How Iran is Calling The Shots With Trump

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

A person riding a scooter carries a flag with an image depicting Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem, as displaced people make their way to return to their homes after a 10-day ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel went into effect, at the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon. (photo credit: MOHAMED AZAKIR/REUTERS)  June Truce: On June 1, Lebanon announced a new partial ceasefire arrangement to halt strikes on Beirut in exchange for an end to Hezbollah's rocket fire, though fighting and localized incursion operations persisted.(Reuters)

Israel is fighting Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.  This is causing Trump a great problem in his planning. Whenever Iran feels the pinch, he uses his get out of jail card, Lebanon-Israel, and Trump caves in.    

 Needless to say, Israel is tired of fighting Hezbollah terrorists wherever they are !!!  Since its joint attack with the U.S. on Saturday, Israel has come under fire from Iran and its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. It has rattled a country still reeling from the Oct. 7.  PBS explained:  Israelis take shelter as Iran and Hezbollah launch attacks.  Here, the wars don't end.

The major conflict phase between Israel and Hezbollah in 2026 lasted exactly three months, from March 2 to June 2. The fighting formally ceased following a U.S.-brokered partial truce intended to halt hostilities in Beirut and limit engagements in southern Lebanon. 

However, because the conflict involved multiple rolling ceasefires, the length of previous lulls in 2026 varied:

• April Truce: A cessation of hostilities began on April 16.
• May Extension: That April truce was officially extended by 45 days in mid-May to allow for continued diplomatic negotiations in Washington, D.C.. 

"President Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel's escalation in Lebanon in an expletive-laden call on Monday, two U.S. officials and a third source briefed on the call told Axios.   Earlier on Monday, Iran threatened to abandon the negotiations with the U.S. over Israel's actions in Lebanon. On the call, Trump called Netanyahu "crazy" and accused him of ingratitude, according to two of the sources. He also put the brakes on Israel's plan to strike Beirut.  

   June 2, 2026, Southern Beirut, Lebanon on one building

Summarizing Trump's remarks to Netanyahu, the U.S. official said: "You're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this."

• A second source briefed on the call said Trump was "pissed" and at one point yelled at Netanyahu: "What the fuck are you doing?"  The U.S. official said Trump knew Hezbollah had been shooting at Israel and that Israel needed to defend itself, but felt in recent days that Netanyahu was escalating in a disproportionate way.Another U.S. official said Trump was concerned by the fact that Israel had killed so many civilians in Lebanon, and objected to the Israelis knocking down buildings to take out a single Hezbollah commander.
  
• New York Times reported:  On May 7, 2026, the Israeli military struck a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut, killing a commander of Hezbollah's elite Radwan force, probably Ahmed Ali Balout.   Israel has conducted several targeted airstrikes that knocked down buildings to eliminate senior Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon, most notably targeting underground bunkers beneath civilian apartment blocks in the southern suburbs of Beirut (Dahiyeh). from wikipedia:  May 7, 2026 — For the Israeli army, he was involved in the preparation and direction of dozens of attacks against Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon.  
• In addition to the threats on Beirut, Israel has been expanding its ground operation in southern Lebanon.  Israel no longer plans to strike Hezbollah targets in Beirut, an Israeli official told Axios.
• Trump's anger appeared to be driven by the fact that Netanyahu's decision to escalate in Lebanon was threatening to implode his negotiations with Iran.   Trump and Netanyahu have had several tense calls in the past but have still coordinated closely on Iran and other issues. One official said this was one of Trump's worst calls with Netanyahu since he returned to office.
• After the call, Trump posted on Truth Social that the Iran talks were "continuing, at a rapid pace."

The other side: Netanyahu released a statement after the call saying he'd told Trump that Israel would attack targets in Beirut if Hezbollah did not stop attacking Israel, and that in the meantime Israel would continue its operations in southern Lebanon.  

