World – Page 26

UNESCO finally runs “Holy Land” exhibit

Canadian participants in a meeting earlier this month with French President François Hollande came away impressed with the French leader’s sincerity and determination to address the terrorism and antisemitism that has France’s Jews on edge.

Avi Benlolo, president and chief executive officer of the Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and Member of Parliament and former justice minister Irwin Cotler said Hollande was empathetic to the concerns of the country’s Jews and was forthright in discussing the threat posed by French-born jihadists returning from Syria.

“Hollande spoke about the barbaric attack on the Jewish museum in Belgium” and about the protection of Jewish schools, synagogues and other community buildings, Cotler said in a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

Cotler and Benlolo were part of a 20-member delegation assembled by the Los Angeles-based

Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which met with Hollande prior to officially inaugurating an historic exhibition at UNESCO’s Paris offices. The exhibit, mounted by historian Robert Wistrich, is titled, People, Book, Land: The 3,500-Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land.

The exhibit was sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre along with the governments of Canada, Israel, the United States and Montenegro, and it launched this month after pressure from Arab countries forced its cancellation in January.

Benlolo said the reception by French officials and Hollande at the Élysée Palace was warm and welcoming. The delegates were anxious to express their concerns about the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels by a French gunman, who killed four people.

“Hollande believes there are more than 1,000 French nationals who went to fight in Syria and joined radical groups,” Benlolo said. Three hundred remain. Many came back and he’s concerned about their radicalization and if they will take action against the Jewish community.

Mehdi Nemmouche, the man accused in the Brussels attack, is believed to have spent 2013 fighting with Islamic radicals in Syria.

Hollande assured the delegates that he is working closely with intelligence and security services to track returning jihadists and to ensure the safety of the country’s Jews.

“I believe Hollande was very sincere,” Benlolo said. “The Jewish community received substantial grants to secure their schools and synagogues,” he added.

Cotler, who has visited France three times in the last six months, said, “People spoke well of Hollande and his genuineness, his commitment to combat antisemitism, to bring perpetrators of antisemitism to justice and his appreciation of jihadist acts as threatening to French Jews and France alike. He took the position that it’s a joint struggle, a part of the protection of French democracy and all of France.”

During the meeting, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Wiesenthal Centre, told the president, “We meet at a pivotal time in history, when the Jewish community and France’s democratic values are under unprecedented attack by the forces of extremism both from the far right and from extreme Islamist purveyors of religious intolerance and murder.”

He applauded Hollande and his predecessor, president Nicolas Sarkozy, for denouncing an earlier terrorist attack in Toulouse that claimed the life of a rabbi and four children, but he lamented the failure of Muslim religious leaders to condemn the attacks.

Meanwhile, Cotler was effusive in his description of the Wistrich exhibit, which he called “historic.”

“It is a remarkable dramatization of history and heritage, of people, book, land, memory and state,” said Cotler.

In 24 panels, the exhibit traces Jewish history back to the patriarch Abraham, through Moses, King David and all the way through to the struggle for Soviet Jewry, the birth of Zionism and the reconstitution of the state of Israel.

The nine-day exhibit had been scheduled to open last January. Pressure from 22 Arab countries, who argued it would prejudice the peace process, prompted UNESCO to cancel it.

Responding to that decision, Hier stated, “It is ironic that, while the Arab League was trying to kill this exhibition and all the attention was focused on Paris, the UN headquarters in New York [was] hosting an exhibit entitled, Palestine, based entirely on the Arab narrative, which was not criticized as an interference with Secretary [John] Kerry’s mission.”

Following public criticism from Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird and U.S. envoy Samantha Power, the exhibit was rescheduled to open early this month, but with the name Israel removed from the title and replaced with “Holy Land.” UNESCO also required the removal of an image of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which had been part of the initial exhibit prepared by Wistrich, a professor of European and Jewish history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

– For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com.

Israeli company builds floating desalination plants for Japan

Environmentalists usually agree that making fresh water from brackish (salty) water is a last resort. Building desalination plants requires millions of dollars in technology, and it’s costly to produce potable water – both in terms of energy to run the plants and the environmental pollution the factories emit.

The Israeli company IDE Technologies – already planning the biggest desalination plant in the United States – is pushing the borders in this domain closer to sustainability in Japan, where it is working to produce floating desalination plants.

