Sunday, March 24, 2013

The road to hell is paved with good intentions..

B'H
I have not been feeling well and trying to work on a project, hence my lack of posts for many weeks. It is with great sadness that I read about Ben Alon or Ben Zeiger who from all accounts was a good young man who bit off a more than he could chew.
One might want to be a hero. One might want to achieve great things in life, but we do not achieve them as islands unto ourselves.We can achieve alone much but in the type of work he was in, he should have had trust in a mentor and worked with that mentor. It seems incredible that he worked alone and others were not aware of what he was up to. In fact, if he had had a mentor - an experienced older person that he could confer with, I doubt he would have made the idiotic mistake of giving out vital information to an enemy agent.
Hashem has his hand in all things and one has to believe that while the loss of this young man's life is tragic and could have been avoided as could the imprisonments and deaths of the people he had betrayed, that the is a greater power at work and things will work out the better for Israel eventually. They will certainly revise the way they communicate and monitor agents' activities. Definitely it was one of the most unprofessional and amateur mistakes of any intelligence organisation's history.
I can not understand, coming from a different view of a person who has never worked in intelligence, why he did not feed some names of people that the Mossad wanted to get rid of to this Hezbollah  agent. That way you would kill two birds with the one stone.
If you are smart enough and can concoct a good enough story, you could pick some one in their terror organisations and plant suspicions, these guys are paranoid enough anyway to warrant making life very uncomfortable for some of the terrorist organizers. Another thing is why did he not have a competent handler that he could trust and open to so he did not make such silly mistakes.
Maybe he was just the wrong sort of person to be a spy. He was not focssed enough although he was smart enough to be a good agent, he lacked other qualities necessary to complete the picture.
His family should have comfort and peace. We must understand that even more that kal Israel is stronger when we stick together like one part of a whole one nation. We must have empathy and compassion for each other and love one another and trust. That way we will survive the desert years and survive whatever with grace and support from the Master of the Universe.
Chag Samech  and blessings to all Jews celebrating Pesach and all those who are not, may they come to the Seder if not this year, Be Shana Haba in Jerusalem. Blessings and be blessed in all things and be freed in thought, body and spirit.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

No Posts Too Busy with other writing and goating around!

B'h
I am busy with other writings and at present which is paid and needs a lot of research. More than I had expected, but what the heck, it is fun and I get paid for it. Crazy with Pesach happening and the film is being made out here at our country home.
Took the goats to the goat farm for a holiday where the couple who run it will take good care of our two goaties and Osnat will get joined with a nice brown or black dairy buck who will ensure that we have one or two kids in spring. Dolly will not be joined. She is too old and cranky. She hated the trip over to the farm and would not allow Osnat to come in the back of the car with her. She is a cranky old thing, but lovable in her nasty unpredictable way. I am sure she has been mistreated somewhere along the way, so I am forgiving of her butty and bossy behaviour towards Osnat. She was quite agitated by the trip over and I had to lean my hand over and scratch her ears and withers to calm her down.
When Paul and Rhonda came out and reassured her she was fine. She settled down. Osnat had no problems getting into the car. I opened the door of the Rav and said to her, 'Hop up here, darling!' she took one look and leapt up into the back of the Rav. She is a seasoned traveler  I could probably book a seat on a plane next to me and she would walk right on up the aisle and settle down into a seat next to me, no problems. Trouble is the other passengers might not like travelling with a goat. Particularly as goats are not particular about where they drop their pellets. I can't imagine mothers being impressed when their toddler toddles down the aisle and thinks the goat pellets are chewy lollies. That would not be a good move. I think I would have to earn heaps of money and buy my own plane so I can travel with my goats. Only kidding or goating around!
I have trouble trying to get the pair of them to understand that the aircraft hanger of a shed we have is NOT a toilet.  Like good thieves they work in pairs. Dolly uses brute force to get the shed door pushed open and Osnat is the clever one who knows how to get the feed bin open and she can also open the lever in the side door of the shed. Dolly being a typical Boer meat goat is driven purely by the needs of her voracious appetite for food. She is a regular vacuum. 
Well it is back to work and go to sleep for an early morning writing session.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Mexican Purim At Gilly's Earling Learning Centre

