The Jewels of Jerusalem .... A Love Story for Tu B'Av !!!

Said Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel ..... There were no greater festivals for Israel than the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur.  On these days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out... and dance in the vineyards. And what would they say? "Young man, raise your eyes and see which you select for yourself...."   

And so it is written,  "Go out, daughters of Zion, and see King Solomon,   in the crown with which his mother crowned him on his wedding day and on the day of his heart's rejoicing" (Song of Songs 3:11). "His wedding day" ~  this is the Giving of the Torah.  "the day of his heart's rejoicing" ~ this is the building of the Holy Temple, which shall be rebuilt speedily in our days.

Talmud, Taanit 26b

 The Talmud goes on to list several joyous events which occurred on the 15th day of the month of Av .... 

1) The dying of the generation of the Exodus ceased. 

Several months after the people of Israel were freed from Egyptian slavery, the incident of the "Spies" demonstrated their unpreparedness for the task of conquering the land of Canaan and developing it as the "Holy Land."   Ha'Shem decreed that that entire generation would die out in the desert, and that their children would enter the land in their stead (as recounted in Bamidbar 13 and 14). After 40 years of wandering through the wilderness, the dying finally ended, and a new generation of Jews stood ready to enter Eretz Yisrael.  It was the 15th day of Av of the year 2487 from creation (1274 BCE).    As long as members of this doomed generation were still alive, Ha'Shem didn't communicate with Moshe. As soon as the last of these men died, once again Ha'Shem lovingly communicated with Moshe. 

2) The tribes of Israel were permitted to intermarry. 

In order to ensure the orderly division of the Holy Land between the twelve tribes of Israel, restrictions had been placed on marriages between members of two different tribes. A woman who had inherited tribal lands from her father was forbidden to marry out of her tribe, lest her children ~ members of their father's tribe ~ cause the transfer of land from one tribe to another by inheriting her estate (as recounted in Bamidbar 36). This ordinance was binding on the generation that conquered and settled the Holy Land; when the restriction was lifted, on the 15th of Av, the event was considered a cause for celebration and festivity.

3) The tribe of Benjamin was permitted to enter the community. 

Av 15th  was also the day on which the tribe of Benjamin, which had been excommunicated for its behaviour in the incident of the "Concubine at Givah," was readmitted into the community of Israel (as related in Shoftim 19-21 ...  this occurred during the judgeship of Othniel ben Knaz, who led the people of Israel in the years 2533-2573 from creation (1228-1188 BCE)).

4) Hosea ben Eilah opened the roads to Jerusalem. 

Upon the division of the Holy Land into two kingdoms following the death of King Solomon in the year 2964 from creation (797 BCE), Jeroboam ben Nebat, ruler of the breakaway Northern Kingdom of Israel, set up roadblocks to prevent his citizens from making the thrice-yearly pilgrimage to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, capital of the Southern Kingdom of Judea. These were finally removed more than 200 years later by Hosea ben Eilah, the last king of the Northern Kingdom, on Av 15, 3187 (574 BCE).

5) The dead of Betar were allowed to be buried. 

The fortress of Betar was the last holdout of the Bar Kochba rebellion. When Betar fell on the 9th of Av, 3893 (133 CE), Bar Kochba and many thousands of Jews were killed.  The Romans massacred the survivors of the battle with great cruelty and would not even allow the Jews to bury their dead. When the dead of Betar were finally brought to burial on Av 15th, 3908 (148 CE), an additional blessing (HaTov VehaMeitiv) was added to the "Grace After Meals" in commemoration.

6) "The day of the breaking of the axe." 

When the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, the annual cutting of firewood for the altar was concluded on the 15th of Av. The event was celebrated with feasting and rejoicing (as is the custom upon the conclusion of a holy endeavor) and included a ceremonial breaking of the axes which gave the day its name.

This is a direct counterpoise to the 5 Tragedies which befell Am Yisrael on Tisha B'Av ~ the 9th day of Av!

It is no coincidence that Yom Kippur and the 15th of Av served as occasions for matchmaking for the young men and women of Jerusalem:.  These two days are the respective betrothal and marriage dates of Ha'Shem and Israel. Yom Kippur ~ the day on which the Second Tablets of Torah were given to Moshe, marking the fulfillment of the covenant at Mount Sinai ~ is the day of Israel's betrothal to Ha'Shem.   Av 15 ~  the day that represents the rebirth which follows the great fall of the Temple's destruction on the 9th of Av  ~ celebrates the ultimate consummation of our marriage with the final redemption of Moshiach.  When He comes!

From the writings of  the Lubavitcher Rebbe .....

After relating how "the daughters of Jerusalem would go out ... and dance in the vineyards"    and "whoever did not have a wife would go there"  to find himself a bride,  the Talmud goes on to describe three different categories of "daughters" and how each would call out to her perspective bridegroom ....

What would the beautiful ones among them say? "Look for beauty, for a woman is for beauty."

What would those of prestigious lineage say? "Look for family, for a woman is for children."

What would the ugly ones say? "Make your acquisition for the sake of Heaven, as long as you decorate us with jewels" (Talmud, Taanit 31a).

