Arch of Titus

 IDF Chief in Rome: Israel Lives 2,000 Years After Temple Razed

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I visited the Arch of Titus years ago and spat at it (general direction). Later I found out that Titus was actually reluctant to destroy Jerusalem but clearly it was God's will.

No Israeli official should be in Rome during this time unless it is to make demands for the Temple treasures to be restored to Jerusalem where they belong.

Will the pope act like Belshazzar or Cyrus?

The Vatican Must Return the Temple Treasures

Furthermore, Am Israel Chai - the Nation and People of Israel lives - not because of the IDF but because of the tender mercies of God.

Among the Mysteries of the Menorah is this fact: "Studying the image on the arch, one can discern dragons or sea serpents adorning the steps of the pedestal—just the sort of pagan art that Jewish sages singled out as associated with idolatry. “If one finds vessels,” we are told in the Talmud, “upon which are the forms of a sun, or a moon, or a dragon, let him throw them into the Dead Sea.” Pillars decorated with dragons virtually identical to those on the menorah’s pedestal have been discovered in the Roman temple at Didyma in southern Turkey. It beggars belief that the Temple candelabrum would have incorporated such a fundamentally pagan aesthetic."

Rachel Saperstein: Five years after expulsion from Gush Katif

GUSH KATIF VIEWPOINT 165: FIVE YEARS AFTER THE EXPULSION
MY SPEECH AT THE ORTHODOX UNION [OU], JERUSALEM, JULY 15
by Rachel Saperstein, Neve Dekalim/Nitzan

My name is Rachel Saperstein. I am almost seventy years old. My husband and I have three children and twelve grandchildren. We lived in Jerusalem for close to thirty years, in Gush Katif for nearly nine years, and now we live in a plasterboard caravilla in the refugee camp of Nitzan between Ashdod and Ashkelon. During the Cast Lead war we were bombed by missiles coming in from Gaza. The missiles and rockets followed us from Gush Katif to Nitzan. There is no escape from enemy assault.

In the evening I take power walks. I also observe life in our refugee camp slum. Most of the gardens are overgrown with weeds. People are slowly moving away. It doesn't make sense to keep a garden growing. After people leave for their permanent homes up the hill, flat-bed trucks arrive. First, the red tiles on the roofs are removed. The caravilla is then cut in half, loaded on the trucks and taken somewhere. We don't know where. Perhaps to a new site being prepared for the next victims of expulsion. We do not know what plans Obama and Netanyahu have for the people of Judea and Samaria. What is certain is that these plasterboard structures will be used again.

I visit the construction site of the new "permanent" homes, especially when we go to the attaching-the-Mezuzah ceremony. We wish the new occupants well. We "ooh" and "aah" at the up-to-date shower stalls, the new kitchen, the lovely floor tiles. The occupants invariably admit they have used all their funds on the house. Some have taken bank loans to finish the house. Many of our friends are in their late fifties and sixties. They worry about how they will ever pay off the
loans, much less how they will live from week to week on their meager salaries, if they are lucky enough to be working. There is a tragedy waiting to happen.

Some cannot build at all. They have been living on their compensation money as they have had no livelihood since the expulsion. Some of our people were renters in the private market in Neve Dekalim, and though they lived there for fifteen or twenty years are not entitled to any compensation at all. Some have lost their money to swindlers, some have lost their money in bad investments. Others see building here as the final nail in the coffin of hope - the hope that they will return to Gush Katif.

In one community families had built and moved into permanent homes. They breathed a sigh of relief. At long last each family had a proper home. But something strange happened. Their children, who as pre-teens had lived through the expulsion, went berserk. They began drinking, smoking, vandalizing public property. The professionals who were called in declared the children victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The children felt betrayed by their parents. By building elsewhere their parents had admitted they would never return to Gush
Katif. This betrayal had brought on a violent reaction.

On one of my power walks I met my friend Dina. I told her I would be speaking here tonight. "What shall I tell them, Dina?"

Dina is a mother of five. Two of her sons are married. She now has grandchildren.

"I should be happy" Dina tells me, "but I'm not. Every night I see soldiers surrounding my home. I wake up shaking and sweating. Then I start to cry. I can't go back to work. I miss my home, the view of the sea, the Beit Knesset. Tell those good people that my heart is broken." I hug Dina as I've hugged so many others. I cry with them. I admit that I, too, suffer from flashbacks. We move forward but the past returns at odd moments. There is so much hurt.

The poverty of our people, out of work, lining up for food parcels, is growing. The charge accounts at the mini-market have grown to proportions unheard of in the past. Parents send their children to purchase the necessities because they are too ashamed to be seen in person.

As the director of Operation Dignity, a chessed Non-Profit Organization, I raise and give financial assistance to some wonderful families - always with a smile and certainly with dignity.

Health issues have increased. Heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, hypertension have taken their toll of our people. But not all is black. Children have been born, marriages have taken place. Over five hundred brides and grooms have been showered by the wonderful volunteer bridal group, bringing essential gifts to start our young couples off even as they move into crumbling caravans near their
parents homes. Watching our young couples walking with their baby carriages brings us hope and joy.

