What I should be doing now is studying for the bio final I have tomorrow. Instead, I’ve been kicked out of my study center (the dining room table), by my father who is teaching bar mitzvah lessons. So I’m sitting at the kitchen table eavesdropping on what my father is telling his new student. They have just gone through the preliminaries, of who my father is, what a mitzvah is, what it means to become Bar Mitzvah.
Oh, also I should mention that my father usually teaches boys who know nothing about Judaism, who think that Hebrew letters are Greek and who usually cannot understand what they are doing sitting at my dining room table. I am always amazed how these tiny (I’m telling you, these kids are actually getting smaller… it’s not me getting bigger!) boys walk in with no Jewish knowledge and walk out around 9 months later actually anywhere from the entire parsha, to leading a tfila.
The reason I love listening in to my father when he meets a new student are his ground rules. He says there are 3 things they have to have down before he can teach them. The first one is, “ring and walk in”, meaning the kids are always welcome. Always! To tell you the truth we have had some kids come in just to talk to my father, ask him questions and it is always “ring and walk in”. The second rule is that since they are learning for their bar mitzvah, they have to start their lesson with a mitzvah, so there is a tzeddaka box in the middle of the table and a bag of assorted change for them to give.
My father explains them the mitzvah of giving tzedakka and usually after the first lesson, the boys tend to bring their own money wanting to be fully in charge of the mitzvah. Some parents have even told my father that their son saves up a bit each week to give. Finally, the third thing is really the most special. The boys are not allowed to start their lesson without telling my father “one good thing that happened to them this week”. This is a tradition my father has already started with his children on Shabbat when he blesses us. The way he explains it to the boys is the concept of “hakarak hatov”, recognizing the good.
There is a lot I have learned and I continue to learn form my parents, but even though I have heard this introductory speech from my father well over 100 times, it gets me every time. It reminds me to keep prospective on things, so even if I am stressed for my final, there is a lot more going on in the greater scheme of things.
Now I really have to study biology! :o)
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While it’s true that tonight starts the 2nd day of Iyar, not the 4th which is when we normally celebrate Yom HaZikaron, Israeli remembrance day, the Rabbis felt they should move it all up making today Yom HaZikaron.
So since today is Yom HaZikaron, a day when we remember Israel’s fallen heroes, i thought i would tell you a little bit about just one of them... it’s a personal story VERY Close to my heart.F.jpg)
Yehoshua (Jason) Friedberg (HY"D) was born and
raised in Montreal, not far from where I was raised and continue to live. Yehoshua went through the religious school system in Montreal, and upon completion, left for Israel to study in a hesder yeshiva and complete military service as a Chayal Boded (literally a lonely solider), a foreign volunteer in the prestigious Golani Brigade (Gdud 51... KAVOD!). He was planning to enter the officer's training course, he was three days short of completing his initial enlistment, when on Purim, 15 years ago, he was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists and shot with his own weapon. His body was dumped by the side of a highway where it was found three days later, after a massive manhunt by Israeli General Security Service personnel. F1.jpg)
Yehoshua was the embodiment of true Zionism. He left the comfort of a safe North American city with a sizable and influential Jewish community so that he could contribute to the defense and development of the Jewish state. He enrolled in an institution of higher religious education to further encourage himself with the traditions that are meant to guide Jews and Israelis, and then set out to defend those traditions and those people simply because he was one of them.
Yehoshua was a very special young man. Poorer students would often ask him for a loan which he gladly gave. When the student came to repay the loan, Yehoshua would show in his notepad that the amount was already crossed out and refused to take the person's money! Yehoshua was very careful about saying or hearing lashon hara (evil speech). When people said something derogatory in his presence, he would simply walk out of the room to show his displeasure. Yehoshua loved learning and teaching Torah, and when he was home, he volunteered to teach Gemarra to the members of our shul. He was a natural communicator, and people marvelled at his teaching abilities. Yehoshua was once a member of my community, the son of my parents’ friends and it was in his merit that I was blessed with the chance to go learn in Israel.
May G-d avenge his blood, which should be immortalized. Yehi Zichro Baruch.
