Snoopy says the Rehovot area is enduring its first major Khamsin wind of the year.
It’s sunny and a scorching 97 degrees F there at 1 p.m. and forecast to reach 101. Then (“…as it is mysteriously traditional on Passover”) to fall back into the 70s daily tomorrow with overnight lows in the 50s through Friday.
These wildflowers on the Golan Heights this time of year remind me how much alike the Texas hill country and Israel are, because we’re approximately on the same latitude and our climates are similar. Our wildflowers also are coming out all over, and although it’s getting steadily warmer, an occasional cold front still blows through every now and then.
The Golan’s wind was icy on March 29, when we spent the night up there in a Moshav’s (religious community’s) B&B. The overhead lights in my unit quit late in the evening, but the room heaters kept working. Thankfully.
It was like the Davis Mountains of West Texas, except that the Golan is a three thousand feet higher in elevation than the rest of Israel. The Davis Mountains, which are suffering wild fires this spring due to our severe drought, are between five and six thousand feet above sea level.
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Posted in Israel, Texana, Weather/Climate
Tagged Golan Heights, Israel, Jeff Davis Mountains, spring cold fronts, Texas, wildflowers
The “black hats”, as I have been calling them for years, or the ultra orthodox Haredim, in their uniform black suits and vests with special wide-brimmed hats. The design of the hats and position on the head depend on the particular rabbi to whom the black hat is a disciple. A few of them live in our neighborhood in Austin.
Never saw so many in one place before as on the 10 to 12-hour flights to and from Israel. Going over from Newark, NJ, they and their families made up about a third of the passengers. Coming back they were an easy majority. But, then, according to Wikipedia, there are 1.3 million of them, one of the world’s fastest-growing religious sects. They weren’t very friendly to us ordinary folks on the plane, however, considering themselves, as they do, the only true Jews and the rest of us little better than pagans.
Some secular Israelis resent them for being on government welfare, considering they make up about 12 percent of the population. Seculars call the men names like “penguins” (for their black suits with white shirts), because they deny the legitimacy of Israel and refuse to serve in the IDF. Although with their uniformly large families, none are getting rich on the dole. I imagine many of the ones on the planes were part of the new trend among Haredim “…especially in Israel, [of] flourishing in upper-management business and the diamond industry.” How else to pay the minimum per person thousand dollar round-trip plane fares?
Some of the wives were memorably beautiful, in their long sleeves, skirts and heavy stockings. The men spent most of the flights studying one volume or another of the Talmud in Hebrew. Which is a daily demand of their discipleship. Which also explains the dole. On the flight back to the States, however, their many toddlers were an ice-breaker. Everyone got to smile watching the little guys tottering up and down the aisles, noses running, grinning to beat the band.
Comments Off on Haredi Judaism
Tagged Black Hats, Haredi Jews, Haredi Penguins, Israel
Cable cars ascend (left) and descend from Israel’s Masada National Park, a 2,000 year old Jewish fortress rising 1,350 feet above the nearby Dead Sea.
The ride is swift and easy, versus the long, laborious and occasionally frightening “snake path” to the top which some IDF infantry units are required to take in training. And Tom Ringwald, an old Army buddy, took to get down years ago, after riding the car up there.
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Tagged Israel, Masada National Park, Second Temple Era
One of the curious features of Israeli life is the way her young conscript soldiers carry their loaded M-4s, M-16s, and other automatic weapons everywhere they go. In uniform and out. It’s required.
You see them in the grocery, the mall, the bus stop, the street, heck, even in the elevator. Snoop and I were riding an elevator in a mall near his home in Rehovot when it stopped to let on two young black men, apparently Ethiopian Jews. Both were in uniform, and both were fully armed.
If you didn’t know better (or you were a Hamas groupie) you might call it an example of Israel’s menace. In fact it’s to help these warriors become intimately familiar with their weapons and to be ready in case the Arabs attack without warning. As they have before, and Hamas still does.
Instead of having to find an armory, they can go directly to their unit’s assembly point announced on Army radio. Like in 1973 when, on the last day of Yom Kippur, the Syrians threw more than a thousand Russian battle tanks into the Golan Heights. The IDF outposts held them, at great cost to themselves, as the reserves and conscripts raced to help.
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Posted in Israel, The War, Troops
Tagged conscript army, IDF, Israel, soldiers with guns
Hamas wanted it. Now they’ve got it. And, now, of course, they’re whining for a ceasefire, and their buddies in the European Union and the United Nations are condemning Israel for a “disproportionate response.” As if “you-kill-two-of-mine and I’ll-kill-two-of-yours” is the way real wars are fought.
Like Treppenwitz I find it increasingly hard to sympathize with the average Gaza Palestinian who allows Hamas to fire its mortars, rockets and, now, an anti-tank missile at an Israeli school bus without so much as a street protest. Have they learned nothing from the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria? Or are they just on Hamas’s side? Their willing partners in war crimes.
I am concerned for the young man with a critical head injury caused by the Hamas anti-tank missile, and the young conscript warriors of the IDF who must risk their lives fighting the barbaric arabs to defend Israelis. In the words of the song and the prayer: O Hashem, protect our men in arms. As they defend our land, shield them from harm. Hu yivarech et chayalei tzava hagana li Yisroel, Hu Yivarech.
The young warriors of the IDF, who fight the foes of the remnant of Israel.
With a great new song and video about them in Hebrew and English via Monkey In The Middle.
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Posted in Israel, The War, Troops
Tagged conscript army, IDF, Israel, Israel Defense Forces
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
