Alpine Goats Stolen from Ginat Eden

I received this email today from respected social worker Judith Berger. I thought that perhaps some of my readers might be interested in helping Ginat Eden repurchase their herd of goats.

Dear Friends,

Recently the Carmel fire severely damaged the Yemin Orde Boarding School. Within 48 hours they collected all the items and money they requested to provide for their immediate needs.

Not published in the news, another catastrophe happened this week, on the night of the great wind sandstorm.Two nights ago I received the very disturbing news. Most of the Ginat Eden Rehabilitation Farm goat herd was stolen by a band of Arab marauders.

These are specially bred Alpine goats. They produce 11 times more milk than the average local goats. They were specially chosen for our girls because, in addition to their therapeutic qualities of being loving gentle creatures, they also provide healthy goats milk for the girls' nutrition. The surplus milk products are a source of occupation and income. These goats were already pregnant, with the expectation of naturally increasing the size of the herd.

Needless to say, the girls who spent time with these goats are devastated. Let's show them that they can count on us!

The replacement cost is 3500 Shekels per female goat. Eleven were stolen.Won't you please help replace these precious animals as soon as possible? Now is the fertile season, and time is of the essence?

On behalf of the girls I am appealing to you for a ONE TIME minimum donationof NIS 1000 to help in this life-giving project.

In order to start the ball rolling Avraham and I are donating the cost of one goat. Won't you join us? All donations are tax-deductible. (Israel donations made out to Ginat Eden, US funds to One Israel Fund, $CDNto VMM)

Praying for Besorot Tovot

Judith

Judith Berger

R.N., M.Sc.Executive Director

Ginat Eden Rehabilitation Farm

Tel: 972-2-586-3371 Mobile:972-2-54-552-4871

Email: abejude2@bezeqint.net> mailto:abejude2%40bezeqint.net

Sabba, You're a Hero????

I just came back from visiting my friend's parents (here for Chanukah vacation from their home in the US). Sabi is 80, bli ayin hara, and his children and grandchildren made him a fabulous memory book in honor of the occasion.

On my visit, they showed it to me.

Wow! A personal book of history of Israel and Diaspora Jewry.

A shiny vanilla building in the once-new Hatikvah neighborhood took center stage of one photo. "I built that building with my two hands when I was 17." Since then he's built, shuls (synagogues) and shopping centers and colleges.

There was a photo of Sabi in an Israeli Army uniform. "Oh, yes, here I am in the Haganah (Pre-State Israeli Army). I was the commander of equipment upgrading."

That's a wierd thing to be commander of. "Well, Israel in 1948 could not get weapons from too many places, and what they could afford was usually reject-grade equipment, so I made it Grade A."

He took guns with broken sites and realigned them, binoculars with blurry glass and refocused them, etc. etc.

Sabi fought the war, married and raised a family, started a profession and gave years of his life to his synagogue, his community, and the Jewish people.

He doesn't wear a uniform anymore, but he still looks like a hero to me.

Beware the grandfather/grandmother you see walking slowly down the street. S/he might be a hero too.

Collecting Chanukah Gelt

As one of those parents who plans presents for the upcoming Chanukah season months in advance, I decided that the theme for this year's family Chanukah would be Chanukah gelt (money). That doesn't sound so genius-y. Folks have traditionally received Chanukah gelt for hundreds of years. Even I remember as a child getting shiny quarters from my great-uncles and grandparents for Chanukah.
Today we shop for gold and silver foil-covered coins with chocolate candy inside. Or we prepare crisp new money bills (20s, 50s, maybe even 100s) to give to our children.
Some say that the tradition of Chanukah gelt began during the Middle Ages, but perhaps the Chanukah gelt tradition began with the Chashmonaim themselves. The Chashmonaim, sons of Matityahu the Kohen Gadol, are the heroes of the Chanukah story. They bravely battled the Syrian-Greeks against all odds in order to free the Land of Israel from oppression, free the Jewish people to worship G-d and keep His mitzvot (commandments), and rededicate the Holy Temple. The Chasmonaim not only liberated the Land of Israel from the tyranny of a foreign superpower, but they minted their own coins with symbols relating to Bet HaMikdash (The Holy Temple) on them.
Possibly our tradition of giving our children coins for Chanukah is yet another way of recalling the miraculous victory of the few against the mighty, the righteous against the wicked, the Torah followers against the Hellenists. Just as our ancestors proudly created Jewish coins when freedom returned to the Land of Israel, we give our children the tradition of freedom in our Land with the remembrance of Chanukah gelt.
International Gelt
Our family is blessed to be living in the Land of Israel. However, Jews live throughout the world today. There is almost no country on the globe that does not have Jewish citizens. Those Jews surely give their own children Chanukah gelt as well.
These thoughts influenced me to collect for my children, Chanukah gelt from all over the world. I made a little treasure box for each child, and filled each with foreign pennies, half dollars, and other change.
Thanks to friends and neighbors, we were able to gather little collections for each child. (If you were one of the kind folks who helped us, THANK YOU.)
The coins came from Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, Italy, France, Great Britain, Tunisia, Morocco, America, Poland and many other countries. They were minted recently or as far back as the turn of the 20th Century...1867 America, not long after the Civil War....1937 Italy, as the fascists were rising to power...1956 Israel, the year of the Sinai War.
I told my children that each coin was a piece of modern or not-so-modern history. Each coin represented a time and place frozen in a small piece of silver or bronze or nickel.
When Chanukah arrived, my husband and I gave our children their gelt. I was gratified that they were as excited about their treasure boxes as I was. And they understood the deeper meaning of each cent, dinar, peso, euro, franc, krone, pound, yen and more.
Jews throughout the world have many different customs according to every holiday, but it's a great feeling to know that they're keeping up traditions that unite us, like the Chanukah menorah, latkes, jelly donuts, and Chanukah gelt.

