Israeli Shlicha Letter to the Communities

January 10, 2008

Dear community members of Alton, Belleville, Carbondale , Benton and Paducah!

I'm glad to be here and write to you again. In the past ten days or so since I sent you my last letter I got to see many of you and talk with many more, and I'm happy for that.

Before saying anything else, I can't send out this letter without mentioning President Bush's current visit in Israel, his first as a President. To keep track of what happens back home, I often listen to Israeli radio on my computer and hear the news and what people think of different matters there. Recently I've been listening to people's reactions to this presidential visit. From what I hear (and it doesn't come as a surprise, I must admit), people in Israel are happy to have the President visit, but do not really think it is going to change anything in the situation with our Arab neighbors. Many Israelis feel that this is a symbolic gesture more than anything else and don't expect it to bring about any progress towards the peace we dream of, but the gesture is appreciated nonetheless. With Israel being the small country that it is, the visit causes many logistical problems (lots of traffic jams, closed roads, hordes of policemen taken from their regular duties to enhance security for the visiting President and his group, etc.), but as long as we have a President visit us, we're happy. It's true.

OK, so with that said, we can now move to some more interesting stuff.

I was happy to join the Belleville congregation last week for their Friday night services. We had a surprisingly large turnout for this time of year and it was nice to meet some new faces. We welcome Patricia Hinton of Belleville to our mailing list and hope to see her again soon. She will join us for the Alton/Belleville Israeli book club and we're excited for it! The service, lead by Gabi Maul, was pleasant and uplifting, and the Dvar Torah given by Emily Martinez touched us all.

Due to some misunderstanding on my part, I arrived at Agudas Achim Temple Israel in Belleville two hours too early and decided to read a book in a coffee shop until services begin. Gabi Maul was kind enough to call and suggest to join me there. We had a wonderful conversation about the differences in religious observance between here and Israel and we found that there are so many of them! At the end of the service I shared my thoughts on the topic with the Belleville congregation and I hope to write something about it and share it with you too, it will be nice to hear what you think.

A big Mazal Tov goes to Rabbi Dale Schreiber of the Belleville congregation who was officially ordained as a rabbi last week. We look forward to enjoying more of Rabbi Schreiber's inspiring sermons in the weeks to come. Thanks to Emily Martinez for sharing this happy news with us and with the Belleville congregation last Friday night.

We also wish safe trip to Terri Riutcel who was sent to Iraq through her army job. We are looking forward to seeing you again in four months, Terri!

Tuesday I was happy to meet some new faces of the Paducah congregation at Beverly and Butch Bradley's house where we had our first cooking class. It was my first cooking class with them, and actually my first cooking class ever, so I was a bit nervous at first, but soon enough I found that "the devil is not that bad" as we say in Hebrew. With the help and enjoyable presence of Bill Flarsheim, Jack Lasoski, Francie and Ken Cooper, Mary Tick, Malla Pollack, and our hosts Beverly and Butch Bradley, this evening was a memorable one. We made Falafel, Hummus and Tehini (all from scratch!), Israeli Salad, Shakshooka (curious? Ask me what it is! It tastes great!) and chocolate balls for desert. Delicious wines were served by our hosts and we all ate and chatted in a nice, relaxed atmosphere at the end of the evening.

Congratulations to Paducah Tilghman High School speech and forensics team member Sarah Flarsheim on her team's second place finish at the Laker Invitational Speech Tournament at Calloway County High School on October 27. Sarah participated in numerous events including a first place award in impromptu speaking. This news reached us through the Paducah Temple Israel monthly newsletter.

I hope to join the Temple Israel congregation in Paducah for services this week.

As you all probably know, this year Israel is turning 60. To celebrate this happy and so far-from-being-obvious event, we're going to launch a series of events in the different communities. One of them is going to take place on February 16th here in Carbondale at Ruth Grater's beautiful house. A well-known Israeli Chef, Avi Sekerel (one of the leading chefs in Israel, owner and chef of the famous Bellini restaurant in Tel Aviv and the Tapas-Bar and Saquella Café' in Florida) will give us a cooking workshop titled 'Eggplants in the Jewish Kitchen'. The cooking workshop will be an interactive one and will conclude with gourmet dinner composed of all the dishes we made. To cover some of the costs, charges are $25 per person. Please register with me (by email or at 314-956-9247) as soon as possible for this workshop, because space is limited. The workshop is open for people from all congregations, not only Carbondale.

We're going to have an Israeli Festival on May 4th this year – place and time will be announced soon. Also, on June 1st this year communities in the USA, Israel and around the globe are going to hold a walk to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary. The Paducah congregation will host the Walk for Israel by holding a walk in Paducah, and we warmly welcome people from all other congregations as well as from the non-Jewish community to march and celebrate with us. More details to be announced soon.

In the mean time, mark your calendars with the following events on our series:

Schedule for 2008, Israel's 60th year:

 

This is just the preliminary list. We will send out the full details and also info on some new events soon.

Purim is two months away, and we're already excited! Rabbi Jean Englinton from Paducah will be involved in staging a play, we'll have costume competition and booths run by representatives from each congregation. We're looking for volunteers from each congregation to man these booths, so if you're interested in a fun role in the Purim party, please let us know soon. Thanks!

And now to something else:

A few weeks ago I was asked by non-Jewish friends of mine about the Arab world and whether 'they hate just you or the entire West'. When I said that there are voices in the Arab world that dare to be different and say things that don't follow along the lines of the Muslim fundamentalists, my friends were incredulous. Perhaps we Israelis get to hear those voices more often than people here do, because larger portions of our news report revolve around the Arab-Israeli conflict, but another reason for it is that when we do hear those voices (and it doesn't happen too often, unfortunately, but also understandably – those people who dare to voice these opinions often put their lives on the line), we make sure our friends hear them too. A good few months ago an El-Jazeera TV network interview with Wafa Sultan (a Syrian-American psychiatrist) was forwarded by email from one Israeli to the other. I wanted to send it to you, but couldn't because it was in Arabic with Hebrew subtitles. Today I got the same interview with English subtitles from Barbara Goldenhersh of the Belleville congregation and so I post it here for you to watch:

http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1050wmv&ak=nul

This is one chance to hear a different voice coming from the Arab world. There are many more and I hope we could hear them more often.

And now to our quiz!

Quiz no. 2:

Our question from last week was: The size of the State of Illinois is 56,400 square miles. What is the size of the State of Israel and what is the ratio between the two states?

The answer: Israel is about 290 miles in length and 85 miles in width at its widest point. It covers an area of 8,630 square miles and therefore is about 1/7 the size of Illinois!

Ed Benyas, Jack and Marsha Hall and Karon Donahue wrote back with the right and full answer; However, the yummy treat goes to Judy Catanzaro of the Alton congregation for giving the right answer just before everybody else!

Quiz no. 3:

In the Hebrew aleph-beth each letter is assigned a numeric value, thus enabling computation of a numeric value for each word or name in the language. The Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and different rabbinical figures have used the numeric value of words and names to draw parallels between names, words or verses in the Torah.

What is the system/method of assigning a numeric value to each of the Hebrew letters called?

The first to send me the correct answer will win a yummy treat!

Wishing you a great weekend and Shabbat Shalom to you all!

Revital

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Revital Yona
Israel Emissary to the Jewish federation of Southern Illinois, Southeastern Missouri and Western Kentucky
314-956-9247
revitalsimokyfed@gmail.com