Do American Jews get a vote in Israel?

If you hate politics, I get it.  Please move along.  Just skip this post.

When I started this site, I feel like I made a promise to you and to myself that I wouldn't get political.  If you want to know more of my thoughts on getting political, in a book that weirdly doesn't get very political, I urge you to read my book, Getting Political: Scenes from a Life in Israel.  (Hey, even if you don't want to know my thoughts, pick up the book anyway!  Seriously, it doesn't get very political...)

And yet.

And yet.

There are times when I feel like I have to get political.

Because when you move to Israel, you cease, in some important way, to be a "diaspora Jew" and become an “Israeli Jew.”

You live here, you walk the daled amos basically every single day of your life, you breathe the holy and sometimes stinky air.

You live with the noise, or block it out with a nonstop stream of English podcasts and audiobooks.

You vote in the elections.

And I don't even have a post I can link to about the elections, because I haven't talked about politics.

But just for a minute, I want to.  So please cut me some slack.
Because I came across this article about how the Canadian diaspora, and presumably, the rest of the diaspora, can influence Israel.

And it scared me.

Spoiler alert: the way that diaspora Jews can influence Israel, apparently, is to participate in the World Zionist Congress coming up in October.  In fairness, it's held in Jerusalem, so they

The horrifying truth about Lag Baomer bonfires

There's so much I love about the period between Pesach and Shavuos here in Israel.  But there's one thing that absolutely disgusts me.  I'll tell you in a minute and see if you feel the same.

When we lived in Canada, this time of year was pretty dull and featureless.  There's Pesach... Yom HaAtzmaut, if we remembered it... Lag Baomer, if we got our act together to get to a bonfire... and then Shavuos.

It was okay, but nothing special.

Here in Israel, it's a VERY special time of year, especially if you measure by how many days the kids have to wear white shirts to school.  In many religious schools, often kids are supposed to wear white shirts for Rosh Chodesh and any other special occasion... and these seven weeks give us PLENTY of those. 

My son's school also has them wear white shirts on Fridays, bringing the white-shirt days up to an uncountably high number:  two days for Rosh Chodesh Iyar, Yom Hashoah, a couple of Fridays, Yom Hazikaron, and more that I'm probably not remembering.  Some chains actually have sales on white t-shirts with school logos just to help parents stock up.

I love all these special days, especially Yom Haatzmaut, which comes smack-dab in the middle of the solemn sefirah period and means we can celebrate Israel's birth with music, which we don't normally listen to during this period (I'm aware that different people observe this different, halachically -- consult your rav for details if you're not sure).

But here's what I don't love. 

What I hate, if you'll allow me to use a strong word.  What disgusts me.

Lag Baomer

My vacation in Mecca, or why I’m saying bye bye to Airbnb

I’ve always loved Airbnb, a site that made it super-easy for anyone and everyone to rent out their place and make a little money on the side (or a lot – I know for lots of people it’s an actual business at this point). 

But I abruptly quite loving them today, following the announcement that they’ll be blocking listings from Jews in disputed areas of the West Bank.

Why?  According to NGO Human Rights Watch, who undoubtedly has advised Airbnb every step of the way, it’s mainly because “Palestinian ID holders are effectively barred from entering” these areas (just as they can’t enter many parts of Israel).  Because the Palestinian Authority have utterly failed, since the initial hope of Oslo, to reach any kind of peace agreement – not tried and failed, but simply failed due to power hunger on the part of their leadership.

When I read about all of this this morning, frankly, I was astonished that I had an opinion at all.

I didn’t used to.

You have to understand that I was a very bad prospective olah, in that I didn't really know anything about Israel before we came here.

I probably couldn't have found Haifa on a map.  Let alone Beer Sheva, Netanya, Ramat Gan and a whole bunch of other towns that I now know as well as the suburbs where I grew up.

Which also meant I couldn't tell the difference, politically, between Chevron and Rechovot, between Efrat and Eilat, between Kochav Yaakov and Kochav Yair (okay, to be fair, even born Israelis get those two mixed up!).

I always figured that if I lived in Israel, the "situation" here would make a lot more sense.  I would know what "settlements" people were talking about and understand whether they were right or wrong and which were the good bits of the country and which weren't.

I’m a lot less naive now. 

