Brotherly Love

While Jews abroad celebrate an eighth day of Passover on Saturday night and Sunday, many Jews in Israel - especially those of Moroccan descent - will be celebrating the Mimouna. The Mimouna celebrations will begin with a festive meal Saturday night, with large families gathering together to enjoy singing, traditional foods, and spiritual nourishment for the coming months.

The festivities commemorate the hope and belief [Emunah, possibly related to Mimouna, according to some] that just as the Jewish People were redeemed on Passover, so too they will merit the Final Redemption "speedily in our days."Another explanation given for this day is that because of the stringencies against eating chametz on Passover, many people would not eat at each other's homes throughout the weeklong holiday. The Mimouna is therefore a chance to renew ties between families and neighbors, showing that the Jews are united in brotherly love.

Two Quotes

Hans Blix: Then let me look around, so I can ease the UN's collective mind. I'm sorry, but the UN must be firm with you. Let me in, or else.

Kim Jong Il: Or else what?

Hans Blix: Or else we will be very angry with you... and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.


“Any Protestant denomination that would consider the weapon of economic sanctions to be unilaterally and prejudicially used against the State of Israel, or those who would hold the State of Israel to a standard different from any other sovereign state, creates an environment which makes constructive dialogue almost impossible,” mainstream Jewish defense groups and the three main religious streams stated in an April 22 letter to Protestant leaders.

The letter is considered the strongest language that Jewish groups have used to date on the issue.

World Leader Health Tips

Scientists report: Obesity In Middle Age Raises Risk Of Dementia Later On

Do the Omer with Homer

with The Homer Calendar

Happy Birthday Mohammed, hope you like dead kids

why even ask, anyone who read the Koran knows he does.

"KARACHI: A schoolteacher, Nadeem Ahmed, who was arrested for allegedly killing his wife and four children said on Friday that he sacrificed them to mark the birth anniversary of the Prophet Mohammed. The man was caught hiding in the bathroom of his house in Karachi, where police found the bodies of his family with their throats slashed. Those killed included his 36-year-old wife Shah Jehan and his four children 12-year-old Hasib, 11-year-old Fasih, 8-year-old Hamza and one-year old-Fawad. The wife of the accused was also a teacher at a government school."

...for anyone just joining us, Islam is a religion of peace. A religion of peacefully slashing your wife and children's throats for Allah.

Hasn't Germany done enough to the French?

(BBC) Wednesday, 27 April, 2005, 21:16 GMT 22:16 UK

Toads in an area of northern Germany are being killed off by a mysterious disease - they are exploding. "You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding," German conservationist Werner Smolnik told AFP news agency.

The bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size, he said.
"I have never seen such a thing," AFP quotes veterinarian Otto Horst as saying. The site - which has been dubbed "the pond of death" - has been closed to the public.

Hollywood shows Al Queda's POV

Brian Grazer, co-chairman of Imagine Television, which is producing the NBC mini-series - and which has hired The Times as a consultant - said he hoped it (a miniseries about 9/11 dealing with the 9/11 hijackers) would do for Muslims what Wolfgang Petersen's film "Das Boot" did for World War II-era Germans.

"Every approach prior to that was, the Germans were horrible," he said. "He humanized them, because they are human. That's what I'm hoping we do, that we don't demonize, that we humanize all the different sides, and so we see the seeds, and we get an understanding from each culture's point of view as to how they got to such a horrible place."

Hollywood executives are notorious for saying utterly awfull and demented things but every now and then they take the cake and choke on it too. Brian Grazer who is to cinema what encephalitis is to cattle, was responsible for such abominations as Gus Van Sant's shot by shot remake of Psycho, the Eminem movie that he hailed as 'an outbreak of talent' (the word outbreak was right anyway), and turning Dr. Suess' The Cat in the Hat into a movie that scarred a generation of children; is undoubtedly deeply qualified to 'humanize' the 9/11 terrorists.

But beyond Grazer's mindless PC speak, lies the liberal Hollywood premise that there is no evil except in the occasional American right winger and that terrorists and mass murderers are representatives of minority groups who must be understood.

Fortunately the TV series 24, which has Grazer on board as a producer but in a non-creative role, takes a rather different tack. Last week's episode featured a terrorist accomplice who was a United States citizen with critical information about an upcoming attack being saved from interrogation when the lead terrorist calls Amnesty Global (a thinly disguised Amnesty International) to intervene on behalf of his henchman.

Enter a manicured arrogant little lawyer who lectures them on the Constitution only to be shouldered aside as in the last 30 seconds Jack Bauer locates the suspect anyway and begins breaking fingers until he talks. That's politically incorrect Hollywood and one we need more of. We are at war and it is about time the executives in their plush leather chairs realized that those same terrorists have no interest in being humanized, they have an interest in killing as many of us (a category that includes them too) as they can.

United Jerusalem Resolution and black Saudi gold

introduced by Senators Brownback, Crappo and Smith and tells some salient facts

(1) Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years.
(2) Jerusalem has never been the capital for any other state other than for the Jewish people.
(3) Jerusalem is central to Judaism and is cited in the Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, 766 times.
(4) Jerusalem is not mentioned by name in the Koran.
(5) Every sovereign nation has the right to designate its own capital.
(6) Jerusalem is the seat of the Government of Israel, including the President, the parliament, and the Supreme Court.
(7) United States law states as a matter of United States policy that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital of Israel.
(8) Israel is the only country in which the United States neither maintains an embassy in the city designated as the capital by the host country nor recognizes such city as the capital.

of course it has no chance of passing; especially on a day when Bush met with the Saudi Crown Prince and his priority seemed to be oil prices and the 'peace process' which means that in exchange for lower prices, this terrorist regime will demand the further demolition of israel.

Leshana Habaa Be'Yerushalayim

Imprisoned 13 year old girls set free

Several girls ranging from 13 in age in Hevron were ordered jailed by Judge Amnon Cohen over Pesach for attempting to rebuild a house in Hevron. Today they were freed after all. To Americans ideas like slavery and freedom can often some abstract and not truly relevant to our lives; but that is an illusion bred by comfort and security.

The struggle for freedom, the true freedom of Judaism rather than the Orwellian prison of liberal freedom that divides men into castes and turns them into slaves of a bureacratic state; is ongoing.

The thugs of the mistara, who have in the past claimed that 70 year old women and small children attacked them; claimed that the 13 year old girls attacked them. The girls were offered to be released by Judge Amnon Cohen (well renowed for bootlicking arabs and persecuting jews) if they signed an agreement to stay away from a jewish neighborhood that has been repeatedly demolished. They refused and were sentenced to jail.