B"H

Purim was hectic. We heard the Megilla (the story of Ester and Mordechai and the wicked Haman who gets his just desserts) late on Saturday night after Shabbat finished. It was a quick costume change for child and hurrying to shule to get there just as they finished saying the Brachot (blessings) for the reading of the Megilla and had started around persuk (verse) five or six of the first chapter. Already too LATE! So we went to another person's place to listen to it read very capably by her husband. For mothers, getting the kids there to shule minutes after Shabbes finishes in summer was really an up hill task. A friend of mine told me about Shabbes's in London that start and finish late, after 11pm in mid summer. Now that you need to be in your mid teens to your late thirties to really appreciate. I think once most of us hit the big 4 OH we start to say 'Hey, time to slow it down and for some it was 5 OH and others it is 6 OH. Most of us just cannot take the late nights like we used to do. It's called WATOB - Wear And Tear On Body.
The next day we went to Gilly's Early Learning Centre. One of the best, if not the best of accredited Jewish Early Learning  Centres in East St Kilda and North Caulfield. I might be biased as my son spent nearly two years there and they were in one word, 'Amazing'. The atmosphere there is very homey and warm with out being unprofessional. All their staff either have their Childcare Certificate IV or are in the process of training towards it.
They were doing a Mexican Purim theme with spicy food. It was in two words "totally fabulous', but then Gilly's is the epitome of Gilly who is a person who give 150% along with her sister Talli, to whatever they do, whether it is running a childcare centre,doing chesed in the community and outside of it. they do a lot of things that no one ever hears about because frankly people like these two women are so busy doing chesed, running their business and looking after their families - they do not have time to talk about it or to talk Loshon Hara about others. They are simply too busy doing good. They are amazing role models and I for one, am very glad my son went to their creche.









I had experienced two creches before my son came to Gilly's early Learning Centre.
In fact the last non Jewish creche (ABC in Deniliquin) he was at, he kept saying to me, many times that the woman who looked after him hurt him. There were no bruises. I often wondered why he persistently said that but was too traumatised by what I had been put through up there to start to deal with it. I do remember the woman in charge Mandy saying to me, when I came to pick him up for one of the last times he was there and I was fighting back tears as I told her that I had lost my teaching position at Deniliquin High School and would no longer be able to afford to keep him in the creche, 'OH. good, she said, NOW you can be a REAL mother to your son.' Then she chuckled.
I realised later how much they must have hated the fact that I had a profession and was earning a good salary. It was so pathetic that they felt they had to try to destroy my earning potential to bring me down to their level. The level of the town grubs that have four or five children sometimes more to different fathers and are lying about on pensions for most of their lives.  I will never be at that level and I will be dead first. G-D only knows what trauma my poor kid suffered at that creche that he had to keep repeating to me 'Cabel hurt me. Cabel hurt me.' Day in day out and I was only half listening to him because I was trying to think what I was going to do for a living and how to earn money to support myself and him. I spent days so highly anxious about how I was going to earn a living that I used to have heart palpitations and could not sleep for days on end. That was when I started writing and praying again. I did pray before but it was shallow prayer and meaningless, compared to prayer that comes from real pain and anguish that leaves you shaking like a tree in hurricane.
You see I do not give up hope.I believe you have to cling to the tree of life with your heart and soul. I believe Hashem rules this world and things happen because Hashem is in charge of us all. We can make choices but ultimately it is G-D who is in control. I believe with utmost faith that it is G-D who allows things to happen and we can make ourselves a receptacle for brachot (blessings) or we can close ourselves off from G-D and G-Dly blessings.
Whenever we hurt someone else or go out to be spiteful to another person, we receive back what we give out. That is why I try to make sure now that even if people are nasty to me or spiteful, I do not give it back to them, but let it go. I place myself out of harm's way for the sake of my son and those around me.
There is this Chassidic tale. Aren't there some of the greatest chassidic parables for every incident we have in life? The sun and the wind saw a chosid walking up the hill in his kapote. It was a nice day. They had been having an argument about who was the strongest. So they made a deal that the one who could get the chosid to take off his long black coat /kapote would be the winner - the stronger of the two.
The wind laughed at the sun and winked. I'll go first it said and you will not need to even try. I will have his coat off in a jiffy. The sun simply smiled. Ok it said.
So the wind rose up and blew and blew and blew. The branches of the trees lining the road were whipped around and leaves flew off them. Within minutes there was a virtual hurricane of wind sound ripping through the air, leaves and debris flying high and the day had become dark and overcast. the chosid pulled his coat tighter around his body and head bent into the storm, he forged on. Try as he might the wind could not budge the coat from that chosid's shoulders and body. Finally the wind gave up panting and exhausted.
Ok, he scoffed. You go. The sun rose up smiling warmly. He beamed warmth and heat towards the shattered and battered trees and the chosid who was walking up the rise of the hill with his coat wrapped tightly around him. Soon it was as hot as a furnace. Heat curled the recently fallen leaves and the chosid he undid his coat and opened it up all the way. He walked on and finally after a few more minutes, he took off the coat and put it over his arm and walked on up the hill and even rolled up his shirt sleeves.
There are some interesting thoughts to be drawn from that. It is my favourite chasidic story because it illustrates so aptly two different approaches to life and living. That is not to say that we never need the wind and only need sunshine. We need both to live in a balanced way.