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Yesterday my blog was a victim of Google's SpamBot going out of control, today, it's a victim of Sitemeter combined with Internet Explorer. If you are having trouble seeing this site using Internet Explorer 7.0, so are thousands of other people who visit sites that use SiteMeter on their blogs.

I use the FireFox 3.0 Browser and this site renders FAST and QUICK without any errors. There's no waiting or pausing for any of the sidebar widgets to load because the site just loads the way sites were meant to load.

The FireFox 3.0 Browser download is just a dash under 8MB so if you have a high-speed connection, it will download and install in no time.

Here is a link to FireFox. I highly recommend it.

Smooth Stone announces its presence on the WordPress platform

Just wanted to let you know that Smooth Stone is expanding and is now operating on the Wordpress platform, in addition to the Blogger/Blogspot platform. You can find the Wordpress version of Smooth Stone at:

http://smoothstone.wordpress.com/

I've also started a new blog called Stop Raping Israel, a team blog dedicated to restoring truth to the Middle East narrative, featuring two excellent bloggers, Bernie from Planck's Constant and Great Satan's GirlFriend from - you got it - Great Satan's GirlFriend. You can discover the new team blog at:

http://stoprapingisrael.blogspot.com/

We're actively looking for contributors to Stop Raping Israel, so if you are interested in contributing, please send an email.

Looking forward to your feedback so please check out the new sites, leave comments, and please forward this message to a friend.

Let's Go Blogging with The Jewish Press

Smooth Stone is pleased to announce that this site is on The Jewish Press' list of worthwhile websites and blogs. Thank you, Jewish Press! Check out the complete list here.

Requisites to Religiosity

I realize that this post is vague; I have chosen to make it innocuous on purpose - because the damage to me by this JBlogger is already done. I write this in response to a personal conflict between me and one JBlogger who prides himself on his Orthodoxy and great fame on the internet. I am hoping that he will one day realize that Hashem judges us for our moral choices, not by how popular our websites are. It's not the number of hits one's site receives, but rather, the content of our moral decisions that matters in this world.

Coincidentally, JWR has an audio today on being honest.

Being honest to the Divine starts with being honest within, especially in more subtle aspects of business, use of time, and expressions of words. Continuing his deep study of the centuries' old work, "Path of the Just", our master teacher -- the author of more than 50 books, and aninternationally acclaimed speaker -- talks frankly about cleaning up ourinner act

RUN TIME: 9 minutes

http://jewishworldreview.com/jwisdom/twerski.php3

I'm home!

Hi everyone, I'm home! I was in the hospital for the last six days having come down with a pretty severe bacterial infection in my tummy. I'm home now and still mending, but it looks like I'm going to be ok. I can't tell you how much your kind words, wishes, prayers, and concern meant to me; they helped me think positive thoughts and I couldn't wait to be able to go home to write this very post to let you all know how much your words meant to me. I was able to read my email on my cell phone while I was in the hospital, but was not able to blog and update you, and I felt awful knowing so many of you were worried. I'll tell ya, the next phone I get is going to be a super-duper computer phone so that I can do blogging and email and heck, even my taxes, if I have to. The next few days are still going to be rough because I'm not completely out of the woods yet, so your prayers are still needed for my full recovery.

Again, thank you for all of your love and support, and please keep sending me email and posts; I loved hearing from all of you.

xoxo

How to start each day with a positive outlook

A great idea from Angel on how to start each day with a positive outlook:

1. Create a new file folder on your computer.

2. Name it 'Hillary Rodham Clinton.

3. Drag it to the recycle bin.

4. Empty the recycle bin.

5. Your PC will ask you, 'Do you really want to get rid of 'Hillary Rodham Clinton ?

6. Firmly Click 'Yes.'

7. Feel better instantly.

Next week we'll do Nancy Pelosi, Leslie Cagan, Mahmoud Admadinejad, Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas, Fatah, and anyone else who supports Islamofascists merely because the world was cursed by having its main energy source located under the feet of savages.

Haveil Havalim #150 is up today

Haveli Havilim #150 is up today at Soccer Dad. As always, there are some great posts from all around the JBlogosphere, but I especially want to bring your attention to this collection of Abuse of Power posts, that articulate how, under Olmert's fascist government, Israel has morphed into a dictatorship, where no Jew is safe from speaking out against the Israeli government.

Bloggers beware. From Soccer Dad:

A contributor at Mystical Paths Blog & Emunah Paths Podcasts is called in for interrogation and INTIMIDATION ! ! !.

