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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. Now also a Blogger on the Times of Israel. Look for my column

Love Yehuda Lave

Yehuda Lave giving two Zoom lectures on tonight at 7 pm (Israel time) and next week September 9 for the Root and Branch organization (it has been associated with the OU for many years)

All one has to do is click the Registration link to sign up for the zoom


Rabbi Yehuda Lave: How Rabbis and Halacha have been affected by the Corona Epidemic
Thursday, September 3rd, 2020, 7 PM (Israel Time)
Registration open to anyone anywhere. Will result in an automatic email containing link to join the Zoom talk

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Rabbi Yehuda Lave: Ten Great Stories from the Talmud
About the Talmud
About the Mishnah
About the Gemara
Wednesday, September 9th, 2020, 8:30 PM (Israel Time)
Registration open to anyone anywhere. Will result in an automatic email containing a link to join the Zoom talk

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Progressive Groups Call to Cut Ties with ‘Racist’ ADL

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Jonathan Greenblatt
REUTERS

JOSHUA KLEIN14 Aug 20205974:10

A new initiative promoted by nearly 150 left-wing organizations calls for a large scale boycott of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — the historic U.S.-based NGO established to fight hatred, bigotry, and antisemitism and whose stated mission is to secure “justice and fair treatment to all.”

Under the heading “The ADL is not an ally,” the fresh initiative — known as “Drop the ADL” — calls for a “reconsideration” of the Anti-Defamation League as “a partner in social justice work.”

Bemoaning the current integration of the ADL in many community programs, the letter speaks of the organization’s “history and ongoing pattern of attacking social justice movements led by communities of color, queer people, immigrants, Muslims, Arabs, and other marginalized groups,” all while decrying its “deceptive” and “harmful” practices including its use of the civil rights banner to attack social justice movements.

While accusing the ADL of “aligning itself with police, right-wing leaders, and perpetrators of state violence,” the letter also claims that the ADL’s credibility in movements and communities is what has allowed it “to undermine the rights of marginalized communities.”

The letter concludes by noting the “destructive role” that the ADL frequently plays in “undermining struggles for justice” and declaring that any collaboration with the ADL is a betrayal of the social justice movements behind the initiative.

Nearly 150 signatories appear on the letter, including far-left activist groups the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Democratic Socialists of America, Dream Defenders, Movement for Black Lives, CODEPINK as well as several progressive Jewish organizations.

The initiative has created a website (DropTheADL.org) and hashtag (#DropThe ADL) and compiled a primer listing ADL activities, which “undermine the rights” of “Black, immigrant, queer, Muslim, Arab, and other marginalized communities.”

Activities that the ADL is accused of in the primer include: targeting and surveilling progressive movements; supporting “racist, militarized policing” as well as “anti-Semites, Donald Trump, and other right-wing, racist influencers”; Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim racism and repressing Palestinian rights; “campus repression”; and “trampling anti-racist, immigrant, queer, and other justice movements.”

The primer goes on to label the ADL a “white-led organization” which seeks to advance a “racist” agenda, “shouts down communities of color advocating for their own rights,” and “muzzles” human rights defenders. The primer concludes with the message it seeks to popularize: “The ADL is not an ally.”

In response to the accusations, the ADL responded to each of the claims individually after having referred to them as “tired, false and misleading statements” and “myths” published by many of the same groups “who have been pushing an anti-Israel agenda for years.”

As Breitbart News has previously reported, the ADL has criticized Sen. Ted Cruz and President Trump as well as Trump administration officials, with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt — a former Obama administration official — sharing his personal view of Trump as a racist and even joining Rev. Al Sharpton in condemning the president, while ignoring Sharpton’s own documented history of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia.

Ironically, despite having become more openly left-wing; repeated criticisms of Republicans; being labeled an “arm of the Democratic Party”; labeling anti-Antifa symbols as symbols of hate; promoting civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and support for immigrants and refugees; and advocating against Islamophobia, the ADL — the leading “anti-hate” organization — has not been spared by the “woke” progressives.

Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.

Tucker: The DNC that Democrats don't want you to see

Most of the actual Democratic National Convention events take place during daytime hours. And if you saw what they were saying during the day, you might flee the country. #FoxNews #Tucker

Israel again denies itself sovereignty in its ancestral heartland

The Arabs have finally learned the secret: say nice words to the Jews and they will fall over themselves to give away their own heritage.

Victor Sharpe , 17/08/20 12:00

There would be nothing more wondrous than true peace by an Arab state with Israel. What you will read below, however, is why my growing suspicion and fear about this peace with an Arab state was immediately confirmed when I realized that this “breakthrough” was not anything to be congratulated, but rather to be criticized.

Jared Kushner may have wrought the means by which an eventual Palestinian terror state will be carved out of the heart of Judea and Samaria. This is a catastrophic and blatant denial of Jewish sovereignty within its Biblical and ancestral heartland.

Note that Mohammed bin Zayed uses the word, “annexation” and describes the ancestral Jewish heartland as “Palestinian territories.” A native people, the Jews, do not annex what is their own historical, Biblical and spiritual land. Nor is this Palestinian territory, for there has never existed a Palestinian state and there has never been a separate Palestinian Arab people throughout all of history.

All of Judea and Samaria is the ancestral and Biblical Jewish heartland, and restoration of Jewish villages and towns in the historical, spiritual heartland is not “annexation” but liberation and redemption.

Jews have waited for 2,000 years for full restoration of their homeland. Tragically after the miraculous victory of the territory’s liberation from illegal Jordanian occupation in 1967 some of it was heartbreakingly given away to the Arabs by leftwing Israeli leaders on the seventh day of the Six Day War – all in the delusional hope for a lasting peace. Now it is happening again and Netanyahu may be tragically abandoning Jewish sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, all for another illusory peace.

After defeats in four wars and numerous clashes, the Arabs have finally learned the secret: say nice words to the Jews and they will love you and fall over themselves to give away the keys to their own heritage. This, I fear, is what is now happening with respect to the “peace” between Israel and the UAE.

But let us also confront the irrevocable Islamic and Koranic injunction upon all Muslims, which is to wage relentless war against any non-Muslim nation state that exists within what Islam decrees as the Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam). Wherever the Muslim foot has trod triumphal in the name of Allah, that territory is considered eternally Islamic land. If it is lost, then it enters the Dar al-Harb (the House of War) and must be retaken and the non-Muslim population either forcibly converted to Islam, forced into dhimmi degradation, or exterminated. So much for true peace.

Mohammed bin Zayed has recognized the existence of Israel much in the same way we all recognize the existence of earthquakes and diseases. Of course we recognize them because they exist, but we recognize them in order to put an end to their existence. This is how the Muslim Arabs view the Jewish state and what motivates them, alas, is deceit and deception, paragons of duplicity and perfidy.

According to Abraham I. Katsh, who wrote the following as far back as 1954 in his book, Judaism and the Koran:

“The duty of Jihad, the waging of Holy War, has been raised to the dignity of a sixth canonical obligation ... To the Moslem, the world is divided into regions under Islamic control, the dar al-Islam, and regions not subjected as yet, the dar al-harb.

“Thanks to this concept, the Moslem is required to subdue the infidel, and he who dies in the path of Allah is considered a martyr and assured of Paradise and of unique privileges there.”

It is not only Israel, the Jewish state, that is to be warred and aggressed against by the followers of the “religion of peace” but all lands that have been lost to erstwhile Muslim occupation: They include Spain, Portugal, Sicily, parts of France and Italy, Hungary, Austria, the Balkans, Greece, southern Russia, India - all lands considered to be in the Dar al Harb. And the Islamic war is against not only Christians and Jews, but Hindus, Buddhists, Bahai, and all non-Muslim faiths or those who have no faith.

