This Normal Life

Parades and Tolerance, Then and Now

Brian Blum — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:20:07 -0400

My nearly sixteen-year-old daughter Merav attended the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade two weeks ago. She had heard about the event, the controversy it had engendered, and thought it would be interesting to see what all the fuss was about.

It’s funny how time tends to curl around and repeat itself. When I was sixteen, I attended my first gay parade, in the heart of San Francisco’s famed Castro District, for many of the same reasons: curiosity, support, adventure.

The San Francisco parade was a major cultural event for the city. A staggering 250,000 people showed up in 1977; there were floats, flamboyance and not an insignificant amount of PDA (with a goodly sprinkling of near nudity).

Despite San Francisco’s well known reputation for tolerance, the gay community was certainly not immune to controversy: 1978’s Proposition 6 – also known as the Brigg’s Initiative – would have banned gays and lesbians from working in California public schools.

I remember the entire state waiting on pins and needles for the voter outcome (it was defeated in a last minute surprise turn around, dealing former orange juice spokeswoman Anita Bryant’s national anti-gay campaign to its first major defeat).

The euphoria didn’t last long. A short time later came the tragic murder of Harvey Milk, San Francisco’s first openly gay supervisor, played in a virtuoso performance by Sean Penn in the Oscar-winning film “Milk.”

Those were confusing times for a nerdy young 16-year-old like me who liked to hang out with his straight friends in the heart of the Castro. That boarded up subway station where in the movie Harvey Milk first used his megaphone to charge up an angry mob? There was a performance artist named Ruby Rodriguez who used to do a risqué cabaret act (including rubber chickens and ventriloquism) every Friday night in that same spot. When the bars let out at 2:00 AM, hundreds of drunk, gay men crowded around. My friends and I were there to cheer Ruby on (I have the tape to prove it).

Although I prided myself on my liberal San Francisco values, I got into my own public controversy with the gay community. In 1978, I was writing a column for the local newspaper. In what I thought would be an “eye opening” pro-tolerance piece, I posited that, if 10 percent of the population were gay, then there must be a number of gay men and women in the high school from which I had recently graduated…including, I wrote, “possibly the football team quarterback or the head cheerleader.”

What was I thinking?

The San Francisco Advocate – a gay-run newspaper - sent a letter of protest to my boss, calling the article homophobic, and I was promptly sacked.

If anything, the pride parade in Jerusalem has stoked even more flames.

True, the Jerusalem version is much tamer than San Francisco’s (or even Tel Aviv’s pride parade earlier in the month which culminated in a group wedding on the beach). But it is no stranger to controversy.

In the past, the parade has been mired by protests by haredi and right wing agitators who consider homosexuality to be a biblical abomination and something that should not be flaunted anywhere, and certainly not in the Holy City. The 2005 parade ended in violence when an ultra-Orthodox man stabbed three participants (he is now serving a 12-year prison sentence).

Then, in 2006, members of the anti-Zionist extremist Eda Haredit religious sect conducted a “pulsa d’nura” – a kabalistic ceremony which, wrote the Jerusalem Post, is believed to “unleash unearthly powers against specific sinners” – to curse the parade.

To the best of my knowledge, lightning did not strike down any revelers that year.

The 2009 version of the parade went off without incident, save for a single case of egg throwing. Haredi protesters steered clear this year, in part to avoid having to explain to their children what the parade was all about. Or perhaps they had bigger fish to fry, like the opening of a parking lot on Shabbat (I’ll save that rant for another post but I just have to ask…where does it say in the Torah that providing a safe and convenient place to park one’s car is a desecration of God’s name?)

In any case, 4,000 people participated in the parade under a police cover of 1,500 officers. Perhaps the biggest complaint was the inevitable traffic jams during the evening rush hour crush.

Still, it got me thinking: what is it about religion that makes one believe that a supernatural being is on the believer’s side or, indeed, that one can reasonably ascertain what that deity’s opinion is on any particular earthly issue?

I’ve still not forgotten, shortly after I first arrived in Israel in 1985, Shas member of Knesset and then Minister of the Interior Yitzhak Peretz placing the blame for a horrendous train accident that killed 22 junior high school students from Petach Tikva on a movie house that was allowed to remain open on Shabbat.

And yet, I fell into that trap myself. In my more religiously extreme days, I tried to take on what I thought was the Orthodox party line regarding homosexuality. My parents were aghast. So was I when I woke up 20 years later and realized how twisted my thinking had become.

Marcia Falk, writing in The Book of Blessings, presents an alternative to the standard Shema prayer:

“Shema Israel, Alfey panim, m’lo olam shekinatah ribuy panecha echad.”

"Hear O Israel, divinity has thousands of faces, the fullness of the world is its presence, the multiplicity of its faces is One.”

Falk’s aim in her poetic license, she writes, is “to articulate what a monotheistic belief means to us. To me it means the honoring of diversity within the unity of creation.”

That diversity means people of all shapes, sizes, shades and, I would add, sexual orientation.
I’m proud that my daughter came out to support the parade, like her father did over 30 years ago. Because I have to believe that, despite what some adherents claim, tolerance is an intrinsic Jewish value and one – borrowing a page of my own from the kabala - that there isn’t enough of in this fractured, broken world.

Hugs and High School

Brian Blum — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:18:41 -0400

What I’ll remember most about our son Amir’s graduation from 12th grade earlier this week was the hugs. Hugs between the guys. Hugs from the teachers to the graduates while on stage receiving their diplomas. The spontaneous group hug and circle dance the guys did to Mashina’s “Return, Return” at the end of the evening.

It was all so sweet. And it got me reminiscing. I don’t remember ever being so affectionate with my male friends when I was in high school, some 30 years ago. On the contrary, I distinctly recall that, after all 400 12th graders received their diplomas in our high school gym, I gave a big bear hug to my best friend John while thinking that this was the first time I’d ever hugged him or any other guy (girls, well that was another story…)

I also remember that it wasn’t until I arrived in Israel after college and found myself in a more traditional Jewish framework that I got into the habit of shaking someone’s hand. Before that: no handshakes, no hugs. What did we do then? Just glare at each other for 12 years?

Fortunately, when you need to do some impromptu research, there’s nothing like Facebook. I put out my question on hugs and high school. My contemporaries weighed in quickly. No, absolutely we did not hug back in 1978, they said. There were the occasional “soul handshakes” and a few high fives.

By the 1980s, “everybody was doing that stupid BH 90210 hand slap and point the fingers thing,” my friend Boaz wrote. “We used to make out in the hallways but that was it,” Debbie from Modi'in added.

But the times they are a changing, even in the U.S. An article by Sarah Kershaw in The New York Times that my Facebook buddy Yosef referred me to described how hugs have now caught on in high school...outside of Israel. So much so that there are different terms for all the hugging.

For example, there's the “bear claw” where a boy embraces a girl awkwardly with his elbows poking out. The "fist bump and slap on the back." Something known as the “shake and lean.” And now the “triple” – any combination of three girls and boys hugging at once.

It’s become so rampant that some schools are now trying to limit hugging via a “three-second rule” or to ban hugs outright. “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” bemoaned a principal in New Jersey interviewed by Kershaw.

The kids disagree, calling it the “hello” of their generation. “We like to get cozy,” said a San Francisco eighth grader. “The high-five is, like, boring.”

What seems to be unique to Israel (and perhaps other Mediterranean countries – I haven’t done a scientific study), is hugging between students and teachers, something that would be absolutely verboten in a litigious U.S. where it could be perceived as bordering on sexual harassment or abuse.

All hugging aside, the graduation ceremony of our oldest child was very emotional for my wife Jody and I. To think that we have come so far as to have a child finished with his formal education. How did we get so old! “Proud and old are not mutually exclusive,” our friend Shira was quick to point out on Facebook.

Some other highlights from graduation:

-- As each boy (Amir attended an all boy’s school) received his diploma, his teacher read a short paragraph describing the graduate (Hartman high school, with a graduating class of 56, is small enough to indulge such a personal touch).

-- There was a lot of emphasis on the army and mechinot (pre-army preparatory programs) rather than "where are you going to college next year?"

-- Amir put together a great slide show with music summing up the six years the guys have been together. The photos of the class from 7th grade elicited some raucous teenage guffaws.

-- Hartman Institute founder Rabbi David Hartman gave an impassioned speech on the importance for religious youth to fight against extremism and intolerance. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not religious,” he exhorted the graduates.

-- This being Israel, the dress code was casual, though a number of the graduates wore loosely knotted ties over untucked short sleeve shirts and jeans. Needless to say there were no caps and gowns. And so, at the end of the evening, rather than toss their caps into the air, they threw their kippot to the sky.

Jody and I were so filled with pride and excitement. It’s a major milestone...for the entire family. So what did we do when Amir came over to us after the ceremony was done?

We gave him a great big hug, of course.

Leonard Bernstein’s Kaddish

Brian Blum — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:58:55 -0400

Two weeks ago, prior to the "Enhanced Kaddish" ceremony we held for my father, Jody and I attended a very different musical memorial. Together with several thousand Israelis, we trekked to Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, for a special outdoor performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, also known as Kaddish.

