This week\’s Torah portion is called \”Behar\” because it begins \”The Lord spoke to Moses behar (on Mount [Sinai]). Upon reflection, something seems out of order. We left Mount Sinai in the Book of Exodus.
Too much driving and dreaming makes me practically a native here, I suppose. When I complained to my friend Stuart back East, he said: \”Slow down. Pull over. Take a class.\”
Numbers never tell the whole story, but these come close. By retaining control of the West Bank, Gaza and the Palestinian populations therein, Israel will either cease to be a primarily Jewish State, or will become an undemocratic one, where a Jewish minority rules an Arab majority.
What have our military expenditures to do with the state of the states? After all, we are a long way from the guns vs. butter arguments, when we used to show how many new schools or hospitals could be built for the cost of one new aircraft carrier.
Fifty-five years is not a very long time in historical terms, especially when talking about a people who have been around for thousands of years.
But the balance sheet of those 55 years has certainly been impressive.
According to Rabbi Tuvia Teldon, director of Lubavitch of Long Island, the root of this custom is a verse in the Torah that compares man to a tree. In Deuteronomy, it states, \”A person is like the tree of a field.\” Just as a tree grows tall and with time, produces fruit, so it is hoped that a little boy will grow in knowledge, good deeds and, eventually have children of his own.
Robert Carlyle, of \”The Full Monty\” and \”Angela\’s Ashes\” fame, gives a striking performance in the title role of the CBS miniseries \”Hitler: The Rise of Evil.\”
When Dr. Edward Phillips set out to create the first English-language exhibit on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, opening Sunday at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, information proved elusive.
Even though he promises to be a kinder, gentler version of himself, his raspy growl is — and will be — unmistakably unchanged.
\”Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002,\” by Charles Enderlin (Other Press, 2003).
I once asked King Hussein of Jordan whether he considered Zionism legitimate. Did he accept that there was any historical basis to the Jews\’ claim to a portion of Palestine as their homeland? He looked at me as if I were from Mars and ducked the question. Later, he told a Jordanian colleague that only a Jew could have posed such a strange question. Perhaps by the time of his death in 1999 he had softened his view. But his reaction still exemplifies that of the vast majority of Arabs today.
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