Shiloh Musings writes about some teenagers who found themselves in the Wrong Place, Wrong Time.

The (not) Forgotten Prisoners of Zion presents The (not) Forgotten Prisoners of Zion: Daughters Of Zion, saying, "Two posts in one regarding the plight of a group of teen aged girls in thrown into the Israeli prison system."

Israel Matzav notes some awfully convenient timing in Just a coincidence? Lieberman's daughter interrogated.

treppenwitz writes about those who are curiously silent in ... but when they came for me it was too late. Elsewhere on the web, you may read about more episodes of censorship and imprisonment, here.

1389 blog just published posts about censorship, freedom of expression, freedom of speech as well:

Ezra Levant Takes Down Canadian Human Rights Commission

Statement from Foehammer: Experiencing difficulties beyond my control

Foehammer's Anvil blog taken down by LunarPages

Words fail me: Belarus jails publisher over Muhammad cartoons

Links to recorded webcasts from threatened British blogger Lionheart(see comments regarding Lionheart's responses to accusations from LGF).

Muslims are winning the war on terror, everyone. Prepare to be muzzled prior to being beheaded.

All JBloggers are not the same

I very much enjoy reading A Simple Jew, and it's one of the few blogs that I visit on a regular basis. This morning I stumbled upon this post at A Simple Jew, Used Properly, which is a link to an article on Yeshiva World by Rabbi Avi Shafran provocatively entitled Blogistan. Rabbi Shafran sums up Jblogs as anonymous as well as obnoxious, with personal opinion-diaries which display utter disregard for essential Torah ideals like the requirement to shun lashon hora and hotzo’as shem ra; to show honor for Torah and respect for Torah scholars. The Rabbi also includes that there is the lack of basic fairness and truth in these Jewish blogs.

I can't help but feel impugned by the good Rabbi's article. I will agree that some Jblogs out there have offended even me with their petty, sometimes embarrassing entries about one's husband or one's child or one's friend or one's rabbi or, even a fellow JBlogger. No less have I been stunned at some posts by Jbloggers who argue about the veracity of Torah and who raise other maybe not-so-profound Jewish issues that I would never publish pubically myself.

But for a Jblogger like myself, who uses the blogging medium to advance the knowledge base of the legitimacy and sovereignty of Israel, I resent the association. The title itself, Blogistan, is offensive, since most "-istan" countries are Judeophobic and share the single goal to commit genocide against the Jew.

I would like to see another rabbi rise in the Jewish community - a rabbi like Rav Meir Kahane, blessed be his memory - who would be brave and inspiring to all JBloggers, and who would encourage JBloggers like me that have had the courage to identify the fact that Muslims have been killing Jews since the early 1900's when there was no occupation. If JBloggers like me are reviled in our own Jcommunity, then our martyrdom served no purpose in Hitler's Germany. It taught the world nothing— except that Jews are weak, and that it's easy and safe to abuse us.

I would like to see a welcome mat from the frum community to bloggers like me - I am Jewish and female - who have devoted most of our spare time, to defend the legitimate and sovereign nation of Israel, instead of impugning us and lumping Jbloggers like me into a pile of lashon hora sinners. And I will add, that after four years of blogging, I have noticed a decline in the support from my fellow JBloggers of late. On the other hand, however, I have noticed an increase in links from heavy-hitter political websites. I can't explain the disparity; I rally against the dangers of radical Islam and self-loathing Jews in government like Olmert. I don't rally against other Jews unless they are detrimental to Israel's existence, however I think that many Jews find the subject of Israel and its survival painful, or worse, many Jews could care less about their fellow Jewish brothers and sisters who were thrown out of Gush Katif, or their fellow Jews who live in a state of constant fear in Sderot while Muslim barbarians lob katyusha and qassam rockets at them hourly.

Abandoning ones fellow Jew, especially those who live in Israel, I think, is worse than anything; I am talking Jews who abandon their fellow Jews who are under seige in Israel - and I look forward to the day when a rabbi will email me and thank me for not forgetting Jerusalem, with the immortal words of David, "If I forget you O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning....". Now that will be an article that I look forward to reading.

Old photos

Do you ever look at old photos and stare into the faces of each person in the photo, and wonder where all the time has gone? Do you ever look at some of those old photos and gasp at how some of the people in them are now dead? Did you ever look at old photos of New York and wonder what life was like back then, when men would nod and tip their hats in greeting to women on the street?

