Here's a Flower for Your Dead by Aliza Davidovit

Airtime is very expensive and TV ratings count for everything, so I questioned why Glenn Beck repeats himself so much. He seems to be preaching to the choir over and over again. But it became clear to me that if Beck is still breaking our heads with a singular message, it is because most of us still remain simply an audience and have not yet become “soldiers” of change. Yes, our awareness as a nation has increased, but from aggravating headline to aggravating headline we continue to hit the snooze button and slumber through the perilous changes that our marking our times.

How many of you have been writing letters to your congressman and senators? How many have called the White House hotline to voice your opinion? How many have sought out the 24 senators who did NOT sign the letter addressed to Obama expressing their support for Israel? How many thanked the 76 who did?

You make a difference. In fact, you may make all the difference. Yes you can! There is always the straw that breaks the camel’s back. As a journalist I can tell you that many of these powerful politicians are insecure individuals who went into public life to overcome childhood rejection or feelings of low self-esteem. They want to be liked, and they want to be liked by you. It is vitally important for you to get involved and fight for what you believe in. Tell them they are wrong. Take Domino's Pizza off your speed dial and put the White House instead. Call them every day until they deliver. Both America and Israel are running out of tomorrows.

It is a Godly coincidence that today, Remembrance Day in Israel, when tribute is paid to Israel’s fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, coincides with this week’s biblical portion which decrees: “Do not stand idly by the blood of your brother” (Leviticus19:16). This command is not just telling us to save someone whose life is being threatened, but also not to stand idly by the blood which has already been spilled. Do not let those who have died have done so in vain. Do not let them die all over again by letting bloody history repeat itself.

Great American heroes have fought and died for this land of liberty, the greatest nation in the world. And great Jewish heroes, including the prime minister's own brother, have fought and died “to be a free people in their own land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.” Do we now stand idly by their blood while graver threats loom and let Glenn Beck and his ilk try and save the world alone? He cannot do it alone. Netanyahu cannot do it alone. Ahmadinejad cannot do it alone. Obama cannot do it alone. We are all complicit in how things evolve. Your silence empowers the threats against us and your voices, boycotts, and protests crumble their base. America and Israel are closely tied at the soul in their fight for freedom, democracy, justice and decency. We need each other. But as America’s soul is being outsourced to the United Nations and renovated for international and Islamic approbation, Israel’s corporeal welfare is in jeopardy. Those who do anything less than fight back against Obama’s domestic policies are committing national suicide and those who remain silent on his Middle East policies are standing idly by while their brother’s blood is shed.

I was happy to learn that thousands of people have recently sent Netanyahu yellow roses to show their support for him and Israel, but I personally prefer to count the graveside daisies because they tell us all we really need to know.
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Something to Remember Me By

I saw a Mel Gibson movie the other day and in it his character said that the bad thing about not having kids is that there is no one to bury you when you die. I found it a painful sentence until I digested it and thought, no, the bad thing about not having kids is that there is no one there to keep you alive in seed and deed and memory. I couldn't help but think back to last week during Yom Kippur when all Jews who have a deceased parent were obligated to say a prayer of homage called Yizkor, which in Hebrew means "remember." Maybe it’s a silly thing to make it obligatory for descendants because who would ever really forget a parent? But there is a substantive difference between not forgetting and remembering. The former is easy and convenient for the lazy and passive, the latter involves actively keeping the person, their teachings, their legacy, their heritage, their sacrifices alive. And just as God breathes life into man in Genesis in this week's Torah reading, we have to continually breathe life into those who have returned to the dust.

But remembering is also a national duty for all peoples. Probably the worst slogan that grates on my sensitive ears is the one in regard to the Holocaust: "We shall never forget." First of all, who is the "we" that will never forget: the generation who lived through it or the one today that is being taught that the Holocaust never happened? Perhaps it’s the ones being told it was a gross exaggeration by Zionists fabricating a casus belli to snatch the Promised Land? Is it Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad who will never let us forget or revisionists like Mahmoud Abbas whose Ph.D. thesis denied the Holocaust as well and who aids those denying the legitimacy of Israel's archeological sites?

What is it exactly that we won't forget? Hitler? Or the number six million? Is that all we have to remember in order to never forget, in order to recognize the warning signs when a new massacre for our people is being fomented on the streets of the world? If we truly haven't forgotten, then please I invite you to ask the average teenager today what were the Nuremberg Laws or ask them if they know what Treblinka is. Just don't be shocked if they think it's an iPhone app. I'm sure few would know it was a concentration camp where 800,000 men, women and children were murdered simply because they were Jews. So please, who are we kidding when we say "we will never forget”? It's meaningless and trite.

This week marks 38 years since the Yom Kippur War when Israel was hit by an Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack and 2,688 Israelis lost their lives. So who cares anymore, who remembers? The history books have recorded it; it’s time to move on. Right? Wrong! Those who do not remember the past will be condemned to repeat it.

