He made it for us to live on!

Ever wonder why all these things are happening to us as we grow from a baby to           small child, adult?  Get married, have children, raise children. In the middle of this all there is diseases, wars, discontent within society, riots, people being hurt. There are reasons for all these things. Then watch your children grow and make their own mistakes which look pretty close to what we also did. All things in our growing up are to prepare us for our life, change us for the good,  G-d is in control and organizes it all. There is a plan for all of us.  From birth to adulthood. Then what?  We age, get older, then eventually pass to the next world. The world to come.                                                                                                              In this world, are things here a manifestation of the spiritual world?  interesting question….

When we study the Torah we get closer to G-d.

G-d  does only good for all He has made.  Man and animal, All things, whether we see them good to us or bad to us are still for our own good.

With all that is going on in our politics, the fight within the “right” and from the “left” fight for the redemption of Jewish people and the fight for their land, the fight from the “left” is coming. Here’s a story Rabbis:

Rabbinic Expert: First Super Blood Moon of the Year Sign of Earthquakes, Governments Will Fall
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz December 30, 2018 , 2:31 pm
The sun shall turn into darkness And the moon into blood.” Joel 3:4 (The Israel Bible™)

Blood moon. (Credit: Nabarun/Wikimedia Commons)
On the evening of January 21, as the holiday of Tu B’shvat begins, a lunar eclipse will pass over the Washington D.C., just as the President will reach the halfway point of his term in office. The eclipse will be a super blood moon, described in Jewish sources as having powerful significance.
On the Gregorian Calendar:
The lunar eclipse will be visible in its entirety from North and South America, as well as portions of western Europe and northwest Africa, on the evening of Sunday, January 20 and in the early morning hours of Monday, January 21. The evening of the eclipse will be a supermoon when the moon is at its perigee, the point in its month-long elliptical orbit that brings it closest to Earth. At that time, the moon appears up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than at its apogee, its furthest point from Earth.
This will not only be the first lunar eclipse of 2019 but also the year’s first supermoon. At that time, the proper conditions will exist to create a blood moon in which the moon has a distinctly reddish tint. This will be the last total lunar eclipse until May 26, 2021.
On the Political Calendar:
The date also marks the halfway point of Donald Trump’s presidency, coming exactly two years after he was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. It should be noted that Trump was born on the night of June 14, 1946, within fifteen minutes of a total lunar eclipse and 700 days before the state of Israel was established. Trump’s lucky sevens did not end there. When he was sworn in as President on January 20, 2017, he was 70-years-old, seven months and seven days.
On the Jewish Calendar:
The holiday of Tu B’shvat, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, begins at sundown on the same day. Known as the new year of the trees, Tu B’Shvat is one of four “New Years” mentioned in the Mishnah (the oral law).
Rabbi Mordechai Genut discussed the lunar eclipse in his book Davar B’ito, a guide to the calendar based on esoteric Jewish sources.
“A lunar eclipse in the month of Shevat is a sign of the rise of the aspect of din (judgment) in the world,” Rabbi Genut told Breaking Israel News. “This eclipse will rule over the Americas but for Israel, it will bring chesed (loving-kindness).”
Rabbi Genut described specifically how this judgment will be expressed.
Judgement Expressed
“There will be a marked increase in earthquakes and volcanoes, even more than we have seen in the past year,” Rabbi Genuth said. “Just as the eclipse is a conflict between the sun and the moon to rule over the heavens, there will be a similar conflict on earth. This will begin a time when governments are in balance. Some governments that seem powerful right now will fall and others will rise in their place.”
Rabbi Genut bases this on a verse in Isaiah.
In that day, Hashem will punish The host of heaven in heaven And the kings of the earth on earth. Isaiah 24:21
Jewish Interpretation of Solar and Lunar Eclipses:
Judaism has a tradition of interpreting solar and lunar eclipses. In its discussion of eclipses, the Talmud (Sukkot 29a) specifically described solar eclipses as being a bad omen for the nations. Indeed, the complete solar eclipse that transversed the continental United States in August 2018 ushered in the most devastating hurricane season in US history.

The same source in the Talmud specifies that lunar eclipses are a bad omen for Israel since Israel is spiritually represented by the moon and the Hebrew calendar is figured by the lunar cycles. If during the course of the lunar eclipse the moon appears red, as the upcoming eclipse will be, the Talmud states that this is an omen that great wars will come to the world.

