Elections on Monday- Who's Bringing The Häagen-Dazs?

Too many Israelis are sick and tired of voting. I wonder how low voter turnout will be on Monday. This is our third round of elections in just under a year.

Considering the popular "line"

פעם שלישית גלידהPa'am shlishit glidaThird time ice cream

I am craving Häagen-Dazs.

And politically speaking, I'm disappointed that Gantz was smart enough to refuse Bibi's offer for a debate, sans notes, computer, earphones etc. Do you now why?

Even more than I hope that the parties on the Left get fewer votes, I really pray that Lieberman loses completely. He's the cause of this mess, because he backtracked on joining a coalition with Likud. 

Blessed Rain on Rosh Chodesh Adar, Next Nissan

Today I found myself dovening and singing Hallel alone at Shiloh Hakeduma, Tel Shiloh. Rain began before I got to our usual place, so I picked the first sheltered spot. The rain was gentle during my walk but picked up in intensity while I prayed. I even heard thunder.

It's winter, so rain is a blessing. The beautiful almond blossoms kept me from feeling lonely. Our year is progressing with lots of blessed and needed rain.

In just over four weeks, we'll be celebrating Rosh Chodesh Nissan. Join us for Women's Prayers.

Gd willing we'll have our Women's Rosh Chodesh Nissan Prayers on Thursday, March 26, 2020, First of Nissan 5780, 8:30 in the morning at Ancient Shiloh, Shiloh Hakeduma, Tel Shiloh.

בע"ה, תפילת נשים ראש חודש ניסן

א' ניסן תש"פ 8:30 בבוקר

שילה הקדומה, תל שילה

For more information, email shilohmuse@gmail.com

לפרטים נוספים shilohmuse@gmail.com 

Visitors come from all over the world to see the wonders of Biblical Shiloh. You can hire a private guide or just follow the signs. For more information contact 02-5789122 or visit@telshilo.org.il. The site is open on weekdays. There's also a gift shop, and snack bar.

Our women's prayer group sings Hallel out loud and prays the other prayers silently and individually.

GUEST POST: Please pray for

Please pray for these children:
====================================
Elisheva bas Yehudis Raizl
[less than one year old]
====================================
Sarah Frayda bas Ruchama Devorah
[less than two years old]
====================================

Eliyahu Meir ben Sarah

[less than seven years old]
==================================== 

Please also pray for their grandmother:

Yehudis Simma bas Rochel Leah
====================================

Thank you.

====================================

What Did Yitro Hear? Who's Today's Yitro?

I must give this week's Women's Shabbat Class "Shiur." Somehow I had volunteered to be responsible for providing words of Torah every few months. This is to give a needed monthly break to the neighbor who has the difficult task of finding someone each week. Our group started over thirty-eight years ago as a Women's Shabbat Torah Class every Shabbat. Considering how many Tanach, Bible courses I've taken in Matan and prior to that my participation in a weekly Women's Learning "Boker Limud" here in Shiloh, you'd think this a "piece of cake" for me. Gd blessed me with the ability/talent to teach anything I know, but I always feel challenged when I have to teach Tanach to my well-educated neighbors who grew up learning it in their native Hebrew. But for some inexplicable reason, they consider me capable of teaching them something new.

Since last week, Parshat Shavua, Weekly Torah Portion Yitro, I keep thinking about the reactions of other religions and people to what has been happening to the Jewish People since the mid-twentieth century, specifically the miraculous Establishment of the State of Israel and the equally miraculous victories in 1967 and 1973. This is my lifetime. I was born just a year after the State of Israel. I came of age with the liberation of our Biblical Homeland and has been living in Holy Shiloh for almost forty years.

Even more than being in the front row of Jewish History, I guess I'm a participant, albeit a "bit player."

Shmot- Exodus 18
וַיִּשְׁמַ֞ע יִתְר֨וֹ כֹהֵ֤ן מִדְיָן֙ חֹתֵ֣ן מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֵת֩ כָּל־אֲשֶׁ֨ר עָשָׂ֤ה אֱלֹהִים֙ לְמֹשֶׁ֔ה וּלְיִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל עַמּ֑וֹ כִּֽי־הוֹצִ֧יא יְהוָ֛ה אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃
Jethro priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard all that God had done for Moses and for Israel His people, how the LORD had brought Israel out from Egypt.

