will be today at 4:30 at our normal location by the entrance of Prospect Park. Take the F train to the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop. If you have fireworks please bring them.
For further info contact Isaac Schonfeld, isaac18@gmail.com or 917-803-9909
Who is a God like unto Thee?
This refers to the Holy One, Blessed is He, as a patient King[6] Who bears insult in a manner that is above human understanding. For behold, without doubt, there is nothing hidden from His providence. Furthermore, there is no moment when man is not nourished and does not exist by virtue of the divine power which flows down upon him. It follows that no man ever sins against God without the divine affluence pouring into him at that very moment, enabling him to exist and to move his limbs. Despite the fact that he uses it for sin, that power is not withheld from him in any way. But the Holy One, Blessed is He, bears this insult and continues to empower him to move his limbs even though he uses the power in that momeny for sin and perversity offending the Holy One, Blessed is He, who, nonetheless, suffer it. Nor must you say that He cannot withhold that good, God forfend, for it lies in His power in the moment it takes to say the word 'moment'[7] to wither the sinner's hand or foot, as he did to Jeroboam[8]. And yet though it lies in His power to arrest divine flow - and He might have said: 'If you sin against Me do so under your own power, not with Mine' - He does not, on this account, withold His goodness from man, bearing the insult, pouring out His power and bestowing of His goodness. This is to be insulted and bear the insult, beyond words. This is why the ministering angels[9] refer to the Holy One, Blessed is He, as 'the patient King.' And this is the meaning of the prophet's words: "Who is a God unto Thee?" He means: 'Thou, the good and merciful, art God, with the power to avenge and claim Thy debt, yet Thou art patient and bearest insult until man repents.' Behold this is a virtue man shoul make his own, namely, to be patient and allow himself to be insulted even to this extent and yet not refuse to bestow of his goodness to the recipients. -RaMaK
Rivka Karasik's in it.
INDULGANCE OF WORLD ART
| Host: |
The Coffee Cave |
| Type: | |
| Network: |
Global |
| Date: |
Sunday, July 5, 2009 |
| Time: |
4:00pm - 8:00pm |
| Location: |
The Coffee Cave |
| Street: |
45 Halsey st |
| City/Town: |
Newark, NJ |
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| Email: |
for a suspended license. he is imprisoned upstate. Please contact Isaac Schonfeld isaac18@gmail.com
By JOSEPH MARKS
The Associated Press
EIN GEDI, Israel — Eli Raz was peering into a narrow hole in the Dead Sea shore when the earth opened up and swallowed him. Fearing he would never be found alive in the 30-foot- deep pit, he scribbled his will on an old postcard.
After 14 hours a search party pulled him from the hole unhurt, and five years later the 69-year-old geologist is working to save others from a similar fate, leading an effort to map the sinkholes that are spreading on the banks of the fabled saltwater lake.
These underground craters can open up in an instant, sucking in whatever lies above and leaving the surrounding area looking like an earthquake zone.
The phenomenon, Raz said, stems from a dire water shortage, compounded in recent years by tourism and chemical industries as well as a growing population. "This is the most remarkable evidence of the brutal interference of humans in the Dead Sea," he said.
The parched moonscape, famous as the site of biblical Sodom and Gomorra, is the lowest point on earth and runs more than 60 miles through Israel and the West Bank.
Large sections of the coast are fenced off and signposted in Hebrew and English: "danger, open pits" and "sinkhole area ahead." But it's too expensive to inspect every place for danger. Just two months ago an Israeli hiker wandered into an area that had no warning signs and was critically injured when he fell into a sinkhole.
While such accidents are rare, Raz says there are up to 3,000 open sinkholes along the coast and likely just as many that haven't burst open yet. And they're having a big impact on Israeli development plans.
The collapsing terrain has forced authorities to close a campground, date groves and a small naval base, and to scrap plans for 5,000 new hotel rooms, said Galit Cohen, director of environmental planning at the Ministry of the Environment.
The holes, also found on the Jordanian side of the sea, are the result of the Dead Sea having shrunk by a third since the 1960s when Israel and Jordan built plants to divert water flowing through its main tributary, the Jordan River.
The holes form when a subterranean salt layer that once bordered the sea is dissolved by underground fresh water that follows the receding Dead Sea waters.
The main road along the shore has been torn apart by streams whose energy is increased because they are flowing farther to reach the receding sea, and all construction along the strip between sea and highway is banned, Cohen said.
