Israeli driver training

December 23, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, education, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel 

Having possessed a car for much of the last 25 years, I’ve grown accustomed to the driving habits most Israelis have adopted – habits that have justifiably given us the reputation of being among the worst drivers in the world.

Driving around Jerusalem the other day, my wife and started joking about what we would do if we were given citizen’s rights to give traffic violations. We decided to keep track of the various infractions Israeli drivers are guilty of on a daily basis.

Within a couple minutes, we witnessed one driver speeding up as a traffic light turned red and barreling through the intersection. “That’s a license revoking offense,” I offered.

A couple streets later, a car over on the right shoulder had just evidently mistakenly passed a side street and was backing up against the traffic in order to turn right. I think that should prompt taking their license away and also impounding their car and forcing the driver to take an IQ test. It’s probably the most dangerous thing you can do on the road besides driving blindfolded.

“This is too easy,” my wife said, as we continued to witness one violation after another – cyclists weaving in and out of traffic, drivers making right turns from the left lanes, and someone blaring thumping trance music from their open window – itself a capital offense.

We thought we had seen everything, and had handed out probably 20 tickers during our imaginary shift. However, driving up the highway incline to our neighborhood, a station wagon passed us containing what looked like Palestinian laborers on their way home. A quick glance came up with nine passengers in a six-seat car, and these guys weren’t tiny.

We couldn’t help but laugh at the negligence around us, but one more sight topped it all. Across the median on the shoulder heading downhill, a taxi was pulled over to the side. The driver was standing around the front of the car, facing away from the road and urinating for all to see.

After all we had witnessed on that trip, it didn’t seem to be so bad at all.

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Foto Friday – 360 degree Holy Land

December 23, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, coexistence, education, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Movies, Picture of the Week, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Technology, Travel, tv 

The Internet offers us endless ways to view the sites and sounds of the Holy Land. This week, we present some of the many panoramic photo and video images that are available online.

Panoramic photography, states Wikipedia, “is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography.” (Click here for more about the methods used to create 360 images). Panoramic photo images have been around since the mid 1800s; this one of Jerusalem was taken in the early 20th century.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

As with everything else photographic, clearly, the technology has evolved. Take, for example, this amazing 360 degree panoramic photo of the Galilee.


Tel Yodfat, Galilee, Israel in Israel

The Church of All Nations is located on Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, next to the Garden of Gethsemane. Click on this photo — the link will take you to a panoramic view of the Church, the Garden and the walls of the Old City, courtesy of 3D Israel.

Israeli company Simply Live has developed a highly technologically advanced 360 degree video camera (only last week presented at the Bezeq Expo innovation showcase). Click on this photo of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — the link takes you to their site where you can view an interactive video that allows you to enter and move through the Church interior.

A fascinating if politically charged panoramic view of Israel’s coastline as viewed from the West Bank is available at MyIsrael.com. The site owners are very blunt about the purpose of the wide-angle shot: they wish to show how vulnerable Israel would be to an attack were pre-1967 borders to be reinstated. It takes only one look to see why the situation here is complicated.

Even on its own, the image is complex: a very wide-angle view (MyIsrael.com say it is the largest publicly available) with interactive controls so that viewers can zoom in on highly detailed close ups. Photographer Yaal Herman provides several pages of explanation on how the photo (really hundreds of photos stitched together) was accomplished. Click on this thumbnail to see the full version.

Whatever the political future holds, we can still hope for stability, quiet and — dare I say it? — peace. A few weeks ago, I was in Bethlehem once again for the annual Papal Peace Run. Instead of a highly secured, quick in-and-out, I would like to be able to return one day at my leisure to visit the Church of the Nativity. Till then, I will visit this way — and invite you to do so, too. Happy holidays to all.


Church Nativity Bethlehem in Israel


Grotto of the Nativity – Church of the Nativity, Betlehem in Israel

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Spreading some Hanukka light

December 21, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Religion, Social Justice 

History was made Wednesday night – the second night of Hanukka – in Ma’aleh Adumim.

The members of Havura Ma’aleh Adumim, the first and only egalitarian, pluralistic congregation in the city outside Jerusalem welcomed its first Torah with a touching service including dancing and singing outdoors, a candle-lighting for Hanukka and the ceremonial eating of some gourmet sufganiyot (donuts) from the local Neeman bakery.

