THE BRAVE NEW LAND

The word THE is THE most frequently used word in THE English language. I looked it up on THE internet. I thought that I might, just for fun, make note of THE wide use of THE word THE by capitalizing all THE letters in THE word THE that appear in this blog post. So, to get started, THE blog post is about an island in Sweden and, yes…, more. I saw a map of THE island THE other day that, when I peered into Google Maps to view it more carefully, caused my heart to stop for at least a beat and a half. It was an aerial view that some friends were showing me, friends that live in Sweden, but love Israel. They live in Malmo, which is THE same place that you hear about occasionally with regards to Muslim extremism, anti-Semitism, and Left-wing / Palestinian aggression 'towards' Israel. My heart skipped, because THE island reminded me of a lake that I used to visit when I was growing up, near Yosemite National Park, called Bass Lake. My father, you see, was really interested in b...

I went to a Yemenite wedding this week. It was cool… I hadn't been to one in the 5+ years that I have lived here in the Middle East. Thinking back on it, all I can 'really' remember is the way they danced. It was very special (and they knew it too!) Each individual had their own personal style, but following the same basic steps. There was a little shuffle, building up the tension to bounce, then a step and another, followed by a kind of 'drunken' looking sway-step out to the left side and a return with the same flare, accept in a kind of recoil… I couldn't see the women dancing, as they were all behind the machitzah (a sort of barrier to keep wandering male eyes from ogling the moves going on in the other half of Eden). I hear, though, that the women folk were tearing it up thoroughly — evidently 'way' more than the male folk and ‘we’ even had a big stuffed elephant guy in costume on the shoulders of some poor schlep! The room was buzzing, as each sid...

The Alter Rebbe This week, while buying our first 'real' car here in Israel, the car salesman, a surprisingly nice guy (as used car salesmen in Israel go), said he was a big fan of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who, for those of you that are just joining, was the seventh leader in the Chabad-Lubavitch dynasty that spanned generations in Eastern Europe and is now headed from Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This car salesman wasn't religious, but gave me a little card with the 'prayer for traveling' on it. The front of the card had a picture of the Rebbe and under it was the word "Mashiach (Messiah)." The strange part is that the name of the salesman's company was "Elbar (Son of God)." I kept thinking, "Is this guy a Jew for Jesus?" I guess it is possible, but, um, isn't that an oxymoron? I mean, what is a 'Jew' anyways? If anything, a Jew was someone like, yes, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Chabad, fo...

When I was young, I thought that it was all going to be OK. Looking back now, I realize that I was right, but, but… it… wasn't about what 'would' be, after all, was it…? It was really about wondering 'in the first place' if it would be alright or not. Some would say that it was a lack of faith that drove that concept home and into my little brain, swirling somewhere in the Universe. I would disagree, vehemently… But, that is just me, now, going on 50 and sitting here in front of a computer screen, right smack in the middle of the Holy Land. I realize that I was duped in life. I was baited with a holy carrot, a supposedly universal truth, a truth that stated that, eventually, I was going to be OK… That is to say that… I am not OK, now; nor have I ever been… So, who determines what is OK? Just look at the current state of affairs in the Middle East for instance. Iran is about to go deep, deep underground with their weapon's grade nuclear production facility th...

This week… I read a Facebook comment that one of my holy teachers, Mora Yehudis, made about Tu be'Shvat. "The mystics say (on Tu be'Shvat) to daven for a beautiful etrog (a citrus-like fruit for Sukkot) and that it is a special opportunity to be able to look straight into our dark sides and to be able to extract the gift hiding within them ("them" being our dark sides)." This week…, at 2:30 am on Wednesday morning, I awoke to my cell phone ringing. My little brother was on the other end of the line and told me that he had just found out that our mother had succumbed to her cancer and died, sometime last Sunday. This week, on Monday night, something sharp landed in my eye, right as I was bedding down for the night. I tried to wash it out, but it kept hurting, so I figured that I had scratched it. To try and sleep I had to press my eye into the pillow to feel some tiny relief; but, every time I rolled over I awoke from the pain. This week… I considere...

