The Blog - Chabad of Thousand Oaks

See the potential!

Tuesday, December 23, 2008 - 12:02 PM

According to Jewish law, a Kosher menorah needs to contain eight candle-holders. Eight potentials for light. If one is lighting on Day 3, it is irrelevant that he does not need the remaining five holders. They have to be there.

The deeper reason: The ultimate way to maximize growth and potential is to fully act on one moment at a time, while looking ahead to future growth and potential.

So that as we celebrate each accomplishment, we can look to the future and know that there is more!

Operation Thunderbolt

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 4:54 PM

Yesterday, we held a movie night at the Thousand Oaks Library, where we watched Operation Thunderbolt on a big screen. A big thanks to Bonnie Levine, who coordinated this event! As always, she thought of everything-from hot chocolate to fresh popcorn.

Operation Entebbe was a counter-terrorism hostage-rescue mission carried out by the Israeli Defense Forces at Entebbe Airport in Uganda on the night of July 3rd and early morning of July 4th, 1976. In the wake of the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 and the hijackers' threats to kill the hostages if their prisoner release demands were not met, a plan was drawn up to airlift the hostages to safety. These plans took into account the likelihood of armed resistance from Ugandan military troops.

I wanted to share three powerful images from this movie that will remain with me for a long time:

Simply because they were Jews
When the hostages were pushed off the plane and into the Ugandan airport, the terrorists identified all the Jewish passengers by checking everyone's passports. They then proceeded to call each Jew by name and ordered them to remove themselves from the group and go into an adjoining room, while the remaining hostages were released.

Young people, old people, a bearded man with a kippah, a vulnerable elderly woman, a young frightened child, were all shoved into this room of isolation. Why? Not because they were "Orthodox", or "Conservative", "practicing", or "non-practicing." Because they were, simply, Jews. Because nothing else mattered. A few tried to convince them otherwise-that their name sounded Jewish, but they weren't...that they weren't Israeli citizens...But it all remained irrelevant. They were despised before the terrorists laid eyes on them. Not because of anything they did. But because of who they were.

I dream that all Jews can embrace and accept each other with the intense understanding that we are all the same. Not because we are "Orthodox", or "Conservative", "practicing", or "non-practicing." Because we are, simply, Jews. Because nothing else matters. Not how we "practice", and not where our citizenship lies. It's all irrelevent. We can love each other before we even lay eyes on each other. Not because of anything we do. Simply because of who we are.

Light of goodness shines out in the midst of the darkness of evil
Friday evening arrived, and the hostages could see no end in sight...Yet they had the light of the Shabbat candles. As the night covered them in darkness, the Jews gathered together and lit two flames, yet one more insistent, fiery symbol in our long, painful history of an unrelenting faith in G-d in the most horrific of circumstances.

Tears of joy, tears of grief
When the hostages were saved by the brave and swift Israeli soldiers, they all returned back to Israel on the army aircraft. As the planes landed, hundreds of people reached to embrace their loved ones. And, as many hostages and soldiers ran forward, one soldier and three hostages remained, forever still.

Friends, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, all shared the same ground, the same moment, yet as some hearts swelled, others shattered. Life is full of opposites. Our expectations are met, our expectations go unfulfilled. Relationships bring us joy, relationships bring us pain. An eldery man dies, a baby is born. But to see the realization of life and death, joy and grief, all at once is a scene I will not soon forget.

A letter to Rivka Holtzberg

Friday, December 5, 2008 - 2:18 PM

Dear Rivka,

One week ago, I did not know you, and you did not know me. Now, I am searching your beautiful face in pictures, reading about you everywhere, haunted that a Jewish sister was murdered because of who she was, and the goodness she did: A Jew, reaching out to fellow Jews, offering them spiritual and physical sustenance in the warmth of your home. And perhaps, as your soul looks down from heaven, you know me and many others in a way you did not know before, as we grieve over your tragic, untimely departure from this world, and for your little orphaned son, Moishele.

I learned about the shining legacy you gave him, imparting your values through daily existence. In the way you spiritually and physically strengthened his little being daily, with his favorite Kosher foods. In the way you expanded his family daily, including Jews from all walks of life, looking to connect. In the way you lit the candles every Friday evening, ushering into your home the peaceful glow of Shabbat. In the way you sang the Shema prayer every night when you lovingly tucked him into bed. Your primal love as a mother, the basic necessities in a child's day, and your Jewish values, were not compartmentalized parts. You infused your love and your tending with these values, creating a loving, spiritual whole. So that when you tragically left him after two short years, there was already a healthy seed of identity planted deep into Moishele's little mind and heart that will continue to grow as his loving family relatives will nourish it, fully immortalizing your incredible, meaningful work.

You have joined the immortalized millions of dedicated Jewish mothers, many who did not know they would be tragically leaving their children so abruptly. And yet, from the pogroms of Poland to the ashes of Auschwitz, the values that they lived with their children transcended the destruction of their bodies, living on and on for generations and generations, decades and centuries of years later-in the young mothers that are still making Shabbat meals, still singing the Shema to their little ones...In the parents that are still infusing their natural love for their children with Jewish ideals.

The largeness of your death, and the life in little Moishele's soulful eyes begs me to ask myself: How am I expressing my values as a daily existence? What are we proudly, definitively, giving our children, beyond their inborn eyes, lips, distinct laughs that resemble our own-that will fade with every mingling of new genes and generations? Beyond their skills and schooling? With every new era, much of these academics and skills will change, or perhaps become obsolete with the winds of time. Are we giving them the eternal values that give meaning to their lives, and hold them during their sorrows?

In educating and involving ourselves in Judaism, and living it with our children, who will then live it with our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren, and all the nameless souls that will be, we, too, are giving our children a great gift. We, too, are part of this long, immortal chain.

Dear great-grandmothers, grandmothers, and mothers.

Dear Rivka.

We will live what you died for.

With an aching but hopeful heart,
Your fellow Jewish sister and mother