The symphony was being performed with a text written and narrated by Samuel Pisar, an international lawyer, author and Holocaust survivor. The text, which Pisar wrote at Bernstein’s instigation, is a heart wrenching review of human cruelty in general, and towards the Jewish people in particular.

Pisar recounts his own experience surviving Auschwitz while watching his entire family being killed. The narration is timed to blend precisely with the anguished, atonal music which, according to the printed program, required an unusually large orchestral complement – including a tuba, sandpaper and a glockenspiel – plus two choirs (the Tel Aviv Chamber Choir and the Ankor Children's ensemble) and Israeli soprano Danna Glaser.

The underlying theme to Pisar’s work is an unbridled anger at God for allowing such genocide to occur, coupled with a chilling warning against allowing it to occur again. Pisar finished his “Dialogue with God” following 9/11 and the attacks figure prominently in his narrative.

From Pisar’s text:

I must honor their tragic legacy,
And warn the living
- Of every race, color and creed -
Against the new catastrophes
That may still lie ahead.
For the unthinkable is again possible
A relapse into the darks ages,
As a leap toward a radiant future.

Pisar’s complaint against God is unmistakable:

How can one be sure
That the catastrophe was totally man-made?
We know from the book of Genesis
How wrathful a God you can be,
When You lose your notorious temper.

Concerning the destruction on September 11, Pisar writes that only after “the carnage that ushered in a newly inflamed world vaguely reminiscent of the one into which I was born did I settle down to write” the text itself. The narrative, Pisar adds, represents “a mounting crescendo for universal tolerance, reconciliation and peace between the hereditary enemies of history.”

The symphony with Pisar’s text was first performed in Chicago in 2003 before an audience of 10,000. This was its premiere in Israel. In attendance were Israeli President Shimon Peres and the President of Romania Traian Băsescu.

Our attendance at the event took on a separate meaning for me, removed from the Holocaust narrative. When we first received the invitation, the idea of hearing a work called Kaddish – in the midst of my own year of saying Kaddish – intrigued me. As I’ve written already, I’ve struggled with the words of the prayer and have tried to find refuge in musical interpretations.

So sitting in the audience and listening to a work by Leonard Bernstein felt like another way of honoring my father. Even more so, as I’m not a big fan of orchestral music, despite my father’s best efforts over the years to convince me otherwise.

I remember my parents taking us several times to the San Francisco Opera House to hear the symphony. While I was consistently “wowed” by the sheer talent that such a production entails, it remained rock and roll that moved my soul.

Indeed, had my father not passed away, it is doubtful I would have even been interested in an evening of classical music. And I won’t lie: the music still didn’t speak to me. But the significance of being there on a monumental evening did.

The day after our evening at Yad Vashem, air raid sirens sounded across Israel at 11:00 AM. The country wasn’t under attack; rather we were participating in the largest ever emergency exercise the nation has undertaken. The rising and falling siren – unlike the steady wails for Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day) and Yom HaZicharon (Memorial Day) – lasted for a minute and a half during which time we were instructed to hurry to our bomb shelters.

The exercise was meant to raise public awareness and to test the responsiveness of emergency workers, coordinate organizations, and pinpoint any failings in the sirens themselves.

During the second Gulf War, we prepared sealed rooms with duck tape, but this was the first time we’ve used the concrete reinforced bomb shelter next to the underground garage of our building complex. At first, we couldn’t get the door unlocked…not a good omen had it been a real attack. Our descent also seemed too casual, even reckless.

Once inside, we inspected what could be our home away from home for an extended period. The shelter was bare – no furniture of any kind, certainly no beds on which to spend a night. The toilet didn’t work either – the water had been turned off. We made a note of everything.

The alarming juxtaposition of the drill with Bernstein’s symphony and Pisar’s text was not lost on us. It would be reassuring to believe that, 60+ years after the end of World War II, hatred and violence would have plummeted from that summit of hell. Of course, that’s not the case.

“Every citizen in the State of Israel must know that anywhere in the country, at any time, an emergency scenario can materialize, and one must know how to act," Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said after the exercise.

Pisar’s text ends on a surprisingly optimistic beat. He acknowledges that, after the Shoah, God taught him to “love and dream again” and blessed him with “a new happy family and with children and grandchildren whose sparkling faces and sterling characters resurrect for me every day the memory of those I have lost.”

He concludes:

Bond with us, Lord
Guide us toward reconciliation
On our small, divided, fragile planet –
Our common home.

Amen.

ObamaNation

Brian Blum — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:31:29 -0400

Let me preface the following rant by saying I voted for the guy. I had great expectations, not quite bordering on messianic, but in that general direction. His oration; the clear, educated and trained mind – especially compared with his predecessor - was lucidly refreshing.

Yes, those of us in Israel were worried that he’d take too soft a stance vis a vis Iran. But, as I wrote prior to the elections, I was sure that those negotiating overtures would come to a quick demise after the Islamic Republic made clear it had no intention of modifying its hard line position.

Ditto on Israel. Yes, there might be some tougher rhetoric, but the bonds between the U.S. and the Jewish state are too strong to fall into any kind of serious crisis.

It is therefore with true regret that I find my support of U.S. President Barack Obama, at least when it comes to our little corner of the world, to have been misplaced. Many of my sublimated fears, the ones I blithely tossed into the dust accumulating under my bed, seem to be coming true.

President Obama’s speech last week in Cairo started out on the right foot. He had promised a message of reconciliation and he was quick to deliver. He was tough on terrorism while speaking passionately about democracy, religious freedom and women's rights in the Arab world.

When it came to the Jews, I was taken aback – in a good way. Here was a U.S. President, appearing in an Arab capital, saying that under no uncertain circumstances Holocaust denial is wrong. “Six million Jews were killed, more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless. It is ignorant, and it is hateful,” Obama told the crowd (to no applause).

Obama went on to say that “the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries. And anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.”

The unstated but undeniable message: the Jews deserve a state because of tragedy, persecution and, in particular, the Shoah.

And that’s where he got it so wrong.

The Holocaust is not the reason we’re here in Israel. It may have been the final catalyst that made the Jewish state viable in the international community, but the connection between the Jews and the land goes back thousands of years. And Obama never once mentioned this historical fact.

What he did was play right into the Arab narrative: that Israel is a foreign entity in an Arab land brought about solely from European guilt. It frames Israel’s existence from a negative: we were killed, therefore give us something in return.

The Arab world makes no bones about rejecting this justification wholeheartedly. “Why should we have to pay for European crimes?” is a common refrain. After all, haven’t Yassar Arafat and all his would be successors claimed for years that there was never even a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount?

And, with no historical connection, just a fading feeling that a safe haven for the Jews might be a good thing, why not give the Jews a less controversial homeland. Like Uganda? Or, as in Michael Chabon’s alt-history novel “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union,” a small, wet and miserable corner of Alaska.

The Zionist movement rejected the Uganda option in 1903 because, as the Jerusalem Post wrote in an editorial earlier this week, “Uganda did not belong to the Jews.”

If this is truly Obama’s position – that Israel is simply payback for genocide - then he is sadly misinformed…and dangerous to boot. He may be striving for even-handedness, but when history is disregarded, then only the most recent positioning becomes valid and this will, as sure as Al-Queida is planning another attack, doom any real prospects for peace.

But Obama proceeded to make it worse. In a line that must have been carefully calculated and worked over for months by speechwriters and policy makers, he stated, immediately after his exhortation against Holocaust denial, “on the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people… have suffered in pursuit of a homeland."

Now, I’m no hard-core right-winger. I will be the first to acknowledge that the Palestinian side has legitimate grievances that must be addressed.

But to even compare the murder of 6 million Jews with the results of a war where the Arab side attacked the nascent state of Israel is unconscionable. Does Obama truly believe this? Despite all his eloquence, this borders on anti-Semitism itself.

At this point in his speech, I was so flabbergasted I could barely expect anything worse. But here it came. His long awaited tough approach to Iran. We expected negotiation, yes, but with the stick of sanctions and just a hint of military action.

Instead what we got was a namby pamb,y brief monologue (a mere 8 paragraphs vs. 25 on the Arab-Israel conflict) on how it would be perfectly fine with the U.S. for Iran to have a peaceful nuclear program as long as it wasn’t military in nature. Right. Isn’t that what Iran has been saying for years to forestall U.N. inspections?

Obama, in a few short paragraphs, gave Iran a free pass, making it clear that the U.S. would take no substantive action, to stop Iran’s relentless pursuit of the bomb (and the missiles to deliver it). Couple that with his delegitimization of Israel’s historical connection to the land, and it’s painfully clear that we are totally and completely on our own.

I was elated at the election of Barack Obama. I had great expectations for a new world order, with a leader who promised, and might truly succeed, in bringing about real change. And still he might. But that change doesn’t look particularly good for the Jews.

To paraphrase the other big message regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and one that I won't get into here), we are not the obstacles to peace. The president of the United States is.

