Teachers at CHW Hadassim with the new computers. (photo by Amir Alon)
Last month, the Athena Fund announced that three Israeli youth villages – CHW Hadassim Children and Youth Village, Mosenson Youth Village and Ayelet Hashachar Youth Village for Girls – have joined the Laptop Computer for Every Teacher in Israel program. The program provides laptops and 120 hours of professional training to teachers across Israel, with the aim of empowering teachers and improving student learning.
Uri Ben-Ari, president and founder of Athena Fund, left, and Zeev Twito, director of WIZO Hadassim. (photo by Amir Alon)
Athena’s Laptop for Every Teacher in Israel program has so far distributed laptops to more than 11,000 teachers in 939 schools and kindergartens in 430 towns, cities and small communities in regional councils, together with professional training courses. The laptop distribution is made possible by contributions from Athena Fund’s various partners, including United Jewish Appeal, Bank Massad, the Israel Teachers Union’s Fund for Professional Advancement, WIZO, local authorities and others.
CHW Hadassim is located north of Tel Aviv and has 1,300 students. It is one the largest youth villages in Israel. Local area students attend the school, in addition to 200 from difficult or new immigrant backgrounds, who reside in campus dormitories.
Hadassim High School offers a full academic course of study in preparation for university. The youth village also provides a wide range of specialized studies tailored to the interests and needs of outstanding students, as well as those who are experiencing scholastic difficulties. Among the subjects offered are criminology, natural sciences, agriculture, horse breeding, therapeutic horse riding, art and sculpture, and photography. There is also a musical group called Ethiopian Sun, which performs all over Israel.
Mosenson Youth Village is in Hod Hasharon, north of Tel Aviv, with more than 800 students, nearly 130 of whom come to study in Israel from North America and countries around the world. The youth village consists of a high school and a boarding school where about 220 students live. The high school is known for many special programs, including one in agro-ecology that deals with environmental issues; a sports program that is ranked in the top five in Israel; a film and communication class; and an excellence class that studies science subjects such as math, chemistry, physics and biology at the highest levels.
Ayelet Hashachar, located on the Golan Heights, is a religious boarding high school, where about 100 girls live and study. In addition to standard subjects such as math, English, history and science, students also have an opportunity to focus on special subjects, such as communications, film and agriculture. The girls also attend a variety of enrichment classes, including nutrition, consumerism, the environment and art.
“The impact of computer use on the quality of teaching and learning in classrooms that participate in the Laptop for Every Teacher in Israel program can be clearly seen,” said Uri Ben-Ari, president and founder of Athena Fund. “Athena’s approach is to bring teachers to the digital world in which their students live. The fund believes that the computer and the accompanying training will help teachers cope with the information revolution and become mentors highly appreciated by their students.”
Ben-Gurion University Prof. Iris Shai, principal investigator of the CArdiovaSCulAr Diabetes and Ethanol (CASCADE) trial. (photo by Dani Machlis/BGU)
A glass of red wine every night may help people with type 2 diabetes manage their cholesterol and cardiac health, according to new findings from a two-year randomized controlled trial (RCT) led by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU). Additionally, both red and white wine can improve sugar control, depending on alcohol metabolism genetic profiling.
In this first long-term alcohol study, recently published in Annals of Internal Medicine, the researchers aimed to assess the effects and safety of initiating moderate alcohol consumption in diabetics, and sought to determine whether the type of wine matters. People with diabetes are more susceptible to developing cardiovascular diseases than the general population and have lower levels of “good” cholesterol. Despite the enormous contribution of observational studies, clinical recommendations for moderate alcohol consumption remain controversial, particularly for people with diabetes, due to lack of long-term RCTs, which are the “holy grail” of evidence-based medicine.
“Red wine was found to be superior in improving overall metabolic profiles, mainly by modestly improving the lipid profile, by increasing good (HDL) cholesterol and apolipoprotein A1 (one of the major constituents of HDL cholesterol), while decreasing the ratio between total cholesterol and HDL cholesterol,” the researchers explained.
The researchers concluded that “initiating moderate wine intake, especially red wine, among well-controlled diabetics, as part of a healthy diet, is apparently safe, and modestly decreases cardio-metabolic risk. The differential genetic effects that were found may assist in identifying diabetic patients in whom moderate wine consumption may induce greater clinical benefit.”
The researchers also found that only the slow alcohol-metabolizers who drank wine achieved an improvement in blood sugar control, while fast alcohol-metabolizers (with much faster blood alcohol clearance) did not benefit from the ethanol’s glucose control effect. Approximately one in five participants was found to be a fast alcohol-metabolizer, identified through ADH enzyme genetic variants tests.
Wine of either type (red or white) did not effect change in blood pressure, liver function tests, adiposity or adverse events/symptoms. However, sleep quality was significantly improved in both wine groups, compared with the water control group. All comparisons were adjusted for changes in clinical, medical and drug therapy parameters occurring among patients during the years of the study.
The two-year CArdiovaSCulAr Diabetes and Ethanol (CASCADE) randomized controlled intervention trial was performed on 224 controlled diabetes patients (aged 45 to 75), who generally abstained from alcohol. They gradually initiated moderate wine consumption, as part of a healthy diet platform, and not before driving. The trial completed with an unprecedented adherence rate of 87% after two years.
According to BGU Prof. Iris Shai, principal investigator of the CASCADE trial, and a member of the department of public health in the faculty of health sciences, “The differences found between red and white wine were opposed to our original hypothesis that the beneficial effects of wine are mediated predominantly by the alcohol. Approximately 150 millilitres of the dry red or white wines tested contained about 17 grams ethanol and 120 kilocalories, but the red wine had sevenfold higher levels of total phenols and four- to 13-fold higher levels of the specific resveratrol group compounds than the white wine. The genetic interactions suggest that ethanol plays an important role in glucose metabolism, while red wine’s effects additionally involve non-alcoholic constituents. Yet, any clinical implication of the CASCADE findings should be taken with caution with careful medical follow-up.”
