Exiled Iraqi Jews look homeward. Iraqi Jews, the 3rd largest immigrant group to Israel (after Russians and Moroccans), have mixed feelings about their homeland:
They tell romantic stories of sleeping on the rooftops in the hot Iraqi summer and savoring barbecued fish amid Arabic sing-alongs on the islands of Baghdad’s Tigris River. But the nostalgia mingles with the bitterness of being denied entry to universities and the fear of violent pogroms.
Now they get inquiries about investment from expat Iraq opposition groups, plan visits back home, and dream of helping to improve Israel-Iraq relations.
Jewish life in Iraq during the 20th century had the flavor of Jewish life in Germany before WWII.
“They were Iraqis more than anything else. They used to say ‘we are more Iraqi than the Iraqis’ because many Iraqis came to the country from Saudi Arabia and the Jews came at the time of the First Temple.” But Jews also lived a precarious existence in Iraq. Anti-Semitism exported from Nazi Germany found a receptive audience among many Iraqi Arabs, and in 1941 the army and police helped rioters who turned on their Jewish neighbors and looted shops and homes, killing 150.
Mordechai Ben Porat, who directed the mass influx of Iraqi Jews after the pogroms, counsels the Israeli government to lay low for awhile and "allow the Iraqi Jews to rebuild relations by doing business with Iraqis."
Iraqi Jews point out
. . . reports of discreet contacts between the Hussein regime and Israel over the years. "[Saddam] had, and he has, a very narrow corner in favor of the Jews because of the memory of his neighbors in Tikrit . . . Still, we know what Saddam Hussein has done and what he is all about."
Iraqi Jews in the US and
the few left in Baghdad also
have mixed feelings.
Shavuot count-down: Day 10 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Tiferet of Gevurah: Compassion in Discipline. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Underlying and driving discipline must not only be love, but also compassion. Compassion is unconditional love. It is love just for the sake of love, not considering the others position. Tiferet is a result of total selflessness in the eyes of G-d. You love for no reason; you love because you are a reflection of G-d. Does my discipline have this element of compassion?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Shavuot count-down: Day 9 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Gevurah of Gevurah: Discipline in Discipline. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Examine the discipline factor of discipline: Is my discipline reasonably restrained or is it excessive? Do I have enough discipline in my life and in my interactions? Am I organized? Is my time used efficiently? Why do I have problems with discipline and what can I do to enhance it? Do I take time each day for personal accounting of my schedule and accomplishments?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Arts for the war. If you enjoy "alternative" events like I do, it's nice to be reminded that although political opinion in the artsy-fartsy world can seem monolithic, it isn't. Nothing new this month at
Poets for the War, and political poetry in general hasn't lived up to the
pro-war fervor of Edna St. Vincent Millay.But the conflict seems to have produced a few MP3s. Check out
"Democracy Whisky Sexy" by Dr. Frank of the Mr. T Experience (permalinks not working) and
"A Million Mogadishus" by Stray Pooch.
The long road to a prosperous, lawful, democratic Iraq. Fareed Zakaria points out that
the rule of law leads to a prosperous just democracy, rather than pure democracy leading to a lawful society.
Over the last decade those countries that moved farthest toward liberal democracy followed a version of the Western pattern: first capitalism and the rule of law, then democracy. . . . In Iraq today, first establish a stable security environment and create the institutions of limited government—a constitution with a bill of rights, an independent judiciary, a sound central bank. Then and only then, move to full-fledged democracy.
Paddy Ashdown, the British politician who was appointed “czar” of Bosnia, admits that administrators there got the sequence wrong: “We thought that democracy was the highest priority, and we measured it by the number of elections we could organize. The result even years later is that the people of Bosnia have grown weary of voting. In addition, the focus on elections slowed our efforts to tackle organized crime and corruption, which have jeopardized quality of life and scared off foreign investment.” “In hindsight,” he wrote, “we should have put the establishment of the rule of law first, for everything else depends on it: a functioning economy, a free and fair political system, the development of civil society, public confidence in police and the courts.”
