Blog/April 2012/Apr 13th

Apr 13th (See this week's devar torah)

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Hi, again!

חג פסח כשר ושמח לכולם! A kasher and happy pesaḥ holiday to all of you!

We're rounding up a week of mo`ed, the intermediate days of the pesaḥ holiday, so the blog is coming out a day ahead of schedule. I hope you don't mind! As you can tell, we weren't exactly deprived during our mo`ed. The seder was as pleasant as usual, and I think our guests from the Olde Country enjoyed themselves.

At the beginning of the week it was very hot, so Esther and I decided to make a trip outside the Land. We went to Makhtesh Ramon, which is about an hour and a half south of Be'er Sheva` (outside the Biblical limits of the Land). We figured it would take us about two and a half hours to get there, but it took us four instead. Partly because the site we were going to was "off the road", on a really bad dirt road. And partly because the road-sign for "highway 6 southbound" were notably missing and we were delayed twenty minutes trying to figure out how to get onto 6 going south! We did find other helpful road-signs though.

Apparently people used to travel through there, stopping at the khan to refresh themselves. Despite the arid and (very!) hot climate, there are plants and close-by was a somewhat stagnant-looking body of water. It was an interesting trip, but a very long an hot one; I don't think we need to revisit the place any time soon. It was 32C at home, but 43C at the Makhtesh!

The next day, we took it easy and were joined by a friend of mine and his family. They stayed several hours and partook of our asado (not a real one, since we didn't have time to cook properly -- it was a faster-paced asado than is really required... but the food was good!).

Yesterday we went on another long and grueling trip -- a whole 20 minutes from home -- to Naḥal Perat. This is one of the most beautiful well-kept secrets around. A real oasis in the middle of the desert. Here's Esther and I dipping our feet in the cool, refreshing water. There's actually a waterfall, and here Esther is again, in the stream. I highly recommend the place to anyone visiting the area, and most particularly to those who think a desert has no water at all. We were there a couple hours, walking in and hiking around the stream; and there were a lot of other people there along with us, but it wasn't especially crowded.

I also was able to make serious progress on my zemanim Android application. I gave it to a couple people to check, and they gave me valuable feedback -- including discovering a few bugs which resulted from using the application in a way I had not yet done. So I anticipate releasing it next week. Here you can take a peek at what it looks like, running on my phone.

This week the last day of pesaḥ is on Friday, so we effectively have a two-day "yom-tov" just like our friends and family in the Exile. We'll have guests for two of the six upcoming festive meals, who will have some combination of: egg salad, schnitzel, salatim, brisket, chicken soup, leek kefta, chicken salad, smoked fish, eggplant, homemade ice cream, chocolate brownies, and chocolate covered macaroons (our penance for not having sufficient deserts last week...)

Until next week,
ḥag sameaḥ and shabbat shalom!

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