Few of us are prepeared to be jailed indefinetly for standing up for what is right, but those girls were and today they are free again. Like Shiprah and Puah: they did not fear law, they feared G-d and they were set free.

The left all across the world seeks a police state that frees criminals and criminalizes freedom. That sets criminals free to maim, rape, torture and kill; in the name of civil rights and views Muslim terrorists as heroes. We seek to be free of the lies and doublespeak that underlies the left's ideology, its political correctness, its civil rights, its murders disguised as mercy killings, its wars disguised as interventions and its oppressive totalitarian state; disguised as a fight for the people's rights. We seek to serve G-D and reject the idolatry of the left and its moral equivalence that says of good, evil and of evil, good and know that until we reject it, we are never fully free.

A Lot of Trash

Bedikat Chametz here sure is a lot of work

Mahmoud Abbas wishes World Jewry a Happy Passover

No it's not a parody, it's an actual news story. While Abbas brings Hamas gunmen into the ranks of the PA police, while rockets and mortars continue being fired on Israel and the PA continues to treat terrorists as heroes and martyrs; expect world jewry gratefull for this greeting to begin slobbering all over this filthy holocaust denying terrorist responsible for plenty of spilled Jewish blood with even more vigor.

Two Truths about Rachel Corrie

I got a comment on the 'Forgotten Rachel's' post yesterday telling me I did not need to demonize Rachel Corrie to defend the victims of terrorism. It is no matter that demonizing Israel, justifying terrorism and the murder of those victims was exactly the business of Rachel Corrie and her organization ISM and is a buisness her parents are carrying on, on her behalf after death.

There is however no need to demonize Rachel Corrie, only to speak the truth. And the truth will stand on its own.

This photo below is the first truth.



It is very different from the photos that those trying to elevate Rachel Corrie to sainthood as a peace activist who only wanted little Arab and Jewish children to play together in one sandbox want you to see.

It is a photo of a woman full of hate. A woman who attended Hamas and Fatah rallies. Who burned the Israeli and American flags before watching children at rallies calling for the victory of terrorism; for murder and for more killing. It is not a woman who came to bring peace but one who came to participate in an orgy of death.

Rachel Corrie's organization ISM was linked to the entry of the British suicide bombers who struck Mike's Place and hid wanted terrorists in their own offices. ISM openly endorses terrorism against Israel. Corrie herself vividly endorsed and supported terrorism and terrorists.

Consider the following excerpt from her online diary entitled, 'Courage And More Martyrs' with the martyrs of course in her twisted mind being the terrorists and not their victims. (note that in 'Terrorspeak' a fighter or a martyr is a terrorist and the illegal occupying force are israeli soldiers.)

"In retaliation for this murderous attack, fighters last night offered their life for their friend and killed two of the illegal occupying force, and injuring another. Two young fighters were killed and I don't yet know the extent of other injuries...put all the Israeli/American propaganda aside for a few minutes and try to imagine, please, the courage it requires to do what these young fighters do, knowing that the odds are against escape and that, every time they do succeed in evading death, the odds against a further survival are shortened. Even if the operation is a success the price is always high.

And every time the Israeli Command terrorises Nablus as today with tanks and Jeeps and APC's bristling with death at every junction within the city, operating a lock-down even worse than before (how can this be possible), more Martyrs are ready to defend the honour of Palestine and fight for the freedom of surely the most gentle, generous and peaceful people on earth."

These are not the words of a peace activist, these are the words of a woman who fiercely believed in terrorism and hoped they would kill as many Israelis as possible. This is not a woman who was a victim but a victimizer. Who did not just sympathize with the terrorists but wanted to do as much as could for them until she finally put herself in harm's way protecting the smuggling tunnels through which the terrorists brought arms into Israel.

This is the second truth.

In life Rachel Corrie was a terrorist sympathizer, in death she is being made into an Aryan female martyr with the evil Jews as her torturers and murderers. The portrayal of her death as being repeatedly tormented by being run over by an Israeli bulldozer for wanting to bring peace and prevent the demolition of Arab Palestinian houses is another blood libel. Blood libels are not foreign to the middle east and certainly not foreign to the westerners who want to use her smiling blond photo to indict Israel and anyone who supports Israel. To permit her to be treated as a saint, to allow their myth to go unchallenged is to hand another propaganda coup to our enemies and to the terrorists.

The portrayal of Rachel Corrie's death by ISM and her parents and the media is a lie. She was not killed by a bulldozer. ISM's own eyewitnesses were utterly inconsistent when trying to describe how she died. The autopsy report showed that she was not killed from being run over by a bulldozer but killed by falling dirt and concrete moved as she stood behind a mound of dirt by the bulldozer out of sight of the bulldozer. The bulldozer was not there to demolish any houses and no houses were demolished but was there as part of a search for explosives.

But the big lie goes on and it is our duty and obligation as Jews and as ethical moral people to challenge the lies and to challenge the portrayal of a woman who aided and abetted murderers as an innocent victim.

Faith and Science: the Trees and the Forest

Inspired by the R. Slifkin case much blogging has been done over Faith and Science often on the extremes. Some distrust all science viewing it as an attack on faith, others distrust faith viewing rational thought as the tool to achieve truth. And truth after all is the end and faith and science are the means to achieve it.

Through science we study, observe and hypothesize to understand as much of the world as we can; through faith we accept what is given to us from a higher power as a truth beyond our full comprehension and exploration. Both science and faith contemplate reality but where science contemplates the micro-reality of the physical world as we know it, faith addresses the macro-reality of the physical world as a product of the spirtual one. Science is capable of addressing the physical world to the extent of the limits and abilities of its users but not of the spirtual world of which it is but a product.

The spirtual world is the underlying superstructure of G-D and his will which emenate throughout the physical world whose existance itself is a manifestation of his power. Faith in Judaism has less to tell us about this world, unless you go into the realms of Kabbalah, as much as it has to tell us what is required of us to do in this world to elevate ourselves spirtually by following his will. Science by contrast should not interfere with the spirtual world since it is beyond and above the physical laws and observed and predictable phenomena on which science is based.

This should mean that in theory faith and science could co-exist; the problems occur when each trespasses into the other's sphere of knowledge. When science presumes to set up theories of the physical world as also defining purpose and the nature of human life on earth and all of existance; it trespasses into the realm of faith. When faith asks us to accept the word of holy men on physical phenomena that are simply not so on faith; it trespasses into the realm of science.

