You Can Take This Niqab And…

So here is the quote of the day (compliments of the Wall Street Journal)…

From a woman fleeing the inhumane treatment in Mosul by ISIS religious terrorists:

“I want to take this niqab and stuff it down the throat of ISIS.”

I’ve now read over and over again how one of the first things the women do, who get away from these ruthless fanatics, is to remove their confining “religious”-mandated garb that covers them so fully and put on normal clothes and be free human beings again.

While I certainly and highly respect women who freely and modestly cover up–especially in marriage–it is abhorrent to violently force women to dress a certain way or make them in any way lessor than or subservient to men. 

The women under ISIS are taught to be ashamed, when they have nothing to be ashamed about!

ISIS and these other radical Islamists that force their distorted version of religion on others goes like this when it comes to women:

“It is permitted to buy her, sell her, and give her away as a gift. They are just a possession and you can do whatever you want with them.”  In their FAQS, they even ask, “Can I have sex with a slave who hasn’t reached puberty?”

Yet, while they are having sex with abducted pubescent and pre-pubescent girls, they force women to stay at home, and they are not allowed to go out unless accompanied by a man (forget education, working, driving or traveling). 

Even at home, “Woman are cautioned to stay away from rooftops, balconies, and windows so they wouldn’t be seen by outsiders.”

And should a women be accused of sex outside of marriage–even when the women are the ones forcibly (gang) raped–they are the ones subject to death by public stoning for their being licentious. 

Are these “religious” fanatics with guns so weak that they fear sexual temptation more than they trust in the bonds of family, personal righteousness, and the ability of people to freely choose right from wrong?

Imagine…as they abduct and enslave women and children, rape them, sell them, and force them into bogus marriages, starve and torture them, these people actually think they are religious. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Did You Know You’re A Sinner

So walking down the street here yesterday, I ran into a sign and was handed a postcard, declaring:

“Sin Awareness Day”

Then I was confronted by a gentleman (or not so gentle) who proceeded to explain to me that I–and everyone else–are sinners!

Innocently, I ask, “Well, what have I done?”

The missionary answers with a stern face, “I’m sure you have lied!”

I said, “I don’t think so,” but then to play alone, I smirked and said, “Well what if I did?”

He answers and says, “You’ll need to repent!”

Thinking that Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) is right around the corner in a couple of weeks, I thought to myself, hey that’s right in line with where I’m going anyway…

The guy continues–of course–to try to enlist me to his “savior” that he believes can save us from all our sins. 

I challenged and said, “Well, how about Moses?”

He roars back, “Moses?!!!” and starts railing on about “convert, convert, convert.” 

Uh no, thank you, I am fine with the faith of my father, and grandfathers, and great grandfathers, etc. 

And I appreciate if we can avoid the forcible conversion parts of yesteryear from various empires, caliphates, crusades, and inquisitions, with no shortage of associated torture, executions, and expulsions. 

Then breaking this historical context and glancing at the back of the postcard that he handed out, I did like this one thing that it said:

“Sin is not primarily a measure of how bad you are, but a measure of how good you are not.”

Heck, why be negative about ourselves (we are not inherently bad); instead see that we not living up to our potential and try, always, to do better. 

In that I am definitely a believer!  😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

To Evil ISIS

I was thinking of holding this photo for “the next” big terrorist attack (G-d forbid). 

But it’s just two days before 9/11, and I thought of all the victims of ISIS terror and said, why wait.

So this is to memorialize all the victims of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Taliban, Boko Haram, the PLO, BDS, and other vile terrorist groups.

For all the victims–men, women, and children–you brutally and ruthlessly:

Beheaded.

Crucified.

Hung.

Shot.

Stabbed.

Stoned.

Threw off of Roofs.

Burned Alive.

Ran over with tanks and other vehicles. 

Poisoned. 

Abducted.

Raped.

Tortured.

Imprisoned. 

Enslaved. 

Sold.

Made refugees. 

Bombed. 

Gassed.

For the mothers and fathers you made childless.

For the children you made orphaned.

For the husbands and wives you left widowed. 

May the one G-d in heaven recompense you for all your evil deeds, may he thwart all your plans and attempts to harm, kill, and destroy, and may he thrust his heavenly spear of judgement through your devilish hearts and straight into the endless depths of Hell. 

(Source Photo: America)

Only Our History Is Colored

Last night, my daughter and I watched the premier of the new miniseries, Roots (on the History Channel). 

The story of American Slavery like all tales of racism, oppression, terrorism, and genocide is completely appalling. 

It represents the worst of human nature whether for motives of profiteering, power, or plain unadulterated hatred. 

We watched, my youngest daughter (in college), literally in tears.

And frankly, we watched until we literally couldn’t watch the suffering on the screen any more (but to be continued another evening). 

What people can do to other people…beyond words, comprehension. 

Is it people doing these things or is it a vicious animal or evil within?

Either way, humankind has a lot to be sorry for…whether for slavery or the Holocaust. 

I can’t imagine what G-d must think or how we can in any rational sort of way explain these things to our children. 