At the end of this section describing the omens contained within eclipses, the Talmud states a disclaimer: “When Israel does the will of God, they have nothing to fear from all of this,” citing the Prophet Jeremiah as a source.
Thus said Hashem: Do not learn to go the way of the nations, And do not be dismayed by portents in the sky; Let the nations be dismayed by them! Jeremiah 10:2
Rabbi Yosef Berger applied this teaching in the Talmud to the current geopolitical situation.
“It’s not that the bad judgment symbolized by the lunar eclipse just disappears,” Rabbi Berger told Breaking Israel News. “It is merely averted to our enemies. In this case, the wars and evil will fall on our enemies. By choosing to be our enemies, the Arab nations have brought the evil that might have befallen Israel upon themselves.”
“This is especially true when the lunar eclipse falls on Tu B’Shvat, a day when only good can happen to Israel.”

Devarim, Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22
Lands and their owners
by Avraham ben Yaakov
Structure of the book of Deuteronomy
The entire book of Deuteronomy consists of Moses’ discourses to the people of Israel in the concluding weeks of his life. The people were encamped in the Plains of Moab, poised to enter their ancestral land. The earlier sections of the book (especially from Deuteronomy 3:23-11:25) mainly review the basic foundations of faith, belief, love and fear of God, awareness of the Exodus and Sinaitic Covenant upon which Israel’s global mission is based. The central sections (Deut. 11:26-26:15) give a detailed exposition of the laws that are to rule all aspects of their lives, including the Temple, judiciary, government, marriage, divorce, domestic, business and social life. The closing discourses (from Deut. 26:16 until the end of the book) give Moses’ final reproof to the people and his warnings and blessings before his death.
An Historical Excursus
In the present opening portion of the book of Deuteronomy, which is called by the same Hebrew name as the whole book – DEVARIM – Moses prefaces these final discourses with an extensive historical excursus reviewing some key aspects of Israel’s journey through the wilderness to their Land, paying special attention to their encounters and relations with the peoples who dwelled in the neighboring territories, especially Edom (descendants of Isaac’s son Esau), Moab and Ammon (descendants of Abraham’s nephew, Lot; Deuteronomy 2:2-23).
God forbade Israel to provoke Edom: “For I will not give you of their land, not so much as for the sole of the foot to tread upon; because I have given Mount Seir to Esau for a possession” (Deut. 2:5). The same applied to Moab: “For I will not give you of their land as an inheritance, for I have given Ar to the children of Lot for a possession” (ibid. v. 9). The same also applied to Ammon: “For I will not give you from the land of the children of Ammon for an inheritance, for I have given it to the children of Lot as an inheritance” (ibid. v. 19).
In the course of this section the Torah mentions a variety of indigenous peoples that had previously inhabited those territories (Deut. chapter 2 vv. 10-12 & 20-23), noting how Children of Esau and the Children of Moab usurped and destroyed the original dwellers in their respective lands (vv. 12 & 22). They were able to do so because “God destroyed them before them and they succeeded them and dwelt in their stead” (v. 21).
“The Earth is the Lord’s” (Psalms 24:1)
The Torah teaches us that the various peoples of the world own and dwell in their lands – or may be dispossessed from them – only because “the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, He separated the children of men, He set the borders of the peoples.” (Deuteronomy 32:8).
The Five Books of Moses must indeed be seen as the oldest deed of land ownership in the world. God gave the Land of Israel to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants for ever. The Torah defines the exact boundaries of this (Genesis 15:18-21 & Numbers 34:1-12), stipulating that the essential condition for Israel’s ownership is observance of God’s commandments (Deuteronomy 11:13-17 etc.).
