Tuesday, Jan. 24 by The Wassermans & Whitehill

By Sandy and Mel Wasserman
Shalom! An amazing day today! We went to the JNF (KKL, Keren Kayemeth L'Yisrael) Park Canada forest and pruned trees! The forest is beautiful... not just trees. Made up of hills and valleys, it contains a lake, and picnic areas, and hiking trails... even SHEEP walking through! (Shepherds are invited to bring their flocks so that the grass can remain at a reasonable height) Our jobs were to use either saws or large pruning shears to trim and prune, starting from the ground up, to about 5 feet high. This winter pruning will hopefully prevent fires in the summer. We pruned for @ an hour and a half, stopped for a tea break (tea boiled on the site on a propane tank/stove, with sage and za'atar - YUM,) then worked some more. The sun was out, and it was glorious, as we stripped off layer after layer of jackets and sweaters. Next we drove around, saw more of the hills and valleys, passed the city of Modi'in, a booming new city populated by many Americans, Canadians, Brits. We stopped for a picnic lunch in an area with tables and benches, and even a swing. This KKL-JNF Park, funded and financed by Canadian money, used to be 4 Arab villages before the 6 day war.
We are BUSSSSSY! And loving it.
L'hitroa'ot,SANDY & MEL

by Rosalie Whitehill - Our speaker on Underwater Archeology, Kurt Raveh was fascinating. Never thought about it much......but, as he put it, if there were but one shipwreck a year in the ancient ports of Israel....that could mean as many as 5,000 ships buried in the sand around each port with myriad treasures waiting to be found......and in the film he showed, I realized we had with us, the Jacques Cousteau of Israel.