Blog/October 2011/Oct 21st

Oct 21st (See this week's devar torah)

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Hi, again!

The holiday of sukkot is behind us now; have to finish loads of laundry and start thinking about returning to work. Another Arab dictator meets his reward. Gilad Schalit returns home after more than five years in captivity. זה היום, עשה ה' -- נגילה ונשמחה בו! (this is the day HASHEM made, we will rejoice and be glad in it)

The weather for sukkot was pretty much perfect. Not hot, not cold, no rain -- really pleasant. During the "intermediate days" of the holiday (that is, the days of the week between the first and last days) we had guests several times, including dear friends from "the old country", who recently made aliyah. Unlike years past, we made no attempts to go on any trips across the country -- mainly because I was (still am) trying to recover from the cold I caught right after rosh hashanah.

We did, however, make one excursion into downtown Jerusalem, to be "regular tourists". It's been years since any of us did that, and it was actually a lot of fun to wander around looking at things, eating, shopping, and just doing nothing of much use. Sometimes all you need to do nothing much.

The cold I had caught seemed to get better, though as usual with me the lungs got involved and I've been coughing the past several weeks. Since I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting pneumonia, I went to the doctor. He said my blood oxygen levels were good, my lungs were clear (despite that I could hear a rattle without even using a stethoscope), and that it would clear up in a week or two -- but if it got worse, he was giving me a prescription for antibiotics as well. Turns out it did not get better, and so I've just started on the antibiotics. The real bummer is being "out of sorts" during such a nice vacation.

By now you've all heard that the tyrant of Tripoli (Libya, not Lebanon!) has met his Maker. One wonders why the MSM (mainstream media) has plastered pictures of his messy demise all over the internet. What purpose is served by showing it? Is it not enough that one less evildoer breathes? Just asking, because he was nauseating enough in life; why do we need to see him in death?

The big news in Israel this week was the unprecedented exchange of more than a thousand terrorists, murderers and criminals for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Schalit. Even some Arabs find this embarrassing. But the problem is, as I've been saying, that the terrorists vow to continue their path, and this is not a good thing at all. True: we learn from this week's Torah portion, from the story of Cain and Abel, that "whoever saves one life, it as if he saved an entire world". But saving one life while throwing away tens and perhaps hundreds of others falls into the category of "my blood is redder than his", and we are forbidden to sacrifice one person for the sake of another. Well, what's done is done; let's hope our security apparatus is ready for the inevitable.

I found out during the holiday that my current employer has cut off my email access as well as my "internal network" access. I still have three weeks to go, where I'm supposedly working for them -- I wonder how I'm supposed to get anything done when I have no email access? On the other hand, my new employer has already set me up with an email account, and is asking when I can have my first meeting with them to get oriented. So I suppose I won't be lacking for "what to do", but I'm a bit tweaked about the zeal with which my current (?) employer cut me off.

Anyway, we've taken down the sukkah and cleaned the patio -- it's now ready for us to enjoy over shabbat. Somehow, I managed to repack things into our storage area more efficiently, so even though the same things are in it, we've got some more room. Maybe the things we use infrequently just decay and disappear, leaving more room -- because we keep putting more things there, and it looks like it maintains the "free space" available!

This week one of Sarah's friends will be staying with us, and since she's a radical carnivore we'll try to accommodate her as best we can. Unfortunately, after a week of sukkot we're almost out of food! This week's menu: tuna salad, brisket cholent, lamb chops, arroz con pollo, beet salad, yams with carrots, chicken soup, quinoa salad, eggplant, homemade ḥummus, apple cake

Until next week,
shabbat shalom!

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