The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that the marriage of Ha'Shem and His people also includes these three categories of "brides": ..... the souls of Israel include "beautiful" souls, souls "of prestigious lineage," and "ugly" souls,  each of whom contribute their own unique dimension to our relationship with Ha'Shem.

There are two types of love, say the Chassidic masters. There is a love that is generated by the person's own mind and heart, when she meditates on the greatness and desirability of a person (or thing, or state) and thereby develops feelings of love and attraction to him/her/it. Then there is an inborn love: .... a love that a person has not created himself  ~  indeed, he may be unaware that he possesses it ~ but which resides in his heart from birth, a natural bond and attraction to something that is implanted in his soul by virtue of who and what he is.

"You shall love Ha'Shem" (Devarim 6:5) is a crucial component of our relationship with the Almighty. Aside from the fact that loving Ha'Shem is itself a Mitzvah, it is also a pre-requisite for the proper observance of all the Mitzvot. As Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi elaborates in his Tanya, Mitzvot which are not motivated by a love of Ha'Shem are performed mechanically and erratically.  Only one who loves Ha;Sgem serves Him in a manner that is both integral and enduring.

 By studying what Ha'Shem has revealed about Himself to us in His Torah, and contemplating and meditating upon these truths, one develops a feeling of love toward Him ....  a desire to approach His great and magnificent being, to unite and become one with it. Indeed, this is one of the primary functions of  human davening, "the service of the heart".  To generate a feeling of love for the Creator by meditating on His greatness and majesty.

But also the person who does not succeed in creating a "self-generated" love by these means can attain a love of Ha'Shem, by resorting to the inborn love for Him we each possess as "an inheritance from our forefathers."   Abraham, the first Jew, was the very embodiment of divine love ("Abraham, who loves Me," in Ha'Shems words .... ), and Ha'Shem rewarded him with the gift of "fatherhood" ~ the ability to bequeath this love to his descendants. So each and every Jew has Abraham's love of Ha'Shem encoded in his spiritual genes. As with all inborn characteristics, this love may be buried in the subconscious, stifled by the dross of material life ... but it can always be wakened and called upon to stimulate and vitalize our observance of the mitzvot.

The advantages of the second type of love are obvious. Every Jew possesses it ~ and the ability to realize it ~ regardless of the extent of his cognitive and meditative skills or his spiritual sensitivity. Furthermore, a self-generated love will always be limited by the finite capacities of the mind and heart which have created it, and will fluctuate in accordance with the person's mental and emotional state at any given moment; our inborn love, being divinely granted, is infinite and unequivocal.

But there are advantages to self-generated love as well. Though lesser in essence and scope, it is more keenly felt, more exuberantly experienced. For such is our nature ....  what we create is more precious to us than the most valuable endowment, what we conceive of ourselves is somehow more relevant and real than what is learned from the greatest master. So although the stimulation of our inherited love for Ha'Shem would suffice to drive our observance of the mitzvot, we should nevertheless strive to enhance our relationship with Him with the ecstasy and passion that only a love created by our own faculties and initiative can bring. In the words of our sages, "Although a fire came down [on the Altar] from the heavens, it is imperative to also kindle a man-made fire."

Therein lies the deeper significance of the Talmud's description of how "the beautiful ones,"those of prestigious lineage" and "the ugly ones" among the daughters of Jerusalem conducted their courtship dance in the vineyards on Av 15th. "

 

The dancing maidens of Jerusalem calling out their virtues to their prospective bridegrooms echo the call of the souls of Israel to their Divine Groom. Among these are the beautiful souls, those who have achieved a best-of-both-worlds perfection in their love of the Almighty: a passionate, self-generated love set upon the immutable foundation of inherited love. "A woman is for beauty," call these souls to Ha'Shem take us as your bride, and You will be rewarded by the pleasure You derive when Your creations realize the potential for perfection You have invested in them.

Then there are the souls of "prestigious lineage." We cannot offer you the flawless beauty of our perfect sisters ~ they call to Ha'Shem ~ but we have unearthed the hereditary love You have implanted in us. "A woman is for children": our relationship might not, as of yet, yield beauty, but it will bear fruit ~ the mitzvot generated by our natural love for You. (In the words of the Midrash Pesikta Zutrati on Bereshit 6:9   "The offspring of the righteous are good deeds.") For is not Your ultimate purpose in creation that Your creations fulfill your will? Our love for you might not excite our senses and illuminate our lives, but we offer You the rewards of family ~ the good deeds that are the tangible, enduring offspring of Israel's commitment to her Creator.

And the ugly ones? Those who have neither roused their minds and hearts to desire their Creator, nor wakened their hereditary loyalty to Him? Those who never generated a self-created love and whose inborn love lies dormant under a squalid veneer of apathy and iniquity? They cry: "Make Your acquisition for the sake of Heaven!"

"Do for Your sake, if not for ours," call the "ugly" souls of Israel. Take us as Your own, despite our appearance, because only You know what lies behind our appearance, and only You know the truth of what You can inspire in us. For You know that, in truth, "The daughters of Israel are beautiful, it is only that poverty obscures their beauty." You know that our "ugliness" is not our true essence, but imposed upon us by the spiritual poverty of galut.