The stain is marked on the souls of the aggressors, and the only thing colored is our history. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The Need For Speed

In the gym this morning, I watched Joel Osteen giving his Sunday sermon on the monitor. 

The guy is a genius–always on message, always inspiring hope, always uplifting the masses. 

Today, he spoke about acceleration. 

The idea was that no matter how deeply bad our situation in life (e.g. illness, debt, demoted) and no matter how many months or years it would normally take us to recover or get out of it, G-d can accelerate things so that we are healed, solvent, or promoted tomorrow. 

He didn’t say this, but as I understand it, G-d is above time and space, and so he can move you faster out of your funk then anyone would normally think.

Osteen gave the analogy of a bow an arrow, and the further back you are pulled–the more pressure and tension you are under in life–then the further and faster, G-d can propel you forward. 

To me it’s interesting that when we are enjoying a wonderful moment in life, that we wish time would slow or completely stop, so we could savor the good times that much longer or just “stay in the moment forever.”

And at other times, when we are down and suffering, the days of despair and defeat can drag on and on, and it seems like the hours and days just don’t pass fast enough…it’s almost like torture in that it seem to go on forever. And that is when, we hope and pray for a speedy resolution to whatever ails us–we just want to be free from the problems, the illness, the suffering–and so if only, we could leap forward in time and this “would all be over.” 

If you are happy, life is too short.  But if you are in pain and suffering, every moment can be torture.

So if we are worthy, time can magnify and be an accelerant for prolonging the good times and getting out of the bad times (or G-d forbid, it can work in reverse as well–shortening the good times in life and extending out the bad ones). 

Similarly, long life can be a blessing if we are healthy and able to enjoy a real quality of life or it can be grueling for those in pain and suffering. 

My wife told me about this news item from a couple of days ago, where a guy won the lottery, but shortly after was murdered–his life cut short–in a home invasion (this “lucky” guy never got to enjoy his winnings).

G-d who controls time (and space) has quite a lot of leeway to test us or meet out justice–just speed things up or slow things down and the experience and feelings are magnified accordingly. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to spitfirelas)

Counter Terrorism Response Level: DYSFUNCTIONAL

OMG, this is completely dysfunctional and embarrassing. 

Can we stop the fighting among ourselves–Democrats and Republicans, Judeo-Christians and Muslims, CNN and FOX, NRA and gun control advocates, immigration pros and foes, etc.)

AND

Instead focus and go after the real murderous culprits–the radical Islamist terrorists who are killing, imprisoning, torturing, raping, enslaving, and taking over vast lands to build a shariah-rule caliphate and take our freedoms and lives away?

We are losing the war on terror, because we can’t get our collective act together! 😉

(Source Photo: adapted from here with attribution for original to Elliott Brown)

Remnants Of The Holocaust

So I had coffee with a wonderful gentleman this week.

And he–like myself–is a child of Holocaust survivors. 

Two quick stories he told me:

– His father, a survivor of the notorious concentrations camps that killed millions, had a number tattooed on his arm by the cursed Nazis. As the years past and his father worked to resume a normal life, what did he do with that number to try and help forget all the atrocities he went through? Get this…he used the number on his arm as the code for garage door opener. As he told his son, this way, I will never forget the code to open it.

– As a child, my new friend wanted to go to summer camp, he once asked his father, “Dad, when you were my age did you go to camp?” And his father replied, “Yes, I went to concentration camp!” Indeed, a very different sort of experience for a child. These days our children run, play, and swim in the beautiful outdoors at summer camp, but in our parents time, as Jews, they were hauled in cattle cars to suffer at the hands of the Nazis in slave labor, starvation, disease, beatings, torture, and in extermination camps behind razor-sharp barbed wire, attack dogs, and watch towers with machine guns.

How on Earth did these atrocities and genocide occur just 70 years ago–in the 20th century?

As much as I have learned, I am still dumbfounded by it: people (really more like vicious animals or Zombie devils) brutalizing other people, human beings–men, women, children, old people, the sick and disabled–and exterminating millions in the most horrific and brutal ways.

Now, the victims, their children, and grandchildren are left to go on and rebuild, where a tattooed number by the Nazis in the infamous concentration camps becomes a reminder for the everyday garage door opener in what we try to make of a normal life once again. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to HolocaustSurvivors.org)

Pain Pain Go Away

So I am more the emotional type who cries at sad songs or heroic endeavors. 

But with the hip surgery, I have to admit that I have had some moments of literally screaming pain. 

The surgeon said he did about a full half hour of cauterization to prevent another bleed (hematoma) and infection that happened last time…so not sure if this is causing the extra-extra sting. 

Usually when they ask my level of pain, I say like 2-3, because I imagine a 10 being some horrible torture like being sawed in half (while hung upside down–actually saw this in a movie) or flayed of your flesh, burnt alive at the stake, or quartered by horses–or countless variations on these.

Let’s just say, the medieval tormentors had this torture stuff down.

In a way, I almost feel guilty expressing my post surgical pain (sort of child’s play) relative to these made-to-order cruelties.

Of course for pain, the doctors give you medicine, but honestly I don’t like to take these because of side-effects and even addictive properties. 

