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daloy-politsey · 3 years ago

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On my first date with Yehoram, I offered him a sip of my prosecco at the hip Tel Aviv bar I had brought him to. He tensed, paused and quietly replied, “I’m not sure if I can. I don’t know if it’s kosher.” I immediately recognized his confession for what it was: a coming-out. I told him that it’s fine, that we can ask the waitress if the wine has a certification, that I grew up in an observant family too. He finally breathed.

I already knew that Yehoram is female-to-male transgender. In fact, it was the only thing written on his dating profile. Over the course of our year-long relationship, and then our seamless transition into friendship late last year, he explained to me that the queer community will often accept that he is trans but not that he is religious. But the same is not always necessarily true of the religious community – and particularly of his family.

There are many preconceptions about his family. The matriarch Mazal, 74, and patriarch Yehiel, 78, were both born in Sana’a, Yemen, and immigrated to the newly-declared State of Israel in early childhood. (Haaretz is honoring their request not to publish the family name.) They are visibly Haredi: Mazal wears long skirts and tucks her hair into modest black caps; Yehiel trims his salt-and-pepper beard, and wears a uniform of crisp dress shirts, black pants and a black velvet kippa.

They speak with heavy Yemenite accents – which have been at least partially adopted by their seven children – and their speech is seasoned with religious aphorisms and allusions. People are surprised to learn that Yehoram, 32, is accepted and supported by his parents, to a degree that is rare even in the secular homes of Tel Aviv.

At their kitchen table in a town near Rehovot, central Israel, Mazal has set out water, juice and a homemade cake. Yehiel has set down a voice recorder of his own, to make sure he isn’t misrepresented. They have a story to tell about being the parents of a trans son, and they have decided that I am allowed to tell it.

Before we begin the interview, both are apprehensive. After much deliberation, they decide that I can publish their names but not their images. Yehiel is a respected figure in religious circles: he serves as his synagogue’s main cantor on the High Holy Days, is a mezuzah scribe and kashrut supervisor for the Chief Rabbinate. He spends his free time poring over religious texts, with Yehoram often alongside him. His son no longer attends the local synagogue in which his father plays so large a role; the congregation knew him before his transition, and it could hurt his family’s reputation.

If someone goes to the rabbi with this article in hand and tells Yehiel that he’s out of the fold, “at our age, there’s no fight left. There’s nothing you can do,” he says. “It would destroy me.” When he thinks I cannot hear him, he says that he suspects that one of his contracts as a kashrut supervisor was not renewed for this exact reason – because of his unconventional family.

But if getting his story out shows religious parents that they can embrace their own LGBTQ children, he wants it published. “I want to help,” he says.

Mazal chimes in. “Both of us do. You hear these stories about parents throwing their children out ... I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how you throw out your child.”

She recounts going to the shivah of a friend of Yehoram’s – the transgender queer activist DanVeg, who took her own life in 2016. “I saw them all in the living room, with their heads on each other’s shoulders. I started to cry. I wanted to hug them all, to go one by one. And they came to me; they saw the look in my eye. There was a man who had become a woman, who came to hug me. And a young girl, and more. I couldn’t take it,” she says, wiping away tears that are coming faster and faster. “More and more of them told us that they’re alone, abandoned by their parents. How can you throw out your child? The child of a human being!”

I get up to hug her, and she cries into my back: “Why? Why would you throw your child out of your house? Why?”

They say they never suspected that Yehoram was different before he came out to them, if not unconventionally, as queer at the age of 18, some 14 years ago.

He did not employ the usual lexicon: “I told them, this is how I am – I’m wearing pants from now on and I’m not interested in men,” he recounts. In Yehoram’s absence, Yehiel recalls it as well. Yehoram sat his parents down in the living room and said his piece, and then asked his parents for a response.

“We got up immediately, as if it were coordinated,” Yehiel says. “We hugged [him] from both directions … and we told [him], ‘You have nothing to be afraid of, no need to worry. You’re our daughter, it doesn’t matter what you do.’” Yehoram then opened his backpack to show a couple days’ clothes inside. “If you didn’t accept me, I would have killed myself,” he told his parents.

From there, they worked to make sure that their son wouldn’t, for one moment, forget that he is loved and cared for. They also made sure that he could live a normal life. “It was important that he be self-sufficient, have a respectable career, be able to build a life without us,” Yehiel explains. “Every day, I’m afraid that he won’t be here. I think about how he can build his life so he’s not dependent on anyone else.”

