Wednesday, December 16, 2015

What's next now that Chanukah is over?

Rabbi Yehuda Lave
Emotional Understanding

In your dealings with other people, do not relate to them only with cold logic. Rather take their emotions and individual personalities into consideration.

These few words can take a lifetime to master. Speaking logically is generally straight and simple. But understanding the unique personalities and emotions of human beings is much more complex.

As a practical tool, focus on those who interact with you in an understanding, caring way. Learn from them.

Love Yehuda Lave

This has been cancelled-but it was an exciting idea. Maybe Trump is the Messiah?

Trump planning Temple Mount visit

  • White House says Trump's Muslim comments disqualify him for president

Republican US Presidential candidate and real estate mogul Donald Trump is planning a visit to the Temple Mount when he comes to Israel for the first time at the end of the month.

A source closely connected to organizing the trip confirmed to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that Trump's staff is looking into the logistics of visiting the holy site and point of conflict between Israel and the Arab world.

The planned visit follows Trump's call for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on," in light of what he said was "great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population."

Palestinians have often used Israeli politicians' visits to the Mount as an excuse for violence, alleging Israel is changing the status quo, which Israel denies.

The government maintains the status quo, in that non-Muslims may visit, but not pray on the Wakf Islamic Trust administered Temple Mount, the site of two of Islam's holiest sites, al-Aksa mosque and the Dome of the Rock shrine.



Jewish visitors are often harassed at the holy site, and earlier this year, a delegation of US congressmen visiting the plaza also complained of harassment by Wakf guards.

Palestinian claims about the Temple Mount reached a fever pitch in recent months and the controversy has contributed to sparking the current wave of terrorism. At the outset of the violence, police found explosives hidden in al-Aksa. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been accused by media watchers of claiming Jews' feet defile the site.

A security source said Trump would probably not be allowed to visit the Temple Mount, the Post's sister publication Ma'ariv reported.

The source said that when the current wave of terrorism began, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu banned all politicians from visiting the site. The source added that Trump's visit is meant to be a provocation, so security forces are likely to bar him from ascending the mount.

Netanyahu on Wednesday rejected Trump's remarks regarding Muslims, but officials suggested his December 28 meeting with Trump would go ahead as planned.

"The State of Israel respects all religions and protects stringently the rights of all its citizens," a statement released by the Prime Minister's Office said.

"At the same time, Israel is struggling with extremist Islam that is attacking Muslims, Christian and Jews as one and is threatening the entire world."

The statement said Netanyahu's meeting with Trump was scheduled two weeks ago, and that the PM, previous to that, had established a policy of meeting with every candidate who comes to Israel.

"This policy does not reflect support for the candidates or their policies, but rather expresses the importance that the PM attributes to the strong alliance between Israel and the United States."

Netanyahu's spokesman confirmed that the prime minister is willing to meet with any US presidential candidate who visits Israel.

But politicians across Israel's political spectrum put pressure on Netanyahu to cancel the meeting in light of Trump's latest remarks.

Meretz chairwoman Zehava Gal- On said such a meeting would be a "slap in the face to Muslim citizens of Israel."

"It is embarrassing that Netanyahu is willing to legitimize Trump as a reasonable candidate who is worth a meeting with a head of state," Gal- On said. "Netanyahu's willingness to meet with Trump despite his serious racist statements authorizes what the prime minister's statements showed about him long ago: That there has never been such a racist, irresponsible prime minister."

A petition circulated by Meretz's Michal Rozin asking that the meeting be canceled was signed by 37 MKs, including two from the coalition: Roy Folkman (Kulanu) and Ya'acov Margi (Shas).

MK Michael Oren (Kulanu) said Netanyahu is in a difficult position.

While Trump has said things that offended Muslims, Latinos, women and others, he could be elected president and it could hurt US-Israel relations if Netanyahu snubbed him.

Trump has not asked to go to the Knesset during his trip to Israel, but that did not stop several MKs from saying he should be banned from the legislature because of his comments about Muslims.

"As far as it depends on me, this racist Donald Trump should not be welcome in the Knesset," MK Omer Bar-Lev (Zionist Union) tweeted.



MK Ahmad Tibi (Joint List) wrote on Twitter: "I asked [Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein] to ban neo-Nazi Trump and all Trumps from entering the Knesset, though his statements are not strange to some racists in the Knesset."

Tibi also retweeted a graphic comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler.

