High-roller suites in Las Vegas

I'll probably never stay in one of these, but it sure is fun to gawk:

http://travel.msn.com//Guides/MSNTravelSlideShow.aspx?cp-documentid=548237&imageindex=1

Didn't even mention the Real World suite at the Palms!

Lost cont'd.

Is Claire still alive? Why did she hide out in Jacob's cabin--with her dead father--and abandon her son? Very odd behaviour.

Presidential campaign

40% of Jews say religion is important in their lives. Among those Jews, they are split 45-45 on their choice for president.

That's encouraging for McCain. I would expect him to lose the Jewish vote 65-35. Maybe he'll do better than that.

A critical view of Sen. Obama's platform: surrender abroad; grow government at home. (Michael Medved, July 8)

Torah as symphony

From CTN Torah Minute by Rabbi Moshe Katz. --Ken

Hope all is well.

Our two boys, who are in day camp, went on a three day overnight last week.

So my wife and I “escaped” for a few days in Milwaukee.

Among the things we saw advertised?

An outdoor concert by the Milwaukee Philharmonic Orchestra.

And off we went.

But we were in for a surprise.

Because we didn’t read the small print.

They weren’t playing the standard classical music.

What were they playing?

The music of a Milwaukee rock band.

The Gufs!

(Talk about being overqualified!)

We figured we would wait and see.

And it was fascinating.

While I wouldn’t say you could close your eyes and swear it was Beethoven?

And while I’m certainly not 'into' rock and roll ...

It actually sounded quite good when played by the Milwaukee Philharmonic Orchestra!

… And it got me thinking.

About the Torah!

How Torah is our Philharmonic Orchestra.

... We all do some pretty boring and unexciting things.

Like getting up in the morning. Eating. Going to work. Talking on the phone.

But our tradition gives us tools to elevate every part of our lives.

To put everything to music!

When we get up in the morning?

If we thank G-d we’re alive? Really appreciate the gift of life?

And resolve to make the coming day meaningful?

… It’s a symphony.

When we eat?

And we make a bracha, a blessing?

Even appreciating the small things?

Like a bowl of (whole grain) cereal. A piece of fruit. A drink of water?

… It’s a symphony.

When we get to work?

And greet everyone with a smile.

Especially when we don’t feel like it.

Or ask ourselves, “Would the Torah want me to do this? Is it ethical?

Will someone’s feelings be hurt?

… It’s a symphony.

And when we get on the phone?

But we don’t share that piece of juicy gossip?

Or when we use the call to raise someone’s spirits?

… It’s a symphony.

And like our concert?

It doesn’t cost a penny to turn our lives into a symphony!

China's pathetic human rights record

A Different Olympic Torch
by Sara Yoheved Rigler

What no Jew can ignore.

As the world revs up for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a different kind of torch is being relayed around the globe. It is the Human Rights Torch Relay, a campaign to stop the despicable persecution of prisoners of conscience in China. The campaign especially focuses on the persecution of the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement tens of thousands of whose practitioners are being held in 36 slave labor camps throughout China.

The Human Rights Torch will pass, with accompanying events, through 37 countries in six continents. It arrives in Israel on February 18. To receive the torch and the mandate it represents, a mass rally will be held on the grounds of the Tel Aviv Museum at 5 PM.

The motto of the Human Rights Torch Relay [HRTR] is: "The Olympics and crimes against humanity cannot coexist in China."

UNSPEAKABLE ATROCITIES

In 2006, reports began to circulate that the Chinese authorities were harvesting organs -- hearts, lungs, livers, etc. -- from live Falun Gong prisoners and selling them on the lucrative organ transplant market. The allegation was so grotesque that many people dismissed it as an urban myth.

The government of Canada, however, appointed two respected attorneys, David Matas and David Kilgour, to investigate the allegations. On May 8, 2006, they submitted their report. The report confirmed the worst -- that organs were being taken out of the bodies of thousands of live, healthy prisoners of conscience to supply the booming Chinese organ market.

"The atrocity is so great that there are simply no words to express it," stated Rabbi David Druckman, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Motzkin. "It is especially incumbent upon us as Jews to lead the campaign that expresses total disgust at this phenomenon."

Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv of Jerusalem is the world's leading halachic authority. Rabbi Elyashiv was asked by an Orthodox Israeli doctor who was hired to accompany a Jewish patient to China for an organ transplant if such transplants were permissible, given the likelihood that a human being was murdered to provide the organ. Rabbi Elyashiv ruled that it is absolutely forbidden to receive an organ transplant from such a source, even if one's own life is at stake.

Several months ago, over 220 Israeli rabbis, academics, and politicians signed a petition calling for an end to the Chinese atrocities. In a rare show of Jewish unity, the signatories included the entire Israeli spectrum from the right to the left, from religious to secular.

Between 2004 and 2007, about 20 Israelis received heart transplants in China, 10 received liver transplants, and some 200-300 received kidney transplants. In 2007 all Israeli health funds agreed to refuse funding for organ transplants in China and other ethically questionable locations. Tal Babich, an Israeli Falun Gong supporter, points out that while organs are being stolen from victims in Turkey, the Ukraine, and India, these crimes are being perpetrated by Mafia-like elements. Only in China is the government itself behind the forcible extraction of organs.

WHAT'S THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE?

Falun Gong began in China in 1992. Today the movement has over 70,000,000 adherents in China and many thousands abroad. Falun Gong believes in the Divine, and advocates the cultivation of three principle traits: truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.

Borys Wrzesnewsky, a Canadian parliamentarian, observed that while the atrocities being perpetrated against the Falun Gong by the Communist government of China are horrific, they are not "shocking," in the sense of surprising. Communism is, after all, an atheistic system, doctrinally opposed to belief in God and spirituality. [Witness the genocide that the Chinese Communists committed against Tibetan Buddhists.] Moreover, he points out, Communism believes that everything can be reduced to economic factors. A human being, therefore, has a purely economic value, either as a worker or, in the case of political undesirables, as the possessor of organs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. "Harvesting organs" from a human being in the same way that one harvests cucumbers from a field is thus perfectly consistent with Communist ideology.

The Torah introduced to the world a different value system. According to the Torah, human beings are valuable because of their spiritual essence, because they are created "in the image of God." While the ancient Greeks, the originators of the Olympic games, were practicing infanticide of babies who were undesirable because they were girls or handicapped, Jews were asserting the inviolable sanctity of human life.

Never Again

"We as Jews must therefore stand at the front lines of this war," asserts Rabbi David Druckman, "and employ every possible tactic in order that the world expunge atrocities such as this. Jewish law requires us to spread the values of faith in the Creator and of maintaining the 'image of God' throughout the world. The same Torah that tells us to keep the Sabbath and to eat only kosher food also requires that we [ethically] influence all of mankind."

So what can we do? HTHR recommends three lines of action:

1.Raise awareness of the atrocities being perpetrated in China. Forward this article, speak to your friends, feel outraged.

2.Social action: Write letters to your local newspapers, to the Chinese Embassy, to the Olympic Committee. If you choose to attend the Olympics, wear a T-shirt condemning Chinese crimes against humanity. Attend the Human Rights Torch Relay when it comes to your area. Let China know that it will not be accepted as a respectable member of the community of nations until it releases the Falun Gong. Do something!

3.Donate money to publicize the campaign.

We dare not remain silent.

Beautiful story

A lovely narrative about a true tzaddik (holy person). I hope the girl realized how lucky she was.

Dear Mr. President
by Yudit Brown

Sometimes great people do write back.

When I was in second grade I wrote a letter to the President of the United States. I had something of crucial importance to discuss with him, and I made it clear that it was an emergency. He never answered.

So I tried the vice president, but he didn't answer either. I was deeply offended. I could not understand why they weren't answering me. After all, when I wrote to my teacher during the summer of first grade she wrote back, and nobody was busier than she was.

I decided to write again. I checked the address in the yellow phone book, and painstakingly wrote it out in large purple letters on my favorite stationery. I then wrote SOS underneath, and proceeded to write my letter on matching stationery paper.

