Rejuvenation: No Bonfires, No Vanities

[Music] hi everybody Eve Harrow rejuvenation on the land of Israel Network it is May 12th 2020 the 18th day of er 5780 and a day that's known as Lag Ba'Omer or the 33rd day in the on they're in the 49 day time period that we're counting between the barley harvest and the wheat harvest or more commonly known as between the second day of Passover until shovel Earth's so it this show is not going to have an interview the last Wow the last few months I have been interviewing people and I did try to get an interview today actually having to do with logged on they're kind of half-hearted because I've got all these thoughts like roiling around in my head mental meanderings if you will Eve's pandemic peeves I suppose could be another name but there's just a lot of stuff that I kind of wanted to talk about in no particular order of importance so I figured that I would take the opportunity to do that today what's so interesting about La Gomera is well of course it's different this year because everything is different this year usually we would be coughing today in Israel there is a amine hug there is ritual or accustomed to light bonfires for reasons that are not so clear some people say because of the mystical fury element of the day and other people say because that's what the marshmallow manufacturers want us to do but there is a very big custom to do that to light bonfires for a lot of reasons again and I don't the shows not going to be about La Gomera just one City give a little preliminary about why I'm in the top floor of my house in my son's room because I miss him and so by broadcasting by sitting here why don't need to have great internet as I do with I'm unzoom not that I have great internet even when I'm and zoom as some of you know because the interviews have cut out sometimes and it's really frustrating but just as an aside because that's how this show is going to be everything's going to be an aside I can't get the cord from my computer so that I can plug it directly into my Wi-Fi box I have not so new MacBook Air and I've been like calling around because obviously like a lot of the Apple stores are closed and a lot of the people that have the Apple products are out of that or maybe never had it because it's old anyway I can't get that cord and so I think it's called a thunderbolt if any of you out there listening to this happen to deal with Apple products let me know please anyway I love my Mac stuff this is not a plug for Apple it just that I it was my first computer way back in the day in the 80s and then we went on to the usual things and then a few years ago I came back to Apple and I loved them also because they all synced together but you don't find them so much in Israel much more popular outside of Israel and so I can't get the cord and that's why I'm sitting in my son's room today just doing a podcast on might ask em where I don't need internet and I'm looking out the window I there's a point to all this I'm looking out the window and a I can see Jordan or the mountains of ma from here because it's just a little bit higher than the mountain ridge looking over the eastern gush etzion and I can see across the rift as a matter of fact I can see the two tall skinny towers that are among so that's like pretty wild but why can I see them this morning is normally on log Balmer morning you can't see nuttin because the bonfires of last night fill the air with a tremendous amount of smoke so as we've had for the last few years and the world's recovering maybe in the environment recovering a little bit from all the junk that we throw into her all the time so on a personal level here in Israel because of the limitations on gatherings which some people of course didn't listen to which is a whole other issue but maybe I'll get into later we didn't have the bonfires all right there are normally hundreds of thousands of people who go up to me Ron which is just outside of Scott and really kind of the cradle of Kabbalah and of mystical Judaism from way back when the reason they do that is because of the gosh be shimon bar yohai this is apparently the commemoration of his passing and he is known for many things one of them which is controversial it's not clear if he did in everybody agrees is writing the Zohar the underpinnings of mystical of Kabbalistic mystical Judaism he also famously hid from the Romans he lived during the second century when the Romans were all about and and he hid from the Romans who were killing the rabbi's who were teaching Torah so he was isolated for seven years in a cave eating just Caribes which is totally not chocolate I had an amazing chocolate last week I'll talk about that in a few minutes carob is not chocolate that anyhow that there's a lot of stories about him and now I was like thinking about him in a different way that's like seven years like that's that's a long time here we are some of us going crazy after seven weeks right and in a lot different situation than he had I assume that nobody listening to this is living in a cave and I'm having to eat just carob so a we need to appreciate the good even within the difficult situation but like that's that's got to change you right so maybe it changed him in the positive sense of him being able to connect more to the Creator and be able to really get into the secrets of mystical Judaism which would be the idea but but I don't know make like maybe he was like just a little bit crabby we need God and there's also stories of that right like maybe his social skills weren't what they should be which also makes sense if you're not really with people for a long time he was also a brilliant apparently according to legend he was also brilliant scientist he knew botany many many many many of the rabbis in the ancient world unfortunately not as many as there should be in this world where science has kind of been shunted aside but I think and I've talked about this before I think anything having to do with science biology physics chemistry all that can be shown and learned as God's world who came up with all those rules Bonet how he was apparently a brilliant botanist and when the Jews were asked to move in Tiberius which had been started by Herod the Great's one of his sons Herod Antipas in the first century the Jews didn't want to move there because there were graves all over the place and Jews don't live where there are graves very big separation between life and death but he apparently was able to find where the graves were and purify the area dig up the bones by planting lupines the beautiful flower and because they grow off of organic material so very interesting person as most people are not you know not can't be boxed in and so one of the reasons for celebrating Lugg but all Mary's to commemorate his death but really when we commemorate some of his death were commemorating their life at least in Judaism that's how we do it it also is apparently a break in the plague yes I will say that again a break in the plague