The new approach will breathe new life into Japan’s stagnant shipbuilding business and help the Japanese fulfil short-term freshwater needs, according to Bloomberg News.

Udi Tirosh, a business development director at IDE, told the business media outlet, “Floating plants will not replace the land-built ones, but floating plants can become an alternative that does not saddle a country with the burden of maintenance once local water tables improve.” This could be welcome news in parched regions of the United States, like California, which is experiencing an historic drought.

Palestinian prof. resigns after Auschwitz trip

The Palestinian professor who touched off a maelstrom of controversy by taking a group of students to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in Poland is now at odds with his former employer after the school accepted his resignation.

Dr. Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi, who headed the American studies department and served as chief librarian at Al-Quds University, stirred up controversy among Palestinians who felt the March trip was inappropriate. Although the participants were all students at Al-Quds, Dajani said that the trip itself was under the aegis of Wasatia, the nongovernmental organization that he heads whose goal is to “promote a culture of moderation and reconciliation between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people.” But when the trip became a public issue, criticism was leveled at the school and the professor. Dajani said he received threats and the employee and student unions, to which he did not belong, formally banned him from membership. On May 18, Dajani submitted his resignation from Al-Quds University.

Incoming university president Imad Abukishek said he was surprised by the resignation, given the lengths he said the school went to on Dajani’s behalf. “We thought he noticed what we did for him and that he would respect what we did for him,” Abukishek said, citing two university-assigned security guards hired to protect Dajani and the school’s attempt to confront the unions to demand the rescinding of the ban issued against the professor.

Dajani, however, said he saw the university’s response in a different light. In his letter of resignation addressed to outgoing university president Sari Nusseibeh, Dajani charged that as a result of the fallout from the Auschwitz trip, “the educational environment on this campus for teaching and learning is not available at your university, which makes it difficult to practise my mission to educate and practise academic freedom.”

In a statement, the administration strongly disagreed, citing the school’s efforts to “act promptly and effectively to deal with the actions” of the two unions and the hiring of the bodyguards. The administration insisted that Al-Quds did all it could do “to deal with the repercussions of his visit,” and did so even though it “was being made to deal with ‘an external activity carried out by Prof. Dajani in his private capacity as the CEO of an independent NGO, which he runs [that] … had nothing to do with the university.’” The statement added that the school did all it could “to ensure that individuals, including Prof. Dajani, had the right to express their views freely, and to act freely within the confines of the law, without fear of intimidations or threats.”

Israel-EU agreement opens sky

A Lufthansa Airbus A320 takes off at Berlin Tegel Airport. From legacy carriers such as Lufthansa to low-cost carriers such as Great Britain’s easyJet, new flights to and from Israel are popping up all over the grid following the EU-Israel Open Skies agreement. (photo by Lasse Fuss vis Wikimedia Commons)

In the months since Israel and the European Union officially signed their Open Skies travel agreement, providing all European and Israeli airlines with equal opportunities to launch direct service to and from Tel Aviv, a slew of airlines are already hard at work trying to expand their offerings.

From legacy carriers including Lufthansa German Airlines to low-cost carriers such as Great Britain’s easyJet, new flights to and from Israel are popping up all over the grid. And Israeli airlines are also getting in on the action, with the country’s flagship carrier, El Al, announcing additional routes to Europe, as well as the launch of its own low-cost brand called Up, which was scheduled to begin service to European destinations this spring.

While the agreement does not come into full effect for all airlines until 2018, Mark Feldman, who has been in the travel business for more than 30 years and is currently chief executive officer of the Jerusalem-based travel agency Zion Tours, explained in an interview that, due to “a grandfather clause, an airline like easyJet, which already began its service from London to Tel Aviv four years ago, can already go ahead and expand.”

David Katz creates plastic currency

If there’s one act of tikkun olam to which David Katz is dedicated, it’s an effort to clean up the oceans and waterways of the world by recycling and reprocessing plastic waste.

