Kumah greets latest NefeshBNefesh Aliyah arrivals - at 3:30AM!
From IsraelNationalNewsMORE JEWS COME HOME: "WHY IT TOOK SO LONG, I CAN'T SAY," SAYS ONE
Yet another group of North American Jews has made Aliyah (immigration to Israel), with their plane touching down at Ben-Gurion Airport in the wee hours of Thursday morning. The new olim (immigrants) numbered about 85, and were the last group of the summer sponsored by the
Nefesh B'Nefesh organization.
The Nefesh crew: Dudy Starck, Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, Motti Salzberg
Although the new Israelis arrived at 3:15 AM, scores of friends, family and Aliyah activists showed up at the airport to welcome them home to Israel. This was the fourth large group of North American olim to have arrived this summer. Over 1,500 North American Jews have made Aliyah with the help of grants from Nefesh B'Nefesh this summer alone the same number as were assisted by Nefesh B'Nefesh in the previous two years combined.
Three previous chartered flights full of olim, one in July and two in August, were treated to a festive ceremony attended by government officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Today's olim did not expect a grand reception, but were still greeted by well-wishers and pro-Aliyah activists with banners, drums and guitars.
A new Israeli, a Jew in Israel
A contingent from the grassroots Aliyah movement Kumah-Americans Return to Zion were on hand, holding banners and distributing bumper stickers reading "Aliyah Revolution." As the new olim came out into the arrivals hall, Kumah members blew shofars, symbolizing the fulfillment of the daily prayer, "Sound the great ram's horn for our freedom, and raise the banner to gather our exiles and speedily gather us together from the four corners of the Earth to our Land."
Seminary girls support the movement
Naomi and Aaron Gassman were two of the first olim to pass through customs and enter the hall. They were greeted by a crowd singing the popular tune, "The children have returned to their borders." The couple was married one month ago in Los Angeles, and is moving to the Gush Etzion town of Efrat, just south of Jerusalem. "Is this not the best one month anniversary ever?" said Aaron, beaming after dancing with well-wishers.
Israeli cabdrivers are wise to the Revolution
Ellie Silverberg and Caty Hill, students studying in a Jerusalem seminary, said they had heard that another group of North American immigrants was arriving and "knew we had to come to the airport to greet them... We heard that there would not be a big organized reception, so we wanted to make sure there were people there to properly welcome them home," said Silverberg, who lives in Teaneck, New Jersey but hopes to make Aliyah herself in the near future.
Mmmm... Israel
Beth Furst, a new immigrant from Denver, Colorado, told IsraelNN.com's Ezra HaLevi that through her Aliyah, she knows she is finally fulfilling the will of her distant relative Ber Borochov, a famous Zionist of the turn of the previous century. Borochov was an ardent advocate of settling pre-state Israel, and led the faction within the Socialist Zionist party, Poalei Zion, that refused to accept Uganda as a substitute for the Land of Israel. "Ever since I visited here 20 years ago, I've yearned to come back," said Furst. "Why it took so long, I can't say."
When ye arrive in the Land
Sabras, Cucumbers, and Horseback Riding
Akiva Werber, the Head of the Jewish Agency's Immigration and Absorption Department's Division for English-speaking Countries (say that three times fast), once told me a parable about Israelis.
He said Israelis are like the Sabra fruit, all hard and prickly on the outside but all soft-and mushy (and full of substance) on the inside. Then he continued. I seem to recall he was quoting his daughter. She said, on the other hand, in other developed countries people are more like cucumbers. Why cucumbers? Because they're all shiny and nice looking on the outside, but inside there really isn't all that much too them. (No offence to cucumber lovers).
Why do I bring this up? Well, there is a
picture that is rapidly circulating around the blogsphere. I've been debating whether or not to post it here - but as it's likely you have
already seen it anyway I'll just describe it instead.
