Quotes from the Chofetz Chaim’s sefer Ahavas Chesed

“…As winter approaches and it becomes terribly cold, it is a great mitzvah to concern oneself with those who cannot afford to buy wood to heat their homes…”

“…He who arranges funds for the needy to buy wood will be forgiven for all his sins and will be considered as having brought a korban eitzim to the holy temple…”

Sanctity of Time by Professor Vendyl Jones

The sanctity of time according to Judaism may make the Jewish calendar the only reliable world chronology.

“In the beginning G-d . . . .” The “Beginning” is a word that nominates time. Time is sanctified from the very beginning in the Torah. “And the evening and the morning was day one . . . and the evening and the morning was day two . . .” and so on through day six. Yet, on the 7th day there is no mention of the evening and the morning. Even time itself, the 7th day was sanctified above all other days. It began at sunset on the 6th day (what we call Friday) and continued until sunset on the 7th day (which we call Saturday or Shabbat).

Full post … at: Vendyl Jones Research Institutes

Redemption!

A thought, regarding Redemption:

“The redemption will be brought about in the merit of those who study and involve themselves in the teachings of Kabbalah.”

RABBI CHAIM VITAL

(Introduction to Shaar HaHakdamot)

Eyes Upon The Land

Our Sages teach that every Jew possesses a portion of Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel. The converse is also true. The land possesses a portion of every Jew.

For this is “a land which G-d… seeks out; the eyes of G-d are always upon it, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.” And just as G-d seeks out the land, so do we.

Source: Chabad.org

In recent years, it has become common to think of the solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms of the formula, “land for peace.” Phrasing the question in that manner produces a ready answer, for regardless of our love for the Land of Israel, there is no question that all sacrifices necessary should be made to achieve peace.

In the pages that follow, we will present a different approach to the issues, one rooted in the principles of our Jewish heritage, yet starkly realistic in its appreciation of what is happening on the ground in and around Israel today.

To read Online, kindly click here.

To purchase the Book, kindly click here.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe on Israel’s Security!

This amazing clip of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s warnings against territorial compromise and concessions.

You will have shivers up your spine listening to his every holy word.

Listening to the Rebbe’s voice and seeing his face can cleanse ones soul.

In order to view, kindly click here.

Note: The clip is in Hebrew, even so, it’s worth seeing and listening.

Bush-said, “End the Occupation,” and Olmert Was Silent!

With the kind authorization of Professor Paul Eidelberg from the The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy.

25-Jan-2008

Edited transcript of the Eidelberg Report, Israel National Radio, January 21, 2008.

In his visit to Israel, President Bush had the audacity to say, “end the occupation.” He had in mind Judea and Samaria including the Old City of Jerusalem. Unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Olmert, like other Israelis who are “tired of being courageous,” was silent.

Of course, Israel requires more than courage. Leaving aside the self-serving motives of Israel’s secular elites, they are abysmally ignorant. They have no understanding of the grandeur of the Jewish heritage, hence of what should be the character of the so-called Jewish state. They know not how to deal with the Arab Palestinian problem. Many would sacrifice much of the Land of Israel in the belief that this would solve that lethal problem. Mr. Bush is also drowning in ignorance, to say nothing of Saudi oil.

Except for the benighted, including journalists or academics, it should be obvious that neither democratic politics nor political science can deal adequately with these issues. The time has come for an unconventional approach. Let’s begin with a Torah perspective.

The Torah repeatedly declares that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. God promised Abraham: “And I will give unto you and to your seed after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession” (Gen. 17:8). God gave the same promise to Isaac and Jacob (Gen. 26:3 and 28:13).

The Land of Israel is the Chosen Land (Gen. 12:1; Deut. 11:12). Strategically located, this land was chosen by God so that His ways would be made known to the world by His Chosen People. “This people have I formed for Myself, that they shall relate My praise (Isa. 43:21). This means that Israel’s world-historical function is to reveal the infinite wisdom, power, and kindliness of the Creator in every domain of existence—physical, intellectual, and moral. “For out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3). Therefore, any loss of Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel can only be temporary. For “God is not a man that He should lie; nor a human being that he should change his mind. Shall He say something and not do it, or speak and not fulfill?” (Num. 23:19).

