Is there anything more ridiculous than the password situation these days? I am afraid that soon I will have to voice a password in order to make a bracha or I will choke!
What is left that we can easily do without inserting a password? Then, chances are that you will be told that the password you are using is invalid. Try to insert a new password and then find out that what you are entering was the password that you used three years ago and you are not allowed to repeat passwords. Don’t forget to answer the security questions accurately or you will be locked out for the next 10 months. What was the street that you lived on when you were 4 years old and what was your favorite food in 2002?
I am truly sick of the whole thing. Please, world, may we sign a pledge that we will be willing to enter different sites without our password?
It is good to joke around every once in a while, even though the above subject is not very funny. Nowadays I find it necessary to let go slightly in order to maintain some sense of balance with the news of what is going on in our beloved homeland. I look at my grandchildren and wonder how at the age of 3 they would be able to manage without their parents in a dark tunnel. Forget the dark tunnel, can you see any of our young children withstanding what is going on by themselves? Let alone what it would be like even if they were with a parent?
Tonight I ventured to turn on the news and heard a Palestinian man tell a reporter that “they destroyed our house and we have nowhere to go.” Am I supposed to feel sorry for him after Hamas’ unspeakable brutality towards innocent Israelis? Are we supposed to feel any type of sympathy for the women and girls released from Israeli prisons in the prisoner swap? Has anyone seen their list of crimes? The young, “innocent” girl who was released recently had tried to stab several people in Israel. Now, that is not really a crime, is it? She said that it was hard for her to leave prison because she left behind her “prison sisters.” I think she should have told the guards that she chose to stay. No one forced her to leave.
As I write this column today I see that against the agreement, which obviously is only one-sided, children were released without their mothers. Imagine the agony of the mother who doesn’t know if she will live to see her children again, but encourages them to go knowing how much better off they will be.
Each day I make a point of calling a different friend in Israel. Everyone has the same story. This one’s son is up North, another has one child up North and another in the South. I just heard of a soldier hiding in a tree in case he has to shoot when infiltrators appear. His perch is so high up that they were not able to carry food up, and at night the army doesn’t have tents for them so they are sleeping on benches. (This man is 50.)
I wish that I was physically able to go in and do something. I do not see myself picking fruit in the South, and as my children have said to me, “Ma, if the siren goes off as you are picking olives and you have to get down on the ground, who will pick you up?” Of course, they are insinuating that I would not be able to get up on my own. It is one thing for me to say it but terribly disrespectful when your own children tell you!
Every friend I speak with in Israel is either watching their grandchildren, cooking meals, helping women whose husbands are on the front lines or making tzitzit. I still think everyone should make the effort to be there and do whatever they can. Most important is to boost the morale of the Israeli population who are amazed at the numbers of Americans who are coming to show their support, as well as to boost the economy by buying as much as they can while there. Speak to friends who have returned from their Thanksgiving visits. Ask them if they felt proud of themselves and whether or not many of the fears they had were unfounded. We all need to go. Israel needs us and we need it for ourselves. Each week I feel the need to remind everyone that the complacency we feel living in our gilded ghettos is temporary. Just this week how many text messages are going around about a planned march of Palestinian students who are attending Teaneck High School?
Let us at least begin to think of rebuilding our lives in Israel, because every one of those chayalim, hostages and citizens is waiting for us to join them.
Nina Glick can be reached at [email protected].
