LOOP DE LOO, OR LOOP DE LAH

  And in fact, does it make a difference whether we're looping this way or the other way? Frankly, in the reality of today, I don't think it makes any difference. That is, unless and until those people who have seen the truth, who know the truth and who are sick and tired of the lying and the false pretenses and the shabby curtains placed in front of the truth, actually join hands within the nation and without, to force a change. 

Not with violence, not with bloodshed, but by actions, meaning stop donating to these funds for election. Boycott their rallies. Let the voices of the quiet ones actually be heard above the sounds of those who wreak havoc upon this nation. Those whom I sincerely believe are the majority of this nation but are over shouted, overwrought and they  have decided one way or another to give up the battle and concentrate solely on their own personal singular life. 

However, that's so clearly not the proper, useful nor productive means and manner and methods to introduce this change so necessary. We need to inspire those who have been banging their heads against brick walls for far too long, not even making a dent. In fact, we need to change ourselves if we are to change others, get them on board to join in the righteous campaign to take back our nation. For the people of the world to take back their nations. All done with the voice of the many overpowering the voices of the few.   

But how indeed do we in fact infuse the tired blood of so many, the resigned minds so clearly at the point of despair and trying to manage and even improve the situation, the overwhelming disruption of their lives and the nation's life over the past decade? What are the methods which will get our message through to those consuming the very fabric of their nations and do not spit it out refreshed, renewed, and repaired, but ever more damaged.  More severe rents in the fabric until we have nearly gotten to the end, to the point where there will be no fabric left at all. 

All nations' cynical, worse than useless, dangerous. and clearly corrupt members of current national political parties and the governments itself must step back from the swamp and the cesspool into which they have immersed themselves. Return to dry land where progress can be made and voices can be heard, no sound deafening qualities of water to interfere with the transmission of the desperate and determined voices. Those voices telling those who have trashed the nations that we are at the end of our ropes. We have no more energy nor desire to allow for the rot to grow the infection now eating away at our foundations.

The political body of this nation must allow for the demand that the political moral reasoning of the Declaration followed by the Constitution must be reinvigorated. Recalled to memory, to purpose and to action. The only way to do that is to play our own game of Red Rover and push through when and where we find the weakest place in their filth and lies. When we demand the reinstitution of true morality, that the strictures which they have piled up high blocking true morality to see the light and take its place once again within the hearts and souls and deeds of the people of the world.

We must try and reject false premises, that morality and courage and truthfulness and dreams are not determined by skin color, or religion or any other so-called faults. Hate perpetrated on a group of people and cynically using people to deflect the truth rising out of the miasma of crooked government must be called out and discarded. The false sense of security that one group feels as they engage in the nefarious approved negative manner and actions against the targeted groups must be clearly shown as fake premises. 

Simply a small space of time between the fate of the first group and the fate of other groups. Hate has a life of its own and a deep and tough shell around it. approved as a life of its own. Once allowed and planted deep in the weak soil of a challenged nation it becomes extremely difficult to uproot, to defy and not only discard it, but to trash it permanently. 

In fact, the very air of our nation must decompose and recompose itself to the point where the poison that spews forth from the corrupt is negated and disappears into the past of history. We must be of courage. We must turn our backs to the corrupt and amoral politicos who have only their twisted souls and lying tongues, heavily engaged in self-aggrandizement. Who have deserted all positive paths in their intense need to amass power and influence as well as grow the numbers of their bottom line.  

We must understand this nation was not formed and founded by the desires of those wishing to only increase their wealth and power and grow their bottom-line numbers and leave behind all else. So bad is it that within this nation we now have people going hungry, parents and caretakers skipping meals so that children can have a morsel to eat. Whe were ejected from their homes even as the crazed 1% build massive and multiple homes for their families. Who feast upon tasty and expensive tidbits of food even as others stand in line by food pantries running out of food. Who dress      extravagantly, ignoring the worn and ragged clothes worn by those with nothing left. 

