Grandma's army

In Israel, the boundaries between the home-front and the army are very blurred. My son and family, who live in the south, are constantly being bombarded by   missiles from the Gaza Strip - by air and ground. Two weeks ago, 700 missiles were fired from Gaza to the south of Israel! in which several civilians were killed. One rocket even reached Tel-Aviv.  At the same time, their youngest daughter (Adi) is an army instructor. She belongs to a corps which teaches soldiers, taken from   all the army’s ground forces, how to use the different weapons used to locate and destroy enemies and armament - in order to clear the area.   It’s hard for me to picture Adi, who is an extremely feminine young woman of 20, instructing soldiers on how to use lethal weapons. These include a particular type of rocket called “Gil”, which was developed in Israel. With the means of a special device the “Gil” can follow any target, even a moving one. The shooter can manoeuvre the rocket ...

The dawn is just breaking on the 71 st Israeli Independence Day. A short time ago – while stilI dark outside - I was lying in bed contemplating the modern-day miracle of Israel. It is a miracle because it does not reflect reality in any way. For over 2,000 years prophecies written in the Bible of the ingathering of a scattered and oppressed people were read and believed. Today, we don’t have to “believe” the prophecies any longer – they are coming true right before our eyes. The flourishing of the land? Impossible. The greatest conquerers tried to build in this land and failed miserably - because it remained desolate. Today, we just have to look out of the window, or go for a walk, and see the beautiful trees and blooming flowers. We have even succeeded in making the desert bloom. Israeli agricultural innovations are not only benefitting Israel but many countries throughout the world. In what can be considered a single lifetime, the Jews emerged from the Holocaust weak, ex...

During the Passover holidays I visited “Jewish” Salonika, the second largest city in Greece and the capital of Macedonia. Since Jews all over the world will be commemorating Holocaust Day tomorrow, we were interested to learn what became of the local Jewish community during WWII. Unbelievably, we were told that 98% of the community perished in concentration camps!  To compound the tragedy -   the physical extermination of Salonikan Jews was followed by almost total oblivion about the history, influences and accomplishments of the city’s Jews. The first Jews are thought to have arrived in the region in 513 B.C.E. and remained uninterrupted throughout the Roman and Byzantine eras. However, it was the influx of the 20,000 Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition in 1492 and found refuge in Ottomon Saloniki, which created an autonomous Jewish city. At least two thirds of the total population were Jewish. Salonika was dubbed “Mother of Israel” and “Jerusalem of the Balkans...