Do children add to our level of happiness?

Most people seem to have the understanding that children brings happiness into life. Research however, shows that the level of happiness in marriage is declining with the birth of the first child. It is called the “ U- effect” as the decline continues until it reaches the bottom when the children are 12 to 17 years old and from there it rises again.
Children often “ruins” a woman’s career, they cause a couple to have less time for one another and they are “heavy” on the bank account.

A research on what women like to do showed that to spend time with friends, to rest, to eat, to do sports, to watch television, to prepare food, to talk on the phone are enjoyed more than to take care of children.

I must admit that I was more than shocked about these results as I would have had a completely different order on my list of what I like do. Spending time with my girls would definitely be on top of my list and that has been the case since they became a part of my life. Actually I didn’t like this particular program until the following point…….

Professor Tal Ben Shachar has defined happiness as follows:
Happiness = pleasure and meaning. ( he would even write it like this: Happiness = pleasure and meaning.)
For something to be meaningful you need to feel that it is important and that it adds something to the world, and it has to be something that you are willing to pay a high prize for. With other words; For something to add meaning to life there is a need to work hard and for a long time.

So the conclusions concerning children are that:
Children do not necessary bring pleasure, but still they bring happiness to most of us because happiness is a combination of a little pleasure mixed with a lot of meaning.
We are the ones to decide what is meaningful to us.
Maybe it would be good for some people not to have children.

Elin Elkouby

How does work influence ones feeling of being happy?

An average person living till the age of 80 will spend his/her adult life as follows:
20 years sleeping
15 years working
10 years in front of the television.
6 years cleaning, preparing food and dealing with bank, post office etc.
3 years in a car
2 ½ years shopping
4 months sex ( with an average of twice a week )
The rest of the time is spent waiting for the lift, going for a walk, having coffee with friends etc.

From the above list we can see that working takes a big share of our lives. Research has shown that a person who works lives longer, is more healthy, is less depressed and has more satisfaction in life. 9 out of 10 winners of a lot of money actually continue to work.

For work to be satisfactory it is important that the worker has a feeling of doing something important and meaningful. Research has shown that nurses, workers in kinder gardens and primary school teachers are the people that express the highest level of satisfaction concerning their work. It is interesting to note that these professions are usually not very well paid. Lawyers, people who work with hi-tech, business men etc are paid much more but express less satisfaction.

Happiness is a feeling or an understanding and therefore is also very individual.
For people who work it can be useful to ask one selves a few questions:
Do I work only to get money?
Do I dream about quitting?
Do I feel that time stands still at work?
Does my work has any importance at all?
If all the answers are negative it is about time to do something about it.

Elin Elkouby

Happiness.
I do not spend too much time in front of the television but there has been a really good series on happiness for the last few weeks. Usually I don’t make notes as I am watching but this time I felt that I really wanted to get some of the information down on paper. It seems like we have lots of wrong ideas concerning what this is all about and what can add to it and because it is so important to us scientists have spent a lot of time trying to learn more.

How much is happiness dependent on wealth?

Many people seem to believe that if they won a lot of money they would be more happy but research have found that this is far from being the truth. Money does have an impact on our lives, but to be rich does not bring more happiness than having enough to pay for house, food and clothes. Most people get used to whatever is “more” or “better” very quickly and therefore gets back to the same level of happiness very soon after the “achievement”.

What makes us really happy cannot be bought for money. Whether we are happy or not has less to do with how much we earn and more to do with how we choose to live. Research show that the amount of money that people earn is less important to them than earning more than their friends. It is a sad fact that we seem to compare ourselves to others and this affects our level of joy. – A research made among sports men who won silver or bronze medals during the Olympic games showed that the ones who won bronze were happier than the ones who won silver. The explanation is that they compare themselves to the ones who didn’t get any medal while the ones who won silver were sad that they didn’t win gold.

People who let money direct their lives and who spend too much time thinking about it are less healthy. A wise man once said “what does it help to have all the money in the world if the angel of death won’t take bribes.

