Blog/December 2007/Dec 14th

December 14th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

This week we finished up Channukah. I took one day off work to go with my family and father-in-law to Masada (מצדה) on a tour arranged by Nefesh-b-Nefesh. We took the cable-car up; but Esther and I walked back down. For those of you who are not familiar with the place, it's a relatively unimpressive hill. Unimpressive, that is, until you climb or descend it on foot; then you have some appreciation of how good a fortress it was. I remember running up Masada at the end of basic training. Of course, I was 19 then -- a few years and more than a few kilos later, it's not nearly as easy.

On the way there, the tour guide shared with us some interesting information; but the thing I found most interesting was what he told us about dates. As you know, the Land of Israel is praised among other things, for its dates. When the State of Israel was founded, the Arabs who had lived here had mostly decimated all the native species. So Israel smuggled some 75,000 Iraqi date palm shoots into the country and planted them in the Jordan Valley. In Iraq, the dates produced about 40 kilos of dates a year; but in Israel they produced 400 kilos! Truly a blessed Land!

Sarah turned 16 this week; so we had to endure her frequent notices about her upcoming birthday. We got her a Harry Potter book in Hebrew, on the assumption she will be motivated to read it and gain vocabulary. In fact, as I type this she's sitting close by and reading it. Daniela was promoted to the highest level of gemara study, which makes her very happy. It's a bit embarrassing that she can read gemara better than I can, but we're proud of her anyway.

Esther interviewed a prospective client for her "doula" practice, though this one is a "freebie" since she doesn't have a license yet. I hope her client doesn't give birth on shabbat... I've been given responsibility for an important project at work, which is going to take up a lot of my time and effort.

We are getting close to signing a contract on the house; it's pretty exciting, and we are really looking forward to being rid of this turkey of a situation we're in right now. I just informed our landlord we are withholding a very large amount of money from our rent payment, because of all the money we have been paying out for others. We expect to receive an irate phone call any moment, but we're done being the Bank of Aaron.

And finally, you knew I wouldn't leave you without a political thought, didn't you? After all, politics is the Israeli pastime. Our town was in the news this week. One of the recent Dry Bones cartoons wryly points out the hypocrisy being bandied about in Washington towards Israel. Of course, that's nothing new, is it? Can you name the single country in the world in which the US Embassy is not located in its capital? I knew you could! Welcome to Israel.

Shabbat shalom!

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