We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
You've all seen photos and newsreels from the liberated concentration camps of fields and piles and small mountains of starved barely alive and dead bodies, and the anguished faces on many that are discernible. I won't repeat them here. Instead here's some photos that dramatize some of the background to the "final solution".
Not all went to the camps, many resisted, and some in the camps found the courage to rebel.
After the war, efforts were made to rehabilitate some survivors. Here's a photo of some crippled children being engaged in dirt lot games to build their strength back and their minds away from the horrors they'd encountered.
A short walk from Yad Vashem, Holocaust museum and memorials, is Mt Herzl military and founders cemetery.
Never Forget, Never Again as regards the Holocaust don't have the power they once had, as ethnic cleansing and mass murders continue and no one seems to really care or make the sacrifices to stop them.
My two sons and I just returned from Paris and Israel, where we had my younger son's Bar Mitzvah at the Western Wall. We had spent the previous days in the Negev. I said to my son at his Bar Mitzvah: You've just experienced a bit of what Jews endured in the desert for 40-years of wandering, and you are at the Wall to where for almost two-thousand years Jews prayed to return to while suffering dispersion and persecutions, so the significance of you benefiting from countless generations of faith and perseverance is highly significant to your entry into Jewish manhood, into the community of Jews who may read from and learn from the Torah and learned writings, and sacrifice to continue Judaism and Israel for another milenium and more.
In another post I will put up some cheerier photos from the Paris area and Israel. Here I will post some photos about the Holocaust and the significance of Israel's creation, reincarnation 70-years ago. Never Forget, Never Again. I am now 70, have grown up along with modern Israel, I've been to Israel three times, 24-years ago, five years ago, and now. The hard work and dedication and brilliance keeps astounding me as new archaelogic discoveries, modern structures, diverse culture, and striving people spring up and overflow as from a cornucopia. Tourism is at an all-time high. Everyone I've ever met, of any background, comes away awestruck. I doubt that I'll be in Israel again. I've Bar Mitzvahed my two sons in Jerusalem, and have many places yet to travel on my punch list (going to Mexico City area in July) before my final rest.
Just a very few photos. First France. From Israel in a following post:
At 8PM tonight in Israel sirens will sound and all stop whatever they are doing, drivers pull over and exit their cars, and stand silently for one minute. Israel prepares to remember 23,646 fallen soldiers and 3,134 terror victims.
That number may not sound very high to an American. However, proportionate to population it would be as if the US lost almost 800,000 in WWII alone, versus the 291,000 combat casualties the US suffered in WWII, almost triple the casualties for Israel.
I always have crafted my own "studies" in Judaism for the major, and some minor, Jewish holidays. This time I am so impressed with a column written by a scholar at the solid and liberal Hartman Institute in Israel, which my esteemed rabbi attends each year and which offers courses and speakers around the US at synagogues.
This column confronts the anti-Israel agenda of trying to disassociate Jews from our thousands of years of roots and attachment in favor of relative newcomers, many indeed only since Israel brought relative prosperity to the formerly barren desert. Most recently, UNESCO ignored the Jewish temples on the Mount in Jerusalem -- our holiest place-- instead just referring to the site by later Arab names.
Here's the column, well worth the read, about Jews as a people and a religion, with Passover and its narrative being highlighted for its a central portion of our daily prayers, our ethic, and our unending attachment to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount-- regardless of diaspora and persecutions.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a member of the Institute's iEngage Project, and a contributing editor to The New Republic. His latest book, Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation, was named the 2013 National Jewish Book Council Book of the Year. His autobiography, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, has just been released in paperback by HarperCollins.
For those of you sick and tired of being abused by empty-headed film celebrities -- many of whom you've never heard of and never will again -- imposing their narrow monolithic partisan views, and the films they love even though in many cases the audiences didn't, here's a more honest film awards show.
Four companies dominate our daily lives unlike any other in human history: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. We love our nifty phones and just-a-click-away services, but these behemoths enjoy unfettered economic domination and hoard riches on a scale not seen since the monopolies of the gilded age. The only logical conclusion? We must bust up big tech.
At 11 p.m. on Wednesday high school students competing at the Kentucky Music Educators Association’s All-State Choir came out of their rooms at the Hyatt Regency Louisville to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Youtube poster: "The Kentucky State Choir Finals schools are all staying at my hotel. They decided to sing the National Anthem together on every single floor." The effect of the singers on each floor of the atrium hotel makes for powerful acoustics.
