Insights and Inspiration
from the
Holy Land
from
from
Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz
"Your friend in Karmiel"
June
24th 2016 -Volume 6, Issue 38 18th Sivan 5776
Parshat Shelach
A Time to Drink
It was a strange evening. I was on my way home from the wedding of
my wife’s step-brother. It was a beautiful simcha. The chupa, the music, the
dancing, the incredible holiness of a new jewish family in Israel and what an
awesome smorgasbord! I love simchas and family simchas that I don’t have to
stand and pose for pictures for hours or pay for are the best of all worlds. On
the way home though as I was absking in the afterglow, I had a call to make. It
was to my brother-in-law who was sitting Shiva in America on the tragic
untimely death of his brother. So sad. So sobering. A young man just starting
his family and in the prime of his life. Someone who will never see his little
kids grow up, will never walk them down the chupa. Who leaves behind mourning
parents, siblings, and his wife. How sad, how tragic. As I said the traditional
words of consolation and prayed that Hashem, the Omnipresent, should comfort
him along with the mourners of Zion, my thoughts were jumbled. I wondered what
King Solomon meant in his book of Proverbs when he said that it is “better to
go to a house of mourning then a house of feasting, for it is the end of all
man and the living will place it upon his heart.” I liked the wedding better.
Now I was all somber. It may perhaps be better to go to the funeral house then
the feasting wedding house, it might make one a bit more contemplative of
Hashem and my mortality. But it sure felt better coming backing from a wedding
then coming back from the Shiva call. One thing was certain I had gone quite literally
‘from’ the house of feasting ‘to’ the house of mourning exactly as King Solomon
had described and I knew that for some reason this was meant to be tov-good.
My next call in the car through me for an even greater loop. It
was from a dear friend and student of mine, whose wife who had been diagnosed
with a brain tumor and who according to the doctors should have been gone a few
years ago on the line. We hadn’t spoken for a while. She had been doing better.
It was almost miraculous. She went from being pretty much paralyzed to getting
up and walking around. She had two more years with her husband and her
children, then they had ever dreamed of. The doctors couldn’t really explain
it. I told him that it was because they didn’t know that he had a Rabbi in
Israel praying on his and her behalf J. But he wasn’t calling
with good news. It seems she had a seizure and a relapse. They didn’t feel that
they could continue with the therapy (which did not include chemo,
incidentally, rather some Israeli invention thingy). They were moving her to
hospice. He was scared. He had unwavering faith though that it could still turn
around. ‘Miracles happen’ he told me. The fact that she is here today is
one.
He told me that he really hasn’t done anything religious over the past
time, he kind of fell out of it. I contradicted him though. I told him that I
believe he had done the most religious thing a Jew does. He prayed. He talked
to God. He may have not used a prayer book. It certainly wasn’t in a synagogue.
But that’s irrelevant. We use those things to get to the point of real prayer.
A real conversation with the Almighty. I told him that I knew that he has been
doing that. He agreed. Although he conjectured that they weren’t always the
friendliest conversations. I assured him that one only gets upset with someone
that they love. Someone that they have a connection with. Someone that they
feel should be there with them. Someone that they know is on the other end of
the phone. That spoke to him. He certainly falet close to Hashem. He had been
with him until now. He would always be with him. We parted with words of hope
and prayer. As I said it was a strange evening.
It is not often one has such an experience of such diverse
emotions. Rising to the pinnacles of joy, experiencing the tragedy of death and
then the emotional roller-coaster of hope, faith and prayer of an illness. It
was the range of human emotions. The different extremes of spiritual
connections. They all related to Hashem though. I was cognizant of His presence
in everything that goes on.
This week’s Torah portion Shelach also comes at that moment of
incredibly diverse emotions. The Torah portion begins with the Jewish people on
the cusp of our redemption. We have finally arrived…almost. We are just a few
days out of our divinely promised destination. The Land we were promised, the
milk, the honey, the land of our forefathers that we had left and were exiled
from centuries before. Moshe sends out the 12 heads of the tribes to explore the
land and bring back the news of their experience. The sights, the sounds, the
holiness, the potential. The spies, as we all know fail in their purpose. The
offer their own opinions. It’s not something that can work. Huge abnormal fruits,
giants, armed cities. They are stronger than us. We can not conquer them. The
nation mourns. Hashem gets annoyed. The decree that we will wander for forty
years and none of the men of age will be ever make it into the land is put into
place. And the 9th of Av becomes a day of eternal mourning.
