Rejuvenation: Unsung Heroes, Weddings and Mutual Interests

[Music] hi everybody Keith Harrow on rejuvenation for at the land of israel network it is great to be back on the mic and i know that sounds funny because you have been hearing from me every week but you know pre-taped a couple of interviews to get us through the holidays i hope you enjoyed them i did and but you're just gonna hear from me today just just a few minutes kind of a wrap-up it is October 7th 2018 the 28th day of Tishri 57 79 and tea-tray of course is the month of the High Holidays which are now behind us and I do mean in some senses with all the eating behind us but anyhow I did have a great Sukkot I hope you guys did too I just wanted to share a little bit of what was going on here I got out to Ebay naho we're both Jeremy and Army or re are living really took my whole family out there and as well as Tamar fold our folds daughter and introduced everybody and had a beautiful afternoon the guys are great they're doing well they're building a beautiful community it's really something to see and I hope those of you who are getting out to Israel can also get out there so again once again I want to thank them though for the opportunity to have this network and I know that they haven't been on here as much as they would like to be with so much going on in their lives so we're keeping it going for them but I just wanted to report to you that they really are both doing well on so many levels and of course I want to thank Tabitha then for doing everything that they do to keep all this going and the holiday season is really a crazy one but what did I do during the intermediate days of Sukkot when I wasn't like necessarily in the kitchen feeding a whole host of people which was also graded in its own way so I had two days that I was doing tours for twenties I'll fund two full buses which was really special one of those days was down in the Jordan Valley and some of you know I will not go sooo caught without getting down to the Jordan Valley and having something to do with the date trees that so symbolize the holiday so it was really a neglected day started off in Milwaukee you recall with the horn and Melvin Lewis who grow dates and we were out there in their plantations and learning about the trees and tasting the dates and get having salon and also trying some date beer that they've made be making their a really a great couple move all you recalled just outside of Jericho and they are both very traditional Jews and he you know he's a kippah where they originally from France and a couple of years ago during the sabbatical in Israel they also kept shmita they kept sabbatical in its strictest meaning that they all their dates were just soldier in Israel they didn't export which is a really difficult thing the date farmers most of their income is from exporting the dates and it's it's not an easy thing to leave that market for a year having to do that because the dates grown during the sabbatical year as anything growing on land of Israel are considered holy and cannot be eaten outside of the land so that was our first stop and then we had lunch in cafe cafe were we go over here and and then went to Bethany vah which was a community that's restarted in the last few years right near where it used to be baby I avow was started in the priest 8 days was destroyed during the war of 1948 there was a potage plant there some amazing pictures of what went on there on how I mean just that the tremendous heat but there was it was a it was a company that was also worked with the Jordanians and they tried to keep it going and kind of keep the whole thing out of Israel's war of independence but didn't work out for a whole variety of reasons and the community ended up being destroyed and we started just a few years ago so we met with their director of security he took us all the way to the Jordan River we were like right near the border with Jordan and showed us some of the graves that they have there from from the 30s and 40s and the people who live Aaron didn't make it and gave us a fascinating perspective on those days and on the current days and then he titled off because he was in the middle of planning date I shouldn't say toddled when it comes to security cheats they don't tunnel anywhere but he was in the middle of doing some planting so he spent a few minutes with us and then he went off to do that like serious security guy no keep on I said not that it matters and then we went off to the afar saman farm to one of my favorite people guy Orla who is growing the ancient Judean balsam again and frankincense and myrrh and all kinds of biblical herbs we did a whole workshop there making an ancient recipe of cosmetics so he he gave us all some of that allows some great stuff in there and told us how he's connected to the to the temple Institute even though he doesn't understand how all of this happened and that is just like a totally amazing thing and beautiful to talk to him as usual I'm going to be going to Li mode UK at the end of December I've been invited back to Birmingham to present for a few days and he's going to be one of the time not him but the Judean balsam or the afar Simone oil of old is going to be one of the topics that I present I'm working on a PowerPoint right now because that whole subject is I'm sure a lot of you know totally fascinates me and I interviewed him a while back some of you might have caught it so that's like part of that ancient Israel coming to life turns out I don't know if I talked about this last couple weeks I read an article that we've got the Methuselah palm we've got that date seed from Masada that was sprouted a few years ago growing kyboots Kotori it's a male so it's giving pollen but turns out that they've managed to germinate a couple of other seeds from Masada hoping that one of them is a female so that we can get some fruit so there's all this great stuff going on here between the wine and the dates and the oils and just bringing back so many of the things in the past so I'm trying to get that out there as much as I can but after saving with guy for a while we went over and met with some of the people from the maguey Lord search-and-rescue unit these people are