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Yehuda Lave, Spiritual Advisor and Counselor

A couple of Jokes first thanks to my friend Rabbi Elyada Goldwicht on Friday night. 1) What is the difference between Natan Sharansky (Israeli politician, human rights activist and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He has served as Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency since June 2009) and other members of the Knesset --He went to jail before going to the Knesset instead of afterwards.

2) We just had three days of being off the internet and our cell phones because of the religious holidays. While it happens much more often out of Israel, it only happens in Israel with Rosh Hashanah., the only two consecutive Holiday and it went into shabbat so it was three days. Rabbi Goldwicht told the story of someone who went to a funeral in the boon docks where where there was no internet. The person asked the Rabbi of the funeral what the password was for the wi-fi so he could log on. The Rabbi said "Have some respect for the dead" and the person, said is "that all lower case?"

Addictive behavior is always rooted in an attempt to deny, escape or suppress the fear of aloneness and the sense of shame, inadequacy and failure often associated with being alone. People turn to alcohol, drugs, food, work, TV, caretaking, superficial relationships, indiscriminate sexual activity and even shallow religiosity for temporary relief. Many people remain in stifling or abusive friendships or marriages in order to avoid facing the loneliness which divorce entails or for fear of being thrown to someone else into that deadly silence. Often, they keep hanging in there year after year, hoping that the partner will eventually see the light and change and become the loving, trustworthy person they yearn for. Paradoxically, the fear of abandonment causes some people to deliberately avoid committing themselves to relationships in order to avoid getting their hopes up only to end up being rejected or being the one who rejects.

Be a whole person and sometimes accept that loneliness is part of life. I know, becayse I lost a love of my life after a month before Rosh Hashana. I thought she was it, but we couldn't make it together no matter how much I loved her. Now I am lonely again. Not desperate, just lonely. My friends, time to beat the bushes to find someone who wants love in their life. The song that says there are two less lonely people in the world is my new theme song. Please help. It is a new year, time for new beginnings.

Love Yehuda Lave

We will heel you We will save your sole We will even dye for you.

Sign over a Gynecologist's Office: "Dr. Jones, at your cervix.";

In a Podiatrist's office: "Time wounds all heels.";

On a Septic Tank Truck: Yesterday's Meals on Wheels

At an Optometrist's Office: "If you don't see what you're looking for, You've come to the right place.";

On a Plumber's truck : "We repair what your husband fixed.";

On another Plumber's truck: "Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber.";

At a Tire Shop in Milwaukee : "Invite us to your next blowout.";

On an Electrician's truck: "Let us remove your shorts.";

In a Non-smoking Area: "If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and will take appropriate action.";

On a Maternity Room door: "Push. Push. Push.";

At a Car Dealership: "The best way to get back on your feet - miss a car payment.";

Outside a Muffler Shop: "No appointment necessary. We hear you coming.";

In a Veterinarian's waiting room: "Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!";

At the Electric Company: "We would be delighted if you send in your payment on time. However, if you don't, YOU will be de-lighted.";

In a Restaurant window: "Don't stand there and be hungry; come on in and get fed up.";

In the front yard of a Funeral Home: "Drive carefully. We'll wait.";

At a Propane Filling Station: "Thank Heaven for little grills.";

In a Chicago Radiator Shop: "Best place in town to take a leak.";

And the best one for last…; Sign on the back of another Septic Tank Truck: "Caution - This Truck is full of Political Promises"

Parashat –Rosh HaShana-5778 "THE GREATEST TEST OF ALL"

By Rabbi Aharon Ziegler

I have always been intrigued and mystified by the Torah reading on the second day Rosh HaShana, namely, the Akeida, (Bereishit 22:1-24.)

I understand the great Nisayon [test] that Avraham Avinu, (and Yitzchak) was subjected to. Requesting him to sacrifice his beloved son, the son that for many years he longed for, that son that would continue his life's work in promoting the concept of monotheism to the world and then, asking him to abruptly end all of that on the Mizbei'ach. That is more than any human being is expected to endure. That's the parasha. We know the story, we read it every year on Rosh HaShana, and again for parshat VaYeira.But what intrigues me mostly is the ending of the parasha.

After all the drama and tension is over, and all ends happily with a ram being sacrificed in place of Yitzchak (pasuk 19) that should logically be the end of the parasha. But the Torah reading does not end there. There are another five pesukim added (20-24). Now these final 5 pesukim have seemingly nothing at all to do with the Akeida. These pesukim merely relate to us the names of all children subsequently born to Avraham's extended family. These last five pesukim are so anti-climatic, so totally out of context with the previous dramatic episode that it seems strange that they are in the same parasha as the Akeida. It appears like adding a list of Mazal Tov's to an important document. It's strange enough that the Torah includes these birth greetings as an appendix to the Akeida, but do we have to include and read them on Rosh HaShana?

After many years of looking at it from a pragmatic and psychological perspective it now makes a lot of sense to me. The Torah, in these final five pesukim is adding a significant dimension to the torment and tension that Avraham and Sarah had to suffer. Many couples that cannot have children feel depressed, embarrassed, guilty and isolated. They avoid mingling at social events with couples that have children. Hearing others discuss their children and grandchildren exasperates their own hurt feelings.

Rachel Imeinu, seeing that her sister Leah had born four sons to Ya'akov Avinu while she remained barren pleads with Ya'akov, saying, "Give me children-otherwise I am dead." (Bereishit 30:1). Likewise, with Channa in the Haftarah of Rosh HaShana being a barren woman, while her husband's other wife; Peninah had no problem bearing children. Consequently, Channa is described as being brokenhearted and embittered. (Shmuel Aleph, 1 1-2:10). Avraham and Sarah felt that way. Avraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90 and they still had no children.

That in and by itself is enough of a hardship. But when the Torah adds a list of Mazal Tov's at the end of the parsha, seeing that their entire circle of relatives have many children with ease as if it's the most natural thing in the world. No pleading and praying, no headache and hardship. Not having what we need and want is bad enough but to see others do have an abundance of it is extremely painful. We would think that they must have questioned the fairness and justice in this world. The Torah is therefore adding these five pesukim as an integral part of the Akeida, to teach us, that both Avraham and Sarah accepted these challenges and said "HINEINI". We accept the decree of the Akeida while at the same time we fargin (a Jewish word) them, we don't begrudge them and we are not jealous of them.

We now see that the five closing pesukim were an additional challenge and Nisayon to Avraham and Sarah, and perhaps, even the greatest Nisayon.

Shanna Tovah U'metukah to all.

THE HOLOCAUST Written, May 1989

Beyond Words

Selected Writings of Rabbi Meir Kahane,

1960-1990

Volume 6

THE HOLOCAUST

Written, May 1989

How the Jewish leadership of our times, and Jews in general have made the Holocaust a religion unto itself, and the raison d'etre of Jewishness! Worse, how the Jews revel in attacking and condemning "the world" for its silence and apathy and refusal to act to save Jews during the Holocaust. The Vatican, the British, the United States, the Christian world – all are the subject of almost delirious Jewish vituperation. "They" stood by and watched Jews die . . .

And yet what a waste and worse. What a waste, because did anyone expect anything more from the Christian world? If Christians do not do for Christians in Lebanon who are massacred by Moslems, are we shocked and angered that they did nothing for Jews? Who are we condemning? Those from whom we never could have expected action? Did we really expect them to help Jews? Or the real culprits, the ones from whom we had every right to expect outrage and anger and action and sacrifice on behalf of the Jews threatened with Holocaust – the Jews of the free world!

They, the Jewish Establishment leaders of the free world, who knew as early as 1942 of the extermination and who did nothing, are the real culprits are the real culprits, the silent partners in the Holocaust. The Jewish organizations – B'nai B'rith, American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, all the rest; the Jewish Federations, the national and local Jewish leaders, the Reform and Conservative temple rabbis – all those, who twenty years later were marching and protesting and being arrested for blacks and civil rights and lettuce and grapes and Vietnam. All those who were nowhere to be seen or heard when the issue was not human rights but JEWISH LIVES, 12,000 Jewish lives, Jews who were murdered daily. All those who marched in Jackson, Mississippi, and who broke the law in Selma, Alabama, but never blocked the streets of Washington to shout: "Bomb Auschwitz!"

For make no mistake – there was a way to have saved hundreds of thousands of Jews. The Jews who were exterminated in the camps did not arrive there, as if by magic. They had to be transported from all over Europe, by railroad. And the Jews trapped in Hitler's Europe pleaded with the Jewish leaders of the free world: Bomb the railroad lines and the bridges over which the freight trains ride! If you cripple them for a day, you can save thousands; for a week, you can save tens of thousands! Shake the world! Shake the world!

The Jewish Establishment shook nothing. They were obscenely fearful of demonstrating and breaking the law and shaking the world, for they feared anti-Semitism that would affect them. Had the Jewish leaders and Jewish organizations led 100,000 Jews to the White House and sat on the streets blocking traffic, they would have been arrested, and world headlines would have cried out the next day: "Jews arrested, demand bombing of death camps!" And they would have been bombed. But the Jewish leaders did nothing of the kind. They feared that this would lead to "anti-Semitism" that would threaten them. The Jewish Establishment. The Jewish leaders. They are the ultimate culprits, the criminals of silence. They were the ones who should have, more than any gentile, shaken the world, and they did not. The scarlet letter, the mark of Cain, will never leave them these are our leaders . . .