http://xkcd.com/709/ 

I remember when he’d say “Ooh, a tricky one!” and would absolutely love it, lived the challenge, and produced something such that most kids remarked, “Wow, how the heck did he see that… in there?” Mr. Squiggle – you’re my hero.

Remembering Miss Pat, Gus the Snail, and Bill the Steam Shovel, and of course, the immortal Mr. Squiggle. There’s a link to some clips here, and this is how the site owner describes the star, and full credit to the drawer – well done:

“Mr Squiggle was a show that encouraged children to draw.
I am sure that it must have inspired me to do so.
Perhaps I would not enjoy drawing so much without it.
Mr Squiggle was the kind of entertainment that I don’t think we see often anymore.
Gentle without being boring.
Funny without being smarmy.
Cheeky without being smug.
Simple without being moronic.”

I’d say that this show was one of the many things that made me, as a child, proud to be Australian. We need more of that, and its equivalent in Israel and around the world, too.

Having just returned from Israel, I found it particularly ironic, as I traipsed the country bumping into all sorts of people I know from around the world – particularly New York and Australia, and particularly in Jerusalem.

I met them at the Kotel. I met them on Jaffa Street looking at a fine metal-work and Judaica store, I met them just bumbling down Ben Yehuda Street. I met them at a mate’s apartment. It was bizarre, and always nice.

I often said while travelling there that Israel is the nexus point, and Jerusalem especially. The article makes a fair point regarding socio-economic status and circumstances inevitably drawing people of the same upbringing together in random places. Ethnically also. Not sure if it mentioned that.

A cute comment on the page was: “the actual reason is that there are only a few thousand real people in the world…”

More on Israel in the coming days, along with some observations that whirled around in the Mind.

I say, of course this is critically important, but consider, now, the effect you can have throughout life, taking a few moments to help a mother who’s child’s fallen over and hurt himself and is now bawling his eyes out. If you manage to help calm him down, imagine how grateful the mother would be to know that someone cares enough to help her out. Even just a compliment can change a person’s day. “That tie suits you very, very well, mate”, can be delivered without fear of appearing anything other than straight, if that’s your worry. “You look nice”. A compliment. Be liberal with them. You can sometimes see the effect occur right in front of you. It’s what I was talking about in a previous post (I think the X-Files one)

An angel walking among us at The Gap

HE IS the watchman of The Gap. A former life insurance salesman who in 45 years has officially rescued about 160 people intent on jumping from the cliffs at Watsons Bay, mostly from Gap Park, opposite his home high on Old South Head Road. Unofficially, that figure is closer to 400.

Some, at his urging, quietly gathered their shoes and wallets, neatly laid out on the rocks, and followed him home for breakfast. Others, tragically, struggled as he grabbed at their clothes before they slipped over the edge.

Still others later sent tokens of thanks, a magnum of champagne or an anonymous drawing slipped into his letter box, labelling him ‘‘an angel walking among us’’.

Don Ritchie, 82, spends much of his time reading newspapers, books and scanning the glistening expanse of ocean laid out before him. His days of climbing fences are gone and he admits some relief that most visitors now carry mobile phones and are quick to contact the police if they see a lone figure standing too close to the edge, too deep in contemplation.

For its part, Woollahra Council has been campaigning for $2.5 million to install higher fences, motion-sensitive lights, emergency phones and closed-circuit television cameras, but Mr Ritchie is ambivalent.

‘‘People will always come here. I don’t think it will ever stop,’’ he says, with a shrug.

Some deaths have been recorded in his diary, others are eternally etched in his mind.

One summer evening he spotted a young man perched on a thin ledge, beyond the fence.

‘‘I went over and I tried to talk to him, asking him questions about where he was from. He wouldn’t talk much, just kept looking straight ahead. I was talking to him for about half an hour … thinking I was making headway. I said ‘why don’t you come over for a cup of tea, or a

beer, if you’d like one?’ He said ‘no’ and stepped straight off the side … his hat blew up and I caught it in my hand.’’ Later, Mr Ritchie discovered the 19-year-old had grown up next door, playing with his grandchildren.

