First Words of G-d to Mankind in Torah

Painting by Maoz Toledo

The very first time G-d actually speaks to Man, as quoted in Torah, takes the form of a simple question - "Where are you?"

Because Torah is our Book of Life, an eternal source of instruction, that question, rather than being a mere historic anectode, is a question always being asked of Man. Over time, man finds himself, hopefully, advancing in life with a meaningful purpose, and every time he should consider the question G-d asks him - to see if in fact his answer indicates he's made real progress.

Perhaps many of us don't lose much sleep over our spiritual shortcomings, as much as we do over our materialistic shortcomings. Thus, the question of G-d, as it reverberates continually when we think of it, should shake us out of our spritual complacency - because that's where that question points to: Where does our soul stand today compared to where it stood yesterday?

G-d expects of us to move forward, to toil to achieve more - not more money, not a better job, not a better physique, not more respect, power or honor. He wants us to become better Jews as Torah beseeches us. After all, we were born with relatively empty vessels, and the world was created purposely with imperfections. Our souls were given this mission down here on earth, to enable the future world for divine revelation. By elevating ourselves spritually, we force a physical change in the world that improves it and raises it a notch; A real cause an effect reaction.

Adam was told, "Don't eat from that one tree!" There were hundreds of trees, and thousands of fruits to eat from in the Garden of Eden. What would it harm the world if one fig, or date, or grape, whatever tree it was, were eaten? What damage could consuming one little fruit wreak on the world?

Well now we know. That tiny act changed the world drastically. Death came to Mankind. Truth and falsehood no longer were clearly delineated. Sin could now become desirous. Man was given to struggle to achieve greatness.

Even a small deed of the person can take a big toll, or render monumental change for the better. Only man has the power to connect G-d with physicality. Only he is the gateway through which the universe becomes transformed. Little man has G-dly powers. One little smile, nice word or deed - can make or break. His behavior, and only his behavior, mediates between supernal G-d and our nether universe. We are G-d's fulcrum.

With so much power at our behest, we'd only be foolish to squander it. Let's resolve, therefore, to jump quantum leaps. Let's dare ourselves with lofty goals. Every day is an auspicious day. So, my friend, to quote G-d, "Where are you?"

Saving a Jew - One Soul at a Time

Here's another story from the Jew who "works" the Kotel.

What! Are You Nuts?

by Gutman Locks

This has to be one of the strangest cases I have ever had the privilege to straighten out.

A group of non-Jewish Americans walked into the Kotel area yesterday. Judging by their appearance, they had to be evangelical christians. I was surprised to see two or three Jewish faces among them. It is pretty rare, but sadly, sometimes we do see a confused Jew drawn into that religion. So I assumed these Jews were also trapped in that idolatry.

I was wrong. I pointed to one of the Jews and said, “You’re Jewish. You certainly have a Jewish face.”

“Of course I’m Jewish, through and through!” he happily confirmed.

“Come, put on tefillin.” He did not know what I was talking about. “We’re going to take your Jewish blood pressure,” I joked. I took his arm and started to put tefillin on him. One of the other Jewish-looking men leaned over and said, “He was baptized this morning!”

“What!” I yelled, “Are you nuts? You’re not a christian. You’re a Jew!”

It turned out the entire group was on a tour that was organized in their hometown somewhere in Florida. Except for the 3 Jews, they were all christians. That morning they had gone on a tour to the Jordan River, and the evangelicals had all baptized each other. As usual, they love to spread their particular brand of confusion, so they tried to lure the 3 Jews traveling with them into being baptized, too. These christians believe it is a huge victory to convert a Jew to their beliefs.

They had a sales pitch: After all, this was the actual Jordan River; the very river where yashka himself was baptized 2,000 years ago. (At least that’s how the story goes.)

When they tried to coax the Jews into joining them, 2 of the Jews had enough brains to refuse, but this nice old guy was up for the adventure. Wading out into the river with your clothes on was certainly something he could tell his friends about when he got home, so the friendly old Jew agreed to join them, and he let them baptize him!

“Listen to me,” I insisted, as I continued to put the tefillin on him. “You are a Jew. Baptism is not for Jews. It is what goyim (non-Jews) do when they accept that false religion. You didn’t accept anything. You are not a christian, you’re a Jew.”

I wanted him to be able to defend himself when they later try to convince him he actually became a christian, G-d forbid!

I told him Jews are a people and not a religion. “But if you want a religion, then we have our own. We do not need theirs.” I told him their religion contradicts our beliefs. “They worship their god, which has three parts, a trinity. Jews worship the one G-d Who is everywhere. G-d does not have parts.”

