Good Friday to you all. It is a beautiful day here in Israel with the temp in the 70s in the shade and the 80s in the wonderful sun. I am sure you are all enjoying the winter and I truly do wish there was snow here, so know that I am jeoulous of the weather you are receiving

Yesterday I was very down because of the terrorist attack on the citizens of Israel. I am not sure why this one affected me more than others, but it did. I needed to go to jerusalem again and for some strange reason I was once again on the #22 bus. And then I saw it all. The bus was in the same point that only 5 hours earlier the #19 BUS WAS BLOWN UP. It was a very uneasy feeling I had. I looked around and I could see the blast radius, which was huge, that was caused from the attack. Broken windows, metal strewn, etc. Lots of security. I am enclosing two pics and a link either http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?swiU04ul0 or http://www.mfa.gov.il/ for you to all see some live coverage of it afterwards. I should warn you though, that there are pretty extreme scenes in the 5 min clip. But it is something I think you should all watch.

After being at the epicenter of the attack, I realized if this is going to bring me down, then I am letting the Aravim (Arabs) win. That is unacceptable. I came to israel to live a free life the way I want to and to be happpy all the days of my life. So to all you terrorists out there and to people who still do not acknowledge Israel as a state, shove it up yours!!!! And although living in Israel means you are living in a warzone, I thank G-d for the opportunity to live in the holiest and most spiritual place in the world. I am happy and I am still here!

Now some words of life: As you all know I believe in G-d very much, regardless how religious I am/was I also knew and had strong conviction that there is a G-d and that the Bible/Torah is true and all the traditions that I have are passed down from Sinai. This week in the Synagouge we are reading from the book of Exodus and specifically, the area of the 10 plagues on the Egyptians. This week, our school had the honor, which is actually on a weekly basis, to have Rabbi Riskin speak to us. I wanted to share something with you on it. First of all, everything in the Torah has a reason and sometimes we do not understand. Many times an action is performed and then later another is perfomed. For excample, Jacob lied to his father to get the first born blessing, and later his 10 sons lied to him about what had happened to Joseph, midah v midah, and act against and act.

Why were the descendants of Israel put into slavery and what was the point of all the plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea, etc.? You see during the seven years of the famine, all the Egyptians ended up selling themselves to Pharoah and in exchange agree crops for him (end of chapter 40 in the book of Genesis). The Egyptians sold themselves into slavery through Joseph, and so the Jews became slaves. What is this coming to teach us? G-d is the Master of us all and no one should be slaves. This lesson isn't just for Jewish people but for the people of the world. All the miracles that occured were to show the world around at that time that slavery is unacceptable. We all, every human being, have the right to live a life of freedom. If G-d gives us free will, how can a man, a creation of G-d, tell one what to do and control them? Every day and all throughout the week in the prayers we, the Tribe of Israel, speak and mention the exodus of Egypt. Why? Because of all the important lessons that we can learn from it.

Everyone has the right to be free and live in a free world! Osama Bin Laden and his associates are telling the U.S. that there will be another attack on the U.S. unless they stop supprting Israel AND all convert to Islam. The extreme Islamist do not believe in freedom... The U.S., with President Bush, and other democracies believe that everyone has the right to be free. FREEDOM, the right to be FREE. If any of you have any questions on this, please feel free to ask...

Well I hope you all have a good weekend. I hope that Carolina wins only because they are the underdog, but the truth is, the Packers aren't in it, so I don't really care the outcome, and I am halfway around the wolrd so the game will begin sometime around 2am. Peace, Love and Repsect to you all!

Strength & Blessing

Yaakov S. Y. Cohen