Sophie the labrador

February 20, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: education, General, health, Israeliness, Life 

We just spent the weekend with Sophie, a labrador — and her family, my sister, brother-in-law and two of their kids. Sophie is their foster dog — their ninth — as she’s being trained to become a guide dog for The Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind. The temporary part works for them because they head to the States each summer, and never liked the idea of putting a dog in a kennel for two to three months, but, yet, wanted a dog.

So, many years ago, nine as I mentioned, they got in touch with the Israel Guide Dog Center (which Rachel also wrote about last summer) and got their first of many dogs. There was Becky, Sheila, Whiskey and a bunch of others who didn’t make as much of an impression on me. Then again, I didn’t have two-year-old twins at the time, and didn’t completely realize how great it is to watch a toddler be completely comfortable with a fairly large dog who just sits or stands there while the two small people pet her, sometimes a little too roughly, pull her tail and then slobbers all over them in return.

One of the reasons Sophie the lab is so gentle is her pre-training at my sister and brother-in-law’s house. She is one of about 30 dogs born to a pure-bred litter that is about twice that size, and has passed the pre-training for becoming a guide dog. She first spends a year at an adoptive family and then goes through a three-week evaluation back at the center. If she passes, she’ll go through five to six months of training, and then a ‘shidduch’ or pairing, will be made with a blind person. They’ll live together at the center for three weeks, and then there’s another month of training at the blind person’s residence.

If the dog doesn’t pass, the first choice is to place her in a family with a blind child, so that the child can get used to having a dog around and eventually have a seeing eye dog. If that doesn’t work out, the foster family gets first crack at adopting their dog for good.

For my sister’s family, the experience has been wonderful, and in many ways even better for having fostered so many dogs, and not just one, beloved mutt. Their kids have grown up with dogs, gotten used to different personalities in dogs, and while it is somewhat sad to have to give ‘your dog up’ each spring, they’ve successfully convinced their parents to foster a new dog nearly every year since.

As for my boys, I was mightily tempted to consider fostering, given how cute they were with Sophie, and vice versa. I’m not quite ready, given the puppy-like behavior of toddlers. But it’s good to know we are welcome to visit the center — as is anyone — and they are also always looking for volunteers of all kinds. Moreover, says my brother-in-law who now serves on the center’s board, more Israelis are now aware of puppies in training and new laws have been passed that don’t require these dogs to wear muzzles in most public places….but they still don’t allow them into museums.

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Nostalgia Sunday – The French School

February 20, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: education, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Religion, Social Justice, War 

Walking down Cremieux Street in Jerusalem yesterday, I was suddenly struck by its connection to the current implosion of the Arab world. Adolphe Cremieux, was the president of first Alliance Israélite Universelle, the Paris-based international Jewish organization founded in 1860 to arm Jews with self-defense and self-sufficiency through education and professional development.

The organization took as its motto the rabbinic injunction Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh (“All Jews bear responsibility for one another”).

According to the organization’s Kol Israel Haverim online history, “The 1860 founders recommended the integration of ideas from the revolution of 1789 – equality, justice and human rights, together with the principals of Judaism…” It also embarked on a mission to educate the Jews of the Middle East through French education and culture. A mere two years later, the first Lycee Alliance opened in Tetouan, Morocco. “It was a cornerstone that in time became a widespread network of schools from Morocco to Iran”.

But AIU’s struggle for equal rights extended to other minorities as well. For instance, “in 1860, [it] acted on behalf of Lebanese Christians, victims of a popular uprising, and in 1863 the organization interceded at the Spanish Ministry of Justice on behalf of imprisoned Protestants who were prohibited from spreading their religion.”

In 1870, founding member Charles Netter, received a tract of land from the Ottoman Empire as a gift and opened the Mikveh Israel agricultural school, the first of a network of Jewish schools in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel.

By 1900, Alliance Israelite Universelle was operating 100 schools with a combined student population of 26,000. Its greatest efforts were concentrated in Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey, but there were schools throughout the Middle East.

In an essay about the Jews of Egypt, Denise Douek Telio writes, “Alliance Israelite Schools were free and open to all religious denominations… My classmates were Jewish, Muslim and Christians girls. We went to each other homes to do our homework and to socialize.”

According to Encyclopedia Iranica, “[in l898] the Alliance finally succeeded in opening its first school for boys in Tehran. Joseph Cazès was appointed as the head teacher of its 350 pupils. Cazès also opened a school for girls with 150 pupils. The Alliance was warmly received by Persian authorities…On the eve of the 1979 revolution, the Alliance operated 7 schools in Tehran with 1,800 pupils and 4 schools [in other cities] with 1,286 pupils.”

Today, thousands of students are still being educated at around 50 Alliance Israélite Universelle institutes and schools — but Morocco is only Arab country still with an AIU school.

The historic schools in Israel still exist: the Alliance High School in Tel Aviv, Alliance Israélite Universelle High School in Haifa, Rene Cassin High School and the Braunshweig Conservative High School in Jerusalem.

There are three schools within the Mikve Israel Youth Village: a state high school and a religious state high school specializing in life and natural sciences, environmental sciences, and biotechnology; and the Raymond Lauwan French-Israeli high school established in 2007 as a joint initiative of the Israeli and French governments.

The AIU network also includes the School for the Deaf in Jerusalem where deaf students, Jewish and Arab, with various mental and physical disabilities study together in a unique model of coexistence.

