A Thanksgiving Feast for the Immigrants

Hi all and happy Thanksgiving.
We had close to 100 people at our Thanksgiving potluck feast / party last night and it was an amazing networking event for all. Introducing the new immigrants here to each other and especially the young people in the army goes a long way in helping those who need it. It is the network of support between us all that is so priceless in Israel. I cooked up two giant birds for the celebration as well. The most important thing is simply connecting everyone.

This brief article that was in The Jerusalem Post today gives a summary and quotes me about the event. In case you don't know, a "Lone Soldier" is some one who came from another country to join the army in Israel and has no immediate family (parents) in the country.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259243016253&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

US Marines Gain Hard-Earned Experience in Afghanistan

This is an NPR clip telling the story of the hard fight the US Marines are currently waging for their country.

On the Watch for European Anti-Zionist Rhetoric

This is a good editorial from the Wall Street Journal with a rational perspective on the recent Zionist bashing "documentary" in the British media.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704204304574543671980025770.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

Getting the Most from the Space Shuttles

This is the closing of an era as the shuttles retire. Right now the rush is on to get as much equipment up into space as possible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/science/space/16shuttle.html?_r=1&hp

A Great Angle On Unfortunate Times

Orthodox Jews Flock to SD, Support Leader on Trial

The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 5:11 a.m. ET

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- In the musty conference room of a South Dakota hotel, Sholom Rubashkin helps a disheveled man in a hooded sweat shirt wrap black bands around his left arm and head. Attached to each is a black box containing inscriptions from the Torah.

''It's on your arm close to your heart, on your head close to your thoughts,'' Rubashkin, a leader in the Orthodox Jewish community, tells Robert Graham in a thick Brooklyn accent. Graham nods.

For the 50-year-old Rubashkin, and the dozens of Orthodox Jewish men who arrive almost daily from across the country to support him, such spiritual guidance is partly why God led him to his federal trial in Sioux Falls.

The former manager of Iowa kosher slaughterhouse Agriprocessors Inc. is accused of defrauding a St. Louis bank and, if convicted, could spend the rest of his life in prison. But for now, he's spreading his spiritual message to people like Graham, a South Dakota Jewish man who was only remotely familiar with the broadest outlines of his religion's traditions.

That devotion and respect for the Rubashkin family is what draws the men to support a fellow member of their Hasidim, a branch of Judaism that translates to ''the pious.'' Its members are easily identifiable in long black coats, fedoras and beards. They know Rubashkin more as the former teacher at an Atlanta Jewish school explaining his faith to young pupils.

''They have a solemn faith it's going to go the way it should,'' said Graham, a bus driver from Sioux Falls. ''Even if it comes back guilty, they would say that's what God wanted.''

While they pray in the hotel conference room, a jury of seven women and five men discuss in a courthouse five blocks away whether Rubashkin is guilty of 91 counts including bank, wire and mail fraud. They carry a combined maximum prison sentence of more than 1,000 years.

Rubashkin also will face a second federal trial on 72 immigration charges.

Despite the uncertainty, the conference room is anything but somber. As it has been for weeks, the room is filled with men who have been arriving and departing in waves, about 10 at a time.

At one table sit two Orthodox Jewish men who joined four others in a Dodge Caravan on Saturday night in Brooklyn. They drove in shifts nearly nonstop to Sioux Falls, roughly 1,400 miles away from their New York City borough, stopping only for gas and to pray.

They're smiling and eager to talk about their faith and Rubashkin, a man they had only met once or twice. Although confident that he will be freed, they say any verdict would be God's will.

''We believe everything is by divine providence,'' said Zalman Levin, 23. ''Coming to see him, it's not a religious duty. It's something we should do. We consider the whole community a family. Even if we would have never met him before.''

Levin grew up in Palo Alto, Calif., but is studying at a Jewish school in Crown Heights, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Orthodox population. He and Rubashkin are Lubavitchers, a branch of the Hasidic movement in Orthodox Judaism. They met once in Brooklyn, when Levin was about 15.

Levin said that because they share a faith, he at least owes Rubashkin a visit. It's difficult, he said, for outsiders to understand why the men have been regularly rolling into this city of about 125,000.

