Yom Kippur
is coming up. This day everything stops in Israel. No cars, no TV, no synthetic kind of noise…..Wonderful.
This is the holiday for bicycles and for walks but most of all it is a day of prayer and fasting. There are more secular than religious Jews in Israel, but Yom Kippur seems to be Holy to most people.
It all started in the Bible when G-g instructs the people of Israel the holidays of the seventh month. It says that on the tenth day of the seventh month, which actually begins at sundown on the day before, shall be a day of fasting and sacrifice. As the Temple in Jerusalem is no more and sacrifices cannot be done prayer has become the substitute. It is not allowed to do any kind of work on this day.
Yom Kippur in Israel starts with an early evening meal. It is usually a big meal as it is supposed to keep people going until sundown the following day. Fasting is understood as meaning no eating as well as no drinking. …….That is the hard part of it !
Children up to the age of 12 or 13 , Bat- or Bar-Mitzvah age, do not have to fast. Elderly people or people with diseases and pregnant women also do not have to fast.
One of the passages read from the bible on Yom Kippur is the prophet Jonah. This book has four chapters in it and the first three verses of each chapter says something about Jonah’s position to G-d; running away, coming back to, walking together with or running ahead of.
It is good to take at least one day a year for the entire people to give a thought to this matter.
Elin Elkouby
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
It’s Jewish New Year or Rosh HaShanah.
There are so many things to say about this holiday but I will only get into a few things. First of all it is strange that “New Year” is celebrated on the first day of the seventh month. This makes sense only if we remember that “our ways are not God’s ways and that our thoughts is not God’s thoughts.”
We need to be released from our way of understanding “time” which is controlled by the sun and the moon, day and night, the seasons of the year. If we try to relate to time not as a straight line but rather as a circle where the “beginning and the end” meets up it may start to make more sense.
God created the world in six days and He made the seventh day a day of rest. This number seven has ever since become a symbol of “the beginning of a new spiritual season”. (Just check this with Leviticus 23 and pay attention to how many times the number 7 is mentioned.)
So the Jewish New Year starts on the first day of the seventh month. (…a month which contains some other major holidays as well; Yom Kippur and Succot/ Feast of Tabernacles) One other name for the holiday is “the feast of the blowing of the shofar”. A shofar is a ram’s horn and it resembles the ram which was caught by it’s horns and which was used as a sacrifice instead of Isaac. The story from Genesis : 22about Abraham ‘s willingness to sacrifice Isaac on God’s command is read in the synagogues.--When Isaac asks about the sacrifice Abraham replies that God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering. The ram was not a lamb and it belongs to the goat family and not to the sheep family.
If we add to the story that Isaac was in his thirties when this happened, that he had to carry the woods for the sacrifice on his own back, that the blowing of the ram’s horn symbolizes “God as King of Kings and Lord of Lords” and that the word ram in Hebrew actually is from the same root of words as God it may cause our understanding of the story to grow in a prophetic sense.
Elin Elkouby
There are so many things to say about this holiday but I will only get into a few things. First of all it is strange that “New Year” is celebrated on the first day of the seventh month. This makes sense only if we remember that “our ways are not God’s ways and that our thoughts is not God’s thoughts.”
We need to be released from our way of understanding “time” which is controlled by the sun and the moon, day and night, the seasons of the year. If we try to relate to time not as a straight line but rather as a circle where the “beginning and the end” meets up it may start to make more sense.
God created the world in six days and He made the seventh day a day of rest. This number seven has ever since become a symbol of “the beginning of a new spiritual season”. (Just check this with Leviticus 23 and pay attention to how many times the number 7 is mentioned.)
So the Jewish New Year starts on the first day of the seventh month. (…a month which contains some other major holidays as well; Yom Kippur and Succot/ Feast of Tabernacles) One other name for the holiday is “the feast of the blowing of the shofar”. A shofar is a ram’s horn and it resembles the ram which was caught by it’s horns and which was used as a sacrifice instead of Isaac. The story from Genesis : 22about Abraham ‘s willingness to sacrifice Isaac on God’s command is read in the synagogues.--When Isaac asks about the sacrifice Abraham replies that God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering. The ram was not a lamb and it belongs to the goat family and not to the sheep family.