Zakaria goes on to compare to Iraq's situation to experiments in liberal democracy from Hong Kong to Chile to Bosnia to Venezuela, lays out the role the US will have to play, and concludes with some optimism:
The single most important strength a society can have is a committed, reformist elite. That has been at the heart of the success of Central Europe, weathering through all its ups and downs. When Michael Camdessus, former head of the IMF, is asked why Botswana, a diamond-rich African country, has done well, while most diamond states have not, his answer is, “Three words: three honest men.” Botswana has had three honest and competent presidents.
There is no magic formula to create such statesmen, but Iraq has a significant advantage—the memory of Saddam Hussein. Just as the backdrop of communism spurred Central Europeans to reform, so Iraq’s long nightmare might well make its leaders determined to break with the past.
Meanwhile, Neil Kritz - an expert on international legal reform who has been tapped to assist the Bush administration in reconstructing Iraq - is focused on the details of
the process of bringing a sense of justice, integrity and accountability to Iraqi society, as a key ingredient for healing and rebuilding it. As such, he said, he was disturbed by the scenes of unrestrained looting that followed the collapse of Hussein's regime. "These images, of coalition forces standing aside while massive looting takes place, convey very much the wrong message," he said. "It makes it so much easier for criminals under the regime — and we have seen it happen in other places — to simply convert their deeds into organized crime, in ways that if not controlled early on can become a much more serious problem to deal with later."
Further complicating matters are the transitional peacekeepers: ordinary soldiers who
struggle to remain impartial and effective in the face of a justifiably mixed reception from the people they are there to help.
The difficulties for soldiers come when the missions are mixed, when you are snubbed and shot at one day and welcomed the next. Soldiers see the issues in simple terms. They respond straightforwardly, picking sides, choosing favourites — and this has nothing to do with national policy. Many of the US soldiers in Haiti came to appreciate the Force Armée d’Haiti, the uniformed gang of thugs and enforcers they were sent in to defeat — but who came to meetings on time and exhibited a certain amount of discipline. In Bosnia, Nato soldiers often liked the Serbs: they were more respectful and military than Bosnian forces. In Kosovo the soldiers quickly sided with the Serb minority, despite their record of human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing, because by then they were underdogs among an Islamic majority. Peace operations in Iraq will involve all of this and more.
So says Gen. Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe 1997-2000, who led Nato forces during the Kosovo campaign.
Keep all these theories and experiences from other nation-building efforts in mind as you read this
rare interview with General Jay Garner, who supervised the resettlement of Kurdish refugees to Northern Iraq after GW1.
I highly recommend all four articles for a rich sense of the task that lies ahead and what will be necessary for its success.
(Cross-posted at
Command Post)
Free Mike Hawash. Maher, better known as Mike, Hawash was born in Nablus in the Palestinian territories, raised partly in Kuwait, and has been a US citizen for 15 years. He is married to a native-born American and has three children. He is an electrical engineer with Intel, most recently as a contract employee.
On Thursday, March 20, 2003, our friend and colleague Maher (Mike) Hawash was arrested ("detained") as a "material witness" by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the parking lot of Intel Corp's Hawthorne Farms offices. Simultaneously, FBI agents in bulletproof vests and carrying assault rifles awoke Mike's wife Lisa and their three children in the home, which they proceeded to search. Since then, Mike has been held without charge in the Federal Prison at Sheridan, OR. All proceedings in his case are secret.
Hawash's former boss at Intel is spearheading the campaign to free him.
The most recent news story on the Hawash case, with speculations on the reasons for his arrest.
A reflection on vulnerability to the caprices of the state from someone who knew Hawash in Houston.
This case has all the earmarks of a litmus test on whether the United States can itself retain the civil liberties we hope to export to the dictatorships of the world. I have read nothing about it on any of the usual pro-war yet civil libertarian sites.
Keep watching this space.
