My daughter, the animal lover, has a father who isn\’t. A hamster is the biggest pet I\’ve gotten talked into so far. It lives in her room, and basically I wouldn\’t even know it was there except for one thing — it\’s nocturnal.
We look back on the past because it was another era. In our youth and young years, life included activities you chose. Your responsibilities were minimal compared to those as you grew older. Being young and thinking young allowed you to exist in a world that is the start of the middle age.
This was by far the most spiritual moment in my life. I gazed up at the stars as I chanted the V\’Ahavta prayer with amazing new friends, standing around the same rocks that our people had wandered past thousands of years before. My eyes couldn\’t help but tear up as we moved on to the Mi Chamocha, the song of freedom. At that moment I felt as though God truly was with us.
\”I wanted to be a coach because I like sports,\” said Gaskin of her involvement with the Prime Time Games program.
The Pacific Palisades resident initially took on the responsibly to fulfill an outreach requirement for her bat mitzvah last spring. The experience has satisfied more than a ceremonial obligation.
\”I feel good because I\’m helping other people,\” Gaskin said.
If you are willing to inflict physical pain upon yourself as a service to your god, why not treat others to the same spiritual experience? Paradoxically, they will be killed or harmed because of your love for them.
There is one program in particular that embodies all of the emotionalism and meaning of machon summer: Tza\’adah. Tza\’adah is a five-day, four-night overnight trip that takes campers far from the boundaries of camp and into the nature of Northern California, where we bond with friends, while experiencing the outdoors.
It was July 12, 1984, my first day on the Ketziot basic training base, my new \”home\” as an IDF soldier in the Givati Infantry Brigade. One by one, we were issued what was then the standard IDF infantry weapon, the Israeli-made Galil rifle.
\”All of us that have kids in Israel are trying to make the best of the situation,\” said Jules Gutin, international director for USY, the youth arm of the Conservative movement, which has about 50 California teens in Israel this summer. \”We want the experience to be worthwhile and positive, as well as safe.\”
On Thursday, July 6, at 9 a.m., Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a longtime supporter of Israel, was interrupted twice in attempts to place a call to Eli Moyal, mayor of the Israeli city of Sderot.
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