Columns

This place must be what protects the entire nation of Israel!” exclaimed the chasid from Ramat Bet Shemesh. We were seated for kiddush on Shabbat morning in Moshav Amirim, a secular community in the Upper Galilee, having just concluded the Shabbat prayers surrounded by every type of Jew — secular, religious, traditional, haredi and chasidic.

Life is full of markers telling you that you are getting older. The Bar or Bat Mitzvah is one. High school graduation, another. Then college graduation, a full-time job, marriage, your first child, a mortgage. On and on it goes.

The world’s greatest decoy is before our very eyes, and many in the world are falling for it. Asleep at the wheel. Israel the terrible! Israel the evil! Israel the monster! In reality, real savages butchered civilians en masse, even perversely and proudly filming it. But then, in classic projection when people are actually describing themselves, they flip the narrative.

In case you missed it, I’ve started a puzzle gemach (free loan). Thousand-piece puzzles have become one of my favorite ways to tune out the world. As one works on a puzzle, it’s nearly impossible to think about anything outside the puzzle.

When the human being, living in a world of woe, yet blessed under a blue sky, next to an ocean or with mountains in sight, is pained, speechless or baffled, the cup of Kiddush (santification) and the cup of Havdalah (division) are one and the same.

In the current election cycle, Democrats seem to think that relentless, socialist, AIPAC- and Israel-bashing, which anyone who is not stupid understands is politically sanitized anti-Semitism, will win them elections. The people of Colorado urgently need bipartisan cooperation and compromise to create fair water policy. We most definitely do not need more grandstanding and populist pandering.

This week a tragic entanglement of two brothers lives told the story that many are still carrying. One brother’s joyous wedding night as he married his bride, the other brother, Bar Ashraf, present and participating in the festivities, warmly hugging his family. Only to disappear afterwards. Within the frantic search for her brother’s whereabouts, three days after the wedding, his sister’s feet led her to Liron Barda’s grave.

Apparently, I’m what’s called a “Doehead.” I’d never heard the term before last month. It refers to people who are very into Colorado’s HAW Tabor, Augusta and Baby Doe saga.

August 1. It is the birthday of the two places where I have lived the longest — Colorado and Switzerland, two places I call home. In 1291, three men met on a field in Switzerland to take an oath, committing to an alliance. A little over half a millennium later, 585 years to be exact, Colorado declared statehood, earning itself the moniker the Centennial state.

When I come back home I’m back in the days and times of “yore” — when I was growing up. It’s always fun to come back and see old friends. One of these people is Pete Moutzouris, known simply as “Pete” of Pete’s Fruits and Vegetables, at the corner of Holly and Cedar Sts., right across from my shul — EDOS.