View From Efrat: April 2011

Irma, Bandit and I have been living in Israel for one year, now. People ask us how we feel about the change. Well, I can only speak for myself, but Irma pretty much agrees, although she might use different words. (You’d have to ask Bandit directly, but she acts happy.)

My feelings are related to the teaching of a Rabbi of antiquity, Rabbi Jacob, who said:
“better is one hour of blissfulness of spirit in the World to Come than the whole life of this world."

I feel that, although I had a good life prior to moving to Israel, the year I’ve spent here, because of the increased spirituality of the land and the people, is better than the world we left behind. In fact, there is such a high level of spirituality attached to the land, that three of the world’s major religions started here.

That’s not to say we don’t have good feelings about what and whom we left behind. On the contrary, we do. We left behind some very special people, friends and relatives in Colorado, Florida and Michigan. We are grateful for the love and help and friendship that we experienced, and that we continue to experience with them.

But, as I might have said about sixty years ago, “enough of the mushy stuff.” What else is there about living in Israel?

For one thing, Israel is a very modern, technically advanced country. That means it has modern cars, busses, trains, highways and planes. Israel also has cell phones and computers and modern medicine. In fact, Israel is the world’s leader in cell phone and computer and medical technologies. So, we have all of today’s modern goodies.

On the other side, Israel’s history goes back farther than that of probably any other country in the world. Our connection with this land goes back about 4000 years. Our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were walking the hills and valleys just outside my window 4000 years ago. They are buried about 25 miles south of here.

People from various civilizations have tried to conquer, murder or convert our people during all of our history; Arameans, Amalikites, Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans and who knows who else. Then, when our survivors were scattered throughout the world by the conquerers, people in our host countries did the same; in England, France, Russia, Poland, Spain, Hungary, Germany and others, up to the present day.

The land that was ours went from one conquerer to another over the centuries. For many years it was held by the Turkish empire. About 100 years ago, a group of Jews bought a piece of barren land (around what is now Tel Aviv). Shortly after that, Great Britain took over the land that is now Israel and the Arab countries, after the Turkish empire lost a war. The land was split up into various countries, and eventually, with a UN vote, the modern state of Israel was founded. The country of Jordan was formed for the “Palestinians.”

OK, “what else?” Let’s start with some of the commonly held ideas that some of the world has about Israel. You need to be aware that much of the world gets their ideas about Israel and everything else from political and media sources that are controlled by big, very big, MONEY.

The world is being told false stories about Israel using terms like slavery and apartheid. Israel is being accused of all sorts of crimes against humanity. Most of those lies start with the UN Human Rights Council, which is made up mainly of representatives of Arab countries. In fact, just a few years back Kadaffi (or Quadafi or however they spell it today) was HEAD of the UN human rights organization.

Now, here is something you probably didn’t know. There have recently been a couple of major discoveries of natural gas just of Israel’s coastline. There is enough natural gas to make Israel, not only self sufficient, but also a major exporter of natural gas.

In addition to natural gas, Israel has the world’s second largest reserves of oil shale, putting it about even with Saudi Arabia in oil reserves. Nobody thought much about oil shale because it was always to expensive and dirty to extract the oil. However, new Israeli technology makes it environmentally clean and price competitive with regular oil wells.

It’s funny how nobody cared about Israel ten years ago, but now that it could be a world class energy producer, everyone wants to destroy us. That’s not really true; people have wanted to destroy Israel from day 1. It probably has something to do with introducing One G-d and morality to the world.

Major historic events are happening all over the world today; earthquakes, floods, sun spot activity, global magnetic shifts, revolutions, anarchy and everything else. Many believe that everything just happens as one long string of coincidences. Some of us believe that the Creator of the world, Blessed be He, plays a major role in all of this.

Irma and I are here in Israel because the Creator gave this land to Abraham and the Jewish people and He continues to control the destiny of the world. We also know that many of our friends feel the same way.

Enjoy the links and pictures below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHStBGk_D8Y Israel Innovation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjfFpFW9OdA&feature=related Hatikva

Be well, Y’all
Mel