These young couples fought for Gush Katif, and using the return of our people to Gush Etzion as their inspiration, know that when the call to re-establish Gush Katif is made they will be the first to answer that call. The Almighty always performs miracles.

And for us, my husband and myself, we are going to Lachish. South of Beit Shemesh, north of Kiryat Gat, Lachish is a wonderful place to establish the township of Bnai Dekalim.

Lachish is a grape-growing region often compared to the Napa Valley in California, or Province in France. Gentle hills, wild flowers and refreshing breezes make the Lachish area an ideal place to build our new home. This will be a truly Jewish town. Our field school will teach the halacha of grape growing and wine making. Our spa will teach healing of body and soul according to Rambam and other Jewish sources.

Visiting rabbis will bring their families and enjoy the state-of-the-art Judaica library in the Yeshiva and Kollel.

Come and visit. Walk in the footsteps of Joshua and Bar Kochba. Whenever we visit, and now that we actually own our own plot, I feel like dancing. Yes, almost seventy and I feel like dancing! I feel a lightness in my heart and begin to sway with the rhythm of the winds.

Soon I will have a home. What a privilege to be almost seventy and to be a pioneer in Eretz Yisrael.

But if the Almighty wills it, with joyful heart and soul we will return to Gush Katif.

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Women For Israel's Tomorrow  (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
mailto:wfit2@womeningreen.org
http://www.womeningreen.org

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Don't Expel Jews from Gaza

Read and weep for the Israeli Jews of Gush Katif/Gaza, on whose behalf
I wrote this article in July 2005 before their illegal expulsion by the
bribed Ariel Sharon and criminal company working for foreign interests.
Many of them remain homeless, depressed and basically abandoned by
their lying government -- their former homes history, stripped bare and
destroyed by marauding Arab enemies who are now fighting among
themselves, one terrorist group (Hamas) against another terrorist group
(Fatah). 

Ephraim Tzur - murdered by Arab terrorists

Moshe Weisfish sent me this picture years ago with this written on back:

"This is my little friend Ephraim Tzur who was murdered by PLO near Bet El with his mother. Here one and a half year earlier in 1995 Independence celebration May 4 1995. He used to visit me with friends."

Meir Kahane was right: "They Must Go!"

Israel's Only Way Out: Follow Kahane!

THEY MUST GO

Peace Now: Arabs and Jews Must Go Their Separate Ways

Shimon Peres Has No Clothes: Where's the Peace?

A Jewish Homeland

Weren't the Jews prophesied to return to Israel? Are the Jews ethnic Jews or merely converts? How should Israel treat their resident Arabs? Why does the world focus on Jerusalem?

A Jewish Homeland 

A Vow to HaShem

"If a man makes a vow to HaShem or makes an oath to prohibit himself, he shall not violate his word... "
(Numbers 30:3)
Tammuz 26, 5770/July 7, 2010

The book of Numbers chronicles the many tumultuous events that occurred during Israel's forty year sojourn in the wilderness. It is worthwhile to note that each event was preceded or precipitated by the words uttered by one protagonist or another. Korach very skillfully chose his words with the intention of manipulating his fellow Israelites for the cynical purpose of self aggrandizement. By using his G-d given power of speech to try to lift himself up above others, he was justly rewarded with a deathless entombment deep within the bowels of the earth.

Bilaam, the heathen prophet, attempted with a persistence that otherwise might be deemed admirable, to use his power of speech in a grandiose ploy to manipulate G-d's wrath against the children of Israel. For his pernicious efforts, he was killed in the very war which he himself masterminded.

The tribal heads of Israel allowed themselves and their brethren to be tripped up by their own words, as they spoke evil against the land of Israel. Their careless words testified to their lack of faith in G-d, lack of love for the land of Israel, and lack of trust in themselves. Their reward? They, and the entire generation that they ensnared were to die in the desert, never setting foot in the land that G-d had promised them.

Even Miriam, the prophetess, spoke ill of her brother Moshe, and was duly punished with a case of the leprous tzarat. Despite the fact that Miriam's intentions were only for the betterment of Moshe, she too had to pay the price for her ill chosen words.

And, of course, Moshe himself was punished most poignantly for his own misappropriation of the gift of speech. First he hit the rock, when he was commanded by G-d to speak to the rock, and then he spoke harshly against Israel, calling his thirsty kinsmen "rebels."(ibid 20:10) Moshe, too, would never enter his beloved Israel.

It is only fitting that the final double Torah reading of the book of Numbers, Matot-Masei opens with the laws concerning any man or woman who utters a vow, or takes an oath. Our words cause and shape our actions and define who we truly are. Words spoken carelessly will in time catch up with us. We reap what we say. And we are in constant peril of being led astray by the words of others when we allow ourselves to fall under their influence.

Torah takes our words very seriously, and, this is to say, takes us very seriously. We are what we speak. The midnight exodus from Egypt, the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, receiving Torah at Sinai, the building of the Tabernacle, and forty years in the wilderness later, and Torah's message to us all, as we are perched upon the banks of the Jordan, moments from entering the land, is crystal clear: Measure your words. Your word is your bond. Your word is sacred.