But even so, I certainly couldn't claim to know more about how to fix the situation than anyone else.  So the fact that Airbnb, like the EU, is announcing that they have the answer, and that the answer is to label different parts of the country in different ways to call attention to the political situation… well, that’s astonishing. 

• It’s astonishing that they

Canadian doctor Tarek Loubani shot near Gaza: A Canadian in Israel responds

You know what this blog post was going to be about?  Volunteers.  And about how Israel doesn't appreciate volunteers who come here from places like United States and Canada. 

It’s an important topic, right?  Too bad that’s not what I ended up writing about.

Volunteers are people of all faiths and all ages who don't have to come here, and who work for organizations like Sar-El (which places volunteers on military bases), on farms, in schools, all over the country.  They must contribute millions of dollars to the Israeli economy, which is absolutely fabulous.

I was talking someone a couple of weeks ago who had been here volunteering on farms for two months, and she started telling me about how she and the others were forced to work half a day on Yom HaAtzmaut, while the farm's owner slept in, then lounged around the house with friends and family (later, the volunteers were invited to join the BBQ -- once they were done work).  She noted that the paid migrant workers weren't in the fields... probably because it's illegal to make them work on a national holiday.

Volunteers can work whenever they want, I guess.

That made me mad, and I also, somewhat guiltily, realized that my daughter has had a volunteer from the U.S. teaching English in her school this entire year and I hadn't even met her, let alone thanked her (she's been working one-on-one with some of the native English speakers), until someone invited her to our Lag Ba'omer BBQ.  So I felt bad that she's been in the country so long and probably barely acknowledged by the community, and finally, belatedly, invited her over.

Like I said, that's what this blog post was going to be about. 

Because seriously, with the feeling towards Israel in North America these days, it's not at all obvious that someone would come here to volunteer, paying their own airfare and often also paying to volunteer, just so they can show up and be ignored at best and their goodwill abused at worst.  Israelis probably see volunteers as "freyers," suckers who are easily conned and therefore aren't worth very much.

(All freyers????  L-R: Sar-El volunteers 2012 photo © IDF via Wikimedia; Austrian Kibbutz volunteers 1978 photo © Robert Schediwy via Wikimedia; American volunteers at Masada meeting George W. Bush 2008 © White House via U.S. National Archives; Farm volunteer © WWOOF Israel)

I wanted to write about that because I was mad.  But then…

Then I saw something that made me even madder, and also -- I found out about people who abuse their volunteers even more than Israel does:  Gaza.  Or rather, Hamas, its quasi-elected dictatorship.

Gaza has had a humanitarian crisis over the last few years due to its leadership's terrorist policies.  Hamas is a government that's in power on a one-plank platform: eliminate Israel.  Once elected in 2006, they dismantled electoral operations so nobody could un-elect them and proceeded to take money out of children's and families' pockets and dedicate it to building terror tunnels and rockets with which to bombard nearby Israelis.

Hamas may be many things, but they're not stupid.  So in addition to these operations, they have poured a ton of work into the PR battle for the hearts and minds of the world.  It's a humanitarian crisis, they weep to the world, which is absolutely, 100% true.  And then, they point to Israel.  That's the whole PR thing: point to the crisis, point to Israel.  Repeat until hearts bleed and journalists cry.  It doesn't take much to make journalists cry, especially if there are pictures of children.

But courting NGOs and liberal media outlets is easy, hardly a challenge anymore.  Like I said, they cry easily.

So if I was in charge of the Hamas PR machine, then the thing that I would want most of all, more than anything else in the world, is a Canadian. 

The world loves nobody more than a Canadian.

To the world, Canadians are innocent, naive, the ultimate freyers, really.

Yup, that’s what would head up my wish list: A nice Canadian frayer, a volunteer who could

Israel NGOs: Riding tigers down the road to hell

A stabber got loose in Tel Aviv this week.  An 18-year-old man ran amok and stabbed some people and thank God, nobody died, but please don't think that's the point and the incident is over now because nobody died.  Four people were wounded, which is important to remember, but there's an even bigger lesson to be learned here.

The man - 18 is a man, I guess, technically - was a Palestinian man.  He was brought to Tel Aviv.  He was brought there by an NGO called "Natural Peace Tours," which honestly, I would have sworn was a made up name, it's so hokey.  It was their mission, apparently, to bring Palestinians to Israel for what this article calls "grassroots negotiations."

Grassroots negotiations?

