Day by Day

 בס"ד

I’m still safe here in Beit Shemesh. Unfortunately at 1:50 PM there was a missile attack on my town. First I heard the sirens of the early warning system. I then moved to a safer place in my apartment. Next I heard the thuds of explosions. The news said that two people were wounded and a building was set on fire. It was not in my neighborhood.

I live in a basement apartment so it's basically underground. However, it's important to get away from the windows to avoid glass if they are shattered. Should a missile go through the window, God forbid, it would be fatal, unless I was very lucky. In recent years all residential apartments are constructed with a room that has reinforced concrete walls to be used as a bomb shelter and I do have access to them. Their main use is during extended periods of shelling. 

The authorities advise people to remain at home as much as possible, which is what I do. Nevertheless I’ll take a walk for exercise and go shopping. I have face to face conversations with people every day. On Shabbos I visit friends for a festive meal. I have telephone and video conversations regularly with family and friends. On Facebook I often exchange comments with others. It's actually a lot of human contact especially since I tend to be an introvert and somewhat of a recluse.

Wars and terrorist acts have been going on for a while. I’m basically battle hardened. This war has managed to shake me somewhat. I don’t greatly fear for my personal safety and tend to reckon myself as a survivor. Concerning this situation, I have a sense of foreboding that it will be very bloody. This is reinforced by the attitudes of the public and the actions of the politicians. They are basically calling for an invasion of the Gaza strip. My feeling is that such a thing really is inevitable, and the time may very well have arrived. My expectation, though, is that such an action would result in many Israeli casualties. We probably need this, as ugly as it may be.

I don’t think this is just about Gaza. I can easily see this expanding to involve the entire land of Israel. Some of the news sites I follow are saying that World War 3 has already started. They point to the existing war in Ukraine and tensions over Taiwan, Korea, west Africa, etc., etc. etc. Some of the other harbingers are the demonstrations taking place just about everywhere and secessionist sentiments in the United States. Anti Semitism is more intense than I’ve ever seen and it is getting worse. At this point I don’t think it will remain viable for a Jew to live anywhere in the world except Israel, even though the problems here are evident.

Often I’m heartsick about the situation and the only thing I can do is mope. Just the same I remain cheerful and optimistic. I get kind messages of concern, love, and support from people I haven't seen in many years. I tend to look at it like going on a diet. It's painful but in the end the person is healthier, happier, and better looking.

To be more conventional, I just returned from a wedding in my neighborhood. Quite frankly it was bittersweet. It was religious nationalist with many of the friends of the couple, yeshiva students who combine their religious studies with military service. They were spirited with high morale. They are the type of soldiers that win wars. I was accepted with joy and honor. I expressed disappointment that there were so many young people but not a single joint. They offered to provide me with some dope, but didn't deliver. I also flirted with one of the cuties. In Israel you must know how to flirt. She was young, pretty, and charming. Mercifully she did not seduce me. They did have whisky and beer and I’m still enjoying the moment. As the song says, “You're gonna find your way to heaven is a rough and rocky road. If you don't Stop and Smell the roses along the way,” (by Mac Davis).

The Beat Goes On

 בס"ד

I’m still safe here in Beit Shemesh. Thank God, There have been no missile or guerilla attacks where I live. I’m far enough away from the Gaza Strip not to be a target. The son of a friend of mine was called up for military service. Most of my friends are Haredi (ultra Orthodox) so the army in this case is not an issue. Typically there are a lot of Arabs working here, doing things like sanitation, construction, driving buses, and stocking supermarket shelves. Consequently there are inconveniences. 

The situation concerning the Arabs is multifaceted. In Gaza they are implacably hostile to a Jewish state in Israel, horribly gruesome, and total savages. The ones within the State of Israel see themselves as servants in the house of Abraham. They enjoy a comparison to Ishmael and Hagar. To the chagrin of many they see themselves like the Jews in New York, namely as well treated expatriates. They often enjoy discussing scripture and morality tales with Jews. However, one should avoid saying the word “gun” to them, because they are easily stirred up. 

The news is worrisome. There has been a large mobilization in anticipation of a major invasion of Gaza. Such an operation would be very bloody. If they consider it to be excessive, Hezbollah over the border in Lebanon and Iran have threatened to join the fray. What happened from Gaza was essentially a series of hit and run attacks. Conceivably they could be replicated by other enemies. Consequently the situation remains tense. 

Generally the social situation concerns me the most. The Jews, particularly in Israel, are spiritually confused and depleted. As a result it invites enemy attacks with a sluggish response. Sadly there is an overemphasis on guns and coercion. People all too often cannot understand the position of others much less rationally debate them. There is an emphasis on parroting the narrative without giving it a reality check. People tend to love their dogs, but not each other. I’ve started to advocate radical solutions, like instigating the CIA to put a ton of LSD into the Jerusalem water supply. The subject is lengthy and perhaps I will develop it in other blogs.

