Just Because.....and a little angel playing the harp

  Feeling The Suffering Of Others 

Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz the late head of Mirrer Yeshiva in Jerusalem said, "While we have to work on overcoming the feeling of suffering in our personal lives, at the same time we should work on trying to feel the suffering of others." When Rabbi Shmuelevitz was in the hospital shortly before his death, another patient was put in the same room. Rabbi Shmuelevitz, who was very weak himself, wrote down with a shaky hand, "When I suffer, it is easier to feel the suffering of others.
All of us are feeling the suffering of the parents and friends of our three brave young men that met their untimely death, just because  they were Jews.

Love Yehuda Lave



In 1946, Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, with no other place to go, returned to their hometown of Kielce, Poland -- and were attacked by the townspeople in a bloody pogrom that left 42 Jews dead and 80 wounded. The pogrom began when rumors spread that Jews had kidnapped a Polish child. Polish policemen and soldiers entered the Jewish residences and began the violence; the Jews were then attacked outside by mobs in a fray that lasted five hours. Some 3 million Polish Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust, yet this pogrom -- occurring 15 months after the end of World War II -- was a horrific aftershock. Yesterday after we buried our three murdered children, an Arab was killed in Jerusalem. Like similar events in Poland,  66 years ago, the Arab's in Jerusalem spread a rumor that the Jews had done it in revenge and rioted and ruined the northern part of the Jerusalem light rail, the train that is called the "peace train" and is mostly used by the Arabs. No one was killed in the rioting, but even though we are in our own country, we share it with those that still want to kill us.

Love Yehuda Lave

 An now a little entertainment:A little angel playing the harp:

http://www.chonday.com/Videos/harprusialg2

  Feeling The Suffering Of Others 


Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz the late head of Mirrer Yeshiva in Jerusalem said, "While we have to work on overcoming the feeling of suffering in our personal lives, at the same time we should work on trying to feel the suffering of others." When Rabbi Shmuelevitz was in the hospital shortly before his death, another patient was put in the same room. Rabbi Shmuelevitz, who was very weak himself, wrote down with a shaky hand, "When I suffer, it is easier to feel the suffering of others.
All of us are feeling the suffering of the parents and friends of our three brave young men that met their untimely death, just because  they were Jews.

Love Yehuda Lave


In 1946, Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, with no other place to go, returned to their hometown of Kielce, Poland -- and were attacked by the townspeople in a bloody pogrom that left 42 Jews dead and 80 wounded. The pogrom began when rumors spread that Jews had kidnapped a Polish child. Polish policemen and soldiers entered the Jewish residences and began the violence; the Jews were then attacked outside by mobs in a fray that lasted five hours. Some 3 million Polish Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust, yet this pogrom -- occurring 15 months after the end of World War II -- was a horrific aftershock. Yesterday after we buried our three murdered children, an Arab was killed in Jerusalem. Like similar events in Poland,  66 years ago, the Arab's in Jerusalem spread a rumor that the Jews had done it in revenge and rioted and ruined the northern part of the Jerusalem light rail, the train that is called the "peace train" and is mostly used by the arabs. No one was killed in the rioting, but even though we are in our own country, we share it with those that still want to kill us.

Love Yehuda Lave

 An now a little entertainment:

A little angel playing the harp:

http://www.chonday.com/Videos/harprusialg2

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Sanctifying Life In memoriam Eyal, Gilad and Naftali.

This past Shabbat we read the portion of Chukkat with its almost incomprehensible commandment of the red heifer whose mixed with "living water" purified those who had been in contact with death so that they could enter the Mishkan, symbolic home of the glory of God. Almost incomprehensible but not entirely so. The mitzvah of the parah adumah, the red heifer, was a protest against the religions of the ancient world that glorified death. Death for the Egyptians was the realm of the spirits and the gods. The pyramids were places where, it was believed, the spirit of the dead Pharaoh ascended to heaven and joined the immortals. The single most striking thing about the Torah and Tanakh in general is its almost total silence on life after death. We believe in it profoundly. We believe in olam haba (the world to come), Gan Eden (paradise), and techiyat hametim (the resurrection of the dead). Yet Tanakh speaks about these things only sparingly and by allusion. Why so? Because too intense a focus on heaven is capable of justifying every kind of evil on earth. There was a time when Jews were burned at the stake, so their murderers said, in order to save their immortal souls. Every injustice on earth, every act of violence, even suicide bombings, can be theoretically defended on the grounds that true justice is reserved for life after death. Against this Judaism protests with every sinew of its soul, every fiber of its faith. Life is sacred. Death defiles. God is the God of life to be found only by consecrating life. Even King David was told by God that he would not be permitted to build the Temple because "you have shed much blood." Judaism is supremely a religion of life. That is the logic of the Torah's principle that those who have had even the slightest contact with death need purification before they may enter sacred space. The rite of the red heifer delivered this message in the most dramatic possible way. It said, in effect, that everything that lives – even a heifer that never bore the yoke, even red, the colour of blood which is the symbol of life – may one day turn to ash, but that ash must be dissolved in the waters of life. God lives in life. God must never be associated with death. Eyal, Gilad and Naftali were killed by people who believed in death. Too often in the past Jews were victims of people who practiced hate in the name of the God of love, cruelty in the name of the God of compassion, and murder in the name of the God of life. It is shocking to the very depths of humanity that this still continues to this day. Never was there a more pointed contrast than, on the one hand, these young men who dedicated their lives to study and to peace, and on the other the revelation that other young men, even from Europe, have become radicalized into violence in the name of God and are now committing murder in His name. That is the difference between a culture of life and one of death, and this has become the battle of our time, not only in Israel but in Syria, in Iraq, in Nigeria and elsewhere. Whole societies are being torn to shreds by people practicing violence in the name of God. Against this we must never forget the simple truth that those who begin by practicing violence against their enemies end by committing it against their fellow believers. The verdict of history is that cultures that worship death, die, while those that sanctify life, live on. That is why Judaism survives while the great empires that sought its destruction were themselves destroyed. Our tears go out to the families of Eyal, Gilad and Naftali. We are with them in grief. We will neither forget the young victims nor what they lived for: the right that everyone on earth should enjoy, to live a life of faith without fear. Bila hamavet lanetzach: "May He destroy death forever, and may the Lord God wipe away the tears from all faces." May the God of life, in whose image we are, teach all humanity to serve Him by sanctifying life.