First of all, let's be very clear:  "grassroots negotiations" is nothing, because anyone "grassroots" isn't in a position to either offer anything or give anything in return.  So through this NGO, let's face it, you're not negotiating.  At best, you're having coffee with someone, and that's very nice, I support that, but maybe - just  maybe - they could have thought about whether it was safe to do what they were doing.

(“grassroots negotiation” in action)

When I mentioned this incident to a dear friend who lives outside of Israel, complaining about starry-eyed and idiotic NGOs, she said that at least they mean well.  Which I am absolutely sure they do.

But to be honest: I have less patience these days with people who mean well. 

The moral high road to hell

I always used to think the expression "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" meant that people were innocently trying their best and somehow missing the mark.  I thought it meant that nice people who had good intentions were sometimes ineffectual.  But how could you really blame them?  After all, they're NICE people.  And they mean well.

What I believe these days about the expression is different. 

And now for something (a little) different…

One reasons I haven’t been blogging so much lately is that I went back to school last year to finally start working my way towards a master’s degree.  This winter, I did a course in Creative Nonfiction, and for the final project, I was supposed to write a narrative essay informed by the techniques of creative nonfiction, as a genre, as well as by graduate-level research into a subject of interest.

So I thought: “What could be more interesting than Israel?”  Obviously!

I have been sharing some thoughts here all along about the idea of politics, and what it means to get political when it comes to the situation here on the ground, and I figured I’d pull it all together into a sort of story of a nice Canadian who is reluctant to deal with politics but who has been forced to due to living in Israel.

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you’ll know that politics is not what I do naturally, or best. 

So much so, perhaps, that when I tried to write a serious post on Palestinian identity, one person nastily took it upon him/herself (I’m guessing HIMSELF, for some reason) to comment, “Better to stick with tips on a successful Aliyah than playing the political game.” 

Like I said,

Is there such a thing as “Palestinians”? (um, yes?)

I already know people are going to get mad when they see a headline like this.

Hard-line Israel supporters might say I’m questioning things that should not be questioned.
Meanwhile, liberal non-Israelis will say it’s an idiotic question – so long as someone defines himself or herself as “Palestinian,” that’s what they are.

(The liberal world is very into self-definition these days.  I always have been, too.  My philosophy has generally been that for the tricky stuff, we can let Hashem decide.  Baruch Hashem, I don’t have to be in charge of the universe.)

The problem with this is that a big piece of the argument for the State of Israel these days seems to be “there’s no such thing as Palestinians.  They just made it up.”

There are so many good memes I could raid to demonstrate this attitude.  Here are just a few:

(okay, same quote, two different memes)

Even the Arabs agree (or at least a couple of Arabs):

Some of these memes rely on the idea that not only are there no Palestinians, but that Arabs are some kind of Johnny-come-latelies to the region…

Be that as it may.

(Here comes the part lots of folks don’t want to hear.)

Be that as it may.

Because I’m not touching any of these memes.  For all I know, they may be right.  In fact, I believe some are right.

The power of illusion

That doesn’t change the fact that today, for all intents and purposes, Palestinians do EXIST.

Why?  Because of the power of illusions. 

Quit apologizing–you’re Israeli now! (Or are you?)

If you’re a person who apologizes, you may find yourself in a distinct minority here in Israel.

Now, me, I’m Canadian.  Apologizing is one of the things we do best.

Here’s proof:

Two days before we left Canada, I was in the grocery store getting some last-minute things to bring with us, and I was pushing my cart down the HUGE, wide aisle, and another woman was coming the other way down the HUGE, wide aisle.  I passed her with my cart and she passed me with her cart, and there was lots of room to spare on both sides.  And as we passed each other, I apologized AND she apologized, at exactly the same moment.

Why?

For being close to each other's spaces.  It's hilarious, but it's also true.  We feel very uncomfortable when we are anywhere near other human beings.  In Canada, there's about 1/4 of a square km for every person, while in Israel (I just checked!) - there's 0.0026982436083974 of a square km.

We also don't want to cause anyone a moment's discomfort. 

On our aliyah flight we switched seats in the middle of the night and the flight attendant was confused in the morning, so I apologized - and she said, "You're Israeli now.  Stop apologizing!"

In Israel it's very warm and very close, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad.  Nobody apologizes for anything.