Mazal and Yehiel tend to refer to Yehoram with female pronouns when he isn’t in the room, and occasionally slip into them when he is. To her, Mazal says, he will always be their daughter. “It’s hard for me,” Yehiel concurs. “[He] should be patient.”

Mazal calls him by his chosen name – an anagram of his birth name – to make him happy. “And to connect with [him] – what can you do? We love [him] either way. [He’s] our daughter.”

There have been difficulties in accepting him along the way, she concedes. But like many parents of LGBTQ children, they are mainly rooted in concerns that he will be able to live a safe, fulfilling life.

No one should mistake their acceptance for liberalism – they repeatedly note that the Pride Parades, with their scanty clothes and glitter, are unsightly. “The left brings it in,” Mazal says. “Non-Jews from abroad, with all their tattoos and whatnot.” However, their embrace of their transgender son and the many queer people who have passed through their doors does not come in spite of their firm religious beliefs, but is the direct result of them.

Yehiel, a lifelong religious scholar, has poured over sources biblical, talmudic, rabbinic and kabbalistic. The kabbalistic concept of the soul provides a simple explanation for the transgender phenomenon, he believes.

“We have the knowledge that Jewish souls can be reincarnated into anything – into non-Jewish families, into animals, even into food,” Yehiel explains. “We were taught that the soul of a man can be reincarnated into a woman, in order to remedy something he had done in a past life.”

When Mazal was pregnant with Yehoram, she had already given birth to five daughters and was hoping for a son. The couple went to a respected rabbi, who told them to buy a bottle of wine for the circumcision ceremony and to come see him 40 days into the pregnancy. Yehiel says that when the time came, it was hard to get hold of the rabbi to schedule an appointment, and they were only able to see him eight months in. The rabbi gave them the blessing regardless.

“The body was already formed female,” Yehiel says, but the prayers had worked: “The soul was male.”

And there is scripture to back up the existence of LGBTQ people within Judaism. “You’re not different, you’re not strange,” Yehiel says. “This [phenomenon] has always existed. It’s in the Torah, and it’s in the mystical sources.” Mazal adds: “It’s a shame that we don’t lay this out these days, to have everything written up and organized to say that it’s all there in scripture.”

At 26, Yehoram told his parents he was transitioning. He underwent top surgery – a double mastectomy – without informing them. “On the one hand, it hurt us,” Yehiel admits. “For us, it meant that’s it – it’s sealed. If he’d told us in advance, we would have told him to wait. Maybe the situation would change.”

But what’s done is done, Mazal says. “What hurt me is that [he] underwent the surgery and I wasn’t there. That ate at me.”

Both loudly agree that the important thing is that he is happy and healthy. “We hope just for success – and thank God there are many successes, so everything is alright,” she says. “I’m just waiting for children,” she laughs.

Yehoram, who has taken a seat next to her, smirks. Mazal jokes about him coming home pregnant one day. He’s slightly irked, but jokes along. A couple of years ago, he froze his eggs through Ichilov Hospital’s fertility clinic for transgender men, and hopes to one day become a father, no matter how he has to do it. His parents strongly supported the move. They have 31 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Yehoram asks a question of his own: Whether his parents want to talk about the time they took him to an esteemed rabbi in Tel Aviv, after he came out at 18.

“After he told us everything, we consulted with a rabbi,” Yehiel relays. “I remember that he got angry and yelled at him. I didn’t like that. He hurt him, and I couldn’t stay any longer, so we left.”

“The rabbi told me that I had lapsed, deteriorated in my spirituality,” Yehoram explains. It’s clear that he remembers it vividly. “That I had fallen.”

After that, the rabbi told him to leave the room, and for his parents to stay. “I heard shouting, and then you left the room,” he says to his parents. “You didn’t say anything, I didn’t say anything. We were quiet all the way home.”

No one discussed the incident for days after, and they barely spoke at all. After three days, Yehoram says, he asked his mother what had happened after the rabbi told him to leave the room.

“I didn’t know what happened, I assumed the worst. You told me that [Dad] got very angry and told [the rabbi], ‘How dare you hurt and belittle a Jewish soul?’ You said you had to give him however much money, and that you just threw a small bill onto the table and left the room,” Yehoram tells his mother. “It really surprised me. I thought you were on his side, and then I suddenly heard that you were on mine.”