that Rabbi Akiva as they say the 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva who's the teacher of every Shimon bar Yohai and who himself is killed by the Romans most likely in Caesarea and say Sharia in the theatre there the the time probably amphitheatre there in front of is tortured 44 refusing to stop teaching Torah dies saying shmeil al which is one of the reasons that's become the what you want to say if you can as you take your last breath stand and you know tortured and really an incredible man robbed a Kiva but not to get it too much in trouble you give it but they say that his students didn't speak nicely to each other and therefore many of them died during this time period of the Omer back in the second century and there was a break in that on this day and there are others who put it more in a kind of political reference and say that his students were fighting in the Bar Kokhba revolt only also although it's a little bit looser and I and I did a show few years ago some of you might remember with with dawn Safavieh a professor here in Israel who's one of the experts on the Bar Kokhba revolt and on Bar Kokhba fascinating individual and so those who say that actually these students what had happened is their deaths are dying as soldiers in the buckle revolt so you can kind of see how this whole day can be tweaked according to what your agenda is so if I'm not your musing agenda in a positive sense here it's a great degree you know if you want to focus on the spiritual aspect and also a lot of people this is when they cut their sons hair people who have their sons hair grow until they're three this is the day will you do the Holika or up Sharon as it's known the give us word and and so you find normally up in Moroni and up near its lot carpeted just the hills carpeted with hundreds of thousands of people wielding scissors and and cutting their son's hair for the first time so there's a whole lot of different rituals and different ideas that kind of fall in on today the Bar Kokhba one is probably the shakiest to a great degree the connections Bar Kokhba here and shooting arrows like I said there's a whole lot of stuff but that is a few shows in and of itself and that's not really what I I want to focus on today although it's interesting for me because where I live in Judea where I live and go John was the heart of the Bar Kokhba revolt or OD in which I can see when I leave my house I can't see it from here it's not got to see a glimpse of it yesterday is the headquarters of the revolts and a lot of what's going around here has to do the Volkl revolt but I'm mentioning it also because yesterday the Israel Antiquities Authority and City of David announced that a coin had been found it wasn't found yesterday a lot of times things that are found in the digs are they way to announce them close to a holiday that has to do with what was found to give it like an extra boost I remember a few years ago after they found a little ostraca a little like I'm clay piece in one of the tunnels in the city of David that says Bethlehem on it apparently the only time the Bethlehem was found like written obviously outside the Bible and they announced that on the eve of shovel arks which is which I'm staring about the time right now outside my window the real Bethlehem because of course we read the Book of Ruth and that has to do with the genealogy of King David and of tremendous social kindness and we filled in the barley fields and all that outside of Bethlehem which means faith let them which means House of bread so the whole thing kind of like fits together so they announced the buckle coin which is a very interesting find a was found in a real dig a lot of we have huge problems here huge with robbery it's another show that I plan on doing in the future with robbery of our ancient archaeological sites obviously an archaeological site is going to be somewhat ancient and a lot of these coins are found and make their way to the black market and once they're taken out of you know not in situ once they're not found in the site then yeah if you have the same thing that was found in a controlled dig then you can make it very very very educated guess that this is from that time period but it loses you know other things lose the historical relevance so Jamie point this was found outside the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and what makes it unusual it's a coin from the second year of the buckle we're volt and you can go online and read more about it and it has a palm tree on one side and grapes a bunch of grapes on the other but what's unusual about it is it says Jerusalem and only four coins have been found have in Jerusalem out of 22,000 corns that have been found in Jerusalem only four have been found from varkala there's another 20 that were found in Europe of also from this time and so what does this mean well we've got the romans are here the legions are here and what the feeling is also that the ones found in Jerusalem is that these are coins that the Roman soldiers had and then took with them and dropped out of their pocket and and that's the way because the eventually go back to what we now know today as Europe and also go into Jerusalem 10th Legion especially sits in Jerusalem for like 200 years because Bar Kokhba did not make it into Jerusalem there they never were able to to reconquer Jerusalem to rebuild the temple which was the main thrust of what they were doing starting in 1:32 ending in in 135 because Jerusalem was being turned into a pagan city by Hadrian and so there's a whole lot of history here and a whole lot of different personalities you know was a good guy was he a bad guy Rabbi Akiva obviously felt that he had some tremendous married to him enough that he might have even been the Messiah which is also why the Christians at the time Christianity is just getting off the ground do not participate in the Birkhoff revolt because hey there messiahs already comes so why would we think that Bar Kokhba is Messiah and that makes a lot of sense and there are others especially the rabbis with scathing criticism of him be mainly because the revolt ends with tremendous devastation and hundreds of thousands of Jews being killed in the land really being devastated my area then is emptied as ethnically cleansed of Jews for hundreds of years Jewish life goes up to the galley into the Golan for hundreds of years until about that the you know the end of well for a lot of different reasons the massive earthquake in 749 the Islamic conquest also a little bit earlier in the seventh century and apparently climate change and plagues and stuff whatever form of global warning global warming took place then I prefer to call it climate change sorry if you're a Democrat but that's the way it goes here these are things that do happen in cycles and famines and droughts and the usual things that devastate a world and that we can maybe have little more no sympathy for but definitely understand more when we're living now in a time