For myself the beat goes on. Today I renewed my lease at a rent that is fair to both my and my landlady. I’ve also been walking more in the park. The news is interesting but becomes repetitive fairly rapidly. Not too long ago I partook of sacred plants and it has made me much more contemplative. Some of the subjects are difficult, however, these tend to purify me and give me the best insights. I remain optimistic and in good spirits. Even if there is anxiety about the present, the hope is that the bad things that bedevil me will be destroyed and the future will be bright. To quote Psalm 91:7-8, “A thousand will fall by your side and a multitude at your right hand, but to you it will not approach. Only with your eyes take note, and the retribution of the evil, you will see”. “With the length of days, I will satisfy him, and I will show him My salvation”, (ibid 16).

Calm in Beit Shemesh

בס"ד

Thank God, things are calm in Beit Shemesh. I may have heard a missile but there were no sirens that accompany enemy action.  For myself I did some errands, took a walk, did some socializing, and went  shopping. Many people were stocking up on food. The lines were somewhat long. The shelves were not as full as normal. More businesses are opening. The schools are still closed. People tend to be friendly. 

The Palestinians are continuing their missile attacks from Ashkelon, about 12 miles from Gaza, to Tel Aviv. The areas that border Gaza have had fatalities. There are conflicting reports as to whether Palestinian troops are still operating in the areas that they seized in their surprise attack. Documented Israeli fatalities now are numbered at around 900 and more are expected to emerge. There are also an estimated 100 captured Israelis in Gaza. Guerillas are still active, but not as effective as before. Arab cities like Shchem (Nablus) have been more restive. Preparations are being made for a major ground action in Gaza and there is talk about reestablishing military control of the enclave. Things are calmer now at least for the time being.

The war has not spread to Hezbollah and northern Israel nor has Iran gotten militarily involved. Both though have threatened action if Israeli action in Gaza threatens to be an expulsion. It seems to be that a sudden massive attack remains a real threat, especially in areas close to the Arabs. Thank God, Beit Shemesh is not one of them. Generally the Arabs have high morale and are effective. The Israelis are sluggish, confused, and inept. Consequently it is unclear whether there will be continued Arab violence, perhaps even escalating. Syria remains a major question mark.

In any event I’m basically cheerful. I’m not generally worried about my personal safety, nor the safety of my friends. It happens, though, that a girl I knew in USY, Nava Zlochever, lives on a kibbutz that had to be evacuated. I looked at the Facebook page of Meira Lustgarten nee Martha Serotkin and she’s safe. 

In my book there are social things that have improved. Other things are major bothers. I appreciate the letters of goodwill from my family and friends and hope that people will draw the appropriate conclusions.

Faith in the Future

 בס"ד

Thank God today was a peaceful day here in Beit Shemesh. I took a walk, talked to friends, and did some errands. I spend an increasing amount of time in contemplation, and this seems to be the most important thing that I do. 

I didn’t see any apparent hostile military action. Many, but not all, businesses are closed. The concern is that crowds may be a target for a terrorist attack. I was in the supermarket and the shelves were not nearly as full as they normally are, and there are longer lines at the checkout  because of increased shopping. I haven't seen any Arabs in the city since the start of the war. Normally there are many Arab workers. 

There has been a major military mobilization of about 300,000 soldiers. The politicians are saying that there will be major punitive action against Gaza. Already there has been extensive bombing. So far there have counted 800 Israeli fatalities, both military and civilian and the number is expected to increase as the situation clarifies. There are predictions for a long bloody war.

Most of the areas taken by the Palestinians have been recovered. The concern is that the conflict will expand into a larger conflict with the Arab / Moslem world. Presently at the maximum there have only been small indications.

From my standpoint there are extensive social problems in Israeli and Jewish society that show little sign of being remedied, consequently it seems like we are headed for a major shake up. My thinking is cloudy about this. In spite of having friends, I often feel alienated and persecuted, but the situation is not so bad that I’d risk my life or sacrifice a friend to change it. War involves suffering and if it's a long one, being over 70, it's uncertain how much I will be able to enjoy the benefits of better times. On the other hand people do live to be over 100 in good health, as a result there is room for optimistic fantasies. I may even enjoy seeing the destruction of the wicked. My faith in the goodness and wisdom of God remains strong, therefore while there is some gloom about the short term, I remain cheerful about the future.

