have said Pollard's sentence was extreme and unfair and have called for his release. Prime Minister Binyamin Netenyahu is to visit the U.S. Sunday.

More information on the Pollard case can be found here.

A Funky Car

I was in Har Nof this morning when I saw this (to appreciate these pics click on them to see enlargements ):



This reminded me so much of the 1960s, when everything was "groovy" and "funky". Here's the car from the other side:



The writing on the rear window tells us that the car belongs to the "Song of the Grasses Gardening and Development Company".


Now that's one funky Subaru. You got to love the guy's creativity!

Everything I've Written About Obama

Just click here to see everything that I've written about Obama.

I start by being uncertain about the man and what he stands for.

As time went on and I saw him kowtowing to the Arab despots and adopting their bogus narrative, I became anti-Obama.

Then there was this post that got referenced by Yahoo News.

Readers of this blog may remember the first time I used this graphic:



Then I concluded:

This blogger did not pay too much attention to the elections in the U.S.A. Obama revealed himself as a sleaze bag to me and others here is Israel during his Cairo speech. His racist policies with regards to where Jews are allowed to live are just a continuation of his sleaziness. BO stinks!

You Must SeeThis! Yaniv Ben David Formerly Busmon Abu-Ras

This is an amazing story. If you understand English, read the article. If you understand Hebrew, listen to the interview:

As more details on the story of an Palestinian Authority Arab ex-con on his way to converting to Judaism are revealed, the more astonishing it becomes.

Yaniv Ben-David, an Arab from the PA territories and Haifa whose official name until recently was Busmon Abu-Ras, found Judaism and G-d while serving a 12-year term in prison. The full miraculous story has come out in three interviews, including one with Arutz-7’s Hizky Ezra [which can be seen here, in Hebrew] and another on Radio Kol Chai with the head of the Civil Administration, Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai, known as Poli.

Yaniv’s speech is liberally sprinkled with “May G-d’s Name be blessed” and the like, as if he had grown up all his life in a traditional Sephardic neighborhood. But in actuality, his story is very different. Without getting into details, he explains that he became involved in criminal activity of which today he is very ashamed, but that once in jail, no one in his family ever visited him. “My crime was not related to terrorism, Heaven forbid, chas veshalom,” he says, “but I don’t want to discuss it.”

Calatrava Update: Trains Sighted!

I got an SMS today from Ya'aqov Ben Yehudah:"Trains now parked at Qiriath Mosh-R' Tzvi Yehuda Stn.!" Ya'aqov (and anyone else who reads this blog) knows that I'm a little obsessed with this thing. Thanks for the tip, Ya'aqov! After work I went to take a look.

Here are a couple of train cars with the bridge in the background:



Safety is going to be a big concern. Don't play on the tracks, look both ways before crossing, etc.:



When will be able to take a train ride?

HH #289

Soccer Dad keeps the Haveil Havalim Blog Carnival rolling with a departure from the regular format. This week's edition is dedicated entirely to RivkA z"l.

More Hope For Pollard?

Lawrence Korb has wrote an article in the LA Times that confirms what I've been blogging about for quite some time:

About 25 years ago, Jonathan Jay Pollard, a U.S. naval intelligence analyst, betrayed his country by providing highly classified information to Israel. Even though Israel was and still is a U.S. ally and is routinely supplied with U.S. intelligence, Pollard deserved to be severely punished for his actions. However, the punishment should fit the crime. In his case, it does not.

Read the rest!

A Couple of Minutes With RivkA

I met her a couple of years ago at the first jblogger convention. This is what happened to the best of my recollection:

I was milling around the place. Suddenly, two ladies were in front of me. One I recognized right away form the pics on her blog: that was Batya, and I was quite honored to meet the person behind Shiloh Musings.

Batya introduced me to the lady standing next to her. My first impression was: this lady is happy! Some people smile after hearing good news, a good joke or their favorite song. However, this lady had a smile on her face and a look in her eyes that expressed a very deep happiness, something that reached deep down to the inner recesses of her soul. This happiness radiated outward with an intensity that could not be ignored. Indeed, the Blogger Conference was a festive event. People there were enjoying meeting the faces behind the blogs. But was this a reason to be SO happy?

