AISH

Raising Boys to become Good Men
http://www.aish.com/f/p/Raising-Boys-to-become-Good-Men.html?s=mm
For starters, they need to see that women are genuinely respected in your home.
by Slovie Jungreis-Wolff
With so many high-profile cases of men falling in disgrace, it’s a good idea for parents to reexamine how to best raise our sons to become good men. How our sons view women when they are children will impact the way they treat women when they venture out into the world.

We are given the responsibility to provide spiritual training to our children. Fathers and mothers are charged with the mandate to leave a spiritual imprint on our children’s souls.

If we expect the next generation to listen to us while they grow, they must hear us when they are young. What is the message we impart? How can we nurture our children’s character so that they leave this world better than when they entered? (It goes without saying the following points equally apply to teaching our daughters how to respect men.)

Honor the Women in your Life
More than any strong lecture about treating women properly is the firsthand view of what children observe. When parents honor one another, when they treat women with dignity, respect flourishes. Ask: How do we honor the women in our life? Do we easily disparage women’s thoughts? What is our tone and body language? Do we carelessly mock a mother’s concerns? Are grandmother’s ignored and made to feel irrelevant?

There are positive ways we can teach children, too. Instead of always having mom serve, tirelessly prepare and somehow make life run smoothly for the family, let’s involve our spouses and children. Even a toddler can learn how to bring a spoon or cup of water to mommy.

And as children grow: “Please sit, Mom, I’ll take care of this.” What beautiful words to a mother’s ears.

Expressing gratitude in front of your children is another avenue of honor. How often do we leave the dinner table or grab a snack that mom prepared without a backward glance? Mom is expected to sooth wounded feelings, heal scraped knees, mediate siblings battles, feed hungry tummies, supervise homework, ferry after school activities, be sure there are clean uniforms hanging, and still be the incredible woman she was meant to be.

If we want our sons to respect women, they must hear and see that respect modeled in the home.
Judaism recognizes the strength of women. Every Friday night we sing Eshes Chayil, A Woman of Valor, paying tribute to the women in our lives. We speak about her rising in the darkest of nights and never allowing herself to fall into the depths of hopelessness. Her flame is never extinguished though her heart may be full. She is exhausted but perseveres.

If we want our sons to respect women, they must hear and see that respect modeled in the home.

Teach Self-Discipline
All children require self-discipline to reign in emotions and actions that can harm others. Our technology-obsessed culture means that often there is ‘no end’. No end to the music, no end to the show, no end to the surfing – there is always something else to watch or listen to. How does one understand the definition of enough? From where does a child learn the meaning of ‘stop’? They keep scrolling down and clicking more.

In a society of instant gratification, children believe that their wishes come before anyone else.
Growing up in a world where wants are fulfilled with a touch of a button can strain a child’s ability to comprehend the word ‘no’. How many parents are able to repeatedly deny their children’s desires? In a society of instant gratification, children believe that their wishes come before anyone else. “I want it and I want it now!” Order from Amazon prime and it’s at your doorstep. Wants and needs are often confused.

Character training demands that a parent be unafraid to declare boundaries. Teaching right from wrong requires our stepping in and setting rules. Whether it is no phones at meals and homework time or limiting purchases on iTunes, we have the obligation to stand up for that which we believe in. Creating a space within a child’s world where it’s ok to not have it all, to respect the word ‘no’, to realize that it’s not what you have but who you are that creates happiness, are all essential rungs on the ladder to moral greatness.

Judaism provides us with built-in avenues toward self-discipline. Mitzvot help us train our children’s hearts.

“Yes, you want to have that chocolate bar but it is dairy and you need to wait between eating meat and dairy.”

‘Sure, you have a juicy piece of gossip but that’s lashon hara, and we cannot hurt others with our words.”

Plug into the positive energy of teaching your child the strength of ruling over one’s desires.

Teach Responsibility and Empathy
Here are two values to work on with our boys to help mold them into great men.

Begin with responsibility. When we hurt others we need to recognize the pain that we’ve caused. Teach children to own their actions. Apologize without ‘ifs’, excuses, or blaming others. Too many adults disclaim the harm they’ve inflicted. We cannot afford to rationalize our sons’ wrongs by excusing bad behavior. Saying things like ‘boys will be boys’ or ‘this is our culture now’ is pitiful. There is no justification for demeaning others. If you bring damage into the world through your words or actions, you need to be accountable.

Inspiring children to respect and have self-control nourishes the inner voice that becomes their moral compass.
Empathy means I am responsive to your feelings. In a world where we have stopped looking at others and focus mainly on ourselves, children have become selfish. Much of the damage inflicted has happened because self-needs take priority over the needs and emotions of the person I am hurting. We want our children to grow up being attuned to the hearts of others. There is no room for callousness. How can I cause pain to another human being?

Put names on emotions like sad, hurt, and feeling badly so that we place ourselves in another person’s shoes. Teach sensitivity. Guide children to distant themselves from writing and forwarding mean texts or leaving classmates and siblings out. Helping children be aware of how others feel will make them think hard about the ramifications of their deeds; a much needed asset when they enter the adult world.

When our sons grow up realizing that their actions impact others, they understand that what they do matters. Our choices can hurt or heal. Let us teach our children to grow sensitive to the feelings of others, to see the faces of those who surround them and recognize the shadow of pain in their eyes. Inspiring children to respect and have self-control nourishes the inner voice that becomes their moral compass.

We have the opportunity to teach our sons how to infuse our world with honor, kindness, and dignity so that they grow to become the good men we know they are meant to be.

Mazel Tov Prince Harry and Meghan MarkleMazel
Tov Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
http://www.aish.com/ci/s/Mazel-Tov-Prince-Harry-and-Meghan-Markle.html?s=mm
Five things we can learn from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s engagement announcement.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
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1. Meghan Markle isn’t Jewish
The internet is full of stories positing that Meghan Markle is Jewish. Some British tabloids have referred to Markle’s supposed “Jewish background”, especially in reference to a statement issued from Britain’s Westminster Abbey that, following church rules adopted in 2002, Markle, an American actress, would be able to marry in the historic church. (The couple recently announced they will wed on the grounds of Windsor Castle, instead.)

Left out of these speculative reports is the fact that it’s Markle’s previous divorce, not her supposed Jewish heritage, that would have disqualified her from marrying Prince Harry in the past. Markle’s first husband, Hollywood producer Trevor Engelson, is reportedly Jewish, but Meghan Markle decidedly is not. The daughter of a black mother and white father, even if her father is Jewish, which some publications have mentioned, according to Jewish law Meghan is not Jewish. And the actress's publicist has written, "Just to clarify… she is not Jewish."

When Prince William wed Kate Middleton in 2011, there was similar, and similarly mistaken, speculation that Kate was a Jew. One former BBC reporter went so far as to write a letter to The Times of London, erroneously declaring that she was. Even Birthright playfully fed into speculation about this imagined Jewish heritage; when Kate Middleton gave birth to Prince George in 2011, Birthright made him an outfit reading “His Royal Highness. Future Birthright Israel participant, 2031”.

2. Harry and Meghan are bucking a trend.
In getting engaged and planning their May 2018 wedding, Prince Harry and Ms. Markle are very publicly backing the institution of marriage, which is increasingly being sidelined in much of the world today.
According to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, marriage is falling sharply out of favor in the US: from a peak of 72% in 1960, only half of Americans today are married. One of the fastest growing demographics are those who will never be tying the knot at all. About 20% of Americans over the age of 25 today have never married, more than double that figure from 1960.
Asked to choose between two opposite statements – that society is better off if people prioritize marriage and have children, versus that society is just as well off if people have different priorities in life than marriage and kids – a majority of Americans agreed with the second statement, that society is just as well off if people don’t focus on marrying and family.
Harry and Meghan’s engagement is something we should all celebrate.

3. They had a Jewish matchmaker.
Matchmakers are an old Jewish tradition and it seems that a Jewish matchmaker was responsible for introducing Prince Harry and Ms. Markle. In recent interviews, Prince Harry refused to reveal his matchmaker’s identity, saying only “It was through her” that the couple met. However, Britain’s Jewish Chronicle revealed that the royal shadchan was Misha Nonoo, a Jewish fashion designer who is close to the royal family.
While many people think of the negative stereotype of the meddling matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof, Jewish matchmakers today are thriving, both online and in person, and countless couples owe their matrimonial happiness to matchmakers who helped them find the right one. Sometimes we all can use some help in finding and connecting with this special person.
While Prince Harry was planning on how he would pop the question a few weeks ago, Jews around the world were listening in synagogue to the story of the Torah’s first matchmaker, Eliezer. Abraham knew his son Isaac was special and wanted to help him find a woman who would match his unique qualities. Abraham asked his trusted servant Eliezer for help. Eliezer prayed to God for guidance, and soon after, he set eyes on Rebecca, Isaac’s bashert.
Like Harry and Meghan, we all can benefit from having a Jewish matchmaker in our corner when we need it.

4. The royal engagement is an answer to rising prejudice and hatred.
When I first read about Harry and Meghan’s engagement online, I scanned the “comments” section at the bottom of the article and did a double take. The venom and racism of the comments was so intense I had to check that I didn't accidentally stray onto a neo-Nazi website.
Meghan Markle is bi-racial; her father is white American and her mother African-American. She is also American and is divorced. For many people, it seems these qualities make her ripe for horrendous insult. In 2016, Prince Harry issued a rare public statement, saying that Meghan Markle had been subject to “a wave of abuse and harassment” and that the racism of opinion pieces and media trolls made him fear for her safety.
The racist bile being directed at Ms. Markle is part of an overall resurgence of hate that’s targeting not only her, but Jews, in much the world today.
The week that Prince Harry and Ms. Markle announced their engagement, a Jewish group in Australia announced a 10% rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Australia over the previous year, with neo-Nazi sympathizers largely to blame. In Britain, 2017 has seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents to the highest levels since records began. In the United States, the first quarter of 2017 saw an 86% rise in anti-Semitic incidents compared with the previous year.
Against this rising tide of hatred, it’s important to take a stand and speak out, condemning racism, anti-Semitism and prejudice, whenever we encounter it. Harry and Meghan’s engagement is a vote for optimism and the future, and a rebuttal of some of the loathing and bile in the world today.

5. We wish them mazel tov!
Often translated as “congratulations”, mazal tov literally means “good luck”, or good fortune in the future.
While it might sound strange in English to respond to the news of “I got engaged!” with a reply of “Good luck!”, this response actually makes a lot of sense. By wishing someone mazel tov, we’re really saying a prayer: asking for good fortune and for Divine help in someone’s future endeavors. Saying mazel tov recognizes that none of us are truly alone, that we all require help as we try to accomplish our goals. It also forges a connection, as we join with others in earnestly wishing another person well and to pray for their success.
With that in mind, we can all wish Harry and Meghan a huge, hearty Mazel Tov!

A Nazi in the Family
http://www.aish.com/ci/s/A-Nazi-in-the-Family.html?s=mfeat
Three years ago I discovered that my grandfather was a member of the SS and arrested for crimes against humanity.
by Derek Niemann

Late last year, I read an interview with a rabbi in my university city of Manchester, in which he said that things were so bad he could not see himself ending his days in Britain. I wanted to cry – how could this be happening in my own country? His words had a special resonance for me – at the time I was finishing a book about my own grandfather – an active perpetrator in the Holocaust.
My German grandfather died before I was born. My father told me that his father, Karl Niemann, was “a bank clerk, a pen-pusher.” He also told me that he was a member of the Nazi party. Out of shame, I kept that from my Jewish friends.
Three years ago while my wife prepared for a conference in Berlin a far more terrible revelation came. I decided to join her in the German capital for a short vacation. I asked my dad where he had lived during the war. I would look it up, maybe take some photos of the house for him. I checked online for any information about the street itself.
Karl pictured in his army uniform on the outbreak of the First World WarKarl pictured in his army uniform on
the outbreak of the First World War

While I was searching a page came up bearing the words: SS Hauptsturmführer Karl Niemann… crimes against humanity… use of slave labor.
I was to discover that in May 1945 my grandfather was arrested in the Alps by American soldiers and imprisoned in former POW camps for three years. My family closed that sordid chapter in their lives and never spoke about it again. But as a 50-year-old writer, I had a compulsion to dig into this new-found truth and to write about it. I trawled archives, went to concentration camps, spoke to Holocaust historians and relatives and began to piece together the story – not just of Karl Niemann, but also that of my family, who had been living a life in Berlin that was both bizarre and frighteningly ordinary.
My grandfather oversaw slave labor and the factories he visited were the likes of Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen.

My dad had vivid recollections of a childhood in which he saw much but understood little. During the war, his father was always going on ‘business trips’. No sooner was he back than he was preparing to go off again. The reality was that he was an overseer of slave labor and the factories he was visiting were the likes of Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen.
SS officers requisitioned inmates to do odd jobs around the house. My dad remembered men wearing “dirty grey striped uniforms, with ‘Jude’ written on the back”. They brought furniture, mended clothes, made bunk beds and an air raid shelter in the garden. His mother gave them coffee and cake. They told her they liked coming to her house. The children played in bomb craters: it was a million miles from the murderous regime in which their father was a working participant.
Karl pictured in his Nazi Party uniform with wife Minna, 1933.Karl pictured in his Nazi Party uniform
with wife Minna, 1933.

Just how much did my grandfather know of the Holocaust and what was his involvement? In the last weeks of the war, he was one of four officers ordered to relocate with their families from Berlin to the Alps. The entourage stopped for two or three nights at Dachau on the way and my dad recalled overhearing a heated conversation between his parents as they looked out over a low building with a tall smoking chimney. His mother said: “You know what they’re doing there? They’re killing the Jews and burning their bodies.” His father was emphatic: “No, they wouldn’t do that,” he insisted.
There is simply too much contrary evidence for his denial to be credible. At his tribunal in 1948, the prosecution lacked incriminating papers that were being used at the time to help hang Karl’s boss, Oswald Pohl, the overall controller of concentration camps. Auditor Karl Niemann had produced accounts for the year 1942, in which he bemoaned the ‘loss’ of 8,000 workers from Majdanek. Eight thousand Jews had been taken out and shot – and Karl had written down the exact date of their killing.

He claimed he had never been to Auschwitz – yet it was the SS’s second biggest ‘factory’ and a Holocaust historian told me that it was inconceivable that he would never have visited it. And how could he have gone to camp after camp, and not seen all the signs of torture, the skeletal figures, breathed the smell of death? My grandfather found inmates to testify on his behalf that he had not physically abused anyone. What of the passive acceptance that allowed him to work for the SS for 10 years?
Most disturbing of all were the comments from the presiding judge that Karl Niemann, presented with the facts, showed no sign of contrition for his part in the enslavement and brutal treatment of innocent people.
It was hard to be objective. There were times when I hated my grandfather. There was a brief window – when I discovered that he had been working deals with the Gestapo to have inmates released – that I thought he might have been another Oskar Schindler. But in the end, I accept he was a flawed individual and look elsewhere for positives.
“I find this hard, but it is true, and you must tell it all.”