The study was performed in collaboration with Prof. Meir Stampfer from Harvard University and with colleagues from University of Leipzig, Germany, and Karolinska Institute, Sweden.
In the new study that followed the research group’s three-month alcohol pilot RCT findings (Shai I., et al, Diabetes Care, 2007), the patients were randomized into three equal groups according to whether they consumed a five-ounce serving (150 millilitre) of mineral water, white wine or red wine with dinner every night for two years. Wine and mineral water were provided free of charge for the purposes of the study. Compliance with alcohol intake was tightly monitored, with patients returning their empty wine bottles and receiving their new supplies. All groups followed a non-calorie-restricted Mediterranean diet (following the group’s previous two-year dietary RCT findings; Shai I., et al, New England Journal of Medicine, 2008). Adherence was monitored using several validated assessment tools.
During the study, subjects underwent an array of comprehensive medical tests, including continuous monitoring of changes in blood pressure, heart rate and blood glucose levels, and follow-up for the dynamic of atherosclerosis and fat by ultrasound and MRI tests.
Locations of different opsins on the human sperm, viewed under a microscope, are revealed by labeling with a fluorescent antibody (bright yellow). (photo from wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il)
In their journey to the egg, sperm “feel” the heat of the fallopian tube and “taste” the chemical signals of the ova. But, a new Weizmann Institute study published in Scientific Reports shows that sperm actually make use of sensors that have mainly been known to belong to the visual system.
If a sperm, about 46 microns (thousandths of a millimetre) long, were the size of a human being, it would swim several kilometres to reach its destination. Thus, sperm need to be guided by various cues. In earlier studies, Weizmann Institute’s Prof. Michael Eisenbach and his team discovered two of these guidance mechanisms – heat-sensing and chemical cues. The heat attraction works across the longer range: the site of the fertilization is warmer than the spot at the entrance to the fallopian tube where the sperm pause for maturation, and this temperature difference points them in the direction of the egg. When they get closer to the egg, they pick up its chemical signals.
“As in all important processes in nature, the sperm rely on more than one mechanism in their navigation, so that if one breaks down, others can provide a back-up,” Eisenbach said.
The heat sensitivity of sperm is extremely high. From a distance equivalent to the length of one sperm cell, they can sense differences in temperature as miniscule as 0.0006 of a degree Celsius, less than one thousandth of a degree. This sensitivity enables them to be guided by a very gradual increase in temperature on the way to the fertilization site.
In the new study, Eisenbach’s team – Dr. Serafín Pérez-Cerezales, Dr. Sergii Boryshpolets, Oshri Afanzar, Dr. Reinat Nevo and Vladimir Kiss of the biological chemistry department and Dr. Alexander Brandis of biological services – set out to discover exactly how sperm sense the heat. The scientists examined a particular category of receptors that, based on their previous studies, were thought to be involved in conveying signals to the sperm. Within this category, they zeroed in on a family of proteins called opsins.
Opsins are best known for their role in an entirely different sphere: the visual system. One major protein in this family, called rhodopsin, serves as a photoreceptor in the cells of the retina. Studies by other researchers working with fruit fly larvae had found this protein involved in responding to heat, hinting that this could also be the case in sperm.
The Weizmann scientists found that several proteins in the opsin family of receptors were present on the surface of mouse and human sperm. Each opsin had its own distribution pattern on the sperm, and each apparently made a contribution, through its own set of signals, to heat sensing. When the researchers blocked the signals from these opsins, the sperm failed to swim from a cooler to a warmer chamber.
These findings may explain the enigmatic presence of opsins in organs that are not exposed to light, including the lungs and the liver. They suggest that the mammalian opsins may be performing heat-sensing functions in these parts of the body.
The Hellenistic/Hasmonean excavation at Nebi Samwil. (photo by Anthony Bale)
Just over 10 kilometres north of the Temple Mount, the Old City and east Jerusalem, where terrorist attacks continue, Muslims and Jews both go up to Nebi Samwil, to what they consider to be the holy burial place of Samuel the Prophet.
On the Thursday between Yom Kippur and Sukkot and the first day of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice, I visited this archeology site located in the West Bank. It was quite a scene.
A young Muslim family in Western holiday dress entered the Muslim part of the joint prayer site. They were followed by a young ultra-Orthodox couple who climbed to the roof for photo-taking. Close on their heels, a group of young adult Chassidic males piled out of a mini-van.
Walking by the Muslim cemetery, along the northern perimeter of the archeology site in the direction of the spring, I nearly bumped into a glitzy-dressed bridegroom, clad from head (kippah) to toe (pointy shoes) in silvery white. Continuing on my way, I glimpsed Bratslav Chassidim scurrying into the trees on their way to hitbodedut or seclusion. At the edge of the spring named after the Prophet Samuel’s mother, Chana, North American yeshivah students were drying off following immersion in this natural mikvah, ritual bath. (If you visit, consider equipping yourself with a bullhorn or whistle to announce your upcoming presence to anyone who might be in this open mikvah.)
Special religious experiences are not new to the site. For example, some 500 years earlier, Christians were having mystical experiences at Nebi Samwil. In 1413, Margery Kempe, an English mystic, traveled from the coastal plain toward Jerusalem. When she passed Nebi Samwil, she was so overjoyed by the view and by her reported heavenly contact, she nearly fell from her donkey. Two German pilgrims broke her fall. “One of them was a priest, and he put spices in her mouth to comfort her, believing her to have been ill. And so they helped her onwards to Jerusalem.” (The Book of Margery Kempe)
And, speaking of “joy,” earlier on when the Crusaders first looked south to Jerusalem from this point, they were so enthralled that they named the area Mount of Joy or, in French, Mont de Joie. In between combating those they considered pagan, heretical or politically inexpedient, the Crusaders happily settled in at Mont de Joie. They established a cistern, church, monastery (apparently commemorating Samuel the Prophet), pilgrims hostel, stable, quarry (drinking troughs and hewn stones are clearly visible today) and a fort. Before they began construction, they razed the area upon which they built. Crusader joy was relatively short-lived, however, as a generation later, in 1187, Salah ad-Din pushed them out and ushered in the Mamelukes. Curiously, the remains of one Mameluke building have an arch displaying a Star of David. While it looks like a Magen David, back then it was not a Jewish symbol.