If we have failed to realize our potential for beauty and fruitfulness, then it is left to You to "decorate us with jewels"  to shower us with the gifts that will waken our quintessential bond to You and bring to light our innate perfection.

This is why the maidens dance on the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur.  And of the two, the 15th of Av is the more joyous one .... for it symbolizes the ultimate marriage.   Of all Jewish holidays, none equal the joy of the 15th of Av. 

And tonight, the Jewels of Jerusalem will Dance !!!!!

A Story of Survival .....

Leon Weinstein survived the Warsaw Ghetto. Surely a Shoah Story with enormous worth itself.  But it is the story of the little girl in the ID card above that he wanted to tell .... and he did last Shabbat to the Los Angeles Times (local edition).  Thanks to my friend Kathy Thomas who saved the story for me & my blog!

The little girl was Jewish, but to live she needed a 'Christian' name.   She could not be Natalie Leya Weinstein, not in wartime Warsaw. Her father wrote her new name on a piece of paper.....   Natalie Yazinska!!!

Her mother, Sima, sobbed.  "The little one must make it," Leon Weinstein told his wife. "We got no chance. But the little one, she is special. She must survive."

He fixed a metal crucifix to a necklace and hung it on their daughter. On the paper, he scrawled another fiction ..... "I am a war widow, and I have no way of taking care of her. I beg of you good people, please take care of her. In the name of Jesus Christ, he will take care of you for this."

 A cold wind cut at the skin that December morning, so Leon Weinstein bundled Natalie, 18 months old, in heavy trousers (pants)  and a thick wool sweater.  He headed for a nearby apartment, the home of a lawyer and his wife. The couple did not have a child. Weinstein hoped they wanted one.  He lay Natalie on their front step. Tears ran down his cheeks. You will make it, he thought. She had blond locks and blue eyes. They will think you are a Gentile, not one of us.  Walking away, he could hear her whimper, but forced himself not to look back until he crossed the street. Then he turned and saw a man step out of the apartment. The man read Weinstein's note. He puzzled over the baby.

Cradling Natalie in his arms, the man walked half a block to a police station and disappeared inside. Weinstein was beside himself.  What if the Gestapo took her from the police?  What if they decided that she was a Jew?

Today, at his small Spanish-style home in Mid-City, Weinstein, now aged 101, recalls in agonizing detail what it was like to give up his baby in 1941 amid the Nazi juggernaut. He is frail, but his wit and memory are keen. He remembers well what followed: killing Germans, dodging death, hunting for Natalie.    Holocaust scholars vouch for his account, calling him one of the last living fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, almost certainly the oldest.  For years, Weinstein kept his memories buried.  

No more!!!!

 
It is important to tell about Nazi horrors, he now says, so they are never forgotten. It is, he says, important to tell the story of his search for his little girl. 

Weinstein was born in the Jewish village of Radzymin, Poland.  As a child, he was independent, even stubborn. His family adhered to Orthodox Judaism, but he never fully believed. He defied his elders and grew into something of a tough guy. Eyes gleaming, he recalls those who called him a "dirty Jew."

"They'd meet my fists,"   he says. "Then they'd be picking their teeth from the ground."
By 15, he had run away from home and was living in Warsaw, where he worked as a tailor's assistant, then for a clothing company. In his 20s, he married Sima. After Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, they were forced to live in Radzymin with other Jews.   Natalie was born the next year.  When she was a year old, Weinstein heard a Nazi guard say that German troops would soon send everyone in   Radzymin to a death camp.  He prepared to flee and begged his extended family to leave too. They refused, saying Germans would never do such a thing.  (My own family, guilty of the same were almost wiped out of history!).

But Weinstein had seen Nazi cruelty first-hand. So he slipped away, with his wife and daughter, into the nearby forest. It was far from a haven .... anti-Semitic Polish thugs roamed there.  Using forged papers that identified him as a Christian, Weinstein and his family headed to Warsaw. They hoped that the sprawling capital would be a good hiding place. Sima

A Polish couple promised to hide Sima, but Weinstein and the baby would draw too much attention. They decided to leave Natalie on the lawyer's doorstep. Weinstein would head for the confines of the Warsaw Ghetto, where fellow Jews would give him shelter.

"This was a place completely unimaginable,"   Weinstein  says. "A place worse even than the hell that Dante described."

The ghetto was surrounded by an 11-foot-high brick wall, barbed wire and guards. More than 400,000 Jews had been forced inside the 3.5-square-mile area. By early 1943,  an estimated 300,000 of them had been shipped to Treblinka, a death camp in northeast Poland.  Nazis rationed food for those who remained and many died of starvation. Disease killed thousands more. Weinstein feared constantly for Natalie and Sima and was certain he would die.  He joined the ghetto resistance.  had no papers ... if the Nazis caught her, all three might be killed.

"If we were going to die,"   Weinstein says,   "we would do it on our own terms. We would die standing proud, on our feet, making a statement to the world. We would take as many of those bastards as we could kill."