And there are positives to come out of this dreadful story. There is my family’s reaction to the book’s publication, most notably my uncle, still living in Germany, who read a draft and told me: “I find this hard, but it is true, and you must tell it all.”
A guiding light has been one Bernhard Gelderblom, whose own father died an unrepentant perpetrator. Bernhard has dedicated his retirement to teaching children in local towns and villages about the lives of Jewish communities before the Nazis came. He inspired people in these places to restore Jewish cemeteries smashed during Kristallnacht.
Throughout this process, I have been shaken, not by hostility, but by kindness. It seems that those closest to the Holocaust are girdled with compassion. Archivists have looked into my heart and said in soft voices: “It’s not your fault.” A lady who had lost family at Auschwitz even said: “Your grandfather probably couldn’t help it.” Kind words indeed, but for the sake of truth, I must value honesty above everything.

The author, Derek NiemannThe author, Derek Niemann
As Holocaust survivors pass away, I understand that I and others in my position have a role. As the grandson of a Nazi criminal, I can say to young people, this is what has happened, but I do not share my grandfather’s beliefs, I do not agree with what he has done. In the weeks since my book was published, I have found others who have been given a similar legacy to me and also want to carry a torch against hatred and bigotry.
I was deeply moved to be asked by Aish.com to write this article. The fact that it is possible speaks volumes for the willingness of good people, regardless of faith, to find understanding and common humanity.
A Nazi in the Family by Derek Niemann, was published by Short Books in March 2015 and is available as an e-book. Click here to order. https://www.amazon.com/Nazi-Family-Derek-Niemann-ebook/dp/B00U58T490/friendsofaishhat

Ida and Louise Cook’s Remarkable Rescue Mission
Using their avid opera-going as a cover, the British sisters saved dozens of Jews in Nazi Europe.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
They were an eccentric pair: spinster sisters who lived for opera, travelling the world to listen to their favorite performers sing. Yet Ida and Louise Cook harbored a secret. For years, they worked to bring Jews out of Nazi Europe, using their avid opera-going as a cover. In all, the sisters saved the lives of 29 Jews.

Louise Cook was born in 1901 and her sister Ida in 1904. By the time Nazism was ascendant in Europe, the sisters were confirmed middle-aged spinsters, living in their family home in London. Louise was an office worker, Ida a typist and later a prolific writer who published under the name Mary Burchell. Their single passion in life was opera, scrimping and saving to be able to visit the world’s great opera houses.
In 1934, the sisters’ lives changed at one of these operas. A few weeks earlier, Austria’s Chancellor Englebert Dolfus had been murdered by a gang of Nazis. All of Austria was in turmoil, but Ida and Louise cared only for music and travelled to Salzburg for an opera festival where they became friendly with the great Romanian singer Viorica Ursuleac. At the end of the festival, Ursuleac took the sisters by the arm and asked them to look after a dear friend, a certain Frau Mitia Mayer-Lismann, who would be travelling to London soon on a short trip.
MORE http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Ida-and-Louise-Cooks-Remarkable-Rescue-Mission.html?s=mm


Nothing was going to keep Richard Wade from seeing Murray join the 3000 hit club. Not even cancer.
by Rabbi Yehuda Appel
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In the summer of 1994 in Cleveland, Bob Wade shared with me the grim news that his father, Richard, had been diagnosed with a particularly pernicious lung cancer. The doctors had given him at best a couple of months to live.
But this did not fit into Richard Wade’s schedule. He had a particular event he wanted to see and nothing was going to keep him from being around when it happened. Bob’s father, a modest, quiet individual, was a fanatical baseball fan with an absolute devotion to Cleveland’s first baseman, Eddie Murray. A top player and future Hall of Famer, Murray was on track to be one of the very few in baseball history to join the 3,000 hit club and Richard Wade had every intention of seeing the event.
When Bob’s father shared this hope with the oncologists, one of the doctors, an ardent baseball fan himself, replied, “I really wish it could be but Eddie Murray won’t reach the 3000 hit mark until next season and, well…. it’s better to make plans.”
Month after month passed by and somehow the senior Wade stayed very much alive. At the end of June, a full year after his diagnosis, Eddie Murray’s hit total had reached 2999. The Indians had gone up to Minneapolis to play a series with the Twins that weekend. The first game was Friday night, the second Saturday afternoon and I thought it a pretty safe bet that by the time Shabbat was over the Indians slugger would have reached the 3000 milestone.
When Shabbat was over, I called Bob’s house to ask how his father was doing. The line was busy and when I finally got through I asked Bob how his father was doing
MORE http://www.aish.com/f/hotm/How-Baseball-Hall-of-Famer-Eddie-Murray-Kept-One-Man-Alive.html?s=


Why I Became a Day School Proponent
Despite my concerns, sending my kids to day school has been crucial to their Jewish identity.
by Stephanie Rubel
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My Jewish identity has never been about what I learned in school.
I’m the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and my Jewish identity was shaped by my family history and my mother’s insistence on the importance of preserving Jewry in the Diaspora. I married a Jew and always planned to raise my kids Jewish.
I also always assumed that, like me, my children would go to public school and get their formal Jewish education from supplementary Hebrew school and maybe the Jewish Community Center, a Jewish summer camp or a youth group.
In truth, though, I never loved the idea of Hebrew school. As a child, I found it to be a waste of time.
Yes, I learned enough to be comfortable at High Holiday services and observe some of the better-known Jewish holidays, like Chanukah. I memorized a Torah portion for my bat mitzvah and learned to read and write Hebrew.
But I can barely speak any Hebrew, and when my mother-in-law gave us a basket of fruit and snacks at Purim, I had no idea that it was called mishloach manot or that it was one of the key traditions of Purim.
MORE http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Why-I-Became-a-Day-School-Proponent.html?s=mm


A Dry Run with Death
A practical, 12-point checklist to prepare for the inevitable.
by Martin I. Berger
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The call came from my mother on my cell phone. She was screaming in the phone that my dad had collapsed at the movies and they were trying to revive him. By the time I got to the movie theater, eight paramedics were doing CPR on my 72-year-old father, repeatedly shocking him with no response. One look at his lifeless body and I knew it was over.
He had been in relatively good health. His heart surgery from 20 years prior had been a success and it was only a week before his death that he started to get a bit tired when walking long distances. His doctor said it was probably congestive heart failure, but that people live another 20 years with that condition. He would schedule some tests and everything would be fine. He never made it to the tests.
MORE http://www.aish.com/ci/s/62819587.html?s=mm


The Siege of Leningrad: The Harrowing Story of One Girl's Survival
And her closely-guarded Jewish secret.
by Valerie Greenfeld
In 1937, Yevgeniya Buyanova was born into a Jewish family in Minsk, Belarus. Eighty years later, she is one of the few remaining survivors of the Siege of Leningrad.
On June 22, 1941, under the codename Operation Barbarossa, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union without warning. With the aim of conquering territory for natural resources and slave labor, this was the largest German military operation of World War Two.
Rather than spend troops and artillery to occupy the city, Hitler's infamous Directive No. 1601 ordered to "starve into submission" the people of Leningrad, saying that “we have no interest in saving lives of the civilian population.”
Yevgeniya spoke from her home in metro Washington, DC, summoning with detailed clarity the events of her youth in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Speaking mostly in Russian, she recalled the sirens signaling an imminent bombing; the explosions shaking her metal bed, causing it to move across the floor; and the harsh, freezing winters when the temperature reached minus-30 degrees Fahrenheit.
Indelible memories of the siege are carved into her soul. With pangs of hunger, fear of darkness, and pain of exposure – amidst hundreds of thousands of dead – 5-year-old Yevgeniya never knew life to be different. The food ration was 4 ounces of bread per day, per person – consisting primarily of “replacement” ingredients such as glue and sawdust. Neighbors stood in line for hours for a sliver of this “bread.”
MORE http://www.aish.com/sp/so/The-Siege-of-Leningrad-The-Harrowing-Story-of-One-Girls-Survival.html?s=mm


It all depends on who is its creator.
by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
Can a work of art be worth close to half $1 billion?
Obviously somebody – and he is still anonymous – seemed to think so when he made the winning bid last week of $450 million at Christie's auction house for Salvator Mundi, a 600-year-old painting reputedly by Leonardo da Vinci.
This stratospheric purchase price makes the 26-inch tall portrait the most expensive artwork in history, beating out the previous record for a painting sold at auction, Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d'Alger (Women of Algiers), which went for $179.4 million in 2015, while Paul Gauguin's Nafea Faa Ipoipo? (When Will You Marry?) commanded $300 million in a private sale the same year.
Perhaps most remarkable about the huge sum paid for what was billed by Christie’s as “The Last da Vinci” is the amount paid for this very same poster-sized portrait in 1958 before its attribution to Leonardo da Vinci. At that time it went for the grand price of sixty dollars at auction, not overly impressing its viewers with its artistic merit. As late as 2005, when the same piece was plucked from an estate sale, a buyer was induced to purchase it for $10,000.
Many art critics point out that even if Salvator Mundi was actually painted by Leonardo, a position which remains disputed, it almost certainly does not deserve acclaim as “a masterpiece.” Shortly after the record sale, art critic Jason Farago wrote in the New York Times that although he is not in the position to “affirm or reject [the painting’s] attribution,” he believes the so-called masterpiece is “a proficient but not especially distinguished religious picture from turn-of-the-16th-century Lombardy, put through a wringer of restorations.” Art critic Jerry Saltz, in an essay for New York magazine, called the portrait “dead” and “inert.”
MORE http://www.aish.com/ci/s/The-450-million-da-Vinci-Is-It-Worth-It.html?s=mm


Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest: The Legend of a Jewish Athlete
When I heard about Nathan’s contest, I knew I had found my sport.
by David Kilimnick
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Thanksgiving got me thinking about food. Truth is, waking up gets me thinking about food so let’s talk about food. Other than the kiddush, nothing is more American than eating massive quantities of food as fast as you can. For that, I thank you America.
I have taken down bigger men before on the way to the cholent at Shabbat Kiddush
It was right before I moved to Israel, that I had the honor of competing in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. Known to many as the Super Bowl of eating, I always wanted to be a professional athlete. The one thing holding me back was my athletic abilities. Then I heard about Nathan’s contest, and I knew I had found my sport.
Qualifying Round Competitor
It was around fifteen years ago when the only kosher Nathan’s at the time was in Los Angeles, so I flew in and competed in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. The competitor I am, I showed up ready to eat.
They didn’t just take anybody. It was a serious competition, and I had to pass the weigh in. At the time, I was well over 200 pounds and I was able to fit into an XXL shirt with no problem. I was accepted. They were worried, as I was 40 pounds lighter than the closest competitor. This is a story of David and Goliath.
MORE http://www.aish.com/j/fs/Nathans-Hot-Dog-Eating-Contest-The-Legend-of-a-Jewish-Athlete.html?s=mm

Broken: My Encounter at the Western Wall
Would the stones of the Kotel touch my guarded heart?
by Chaya Levy
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We dump our heavy bags and suitcases in the middle of the large, stone-floored apartment in Rechavia and hurry back out into the crisp morning air to hail a cab. It's my first time in Israel and, of course, we have to go see the Kotel, the Western Wall, first thing.
My pulse speeds up with the acceleration of the taxi and my fingers dig into the cracked leather hand rest on the door next to me. I'm anxious as I watch the white stone buildings fly by. I reflect on some of the incredible places I've traveled to, remembering in vivid detail the soaring mountains that dominated the landscape, the thundering waterfalls that shook me with their sheer power, and the vast, silent, wild lands where I contemplated my utter puniness in comparison to God's infinity.
I've heard about the soul stirring connections people felt at the Kotel, but I am doubtful. Will I really be moved by a pile of old stones? Or is it all a bunch of hype made up by some swooning, head in the clouds, uber-spiritual seminary girls.
Our cab bumps up a road surrounded by an ancient stone wall. The road curves up and I hold my breath, trying unsuccessfully to keep my body from being thrown side to side as the driver swings wildly around the turns.
Suddenly, we emerge from the shadows, the sky opening up before me. And there it is. The Kotel seems to glow in the sunlight. I'm stunned at the unbidden emotion that lodges in my throat. "So this is where I've been facing all those years of prayer," is my first thought.
MORE http://www.aish.com/jw/id/Broken-My-Encounter-at-the-Western-Wall.html?s=mfeat

102-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Meets His Nephew for First Time
Eliyahu Pietruszka thought his entire family had died. Watch the moving video of him meeting the nephew he didn't know existed.
by Channel 4 News
Eliyahu Pietruszka, 102 years old, believed his entire family had died in the Holocaust. This week he met his nephew that he didn't know he had. Watch the moving video of the two meeting for the first time in the lobby of Eliyahu’s retirement home in Israel.
WATCH http://www.aish.com/jw/s/102-Year-Old-Holocaust-Survivor-Meets-His-Nephew-for-First-Time.html?s=mfeat

Ida and Louise Cook’s Remarkable Rescue Mission
Using their avid opera-going as a cover, the British sisters saved dozens of Jews in Nazi Europe.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
They were an eccentric pair: spinster sisters who lived for opera, travelling the world to listen to their favorite performers sing. Yet Ida and Louise Cook harbored a secret. For years, they worked to bring Jews out of Nazi Europe, using their avid opera-going as a cover. In all, the sisters saved the lives of 29 Jews.