It is amazing how today we will sit, in Israel there is no school, the soldiers, seminaries, yeshivas and high schools all go to Har HaZaitim, where the soldiers are buried... and we all pay our respects. We daven at their graves and we cry for our fallen heroes. Our brothers, our sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins, uncles and aunts, boyfriends, girlfriends and best friends we remember that they did not fall in vain, and we PROMISE them that they will be remembered. Today we reflect on all they did for us, we have a moment of silence where we thank them and remember them. Then as soon as the sun goes down at a moment when all becomes dark again, we celebrate all that the did for us... we have fireworks and BBQs and parties. We do all this, because we will not sit around and be sad, they did NOT die for no reason... so as we say 'vayehi erev vayehi boker' (first it was night then it was day) we have sadness and despair in the darkness of the night... but it is always followed by the joy and hope of the day. So today we are sad... today, we remember with tears and reverence... and tomorrow we remember with celebration... telling them that we will continue to live the life they fought for us to have... we WILL continue to LIVE
Part of The Yom Haatzmaut Project
Four Israeli accomplishments that I am quite proud of:
1. The cell phone was developed in Israel by Israelis working in the Israeli branch of Motorola, which has its largest development center in Israel. (This is something very near and dear to my heart, as jappy as it sounds I am very attached to my phone and I am very thankful that I have one...)
2. Researchers in Israel developed a new device that directly helps the heart pump blood, an innovation with the potential to save lives among those with heart failure. The new device is synchronized with the camera helps doctors diagnose heart's mechanical operations through a sophisticated system of sensors. (Cuz that is just awesome!)
3. I have never ever felt more at home in any place in the world. It is the only place where I can be walking in the street and find out that my friend is engaged and have the random people I don’t know excited with me just from overhearing the convo.
4. Israel is the only democracy in the whole Middle East. I know its kind of cliché but it is actually a really big deal. I am proud of my friends and family who fight and who have fought to defend that, and I am proud of everyone who supports it. I am proud that we have never backed down and that we know that HKB”H is always on our side. In the end of the day, I don’t have 4 main things that I am proud of... I just have a constant pride in my country and my people.
I am not going to make this a long post just what is on my mind. After every pgiua (attack) we are always told by our Rabbis that we cannot all pick up arms and fight, so we are meant to make a tikun. We are meant to improve ourselves, we are meant to daven (pray) with more kavana (intention), we are meant to learn more and overall become better people.
Yet where were these boys so brutally murdered? I
n their Beit Midrash (study hall), where they had just finished davening (praying), and had just started learning for their night learning. Were they not doing exactly what they were meant to do?
I am not usually one to question things. Thanx G-d, I have my own way of understanding, but this, this I cannot reconcile against anything. This raises many questions. For last number of weeks I have been working very hard on a campaign to raise awareness about what is going on in Sderot. It has been extremely time consuming with a lot of people putting in a lot of effort and IY”H (G-d willing) it will work out as amazingly as we hope it will.
Each person is moved to action for different reasons, personally I have had enough. It is time to do something. I do not know what and I do not know how, but I do know that we have to do something NOW! We, the people who care the students with a voice we have to act.
I spoke to my friend Shoshana Cohen who told me: “It’s a good thing that Purim is coming up, because we definitely have a few lessons to learn and apply from the megilla, to our situation today.
First, when Mordechai was telling Esther that she needed to go to the king, and save the Jewish people, he let her know that now was her time to stand up and be Jewish and help am yisrael. If she didn’t do it, someone else would, but he told her that she should definitely not miss her chance. Let’s not miss our chance here. It’s our time now to step up and help am yirael.
Secondly, right after Esther accepts her mission, the one thing she tells Mordechai to do, is “Lech Knos et kol haYehudim” She tells him “Go and gather all of the Jews.”
Esther here is letting us in on the secret of how to save am yisrael. She doesn’t just say “get the Jews” but she says “Go and get ALL of the Jews” “Kol HaYehudim”. The only way that we will ever win is if we stand together. She knew that if am yirael was united, no one could stop us. I hope and pray that we can do just that, unite and stand up to help our brothers and sisters in Sderot, in Yerushalim and around the world.
It always amazes me the way children are able to see things in a much more simple and honest way than I do. To them the world is not filled with unanswerable questions, it’s not so scary and everything seems to have its place.
Just a few days ago I was playing with my little cousin (she’s like 6) and we were talking about this girl in her class who was bothering her while playing with a LiteBrite. You know what a LiteBrite is, it’s that old school toy where there is a light behind a black peg board and you have to stick different coloured pegs to create a picture. Yes, my cousin does have a hand me down toy. In any case we were playing with and finally she turned to me and he said with such honesty and frankness: “doesn’t she (the girl bothering her) get it? We are all the same, just because I have blond hair and green eyes and she has brown hair and brown eyes don’t mean that we are different? We are both Jews and we are both in the same class and we are both girls... does she think that all these coloured sticks (talking about the pegs) are different? They can’t shine without the light behind them! Duh!”
As usual the 6 year old has a greater insight into life then I do. To her it made perfect sense that just as each peg in the toy was the same just as each Jew is essentially the same. We all need to have the light behind us to shine.