I told him the baptism he went through did not mean anything, that he did not accept any of their religious foolishness, and that he was not going to follow that religion.

It turned out he is 81 years old, and this was the first time in his life he had ever put on tefillin! I told him that it was his bar mitzvah! (Actually, bar mitzvah means a Jewish boy has come to the age [13] when the Torah says he is old enough to begin to be responsible for his own spiritual life. One of the first things he can then do is put on tefillin.)

I made sure he had pictures of himself wearing tefillin on to remind him he is a Jew. “While christians have baptisms, Jews have tefillin and bar mitzvahs.”

He was very happy, and he has absolutely no intention of joining any christian religion. And they are not going to be able to fool him into thinking he became a christian.

Thank G-d he met us, or who knows where he'd have ended up.

The Middle East Conflict - in a Nutshell !

The lowdown on the Middle East problem - short and to the point.

That Missile Seen from the California Coast- The Regime is Playing Dumb

The regime in the White House is lying to us - again. And, if you believe the Pentagon, or any of the "mainstream" media sources (who take their "talking points" from a conference call every morning with the White House), who tell you that missile seen last week over the Pacific ocean off the California coast, streaking high into the sky with its heavy trail, "was not a missile" - I bet you're being lied to!

(E.g, MSNBC headline reads, "U.S. sees no threat in alleged 'missile': Pentagon says it's baffled ... bla, bla bla.")

Here's a forum entry that spoke to this issue, apparently by someone in the know. I have no reason to doubt its veracity, because - it speaks for itself. (I changed nothing. I even left spelling errors intact.)

dated: Nov 11, 2010

Finally there is something that has occurred, in which I am actually an expert and qualified to give a real answer about.

I am a retired U.S. Navy FireControl Technician, who is platform certified in the gun and missile systems on board Adams class guided missile destroyers, I have also worked with the Navy's Harpoon, Tomahawk and ASROC missile systems. (FireControl Techs operate, maintain and repair the computer, radar and periphial systems used to launch and guide the various naval weapon systems, we are the guys who "PUSH THE BUTTON")

Anyway, what I saw in the recent video concerning the object 30 miles off the coast of CA. Is blatently a foreign made, Large Cruise or ICBM missile, being launched by a sub-surface aquatic platform. First I know its a large missile because it did not exhibit the typical "corkscrewing" trajectory of a beam riding missile as it trys to aquire the targeting beam. This tells me its a Big Boy with a complete guidence system installed in it, what is nicknamed a "fire and forget" missile, as once its launched its internal guidance system takes over and there is no real need for external guidance.

Secondly, I'm fairly confident its not one of ours, as the vapor trail appears "dirty" it looks brownish. I have personally been involved in (5) SM2 missile launches, and (2) ASROC missile launches, and have been on safety observation for at least 15 more launches of Harpoons, Tomahawks and other missiles. We put alot of sweat and money into our "birds" and part of that is the fuel cells, they burn very clean, a whitish-blue infact, not a dirty blackish brown. That missile had rather crude fuel cells, which tells me its not one of ours.

I bet the brass in Washington is freaked out big time, because of what I know of our "defenses" they should really have had a pretty good idea this thing was sitting there, and they should have been watching it, not only that the moment it broke the surface of the water and ignited our early warning dopplar should have picked it up, and relayed the info to NORAD, and the CAP units flying patrol over the country...

Any high ranking expert who believes this is a condensation trail off of a commercial airliner is lying or stupid. I hope you hear from other Fire Control Techs who saw the same thing I did!

I forgot something, as any Firecontrol Tech or Gunnersmate will verify, the protocals to launch a missile are so complex, there is no way this was an "accidental" launch. I do not want to share too much info, but there is no "one red button" to launch a missile, thats all hollywood B.S. Yes two keys are turned to arm the system, but it takes at least three other things to occur in proper sequence to launch a bird, so thats at least 5 people all doing something at the right time. Its impossible to accidently lauch a missile!

UPDATE: Heard about this Nov. 10 incident with China? (see here)

UPDATE (Nov. 21): President's muted response (link here)

UPDATE (Nov. 24): It was a missile "message"- Limbaugh. (link here)

UPDATE (Nov. 28): The Chinese are jabbing us. (link here)

UPDATE (Dec. 2): Good reporting and video here.

The Self-Extinction of Reform Judaism

With the festival of Chanuka approaching, the war to reform the Jewish spirit comes into focus.