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I know I’m not the first person to write about these issues. But I would be very interested to hear your comments. Do you agree with my analysis? Do you think I’m over-dramatizing the speech? Or am I hopelessly naive? Please post your comments to the blog and let’s start a conversation.

Kaddish & Kiddush

Brian Blum — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:26:07 -0400

Since my father died two months ago, I’ve thought a lot about what is the nature of community and, in particular, what is my place in it. It’s not a simple question.

For many years I’ve been what I jokingly call “tefilacally-challenged” (tefilah being the Hebrew for “prayer”). Prayer is not something that’s easy for me to relate to. Yes, I go to synagogue but, more often than not, I use it as a time for introspection, maybe a little light meditation, rather than reading the specific words in the siddur.

One of the strong prayer traditions of mourning is to say Kaddish whenever there’s a minyan. One says it for a year after a parent dies, a month for children, spouse and siblings.

For many observant Jews, this means making an effort to get to synagogue for the three daily prayer services. As I’ve talked with people about the mourning period, I’ve heard repeated stories of ostensibly secular men and women taking on this commandment and deriving great satisfaction from it.

That hasn’t been my experience, though. Indeed, the Kaddish, for me, is even more difficult than the rest of the davening. I’m a very literal person and I find it hard to get my head around the traditional understandings of the prayer: that I’m helping my father’s soul find its way to heaven, or that I am so anguished that I must publicly proclaim my faith multiple times a day, lest I lapse into heresy. In any case, my devoutly irreligious father wouldn’t have wanted any part in all this.

Don’t get me wrong, despite my misgivings I’ve still been saying Kaddish…but only when I make it to shul, which is erratic at best. And yet, as I’ve written before, sitting shiva in Israel was one of the most meaningful moments of my life, primarily because of the power of community. The fact that so many people came from all over the country to support me and to hear stories about my father still brings tears to my eyes.

But I have to ask: does that community expect anything in return? Or to put it differently: what are the essential minimums of participation that qualify one for membership in a religious community?

I’m not speaking about the specific communities to which we belong here in Jerusalem which are as liberal and accepting as any I’ve known. (The joke at shul is that, as long as you show up for Kiddush duty, you’re a bonafide member.)

To be sure, there are many aspects to a religious community: learning, giving tzedakah, hosting guests for Shabbat, celebrating smachot, Zionism, observing Jewish law. But isn’t the prayer community the most central pillar?

Jews for thousands of years have prayed together. The Mishna and Talmud are filled with rules about what to say at what times and in what situations.

Can one come to Saturday morning Kiddush without saying Kaddish? How about if you come Friday night but not Shabbat day? Or if your wife and/or kids are regulars - can you coast by on the zechut of the family?

Many of the same arguments could be made for online communities, by the way. Is it enough to join, or do you need to create a profile, upload some pictures and “poke” a few people? What if you only “lurk” on a discussion forum rather than participate? Are you truly a member of the community if you follow your activity stream but never update your status?

In the midst of all this, I attended a talk by Rabbi David Aaron. A friend had heard Aaron speak on prayer and insisted that we attend. Maybe it would give me a new perspective, she suggested.

I should have known better. The author of such books as “The Secret Life of God” and “Living a Joyous Life: The True Spirit of Jewish Practice,” Aaron’s message was as disheartening as it was exclusionary.

In essence, he said that if you’re not a part of a prayer community, there’s really no point in being in the religious Jewish world at all. The unstated implication: “We don’t want you.” That had me running for the spiritual door.

I had the exact opposite experience during a private meeting with Nachshon David Mahanymi, a Rabbi-in-training with the Jewish Renewal movement here in Jerusalem. His take was that I was getting it all backwards.

The year of mourning is all about creating meaningful ways to remember the person who has passed away, he said. We began to brainstorm alternative approaches for how I could honor my father, in a manner that he would appreciate and to which I could better relate.

There’s an expression referring to the mourning period, “ilu’i nishmato,” which, re-framed in a modern light, might be translated as “to elevate the essence of who he was.”

My father was a writer. And music infused his life with joy. What could I do that would incorporate these two elements of his life, I wondered?

An idea began to form. Perhaps I could sponsor a series of events over the course of the twelve months of mourning that would serve to elevate his name.

And by making these public, it might also be a way where I could connect with community beyond the walls of the synagogue. Call it an “Enhanced Kaddish.”

To that end, the first community event that I have planned will take place on Tuesday, June 9 at 8:30 PM at Kehilat Yedidya, 12 Nahum Lifshitz Street in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem. It will be an evening of “stories and song” in memory of my father.

Joining us will be Yoel Sykes and Daphna Rosenberg, musicians from Nava Tehila, who have composed seven original songs based on psukim from various places in the Torah, prophets and psalms. By weaving together the music with the text, my hope is that you will get to know better what my father was like and what he was passionate about.

I’ll continue saying Kaddish in shul – at least when I make it in time - while at the same time bringing my Enhanced Kaddish to the greater community. Beyond that, my year of mourning, I expect, will be challenging and constantly evolving.

I'm OK with that. Are you?

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Please RSVP to brianblum@gmail.com if you are planning to come to the June 9 evening so we can arrange the space accordingly.

TNL Classic: More Cheese Please

Brian Blum — Thu, 28 May 2009 05:04:23 -0400

The Jewish holiday of Shavuot begins tonight and I’ve dug up another TNL classic. This one first appeared just before Shavuot in 2005. The kids are, naturally, a bit younger in this story but the learning is just as relevant today. Enjoy…and chag sameach!

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“What are we going to do today?” six-year-old Aviv demanded as he shoveled in his tenth spoonful of cornflakes in as many seconds.

It was shortly before Shavuot last year and the kids were off school. Then ten-year-old Merav and twelve-year-old Amir were now looking up from their breakfasts as well, waiting for my pronouncement.

But I was ready. I had concocted the perfect plan.

Now, one of the traditions of Shavuot is to eat dairy products. So I declared in as animated a way as I could: “We’re going to a cheese farm!”

“A what?” asked Amir with more than a hint of cynicism.

“I read about it in the paper. There’s an organic goat farm that sells these incredible cheeses. It’s only a few minutes outside the city. Wouldn’t that just be perfect?

But to my surprise, the kids were into it. I should have known; they like just about anything that has to do with eating.

[Unfortunately, the Har HaRuach Goat Farm has been closed since this story was originally written. But there are other great goat farms in Israel, including Eretz Zavat Chalav u'Dvash near Petach Tikva, the Zook Farm outside of Beit Shemesh, a farm in Sataf and another in the Negev (see this link for more information on all of the farms.]

As we drove home from our cheesy day, the conversation turned to the upcoming holiday. Shavuot symbolically marks the day the Israelites received the Torah on Mount Sinai after leaving Egypt.

“So, does anyone know where the custom of eating dairy on Shavuot comes from?” I asked.

Blank stares.

“Um…I think it had something to do with when they left Egypt, they didn’t have enough time to take any meat...” Merav ventured a guess.

“That was the matza,” Amir corrected her.

“Maybe they didn’t have meat plates?” I joked.

“They didn’t use dishes,” Amir and Merav both shot back in unison.

All the joking, however, didn’t diminish the fact that we hadn’t the foggiest idea why we eat dairy

So I proposed a contest. We have several computers at home. We would divide into teams and scour the Internet. Whoever came up with the best explanation would get an extra helping of quiche at dinner.

Amir and I headed for the computer upstairs. Merav and Jody took control of the downstairs machine. We came back together and shared the results of our research.

From Team Merav:
“Shavuot was when the Jews accepted the Torah which means it’s also when we learned about separating milk and meat and the various laws governing animal slaughter. Before that, what else could we eat but dairy?” OK, but that sounded a little too much like my joke about the dishes!

And:
“Israel is known as the land of milk and honey.” But then why don’t we eat honey cake on Shavout instead of cheesecake and blintzes?

From Team Amir:
“The gematria (the practice where each Hebrew letter is assigned a numerical value) of chalav – the Hebrew for milk – is 40, the same number of days that Moses was up on Mount Sinai.” Maybe, but a whole holiday based on what essentially comes down to an ancient magician’s card trick?

And:
“Receiving the Torah was a form of rebirth.” So we celebrate by eating baby food. Namely: milk.

Even Aviv shook his head at that one.

Finally, it was Jody who found what we all agreed was the most acceptable, if somewhat obtuse, explanation.

According to the mystical book of the Zohar, for the 49 days of the omer period – the amount of time between Passover (leaving Egypt) and Shavuot (receiving the Torah), the Jews needed to be in as pure a state as possible. Abstaining from eating meat, which is inextricably connected with death, facilitates such purity.

“But wait a minute,” I said. “If Shavuot is supposed to be the night we got the Torah, then we should be celebrating by eating meat. The 49 days of purification are over. Time to break this flesh fast. Let the party begin!”

“Meat, meat, meat,” the two older kids began to chant [this was several years before Merav became a vegetarian].

