First Laundry
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life
By Avi (Alden) Solovy
The scene: the basement laundry room in a new off-campus housing complex for students and guests of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. I’m with Ellen, a remarkably sweet woman from Albany, NY, who’s showing me how to work the machines. Ellen and her husband Jack, a couple in their 60s, are regular participants in the BGU winter semester ulpan where I’m also a more mature student. It was my first experience doing laundry in Israel.
Together we had three loads, but there were only two available machines. Someone left laundry in the others. We each started a load. A man came in, asked about the machines full of wet clothing. Not ours, we told him. He took the clothing out of one washer and put it in a dryer. I followed his lead, moving laundry from one machine to a dryer. So did Ellen.
Moments later a young woman stormed in, upset that her laundry had been moved. Five people are talking, questioning, arguing in two languages at once. She’s downright indignant.
“Don’t you know these machines are for students who live here, not just anyone who wants to use them?” she said. And: “You shouldn’t touch my laundry.” I pulled out my student ID and told her that we’re students, that we live in this complex and that I asked another student the protocol for the laundry room.
“Okay, okay, I was just shocked.” She started her dryer and left.
After we got our laundry going, Ellen and I moved to the adjacent study lounge. There, sitting at one of the desks, was the angry woman from the laundry, Adar from Eilat. She shoots a smile that says, what’s done is done, no problem! – and says hello. We get acquainted. She wonders why I’m considering aliyah. We talk about Jews living in our own land. I ask about her family. We talk in Hebrew and in English. Good practice for us both.
Adar’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Her grandfather came here in his teens, spoke no Hebrew, knew nothing and no one. “It was a rough life,” she said. Her family now lives in Haifa and Eilat. “You should come to Eilat.” Her mother can fix me up with a date, she said.
Adar plays guitar and writes love songs. She’s a scuba diver. Near the end of our conversation, she confesses that she doesn’t actually live in these dorms. She shrugs. We laugh.
I forgot to ask her what she studies here at BGU. No problem! We traded phone numbers. Perhaps we’ll catch coffee. Or a beer.
It’s true, what they say. You can argue with an Israeli and, when it’s over, you can make a friend.
Meet Noam Dolgin from the Green Zionist Alliance
Jewish religious values can help green The Holy Land.
Noam Dolgin is a Jewish environmental educator and the executive director of the Green Zionist Alliance (GZA). Based in Vancouver, Canada, he travels regularly around North America teaching about Jewish environmental values and Israel’s environment.
Green Prophet blog sits down with Noam to learn a little more about the Green Zionist Alliance and what it does. Read more
Helping Israel While You Waste Time
Filed under: Blogging, General, Life, Pop Culture, Technology
There are some people (lots, actually) who really get into role-playing fantasy type games – nowadays, mostly online. They’re a waste of time, as far as I’m concerned. These are the same people who like thrill rides at amusement parks, I have noticed. Not me; I can’t be bothered with online games (who has time?) and for me, just driving down the highway is enough of a thrill ride!
But helping spread Israel’s message online is something I always have time for. And believe it or not, I discovered an online game that does exactly that! It’s called PMOG, “The Passively Multiplayer Online Game.” Basically, you take on “missions” that entail your surfing through internet in a guided format. The author of a mission assembles web site s/he wants to introduce people to, and you get points for visiting. You can also lay mines at sites, which explode (the screen shakes a little) when a fellow PMOGer surfs to the site (they lose points, too). You can also “leave some love,” ie points, for someone to pick up at the site. There are also associations, merit badges, weapons, defensive measures, etc. – all the “tools of the trade” that you would find on a fantasy game site, except this one takes place all over the internet.
The Israel connection in PMOG comes with the missions members can organize and leave for others. PMOG users who take missions (for which they earn points) are directed to sites by the mission organizers, the idea being that they discover sites – and information – they might not have known. A few enterprising people have built Israel missions. One, called “Israel media,” took me to sites like the Israel Internet Statistics, and a couple of pages about anti-Israel bias in the media. Another mission is sort of an Israel travelogue, taking users to sites describing sites in Israel.