Even as we stand by, remain silent or supportive of the fascistic and communistic tactics of violent unconstitutional laws targeting chosen groups to be demonized and accused of all things terrible. Chased down. Even to be killed. To be ripped away from families. To remain in detention, invisible. Or to be deported to strange counties, even to warring nations. To be denied rights and be treated as less than human. To be beaten by the moral descendants of Nazis and criminal "law” enforcement. And always, just take a peek behind them and you will see another 'chosen' group already under serious attack. 

We must "screw our courage to the sticking point" and fix our nation. Encourage other nations to do the same, and yes, ironically, using a phrase of our oh so beloved head of government, we will be able to "make America great again". Only this time in the right way, in the moral way, in the positive way.

 Bob the Builder says, yes, we can. Dora will use her map and bring along all those young, believing children. And we, the adults, whom will we follow? Will we choose the right Pied Pipers, or will we fall prey to the false tunes they play? Mesmerizing us in the wrong manner along the wrong path

The choices are up to us, as always. Methodology? Well, that, my friends, I leave for those heads brighter, wiser, younger than mine All I can do here is use words that encourage change. Words that abhor violence. Words that encourage us to use legal manners powerfully, positively, and rid all nations of the parasites which are now sucking the nation's blood from so many places.

Anybody out there willing to stand up, stand against the corruption, the nastiness, the falsehoods that so permeate this nation along with the rest of the world? I think these people are few and far between, if they can be found at all.

What do you think?

Are we condemned to repeat the past of those terrible yesterdays? Drag it into today and condemn our tomorrows before they have even arrived? Or can we change things? Can we positively and powerfully effect those changes? Grow new roots with stronger fabric and fortified foundations.

 Can we?

 Might we?

 Will we?

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT

    The words of the title have been the mantra of the Jewish people from the time of Abraham, Avram, the very first Jew all the way through to the most recent generation. And those to come as well. It seems almost impossible to picture such a thing happening under the darkness of our todays, especially in the sadness of today, Tisha B'av, a day which is of accursed memory in Jewish history, with many tragedies taking place on that day. 

However, we only have but to look behind us and see what we have come through, resurrected ourselves, climbed from subbasements to floors high in the sky. Worked our way from poverty and darkness to prosperity and sunshine. Reinventing ourselves as necessary, resurrecting ourselves as an intact nation sharing the same goals and willing to share our gifts with the world in general. Refusing to give way to our enemies, refusing to acquiesce in their dastardly plans for us and to confound them time and time again as all their evil comes to nought. 

It never seems to penetrate brainless heads and stone hard hearts and blackened souls. No matter how many times we have told them Am Yisroel Chai -Lanetzach - the People of Israel Live - Forever, they refuse to take its truth to heart. They ignore the historical proofs to be found in the tomes of history and in the very survival and revival of the Jewish people, overcoming any and all horrors perpetrated upon them. 

Even as those same historical records state the results, the destiny of those who attack Israel, the attempts to exile us from our land forever, to deny us a safe and assured life within the nations of our Exile, where we were greatly contributory to their wellbeing, who were given our loyalty.  They self-condemned themselves and took their places in history as those nations defeated, now merely dust in the winds of the earth. 

All the while we found our way out of their choking dust and rebuilt our lives, as many times as necessary, at least until the inhabitants of this world give up on the hate and instead understand that we humans all work better in the light rather than in the darkness and futility of hate and bias. Working together as a team provides for the strength of many rather than the weaker efforts of the single.      

 We have ultimate faith in our permanent survival no matter how bad it becomes. Such is the Power of our Defender, the Father of Our People, the Eternal Guardian of His and those who are good to them, who might turn His head aside for a time, but will always return. Faith is what has given us the courage and the strength to live through unlivable times, to know that some will survive out of this, whole, and able to relate the truth of the fiendish deeds of the acolytes of the Devil. To rebuild once again lives destroyed by an eternal, filthy hate that has become a favorite meme, a practice of the basest humans of this planet, the abominations in the world who would do us a great, big favor if they would go POOF!

These ugly critters are to be found contaminating the earth worldwide, sneaking in wherever they see an opening with ugly plans and motivations which inevitably shatter the world into warring tribes, resulting in war and periods of hate inimical to the survival and the betterment of humanity. Worse is that these deficient creatures are to be found within all, even within those of us, our fellow Jews who refuse to stick within their people and instead seek a nonexistent reassurance from others, turn traitor to themselves and their people, and call out for their own destruction. 

