Dear Friends

1) for a link to Sharon Katz’s short movie in English about our event on the Eitam please click:
http://www.voices-magazine.com/index.php?page=inside_page&id=212
for a link to the Hebrew movie: http://www.youtube.com/user/NashimBeYarok#p/a/u/0/0vVkKFYuK5s

2) Rabbi Baruch Efrati, Rabbi of the Zayit Raanan shul in Efrat and member of the committee for the development of Eitam wrote a letter on the day of the event in Eitam:

Moadim le-simhah, friends

Unfortunately, I do not feel well and was therefore unable to come to the festive prayer service and the happening this morning at Eitam.
I heard that large numbers came from all of Gush Etzion, and from our neighborhood [Zayit].

A great yeyasher koah (well done) to everyone who made the effort to come to the event, and a special yeyasher koah to Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar. Now as then, Israel was redeemed only by merit of righteous, wise, and pragmatic women.

The connection that we all have with the L-rd’s land, and especially with the portion of Judah, and especially with the mountain ridge that connects us with the Temple Mount, is an incomparable holy and essential connection.

In the days in which the State of Israel is examining its identity, its purpose, and its character, it is important to remember and to remind that we are here in the land as part of the revealed Redemption, that the people of Israel came to life after death in the exiles, and wishes to return to the life that was here, as in the time of David and Solomon, with Temple and king, prophecy and Torah. Not a life of the material and vanities, desires and the confusion caused by the media, but a holy life that gladdens those who come to restore the fallen Tabernacle of David.

We did not come here as refugees from the Diaspora, without any choice, rather, we arose to new life and returned to Eretz Israel out of a holy ideal.
And as our master Rabbi Kook described this: “Judah the lion’s whelp has awakened from its lengthy slumber, and behold, it is returning to its portion.”

Accordingly, settlement on the Eitam ridge is both the fulfillment of a positive Torah commandment of the conquest of the land, and a strengthening of the Jewish and original identity of the state as a whole.
Here is the basis of the state’s identity, in the hills of David and Solomon, first among which is the mount of the Lord’s Temple; it is only from here that the coastal plain draws both its spiritual and material strength.
Every strengthening of the settlement in the hill country strengthens the state’s resolve and its original Jewish identity.

With God’s help, there will be many activities in the coming year to strengthen Eitam, and we all are summoned to participate in the settlement of the site.

Whoever has ideas for strengthening is invited to turn to the Committee for the Development of Eitam, headed by Yehudit and Nadia.

Yeyasher koah and Hag sameah – happy holiday

Baruch Efrati