111021 ULPANA

It is unbelievable that this Jewish neighborhood is to be razed to the ground!

A Neighborhood of Beit El
The area is surrounded by archeological finds that date back to Biblical times, which prove the existence of Jews in the area long before the return in the last couple centuries. One hill is referred to as ‘Sulam Yaakov’ – Jacob’s Ladder. Also, a thousand-year-old Oak Tree stands in the vicinity; three-thousand-year-old wine press has been uncovered from the time of Bayit Rishon. The entire area is loaded with ancient Jewish history.
With all this proof of pre-existing 1948 signs of Jewish life, sadly the Supreme Court endorses what the Arabs claim. We are in a battle here, a struggle for the Land.

111021 GIVAT ASAF

Givat Asaf was founded in 2001 and sits off to the side of Highway 60 in the Shomron.

The yishuv is a neighborhood of caravans which was founded in reaction to the murder of

Asaf Hershkovitz, a resident of Ofra at that time.. Three or four months earlier, Asaf’s 

father, Aryeh Hershkovitz, was murdered by Arabs near the same spot. 

The couple, Binyamin & Talia Kahane, were also murdered in the same vicinity.

There are about 28 families living in caravans in Givat Asaf. We met with Rabbi Mordechai Levitz who just moved there and he talked to us about the strategic importance of this location.

What a simple life these Jewish people are satisfied to live! Their only demand has been to politely allow them to obey the commandment of Torah to "possess the Land when you enter", and that demand has been only in the quiet way they live. Now, they have been forced into the limelight of a shadowy atmosphere of political and judicial struggle, an immensely heavy burden for simple G-d loving Jews.

110503 SURVIVAL: SELLING BLACKMARKET CIGARETTES

YOM HASHOAH 2011: IN MEMORY OF YURIK

by Ruth Lichtenstein

In August 1942, the Germans began liquidating the ghettos around Warsaw, among them the ghetto of Otwock. At that time, my grandfather, Reb Eliezer Yischok Mostovitz, Hy’d, who was then only thirty-eight years old, was caught carrying a sefer Torah and was immediately deported to Treblinka, where he perished. For many years I longed to find out additional details of his capture and deportation, but of course there was no one to ask.

Eventually, I contacted Dr. Nili Keren in Israel who told me to get in touch with Yurik Plonsky from Mishmar HaEmek, a secular kibbutz in Israel. My family and I visited Yurik on Succot the following year, and he told me his story.

His father sat and learned Torah while his mother took care of the family’s material needs. As soon as the Jews of Otwock were forced into a ghetto, Yurik’s mother sewed for her ten-year old son a body belt with many secret compartments, filled them with bits of meat, and sent him by tram, under cover of darkness, to the Warsaw Ghetto, about a 45-minute ride away. Once in the ghetto, Yurik sold the meat since there was precious little meat to be had in the city. In this way, he kept his family alive. Never during the more than two years that Yurik trafficked in meat did he question why he was forced to face such danger.

One day, when he was near his Bar Mitzvah, Yurik’s father told him that he needed his help in Warsaw. Word had gotten out that the ghetto in Otwock was about to be liquidated and they needed Yurik’s help to rescue the seven sefer Torahs in their boarded-up shul. To accomplish this, Yurik climbed a tree that grew near the shul, jumped onto the shul’s roof, made his way down two floors, removed a sefer Torah, tied it to his body with rope, climbed back up to the roof, jumped down from the roof onto the tree, scrambled down to the ground and handed the Torah scroll to one of the Jews hiding nearby. Yurik did this six times successfully. But on his seventh trip, as he climbed down the tree with the last sefer Torah, he heard noise and realized that the Nazis had caught wind of what was afoot and had arrived.

Frightened, he quickly untied the Torah from his body and handed it to a Jew whose outstretched arms lovingly received it. And as Yurik finished his story, I finally knew why my grandfather had been captured and the mitzvah in which he had been involved in those final hours.

Yurik escaped that night and fled to Bialystok where he took refuge in the Warsaw Ghetto and became a vendor selling black-market cigarettes. A number of Jewish boys disguised themselves as Polish boys and stealthily smuggled themselves out of the Warsaw Ghetto and into the Aryan side to sell the goods.

Yurik survived the war, immigrated to Israel and became a kibbutznik. Sorrowfully, many years later, he lost his son in one of Israel’s wars of defense. Yurik passed away only a few months ago.

101227 MIDNIGHT EXCURSION INTO SHECHEM

Busloads of Jews make midnight excursions into Shechem to pray at the Biblical site of Kever Yosef. Three to five buses are escorted into the compound by the IDF and as they return, another three to five buses are entering. These rotating excursions of intermittent travel take place under the cover of dark since Jews are in danger of assaults, attacks and even murder when entering Shechem in daylight. 

Brave religious Jews, men & women, young & old, have taken upon themselves a mantle of prayer vigilance at Kever Yosef. This particular trip was sponsored by Women for Israel's Tomorrow to stand with the diligent worshipers who are having to prove to the government that this Biblical site is of great significance to Jews, and that they should be allowed to visit any time of day.

Thanks to our young IDF soldiers, our guardians of the night, for their courageous endeavors to secure our protection into such volatile territory. May the God of Israel be your shield and protector!

101112 STANDING OUR GROUND AT NETZER

Netzer is an agricultural area which is nestled in a valley between Alon Shvut and Elazar in Gush Etzion. There is a major ongoing dispute with the Arabs about what is privately owned land and what areas are state-land. Women in Green stands diligently to keep the land from being over-run with illegal Arab agriculture.





Photos of the participants at Friday's shiur

101026 KHIRBET WADI HAMAM

During a recent visit to the Galilee, a friend from Migdal mentioned the remarkable find of an ancient synagogue, Khirbet Wadi Hamam near Mt. Arbel, so with his directions embedded in my mind, I went to investigate the scene. What seemed to be simple enough turned out to be more complicated since the place is not well marked.
The ruins are on a hillside at the base of Mt. Arbel

101008 AN OPEN FRONTIER

BIKAT HAYARDEN, also ARAVOT HAYARDEN, Part II
(For Part I, submit a request for newsletter "On Assignment in Jerusalem" #101008, Part I, by writing to Abigail at uriyah@netvision.net.il)

Photos are of a recent public relations tour of the Jordan Valley. The goal of the journey was to create awareness of the lack of industry along the Jordan and awaken a dream to redeem lost opportunities since 1967. (2010)

During our recent tour of the Jordan Valley, we went to the high points of the eastern mountain range which makes for a strategic, defensible border with a view of the Jordan River below. (2010)

The first time I came to Israel was the summer of 1978. I had joined a team who was doing a documentary film of the prosperous dimensions of agriculture in Israel. It was said at the time that the small country of Israel could produce enough food to lift the world out of poverty and starvation. The only problem was that the majority of the world refused