So apparently at their wedding, a nice Jewish couple from Los Angeles, in what has got to be considered one of the greatest "shticks" (stunts) of all time,
rode out on horseback after they were introduced at the first dance. Indeed from looking at
the wedding pictures they posted online, the entire affair seems to have been quite as
extravagant. And it's no secret, even if you haven't heard the "Wedding Song" on Abie Rotenberg's "Journeys II" album, that many Jewish American weddings tend to be more on the, shall we say, "shiny and good-looking" side.
Looking at those pictures got me thinking a bit about the pictures (
posted right here at Kumah) of Yishai and Malkah's wedding in Chevron. Sure there weren't hundreds of fancy chandeliers hanging from the ceiling or polished brass hand railings. And there weren't any ponies either. But they were at Ma'arat Ha'Machpela!
They were with our Fathers and Mothers!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that maybe all this "horsing around" at Jewish weddings should serve as a wake-up call. Where are we now? Where are we headed? What is our goal as Jews?
What is
really important?
Soldiers with the weapon of the future
Why I'm Moving to Israel
From Fox NewsBy Erica Chernofsky
When I tell people I spent the last year of my life studying abroad in Israel, they usually look at me funny and respond politely.
When I tell them I'm planning to move there permanently in August, the flabbergasted look on their face demands an explanation.
I'm a 21-year-old student at NYU majoring in journalism. I have blonde hair and blue eyes and a boyfriend. I come from the average American family, and look like the average American girl. So why am I leaving the land of opportunity to live, permanently, in a land ravaged by war?
A rabbi once told me that when God took Abraham to Canaan and showed him the land, promising it to Abraham's future generations, He also showed him every Jew that was ever to be born. The rabbi went on to explain that, according to the legend, when a Jew stands in the exact spot where thousands of years ago Abraham first beheld him, he becomes intimately and eternally bound to the land.
Like many Jews, I had been to this land, now called Israel, numerous times, to see the holy sights and visit the home of my forefathers. And while I felt a connection, and perhaps had the feeling of "coming home" that many Jews boast of, I never viewed the country as anything more than a place of religious and historical significance to visit every once in a while.
But two summers ago, when I visited Israel with my family, something was different. I suddenly felt a visceral need to identify with the people and the culture, and so I decided to spend a year abroad studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The only explanation, albeit fantastical, that I can offer is that perhaps that summer I stood in the very place where Abraham first regarded me, so many years ago, and my soul anchored itself in the sacred soil.
I was overcome with the realization that there was a country whose land had been promised to me, where millions of my people lived, yet their lives were so different from mine. I wanted to see that land and that life, learn about it, be part of it.
Mmmm.... Aliyah!
I quickly became part of life in Israel. I got used to having my bag checked every time I went into a store or restaurant, I got used to seeing my Israeli soldier friends walking around with huge M-16s on their shoulders. I mastered haggling with the taxi drivers. Taxis, not buses that was the rule my parents, and many of my friends' parents, issued before we left. With all the suicide bombings on buses, it just isn't worth the risk. And though I don't travel on buses, I'll admit I still feel frightened walking by a bus, or sitting at a red light in a taxi with a bus in the next lane. It's just too hard to get the television images of blown-up buses out of my head.
Two weeks after I arrived, I was lucky enough to land an internship at The Jerusalem Post, which was an invaluable opportunity for me as a young journalist. There, I was thrown right into the thick of things, with no choice but to learn quickly. On my very first day, I wrote an article that appeared in the newspaper, and while it wasn't front-page news, it was my debut into the world of journalism.
The internship was my first step into the "real world." The Post staff treated me like a full-fledged reporter, giving me assignments and deadlines and sending me around the country to gather information. It was great training, and it was often fun.
But, living in Jerusalem was also often very stressful.
I remember one night that was particularly nerve-racking. It was a Saturday night. My parents' plane had just taken off after a brief visit, and all my friends were on a weekend get-away hiking in the Golan. I was in my dorm at Hebrew University when I got a phone call from a friend in the Israeli army. He said he couldn't talk, but he wanted to warn me not to leave my dorm that night.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because we're on our way to Jerusalem right now to look for a terrorist who's on the loose, who according to intelligence is planning on blowing himself up in Jerusalem tonight."