I told her that I was the author of the Cosmic X in Jerusalem blog, which she told me that she had never heard of (not too many have!). I asked her for the name of her blog, and she said, "Coffee and Chemo".

I didn't get it. What in the world is "Keemo"? Is it some kind of caffeinated beverage? Is it a Hebrew word that I wasn't familiar with?

"Keemo?" I asked her.

I think she understood my problem: "Chemotherapy", she added as a clarification.

Now I was in total shock. This lady was in the middle of being treated for the dreaded disease, and she is so incredibly happy. I told here that I would check out her blog, which I did.

I, along with many others had "positive thoughts and prayers" for RivkA. We followed her blog, hoping that she would have a full and speedy recovery. It was not to be.

So what was the secret of her happiness? I think that she realized the value of life, the preciousness of every minute. She was not about to waste time feeling sorry for herself. She was going to enjoy every moment that God gave her in this world to the best of her ability.

In this way she was a walking book of ethics. I learned so much from that short meeting. How many times are we upset or angry about things which are really not important? Do we "serve God in happiness" or with a frown upon our face?

May RivkA's family be comforted with the rest of the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem!

New Logo

This is the cherry on the cream of this blog's metamorphosis. Many thanks to the young artist atchalta!

ברוך דיין האמת

Here.

Dvar Torah for Chayei Sarah: Honesty is the Best Policy

In this week's Torah portion we read about Abraham's purchase of Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Patriarch's Cave, from Efron the Hittite. Here's a story that I read in volume two of the book "Avihem Shel Yisrael", a compendium of stories about Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu zt"l:



Even before the 1929 massacre of Hebron's Jewish Community by the Arabs, the Cave of the Patriarchs was closed off to the Jews. It did not matter that this was the resting place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah. The Arabs would only let the Jews up to the seventh step of the stairs leading up to the entrance.

After Hebron was liberated by the IDF during the Six Day War, Jews were finally able to enter the Cave of the Patriarchs. Chief Rabbi Nissim sent Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu to take care of the place. Many soldiers were there. Also present were high ranking officers like Rabin, Bar Lev, and Uzi Narkis. Some important Rabbis also came to Hebron to pray at the burial place of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish People.

The soldiers, some of them wounded, some of tired from days of battle, took a nap on the rugs that were there. Those that were hungry grabbed a bite to eat. Suddenly the Sheikh of the Cave, whose name was Jabri, started yelling at the soldiers and the commanders.

"Get out of here! You are not giving this site proper respect! We Muslims wash our hands five times before entering and remove our shoes. You Jews, have no respect: sleeping here, eating here and entering with your dirty shoes. Get out!

Seemingly, the sheikh was correct. Everyone was silent, except for one.

"Listen ya sheikh," answered him Rabbi Eliyahu in Arabic, a language familiar to him and to most of the high ranking officers. "If the king's servant comes wearing dirty clothes and serves the king food from a dirty platter in front of the the king's ministers and servants, he is certainly liable the death penalty. However, if the king's son, who hasn't seen the king for twenty years, and his father and mother miss him and cry about him at night - if this son, will show up in ragged and dusty clothes, without making an appointment, and will enter in the middle of a meeting of the king and his ministers and say, 'Father, I've come back' - he'll come to his mother and say 'Mother, I'm home' - the father and mother will surely hug him heartily, dirty clothes and all. He's their son."

"Listen ya sheikh," continued Rabbi Eliyahu. "Abraham is our father. Sarah is our mother. We feel at home here. You are the children of al-fatma, the maidservant Hagar. You are behaving here as is proper for a servant to behave, we behave here as is proper for a son to behave."

The sheikh turned red with shame and anger. He lost the argument, and in addition was called "ibn al-fatma". He returned in anger to his office.

The officers there were upset. "We want to live in coexistence and peace with the Arabs. Why did you anger him?"

The rabbi answered, "You have to tell them the truth. That's the only way they understand.

The argument continued for several minutes, until the sheikh came out of his office again. He turned submissively to Rabbi Eliyahu and said, "ya chacham, ya sidi, (wise man and master) please forgive me."