Louise Cook was born in 1901 and her sister Ida in 1904. By the time Nazism was ascendant in Europe, the sisters were confirmed middle-aged spinsters, living in their family home in London. Louise was an office worker, Ida a typist and later a prolific writer who published under the name Mary Burchell. Their single passion in life was opera, scrimping and saving to be able to visit the world’s great opera houses.
In 1934, the sisters’ lives changed at one of these operas. A few weeks earlier, Austria’s Chancellor Englebert Dolfus had been murdered by a gang of Nazis. All of Austria was in turmoil, but Ida and Louise cared only for music and travelled to Salzburg for an opera festival where they became friendly with the great Romanian singer Viorica Ursuleac. At the end of the festival, Ursuleac took the sisters by the arm and asked them to look after a dear friend, a certain Frau Mitia Mayer-Lismann, who would be travelling to London soon on a short trip.
MORE http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Ida-and-Louise-Cooks-Remarkable-Rescue-Mission.html?s=mm


Nothing was going to keep Richard Wade from seeing Murray join the 3000 hit club. Not even cancer.
by Rabbi Yehuda Appel
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In the summer of 1994 in Cleveland, Bob Wade shared with me the grim news that his father, Richard, had been diagnosed with a particularly pernicious lung cancer. The doctors had given him at best a couple of months to live.
But this did not fit into Richard Wade’s schedule. He had a particular event he wanted to see and nothing was going to keep him from being around when it happened. Bob’s father, a modest, quiet individual, was a fanatical baseball fan with an absolute devotion to Cleveland’s first baseman, Eddie Murray. A top player and future Hall of Famer, Murray was on track to be one of the very few in baseball history to join the 3,000 hit club and Richard Wade had every intention of seeing the event.
When Bob’s father shared this hope with the oncologists, one of the doctors, an ardent baseball fan himself, replied, “I really wish it could be but Eddie Murray won’t reach the 3000 hit mark until next season and, well…. it’s better to make plans.”
Month after month passed by and somehow the senior Wade stayed very much alive. At the end of June, a full year after his diagnosis, Eddie Murray’s hit total had reached 2999. The Indians had gone up to Minneapolis to play a series with the Twins that weekend. The first game was Friday night, the second Saturday afternoon and I thought it a pretty safe bet that by the time Shabbat was over the Indians slugger would have reached the 3000 milestone.
When Shabbat was over, I called Bob’s house to ask how his father was doing. The line was busy and when I finally got through I asked Bob how his father was doing
MORE http://www.aish.com/f/hotm/How-Baseball-Hall-of-Famer-Eddie-Murray-Kept-One-Man-Alive.html?s=


Why I Became a Day School Proponent
Despite my concerns, sending my kids to day school has been crucial to their Jewish identity.
by Stephanie Rubel
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My Jewish identity has never been about what I learned in school.
I’m the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and my Jewish identity was shaped by my family history and my mother’s insistence on the importance of preserving Jewry in the Diaspora. I married a Jew and always planned to raise my kids Jewish.
I also always assumed that, like me, my children would go to public school and get their formal Jewish education from supplementary Hebrew school and maybe the Jewish Community Center, a Jewish summer camp or a youth group.
In truth, though, I never loved the idea of Hebrew school. As a child, I found it to be a waste of time.
Yes, I learned enough to be comfortable at High Holiday services and observe some of the better-known Jewish holidays, like Chanukah. I memorized a Torah portion for my bat mitzvah and learned to read and write Hebrew.
But I can barely speak any Hebrew, and when my mother-in-law gave us a basket of fruit and snacks at Purim, I had no idea that it was called mishloach manot or that it was one of the key traditions of Purim.
MORE http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Why-I-Became-a-Day-School-Proponent.html?s=mm


A Dry Run with Death
A practical, 12-point checklist to prepare for the inevitable.
by Martin I. Berger
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The call came from my mother on my cell phone. She was screaming in the phone that my dad had collapsed at the movies and they were trying to revive him. By the time I got to the movie theater, eight paramedics were doing CPR on my 72-year-old father, repeatedly shocking him with no response. One look at his lifeless body and I knew it was over.
He had been in relatively good health. His heart surgery from 20 years prior had been a success and it was only a week before his death that he started to get a bit tired when walking long distances. His doctor said it was probably congestive heart failure, but that people live another 20 years with that condition. He would schedule some tests and everything would be fine. He never made it to the tests.
MORE http://www.aish.com/ci/s/62819587.html?s=mm


The Siege of Leningrad: The Harrowing Story of One Girl's Survival
And her closely-guarded Jewish secret.
by Valerie Greenfeld
In 1937, Yevgeniya Buyanova was born into a Jewish family in Minsk, Belarus. Eighty years later, she is one of the few remaining survivors of the Siege of Leningrad.
On June 22, 1941, under the codename Operation Barbarossa, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union without warning. With the aim of conquering territory for natural resources and slave labor, this was the largest German military operation of World War Two.
Rather than spend troops and artillery to occupy the city, Hitler's infamous Directive No. 1601 ordered to "starve into submission" the people of Leningrad, saying that “we have no interest in saving lives of the civilian population.”
Yevgeniya spoke from her home in metro Washington, DC, summoning with detailed clarity the events of her youth in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Speaking mostly in Russian, she recalled the sirens signaling an imminent bombing; the explosions shaking her metal bed, causing it to move across the floor; and the harsh, freezing winters when the temperature reached minus-30 degrees Fahrenheit.
Indelible memories of the siege are carved into her soul. With pangs of hunger, fear of darkness, and pain of exposure – amidst hundreds of thousands of dead – 5-year-old Yevgeniya never knew life to be different. The food ration was 4 ounces of bread per day, per person – consisting primarily of “replacement” ingredients such as glue and sawdust. Neighbors stood in line for hours for a sliver of this “bread.”
MORE http://www.aish.com/sp/so/The-Siege-of-Leningrad-The-Harrowing-Story-of-One-Girls-Survival.html?s=mm


It all depends on who is its creator.
by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
Can a work of art be worth close to half $1 billion?
Obviously somebody – and he is still anonymous – seemed to think so when he made the winning bid last week of $450 million at Christie's auction house for Salvator Mundi, a 600-year-old painting reputedly by Leonardo da Vinci.
This stratospheric purchase price makes the 26-inch tall portrait the most expensive artwork in history, beating out the previous record for a painting sold at auction, Pablo Picasso’s Les Femmes d'Alger (Women of Algiers), which went for $179.4 million in 2015, while Paul Gauguin's Nafea Faa Ipoipo? (When Will You Marry?) commanded $300 million in a private sale the same year.
Perhaps most remarkable about the huge sum paid for what was billed by Christie’s as “The Last da Vinci” is the amount paid for this very same poster-sized portrait in 1958 before its attribution to Leonardo da Vinci. At that time it went for the grand price of sixty dollars at auction, not overly impressing its viewers with its artistic merit. As late as 2005, when the same piece was plucked from an estate sale, a buyer was induced to purchase it for $10,000.
Many art critics point out that even if Salvator Mundi was actually painted by Leonardo, a position which remains disputed, it almost certainly does not deserve acclaim as “a masterpiece.” Shortly after the record sale, art critic Jason Farago wrote in the New York Times that although he is not in the position to “affirm or reject [the painting’s] attribution,” he believes the so-called masterpiece is “a proficient but not especially distinguished religious picture from turn-of-the-16th-century Lombardy, put through a wringer of restorations.” Art critic Jerry Saltz, in an essay for New York magazine, called the portrait “dead” and “inert.”
MORE http://www.aish.com/ci/s/The-450-million-da-Vinci-Is-It-Worth-It.html?s=mm


Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest: The Legend of a Jewish Athlete
When I heard about Nathan’s contest, I knew I had found my sport.
by David Kilimnick
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Thanksgiving got me thinking about food. Truth is, waking up gets me thinking about food so let’s talk about food. Other than the kiddush, nothing is more American than eating massive quantities of food as fast as you can. For that, I thank you America.
I have taken down bigger men before on the way to the cholent at Shabbat Kiddush
It was right before I moved to Israel, that I had the honor of competing in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. Known to many as the Super Bowl of eating, I always wanted to be a professional athlete. The one thing holding me back was my athletic abilities. Then I heard about Nathan’s contest, and I knew I had found my sport.
Qualifying Round Competitor
It was around fifteen years ago when the only kosher Nathan’s at the time was in Los Angeles, so I flew in and competed in the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. The competitor I am, I showed up ready to eat.
They didn’t just take anybody. It was a serious competition, and I had to pass the weigh in. At the time, I was well over 200 pounds and I was able to fit into an XXL shirt with no problem. I was accepted. They were worried, as I was 40 pounds lighter than the closest competitor. This is a story of David and Goliath.
MORE http://www.aish.com/j/fs/Nathans-Hot-Dog-Eating-Contest-The-Legend-of-a-Jewish-Athlete.html?s=mm

Broken: My Encounter at the Western Wall
Would the stones of the Kotel touch my guarded heart?
by Chaya Levy
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We dump our heavy bags and suitcases in the middle of the large, stone-floored apartment in Rechavia and hurry back out into the crisp morning air to hail a cab. It's my first time in Israel and, of course, we have to go see the Kotel, the Western Wall, first thing.
My pulse speeds up with the acceleration of the taxi and my fingers dig into the cracked leather hand rest on the door next to me. I'm anxious as I watch the white stone buildings fly by. I reflect on some of the incredible places I've traveled to, remembering in vivid detail the soaring mountains that dominated the landscape, the thundering waterfalls that shook me with their sheer power, and the vast, silent, wild lands where I contemplated my utter puniness in comparison to God's infinity.
I've heard about the soul stirring connections people felt at the Kotel, but I am doubtful. Will I really be moved by a pile of old stones? Or is it all a bunch of hype made up by some swooning, head in the clouds, uber-spiritual seminary girls.
Our cab bumps up a road surrounded by an ancient stone wall. The road curves up and I hold my breath, trying unsuccessfully to keep my body from being thrown side to side as the driver swings wildly around the turns.
Suddenly, we emerge from the shadows, the sky opening up before me. And there it is. The Kotel seems to glow in the sunlight. I'm stunned at the unbidden emotion that lodges in my throat. "So this is where I've been facing all those years of prayer," is my first thought.
MORE http://www.aish.com/jw/id/Broken-My-Encounter-at-the-Western-Wall.html?s=mfeat

102-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor Meets His Nephew for First Time
Eliyahu Pietruszka thought his entire family had died. Watch the moving video of him meeting the nephew he didn't know existed.
by Channel 4 News
Eliyahu Pietruszka, 102 years old, believed his entire family had died in the Holocaust. This week he met his nephew that he didn't know he had. Watch the moving video of the two meeting for the first time in the lobby of Eliyahu’s retirement home in Israel.
WATCH http://www.aish.com/jw/s/102-Year-Old-Holocaust-Survivor-Meets-His-Nephew-for-First-Time.html?s=mfeat

http://www.aish.com/sp/pg/Five-Ways-to-Improve-Your-Emotional-Fitness.html?s=mm
Five Ways to Improve Your Emotional Fitness
Practical tips on how to transform your emotions and live a happier life.
by Sara Debbie Gutfreund 

We can channel and transform our emotions way more than we think we can by implementing these five strategies that build the core of our emotional fitness.

Change your physical demeanor. When you feel any emotion, notice what is happening in your body. For example, when someone is sad he typically has a slumped posture and speaks slowly and quietly. Even the breathing pattern associated with sadness is different from more positive states; when someone is depressed or angry he tends to take shallow quick breaths instead of deep, slow ones. Once we are aware of how we express our emotions physically, we can often change our moods from the inside out by breathing deeply, correcting our posture and even changing the tone and speed of how we are speaking. Going for a run can do wonders for our bad mood.

Change your focus. What we decide to focus on in any situation creates our feelings. Do we focus on the problem or the solution? The gratitude or the lack? The mistake or all the things that we did right? What we can control or what we can’t? The more we look for things to be grateful for, the more blessings that we will see. The more we focus on what we can control, the more solutions we will find to deal with our challenges.

Pay attention to the words you use. The language that we use (even if it’s only words we are saying to ourselves) to describe our lives and the world around us radically affects not only our perspective of life but the meaning that we ascribe to it. For example, what is life like for someone who describes it as ‘getting through the day’ versus someone who describes life as sacred? Compare describing life as a dance versus life as a test. Our language creates the emotional fabric of our lives and sometimes just changing one adjective can shift our whole mindset.
Know your why. In order to understand and use our emotions, we need to know what motivates us to do what we do. What drives us? Once we understand our motivation (which is different for each of us), we can create a compelling future that harnesses the power of our why in life. Meaningful goals that leverage our emotional motivations allow us to consciously direct our feelings in constructive ways.

Clarify your beliefs. We are all driven by a number of unconscious beliefs that create our sense of identity. These convictions are often not even our own; they have been programmed into us by society. We live according to what we believe we are. If we believe that we aren’t enough, then nothing we achieve will ever make us feel like we matter. If we believe that we are “an angry or depressed person” then we will search for and find reasons to affirm that identity regardless of what is actually happening in our lives. If we instead identify with the part of us that is calm and happier and believe that we are merely feeling angry or sad for the moment, then our positive identity will prompt us to seek out people and ideas that will reinforce our identity as a generally happy person.
Each of us comes to this world with unique gifts and incredible potential; our emotions are tools that we can use to help us share those gifts with the world. But we need to harness their power and control their direction. Try using these five strategies to thrive and work on building the core of your emotional fitness. Our feelings are too powerful to waste and our lives are too precious to live without using all the gifts that we have been given.
*Many of these ideas are based on the work of bestselling author and speaker, Tony Robbins

The Woman in the Burqa
http://www.aish.com/jw/s/The-Woman-in-the-Burqa.html?s=mm
A true story for any Jew who ever felt their name was too Jewish or that wearing a kippah wasn't cool.
by Dr. Jacob L. Freedman
I haven't been on a college campus in a long time. Back when I was an undergrad, being Jewish didn't place a target on my head. Sure I had my share of arguments with folks who made some inappropriate comments and even a scuffle or two (or twelve), but anti-Semitism wasn't as prevalent and out in the open as it is these days.

Last month a college newspaper in California published anti-Semitic cartoons about Alan Dershowitz that mirror Nazi propaganda. Pro-Israel freedom of speech is squashed even by Jewish organizations such as the Princeton Hillel where an Israeli diplomat was blocked from lecturing (they later apologized, but still – how did it happen in the first place?). And then there are the cowards from BDS movements who engage in libelous and even physically-intimidating tactics to scare Jewish and pro-Israel students.

So when I was recently asked to speak to a group of American college students on a trip to Jerusalem, I wasn't surprised to hear that all had felt intimidated because of their faith. They had been shouted down in class, embarrassed for wearing their kippot, and even presented with "eviction notices" to leave their dorms.

It was time to make them proud again to be Jewish. To help them appreciate that they are part of the most wonderful nation in the world charged with the mission to bring light to the world.
Preparing for my talk reminded me of a unique case I had in my clinic. I am a clinical psychiatrist and work at an Orthodox Jewish treatment facility in Jerusalem; the vast majority of patients that I see are religious Jews. I am inspired every day by the faith of my patients under adverse circumstances. One day the name Fahima was on my patient list and I was very curious to see who would walk in.
A religious Arab woman entered my office with her infant child. While I was surprised to see a woman wearing a burqa in my clinic that mainly serves the Orthodox Jewish community, I was happy to provide the same high-quality of care to all.

