Rosh HaShana

As we are rapidly approaching Rosh HaShana it occurs to me that many times during the next week and a half we will think about life - we will wish each other good and sweet years; to enjoy life; to experience only simchas; and finally to live to the next Rosh HaShana. Every year on Rosh HaShana I get reminded of the cliché "Every day is a gift that's why it's called the present".

It may be over used and rather simple - but I think there is elegance in the simplicity. We never know what is in store for us, we don't know if we will live to see another Rosh Hashana, another Yom Kippur, or another Sukkot. One of the things that I don't do nearly enough, not nearly enough* is taking advantage of each day.

At my previous job, the owner would forcefully remind us that we should use two hands to be twice as productive. One of the other employees remarked, "There's a method to his madness, I always remind myself that God gave me two hands, and if I'm not using both of them for a task that could use them then I'm not using God's gift to it's fullest potential". In this time of tshuva we need to remember that each day is a gift and that we need to grab each day by both hands and use it to the best of our abilities.




*- Who, besides Avi, got the The West Wing reference?

New City, New Job, Broccoli and Heksherim

I've been very busy lately in the past month I moved to a new city (Baltimore) and found a new job, then left that one for another new job. I was asked to become the Mashgiach at Johns Hopkins University which is great except I've been putting in 12-13 hour days regularly. So it pays well but leaves very little time for blogging. I've even got this nifty name tag that says "Mashgiach" apparently nobody cares about my name just my position.

What I really want to write about is Heksherim. I've been a big proponent of Shlomo Aviner's "If you don't have a reason to doubt a heksher, don't" (paraphrased from B'hava u'Emuna found in English thanks to google here). Meaning unless you know for sure that this specific Heksher is not trustworthy then you should trust it. And since I'm certified by two va'ad hakashrut organizations I've got a lot of experience in which heksherim they trust and which they do. Part of me always believed that it wasn't all together right...How do you decide? I never wanted to believe that it came down to money. And I'm now convinced that there is a method to the madness.

All of my salad bar ingredients went bad today so along with the whole process of getting the food prepared I now had the major task of checking a lot of vegetables to get this salad bar up and running. Celery, check. Cabbage, check. Lettuce, check. Then came the broccoli.

Instead of store bought whole broccoli, Dining Services gave me pre cut and presumably pre-washed (industrial not bedika) broccoli. So I go ahead and start washing it. While checking the water I notice a brown aphid*. That's not unexpected. The next glance, there's three more. I take this opportunity to show the managers my find and tell them I hope they're washing the broccoli too - of course. Time to rewash. Geez, still more aphids, all of them brown. A lot of them. Next wash, okay this is getting ridiculous, still more brown aphids.

That makes three, got to scrap the whole bag. It was at this point that I noticed a heksher on the bag. What? Some company decided that this was kosher? I'm still in shock. I've never seen more aphids in one handful of broccoli in my life. This heksher (do is still call it that?) is not on this list of Star-K approved heksherim (thank God), but it now occurs to me that this is why they don't accept this one and that there must be a similar reason to not accept the others.


* - Aphids are normally light green or white and parboiling turns them brown [according to the OU Guide to Preparing Fruits and Vegetables]. This heksher went through the trouble of parboiling the broccoli but forgot to check it completely. Unbelievable.

UN Ambulances

If you haven't seen these two videos that have recently surfaced (thanks to JoeSettler for bringing them to my attention) showing UN Ambulances involved in transporting Hezbollah terrorists to and from the staging areas for rocket attacks.

Here is a direct link to the first one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqGjz7iJTns

And the second:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmk3BEKziJU

While it is easy to attempt to negate the evidence portrayed in the videos - be they fakes or stolen UN vehicles - what is necessary is to try to create a situation much like the falsified Reuters photos where an investigation is necessary. To create enough notice that the UN looks into them. If they are stolen - an answer that I can accept - the UN should have reported that day if not the next that an ambulance was stolen and possibly used for attacks against Israel. If they are fakes then shame on the people that made them.

As a historian this gets me into an area that I wish I knew more about - how do we know that anything really happend?. I hope to post on this eventually as my thoughts come together and I do some more research. Sufice it to say that the argument regarding the dinosaur bones, ma'aseh bereshis and testing our emunah will be discussed.

Creationism Explained by Soda and Bananas

Watch the video first:


If that is the basis of belief in Creationism or God in general I'm going to cry. It's not only sad that people believe people like these two - but enough people believe it that they make a TV show about it. I also found it interesting that William Paley's famous watchmaker proof (If you find a watch in the desert there must have been a watchmaker...) is re-invented to soda. And yes, that's Kirk Cameron of Growing Pains (and brother to Candice Cameron of Full House).