Science is a micro-reality which can be compared to a room in a great skyscraper. It can describe in detail the nature and functioning of the room but it knows nothing of the skyscraper. Its results can often be reliable but nonetheless limited because its ignorance of the skyscraper prevents it from fully knowing the room. Faith is the macro-reality which sees the skyscraper but is often fuzzy on the details of what is inside. It knows the big picture and ideally is satisfied with it. But when it attempts to go into the fine details of the room it is bound to overeach itself. Faith is after all a higher knowledge but not one gained by the study of the world but the one who made it. It grants inspiration, vision and a grasp of the moral and spirtual purposes of existance but not the fine details of the physical structure of individual carbon atoms. Such knowledge must be gained through study of the physical world and it is not easily gotten.

The error of those who trumpet that science knows all is in believing in the supremacy of physical reality and materialism. The error of those who trumpet that holy men know all is to assume that because spirtual knowledge is superior in purpose, that it is also so overriding to the extent that it obliterates all lower levels of knowledge and gathers them in. Scientists see the trees, men of G-D see the forest. Both can err, scientists are far more likely to err when discussing the forest by plunging into grand theories of evolution and the age of the universe; men of G-D are more likely to err when discussing trees; the nitty gritty details of how the day to day physical world works. Truly wise men on both sides know not only what they know but what they do not know as well.

The Forgotten Rachels

London from which as the Holocaust grew and raged in fury decisions were made to close Israel to the Jews, from which came the orders to disarm the Jews living in remote villages surrounded by arabs across Israel to prepare the way for their massacre. London which tore away as much of Israel as it could to give to the arabs, on whose throne a Nazi sympathizer briefly sat has a new play.

London, from which Jews were twice expelled. London where Jews were stoned and burned at the coronation of Richard the Lionheart. Shakespeare's London where the story of a Jew held hostage to give a pound of flesh became the story of an evil Jew demanding a pound of flesh. London where Dickens equally repugnant anti-semitic stereotype Fagin roamed the streets in search of gentile boys to corrupt, hosts another anti-semitic play now.

Much as the Passion Plays depicted the evil Jews torturing and tormenting Jesus, in the footsteps of the Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist (which Dickens staged as a theatrical production playing the part of Fagin himself with vehemence and spite before perishing of a heart attack); a new play called 'My Name is Rachel Corrie' depicts the evil Jews torturing the saint of western terrorist sympathizers, Rachel Corrie depicted below burning the American and Israeli flags at a Hamas rally.



Like all anti-semitic stories, like all blood libels, the story will be simple. Rachel Corrie was an idealistic young student working for peace. Based on her diaries, the play will make no mention of her support and affection for terrorists that appears in her diary. The photos will show her westernized with blond hair and smiling gently into the camera, not with her face contorted with hate in a burqa. After all it does not do to show up saints for the rabid anti-semites they really are.

The true victims, those murdered by Rachel Corrie's comrades will not be remembered at that play. The true victims, those murdered by the weapons smuggled through tunnels that Rachel Corrie fought to keep open, will not be paid tribute to by the somber faces and fat jowls sitting as their ancestors sat while the Jews on stage killed Jesus, demanded their pound of flesh and abused poor Oliver. These are the other Rachels. London may not remember them but G-D surely will.

1. My Name is Rachel Levy (Israeli girl age 17, blown up in a grocery store)


On Friday afternoon, Rachel's mother, Avigail, asked her to go to the supermarket to buy some things for the Shabbat meals. Rachel Levy, 17, of Jerusalem, was one of two people killed when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in the Kiryat Yovel supermarket in Jerusalem. Rachel Levy was a senior at the Sieff High School. Fellow pupils from her photography class at school said that she was an excellent pupil, and that an exhibition of Rachel's photographs is being held at her school.

2. My Name is Rachel Thaler (Israeli girl aged 16, blown up in a pizzeria)


"Rachel Thaler had gone on Saturday night to the local Yuvalim Mall in Karnei Shomron with his brother, Lior. Since its opening six months ago, the mall has become a popular meeting place for local youth. Rachel, who suffered a critical head injury in the bombing, never regained consciousness. She died 12 days later."

3. My Name is Rachel Levi (Israeli girl aged 19, murdered while waiting for the bus)

She had been dropped off by her father near the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, about an hour before she was killed. He said: "Adi, my older daughter, told me that the attack occured at a junction where Rachel used to be daily. We called her on her cell phone, but there was no answer. Rachel left behind her parents and two sisters. She was buried in Ashkelon

4. My Name is Rachel Gavish (killed with her husband and son while at home)


Rachel Gavish, 50, of Elon Moreh was one of four members of the Gavish family killed in Elon Moreh, when a Palestinian terrorist infiltrated the hilltop community near Nablus, burst into their home, and shot them shortly before 9 P.M. Rachel Gavish was buried in Elon Moreh alongside her family members. She is survived by her six children: Menashe (23), Yeshurun (2), Avigdor, (19), Tzofia (18), Leah (17), and Assaf (14)

5. My Name is Rachel Charhi (blown up while sitting in a cafe)


Rachel was a secretary at an accounting firm. Her daughter had often suggested she quit her job so as not to have to ride the busses, but Rachel told her not to worry. On the day of the attack, Rachel and Ben-Zion thought to dine in a different cafe but chose My Coffee Shop instead, since it was less crowded. Rachel was buried in the Yarkon cemetery in Tel-Aviv. She is survived by her husband Benzion, daughter Kinneret 14 and sons Ariel 13 and Barak 7.

6. My Name is Rachel Shabo (murdered with her three sons aged 5, 13 and 6 while sitting at home)

The terrorist first shot the mother, Rachel (top right), in the back. Then he shot Avishai, 5 (top, second from right), Zvika, 13 (bottom, second from right), and Neria, 16 (bottom, third from left), as well as a neighbor, Yosef Twito, who came to their aid. Rachel Shabo was buried in Itamar alongside her three sons.

When it comes to Jews, the world and self-hating Jewish have a tendency to lament the perpetrators not the victims, to make heroes of the murderers and those who held the murderer's hands and washed clean the blood on their hands and not the innocents whose blood they spilled; because those innocents are Jews and Jews on the London stage are condemned to be Shylock's, Fagin's and Sharon's. Let us remember and honor our dead because no one else will.

