by Rabbi Shraga Simmons
Not sure how to begin? Look no further!
The key to a meaningful Shabbat experience is that it shouldn't feel just like "any other day." Rather, we want to create a special mood. This means getting dressed up in our nicest (or favorite) clothes, buying or preparing our favorite foods, and setting aside uninterrupted time to reflect and appreciate what our lives are really all about.
How do we break loose from the whirling weekday pattern and get into a "Shabbat-state-of-mind"? The key is to remove outside distractions. If you're just beginning, try going through all of Friday night with no canned entertainment: no TV, no radio, no movies. If you're really brave, no telephone either! This helps pulls us out of the regular weekday cycle, and propel us into "The Shabbat Dimension."
Here are the basic steps of turning Friday night into Shabbos. Click on the links for more detailed "how-to" articles.
1) Candle Lighting. The image of a Jewish woman kindling her Sabbath candles is a timeless symbol of Judaism. Eighteen minutes before sunset, we light the candles, inviting peace and harmony into the home, infusing the atmosphere with physical and spiritual light.
Candle ...   more »

Ronen Bergman presents new revelations, offers comprehensive review of Israel's struggle against Iranian threat
Yigal Walt
Everything you wanted to know about Iran but were afraid to ask: In recent years we have seen the emergence of a growing, multifaceted Iranian threat to Israel. Ranging from the support it offers terror groups to its nuclear ambitions; Tehran increasingly appears
to be on a collision course with the Jewish State, and possibly with the entire western world.  
But what do we know about Iran? What are the key elements that direct its anti-Israel policies? And what efforts have Israel's intelligence arms and security forces undertaken in order to counter the growing threat? Some answers to these and many other questions can be found in "The Point of No Return," a comprehensive account of Israel's struggle against both Iran and Hizbullah by Ronen Bergman.  
Bergman, a regular contributor to Yedioth Ahronoth and Ynetnews who is increasingly establishing himself as one of Israel's foremost security and terrorism experts, based his work on hundreds of conversations with senior officials in Israel and abroa,  as well as thousands of previously unpublished documents. The fascinating result is a book that reads partly like a ...   more »

In march marking two years since disengagement, evacuees break through police barrier, leading to a few arrests; four evacuees entering Palestinian territory are rescued by IDF. 'Eventually, we will return home', says Elei Sinai evacuee

Shmulik Hadad
Hundreds of Gush Katif evacuees, mostly youths, marched toward the evacuated settlements Nisanit and Elei Sinai in the northern Gaza Strip on Thursday, marking two years since the disengagement.  
Upon arriving at the Nativ Ha'asara community, some of the marchers broke through the police barrier in the area and managed to reach the fence which separates between the community and the remains of Elei Sinai and Nisanit.  
Gush Katif evacuees: Return is a matter of time  / Anat Bereshkovsky  
Former residents of Jewish settlement bloc mark two-year anniversary of Gaza pullout with rallies in Kisufim, Netivot, Sderot. Many still feel abandoned by government      
Hundreds of police officers were sent to the area and clashes broke out between officers and marchers, a few of which were apprehended for investigation.  
Later Thursday, IDF forces rescued four marchers who had managed to cross the border fence into the northern Gaza Strip. Military sources said that the four climbed over the fence ...   more »

Right-wing activist running in Likud elections says financial success not enough to sustain country, claims leadership lost faith
Attila Somfalvi
Right-wing activist Moshe Feiglin, a candidate for the Likud leadership, will launch his campaign against party leader Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday evening.  
In an interview with Ynet, Feiglin said he was running for the position because he wanted to bring the “spirit” back to Israel.  
“My main message is that without spirit, all of the material success we’ve supposedly achieved means nothing,” he said.  
“The most difficult problem lies in the fact that citizens of Israel do not believe in the future of their country, with all its financial success. It’s proven in the polls, and it’s a terrible thing.  “That’s why we need to get the spirit back. That’s what I want, that’s why I’m running, and I believe I will succeed.”  
Do you believe a higher power will give you the victory?  
No, no. I’m neither a wise man, nor a prophet. I’m not trying to convince anyone to change the way they live. The leadership of this country has lost faith in the righteous path and in God.  
The basic beliefs that ...   more »

