Globetrotters bounce into Israel
If there are two things that are universal, it’s humor and basketball. So the Harlem Globetrotters have all angles covered.
The venerable touring jugglers/ball handlers glided into Israel last week for three shows – two in Tel Aviv and one in Jerusalem. An international institution since 1926, the Globetrotters have showcased their iconic talents in 120 countries on six continents.
I saw them a few times growing up in New England, with the legendary team featuring Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal. So I was psyched to take my 11-year-old basketball-loving son to see them in Jerusalem.
And happily, aside from a few more showbiz hip-hop moments, the general premise was still intact – some amazing magicianship with the ball, tons of laughs, incredible baskets, and good, clean fun.
The names had changed – Hi-Lite was the Meadowlark funnyman-frontman, and Flip Atkins was the limber gymnast flipping around the court like he was on coils. But the game remained the same, down to the bucket of water chasing around the court during the break skit that ended up with confetti on the adoring crowd.
One ‘only in Israel’ moment occurred when Hi-Lite went into the crowd and came back with a women’s purse for some cross-dressing fun. He then asked the owner of the purse, Dina, to come to mid-court to regain her possession It turned out that, like much of the audience, she was religiously observant, wearing a head covering and a skirt.
She was a good sport, dancing with Hi-Lite and playing the straight woman to his Groucho Marx. However, when he thanked Dina and told her to give him a kiss, that’s where she drew the line.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not,” asked Hi-Lite.
“I can only kiss my husband.”
“Your husband? Is he here? Show him to me.”
They walked back to the stand and he shook hands with the husband, and turned back to Dina. “That’s your husband? Good luck to you!” And he gave her big hug, and returned to the court for the resumption of the game.
Of course, the Globetrotters won the game handily, against their worthy but hand picked opponents. And by the looks on the children, and adults leaving Malha auditorium, everyone went away happy. Even Dina and her husband.
Foto Friday – Ein Gedi Botanical Garden
The biblical city of Ein Gedi was a desert oasis, known for its date palms, vines and perfumed balsam. Modern-day Kibbutz Ein Gedi, located a kilometer down from the springs, is no less of an oasis, known for its desert agriculture, hotel/guest house and a prize-winning Botanical Garden that is the only one in the world to be integrated with the residences of the surrounding community.
According to Botanic Gardens Conservation International, “It is the only international botanical garden to have a community resident in it, which is a tribute both to the gardening staff and to the population of Ein Gedi. In fact, the development of the botanical garden and Kibbutz Ein Gedi are inseparable.”
Over years of trial and error, Ein Gedi’s gardeners have cultivated a collection of over 900 species of rare plants from all over the world…
The plants flourish in the summer heat, mild winters, and the mineral-rich Dead Sea atmosphere that encourages quick plant growth, so much so that some parts of the garden resemble a lush jungle…
Typical regional plants – date palms, olive, pomegranate and fig trees – can be found alongside tropical ones…
The adjacent Cactus Park is a rare collection of 1,000 species of cactus and desert plants from around the world…
At the garden’s northern edge is an observation point with a view of the entire oasis. (Click here for a 3D tour). And yes if you stay at the Ein Gedi hotel, you’ll likely meet one of these fellows…
The botanical garden office is open every day from 8:30 a.m-4:30 p.m. and on Friday until 2:00 p.m. For more information, please call: 08-658-444 or visit their website.
Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Ein Gedi Hotel. For more information, visit the hotel website and Facebook page.
Searching for a cure to insomnia the Israeli way
Photo from Israel21c
Haaretz recently published an article about an Israeli website they dubbed “Dr. Google.” The site is called Treato; its goal is to aggregate health and medical information, in particular on drug side effects, in a single place rather than forcing sufferers to wade through thousands of hits on Google, many of which are either irrelevant, unverified, or thinly veiled ads for the drug manufacturers themselves.
I had a chance to speak with the Treato guys last November for an article on Israel21c and their aim, as Elvis Costello might croon, is indeed true. The site, which is backed by the former CEO of Israeli powerhouse Commtouch and some $9 million in venture capital, covers some 13,000 conditions and 11,000 medications. There are 800 million patient discussions indexed, coming from 23 million patients. Treato then analyzes and prioritizes all that data, so you don’t have to.
When I was writing the article, I decided to give Treato the personal touch. I’ve suffered from insomnia most of my life. People who don’t sleep have a lot of extra time on their hands, which often translates into trolling discussion boards in the wee hours of the night. Everyone has their own treatment successes or failures, and they’re all ready to share, push and proselytize as if their solution is just on the cusp of curing the rest of us.
