A blog is supposed to be a place where you can have fun, be serious, speak your mind, rant, rejoice, you name it. My blogs, which I started full of enthusiasm a year after June 2008, when Anthony Delgrado and Fiona Jordan of bluechrome Publishing and I TOGETHER decided to cancel all further publication of my autobiographical novel, Rachel Sarai’s Vineyard. Why? You can find it HERE, in Anthony’s own words + mine:

Yes, I was enthusiastic. About, among other things, the novel I was writing – or better: rewriting – by the same name as the cancelled book. Why the same name? Because I think it is a bloody good title and the novel covers the same problems: WWII, the Resistance, Child Abuse, and the secrets surrounding a child’s nativity.
I am no longer enthusiastic. Actually, I don’t feel like going on with the blogs, because the same people who made life hell in 2008 are now harassing me each and every day, calling me a liar, telling me I’m not a Jew, telling me telling me telling me … telling me so much shit that it doesn’t weigh up against the kind and lovely comments I get from others, who are sadly in the minority.
All this said and done:
I AM NOT GIVING UP, I am simply stopping my blogs.
I AM NOT CANCELLING THE BOOK, it is selling beautifully, thank you.
I AM NOT RUNNING AWAY, I am just sick and tired of the Sharons, Andreas, Robs, Jameses, Simons, Chaims, Hohos, and whatever other crappy name they use, if they are not Anonymous for a change.
On this first day of the New Year I give the hoax-hunting shitkickers ‘le bras d’honneur’. Wanna bet that Rachel Sarai and her Vineyard will win in the end?
To my Friends: Happy New Year. We’ll meet on your blogs, okay?

Christmas, candles lit
in welcome windows
Christmas, shopping buy
buy buy and screw the budget
Christmas, overeating venison
hit the booze pop the champers
get pissed while millions
all around the world will starve
to death during Christmas
without a home. Christmas,
in a cardboard box outside
Christmas, new expensive
clothes for wild and sex-filled
parties fucking up a happy
marriage or two or more
making matches that won’t
last over the New Year
Christmas, drunken fights
in pubs and on the street
Christmas, chic diamonds
bored dining at the chic silver
crystal and over-boring restaurant
soft Christmas music in the
background fake laughter
all around, much of the
excessive chow left over
thrown out. It’s Christmas.
Christmas, ‘must go to
the in-laws, bloody hell’
Christmas, ‘family get-
together’ only once a year,
thank G-d! Oh, shit, He’s
also in the Christmas scene
together with His Son
Christmas, Birthday of
the Saviour who was
not saved … just like
that soldier in a far-off
foreign desert land
fighting in the name of
G-d or the present leader
of his saviour country even
during what they still call
The Merry Christmas Season.
Christmas. Again.
I cannot help but wonder
each and every year
what –
in G-d’s name –
what the hell
ever happened
to Christmas
Peace On Earth?

© 2006 Deborah Rey

The sign, stolen from the entrance gate to the Auscwitz concentration camp, was recovered. Cut into three pieces. Five people were arrested, but the police don’t know why, or for whom they stole the sign.
I was, still am and will be shocked beyond words over this barbaric and inhuman act. As if what happened at Auschwitz wasn’t enough.

Until I find one lock
of hair, one shoe, one tiny
something to remember
her by, and also
the place where she,
her body,
was thrown into a cadaver
pit and doused with lye,
until I can kneel and kiss
the grass, and talk to her,
I’ll work like hell to free
my soul.
Arbeit macht Frei?
It does not help me
very much, as yet.

© Deborah Rey 2006

For those of you who don’t get Time Magazine online, nor read Ilana-Davita’s most interesting and lovely blog (from where I snitched this link), some more info about CHANUKKAH and things you may not know about it.
May the Light of this holiday be with you all year.

Welcome Home, RACHEL, and Welcome into the Family!

With the warmest possible thoughts and a huge hug,

Deborah

We are having fun again: I am being accused of plagiarizing my Chanukkah posts by a person called jo, just jo … jo37@gmail.com.
This blog has been quiet until now, but since I am sick and tired of being harassed (I am on my blogspot blog, on amazon etc.) I shall write no more about Chanukkah. The bastards won’t let you live and won’t let go.

KHANUKE (kh = pronounced as a gutteral G)

This is one of my favourite Chanukkah songs, one I remember from way back when.

Spinning the dreidl, is played with a square top. You can use matches, small coins, or raisins and almonds. We always use Rozinkes and Mandeln, raisins and almonds.
A dreidl shows four Hebrew letters: Nun, Gimel, Hei and Shin. They stand for the Hebrew saying: ‘Nes Gadol Hayah Sham’, a great miracle happened (the miracle of the oil).
The letters also stand for the Yiddish words: Nit (nothing), Gantz (everything), Halb (half) and Shtell (put, add some), and there you have the rules of the game! Every family has its own rules but we started like this: everyone puts in one coin, or raisin, almond, token. The youngest at the table spins the dreidl. If it lands on Nun, you get nada, Gimel, it’s all yours, on Hei, you get half of the pot, and on Shin, you have to put something in the kitty.
I am a Nin dreidler . Good for nada :^)

IMPORTANT: THE HAPPY STATION BROADCAST IS TOMORROW? NOT TODAY!

Why does a Chanukkah menorah have 9 branches and not 8? Because the one in the middle, the one that’s always taller than the other candles, is the ‘shammus’, the servant with which you light a new candle each night
The candles are put in every day, counting from right to left (the way Hebrew is written), but you light the candle on the left first, because it is the newest.
The presence of the ‘shammus’ also explains the 6 + 1 branches in the everyday menorah.
And now something totally different:

Those of you who were interested in the part of my life of derring-do and fame and fortune when I was working as a broadcaster/entertainer, tuned in on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 and found out (almost) all about the Dody Cowan I was at the time.
Keith Perron, the gorgeous bloke who interviewed me for his Happy Station Show and really put me in the mood to be back in broadcasting, is airing the part of the interview he did with me in which we talk about Deborah Rey, the author:

On World FM
http://www.worldfm.co.nz
88.5fm New Zealand

When Antiochus IV, the successor of Alexander the Great, was in control of Syria, Egypt and Palestine, the Jews were oppressed, murdered, a Hellenistic priest was placed in the Temple, and the practice of the Jewish religion prohibited.
Two groups opposed Antiochus – one led by Mattathias the Hasmonean and his son Judah Maccabee, and a religious group known as the Chasidim – revolted The revolution was a success and the Temple rededicated. But , the Talmud tells us, there was very little oil left, needed for the menorah in the Temple, which had to burn throughout the night. Only enough oil to burn for one day was left and yet it burned for eight days. This gave them enough time to prepare fresh oil for the menorah. And that is why Chanukkah is an eight-day festival, to commemorate this miracle.

Chanukkah, which I call the Feast of Lights, is an eight-day festival beginning on the 25th day of Kislev, which this year fell on December 11th at sun down.

The story of Chanukkah … I’ll tell you tomorrow (as if you didn’t know it already. Ha!)