The story tragically continues with a group of the tribe of
Ephraim that decides to try to come up anyways and the tragic massacre of their
tribe by the Canaanites and the Amalekites. We went from the top of the world,
from a future that was so bright to the depths of mourning, sadness and
tragedy. It is a hard parsha to read. It is so sad. We were almost
there. I think I want a drink. But hey, what’s that in the next Aliya-the next
Torah portion we read? A mitzva, a
command that contains wine. A L’Chaim. Seems like Hashem would like a drink to.
The Mitzva that Hashem has chosen to place right after the
narrative of the spies is certainly a strange one that feels out of place.
“And Hashem spoke to Moshe saying, Speak
to the children of Israel and say to them: When you will come to the land of
your dwelling places that I have given you and you preform a fire offering to Hashem-an
Olah or a peace sacrifice or on your festivals to produce a pleasant fragrance
for Hashem from the cattle or the flock-the one who brings his offering to
Hashem shall bring a meal-offering of a tenth of an ephah of fine flour mixed
with oil and a quarter of a hin of wine for a libation…”
Didn’t we finish up the laws of sacrifices in Vayikra already?
What does this have anything to do with the story of the spies? Why here? Why
only now does Hashem command Moshe to tell this mitzva that with each sacrifice
they should bring a wine libation and some flour offering? Our sages explain that
although the mitzva of libations was given already but that was for public sacrifices.
The new command given here was that every personal offering should also have
the wine brought with it. A little L’Chaim it seems.
Rashi explains that Hashem over here is giving them tidings over
here and now to let them now that despite the decree they will still enter the
land. But that makes it even more perplexing. For seemingly they will not enter
the land. It’s almost like rubbing salt-or wine in their wounds. Which is
certainly not the intent. The Torah is telling us that on some level this is
considered that theyw ae ‘coming to the land’ it is still the land of ‘their
dwelling place’. And again what does this have to do with wine?
It’s interesting if you note that there are many references to
grapes in the story of the spies. The story begins with the introduction to
their mission into Israel with the term
(Bamidbar 13:20) And the days were the days of the ripening of
the grapes.
As well the Torah tells us (Bamidbar 13:23-24) that they came to the
valley of Eshkol (which is a cluster of grapes) cut a vine with a cluster of
grapes and they carried it on a pole by two. Which the commentaries explain that
eight spies had to carry this one cluster. And then it says the called this
place the valley of Eshkol because of the cluster they cut. Obviously grapes
have quite a role in this whole story.
When you want to understand something in the Torah you have to go
to the first time it is mentioned. The truth is that grapes and vineyards and
wine seem to have a story. Perhaps the first story in the Torah of a new world,
a missed opportunity and a tragedy. I refer to the story of Noach. Here we have
a man who’s whole world was destroyed and he was meant to make a new start. As
the Jewish people were about to enter their new land so was Noach about to
enter his new world. The future was bright. It was certainly built upon the
destruction of the old world. But the sun was shining and it was time to get
started. Noach had prepared for this moment and he brings a sacrifice. He
thanks Hashem and the covenant of the rainbow is made. And then he plants a
vineyard, grapes, gets drunk and its downhill from there. Our sages tell us that
Noach brought all the animals that Hashem told him to bring on the Ark, but he
also chose to bring grapes. He knew that he would need a drink after all of
this and it is the first thing that he brings. Some of our sages point out that
the reason he chose grapes was because this was the tree of knowledge that Adam
had eaten from. It was the grapes and the wine-certainly not an apple, that he
ate from that led to the first downfall and exile of Creation. {It is
interesting that the word eshkol-cluster shares within it the word sechel
knowledge or intelligence} Noah planted vineyards and wine to symbolize that
return to Eden. The incredible potential of this new world.
Wine we are told is the revelation of the hidden potential. Unlike
other things wine gets better with age. The Talmud in Shabbat (67) tells us
that when the great Rabbi Akiva would make a feast for his son he would raise
his glass and say “Wine and life for the sages, life and wine for the sages and
their students”. The Maharsha explains that wine has the power to connect to
extend life, to ‘gladden the heart of man’. Yet if misused if taken to excess
then it can be a source of death of tragedy. Thus Rabbi Akiva would bless them
first with wine to gladden them and the life with it. Yet after they drank he
would switch it around and bless them with life first and then wine. The wine
should be one that connects them to eternal life. To Hashem.
