One Of Those Big "If's..."

I love being in Shiloh.  I think that making that move to Shiloh almost thirty years ago was one of the best things we ever did.  It feels like the right place.  There's a mishna (please don't ask me for identifying name, rank, serial # etc) that says that there a "hidden magnet" in us leading us to the tribal portion of the Land of Israel we're supposed to be part of.  That seemed so true after volunteering a few years on our Va'adat Klita, Absorption committee.

But when we first looked for a yishuv in Judea and Samaria, we checked out Judea, not Samaria.  Actually, the very first place we almost moved to was Kiryat Arba.  We were almost among the very first and had even been assigned an apartment in stage one.  The Shabbatot and Jewish Holidays we had spent in the Hebron Memshal among the original post-1967 Jewish community there were great.  But then my husband got a good job in Jerusalem and it just seemed too much for a very young family to live so far away.  And we had bought our Bayit V'Gan apartment, having moved in after the birth of our eldest.  We had been so sure that we were going to live in Kiryat Arba that we didn't even fully furnish it, figuring that we'd wait.  Then we checked out Tekoa and Efrat, in both we would have been in the original group or close to it.  Tekoa would have had been great fun for me and my husband, but there were no kids for our daughters.  And the first stage of housing in Efrat did not attract us. They couldn't give a price but wanted a deposit, and one of the plans had all internal toilets, no windows, which seemed much too dumb.

Then friends, with daughters the same ages as ours looked into Shiloh and we all moved here the same year.  There's only one thing that gives me regrets, OK, make it two.  Raise Your Spirits Theater and Dames of the Dance.  I write for Sharon Katz's Voices Magazine from Shiloh, so that's taken care of.  But the stage calls me...