In Memory Of Julian Jacobs – יהודה רחמים הלוי בן אסתר ויוסף ז"ל –

In Memory Of Julian Jacobs – יהודה רחמים הלוי בן אסתר ויוסף ז"ל –

5 November, 1932- 10 February, 2013.

Our dear, dear and beloved Julian,

I’m writing on behalf of Michele and our children to say farewell. You have departed on to the next stage of your cosmic journey. Godspeed. We will surely miss you. We will miss your amazing personality. We will miss your incredible optimism. We will miss your enveloping warmth. We will miss being wrapped in your embrace. We will miss the incisiveness of your insights. We will miss the heartwarming pride of your Jewishness. We will miss your quintessentially Southern manner. We will miss the wink of your mischievousness. And oh, will we ever miss the breadth of your unbelievable smile.

We often think of ourselves as a body that has a soul. I firmly believe it’s the other way around. We are soul, we are spirit. God loans us a body for the duration of our sojourn on earth, and then when the loan is up, we have to return the body, but our soul continues on its cosmic journey. That’s how I interpret our Sages description of us humans having “Helek Eloka MiMa’al.”

For at the end of the day we leave behind nothing of our physical selves. We can only leave behind a legacy for those who follow and remember us, those who are still on their Earthly journey.

We came into your life only 14 years ago. You immediately adopted us as your own. I remember so well you introducing me to your friends in Atlanta not as “My Daughter’s Brother-in-law” but as “My Mechutan.” I was “yours.” What a great feeling that gave me! You shared with us, accepted us and loved us. We became your children too. And you became our Saba Yudele as well.

So go in peace beloved Julian. As much as we will miss it, we will celebrate your life, and it will comfort us.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.


In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.


Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.


It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

From "Ulysees" by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.


Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

On Christians and Sukkot in Jerusalem 2009

This year, I spent Hol Hamoed Sukkot in Binyanei Ha’Uma in Jerusalem. I was a vendor selling artwork at the Tabernacles Festival organized by the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. The event is held every year and brings to our capital evangelical Christians from all over the world. If I would use a single word to describe my feelings at having spent a full five days in the company of so many believing Christians, that word would be “strange” or “unusual.”
I take it as a priori and as a given that in order for them to fulfill their mission and purpose as believers in their faith, I and every other Jew needs to be here in Israel. That way, their messiah will come (again). I am not offended by their belief, or by anyone else’s belief. It is what it is.
On the one hand I met some absolutely wonderful people. I met uncommon people with whom I found commonality. Of those who stand out was a Texas oilman who has been drilling for oil here in Israel for the last 20 years. I wish him much and continued success and hopes he strikes it BIG here for his and our benefit. I met a pastor from British Columbia, Canada and another from Durban, South Africa; yet another from Stellenbosch in South Africa and one from Gaborone in Botswana as well as a Cameroonian man who minister in Gabon. I discovered that we had a very common language. I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does. I suspect it’s because I have never before had such an intense encounter with so many ardent Christian believers.
While I took an occasional peek at the goings on in the main auditorium, and while I confess I truly enjoyed some of the music that would leak out into the vendors’ area, most of my contact with these folks was in the selling area. I conversed with tens, perhaps hundreds of the participants over the five day period. Most didn’t bother trying to engage me in a conversation about our differing faith. Most of those with whom I spoke came out of a genuine love for Israel, Jerusalem and the Jewish people. Five people (including one Holocaust survivor) tried their hand at explaining to me the grave error of my ways, but I swiftly (and once quite rudely) sent them packing. When opposing worldviews came up in other conversations, I politely drew my line in the sand and explained that we can still embrace over that line… but the line remains in place.
I engaged in numerous conversations with pastors and ministers from a variety of countries. Once they discovered that I had been a community rabbi, it was easier to develop some common ground. With some I even found common friends in the far-flung places of our planet.
The one thing that was for me somewhat surreal was the presence there of (too) numerous messianic Jews. This being my first exposure to this event, at first I never knew who was who. Turns out, some folks there thought I was of the messianic persuasion too! It seems like an orthodox rabbi selling art at a Christian event, is indeed a little weird. However, once we got to talking it became apparent who was and who wasn’t. I must confess my dislike for those messianic Jews. They seemed far more ardent in their desire to “convert” and justify the “correctness” of their belief than the Christians. A little too much “Amen” and “Helleluya” for my liking.
I don’t know if I will ever attend this type of event again. It was a little too far out of my comfort zone. However, I believe I will maintain contact with some of the people I met there. They were genuine people. They are our friends in a world that grows increasingly hostile to us. And friends are those with whom we can disagree agreeably.

Israel is a country...

This is not mine and I don't know who wrote it, but I like it. So kudos to the anonymous author.