However, Netanyahu has frequently pushed back against the perception that the U.S. dictates Israeli security policy. This tension became particularly visible during a public address in October 2025 where he asserted, "We are not a protectorate of the United States. Israel is the one that will decide on its security". Furthermore, after receiving pressure from U.S. leadership regarding military actions in the Middle East, he and his coalition have firmly reiterated that Israel is an independent state and "not a banana republic". Good for him.  He's not about to become one of these chopped liver states.  

Resource:

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2026/05/why-israel-and-lebanon-have-been-at-war.html

https://en.lasicilia.it/news/italy-world/3038350/who-was-ahmed-ali-balout-the-commander-of-the-radwan-force-killed-by-israel.html

From the Old, the New Exciting Noetic Science

 Nadene Goldfoot        

The famous Maimonides or the Rambam: (1135-1204)Philospher,  Halakhist, and medical writer;  Left Cordova, Spain when  13 with family to escape the Almohade persecutions. Championed a highly noetic approach to thinking, viewing human intellectual perfection as the ultimate goal. He argued that the highest form of worship involves the intellect directly grasping divine truths.

 Reached Palestine in 1165. Wrote paper on Jewish calendar, intercalation in 1158 and works on logic and the 613 precepts of our Mosaic Law.  Unable to settle in Palestine, suffering from Crusades, went onto Egypt in 1167, then became spiritual head of Cairo Jewry.  After 1170 became physician to the Viceroy of Egypt. Died in 70th year, buried in Tiberias.  Wrote on much more.  

Noetic is a formal adjective that means of or relating to the intellect, mind, or rational thought. It describes knowledge that is apprehended by reason rather than sensory perception.

Jewish thinkers engage with noetic concepts through several distinct historical and mystical lenses: There is an intelligence threshold people must reach before being highly creative after this threshold is reached there is no strong relationship between creativity and intelligence. 

Creative innovation is heavily dependent upon disengagement and divergent thinking as well as subsequent convergent thinking and productivity. The mean by which a person's brain functions is dependent upon both nature (genetically determined) and nature (learned). In regard to nature, from their earliest age many Jewish children are encouraged to question as well as taught that disobedience in the pursuit of truth and justice is not only justified but is also desirable. Thus, disobedience in this regard is not the cultivation of insolence, but rather gives rise to disengagement and divergent thinking, the critical elements of creativity. Training can also alter the brain, and the Jewish people success in creativity may not be related to their genetically determined IQ, but rather the learned propensity to earnestly question and seek better alternatives.

1. The Noetic Turn in Jewish Theology

In late antiquity and the Middle Ages, Jewish philosophers translated earlier prophetic and apocalyptic visions into noetic categories.  Others besides Maimonides:  

• Abraham Abulafia: A 13th-century mystic who developed "Ecstatic Kabbalah," utilizing noetic techniques of letter combinations and breathing to induce altered states of consciousness and achieve prophecy.

• Philo of Alexandria: Blended Hellenistic philosophy with Jewish scripture, arguing that the divine mind (Logos) and human intuition are the highest forms of apprehending God.
• The "Noetic Turn": Later medieval and Hasidic thinkers re-conceived concepts like angels, heavenly realms, and God's throne as noetic perceptions rather than physical locations or visions. 

2. Kabbalah and Meditative Noesis

Jewish mysticism relies heavily on the belief that the human intellect can reach higher spiritual dimensions. 

• Hitbodedut: This meditative practice, popularized in Hasidism (especially by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov), involves quiet, contemplative isolation to achieve a noetic connection with the Creator.                    

                                         

                  Pieter van der Hurk (21 May 1911 – 1 June 1988)

Peter Hurkos was an unusual man I read about long ago.  Born Pieter van der Hurk in the Netherlands, he was a house painter who claimed to have manifested extrasensory perception (ESP) in 1941 after surviving a four-story fall from a ladder and suffering a severe brain injury. 

Hurkos later relocated to the United States and became a famous "psychic detective" who consulted on high-profile cases, including the Boston Strangler and the Manson Family murders.  How can this be?   This was a mystical experience. Wasn't this an example of a noetic science? Hurkos became a popular entertainer known for performing psychic feats before live and television audiences. With each reading of people's future, he would be drained.  It was very tiring for him.  

