Today is Friday, December 26th, 2008 and it is now 2:01 AM here in the Philippines.
Music wise...As I stated in another entry, one of the positives about losing the Journal was being able to shove my favourite songs than readers' throats once again. One such song is "Mi'ma'amkim" ("From the Depths") by the Idan Raichel Project.
Idan's family is from the region of Bessrabia that my mum was native to (Trans-Diniester) and as such there is a very real chance that we af the same lineage but since we only concentrate on our father's lineage (we become Jewish from our mums but get our name and status from our Clan affiliation although most Ashkenazi long ago stopped even maintaining their own lineages and have no Clan structure to speak of.
"Ashkenazi" means "German" in Hebrew and describes one major Jewish ethnicity. They are called "German" because their language is "Yiddish." Yiddish is based on Middle-German (German as it was spoken about 800 years ago) but its grammar is prurely Semitic.
In addition it is written in Hebrew characters that left most Ashkenazim (the plural) out of mainstream cultures in all areas of Europe until the early 19th Century (and even then those in Eastern Europe were still isolated.
My mum's line was in Spain before the Inquisition but like almost all Jews fled the region instead of conversion to Caholicism. they ended up in Bessarabia (a tiny spit of land in between Rumania and the Ukraine). they adopted Asheknazi customs (since they were vastly outnumbered by them) but always made sure to mark their genealogy.
My dad's Clan has a minor line that also came from Spain except that during the Inquistion they fled back home, to what is now Israel, etc. Over the centuries that followed they married into my father's main line, and so my direct male ancestors never left our homeland.
After Saladin (as he is commonly known to Westerners) defeated the Crusaders a branch of our Clan (Dwek) converted and became a diveregent line. We have no contact with them nor have we for many centuries. Strange, the way life is in that part of the world. Literally close relatives and yet we battle.
Meandering back to the song...It came out in 2007 but when I went into battle in the last war (Lebanon War of 2006) we were about a week late getting into the theater because most poor coordination on the call-up of Reserves (at the time I was, like most Israeli men, a Reservist in the army). We gathered in a parking lot of a Kibbutz (all Battalions have static Induction Points, so that in wartime, no matter what we know where to meet and what protocols to follow.
I was in NACHAL Briade (NACHAL is an acronym which means, in English, "Young Fighting Pioneers), 50th Battalion. the 50th is the only dual Paratrooper/Infantry Brigade in Israel, and probably the world. A fast deployment method is to ride the rails of Apaches and Cobras (gunships that only seat 2 crewmen with no space for passengers unless heavily modified. We stand on the copters' rails, and hold onto handholds built into thge body of the copter.
However, arranging this would have taken too much time and they were desprate to insert us so we caught rides with an Armour Column from the
7th Armour Brigade. I had been hastily awarded my long awated promotion , to the rank that would be more or less equivalent to a Us Cpatain except that my rank actually is a higher position, more like Major.
I was also given command of a Platoon, which consists, often, of 4 Squads. Each Squad in turn has 2 "Chains" each. A Chain has 3 soldiers in each one. Ideally one of those 3 is a Squad Sniper, one is a heavy gunner (machine gun), and the third just a rifleman.
The heavy gunner is what is called "Position C" in translation. The Sniper (Postion A) takes point, the Rifleman (Position B), second, and then the heavy gunner. With the Snipers leading the
Chains advance from Point of Cover to next POC. When you get within 35 meters you fire from the hip, as an auto-reflex. This is how we operate (I am being careful not to talk about anything I should not).
So..I was given Platoon Command, and I and my men rode 3 Mk4s (Merkava MBTs, meaning "Tanks"). On my tank my mate had a boombox with alot of mixed CDs (Israelis love trance), and one of those CDs was the one that features this song by Idan Raichel and his group.
The song, in Hebrew, is about soliders who are even willing to die for their People and Nation to live. the words in English:
"From the Depths"
From the depths I called out to you
Come to me
Upon my return the light will return to my eyes
I am not finished
I am not leaving the touch of your hands
May it come and light up to the sound of your laughter
From the depths I called out to you
Come to me
Against the moon that lights my way back to you
The moonlight spreads out and melts against the touch of your hands
In your ears I whisper and ask
Who is that calling out to you tonight?
Listen up
Who sings out loud to you, to your window?
Who is willing to give his woul for you to make you happy
Who will help to build your home?
Who will give his life and put it beneath yours?
Who will live as the dust beneath your feet?
Who will love you more than all other loves?
Who will save you from things that go bump in the night?