period where this unseen sea and very difficult to fight against virus is devastating much of the world not necessarily in the numbers of dead please God it should remain that many many people have died but it's not you know the millions and millions that were predicted the beginning but who knows it still could be because we don't know if there'll be another wave and we don't know what's going on here and so when we look back at our history and you know a lot of people been talking about different plagues and different things that happened that just knocked out like 30 percent of humanity at the time but when it comes to like learning his the history here of the land of Israel which is of course what I love to do then you see how these things happen to waves anyhow so the Jews go up and they're mainly in the galley and the Golan a little bit down in the southern horn hills which I'll talk about in a minute I was just there last week and and and out of this area for a long time so it's it's even a greater feeling to be here and to you know be able just a few minutes out of Jerusalem and being able to we have reestablished life in this so incredibly important time of you know of sovereignty and the Jews coming back home I guess many of you know I dislike the we were gone for 2,000 years because we were not gone for 2,000 years there were always Jews been living in the land always always always always but we haven't had sovereignty and political power since really Bar Kokhba revolt where he carved out a little state of Judea here and of course there's a lot of questions that come about this here also having to do with our modern world which is well when do you repel or at least say no to a higher authority right because that's what was happening here you look back you know like what are you out of your mind well you're rebelling against the Roman Empire strongest Empire in the world at the time and there are up some people who say well then we shouldn't be doing it now either we shouldn't be upsetting the United States we shouldn't be upsetting the European Union and maybe the plans that are we have to apply Israeli law in Judea and Samaria and and you know their areas like we shouldn't be doing that now so where is that balance here and and you know how strong are you and and can you can you do that and and if you're wrong the price to be paid is tremendous so these are the same ideas and there aren't clear answers and that's I think what's so confounding when you when you look at history and specifically Jewish history is there very very few situations where it's really clear that they should have done a instead of be I'm yes you can look into the Bible did you say okay well that was a bad move like you know making the golden calf was probably not the way to go right like you know so the Bible tends to present its case more black-and-white but when we leave that time period and that time period happened a long time ago and we start getting into the period where we don't have prophets and we don't have like you know the biblical record and the great people of that time demonstrates getting a little bit money here and I think that bar cultural revolts is a classic example of that and the way the rabbi's write about it afterwards again is like no no no and no perhaps that is infiltrated its way a little too much into our psyche now where we are still kind of trying to lay low and trying to not make problems and just like excuse me for living and we should be holding up our heads and saying no you know if we're back in Israel and we are a country among others that also gives us the right to make our own decisions about our future because we're gonna pay the price if decisions or things situations are foisted upon us that are not good and when we have reason to let's say have a certain lack of trust in other countries and their ideas about what we should be doing here so like it's really really really hard to listen to the European Union excuse me no I don't I'm not coughing that is allergies and in early morning whatever but when the European Union or France or all these other countries are trying to say no no you know you need to create a Palestinian state and we're like okay guys you just really care about our future right and you want the Jewish people to survive so we also have to take that with a little bit of looking back and wondering what their agenda is and not necessarily falling into something which we have over the past many many decades of maybe being too afraid of other people's opinions not doing what's best for us so I've already kind of like slipped down that slope into talking about politics so I will say that I am a little bit torn when it comes to Yummie now which is the party that I voted for it not solid Anna died other Czech hey it's all smut rich etc because it looks like they're not going into the next government and on the one hand I understand why it looks like the Prime Minister is just humiliating them as much as he possibly can not offering any kind of ministry that has really any kind of teeth while during this these last few months it seems like the Yamina ministers have done a good job from what I'm reading and I don't just read the Articles that make me comfortable like in mccrory stron or other sources where I know that journalism is the way I would like journalism to be and doesn't have like this tremendous left-wing tilt but I also do read certain things in Haaretz Blair but yeah not the editorials but a lot of the other things that are given over there because I think it's important to try and get make my own decision and try and get balanced views from different places and it seems like Batala Smotrich is very well thought of that what he's done in the last few months in the transportation ministry has earned him the respect of a lot of people that he was working with fascinating article a couple weeks ago about how they helped because we haven't leave in home so they've been able to really move on the train systems and a lot of the road works because people haven't been there and they've been working like crazy and things are gonna even end up on schedule but they said he's really worked well someone who didn't have a background in that and he's really really gotten in there and made the most of his time of course that's a ministry that he's going to lose and that I'm I mean I'm happy with how Naftali Bennett did in the in the defense ministry and and how not just how it worked with it comes came to the pandemic in open different hotels for people who are pointing and all that but looking around a little bit outside our borders some of the messaging that he's given to come off in Gaza some of what's been going on Syria to move Iran out of Syria you know there's still things happening even while we're all isolated there's a whole lot of things happening out there and in keeping you know an eye on that I think he's done a very good job and so it bothers me that looks like for personal reasons