But when the people of Israel transgressed the Torah, they were expelled from the Land. They became a “byword among all the nations” (Deut. 28:37), scorned, tormented, and decimated, the hapless victims of anti-Semitism. Their tortured exile and temporary loss of sovereignty over the Land constituted a punishment prescribed in the Torah itself. “You shall therefore keep all my laws and social rules and fulfill them, so that the land to which I bring you to settle in will not spew you out” (Lev. 20:22). “I, Myself, will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies that settle in it will become astonished at it. But you I will scatter among the nations” (Lev. 26:27, 32).

Remarkably, the Hebrew word “astonished” (shamemu) was understood by the Jewish Sages, more than two thousand years ago, to mean that Israel’s enemies “shall be desolate” while occupying this strange land. In other words, any nation that supplants the Jews in the Land of Israel will not prosper there.

History has confirmed this prophecy. During the last twenty-five hundred years, the Land of Israel has been conquered many times by different nations. Yet, despite its extraordinary fertility, this land remained desolate no matter which foreign nation occupied or controlled it.

Especially significant or providential is the nomadic character of the Arabs who have lived in the Land of Israel and who left it in the most sorrowful desolation as Mark Twain once saw and described. Had the Arabs developed the Land and had they formed thereon a sovereign state with a distinct national culture, Jewish immigration to the Land would have been out of the question. Apparently, the Arabs were placed here as temporary residents, until the Jews, having passed through the fires of exile, could reclaim the Land and make its deserts bloom.

The Arabs, descendants of Ishmael, condemn the Jews as “aggressors” for having “usurped” the land of “Palestine.” President Bush calls us “occupiers.” This denunciation was anticipated in Rashi’s commentary to Genesis 1:1. There the question arises: Why does the Torah begin with Creation and not with the first commandment given to the Jewish people? Rashi answers:

So that if the nations of the world should [question the validity of Israel’s title to the Holy Land] and say: “You are robbers in that you have seized by force the territories of the seven nations” [of Canaan that had previously occupied the land], Israel can retort: “The entire world belongs to the Holy One, Blessed be He. He created it and gave it to whomsoever it was right in His eyes. It was His will to give it to them and it was His will to take it from them and give it to us.”

Of course, Rashi’s commentary would be dismissed by nations no more disposed to recognize the truth of biblical prophecy than to abide by the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality. Why should it be otherwise, since the secular Zionists who founded the State of Israel in 1948 dismissed the Torah, the only rational justification for Jewish possession of the Land of Israel?

But as I have often shown, the concept of the sovereign “state” is foreign to the Torah. At last, however, the New Jewish Congress, recently inaugurated in Jerusalem, declared that the Land of Israel does not belong to the State but to the Nation—the Jewish People. The State is nothing more than a trustee of the Jewish People to whom this land was given by God Almighty. But if Prime Minister Olmert does not recognize this truth, what can we expect of President Bush?

Since Israel’s secular elites deem the State supreme—a fascist doctrine—and since they reject the idea that the Land of Israel belongs to the Nation, the Jewish People, logic dictates that the State, as presently conceived, must perish if the Jewish People are to retain their only homeland—Eretz Yisrael. But inasmuch as the power of the State is concentrated in its political and judicial institutions, these institutions much perish or be radically transformed.

Democratic elections alone will not accomplish this task. In fact, it is precisely democratic elections that endow Israel’s elites with legitimacy despite their treachery. No one in public life emphasizes this fact on public forums—not even Manhigut Yehudit, the Jewish Leadership movement despite its having adopted, years ago, many of the ideas and institutional proposals of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy.

I say this not to disparage anyone, but to inform people of what must be done to save Israel. I know of no one aspiring to become Israel’s leader who has the courage and the intellectual ability to tell the people of Israel that they have been brainwashed for 60 years about Israeli democracy. Nor has anyone enlightened them about the inherent contradiction between the idea of the sovereign State and Judaism.

