Shabbat Nachamu

Shabbat Nachamu is the name of the first Shabbat after the Ninth of Av, which according to tradition, is when both Temples were destroyed. Its name is taken from Isiah 40:1, “Comfort, Comfort my People says your G-d,” which is the first verse of this week’s Haftarah

This Shabbat officially ends the three weeks of mourning which culminate with the fast of the ninth of Av. Its Parasha  aims at offering solace and consolation for the suffering our People endured as a result of their transgressions that preceded the destruction of the Temples.

I believe I first remember it being mentioned when I was seven years old. Though I am certain that “Shabbat Nachamu” had been mentioned many times before, it was only when I reached that age that I finally grasped their profound meaning.

For my parents and many other Jews, Shabbat Nachamu was the day on which they were liberated from the Nazi Death Machine. It ended the darkest chapter in our Jewish history.

Each time I heard them, and there were many, they scorched my Jewish essence forming yet another painful scar that refuses to heal.

As symbolic as the liberation of my parents and my unborn older brother which occurred on this Shabbat may be, I kept pondering on the reasons that brought about the destruction, Churban, which, incidentally, is what the Shoah is referred to in Yiddish, that befell them and their generation. What sins could my two wonderful parents have committed to have brought such a punishment upon them? What crimes could my young little cousins have possibly carried out before they perished in Ponar, I ask, as the waves of grief refuse to subside. I try to find some logic, some order, in the chain of “cause and effect,” in the great world that G-d once created for us.

Alas, no matter what, the answers evade me.

Instead of resuming to torment my soul, I have decided to focus on the future and the lessons that we could apply  towards it, lessons which our Jewish history has been trying so desperately to teach us.

As we are approaching the end of the period that is referred to as “between the straits” (bein hametsarim), the three weeks of mourning over the tragedies that befell our People over two thousand years ago, I look around me. I observe our People, “The People of the Book,” the ones who were destined to be “A Light unto the Nations,” their practice of our cherished values, or rather their lack thereof, I keep asking, have Jews learned anything from our sanguineous history?

We are still exercising vain hatred and continue to intensify that already deep divide among us, while our enemies continue to weave their web of design to destroy us. We adopt foreign customs, we name our children after foreign deities and worship the golden calf.

Am Yisrael and fellow Jews, time to wake up and look inside ourselves. This is where we shall find the answers to the why and the what that has befallen us.  Let us practice that which we gifted the world. It is time to shed off all masks and be true to ourselves first.

Let us console, support each other and unite during these hard and trying times. Let us defy all odds, pursue justice, and continue to live up to that which we are commanded to do and “Choose Life.” We owe it to ourselves  and to our future generations.

Better days are ahead of us and despite and in spite of it all, the People of Eternity is here to stay, in our Jewish Homeland, in Eretz Yisrael.

Am Yisrael Chai

We Are Fed Up.........

Dear friends,

I have decided to translate into English the following FB post, written in Hebrew by Tal Gilad. I have done it for the benefit of those among us who are new Olim, native English speakers who are exposes to the biased media and all those “mavins” who try to impress upon us that the Chinese Communist Party Virus, though released accidentally yet spread  around the world deliberately, is nothing bu a scare tactic by our leaders.

Shabbat Shalom padded with abundant health and the best of every blessing. 🇮🇱💜🇮🇱

Here it is.

“I am already tired of the nonsense. I am tired of each of our nine millions citizens is convinced that they are the only ones who know what is good and what needs to be done about the current health crisis (or any other issue). They and only they are the wisest and have all the information on everything since they read on the internet what someone said.

I am tired of hallucinatory  conspiracy theories about the virus which  refer to it as a “fake plague,” a n international plot to try and control our privacy, where we are at any given moment as though Google and Facebook did not do it a long time ago and with our full and enthusiastic consent. Those who are not yet familiar  with the Google timeline is welcome to check. If anyone has forgotten where he urinated  two months ago, Google will remind them and will even draw a map of how they got there and how long they  urinated. They will also provide the exact amount in liters. An analysis of the colour is not yet available, but soon there will be, for sure.