With thanks to Steven Plaut

Boycotting Zionism

Some time back there was an article that listed Jewish scientific achievements for anti-semites to avoid, such as the polio vaccine now on the heels of continued attempts coming out of Britain to boycott Israel and Israeli products, Douglas Davis has a list of items and technologies for anti-zionist anti-semites to avoid.

"Pay attention, Professor. If you support the proposed academic boycott of Israel — and if you are to remain intellectually honest — prepare for a radical lifestyle change. Firstly, unplug your computer. Good. Now switch off your interactive digital television set. Well done. And now throw away your mobile phone. Excellent. You see, Professor, these machines are not only the engine of the globalised, capitalist world but they also depend on technologies that have been produced by Israeli academics in the Zionist entity.

Stop playing with your detached mouse, Professor, and concentrate. I’m afraid you may not use the British Library because it has been computerised by Ex Libris, a Zionist company that was spawned by the odious Hebrew University of Jerusalem. And if, God forbid, you develop problems of the small intestine, you may not pop the Zionist-invented ‘video capsule’, which passes naturally through your body as it monitors this delicate piece of your anatomy.

...The offenders presumably have earned their place in infamy by dealing with the Zionist entity, by being owned by Jews or by having Jews on their boards. They range from Coca-Cola and Nescafי to Johnson & Johnson and Estיe Lauder, from Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren to Selfridges and Marks & Spencer, from Kleenex and Wonderbra to Lancפme and.... All marked for boycott.

...IBM and Intel each have three R&D centres in Israel; Microsoft established its first non-American facility there, and Cisco Systems has built its only non-American R&D centre in Israel. Then there is Motorola, which has its largest R&D site in Israel, and News Corp, whose company NDS develops those neat interactive technologies for digital television. There are many more. "

Read it all Here

Tides of Holiness, Tides of Life

It was Kiddush Levana tonight again. First we search for the moon in the sky, past the blooming branches of tall trees and the dark sloping roofs of houses. The moon has become hard to find with spring, one pale silver sickle in New York City's starless ink-blue sky among the moving stars of helicopters and planes.

The non-religious or non-Jewish neighborhood residents who pass us by must think we're a tribe of moon worshipers as we race back and forth down the street looking for a clear vantage point for the moon. Look, we point up, and they look too trying to understand what it is about a small slice of moon that interests us so.

The Jewish people are compared to the moon. As it waxes and wanes, so too we wax and wane. From exile to redemption, closeness to G-D and distance from him; man is more lunar than solar, a cycle of light and darkness rather than a clear bright light. Man reflects light from Hashem rather than creating it.

In this Shabbat's Parsha we went over the laws of the Metzorah, of the Niddah, of the Zav and the Zavah. All laws of cyclical conditions. Laws that indicate man is not a solid state but in flux. The progressive modern view of the world is to think of it as a steady rise, a growth from ape to man and from man to superman. From barbaric superstition to scientific enlightenment and the apex of human civilization. Yet our view of the world is the cyclical view of Kohelet, Ein Hadash Tahat Hashemesh - there is nothing new under the sun, as Shlomo Hamelech said.

The arrogance of the Metzorah is his sin, it was to think of himself as the sun, high and bright and above all others. A source of light, rather than one who reflects the light of the Tzibbur, community, and the light of G-D. Yet as Shlomo Hamelech said, there is nothing new under the sun. All that has been was done already and the arrogance of the metzorah is in thinking that he is outside and above all else. The condition of Tzarat, reminds him that his existence is not a steady rise but a cycle which he can control only by bringing himself closer to the true source of light which the Metzorah only reflects; the light of Hashem.

We live today in a solar society, A society that worships wealth and power and strives towards an ever greater rise and sees itself as the apex of civilization. We have absorbed some of this attitude, grown comfortable in our ways, in our haskafos and our communities. We believe that the sun shines for us but the Jewish people are like the moon. From catastrophe to rebuilding, travails to temporary shelter; only when Moshiach comes will the moon once again shine like the sun as it did during the seven days of creation.

Bush's Historic Non-Concession

Sharon and Jewish Republicans have been endlessly trumpeting Bush's historic non-concession that Israel can keep some of the 67 territories, particularly those around major population centers. Of course there is nothing historic or any concession about this whatsoever.

"We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of June 4, 1967 will not bring peace." President Lyndon Johnson September 10, 1968

"Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338... rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to 'secure and recognized borders', which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949." Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. President

"I have personally followed and supported Israel's heroic struggle for survival since the founding of the state of Israel thirty-four years ago: in the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again." Ronald Reagan, U.S. President

Historic concession? What a crock!

The historic juncture of generations

"The study of Torah is not simply a didactic act; involvement in the words of Torah is not simply a technical formal matter concretized via the creation and exchange of ideas. It is a powerful experience involving the closeness of many generations, the joining of spirit to spirit and the connection of soul to soul. Those who transmit the Torah and those who receive it meet one another at the same historic juncture."

Rav Soloveitchik

Satmar Simcha Hall Stamford Hill

For the individual who found this blog by searching google for "Satmar Simcha Hall Stamford Hill" I really wish I could help you but frankly I have no idea. Anyone who does though is free to volunteer information.

White House promises to send Hamas $$$$$ if Hamas wins election

WND: In the event that Hamas, a terrorist organization not yet disarmed by the Palestinian Authority, wins a majority in the legislative PA, will the Bush administration still send $350 million U.S. taxpayer dollars to the PA, or not?

Presidential Press Secretary Scott McClellan: Les, it's – the one thing that you see when people have elections that are free and fair is that they tend to choose people who are committed to improving their livelihood, not people who are committed to terrorist acts. And I think if you look back at the previous Palestinian elections, the people that were elected, while they might have been members of Hamas, they were business professionals. They were people that ran on talking about improving the quality of life for the Palestinian people and addressing their economic needs and addressing other needs that are important to them – not terrorists.

As mind boggling as this statement is, it's hard to determine if it's brought about by faith that 'everyone is just like Americans and want to vote themselves goodies' naivete or cynical rhetoric justifying the Bush administration's willingness to deal with terrorists... that is terrorists besides Abbas.

ID Thefts grow as jobs get outsourced

"About 570,000 service jobs were outsourced in the last five years. That will grow by another 1.1 million during the next five years, and increase again by 1.6 million from 2010 to 2015. Overall, 3.4 million jobs, and $136 billion in wages, will be lost over 15 years.

