Tag: nation

Being Jewish is a nationality, not merely a religion. We Jews are the Children of Israel. We are members of the Nation of Israel. It doesn’t matter where we live. Only because of having been exiled from our own Jewish Land and scattered to foreign countries for the last 2000 years do we mistakenly think we are members of those foreign, gentile nationalities. Yes, a Jew may have citizenship in the United States or France, but he is still, first and foremost a Jew.

Had Mark Zuckerberg been told that the Jewish people have a mission to rebuild a Jewish state, and that his creative talents are needed, he may have harnessed his mind in that direction. Had he been offered an opportunity to take part in the most exciting project of the Jewish people in two-thousand years, he probably would have taken it.

To all of my beloved Jewish brothers and sisters in America, go ahead and eat your hot dogs. Drink your beer. But don’t think that the Fourth of July is really Independence Day for you. Remember that your nation is Israel, not America. Your hearts should beat proudly when you see the Star of David blowing in the wind, not the Stars and Stripes. And always remember that you are only in America, temporarily, because of the curse of galut.

Our forefathers passed on to us a Bill of Rights, and we shall pass on to our descendants a Bill. A tremendous Bill which can be unrolled from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam... and all the way across the ocean to China.

The current raft of outsider-insiders, includes actors who play politicians, politicians who act like actors, billionaires who push class warfare, blue-eyed Cherokees, Nobel Peace Prize warmongers, fighting on behalf of outsider groups, like gay marriage advocates and illegal aliens, whose agendas are backed by some of the largest and well-financed lobbying groups in the country.

Hashem criticized His holy nation relentlessly, yet Rabbi Avigdor Miller, zt”l, observes that for 38 of Israel's 40 years in the desert, Hashem expressed no criticism at all. Herein is a lesson in Israel's greatness.

Australia’s 2011 census shows that Australia’s official Jewish population has risen to almost 100,000, a rise of 10 percent in five years.

Picture a family full of smiles, and joy. See all the moments they spend together and support each other, through blessed times and difficult ones. Picture the holidays filled with warmth and laughter, and the Shabbat... But then something destroys the serenity.

"Law and Order SVU" star Richard Belzer is in hot water over what he insists was a comic homage to the late Charlie Chaplin and not, say, an expression of his fealty to the Nazi tradition.

We mustn't forget that the gentile nations do us a favor by allowing us to stay in their lands - until they expel us. One must realize that we are on foreign soil there. It is not our society, nor government, nor culture. Nothing is ours. Only in Israel are we at home with family, living according to our customs, and our uniquely Jewish year, living in the one place designed for our holiness, for our psychological health, even for our physical wellbeing.

A values-based identity appears to be superior, but it is actually the product of an identity crisis. For example, Jewish assimilation dropped the 'peoplehood' aspect, leaving behind a values-based identity. When liberal Jews express their identity, it is values-based, built around "Tikkun Olam", or "Social Justice". That opens up a hole for someone like Peter Beinart to crawl in with a crisis of Liberal Zionism, a conflict between values-based identity and Jewish survival.

For many people, especially younger ones, ideas about which government rules and “services” we can happily do without will be new and startling. But it is possible to slip the surly bonds of the Regulated Man construct and envision a better future. Wisconsin has taken an important step toward that future. Walker’s Wisconsin is what “Forward” looks like.

Some still think that the rightist leadership is actually capable of getting the State of Israel off the route previously charted out by the Zionist Left. They really think that the reason why our national train continues to speed down the Oslo track is because of the people in charge.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently suggested that Israelis are in a “coma” and unless “unilateral disengagement” is implemented now from Judea and Samaria, it will be too late for a peace agreement once they awaken.

The irrational, obsessive, unbalanced, excessive, fanatical hatred of a nation that characterizes a person like CSU-Northridge Mathematics Professor David Klein is a form of mental illness that attacks and destroys the moral sense found in a normal individual. En masse, it is a mass psychosis. In academia, it is an endemic mass psychosis.

The past decade saw the privatization of El Al and today the airline is more dedicated to keeping public shareholders happy than she is to fulfilling any sort of national mission. A perfect case in point happened recently when a profit-motivated El Al attempted to charge the President of the State of Israel an exorbitant $4,700 to haul a security mandated oxygen tank.

The Third Jewish Commonwealth has accomplished remarkable growth and productivity in its first six decades, and inspires the world with its resourcefulness. Yet as a young country, Israel has much room for improvement. Here are the Top 12 most pressing issues facing the reborn nation today:

There is a tradition from the Vilna Gaon that Milchemes Gog and Magog at the time of Moshiach will last only 12 minutes. In that short amount of time 1/3 of the world will be destroyed, 1/3 severely wounded and 1/3 will survive. Until recently this was incomprehensible - how could such destruction happen so quickly?

Here we are again – Shavuos, the yom tov commemorating the giving of the Torah, God’s greatest gift to mankind. If someone were to say to me, “It’s unbelievable that Hashem gave us His amazing Torah,” I would respond, “That’s the wrong way to put it. ‘Unbelievable’ means ‘not to be believed.’ The correct expression is, ‘It’s beyond belief’ – meaning more than belief. Hashem loves His charming nation beyond words.”

One of the questions a person is asked when he reaches his Heavenly rest is, "Did you yearn for Salvation?" If a Jew does not long for the Redemption, for Salvation from the exile, then something is wrong. If he is happy in the Diaspora, then his Judaism is out of focus, and he is out of touch with his soul's deepest yearnings. As The Kuzari poignantly declares, his prayers for Jerusalem and Zion are like the chatterings of a nightingale, melodious but empty of meaning.

The United States can survive without the international order, but it cannot survive the international order. If the United States is going to survive the century, it will have to do so as a rogue nation.

The Asifa was a sober and responsible approach to a real problem, and I was impressed by the quickness with which the organizers responded to the potential pitfalls of being portrayed as Luddites, which does not befit a nation of scholars and questioners.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan once said that democracy was like a trolley. You ride it until you get to your destination and then get off. Presumably that’s at the point where you have consolidated power to the point you can do whatever you want and have turned Turkey into an Islamist state.

While Pakistan has been invited to the NATO summit in Chicago next week, Israel has been left out, at the request of Turkey, according...

The Talmud tells us that compassion is one of the three traits that distinguish the nation of Israel (the others are shame and kindness). The Torah abounds with commandments that exercise this quality, and Rabbi Avigdor Miller, zt”l, explains that they are given for exactly that purpose.

President Barack Obama's recent self-congratulatory comments on the killing of Osama bin Laden must be viewed against the backdrop of past presidents, and how they related to the role of the military.

We're a seriously self-obsessed nation, goes without saying. And if we spot you even mumbling something under your mustache or into your beer – we just know it was about us and how we control things, and grab your money and all that. But what if you say nothing about us – and you're Gore Vidal? Tricky, right? We'll answer that and 9 more mysteries after you click.

Yaakov Avinu received word that his brother Eisav was coming to greet him. He understood fully well that this was not to be a warm family reunion. Eisav came accompanied by a band of four hundred armed men, bent on revenge. The Torah says Yaakov was “very frightened,” so he prepared for war.

President Shimon Peres: "Our mutual unwavering commitment to each other is crucial. The young generation's commitment to our state is essential as our shared tomorrow will be defined by innovation. As partners of our nation, your ability to secure a future defined by scientific development and discoveries is vital to our shared mission."

"Under the Prayer Shawl - Secrets of the Priestly Blessing", was shot on location at the 2011 annual massive blessing by the Jewish Priests...