The miracle of Chanukah, the celebration of which begins tonight, is about more than the sacred oil lasting eight days. It is about the determination of mankind to overcome despair, to rise up in our faith, to have freedom. This meditation is appropriate:
Hanukkah [Chanukah, properly, with a gutteral "ch"] begins on the 25th of Kislev. All through this period, our days grow ever shorter with light leaving our world as we move from the Jewish month of Cheshvan to Kislev. The Jewish calendar is lunar and the first of any month always coincides with the new moon, so it is easy to make certain that Hanukkah always falls at the darkest time of the year, the time when the sources of light --the moon and sun -- together cast as little light as possible. This always falls in the period from the 25th of Kislev to the beginning of the next month, Tevet. All during Hanukkah we light more and more candles, as the moon wanes and disappears and the world becomes progressively a darker place. We are rewarded on the last day when a sliver of the new moon finally appears, daylight increases, and the world outside grows progressively lighter. We can also think of this as spiritually connected with the High Holidays. Rosh Hashanah is on the 1st of Tishrei, just three months earlier, a time when we confront the darkness of our souls and the hope that we can take steps towards the light. Hanukkah demonstrates that this can take place in our physical world if we keep faith and act and persevere no matter how hopeless it all seems. The victory we will celebrate at Hanukkah is also a victory over fear and hopelessness wherever it exists –- including within ourselves.
Odetta, great folksinger and inspiration to many others ("The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta."- Bob Dylan), explains the meaning of one of her favorite songs. Listen closely. Then clap hands and sing along with her.
Today is the 242nd birthday of the Marine Corps. There's good reasons we're the few and the proud, and feared by our nation's enemies and respected by our nation's friends. Those of weak spine and mind may resent those of us who are not, but they are not the ones first called to charge forward, known to win. Instead weaklings guard their own rears (sometimes).
In a recent discussion with a fairly knowledgeable person of centrist views we raised the question to each other, what does the government do well? Sure, there’s education, but it has become too much an exercise in inculcating left-liberal themes and not preparing needed skills. Sure, there’s the military, but it has become undersupported and used poorly by timid careerists and ignorant of war political leadership. Sure, there’s welfare, but it is a virtually unrestrained and lax stipend to secure votes from those without ambition, self-discipline, and illegal immigrants they want to legalize. Sure, there's infrastructure, but it is usually dome ineptly, overly costly due to paying off unions, and the funds drained away for pet projects outside core infrastucture needs. I could go on. What we came up with is the sole thing that government does well is to use our tax money to line the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats, most of who are really not needed except in the view of those who support interfering with and controlling the private lives of productive citizens.
The establishment is largely without merit.
That is the core understanding of at least half the voters nationally, and probably more when directly faced with the question of worth that we discussed. This well may be somewhat exaggerated, but probably not by very much.
The one-sided and contemptuous behavior and writing of the left’s politicians and their media and cultural allies in the NY-Washington, L.A.-San Francisco, and academic self-congratulatory circuits merely confirms this view of the establishment every day almost every time they open their mouths.
The half of America that takes umbrage and rejects their snotty and ignorant disregard of reality, the half of America that really toils and pays the tolls, stand up behind the Trump agenda because they understand it. The Trump agenda is to bring down and destroy if possible the corrupt establishment. It’s an imperfect agenda, opening ground that the establishment thought it has plowed under and sanitized against independent thought, but it is felt and believed to be necessary. That’s why the pouting of the left is disregarded as an immaterial and misleading defense of their status quo establishment’s self-serving.
A central theme in this Day Of Judgment, which begins tonight, is the importance of seeking out forgiveness from those who we've harmed, and determining to set a better new course in our behavior. The flip side of this is whether the one who is harmed will be forgiving. If not, after several sincere attempts to obtain forgiveness, the duty is satisfied. Yet, the one harmed will bear the burden of bitterness. This video explains how to overcome that.
The "Days Of Awe" begin with Rosh Hashanah and end 10 days later with Yom Kippur. These High Holy Days are a period of intense soul and behavior searching, and repentance only comes from abject admission of sins, earnest apologies and restitution to those harmed or needlessly offended, and a strict course of reform. It is appropriate that the Torah portion of this week is Deuteronomy 32.1-35.52. Moses is denied entry into Israel due to his prior sins and he is instructed by G-d to recite a poem to the Hebrews to remind them that if they stray from G-d they may lose G-d's favor.
This period and warning are not applicable just for a day, or a week, or even a year. The warning is applicable throughout our lives. This isn't to say that any of us will not fail from time to time but that the course of getting back on track is clear, is within out own power and responsibility, and does not come from or depend on absolution by G-d.