When the spies enter the land of Israel they find grapes, the find
that potential to make that connection to Hashem. The y see the sechel and name
the river after it. Yet they lost it. They lacked the faith. They didn’t make
their second L’Chaim. The wine became their focus and they didn’t clink glasses
with the Almighty that brought them there. After that great tragedy Hashem
tells Moshe to tell His children, that it will never be the case anymore. They will
come into the land. Perhaps not that nation- who will die in the wilderness,
but they are not dead. They will always be connected to life. The land will be
considered their dwelling place. It will be as if they themselves came into the
land. Their children will come in and they will bring offerings. Sometimes
those offerings will be times of joy, sometimes they will be for sins,
sometimes for tragedies for purity, for atonement. The offerings will have a L’Chaim
associated with them. A L’Chaim for generations that did not merit to be here
with them who are bound in eternal life. A L’Chaim to recognize that each of us
is always connected to Hashem no matter what happens in our lives. A L’Chaim
for Hashem who has waited so long for this day for this moment when His
children are home with him and are bringing those offerings that will always
connect them to Him. That will remind Him of that pristine world when we were
there with Him in the Garden of Eden. That will rectify the failure of Noach to
return us to that world. A L’Chaim that we hope soon to sing and drink with our
Temple returned in His home, Yerushalayim. L’Chaim!
Have an amazing Shabbos,
Rabbi Ephraim Schwartz
***************************
RABBI SCHWARTZ’S VIDEO OF THEWEEK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di5Etd1iDvs
–I
know you’ve been waiting for this. It’s here! Shani and Yackov wedding video I
made from the pictures we just got! Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/AaEBa3CuItc – Lipa Shmeltzer-the self described Chasidic “Lady Gaga” Pepsi Max
commercial
https://youtu.be/aHf7d4LvPVo –in honor of the wedding this past week of Zalmy
and Yael Sorotzkin..a Jewish ‘My Way’
RABBI SCHWARTZ’S
FAVORITE YIDDISH PROVERB OF THE WEEK
“Az men krigt zikh miten rov, muz men sholem
zein miten shainker”-. If you’re at odds with your rabbi, make peace with your
bartender.
RABBI SCHWARTZ'S JEWISH PERSONALITY AND HIS
QUOTES IN HONOR OF THE YARTZEIT OF THE WEEK
“Almost all
of our sages (poskim) have agreed with the opinion of the MaHaRit that even in
our times we are commanded to go up to Eretz Yisrael. Therefore I was much
surprised at some of the great leaders of our nation who are learned in Torah
and Hasidut, when they expressed opposition to living in the Holy Land and
causing its reclamation by buying field and vineyards for Jewish farmers to settle
upon it. They based such opposition on the fact that a majority of these
farmers, specifically the young ones, don’t adhere to the Torah. Their words
are not correct, for it has already been written that the Holy One Blessed Be
He would rather His children remain in the land, even though they do not keep
His commandments, than reside in the Diaspora and keep the commandments.””
“The basis of Hibbat Zion is
the Torah, as it has been handed down to us from generation to generation, with
neither supplement nor subtraction. I do not intend this statement as an
admonition to any individual regarding his conduct, for, as our sages have said:
“Verily, there are none in this generation fit to admonish.” I am nevertheless
stating in a general way, that the Torah, which is the Source of our Life, must
be the foundation of our regeneration in the land of our fathers.
In conclusion, I lift up my voice to my
brethren : Behold, it is now two thousand years that we await our Messiah, to
redeem us from our bitter exile and to gather our scattered brethren from all
corners of the earth to our own land, where each shall dwell in security, under
his vine and under his fig tree. This faith, strong within us, has been our
sole comfort in the untold days of our misery and degradation. And even though
in the last century some have arisen in our midst who have denied this belief,
tearing it out of their hearts and even erasing it from their prayers, the
masses of our people hold fast to this hope, for the fulfillment of which they
pray morning, noon and night, and in which they find balm for their suffering.
