Tikkun Olam

I finally figured out (with a little help from Jameel - rav todot!) how to post the Israel Clock. It didn't work the first time (no pun intended), but it did the second. At first, I chose blue, for the color of the Israeli flag. Then I decided I wanted orange , to show my solidarity with the people from Gush Katif and to express my anti-disengagement sentiments. So be it. I am back home and will post soon, bli neder...right now I have one hour and forty-five minutes to finish preparing for Shabbat, so goodbye, and Shabbat Shalom!

I just finished reading Irina's account of her first visit to Israel. She said something very important, which expresses what I wanted to say in my last post: Israel is a memory. When a Jew first arrives there, looking at it from the window of the airplane even, he feels as if he has been there before, that he has known it before. That just about sums it up. We've been there before, sometime, somewhere. Is is in our minds. Is that a collective memory for all Jews? Suffice it to say, we really all were at Sinai...

As per West Bank Mama's request for people's stories on why they made Aliyah, I am honored to be included in the group, even though after four years in Israel our family made 'y iridah' back to the States . So technically, we are currently not living in Israel, although four of our children are. OK, here goes. Here goes a feeble attempt to verbalize and express a lifetime of hashkafa , a lifetime of an inexplicable love of Ivrit , a lifetime of longing and yearning for - I still can't put it into words; a certain hagshama of everything I had been taught in school and raised on at home. Let me begin by saying that I remember as a small child, my mother's stories of her childhood in Poland; how she would have to bring bouquets of flowers to the Christian bullies down the block on her way to school in order for them to allow her to pass without beating her up; how she was once chased by such anti-Semitic youth - thugs and fell down a cellar staircase in her attem...

Shalom u'Vrakhah, Everybody! I apologize in advance. This blog's intellectual level is about to drop to the depths...of a baby and pre-schooler's! You see what happens when one goes to visit one's married daughter and grandchildren? One's life COMES TO A COMPLETE HALT! I have not been as exhausted as this since my kids were little. I am running around doing a little cleaning, laundry, helping take care of, drive to camp, cooking a bit and feeding and bathing my grandkids - not to mention changing stinky diapers (sorry, mentioned them!). Suddenly, I don't have a life. Actually, in truth? I didn't have a life before I came here; NOW I have a life: Being involved in my daughter's & to a lesser extent, son-in-law's life (and he is like a son to me), getting to know my grandkids and instilling in them (I hope) a bit of Yiddishkeit -"B. V. G." - 'before visiting grandkids' - THAT'S when I didnt' have a life; I just looked ...