Israelis help ease the headaches during Ramadan

August 24, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, health, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs 

Observers of Ramadan can get to the goodies without debilitating headaches thanks to Israeli researchers.

The month-long Ramadan period is in full swing, and from our home, we can see the nightly bright lights of our neighboring Muslim village, as the residents gather nightly to end their day-long fast with a culinary celebration.

For an entire month at the height of the oppressive summer heat, the observant Muslim population fasts from dawn to dusk, an effort that goes far past our 24 hour fasts for Yom Kippur, Tisha Be’av and the other lesser Jewish fast days during the annual holiday cycle. So we Jewish Israelis can certainly identify with the trials of our Muslim neighbors, as they abstain from eating for a whole month: so much so, that Israeli researchers have conducted a study on how to help Muslims avoid incapacitating headaches during Ramadan.

According to a study published in the journal Headache, about four of every 10 Ramadan observers get headaches. However, a pill produced by US pharmaceutical giant Merck called Arcoxia, may prevent the headaches from taking shape. The pill, made from the drug etoricoxib, had already been shown to be effective in a study that revealed that Jews fasting for Yom Kippur who took Arcoxia got fewer headaches than those that didn’t take the pill.

Reuters Health reported that in the new study, Michael Drescher, from Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, along with a group of Israeli colleagues, assigned 222 Muslim adults planning to fast in 2010 to either take the drug or an inactive placebo pill just before the start of fasting each day. All participants recorded how often they had a headache, and how severe it was.

After a week they switched treatments. During the first day of fasting, when headaches are thought to be most common, 21 percent of people taking Arcoxia reported having a headache, compared to 46 percent of those who took the placebo pill.

The Arcoxia group also reported fewer total headaches during that first week, the researchers wrote. And when they did have headaches, they rated them as less severe than participants taking the placebo.

Arcoxia isn’t currently approved for use in the US because the FDA decided it was too similar to another Merck drug called Vioxx, which was pulled from the market in 2004 when it was linked to a higher risk of heart attack. But Arcoxia is available in Israel, as well as other countries.

And as far as any Jewish or Muslim religious opposition to taking a pill to prevent headaches during their respective fasts, Drescher told Reuters Health that none of the Muslim participants expressed any objections, and that rabbis who were consulted pointed out that not having a headache could allow people to be “freer spiritually.”

“The religious edict to fast really is not a command to suffer,” Drescher added.

So from one fasting people to another, Ramadan Kareem!

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Riding the (light) rails in Jerusalem

August 22, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel 

The Jerusalem light rail - before it got crowded.

On my last day of a short vacation, my 10-year-old son and decided to take our maiden journey on the new Jerusalem light rail which began carrying passengers on a trial basis last Friday.

Years in the making, and the object of much derision from Jerusalem residents and shop owners annoyed at the upheaval the construction of the tracks caused, the trains are actually up and running. And it’s actually very nice. Sleek, smooth and modern, the trains provide a jarring juxtaposition as they travel their route along the ancient Old City walls and by the old world Mahane Yehuda market.

But while we may have been expecting a leisurely, pleasant ride through Jerusalem with a few other passengers, we weren’t prepared for the human onslaught. Apparently, the decision to not charge a fee to ride the train in the initial stages until all the chinks have been worked out have made it a prime late summer attraction.

When we got aboard, on Road 1 near the National Police headquarters, it was already standing room only. Families, many of them haredi with a half-dozen children, were ‘enjoying’ the free ride to Mount Herzl. The downside is that the noise level was deafening, the waits at intersections and at the stations sometimes took up to three or four minutes, and it took more than an hour to arrive at the end of the line, a journey that would take maybe 20 minutes by car. The upside is that we made it in once piece, the ride was luxuriously smooth, there were no traffic jams, and we got to ride over the Strings Bridge at the entrance to Jerusalem.

After alighting at Mount Herzl and visiting the highly recommended Herzl Musuem (after a planned visit to Yad Vashem was mutually nixed), we made the return ride back to the city center. However, after another standing room, noisy crowd, we decided to get off the train at the central bus station and take a bus the rest of the way. There, we both got seats, there were no kids screaming in our ears, and we made it back home in 25 minutes.

I’m sure I’ll ride the train again, it’s going to replace many of the bus lines in the coming months. But I may wait until they start charging , the crowds thin out, the intersections get in synch, and I have a free hour.

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Summer in the city

August 22, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, News, Travel 

It's even empty on Jaffa Road...