Of late certain orthodox rabbis have arisen in Western Europe, among whom one
has even declared that the promises of future bliss and consolation made by our
seers were in the form of symbols and parables. The coming of the Messiah, they
say, will not be to bring Israel back to the Land of its Fathers and put an end
to its long dispersion and many sorrows, but will be to establish the Kingdom
of Heaven for all mankind, while Israel continued in exile as a light to the
gentiles. Others of these rabbis assert, without qualification, that
nationalism is contrary to our belief in the advent of the Messiah. I am
therefore constrained to declare publicly that all this is not true. Our hope
and faith has ever been and still is, that our Messiah will come and gather in
all the scattered of Israel, and instead of our being wanderers upon the face
of the earth, ever moving from place to place, we shall dwell in our own
country as a nation, in the fullest sense of the word. Instead of being the
contempt and mockery of the nations, we shall be honored and respected by all
peoples of the earth. This is our faith and hope, as derived from the words of
our prophets and seers of blessed memory and to this our people clings!”
Reb Shmuel Mohliver, - 19th of
Sivan this Shabbos (1824–1898))-The concept that Jews should return to
Israel, that it is necessary and part of the redemptive process for us to come
back home, that Jews regardless of their religious observance level need to
unite around are certainly concepts that go back through the centuries from
Nachmanides in the 13th century to the Gaon of Vilna in the 18th
century. Yet perhaps the individual who can be attribuited and even called the
father of religious or Torah Zionism-that the return to Israel in the present
century is based not on secular values but rather is founded on Torah principles
is Rav Shmuel Mohliver the founder of the Chibat Tzion in the 19th
century and eventually the forerunner of the Mizrachi Movement.
Rav Mohliver was born in 1824 in a village near Vilna, the
intellectual center of Lithuanian Jews. He was so brilliant a student of the
traditional talmudic curriculum that he was ordained a rabbi at the age of
eighteen. At first Mohliver refused to practice this calling and instead was a
merchant of flax for five years. Business reverses and the death of his well-to-do
in-laws constrained him to accept the office of rabbi in his home village. A
period of six years there was followed by successive calls to ever larger
communities. In the 1870’s, when he first displayed signs of an active interest
in work for the Holy Land, Mohliver was the rabbi of Radom in Poland. Already
notable not only as a scholar but as a communal leader, he was elected to a
much larger post, also in Poland, in Bialystok, which he occupied for fifteen
years until his death in 1898.
Mohliver
was moved to practical Zionist labors by the pogroms of 1881. Tens of thousands
of Jews had fled across the Russian border to Galicia, in the Austrian-held
part of Poland. Mohliver attended a conference of western Jewish leaders that
was called on the spot, in Lemberg (the capital of Galicia), to decide what to
do with these refugees. He suggested, without effect, that they be diverted to
Palestine. On this journey, Mohliver also visited Warsaw, where he had better
success; he was instrumental in organizing there the first formal section of
the then nascent Hibbat Zion. While in Warsaw, he convinced two of his most
distinguished rabbinic colleagues to join with him in issuing a call for
emigration to Palestine, but these men soon fell away from such activities. The
Hibbat Zion movement was dominated by secularists like Leo Pinsker and Mohliver
remained one of the few distinguished figures among the rabbis of the old
school to be active within it.
His
decision to remain in Hibbat Zion, side by side with avowed agnostics who did
not live in obedience to the Law, was the crucial turn in the history of
religious Zionism, for it determined not only its future as an organized
“party” but also the nature of the problems it would have to face henceforth.
On the one hand Mohliver, like his successors to the present, were opposed and
battled by the yeshiva-orthodox; it was no small matter for an undoubted
pietist to announce that all Israel was in peril and hence “would we not
receive anyone gladly and with love, who though irreligious in our eyes, came
to rescue us?”
Even seventy years later,
though this fight is now largely won, there are still those among the orthodox
who do not accept the notion of a Jewish national loyalty that all should
share, which is greater than religious differences. On the other hand, Mohliver
inevitably exercised constant pressure – and here, too, he has been followed by
his successors – on the national movement to be more responsive, at least in
practice, to the demands of the orthodox religion. This note is sounded in what
was in effect his testament, the message to the First Zionist Congress that he
sent through his grandson. Earlier, in 1893, a long series of differences
between him and the main office of Hibbat Zion in Odessa, which was largely
secularist, had led to a decision of the movement to create another center,
headed by him, to do propaganda and cultural work among orthodox Jews. This
office was given the Hebrew name Mizrachi (an abbreviation for merkaz ruhani,
or “spiritual center”); when the presently existing Zionist organization was
re-founded in 1901 by Rabbi Jacob Reines and others of Mohliver’s disciples,
they continued the name, the spirit and the stance.
