Still Small Voice

Dear friends of Jay and Meridel:

It is with a profound sense of gratefulness that we send you these heart felt greetings for a blessed 2016.

We are presently working in Kathmandu Nepal with Daniel to complete the film we began over two years ago on the ‘behind the scene’ work of CHANGE ACTION NEPAL. David received the name of ‘CAN’ while filming our Nepali friend Indira. She is our hero because of her wise and loving work of rehabilitating trafficked children. Our sons. David, Chris, Josh and Daniel have joined their parents in getting this story out to the world.

We desire to keep you posted as this journey unfolds from the roof top of the world.

Our first course of action is to film the earth quake damage from April 2015 and the shocking upsurge in human trafficking due to increased poverty and want.

We are counting on your prayers and gifts to make the difference that is waiting to be made in countless lives. Please stay with us

“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” (Proverbs 18:24)

In the long history of Jews in Russia, the government has rarely been an ally, and often been the source of persecution. Current Russian president Vladimir Putin, however, is a powerful exception, with Jews playing a significant role in his personal history and his inner circle.  With the Russian army a major player in the potentially explosive multi-national puzzle unfolding in Syria, this personal element could become an important, perhaps decisive, factor in how the conflict unfolds.

Read the whole article by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz on Breaking Israel News.

We celebrate Hanukka in commemoration of the Macabee revolt against the hated Syrian overlords and recapture of the Temple Mount from Syrian Greeks in around 167 BCE. It is the only time in ancient history that the Greeks were defeated and this time by a handful of priests and farmers.

The Greek leader Antiochus 1V Epiphanes built a ‘Akra’ (Citadel) which provided oversight onto the Temple Mount. His soldiers spied to spy and keep watch over our rebellious Maccabean ancestors. The Akra was a thorn in their flesh: it was a constant threat with the Syrian Greeks watching all they were doing on the Temple Mont. But where was the Akra, and how could it overlook the Temple Mount, which was higher than all the surrounding areas?

In 141BCE Simon Maccabees captured the Syrian Aka and expelled its evil foreign soldiers. The early Jewish historian Josephus also mentions the event. He says that Simon took the Akra by siege, razing it to the ground that it might not serve his Simon’s foes, s a base to occupy and do mischief.¹

Just recently archeologists f rom the Israel Antiquities Authority exposed the massive foundations of a large tower. They claim the tower could have risen to a great height, and probably built to overlook the Temple site, located to the north and not far away. From here the Syrian Greeks were able to keep their rebellious Jewish subjects on the Temple Mont under constant surveillance, and at the same time under the likely threat of retaliation. They claim they have found the ‘Akra’, or at least its foundations.

Other finds around the base of the foundations included heavy lead slingshot projectiles and ballista sling stones.Remnants of many metal arrow heads were also found, some in bronze and marked with a small symbolic trident, which was the insignia of Antiochus 1V

Epiphanes, leader of the  Syrian Greeks.  Numerous foreign coins and extensive clay sherds from large wine jars gave them the probable dates of the finds, as well as indicating that the tower’s inhabitants were non-Jewish.

The Maccabees could not tolerate the presence of this overbearing and threatening tower, and on 23rd Iyar of the year 241 BCE, they captured it, “to a chorus of praise and the waving of palm branches, with lutes, cymbals and zithers, lyres and songs.” And so they celebrated the final riddance of a formidable enemy. The Syrians troubled them for war for 74 years.

We Israelis, look to history and to scripture, which have a cyclical aspect. Jesus kept Hanukkah. “Now it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the Temple in Solomon’s porch.” He responded to taunts with: “The works that I do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” 

We take heart, and see through these dark days of terror, now trying to clutch the globe in its death grip. We know the end of the story.   Hag Samach, Happy Hanukkah!

¹ Jewish Antiquities X111:215.