SAFE IN BEIT SHEMESH

 בס"ד

There were no attacks in Beit Shemesh today in any way, shape, or form. There were no missile attacks or guerilla attacks. I did see at least two low flying Israeli helicopters and a police car with flashing lights. Arab manual laborers, which have been a common sight, have been banned from the city. They tend to be maintenance men, garbage men, bus drivers, and supermarket stock clerks. Schools are closed and so are some businesses. 

For myself I took down my sukkah and did laundry which had accumulated over the holiday. I also gave my havrusa (study partner) a phone call, but we did not manage to meet.  I took walks in the morning and afternoon, watched YouTube videos, and read the news.

There is a lot of analysis of the war, specifically the success of Hamas and how it escaped the Israeli network of spies. It seems to me the story is in the morale of both sides. Hamas morale is very high and Israeli morale is very low. The state’s conduct of warfare has infuriated the enemy and this showed up in the spirited attack. Israeli society is corrupt and frivolous, consequently their response was sluggish and empty. Ominously there has been increased attacks by Hezbollah from Lebanon and an increase in “lone wolf” Arab attacks on Jews. It looks like the Hamas strategy is to bleed the State of Israel and they will kill civilians as easily as soldiers. There is talk that the Medina is planning a ground operation in Gaza. How long this situation will last remains uncertain.

I’d say that the immediate trigger of the war is the intention by Israel to give Saudi Arabia the ability to independently produce atom bombs. This is totally unacceptable to Iran. Most likely they told Hamas to attack. Hamas is also extremely angry about the Saudi intention to reciprocate by establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. About a week ago Iran leaked photos of former prime minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Gantz in their homes. It struck me as an implied threat to kill Netanyahu if he kills the heads of Hamas as has often been threatened. 

The government remains shakey. There is talk of opposition leaders Gantz and Lapid joining it. I don’t see United Torah Judaism agreeing to the drafting of Haredim and it is very questionable if they will agree to any delay in the appropriate legislation concerning this. The war has put the issue of concessions to the Palestinians on the back burner. But if Netanyahu should exploit the war to do just this, the Religious Nationalist may immediately leave the government. Labor remains adamantly opposed to Netanyahu and blames him for the war. The leftist protests against the Orthodox have stopped at least for the moment.

Generally I’m in a good mood. The war is on my mind, but not greatly. I’m more concerned about the things that ordinarily bother me. My hope is that people will give their values a reality check and the social problems that bedevil me will be remedied.

Gaza War: Saturday Night, October 7, 2023

It’s 9:00 PM here in Israel and I’m about to go to sleep. I have made it through the day. As you know Gaza has a military operation against the State of Israel. This morning they launched missile attacks targeting a number of cities including Beit Shemesh, where I live. I heard the rockets explode and there were also sirens. It does not look like they did any harm, thank God. Hamas also launched guerilla attacks on Israeli communities close to Gaza. These were deadly and about 100 Israelis have been killed. Ramat Beit Shemesh is about 57 kilometers or 31 nautical miles from Gaza and therefore not a target. 

Right now the Israel army is restoring control to the areas seized by the Palestinians. The concern was that this could spark a general war. It does not look like this is going to happen. The Arab citizens have no inclination to join the conflict and generally prefer to remain in the Jewish state. The Palestinian Authority (Judea & Samaria / West Bank, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and Syria have expressed support for Hamas but have declined to engage in hostilities. The other Arab states have generally called for restraint on both sides. As such I presently estimate that military activities on both sides will not last more that a week. 

Continued missile attacks are a possibility. I do have a bomb shelter one flight of stairs up and the State has an early warning system. As such I am reasonably safe. There is no realistic possibility of a significant guerilla attack in my locale. As long as there is a concern, I’ll keep you posted.

Bereishit: Return to Purity, Return to Paradise

In parshat Bereishit Adam the first man and by extension all humanity sins by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. For this he is expelled from the Garden of Eden. This is generally understood as a desire for promiscuity and this is by far the most common sin of humanity. The idea of a desire for virginity would seem to be very alien from the secular world. However my personal experience often is much different. 

In college I had a friend who fell in love with a girl. They made love for the first time together. After which the girl broke off the relationship with the intention of playing the field. My friend was crushed. However after he recovered, he became quite wild, and could score at will. When I was impressed, to my surprise he said that he would give up all the chickadees for his sweetheart. He explained that the other girls meant nothing to him but his beloved meant alot. I pondered what he said. His sweetheart was very pretty and far prettier than the girls he subsequently dated. I thought to myself that if I had the choice between his sweetheart and his other interests, I'd take the sweetheart every time.  In this case to me variety was pointless.

Sometime later I moved to Manhattan. There I got involved with Orthodox Judaism. Living with my parents, I had gone to synagogue regularly. My family were leaders of the Jewish community and both Jews and non Jews considered us to be royalty. By the time I graduated high school, I had absorbed everything Conservative Judaism had to offer. More importantly I needed to find my own way.