just a whole group of Raley's who live in the area from Allium a man fired to meme mainly settlers who who volunteered to go find people who get lost in the hills because there's some great hikes around there Mickey locked that region Megiddo which is the northern to probably mid area of the Dead Sea and the mountains around it called McGee lot after the Dead Sea Scrolls there's a lot of hiking a lot of great trips but then people get lost get dehydrated so they were showing us they have a really cool drone they've Kym go it's a regular drone and when people get lost the drone of course can fly around and find them but one of the things that we were there for is the one Israel fund is trying to get them a different kind of a drone they've can deliver things to people so say they find somebody who's dehydrated or night is falling and it gets really cold in the desert really fast as soon as the Sun Goes Down doesn't matter how hot the day was so let's say they're suffering from I'm from hypothermia all kinds of problems so the rescue team finds them by the drone who knows where they are but it might be a few hours until they can actually get to them because the terrain can be really difficult and let's say somebody's fallen and you got to get all together and just some valley where there's no paths anyhow so they are their next goal is a drone that can deliver things to people get them some water get them a thermal blanket whatever it is some medical equipment if they need just to patch themselves up until help can get to them they saved 500 people last year which is just like outrageous and these are people from all walks of Israeli society from doctors and nurses to people home garages to educators volunteering to do this and you know once again at the end of the day thinking to myself like wow I can't believe that I belong to the same nation as these people they're just so amazing and they they don't want anything for themselves they just want you know equipment to be able to go and save lives and have their lives be disrupted as often as possible so that they can get out there and bring people home again so the next day I went to the other end of the country also guiding and went to a fun bus went all the way down to the corner of Israel Sinai and the Negev and Gaza so we were all the way in there corner in a place called Kerem Shalom and Kerem Shalom used to be keyboards it's not anymore even though as they said like it's still icky but its meaning it's not socialized it doesn't have the underpinnings of aqui boats like the ideology the kibbutz but it's to keep both still in the sense of everybody being very involved with each other and very caring about each other so they had there was a not religious key button again you guys know what I feel about these words I want to throw them in there just to save time they had 25 families there up until this summer with when all with the balloons and all the fighting and they're surrounded at least on the Gaza side there's an enormous concrete wall there they painted all kinds of graffiti on otherwise they would get it be getting shot at by snipers constantly from Gaza and there's demonstrations on the other side of that wall all the time they had 25 families there until this last summer when they were joined by 13 religious families so they're now a mixed community so more than 50% doubled right like 25 to 38 so do the math you know what I'm saying there and while we were there that day there was a breach there was a circumcision for a nade a old boy going to one of the religious families and there were a whole bunch of other people would come down there also from Jerusalem and other places in the country to celebrate with them they built a really big soca all the houses there are filled if you wanted to move there no room for you right now their challenges are unbelievable met with the security chief the rough shots there as well who just has such a difficult situation to keep them all safe these roughshod seem who are the civilian security chiefs of communities in Judea and Samaria and on the Gaza border are really some of the unsung heroes of this country devote their lives sometimes pay very high personal price marriages not so easy when you're walking out the door constantly showering you know with your beeper right next to you like you know really sleeping with your boots on and I'm not exaggerating at all and they're totally amazing to keep their their communities and their families safe and he you know he was just listing some of the challenges that they have there and you can't you can't even imagine and we were just so inspired by these people and they're just they're not going anywhere as a matter of fact other people are joining them and the more that we get pushed back the more people are pushing back so I had actually I knew about this brief before we went down there because a NIDA Tucker who for some some of you may know who she is she used to live in answer khazzani in gaza in Gush Katif she grew like meter-long celery I still can't look at celery without thinking about her she just became a farmer former American who moved to gush Katif was there ready in the very early days in the 1970s of course got thrown out of her home and her home was destroyed and her farm was destroyed in the debacle of 2005 but she had heard about the trip and she wrote to me that one of her one of her I think it's a great nephew but the guy the father of this baby she told me was making this breach and and otherwise he would have spoken to the group but he was a little bit busy prepping his child to join the Jewish people so I knew that that was going to be happening but it's still an incredible thing to see you really you know we were listening that after there we went over to shlomit in hell Okaloosa to an area where some of the Gush Katif people have literally replanted themselves we had lunch there and one of the cicadas just listening to the Egyptian army fighting with Isis like 800 meters away in the border you know in the Sinai border and it's like like just not so far there's all these crazy things going on in in Gaza and Sinai and here on the Israeli side having circumcision ceremonies and building things and