they're not going to get ministries that would give him the ability to do things for the people and I think they're capable of doing on the other hand if we really are going forward with the deal of the century or you know in the next few weeks or finally putting Israeli law on the Jordan Valley and in certain you know in the different communities in Judea and Samaria and I understand the concerns about it saying that there will be a Palestinian state I do I'm not immune to that to the dangers of recognizing that and to the dangers of counting on the so-called Palestinians to mess it up even though I think they will because they don't think rationally and they really don't want to state what they want is - they're not being in Israel so and and it's like totally totally totally confusing and I speak with people that I know whose opinions I respect tremendously they interviewed some of them on the show here you know and and and it's not so simple and some people think you mean I should go in because this is a very important time and the party that represents the national religious camp if you will should be in the government when all this is happening which is really the culmination for many of us of what we've been pushing for for many years because many of us live in these communities and don't live in Israel all right we are not the communities themselves the small communities are some degree subject to Israeli law but to a great degree aren't our mayor posted a few days ago that he got a visit from it's not a secret posted it from the police talking about how things will change if Israeli law comes here because right now there's a we are really under military law and and therefore like car accidents and some things that you would just use wouldn't you eat anything twice that using the police or the police showing up are actually dealt with here by the army which is not healthy for algas iliyan reasons and so how things are going to change like that so we're feeling that there's a move towards that and so I would like to see Amina in and even if it means taking portfolios they're definitely designed to humiliate them to some degree because they're not the major ministries but maybe sometimes you have to go in and just make something of it like the portfolio for Jerusalem which they were offered so I've been in touch with claim silverstein who I interviewed here last year many of you know him know about him because his daughter was shot at when she was pregnant and lost her baby and there's been all that level of it but he is in charge of a program he has a program called keep Jerusalem which is a different idea about what to do with Jerusalem which is a headache in and of itself a very worrisome survey came out yesterday that a lot of the Arabs in the eastern part of Jerusalem would now prefer to take Palestinian Authority citizenship as opposed to Israeli and so a lot of people are concerned because obviously that means that they've been radicalized because everyone knows that the Palestinian Authority is not good I mean we're not fooling anybody their own people know that but they had wanted Israeli and the numbers are huge like for more than 50 percent to 15 percent and nobody knew and even years ago when the numbers were that they wanted to be connected more to Israel nobody thought it was because they love the Jewish state there was a practical reason they wanted access to the healthcare and they wanted access to the schooling system and a lot of the benefits to be able to work in Israel so this shows that you know the Hamas and some of the radicals there have been working on them and so he so this idea is to divide Jerusalem in different ways though not to divide Jerusalem the way it happened in 1948 but to divide it along the lines of the population and everybody with their own means and everybody with their own connections to whatever sovereign will be there and there you know to Doctor Who their own identity anyhow that is like a whole thing I told you today's gonna be like a little it's gonna be like a smorgasbord of a show we're just gonna we're just kind of like I said go with how my brain is going at the moment which is it's like a total mishmash and the different things that I've been thinking about because because that's what I do all the time is think about things and and how things can be made better but also how we can find opportunity with in what looks like chaos so if they're ready feeling like that and they don't want I'm going back to the Palestine Arabs of East Jerusalem and they don't want Israeli citizenship so okay so then maybe that's a problem that we then now don't have to deal with because that is a concern and we don't want to add lots of people to our citizenship roles who paid the state and would like to dismantle the state that's I think any country although you look at Europe and even the United States to some degree hello like what are you doing especially Europe like don't you realize that you have created an entire class of people within your country who are trying to destroy your country but that's not my problem my problem is right here in Israel and so maybe there's an opportunity here to go with that plan and so maybe give me not to get back to that should take the Jerusalem portfolio and be able to work with that and do some little quiet work in the background and not get the the glory or the it's not just glory that they're looking for I'm being a little bit's mine because these big ministries also have bigger budgets and are able to wield bigger changes so I do understand that and I am torn and so it's like this is one of the reasons that I'm not in politics because my little foray into there 20 years ago when I was a member of for ten years when I was a member of the local council here in Efrat gave me a nice glimpse in there taught me a lot about how it works and made me realize that that's not the world that I want to be in and so thank God I'm in a different world which is or used to be the world of tour guiding in the world of speaking I wasn't in the best of moods I have to admit on Shabbat I have to I did apologize to my husband afterwards I mean wasn't like really but I was you know not so happy because I was supposed to be in London at a program the weekend of inspiration that Ms Rafi was was running for his I inist in London to connect with Israel and I've been invited to speak there and and to teach also on Sunday of course the whole thing was canceled because of the pandemic and and the British and the British Jews in particular have just really been devastated it's been horrible but it would have been great to be there and to meet new people and to bring a little bit of Israel to the UK and so yeah I know it's a small thing but my life has has a lot of the things that really like the the plank of my life if you will the guiding and the traveling and the speaking and even some of the littler things like Pilates and swimming I haven't been able to do so yeah maybe I'm very