If we add to the story that Isaac was in his thirties when this happened, that he had to carry the woods for the sacrifice on his own back, that the blowing of the ram’s horn symbolizes “God as King of Kings and Lord of Lords” and that the word ram in Hebrew actually is from the same root of words as God it may cause our understanding of the story to grow in a prophetic sense.
Elin Elkouby
Friday, September 11, 2009
Haj Amin el-Husseini
is a key person to the understanding of the conflict in this land. He was born into one of the richest and most powerful of all the rivaling family clans in the region in 1893 (or 1895). He studied religious law at a university in Cairo and continued at the Istanbul School of Administration. A pilgrimage to Mecca in 1913 assured him the title Haj.
He fought with the Turks during World War I, but switched side to support the British upon his return to Jerusalem in 1917. He was a pure breed “Islamist” and the engine behind the Arab anti Jewish riots which swept over the land from 1920 and onwards. His instruction were simple; Kill the Jews and loot their homes! ….Jerusalem. Rehovot and Petach Tikva were attacked within the first year and 47 Jews were killed as a result.
Haj Amin el-Husseini was supported by anti Semitic forces within the British Administration in the region and given the title of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as well as appointed President of the Supreme Muslim Counsel thereby making him both the religious and the political leader of the Arabs. Once he was in power he started terrorizing and intimidating anyone who opposed him. He killed Jews and eliminated any Arab who opposed his strategy of violence.
His methods were no different than the methods used today. By using lies he managed to fuel the Arab hatred against Jews. In 1929 riots broke out in Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron, Motza and Jaffo and resulted in 133 Jews being killed 67 of them belonging to the Jewish community in Hebron. The background of these riots were false accusations about the Jews being a threat to the local mosques.
From 1936 to 1939 the riots led by Haj Amin el-Husseini costed 415 Jewish lives.
In 1937 he expressed his support for Germany and asked the Nazi Third Reich for help to prevent Jewish immigration to the land, to oppose the establishment of a Jewish State and to provide the Arab population with arms. He was finally deported and exiled by the British.
Haj Amin el-Husseini developed close relationship with the Third Reich and its leaders. He received financial support from Germany during the riots of 1936-39 and actually had Adolf Eichmann paying him a visit in the land. While in exile in Syria he aided the pro Nazi revolt in Bagdad and ended up being Hitler’s special guest in Berlin until the end of World War II.
After the war he moved on to Egypt and was received as a national hero. He was never tried as a was criminal, in spite of numerous accusations against him, because the Allies were afraid of reactions from the Arab world. While living in Egypt he arranged the assassination of the Jordanian king Abdallah because he had given the position as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to someone else. The Jordanian kings to follow ensured that Haj Amin el-Husseini never came back to Jerusalem. They knew that it would be a threat to peace in the region.
Haj Amin el-Husseini died in exile in 1974.
Elin Elkouby
is a key person to the understanding of the conflict in this land. He was born into one of the richest and most powerful of all the rivaling family clans in the region in 1893 (or 1895). He studied religious law at a university in Cairo and continued at the Istanbul School of Administration. A pilgrimage to Mecca in 1913 assured him the title Haj.
He fought with the Turks during World War I, but switched side to support the British upon his return to Jerusalem in 1917. He was a pure breed “Islamist” and the engine behind the Arab anti Jewish riots which swept over the land from 1920 and onwards. His instruction were simple; Kill the Jews and loot their homes! ….Jerusalem. Rehovot and Petach Tikva were attacked within the first year and 47 Jews were killed as a result.
Haj Amin el-Husseini was supported by anti Semitic forces within the British Administration in the region and given the title of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as well as appointed President of the Supreme Muslim Counsel thereby making him both the religious and the political leader of the Arabs. Once he was in power he started terrorizing and intimidating anyone who opposed him. He killed Jews and eliminated any Arab who opposed his strategy of violence.
His methods were no different than the methods used today. By using lies he managed to fuel the Arab hatred against Jews. In 1929 riots broke out in Jerusalem, Safed, Hebron, Motza and Jaffo and resulted in 133 Jews being killed 67 of them belonging to the Jewish community in Hebron. The background of these riots were false accusations about the Jews being a threat to the local mosques.
From 1936 to 1939 the riots led by Haj Amin el-Husseini costed 415 Jewish lives.
