The previous 2 statements by someone called Shmuel Avoqiah, shows ‘great intelligence’. So, I will leave it at that.

Hi all!

Well, I am very pleased that things seem to have been worked out in Chevron and am rather distressed thatm at least as far as things look now, things look like they might not won’t work out so smoothly in Amona.  I comfort myself with the fact that things did go fairly smoothly in Gush Katif & northern Shomron this past August & that those few who threatened violence against the IDF & Israel Police were, for the most part, all bluster & no muster.  I look at the (mostly young) people going to Amona & I’m sad that once again the same people are going to the fight wrong battle and lose.

The rancor here is just as bad as it was when I made my first post on this thread.  It has not been as apparent as it was in August, but it’s still there.  PM Sharon’s condition & the impending action at Amona are stoking it up again, I fear.

I saw this in Machon Meir’s Shabbat daf a few weeks back on Parshat Vayehi.  I had heard rumors to this effect but seeing this from an unimpeachable source still shocked me:

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner – Chief Rabbi of Beit El

“Sticking to the High Moral Ground”

First Story:

“I am an officer in the standing army. I stopped a car to get a ride but the driver told me, “Please change shirts.”
“I have no other,” I replied.
-Then take it off. What are you wearing under it?
“Under the shirt I am wearing tzitzit, and under the tzitzit is a Jew.”
-I have a problem with giving you a ride because of the shirt of the Expulsion Army.
“I wasn’t there! I serve in the Hebron area and I myself live in a settlement.”
-Fine, so I’ll give you my shirt.
At this point I told him “No thanks. Drive on.” Another driver who heard the conversation told me angrily, “Why don’t you shoot him?”

Second Story:
“I am a sergeant and was invited to the wedding of one of my soldiers. When I entered the hall, a family member approached and asked me to remove my uniform; to their credit, they had prepared in advance white shirts for the soldiers. Since I am not embarrassed by my uniform, I just sat down at a table. After several minutes, two people approached me and began persuading me to take off my uniform. At this point, I told them that I was not interested in arguing with them. I approached the groom, told him that I had to leave, and I left.”

Third Story:
“Thank G-d, we have a lot of children, they are all married, and they all love each other greatly, or, more precisely, they did until the expulsion. Since then they are angry with one another due to their differences of opinion. They cannot sit together around the same table. Therefore we invite them separately for Shabbat, one by one.”

Question: What’s going to be?

This broke my heart, the extent to which we are riven (still!) by sinat chinam.  Is this what we have come to??!!

What cheered me up (a little) was Rav Aviner’s answer:

Answer:

1. The settler population is high in quality but low in numbers, so we have to be united. The same applies with the religious population at large, and that population has to be united as well. Altogether, the entire Jewish People are high in quality but low in numbers, so they must remain united as well.

2. We are idealistic people, thank G-d, but we have to be careful not to be extremist. We should be tolerant of those who do not think the way we do. We mustn’t conduct ourselves only according to the strict letter of the law, but according to strict law combined with kindness.

3. Without taking anything away from the enormous merit and self-sacrifice of part of the army, even if we decide that other parts are being dragged in a corrupt and unsavory direction, this requires us all the more not only to enlist in the army but to produce excellent, idealistic soldiers and officers.

4. We must recall what Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook taught: We must always see the hand of G-d acting within our midst, both in the bright sun of G-d’s “morning kindness” and in complicated situations of His faithfulness at night” (Psalm 92).

5. We must remember that with all the shortcomings of our political lives, we are rising up to rebirth, and nothing can stop the word of G-d, who spoke well of Israel.

6. We must rise above hateful thoughts in favor of unbounded love for all Jews. We must recall the blessings before the Shema, which note that G-d “has lovingly chosen His people Israel” and that He “loves Israel”, and the Shema itself, which states, “Hear O Israel: Hashem is our G-d. Hashem is one.”

Link: http://www.machonmeir.org.il/english/archive_id.asp?language=English&id=401

From Rav Aviner’s keyboard to our hearts!

Be well!

stillsmallvoice

Hi all!

Well, I spent all morning & all early afternoon watching the scenes from Amona on TV here.  Ach, it was heart-wrenching.  To those who protested passively & non-violently, I say kol hakavod to their restraint & their self-respect.  But the kids (kids!) who were throwing cement blocks, etc. at the security forces and using other violent means (these latter-day biryonim have no rabbanim & no Torah, having ignored repeated calls not to use violent means) are lucky that the police were as restrained as they were.  One policeman is in critical/serious condition with head injuries after a cement block was dropped on his head.  It was the sight (again) of the kids that got me so riled up.  Where are their parents?  Has our conflict with the Arabs, this danse macabre, got to us so much that we have become like them, that we send our children to fight our battles?  Have we sunk to the point that we have become like them?  They are animals who delight in violence & in the shedding of blood and we are Jews!  We have to show the world & ourselves that we are not like them, that we are better than them, that we are not nihilistic animals!