I was terrified. I was all alone. I couldn't call my parents, and I was scared to leave my dorm. I had never before experienced such real fear and danger.
But in Israel, that sense of fear and danger is the norm. In Alaska, it's normal to wear snow boots all year round. In New York, that would be absurd. In Israel, the snow boots are simply bulletproof vests.
Life is about adjusting, and I'm still struggling with the adjustment.
When I told my best friend that I was going to Israel for a year, she couldn't believe it. She couldn't understand why I was going to spend a year of my life in a country filled with angry extremists who would jump at the chance to kill me.
Sinai Tor, Israeli singer, next to his home in Hebron
She was correct in that what we see on TV is scary images of the burned frames of blown-up buses or cafes, the Israeli military in the slums of the Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza.
But the majority of the cafes in Israel are modern, popular places where Israelis spend their evenings or lunch breaks, and many Palestinians are not the suffering, impoverished people we see on TV. Many live in mansions in developed Arab villages.
I explained all of this to my friend as best I could, but I didn't say what I was really thinking: Honestly, how safe is it to live anywhere these days? Today, terrorism is a global threat. How many New Yorkers were scared to go to work at the World Trade Center on that Tuesday morning in September 2001? But today, everybody is wary, everywhere in the world. The point is that we still go on living. Not just existing, but actually living. We can't live life scared to go around every corner, or none of us would ever leave the house.
It's no different in Israel. Living means putting the fear behind you.
Of course, managing the fear is a personal battle. On the one hand, no one wants to forget the 3-year-old child killed by a Palestinian rocket while he was walking to nursery school with his mother. On the other hand, we do want to forget. We want to move on and not dwell on all the sorrow and tragedy.
Yet while their survival requires Israelis to harden their hearts to the pain, to take a deep breath and push the grief out of their minds, doing so is slowly turning Israel into a very hardened country. I fear once I live there, I might harden with it; so while some may worry that I will lose my life, I worry more about losing my heart.
It is Israel's mostly futile effort to block out the pain of all the death that is causing them to lose the media war. The Palestinians bring the journalists and cameras into their homes, showcasing their anguish for the world.
Everyone can remember the last time they saw an Israeli bulldozer destroying a house, or an Israeli tank plowing through a Palestinian village. But rarely do we see the footage of the Israeli mothers, wives and children crying for lost relatives. We hear the names of the dead, but rarely do we see the victims who remain maimed and crippled. They do exist, but Israel avoids revealing its vulnerable side.
So instead, Israelis appear tough and military.
Oddly, once I arrived in Israel, I felt further from the war-torn country I was familiar with than when I was at home, watching suicide bombings and shootings on the news every day. There I was, living in what is technically considered East Jerusalem, and I was oblivious to the danger around me. Despite the terror, bombings and deaths, there is a living side to the country, and that's the Israel I became a part of.
And that's my answer to those who can't understand my decision to live in Israel, exactly what Israelis want the world to remember: People are actually living life there. It's not a third-world regime. It's not Afghanistan or Iraq. It's a modern democracy, just like the United States, trying to exterminate terrorism. The roads are paved, there are prestigious hospitals and universities and they even have The GAP and IKEA.
But none of that makes news, so we don't see it hence the flabbergasted looks when I say that after spending a year in Israel, I?m moving there permanently this summer.
So while perhaps it was my religious beliefs that led me to explore the country in the first place, it was the country itself, the people, the culture and the life, that kept me there.
