We have all had the dubious privilege of reading in the news about the latest Islamic pirates, who eagerly sail to Israel with humanitary aid for the “Palestinians” in Gaza. Let it be clear to all —- Those who travel without identification, with thousands of dollars, knives, and crowbars in each hand and pocket are not coming on a peace mission.
Blessings and Shalom,
David Rubin
Shiloh, Israel
Today is Yom HaZicharon, Israel’s Memorial Day, when we honor the memory of the many thousands of soldiers and terror victims who have been killed by Islamic terrorists. It always confirms for me that what we are doing with the children here in the Biblical heartland is the most correct response to terrorism.
The terrorists seek to kill, to frighten, and to intimidate anyone who doesn’t share their extreme Islamic views. Those who have fallen in the struggle for Israel’s return to the Land are deserving of honor and that is why we have this special day. But they have also fallen for the cause of freedom and liberty, for that is the ultimate target of Islamic terrorism and war.
The affirmation of life is what we are all about. They want to kill us, so we will live! They want us to flee, so we will stay, and they want us to be frightened, so we will be courageous. By helping the children and rebuilding the Biblical heartland of Israel, we are doing the exact opposite of what the Muslim terrorists and their armies intended. Those who assist us in that struggle are actually responding to the terrorist threat of death and destruction with an affirmation of life and liberty.
Tomorrow we will celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut, celebrating Israel’s independence and miraculous rebirth as a sovereign nation once again. I call on all of our friends, all those who disdain Islamic terrorism and murder, and value liberty and life to join with us in celebration!
With Blessings and Shalom,
David Rubin
Shiloh, Israel
I grew up in the United States, where both Mother’s and Father’s Day are important holidays. Now an observant Jew living in Israel, I often reflect on the importance of those days, but not just once a year. The Ten Commandments that were given to Moses and the Israelites on Mount Sinai well over 3,000 years ago featured a commandment to “Honor your father and your mother”. Half of the Ten Commandments are considered to be commandments between people and people, while the other five are between people and G-d. Interestingly, the commandment to honor one’s parents is listed as being between people and G-d, in order to emphasize the crucial role that one’s parents play in this world. One of my professors in Teachers Colllege at Columbia University once aptly referred to education as “the responsibility of parents that is shared with the schools”. Likewise, the Torah clearly was teaching about the central and primary role of parents in the education of their children. We parents don’t own our children, but they are expected to honor us, and we have the responsibility and privilege of raising them up to be honorable and moral adults.
Which brings me to Ruby Rubin. These days when I speak or write about Ruby Rubin, I am almost invariably speaking or writing about my now ten year old son, who was wounded with me in a terror shooting attack in Israel seven years ago. From the trauma of that attack emerged the Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund, my non-profit organization to help Israeli children, which was and is my response to the terrorists.
Yet there was another Ruby Rubin who was central in my life, and that was my father of blessed memory, who returned his soul to his Creator over twenty years ago. He lived a life that was dedicated to children, not just his own, but many thousands of others. As a dedicated teacher in Brooklyn, NY for some 30 years, he taught with a gentleness and patience that I often admired, especially in my many years of teaching, many years later. He taught in one public school, educating children of all races and religions in the era of deteriorating neighborhoods and high crime in Brooklyn. He was mugged at gunpoint while supervising his school’s lunchroom, but he refused to stop teaching there after the mugging.
Ruby also ran a summer camp for children in a large bungalow colony in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. Through the years, he always had a vision of what he wanted to accomplish in that camp, always keeping in mind both the short-term and long-term needs of the children who were entrusted in his care for those crucial two months of the year. Often it was sports activities, or a very comprehensive “color war”, which taught the values of creativity and cooperation combined with intense competition. Then there were the activities of a more spiritual realm —- getting in touch with nature through hikes and camping out, or trying to gently inspire the children with Jewish tradition with a Sabbath evening service, to the extent that he thought they could handle it and to the extent that he sensed that their parents would desire it.
Although I am sure that I inherited my father’s love for children and his passion for educating the next generations of children, the one thing that stands out foremost in my mind about him is the constant sense of optimism and idealism which was the prism through which he viewed life.
Those were the values that he hopefully succeeded in passing along to the thousands of children whose lives he touched, and I am honored to have been touched by him as well. Happy Father’s Day to all!
David Rubin
Shiloh, Israel
Iran has threatened Israel and the Western democracies with its soon to be functional nuclear program. This is not an idle threat, somehow restricted to its Hitlerian leader, Achmadinejad, but extends to his more ”moderate” opponent in the upcoming Iranian elections. The difference is that Achmadinejad threatens both loudly and clearly. But the question I’d like to address here is this; How will we respond to that threat? There is a great deal of discussion these days in the American and Israeli corriders of power about the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Word has it that President Obama is demanding Israeli concessions in exchange for American cooperation/silence in the face of such an attack. This apparently refers to the ongoing Arab/ Muslim/American demand for Israeli agreement to the creation of a Muslim terrorist state within its tiny borders, a sure recipe for Israel’s destruction, or at least a sharp increase in terror attacks by our “partners for peace”. According to a news report in yesterday’s papers, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, apparently caving in to the misguided American pressure, voiced support for the so-called “Two-State Solution”, in which a Palestinian terror state would be created in Israel’s biblical heartland of Samaria and Judea.