Fahima told me an awful story of her husband's brutal temper and how he's broken her ribs after she returned from the hospital the previous month having delivered a girl instead of a boy. He had subsequently began drinking alcohol on a daily basis and would threaten her life throughout the night.
As we spoke, it became clear to me that making a diagnosis was less important than finding this young woman a safe haven from her increasingly-abusive husband. With her permission, I contacted the local welfare office and was able to schedule her an intake at a domestic violence shelter in the city.

Within an hour, a social worker from the city had arrived to bring her to a safe place. As the episode neared its closure, I couldn't help but to wonder what had brought Fahima to our clinic as opposed to any of the other facilities in the area. Luckily Fahima answered my question for me as she walked out the door.

"God bless you Dr. Freedman. I had nowhere to turn in my own village but I knew if I came to the Jews that they would help me. God bless you."
I was grateful for her blessing, and I felt proud. Not of myself of course – I had only done the simple and obvious thing of connecting a domestic violence victim with social welfare services – but proud of the Jewish people. Her words echoed in my mind, "I knew if I came to the Jews that they would help me."

For every Jew who ever felt that the name Goldstein was too Jewish or that wearing a kippah wasn't cool, I beg to differ. And for every Jewish comedian that seeks to belittle their heritage for a few cheap laughs, I'd offer a rebuttal: nothing should make a person more proud than being part of a people with a national mission to fix the world.
And that was my message to those college students. "But it's so hard," one them said to me.
“It’s true,” I replied, “but a little bit of light can chase away a whole lot of darkness.”

http://www.aish.com/sp/pg/Seven-Ways-to-Make-Your-Thoughts-More-Empowering.html?s=mm
Seven Ways to Make Your Thoughts More Empowering
How to bring more positivity and optimism into your day.
by Sara Debbie Gutfreund
Author and psychologist Wayne Dyer often said, “When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.” Here are seven ways to change our thoughts to build more positivity and optimism into our day.

1. Change the focus. Do we focus on what we have or on what we lack? On our goals or our obstacles? On what is right in our lives or on what is going wrong? We find what we search for; our minds can only focus on a limited amount at a time. Focus on what you want and who you want to become.

2. Start your day with something inspiring. Many of us are regularly and repeatedly exposed to negative messages without even realizing that the media we are consuming is influencing us. The news rarely informs us of happy events that reinforce a belief in the core goodness of most people. Instead we are bombarded with pessimism and tragedy often before we even have our first cup of coffee. Start your day with learning something that inspires you and directs your thoughts into a positive direction.

3. Learn to question yourself. Observe your own thoughts throughout the day and question them. Are they true? Are they helpful? Are they necessary? Clarity is power. Know exactly what your goals are and ask yourself often if your thoughts are helping or hindering those goals.
4. Start and end with gratitude. As soon as you open your eyes in the morning, train yourself to always have a grateful thought first. Think about the people you are blessed to have in your life. About your warm bed. The food in your fridge. The gift of another day. And right before you go to sleep at night, find a grateful thought that you can have about the day. A smile. A kind word. A new opportunity. Bookend your days with grateful thoughts.

5. Shift your locus of control. Unhappy people often have an external locus of control; they attribute everything that happens to them to outside circumstances. Changing our thoughts to an internal locus of control (believing that we can shape our lives and who we become) not only increases our happiness, but it also increases our motivation and our overall effectiveness in our lives.

6. Pay attention to your words. How we speak and the words that we choose deeply affect the content of our thoughts. Even seemingly innocuous phrases like “it doesn’t matter” or “I’m just saying” can change our perception of our own actions and words. We often downplay the significance of important aspects of our lives with sarcastic or dismissive words. Tim Grover, the author of Relentless, suggests that people never say “it’s only a job” or “it’s just a meeting.” Try taking words like “only” and “just” out of all of your sentences and see how your thoughts are moving you forward instead of pulling you back.

7. Substitute thoughts instead of fighting them. Many of us try to get rid of our negative thoughts but find that the more we try not to think about something, the more we ironically think about it. This is why it is sometimes more effective to instead replace unwanted thoughts with desired ones. This requires having a good book or source of wisdom ready nearby or a list of quotes that you can look over to change the direction of your thoughts. At any moment the thoughts we have can alter the direction of our lives and the lives of those around us. Don’t wait until you feel positive and inspired to transform the way you think. As the Lubavitcher Rebbe said, “If you wait until you find the meaning of life, will there be enough life left to live meaningfully?”

AISH
They hid a number of Jews in the Paris apartment, at great risk to their lives.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Charles Aznavour, 92, is a towering figure in French music. For generations, his magnificent voice and sensitive singing have made him one of the most popular French entertainers of all time.
Some of Aznavour’s many fans might be forgiven for thinking the singer is Jewish. He has appeared in French films over the years playing Jewish characters, and his version of the Yiddish song La Yiddishe Mama has been one of his enduring hits. His haunting 2011 song J’ai Connu, “I Knew”, is told from the perspective of a Jew imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. Aznavour has performed repeatedly in Israel, most recently in October 2017.
On this most recent visit to the Jewish state, Mr. Aznavour met with Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin who bestowed on Mr. Aznavour and his sister Aida the Raoul Wallenberg Medal, given by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, in recognition of the Aznavour family for saving the lives of several Jews and others during World War II.
Aznavour receiving the Raoul Wallenberg Medal by President Reuven Rivlin in Israel.
Aznavour, the son of parents who fled the Armenian Genocide in Turkey of 1915-1918 to find safety in Paris, has previously said little about his parents’ heroic wartime activities.
That changed in 2016. Aznavour worked with Israeli researcher Dr. Yair Auron to write a Hebrew language book published in Israel that details the ways his family saved the lives of several people in wartime France. The book, titled Matzilim Tzadikim V’Lohamim, or “Righteous Saviors and Fighters” in English, will be translated into French and Armenian, too.
“We grew up together in the Les Marais district” in Paris, Aznavour recalls, where many immigrants mingled together, including both Jews and Armenian refugees. “They were our neighbors and friends.” By the time World War II broke out, a then-teenage Charles Aznavour lived with his parents Michael and Knar Aznavour and his sister Aida at 22 Rue de Navarin, in Paris’ 9th Arrondissement. That small, three-room apartment would become a safe haven, Aznavour explained, for Jews and others who were hunted by the Nazis.
A portrait photograph of the Aznavour family in the 1920s. Charles' father, Mischa (center), is next to his wife, Knar.
The first person the Aznavour family sheltered was a Romanian Jew who lived in Germany. That Jew, whose name the singer no longer remembers, was accused of subversion and had been sentenced to death. He’d escaped to France disguised as a German soldier, but had been discovered and he was being hunted by the Gestapo. A friend alerted Michael Aznavour of the situation and the family took him in.
Aida Aznavour recalls in the book, “We understood that the Jews were going to be the victims of brutality. We looked upon the Jews with sadness and sorrow.” Having escaped persecution in Armenia, “we knew what genocide was.”
It was clear that if the Nazis found this man in our house, they’d kill us right away.
She recalls that her parents never hesitated to shelter Jews, “even though it was clear that if the Nazis found this man in our house, they’d kill us right away. We told him that our home was his home, and we treated him warmly, like a good friend who had to extend his stay. For a few days, he even slept in the same bed as Charles.”
Later, a female acquaintance of the Aznavours asked them to hide her Jewish husband, whose name Charles and Aida recall was Simon. Simon had been rounded up with other Parisian Jews and sent to the Drancy concentration camp, but he had escaped. The Aznavours took him in, and later on, Charles and Aida recall, they sheltered a third Jew in their tiny apartment, as well.
As the occupation of Paris continued, the Aznavour family also sheltered Armenian soldiers who’d been forcibly drafted into the German army and had deserted rather than fight for the Nazi regime. At times, there were up to eleven refugees hiding in the family apartment, sleeping on the floor at night.
Michael and Knar Aznavour helped the refugees obtain false papers, and Charles and Aida offered aid as well. It was the teenagers’ job to burn the Nazi uniforms of the Armenian deserters and dispose of the ashes far from home, the siblings recall.
The Aznavour family was close with another Armenian couple living in Paris, Melinee and Missak Manouchian, who helped found and run an underground resistance movement in Paris called L’Affiche Rouge (The Red Poster). Charles Aznavour explains that though his parents were not formally members of the group, they helped members of the organization and even hid Melinee and Missak Manouchian for several months while they were hunted by the Gestapo, after their other friends refused to risk their lives to help.
Charles Aznavour explains, “My parents knew the danger was there every day, but my sister and I only grasped it later. We were ‘crazy’ young people. We were living out our youth and we followed in our parents’ footsteps. Only after the war did we realize how great the risk really was.”

The 6 High Performance Habits that Make People Extraordinary
http://www.aish.com/sp/pg/The-6-High-Performance-Habits-that-Make-People-Extraordinary.html?s=mm
All successful people share six common, consistent habits regardless of their area of expertise. Everyone can emulate them.
by Sara Debbie Gutfreund
When we look at highly successful people, we often fall into the trap of thinking that they possess superior talent, intelligence or resources that we don’t have access to. After a decade of researching and interviewing high performers, Brendon Burchard discovered that all successful people share six common, consistent habits regardless of their area of expertise; it is these habits that ultimately differentiate them from others. In his new book, High Performance Habits, Burchard describes the following habits that all of us can emulate to help us reach the next stage of growth in our lives.

Seek clarity. We need to figure out who we want to be, how we want to interact with others, what we want and what will bring us the most meaning in our lives. Every time we begin a new project we should ask ourselves: What kind of person do I want to be while I’m doing this? How should I treat others? What are my intentions and objectives? What can I focus on that will bring me a sense of connection and fulfillment? High performers continue asking themselves these questions every day; they develop a consistent routine of self-monitoring to make sure that their goals are always clear to them.

Generate energy. In order to perform at a high level day after day we need to take care of our mental stamina (through frequent and intentional breaks), physical energy (through diet and exercise) and positive emotions (through controlling our thoughts). High performers know that they need to consciously generate energy so that they can maintain focus, effort and well-being. They know that they need to take care of themselves to stay on their A game.

Raise necessity. We need to find and access the reasons why we absolutely must perform well. This necessity should be based on a mix of our internal standards (ie. our identities, beliefs, values and expectations for excellence) and external demands. (ie. social obligations, competition, public commitments, deadlines). We need to know our why and nurture the drive to transform our goals into absolute necessities.

Increase productivity. We need to focus on prolific quality output in the area where we want to have the most impact. In order to do this, high performers minimize distractions and say no to opportunities that don’t help their quality output in their specific area of expertise.

Develop influence. Success is rarely achieved in isolation; we need to develop influence with those around us. It’s crucial to have others around us that believe in and support our ambitions. High performers intentionally develop positive support networks because they know their achievements would be limited without the help of others.

Demonstrate courage. We need to stand up for ourselves and others even when we are faced with fear, change, doubt and threat. High performers consistently express their ideas and take action every day. Ultimately, courage is not one bold action; it is a trait that we can choose to develop and use on a daily basis.

The Mishna teaches, “Anyone whose good deeds are greater than his wisdom, his wisdom will endure. And anyone whose wisdom is greater than his good deeds, his wisdom will not endure” (Ethics of the Fathers, 3:12). Ultimately it’s our actions and habits that help us move forward in our lives. Once we have the clarity about what is truly important in our lives, we can overcome impasses by implementing these six habits that other successful people have used to achieve their goals.

When My Son Clinically Died
http://www.aish.com/sp/so/When-My-Son-Clinically-Died.html?s=mm
He had fallen into a pond and was found blue and lifeless. Then the miracles started to happen.
by Yoshie Moshe Falber
Sitting in the huge sukkah with our neighbors, enjoying our festive Yom Tov meal as my almost two-year-old son Elchonon played in the large garden with other children, little did we know that my wife and I were about to experience the greatest nightmare of our lives, and our greatest miracle.
In the middle of the meal a man’s scream suddenly pierced the air. “Help! Help! Help!!” I scrambled to find the source of the commotion and saw my neighbor holding my soaking wet son who was blue and lifeless. He had fallen into a small koi-pond near the garden and drowned. I grabbed him and assisted one of the other guests in administering CPR. Within two minutes, United Hatzalah first-responders arrived, trying to revive Elchonon who wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.
Within two minutes, United Hatzalah first-responders arrived, trying to revive Elchonon who wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.
We were able to get some of the water out of his lungs before being whisked away in the ambulance where the professionals provided much needed oxygen. With all the tools at their disposal they frantically tried to resuscitate him and get him breathing. He was not responding.
There was deafening silence in the back of the ambulance. Then came the sweetest sound I have ever heard: a screeching, shrieking toddler. We sighed with relief.
In a dizzying whir we arrived at the hospital where my beloved Elchonon was eventually stabilized in critical condition. He began to breathe on his own but he required oxygen and was not responsive. He had experienced hypothermia and his hands were locked into a spasm resembling someone with severe retardation, a possible indication of nerve damage or brain damage. The doctors told me that it may take a month before he begins to respond.
Somehow I remained calm and drew strength from some unknown source. I would not (and could not) believe the dim prospects offered by some of the doctors.

My wife and I with our son
Once we were transferred from the emergency room into the ICU my wife asked me, teary-eyed, “Yoshi, what is going to be?”
“He is going to be 100 percent fine.” I refused to let go of hope despite the horrific circumstances. The visitors began pouring in with the cookies, cakes, toys, positivity and love. We were informed that the shuls in our neighborhood had called for a special gathering of the community to recite the Book of Psalms. They, too, did not give up hope.
Our hospital room was kept to arctic levels to keep Elchonon’s body temperature down to prevent further brain damage. My wife and I alternated sitting in a chair and holding our son in our arms for hours on end. I spoke to God in that chair from the deepest places in my heart. I whispered to my son, “Fight little guy, fight!” and I thought I saw a little nod. I kept telling him that when he gets better he’ll go play with his friend Dovie and Mordechai, and I would give him cookies and candies and cola, all the treats he wanted. I told him that there was so much I wanted to show him and teach him. I told him we loved him and that Grandma just bought him a new toy.
He began to move his eyes a bit. The doctor came in and told us that the oxygen levels in in blood had dramatically improved and she saw how Elchonon’s pupils were responding but it was too early to say anything for sure.
I asked Elchonon if he wanted his pacifier and he grasped at it with his clenched hands, unable to grab hold of it. But at least he began to respond.

