Bric-a-brac

Eli and his quills

Just another 2 weeks and the Jewish New Year will begin. I noticed many houses had already started building the skeletal structures of the booths in preparation for the Feast of Tabernacles or Booths. It's not tents because tents are made from goatskin and are used by shepherds living with their flock. Booths or huts are made from branches and used by farmers to store their harvest while the work in the fields. The Feast of Tabernacles is therefore an agricultural/farmers' feast and not a pastoral/shepherds' feast. I was reminded of this when I visited a jewish friend Eli yesterday. He's a scribe ... someone dedicated to copying the jewish Scriptures by hand on parchment using a quill. Very interesting work!

And as the jewish New Year approaches, our school year will also begin. I think we're the only school that starts in October. All other schools have begun their new academic year last week. Well that only means that when other schools finish the academic early and start the summer holidays, we still have one more month of studies. Not that it bothers me too much as I don't have summer holidays anyway. In fact I'm busier during summer than any other time of the year. Maybe I should take my holidays during the school year then.

There's an article yesterday about the persecution of Christians in Iraq even though ISIS has been driven out (almost) from Aleppo. It's an awful situation.  http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/09/armenians-iraq-minorities-christian.html#ixzz4s0Yk4Snh

In the ongoing feud over the Greek Orthodox Church selling away its land, the Jewish National Fund has now criticized the jewish investors who bought the properties. The ripples of this land sales are spreading wide.   http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.811215