small minded and I'm coming out of that but it's like the rug was taken out from under me and I've had to readjust so I have and I bought one of those programs that they that they're selling all over Facebook right the to exercise at home so I bought I don't have to give them free advertising but I bought one of them and I've been doing some like dancing exercising alone with the shades drawn in my den because like many of you out there so I've got remember there was the freshman 10 so I've got the kovat 5 actually too because it's so much better in kilo so it's the Cova too one of them has is off the other one still needs to get off so that I get back to my fighting weight although yesterday I had pizza how did I come to have pizza because yesterday I was out in Jerusalem and I was filming for a virtual tour also Fermi's Rafi they asked me to do one for Jerusalem day for you wish and I am that the liberation I'm Jerusalem in the six-day war so not being a military historian and also you could I mean you could feel you could do it like a whole mini-series on that but I decided just to focus on the paratroopers and to get more into how they liberated Jerusalem like since I'm here right and a lot of the pictures and a lot of the numbers are all available but I went from place to place couldn't have done this without my daughter nearly being behind that but I'm the camera and filming me so I Joe was jumping around Jerusalem to different places to ammunition Hill where there's a the battle early on June 6th when I say early I mean 2:30 in the morning earlier where they fought the Jordanians for four hours and a tremendously difficult battle to take over ammunition Hill and then from there I went up to Mount Scopus to near Hebrew University Anna das hospital so you could look down on the basement of Jerusalem from there and because that's how they came up and then they went along the Mount of Olives ridge so I went there and did a little bit of taping from there then I went down the hill taping them the ride down the hill and trying to feel how the paratroopers I mean how could I ever do that that's really the height of hooks but but you know that the the fear the grief right they'd been fighting this sport like so many people are getting killed around them but also the excitement and the sense of opportunity and the historical moment that's on them as they go into they get permission to liberate the old city and they go in through the Lions Gate so I went in I went into Lions Gate um with and but the the way I'm King Faisal street that the paratroopers went in is now blocked off normally you make that left into this alleyway where there's a whole lot of buildings left from the mama Luke's with the AH block the red and white stone these beautiful buildings there but you go down an alleyway and then these big metal gates and then you could see through them right into the Temple Mount and you could see the Dome of the rock and so normally that's how I go and I take people around there and we can't go in there our border policemen who stand there and don't allow Jews to go in they allow Moslems going now it's even worse the gates are even shut you can't even see into the Temple Mount and Jews have not been allowed on to the Temple Mount since this whole pandemic began which also means that there's a lot of mischief kept happening there and a lot of talk about desecration of an archaeological site that number one maybe archaeological site in the world and it's being desecrated but there's also different rules in play today because we're in the month of ramadhan and so the Muslims are fasting all day and eating at night this is really their holy month and we're being very considerate of that in you know it's interesting because on the one hand it's very very clear that the jihadis to the enemy and the people that want to take over my country are the enemy on the other hand I have a tremendous amount of respect for religion and and for people trying to get closer to God and there's a lot of beauty in Islam as well in terms of giving charity and that spiritual level so there's a lot of not great things in Islam but there's also you know people there's also a lot of really good people who are who Islam has been stolen from them to a great degree so like going to the supermarket this week you know like don't go in the afternoon because that's where they're going to buy things so that they can go home and cook and break the fast and you know I mean as someone who we don't have a month of fasting but we do have our fast days in Judaism and I'm not a great faster so I know that like three four or five o'clock on a fast day you just have no patience and and I get it and especially now it's hot so it's even worse than they're dehydrated and there's also more car accidents because they're on the road rushing to get home from wherever they are so you know there there's a lot of that mix and when you live here in Israel and a good part of our population is Muslim and you feel it you know here in Israel we actually feel their calendar and we feel their holidays because we're living with them and you know we know when there's a run on the food and we know when we should there's going to be a lot of traffic at a certain time of day because they're trying to get home but if you wait till after dark when they're all sitting home eating then the roads I'm talking about specifically now in Judea and Samaria with their villages are in close proximity to ours then you feel in a different way and so yesterday when I was in the old city I also felt it much less definitely obviously less tourists like none there but also just you know a lot of the locals and I was in the Muslim Quarter because Lions Gate go is the beginning of the Via della Rossa but it's the Muslim Quarter yeah I'll talk about all the religions mixing up together and there are different rules in play also for their prayers and for their being able to have their holiday the way they want to have it and much less foot traffic around and again that's because it was high it was Ramadan so you know this is what's going on through my brain and I was disappointed that couldn't get the video that I wanted with the gates were an open side could really show how the paratroopers went in so I had to pivot and do it from a higher place up in the Jewish quarter but all the rooms were closed of the big synagogues because this big synagogues are closed to the roof of the Kaurava which is a great place to take a video or look into the Temple Mount from there I couldn't get up there so I did my best and it was just great to be out and about and to be doing some form of guiding it just made me so happy and and emotional also back to the Kotel where I haven't been for quite a few weeks and and I've spoken about this before on the show that I'm less a I thought until yesterday emotionally connected to the cartel because of some of the ideas that I have about us getting back on the Temple Mount and that's really