Israel's War

I loved Charles Krauthammer's recent Op-Ed called 'Disproportionate' in What Moral Universe? I've been reading a lot of negative critiques (not just by those who would be labeled anti-Israel) that the military response to Hezbollah is disproportionate. I could not disagree anymore with them anymore.

When the United States was attacked at Pearl Harbor, it did not respond with a parallel "proportionate" attack on a Japanese naval base. It launched a four-year campaign that killed millions of Japanese, reduced Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki to cinders, and turned the Japanese home islands into rubble and ruin.

Disproportionate? No. When one is wantonly attacked by an aggressor, one has every right -- legal and moral -- to carry the fight until the aggressor is disarmed and so disabled that it cannot threaten one's security again. That's what it took with Japan.

It would be easy to respond that indeed WWII was one big Human rights violation by today's standards. Dresden, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, etc. These are notorious for Allied bombings that killed thousands of civilians, but the Allied Forces believed that it was necessary to purposefully inflict these damages to end the war.

Even if Israel is purposefully inflicting civilian casualties they might be justified according to Krauthammer, but I refuse to believe that the IDF would do that. We've seen evidence for the last four years (Jenin, Gaza, etc.) that shows that the IDF is willing to risk the lives of their soldiers to prevent civilian deaths. As Krauthammer explained we're dropping leaflets warning of an impending attack giving Hezbollah time to evacuate, but we must be the or l'goyim - we must show the world how to properly deal with terrorists cowardly hiding among civilians.

So is Israel disproportionate? No. It seems to me that Israel has a stronger moral backing than the Allied forces had in WWII. It will not be easy and more soldiers (like my friend Michael Levin) h"vs will be killed, but we must defend ourselves.

What Olmert needs to explain to the world that we cannot give up while our civilians are still being attacked. If it takes another week to destroy Hezbollah, go for it. But do not stop this campaign until the threat is finished.

Baruch Dayan HaEmet

I received word tonight from my sister that a friend of mine (I'm closer with his twin sister - who was working with my sister at the time) was killed today in Lebanon in the village of Aita al-Shaab. He is one of the (so far) unnamed Sanchanim that were killed today in His name has not been released by the IDF (though the family has been contacted) yet - I assume because he is a Chayal Boded.

I have not seen my friend in nearly two years since I randomly ran into him on Ben Yehuda Street a year after he made Aaliyah and joined the army. He could not have been happier then when he was fighting for his country. The only consolation I can offer his family is that he died doing exactly what he wanted to do with his life. I truly believe that had he known what was going to happen to him - to be killed by Hezbollah defending his country - he would have joined the army anyway.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153292058280&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Qana: Who is this Man? What really happened?

In the wake of the Qana catastrophe there have been lots of reports of dead children due to the Israeli airstrike there. While Israel has accepted the responisbility for this attack it seems that there is something fishy going on.

EU Referendum posts about this man:





He seems to be everywhere in Qana, a super-man of sorts, or is he?

Bluke posts about an article he read regarding the "catastrophe" - I'm not exactly sure what happened in Qana, but it is definitely not what was reported by the media nor accepted by Israel. AlanLaz responding to Bluke's post suggests that Israel need not appologize for anything, whiel I understand his sentiment, I disagree - Israel should appologize for every civillian killed - but that should not stop them from doing what is necessary for the good of the country.

Hebrew National...A better commercial

For all of the stigma that is associated with Hebrew National I have to say that their recent ad campaign is just brilliant. I came across this commercial while watching the History Channel and none of my roommates picked it up - but being a Kashrut dork - I did.

The commercial says: "They might just be the best hotdogs on earth, no ifs ands or butts about it". Of course this is due to the issur d'orisa from Bereshit 32:33 regarding the gid hanasheh (Sciatic Nerve) and the relevant parts if it's not removed.


I don't think one should have to be a Kashrut dork to notice it; they should have. Nonetheless, my level of respect for Hebrew National has risen tremendously, that doesn't mean that I will be eating their meat just yet but that's a cool commercial.

I'm sure Rav Ralbag is a reputable rov and a good mashgiach, but I'm not going to start buying their meat without some Rabbinic support. ADDeRabbi?

One Day in a Pizza Shop

I went home to visit my parents in Philadelphia yesterday - a pre Rosh Chodesh BBQ was in order - and had a wonderful visit. This afternoon while running errands with my mother we stopped in a Pizza Shop in the North East (not hard to figure out which one if you know Philly) to get some lunch. I looked over at the community bulletin bord and noticed a Tzeddaka campaign for a chasid whose dying and has ten children to take care of. It's a heart-wrenching tale in a beautiful brochure with full color pictures of the children*.