Sometimes it just takes a color of the sky, or a smell on the wind, for a particular memory to flash for me. Sometimes I would drive onto the Cross County and as the road would curve, I would be reminded of a moment in time when I was around 5 years old when I was in the back seat of my parents old Pontiac, on the way to see an aunt and uncle. That's all I remember, was that back seat and the tall, full trees when I looked out the window, tiny me that I was then. They are probably the same trees I see today when I drive that same route, only 45 years taller and broader and fuller.

Sometimes, I think about my mom and dad, how they used to live together in the home that now only houses my widowed mom, engulfed in loneliness. Did she ever think that day would come when she would sit and cry alone in her home 15 years ago when she moved in?

Then I think of all of our legacy and purpose in life. What is our purpose here? We are born, we grow up, we marry, we have children, our children grow, we watch our grandkids grow, then we die. To what end? The fact is that for some of us who had galliant dreams of loving husbands, big houses, five or six kids, a bungalow - well, it never happened. For some of us, the dreams of our childhood never came to fruition. What happens when the children we give birth to grow into adult monsters? What happens when our children dissappoint us? We mourn our losses even though there has been no funeral. We are mourning our dreams. Our broken dreams.

Sometimes I will look at my mother's house and wonder who lived there before she and my dad moved in. I already remember - it was another widow. Then I remember the widow who lived across the street from my parents home when my parents first moved into their house. Now that widow, too, has since passed away.

And one day, my tiny, sad, lonely beloved mother will also die. And I will be heartbroken again and I will become an orphan. In one moment, I already know this, that at the moment of my mother's death, 50 years will have passed before my eyes. I will see myself as a little girl playing in our apartment, and my mom watching me while she was on the phone, smoking a cigarette, drinking her coffee, talking to her best friend. Who would have ever thought that 50 years would fly by, and I would be where I am, thinking about that almost perfect day when life was gentler, softer, quieter, and devoid of any memories that would break my heart 50 years later.

Imagine getting this Christmas postcard now, postmarked 1914...

Great Satan's Girlfriend

I had to reprint this comment from one of the most astute and intelligent bloggers I have come across in years. Courtney, owner of the political savvy and astounding GreatSatan'sGirlfriend, wrote the following comment on my site in response to my post about the establishment of The New Jewish Congress which was launched in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Folks, your must acquaint yourselves with GreatSatan'sGirlfriend. Here's a sample why:

This is a great opportunity - especially in the PR world - consider redefinition:

right of return = right of relocation.

Example? Compare a map of Deutschland in 1914 to one of 2007. Try and make the case for returning turf that has been German since Roman times and the world will laughing lecture you about the wages states pay when they repeatedly attack their neighbors and repeatedly lose.

Reparations could include land, citizenship and of course cash.

Reparations should be paid by nations who have repeatedly launched wars of agression against a democratic member of the UN.

Palestinian refugees are no different from the nearly 8 million who were driven out of eastern Europe.

Assimilation is key. Time for the ME's pet[t]y despots - benign and horrid to rise to the challenge of accepting responsibility. For the sake of Peace.

History provides other examples - many more recent. Cyprus is one. Never hear about Greeks demanding the Right of Return to Symrna. Or Germans detonating themselves in GDansk protesting Polish rule over Danzig.

What is so magical about Palestinians?

These points should be repeated constantly

GreatSatansGirlfriend

Brilliant.

I often wonder

Who will I have become when I die? Did I do well? What did I accomplish? Will anyone mourn? Who will curse my decomposing flesh? Who will remember my laugh? Will anyone place a stone at my grave? How will I be remembered? Who will say kaddush when I die? What will be my legacy?

I want to have made an impact.

Yet, even now, no one knows my name.

Why must there be tragedy?

It is difficult, after having read Rob Eshman's heartbreaking article And Who Shall Die? via Rick Richman of JPundit, to not think about Marcy Asher and HaShem and life and its mysteries and cruelties.

In one of my favorite books, 9 Questions People Ask About Judaism, I can try to extrapolate and apply a similar theorem that just because bad things happen does not prove that God does not exist, and just because good things happen does not prove that God does exist.

So how do we review Marcy's life? How do we regard HaShem in light of Marcy's tragic life? Why was this innocent woman burdened with so many tragedies and failures?