I began the letter with a compliment on the great job he was doing as president. (All presidents love compliments.) I then went straight to the point. I asked him if he could please, please come down to our school in three more weeks on Tuesday afternoon. I wanted to "show 'n tell" him to the class. It would be my turn then. And this was an emergency, because no one had ever brought the president to our classroom yet. He could give a small speech, not like the long ones he always does, and then I would give out doughnuts and he could leave. If he absolutely could not make it, I would be willing take the vice president instead.

But a few days passed and there was no answer in the mail. I figured there must be something wrong with the mailbox, and that my letter never got transferred to the one in the White House.

I asked my mother if there was a better way to send important letters, and she told me, yes, there was Federal Express. But when I asked her to send my letter that way, she stubbornly refused and nothing I said could convince her otherwise.

Finally, I decided on my last option. I would to try another mailbox. Maybe a different one would work better.

Two days before show 'n tell, I received an envelope from the president. Inside was a portrait size picture of him, and under the picture he had signed his name.

I was furious. What was I expected to do with a portrait size picture of the president's ugly face?

I wrote him a letter raging that when I would grow up I was never gonna vote for him, and, here -- he could have his picture back.

That was the last time I ever wrote a letter to the president.

In fact, that was the last time I wrote any letter at all until the end of the year, when one evening I had an explosive argument with my brother.

I loved chewing pens. When I was doing homework, writing or thinking, I was chewing off the top part of a pen. My mother always told me to stop -- I was deforming all the pens in the house. My father told me that I was ruining my teeth, and my brother teased the life out of me.

One day he walked into my room while I was peacefully chewing on a pen. He grabbed it out of my mouth, and gleefully informed me that I was not allowed to chew on pens any longer. They weren't kosher.

I told him to hand me back the pen immediately.

But he held the pen over his head gloatingly, danced around my room in circles, and said that he couldn't give it back to me. I was chewing something treif.

I argued that the pen was definitely kosher because I had bought it in a Jewish grocery store. But he said it made no difference -- there was no supervision symbol, no hechsher on it.

I said that it didn't matter, because I wasn't really eating it. But he held up the pen close to his eyes, and said, actually, I sure was.

So we argued and yelled until he finally said that I could ask the biggest rabbi in the world, and he would tell me that pens weren't kosher.

I said fine. I was gonna ask the biggest rabbi in the world. My brother looked at me, and burst out laughing. He laughed and laughed and finally said that he would even give me the address of the biggest rabbi in the world, and I could send him my silly question and see that he was right.

He pulled out a "Torah card" from his pocket and showed it to me. It was a picture of Reb Dovid, one of the biggest rabbis in the city. This man is busy day and night assisting people's lives and dealing with important community issues. I carefully wrote down the address on my homework pad, and kicked my brother out of my room. He was still laughing and yelled through the door that Reb Dovid got millions of letters from people, and that I was dreaming. He would never answer my stupid letter.

But I wanted to know if a pen was trief, and did it really need a hechsher to put it in my mouth? I also wanted to know how much I was allowed to hate my brother, and was it a smaller or bigger sin than eating non-kosher?

So I wrote the letter and sent it that evening before I went to bed.

I went to school, failed a math test, argued with my brother and received a letter at the end of the week. Reb Dovid wrote back. It was a long letter. He wrote that he was delighted with my letter, and I should continue to write to him whenever I have a question. He said that my questions were good ones, and he had spent a lot of time thinking and looking through many holy books before he was able to answer. He could tell I was an intelligent person, and that I liked to think, and then he answered my questions.

Pens, he answered, are a lifeless object, so the concept of kosher is irrelevant. But even if it wasn't a problem according to Jewish law, I should try to stop chewing pens was because it was an annoying habit that ruined the pens, and it probably bothered whoever else wanted to use it.

He once had a friend who also loved chewing pens, and then one day he chewed right through the ink tube and had a black mouth for a week.

After that his friend always put a little mustard on top of the pen he was using, until he got used to chewing his fingernails instead of the pen...

He also said that it was okay to hate my brother. My brother probably hated me sometimes, too, but we would become friends when we grew up. For now we only annoyed each other, and it wasn't really hating. He hated his sister, too, when he was younger. She would boss him around, and he never listened. Today, they are best friends.

I put the letter in a separate folder, and sat down to write another one. And another, and another, and another...

Could you push off Shabbat to Sunday if it was an emergency? Was I allowed to tell my friend's secret only to my mother and my teacher and my other three friends? Could I ask God for a new dress while davening?

