Rejuvenation: The Dark Side of Tel Givon

[Music] hi everybody Chev lot of this is a pero on rejuvenation for Atlanta visual network it is a beautiful beautiful beautiful Sunday morning in the land of a shelf April 28th 2019 the 23rd day of Nisan 57 79 might be hearing birds chirping in the background I'm sitting in with the window open you might also be hearing the dulcet tones of my washer and dryer working full capacity after he towels and sheets and all times very very busy things going on in the house with children and grandchildren I hope all of you listening who celebrated the Passover holiday had a wonderful new home you know for holidays I worked hard as I usually do inside there at home in the kitchen or out diving but it's a very very special week started off paling last Sunday it was the day that I decide to do things with my family until we went up into goats she though area we did a glass workshop that my weeks that I've taken people to but never take mention so that was great it was really good that we planned something indoors because we had just started saying more Eva's house which is of course the prayer that we start saying first day of Passover as the winter segues into the spring that should stop raining and it should just be due and then it was hailing so Pesa itself just encapsulated that transition over from winter into spring and now it's a beautiful day and anybody any one of us have allergies hay fever now taking that because everything is blooming but it was really more about the holiday in a minute news coming in still about the tragedy in San Diego as I was cleaning up last night moving the house back from all the Passover dishes back to the regular the news came in of the shooting at the Habad synagogue in San Diego as I'm taping this there is confirmed one person dead and and three others injured I was just talking with people over the holiday about Chabad its traditional to give more charity the week before Passover for people who can't afford the meals and can't afford to have the holiday so those of us who are blessed to be able to do that to be able to give and not receive so - I actually gave to two different cloud organizations that week one is international kebab because I know that anywhere in the world where there are people who want to have a Passover Seder be it the thousands not exagerating of trekkers of Jewish and Israeli trekkers who are let's say nopal are in places very very far from an organized Jewish life there's Claude going to make a seder for them but also here in Israel where they take care of poor people really a tremendous organization I travel a lot and how about is always there to be there just to be there for people who need not just kosher food but even more than that to a great degree there they're really ambassadors for the Jewish people all over the planet and so and then you know to hear about this maniac and San Diego and is this Pittsburgh all over again and what is going on except we know what is going on so first of all wishing whoever was injured a very speedy recovery wishing the community the ability to deal with the trauma because very often it's this who was hurt but there are many many people who are emotionally hurt as well and hopefully someone's getting in there and is taking care of them as well we have all too much too much experience here in Israel with what they're going through and so like that's you know how we ended Passover holiday here in Israel was hearing what was happening with our co-religionists on the other side of the world and of course I'm from Los Angeles so anything that happens in California like it's an immediate blink from me but anyway I so I was talking about Passover a little bit it's just just so funny I you know I have a like a finger idea on my phone I know a lot of people do just tells you how much like cleaning and how many detergents have passed my fingers that my finger ID will not work this morning it's like whatever rubs off on my thumb or whatever it is the identification it isn't there anymore we'd have to wait for that to grow back so but in addition to all that I did I did some guiding I was up and though I was in the old city last week with a family right at we got in there right after the beautiful Priestly Blessing at the cartel the last remains of the surrounding the supporting wall of the second temple through the Western mall and so the place was just packed I mean it was just an amazing thing to see so many people there just a beautiful thing not just tourists but also Israelis who come up and the whole plaza if you've seen pictures or hopefully if you've been there just packed you could not move which is you can look at it and be annoyed like why there's so many people here and you look at it and go wow there are so many people here who would have thought a few years ago it's just an incredible thing and then spent a day also up in the shomron in Samaria with family and then was on a1 Israel fund bus that I had organized a trip on Wednesday in my home area of gush etzion sorry that was Ash look of much-needed coffee and the the theme of the day was pioneers of gush etzion pioneers of the area people who how do what how would I put it let's say put the cart before the horse okay in the absence of proper leadership both political and otherwise in this area in Judea where the Jews living here are under military rule and the laws here are just not normal as they should be which is again why the push Fran for annex in Judea and Samaria for putting Israeli launched in Samara so where do you think I started my full bus up with where else would I do that but at the ranch at our event ranch with our guys with ari and Jeremy with their families and we planted trees people donated money we planted about 30 trees everybody you know they took them around and spent a couple hours there it's amazing thing to see people were just like blown away vote by the vision by the excitement by the passion that our boys have and it was a really great place to start the day Rachel and some club luck from last week's interview and well I got some great mail thank you for your feedback people were just so touched by their story and so they came up they had they were at the Dead Sea for the week but they came up to the ranch with my or and with your care frame it so everybody got to see him heard a little bit of their story but I pretty much directed them to the podcast but they brought