Like the earlier Umayyads and Abbasids (638-1099), the Mamelukes went into pottery production. Archeologists have uncovered the large kilns they used, as well as pottery with place-identifying Arabic seals. Oddly enough, during this same period, the site became a holy place for Jews from Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia and elsewhere. In 1730, however, Jerusalem’s Mufti Sheikh Muhammad al-Khalili called a halt to Jewish pilgrimage, by what Yitzhak Magen terms “appropriating the tomb from the Jews” and forbidding Jews to pray there. The mufti erected a mosque at the site.
Some Jewish sources have identified Nebi Samwil as the biblical Rama, the burial place of Samuel. Others have identified it with Mitzpah, a site connected to Samuel, and later to the Hasmoneans.
Speaking of the Hasmoneans, the well-built structures from the Hellenistic period were not destroyed by natural disaster or by fighting. It appears that the community was simply abandoned. One theory maintains that the Hasmoneans did not want competing places of worship, as there apparently was a tradition of worship at both Mitzpah and neighboring Givon (see Maccabees I: 3,46 and Kings I: 3,4). That is, they wanted to centralize worship and power in Jerusalem.
In being at the site, you see how people have protected their holdings. One way has been to build a fortress, equipping it with soldiers and weaponry. Another way has been to declare a place a holy site. While we cannot actually prove that Samuel the Prophet was buried at this site, neither can we totally disprove it. So the tradition stands for Jews, Muslims and Christians. Today, the site houses both a Wakf-run mosque with its tomb of the Prophet Samuel and an Orthodox synagogue with its separate tomb for the Prophet Samuel.
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If you visit Nebi Samwil, don’t be fooled into thinking that you are going to the original citadel and mosque. The British destroyed it while fighting to take Jerusalem from the Ottoman Turks. During the Mandate, however, they rebuilt the structures.
The visiting hours for the archeology site are 8 a.m.-4 p.m. (winter) and 8 a.m.-5 p.m. (summer). Visiting hours for the prayer sites are Sunday-Wednesday continuously, with the exception of two hours between 2-4 a.m.; and Thursday-Friday, from 4 a.m. until an hour before Shabbat begins. More on the site, including a map, can be found at parks.org.il/sigalit/DAFDAFOT/nabi-samuel_eng.pdf.
At the time of my visit, there was no checkpoint, and apparently only one guard on the premises. Originally located among the archeology ruins, Israeli authorities moved the village called Nebi Samwil to its current setting in 1971, with some controversy. (For example, see alt-arch.org/en/nabi-samuel-national-park.)
Nebi Samwil is partially accessible to wheelchair users. If readers wish to get further details on the subject, they can contact the park curator, Avivit Gara, at 972-2-586-3281.
Deborah Rubin Fieldsis an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
The Machal memorial, in Jewish National Fund’s Yitzhak Rabin Park. (photo from machal.org.il)
You would think that, after serving in the Second World War, you would just want to pick up where you had left your civilian life. Indeed, the vast majority of Jewish and non-Jewish Canadian soldiers did so. But some 300 Canadian fighters joined more than 4,100 volunteers from almost 60 countries to fight for and maintain Israel’s independence. They were referred to as machalnikim, machal being an acronym in Hebrew for mitnadvei chutz l’Aretz, or “overseas volunteers.”
According to Smoky Simon, World Machal chair, four interrelated factors impelled the volunteers to keep fighting: the Holocaust, the British deportation of Holocaust survivors, the Arab threat to wipe out Palestine’s Jewish population and the feeling of Jewish unity, particularly in times of major crises.
These veteran fighters provided inexperienced Israeli forces with much-needed military knowledge and leadership. For example, Torontonian Ben Dunkelman claimed that “Canadian pilots accounted for one-third of all Arab planes shot down in that war.” In fact, John McElroy, a Canadian Second World War ace, succeeded in doing just that.
Following Israel’s independence, Machal volunteers built the radar system for the then-infant Israeli army. According to Rabbi Dr. Joe Heckelman, in his 1974 book American Volunteers and Israel’s War of Independence, this “early warning” system identified intruder planes “at relatively great distances.” Until mid-1949, a significant number of Machal personnel worked on the radar unit, then called Squadron 505.
Other Canadians volunteered for other kinds of service. Thus, Toronto-born Leonard Fine, who had served for five years as a physical training instructor in the Royal Canadian Air Force, joined the Israeli 72nd Infantry Battalion of the 7th Brigade. Dunkelman commanded this brigade. The only two platoons of the completely English-speaking B Company successfully removed problematic Arab Liberation Army observers and snipers situated on the Kabul mountains, overlooking the small Arab village of Tamra. Canadian volunteer Sidney Leisure died in the shooting. A month later, Fine became the sergeant major of the support company.
Another former member of the Canadian Air Force also switched military careers in Israel. Montreal-born Willie Rostoker volunteered to staff immigrant ships, undaunted by the fact that he had no sailing experience. Rostoker was quick to learn, and started studying navigation and other seaman’s skills. He proved to be a very good helmsman. Between 1946 and 1948, he worked on several Aliya Bet ships, including Ulua (aka Chaim Arlosorof), which docked in Palestine on Feb. 27, 1947; Pan York (aka Kibbutz Galuyot), which arrived in Palestine on Jan. 1, 1948; Fabio (aka the Battle of the Ayalon Valley), which made it to shore on May 29, 1948; and the Kefalos (aka the Southerner), which steered into Israel on Nov. 23, 1948. In addition, before the ma’apilim (Jews who tried to enter Palestine during the British blockade) set sail on the Battle of the Ayalon Valley, Rostoker trained them. When the fighting ended, he made Israel his home.
