Blog/September 2008/Sep 19th
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September 19th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!
What a week! Lots of stuff to talk about...
First - this past shabbat there was a terrorist event in the small town of Yitzhar. One of our cousins from a neighboring village took it into his head to cause some damage. So he went into Yitzhar, burned one house and stabbed a nine year old boy who tried to stop him. Then he ran off to the neighboring village. A group of irate Yitzhar residents went into the village and fired some shots and threw some stones. That was apparently the event. Now, depending on what you choose to read, you will hear a story of self defense, or perhaps the Wild West. Or more ridiculous: pogroms and yet more on pogroms. Then of course, there's the lame response of our government.
Not everyone who reads these pages is Jewish. For my Christian readers: this is why you should care.
What else? Oh, on the way to work every day I hear an alarming ad on the radio. It opens with shofarot sounding an alarm - then the serious voice of the announcer tells us that Rabbi Nachman's grave is in danger. Why? Because some Ukrainian businessman won a judgment of $10 million against the grave-site of R' Nahman. So the announcer continues, imploring us to donate money to 'save our Rebbe's grave'. Not that I have anything against R' Nahman, Heaven forbid -- but wouldn't it make sense to move his grave to Israel and thereby (1) solve the Ukrainian problem, (2) save Breslovers millions of dollars every Rosh Hashana and (3) provide a more honorable resting place for their Rebbe?
In personal news... we finally got our dining room table! Finally, we don't have to eat off the folding plastic table and folding metal chairs! We're looking forward to a more restful shabbat this week.
Esther went with a neighbor to kever Rachel. This is her story in her own words:
"I got a call from a neighbor who was going to drive with her daughter over to kever Rachel and invited me to go. I immediately accepted the offer since it was one of the places I've never visited. Up to last month it was not possible for private cars to go all the way to the site. People had to go by bus from Jerusalem, which according to my neighbor it could take up to an hour, and once they got to the site had to wait to be escorted by a soldier. Just a couple of weeks ago the government decided to open the road to private cars on an experimental bases. It took us 25 minutes to get there from Maaleh Adumim. The kever is right at the entrance to Bethlehem and just a few blocks away from where Daniela attended seminary last year. You drive in one block and then get in to the road to the grave which is lined on both sides with very high cement walls to protect the visitors from our friendly neighbors. Once inside it is all very quiet. There is an entrance for the men and one for the women. The women section has two small rooms where people sit and pray. I was able to get into the innermost room first standing and then found a chair and sat down. It was very inspiring to be there and I hope it stays open to private transportation so more people have a chance to go visit".
Daniela's computer virus problems were finally solved this week. We reinstalled Windows. I hate Windows...
Sarah got her bagrut results; and while they were disappointing to her, they were not bad at all. Especially considering she had to learn Hebrew while learning the subject matter.
In more Sarah news: yesterday she got her tsav gius -- call-up notice from the Army. So she needs to register with them in December. In the meantime we need to find out exactly what she has to do for the "religious girls" exemption. So you can call her 'recruit Sarah' now.
I got a call this week on my cel-phone, from some woman I don't know, for a woman I don't know. The conversation went like this: Hello, Tali?. No, sorry, no Tali here. Are you sure?. Yes, I'm sure there's no Tali here. Well, I was given this number for "Tali". It's about a law-school course. That's nice; but I'm not Tali, nor do I know a Tali, nor do I want to be a lawyer... good bye!
Work was excellent, if stressful this week. I was able to get a small project finished which will serve as a launching-point for future projects. In 'manly' news, I re-screened our screen door and main window of the kitchen, so we can get a cross-draft now without worrying about bugs flying in. I know, it's not interesting ... but you have to take the good with the bad.
In odd news: we were invited to a meeting with the mayor of our town the other night. Well, we weren't the only invitees, but in any case -- we went, and there was noone else there. We still don't know why. So my phone rings, and a friend of mine says he's in our neighborhood, and would I mind dropping by where he was. Since we were on our way back from the abortive meeting with the mayor anyway, we said "sure". Turns out, he's at a local Chabad shul (literally two minutes from my house), and they were having a 'chai Elul' party. The place was just one room -- it reminded me of our shul in Bellevue many years ago, when it was getting started -- and there was an "interesting" collection of characters there. More varieties of pickled fish than I'm used to... but it was an interesting end to the evening.
Until next week,
Shabbat shalom!
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