Holy Land, Holy Lights

In bloggersphere terms it has been a long time since the last post. These past few weeks have seen more discussions about our government's negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit and plenty of heated debate and action and counter-action regarding the Netanyahu government's hasty, ill-conceived, anti-Zionist and cruel 'settlement freeze'. I have imagined several posts but all of them turn into very negative rants and are neither constructive nor enlightening rather than write, for now, I talk back to the radio and computer screen and spare the rest of you my unabridged rage. 


David and I are taking off in a few hours for two weeks of visiting with our families in the US. Our trip and all the accompanying arrangements were made using the Internet and I am truly amazed by this. We comparison shopped, ordered the tickets, bought health and baggage insurance and have already checked in and printed out the boarding pass for tomorrow's flights - all online. In a way it seems a bit of anti-climax that we actually have to go to the airport now and fly. (Where's the link to Newark airport, can't I just click and arrive?)


Friday afternoon just before we light the Shabbat candles we will be lighting the first candle of Chanukah. David asked his Rabbi a question about lighting the Chanukah candles when travelling and the answer he received was at first very surprising to me. He said that a person who has made his home in Eretz Israel must have his candles lit in his house. Lighting candles anywhere else does not fulfill this mitzvah. If we can't light the candles in our home we must have someone do it for us, in our home. It can be a family member or anyone who we appoint to do this. So tonight we set up our Chanukah menora and David asked our upstairs neighbors to come down and light ours every night while we are gone and they graciously agreed.


We will be celebrating Chanukah abroad this year. But we will be mindful that the miracle of Chanukah is intimately connected with this land and has special meaning here and we can't leave our home dark.


Happy Chanukah everyone!