When he is with us in the room, Yehoram sometimes seems agitated by his parents’ insistence that their acceptance has always been complete. He tries to direct them toward other instances, other rabbis they don’t or won’t recall. It is often difficult for parents to acknowledge the pain or discomfort that their actions caused their children, even if they were accidental. Mazal brings out a picture from Yehoram’s bat mitzvah, of them embracing the young girl he was. They look almost exactly the same, 20 years later, beaming. Young Yehoram, in a long-sleeved, high-necked dress, is smiling, but the smile does not reach his eyes.

Elisha Alexander, co-CEO and founder of the transgender advocacy and information organization Ma’avarim, says that even though Yehiel and Mazal’s acceptance of their son may seem unique, he would like to think it’s more common than we assume.

“There are religious and even ultra-Orthodox people who accept their trans family members, but it’s usually in secret. The main problem in these communities is the leadership,” he says.

But if more of them realized that embracing their children was a matter of pikuach nefesh – the Jewish concept that saving a life supersedes most religious commandments and norms – they would be more inclined to find a halakhic solution to integrating transgender people into these communities.

There is also a misconception that acceptance is a binary choice: That any parent who does not kick their transgender child out of the house or disown them has, by default, accepted them. “This could not be further from the truth,” Alexander says. “Accepting your child means accepting every aspect inherent to them, including their gender identity, pronouns and so on.”

When parents refuse to do so, their child may seek acceptance elsewhere. He adds that studies show that acceptance within the family drastically reduces the suicide rate among transgender people.

Knowing this, Yehiel says that any parent in his position must continue loving and supporting their child. “This child can fall,” he says. He does not mention it, but he is aware of the stories and statistics: trans youth who find themselves on the street face high rates of abuse and exploitation. Thirty to 50 percent of transgender teens report suicidal thoughts and behaviors – a rate three times higher than for teens overall. But that figure falls to 4 percent when families accept and embrace them, says Sarit Ben Shimol, manager of the Lioness Alliance for families and transgender children and teenagers.

Yehiel adds that it is the duty of parents to give children the support they need to thrive. “As a parent, it is your responsibility to tell your child: You are my child and you are my life. My life depends on you. Watch over me so that I can watch over you,” he says.

As we get up from our seats, Yehiel looks at me for a moment and asks, “If it’s not too personal – since we already opened up the topic – what is your relationship like with your parents?”

I tell them that I talk to my parents, and especially my mother, almost every day. That it was difficult for them to come to terms with my sexual orientation as well, and that sometimes I have an inkling that it still is, even if they won’t say it outright. But I try to be patient.

“Good,” Mazal says. “It’s important to be patient – they’re learning too.” She embraces me again, and Yehiel rests a hand on my shoulder. They invite me to come again, whenever I like. “After all, you’re like our daughter, too.”

#lgbt jews #transgender #judaism #jumblr #transphobia cw

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ruminativerabbi · 3 years ago

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What To Read This Fall

As I embark on this, my seventeenth year of writing weekly on matters close to my heart (and, I hope, also to yours), I’d like to talk about three books I’ve read over the holiday season that affected me in different ways.

The first is David Baddiel’s Jews Don’t Count, a remarkable volume published earlier this year by TLS Books in London. The author, whose name was unknown to me before reading the book, is apparently a well-known British comedian. (He was actually born in Troy, New York, in 1964, but has basically lived his entire life in the U.K.) But this book is not at all funny. Just the opposite, actually: it is 123 pages of very angry prose directed at a world that simply refuses to take anti-Semitism seriously as a form of pernicious racism. Mostly, his fire is aimed at progressives and liberals. But although there is more than enough ammunition left over for him also to take aim at right-of-center groups and conservatives, he’s particularly enraged at people on the left for whom the slightly hint of racism or bigotry is intolerable, yet who seem more than able to tolerate even overtly-stated, ham-fisted anti-Semitic remarks without reacting even slightly negatively, let alone with real revulsion or even feigned outrage.

