Brotherly Love

In Parshat Vayechi, the final portion of the Book of Genesis, we learn about the final 17 years of Jacob’s life, and we read the special blessings that Jacob bestows upon his children just before he dies. Each son receives a unique blessing, and each blessing tells us important things about the individual in question.

When it comes to blessing Joseph, Jacob does something odd: He asks Joseph to bring his sons, Menashe and Ephraim, in order to give his grandsons a special blessing. In one of the most powerful moments in the entire book of Genesis, Jacob crosses his hands in order to place his right hand on the head of Ephraim (the younger brother) and places his left hand on the head of first-born Menashe. It’s a strange scenario – normally you would expect Jacob to place his right hand (which is usually considered the stronger hand) on the head of the older brother. But Jacob deliberately crosses his hands, as a signal that Ephraim would actually be greater than his older brother. Why does he do this?

You may recall the book of Genesis is filled with stories of brothers who can’t get along. Specifically, the book is filled with stories of older brothers fighting with younger brothers about who is greater. Think about it: Cain killed Abel, Yishmael got kicked out of Abraham’s house because of Isaac, Eisav threatened to kill Jacob, Leah’s kids threw their younger brother Joseph into a pit and sold him into slavery.

Now, on the last day of Jacob’s life, it seems like we are doomed to repeat the sad story with Menashe and Ephraim. In fact, Joseph tried to correct his father and to guide Jacob’s right hand to Menashe’s head, but Jacob insisted that he knew what he was doing.

Perhaps Jacob was testing Ephraim and Menashe. On one hand, Jacob knew that the good life in Egypt was about to end and the Jews were about to become slaves. That’s a terrible situation, and the founder of the Jewish nation (Jacob) knew that the Jews would have to stick together and protect one another in order to make it through. And he also knew that after the slavery ended, the children of Ephraim and the children of Menashe would have to live in peace together as part of the Jewish people.

And so Jacob places his right hand on Ephraim’s head and indicates that yet again, the younger brother will outshine his older sibling. But this time, Menashe does not object. By remaining silent, Menashe accepts the fact that his younger brother will be greater than he is. In Hebrew, this is called a tikkun – a correction for all the fighting brothers in history.

With this realization, Jacob understands that the family is complete. There will be no more fighting between brothers, and Jewish history can now begin. The Torah can now conclude the book of Genesis on a positive note, and the stage is set not only for slavery in Egpyt, but also for the birth of Moses, the 10 plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, Mount Sinai and the Land of Israel!

Shabbat Shalom.

Woman Hurt in Beer Sheva Attack

BEER SHEVA, Israel  ―  One woman was killed and eight people were treated for shock Wednesday when Palestinians fired two Grad missile at Beer Sheva, Israel’s fourth largest city. The woman was killed when the missile hit her home; the other one hit a school in the city. The school was empty at the time.

 

 

Beer Sheva is located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Gaza Strip. There are approximately 150,000 residents of the city. Although Palestinians have been firing rockets at Israeli cities near Gaza for more than eight years, they have usually been limited to small towns and kibbutzim near the Israel-Gaza border. The attack on Beer Sheva was the farthest Palestinians have managed to strike inside Israel.

Other attacks

Palestinian groups in Gaza fired a total of 27 rockets Wednesday morning. Apart from Beer Sheva, rockets struck Ofakim, Ashkelon, Kiryat Gat, Kiryat Malachi and Ashdod and the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council. There were no injuries or property damage reported in those attacks. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Salah al-Din Brigades claimed responsibility for the attacks.

 

Israel Attacks Gaza

GAZA STRIP, Southern Israel ― The Israel Air Force launched a massive attack on Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip this afternoon to retaliate for Qassam missile attacks on Israeli cities near Gaza such as Sderot, Netivot, Ashkelon and others. Palestinians said more than 200 people were killed in the attacks, called Operation Cast Lead, and that hundreds more were injured. Many buildings were destroyed, including laboratories used to make missiles, warehouses to store weapons, police stations and more.

Gaza Under Fire

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel tried hard to avoid a military operation in Gaza, but that daily Qassam rocket attacks on Israel have made life terrible for residents of Sderot, Ashkelon and other cities near the Gaza Strip border.

“Israel did everything in its power to… enable normal life for its citizens in the communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip,” he said. ”The quiet that we offered was met with shelling.”

Olmert also said that Hamas is responsible for the current violence.

