THE BRAVE NEW LAND

In the heavens above, not in the fabled heavens but in the heavens that are described by our sages as the worlds above, there was once a place where the water gathered into petty and jealous pools of rivalries. The Master of the Universe had to separate these pools by putting a five hundred mile thick barrier or a firmament between them. Wait… I think I need to back up, you see, the water isn’t really just ordinary water; it is a viscous and vaporous condensation of spiritually incandescent and pearlescent… water. This is not only the water of life but the water of everything else as well. Talk about the fountain of youth! Water…I am getting thirsty… for something wet and watery… water… Ok, back to reality. You see, this story is really about how our minds work. It started with water because this is the substance that leaves our body when we activate its spiritual thermometer by engaging in acrobatic mind maneuvering. This water isn’t the normal water but it is also the same viscou...

Long ago, in a time before there was time, there was a garden. This was no ordinary garden mind you; it was a very, very special garden indeed. This was the first garden that was ever created and it was done so in an otherwise barren wilderness. There was nothing anywhere else in the whole universe, accept one thing. And that thing was (and is) so big, so large, and so timeless, that I could never use words and language to describe it. It is a thing that we have come to call by many names and all are Holy with a capital ‘H’. So, not to labor the point too much however, this story starts in a place that can only be described as everything and nothing at the same time. The ‘everything’ comes from what we see today… everything that is always all around us to see, hear, smell, feel, and whatever. And the ‘nothing’ you ask? The ‘nothing’ is also everything around us. The ‘nothing’ is something that we can not see or hear or feel. Sometimes if we are lucky we get a whiff of it though. It sme...

Deep in the burrow, the brothers and sisters were snuggling together for warmth against the damp musty air. A smell of wet fur and newborns was still evident upon entering the well hidden home under the ancient tree. The ancestors had raised all of the generations under this same old oak tree and it had born witness to all of the wonders beneath its roots. It had also witnessed the tragedies. This tragedy however, is foremost in its memory. This story is about one particular creature that had always seen the world from eyes of wonder. Burnsting was a very normal looking field mouse. He had brownish matted fur and an extra small and twitchy nose. His brothers and sisters usually laughed at him when he would have one of his moments of vision. He had a very peculiar way of noticing the small things, while never really grasping the larger ideas like the time he day-dreamt for days why the little line marching bugs would break their formation when interrupted, instead of asking himself how...

October 30, 1991: President Bush (the 1st one) opened the Madrid Conference with the intended purpose of which was to strip Israel of land in exchange for peace with the Palestinian Arabs. ON THAT VERY DAY, an extremely rare storm formed on the coast of Nova Scotia, a storm later named "The Perfect Storm" (which the book and movie were about), and record-setting waves pounded the New England coast causing heavy damage to the President's home in Kennebunkport, Maine. August 23, 1992: The Madrid Conference moved to Washington, D.C. with the same agenda of attempting to wrest land from the sovereign country of Israel, leaving thousands of Jews in a state of homelessness. ON THAT VERY DAY, Hurricane Andrews produced an estimated $30 billion in damage, leaving 180,000 Floridians homeless. It was the worst natural disaster to ever hit America, at least up to that time. January 16, 1994: President Clinton meets with the Syrian President in order to develop a strategy that would ...

Ma hadash… Well, what is new anyways? In the big picture… we are all still working on our little lives, busy all the time, living day to day. The news is just more of the same (check this link out for the official… ‘Global Incident Map’ to see what I mean). http://www.globalincidentmap.com/home.php Is there anything that is really new to us in the world? Are we all just on a cosmic zip-line that takes us down the same track as the last time? Or, are we really doing something that counts, something with meaning to us and the people around us? Maybe if we are lucky, there could also be some meaning beyond our little lives and into the unknown. Well, the word unknown is kind of leading because we actually do know if we want to take the time to not only look, but to believe. I have recently taken steps to continue to walk up that path. A path that started for me as a Surfer on the beaches of Southern California and in the want-to-be ashram of the Hare Krishna’s in Laguna Beach, Calif...

When I woke up the morning of my wife Adele’s return from her first journey chutz la’Arets (out of Israel) since we moved here, the house had just been cleaned by May, the Pilipino woman that Adele had arranged three weeks before, Shabbat dinner was planned, and I had time before driving to the namal ta’ufa (airport) to shop for the week and then get dinner started, or so I thought. The morning started just as any other Friday morning had. I quickly grabbed the load of laundry that was still left, headed downstairs and shoved it all into the mechona hakvisa (washing machine). Then, I started looking for my cellphone… After I waited while the ridiculous washing machine (see Adele’s letter for further information on that one at - http://adventureoodle.blogspot.com/2007/08/european-clothes-washers-and-tears.html ) to drain so that I could open the locked door and rip the clothes out, I found it… in the bottom of the washer. Its light was still on in a desperate attempt, it seemed, to l...

