Voices for Israel - the video

Surely you've heard of Voices for Israel:

This album includes the song "Chazak Ameinu", sung by dozens of the biggest names in Jewish music, including my favorite, Yehuda! (1 | 2 | 3).

The album also features the song "Shir Lismoach" (English Lyrics), written by 15 year-old victim of terror Malki Roth.

Now there's a music video for the title song, Chazak Ameinu (Windows Media | RealAudio). Enjoy!

Presidential salutations

"...May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy."

-George Washington, letter to Moses Seixas, Warden of Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island

Today is the anneversary of George Washington's birth. Read the entire letter.

More snowshoeing

Jason and I went snowshoeing today. The cloud ceiling was at about 1000 feet, and the weather was bad enough that the GPS didn't work.

I think we hiked 4 to 5 miles. From the Tuxedo train station, we hiked up the Ramapo-Dunderburg trail to Black Ash pond. The west end of the pond is built up by a natural rock wall, and from the other side it creates a small waterfall:

From there, we took the Blue Disc trail to the Tuxedo-Mt. Ivy trail. Near that junction is "Claudius Smith Den", one of the mountain hideouts of Claudius Smith, a revolutionary-war-era criminal. Jason is in the lower left corner of the picture:

From there, we took the Tuxedo-Mt. Ivy trail back to the Ramapo Dunderberg trail, then hiked north along a gas pipeline easment to the Triangle trail, which met back up with the Ramapo Dunderberg trail.

Wedding at 770

Tonight, Trish and I went to the wedding of Moti Wilhelm, the eldest son of Rabbi and Rebbetzin Wilhelm, the Chabad Shluchim in Portland, Oregon. We were a little slow leaving the house, so we got to Crown Heights right before the wedding started. Unfortunately, we were a little under-dressed, as this wedding was held outdoors.

Did I mention it's February? It was in the low 30s. Thankfully, we all seemed to have enough cold weather gear to stay warm.

Here's the Chuppah from a couple angles:

Moti and his wife-to-be. Chabad women use a really thick veil:

The chuppah ended around 6:30. Since the kids usually go to bed at 7:30, we decided to head home. Although Trish didn't get to say hello to the Rebbetzin, I did see the Rabbi, and Trish saw two of her former coworkers from the Chabad school.

Hike to Mostly Perpendicular

Went on a hike this afternoon. It was a 4.6 miles, and I was out from 3:15 to 5:30ish. Here's the route and profile. I started at the bottom and proceeded clockwise:

The hike started at the end of Johnsontown Road in Sloatsburg. At about 8/10s of a mile, the climb up onto Almost Perpendicular, a cliff, began. I took a brief detour to try and find Dater's Mine, but I wanted to be sure I got back before dark so I stopped looking after a couple minutes. Before the climb, I climbed up onto a little ridge to take in the view:

From there, I could see the face of Almost Perpendicular:

I went back down to the trail which climbed up the back of Almost Perpendicular. From there, I could see the Harriman Visitor Center, almost a mile away:

After a brief respite, the trail climbed up through a draw in a small cliff face. When I popped up onto the top of the cliff, there was a deer standing about 30 feet away. We were both quite surprised:

I continued on as the sun began to set:

As I approached these ice walls, I was walking on a leaf covered flat area. Suddenly, I stepped through into water. A layer of ice had formed over a creek, and leaves had covered the ice. Quite the surprise.....

A bit farther on, I passed "Elbow Brush", a narrow crevasse through a pile of rock:

After about 2 miles, the "Blue Disk" trail met the "Tuxedo/Mt. Ivy Trail". I followed that for about a mile, then took the "White Bar" trail for 1.6 miles back to the car.

All in all, it was a nice little hike!

Unchanging Orthodoxy, Constantly Evolving

The analogy that I want to use is a little different. In the middle of a chess game, the board looks quite different than it looked at the beginning. There are any number of legitimate mid-game configurations of the board. There are also many illegitimate moves. For example, up-ending the board in frustration and tossing the pieces in the air is not a legitimate move. Letting your kid play through to the end even though he lost his king right at the beginning is also not kosher.

Orthodoxy does look different today than it did a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago. The board has changed a lot. But we have always played by the rules.

A chess expert can look at a board and tell whether the current configuration was arrived at legitimately. He might say, “Whatever you guys have been playing, it isn’t chess. You can’t keep playing without the King!”

A Reform chess player may respond, “Men made up these rules and men can change them. The King is only a human construct anyway. I don’t need Him.”

A feminist chess player might add, “Men made up these rules, and women can change them. The old ones are too patriarchal. Nowadays we know that a Queen can do anything a King can do.”

The chess grandmaster tells them both that if they want to tamper with the rules of the game, they can play however they like, but they can’t call it chess. They both turn on him in fury and say, “We don’t see you keeping all the white pieces on your side of the board! Your board has changed since the start of the game! You make all these changes and then you criticize us!?”


Read the article.