Despite many proofs that he was a fake, Hurkos remained famous. There have been several television specials about him, including: the fact that Hurkos is mentioned in the 1979 Stephen King novel The Dead Zone. The novel seems to imply that Hurkos actually did have psychic powers.

Uri Geller was another Mystic.  Uri Geller  Hebrew: אורי גלר; born 20 December 1946) is an Israeli-British illusionist, magician, television personality, and self-proclaimed psychic. He is known for his trademark television performances of spoon bending and other illusions.

1. Linguistic Definition

In standard vocabulary, "noetic" describes processes that are intellectual and driven by logic and reason. For example, evaluating a math problem or using deductive reasoning represents noetic thought. 

2. Philosophy & Psychology

In philosophy, noetic concepts refer to the action of perceiving or "pure thinking." Philosopher William James famously used the term "noetic quality" to describe mystical experiences, defining them as states of insight into depths of truth that the normal, calculating intellect cannot reach. 

3. Noetic Sciences

The word gained public recognition through the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), a California-based research institute co-founded in 1973 by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell. It broadly explores the intersection of objective science and subjective inner experiences, such as intuition, consciousness, mind-matter interactions, and human potential. 

Edgar Mitchell In his dialogue with Walter Link, we learn more about Edgar’s Mitchell’s epiphany in space, and consider the science of consciousness – are our current paradigms adequate for studying consciousness, which is at the root of all human experience?  

Edgar Mitchell: As we were coming back, I had the realization that perhaps the story of ourselves as told by our science was incomplete and perhaps flawed. And the story of ourselves as told by our religious traditions were archaic and perhaps flawed. And that maybe now that we were spacefaring, beginning to be a spacefaring civilization, we had to re-ask these questions all over again from a modern point of view.

Edgar Mitchell: When I got back I immediately wanted to try to understand what was this experience of ecstasy and overwhelming feeling of accomplishment and joy at seeing the heavens like that. I could find nothing in the science literature, and I could find nothing in the religious literature. So I turned to some anthropologists and paleontologists over at the local university and asked them to help me, if they could find it.

Edgar Mitchell Studies Map

And they came back a short time later and said they had found in the Sanskrit of ancient India, 5000 years or so ago, a description that might fit what I was talking about. And I said, what is it? They said, it’s called samadhi. I said, well, what does that mean? And they said, it means to see things as they appear to the eyes but experience them internally, viscerally and emotionally as ecstasy and and joy and wonder. And a sense of oneness with everything.

And that was the point. I had experienced a sense of unity, of oneness with the universe itself. And I realized from my training at MIT and Harvard when I got my PhD and studying astronomy there that our understanding is that the matter in the universe is created in star systems. The stars are furnaces for creation of matter.

4. Other Uses

• Math Competitions: The Noetic Learning Math Contest is a well-known biannual problem-solving competition for elementary and middle school students.
• Cybersecurity: Noetic Cyber is an enterprise technology platform that helps companies manage and control digital assets. 

Our National Yiddish Theater and Our Yiddish Theater In English

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

            Danny and Nadene Eskow nee Goldfoot September 1980

When we moved to Safed, Israel, we met up with David Bedine who gave Danny, former Little Theater actor in Florida,  the idea of his writing something with acting to take to different towns in Israel.  So Danny wrote our sketch of LAUGHING THROUGH KLITA.  A little later on, I got brave and took a famous Yiddish story by Sholom Alecheim and wrote a play, starring Danny.  We gathered up other actors and had a group, Yiddish Theater In English.    The city gave us for free the area to produce and show our play.  I wrote three of them, and one was called, "SHE MUST MARRY A DOCTOR!" I made all the costumes with my portable sewing machine, and we charged a fee to see our plays.  A friend from Portland had moved across the street from us who carried a billboard over her head which advertised on both sides and we ran all over town putting up ads.   Here is what we were trying to simulate, I think;  something we then started hearing about:    The National Theater (originally the Adler-Thomashefsky National Theatre) was a prominent 1,900-seat Yiddish theater located at the southwest corner of Chrystie and Houston streets in Manhattan's historic Yiddish Theater District. 

