Dozens of people who were blinded or otherwise suffered severe eye damage when they were splashed with caustic chemicals had their sight restored with transplants of their own stem cells — a stunning success for the burgeoning cell-therapy field, Italian researchers reported Wednesday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100623/ap_on_he_me/us_med_stem_cells_blindness
Occasionally, I try to find a link between the parsha of the week and current events.
In this week's parsha the Gentile prophet Bilam is hired by Balak, the king of Moav, to curse the nation of Israel. Blinded by avarice, Bilam attempts to do that for which he is hired. But, upon seeing the Israelites, Bilam becomes spiritually sighted and can only bless them.
"How good are your tents (nation) of Yaakov, your dwelling places Yisroel." (Numbers 24:5)
With every passing day, Israeli actions are being condemned and boycotts are being organized. Anti-semitism is rife.
But, let's choose to focus on the good of our people. This week saw a unified people who gathered in the thousands to pour out their heart in prayer for a fellow Jew to avert a lengthy prison sentence. Our brother's pain was our pain.
An INN journalist writes the following.
A second-hand clothing charity fund based in Efrat that helps Jews across Israel has also helped its Arab neighbors for more than 20 years, according to Ora Yannai, who co-founded the project with Rebbetzin Vicky Riskin, whose husband is the city's Chief Rabbi. The gemach, as it is called in Hebrew, has blossomed from its humble beginnings as a small distribution of second-hand clothing to Ethiopian immigrants in Kiryat Arba some 25 years ago, into a massive country-wide operation.
Read full article: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/135741
Incidentally, I came across a devar Torah by Rabbi Chaim Dovid Green in which he asks what Bilam noticed about the nation of Israel when he uttered the words of blessing.
Rashi (11th century) explains that the tents were situated in their encampments such, that the doorways did not face each other. This was done for the sake of privacy.
There are two important values which we gain from this knowledge. Firstly, the Torah praises the Children of Israel for keeping private things private. In counter distinction to modern western culture where all dirty laundry is washed in public, the Torah attitude is that not everything is for the public eye....
Secondly, we see that the nation of Israel voluntarily situated their tents such that they should not violate the privacy of their neighbors. That means that they were not interested in their neighbor's business....
http://www.torah.org/learning/dvartorah/5760/balak.html
Let us, by virtue of doing good deeds, studying the Torah and taking Rabbi Green's words to heart, merit to have the nations of the world bless the Jewish nation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100623/ap_on_he_me/us_med_stem_cells_blindness
Occasionally, I try to find a link between the parsha of the week and current events.
In this week's parsha the Gentile prophet Bilam is hired by Balak, the king of Moav, to curse the nation of Israel. Blinded by avarice, Bilam attempts to do that for which he is hired. But, upon seeing the Israelites, Bilam becomes spiritually sighted and can only bless them.
"How good are your tents (nation) of Yaakov, your dwelling places Yisroel." (Numbers 24:5)
With every passing day, Israeli actions are being condemned and boycotts are being organized. Anti-semitism is rife.
But, let's choose to focus on the good of our people. This week saw a unified people who gathered in the thousands to pour out their heart in prayer for a fellow Jew to avert a lengthy prison sentence. Our brother's pain was our pain.
An INN journalist writes the following.
A second-hand clothing charity fund based in Efrat that helps Jews across Israel has also helped its Arab neighbors for more than 20 years, according to Ora Yannai, who co-founded the project with Rebbetzin Vicky Riskin, whose husband is the city's Chief Rabbi. The gemach, as it is called in Hebrew, has blossomed from its humble beginnings as a small distribution of second-hand clothing to Ethiopian immigrants in Kiryat Arba some 25 years ago, into a massive country-wide operation.
Read full article: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/135741
Incidentally, I came across a devar Torah by Rabbi Chaim Dovid Green in which he asks what Bilam noticed about the nation of Israel when he uttered the words of blessing.
Rashi (11th century) explains that the tents were situated in their encampments such, that the doorways did not face each other. This was done for the sake of privacy.
There are two important values which we gain from this knowledge. Firstly, the Torah praises the Children of Israel for keeping private things private. In counter distinction to modern western culture where all dirty laundry is washed in public, the Torah attitude is that not everything is for the public eye....
Secondly, we see that the nation of Israel voluntarily situated their tents such that they should not violate the privacy of their neighbors. That means that they were not interested in their neighbor's business....
http://www.torah.org/learning/dvartorah/5760/balak.html
Let us, by virtue of doing good deeds, studying the Torah and taking Rabbi Green's words to heart, merit to have the nations of the world bless the Jewish nation.
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