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Leah’s Blog Tu B’Shvat 2021
Leah’s Blog – Tu B’Shvat 2021 Our earliest neighbors here on Itamar were (and are) organic farmers. Back in those days the remoteness of Samaria in its new beginnings enabled you to get deeply attuned to nature whether you were a farmer or not. Walking in the wild woods into the remnant of ancient brambles,…
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Leah’s Blog Parashat Bo 2021
Leah’s Blog Parashat Bo 2021 My life is like a movie. It pulses down and up rapidly- like the monitor of a beating heart, my beating heart. Down and up down and up it goes as I feel the fresh winter air enter into the veins of our tree, there above the dripping frozen drops…
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Leah’s Blog Parashat Vaerah 2021
Vaera – 2021 Time is speeding by and I can’t do things fast enough. It’s Thursday morning and I’m baking challah; The dough bubbles and rises slowly, but my time is waning; the clocks ticks impatiently. Popping the trays into the piping hot oven, soon I enjoy the warm scent of deliberate relaxation only chilled…
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Leah’s Blog Parashat Vayechi 2021
Vayechi 2021 The tractate of Baba Batrah in the Gemara tells us about a place in the forest that the doe goes to in order to give birth. The bambi struggles in extreme pain with labor as her womb is too narrow. Travailing, a snake comes along and bites her, causing her innards to open…
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Leah’s Blog Dec 24th 2020
Vayigash 2020 You know that part of the wedding when the photographer passes around the mike and poignant statements are videoed for life? Uncle Milty’s took the cake. “May you find what you’re lookin’ for!” he said as he couldn’t hide the look of “they’re nuts” on his face. It was the last hurrah as…
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Leah’s Blog Parashat Miketz 2020
Miketz 2020 Socialism: You have two cows. You keep one and you give one to your neighbor. Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Communism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and provides you with milk. Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes them both and…
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Leah’s blog Dec 10th 2020
Way before I met and knew Shakid, and our other Pashtun brothers, I thought I knew everything about Yosef HaTzaddik. Joseph’s tomb site was once a secure attachment for us. Like sitting in the eye of a tornado, the little Yeshiva there served as a sheltered city of refuge in a city of refuge. (Later…
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Leah’s Blog Dec 2 2020
Vayishlach 2020 I can just make out from the view down the western slopes of Mount Gerizzim an impressive building from the past that peeks out above the heavily populated city of Shechem, a Greek hippodrome from days of old. The acoustics here are one of a kind, like shouting into a barrel, I’m sure…
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Leah’s Blog Toldot 2020
Hand in hand, Shlomo and I walk up to the Tel just behind our house. Not abashed at holding my hand even at age ten, he excitedly says, “Savta, this IS school!” His enthusiasm has me puffing a bit behind him as we climb the little hill walking the derech (road) recently paved, his hand…
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Leah’s Blog Parshat Vayerah
Parshat Vayera 2020 I purr in a moment of bliss on the lounge chair facing the ever-changing colors of fall splendor. The birds are chirping quietly and contentedly now in this ideal temperate weather, satisfied and debating whether to stay or fly south to Africa. For a moment there, it feels like “איש תחת גפנו…