THE BRAVE NEW LAND

Last year on Holocaust Memorial Day, I was very fresh in this amazing Country. I didn’t really know what to expect when the siren went off to memorialize the 6,000,000 (notice all the zeros?) Jews that had fallen to torture, death, and ashes, in the Nazi Germany Holocaust. I remember wondering what it would be like a few days before, knowing that the whole Country would stop what they were doing and stand in place, looking out over the survivors and their descendants, which were also standing… and looking. Ironically enough, I spent that first minute or so looking out across the factory of Germans where I work. Tomorrow I expect that it will be about the same, although with a few minor differences. Things like, the old man that used to work next to me, who one day decided to tell me about how he was drafted into the German army during WWII when he was seventeen. It was towards the end of the war and, evidently, the Germans were just throwing people at the front line. This old man, I th...

In my mind, freedom is a matter of being able to choose. We are presented on daily basis choices to make and, Baruch Hashem, we are free to choose from them. When G-D created Adam, he gave him free will. Our sages tell us that this was in order for us to accomplish the Mitvote (G-D’s commandments) by loving Hashem. We were given the freedom to choose, or not to choose, to express our love for The Creator. When Adam chose to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he chose to identify with his body and ego, as opposed to what his identity truly was, his soul. He became ashamed and hid from G-D because his identity was now naked. He no longer wore the body as clothing for his identity and needed clothing to cover his nakedness. This choice that Adam made descended a fog over our perceptions of the world around us which has affected our decisions throughout human history. When the Jews left Mitzraim (Egypt) 4/5th’s were left behind. These Israelites had the freedom to choose ...

About a month ago, I got sick. It was not fun, starting with vomiting and ending with explosive diarrhea. I stayed home from work for a few days and towards the end of this stint answered my cell phone. Since I was home I wasn’t wearing my fancy new phone holder on my belt and when I finished the call, had no choice but to put the phone in my pocket… where I forgot about it. Then, about ten minutes later, was shocked to realize that I had had an accident… you know. Well, I just stripped down to nothing, slammed the whole bundle in the washing machine, took a shower, changed clothes, and remembered my phone. Not again!!! I ran down the stairs, stopped the cycle, drained the washer, and eventually recovered my phone. It was a little wet but when I turned it on it worked. I dried it out and continued to use it. Whew… almost had to cash in on the stupid insurance thing I had to buy the last time to get a new phone, but the story isn’t over yet. You see, there is something called corrosion ...

I was forwarded this list of questions to answer and thought I would slap them up on the blogsite. I learned some interesting things about how I think about things so, thanks... to whom it may concern. 1. Family background and why we choose to live in Israel. Adele and I have been coming to Israel since our honeymoon over 20 years ago. We came for events such as a wedding, and most recently our son’s bar mitzvah. In addition to this, Adele lived in Israel for 4 years when she was in high school. We have always been Jews that have identified with coming HOME to Israel or Zionists if you prefer. We are spiritual people and being such, found that there was an undertone to normal life that seemed to drive us if we chose to let it. When we arrived for our son’s bar mitzvah, we felt that familiar feeling of, “we are HOME now” once again. That was really our last chance to listen… and we did. That’s why we live in Israel now. 2. Perceptions of violence before we moved. We knew of just about e...

Recently, Adele and I went on a hike to a very nice part of the Country up in the north. It was a long hike and we pretty much covered every topic we could think of while on the way up and back to the same castle that I had visited with the Beit El teeule a few weeks back called Monte Fiord. This was a castle that was built in a canyon instead of on top of a mountain because it was meant to be a kind of Fort Knox for the Crusaders about a thousand years ago. They needed money to conquer the Holy land and this is where they kept it because it was very well protected from invading Arab (pre Muslim) armies. It was very interesting but the most interesting thing turned out to be a little trail maintenance that we did along the way. We decided to pick up garbage on our trip up to the top and among all the variety of trash we found ample amounts of plastic bags to deposit it all in. as we picked up the trash, I noticed that people were taking notice so I decided to make a show of it and foun...