Blog/April 2010/Apr 16th

Apr 16th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

The week started off with us taking dear Daniela to the airport so she could return to the Exile to finish the school year. We were sad to see her go, and believe she was too... but she'll be returning at the end of May, God willing.

Then we were invited to a meeting with the mayor of Maale Adummim, Benny Kashriel. Just us, and twenty or so other "new immigrants". In fact, we (and our friends the Casdens) were among the small group of "old" immigrants. But I digress. On the one hand, the mayor was trying to make new contacts for fund-raising purposes, since the national government is not giving as much money as needed to keep our town a very pleasant place. Since none of us are currently rolling in money, I'm afraid that aspect of the meeting was not particularly effective. On the other hand, we did get to hear some interesting tidbits about our national government (in particular, as lead by Netanyahu) and the "building freeze" here in Judea, which is apparently quite seriously enforced. As the mayor said, bowing to foreign pressure to freeze development in Jewish areas was a "huge mistake" on Netanyahu's part. Not that any of us disagreed with the mayor's assessment, of course.

Sarah finished the work on her year-end art project, which took a lot of pressure off her (and us) and made her much happier. She also had one bagrut this week, but has many more coming up over the next few weeks. She's getting nervous, but she will probably do just fine -- at least, we hope so. Daniela arrived at Stern safely, and is immersed in her work there, looking forward to her return here over the summer (as are we).

One of my cousins invited us to her youngest son's bar-mitsvah celebration at the Western Wall. We went; but never found her, which was frustrating. Of course, the fact we've only seen her once, a long time ago, made it more difficult. So we decided to meet her at the kiddush afterwards; but when we tried to find the place where it was to be held, we had no luck at all. All in all, a most frustrating morning. So Esther and I went to a nearby restaurant and had a reasonably good lunch. I guess there really is no such thing as a "free lunch"!

Today, that same Esther decided to shave the hair off her thumb, using a "mandolin" vegetable slicer. At least it was a new mandolin, so the blade was razor sharp and the cut it made not too painful. But it didn't stop bleeding, no it did not... until Dr. Ron put a moistened teabag on the wound to stanch the bleeding (see how useful chemistry is?!?). Anyway, we got the bleeding under control and she is fine now, B"H! Not wanting to be left out of the running, Sarah did something to her arm the other day, which left it very painful ... and twitching. Ironically, each of them hurt their dominant arm, so even working as a team, they're not so efficient right now. A רפואה שלימה (complete recovery) to them both!

We used to get the National Geographic, until one-too-many articles defaming Israel appeared it in. See if you understand what it is about this article on water in Israel which confirms that the NG sucks.

This coming Tuesday is the 62nd Israeli Independence Day (Yom ha`atsma'ut). The day when millions of shekels worth of meat is grilled. Thousands of flags deployed. Traffic jammed from Dan to Be'er Sheva. We will probably be staying home; or perhaps meeting that cousin whose son's bar-mitsvah we missed. Another person staying home is Anat Kam, though her staying home is court-imposed. She would do well to ponder the severity of her actions, and be thankful that there is no death-penalty in Israel.

Odds and ends:

• The Palestinian Minister of Uncontrollable Rage explains the subtle distinctions between the various "moderates".
• Happy Birthday, Israel!
• The Britards say the Western Wall is not part of Jerusalem.
• Woman attacks ex with knives during reconciliation talks. Sounds like the Arab's idea of the "peace process".

This shabbat, we've got the Casdens (two-thirds of them, anyway) coming over for lunch. My good friend Fred brought a bottle of wine he found in a store in downtown Jerusalem, which comes from a winery which was not kosher, then became kosher, and has since reverted to non-kosher! So it will be interesting to see if the wine is any better than the other (most excellent) Israeli wines we've explored so far. The menu this week includes vegetarian stuffed peppers, "denis" fish baked with za`tar (hyssop mixture) and olive oil, baked chicken breast, peanut-butter and chocolate brownies. Oy! I'm getting hungry just thinking about it all...

Until next week,
Shabbat shalom !

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