Jody, however, turned to us and, with a single withering look that encapsulated exactly why it is so difficult to change 3000 years of tradition, said simply:

“So, what am I supposed to do with all that lasagna?”

TNL Classic: Save My Spot

Brian Blum — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:23:48 -0400

This week, Jody got stuck in a half-hour long p’kak – Hebrew for “a traffic jam” – waiting to get to the front of the meat counter at the supermarket. That reminded me of a supermarket-themed piece I wrote way back in 2004 about a similar experience. So in that spirit, here’s another “TNL Classic.”

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He looked like a regular guy. His short cropped hair, half frame wire glasses, t-shirt (not too designer, not too sloppy) and well worn sandals all suggested a cafe patron with at least a moderately worldly frame of reference. So when he asked Jody to “save his spot” at the SuperSol Deal supermarket checkout line, it was hard to refuse.

“Save my spot” is one of the hardest things for the Western immigrant to Israel to get used to. It can occur at nearly any time in just about any public place: the line at the post office, the pharmacy, the bank. An optimist would say it’s simply a way of maximizing limited resources. You reserve your spot and then continue shopping. As long as you get back before your turn, no one gets hurt.

Others would call it plain chutzpah.

Usually we shrug it off and try to go with the flow. There are bigger battles to fry. And to protest this quintessentially Israeli behavior is to admit that we have not – nor may we ever – fully integrate into life here in our new home.

Plus the man with the wire frame glasses had a gentle look that said “trust me, I’m not here to screw you. I’m just covering all my bases.”

Well, looks can be deceiving.

He had maybe twenty items in his basket and he wanted to see if he could get through the "Seven Item Maximum" Express Line. That should have been a red flag right there.

He trotted off and was gone for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Jody and her basket slowly inched forward. It was a Thursday night and the store was overflowing with pre-Shabbat shoppers.

Jody spied the man with the wire frame glasses moving from check out lane to check out lane, trying to secure a space. The Express Lane wouldn’t let him in. He pestered the customer service desk.

And then, when Jody was finally next in line to check out, the man returned. He didn’t say anything but it was clear he expected his spot back.

Now, maybe there’s an etiquette in spot saving, something that, not having grown up here, we just don’t have the cultural background (some would say baggage) to pick up on. But it seemed clear to Jody that a fifteen-minute sojourn was pushing it.

She gave him another quintessential Israeli gesture: she shrugged.

To no avail. The man in the wire frame glasses inched his cart up to Jody’s and angled it in such a way that there was no way to gracefully avoid confrontation. Someone had to back down.

The woman in front of Jody, who was now transferring items from her cart to the checkout counter, turned around and snarled at the man. “Go in back of her,” she said. “It’s only fair.”

“I was here first,” the man said. It was so incredibly childish that Jody let out a laugh. Like two kids wrangling over who gets the last scoop of ice cream.

This only increased the man’s determination. He pushed his cart forward again.

“What does it matter to you?” he said to Jody. “It’s not like you’re giving up on something you already had.”

“Be a gentleman,” the woman in front said.

Now, a native-born Israeli would have pushed back or turned to fisticuffs. A native-born Israeli would have yelled and made such a fuss that the man and his no longer charming cafe culture wire frame glasses would have been caustically embarrassed into retreat.

Jody let him through.

With a sneer, he drove home this battleground victory, hissing under his breath “Americans are so inflexible.”

How he could discern Jody's country of origin was anybody's guess. She hadn't said a word the entire time. But this latest declaration was too much for the woman in front who had taken the role of Jody’s defender.

“She’s just as Israeli as you or me,” she snapped. One look at Jody’s basket filled with Israeli brand milk and pizza and cornflakes and frozen chicken would confirm that assertion.

Jody was still too stunned by the whole incident. All she had intended to do was shop. She hadn’t gone scrapping for an international incident.

And then, the man with the wire frame glasses left his cart in place...and went off to shop some more. Unbelievable! Jody thought.

He returned just as the woman in front had placed her last item on the conveyer belt and was getting her credit card ready. He moved into place, quickly bagged his twenty items, paid, and triumphantly took off, having beaten the system...and his fellow shoppers.

Jody was loading her goods onto the conveyer belt when she spied him making a hasty return. She girded herself for another confrontation. But the wild beast look that had so taken over his visage had subsided. He was holding out his hand.

“I hope I didn’t upset you,” he said.

“Well you did,” Jody replied. She wasn’t letting him off the hook for ruining her day quite so easily.

“Oh, well..” he said, hesitating for a moment. “Well, um...then Shabbat Shalom!”

And that was it. As far as he was concerned, the matter was closed. Bygones should be bygones and any animosity from this point forward would be as inappropriate as...well, his behavior just a few moments ago.

What could Jody do? Not return the greeting? That would be so un-Israeli. And she’d already been accused of that. But maybe there was something to learn here. About how Israelis deal with conflict. Or muster an apology.

She’d think about that later. For now, there was only one thing to say.

“Shabbat Shalom,” Jody wished the man with the wire frame glasses. She shook his hand and he smiled. Jody suppressed another laugh and smiled back.

And then they walked their baskets through the sliding glass door and out into the parking lot together.

TNL Classic: Overly Sensitive New Age Guy

Brian Blum — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:11:41 -0400

Last night, my friend Eliezer and my son Amir dragged me to the movies to see the new Star Trek film. I have not been to a movie theater in more than three years, since we bought our big screen plasma TV. For me, 42 inches is an entirely acceptable alternative to the costs and hassles of going to the theater.

The real reason I've stayed at home watching DVDs, though, is that the Israeli movie "experience" is one that I'd rather not repeat on a regular basis. To give you a feel for what I'm talking about, I'm running a TNL Classic today, a piece that I originally posted over five years ago, about going out to see the Matrix. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past.

(BTW - the audience for Star Trek was surprisingly well behaved. Only one cell phone rang and I even had a clear shot of the screen with no one sitting in front of me. As for the movie, well, Roger Ebert says it better than I could.)

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Amir and I went to see the final installment of the Matrix trilogy the other night. Going to the movies is one of the things Amir and I do, and I have to say it’s really a pleasure to have a child old enough to see the kind of movies my wife wouldn’t go near: you know the shoot-em-up action, sci-fi, and fantasy flicks my aging adolescent mind still craves.

Now, when I go to the movies, it’s for the experience: the big screen, the Dolby surround sound system. The experience Amir and I had at the movies the other night, though, was pure torture.

If I had to call it, I’d say this was quite possibly the worst audience I had ever been in. And as an avid movie buff, I’ve been in some bad ones.

It didn’t help that I was without a question the oldest person in the auditorium. The crowd of mostly pre-teenage boys talked –no, shouted – through nearly the entire film. I’m glad they were enjoying themselves, but…

And then there were the cellphones. Constantly ringing. Followed by more loud talking. The kid next to me must have answered some caller five times in a row, each time belting out in Hebrew “I’m in the middle of a movie.”

Did it occur to him to not answer? Or turn the phone off? Never.

Did it occur to his parents not to buy him a phone?

There were times during the film that I literally could not hear what was being said.

I know this kind of thing is not unique to Israel, although I think we have it worse here than some places around the world. In California I once saw an usher actually escort a pair of incessant movie-talkers out of the theater. Now that's service!

And in North America, you can always change seats. In Israel, however, your place is reserved and Israelis take their seat assignments seriously. They’ll blab away for two hours on the cellphone, but they wouldn’t think of disobeying the seat rule. Go figure.

OK, I admit I’m what you might call an overly-sensitive new age guy. I don’t allow talking when we’re watching a TV show at home either. But that’s all in the family. And I can usually press the rewind button.

When it’s strangers, though, in a public place, I have to weigh my response much more carefully. Because you never know when the way you react to something is going to leave an indelible stain on your kids.

And herein lies the problem: what does a parent do when he is being driven to distraction…but doesn’t want to pass that bad trait down to an impressionable child?

If Amir picked up on my agitation, or if I flew off the handle and started screaming at some pre-teen to shut up (in my bad Hebrew no less), Amir could develop his own low tolerance for movie noise when he gets older.

What kind of role model would I be?

It’s not just in the movies, of course. The parent’s dilemma is constant. We are human. We just don’t want our children to know that.

Well we do, of course, but only the good stuff. Not our nutty, neurotic bad habits. You know, the things we do and know we shouldn’t.

Like drinking straight out of the bottle. The soda just tastes better that way. Come on, you know it does.

Or sneaking chocolate when no one’s looking. We tell the kids it’s for special occasions. So how come Abba gets to have sweets whenever he wants to?

How about arriving at synagogue late again because the bed is just so darn comfortable?

Or saying “just a minute” when I know with near certainty that I won’t be done with whatever it is I'm doing for at least another half an hour?

Then there’s remembering to turn lights off and should I even mention washing hands every time after using… no, better not go there.

You get the picture.

Not knowing which will be the behaviors that may send our kids to years of psychotherapy can, well, send their parents to years of psychotherapy.

