Fri, March 18, 2011 8:33:36 AMshabbat shalom 18.03.11 ...
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| Linda Olsvig-Whittaker |
| Hi everyone, I was hoping for a peaceful weekend after the stresses of the week, and indeed was snoring away contentedly when I was wakened at about 3 am this morning by the unmistakable mewling of newborn baby kittens in my wardrobe. (We usually don't have closets in this country; instead we have large free-standing pieces of furniture designed to store clothing, called an "aron" in Hebrew, literally an ark.) Well, this ark had a mother cat and three kittens. She is a wild cat that comes for food and obviously decided my bedroom is just the place for her kittens. She looked at me calmly while I picked up her little bundles of joy and took a look at them. I had thought that might happen and had resolved to drown the babies as soon as they were born, but when I held these tiny squirming fur-balls in my hands, so weak and trusting, I didn't have the heart to do it. So cursing mildly in a few languages, I pulled out the soiled sheets, got the new family a decent cat basket, closed the wardrobe door on them and sighed. I've seen enough about death this week; it's not a time to drown kittens. But MOM has some surgery scheduled at the vet at the nearest possible date! This is the Purim season in Israel. Purim is the Feast of Esther, when the Book of Esther is recited. It usually falls around Mardi Gras, and like Mardi Gras, is a holiday when people wear costumes and drink themselves silly. Both holidays are rooted in ancient pagan spring festivals, notably the Saturnalia, when master and slaves changed places, and no questions were asked about where people spent their days - or nights. Purim isn't quite a Saturnalia but there sure is some serious drinking going on, bottles even passed around in the synagogues, and the local AA's get worried. There will be meetings around the clock over Purim here in Jerusalem, and the AA's also organize a safe, sober Purim party for members and friends, with no alcohol. It used to bother me a lot in early sobriety; now I just go and enjoy until I get itchy and then I leave. My early radar system is fairly reliable these days, and I know when the booze is going to get me nervous. Purim is a bittersweet time in Israel. In the past we had a lot of bombings around this time, when the weather improved and people were out on the streets for the first time in months. This week was no exception. There were brutal murders in the remote West Bank settlement of Itamar, where two terrorists broke in and slashed the throats of a mother, father, and three children as they slept in their beds. Although this was quickly upstaged in the news by the earthquake and related events in Japan, the world was briefly horrified. Now we may have a little tsunami of our own, as settlers retaliate. And the beat goes on..... Like everyone else, we are glued to the news coming out of Japan, not least because my congregation has a sister congregation in Sendai. As my pastor noted in his weekly newsletter: "We have very dear brothers and sisters in Japan and we must lift them up before the Lord and ask Him to protect and save our brothers and all of Japan from any harm or damage. We ask you to pray for the family of Pastor Tokio Tanaka and his family members who are still unaccounted for. Their church was by the seashore and located at the hard-hit area. Please pray for he and his family and his church. Pastor Tokio Tanaka was actually praying for the salvation of Israel and the Jewish people for seventy years. "I also ask you to pray for Pastor Takashi Yokoyama who lived in Sendai and had businesses in Sendai. I believe that he is alive, but we don't know much about his house, his businesses and his family. "The least that we can do is lift all of Japan before the Lord in prayer and just relay on God to prove and show His mercy and grace to all of Japan. We pray for the authorities to have the wisdom how to shut-down the nuclear plants in Fukushima. We pray and ask God to find solutions for the hundreds of thousands of refugees who's lives where cast into limbo from the minute that the earthquake and Tusnami struck. We pray for those who grieve in for their lost and dead relatives in Japan. We pray for those who are searching for survivors and those who are working in the nuclear plants to be protected from any harm. We pray for our brothers and sisters in Tokyo for both protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit to know how to witness and comfort their friends and relatives with the Good News God and Yeshua the Messiah." With sister congregations scatted around the world from Finland to Korea to Brazil, we often connect faces and names with world events far away from Israel. This is especially true for Japan, where Christians have been so lovingly supportive of Israel over the decades, sometimes when it seemed like everyone else had turned their backs on us. Japanese visitors come here every year by the thousands, and many end up visiting our congregation, young people working as volunteers especially. I think we feel a debt of friendship and support, to give back to the Japanese people some of the help and love they gave us over the years. When the first effects of this disaster are over, there will still be years of recovery, and that is when strong people like the Japanese are likely to despair. We Israelis will have to stand by them in support for years to come, even as they have supported us. I think we are prepared to do that. We just have to learn how. This week was the first fine spring weather, and I couldn't stand sitting indoors any longer. On Tuesday I drove down to En Fescha oasis, near Qumran, along with a friend who works as a nurse and also doesn't get out very much. The staff were expecting me, I was in the Nature and Parks Authority uniform, and was simply given a key to the gate for the restricted third of the nature reserve and turned loose to prowl. I haven't been out like that, for ages. My friend was a little bit afraid to be in the bush but there is nothing in the oasis to hurt you except quicksand and I wasn't going in those areas. My nose started twitching and I was in field biologist mode within a few minutes; even my friend knew enough to stop chatting and start watching. I've been working on En Feshcha more than a decade and will continue monitoring it, so I was alert to changes and taking some pictures of the more interesting developments. We walked around for a couple hours and then went to Qumran for lunch. My friend confessed such work was too lonely for her, but when I saw her today, she also told me she had not had any problems with depression (a nagging difficulty she has) since we were in the field. I told her to keep getting out, it is therapeutic. This is quite true by the way. I have a Dutch friend, a forester, that I essentially cured of his depression by dragging him around in the field in Israel for two weeks in spring. He had been unable to work full days for two years before he came here and when he went home he was able to do regular work with no further problems. When I visited him in Holland, his boss asked me what on earth I had done to cure him. When I told her that I had just dragged the guy all over the desert, she grinned and asked if she could send some more of her staff! I also notice a day in the field does me a world of good and I feel better today than I have in months. This means it will be very important to keep on doing field work if I am not to go completely rotten with office work. I can't do the kind of day I did twenty years ago, but I can get out there and do something. And will. shabbat shalom, Linda |
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