• Israel is a country where the same drivers who cuss you and flip you the bird will immediately pull over and offer you all forms of help if you looklike you need it.
• Israel is the only country in the world with bus drivers and taxi driverswho read Spinoza and Maimonides.
• Israel is the only country in the world where no one cares what rules say when an important goal can be achieved by bending them.
• Israel is the only country in the world where reservists are bossed aroundand commanded by officers, male and female, younger than their ownchildren.
• Israel is the only country in the world where "small talk" consists of loud, angry debate over politics and religion.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the coffee is already so good that Starbucks went bankrupt trying to break into the local market.
• Israel is one of the few places in the world where the sun sets into theMediterranean Sea .
• Israel is the only country in the world whose soldiers eat three sets of salads a day, none of which contain any lettuce (which is not really a food), and where olives ARE a food and even a main course in a meal, rather than something one tosses into a martini.
• Israel is the only country in the world where one is unlikely to be able to dig a cellar without hitting ancient archaeological artifacts.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the leading writers in the country take buses.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the graffiti is in Hebrew.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the "black folks" walking around all wear yarmulkes.
• Israel is the only country in the world that has a National Book Week, during which almost everyone attends a book fair and buys books.
• Israel is the only country in the world where the ultra-Orthodox Jews beat up the police and not the other way around.
• Israel is the only country in the world where inviting someone "out for a drink" means drinking cola, coffee or tea.
• Israel is the only country in the world where bank robbers kiss the mezuzah as they leave with their loot.
• Israel is one of the few countries in the world that truly likes and admires the United States.
• Israel is the only country in the world that introduces applications of high-tech gadgets and devices, such as printers in banks that print out your statement on demand, years ahead of the United States and decades ahead of Europe.
• Israel is the only country in the world that has the weather and landscape of California without the earthquakes.
• Israel is the only country in the world where everyone on a flight gets to know one another before the plane lands. In many cases, they also get to know the pilot and all about his health or marital problems.
• Israel is the only country in the world where no one has a foreign accent because everyone has a foreign accent.
• Israel is the only country in the world where people cuss using dirty words in Russian or Arabic because Hebrew has never developed them.
• Israel is the only country in the world where patients visiting physicians end up giving the doctor advice.
• Israel is the only country in the world where everyone strikes up conversations while waiting in lines.
• Israel is the only country in the world where people call an attache case a "James Bond" and the "@" sign is called a "strudel".
• Israel is the only country in the world where there is the most mysterious and mystical calm ambience in the streets on Yom Kippur, which cannot be explained unless you have experienced it.
• Israel is the only country in the world where sunsets in Jerusalem are gorgeous every evening.
• Israel is the only country in the world where people read English, writeHebrew, and joke in Yiddish.

On Barack Obama, Anti-Semitism and Self-Reflection

Do I think Barack Obama is an Anti-Semite?No. I don’t think Barack Obama is an anti-Semite. Arabs are Semites. Barack Obama is therefore not an anti-Semite.

Do I think Barack Obama is an enemy of the Jewish state? Yes I do. That is not to say that I think he is acting against of what he believes are the best interests of the country he heads. After all, he was not elected president of Israel. He was elected the president of the USA. Anyone in the Democratic Party would have been elected president of the USA. All it required was to be the un-Bush. So the process went the way it went, he beat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Primaries and became the Democratic Nominee for the presidency and therefore he won. My hear weeps for the Republicans. They never had a hope anyway.

So Barack Obama has a world view upon which he bases his domestic and foreign and economic agendas. Whether the economic and domestic agendas will eventually play out and he becomes an 8-year president is still to be seen. My concern is about his foreign agenda and in particular his agenda for the Middle East. His meeting last week with Jewish leaders in the USA was probably the most debasing meeting between a US president and representatives of his Jewish citizenry in modern history. I am angry that no-one there mentioned to him that he was the president of the USA and not the president of Israel. I am angry that no-one stood up and said, we engage in self-reflection all the time, Mr. President. We are constantly on the lookout to ensure that we abide by our own set of rules. And we do have one, Mr. President. We have a set of rules that goes back a few thousand years. And by and large, as a nation, we have abided by it for those few thousand years.

We should engage in some self-reflection? Shame on you, Mr. President!

Oh, and please spare me the retort that you also told the Arab nations in your speech in Cairo that they need to clean up their house, recognize Israel, yadda, yadda. Surely you’re not THAT ignorant. You gave the speech in Cairo. Something like Yasser Araft’s speech on Johannesburg. You know, the one “among buddies” with the wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Oh, and the demand that Israel not build homes for Jews in Jerusalem. What, are you inhaling too, Mr. President?

Yes, we are a small little country. But we can wait you out. Preferably, you’ll be Jimmy Carter-like and go away after 4 years. But if not, we’ll wait the other four. The Arabs figure they’ve waited everyone else out of this neck of the woods, and while you're doing their foul work, they’ll wait us out as well. Well, let me say, Mr. President, that we waited 2,000 years to get here and we don’t plan on leaving that soon. I am the second of three generations that have fought wars here, Mr. President - against your friends. We have never chosen a priori to go to battle, Mr. President. Unlike your friends, we prefer to live. For us, paradise is to be found in living and making the world a better place. We have beaten your friends every time. Mr. President, and if we have to, we'll beat your friends again.

