Life in a modern Gan Eden. High-end restaurants, sport arenas, ski trips to Bulgaria, shiny new cars, upgraded hotels, glatt kosher of course. Pesach in Thailand, no gebrochts, and nothing less than matza shmurah the whole holiday, going to the mall to get rid of excess money, a trip to Israel to say “hello and goodbye” to the Kotel, financial plans with total expectations that they will be fulfilled, weddings to impress. PARADISE LOST.
The present year is תש”פ (780 or 5780) the acrostic of the first two letters reads תהא שנת (this year shall be), but what about the last letter פ?
It can stand for the word por’onoot (catastrophe) or pidyon (redemption). I see por’onoot for the enemies of Am Yisrael and redemption for HaShem’s loyal children in Medinat Yisrael.
At this time of world crises, I have three messages: one for the gentile (non-Jewish) world, one for the Jews of the US and one for us in the holy land.
As I read about the pandemic now facing the planet, it comes to mind that perhaps it is HaShem again sending a message to the Jewish people, even at the expense of economic, social and health issues of “innocent” bystanders. But be that as it may, the fact is that it is a shocking wake-up experience for many Jews in the galut.
The accepted practice when dealing with a nation’s future is for the planners to research its past accomplishments and its contemporary human resources and work from there to develop a rational approach to the future possibilities of the nation. Not so with the Jewish people. As in all things, we are very different than any other nation. We don’t predict where we are heading based on from where we came; we have the luxury of knowing our future destiny and need only synchronize the present with that future which includes the in-gathering of all Jews to our holy land; restoration of our sovereignty over all of biblical Eretz Yisrael, the Bet Hamikdash and much more.
The Jewish Federation of Rockland County and the Anti-Defamation League awarded a gift of twenty thousand dollars to Mr. Joseph Gluck for his heroic act of preventing a savage attack in a bet knesset in Monsey, NY, and aided in apprehending the attacker.
However, Mr. Gluck, after consulting with his rabbi, rejected the gift because the two donor organizations are pro Zionist, so they do not represent the beliefs and values of his Haredi community. Mr. Gluck told News 12 Brooklyn, “I was not willing to offer my soul for $20,000. My identity for $20,000 was not for sale.”
An incident that occurred in my formative years as a student at the Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshiva HS in New York’s lower east side.
I was one of ten boys in the Thursday journalism class who put out the yeshiva newspaper four times a year. The class was on the entrance floor to the building right above the school cafeteria. The rule was that no student may go to the cafeteria during study hours, but we considered ourselves to be the elite of the yeshiva, so the rules did not apply to us. So, one boy would collect orders from all the others – what they wanted us to bring from the cafeteria, from ice cream to spaghetti – which we would devour when Mr. Brown our teacher, who I really liked, was not watching us. It was my turn to bring the illegal, but kosher, food, but while making the order at the cafeteria the sky fell from above. The assistant principal who was the yeshiva’s disciplinarian appeared. He asked me, “Kahana, what are you doing here?”