The 45-year-old Port Moody, B.C.-based founder of the Plastic Bank recently returned from Greece, where he was awarded the Global Citizen of the Year Award from the Entrepreneurs Organization. The honor recognizes an entrepreneur who is making a mark on the global landscape, impacting communities, inspiring support and effecting positive change.

photo - David Katz — David Katz, founder of the Plastic Bank. *(photo from plasticbank.org)*

Katz’s approach to the clean up of plastic at the world’s shorelines is innovative and, if it succeeds, its potential is huge. The idea is that waste-pickers in the most poverty-stricken countries will collect the plastic garbage and deliver it to reprocessing facilities where they’ll receive a credit at the Plastic Bank. They can then use the credit towards education, loans and access to 3-D print shops, where the plastic can be transformed into tools, parts and household items.

Katz is engaged in a pilot project with Ciuda Saludable in Peru, an organization that works with communities to increase the volume of plastics collected. He’s in partnership talks with similar organizations in Columbia and has had partnership requests from organizations in 40 different countries to date.

Back at home, he worked with the University of British Columbia to develop an extruder, which creates recycled plastic 3-D printing filament, and he’s working with a local plastic reprocessor to create Social Plastic, a brand of recycled plastic. Katz hopes to convince companies to purchase it as a socially responsible alternative to creating new plastics.

“There’s enough plastic in the world right now that we would never have to make more of it,” he explained. “And once it’s reprocessed, the plastic doesn’t degrade, which means it can be used for a wide variety of purposes and continue to be upcycled. It could be turned into fibre for clothing, or into prosthetics.”

Lush Cosmetics is one of the companies that has shown an interest in using Social Plastic in their cosmetics tubs and, at the time of publication, Katz was awaiting the final paperwork on Lush’s participation. Convincing companies to come on board with the concept of Social Plastic may be challenging, though. “Potential customers are concerned that once they start using Social Plastic, they’ll always have to use it,” he said.

Katz said he’s always been drawn to the shore, and with that attraction has come an exposure to its continuous degradation. “It’s a symbol of the global catastrophe occurring because of people’s misunderstanding of environmental issues,” he said. “We’re hoping that by turning plastic waste into a currency that can be exchanged, we can help lift people out of poverty and transition them into a self-sustaining life of entrepreneurship.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Kosher certification changes

In his book Kosher: Private Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food, American author Timothy Lytton recounts an old rabbinic joke featuring two mythical creatures created by God at the dawn of time: the Behemoth, a giant ox, and the Leviathan, a giant fish. In the joke, a rabbi explains to his students that, at the End of Days, when the Messiah arrives, there will be a feast and God will slaughter the Behemoth to feed the entire world. The Leviathan will also be slaughtered at the same time, and it too will be used to feed the entire world.

“But rabbi,” one of his students asks, “if the Behemoth can feed the entire world, why also slaughter the Leviathan?”

“Because there will be those who won’t believe the Behemoth is kosher, so they will be able to eat fish,” the rabbi answers.

Clearly, disputes over kashrut go back a long way and, if there’s any truth to the joke, the Messiah’s arrival might not resolve the matter.

Lytton, a professor of law at Albany Law School, told the CJN that the current certification system in North America, in which a handful of big players effectively dominates the market, developed as a result of widespread corruption and uncertainty in the kosher food market in the early days of the 20th century. Things then were so bad that people had no confidence that the food they might consume was actually kosher. Many kosher-observant Jews simply stopped eating meat, because they did not trust any certification.

Standards began improving 50 or 60 years ago and, today, industrial producers of all sorts of foods eagerly seek out kosher certification for entry into a desirable market. But rivalries among certification agencies can have a negative effect, Lytton writes.

“Personal animus and institutional rivalries can skew judgments about reliability. Information networks and supply-chain influence can be used to poach clients and stifle competition.

“Too many rivalries and accusations can spill over and create a public perception and a consumer response that is bad for both sides.”

“If the competition gets too bad or nasty, it tends to degrade the reputation of kosher supervision overall.”

Kosher certification agencies are “hostages of each other…. If the competition gets too bad or nasty, it tends to degrade the reputation of kosher supervision overall. If the nastiness gets bad enough, the history of kosher certification suggests that it will be bad for the public reputations of all the certifiers. There’s a long history in kosher certification of rabbis running each other down and, if they do it in public, the public won’t trust any of them,” he said.

One solution to infighting among certification agencies is being considered in Israel. Naftali Bennett, the country’s economy and trade minister, who also serves as minister for religious services, recently announced plans to introduce a three-tier system that aims to make certification easier for restaurants and their patrons. According to the Times of Israel, Bennett’s system would award food-producing establishments with one to three stars, indicating their level of adherence to Judaism’s dietary laws.

