Latma #133 with the song "Anyone You Can Fool I Can Fool Better" in honor of the unity between Hamas and Fatah's conciliation and healthy competition between them. Ilana Dayan strikes again with an especially courageous and surprising investigation. Latma, the Right way of looking at the news.

Israel is always held to different standards.  One of the latest anti-Israel anti-El Al "jabs" is by some Arab journalist complaining about security enforcement.  I had it on Delta flying out of Phoenix, Arizona. Wearing the same skirt I had worn flying out of Israel's Ben Gurion Airport and JFK, only the AZ airport demanded a "pat-down."

That's just the annoying stuff. 

Bank robbers no longer need to arm themselves with guns and other dangerous devices.  They hack into the bank via the internet, instead of blasting with explosives.

But there still are physical dangers, like the attack in India which seriously wounded the Israeli Ambassador's wife.

Has the United Nations called an emergency meeting of the Security Council?

You may have noticed that I've added something new to this blog, a Honenu news ticker.  It's on the right sidebar just above the Jewish Israel one.  For some strange reason, of late you have to be on/in a specific post/article on this blog to see the sidebars, so, just click a post title and the sidebars will appear, G-d and google willing.  And, also inexplicable, is that the lower portion of the right sidebar has been "eaten up" by some mysterious internet demons.

Honenu and Jewish Israel are two very important organizations and internet sites.  I support and agree with them both.  That's why I have them both on my blog and I help out however I can.

Honenu is a very needed, unfortunately, legal aid organization that assists those Jews who are arrested by the Israeli Government for defending Jewish Rights:
Honenu is the only legal aid group that defends Jewish dissidents.  I know many people who have been helped by them.

Jewish Israel defends Judaism from Christian encroachment into our Jewish Land and People.
I highly recommend that you make a point of visiting and supporting both of these groups. Thank you

My main objection to rabbis such as Riskin, Lichtenstein, Boteach etc who are ritually Orthoddox but politically and philosophically Liberal (with a capital "L,") is that they have substituted a secular philosophy and value system for pure Judaism.  There's a very crucial, dangerous conflict in that.  Judaism, as many polled by Israel Democracy Institute’s Guttman Center for Surveys, along with the Avi Chai Foundation agree, includes a G-d given philosophy and value system which must be followed.

Democracy, for example, is not a Jewish value.  We are warned not to follow the majority, because it is frequently wrong.  We're supposed to follow the one giving us G-d's instructions and not the majority.  One of my favorite Torah examples is when G-d told Moses to send representatives to scout the Land after fleeing Egypt and Pharaoh's cruel regime with the help of G-d and His Miracles.  Moses assembled a delegation of tribal representatives, twelve in all, one from each tribe.  Instead of just reporting the beauties, riches and wonders they saw, they, ten out of twelve--the majority analyzed the situation and reported that there was no way that the Jewish People, tired* former slaves, could possibly conquer the inhabitants of the Land.

The Jewish People exist and survive due to a totally different system.  G-d runs that system, and we can't figure it out.  It trumps nature for sure.  That's the story behind Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Days War.  All of the experts had predicted Israel's defeat.  Without any allies at all, Israel took on the Arab armies on all fronts and rolled them back.  With G-d's help, Syria gave us the Golan, Egypt gave us the Sinai and Jordan gave us all of the Land west of the Jordan River which includes Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley.

Democracy and western values have given us nothing, nothing at all.  The "civilized, cultured" western, Christian world stood by as the Nazis slaughtered the Jews of Europe.  The war against the Nazis wasn't to rescue Jews it was to stop the invasion of Europe and Britain.

G-d's Law, Jewish Law is the only one I care about.

*tired-Just like Ehud Olmert

I'm one of those who considers the Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel a very important and well-written prayer.  Rafi of Life in Israel just posted one of the more popular renditions.

[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/_Q5--mNIZhU ]

This version is arranged and conducted by Dr. Mordechai Sobel who does fantastic work. We've enjoyed two Shabbatot in Tel Aviv with him. Each time I found myself standing for hours, the entire morning prayer, peeking mesmerized from the Women's Gallery.

I'm no expert concerning the various versions of words; the basic idea is the same in all.

This traditional version of the Prayer for the State of Israel was published by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel in 1948.
This alternative version is adapted from the Kol Haneshama siddur, 1994.

Here's another youtube of it.

As you must know by now, I work with Arabs, a lot, more than I had ever imagined.  My selling job has put me in contact with Arabs all the time.  They love to shop in the Rami Levi, Yafiz stores.  Our branch, in Sha'ar Binyamin, isn't restricted to Arabs with "papers."  Most (or all) of the other branches are in areas in which only Arabs with entrance permits can go in.

So we get Arab tourists from countries that aren't allowed in Israel and Arabs from the PA.  Even some of the workers can't go to other branches to work.

Never in a million years did I ever expect to find myself in this "oasis" of Jewish-Arab what's the right word...  It's  a pragmatic "tolerance" of sorts.

There are a number of actresses, mostly very amateur in my family, and I guess that when I'm working, I go into an acting mode.  Salespeople and teachers are on stage, no less than TV, Broadway and movie stars.  So, you can say that I'm in the family profession.

Using that analogy, once I'm on-stage I really don't pay much attention to people's dress and nationality or identity.  I just enjoy selling the clothes we have. Yes, I really do.  It's fun and much easier than controlling a class.  It's almost as easy as tutoring, teaching one-on-one.  Selling in the store is more like tutoring, because I work with one customer at a time.