Was I allowed to slap my teacher, if it was only in a dream? Could I "borrow" a snack from my friend if she didn't know?

Almost every week I wrote a letter, and almost every week Reb Dovid wrote back. He was always happy to receive my letters. Sometimes he wrote that my questions became difficult for him, and he had to consult with another rabbi. Did I mind? And could he read the last letter to his wife? She would enjoy it so much.

How was my annoying brother? Did I do well on the Chumash test? I should read the book, "Goodbye, Friend" -- an intelligent person would enjoy it.

What was I doing in the summer? Of, course, you should write to me then. Here is my address in the mountains...

My daughter didn't like day camp either, but in another few years you will start going to sleepover camp. Now, that is fun... Yes, you can definitely tell your mother that you don't like the new school shoes, it all depends on how you say it, and I'm so happy that you made friends with the new girl in your class. I see that you have a good teacher this year, your questions are on a high level.

It was Purim time, fourth grade, when I received the last letter. It was his longest one.

He would no longer be able to answer my questions. He had to go away soon... But here was the address of his good friend who knows all about Torah, and can write letters even better than he had. His friend loves letters like mine, and I should write to him whenever I felt like it. He had enjoyed my thoughts so much, and he knows that I would grow up to be a great person.

You are a smart girl, he wrote, and always must remember that what makes you so smart is that you ask questions.

Reb Dovid died two days after I received the letter. They told us about it in school, and we heard many stories about him. Everyone went to his funeral, and they wrote all about him in the weekly newspapers.

They published an article he had written before he passed away but I couldn't really understand it. His letters were much simpler.

I showed the letters only to my parents, and then hid them all in the back of my drawer. Once after he died, I wrote him a letter, but no one knew the address of Paradise. Instead, I wrote to his wife and asked if she knew how long Reb Dovid was planning on staying in heaven, and did he ever come to her in a dream, and when he did could she ask for the address? I wanted to write to him.

She wrote back that Reb Dovid would be in heaven until Moshiach came, and, no, he didn't come to her in a dream, and no, heaven has no address.

Then how, I wondered, did anyone know where to go when they died? And where was Moshiach all this time anyway? In heaven, or hiding somewhere on earth? At first I thought of waiting for Moshiach to write my next letter, but when a few days passed and he hadn't arrived, I decided he was taking too long. Until then, I would write to the other rabbi that Reb Dovid had told me about.

Original article copyright (c) Hamodia.

Author Biography:
Yudit Brown grew up in Flatbush and now lives in Jerusalem with her husband and toddler. She is pursuing an MA in English and writes for a number of Jewish periodicals.

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This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/spirituality/odysseys/Dear_Mr._President.asp

Dr. Schroeder vs. NYT

One of my favorite authors. --Ken

An Atheist Turns
by Dr. Gerald Schroeder

Unable to disprove the message, The NY Times tries to discredit the messenger.

On Sunday November 4, 2007, The New York Times Weekend Magazine featured an article, The Turning of an Atheist, written by Mark Oppenheimer. It describes the conversion of arch-atheist, philosopher, Antony Flew into a believer. In the article I am cited 21 times by name as the arch-offender in the abominable act.

Flew had authored an article in the mid-1950's, "Theology and Falsification" and presented this thesis at the Socratic Club of Oxford University, presided over by none less than C. S. Lewis. Many felt it was a brilliant and invincible proof for a godless world. Over the decades that have followed it became the consistently cited landmark confirmation for atheists

And then, a few years ago, Antony Flew met Roy Varghese, a successful high tech entrepreneur who spaces his time between Dallas, Texas and India. Roy had written several books on the magnificence of creation and urged Antony to read his book "The Wonder of the World" and my third book, "The Hidden Face of God." Those two books were Antony's undoing.

