feature: students

Staff photo by Angie Baan

Teen2Teen staff photo by Colton Graub

uniting
against evil

Students protest

Nachshoni, 16, of West Bloomfield

Ahmadinejad's

U.N. visit.

by Sarah Spitzer

commentary

At&
Akiva students Tzvi Klein, 16, of Oak Park and Amitzur

Hillel student Josh Graff, 13, of Huntington Woods takes a stand.

A

chdut, unity. When I got up to speak at the rally
held Sept. 22 protesting Iranian President Mah-
moud Ahmadinejad's United Nations visit, I was
inspired by it. Jews and non-Jews alike from all over the
community showing their concern for the issue.
Among those making a stand were more than 100 Jewish
students from Yeshivat Akiva in Southfield, the Frankel Jew-
ish Academy in West Bloomfield and Hillel Day School in
Farmington Hills.
Akiva students sang and danced to express their Jewish
heritage; FJA students held protest signs; and Hillel students
joined in the statement we were making to the world.
Chosen as the Akiva student speaker, I spoke about Ahma-
dinejad and how he interprets the Koran to give himself reli-
gious authority to commit criminal and terrorist atrocities and
corrupt his government. He wants to eliminate the "world's
ills" by ridding the world of Zionism and Jews altogether. Even
more, he and Islamist extremists wish to take over the entire
world with their twisted and backward beliefs. They intend to
obtain and use nuclear weapons to destroy Israel and essen-
tially control the world. If not stopped, they will succeed.
Moderate Muslims, on the other hand, interpret the Koran
very differently and practice their religion peacefully.

"While the moderates wish to negate the beliefs of the ex-
tremists, they cannot do it alone, especially if we're shaking
hands with these terrorists and supremacists and happily swal-
lowing their lies while they embrace us with one arm and reach
over to stab us from behind with the other," I told the crowd at
the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills.
A section of my speech was quoted in the Detroit Free Press,
and "dfobare" posted this comment on the paper's Web site:
"Poor Sarah Spitzer. She doesn't have a problem with 'Islamic
extremists.' She has a problem with Islam itself. As the Hadith
[oral traditions of the words and deeds of Islamic prophet Mu-
hammad] says about Judgment: .. and the rocks and trees will
say: '0, Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and
kill him!' Ahmadinejad takes Islam seriously, that's all. And so
should us kuffars [nonbelievers]."
Need I say more?
If these extremists and criminals are suc-
cessful in their mission, one day parents will
tell their children bedtime stories saying, once
upon a time, there was a Jewish state. Poor Is-
rael.

Jewish
mupity

Sarah Spitzer, 17, is a senior at Yeshivat Akiva in

Southfield.

T2T torah: Sukkot

Oct. 18, 2008 — by Rachel Brown

the four species

Sukkot's symbols relate to all types of Jews.

One of the many special mitzvot we have on Sukkot

have no taste but smell

is the mitzvah of the

lacking in Torah studies but abundant in mitzvot. The

good;

they represent a Jew

Arbah Minim, or the four spe-
cies. They consists of the lulav (a date palm branch),
hadassim (myrtle branches), aravot (willow branches)

aravot, having neither a good taste nor smell, repre-

and the etrog (citron). In six directions — north, south,

The etrog, with it's wonderful smell and good taste,

east, west, up and down — we shake the lulav, hadas-

symbolizes a Jew who is rich is Torah and mitzvot.

sim and aravot that are tied together in one hand and

the etrog that is held so delicately in the other.

sents a Jew who does neither Torah study nor mitzvot.

On Sukkot, when we bind all of these together,

it represents a binding of all Jews on a holiday that

To the casual observer, these four items may seem

symbolizes God's perspective on

strange. The obvious question then is why these and

fusing the physical with the spiri-

what do they represent?

tual.

Each of the Arbah Minim symbolize four specific

Rachel Brown, 17, is a senior at

types of Jews. The lulav, which has a good taste from

the Frankel Jewish Academy in

its dates yet has no smell, is a comparison to the Jew

West Bloomfield.

who learns Torah but does no mitzvot. The hadassim

B2 teen2teen October • 2008

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