"And thou shalt rejoice
before the LORD thy God,
thou,
and thy son, and thy daughter,
and thy man-servant,
and thy maid-servant,
and the Levite ..., and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are in the midst of thee,
...
And thou shalt rejoice
in thy feast,
thou,
and thy son, and thy daughter,
and thy man-servant,
and thy maid-servant,
and the Levite, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates.
[Deuteronomy 16,11; 14]

In Judaism "Joy" and "to rejoice
is a commandment, a Mitzvah,
and there are at least 10 synonyms
for "Simchah"
as the Hebrew Wikipedia says.

It's significant,
that - as I often mention -
in the English Wikipedia
"Joy" is "happiness",
but joy is not the same as happiness!

An hour after I sculpted this column,
on May 19, 2011
I open today's "GoodNews" e-mail,
and there they quote an invitation
to a happening on the street
on May 20, 2011, of
These people call themselves
"S-i-m-ch-a-h", "Joy",
the capital letters of their purpose.
They want
"to be joyous and bring joy"!
in Hebrew these are just two verbs
of the same root:
li-smo'ach ~~~ le-same'ach.

another mixture of cousins:
Mika and Elah,
Itamar and Rotem

A moment later,
the camera moved a little,
and already
the composition
and each of the faces
look different...

Here - with Efrat and Yael -
in front of the old house -
I can be seen in that outfit,
dress, stockings, shoes,
which I , as I told,
I bought especially for this occasion,
to please my daughter,
after I've never bought anything
for 20 years (except in cheep India).
She, indeed, thanked me , even twice!

It's so cold,
that I have to hide the pretty dress
under a thick coat,
while I talk with Ronya,
Uri's sister,
once my almost daughter-in-law.


The photo on the wall
shows
a hora-dance
perhaps 70 years ago
[In the Hebrew Wikipedia
a similar photo is shown]
[see a video of 11 min. with a string of horas]

Ronnit
with her sister-in-law, Ronya,
with her daughter, Rotem,
with her mother , Rachel

4 times "R" .....