A Eulogy From One Sister to Another

Hesped of Polly Geller
By
Sharon Geller-Metal

My sister Polly was the bravest person I’ve ever known. She was born into a world not ready for her and spent all her life trying to figure out her place in it.

Blue eyed and honey blonde, Polly was an adorable little girl. In every family picture, she looks out, pigtailed and smiling. It was a while before she realized that the world was moving a little bit faster than she was and from then on, she struggled, both inwardly and outwardly, to hang on.

Polly never shrank from a challenge, never said “I can’t do that.” She always tried and tried her best and then tried some more. If she were entrusted with a job, she would keep at it no matter what the obstacles. Very proud and protective of her place in the law firm where she worked for 18 years, Polly almost never took a day off – she felt both irreplaceable and at risk. At the end of one morning commute to her job in Manhattan, Polly broke her ankle getting off a bus but made her way to the office anyway. She didn’t want to let her employers down.

The world seen through Polly’s eyes must have been a terrifying place but you would rarely see the sadness that I know dwelled inside her. My sister would always move aside if she saw you coming, not because she didn’t want to interact with you. She was just afraid of being in the way. I think Polly always felt that she was somehow in the way. She tried to make herself invisible because she thought that was what people wanted from her.

The best way to provide for Polly was to ask her what she wanted and do the opposite.

“Do you want more chicken?” “No thank you.” But she really did want a second helping.

“Would you like to go to a movie?” “No thanks.” But she really did want to go to a movie.

“What time should we pick you up to go to Arline & Denny’s Chanukah party?” “Don’t bother, I don’t want to go.”

But she really did want to go, to do something, to be with people, even if she didn’t have the same social skills that others did.

Polly had no vanity and therefore approached the world with honesty, naiveté and a forthright manner. Not caring how you appear to others is emboldening. After 9/11, Polly would approach any police officer or fire fighter on the street and thank them for their service. She did not always get the response she anticipated but it was the only way she knew to approach the world – straight on and hoping for respect in return.

Of course, my sister’s life wasn’t all sadness. In Polly’s world, certain things were important and gave her pleasure. Star Trek gave her pleasure. “Law & Order” and “MASH” were important. Doing needlepoint was a pleasure. Knowing the entire lineage of the kings and queens of England was important. After all, our grandfather was a Londoner and our great-grandfather started the first Yiddish daily in England. Polly’s very name was British. (But people who asked her if she wanted a cracker risked her wrath.)

Which brings me to the subject of humor. Polly did not suffer bad puns lightly. We grew up in a household full of a type of humor, which elicited much laughter from guests but merely groans from us. If you came up short in the humor department, Polly would assume that you got your wit from the Victor Geller humor academy and would dismiss you with a sad shake of her head.

While I’m not sure having Deena, Maury and me for siblings gave her pleasure, but being an aunt and a great-aunt definitely brought Polly both pride and joy. In her way, she was a loving aunt to Avigayil, Rami, Yehuda, Batsheva, Aliza, Akiva, Yael and Shlomo, never forgetting a card and a wish of “Hippo Birdie” at each birthday. When the next generation came along, she said “I was always a great aunt and now I’m a great great aunt.”

Her favorite relative though was always Izzy. When Polly was about nine years old and I was 15, we were stuck together for a shabbos in Bnei Brak with relatives we had never met. I’ve shut the memory of it out of my mind but it must have been some long shabbos because Polly did not speak to me for the next three years. Silence. Not a word. “Please ask my sister to pass the ketchup” silence. And then, one day, I brought Izzy home and instantly regained Polly’s grudging respect. She started to talk to me again and we began to rebuild our relationship.

Of course, the people to whom Polly showed the deepest love and loyalty were the members of the New York Yankees organization. Polly was an expert on the Yankees and their most devoted fan.

This was not an easy path to tread in our family. Before she was married, our mother had season’s tickets to seats behind the dugout at the Polo Grounds and our father, who grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium also was a proud NY Giant fan. When Willie Mays and the rest of the team betrayed New York City and moved to California, family loyalties reluctantly shifted to the hapless Mets. All except for Polly. Before there was ever a family photo on her walls, my sister hung a picture of Mickey Mantle. She wore a Yankees cap to work and carried her keys on a Yankee chain. And when she got sick, the Yankees sent her a blue teddy bear – whom she named Yoggi Beara. She kept him with her and held him tight during her last few months.