From the depths
Come to me"
The song is about men willing to do their duty to protect those they love even if it means that those people they love will go on without them afterwards...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0PWukxRV8U
The second song is by an American born Jew who is rather popular in Alternative circles. His name, "Matityahu" means Matthew in the Ashkenazi dialect of Hebrew. Most Jews pronounce it "Matisyahu." He is well known as a Reggae/Dancehall singer who wears the tellt ale clothing of Chassidic Jewry.
The first song is "King Without a Crown," and the "King" is meant to signify the "Messiah" whom we call "Mosheeach" in Hebrew. I knew he was getting well popular when I heard this song in Victoria Mall in Davao City.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hip2i9yHZ38
The second song, also by him, is "Jerusalem" and is about the Jews eternal need for their homeland, and how we suffered through nearly 2000 years of Exile. In this video there is a montage of pictures/photos that is meant to represent the "Western Wall" AKA "Wailing Wall," which is the last rmenant of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ5FvaASrs0
My last song is "Brothers in Arms," by Dire Straits. The lead singer of the group, Mark Knopfler is a British born Jew who is considered one of the world's best guitarists, especially "finger picking" style. The song is about the comradeship of war and how it effects men.
I first heard it, as conincidence would have it, in war. Back in "Operation Peace for Galilee" AKA "First War in Lebanon." My squad and I were 2 kilometers from the Israeli border, on the Lebanese side. A "wadi" is a dry riverbank. In a wadi , never wet I suppose, stood a cement block structure with zinc roofing. We were pinned down between our own Artillery and the PLA, a Syrian paramilitary that utilised Syrian officers to lead "Palestinians."
We were there for many days and after the 3rd we were in bad shape without water or food, no communication with our country, and because of the terrain even on top of the wadi our own forces could not see us due to hillocks. We ended up eating raw meat from a rodent very closely realted to rats but one of my mates still died there.
The batteries lasted until the 4th day because we hardly used it. Mark Knopfler allowed the song to be used by the IDF 2 years ago and the army incorporated images of the Israeli forces, and has used it as a training tool during the first stage of Induction for new recruits.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wahd2piIr4Q
Book wise I am reading a historical novel entitled "Confessions of a Pagan Nun" by Kate Horsley and published by Shambhala Publications in 2001. It is a fictionalised memoir of a pagan Irish woman in the 6th Century CE/AD who converts to Catholicism but feels torn between the new and old faiths. Interesting so far but have just begun it.
I will continue in a subsequent entry because of the dreaded character count...
Music wise...As I stated in another entry, one of the positives about losing the Journal was being able to shove my favourite songs than readers' throats once again. One such song is "Mi'ma'amkim" ("From the Depths") by the Idan Raichel Project.
Idan's family is from the region of Bessrabia that my mum was native to (Trans-Diniester) and as such there is a very real chance that we af the same lineage but since we only concentrate on our father's lineage (we become Jewish from our mums but get our name and status from our Clan affiliation although most Ashkenazi long ago stopped even maintaining their own lineages and have no Clan structure to speak of.
"Ashkenazi" means "German" in Hebrew and describes one major Jewish ethnicity. They are called "German" because their language is "Yiddish." Yiddish is based on Middle-German (German as it was spoken about 800 years ago) but its grammar is prurely Semitic.
In addition it is written in Hebrew characters that left most Ashkenazim (the plural) out of mainstream cultures in all areas of Europe until the early 19th Century (and even then those in Eastern Europe were still isolated.
My mum's line was in Spain before the Inquisition but like almost all Jews fled the region instead of conversion to Caholicism. they ended up in Bessarabia (a tiny spit of land in between Rumania and the Ukraine). they adopted Asheknazi customs (since they were vastly outnumbered by them) but always made sure to mark their genealogy.
My dad's Clan has a minor line that also came from Spain except that during the Inquistion they fled back home, to what is now Israel, etc. Over the centuries that followed they married into my father's main line, and so my direct male ancestors never left our homeland.
After Saladin (as he is commonly known to Westerners) defeated the Crusaders a branch of our Clan (Dwek) converted and became a diveregent line. We have no contact with them nor have we for many centuries. Strange, the way life is in that part of the world. Literally close relatives and yet we battle.
Meandering back to the song...It came out in 2007 but when I went into battle in the last war (Lebanon War of 2006) we were about a week late getting into the theater because most poor coordination on the call-up of Reserves (at the time I was, like most Israeli men, a Reservist in the army). We gathered in a parking lot of a Kibbutz (all Battalions have static Induction Points, so that in wartime, no matter what we know where to meet and what protocols to follow.