their selves of Jerusalem with them and totally sold out everything they had it was just great and and people really got to see them to talk to the to you know get their information to be able to use them as resources for what unfortunately what they've learned but this is what happens here is people go through or not just here everywhere you go through tough times and what you do with it is what's going to make the difference and so they want to move that on as we heard last week so that was that was great that we went over to hub its young and to my friend and she also does all my media stuff Rachel Moore and she talked about her initiative in starting a hub here at work space for people here in Gush Etzion and now that she has done it other people are doing it and that I think the government is also coming in and helping and so again in an area where nothing like that was going on she pushed through and she and now people are following her and then we went to OHS Vega on to the beautiful park and forest that was completely rehabilitated after the three boys were murdered a few years ago in their name that's awes but go on and Nadia Matar who's who's the main person who got all that done was going to meet us except she had a very good reason for not being there which is that she was at the breech of her grandson her daughter had a boy the week before nod you picked up the phone right away like I think within a few minutes and said I'm not gonna make it next week to meet your group it there's a really good reason why best reason why and some was all tough to their whole family but we were there and we looked around and we saw what happens again when people take initiative after the three boys were killed there was a lot of confusion and anger among the youth here and fear and she and others channel that into rehabilitating a forest which was just more than a junkyard and into a beautiful place it's a park it's just absolutely beautiful so we were there we had a picnic lunch and then we had a wine tasting with Yossi's Webner who has a very small winery here in the Judean Hills also fulfilling the blessing of the tribe of Judah just about fifty five hundred bottles there's Webner winery it's going to be hard for you guys to find it but it's been a boutique wine and really amazing and he's won awards for that and he was speaking to us about because it's you don't go into winemaking to make money but he's doing this in making fine wine which by the way on his bottles he labels Bethlehem because you said it cannot be that Bethlehem is associated either with the Palestinian Authority or with Christianity when eight is a biblical Jewish City of course David we're going to be reading in a few weeks michiel a told the scroll of Ruth the Book of Ruth happens all around Bethlehem and he said he's branding Bethlehem once again is a place for for kosher wines and for and for you know Jews making wine and for him it's also part of the resurgence of Jewish culture in this part of the world it's a good part of what people are known for for their culture is the food and the drink that they produce you give an example that we all think of Italian cuisine we think of pasta and tomatoes right neither of which source out of Italy so but it's they've made it their own and so he's not just making wine he's also creating new or going back to a cultural identity for the Jews and then we heard from giddy Kelman from stable eyes which is a small community currently without permission to be there where they're building their houses just outside of Nevada al right near the patriarchs route there ten Roman miles from Jerusalem they overlook all of Jerusalem stabilized of course I mean in the fields of Baz again harking back to the biblical connection and with their building their homes and he has Timur there and he's a world-class carpenter and they're doing what needs to be done and making sure that what we look around here and see all this illegal era building so we make sure that the Jews are also building and doing what we can in this kind of nebulous region right now or as I keep saying and we'll keep saying it till it gets straightened out where the laws are all over the place so people who have entered a situation and are not looking to the left and to the right or up for someone to tell them what to do but are doing it themselves little people little people who for me or people and for whom it's really an honor to be associated with that these are the times that we're living in that you have to look around be good people see what has to be done see what it is in a good way that you that Hashem wants us to do as we've returned to our land and in terms of building so we ended up the day with who would you think of course Jenna and her Jacob's sheep and so my my my flock on the bus got to meet part of her flock I think she brought Ruth out with her and that was one of the sheep that they met and again somebody who's taken an initiative and of course you heard about her a couple of weeks ago on this show so it was a really interesting day the next day I went with my husband on a special trip that was done during the intermediate days of Passover were they the country the army very much tries to open up places that we can't normally get to like Sebastian run for example which is in the heart of the shimron was the capital of the the Kingdom of Israel so that was open for three days I was busy I didn't get it to get up there this time even though it's one of my favorite places to go and one of my most frustrating more on that in a minute but I'd signed us up for a trip to tell give on to the biblical give on it is an absolute correct identification because there are there are Ostrow color or pottery there we'd have which have on it gimel bet i in noon which in ancient hebrew which is Kevon so a better identification that you don't get some of you might be familiar with given when it comes to hashem ish be given dumb right when joshua and everybody right around this time just about 3,300 years ago our thought our battling here battling Canaanites and the Sun stand still over qivana Shemesh be given dumb but there is so much other history there it's where the tabernacle goes after she Lo has destroyed the Ark of the Covenant it's where Solomon asks for window for wisdom and gets a nose and cavity gets a listening heart which is so much greater than that and so much more history was in the tribe of Benjamin