From time immemorial, there have always been those in the world who cast aside warnings of oncoming events, of humankind gone astray. From co-citizens of Noah to the builders of the Tower of Babel. To the shepherds of Lot to the bad crowd at the time of the Exodus. To those of little faith of sustenance within the desert, or the return of Moses. Or for a safe entry into the Promised Homeland. Always there are doubters. Always there are spoilers. Always there are those who called down hell upon their own people in the name of being more successful in an often-unfriendly world. 

They have called doom down upon their own heads No matter what seems to be is not always what it is. We do not always have the ability to fathom the Lord, but the Faith that ultimately it will all sort out into the way it should be, until the time of the true Messiah is strong. Times of peace and goodness. When future historians will be shocked at how low humanity had sunk. How long they had insisted on clinging to and keeping tight hold on the basest of the emotions and motivations and actions of humanity.

Would that we learn soon. That we turn the yesterdays into lessons from which to better todays and certainly turn the tomorrows into the world it should be. 

WORDS OF WISDOM AND TRUTH

 There are many, many, many people who can and do right better than I can. At times what they write is so good that I feel I must pass it on to my readers. One such essay is written by Jonathan Tobin, a brilliant writer as well as an intelligent man who speaks truth in his writing and presents it in a way that is easy to understand and to internalize. With great humility I present the following essay for my readers. Read, think and think deep. 

Jonathan S Tobin is the editor in chief of the Jerusalem News Syndicate. I publish his essay here on my site for it is too important to miss.

The lies behind Mamdani's Netanyahu stunt are the real threat.

It didn’t take a statement from President Donald Trump to ensure that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn’t going to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in Manhattan for the annual U.N. General Assembly meetings in September.

Like all world leaders, Netanyahu is protected by the terms of the treaty by which the United States secured the placement of the world body in New York City in the years after the Second World War. Moreover, the United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, whose corrupt former chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, indicted the Israeli leader on false charges of having “intentionally and knowingly deprived” Gaza’s population of food, water, fuel and medicine in 2024. Khan resigned under fire because of a different issue entirely: accusations of sexual misconduct.

An empty threat

The Trump administration has rightly sought to dismantle the court, whose activities are a travesty of justice and motivated solely by political prejudice against the West, and especially Israel. The ICC’s influence may have made it impossible for Netanyahu to travel to most places in the world. However, it has no jurisdiction in the United States, and federal authorities would prevent Mamdani from interfering with the prime minister’s ability to visit New York or anywhere else in the country.

Mamdani is smart enough to know this. Why then, did he tell The New York Times that he had asked city lawyers to see if he had the authority to honor his campaign pledge to arrest the prime minister, whom he has smeared as a “war criminal”?

The answer isn’t any mystery. To those who support the Democratic Socialist mayor, Israel is the epitome of international evil. They truly believe that the actions the Jewish state took to defend itself against the Palestinian Arab terrorists who launched a war on Oct. 7, 2023, with the largest mass slaughter since the Holocaust were not merely wrong or excessive. They believe that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. And no amount of reporting, historical knowledge or the actual meaning of the word will convince them otherwise.

The ‘genocide’ myth

Wars are raging around the globe that have caused far greater civilian casualties than the one fought against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, who were responsible for the orgy of murder, rape, burnings, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction that happened on Oct. 7.

But that doesn’t matter. Nor do the reasoned arguments of military experts who have repeatedly stated that Israel’s war against Hamas was conducted in a manner that was more moral and produced fewer casualties than against any foe in an urban environment—let alone one that deliberately, as Hamas did, hid behind non-combatants and sought to endanger as many of their compatriots as possible. Moreover, even the United Nations and The New York Times have finally admitted that it was Hamas that was blocking the distribution of food and other supplies to civilians in Gaza even though both spent most of the war denying it.

If you believe the existence of one Jewish state on the planet is not only illegitimate but that the key to solving all of the world’s problems is bound up in its destruction, then you are ready to believe any charge against it, no matter how false or outrageous. The toxic ideologies that enable such bizarre notions are also responsible for the surge in worldwide antisemitism, not least in New York City, where Mamdani has been forced to acknowledge that Jews are being targeted for hate crimes on his watch out of all proportion to their percentage of the population. And that is a far greater problem than a mayor who thinks that pleasing his base obligates him to make empty threats about arresting Israel’s head of government.

