Libi BaMizrach

I write today on a painful subject, one that caused me great sadness and heartache eight years ago, and just when I thought that the wound had healed, the scab has been torn off and the pain is back, as raw as ever. I write about the great tragedy of someone I greatly admired and will miss very much – Rav Mordechai (Motti) Elon.  This past week he has once again been accused of acting in a sexually inappropriate way with a young student who recently came to him for counseling, and the very esteemed Rabbis who have dealt with it have let it be known that the evidence is incontrovertible, and was admitted to by the perpetrator. This is so personally painful to me on both on a national and personal level. On a national level, it is painful for two reasons.  First, it is an enormous Chilul Hashem when respected Rabbis abuse their standing and power with young people for their own personal vices.  In this case, we are dealing with a Rabbi who is extremely loving, ca...

(Note: There are many clickable links in this article, although that may be hard to see)        The mid-term election will soon be over.  And not a minute too soon.       In my sixty years on this planet and the many elections that I have observed, I have never seen such acrimony, hate, distortion, vilification of the other side, and bald-faced lying for political gain as in this season.  And that includes the 2016 election, bad as it was.  I can only hope political discourse gets better from here, as I do not see how it could get much worse.  In particular, I was irked in the past week by several blatant examples of “fake news”.  Whether or not you are a fan of President Trump, it is hard to deny that he is right that the media is extremely biased, and attempts to shape the news, rather than just report it.  Here are some of the things that disturbed me.   I will not delve deeply into any of these exampl...

(This article appeared in the Jewish Press ) ------------------ After a pleasant Shabbat in Lavon – a welcome break from the manic pre-election climate both in Israel and in the USA – I turned on my computer only to find two bad news items – one horrific, and the other sad. The horrific one, of course,  was  the terrible tragedy in Pittsburgh, resulting in Eleven dead Jews and six injured by the vicious actions of the monster Robert Bowers, may his name be blotted out.  There are no words to describe the depth of evil this represented, on a par with some of the worst terrorist atrocities here in Israel.  I could only imagine how frightening it must have been for those who were at the Shabbat morning service and their loved ones. The sad news was the identity of the person behind the wave of pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats. I had been quite convinced that we were seeing a false flag operation , as any Trump supporter with a brain larger than a cockroach w...

My sister Lisy and I have an ongoing dispute for many years; we have mutually decided that it will be resolved only after 120 when we can “review the videotape”.  She insists that, many years ago, she and I went to see West Side Story at a cinema, and that I embarrassed her by singing along loudly with the soundtrack.   I know that — after hearing my mom’s record many times as a child — I first saw the film much later life.   We are both absolutely certain that we are right, and that the other is totally mistaken.   At the same time, neither of us thinks that the other is lying; I think that she is nuts and vice versa. Clearly, memories work in strange ways.  Whether “what’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget”, or whether we choose to remember things differently than the way they really happened, it is quite common that our vivid memories, or lack of memory, may have little resemblance to what actually happened in the past. ...

This past Shabbos we encountered the very difficult topic of עיר הנדחת   (Ir Hanidachas), a wayward city of idolaters.  The entire city and its inhabitants and wealth are to be destroyed and burnt – a terrible result.  Some of our sages say that “there never was, nor will there ever be, an  עיר הנדחת , and it appears in the Torah only for some lessons that we can learn” (Sanhedrin 71a).  I have heard Rabbi Yissochor Frand שליט"א say on several occasions that when he was growing up in Seattle, they considered the Jewish community in Portland, Oregon to be a virtual  עיר הנדחת .  The community seemed so irredeemably lost to Torah-true Judaism that there was no hope that anything positive would come from it.  Surely that was meant hyperbolically; it has been proven quite wrong, as a wonderful community has developed since the days when we had the privilege of planting some seeds.  But living now as the only Shomer Shabbos family in Lavon...

People seek fame and recognition by many means -- some make positive contributions while others seek to tear others down.   Seth Farber belongs in the latter category.  His goal is to be the “enlightened” voice of Orthodoxy, and his modus operandi is to tear down the legitimacy of existing Orthodox institutions, particularly the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.  In a particularly egregious example, Farber last week caused a huge Chilul Hashem by slandering the Chief Rabbinate in the New York Times, with his essay  Fighting for Judaism in the Jewish State .  He succeeded in giving its large readership of non-Orthodox Jews and non-Jews a maliciously false and negative impression of that institution, in order to further his personal agenda. After stating “valiantly” that “I am an Orthodox Rabbi dedicating my life to breaking the Ultra-Orthodox monopoly over Jewish life in Israel”, Farber set out a laundry list of complaints and talking points that actual...

     The thousands of regular readers of this blog   might be interested to know that fortune smiled on Lonni and I twice last week, and we received some attention in the media.  I assume that it is because the Lord wills that we be a vehicle to publicize the wonderful work that Ayelet HaShachar is doing.        The part that we have been privileged to play will hopefully serve as an inspiration for many others to follow in our footsteps and come home to Eretz Yisrael, and hopefully do so in a way that will make an impact for others. Below the following letter that I wrote to Rabbinical colleagues, appear the two media pieces that were written about us: one in the Queens Jewish Link (with pictures of Lonni) and one in Mishpacha (without). You can read more about our experiences in Lavon on this blog here ,  here  and there . If anyone is interested in hearing more about this or joining Ayelet HaShachar, plea...