Speaking of ships, David Azrieli reports in Rekindling the Torch: The Story of Canadian Zionism (2008) that, during this period, two Canadian corvettes were purchased as “freighters” – the Beauharnois, renamed the Josiah Wedgwood, and the Norsyd, dubbed Aliya Bet Haganah. Canadian Moishe Sokolov volunteered to sail with the Haganah. It was supposed to transport 1,200 refugees and return for more people. But, once in Yugoslavia, the crew learned it would be the last Aliya Bet ship allowed into Palestine. Hence, orders were to take as many refugees as possible: 2,600 boarded, with about half below deck and half on deck. According to information obtained from the World Machal website: “It was so crowded that the ones above could not get below, and the ones below could not get topside. It was a very difficult and dangerous trip for all, passengers and crew alike, but all the refugees got to Palestine.”
After Israeli independence, the vessels were reactivated and renamed the Hashomer (Guard) and the Haganah (Defence). The vessels engaged Egyptian warships, bombarded enemy positions and patroled the shoreline. Their biggest coup came on Aug. 24, 1948, when the former Canadian corvettes seized a huge cargo of arms intended for the Arab armies. In what was called Operation Pirate’s Booty, the Hashomer and the Haganah intercepted the Argiro, a ship sailing under the Italian flag. The Israeli crew members found 8,000 rifles and 10 million rounds of ammunition.
Canadian Machal volunteer Joe Warner, who is now 90 years old. (photo from machal.org.il)
Although not from a Zionist background, Canadian Joe Warner, now 90 (and going strong), joined the fighting because he felt “it won’t be worth being a Jew elsewhere if Israel did not survive.” He fought in southern Israel, in the Faluja area. The battles in which he participated helped free the Negev from Egyptian control of main roads. The combat – especially around the strong concrete police fortress of Iraq-Suidan – was intense. Years later, when Warner visited the Givati Museum established at that very spot, he found the captured Egyptian cannon his anti-tank unit had used.
Warner had been training as a pharmacist after his Second World War discharge. So, in Israel, he was called upon to be a pharmacist/ medic. He responded by setting up a first-aid station at Hazor, making use of medical equipment and supplies seized from the Egyptians. This early hands-on experience apparently served him well, as for 15 years he helped establish and manage Pfizer drugs in Israel.
In contrast to Warner, now 91-year-old Batya Wolfson Lam had a strong Zionist background. As a member of Toronto’s Shomer HaTzair, she had made aliya in 1947 or 1948. After three months of boring work on Kibbutz Sasa, she jumped at the call for volunteers to help in the fighting. She joined Machal, as the pay was slightly higher than the pay received by regular Israeli soldiers. She was assigned to the English-speaking air force codes and ciphers department. There, she received messages that she forwarded in secret code. She first worked at a station on Yarkon Street in Tel Aviv but, after a year, she opened stations in Jerusalem, Dorot, Yavniel and Haifa. She trained the staff for these locations. She served in the army for two years, returning briefly to Sasa. Then, she moved to Kibbutz Eindor, where she met her husband. Although her four children chose not to remain on the kibbutz, she has lived there for more than 70 years. She regrets that Machal volunteers haven’t received more recognition for their contribution to Israel.
Mention must be made of the Canadian volunteers who lost their lives in Israel’s fight for independence. They include both Jews and non-Jews. According to Heckelman and World Machal, they were George (Buzz) Beurling, Wilfred (Zev) Cantor, William (Willy) Fisher, Leonard (Len) Fitchett, Sidney Leizerowitz, Edward Lugech, Ralph Moster, Sidney Rubinoff, Reuben (Red) Schiff and Fred Stevenson. Two cousins, Harvey Cohen and Ed Lucatch, are not recorded to have joined any army unit; they disappeared without a trace.
Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.
Anat Hoffman, right, and another member of Women of the Wall, standing at the entrance to the Kotel in January 2013, as Charedi men look away. (photo by Michal Patelle (Women of the Wall) via Wikimedia Commons)
For more than 30 years, Anat Hoffman has been fighting for individuals’ rights. Notably, her work with Women of the Wall, which won legal recognition in 2013 for women’s right to pray at the Kotel wearing prayer shawls and using a Torah. And her more than 10 years with the Israel Religious Action Centre, which has achieved government funding for non-Orthodox rabbis, earned multiple Supreme Court decisions recognizing Reform and Conservative conversions, and won a 2011 Supreme Court ruling making gender segregation on public buses illegal.
The self-described troublemaker will be in Vancouver Nov. 15-18, speaking to several community groups, as well as addressing the Jewish community as a whole on Nov. 16, 7:30 p.m., at Temple Sholom. Her topic – From the Back of the Bus to the Top of the Agenda.
“I’m talking about the achievements of a family of organizations – Women of the Wall, the Religious Action Centre, the Jerusalem Open House, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, all sorts, we’re a cluster of organizations for social change, and I am such an admirer of my colleagues,” said Hoffman. “And we’re all looking at the same issues: how the monolithic interpretation of Judaism in the Jewish state is limiting and stunting our ability to enjoy Judaism and celebrate it.
“In this respect, more than any other, including security, economics … we must dialogue with the Diaspora Jews. You have a stake in it, and you have an opinion. Israel is way too important to be left to the Israelis.”