But the nurse and physical therapist told me not to let the pain get ahead of me, because then it is harder to control it (and also harder to do the full PT and get the benefits from it).

In the hospital, I was amazed that some people had so much pain (i.e. me) and others just sat there in PT seemingly shrugging off the whole experience. 

Still I made it the full loop with the walker the first day (which the therapists told me is maybe 3x what most others do at that point).

Another thing that I am thinking about with pain, is how do you compare emotional and physical pain–which is worse?

The loss of loved ones, deep disappointments, suffering with sickness or disability, anxiety and depression can certainly cause a lot of pain inside–those are the screams that often no one hears.

Also, that hurt can often lead to physical sickness and bodily pain and vice versa–so they are not mutually exclusive.

My father used to tell me that “When you have your health you have everything.”

I think this is partly because if you don’t have your health, you can’t really do or enjoy much else anyway–so good health is sort of a precursor to all other activities and pursuits.

Probably the worst pains are the ones where their is simply no hope of getting better…and you just have to accept the loss or the end. 

The corollary that my father taught me was “Where there is life, there is hope!”

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

How You Treat Animals

This little bird is singing pretty with his Coronoa.

But this isn’t always how we treat animals. 

Some absolutely revere their animals as integral parts of their family or faith–as pets, they may be loved and cared in nice homes, and as source for milk, dung, and tilling, they may even considered sacred as in Hindu India, or for sacrifices on the holy Temple alter in Jerusalem. 

I’ve seen dogs picked up after and wheeled around in baby strollers, while in the Movies like “Meet The Fockers,” Jinx the cat is exalted for doing her deed in the toilet, the same one used by the family.

One colleague told me how she had to run after her dog cleaning up all over her house, when it was sick and had a bleed out of its butt–yeah, ick!

And I remember learning about how in Nazi Germany, dogs would walk on the sidewalk, while Jews were forced into the gutters. 

On the other side of the animal coin…

We have animals sickeningly and inhumanly confined and caged in tiny spaces; starved or fattened; pepped up on antibiotics, and clubbed, electrocuted, given lethal injections, shot and cut up.

Animals are used for food, fur, and even so-called fun from cock fighting to bull runs.

Further, animals are used for research in everything from new medications to abusive studies in mind control and even punishment.

Animals have also been used for horrific torture of POWs where masks were attached to victims faces and a fire would heat the other side and force the rodent locked inside to burrow into the faces of their victims.

Similarly, in Nazi Germany, gruesome studies were conducted on humans by sewing live cats into the stomach of victims.

In more positive ways, animals have been used to locate everything from disease to the implements of war–from dogs being used in identifying human diseases like cancer and tuberculosis to giant rats used to locate land mines. 

Also, animal products are used in many life-saving medications. 

I found the remorse of an animal experimenter today in the New York Times to be refreshing, and those who choose to become vegan or disavow the use of fur and other animal products to be noble, as long as they accept that others may feel different. 

When the experimenter in his guilt thinks about the tables being turned, he imagines aliens coming to Earth and abducting and conducting experiments on us humans…oh, he seems to go, now I know how it must feel. 

Guess he didn’t think to walk in that chicken’s shoes before…

While to carnivorous animals, we are just another piece of beef in the food chain, other domesticated animals can be “man’s best friend.”

Killing an animal for survival is one thing, and where people draw that line can vary quite some–for example, how badly does Kim Kardashian need another fur to keep her warm?

But pure abusive and sick treatment of animals for amusement, profiteering, or psychotic ends is wrong, period. 

Animals are not people, but they are G-d’s creatures and sentient, and they should not be harmed or pained just because some of us like to act like animals too. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Disabled, Can You Imagine?

A very important article in the Wall Street Journal by Anthony Weller about what it’s like to Paralyzed From The Neck Down.

Weller has suffered for 10 years with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. 

He describes losing everything…from “incalculable personal pleasures” to being “totally helpless.”

And what’s more, you have to save your chips in asking others for things, because “you’d be asking the whole day.”

“Say goodbye to any sense of personal space, too”–in needing everything, you’re essentially left like an open book to everyone around you.

Here, I can’t help thinking about those moments of personal indignity–in caring for our own bodies–that even that someone else must be there for.

Then, there is the just sitting around and endless thinking…”There isn’t much else to do.”

I remember learning about some medieval torture methods and one involved lying a person down in the space cleaved into the stone face of the dungeon and there a person would essentially rot–not being able to move, sit or stand up, or even roll over. 

How long could a person last like that before completely losing their mind?  

While Weller says that he used to imagine being paralyzed as feeling like being “encased in stone,” but now he see it more that your limbs just ignore you, to me whether you are paralyzed in your own body or embedded in medieval stone, the challenges physically and mentally are as scary as anything that can be imagined. 

How do you keep your sanity, let alone any hope?

Weller says, you live in the past, “happiness isn’t is, but was, [and] you try not to contemplate the future too much.”

G-d should have infinite mercy on his creations and lift up the fallen, cure the sick, and release the innocent that are imprisoned…please, please, please let it be. Amen.

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)