Regarding the Arab and Muslim total war against Israel, it is not accurate to describe it as the Arab-Israel conflict, nor is it correct to label it the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It is, in reality, the Islam-Israel conflict and will grind on so long as Islam, to quote Winston Churchill, remains an “ideology wrapped in a religion.”

We must face a dire reality and plan to resist it. It is a sin to deceive one’s neighbor, but it is a crime to deceive oneself.

Europe is now slipping and sliding under the orbit of Islamic Sharia law. The Europeans and the Brits are in grave danger of committing national suicide.

Vast numbers of Muslim immigrants are being allowed into Europe, Britain and the United States through slavish adherence to the unholy trinity of political correctness, diversity and multiculturalism. These immigrants - sometimes masquerading as refugees and mostly young men - are the present day Islamic advance guard for the conquest and re-conquest of much of the European continent and the rest of the world.

In Israel’s case, it stands as a bulwark - an advance guard if you will - against the battering tide of Islamic triumphalism and imperialism, which threatens to overwhelm the West and subjugate once again Jews and Christians, turning them into dhimmis, third class citizens enduring a grisly existence under Muslim control.

How supremely ironic then that the same West, facing its own self-inflicted destruction, aggressively pressures Israel into conceding ever more of its tiny landmass to create within its Biblical and ancestral heartland (Jewish Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank) yet another Muslim Arab state and a terrorist entity to boot whose sole purpose is to finish off the Jewish state: first to be reduced to a narrow width of a mere nine miles, and then to be exterminated.

Bowing to previous pressure from the Clinton Administration, Israel accepted the Oslo Peace Accords with the arch terrorist, Yasser Arafat. After shaking Israeli Prime Minister Rabin’s hand in the infamous 1993 photo-op on the White House lawn, Arafat promptly flew off to Durban in South Africa where in a local mosque he was heard in Arabic reassuring his audience that he had no intention of making peace with Israel.

Arafat’s sole purpose (and that of his successor Mahmoud Abbas) was to destroy Israel in phases; take as much historic Jewish territory as he could and use all the powers of dissimilitude, propaganda and outright lies to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. In this, he was fulfilling the Islamic injunction of Teqiyah; to deliberately lie as a faithful Muslim to non-Muslims or what Muslims arrogantly, impudently and contemptuously call; infidels.

The Jewish state’s foolish invitation to Arafat’s PLO, (which had all but faded from sight in its Tunis compound) to enter the administered territories and the subsequent tragic abandonment by the Israeli government of much of its Biblical heartland (Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank) to the PLO led Arafat to immediately renege on all his promises of peace with Israel. Instead, he used the newly acquired territory, ripped from ancestral and Biblical Jewish land, to become a launching pad for ever more horrendous terror attacks upon Israel’s civilian population.

True to his evil promise, since the September, 1993 Oslo “Peace” Accords were signed - with Israelis hoping and praying that true and lasting peace would now break out at last - thousands of Israeli civilians perished at the hands of the PLO, Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and all the other Palestinian Arab terror gangs.

Oslo legitimized the fraudulent Palestinian narrative while delegitimizing the historic, spiritual and Biblical Jewish claim to the land. This was a monumental error and a living calamity for Israel.

During the Palestinian so-called Al-Aqsa Intifada alone, many hundreds of Israeli civilians perished or were burnt to death in ghastly bus bombings. I used the horrific picture of one such atrocity on the front cover of two of my four books titled Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state. Palestinian terrorist attacks caused not only many Israeli civilian deaths but left thousands more maimed for life - and this Muslim aggression continues daily.

In yet another suicidal decision by Israel - always done in the vain and naive quest for peace with a permanently hostile Muslim world - Israel’s then Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, in 2005 forcefully removed 10,000 Israelis in the Gaza Strip and handed their homes, farms, synagogues and all their territory over to the Fatah wing of the so-called Palestinian Authority.

The vain hope was that the Palestinian Arabs would build a democratic and peaceful society and live in harmony with the Jewish state. But it was predictably not to be. Hamas took over Gaza and Israeli villagers and townsfolk bordering the Gaza Strip and beyond have endured a barrage of thousands of lethal missiles fired at them by the Iranian supported Hamas occupiers of Gaza since that fateful and senseless decision.

