And the river turned to...animal fat?

Beef Tallow floating on the Houston Ship Cannal (AP/US Coastal Guard)

HuffPost reports:

Workers with the U.S. Coast Guard and the Texas General Land Office used pitchfork and fishnets Wednesday to pierce, corral and remove chunks of beef fat clogging the Houston Ship Channel, shutting down nearly a mile of one of the nation's busiest marine arteries...

Some 15,000 gallons of animal fat poured into the channel through a storm drain on Tuesday after an onshore storage tank owned by agricultural company Jacob Sterns and Sons leaked 250,000 gallons of the greasy substance, Brahms said...

"When it hit the water it instantly thickened," Brahms said. "It turned into a thick pattie, which is pretty much what we're cleaning up now."

In the first of the Ten Plagues, Moses turns the main Egyptian waterway to blood:

This is what the LORD says: By this you will know that I am the LORD: With the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water of the Nile, and it will be changed into blood. The fish in the Nile will die, and the river will stink; the Egyptians will not be able to drink its water. (Exodus 7:17-18)

It's not that unusual

AP reports:

"It is not that unusual," said Kristen Schuler, a scientist at the US Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center. "There is nothing apocalyptic or anything that is necessarily out of the ordinary for what we would see in any given week." Indeed, the USGS keeps a log on its website with reports of groups of birds dying each week, averaging from dozens to thousands.

It may be normal for large groups of birds to die from time to time. It may also be normal for large groups of fish to die from time to time. But the timing of several incidents of mass bird deaths, along with several incidents of mass fish deaths, within days, across the globe is startling. Moreover, while mass wildlife kill is a known phenomenon, birds falling dead from the sky with no disease and no external harm is equally bizarre.

I wonder if in Egypt, each of the ten plagues were explained away by experts. I wonder at what point people started to wake up.

We are now approaching the Jewish holiday Tu Bishvat, and after that, Purim. In the Purim story, the Persian king's minister orders a death sentence for the entire Jewish people, as a result of a Jew's refusal to bow down to the minister, and only to God. Luckily, the king's queen is secretly Jewish, and through her exquisite beauty, wit and charm she convinces the king to reverse the tables, honor the Jew, and hang the minister. Purim is a celebration of the reversal of bad fate, and the ability of things to turn from entirely doomsdayish to entirely sweetened (b"H).

In the scroll recounting the story of Purim, God is entirely absent from the written text. In other words, anyone reading the story could argue that the miracle of saving the Jewish people was entirely due to Esther's beauty, wit, and charm; her uncle's wisdom to plant her as a spy in the palace in the first place; the king's love for Esther; Haman's lack of charisma; grim prospects for the upcoming election year; global warming; etc., etc. Indeed, all of these reasons were indeed the means by which the people were saved...but who was orchestrating the show? The point is, since supernatural miracle Chanukah (200 CE), it's all interpretation. It's all up to us. The test of the generation of Mashiach is emunah, best translated as steadfastedness. We have to find God within the Purim story; we have to find God inside the headlines, inside the wonders of creation, inside Egypt.

Take the Ten Plagues, which we read about during this week's Torah portion, Bo (Exodus 10:1–13:16). First, the nile turns red from blood (on that note, Houston's ship channel just get clogged with beef fat). Blood-filled nile is a little weird, but could be explained by various natural factors. Next, frogs are everywhere. Big ones. Again, weird, but nothing supernatural. Then, lice. If you've ever played with kids in Israel, you know how hard this one is to get rid of. At this point, you start to wonder: wait, first bloody nile, then frogs, now lice. Could there be a connection between the three? They seem unrelated, and each can be explained on its own by natural forces, and there have been somewhat similar instances in the past of each isolated incidents in the past, so, the Jews remain in captivity, and business as usual resumes...

We all know the end of the story. Pharoah connects the dots and begs the Jews to leave. God splits the sea and demonstrates his power over . Let's not wait for miracles, let's find Hashem in the times! Bo el Paro...come to Pharoah, because, you'll find out, that I was there all along ! ! !

Mass Suicides? #2

In my earlier post, I discuss an expert opinion that the 26 dolphins found dead in England in June 2008 had essentially taken their own lives, by inhaling large amounts of debris and mud. In the past, dolphins have been known to not come up for air or slam themselves against sides of a pool for no apparent reason, something that has led experts to believe dolphins are among creatures who can choose to take their own lives.

Today, more stories are circulating regarding suicide as an explanation for animal deaths in the past, especially when circumstances of an incident are highly unusual and when other plausible explanations are lacking. These stories are not further evidence in the latest trend of mass animal deaths, but rather as evidence suggesting that animals have a level of sensitivity and complexity which is generally overlooked. It is sad that we have to derive this understanding from such horrific circumstances.

1. Mass sheep suicide in Turkey, July 2005:

First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the same cliff, Turkish media reported.

In the end, 450 dead animals lay on top of one another in a billowy white pile, the Aksam newspaper said. Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher and the fall more cushioned, Aksam reported.