The Rabbi did not answer him. Instead he turned to the commanders and said,
"You see which language they understand. I grew up among them as a child in the Old City of Jerusalem. Tell them the truth and they understand.

Rabinfest IV

Some satire from Latma (Hat tip to Batya):

Update: The clip is no longer embedded. It was brought to my attention that the lady in the film is not properly dressed. If you want to see the film anyway, it is here.

Jon Stewart: No Nachas Here

You cannot help but feel the sense of Jewish pride in this article from Arutz 7:

Jewish-American comedian Jon Stewart is the most influential man of 2010, far ahead of President Barack Obama, according to a survey conducted by the AskMen online magazine, which attracted roughly 500,000 people to vote in the poll.

What yiddishe nachas!!! He's number one, far ahead of the president!!! The article continues, telling us who Jon Stewart is and what he has done. I do not watch television and I have not seen him perform. Being curious, I googled the guy and I found out the following:

Although the topic doesn’t come up often, it’s also evident where Stewart stands on intermarriage. In 2000, he married Tracey McShane, a veterinary technician and a Catholic. Stewart, who does The New York Times crossword puzzle daily, popped the question with a puzzle of his own. The paper’s “Puzzle Master,” Will Shortz, found Stewart a puzzle creator for the occasion.

The Stewarts (they changed their names legally in 2001) live in a loft in lower Manhattan and have two children. Nathan Thomas Stewart, four, is named after his grandfather. Maggie Rose Stewart is two. As Stewart told Tony Blair on The Daily Show in a September 2008 interview, “My wife is Catholic. I’m Jewish. It’s very interesting; we’re raising the children to be sad.”

And then there is this:

Stewart is the assimilated Jew writ large, joking about raising his child to observe Christmas and Hanukkah before wryly noting that "Christmas blows the doors off Hanukkah." In his Jewish mode, Stewart resuscitates the kind of awkward, neurotic Jewish-themed humor associated with USY events and bar-mitzvah instructors. The Festival of Lights, Stewart observes, "celebrates the birth of our savior, Hanukkah Harry."

I know where Stewart is coming from. He is my contemporary. He also grew up in a part of suburban New Jersey where authentic Judaism was almost non-existent. What I do not understand is why Arutz 7 would bother reporting about such a guy.

This blog has absolutely no tolerance for intermarriage, as you can see from some previous posts. You can also see the comment (number 7) that I left on the Arutz 7 article.

The Arutz 7 article, which started bubbling over with Jewish pride, ends on a somewhat sour note:

He has been criticized by nationalist Jews for his coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which tends to accept the leftist media narrative that blames Israel for failed negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

How come I'm not surprised?

1,000 at Kahane Memorial

From jpost.com:

Nearly a thousand people crowded into the event hall of the Ramada Hotel in Jerusalem on Tuesday night for the memorial service marking twenty years since Rabbi Meir Kahane was assassinated, on November 5, 1990.

“You can see a true awakening to Rav Kahane, because every year it’s growing, every year more and more people are joining us,” right-wing activist Baruch Marzel told The Jerusalem Post as he hurriedly tried to organize more chairs for hundreds of people standing outside. “There are those who thought that with each passing year it would be weaker, but that’s a lie.”

Too bad I couldn't make it. I'll have to purchase the comic book somewhere else.

Rabinfest 2010 III

Here's the latest:

Globes reports that none of the major television networks will provide live coverage of Rabinfest's major event, the yearly memorial in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. The event will be broadcast by channel 8, and on radio by reshet gimmel. My guess is that just as Israelis will not show up at Rabin Square, they will not let this bizarre form of paganism enter their homes through the radio or the television set. This is true no matter what pop stars will participate.

Kalman Libskind has written the ultimate article about the "Rabin Legacy". At the time of this post their are already over 500 talkbacks.

Update: Ha'aretz reports that TV Channel 1 will broadcast Rabinfest. Why didn't they want to at the beginning?

Industry sources earlier told Haaretz that the ceremony organizers' had demanded a large sums for the rights to the event, as well as refusing to allow advertisements during the program, a condition that deterred commercial networks.

