Against All Odds, We're Back!

March, 2017

Yesterday, Rosh Chodesh Nissan, while my friend and I were slowly making our way from the Mishkan, Tabernacle area of Shiloh Hakeduma, Tel Shiloh, we couldn't help but admire the wildflowers, some familiar and some not, defiantly decorating the otherwise barren terrain.

There was a time when our walk to and from the Mishkan, Tabernacle area during the months of February- April, Shevat-Nisan was like a magical adventure on an "oriental rug" of brightly colored flowers.

But then the administration of Shiloh Hakeduma decided that clearing the remains of the uncontrollable plants once they had dried and become more like a clans of dangerous octopi and medusas was an expense to be eliminated. So they had poisons spread along the paths and nearby rockery, which aborted the growth and flowering of the otherwise legally protected plants.

March, 2016

Therefore the last few years it has been terribly hard to recognize the season by flora, since almost nothing grew on that Biblical landscape, the same spot where Hannah had successfully prayed for a son, and Eli the High Priest had heard the runner approach and his horrendous news. Before weed, sic, killers had been spread on the Holy ground, it had been easy to imagine that Joshua, Hannah, Eli, Samuel, Elkana and all the other ancient Jews who had made their way to Shiloh had marveled at the beauty of the antecedents of the very flowers we were enjoying.

March, 2017

As we admired the tenacity and chutzpah of these amazing flowers, I couldn't help but to compare them to the Jewish People who have also defied all of the "rules" of nature, history and warfare.

• We have survived thousands of years of exile.
• We have been victorious in wars when "everything" was against us.
• We have revived a language that had been considered as dead, and today its speakers excel in the most modern and innovative technology imaginable.
• We have reestablished the Jewish State thousands of years after it was invaded and destroyed. 

Wildflowers are the landscaping designs of Gd Almighty. And we, the Jewish People, are His People, too.