I am fed up with those irresponsible  and impatient’ who refuse to let anyone “make decisions about them” since “the Spirit of Man” and their “Right” and BS, and they do not understand that they not only put themselves in harm’s way but also anyone they meet after, in their vocalism, their invincible young spirit and their fantastic immune system,’ endangered themselves. Don’t you honestly understand that you, in your foolishness, are a catalyst to the virus and cause more infected and the extension of the emergency guidelines?

We are tired of those who seriously believe that Netanyahu is responsible for the virus or uses it to take control or who knows what  the hell else. How much empty space does one need to have in their skull to fill it up with such absurdities?

The entire world confronts the virus. Do you genuinely believe that millions of doctors, nurses, elected officials, leaders, members of the health system, including Arab  and Muslim states, all are employed by Netanyahu and Sarah?

Do you seriously believe that you know about the virus more than millions of doctors’ nurses, elected officials, leaders, and members of the health systems the world over? All of those are brainwashed, receive instructions or threats or are part of an international conspiracy and only you the underground smart-alecks know better?

Are you that thick? Are you honestly unable to, at least for a few months, able to follow emergency guidelines and sit quietly, for heaven’s sake?

We are so fed up with the nonsense. So fed up."

Yes to Brit Mila Simply Because We Are Jews

This article was written by Tal Gilad in Hebrew and was published first in Walla on November 29^th, 2013, during a public debate that was raging over on the subject of Brit Milah  which ensued following a fine imposed on a woman who refused to have her son circumcised. It was translated into English by Bat-Zion Susskind-Sacks.

I am circumcised. My son is circumcised. Anyone that I know in my close surrounding is circumcised. I presume that with certainty even though I never checked. Not one of us remembers his circumcision as a horrible and traumatic event since we were only eight days then and no one remembers anything of that age.

A baby eight days old does not possess enough awareness to be afraid of what they are about to do to him, develop trauma or treat this pain as no more than a momentary unpleasant discomfort. He does not fear the consequences it might bear on his sex life, on his masculinity or his male identity. He does not see it as an attack on his legal rights as a human being. He does not know anything about any of these issues. All he knows is that it hurts during that moment and then it stops and that is all because he is merely eight days old. That is why the ceremony is performed when he is eight days old.

I do not wish to enter the issue of the penalty which the rabbinical court decreed. I do not know all the details and wish to avoid the issue of whether any institution has the jurisdiction to impose that. That is not the topic.

Brit Mila (circumcision) is a directive that Jews have been following for four thousand years. It does not cause any medical problems (possibly the opposite) and poses no national or personal tragedy that is imprinted on  the memory of our genetic code.

I need to confess that I, too, was nervous during the Brit Milah of my son. I also remember that I felt like hitting everyone. The bottom line, however, is that we are Jews and it would be more stupid and selfish if, because of my belligerence he will have to face this predicament of whether to do or not do it at the age of twenty, with all the fears that were mentioned earlier which are nonexistent at the age of eight days. I do not wish to mention another faith which performs this ceremony when the boy is thirteen, when one is fearful and is forced to go through that. This way, it is one unpleasant minute for the baby, one nervous minute for the parents and over.

It is by far less worse than other events that the child undergoes in his life, starting with birth, a scary experience in itself, through ear aches, teething aches, inoculations, fear and sadness during those moments when a determined brave mother who refuses to circumcise her son goes out to have a good time because it is her right and no one will decide for her. There are other more traumatic events in a person’s life such as, the first day in the nursery, kindergarten and a whole host of occurrences which are far less pleasant than Brit Milah which one overcomes and continues to grow.

And no contentious organization sees in it anything that hurts the child’s rights.
That is so, perhaps since it does not carry the intoxicating  scent of was against religious imposition and no one can bask in the words, “primitive ritual.”

By the way, interesting to notice that part of the primitive and cruel People that lives in America do the same to their children without the noise and the commotion and human rights. Oh, those cruel Gentiles 😉