If so, Rabinfest is not just lowly leftist propaganda, it's big bucks!

Fiddler on the Roof and Assimilation

From Vos Iz Neias:

Playwright Joseph Stein, who turned a Yiddish short story into the classic Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof” and later wrote the screenplay for its successful movie adaptation, has died at age 98.

For anyone that grew up Jewish in the 1960s , that musical was part of the musical experience. I think that I knew most of the songs almost by heart: Tradition", "If I Were a Rich Man", "Sunrise Sunset", etc.

Looking back, I am not sure that the message of the musical was so positive. The religious people in the film are portrayed as being backward and greedy. Tevye agrees to marry his daughter off to an older man because he is rich. Whereas the younger generation, exposed to authors like Heine, are portrayed as being more intelligent and sensitive.

I think that American Jews perceived Tevye's loyalty to God and tradition as being primitive. How many of those that watched the play sided with the daughter that decided to intermarry? How many other saw the religious Tevye's opposition to intermarriage as justified, while seeing their irreligious parents opposition to intermarriage as being a vile form of ethnocentrism? How much did "Fiddler on the Roof" contribute to assimilation?

I don't have an answer.

Is Height Important?

Is Height Important? People seem to think so. So much money is spent by so many trying to look taller. Does the Torah have anything to say about the subject?

In 1 Samuel Chapter 9 we are told of how Saul became king:

1 Now there was a man of Benjamin, whose name was Kish, the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Becorath, the son of Aphiah, the son of a Benjamite, a mighty man of valor. 2 And he had a son, whose name was Saul, young and goodly, and there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he: from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people.

No doubt that Saul performed good deeds and had an exceptional personality. The verse lists his good traits, among them that "from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people". He stood head and shoulders above everybody else! It is clear from the above passage that his above average height was one of the things that made him worthy to be king. He was made to be a warrior and a leader.

I think that it is a universal human trait that we associate height with authority. As children we grow up seeing all of our authority figures (parents, teachers etc.) as being taller than us. We apparently carry this trait well into adulthood. There are even those that say that it is a major factor in how Americans choose their president, that is to say that the taller candidate has a much better chance of winning.

One the other hand, some of Israel's Prime Ministers were exceptionally short: David Ben Gurion and Yitzchak Shamir being examples.

This is perhaps one of the difficulties of adolescence, going through the proverbial "growth spurt". All of a sudden the youngster may find himself taller than his mother, father, and teachers. It is weird "looking down" at these authority figures. Could this sudden feeling of being "big" be one of the causes of adolescent rebellion?

Obviously height is not everything. For King Saul, his exceptional height was not enough. Certain flaws in his character proved him unworthy to lead the nation of Israel.

13 And Samuel said to Saul: 'Thou hast done foolishly; thou hast not kept the commandment of the LORD thy God, which He commanded thee; for now would the LORD have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. 14 But now thy kingdom shall not continue; the LORD hath sought him a man after His own heart, and the LORD hath appointed him to be prince over His people, because thou hast not kept that which the LORD commanded thee.'

Saul's stint as king was not successfully. When the time comes to anoint a replacement it is interesting to note what God tells Samuel:

7 But the LORD said unto Samuel: 'Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him; for it is not as man seeth: for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.'

Don't pay attention to his outward appearance! While it doesn't hurt to be tall, height is not what is going to make a leader or break him. What do you really need to be a leader? King David tells the following to his son Solomon:

1 Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die; and he charged Solomon his son, saying: 2 'I go the way of all the earth; be thou strong therefore, and show thyself a man; 3 and keep the charge of the LORD thy God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His ordinances, and His testimonies, according to that which is written in the law of Moses, that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest, and whithersoever thou turnest thyself; 4 that the LORD may establish His word which He spoke concerning me, saying: If thy children take heed to their way, to walk before Me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul, there shall not fail thee, said He, a man on the throne of Israel.

David is telling his son Solomon what Solomon would later write: "...a God fearing woman shall be praised". That's the main thing. With regards to being tall, it is like chicken soup: it may not help but it couldn't hurt.