I plan on showing that this is happening right now. People of all religions are coming here to Israel to learn from us. I see it in Shiloh, which has an active archeological dig where recent discoveries are proving the Biblical narratives correct.

Shiloh Hakeduma, Tel Shiloh,
Biblical Shiloh

Also for decades delegations have been coming to Israel to learn various technologies, from high tech to low tech. Koreans are convinced that Talmud learning is good for the mind and come here to learn. Christian scholars are admitting that their theology is faulty, then subsequently convert to Judaism. Noahide groups now exist and more examples. 

I'm requesting your ideas of examples, showing how "modern Yitro's" have heard what has happened to the Jewish People and are subsequently coming to join and help us, like in the days of Moses, Moshe Rabbeinu. Thanks. Please answer in the comments.

in Matan

Israeli Elections Again, Really?

Rather confusing political times here in Israel. Round three of Israeli Elections is getting even less press time and interest than the "redo" a few months ago.

On the whole, life is going on as usual, although we've been in lame duck or caretaker mode for about a year. Periodically there's some hysterical item in the news about how someone is suffering because without an "official" government certain budgets can't be updated, or something like that. I certainly don't doubt that the situation is affecting people, but we have MKs and Ministers etc.

Binyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is still the Prime Minister and still makes government policy decisions. Wannabe PM Benny Gantz seems even less impressive as time goes on. And his backup squad can only be described as pathetic.

Netanyahu is just a few months younger than I am. Honestly, I don't know from where he gets his energy. I'm happily lazily retired. So far he seems able to go on forever, but when the time comes for him to retire, there are quite a few potential replacements from the political Right. The Right, as we'll refer to it-- meaning Likud -- see themselves as responsible for governing all Israelis, regardless of nationality, politics and religious observance. The Blue & White Party plus those further to the Left campaign hatred, and that is bad for the State of Israel.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a great fan of Bibi, Likud and Yemina, but as I've written previously, sometimes you have to hold your nose. The Israeli political system requires compromise and working as a team. It's the real world.

In a few weeks we'll be having elections yet again here in Israel. I vote Häagen-Dazs. I just hope to find a way to get some here in Shiloh. Gd willing, third time will be the charm. I can't think of the right joke to pin onto a fourth election.

A TV Show Instrumental in Changing My Life

I decided to blog about this, because

As I began on facebook...

A gazillion years ago, before most of you were born, there was a Jewish tv show on Sunday afternoons, and I'll blog about it and then put the link up here.

...When I was a little girl, in the middle of the previous century, Sundays in the USA were different from the other days of the week. The country was much more Christian. People were expected to be with their families on Sunday. Stores were closed. Only Jewish stores which had been closed on Friday night and Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath were allowed to open.

There was a different television schedule. Sundays, on one of the less commercial channels, there was a Jewish television show called The Eternal Light produced in conjunction with the Jewish Theological Seminary. Sometimes, out of boredom, I watched it. My family was not religious. We were members of a Conservative shul, because its relatively traditional ways of keeping Judaism and the fact that it didn't expect the members to keep kashrut, Shabbat and Jewish Holidays at home made my parents feel welcome. In those days, it was believed by most that Orthodox Judaism was on its way out, and Conservative Judaism was the Jew of the future. JTS was very strong and growing.

The episode on The Eternal Light that was Instrumental in Changing My Life must have been broadcast around the time of the production of the Diary of Anne Frank as a play. The play and the Anne Frank story got a lot of publicity, and I must have heard about it also in whatever Sunday School or Hebrew School I was attending in Oakland Jewish Center, Bayside, NY.

All I remember from the episode is a couple of men talking about what happened to Anne Frank and her family and what it had been like for Jews under the Nazis. There was a man who said very proudly and firmly:

"If I was forbidden to light the Chanukah Menorah, I wouldn't be afraid; I would light one even if it endangered my life."
His friend asked: "Do you light the Chanukah Menorah here in America?"
"No."
"Why don't you light it here, where you are permitted?"

That short dialogue stayed in my mind for years.  It was certainly one of the first little "seeds" planted in my mind about living a more Jewish Life. After we moved from Bayside to Great Neck we joined an Orthodox synagogue simply for financial reasons. The Great Neck Synagogue had an active NCSY chapter which I became a member of. I also went to YU Seminars. By the time I had graduated high school, I was a Torah Observant Jew. Considering that I remember the show all these decades later, it's clear that it was Instrumental in Changing My Life.