Yehuda Lave, Spiritual Advisor and Counselor

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

Ruminating about the past will get you nowhere. So go ahead and learn from the past whatever you can, and then put it behind you. Remember, there is nothing you can do to change it, but you can use its lessons to improve your future.

Abraham J. Twerski

Man's pursuit of physical desires and earthly possessions is an indication of his lack of conviction that the purpose of his existence is the attainment of spirituality.

Abraham J. Twerski

Yael goes to the post office to buy stamps to send out her Chanukah cards and says to the clerk, "May I have 50 Chanukah stamps?" The clerk says, "What denomination?" Yael answers, "Oy, do I have to? Give me 6 Orthodox, 12 Conservative, and 32 Reform!"

Last week was my sixth aliyah day. For some reason not too many people opened that email so I am posting the story that I wrote last week again today:

It was six years ago today that I came on Aliyah. I had lived here for five years before (from 1995-2000) when I had gone to Yeshivah, but now I was coming home again.

I came alone as my wife didn't want to join me and the Halacha is that if one person doesn't want to go home to Israel and the other does, it is grounds for divorce. I loved my wife and hoped she would eventually join me, but we went our separate ways.

Baruch Hashem, G-d gave me a new wife who also loves me, and we are living a Torah life here in Jerusalem as the Torah teaches we are supposed to. I bless G-d every day, that I have the merit to live here. My Grandfathers, both Rabbis would have given everything to have the merit to live here. One made it to America and had my Father, but the other was murdered in the Holocaust, but was able to get my Mother to America. I was able to go back this year to see where she was born in Germany and to Poland to see the Holocaust camps where her family was murdered.

To all those Jews who haven't made Aliyah yet, I say it is one of the most important things you can do as a Jew.

Love Yehuda Lave

Jersey City mayor: Gunmen wanted to target next door yeshiva with 50 kids inside

If police hadn’t managed to trap shooters in kosher store where 3 killed, result would have been ‘much worse,’ says Steven Fulop;

Police officers stand near the scene of a gun fight at a kosher supermarket and next door yeshiva in Jersey City, N.J., Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop said Friday that he believes that the two gunmen who attacked a kosher store in the city, killing three people inside, were actually planning to target a yeshiva next door that had 50 children inside at the time of the assault.

“My opinion is that as more info comes out it’ll become increasingly clear that the target was the 50 children at the Yeshiva attached to that store.” Fulop, who is Jewish, tweeted:  “We will never know 100% but the doorway to the yeshiva was 3 feet away + it seems he goes in that direction 1st.”

On Thursday Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said the attack was driven by hatred of Jews and law enforcement and is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism.

The two killers were armed with a variety of weapons, including an AR-15-style rifle and a shotgun that they were wielding when they stormed into the store in an attack that left the scene littered with several hundred shell casings, broken glass and a community in mourning. A pipebomb was also found in a stolen U-Haul van.

Steven Fulop✔@StevenFulop

My opinion is that as more info comes out it’ll become increasingly clear that the target was the 50 children at the Yeshiva attached to that store. We will never know 100% but the doorway to the yeshiva was 3 feet away + it seems he goes in that direction 1st

The Meturgeman@DraftRyan2016

You can see the turn in this new video as well.

The massacre – while horrific – could have been so much worse. The 50 children upstairs had their lives spared only through an act of G-d.

“The outcome would have been far, far worse” if not for the Jersey City Police, Grewal said Thursday. Authorities noted that the Jewish school was next to the market, and a Catholic school is across the street.

The attackers killed three people in the store, in addition to a police officer at a cemetery about a mile away, before dying in an hourslong gun battle with police Tuesday afternoon, authorities said.

Fulop later clarified his views to the New York Jewish Week, saying: “My job is different than the people that are doing the investigation. I do my best to say it how I see it.”

He cited the locations of the store and yeshiva and the large cache of weapons that the shooters brought in their vehicle.

“It’s very, very clear that the perpetrator first doesn’t go directly to the deli, he goes toward the door adjacent to it, the building and the doors adjacent to it are the yeshiva…he brought a pipe bomb and he brought 5 guns and hundreds of bullets…we know that he drove deliberately to that location,” said Fulop. “You put all things together, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion.”

On Thursday Grewal said it was clear the attack was anti-Semitic.

“The evidence points toward acts of hate. I can confirm that we’re investigating this matter as potential acts of domestic terrorism fueled both by anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs,” the attorney general said. He said social media posts, witness interviews and other evidence reflected the couple’s hatred of Jews and police.

Grewal noted that after killing three people in the store, the couple concentrated their fire on police and did not shoot at others who happened to be on the streets.