I Am Not Ashamed

I am not ashamed to admit it. I am afraid. I am afraid that my people and my state are marching inexorably to a horror that can best be unimagined. And I am afraid, for the first time, that we are in the hands of people so blind and so mad and so un-Jewish that we may not be able, G-d forbid, to avert the catastrophe.

Last week I was at the Western Wall. It was the Friday, after the Friday when the Moslems, standing on the Temple Mount – our Temple Mount – hurled rocks and stones on the Jews praying below. It was the Friday after the Friday when Jews, in the sovereign State of Israel, praying at the remains of the Holy Temple, fled in panic from the Moslems who cried " Allahu akbbar!" It was the Friday after the Friday in which Jews in the State of Israel fled in panic from Moslems who proclaimed their dream of destroying the Jewish state.

I was at the Wall on the Friday after the Friday. No less than 3,000(!) security forces were there to protect the Jews in their own state from Moslems who once so trembled before the Jew. Three thousand(!) security forces to protect Jews – who were so frightened that they stayed away in droves. The proud State of Israel….

I am afraid. I am afraid that the Jews of insanity who run this land will destroy us, even as all the impossible Herut fools in the United States continue to write columns attacking the PLO.

I am afraid. Last week, I was at the Hebron Jewish cemetery. I saw the swastikas and the Arab graffiti of hate on the walls. I saw the desecrated tombstones. I watched as the Jews held a memorial service.

A memorial service! They murder us and they desecrate us and we react with memorial services!

That day a rock smashed through the car window of a Jew traveling in Bethlehem, injuring him in the temple, cheek, and shoulder. That day, 600 apple and 50 olive trees were destroyed along with tens of thousands of commercial flowers at the settlement of Nvei Michael. But, I return to the cemetery.

How many people, how many Jews, in the world heard of the Hebron cemetery outrage? No matter. How should they have heard of it when the prime minister of Israel, the president of Israel, in its Knesset, and its governmental leaders did not find it necessary to shout their indignation.

A week of Chaillul Hashem, of desecration. And the men who run this State of Disorder sit by, hapless and impotent, silent partners to desecration. And I know that the Almighty's

rage will lash out at us for allowing His Name to be defiled. I am afraid for much more.

Last week I watched as the insanity spread and reached new heights. The Border Police, the elite security forces, were sent to make arrests in the murderous village of Nahalin. They were attacked by hundreds of stone-throwing, Molotov cocktail-throwing Arabs. The Border Police, under a murderous barrage, fired and killed four Arabs. Only four Arabs. The Arabs shrieked in protest; the pathologically sick leftists joined them and demanded an "investigation", the army command, led by two kibbutz members, chief of Staff Don Shomron and Central Command OC Amram Mitzna, so ordered. The Border Police were accused of "overreacting" and "indiscriminate shooting," and two of their officers were suspended from duty.

I am afraid. Yesterday they destroyed the army with their insane orders that gobbled the troops, causing them to fear to deal with the Arabs as normal soldier should. Today, the take the best of the security forces, the Border Police, and destroy them, too. And they must be stopped before they destroy the Jewish state – and the Jew.

They protest over Nahalin? They investigate attacks on Nahalin? Do you know what Nahalin is? Do you know who the Arabs of Nahalin are? Of course not, so read. And learn. And grow angry and bitter – and do something.

In 1948, the villagers of Nahalin participated in the massacre of 35 Jewish students coming to the rescue of Kfar Etzion. They murdered them in cold blood. In 1954, two Jews were murdered by Nahalin villagers leading to a reprisal raid on the village by Israel. At that time, the UN condemned the Jews. Today, the Jews do.

When Israel liberated the land in 1967, the normal, sane thing to have done would have been to drive the scum out. But we are not normal. We are not sane. We allowed them to remain along with all the rest of them – the murderous Ishmalites who cannot live with Jews or themselves (and let us raise a toast to gloriously peaceful Beirut). And now we investigate and condemn our Border Police for having "fired indiscriminately" on the village that murdered Jews yesterday, that dreams of murdering them tomorrow, and that attacked the Border Police with hate and rocks and firebombs in their hands.

We are insane. We are in the hands of leaders who are insane and who march us down the road to horror and destruction. I am afraid.

I am afraid of a government that, instead of supporting the men whom they send into war (and this is a war!); instead of giving them accolades and medals for killing the Arab enemy (and they are the enemy – all of them) – investigates them, censures them, disciplines them. Insanity. And I am afraid.