Israel’s reputed democracy, confronted by Arab-Islamic despotism, did not prevent Mr. Bush—a self-styled Christian—from telling Jews to end the occupation of their God-given land. Mark my words, Mr. Olmert, like Ariel Sharon, will justify withdrawal from Judea and Samaria in the name of democracy. And he will do this because Israel’s secular elites regard the State and its laws superior to the laws of the Torah, as the Jews of Gush Katif learned in their misery.

Have you heard any religious party declare, again and again, that the laws of the State are not the highest law? Have you heard of any person in public life such as Effie Eitam or Arieh Eldad or Moshe Feiglin say that those who claim the laws of the State are the highest laws are actually espousing a fascist doctrine? If the Supreme Court or the Knesset insists that the laws of the State are the highest law, then I urge the men just named—and I wish them well—to call for regime change and not just civil disobedience. Indeed, those who have not sacrificed their intellects to “political correctness” must surely know that Israel’s phony democracy, with its destructive political and judicial institutions, must perish if Israel is to survive.

Original Article can be seen at: The Foundation for Constitutional Democracy.

A Tour of Palestine, C.E. 1696 By Avi Goldreich

Source: faz.co.il

 

Due the fact, that there are a few of us Jews who think that Eretz Yisrael, is not our Home Land, despite what is very clearly stated in the Torah and that we are the intruders and that the so called Palestinians are entitled to posses our Holy Land, claiming that it was theirs time immemorial.

I have felt the urge to post this article, so that once and for all, we can all come to the complete knowledge that the Holy Land was ours, is ours and will always be ours, it was given by G_d, to our forefathers, Avraham, Yitzhak and Ya’akov.

So it’s quite clear that we do not have to hand over one single inch of Holy Land to anyone far less to our enemies and this also implies that Eretz Yisrael is exclusively for the Jewish People, nobody else; which also means Arabs out and whoever does not profess their belief in Hashem.

IHC Abstract
A recent visit to Huber’s antiquarian bookstore in Budapest yielded a veritable time-machine: A large volume (in Latin), published by Brodelet in 1714, entitled Palestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrate, which documents a survey of the Holy Land made in 1695 by its author, Hadriani Relandi. Relandi was eminently qualified to conduct this exhaustive survey: He was a geographer, cartographer and a polylinguist, possessing – in addition to the European languages – full command of Hebrew, Arabic and classical Greek. His journey encompassed 2500 sites mentioned in the Bible, Mishna and Talmud.

He began by mapping Eretz Israel, employing plane-table topography, triangulation and a sextant for an extremely accurate map (relandi map.jpg). He then identified each and every site mentioned in the Bible, Mishna and Talmud with the source of its name.� If it was a Jewish source, he quoted the appropriate text from Scripture. If the place name was Roman or Greek in origin, he supplied the source for those. He also conducted a census of each such habitation, with the following data:

1. Not one place in Eretz Israel has a name that originates in Arabic.
Place names are Hebrew, Greek or Roman (Latin), that were given meaningless Arabic derivations. Akko, Haifa, Yafo, Nablus, Gaza or Jenin have no meaning in Arabic, and city names like Ramallah, Al-Khalil and Al-Quds lack historic or philological Arab roots. In 1696, the year of the survey, Ramallah was called Bt’ala (=Beit-El), Hebron was Chevron, and the Cave of the Machpela was Al-Khalil, Arabic for patriarch Avraham.

2. The country was a wasteland. Its few inhabitants were concentrated in cities like Jerusalem, Acre, Safed, Jaffa, Tiberias and Gaza. Most of the city folk were Jewish or Christian, and only a few Muslims, usually Bedouins. Nablus (Shechem)was an exception, home to some 120 Muslims and 70 Shomronim (Samaritans). Natzeret (Nazareth), capital of the Galilee, was inhabited by 700 Christians. Some 5000 people lived in Jerusalem, most of them Jews. Interestingly, Muslims are mentioned only as nomadic Bedouins, who served as seasonal agriculture and construction workers. The population of Gaza was equally divided between Jews and Christians. The Jews raised grapes, olives and wheat crops (Gush Katif), while the Christians were occupied in commerce and transportation of goods. Safed and Tiberias also had Jewish communities, but the only occupation mentioned is fishing in the Sea of Galilee. A city like Um-al-Fahm, for example, is mentioned as a small village consisting of 10 Christian families, with a small Maronite church.