However, eight of the children have their faces blurred out. Which eight? All of the girls. Much like the recent Feldheim scandal, Charedim have decided that pictures of females are completely assur even if they are newborns (check out what the Shulchan Aruch says about clothing your children) and dressed tzniusly.

What is the point of our tzniut standards if they are not good enough? We are telling our women that we really want them wearing burqa's if they ever need to show their faces. But why stop there? It should be assur to take pictures of women even if we can't see them, because men will imagine them and that's assur - even though it's not written anywhere it's still assur. But that's okay because our women don't learn anything but how to pray, read a chumash, cook, and maybe a few necessary mishnayot; so they'll never learn the difference.


*- It occurs to me that maybe the money spent on this brochure could have been better allocated to the children in need.

One Israeli's View

I came across this article and I immediately thought I needed to copy it in it's entirety. Read and enjoy.

One Israeli's View

The great Yogi Berra once said, "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."

I am not a columnist - just an ordinary American citizen living in Israel - but I have gained some insight into both cultures, some might say mentalities. Here is what many Israelis are feeling nowadays.

The first point concerns some unwritten American values I grew up with:

* Problems are solvable.
* Good will is returned in kind.
* In general, favor the underdog over the top dog (unless you're the top dog).
* If two sides are fighting, they must both have some justification.
* Be reasonable; split the difference.

But what if you are living in a neighborhood where they are not quite as reasonable as you? Where your attempts to reason and split the difference backfire? Or worse, where concession is laughed at as weakness.

The second point concerns Israel in particular. We are 6.6 million people, toughened but pragmatic. At 8,020 square miles, we have an area 25% smaller than Maryland. The difference is that, unlike America's vast power, with oceans and peaceful neighbors on all sides, the Jewish state is surrounded on several sides with people who actually want to kill us. Not subdue us - destroy our country.

It would be convenient to think that this must be because of something we did. But Hamas and Hezbollah say it out loud and crystal clear. The "occupation" is the whole works. Their final solution is the total destruction of Israel. Iran, a member state of the UN, holds conferences called "A World Without Israel."

This is the backdrop against which most civilized countries would have us turn the other cheek. As social writer Eric Hoffer once said, "We really do expect the Jews to be the only good Christians in the world."

To put things in perspective, imagine, if you can, that Arlington lobbed 1,000 shells at Georgetown. Or sent suicide bombers. How exactly would you react? Imagine that Mexico was calling for the destruction of the United States, backing it up with cross-border raids and missiles.

The third point is that Israel already withdrew from every last inch of southern Lebanon and Gaza, as the international community demanded. But the provocations and terror - violence aimed intentionally against civilian targets - continued. This is why we entered this conflict. Enough is enough.

This is a horrible situation to be in, fighting Hezbollah behind its human shields. But before bombing southern Lebanon and the Hezbollah neighborhoods of Beirut, Israel dropped leaflets encouraging evacuation. Confronted with terrible choices, we are trying to fight while minimizing civilian casualties.

It was wishful thinking to hope that joining the government would make Hamas and Hezbollah more responsible. Sometimes putting the bully in charge of the playground works, and sometimes it doesn't.

The operative emotion in Israel right now is sadness, sadness for what is being done to us, sadness for what we must do to defend ourselves. The missiles shot at Haifa landed a few miles from the research labs of Intel, IBM, Microsoft and Google. Israelis would much rather continue working on desalination, stroke treatment, and alternative fuels (see www.israel21c.org). We would rather that our adversaries developed their own economies pragmatically.

We hate this conflict, but we will not commit suicide. As Golda Meir said, "We will have peace when our enemies love their children more than they hate ours."

My father was a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, was the most optimistic person I ever knew, but he once taught me, "Above all else, when someone threatens to kill you or your loved ones - just believe him!"

The lesson for America is simple. Do not hide from international responsibility. Do not assume the oceans offer protection. Iran is behind Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria, and, of course, the insurgents in Iraq. If Iran gets nuclear bombs, do you want to bet they won't sponsor a radical Islamic group to eradicate American cities?

You want to know what Israelis are thinking? Theory and practice are intertwined. We are on the front line, but we will show patience and strength. That's why 89% of Israelis, Left, Right and Center, support the army right now. A mere 61 years and 10 weeks after V-E day, we know that evil and blind hatred exist. And that they can be beaten.

-- Bob Rosenschein is CEO of Answers.com (NASD:ANSW); he can be reached at rrosenschein at gmail.com; this piece reflects his own views

This post originally came from rishon-rishon.com and is also featured on The Washington Post.