There are a few conclusions to be drawn from this:
1. Above a certain level it is true that more money does not bring more happiness.
2. If you want to be happy do not live next to people that are more wealthy than yourself.
3. Be a volunteer! It is healthy!
4. Thinking too much about money is a risk to ones health.
5. In order to be happy it is important to “invest” in good experiences (dinner with friends, a walk by the sea etc.) rather than in things.

Elin Elkouby

Sukkot- The Feast of Tabernacles

We have celebrated Jewish New Year and fasted on Yom Kippur and will be entering into a new holiday in just a few days. This time it will be one of the three festivals for pilgrimage and it is called Sukkot in Hebrew and the Feast of Tabernacles in English.
The two other festivals for pilgrimage are Jewish Pessach, translated to Passover, and Jewish Shavuot, translated to the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. These two Jewish feasts have Christian parallel feasts, but that is not the case for Succot, at least not yet………

It is interesting to read the prophecy in Zachariah’s last chapter from verse 16 which describes that non Jews from all over the world will come to celebrate this particular feast every year. Many have wondered what is so special about this particular feast.

The Bible tells us that the reason why the people of Israel have to live in booths on this day has to do with remembering that the Lord brought them out of Egypt from slavery to freedom.

Many Bible scholars believe that Jesus was actually born into this world on the Feast of Tabernacles. They base this belief on information in Luke: 1 which gives information about Elisabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist, and of Mary who goes to stay with Elisabeth for three months after she has become pregnant herself. It says in verse 41 that the baby leaped in her womb when Mary told Elisabeth that she was pregnant.
Earlier in the chapter we get information about Zechariah who is a Levite and therefore has service in the Temple. We learn that he belonged to the 8’th rotation of Abijah and therefore, based on information in 1. Chronicles:24,10, we also know when his time for serving in the Temple was.
When we put all these pieces of information together it points to the time around Sukkot to be the time for the birth of Jesus. In a spiritual way it makes perfect sense that the Messiah should be born on a holiday remembering the freedom from slavery.

But there is more to it: The seventh month is obviously not the first month, yet it is in this month that we celebrate Jewish New Year. New Year certainly symbolizes some kind of new beginning.
It will probably be during this time that the Messiah will come back and again cause the world to enter into another kind of “season”. Time will reveal all these secrets to us one day.

Elin Elkouby

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

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

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

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.

Miri Awad and Ahinoam Nini

are two women who represented Israel with their song; “There Must Be Another Way” in the European song contest this year. This is also the title on their new album with 12 songs in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Miri Awad is an Arab looking like a Jew and Ahinoam Nini is a Jew looking like an Arab. Together they are “dynamite”.
None of these women are hypocrites. They wouldn’t go for something like this just to sell well or to just add some temporary sweetness to a rather sour reality. These two women have courage and the ability to see the potential in a situation where others see only closed doors and shades of black and grey.
Miri Awad has been much criticized by the Israeli Arab community who accuses her of being used to create a false impression of the situation between Jews and Arabs in Israel.
These accusations are shallow and just testifies to the fact that the ones who criticize didn’t even bother to listen to the words in their songs.
Neither Jews nor Arabs are happy with the situation in this country. Both sides suffer.
I think they do well when they sing; “And when I cry, I cry for both of us. My pain has no name. And when I cry, I cry to the merciless sky and say, “There must be another way.”
Later the words go, “Where can we go from here? Sister, it’s been a long night. What’s to come? I fear. Give me something to restore my faith in the light. Tell me that we’re here to stay, and that we can set things right.”
To all the pessimists in the world there is a message , “You’re broken when your heart’s not open. There is no point in placing the blame. And you should know I suffer the same.”
Both Jews and Arabs are descendants of Abraham through their forefathers Ishmael and Isaac. Abraham cared for both of his sons and for the others to be born to him later, and when he died both Isaac and Ishmael were there to bury him. If they could do such a painful act together I see the potential of hope in present day’s situation.
The song ends by stating that,”…the clock’s still ticking in a frantic trance, and we are locked together in a tragic dance, remember that every second offers a second chance.”

Elin Elkouby

Two heads are better than none.