“No country would be willing to accept the current reality (of rocket attacks). It is clear that Hamas is bent on conflict.  In such a situation we had no alternative but to respond.  We do not rejoice in battle but neither will we be deterred from it,” he said.

100 bombs dropped

The operation began at 11:30 am. More than 80 warplanes and helicopters took part in the assault, dropping more than 100 bombs.  At one target in Gaza City, Palestinian police were holding a graduation ceremony for new officers.

 

After the attack began, Palestinian terrorists fired several dozen Qassam and Grad rockets at Israel. One man, 58-year-old Beber Vaknin, was killed when a missile hit his home in the city of Netivot. Other bombs landed in Sderot and Ashkelon, and gunmen shot at workers in the fields at Kibbutz Nir Am, next to the Israel-Gaza border.

 

7 years of Qassams

Since the al-Aqsa Intifada began in September, 2000 Palestinians have fired more than 10,000 Qassam Rockets at Israel. Since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June, 2007, there have been ___ rocket attacks.

 

In June, 2008 Israel and Hamas signed a tahadiya, or temporary cease-fire agreement, that was meant to last six months. There were no attacks for more than four months, but Qassams started falling again in Israel in early November after the Israeli army moved to prevent Hamas members from kidnapping an IDF soldier. Four Hamas members were killed in that operation. 329 Qassams and mortars at Israel during the tahadiya period.

 

On December 19, Hamas officially declared the truce over, and three rockets fired from northern Gaza  landed in open fields in southern Israel. Also, Palestinians tried to shoot farmers working in kibbutz fields near the Gaza border. That weekend, more than 40 rockets and mortars were fired at southern Israel from the Gaza Strip and 20 rockets landed in Israel on December 21. One house was damaged in the attacks, and a foreign worker on a kibbutz was lightly injured from shrapnel from a mortar bomb. 

IDF Soldier Arrested for Shooting at Arab House

An IDF reserve soldier was arrested Tuesday for shooting at a Palestinian home last month during a demonstration in Hebron. When the individual is not in the army he lives in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish town next door to Hebron.

Ceasefire over in Gaza

Article here about end of the ceasefire between Israel – Hamas

Parshat Vayeshev: What’s so special about Joseph’s coat?

Parshat Vayeshev is one of the most well-known sections of the Torah. It talks about Joseph’s dreams, tells the story of how Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt, and of course recounts Jacob’s special gift to his favorite son, the coat of many colors (actually, the Torah never says it was a coat, nor that it had many colors. It was actually nothing more than a striped shirt!)

 

It’s a terrific story. But have you ever wondered just why Jacob decied to give Joseph a special shirt? After all, Jacob was a rich man. If he’d wanted to give Joseph a special gift, why not gold or silver? How about some livestock? Either of those things would have been a very valuable gift in ancient times, much better than a shirt.

 

And how about another question: Why did Jacob give him a special present at all? Didn’t he realize that “playing favorites” by favoring one son over all the others would cause jealousy and fights?

 

I think that the shirt is a metaphor for the Jewish People. The stripes seem to symbolize the 12 tribes, and the fact that they are all together on one shirt is a sign that eventually, the 12 sons of Jacob would stop fighting and learn to live together. That is why he didn’t give his son valuable jewelry or cattle as a gift.

 

In giving Joseph a striped shirt, Jacob seems to be telling Joseph that he will be responsible for uniting (uniting means “bringing together”) the family (if you’ve read the first part of Genesis, you know that Abraham and Isaac’s family is pretty messed up!). That means Joseph has to find it in his heart to forgive the brothers for selling him and work to make sure that Jacob’s 12 children could eventually start acting like brothers.

 

As anyone who’s got younger siblings can attest, that is sometimes the hardest thing in the world to achieve.

No Plans to Bring Yemenite Jews to Israel

JERUSALEM ― Israel will not try to rescue a group of  280 Jews from Yemen despite a recent wave of attacks on the local population, a Jewish Agency spokesman said Thursday.

 

Michael Jankelowitz, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency, told SababaNews that Yemenite Jews are free to immigrate to Israel if they want to, and added that Yemenite authorities are trying to protect Jews.

 

“No one is forcing Jews to remain in Yemen,” he said. “Even though most members of the community are religiously observant (i.e. Orthodox – editor), many view Yemen as their motherland and they really do not want to leave. They are loyal Yemenite citizens.”