 

He helped organize and train resistance fighters. On occasion, using his forged papers, he talked his way out of the ghetto and smuggled weapons back inside.  On April 19th, 1943, the first night of Passover, the Nazis began their final push to wipe out the ghetto. When German tanks rolled forward, Jewish fighters appeared at windows, on rooftops, along street corners. They hurled grenades, Molotov cocktails, bricks and rocks. Weinstein ran along rooftops in a fury, strafing Nazis with a machine gun.  The resistance held, but only for a while.

"When could I have been killed?"  Weinstein says.  "Every five minutes."   He says it again, pausing between each word. "Every…five…minutes."

One day he was crouched on the second floor of an abandoned building when he heard the footsteps of Nazi troops on the stairs.  It's over, he told himself.  He looked out a window. A solitary soldier stood guard below.

Weinstein leaped. His steel-toed boots slammed into the soldier's head. "He fell like a sack of stones,"Weinstein says. "I could see his skull, his blood, brains. For killing a man who hunted me, I felt nothing but good ~ and I was so excited I felt no pain.

 "I was alive at least for another day."

Weinstein hid in sewers that swarmed with rats and human waste. He eventually found a way out that seemed safe, but was too weak to lift the iron cover.   Was this how he would die?

He fell asleep and dreamed of his grandfather, a deeply religious man. " 'You must keep going,'"   his grandfather told him. "'You must. Don't stop.'"

Weinstein awoke with new energy. He hunched his back against the manhole cover, gathered all of his strength and pushed. It opened.  In the early morning darkness, he hunted for someone who would shelter a fleeing Jew who stank of sewage and looked as though he might collapse and die.  A Warsaw couple he had known before the war took him in.  Weinstein asked after his relatives who had stayed behind in Radzymin. All were dead. He looked for Sima. He learned she was dead too. 

By spring 1945, the war was over, and surviving Jews began to leave the country. Weinstein was not among them. He had to find Natalie.  His first stop was the street where he'd left his little girl. It was mostly rubble, but one building stood untouched ~ the police station!!

He walked in. "Do you remember hearing about an abandoned girl who was taken here?"

One officer did. The girl had been taken to a nearby convent.  The nuns there remembered, too. The baby was among several they tried to shelter. Disease claimed some, but the baby named Natalie survived. When the fighting drew near, she was sent to a cloister in the countryside.  Over bombed-out roads, pedaling hard on his bicycle, Weinstein made his way there. But Natalie was gone, sent to another group of nuns. On he went, to convent after convent, sometimes sleeping in fields.  The story was the same. Natalie had been there, but nobody knew where she was now. Nobody knew if she was alive.

After six months, Weinstein returned to the city, exhausted.

Then, against all hope, he decided to visit a convent near the Ghetto. He walked past a statue of the Mary Idol entity, then into a hall where dozens of pale, thin orphans stood.  "Mister, mister."  They grabbed at his tall, brown boots. "Mister, mister, take me, take me."

As he drew away, frustrated, a nun walked past, carrying a bony, blond girl, who looked about 4. He looked into the child's eyes. They were blue.  This, he said, was Natalie.

"She is yours?"   the nun asked. "How can we know?"

"If she is,"   Weinstein said,   "then she has a little brown birthmark, the size of a pencil eraser, just near her right hip."

The nun lifted the girl's dirty gray shirt and they looked.  He had found Natalie.

Weinstein and Natalie moved to France.  In time, he married Sophie, another Shoah survivor and they had a son,  Michael.  In 1952, the family took a ship to New York, then a train to L.A., where Weinstein became a successful clothing manufacturer.  In 1993, Michael died in a car accident. Twelve years later, Sophie died of heart disease.  Weinstein remains full of life. He recites the Torah at Congregation Atzei Chaim, the Beverly Grove Synagogue he has attended for seven decades.  He reads three newspapers and sips at least one glass of Chivas Regal, on the rocks, every day. 

So what of Leon Weinstein .... what is his story????

Leon Weinstein was born in 1910 into a large,  extended family of Hassidic Jews who had lived in Poland for many generations. He married his childhood sweetheart, Sima, in 1939, and they gave birth to a daughter, Natalie, in 1940, as their town of  Radzmin in Poland was becoming a ghetto.   Leon has an inspiring story of survival, yet suffered as many did with the loss of many family members.   Leon worked with the resistance smuggling arms into the Warsaw Ghetto.   And, Leon survived the Warsaw Uprising, Baruch Ha'Shem !!

Leon was instrumental in the rescue of countless Jews and the repossession of 13 sefer Torahs, stolen from the synagogue during the War Years.   The loss of his entire family set Leon on a lifelong quest of restoring the religious and warm communal life into which he was born. Continuous membership in a Synagogue, support for Israel,  and The “1939″ Club has helped to fulfill that quest. Leon and Sophie were members of the 1939 Club for over 50 years.  And Leon continues to live life to the fullest ... even in his 102nd year. 

 He rarely goes more than two waking hours without telephoning the woman who fusses over him, who tends to his every need. She is a psychologist known by her married name  ....  Natalie Gold Lumer.

Every Friday night, father and daughter share a Shabbat meal. They gather with family and friends, light candles, hold hands, tell stories and offer lengthy prayers of thanks.  "It was terrible, what I went through," Weinstein said at a dinner not long ago. "But it was worth what I came away with: my beautiful daughter."   Natalie looked at him, shaking her head. There was a long silence. 

