Foto Friday – Benefits of Rain

February 10, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Blogging, Entertainment, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Sports, Travel, tv 

It’s still raining and I’m still not a fan. My surly attitude notwithstanding, the benefits are beginning to make themselves felt: the water level at Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) rose 55 centimeters in January, and as of yesterday stood at 212.94m below sea level. Which means we’ve just passed the lower red line of 213m below sea level. That’s good news. Or, as Tweeted by Kinbot, a computer generated daily report of the Kinneret water level, “Good show, Israel!”.

Tel Aviv Beach – Wintertime 2012
Photo by Ilan Malester, Courtesy of the Ministry of the Environment

Well, yes. It’s definitely an improvement but reaching the line doesn’t mean we’re done with the drought yet. The lower red line is a fluctuating government-recommended level below which water should no longer be drawn from the lake. Beyond it, there’s the black line, at 215 meters below sea level, the point at which pumping water becomes dangerous and must be shut down. We hit that on November 29, 2001. There is also an upper red line, set at 208.80 meters below sea level, which is the high-water mark. We haven’t been there since the great flood of Tiberias in 1934. So, we still have a way to go.

The rain has also brought out Israel’s storm chasers in droves. Jessica wrote about these hardy — or do I mean foolhardy? — folks two years ago. Since then, the popularity of driving 4x4s and jeeps into the desert or the mountains in search of rushing water has only increased, judging from the activity on the various storm chaser forums, chat groups and recently posted YouTube videos. Even the Society for Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) has gotten into the storm chaser act, offering hikes specially geared towards those with taste for flash. Er… flash floods, that is.

For those of us who’d rather chase storms from the comfort of a nice warm living room, here are a few recent clips, courtesy of the Israel Nature & Parks Authority.

Floods in the northern Dead Sea region – January 2012

Floods in the Carmel mountain range – Nahal Oron

Initial moments of a flood in Judean Desert dry river beds

And here’s a local news item from northern Israel, reporting on snow on Mount Hermon and flash floods in the Golan and Galilee.

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Tel Aviv Nights – The Ballad of Alon Day

January 22, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Sports 

The fact that a major US auto racing team has signed up an Israeli to be America’s first Sabra race care driver begs the question: Aren’t all Israelis race car drivers?

Whatever the answer, Alon Day undoubtedly will bring his rich experience on Israeli roads to Belardi Auto Racing’s Firestone Indy Lights 2012 roster.

The 20-year-old Day grew up in Ashdod, and for his 10th birthday, his parents his parents bought him lessons. According to Racer website, Day, through his teens, he earned more than 60 titles and trophies in Israel and Europe before moving up to 2-liter cars in Formula Renault in Asia and Hungary. In 2009, the 17-year-old clinched the Asia Formula Renault Championship.

Last year, he was given a deferment by the IDF to delay his army service due to his career accomplishments. Instead, he competed in the German Formula Three Championship and was later selected by ex-Formula 1 driver Alexander Wurz to be one of 12 FIA Ambassadors as part of the FIA Institute Academy Initiative. This year, Day will compete in 12 events across the U.S. and Canada.

“I am very excited to welcome Alon to the Belardi Auto Racing family for the 2012 Indy Lights season,” team owner Brian Belardi said. “Alon really blew us away when he came down to test with us at Palm Beach in December. His very first time in an Indy Lights car could not have gone better, and we are very lucky to have him join our program. I think with Alon’s natural talent and determination, he will have a really great season as a rookie in the Firestone Indy Lights series.”

Since he’s managed to navigate through Israel’s treacherous highways and byways, he indeed should have a great rookie season in the US.

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The NFL vs Sudanese refugees in Israel

January 16, 2012 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Israeliness, Life, Social Justice, Sports 

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning wasn't thinking about Sudanese refugees on the field Sunday against Green Bay. (AP)

I was participating in a quintessentially American pastime Sunday night of watching the NFL playoffs with three friends in a spacious Modi’in home. Of course, instead of it being Sunday afternoon or evening, it was really night – the game (New York Giants vs. Green Bay Packers) began at 11:30 pm local time. But aside from that, it could have been a scene from any number of Sundays in my pre-Israel existence.

Near the end of the wonderful game (for us Giants fans), I heard the SMS bell on my cell phone go off – curious, since I didn’t know any other Giants fans, or anyone else, who was still awake at 2:30 am.

The message was from my daughter, serving in the IDF along the border with Egypt. It read: “I just caught 38 Sudanese coming across the border, 25 men, 11 women and two babies. It was horrible.”

Sudanese refugees inside Israel - definitely not thinking about the NFL playoffs.

That sort of snapped me back into the reality that, no – I wasn’t sitting in an American den, watching football. I was in the country where nothing is taken for granted – where some people can be sitting comfortably in a warm house with a flat screen TV, eating the worst imaginable junk food that Mahane Yehuda sells, and at the same time, our children are out on patrols all night in the freezing cold, putting their lives on the line, and being forced into situations where they are ‘catching’ women and babies who are fleeing for their lives in the hopes of finding a new life in Israel.

I left the living room and called her to see how she was, and she sounded fine, explaining that it wasn’t so ‘horrible’ as she had written. They had given the refugees food, and helped the mothers with the crying babies. But from hearing her past experiences, I know that she had to be a soldier – not a welcome wagon – and that she had been forced to act tough in front of the refugees.

Talk about mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’m elated that the Giants are headed for certain victory in the final minutes of the game. And on the other hand, my heart is breaking that my daughter and her rifle are herding Sudanese refugees into a makeshift prison called by the soldiers “the Sudaniya.’