“Each business or company can decide how many stars it wants,” Bennett said.

The new approach would also revise the system of funding for certifications. Currently, food establishments pay for their own supervision, a practice that has drawn criticism for creating potential conflicts of interest for inspectors. The new reform proposes a third-party body that would handle the financial side of the kashrut supervision. However, the Times of Israel reported that there was plenty of criticism of the new government plan.

Shahar Ilan, deputy director of Hiddush, an Israeli nonprofit organization that promotes religious freedom and equality, said Bennett’s arrangement would maintain the state rabbinate’s monopoly over the kashrut system instead of opening it up to the free market. He called on authorities to encourage kashrut liberalization, including non-religious, Reform and Conservative kosher certifications, enabling consumers to choose to be kosher according to their own beliefs.

Lawrence Lax, a kosher consumer and an addiction counselor by profession, has his own suggestions about reforming kosher supervision in Toronto. He suggests that the Kashruth Council of Canada, which administers the COR hechsher and is known by that name, faces “a conflict of interest” in its operations – though different than the one centred on the way mashgichim are paid.

“On the one hand, they have to be of service to the people they work with in the food industry,” Lax said. “On the other hand, they have to make it possible for us to have kosher food at good prices.”

He suggested that COR use its market clout to negotiate better prices for meat. He also proposed that COR should transition into a community service organization; that it “age-out senior salaries” when older employees retire and turn over most mashgiach services to young men coming out of yeshivot, who wouldn’t command large salaries.

COR declined to answer the CJN’s questions. It published an open letter, in which it described itself as being “dedicated to serving our community.”

“COR is a not-for-profit organization and all fees collected go towards covering our operations and providing services to the community. In the food service division (i.e. restaurants and caterers) we actually operate at a financial deficit – our expenses are greater than our fees. We are able to marginally compensate for this loss from our other divisions. Customers choose COR because they know that we are reliable, we provide professional service and our prices are in line with the other major kosher certifiers,” the letter stated.

COR, however, has adopted the practice being criticized in Israel – it permits restaurants, caterers and suppliers to employ mashgichim directly, though they report to COR and are under the supervision of COR personnel.

Moti Bensalmon, a spokesman for Badatz Toronto, a kosher certification agency founded in 2008, said, “The conflict of interest whereby a mashgiach is paid directly by a business is finally going to end in Israel. Any agency allowing mashgichim to be paid by ownership loses its credibility in today’s world.”

Referring to other Israeli proposals for reform of its kashrut certification system, Bensalmon rejected the idea of a three-tiered approach.

“I believe a three-tiered system is bad here and in Israel. What we need to strive for is a solid one-tier system that is acceptable to everyone. This means that the Charedim and Modern Orthodox should negotiate unified minimum standards and apply them to everyone.

“What Bennett is trying to do is undermine the legitimate operations of the private hechshers and have the government be the sole certifier of kashrut.”

“If a restaurant or caterer wants a higher level of supervision, there are many reputable private hechsherim that can fill the void. What Bennett is trying to do is undermine the legitimate operations of the private hechshers and have the government be the sole certifier of kashrut.

“I believe the best way to move forward is for the Israeli Rabbanut to be more of a governing body for all hechshers. In order to provide kosher certification, the nongovernment hechshers would have to be accredited by the Rabbanut, meet certain standards, regulate their business practices and treat their mashgichim with fairness.

“This would also eliminate the back-room deals and put an end to agencies blocking each others’ products from entry into their establishments. This is the real solution, and it will open the hashgachah market up to more real and fair competition, which would eventually bring all prices down,” he said.

As to Badatz’s disputes with COR, Bensalmon said, “Everywhere there is a large Jewish community like Toronto, there are multiple kashrut agencies. It’s a fact of life that the COR must come to terms with. We harbor no ill will to the individuals running COR in any way. We would like to run our organization without interference from COR and vice versa.

“We have reached out to them multiple times and tried to have meaningful discussions centred on having two organizations operate by the same sets of rules in Toronto. Their position we were told is that the only solution is to join COR under their leadership and administration. As we see in other parts of the world, it’s difficult to reach an agreement with people who harbor those views.”

– For more national Jewish news, visit cjnews.com.