Grewal said the attackers, David Anderson, 47, and Francine Graham, 50, had expressed interest in a fringe religious group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, whose members often rail against Jews and whites. But he said there was no evidence so far that they were members, and added that the two were believed to have acted alone.

The pair brought their cache of weapons in a U-Haul van they drove from Bay View Cemetery, where they shot and killed Jersey City Detective Joseph Seals, according to the attorney general.

The Tunnel2Towers organization, formed after Sept. 11 to support police officers killed in the line of duty, said Friday it would pay the mortgage of Seals, who left behind a wife and five children.

Director of Public Safety James Shea called Seals “the ultimate detective or officer we would point to to tell young officers, ‘This is how you should behave.'” He said Friday that he doubted Seals would have been ambushed by the pair. Authorities haven’t disclosed why Seals was in the cemetery or details of the confrontation that led to his death.

Anderson fired away with the AR-15-style rifle as he entered the store, while Graham brought a 12-gauge shotgun into the shop. They also had handguns with a homemade silencer and a device to catch shell casings. In all, they had five guns — four recovered in the store, one in the van — in what Grewal called a “tremendous amount of firepower.”

Serial numbers from two of the weapons showed that Graham purchased them in Ohio in 2018, the attorney general said.

The victims killed in the store were: Mindel Ferencz, 31, who with her husband owned the grocery; 24-year-old Moshe Deutsch, a rabbinical student from Brooklyn who was shopping there; and store employee Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, 49. A fourth person in the store was shot and wounded but managed to escape, authorities said.

Members of New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community gathered Wednesday night for funerals for Ferencz and Deutsch. Thousands of people, mostly men, followed Ferencz’s casket through the streets of Brooklyn, hugging and crying.

The bloodshed in the city of 270,000 people across the Hudson River from New York City spread fear through the Jewish community and weighed heavily on the minds of more than 300 people who attended a vigil Wednesday night at a synagogue about a mile from where the shootings took place.

In the deadliest attack on Jews in US history, 11 people were killed in an October 2018 shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Last April, a gunman opened fire at a synagogue near San Diego, killing a woman and wounding a rabbi and two others.

How Israel and Facebook are working together to connect the world

Facebook Lite and other apps are making technology accessible to developing countries

By AARON REICH 

In the Western world and certainly in the Start-Up Nation of Israel, being “connected” online is as common as a cup of coffee. But in developing countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China, for example – outdated devices and weak or expensive data networks often keep people offline.According to Facebook’s Maayan Sarig, Israel in general and Facebook in particular are at the forefront of bringing data to the masses.Read More Related Articles

At a briefing on Monday, Sarig explained to a group of reporters how the company’s invention of Facebook Lite for low-speed connections and low-spec phones is an only-in-Israel creation that is making waves in emerging markets, which will account for more than 90% of mobile subscribers globally by 2020.In many of these developing economies, mobile networks can be slow and smartphones have limited processing power.The first lower bandwidth version of Facebook originated in 2009 for web, but only lasted eight months before it was discontinued. However, it was reintroduced in 2015. The newer incarnation featured a more blocky, seemingly dated design and interface with larger icons, but it was still perfectly functional, and served much of the same functions as the regular Facebook app.Facebook Lite functions on a 2G network, according to Tazach Hadar, director of project management for Facebook. In emerging markets, 2G networks are still the most popular. Even if 3G networks exist, they tend to be slow and have many problems with speed and connectivity in these areas.When it comes to data in these markets, cost is a significant issue.

“Data is really, really, really expensive,” Hadar emphasized.He provided an example of a village in South Africa that had fast Internet but barely anyone could afford to connect, with some people having to decide whether to eat lunch or go online.“Most people in emerging markets consider app size when downloading,” said Dekel Naar, who works for Facebook as a software engineer, and worked on Facebook Lite. He said that when “lightening an app,” less is more, because it can provide a better download experience in low connectivity areas.Harder downloads are one of the biggest barriers to new users. And, in addition, a smaller app size helps to address the single largest reason for discontinuation of Facebook among users: lack of storage. This often comes when users have 200MB of space or less left on their device.This meant excluding many features, such as sound and Facebook Live.When Facebook Lite was first released, “people said it looked like it was made 10 years ago,” said Facebook Lite engineering director Yuval Kesten. “To be honest, we agreed with them. So, we worked on it.“We want to set a high bar for Lite users,” he continued. “Easy, fast and delightful. We do it in a tailored and optimized experience.”Facebook Lite was the first of its kind. Since then, it has been followed by Facebook Messenger Lite and Skype Lite. There is even an Instagram Lite currently in the testing phase.Other social companies, such as Twitter, are likewise putting out lite apps of their own.Why was Facebook Lite developed in Israel?Sarig said simply because Israel is the Start-Up Nation.She explained that Israel currently has 1,500 digital companies and that the ecosystem and culture has allowed larger companies like Facebook to simply buy start-ups and incorporate their teams and offices into theirs.Facebook has largely resisted this trend.“Originally, Facebook would buy start-ups and send them all to Menlo Park,” explained Hadar. “But when they bought Onavo in 2013, they decided to keep them here. Unlike hubs, these start-ups like Onavo have established teams who are used to solving problems themselves.”This really sets them apart and allows them to innovate, he said, noting that some Onavo team members were behind Facebook Lite.“Israel is a world leader in all areas of tech,” said Sarig. “Israel is the only country in the Middle East with no oil. No oil, no soil, no water. What do you do? You innovate.”

