Hello all!

The Bergs' "kabbalah" is to real kabbalah what a Twinkie is to real pastry, i.e. there's a vague, superficial resemblance but that's about it.  When I see this holy concept of our faith being prostituted by these money-loving charlatans, I get an inkling of how Catholics must've felt a few years back when that so-called "artist" put a crucifix in a glass of urine and called it "Piss-Christ."  Ugh!

I thought Rav Shmuely Boteach's take http://www.beliefnet.com/story/139/story_13921_1.html  was pretty good.  As for Madonna, ditz extraordinaire, try http://www.colleen-campbell.com/Misc_Columns/092204RNSMadonna.htm.  The stuff I just scraped off the inside of our oven (ah, Pesah cleaning!) knows more about genuine spirituality than she does.

 L'chaim!

Oxartes

"But leave the Wise to wrangle,
and with me The Quarrel of the Universe let be:     
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,     
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee."
Omar Khayyam, "The Rubaiyat

Hello all!

Way back before Mrs. Oxartes & I got married (1988), I went to a lecture in Jerusalem, at the local AACI (http://www.aaci.org.il) office, by a religious woman attorney, on the legal status of marriage in Israel.  She mentioned an incident in Montreal about an orthodox couple getting a divorce.  He granted his wife a civil divorce but was blackmailing her over the get.  She didn't get mad, she got even.  She organized her friends who organized their friends, etc. until around 100 women signed a statement that they wouldn't go to the mikveh until their friend received a get.  The recalcitrant husband caved in in 5 days after his car was repeatedly vandalized, after he received threatening phone calls at all hours, after he was roughed up, etc.  Nice!  Good for her.  (I'm surprised her husband lasted a whole 5 days.)

 L'chaim!

Oxartes

"But leave the Wise to wrangle,
and with me The Quarrel of the Universe let be:     
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,     
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee."
Omar Khayyam, "The Rubaiyat

Hello Michael!

The last sentence in your article is quite correct.  Well put.

 However, if you characterize Peace Now as "left-of-center", you should then characterize Kach as right-of-center.  Peace Now is an extreme left-wing movement that, like its extreme right-wing counterpart, lives in an ideological fantasyland of its own devising, totally detached from reality.   That they have no qualms about going up & down Judea and Samaria shouting Juden Raus! because they think that all of our problems will be solved thereby, marks them as no less racist than the folks in Kach who want to expel the Arabs because they think that all of our problems will be solved thereby.

 L'chaim!

Oxartes 

"But leave the Wise to wrangle,
and with me The Quarrel of the Universe let be:     
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,     
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee."
Omar Khayyam, "The Rubaiyat

Hello all!

Orthodox Judaism (at least how I understand it & as I've come to embrace it over the last 20+ years) does not denigrate or disparage the role of women. A common (and very condescending & infuriating) liberal fallacy is that because a traditional faith like orthodox Judaism believes that men & women are different and have different roles, that we necessarily believe that women are inferior; people confuse uniformity with equality & mistake the absence of the former for a lack of the latter. Quoth Montgomery Burns, "Pish-posh!" (i.e. this is nonsense).

L'chaim!

Oxartes

"But leave the Wise to wrangle,
and with me The Quarrel of the Universe let be:     
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,     
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee."
Omar Khayyam, "The Rubaiyat

Now who will be 2008's Jesse Owens?

 L'chaim!

 Oxartes 

"But leave the Wise to wrangle,
and with me The Quarrel of the Universe let be:     
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,     
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee."
Omar Khayyam, "The Rubaiyat

Spot-on commentary!

 "Here is one example that keeps popping in the book: your repeated puzzlement with the fact that Israelis constantly improvise."

When I did the IDF medic's course way back in early 1991, written (painted actually) in very big letters on the wall of our classroom was "A good medic improvises."  I was discharged in 2005 but I still quote that to myself all the time (our kids reply, "But Abba, you're out of the army!").

 I made aliyah 21+ years ago.  More than anything else, it was doing miluim for 14 years that helped me understand, more than anything, what makes my fellow Israelis tick.

Nicely written!

 Oxartes 

"But leave the Wise to wrangle,
and with me The Quarrel of the Universe let be:     
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,     
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee."
[Omar Khayyam, "The Rubaiyat

Leonidas chocolate...Mmmm...

"But leave the Wise to wrangle,
and with me The Quarrel of the Universe let be:     
And, in some corner of the Hubbub coucht,     
Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee."
[Omar Khayyam, "The Rubaiyat", Verse #45]