#malka refugee camp

[eretzyisrael]

by Hugh Fitzgerald

In mid-September, another march was held, starting from the Malka camp that is situated on the border with Israel. It was presented to the world as a “peaceful march,” but that description was belied by the large bomb the marchers brought with them, intending to place it where it then blow up next to IDF soldiers on the other side of the border. More on this march can be found here: “Only in Gaza are there huge bombs brought to a ‘peaceful march,’” Elder of Ziyon, September 13, 2023:

Safa  [the Palestinian new agency] reports, “Five young men were martyred and 25 others were injured this evening, Wednesday, as a result of an explosion during a peaceful march in Malka camp on the eastern border of the Gaza Strip.” Palestine Today adds, According to the statement of the rebel youth, a number of Mujahideen from the Engineering Unit advanced to Malka Gate to detonate a heavy-caliber explosive device, but the occupation betrayed them and opened fire where they were to plant the device. The Mujahideen were unable to withdraw, which led to the explosion of the device….

Yes, doesn’t everyone bring a large bomb along on a “peaceful march”? Well, perhaps not everyone, but the Palestinians certainly do. But this “heavy-caliber explosive device” apparently exploded after it had been so carefully planted by the “rebel youth,” the brave Islamic warriors or Mujahideen. Those IDF soldiers whom the “rebel youth” were dead set on blowing to smithereens instead “betrayed them” — how thoughtless of them — by firing on them as they were planting the explosive device. The gunfire prevented the Palestinians from retreating, and the bomb blew up before they had a chance to escape, just the way Wile E. Coyote is always hoist by his own petard of dynamite from the Acme Missile Co., when he tries, again and again, to blow up the Road-Runner. Elder of Ziyon adds:

And make no mistake, for a bomb to kill 5 and injure 25, it was quite big.

#great march of return #gaza #palestine today #safa #malka refugee camp

[coolsandy8800]

Packed with refugees, Palestinian camps face grave threat if coronavirus spreads

Malka Abu Aker has seen her crowded refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank swell year upon year since fleeing there over 70 years ago, with the arrival of new generations and those escaping successive Mideast conflicts.

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#Breaking #Global #News #World

[hkformalengwriting]

Packed with refugees, Palestinian camps face grave threat if coronavirus spreads

BETHLEHEM — Malka Abu Aker has seen her crowded refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank swell year upon year since fleeing there over 70 years ago, with the arrival of new generations and those escaping successive Mideast conflicts. Read More

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#Bon Bon Lifestyle Webazine

[mideastsoccer]

Rise of civilisationalists forces rethink of sovereign nation state

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, Patreon and Castbox.

 Shaping a new world order is proving to be about a lot more than power.

 The rise of the civilizational state and of civilizational rather than national leaders is calling into question the concept of sovereign nation states.

 That is evident in the consequences of the civilizationalist assault on minorities ranging from the Kurds in Syria and Turkey to Muslims in China, India and Myanmar to Islamophobia and mounting anti-Semitism in the United States, France and Hungary as well as sectarianism in the Middle East.

Democracies legally enshrined yardsticks of non-discrimination and equality irrespective of creed, ethnicity, colour, gender and religion but never succeeded in truly enforcing those principles.

As a result, civilisationalism’s assault spotlights the long-standing failure of the nation state, evident from the moment it was conceptualized by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, to give true meaning to guaranteeing the security, safety and rights of all its inhabitants irrespective of creed, colour, race, ethnicity, faith or gender.

The rise of a critical mass of civilizational leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, Myanmar’s Win Myint, India’s Narendra Modi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Victor Orban and US president Donald J. Trump makes a rethink inevitable not only of the functioning of democracy but also of the concepts of the nation state and sovereignty that have structured world orders for close to 500 years.

Many of these leaders conceive of their societies and/or states as defined by civilization and its reach into akin Diaspora communities rather than by legally recognized borders, population within those borders, and language.

Civilisationalism has allowed China to extend its reach in the South China Sea beyond internationally recognized borders at the expense of other littoral states as well as to Diaspora communities across the globe.