Be well!

stillsmallvoice

The news from Amona indicates that Hamas is alive and well and still running the Israeli Government, it appears as if Olmert is simply their agent. Baruch Dayan Emes.

Hi all!

The news from Amona indicates that Hamas is alive and well and still running the Israeli Government, it appears as if Olmert is simply their agent. Baruch Dayan Emes.

I’ve been to the funerals of Jews here who were m-u-r-d-e-r-e-d by Hamas & have had to pay shiva calls on their grieving relatives.  Aside from saying a bracha l’shav, how dare you libel Israeli policemen this way!  Your choice of analogies is altogether inaccurate & unacceptable!

LHABER (where do you live, again?), not only does such florid rhetoric rarely help anything, it usually causes more damage.  I live in Yesha and am mad as a hatter that such wild rhetoric, along with the actions of the wild kids, yesterday will cause my fellow Jews to write off all those of us who live in Yesha as fanatical extremists & to thus tar us all with the same brush.  No sir!  I will not be lumped in with the biryonim (in the Mishnaic sense) who raised their hands to other Jews & who threw cinderblocks at police who were executing a lawful court order!  We have got to stop acting like spolied children throwing a tantrum because our friends have suddenly decided that they don’t want to play it our way anymore!  Oh, they tried to block several highways here yesterday.  Now, there’s a helpful, sensible move that’s going to persuade the undecided and/or win over those who aren’t with us, yessiree!  It is those who, because of their own actions & choices, find themselves the most helpless/ineffectual/not-listened-to that often resort to the wildest rhetoric & wildest actions, in order to compensate for their impotence (which, of course, they’ll blame on everyone but themselves).  A fight is measured in rounds.  If you don’t do so well in one round, you try harder (or try something different) in the next.  The kids yesterday are impatient, they cannot see anything in the long-term & their faith is misguided and shallow.  Fighting with the police yesterday & rolling burning tires on the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway near Latrun (happened yesterday), what positive purpose does it serve??  None!!  Therefore, it is/was better that they not be done because the only thing such actions accomplish is to generate ill-will & hatred and Am Yisrael is choking on a surfeit of ill-will & hatred right now!  We would all do well to take what Rav Aviner (and I’ve seen where some fanatics, who don’t have even 1/100th of his Torah & emunah, who are not even fit to shine his shoes, have taken to questioning his status as a posek and to calling him a leftist, merely because his views do not jibe with their own!) has said to heart.  I will post it again because I think that Rav Aviner is offering good medicine for troubled Jews in these troubled times:

1. The settler population is high in quality but low in numbers, so we have to be united. The same applies with the religious population at large, and that population has to be united as well. Altogether, the entire Jewish People are high in quality but low in numbers, so they must remain united as well.

2. We are idealistic people, thank G-d, but we have to be careful not to be extremist. We should be tolerant of those who do not think the way we do. We mustn’t conduct ourselves only according to the strict letter of the law, but according to strict law combined with kindness.

3. Without taking anything away from the enormous merit and self-sacrifice of part of the army, even if we decide that other parts are being dragged in a corrupt and unsavory direction, this requires us all the more not only to enlist in the army but to produce excellent, idealistic soldiers and officers.

4. We must recall what Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook taught: We must always see the hand of G-d acting within our midst, both in the bright sun of G-d’s “morning kindness” and in complicated situations of His faithfulness at night” (Psalm 92).

5. We must remember that with all the shortcomings of our political lives, we are rising up to rebirth, and nothing can stop the word of G-d, who spoke well of Israel.

6. We must rise above hateful thoughts in favor of unbounded love for all Jews. We must recall the blessings before the Shema, which note that G-d “has lovingly chosen His people Israel” and that He “loves Israel”, and the Shema itself, which states, “Hear O Israel: Hashem is our G-d. Hashem is one.”

Be well!

ssv

Unfortunately, I still live in America. Nonetheless, My son, his wife and five children live in Yesh (No thanks to Sharon it really shouldn’t be called Yesha any longer. When I visited last I went to Aza to protest and my son was very active in the protest movement. I sincerely hope that the time will NOT come when you will be on the receiving end of an evacuation.