29/30 Acharei-Kedoshim: Day 5 (Thursday) | Gossip Versus News

6 Iyar 5786 AM | 1 AVE.

Blessed are You, LORD our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us by Your Spirit and invited the nations to share in the richness of Your Word. We thank You for the people and state of Israel, including the Messiah, our First Fruits, through whom the harvest of life has begun.

Today is the nineteenth day of the Omer according to the minority Sadducean and Essene counts, which is 2 weeks and 5 days.

May the Spirit of Truth prepare my heart for the revelation of the 50th day.

6:17 AM EDT in Albany. 

Jonathan Writes:

The morning sky over the city is delightfully clear today. Hashem is blessing me with some good energy and structure in synchronization with my reduction in daily calories, so I will take this opportunity to reflect on my "Torah with Jonathan" process. It is day 74 since I started this blog (929 days since the start of Israel's multifront war with Iran and its proxies, according to Jonathan Schanzer at FDD). If I am very disciplined with my new American monastic horarium, I have from 6 AM to 8 AM every morning to reflect and comment through this blog on news from the Jewish world, including the daily Torah reading.

It's not nearly enough time, of course, so I have been "catching up" with YouTube input from the Jewish world at odd moments during the day, which I don't really have room for in my horarium. This is another way of saying that these YouTube checks are "leaks" in my discipline. 

Over the next 24 hours, I am going to see if I can avoid any leakage.

That's it for my background opening. It's 6:51 AM. My next step this morning is not the Torah reading. It's a scan of JNS. I read one opinion article: Do not ask Sinai to whisper. The piece is a young lion's roar.

At 7:15 AM, I turn to The Times of Israel. I am struck by a surprising off note here: Repeatedly deferring to Trump, Netanyahu subjects Israeli security to US president's whim | The Times of Israel. That doesn't sound like strategic analysis, it sounds like partisan opinion. Another issue: I will need to pay for a subscription if I want to avoid the offensive advertisements. That's a big issue on my tight budget. Maybe I should subscribe to Haaretz instead? I don't know, is Haaretz more dovish or hawkish than TOI when it comes to bashing Netanyahu and Trump over a two-front ceasefire?

Along with JNS and TOI, today I have added Haaretz, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and The Forward to my Microsoft Edge Favorites bookmarks in my 6-8 AM "Watch of the Yeshiva" folder. Now it is 7:51 AM and I have just nine minutes left.  

The reading for this morning is Leviticus 19:15-19:32.

This is the link to the Daily Chumash with Rashi at Chabad.

The Daily Wisdom from the Lubavitcher Rebbe is titled "The Power of Thought and Speech."

End 8:06 AM.

Shalom.