3. Relandi’s book completely refutes postmodern theories about a Palestinian nation or a “Palestinian tradition”, and reinforces Jewish ownership of the land, to the total exclusion of the Arabs, who even stole and adopted the Latin name of Palestine. 700 years of Arab rule in Spain, for example, have left a real cultural Moorish legacy of literature, architecture, engineering, medicine and the like. Andalusia and Guadalajara are undeniable facts, whereas in Israel, there is nothing that is Arab: no city names, no culture or art, no history, and no evidence of Arab rule. There is only a legacy of violence and robbery of the Jews’ promised, most sacred land.

There is no Palestinian nation, there never was one, and there may never be one. This is an Arab fiction, encouraged by an Israeli Left that suffers from a severe case of self-hatred and colludes with the worst of our enemies.

I strongly recommend that you read this article in full at faz.co.il, it’s in Hebrew.

 

“Now, O Israel…!

Rabbeinu Yonah (end of Gate of Awe) tells us to read every day the verse “Now, O Israel, what does G-d, your G-d, ask of you? Only that you fear G-d…”. (Deut. 10:12) It is good to follow this advice.

Devarim – Chapter 10

12. And now, O Israel, what does the Lord, your God, demand of you? Only to fear the Lord, your God, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, and to worship the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul,

Rashi’s Commentary:

And now, O Israel Even though you did all this, His mercy and His affection are still upon you, and with all that you have sinned against Him, He demands nothing of you, except only to fear [the Lord, your God,…]

Only to fear [the Lord your God,…] Our Rabbis derived from this verse [“And now… what does… God demand of you”] that everything is in the hands of Heaven except the fear of Heaven (Ber. 33b).

 

Why Gilgal?

The sanctity and holiness of Gilgal are eternal. When Joshua arrived at Gilgal, Josh. 5:15, the Angelic Captain of the Lord’s Host commanded Joshua to “remove the shoe from off his foot for the place whereon thou standeth is Holy.” Gilgal was Holy before Israel camped there for fourteen years.

After fourteen years, the land was redeemed and the tribes received their inheritance and moved from Gilgal into their designated territories. The Tabernacle was moved to the center of the land at Shiloh. The Tabernacle remained in Shiloh for 369 years. After the Tabernacle had been at Shiloh for more than three centuries, the Israelites wanted a king like the other nations. They rejected the theocracy with which G-d had ruled over them since the Call of Avram. They wanted to imitate Gentile nations with a monarchy. They rejected G-d and chose man. Where did Samuel call the people to assemble? I Sam. 11:14: “Then said Samuel to the people, Come, and let us go to Gilgal, and RENEW THE KINGDOM there. And all the people went to Gilgal; and there they made Saul king before the L-rd in Gilgal;”

Full post … at: Vendyl Jones Research Institutes

The Real Disgrace… is Ehud Olmert!

9 Shevat 5768, 1/16/2008
by Michael Freund

Referring to the various hilltop communities that have sprouted up in recent years throughout Judea and Samaria, which the media likes to besmirch by labeling them “illegal outposts,” Olmert said it was a “disgrace” that they had not been demolished.

“The fact that illegal outposts are still standing,” he told his ministerial colleagues, “even though the last two governments decided to evacuate them is a disgrace.”

With all due respect to the prime minister, the fact that there are still plenty of Jewish youth who are willing to dedicate themselves to reclaiming our ancient patrimony would hardly seem to qualify as a “disgrace.”

If anything, it should serve as a source of pride and hope, for it demonstrates that true Zionist idealism and love of the land continue to resonate among the next generation.

Full post and comments… at Arutz Sheva