 

Moshe Nahari, a leader of the tiny Jewish community in the town of Raidah, was shot and killed on December 11 in the town’s outdoor market. Eyewitnesses said the gunman shouted, “Jew, you must accept Islam” before shooting Nahari. Since then, other Jewish people in Riadah have been attacked and Jewish leaders have asked the Yemenite government for protection. There are also reports that the government is planning to move the community from Raidah to Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, where it would be easier for police to protect them.

 

Jews have lived in Yemen for more than 2,700 years, making it one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Some people believe that the first Jews to settle in Yemen moved their from the Land of Israel in 629 BCE, when the prophet Jeremiah predicted that that the Temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed.

 

Relations with non-Jewish Yemenites have often been good, and over the years many Jews served in the government, were respected artisans and were considered to be full-fledged Yemenites. But relations with Moslems have often been difficult since Moslems conquered Yemen in the year 631. When Moslems have ruled Yemen, Jews were often called dhimmis, or second-class citizens, and forced to pay special taxes for refusing to convert to Islam.

 

Today, the 400 Jews who live in Yemen are full-fledged citizens of the country, and the government of Yemen is supportive of the Jewish community even though the majority of Yemenites are Moslem.

Seven Qassams Rock Southern Israel

Palestinian terrorists fired seven Qassam into Israel from the Gaza Strip Wednesday. No injuries or property damage were reported as a result of the attacks.

 

The rockets hit the southern tip of the city of Ashkelon. In recent days terrorists have fired dozens (one dozen = 12) of Qassams at Israeli cities near the Gaza border, such as Sderot.

Qassam rocket recovered from southern town of Sderot

 

Palestinian groups in Gaza have attacked Israel with rockets thousands of times since the start of the al-Aqsa Intifiada in September, 2000.Terrorist groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and others build their bombs in makeshift laboratories with explosive material smuggled into Gaza via tunnels leading from Egypt. Many of these laboratories are located in former Jewish communities that were destroyed when Israel withdrew from the region in August, 2005.

 

The current round of attacks marked the end of a six-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. During the first half of 2008 terrorists attacked Israeli cities almost every day, and the Israel Defense Force responded by closing border crossings in and out of the Gaza Strip and attacking homes and laboratories used to make or fire rockets. In June, Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary truce (Hamas is the governing party in Gaza and is responsible for the Palestinian Authority in that region. Fatah, headed by Abu Mazen, controls the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank).

 

Officially, the ceasefire ended on Friday, December12. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told reporters last week that Israel would like to renew the truce, but it is still unclear whether Hamas will agree. Some Hamas leaders, like Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, have said they would like to renew the ceasefire. Others, like foreign spokesman Khaled Mashaal, say the organization wants to resume its war with Israel.

Modern History: Kibbutz Sde Boker

The drive south from Be’er Sheva towards Sde Boker, the desert kibbutz where David Ben Gurion, one of Israel’s founding fathers retired after serving as the country’s first prime minister, is unique. Unlike many cities around the world in which tall buildings and city buses slowly disappear and give way to wilderness, leaving Be’er Sheva happens suddenly. One second you are in the center of town, the next you are in the middle of a rolling desert. One minute the road is surrounded by concrete and taxi cabs; a minute later it is sand and sky for as far as the eye can see.

 

Ben Gurion loved the Negev, and he nouraged Israelis to expand the then-young country by moving away from the Tel Aviv metropolis. Although he was active in building the Tel Aviv suburbs of Petach Tikva and Rishon LeZion, as well as several agricultural settlements near the Sea of Galilee, Ben Gurion believed the future of the country lie in the south. He retired from politics in 1953 to move to Kibbutz Sde Boker and lived there until his death in 1973.

 

Today, Ben Gurion’s desert home is open to the public. The grounds have been preserved as they were when the former prime minister lived there, and it is remarkably simple. The television is still in front of a plain-looking sofa (this is what the first TVs looked like!), the photographs on the wall feature great leaders such as U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Indian human rights leader Mohandas K. Ghandi, and the small dining table looks like the Ben Gurions are planning to host a dinner party this evening.

 

Just as the Old Man left it: Ben Gurion's library

By far, the most impressive room in the house is the library, a collection of hundreds, if not thousands, of books in English, German, French and of course Hebrew. Like the living room and kitchen, Ben Gurion’s desk has been left as it was when the room was a center for modern Jewish and Israeli discussion and debate, and the owner’s glases, letter opener (with engraved menorah symbol) and address book are in place.

