While we wait to see if Gilad Shalit will be “traded” we entertain some tourists from the mid-west. Who is “Gilad Shalit?” they ask. “What did he do to get captured?” “If he wasn’t in Gaza but on Israeli land why did they capture him?” “How did they capture him while he was sleeping? Isn’t that unethical?” “Why haven’t they let the Red Cross see him?” “Why have there been no communications with him?” “Who are the prisoners they are trading him for?” Their simple questions remind me how we have ignored the total outrage of his capture in order to get him back.
Last night, the last night of Hannuka, we celebrated the arrival of a wonderful light. When I was a little girl we used to pray at the kippele shul in Rochester. It was called the kippele because it was next to a big synagogue with a big dome, a kippa. And this was the diminuitive synagogue. I studied, together with my brother, with the Rabbi, Gedaliah Cohen. And while he concentrated on the important things, I looked at the details, the fixtures, the walls, the tops of the heads of the people praying. So when Bob Chait offered to send me the light fixture I was thrilled. And yesterday it arrived.
But since no one else remembers this, our celebration was small.
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