Tag Archives: Israel

This Halloween, ask yourself “What am I celebrating?”

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It’s all fun and games till they start beheading babies

I liked Halloween as a boy because, even then, I was a cheapskate. I loved getting candy, and I loved even more getting it for free.

When I was about 11, my three siblings came down with the flu. Oddly, I didn’t. I went out trick-or-treating alone till about 10:30, way past my bedtime, while my sister and brothers languished at home praying to the porcelain god.

I took in quite a haul. Two full bags. Probably today’s equivalent of a couple hundred dollars’ worth of candy. 

I was afraid that night. Not of goblins or ghosts. No, I was afraid that my sibs would steal some of my hard-earned free candy. I ate as much as I possibly could, and then some more, but there was still an overflowing bag of the sugary crap. To guard it from my ill siblings, I put it right next to my bed.

That night, the flu, the candy, and the fates, caught up with me. I turned on my side and projectile-puked right off the bed into – you already guessed it – the candy bag.

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The Western Wall

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DSC01970Muslims have the Taj Mahal and Mecca. Catholics have St. Peter’s Basilical and the Vatican.

Jews have a wall.

The Western Wall is a stack of massive stone blocks a few dozen feet high and a couple of hundred feet long. It’s all that’s left of Jerusalem’s second Jewish temple, a structure that astonished even the Romans. The Romans destroyed it to punish the Jews for their Great Revolt in 70 A.D.

That wasn’t the first time. It’s called the “second” temple because it replaced Solomon’s temple, which had been destroyed by the Babylonians six centuries earlier.

For millennia, this fragment of the second temple has been sacred to Jews, reminding them of their culture, their religion, their diaspora, their return and their faith that someday there will be a third temple.

I visited the Western Wall a few Fridays ago, just in time for Continue reading →