Even though the book itself is really just an extended (a very extended) essay on the topic, the author has more than enough ammunition at the ready to buttress his point. Over and over he cites instances of public figures, including A-list celebrities, making overt or allusive anti-Semitic comments without facing any sort of public censure, let alone being “cancelled” in the way people who make openly disparaging remarks about other minority groups become personae non gratae overnight and are, at least in some cases, never heard from again. Some of the people he quotes will be familiar to American readers, but others will not be. Nonetheless, his analysis of the reason the comments those personalities are cited as having made are more than tolerated by the liberal public—for the most part because speaking negatively about Jewish people, Jewishness, or Judaism is somehow legitimized with reference to some specific ethnos-wide character trait that people can legitimately use as a rational basis for hate—will be familiar to any Jewish reader who lives out there in the world, who reads a daily newspaper, or who spends time wandering around in the blogosphere.

The author draws an interesting portrait of himself. He declares himself not to be a Zionist, which I take to mean that he has neither any specific interest in the fate of the State of Israel or sense of a personal stake in its wellbeing. So that puts him outside the camp in which an overwhelming majority of Jewish people I know live. And the author also self-defines as an atheist with no specific allegiance to Jewish ritual or belief, thus putting him even further outside the ranks of the kind of Jewish people who occupy the world I personally inhabit. In many ways, his prose made me think of him as the latter-day version of those German Jews in the 1930s who were so busy being German that they were amazed that the Nazis considered them to be part of the Jewish problem at all. (There’s a certain irony in that thought too, given that Baddiel’s grandparents fled Nazi Germany.) Perhaps that lack of connection to traditional Jewish values or beliefs and his disconnection from Israel is what fuels his rage—he (and so many like him) see themselves as having done nothing to offend, as holding no beliefs that set them apart from the British mainstream, as being as properly ill at ease regarding Israel’s vigorous efforts to defend itself—so how dare the world refuse to censure, or let alone to cancel, people who are overtly anti-Semitic in the way those very same people would never dream of tolerating homophobic or anti-Black racist comments!

I recommend the book strongly, despite all of the above comments. It is a short read, but a forceful, dynamic statement that readers on this side of the Atlantic will have no trouble translating into local terms. It is upsetting, and in a dozen different ways. But that only makes it more, not less, important and worth your time to find and read.

The second book I’d like to write about today is Dara Horn’s People Love Dead Jews, published this summer by W.W. Norton. The author, born in New Jersey in 1977, has taught at Sara Lawrence and at CUNY. Some of my readers will know her work from essays published in The Atlantic and the New York Times. And she has written five novels, mostly recently A Guide for the Perplexed in 2013 and Eternal Life in 2018. People Love Dead Jews is her first book-length work of non-fiction.

The book itself, about 100 pages longer than Baddiel’s, is also about anti-Semitism, but is written in an entirely different key—one given away subtly by the book’s subtitle, Reports from a Haunted Present. And, indeed, the book’s twelve chapters, while all discrete essays that can be read separately and without reference to each other, are also all rooted in the same soil: the author’s slow, eventual understanding and coming to terms with the fact that most of the way the world thinks about Jews—and, even more to the point, the way Jews think about the way the world thinks about Jews—are floating along somewhere between dishonest and disingenuous. Her opening chapter, for example, about Anne Frank points out that the great success of her diary rests to a great extent on the endlessly cited passage in which Anne, still hiding in the Achterhuis and hoping to live to adulthood in a liberated Holland, writes that she still believes, “in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” She surely changed her mind when she got first to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen, where she and her sister Margot died in the spring of 1945. But that detail, unpalatable to those who wish to see Anne not as a murdered Jewish child but as an apostle of universalist optimism, is generally ignored. And so, to address that issue specifically, Horn provides an obituary for an imaginary Anne who survived the camps and lived into her 90s, and who definitely did not end up thinking that all people, presumably including the guards at Auschwitz, are truly good at heart. It’s that kind of writing that will grab readers from the very beginning and keep them engaged to the end.

The three chapters devoted to the rising level of anti-Semitism in the United States should be required reading for all Americans, but particularly for Jewish Americans still living in their grandparents’ fantasy world regarding the impossibility of America ever engendering its own violent version of “real” anti-Semitism, the kind that moves quickly past quotas and sneers to actual violence, including the lethal kind that cost those poor people in Pittsburgh their lives one Shabbat morning in 2018. Yes, the book is uneven. The admittedly fascinating chapter about her trip to Harbin, China, is at least twice as long as it needed to be. The chapter about the recent Auschwitz exhibition at the Museum of Jewish Heritage is unfocused, the author’s point (at least to me) unclear. The chapter about The Merchant of Venice will leave most readers without university degrees in Shakespeare at least slightly confused. But the book itself is wonderful—thoughtful, intelligent, challenging, and stimulating. I recommend it to all without hesitation.

