Aliyah to Har Habayit-- Temple Mount Today

Yes, today was a big celebration for me... I ascended Har Habayit-- Temple Mount today for the third time. As with the first time, I joined my neighbor Rachel Sela and a variety of women from Shiloh and further afield. It has been a few years since

Actually I was involved in an attempt to ascend Har Habayit which failed due to anti-Jewish government orders. I had forgotten about it completely until searching my blog for the links of my successful aliyot.

My second aliyah to Har Habayit was with my husband, one of our sons and his son, yes, three generations. It was very thrilling.

This week, the beginning of the Jewish Month of Elul, is a double anniversary for us, aliyah to Israel, 56 years, and aliyah to Shiloh, 45 years. So when I saw that Rachel was saying that she's going up today, I decided that I'd join.

Rachel ascends Har Habayit relatively frequently and invites women to join her. This time there were a few young ones who brought their children, even nursing babies. This was amazing to me, who took decades to make my way there, because it wasn't all that suitable aka safe at first for a young mother. Also, conditions for Jews were awful and dangerous. And then... it took me a long time.

Regulations have changed, even over the few years since my first visit.

Even though siddurim (prayer books) and Tehilim (Psalm) books are still officially forbidden, they offered us printed papers with prayers. And nobody stops anyone from praying from their phone.

We sang and danced to religious texts we knew by heart. We also got down on the holy ground facing the holiest spot praying our own private prayers silently.

There were also men in the group "supervised" by the same police officers. Yes, that's Yehuda Glick, well-known for his ascents to the Temple Mount and his miraculous recovery from an assassination attempt a number of years ago. 

This visit was more relaxed than my previous ones. At one point, the men who were assigned to our group had had enough, but we hadn't. We were allowed to stay with a newer one. The police were very accommodating. That began only in recent years, since Itamar Ben-Gvir became Minister of National Security, which includes the police on Har Habayit.  

Just to make things very clear. All of the Land of Israel, including Jerusalem and the Temple Mount have a long documented history as Jewish. Islam was invented thousands of years after Judaism, and Jerusalem isn't even in its early narrative and books. But on Har Habayit-- Temple Mount all the signs are in Arabic. Israel has failed to protect its most precious place, where both the Jewish Holy Temples were located. Thank Gd there is a bit of improvement, though we have a long, long, very long way to go.

Our group today on Har Habayit (with permission from Rachel Sela)

Israeli Elections Musings #5, The Undecideds Talk Again-- I'm More Undecided

 

Last night we Undecideds had another, our third, discussion. Most of us are still undecided, some more and some less. I'm probably the most undecided and depressed about the choices before us. Also, compared to the rest of the panel, I think I'm the most disappointed in my voting options.

No political party is offering, publicizing a platform that I'd consider the minimum of what I think is necessary for the long-term survival of the State of Israel. To make matters worse, the options in the Likud Primaries are even worse.

 

You're probably wondering what I'm looking for. Simply put:

VICTORY, TOTAL ABSOLUTE VICTORY  

Victory requires that the enemy surrenders, and the victorious country takes over and makes changes. Victory isn't just a battle and enemy withdrawal. Fighting for Victory requires "boots on the ground," which disqualifies Trump's American assistance. I'm thankful for what he has done, but it doesn't qualify the USA to take credit and make policy decisions.

War is hard, dirty, painful if you want to win, or you've been attacked. There's no clean way about it. It's not a game that can be won by high-tech remote control. And even more important to remember, deals don't bring peace. If you don't fight to win, you'll suffer even worse in defeat.

We've been suffering form what can either be called  serial wars or a never-ending war that takes breaks. But whatever you want to call it, the State of Israel is in serious danger. Soldiers and civilians are getting killed. As I've said for decades, I'm a CPA's daughter and care about the bottom line and not interested in pretty words, promises or clever "tricks."

One thing that disturbed me in our discussion is that nobody else said anything to show that they also considered Victory a priority. I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around that. Is it age or ideology? Or were they being cautious about identifying with my overall "extremism?"

Gd willing, despite my fears, we'll have new strong, brave leadership, which will help achieve a true victory... I'm praying. Elections in Israel are very complicated because of the need for a coalition. 