There’s a lot going on around us right now. There’s a sense of despair about what is happening down south (a friend posted that now when one orders a coffee at a Beersheva cafe, the check is brought with the coffee in case you have to duck and run from a rocket), how Egypt is reacting, what will our reaction be and what does it all mean? It’s creeping up here as well, with a terrorist scare last night in Jerusalem, as Brian posted, and concern about everyone down south.

And on another front, it’s the end of August, which means juggling childcare and work, dealing with the August heat, and heading on vacation for others. But the best part about the end of the Israeli summer, is that thousands of Israelis are away. They’re traveling abroad — more than 35% of Israelis travel abroad during the two-month summer, according to the Tourism Ministry — thousands are up north, and many are still down south, where hotels are still full, thanks to the Red Sea Jazz Festival and the Israeli tendency for life to go on.

That means that around here, the place is empty. There’s no traffic, not on streets, roads or major highways (at least in the center). The bank? Empty this morning, even at 9:30 am when you usually have to wait half an hour to speak to someone. No one in the supermarket, or the post office, either. Sure, head to the vacation-y places in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, such as the zoo, the Chutzot Hayotzer Crafts Festival, the recently christened light rail, the beach or the Tel Aviv port, and you’ll find plenty of people milling around.

But in the environs of home and the local ‘hood, everything is fairly peaceful and quiet. It’s almost like being on vacation.

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Sweating the small stuff too

August 22, 2011 by · 7 Comments
Filed under: Israeliness, War 

Hutzot HaYotzer arts and crafts festival

While it’s the big news that gets all the headlines, sometimes it’s the small stuff that’s the hardest to sweat. Last week, terrorists attacked along the Israel-Egypt border just north of Eilat. The ensuing days have been filled with IDF strikes and Gazan counterattacks. More people have died.

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, the seminal rap-rock band HaDag Nahash was playing a concert at Sultan’s Pool as part of the annual Hutzot HaYotzer arts and crafts festival. Our 17-year-old daughter Merav had a plan to dance up a storm with her friends at the show. She got all dolled up, then received a phone call.

“There’s a terror alert in Mamila (the mall that is adjacent to Sultan’s Pool). Everyone’s been ordered to get off the street and hide in the stores. There are police everywhere. It’s really serious,” her friend on the phone said.

“What should I do?” Merav asked us. “I want to go…”

“…but you don’t want to die,” I finished her sentence.

“Right,” she responded.

We checked the news. There was indeed a “high alert” going on in Jerusalem, but it was mostly along the highways entering the city from the north and west – Highway 443 was reported to have back-ups for up to 10 km coming towards the checkpost from Modi’in. But nothing written about trouble in town.

“If they’re locking down the mall, they must have some good lead,” I speculated.

“Maybe I could get to the concert from the other side,” Merav offered.

“No, they’ll have closed everything,” I said.

“And the other way is kind of dark,” Merav remembered. “Oof, this sucks! I really like HaDag Nahash.”

“And I really like you…alive,” I replied. I wish I were trying to be ironic.

Merav sat in the kitchen, now with two of her friends. While we’d tried to leave the decision up to Merav (with some strongly worded parental advice), one of her friends had much stricter marching orders.

“My mom says I can’t even leave your house,” she said gloomily.

The truth is, this kind of terror lock down has been pretty rare in recent years. During the early 2000s, it was a nearly daily occurrence, but nowadays we take for granted that we can sit at a Café Aroma and sip an iced limon-nana on a warm Jerusalem night with carefree abandon.

But an arts and crafts festival with tens of thousands of nightly attendees makes a pretty good spot for an attack. It’s a reminder that, despite our protestations and blogs to the contrary, Israel is not quite yet that “normal” nation we proffer it to be.

And yet the contrary is just as true: we say (and we mean it) that we won’t let the bad guys stop us from living our lives. If Merav had received a call just then saying the threat had passed, she would have been on the next bus to town, with our blessing.

The girls wound up reluctantly taking a pass on the show. We watched a family movie instead: “The Invention of Lying.” It was an amusing distraction.

Later, Merav talked to a friend of hers who had made it to the show. It was amazing, Merav quoted. “But he said everyone was terrified. They spent the whole concert looking around, trying to spot if there was a terrorist in the crowd.” She added, almost parenthetically, that she was, in fact, glad she hadn’t gone in the end.

