Grandma's army

  Written in 2013, the world needs reminding, from time to time, what Israel is up against. The entire world has changed dramatically since the 1970’s – a decade which is, for Israel, one of the most traumatic. The Yom Kippur War in 1973 left the country devastated by the loss of 2,600 soldiers. In spite of the astonishing victory against all odds, the country lost faith in its leadership and, with it, a sense of security. [That is perhaps one of the reasons that, in 1977, a right-winged government defeated the impregnable Labour Party for the first time]. Although terrorism has been an ongoing factor since before Israel existed, the 70’s was a nightmare. Palestinian terrorists were sowing terror against Israelis, both on Israeli soil and around the world. The most glaring example was the terrorist attack on the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, in which eleven members of the team were murdered. In the same year, Ben Gurion Airport became a slaughterhouse, when t...

In 1290 King Edward I expelled all Jews from the Kingdom of England. After the expulsion, there was no overt Jewish community until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. Although Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to England, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656, and allowed to remain. England, in the 19 th century was no exception to the rest of Europe when it came to bigotry and anti-Semitism. Jewish born Benjamin Disraeli had been converted to Christianity, allowing him to pursue a political career, at a time when Jews were barred from Parliament.   Even though he was elected twice as Prime Minister, he was constantly subjected to antisemitic slurs. He was regularly characterized   in cartoons with a hook nose and a stooped posture. [In answer to a personal insult by a member of Parliament, Disraeli wrote in a letter to the  Times : "Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honourable ge...

  To quote Einstein: "I believe that the abominable deterioration of ethical standards stems primarily from the mechanization and depersonalization of our lives—a disastrous byproduct of science and technology. Nostra culpa! (We are to blame!)". Nobody questions the remarkable achievements and progress that science and technology have made to our quality of life. However, it’s become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity. Our great-grandchildren know how to use smart phones and computers, from an early age. But their general knowledge is woefully lacking. What do they know of the great cultural visionaries of the past,   who introduced us to art, music, philosophy, etc.   To a world of beauty, grace and the thirst for knowledge. For the most part, they haven't a clue. People increasingly rely on smartphones, tablets, and computers for daily tasks such as navigation, reminders, work, and entertainment. This dependence reduces problem-solvin...

  There is an increasingly widespread view that philosophy — that ancient pursuit of meaning, truth and understanding that has been with us for several thousand years at least — is dead in the modern world. Science, so goes the argument, has answered all the questions that philosophers once pondered: From a scientific perspective, there is no grand design, no cosmic plan that bestows meaning upon our lives. As scientists delve deeper into the mysteries of the cosmos, their discoveries reveal a universe that is vast, ancient, and seemingly indifferent to our presence. It’s easy to understand the appeal of this position. Science has been extravagantly successful in explaining the natural world, and its discoveries have led directly to stunning technological achievements, from heart transplants to the moon landing. Philosophy, on the other hand, hasn’t achieved anything that could be considered a clear breakthrough in human understanding.  Not so very long ago, sc...

  THE GIVING TREE There's a well-known children's book by Shel Silverstein about a boy and a tree. The boy keeps taking from the tree. The tree keeps giving. The boy never says "thank you" the tree never says "no". Until the stump of the tree is all that's left. This is similar to the story of Israel and the "Palestinians": Israel is the tree. The "Palestinians" are the "boy". Ungrateful, entitled, and permanently dissatisfied. In addition, the "boy" is invariably hostile. Baum/Boim (tree in Yiddish), is a common Jewish surname: applebaum (apple tree), birnbaum (pear tree), kirschbaum (cherry tree), nussbaum (nut tree), feigelbaum (fig tree), mandelbaum (almond tree). Here are a just a few examples of THE GIVING BAUM: Rescue from neglect and poverty: From 1948 until 1967, the "West Bank" of the Jordan river was controlled by Jordan. Jordan treated it as far less important than the "East B...

The late Prime Minister Menachem Begin famously said: "I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid". For decades, we have confronted the scourge of Islamic fundamentalism. We have outlived expulsions, progroms, massacres, and even the Holocaust. Our history may be tragic, but we have reason to be optimistic. We are living in times in which we need to be reminded of how much strength the Jewish people have: Our survival as a people, the gathering in of exiles and the rebuilding of a Jewish state.   To quote Mark Twain: "Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of.  He is as...