It also provided the basis on which China has so far successfully imposed its views on others whether its acceptance of its one-China policy or silence, if not acquiescence, in repression in Xinjiang.

Civilisationalism has further enabled Russia to recognize breakaway states in Georgia, annex Crimea, and spark violent conflict in eastern Ukraine.

In some ways, the nation state, designed to put an end to religious wars in Europe, paved the way for a revival of civilisationalism by godfathering exclusionary politics that were based on a determination of who belonged and who did not belong to a nation, a question which civilisationalism answers by legitimizing supremacism, racism and prejudice.

From the outset, newly conceived European nation states sought to build nations by not fully embracing those it believed were not truly part of their nation.

The nation state’s exclusivity, rather than as a result of the Westphalia treaty pulling the curtain on an era of European wars, sparked another round of armed conflict intended to fortify newly found national identities.

Today, reconceptualization of the nation state and the notion of sovereignty has become an imperative with civilisationalism adopting exclusivity as its battle cry and the nation state’s centuries-long inability and unwillingness to negotiate mutually workable arrangements that take account of aspirations and identities of societal groups that feel excluded.

Reconceptualization would need to be geared towards guaranteeing individual and minority rights based on an international legal framework that is enforceable.  

Failure to do so would likely usher in an era of disruptive societal tension, marginalization and disenfranchisement of minorities, flows of mass migration, radicalization and increased political violence.

A recent International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) report concluded that China was advising countries confronting political and economic instability, sometimes sparked in part by Chinese project-related corruption, to adopt its model of brutally cracking down on any expression of dissent like in Xinjiang.

China, according to the report, is also advocating implementation of its system of social control, involving the use of invasive Chinese artificial intelligence-based surveillance technology, reducing media to parrots of government policy, and firewalling the Internet. China is further training governments in ways of disrupting opposition activity.

China’s view of economic development as a way of countering what it sees as cultural drivers of extremism underlies its effort to Sinicize Turkic Muslim Islam in Xinjiang and is implicit in Chinese aid to countries in the Middle East.

Mr. Xi announced in July of last year US$20billion in loans to Middle Eastern nations as well as US$106 million in financial aid for Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen on the back of Chinese assertions that finance would help resolve the region’s political, religious and cultural tensions.

“China is increasingly proactive in its response to instability in developing countries. It is now more forthright in its advice to partner countries and is proactive in promoting Chinese solutions to other countries’ problems,” said Nicholas Crawford, the IISS report’s author.

China’s policy prescriptions, elements of which are being adopted across the globe, is likely to perpetuate problems inherent to exclusivism propagated by both civilisationalists and nation states that are more concerned about perceived threats to their territorial integrity or constructed collective identities than aspirations of groups that are part of their societal fabric.

The rise of civilisationalists, autocrats, authoritarians and illiberals, including Mr. Xi, does not bode well for Eurasia, a region pockmarked by groups whose rights have been repeatedly violated by various civilizationalist leaders as well as exclusionary nation states concerned about challenges to their territorial integrity or constructed collective identities.

“Geopolitics is no longer simply about the economy or security… The non-Western world, led by Beijing and Moscow, is pushing back against the Western claim to embody universal values… The rejection of Western universalism by the elites in Russia and China challenges the idea of the nation state as the international norm for political organisation… The new pivot of geopolitics is civilisation,” said political scientist Adrian Pabst.

A tour of the world’s flashpoints proves the point.

The flashpoints include predominantly Kurdish south-eastern Turkey, what is left of the Kurdish enclave in northern Syria, Rohingya rotting away in Bangladeshi refugee camps after fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar; the plight of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang and Catalan efforts to democratically decide whether they want to remain part of Spain.

They illustrate the fact that the failure of the nation state to build truly inclusive and cohesive societies coupled with the rise of the civilizational state and civilizationalist leaders portends a new world order that is likely to be characterized by individual and collective rights abuse that heightens societal tensions and aggravates disputes and conflicts.

“The global order provides more mechanisms for states to deal diplomatically with each other than with the people inside them,” noted scholar and author Malka Older.