It is the very height of irony that today, practically all the nations of the world as represented in the United Nations and other international organizations are engaged in a concerted campaign contesting the legitimacy of the Jewish national homeland in Israel’s ancestral territories. However, this is not a new phenomenon. Nearly a thousand years ago, Rashi, prince of the Torah commentators (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki 1040-1105), opened his commentary on Genesis by explaining that the Torah itself is the answer to this challenge:
“‘He has declared to His people the power of His works, in giving them the heritage of the nations’ (Psalms 111:6). For if the nations of the world say to Israel, ‘You are robbers because you conquered the lands of the seven (Canaanite) nations’, they say to them: ‘All the earth belongs to the Holy One blessed-be-He; He created it and gave it to whoever was fit in His eyes; through His favor He gave it to them and through His favor He took it from them and gave it to us'” (Rashi on Genesis 1:1).
Conquests and occupations
Practically the whole of human history is the story of the occupation of lands by various ethnic groups and their subsequent conquest and occupation by other groups.
When the Children of Noah first began to spread in all directions across the world, they consisted of tiny family groups and clans that discovered vast expanses of lands of every kind ready for them to take, conquer from nature and develop. In the case of ownerless land and the resources it contains, Torah law explicitly grants ownership to the first comer (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Property Rights and Gifts 1:1).
As populations grew and developed in different ways, various groups were frequently tempted to try to improve their lives by migrating to better territories, which they often conquered from their previous inhabitants, whom they either drove out or enslaved. The Bible itself records some of the history of such conquests, such as those of the Edomites and Moabites recounted in our present portion of DEVARIM (see above). The Book of Kings, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, Esther etc. trace the rise and fall of the great ancient “world” empires of Assyria, Babylon, the Medes and Persians, under which enormous tracts of lands were seized from their native inhabitants, who were often forcibly deported. The Persian Empire was defeated by Alexander the Great, and the Greek Empire was then superseded by the Roman Empire.
In the “Dark Ages” various different “barbarians” spread in many directions. Britain was conquered by the Angles and Saxons, and then by the Normans. The last five hundred and more years since the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus witnessed unparalleled conquests of territories throughout the world by European powers such as Britain, Holland, France, Italy and Spain. It was normal practice for the colonial powers to plunder the lands and resources they conquered and either enslave the indigenous peoples or consign them to lives of inferiority, disenfranchisement and poverty.
The European colonial empires have officially been dismantled, yet Britain continues to occupy Northern Ireland and also regards the far-off Falkland Islands as its territory. British forces are currently operating side by side with American and other NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though these countries are thousands of miles from their own countries. Turkey occupies large parts of Kurdistan even though the Turks and Kurds are ethnically different. China occupies Tibet even though the Tibetans are a different people. Russia occupies parts of Chechnya and Georgia, Spain and France occupy the Basque country, the United States of America occupies the lands of the indigenous American Indians.
Legitimate business
Our portion of DEVARIM teaches that while Israel were authorized to conquer the territories that God promised to the patriarchs, they were forbidden to conquer the land of the Edomites since this was not part of God’s gift. On the contrary, they were explicitly commanded to conduct themselves towards them in a civil manner, buying any food supplies they needed on their way, including even the basic necessity of water, for which they were to pay ready money (Deuteronomy 2:6).
From this we learn that even where the national aspirations of one nation are different from those of another, they must not regard one another as objects for conquest and plunder. On the contrary, they must relate to one another peacefully, buying or selling in order to benefit one another.