JOHNNY CARSON INTERVIEW SEAN CONNERY Oct 06 1983

classic

110-year-olds live so long thanks to ‘super’ immune systems: study By Hannah Sparks

If you think daily exercise and a healthy diet were the key to a long life, think again.

Scientists say that the secret to living more than 100 years comes down to a hardy immune system, thanks to an abundance of a particular infection-fighting white blood cell.

In a study coordinated by scientists at Japan’s RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) and Keio University School of Medicine, researchers discovered that supercentenarians — those aged over 110 years — have an excess of cytotoxic CD4 T-cells.

These “super” immune system cells, according to the study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), are more aggressive and known to kill any damaged cell that crosses its path, such as virus-infected or cancer cells.

“We believe that this type of cells, which are relatively uncommon in most individuals, even young, are useful for fighting against established tumors, and could be important for immunosurveillance,” said Piero Carninci, deputy director of RIKEN, in a statement. “This is exciting as it has given us new insights into how people who live very long lives are able to protect themselves from conditions such as infections and cancer.”

Scientists noticed that most of Japan’s supercentenarians had managed to dodge illness most of their lives, leading them to believe their advanced age might have something to do with their extraordinary immune systems.

To find out, they pulled a total of 41,208 immune cell samples from seven supercentenarians, and 19,994 cells from younger individuals ages 50 to 89. They found that while both groups had about the same number of T-cells altogether, the supercentenarians had an excess of the unique cytotoxic CD4 T-cells.

SEE ALSOCentenarian sisters talk 100 years of sisterhood

This finding might help explain why so many centenarians will say that drinking booze regularly didn’t stop them from reaching 100. Others, though, credit a life without the stress of marriage or children as helping them to outlast their peers.

Amparo Perez, 105, told The Post she doesn’t regret never remarrying when her first husband died. “No aggravation,” she said, “[is] the most important thing, not to have aggravation.”

Caroline Binns, 101, would agree that husbands were only trouble. She told The Post last year, “I’d rather be left in peace, not in pieces.”

Her friend, 101-year-old Lucille Watson, said dancing and cheesecake inspires her to get out of bed every morning: “Life’s pleasures are meant to be enjoyed.”

The Opening of the Academy Awards: 1984 Oscars

Host Johnny Carson opens the 56th Academy Awards in 1984, featuring Academy President Gene Allen, Shirley Temple Black, Sammy Davis Jr., and an overture conducted by Quincy Jones. With red carpet appearances by Christie Brinkley, Hal Roach, Timothy Hutton, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Steven Spielberg, Amy Irving, Joanna Pacula, Jane Powell, Jennifer Beals, Jane Alexander, Matthew Broderick, Roger Moore, Charles Durning, Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine, Tess Harper, Dyan Cannon, Sissy Spacek, Twiggy, Tommy Tune, Cher, Glenn Close, Gene Hackman and more

We remember the Har Nof synagogue massacre in Jerusalem

We remember –  five years ago, on Tuesday morning Nov. 18, 2014, two Muslim terrorists armed with guns, knives and axes stormed into the Kehilat Bnei Torah synagogue in the quiet Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem during morning prayers.

Five Jewish worshipers and a brave Druze policeman were brutally slaughtered in the terror attack.

Murdered were American-Israelis Rabbi Moshe Twersky (59); Rabbi Calman Levine (55); Rabbi Aryeh Kupinsky (43); British-Israeli Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg and Master Sergeant Zidan Saif (30).

Seven other worshipers were wounded by the Muslim terrorists, two seriously. One of the injured victims, Howard (Chaim) Rotman, having spent nearly a year in a vegetative coma died of his wounds on October 23, 2015.

Both terrorists from East Jerusalem were eliminated at the scene by police.

See you tomorrow bli neder

Love Yehuda Lave