The civilizationalist threat to individual and minority rights is enhanced by its insistence on collective adherence to an overriding ideology whether that is the Chinese communist party’s concept of absolute control of anything and everything cloaked in ultra-nationalism and concepts of unique Chinese characteristics; Russian Orthodoxy cemented in the alliance between church and state; or Victor Orban’s conceptualization of a Hungarian nation that is homogenously white and Christian.

In a recent study of religion and tolerance in the Middle East, widely viewed as perhaps the religiously most intolerant part of the world, political scientist Michael Hoffman concluded that it is not religion that in and of itself breeds intolerance and prejudice.

Instead, Mr. Hoffman suggested that Muslim attitudes towards the other differ sharply between believers who pray collectively in a mosque and those who worship in private.

Private prayer “does not contain the same sectarian content as communal prayer,” Mr. Hoffman noted, implicitly pointing a finger at autocratic authorities who in the Middle East often exercise tight control of what is said in the mosque.

“The group identification mechanism is not present for private prayer; since private prayer is fundamentally an personal phenomenon, it does not cause believers to distinguish more sharply between their own sect and others and therefore does not produce the intolerant outcomes associated with communal worship,” Mr. Hoffman went on to say.

Mr. Hoffman’s research, despite its focus on the Middle East, spotlighted in an era of rising civilisationalism the risks to universal basic human dignity as well as individual and minorities rights in directly or indirectly imposing collectivist beliefs that drown out the political, ethnic or religious other.

The silver lining in what are bleak prospects may be Mr. Pabst’s conclusion that “neither the Western cult of private freedom without social solidarity nor the totalitarian tendencies among China’s and Russia’s elites can nurture resilient societies against the disruptive forces of technology and implacable economic globalisation… (Yet) across different civilisations there is an inchoate sense that the purpose of politics is the free association of people around common interests and shared social virtues of generosity, loyalty, courage, sacrifice and gratitude. The practice of such virtues can bind us together as citizens, nations and cultures beyond colour, class or creed.”

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture

#china #China (PRC) #Russia #europe #Eurasia #civilization #racism #supremacism

[chloespolandblog]

10 Interesting Polish Books

The Spies of Warsaw

“An Autumn Evening In 1937. A German engineer arrives at the Warsaw railway station. Tonight, he will be with his Polish mistress; tomorrow, at a workers' bar in the city's factory district, he will meet with the military attache from the French embassy. Information will be exchanged for money. So begins The Spies of Warsaw, the new novel by Alan Furst. War is coming to Europe. French and German intelligence operatives are locked in a life-and-death struggle on the espionage battlefield. At the French embassy, the new military attache, Colonel Jean-Francois Mercier, a decorated hero of the 1914 war, is drawn into a world of abduction, betrayal, and intrigue in the diplomatic salons and back alleys of Warsaw. At the same time, the handsome aristocrat finds himself in a passionate love affair with a Parisian woman of Polish heritage, a lawyer for the League of Nations. Colonel Mercier must work in the shadows, amid an extraordinary cast of venal and dangerous characters - Colonel Anton Vyborg of Polish military intelligence; the mysterious and sophisticated Dr. Lapp, senior German Abwehr officer in Warsaw; Malka and Viktor Rozen, at work for the Russian secret service; and Mercier's brutal and vindictive opponent, Major August Voss of SS counterintelligence. And there are many more, some known to Mercier as spies, some never to be revealed.” (goodreads.com)

The Kommandant’s Girl

“Nineteen-year-old Emma Bau has been married only three weeks when Nazi tanks thunder into her native Poland. Within days Emma's husband, Jacob, is forced to disappear underground, leaving her imprisoned within the city's decrepit, moldering Jewish ghetto. But then, in the dead of night, the resistance smuggles her out. Taken to Krakow to live with Jacob's Catholic aunt, Krysia, Emma takes on a new identity as Anna Lipowski, a gentile. Emma's already precarious situation is complicated by her introduction to Kommandant Richwalder, a high-ranking Nazi official who hires her to work as his assistant. Urged by the resistance to use her position to access details of the Nazi occupation, Emma must compromise her safety—and her marriage vows—in order to help Jacob's cause. As the atrocities of war intensify, so does Emma's relationship with the Kommandant, building to a climax that will risk not only her double life, but also the lives of those she loves.” (goodreads.com)