It is a good thing sometimes, to not be too apologetic.  As a nation, Israel sometimes needs to stand up for what it believes in and not let anybody convince us otherwise.  I noticed this bumper sticker on the wall of the bus station in Jerusalem this morning.

It says:  “Israel:  Trust in Hashem, and not in America.”  Sometimes, Israel is so busy apologizing to America, or at least, trying to look nice for the Americans, that it loses sight of its own values.

The only problem with trusting in Hashem is that none of us have a direct hotline to Hashem, which means that sometimes Israelis make mistakes and don’t apologize.  Either way, I guess, is a problem – too much apologizing, or not enough.

When you’re visiting the President: the secret to my success.

I don’t like to brag, but I’m kind of a big deal.

How big?

Well, I spent this morning hobnobbing with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.  Does that count as a big deal?

Okay, we weren’t exactly hobnobbing. 

Actually, neither of those guys has a clue who I am… and I’m okay with that.  I’m kind of shy in real life.

But one of the things I’ve loved most about my time here in Israel is putting on my cub reporter hat and attending events (fun and not so fun) with ambassadors, ministers, in the Knesset, and various high-level government offices.

If you’re not planning to spend time in the upper echelons of government, maybe my secret isn’t so relevant.  But I’ll tell it to you anyway.  Here is the secret to my success:  leave an hour to go through security.

Getting in to see these guys is like an airport, only more so.

Remember – Netanyahu is one of the most hated people in the world (and I don’t just mean outside of Israel).  As a nation, we have far more enemies around the world than friends.  As far as his security folks are concerned, you are one of those enemies, until proven otherwise.

So smile, relax, and bring a nice blended iced coffee with you to help make the process go smoothly.  I recommend Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf – you’ll be standing around for an hour, you’re worth it. 

While you’re waiting, be prepared to:

The other half of Israel: do religious Jews hate Arabs?

Last week, a friend who volunteers teaching English to kids in an Arab village near Karmiel mentioned an informal survey he’d done among the kids he teaches.  He asked them, hypothetically, who they wouldn’t want living in their village. 

He listed a whole bunch of different types of people:  Arab Christians, Americans, religious and non-religious Jews.

It turned out that the main group of people that the kids didn’t want coming to live in their village was religious Jews.

Why?

Because, according to the kids, religious Jews hate Arabs more.

In other words:  not because they hate us, but because they believe we hate them.

I was astonished, but actually this makes sense.  They probably figure that the people who are most passionate about the religion are also the most passionate Zionists.  And thus, the most passionate Arab-haters.

To me, being a religious Jew is totally about Israel.  But it is not at all about hatred. 

I always figured that when I made aliyah, I’d understand the situation here a lot more clearly.  You know, being actually present on the ground, as opposed to being way off in North America.

That’s about as accurate as a flea expecting to understand a dog’s life just because it lives on the dog’s back. 

(Mis)interpreting the news – an editor’s perspective on tragedy

Some people’s reaction to tragedy is to weep.

I edit.

You might have noticed that I don’t usually get political on this site, mainly out of humility; I don’t understand enough to get involved in one side or the other.

This isn’t about politics, because I don’t know politics.

But what I do know is words.

What I do understand is grammar and the importance of using language precisely and accurately.  And the tragic consequences if you don’t.

Perhaps I’m just a writer and editor at heart, but I couldn’t help making a few corrections to the story of the funerals as told by Al-Jazeera.  I have taken the liberty of fixing a few things.

I think my edits make the article much better. 

Even better would have been if it hadn’t needed to be written at all.

Funeral held for slain Israeli settlers boys

Burials held for three young settlers 16-year-old boys who disappeared were kidnapped weeks ago as well as for [one, unrelated] Palestinian shot by Israeli forces.

[If you don’t mention who killed the Israeli boys, why are you pointing out who shot the Palestinian one? This is flawed parallel structure, and as an editor, I won’t stand for it.]

Israel has held funerals for buried three young settlers beloved boys found dead near Hebron in the Occupied West Bank Israel more than two weeks after they went missing were abducted.

[Many hundreds of] Thousands gathered for the burials of Gilad Shaar, 16, Naftali Fraenkel, 16, and Eyal Yifrah, 19, in the West Bank Israeli city of Modi'in [,home to the Biblical Maccabees,] on Tuesday.