By midnight I told my wife to go home for the night because she needed her strength and we were told we would need to be there for weeks. She insisted that I go.
Around 2:00 AM she called to tell me that Elchonon tried to get up on all fours as if to crawl. We cried, and I went fitfully to sleep in an empty house, the future uncertain.
I was shocked when I returned the next morning. Elchonon’s hands had eased into their natural position and he was looking around! My wife told me that he tried to say “Mama” and seemed to want to walk. He was even interacting with some of the other children on the floor but she was too nervous to let him go.
She went home to get some much needed rest after a sleepless night. The doctors gave me permission to take Elchonon in his stroller to the hospital sukkah. Off we went and Elchonon was actually trying to climb out! I was astounded by his terrible-two energy and let him slowly come out of his stroller, holding him as he stood on his own two feet.

Then he suddenly took off running!
He went straight for the toys in the children’s ward and started playing with puzzles with the other children. I had to pick my jaw up from the floor. Not wanting to push too much I buckled him into the stroller and headed for the sukkah with a book, thinking he would nap and I would get to learn a little bit. He insisted on walking into the sukkah himself.
The doctors were shocked by all of his amazing activity but I needed to hear my son talk.
I didn't imagine I would be chasing him around so soon, but I was terribly concerned that he wasn’t yet talking. The nurses and doctors were shocked by all of his amazing activity but I needed to hear my son say something – Mommy, Daddy, bottle, paci – anything.

In the sukkah I tucked him back into the stroller and tons of visitors started arriving with more cookies, teddy bears and toys. I told them about Elchonon’s amazing progress and my desperate need to hear him speak. Suddenly Elchonon jumped up and grabbed a cookie and ate it – the first solid food he had eaten since the accident the day before. He gobbled it down and grunted as if to ask for another one.
Holding my son in the hospital.
I told him, “Elchonon Aharon, you can only have another cookie if you ask. So say 'cookie'.”
He said, “Cookie”!
WOW!
Then he said it again. He pointed to a pomegranate on the table and said “Apple” – which was good enough for me. And from that point on he didn’t stop talking, jumping, dancing and playing. Our Elchonon was back!
I immediately called my wife and word got out to the hundreds of people who were hoping and praying. We were told how people all across Israel were doing amazing things in the merit of our son’s complete recovery. Jews from every possible background came together in unity.
Four days after the drowning we were discharged from the hospital with a perfect bill of health. The doctors told us that they could not understand what they were witnessing. It was an outright miracle. The community of first-responders were stunned, crying tears of joy and relief. Our phones were ringing off the hook from all over the world. Our neighborhood, French Hill, became like one big family, all of our hearts united in distress and now in jubilant celebration.
Elchonon on stage.

We were invited to a benefit concert for United Hatzalah with some of the best singers in the Jewish music world. I was asked to share our story with the thousands of people there. As I thanked God and all of His heroes for saving our son, the audience broke out in laughter -- Elchonon started performing somersaults on stage and dancing. And that was the headline in the Jerusalem Post the next day: “Miracle baby who dies on Sukkot dances on-stage five days later”.
Holding my son at the United Hatzalah concert.
Experiencing the clinical death of our only son and then his miraculous recovery has left my wife and I emotionally shell-shocked. Words fail to express the depth of gratitude we have to the Almighty for being the recipients of such an outright miracle. The unity and outpouring of love we saw from thousands of people make us feel more connected than ever to the Jewish people. We are eternally grateful to the first-responders and the doctors for all their heroic efforts of in saving our son.
And the gift of seeing our son run ahead and then look back as if to say, “Hurry up already, Daddy!” makes me well up with tears and say out loud, “Thank You.”

Forgiving Mengele
http://www.aish.com/jw/s/Forgiving-Mengele.html?s=mm
Is it right to forgive an unrepentant mass murderer?
by Rabbi Benjamin Blech
I would never criticize Holocaust survivors. Even if I disagreed with them I would choose silence over disapproval.
Their pain trumps my judgment. Their anguish overrides my feelings.
I don’t dare speak ill of Eva Mozes Kor whose story went viral last month. And what a story it was! Eva, now 83, survived the hell of Auschwitz and the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele who carried out excruciatingly horrible “medical experiments” on inmates who had the dubious distinction of being twins. To hear what she endured is almost too painful for words.
Eva’s twin, Miriam, eventually succumbed to her torture. But Eva, still alive, came to an almost unbelievable decision. It is the reason for her video’s astounding popularity.
Titled “The Power to Live and Forgive” Eva has chosen finally to forgive her tormentor, the man commonly referred to as “the Angel of death at Auschwitz”.
“I imagined Mengele was in the room with me,” she recounts. “I picked up a dictionary and wrote down 20 nasty words which I read clear and loud to that make-believe Mengele in the room. And at the end I said, ‘In spite of all that, I forgive you.’ Made me feel good.”
As a personal decision for her, I can only feel pleased that she has found a measure of self-healing. If that is a source of comfort to her I must respect her wishes. What I cannot accept however is the verdict of the millions of viewers which suggests that Eva has now become the personification of the ideal victim of Nazi barbarism – a saintly soul by virtue of her willingness to forget and forgive, a perfect role model for all other survivors or students of all too recent modern history.
For a select few forgiveness in this situation may be their best choice for personal healing and psychological survival. But it is neither theologically sound nor morally acceptable.
Forgiving people who don't personally atone for their sins makes a statement: Repentance isn't really necessary.
Mengele died as an unrepentant sinner. He never showed any remorse, shame or regret. No apologies were ever uttered for his actions, no sincere attempt to atone for his crimes ever attempted. To forgive evil without demanding its admission of guilt is to condone it and to grant it a legitimacy which empowers it rather than helps to create the conditions for its rejection.
Forgiving people who don't personally atone for their sins makes a statement: Repentance isn't really necessary. Can anything be more immoral than encouraging evil by refraining from any condemnation of those who committed it?
The positive reaction to Eva’s video is in sync with contemporary models of correct psychological behavior as well as “religiously approved” righteous actions. The day after the Columbine High School massacre, a group of students announced that they forgave the killers. A short while after the Oklahoma bombing, some people put out a call to forgive Timothy McVeigh. And, on September 12th, immediately after the tragedy of 9/11, on several American campuses colleges groups pleaded for forgiveness for the terrorists responsible for the horrific events of the previous day.
These were deeply misguided gestures of compassion that carried potentially tragic consequences. Evil unchallenged is evil pardoned. To forgive and forget, as Arthur Schopenhauer so well put it, "means to throw valuable experience out the window." And without the benefit of experience's lessons we are almost certain to be doomed to repeat them. That's why to forgive those who remain unrepentant before dying is to become an accomplice to future crimes.
Recent articles have taken note of the contemporary phenomenon of “forgiveness shaming.” Forgiving, no matter what the original offense, has achieved such moral glorification that people who refuse to join in the chorus of “I love you no matter what you did to me” have become the ones who need to justify their stance or face communal shaming for their rigid “intolerance.”
Jeanne Safer, a prominent psychoanalyst and psychotherapist wrote about a colleague who was exposed to disturbing behavior and bullying from her brother who never apologized for his actions. “Contrary to the conventional wisdom, refusing to forgive or have further contact with an unrepentant, abusive relative is therapeutic. While it's commonly believed that forgiveness promotes mental health and alleviates depression, doing the opposite can express a person's very right to live.”
Elizabeth Bernstein wrote in The Wall Street Journal, "At first it may help the person who has been hurt to let go of anger, resentment and desire for revenge. But forgiving also may encourage the transgressor to do it again. Experts say reaching true forgiveness is a journey that may take years. And it is at times best not to forgive."
Jeffrie Murphy, a professor of law, philosophy and religious studies at Arizona State University, who has written about the issue for years, warned against assuming that forgiveness was always the right answer and that someone who failed to offer forgiveness was “not a good person or a mentally healthy person.”
More and more voices are being heard that forgiveness has to be earned, and to “forgive in order to heal” without receiving any expression of remorse can be destructive.
Some things are unforgivable. Unrepentant murderers are unforgivable. Genocide is unforgivable. The Holocaust is unforgivable. And the Angel of death, Dr. Mengele of Auschwitz, dare never be forgiven – even though I forgive Eva Kor for choosing that option for herself while almost all of her fellow victims reject it.

Why do we have two holidays for the Torah -- Shavuot and Simchat Torah?
by Rabbi Benyamin Buxbaum
http://www.aish.com/h/su/saast/48967086.html?s=mm
If the holiday of Shavuot celebrates the receiving of the Torah, why was Simchat Torah -- immediately following Sukkot -- chosen as the day to end and begin the annual Torah reading cycle?
Furthermore, why do we have two holidays for the Torah -- Shavuot and Simchat Torah? They are also celebrated so differently. On Shavuot, we stay up all night learning Torah. And on Simchat Torah, we dance.
The need for these two holidays has been explained in a parable that has been handed down from generation to generation.
Once a king issued a proclamation. Any one of his subjects was welcome to try for the hand of his daughter. On one condition: The potential suitor was not allowed to meet or see his daughter before the marriage.

The proclamation caused quite a stir. Soon the local inns were buzzing with speculation and rumors. "I hear she is a real shrew," said one. "I heard she is a deaf-mute," said another. "I know for a fact that she is a total imbecile," intoned a third.

Round and round the rumors flew. Finally, a simple wholehearted Jew spoke up. "I am willing to marry her. How bad can she be? After all, she is the king's daughter and we all know how great our king is."
Word quickly spread and the suitor was led to the palace. As it turned out, he was the only one who volunteered. The king accepted the match and the wedding date was set.

After the lavish wedding, the groom escorted his bride to their new home. She removed her heavy veil, and he was astounded at her beauty. Remembering the rumors of her reputed faults, the groom decided to thoroughly test her. He engaged her in conversation, tested her in character and refinement and found himself pleasantly surprised. In every way, she excelled beyond his greatest hopes and dreams. Overjoyed, he held a lavish party to celebrate his good fortune.
PARABLE EXPLAINED

The King in the parable is God. When He wanted to give the Torah, He offered it to each nation in turn. All the nations refused, each one claiming some fault in the Torah they would not be able to live with. When God offered it to the Jews, they said 'Naaseh VeNishma' -- "we will do, and then we will understand" (Exodus 24:7). The Jewish people accepted the Torah without having seen it, as they were grateful for all God had done for them.

Though the Jewish people fully accepted the Torah, they feared a loss. They assumed that the numerous obligations in the Torah would deprive them of their pleasures and freedom. Similarly, the groom in the parable married the king's daughter fearing he would be disappointed in other areas. But as the Jews learned the Torah and applied it's teaching to their lives, they were pleasantly surprised. Not only did they not have to give up anything, they found the Torah maximized their pleasure in every way.

Therefore at the conclusion of reading the Torah, when we have again delved into its teachings for a full year, we make a party on Simchat Torah.
On Shavuot, we stay up and learn all night to show our readiness and anticipation to receive the Torah. Because it is an intellectual appreciation, we stay up all night learning Torah. On Simchat Torah, however, we dance -- expressing the emotional joy of the body. We are showing that even our bodies have gained tremendously by keeping the Torah.

Ask anyone who has increased their Torah observance and they will tell you the same. At first, each feared, according to his or her nature, that some aspect of the Torah would be restrictive. Be it keeping Shabbat, kosher, family purity or laws of proper speech, each encountered an area that tested their resolve. However, they kept the Torah knowing it was the most meaningful thing to do. And as they grew in their Judaism, they found their lives enhanced in every way.
It is with this renewed appreciation that we approach Simchat Torah. We are filled with gratitude and awe for the great gift that God has bestowed on us with love.
((based on Otzar haShavous quoting Rav Avraham and the Dubno Magid)

Don’t Let Your Mistakes Define You
http://www.aish.com/f/mom/Dont-Let-Your-Mistakes-Define-You.html?s=mm
Like the professional athlete, you’ve got to get back into the game and play to win.
by Emuna Braverman
I was watching some football highlights last week and pondering what it means to be a professional athlete. I watched Kareem Hunt of the Kansas City Chiefs fumble the ball at the beginning of the game and then go on to catch two touchdown passes and rush for 148 yards, scoring yet another touchdown with his running game. It wasn’t his prowess I was marveling at; it was his ability to move past that fumble to become quite literally the star of the game. I think that’s the quality that distinguishes a professional from an amateur.

Like figure skaters who fall and then immediately get up and continue their routine, like baseball players who strike out in one inning and hit a home run in the next, the professional is someone who doesn’t let his mistakes define him. He doesn’t let them get him down or feel discouraged or, worst of all, give up. He keeps going, he gets back in the game and he gives it his all.

We can all learn from watching these athletes. (I knew I could justify my obsession with football somehow!) Because they are demonstrating a crucial life skill. Life can be (okay, is!) challenging. Sometimes it feels like it’s just one test after another. Some days we want to just lie in bed and pull up the covers. But the professional at the game of life won’t allow that to happen. The professional picks him or herself up and just keeps going. The professional throws himself immediately back into the game – not grudgingly, but with full energy and enthusiasm.

That is our test. That is our opportunity. At this time of year, as we think of the mistakes we made in the past and the ones we’d like to rectify for the future, it can be overwhelming. The task can seem daunting and the likelihood of success minimal. But we are professionals here; we can’t afford not to be. So despite our mistakes and flaws, we need to get back up on that horse and try again.

The Talmud teaches that a righteous person falls seven times. It’s not the falling that’s determinative; it’s the standing up again. The days may be difficult and draining but if we get up the next morning and put one foot in front of the other, we are winning the game. If we add in a smile, we are the MVP.
The professional athlete appreciates how high the stakes are in winning or losing the game, yet they are nothing compared to the stakes in the game of life that we are all playing. We can’t give up. We can’t allow ourselves to despair. We need to keep pushing forward, we need to bring our best game, we need to stay focused on the end goal.
Because in the game of life where it really counts, we’re playing for keeps.

Spiritual Deficiency Syndrome and What You Can Do About It
Take this important annual spiritual checkup before Rosh Hashanah.
by Sara Debbie Gutfreund

Are you suffering from what Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski calls Spiritual Deficiency Syndrome?
In his book, Happiness and the Human Spirit: The Spirituality of Becoming the Best You Can Be, he writes:

Recognize that you have a body and a spirit. If your body lacks something-let’s say iron – you develop iron deficiency anemia. You’ll go to the doctor, and he’ll prescribe supplements. If he gives you extra vitamin A or niacin, it won’t help. It has to be iron. It’s the same with spiritual deficiency syndrome. If you try to cure it by amassing wealth, going for a cruise, taking a drink, taking another drink, you’ll feel better for a while. But you won’t be happy.

One of the beauties of being human is that we can realize we’ve made a mistake. Once we realize that we’ve been undermining our own spirituality, we see that we’ve been using the wrong things to fill the void.”
What are the signs of spiritual deficiency syndrome and what can we do to treat it?

