An Instant In An Eternity

After spending a month considering the approach of the Jewish New Year, the topic returns and returns in little ways. Rosh Hashanah is a time to remember. There are two reasons we do this. One so that we can look back at the good, the bad, the pain, the triumph, the mistakes, and the achievements of the past year. If we don't look back and evaluate, how can we build a plan to move forward? Two, it is to return farther back to our goals, hopes, and dreams of the previous year. We are to look at the larger picture of our life, our community, our country, our world and take stock. What are we trying to do on the larger, meta-macro level? What did we do and what remains to be done? It's a bit awkward to think about the start of the New Year as a time to be looking back. The secular New Year is a time to make resolutions and to plan for the future. Judaism teaches us that we can't move forward without the past. We must learn from our past, we must heal our past wrongs, we mu...

After quite a bit of time I finished reading a fascinating, thorough, and comprehensive history of pollution and environmental issues in Israel. Pollution in a Promised Land by Alon Tal is well worth the read if you can put your hands on the book - it's out of print, but of course you can grab a used copy on Amazon. Or come for a visit and borrow my copy! During the course of my reading I was struck often by so many amazing historical facts and anecdotes. Towards the end, which correlates to modern times, two quotes jumped out at me leaving behind significant impact to make me dog-ear the page to remember to return to the note (it was on Shabbat, so no other option to record it!) The first is in relation to efforts to build public or private projects, or some that are a bit of both, to convert public lands into developed areas. Initially the case was going in favor of the city officials and developers who wanted to build a marina in Herzliyah, an upscale, well-to do community ...