Michal and Meir Negrin are husband and wife and as well as business partners.
Michal is a 1957 model and she grew up in kibutz Naan which is located in the center of Israel.(The kibutz is famous for inventing the drip irrigation system.) Her family name used to be Green. (Some may know that David Ben Gurion’s family name used to be Grun which is German for Green, and guess what; Michal’s great uncle was David Ben Gurion)
From an early age she enjoyed creating jewelry with lots of colors. She was not as enthusiastic about school, but her mother saw that she was good at what she was doing and encouraged her and provided tools for her works.
She got married to Meir Negrin in 1984 and he also believed in her talent. Soon they started selling her jewelry on the open-air-twice-a-week-artists-marked in Nahalat Benyamin in Tel Aviv.
After some time they had enough money to open up a shop in Tel Aviv’s trendy Sheinkin Street and in 1996 the factory was opened in Bat Yam. From that point on it completely took off…..
Michal Negrin creates jewelry, home décor and clothing inspired by Victorian style or from the 1920’es. Her style is frilly, fanciful and full of fun and color.
Today she employs close to 200 artisans who work at the factory and she has 23 shops in Israel. The Japanese love her style and 16 shops can be found around their country.
She has 4 shops in the USA, 5 in Mexico, 2 in Spain, and one in Croatia, U.K, Switzerland, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan and Holland.
Her success story is a mixture between her artistic talent and her husband’s business talent. How fun to see that things can work out when both talents are honored!!!

Elin Elkouby

It is 40 years since the first man put his feet on the moon.

I watched it on our black-and-white-TV and as such was one out of an estimated 450 million people around the world who actually followed the event through TV or radio. My mother was very exited about “how far mankind had come”, but I was a simple child at the time and what fascinated me the most was that the astronauts were jumping around being weight less. I would have loved to bump around in a place like that.

Neil Armstrong was the first man to put his feet on the moon. Upon doing so he said these words; “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
He walked on the moon on July 21, 1969.

Armstrong became a believer in God out in space. At one point in his life he came to Israel to “walk in the footsteps of Jesus”. Meir Ben Dov, one of Israel’s great archaeologists, was the one to show him around.
Meir Ben Dov is a Jew and not in particular a religious man. So he took Armstrong around to the different churches in Jerusalem and told him both the “Christian traditions” claims concerning the sites and his own reflections based on his knowledge of history and archaeology. As Jerusalem was destroyed and rebuilt completely after the time of Jesus it is hard to claim with certainty that Jesus actually “had his feet” on any specific spot in present days churches.
At the end of the tour Mr. Ben Dov wanted to show Armstrong the area close to the southern wall surrounding the Temple Mount. He was actually digging in that area at the time. On this particular part of the wall the two main entrances to the Temple from the south are still visible. The gates are closed today, but in front of them there are huge original stone slabs.
While standing on the one in front of the middle gate Armstrong asked the archaeologist if there were any place at all where one could say for sure that Jesus must have stood. “Right where you are standing now”, was the answer.
(I know this story from Meir Ben Dov. I was fortunate to be taken around by him myself when I was studying to become a tourist guide in the early nineties.)

It took many years for Christians to understand that the closest they could get to “walk in the footsteps of Jesus” was to enter into the area of the Archaeological Park south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Jesus spent most of his time in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount teaching the crowds. In order to get up there he must have entered through this middle gate as did other rabbis at the time.

It is almost too Jewish to be true…..

Elin Elkouby.

1,350 Palestinian refugees from Iraq on their way to US.