Please listen to our discussion, and tell me in the comments what you think and why. And of course, share this around. 

The Jewish People Have a Documented Right to Rule Israel Unlike Others...

The Jewish People Have a Documented Right to Be in Israel Unlike Europeans, Asians, Africans etc. in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand etc...

The only people/nation to have lived as a true nation, governing body in the Land of Israel aka Judea, later renamed by Hadrian to mask its Jewish identity. 

We've been living in Shiloh since 1981, forty-five 45 years. 

Biblical archeological experts agree and confirm that Shiloh, where I live, is the authentic Biblical Shiloh. There are no disagreements, which is pretty rare. Not all Biblical locations can confirm their identity/location. For example, experts disagree about Kever Rachel, the Tomb, burial of place of Rachel. Some think it's north of Jerusalem, not south in the spot that people visit.

Archeologists from all over the world, ever since the science began, have come here to dig and try to match what they found to the Biblical narrative. Also tourists, like Mark Twain, came to Shiloh and documented their visits. Twain found it deserted, which was how my neighbors who were the first Jewish families to return to live here in early 1978 discovered it. 

In recent decades more and more archeologists, Jewish and Christian have been devoting their time, energy and expertise discovering connections and proof to what's written in the Bible. 

Dr. Scott Stripling has been heading an annual month long dig in Tel Shiloh for years. His archeologists come from all over the world.

I heard the well-known Tanach scholar Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun tell of his first visit to Shiloh, in between the 1967 Six Days War and the 1978 Jewish return. He hiked around trying to identify specific locations from the Biblical text. When he walked from south to north, at the furthest northern end, he saw wit was flat and a size that matched the area of the Mishkan Tabernacle. He was the first to recognize it.

Historically, the Jewish People ruled for over a thousand years, Judges, Priests, Kings, including a short exile between kingdoms. The Land was conquered by invaders, but no other native people ruled. Cities lost population and farms dried up, until early Jewish Zionists arrived to rebuild the Land and establish a Jewish State.

Much newer religions adopted parts of Jewish narrative forefathers and even claimed ownership of our Land as their own to try to delegitimize us to keep the Jewish People away. But archeologists have discovered synagogues under churches and mosques. Christianity and Islam are thousands of years newer than Judaism

Think about it, and share further.

All photos were photographed by me here in Tel Shiloh.

Israeli Elections Musings #4, Preparing for Third Undecided Panel Discussion-Decisions Still Unknown

Israeli Elections are getting closer, but my decision about which political party to vote for seems further away than ever. Many friends feel the same way. 

I don't want anyone involved in the October 7, 2023 fiasco in power any more, and that's not only Binyamin Netanyahu and his loyal poodles. That includes all the powerful generals who've been leading the IDF, Military Intelligence and other national security honchos for the past decade or more. They're heavily involved in the failures. I'm also suspicious of those who had gone to the USA for "training," better described as brainwashing. They drank the Koolaid claiming that tiny Israel, surrounded by real enemies, only needs a "small, smart army." I guess that's why civilians got to the Nova site and the attacked southern communities faster that the IDF.

In addition, it won't help much to fill the Knesset with people who don't know the system... grrr, yup. That's part of why I'm so UNDECIDED. No party or MK at this point has my full trust aka vote. In Israel we vote for political parties, not for individuals. And no political party ends up with a majority of the one hundred and twenty 120 Knesset seats. Various parties must form coalitions to rule in theory, but Binyamin Netanyahu discovered a way out of that, and he did it a number of times in recent decades. We went through a series of elections that didn't result in a coalition, so Bibi Netanyahu was able to continue to rule as Prime Minister with a select minority of Knesset Members. 

It only ended when Naftali Bennett made history crafting a coalition, while leading a small party of only seven members. Bennett's coalition fell after Bibi "bribed" a couple of MKs with promises of safe places in the Likud list and undeserved cabinet positions in his next government. That's why he had the Likud bylaws amended to give him a large amount of "safe seats" to choose according to his will, rather than the Likud primaries. 

The Undecided Panel will be meeting soon. You can hear our last discussion here.