The above chart (copied from here), based on researched American data, crystallizes the specter "Reform Judaism" casts upon Jewish sanctity, showing that its adherents cannot withstand the test of time beyond 3 or 4 generations before they are swallowed up and lost from the Jewish people. Even a Hitler could not have devised so good a strategy to quietly annihilate so many Jewish souls.

Leaving aside the reason for their fragility or vulnerabilty to self-extinction, by the time their grandchildren are born, most of these will already have been subsumed under Gentile persuasion; Their Jewish genomes will have migrated out of the collective Jewish gene pool and their Jewish souls will have lost their moorings to Jewish tradition and intimacy with G-d.

But there is a strange twisted logic many Reform Jews apply. If they were to admit they prefer chiselling away at tradition to relieve their anxiety about perceived constraints on their mode of easy living, that would at least be refreshing. But rather, at least if a representative website's reasoning is any indication, convenience isn't at the core of the issue. Here's how that website rationalizes their philosophy:

"The word 'Reform' in the name of our Movement is a recognition that reform is part of our way of life, as it has been for Jews throughout the centuries."

While the assertion that reformism has been around "throughout the centuries" is authentic, it conceals a spurious statistic the above chart addresses - and we must separate the authentic fact from its spurious justification. It may well be true a fringe of Judaism always prefers assimilation or reform, but that does not mean that they - as a collective body - are perpetuated. This is the crucial point: Reform Jews of today are definitely not descendants of Reform Jewry of the past. Reform Jews - as Jews - self discard. After 2 or 3 generations, most are already intermarried and their assimilation into the Gentile world is complete.

Their claim of a centuries-old "tradition", therefore, is deceptive. Their duration, in fact, occupies miniscule fragments of history. In the space of a few generations, they will have lost their Jewish identity.

Every generation has fringe elements that might drift to reformism ("conservative" or "reconstructionist" included). But these offshoots simply disappear from the Jewish horizon in a few generations. There simply is no longevity to their compromising way of life. In fact, they fare no better than secular Jews, most of whom have been "kidnapped from birth" by their foreign culture, in preserving a Jewish identity.

The permanence of Judaism rests in Torah-true tradition. Torah is the glue of Jewish civilization. The Reform "movement" does not survive. To attribute tradition to reformism is the voice of lemmings taking comfort in mass flight from Torah -- headlong to self-extinction.

The Chabad Banquet for its Emissaries - 2010

Mr. Gennady Bogolubov speaks at the International Conference of Shluchim 2010 from Jewish Educational Media on Vimeo.

“My Heart Swells with Joy”

By Yosef Y. Jacobson

Mr. Benny (Yechiel Benzion) Fishhof, a prominent New York businessman and a member of the Chassidic group of Ger, stood at the gala banquet of 4,000 Chabad shluchim (ambassadors) from across the world last Sunday evening, and chatted with Rabbis Mordechai Avtzon and Boruch Jacobson, the Chabad ambassadors to Hong Kong and New York’s Hunter College.

“You will never understand what I am feeling here tonight,” said Benny Fishhof, who as a youngster in the 1930’s still traveled to the Polish city of Ger, some 20 miles from Warsaw, where the Gerer Rebbe, Rabbi Abraham Mordechai Altar, presided over hundreds of thousands of followers, and saw most of them exterminated in the Holocaust. “I survived the death camps. I watched my closest kin marched into the gas chambers. In 1950 I lived on Montgomery St in Crown Heights and I walked into ‘770.’ It was a little shtibel with a few Chabad Chassidim present.

“Tonight I return to the international convention of Chabad emissaries from around the world. I listen to the words and watch the dancing, and my heart swells with indescribable gratitude. The joy has returned! Here in one room are assembled 4,000 individuals who created a Jewish renaissance around the globe.

“My friends and I saw only mounds and mounds of ashes, the remains of our six million brothers and sisters. Never had Judaism's everlasting light come closer to being extinguished. The Shoah destroyed the core of Jewish life: men, women and children who were the most vibrant, animated elements of the Jewish people. An entire world went up in smoke.

“What happened next will one day be told as one of the great acts of reconstruction in the religious history of mankind. A handful of Holocaust survivors and refugees set about rebuilding on new soil the world they had seen go up in the smoke of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneersohn, together with other Jewish leaders, refused to yield to despair. The Rebbe urged every person he could touch to bring the stick back to life: to marry and have lots of children. He built schools, communities and yeshivas and encouraged and inspired countless Jewish people to do the same. He sent ambassadors to the entire world to rekindle the Jewish spark.”

