Parashat Behukotai 5778 This week our Self Renovation workshop, a joint program between Tal Orot and Livnot U’Lehibanot, is in full swing. A number of adventurous adults have joined us here in Tzfat, most from the States, one person from…
This Land is God’s Land
Parashat Behar 5778 Meir Sendor This is our first spring tending the garden we started last fall, and it’s in bloom now, with figs and lemons ripening, the summer vegetables getting started, bees humming in the flowers, ladybugs beginning to…
Stormy Weather
Parashat Emor 5778 Meir Sendor The Land of Israel has been battered by a series of wild, unseasonable thunderstorms all week, with gale force winds, heavy downpours and hail, from here in the north down to Eilat. Tragically, a powerful…
Dependence Day
Acharei Mot/ Kedoshim 5778 Meir Sendor There’s a special feeling to Yom HaAtzmaut this year, celebrating seventy years since the founding of the State of Israel. In Pirkei Avot it says “seventy years signifies the venerability of old age (5:27),”…
Family Ties
Parashat Tazria/ Metzora 5778 Meir Sendor Our next-door neighbor was sitting Shivah this week for the passing of her sister, and people in the neighborhood who know the family were coming by for condolence calls and to help make the…
True Blue
Hol haMoed Pesach 5778 Meir Sendor During Hol haMoed we took a day trip with some of our children and grandchildren to Kibbutz Nahsholim on the Mediterranean coast just south of Haifa, to attend the Marine Tour sponsored by Ptil…
Delicacies New and Old
Pesach 5778 Meir Sendor Among the long-term challenges of olim hadashim is achieving full fluency at speed in conversational Hebrew. We’re progressing, and I teach a few shiurim in Hebrew, but I’ve still got a long way to go, and…
Open Season
Shabbat HaGadol – Parashat Tzav 5778 Meir Sendor We were in Netanya earlier in the week on the way to teach a shiur, and took time to walk along the seacoast promenade on a warm and partly sunny afternoon. (I…
Above and Beyond
Parashat Vayikra 5778 Meir Sendor I’m not about to wade in to the acrimonious debate going on here in Israel over the exemption of Haredi Yeshivah students from enlisting for some form of military or national service. I will say,…
Back to the Garden
Parashat Vayakhel/ Pekudei 5778 Meir Sendor This week we attended the wedding of a young couple in Tzfat. The Kallah is the daughter of a wonderful family we have come to know here, the brilliant artist Yoel Tordjman and his…
