KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE

Timing is everything. Prime Minister Olmert’s potential legal problems must be fairly serious. After all what better way to distract the public then to announce a diplomatic breakthrough [translation: I agreed without asking anyone to give away peoples’ homes, fields, orchards and businesses so that the folks who are pledged to your annihilation can be all that much closer so you can be more clearly in their crosshairs].

What is astonishing is how the nation’s representatives are more committed to remaining in office than acting in the national interest. Especially those MKs who profess their commitment to G-D, Torah, and Jewry are willing to allow a repeat of the Gush Katif disgrace. The continued dilution of the State’s commitment to Jewish education by the current Education Minister has the effect of estranging the State’s youth from their heritage, a legacy intimately connected to the Land of Israel.

Now as the time approaches to receive the Torah, it is time to call out the emperor class’ destructive and delusional behavior and put the brakes on the national slide in to the abyss.

HAPPY 3,280 Israel !!!!!

Birthdays are a time to celebrate one's life, no doubt one should find joy in experiencing the privilege of life. There is a further dimension, birthdays are in the Jewish tradition a time to reflect, assess what can be done better in the future, how can growth be facilitated, how can one be better person within the family, community, country, world and most importantly, before G-D.

Over time circumstances, choices coupled with habits and aspiration may lead one to place never imagined or intended when setting out on life's journey. A Birthday is the day to ask "How did I get here? Is this where I am supposed to be? "

At 60 the State of Israel should collectively ask itself is it comfortable where it is?

Today the debate is over the public sale of Chametz on Pesach or apostate Jews participating in the Bible contest. These are not political /security / issues like aid to Yeshivoth, or the dismantling of settlements or checkpoints etc. Sec. Rice does not care about the Bible Contest or Bread on Pesach. Yet given the opportunity to make a Jewish choice or a democratic one, which one does the government make even when unfettered by foreign influence?

As the birthday of the modern state of Israel approaches maybe the country needs to take a collective look in the mirror. Maybe the first step is to disavow the notion of this being a 60th anniversary. This is the 60 anniversary of the reassertion of Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel. Jews are in the land , not by the leave of the United Nations but as successors of Ezra and Nechemiah's commonwealth.

f the Zionist vision for a state is for the Jewish People to have a seat at the the international table then sit there, true to our identity, as Jews.

Witha prayer that at the end of this year's S'fira and even before then the nation stands together again united to hear Torah from Mashiach