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User:Elipongo

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Elipongo
Working, Editing, Bicycling
— Wikipedian  —
In my "office" at work.
In my "office" at work.
Name
Born (1969-09-05) September 5, 1969 (age 55)
Hebrew: כב אלול תשכ"ט
Current locationUpper West Side, Manhattan New York,  United States
Blood typeO+
SexualityHeterosexual
Family and friends
Marital statusSingle & looking for my bashert.
Education and employment
OccupationCritical care paramedic
EmployerSeniorCare EMS
EducationA.S. Mechanical Engineering
High schoolEllington High School
CollegeManchester Community College
UniversityUniversity of Connecticut
Hobbies, interests, and beliefs
ReligionModern Orthodox Judaism
PoliticsLibertarian, Republican
AliasesElipongo
Interests
Contact info
BlogElipongo's Blog
Emailelipongo@gmail.com
Elipongo subpages
Userboxes
This editor is a Veteran Editor IV and is entitled to display this Gold Editor Star.
This user helps out newcomers.
This user observes Shabbat.
It is approximately 9:45 PM where this user lives.

Bio

My name is Elias Friedman (Hebrew: אליהו מתתיהו בן צבי). I'm a critical care paramedic living in the Upper West Side section of Manhattan in New York City. I moved here at the end of December 2008 from Connecticut.

I'm a 55 year old, single, Modern Orthodox Jewish male. I grew up in Ellington, Connecticut where I was the president of Congregation Knesseth Israel.

I got into EMS in 1997 when I started volunteering in Coventry. I got a job at a commercial ambulance service in 1999 when I was laid-off from my previous job as a Pellet mill operator in a feed mill. I got my Associate's degree from Manchester Community College in Mechanical Engineering in 2000 which was also the year I became an EMT-Intermediate. I was working on completing my B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Connecticut when September 11th made me re-think my priorities. I entered Hartford Hospital's Paramedic program and graduated in April 2004. My precepting was delayed to September due to my father's death that July, and I've had med-control since December 2004. In the first week of September 2008 I was laid off from my job at the Ambulance service of Manchester, but since I was already in the process of getting reciprocity of my paramedic license for New York, it didn't let it upset me too much. In December of 2008 I started to work for SeniorCare EMS which has bases in both the Bronx and in Brooklyn, I quite enjoy working there! In the Summer of 2012 I became a volunteer paramedic member of West Side Hatzolah so I can better help my local community as well.

Ready for a bicycle ride!

The second half of my username is derived from my Dalmatian, Pongo, who died in March 2006, just a week shy of his sixteenth birthday.

I really enjoy my working in EMS, my friends have remarked (positively!) that I love to talk about my work. Getting up out of bed to go to work isn't an effort of willpower like it had often been at my previous jobs. My health and stress level are better than they have ever been, of course that's partly attributable to my taking up year-round bicycle commuting the eleven miles to work. I really think that I've found my niche.

I am a member of the Connecticut Chapter of Triangle Fraternity, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Republican National Committee, and the NAEMT. I am a master Freemason. I am a former member of the ASME

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float

Wiki stats

N.B. These edit counts tend to move down over time as pages (and my edits) get deleted.

Things I'm working on

Feel free to help out on any of these items!

Existing pages

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float

Pages yet to be created

To do

  • Write up report on Lord & Taylor vandal for WP:LTA
  • Create navigation template for Investment banks

Community

How to add to the community bulletin board

Welcome to the community bulletin board, which is a page used for announcements from WikiProjects and other groups. Included here are coordinated efforts, events, projects, and other general announcements.

