Blog/January 2008/Jan 25th
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January 25th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!
This past shabbat I was speaking to one of my fellow congregants after morning prayers. He asked me if I was "ashkenazi", to which I replied, "there is no such thing!". As he looked at me quizzically, I continued and said, "you are a Jew, I am a Jew, there is no such thing as 'ashkenazi' or 'sepharadi'". His question made me think about how Israelis in general categorize a person by the types of clothes or kippa worn. It seems there is a strong need to pidgeonhole people - it makes it easy for us to determine that person's relative worth. But listen up, people: there is no such thing as an "ashkenazi" or a "sepharadi" or a "temani" -- there is only "Jew". Whether you converted according to halachah, or you were born into the club; whether your ancestors spent time in Morocco or Poland or darkest Africa ; whether you keep all of the 613 mitsvot you can, or haven't got there yet: you are a Jew, period. Get over the pigeonholing, please!
Good news from Israel: To those who are concerned that we are in danger of getting hit by the missiles which affect Sderot, your fears are unfounded. We are over 100 kilometers away from there, on the other side of the central "mountain" range. Nothing comes to Maaleh Adummim, not even rockets. We appreciate your concern, but you should know that we here in Israel are half as likely to die a violent death as those of you in the USA. Really, it's true. Of course, we're twice as likely to get apoplexy from dealing with our government; but then, you have the collapsing dollar to worry about. I guess it evens out in the end.
More good news: we have allies in the "iriyah" (City Hall). If you recall, we've been tilting at windmills, trying to get our neighbors to pay their portion of the various bills. Previously, we would pay the bill and then wait for recompense from them; and when it wasn't paid we would subtract the amount owed us from our rent check. But this week: we went to the iriyah and told them we only wanted to pay our portion - and they said, absolutely! you shouldn't pay the rest! It was a breakthrough of sorts. When I gave the clerk there our landlords' address and phone numbers, she said, "you are doing a very good thing!" - because they keep trying to contact them and we end up getting the letters.
These landlords... don't seem to care much about maintaining the house or doing anything that's necessary. We still don't have gas, but I did phone, email and send them a fax. Now I'm going to tell them that if we don't get gas hooked up, I'm charging them for the extra (the considerably higher) amount we have to pay to cook with electric hotplates vs. gas. That will probably get their attention. We're another step closer to getting our mortgage. This week we signed yet more paperwork; it's almost done. Then we'll be able to feel better and sleep more soundly.
More good news: It turns out that talmud makes you a better sharpshooter. At least, the "Nachal Hareidi" sharpshooters scored higher than the rest of the sharpshooters. This despite the fact they don't learn advanced math (which is needed to figure corrections, apparently). Given the high birth rates among the Hareidi sector, our enemies have good reason to tremble... (that was a bilingual pun: "Hared" means "tremble". If I have to explain it, it's not fun anymore)
Sarah made her Israeli stage debut. Her school put on a play (of course, only girls taking part in it, and only women in the audience) in which she had a short part. The play was an adaptation of Ephraim Kishon's Salah Shabati, and though she only had a small part, it was the stepping stone to fame and fortune (or maybe not, but it was fun apparently).
Esther had her first mehadrin bus experience. Basically, a 'mehadrin bus' has the women and men sitting in separate sections. In this case, it was a 'double' bus, so the first bus section was men, and the second section was women. This was in Jerusalem, not Maaleh Adummim. Here we're lucky to have any kind of bus, let alone a 'mehadrin' one.
I had several experiences this week where shop owners recognized me, which was a little disorienting. We called to order a pizza, and the pizza guy started to say my address. I told him it was pretty bad, that I must order too much pizza - and he said, "no, you only order every 2-3 weeks". Nebach, he even knew the frequency with which we order. It's time to do teshuva when the pizza guy recognizes you over the phone...
Shabbat shalom!
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