By Ben Blicker
The key to joy is success in our relationships. This includes our relationship with other people, with ourselves, and with God.
Every Jewish holiday is infused with a special energy to help us work on a particular character trait, and to develop certain aspects of our lives. The mitzvot of the holiday are tools to help us achieve the goal of the time.
Often, the key to discovering this focus is found in the prayers. The Siddur (prayer book) refers to Sukkot as Zman Simchateinu, "the Time of Our Joy." Sukkot is designed as a one-week workshop on joy!
For seven days, we move out of our wall-to-wall carpeted, air-conditioned house, into a little hut called a Sukkah. But how is this supposed to make us happy?!
The lesson is that the physical objects with which we surround ourselves are not what make us happy. A person can live in a gorgeous home and be absolutely miserable. Or, he can live in a shabby hut and be ecstatically happy. The key to joy is success in our relationships. This includes our relationship with other people, with ourselves, and with God.
RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHERS
The Lulav offers important ...   more »

By The Associated Press   
Gov. Rick Perry announced on Tuesday the establishment of the Texas-Israel Chamber of Commerce, an agency meant to foster economic exchange and academic collaboration between the two.
Perry also said he has asked the directors of the Employees Retirement System and Teachers Retirement System to divest their funds from companies doing business with Iran. The governor said Texans will not condone Iran's support of terrorism.
"I personally believe that any company that does business with Iran is actively assisting those who seek to harm American men and women who are serving in the Middle East and funds terror attacks on our allies in the region," Perry said.    
"And so, today, as we usher in a new era of relations between Texas and Israel, we speak of a grand vision of a world where terror is defeated by kinship, economic partnerships create new opportunity and people are free to work and live in peace," he added.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has previously called for the destruction of Israel - an American ally in the Middle East.
Texas is Israel's third largest U.S. trading partner, and the newly formed chamber is the first such statewide agency ...   more »

by Hillel Fendel(IsraelNN.com) The chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice last week - and told her that Prime Minister Olmert agrees, finally, to turn eastern Jerusalem into the capital of a future state of Palestine.  So reports the PA newspaper Al Hayat Al Jadeeda, quoting an unnamed "senior Palestinian source."
Abbas reportedly told Rice that Olmert had agreed to the demand in an Olmert-Abbas meeting a couple of days before.  Another Olmert-Abbas meeting is planned for next week, the paper reports.
Arutz-7's Haggai Huberman reports on another PA media article.  The Palestinian Press claims that Iran has given the order to Hamas and Islamic Jihad to reduce Kassam rocket attacks against Israel during the month of Ramadan, in order to reduce the suffering of Arab citizens in Gaza during this period.  Hamas chief-in-exile Khaled Mashaal reportedly told Iran that though Hamas agrees to hold fire, Islamic Jihad does not.
Meanwhile, plans continue for U.S. President George Bush's international Middle East summit, scheduled for this November in Washington.  Secretary Rice announced Sunday night that Syria and Lebanon will also be invited to take part, though they will have to commit ...   more »

By Joshua Mitnick - TEL AVIV — Passengers traveling through Israel's Ben Gurion Airport are more likely to fall victim to an aviation accident rather than a hijacking, authorities and analysts warn.
Israel, which handled more than 17,000 passenger arrivals a week from the United States during July and August, has been praised worldwide for securing air traffic from terrorist attacks for more than three decades. But air safety standards at Israel's sole international airport have become so outdated and sloppy that authorities have become profoundly disturbed.
Reported problems include cramped air lanes, poor English spoken by air traffic controllers, communications interruptions by pirate radio stations, anachronistic aviation legislation and insufficient regulation.
"Unfortunately, as Israelis, we put too much into security and not enough into safety. It's a result of years of negligence," said Avner Yarkoni, an aviation lawyer, fighter-pilot veteran and former director of Israel's equivalent of the Federal Aviation Administration. "I am quite pessimistic. I hope there won't be an accident."
An international aviation panel found 102 air safety deficiencies at Ben Gurion in January. Last week, a team of three FAA analysts visited Israel and submitted an initial report to aviation officials. A second report is expected ...   more »

HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
US President George W. Bush blasted the UN Human Rights Council for singling out Israel while ignoring major human rights violators, in his speech at the opening of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
Bush said that for the United States to be credible in standing up for human rights, "the UN must reform its own human rights council."
The UN was "silent on repression" in places like Caracas and Teheran while it focused its criticism "excessively on Israel," he said.
Bush also mentioned Israel in his reaffirmation of a two-state solution and call for the international community to help by backing Palestinian moderates. "The international community must support these leaders," he said.
"In Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration," Bush said, but otherwise avoided focusing attention on Teheran in his speech.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, however, devoted more attention to the Iranian threat and warned against the Islamic Republic gaining nuclear weapons.
The international standoff over Iran's nuclear program will only be resolved with a combination of "firmness and dialogue," and appeasement can only lead to "war," he said.
Sarkozy, addressing the UN ...   more »

Palestinian security forces uncover two meter-and-a-half long rockets ready to be launched in the town of Beit Jala, near the capital. Large amount of explosives also found
Ali Waked
Palestinian security forces uncovered on Wednesday two rockets ready to be launched in the town of Beit Jala near Jerusalem, the Ma'an news agency reported Wednesday, adding that a large amount of explosives were also discovered.  
Palestinian security forces transferred the rockets to the Israel Defense Forces, who reported that the rockets were not Qassams and did not pose any real threat to Jerusalem. 
The news agency quoted the commander of the Palestinian security forces in Bethlehem as saying that the rockets seized were a meter-and-a-half long and carried the words "Allah hu akbar".  
Al-Aqsa Brigades say they fired Qassam rocket towards Elei Zahav settlement in Samaria, warns that all Israeli towns will soon be targets; IDF fails to comment on incident    
Palestinian security forces have opened an investigation into the matter, in an attempt to uncover who was behind the rockets.
In the past, IDF forces in Bethlehem killed a member of the Palestinian security forces who helped establish the terrorists' rocket-manufacturing capabilities in the West Bank. ...   more »