PJ Library launches Lantern Library for Arab Israeli kids

Children in Baka al-Gharbiyah enjoying Maktabat al-Fanoos books and working with their teacher on their storytelling skills. (photo by Akmal Nagnagy)

PJ (aka “pajama”) Library is taking the PJ concept to Israel’s Arab population, with the creation of the Lantern Library (Maktabat al-Fanoos, in Arabic). Now Arab, Bedouin and Druze kindergartens, special-education Israeli schools and some preschools will start receiving books.

The first book to be distributed is a story about a mouse named Soumsoum, and it has already become quite a sensation in Arab, Bedouin and Druze state-run schools in Israel.

photo - Children enjoying their books about Soumsoum the Mouse as part of the Maktabat al-Fanoos program, which fosters a love of reading — Children enjoying their books about Soumsoum the Mouse as part of the Maktabat al-Fanoos program, which fosters a love of reading. *(photo by Akmal Nagnagy)*

Galina Vromen, former international correspondent for Reuters who joined the Harold Grinspoon Foundation more than 10 years ago, launched the Israeli version of PJ Library in 2009, called Sifriyat Pijama, for the Jewish Israeli population.

Like its North American parent program, PJ Library, Sifriyat Pijama aims to inspire discussion at home about values and Jewish heritage and to instil a love of books. Unlike the North American program, Sifriyat Pijama books are distributed via government preschools and are then taken home.

“Some 215,000 children and their families receive the books, which is about 80 percent of all children in Hebrew-language state preschools,” said Vromen. “The children receive eight books a year. By the time they finish their three years of preschool, they have a 24-book home library.”

Lantern Library is a sister program to Sifriyat Pijama and, like its counterpart, Lantern Library books are delivered by courier to each classroom, with a copy for each child and two classroom copies.

After the teacher introduces a book and usually also conducts book-related activities (i.e. a discussion, a play, an art project), the book goes home to each student and his/her family.

“The books are culturally appropriate, but still chosen with a view to inviting discussion on values – universal, humanistic values rather than Judaism’s specific take on a value,” said Vromen. “But often, it comes down to much the same concepts, like honoring parents, being hospitable, visiting the sick, caring for one’s community and helping others.”

Lantern Library, like Sifriyat Pijama, is funded and operated in partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Education. But with Lantern Library, “We also work with the California-based Price Family Charitable Fund, which has long been active in funding and operating programs for young children and their parents in the Israeli Arab community through its Bidayat (Beginnings) Early Childhood Centres,” said Vromen.

The foundation and the Price Family Charitable Fund committed to start a pilot project this year, with or without the ministry, offering to provide additional matching funds if the ministry came on board.

“The ministry did find some funding, so instead of our initial plans to start with 5,000 children, we ended up launching a program for close to 50,000 kids,” said Vromen.

photo - reschoolers in Baka al-Gharbiyah receiving their picture book, to enjoy at school and with their families at home — reschoolers in Baka al-Gharbiyah receiving their picture book, to enjoy at school and with their families at home. *(photo by Akmal Nagnagy)*

The most immediate goal was to get good books out to every classroom and to each child. Other goals were to ensure teachers understand how to effectively integrate the books into the classroom and to understand their role in encouraging parents to read at home.

“Ultimately, we want children to love books, so they’ll be motivated to read,” said Vromen. “We don’t aim to teach children to read. Before children learn to read, they need to want to read through having positive experiences with books and being excited about the stories and the places they take you. We hope to encourage those positive, crucial experiences with books.”

The books have been received with great enthusiasm, added Vromen. “The teachers are extremely positive and send us lots of pictures of the activities they do with the kids. We post some on the program website, which is also exciting for the class.

“The parents are delighted to be getting the free, quality books. Arab parents, like Jewish ones, recognize the importance of education for their kids, and know that starts with books.”

According to Vromen, some Arab families have many books in their home and some have none. “Like elsewhere, people who don’t have a tradition of reading or don’t have the resources to buy books, don’t have as many as those who do,” she said. “Arabs have a long, honored tradition of oral storytelling. In many cases, this takes the place of a tradition of reading. We hope the practice of reading books together in the family will flourish alongside the oral tradition, reinforcing and complementing it.”

