Land of Israel

Today's podcast comes from the "Ad Halom" Israel Independence War Monument Park in Ashdod. "Ad Halom" in Hebrew means, "until here", to commemorate the most northern point in Israel that the Egyptian Army reached in 1948. Had, they captured Ashdod, there would have been nothing to stop the Egyptians from capturing the entire south of Israel as far as Tel Aviv - Jaffa in the north. But even in Ashdod there was nothing to stop the entire Egyptian Army except for a single-engine Piper piloted by a South African Jew named Eddie Cohen, of sacred and martyred memory, who was dropping Molotov cocktails from the cockpit on the heads of the Egyptians. Any objective observer knows that Hashem was controlling events, not the fledgling army. It's still the same, so there's no sense in trying to be a control freak...

Today, Rabbi Lazer broadcasts from the ancient Sycamore grove in the dunes of the northern Negev Desert south of Ashdod. What's the secret of these trees and their ability to thrive in such an arid climate with winds and shifting sands? These trees are an amazing living parable about the Jewish People...