The embrace of critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism by the American education system and so much of popular culture has materially altered public discourse not merely about race, but about antisemitism and Israel. The belief that Israel and Jews are “white” oppressors, and that Palestinians are oppressed “people of color” who are their perennial victims, is contrary to the facts about both peoples. Jews are the most oppressed people of the last two millennia, and the majority of Israelis are people of color by the definitions of the American left since they trace their origins to North Africa and the Middle East.

The perpetuation of the conflict is the function of the fact that any outcome other than Israel’s destruction and the genocide of the Jews living there is an injustice the Palestinians cannot abide.

Once you buy into those myths, it’s easy to believe the blood libels about Jews committing genocide, whose downfall could liberate all of humankind. And if you swallow that, it’s easy to understand why a Democratic Party under the sway of Mamdani’s fellow left-wingers has accepted the hostility to Israel that has, alongside opposition to enforcing immigration laws, become the organizing principle of American politics.

Social-media algorithms versus facts

The real problem behind Mamdani’s latest publicity stunt isn’t merely a function of unjustified anger at Israelis and Jews. As an essay by historian Niall Ferguson and AI researcher John-Clark Levin in The Free Press argues, the same factors are responsible for the growth of Holocaust denial and what they call “The Death of History.”

Ferguson and Levin believe what we are witnessing in our public discourse, both on the left and the far-right, is a “comeback” of the same sort of genocidal hatred for Jews that led to the Shoah in the mid-20th century. Ferguson has spent a lifetime writing histories and producing documentaries warning that accepting these vile ideas leads to tragedy. But he has come to believe that his work—and that of other historians—is increasingly looking like it was all in vain because it is being overridden by social-media algorithms designed to spread hate. While in the past, thought leaders like conservative writer William F. Buckley were able to banish believers in these ideas from the political mainstream, now such efforts are failing.

Instead of denying the Holocaust, political commentators and podcasters on the far-right like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes “mock and celebrate it.” That amuses right-wing youth, who get their knowledge of the world from social-media feeds. Those on the left then “cleverly blend it with anti-Zionism and anti-capitalism.”

Ferguson and Levin point out that “as it is young voters who are most susceptible to these trends, the implications for the future of American politics are chilling.” It explains a lot about Mamdani’s appeal. It also shows how he can flip the narrative about the conflict between Israel and its genocidal foes. That is what is behind the accusations against Netanyahu and the widespread belief that it is Israel that is committing “genocide.”

AI images that feed rage

The lies that Mamdani—and those who echo his smears in outlets like the Times—tell about Israel are easily refuted by those who array the facts about the conflict against them in the same manner serious historians can answer Holocaust deniers. Still, the problem is that this only works against arguments that at least pretend to be reasoned.

But the algorithms that spread the new big antisemitic lies aren’t pretending to be rational. They are a function of manipulated images and rage about alleged crimes that are difficult to refute online. As Ferguson and Levin note, “The algorithms reflect our own vices back to us—and magnify them. As long as we indulge our wrathful impulses, we’ll see more rage bait that stokes them. As long as we give in to our short attention spans, our news feeds will carpet-bomb our brains with dopamine. As long as we guzzle flattering lies, the truth will be muscled off our screens by propaganda.”

That’s a sobering thought that puts the failures of pro-Israel voices to effectively counter the “genocide” blood libels in perspective.

With respect to Holocaust denial, historians now feel as if they are helpless to combat the fallout of so many lies.

“In the face of an avalanche of AI-powered anti-history, the real historians are powerless. We thought we could prevail in a fair fight about what really happened in the past. We naively believed that, if we went to the right archives, and read the right documents, and summarized them with the right footnotes, and published our scholarly books and peer-reviewed articles, then the Holocaust deniers would be driven from the field. What fools we were,” Ferguson and Levin conclude.

Can virtue defeat hate?