 

Ben Gurion often said that he felt most at home surrounded by books, and he had wide range of interests. The library includes several encyclopedia, including the original Encyclopedia Judaica, published shortly before Ben Gurion died, and the Encyclopedia of Islam. Other books include Hebrew, English and French classic literature, traditional Jewish texts, law books and much more.

 

Next door to Ben Gurion’s home, the Ben Gurion Heritage Institute at Sde Boker has created a gallery dedicated to the former leader, with hundreds of photographs, quotations, artifacts and more, from all periods of his life. Special emphasis is placed on Ben Gurion’s love for his wife, Paula, and the exhibit features several letters written between the couple as the former traveled the world serving as a political leader, and the latter stayed home raising the couple’s three children. 

 

For children, the museum features a “find-it” game in which participants are asked to identify photographs from the permanent exhibit and match them with the relevant quotations. Outside, there are grassy areas that are appropriate for a family picnic or a casual game of Frisbee, with tall trees to provide shade from the strong desert sun. The grounds are very clean and feature several family games.

 

Other attractions in the area include the magnificent Nachal Zin, a dry riverbed located next door to the kibbutz that is one of the Negev’s premier hiking and camping destinations. There is a bicycle rental agency on the grounds of the kibbutz, and there are two-or-three days worth of trails to explore on foot or on bike in the immediate area. As always, remember to bring enough food and water when exploring in the desert.

 

Adjacent to the museum there is a small gift and snack shop, featuring crafts by local artisans and wine from the kibbutz winery, as well. Near the parking lot there is another shop with a traditional gift shop, including books by and about Ben Gurion, Negev region tour books, t-shirts, souvenirs and more. Note that there is no restaurant on site, and Be’er Sheva is a 45-minute drive away, so it pays to pack a lunch to enjoy in the natural surroundings.

 

Ben Gurion’s Desrt Home at Kibbutz Sde Boker is located near the junction of Highway 40 and Route 204, 50 kilometers south of Be’er Sheva. Information available in Hebrew, English, Russian,  all European languages and several Asian languages. Tickets are NIS 10 for adults, NIS 7 for children/students/senior citizens/handicapped.

 

Opening hours are 8:30 am – 4  pm Sunday to Thursday, 8:30 – 2 pm Friday and holiday eves, and 8:30 – 3 pm on Saturdays and holidays. Last admission 30 minutes before closing.

 

For more information please contact Kibbutz Sde Boker, (08) 656-0469 or via email at palmach@bgu.ac.il. Internet information is available at www.bgh.org.il

 

 

Likud Party Goes to the Polls

JERUSALEM – The Likud Party will hold primary elections on Monday, December 8 to choose the party’s candidates for the national elections, scheduled for February 10.

Likud Party Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu

 

The lead-up to the primaries was marked by a battle between party chairman Binyamin Netanyahu and party activist Moshe Feiglin. During the 1990s, Feiglin was the leader of a protest group called Zo Artzenu and was arrested several times for protesting against the Oslo Accords and former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 2005 he was very critical of the Likud government for carrying out the Unilateral Disengagement from Gaza, and he has also criticized Netanyahu for pulling out of parts of Hebron during his first tenure as prime minister from 1996-1999. Netanyahu served as finance minister until three weeks before the pullout from Gaza.  

 

Today, Feiglin heads a group of Likud members called Jewish Leadership, a faction dedicated to preventing more Israeli withdrawals from Judea and Samaria and to using the Torah to influence Israeli policies in politics, economics, education and other areas. But many Israelis also believe that Feiglin is anti-Arab, and while all Israelis want security, very few would vote for the Likud if they believed an extremist candidate was on the party’s election list.

 

In an effort to prevent Moshe Feiglin from being elected during the party primaries, the Likud elections committee changed the rules for the primary election. In the past, Likud members could vote for 12 members to represent the party in national elections; this time, the ballot was expanded so voters could choose 15 members. This gave candidates not aligned with Feiglin a better chance of being elected and was designed to push the Feiglin camp off the Likud list for the national elections.

 

Current opinion polls predict the Likud will win 37 Knesset seats in the election if Moshe Feiglin is not part of the election list, over 25 for the Kadima Party and just eight for the Labor Party. If Feiglin is part of the Likud slate, polls predict the party would win about 30 seats.