Events and projects [add]

Yearly or infrequent events

Monthly or continuous events

Recently completed: Alphabet run: M & N Women in Red turns 10 Geofocus: Ten for Kenya
New this month: Alphabet run: O & P Indigenous women Film and stage
Ongoing initiatives: Music #1day1woman
Upcoming events: Ideas


Meetups for August 2025 +/-
Christchurch 41 August 3, 2025 (2025-08-03)
San Ysidro (SD125) August 9, 2025 (2025-08-09)
London 219 August 10, 2025 (2025-08-10)
San Diego Wiknic (SD126) August 16, 2025 (2025-08-16)
Aberdeen 4 August 25, 2025 (2025-08-25)
Minnesota August 26, 2025 (2025-08-26)


Meetups for September 2025 +/-
San Diego 126 September 13, 2025 (2025-09-13)

Also consider posting WikiProject, Task Force, and Collaboration news at The Signpost's WikiProject Report page. Please include your signature when adding a listing here.

General notices
Weekly Torah Portion
Eikev (עקב)
Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25
The Weekly Torah portion in synagogues on Shabbat, Saturday, 15 Av, 5785—August 9, 2025
"And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God, to walk only in His paths, to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and soul, keeping the Lord's commandments and laws, which I enjoin upon you today, for your good." (Deuteronomy 10:12–13.)

Moses told the Israelites that if they obeyed God's rules, God would faithfully maintain the covenant, would bless them with fertility and agricultural productivity, and would ward off sickness.

Moses directed the Israelites to destroy all the peoples whom God delivered to them, showing no pity and not worshiping their gods. Moses told the Israelites not to fear these nations because they were numerous, for the Israelites had but to recall what God did to Pharaoh and the Egyptians and the wonders by which God liberated them. God would do the same to the peoples whom they feared, and would send a plague against them, too. God would dislodge those peoples little by little, so that the wild beasts would not take over the land. Moses directed the Israelites to burn the images of their gods, not to covet nor keep the silver and gold on them, nor to bring an abhorrent thing into their houses.

God made the Israelites travel the long way in the wilderness for 40 years to test them with hardships to learn what was in their hearts and whether they would keep God's commandments. God subjected them to hunger and then gave them manna to teach them that man does not live on bread alone, but on anything that God decrees. Their clothes did not wear out, nor did their feet swell for 40 years. God disciplined them as a man disciplines his son.

Moses told the Israelites that God was bringing them into a good land, where they might eat food without end, and thus when they had eaten their fill, they were to give thanks to God for the good land that God had given them. Moses warned the Israelites not to forget God, not to violate God's commandments, and not to grow haughty and believe that their own power had won their wealth, but to remember that it was God who gave them the power to prosper. Moses warned that if they forgot God and followed other gods, then they would certainly perish like the nations that God was going to displace from the land. Moses warned the Israelites not to believe that God had enabled them to possess the land because of their virtue, for God was dispossessing the land's current inhabitants because of those nations’ wickedness and to fulfill the oath that God had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

"The Adoration of the Golden Calf" (painting by Nicolas Poussin)
Moses exhorted the Israelites to remember how they had provoked God to anger in the wilderness from the day that they left Egypt until that day. At Horeb they so provoked God that God was angry enough to have destroyed them. Moses ascended the mountain, stayed on the mountain 40 days and nights, and ate no bread and drank no water. At the end of the 40 days, God gave Moses two stone tablets that God had inscribed with the words and the covenant that God had addressed to the Israelites. God told Moses to hurry down, for the people whom Moses brought out of Egypt had acted wickedly and had made a molten image. God told Moses that God was inclined to destroy them and make of Moses a nation far more numerous than they. Moses started down the mountain with the two tablets in his hands, when he saw how the Israelites had made themselves a molten calf.
Moses with the Tablets of the Law (painting by Rembrandt)
Moses flung the two tablets away, smashing them before their eyes, and threw himself down before God, fasting another 40 days and nights. And God gave heed to Moses. God was angry enough with Aaron to have destroyed him, so Moses also interceded for Aaron. Moses burned the calf, broke it to bits, ground it into dust, and threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.

Moses reminded the Israelites how they provoked God at Taberah, and at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah. And when God sent them from Kadesh-barnea to take possession of the land, they flouted God's command and did not put their trust in God.

When Moses lay prostrate before God those 40 days, because God was determined to destroy the Israelites, Moses prayed to God not to annihilate God's own people, whom God freed from Egypt, but to give thought to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and ignore the Israelites’ sinfulness, else the Egyptians would say that God was powerless to bring them into the land that God had promised them. And God agreed not to destroy them.