Throughout her illness, Polly was a brave patient. She did not complain when her vision was compromised or when her hearing diminished. She did everything that was asked for her because she wanted to recover. She never complained, not through surgeries, procedures, blood tests, chemo, radiation, medication. Polly placed her trust in Hashem and always assumed that, like the Yankees, she would make it to the post-season, that things would turn out well.

That’s how I knew that Polly’s illness had run its course. The last time I spoke with her was on Friday morning. I told her about Thursday’s exciting Yankee game. How they hit a record breaking three grand slam home runs and how they came from behind and won 22-7. My little sister said nothing. She didn’t cheer or belittle my surprise at their prowess. She didn’t react at all. If Polly no longer cared about the Yankees, I knew that she was ready to end her long battle with this world and move on to an easier one – one with a place for her.

Eulogy From A Nephew to Aunt

Hesped of Polly Geller
By
Rami Metal

Speaking about Polly is hard. It is hard because her life was profoundly difficult, because the obstacles she encountered daily were never fully within her control and were never her fault, and because she died far too soon after being born too early. It is hard to think about Polly and not be sad- in many ways because sad is not what Polly did and not how she went about her life. If we were sad for her she was never sad for herself- at least not outwardly- and I think that it is that knowledge- that she has had to overcome more obstacles than we can imagine and yet remained, to the end, optimistic, proud, and completely lacking in self pity- that makes understanding her life and death so difficult for those she’s left behind.

Polly was at bottom a deeply courageous and a profoundly proud person and I don’t think that we can ever know what she thought about the world around her and cards that she was dealt. But we know for a fact that she loved us. We know that we were central to her life in a way that few people could be central to anyone’s life. We, her family, were Polly’s life, and while we may not have not always felt like we were able to give back in equal measure what she was gave to us, (I, for one, am certain that I was unable to do so), we did know that we were loved and that Polly did matter, to us, in a way that was at times a challenge, at times a rebuke, and at all times a fact, as strong and resolute as she was.

Polly took being an aunt very seriously. I think that she took nothing else as seriously as her duties as an aunt, save her love of the Yankees. She remembered all our birthdays and called us every year with a chirpy “hippo birdie”! She never forgot. Not our birthdays, not Jack’s, not Dan’s, not Rose’s, Ryan’s or Wolf’s. She gave us shalach manot every year. This year she had bags for Jack and Dan as well. She was determined to be as great of a great aunt as she was a great regular aunt. I’m sure that if we asked him to, Jack could write an essay in French as to how she was a great great aunt.

Avigayil remembers Polly taking her to Fantasia on Continental and I remember her taking me to see Clue on Austin Street. (I think that in the version we saw everyone had done it.) I don’t think that Polly thought that it was the best movie ever but that didn’t matter. Being with us is what mattered and being a good aunt was paramount. I don’t know when she understood that she would not be having children of her own but she knew and so her role as an aunt would have to make up for some other things that she was not going to have. And no one would ever be able to say that she couldn’t do that. That she couldn’t be a great Aunt. That she could control.

No one could tell her how to love and she was never impaired, limited or otherwise deficient in her abilities to do so. She was, if anything, more capable that others in this regard and we, as her nieces and nephews, became the object of that determination and the means by which she could do something right, do it well, and do it total.

And then she became a great-great aunt. And watching Jack and Daniel and Rose interact with Polly over the past few years has reminded me of how we used to act around her when we were kids. The way they said hello and goodbye to her, running to give her a kiss and a hug, the way Jack would ask her how she was feeling and if she was extent uninformed by the knowledge of her limitations, and the extent of her illness – has been a pleasure to watch.

This is how we used to be, how we understood Polly as children, before we knew more and had less time and lived further away and had found it harder to know what to say, and exactly how to be the nieces and nephews that she believed us to be. She, as an aunt, was a tough act to follow. Jack, Dan, Rose, Ryan and Wolf were another opportunity for Polly to be the aunt that she was so good at being and it is all of our losses that she was not able to be a great great aunt for a new generation.

Polly was in many ways, the family encyclopedia. She did not forget anything, ever. If there was a discussion about what happened when to whom and there were differences of opinions we usually learned to trust that it was Polly who was right. She did not forget. Especially if it involved family. She was right. It falls on Avi to be the family historian now, she seems to know everything about everyone in the family going back to when she was, I think, two years old but not in the same way as Polly and not of course with the same breadth.

