Blog/May 2008/May 2nd

May 2nd (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

It's been a wild and wooly week! First, the seventh of Pesach was on shabbat.. so as soon as shabbat was over, we started putting our Pesach dishes and supplies away in boxes. Since we have more Pesach supplies than year-long ones, that took a while. Then, since we are moving out (God willing!) soon, the landlords have the place advertised for rent... and we've had a pretty constant stream of prospective renters coming by. More on that later.

Tuesday my Mom and Daniela arrived; Mom for her first time ever outside the US, and Daniela coming to finish off her year at Lindenbaum. They had a good flight, and even though it's a very long flight, my Mom looked fresh and in very good shape. However, they each had a cart full of luggage and bags, and I told them my car's an Israeli car -- not an American one. But we were able to get all their stuff inside, and we all got back to our place without problems.

Mom had the idea that Israel is all sand and desert - so she was surprised on the drive from the airport to Jerusalem by how much green there is. In fact, there is no desert between the airport and Jerusalem - it's all either farmland, small towns or forest. Even in our town, the desert is not apparent until you look eastward toward the Jordan valley, where the sere earth looks back at you with dangerous promise.

So far, she has been slow to get used to the Israeli way of doing things. For some reason, she thinks Israelis are rude and can't drive. She's right about the first, but I beg to differ with the second - they are just very impatient drivers.

This Friday we took a small trip to the Dead Sea, to show Mom some actual desert. She seemed more fascinated by all the camels and bedouin settlements than by the sea. But the scenery is starkly beautiful, and the weather was pleasant for such a trip.

You probably have heard all about the worldwide rice shortage. It's affecting the price of rice here in Israel and around the globe. But what I really wish we had, was a Rice shortage. We could do with a lot less Rice and her fellows. The idea that the young Fakestinians are "losing hope" and therefore they are "militants" and weakening the moderates, is one of the more ludicrous tenets of America's ludicrous Middle East "policy". At least she's not as bad as Jimmy "Never saw a Jew I liked" Carter, may God take his soul quickly, amen!

Speaking of the taking of souls, my laptop died suddenly this week. It shut it off one night, and the next day it turned-on to the dreaded sound of diagnostic beeps. Today I'm taking it to someone who can fix it, perhaps; hopefully I'll have good news about it next week.

And next week is Israel's 60th Independence Day celebration. During which our spunky mayor, Benny Kasriel, will hold a protest on one of the new (approved? not approved? who knows??) neighborhoods of Maaleh Adummim. I like this guy, he's one of the few politicians I know who actually seems to care about his constituents.

In odd news from the Holy Land, a group of Rabbis have called for a boycott of this year's International Bible Quiz. The issue is that this particular quiz is only for Jews, and one of the finalists is a so-called "Messianic" Jew. On the one hand, all traditional Jews are "messianic", in that we pray for the revelation of our anointed king (the meaning of "messiah", or mashiaH in Hebrew) three times a day. But "Messianic" Jews are not Jews (at least, not in terms of their beliefs -- some of them are in fact Jews by birth). They are Christians, part of a movement founded and funded by a Southern Baptist organization. Their only purpose is to convert Jews to Christianity. Sadly, they are making inroads among the ignorant. The truly sad thing is that it is already illegal in Israel for Christians to proselytize Jews, but somehow these drek-essers managed to gain a different status for themselves.

Shabbat shalom!

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