Such pandering to Obamian and Clintonian whims will solve no problems, but will certainly create new ones by projecting Israeli weakness at a time when we need to stand firm against the Iranian Muslim regime that would love to nuke Israel as a critical first step to renewed attacks on the remaining NY coastline and American interests around the world.
Is Obama simply naive about the stark realities in the Middle East, or was his infamous bow before the Saudi monarch several weeks ago just a symptom of a much more ominous Obamian admiration for the Muslim culture that he was raised in?
More importantly, will Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stand up to Obama and Clinton and speak truth to power?
In about two weeks’ time, we will probably know the answer, as Netanyahu leaves for his trip to Washington.
David Rubin
Shiloh, Israel
Stop the carnage! The Israelis are killing civilians! Save the innocent Palestinian civilians! So goes the mantra that we’ve been hearing.
I recently saw video clips from a demonstration in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, which could have easily taken place in Iran. A Muslim women, in full Muslim garb, was filmed shouting to the Jewish counter-demonstrators across the street, “Go back to the ovens. You’re gonna need a big oven!” This kind of vile exploitation of American democracy and freedom of speech by Muslim Nazis is shocking to many Americans, but these kinds of abhorrent displays should have been expected, given the violent nature of Islamic extremism and its inroads into American society.
Lest we forget, the war in Gaza was started by a Muslim terrorist government that has been launching missiles at Israeli civilian population centers for the past eight years. That Muslim terrorist government was actually elected in free elections encouraged and supported by the Americans, the Europeans, and the Russians. And guess who voted for the Hamas terrorists? The “poor, oppressed” Muslim Arab civilians, the ones who send their young children to Hamas and Fatah military training camps to learn the art of terrorism and hatred, of “Death to the Jew and the Infidel”, as their Muslim preachers so proudly proclaim. That is how they raise their children and they do so proudly. They train their young children to hate and kill while simultaneously, the Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund and other Israeli organizations struggle to support camps where terror victim children can play soccer, enjoy field trips and try to regain some of the lost innocence of childhood that the elected Hamas and Fatah terrorist governments had stolen from them with their shootings on the roads, bombs at bus stops, and missiles in the air.
During WWII, the allies bombed German cities mercilessly and repeatedly, killing and wounding both Nazi soldiers and the civilians who elected Adolf Hitler, all with the clear understanding that justice was on their side, that in wartime, enemy civilians often perish along with the soldiers. And that is perfectly understood. Only with Israel is there a double standard in place.
No, I will not cry for the Hamas and Fatah civilians who have died along with the Hamas and Fatah soldiers. They are no more innocent than the Nazi civilians who were killed in WWII Germany, as their brethren were simultaneously murdering six million innocent Jewish civilians in the concentration camp ovens some 65 years ago.
Yes, as the historians tell us, history does repeat itself, and the anti-Semitism that we are facing today comes primarily from the Muslim world, which has its roots in the Jew-hatred of Islam’s founder, Muhammed. The civilians who worship him as a prophet are the same ones who elected the evil Hamas as their leadership and, according to the word “on the Arab street”, would do it again. I will shed no tears for such civilians.
David Rubin
Shiloh, Israel
The ground troops of the Israel Defense Forces (the I.D.F.) have just entered Gaza. We hope and pray for their success and minimal casualties on our side.
This attack on the Muslim terror organization known as Hamas should have been done several years ago, while we still had thriving, although besieged Israeli communities in Gaza, but that was not to be. In the Summer of 2005, our political leadership, led by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and gleefully supported by his then deputies Ehud Olmert and Tzippi Livni, foolishly and callously destroyed those wonderful communities that had literally made the desert bloom, in the naive hope that the terrorists would halt their rocket attacks, thus bringing peace on Earth and goodwill towards men, women and children. How blind and careless they were. After the expulsion and subsequent withdrawal of the IDF, the rocket attacks picked up speed and range, as there were no Israeli soldiers in Gaza to prevent the bomb and rocket factories from increasing their capabilities and expanding production, with massive funding and technical support from Iran and the political acquiescence and quiet financial support of the so-called Arab moderates who are relatively moderate only in their degree of adherence to Muslim Sha’aria (religious dictates) and the extent to which they oppress their women.