I talked to Avigayil last night and we mainly cried and talked about Polly and how wonderful she was to us and how deeply sad this made us feel, sadder than we expected to be, and how profoundly grateful to her we are for what she tried to do in her life and for the effort that she put into what she did. We also have memories, Avigayil, Aliza and I, more than 30 years of memories of Polly, the most indelible of which came in our role as children – as nieces and nephews, of walking over to Saba and Savta’s on shabbos, of reading Peanuts cartoons and doing puzzles and reading Life magazine and being with Polly.

Avi told me that she remembers being in Polly’s room in Forest Hills surrounded by books about the royal family and playing Polly’s 45 of the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine over and over. I still have no idea if that is a good song or not (I am told from time to time that it is in fact an awful song) but it reminds us of Yellowstone Boulevard, of running around Saba and Savta’s house, of Polly, of candy drawers and long seders and afikoman hunts. Seder will not be the same without Polly. Shabbat at my parents will not be the same. The Yellow Submarine will not be the same.

Finally there is baseball. To talk about Polly without talking about her love of baseball and more specifically her love of the Yankees would be a terrible incompletion. Polly and the Yankees. Gehrig, Babe, Di Maggio, Polly.

I was watching the first of episode of Ken Burns’s Baseball the other night when the narrator explained that female baseball fans in the late 1800’s were known as cranklets. Polly was a cranklet. She might have been the biggest Yankees cranklet to ever wear a retro Mickey Mantle jersey. She loved Don Mattingly. She worshiped Mantle. She watched every game that wasn’t on shabbat or yontif. She had every Yankee yearbook from 1971 to 1986.

I consider being a Yankee fan to be a great gift in that I get to root for a local team that isn’t an embarrassment and Polly was one of the biggest reasons that I became a Yankee fan. A few years ago she gave me her baseball card collection. She had every card Topps made from 1977 to 1983, all in mint condition. She would go to the stadium with me or Saba or Abba and watch, while listening to the radio on her Walkman. I don’t think that anything made her happier than being at the stadium.

I also don’t think that anything made her more unhappy than having to listen to John Sterling on the radio. She did not suffer fools gladly and she believed that John Sterling was a fool, and a clown, and refused to listen to the games on the radio. Polly was a hard one to pin down at times but her hatred of John Sterling attested to her seriousness as a Yankee fan and as a general arbiter of good taste.

I grew up watching the Yankees when they were on Channel 11 and I honestly do not remember how many of those games I watched with Polly, listening to Phil Rizzuto and Bill White talk about Piniella and Guidry and Winfield and Mike Pagliarulo, but I feel like there were many, and that she was my cool aunt who had a Snoopy doll in a Yankee uniform who loved the same thing that I loved. I consider my being a Yankee fan as a shared thing, as something that belongs to me, to Polly, and also to Abba. It may not be the most profound thing in the world, but it’s mine, it was hers, and baseball never dies.

We will miss you Polly. We will make sure that you are remembered by us and known and understood by our children, even those yet to come. The extended Geller, Metal, Gorodezter, and Porath families were central to your world and we will make sure that you are a permanent part of ours.

I’m Ba’ack!

This is my first post since January. Too much is happening to stay quiet. So here’s the first. There was an oped article in todays Jerusalem Post. Here’s the link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=233309<a href=

Here’s my response: Dear Mr. Tauber,

I started reading your oped piece in todays JPost and stopped when you wrote that Yerushalayim could fall again. I beg to differ as vociforously as I can. We are only in the Land through HaShem's promises to us. We can see it everyday in the diversity of Jews walking the streets of the Land. The prophesies of our return have come true. One of the promises was the promise of the four galuyot – four exiles: Egypt, Bavel (Babylon), Poras (Persia) and Rome. The Rome exile lasted until the gates opened for Jews to return to the Land beginning in the late 1800's. THERE WILL NOT BE A FIFTH EXILE!

We care for our security and well being more from a place of confidence that this truth brings – that no politician from anywhere, within or without – can bring us down, than from a quaking fear that anyone is more powerful than HaShem's promises.

Until this internalized, we will make it more difficult, but it won't be the catastrophe you envision. Indeed, America, Europe and China have so much more to fear, as they have no protection of promises from Heaven. Even more, their downfall is Divine decree to make room for the world that HaShem intended before Creation. We see it coming more true everyday.