Crazy, living in the past is so… passé. We are so focused on potential future benefits, as they have been projected from our past forays into whatever, we just don't pay attention. I mean, it has 'all' been spelled out, for those of us that are ready to hear it. We just are too busy, I guess… My last post was a real shocker and, yeah, a downer too. Personal business is, as well, so… passé… Let's talk about the parsha ha'shavua, Beshalach (Exodus 13:17-17:16), why don't we? It is about how Pharaoh, the god-king of Egypt, had finally agreed to let the Jews leave and God, in his Infinite wisdom, led the Jews to Israel on the most roundabout way and the 'longest' route believable. God, of course, knew that if He took them out on the shortest route, the Jews would get mixed up in the war that was brewing along the way. God said, "Perhaps the people will reconsider when they see a war, and they will return to Egypt" (Exodus, 13:17). Even though the...

This morning, I began to dwell on the fact that my mom has been in the hospital, dying of cancer, and that a new twist has arisen. The doctor and nurses are no longer able, legally, to give out any information over the phone, unless it goes through her new, younger husband. Not going to dwell on that one... The nurse that I spoke with (just about, but not quite) said, "You don't have time to fly here from Israel."   Of course, that tells me that my mom is on death's doorstep and I won't be able to sit on the side of her bed and ask her questions about the other side, like I had done with my father ( click here forthe blog-post link ). I have to be OK with my last few conversations with her. I have to be OK… I just have to be. This morning, while praying to the Master of the Universe, I had a thought about how all of Humanity is a kind of cancer, sort of like how Mr. Smith in the Matrix explains it, but not so superficially. He explained it as if humans wer...

I almost kept going this morning… I was on my way to work, walking down the road next to the 1870 farmer's town of Zichron Yaakov, where I live, and thought, "What if I kept going, all the way to Fureidis, the Arab town at the bottom of the hill. Fureidis was named by the Crusaders when they passed through, looking around at the beautiful hills and calling it Paradise – the Arabs mispronounced it, since they can't pronounce 'P.' I almost kept going, even beyond Fureidis. I thought, "I should just keep going, all the way to Dor Beach, where Napoleonic ships still sit under the waves. The last time I was down at Dor Beach in the middle of winter, it was right after a huge storm and up the coast at Kibbutz Nahsholim, the hillside covered with ancient ruins from the Romans and Philistines had collapsed into the Mediterranean Sea. I wondered what it looks like now – with exposed artifacts and ancient stonework, maybe… I almost kept going this morning… I thought,...

Life has its ups and downs. I am starting to wonder if I am going through male menopause or something. Not to make little of female menopause, since I have absolutely 'no' idea what that must be like (kind of like giving birth); but, I just seemed to have been getting overwhelmed on every level imaginable over the last few months. My wonderfully insightful wife tells me that it must have something to do with my mother, who has been battling cancer, mental illness, and spiritual dismemberment. But, it is more than just that. For instance, when my mom began her most recent downward self-awakening realization, it was about the same time as my son was fighting for his position in the IDF. For those of you that don't know, he was in the Pilot's Course, not because he enjoyed flying or had dreamed about it for his entire life, but because he just found himself there. He passed all the tests and got in. He didn't like flying. Even when he was a kid he hated roller-coaste...

This is my first blog post in over… a month, so we’ll have to cover some ground here quickly, but first, I just need to make clear that I have been struggling. Early on in this self-induced hiatus, I was even waking in the wee hours of the morning to an inevitable sense of irrational dread. At first I thought it might be about faith, but it wasn’t at all, as when I pondered this possibility, I came to realize that I seem to be fully cognizant of my place in the world and completely aware of ‘Who’ runs ‘it.’ I don’t know why, but I guess I just keep tripping on the rough edges, slipping ever downwards towards the ragged under-belly of… my perception of whatever ‘it’ is. If I were to have to describe ‘it’ somehow, I guess it would kind of feel like putting the last few pieces of a puzzle together and finding that there was more than one of the dang puzzle things mixed up inside the box. Now, when stepping back and trying to get a picture of the finished puzzle, I can feel the picture’...