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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

My Trip Into Samaria or "My Gosh! It's Right Next Door!"

Nadene Goldfoot
On October 7, 1982 during my Succot vacation, my husband and I had the chance to visit Samaria.  We had been in Israel since September 1980 and had spent 10 months at Gordon Seminary in Haifa studying and taking final tests to continue our teaching profession and was then ready to teach English in Israel.  Danny and I had come from Oregon where I was born and raised in Portland.  Danny was a recent  implant from Brooklyn. We had found an apartment in Safed in the Galilee and were teaching there.   

"We had signed up for an ACI (Americans and Canadians in Israel) trip that was to go to Samaria and it became quite an eye opener for us. " This is a excerpt from my book, Letters From Israel page 221-222.

"What happened was that we drove on the highway from Haifa to Tel Aviv along the coast.  It is a lovely drive and turned left at Kvar Saba, went into that little teeny town and out of it, and we found ourselves in Samaria.  I was so shocked.  It's practically on the other side of the highway.  We stood at a plaque where Sharon and his men had fought not too recently and saw our highway and car.  It was unreal!

We drove deeper into Samaria and saw Arabs, sheep, a little Arab town outside Kvar Saba, and in the distance Ramalla, which was a larger Arab city.  I saw lots of land that looked somewhat like Eastern Oregon, and finally came some twenty-five minutes later to a Jewish settlement where we had lunch in their Succa.  We brought our own sack lunches with us.  This settlement is made up of mainly Israelis and a few Americans who are very dedicated and Zionistic.  One of their people is a non-Jew who is a Japanese man recently from Japan who has a paper factory there where he makes paper for computers.  He goes to services, and once got all dressed up in his Japanese robes and proceeded to take movies of the Friday night services until he was asked to please stop.  (This isn't done by anyone during services)  They are building beautiful homes but no apartments there, and are almost ready to move in.  The establishment is six years old.  You know that house in Ontario on the corner with the red tile roof and wood sides?  One house I  saw looked like that one.  The other houses had the same roof but were made of cement.  (Ontario, Oregon is in the Eastern side of the state which is semi-desert and similar to Israel.)

Anyway, the point is this.  The shape of Israel decided by the United Nations is really weird.  They gave us the seacoast from Haifa to Tel Aviv, and that's it.  The land adjacent to us is ancient Samaria and Judea.  How dumb!  We should have that land as well."

Resource: Letters From Israel by Nadene Goldfoot-listed on http://amazon.com/ 2003.

1 comment:

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