Friday, September 25, 2026

Succot With What is Truly Important in Life

 Nadene Goldfoot                                     

                                    King Solomon Thinking

Succot, which starts today at sundown, turns to Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament and explains to us what is truly important in our lives.  It was explained by King Solomon, the very wealthy king, who knew what opulence was;  and proclaimed that the pleasures and allures of this world are fleeting and valueless, as we may well realize when find ourselves needing assistance, anyway.

We are told that Spirituality is eternal.  Man must recognize that his health and prosperity should be used to enable him to better serve G-d.                                                    


We are faced with the troubling question of why good people suffer and bad people prosper.  We can know the answer only when we know and understand all the elements upon which G-d  bases His decisions.  Such intelligence is beyond our capacity, so our incomplete knowledge cannot be used as a basis to doubt G-d's justice.  That level of understanding will come only at the time of the Messiah arrives and leads the world to its future state of perfection.  Until then, our faith must remain strong.  


Solomon started off in a very depressing mood writing that all is futile! Perhaps he realizes that he has asked men to work for no wages to build the Temple and this is not okay with them.  It may cause a split in  the government.  (which it did when Solomon died).  

 What profit does man have for all his labor which he toils beneath the sun? (1:2-3).  He then ended with "The sum of the matter when all has been considered:   Fear G-d and keep His  commandments, for that is man's whole duty." (12:13) The climax of the Book, the Sages recognized, proved that the treatise-----all of it-----was intended to lead people to the ultimate goal of fearing and serving G-d.   And this is what Jews have worked hard to follow, feeling that this is their goal in life.  

This is my favorite paragraph:  


Solomon:  "I said to myself:  Here I have acquired great wisdom, more than any of my predecessors over Jerusalem, and my mind has had much experience with wisdom and knowledge.  I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.  I perceived that this, too, is a vexation of the spirit, For with much wisdom comes much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases pain."


Oh dear, too bad he didn't live in the scientific age of discovery and know the excitement when something was found.  In his day, he  just didn't have the resources that we do today.    I feel very privileged to live today and to see all the developments we now have.  

   

UNITED NATIONS 2026 AND NETANYAHU'S SPEECH AGAINST ANTAGONISTS

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              


The IDF announced that it eliminated Hamas finance department chief Muhammad Abu Alwan in an airstrike in Gaza yesterday. Alwan transferred more than 1 billion shekels to finance the terror group’s activities during the war.

Abdullah II is the king of Jordan, having acceded to the throne on 7 February 1999. He is a member of the Hashemites, who have been the reigning royal family of Jordan since 1921, and is traditionally regarded as a 41st-generation direct descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II delivered one of the week’s sharpest attacks on Israel at the UN General Assembly, accusing the Israeli government of war crimes, an “expansionist appetite” and pursuing policies designed to make a viable Palestinian state impossible. He devoted a substantial portion of his to the war in Gaza, developments in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) and Israeli activity in southern Syria. He also accused the international community of spending years trying to “manage” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead of resolving it.                             


Then, Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the U.N. (whoever doesn't walk out) at around 2pm yesterday. 

The Prime Minister’s Office said Netanyahu was scheduled to meet the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Panama and Ethiopia, the vice president of Colombia, and the prime ministers of Greece, Slovenia and Papua New Guinea.  

Since the 25th is the Erev Succot, he wishes to be back home in time, I'm sure. 

 And yes, I watched Netanyahu's speech and saw 

when so many walked out before he started but 

was at the podium.  Again, he gave what I thought 

to be a marvelous speech, and gave some most 

interesting facts that I had not known or realized.  

It's just maddening that those that need to hear 

what any of us defenders say is when they stick 

their fingers in their ears and turn away.                                       

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter gives a statement to the media at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, after his son Neria, an IDF reservist, was hospitalized in critical condition after being seriously wounded in a car-ramming attack the previous day, September 24, 2026. At right is Leiter's son Noam. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Neriya Leiter, an IDF reservist from Havat Yair and the son of Israel's Ambassador to the U.S. Yehiel Leiter, was rammed by a terrorist as he was standing guard at a checkpoint on Highway 443 near Modiin.

