First of all, we never mentioned that Eliav Yitzchak came into our lives on 4 Tishrei (September 26). He is a beautiful, sweet little baby and we are all thrilled to have him. We have to watch that the boys don’t smoosh him with love – other than that, we haven’t had any adjustment problems!

So, the boys were sitting around the other day drawing Chanukah pictures. There was music on and the song suddenly said, Nes Gadol Haya Sham, A Great Miracle Happened There. One of the very cool things about living in Israel during Chanukah is this saying. In the rest of the world when you buy a dreidel, you see that it says “A Great Miracle Happened THERE” and if you buy one in Israel it says, “A Great Miracle Happened HERE”. We have discussed this with the kids a number of times, pointing out how cool it is that they live in the only place in the world where the miracle happened and where their dreidels say HERE and not THERE.

So, back to the story. The song said that the miracle happened there. Matan suddenly jerked his head up and said, “Hey – this song isn’t from Israel. You know, Huda, we live in the place where the miracle was. The song should say “Nes Gadol Haya Po” and not “Nes Gadol Haya Sham”. This is one little, amazing example of living a miracle and living in the midst of history. We are in THE place where all of this happened. We daven each day during the Chanukah and thank Gd for the miracles that happened on this holiday – that happened here – exactly in the land we are in. Even after two and half years here, this is still amazing to us.

We spent the day today enjoying a day of Chanukah break as a family. First we went to the Airforce Museum in Beer Sheva which was a great place. The boys loved looking at the planes and climbing in the old ones that were there for them. Afterwards, we went to Sderot for a brief solidarity visit. Sderot has taken the incredible brunt of the withdrawl from Gaza onto each shoulders having withstood a near constant rain of rocket attacks (numbering in the thousands) since the Disengagement was completed last September. Since there is no longer a buffer, or a group of Jews and army in Gaza, Hamas, Fatah (yes, those ‘moderates’ of Fatah are terrorists too) and Islamic Jihad have managed to send thousands of rockets into Israel. Sderot has taken the brunt of these attacks, and no one seems to be particularly outraged or willing to do much to stop the constant terror that they are experiencing (even during the current ‘cease fire’). I read recently that the children of Sderot hadn’t been allowed to a playground for over a month. Can you imagine?

Well, Yehuda’s school has been collecting candy to send to the kids of Sderot and we figured that it would be nice to go there to show solidarity and to connect the place with the name for our children. Huda was very cute – he wanted to meet THE kids who received his candy. He didn’t quite get the idea – but he was very earnest and wanted to talk to kids who needed comforting (of course he refused to say a word while we were actually there, but that’s another story). We had a very nice lunch there and talked with a few locals about how tired and exhausted they are of the situation. May things improve soon.

Chanukah Sameach to you and yours!