Happy Hanukkah

May you all enjoy a Happy Chanukah (Hanukkah)

 

Two of my four grandparents were from Anavrati, (photo right above: Gavaris family) a small mountainous region near Sparta. (The other two were from Kalamata, a few miles east of this). The population of Anavrati used to be about 1,400; now it is 48 - mostly retired Greeks. 

 

Here is an interesting account from a first-hand resident, answering the question: “ Was Anavriti itself really Jewish: Yes, he replied, that’s what the old people say. According to popular tradition, the village was founded by Jews around 500 AD. 

 

Later on everyone converted to orthodox Christianity, he said, but they were proud of their origins, and disappointed that the young people took no interest in the tradition. Source: http://www.greeknewsonline.com/the-beautiful-village-of.../

 

In an article published in the Oxford Journals, John Launer writes the following about Anavryti: “I found out that the legend of the Greek mountain Jews was not nearly as improbable as it seemed. Indeed, the Apocrypha records contacts between the Maccabeans and the Spartans that go back to the third century BC. Over a millennium later, there were Jews living in Sparta—although a monk named Nikon tried to have them expelled, in exchange for helping the inhabitants to overcome the plague. 

 

A Jewish quarter survived in Mystra itself after the Turkish conquest, only to be burned down later by the more brutal Venetians. Maybe the village of Anavriti had been founded by the survivors of one of these upheavals.

 

By the way, my Aunt Jeanette’s brother was the Paul Bogart (director of All in the Family) 

photo right -below

 

Check out the Story of Hanukkah: https://www.scribd.com/.../3349.../The-Story-of-Chanukah-pdf

 

A special message for you:

http://gatewayorg.blogspot.com/.../is-your-life-really...

What's Christmas All About, Anyway?

by Ruth Bell Graham

This is the Christmas season--a time for giving and receiving gifts. And for weeks now you have probably been working on your gift list and shopping, shopping, shopping.

But in this final rush before Christmas perhaps you don't care anymore. Perhaps love is dead. Or your children are beyond your influence. Or you have no children. Perhaps something has happened, and now you find no joy or meaning to your life anymore. Perhaps the most you look for is some temporary form of escape. Maybe you can't give anything. There's nothing left to give. Or there's no one left to give to.

Listen! What's Christmas all about anyway? Wasn't there a death, an emptiness, a need? Wasn't there a Love somewhere--infinite, eternal, unchangeable--a Love that gave His only  Son away?

That's what Christmas is all about: God coming to earth in the Person of the Christ Child to do for you and for me what we cannot possibly do for ourselves. Jesus lived among us and had the same kinds of problems that we do.

You haven't a problem--and I haven't a problem--that He doesn't understand from close personal experience. He spent His entire life meeting human needs. He died on the cross to deal once and for all with our greatest need--the sin problem. Just before ascending to heaven, the risen Christ gave this glorious promise: "I am with you always" (Matthew 28:20). That's what Christmas is all about.

While Jesus was here on earth, He invited people to come to Him: tired people, bad people, good people, bewildered people, laborers, revolutionaries, cheats, bigots ... it is the Invitation of the Ages. Just as people went to Jesus 2,000 years ago, today we still come to Jesus that same way: just as we are.

Our only credentials: our need. This Christmas, God is asking you to come to Him. You with your failures, your sins, your problems, your fears. You. This is Christmas. Redemption's glorious exchange of gifts!

God is loving, searching, giving Himself-- to us. People are needing, finding, giving ourselves to God. This is the meaning of Christmas. This is the wonder and the glory of it all.

You can come to God this Christmas, or anytime, by praying a simple prayer like this:

Dear God, I confess to You the emptiness in my heart, the selfishness of my thoughts, the fear in my spirit, and the sinfulness in my life. I'm so sorry. I know it was for me--and because of me--that Jesus died. Please forgive me of all my sins. Thank You for Jesus, who accepts me as I am. I come to You now, ready to spend eternity in heaven with You. Thank You for giving me Jesus! Amen