1. Boredom. Pascal once said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Feeling bored isn’t just a result of having nothing to do; we are afraid to face the silence both within ourselves and the world. The silence that asks us to face ourselves and the hard questions that life raises. Instead of struggling with the answers we turn on Netflix or our ever-present phones and fill the silence with noise and distraction.
To help overcome this spiritual block take a few moments and write down your answers to the following questions:
If I wasn’t afraid, I would…
Who was I created to be?

2. Lack of empathy. A significant symptom of spiritual deficiency syndrome is being wrapped up in our own problems to the extent that we cannot see or feel one another’s pain; this means that we are not relating to the infinite light that resides within each of us when we encounter others. Being able to give and listen to others is not only what makes us spiritual; it is ultimately what makes us human. There is no greater spiritual exercise that getting out of ourselves and giving to others.
Sometimes our own daily challenges make it hard for us to see the bigger picture, but thinking about these questions can help us gain more perspective:
Who do I know that may be struggling with loneliness, pain or grief? How can I help that person?
What are three ways I would help make the world a better place today if I had unlimited resources?

3. Preoccupation with the physical. We often attempt to fill our inner spiritual voids with more and more things that we don’t actually need, which ultimately deepen the emptiness we feel within. We may try to alleviate that emptiness with overeating, surfing the internet and binge watching movies, but the temporary relief is always followed by disappointment because we are not feeding our souls what they really need.

Spiritual Deficiency Syndrome is in some ways a gift. It’s our soul telling us that it’s hungry and needs to be fed, not with empty calories but with genuine meaning and purpose that fills our inner core.
Rosh Hashanah is the time to get clarity about what really matters to us. As the new year begins we have the opportunity to examine who we really are and who we ultimately want to become.
Think about: What is the legacy that I hope to leave behind? If I died today what will I regret not saying or doing?
Each of us has an infinite core filled with light that we yearn to pour into the world around us. When we ignore that light, we will feel the emptiness and try desperately to fill it. This year fill the soul with what it really needs: purpose, connection and meaning.

http://www.aish.com/ci/s/442719723.html?s=mm
Think for Yourself: Good Advice Not Just for Harvard Students

Real learning begins when we leave the echo chamber.
by Emuna Braverman
I was heartened to read the letter written by a number of prominent professors from Harvard, Yale and Princeton last week encouraging students to think for themselves.
In the first test that God gives Abraham, He tells him to leave everything behind – his family, his community, his country of birth – and go to the place that the Almighty will show him. Abraham is challenged to achieve independence, to figure out who he is and what he believes, not to be perpetually subject to the groupthink that concerns these professors. God was essentially telling Abraham the same advice as the professors: “Think for yourself.”

It is not a new idea but such an important one and a notion that has gotten lost in the world of micro aggressions and safe spaces. What makes our children so fragile, so unable to cope with different ideas, so threatened by notions opposed to their own? Jean Twenge, the psychology professor from San Diego State University suggests that in a world where most communication is done via smart phone, words matter more and are therefore more frightening and powerful.
I am skeptical of that explanation. Words have always mattered. Words have always been powerful. But, in the United States anyway, we have relied on the market and not the law to regulate them. We have relied on the good will and common sense of the people. This is what seems to be lost and, despite some of my frustrations with what occurs on college campuses today, I don’t blame the students.

I blame us, their parents, their professors, their administrators. Because, unlike those few who signed last week’s letter, we have not behaved like grown-ups. Besides coddling our children, we have embraced our own fear. It is not our children who are unfriending people on Facebook due to different political beliefs. It is not our children who can’t have a civil conversation with someone with an alternate political viewpoint. It is not our children who call the other side evil and hurl accusations back and forth. It is not our children who refuse to try to understand Americans whose life experiences and political viewpoints vary from ours.

It is us. We’re the ones who bear this responsibility. We’re the ones who’ve taught our children to be frightened of the other, who have promoted an “us versus them” mentality, who don’t have enough belief in the power of education and the good will of others. We’re created this atmosphere of mistrust and intolerance and we need to fix it.
If we want our children to get both a good college education along with good preparation for life we need to teach them how to accept and understand people and ideas that are different, even opposed to theirs. We don’t have to believe the ideas but we need to understand them and the people who espouse them.
Instead of feeling threatened by new ideas, we need to teach our children to be excited.

A world of love and tolerance is not built by surrounding us only with people who think the way we do, the “echo chamber” that the professors refer to. It is created when we sit in dialogue with those who ideas radically differ from ours and we listen with patience, calm, attentiveness, reason and understanding. Our politicians need to learn this. Our teachers need to learn this. We all need to learn this.

If we surround ourselves with only people like ourselves we are the ones who lose. We lose the opportunity to be enriched by the knowledge, wisdom and experience of others. And our children lose – because they have no tools to cope with and/or evaluate original or different ideas.

If people judge us as part of a community and not as individuals, we frequently get offended. We should be wary of doing the same. Start reading newspapers you disagree with and open yourself up to learning something you didn’t know. Start having coffee with individuals from the “other” party and be prepared to be surprised when you discover the similarities between the two of you or the reasonableness of their position.
It requires courage to think for yourself. Instead of feeling threatened by new ideas, we need to teach our children to be excited. That’s where the learning is, that’s where the growth is, that’s where the education truly is.

http://www.aish.com/jw/s/The-Meaning-of-Some-Common-Jewish-Last-Names.html?s=mm
The Meaning of Some Common Jewish Last NamesThe Meaning of Some Common Jewish Last Names
Some of these will surprise you.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller 

Last names are a relatively new phenomenon.  In ancient times, many people were known by their first name only.  Jews often added the names of their fathers or their mothers to their names, and still do today in religious situations, being called by their name “ben” (son of) or “bat” (daughter of) their parent’s name.  Jews descended from the priestly groups of Cohens and Levis sometimes note this status in their name; indeed, variations of “Cohen” and “Levi” are the most common Jewish last names today.
Within the Jewish community, widespread adoption of last names was first seen after the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, when many Jewish families adopted the names of their family’s hometowns as a surname.  Baruch Spinoza evoked the name of Espinosa, a town in Spain from where his ancestors hailed.  Many other Jews gained place-based surnames two hundred years later, when the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Joseph II decreed that his subjects adopt last names; the custom was seen at the time as modern.  

Here is a list of some common Jewish last names and their meanings. Some of these might surprise you!
Abrams: from the Biblical patriarch Abraham, who moved from what is today Iraq to Israel
Abramson: a patronymic name (from one’s father) meaning son of Abraham
Becker: Germanic name for baker, refers to an ancestor who was a Jewish baker
Blau: meaning blue, this name reflects the popularity of colors as surnames among German-speaking Jews
Blum: from the Jewish woman’s name Bluma, meaning “flower” in Yiddish
Cantor: one who sings in a synagogue (Chazzan in Hebrew)
Cohen: from the priestly caste who served in the Jewish Temple in ancient times
Cooperman: Cooper is a form of the Yiddish nickname Yankel, meaning Jacob
Diamond: this name reflects the popularity of using beautiful gems as surnames among German-speaking Jews
Ehrlich: a name bestowed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire meaning “honest”
Eisen: meaning “iron”, it was a popular choice for Austrian Jews
Elkayim: this Middle Eastern Jewish name refers to a family profession and means tentmaker
Fingerhut: from the Yiddish word for “thimble”, this name refers to an ancestor who was a tailor
Fishman: this name means fish-seller, and refers to a family’s profession
Gelb: Like Geller, this name means yellow in Yiddish, and was often given to people with light hair
Geller: Yiddish for yellow, this name was often given to people with lighter or reddish hair
Gold: many German-speaking Jews adopted the names of precious metals, like gold, as names
Goldberg: this name refers to the towns of Goldberg in Germany and/or in Poland, both once home to Jewish communities.  The name means “golden town”.
Goldman: a popular choice among Austrian Jews for its beautiful connotation “gold” and “man”
Goldschmidt: this Germanic name refers to an ancestor who worked as a goldsmith
Green: adopting colors as surnames was popular among Austro-Hungarian Jews
Greenberg: referring to the towns of Grunberg in Germany and Poland, both once home to Jewish communities
Hakimi: this Persian surname is derived from the Arabic “Hakim” meaning wise
Horowitz: referring to the town of Horovice in the Czech Republic, once home to a Jewish community
Kaplan: a Germanic form of Cohen, the priestly workers who served in the Temple in Jerusalem
Katz: acronym of “Kohen Tzedek”, or “righteous Cohen”, one who served in the Temple in Jerusalem
Kauffman: a form of the Yiddish nickname Yankel (meaning Jacob) plus the German for man
Koppelman: derived from Koppel, a Yiddish nickname for Jacob, plus the German suffix “man”
Koval: this Slavic name refers to an ancestor who was a blacksmith
Kravitz: this name recalls an ancestor’s occupation, and is a Slavic version of the word tailor
Leib: meaning lion, this name refers to the Jewish name Yehuda, who was compared to a lion (Gen. 49:9)
Levi/Levy: of the Tribe of Levi, descendants of Moses’ brother Aaron; members worked in the Temple
Levin: derived from Levi – members of the Tribe of Levi who served in the Temple in Jerusalem
Lieberman: a nickname adopted by some Jewish families, meaning “dear man”
Maggid: from the Hebrew for teaching, refers to an ancestor who was a scholar and teacher
Margolis: meaning “pearl” in Hebrew, it often reflects a mother’s first name
Maze: an acronym – “M’zera Aharon Hakohen” – from the seed of Aaron the High Priest
Melamed: from the Hebrew for teacher, referring to an ancestor who was a teacher
Mizrahi: meaning “Easterner” in Hebrew, this name refers to families from the Middle East
Nudel: meaning needle, this name reflects an ancestor’s occupation as tailor
Perlman: husband of Perl (a common Jewish woman’s name in Eastern Europe)
Portnoy: this name refers to an occupation – it means “tailor” in Russian
Rabin: from the Hebrew word Rabbi, this name could refer to a rabbinic ancestor
Rabinowitz: a Slavic name meaning “son of Rabbi”
Rivkin: a matronymic (deriving from one’s mother) name, from Rebecca
Rivlin: derived from the name Rebecca, the Jewish matriarch who married Isaac
Roth: meaning red, this name reflects the popularity of colors as surnames among German-speaking Jews
Rothschild: this prominent family’s name pre-dates the forced adoption of surnames, and refers to the “red sign” (the meaning of the name) that graced the family’s home
Sas: an acronym of “sofer stam,” a writer of religious texts
Sasson: a matronymic name (derived from one’s mother) meaning Shoshana, “rose” in Hebrew
Sebag: this name refers to the profession of a long-ago ancestor, it means dyer
Schechter: from the Hebrew for butcher, one who slaughters animals according to Jewish law
Schneider: a Germanic name meaning tailor, reflecting one’s ancestor’s profession as tailor
Schreiber - from the Hebrew “sofer”, a writer of religious texts
Schwartz: this means black – many German speaking Jews adopted colors as surnames
Segal: a common name for members of the tribe of Levi, Segal is an acronym – “Segan Lekehunah”, or “second to the Cohen”, referring to working in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem
Shapiro: referring to the town of Speyer, in Germany, once home to a Jewish community
Singer: referring to an ancestor who sang in a synagogue as a cantor
Shamash: reflecting an ancestor’s occupation, this means one who worked in a synagogue
Shulman: “shul” means synagogue in Yiddish – this name was adopted by some caretakers of synagogues as a surname
Soros: from the Hebrew name Sarah, meaning “princess”
Stern: meaning “star”, many Austrian Jews thought this a beautiful name to choose
Weiss: meaning white, this name reflects the practice of adopting colors as surnames among German-speaking Jews
Weinberg: referring to any of various places in Europe which once were home to thriving Jewish communities, including the region of Mt. Weinberg in Westphalia, Germany, or towns named Weinberg in Germany, the Czech Republic or Poland
Wexler: Germanic form of moneychanger, one of the occupations to which Jews were restricted.

The Nazi and the Jew-Doctor
What drove this tortured soul to seek out a Jewish psychologist?
by Rabbi Dr. David Fox 
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He was not an imposing man, short, tidily groomed. I did not sense anything intimidating about him as he faced me in the office. But his eyes were striking – cold, metallic grey, locked upon mine with an unwavering gaze as he spit out his reason for making the appointment.

His wife had become paralyzed following an accident and could not speak, move or respond to anyone. She lay in bed, staring. No communication, no relationship. His reason for seeing me? “Because all of my friends say I should just dump her and move on, but in my heart I needed to ask a… Jew-doctor.”
He said it casually without a smirk or taunt. He went on.
“I might as well tell you that you may have a hard time working with me. I am a member of the American Nazi Party. I have also been a Klansman.” This was said without a sinister air, with no sense of menace. He wanted me to know from the start that I might I feel uneasy working with someone who, well, considered me a “Jew-doctor.”
I detest the Jews as a group… but that’s not to say that I don’t recognize that some of you people are good at what you do.

I was prepared to offer him respectful support. But, within my mind, I was eager to learn why his heart had prompted him to seek out a Jewish psychologist. “I want you to know doctor that I detest the Jews as a group, just like I oppose all other aliens who don’t belong in our country. But that’s not to say that I don’t recognize that some of you people are good at what you do. You make good accountants. You are great lawyers, doctors too. What I want from you is to tell me what you people would do if you were in my shoes.”

I still did not get it. This man was a racist, detested “my people”, but chose me to find out what a Jew would do if faced with his predicament. How could I possibly prescribe to him “the Jewish solution” if this man would have been content with “the Final Solution”? How would it matter to him if a solitary (Jewish) opinion might conflict with the recommendation of his bigoted peers who advised him to leave his non-functioning wife? Was this a matter of him needing to appease his soul, doing due diligence by seeking a second opinion from me, or was this a matter of conscience, if indeed he had one? He had already shared with me some of the criminal activities which he had been part of in his vigilante escapades. Was he having pangs of guilt, but only about deserting his wife of many years? Was it love that kept him bound to her, or was there some deeper dynamic banging at the basement door of his mind?

As the weeks went by, he began to loosen up. He had begun to trust me enough to share his emotional torment, in small pieces. The cold stare was still very present, but so were the occasional tear drops which dampened those steely eyes.

His marriage was once good. She was a stable kind woman, seldom questioning him about his political views or pressing for details about his under-the-radar dealings. They had a love, clearly, and he appreciated her. Now she was confined to permanent bed-rest to live out her years, unresponsive forever. Should he stick with her, resigned to eternal loneliness, or respect his needs as a man and “cut his losses” and find another wife? His dilemma was a psychological one that had some moral undertones.
One day, he referenced her accident. It was a nonchalant remark, yet the first mention of the catalyst for his psychological struggles. “You see, doc, my wife’s accident may not have been a true accident.” I looked at him, stayed quiet, but with the most sincerely patient visage I could muster. He continued. “We had a little fight that day and she left in a huff. She sped off in the car and was probably careless because she was crying and mad at me.”

