Thoughts on being Jewish

You always hear the usual stories of pennies on the sidewalk being good luck, gifts from angels, etc. This is the first time I've ever heard this twist on the story. Gives ou something to think about. Several years ago, a friend of mine and her husband were invited to spend the weekend at the husband's employer's home. My friend, Arlene, was nervous about the weekend. The boss was very wealthy, with a fine home on the waterway, and cars costing more than their house. The first day and evening... Sign in to see full entry.

Israeli Army Doctors Heal the Enemy Medicine trumps politics for the Israeli army doctors serving on a West Bank military base near Ramallah who run an emergency clinic for local Palestinian villagers. May 19, 2008 - by Stephanie L. Freid Blech. Cheezy. This feels like too much of a public relations plug for Israel. …these were my thoughts as I hung up the phone after I was briefed on a potential story involving Israeli army doctors and their benevolence toward Palestinians. The media will never... Sign in to see full entry.

“I’d be surprised if we humans are around in a hundred years,” Pete Seeger said to me during an interview a few years ago, a sentiment echoed recently by super-brain physicist, Steven Hawking. Why are these two men, one who once believed that there wasn’t a protest song that couldn’t save the world, and the other who routinely delves into the wonders of the universe so pessimistic about the human race? Well, look around. Polar bears are drowning, children are murdered in their classrooms,... Sign in to see full entry.

Irena Sendler died yesterday at the age of 98. A Polish Catholic, during WWII, she saved over 2500 Jewish children from certain death by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, providing them with counterfeit papers and placing them in convents and orphanages. She and 30 brave volunteers - mostly women - managed to get children and some teens out of the ghetto before it was liquidated and the remainder of the Jewish residents were sent to death camps. In all my research about the Holocaust,... Sign in to see full entry.

“My father was the second oldest of four children,” wrote my paternal grandmother in a letter meant to be passed down from one generation to the next. “The oldest, Shmeelic, was a contemporary of Theodore Hertzl and a committed Zionist who emigrated to Jaffa, Palestine. He contracted malaria and had to return to Russia. All contact with this part of the family ended after WWII and we have no knowledge whether any of them survived.” My mother had stuffed this letter in a file marked “Family... Sign in to see full entry.