Another Rabbi:

Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi
There are six mitzvos that you can perform every waking second of your life.
1. Anochi Hashem Elokecha – To believe that there is a Hashem who made the world and rules the world. That He was, is, and will be forever.
2. Lo Yihiyeh Licha Elohim Acheirim Al Panai – There is no other source of power other than Hashem. Nor has he delegated power to any other source. Everything is only with His will.
3. Shema Yisroel Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad – He is one and has no partner and never did.
4. V’Ahavta Eis Hashem Elokecha – To love Hashem by thinking about all that he does for us.
5. Es hashem Elokecha Tira – To be awed (afraid) of Hashem and not to violate His mitzvos even when no human can see.
6. V’Lo Sasuru Acharei L’Vavchem – Not to be led by our hearts to thoughts opposite from the views of the Torah (Apikurses), nor to be led by our eyes after the pleasures of the world.
(revach)

Another Rabbi:

EZEKIEL CHAPTER 3
We read at the end of the previous chapter how a hand spread forth a scroll before Ezekiel, “.and it was written inside and outside, and in it was written lamentations and mourning and woe” (Ez. 2:10). Targum (ad loc.) renders: “.And written in it was what happened from the beginning and what is destined to happen in the end, and in it was written that if the House of Israel transgress the Torah, the nations shall rule over them, but if they practice the Torah, lamentations, mourning and woe shall depart from them.”
Our present chapter opens with God’s command to Ezekiel to “eat this scroll” – to imbibe and internalize its message of rebuke so as to ready himself for his mission to the House of Israel.
In vv 4-10 God fortifies Ezekiel in preparation for his mission, warning him that whereas any other people would heed God’s rebukes, Israel are brazen and hard-hearted – but reassuring him that God has made him even stronger than them, like the slender Shamir worm, which has the power to eat through stone (v 9).
Following the vision of the Chariot with which Ezekiel opened (Ez. 1:1ff) and his appointment as prophet (2:1-3:10), God now tells him in verse 11 of our present chapter to return to the main body of exiles in Babylon from which he had become separated when he began to prophecy by the river Kvar.
“Then a spirit took me up and I heard behind me a voice of great rushing, saying, Blessed be the glory of HaShem from His place” (v 12). In the words of Rashi (ad loc.), “After He completed giving His instructions, He commanded the wind to carry him to the place where the exiles were.” Metzudas David (ad loc.) explains: “It is as if He was saying to the prophet, Do not think that now that the Shechinah is leaving its place in the Temple Holy of Holies the Glory of HaShem will not be blessed and praised as it was when it was in its place in the Holy of Holies. For even though it will have left its place, He is still blessed and praised” – i.e. His true glory transcends any possible earthly revelation of it, since nobody can know His place (cf. Chagigah 13b). The phrase “Blessed be the glory. from His place” is the second response in the KEDUSHAH (Sanctification) recited by the prayer leader and congregation as the high point of the communal repetition of the daily morning and afternoon AMIDAH and Shabbos and festival Mussaf prayers immediately following the joint response of “Holy! Holy! Holy!…” (Isaiah 6:3). The verse here in Ezekiel 3:12 is also recited in KEDUSHAH D’SIDRA (the prayer “Uva LeTziyon.”) after the daily morning Amidah and at Minchah on Shabbos and festivals and on Saturday nights.
Ezekiel could still hear the awesome sound of the wings of the Chayos and the noise of the Ophanim as the spirit carried him away from the “place” of his vision back to the exiles in Babylon (vv 13-14).
“Then I came to the exiles in Tel Aviv.” (v 15). A TEL is a hill or mound, while AVIV refers to ripe barley, which in Israel is the sign of SPRING (Ex. 9:31 & 13:4 etc.). It is indeed after the name of the Jewish place of exile in Babylon mentioned in our present verse that the modern Israeli city of Tel Aviv was named when it was founded in 1909 to serve as a residential suburb of the ancient port city of Yafo ( Jaffa ). The name had been used by the author Nachum Sokolow as the title of his Hebrew translation of Theodore Herzel’s ” Old New Land ” to symbolize the spring-like rebirth of a new state on the mound remaining from a much earlier state.
Ezekiel spent seven days in a state of total shock following his return from the exalted world of prophetic vision to the bustling center of the Babylonian exiles from Judah , until God spoke to him again with further teaching about the nature of his mission (vv 15-16). The prophet was obliged to address both the wicked and the righteous. He was to warn the wicked to turn from their evil ways, and he was to warn the righteous not to allow themselves to lapse. If the prophet failed to rebuke them he would bear responsibility for their evil deeds and lapses, but as long as he discharged his duty he would be “clean” and they alone would bear the consequences of their evil.
“And when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, I will lay a stumbling block before him and he will die.” (v 20). “If the righteous man makes the mistake of thinking that on account of his having been righteous for a long time God will forgive him for the evil he now commits, I will prepare a stumbling block for him” (Metzudas David ad loc.). “The stumbling block will be that he will succeed in all his affairs in this world, because he will eat in this world the fruits of the righteousness he was intended to eat in the world to come, ‘and his righteousness that he did will not be remembered’ i.e. in the world to come” (RaDaK ad loc.).