Vromen said with a smile, “I’ve yet to meet a child who, when given a choice between going straight to bed or being read a story first, chooses to go to bed without a story. It’s not just the reading. It’s the cuddling together, the looking at the illustrations together, and talking about what the characters feel or what might happen to them next that creates an emotional attachment to books, as well as, of course, enhancing the parent-child relationship.”

The foundation has considered electronic books, but has found that, for now, the time is not yet right. “The online book industry is much less developed in Israel than in America, so it’s still rare for Israelis to read books in Hebrew online,” said Vromen. “The issue is whether or not online books can provide the same emotional experience between parent and child as a paper book. The jury is still out on that, but as an avid electronic book reader myself, I personally don’t see a problem.”

Maktabat al-Fanoos, Sifriyat Pijama and PJ Library, according to Vromen, are all based on the concept known in Judaism as “girsa d’yankuta” (Aramaic for “learning with one’s mother’s milk”). This idea “assumes we develop a lifelong attachment to the stories, narratives, rituals and concepts we imbibe as young children,” said Vromen. “Parents don’t always realize how fleeting those early childhood years are – how sweet and also how precious is the opportunity to read and talk to children about things that matter. So, I hope they seize that opportunity.”

To learn more about Lantern Library, visit al-fanoos.org. English is available by clicking on the top left “En” button on the home page.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Critics peek under the Conference umbrella

President Barack Obama meets with leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in the state dining room at the White House on March 1, 2011. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Since the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations voted April 30 to reject the membership application of the self-labeled “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby J Street, the umbrella group has come under siege with accusations of not being adequately representative of U.S. Jewry’s views and for being controlled by a faction of right-wing members.

Yet a closer look at the Conference’s makeup reveals the prevalence of politically centrist or apolitical organizations – particularly among its largest members – such as Jewish National Fund, Hadassah, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, Jewish Federations of North America and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Also included in the Conference are openly liberal groups such as Ameinu and Americans for Peace Now.

“A majority of the groups voting against J Street were secular, centrist groups, not religious or right-wing,” Zionist Organization of America national president Morton A. Klein suggested, noting that by his count there are no more than 11 religious or right-wing groups among the Conference’s 50 members.

“To say it’s not inclusive when you have Peace Now, Ameinu, [American Friends of] Likud and ZOA in the Conference, is an absurd statement,” Klein added.

J Street responded to the vote with a letter on its website addressed to Conference of Presidents executive vice-chairman/chief executive officer Malcolm Hoenlein, stating, “Dear Malcolm: Thank you for finally making it clear that the Conference of Presidents is not representative of the voice of the Jewish community. We recognize the need for an open and honest conversation on Israel in the United States. We appreciate you being honest. Now we’ll work on the openness.”

To gain membership in the Conference, J Street needed the support of two-thirds of the body’s members. Forty-two members showed up for the vote, whose final tally was 22 against J Street, 17 in favor and three abstentions.

Hold a newborn like a kangaroo

Premature babies experience long-term benefits from skin-to-skin contact with their mothers for a short time every day. (photo from israel21c.org)

A new Israeli study reveals that “kangaroo care” for premature babies has life-long effects on neurological and psychological development. Conducted by Dr. Ruth Feldman – a professor in the department of psychology and in the Brain Research Centre at Bar-Ilan University and adjunct professor at the Child Study Centre at Yale – the study shows that skin-to-skin contact between mother and newborn improves brain functioning later in life.

The concept of “kangaroo care” (named for the way that this marsupial carries her unformed offspring in her pouch) is not new. Introduced by neonatologist Edgar Rey Sanabria in 1978 in Bogota, Colombia – where access to incubators was limited – it is a method of using maternal body heat to prevent hypothermia in preemies. That it proved effective in keeping infants warm made sense, but Feldman and her research team set out to examine whether it had a measurable influence.

They began performing a double-blind longitudinal study in 1996 and 1998, looking at one group of 73 premature babies in a neonatal unit receiving standard incubator care, and another set of 73 whose mothers provided skin-to-skin contact for one hour a day for two weeks in a row. The parents in the control group were not aware of the kangaroo-care study, but were offered ongoing psychological and medical care for their babies.

At seven intervals over the course of the next decade, all 146 of these children were tested with brain scans. Today, they are 16 to 18 years old.