She doesn’t want Diaspora Jews to be silent, she said, because there are things that Israelis can learn from them. “I’m tired of Israeli arrogance, and the feeling that we know everything,” she said. “If we know everything, how come we are in the situation we are in today on our 67th anniversary? That’s number one: I am humbled by reality and I think we could use all the help we could get.
“The second thing is, I think it’s a joint project. I think it’s the most important project of the Jewish people…. The state of Israel, the fact that we have a sovereign Jewish state, is so exciting and so wonderful, and I think we’re involved in the most important dialogue in our lives – you and I. What are the values of the Jewish state? What are Jewish values anyway? Are they the values of the Book of Joshua – smite them, kill them, annihilate them? Or the values of Isaiah? Who do we listen to, and who do we act like? I’m an Isaiah person, he’s my steering committee. I read him for inspiration and I think if he were alive in Israel today, he’d be under administrative detention – the man had no mouth control.
“So, I am driven to speak to Diaspora Jews, involve them in this dialogue and tell them to stop being quiet. If you are quiet, don’t be surprised if Jerusalem turns into Tehran, don’t be surprised if you wake up one day and you’re ashamed to even be called Jewish because of what the Jewish state is doing. You have to make your statement known today – and, it turns out, the Israeli government is very sensitive to what Canadian Jews think…. You’re not using your fantastic nuisance value. You have so much of it and you don’t use it.”
Acknowledging that Canadians are “extremely harmony-seeking and somewhat conservative,” Hoffman said people should speak up “in whatever style fits you. If Israel arrests women wearing a tallis, praying out loud and trying to have a bat mitzvah at the holiest site of the Jewish people, if this is not something right, then you should mention it.”
The morning of her phone interview with the Jewish Independent, Hoffman had attended a b’not mitzvah at the Kotel, one girl had come from Brazil, the other from the United States. “I had to stand in front of them and explain that we don’t have a Torah scroll this morning because the rabbi [Shmuel Rabinowitz] refused to give me one for these two girls – he has 100 Torah scrolls for public use. I found a way to smuggle in a Torah, but I didn’t use it today. Why? Because I didn’t want to make the Jerusalem police look like horses’ asses today because they have other things on their plate,” she said, referring to the current spate of terror attacks.
Because of the security situation, Hoffman had written Rabinowitz to ask him to make an exception that one day, and to allow the women to use one of the Kotel’s Torahs, “so that we do not burden the police with our problem,” she said. “I didn’t even get an answer.”
Anat Hoffman (photo from Anat Hoffman)
Despite “30 years of troublemaking,” Hoffman said she has never felt unsafe or isolated. “Not only am I not persona non grata, I was elected and reelected to the city council of Jerusalem endless times. I have 24,000 voters in this right-wing, ultra-Orthodox city. I’ve never felt threatened. My phone number is published in the phone book…. Israel is a democracy and as someone with a dissenting voice – I always was a member of the opposition – I think I was rewarded for this.”
On the issue of gender segregation in public spaces, Hoffman said victory could be declared. “We certainly don’t see new segregations going on, and the new ones are punished by the government now.”
Of the challenges that remain, she said, “Freedom of religion and pluralism, recognition of the Reform and Conservative movements, recognition of women in religion, the issue of the Wall – on these issues of pluralism, the religious establishment is very, very strong in resisting any change because any change would mean the breaking of their empire.”
Also on the morning of her interview with the Independent, former chief rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger was indicted for allegedly accepting some $2 million in bribes. “They have a corrupt system and they’re fighting to keep it because they are very spoiled and used to it, and there’s a lot of resistance to change in that power structure. That structure is the next frontier.”
Calling the Women of the Wall, “the Little Engine that Could,” Hoffman said, “We’re pushing for equality and, in the end, we will win. Am I going to see the end of this struggle? I’m not sure, it’s taking too long. But is it going to be won? There is no doubt in my mind that it will be won.”
Hoffman said she is pushing for a model she learned about in a Limmud South Africa conference a number of years ago. The presenter – Simonne Horwitz – shared stories about the small Jewish community of Saskatoon. In the winter, people help each other get to synagogue, she said, “and they don’t care if you’re Orthodox, Reform or Conservative. And the congregation, the building of the synagogue, it’s Orthodox if a majority of Orthodox show and it’s Reform if the most Reform show, and the one structure can become whatever it is that the people want it to be at that moment.”
Horwitz told the small community’s stories “with so much humor, so much joy,” said Hoffman. “I come from the largest Jewish community in the world, and I have a lot to learn from Saskatchewan, Canada.”
Hoffman said about Israel, “I want us to recognize all streams. I want our structures of religion to be able to be as pluralistic as possible. I want freedom in the market called religious services, and may the best rabbi win.”
Hoffman encouraged everyone to come hear her speak. “I would like to make sure that people who are not liberal, feminist, peacenik, that they know that they are very, very welcome to come dialogue with me. I’m very interested in speaking to more than the choir. I love to dialogue with people who are willing to look at their opinions and check them out with this Israeli. There are Israelis of many kinds. Israelis like me don’t come to your area very often, and I would very much like to dialogue with people who disagree with me, in a civilized manner. Even if you leave me with your same opinions, at least you’ve aired them out a little bit…. It’s a Jewish thing to do. We’re asked to leave our comfort zone a few times a year: when we leave home to build a sukkah, when we throw every piece of bread from our house…. So, I invite very much those people who are not in my natural habitat to come and talk to me.”