Erica Chernofsky will graduate from NYU with a degree in journalism in January 2005, completing her last semester at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She was an intern with Foxnews.com this summer, and moved to Israel earlier this month.Rachel Fleisher in Hebron
Harvests of Our Heritage
Seeing those pictures that Ezra posted last week of Jews harvesting grapes in the Holyland reminded me of a Divar Torah I put together on this week's Parsha, Ki Tavo, for K'Cholmim two years ago. Indeed harvesting is "waaaay better" than uprooting and as you can see below the message harvesting Holyland fruits imparts is still just as important as ever. Same Golus, Different Zip Code?By Pinchas M. Orbach
Elul - 5762
I was asked to contribute to K'Cholmim's Weekly Zionist Devrai Torah. As I wondered how to go about writing a "Zionist" Devar Torah it occurred to me that the Torah, even in its simplest form without any elaborate commentaries is itself fiercely Zionistic. Take this week's Parsha for instance. It begins:
When you come to the land that G-d your Lord is giving you as a heritage occupying and settling it, you shall take the first of every fruit of the ground produced by the land that G-d your Lord is giving you. You must place it in a basket, and go to the site that G-d will choose [Yerushalayim] as the place associated with his name. There you shall go to the priest officiating at the time and say to him, "Today I am affirming to G-d your Lord that I have come to the land that G-d swore to our fathers to give us." (Devarim 26:1-3)
This Mitzvah of Hava'at Bikkurim imparts an important lesson. It addresses Jewish farmers which toiled the whole year, working the land to ensure a plentiful harvest. The very first fruits that blossom are marked, harvested and brought to the Beit Hamikdosh, the site Hashem chose as "the place associated with his name." There they are given as gifts to the Kohanim. The obvious lesson is that while it may appear like the farmers are agricultural experts that turned the desert into a blooming orchard of pomegranate trees, to assert this claim would be to deny a fundamental facet of reality -- everything comes only from Hashem.
Regard this subject Rav Eliahu Dessler zt"l, wrote:
Nature itself is a miracle. Should someone protest and say that nature is rooted in a cause, we may very well ask him why that particular cause produces such a particular result. Nature is a miracle - but we have become accustomed to it.
Were we to be told that a man died, was buried, that his body had rotted in the ground and that the grave had opened and he had come forth, we would exclaim, "A miracle, a revival of the dead." Yet, when a seed is planted and grows forth after it has rotted in the ground, is that not, too, a revival of dead? Bury the lobe of a calf's ear deep in fertilizer. If a full-grown cow were to spring up, that's a miracle. When a full-branched tree grows from the planting of a small shoot, is that any more natural? But to one we are accustomed and see it as part of nature; to the other we are not and name it a miracle. (Haggadah Gedoli Tunoas HaMusser, P.104).
Since these fruit are actually miracles from Hashem it is most appropriate that we show our thanks by designating these "first fruits" as gifts for Hashem - or for his representative, the Kohan.
But aside from giving the first fruits to the Kohanim the farmer is told of another Mitzvah, Mikra Bikkurim, the declaration recited after the fruit basket is placed before the Alter and accepted by the Kohan. "Today I am affirming to G-d your Lord that I have come to the land that G-d swore to our fathers to give us." The farmers declare how before being given Eretz Yisrael we were slaves harshly afflicted under the Egyptians.
"G-d then brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, with great visions and with signs and miracles. He brought us to this area, giving us this land flowing with milk and honey. I am now bringing the first fruit of the land that G-d has given me." (Ibid. 26:8-10)
These are not only G-d's fruit. They are G-d's fruit from G-d's land. Just as it is a miracle that these fruit grew is also a miracle that we are living in Eretz Yisrael. Both are gifts from Hashem. Which explains why Bikkurim must be brought to "the place associated with his name." This declaration cannot be made anywhere else. Only by actually being in Yerushalyim can the farmer truly appreciate the message that Bikkurim is trying to send. It is only from the Beit Hamikdosh, "you, the Levite, and the proselyte in your midst shall thus rejoice in all the good that G-d your Lord has granted you and your family." (Ibid. 26:11)
Rav Menachem Zemba zt"l (from the Warsaw Ghetto) gives an interesting explanation for Bikkurim. Interpreting an insight from the Ari Z"L, Rav Zemba concludes Bikkurim are actually a remedy for the slandering of the Land by the Maraglim, the spies, in Parshat Shalach. He points out how the spies brought back the same fruit the Mishna uses to explain Bikkurim, "one cluster of grapes, pomegranates, and of the figs." (Bamidbar 13:23) Rashi explains these were used specifically for the purpose of slandering the Land. "Look, just as these fruit are giant, the inhabitants are also undefeatable giants!" These fruits were used as a tool to prevent Jews from coming to Eretz Yisrael. Therefore these same fruits, the fruits of Eretz Yisrael, which were used as "proof" that the Land cannot be conquered, are used for the exact opposite purpose. These fruits are proof that as promised, Hashem has given us "this Land flowing with milk and honey." Then, only after affirming we've come to our Homeland and repenting for slandering Eretz Yisrael, can we "rejoice in all the good that G-d your Lord has granted you and your family."
