This year has really been one for the books in terms of “Nes gadol haya sham!” In the aftermath of October 7th, 2023, Gaza is in ruins with nothing left that anyone would want to live in. Despite our progress in ridding the area of terrorists, we still haven’t been able to free our hostages, even with Sinwar, Deif, and thousands of other Hamas terrorists wiped out.
Unfortunately, our hostages are still not home with their families and continue suffering, still imprisoned by what’s left of those murderous animals scurrying around like rats underground, and we’re all desperate for a deal to get them out of there once and for all. We all pray that this will be over very soon—it’s been going on too long already.
On the other hand, up North, the IDF has nearly cleared out Hezbollah from Lebanon. The nudnik Nasrallah has been blown out of his underground bunker and is gone forever. Whatever is left of Hezbollah is like a rundown battery.
Syria’s Assad has now taken Russian citizenship along with his family members and cronies. That should be interesting to watch down the road while the IDF has temporarily taken control of more of the Golan Heights with the Syrian Druze inviting them to stay and the Turkish-backed Islamists who took over claiming they want peace with Israel and Iran should go home. Not sure how this is going to play out, but maybe we should sell him a bridge. In the interim, it seems like Syria is one more place Iran has lost out on and hopefully this whittles away at Ali Khamenei and his Iron Guards. Maybe they should all take Russian citizenship?
Meanwhile, the Houthi minions in Yemen are running in circles, patting themselves on their backs for being nuisances, and seem to have no idea that if they annoy enough people, Israel will be the least of their concerns. No different from the cartoon minions (sorry to insult the cartoon minions)!
None of the above is a laughing matter, of course, but with the trauma of the last year we need to have a little levity, if only briefly.
To add to this, all of us have been receiving all kinds of pictures and posts for the last week or so of menorahs in the most unlikely of places, from Gaza, to Lebanon, to Syria, to name just a few. I would like to share a posting I received that deserves the prize for “most original Chanukah menorah for 2024.”
A huge carved ice sculpture menorah beautifully set up on a complete ice canvas under a blue sky! Where do you ask? It turns out that it’s the brainchild of Chabad of Siberia. Yup, you heard it right. There’s a Chabad house braving it out in frozen Siberia and they had this ice sculpture menorah prepared for them.
I keep asking myself: Who would want to live in Siberia all year long if you were not in a Russian gulag? I guess keeping food there is easy since everything is frozen, but whoever is running this Chabad should definitely be the winner of the Chanukah prize for the most unique!
Happy Chanukah everyone! n
Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a Licensed Real Estate Broker (Anessa V Cohen Realty) with over 20 years of experience offering full service residential, management and commercial real estate services in the 5 towns of Long Island as well as the tri-state area. She can be reached at 516-569-5007 or Readers are encouraged to send any questions or scenarios by email to anessa@avcrealty.com.