I was in NACHAL Briade (NACHAL is an acronym which means, in English, "Young Fighting Pioneers), 50th Battalion. the 50th is the only dual Paratrooper/Infantry Brigade in Israel, and probably the world. A fast deployment method is to ride the rails of Apaches and Cobras (gunships that only seat 2 crewmen with no space for passengers unless heavily modified. We stand on the copters' rails, and hold onto handholds built into thge body of the copter.
However, arranging this would have taken too much time and they were desprate to insert us so we caught rides with an Armour Column from the
7th Armour Brigade. I had been hastily awarded my long awated promotion , to the rank that would be more or less equivalent to a Us Cpatain except that my rank actually is a higher position, more like Major.
I was also given command of a Platoon, which consists, often, of 4 Squads. Each Squad in turn has 2 "Chains" each. A Chain has 3 soldiers in each one. Ideally one of those 3 is a Squad Sniper, one is a heavy gunner (machine gun), and the third just a rifleman.
The heavy gunner is what is called "Position C" in translation. The Sniper (Postion A) takes point, the Rifleman (Position B), second, and then the heavy gunner. With the Snipers leading the
Chains advance from Point of Cover to next POC. When you get within 35 meters you fire from the hip, as an auto-reflex. This is how we operate (I am being careful not to talk about anything I should not).
So..I was given Platoon Command, and I and my men rode 3 Mk4s (Merkava MBTs, meaning "Tanks"). On my tank my mate had a boombox with alot of mixed CDs (Israelis love trance), and one of those CDs was the one that features this song by Idan Raichel and his group.
The song, in Hebrew, is about soliders who are even willing to die for their People and Nation to live. the words in English:
"From the Depths"
From the depths I called out to you
Come to me
Upon my return the light will return to my eyes
I am not finished
I am not leaving the touch of your hands
May it come and light up to the sound of your laughter
From the depths I called out to you
Come to me
Against the moon that lights my way back to you
The moonlight spreads out and melts against the touch of your hands
In your ears I whisper and ask
Who is that calling out to you tonight?
Listen up
Who sings out loud to you, to your window?
Who is willing to give his woul for you to make you happy
Who will help to build your home?
Who will give his life and put it beneath yours?
Who will live as the dust beneath your feet?
Who will love you more than all other loves?
Who will save you from things that go bump in the night?
From the depths
Come to me"
The song is about men willing to do their duty to protect those they love even if it means that those people they love will go on without them afterwards...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0PWukxRV8U
The second song is by an American born Jew who is rather popular in Alternative circles. His name, "Matityahu" means Matthew in the Ashkenazi dialect of Hebrew. Most Jews pronounce it "Matisyahu." He is well known as a Reggae/Dancehall singer who wears the tellt ale clothing of Chassidic Jewry.
The first song is "King Without a Crown," and the "King" is meant to signify the "Messiah" whom we call "Mosheeach" in Hebrew. I knew he was getting well popular when I heard this song in Victoria Mall in Davao City.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hip2i9yHZ38
The second song, also by him, is "Jerusalem" and is about the Jews eternal need for their homeland, and how we suffered through nearly 2000 years of Exile. In this video there is a montage of pictures/photos that is meant to represent the "Western Wall" AKA "Wailing Wall," which is the last rmenant of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ5FvaASrs0
My last song is "Brothers in Arms," by Dire Straits. The lead singer of the group, Mark Knopfler is a British born Jew who is considered one of the world's best guitarists, especially "finger picking" style. The song is about the comradeship of war and how it effects men.
I first heard it, as conincidence would have it, in war. Back in "Operation Peace for Galilee" AKA "First War in Lebanon." My squad and I were 2 kilometers from the Israeli border, on the Lebanese side. A "wadi" is a dry riverbank. In a wadi , never wet I suppose, stood a cement block structure with zinc roofing. We were pinned down between our own Artillery and the PLA, a Syrian paramilitary that utilised Syrian officers to lead "Palestinians."
We were there for many days and after the 3rd we were in bad shape without water or food, no communication with our country, and because of the terrain even on top of the wadi our own forces could not see us due to hillocks. We ended up eating raw meat from a rodent very closely realted to rats but one of my mates still died there.
The batteries lasted until the 4th day because we hardly used it. Mark Knopfler allowed the song to be used by the IDF 2 years ago and the army incorporated images of the Israeli forces, and has used it as a training tool during the first stage of Induction for new recruits.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wahd2piIr4Q
Book wise I am reading a historical novel entitled "Confessions of a Pagan Nun" by Kate Horsley and published by Shambhala Publications in 2001. It is a fictionalised memoir of a pagan Irish woman in the 6th Century CE/AD who converts to Catholicism but feels torn between the new and old faiths. Interesting so far but have just begun it.
I will continue in a subsequent entry because of the dreaded character count...