So what’s your obsession with us Mr. President? You’re not an ignorant person. You know the difference between right and wrong. So it’s not about knowledge.

Therefore, there’s only one other option. It’s about belief. What do you believe, Mr. President? Beliefs are those concepts that become our paradigms early on in life, when our minds are wide open and the things we hear and are taught and observe over and over again become the foundation of our set of values, and they are the ones with which we go through our lives – unless we make a very concerted effort to change them. Do you know, Mr. President, what percentage of the population ever succeeds in changing their paradigms? 1%. And nothing in your behavior shows that your paradigm has changed.

Although you profess Christian faith in your adult life, as a child you were indeed educated in a Muslim school in Indonesia. Even you haven’t denied that. Now I’m not professing any Muslim plot or anything like that regarding your accession to office, but your paradigms are those you learned way back in your childhood. Those are your paradigms. They govern your world view. It cannot be otherwise. You obviously, by your actions, are also not interested in any otherwise.

So in all fairness, we can’t really expect anything different from you. You don’t like the Jewish State and nothing it can do short of delivering itself to your surgeon’s scalpel will please you. Now here’s the thing. You are not a trustworthy surgeon. You are not interested in this patient’s health. Your actions speak far, far louder than your very eloquent and carefully chosen adjectives and your meticulously selected and well photographed insults.

You see Mr. president, when you spit on us we know you're spitting on us. Don't be fooled by your wazirs into thinking that we assume it's raining. And by the way, you can also pass the message on to Mr. Mitchell. We've been here a lot longer than he's been there.

If you truly, deep down in your heart, when you stand alone facing yourself in your shaving mirror, believe that building a house for a Jew in Jerusalem is what stands between you and world peace, then you are in need of a little more than self-reflection.

The Book of Man

This is the Book of Man Johnson, a well-known inebriate who dwelt in the gutters of Beverly Hills where the exhaust fumes of Jaguars and Cadillac Convertibles were the heady stuff of existence. And existence it sure was, for during the sweltering evenings of August, it definitely wasn’t life.

It mattered not though, for Man Johnson was content with his existence. He lacked neither money nor a roof over his head. He ate from restaurant hand-outs and laid his weary body down wherever he happened upon a grass patch. Night and day were of no significance.

Thus it came to pass that a stranger in a double breasted pin-stripe suit approached him one day with some understandable hesitation and handed him a business card. That Man Johnson had forgotten how to read was not known to the man in the double breasted suit, so when he handed the card to Man Johnson, he was even more surprised to discover that Man Johnson was stuffing the card into his mouth. What the heck, sometimes a ‘burger, sometimes cardboard. As long as there was no poison in it, it was as good as food. Then he burped.

This was all just as well, because the card read “Ivor Lionel Grundman, Attorney-at-Law” and all the other stuff that people put on business cards. Lawyers write them even smaller than other people. And the reason why Ivor Lionel Grundman wanted to introduce himself to Man Johnson was to tell him that a Last Will and Testament had been deposited in favor of Man Johnson by his great-uncle Man Johnson. Uncle Man Johnson had left the tidy sum of fourteen million dollars to the only relative in his four hundred and twenty-one member extended family who had the identical name to his.

Ivor Lionel Grundman did not give the fourteen million dollar check in his pocket to Man Johnson. He took it out and, holding it in both his hands, showed it to Man Johnson. Reading, he had forgotten. But numbers had remained with him. Man Johnson beckoned to Ivor Lionel Grundman to come closer. He made sniffing sounds and pointed from the check to his nose, from the check to his nose.

Ivor Lionel Grundman held out the check, firmly between the thumb and forefinger of his hands, and with some trepidation brought it close to Man Johnson’s nose. Man Johnson sniffed in deep. Once, twice, three times.

“Well my man, it sure smells fine,” Man Johnson said. These were in fact the first words he had spoken in eleven years, ever since the day he had gotten laid at Milly’s Paint Store and Brothel on West Beverly Boulevard.

“It’s yours,” said Ivor Lionel Grundman, “if you can show me some sort of identification to prove that you are Man Johnson.”

Man Johnson looked at him blankly. Then, ever so slowly, he pulled from the inner pocket of his rumpled overcoat a passport, a driver’s license, his social security card, his American Express Gold card, his VISA card, his MASTERCARD, his membership card at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel Spa and Sports Club, and a card from the Howard Hughes Temple testifying to the fact that at the age of 44 he had undergone conversion to Judaism and was ritually circumcised by Dr. Ruth Wertheimer.

“I guess the money’s yours,” said Ivor Lionel Grundman and handed the check over to Man Johnson. Man Johnson took the check, sniffed it deeply thrice more, and ate it.