To them, Rubashkin and his father Aaron are the ideal Lubavitchers, men who founded Agriprocessors Inc. in northeast Iowa, far from the lives they knew in New York, and supplied inexpensive kosher food to Jewish men and women who otherwise couldn't afford it.

To many, the Rubashkins' image in Crown Heights is of generous and devout people who donated money without a second thought and opened a restaurant that didn't charge those who couldn't pay, said Isaac Gurewitz, who traveled to Sioux Falls with Levin.

Rubashkins' trial began Oct. 12, moved to South Dakota in part because of pretrial publicity in Iowa. At least 60 Hasidim packed in an overflow room in the Sioux Falls federal courthouse. They came from Brooklyn, Minnesota, Chicago, corners of the country with small Orthodox populations and even Italy. They rocked back and forth while reading from the Torah, and flocked to Rubashkin when he stepped outside during court breaks for a cigarette.

Levin acknowledges that the Hasidim are oddities to the locals -- during jury selection, one South Dakota man confused them with the Amish.

''It's a bit of a strange sight,'' he said with a smile. ''You haven't seen many people like us.''

Former Agriprocessors employees have testified that Rubashkin personally directed them to create fake invoices. Days before an immigration raid in May 2008, former employees said Rubashkin scrambled to get new documents for his workers, at least 389 of whom were found to be illegal immigrants.

Rubashkin's defense attorney has argued that Rubashkin never read the loan agreement with St. Louis-based First Bank and tried to show Rubashkin as a bumbling businessman in over his head.

Rubashkin's son Getzel said his father has been a calming influence on his worried family. He said he's amazed by his father's perseverance, but shares his faith in a verdict of not guilty.

But the allegations weren't the focus of a recent morning in a hotel room packed with kosher food. The Lubavitcher men instead wanted to talk about a new believer.

Graham, the Sioux Falls man, said Rubashkin showed him last week how to apply the tefillin, the black arm bands attached to Torah scripture. To the Lubavitchers, it was Graham's initiation into Jewish society, and one of the reasons they believe God led them to Sioux Falls.

''This room is the biggest synagogue here,'' Levin said, laughing.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/11/11/business/AP-US-Kosher-Slaughterhouse-Rubashkin.html?scp=1&sq=rubashkin&st=cse

Magen David Adom, Tel Aviv

An exposure like no other.

As an active volunteer EMT with MDA Tel Aviv, Israel, I see the inner workings of the city from the streets to people's homes. As a new immigrant in this society, no other experience has so intimately introduced me to the city and the country as a whole. It provides me with a unique cultural exposure by entering peoples homes across all strata of society.















With much of the "clientele" being elderly, this has given me a great opportunity to learn their amazing stories. This is the generation who escaped the persecutions of Europe and elsewhere in the world and established this country.

For example, this last Sunday during my shift on the intensive care ambulance, we took an 87 year old woman to the hospital with chest pain and other irregularities. On the way, I was responsible for monitoring her status as closely as possible. One of the best ways I have learned to do that is just by talking conversationally.
Captivating my imagination, she told me of her journey through British displaced persons camps in Cyprus as a Holocaust refugee from Poland. Glaring at the wrinkled blue tattoo of still legible numbers in the center of her forearm, what she described to me was the long story short. She came through the flames and built this place from scratch.

This incredible generation is, sadly and inevitably, being taken to the hospital by day and night more than I'd like to admit. I am profoundly grateful for my exposure to their lives and stories, and realize that this is an opportunity that will not exist for my children.

The stories and experiences must live on through us.

More on this to be posted soon...

A Story Close to Home With Many Israelis

Israeli households are filled with many stories similar to those of these women featured here in the The New York Times. In this tribute story to American women combat veterans, heroic stories of service are told, and the issue of post traumatic stress disorder is addressed. Few countries find their servicewomen on front lines or in dangerous battlefields. Driven by necessity and extraordinary will, women serve vital roles in both the American and Israeli armed forces. Their exploits serve to inspire us all.

"In early October 2004, her convoy of about 30 vehicles set out from Kuwait for Mosul, one of Iraq’s most violent cities. On the way, she said, they were hit three times with roadside bombs. One exploded 200 feet from the unarmored Humvee in which Mrs. Pacquette spent day and night pointing her rifle out an open window. " Please take a look at the rest of the article to learn more about their stories.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/01/us/01trauma.html?pagewanted=1&ref=us