The Things we Cherished

“An ambitious novel that spans decades and continents, The Things We Cherished tells the story of Charlotte Gold and Jack Harrington, two fiercely independent attor­neys who find themselves slowly falling for one another while working to defend the brother of a Holocaust hero against allegations of World War II–era war crimes. The defendant, wealthy financier Roger Dykmans, mysteri­ously refuses to help in his own defense, revealing only that proof of his innocence lies within an intricate timepiece last seen in Nazi Germany. As the narrative moves from Philadelphia to Germany, Poland, and Italy, we are given glimpses of the lives that the anniversary clock has touched over the past century, and learn about the love affair that turned a brother into a traitor. Rich in historical detail, Jenoff’s astonishing new work is a testament to true love under the worst of circumstances.” (goodreads.com)

Death in Breslau

“Occupied Breslau, 1933: Two young women are found murdered on a train, scorpions writhing on their bodies, an indecipherable note in an apparently oriental language nearby ...Police Inspector Eberhard Mock's weekly assignation with two ladies of the night is interrupted as he is called to investigate. But uncovering the truth is no straightforward matter in Breslau. The city is in the grip of the Gestapo, and has become a place where spies are everywhere, corrupt ministers torture confessions from Jewish merchants, and Freemasons guard their secrets with blackmail and violence. And as Mock and his young assistant Herbert Anwaldt plunge into the city's squalid underbelly the case takes on a dark twist of the occult when the mysterious note seems to indicate a ritual killing with roots in the Crusades” (goodreads.com)

In the warsaw Ghetto

“Ala Silberman is training to be a dancer when the Germans invade Warsaw. Together with almost half a million other Jews, Ala and her family are forced into the ghetto, where she struggles with feelings of guilt at her comparative privileged circumstances. Then Ala's enigmatic teacher forms a dance company with the intention of putting on a performance for the ghetto's residents. Max Silberman, Ala's uncle, is a bachelor, who still carries the flame for the girl he knew at university. She married someone else and he hasn't seen her for over a decade. When he meets her in the ghetto and discovers she and her two children have been abandoned by her Catholic husband all his dormant hopes are incongruously revived amidst the squalor and destitution surrounding him. In the Warsaw Ghetto tells the deeply moving story of Ala and Max's struggle to preserve their aspirations in the midst of the inhumane conditions of the Warsaw ghetto, until the deportations to the death camps begin and the Jews organise themselves into a fighting force determined to oppose the Nazis.” (goodreads.com)

House of Day, House of Night

“Nowa Ruda is a small town in Silesia, an area that has been a part of Poland, Germany, and the former Czechoslovakia in the past. When the narrator moves into the area, she discovers everyone--and everything--has a story. With the help of Marta, her enigmatic neighbor, the narrator accumulates these stories, tracing the history of Nowa Ruda from the its founding to the lives of its saints, from the caller who wins the radio quiz every day to the man who causes international tension when he dies straddling the border between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Each of the stories represents a brick and they interlock to reveal the immense monument that is the town. What emerges is the message that the history of any place--no matter how humble--is limitless, that by describing or digging at the roots of a life, a house, or a neighborhood, one can see all the connections, not only with one's self and one's dreams but also with all of the universe. Richly imagined, weaving anecdote with recipes and gossip, Tokarczuk's novel is an epic of a small place. Since its publication in 1998 it has remained a bestseller in Poland. House of Day, House of Night is the English-language debut of one of Europe's best young writers.” (goodreads.com)