Years later, Mr Ritchie encouraged a ‘‘nervous and confused’’ woman, sitting on a ledge, shoes by her side, to follow him home. Over tea and toast, she revealed she was unhappy with medication she had been prescribed for depression. Mr Ritchie’s wife suggested she seek a second opinion. ‘‘A couple of months later she came up the path with a bottle of French champagne. We later got a Christmas card from her, and a postcard. It said ‘I’ll never forget your important intervention in my life. I am well’.’’

Despite his bravery and compassion, Mr Ritchie has steered clear of the limelight. He was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2006 for his services to suicide prevention but is all too aware that any publicity attracts more depressed and disturbed people.

In the weeks after the Channel 10 newsreader Charmaine Dragun jumped to her death outside his house in November 2007, Mr Ritchie’s wife is adamant six more followed.

‘‘But what do you do? Not talk about it?’’ he asks. ‘‘It’s the truth. It’s what goes on here.’’

It has long been a haunting dichotomy for rescuers, families and media. To speak out in a bid to have the area made safer, risking more people becoming aware of it, or to keep quiet, letting the deaths go on.

But for an anti-suicide campaigner, Dianne Gaddin, whose daughter Tracy jumped from The Gap in 2005, the answer is easy. If the issue is not aired, the problem will never be solved.

She has written four letters in the past month to the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, urging him to act. While her pleas go unanswered, her desperation balloons. She knows Mr Ritchie will not be standing guard forever.

‘‘Sometimes just a smile and a greeting is all it takes to change the mind of the would-be suicider. I don’t believe people want to die, but living is just too hard. To me, Don is a guardian angel.’’

Lifeline: 131 114; Beyond Blue 1300224 636.

On the drive to work, over time I discovered the same flock of birds zipping, diving, swooping, dipping and soaring around above Doncaster Ave, just past Anzac Pde, heading towards Gardener’s Rd.

Flock of birds - zoom in to see.

They dart around and around in large arcs and circles, like an army’s air force, somedays more orchestrated, other days not so cohesive a bunch. But it looks like they’re training. Every day. Pretty much without fail. Why are they doing it?

Here they can be seen immediately

I would encourage anyone to stop and smell the roses, it makes a happy person.

And away they go again, a daily aerial aerobics workout

 Tzippor Echad, B’Lev Echad. ‘One bird, with one singular heart’- a play on the popular saying and song. It’s really quite inspiring, and something for which I believe it is incumbent on me to thank G-d. Indeed I am very grateful. Not just that this phenomenon occurs, but that it occurs with such regularity, and even more thankful for being drawn to see it. An incredible display.

Mah Rabu Ma’asecha, Adonai, Kulam B’Hochmah ‘Aseeta – Mal’ah Ha’Aress Qinyanecha.

“How great/numerous are Your works, G-d, all made with Your wisdom – the world is filled with Your creations.”

Impact can be seen as a small black dot on the top-right, said by SMH.com.au to be the size of Earth

In order to think about that, you’d need to know how much garbage able to cause significant damage is floating around every solar system in the universe. Still. If it’s anything like our solar system, it’s most likely that without Jupiter scooping up deadly-sized objects during its orbit around the sun, Earth simply wouldn’t be here.

Naturally, I’m going to pin credit on G-d’s brilliant design, but then we’re all free to choose to maintain were here out of sheer luck and we’ll see how much that informs one’s existence. :-P

“[...L]et us review the events in Numbers: The Israelites have begun to commit harlotry with the Moabite women, justifying their immorality by attaching themselves to the hedonistic philosophy of Baal Peor – “It’s good if it feels good; whatever is natural is positive.” [Emphasis added] God then instructs Moses, and Moses instructs the judges to execute all the leaders of this idolatrous wave.

But at that very moment a prince of the tribe of Shimon publicly fornicates with a Midianite woman – daring Moses, whose own wife was a Midianite – to punish him. Moses is momentarily paralyzed. The entire nation is aghast at the impudent rebellion; the elders are weeping at the Tent of Meeting. Phinehas, usually a respected and peaceful mediator, understands that if he does not act at once, Moses and his divine laws will have been silenced and Jewish history will end, so he is forced to step out of character for the ultimate good – and peace – of the nation.”