I really am haunted by the terror that one day I will also think atheistically about HaShem and Judaism as Marcy's mother did. A little part of me doesn't blame Marcy's mother for thinking that way. I suppose that what I could do in order to successfully digest Marcy's tragic life, is to remember that there were six million others who also suffered great tragedies, and yet, from out of those catastrophic horrors, also came the testimony of great survival and blessings and births and laughter and generations of babies and inventions and healing and miracles. But doesn't my own putrid rationalization of the tragedy of the Holocaust, also reduce each of the six million people's souls and personal agonies into insignificant bits of dust and particles, cogs perhaps, in a cold clinical mysterious mechanism, whose purpose is still a great unknown to all of us?

How can I make sure my life doesn't end up like Marcy's? How will I die? Will I also breath my last breath, crying out in blazing agony, where no one will hear me, alone, abandoned, and insane?

Poor Marcy, may she rest in peace, and may her soul at last know HaShem's Loving-Kindness, Mercy, Affirmation and Perfection.

Thank you, Rick, for a great post.

If you can't say anything nice, then...

I think it is disreputable for some bloggers who believe they are the police for the JBlogosphere to troll other JBlog websites, and then impugne those other bloggers on their own blog in cryptic, shallow posts, just so that they can feel better about themselves.

Hey, who's the guy with the sword?

Folks, I've added a photo of myself to my Blogger profile in the upper left corner. Do you see it there? And no, that's not really me. That's David - about to sever the head of the arrogant Philistine, Goliath, in a powerful painting by one of my favorite artists, Peter Paul Rubens.

There are many visual metaphors for a smooth stone. However, I chose this particular painting to represent this blog because the name of this blog is taken literally from the Bible story of David and Goliath, in 1 Samuel 17. You see, all it took was one smooth stone to slay the arrogant Philistine.

The artist Rubens took no liberty when he painted David. David was a shepherd and carried only a sling and a pouch and within it, five smooth stones he found from a nearby brook. David carried no sword. The sword in the painting is Goliath's and the sword with which David cut off Goliath's head as mentioned in the Bible is Goliath's. Pan in with your mouse and look closely at David's strength in his muscles here. How did a shepherd become so muscular? David himself tells his king, Saul, that he needs no armor to face the Goliath.

In an excerpt from Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus,

"I undertake this enterprise," said David, "in dependence on God's being with me, for I have had experience already of his assistance; for I once pursued after and caught a lion that assaulted my flocks, and took away a lamb from them; and I snatched the lamb out of the wild beast's mouth, and when he leaped upon me with violence, I took him by the tail, and dashed him against the ground. In the same manner did I avenge myself on a bear also; and let this adversary of ours be esteemed like one of these wild beasts, since he has a long while reproached our army, and blasphemed our God, who yet will reduce him under my power."

But why did David and Goliath fight to begin with? Who started it? Why?

Well, the Philistines had been gathering themselves for a very long time and during this time they grew to have a large army. And having gotten together a great army, they made war against the Israelites. This was in a place between Shochoh and Azekah. Saul, who was also king, drew out his army to oppose the Philistines; and by pitching his own camp on a certain hill, he forced the Philistines to leave their former camp, and to encamp themselves upon such another hill, over-against that on which Saul's army lay, so that a valley, which was between the two hills on which they lay, divided their camps.

Goliath was a man of vast bulk who came out of the Philistine camp and challenged - not once- but for 40 straight days to Saul and the Hebrews, "I will free you from fighting and from dangers; for what necessity is there that your army should fall and be afflicted? Give me a man of you that will fight with me, and he that conquers shall have the reward of the conqueror and determine the war; for these shall serve those others to whom the conqueror shall belong; and certainly it is much better, and more prudent, to gain what you desire by the hazard of one man than of all."

Saul and his army were terrrified, while they put themselves in array as if they would fight, but they did not come to a battle. When no Israelite took Goliath's challenge, he reproached them, that they had no man of valor among them that would come down to fight him; and as David was talking with his brethren about the other business for which his father, Jesse, had sent him, he heard the Philistine reproaching and abusing the army. Flavius Josephus writes:

[David] taking his staff with him, and putting five stones out of the brook into a shepherd's bag, and having a sling in his right hand, he went towards Goliath.

But the adversary seeing him come in such a manner, disdained him, and jested upon him, as if he had not such weapons with him as are usual when one man fights against another, but such as are used in driving away and avoiding of dogs; and said, "Dost thou take me not for a man, but a dog?" To which he replied, "No, not for a dog, but for a creature worse than a dog."