ground zero for for Judaism where we should be able to go and pray and that's where the temple was and the Kotel is the supporting wall at the temple and I think sometimes people have gone overboard when it comes to the Kotel the coats of the Kotel because they have to be careful also not to worship the stones we go to the Kotel in order to connect with Hashem because the closest that we can get to where Hashem made his presence felt in the world of of the temples way long ago but I surprised myself yesterday and saw the clock sound started to cry and and was happy to get back there after all this time and that kind of I wasn't expecting that and said obviously lots of prayers there for especially for people who are sick and that we should humanity should come out of there this pandemic and keep the good things that we have learned and and maybe change the world for the better maybe this is an opportunity and I know a lot of people are talking about that God is talking to us he might be but I'm not familiar with the language I'm looking just like everybody I'm searching for what this all means I am by no no way shape or form going to say definitively this is the message so am I to be able to say that so I'm searching for personal messages in my own life like maybe I needed to slow down and so I definitely had to slow down although I will say that I am NOT going to do yoga all right people always said to me over the years only had more time you would really love yoga and it's like you have to have patience I am NOT going to get into yoga if this hasn't proven it to me then nothing will okay I love to do the downward dog but I'm not going to do it for an hour I'm not gonna stand on my head I do still not I guess this is my personality and not an issue of not having time I am NOT a yoga person and I find myself not even wanting to have conversations with people who are into yoga who are like so excited because all this isolation has made them better at what they're doing and Here I am like not necessarily getting better at anything that I'm doing just trying to not slip and slide totally into the abyss so it's like okay I know it's fine not happening not in this lifetime so we're all good to go with that but anyway so Who am I to give messages to anybody on really on anything I'm trying to work out my own way so I was a little bit surprised at myself yesterday in a good way because uh because it was good I mean it was just good to come back there and realize that whoa this is still a very very special place I don't worship the stones oh they'll have to say they're going to the cuts like yesterday and touching the stones there's definitely and maybe because they were warm or and worn but there's definitely a special connection getting there not to be worshipped but definitely a place where you could just feel the prayers whizzing by there is a vibe there whatever you want to call it that that you can feel which is which I have felt in other places as well and I've talked about that before some of my most intense prayer times where I felt like Hashem was right there have not happened at the Kotel they usually have to do with something happening with one of my children some of them have not even happened in Israel so I just it guess if you leave yourself open for the messaging if you have the Ted there as they say like the the bandwidth on then you will me maybe if you're lucky or if you're open to it get those messaging I think it's amazing for the people who are feeling that now much more than they have before and that's a beautiful thing if you will a Rashmi moment right the seven years in isolation where he was able to get in touch with a whole other level of mystical Judaism and that's beautiful I'm still struggling with that and I like I'll give you another example and I'm listening to a lot of the different podcasts both from people on the station and not and a lot of articles that are being written about how it's time for the Jews to come home to Israel and if this pandemic isn't giving you that message and if the anti-semitism that's rising rearing its ugly head isn't giving you that message and if the economic slowdown which always whenever their people are under stress or there's cracks in society anti-semitism is going to rear its ugly head and especially in the United States or in the Western world in general there's so much built on materialism and so much built on money so and civilizations tend to fall apart on what they were built on so if there's going to be an economic slowdown or even a depression and at this point we really aren't sure yet was reading yesterday some article economic article are we in a swish are we in like a Nike v where there's been like a little drop and then it there's gonna be a big going up again and the economists they have all kinds of different names if you ask me I can send you the article if you're interesting that exactly what's gonna go on here as we recover are we going to recover is this going to be one long w of ups and downs and ups and downs because maybe the pandemic will come back and we'll have to isolate again and obviously the focus here was the economy and and what's going to happen to countries but yes whenever there is any kind of disruption like that the Jews are really at the forefront but I'm not going to sit here and tell those of my co-religionists who are listening to this show to make aliyah because so don't I mean I happen to think they used to come and I'm here and I've put my entire life's life into this country and it's raising children here and into feeling that this is the most incredible miracle and I want be a part of it even though it is not simple maybe especially because it's not simple and not clear and not and and a lot of you know just to get back for a second to digress back because this is one big digressive show anyway so I mean bhakti Amina and religious Zionism and have we put too much of an emphasis on design isn't right on the does he lumi it's like how it come on Eve translate not necessarily Zionism but but you know there's like the public sphere going into the army and serving the states and believing the state itself is and holy but it's the beginning of that's the beginning of the Gila why it's that it's the CLE it's the vessel that we have to getting to the where the good times will roll and needing to be involved with that but many of us myself included perhaps put too much of an emphasis on the that part of it on the you know being a part of Israeli society and not enough of an emphasis on the Torah world and that's why that this this sector that I belong to is struggling to keep our children involved with Torah and mitzvot and there's a very large shift okay we're children who are raised in religious Zionist homes have kept design ISM but left some of them it's thoughts and some of the religious elements behind as opposed to let's say the heredia ultra-orthodox world which with whatever that you want to say about them and I don't belong