She also stressed that it is not regular Israelis who object to the changes she and her colleagues and supporters are demanding, but rather “the establishment that has so much to lose. And it’s all the folly of Israel. By giving one stream the political power, huge political budgets and the ability to monopolize all religious services in Israel, we’ve corrupted something so important for Judaism – the free spirit of criticism, the art of argument. All this is gone now because there’s only one way. Since when do the Jews have a chief rabbi? We never had a pope, never. We’ve always argued. We argued with Moses, Moses argued with God, the prophets argued with the kings, the kings wanted to resign, God resigns, Moses throws his hands up! We’ve always argued. The Talmud is one long argument. We come from a fantastic core of arguments. It all ended with the state of Israel, the argument ended, there is an establishment, the Orthodox establishment, and it’s so bad for orthodoxy, bad for Israel and bad for Judaism.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, left, welcomes President Pranab Mukherjee to the Knesset. (photo from Israeli Prime Minister’s Office via jns.org)
In the first-ever official visit by an Indian head of state to Israel, President Pranab Mukherjee arrived in Jerusalem last week to discuss a wide range of issues including the negotiation of an extensive free-trade agreement, bilateral cooperation in agricultural and other technologies, and expanded counter-terrorism coordination.
“India attaches high importance to its relationship with Israel, a relationship which has taken great strides in the last few years,” said Mukherjee.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin described the visit as deepening “the friendship between our states in the fields of economy, science, medicine and agriculture.”
Relations between India and Israel have recently undergone a major shift. In 1947, India voted against Israel joining the United Nations and did not establish official relations with Israel until 1991. This was mainly out of concern over how this would affect India’s diplomatic relations with Muslim countries, as well as India itself hosting “the world’s second-largest Muslim population in raw numbers,” according to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Centre.
Nevertheless, this recent development demonstrates how ties between the two countries have expanded considerably since then. The most recent example of a warming of relations between the countries came when India decided to abstain from the UN Human Rights Council vote condemning Israel during the 2014 Gaza conflict. This was a significant policy change, since India for decades was a leading force for nations that automatically voted against Israel in all international forums.
At the same time, the Press Trust of India recently quoted Mukherjee as saying, “India’s traditional support to the Palestinian cause remains steadfast and unwavering while we pursue strong relations with Israel. Our bilateral relations [with Israel] are independent of our relations with Palestine.”
During Mukherjee’s visit, India and Israel signed a double taxation avoidance pact as well as a number of accords promoting cultural and technological exchange between the two nations. Mukherjee and his delegation reserved 70 rooms in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel and another 30 rooms in the nearby Dan Panorama. Celebrity chef Reena Pushkarna was hired by the King David Hotel to prepare Indian dishes for the delegation and some 300 members of Israel’s Indian community.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu shares a very warm relationship with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and referred to him as his friend multiple times when hosting Mukherjee at the Knesset. The prime ministers earlier this year congratulated each other on their respective electoral victories, with Modi making a point of doing so in Hebrew and Netanyahu expressing his good wishes in Hindi. Mukherjee extended an invitation to Netanyahu to become the second Israeli prime minister to visit India, the first being former prime minister Ariel Sharon, who visited India in 2003.
Further illustrating the growing ties between the two countries, Israel is India’s second-largest arms supplier after Russia. But relations are not limited to military ties and a mutual commitment to fight terrorism. Vijeta Uniyal, founder of Indian Friends of Israel, described how Israel’s commitment to developing the desert “extends to the Thar Desert, Gangetic Plain and Wetlands of Bengal.”
Bilateral trade between Israel and India grew from $200 million in 1992 to $4.39 billion in 2013, with both countries importing and exporting precious stones, metals, machinery, minerals, plastics, chemical products, textiles, agricultural products, and transport equipment.
Ties between the two countries are expected to strengthen considerably as a result of Mukherjee’s visit, signifying the solidification of a strong alliance between India and Israel.
Bradley Martinis a fellow for the Salomon Centre for American Jewish Thought and research assistant for the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.
Recent visitors to the Hummus Bar at the M Mall in Kfar Vitkin, near Netanya. The eatery is offering a 50% deal on its hummus for Jews and Arabs who share a table and eat together. (photo from facebook.com/Mhumusbar)
An Israeli eatery is making headlines across the globe for its latest menu deal: 50% off any hummus dishes served to tables seating Jews and Arabs together.
Breaking bread together throughout history has always been an act of sharing and reconciliation. So, in response to the latest wave of terror attacks and incitement in Israel, Hummus Bar at the M Mall in Kfar Vitkin, near the coastal city of Netanya, posted a Facebook call for customers to share pita and hummus together – and pay less if they do.
The Oct. 13 post reads: “Scared of Arabs? Scared of Jews? At our place, we don’t have Arabs! But we also don’t have Jews … we’ve got human beings! And genuine, excellent Arab hummus! And great Jewish falafel! And a free refill for every serving of hummus, whether you’re Arab, Jewish, Christian, Indian, etc.”
Speaking to local media, manager Kobi Tzafrir said there were a number of people taking up the offer from his restaurant, which is famous for its chickpea spread. But, he added, the short post also fueled interest from around Israel and the world.
Hummus eateries are countless in Israel, yet Tzafrir reported that visitors have come from around the country to show support for the Hummus Bar’s message of tolerance and camaraderie.
“If there’s anything that can bring together these peoples, it’s hummus,” Tzafrir told the Times of Israel.
Hummus Bar’s Facebook page continues to garner positive posts from abroad, as well.
“Love the idea of bringing people together with food! Love and food conquers all!!” writes Urbian Fitz-James from the Netherlands.
“I think it is amazing what you guys are doing to unite people!” posts Josh Friesen from Canada.
“Thank you. This is marvelous,” writes Samir Kanoun from Turkey.
There are other messages of support – including from the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan – on the eatery’s Facebook page.
Hummus, of course, is a national dish in Israel, from the point of view of both Muslim and Jewish communities in the country. The International Day of Hummus even began here.
And it’s not just hummus that brings tolerance and coexistence. There are also Arab-Jewish owned eateries serving up coexistence, including Maxim restaurant in Haifa and Bouza ice cream in Tarshiha.
Viva Sarah Press reports on the creativity, innovation and ingenuity taking place in Israel. Her work has been published by international media outlets including Israel Television, CNN, Reuters, Time Out and the Jerusalem Post. Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.