Just a few days ago, someone opined, regarding a particular negative mitzvah: “…but what if they see no wrong in it? …[if the action] was just something so completely natural [to them] that they do not perceive it as unholy.”

This ties in with the Friday night conversation from the Maccabiah post. If something is natural, then it’s a good, or so the logic goes. The above exchange takes it one step further: If something is perceived as completely natural to them, then how can it be a bad?

These views reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Judaism’s philosophical stance regarding the nature of G-d, G-d’s relationship to the world, and consequently the required relationship between mankind, its world, and its Creator.

My knowledge on this comes from a few places such as a particularly brilliant interview with Dennis Prager on moral relativity and the need for an Absolute G-d for the proper functioning of society (Ultimate Issues Spring Summer 1986 pp. 4-8 and 26-27) and Rabbi Ezra Bick from his excellent “Topics in Medieval Jewish Philosophy” series available under “Machshava” on the Ki Mitziyon Tetze Torah website.

Maimonides asserts that G-d is different than, separate from, and independent of anything we could possibly know within creation*. Indeed he says there are only three things we can know about G-d, the rest is impossible. Instead of having  a relative god, simply “greater than” its creation, you believe in an absolute G-d, utterly beyond His creation in any and every way imaginable – the ultimate Other. This is the point I needed to draw out. And this is the crucial factor for the moral system of Judaism.

It doesn’t matter one iota whether an individual feels that an action is right or wrong, forbidden or permissable (for all or even just for him), rather, if the law derives from the Absolute is that X is forbidden, then X is forbidden. Whilst Judaism considers the different feelings of individuals in the manner of the law’s application (the nature and/or degree of the application etc**), nonetheless the law itself does not change depending on the whims and wit of society in one era or another, from one place or another, or from one person to another. This is the only valid way we can make judgements on Earth. Everyone must be held up to the same moral standard, and that moral standard, just as its Author, is immutable, unchanging, and absolute. Via moral relativism, everything and anything is permissable. This is the essential characteristic of polytheism as well – pick the god you like, and his or her moral standard with it. And if your god is defeated by another god… all that garbage.

G-d dictates our moral sensitivities, not the other way around.

The Riskin comments about the hedonistic philosophy of Baal Peor can be applied in this context: it is foreign to – and stands completely at odds with – real Judaism, of that we can be sure.

Torah – in my experience – is always timely.

—-

* But this is not to suggest that G-d does not know us. By definition, G-d being infinite implies a perfect knowledge of the minutiae of our lives, and this knowledge brings about both reverence and love, ideally at once. Reverence because you realise that G-d knows what you’re doing and will hold you accountable – He cares, and love because G-d’s knowing about you and the smallest goings on within your existence mean He can help, and often does help, if your eyes are open and you have a developed sense of gratitude.

Many wish to banish G-d, (Hass V’Shalom, G-d forbid to think such) to the farthest Heavens, such that you can go about your business. Then those people want to complain that G-d is so far away, how can we possibly reach him? Some religions then create intermediaries to act as emmisaries for our requests, others turn that feeling of abandonment  – towards abandoning morality, like what often happens if a parent never disciplines a child.

Still others want to consider G-d as the un-knowing Creator, as a way to invalidate G-d as having to answer for the injustice and pain that occurs (Lo Aleinu). This latter thought I can understand and feel for emotionally. Very deeply. But intellectually I cannot accept it. G-d is infinite. He cannot not care. The question of Tzaddiq Ve-Ra’ Lo, Rasha’ V’Tov Lo (why bad things happen to good people) remains, and as Rabbi Benjamin Blech says in his lecture series on Aishaudio by the same name, there may be answers, but there isn’t one definitive answer.