Yes, it is a tragedy when you don't have kids to keep memories alive, but the bigger tragedy today is that parents are not giving their kids WHAT to remember. They don't even know for what Israel is fighting and if they do they are ashamed of it. Two weeks ago I went to listen to Alan Dershowitz speak about the rampant anti-Semitism on campus and he said one of his students was afraid to let people know he was a Zionist because then he wouldn't be able to get a date. So, silently, he walks through his campus as Israel's enemies attempt to delegitimize the state and call for divestments and boycotts. I can't help but think of Menachem Begin and his contemporaries who as teenagers risked their lives over and over again to boast about their Zionism and who fought for a homeland’s existence until they held its soil in their hands and turned sand and swamps into the beautiful verdant Eretz Yisrael.

How come we are not firing up the souls of our Jewish youth anymore to make them realize that Israel is our proud birthright and fundamental to our survival? Christians are fired up and standing tall for Israel with pride, why aren’t we? As Netanyahu said, Israel is not what is wrong with the Middle East, it is what is right about it. Today's Jews, however, seem to have bequeathed to their children the materialism of the American Dream without also nurturing their Jewish pride, their sense of Jewish history, their Jewish place in this world and without honing their Jewish survival instincts. How dangerous it is in a time when Israel's enemies are indoctrinating their kids with a strong sense of purpose and history, albeit an invented one and we leave our kids with a vacuum of knowledge that Israel's haters fill with their poison. And I'm scared. I truly thank God for Israel's Christian friends who stand up for Israel when so many Jews are sitting down on the job.

The Jewish people are so quick to forget over and over again who they are and from whence they came when their very survival is in the remembering, in keeping the history alive just as Scheherazade kept herself alive by never stopping to tell her narrative. You see, I'm not worried that Jews will have no one to bury them, for that they will find many volunteers. I'm worried that Jews have squandered their best asset, their sole means of survival and justification for the Holy Land: Jewish memory. I'm not worried who will say Yizkor, I'm worried that soon will arise a generation that asks, "What is Yizkor?"
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Holy Bagels! by Aliza Davidovit

Dear readers, we are close enough for you to know that I suffer from opsomania, which is, the abnormal love for one kind of food. In my case it’s bagels. Therefore, I cannot deny that as Passover approaches, I lament the loss of this round shaped carbohydrate and my spirit sadly flattens like a whole wheat matzo.

But Passover is not just about cutting bread from the menu or getting rid of the last possible crumbs from your fridge, your car, your sock drawer, or anywhere else you are harboring baked stowaways. On a deeper level, Passover, just as Easter, is a time for us to take an introspective look at ourselves, to clean up our spiritual crumbs, and to commit ourselves to do things differently today than we did yesterday.

The yeast that makes bread rise is compared to a man’s pride and to the puffery we entertain ourselves with in our ego-driven lives. Yet matzos are hardly attention getters, either by sight or smell. Everything about them bespeaks humility. Quite frankly, they are a needed reminder to a people who, bloated with their own success, forget that at any moment history can take the air right out of them. The destiny of a Jew can pivot in a second.

This past week, as we watched politics play out with President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, we were reminded of that fact. And ominously, in the shadow of Passover, history seemed to repeat itself.

Once there was a leader named Moses who came before Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go!” But Pharaoh’s heart was pumped up on self-importance, ego and pride. Though he had chance after chance to do the right thing, he spurned Moses and God. He was, figuratively speaking, a yeast filled bagel. But egos make for poor scaffolds and thus the Egyptian empire crumbled. Netanyahu, too, arrived in the columned halls of DC with a similar message regarding housing for Jews in Jerusalem, basically saying, “Let my people grow.” The prime minister was met with the same defiance and arrogance of a true enemy of the Jewish people, a dislike that breached all former protocol, decency and semblance of friendship. Pharaoh told the Jews to make bricks with no straw, Obama tells Jews to build houses with no bricks.

My friends, the moment is as brittle as a matzo. This night is certainly different than all other nights as the US-Israel relationship hits an historic low and Iran casts an ominous gloom on the tiny Jewish state. Let’s pray for the sake of sparing lives and friendships that Obama will learn something from the humble matzo and soften his stance toward America’s stalwart ally in the Middle East. As for Netanyahu, like Moses, I implore him to stay the course, despite the pressures, so that God will continue to stand behind him and bless the Promised Land. If the president would have spent less time listening to his reverend’s hateful speeches and more time listening to scriptures he would have learned that the bread you cast upon the waters flows back your way. But, until it all plays out, let us just be glad that Obama bows and bends to foreign leaders as if he was a Geisha girl-- like this he won’t feel too disjointed if the God who watches over Israel has to bring him to his knees.

Happy Passover and Easter!!!
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