I am afraid. Last week I watched as the police indicted Rabbi Moshe Levinger for doing that which any normal human being would. Driving in the heart of Hebron, a nest of snakes and scorpions, a city of Arabs with Jewish blood on their hands from 1929 – his car was attacked and a stone smashed its window. He ran out shooting at the Jew-haters and killed one. A pity. One. He was indicted and I am afraid. For I fear that we may be lost.

I see the leftists who control the state news media even as the pathetic Shamir government does nothing. I see that daily barrage of the state-sponsored self-hate and self-destruction aimed at destroying the morale of the security forces, while the tiny people who run this tiny government sit impotent. I see the defeatists who run the Likud-controlled Ministry of Justice indicting Jews who were attacked, even as the army does the same to its soldiers, and the government of Shamir sits in its perpetual transcendental silence. I watch Shamir and his Likud sell out Israel through the kind of deception we learned from Begin. He prepares elections that will seal the sovereignty of the "Palestinians" over the land, as it leads to the autonomy of Camp David that will whet the Arab appetite and increase the Jewish dementia and result in a "Palestinian" state that will be a dagger in Israel's heart.

I see all this and know that if we are to save the Jewish state and its three-and-a-half million Jews from terrible horrors, we must rise up and demand a fundamental change in the very system of government. We must throw out those who destroy us from within, and keep them out. I know that this present system of government that allows them to control our lives and lead us to destruction must be ended. I know that elections must be limited only to those who understand that the Arabs are the deadly enemy of the Jewish state, who would bring on us a slow Auschwitz – not with gas, but with knives and hatchets. I know that only groups which accept the following program should be allowed to run for office:

To finish the Arab war against Israel with every means at our disposal and an end to the immoral and sick "pity" for them; to remove the Arabs from the land once and for all; to annex Judea-Samaria-Gaza and make them part of the Jewish state; to radically overhaul the bankrupt education of Israel by infusing our children with Judaism and true nationalism; and to cleanse Israel radio and television of the mad and dangerous leftists who, daily, destroy us from within.

I know that unless the people rise up and demand such a national referendum, to dissolve the Knesset and vote on such a program, we are lost. And I am afraid.

Written in The Jewish Press 1989--Ask me who wrote this great piece in 1989. YOu wiill be surprised....Yehuda

Vatican: Jews don't need Christ to be saved

Jews can secure eternal salvation without converting to Christianity, senior Catholic theologians say in a report published Thursday, in the latest refinement of their stance on a vexed theological issue.

Addressing a question that has long blighted relations between the two faiths, the report also unequivocally states that the Church should not actively seek to convert Jews to Christianity, echoing the stance outlined by former Pope Benedict XVI in a 2011 book.

The report, drawn up by the Church's "Commission for religious relations with the Jews," goes further than Benedict however in effectively affirming that Jews can be saved independently of Christ.

"Although Jews cannot believe in Jesus Christ as the universal redeemer, they have a part in salvation, because the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable," the report concludes, according to a summary released to the media.

The belief that the only way to salvation is through belief in Christ is a fundamental tenet of every strand of Christianity.

But it has also been blamed for creating an evangelical tendency responsible for some of the darkest periods in the history of religion, that are tainted with violent anti-Semitic violence and persecution such as the crusades of the Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, pogroms and more.

The latest report reiterates claims that it is only thanks to Christ's death and resurrection that all people have the chance of salvation, but accepts that Jews can benefit from this without believing in him.

The authors appear to acknowledge that they are effectively squaring a theological circle.

How Jews being saved while not believing in Christ "can be possible remains an unfathomable mystery in the salvific plan of God," they say.

The report, which does not constitute a formal change to official Catholic doctrine, was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the close of a landmark Vatican Council that attempted to draw a line under centuries of persecution of Jews based on Catholic teaching.

The council, widely known as Vatican II, disowned the concept of collective Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ, decried anti-Semitism and emphasized the shared heritage of the two faiths.

Relations between the two faiths have warmed since then and were helped by a 1998 report from the same commission which called on Catholics to repent for their failure to do more to prevent the Holocaust, while stopping short of blaming the Church as an institution for its silence under the leadership of wartime pope Pius XII.

Catholic-Jewish relations are said to have been bolstered by the election of the current pope, Francis, who has a long-standing friendship with Argentinian rabbi Abraham Skorka, with whom he jointly published a book of conversations about issues of ethics, morality and faith.

He is due to become the third pope to visit Rome's main synagogue when he meets members of the Italian capital's Jewish community on January 17.

The synagogue is located just across the River Tiber from the Vatican, in an area still known as the Ghetto where, under the orders of Francis's predecessors, Jews were confined for more than three centuries until their emancipation at the end of the 19th Century.

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