And the third book I want to recommend for my readers’ reading pleasure this fall is Noam Zion’s Sanctified Sex: The Two-Thousand-Year Jewish Debate on Marital Intimacy, published earlier this year by the Jewish Publication Society in Philadelphia. The other two books were short, perhaps even too short, but no one will say that about Zion’s book, which weighs in at almost 550 pages. But potential readers who allow themselves to be put off by the book’s size would be making a huge error of judgment—the book is long and complicated because its subject is complicated and the sources he cites, often at length, are many and complex. But the book itself is a true tour-de-force and deserves to be considered in that context.

Most readers, used to thinking of sex as something antithetical (or at least unrelated) to religious philosophy, will be amazed to learn how seriously rabbis writing over the last two millennia have taken the very same topics that engage moderns when the talk turns to intimate matters: the limits and boundaries of marital fidelity, the relationship of fantasy to reality in the healthy sexual context, the possibility of legitimate sexual liaisons outside of marriage, the relationship of homosexuality to heterosexuality (and, by extension, of gay people to straight people with respect to the legitimacy of their coupling), the precise nature of the obligation spouses bear to provide sexual satisfaction to each other, and the relationship of reproductive possibility to ongoing sexual activity in the absence of such possibility.

The book is organized chronologically with respect to the sources the author cites, but most readers will be far more impressed by the breadth and depth of the sources than by their relationship to each other chronologically. Many of the authors cited, particularly from the Haredi world, will be unknown to almost all readers. Only a tiny percentage of them wrote in any language other than Hebrew or Yiddish. An even smaller percentage have had their books or essays translated into other languages. As a result, reading Zion’s book is something like being ushered into an art gallery featuring works of great creativity and depth by painters you’re slightly amazed never to have heard of. (I include myself in that category, by the way: almost all the books, essays, and pamphlets cited in the 150-odd pages on Haredi authors were unknown to me.) But the breadth and depth of Noam Zion’s reading of these books, and his willingness—given the riven nature of the Jewish world, his truly remarkable willingness—to consider these men (all of them are men) and their writings in light of writing on the topic by my own colleagues in the Rabbinical Assembly, by authors affiliated with various Reform Jewish institutions, and (even more impressively) with feminist authors of various sorts, that is truly what makes of this book something that my own readers should think twice about not reading.

Noam Zion is a friend. His home in Jerusalem is just a few blocks from our apartment. His wife taught the Lamaze course Joan and I took when we were anticipating the birth of our first child. I mention all that merely to be fully transparent, but also so that I can also say that I would recommend his book this highly even if he and I were not acquainted personally. It is a magisterial work on a complex topic that all readers interested in Jewish thought and its relationship to practice will find fascinating.

And those are the three books I would like to recommend to you all as autumn reading you’ll enjoy and find stimulating and very interesting.

#Noam Zion #Dara Horn #David Baddiel #anti-Semitism

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cfijerusalem · 4 years ago

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THE HEARTBEAT OF EARTH

“The earth is the Lord’s and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it”. (Psalm 24:1)

Our Hebrew word this month is “Geulah.” In Hebrew it literally means “redemption.” We are living in a time of redemption for Israel and the whole world, i.e. “the last days”. In Jerusalem, there is a neighborhood where Christian Friends of Israel had their very first offices. It is near the center of Jerusalem and populated by mainly Haredi Jewish families.

Rabbi Stern explains that the word pidyon also refers to redemption on a case-by-case basis (i.e. the redemption of the individual), while geulah refers to mass redemption (i.e. redemption of the public, or nation of Israel at large). It is a time of restitution, reclamation, reparation and retrieval according to the sages.

All around us, all we have to do is take a look at nature and everything our Wonderful Creator God made by His Own Hands. Anyone who cannot see God in nature, in the way it was so beautifully designed, is sightless and very deceived. To even “think” that this world might have been created by a “big bang” is not even intelligent.