“What we found was that the children in the kangaroo-care group had better cognitive skills, sleep patterns and a higher functioning autonomic nervous system, better able to cope with stress,” Feldman said. “And their mothers were more sensitive parents.”

TEDxJaffa speaker says porn habit is detrimental

It is not every day that the subject of pornography gets centre stage at a major venue of a vast international audience such as TEDx, but that is just what happened recently – at TEDxJaffa in Israel.

The featured speaker, Ran Gavrieli, has been all over Israel and beyond, speaking about pornography addiction and how it afflicts women and men alike, as well as impacting children, even those as young as five years old, according to researchers.

photo - Ran Gavrieli — Ran Gavrieli *(photo from Ran Gavrieli)*

According to such research and to candeobehaviorchange.com, a website dedicated in part to sexual addiction, watching pornography and sex brings about a chemical reaction in the brain similar to that produced by consuming drugs or alcohol. As the brain releases a surge of endorphins and other powerful neurochemicals, like dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin, these “natural drugs” produce a rush or a high. Statistics reveal that people all over the world use pornography as a form of escape and self-medication.

At the TEDxJaffa talk, Gavrieli had the opportunity to explain his personal position on the topic, including how porn watching affected his mind and, consequently, his relationships with the opposite sex. The talk can be viewed at YouTube, under the title, “Why I stopped watching porn: Ran Gavrieli at TEDxJaffa 2013.”

Gavrieli holds a BA in gender studies and theatre, and a master’s, and is working on a PhD in gender studies. He has been an outspoken activist against human trafficking and prostitution since 2008. He gives approximately 400 lectures a year to audiences of all ages, including military units and high-tech organizations.

He said he began viewing porn when he was in his twenties. “I soon felt the distortion of my mind,” he recalled, “and I began doing something about it around the age of 30.

“Porn did not change my general perception of women, but it did invade my intimate life. By doing that, it made me look at women in an automatic way, through ‘porn lenses.’ This contradicted who I am, so I had to uproot this habit for my personal well-being.”

Gavrieli said, “I felt [feelings] without the ability to name them, but when I started reading [work by feminist author and activist] Catharine Mackinnon, it all became crystal clear.”

Gavrieli was approached by TEDxJaffa organizers after some of his views were published in popular media in Israel. “The experience was great, because it gave the option to communicate with people all over the globe,” said Gavrieli.

“It is my day job to do these talks, 90 minutes each. But usually it’s to an audience of few hundreds, not millions. I am very grateful to the TEDxJaffa team for allowing me to do so.”

Since the TEDxJaffa talk, Gavrieli has continued receiving positive feedback from viewers. “The comments were fabulous. I keep on getting tons of them every day on Facebook,” he said. “The only thing I am still waiting for is the TED official website to put me on their front page for a couple of days. My talk is only on YouTube for now.”

Gavrieli’s goal is to “deconstruct power relations between genders, between people,” he explained. “In so many aspects, we try to strive for equality in our society, but in terms of sex and money, we regress.

“Prostitution is where sex and money intersect. So many self-made women don’t want to be called ‘feminist,’ or feel disappointed with feminism. It is because of equality not prevailing. Sex and money are how we preserve oppression toward women.”

Porn watching by the numbers

According to Gavrieli, “In Israel, like in the U.S. and all other Western countries, porn is being watched on regular basis by 92 percent of 12-year-old boys. The same rate of girls is exposed as well, even when they don’t wish to be.”

As a father himself, Gavrieli emphatically asked, “Are we cool with porn being, by far, the Number One educator of sexuality and intimacy of our kids?

“Israel is not dealing with it. Not yet. Just like the U.S., the Israeli government cares more about money and taxes coming in from porn than it cares about [the] education, values and identity of the next generations.”

Statistics at familysafemedia.com show that the average age of first internet exposure to pornography is 11 years old, with 90 percent of 8-to-16-year-olds having viewed porn online (most while doing homework). As well, the website notes that 40 million Americans regularly visit internet porn, with 10 percent admitting to it being an addiction.

The male/female breakdown is at 72 percent male, 28 percent female. While 17 percent of women admitted to having a pornography addiction, nearly 10 million were found to access adult websites on a monthly basis. Women are more likely than men to use adult chat rooms and be more discrete about their cyber activity. In fact, 70 percent of women keep their cyber activities secret.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.