Boil(er)ing point
As always happens at the most inopportune of times, our central heating has packed up. Of course, it’s winter, and it’s really fucking cold. It turns out the problem is with a particular valve, the boiler would apparently fire up for a second when the boiler man held the valve down into a pipe, but it would cut out when he took his hand off. Apparently the valve has just literally worn out and there are burn marks on it.
So while we’re waiting for it to be replaced, we have no heating. Joop’s heat mat can only do so much for him, so he relies on the base temperature of the house being decent enough. The plumber loaned us a small heater but unfortunately it barely produced any heat. Luckily my MIL had one in the garage, it’s small but produces a decent ray of heat.
So, in one room, we have heat of some kind. But those electric heaters are flammable, they need periods to cool down. We can’t just leave it on overnight to keep Joop alive. So, I’ve been doing nightshifts with it, making sure it doesn’t burst into flames, making sure Joop’s temperature is stable, giving it time to cool off. I then go to bed in the morning and sleep a lot of the day, while other people are downstairs with the heater and Joop.
Unfortunately, this isn’t one of my times when I’m really awake in the night. I’m in one of my phases of needing to sleep normally at night. I am so tired and so bored babysitting an electric heater. But hopefully it will all be sorted soon.
Here are some pictures from recent times.
Although Yom HaShoah is not until April in Israel, there is internationally a Holocaust Memorial Day observed to coincide with the liberation of Auschwitz.
I can only ask that people try to learn something because there is only so much that words can do.
More4 showed this programme. Part 2 should be on at 9pm but will otherwise be available at the same link. Even I didn’t know that Nazis in some places banned Jews from owning pets, just to induce that extra bit of misery.
This on Netflix is old and I’ve recommended it before but again, there are some things you won’t believe unless you take the time to see them. It’s the right day for it.
And this playlist is about the sheer dangers that still exist in the modern day. It’s indescribable. The episode about the UK has been conspicuously deleted but the rest are still there and they are terrifying.
Most Holocaust remembrance concerns the events in Europe, but there were also atrocities for Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews in North Africa and West Asia. Including camps. Amin al-Husseini, a Muslim leader during the British occupation of Israel, met with Hitler and Himmler, visited Nazi-occupied Europe, asked for support to stop more Jews returning to Israel (over 500,000 Muslims moved there during the Mandate), and established a Muslim SS division.
Don’t forget how far reaching this was and don’t forget how easy it would be to start it all over again.
And because documentaries rarely point this out: Jews are not in charge of your finances. The only reason Jews ever ended up in banking is because we were literally forced to be, as Christians and Muslims alike considered it unpure work, and Jews were banned from most other professions until surprisingly recently. And we only left Israel in the first place because we were trafficked as slaves around the world. We are indigenous to Israel in West Asia.
“Canaanite peoples
Jews (Yehudim): along with Samaritans, belong to the Israelite nation of the southern Levant, who are believed by archaeologists and historians to have branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrous—and later monotheistic—religion centered on El/Yahweh,[6][7][8] one of the Ancient Canaanite deities. Following the Roman colonial occupation, destruction of Herod’s Temple, and failed Jewish revolts, most Jews were either expelled, taken as slaves to Rome, or massacred,[9] although a small number of Jews managed to remain over the centuries despite persecution by the various conquerors of the region, including the Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, and the British. Additionally, a substantial number of Jews returned from diaspora during the 19th and 20th centuries (mainly under the Zionist movement), as well as after the modern State of Israel was established in 1948. This was coupled with the revival of Hebrew, the only Canaanite language still spoken today. DNA studies show that all major diaspora Jewish communities, with the exception of Ethiopian and Yemenite Jews, derive the majority of their ancestry from ancient Israelites.[10][11][12][13]
Samaritans (Samerim): of Samaria. An ethno-religious group of the Levant, closely related genetically and culturally to the Jewish diaspora and are understood to have branched off from the latter around the time of the Assyrian exile. The Samaritans are adherents of Samaritanism, an Abrahamic religion closely related to Judaism. Their sole norm of religious observance is the Samaritan Pentateuch.[14][15]”
We also don’t go around calling ourselves “God’s chosen people.” But on that subject, he is our God, so obviously he likes us. El is the deity of the land of Israel. It’s weird that people act like Jews hoard him. Are Hindus hoarding Vishnu, or do people realise that deities belong to specific people and places in other cases? Why is it only our deity who has to be spread equally among everybody? Everyone’s critical thinking goes out the window when it comes to Jews.