2. 200 whales strand themselves on King Island between Australia and Tasmania. Apparently, this is not an isolated incident:

Mass strandings of whales occur periodically in Australia and New Zealand, as the whales migrate to and from Antarctic waters, for reasons that are not entirely understood.

Theories include disturbance of echo-location, possibly by interference from sound produced by human activities at sea.

3. Dogs known to leap suddenly from a bridge in Scotland:

In the past fifty years, 50 to 600 dogs have jumped over Scotland’s Overtoun Bridge and plummeted to their deaths. A few years ago, five dogs jumped in under six months. The Daily Mail wrote an article featuring reports of horrified pet owners who walked their dog over the bridge, when suddenly the dog would, without warning, leap over the bridge, falling 50 ft to the rocky bottom below. Perhaps even more disturbing, there are reports of “second timers” – of the few dogs who have survived the fall, some jumped over the same bridge again.

Many theories have circulated about why dogs react this way to the bridge. Some suggest that the dogs are deliberately committing suicide, perhaps due to depression in their owners or even a supernatural force. More recent research suggests that it may be the scent of minks, an animal known to live under the bridge.

Animals, who are closer to nature, are more attuned with the purpose of the world as ingrained in them naturally by their creator. If this is part of what is behind news, it is a huge wake-up call to humans to get the world back on track. Ha'olam lo hefker - this world is not abandoned, rather, this world has the potential to be a dwelling place for the Divine, and will be that one day, soon, b"H.

The search for explanations

With no signs of infections or other illnesses, and no external signs of what killed them, experts around the world are struggling to explain the mass animal deaths, while holding off on the temptation to connect events in Europe to the U.S.

In Sweden, 100 jackdaws were found dead on a roadside. Explanations remain vague.

According to CNN:

Autopsies were performed on five of the birds. The institute said they died due to "sudden, hard external blows," according to the press release. They had no signs of infection or other illnesses, and there were no external signs indicating what killed them.

"We have determined that the birds have died from severe internal bleedings caused by external blows," said the Institute's Marianne Elvander.

Meanwhile, "A county veterinarian has speculated that the birds that fell from the sky in central Sweden on Tuesday may have been frightened by fireworks, then run over by a car after landing on the road in the dark." (The Swedish Local)

Seems to me like this NY Times lesson plan designed for the classroom is doing a better job of asking questions than the media, which is either lazily relying on authorities' vague explanations for isolated incidents, or resorting to a Church's declaration that May 11, 2011 is judgment day.

Fish and Jews

Gefilte fish (photo by David Shay)

בראשית מ"ח ט"ז

הַמַּלְאָךְ הַגֹּאֵל אֹתִי מִכָּל-רָע, יְבָרֵךְ אֶת-הַנְּעָרִים, וְיִקָּרֵא בָהֶם שְׁמִי, וְשֵׁם אֲבֹתַי אַבְרָהָם וְיִצְחָק; וְיִדְגּוּ לָרֹב, בְּקֶרֶב הָאָרֶץ

Genesis 48:16: "May the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys; and let my name be named in them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them be like fish in the midst of the earth.'

The Hebrew word 'vayidgu' is difficult to translate - it's as if the word fish had a verb form - thus 'be like fish' comes close. Jacob blesses his offspring, the ancestors Jewish people, that they multiply like fish. 

Rebbe Natan of Breslov, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's student, on fish and Mashiach.

Yitzchak Ginsburgh on Mashiach, the letter Nun and fish at Inner.org

A gefilte fish recipe @ Chabad.org

homemade rocket lands in eshkol

Militants in Gaza fired a homemade Kassam rocket into Israel on Wednesday night. The rocket fell in an open area in the Eshkol Regional Council (map). There were no injuries.

Despite weekly, and sometimes daily, rocket fire into Israel, which causes an inconceivable level of fear and stress on the lives of Israelis in the area, there are miraculously low casualties as a result of the rockets (keyn hora). See this video below (in Hebrew only for now, sorry!) for an account of the miracles of the Gaza war, among them, the many instances of miraculous dodging of Hamas rocket fire.

Hashem Yirachem!

A Vulture turned Mossad Spy

While birds around the globe are dying en masse, leaders and online forums in the Arab world are accusing Israel of a Zionist plot to train birds as spies...

Haaretz reports:

A vulture tagged by scientists at Tel Aviv University has strayed into Saudi Arabian territory, where it was promptly arrested on suspicion of being a Mossad spy, Israeli and Saudi media reported Tuesday.

The bird was found in a rural area of the country wearing a transmitter and a leg bracelet bearing the words "Tel Aviv University", according to the reports, which surfaced first in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.

Although these tags indicate that the bird was part of a long-term research project into migration patterns, residents and local reporters told Saudi Arabia's Al-Weeam newspaper that the matter seemed to be a "Zionist plot."

The accusations went viral, with hundreds of posts on Arabic-language websites and forums claiming that the "Zionists" had trained these birds for espionage.