PANTRY PACKERS

Making a Difference on your vacation.

Next time you visit Israel set aside 90 minutes to help the needy.

Visit Colel Chabad’s Pantry Packers center in Jerusalem’s Talpiot neighborhood and spend some time  packing up  healthy food products for distribution to needy families all over Israel.

Pantry Packers’ stand at the recent Jerusalem Tourism Conference

After watching a video, explaining the importance of the work you’ll be doing, you’ll be given  your own apron, plastic gloves  and hat to keep everything clean. Then, using ultra modern equipment  you will pack, label and stack  family sized packages of food staples.

This organization provides 80 different food items to 5000 families every week.

 

Packing food for the needy in Israel

It’ll add meaning to your visit.

Call 02-6260035 to arrange a visit. It’s free and suitable for all ages.

Of course you don’t have to be a tourist to help.

Everyone is welcome.

TEMECH CONFERENCE 2013

Naomi Elbinger, conference organizer opening the conference
Many of the attendees at  The Temech Conference for Women in Business, which took place in the Ramada Hotel this week, have been looking forward to it since last year’s conference.

Being an entrepreneur can be a lonely experience and the information, insights, tips and skills, not to mention the networking opportunities we all receive at this conference give many of us the impetus we need to try that bit harder.

This year one of the main features of setting up a successful business that was stressed was building up your own brand- being instantly recognizable and letting your customers know what makes you one step ahead of any competition. What your business offers that others don’t.

Branding advice from new immigrant and  ultra successful  businesswoman Jamie Geller of ‘Quick and Kosher’ fame, halachic advice from Rav Yitzchak Berkovits, inspiration in her inimitable style from Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi, networking groups  and various workshops in both Hebrew and English were all orchestrated perfectly by conference organizer Naomi Elbinger.

Yashar Koach to Naomi,  her talented staff of volunteers who worked 24/6  the weeks before the conference as well as the Temech supporters without whom the conference and organization wouldn’t exist.

We’re already looking forward to next year.

POPES, POLITICAL PARTIES AND PESACH

A new Pope has been elected, a new Israeli government has been formed (I think – but you never know there could be another crisis along the road paved with so many poor intentions!)… there are changes afoot in the world at large …



and I’m in my kitchen making Pesach.
This is the time of year when no matter what…Pesach has to come first.


The house is spring-cleaned- thanks to my wonderful daughters who left their husbands and babies and came to rescue me after I dislocated my shoulder … wot you forgot about that!!
And now we’re down to the real nitty-gritty a.k.a. chametz in the kitchen.
My husband still keeps hoping that I’ll find a packet of lamb-chops hidden away in the back of the freezer like we did once, about 15 years ago.


It was a small pack that my late mother had brought us  from England with just a few chops in – definitely not enough for all of our seven wonderful  children. And in any case, they wouldn’t have appreciated them… or so we kept telling ourselves.
So we gave them money to go out to the pizza shop and pamper themselves with pizza, ice cream, drinks and goodies …..and I cooked the lamb chops for our supper.

We did enjoy them – and the kids had the best supper of their lives.

So what terrible parenting sins do you  have to admit to – so many are committed during the week before Pesach

SHOULDERS ARE IMPORTANT

Yes they really are.
And believe me I didn’t realize just how important until I dislocated my left one over two months ago.

Fortunately  when I fell down the stairs my natural survival instincts took over and I shot out my arm to break my fall, thus saving my head.

At TEREM( that wonderful Israeli invention for emergency medical care) after giving me a quick shot of morphine, two big, strong doctors pulled and twisted my arm …until CLUNK:THUD  it slipped back ‘soundlessly’ into place.

That would have been fine had it stayed there…but when I raised my arm, it slipped out again…and we had to go back and have an ‘action replay’ of the whole thing.
After that my upper arm was strapped tightly to my body with strict instructions not to be moved for three weeks.

If you’ve never experienced anything like it then you won’t realize how frustrating it is not to be able to do so many things without help- from getting dressed to preparing a simple meal.
I did manage to maneuver my keyboard into a position that I could work at the computer.

I innocently  thought that after three weeks I‘d throw off the bandages and get on with my life…but it doesn’t work like that.
My upper arm had forgotten how to move…and it’s taking it a long while  to relearn. Physiotherapy’s helping a great deal but it’s still an unbearably slow business.



I’m getting lots of sympathy – and help…which is just as well with Pesach round the corner.
In fact there are some less-than-sympathetic souls who think I did it to get out cleaning for Pesach – like last year when I got double pneumonia between Purim and Pesach.