growing everything pretty much in coloca Luther's growing in the inert sand from etro game to pomegranates to pineapples to tomatoes and it's just like it's impossible to describe it's just impossible to describe then we went up to kiss oof in the ash coal region one of the kyboot seemed right on the Gaza border a little further north and had an incredible meeting with the head of security for like 33 communities there and with a couple of his rough shots him who came out from their communities and spoke with about the challenges that they face and while we're there in this little area just like right in you know right in from the gaza strip behind keyboards kiss of fame we see a fire balloon land start a fire fire truck goes zipping by us and this is this is not just a daily occurrence it's almost sometimes an hourly occurrence burnt fields everywhere we look and it's just like there's a total war of attrition going on there I don't know who knows I don't know who cares but these people are just holding the line there and they just want people to know and they just want people to care and they just want the Israeli government to do something about it not that anybody takes going to war lightly and we discussed a lot of the options some people on my bus had some ideas for the security chiefs which I thought was interesting because I wouldn't for a second even begin to think of telling these guys anything that they should do or any advice because they have seen it all some more unsung heroes and once again this feeling of you know a lot of times to go to these places and you think that or we think that we're going to support them and we're gonna inspire them and we're gonna say hey guys were with you and come home from from these areas feeling so humbled and so odd and so appreciative of people in this country that every single day are just holding the borders with their kids and in in such difficult situations and then you just see it up close and you know grateful to be able to bring people down there and grateful to have the opportunity to meet people like this and just like that it just doesn't go away and just really wow and you know hopefully we'll be taking other people down there I'm going to be guiding a mission from a synagogue in Toronto in December and some of the couple of people who organize that we're on my bus that day so that went into a tin ireri for the December trip and of course like happy to take people down there whenever I can and you know whenever I have time to go down and and just like do what I can for whoever's there on that border which is just every single day lots of riots a lot of even people in Israel know what's going on there but our soldiers are there too and obviously in addition to the people in the communities our soldiers are there and and you know and like what's going on of course is Hamas or whoever's doing this from the other side sending kids sending women to shoot and to throw things knowing that our soldiers are not going to shoot back at them whether that's why you're not discussion for for another day but it's just like totally using whatever they can and then just to segue into some of the other things that that I've been doing the last couple weeks we've been invited to a lot of weddings which is totally great and some of the weddings are everyone is different of course and everyone is joyous and some of them of course involve families where there's been divorced either the bride or the groom the parents were divorced and either remarried are not remarried but there's that you know blended family and stepparents and who's paying for this and the tensions between different sides of the family which anyhow you get in the best of situations during weddings but at a wedding not long ago where it was a second wedding for both and you know they have their kids there and everybody was very happy for everybody and I was talking to one of the kids this is a relative and you know it's I was also at my father's second wedding or actually third wedding and it's not an easy situation to be at I wasn't at the hope of ceremony at the actual wedding ceremony there for the party and that's what happened here with these kids too this is not an easy thing in any circumstance I think maybe if a parent's been widowed for a long time to see them remarry and but you know when there's been a divorce so it's not it's not easy and I'm sure a lot of you listening know what that's about and you know I was looking at this situation and then I was party to a conversation between two of my sons they were talking about religion one of them is a little more devoted to his the religious side of his world then the other one is and was explaining that yeah he's not always thrilled to go let's say to synagogue or not the prayers are not always speaking to him but he does it anyway because the moments in religion where you do get those highs or those great feelings be it like in a singing situation or something else then um you know that was worth it and and I was thinking about how you know again like that most of our lives to a great degree in any relationship we're in there's like maintenance right like even in the best of marriages so most of the time you're not like bowled over with waves of love for your partner right a lot of it there during the day's maintenance and and then you have those moments where you know you are like reminded again and there's that wave of love for your partner but a lot of us I think and maybe it's because of movies or I don't know what think that we should just have that all the time like there just should be that heart pounding whatever all the time and it doesn't work like that it doesn't look like that I think in any relationship and definitely in a relationship I guess you could say with God as well you know we're not always going to be or maybe some people aren't and great for you if that's a situation we're not going to always be in these great Wow's within a relationship with God either and a lot of it is maintenance to keep the relationship going so that we can get to those wow moments and then I started correlating a little bit with something that I think about when it comes to national relationships