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New Ambassador Mike Huckabee Sounds like a Friend of the Torah World
The new U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee clarified an unusual opinion, reflecting that of the new president, Trump. regarding the subject of army enlistment. It was presented on the Channel 14 news among other topical public issues in the course of a conversation with President of Dirshu, Rav Dovid Hofstetter. Huckabee is an evangelical Christian and an ordained Baptist minister.
Huckabee, a non-Jew, addressed the very touchy subject of the draft of yeshiva students and said, "There are many ways in which someone can serve, and not all of them are militarily-connected. There are jobs which are not at all connected to war. We dealt with this in our system as follows, and it might work for you as well."
Notwithstanding the exuberant joy at the return of the hostages, let us not forget the stunning blow to hundreds of families who lost their loved ones through devastating terrorist attacks and now see how the despicable murderers are going scot-free, celebrating their liberation instead of rotting away in prisons for the rest of their lives.
And this is a steady process in chilling repeated series, when every murderer of Jews, if not eliminated on the spot but captured and imprisoned, simply waits the time when he will be exchanged and freed in some agreement or another. There is no doubt that the knowledge whereby those who sent him on his mission of murder will do all in their power in have him freed as soon as possible is present and waiting. And this only reinforces his motivation.
The Israeli government, throughout its generations, employed different methods. ...
This appreciation of the Ozharover Rebbe was originally published in 1996, 29 years ago.
Part 1
"I toiled in order to demonstrate that every single Jew is capable of realizing his true potential in Torah [study]. That despite the plagues afflicting this generation — the deep spiritual darkness, the utter confusion wrought by false ideologies, the intellectual obtuseness — it is still possible to see light and to walk in the path of righteousness" (Excerpt from R. Moshe Yechiel Epstein's introduction to Be'er Moshe on Devorim).
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R. Moshe Yechiel (Halevi) Epstein — known simply as "the Ozharover" — was born in 1890 in Ozharov, a small shtetl in Central Poland. He was the fifth heir to the Ozharover chassidic dynasty, which had originally been founded by Rabbi Yehuda Arye Leib (Halevi) Epstein, a disciple of the Chozeh MiLublin.
By the time of his death in Tel Aviv on 1 Shvat, 5731 (1971), the Ozharover became a renowned Torah luminary who provided spiritual guidance to large numbers of Jews in Poland, the U.S., and Israel. He also made two important contributions to Torah literature: The Aish Das, a 7,000 page encyclopedic synthesis of Torah ideology and chassidic lore, and the Be'er Moshe, a 5,000 page commentary on the Pentateuch and early Prophets (reprinted by Rabbi Tanchum Becker, the present Ozharover Rebbe).
Nowadays, many people refer to the Ozharover as "the Aish Das." Perhaps this is an indicator of the tremendous impact his classic sefer had on the Torah community. Even so, those who merited to come into personal contact with the Ozharover glimpsed a saintly tzaddik whose gadlus extended far beyond his literary accomplishments. Indeed, to focus exclusively on the Ozharover's written works would only be telling half his story — literally — since he only began committing his thoughts to writing halfway through his lifetime, when he was 40 years old.
In order to gain a deeper appreciation of who R' Moshe Yechiel Epstein really was, we must learn more about his personal experiences: the challenges he faced, the trials he experienced, the manner in which he expressed his profound love for his fellow Jews.
As the Ozharover himself wrote in his introduction to Aish Das, "I named the book Aish Das (lit., "Fire of Religion") because it is founded upon [my] three `burning loves' — love for Hashem, love for Torah, and love for one's fellow Jews." These three "burning loves" glowed within his heart since youth, and flared increasingly brighter with each passing year. His story crowds the throat with emotion and inspires us to reach ever higher in our avodas Hashem.
Rain and Kinneret Watch by Dei'ah Vedibur
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Our weekly report of the rain and the level of the Kineret -
Winter, 5785.
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Opinion & Comment
Part II
Part I of this article ended with a quotation from a recent book which uses the parable of monkeys and typewriters. I challenged the readers to try to intuit its exact meaning. Here's the quote again:
"It is a bit like the well-known horde of monkeys hammering away on typewriters -- most of what they write will be garbage, but very occasionally by pure chance they will type out one of Shakespeare's sonnets."
This quote is from A Brief History in Time (p. 123), a book that was very popular in the secular world despite the fact that it deals with some of the most difficult topics of theoretical physics. The author of the book, Stephen Hawking, was considered by many to be the preeminent theoretical physicist of the past decade. He was certainly not unaccustomed to thinking about, or intimidated by, large numbers.
Readers were asked to try and pin down the meaning of the phrase "very occasionally" used by Hawking in the passage. Just how long would it take a "horde of monkeys" to type out one of Shakespeare's sonnets by chance?
We will try to estimate this more exactly. To do this we first have to determine about how long a Shakespearean sonnet is, and then how long it would take Hawking's monkeys to type one out.
It is commonly accepted that Shakespeare wrote about 154 sonnets. (The word sonnet is derived from the Italian sonetto, meaning "little song.") Each is a poem of exactly fourteen lines written with a special rhythm called iambic pentameter. An iamb consists of an unstressed syllable followed by one that is stressed and a poem written in iambic pentameter has lines which usually contain five groups of iambs, each of two syllables. Thus it follows that a typical sonnet should have about 140 syllables.
Opinion & Comment
From the attention that the issue of army service deferrals for yeshiva bochurim receives in the media, one would think that it is the greatest single threat facing the State of Israel today.
Hizbullah raids on the northern front, nuclear warheads mounted on Iranian long-range missiles, deteriorating relations with the Palestinian Authority, skyrocketing unemployment -- these issues pale in significance beside the "real" cause for concern: why 27,000 aspiring young Torah scholars, who will ensure the propagation of our heritage for generations to come, are being given the opportunity to devote their best years to Torah study?
"Outrage!" the pundits of Meretz scream. Never mind that the Minister of Defense, Yitzchak Mordechai, has pleaded time and again to bury the issue once and for all. "We don't want them," Mordechai insists, and with good reason.
The IDF has more recruits than it knows what to do with, and the modifications it would have to undergo in order to accommodate the thousands of yeshiva bochurim would cost it a pretty penny. But Meretz and its trusty ally -- Aharon Barak and his Supreme Court groupies, joined lately by Ehud Barak and the Labor Party -- insist on sticking to their guns. Who cares what the military thinks? It's the principle that counts.
Not long ago -- the last time the issue reared its ugly head - - Yaakov Ne'eman, the Minister of Finance, proposed a solution to this "problem": conscript yeshiva bochurim for "only" one month of basic training. That's all. What's one month in a lifetime? Surely it is not too difficult a burden to bear! Today similar compromises are being discussed in the political arena, yet the gedolei Torah have stated emphatically that there is no room for compromise on this issue -- the Supreme Court's decision strikes at the very nerve center of Am Yisroel.
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