BUT IT’S  NOT TRUE – REALLY.


So that’s what I’ve been up to over the last few months.
What have you been doing?

WRITING UNDER FIRE - ISRAEL v GAZA

Some people can write their way through missile attacks, writing blog post after blog post full of what’s happening now, how it might continue, what should be done and informing the world about our situation.

I can’t.

I found myself paralyzed, as the missiles fell in their hundreds over southern Israel, then further north to Tel Aviv and eventually right near home in Jerusalem. The deaths the terrorists  were responsible for, and the massive destruction and havoc they caused to millions of people’s lives were well documented by hundreds if not thousands of bloggers in Israel.
photo credit Dror Einav

I’m not sure why I couldn’t put finger to keyboard.

I think it was because I was scared that my comments, predictions and thoughts  might come back to haunt me as  events unfolded. 

Now we have a cease-fire - for the time being . A cease-fire forced on us by outside pressure even as we know that although the IDF managed to make an enormous dent in Hamas’s arsenal of missiles, it still has plenty which can reach the heart of our country. And we know that Hamas will use the time to rearm with the help of Hezbollah and Iran.

So, as always, all we can do is to pray the The One Who is really in charge that He will continue to take care of us as He has done for the last thousands of years.

SITTING IN JERUSALEM–THINKING BOUT ‘SANDY’

This is a situation we’re just not used to.

Usually we in Israel are the ones who cause  worries for our friends and family around the world.

But this time we’re sitting in our warm homes, the sun is shining outside and we have running fresh, clean water and electricity.  And we’re worried sick about our friends and family in the USA. since hurricane Sandy smashed her way into their lives just  a week ago.

image courtesy of creative commons.
It’s been a sobering lesson to all of us.

No matter where you think you are on the social/financial scale, when the forces of nature hit, the damage is indiscriminate,  flattening the homes of the  rich and poor,  CEOs and street cleaners,  the religiously devout and  atheists.

You can prepare just so much, but then you have to sit and wait it out or flee and leave your home to the ravages of the hurricane.

You’re forced  to realize what Is important in life – and what can be replaced or rebuilt.

When I heard about people who refused to evacuate their coastal homes or even went to them specifically before the hurricane arrived, maybe believing they could keep the waves away with their forceful presence,  I began to think again about Jews who refused to leave Nazi Germany because they just didn’t believe anything would happen to them.

In one day the liveliest city in the world was reduced to a flooded, sightless wreck, a black soaking shell.

A week later life is starting to return to normal. But as these acts of nature become more and more frequent people are beginning to realize just how vulnerable we all are and how little we can really control in our own lives.

FOLLOW UP TO RICHARD III AND NAZI POTTERY

My last blog post got a lot of attention and was passed from friend to acquaintance to elderly relatives in an attempt to discover the answer to the mystery of the Nazi pottery that was discovered in the fields of the farm in Thaxted England.


We seem to have solved the riddle with this reply.

Asher Cailingold forwarded your email to me, as I might be able to shed a little more light on explaining the swastika emblem on some pottery found in a field in Thaxted Lodge.
I was on Bachad Hachsharah in England for many years, including 10 years (1944-54) at the Bachad farm in Thaxted, including four years (1950-54) as its manager.
There are two possible explanations:
1. When we took over the farm in 1944 - WW2 was still raging - we found a large hole in one of the fields. We were told that a plane had crashed there earlier in the war, but no one knew its identity. Thus it is possible that this was a German aircraft, which could explain the presence of some cup or other gadget on this plane.
2. During 1944/45, when we needed a larger number of workers, the Essex War Agricultural Committee supplied us occasionally with groups of German POWs, so this could be the source of this piece of pottery.
It was certainly not an item belonging to any of the German origin Chaverim.(members)
I hope this will satisfy your curiosity to some extent.
Well that seems a logical answer, even if it was less exciting than the version  my imagination conjured up.
                   …………………………………………………………………….


The identity of the remains that were excavated in Leicester are still a mystery.
We won’t know if it really is  King Richard III for another six to eight weeks as DNA testing can’t be rushed.

But that hasn’t stopped the authorities in Leicester from starting to cash in on the possibility that this really is the king and all that it would mean for the fame and fortune of this relatively quiet town.

Great plans for coping with the possible upsurge in tourism are already in the making as you will see from this report from the BBC.

Marketing this, possibly much maligned, king could be big business.