"To have a father with such courage," she said, finally. "Well, I owe everything to him....I owe him my life."

 Watch the Video below ... it is a touching tale!!

Dare to Dream .... A Love Story for Tisha B'Av !!

Today is Tisha B'Av .... A day of Tears & Lamentations for Jewish losses,  the Saddest Day of the Jewish year.  It follows an intense three week period of mourning & is a day of Fasting & Mourning for all of  the Tragedies that have befallen us on 9th day of Av,  most especially the Destruction of our Temple in Jerusalem.  Twice!!  

On that same date that the spies returned and spoke evil about the Land of Israel, the First Temple was destroyed. It was on that same day, the ninth of Av, that the Second Temple was also destroyed. On the ninth of Av, the Romans destroyed Betar and massacred thousands of Jews. As the prophet Yirmiyahu predicted, Jerusalem was ploughed over ~ All on the ninth of Av!

On the 9th of Av 1492,  the Jews were expelled from Spain. On the 9th of Av 1914 ~ The First World War began. The insubstantial peace that concluded this war was one of the causes of the Second World War and the Slide to the Shoah,  in which the six million Jews perished. The 9th of Av 1942 ~ The first killings started at Treblinka.  

As Tisha B'Av remembers Tragedy ... it looks forward to Joy too.  It is on this date of 9th Av that Moshiach will be born & we are told that those who weep with Jerusalem in it's Sorrows will be there for to share it's joys ..... Hazorim b'Dimah, b'Rina Yiktzoru!!!

I am reprinting this "Love Story" from 'The Jewish Woman'  by Samantha Barnett  of Los Angeles, California.  My previous home.

"I grew up dreaming about my Prince Charming, besotted with the idea of “love” as I understood it. I knew my grandmother had been married by the age of nineteen to a man who absolutely adored her, and their love was a lasting one.  On Sundays, my grandfather used to take my grandmother and me out for ice cream. The two of them would share a cone and smile at each other. I remember the way he looked at her and the way she returned his gaze. To him, she was clearly the most beautiful woman alive, and I could tell by his expression that he felt lucky to be married to her. As they passed the ice cream cone back and forth, I knew my grandmother felt cherished and protected by my grandfather. Even after so many years of marriage, their love seemed fresh and new.

 From watching my grandparents interact, love seemed easy. I developed the conviction that love was easily attainable, and I became consumed with the idea of romance. I read romantic novels, watched romantic movies and dreamed romantic dreams. One thing was certain: if love was involved, I was hooked.

But as I grew up, I began to see problems in the world of love. I watched people compromising themselves for romances that were obviously temporary. I saw momentary pleasure taking the place of true intimacy. I met children and adults who had been thoroughly hurt by their parents’ bad marriages. I watched couples separate after years of dating because they knew they could never marry each other, and that left me perplexed because I had always assumed that marriage was the goal of dating. I found it ironic that in a world obsessed with analyzing and discussing others’ relationships, it has become tough to find good relationship role models.

And I wondered: is the romance of my grandparents’ generation already an ancient phenomenon? Does my generation, witnessing skyrocketing divorce rates and illicit affairs plastered across the media, even believe that true love is possible? Do we realize what we are missing?

The Jewish nation is likened to a bride. We found “Mr. Right” in Ha'Shem,  but through our actions we grew apart from Him. Consequently, we lost the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, our strongest connection to Him. We have become used to life without a Temple, and to us it seems normal, but it is not. We are missing out on a deep, soulful relationship with Ha'Shem, and that is something to cry about.  In fact, we have a designated day to grieve over this loss: Tisha B’Av ~ the ninth day of the month of Av. Perhaps, if we take a closer look at this day of fasting and commemoration, we’ll better understand how to fix and maintain the important relationships in our lives.

After the Jewish people escaped from Egypt, we needed a homeland. Ha'Shem promised us the land of Israel, and we began to journey through the desert in the direction of the Holy Land. But before we were to enter the land, the people approached Moshe and requested he send ahead a group of men to scout out the layout of the land and its inhabitants, so that they could strategize how to conquer this new and foreign country. Moshe agreed, and assigned spiritual leaders from each of the twelve tribes to act as spies. When they returned, the entire nation assembled to hear their reports. Ten of the leaders publicly pointed out why the Jewish people would not be successful in acquiring the Land. Their words planted seeds of doubt in the minds of the Jewish people, and some began to wonder if they might have done better to remain in slavery in Egypt. That night the Jewish people cried, afraid of the land and afraid of its inhabitants. This night of sadness took place on the ninth of Av, a day which has become synonymous with tragedy and mourning. The sin of the spies is considered the source of all the other tragedies which would occur on Tisha B’Av in later years.

The reason the sin of the spies was considered so grave was because the Jewish people lost faith in Ha'Shem so quickly, when they had just been privy to open revelations of G‑dliness. He performed miracle after miracle ....  He bombarded the evil Egyptians with plagues, split the Red Sea, and revealed Himself at Mount Sinai. But still, we lost faith in Him.  The cornerstone of any relationship is trust. Without trust in Ha'shem, we ultimately have permanently damaged our relationship with Him.