right country to country and we talked about this that you know people to say oh Israel and Saudi Arabia are now friends Israel and Saudi Arabia are not friends is wrong Saudi Arabia right now have a relationship with mutual interests okay everybody hates Iran and understands what Iran is all about so you could say that I suppose that in instead of saying maintenance you could say mutual interests when it comes to let's say marriages right I mean most of us have a mutual interest with our spouse or with our partner in maintaining a framework of let's say family life our mutual interests let's say in my case are our children and the lives that we have together and and so even when it's not like bells and whistles we still we stay together because we have a lot of mutual interest and when marriages disintegrate it's because whatever was going wrong in the relationship obviously if it's abusive I'm not even talking about that but you know even when two people are just Grob heart though even the mutual interest that they have of their children of keeping the family together is not enough to outweigh the unhappiness or you know whatever it is that the disappointments that it is and and then you know and then you have new beginnings and new relationships and they should just all be good but when it comes to I guess like I'll talk for myself like my relationship with Hashem so I'm not I'm not always having those wow moments a lot of them I have talked about on this show those unbelievable moments of all where I was like totally feel that Hashem is everywhere and carrying me but I have a mutual interest with him as well too you know which is why I pray to him or feel that he's in my life to keep my people going in safety and security to keep my family going to keep me doing what it is whatever it is that he wants me to be doing in this world and my whatever life that I'm leading to you know give me the strength and the abilities to do what I'm doing so I guess you could say that that's also a relationship of mutual interest oh I don't know I know how mutual it is from his side although he did create a world of thinking and independent people and not just a world of at least so we believe in Judaism a world of autumn people on automatic pilot or people who are angels and are just doing whatever is right and good because they have no choice but he created a world a very fractious world of people who've got choices all the time so I guess there is some kind of mutual interest in that that he wants us doing whatever it is that he deems is the right way to run this world and care about each other and and be decent to each other and tolerant listening to each other and not fighting with each other so that the world will ultimately get to a place where he's happy with us and we're happy with him and all is good so I guess you could say maintenance or mutual interests is what defines virtually every kind of relationship whether it's a nation to nation or our relationship to God or our relationship to each other our relationship to the significant others in our lives anyhow so it's like a whole lot of stuff that I've been thinking about not unusually in the past couple of weeks and then moving along from that I have my trip set up so I'll be going to the states in just a couple of weeks and camera has organized the the committee for accuracy and middle-east reporting I think that's the whole their name but they're there the bulk of where I'm going in the States so if you want details you can write to Tracy tra Cey at Cameron org if you want to sign up for certain things but in the meantime I can tell you that I will be in Chicago and you can already sign up for that event it is open on October 25th I'll be in Tampa Florida on October 29th Miami October 31st Chevy Chevy Chase in the Washington DC area November 4th and the Philadelphia area on November 5th and then I will be at the one as well fun dinner in New York City on November 6th so a lot of other stuff going on in between there and you can definitely write to me Eve at the Land of Israel calm and I'll give you some more details about my trip and it's shaping up like beautifully and I'm excited to go excited to bring Israel out there and talk about the main the main issue for camera of course is the bias in against Israel in the in the American media but it's you know beyond that and one of the things of course that I see is I get to travel and and take people around is just like like the lies that people tell about is are so in our faces you know be it that Israel is racist or Israel's apartheid and you really see it when you're here but that's some of what I'm going to be talking about of course in the States but you know but more than that the the media bias against Israel is not just against Israel it's against a lot more than that and not just against conservatives or whatever whatever labels people are putting on themselves right now but it's it's an interesting battle ground that we've got here and just like on the Gaza border and just like on the Sinai border so we're kind of sitting here at the forefront of the battle that's much much bigger than just Israel and the Jewish nation as it so often appears that we are so I'd love to see you if you're in any of these places come come here come see come ask and I'd you know just love to meet you anyway those of you and you know get like some face time would be absolutely terrific and if I have some free time when I'm in the States and can meet for a cup of coffee or you know talk about some other things especially Israel that I would love to be able to do so so be in touch and and I think that's it for today short and sweet and we'll be back next week I still before I go so thank you everyone so much for listening again thanks to Tabitha and Jeremy to the network the Land of Israel Network Eve Harrow on rejuvenation take care of you Betty good bye for now [Music] it's much more real than any reality show it's much more dramatic in any drama it's much more funny than any comedy it's like a game show but it's no game it's our lives listen to inside Israel today with Gil Hoffman political correspondent for The Jerusalem Post every week on the land of Israel dot-com