Somehow, I just don’t think Giants fans in suburban Jersey were experiencing anything similar.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Riding the waves

December 11, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Profiles, Social Justice, Sports, Travel, War 

Israel’s Lee Korzits won the gold medal this past weekend at the Sailing World Championships in Perth, Australia. Her achievement, along with Gal Fridman’s Olympic gold medal and Shahar Zubari’s bronze, is remarkable on its own. Even more so, given how new pro surfing is to our young country. And, like most things Israeli, it started with a dream.

Before surfboards arrived on our shores, there was the hasakeh, a sort of platform on which lifeguards would stand and paddle. Used from at least the 1930s onwards, there are several theories as to how this banana-shaped wood vessel came into being: one that it was used by Arab fishermen, another that it was based on a 1926 design by legendary surfer Tom Blake.

Its use by the Israeli Navy was immortalized in song in 1972.

Hasakeh

Riding the waves on a hasakeh, however, was not surfing. According to an online essay about the History of Surfing in Israel, that began with Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, an American surfer and physician visited Israel in 1956. Wikipedia states that he volunteered for the Israeli army during the Suez Canal crisis but was rejected. Nonetheless, during his year-long stay, he found happiness on the beaches of Tel Aviv where he conceived of a dream: to found the first Olympic surfing team from the young state of Israel. Paskowitz imported six long-boards imprinted with the Israeli flag and began scouting the beach for potential talent and for someone to manage the project.

“…he arrived on Frishman Beach, [where] he found a lifeguard named Shamai Kancepolsky, also known as Topsea, and presented the idea to him. Says [Topsea's son] Nir Almog, ‘There was an immediate chemistry between them and my father decided to take on the project.’

‘At that time, lifeguards caught waves using hasakehs alone. Dorian gave them lessons and slowly, the lifeguard booth gang began surfing. In those days, [before breakers were built] Israel had high waves that broke on the shore itself… and going into the sea to surf was considered an act of bravery bordering on insanity…”

“A few years passed and the gang gained experience… but there was still no Israeli representation abroad. Dorian [Paskowitz] returned a second time, bringing a load of surfboards with him that were distributed among the new members.”

“Nir Almog adds, ‘In the Sixties, a huge storm damaged the storeroom where the surfboards were stored, and broke some of them to bits. After that, my dad decided to restore one of the big ones and shortened it to 1.80 meters. I was the only one in Israel with a shortboard.”

“In the early Seventies, a paratrooper commander by the name of Yair told Topsea that the army used a material — a aerated plastic called polyurethane foam — made by a company in Haifa. The material was similar to that used to make surfboards. Yair raised the possibility of manufacturing surfboards made of this material… Topsea and Nir began trying to design surfboards… and began a small surfboards producing industry. Most were rented out, and so a new generation entered into surfing…”

Topsea managed a small workshop on Hilton Beach and, along with renting out Hasakehs, designed surfboards. He, his wife Naomi — Israel’s first female surfer — and their children, all became lifelong surfers.In 1977, son Nir founded Almog Surfboards, Israel’s first pro surfboard company. Topsea co-founded the Israel Surfing Association in 1986.

The sport has continued to grow in popularity; according to the Encyclopedia of Surfing, “Israel is home to about 15 surf shops and 10,000 surfers”.

Paskowitz, by the way, gave up practicing medicine to become a professional surfer. He and his family founded and run Surf Camps and are known as The First Family of Surfing. In August 2007, he founded Surfing 4 Peace together with his son David (along with Israeli surfer Arthur Rashovan and eight-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater) to deliver surfboards to the surfing community in Gaza.

A wonderful online photo archive, can be found at the Topsea Israel Surfing Center website. Topsea’s youngest son Orian runs the center, carrying on the tradition and legacy of his father. The Center also hosts a YouTube channel where there are more videos about the legendary Shamai “Topsea” Kancepolsky and the history of surfing in Israel.

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Israeli research solves the mystery of NBA 3-pointers

December 11, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Science, Sports 

The Boston Celtics' Ray Allen is the king of 3-point shots.

With the players’ strike over in the NBA, fans are looking forward to the belated opening of the shortened season later this month. But players better take heed to some new Israeli research as they warm up for their opening games. There may be no such thing as a ‘hot hand.’

According to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem study, players who try to repeat a successful three-pointer are more likely to be a missed shot. On the other hand, trying again after missing is more likely to end with a score. The findings were published in the latest journal Nature Communications.

Professor Yonatan Loewenstein and graduate student Tal Neiman examined more than 200,000 attempted shots from nearly 300 leading players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the 2007-8 and 2008-9 regular seasons. They also examined more than 15,000 attempted shots by 41 leader players in the Women’s National Basketball Association from the same seasons.

They wanted to test the conventional wisdom that a player who scores one or more three-pointers is more likely to make the next shot from beyond the arc and enjoy a scoring streak. “There was an idea that if you make three shots then you’re sure to make a fourth,” said Loewenstein, from the university’s department of neurobiology. .

“What we learned is that it is not always a good idea to follow your intuition,” Loewenstein told The Media Line. “We typically infer our future from our very recent experience and this is true sometimes, but not always.”

In other words, if a player makes a three-pointer, which is statistically about 30% of the time, then they are prone to try it again shortly afterwards. On the other hand, if they missed it, they are more cautious about giving it another shot, thus missing opportunities.

“What we concluded is that these players chase random fluctuations in outcome of the action. And as a result they sometimes taking risks they wouldn’t if it wasn’t for their recent history,” said Loewenstein.

According to the researcher, the implications of the study are not only for basketball players, but for any risk-taking profession.

“Stock brokers make investments according to past market performance, and commanders make military moves based on the results of past battles. Awareness of the limitations of this kind of learning can improve [people's] decision-making processes – as well as those of basketball players.”

So, if you see the percentage of three-point plays rising this year in the NBA, you’ll know that the players have been taking Israeli advice to heart.

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