Both Israel and Jordan evaporate Dead Sea water to extract its phosphates and have built hotels along the coasts for the thousands of tourists who come in search of the curative powers of Dead Sea mud, or simply for the experience of floating unsinkably in its salt-saturated waters.
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Only micro-organisms survive in the Dead Sea, but indigenous species of fish, amphibians and snails live in small nearby ponds fed by underground springs, and these could be wiped out as the Dead Sea gets smaller, Raz said.
Many of the changes are masked at the pricey resorts on the sea's southern end, which lie on the banks of a large artificial pond built by the mineral industry. But around Ein Gedi, the kibbutz or communal farm where Raz lives, the Dead Sea's shrinkage is evident.
Twenty-five years ago Ein Gedi built a spa by the sea. Now it's a one-mile trolley ride from the water.
"Any visitor that's come back for a second visit in these last 10 years would see a dramatic change," said Gidon Bromberg, Israel director of Friends of the Earth Middle East, an advocacy group. "The sea has run away from the cliffs and it's exposed kilometers of mud and sea floor."
No quick solution is in sight.
The World Bank is studying a proposal to dig a canal from the Red Sea, more than 100 miles south, to replenish the Dead Sea's waters. But with costs estimated at up to $15 billion, there's little optimism it will happen.
Without a solution, the sea is expected to shrink to lose another third of its area over the next century.
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
I was nineteen years old in the fourth class of Oholei Torah, the year students went on shlichus. For the first time in my life I had not been at a farbrengen in four months. These were the beginnings of me leaving Chabad, and the Ultra-orthodox community in which I was bred. I’d lie at home for weeks reading books and not leaving my bedroom. This new entry into the world of books was not so much an escape or even a hope but more of a desperate attempt by me to block out the confusion and ugly states of mind that I was experiencing
My entire class had been selected to go on shlichus to various yeshivas throughout the world but I was not selected to go to Sydney, Australia, the one venue I wanted to go, since my chavrusa of the past two years was going there.
So I did not attend the farbrengens until one shabbos I decided to go. I entered 770 at 1:30 pm and walked to my place but as the farbrengen began I was feeling depressed and decided to leave. My place, to the Rebbe’s left on the raised platform, five people behind Rabbi Chodokov, was great for listening, being so close, but not great for viewing the Rebbe’s face. Throughout all the years which I stood there, it did not even enter my mind that the Rebbe knew who I was or where I stood. In those years there were thousands of Chassidim at the farbrengens and in no way would he know where I stood tucked behind people, out of view.
Fifteen minutes after the farbrengen began I left 770 and walked along Eastern Parkway, then under construction. I walked in the direction of the Brooklyn Public Library and was feeling very despondent about my life etc. For some reason I decided to turn back and walk home, passing 770 again. I was drawn back and walked to my place at the farbrengen as the Rebbe was finishing the first sicha.
Between sichos married men and non-Lubavitchers raised small 1 ounce cups with wine and wait until the Rebbe saw them and nodded his head, bestowing a blessing. Unmarried Lubavitchers did not do this, and one waited until one was married.
As I walked back to my place, a full eight-ounce cup of wine was on the table and I raised it towards the Rebbe. The Rebbe’s head turned all the way around towards me and two large beams of blue light began shaking my body. This went on for several seconds and I remember sweating and shaking as I drank down the full cup of blessed wine.
For years I never repeated this story. I was living an irreligious lifestyle and was perhaps embarrassed about what I took to be a miraculous occurrence. But I would always ask myself privately, “how did the Rebbe know what I was going through?”
Five years later I was eating the shabbos meal at Gershon Jacobson’s home and Meir Abbesera was there. He told a story about being in 770 in the 70’s and how the Rebbe looked at him, and the two blue beams of light threw him up against the wall. The people who were with him witnessed this and he was taken outside etc.
Four months later I wrote to the Rebbe that I wanted to go to University but would follow the Rebbe’s advice if he told me to go on shlichus to one of the other yeshivas. The Rebbe responded three hours later that I should go to college with great blessings. One year later the Rebbe agreed that I should leave Crown Heights and move to a campus apartment. The Rebbe knew and guided me to leave and enter on a new road, a road that seemingly is fraught with everything the secular world offers, but with the dire consequences as well. I walk on this road, but I always turn to him, for in this world of confusion, I always did and always will have, my Rebbe.
i know i'll get shit for this but can anybody write in telling us how the cow has changed your life? did it make you:
