Archaeologists discover oldest Hebrew text in Israel, matches biblical account and Melanie Phillips Why liberals fail to equate Israel and Ukraine and funeral jokes and Passover Friday night and Waqf official says significantly lower turnout at Friday Ramadan prayers in Jerusalem’s Old City By Aaron Boxerman and Arab Students going to Israeli University on your tax dollarsCall for Intifada at Tel-Aviv University

View in browser Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement. Love Yehuda Lave Join my blog by sending me an email to YehudaLave@gmail.com The Three Musketeers at the Kotel The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember. The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave. Arab Students going to Israeli University on your tax dollars Call for Intifada at Tel-Aviv University Hours before the horrific terrorist attack in Tel-Aviv on April 7, 2022, in which three Israelis were murdered, students at Tel-Aviv University were calling for Intifada and inciting violence against Jews. Archaeologists discover oldest Hebrew text in Israel, matches biblical account Ancient tablet discovered by archaeologists on Mt. Ebal in Samaria. (Michael C. Luddeni/Associates for Biblical Research) The discovery was made at Mount Ebal in Samaria, the site of biblical curses — relevant to the tablet's wording. By Adina Katz, World Israel News Biblical archaeologist Dr. Scott Stripling, along with a group of internationally renowned scientists, unveiled what he says is the oldest example of Hebrew text ever found in the Holy Land, dated circa 1200 BCE. The discovery was made at Mount Ebal in Samaria, in the vicinity of Nablus (Shechem). Remarkably, the text also includes the holy name of God (YHVH). The archaeologists – from the Associates for Biblical Research, a Christian apologetics ministry dedicated to demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible through archaeological and biblical research, as described on its website – held a press conference on Thursday at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas, to announce the exceptional discovery. The tiny, two-by-two centimeter defixio (curse tablet) came to light in December 2019 when Stripling, ABR's director of excavations and director of the Archaeological Studies Institute at The Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas, led an ABR team to wet sift the discarded material from Adam Zertal's excavations on Mt. Ebal from 1982 to 1989. "These types of amulets are well known in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but Zertal's excavated pottery dated to the Iron Age I and Late Bronze Age, so logically the tablet derived from one of these earlier periods," Stripling said. "Even so, our discovery of a Late Bronze Age inscription stunned me." Mt. Ebal is mentioned in Deuteronomy and the Book of Joshua as the site of biblical curses, the ABR noted – as opposed to Mt. Gerizim across from it, which is the site of blessings. Moses urged the Israelites in his farewell before his death to follow God's commandments and that He has given them the choice between a life of blessings and one of curses: "And it will be, when the Lord, your God, will bring you to the land to which you come, to possess it, that you shall place those blessing upon Mount Gerizim, and those cursing upon Mount Ebal." (Deuteronomy 11:29) The ancient inscription uncovered by the archaeological team contains 40 letters and reads: "Cursed, cursed, cursed, cursed by the God" – followed by the Hebrew name for God. "You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by [God's name] – cursed, cursed, cursed," the tablet, likely meant to direct Divine wrath on an enemy. Waqf official says significantly lower turnout at Friday Ramadan prayers in Jerusalem's Old City Worshippers attend Ramadan Friday prayers in the Old City of Jerusalem on April 8, 2022. (AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP) Around 80,000 worshippers prayed today at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a significantly lower number than usual, Waqf official Azzam al-Khatib says. "During a normal Ramadan Friday, we would expect to see as many as 200,000," Khatib says in a phone call. Khatib says fewer worshippers arrived from the West Bank than expected, although he declines to comment further as to why. By Aaron Boxerman FEATURED COLUMNMELANIE PHILLIPS Why liberals fail to equate Israel and Ukraine The reaction to aggression against each country plays very differently in the anti-Semitic West. Two women and a rabbi were among four Israelis murdered in a terrorist attack this week in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva. The terrorist, a Bedouin from a village of Houra, north of the city, had previously been jailed for supporting ISIS. The Beersheva attack was, in fact, the fourth terrorist attack on Israelis in a week. There were also stabbings and a shooting attack in eastern Jerusalem, west Jerusalem and a village near Nablus, injuring civilians and a policeman. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad welcomed all these attacks and called for increased "resistance." Britain's Jewish Chronicle reports that there's been a surge in online jihadi calls for such "resistance" that's believed to be driven by Iran. Police and counter-terrorism experts told the paper that they were discounting any involvement of ISIS in the Beersheva attack. Instead, they said, a shadowy Iranian group has been training Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah in how to use social-media platforms to sow hatred for Jews among Arab Israelis. Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories None of these attacks, however, merited more than glancing media coverage in Britain or America. The contrast with public concern over Ukraine is stark. Of course, these situations are totally different in scale. But even when thousands of rockets were being fired from Gaza into Israel last year with the aim of murdering Israeli civilians, the situation received scant coverage in Western media until Israel finally took military action against Hamas. No mainstream Western journalists hastened to southern Israel to inform aghast British or American readers about the appalling trauma being endured by families forced to live for weeks or even months in bomb shelters. Like Ukraine, Israel is a country under existential attack. The fact that, unlike the current Russian onslaught on Ukraine, Israel is subjected to an unending war by terrorist proxies backed by rogue states—punctuated over the past century by all-out regular wars—doesn't alter that similarity. Yet today, hardly any Western journalists are equating Israel with Ukraine. Instead, more people in Britain are appallingly equating Israel with Russia's warmongering and tyrannical president Vladimir Putin. This is because they have uncritically absorbed the propaganda pumped out for decades by the Palestinian Arabs that Israel has taken over their historic lands. In fact, the reverse is the case. The Jews are the only people for whom the land was ever their national kingdom—long before the waves of invasion by Romans, Christians and Muslims. That's the reason that, in the 1920s, the international community gave the Jewish people alone the right to settle throughout their ancient homeland—the area which is now Israel, the "West Bank" and Gaza. That right has never been abrogated. Yet many in the West believe that the Jews are the interlopers. It's a belief that appears to be shared by the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides. He told Americans for Peace Now that the idea of Jewish settlement growth in eastern Jerusalem and the disputed territories "infuriates me." "We can't do stupid things that impede us for a two-state solution," he said. "We can't have Israelis doing settlement growth in east[ern] Jerusalem or the West Bank." His ignorance was staggering. He seemed to be oblivious that the war to exterminate Israel started when Israel was reborn, decades before Jews started to settle the "West Bank." He ignored the fact that ever since its creation, the State of Israel has repeatedly agreed to a Palestinian state alongside it, and that the people who have rejected that "two-state solution" are the Palestinian Arabs. And he seemed unaware that, since the Jews are the only people with a legal and historical claim to the whole of the ancient land of Israel, the inescapable logic of his objection to Jews living in parts of that land must therefore extend to Jews living in any of it. What he went on to say, however, was even worse. Referring to the payments made by the Palestinian Authority to the families of terrorists—termed "pay-for-slay"—Nides said: "These martyr payments, you know we can debate and talk about it, have caused an enormous amount of problems. And I'm working with [Israeli Defense] Minister [Benny] Gantz and the prime minister and the Palestinians to figure out how to stop it, because it gives the haters—and there are haters—who say: 'We can't do this because they are paying for people to kill Jews.' " By haters, Nides didn't mean the Palestinian Arab leaders who teach their children to hate Jews, murder Israelis and steal their land. He meant those who stand against them. Astonishingly, he was saying that while Israeli settlement growth was so bad that it mustn't be tolerated at all, rewarding terrorists' families and thereby incentivizing terrorism merely caused "problems"—because this could be used as an argument against a Palestinian state. Just how morally degraded is this thinking? Moreover, endorsing the false claim that the Israeli residents of the territories are the problem because no Jews should live there serves to legitimize and thus further incite more Palestinian terrorist attacks. And yet Nides professed horror and sympathy over the Beersheva atrocity. "Despicable terrorist attack today in Beersheva," he said. "This has to stop! My heart goes out to the victims and their families." Nides's mindset reflects the left's fantasy that eastern Jerusalem and the disputed territories are Palestinian land that Israel has no right to be in at all. This is the same kind of mind-bending reversal that we hear from Putin, the former KGB officer, when he dismisses Ukraine as a fake country involved in aggressive action against Russia. The similarity is hardly surprising since the entire Palestinian fiction was concocted in the 1960s between the terrorist leader Yasser Arafat and the Soviet Union. This has been nourished in the West by the liberal belief that the nation-state is the fount of all evil, and that nationalism (in this case, Zionism) leads inevitably to prejudice, aggression and war. Yet although Putin is an advertisement for monstrous nationalist excess, the astonishing defense against him being mounted by the Ukrainians demonstrates how an aggressor can only be repelled if people have the strongest possible attachment to their nation and understand that their freedom depends upon its survival. The idea that Western liberals will therefore now rethink their hostility to the nation is, however, surely misplaced. This is because they aren't in favor of national self-determination so much as they are opposed to economic and military power, which they believe makes inevitable victims out of those who can't match it. By this standard, the West can never be victimized by the developing world, whose violence is to be excused as "resistance." This is why to such people the Israelis, who have economic and military power, can never be victims. More noxiously still, the endemically anti-Semitic West believes that the Jews are cosmically all-powerful, and run the world in their own interests and to the disadvantage of everyone else. So Israel is multiply damned. The recent upsurge of attacks against Israelis has reinforced concerns that the imminent arrival of Ramadan will produce a lethal spike in incitement and terrorism. There are particular worries that the upcoming surrender to Iran by the Biden administration over the nuclear deal will galvanize Gaza and the disputed territories into murderous attacks, in the giddy belief that the Islamic world is now on the verge of finally annihilating Israel. Will anyone care if Israelis find themselves once again under sustained onslaught? Only if Israel retaliates with military force. Then what the West will care about—deeply—is that the Jews have the gall to fight back. The Ukrainians are allowed to do so. The Jews are not. Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for "The Times of London," her personal and political memoir, "Guardian Angel," has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, "The Legacy." Go to melaniephillips.substack.com to access her work. RABBI SCHWARTZ'S TERRIBLE FUNERAL JOKES OF THE WEEK I hate how funerals are always at 9 a.m. – I'm not really a mourning person. When Berel was younger, he just hated going to family weddings. All of his uncles and aunts used to come up to him, poke him in the ribs, giggle, and say to him, "You're next, Berel." But they stopped doing that after Berel started doing the same thing to them at funerals. A man dies, and his friend is invited to his funeral. This friend asks his wife "Can I say a word?" "Of course" she says. The man stands up and says "Plethora" The man's wife says "Thanks, it means a lot" They asked me to speak at this funeral, and I said "Of corpse"! Moe Levine used to run the local bus service line from Monsey to Manhattan. When has passed away at age 65, the newspaper obit read. "The funeral will be held on Thursday at 7:30, 8:10, 10:20, 5:30, 8:40 and 10:50." Sally Roth, an elderly lady from New York, was getting her final affairs in order. She prepared her will and made her final arrangements. As part of these arrangements, she met with her Rabbi to talk about what type of funeral service she wanted, etc. She told her Rabbi she had two final requests. First, she wanted to be cremated, and second, she wanted her ashes scattered over Bloomingdales. "Cremation!" said Rabbi Rosenberg. "God Forbid, do you realize that this is forbidden by the Torah?" "I do indeed," said Mrs. Roth. "I'd like to speak with you about this Mrs. Roth," said Rabbi Rosenberg. "Before we do that, may I ask, why Bloomingdales?" "That way," said Mrs. Roth, "I know my daughters will visit me twice a week." Howard was 90 years old, very ill and in the hospital, and his Rabbi went to pay him a visit. As the Rabbi walked up to the bed, Howard 's condition began to deteriorate, and he motioned frantically for something to write on. When the Rabbi gave him a pencil and a piece of paper, Howard used his last ounce of energy to write a short note. Then he died. The Rabbi placed the note in his jacket pocket and said prayers. Later, at Howard's funeral, as the Rabbi was finishing the eulogy, he suddenly remembered the note. "I've just remembered," said the Rabbi to those present, "that Howard handed me a note just before he died. I haven't looked at it yet, but knowing Howard, I'm sure there's a word of comfort in it for all of us." The Rabbi opened the note and read, "Help, you're standing on my oxygen tube!" Sam died. His will provided $50,000 for an elaborate funeral. As the last attendees left, Sam's wife Rose turned to her oldest friend Sadie and said, "Well, I'm sure Sam would be pleased." "I'm sure you're right," replied Sadie, who leaned in close and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Tell me, how much did it really cost?" "All of it," said Rose. "Fifty-thousand." "No!" Sadie exclaimed. "I mean, it was very nice, but really... $50,000?" Rose nodded. "The funeral was $6,500. I donated $500 to the shul for the Rabbi's services. The shiva food and drinks were another $500. The rest went for the memorial stone." Sadie computed quickly. "$42,500 for a memorial stone? Oy vey, how big is it?" "Seven and a half carats Friends and family were at Finchley cemetery for Moshe's funeral. Just before the funeral service commenced, Rabbi Zeller goes over to Ruth, a very elderly widow, and asks, "So how old was Moshe?" "He was 99, kin-a-hora," replies Ruth, "two years older than me." "So you must be 97?" says Rabbi Zeller. Ruth replies, "Yes, hardly worth going back home is it?" Moishe meets Arnold at their social club and asks how Abe's funeral went the other day. "It went OK, Moishe," replied Arnold, "but at the end of the Rabbi's eulogy, I had to try and stop myself from laughing aloud." "Why was that?" asks Moishe. "Well," says Arnold, "throughout his marriage to Miriam, she was always telling me what a mean man he was. He never had a steady job and the money he brought home to her wasn't enough for food and clothing, let alone holidays. Yet he drank heavily and often stayed out all night gambling. Altogether, a good husband he was not. But at the funeral, the Rabbi spoke of how wonderful the deceased was - so considerate, so beloved, so thoughtful to others. Then, when the Rabbi had finished, I heard Miriam say to one of her children, "Do me a favor, David, go see whether it's your father in the coffin." "According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy."― Jerry Seinfeld It's the World Cup Final, and a man makes his way to his seat right next to the pitch. He sits down, noticing that the seat next to him is empty. He leans over and asks his neighbor if someone will be sitting there. 'No,' says the neighbor. 'The seat is empty.' ' This is incredible,' said the man. 'Who in their right mind would have a seat like this for the Final and not use it?' The neighbor says, 'Well actually the seat belongs to me. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she passed away. This is the first World Cup Final we haven't been to together since we got married.' 'Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. That's terrible….But couldn't you find someone else, a friend, relative or even a neighbor to take her seat? ' The man shakes his head. 'No,' he says. 'They're all at the funeral See you tomorrow bli neder We need Moshiach now! Passover is this Friday night! Love Yehuda Lave Yehuda Lave, Spirtual Advisor and Counselor Jerusalem, Jerusalem  Israel 972-585043210 YehudaLave@gmail.com You received this email because you signed up on our website or made a purchase from us. Unsubscribe