Coming of age. Rites of passage. Somehow, to me this brings to mind images of a boy in a loincloth, holding a sword in one hand and a sack of grain in the other, going off into the woods to kill his first bear. Or someone breaking out a bottle of bubbling champagne and drinking … Read more
So now we have a cease-fire. Yet even as I watched Olmert and Barak on T.V., announcing our one-sided truce, the media split the screen and showed Ashkelon and Beer Sheva getting hit with rockets! And all day Sunday, rockets continued to land in our Southern cities. Time will tell how effective this agreement will … Read more
I was driving into my community of Karnei Shomron last week and literally had to pull over at the glorious sight of bright red tulip blossoms cheerfully clustered around our main traffic circle. I knew that these were tulips donated by our Christian friends in Holland, and it made me smile when I realized what … Read more
April 2009 Today is Yom HaShoah- Holocaust Memorial Day. It started last night at sundown when a siren blew. The siren blew again this morning at 11 A.M. All over the country, radio stations broadcast a minute long siren, both at night and in the morning. Schools, municipalities and people in their homes, tune their … Read more
May 2009 On my way to work today, I heard the song that Israel sang in this year’s Eurovision contest, which took place this past week. It’s called “There Must Be Another Way” and it is sung by a popular Israeli singer and an Arab singer. Part of it is performed in Hebrew, part in … Read more
October 2009 Two weeks ago we celebrated “Sukkot”- our beloved Feast of Tabernacles. But there’s a one day holiday tagged on to the tail-end of that week long festival, which I feel, sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. In Hebrew it’s called “Simchat Torah” and it means “Rejoicing with the Torah”. It follows the last … Read more
November 2009 This past Shabbat I sat in synagogue, listening to the Blessing of the New Month, Kislev, which will begin tomorrow. “May it be Your will, our G-d and the G-d of our forefathers, that You inaugurate this month upon us for goodness and for blessing. May You give us long life—a life … Read more
February 2010 I lay in bed in the morning, trying to decide, through transparent eyelids, whether daylight has truly dawned or whether I have a few more minutes to burrow back under the covers. But then the alarm clock rings and all sense of illusion is gone and I sit up, groggily groping for my … Read more
April 2010 These past two days have been a roller coaster of emotions. Monday was Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror. Every school, every city, every small community, had a ceremony commemorating the country’s heroes — those who fell in the battlefields of our endlessly long list of wars, and those … Read more
May 2010 In my home, as in many Jewish homes around the world, Friday afternoon, as Shabbat approaches, tends to be hectic. I call a five-minute warning upstairs to my girls who are putting the final touches on their Shabbat finery and remind my boys to turn off the computer and start setting the Shabbat … Read more