I came across a very informative, and inspirational article from a science related magazine Discover, by Anna Funk. The headlines say: “The Earth Is Pulsating Every 26 seconds, and Seismologists Don’t Agree Why.” Just like clockwork, seismometers across multiple continents have detected a mysterious “pulse” since the early 1960s. Every 26 seconds a little “blip” is seen on their detectors. No one can agree what it is; however, the researcher, Jack Oliver, working at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory on tectonic plates, did not have the digital seismometers that we have today. Then one day in 2005, another graduate student was working on seismic data at his lab at the University of Colorado, and discovered the sound was located in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western coast of Africa. Still no real answers. Fast forward another six years, when another graduate student, Dou Wiens, in a lab at Washington University narrowed down the source of the pulse even more, to the Gulf of Guinea called the Bight of Bonny. According to Discover magazine, it still remains a mystery. It was at the same time I saw this article that I found another article from Rabbi Lazer Brody, and American-Born Hasidic rabbi who teaches on his Lazer Beams blog about the 26-second pulse of earth. It inspires him. “There are so many secrets, places where we can discover HaShem (God, literally the name)” Brody told Israel 365 News. “I focus on simple faith, and science is just a different part of that.” His sentiments are echoed by other rabbis. “It is very consoling,” Rabbi Shlomo Katz of Efrat, Israel, said “...in these last stages before the geulah (final redemption), it is clearly important to be in tune, even literally, with the planet...to see how the entire world fits into God’s plan...the 26-second duration of the microseismic pulse is explained by the gematria (Hebrew Numberology) of God’s name (Y-H-V-H), spelled out by the Hebrew letters equals 26… In English, the name of God has been transliterated as YHVH, with the meaning often rendered as “I AM” which carries the value of 26 also. God could have made the world in an infinite number of ways but here we see that every detail is for His glory”, he added. Rabbi Shaul Judelman, former director of the Ecology Beit Midrash, says the Bible itself actually refers to what he called, “the earth dancing for the Name.” How wonderful to think that “maybe” this is a heartbeat of earth dancing for Him. It is something to think about. True treasures are found in the Words of the Everliving God. They never grow old. We only need to search for them. As the scientists continue to search for the “blip” that sounds like a heartbeat for earth, let us also search for God in new ways of being with Him, concentrating on Him, and the width, breadth and height of His Great Love for His World and for all of us. May “Geulah” come soon and may the King of all Kings come to usher it in. We wait for Him.

Let Us Enter the Throne Room of His Grace

The Duty of a Watchman is to stand on the wall of prayer and look for approaching dangers and (for us) to pray.

Intercede that hearts everywhere, especially in Israel, will become humble before a Mighty God, for God’s Hand is outstretched at all times for all who come to Him in honest prayer. “The leaders of Israel and the king humbled themselves and said, “The LORD is just” (2 Chronicles 12:6).

Thank God that the Israeli IDF has recently discovered a very large underground tunnel – one of the largest ever found which would have perhaps caused many casualties. Thank God that the Bible says that “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight” (Hebrews 4:13). We thank Him who led the soldiers to discover this hideout and that it was laid bare for all to see and prevented many deaths of innocent people in Israel.

Fervently pray for a unity government in Israel as Israeli possible elections come to pass. May the leaders of Israel seek God for the leader God has prepared for the people at this time. “Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to humble himself?” (Isaiah 58:5).

Praise His Name that Israel will be protected by the Almighty as He is Our Defender. “Yes, your protection comes from the LORD, and he, the Holy One of Israel, has given us our king” (Psalm 89:18).

Beseech His Face for Israel’s Prime Minister as he is under much pressure and attacks even upon his life. “Whoever is pregnant with evil conceives trouble and gives birth to disillusionment” (Psalm 7:14). “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1).

Pray for a Godly leader in Israel to arise, one that has the fear of the Lord in his heart. Naftali Bennett and Yossi Cohen are candidates for the Prime Minister’s successor. It is an historic time for the people of Israel as they experience a common crisis with the rest of the world. They are working with their brothers in the Diaspora and praying that they will support one another through many personal difficulties. As one solidarity campaign put it: “Make us look up and look each other in the eyes. Only this way can we get out of this crisis in peace and even become stronger” (Naftalie Bennett). “A Song of degrees. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help” (Psalm 121:1).

Read Together and Proclaim that Israel leaders and religious leaders will begin to rely only on the Lord and not on other nations. “And the Israelites were subdued on that occasion, and the people of Judah were victorious because they relied on the LORD, the God of their ancestors” (2 Chronicles 13:18).

