Arutz Sheva has provided links to some moving videos of pictures and movies from Gush Katif:

• Zeh Haya Beiti – This was my house – Pictures set to song (go here for the words). (If you are a man and you hold that kol isha on recordings where you cannot see the woman are forbidden, do not watch). Produced by Shmuel Benamu
• Expulsion from Nezer Hazani – Video of expulsion set to very moving group singing. Produced by Avi Abelow
• Video from Israeli Television. All in hebrew, 28 minutes long. Features video fo destruction of homes, interviews with different participants. Starting at 11 minutes into the video, they show the prayers and singing on hundreds of girls in the Beit Knesset of Nevei Dekalim, minutes before its destruction. I started watching this while I was taking a break at work. I cannot continue because I will not be able to watch all of it without crying. Rav Aviner is in the shul – he says the beracha of Dayan Emet and tears keriyah. Very very powerful footage. This is followed by the forced evacuation of the beit knesset (11-18 minutes into the video).

At one point in the video from Israeli television, a reporter asks one of the former residents of a destroyed community: “What was that street called”?

He responded: “Here the streets did not have names. Over there lived the Kobi family. In cities the streets have names of dead people. Here, when there was life, we did not call the steets by names. Now longer”.

Watch and think about it. Maybe it will help you have better kavana in the upcoming weeks. Just don’t claim ignorance of what happened.

There are alot of things wrong about Israel. They forcibly removed thousands of residents (many of whom remain homeless) from thriving communities for political reasons, in order to give land to our emenies for nothing. But living in the US, it is hard to feel a day to day connection to the Jewish people. I can feel it for five minutes when watching these videos, but then the video ends, and we go back to our day to day lives and think about the real problems that we have, like how are we going to survive without pareve Duncan Hines brownies. I don’t know about you, but that is not the way that we are suppossed to be living our lives. Time to walk the walk (since I have been talking the talk for a while). (96 DAYS TO GO!!!!!!!)

What is your excuse?

(I didn’t plan for this to be such a long post. It just kind of happened. Sorry for the rambling).