OK, I thought things were getting rough in the States. Turns out things are far worse than I could have ever imagined!

This weekend I listened to an empassioned speech by a Jew who fought in the American military during WWII and was directly responsible for liberating Buchenwald.

One story he told that I don’t think I’ll ever forget involved his interrogation of a Nazi commander.

The Nazi was in restraints,  and the American soldier (now 86) asked the commander if he understood that he was a prisoner. The Nazi nodded.

The soldier than said, “I am an American soldier… and I am a Jew.”

What do you do if you’re a Nazi commander in restraints in a pre-Geneva Convention world, and the soldier across from you says he’s a Jew?

The only thing I can think of is to grovel and beg forgiveness for all you’ve done.

The Nazi grimaced. He muttered the words “God damned Jew”, and then spat in the American soldier’s face!

Without thinking or compassion, this American soldier pulled out a knife, and the corpse of this Nazi commander was disposed of behind the shed.

I gasped.

I was shocked.

And then I smiled.

But I was rather suprised to hear what he said next.

The soldier explained that the war had severly messed with his brain. He had seen things no human should ever experience. He was agitated, and angry.

He acted on impulse against an unarmed man in restraints, and has felt guilty about it for 65 years.

I’m not this soldier.

I cannot fathom his emotions, not for a second.

But he stared pure evil in the face, pure non-repentant evil, and he wiped it off the face of the earth for good.

I can’t imagine for a moment he acted incorrectly, and I beg God that if I were ever in the same circumstances I would have the courage to do as he did.

What would you do?  

The Israel that has eliminated terrorists in some of the most impressive and creative ways imaginable, everything from bombs in cell phones, to missiles shot through office windows with pinpoint accuracy. 

The Israel that filled its military with laws that protect the rights of all of its religious soldiers so they could observe their laws to the fullest. 

The Israel with laws preventing soldiers with siblings who have died in duty from serving in frontline units without parental consent. 

The Israel where a siren rings throughout every city to remember its fallen soldiers, and cars stop even in the middle of the highway so people can stand at attention.  The Israel where even though we may not all get along at all times, we all recognize that we are brethren and ultimately we will stand together through thick and thin. 

The Israel where soldiers are forced to throw Jews out of their homes and are jailed if they refuse, and Israeli soldiers slickly dress up like Arabs to capture Jews who try and live on our own land… 

Gosh, I miss what Israel WAS.   

Soldier Jailed for Not Razing Outpost, Police Entrap Jews
by Hillel Fendel  (IsraelNN.com) An army driver was sentenced to 20 days in jail for refusing to take part in destroying the Meoz Esther outpost, and six arrests were made when police ambushed them from within a car with an Arab license plate. 

The soldier driver was sentenced on Thursday by an IDF regiment commander. The soldier had refused to take part in the destruction of the Meoz Esther start-up neighborhood, near Kokhav HaShachar, carried out the same day. 

The soldier is a resident of the Shomron town of Kedumim, and was himself forcibly evacuated from another Shomron town, Sa-Nur, during the Disengagement of 2005.   Despite this, he was ordered to join a police force that was to destroy Meoz Esther.

He responded, “I cannot take part in that, take someone else.” 

His commander did find someone else – and told the first soldier he would be tried by a Lt.-Col, who sent him to jail for 20 days. 

People used to ask me if I had any solutions to the crisis in the middle east. My favorite answer was that we should create a common enemy. If we all work together toward a common goal, peace will flow naturally. My suggestion was England. EVERYONE has a bone to pick with England. Well, this article doesn’t suggest England… but theirs is just as good!

A former student of mine, who I care about deeply, recently sent me a link to a blog. I usually diagree (respectfully) with this student about all political matters, especially those relating to Israel . This was by no means an exception.

Now, I’m as open-minded as the next guy. I like to hear other people’s opinions, and I’m more than willing to entertain the possibility that I’ve made an error. But this nonchalantly sent link irked me in a way that you couldn’t possibly imagine.

OK, I can handle left-wing nonsense about Israel. I can handle people telling me the army uses disproportional force. I can handle lies presenting 4-year olds chucking little pebbles at battalions of tanks. I can handle a media bias which always presents Israel as the bad guy. I agree with none of this, but I can handle it.

I stopped reading the long-winded trash of a blog when the author started attempting to draw parallels between the Nazis and the Israeli government. This vomit he calls his opinions are not worthy of being seen by my or anyone else’s eyes. Any person who can be so idiotic as to even entertain for a moment that such a comparison is reasonable in any way, shape, or form, well, this is miles over the line as far as I’m concerned. Your opinion reeks of an ignorance of what the Holocaust was as well as what Israel is, and you posses an incomparable insensitivy.

You might call me pig-headed and too stubborn to listen to “the facts.” Yup. Call me what you call me, but my ears are closed. Your opinion is less than dirt to me.

If you would like to do the “open-minded” thing, and have the patience for vapid, vile drivel, read away: http://songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com/2009/03/israeli-terror.html. As far as I’m concerned, there is no limit to how many better ways I could spend my time.

Some light hearted fun from my days of confusion in the Israeli army:

I could remember it like it was yesterday, although I still scratch my head each and every time I think about it.

In the Israeli army at the end of every basic training there is a swearing-in ceremony, where everyone shouts their pledges of dedication to the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Force. Not suprisingly each and every soldier receives a copy of the Bible, in Hebrew, to accompany them through the experience.

So there were two soldiers in the unit who were self proclaimed atheists. Why this matters I’ll never know. They were Jews, and loyal to the country, and gave no indication that despite their lack of belief in God they harbored any angst toward Judaism.