Death of Danzig

“Germans flee the besieged city of Danzig in 1945. Poles driven out of eastern regions controlled by the Russians move into the homes hastily abandoned by their previous inhabitants. In an area of the city graced with beech trees and a stately cathedral, the stories of old and new residents intertwine: Hanemann, a German and a former professor of anatomy, who chooses to stay in Danzig after the mysterious death of his lover; the Polish family of the narrator, driven out of Warsaw; and a young Carpathian woman who no longer has a country, her cheerful nature concealing deep wounds. Through his brilliantly defined characters, stunning evocation of place, and memorable descriptions of a world that was German but survives in Polish households, Chwin has created a reality that is beyond destruction.” (goodreads.com)

Night of flames

“Painting a vivid and terrifying picture of war-torn Europe during World War II, this tale chronicles the lives of Anna, a Krakow university professor, and her husband Jan, a Polish cavalryman. After they are separated and forced to flee occupied Poland, Anna soon finds herself caught up in the Belgian Resistance, while Jan becomes embedded in British Intelligence efforts to contact the Resistance in Poland. He soon realizes that he must seize this opportunity to search for his lost wife, Anna.” (Amazon.com)

A minor Apocalypse

“As in his novel The Polish Complex, Konwicki's A Minor Apocalypse stars a narrator and character named Konwicki, who has been asked to set himself on fire that evening in front of the Communist Party headquarters in Warsaw in an act of protest. He accepts the commission, but without any clear idea of whether he will actually go through with the self-immolation. He spends the rest of the day wandering the streets of Warsaw, being tortured by the secret police and falling in love. Both himself and Everyman, the character-author experiences the effects of ideologies and bureaucracies gone insane with, as always in history, the individual struggling for survival rather than offering himself up on the pyre of the greater good. Brilliantly translated by Richard Lourie, A Minor Apocalypse is one of the most important novels to emerge from Poland in the last twenty five years.” (goodreads.com)

The Things we cannot say

“In 1942, Europe remains in the relentless grip of war. Just beyond the tents of the Russian refugee camp she calls home, a young woman speaks her wedding vows. It’s a decision that will alter her destiny…and it’s a lie that will remain buried until the next century. Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents’ farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief. Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative that weaves together two women’s stories into a tapestry of perseverance, loyalty, love and honor. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.” (goodreads.com)

[originoffpage]

Resident Spotlight: Suzanne Ringel

Suzanne Ringel was born in Berlin Germany in 1933, to parents Malka and Nathan Gutmann. By the time Hitler came into power in Germany, Suzanne was four years old. Her family chose to leave Germany and traveled instead to Belgium. When Hitler then invaded Belgium in 1939, Suzanne and her family fled to France despite the closed borders. Eventually the family settled temporarily in Nax, France, a small town near the border of Spain. Suzanne’s father had planned to take his family into Spain, but was unable to, and in 1942, Suzanne and her sisters said goodbye to their parents for the last time as they were arrested by the French police along with many other Jewish people.

The police brought Suzanne’s parents to Camp Rivalte, a deportation camp which would ultimately lead to Auschwitcz concentration camp. Suzanne and her sisters, deprived of their parents, were smuggled into Switzerland. There, Suzanne and her sisters attended school until the end of the war came in 1946 and all refugees in Switzerland were ordered to leave. Fortunately, Suzanne and her sisters were not without hope. With aunts and uncles living in the United States, Suzanne and her sisters found themselves on the first ship to America to live with relatives, Suzanne with one aunt and her sisters with another, in Cleveland, Ohio. Suzanne attended high school in Ohio, where she fell in love with her future husband, Hy Ringel. Hy was an electrician and the happy couple married and had three sons in Ohio before moving to North Miami Beach in Florida in 1980. Sadly, Hy passed away only five years later, and Suzanne eventually decided to move into the Imperial Club. Suzanne says she is very happy here and you can be sure to find her at the Bingo table every day!

Contact us here to learn more about Miami retirement communities, including assisted living Hollywood Florida or senior housing Miami.

Contact Us

Thank you for your interest in Imperial Club Retirement Community. We are committed to meeting your and your family’s needs both now and in the future. To better discover what makes our retirement community such a wonderful place to call home for active seniors and those needing assisted living services, please complete the contact form below describing your interest in our community. Our skilled leasing team will respond within 24 hours.

