What a Way to End the Year
It's surreal
The year started off like any other. But on the last day of the year, seven people were killed in a terrorist attack, while the rest of the country miraculously survived a traumatic attack from Iran of 180 ballistic missiles. And meanwhile there are countless thousands of soldiers in Lebanon, not to mention the soldiers still in Gaza, and the hostages whose fate is still unknown. It’s all quite disturbing and surreal.
Then I saw someone tweet saw that the fact that Israel is rejoicing that no civilians were killed by Iran shows that Israel measures military success in terms of how many civilians are killed. And the tweet got tens of thousands of likes. Just insane.
Anyway, as the year closes, I would like to thank all the readers of this blog, all the commentators (well, maybe not all of them), and especially the paid subscribers whose support is so appreciated.
Here’s a video with an interesting revelation about the contemporary shofar market situation:
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Wishing you all a happy and healthy new year. May the hostages come home, may the bereaved find comfort and may the injured find healing, may our soldiers be protected and successful, may the evacuees be able to return home, and may we attain true achdut and victory and peace.
Oh my gosh! I always thought Eastern European shofarot (I have one myself, my grandfather's) were rams' horns and looked that way because they had been straightened out! I never knew they were from goats!
Also note that back then they used to carve their shofarot. You never see that these days. You often see shofarot that haven't even been polished. I don't know why that is, apart from maybe some "frumkeit."
I don't want to be too pedantic, but "Eid" is Arabic for "holiday"- it has the same root as the Hebrew מועד- and is used for multiple holidays. The one in question is Eid al-Adha, the Festival of the Sacrifice. (I'll add more in response to the comment below.)
And I also don't want to be too annoying, but "not taken from a Yemenite" should perhaps be phrased "not taken from a Yemenite animal" to be a bit more respectful. My question is, what did Yemenites use before importing from South Africa became common? Did they get kudu from Ethiopia? Did they use another animal?
Fascinating video!