And so I sat there at the Matrix and I took it. I didn’t call the theater staff, or wave my fist, or yell out “Quiet please!” into the cinematic darkness.

But afterward, I blurted out my frustrations and the resulting parental quandary to Jody while Amir was in earshot.

“Really, Abba?” was his comment from the other side of the room. “I didn’t even notice.”

The Future of Reading (and its Impact on Jewish Law)

Brian Blum — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:09:24 -0400

I have seen the future of reading and it is not print books or newspapers.

On Wednesday, Amazon unveiled the Kindle DX, a larger version of its popular Kindle eBook reader. The DX’s 9.7-inch screen is two and a half times the size of the original Kindle, making it perfect for reading newspapers, magazines, textbooks, even large format printed material such as cookbooks.

Essentially the height and width of a sheet of paper and 1/3 of an inch thick, the Kindle DX, like its little brother, uses a technology called e-Ink which displays black text on a white background, much like a real newspaper or book. It’s far more readable than an LCD laptop or computer screen monitor (or even an iPhone or iPod Touch). There’s no backlight, meaning you can’t read it in the dark, but you can view it in high sunlight like at the beach.

The new Kindle comes complete with a built-in MP3 player, font size that can be adjusted to soothe tired eyes, and direct access to Wikipedia and The New Oxford American Dictionary. Books and newspapers can be downloaded anywhere wirelessly (in the U.S. at least) within 60 seconds. About the only thing missing is color and video, but hey, this is just version 1.0.

The DX follows on the surprising success of Amazon’s first Kindle which came on the scene a year and a half ago and proved that, after years of over optimistic predictions and false starts, a pent up desire for books that can be read electronically on a paperback-sized portable device truly exists.

Forrester Research says that 400,000 Kindles have been sold since its Q4 2007 launch. There are now 275,000 titles in the Kindle library, with bestsellers and new releases priced at only $9.99. Late last year, Oprah endorsed the Kindle on her TV show.

Kindle isn’t alone either. New portable newspaper-sized readers are being readied for release later this year from media giants Hearst and News Corp., and from startup Plastic Logic whose device has a touch screen. Apple may release the long awaited tablet-sized version of its popular iPod Touch as early as June.

But what’s important is that electronic book and newspaper readers are going to change the way we consume the written word. In the last year alone, sales of eBooks have quadrupled. Notwithstanding the Luddites who will always insist a print book or newspaper is an inherently superior reading experience, it’s my firm conviction that within 10 years - 20 years tops - most people will be reading on portable digital devices and it will be nearly impossible to buy anything in print.

And why not? You can load on thousands of books; newspapers, blogs and websites can be updated in real time; and you’re helping the planet to boot by cutting down fewer trees. Plus think about the poor college student who has to lug around a backpack full of heavy – and ridiculously expensive - textbooks. All that will be gone.

So, why am I writing about all this tech goodness on the This Normal Life blog? Because the future of reading will also fundamentally change halacha – Jewish law.

Think about it - what happens when most reading goes electronic? It will no longer be permissible for observant Jews to kick back on the couch with a good eBook or eNewspaper on Shabbat and holidays since using electrical devices on those days is forbidden. I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s the main day of the week I have to catch up on the week’s events or to curl up with a favorite novel.

Now, it’s possible that a number of frum Jewish print houses will crop up and continue to publish newspapers and books “the old fashioned way.” But that market would be necessarily small and would inevitably be limited to Torah-centric content. If you want to learn a page of gemara or peruse HaModia, sure go ahead.

But the modern Orthodox want to read the same newspapers and the same books the rest of the Jewish community does. Will the Jerusalem Post come out with a special print edition on weekends? Maybe. How about Haaretz? No way. And what about outside of Israel? Once The New York Times goes all digital, there’s no turning back.

It’s already happening. The Times has been on the Amazon Kindle platform since the beginning. The paper now has 10,000 paid subscribers. Doing the math, if the electronic Times costs $13.99 a month, that would mean the Times’ Kindle edition is generating in the neighborhood of $1.4 million a year total. With the new Kindle DX, those numbers should soar.

Indeed, the large format electronic reader is being touted by some as a potential remedy for the woes of the beleaguered newspaper industry. An analysis by Nicholas Carson in Silicon Valley Insider suggested that even if The New York Times bought every one of its subscribers a Kindle, by killing its print run, it would still come out ahead by some $346 million.

Then there’s the Christian Science Monitor which announced last year that it was ceasing publication of a print edition entirely except on the weekend, encouraging readers to go online. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer went all digital last month. The Rocky Mountain News in Denver shut down entirely.

“We’re clearly now seeing a path to the end of the printed daily newspaper – a trend that is escalating much faster than we had anticipated,” commented Jeffrey I. Cole, director of USC’s Center for the Digital Future, in a report released this week.

This is not the first time we’ve seen a transition that outpaced all expectations, of course. When CDs first came out, purists argued that the sound on LPs was far better. Today, other than a few specialty stores, where can you buy a vinyl record? Now CDs are the also-rans with MP3s and iPods taking their place at an even faster clip. I recently ordered a terabyte hard disk so I could convert all my old CDs and stream them over our wireless home network.

I think the only answer to the Shabbat and holiday reading conundrum is that observant Jews will have no choice but to use the new fangled eReaders. At first, this may be clandestine. But when other forms of reading no longer exist, there will be a clamor amongst the religious public that will force more progressive rabbis to deal with the changes.

That might be in the form of alternative devices created by organizations like the Tzomet Institute that builds electronic devices that are kosher for Shabbat-observant soldiers, doctors, and other professionals in need. The organization’s Shomer Shabbat telephone, for example, allows dialing in an indirect way – an electronic eye scans the phone buttons every two seconds. If one has been pressed, the eye activates the phone’s dialing system.

Could a similar indirect paging system be employed on a Kindle?

But it might also be that the whole concept of using electricity on Shabbat and holidays gets thrown topsy turvy. The Jewish Worker blog posted a fascinating article outlining the origins of the prohibition on using electricity on Shabbat and holidays. The Daat website goes into even greater detail. As it turns out, there’s no one single reason.

One authority says that completion of a circuit creates sparks and is thus similar to the biblical prohibition of kindling a fire. Another explains that it is prohibited because it is a form of building. There is also the opinion that using electricity is analogous to creating something new, another no no.

When these explanations are applied to turning on an incandescent light bulb, which involves heating a metal filament until it glows, there is general agreement among the poskim that this is a prohibition from the Torah. Turning the light off, however, is less clear. And using a fluorescent light, which does not heat a filament at all, is considered by some to be entirely permissible.

When it comes to electricity used for appliances rather than lights, the responsa are much cloudier, to the point where Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach concludes in his Minchat Shlomo that electrical appliances may actually be permitted on Shabbat and holidays. He writes:

“In my opinion there is no prohibition [to use electricity] on Shabbat or Yom Tov…unless the electricity causes a prohibited act like cooking or starting a flame...However, I am afraid that the masses will err and turn on incandescent lights on Shabbat, and thus I do not permit electricity absent great need.”

“Great need,” however, may be coming sooner than the rabbis expected. Is using an electronic book reader akin to switching on an incandescent bulb? How about an e-Ink screen which displays black pixels on a white background without a back light? Will the Rabbinic authorities be forced to re-open the discussion when modern observant Jews demand it?

I for one am looking forward to the year 2029 when I can read my Kindle-delivered newspaper over a cup of coffee after Shabbat morning Kiddush and later curl up with a good eBook in bed.

A Peek Inside

Brian Blum — Fri, 01 May 2009 06:06:27 -0400

Ever since I saw the 1965 classic sci fi flick Fantastic Voyage, I have been fascinated with seeing the inside of the human body.

In Fantastic Voyage, a team of scientists in a submarine are shrunk and injected into the body of a man to repair a blood clot in his brain. The team, most notably featuring Raquel Welch as eye candy, has only one hour in which to reach its destination before the shrinking process reverses itself. The submarine faces numerous obstacles as it navigates through mid-1960s cheesy graphics – in particular unexpectedly harsh turbulence while traversing the heart, which forces the crew to induce a temporary cardiac arrest – before successfully completing its mission with, naturally, five minutes to spare.

My own view of the guts and goo of the body, however - other than a furtive glance at my wife’s intestines when I was allowed a quick peek behind the curtain during the C-section of our oldest son - had not been realized…until now.

The Body Worlds exhibit, launched in 1995 to worldwide acclaim (and not a small amount of controversy), opened last month in Israel for a three month run. Body Worlds’ founder, German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, invented a process in the late 1970s called “plastination” which dehydrates bodies and replaces the fat and water with a plastic polymer solution.

The result is a little like embalming but with all the skin removed so you can see the bones, muscles, nerves, and organs up close and personal. The result is both disturbing and engrossing.

The Israeli version of the exhibit consists of 20 full body “sculptures” and 140 individual organs under glass. Each body has a different cut-away. Some show the muscular system with red ligaments attached to bone (the resemblance to raw beef was nearly enough to turn this avid carnivore into a vegetarian). Others highlight the nerves, with white strands extending from the brain to the extremities of the body. The blood vessels and arteries were particularly riveting: I never knew the aorta was so thick and long.