The boldness and courage of Jews speaking this truth, in a gentle, confident manner is our greatest resource. Please consider this and re-examine your vision. If we were only subjects of politics and politicians, we would have been gone long ago. Please write to encourage and give faith and trust and confidence through your words and work, rather than convey unfounded fear based upon a seeming logic that defies our entire 4,000 year existence.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Moshe Pesach Geller
052-733-6791

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“Who can stop what must arrive now? Something new is waiting to be born” Jerry singing Hunter

Good Morning Yerushalayim. Good morning Eretz Yisrael. Good morning world. Good morning HaShem. I stand on this day of the re-birth of Creation. I stand with the greatness of spirit and soul that resides in each and every human being. I stand with the awesomeness of humanity in our striving in world that is fully revealed, yet so hidden. I give thanks for every blessed nanosecond that allows me see, feel, know, touch and be touched. I bless us all to embrace ourselves and each other in our knowing and unknowing; in our hopes and dreams and prayers. Shabbat Shalom, World. Let it be.

It’s Finally Here!

We are honored, humbled and proud to share with you an incredible project.
After many years in the making (and please G-d many more to come), it is our privilege to share the following with the world.

www.carlebachlegacy.com

Join us in this awesome journey.

Hearing the Bas Kol

Now I want you to know, the whole story between Yosef and his brothers was mamesh from heaven because this was the beginning of us Jewish people going into exile.

I want to tell you something awesome… awesome is not the word.

Here the brothers want to kill Yosef. Let’s assume they were convinced they were right. So it says(Breishis 37:20) ‘let’s throw him in a pit’, and then it says ‘we will see what will happen to his dreams’. So the way it’s translated is that they said it cynically ‘yeah, let’s see what happens to his crazy dreams’.

But the Medrash says (Medrash Breishis Raba 84:14) that a Bas Kol, a voice from heaven said ‘Nireh Ma Yihiyu Chalomosav’, let’s see what happens to his dreams.

Then it says ‘Vayishma Reuven’ (Breishis 37:21), what did Reuven hear? He mamesh heard something and wanted to save Yosef. So the way it is simply learned is that Reuven heard and said ‘ahhh, I got to get him out of the pit’. You know what the Zohar Hakadosh says? The only person who heard this voice was Reuven. ‘Vayishma Reuven’. He heard a voice from heaven saying, we will see what will happen to his dreams. You think it’s the end? It’s the beginning.

He asks his brothers ‘did you hear something?’

They said ‘no’.

So he should say to himself ‘I must be dreaming, I’m crazy. I have to see my therapist, I hear voices’.

Where would Reuven be if he wouldn’t have listened to this voice and want to save Yosef?

I want you to know friends, the prophet Hosea, who is the master on tshuvah, Shuva Yisrael, was the great grandson of Reuven who did tshuvah. Mamesh, awesome.

You see what it is? This is so deep, and yet it sounds so simple. Every person has to realize what they need for the fixing of their own neshama. G-d is not a Yenta who is telling everybody everything about me. G-d is telling me what I have to know for the fixing of my neshama.

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This Is Must Read (and take it a s a blessed challenge!)

If you want to know what you need to know about what is needed and desired from you by Heaven, here it is. This is the challenge. This is the test. This is what we all need to know to know to go forward in our lives and bring any hope to the world.

I bless you with taking on the challenge and have safe, liberating journeying. See you on the Great Day.

Shabbat Shalom, Moish

This is from Rav Sholom Brodt in Jerusalem:

In honor of Reb Shlomo’s yahrtzeit you will find a collection of his teachings on this week’s parsha- Va’yeira.

Reb Shlomo zt”l mammash lived like a child of Avraham Avinu, always doing chessed, always inviting people for Shabbos and Yom Tov, always moving beyond himself. People often think that great people were just born that way. Sure, it’s true that there are great people who are endowed with great talents and what is difficult for most comes easily to them. But all the truly great people had to work very hard; they had to turn themselves inside out and traverse over a deep and frightening abyss. Like Avraham Avinu who was tested with ten awesome trials, every one of us must go through adversity and hardship to actualize our potentials and beyond.

These tests that we must go through may just come upon us, unexpectedly, or they may just be there waiting for us to ‘take the test’. Though we may understand how important it is for us to take the test, or work on it sincerely, we sometimes are just too lazy or scared to proceed, even though we know that we must. I once heard Reb Gedaliah Fleer say that most people prefer to continue living in their misery because they are familiar with it, rather than try to make changes and improvements for the better, since that would require them to enter into unfamiliar territory and realms which they are frankly afraid to approach.