Guilt can do magnificent things to the mind. It can bring a person to his knees with regret, and it can propel a person into emotional and existential agony. The fights and arguments which we have with our dear ones, especially when followed by tragedy, can lock us into spasms of remorse and self-blame. Was he staying with her for penance, serving a life sentence with the woman he had fought with, which had led her to this living death?

The man went on, divulging a blend of woeful pain over what had become of his wife, but with sparks of anger at her. I gently pushed him to look at the sadness along with that hostility. He seemed to be hurting, yet was also resentful of his wife. We are all at time saddened by another’s hardships, yet vaguely aware that their predicament makes our own lives difficult. It is a hard tug of war between staying compassionate while also feeling anger when our own happiness is compromised by their inability to care for us.

She told me that she had been hiding something from me for 30 years.
“It was that last talk we had, before she took off in the car. “ This time, the moist eyes had turned to sobbing, tears lining his taught cheeks. The angry grimace still grasped his face, but he was crying. “She told me… that she had been hiding something from me for 30 years. My wife… came from a Jew mother.” He wept openly now, sad, bitter and yet there was something else going on. “That was the worst shame anyone could cause me. And I told her that. Then she ran out to her car.”
“When I heard she was in that car crash, part of me was sorrowful, but part of me felt she had it coming. She had lied to me all along. How did I ever get stuck with a Jew for a wife? Such shame she caused me. I hoped she would die then and there, but she didn’t.”

He breathed in deeply, seeming to loosen up and melt into the chair. Then he looked at me with pleading eyes, as if begging to share a conspiratorial wish. In a soft whisper, he said, “So since my wife survived, she deserves for me to do what a Jew would do for a Jew. And that’s why I knew that I needed to get me a Jew-doctor. Can you help me, now, doc? Please can you help me?”
Sometimes, the twists and turns of a tortured conscience lead to the gateways of the soul.
Reprinted from Jewish Life magazine, www.jewishlife.co.za, download the free Jewish Life app on iOS and Android

http://www.aish.com/jw/id/My-Journal-during-The-Six-Day-War.html?s=mm
My Journal during The Six Day War
by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman
The dramatic journal of an American family in Israel during the Six Day War.
family in Israel during the Six Day War.
by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman 
Rabbi Emanuel Feldman was living in Israel with his young family during The Six Day War while on sabbatical from his rabbinic duties at Beth Jacob Synagogue in Atlanta, GA. While in Israel he was a visiting professor at Bar Ilan University. This excerpt is taken from his journal of the Six Day War, The 28th of Iyar (Feldheim), which was originally released in 1968 and has been re-printed in commemoration of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Six Day War.
This entry describes the breakout of the war.
Tuesday, June 6, 1967/ 27 Iyar
Sheinfeld was partly right about those Arab pilots. From 11 P.M. to 4 A.M. there are no alerts. But at four, just at daybreak, we are shaken from a deep sleep by that terrifying scream. I groan, and run in to wake the boys, but they are already dressed and cheerfully getting ready to go down to the shelter.
The shelter is filled with the same people, but everyone is in fine mood today, animated, friendly, alive. Israelis by nature are very reserved, almost aloof, but some of our neighbors – even the ladies – who scarcely nodded to us for the past ten months are suddenly friendly.
The news on the radio now is incredible: Israel is claiming the destruction of 375 Arab planes. 375! Incredible, astounding, unbelievable. It cannot be. Undoubtedly this is just an exaggerated war claim. And yet the Israeli Army is not known to make idle claims. 375 planes? Is it possible?
Jerusalem is still being heavily shelled and our troops have invaded the Old City. Good. There is news that we have captured Latrun and Nabi Samuel and are moving to surround the Old City. And El Arish in the Sinai has been captured and we are moving on Aza. So things are not going badly.

Estelle wonders what we will do for food today. We are out of milk, there is just a little bread, and the stores will undoubtedly not be open. As for the milkman, we are lucky if he shows up in normal times. But we will manage.
All is quiet. We hear no sound of anti-aircraft guns, no explosions. The all-clear sounds at five A.M. and the men decide to go to Itchkovitch for Shacharis (morning services). There is already a large crowd there, overflowing into the street, and everyone is whispering excitedly about the 375 planes. The prevailing opinion is that we have won some important air battles, but that the Air Force has stretched the truth this time in its claims. I pick up BBC on my radio and the announcer is saying, “There are conflicting claims on both sides. Israel claims to have destroyed over 300 Arab planes, while the Arabs are claiming that they have shot down over 200 Israeli aircraft.”

An interesting occurrence during Shacharis: we are davening out on the sidewalk in typical Itchkovitch fashion, and the Kohanim are about to begin their Priestly Blessing. At that moment the air-raid alert sounds again. We all look at one another, no one moves, and without a word or a motion we agree intuitively that we will continue davening and not run to a shelter in the middle of prayer. And so, as the siren continues to wail, the Kohanim take their customary position up front, raise their prayer shawls over their heads, cover their faces, stretch forth their arms, the chazan intones, “Kohanim,” and, as if in musical harmony with the alarm, they recite Birkat Kohanim, “Yevarechecha – May God bless you and keep you. May 

God turn His countenance upon you and be gracious unto you. May God turn His face unto you and give you – ” and just as they are about to utter the last word of the blessing – “Shalom, peace” – the all-clear sounds and they chant Shalom in counterpoint to the siren.
It is just before 6 A.M. We are back in the shelter waiting for the next all-clear when we hear the clip-clop of a horse and the clinking of glass. We dash out of the shelter and there, resplendent with his white bottles, is our milkman.

Our milkman: how we used to curse him silently every morning, him and his creaking wagon and neighing horse and noisy bottles. How could he be so coarse, so insensitive, so oblivious to the fact that it was still nighttime and we were asleep? And how we used to resent the fact that the bottoms of the bottles were always encrusted with mud and sand. Milkman, all is forgiven: we surround him and chatter gaily and the children jump up and down and embrace him and climb up on his dreary, gray horse.

It occurs to me suddenly that our family in the U.S. must be frantic, and I go over to the Post Office to send a telegram. There is a long line in front of the telegraph clerk. He seems to be discussing the wording of every telegram presented to him. Perhaps there is an emergency limit on the amount of words, or maybe a special censorship has been imposed. As I get closer to him I can hear what he is doing.
“What?” he says. “You are telling them that there is still some danger? Change that. We are not in danger.”
Dutifully the customer makes the appropriate correction.

“Oy,” he says to the next man. “Why do you have to mention about the shelling? The shelling was nothing. You should have seen Europe. Just take that part out.”
“Ah,” he beams at a lady’s text, “this is the kind of telegram to send. Everybody listen. This is a model. ENEMY IS DEFEATED. ALL ARE WELL. GOD HAS REVEALED HIMSELF TO ISRAEL. DO NOT WORRY. That’s what a telegram should be: encouraging, happy. We have to show the outside world that we are the victors.”
So it goes. He edits and deletes and rewrites and censors – a word here, a phrase there. If the outside world this morning is receiving unusually ecstatic messages from a country at war, they have this clerk to thank.
 
Feldheim Publishers is proud to reissue Rabbi Emanuel Feldman’s bestselling firsthand account of life on the Israeli home front before and during the war.

Rabbi Feldman was on a sabbatical in Israel with his family in the time before and during the Six Day War. His decision to keep a daily account of the tense weeks before the war and during the war itself led to a dramatic, day-by-day journal telling the story of an American family and an entire nation who lived through the frantic and historical days of June 1967. Click here to order. http://www.feldheim.com/the-28th-of-iyar.html

Three years after its libel against Israel, the medical journal sets things right.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller 
The Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, is currently featuring a special edition devoted to Israel’s world-class medical establishment. As well as being an informative issue, this latest issue is also a remarkable act of atonement for a terrible wrong the journal did to the Jewish state three years ago.
This unusual story starts in July 2014 when, after enduring near-constant rocket attacks from Gaza, Israel’s army (the IDF) fought back, destroying missile launchers and other military targets in several weeks of fierce fighting that were dubbed Operation Protective Edge. During the conflict, nearly 5,000 missiles rained down on Israeli towns. 66 Israeli soldiers were killed, as were six Israeli civilians, including children. Israeli forces also discovered a network of terror tunnels leading from Gaza into the Jewish state. Hamas positioned its rocket launchers in civilian areas, including Al-Shifa Hospital. When Israeli forces dropped leaflets warning civilians to flee areas that were identified as military targets, Hamas ordered them to stay. Gazans, unsurprisingly, suffered large numbers of casualties: about 2,127, among both Hamas fighters and civilians.
The letter glorified Hamas, describing it as committed to resolving political conflicts “without arms and harm”.
During the fighting, The Lancet, Britain’s premier medical journal, decided to take the highly unusual step of entering the fray. In their July 30, 2014 edition, they published an “Open letter for the people in Gaza.” The letter, written by five prominent physicians and signed by 19 more, shocked many with its vicious tone and biased perspective.
Dr. Karl Skorecki, a senior staff member at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, was one of many physicians in Israel and across the world who was appalled by the letter’s hateful tone. In an Aish.com exclusive interview, Dr. Skorecki recalls it as a “one-sided, mean-spirited, ill-based attack that came from a place of hatred… It accused medical professionals in Israel of complicity in inhumane activity. It was demonizing.”
Making no mention of Hamas’ use of human shields, deliberate targeting of civilians, and practice of hiding missile launchers and weapons in schools and medical centers, the letter accused Israel of lying to creating an emergency, of “massacre”, and of harboring the bloodthirsty aim “to terrorize, wound the soul and the body”. The letter bizarrely glorified Hamas, describing it as committed to resolving political conflicts “without arms and harm”. Israel’s Ministry of Health described the letter as “bordering on blood libel”.
In the weeks after The Lancet published this screed, NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog group, revealed that the letter’s authors had links to anti-Semitic groups. Two had shared a video of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, railing against Jews and Israel. One author had forwarded a message claiming that Jews and Zionists were behind the Boston marathon bombings; another author travelled to Gaza in a sign of solidarity during the fighting.
Prof. Richard Horton
The Lancet’s editor, Prof. Richard Horton, announced that while he “deeply regretted” the “completely unnecessary polarisation” the letter caused, he stopped short of condemning the letter itself, and kept it up on The Lancet’s website.
Invitation to Israel
Jewish doctors across Britain wrote to The Lancet. In Israel, medical school professors resigned from advisory boards associated with the journal. At Israel’s prestigious Rambam Hospital in Haifa, the staff, too, were outraged, and sent a letter of their own to The Lancet, which went unpublished. Instead of resigning themselves to anger, however, Rambam’s doctors and staff decided to take a different approach.
“Let’s invite him,” suggested Prof. Karl Skorecki, Rambam’s Director of Medical and Research Development, speaking of the editor responsible for publishing the letter. As Prof Rafael Beyar, the Director General of the hospital recalled, the staff liked Prof. Skorecki’s idea. “It seems like he doesn’t known man facts about this region,” the doctors noted. “He needs to see the reality of medical life in Israel.”
READ MORE http://www.aish.com/jw/me/The-Lancet-Admits-Its-Error.html?s=mm

Raising Our Kids on Vampires, Satanism and Zombies
What’s capturing your teen’s imagination?
by M. R. (Rhonda) Attar 

Do your kids enjoy fantasy adventures? What’s their vampire IQ? You might be shocked by their prowess.
Books, movies and computer games today are filled with occult, witchcraft, Satanism, paganism, vampires, zombies, Greek mythology…all under the innocuous title of fantasy adventure.

As parents we may be thrilled that our teenager is actually reading, but what values are impressionable minds ultimately absorbing from such content? A treasure trove of fantastic personalities, legends and esoteric mysteries can be found within Jewish tradition, history and Torah, so why aren’t we providing alternatives for our youth based on Jewish content and values?

I created the Elisha Davidson trilogy to inspire the imaginations of our teens to our phenomenal, life-enforcing Jewish heritage.
Because I wanted to inspire the imaginations of our teens to our phenomenal, life-enforcing Jewish heritage rather than steep it in violent occult darkness, I created the Elisha Davidson trilogy.
Do we really want our kids fantasizing through an entire series about gruesome zombies or Greek gods?
When the books on Jewish bookstore shelves don’t capture their imagination, is it any wonder they turn to Vampire Academy, Zombie Apocalypse, Percy Jackson and similar fantasy books that do offer what they crave?
As a career television executive, I’ve launched 10 television channels in as many as 120 countries and subscribe to the industry adage that ‘Content is King’ for successful entertainment. Our Torah heritage is a massive, untapped reservoir of spectacular content, and it is up to us to create the medium that will showcase our captivating content. I believe the Elisha Davidson Trilogy does this. Some reviewers have heralded the Elisha Davidson series as a new genre; others have labeled it the ‘Jewish Harry Potter.’ I’m not particularly enamored by the latter categorization, but I am thrilled to see reviewers, teens and parents alike quickly get the point and turn into avid fans.

The adventures of Elisha Davidson first came to life in my living room before Harry Potter was a household name. For years I hosted a Shabbat afternoon story-telling group for my children and their friends. I would read Torah stories, tales of the Sages and just about anything really interesting and Jewish that I could get my hands on. As time went on I wanted to forge a stronger bond between the kids and the content. I wanted to ignite their imaginations, so I made up my own story about a young boy named Elisha Davidson living in modern-day Jerusalem. His mysterious adventures were interwoven with stories from Torah, Talmud and Medrash. The kids were spellbound and continued coming to the group well into their late teens. I wanted to write the stories down, but as a working mother time eluded me. Fast forward a few years, and a lot of writing, and now thanks to Menorah Books, a years’ worth of Elisha adventures have been published as the Elisha Davidson Trilogy.

The overall plot of Elisha Davidson is fantasy, but instead of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry or the never-ending variations of Transylvania High, the backdrop is Jerusalem’s eternal Old City. Elisha is a 6th grader at North Temple Mount Academy, and the magical and captivating characters surrounding him include Torah legends and personalities. Each page was crafted with meticulous adherence to traditional Jewish sources which are so wondrously compelling in their own right, they naturally fit right in.
Can Torah-sourced content compete with the allure of the Dark Arts? You decide: Elisha discovers a powerful
READ MORE http://www.aish.com/ci/a/Raising-Our-Kids-on-Vampires-Satanism-and-Zombies.html?s=mm

http://www.aish.com/ci/s/10-Little-Known-Facts-about-Einstein.html?s=mm
10 Little Known Facts about Einstein
Including what he considered to be his greatest day.
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Albert Einstein is known for his famous theory of relativity, his iconic formula about the intensity of energy E=mc2, and for being one of the most brilliant scientists of all times.
Many of us know the basic outlines of Einstein’s life: he was born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1879, achieved fame at a young age for his groundbreaking work on particle physics, and fled Nazi Germany in 1933, arriving at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in the United States where he taught until his death in 1955.
Here are ten less well-known facts about this brilliant physicist which might surprise you.