The gala banquet of the “Kinus Hashluchim” had 4500 people packing Pier 12 in Brooklyn for an evening of inspiration. There were few dry eyes when a Dvar Torah was delivered by ten-year-old Moshe Cohen of Manchester, son of Esty Cohen, a young Chabad shlucha who passed away earlier this month at the age of 33, shortly after giving birth to a new baby. “I know my mother is looking down at me from heaven and is proud of the fact that I am continuing her life’s story,” Mosheleh Cohen said.

And few faces could avoid a smile when billionaire Mr. Gennady Boglubov of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, told the shluchim: You just come and ask, and I will give…

Original link: Here

In Commemoration to a Most Beautiful Woman

Irena Sendler

98 year-old Irena died May 12, 2008.

During WWII, Irena got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist.

She had an ulterior motive.

Being German, she knew what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews.

Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried. She also carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack - for larger kids.

She also had a dog in the back of the truck she trained to bark when Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog; And the barking covered any noises made by the children.

During this time of her employ, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 infants and children.

Then she was caught. The Nazi's broke both her legs and arms, and beat her severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the children she smuggled out. She kept it in a glass jar buried under a tree in her backyard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents who may have survived, to reunite the family.

Most parents had been gassed. For these children she helped get placement into foster or adopted homes.

In 2007 Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize. She was not selected. The degenerates gave it to idiot Al Gore - for a slide show on the "global warming" hoax.

(See also this related post.)

Caroline Glick - On the Present Mode of Concealing Truth

The Age of Dissimulation

by Caroline Glick

Years from now, when historians seek an overarching concept to define our times, they could do worse than refer to it as the Age of Dissimulation. Today our leading minds devote their energies and cognitive powers to figuring out new ways to hide reality from themselves and the general public.

Take US President Barack Obama's senior counterterrorism advisor for example. On Sunday, John Brennan spoke on Fox News about the latest attempted Islamic terrorist attack on American soil.

Since the Obama administration has barred US officials from referring to terrorists as terrorists and effectively barred US officials from acknowledging that Islamic terrorists are Muslims, Brennan simply referred to the Islamic terrorists in Yemen who tried to send bombs to synagogues in Chicago as "individuals."

Today, practically, the only individuals willing to speak honestly about who Islamic supremacists are and what they want are the Islamic supremacists themselves.

For instance, in an interview last week with Reuters, the Islamic supremacist Hamas movement's "foreign minister" Mahmoud al- Zahar told the Christian West, "You do not live like human beings. You do not [even] live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticize us?"

Al-Zahar also made the case for Islamic feminism. As he put it, "We are the ones who respect women and honor women ... not you. You use women as an animal. She has one husband and hundreds of thousands of boyfriends. You don't know who is the father of your sons, because of the way you respect women."

Finally, al-Zahar claimed that Westerners have no right to question Islam or criticize it. In his words, "Is it a crime to Islamize the people? I am a Muslim living here according to our tradition. Why should I live under your tradition? We understand you very well. You are poor people. Morally poor. Don't criticize us because of what we are."

Al-Zahar can sleep easy. The citizens of the West have rarely heard anyone in any positions of power and influence criticize Islamic supremacists "because of what they are."

In fact, the most remarkable thing about al- Zahar's interview was not what he said but that Reuters decided to publish what he said. By letting its readers learn what al-Zahar thinks of them, Reuters inadvertently gave Westerners a glimpse at the simple truth its editors and their counterparts throughout the Western media routinely purge from coverage of current events.

Rather than discuss the nature and threat of Islamic supremacism, the Western media along with nearly all Western political leaders and academics deny and dissimulate. Rather than address the threat, they accept the Islamic line and blame Israel for everything bad that happens in the world.

The ONE group of people that can almost be forgiven for this crime against reality is the non-Muslims who live under Islamic rule. On Sunday, we received a grim reminder of the plight of such minorities with the Islamic terror attack on Baghdad's largest church, the Our Lady of Salvation Catholic church.

As some one hundred worshipers celebrated evening mass, Islamic terrorists stormed the church. According to an eyewitness account, they walked straight up to the priest administering the mass and executed him. The Muslim terrorists then took the Christian worshipers hostage.

As Iraqi military forces stormed the church under US military supervision, the Islamic terrorists threw grenades at the worshipers and detonated their bomb belts. By Monday, the death toll had reached 52.

Read it all - here.