Accounting, bookkeeping, tax preparation, auditing and payroll services, telemedicine, particularly x-ray reading, billing, transcription, medical transcription, call and e-mail centers, telemarketing, claims processing, document management, digitization of information, including data entry, production of shop drawings for architectural firms and mapping. Anything that can be digitized and done on a computer or by telephone can be done in places like India as easily as it can be done across town from the customer in the U.S.

All that work processing medical records, bank accounts, mortgage applications and tax returns that is being subcontracted to foreign-owned companies raises serious questions about security."

Essentially what we have is not only millions of American jobs being exported overseas, no longer merely industrial ones but now even service jobs (weren't we supposed to be switching to a service economy?) and we're exporting all vital data overseas too.

Terrorists operating from Pakistan can now get American identities at work along with information that can be used for blackmail or to build entirely new identities. We are not only drilling a hole in our economy so some corporations can save money which will reward their shareholders in the EU and Japan and Martha's Vineyard but in our privacy and national security.

JTA Lomdus

SAN FRANCISCO, April 13 (JTA) — Despite the Talmudic injunction that calls upon every Jew to write his own Torah, only a handful of scholars throughout history have attempted the monumental task of translating the entire Chumash, or Five Books of Moses.

It's hard to know what to deal with here first? 'Talmudic' injunction or the JTA's belief that every Jew writing his own sefer torah involves an obligation to translate it into english, when in fact translating the Torah was considered unacceptable originally and the translation into greek was considered a cause for mourning.

All Germans benefited from Hitler

Increasingly, rather than taking responsibility for their crimes, Germans have continued to try and pass themselves off as victims of a Nazi dictatorship which is why a new book by German author Goetz Aly has touched off a storm by questioning that mythology.

"A well-respected German historian has a radical new theory to explain a nagging question: Why did average Germans so heartily support the Nazis and Third Reich? Hitler, says Goetz Aly, was a "feel good dictator," a leader who not only made Germans feel important, but also made sure they were well cared-for by the state.To do so, he gave them huge tax breaks and introduced social benefits that even today anchor the society. He also ensured that even in the last days of the war not a single German went hungry. Despite near-constant warfare, never once during his 12 years in power did Hitler raise taxes for working class people. He also -- in great contrast to World War I -- particularly pampered soldiers and their families, offering them more than double the salaries and benefits that American and British families received."

"Financing such home front "happiness" was not simple and Hitler essentially achieved it by robbing and murdering others, Aly claims. Jews. Slave laborers. Conquered lands. All offered tremendous opportunities for plunder, and the Nazis exploited it fully, he says. Once the robberies had begun, a sort of "snowball effect" ensued and in order to stay afloat, he says Germany had to conquer and pilfer from more territory and victims. "That's why Hitler couldn't stop and glory comfortably in his role as victor after France's 1940 surrender." Peace would have meant the end of his predatory practices and would have spelled "certain bankruptcy for the Reich." Instead, Hitler continued on the easy path of self deception, spurring the war greedily forward. And the German people -- fat with bounty -- kept quiet about where all the wealth originated, he says."

"About 95 percent of the German population benefited financially from the National Socialist system. The Nazis' unprecedented killing machine maintained its momentum by robbing from others. ... Millions of people were killed -- the Jews were gassed, 2 million Soviet war prisoners were starved to death ... so that the German people could maintain their good mood." By contrast, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill cajoled his people in 1940, just after France had fallen, to "brace ourselves to our duties" so that in a thousand years, "men will still say, this was their finest hour."

Read it all here

Bush on Israel

"As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders. These should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. As I said last April, new realities on the ground make it unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will be achieved only on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities. That's the American view. While the United States will not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations, those changes on the ground, including existing major Israeli population centers, must be taken into account in any final status negotiations." - George W. Bush

To sum up...Sharon has been telling anyone he can find that Bush promised him that withdrawal from Gaza would let Israel keep all the other territory, Bush has once again reiterated that he has said no such thing, that any territory Israel keeps has to be AGREED UPON WITH THE PALESTINIANS. The US is not promising anything, the widest promise that Bush has made is that any major population areas should be taken into account in the negotiations. Not that Israel will get to keep them, but that they will be 'taken into account' but that maybe it's unrealistic to expect Israel to withdraw from 100 percent of the territory. That's all.

And meanwhile Jr like his Daddy is dictating once again where Israel can and can't live.

Prayers for the Czar but not for Jewish Soldiers

Read it All

Who stands guard at the Kotel, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, if not the Jewish soldier, the messenger of the All-Merciful?Who endangers his own life when Arab bullets fly at Jews praying at Rachel̓s Tomb, if not the soldier of the army of Israel?Who puts his body on the line watching over the cave of Machpela, enabling his Jewish brothers and sisters to pour out their hearts at the graves of their forefathers, if not our brave Jewish warrior?

Would you therefore not think, faithful reader, that the Israeli soldiers who put their lives on the line on a daily basis to protect our holy land are deserving of a Misheberach in our synagogues on Shabbos? Tell me, please, is a Jew who is willing to die in defense of our Jewish homeland not worthy of a Misheberach? I ask those of you who feel that to even make such a suggestion is to come perilously close to heresy: is not the blood of a Jewish soldier worth a Misheberach?

Yet, hard as the concept may be for those outside the Orthodox world to accept, there are very fine “frum shuls” that refuse – stubbornly, adamantly, passionately – to make a Misheberach for the brave and bold soldiers of Israel.

For the Russian Czars, the arch-enemies of all the Jews, the most boorish and barbaric evil-doers – for them frum Jews did make a Misheberach. But for Jewish soldiers in the land of Israel, for the wonderful and loyal guardians of our people, some “frum shuls” refuse to make a Misheberach. Why?

For Romanian dictators, racketeers, ruffians, and vicious anti-Semites (including royalty) we did make a Misheberach, but for Israeli defenders, the God-appointed messengers, some “frum shuls” don't. Why?

For the Polish rulers – may their names be obliterated, the scoundrels and drunkards who imbibed anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk and killed Jews while crossing themselves – we did make a Misheberach, but for our Jewish soldiers there is nothing from some “frum shuls.”
Why?

For Hungarian vagabonds, lowlifes and womanizers, we did make a Misheberach, but for the Jewish soldiers, the protectors of our land, some “frum shuls” will never make a Misheberach. Why?It is written in the Jerusalem Talmud and in Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer that “being an ingrate is equivalent to being a heretic.” If someone does not acknowledge favors done to him by others, he does not, God forbid, acknowledge the existence of Hashem. Can one think of a more powerful indictment?