As the US is preparing to leave Iraq the State Department confirmed that as many as 1,350 Palestinian refugees will be resettled mainly in southern California. The US allowed 7 Palestinian refugees to enter into America in 2007 and 9 in 2008.
34.000 Palestinians used to be well treated guests of Saddam Hussein before the American invasion. As many as 21.000 of them fled to other countries after 2003 and approximately 13,000 are left within the borders of Iraq where most of them live under extreme conditions in refugee camps in the desert bordering Jordan and Syria . (Both Syria and Jordan has been willing to accept around 300 Palestinian refugees each but there is an absolute closure on both borders for more.)
Palestinian refugees have come in waves to Iraq. The first ones to arrive were refugees from the war in 1948. Most of these refugees were originally from either Yaffo or Haifa but they fled their homes and sought shelter with the Iraqi army which had arrived to fight the newborn Jewish state. As they did not succeed in doing so the refugees were joining them as they withdrew back to Iraq.
The second wave came during the war in 1967 and the third came as a result of massive Palestinian support of Saddam Hussein as he attacked Kuwait in 1990.
Kuwait used to be the country with the highest Palestinian population of all the Arab states. Up to 1991 they numbered more than 400.000 but since the attack on Kuwait in 1990 the Palestinians have been chased out of the country by the Kuwaitis.
No Arab country has ever offered Palestinian refugees citizenship. Even those born in the country do not have the rights of a citizen. Arab countries are scared of other Arab countries and do not want any other Arabs to enter into their territories. This is in a way strange as they all belong to the same ethnic group, share the same religion and speak the same language. However, every Arab knows that the worst enemy to an Arab is always another Arab.
When the US army entered into Iraq the good conditions for the Palestinians in Iraq changed. They had been issued special travel documents, had the right to work and were given full access to health, education and other governmental services. They also enjoyed subsidized rent or lived in government owned houses. This has been a source of resentment for Iraq’s poor Shia’ population who turned to be fierce enemies of any Palestinian as soon as Saddam Hussein was off “stage”.
Since the US invasion the Palestinians in Iraq have been chased out of their rented homes or have had their neighborhoods bombed continuously. They have been terrorized with robbery, rape, torture, kidnapping and murder.
What happens in Iraq is what happened in Kuwait in the 90’es, in Lebanon in the 80’es and in Jordan in the 70’es. The only safe haven for Palestinian refugees has been in non Arab countries.
Good luck California.

Elin Elkouby

Penina Pie.
I remember it well;
One of my best friends in Israel, Penina Konforti, went to study in order to be a professional confectioner. The place of study was at the Dan hotel in Tel Aviv and her teachers were the best in the country. Every Sabbath after our service in Tel Aviv we would go south to Gan Yavne and spend the rest of the day with our friends.
We lived in Tel Aviv back then, so for us to go to our friend’s home was like going to be in the country side. We both had daughters the same age and we all loved this time of rest and fellowship with people that we communicate easily with.
Every Sabbath Penina had prepared three different luxury cakes for us to test. They were all beautiful to look at and the tastiest cakes you can imagine…..Penina wanted to know our opinion about how they looked, how they tasted, if they were too sweet etc.
After she finished her studies she opened a confectioner’s shop at her house and later moved into new facilities in one of the shopping centers close to her house.
Our family left Tel Aviv and moved to Gan Yavne. Penina’s girl and my oldest girl are the same age. They went to the same kinder garden and class at school and every afternoon they would spend in my house.
One day we woke up to a new and strange reality. Someone had put up posters all over Gan Yavne with Penina’s picture on them. They were warning people from buying cakes at her shop claiming that she was a missionary “hiding” behind her shop. Rumors had it that she prepared the dough at the “priests” home and that she mixed “pig’s blood” in her cakes.
Few people had known that Penina was part of the Messianic fellowship before this happened. Now people came to ask what her faith was about and to express that they did not agree with what was happening, but she also lost many of her customers who decided to believe in the lies of some of the religious Jews in Gan Yavne. The nicest thing that happened was that the friends of her children went to take the posters down the same afternoon.

Since this first act of persecution Penina has been haunted by the religious Jews both in Gan Yavne and in Ashdod. More posters have been put up and small papers with warnings on them have been copied by the thousands and put in people’s mail boxes.
The Rabbis have refused to grant her a “kosher certificate”.
Penina finally decided to bring her case to court. I could assist with a “nice collection’ of posters, letters and everything that had been said or printed about her since this first event.( I collected the originals as they were being“published”)
Israeli bureaucracy is slow and her case has been moved through different court levels until it reached the Supreme Court.
Last Sabbath we celebrated that finally, after all these years, she got support from the court which ruled that there is no reason why she should not get a “kosher certificate” and which decided that the rabbis will have to pay all the court expenses.

So we have celebrated for one day, but that does not mean that the problems are over…….

Elin Elkouby

What did Raed Wael Sawalha do wrong ?