There are people who are very kind, but so long as they are kind because ‘they’ are kind, their kindness has limitations. However, says the Piasetzner Rebbe zt”l, when one gives him/herself completely over to Hashem and wants to be and do kind things because that is what Hashem wants them to do, their kindness reaches way beyond anything they imagined. Avraham Avinu went into the beyond and he got there by submitting his will completely to Hashem’s will. May we all be blessed to grow beyond as we approach each life-test joyously. Amen!

Yehi ratzon mil’fa’necha H’ Elokai, in the merit of the ‘yom ha-hilulah’ of the holy neshamah of our Rebbe ztz”l, that I may have the ‘zchut’ to share with you divrei Torah and stories “from the heart” as our holy Rebbe Reb Shlomo ztz”l learned Torah with us. He would sing and he would cry to Him and to us “for the sake of my brothers, for the sake of my sisters, I will speak now, ‘sholom bach’ peace be in YOU”.

Master of the world, we want to be in You. Bless us to want to be in You sincerely. Hashem help the student to give honor to his Rebbe. Help him not to steal from Your Honor, nor to steal from his Rebbe’s honor. Bless the talmidim to be matzliach “for the sake of my brothers, for the sake of my sisters”.

I Just Wrote This EMAIL To A Friend

As you have some awareness, this are momentous times for the Planet and of course, our People, the Jewish nation. During these 10 Days of Repentance, there are ‘talks’ going on between us and our cousins, under pressure from the American Government. The decisions and choices made in these talks will set up much of the Jewish future. You have on occassion asked me questions about our situation here and claims against us.

It has always frustrated me, because to do justice to your questions, require responses truly long. They require explications of context and history. But there is too limit time for truly just responses nor to study them.

There was a time before the Liberation and Unification of the Land in June 1967. There was what created the new circumstances of Liberation and Unification. There was a time when Israel was less than 20 years old. When Israel was small, both in physical size as well as numbers. It is less small than it was. It still is squite small; smaller than New Jersey, with a population smaller than some U.S. cities!

The link is to a recording of the words spoken by Abba Eban at the U.N. Security Council the day after the Six-Day War erupted. It is 40 minutes long. Please give it a serious, close listen, with no distractions allowed. Listen two more times.Think about it. Let me know what conclusions you’ve come to.

http://savethemusic.com/bin/archives.cgi?q=songs&search=title&id=Address+before+the+Security+Council+of+the+United+Nation,+June+6,+1957

Blessings, Moish

Inspired By The Previous Post/Exchange, Here Reb Shlomo Carlebach Teaches: The Holiness of the Land of Israel and Its People

The Holiness of the Land And of Its People

Reprinted with permission of Connections Magazine. Copyright (C) 1986 Congregation Kehilat Jacob Hakrev Ushma Division

There is a teaching from the lshbitzer Rebbe Master, lived 175 years ago) that says that a man brought an object from somebody and he thought that it was copper and worth one hundred rubles. And someone stole it from him. Then he discovered it it really was made of gold. They caught the thief, who had sold the object, and asked the Holy Rosh (Rabbinic Authority of his time) how much he had to pay. The Rosh ruled, and I don’t know if all the rabbis agree with him, that he is only the baal bayis (the owner) to as much as he thinks it was worth. Since he thought that it was only copper, and only worth one hundred rubles, the thief has to give him back only double that amount. (In Jewish law. a thief repays double the value of what he stole.)

The Ishbitzer says something very deep. Things belong to you only as much as you think they are worth. So, if a Jew thinks that Yiddishkeit (Judaism) is worth only a little to him, that is how much he is really a Jew. Obviously it is not hard to find out how much something is worth. But, on a deeper level, you really only know how much something is worth after you lose it.

That kind of knowledge, how much something is worth, is so deep, so infinite. because as long as you have it, you only have the object, but suddenly you lose it, and you feel as though you are losing a little part of your heart

I had this thought. Whv is our Mother, Rachel, the one who is bringing us back to Eretz Yisrael? “Rachel is weeping for her children.” Because Rachel was the first Jew who met a Jew who had lost Eretz Yisrael. After Yaacov left Eretz Yisrael, the first Jew he met was Rachel. And the Torah says that when he met Rachel. “He lifted up his voice and cried.” The Midrash says that he cried over the destruction of the Temple. You know what he told her? He taught her how a Jew feels when he misses Eretz Yisrael. Therefore, Rachel is the master of how a Jew feels when he has lost Eretz Yisrael.

