Introduction

My name is Chana, and Baruch Hashem I have been living in Israel for 25 years.  Baruch Hashem (BH), I am married to the closest-to-perfect guy on the planet, have 5 absolutely amazing, kind-and-considerate and strongly-opinionated children,  a supportive family and some truly incredible friends and neighbours.

This blog is being started at the request of some friends, who occasionally enjoy things that I write about Israel. Feedback is always welcome.   And I apologize in advance for typos.  When I know what you expect to read, I might not notice if a couple of letters are swithced aronud....  

Loving Living In Israel, for me, starts from birth.  

My mother was born in Bergen Belsen when it was a DP camp, and those few surviving  Jews were STILL not being allowed to go to Eretz Yisrael.  

I was born in Mount Sinai Hospital - Mount Sinai hospitals were started because Jewish doctors were not allowed to practice in many hospitals in Canada and the United States.  

My daughter was born in Hadassa Har Hatzofim hospital, in a room overlooking Har Habayit.

Loving Living In Israel is easy for me, because I have always loved reading history books and my hubby and oldest son have enhanced my understanding of Tanach and Torah She'be'al Peh from a historical perspective.  There has barely ever been a period in which Jewish life was so strong as it is now in Israel.  I can go on about that for weeks, and B'ezrat HaShem (BEH), in future posts, I will.

I grew up in a relatively religious area.  My parents invited a non-religious friend to join us in our Sukka every year.  She ate with us, but did not ask to learn more.  And when she went to college, she did not ask to continue coming.  Here in Israel, when my husband had the zechut to spend a Sukkot as one of only two "Shomer Shabbat" soldiers on an army base,  the soldiers who watched them build the Sukka with whatever they found were interested.  They asked,  "Are you sure that is kosher?" - and learnt the halachot.  And they chose to spend their rest times in the Sukka.   

Here in Israel, I find that people WANT to be Jewish, want to live a Jewish life, even if their idea of Jewish might be different than mine.  

Which takes us back to the historical perspective on Torah.  Many halachic issues that seem so clear to us today, were actually done in very different ways over the course of our history.   Criteria by which we often measure someone else's religious level are new, and the gedolim of previous generations might never have passed many of them.  I will go on about that in future posts, too.   My point here is to encourage us all to think about our definitions of Shomrei Mitzvot-  bring them to our conscious awareness, and then be brave enough to look beyond them, in order to appreciate how much Shmirat Mitzvot is going on around us all the time here in Israel, consciously or unconsciously.  The Gemara states clearly that just living in Eretz Yisrael means a person can do no wrong.   Add to this people's messirut nefesh in risking their lives in the army or as security guards, knowing when it is  Shabbat and all Jewish Holidays, eating kosher at any given time simply because the meat on sale  in the supermarket IS kosher, etc etc, and BH, we have quite a lot of mitzvot being kept even by the most "anti-religious" Jews here.

Loving Living In Israel is about looking at the 90% of the cup that is full.  One day, when I got annoyed about somethign silly that my hubby didn't put away, I yelled out , "You're ... NOT PERFECT!!"   And he isn't.  And I amn't.   And my kids aren't (well, okay, THEY are, but don't tell them I said so).  And the mayor isn't perfect, and the police minister isn't perfect, and there are rabbis who steal and they serve kosher food in prisons, and and and.  But there is so much good, and I think that if we look at the good, thank Hashem for it, and learn  it, we can take that cup up to 99%.

Loving Living In Israel is about being grateful to Hashem for giving me the opportunity to be here, at this time.   When I say Hallel on Yom Ha'atzmaut, I am thanking Hashem for the unfathomable miracle that 600,000 Jews, mainly new immigrants, many still recovering from the concentration camps themselves, (some school-age children, still learning in their Heider) survived the attack by 11 well-armed Arab countries.   מסרת גיבורים ביד חלשים, רבים ביד מעטים, טמאים ביד טהורים זדים ביד עוסקי תורתך.  I am grateful for the zechut to settle The Land which could not be settled by any other nation / religion that tried over the past two thousand years.  I am grateful for the pomegranates and grapes that grow in my backyard, which give me the opportunity to keep the mitzvot of terumot u'ma'asrot, birkat ha'ilanot, pidyon neta reva'i, shemitta, and BEH will one day enable me to bring Bikkurim to the Beit HaMikdash.