Finally, after months of speaking of the magnificent virtues of restraint as our children were repeatedly traumatized by the threat of war and terror always hanging over our heads, our corrupt governmental triumvurate of Prime Minister Olmert, Foreign Minister Livni, and Defense Minister Barak, while awaiting the Feb.10th elections and seeing their political parties’ plummeting poll numbers, have finally woken up and suddenly realized that rocket attacks on Israeli cities are an existential problem for Israel after all!
So the troops have finally gone in. We wish them great success in their mission and pray that the self-serving governmental triumvurate will overcome its myopia and understand that a ceasefire should not be discussed at this time. A temporary cessation of violence until our Feb.10th elections or a few months or even a year beyond that date is not sufficient. If we don’t destroy Hamas now, destroy their weapons smuggling tunnels now, collect their weapons now, and fully reconquer Gaza, we will be back in a similar situation or worse within the year.
And let the world remember before it’s too late, we Israelis are here on the front lines fighting the war on terror, but the ultimate sights of the terrorists’ weapons are aimed at the United States, Europe, India, China, and any other country in which Muslims are not in control. If we don’t win the battle here in Israel and if we don’t receive your support in this battle, the terrorists will (once again) reach your borders and your cities.
David Rubin
Shiloh, Israel
For those who aren’t aware , Chanukah is an eight day holiday in which we commemorate Israel’s restoration of the traditional worship in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. This involved an ongoing battle against the culture of the Greek Hellenists and the Hellenistic Jews who had aligned with them. The focus in this story is often on the Menorah lights and the Temple ritual, but the symbolism of the societal struggle is much greater. More to the point, the Greek values and sexual mores were not our values, but were being forced upon us, and this is a lesson for our times, as well.
The struggle for traditional family values that we recently saw in California’s Proposition Eight and the subsequent violent backlash against it, as well as in other parts of the United States, is a struggle that is even taking place in the Land of Israel, as witnessed by the yearly “Gay Pride” parade in Jerusalem. It is the traditional Jewish family and its enabling of gender identity in the home that has kept us strong over the centuries of persecution. We do not take pride in a repudiation of the traditional family values that have been the foundation for the passing down of our biblically-based traditions. This is not an issue of civil rights, rather a brazen attempt to drastically change the recognized norms of society from one in which the nuclear family of father, mother, and children has always been the ideal to strive for, to a society of infidelity, promiscuity, and a blatant blurring of gender identity.
In this holiday season, we should be proud of who we are, and not let the bullies of political “correctness” dictate our societal norms.
With Blessings for a wonderful holiday season,
David Rubin
Shiloh, Israel
Should one continue to give charity (to Israel) during a recession? Apparently, some people are grappling with this question. I was even amazed to be told recently by a rabbi in a well-known Jewish community in the USA that he wants all the rabbis in his community to discourage all giving to Israel until the economic situation improves! With all due respect, he seems to be missing some of the basics from the little-known college course Giving 101(not to mention the Shulchan Aruch, the Code of Jewish Law, which clearly gives priority to Tzedakah given to the Land of Israel). A person is strengthened and uplifted by the support he gives to Israel!
I want to be very clear about this: The Hebrew word for charity is Tzedakah, coming from the root Tzedek, which means Justice. Our sages made it clear that the just thing to do is to give. It is not simply an act of kindness from the giver to those in need. In fact, the giving of tithes ranging from 10-20% of one’s income is an obligation in Judaism. and giving is good for the giver!
The Hebrew word ashir (wealthy) is similar to the word maaser (tithe), denoting not only the obligation to give, but the benefit that such giving will have for the donor. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory, used to stress that when we are in tough economic times, one should give more! In the spiritual realm, which is not detached from reality, that is the true way to increase one’s wealth!
And there is no better giving than to invest in the Children of Israel in the Land of Israel. As it says in the Book of Genesis (12:3), those who bless Israel will be blessed!
David Rubin
Shiloh, Israel
As a child growing up in the USA, Thanksgiving turkey and the family get-togethers were always looked forward to, but the deeper meaning was somehow obscured. Now, many years later, after experiencing and witnessing the pain of many terror attacks and war, I’m starting to grasp the meaning of thanks, which I believe we should all really think about this year.
First of all, we should put things in perspective. Yes, there are global economic challenges today, and the challenge of Islamic Terrorism has never been greater. Today’s massive attack in India was a bitter reminder of the global nature of our challenges. Even so, we should all be thankful for our health and that of our families; and if we are sick, we should be thankful for having bodies that can be healed. Secondly, we should remember that God gives us challenges that we can handle, even if we have to search for that inner strength that will help us through the trauma. The children in our Therapy Center here in Shiloh, Israel are proof of that.
Last but not least, we should remember who we are giving thanks to! The Almighty is the source of all goodness and the potential for goodness. When I give thanks, I don’t thank goodness. I thank the King of the Universe who created that goodness, thereby giving us the ability to choose life and to surmount its challenges!
Happy Thanksgiving and Blessings from Shiloh!
David Rubin
Shiloh, Israel