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Barbara Sofer
e-mail: [email protected]
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Award-winning writer and lecturer Barbara Sofer grew up
in a small town in Connecticut, and moved to Israel in 1971. She is a
graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. Her articles -taking on a wide range of subjects from ethnic
cooking to terrorism--have appeared in The New
York Times, The Boston Globe, Parents, Readers' Digest, Woman's Day,
Hadassah Magazine and Inside Magazine
among many others. She writes a bi-weekly column for the Friday Jerusalem
Post.
Barbara has written five books and contributed to
several others
Available now from Amazon
EXCERPT FROM CURRENT ARTICLE
Jerusalem Post
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Happy Grandparents' Day
By Barbara Sofer
The principal asks the assembled elementary school kids what's special about today. The kids already know it's Rosh Hodesh Kislev – the beginning of the Hebrew month that brings in Hanukkah.
"Don't you dare say Black Friday," she warns, eliciting a laugh. Then she explains about the unusual "kaf-tet b'November," a rare naming in Hebrew of an Israeli celebration marking a non-Hebrew date: the 29th of November.
That's when the United Nations General Assembly voted in Resolution 181, calling for the partition of the British-ruled Palestine Mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The resolution was approved on November 29, 1947, with 33 votes in favor, 13 against, 10 abstentions and one absent. A triumph for Zionism.
That particular 29th of November took place before I was born, but a number of the others who are in the auditorium remember the all-night celebrations, the champagne in cafés in Tel Aviv, the congratulatory bonfires in the north of Israel. We older folk are present in numbers in the school audience because today is also Grandparents' Day in the Yachad School in the city of Modi'in.
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