I was in a Jewish bookstore last week. There was a big sale. The owner joked about the how the sale would last until the end of the summer or until he won the lottery, whichever came first. Should he hit the jackpot he would spend his time "studying the Babylonian Talmud," he quipped. One of the customers remarked perhaps he should consider "moving to the Holy Land as well." He dismissed this suggestion with a nod of his head and a sweep of his hand, and muttered "same Golus, different zip code." He would not rejoice at the thought of living in Eretz Yisrael. So long as the third Beit Hamikdosh is not standing, in his mind, there is absolutely no difference between living in the land of our heritage or living in 11230. "It would be best to go back to Egypt!" (Ibid. 14:3)
A similar phenomenon of apathetic Jews following the Balfour Declaration, prompted Rav Kook to remark:
"There are some Jews for whom the international recognition of the Jewish people's right to its land does not inspire joy. This is because the primary focus of their mourning is the spiritual destruction of Jerusalem and Eretz Yisrael, while the utter humiliation of the Land being subjected to foreign rule does not grieve them. But those who always felt deep sorrow, not only for the destruction of Jerusalem and Eretz Yisrael, but for the absence of Jewish sovereignty in our land, the international declaration that Eretz Yisrael must return to the Jewish people is a source of happiness. They merit to see Jerusalem in its joy." (Ravkook.n3.net)
I would like to share with you a little addition to this thought. A friend of mine enlightened me to a marvelous motto. "Hodu L'Hashem Ki Tov, Ki Le'olam Chasdo." It's from Tehillim 118 (with all the current events read the whole 118 now very carefully. Interesting isn't it?) "Give thanks to Hashem for he is good; for His kindness endures forever!" Truly internalize this thought and everything becomes "the hand of G-d." How wonderful it must be see life this way! Hashem through kindness makes fruit grow - a miracle. Hashem through kindness gave us Eretz Yisrael - a miracle. But the most difficult part is realizing that even when events seems to be terrible and can't get any worse - this too is the kindness of Hashem - a miracle. And the spies did not realize this - that was their sin. The owner of that bookstore did not realize this. "Give thanks to Hashem for he is good; for His kindness endures forever!"
Indeed this was precisely the farmer's declaration before rejoicing. "Hashem has indeed brought us to the land given to us as a heritage." Only after thanking Hashem "for he is
good" can we "rejoice in all the
good that G-d your Lord has granted you and your family." As a side point according to the Rambam, Yerushalyim still maintains the very same sanctity today as it did in the time those farmers rejoiced. "Because the sanctity of the Mikdash and of Yerushalayim is on account of the Shekhinah - and the Shekhinah is never nullified." (MT Beit haB'hirah 6:16)
Today, we must strive to emulate the message of the Bikkurim rather than the message of the Maraglim. Without perceiving Eretz Yisrael is a gift we will end up slandering the land. We must appreciate that Eretz Yisrael is not merely another zip code. It is called "Nachlah" - a land given to us as our heritage! A gift - a miracle - from Hashem! Indeed "the Land is a very, very good Land." (Bamidbar 14:7) It is a land flowing with Milk and Honey. We must return. And when we do we will merit seeing the prophecies of this week's Haftorah materialize. "Violence will no longer be heard in your land, neither desolation nor destruction within your borders; but you will call your walls Salvation, and your gates Praise." (Isaiah 60:18)
"May Hashem bless you from Zion, and may you gaze upon the goodness of Jerusalem, all the days of your life." (Tehillim 128:5)
Shabbat Shalom.