At work at the factory of Beth El in Zichron Yaakov, they are building a wall. It is a wall, like any wall is, to keep out thieves and undesirables, a wall for privacy, and a wall for protection. Walls have been built throughout time for the same reasons. We feel secure behind walls but if we are on the wrong side we feel threatened by them. A wall is a symbol of many things. It can symbolize the primordial awareness of ‘fortress’ or it can just be something to perk our curiosity… what is behind that wall anyways? I have heard tales of giant walls surrounding giant homes in Johannesburg, South Africa to protect from rampant violence and thievery. I have been to the only wall I know of that was built to keep people inside of a country instead of out, the Berlin wall in what was then, East Germany. I went to the Pink Floyd concert at the L.A. Forum entitled “The Wall” and watched a mach plane land on it and crash it down. In my youth, while spending my Summers near Yosemite National Par...

At work the other day, I was having a great day. It was morning and I had many, many cabinets to make. It had just rained and the day before it was so clear that I could see Har Hermon from my mirpeset (porch). Har Hermon is a mountain on the borders of Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. It is the place that (Bisrat Hashem ye’heyea sheleg) we will go snowboarding this year. There is no out-of-bounds skiing there. The area is surrounded by a military presence and Syrian mine fields that were left from the last war. You still can hear stories of cows wondering off and becoming instant hamburger from an ill fated step. That little story is a side step to this one so to get back on point; at work that day, I was feeling really great. The rain felt good, and my nephesh (soul) was content and happy. Often times at work I start writing a story or blog in my head and later write it down. Recently, I had studied a text or two with my friend Moshe about the sixth day of creation, deepest, darkest Afric...

My Son Zach is now 15 years old. He will be 16 in April and at that time; he will need to register for the draft. I remember when I was young and also turning 16 and needed to do the same in the U.S. I remember that my father told me that I had to do it, but that it was a big decision. I now wonder what that meant… a big decision, but that I had to register anyways. At the time, there were still a lot of vibes going around about the Vietnam War and how it resulted in mostly lost Sons, Fathers, and relatives, with nothing but a lost battle in the War against Communism to show for it. It was a very unpopular war in not only the U.S., but in the World. All the wars before that were accompanied by fanfare and support for the men and women that fought for the ideals and freedoms of the United States of America and the larger free world. Vietnam was different. It changed the public eye about how to think about government. To this day, we see with the current crises in Iraq and Afghanistan, w...

(Garden of Eden) My wife Adele has been out of Israel for only one week of a planned three week visit to the States. Even though we already miss her, early on all four boys in her household were ecstatic about the new found freedoms. Well, maybe the dog wasn’t so thrilled. Dude the dog had an unfortunate experience with nerves and missing his Mommy when about two days into this so-called freedom of the household he decided to change his poop schedule. He usually had a daily bowel movement on my late-night walk with him, but no… he wanted to go right in the middle of a really good movie and a cold beer! I, conveniently, didn’t heed his rather obvious warnings of impending doom and continued to watch the movie with the boys. Just being able to do this without the nagging insistence on playing with the toy of the day should have been warning enough for me of what was to come. To make a long and unpleasant story short; when it was bed time and I took him for his walk, he didn’t go poop lik...

(My Birthay!) I was born in a hospital in Tustin (I think), California, The United States of America, on October 30, 1962. (Thanks Mom!) (And see picture of me in high school… couldn’t find any real baby pictures, oh well) that makes me exactly 45 years old… tomorrow. Happy birthday to me!!! Well, wait a second. My Jewish birthday is Cheshvan 2, 5723. What exactly does that mean? Do I have two birthdays, or just two calendars? If the former, then because of the combined effect of having two birthdays every year I would have been 89 on October 14 this year and tomorrow I would be 90 years old. So, that sounds like a bad idea. Nothing against being 90 mind you, I just want to remember a little more for the time I put in. So that just leaves the possibility of two, totally separate and distinct, calendars! But how is that possible you ask? Can we really live with dates like October 30 and Cheshvan 2 at the same time? And just to make it more complicated the dates are never the same every ...

Recently we had a tee’oule (trip) with my Mother in Law Ruth to the northern borders of Israel between Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. We took Josh with us and played it by ear as we went, with no real plan. This, of course, led to an exorbitant amount of time at the fun zone when we arrived in Kiryat Shmone. It WAS fun though. We took a cable car up the side of the cliff there and witnessed where the trees that were once covering the hillsides were burnt away by the rockets from last years war. We watched crazy downhill bike riders in all their gear ride up and then fly down the mountainside. Josh did a really amazing, and a bit scary zip line down the cliff as well. If you want to watch… now you can at the following link! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjMbCpoEl64 yeah! I love when technology works. He had fun and so did Baba Ruthie, but maybe it wasn’t until a little later on when we stopped at Tel Dan at a really great restaurant called Dag al HaDan (Fish on The Dan River). We sat on ...