** The example that springs to mind is in tractate Makkoth (lashes), where if a person about to be lashed is so distressed by the impending blows that he or she urinates, publicly, the embarrassment arising from this is such that were it to have taken place even before the first blow, none would be given. This is off the top of my head and may not be 100% accurate nor may this principle cover all circumstances.

In discussing how Halacha can change from country to country, society to society, era to era and individual to individual, Rabbi Mark Dratch at Yeshiva University described it like a equation, whereby “x + y = ” is the law that never changes, but the inputs to those variables can and do change all the time depending on circumstances, yielding different legal outcomes. This is the true nature of flexible Judaism that does not break with tradition – it does not and never needed to compromise one centimetre.

And the more the world is outraged by the gross violation of territorial boundaries by Israel, the more we know how crucial the missions were. The deeper the Mossad strikes the heart of vicious, terrorism-supporting dictatorships, the safer we all are, whatever religion or country we belong to.

We all talk about how important hasbara, explaining one’s position, is for Israel’s standing in the world. I think that if we can’t do it right, if we can’t do it effectively, we should let our actions speak louder than our words, and keep fighting to good fight.

G-d bless the IDF, the Mossad, and all those who do so.

Analysis: Restoring Israel’s deterrence and the Mossad’s prestige

Jun. 22, 2009
Yaakov Katz , THE JERUSALEM POST

In 2002, when then-prime minister Ariel Sharon appointed his longtime friend and former IDF subordinate Maj.-Gen. (res.) Meir Dagan as head of the Mossad, the intelligence agency was described as lacking imagination and courage, of being in a state of stagnation.

Seven years later, there is no one in the defense establishment who will say that the Mossad lacks courage. While there is criticism of the continued extension of Dagan’s tenure – the prime minister approved an eighth year for the Mossad chief on Sunday – it refers mainly to the concern that the organization will find itself at a loss for fresh blood if it does not shake up its top ranks.

Dagan is said to have returned the agency to its glory days.

“Dagan has done some great things,” former Mossad deputy chief Ilan Mizrachi told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. Mizrachi was the Mossad No. 2 under Ephriam Halevy and was beaten out for the top job by Dagan in 2002.

“He has put the Mossad back on the map, restored its prestige in Israel and abroad, particularly when it comes to Israeli deterrence,” Mizrachi said.

The agency started to feature prominently in foreign press reports about five years ago, following a series of accidents relating to Iran’s nuclear program. Scientists were found dead in mysterious circumstances; Revolutionary Guard jets crashed one after another.

The most recent operation attributed to the agency by foreign media was in January, when during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, the Israel Air Force reportedly bombed a weapons convoy deep in the Sudanese desert.

A year earlier, fingers were pointed at the Mossad by the foreign press after a car bomb went off in the heart of Damascus killing Imad Mughniyeh, one of the most-wanted terrorists in the world, and Hizbullah’s chief military commander, believed to have been behind the bombings in Buenos Aires in the 1990s and the July 12, 2006, abduction of IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

Last summer, Syrian Gen. Muhammad Suleiman was assassinated by a sniper in the seaside resort town of Tartus. He was reportedly a close adviser to Syrian President Bashar Assad, and a liaison to Hizbullah and Hamas.

But possibly one of the greatest achievements attributed to the Mossad by the foreign media was the discovery of the Deir a-Zour nuclear reactor that was destroyed by the IAF in September 2007. While officials still refuse to publicly discuss the strike, it is described as one of the greatest operations in recent IDF history.

Then-prime minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet when extending Dagan’s tenure last year that “Meir Dagan is doing his job with exceptional success and the list of Mossad’s achievements over the last six years is most impressive.”

While Dagan receives across-the-board compliments, he has been criticized for the way he has handled appointments in the agency. During his tenure, a number of senior Mossad officials have left their positions prematurely and after fighting with the boss.

His appearance last week before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee has also drawn criticism after Dagan was quoted as saying that Iran would only obtain a nuclear weapon in 2014.

This was a sharp break from Military Intelligence assessments and Israeli diplomatic claims that 2009-2010 are the critical years to stop Iran. He also predicted that the demonstrations in Iran would die out in a number of days. That was last Tuesday, and on Sunday the demonstrations seemed to be far from dissipating.