The same problem applies to the debate about Israel. Similar rage-based distortions about the actions of the Jewish state and those of its genocidal foes—combined with a biased media whose journalists have been indoctrinated in leftist ideologies about “white” oppressors—have materially altered public opinion. If a plurality of Americans now tell pollsters that they believe Israel has committed “genocide,” it’s not because of anything Netanyahu has said or done. It’s because we live in a time when fast-paced technology has the power to persuade people to accept patently false assertions with much greater ease than the manner in which the Nazis employed print, film and radio nearly a century ago.

Answering this isn’t going to be enabled with attempts to ban hate speech. It will, among other things, require the clever use of social media and technology. But as Ferguson and Levin assert, there is more to it than that. “We must recover a shared sense of moral responsibility not to contribute to the conditions that let a Fuentes thrive,” they say. “It’s a lesson that dates back to Cleon in ancient Athens. Ultimately, as Plato and Aristotle discovered, the only bulwark against demagogues is a people virtuous enough to resist their lure.”

A leering young mayor peddling blood libels against Jews like Mamdani doesn’t seem to fear such a turnaround. Indeed, in an age where virtue seems conspicuously absent in our politics and culture, optimism about the future can be difficult to maintain.

Still, giving up isn’t an option. And the rise of current advocates for antisemitism, the hatred of Jews and Israel, like the mayor, isn’t unprecedented in history. They have been defeated before by decent people who are ready to heed fact-based journalism in the same way they have sometimes heeded the lessons of real, rather than AI-distorted, history.

What is required is not just better use of AI and social media by the forces of truth but an appeal to higher virtues by a new generation of journalists, artists and faith leaders that will undermine the appeal of social media-driven hate. It’s a tall task, but there is no alternative available but to begin that fight.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.

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WHAT HAVE WE FORGOTTEN?

   I believe we have indeed forgotten something. That something is quite critical and necessary as it enables a smooth sailing on calm seas for all the ships of state of the nations of the world. The sadness of it all is that we seem to have ignored this critical something from the time of Adam and Eve and we have not gotten any better at it at all. In fact, I believe we have gotten worse as we have discounted that critical ingredient and if humanity is to reach for the highest heights and achieve it in positive manner, we must strive to incorporate it into all our decisions and action. When we ignore it, shove it aside as not sufficient for the purpose thereof, it is then that we engage once more in trying to destroy our world and bring it down around our ears. The consequences of those foolish actions and decisions have remained with us since the beginning of time.

So, what is it that we have trashed and denied entry into the common lexicon of the world? It is a six-letter word easy enough to remember, but quite difficult to make use of, even as we claim to do so. The word is wisdom. As presented in the Bible, our most ancient guidance system, it is defined in several ways.

" It is a divine gift that combines knowledge, understanding, discernment and the ability to apply God's truth in righteous and practical ways."

In Proverbs it is often personified as a woman, perhaps less liable to be misconstrued as an act of enmity, calling out to all, reminding us that wisdom is available to all and true wisdom is worth far more than the largest of gems.

Unfortunately, most of the world, for most of the time, ignored that presentation of true wisdom and its critical importance to the world at large. They too often moved onto the next step using every trick and tool they had in their toolbox. Nationalism. Patriotism. Claims for land. Wealth. Prestige. Claims of legacies. Eternal enemies. And not to forget the enrichment of those who supply that which is needed to wage the wars under the above motivations and claims.

Simply scroll through the pages of tomes of history and find for yourself. See for yourself how often or how infrequently we share the truths of true wisdom and find ourselves embroiled in the situation. We know " winners" but also know for in fact all are losers, one way or another. Nor are most wars, from ancient history to the present and most probably well into the future, waged for pure reasons. The gang membership is always changing, always in flux as allies become enemies and enemies become allies and nary a true friend around.  

Why do we do this? Why do we persist in doing the same thing expecting something different but getting the same, with mostly inconsequential differentiation from one war to the next. Yes, there are some wars which are justified, and the Bible makes that clear, but that clarity, that wisdom is glaring in its absence. Certainly, absent from the thoughts of humanity and certainly from the minds and motivations of those so-called leaders who unfortunately lead us into perdition and sorrow. Will we ever learn or have those brain cells withered to the point of uselessness?