I Haven’t Opened My Mouth Like This In A Long, Long Time

I got off Facebook. Some months later, I got back on. Not sure why. But it’s been out of my consciousness, so I haven’t been reading nor posting. Tonight, I got a notice that had me log on and I read my Home Page. There was a post for a truly awesome woman. I really love and like her. But we stand on opposite ends of the Judea-Samaria debate. Here’s the thread so far:

Leona Strassberg Steiner J Street is the only organization that is trying to make real change in the way we see Israel, the way we connect with Israel and the way we can convey to the rest of the world that there are so many people that are unhappy with the shenanigans that are happening over the green line in Israel. Please join and help make… a difference in our life time for a just and sensible peace for everyone in the region. Gmar Hatima Tova!

Moshe Pesach Geller: The assumptions of ‘shenanagins’ is offensive to those who regard for our Divine patrimony as a precious, neccesary gift. Easy for you to give away something that you have no identification with, are 7.000 miles away from and IS NOT YOURS TO GIVE AWAY, and anyway, are impotent to do so.

How you people ‘over there’ see us is only ultimately important only to you. It is how we see ourselves here that counts and J Street has zero influence. Indeed, I would bet that not more 10% of Israelis have ever heard of it. What is relevant to the inexorable flow of Jewish History happens in the Land. As it should be.

Moshe Pesach Geller: Try this on for size: http://www.theothersidevideo.com/ and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_uk5nx5yyI and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-_sICgOkMY and finally this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBtFGHKPRHY

Leona Strassberg Steiner: my brother, me thinks you need to do some serious homework and read history books…… religion and politics is the downfall of this world…. our fanaticism and our cousins fanaticism is exactly the same….. I pray for open hearts on all sides every time I light Shabbas candles

Moshe Pesach Geller: Leona, trust me, I’ll challenge you to a history debate on any history of the planet anywhere, anyplace anytime. Religion? I’m a rabbi of the most radical kind, as you know. If religion and politics are the downfall of the world (you’re wrong.It’s people, many who are politicians and religious people, many who are doctors who beat there wives, artists who sleep with their children, and the list is endless.) If not politicians, who will make what you want to have happen, happen? And having lived here, how many people do you think will actually listen to what you say, let alone implement what you think?

In Ofakim, you are irrelevant, unless you’re there to help them feed themselves. In Meah Shearim as all charedi places and as most all Arab villages where honor murders still take place, as a woman, you aare invisible. By the time we gather whatever audience you would have, there wouldn’t be many left. Pretty impotent. So the question becomes, at what point will you look at the truth of the people on all sides who live there.

With the Christian Arabs blaming the Jews for their situation when everyone knows they say it because if they lay the blame at the source, they will suffer even more, the truth is crushed. When Arab women’s voices and talents are stifled in Muslim society, especially Gaza, the truth is crushed. With Yishuvnikim tar and feathered as Chas v’Shalom, I won’t use the words, the truth is crushed. When the Tzahal you were a member of likened to Yimach Shemom from Germany, the truth is crushed. With Hamas laughing at you, they know with the smiles they offer you, the truth is crushed.

With Fatah and Hamas at each other’s throat’s and Nabil Shaath fighting with Saed Ekerat over who should lead the negotiations on Fatah’s side, the truth of ‘partnership’ is crushed. With ignoring that ALL OF JORDAN is Mandatory Palestine and the majority of the population ‘Palestinian’, the truth is crushed. When history is selelctively started 40 years ago or 60 or 100, the truth is crushed.

When our cousins say that there was no Bait HaMikdash and no Jewish historical association with Yerushalayim, the truth is crushed.

You can’t build redemption and peace on lies.

So you guys can shout all you want, tear you hair out all you want and pound your hearts for lack of vessels for HaShem forces us to go through until the real, the ultimate Shalom comes for EVERYONE. For finally, there is no such things as ‘peace’. ‘Peace’ is a bastard English word with no intrinsic meaning of its own.

Ahh..SHALOM! That has meaning and a shoresh that reveals it’s meaning: SHALEM! Whole, complete. Peace is not negotiated by corrupt western white men in suits who have only a temporary poistion of influence anyway.It is beyond all that. And until people give up their KMart discounted version of peace to only hold out for the WHOLE SHEBANG: SHALOM!!! Will Shalom be clear on the horizon.