Need immediate information? Call us at (305) 935–1801 to schedule a personal tour. Private tours are available Monday through Friday 9:00am-5:00 pm and on evenings or weekends by appointment. You may also e-mail us at [email protected]

#Senior Housing Miami #Assisted Living Aventura #Retirement Communities Miami #Assisted Living Hallandale #Retirement Community Miami

[thebeautyoftorah]

Shemot

bs'd

Shalom, I hope you are well.

My second book "Healing Anger" is about to be published. If you want a dedication for a relative or sponsor the book please send me a message.

I am also offering all of you the opportunity to share in the mitzvah to honor a loved one by sponsoring my weekly parsha review, or for refua shelema (healing), or for shiduch, Atzlacha (success), etc. My weekly review goes out to over 5000 people in English and Spanish all over the world. Please contact me for more details.

Feel free to forward these words of Torah to any other fellow Jew.

Enjoy it and Shabbat Shalom.

Shemot-Moshe: The Beginning

Moshe Rabbenu was eighty years old when Hashem first appeared to him at the Burning Bush and commanded him to tell Pharaoh “Send out my people!” (see Shemot 3:10 and 4:23 Rashi).

Did you ever wonder what “the greatest Jew who ever lived” was doing for the first years of his life? The Torah doesn’t tell us much, just his birth and being rescued by Pharaoh's daughter, that he noticed the suffering of his brethren, killed an Egyptian at a young age, and ran away to Midian where he met his wife, Tzippora.

The Torah says [1] that Moshe’s mother Yocheved could no longer conceal him from the Egyptians who wanted to drown all Jewish boys, so she placed Moshe in a reed basket in the Nile river, while his older sister Miriam watched from a distance to see what would happen to him. Pharaoh's daughter, Batya, took the basket from the river and brought the baby to the Egyptian palace where she raised him as her own son.

The Oral Tradition that was handed over to Moshe at Har Sinai together with the Written Torah gives us a detailed description of the “early years” of our great teacher who had a stuttering problem (see Shemot 4:10).

The Midrash [2] tells us the fascinating story behind Moshe's speech defect:

When he was three years old growing up in Pharaoh's palace, Moshe once took the royal crown and put it on his head. Pharaoh grew angry with Moshe and decided to kill him. One of his advisors (some say this was Moshe's future father-in-law Yitro!) suggested to Pharaoh that before killing the child, they should test his intellectual ability to see how smart he really was. So they brought in front of Moshe a diamond and a glowing coal. The smart little boy was about to go for the jewel, but G-d performed a miracle and sent the angel Gabriel to push his hand over to the hot coal instead. Moshe put it in his mouth, causing the speech defect.

The Ramban explains that Hashem didn't want to heal Moshe's speech problem, even though it greatly reduced his effectiveness in communicating, because He wanted Moshe to have a constant reminder of the great miracle that he experienced that saved his life. This handicap of Moshe was a “gift from G-d” ensuring that he would be eternally grateful, never for a moment taking his life for granted (probably for the same reason Moshe never prayed to Hashem to heal him from this impediment).

Rabbi Nissim ben Reuben (known as the Ra”n) offers a different explanation as to why G-d didn’t heal Moshe’s speech impediment before sending him to speak with Pharaoh. He says that had Moshe been an eloquent and gifted speaker, there would always be room for skeptics to claim that the Jewish people accepted the Torah, its truths and its mandates, only as a result of Moshe’s charisma. After all, a captivating speaker can convince people of just about anything. Now that it was actually a challenge to listen to Moshe, it became eminently clear that we did not accept the Torah because we were wowed by Moshe’s words; we accepted the Torah because we clearly heard G d’s words.

The Midrash [3] also tells us that during his time spent in the king's palace, Moshe often went to his brethren, the slaves of Pharaoh, sharing their sad lot. He helped anyone who bore too heavy a burden or was too weak for his work. Since Moshe was in charge of the royal household he advised Pharaoh that a day of rest would increase the efficiency of the slaves. Pharaoh did so and Moshe instituted the Sabbath, as a day of rest for the Jews.

