Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Rosh Hodesh Adar (today) is a time of forgiveness and Happiness-Please forgive me

Rabbi Yehuda Lave

Don't Let Others Control Your Happiness 

"A truly happy person does not allow his happiness to be dependent on any external factor over which he may not have control." (Chochmah Umussar, vol.2, pp.331-2)

Base your happiness on your own attitudes, and you can be its master. If you tell yourself that you can only be happy if others do or say what you wish, your happiness is under the control of those people. You can never have a guarantee how others will behave. Even when they do behave as you wish, you are likely to feel uneasy about how they might behave in the future.

Love Yehuda Lave

Rosh Hodesh Adar is a time to ask for forgiveness. It is considered like a mini-Yom Kippur. If I have hurt anyone, I want you to know it was not on purpose and I ask for forgiveness. Adar is the time of increasing Joy building up to Passover when we ask G-d to redeem us from our misery and bring us to his service in Joy.

This being Tuesday, you should be used to this drill by now. I use a different sender on Wendesday and I have no way to compare my lists. If you do not get (not if you do get) an email tomorrow, please let me know.

your friend

Yehuda

I said goodby to my Ulpan after spending 13 months there learning. Live is full of goodbys and hellos.

Love Yehuda Lave

Here are your Dry Bones blog updates

Iran and Kerry. Who to Believe?

Dry Bones cartoon, Kirschen, Iran, Kerry, America,Frozen Funds, U.S. administration, sanctions, nukes,
The news item:

Contradicting Kerry, Iran Claims $100 Billion in Sanctions Relief 'Fully' Released

(CNSNews.com) – Iran now has access to more than $100 billion in formerly frozen assets that has been "fully" released as a result of the nuclear deal, regime spokesman Mohammad-Baqer Nobakht has claimed in an interview with state-owned television.

"These assets have fully been released and we can use them," Press TV quoted Nobakht as telling the Alalam TV network late Sunday. He said much of the money – Iranian oil revenues – had been held in banks in China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey for years because of sanctions imposed over the nuclear program.

With Iranian banks now reconnected to SWIFT – the global cross-border financial transactions system from which Iran was excluded in 2012 – those funds could now be repatriated. However, he said much of it would not be brought directly home, but instead be used for purchases and investments abroad.

Nobakht's claim contradicts assurances by Secretary of State John Kerry that the actual benefit to Iran resulting from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal would amount to some $55 billion.

Jewish Lives Matter

'Israeli Lives Matter' online initiative draws thousands

Online initiative memorializing Israeli victims of terror seeks to bring their human stories to international aud

By Ari Soffer

First Publish: 2/4/2016, 4:54 PM

"Israeli lives matter"

"Israeli lives matter"

World Zionist Organization

Since the major escalation in Arab terror attacks began some five months ago, Israelis have been outraged by some foreign news outlets who consistently seek to play down Israeli victims of terror, while casting their killers as victims.

That's something a new online initiative by the World Zionist Organization is trying to combat, by highlighting the Israeli civilians and members of the security forces whose lives were tragically taken by murderous acts of terrorism.

The "Israeli Lives Matter" online memorial initiative was launched last month by the Department of Zionist Operations of the World Zionist Organization.

It memorializes Israeli victims of terrorism both from the current wave of terror - which has claimed the lives of more than 30 Israelis and wounded hundreds more - as well as previous attacks.

The Facebook page has already attracted a huge amount of interest, garnering more than 15,000 likes in just one month.

The idea behind the page according to deputy chairman of the WZO, Dr. David Breakstone, is to bring the personal stories of Israeli terror victims to light, in spite of a media which often seeks to dehumanize them.

"The real story of Israel is the story of its people - their passion, their achievements, their aspirations, and, unfortunately, their deaths," Breakstone explained. "By putting a face to those who have been sacrificed on the altar of Zionism, 'Israeli Lives Matter' will help humanize the tragedy of the ongoing refusal of our enemies to accept our existence, while simultaneously paying homage to the victims of the conflict."

Zionist Operations Department director, former MK Dov Lipman, established the page, which posts one or two profiles of Israeli terror victims each day.

"The idea for the page came when we felt that the world was paying homage to those killed by terror in France and California - as it should - without taking notice of the loss of life here in Israel," Lipman said. "We began with the lives lost in the recent terror wave and then began posting lives lost from the past 15 years either on the anniversary of the murder or near it."

"The response has been remarkable," he continued. "People are realizing that we get lost in the numbers that have been killed here and forget that there is a depth to the lives that have been lost in addition to too many widows, widowers, bereaved parents, and orphans, that have been left behind."

Comments on the pages have appeared in numerous languages, demonstrating its global reach.

The picture of each victim, along with a short personal biography, generates powerful reactions ranging from a simple, "May they rest in peace" and "may their memory be a blessing" to much more forceful denouncements of terror.

The creators of the page emphasize that the page is not limited to memorializing Jewish Israeli terror victims - several Christian and Muslim victims of Palestinian terrorism have also been featured.

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