A desperate call for urgent help -- Ps. 70

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All day yesterday I was mulling what to do with Psalm 70 (for Robert's weekly PsalmChallenge).
I was getting no inspiration; I couldn't find a fitting photo (and still can't).
What to do with yet another psalm of calls for help and revenge?
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The answer came to me in a dramatic way:
I left the house for my usual evening walk; the minute I stepped onto the street a small dog came yapping and running toward me, got behind me and bit me on the lower leg.

I spun around and yelled "Stop it!", hoping it would make the dog's owners, a young couple and their baby, pay attention and come to my rescue.
They took their sweet time coming over and calling their dog, thinking he was just barking at me.
I looked at the two red scratch marks from its fangs and at its saliva on my skin and felt the pain inside and shouted to the people that it was indeed a bite.

"Oh, slicha, slicha" they said.
I retorted, "I don't want 'Sorry, sorry,' I just want not to be bitten when I walk on my own street! Train your dog! Get a leash! Take some responsibility!"
And I added that my step-daughter recently spent months in a wheelchair after a dog bit her on two different days in the stairwell of her apartment.
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Back home, cleaning my wound (which fortunately was not deep or bleeding), I felt the anger more than the physical pain.
I had shouted, I had been attacked, help was slow in coming--all such rare things in my current life--and the adrenaline was pumping.
I heard myself planning: "Next time I'll go out walking with a strong walking stick and if that damn dog comes at me again I'll break its teeth, I'll smash its head, I'll . . . ."
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Then it occurred to me: I was sounding like the biblical psalmists!
I could so identify with them, suddenly.
I could feel their righteous indignation!
And my murmured threats were nothing worse than an example of the Hebrew hyperbole so common in the Bible, the exaggeration for effect often used in Semitic languages.
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Then I wondered just how many folks in the Western world have ever been physically and unjustly attacked by man or beast, how many know the constant fear of an existential threat to them and their whole country?

The people who feel a need to "clean up" and tone down many of the Psalms, taking the "violent" and "terrible" verses out of some Psalms before inclusion in their prayer books--are they not missing the point and power of the Psalms?

Well, I was taught a lot yesterday; but next weekend I might think twice before praying for some PsalmChallenge inspiration.
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PSALM 70

1. For the leader. Of David. Lehazkir.

2. Hasten, O God, to save me; O LORD, to aid me.

3. May those who seek my life be disgraced and abashed; may those who wish me harm fall back in shame.

4. May those who say “Aha! Aha!’’ over me retreat in disgrace.

5. May all who seek You be glad and rejoice in You; may those who are eager for Your deliverance always say, “God be exalted!”

6. As for me, I am lowly and needy; O God, hasten to me. You are my aid and my rescuer; O LORD, do not hold back.
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Translation by Rabbi Benjamin J. Segal.
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For a modern and initially shocking reworking of Psalm 70 by Rabbi Justin David, do see the new American book Psalms in Ordinary Voices.
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Dean the Dragon

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Wanting to join the bloggers' bandwagon for Halloween, but what to do if Israel has no Halloween?
Well, I DO have a photo from 2009 of grandson Dean dressing up in dragon and animal costumes in the fantastic kids' playroom at the Australian Museum.
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And the mirror gave us something nice for James' Weekend Reflections.
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Happy Halloween to all of you who live in a country that celebrates it.
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Sunrise breakfast with baby in the Jerusalem Hills

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Meet Libby, my sweet 4-month-old grandbaby.
She and my daughter flew up from Australia yesterday for a short visit in the homeland.
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As the photo proves, I am the typical doting grandmother; but hey, it was my very first time to hold the little girl!
In Hebrew libi means "my heart," and Libby has truly captured my heart.
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After flying across seven time zones, Naomi and Libby felt the jet lag, so we were all up for a very early breakfast as the sun rose on the Jerusalem Hills.
We stay at the old house of friends who are conveniently away.
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1,001

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A thousand and one nights, Alf Layla wa Layla

Tonight sees post number 1,001 of Jerusalem Hills daily photo.

Mabruk, ya blog!