The deeper reason the Jews in the desert cried upon hearing the spies’ report was a desire to remain close to Ha'Shem. Life was good in the desert. Miracles happened on a daily basis. The Jewish people knew that entering Israel would involve returning to reality, toiling on the land instead of receiving manna from Heaven, thus having less time to spend studying the Torah.

But what we failed to understand is that entering the Land would enable us to live in the ultimate reality. Ha'Shem wants us to live in this physical world and use its very physicality for spiritual purposes. Our mission in the world is to infuse our surroundings with spirituality and G‑dliness. The spiritual vortex of the world is Israel, Jerusalem in particular, and specifically the Holy Temple. The ultimate relationship connects the physical and spiritual worlds, enhancing each of them. Unfortunately, the Jews in the desert didn’t realize that entering the Land of Israel would have accomplished that, creating a better reality than they had in the desert.  I once asked a rabbi why the Western Wall is so important to the Jewish people. Shouldn’t our holiest site be Mount Sinai? After all, Mount Sinai is the mountain where Ha'Shem spoke to Moshe and gave him the Torah. It is there that each and every Jew heard first hand the voice of the Almighty. Yet this mountain is not considered the holiest place for a Jew. That title is reserved for the place where the Holy Temple stood.

 The mission of a Jewish person is to take physical matter and make it holy. In the desert and at Mount Sinai, Ha'Shem spoke to us, and that was incredible!   But we were like infants being fed by our mother; we were not yet partners with the Almighty.  The Temple site is so holy because there we built a home for G‑d out of our own blood, sweat and raw materials. It is the place where we worked together with the Almighty to bring His presence down to earth, thus infusing the physical matter with holiness. Holiness with Ha'Shem is a more mature relationship than we had at Mount Sinai. It is a love affair. It takes two to make it work.

The Jews in the desert were being noncommittal. They had the ultimate romance with G‑d, who granted them constant miracles. We had found our perfect match, and yet we were scared to move on to the next stage of the relationship. Our greatest flaw was that we did not want to grow. We wanted the overwhelming passion of new love, and were afraid to move into an unknown future. 

The romantic stage of a relationship is indeed wonderful, but it doesn’t last, because romance is not true love. True love is based in reality. It is when we share the mundane experiences of life with our partner that we learn to truly love. Our shared moments and growth are our most intimate, and our partnership makes the world a better place.  A good relationship is not about lust, attraction or “me.” A strong relationship is borne when both partners focus on giving, and exploring what’s special about “us.” The ultimate partnership is between two people who can “build” with each other. Ha'Shem, too, wants to partner with us in building. The Temple can stand only as long as we keep building it through nurturing our relationship to the divine.

Relationship breakups are tough. Whenever a relationship dissolves in books or movies, the woman ends up sitting on a couch and eating ice cream to “get over” her partner. But, we observe Tisha B’Av because we can never “get over” the relationship we have lost with Ha'Shem.   This relationship is not disposable. It is irreplaceable!!

And yet, we cry. We cry because we know He wants a relationship with us, but we messed up. We cry because the home that we built with Ha'Shem is destroyed, and we want to build it with Him again. We cry because, even 2,000 years after our falling out, we still crave His love and yearn to be as in love with Him as He is with us.

Most importantly, we don’t cry because we feel hopeless. We cry to change ourselves. We cry because through tears we hope to grow. This world was created for us to connect with Ha'Shem and we must cultivate our inner longing to unite with Him. Our relationships with each other are a taste of this divine relationship. With that in mind, how could we not direct every effort into developing and cultivating them? How can we settle for anything less?

Sometimes it can be difficult for us to relate to the loss of a Temple we never knew and a relationship with G‑d we never experienced ....  We don’t even know anyone who has known it!

But if we recognize the loss of the Temple as the loss of our greatest relationship, perhaps we can relate a bit more deeply. We’ve missed 2,000 years of anniversaries.  We have the chance to be the couple who emanates love. The pair whom people stop to ask: “What’s your secret?” We have the chance to be the light unto the nations ~ but we can’t do it without partnering with the ultimate source of the light."

Nivea Nazism???

Nivea is a global skin- and body-care brand, owned by the German company Beiersdorf. The company was founded on March 28th, 1882,  by pharmacist Carl Paul Beiersdorf.  A German Jewish Company,  and one which abandoned it's Jews to Collaborate with the Nazi Regime in the 1930's,  so maybe not surprisingly,  this week it came to light that Nivea includes the invented entity,  the 'palestine territories' in their list of drop down countries in the Middle East .... Even more Interesting is the fact that Israel is absent !!!!!   That is the Jewish State of Israel.  Is this deliberate policy, I wonder??  At least I did on Thursday afternoon, when a friend who wanted to purchase online alerted me to this fact!

As you can see this is  .....  

THE MIDDLE EAST ACCORDING TO NIVEA !!!!!