According to Yalkut Shimoni [4] Moshe was eighteen years old when he ran away from Pharaoh’s palace and ended up in the land of Kush (Ethiopia?). After spending ten years there in the army and successfully helping the Kushites conquer the capital, a fortified city, they proclaimed him the official king of Kush, and he was given the wife of the former king as his queen. But Moshe who feared Hashem would not approach her, because he remembered Abraham made his servant Eliezer swear, saying: ‘Do not take a wife for my son from the daughters of Canaan’.

Moshe ruled over Kush for forty years, after which time his 'wife' complained to the ministers and the people: "This one has ruled over Kush forty years, but he has never shared your way of life and he has never worshiped our idols!" She advised them to instead make her son the king, and they agreed to this and dismissed him with great honor and gifts.

At this time Moshe was 67 years old. He still could not return to Egypt out of fear of being killed by Pharaoh, so he traveled to Midian where he met up with Yitro (who would later become his father-in-law). When Yitro knew that Moshe was a refugee from the Egyptian court, Yitro decided to put him in prison ten years for fear of Pharaoh [5]. Subsequently, Moshe married Yitro’s daughter Tzippora who saved his life (see Shemot 4:24-26 Rashi), and she bore him two sons, Gershom and Eliezer. Moshe was now 80 years old and G-d appeared to him at the Burning Bush, and the rest is history.

There is a fascinating Midrash quoted by the Tiferet Israel [6] which reveals to us the true greatness of Moshe Rabbenu:

A king at the time the Jews left Egypt who was intrigued by the countless wonders that were done through Moshe wanted to know about his natural tendencies and personal characteristics. The king sent an expert artist to draw Moshe’s face, and conscripted professionals to interpret his features, which would reveal his personal characteristics. When the artist returned from painting Moshe’s face, the professional interpreters said that this was a person of evil deeds — haughty, a money-lover, an unreasonable individual, and someone who suffers from every other deficiency of character imaginable.

Surprised, the king could not understand this information because it contradicted everything he had heard about this great man. He understood that there must have been a mistake, either by the artist, who did not properly portray the leader of the Jewish people, or by the interpreters. The king traveled to the camp of the Jews to clarify the matter himself.

Seeing Moshe Rabbenu in a distance, he realized that the painting was excellent, and decided to come to his tent. He told Moshe what had happened and that his expert interpreters had betrayed him. Then Moshe replied, “Actually both are correct. The drawing shows my face, and I'm not sad to say that all the deficiencies they told you — and even more — are really my nature. But with all my heart I have fought to overcome my natural tendencies to acquire a different nature.”

From this Midrash about Moshe and how he overcame all his negative character traits, we learn a powerful lesson that we can apply in our own lives. We all have bad traits like anger, arrogance, selfishness, greed, etc. We see that even the greatest Jew who ever lived had them! But what makes a person truly great is his will to work on changing or channeling those traits into something positive and becoming a kind and sensitive person, a true servant of Hashem. If Moshe [7] did it, we can do it too! ____________________________________________ [1] See Shemot 2:1-4. [2] Shemot Rabbah 1:32. [3] Ibid. [4] Shemot #168. [5] Yalkut Shimoni, Chelek A, 117. [6] Kiddushin 4:14, paragraph 77. [7] Hashem called Moshe 'My servant' (see Devarim 12:3).

Le Iluy nishmat Eliahu ben Simcha, Mordechai ben Shlomo, Perla bat Simcha, Moshe ben Gila,Yaakov ben Gila, Sara bat Gila, Yitzchak ben Perla, Leah bat Chavah.

Refua Shelema of Yaacov ben Miriam, Gila bat Tzipora, Tzipora bat Gila, Dvir ben Leah, Abraham Meir ben Leah, Elimelech Dovid ben Chaya Baila, Noa bat Batsheva Devorah

and  Dovid Yehoshua ben Leba Malka for whom you can donate to a life saving cause

http://www.causematch.com/en/projects/love-your-neighbor-challenge/

Atzlacha to Shmuel ben Mazal tov and Zivug agun to Marielle Gabriela bat Gila.