K, so a little while ago Dan asked me to think about maybe writing for this blog. I'm not going to lie to you; I'm not a big writer. I will for sure have typos and run on sentences and all kinds of things that would make all my English teachers cringe and wonder where they went wrong. And yet, despite all of that I'm still going to try. I'm not an overly fascinating or insightful person, I'm just a regular girl going through life, but I’ll be sharing my thoughts feelings and ideas that happen to run through my mind however jumbled they are.
A few days ago I came back from an all too short trip to Israel. I was lucky enough to go for a good friends wedding and I got to stay for a little while longer (got to be thankful for a long winter break). In that short time I was able to do many things, really it’s amazing how much a persona can pack into a few days if they really want to. I went shopping (tell my father I was boosting the Israeli economy), I visited family and friends; I went back to seminary for a few days, visited the Kotel and some rabbis and of course discovered the burger wrap at burgers bar. There were another hundred things I would have liked to do but IY”H (g-d willing) I will try to do it next time. There is one thing however that I did not get to do and hopefully will not be something to do next time. I really really wanted to visit S’derot for Shabbat. It was and still is something very important to me. Unfortunately I was not able to go during the time I was there but it doesn’t make it any less important to me.
I have a good friend who is learning in Yeshivat Netiv Aryeh, he is in his second year and IY”H (g-d willing) going to join the army in 9 weeks time. I spoke to him earlier on in the year and he told me that he was a bit stressed in Yeshiva so he was going away for a few days to take a break. I asked him where he was going to which I expected him to reply something along the lines of the Dead Sea or up north, but what he said was simply S’derot, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. So that is what he does when he is stressed out, he goes to a city that literally has bombs falling on it several times a day to unwind. Truthfully he told me, he goes to play with the kids, he adores those kids, the ones who are afraid to play outside, to leave the bomb shelter. He told me that to play with them for one hour is almost as if he would take them to Disney World for the day. He plays soccer (which he calls football) and does art with them, takes them to the park, sits and talks with them he acts as a big brother just as he would act with his own little brother. He also goes and learns in the yeshiva there, sleeps in the dorms and runs for his life in the 7 seconds he has between hearing a “Tzevah Adom” (code red) and a Kassam rocket exploding on the ground. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there are 7 seconds to run, my friend Shoshana told me that there are 4 ways to protect yourself from a rocket “Your first option is to run into a bomb shelter. Second, you can run into the nearest home or apartment (all homes stay unlocked in Sderot in case of a red alert). Third, if you are not near a house, then put your body up against a wall. Lastly, worst comes to worst, hit the ground, put your hands over your head, and pray to Hashem that the Kassam does not fall anywhere near you.” This is where my friend goes when he is stressed out; I figure it puts things in perspective for him.
So you are probably thinking to yourselves, why I have told you this little story. What my friend also does, along with the people in S’derot, he arranges trips, not tours so much as trips, where the volunteers get together and run errands for those too weak to do it themselves, those to afraid to leave their homes. They play with the children and help rebuild houses; they talk to the residents and let them know that even though it looks like they are forgotten they are not. Yes it is a dangerous thing to do (he told me that one night he literally had to run to the bomb shelter 11 times in that one night!!), and yes they have to run for their lives, not as a test run but as an actual fact, but they do it. The hope is that it will work as a “pay- it forward” type of thing (without the terrible ending). He also is working on a project so that every other Shabbat anywhere between 50 to 100 people can spend Shabbat in S’derot. All of this is good, but it is just the start. Most people don't even know the extent of that is happening there. So the first thing we have to do is know, raise awareness, realize there is a problem, and then we can start to fix it. There is no nation, no country in the world that would allow such a thing to happen, to be hit with bombs so often (11 times in one night!!) and yet it IS happening, and if we don't do something about it, who will?
Display Name : Tamar
Gender: female
Birthday: in the summer
HomeTown (where you grew up): Montreal
Current City of Residence: letza'ari still Montreal
Favorite City outside of Jerusalem: Beit El
Yeshiva/Seminary Attended: Harova
Occupation: nursing student (for now...)
Random Questions:
When you hesitate before hitting snooze on your alarm clock, are you being lazy?
Sometimes im being lazy, but usually im having a huge interanl battal over the worth of getting up at the time i set over sleeping the extra 5 mins... really its all futile cuz once i hit the snooze i feel all guilty and end up getting up anyway... and plus when im tired enough to NEED the snooze ill just sleep through my alarm
What's the earliest you've gotten up to watch cartoons and what did you see?
I didnt get up early, i stayed up late... YTV used to play "The Justice League" at like 3:00am... yes im that sad...
Have you ever drank your soda from a straw?
I dont really like the bubbles so i use the straw to try to get rid of them
Whats your favorite planet and why?
I'm gonna say pluto cuz neb, its not a planet anymore... imagine how you would feel if for hundreds of yeard you were a planet and all of the sudden your no longer... poor thing... in my mind itll always be a planet...