I’m one of those members, and along with my wife, helped to found the havura more than 15 years ago. Cutting against the grain of the city’s religious establishment, and a chief rabbi who doesn’t recognize any stream of Judaism except Orthodoxy, we’ve kept a low profile over the years, meeting on Friday nights, as well as holding shiurim, special events for holidays and community activities. But until this year, we never held Shabbat morning services requiring a Torah.

After launching morning services earlier this year, with a borrowed Torah, we’ve finally built our numbers up to the level where the Masorti Movement in Israel has given us a sefer Torah on permanent loan.

Speaking to the congregants at the ceremony, havura co-founder Shelley Brinn tied in the holiday of ‘lights’ with the concept that our egalitarian congregation is helping to shed its own light in the midst of ever-increasing darkness around the world – from the countries threatening our existence to the forces that would separate men and women on buses.

May the light of Hanukka continue to shine on all of us.

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Meet Israel’s ‘Rosa Parks’

December 19, 2011 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Religion, Social Justice 

Tania Rosenblit meeting with Transportation Minister Yaakov Katz on Sunday.

She’s being dubbed the ‘Israeli Rosa Parks’ but Tanya Rosenblit insists she wasn’t looking to be a role model when she refused demands last week by ultra-Orthodox passengers to move to the back of the Egged bus she was travelling on between Ashdod and Jerusalem. She just wanted to get to work.

But her bravery in the face of angry haredim on the bus line – which has traditionally placed men in the front and women in the back in deference to the high percentage of religious men who patronize the line – has made the 28-year-old a symbol of defiance against religious coercion.

She posted about her experience on Facebook, and soon the Israeli media was all over the story.

“I could tell that the other passengers were looking at me with disdain. One of them yelled ‘shiksa’ at me and demanded I move to the back of the bus, because Jewish men can’t sit behind a woman,” Rosenblit told The Irish Times. “I wasn’t causing any provocation. It’s a normal bus and anyone can ride it. I bought my ticket, just like they did and they have no right to tell me where to sit.”

While the phenomenon of gender-segregated buses has become more prevalent in recent years, the Supreme Court ruling states that voluntary segregation on buses is permitted, but bus drivers must intervene to prevent forced separation. When the Egged driver did just that, the haredim held up the bus for 30 minutes until police intervened and allowed Rosenblit to stay in her seat up front.

Rosenblit turned into an instant celebrity, with Opposition leader Tzipi Livni praising her actions on her Facebook page, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Israel’s Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger condemning the incident and the latter suggesting that the haredi community establish its own transportation company, Transportation Minister Yaakov Katz meeting with her, and Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat inviting her to testify before a government committee examining women’s public exclusion.

The gender-seperation phenomenon in Israel is still marginal, (and not worthy of comment by the likes of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton), but the Rosenblit incident serves to show that it can affect any woman at any place. Maybe her act of drawing the line on the Ashdod-Jerusalem bus will be the tipping point that will raise public awareness and send religiously imposed gender segregation back to the dark ages.

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Shattered calm close to an Israeli home

December 18, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life, News, War 

The entrance to Ma'aleh Adumim usually looks like this.

To get into our city of Ma’aleh Adumim, you have to pass a compact roadblock usually manned by two people. It consists of a mobile barrier that drivers need to slalom around, slowing down enough for the guards to get a good glance at you.

It’s generally a boring place, despite the thousands of cars that pass daily, and the hundreds of construction workers – mostly from the neighboring Palestinian village of Azariyah – who on foot pass through the barrier on the way to their day jobs.

So, it was surprising to find out on Saturday night, after Shabbat came to an end, that a guard at the entrance had been lightly injured in a stabbing attack that morning.

According to The Jerusalem Post report, “a suspected Palestinian terrorist launched a knife attack against a security guard at the entrance to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem on Saturday. The municipal guard was lightly injured in the assault. He was evacuated to hospital for treatment. Police and IDF forces were searching the area for the suspect.”

It took place on a beautifully sunny, mild winter’s day, less than a quarter-mile from my house, unbeknownst to the families in the neighborhood enjoying the day with their families.

An odd thing about the incident – generally Palestinians aren’t coming into Ma’aleh Adumim on Shabbat, since there’s no building or repair work going on. So either the perpetrator made a special trip to attack, or he had another reason to be coming to the city.

Either way, whether the attack was the result of cumulative anger, hate and frustration at Israeli ‘occupiers, or he had a personal vendetta about a work issue that left him humiliated or enraged, or whether he was mentally unstable and the guard was a natural target, the ‘business-as-usual’ feeling that passes for reality in the West Bank is a tenuous one that can be broken at any time with ease of a knife’s steel blade passing in the wind.

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