The settlers children disappeared were abducted on June 12 while hitchhiking home from a religious school in Kfar Etzion, an illegal settlement between Bethlehem and Hebron school, as millions of kids do every day without incident, probably guaranteed somewhere in the U.N.’s Rights of the Child, and were last heard in a brief heartbreaking emergency call to police.

Their bodies were found heartlessly dumped near the West Bank Muslim Arab [just a coincidence, folks!] village of Halhoul on Monday night.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has blamed the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas for the killings, spoke of the "murderers who with endless cruelty and without the blink of an eye, violated the ancient order not to raise a hand against a boy".

Netanyahu has already vowed the group would pay for the deaths. Speaking before [the extra word here was just their mistake; probably non-malicious] before Israel's security cabinet convened for a second time in two days, he said that Israel "must strike hard at Hamas people and infrastructure in the West Bank" and would weigh further attacks to prevent rocket fire from Gaza on southern Israel.

Palestinian [also, but unrelatedly] mourned

Meanwhile [in a completely unrelated event inserted here to distract from the main event], hundreds of Palestinians mourned the death on Tuesday of a 19-year-old Palestinian man shot dead [redundant; if it’s his funeral, we know already] by Israeli forces unmurdered Israeli teenage soldiers who have during a raid in Jenin Refugee Camp in the occupied territory Israel, [which was founded in 1953 by the Arab nation of Jordan to house their fellow Arabs to whom they refused citizenship, creating a brutal breeding zone for terror which has spawned more suicide bombers and militant attacks than any other Palestinian city].

…

This article continues in this vein, devoting nearly 400 words to injustices caused by Israel – with under 200 spared for the three teens in an article allegedly about their funerals.  Honestly, any decent editor would have chopped it after Netanyahu’s statement.

Let’s all be editors and take our red pens to terror wherever we are.  If you read a newspaper report that twists reality so badly it threatens to break, write to them, cancel your subscription, leave a comment – do something.

A couple of sites that can help:

• HonestReporting.com (or HonestReporting on facebook)
• Committee for Accuracy in Middle-East Reporting in America
• Dishonest reporting – from Aish.com
• 25 Answers to Tough Questions About Israel, from StandWithUs – countering anti-Israel bias on campus

Haveil Havalim, Behar / בְּהַר Post-Party Edition

 

If you weren’t in Israel, you missed Yom HaAtzmaut.  Sure, you may have celebrated even if you don’t live here, as I did for many years before we made aliyah.  But I’m going to take the self-righteous leap and say that you haven’t truly experienced it if you haven’t been here.  It’s not just a party… it is a celebration of national pride, on a spiritual and physical level.  Awesome.

Now the party’s over, but don’t worry – there’s more fun coming, in the form of Lag b’Omer and then Shavuot.

So what are we doing here?  Hosting Haveil Havalim, of course!

This is a weekly roundup of what’s new and great in the Jewish / Israel blogging world.  If you haven’t checked out these great blogs yet, you really should. 

• Last week’s was hosted by Batya over at Shiloh Musings
• Next week’s will take place at Esser Agoroth.  Submit your posts to esseragaroth “at” gmail “dot” com.
• For more details and a complete schedule, please join the HH facebook group.

So while we’re recovering from the party (and waiting for the next one to begin) let’s check in with what’s late & great from around the Jewish World!

Normally, I split the links up into categories… but absolutely everything this week was about Israel, from start to finish.  As is probably fitting this week.  So I made up  my own “categories.”  Enjoy!

Setting off Fireworks

Before we came here, I always assumed there wouldn’t be fireworks in Israel.  I guess I figured there was too much stuff exploding as it is.  But as Batya points out in Yom Ha'Atzma'ut Explosion of Joy 66!, there’s also a spiritual side to the celebration.

Lemon Lime Moon comments on tensions that broke out during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s presence at a Yom HaAtzmaut ceremony over his decision to free prisoners in Netanyahu ' Honors' the Dead, saying “In what far out universe does one honor the dead by freeing their murderers?” 

The Spiritual Side

Yerushalayim wasn’t the only location liberated from Jordanian rule in 1967.  The ancient Biblical site of Shiloh was also reclaimed in the 6-day war, as Batya explains in Women, Join Our Rosh Chodesh Prayers at Shiloh HaKeduma, Tel Shiloh.  Join her each month in the monthly women’s Rosh Chodesh tefillah on Tel Shiloh, the site where the ancient Mishkan (tabernacle) rested for almost 400 years.  (I did!  It was great!)

