Rega Lifney Shabbat…

I love books. If words represent thoughts, the written word represents
civilization – the development of cultures, concepts, ideas and philosophy.
Looking through sentences, paragraphs and chapters is like taking a virtual
journey – exciting, surprising and revealing. It was no surprise when
yesterday I very quickly unpacked our stuff, that finally arrived from the
US, but it took me many more hours than necessary to unpack the boxes that
contain all our books: with each book I took out I stopped, fumbled through
the pages, enjoyed some of the familiar texts before moving on to the next. One of my favorite books is an old Israeli book, containing a selection of
newspaper articles from 1880 up to 1948. These were one of the most
significant times in Jewish history, from the beginning of the first modern
aliyah’s, the revival of Hebrew as an everyday language, the major struggles
of the first half of the 20th century, up to the birth of the state of
Israel.
Yesterday, while flipping through it's pages, an interesting article caught
my eye: exactly 120 years ago, some Arab kids were playing in a cave on the
outskirts of Jerusalem when they noticed some strange signs on the cave
walls. Curious, they cleaned the dust and revealed more signs. Not
recognizing what these signs were, they called their Sheik – who immediately
new this was Hebrew and called his Jewish friends. Together they revealed
what is known as the Shiloach Inscription – a detailed, written story from
the time of King Chizkiyahu, 2800 years ago, describing the ways of bringing
water to Jerusalem. Almost three thousand years later, we can still read the
words written on the cave walls. We can do more then that - we can
understand them!

Being able to understand these different aspects of our heritage, taking on
the responsibility to pass them on throughout generations, the realization
of Jewish independence and the continuing growth of Jewish culture – those
are our claims to fame as a people, they are what make our claim on the land
of Israel valid: thousands of years of history, heritage – and remembrance.
We are the only people on the face of this earth whose children can read and
understand a three thousand year old inscription.
And if that isn’t a miracle, what is?

Shabbat Shalom

Liat