to that world and there's a lot of things that bother me about that world but there's also a lot of things that I think are tremendous about that world and one of them is that they are able to keep their kids involved in the religious sphere on a tremendous degree much much higher level than the religious Zionist and maybe it's because they isolate them more okay isolation keeps you away from certain temptations and certain things and when you go into the army and when you go to work in the public sphere then you will be exposed to marvelous Jews who are not necessarily keeping them meat spots and then it's a Jewish country so you can just be Jewish without necessarily keeping the trappings of Judaism and Shabbat in cash roots and the laws of family purity something that a lot of us are struggling with in this place that I am and so yes I've devoted my life to Israel and but I'm not gonna sit and tell people to come here because I don't I'm not gonna beg like if it's not obvious to you it's not obvious to you so don't come you know I know that sounds a little bit harsh but we need you also this is not just a get away from the anti-semites and run and pack your bags before you can't cross the ocean anymore and crystal knox is just around the corner and then maybe you'll get the message and that's all quite possible because things can turn on a dime for sure okay and when mayors of large cities make put out tweets that that like just say you know something against one group of people the ultra-orthodox while other people were also having gatherings and things like that that they shouldn't have been but nothing said about them that's what bothers me you might have realized that is hypocrisy yeah if there's a rule for one person that one group then there should be a rule for another all right so if you're gonna get upset with people because they've been flouting the rules of social distancing and you should they get upset with another group of people who did the same thing don't just focus on one that's what bothers me that's what like we've talked about this before when it comes to Israel as well right so Israel is far from being a perfect country and you're obviously welcome to criticize Israel but then you better damn well criticize other countries do they're doing the same thing or even worse all right so it's the double standards and hypocrisy where you need to raise the warning bells okay so getting back to people making all yeah don't come all right especially if you're praying towards about Israel and Jerusalem and you are Zionist and you're not here I don't understand okay and especially now when things are gonna get worse but I want people to come here because we also need you just to touch back on what I was saying if we have a stronger group here sector here that is able to balance the modern world okay working and all that with a fulfilling meaningful and rich Torah life and integrate that and that's what's missing here in the sector that I live in and if you are able to do that outside the country then in other countries then come here and do it here because we need do it's a piece that's missing here a very big piece that's missing here instead of sitting complaining and saying well but if I moved to Israel my kids might not be religious a very valid incidentally a very valid thing to say all right absolutely because that's one of the issues that we're dealing with here is well I could just be Jewish and not have to be the other so I can slip on you know on some of the religious things then come here and make it better because that's the responsibility to your people if you feel that that's the proper way to live and Israel is the country of the Jews for then come and do it here I'm not going to beg you to make alia you need us we need you come if you want to I can't imagine living anywhere else and I feel sorry for people who don't see that yesterday after doing the filming I was with my daughter and her husband they the ones that got married at the end of February right before this whole thing happened which was in retrospect just an incredible thing and we ate pizza I love pizza okay because I had to thank her for helping me all day I didn't have to but I wanted to so I treated them to pizza and it was such good pizza yes this is possibly one of the reasons that I've lost the one kilo but not the second but I was really good I had only had a fruit shake in the morning so I had the calories save for the pizza such good pizza sourdough dough and four different kinds of cheese this wasn't like your slot GP so I love pizza I'll admit it there like definitely a food a comfort food and they've had onions on it and mushrooms which are my favorite so we had this really good pizza but they live in in the near the open-air market muffin a hooter in Jerusalem and so afterwards I went I went shopping for some fruit and the apricots are out so last time that I was in the market there were no apricots the apricot season is very very short it's like two weeks so even though the price is a little higher than I would like to pay I was like 15 shekels a kilo I guess that isn't terrible it's not going to break the bank at this point even though I have no income I think I could spring for some apricots and and they were just so beautiful and you know reminder of the things are still growing I can look out in my back yard I've got a cherry tree and have a pomegranate tree and Plumtree and the fruits are there and they're growing probably won't get any because the birds usually get to them way before we do because it's a whole big thing and expensive thing to net the trees but just enjoying enjoying the fruits and this is the land of fruits right be fruitful multiply but Israel is definitely the land of trees and the land of fruit and many of our seven species are fruits right five out of the seven and so just enjoying walking around the market and the beautiful watermelons and and it's also getting back on its feet just a little bit and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that over ninety percent I would say of people are wearing masks so even though we're out and about on Thursday I also I was in the southern covering Hills doing some filming for video tours for virtual video tours for the winners rail fund and I was in at the Chocolate Factory in the holy kick a factory my left her there and then went to one of the ranchers down in my own and ended the day at the dreamy a winery in sucia so it's just a beautiful day and you can almost pretend because I'm trying to get out a little more and do these virtual things almost pretend that things are back to normal almost but but the truth is we still have to be careful and stay you know far from people I'm trying I'm really trying but injures from I saw and I myself except for when I was filming was wearing a mask and I would say even well over 90% of people it's rare to see somebody who wasn't wearing a mask and that was really good to see because um you know this is like