Shopping in Sderot

August 19, 2007 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: General, Life 

What happens when you cross Israel’s favorite past-time, with a desire to help the people of Qassam-battered Sderot?  A day of shopping in Sderot of course.
On August 31, a convoy of people from across the country will take part in a mass-shopping spree in the southern town buying school supplies and groceries for the High Holidays, in an effort to jumpstart the town’s failing businesses.
The grassroots initiative was founded by Ilan Cohen, a Modi’in resident who couldn’t sleep one night after Sderot was hit badly by a series of rockets sent from the Gaza strip.
This is the third convoy Cohen has organized to the town. The first convoy took place three months ago, and was followed in July by a larger one of 300 cars.
Now Cohen is planning the biggest convoy of them all. Cars will depart from locations around the country and convene at Yad Mordechai parking lot ready to drive on to Sderot together.
Nice to know that Sderot hasn’t been completely forgotten.

Tags:

Car Smoke Ban

August 19, 2007 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

Yesterday while lazing in a Tel Aviv park I watched in wonder as a mom cradled her toddler in one hand and dragged off of her cigarette with the other. She exhaled generous plumes of smoke without shame or embarrassment. Awareness and public shame surrounding smoking around children hasn’t yet achieved the heights in Israel that is has in other countries, like the U.S.

This week in New York, you can count on controversy when Queens City Council member/chairman of the council’s Environmental Protection Committee, James Gennaro, introduces a new smoking bill.

The bill calls for a ban on city smoking inside cars if minors (under 18) are present. No lighting up if a kid’s in the car.

“I am just seeking every opportunity I can to denormalize smoking and to try to put it out of the reach of kids,” Mr. Gennaro told New York press. “I’ve lost family members to lung cancer and I’ve seen what happens.”

There’s already been an uproar over the proposed bill because if enacted, it would pad an ever-expanding list of city don’t's: smoking in bars and restaurants, making too much noise at night, serving trans fats in restaurants, and allowing students to carry cell phones in school.

Mayor Bloomberg favors the law but admitted it might be tough to enforce. “We do have a responsibility to provide a health environment for our children and I would just urge anybody, if you have children at home, don’t smoke at home, don’t smoke in your car with your child; you really are damaging your child’s health.”

I think it’s a good thing; Infants, toddlers, kids and teens often can’t speak up for themselves or feel uncomfortable doing so.

As an elementary school kid I squirmed in discomfort each morning as the father responsible for the morning “to school” transport lit up. My brother and I would roll our eyes and make gagging motions at each other in the backseat as tears sprang to our eyes from the suffocating effect of a smoke filled car. Years later we still joke: “Remember how Rabbi X used to smoke on the way to school? UGH!!”

It’s not funny and it certainly wasn’t then. I’m hoping the law is enacted in New York and I also hope Israel will QUICKLY catch up with New York, San Francisco, London and other smoke-ban locales. There are (sometimes enforced) smoking restrictive laws already in place in Israel but there’s a way to go.

Tags:

Erasing the Hard Drive

August 18, 2007 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Life, Technology 

What better way to improve short term memory than to get rid of the long term?

Sound ridiculous?

Not according to this story which claims a joint Israel-America research team is working on a new drug that can erase long term memory. Logic being that long term memory impedes short term retention. The drug’s target clientele is dementia sufferers.

So far, testing has only been carried out on rats because it’s too risky and invasive to try out on humans.

In the study, published on Thursday in the journal Science, the researchers fed the rats saccharine, which made them sick and taught them to associate the taste with feeling unwell.

They then injected an enzyme inhibitor called ZIP into the rats’ brains that blocked a protein, PKMzeta, which controls the flow of information involving memory between brain cells.

After the injection, the rats did not remember the association with saccharine, no matter how long the researchers had trained them to do so, said Dudai, a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

This suggests a key mechanism in the brain works like a piece of machinery to store long-term memory, Dudai said. Once the machinery stops, memory shuts down.

“This research is important because it casts light on the mechanisms of memory,” Dudai said. “It also shows that long-term memory is not a permanent change and can be edited.”

Tags:

Foto Friday #18

August 17, 2007 by · 5 Comments
Filed under: Art, Blogging 

Isn’t it nice when Friday rolls around? What do you do when your Fridays roll around?

We like to look at pictures.

Have a good one…..Your friends at Israelity


Displaying the Goods…Webster 3

Jaffa Capoeira….the other side

Army Induction…Yehuda, Games & Blogging in the Holy Land

Tags:

From Capitol to Capitol.

August 16, 2007 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: General, Immigrant Moments, Life, Politics 
Condi Rice in London

One of the reasons I can only live in Jerusalem and not Tel Aviv is that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital city. While it’s certainly true that some politicians and government offices are based in Tel Aviv, that’s no different than New York in America. Growing up outside of Washington, DC my idea of celebrity watching was going downtown and watching administration officials and congressmen. Yes, it’s true, I got more excited when former Clinton Cabinet member Donna Shalala walked into a store I was working at in college than when The Nanny’s Benjamin Salisbury was in my college film class or when I spent a semester studying with Jerusalem-born Natalie Portman at Hebrew University (OK, maybe that one’s not true … but it’s Natalie Portman, every Jewish guy’s dream girl, so that’s a special exception). Yes, I’m more comfortable and feel at home when my friends work on Capitol Hill or the Knesset rather than in Hollywood or New York, or when my mother runs into Joe Lieberman at the supermarket or when I walk home from synagogue in Jerusalem on Shabbat next to Hadassah Lieberman. I appreciate it more when Congress members come to Jerusalem rather than Will Smith visiting the Western Wall (although I suspect, the female population would disagree with me there). Yes, I would rather work in a think tank than in high tech (well, except for the salary issue!).

Basically, I’m a Washingtonian born and bred who watches C-SPAN and the Knesset channel for entertainment and I’m proud of holding a political sophistication that most of America or Israel lack (how many people know the difference between hokei hayesod and a huka?). So, I always get a little homesick and a little happy when I have a little politico moment here in Jerusalem, no matter how minor.

I always feel just a bit better seeing motorcades and diplomats, such as when Condi Rice was just down the street from me a few weeks ago, staying at the David Citadel Hotel. Peeking from afar her covered exit and some of the secret services’ black SUVs, I walked home the rest of the way feeling just a bit more at home.

Walking down the street yesterday, I heard several sirens. Having lived here during the worst years of the second intifada, I was alert to a possible pigua (terror attack), which is normally what multiple sirens symbolize. But, I breathed a sigh of relief when the sirens were a police car, black Volvo, and several SUVs, carrying some dignitary – most likely bringing Prime Minister Olmert back to his nearby home. Oddly, though, I thought to myself, unlike the American presidential motorcade (OK, which I admit, I only saw once), the prime minister’s motorcade didn’t include an ambulance.

As Jay (also a Jerusalem transplant from DC) said, when he ran into the Meridor brothers (Dan and Sallai – a former Israeli justice minister and Israel’s current ambassador to the US) at the beer festival in Jerusalem:

I was talking with a former Justice Minister and the current Israeli Ambassador to the USA in the middle of the street in the middle of the night with no security guards. Up there with motorcades and the drones of surveillance planes in the middle of the night, random politician spotting makes this place feel more like DC. WOW.

Despite being Israel’s financial – but not political – capital, this just doesn’t happen in Tel Aviv … or New York.

Tags:

Page 10 of 22« First...89101112...20...Last »

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Sitemap