I’ve Got You Babe: Obama, Israel and the Next Holocaust by Aliza Davidovit

Ask 100 people what the most non-kosher animal is and 100 people will tell you a pig. But the truth is that tigers, dogs, horses, camels and so many other four-legged friends are all equally on the “Do Not Eat Diet” for Jews.

So how did the poor pink pig earn such infamy? For the simple reason that it is a hypocrite. There are two essential traits that make an animal kosher: It has to have split hooves and, in terms of its digestion process, it must chew its own cud. Swine posses only one of these two characteristics, which thus renders them not sandwich worthy for Jews. On the outside they showoff their split hooves as if to boast, “Look I’m kosher,” but what’s really going on is another story. A pig never shows its true colors and so you don’t really know who or what you are dealing with and can be charmed into taking a figurative bite. I can’t help but think of the movie Babe, which was about a lovable little pig who wants to be a sheepdog. He is very successful at coaxing the sheep into submission and when asked how he did it, he replied, “I asked them and they did it. I just asked them nicely.”

Babe the pig might have something there. As Marxist philosopher George Sorel advocated, the masses can be united into a social force through nice sounding slogans and myths. Indeed, history has shown us how people have been bamboozled by slogans when they were “asked nicely” to join a cause. As Hitler himself said, “The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.” As such, over the centuries, the world’s greatest dictators and villains offered the unemployed and hungry “sheep” a dream to chew on, and they gobbled it up as if it was bread.

Today, as we contemplate Holocaust Remembrance Day, I can’t help but ask myself as I do every year, how did it actually get to the point where it was okay to send a human being into a gas chamber and turn a person into a lampshade? Such emotional and moral callousness could not have happened overnight. Certainly, it was built up.

I’ve heard it echoed through the years, “We shall never forget,” but I’m not so sure we are remembering the most important part. The number 6 million and the word Holocaust will likely never be forgotten. But what is even more important to remember is how we got there. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which defined exactly who a Jew was, were awful, but the tragedy didn’t begin there. It was incremental. First Jews weren’t allowed in parks, then restaurants, then universities, then into certain professions. Then Jewish businesses were boycotted, Jews could no longer be citizens and Germans were prohibited from interbreeding or marrying a Jew, etc. Every time the Jews thought it couldn’t get worse, it did…as it always does. A rolling ball doesn’t stop midway down the hill unless it is stopped. Yes, today we mourn the victims, but we must also mourn the intermediary steps which went unchallenged and allowed the final carnage to ensue.

Today, another set of incremental steps are taking place that are harbingers of what may be another destructive episode in Jewish history. Readers, I do not like what I’m seeing from Washington vis-a-vis Israel: I do not like it that Israel is being told where Jews can and cannot live in their own homeland; I do not like the path Obama’s nuclear agenda is taking compromising both America’s and Israel’s security; I do not like that Obama has never visited the Jewish State since he’s been President while making time to visit Muslim countries; I do not like it that Obama is considering imposing his own take-it-or-leave-it peace plan; I don’t like that Obama reportedly denied entry into the United States of an Israeli nuclear scientist who works on the Dimona reactor; I do not like it that Obama has refused to approve any of Israel's military requests since he entered office in January 2009. The ball is picking up speed.

My friends, when Obama was running for office he showed us his kosher-style hooves. When he visited Sderot in ’08 he said, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughter sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same.” When he spoke pre-presidency at AIPAC, he supported an undivided Jerusalem.” But now, my friends, it is apparent that he may have kosher hooves, but he doesn’t chew his own cud and those who supported him are being left to eat crow.

Every single day that we remain silent the chasm grows and the shadow gets darker not only over the Jewish State but over all that this great country stands for. If we do not, with the full force of our abilities, resist this “gathering storm,” then I advise we change the slogan from “we will never forget” to “we will never learn.” Maybe in the end we are all just sheep pulling the wool over our own eyes while the little piggies go “ha, ha, ha” all the way home.
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Oh No, My Expiration Date is Looming!©

We’ve all heard people say it, and we all say it ourselves too: “I’m not what I used to be.” Some of us were better looking long ago, had more money, more prestigious jobs, exercised with more vigor, etc. It is no secret that time wages a war of attrition against us mere mortals and slowly, but ever so surely, like a veritable Indian giver, it takes away all the gifts it once gave us. Observing life is like watching the battery bars on a cell phone. Slowly, slowly we watch the life force draining away.  And we are always far from the charger just when we need it most.

