60 Days for 60 Years

On Monday we started reading this book, 60 Days for 60 Years: Israel A Commemoration and Celebration. Its a book that has 60 essays written by various authors. Each essay talks about different aspects of Jewish life, history and practice with respect to Israel.

Why 60 days? Well, we are approaching the 60th anniversary of the creation of the modern state of Israel, Yom Ha’atzma’ut, on May 8th, 2008.  After recently finishing The Arab-Israeli Wars by Chaim Herzog I have a new found understanding of what miracles were achieved to make the state a reality. Also I’ve been listening to the Crash Course in Jewish history by Rabbi Ken Spiro(http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/) which has also shed some light on how miraculous and unprecedented in history it is for a people to be exiled for 2000 years and then return to their land.

While reading the essays, we are suppose to have in mind all those who have fallen in defense of the state, as well as those innocent civilians murdered by brutal terrorists.

some post-Chanukah thoughts

Towards the end of Chanukah this year, I started to think about the whole story involving the oil. I was thinking that maybe there was a connection, a common thread, to other miraculous stories involving oil. The two that came to mind were in I Kings 17.14-16
and in II Kings 4.1-7.

I spoke with several different rabbi’s that I know and none had any thoughts off the top of their head. So I didn’t really pursue it much after that and was kinda just hoping that somewhere along the way I would hear something….

…sure enough, not more than a week goes by and I make my weekly journey over to Rabbi Berel Wein’s page. He also had some post-Chanukah thoughts, which I thought tied in nicely…

http://www.rabbiwein.com/Jerusalem-Post/2007/12/279.html