Most of the missions in PMOG, it should be noted, are “fun” missions, like “Wizards and other Magical Beings,” “National Peanut Butter Day,” “Ukeleles,” etc. Of course, a game is supposed to be fun – but this one is educational, too. Why not some missions on Israeli medical advances, or hi-tech stories (I’ve got a couple I could contribute!). PMOG could be an interesting educational tool!
RepORTs from the teens
A network of high schools across Israel that emphasizes high-tech vocational training, ORT is an educational powerhouse, its 100,000-strong student body representing about one tenth of all Israeli high school students.
With six branches within rocket range in southern Israel, ORT estimates that 7000 of its pupils are currently under high risk of Hamas attacks.
ORT’s Ronson School in Ashkelon, which educates some 1800 students, has temporarily closed its doors due to this situation, necessitating special tutoring and commuting arrangements so that the 12th graders don’t fall too far behind.
In the meantime, the school’s Eye 2 Israel / Yama and student blogging (informational site in Hebrew only) projects have encouraged students to use their tech bent to help foment a positive image of Israelis in the blogosphere – a motivation close to Israelity’s heart.
One of their bloggers, 14-year-old Rebeca Mayer, is an immigrant from Cuba. Although her English isn’t the most polished, Mayer’s accounts of her day-to-day life are a poignant reminder that there are real people behind every headline. As she puts it in her blog, “I decided to open this blog so all of you out there will understand what we’re going threw here in Ashkelon.”
Writing from inside a bomb shelter, where she and her family have been spending lots of time lately, Mayer wrote on December 28:
I’m really board here cause there’s nothing to do, my little bro is playing with my grandma with a train.
….I wanted to go out today and buy some shoes, but I guess this plan would have to wait, it really sucks to live in this kind of reality I just hope everything will be ok.
More recently, this past Tuesday, she wrote about her feelings of personal connection to the IDF soldiers who had recently been killed in combat in Gaza:
I feel so responsible for there death, cause I know they died to defend me.
They were supposed to come home as heroes but they come back in a coffin.
Now nothing could change, I just hope they will be happy up there in heaven.
As of yesterday, Mayer was planning on going to Eilat for the weekend for some escape and fun. We hope she finds what she’s looking for.
Image Ashkelon courtesy Jason Turner from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
Israeli Tots At 82 Kindergartens To Learn Green ABC’s
In a special ceremony, held in Bar-Ilan University earlier this month, some 48 green kindergartens located in the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, central and southern districts of Israel were certified “green.”
An additional 34 kindergartens were certified earlier in the month, on December 3 in Haifa, 8 of which came from the Arab sector, reports the Ministry of Environmental Protection website. This is good news to our ears.
In all, 82 Israeli green kindergartens were certified in 2008, compared to 32 in 2007. But what does it take to make Israeli tots green? Do the ganenets feed them organic food? Do they learn about recycling? Maybe they plant trees?
In order to be officially certified, kindergartens must demonstrate their achievements in three areas:
- Environmental curriculum
- Rational use of resources
- Contribution to the community
According to the Ministry, kindergartens have a critical role to play in setting the educational infrastructure or basis for the understanding of basic concepts at the personal and social levels. “Cultivating environmental literacy in the kindergarten is of major importance since it is at this early age that we can try to instill positive attitudes toward the human and physical environment, in the present and in the future,” they write.
Accreditation of Green Kindergartens Come With $ Incentive
The aim of the “Green Kindergarten” program is to lead kindergartens through an educational process in which the children, kindergarten teachers, assistants and parents take part in incorporating environmental subjects into the kindergarten.
The accreditation process for Green Kindergartens was initiated in 2006 by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in cooperation with the Ministry of Education. Coming along with a cash incentive, going green can also boost enrollment (it’s a new thing moms and dads can brag about at the park). In Israel it seems that most kindergartens are privatized. So the added marketability of teaching tots to go green can be a selling point.
Recycling Corner in a Petach Tikva kindergarten
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