I have two teenagers at home and I enjoy seeing them grow and develop as independent individuals. Every step of this journey, since they were born, has added a lot of joy to my life. I loved to take care of them as babies, I enjoyed watching them as they learned to walk and I have enjoyed the conversations between us which have been taken to higher levels as they have grown. I have never considered them a problem of any kind to me.

We do not always agree. In fact there is no need for them to agree with me in everything. Growing up is about relating to the surroundings in a mature way and to take responsibility for ones actions. It is easier to do that if a person had been allowed to grow up and is acting in harmony with his/her own understanding of things.

It seems like not every parent or family member agree with me on this. There are families where to ask questions are considered rebellion and where acting according to ones belief is considered dishonoring the family.

Raed lived in an area with a lot of tension within the Palestinian society. His village was close to Qalqilia where there has been a lot of trouble between Fatah and Hamas lately.
The problems often cause a split within families as different family members have sympathies with different political fractions.
I do not know the details about his family other than that his father, uncle and cousin decided to torture him brutally and finally hang him because he allegedly had connections with the Israeli authorities.
Hundreds of young Palestinians have been killed by their own people for the last couple of years for similar reasons, but it is the first time it happens within the closest family.
Usually the children killed by their own father, brother or uncle are girls.

It must be hard being a mother under such circumstances. When news reporters come to interview the family or neighbors in such cases we always see the women trying to be invisible by covering their faces, hiding and not talking to anyone.

Israel and America is of course to blame for this !?!?!?????

Elin Elkouby

Hard questions.

I have just come home from guiding a group of tourists. Every time I go to the air port to pick up a new group I am wondering what it is going to be like. Most of the touring will be similar to what other groups have on their itinerary but it is amazing to see how different every tour turns out to be. The itinerary deals with the sites, stones and dust but the people in the group are what the Bible refers to as the “living stones”. When the two of them comes together only God knows what can happen……and something does happen.
I always learn something new being with a group and when they are gone that is what stays with me. This time is was a message from one of the tour leaders. She shared with us about the Queen of Sheba who came from a country far away in order to seek answers to her many questions.
Rumors had informed her about this Jewish king and his wisdom. Back in those days a trip like the one she did was tiresome, long lasting and dangerous. The Bible tells us that she came to the king to “test him with hard questions”.
Many people have questions which they cannot seem to find answers to and which are nagging from within. These are existential questions and when answers are sought but not found the person is left with a kind of sadness which often turns into a defensive and often also aggressive attitude towards people who claim to have the answers. The Queen came with this kind of attitude ready to push this king into a corner of no escape.
Her attitude changed, however, and she soon found herself having a conversation with Solomon where “she spoke to him about all that was on her heart.”
The gospel of Luke refers to this meeting between the Queen from the South and the King in Jerusalem an states that Jesus’ wisdom goes much further than the one of Solomon.
I am in the “question producer business”. We go through things in life and see things happening to others that leaves us with lots of question marks. I don’t know what my life would have been like if I had not had someone to turn to with my hard questions……and even better; I can speak to Him with all that is on my heart.

Elin Elkouby.

Counting the dead.

The director of a Norwegian peace research center criticizes the Norwegian Army for not being capable of giving numbers concerning how many Afghanistan’s have been killed by Norwegian soldiers. He claims that the soldiers should keep statistics over every person being killed, how it happened and to what extent the Norwegian soldiers were involved.
The Norwegian Army answers by saying that dead people a carried away quickly by the Taliban and that they do not want to enter into any competition concerning numbers with them. It also states that no civilians have been killed but continues saying that it is hard to know who is a civilian. Sometimes a civilian all of a sudden picks up a weapon and starts shooting.
Really….!!!!!
How come that it is so hard to understand that this is exactly what is happening in this part of the world.
I am amazed to see how this “ugly game of war” is being “played” by different rules depending on location. I have been following the news reports from Pakistan, Somalia and Afghanistan lately and see that thousands have been killed, many of them civilians. It is always described as the “good” fighting “the bad” and if the fighters are considered to be extreme Moslems the picture is clear.
What is not clear to me has to do with why extreme Moslems who’s aim is to conquer the entire world and to make sure that people live according to shariah laws are not seen as such if they happen to be Palestinians.
To believe that Hamas is fighting for the rights of the Palestinian people is a sour misunderstanding. Their aim is to convert every Palestinian to become a devoted Moslem practicing shariah and through that to join forces against Israel and to wipe out “the infidels” of the land.
If they should succeed in doing so the women will be the first to suffer. The ones who have started to enjoy the taste of the right to make up their own opinions and to express them are the next in line. This is what is going on in Gaza right now and what Hamas groups are trying to enforce on the people living in PA controlled areas in the so called West Bank.
Who will demonstrate in the cities of Europe and be a voice to those who are not allowed to speak up?
Who decided that one person’s life is more valuable than another?
Why does lives in Africa, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and other places count less than the lives of Palestinians?

