by Danny Verbov
The everlasting message of tefillin -- from Bergen-Belsen to a Jerusalem oncology ward.
My great-grandfather, Rabbi Nachum Mordechai Verbowsky, was the rabbi of the Lithuanian town of Akmian. Sixty-seven years ago, he put on Tefillin for the very last time.
Before the war, the Akmian numbered some 300 Jewish families, Mazeik 500, and Vekshne 200. In the summer of 1941, these three Lithuanian towns bore the brunt of Nazi brutality.
On the day the Germans entered, all the Jews, together with their rabbis -- including my great-grandfather -- were rounded up and taken to the dense forest of Tirkshle.
The rabbis knew they were being taken to their execution, and so they donned tallit and tefillin. It was an imposing spectacle -- the mass of Jews, led by their rabbis, courageously marching to their deaths.
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Dan Izenberg ,
Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch on Wednesday appeared to dismiss Likud MK Limor Livnat's arguments that in continuing negotiations with Syria and the PA, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meant to force the next government to accept the terms he reached.
The court was hearing Livnat's petition calling on the court to order Olmert to stop negotiating because he was head of a transitional government which did not have the people's support.
Livnat and her attorney, David Shimron, tried to persuade the court that the circumstances today were different from those of 2001, when the High Court rejected a petition calling on it to order then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak to stop negotiating with the PA after he resigned and new elections were pending.
Shimron said that in 2001, the Knesset had not dissolved and the election was only for the office of prime minister. Secondly, Barak was a candidate for prime minister in the 2001 elections In the current case, there is no chance that Olmert will be able to return to office and continue advancing his policies since he is not running for prime minister. Secondly, this time the Knesset has dissolved and does not enjoy the ...   more »

by Hillel Fendel
Outgoing Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski says that Olmert’s policies in Jerusalem manifest his desire to split the city.
Speaking with the Israeli business site "Globes" just days before Mayor Lupolianski is to leave office, the smiling, easy-going hareidi-religious public official had harsh words for his predecessor – though spiced with compliments. 
“When we talk about keeping the city unified,” Lupolianski said, “it must be clear that this cannot be done in a city that has such wide gaps [between the Jewish and Arab sectors]. But the government is, de facto, dividing the city.”
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When US President George W. Bush met with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week he urged Olmert to reconsider his ill-conceived rush to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria.
That according to diplomatic sources briefed on the White House meeting between the two outgoing leaders.
The sources told Ha'aretz that Bush pointedly asked Olmert, "Why do you want to give [Syrian President Bashar] Assad the Golan for nothing?"
Olmert reportedly responded that the surrender of the Golan would "not be for nothing. It's an exchange for a change in the region's strategic alignment."
Bush then suggested that Olmert was foolish for taking Assad at his word, to which the Israeli leader had no reply.
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by Rebbetzin Tzipporah Heller
By understanding God's manifestations in both male and female imagery, we can begin to unify our connection to the transcendence reality.
One of the more arresting images used for God is that of God as a Man or a Woman. But why do we refer to God so frequently as He? Can God ever be called She?
While the actualities of gender are of course irrelevant to God, who has no body, there is a reason for the use of these allegories. Let us penetrate the surface toward a sophisticated understanding underlying these images.
BANANAS AND INFINITY
Before tackling our question, we must ask another one: Why is imagery used at all to describe an unknowable God? It seems so pagan!
Humans are hopelessly addicted to physical reality. Our ability to think in abstractions without using the physical world as a base tends to be illusory. We turn to words to convey ideas that are vastly beyond our experience, and fool ourselves into thinking that because we feel comfortable with the word, our grasp of the idea it conveys is complete.
Try an exercise. Close your eyes and picture three bananas, without dividing them into groups ...   more »