Each body is “open” in a different way: in one, the rib cage was pulled apart so you could see the heart, lungs and stomach. In another the brain was removed. Eyes, tongue and lips were generally preserved “as is,” creating the eerie impression that the body may still be alive in some way.

Ditto on the penises and testicles – Body Worlds doesn’t sugar coat the experience. Interestingly, freed from their protective sack, the testes dangle quite far from the body itself, adding a visceral new meaning to the ribald camp version of “Do your ears hang low?”

Body Worlds deliberately crosses the line between science and entertainment. To spice things up, the bodies don’t just stand at attention as in a museum, but are posed into different “artistic” dioramas. There were a couple of runners flexing their calve muscles; a doctor performing open heart surgery; three bodies playing poker (with a video of the James Bond film Casino Royale, which features Body Worlds, running in the background); and the exhibit’s only female body (von Hagens eschewed using women to avoid appearing voyeuristic) posed like an Olympic torch bearer, inexplicably holding all her innards above her head. The wildest display laid a body out horizontally suspended by cables and sliced into 11 equidistant sections.

The Hollywood quality of the exhibit may give some people the willies, but the Body Worlds team assures visitors that everything on display was donated by explicit consent, so presumably donors knew what they were getting into. Indeed, more than 8,000 people have given signed permission to undergo the process when they die, including disgraced pop icon Michael Jackson (why doesn’t that surprise me?) Von Hagen employs 340 people full time at five laboratories in three countries to keep up with the demand.

Body Worlds’ Israeli home is the Haifa’s MadaTech, a rundown museum of science exhibits, many of which no longer work. The Body Worlds show is so popular – 26 million people around the world have visited – that we wound up having to wait several hours before we were granted entrance (tip: book your tickets online before you come). The exhibit costs about $20 and includes entrance to the rest of the MadaTech.

My wife Jody and I went with 15-year-old Merav and 11-year-old Aviv. Merav found it all terribly gross but nevertheless valuable given that she’s taking a pre-med elective at school. Aviv said he felt nauseous and, after viewing the first couple of sculptures, refused to look anymore and generally skulked through the hour and a quarter it takes to take in the entire exhibit.

While the exhibit is, according to its website, intended for “health education,” Body Worlds has encountered opposition wherever it goes.

In 2007, Manchester, England Catholic church leaders accused the exhibitors of being "body snatchers" and claiming that donation of bodies for plastination would deprive the U.K.’s National Health Service of organs for transplant.

More recently, the Archdiocese of Vancouver criticized the exhibit, saying human bodies are sacred and the show is improper. And last month, a French judge ruled to shut down a Paris exhibit of Body Worlds, writing that exhibiting dead bodies for profit was a “violation of the respect owed to them” and that under law “the proper place for corpses is in the cemetery.”

There’s even a web page set up specifically to oppose the exhibit (see http://dignityinboston.googlepages.com/.

Israel has been no stranger to the controversy either. Writing in the Jerusalem Post, David Brinn spoke to Haifa Chief Rabbi She'ar-Yashuv Cohen who said that, even if none of the body parts in the exhibit originally came from Jewish donors, there's a prohibition against Jews viewing the finished product due to respect for kavod adam, human dignity. Cohen didn’t call for protests but suggested that Israelis “stay away.”

Compounding concerns is the fact that founder van Hagen’s father had been a member of the SS during World War II. Aviad Hacohen, an attorney representing a group of Israeli protesters put it this way in an interview with Haaretz: "Would, by contrast, anyone conceive of an exhibit of the bodies of Jews that were found in the extermination camps in one of the Holocaust museums being accepted with such aplomb in the state of Israel?"

Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger went even further, writing prior to the opening of the show, that if it the exhibit were eventually held in Israel, “Our outcry would reach the ends of the earth.”

Perhaps the most poignant complaint came from Yehuda Meshi-Zahav of the ZAKA organization which goes to great lengths to preserve every part of a body after a terror attack. "As an international organization that takes extreme measures, during daily routine and in crisis, to save and honor each body, and which sees to it that human bodies, which were created in the image (of God), are extended the same treatment worldwide, we cannot agree that things will be different in Israel."

When we went visited, there were indeed few religious visitors (although a couple of haredi men surreptitiously seemed to be having a good time).

The Blum family take is that Body Worlds represents a once in a lifetime chance to explore a world generally hidden from ordinary eyes and is well worth the trip.

And, if you get the chance, watch Fantastic Voyage first to see how far we’ve come in imagining our innards in the last 45 years. You can watch a ten-minute “making of” trailer for the film here.

Other links:
The opening sequence and the last 10 minutes.

The Original Ponzi: An Inside Account

Brian Blum — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:26:06 -0400

Bernard Madoff’s multi-billionaire dollar swindle has been called a “Ponzi Scheme,” referring to a similar scandal perpetrated by Charles Ponzi beginning in 1920. There has been no surfeit in articles on Ponzi, but nearly all have focused on comparing and contrasting Madoff and his would be inspiration.

That’s one reason Chapter 3 in my father’s 1968 biography “Benjamin H. Swig: The Measure of a Man” is so fascinating. The book - which was commissioned by the Swig family to chronicle the life of Benjamin Swig, a well-known banker and philanthropist in San Francisco - describes how Ponzi operated long before Madoff came on the scene.

As a tribute to my father, who passed away just over a month ago on March 22, I am pleased to present here an excerpt from his book.

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To Ben Swig, it was a most peculiar site: this dapper little man with the carnation in his lapel who strode into the Tremont Trust Company [the bank owned by Ben Swig’s father Simon Swig in Boston] one day in 1920, his arms overflowing with wastebaskets, the wastebaskets in turn overflowing with money.

Charles Ponzi had struck it rich. No gold mine was the fountain of his wealth, however, but the dollars of simple men and women withdrawing their life savings, selling Liberty bonds, borrowing from loan sharks, cadging, stealing, appropriating every possible penny that could be pressed into the willing hands of a man already acclaimed throughout Boston as the “Wizard of Finance.”

Ponzi, they said, had discovered money. His plan was simplicity itself. He would buy depreciated foreign currency with U.S. dollars, convert the currency into International Postal Union reply coupons at par, then convert the coupons back into dollars. Result: immediate profit. The coupons were incontrovertibly safe; they were regulated by an international agency which stipulated they could not be sold for less than 28 centimes gold.

The investor was given a tempting choice: he could double his money in 90 days – and many did – or he could hold on and make even more. An organization called the Securities Exchange Company (no relation to the present Federal agency) was set up to accommodate anyone who wished to avail himself of the scheme. But the mere mathematics of the thing staggered the imagination. By a simple process of calculation – of doubling, tripling and quadrupling – it became obvious that anyone joining Ponzi’s operation couldn’t help but become rich.

Of course, it was a swindle – one of the most fantastic, and certainly the most successful fraud of its kind ever perpetrated in the United States.

But it worked. By July of 1920, Boston was literally money-mad. In the first eight months of its operation, the scheme netted Ponzi $15,000,000 from 40,000 people. They were lining up around the block to get in. Ponzi was serving them free coffee and frankfurters as they waited. He was collecting $250,000 a day; his chief assistant, an ex-butcher’s helper, was earning $7,000 a week.

The money that poured into his dingy office at 27 School Street carpeted the floor, overflowed into closets and those unbelievable wastebaskets, lined the vaults in the basement of the million-dollar showplace he had built. He acquired large holdings of Boston real estate, purchased the controlling stock of the Hanover Trust Company, bought out the brokerage firm (Poole’s, which had employed him as a stock boy three years earlier), stocked a cellar with rare wines, and drove around town in a custom-built blue limousine. Wherever the limousine went, Ponzi was mobbed by investors begging him to take their money.

It was Simon Swig’s misfortune to be chosen as one of the bankers with whom Ponzi deposited his ill-gotten rewards. He watched the little “wizard” pyramiding his fortune, depositing more and more money with the bank. He eyed the hysteria that had gripped his adopted city, and worried. Then one day, just on a hunch, he got in touch with a financier friend, Thomas L. Lawson, and asked him what he thought of the Ponzi scheme.

Lawson sent out and bought one of Ponzi’s notes, and discovered to his horror that the lithographed document bore a promise to pay “at any bank” – obviously an impossibility – and not just any bank in Boston, but any bank in the country. Lawson’s advice to Swig was short and sweet: “Get Ponzi’s deposits out of your bank without a moment’s delay!”

Simon Swig moved fast. He wrote a letter to Ponzi, ordering him to withdraw his account and outlining the reasons. “People have come to us and said that your company has given us as a reference,” he added with controlled indignation. “We know nothing about your company, and you had no right to give us as a reference…”

Meanwhile, other minds in Boston were working along the same tracks. One of these was Richard Grozier, publisher of the Boston Post. Suspecting that Ponzi might be a racketeer, the Post assigned one of its top newsmen, William H. McMasters, to get the real story. Between them, the Post and Simon Swig pricked the bubble of Ponzi’s scheme, and the air rushed out with a terrible hiss. Thousands of small investors were caught in the downdraft. Five major banks had to close their doors. For a while, the entire economy of the city was threatened.

