THE BRAVE NEW LAND

On the way out of the house the other morning, my son Josh asked me if God helps when you ask for it. The answer that I gave him, thinking back on it, seemed to come from somewhere else. I said, “If you make the effort in your task, God will help you do it; if you don’t make the effort, the only choice that ‘you’ have left God is to try and teach you from ‘your’ mistake of not making the effort in the first place.” Josh smiled... and so did I… Relationships between people seem to make all the difference in the world, which is what I have been thinking about this week. Since I have been really busy with lots of things (and you know how it goes sometimes…), it has been really hard to find that quality time to spend with the people I love and care about. Sure, we ‘make’ time, but that, sadly, is exactly the point. We seem to put our creations in this world first; just think of it like this: ‘we MAKE time.’ You know, we are busy, multitasking people that have to get to work, finish that p...

I had a dream the other night that Gilad Shalit was released from terrorist captivity and not a soul even knew about it. Do you know who Gilad is? Well, if you don’t live in Israel, it is quite possible that you don’t, considering the weight the Western Media puts on pro-Hamas-Palestinian / anti-Israel-Semitism propaganda. About 5 years ago, just to fill in any gaps, two weeks after I moved halfway around the planet to start my life again for the third time, the Second Lebanon War broke out. It started when an ambush from the Palestinian terrorist organization that controls Gaza, Hamas, and a virtually simultaneous ambush from the Palestinian terrorist organization, Hezbollah, who control the Lebanese border, captured Israelis, including Gilad, by crossing the border into Israel. He is still believed to be alive, but we don’t know how well he is doing, since he has been refused any medical care from any outside institution. What I ‘do’ know is that as long as I have lived in Israel, h...

“Lenny!” said Stanley, “What was that rumble?” “Um,” answered Lenny, “I think it must have been another one of those unexplained phenomenon...s. Phenomenon has an ‘S’ at the end, doesn’t it?” “Lenny! Nu, watch what you’re doing! Hey! Look out! The treasure is rolling by itself! Catch it!” “Stanley, you are such a nudge... Why can’t you just let things be? You know, there are things in the world that can’t be explained; things like the ball of hot god-light and the dark cold sniffers, things like the water upside down and the village-people in the sky.” “Lenny! There it is again! What ‘was’ that?!” “OK, OK... I felt it that time too. Quick, get under the front of the treasure and I will stay at the back. We can stay like this for awhile, but don’t move! Yeah, like that. And Stanley, try to stay out of the brightness from the ball of hot god-light.” Meanwhile, 20 minutes have gone by in the world of the biggies. Stanley and Lenny are still motionless, hiding under their ball of dung, thi...

How strange it is to sit at the kitchen table, after lighting one little, tiny memorial candle, and cry. I don’t have any relatives that perished in the Holocaust. I do know people that had relatives that perished and I have friends that are one generation removed from those that escaped, barely. But... I was born a Goy that, somewhere along the way, joined the Jewish People and moved to Israel. I have cried about my dad’s death; I have cried about my mom’s illness; but, I didn’t think about those things at all while sitting at the kitchen table, sobbing with hesitant breaths. I think that I might have thought briefly about some level of pain and suffering... that I just could not even begin to fathom, and just stopped dead in my mind’s tracks. When I looked at the candle that I had lit, as it flickered in a tiny little way, I was instantly overwhelmed. There was no thought that drove the plunge. There was no signal that something had occurred to induce my spasms. I (as in me, my soul)...