Haveil Havalim #247: Chanukah 2009/5770 Edition

Happy Chanukah!  Welcome to Haveil Havalim #247.  My name is Eric, and I will be your host this {morning/afternoon/evening/night}.  For those of you new to the Haveil Havalim scene, here is the lowdown:

Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs — a weekly collection of Jewish & Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It’s hosted by different bloggers each week and coordinated by Jack. The term ‘Haveil Havalim,’ which means “Vanity of Vanities,” is from Qoheleth, (Ecclesiastes) which was written by King Solomon. King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other ‘excesses’ and realized that it was nothing but ‘hevel,’ or in English, ‘vanity.’

So, it has been about nine months since I last hosted a HH.  In that time, someone could have gotten pregnant and had a baby!    Since I last hosted, though you have hopefully visited since, the site has had a URL change (from theisraelsituation.com to israelsituation.com) and moved from Blogger to my own self hosted WordPress build.  It looks and feels different, and will be changing more in the future.

This is a special week in the Jewish world.  This week marks the holiday that Christians believe is the most important Jewish holiday of the year: Chanukah.  While I would digress that it is not the most important, it is easy to forget the true meaning of the holiday.  Most kids today think of Chanukah as a week of menorahs and presents.  I think of it as a week of warmth in a cold season and a time to remember victories of the past.  While most holidays on the Jewish calendar work like this: “they tried to kill us, we’re still here, lets eat,” Chanukah is more of: “they tried to kill us, we pulled a Chuck Norris on them, we are awesome, and God gave us a miracle.”  In fact, the Maccabees are the closest thing to ninjas the Jewish people have ever had, aside from the modern Mossad.

Now that I have sufficiently rambled about the meaning of Chanukah, enjoy this lovely video of a flash mob in Jerusalem, in celebration of Chanukah, put together by Nefesh B’ Nefesh.  And, for SEO purposes, I should probably also mention Hanukah, Channukah, Hannukah, Chanukkah, Hanukkah, and every other possible spelling.

Now, on with the posts (in no particular order this time around):

First off, the shameless self promotion that Haveil Havalim allows:

Israel Situation authors Anthony and Joel wrote great posts on racial profiling and non-profit and NGO funding, respectively.  I wrote Haveil Havalim and gave thoughts on a recent EU vote on the status of Jerusalem.

My buddy Yaakov over at Esser Agaroth gave his 10 cents about another Christian supporting Israel and his politically incorrect but accurate telling of the story of Chanukah.

Barry Rubin, the guy who writes so much I am not sure if he does anything else but blog (that is a compliment, Barry) wrote a great article on the Palestinian’s true intentions when dealing with Israel.

In the mean time, Rivster dropped by and told us about a dream she had the other night.  Did I mention that it is sort of a strange dream?

In what sometimes feels like fiction, Israelity noticed that Israelis are not taking to the iPhone, signaling the possible end of the world.  Those snazzy folks at Israel21C also snapped a photo of someone drinking and driving and doughnut eating (no wonder Israel’s traffic is so horrible) and wrote about an Israeli movie hitting big screens in the US.

Batya had a busy week.  She me-andered about why Presidents’ daughters have a thing for Jewish men and mused about Jewish guilt, while davening, in a minyan.  She also had a guest stop by and write about building in Judea and Samaria now that Bibi has put things on hold.

Ricki’s Mom wrote about her proudest moment.  We also learned that Ricki is learning to sew, and made a skirt.  I am not that talented.  My mom had to sew my Boy Scout badges on for me until I was 18.  If there were only more Ricki’s in the world…

The Real Shilach, writing from one of my favorite neighborhoods outside of Israel, discussed people kvetching about davening too quickly.  If they don’t like it, they should lead it themselves (my commentary).  However, it still sounds like the party is at 770.

Yisarel Medad did his usual prolific writings about his right word, not to be confused with left or incorrect.  He wrote a post with a subject so great that I couldn’t refuse: One Funeral, One Kippah, One Tattoo, Soccer and the Songs of Songs: The Beckhams, David and Victoria.  He also chats up the web on the UK’s attempt to fight some Israeli products and wants to let us know that he added a settlement freeze countdown clock to his site.

Sharon got some great pictures of the real Jerusalem streets.  Here are photos of a large protest.  (It looks like they are taken from the Prima Kings hotel? I have stayed there on multiple occasions).

Yaacov wrote a touching story about Aharon Karov, a soldier pulled from his honeymoon to fight against Hamas.  Israelycool wrote a funny article about twins separated at birth.  The Hasmonean wrote about, surprisingly, the Hasmoneans: aka the Maccabees.  Kaplan’s Corner has a fun article on the history of Jewish baseball cards.

Daled Amos, a regular in the J-blogging world, wrote a good followup to the Goldstone Report.  It turns out that the Palestinians where highly influential in what the report contained, as they funded it.

Finally, to wrap things up, Dzeni at Not Quite Perfect wrote a short but great article about bringing in Chanukah.

Happy Chanukah to all of the regular Israel Situation readers and those just stopping by for the carnival.  I hope you would consider subscribing to our RSS feed or by e-mail using the form on the top right of the page.  Next week, Haveil Havalim will be hosted by Frume Sarah’s World.  If you are interested in submitting an article or hosting a future HH, visit the Haveil Havalim home at Blog Carnival.

P.S. If I did not include you this week, it was not personal.  The HH e-mail submission system is broken and I did not receive anything from the site.

This post was written by

Eric – who has written 1527 posts on The Israel Situation.

Eric is the founder and editor of IsraelSituation.com. You can follow him on Twitter as @DenverEric and read his personal blog at EricJRosenberg.com

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