it is where Saul's family is very interesting so we took a tour there we sign up for a tour let me just get back to that because this is my frustrating part so we had four buses for bulletproof buses and 130 I'm not exaggerating a hundred and thirty soldiers and border policemen who were either with us are all around us to protect us and this is where my blood started boiling because tel given is not like you feel like you're going into a foreign country but you're not it is just north of Jerusalem I see it all the time when I'm in that Assam well on the high hill when I'm guiding and there be some well and we looked down into the northern part of Jerusalem it's kind of sandwiched between Jerusalem and Ramallah the Jewish communities of mugie Vaughn of givat Zev right there but for reasons that still remain unclear to me and also why these people have not been thrown out of every kind of public position possible the architects of the accursed Oslo Accords in the early 1990s who gave this tremendous tell this tremendous archaeological site to the Palestinian Authority hence the need for bulletproof buses and all these soldiers protecting us now it's not that we went into their village and they were told to stay in their houses with their doors shut and leave us alone more went around their tell no we drove through the village al jeeb which is at that's given and that's how you would say it in Arabic and and that's also part of the whole area we drive through there there running around the little kids lays no problem and I have no problem with that and we have to be like thieves in the night protected and understandably protected because just like in San Diego or just like in other places it's the bad guys with the guns who kind of rule the day okay and so there was reason to feel that we would be attacked of course the reason to feel being attacked a group of Jews on their holiday wanting to go visit an ancient site that's mentioned in the Bible and it's all part of our history of course we should be attacked right like we're asking for it okay so this is where my anger came in and you can see it's a few days later and I'm still really really really upset so there's work to be done here my feeling is we should have been able to drive in my feeling is that it should be just an open site and that archaeologists should also be able to work there because we got got there it's incredible site you have all these huge pits it was it was an enormous winemaking area and so we have these with a yeah keV like you have a huge wine er wine area were where I like the pits were and there were a pottery that was found there were these big jugs more really than anywhere else and hold a couple of water installations like you have also that say Megiddo and in cuts or for those of you who have toured the land where you go down many many many stairs cut into the rock until you get to the water that's coming out inside you know like an interior spring where the water is going to be running all year because as we can feel now we've the next six months we're not going to have rain and that's how people were able to survive but you do it inside your wall town and therefore you can get your water safely so I went down into one of these tunnels it is full like was stairs my thighs are killing me for two days afterwards it was stairs now it's really not so much stairs anymore you kind of slide down into this into this water going down tens and tens of stairs a bunch of us did my husband who's not so fond of dark places below ground so he waited for me with some of the other people up on the top and and it's full of garbage so this is a site that should be could be a major tourism site definitely needs more archaeology done there because there are still places that haven't been found you know like underneath there that we know of and still a lot of question marks about who cut what when like there's a an underground tomb it's a you know clearly a place where there was burial that at some point was turned into an Olive Press also you can see still were they where they would put the major beam for putting as opposed to grapes for you know putting heavy heavy beam and weights in order to crush the olives for oil and still a lot of questions that are not that are not clear about who when was it well we would say mid bronze was it Iron Age which is Kingdom monarchy and when and who and there's layers of destruction is that layers from Joshua is that layers from because I guess big Eve are that the story right at the end of the book of Judges even though probably happens earlier than the end of the book of Judges but that's of the book of Judges ends up with the story of the Benjamin Knights being almost completely wiped out by the other tribes and then reconstituting themselves which is the theory of jabo of Zev Ehrlich who is the guide that we were with who's one of my favorite guides I'm not going to be able to interview him though because his English isn't good enough but he's just phenomenal and his theory that the family of Saul who's associated with that area go look it up and chronicles India very I mean like settled in different villages there because you know they would needed to like get the land back some stories just don't change over time so just so much there and so much junk the air village next door just treats it as a garbage dump I'm sure they do digging there for artifacts whenever they cancer for them it's win-win you can despoil and put down and disrespect a biblical site you can turn it into your garbage dump and you can also maybe mine it if you want for for things that then you can steal and then it ruins the archaeology and it's just win-win all the way around but the fact that successive governments have let this continue and also as I mentioned in places like sham Ronan sebastio to me is just not understandable it's just not understandable we are so strong we're so strong so why do we let this happen why do we let ourselves be humiliated like this and let history really be erased it is so incredibly upsetting and I just hope that as the new government is formed and I really haven't been paying attention to what what's been going on I've been doing my day to day but as the new government is formed you have people in key places who will stop this kind of travesty so that we don't dust and the next time that I don't want to go to give on I could just drive up there go around say hi to the