תהא שנה עם בריאות, ברכה, ביטחון ובשורות טובות!
May it be a year of health, blessings, security, and only good news!
I decided to move to Beer Sheva to avoid the long commutes to Ben-Gurion University from Jerusalem for my last semester. Here's my new home. I left behind my incredible friends and spectacular capital city, all of which I came to know so well during 3+ years mostly living in the Baka neighborhood. The heavenly scent of those jasmine flowers was all over the air leading up to my move.
This last month I was preoccupied by my beloved Texas Rangers on their run as close to a World Series title as you can possibly get without hoisting that trophy. October baseball in Israel means many late nights, and several replays of games missed during Shabbat and חגים/chagim/holidays (three this time around). It also means being awake in the middle of the night and hearing the Muslim call to prayer echoing across town at about 4 am. It meant a couple nights enjoying the game with fellow Far North Dallas natives, and teaching my Israeli girlfriend baseball (Game 6 of the World Series was her unusually dramatic Baseball 101 course).
Dear Dad, you said at the beginning of this season that you believed Texas would take a step back before it could take a step forward. In the end you were slightly off--while we only won one World Series game last year, this year we won three. You lived to see this great team win its first six games, and they made an epic run to Game 7. Mom saw our boys pound Detroit 15-5 in Game 6 of the ALCS (finally a Dallas team beat Detroit in the playoffs after the Lions pummeled our Cowboys in '91 and the Red Wings owned the Stars like a million times). Aron and his Dad caught Holland's gem in Game 4 of the World Series, Standing Up for You as part of the Stand Up To Cancer campaign.
But the St. Louis Cardinals managed to shorten my life with their timeliest of hitting, pitching and defense (I'll shortly be returning that top-shelf bottle of champagne I purchased in hopes of a toast 32 years in the waiting). Hats off and special congrats to my friend from way back at a USY convention and then a taglit trip 3 years ago, Kenny from StL, who deserved a celebration while recovering from surgeries. Another big advantage of living in Beer Sheva, which sports a relatively minimal community of Americans, is that baseball is way off the radar here. So while I don't have the support of fellow Texans whose gut was decked by the Cards, I can just avoid the whole topic pretty darn easily here.
While the Cardinals were merely doing their job of giving everything they had to earn the title, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and all the gang in Gaza are literally trying to shorten my life by launching rockets all over the south. After I finished watching the replay of Game 7 on Saturday night, I heard that a father of four in Ashkelon had been killed by a terrorist rocket. That'll put a sports loss in perspective pretty quickly.
And a mere five days after my move to my new home in Beer Sheva, I just received my official "Welcome to Beer Sheva" from the likes of Islamic Jihad (I was in town for two of their rockets in one day back in March). When the siren was sounded here, I joined a friendly group of students in the shelter. The procedure is to wait for ten minutes after the sounding of the siren before heading back up. I bonded with Nir over Dallas sports (I informed him of the ugly Cowboys loss last night; he gave me "much respect" for the Mavs. Thank G-d he's also oblivious to baseball). He laughed off the sprint to the shelter and with the typical Israeli dark sense of humor said "נתראה במקלט/nitra'eh ba'miklat/see you in the shelter!" Yediot Acharonot newspaper is reporting that the rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome system. Folks all over Israel question the extremely expensive system's worth, but it may have just saved my apartment from being blown up. I'd say that's worth it!
So while America's national pastime is baseball, and Israel's national pastime is celebrating שמחות/s'machot/joyous celebrations (I celebrated friend Ben (on the left)'s wedding last night in Jerusalem), the Palestinian Islamic terrorist national pastime is killing Jews. Gilad Shalit has been freed...Israel celebrated the restoration of a family; 1027 Palestinian prisoners, collectively responsible for the deaths of 600 Israelis and for wounding thousands, have been/will be freed...the resounding Palestinian response was a call for more terror and taking more Israelis hostage (here the "moderate" Abu Mazen applauded Hamas for kidnapping Shalit). Now, simply for the sake of killing Jews, the Gaza terrorist organizations have decided to send another several-days-long round of rockets across Israel's south. That's just what they do. Thank G-d they're usually unsuccessful, but may that father of four's memory be a blessing (and may the Ashdod school that was directly hit Saturday be repaired quickly). And the irony here is I'm joined in the campus bomb shelters by many Arab students. You may remember that some victims of Hezbollah terror rockets in 2006 included Arab Israelis.
I'll just go back to living and celebrating life, writing papers, and heading back to class tomorrow (assuming the rocket situation doesn't escalate). In St. Louis, a rain delay pushed the games back, putting the ball back into the Cards' ace Carpenter's hand for Game 7. In Beer Sheva, class was cancelled yesterday at the university, and yesterday and today at the city's schools. So we'll stay tuned (the university sends out text messages for "rocket days").
As they say in Israel's south these days, שיהיה שקט/sh'yihiyeh shaket/may it be quiet. I've already taken advantage of the convenience of living on campus. I only have about four more
months of this experience--sometimes you just have to take a deep breath, lie down on the grass on campus, and watch the clouds float by. As you can see, I'm a happy man back in the south--Islamic Jihad be damned!
Greetings from the computer lab (which doubles as a bomb shelter). Peace and love unto all y'all,
אריק/Eric
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