Elin Elkouby

A dangerous place to live.

I enjoyed watching a list of supposedly secure and dangerous countries on earth. Norway was number 3 after Denmark and New Zealand. America landed on number 83 and Israel was listed as the fourth most unsecure place to live being all the way down to 141 and having only Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq being considered as even worse.
……and I say to myself, “What a wonderful world!”

What scares me the most in Israel is the bureaucracy.

Elin Elkouby

Choosing what to hear, what to see and what to say.

The Norwegian doctor Erik Fosse was back in Gaza almost a week ago. His college Mads Gilbert was not allowed to cross the border by Israeli authorities.
The two were the first foreign doctors to enter Gaza during the war last December and January and as such became spokesmen to the world concerning the situation in Gaza. Their description of what was going on was heavily colored by their personal political standpoint which is far (and further than far ) to the left and “signal red” by dye.
The base of their understanding concerning the conflict between the Moslem and the Western world is that “Israel is to blame” and that “America is the source of most evil”.
Whoever listens to them should at least know that before they uncritically accept their reports.
Magdi Allam used to belong to the same side in politics. He was born into a Moslem family and raised in Egypt but left for Italy in 1972 where he studied and ended up as one of Italy’s most famous journalists. He used to work for the communist newspaper “Il Manifesto” and continued to the center-left leaning paper “La Repubblica.” He was outspoken as a supporter of the Palestinian issue, an admirer of Yassir Arafat, supported Moslem immigration as well as the building of Mosques in Europe and used every opportunity to speak and write against Israel.
But, this has changed. From 2002 on he went through a major change of mind concerning the issues which had been his main focus for more than 25 years. He all of a sudden got an understanding of what the leading Moslems are after and it has caused him to pull the breaks. He is now the deputy director of one of Italy’s oldest newspapers called “Corriere della Sera” and has written a book called “Viva Israele” or “Long live Israel.
He accused Italy and the West of ignoring the dangers of an imminent "Islamization" of the society, and a possible Jihad (Islamic holy war) in Europe.
He’s criticizing Hamas and is saying that "the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel”
"I thought it was a big mistake to allow a terror organization to participate in elections. Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair deluded themselves in believing that Hamas' very participation in the government would turn the group into a pragmatic political power. Instead, it turned out that Hamas will never recognize Israel's right to exist, will not relinquish terror and will not honor international agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority. Hamas wants absolute rule in order to impose sharia and to revive the international Islamic caliphate. As it pushes for absolute rule, it does not hesitate to massacre its Palestinian brothers in Gaza. It will try to do the same thing in the West Bank."

It is interesting that he sees what others refuse to see. Most people die with the opinions they had and the conclusions they made at a young age. Very few are brave enough to dare admit that what they used to believe is actually wrong. It takes courage to do so; especially when it causes danger to ones life. Magdi Allam never needed police protection before he changed opinion. Now he is surrounded by security guards around the clock.

What he said about Hamas is right. Last Saturday 6 people were killed as Abu Mazen’s security force came to arrest a couple of Hamas terrorists in the town of Qalqilyah. Three of the killed were policemen and the other three were the two terrorists and the house keeper where they were hiding. The case is considered the bloodiest intra-Palestinian incident in the West Bank in years and there is fear that the conflict within the Palestinian society will spread to other towns in the area. Hamas, of course, has promised revenge although it was the two terrorists who opened fire and shot policemen first.

How come that I cannot find this to have been reported in any media abroad ????

Elin Elkouby

Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks.