a danger time and we want to get out and the weather is so beautiful and there's that springtime in the air and and you could the nationalist parks are starting to reopen and they're talking about the restaurants but at least you can do take out the pizza was take out and um you know you're just slowly slowly slowly kind of climbing out but people are still wary and my husband who's a physician says it's got a lot of patients coming in with a lot of anxiety because coming out of the isolation right so there was anxiety in when we were in isolation but now that we're coming out of it there's also an there's possibly even more anxiety because now you're out in the danger zone right you're not go stay in your house all the time you got to get out but where is it coming from and so even though some of the schools are open a lot of the parents including my daughter and not sending their kids back yet until they see what's going on if there's going to be another outbreak how hygienic everything is you know and still older people like including my mother not accepting visitors is there really in a high risk category so we got again find that balance again slowly slowly moving our way out of there still keeping an eye on the testing and how many people are getting sick and where they're you know the difficult zones are let's say like the nursing homes or some of the different neighborhoods that still their numbers are too high even though it is really unbelievable what the numbers are here in Israel and puh-puh-puh and I don't want to say anything but definitely the numbers of fatalities and every death was a tragedy for everybody around them of obviously and that goes without saying but the numbers nowhere near what we had feared them to be because of Hashem always because of Hashem because of good leadership that shut us down early obviously that's also a factor because of really a lot of discipline when it came to the social distancing here and to stay in to the isolation even though obviously a lot of it was in the news that people who didn't do what they were supposed to do but for to a great degree in a society that a lot of times was considers itself undisciplined and not willing to always listen to the rules really a lot of people did stay and their apartments are still are staying in their homes are not going out so I'm out because I'm out but also wearing the mask trying to be safe obviously can always do better hoping that I won't get sick hoping more I think that I don't get sick that I don't get other people sick cuz that would really be terrible and just you know just so many unknowns out there it's it's really so frightening and we don't know about the statistics because the statistics are all over the place if somebody died with Cova does that mean that they died of kovat not the same thing and a lot of the you know the numbers that are out there that are being bandied about that will never really be able to get a handle on because no one's ever really going to know anyway I think I've me and 'red over here on a lot of different topics and so I thank you for listening and I also thank you for writing I got a lot of beautiful notes after that especially after the Gil Hoffman interviewed last week which wasn't such an easy interview and I think and and I'm glad especially because he's a friend and I'm glad that many of you appreciated the sensitivity with which we dealt with the topic of his mother's death if you haven't heard the interview go back and listen to it and also love the feedback on some of the other people that I've interviewed and had here over the last few weeks I really do love your feedback I also need some advice from those of you listening that's not just about the cord from my macbook air so that I can get better better Wi-Fi and internet quality when I do my zooming but I'm thinking of signing up for patreon to be able to if people want to you know give a little donation to cover the podcast that would most definitely be appreciated and I know that other people do that I've been loath to do that for a while now I've been told that I really should and that that the content if the content is important to you then to be able to do that so if anybody has suggestions though I really have PayPal but they take a lot of money they take like a high percentage so I've been suggested patreon if any of you have advice though on what um app or however it works whatever you have called apps probably not the right word to to get people to donate to the podcast that would be amazing I'm not sending you to my website as I normally do because I had the people that put my show on my website and really they take care of my website I did have to put on unpaid leave because when I'm not guiding and not earning so I can't afford you to do that and I don't have the brains to be able to do it myself so if you want to listen to old podcasts or be in touch with me first of all just be in touch with me straight Eve at the Land of Israel com just writes me directly and if you want to listen to a podcast we'll go obviously into the network and and they're all there they're also up on soundcloud and and if you're a new listener then this was an unusual show this you get like every six months or so when all these thoughts just build up and I spill them out usually it is an interview with buddy that I find interesting and very often find out they you also found that person interesting and that's cool and I've got a list of people that I'm gonna be having on in the next few weeks people whose books I've read whatever doing some research that I find fascinating and and that looks like it's gonna be the way that we go here in this in this virtual world coming out through our computers but it's more than Rashmi had although maybe he wouldn't have written been able to write the tsar had he had all the noise coming into his cave so but it is what it is and here we are in 2020 5780 with the tools that we have and and using them and hopefully gaining from them and and learning from them and not wasting too much time because there's also the possibility of doing that so with much much thanks to Ben in to Tabitha who keep this show going out and I appreciate that so much especially as I've said Tabitha but the house house full of kids not so easy to be able to do that and I really do appreciate those who enable me to get my voice out and those of you who are listening so take care everybody all right get well stay well whatever it takes we're all gonna get through this somehow apart but together Eve Harrow rejuvenation on the Land of Israel Network broadcasting unloggable home air from a smoke under a smoke free sky once landed in Israel on like boomer and it was like actually landed through a cloud of smoke so very nice to not have that today remember planes use the land and everything's right rebel ah we'll get back to it one day and hopefully to a better world so really take care everybody thank you so much for listening so much appreciate it