Thereupon God told Moses to carve out two tablets of stone like the first, come up to the mountain, and make an ark of wood. God inscribed on the tablets the Ten Commandments that were on the first tablets that Moses had smashed, and Moses came down from the mountain and deposited the tablets in the ark.

The Israelites marched to Moserah, where Aaron died and was buried, and his son Eleazar became priest in his stead. From there they marched to Gudgod, and on to Jotbath.

God set apart the Levites to carry the ark of the covenant, to stand in attendance upon the Tabernacle, and to bless in God's Name, and that was why the Levites were to receive no portion of the land, as God was their portion.

Moses exhorted the Israelites to revere God, to walk only in God's paths, to love God, to serve God with all their heart and soul, and to keep God's commandments. Moses noted that although heaven and earth belong to God, God was drawn to love their fathers, so that God chose the Israelites from among all peoples. Moses described God as supreme, great, mighty, and awesome, showing no favor and taking no bribe, but upholding the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriending the stranger. Moses thus instructed the Israelites to befriend the stranger, for they were strangers in Egypt. Moses exhorted the Israelites to revere God, worship only God, and swear only by God's name, for God was their glory, who wrought for them marvelous deeds, and made them as numerous as the stars.

Moses exhorted the Israelites to love God and always keep God's commandments. Moses asked the Israelites to note that it was they themselves who witnessed the signs that God performed in Egypt against Pharaoh, what God did to Egypt's army, how God rolled upon them the waters of the Sea of Reeds, what God did for them in the wilderness, and what God did to Dathan and Abiram when the earth swallowed them. Moses instructed them therefore to keep all the law so that they might have the strength to enter and possess the land and long endure on that land flowing with milk and honey. Moses extolled the land as a land of hills and valleys that soaks up its water from the rains, a land that God looks after.

Then Moses told them words now found in the Shema prayer: If the Israelites obeyed the commandments, loving God and serving God with heart and soul, God would grant the rain in season and they would gather their grain, wine, and oil. God would provide grass for their cattle and the Israelites would eat their fill. Moses warned them not to be lured away to serve other gods, for God's anger would flare up against them, God would suspend the rain, and they would soon perish. Moses urged them to impress God's words upon their heart, bind them as a sign on their hands, let them serve as a symbol on their foreheads, teach them to your children, and recite them when they stayed at home and when they were away, when they lay down and when they got up. Moses instructed them to inscribe God's words on the doorposts of their houses and on their gates, so that they and their children might endure in the land that God swore to their fathers as long as there is a heaven over the earth.

Moses promised that if they faithfully kept all the law, loving God, walking in all God's ways, and holding fast to God, then God would dislodge the nations then in the land, and every spot on which their feet tread would be theirs, and their territory would extend from the wilderness to Lebanon and from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean.

Commentaries from Aleph Beta Academy

Thanks!

Awards & barnstars
For your contributions to Wikipedia and humanity in general, you are hereby granted the coveted Random Smiley Award
originated by Pedia-I
(Explanation and Disclaimer)

TomasBat (@)(Contribs)(Sign!) 21:54, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The Original Barnstar
For your willingness to help a new user in a difficult and time-consuming situation, with little potential for any appreciation at all, I am delighted to award you this barnstar. Thank you for trying to keep a new editor contributing! Accounting4Taste:talk 16:20, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Updated DYK query On 4 January, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Republic of Lakotah, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.
--Royalbroil 16:43, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
The Real-Life Barnstar
Given to me and other attendees of the March 2008 New York City meetup by Mindspillage (talk · contribs)


For protecting my user page and user talk page. Razorflame 03:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
This is for being a damn good vandal fighter and for beating me to reverting vandalism on many occasions. Keep up the great work! --Kukini háblame aquí 16:20, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
Your thoroughness requires a cookie. Any other reward would be insufficient. Rob Banzai (talk) 22:38, 16 May 2008 (UTC)