Fascinating historical fact:  “it is no idle coincidence that the Treaty of London, which would drag Britain into the conflict after 75 years, was signed on Friday the 5th of Iyyar 5599 (19th April 1839), the same date and the same day of the week on which Israel would become independent 109 years later.” writes Devash in Restored-Jewish-Sovereignty-in-the-Land-of-Israel Day.

 

Getting Your Facts Straight

Still believe that “Israel was brought into existence by the European powers in order to ease their consciences after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed”?  It’s a myth, says Brian (a fellow Feb 2013 NbN Go North pilot tripper, now living in the north!) in Misconceptions Concerning Zionism and Against Founding of Israel.  What are the other misconceptions?  Read it and be forearmed against those who would delegitimize Israel.

“The… adversarial statements by United States Secretary of State John Kerry…could be a harbinger of troubling times,” writes Brian, yet in Would Loss of American Unquestioned Support Destroy Israel? he says he’s unafraid.  Whether you agree or disagree, it’s worth a read.

As a victim of a past terror attack, Esser Agoroth also takes issue with the abuse of the rhetoric of terror in the recent death of 20-year-old Shelly Dadon, saying in his post Believe it or Not, Shelly Dadon was Killed by Arabs, not Jews, “To refer to graffiti, even to the slashing of tires and other vandalism as an act of terrorism is more than ludicrous; it is truly offensive.”

 

Simply Proud

Sure, we’ve all heard of SodaStream (now!), but I had no idea that Fiverr and many other companies are based in or were started in Israel.  Naomi Goldberg shares her favourites in 66 companies that make me proud to be Israeli.

Interested in exploring one of the country’s natural wonders?  The Eilat Coral Reef Reserve is a great place to start, writes tour guide David Ben-Sira.  It’s not overrun with tourists, he says, but there’s a snack bar and on-site gift shop, as well as changerooms with showers, so you’re never too far from civilization.

For me, being Israeli is still a strange, new thing.  Mostly good-strange, but sometimes disconcerting.  Two posts this week deal with different aspects:  one, Learning patriotism, for Canadian beginners., is all about my adventures in discovering patriotism (relatively) late in life, and the second, When chummus comes a-knocking… is a lighter comment on my distaste for this beloved national “dish.”

(Or Not)

“I do not celebrate the birth of the State of Israel, because I despise it,” writes Rafi Farber in Why I do not Celebrate the Birth of the State of Israel.  An unpopular sentiment, perhaps, but it’s seems that it’s more statehood that he opposes than Israel.  I’ll let you get the details from him – you may still disagree, but do read the piece before forming an opinion based solely on its (inflammatory) title.

Ariel ben Yochanan writes, “Let's call a spade a spade and say that these are pogroms!” in reply to some discouraging news in This Is Terrible!

The media here has been abuzz with an incident concerning the trial of David HaNahalawi, mainly because so many soldiers and civilians have reacted in unprecedented numbers through the semi-anonymity of social media.  Esser Agoroth stands with the soldier, saying “There are plenty of additional injustices being executed by the Israeli Government against its own constituents,” in I Stand with David the Nahal Brigade IDF Soldier!

The Israel Prize is the country’s highest honour, handed out once a year on Yom HaAtzmaut to to an Israeli citizen or organization who has “displayed excellence in their field(s), or have contributed strongly to Israeli culture.”  In The State of Israel Awards One of its Loyalists a Prize: Big Deal!, Esser Agoroth takes issue with one of this year’s selections.

The Sting with the Honey

The flipside of happiness is sadness, and there is plenty of it in Israel on Yom HaZikaron.  This country which we celebrate with joy was won with tears.  “All of the pain, all of those wonderful people dead,” says Batya in Understanding Israeli Independence, No Fairy Tale.

Sometimes, celebrating Israel comes down to the small “everyday” moments, touching ones and happy ones, as Mrs. S. asks, “What small yet meaningful moments defined Yom HaZikaron/Yom HaAtzma’ut 5774 for you?” in A Tale of Two Moments.

Hope you check out at least a few of these posts… and tell their authors HH sent you!  Remember to submit your posts for next week to esseragaroth “at” gmail “dot” com.

[photo credit:  Chris Young, via flickr]