Entering the land of Israel marks the fulfillment of G-d's word, His promise to Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. Now is the time for us to keep our word: To settle that same land, to love and to nurture it. To do all this, and to build the Holy Temple is not merely to fulfill G-d's aspirations for each of us. It is to keep our word with G-d, to state unequivocally that we are worthy of the gift of speech with which he bequeathed us, worthy of His love, worthy of being called G-d's children.

Tune in to this week's Temple Talk as Rabbi Chaim Richman and Yitzchak Reuven, reunited at last, discuss the Rabbi's experiences in America, and the incredible people he encountered on his travels. Traveling, and the things we all go through as we travel through this world, is also one of the themes of this week’s double Torah portion of Mattot and Masei, with which we conclude the book of Numbers. Parshat Masei opens with the concept of the power of a vow... ummm, like the one Prime Minister Netanyahu made to the people of Israel that he would not extend the draconian building freeze in Judea and Samaria past the deadline. But this week as he travels to Washington to meet with US President Obama, speculation abounds that Obama will pressure Netanyahu to break that promise.

The eternal boundaries of the Land of Israel are also featured in this week’s Torah reading, another subject that’s bound to come up on the agenda of our leaders. But who sets those boundaries… the G-d of Israel, or other elements?

The three week mourning period for the Holy Temple is once again upon us. How do we free ourselves from the seemingly endless cycle, year after year, of mourning for the Holy Temple? Does anyone actually think the situation could change?

This week features the new Light to the Nations teaching by Rabbi Chaim Richman, entitled, "True Service of G-d: We serve G-d by drawing near to Him, and making Him present in every aspect of our lives, from our most sublime moments to our most mundane. To do so, our relationship with G-d must be a living relationship, in accordance with Torah, and expressing the unique qualities of our own souls." Click here to view.

On the evening of June 17th, 2010, Rabbi Chaim Richman spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in Houston, Texas. For nearly two hours the Rabbi held the audience spellbound as he brought to them his unique message of the immediacy of Torah in every man's life, weaving together the timeless message of Torah with the prophetic events taking place today. If you couldn't be there, or if you want to hear it again, please click here: Part 1; Part 2

International See and Say Only Good Things about the People of Israel and The Land of Israel Month: Spiritual and Practical Goals for the Month of Tammuz, a message from Rabbi Chaim Richman. Click here.

The two Torah portions, Matot and Masei, which conclude the book of Numbers are read together as one. What is the true connection between Matot, which begins with the laws concerning the responsibility of taking upon oneself a vow, and the opening verses of Masei, which describe the journeys of Israel in the wilderness? Taken together, they provide for us a key and a map to our own life's journey. Click here to view Rabbi Richman's short teaching on parashat Matot-Masei (Numbers 30:2-36:13).

Blessings from the holy city of Jerusalem,

  Yitzchak Reuven

  The Temple Institute

Help us build the future.
Click here.

THE TEMPLE INSTITUTE

PO Box 31876

Jerusalem, Israel 97500

www.templeinstitute.org

Obama's driven to destroy America

"Whom God would destroy, He first sends mad." The United States elected a lie, clearly under strong delusion, and are now suffering the consequences for refusing to hear or believe the plain truth about the light-skinned soap opera black (that New Age Oprah cast her spell for over her touchy-feely audience and cursed America by promoting Obama's books - undoubtedly ghost-written - and now many are crying).

It was a sin to vote for Obama. In light of the dark days the United States has experienced under the president usurper, the fraud and foreigner, the con man from Kenya, the bastard from Africa - Obama/Soetoro/Obama -enabled by conservative cowards to occupy the Oval Office and pollute the White House, it's befitting to review and reflect upon the self-evident truths BLACK DAY IN AMERICA: Obama Wins, America Loses -

What nation in its right mind, after 9/11, after Osama (at least his collaboration with the powers that be on it), after our alleged war on terrorism, would elect a questionable and dark character who is pro-Muslim, raised during his influential years in Muslim countries, has attended a hateful Afro-racist congregation that preaches anti-American and anti-white sermons typical of Black Liberation Theology, is endorsed by avowed Black racists and rabid Nazi Muslims, etc. would let Barack Hussein Obama even entertain the notion of running for president for a second? It certainly appears America is under a curse and those who treacherously voted for that fraud and foreigner are helping to make Marxist Jeremiah Wright’s wish come true that God damn America. Shame!

Jeremiah Wright, Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson and others all represent the curse of reverse discrimination, the tail wagging the dog, the animals running the farm, the serious consequences for White Israelite disobedience to God.

Deuteronomy 28:43
43 “The alien [Gentile] who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower.

Deuteronomy 17:15
15 ...you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses; one from among your [white Israelite] brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.
 

We've failed to learn from history and have an illegitimate president elect; we've been deaf, dumb and blind to the two witnesses of raped Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ruins) and besieged South Africa (that testify against our madness); and we've rejected common sense. Now we'll have hell to pay for it! God save us all!

"I will say, then, that I AM NOT NOR HAVE EVER BEEN in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever FORBID the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race."

- Abraham Lincoln