In 1937 he expressed his support for Germany and asked the Nazi Third Reich for help to prevent Jewish immigration to the land, to oppose the establishment of a Jewish State and to provide the Arab population with arms. He was finally deported and exiled by the British.
Haj Amin el-Husseini developed close relationship with the Third Reich and its leaders. He received financial support from Germany during the riots of 1936-39 and actually had Adolf Eichmann paying him a visit in the land. While in exile in Syria he aided the pro Nazi revolt in Bagdad and ended up being Hitler’s special guest in Berlin until the end of World War II.
After the war he moved on to Egypt and was received as a national hero. He was never tried as a was criminal, in spite of numerous accusations against him, because the Allies were afraid of reactions from the Arab world. While living in Egypt he arranged the assassination of the Jordanian king Abdallah because he had given the position as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to someone else. The Jordanian kings to follow ensured that Haj Amin el-Husseini never came back to Jerusalem. They knew that it would be a threat to peace in the region.
Haj Amin el-Husseini died in exile in 1974.
Elin Elkouby
Friday, September 4, 2009
Summer holidays are over
and 1.5 million Israeli children are back in school. Some of them have been looking forward to it while to others it means “endless humiliation”. Israeli schools offer small class rooms with up to forty children per teacher. In most schools the parents have to buy all the books as well as pencils, rubber, rulers, note books and t-shirts with school emblem. School fees of various kinds and school trips have to be paid for in advance and all these expenses are a heavy burden on many families. Some parents seem to try to avoid as long as possible to pay for these things which makes going to school a “heavy walk” for their children as the teacher will remind them every day of “who have still not paid” in front of the rest of their class mates.
I grew up under very different circumstances. Our school was “all paid for” even down to pencils and note books. We had no more than 30 children in a spacious class room equipped with shelves and drawers for every child as well as for the teacher. Biology, chemistry, physics, gymnastics, handcrafts and cooking were taught in special class rooms equipped for those particular subjects. We had a nurse working every day in her office at school as well as a dentist with an assistance who would check on all the childrens teeth twice a year from age 7 and nine years on. The dentist had her own fully equipped dental care office within the school building.
But Israel is far from Norway both in kilometres and standard of living.
I was surprised this year that school started without any threats of strikes lurking in the corridors……… but only to find in todays new paper that there is a possibility for a strike as soon as next week as the annual education budget has been cut rather than increased. An increase was promised last year following a several weeks long strike covering the entire country. Some teachers won’t get paid the two first months of the school year as there is no money on the budget for them….
---This is happening because the State had to coop with a war in the middle of last school year. The promise was made before the outbrake of the war. It seems like this is just another way we will have to continue paying for the right to survive…
Elin Elkouby.
and 1.5 million Israeli children are back in school. Some of them have been looking forward to it while to others it means “endless humiliation”. Israeli schools offer small class rooms with up to forty children per teacher. In most schools the parents have to buy all the books as well as pencils, rubber, rulers, note books and t-shirts with school emblem. School fees of various kinds and school trips have to be paid for in advance and all these expenses are a heavy burden on many families. Some parents seem to try to avoid as long as possible to pay for these things which makes going to school a “heavy walk” for their children as the teacher will remind them every day of “who have still not paid” in front of the rest of their class mates.
I grew up under very different circumstances. Our school was “all paid for” even down to pencils and note books. We had no more than 30 children in a spacious class room equipped with shelves and drawers for every child as well as for the teacher. Biology, chemistry, physics, gymnastics, handcrafts and cooking were taught in special class rooms equipped for those particular subjects. We had a nurse working every day in her office at school as well as a dentist with an assistance who would check on all the childrens teeth twice a year from age 7 and nine years on. The dentist had her own fully equipped dental care office within the school building.
But Israel is far from Norway both in kilometres and standard of living.
I was surprised this year that school started without any threats of strikes lurking in the corridors……… but only to find in todays new paper that there is a possibility for a strike as soon as next week as the annual education budget has been cut rather than increased. An increase was promised last year following a several weeks long strike covering the entire country. Some teachers won’t get paid the two first months of the school year as there is no money on the budget for them….
---This is happening because the State had to coop with a war in the middle of last school year. The promise was made before the outbrake of the war. It seems like this is just another way we will have to continue paying for the right to survive…
Elin Elkouby.
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