Dig, dig, dig, dig your shovel deep

Note: If you’re looking for an intelligent analysis of yesterday’s shakeup of Israel’s political landscape, you’ve come to the wrong place. (I suggest you check out Jameel’s list of winners and losers instead.) Because the only thing I have to say on the subject is that it’s quite disappointing. I mean, here in TRLEOOB*, we were really looking forward to having a day off… :-)

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It was Monday, the second day of Rosh Chodesh Iyar, and I was busy patting myself on the back over a job well done.

You see, the Iyar Challenge was underway, and by all indications, it was going to be a huge success.

I had calculated the optimal time to do laundry during the week; each of the kids knew which shirt to wear each day; and I had even managed to convince a certain young man of my acquaintance not to wear a certain shirt from his collection…

And then… [cue: dramatic music] one of the Shiputzim daughters (henceforth, OOTSD) walked in the door.

She needed a few things for her school’s upcoming Yom HaZikaron/Yom HaAtzma’ut ceremony, she told me.

Still deep in the throes of congratulating myself, I wasn’t concerned.

“Bring it on!” I may even have said.

And so she did…

Her class was dramatizing Yoram Taharlev’s “Ein Kvar Derech Chazarah” (“No Way Back Anymore”):

The lyrics are available here.

OOTSD was supposed to dress up as one of the Bilu’im, and her costume had to include a checked shirt, a straw hat or a kova tembel, and a farming or work tool.

Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling so confident anymore…

Because while we had no trouble finding a suitable shirt and hat, I had no idea how to approach the third item on the list.

After all, we’re not exactly the kind of family that just happens to have spare agricultural implements lying around.

Especially since not just ANY agricultural implement would do. It couldn’t be valuable, because OOTSD was taking it to school. It couldn’t be too heavy, because she was going to be dancing with it.

And, most importantly, it had to pass muster with OOTSD’s discriminating teenage sister…

But fortunately, YZG – aka He Who Successfully Built a Model of the Mizbei’ach in Just a Few Hours – once again stepped in and saved the day.

After grabbing a cardboard tube and some heavy duty aluminum foil, he produced this:

Amazingly, not only did the aforementioned teenage sister approve, but when OOTSD brought the shovel to school, her friends said that it was “magniv” (loosely, cool).

Which, by all accounts, is very high praise indeed…

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*TRLEOOB=the real life equivalent of our blog