What was nice to my mind was that the same mind that read the same words still looked at it with both child and adult-like eyes. I willingly, immediately suspended the expectation of all grownup vices one usually endures from what passes in front of one’s eyes. And yet I simultaneously noticed themes fit for an adult thinking mind while having fun like a child on a rollercoaster. What warmed me more was that it felt… like a forgotten memory, that I had always thought this way – as an adult and a child at once. Which would explain why I didn’t make hundreds of friends as easily as a boy – I distilled on my own even then that I was thinking differently, in ways that few if anyone else could understand. (Hence the Mind of Michael. Much luck to you.)

I hadn’t had a bath in so many years (showers. I’ve had showers. That-  that context is probably important), that I actually forgot how it works. I got as far as pouring in oh… the entire bottle of bubble bath gel as the water slowly filled, and stood there scratching my head asking where the bubbles were at.

Preparing for the bath I looked around in my bag and pulled out of the top compartment what appeared to be a shell. I record my thoughts, in order, here, for posterity: “Hrm. That’s pretty. I don’t remember picking that up at the beach. Hey wait a minute… what’s that inside? …It can’t be. <wondering in amazement, tests the durability of shell between thumb and forefinger> *CRACK* Oh- Oh G-d, that’s disgusting, it’s oozing and convulsing in and out. What the hell?! <throws in bin> Oh damn, it’s probably in pain and dying. What do I do to help the bugger? Eyes toilet next to bin. Grab snail out of bin. place in toilet. *FLUSH* Wash hands. Twice.

What the hell is a snail doing IN MY BAG?”

About ten minutes just sitting in the bath reading (thinking ‘OK – now what?’ at the back of my mind, like an idiot who’s forgotten how to relax in general), I noticed the button for the jets. Well, I positioned myself strategically with my back to a very willing jet for a nice massage and promptly returned to my book.

Well, Bilbo is such a wonderful little character, and Tolkien’s literary canvass is so consistently painted the warmest shade of vivid that I soon found myself lost in his Middle Earth. I myself come from Higher Earth, where the Lower Matzah is broken and placed in forests for the giant spiders.

I’ve always particularly appreciated Beorn as a vehicle for demonstrating the very human trait whereby one is found oscillating between one’s raw, primal, animal tendencies and one’s morally strong, and steadfastly dutiful and giving qualities. Of course in the case of Beorn and the backdrop being Middle Earth, this was conveyed instead as his greatest strength, rather than so often a failing of Man to live up to his noble bearings (pun intended). Beorn the strong yet gentle. Beorn the wary yet most lavishing host once befriended. Beorn the shapeshifting man-bear that Bilbo fears and respects by night as he hears a scratching sound at the door to the wood cabin, and loves and admires by day as Beorn entertains his guests with honey, mead, and cream and all sorts of other bear schneed.

Beorn (http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/lordoftherings/)

Although Beorn appears to be unable to control himself fully when in bear form (hence Bilbo’s adherence to Gandalf’s warning to stay inside the wood cabin’s walls at night and not get too curious, for his own safety), he nonetheless harnesses his power for upright ends, acting properly whether man or beast, as the reader sees especially towards the end of the book. Clearly, this is what Judaism’s core principle is said to be, not negating or denying the animalistic drive but using the best of its ways in the most appropriate measures for the best of purposes.

Then again, when I was young, I just thought Beorn was frickin’ cool. And being a rather chubby child interested in tasty delicacies – all that honey-flavoured food sounded amazing.

One of the last adult theme things I noticed was towards the end of the book.

Gandalf says to Bilbo at the end: “Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies just because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself?”

And I thought about the role of Zionism, secular or not, and its role in returning Israelites to Israel. Its role of fulfilling prophecies from the Torah. Interesting. Interesting. Then also reflected on the whole dwarvish quest to return to the land and the treasures that are rightfully theirs, in their family for generations, razed and seized by Smaug, who lay comfy there for years. Perhaps here is an analogy to the ‘just who’s land is it?’ debate between Jews and Arabs. Not to say the Arabs came and violently seized Judea/Palestina/Palestine/Israel like Smaug, but temporally speaking, they inhabited the Lonely Mountain as their home for a brief time – does that make it theirs with the backdrop of thousands of years of connection and/or ownership by the dwarves?