Palestinians now fly balloons filled with lethal and flammable material into Israel, burning down forests, nature reserves and thousands of acres of agricultural farm land. Residents are haunted by the terrible sounds of animals screaming as they are burnt alive. But predictably, not one word of protest is heard from the hypocritical world’s greenies and environmentalists.

Very little if anything about this relentless crime is ever reported in the international mainstream media. Only when Israel, tormented beyond endurance, finally responds does the media wake up and portray Israel as an aggressor - seemingly attacking poor Palestinians for no apparent reason. Such is the insidious power of much of the media (MSM).

Under Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denier and a leader who has remained in power now for over 14 years - after his earlier four year term expired - the Palestinian Authority’s media and schools have descended to Nazi era anti-Semitic indoctrination and incitement of its children. This is the “peace” Israel has received from its Arab peace partner. These crimes against children are merely echoes of so many of the horrific anti-Jewish passages found in the Koran.

We should remember that Israel had also foolishly withdrawn from the security strip along the Lebanese border some years earlier at the lamentable orders of the then Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, and predictably the territory was immediately occupied by Iran’s other surrogate Muslim terrorist organization, Hezbollah.

Now Israeli towns and villages in the north face some 150,000 Iranian supplied missiles, most of them - just as by Hamas in Gaza - deliberately sited in Lebanese schools, hospitals and private homes. This act of hiding weapons and terrorists among civilians constitutes a further crime against humanity.

It is Islam which drives the implacable aggression against Israel. It is not about territory or borders, it is about Islam never accepting any non-Muslim nation in territory it once conquered in the name of Allah.

Many times, Israel’s survival has been challenged by the Arabs on the battlefield. The Palestinian Arabs have tried despicable terror against Israel’s civilians. All have failed and so they now resort, with their duped supporters in the West, including not only the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) miscreants, but the European Union, to engage in threats of sanctions and extortion.

This naked pressure is designed to force the embattled Jewish state to allow a fraudulent Arab people to create a Muslim terror state within Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank) which is the very Biblical and ancestral Jewish heartland, and for Israel to exist in a suicidal border a mere nine miles wide at its most populous region.

This is the armistice line that existed prior to the defensive war Israel was forced to fight for its survival against Arab aggression in June 1967. That was what the Israeli statesman, Abba Eban, once described as the Auschwitz lines - the implication being horrifyingly clear.

It is difficult for Americans, living in a land that stretches some 3,000 miles from sea to shining sea, to understand that the width of Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the tiny creek that is the River Jordan (including the Biblical and ancestral Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria - known erroneously by its illegal Jordanian erstwhile occupation name of the West Bank) is barely 40 miles wide.

How ironic and shameful that the same world, which cheered the reunification of Berlin, but which still remains silent at the Muslim Turkish occupation and division of Nicosia, should gleefully and gloatingly wish to divide Holy Jerusalem against itself.

How shameful that the BDS trolls never protest or call for boycotts against China’s rape of Tibet, or Turkey’s illegal occupation of half of Cyprus, or Putin’s invasion of the Crimea or the Muslim murderers of Christians throughout the Middle East, Africa and the Philippines among other worldwide human rights atrocities. Only the one democratic and embattled Jewish state is singled out to be the victim of persecution.

Now because the UAE says nice things to Israel and is willing to “make peace” the Jewish state is asked to indefinitely put off its hope of redeeming the tiny 30% part of Judea and Samaria, of finally incorporating into Israel the Jewish towns and villages that grace the Biblical hills and valleys where our Jewish prophets, kings and warriors lived thousands of years ago. It is asked to delay establishing its strategic eastern border in the Jordan Valley. And all for what may well be another delusional and suicidal peace with the Muslim Arabs.

Peace, peace, but there is no peace. Jeremiah 6:14.

