A Message from the Chairman By Jeremy Rosenstein
This year is the 40th year since I came to finish high school in Israel and first got to know our Shul and Kehillah. I have many memories over the years—including sitting in my matriculation exams in June of 1982 in my school just outside Haifa and hearing Israeli aircraft flying overhead from the nearby airbase during the 1st Lebanese war; or one year later when I was a soldier in the Nahal corps not knowing how much I would have to pay for the bus every week when going out for Shabbat, as there was very high inflation and bus fares changed every week; or spending days in South Lebanon in 1986 looking for kidnapped Israeli soldiers. There were two special occasions during my army service that I will always remember.
8 |Pesach 2020
The first was 24th December 1983 when our unit, made up of many “Olim”, was taken to do guard duty in Bet Lechem for the local celebrations. I spent that evening on the roof of the Church of the Nativity guarding and listening to the carol music below. My friend and member of our Kehillah, Ralph Portner, who was one of the sergeants in our unit, was with a group of English speaking soldiers walking the narrow streets, when he came across a group of English tourists (who could not understand how Israeli soldiers were speaking with broad “Mancunian” accents) and managed to explain to them that he was part of an elite British army unit who travel the world protecting British tourists! My second memory is of Pesach 1985. At the time I was based as a Sergeant in “Machane 80” of the Nahal brigade with soldiers doing their basic training. It was decided that our unit would come to Netanya for Seder night and that the soldiers would spend the evening patrolling the streets of Netanya. The idea was to have two soldiers patrol in the square, two patrol south of the square and two patrol north of the square on David Hamelech