When a boy returned home a young man after WWII, the sole survivor of his family, only to find his German neighbours living in it – awkward as the moment must have been for both… whose house is it now? That family has settled there for four years. They didn’t think anyone was coming back - now this Jew whose family had lived there for hundreds of years wants his house back. That is difficult. Three years is hezqat qarqa’? Does that apply? Which set of laws apply? Talmudic? International UN law? Shari’a?

…I never saw that kind of thing, naturally, as a child. I liked the mischievous playful make-believe trashing of Bilbo’s home by the dwarves in their song, beating the living daylights out of trolls, goblins and spiders with swords that glowed blue – that kind of thing.

Looking down for a moment at the bath my eyes turned wide – “holy &^%*!” I thought as the bubbles nearly flowed over the edge, while I reached for the button.

Thank G-d for the smiles on peoples faces.

What comforts me, in my self-imposed period of revelry is that I did so with mostly complete retention of my faculties (and true to form, my vocabulary expands in accordance with the quality, type, and general splendour of the various mind-expanding substances imbibed tonight. [Actually just wine - we had a French gal on hand, I felt silly to ask for anything other than that which might have a French name on the label that I could challenge myself by saying out loud]). Case in point, I was able to share an interesting halakhic tidbit with the Hineni Shaliah whilst enjoying my… fourth or fifth glass of wine. Yeah, yeah. Laugh and ask what I’m like in one month’s time on Pessah.
Still, with all my troubles grabbing enough sleep, and with all the alcohol in my system at present, I think it wonderful that I am able to retain the majority of my faculties, including halakhic ones. The halakhic faculty is one worth developing, more than anything else in the area of one’s words, because practice there breeds a good life, one in harmony with others.
I sit here on the border of the most exquisite thankfulness and dedication of my very essence to G-d, the Infinite, and at the same time on the border of blasphemy, exhilarated at each moment by the thrill of which way I will fall, whether I let myself fall there, and how long I will stay before I climb back up to that painful seat on the fence.
Maybe it’s the alcohol talking, I hope not. It’s most likely the alcohol that’s making me sound a drop deeper than usual, but I wonder. Maybe this is the truth coming out, as they say. We think we see everything, we judge and categorise, but whatever we create in our minds are naught but carbon copies of the real. And even the real, we are told, is not real. When you add finite to infinity, Infinity is unaffected.. so also if you subtract finite. That would be a neat - if insufficient - description of G-d, mathematically, if not philosophically.
I… feel a very strange rush when I have had a few more than normal… The depressant element kicks in with a sort of buzz, and, simultaneously, a sense that everything will be alright, a form of Gestaltism perhaps. A buzz. I am tired. Speaking of tired, there is a type of personality with which I find myself completely at ease. Such people are rare, but they do exist. Guys and girls, and I am blessed with the privelage to know a select few. It is that kind of person who prima facie requires nothing to which I most prefer to give. Such giving energises, rather than saps. Which is odd. 

 While staring at the upside down קטשוף bottle on the table, I wonder why that is the vehicle for the message “go to sleep, you have work tomorrow”. Maybe I should have done this more during uni, when I was a ‘uni bum’. Maybe that would have been stupid, whereas on Purim and Simhat Torah it would have been, and is, proper. I don’t know. I just know one can be a thinking and perhaps oft too thoughtful older man in a young adult’s body, who allows a silly, fun-loving adolescent and a young, pure, innocent, happy, laughing child free housing within.

Rabbi Noah Weinberg Z”L, who just passed away, opined that Adam HaRishon was like such a child. When a child falls over, she cries, and then gets up in 5-10 mins and is just as giggling and vivacious as before, scabs and cuts notwithstanding. We should all be blessed with the ability to revert back to that at will.

Odeh La-El.