Nevertheless, I can still hear the voice of one of them shouting in anger (repeatedly), in a super-thick Russian accent, how he wanted to throw his new book at his sergeant.

In place of a Hebrew Bible these two soldiers were given, without any explanation whatsoever, copies of the Koran in Arabic.

For years I’ve racked my brain trying to explain this awkward moment, but always found myself returning to the oft repeated phrase in the Israeli army: “Ein higayon b’tzava.” (There is no logic in the Israeli army.)

I’m once again a famous published author, with another Dvar Torah in the Baltimore Jewish Times:  

A Plea For Shabbat

Parshat Vayakhel-Pekudei

Every year, thousands of people experience Parshat Vayakhel and see these words: “On six days, work may be done, but the seventh day shall be holy for you, a day of complete rest for HaShem” (Vayikra 35:2).

The average person sees these words and all of a sudden, thoughts flood their mind. “How could I possibly not work on Saturdays? Won’t I have a huge advantage over anyone if I work every day of the week? Are you kidding me!? A day with no cell phone or Internet! And what do you expect me to do with that time? Get closer with my family? Or even worse, my Creator!? Keep dreaming.”

If my life had been much different, this would probably describe my thoughts. However, approximately 12 years ago, I stumbled upon these words of Mordechai Kaplan: “An artist cannot be continuously wielding his brush. He must stop at times in his painting to freshen his vision of the object, the meaning of which he wishes to express on his canvas. Living is also an art. We dare not become absorbed in its technical processes and lose our consciousness of its general plan. Our ideal of the personality we would become, if we achieved salvation as here interpreted, is the object we are trying to paint; the Sabbath represents those moments when we pause in our brushwork to renew our vision of this object. Having done so, we take ourselves to our painting with clarified vision and renewed energy.”

In my mind, the logic was flawless, and at the very least opened me up to the idea of attempting to observe the Sabbath. I resolved that that weekend would be the first time I would undertake to fully observe Shabbat.

Ask me if it went well and I’ll tell you I don’t remember. But 12 years later, I have not since missed fully observing each and every Shabbat. It must have been a pretty special experience.

So why am I telling you all of this? I’ve fully resolved to myself that no amount of pro-Shabbat propaganda will have the slightest impact on someone uninterested in giving it a whirl. I’m telling you this because I’ve stood on both sides of the tracks and I know that my own existence is enhanced one-thousand-fold because Shabbat is a part of my life, and despite that fact I know that whatever attempt I make to explain will fall short of the mark.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not positive that I’m correct. It just means all I truly feel comfortable saying, Give it a shot. Call up a Shabbat-observant friend and say you’re interested in learning about the Sabbath and would like to go to them for a meal or two this weekend. I can all but guarantee they’re more than happy to oblige. Heck, give me a call. My wife and I would be happy to have you over.

If I told you I wanted to give you a lottery ticket, free of charge, with the potential of winning $500,000, you would know that you had everything to gain and nothing to lose, right? Would anyone refuse?

The average person would rather remain unaware their whole life than risk the potential of “losing” one day to a true Shabbat experience, fully convinced that they know it’s not worth it to them. But we know better than that. We know you cannot judge something you have never experienced. We know you can never reject something you couldn’t possibly know anything about.

I’m a better and happier person because of the experiences I have had. I would feel ashamed and irresponsible if I didn’t at least try and tell you about them.

I study history. No, I am not an historian. Nor do I have a degree in history. I’m a careful reader of world history, and a casual observer of the modern world with a an accute sense of parallels between the two.

There are many mistakes people make when looking back at pre and post-WWII Germany.

One mistake is the assumption that the world is so overly disgusted with the actions of Nazi Germany that the Jews are now safer than they used to be. History proves otherwise, time and time again.

Another mistake is the assumption that the Germans are now a changed people. There was a collective and unprecedented guilt that ripped through Germany so powerful, the population would wince at the thought of causing any harm to anyone, let alone Jews.

Fact: The Jews are very vulnerable. Antisemitism hasn’t slowed for a minute, not even in Germany.

Facts: Germans are Germans. They caused two world wars, and don’t be suprised if they’re at some point instrumental in causing a third.

Read this article. Read it and learn from the past. If you’re in Germany, get out and get out fast!

Maybe. Maybe not.

I recently got into a debate with a student of mine about whether or not the claims of some psychics that they can communicate with the dead has any validity.

I almost felt bad for her. She was the lone believer preaching among a teacher and an entire class that not only disagreed with her, but saw her as silly and naive.

I know one grand example is certainly not enough to prove a point, but I stumbled across a video that I thought was so hysterical, and so demonstrated how ridiculous these folk can be, I thought no more fun of a place to post it than right here in my blog:

I found this, and thought it was the kind of thing that should be posted and passed around. 

Mike Monsoor, a Navy EOD Technician, was 
awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor 
posthumously for jumping on a grenade in Iraq, 
giving his life to save his fellow Seals.
(Notice: Mike was not a Navy SEAL, he was EOD..
He gave his life to save a group of Navy SEALS.)

During Mike Monsoor’s funeral in San Diego , 
as his coffin was being moved from the hearse
to the grave site at Ft. Rosecrans National  
Cemetery , SEAL’s were lined up on both sides
of the pallbearers route forming a column of two’s,
with the coffin moving up the center. As Mike’s
coffin passed, each SEAL, having removed his 
gold Trident from his uniform, slapped it down
embedding the Trident in the wooden coffin.

The slaps were audible from across the cemetery; by the time the coffin arrived grave side, it looked as though it had a gold inlay from all the Tridents pinned to it.This was a fitting send-off for a warrior hero.