1. Bahrain ( البحرين)
2. Egypt (مصر)
3. Iran (إيران)
4. Iraq (العراق)
5. Jordan (الأردن)
6. Kuwait (الكويت)
7. Lebanon (لبنان)
8. Libya (ليبيا)
9. Middle East - English (Middle East)
10. العربية ‎- الشرق الأوسط (Middle East)
11. Oman (سلطنة عمان)
12. Palestine Territories (فلسطين)
13. Qatar (قطر)
14. Saudi Arabia (المملكة العربية السعودية)
15. Syria (سوريا‎)
16. United A. Emirates (الإمارات العربية المتحدة)
17. Yemen (اليمن)

WHERE IS ISRAEL?? ..... THERE IS NO ISRAEL INCLUDED IN THE LIST OF COUNTRIES !!!!!!!

Perniciously included, however,  is the fictional entity the 'palestine territories',   not recognised as a country anywhere .....  but Israel, a soverign nation & recognized by the UN, the EU,  and everywhere except the Arab world as a country, does not appear on Nivea's website.  WHY????   Because this is part of the Islamist campaign to delegitimise Israel as a State, to deligitimise Israel as THE JEWISH State,  in advance of the nonsensical notion to declare the fictional 'palestine' as a nation in the UN,  scheduled for September .... sending the Jews who live there  to Swim the Sea!!!! 

Perhaps this was a simple oversight on the part of some Anti Semitic website worker???

I don't think so!!!!!!  

This is the Beiersdorf map (now removed) of the Middle East,   from the  Beiersdorf Company Website  .   It  again contains the country 'palestine' ~ a Fiction ~  and does not mention ISRAEL  ~ the reality ~  how could it be anything but deliberate policy on behalf of Nivea ?????

WHY does Nivea choose to eliminate the Jewish State off the map of the world?  Such behaviour recalls the history of Europe  .... and Nivea's native country, Germany, during the days of the Nazi Regime.  Or the Iranian regime that denies the Holocaust and issues calls to wipe Israel off the map  .... that is apparently what this company supports?  Is it the terror groups such as Hamas, Hizballah and IHH to name just a few that Beiersdorf wants to assist ..... does it actively fund their activities,  or is it just a wish to keep them happy? Or is it just basic business .... there are more 'Arab customers' than Israeli, so Nivea would rather risk losing our business than theirs?  Simple or Sinister????

Is this is another example of Sickening Anti Semitism?? ... to follow on from last week's 'Belsen was a Gas Parka'  (see blog posting  Sick not 'Chic' ),  and last month's Lush 'Help Hamas' Soap products (see blog posting  Lush Lies).    Or is Ethnically Cleansing the Middle East of Jews the new 'IN' business Strategy and practice ..... it certainly seems so!! 

Nivea is a big seller amongst Lefties ~ remember the 'intactivists' who campaigned to criminalize Circumscision??? ~  because it is 'kind' to animals.    Nivea might not test its products on animals, but it denies the existence of Israel on its website while promoting the existence of the 'Palestinian Authority' which seeks to Anihilate Israel.  The Nazis were most solicitous towards animals as they annihilated Jews.   Are Jews less than Animals??  Is Nazism a promotion of the past as far as Nivea are concerned????   Or do Nivea Nazi's abound??    

The word Nivea derives from 'niveum', meaning 'Snow White'.  Nivea's Fairy Tale is somewhat Nastier!!!!!

Tell a lie over and over, ~ like the Nazi Minister for Propoganda Goebels ~ and the "ignorant" of the facts eventually simply accept, "it must be true."   That is the stance that Nivea is taking vis-a-vis Israel  .....  "visualize the disappearance & the irrelevance" of Israel and the politics reflect a resulting "manifestation" of their restricted reality. You have to go out of your way to Omit a country which has been re-established for over 63 years on your website while including lands formerly occupied by Egypt and Jordan under a fabricated name for a fabricated people.  Wake Up World!!!!!!

Nivea's marketing to the Muslim Middle East ..... 

Could the Contrast be any Clearer????

After concerted pressure & public outcry spearheaded by well placed public denunciation on Facebook and the establishment of a  Facebook Page  encouraging a Boycott of their Products (which of course you should all immediately join!!!!),   on Thursday, Nivea suddenly added Israel as a location option. Users who choose Israel as their location are now redirected to Nivea's Israel site, which although at present a blank page is under construction!?!?!?!?!?

Perhaps it was that Nivea does not emply enough Ivrit speakers to have a Hebrew website ... they certainly claimed this and that the Hebrew website is being constructed .... It might appear to Nivea to be credible,   BUT   Nivea's Official Israel Facebook Page     is already constructed in Hebrew ... Are Israeli resources no longer available to this mulit national conglomerate????


Beiersdorf officials insisted that Israel's name was not omitted due to a boycott or any other political reasons, claiming that Nivea's Israel branch is managed by Greece, and similarly Malta and Cyprus also do not appear on the list of countries because they are managed by another country. However, due to growing protest, the company decided to add Israel to the list and will soon launch a website in Hebrew and English.    But a brief search showed that the 'palestinian territories' had no such site either, and was in fact linked to the same website as Lebanon's or Kuwait's ~ a general website for Middle East countries that can be viewed in English or Arabic.  So, why not link Israel to the same site in English, or to its parallel European website?

So, Business Strategy demands denying Israel's Soverignity as a State because it is insignificant politically or as compared to Nivea's profits from the Arab market .... "financial considerations" being paramount.  Perhaps!   Or,  perhaps it is just a case of  Nivea Nazism ????

