What Makes People Tick?

Today is the second day of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah (חנוכה), also known as the Feast of Lights. Hanukkah celebrates that once upon a time over 2000 years ago, a miracle happened in Jerusalem. Read all about the story of Hanukkah on Chabad's website, here: What is Hanukkah, from Chabad.org . Chabad writes: In the second century BCE, the Holy Land was ruled by the Seleucids (Syrian-Greeks), who tried to force the people of Israel to accept Greek culture and beliefs instead of mitzvah observance and belief in G ‑ d. Against all odds, a small band of faithful but poorly armed Jews, led by Judah the Maccabee, defeated one of the mightiest armies on earth, drove the Greeks from the land, reclaimed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and rededicated it to the service of G ‑ d. When they sought to light the Temple's Menorah (the seven-branched candelabrum), they found only a single cruse of olive oil that had escaped contamination by the Greeks. Miraculously, they lit the menorah and th...

 About 11 years ago, I penned " A Two-State Solution with a Twist - My approach to the problems facing Israel and Palestine today "  full of hope and idealism. Af ter October 7th 2023 and the long, drawn-out war in Gaza that followed those horrific attacks, a peaceful so lution seems further away than ever. Ever the optimist, I find myself revisiting my thoughts on the topic. Today, I'm finishing the post from 2014 with some edits and some newer thoughts mixed in. M any years have passed since 1948 and whether one likes it or not (I'm looking at you, Hamas !), the State of Israel is an established fact. The only way to remove the State of Israel is to wipe every last bit of it off the map entirely, which would equate to the mass genocide of millions of innocent people. Seeing the world already tried that 'solution' some seventy-odd years ago, let's try building bridges this time instead of fences. Just as the State of Israel is an established fact , so...

There's a difference between the person who writes this blog, and the person I am when not writing this blog. In my personal life, I'm quiet, someone who doesn't like attention. There are two reasons for that: One: I often feel like people just don't get me. Being 'the outsider' is just easier. No strained interactions. No having to try to fit in. Two: When it comes to stuff I am passionate about, like sociology, psychology, politics and religion, my opinion differs from many around me. I am pro-Israel.  Something that doesn't seem very popular or mainstream. Especially since October 7th. Being pro-Israel, to me... That doesn't mean that I support, or agree with, every decision the Israeli government makes. Far from it. But do I support Israel's right to exist? Yes. Do I support Israel's right to defend itself? Yes. Do I feel that the world is against Israel? Also: Yes. On the 7th of October 2023, a large number of rather angry men entered towns ...

 Is there one great truth? One thing, or several things, that connect all religions? Is there one great universal truth? If there is... What is the great universal truth?  Certainly there are themes that seem universal, that come back in many different creeds and many different religions. But really, is there one universal truth that we can glean from the world's religions and spiritual systems? Trust and believe in something greater than yourself. Be kind to the needy. Be kind to the poor. Be kind to the orphans. Be kind to widows. Love your neighbour as yourself. Treat others as you'd want to be treated yourself. Don't lie. Don't kill. Treat your parents well. Have faith. Be kind. Do good. Show kindness. Be compassionate. Treat others well. Be kind to those who are less fortunate than you are. Those are themes that seem to come back time and again in the world's major religions.  Knowing only what I know, I want to write that the one great universal truth is this:...

 I'm not an American. Have never wanted to be an American. Sure, I watch American television, American movies. Can name which states cities are in, if they've been featured on television, in books I read or movies I watch. New York. LA. Miami. Chicago. Washington DC. San Francisco. New Orleans.  All I really know about the US of A is from television, from movies, from the media. But also from friends. The US shown on TV and in movies is often a happy place. High-school movies with jocks and cheerleaders, that sort of thing. Sure, crappy things happen, but good prevails, in the end it all makes sense, and despite the bad stuff people do, the hero saves the day. These days... I'm not so sure. I'm not sure if I've written about this before, but I remember the day the orange dude was made president. Was in a public train, on my way to work. Sitting across from a bunch of strangers. And the news came in on someone's phone. They were so appalled that they shared with ...

 My friend died. And I am sad. A friend of mine died on Friday. She was a good person. A mother. A wife. A daughter. A sister. A friend. A colleague. And an all-round really awesome and amazing human being.  She died. And I'm alive. It feels unfair. Sometimes... The world feels unfair.  This is not a post about religion, about world politics, about big things that matter to many people. It is a personal post. A post about my own feelings. Because I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm hurt, I'm trying to understand why, when the death of a good person feels like it makes no sense.  My friend died. A good, kind and loving person died. Someone who was loved by many. She really was a light to so many who knew her. Someone who always made an effort to make the world a better place, one kind act at a time. And she should still be here. She should.  It feels wrong. It feels unfair. While I've cried a lot these past few days, I've also tried to make sense of her death. And to be ...

