Sundays Bore Me

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon helping my seventh grade brother with his homework. The assignment was to write over perakim aleph and bet of Shmuel Alef as if it were a newspaper article. At first we wrote it like a news item, but after calling a friend and finding out that we needed to include everything that happens, we rewrote it as a feature article. And I will be very honest, I'M VERY PROUD OF MY BROTHER. After we were done, I printed it and gave it to him with a pen so that he could edit it and his edits were mamash adorable.
Once, after spotting his name in a story I wrote on here, my brother let me know that I should write more about him because "your audience loves me." So, here is the article I helped my brother put together. And by "helped" and "put together" I really mean those in the loosest sense. It was really 98% him.

The Shiloh Times

Hashem Answers Barren Woman’s Teffilah

By Josh P.

SHILOH – Only a few years after being accused of coming into the Mishkan drunk, Chana, the wife of Elkana the Navi, is sending off her first son. The boy’s name is Shmuel and the intention is for him to have a life dedicated to Hashem.

Chana had entered the Mishkan to daven for a child. She was so upset by Penina’s (her co-wife) mocking, that she poured out her heart to Hashem. Eli haKohen, the manager of the Mishkan, saw her behavior and accused her of being drunk. In reply she said, “no, my master. I am a woman of heavy-spirit and I have not drunk wine; I poured out my soul before Hashem.”

Eli, greatly taken aback, gave her a bracha that Hashem should listen to her teffilah. (Some miforshim say this was a prophecy.)

After Chana released Shmuel, she wrote a song about Hashem’s power. In the song, she writes lines such as, “there is nobody as holy as Hashem and there is nobody like You,” and “Hashem brings death and brings life, lowers to the grave and raises up. Hashem could make the poor rich and the rich poor and so too, Hashem can make the barren give birth to seven.”

So you might ask, where is Chana now? She is on her way to Shiloh for her yearly visit to Shmuel bringing along a new coat for him and her two other sons and two daughters. But wait—why does she say that Hashem gives seven children to the barren if she only has five? There are four possibilities. One is that every time Chana had a child, two of Penina’s were niftar. By the time she had only two left, Penina begged Chana to daven that her children should stop dying. Chana davened and it stopped. Therefore, the last two children are considered part of her family. Another reason might be that she lived to see two of her grandchildren. One might also say that the seven is referring to Shmuel alone because the gematria of his name is the same as the gematria of sheva. And lastly, one meforesh says that seven is just the generic term for many.

He insisted on putting that last part in, something about maybe getting extra credit for it or something...