The resulting investigation revealed that, in the last six years, the entire issue of postal-reply coupons had amounted to only $1,000,000. Yet Ponzi had already accumulated over $10,000,000 in just a few months. How was that possible? The answer was simple: Ponzi hadn’t bought any postal-reply coupons at all. In the manner of the classic swindler, he had merely used the latecomers’ money to pay off the early birds. Since he kept no books, there was no way of telling where Ponzi was getting his money. When pressed for an answer, the little man had a ready excuse: “Why, I’ve just used the postal-coupon idea as a blind,” he said. “I didn’t want the Wall Street boys to get even a hint of what my real scheme was.

There was no “real scheme,” of course. But the little swindler was as brazen with lies as he was adept in manipulating money. Faced with exposure, he promptly offered to refund all the money taken in, rented an office, and for several days busily handed out cash at the rate of $500,000 a day. Did that end it? Not at all. Before long, new money was pouring in. Police inspectors, assigned to investigate Ponzi, ended up investing in his company. Even after the Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning expose, Ponzi managed to collect more than $5,000,000 in additional investments.

Now, at last, the forces of law closed in on Ponzi. It was discovered that he was an ex-convict who had served time as a forger. The United States Attorney moved for an indictment, and the Post Office, which had been working undercover on the case, revealed the extent of its investigation. Still, Ponzi remained unruffled. Leaving Simon Swig’s Tremont Trust Company, he was asked by a reporter if he would mind disclosing how much he had withdrawn. “No, I don’t mind,” Ponzi replied airily. “Almost $200,000.” It was left to the treasurer, looking with distaste at his unwelcome customer, to furnish the exact total. “It was $185,600,” reported Ben Swig, who as usual had everyone’s finances – including a swindler’s – at his fingertips.

Ponzi was indicted on 86 counts by the Federal government. He spent the next three and a half years in prison for mail fraud. Released, he tried to launch a comeback with a “200 percent profit” land swindle in Florida, was jailed again, and in 1934 deported to Italy. He died in 1949 in a Rio de Janeiro charity ward, blind in one eye and partly paralyzed. When his effects were settled, it was discovered he had left an estate of $75. Few who read his obituary even knew who the little swindler was.

The Power of Shiva

Brian Blum — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 06:13:04 -0400

I have paid many shiva calls but I never truly realized how important they are until I sat on the other side of the chair.

My father, Walter Blum, died on a Sunday. He was buried on Wednesday. I sat shiva for one day in California at my parents’ home. Then I returned to Israel to complete the mourning process with my community in Jerusalem.

My first act of shiva came Saturday night after the Ma’ariv minyan (the evening prayer) that was held in our living room. As I sat down in the low chair prescribed by Jewish law, wearing my ritually torn shirt, some 25 eyes, many of them strangers, bore down on me.

The tradition is that those who come to comfort the mourner do not speak first. It is up to the bereaved to direct the conversation. Never having done this before, I nervously began to tell of my father’s last days, of how he went from diagnosis to death in less than three weeks.

When I paused, about half of the men and women present got up to leave. I breathed a sigh of relief. Surrounded now by just close friends, I was able to open up.

Over the next two and a half days, I shared stories about my father. At first I was timid. But the more I did it, repeating the same words and answering the same questions, I became more “polished.” I perfected my inflections; I even started doing voices.

Everyone experiences shiva differently. I know it sounds strange to say, but I actually had fun. To the point where one of our friends told me the following Shabbat “I really enjoyed the shiva. I felt like I got to know your father.”

And that was the point. My father was a performer. He started his career as a radio disc jockey. Then, as a journalist for 35 years, he had a magical way with words. By putting on my own “show,” I felt as if I was honoring his memory, celebrating his achievements with joy and verve.

And as I told the stories, I learned even more about who my father was and how much he shaped who I am today.

My father grew up in New York in a modest apartment on W. 83rd Street in a Conservative home. His parents went to synagogue and kept two sets of dishes. But Dad was an iconoclast. As soon as he left the house for college, he rushed to the first non-kosher restaurant he could find and ordered a bacon double cheeseburger. He never looked back.

Dad received an M.A. in Music Composition from Columbia University. During his 10-year career in radio, he played classical music on air and hosted a “romantic” morning show. It was during a gig in Philadelphia that he met my mother. She had fallen in love with his voice on the radio even before they met at a local Jewish students social.

My parents moved to California a month before I was born. My father intended to get another radio job but the town was unionized and he couldn’t find one. Instead he took a part time job at the San Francisco Examiner. They liked him and eventually he became the senior feature writer for the Sunday magazine.

(My own experience paralleled my father’s in many ways: I also intended to pursue a career in radio after college but came to Israel where, in 1984, there was only one rock and roll station…in Hebrew, plus the Voice of Peace, a pirate station broadcasting from a ship off the Tel Aviv coast. I didn’t come to Israel to work at sea. So I too turned to writing.)

My father’s real dream was to write a novel. So every night, he would retire to his den and work for two hours on his old IBM Selectric typewriter. When he’d finished a book, usually after a couple of years of work, he would retype it with carbon paper, then carefully place the original in a box, put a rubber band around it and ship it off in search of an agent.

We would then wait and wait. Inevitably the box would return. There would be a few days of depression. But Dad was tenacious and another book was always on the way. If there were blogs in the 1960, I imagine my dad would have written a very good one.

He did publish one book, a commissioned work on the life of Benjamin Swig, a well-known banker and philanthropist in San Francisco. As we were looking over the book during the shiva, one of the guests flipped to Chapter 3 which was all about a man named Charles Ponzi – yes, that Ponzi – whose actions eventually forced a bank owned by the Swig family into bankruptcy. It was fascinating to read a fresh account of the original Ponzi that wasn’t primarily a comparison with international scammer Bernard Madoff. (I’ll post an excerpt from the book in an upcoming blog.)

In addition to writing, I’m sure my passion for music also came from my father, though our preferred genres differed. When I was a teenager, I tried valiantly to convince my father that Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen was on a level with Beethoven and Schubert. I never won that argument, but now my 11-year-old son Aviv is convinced that Queen’s 1975 ode to histrionics is one of the greatest songs ever written.

My father arrived home from work every day at exactly 5:25 PM. Dinner was served precisely at 5:30 PM. We ate together every night and were expected to talk. Dad took the role as itinerant professor, leading us through discussions on science, history, philosophy, politics (a lot of ranting about Richard Nixon) and religion (a superstitious anachronism of a primitive era).

Those dinnertime debates instilled in my brother and me a life long passion for intellectual pursuit. I can see that now as I try to keep things lively around the Shabbat table. More recently, in the computer age, Dad’s emails have been a constant source of call and response. I will sorely miss our electronic back and forth.

My father’s life wasn’t easy. He was disabled as a child from polio and although he was able to walk well – albeit slowly – for many years, as he grew older an ailment known as “post polio syndrome” set in and he found himself combined to a wheelchair. That made him crotchety for sure, but he could also be quite the charmer, something that many of the residents of my parents’ retirement community cited when they paid their shiva visits.

Above all, he was a fighter. When the cancer was raging in his body, he was given the choice to do nothing (in which case, the doctors said, he had anywhere from three weeks to three months) or to try chemo which would be very hard on his body but that could give him up to a year more. He opted for the latter. It’s probably what killed him in the end.

My father wasn’t perfect by any means. Although he liked my writing (and edited the articles I wrote for the local newspaper while I was growing up mercilessly), he rarely said “good job” or “that’s a nice paragraph.” I don’t remember him ever saying “I love you.” Emotion wasn’t his thing.

That was hard for me. So hard, in fact, that I’ve spent much of the last 30 years being angry at my father for what I didn’t get, losing sight of what I did.

And that’s why shiva has been so profoundly moving. It was an opportunity to reconnect with the good. To appreciate how he positively influenced my brother and me.

140 friends came to visit during the short time I was back in Israel. The more I spoke, the more the things that hurt began to fade away. Now it seems so foolish, to have spent all that energy on something that ultimately proved so unimportant. It propelled me to hold individual talks with each of my kids on the importance of communicating now, not just at the end.

At the end of shiva, our friend Rabbi Ruth Kagan facilitated a “getting up” ceremony. Several close friends shared words of wisdom. Then they physically pulled me up out of my low chair. I changed out of my torn shirt and they accompanied me in my first walk outside since we re-started shiva at home.

When shiva is over, you’re supposed to go back to work. I had a meeting in Tel Aviv and my business partner was frantically calling to tell me about an important presentation we had scheduled for the next day.

But I wasn’t ready. I had spent the last week in a fog, thinking and talking about nothing other than my father. I was constantly surrounded by people. Now I was without that framework but I was still grieving, I felt lost, confused. During shiva, I kept my composure. Three days letter, after watching a stupid Jim Carrey movie, I broke down into hysterical sobbing. The post-shiva period has turned out to be far more difficult than the shiva itself.

