Update: The doctors at Shaarei Tzezek will not be releasing Yehudah Glick on Sunday as previously planned. On Friday, the doctors decided to run some additional medical treatments on him.

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Shaarei Tzedek Hospital officials said that Rabbi Yehuda Glick will be able to go home Sunday following his miraculous recovery from gunshot wounds at the hands of a Jerusalem Arab who tried to assassinate him last month.

The chief rabbis of Jerusalem and of Israel visited Glick this past week, challenging themselves in the art of diplomacy considering their interpretation of Jewish law that Jews are prohibited from visiting – let alone praying – on the Temple Mount.

Rabbi Glick is the leading activist to encourage Jews to listen to the rulings of a growing number of national religious rabbis who have stated there is no problem with visiting certain areas of the site that covers the ruins of the First and Second Temples.

All rabbis agree that it is forbidden to walk in certain area, such as where the Holy of Holies once stood and where only the High Priest was allowed to enter once a year, on Yom Kippur.

Jerusalem Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Aryeh Stern visited Glick in Thursday. Despite his opposition to Jews visiting the Temple Mount, he tactfully said, “It is with the help of God that He wants your words, and your intentions are in the name of God, and that is most important.”

Glick to told Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau earlier this week that the Jerusalem Arab who shot him first told him, “I am sorry. But you are an enemy of Al Aqsa” and then pumped four bullets into his chest, one of them puncturing a lung.

It is not surprising that Sephardi Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef did not visit Glick. Rabbi Yosef last week was not satisfied with reiterating the Haredi stand that Jews aren’t allowed to visit the Temple Mount. He went to the extreme of disgracing himself by labeling rabbis who permit visits as “fourth-rate” rabbis.

Doctors at Shaarei Tzedek will hold a press conference on Sunday before Glick goes home to continue his recovery, which he will not consider complete until he returns to the Temple Mount. Of courses, no one will allow him to pray there because Muslims are afraid that God may hear his prayers,

The idiots don’t know that God also hears a silent prayer.

 

The two Jerusalem Arabs who slaughtered Jews Tuesday morning attacked in the middle of the “Amidah” silent prayer, according to one of the worshippers.

“Yosef” told Israel Radio that he heard shot during the prayer, turned around and saw one Arab shooting in all directions. Seconds afterwards, the second murderer emerged with a butcher knife and slashed at anyone in his way.

Yosef his under a table, “When I saw him approaching in my direction, I escaped while the terrorist was struggling with a victim. There was blood everywhere, and I fled downstairs to the kitchen of the hall used for festive occasions.”

 

 

A young man whose soul loves to fly in the sky even when his body is grounded found he can integrate both in a Torah-observant lifestyle.

Benad Even-Chen, 27, was not a “religious” Jew when he began to explore his roots in late adolescence. He was, however, a semi-pro skier, cello player and skateboard fiend.

By the age of 20 the restless young man was still searching, however, and began to head towards a Torah way of life.

Today Even-Chen is a student of Jewish learning at a Chabad-Lubavitch Yeshiva in Israel. And he can be seen flying around Jerusalem on his skateboard too, when he’s not jamming with other spiritual seekers on his cello.

Fave spots? The Old City of Jerusalem near the Tower of David, alongside the rampart walls, and in the “newer” part of the capital in the Mahane Yehuda open air market.

Even-Chen was caught by a camera on a special trip zooming down the market streets just before the Rosh HaShanah holiday this year, where he was spotted blowing a shofar for Jews who might not otherwise have had the chance to hear it. From his skateboard, of course.

Police arrested a Muslim on Sunday for trying to stir up unrest on the Tempe Mount where a group of Jews was visiting.

A riot erupted after calls of incitement by the Arab.

Another Muslim was detained earlier in the day for similar reasons.

Police also arrested a Jew for incitement, of a different form – he dared to pray on the holy site. That kind of “incitement” is reserved for Muslims, who pray for the destruction of Jews among other blessings requested from Allah.

The Supreme Court has questioned whether the discrimination against prayers by Jews, judiciously enforced by the police, is legal, but no one has yet been able to bring the issue for the judges to decide.

It is obvious why Muslims don’t want Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, believing perhaps that God will pay more attention to Jewish prayers said there instead of elsewhere, such as in Psalms 92, verses 7-8:

“A boorish man does not know; neither does a fool understand this. When the wicked flourish like grass, and all workers of violence blossom, only to be destroyed to eternity.”

Doctors are becoming increasingly concerned about one of the two IDF soldiers who suffered shrapnel wounds in Thursday’s rocket attack on the Eshkol Regional Council district.

The soldier, Mordechai Yamin, was admitted in moderate-to-serious condition at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, has now been moved to the Intensive Care Unit and is listed in serious-to-critical condition.

Surgeons worked through the night to remove fragments from his body but a sliver of shrapnel remains in his brain and doctors are hesitant to remove it due to the danger involved.

The public is asked to pray for the full and speedy recovery of Mordechai ben (son of) Bracha Yehudit.

An opinion recorded in the Talmud states that prayers correspond to the daily sacrifices offered in the Temple that are mentioned in this week’s portion (Berachot 26b, Numbers 28:4). It’s been argued that this opinion may be the conceptual base for our standardized prayer. Since sacrifices had detailed structure, our prayers also have a set text.

Why should this be? If prayer is an expression of the heart, why is there a uniform text we follow?

Rambam writes that after the destruction of the First Temple and the consequent exile of Jews to Babylonia and Persia, Jews found it difficult to pray spontaneously. Living among people who did not speak Hebrew, a new generation of Jews arose who no longer had the ability to use Hebrew as a means of articulating their inner feelings to the Almighty. Responding to this, Ezra and the Great Assembly introduced precisely formulated prayer (Rambam, Code, Laws of Prayer 1:1).

Here Rambam is arguing that standardization of prayer allows all Jews regardless of background and ability to express themselves and to be equal in the fraternity of prayer since the well-spoken and the least educated recite the same prayers.

Rambam may also be putting forth the idea that with the appearance of standardized prayer, Jews dispersed all over the world were united through a structured formula of praying.

Finally, Rambam echoes the Gemara, which states that Ezra designed the prayer service to correspond to the standard sacrificial service offered in the Temple. In following this view, Rambam may be suggesting that after the destruction of the First Temple the rabbis sought to promote religious procedures that would link Jews living after the First Temple era with those who’d lived during the time of the Temple. Elements of the Temple service were therefore repeated in some form in order to bind Jews to their glorious past.

The halacha indicates that structure should inspire spontaneity in prayer, but Rambam’s analysis reveals the importance of standardization. Through the set text all Jews are democratized. No matter our station in life, we all say the same words. And through standardization of text Jews scattered throughout the world are reminded to feel a sense of deep unity with their brothers and sisters everywhere and with their people throughout history.

Prayer helps bring about a horizontal and vertical unification of our people, a unification so desperately needed today.