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Dig fun

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Thanks to veteran volunteer Gretchen C., we finally have some photo proof that I really do dig.
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And Gretchen made a fine 7-minute video called "Digging Rocks" about archeology volunteers' life. You can watch it at her Facebook group, Tiberias-Excavation.

When you dig in the earth long enough, you eventually find something.

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But we are not allowed to reveal any new discoveries. The archaeologists in charge have the right to first publication, of course.

Every dig season (2 seasons per year at Tiberias) we get a new T shirt.

This newest one's theme is "Get hooked on Tiberias!!!"

If several dozen of us are walking around with this on our back, I take that as a sign that posting a picture of the find is now OK.

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Ta-daa!

Here is Area Supervisor Yuli modeling the original chain when it emerged from the dirt last autumn!

It is part of the metal chain on which hung the mosque lamps over a thousand years ago.

It is, after all, an Early Islamic Period mosque that we are excavating.

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You can see a picture of a newer, simpler mosque lamp for sale at Christies' here. But it shows how the chains are attached to loops in the lamp.
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That's my sometimes-dig-world for That's My World Tuesday.

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O the Chimneys

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The siren just now sounded for Holocaust Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Day.
The shorter, blunter name we usually call this day is Yom HaShoah.

When I lived in Switzerland as a volunteer, this was the view from my window.
It is nothing more sinister than an incinerator that burns people's garbage in order to heat their water.
But there at the foot of the Jura Mountains, I discovered that my sense of the Jewish collective memory is strong and unavoidable.
I could never see the smoke and the chimney without being reminded of Nobel Prize winner Nelly Sach's poem "O the Chimneys."
Here are its opening lines:
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O die Schornsteine
Auf den sinnreich erdachten Wohnungen des Todes,
Als Israels Leib zog aufgelöst in Rauch
Durch die Luft –
.Oh those smokestacks
Above the abodes of death, so ingeniously devised,
When Israel’s body, dissolved into smoke, was drifting
Through the air--

(translated by Reinhold Grimm)
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The entire poem, in German and English, appears in the book German 20th Century Poetry.
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Asking you for slicha

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"Jews praying in the synagogue on Yom Kippur" -- 1878 painting by Maurycy Gottlieb

The Day of Atonement is almost upon us! Tomorrow, after the afternoon feast, we will enter into 25 hours of fast and prayer. Yom Kippur atones for many sins if we truly repent. But before God can forgive us for the sins against him, we must ask (and hopefully receive) forgiveness from the people we may have hurt or wronged.

My dear friends and blog-reading friends, I sincerely ask your pardon
> for when I have not answered your welcome comments in a timely manner (or at all!)
> for not yet finding answers to some of your good questions
> for postponing visits to your blog, thinking I will get to it when there is more time
> for letting some e-mails slip out of sight onto the previous page of my inbox
> for not yet posting awards some of you have graciously granted to Jerusalem Hills
Please forgive me for the sin of procrastination and laziness.
I will do my best to be a better blogger-friend in this new year.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Shalom, may we all have shalom!
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Thank you Paul Newman

Shalom Paul Newman. Rest in peace. Your character Ari Ben Canaan will live on.
The 1960 "Exodus," along with the epic "Lawrence of Arabia," were movies that fueled the fire in my idealistic teenage heart and pushed me to sail to Israel in 1968, with a one-way ticket, disembarking in Haifa.
For the dramatic story of the actual Haganah Ship Exodus 1947 see either Wikipedia (from which the above photo is borrowed) or a Zionist telling of the story here. A great old photo of the Exodus taken from the British ship that intercepted her is midway on the page of a Glasgow website.

Author Ruth Gruber called the Exodus "the ship that launched a nation."

Archaeological S words

Stepped stone structure at the City of David.
Sarcophagus at Rockefeller Museum.
Sacks of shards awaiting restoration.
Setting up shade on a sweltering day at one of my summer digs.
Swollen painful hand following stings. My pickaxe must have struck their underground nest in that square shown above. Several wasps flew straight into my work glove. Sh--!! is all she could say.