It's rare to be presented with conclusive evidence of G-d's existence, rarer when two pieces of evidence present themselves on the same day. Every Sunday night for the past ten months we've been hosting three American students from a local post high school yeshiva.  The come over for some home baked goodies, informal Jewish learning and "anything goes" conversations.  With the year coming to a close and the trio returning to America, I thought it would be nice to end our time together with an overnight camping trip at the Dead Sea.  Naturally they all readily agreed to the idea. Heading out two hours later than we were supposed to, we got to Jerusalem from Beit Shemesh, drove past the growing city of Ma'aleh Adumim and found ourselves on the winding, single lane road that leads to the Dead Sea beach area. 

On Monday of Pesach, My wife and I loaded kids, carriages and matzo into the van and headed to Jerusalem.  We were planning on stopping to visit with some relatives who were staying in a hotel and were having dinner over at our cousins.  In between we were going to visit the Kotel. There is a mitzvah to visit the site of the Temple in Jerusalem on the three major Jewish holidays, Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot.  I'd always wondered what Jerusalem looked like all those all those years ago as thousands of people thronged the city with a menagerie of animals and children.  I think we got a taste of it in modern terms that day.

Fifty years ago, on the morning of January 25th 1949, my grandfather, Shimon Leib Alpert, made his way out to the polling booth, on the very first election day in the country's history.  His brother, Moshe Alpert, accompanied him, and on that festive day - as he did every day - he recorded his experiences in his journal.  With his usual precision he detailed the most technical aspects of the voting process, along with the deep religious and national excitement of the day.

Moshe Alpert, who left a journal of 1,200 pages, was a man of the old settlement (yishuv hayashan), third generation in the country, and a teacher at the Talmud Torah Eitz Chaim.  But those titles do not encapsulate the man.