There was no terror attack and the threat level was lifted by morning. My wife and I are scheduled to attend the festival and show on Tuesday (Ehud Banai is playing live). And unless the roads are closed, we’ll be there, defiant, proud and enjoying a warm Jerusalem evening.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Eilat

August 21, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Environment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Travel 

We tend to think of Eilat as a tourist spot, a destination for fun in the sun, a tranquil if trashy oasis. The Israeli equivalent of Miami beach — if not that classy. The horrific events of this past Thursday served to remind us, like a slap in the face, that the unending desert is a facade behind which danger can, and does, hide and Eilat, like much of our little country, is a border outpost.

Umm Rashrash was the name of the town upon which the modern city of Eilat was built. The area was designated as part of the Jewish state in the 1947 UN Partition Plan. On March 10, 1949, Umm Rashrash — then under control of the Jordanian Arab Legion — was taken by the Palmach Negev Brigade in Operation Uvda (also Ovda). The aim of the campaign was to conquer the Negev and Arava regions before signing the Armistice Agreements with Jordan. It was done without firing a single shot.

Following the taking of the town’s police station, the soldiers raised an home-made flag — known popularly as “The Ink Flag” — which became a symbol of the victory. According to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, “The improvised flag was made on the order of the then Negev Brigade commander, Nahum Sarig, who discovered that the Brigade did not have an Israeli flag in its possession. The soldiers found a white sheet, drew two ink stripes, and sewed between them a Star of David torn off from a first-aid kit. The raising of the ink flag marked the climax of Operation Ovda, the last operation of the War of Independence.”

“When the Golani advance guard arrived two hours later, the two brigade commanders, Nachum Sarig and Nachum Golan, sent the following telegram to the front commander, Yigal Allon: ‘Inform the Government of Israel: On the birthday of the Haganah – 11 of Adar – the Palmach Negev Brigade and the Golani Brigade hand over the Gulf of Eilat to the State of Israel. Eilat (Um Rashrash) 9 of Adar, 10.3.1949, 1600 hours.’” (The online Palmach museum has a presentation [in Hebrew] with maps showing the progression of the Operation Uvda campaign).

A detailed first-hand account of Operation Uvda is available online; it contains excerpts from the book “Eyes of the Beholder” by David (Migdal) Teperson, a member of the Hayot Ha-Negev (Negev Beasts) Jeep commando. Teperson notes that later on, an official flag was procured and an honor guard held.

A stamp commemorating the raising of the Ink Flag was issued in 1998, part of a three-stamp sheet presenting Israel’s three battle fronts in the War of Independence.

Eilat’s first residents worked at the Timna copper mines and, following the 1956 Sinai Campaign that opened the Straits of Tiran, at the new Port of Eilat. Initially, the city operated under a Municipal Council; it took a full decade until Eilat was officially recognized as a town with 6,000 residents in March 1959.

With the opening of the Eilat Hotel in 1958, the city’s first hotel, Eilat became a tourist spot but really took off after 1967′s Six Day War, when the Sinai peninsula was captured. The highway to Sharm El Sheikh was completed in 1969 and Eilat became a way-station for beatnikim (aka: hippies) en route to find peace of mind in the Sinai. The first direct European charter flights began in 1975 and tourism boomed. After the Sinai was returned to Egypt, Eilat branded itself successfully as a destination separate from the rest of Israel; the strategy worked for a good number of years. In 1985, it was declared a Tax Free Trade Zone and nine years later, in October 1994, Eilat was the site where the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty was signed.

Today, the city boasts 11,000 hotel rooms and a range of activities, from snorkeling among the coral reefs, swimming with dolphins, hiking and bird watching to fun parks, VAT-free shopping, resto-pubs and nudie bars. And of course, the annual Eilat-Eilot Renewable Energy Conference (the region is slated to go 20% solar in the next half-year) — which is the only reason why I venture there. But my smug taste in holiday activities is not the point. The point is that in less than 60 short years, Eilat has become an international tourist destination, a success story, and God damn those who would try to take that away.

My City Eilat is a very interesting online archive, run in conjunction with the municipal museum, that has a wealth of photographs, news clippings and other documents about the city’s history; events such as the tragic 1954 Maale Akrabim bus massacre that so sadly echoes current events, and happier ones, as seen in this wonderful slide show by photographer and local historian Shmulik Taggar.

Eilat's History ההיסטוריה של העיר אילת
View more presentations from Eilat’s History Museum

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