In 2004 Flew announced that the discoveries of modern science have made it abundantly clear that the creation of the universe and of life and consciousness from non-living inert matter must be the work of an infinite Intelligence and not the result of random acts of an unguided nature. This revelation, in which Flew also apologized for having misled so many souls over the decades since his "Theology and Falsification," was extraordinary news. Yahoo, in its daily news summary, even listed Flew's recantation as one of the five major events of the day. Roy released a DVD titled "Has Science Discovered God?" In it, Flew and I discuss the facts of nature, not speculations, that had such an impact on Antony. Here in a bit of irony, Flew tells us that he follows the creed of Socrates, "I go to where the truth leads me." Recall that his original argument was presented at Oxford's Socratic Club.

In October 2007, Flew's book, "There Is a God: How the world's most notorious atheist changed his mind," was published by HarperOne. This was already too much for Oppenheimer and also so it seems for The New York Times. In a scathing article, Oppenheimer attempts to portray Flew as a duped and senile philosopher, unaware of the ways of the scientific world. Yet Oppenheimer brings no arguments against the science. Because he can't. The science is fine. So his only approach can be against the veracity of Flew and me.

The supposedly senile Flew sums up brilliantly Oppenheimer's vitriolic attack on him and me, "If you can't disprove the message, then try to discredit the messenger."

For me, this has been an awakening of the obsessive lengths to which the anti-God community will go to maintain its control over what is taught in schools. My reply, edited by the Times to the 150 word limit, appeared a few weeks later:

Mark Oppenheimer [NY Times 4 November 2007] mentions me as a source for "the science" that "turned" Antony Flew from skeptic to believer. Some people may believe that Flew, being old and therefore possibly senile, was duped by this "pseudoscience." Let's look at just one aspect of our cosmic genesis. As Antony Flew realized, as does any objective evaluation of this cosmic genesis reveal, the wonder is not whether it took 6 days or 14 billion years, or even an eternity. The wonder is that it happened. The energy of creation became alive, sentient, learned the emotions of joy, love, boredom. There is not a hint of sentience in the electromagnetic radiation that marked the creation or in the 92 elements that the radiation eventually formed. But in an exotic combination of these elements we discover the self-awareness of life.
Gerald Schroeder
Jerusalem

And that is truly the wonder of the world, our world. By a micro-second following God's creation of the world, the Big Bang Creation, the material world was composed almost exclusively of electromagnetic radiation, in simplistic terms, super powerful light beams. According to the Ramban, this was the only physical creation. All other creations were spiritual. Our bodies, not our souls, are made of the light of creation. No wonder that God, upon expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden dresses them in oahr spelled with the Hebrew letter ayin, which means "skin" in Hebrew. Before that while in the Garden they were dressed in oahr, but spelled with an aleph, meaning "light."

The most powerful challenge to an atheist's view of the world lies within the world itself: the simple reality of existence. Why is there existence? Forget things as complex as life. Just consider the being of anything: space, time, matter in any form. Is there some "law," some axiom, that demands there be existence independent of an underlying force that brought it into being? Even if we posit that the universe and all existence is eternal, the question remains: why is there an "is"? It's a question that calls out for an answer. Of course the facile response is if there were not existence, then we could not ask the question. True, but we do exist and so it is a puzzle that demands probing. The greatest self-revelation of a Creator is the creation It brought into being.

Moses, in his closing message to the Jewish people, tells us that if we want to discover the Creator, "Remember the days of old; consider the years, generation by generation" (Deuteronomy 32:7). "Remember the days of old" -- the Ramban relates this to the six days of Genesis, the wonder of the flow of nature. If that is not enough to convince one of a God active in this magnificent world, then consider the years, generation by generation -- the flow of social history. In every age there are miraculous wonders that reveal the hand of our Creator active within the creation. We don't have to go deep into history. The past 60 years are more than adequate to show God's hand. As David Ben Gurion is quoted, "If you live in Israel and you don't believe in miracles, then you are not a realist." We live in a land of miracles. Just look around.

Author Biography:
Gerald Schroeder earned his BSc, MSc and PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of GENESIS AND THE BIG BANG, the discovery of harmony between modern science and the Bible , published by Bantam Doubleday; now in seven languages; and THE SCIENCE OF GOD, published by Free Press of Simon & Schuster, and THE HIDDEN FACE OF GOD, also published by Free Press of Simon & Schuster. He teaches at Aish HaTorah College of Jewish Studies.

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This article can also be read at: http://www.aish.com/societyWork/sciencenature/An_Atheist_Turns.asp