(via
BookBlog)
Shavuot count-down: Day 8 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - we have travelled through all of the combinations of the 7 lower sephirot with
the sephira of Chesed. Tonight we begin 7 days of combining these sephirot with
the sephira of Gevurah, starting with
Chesed of Gevurah: Lovingkindness in Discipline. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:The underlying intention and motive in discipline is love. Why do we measure our behavior, why do we establish standards and expect people to live up to them - only because of love. Chesed of gevurah is the love in discipline; it is the recognition that your personal discipline and the discipline you expect of others is only an expression of love. It is the understanding that we have no right to judge others; we have a right only to love them and that includes wanting them to be their best. Ask yourself: when I judge and criticize another is it in any way tinged with any of my own contempt and irritation? Is there any hidden satisfaction in his failure? Or is it only out of love for the other?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
If it's good enough for Arafat . . . David M. Weinberg, the director of public affairs at Bar-Ilan University, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, thinks the Iraq war could have been better handled like another Middle East conflict:
There is an urgent need to end the bloodshed in Iraq. The cycle of violence must come to a stop. The international press is unanimous: the US cannot continue to use disproportionate force against the duly-elected regime of Saddam Hussein and deny the Iraqi people their legitimate rights. Occupation is intolerable. It is time for the international community to step in and dictate a road map for peace in Iraq. This is what I suggest . . . .
For a bitter laugh,
read the rest.(cross-posted at
Command Post.)
. . . and now for something completely different. I am weeding out my bookmarks, including all sorts of subjects I was going to blog about and never got to. Like
Wolford, the Rolls-Royce of pantyhose. They sell other kinds of underwear too, but they are known for their $50 pantyhose. Wolford pantyhose have a reputation for being indestructible. I mean, these are pantyhose you can bequeath to your grandchildren. So I was not only pleased to find myself in a city with 3 Wolford boutiques, but I went nuts when they had a half-price sale in January. I will not buy a pair of pantyhose for $50, but I would consider buying a really good pair of pantyhose for, mmmmm, $20.
Then I found out that Wolford pantyhose are not only indestructable, but also comfortable. The waistband does not come up to my ribcage, but sits a little below my navel, like it's supposed to. It doesn't dig into my stomach; in fact, I can barely tell it's there, yet the crotch doesn't sag. How they do it, I don't know. They also come in
funky colors and patterns.Since the official Wolford site uses frames, I googled for some other sites showing pictures or reviews of their wares. Apparently Wolford features prominently - by brand - in several
pantyhose fetish
sites. (Great - now KT is going to get traffic from people looking for pantyhose fetish photos . . . . ) But lo! When I googled a bit more, I found that
there is a brisk trade in Wolfords on eBay. So I won't have to wait for the next half-price sale . . . .
Kesher Talk Pesach links. The 8 days of Pesach conclude this afternoon. Previous Kesher Talk links to celebrating the holiday:
Countdown Day 7. Hilarious seder customs.
Countdown Day 6. Halacha and aggadah, and some Mizrachi Pesach melodies.
Countdown Day 5. "Ten Ways to Tell You've Invited Too Many People to Your Seder."
Countdown Day 4. Christian seders and other applications of the seder format.
Countdown Day 3. Etymology of "seder" and "hagaddah."
Countdown Day 2. Halacha on women's participation in the seder. A parody: "If the Passover Story Were Reported by CNN."
Countdown Day 1. Had Gadyah.
Countdown Day 0 (Pesach Day 1). Iraq's 10 plagues and the challenge of freedom, Iraqi Jews remember Purim in Baghdad, Jewish soldiers in Iraq, Judith's Pesach prep. Also
T'filat Tal.Pesach Day 2, Shavuot countdown: Day 1 of counting the Omer. Lots of links about counting the Omer (and the Homer!). A few of
the daily posts
about the Omer count include more links to
Pesach stories as well. I intend to post each day's Omer count until Shavuot, with some URLs about Shavuot as the festival draws closer. Since one can interpret this season as being
one long hag from Pesach through Shavuot - hag sameach, everyone!
Blog round-up. Jew School is a fairly new Jewish blog from NYU with a "hip Heeb" attitude.
Very old links (as I plow through my accumulation of bookmarks) but still relevant:
Imshin
had some thoughts (with links to other blogs discussing this issue) on
Naturei Karta's special relationship with Yassir Arafat.
Dixie Flatline wrote a
long passionate very detailed screed on why she hates the Palestinians. Instructive reading for those who just can't understand why everyone isn't sympathetic to those they see as the obvious "victim."
Great poster.
What would Passover be without ... sushi? I hate the stuff (though my wife loves it). But neither of us technically can touch it during Passover (which thankfully ends this evening).
Jerusalem's Brian Blum reflects on
the problems of the kitniyot, the Passover regulations that make dietary life hell for Ashkenazi Jews like us.
Of course, his problems are multiplied, because officially certified kosher-for-Pesach products in Israel are full of the Ashkenazically-offensive kitniyot, because the majority of Israeli Jews are Sephardi, and can happily eat kitniyot - like the rice that encases sushi.
Shavuot count-down: Day 7 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Malchut of Chesed: Nobility in Lovingkindness. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Mature love comes with - and brings - personal dignity. An intimate feeling of nobility and regality. Knowing your special place and contribution in this world. Any love that is debilitating and breaks the human spirit is no love at all. For love to be complete it must have the dimension of personal sovereignty.
We have now moved through all of the combinations of the 7 lower sephirot with
the sephira of Chesed. Tomorrow begins the week of
Gevurah.(More on counting the Omer
here)
Tonight also begins the 8th and last day of Pesach. In the morning we include one of the four
Yizkor services of the year.
As we prepare to end the 8-day celebration of Pesach, here's a short tour of how
Jews around the world celebrate the hag.
Blogspot has been refusing to allow me to link to permalinks for several weeks now, and this has influenced which blogs I link to. But please make an effort to find
The Head Heeb's wonderful annotated posts on "A Muslim Passover?" and "The great mechanical matzah controversy." (scroll down to those titles.)
Reluctant warrior. Two months ago, Thomas Nephew wrote
a closely reasoned and voluminously annotated argument in favor of the Iraq war. His decision was all the more compelling in that it was reluctant.
In the early days of this debate, in late 2001 and spring of 2002, I frequently argued against a war on Iraq. I brought up a number of good reasons:
* the war would detract from the one I cared about most, the one against Osama Bin Laden.
* a unilateral push to carry out this war would harm institutions that have by and large served the United States’ interests well.
* Saddam could be contained and deterred, just as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.
I'll return to those arguments below. But first, I'll dismiss a few I've never believed in.
In the sea of ahistorical, emotion-driven, conspiracy-addicted, often just plain stupid antiwar arguments, Nephew was a breath of fresh air. His carefully-considered reasons for finally supporting the war were also a breath of fresh air. I think they've held up pretty well, so far, don't you? (
Great discussion in the comment section, too.)
Historical bias Dept. I've been wanting to see a professional fisking of Karen Armstrong for some time.
This critique of her book
Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths is from
a biblical archeology site. After listing many factual errors, the author concludes, in his understated scholarly way:
10 P. 426: “In exile, Zion became an image of salvation and reconciliation to the Jews. Not surprisingly, al-Quds has become even more precious to the Palestinians in their exile. Two peoples, who have both endured an annihilation, now seek healing in the same Holy City.” The highly personal, arbitrary and undocumented statements cited above, and others like them found in the book, pale when compared to this most unfortunate characterization of historical events of the past seven decades.
Armstrong’s treatment is obviously not totally innocent. The book’s rhetoric, judging from the above citations and many other passages, seems pitched towards gaining the reader’s assent to certain of the author’s own conclusions regarding the political situation now prevailing in Israel and the territories, with particular focus on Jerusalem. In the end, Armstrong’s view of this matter emerges as decidedly partisan, not at all flowing of necessity either from the documented historical facts presented by the author or from those sources relating to it that remain untreated by her.
Blog round-up. I haven't done a blog or war news round-up or put up anything on
Command Post for several weeks. First I had my DSL and browser problems, then I wanted to spend my time in Austin looking at my friends' faces and scenery rather than at my laptop screen. While I was gone CP redesigned their site and now the glitch that made it hang my browser is gone, so now I can view CP without having to switch my OS. I look forward to going through my backlog of bookmarks and posting whatever is still relevant.
Here are a few relatively fresh links on topics other than the war and its aftermath:
Winds of Change, has
some info on
technology that could have come from a 50s sci-fi B-movie. WofC also links to the
Stupid Security Contest, "an international competition to discover the world's most pointless, intrusive, stupid and self-serving security measures." The winners are up - check it out.