This feast has several names; Shavuot which simply means “Feast of Weeks, Hag matan Torah which means “Festival of giving the Torah”, Hag Ha’Bikurim which means “Festival of the First Fruits” and Hag Ha’Katzir which means “Festival of the Harvest”.
The barley has been harvested and we have been counting the fifty days of Omer and are preparing for Shavuot and the harvesting of the wheat.
It has been a period of temperatures swinging from low to high in waves. We have felt the heat of the Chamsine which is the result of a desert storm being brought to us through strong hot winds and lots of desert dust. The word Chamsine is Arabic and actually means fifty so the Bible and nature is in agreement when it comes to this period between these two holidays in spring.

Both the giving of the Torah and the story about Ruth is part of this holiday.
We learn from the Book of Ruth that she was a widow who followed her mother in law, Naomi, back to Bethlehem.
Naomi had left Betlehem Ephrathah together with her husband and two sons in order to dwell in the country of Moab. After her husband and both sons had passed away she headed back to her hometown in the Judean mountains. Her Moabite daughters in law followed her on the first part of her journey but only Ruth insisted on continuing after Naomi had released them. “Your people shall be my people, and your God shall be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried, “ she stated and continued walking into a new and completely unknown future. Her decision was to become a blessing both to herself and to her mother in law……and even to us. They were on their way to the place and family that would bring forth the Messiah.
The Bible tells us that they came to Bethlehem in the beginning of the barley harvest and that Ruth eventually “stayed close by the young women of Boaz, to glean until the end of barley harvest and of wheat harvest.”
Ruth was completely accepted as “a daughter” by Naomi and her new family. She was to become the grand-grandmother of king David. She was “grafted in” physically just as Rahab had been one generation back in time. Rahab was the mother of the man Ruth was about to marry.

Shavuot is all about giving; The giving of the Torah, the giving of the first fruits, the giving of equal rights for whoever chooses God and the giving of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

To give is a lifestyle. It seems to me that people who give never complains about being in need. God instructs us to give and to follow His directions always brings blessings.

A wise man once said: “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.”

Elin Elkouby

The new Palestinian government.

It has been interesting to follow the Palestinian building of a new government. It does not have the support neither of the Hamas nor of the Fatah nor of some of the other groups within the Palestinian political landscape.
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is trying to please his own people, the Egyptians and the West all together and does not really succeed in doing so.
The Palestinian people are being torn between Hamas and Fatah as it is these two main groups which control the media. They decide everything concerning “what to say” and “how to say it”. The people do well in supporting whoever is the strongest in their region. Not doing so can be dangerous.
Egypt has had a few issues lately with Iranian supported Hezbollah groups operating within her territory. Everybody knows that Hamas is supported by Iran as well. There is a lot of friction within the Egyptian society but Housni Mubarak still tries to host peace talks between the Palestinians as well as talks on an international level in order to put Egypt on "the map".
The West needs a Palestinian “address” which recognizes Israel, but if it does not have any support among its own people it won’t be of much use.

The new government consists of 24 ministers, including Salaam Fayad, who is both continuing as prime minister and who also is ministering the “money box”. Seven of the ministers served in the previous government. Fayad is known to be a moderate politician with good connections to both Israel and the West.

A few months ago it looked as if the Palestinian government was all Fatah and that the biggest group in opposition was Hamas. The war last summer actually was presented to us as if that was the case. We know that Hamas took completely over the Gaza Strip and that it also has strong support within many towns on the West Bank. The media presented this war as to be “the bad guys fighting the good guys” ( My blog on Jan.20.2009 deals with that issue. )

There is a major crisis going on within the Fatah at the moment. Some seem to be leaning towards Hamas. It is amazing how “scaring people to death” can result in a wish to get closer to the enemy.
During the war last summer lots of Fatah policemen were shot in their legs in order to cripple them. (Seventy of these policemen have come to Israel to receive medical treatment and artificial legs.) This may be understood as a warning to cause people to behave according to Hamas set rules. Fatah claims that Hamas has killed more than 700 of their people since the uprising in 2000. They kill the ones they know will not change....

The new government has yet to be approved by the majority of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Elin Elkouby