Roger Sherman’s Florentine Films crew chows down at El Babor restaurant in the Haifa area. (photo from Florentine Films)
It might seem absurd that an American filmmaker, who, until five years ago, thought that falafel and hummus were the only ingredients of Israeli cuisine, would introduce the world to the Israeli food and culture scene. But documentarian Roger Sherman – who has won an Emmy, a Peabody and two Academy Award nominations – seems to be the right guy to whet the world’s appetite for Israel’s diverse and innovative dishes.
“The reason I’m doing the film is because I found a food culture that no one in the world knows about. This is the best-kept secret,” Sherman told Israel21C during a quick interview in the lobby of a Tel Aviv hotel before setting out to film final pickup shots for his documentary, The Search for Israeli Cuisine.
Sherman discovered Israeli cuisine five years ago when he made an introductory visit to the country he’d heard so much about in the news.
“I was knocked out by what I saw, what I ate and how gorgeous the country is. Who knew that there was a gorgeous beach that runs the whole length of the country? Israel has incredible mountains and desert,” said Sherman, who finally came for a visit at the behest of a foodie tour-guide friend.
Sherman, married to the founder of influential gourmet food and wine magazine Saveur, said the country’s culinary revolution is unknown to many because most foreigners only associate Israel with “political drama and biblical history.”
“They don’t realize it’s so much more,” he said. “Israel has a food scene that I had no clue about, a restaurant scene that rivals New York, London and Paris. I think people are going to be shocked, surprised and very pleased with what they learn from watching this film.”
The two-hour PBS special is to be completed by October. Sherman admitted that he has enough material for a six-hour miniseries but prefers to pack the choice shots into 120 minutes, leaving the remaining 150 hours of footage on the editing floor.
Private backers as well as a successful Kickstarter campaign have helped support Sherman in the two-year researching and filming process. He interacts with interested would-be viewers via Facebook, Twitter, a blog and Instagram almost daily.
“The primary audience is American public television but it will be shown around the world. American public television is a fairly high demographic of people who like to travel, and a lot of people that like to travel like to eat, and they like to see new things and explore the world,” said Sherman. “It’s also for people who like to open their minds even if they don’t travel or are interested in surreptitiously going on adventures. And I think this is going to be an adventure.”
The Florentine Films documentary tries to answer the question “What is Israeli cuisine?” To do this, Sherman’s team crisscrossed the country, filming at more than 100 locations.
While the question is simple enough, the answer is not clear cut.
The film introduces audiences to the country’s leading chefs, innovative farmers, home cooks, boutique winemakers, craft beer brewers, world-class chocolatiers, cheese artisans, restaurateurs, food journalists, street foodies and traditional bakers. Some of them believe Israeli cuisine can be defined as a hodgepodge of traditions, while others say it’s too early to brand the delicious concoctions being created at local eateries.
“What we have here is confusion food. It’s all mixed together beautifully: traditional spices, techniques, dishes that intermingle with all the influences. After [service in] the army, we Israelis go to study abroad or [travel] to the Far East, India or South America. We get to know Thai and Vietnamese food, Mexican flavors. Some [return] and open restaurants. It all becomes Israeli food,” chef/baker Erez Komarovsky says in the documentary.
Chef Maoz Alonim of HaBasta restaurant is one of those against labeling Israeli cuisine as such.
“So, what is Israeli food? Domestic food. We have our inspirations from ingredients that used to be cooked here for hundreds, thousands of years. I really do not think that I serve Israeli food,” Alonim says. “I serve domestic food again and again and again. And what makes it Israeli? Sure, I take fresh ingredients from Israel and I can import the fresh oysters from France, but does this make it Israeli? No, that just makes it oysters that I really like.”
For Sherman, the American looking in, there is definitely a “something” that makes gastronomy in Israel different from elsewhere.
He shows Israeli-American chef Michael Solomonov, a James Beard Award winner and guide for the film, stopping at a Yemenite grill in Tel Aviv, where he is served 17 salads as an appetizer. The salads are an international sampling of Arab, Iraqi, Arabian, Moroccan, Russian, Eastern European, Italian, Turkish, Moroccan and Greek dishes – obviously, all made in Israel.
Michael Solomonov being filmed in the kitchen of Krav Sakinim (Israel’s Iron Chef) judge Ruthie Rousso. (photo from Florentine Films)
“In America, it’s identifiable. But here, people say it’s too soon to have a cuisine. There are people that love the idea of a melting pot, everybody coming together. But there are also people who do not like this idea; they want to keep cultures separate,” Sherman said.
“Israeli cuisine is the amalgamation of dozens of cultures that are taking remarkable local ingredients and either trying to stay true as much as they can to their traditions or updating and upgrading.”
Sherman contends that Israeli cuisine only came into existence in the 1980s. “You have a country that began with no kitchens in private homes because, if you lived on a kibbutz, and many people did, you ate communally. And, if you talked about enjoying food, people would slap you. ‘We’re here to survive, we’re trying to create a country,’ they’d say,” Sherman explained. “Until at least the mid- to late-’80s, ‘cuisine’ was a four-letter word. You didn’t mention it.”
Today, of course, Israeli cuisine is simmering in pots around the country – and even beyond. He pointed out that three of the best new U.S. restaurants as chosen by Bon Appétit magazine are dedicated to Israeli cuisine. “Israeli cuisine is now proliferating, accelerating … in the past year, Israeli cuisine places have opened all over the world. Israeli cuisine is a force,” he said.
The Search for Israeli Cuisine is not only focused on the kitchens of Israel. Sherman spotlights Israeli agri-tech and how Israeli farmers and engineers are changing the way the world eats.