It
should be added that Mohliver was active not only in organizational and propagandistic
affairs but also in the labors in behalf of colonization in Palestine. His
single greatest service to this field came early, in 1882, when he went to
Paris to meet the young Baron Edmond de Rothschild. Mohliver convinced him to
take an interest in the struggling settlers in the Holy Land; Rothschild
remained, until his death in 1934, the greatest single benefactor of the
Zionist work there.
Days before he died he received a letter from Theodore Herzl for
him to sign upon the establishment of the first Zionist Congress. He died
before he could sign it and was buried in Bilaostok, however after WWII when the
Nazis destroyed the city his grave and body were moved to the State of Israel
one that he had dreamed of seeing and ultimately living in. May he be bound in
the bonds of eternal life.
RABBI SCHWARTZ'S TOUR GUIDE EXAM QUESTION OF
THE WEEK
answer below at end of Email
Q. A Moshava established by Romanian Jews was:
A.
Motza
B. Gedera
C. Petah Tikva
D. Rosh Pina
RABBI SCHWARTZ'S COOL RASHI OF THE WEEK
Rashi’s job as he tells us is not only to tell
us the simple understanding of the text and the words but also to give us an
overarching view of the whole story. And sometimes if we look at not just one
Rashi and we understand the choice of his words, what he says, what he doesn’t
say then we can get a larger picture and appreciation of a story that on its
face might seem contradictory.
In the story of the Spies we find different
messages in the story. In the beginning Rashi seems to say that the idea of the
spy was Moshe’s not necessarily Hashem’s plan. In fact Hashem even seems to
oppose the idea claiming that He had already said the land was good. Rashi also
notes that the spies were ‘kosher’ in the beginning. They were good people
where did they go wrong? On the other hand it seems that Moshe is nervous about
the spies. He changes Yehoshuas name adding the letter from the name of God Yeho
to his name Hoshea so that “Hashem should save you from the plot of meraglim-
the spies” If that is the case then why did he send them in the first place?
The Lubavitcher Rebbe notes that the words meraglim-spies is nowhere to
be found in this weeks Torah portion and the mission that Moshe sends them on.
The words that Moshe uses are La’Tour es Ha’aretz- to tour the
land. The difference between a tourist
and spy. Is that the job of a tourist is to be in awe and appreciate all that
he sees. Not to criticize, not to plot, not to figure things out. In Hebrew we
say L’Hitrashem- to take it all in. The failure was that they decided to
become spies. It was that which Moshe prayed for. Let Hashem protect them from
the plot of the ‘spies’. It was spying that Hashem was opposed to. The spies
failure when they came here was that they assumed they were here on a pilot
trip. To check it out. To figure it out. Therefore they offered their opinions,
their ideas and the practicalities and statistics of their chances to conquer
it. That wasn’t their mission. They were moving to Israel. They should’ve
understood that this wasn’t a can we- what if – trip. It was a ‘we are coming;
wow isn’t this incredible trip.’
An important lesson every tourist should
remember. You’re here to tour not spy, not to justify your life in America or
anywhere elese. This is your home. Come and be in awe of it.
RABBI SCHWARTZ'S COOL HISTORICAL EVENT THAT
HAPPENED ON THIS DATE IN ISRAEL OF THE WEEK-
The division of the 10
Tribes under Yeravam Ben Nevat- 23rd Sivan 797 B.C.E.-After Shlomo HaMelech / King Solomon's
passing in 797 B.C.E., Yeravam ben Nevat, a member of the tribe of Ephraim,
incited ten of the twelve tribes of Israel to rebel against Shlomo's son
and heir, Rechavam .The Holy Land split into two kingdoms: the
"Kingdom of Israel" in the north, with Yeravam as its king
and the city of Samaria as its capital; and the southern "Kingdom of
Judah" with its capital Jerusalem, where Rechavam ruled
over the two tribes (Judah and Binyamin ) that remained loyal to the
royal house of David. The spiritual center of the land, however, remained Yerushalayim,
where the Beit HaMikdash built by Shlomo HaMelech stood,
and where every Jew was obligated to make a thrice-yearly pilgrimage for the
festivals of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot.