Victor Sharpe is a prolific freelance writer with many published articles in leading websites. He is also the published author of seven books including the highly acclaimed four volumes of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state, which may be found with his other books on Amazon.com


KAHANE ON THE PARSHA

PARSHAT RE'EH

WHO NEEDS A COUNTRY

"And you shall drive them out and you shall dwell in their land" (Deuteronomy 12:29). The Rabbis ((Sifri, Re'eh 80)say concerning the verse: "The mitzvah of living in Eretz Yisrael is equal to all the commandments of the Torah." Therefore, "A man should dwell in Eretz Yisrael , even in a city that is completely inhabited by gentiles, and not outside the land, though it be a city that is completely Jewish" (Tosefta, Avoda Zara 5).

The rabbis add: " Wh0ver lives outside Eretz Yisrael, is like one who has no G-d".

The halacha is clear that a Jew must live in Eretz Yisrael and woe unto a generation that has lost sight of the clear truth. But dwelling in Eretz Yisrael is not just another halacha. It is an essential, fundamental one. Consider:

When the Almighty freed the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, he did not give them a Torah there. He did not command them to keep His laws and live in Egypt or anywhere they wished to. The question is: Why? If the main purpose was to make the Jewish people a holy people, observing the laws of the Torah, why could this obligation not be placed upon the Jews without reference to where they lived? Just as a Catholic was never commanded to live only in Rome but can be a good son or daughter of the Catholic Church in Austria, Australia, or Brooklyn; and just as a good Moslem need not live in Mecca (he need only go there once in his lifetime on a pilgrimage)- why is it that the Almighty insisted that all the Jews leave Egypt and go to Eretz Yisrael rather than allowing them to settle as good and "frum" Jews in Goshen where they could set up their own yeshivas and shtiebels?

Secondly, we find an amazing statement by the Rabbis in the Sifri (Ekev 43): "Even though I exile you, continue to be marked with mitzvot [i.e., continue to keep them] so that when you return to Eretz Yisrael they will not be new [i.e., unfamiliar] to you."

Astounding! This is the reason for a Jew to put on tefillin and affix a mezuza in the Exile? Merely so that it should not be unfamiliar to him when he returns to Eretz Yisrael?! One would imagine that the reason that a Jew in Brooklyn or Los Angeles or Toronto should put on tefillin is that it is a mitzvah sh'begufo, a mitzvah that is personal to his body wherever he is, his place of residence being irrelevant.

But the truth, the fundamental truth, the, alas, bitter truth to too many observant Jews, is that the Almighty wanted the Jews to live in Eretz Yisrael ONLY, and He gave the mitzvot to be PRACTICED ONLY in Eretz Yisrael. Over and over again, we find the Torah making statements like: "Behold, I have taught you decrees and ordinances...that you should do within the land that you go to possess" (Deuteronomy 4:5)

The reason is succinctly stated by the Ibn Ezra (Deuteronomy 4:10): "For the L-rd knew that [the Jewish people] could not do His commandments properly as long as they were in the lands that ruled over them." And the Sforno (Deuteronomy 6:21) adds: "And since in our bondage we could not acquire the completeness directed from Him, He did wondrously to take us out and bring us to a land where we could acquire that completeness."

There it is! The Almighty insisted and INSISTS that the Jew be removed from all other peoples, isolated ("lo, it is a people that dwells alone"- Numbers 23:9), because He knows the immutable, natural fact that the Jew living as a minority under a majority gentile culture cannot help but be influenced by that culture. Like gamma rays, the non-Jewish culture and ideas and concepts bombard the Jew so that he is subtly and not-so-subtly influenced by his gentilized environment. And, thus, the Torah that he practices is not practiced "properly" (to quote the Ibn Ezra), and is without completeness (to quote the Sforno). It becomes a system of ritual that is bereft of so much of the conceptual content because other concepts, majority concepts, majority non-Jewish concepts, influence us.

That is why the Almighty, from the very beginning of Jewish national history in Egypt, demanded that the Jew live only in one country- HIS country- where he could be as isolated as much as humanly possible from conflicting cultures and concepts. That is why He still demands it today.