By Scott Wilson
Updated: 2:39 a.m. CT July 26, 2007
HEBRON, West Bank - The barrier Israel is constructing in the largely rural West Bank is effectively separating Arab from Jew along much of its 456-mile length. But the broader project of disentangling the two peoples in the absence of a peace agreement is failing in urban areas such as Hebron, where the most radical elements of Islamic and Jewish nationalism are gaining strength.
Within Hebron, the separation is enforced not only by Israeli barriers but also by military checkpoints and curfews intended to protect the roughly 700 Jewish settlers living within the city's most historic and religiously important areas. Securing the small Jewish minority has a potent impact on the lives of the city's 150,000 Arabs, who voted last year to fill all nine of the district's parliamentary seats with candidates from the armed Islamic movement Hamas
This city, set among prolific vineyards, was among the first destinations for Jewish settlers following the 1967 Middle East war, when the Israeli military occupied the West Bank. Fired by a four-millennia-old religious claim to Hebron, the settler enterprise here is among the most ideologically determined in the territories. Its expansionist goals ...   more »

Two planes carrying 600 new immigrants from France land at Ben-Gurion Airport, marking biggest aliyah event since beginning of year. More than 3,000 olim expected to arrive from France by end of 2007
Yael Branovsky
"When I got on the plane on the way to Israel, I immediately felt calm and secure. In France I was always worried when my children went on the underground on their own, or even just wandered the streets. I always dreamt of immigrating to Israel; I feel safe here," Jacklyn Benishu said Wednesday morning after landing in Israel as a new immigrant.  
Benishu arrived with 600 other new immigrants from France on two planes which landed at Ben-Gurion Airport in the morning. 
The two planes, one from Paris and one from Marseilles, marked the biggest aliyah event since the beginning of the year.  
Officials at the Jewish Agency for Israel, which organized the event with AMI (Aliyah et Meilleure Integration), said that this year has seen a 10 percent rise in the number of new immigrants from France compared to the previous year, making 2007 a record year for French aliyah.
More than 3,000 olim are expected to come to Israel, as ...   more »

Israel should focus its energies away from settling the West Bank and begin investing its future elsewhere, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday in an interview with Al Hurra Television, a US-sponsored service broadcasting in the Middle East.
"I believe that Israel understands...that it has obligations that need to be met and need to be met now, because the future of Israel is not in the continued occupation of the West Bank," Rice said. "The future of Israel is in building a strong Israeli state in places like the Negev and Galilee."
Rice was reiterating remarks made by President Bush on July 16 in a White House speech devoted to Israeli-Palestinian issues.
The secretary of state revealed that during her next trip to the region she would help promote both the dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians and the broader Arab-Israel track. "There is…much that can be done by Arab states to support the progress that the Palestinians and Israelis need to make…[and] when the conflict ends it should end for all parties," she said.
Rice also said that were Israel and Syria to embark on a diplomatic track with the hope of garnering a peace agreement, the ...   more »

'All it takes is for someone to say my feelings were hurt'

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Posted: July 25, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Bob Unruh
A website featuring comments by, for and about "principled conservatism" is being investigated by the Canadian government, and could be fined or ordered shut down for some postings about Islam and homosexuality.
Connie Wilkins, who with Mark Fournier runs Canada's Free Dominion site and posts articles, comments and blogs on a wide range of issues, said she just was notified by the nation's Human Rights Commission about the investigation.  
The Human Rights Commission is appointed to investigate complaints that "hate speech" or other illegal activity has been detected, and issue rulings or recommendations to the national Human Rights Tribunal, which has yet to find any defendant innocent in such a case.
The scenario bears a close resemblance to the situation feared by opponents in the United States should a pending "hate crimes" legislation be approved by Congress and signed into law by the president. It would essentially provide an enhanced penalty for a range of crimes if someone perceives they are being targeted for being part of a recognized population segment, such as the homosexual community. ...   more »