“And He said to me, Arise, go out to the plain (BIK’AH).” (v 22). “He instructed him to go out to the plain where He showed him the Glory as He had showed him by the River Kvar, for the plain was a place of greater purity than Tel Aviv, which was a human habitation. He sent him this vision time after time in order to deepen his understanding of God’s providence and His way of governing the creation. Moreover that plain (BIK’AH) was the same plain in which the original Tower of Babylon had been built (Gen. 11:2), and He began showing him His providence over His creatures when he mixed up their language and thwarted their intention” (RaDaK on v 22).
In the plain God gave Ezekiel further instructions and a series of prophecies that are contained in the coming chapters (chs 4-7). From now on the prophet was to shut himself up in his house as if imprisoned and not to speak to the people except when God opened his mouth in prophecy, for the people would not listen to him. The reason was – in the words of the repeated refrain (ch 2 vv 5, 6 & 7; ch 3 vv 26 & 27) – “FOR THEY ARE A REBELLIOUS HOUSE”.
CHAPTER 4
SIGNS AND SYMBOLS
At various junctures, certain prophets were instructed to carry out symbolic actions as a way of vividly dramatizing their message. In the present chapter Ezekiel (still in the “plain” receiving the series of prophecies that began in v 23 of the previous chapter) is given three sets of instructions.
1: THE BRICK (vv 1-3)
Ezekiel was to take a large building block and carve on it a representation of the city of Jerusalem , which he was to surround with siege towers, siege mounds, army camps and battering rams symbolizing the coming Babylonian assault. “And take for yourself an iron pan and set it as a wall of iron between you and the city” (v 3) – “From the day the Holy Temple was destroyed, a wall of iron stands between Israel and their Father in heaven, as it says, ‘Take for yourself an iron pan.'” (Berachos 32b).
2: LYING ON HIS SIDE (vv 4-8)
The “brick” would be positioned where the prophet could gaze upon it before him (see v 7) while lying immobilized on one side for extended periods. “Lying on one side for a long time without being able to turn onto the other side is extremely hard” (RaDaK on v 4). Rashi explains that Ezekiel was to endure this pain and suffering for a specific number of days corresponding to the number of years that Israel had vexed God with their defiance, “and you will atone for their sins since the punishments I have said I will bring upon them are harsh in your eyes. I have made it easier for you to bear the pain I have suffered for the total number of years they have sinned before Me by turning them into the corresponding number of days” (Rashi on vv 4-5). “Through this pain the sins of Israel would be atoned without their being utterly destroyed on account of their sins” (Metzudas David on v 4). “When a king of flesh and blood wants to punish a rebellious province, if he is cruel he kills them all. If he is kind, he kills half of them. But if he is overflowing with kindness, he chastises their leaders. Similarly the Holy One blessed be He chastised Ezekiel in order to cleanse Israel of their sins” (Sanhedrin 39a).
The prophet was to lie on his left side to atone for the sins of the House of Israel – the Ten Tribes – whose kingdom was centered to the “left” (=North) of Judah (see Ezekiel 16:46; Metzudas David on v 4). Rashi (on v 5) gives an exact account of how all the years in which Israel sinned from the period of the first Judges until the exile of the Ten Tribes by Sennacherib add up to a total of 390. Likewise in his comment on v 6, Rashi gives an account of the 40 years in which Judah sinned from the time of the exile of the Ten Tribes until the year of Ezekiel’s present prophecy five years after the exile of King Yeho-yachin (see Ez. 1:2) i.e. in the fifth year of King Tzedekiah.
“Behold, I will lay cords upon you” (v 8): “You shall feel the stringency of My decree of instructions as if you were bound by thick ropes so that you are incapable of turning from side to side” (Rashi ad loc.).
3: FAMINE RATIONS (vv 9-17)
“And take for yourself wheat and barley etc.” (v 9). During these extended periods of lying on one side, Ezekiel was to eat in the same way as people facing famine under siege. Barley is normally animal feed: people only make bread of wheat mixed with inferior grains when supplies are scarce, and they then permit themselves only minimal rations for fear of being left with nothing (vv 9-11). The most repulsive aspect of the prophet’s diet was that the fuel for baking his crude loaves would be dried human excrement (v 12). This would symbolize how “the children of Israel will eat their bread unclean among the nations to which I shall drive them” (v 13). This decree so appalled Ezekiel – a priest who had eaten only kosher, ritually pure food from his youth – that he cried out bitterly in horror (v 14): “I have never eaten an animal that died of itself or was torn by beasts.” – “not even a dying animal that was slaughtered hurriedly to permit it consumption”; “.nor did loathsome meat ever enter my mouth” – “not even from an animal over which a sage had to issue a ruling because of a question over its fitness for consumption. not even an animal from which the priestly portions had not been duly separated” (Talmud Chullin 37b).
Because of Ezekiel’s plea for mercy, God softened the decree, permitting him to use animal droppings as fuel to bake his bread instead of human excrement. Even so, it was impossible to avert the coming famine in Jerusalem in which the people would waste away because of their sins (v 17).
May HaShem turn our hearts to Him and bring us to complete TESHUVAH! Amen!