And that is, indeed, the clear message of the Sifri quoted above. The mitzvot were never meant to be practiced outside Eretz Yisrael. They were always meant to be kept ONLY in Eretz Yisrael for the basic reason I have mentioned above. But since the Almighty knew that the Jews would be driven out of their land and live in the exile, He decreed that they should continue to observe mitzvot solely for the reason that they not be forgotten when they, the Jews, returned to Eretz Yisrael, the only place where the mitzvot were designed to be kept.

The Jewish Press, 1988

The second stop on the Stay Vacation in Israel was the Jerusalem Bird Observatory

The Jerusalem Bird Observatory - JBO, houses one of many national bird-ringing centers. Together with the active ringing station, it serves as an ideal tool for conservation studies and research that monitor bird populations. Birds Migration patterns in Israel are studied throughout the various seasons and data is collected and analyzed in a comprehensive national database. The national database also receives information from our other birding stations throughout the country, including the Hula Valley, Eilat, Ma'agan Michael, Hazeva, and Sde Boker.

The JBO is located in the center of Jerusalem near the Knesset. Visitors can stop by for an eco-experience. Bird watching, presentations, about bird migration in Israel, and a comprehensive urban nature experience is available for tourists visiting as groups or individuals.

The Gail Rubin Gallery, which was established to encourage nature artists and photographers in Israel, always houses exhibitions. The exhibitions focus on different aspects of nature and are free and open to the public whenever the building is open.
Birdwatching in Jerusalem

The Israeli government allocated the JBO a one-acre plot (5,000 square meters) of prime real estate, between the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) and the Supreme Court. The site is one of the few traditional birdwatching areas in Jerusalem that has not been harmed by development, and is centrally located, making it attractive as an educational and tourist center for the public.

Since the establishment of the JBO, birds have arrived in greater numbers each year, to the great pleasure of bird and bird watcher alike. The JBO acts as a magnet for many common migrating and wintering birds: Wrynecks, Collared flycatchers, Masked and Red-backed Shrikes, and Thrush Nightingales can be seen migrating and European Robins, Hawfinches, and Bramblings are regular winter visitors. In addition many resident Israeli birds make their home at the JBO, including Palestine Sunbirds, Spectacled Bulbuls and Israel's national bird, the Hoopoe. The endangered Lesser Kestrels can be seen nesting in springtime in nearby Musrara and many Short-toed eagles and Little Owls can be found in the hills surrounding the city. The JBO is also home to a vast amount of animals and plants that make up an inseparable part of the local environment.
Visiting the JBO

The JBO is located directly next to the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), past the main entrance, nestled between the Rose Garden and Sacher Park. The bird hide of the JBO is open every day, 24 hours a day to the general public and is fully wheelchair accessible, thanks to the help of the Nyman family.

Visitors are invited to sit and observe the natural diversity of birds and wildlife that live in or pass through Jerusalem. Feel free to meander the paved road that leads from the Knesset and the Rose Garden to the gate of the cemetery, but we ask that you leave the rest of the site for the birds and not leave the paved road. For the sake of the wildlife and the comfort of our visitors, please refrain from smoking, lighting bonfires, loud music or littering. Please keep your dogs on a leash while on the site.

Schedule: Sunday-Thursday from 9:00-3:00pm or by appointment.

Types of activities: Bird watching, night hikes, nature movies, bird banding, group tours, nature crafts, tree planting, photography workshops, sketching workshops, and birdwatching for beginners workshops.

Bird Ringing is conducted several days a week and guided tours are available by appointment. Please call or e-mail for details.

Phone: +972 (0)2-653-7374.
Mobile: +972 (0)52-386-9488

Email: jbo@inter.net.il

See you tomorrow bli neder

We need Moshiach now!

Love Yehuda Lave

Yehuda Lave, Spirtiual Advisor and Counselor

Jerusalem, Jerusalem
 Israel

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