I also made a number of trips to Israel. On the first trip I decided to move there. However, when I discussed it with an immigration counsellor, I could barely get the words out of my mouth. It was as if Israel was on the other side of the Sambatyan. The Sambatyon is a mythical river in Jewish literature that is uncrossable because it is flowing with fire and stones. However it seems to be a metaphor for emotional and pychological barriers, basically estrangement. It took four years for me to get my head and heart in the right place to get on a plane with a one-way ticket. It turned out that the flight was the easiest part of my moving to Israel.

While this was happening I started to date a girl I met while taking courses at NYU Graduate School. She was unusual because she wanted to convert to Judaism. It was basically platonic. However, when things started getting romantic, she said to me that she must get the wildness out of her system, after that she would be my virgin. I was taken aback and replied that I never had thought in those terms, but whatever my point of view was, it was not that. As it turned out I moved to Israel before anything happened. 

Once in Israel I moved to the Haredi neighborhood, Geula, and spent alot of time studying Torah in yeshiva. The subject of Ruth Blau kept coming up. She was generally considered a great woman. She wound up marrying the chief rabbi of the Neturei Karta and living in Meah Sharim. She struck me a high maintenance woman living in a total slum. She was quite beautiful, but the Neturei Karta specifically makes their women ugly. When asked how she got into so many unusual situations, she replied that at every step she made the best decisions she could and this is where it brought her. The comment remained with me.

In short her story was that she was a convert who came to Israel and Judaism out of love of religion and the Jewish people. She had done some wild things which can be expressed in the words of the Billie Joel song, "You may be right, I may be crazy, but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for". People often said she was a night club singer. Everone agreed she had never been a nightclub singer, rather it was a euphemism for sordid aspects of her life. 

Generally I reacted with boredom and irritation. I had suffered myself in life and had always been a friend of distressed people. At the time I was working as a caregiver for psychotics. They were in and out of mental institutions, taking lithium, and receiving electroconvulsive therapy. The seamy side of life for many was titillating, for me it had no entertainment value whatsoever because I had seen too much human suffering and depravity.

Even worse Rebbitzen Ruth Blau was much like my Aunt Kaye. When I was young my mother had a nervous breakdown requiring hospitalization. Nobody knew when she was going to get out if ever. It was a family of six children and my father was looking for a housekeeper. Kaye was staying at the home of a friend of my mother and the friend told my father that Kaye could do the job and he would only need to pay her a small amount of money. Kaye took the job. It turned out she was a fundamentalist Christian, who frequently quoted the Bible and told stores about Jesus. She loved the Jews and saw them as God's chosen people. She was fifteen and a half, truant, came from a dysfunctional family, and had a boyfriend who was not her first. My older sister and I reacted to her with love. So did my uncle, who was over twenty years her senior. Lenny was recently divorced and a womanizer. He wrote her a love letter that got quick results and they dated for a short time. When my mother recovered, he married Kaye. She had just turned sixteen and they subsequently had two children.

This did not go over well with my Grandmother, who was basically a religious fanatic. That Kaye was sixteen and from a distressed background, did not bother her all that much. The fact that she was not Jewish made my grandmother all but impossible to deal with. For Kaye this played into her hands. She converted with her little children to Judaism and sent them to an orthodox Jewish day school. The strange thing was that all the time Kaye was with my uncle, she looked and behaved like a virgin.

In a recent book about Ruth Blau an incident is recounted with a befuddled tone, how she started making a scene in Meah Sharim, crying, and screaming she was a virgin. I was not befuddled. It seems to me her loss of purity tormented her that much, and this seems to be her greatness. It may be an example to the world, especially the Jewish people, how upsetting our lack of purity should be. And this may be the rectification of the sin of Adam the first man and our return to the Garden of Eden. 

Things did not end well for Kaye and Lenny. Lenny was anti religious and pulled the children out of Jewish day school. Kaye had another walk on the wild side. They got a divorce and my uncle died of cancer a few years an later. Years after that, when I returned from Israel to attend the weddings of two of my sisters, I unexpectedly I got a call from Kaye. We chatted some. Still reckoning herself as a Jew, and still a spiritual seeker she told me of her trip to India and stay on an American Indian reservation. Suddenly she broke out crying sobbing she never loved a man like she loved my uncle.

It seems to me often paradise is a frame of mind with fleeting aspects of it in this world. It can be seen in the pristine blue of the Mediterranean when travelling from Tel Aviv to Haifa, in Venus sparkling like a diamond in the sky, the birds singing in your yard in the morning, and in the view of the Temple Mount from the promenade in Jerusalem's east Talpiot neighborhood.

תו"ב במהרה בימינו