World history in a nutshell from Brad deLong. I mean from the first domesticated animals to WWII, including the influences of weather, terrain, and technological innovation on historical events. Excerpt:
p. 128: climate change (probably) and pastoral expansion (certainly) hurt agriculture throughout the semiarid heartlands of Southwest Asia, and the Black Death was very costly.... Muslim governments did invent ingenious ways to subsidize caravan trade.... But this did not enable camels to carry heavier loads. High-cost luxuries therefore remained the staples of interregional commerce in Southwest Asia. Peasants, oppressed by rents and taxes in kind... harassed by nomads... could only enter marginally... limited capacity of overland caravans inhibited commercialization of the rural majority in Muslim lands on anything like the scale that China and parts of Europe witnessed...
The comments are great too.
I forget where I first learned of
Cronaca, a weblog primarily devoted to archeology. Given the prominent role of archeology in the Iraq conflict, Cronaca has some timely news as well.
And, last but not least, Meryl looks back on
two years of blogging. (That's an entire generation in dog years, but as they say, on the Internet no one knoes you're a dog . . . ) happy anniversary, meryl, and here's to many more!
Shavuot count-down: Day 6 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Yesod of Chesed: Bonding in Lovingkindness. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:For love to be eternal it requires bonding. A sense of togetherness which actualizes the love in a joint effort. An intimate connection, kinship and attachment, benefiting both parties. This bonding bears fruit; the fruit born out of a healthy union.
(More on counting the Omer
here)
In shul on the morning of the
seventh day of Pesach, we sing the
Song of the Sea (you may recognize the "mi chamocha" that we chant during the Shma at shacharit and maariv). Of interest to calligraphers: Shirat Hayam is one of the sections of the Torah that must be
scribed in a certain way in a Torah scroll.
War-related URLs: As I've said before, timely stuff goes to
Command Post, stuff with shelf life goes here.
VodkaPundit
notes that since the antiwar movement was wrong about almost everything having to do with the conduct of the war ("quagmire," anyone?), there's a good chance their dire predictions about the forging the peace are wrong as well. Lots of links and comments.
Sgt. Stryker has
some comments on depleted uranium studies and so do the readers, as does Kesher Talk's departed
editor.
HaMakom yenachem et'chem b'toch shar avay'lay Tzion vee'Yerushalayim. Marine Cpl. Mark Asher Evnin, the first Jewish American to die in the war in Iraq, grandson of a rabbi and nephew of a cantor, Harry Potter fan, was
buried with full military honors April 14 in Burlington VT, 11 days after he was killed in combat.
Jonathan Koopman, a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle embedded with Mark’s unit, witnessed and wrote about the soldier’s last moments: “A young corporal, standing next to one of the armored personnel carriers, fired a grenade launcher at an Iraqi bunker,” Koopman wrote. “He turned and caught a bullet in the gut. He went down. A medic went to work on him while the firefight continued 20 yards away. A unit commander says Evnin was awake and coherent, and angry about being hit.”
The funeral was held at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in Burlington.
Read excerpts from the eulogies by Mark's family, friends, teachers, and clergy. Cpl. Evnin's death generated a huge response from Jews around the world, and from gentile families with relatives in the Marines.
More than 1,000 people attended [the funeral], including Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas and Bishop Kenneth Angell of the Burlington diocese. Angell’s brother David, producer of the TV show “Frasier,” was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 that Al Qaeda hijackers crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Local police and firefighters formed an honor guard outside the synagogue, Mindy Evnin said, and townspeople lined the funeral route, saluting and holding their hands on their hearts. “He is buried with my father’s tallis,” or prayer shawl, which Wall wore at his wedding and hoped would be buried with him, Mindy Evnin said. She also put a Chumash — the first five books of the Bible — in Evnin’s casket.