Even more galling – at least it should be to every reader in whom a Jewish heart beats – is that in some “frum shuls” there are menuvolim (vile people) who have the audacity, the chutzpah, to rip out those pages in the gabbai`s guidebooks that contain the Misheberach for Israeli soldiers. Is it possible that such people were present at Sinai when the Almighty revealed Himself in His full glory to give us the Ten Commandments? Would not the Pillar of Cloud have spit them out? May Hashem have mercy on them.

There are those who argue that the Jewish soldiers of Israel don`t deserve a Misheberach because they are defending an “irreligious state" state that, according to their teachings, was born in sin. A simple question to such people: Is the modern State of Israel any less religious than those states that existed in the days of Achov or Menashe or Yirovom Ben Nevot? To put the question in more sweeping terms, is the modern State of Israel any less religious than were the Jewish states under most of the kings of Israel and Judah? The Gemara says that during the reign of King Achov there wasn't a single lawn in all of Israel that did not have an idol on it. And yet his armies were victorious in battle (Sanhedrin 102, 2).

And let's not mince words: Is it not primarily the fault of we ourselves – we frum Jews — that the government of Israel is not religious? Was there ever a mass frum aliya to Eretz Yisrael? Did we answer the call in the state`s formative years, after Europe had slaughtered Jews in the millions and vomited out those who survived, and when the gates of Israel were wide open and the land was crying out for its children to come home? To ask the question is to answer it.

And let`s get a few things straight about this “irreligious state” that so many of us in the frum community love to denigrate:

• This “irreligious state” is the greatest repository of Torah knowledge in the world today. In fact, more Torah is being learned and disseminated in Israel now than at any time since the destruction of the Second Temple.

• In this “irreligious state” there are more yeshivas, Talmud Torahs, synagogues and gemachs (free loan societies) than anywhere else in the world.

• This “irreligious state” is home to more “Shas Yidden” than any other country. (A Shas Yid is a person who has completed the Talmud cycle with most of the commentaries several times.)• In this “irreligious state” can be found the greatest assemblage of Torah giants on earth. Their opinions are accepted worldwide, and they are revered by all.

True, we frum Jews in America are not fighting in a war, but we can say a Misheberach in shul on Shabbos for those who are fighting on behalf of the Jewish people in our homeland. Not only are those dedicated young Jews going to war, they are ready to risk their lives for the sake of Eretz Yisrael. For heaven`s sake, the least we can do is make them the same Misheberach that our forebears made for the Jew-hating thugs who ruled over them in Russia and Poland and Hungary.

Bezalel Fixler, a survivor of the Transnistria death camp and a musmach of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, is a contributing columnist to Dos Yiddishe Vort and the Algemeiner Journal. He can be contacted at bfixler6@aol.com.

Shabbat Shalom

Two Muslim Nyc Girls Planned Suicide Bombings

NEW YORK - Two 16-year-old girls from New York City have been arrested on immigration charges after federal authorities said they planned to become suicide bombers, according to a published report.

The teenagers were arrested March 24 and were being held in a detention center in Leesport, Pa., According to the document, the FBI found that the girls posed "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based upon evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers," the Times said. The girls — one from Bangladesh, one from Guinea — were living in the United States illegally, the Times reported.

Is this a sign that America is in for the same things Israel has been going through? Up until now we've had domestic teenagers going on killing sprees but it's only a matter of time until the domestic radicalized Islamic and arabic population will do their part too.

The difference of course is that the only ones who celebrated the Columbine killers and saw them as role models were their fellow teenaged sociopaths; but these girls had they succeeded, would have been seen as martyrs and role models throughout the muslim world. That is the difference between our society and the Muslim one which celebrates the homicidal and suicidal fantasies of teenagers instead of condemning them.

Had the Columbine killers been two arab boys and had they done their act in a Jewish High School, posters would have been hanging of them all over Palestinian cities and towns and schools too. If this is resistance, then the Columbine killers were the resistance too. And if the Columbine killers were evil then so are the terrorists and their teachers who instead of moving to prevent the violence, raise them and encourage them to be murderers.

If America is in for a taste of the Islamic terror Israel has been experiencing than Columbine will not be a shocking event but a part of our everyday lives.

Three Quotes from a Man

"Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love."

"There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for."

"You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write."

Saul Bellow died Tuesday at the age of 89 and somewhere he is writing still.

That Wacky Wecker

Lukeford has the contents of the 'controversial' Menachem Wecker article from The Commentator which oddly enough does not appear on his own blog. The fact that something like this got printed suggests The Commentator's standards have gone down and their relish for venom has gone up.

The 'article' attacked Stern college as a finishing school for silly girls who only think about fashion who are incapable of writing anything serious, whose student newspaper is a joke in contrast to the deep minds at The Commentator which Wecker himself represents and and his high artistic standards which can be gleaned in a sample of his artwork he has displayed at his blog up above.

Some people view the piece as motivated by sexism, I think the real giveaway though is his obsession with Christo's orange curtains which defaced Central Park for a week and his outrage that The Observer, the Stern college student newspaper dared to criticise 'The Orange Gates of Doom'. Indeed his article seems obsessively focused on claiming that Stern girls and their newspaper are incapable of comprehending the work of Christo because they're too busy looking at fashion magazines.

In defense of Christo's orange shower curtains, better known as "The Gates" or 'The Gates to an Orange Hell That Defaced a New York City Landmark With Pretentious Eurotrash Avant Garde Nonesense' as I call it, Wecker spews Lashon Hara, sexism and defamation at the staff and student body of a Jewish college. A good demonstration of the corrupting effects of modern art.

Besides his unnatural orange curtain love, Wecker's letter claims The Observer is not as good as The Commentator because it doesn't have a website, though it's not too clear what websites and journalistic quality have to do with one another. He cites spelling and grammatical errors as proof of the Observer's lack of standards and articles he considers silly. The Commentator had plenty of spelling errors and silly articles. And while none of them were fashion spreads, that's a gender difference; not a difference in quality. Neither newspaper is all that professional or impressive by the standards of a professional paper.