 He is at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, where he underwent a complex brain operation that lasted several hours. 

His doctor said, “After a series of tests and a series of surgeries, we can say that his condition is stable. His condition is still serious and his life is still in danger, but we are full of hope.” The patient underwent life-saving stabilization in the Trauma Unit before being transferred to the Operating Theater. There he underwent a complex neurosurgery procedure which continued for several hours to further stabalize his condition.
At this time, Mr. Leiter remains in extremely serious and life-threatening condition. His care involved coordination between multiple areas of the hospital including surgical and intensive care teams who continue to actively treat Neria at this time.
Hospital social workers are alongside the patient’s family at all times.


His father, Ambassador Leiter, rushed back from the U.S. to be at his side.                                                  


 His oldest son, Maj. (res.) Moshe Yedidya Leiter, was killed in Gaza in November 2023.                

  Maj. (res.) Moshe Yedidyah Leiter who was killed in Gaza on 

                          November 10, 2023. (IDF)

Leiter, a reservist, served as a paramedic and was due to start a training placement at a hospital as part of his studies to become a doctor. He is survived by a wife and six children, the youngest of whom is under three months old.

He was killed alongside his fellow reservists and comrades, Sgt. Maj. (res.) Yossi Hershkovitz, Master Sgt. (res.) Matan Meir, and Master Sgt. (res.) Sergey Shmerkin.

Meanwhile, Ambassador Leiter's eldest daughter gave birth in the same hospital just 40 meters away, 2 weeks early. She is in intensive care.

Resource:

israelAM

The Times of Israel


Thursday, September 24, 2026

EREV SUCCOT On 25th of September 2026-OUR 2 DAY HOLIDAY

Nadene Goldfoot                                     

                       A Sukkah 

The command to observe Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths) is found primarily in Leviticus 23:33–43 and Deuteronomy 16:13–15. This goes back to Moses (1391-1271 BCE,  who lived about 3,300 years ago.  

In the Bible, the primary reason for Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths) is to commemorate the 40 years of divine protection and provision when God had the Israelites dwell in temporary shelters during their wilderness journey after the Exodus from Egypt.The Wilderness Journey: According to Leviticus 23:42–43, God commanded the Israelites to live in temporary booths (sukkot) for seven days so that future generations would know that God made the children of Israel dwell in booths when He brought them out of Egypt. That was their rest; their joyful time of making it to their goal that took 40 years to accomplish.  

I remember living in Israel and my husband and young neighbor built a succah.  The holiday in Safed was celebrated by having school closed for the holiday and people building a succah.  Then we would visit each other and enjoy cookies and breads in each other's succah.  Men might sleep overnight in them.  3 sides were covered with blankets.  The ceiling was to be open in order to see the sky, laced with tree or shrub branches. In the states, each synagogue has a succah for people to come and eat in for that is a mitzvah.  

These agricultural origins of  Giving Thanks: served as an agricultural thanksgiving at the end of the agricultural year, celebrating the final harvest of crops and fruits before the onset of the winter rains. It had always been considered as a joyful holiday. 

We remember that day of October 7, 2023, only 3 years ago,   when Jews in Israel celebrated Succot with dancing outside and all were attacked and killed in the gruesome and brutal manner possible. 

  • Civilians: 828 victims (including 36 children and 71 foreign nationals). Of these, 364 civilians were killed during the massacre at the Nova Music Festival.
  • Security Forces: 367 members of the military, police, and local security teams who died in combat.
          1939, 
    Family members sitting together in their Sukkah, Jerusalem, 

  • A family is hanging decorations from the s'chach (top or "ceiling") on the inside of a sukkah

  • Who has lived and come through so many trials and tribulations as the Israelites/Jews?  Who is still capable with a memory and writing about such an accomplishment?  Only the Jews.  