The other night, there was this Arab guy on the outside of the store, where we have a lot of sales items.  I went over to check out what was happening.  I was fully in my role and enjoying myself; my smile was sincere and natural. From what I began to understand, the guy was there with a number of wives.  He'd check out prices of various items and send each wife to buy them with cash from his very full wallet.  He told me that he found my smile encouraging.


I didn't ask him what he meant by it.  It actually made me a bit nervous.  I don't treat the Arabs well for political reasons.  As all readers here may know, I'm not a Leftist, nor a Liberal with a capital "L." 

I'm pragmatic, not a racist.  On the stage of the store, I have no prejudice if that makes any sense.  Each person who enters is a human being and potential customer.  I don't care about their politics when I'm showing them items they can buy.  And I don't let my politics get in the way of my job.  Actually, that's not quite it.  In a sense my ideology makes my job more fun.  I love the idea that Arabs are shopping in Yafiz and Rami Levi and putting money into the Israeli economy.

But I would never ask an Arab like the guy I helped the other night what he meant by his statement.  I don't want to know and I don't want him to know what I believe either.

Most people have totally inaccurate concepts of how cold and how much rain etc.  There are two things I've learned about the weather in my forty-one years here in Israel:
Last night the tv "weather maivens" were telling us that there's great news.  The Kineret (Israel's fresh-water lake) has reached the lowest permitted/recommended level weeks earlier than last year.  Of course, they sort of fudged about saying that it's still at a dangerously low level, and we're using more water than can possibly get rained in, but do you really expect the hard truth from the media?  They won't admit that their pet Abbas is pro-terrorism and that here's no real difference between Fatah and Hamas, so why should they make it clear that growing grassy lawns is a dangerous water-waster and should be banned, unless people use recycled water like from the washing machine or dishwasher.

Mateh Binyamin, the Benjamin Regional Council, in which Shiloh is located has made the guesswork about rain, temperature etc a thing of the past.  On its Internet site you'll find a page (in Hebrew only) indicating how much rain, wind, cold spells, strong sun etc there has been each day in each community, or general area. 

Shiloh has its page.  So I can actually find out how much rain fell on a particular day or week.

Now the real challenge would be finding out a way to show us how much water we're wasting...

There's nothing like Caroline Glick's Latma. This week:
[ http://www.youtube.com/embed/lvlu0biQ568 ]

This Shabbat, we Jews in Shiloh are celebrating our return.  The City of Shiloh is central in Ancient, Biblical Jewish History.  It was the Capital City, location of the Mishkan, Tabernacle for 369 years.  Unlike many other popular spiritual and tourist sites in the Land of Israel, such as Rachel's Tomb, everyone agrees that Shiloh is Shiloh.



Actually, the original plan of those who ended up establishing the first Jewish community in the Shomron after the 1967 Six Days War had planned on coming to Shiloh for the obvious historical significance.  But they ended up complying with the government's condition/demand that they choose a location that had structures in which they could live.  The government hoped that it would be no more than a temporary "demonstration" and didn't want there to be the need to build at all.  That's why Ofra was chosen; there were Jordanian police/army barracks to move into.  Shiloh stayed on the list and the Ofra community hosted the Shiloh garrin, settlement group until the time was ripe and logistical problems could be solved.

Seven young families and a few singles moved to Shiloh on Rosh Chodesh Shvat, 5738, January, 1978, yes, this time of the year, thirty-four years ago.  Considering how much ordinary, everyday technology has advanced in those few decades, it's hard to imagine how those young families managed in what was then a very isolated location, accessed via an Arab village, no phones, electricity or reliable water supply.  The lived mostly in trailers and tents.  A simple generator was set up, and water was trucked in periodically.  An old, mostly destroyed building was given a new roof, and it served as the synagogue and yeshiva which had also been established.

When I visited Shiloh with our then young daughters, exactly 34 years ago on TU B'Shvat, there were just over thirty families living in trailers and cement prefabricated homes near Tel Shiloh.  I can't exactly say why, but I just felt that Shiloh was the place for us to live and raise our children.  Over the next few months we visited as a family a few times for Shabbat, met more people and decided to make it our home. 

We moved to Shiloh on September 1, 1981, the day the Shiloh elementary school, Ohel Shiloh, first began.  There were exactly eighteen students that day, divided into three grades, First, Second and Third.  Our second daughter was the oldest girl in the school.  Our eldest daughter had been driven to Ofra to study in their school with a few other children too old for the new Shiloh school.  By the end of September, the population of Shiloh had more than doubled from our first visit.  There were over sixty families and many more children.

Today Shiloh is a busy vibrant town of over three hundred families of all ages and from all over the world.  The main synagogue was built to resemble the Mishkan, Tabernacle, which had rested here for almost four hundred years in Biblical times. Our school is the district school, elementary education center, separately administered boys and girls schools educating the full eight grades.  Students come from as  far as the Jordan Valley to the east, Rechallim to the north, Maale Levona to the west and all of the smaller communities in between.  We have enrichment programs for the gifted and remedial for those who need them.



Shiloh has changed my life for the better.  I just can't imagine being any place else.  In thanks to those powerful figures, like the Biblical Chana, who once walked in this very place, I've established the custom of Women's Rosh Chodesh Prayers every month at Tel Shiloh.

The Rosh Chodesh Adar Women's Prayers at Tel Shiloh


You're welcome to join our facebook page. Tel Shiloh is open to visitors daily. Tours can be arranged through the office. Email telshilo@gmail.com
It's winter in Shiloh, and fruit trees, like the legendary grape vines and shkaydia, almond tree, is blooming already.  Out of season, the plants look dead, just like the Jewish People did in exile.  But we didn't die.  We're still alive and thriving, Baruch Hashem, thanks to G-d.

or phone 02-994-4019.