Whatever God has in store for the world in the coming days, let us bind together in faith and unity on doing what HE says to do, and not man. May we walk in the fear of the Lord and continue to love the Nation of Israel and her people and to proclaim all the promises God has for her and for those who stand with her. God bless you all and thank you for your prayers for Israel, for the ministry of Christian Friends of Israel around the world and for us personally. You are of great importance to us.

In His Service Together,

Sharon Sanders

Christian Friends of Israel - Jerusalem

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nataliesnews · 4 years ago

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Why demonstrations, rain and the serum 21.10.2020

Just to make things clear. The main object of the protestors at Balfour is to force Netanyahu to resign. The protest against the occupation is rather muted although there are those who carry signs against the occupation. But that is in the hearts of many of us . But there are also people who have never come out before to demonstrations and would not come out if the occupation was emphasized . There are now Likudnikiem….Netanyahu’s friends…..who are coming out for economic reasons as they have lost their jobs or their businesses have folded. So it is a very mixed bunch. People say but those who come after Netanyahu will be worse. I agree. But maybe it will do something about the corruption. What is sure is that the violence against the protestors is strengthening and the police do practically nothing about it. One thing which to me seems to project their goals and the orders they are given……yesterday at Nofim at our demonstration we saw two police photographing us from the other side of the street. We are such a threat…about 30 old people …people who have helped to build the state which pays for the Balfour Bunch and everything they have…..people whose children and grandchildren serve in the army….we have to be photographed. A man alone in the forest practicing his music…and he has a permit for this by the way….given a fine for not being in his own area and not wearing a mask…even though there is not a living soul near him. Yes I am becoming paranoid but I have a good reason to be so.

One man was arrested…..I am not sure for what…and taken away in a unsigned police car rented from Eldan. I guess he was freed but why are police cars now unmarked? Argentine?

Last night the same piece of filth came out with his loudspeaker and with all the little religious kids who play at the monster around him and their mothers listening happily to his filth. He has now come up with a new insult. “Go home and change your diapers” and the children chant after him. Tomorrow I want to go up to where he stands and speak to their mothers. To ask them if that is what they want their children to learn. And not to be surprised if one day the children use the same chant to their grandparents or to them when they are old. To complain to the police. If they do practically nothing when there is physical violence they will act to verbal abuse? As one person said about this man, “He may be religious but he does not have God”

He shouts “Go to Gaza” so one young man shouted to him, “I served in Gaza and lost friends of mine there. And you?”

About the cure which each country seems to claim that they have found the serum….I hope that when they do it will be given first to the young and not to the old. The young will have to build the world up again. We, the old, whatever we are still doing, how much longer do each of us have and each year we will do less and less. Save those who will have to live in this mess part of which we have created.

It has started raining. How BB must be rejoicing. To think how I used to wait for the winter and the first rains and now I dread it in every way. I am also having a picnic on Friday night….I hope and now it is a problem. But more I am upset about the demonstrations. I was amazed at the people who came out. Ana, who has the most difficulty, came after myself and Noga. And the filth that cursed us remained at home

And with all that happening at the protests the police do nothing about the so called rabbis who are defying the laws of the state and nothing is done against them. While the police patrol the demonstrations of Nofim

Prominent rabbi orders Haredi schools to reopen; Netanyahu warns against move

PM says rules will be enforced, calls on Haredi community to heed regulations, after Kanievsky instructs boys' schools to resume teaching despite ban

https://www.timesofisrael.com/prominent-rabbi-orders-haredi-schools-to-reopen-netanyahu-warns-against-move/

Don't Say We Didn't Know 718

Two days after olives were stolen from the grove of a Masha villager across the Separation Barrier, on October 4, 2020, and not as I wrote a week ago, settler-colonists returned to his land. This time they came with a tractor and worked there on two different occasions. They uprooted five olive trees.

On Friday. October 16, 2020, volunteers from Combatants for Peace came to help harvest olives in the groves of Palestinian farmers from Sawiya village. Israeli soldiers arrived and chased them away, claiming the area was a closed military zone. The activists went on to harvest outside this area, and were chased away again by the Israeli soldiers.

And to close on a funny note which is so true

#Why demonstrations rain and the serum 21.10.2020

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