  •  


    OH G-D ! A SERIOUS TALK WITH G-D AFTER YOM KIPPUR

     Nadene Goldfoot                                           


    You created the Jews, Israelites or Hebrews, the Wandering Jew, all the names of one group of people over over 4,000 years, as an example of what Goodness happens to be.  You gave them 613 laws to follow, and they have tried to do so as humanly and humbly  as possible, knowing that others have held them over their heads and may be the reason to hate these people, making them different from others.  

    These Jews have had to fight defensively since creation, even during the Exodus until this day to survive, and each generation that comes along seems to understand even more clearly what has been expected of them, why they must survive.  For if they are destroyed, so will go the human race.                                 

    Israeli soldiers take part in ground operations, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at a location given as Gaza in this photo released November 7. Israeli Defence Forces/via REUTERS 

    Defensive fighting has been called for, as defensiveness in oral combat with those against their being.  We have had speakers of outstanding capabilities who are listened to a handful, insulted by others, with even some of their own people turning against them, infected with the fear given to them of their enemies.  

             UN Delegates walked out on his speech as Israel faces                        global isolation 

    I myself, a small cog in a small wheel, have pleaded for Israel since 2004, the past 22 years almost daily.  Benjamin Netanyahu, (October; 21, 1949-77 years old, ) our best speaker of my life to you and to the United Nations,  is pleading today the defensive roll Israel has had to take in a war of all wars, a war no one else has ever had to fight, with Iran.  Jordan's king has already spoken against Israel in a speech no doubt likely to turn even those not sure of what Goodness is, against Israel.  We were a country you requested to follow goodness and we were the only ones to answerer your call, and we are the most hated on earth!!! 

     How, in your name, can people believe this about a people whose resume is one of trying to teach and help people to live with a productive life for 4,000 years  who aren't even asking them to change their beliefs, but respect them and let them live?  

    Jews have gone through fire, tied to stakes and lit; pogroms,  the Holocaust when 6 million were killed-many gassed or burned to death  as ashes showing their past lives had existence;  and lately the hateful October 7th 2023 when people were tortured, torn apart, brutalized, raped, slaughtered and put to the torch while alive with children brutalized in front of parents and likewise by killers either high on drugs or extreme hate. 

    In Jewish thought, the "End of Days" (Acharit ha-Yamim) does not mean the physical destruction of the planet, but rather the end of regular human history and the start of an era of universal peace and divine awareness must be close at hand.  What has been happening to us Jews seems to the very end of our human history, with peace looming close for us.  Is the Mashiach  close at hand?  It is said that - A human leader descended from King David who will unite humanity, restore justice, and bring world peace is soon to arrive.  We know who  it is not, and that he must be special.   There are many who would be descended from King David.  





    My Icon : Hedy Lamarr

     Nadene Goldfoot                                      

    Studio publicity still of Hedy Lamarr ( November 9, 1914 – January 19, 2000) died at age 86;   for the film Ziegfeld  Girl 1941 age 27.  Lamarr's most successful film was the religious epic Samson and Delilah (1949 at age 35).. 

                                    More of Ziegfield Girls
        

    Hedy Lamarr was a Jewish woman who lived during WWII in Europe. Her father was born to a Galician-Jewish family in Lemberg in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, part of Austria-Hungary (now Lviv in Ukraine) and was, in the 1920s, deputy director of Wiener Bankverein, and at the end of his life a director at the united Creditanstalt-Bankverein. Her mother, a pianist and a native of Budapest, in the Kingdom of Hungary, had come from an upper-class Hungarian-Jewish family. She had converted to Catholicism and was described as a "practicing Christian" who raised her daughter as a Christian, although Hedy was not baptized at the time. Chances are that her parents had her convert to Catholicism to save her life from the Nazis who started their anti-Semitic acts in about 1932 when she was 18.  In their position, they were in the know of what was happening to Jews.  

