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      The Eye of the Storm
      by Batya Medad
      A Unique Perspective by Batya Medad of Shiloh
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      Batya Medad made aliya from New York to Israel in 1970 and has been living in Shiloh since 1981. Recently she began organizing women's visits to Tel Shiloh for Psalms and prayers. (For more information, please email her.)  Batya is a newspaper and magazine columnist, a veteran jblogger and recently stopped EFL teaching.  She's also a wife, mother, grandmother, photographer and HolyLand hitchhiker, always seeing things from her own very unique perspective. For more of Batya's writings and photos, check out:

      Shiloh Musings

      And:

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      Iyar 13, 5769, 5/7/2009

      "Light Unto The Nations"


      People love to rationalize that we must adhere to all sorts of "moral standards," because they claim that we're supposed to be a "Light Unto The Nations."

      If so, do it properly. Be a "sun" and not a "moon." Israeli politicians like Israel's President and veteran politician Shimon Peres haven't a clue as to what the true Jewish Light is. You can see/hear it in his fawning attitude towards the United States. He's speaking like a moon, not a sun with its own light source.

      If we acted like a sun, following Judaism, rather than fad of the day philosophies and the world's public opinion, we'd be a genuine light to the nations.

      "Light" in this context is leadership, and leadership means that we use our needs and sources to make decisions. We shouldn't look for anybody's approval but G-d's.

      Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook, ZaTzaL, used light as his main image in Orot Hakodesh, Holy Lights.
      IF YOU DESIRE

      If you desire, human being, look at the light of God's Presence in everything.
      Look at the Eden of spiritual life, at how it blazes into each corner and crevice of life, spiritual and of this world, right before your eyes of flesh and your eyes of soul.
      Gaze at the wonders of creation, at their divine life-not like some dim phenomenon that is placed before your eyes from afar.But know the reality in which you live.
      Know yourself and your world.Know the thoughts of your heart, and of all who speak and think.
      Find the source of life inside you, higher than you, around you. [Find] the beautiful ones alive in this generation in whose midst you are immersed.
      The love within you: lift it up to its mighty root, to its beauty of Eden.
      Send it spreading out to the entire flood of the soul of the Life of worlds, Whose light is reduced only by incapable human expression.
      Gaze at the lights, at what they contain.
      Do not let the Names, phrases and letters swallow up your soul.
      They have been given over to you.
      You have not been given over to them.Rise up.
      Rise up, for you have the power.
      You have wings of the spirit, wings of powerful eagles.
      Do not deny them, or they will deny you.
      Seek them, and you will find them instantly.
      Orot Hakodesh I, pp. 83-84
      The "light" of Judaism, as described by HaRav Kook is not the light the world is seeing from us today.