This provoked Goliath to anger, who thereupon cursed him by the name of God, and threatened to give his flesh to the beasts of the earth, and to the fowls of the air, to be torn in pieces by them. To whom David answered, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a breastplate; but I have God for my armor in coming against thee, who will destroy thee and all thy army by my hands for I will this day cut off thy head, and cast the other parts of thy body to the dogs, and all men shall learn that God is the protector of the Hebrews, and that our armor and our strength is in his providence; and that without God's assistance, all other warlike preparations and power are useless." So the Philistine being retarded by the weight of his armor, when he attempted to meet David in haste, came on but slowly, as despising him, and depending upon it that he should slay him, who was both unarmed and a child also, without any trouble at all.

But the youth met his antagonist, being accompanied with an invisible assistant, who was no other than God himself. And taking one of the stones that he had out of the brook, and had put into his shepherd's bag, and fitting it to his sling, he slang it against the Philistine. This stone fell upon his forehead, and sank into his brain, insomuch that Goliath was stunned, and fell upon his face. So David ran, and stood upon his adversary as he lay down, and cut off his head with his own sword; for he had no sword himself.

And upon the fall of Goliath the Philistines were beaten, and fled; for when they saw their champion prostrate on the ground, they were afraid of the entire issue of their affairs, and resolved not to stay any longer, but committed themselves to an ignominious and indecent flight, and thereby endeavored to save themselves from the dangers they were in. But Saul and the entire army of the Hebrews made a shout, and rushed upon them, and slew a great number of them, and pursued the rest to the borders of Garb, and to the gates of Ekron; so that there were slain of the Philistines thirty thousand, and twice as many wounded. But Saul returned to their camp, and pulled their fortification to pieces, and burnt it; but David carried the head of Goliath into his own tent, but dedicated his sword to God [at the tabernacle].

One smooth stone and faith in the Almighty is all we need to slay our enemies. But Rabbi Noson Weisz tells us, and I agree, that the common conception holds that belief in God is generated in the heart of the believer, by virtue of a conviction that God exists. Those who are skeptical of God's existence have no such conviction of faith and thus do not believe in God's existence. The great 20th century sage, the Chazon Ish explains that belief in God is a built-in attribute of the human soul, and is not dependent on one's prior convictions.

But the point is, that life without faith is not an option. and we shouldn't be confused by optimism and belief. Optimism is the confidence we will defeat our enemies and belief concerns matters that are beyond our capacity to accomplish especially when applying this concept to the situation of the Jewish people in Israel. We can clearly see that they are presently located in a belief situation where there is little room for simple optimism.

So what I pray for myself is to have faith like David in my invisible Protector and to have belief in the not-very-optimistic situation in Israel that we will defeat our enemies.

Will we need something more powerful than one smooth stone to defeat our enemies? Yes, we will, and that item will be our belief in our faithful One and Only True G-d of Israel. As hard as it might be to elevate to that level, we must all feel within us our own Jewish spark, and ignite it.

This blog is growing up

Folks, Smooth Stone is going to be celebrating its 3-year anniversary on July 13, 2006, and just in time, it's growing up. All graphics have moved towards the bottom of the sidebar, and all the links have moved upwards. The BlogRoll has been edited. Dead links and unreciprocated links have been removed. Of course, I won't lie, I want everyone who is anybody to link to me.

If you would like to be linked by Smooth Stone, please let me know and I will be glad to reciprocate.

I started Smooth Stone because I believe that Israel and Jews deserve a place in this world other than under the feet of angry and fascist Arabs and Muslims. I started Smooth Stone because my previous three years of effort to defend Israel on America Online's Middle-East forums was overrun by both Jewish and non-Jewish insane posters. One day, I am going to list the screen names of some of the users at AOL who threatened the lives of Jews and Americans. The FBI was told; they did nothing with the information.

Maybe some of you will have better luck.

Be advised, if you haven't already noticed, I sometimes use naughty words and talk about grown-up things. I realize that publishing something for public consumption under the name "anonymous" doesn't suddenly make it private or to some of my more religious readers, "right" or "Jewish". Nor does it guard me from criticism by the public that consumes what I write.

I note, however, that I don't have to allow feedback on my blog, which serves as a prophylactic against the complete lack of compassion one can find when blogging on the net. I enjoy other J-sites where bloggers write about their families and children, but my focus is on Israel and her legitimacy.

Israel does not have the right to defend herself but rather the OBLIGATION to defend herself. As a proud Jew who loves and believes in HaShem, I am also obligated to defend Israel.

May HaShem find me worthy to merit His Blessings for my efforts.

Am Yisrael Chai. Ma fish falastin.