 One of the first signs of lack of wisdom is the constant motormouth activity of those wishing for war, for whatever reason. In the midst of that volume of dangerous words, they flip flop from day to day, from week to week, often from hour to hour. There is neither wisdom nor purity of reasoning and motivations and once again there we are, the same old, same old. No matter how tired it is, there is always that huge and cruel price to pay in destruction and death.

If only we listened to the wise voices emanating often from unexpected places. One saying which I read recently, states that wars are not fought in the trenches but are fought in the hearts and minds of those involved. Succinct and so true. Would that we would have understood that simple but critical understanding. All the horror that we could have avoided. All the energy we could have directed   along proper pathways rather than expending it    in the design, invention and creation of more and more horrid weapons of war, that energy placed in the right way, in the right directions rather than in the awful creation of those weapons of war. What a blessing it would have been and still could be if we shut down the raucous voices of those spouting words of violence and hate. Allowing wiser voices to be heard. Pipe dreams, I guess. And as an aside, in the Ethics of Our Fathers is a verse which tells us that the wiser person will listen carefully. Think carefully. Before opening the mouth. With the loss of that hot air, we could have ended the warming of the planet.

The importance of wisdom and acknowledging the truth of that wisdom has been around for a long time to be found in all cultures. To wit an Irish proverb along those very lines.

" May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you're going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far." Would that those in seats of power, heavily misused power, hear these and similar words and straighten their twists and curves of their hearts and souls. Would that those who enable their rise to seats of power have understood what they were indeed bringing forth upon this planet.

Yesterday.

Today.

Tomorrow.

 Certainly, time enough to have learned from the first foolish decision made by Eve and compounded by Adam.

But we did not.

The result is, was, always will be, unless we do better and rid the nations of wicked leaders, of those who bear terror, horror, destruction to the residents of the lands. As well as leaders who are way past their sell by date. Unfortunately, there are many of those within the governments of the nations of the world.  Iran, Many Arab and Moslem nations. The foolish and dangerous ones of many of the Western nations of Europe. Leaders in Israel who fell down on the job and enabled murder upon the residents of Israel. Or the rather limited who lack morals and guidance, who charge hard along the paths of revenge and retention of power, those who appoint glaringly obvious misfit people into positions of power. ie, Hegseth and his crude raids on our armed services, who are supposed to be our guardians, to protect us.

Humph on that.

And not to forget that arrogant and dangerous, so called Democratic Socialist Party, who claim to be progressive but in every act, every statement, send us into retrograde propulsion rather than a forward movement. The Democrats, the Republicans, the Right and the Left, the Moderates who have forsaken the truths of that position, who for the sake of their remaining in office, have bought heavily into the latest rage - which is raging JewHatred

Surely there are those better suited to be leaders. Surely some intelligent people could present the words of truth from the Bible and let us make headway against those who would destroy us all.

So far there are few and far between capable of that role.

Suggestions anyone?

Someone? 

EICHAH LAMENTATIONS

  We are now in one of the most horrifying, saddest periods of time in Jewish history. It is when we mourn the destruction of the Second Temple and yet again more grief, horror and exile. One can understand how the constant fire and destruction rained upon the people of Israel have left a mark on their universal soul, an inherited genetic trauma. Proven time and again to recur, no matter the century and year, no matter the country, no matter the interwoven contributions of the Jewish nation, of the State of Israel into the fabric of the world.

On Thursday we fast and we pray and we mourn a violent period in our history, one whose echoes followed us through the centuries, one which we mourn today, even as there are sparks of hope in a seemingly hopeless world. What is that spark? It is the hope that someday relatively soon led into Jerusalem on a white donkey will be the culmination of what has been the one dream of the Jewish nation since time immemorial. 

The coming of the Messiah, a time of peace and goodwill, a time when all will live righteously in harmony, the actualization of all the dreams and metaphors and allegories of Jewish literature, from the sacred to the profane. The revelation that Jews have been waiting for since the time of their birth as the Jewish nation, the People of the Book.  