Moscow, July 22: Russian government has submitted a bill to the State Duma banning 39 sectors for foreign investment in the country, including natural monopolies, the defence sector, aerospace and the nuclear sector.
Under the bill, submitted in the lower house of parliament, a foreign company or a Russian firm willing to buy more than a 50 per cent stake in an enterprise from the list, or half of the seats on its board of directors or management committee, must get a permit from a regulatory body.
Foreign companies would be allowed to buy less than 25 per cent of the shares in a strategic enterprise, Vedomosti newspaper reported.
A government commission headed by the Prime Minister would grant or deny permits, acting in accordance with the instructions barring foreign investors from companies that have development licences for projects involving state secrets, export defence products, or state defence contracts.
However, foreigners might be allowed to buy such companies if they pledged to continue supplying weapons at agreed prices.
In the case of companies fulfilling projects involving state secrets, only Russians with a clearance permit may sit on the said company's managing bodies after its acquisition by a foreign investor.
Russian ...   more »

Moral paralysis" is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them.
It is a term that may be painfully relevant to our own times.
Back in the 1930s, the governments of the democratic countries knew what Hitler was doing — and they knew that they had enough military superiority at that point to stop his military buildup in its tracks. But they did nothing to stop him.
Instead, they turned to what is still the magic mantra today — "negotiations."
No leader of a democratic nation was ever more popular than British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain — wildly cheered in the House of Commons by opposition parties as well as his own — when he returned from negotiations in Munich in 1938, waving an agreement and declaring that it meant "peace in our time."
We know now how short that time was. Less than a year later, World War II began in Europe and spread across the planet, killing tens of millions of people and reducing many cities to rubble in Europe ...   more »

The USS nuclear carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65), en route for the Persian Gulf, entered the Mediterranean Sea Monday July 23 for joint maneuvers with the French Charles De Gaulle carrier. Rafale M fighters took off from its deck, touched down briefly on Enterprise runways and returned to the parent ship. This is the first time ever that French fighter-bombers have landed on an American carrier and used its facilities.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East and Washington sources say that the closely integrated maneuver is part of the growing cooperation between the Bush administration and the new Nicolas Sarkozy presidency on burning Middle East issues.
DEBKAfile’s sources have previously pointed to a dramatic opening-up of interchanges between Paris, Tehran and Hizballah. They now affirm that this new track was launched with tacit approval from Washington.
Saturday, July 28, on the heels of the joint naval-aerial exercise, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner is due in Beirut for a visit prepared by France’s former ambassador in Damascus, Jean-Claude Cousseran. Early next week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrive in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Rice will also visit Jerusalem and Ramallah.
The contours are thus emerging of a division ...   more »

A crowd of 100 stunned stargazers brought a town centre to a standstill when five mysterious UFOs were spotted hovering in the sky.
Drinkers spilled out of pubs, motorists stopped to gawp and camera phones were aimed upwards as the five orbs, in a seeming formation, hovered above Stratford-Upon-Avon for half an hour.
The unidentified flying objects lit up the otherwise clear night sky above Shakespeare's birthplace in Warwickshire on Saturday.
Exclusive: Watch the extraordinary UFO footage here
Although Air Traffic Control reported no unusual activity, some witnesses were convinced they were witnessing an extra-terrestrial spectacle.
Crowds gathered to gawp at the strange lights that hovered silently over Stratford for 30 minutes
The strange episode started just after 10.30pm, when the lights were seen hovering slowly over the town before three of them formed a triangular shape with one positioned just to the right.
A few minutes later a fifth came into view travelling towards the others at breakneck speed before slowing down and stopping a short distance away.
Sceptics dismissed the UFOs as nothing more than hot air balloons, fireworks or even lanterns which had broken loose from a local rugby club.
Others, however, claimed the speed and agility ...   more »

By Bob Unruh
The Internal Revenue Service has lost a lawyer's challenge in front of a jury to prove a constitutional foundation for the nation's income tax, and the victorious attorney now is setting his sights higher.
"I think now people are beginning to realize that this has got to be the largest fraud, backed up by intimidation and extortion and by the sheer force of taking peoples property and hard-earned money without any lawful authorization whatsoever," lawyer Tom Cryer told WND just days after a jury in Louisiana acquitted him of two criminal tax counts.
And before you consign him to the legions of "tin foil hat brigades" who argue against paying taxes, and then want payment to explain how to do that, he addresses the issue up front.
"These snake oil peddlers have conned millions of dollars out of many well-intended patriots and left a trail of broken lives in their wake. … These charlatans should be avoided, not only because they will lead you to bankruptcy and prison, but because by association they discredit those who are telling the truth," he said.
The truth, he said, is where he comes in, with the launch of a new ...   more »