 When news reports started coming in on Saturday evening (European central time) that Iran had launched an attack against Israel, I started worrying. I have no family in Israel. I'm not Israeli. I'm not Jewish. I'm not worrying about 'my home' or about family members. But I am a supporter of Israel. I'm not always a staunch supporter of the Israeli government, true. There are decisions that I, as a person, do not agree with. There are things I would change, would do differently, if it were up to me. But am I a staunch supporter of Israel's right to exist, of the right of Israeli people to live in freedom? Definitely. I have friends in Israel. People I've met as I travelled the world. Good people. Kind people. People with parents, with siblings, with children. People I care about.  My main thought as I was watching the news on television and reading the updates on Twitter/X however, wasn't about my friends in Israel. I wasn't worried about them: T...

How can we make the world a better place? How can we ever make it better? How can we fix what we have done to this world, to its people? How can we, you and I and regular human beings like us, just living our lives, actually make this world a better place? War. Famine. Destruction. Poverty. Hatred. Illness and disease. Some living in riches while others suffer in poverty? How can those of us whose lives are relatively good, without war, destruction or famine, be okay with so many of our fellow human beings living in poverty, dealing with the ravages of war every day, being subjected to the harshest of what life can give? How can we, living in relative safety and security, be okay and just live our lives, worrying about trivial matters like what person x said about person y, about clothes, about make-up, about fashion, about which cars we drive, about brand-name clothing, about what others think of us and the like, while so many of our fellow human beings live in war-torn nations, deal ...

 The concept that we are all interconnected, that we are all one, is something I'm being confronted by quite a bit lately. It makes me think. Not just about how yeah, we're all stuck on this big rotating ball together and how everything on this big ball is connected and has the power to influence each other. When a message keeps reappearing, keeps coming back, it makes me think that I need to do something with it.  All = one One = all One. Me. An individual.  All. Many individuals together. Together as individuals. But also together as a whole, as a bigger 'one'. One person in a country of many people. The many people make a bigger country of ones. One individual in an aeroplane. Many ones make the all of the aeroplane. And everyone in the aeroplane is again a bigger 'one' with a similar path, a shared destination, the shared wish that the aeroplane will arrive safely and that the passengers will get to their destination. But it is more than that, less mundane a...

  This is what broke me.  Silly fool me, I figured I'd 'catch up' on what's happening in the world by checking Twitter (I mean X) before heading to bed, a few days ago. I saw this report on how women had been raped by the Hamas terrorists on October 7th. Not just one rapist, but many. Not just a man or multiple men using their body parts to do the rape, but evidence that they used other things as well. I believe the report mentioned knives, and other things too. Evidence that women were alive when that happened, or alive for at least part of it.  It broke me. It made me scared to go to sleep in my own bed. Scared because I was worried that I'd have nightmares based on what I'd read, and scared because being asleep means being unable to run from possible attackers. No, I'm not in Israel. But I'm still a woman, and there are fanatics the world over. Fear isn't necessarily rational, it just is. Let me be honest: As a person and as a human being, this re...

  Last weekend, on Saturday the 7th of October, a great number of people got together to cross a border. Some flew over using gliders. Others toppled a fence in a lot of places. Through the breaches in the fence came people. Men. In cars. On motorcycles. They didn't come through that fence to find freedom, or to flee from persecution. They didn't cross the border hoping for a better life, for the fulfilment of a dream. The men who crossed the border, they came to kill, to murder. To shoot people in their homes. To kill babies and children in their beds. To go into communities full of people, civilians, and indiscriminately shoot everyone and everything. To go to a festival where people were dancing, enjoying themselves, and to shoot, kill, rape those people. The stories of the survivors are horrifying. Stories of people rushing for their cars, driving, being shot at. Stories of people running, being shot in the back. Stories of people hiding, being found, finding new places to ...

Never Again... What does that actually mean in today's world? This What Makes People Tick? blog post looks at what I learnt about the Holocaust as a child, as a teenager and as an adult; it examines my current views on Judaism and it explains why I believe that it is still vital to educate everyone about the horrors of the Holocaust. Writing a post earlier this month about The non-Jewish Nanny who educates the world about Judaism , I realised that I also wanted to write about my own history of learning about Judaism. As writing about a sensitive topic like the Holocaust doesn't feel appropriate when also gushing about a young woman's social media pages, I figured that a separate post was in order. I was born in the early eighties and growing up in Europe, much of what I learnt about Jews and Judaism had to do with the Second World War. Back when I was in primary school in the nineties, we learnt a lot about the War. And back then, my grandparents and many others of their g...

 I'm quite certain that I'm not the only one who's recently learnt about Adriana Rosie's social media channels where she writes about being a non-Jewish nanny for Jewish families in Florida in the US. It was an article from the Times of Israel ( ‘Non-Jewish Nanny’ to Orthodox kids gains TikTok fame with cute culture-shock videos ) that got me reading about what she does. And honestly, I've really enjoyed going through this young woman's Every Single Instagram Post. Check it out for yourself:  Adriana Rosie @nonjewishnanny .  While I usually prefer using Instagram to check out photos as opposed to videos (one of the reasons I'm not on TikTok...), I have to admit that I've just been eating up the content, and have really enjoyed learning about all her experiences. This is someone who's respectful of a community with many customs, rules and regulations that may not make sense to, or seem strange to outsiders, and opens up that community to the wider wor...