Seeing this as a threat to his sovereignty, Yeravam, King of Israel, set
up roadblocks to prevent the people's aliyah l'regel (pilgrimage)
to Yerushalayim. As a substitute, he introduced the worship of two idols,
in the form of golden calves, which he enshrined on the northern and southern
boundaries of his realm. (those who have gone on my Tel Dan tour know why he
chose those symbolsJ)These barricades remained in place for 223 years, until Hosea ben Elah, the last king of the Northern Kingdom, had them removed on the 15th of Av of 574 B.C.E. By then, the ten tribes residing there were already being expelled from the land in a series of invasions by various Assyrian and Babylonian kings. The last of these occurred in 556 B.C.E., when Shalmanessar of Assyria completely conquered the Kingdom of Israel, destroyed its capital, exiled the last of the Israelites residing there, and resettled the land with foreign peoples from Kutha and Babylon. These peoples -- later known as the "Samarians" -- assumed a form of Judaism as their religion, but were never accepted as such by the Jewish people; they subsequently built their own temple on Mount Gerizim and became bitter enemies of the Jews. The "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel" were never heard from again, and await the coming of Moshiach to be reunited with the Jewish people.
RABBI SCHWARTZ'S SPY JOKES OF THE WEEK
The CIA lost track of it’s operative in
Ireland “Murphy. ” The CIA boss says, “All I can tell you is that his name is
Murphy and that he’s somewhere in Ireland. If you think you’ve located him,
tell him the code words, “The weather forecast calls for mist in the morning. ”
If it’s really him, he’ll answer, “Yes, and for mist at noon as well. ” So the
spy hunter goes to Ireland and stops in a bar in one of the small towns. He
says to the bartender, “Maybe you can help me. I’m looking for a guy named
Murphy. ” The bartender replies, “You’re going to have to be more specific
because, around here, there are lots of guys named Murphy. There’s Murphy the
Baker, who runs the pastry shop on the next block. There’s Murphy the Banker,
who’s president of our local savings bank. There’s Murphy the Blacksmith, who
works at the stables. And, as a matter of fact, my name is Murphy, too. ”
Hearing this, the spy hunter figures he might as well try the code words on the
bartender, so he says, “The weather forecast calls for mist in the morning. ”
The bartender replies, “Oh, you’re looking for Murphy the Spy. He lives right
down the street. ”
Israel University decides to create a crew
team. Unfortunately, they lose race after race. Every day, they practice for
hours and hours but always come in dead last. Finally they send Yankel to spy
on the USA Harvard team.
Yankel shleps off to The USa and hides in the
bushes off the Charles River from where he secretly watches the Harvard team
practice. After two days, he returns, satisfied.
“I figured out how they do it,” says Yankel to
his eager teammates. “They have eight fellows rowing and only one fellow
screaming!”
A mummy was found in Egypt, and to determine
its age and whatnot, three best forensic teams of the world decided to start a
competition.
The CIA went first. They studied the mummy for
a year, and then came up with a result: the person lived around 1000 years BC,
plus or minus 200 years.
The Mossad goes next. They study the mummy for
a month, and conclude: it was a pharaoh who ruled 1000 years BC, give or take
100 years.
The KGB team goes next. They hold the mummy
for a week, and then come up with this: it was Pharaoh Ramenhotep the Second,
born 1022 BC, became king after murdering his uncle, ruled for five years, on
the third year of his reign the Nile flooded Luxor, on the fourth year the
hittites attacked.
Everyone is perplexed: "How did you find
all this out?"
"He confessed"
The CIA, Mossad, and Syrian Intelligence
decided to play a game. Each would send 2 agents into a forest to find a
special white rabbit. So in they went. After 1 hour, the Israelis returned with
the rabbit. An hour later, the Americans returned, having determined that the
Israelis had already captured the rabbit. An hour passed… two, and still the
Syrians had not returned. The Israelis and Americans decided to mount a search
party for their Syrian friends. In they went, were they found a donkey, with a
black sack over its head, and all 4 legs tied to trees, being beaten by the
Syrians. “Admit it!” shouted the Syrians, ” You’re a rabbit!”
:**************
Answer is D – Now although the mother of all Moshavim-settelemnts or
villages from the period of the Aliya Rishona the late 1800’s is known to be
Petach Tikva founded in 1878 by Jews that had left Jerusalem-who were Hungarian
and Lithuanian, the true first settlement was in fact Gai’ Unni or as its known
today as Rosh Pinna that was founded by Jews that had left Tzfat originally but
ultimately was settled by Jews from Romania. Gedera was founded by the famous
socialist Bilu’nikim, and Motza was by Syrian Jews. Besides Gedera almost all
of the new settlements and 1st Aliya were religious families that
moved to Israel with the ideology that this was biblical fulfillment of the
commandment to settle the land.