You can read a lot more about the development of AIU’s school network throughout the Jewish communities in the Middle East, (including the education and modernization of women), in the book The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times. More images from the Egyptian Jewish community that was can be found at the Historical Society of Jews From Egypt site.

It’s also worth watching films like The Last Jews of Libya, From Babylon to Beverly Hills and The David Project’s excellent The Forgotten Refugees.

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No standing on ceremony here

February 19, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

We headed down south to Dimona this week for an army ceremony for our daughter who finished up a four-month commanders’ course.

I don’t think I’ve been in Dimona, about a half hour from the Beersheba, the nearest city, more than once in the 25 years I’ve been in Israel. Entering the nondescript town, our task was to find ‘the soccer stadium’. And following most of the cars in front of us, we located it on the other side of town pretty quickly.

Hundreds of vehicles were already lined up in the dirt parking lot, and the ‘stadium’ was little more than a crumbling concrete wall surrounding a soccer field, with one section of bleachers.

Maybe because the ceremony for the some 300 soldiers graduating from the commanders’ course was taking place in a soccer field, the mood among the spectators and family was somewhat less solemn than previous IDF landmark ceremonies we’ve attended. It was almost like attending a… soccer game!

Some soldiers had cheering sections with signs and megaphones they would use to should out their loved one’s nickname. All fine and in good spirits, except they were doing this in the middle of speeches by decorated generals and during roll calls for awards given for exemplary service by soldiers in the course.

Standing behind the cyclone fence generally used to keep hooligans off the soccer field, we even had to turn and ‘shhhh’ the neighbors more than once, exposing our genteel, Anglo allegiance to decorum.

Thankfully, the ceremony, like most in the IDF, was so short that our blood was only halfway to boiling before it was over and everyone crowded onto the field to find their special soldier. We can stand a little Israeli obnoxiousness, realizing that the recipients of the calls and cheers were kids our daughter’s age who had also just gone through the rigorous travails to become a commander.

As one father, who a minute before had been yelling out his son’s name at some inopportune time, told some other soldier’s mother who had muttered out loud that she couldn’t see where her son was lined up: “It doesn’t really matter. They’re all our children.”

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Foto Friday – Ron Shoshani’s Tel Aviv winter

February 18, 2011 by · 4 Comments
Filed under: Art, design, Foto Friday, General, Life, Picture of the Week, Profiles, Travel 

It’s been about a year since Ron Shoshani was profiled in this column and it’s been quite a good one apparently. Shoshani’s color-saturated, hyper-realistic “eye candy”, as he calls it, makes up the background graphic for the Channel 2 morning show; he’s had the cover of Time Out Tel Aviv, and a newly uploaded stop-motion video marks a new direction into animation.

Shoshani loves Tel Aviv and his cityscapes express that affection. As winter draws to a close, here a few images of Tel Aviv in winter: the clouds, rain and strong colors that will soon fade to dusty pastels in the summer heat.

Tel Aviv Morning – February 15, 2011

S-I-M-C-I-T-Y

Tel Aviv – First Railway Station

Tel Aviv LEGO 4/4

Sarbata Sunrise

The Sartaba isn’t in Tel Aviv; it’s the highest mountain in the Jordan Valley. Shoshani took the picture from within the ruins of a 1st century fort on the summit. After snapping the initial image, he works his magic using a combination of digital techniques. You can read more about it here, order prints directly from directly from ronsho@gmail.com and view many more amazing images on his Facebook page.

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It’s a wrap

February 17, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, design, General, health, Medical Breakthroughs, News, Technology, War 

We first became aware of it back in 2005 when ISRAEL21c reported how American soldiers wounded while fighting in Iraq were being treated with a special, new Israeli-made bandage that effectively stopped traumatic hemorrhaging wounds with a built-in pressure bar.

The Emergency Bandage, developed by First Care Products, a tiny four-man Jerusalem start-up, allowed medics to twist the bandage around the wound once, and then change the direction of the bandage, wrapping it around the limb or body part, to create pressure on the wound. The pressure bar also enables a soldier to use the bandage on complicated injuries like the groin and head, which require wrapping in different directions.

The Emergency Bandage was back in the news this week in another more recent context – the January 8 shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. First responders credited the Emergency Bandage, commonly known as “the Israeli bandage” with saving lives in the aftermath of the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that left six dead and 13 wounded.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency report by Ron Kampeas, Pima County officials displayed the kit at a Jan. 21 news conference in Tucson, along with other military-grade gear used in ministering to the wounded in the Jan. 8 shooting.

“Without this care it would have definitely been a different situation,” Dr. Katherine Hiller, who had attended the wounded at University Medical Center, told The Los Angeles Times.

While it wasn’t clear whether the Israeli innovation was used specifically on Giffords, the bandage is known for its utility in stanching head wounds, and one model covers both entry and exit wounds, which Giffords is known to have sustained.

Since its 1993 invention, the Emergency Bandage has become standard issue in militaries throughout the world and is considered the first major innovation in bandages since the 1940s. It was invented by an American immigrant to Israel, Bernard Bar-Natan, who served as a medic in the IDF, and disgruntled at the stunted growth in the bandage field, formed First Care.

If there ever was a case to back up claims that Israeli ingenuity and saving lives around the world, this is it. Even Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, reportedly said that learning of the bandage’s role in saving lives in Tucson has been a highlight of his stint as ambassador.

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