Wecker who vaguely reminds me of The Commentator's Mordechai Levovitz in temperament , writing style, and queenish mannerisms, does a regular modern art column for the Jewish Press that delves into the artistic principles of upside down cubes, splashes of paint on canvas and the other debris we euphemistically call modern art. The JP's other writer on the topic, Richard McBee who can at least occasionally be counted on to review actual art as opposed to something that looks like a first grader's finger painting; has an even nastier letter in support of his colleague that refers to Stern College as a harem. (anyone who feels that this attitude should not be represented in a major Jewish newspaper, should address their letter to the Jewish Press at letters@jewishpress.com )

It seems there's something about grown men who become committed to pretending that purple triangles are art that makes them rather nasty and intolerant. Absurdly Wecker can argue that fashion is not art but Christo's The Gates are. Artfully designed clothing is not art but hanging orange curtains all over the park is.

Wecker says: "The very anti-aesthetic model that bars an understanding of "The Gates" from observer staff is also responsible for the juvenile writing and for the six page fashion spread." To his mindset, one must be appreciate of modern art to be a serious artist or writer. What genuine artists of the past such as Rembrandt or Sargent would have made of self-indulgent nonsense like The Gates suggests that they would not meet Menachem Wecker's standards of seriousness. It is ironic that ridiculing modern art makes one juvenile in Menachem Wecker's assessment but producing and appreciating orange curtains hung on a park does not make one juvenile. And most of all making the kind of finger paintings we can see up above and trying to pass them off as art is the mark of a 'serious artiste' like Wecker.

"For Christo is about meditation and about a cautious, humble way of looking. It is about exploring what orange means and about complicating notions of art," Wecker writes. It's hard to know how hard to laugh when the author of the above sentences actually has the gall to criticize the writing and seriousness and aesthetic understanding of anyone else.

But in honor of exploring the meaning of orange, I will make my last sentence to this piece be orange as well. Art is in the eye of the beholder but everyone can tell a snob and a jerk when they see one.

Professional Journalists vs Amateur Bloggers

Battles and backbiting between bloggers and the mainstream media have increasingly become commonplace, with the most prominent being the collision between conservative bloggers and Dan Rather, that ended with Dan giving up the anchor chair - the Jewish Week's attack on bloggers is only the latest skirmish in a campaign by a threatened mainstream media which in this case takes place in the localized niche of the Jewish media world.

And while this shot across the bow may have taken place in the Jewish world but the angle of attack is essentially the same as Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt attacks bloggers for a lack of professionalism. And the same argument is made by him as has been made by all the countless reporters out there; "I wouldn't seek legal or medical advice from an amateur attorney or physician who insisted on remaining nameless," Gary argues.

But what is the difference between a professional journalist and an amateur blogger? Yes there's the office and the fat UJA funds derived salary and getting invited to dinners in your own honor. Doctors and lawyers are trained and taught in order to pick up the knowledge, skill and technique to know the means and procedures of operating in a complex world. Theirs is a hard science and their service is to their clients.

No such standards are truly relevant or meaningfull to journalists and journalism is not remotely like either medicine or law. There is first of all no client for journalism. Reporters don't work for the public, they work to provide content for media outlets, making them no different than any writer. The basic skills and techniques of the profession can be known by anyone with a decent college education or even decent high school education. And this is why Gary Rosenblatt's only real point is the namelessness, it is why he must tack on the 'nameless' complaint to his complaint over the amateurishness of bloggers.

Indeed he would not take medical advice from an amateur doctor or legal advice from an amateur lawyer; but when it comes to journalism, the only real difference he can come up with is anonymity. The problem with that though is there are plenty of anonymous figures in the media too. There's a tradition of anonymous collumns. many others go unsigned, do you really know who writes the editorials in your newspaper? But to Rosenblatt this is not considered anonymity precisely because they are known to their colleagues and that is at the heart of the media's worldview.

The media is not accountable to their readers, as blogs are increasingly forcing them to be; like academics they are accountable to their peers. The blogging revolution is forcibly changing that by first bringing in outsiders to engage in the participatory journalism Rosenblatt puts in quotation marks and sneers at. And secondly by making the reader part of the process, the man or woman commenting on your blog quite likely has a blog of their own or will soon or could create one in minutes if they chose to; they do not have to stare up with awe at the olympian peaks of journalism as mainstream media would look.

Gary Rosenblatt does not make this argument though, instead he claims he's standing up for the little guy being victimized and smeared by the powerfull anonymous bloggers with no recourse. One wonders how much recourse anyone the Jewish Week has smeared has? What is their recourse exactly? A letter to the editor buried on page 57 and followed by a rebuttal from the paper twice its lenght? Lawsuits, slander and libel lawsuits have little chance of being won and even less chance of being awarded damages. ABC news and the rest of the media went into hysterical fits when Food Lion supermarkets were awarded damages for blatantly illegal actions by ABC reporters. The New York Times regularly slanders and smears Israel with no recourse. The Jewish Week has one standard for reporting on abuse case in the Orthodox community and another in the backyard of his more liberal publishers.

Truly media hypocrisy is a thoroughly nauseating spectacle and the sight of Gary Rosenblatt fighting blogger abuse on behalf of the public is laughable. He claims that bloggers are not accountable for their abuses because they are anonymous, how accountable are the 'named' figures of the mainstream media? When Dan Rather and 60 Minutes used obviously forged documents to smear the President of the United States, it took 11 days for them to admit error and Dan Rather still has a job at 60 Minutes and none of the people in charge have been fired. This is the accountability that the most powerfull man in the world can get from the media, what hope is there for anyone else.

Let us speak the truth; neither the media nor bloggers are accountable and anyone who writes must be judged by their reputation and track record; not whether their name is Jewish Whistleblower or Gary Rosenblatt. The ethical and journalistic standards of the media are worthless, only personal character counts. Let the people judge.

Distinctions of Holiness

Parshat Shmini seems to contain four somewhat disparate elements. First we have the dedication of the Mishkan, the home of G-D and the focal point of the worship of the Jewish People. Then the death of two of Aaron's sons during what should have a joyfull time and then two sets of laws are given, laws of Kashrut and some laws of impurities. One might ask what is the connection between these things.

The last pasuk of the parsha gives us a hint, it begins with Lehavdil, to distinguish, bein hatamea ubein hatahor, between the impure and the pure. By placing impure before pure, the emphasis is and priority is placed on dinstinguishing the impure. We might normally think that it would make more sense to place the pure first as more important to distinguish than the impure, yet this is not so.

When discussing the laws of Kashrut, animals that have one sign of Kashrut but not both are emphasized as unclean, particularly the pig which has become a byword in Yiddish, a Chazzer Fissl, a pig's foot meaning a hypocrite who pretends to be pure on the outside as the pig stretches forth its cloven hooves to pretend it is Kosher while on the inside does not chew its cud and so is in fact not Kosher. Thus a distinction must be made, not everything that seems pure is pure and not everything that seems clean is clean, we must investigate and determine for certain.