To the Evnin and Wall families:
May the Omnipresent comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.(Tip from Diane)
Naive tool/terrorist sympathizer Dept. Someone emailed me
an article from Haaretz about Rachel Corrie. It's by an Israeli ISM sympathizer, but somewhat critical. Adds some more brushstrokes to the picture of
the "internationals," the various activist groups which rally to the terrorist cause. (Here's
another account by an Israeli ISM activist, who is just a bit critical of the movement (scroll to the end for that part).
The current issue of
The Stranger, the Seattle weekly which ran
a tough piece which is still the best reportage I've seen on the Rachel Corrie incident, has a feature on the contrast between
real Iraqis and antiwar posters.Two different groups of Iraqis were spotted in downtown Seattle recently.
The first group was silent, timidly smiling, and two-dimensional. If you attended a peace march in Seattle you probably saw these Iraqis being carried around by antiwar protesters. . . . "Look at these people," the picture-toting protesters demanded. "They are innocent and they are in great danger. American bombs could kill them. These are the innocent victims! Look at them!"
The other group of Iraqis seen in Seattle last week was three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood, and not at all timid. They weren't being carried by peace protesters or wheat-pasted to light poles or slapped onto buses. They were celebrating in Westlake Center--cheering, weeping, and waving American, Iraqi, and Kurdish flags. These Iraqis were celebrating the collapse of Saddam's regime. . .
An Iraqi Jew
recalls his own exodus from Baghdad to the US, and as Joe Katzman noted, how appropriate that
this celebration comes during Pesach. UPDATE: Lynn B
has more links to an IMRA report and
an essay by Judy Lash Balint on the Rachel Corrie incident, which includes a number of contradictory eyewitness accounts not only of the bulldozer incident, but of Rachel's time of death and the details of her Palestinian funeral. The article also reminds us of previous ISM actions in the Bethlehem Church of the Nativity stand-off.
Last May, a number of ISMers raced past Israeli soldiers into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where dozens of Palestinian terrorists had holed up to evade capture by the IDF outside. After an agreement was reached, the ISM members refused to leave the church, holding up the solution. Then they charged that they were mistreated by clergy, who claimed the ISMers desecrated the church by smoking and drinking alcohol.
Previous Kesher Talk posts on Rachel Corrie
here and
here. UPDATE: Please check out the comment section and enjoy our resident troll. It's okay to feed him, since we don't get so many.
Shavuot count-down: Day 5 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Hod of Chesed: Humility in Lovingkindness. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:You can often get locked in love and be unable to forgive your beloved or to bend or compromise your position. Hod introduces the aspect of humility in love; the ability to rise above yourself and forgive or give in to the one you love just for the sake of love even if you're convinced that you're right. Arrogant love is not love.
(More on counting the Omer
here)
It's still Pesach, and - a bit late - here's President Bush's
Passover message to Jews around the world, and Judy Lash Balint on
how you can tell Pesach is coming to Jerusalem.
So what else is new? As long as Arafat is alive and moderately well, he
will not let power be pried from his hands. Yasser Arafat is starting to approach other candidates about becoming prime minister after failing to agree so far with Prime Minister-Designate Mahmoud Abbas on a list of new Cabinet members, Palestinian sources said Monday. Arafat and Abbas are engaged in a power struggle, with the Palestinian Authority president seeking to retain as much control as he can, sources told CNN. Abbas -- commonly known as Abu Mazen -- has said he wants genuine authority in the job. . . .
Shavuot count-down: Day 4 of counting the Omer. Using
Kabbalistic symbology for
counting the Omer - the days between the 2nd night of Pesach and the start of Shavuot - tonight begins the
Netzach of Chesed: Endurance in Lovingkindness. Rabbi Simon Jacobson's
meditation for this day of the Omer:Is my love enduring? Does it withstand challenges and setbacks? Do I give and withhold love according to my moods or is it constant regardless of the ups and downs of life?
(More on counting the Omer
here)
Adina
recalls the highlights of our Austin seder at her house across the street from
Stacy Park. It was a sweet time, although I wish people hadn't conked out too early for me to indoctrinate them in new Pesach melodies. If you blogged a seder, let me know and I'll link to it.
Adina - as befits her role as
Marketing VP for a company that makes web-based groupware - also observes that
the proliferation of custom Haggadot is a happy result of the intersection of technology and religious practice.