When I was a kid, I grew up in Orange County, California, in the U.S.A. I was born in a town called Tustin, and moved thereafter, to a tract home development in a place in the middle of a really big orange grove called El Toro. We lived there until I was in 1st grade and then we moved to Laguna Beach, California, although it wasn’t like the TV series that you may have seen. Back then, it was a very sleepy and isolated beachside community with a lot of tradition in the arts and to be truthful, drug trafficking. It was heaven to grow up there. We had the Pacific Ocean and the whole town was surrounded by what they called a green belt. This green belt was an untamed natural place that, when we were able to sneak into, became an amazing place to build forts, ride dirt bikes, and just have secrets, and we had a lot of them. My childhood was an enchanting place. It was a place of spontaneous happenings, like the performance art that we did for tourists when we were in high school, and the cr...

(shvitote and more, what to do?) So, what does shvitote mean you ask? It is a simple answer that has a very long and frustrating explanation. A shvita (singular for shvitote) is usually for a good cause, but also produces much anguish for parents and at the same time, much excitement for kids (see picture for emotional value). Yes, you may have guessed it already; we are talking about the dreaded school strikes. The Israeli school teachers are very poorly paid and have been for long enough to insure that the lower education in Israel is not of the highest caliber. We knew this before we came to live here and left what was supposed to be one of the best school systems in the United States. But we still made the decision to make Aliyah to Israel. This was in part because we knew that education is more then just book learning. We knew that to get a proper education for our children we would really need to step up to the plate and do something extraordinary. We needed to make sure that our...

Sukkot in Israel is a very different thing than in the States. In the States, we make a Sukka, usually… but only if we are involved with Judaism on a marginally deeper level. There are many ideas about Sukkot and why we are supposed to build one and live in it for seven days, but the most convincing argument comes directly from The Big Guy. He doesn’t say anything about the Arbaim Menim (Four Species), Palm, Citroen, Myrtle, and Willow, but he does say that we need to dwell in the Sukka for seven days. I think we add another day for Simchat Torah because the holiday is actually 8 days long. Before the Holiday begins, right on the heels of Yom Kippur (the very religious actually start as soon as the fast is over) we start to build the Sukka and this leaves us very little time to get it done and livable. There are kids dragging the Skach (branches and leaves for the roof) around all over the place and funny little carts selling it in the Religious neighborhoods. The trees are trimmed all...

Even though I am beginning to understand a bit of Hebrew, know what to do in some situations, and am starting to expect certain things from our new life here in HaAretz, I still think of myself as an utter stranger here. On the inside I feel more at home then any other place I have been in on the planet but I suspect that I will always feel like a stranger to some extent in this amazing and crazy land. I have also noticed however, that when I take a moment to really look at the people around me, that everyone else also seems to be a stranger in some indefinable way to there environments. Even the Sabras (born Israelis) seem a little like they are strangers. Now that is a strange word for born Israelis… Sabra. It comes from a cactus plant that is indigenous to Mexico in Northern America. The idea behind this unusual choice of names is that a Sabra is prickly on the outside and soft on the inside. The analogy sure fits, but what about the origination of the plant? I would think they woul...

Over the last few weeks I have been studying Sipur Yona (The Story of Jonah) in preparation for the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) which is this Shabbat (Satuday). My Brother in Law, Abba, told me about a Rabbi called the Vilna Ga’on (genius from Vilna) that did an amazing study of Sipur Yona. Some people just refer to this guy as the Ga’on so you get the idea about how smart he was. He broke the story down into word by word metaphors and it is a really amazing ride to go on. I asked my Yeshiva student friend Moshe to study it with me and he has been so wonderful to work with on this. I go to the Yeshiva up the street from me once or twice a week and we have been covering Sipur Yona as deeply as possible… for us non geniuses that is. I really wanted to complete it for Yom Kippur, but it looks far away still. We have a chapter and a half to go. We shall see. Anyways, in the story, there is mention of a plant called a Kikayon, which grew over Yona and gave him some shade. I am not actuall...

We have had an amazing year here in Israel. We have visited many places where amazing things have occurred throughout history. We have begun to adjust to the many differences in culture and lifestyle (we still have miles… I mean kilometers to go!). And that is really what this time of the year is all about, anyways… to take stock of who we are, who we have been for the last year, and how do we want to be written in the book of life for the year to come. It is said that everything is decided for the year to come before we even begin to live it. Well if that is the case then I hope that everyone has the best year to come as is heavenly possible! Ok, now that the official stuff is done… I went to the green line today. This is an artificially placed border which roughly defines the 1967 border of Israel and what is called the stachime (West Bank Territories) I went with my boss and some of the Germans from work to move some chairs for a Techus (ceremonial gathering) that they will be havin...