Ask Your Kids Everything!

Chanukah is a time of company for meals and parties and special events. If you host a shindig, often there are so many people there, it's difficult to have a meaningful chat with any of your guests.

However, if you listen carefully to bits and pieces of conversations around you, you're very likely to learn something interesting.

For example, last week we had our own children, our nephews, and other guests for a holiday meal.

In the middle of the meal, I heard one of the guests ask his friend how miluim (reserve call-up) was. I was told later that the friend was in Eilat, guarding the border.

Guarding the border in sunny vacation-town Eilat must be a big yawn, "I hope you had suntan lotion," I said.

He said that I was totally incorrect, and that he hardly slept the entire time he served on the border, because not a moment went by when they could lower their guard. He said that Sudanese were pouring in to Israel unstoppably. They ran for hours and hours to get to the Israeli border, and then they made their way to Eilat, up to Southern Tel Aviv and Bnei Brak.

"Why didn't you tell me that you were chasing Sudanese? I said.

"You never asked me," he responded.

So, tell me, when you see a young person, what should be your dialogue? "How are you?" "How is your family?" "Going out with anyone lately?" "Did you capture any Sudanese in miluim?"

Nazi-Loving South America Recognizes "Palestine"

I read this week in Jpost.com that Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay would recognize "free and independent Palestine" within Israel's 1967 borders. Then a Palestinian Authority figure announced that Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay and Paraguay would follow suit.

Why am I not surprised?!

South American nations were the first to welcome Nazi murderers and terrorists after they escaped the hands of justice in World War II. The most welcoming South American nation then was Argentina under dictator Juan Peron (as in...Evita's "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina"), but Nazis found there way to many other South American countries, where they were welcomed, respected and protected.

• Adolph Eichman, yimach shmo, Hitler's right hand man, fled to Argentina with fake papers, thanks to the International Red Cross, and lived there under a false identity until he was captured by Israeli spies in 1960. He wasn't the only Nazi to call Argentina home. There were many others who learned to speak Spanish in Buenos Aires.
• Joseph Mengele, Auschwitz's Dr. Death, fled to South America after the Holocaust. Unfortunately, while he was hunted for the rest of his life, he evaded capture.
• Bolivia was the preferred destination of Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon. B"H, after Barbie escaped to Bolivia, he was later captured and sentenced to death.
• Franz Stangl, the commander of Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps, escaped after the war to South America's largest country Brazil, and lived there until he was captured by world-famous Nazi hunter Simon Weisenthal.

South America's heritage of Nazi-love or plain Jew-hatred is not new. It's just be reJEWvinated.

Chanuka at the Israel Museum

I couldn't have picked a better time to visit the "new" Israel Museum than on Chanukah. In addition to the other exhibitions (my favorite was Jewish life...), there's a gorgeous exhibition of Chanukah Menorahs from all over the world in the Mandel Wing for Jewish Art & Life.

Silver, copper, brass, intricate, simple, timeless. The chanukiyot (menorahs) came from German, Poland, Syria, Iraq, Russia, Netherlands, Tunisia, Austria, Afghanistan and more.

There was no photography allowed in the museum, but this page (pictured above) right off the museum's website, http://www.english.imjnet.org.il/htmls/home.aspx, will give you an idea of how gorgeous the menorah room is. It's a corner of the musem where you'll want to linger, so that you can examine each of the different menorahs. If your mind wanders to those Jewish families in Afghanistan or Germany or Iraq that lit the menorah inside their homes, while danger lurked outside, you understand the significance and the feeling behind the exhibition.

Go see it.

Gush Etzion & the Chanukah Story

On Chanukah, Jews throughout the world celebrate two completely separate miracles - the miracle of the little jar of pure oil found in the Holy Temple by the Chashmonaim; and the military victory of the small against the many, the weak against the mighty super-power.
Just wanted to remind everyone that a good portion of Chanukah's military victory took place outside Bet HaMikdash (the Holy Temple) - right here in Gush Etzion.
When you sing "Maoz Tzur" tonight and your candles burn brightly at your door post or in your living room windows, please think of Gush Etzion and the Chanukah miracle.
http://voices-magazine.blogspot.com/2009/12/maccabees-and-gush-etzion.html
Happy Chanukah.