Michael Solomonov dines with Israeli celebrity chef Meir Adoni in Tel Aviv. (photo from Florentine Films)
“This is another reason I’m doing the film. If you go back, Israel was a Third World country for most of its existence. Now, it’s not just a First World country, but it is leading the world in many ways,” he said. “I don’t think many people know that Israel’s high-tech agriculture has changed the way the world eats, beginning with drip-irrigation methods and going to seedless watermelons, cherry tomatoes, soon-to-be seedless lemons. Israelis know all this stuff but people around the world don’t.”
Sherman said viewers will be flabbergasted to hear that “farm to table” and “locally sourced” are standard practice in Israel. “People will think that’s fantastic because it’s such a big deal in the U.S. right now, what is your carbon footprint,” he explained. “Here, the whole country is accessible in two hours.”
Eating is a sensory experience, and a food-focused documentary has to instil the enjoyment of cuisine through the big screen. “People who watch our teaser, which is five minutes long, say, ‘Oh my God, that made me so hungry,’” Sherman said. “So, if I can do that in five minutes, imagine what I can do in two hours. We’re telling really interesting stories about people who are passionate about what they do. The people I have found have been wonderful in sharing their passion to the world.”
Israeli-American chef Solomonov takes viewers into the lives of everyone – Jews, Christians, Arabs, Druze and Bedouins – changing the food landscape of Israel.
“Israeli cuisine reflects humanity at its best. People need to know that, regardless of what they see on TV, regardless of their political stance, the best way to relate to Israel is through its food and culture,” Solomonov says in the film.
Sherman admitted that, prior to his visit, he realized that he’d “never thought much about the Israeli people. It became clear that most people I meet don’t know much about the Israeli people either, and they’re surprised at what I reveal.”
And that’s why he doesn’t see The Search for Israeli Cuisine as simply a foodie movie.
“I’m calling this a portrait of the Israeli people told through food,” said the same filmmaker who profiled preeminent restaurant owner Danny Meyer in The Restaurateur. “It’s not a cooking show, it’s not recipes; the food is at the heart of it but it’s really about these amazing people doing these dynamic things.”
Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.
Among the events that began the Jewish year of 5775 (2014/15), Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu traveled to the United States, where he addressed the United Nations to warn of the danger of a nuclear-armed Iran, and met with U.S. President Barak Obama at the White House.
Prior to that visit, in September 2014, Israel received from Germany another state-of–the-art submarine, the INS Tanin. In October, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon was taken by the Israel Defence Forces to see a Hamas-built tunnel on the Gaza border, used for the purpose of terrorism.
In November, there was an attack on the Jerusalem light rail in which one person died after a terrorist drove his light van into a crowd of people waiting at a train station, and also injured more than a dozen others. The same month saw two terrorists enter Kehilat Ya’acov Synagogue in Jerusalem and attack worshippers at morning prayers with knives, axes and guns, killing four people and injuring a further eight.
In December, Labor party leader Isaac Herzog and Hatnua party leader and former justice minister Tzipi Livni announced that the two parties would join, with Herzog becoming party leader. Another new face was that of Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, who became the new chief of staff of the IDF in February.
The year was a reality check for some public figures, as their misconduct caught up with them. In February, former chief rabbi Yona Metzger, who had been subject to an investigation for accepting bribes, was indicted. In March, former prime minister Ehud Olmert was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to a prison term.
With respect to the environment and public space, the Tel Hiriya waste dump outside Tel Aviv was closed down and a development started for the foundation of a huge urban park in its place.
In March, Netanyahu won the general election, but was only able to form a majority government with a coalition. Later that month, seven siblings, aged 5 to 16, from Brooklyn were buried in Jerusalem after they died in a fire in their home.
During the year, several incidents brought into focus the complaint, particularly by Jews of Ethiopian descent, of discrimination by the police. In one, an Israeli Ethiopian IDF soldier, Damas Pakada, was attacked by a policeman, after which Pakada was invited to the Prime Minister’s Office to receive an apology.
In April, Israel was one of the first countries to respond to the earthquake in Nepal. Within a day or two, a field hospital was set up by the IDF in Katmandu.
In May, there was another attack on the light rail system in Jerusalem. This time, the terrorist was shot in the legs, then apprehended, by a security guard.
In July, the United States announced that it would release Jonathan Pollard in November. Pollard will have served 30 years in prison for spying for Israel. He will not be allowed to leave the United States for five years after his release.
In August, Yishai Shissel, who had recently been released from prison for stabbing participants in Jerusalem’s Pride parade 10 years earlier, once again attacked marchers in the annual parade. He stabbed six people at random, and a 16-year-old died of her injuries. Once again, Israel was faced with problems relating to discrimination and violence.
As the year closed, the government concluded a deal with the companies that will be responsible for mining the huge quantities of natural gas found off Israel’s coast.
A border policeman walks past the covered body of a victim of the terror attack near the Jerusalem light rail in November 2014. (all photos from Ashernet)Near the end of February 2015, Israel and Jordan sign an agreement to revitalize the Dead Sea by building an $800 million pipeline from the Red Sea. The measures will not only slow down the evaporation of the Dead Sea, but also supply electricity to both countries when completed.In March 2015, Likud wins the general election.On March 22, Gabriel Sassoon from New York eulogizes in Jerusalem his seven children who were killed in a house fire the previous Shabbat in Brooklyn.The Tel Hirya reclamation project and urban park, April 2015.In April, Senator John Boehner visits Israel to show his solidarity over the rejection of the deal with Iran.Israel Defence Forces medical personnel treat injured Nepalese at the IDF field hospital in Katmandu, May 2015.Ethiopian Jews and their supporters protest outside the Ministry of Defence headquarters in central Tel Aviv, June 2015.Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu receives Esther Pollard in his office on July 29, 2015, following the news that her husband Jonathan Pollard is to be freed from prison in the United States in November.In August 2015, Jerusalemites take to the streets in a rally against violence and hate crimes. Thousands also take part in the demonstration in Tel Aviv.