Tripoli, 26 July (AKI) - France and Libya have signed an accord to build a nuclear reactor for sea water desalinisation and clinched deals on military-industrial and research cooperation, as well as cultural, scientific and technical assistance. The two countries also signed a partnership agreement on health, illegal immigration, counter-terrorism.
The deals were sealed late on Wednesday by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Libyan leader, Muammer Gaddafi. They came just a after Sarkozy's wife, Cecilia, and his top aide, Claude Gueant, helped negotiate an agreement between Libya and the EU to release the five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who had been sentenced to death for allegedly infecting more than 400 Libyan children with AIDS. The EU has stated that no money has been paid to Libya.
The French anti-nuclear group Sortir du Nucleaire slammed the civilian nuclear energy deal, describing it as "irresponsible" and "unjustifiable bartering". The group accused Sarkozy of working to build up a "nuclear trust" with French companies Areva, Alstom and Bouygues.
"The nuclear deal will allow these companies to boost their business in Libya, especially by building nuclear power stations," it said.
"Sea water desalinisation is merely a subterfuge to attempt to justify nuclear ...   more »

Terrorists will try to carry out an attack on the United States within the next 90 days, a former Israeli counterterrorism intelligence officer predicts.
Juval Aviv, head of the New York-based intelligence company Interfor and a special consultant to the U.S. Congress, told Fox News his information is based primarily on intelligence "floating in Europe and the Middle East."
An event is "imminent and around the corner here in the United States," he said. "It could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few months. Ninety days at the most."
Aviv, author of "Staying Safe: The Complete Guide to Protecting Yourself, Your Family, and Your Business," said Americans should look at what happened in London and expect mass transportation to be the next target of attack.
"We have put all of our emphasis, right or wrong, on the aviation area," he said. "What has happened, in the last two to three years, based on information we have, the terrorists have realized that they cannot hijack a plane in America soon because the passengers are going to fight back."
The terrorists are aware, he said, that they have been successful over the last 50 years in ...   more »

Did you hear about the religious fundamentalist who wanted to teach physics at Cambridge University? This would-be instructor wasn't simply a Christian; he was so preoccupied with biblical prophecy that he wrote a book titled "Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John." Based on his reading of Daniel, in fact, he forecast the date of the Apocalypse: no earlier than 2060. He also calculated the year the world was created. When Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning," he determined, it means 3988 BCE.
Not many modern universities are prepared to employ a science professor who espouses not merely "intelligent design" but out-and-out divine creation. This applicant's writings on astronomy, for example, include these thoughts on the solar system: "This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and domination of an intelligent and powerful Being . . . He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done."
Hire somebody with such views to teach physics? At a Baptist junior college deep in the Bible Belt, maybe, but the faculty would erupt if you tried it just about anywhere else. Many of them would echo ...   more »

As travelers waited with baited breath to find out whether the general strike that began Wednesday would be expanded to include Ben-Gurion Airport, Histadrut Labor Federation Ofer Eini and Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On were set for a "white night" of talks, hoping to break the deadlock.
An earlier report that the airport might not close, after all, went unconfirmed. Meanwhile, it geared up to allow takeoffs every three minutes.
A total of 120 flights carrying 20,000 passengers were expected to slip out of the country before 6 a.m. Thursday, when the general strike was scheduled to affect Ben-Gurion, Channel 10 reported.
El Al Israel Airlines has advised passengers flying out Wednesday night to be at the airport five hours before their flights were scheduled to depart.
General strike in Israel
Health services will wheeze through a shutdown
Analysis: Eini chooses right time to act
Manufacturers could lose NIS 1b. a day
B-G passengers not worried - yet
Officials: Mere threat of strike damages tourism
'It wont break us'
600 French olim to arrive ahead of B-G strike
Don't fly off the handle!
An earlier meeting between Eini and Treasury Wage Director Eli Cohen ended without results. Before he sat down ...   more »