Oh New York, center of Yiddish Theater, I have only gone through on a plane's stop but have heard of this part of our American history's Yiddish culture.  This is certainly something to remember for our 250th Anniversary of USA's birth.  

Boris Thomashefsky born in 1866–July 9, 1939, approx. 72 - 73 years, Ukraine, grandson of the cantor,

 

 Adler in Nokhum Rakov's Talmud Khokhem, 1930, b: 9/23/

1906, Poland d: 12/28/1994 at 88.  

Opened in September 1912, it was designed by celebrated architect Thomas W. Lamb and leased by legendary Yiddish theater stars Boris Thomashefsky and Julius Adler. 

Key historical details about the theater and its primary star:

• The Star: Boris Thomashefsky (1866–1939) was a Ukrainian-born singer, actor, and producer, widely crowned as the "prince of the Yiddish theater". He is also the grandfather of renowned American orchestra conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. Repertoire: Under Thomashefsky's management, the theater staged vibrant Yiddish productions, ranging from original works and adaptations (like a Jewish version of Uncle Tom's Cabin) to Yiddish renditions of classic European plays.
• Legacy: The venue served as a cultural anchor for Jewish immigrants in New York. After ceasing operations as a live theater in 1941, the building operated as a cinema before eventually being closed and demolished.
  
                        Aaron Lebedeff in Der Yidisher Yankee
• One of the actors was Aaron Lebedeff (1873–1960)^] was a Yiddish theatre star, born in Gomel, Belarus.In childhood he sang for the Hazzan, Borekh David. Having no interest in education, he was sent to learn a trade, but soon he ran away and began to play small roles in a Russian theaters in Bobruysk, Minsk and other towns. When the Russian troupe fell apart, he went back to Homel, taking part in amateur theatre and opening a dance club. When Leyzer Bernshtein's troupe arrived, he wheedled a place in it.

  He was officially a chorister, unofficially a roadie/stage hand (pekl-treger). He dressed the actors and was a prompter. He finally debuted in Der Pipkiner rav and became the character actor he would remain, playing in different wandering theatre troupes across Russia. He was hired in Warsaw and became popular there as Der Litvisher Komiker (The Litvak comic). In 1912–13, he played in Łódź with Zandberg, then back to Warsaw; and at the outbreak of World War I, he was pressed into the Russian army and sent to Harbin, Manchuria, (1916), where he spent his time of military service giving concerts for the officers.

  After being demobilized, he worked in Avrom Fishzohn's troupe; but in order to support himself, he often had to sing in Russian or English for the American Red Cross.He married Vera Lubow and later wandered toward Japan with his wife, presenting "International Concerts" (also in China). In 1920, he and his wife left for America and were hired for Boris Thomashevsky's National Theater production of Wolf Shumsky's Lyavke Molodyetz. He was such a hit that he became an overnight star of Yiddish theater in America.

  Aaron died on November 8, 1960, and was buried next to his wife (who died two years prior) in the Yiddish Theatrical Alliance section of Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens, NY.

• Boris Thomashefsky's influence on Mel Brooks' character Max Bialystock   Max: 
  I was a protege of the great Boris Tomashevsky. He taught me everything I know. I'll never forget, he turned to me on his death bed and said: "Maxella, alle menschen muss zu machen, jeden tug a gentzen kachen!"

  Nun:

  What does that mean?

  Max:

  Who knows, I don't speak Yiddish. Strangely enough, neither did he. But in my heart, I knew what he was saying. He was saying when you're down and out and everybody thinks you're finished, that's the time to stand up on your two feet and shout: "Who do you have to f*** to get a break in this stinking town?" "

  — Mel Brooks, The Producers
• Resource:
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Lebedeff
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Adler_(actor)
• https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/4164/Thomashefsky-Boris