There are the magnet hucksters, the CBT wonks, the magnesium machers, the anti-chocolate crowd, the acupuncture/homeopathy/chiropractor/melatonin/meditation groupies and, of course, an unending stream of recommendations for this or that sleeping pill or anti-depressant.
I’m not putting any of these true believers down – on the contrary, I’ve tried the gamut of proposals and some have actually provided some relief. It’s just that Google is an unforgiving intermediary. She doesn’t tell you what ranks higher and what the potential side effects might be. Treato does.
You still have to work it. A search on Treato for “insomnia + not sleeping” resulted in 33,000 comments, from both expected sites (anxietyzone.com, askapatient.com, healthboards.com) and some surprises (breastcancer.org, autismweb,com, schizophrenia.com). But at least I don’t have to open each site one at a time; Treato puts it all in one place.
Treato launched in 2011, is aiming for revenues of $10 million this year, and hopes to break even in 2013. It’s not a play likely to be picked up by Mark Zuckerberg or other social media moguls. “People don’t like to talk about anti-depressants on Facebook,” Gideon Mantel, the company’s CEO says.
In the meantime, I’ll keep using Treato. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll discover that pickles and ice cream are the perfect cure for insomnia. Either that or I’m pregnant.
The insider’s reference
It’s not exactly Israel-related, but it’s always funny when TV screenwriters put in hamevin yavin — ‘for those in the know’ — references for characters. This time, it was in the new HBO show, “Girls”, which is about a group of young women living in New York, post-college. In one of the recent episodes — it just started up in mid-April — Jessa Johansson, a Brit and her cousin, Shoshanna Shapiro, are crossing the street somewhere downtown when a guy calls out to Shoshanna, reminding her that they knew each other in Camp Ramah and that she carried out the best kitchen raid he’s ever experienced.
Yes, it’s the Camp Ramah reference, appealing to all those who attended one of the seven, now eight, Ramah camps in North America, established and run by the Conservative Movement, and with programs in Israel as well. It’s not the first Ramah reference on TV. On “Will and Grace,” actress Debra Messing sometimes dropped Ramah references, thanks to one of the screenwriters who attended, and supposedly Messing did as well.
Ramah Israel has also made onto the Israeli small screen, although more unobtrusively, as part of the opening scenes in “Srugim”, which shows images of Jerusalemites walking to shul on Friday night, when some cameraperson captured the students on TRY — Tichon Ramah Yerushalayim — making their way to a local synagogue.
It’s a small thrill, but a thrill nonetheless. Clearly, you write about what you know.
Apping the Omer
The "Sefiros" iPhone app
From the second day of Passover until the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, observant Jews perform a ritual called “counting the Omer.” Between those two dates, there are 49 days and, during evening prayers, one is commanded to say a few special phrases to mark each day (the “Omer” refers to a measure of barley offered as a sacrifice during Temple times).
There are Kabalistic connotations as well as historical/mythological ones: it’s said that a great plague that killed 24,000 followers of the first century CE luminary Rabbi Akiva abated on the 33rd day of the Omer. In Hebrew, it’s known as L’ag b’Omer, or more popularly in Israel, the “night of the bonfires” (ask any kid toting a rotted old bathroom door and you’ll quickly get the gist).
Counting the Omer is not terribly difficult in and of itself, but there’s a built in trick: if you miss counting for just a single day, you can’t say it with a blessing again for the remainder of the 49 days. For the frummer among us, that can be a big deal. It’s like Survivor or Big Brother, except the last one standing doesn’t win a million bucks, just the undying gratitude of a possible deity.
I can tell you that, when I was more religious myself, there wasn’t a single year that I got through until Shavuot intact. So I probably would have been delighted to have discovered a new iPhone app called “Sefiros” (that means “counting”) which is here to remind you to, well, count.
It’s really a very simple app: you set a timer and the app beeps to tell you it’s time to say the prayer. Sure you could do that with your regular iPhone calendar…but would you? A dedicated app with a repeating alarm that expires after 49 days is just that much easier.
To make it a bit more robust, the Sefiros app lets you add “action alerts” to your reminders; you can set them be with “with God,” “with others,” or “with yourself.” You can even reach out for a little social media feedback and post your success to Twitter. “Hey fellow frumsters, I made it to day #29. Nya, nya, nya.”
Not sure when sunset is? Never fear, Sefiros checks the time using GPS. The blessing you’re supposed to say is all there in punctuated prayer book Hebrew. And to beef it all up, the app includes a page of Kabalistic and personal growth insights for each day, written by Rabbi Yaakov Haber (his whole book is included in the app). Jerusalem-based AppStudio built the whole thing.
Can I recommend Sefiros? If you always lose the “did I remember to count” game like I once did, sure, why not? At $4.99, it’s not cheap, as far as apps go. But who’s counting anyway?
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