archaeologists even as I've done in other places like let's say with dr. Scott stripling and she'll o be able to go and interview the archeologist who's there without worrying mattering the reason that Scott's tripling and others can dig and she Lo and na Maya Halle Mack who I have altered also interviewed you can can can dig up in tell able maja up in the north is because Israel's control of these places and so we can get there and people and scientists can get there and and do what we need to do and when I get to places and one and I'm incredibly grateful to the army and to the it's all the soldiers into the border policemen who ensured that we're going there I'm in no way upset with them quite the opposite it's also their holiday and instead of them being out at the beach or them going around and smelling the flowers or hiking up in the north and seeing all the beautiful waterfalls are being with their families there they're protecting astana so I have tremendous gratitude to all the security forces who this entire week all over the land made sure that pretty much everybody came home safely at least you know they can't prevent people from falling off cliffs or dehydrating or doing things that always happen but in terms of keeping us safe here from people who are constantly trying to hurt us and not just here in Israel but also where you are this is happening and so we need to take a minute to thank all our security and intelligence forces for doing what they do it's inevitable that something's going to slip through let's say like what happens in San Diego but but here in Israel given the loonatics around us or not lunatics maybe that would be giving them credit the very bad and evil people around us and within us who are constantly trying to disrupt daily life so really tremendous thank you to all of those people who made sure that the vast majority of the people who did - Liam who did trips around the land this last week came home safely but it's just very frustrating for me that it has to be like this and we looked there from the TEL we looked out onto one of the air villages nearby and they told us that that's where knocked on waxman for those of you who remember 20 fall most 25 years ago the soldier that was kidnapped and killed during the rescue attempt Esther Waxman his mother went on to to become a speaker some of you might have heard of her and and so that was the village where he was held and just like you know they are gonna be bad people and they're things that we can't stop and then they're also decisions that are made that are just so stupid and what were people thinking and how do you not understand what it is here in the Middle East which is carve a safe space for yourself and protect it with what you've got with everything you've got and don't give it up to anybody else and if anything really points out that story so well it's the story of the original given Knights who trick Joshua and the Israelites into having a treaty with them and therefore don't don't get the punishment that they deserve for being the enemy and and and we've got to go and help them in their battles and so much of what goes on in the past still resonates today they the the stories the people maybe the what we're wearing right in the context of the times change but there's certain essence of things that just in the same place that come back over and over and over again and if you're going to have a peace treaty with people and I certainly hope that we do and we'll hold out our hands all the time to our neighbors make sure that they don't have security control all right that they're not the ones who can dictate whether you live or die and that they we all get the benefits of having a nice relationship but they don't get to decide where you go and how you go and if you need to be protected when you go there and that is just like beyond so that was Eve's peeve for today I am on the way out again it is Sunday morning but too late late Tuesday night I'm leaving Israel just for a few days Mizrahi or religious scientists of America as you might recall last year I was in Beverly Hills so they have this next Rabat they are sending well over 70 people all around the world now not just North America and Canada to speak about Israel because next week is our Independence Day so this year I'm going to be a congregational have Shalom in Merrick Long Island that's next weekend that's Shabbat May 3rd and 4th and then I'm also going to be going to Teaneck New Jersey to congregation Bonet yixuan on Sunday morning May 5th to do a presentation probably the same one that I did in Phoenix which I absolutely love a PowerPoint that I put a lot of time into it at Israel so if you're around in either of those areas I would love to see you and you can go oh is you can go into my website and see what my schedule is planning a trip to North America the first week in September because the holidays are not late this year I mean the holidays are late this year according to the Gregorian calendar but of course according to the weather and the Land of Israel the holidays are right on time but Russia Shanmugam Kippur the holidays are not going to be until October on that calendar and so I'm going to be sneaking and I think at the end of the summer beginning of September a quick trip to the States nothing else planned from now until then one of my daughter's is due to have a baby in July some doing some little trips around going to Greece with my granddaughter's doing couple things like that but other than that kind of staying in the Middle East at least right for now but things change and sometimes I get an email and somebody want me somewhere so I'll go so be in touch and if you think that this voice and what I have to say about our journey is something that you would like your community to hear in person then be in touch Eve at the Land of Israel dot-com I want to thank Ben and Tabitha as usual and all the people here on the station for allowing me to vent to end to interview and to do some of the things that I do and to all of you for listening and for being in touch and giving your feedback I so appreciate it I really do but now I've got to be off got a lot of things to do in the next couple of days that were kind of in abeyance over the holiday but I've got again before I leave in a couple of days so I will be back though God willing next week Eve rejuvenation the Land of Israel Network take care everybody goodbye for now