05/06/2024
Shani is engaged! ... and other Orbach news
To all our friends and family!
בשבח והודיה לה' יתברך, אנחנו שמחים להודיע על אירוסי בתנו שני נעמה ליאר יהודה בנג'ו מבית שאן!
We are overjoyed to announce the engagement of our daughter, Shani Naama with Yaer Yehuda Benjo (pics attached)
Before the personal stuff, I want to wish everyone a joyous Jerusalem Day. In Israel we are celebrating today, the date on which the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem, was liberated and reunified in 1967.
I'd also like to mention that if you want to respond (and you do not have to), please do not do so between sunset Friday and sunset Saturday in your local time zone.
There is an ancient book (Bresh*t Raba 68:4) in which a Roman matron asks the famed Rabbi Yossi bar Chalafta what has G-d been doing since He finished creating the world? The Rabbi answers that He has been matching up couples. She laughs and says that "even I can do that". Rabbi Yossi explains that to do it properly is as difficult as splitting the Red Sea. To prove her point, she lined up her male and female servants and married them to eachother. I won't go into the rest of the story, but it did not work out so well for her.
So we are very grateful to G-D, who took time out of His busy schedule, to find the perfect match for our amazing and brilliant Shani, a young man who is sweet, sensitive, caring, and compassionate and if I could pick a son, I would choose him in a second.
Yaer is of Moroccan descent and his name is a word that means "[G-D] will enlighten (or shine)" and is found several places in the Bible, most significantly in the priestly blessing (Numbers 6:22-25 - G-d will shine His countenance upon you). This is also the blessing parents give their children before the Sabbath meal every Friday night.
Yaer comes from the Hebrew root word Ohr (light) which is the same root as our family name Orbach (which means the light within you).
Yaer is from Beit Shean, which is just below the Sea of the Galilee. Beit Shean is one of the oldest cities in the region. It was where the Philistines had displayed the bodies of King Saul and his sons after killing them in battle. Today it is home to one of the most fascinating archeological parks with a 7000-seat Roman theater, colonnaded streets of which the columns all fell parallel to eachother in the earthquake of 749 CE, gladiator amphitheater, bathhouse, marketplace, temple of Zeus, Samaritan synagogue, and much more.
My other daughters and son-in-law helped Yaer set up the lovely spot where he proposed (and also photographed the occasion).
Meanwhile Shani's friends were here in the house preparing a party for her.
Yaer and Shani started dating about a week or so before the war.
Since Yaer was serving in the army at the time in and around Gaza, it made for some very unusual and unplanned dates, and many date cancellations.
As he lives quite a distance up North, he would often be released from the army for a Shabbat (Sabbath) but not have enough time to get home, so he would spend the Shabbats with us.
The infrequency of their dates and never knowing when or even if it would happen made for a very strange but intense courtship.
Yaer's last day of regular army service was on the Thursday before Passover and we kind of thought the engagement might happen sometime around then.
But then he was unexpectedly (but not surprisingly due to the ongoing war) informed that on Friday, the next day, he must report for 4 months of reserve duty, so then we expected the engagement would be after the summer when he was finished with the army (for this year at least - reserve duty is required every year until a certain age).
However, at the beginning of May, he came to the house when Shani was not home and asked for our permission and blessing to ask Shani to marry him. He then purchased a ring which he showed us as well.
With G-D's help (and hopefully without a new warfront opening up in the North with Hezbullah in Lebanon), the wedding will be towards the end of the year (Nov-Dec?).
Both are 22 years old with Shani just a drop older, I guess making her a cradle-robber. But she has always been feisty. When a toddler, in a store like Walmart for example, she thought it was hilarious to hide in the middle of the clothes racks and not respond to our calls. If we took our eyes off her for a second, we would have another 15-30 minutes searching in the clothes racks for where she was hiding.
I was always very anti-child leashes. But We needed to fly somewhere and I was really afraid we would lose Shani in the airport. So we gave in and got a child-leash. But we bought two of them and attached them so she would have more of a range to run around. I thought a longer leash would make me a better parent than those others who leashed their kids. And, as much as I hated it, it worked! We did not lose her!
Finally we boarded the plane. She was still at an age where she didnt need a seat and sat on our laps. We sat in our seats and removed the leash, finally safe from worrying about her. And within 30 seconds, we fell asleep. It wasnt very long before the stewardess woke us up to ask if the rambunctious little pipsqueak running up and down the aisle was ours. It seems as soon as we fell asleep, she jumped off our laps and started going up and down the aisles. Shani was rubbing women's legs bc she liked the feel of pantyhose (another reason we had to keep her close by in stores) and when she saw someone sleeping she patted them and said "Wakee Upee" until they responded to her. No more sleep the rest of that flight!
Although she does not do these things anymore (as far as I know), she is still a little firecracker who can light up a room with her smile and her wit and all of her brilliant radiance and I wish Yaer a lot of luck and patience over the next 100 years or so.