Tisha B'Av ..... Time for Tears !!

"Be very careful if you make a woman cry .... Ha'Shem counts her tears. Every tear a woman sheds is equivalent of a man’s sacrifices in life"

 Thus read my Twitter & Facebook Status's yesterday.  It is actually from Talmud .... Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Mezi'a 59a.   And ....Yes, He does.  Ha'Shem counts My tears & the tears of Am Yisrael too.  And as it is the 9 days to Tisha B'Av,  I have been thinking a lot about those tears.  Both my personal tears & those of Am Yisrael in general. 

Thou has counted my wanderings, put Thou my tears into Thy bottle ... are they not in Thy book? 
~ Tellihim 56.9 ~

It is strange that we have the capacity to cry, to expel water from our eyes when we are sad. It seems to serve no real purpose .... although science can explain the physiological “why”,  and mental health experts can explain the psychological “why”.  That still leaves the real question of “why” tears ..... just why were we created with that capacity?

It seems a mysterious part of what it means to be human to shed tears.  And yet, Torah, Tanakh & Talmud are replete with references to tears.  It seems less mysterious for Jews ... or so thinks this Jewish girl anyways.   And especially at this time of year ...  the Kinnos of Av, or the lamentations of Av.

Rabbi Eleazar said ..... "Since the destruction of the Temple, the gates of tefilah are locked, for it is written, Also when I cry out, he shutteth out my tefilah. Yet though the gates of tefilah are locked, the gates of tears are not, for it is written, Hear my tefilah, Ha'Shem, and give ear unto my cry, hold not thy peace at my tears."  ~ Talmud Tractate Baba Mezi'a ~

“A child’s tear rends the heavens to reach Ha'Shem” .... An old Yiddish Proverb oft repeated to me in childhood.

So tears penetrate  the "Gate of Tears" that gets you through to Ha'Shem, to the one who provides justice & respite for the afflicted, whether they be personal tears or those of Klal Yisrael ... Hashem does not forget a Jewish tear!

That is the purpose of tears in life!

And, I know in life too, there is no such a thing as coincidence If something has happened it's for a reason. Perhaps simple, perhaps not. Just unknown ... to me that is. It is not unknown to Ha'Shem. How could it be??

Hashem doesn't just do things or allow things without reason. Hashem decides and plans for each person what is best for them, on an individual level as he is persuaded .... not a blade of grass sways in the wind, or a wave breaks on a rocky shore, but that Ha'shem has decreed it first. He knows each wisp of wind, as he knows each of us he has created, intimately. And perhaps the reason I don't see the reason, or the hand of Ha'Shem at work is because what I really need is to work on myself to become closer and closer to Hashem. So, each Yisurim that I pass through is to bring me closer to Ha'Shem himself. It is to improve my Bitachon & Emuna in Him.

Hashem is full of Chesed and Rachamim for every Jew in the World. It is knowing this & trusting this, allied with tears that open the gate to Ha'Shem's mercy.

 

That is the purpose of Tears I think!!

And I wanted to write on this today because it has obsessed my heart recently .....  And, I'll end with a tale from the Artscroll translation of 'The Kinnos of Tisha B'Av' by Rabbi Avraham Chaim Feuer.

Rabbi Feuer (p.xiv) brings a beautiful story with Rabbi Aryeh Levin a man of rare compassion and sensitivity ......

Once a distraught, recently widowed woman came to him and cried uncontrollably. All of his efforts to console her were of no avail. Finally the widow said that she would accept consolation if he could please answer the following question. "Please tell me what happened to all of my tears? I prayed and prayed for my late husband, I recited chapter after chapter of Tehilim, and shed thousands upon thousands of tears. My very soul flowed into those tears. Were they all wasted?"

Gently, Rav Aryeh replied, "After a hundred and twenty years, when you will leave this world and ascend to the heavenly tribunal, you will see how meaningful and precious your tears were. You will discover that Hashem Himself gathered them in and counted every single teardrop and treasured it like a priceless gem. And you will discover that, whenever some harsh and evil decree was looming over the Jewish people, one of your tears came and washed the evil away, making it null and void. Even one sincere tear is a source of salvation!"

Hearing this the woman burst into a fresh flow of tears ~ not tears of sorrow and grief, but tears of courage and hope.   That is where I need to be ...... 

Yishayahu 25:8   "umacha hashem elokim dima me'al kol panim " ~ ... "May Hashem Elokim wipe away tears from every face" .... Mine included!!!!

And as an aside ..... a muse ..... I like thinking of tears as Diamonds falling from my eyes as Raindrops falling from Shemayim are Diamonds .... and Mayim is the Hebrew word for Water.  Just another analogy I like ..... Raindrops from Shemayim have healing properties because they are the waters of Heaven in Ha'Shem's presence. Yesterday I likened the Sea to Salty tears ~ Sad Waters that had to separate from Ha'Shem and dwell in the earthly space ....... "And Ha'Shem said  'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' And Ha'Shem made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so."   ~ Bereshit 1.6 ~

Tears are Diamonds in Disguise .....