                                Hedy in 1944, age 30

     She was not only a most beautiful woman, but also a brilliant one.  She's to be admired for what she accomplished during her life.   born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler;  was an Austrian and American actress and inventor. Regarded as a successful film star, she also co-invented a radio guidance system during World War II.

    In 1940, Lamarr, who had learned about weaponry through her marriage to an arms manufacturer, joined with the avant-garde composer George Antheil to invent an anti-jamming device for radio-controlled torpedoes.  

    The Navy ignored the advice. But years later, after the patent expired, the Lamarr-Antheil idea was independently advanced by other scientists and helped form the basis for the anti-jamming technology now used in the U.S. military's $25-billion Milstar defense communications satellite system.  Frequency hopping, which existed and was utilized before the Lamarr–Antheil patent, is a foundational technology for spread spectrum communications. Its principles are utilized for secure wireless networking, including Bluetooth and early versions of Wi-Fi, which use variants of spread spectrum to protect data from interception and interference.  Her part in this invention was out of the bag when people saw her patent had expired with her name on it.                       


    Lamarr's role in "frequency hopping," overlooked for decades, is now as hot with technology enthusiasts as pinups of Lamarr were with World War II servicemen.

    Schematic drawings of her patent appear on Internet Web sites. The actress, who never won an Oscar, is being showered with awards from inventors groups. Her most recent tribute will be accepted by her son Sunday at the Invention Convention in Pasadena.

    For Lamarr, her brilliance was both a gift and a burden.  Despite her fame, she often felt typecast and undervalued, facing six failed marriages, financial struggles from bad investments, and tabloid scrutiny over her looks, including plastic surgery complications.  Don't feel bad, Hedy, Elizabeth Taylor was married 8 times in trying to find the right man.  

                                              Elizabeth Taylor 


    Hedy Lamarr, the star of such films as "The Heavenly Body" and "Dishonored Lady," secured her place in history more than 60 years ago as the first woman to romp naked across the screen in a feature film.   Hedy Lamarr's IQ is widely reported by biographical and trivia sources to be around 140 to 160, placing her in the genius-level range.                                          


    As she reflected in her autobiography Ecstasy and Me (1966), the invention’s rejection meant no financial gain—despite its billions in modern value—requiring her to fight twice as hard not just against typecasting, but against erasure of her intellectual legacy. Her experiences highlight the societal challenges faced by women who dare to blend art and science amid prejudice.

    Aside from her frequency-hopping invention intended to help defeat the Axis powers, Hedy Lamarr directly helped her own family escape Europe and actively supported the broader Allied war effort.  Navigated barriers: Because Atlantic crossings were perilous and targeted by Nazi U-boats, Lamarr worked through complex diplomatic and logistical hurdles to get her mother out safely. (Her mother later converted to Catholicism) , to help obscure their Jewish identity during a hostile era of widespread antisemitism in Hollywood).  It happened After the 1938 Anschluss (the Nazi annexation of Austria), Lamarr successfully arranged and paid for her mother, Gertrud Kiesler, to safely escape Vienna and join her in the United States.

    Sold war bonds: Turned away by the Navy regarding her invention, she threw herself into public fundraising, famously raising millions of dollars in war bonds for the U.S. military. At one famous rally in 1942, she raised $7 million in a single night by offering to kiss a participating buyer. 

    Hollywood Canteen volunteer: She regularly volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen, dancing with departing servicemen, signing autographs, and performing kitchen and dishwashing duty.

    Hedy Lamarr is to be much admired.  She truly is an icon for all of us.  

    Resource:

    Wikipedia

    https://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/2554-a-starlet-s-secret-life-as-inventor?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22062257718&gbraid=0AAAAAD-uARGfkP_XOyCFRsIvV8ttBLsCq&gclid=Cj0KCQjwlNPVBhCMARIsAPZ5Rqhf3AgGaVwkj0cb6Id4n8PWl2G9ZeSM2s7Hg9g