Currently, Shani is finishing her first year in university in a city called Ariel. She is studying Human Resources and Psychology. She didnt really have much of a first semester (which starts in October) as many of her fellow students as well as her teachers were called up to reserve duty. It is difficult and unfair to have a semester where a significant amount of the student body and the staff are defending the country. I believe Yaer will start studying there next year also and that is where they will live.
As far as the rest of us:
Doniayle (age 26) is working as a social worker and raising her two beautiful daughters Talya (age 4) and Noga (age 1.5). Akiva (age 27) is an amazing father but he is often away doing his job making the country and the world a safer place. Besides that, he also started studying in university this year in a special track designed for someone with his busy schedule.Whatever he is doing at the moment, he is 150% invested in that part of his life and you would never even know that he has so many other things going on in his life. Doniayle, who often has to deal with the kids on her own due to his schedule, is an amazing and dedicated mother, whom I hope will someday have the quiet and relaxation she deserves and is continually earning, as well as the nachas (joy) from her family as we have from our children and grandchildren (especially when we can return them if they get too cranky). But, for now, she is a family powerhouse!
Talya is smart and witty and sharp and loves to sing and dance (which she actually does pretty well - did not get that from my side) and has a personality somewhat like Shani did at that age. She keeps her parents on their toes. Noga was a little easier but a few months ago she learned how to walk and that changes the entire dynamic. She uses her walking to make it very clear where does and does not want to go or what she does and does not want to do. We love to spend time with them. Every Shabbat (the only day off in Israel, Sunday is a work day), Talya wakes us up between 6-7 am and if we dont get up fast enough, she crawls into bed between us and, believe me, she is a restless sleeper who likes her space.
Maital (age 19) is the most motivated, dedicated, driven human being I have ever met in my life. She makes herself a strict schedule for studying, exercising, flute lessons, social time, etc. and sticks to it 100%. And her grades reflect that. She will be graduating next month. Next year, she will be volunteering in the National Service program with an organization called HaShomer HaChadash (the new watchmen). https://eng.hashomer.org.il/%d7%94%d7%9e%d7%a9%d7%99%d7.../
A little tangential background - In 1907, a group was formed called Bar-Giora (named after the rebel leader during the revolt against the Romans) to protect Jewish settlements by early settlers such as Yitzchak Ben Tzvi who would later become the 2nd president of Israel. This group was absorbed into the newly formed HaShomer group (the original one) in 1909. The idea was to guard jewish agricultural settlements instead of relying on the goodwill of foreign consulates and Arab watchmen. This group would eventually become the underground Hagana organization, fighting for Jewish independence from the British and after 1948, became the Israeli Defense Forces until today.
***Interesting little tidbit - David Ben-Gurion was not allowed to join BarGiora/HaShomer group. The reason given was that he was too short to jump on a horse. Although I am against discrimination of any type, I personally feel an affront to those who are discriminated against for being vertically-challenged (Hamayvin yavin - IYKYK). However, this was not the real reason. It seems they just did not like him and didnt want him in the group. This may have been harmless at the time, but years later it would cause quite a bit of tension when the founder Yitzchak Ben Tzvi served as Israel's president under Israel's Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion. ***
Maital is very interested in agriculture and this organization was established in 2007 after a new law was passed to protect those who defend their land from agricultural crime. It also seeks to strengthen the connection between the Jewish people and its land through education, agriculture and forestry. She is very excited about the opportunity before her.
Orli is a continually rising star in the school where she wears many hats. Besides teaching, she gives matriculation exams, mentors new teachers, is the head of the staff that deals with certain grades, and does many other things. The principal of the school, with whom Orli has had a very close relationship since she began working, is retiring after this year. But Orli is also about a month away from finishing her Masters Degree in Educational Counseling. For now, she is happy with what she does and will be continuing with the students she has been teaching for years as they enter 12th grade in the fall.
Between Corona and the war, tour guiding is not the most lucrative profession in this country. So I dont get to do a lot of that, even though it is my most favorite thing in the world and, when I am guiding, I can't believe I get to do the thing I love most in the world and also get paid for it (if there are tourists...). But I needed a more reliable steady income. So I am the educational director of Ptil Tekhelet (https://www.tekhelet.com/), which is dedicated to bringing back the commandment mentioned in Numbers 15:38 of wearing a blue string made of an ancient dye from snails, a recipe that was lost to us for over 1500 years and only rediscovered by accident in the late 1980's. I go around the country (and around the world on zoom) and give lectures and dyeing demonstrations. Very soon, we will be opening a museum which I will be in charge of and I am very excited about that.
So that is it for now. I hope all of you are well and helathy. If you have questions about things you see and hear in the news about Israel, please feel free to contact me. Other than that, I wish you all a safe summer and continued blessings in your lives.
Thank you so much,
David Orbach
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