The Rashi on Lehavdil, emphasizes that it is not enough to merely study the signs but to be able to actually distinguish them. There are different views on why Nadav and Avihu died but the Pasuk clearly emphasizes the main reason in what they did wrong, they brought an Eish Zara Asher Lo Tziva Otam, a strange fire that G-D had not commanded. It is no coincidence that the previous Parsha is Tzav and that it concludes with 'And Aaron and his sons did all the things that Asher Tziva Hashem, which G-D commanded.' The previous Pasuk before that has Moshe relaying G-D's commands with the threat of death again using the words Tzuveiti, as I am commanded. Nadav and Avihu however failed to distinguish between the form of worship they wanted and G-D's commands and thus were punished.

These are similar things after all, they were both forms of worship to Hashem, they were not committing idolatry, yet they failed to make a distinction between things that may outwardly seem good much like the pig's cloven hooves but are inwardly wrong. Worshipping Hashem is a good and great thing but worship of the kind that Hashem did not want and disobeying what he did command, is inwardly wrong. Similarly many self-righteous people may think they are worshiping Hashem but if what they are doing is not what Hashem has commanded, regardless of how great they may be, they are bringing a strange fire, a pig's foot that may seem outwardly good but inwardly not Kosher.

Moshe Rabbeinu then tells Aaron after their deaths, this is what G-D means Bekrovai Ekodesh, through those who are close to me I will become holy. As the Parsha concludes it emphasizes twice that we must be holy as G-D is holy using once again the word Kadosh. Vehayitem Kedoshim Ki Kadosh Ani and you shall be holy for I am holy. Closeness to G-D and our status as the chosen people demands holiness. The Pasuk goes on warning against defiling our soul's with impure things and thus explains why the distinctions must be made, they must be made to maintain our holiness.

Distinctions are the essence of Judaism and of this Parsha. The Mishkan itself is full of distinctions, the outside and the insider, the Shulchan where the physical bread is and the Aron where Hashem's Shekhina resides. Indeed it is said to be reflective of every part of the human body. Similarly a person must then make of his body a Mishkan Mei'at, a little Mishkan that is also sanctified to Hashem. By failing to make distinctions Nadav and Avihu defiled the Mishkan of G-D, the Parsha then goes on to teach the distinctions on foods and creatures that keep our little Mishkans holy.

Shmini is the eight day and the name of our Parsha, in the week the eight day is sunday or the day after Shabbat. At the end of Shabbat we make Havdalah during which we say Hamavdil Bein Kodesh Lehol Ve'Or Le'Hosech Ve'Yisrael Le'Amim, Ve'Yom Hashvi Le'Sheshet Yemei Hamaaseh, Baruch Ata Hashem Hamavdil Bein Kodesh Le'Hol; He Who Distinguishes between Holy and the Mundane, between Light and Darkness and between Israel and the Nations and the Seventh Day and the Six Days of Work, Blessed are you Hashem who distinguishes between the Holy and the Mundane. By classing these things together we assume a linkage, Kodesh Le'Hol is the actual blessing and is mentioned twice and the others are sandwiched in between it. Light and darkness, Israel and the Nations, and Sabbath and the other six days; all these are corollaries of distinguishing between the holy and the mundane. If we cannot distinguish between the holy and the mundane, there is no longer any distinction between darkness and light, between the jews and the rest of the world and the Sabbath itself vanishes. This distinction between the holy and the mundane underpins all the spiritual essence of existence.

We can see today in the world that moral equivalence and a lack of distinctions undermines and ultimately destroys any moral sense in society and any understanding of right and wrong. As Yeshaya HaNavi bemoans, good is called and evil good, darkness called light and light called darkness. No one any longer makes distinctions and as a consequence of that evil flourishes. It is important Lehavdil, to distinguish between the impure and the pure. The failure to do that makes all of society and the world impure. It may begin with things that seem outwardly good, like the chazzer fissl, that seem Kosher when on closer inspection they are not; it ends with erasing all the barriers between good and evil, right and wrong, holy and unholy and darkness and light.

The Mishkan was formed to create distinctions, the service of Hashem by the Kohanim was formed with distinctions. Distinctions between the various parts of the Mishkan and the various parts of the service, between the Kohen Gadol and the other Kohanim and the Leviim and Klal Yisrael as a whole, between the various sacrifices and where the various sacrifices could be brought and how the service was performed for them. Previously this had been gone into in great detail yet the lesson had not been learned and Nadav Avihu did not make the distinction s that Hashem had mandated but did as they wanted and so now Shmini teaches us instead the distinctions between clean and unclean and pure and impure which underlie all divine service. If we are to be a holy people, the service required of us is to remain holy and to reject impurity whether in the obviously un-kosher bugs or the more subtly un-kosher pig. All are ultimately impure and the distinctions between them are the distinctions that keep us close to G-D.

Lecha Dodi Likrat Kallah Pnei Shabbat Nekablah

Shabbat Shalom

Europeans See Issue As Strictly Medical

'Europeans See Issue As Strictly Medical' the headline on the Washington Post article reads when reffering to the Terry Schiavo case.

What does medical mean. One might imagine that this means they see the issue purely in terms of saving and preserving life, following the Hippocratic oath, First Do No Harm; but not at all. To Europeans a medical issue, means that once the Doctor decides a life is expendable that treatment is denied. And a feeding tube includes medical treatment.

This is the same understanding of medicine that the Germans had in which medicine does not exist to save lives but to balance the quality of life against its expense, a decision that is in the hands of the doctors.

In the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legal since April 2002, the struggle over whether to remove Schiavo's feeding tube would not have happened because "here it's more accepted that the doctors make those decisions," said Rob Jonquiere, head of the pro-euthanasia group NVVE

Thus we go from the family or next of kin and the individual deciding what treatment they want to the doctor deciding what treatment they feel is usefull. If no treatment is usefull, the individual can be killed with no compassion or compunction.

As medicine becomes more socialized and centralized, indeed the individual himself becomes the property of the state. His medical care is paid for by the state and therefore the state has the right to decide how he lives or dies, after all the state is paying the bills and the doctors are the ones who punch the clock of life or death in the socialist state. Accepted to some, Rejected to others.

When doctors forget that they do the work of G-D, truly they come to believe that they are G-D.