1. His parents worried that he didn’t talk as a child.
A number of myths flourish about Einstein. It’s often said that he didn’t talk until he was four and that he failed math as a child. It is true that Einstein’s language development was delayed – one nursery school teacher told his parents he’d never amount to much – but by the time he was two years old, Einstein was beginning to learn to speak, much to his family’s relief.
As for failing math, in 1935, a rabbi in Princeton, New Jersey, where Einstein was on the faculty, showed Einstein a newspaper clipping that claimed of him “Greatest Living Mathematician Failed in Mathematics.” Einstein laughed, correcting the column. “Before I was 15 I had mastered differential and integral calculus,” he explained.

2. He was intensely religious as a child.
Einstein’s family wasn’t religiously observant; in fact, growing up in Munich, young Einstein attended a local Catholic school. (He later recalled helping his classmates with their religion homework.) When Einstein was nine years old, however, he developed a love for Judaism. He started keeping kosher, observing Shabbat and even made up prayers that he’d sing on his way to school.
While he didn’t maintain this level of observance into adulthood, Einstein always was proud of being Jewish. In 1933, one month after Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany, Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa left Germany for good.

3. A visiting medical student sparked his interest in science.
Einstein’s parents continued a long-standing Jewish custom of inviting a poor student for a meal each week. When Einstein was a young child, his family hosted a Jewish medical student named Max Talmud for dinner each Thursday.
It was Max Talmud who first introduced Albert Einstein to science books, of which there were none in his parents’ home. The ten-year old Einstein devoured works by Charles Darwin, raced through the five-volume classic series “The Cosmos – Attempt at a Description of the Physical World” by Alexander von Humboldt, and read the twenty volume popular “Science for the People” series by Aaron Bernstein. Albert’s lifelong love of science was born.

4. He gave away his Nobel Prize money to his ex-wife.
Einstein travelled to Switzerland for college, where he attended the Zurich Polytechnic. The only woman in his physics classes was a young Serbian woman named Mileva Maric. They married in 1903, when Einstein was 23. Their union was unhappy and Albert soon offered Mileva an unusual bargain: if he ever won the Nobel Prize, Albert promised her he’d give her all the prize money. In return, he asked for a divorce. Mileva thought it over for a week, then agreed.
Years later, in 1921, Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics and turned over the prize money to Mileva.

5. Einstein fought racism.
After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933 for the United States, Einstein took up the cause of opposing racism in the United States. He became close friends with actor Paul Robeson; together this unlikely duo formed the American Crusade to End Lynching. In 1937, when the famous Black singer Marian Anderson was turned away from a hotel room in Princeton, New Jersey, where the Einsteins lived, Einstein and his wife Elsa invited Ms. Anderson to stay with them. From then on, whenever Marian Anderson passed through Princeton, she stayed with the Einsteins.
In 1946, Einstein issued a challenge to the citizens of his adopted country: “What...can the man of good will do to combat this deeply rooted prejudice? He must have the courage to set an example by word and deed….” Throughout his life, Einstein set an example, counting Black Americans as friends, lecturing at traditionally black colleges, and speaking out against racism.

6. The “greatest day” in his life came in Israel.
In 1921, Einstein and the chemist (and later first president of Israel) Chaim Weizmann travelled to the United States to raise funds for an audacious new plan: the establishment of a new Jewish university in the Land of Israel. “I feel an intense need to do something for this cause,” Einstein wrote to a friend.
Two years later, Einstein visited Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, where the new university’s main campus was being built. He was invited to speak from “the lectern that has waited for you for two thousand years.” Overcome with emotion, Einstein later wrote “my heart rejoices” as Hebrew University grows.
Albert and Elsa Einstein toured the land of Israel and was mobbed everywhere he spoke. “I consider this the greatest day of my life,” Einstein announced at one venue.

7. He was featured in Nazis’ anti-Semitic propaganda.
After fleeing Germany in 1933, a month after Hitler’s election as Chancellor of Germany, Einstein spoke out against the barbarity of the Nazis.
Nazis circulated a pamphlet in Germany decrying the Einsteins’ flight as an act of ingratitude and deceitfully speaking out against Hitler. The pamphlet ominously finished up by describing Einstein as "unhanged" – hinting that he would be put to death were he ever to set foot back in Germany.

8. Einstein shocked other scientists by insisting that God exists.
Einstein insisted that his scientific research and understanding enabled his belief in God, instead of undermining it.
Once, sitting at a Berlin dinner party, Einstein stunned the table with this following statement: “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature,” Einstein told the stunned guests, “and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable.”
Years later in Princeton he explained his persistent belief in God in simpler terms. When a sixth grader wrote to the Einstein asking if scientists prayed, he made time to write her back, noting, “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit if manifest in the laws of the Universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble….”

9. There could have been a “President Einstein”.
Of Israel, that is. Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel, a largely ceremonial role as head of government in the Jewish state, twice. Both times, he turned down the honor.
The first time was in 1948, when Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban, called Einstein to offer him Israel’s premiership. Einstein smiled and refused, replying, “I know a little bit about nature but hardly anything about human beings.”
He was asked again in 1952. This time Einstein wrote a formal letter, explaining he lacked the experience to help govern, and also that “advancing age” was “making increasing inroads on my strength.”

10. His last words were about the Jewish State.
At the end of his life, Einstein became even more outspoken for Zionist and Israeli causes. At the age of 73, looking back on his life, Einstein declared that “my relationship with Jewry had become my strongest human tie once I achieved complete clarity about our precarious positions among the nations.”
On the morning of Wednesday, April 13, 1955, Einstein met with the Israeli consul to go over a televised speech he was planning to celebrate the 8th anniversary of Israel’s founding. He penned a sentence about the prospects for Israel to make peace with its Arab neighbors, then broke off. Einstein's health faltered, and he died five days later. His speech, the last words he ever wrote, remained unfinished.

LOVING THE WRONG PERSON
And how to make it right.
by Slovie Jungreis-Wolff
http://www.aish.com/f/m/Loving-the-Wrong-Person.html?s=mm
Why do so many people struggle with feelings that they’ve made a poor choice in marriage?
In his recent New York Times’ piece, Alain de Botton explains why so many people end up marrying the wrong person. We find it difficult to draw close to others. We mask our idiosyncrasies and appear normal until others get to know us well. One of the first questions we should ask on a date is: “And how are you crazy?”

Getting married involves taking a gamble. We think we know each other sufficiently well by looking at old photos and getting to know friends and family, and feel comfortable enough to commit to a life together. But the truth is we have no idea what is waiting down the road. We are hopeful, committed, but no one really knows how they will act and react under the microscope of marriage.

We are not yet complete. The nuances of our hearts are still being molded and shaped. We are a rough draft in the making. When facing our flaws some of us go into silent mode. Others blame partners and walk away from the relationship. We remain with the perception that we are the ‘right’ ones, and simple to set up life with. It’s everyone else who is wrong.

After falling in the emotional swirl of love, replete with a romantic sunset, deep conversations and buzzing excitement about the future, ordinary life eventually intrudes with a white picket fence, long days in the office and kids who overwhelm us.
Instead of passion we are left with the lingering doubt: Did I make the wrong decision?

Marriage is supposed to be forever even though those initial romantic feelings are not. What happened to the passion? Instead we are left with the lingering doubt: Did I make the wrong decision? Now what?

“The good news,” de Botton writes, “is that it doesn’t matter if we find that we have married the wrong person.” There is no such thing as that perfect person we’ve dreamed about or imagined from the time we were young. None of us are flawless. We don’t need to contemplate divorce when we feel frustrated, angry, disappointed, annoyed, and even incomplete. We have adopted this romanticized version of marriage that has destroyed the truth we must face when living with another. Disney love is meant for theme parks and big screens. That the partner we chose cannot shield us from difficulties, sadness and heartbreak does not create a strike against our life together.
Contemplate what really counts in marriage. It’s the spouse who can best live with our differences who becomes the ‘perfect partner’. A generous heart and forgiving nature are the best ingredients to achieve love. We can right the emotions of imperfection that we fear when our relationship doesn’t work out as we thought it would.

Judaism and Seeking Love

When Abraham sought a wife for his son, Isaac, he sent his right hand man, Eliezer, to search for the girl in his home country. How would Eliezer recognize a woman worthy to become the next matriarch of the Jewish people?
It is not the romance that will sustain the marriage; it is good character.
Eliezer knew that if he would meet a woman who displayed incredible kindness, she would be the proper match. Waiting at the well, Eliezer meets Rebecca. She was not only dignified and gracious, she demonstrated her true character of chesed, deep-rooted kindness. Rebecca offered to draw water for both Eliezer and all his ten camels. She did so without complaining, without hesitation, without expectations. Rebecca was unrestrained in her goodness.
For love to flourish we must give love wholeheartedly. We cannot measure, we cannot hold back waiting to see if our spouse will match our actions. Too many petty arguments snowball when we question our giving versus the amount our spouse gives. We limit ourselves and make our love seem small.

Abraham knew exactly what was needed to bring light into the life of his son. A partner who would mirror his love of kindness that remains our nation’s legacy till today.

When seeking a spouse, let us follow in the wise path of Abraham as he contemplated a match for his son. He knew it is not the romance that will sustain the marriage; it is good character. Good heartedness, a forgiving nature and being kind build the bonds of love.

My Catholic Friend’s Question
Curiosity is the beginning of freedom.
by Rabbi Henry Harris
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I was 20 years old, living the good life as an exchange student in Madrid, and running late to meet Spanish friends at a club one Friday night.
“Where are you coming from?” one of the girls asked nonchalantly.
“I was at synagogue,” I replied.

At that point in my life, synagogue was not a typical hangout, but as a stranger in a foreign land, I was intrigued by the invite my Catholic house mother made to check out my heritage. (After discovering my Jewish roots, she actually tracked down and gave me the name, address, and phone number of the only active synagogue in Madrid. “Go!” she said, “it’s important to have a connection to your people.”)
I went once, liked the easy connection I felt with Spanish Jews, and chose to go to Shabbat services occasionally before going out Friday nights, which explained why I was late that night to meet friends.

“You’re Jewish?” my Spanish friend asked. “That’s so interesting.”
Then she dropped the question bomb.
“I’ve always wanted to know: what is the difference between Judaism and Christianity?”

In a split second her straightforward question revealed how little I knew about my own roots.
I had considered myself a reasonably literate, curious, and informed person, and in a split second her straightforward question revealed how little I knew about my own roots.
“Well,” I offered lamely, “I know that we don’t believe in Jesus.”
The question – and my ignorance – began to bother me. Clearly, I was missing something.

My Catholic 20-something friend knew she was Catholic, cared about its belief system and history, and was palpably excited to discover more about someone else’s religion. I felt her excitement in identifying with her roots. And I acutely felt my lack of connection. I was embarrassed. How could I not know something as basic as the foundation of my own identity? I realized, I was a Jew who had no idea what Judaism was.

I wanted to find answers. But where?
I began to seek “identity through osmosis:” more time with the Jews of Madrid, more young adults events at the community center, a Passover Seder with a traditional family from Morocco.
In Madrid with my mother
It was fun. It was cultural. It was sometimes exotic.` Yet returning to New York for my senior year at college, I still didn’t know what the essence of Jewish belief was. So I sought out more Jews.

One of my philosophy professors was a former kibbutznik. “You’ve never been to Israel?” he asked. “Get a taste of the Israeli commune. Explore the land. Try out the beaches at Tel Aviv.” Kibbutz, I discovered, qualified for student loan deferments. After graduating, I jumped.

Starting out as a volunteer at an Israeli munitions base, I was startled by what I found: two sets of dishes in the mess hall, mezuzahs on all the doorways, soldiers my age named Shimon and Dav-eed, and an inspiring, against-all-odds story of Jewish return to the land despite thousands of years of exile and massive Arab aggression. The Jews were not just an interesting identity; we were a nation with a way of life and a beautiful story. My Jewish identity was expanding outward – and arousing new questions.
Volunteering on Israel army base

If I loved being Jewish, did I need to move to Israel? If not, how would I express my Jewishness? I was a universalist at heart; was I ready to rule out the majority of the world’s women as marriage partners because they weren’t born Jewish? What about the abundance of hatred and persecution that had dogged the Jews throughout history? Wouldn’t it just make sense that Jews voluntarily assimilate and thereby put an end to anti-Semitism?

Travelling with fellow volunteers from the army base, we spent a weekend in Jerusalem’s Old City. We celebrated Shabbat dinner with a local family. We shmoozed with other Jewish travelers and we were having a blast. They recommended things to do and places to visit, including Aish HaTorah and the Discovery program. Aish HaTorah, they described, was a yeshiva, kind of a university for Jewish studies, but with programs for beginners – like us. Discovery was a compelling seminar that laid out the basics of Jewish belief.

This became my first encounter with a full-bodied, wide-angle, rigorous presentation of the meaning of being Jewish. I saw more clearly the miraculous nature of Jewish history, the depth of Torah wisdom, the joy and vibrancy of Jewish homes. I was beginning to find my answers. I stayed for a summer to learn more. I eventually changed grad school plans for a rabbinic degree.

Today I am fortunate to be an educator of Jewish ideas with a Jewish family of my own.
Studying at Aish HaTorah
And it began with a question in a Spanish bar.
The power of questioning is a central theme of the Passover Seder. The Haggadah starts by raising four questions and is designed to raise more questions throughout the evening. Why not skip all these questions and just get straight to point?
The Maharal of Prague explains that without a question, information remains irrelevant. A question creates a space, a vacuum that yearns to be filled and enables an answer to enter and take root.
For years I had walked around with opinions about Judaism but it had never occurred to me that I didn’t really know what Judaism was (certainly not with the sophistication I aspired to know what Plato, Karl Marx, or the Civil War was). My Catholic friend’s simple question about Judaism and Christianity created an opening for a beautiful journey.

Passover is a time for freedom, a time when the Jewish people unlock new worlds of potential. It begins with curiosity. Perhaps this is why the Talmud’s term for a Torah scholar is talmid chacham, a wise student – someone open to questions. This Passover, may we merit to be open to our own great, unasked questions and the wisdom journey they point to.
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