But in the meanwhile, we must wait We can dream, we can prepare. We can imagine the glorious time of the rebuilding of the Temple; this time a permanent rebuilding. It is hopefully a time when the people of the world and the people of the Jewish nation understand what it means to live a righteous life. To be accepting of differences among people. To manage to weave all the differences into a picture of harmony of the proverbial scene of the lion sleeping with the lambs. Of swords and weapons disappearing, to emerge from the fire as plowshares, ready to till the earth of this planet, of this world, that G-d has gifted to us.

Along with that beautiful scene of serenity, one can call it also a time when the debts of the individuals and nations of this world must be called and repaid in one manner or another. The Jewish people are well acquainted with such times. Often and understandably, they conflated the latest violence with the violence and upheaval that will come along with the appearance of the true Messiah.

 In fact, during some of these violent periods of history, be it the slashes of the Crusaders or the raids of the Cossacks, or the scientifically planned extermination of the Jewish people via the Nazis and others of their ilk, the despair often gave rise to desperately sought elements of hope, of the temporary nature of the awful times and of the bright light of the Messiah growing ever brighter, ever closer. The bloodshed and violence and despair of such times gave rise to the seeking of that Messiah and too often, repeatedly so, a false Messiah was declared found, or self-announced, and the end result was more despair as the truth emerged and the false hope disintegrated. 

We seek redemption. We seek an end to the copy paste methodology running through the history of humanity. We despair time and again when the humane is divorced from humankind, trampled upon, deemed irrelevant and even harmful to the ambitions of those who deem themselves the royalty of mankind, immune from all laws, legal and moral. 

At such times, the violence and rampant hate and uncertainty inevitably rains down upon the Jews, deemed the source and the cause of all woes of the world, hence, of necessity, there should be a total isolation of them and an inevitable extermination. Such has been the history of the world at large and of the Jewish people in particular. Jewish people are caught, always, in the middle of that hate drowning the world, swirling around. Leaders and their base followers take advantage and use the ugliness of the times to destroy those who stand in their way.  It could be a sect of religion, a tribe or caste, any pathetic reason deemed useful by those seemingly 'bespoken' souls for Evil, and always, the Jewish People.  

Thus, what we are mourning during this period of time is not "only” the destruction of the Second Temple but the shattering of a hope.  A permanent home for the People of the Book. To live in peace, to prosper, to raise families, to contribute to the world and leave the world a better place for their having been part of it.

Eichah, the Book of Lamentations, where and when we sat alone, as usual, as always, as we cried on the banks of a river, as we wondered how did we reach this point, that spark of hope was able to be seen and to be internalized by the Daughter of Zion. Even  in the depths of despair, she received comfort. There will be a better time, that this will not be the eternal condition of the Jewish people. 

And indeed, history has borne out the truth of that promise. Even as we mourn the losses of our past and contemplate the horror of current losses and the probability of more to come, we can build a firm basis for a better future. A time of promise and peace. Hope and an encouragement borne out many, many times in the books of the Bible, a reassurance that as bad as it has been, as it could be, always know that we are the Children of the Lord. We will always have a chance to think, to contemplate and to return from any wrong paths onto which we have strayed, along with the rest of a sorely disappointing humanity at large. 

A most telling and encouraging message of hope is from Isaiah 56:5 - 

“To them, I will give in my house and within my walls, a place and a name... an everlasting name that shall not be cut off." 

A permanent home never to be forced out, never to be exiled, never again to be unsure of our welcome and acceptance within humanity. 

Always to know and for the world to know we stand in direct line from within our history to the reestablishment and the reinvigorating of the State of Israel. A state of and for the Jews, promised to them, for them, by the Lord to Avraham Avinu, Abraham, our founding father. Validated by history. Validated by blood, by sacrifice and validated by the will of the Lord Above.

Yesterday, today, tomorrow.

Always the same but capable of changing. It is up to us to create an opening and an opportunity for the fulfillment of our righteous and proper role in the world.

I recommend reading two books, very different. One is the Book of Lamentations, basically an explication of it, written by Joshua A. Berman, a professor, scholar and author of note and brilliance.

I also recommend a very different book which I unexpectedly came across. It is titled Justice for Some, written by Reid S. Cherner. A book most intriguing, most confusing, most enlightening and most frustrating. Well worth a read.