Yes, too often I hear that negative sentence, “I’m not what I used to be.” And I wonder why we tend to mourn over what was instead of celebrating what can be? Maybe it’s because we value and idolize the wrong things. I’m of the strong opinion that there is only one thing in life that leaves us not "less than we used to be," but rather greater than what we ever were, and that is G-d's laws. 

Countries and people only decline when they attach themselves to false gods, when they spurn morality and vacate religion from their lives and when they unplug themselves from the ONE true "charger": G-d.  I have never heard a Torah scholar complain that he is upset that he is not as unlearned as he used to be or that he longs for the days when he had less good deeds under his belt. He is glad that he is not what he used to be because now he is even better.

One of my Torah teachers, Esther Jungreis, told me she never took a vacation her whole life because she said you only grow tired when you're running from something, not when you are running for something. Now in her elderly years, she is still running around the world teaching Torah and doing mitzvahs.

We can learn from the story of Esau how he was tired, even in his youth, because he was always pursuing the next big thing, going for the next big kill. He attached himself to this world alone and never attached himself to a spiritual outlet. He held Kurt Cobain's suicidal philosophy that, "It's better to burn out than to fade away." And he did.

Every second in all of our lives we are continuously diminishing unless we are bringing light to the world and enriching not only our own souls but the universal soul. When G-d is our “charger” we don’t burn out and fade away; we become like the burning bush that is not consumed. 

For 49 days, from Passover to Shavuot, Jews are now counting the omer and during this time we are obligated to work on ourselves to become better human beings more devoted and devout; we should be committed to becoming  NOT “what we used to be” but rather what we never were  and all that we were really meant to be!
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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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Who is Buttering Your Bread?

 Click to watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1IyV7yyJcs
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Who Do You Think You're Talking To?

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The Time of Your Life©

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The Role of a Lifetime by Aliza Davidovit

Are you a nice person? What makes you think so? Then there is the better question: Does it “pay” to be nice? The word “nice,” derived from Middle English, once meant foolish and stupid. People do indeed take you for foolish, stupid or weak when you’re nice (especially in places like New York).

Did it pay for Moses to be nice? You can’t get nicer than him. He led his people to the Promised Land via great efforts and personal sacrifice, and in the end he himself wasn’t even allowed in. After all of Jesus’ efforts to spread kindness, healing and love, his days, too, didn’t end with a Lifetime Achievement Award. If being nice pays, how come only the good die young? How come the squeaky wheel gets serviced? How come it’s the guy who punches hardest that wins the heavyweight championship and not the guy who gives him a massage?

It is very hard to keep being nice in a world the often deems you a fool for being so. Let’s face it, nice guys finish last.

But, my friends, if we don’t like the answers it’s because we have approached these questions with a capitalistic mindset. We want payment in the here and now to prove being nice is worth it. However, we are not here to walk our days on earth as collectors of treats because we did something good. Life is indeed a whetting stone and we can use it to shape us into miserable shmendricks or into the best version of ourselves.

As Jesus walked the Via Dolorosa and Moses watched the Israelites cross over into the Jordan Valley, neither said it doesn’t pay to be nice. It is precisely because acts of kindness often get lost in an ever-darkening world that we have the additional responsibility of being extra good, extra nice and extra charitable in order to sustain the light in the world. If each one of us serves as a spark, combined we form an intense ray that can save the world—just like a laser beam (intensified light) can blast cancer.


It is said that when we enter the pearly gates we will be shown two films. One will be a biography of our entire lives, a true nitty-gritty tell-all expose, probably produced by a former 60 Minutes journalist. The other film will be of all that we could have been if we had lived our lives by God’s cues and directions and had given our days the best performance we could. The gap between these two films is a tragic abyss. It is in our hands NOW to decide what movie we want to make and what scenes we want to cut and leave on the edit room floor. Just remember that there are no second takes, the part you play today is a role of a lifetime.
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