I will never forget the shiva experience. It was without question one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever done. Judaism got this one spot on right. Of course no one wants to have to sit shiva, but when the time comes, being part of a supportive community makes all the difference.

My father’s name now lives in Jerusalem as well as San Francisco. My fervent hope is that I’ve brought a taste of who he was to my friends and community here in Israel.

------------------

An obituary for Walter Blum appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle last week. Here's the link.

Shiva Limbo

Brian Blum — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:23:34 -0400

The most disconcerting thing about my trip to the U.S. for my father’s funeral was the “pre-shiva” period (known in Hebrew as aninut).

Shiva is the seven days stipulated by Jewish tradition for mourning following burial. My father died on a Sunday. But the funeral didn’t take place until Wednesday.

The official reason was that it took time to process all the paperwork. The cemetery wouldn’t start digging a grave until they had an official death certification. But doctors generally don’t work on Sunday, so we had to wait until Monday and then it took until the end of the day to get everything processed.

In the meantime, my mother, my brother and his wife, and I found ourselves in a kind of a limbo. Dad was dead but the formal shiva didn’t start for two more days. What were we supposed to do? No one quite knew.

Should we be all happy and normal? Maybe go shopping? I’m not near a big American mall all that often and I needed some new jeans. Would a quick trip to Sears be inappropriate? My mother suggested a movie. She had a video from Netflix she had to return. Eventually we settled on a board game. My father loved games.

Mind you, it’s not like we didn’t have anything to do. I arrived Monday afternoon and within a few hours we had met with Rabbi George Schlesinger from Congregation Beth Ami, the local Conservative synagogue. He was wonderful, able to bridge my brother and mother’s less observant world and my more traditional concerns.

On Tuesday morning we dealt with the funeral preparations.

Carol, our funeral home “salesperson” (for lack of a better term), was as personable and chipper as could be under the circumstances. “Hello and welcome to Daniel’s Chapel of the Roses Funeral Home and Crematory,” she burst out with an ear-to-ear smile. “We’re here to help you with everything you need.” And then, while patting my mother on the shoulder, she added “Oh, so sorry for your loss. Now let’s take care of business,” she exclaimed, returning back to perky persona.

Despite her abundantly outgoing nature, Carol was patient and professional as she explained to us how the funeral home itemizes everything into products and services. “Services” include caring for the body, refrigeration and transport. The main “product” is the casket which is jarringly priced like a holiday sale in a clothing store – for example, $1,595…plus California sales tax of 8.5%, for a total of $1722.60.

The caskets can cost up to nearly $7,000 for a deluxe model made out of steel and mahogany. Now, Daniel’s isn’t a Jewish funeral home – there are none in the small Northern California town of Santa Rosa where my parents live – but there is a corner containing several plain pine caskets appropriate for a traditional Jewish burial.

My mother was already reeling from the price of the funeral – the total eventually came out to close to $8,000. “We’ll take that one,” she told Carol, pointing at the perfectly acceptable basic model.

Next stop was Santa Rosa Memorial Park. Tim, the cemetery guy, had the same demeanor as Carol – charming and upbeat, a quiet “so sorry” and a pat on the shoulders, then down to work. I suppose it couldn’t be any other way. If you spent all day sporting a deliberately dour expression, you’d quickly go mad.

We drove to the small Jewish section where our task here was to pick out Dad’s plot. Did we prefer a location near the bench or the tree? How about next to the road?

The biggest issue was whether Mom would buy two plots or one. She had long held that she wanted to be cremated – only $1,695 plus an urn starting at $80, according to the 8-page Daniel’s price list. Now she wasn’t so sure. There was a discount on the second plot if you “pre-pay.” It was all so much, coming at us at a time when we scarcely in the frame of mind to make these types of eternal business decisions.

One other comment from Tim: all graves in California are required by law to be lined and covered with concrete, something that’s frowned upon by Jewish tradition because it prevents the grave from being filled in entirely with earth. The reason? Flooding. A few years back there were some intense rains and a number of coffins residing in a cemetery built on a hill went sliding down into the backyards of local residents.

We went home and had lunch, but my day wasn’t done yet. I had missed seeing Dad before he died. Now, I decided I wanted to see Dad in the funeral home. I had asked the rabbi if that was halachic – he said there was no clear direction as not much had been written about the subject in Jewish literature - but I knew I needed to say goodbye in person.

Dad was lying on a bed in the corner of a large room. There was a curtain, couches and flowers. He was alone – no shomerim to guard over him (they would come that night as part of the services provided by the local chevra kadisha). Dad’s face looked much more gaunt than when I’d last seen him at my brother’s wedding a year and a half ago. He wasn’t wearing his glasses.

I started to talk to Dad, at first in a whisper, but steadily I gained the confidence to speak in an almost conversational tone. Tears flowed down my face as I reviewed his life, our times together, his challenges and his successes.

As I walked out, I kept turning back, filling up another tissue. I’d reach for the door, then turn again. I knew once I walked out, I would never see Dad again. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

By the time the funeral was held the next morning, I was more composed. It was an entirely “kosher” funeral. We did everything you’re “supposed” to do – tearing kri’ah (or ripping a garment), saying Kaddish and walking out between two lines.

We returned to my mother’s house and began the shiva. A friend of my mom brought over a tray of cheese and crackers, bagels and fruit. Another made brownies. Many residents from the retirement community where my parents moved 9 months ago stopped in to pay their condolences. A surprising number of my friends made the hour and a half trip up from Berkeley. Later in the day, Rabbi Schlesinger came back to lead an egalitarian minyan for Ma’ariv (the evening prayer) where we said Kaddish again.

It was clear that there would be no more formal shiva the next day. People were already moving on. My brother had generously offered to go through paperwork with my mother and to set her up on the computer (Dad had always handled all the email communication). Mom had started negotiating with the retirement community management to secure a smaller apartment.

But I wanted to sit a complete seven-day shiva. I didn’t want to work. Going for a run didn’t seem right. What would I do all day? There are only so many hours you can surf the Internet.

It’s become traditional for members of our community in Jerusalem to try to “finish” shiva at home with friends and family, even if just for a few days. I wanted to honor Dad’s memory by telling stories about his life to our friends waiting in Israel.

Plus my family needed me. Jody had been fighting pneumonia the entire time I was gone, and the kids were quite broken up over the loss of their grandfather. I re-booked my ticket and headed out at 4:00 AM for the drive back to the airport and a morning flight.

I felt guilty about leaving so quickly. My mother was stoic – “don’t worry about me, I’ll be OK, I’ll sit here in the dark.” OK, she didn’t say the last line, but you get the point.

And my mother is in a good place. She has tons of new friends in the retirement community. It’s a very upscale place. My brother calls it the “cruise ship.” There’s a small library, a private movie theater with plush leather chairs and popcorn, a fitness center and even a man-made lake with paddle boats. Instead of an ordinary dining hall, there’s a restaurant with waiters, menus, daily specials and an executive chef. And there are tons of trips and activities - visits to museums and the theater. Last month they went to the City to see Wicked.

Dad loved it too. One of the saddest things is that he only got to be there for 9 months. On the other hand, his last months were very good ones.

When I was saying my goodbye to Dad in the funeral home, I found myself trying to make some sense of it all. He looked so singular, so disconnected in death. But then I began to imagine him differently. A part of something bigger. It’s kind of cliché to say that if Dad wasn’t there, neither would my brother or I be around. But it’s true. Dad was his own person of course. But he was also a critical link in the continuity of the Jewish people. Dad was the result of 4,000 years of Jewish history. And his children will be responsible for the next 4,000…this time in Israel.

I don’t know if Dad – a proud Jew but never one who yearned to visit the Holy Land - would have seen it that way. But it gave me some peace, some closure. Maybe that’s what’s meant by the phrase traditionally said to the bereaved, “may you be comforted by the mourners of Zion.”

Marathon Man

Brian Blum — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 07:56:10 -0400

I had planned on running in the Jerusalem Half Marathon last week. Instead, I found myself running half way around the world in a frantic attempt to kiss my father one last time before he died.

The sprint from the diagnosis of cancer to his final days went alarmingly fast – less than three weeks from start to finish. There was barely any time to think through treatment courses, let alone work out emotions that were hitting our family like blunt objects hurled with laser precision.

One moment he couldn’t breathe, the next he was starting chemo and the oncologist was optimistic. Then he stopped eating.

When the call finally came to “get on a plane now,” my mother wasn’t sure he’d even know who I was when I got there….if I arrived in time. Over Shabbat, he had told my mother he just wanted to go to sleep and not wake up.

It all happened so fast. Just 4 days earlier, my mother had asked the doctor if her son in Israel should come. No, the doctor said. He has time.

As my Delta flight wound its way to the U.S., I prepared myself by pouring through “Wrestling with the Angel,” a pluralistic compilation of essays about Jewish approaches to death and morning edited by Rabbi Jack Riemer. I took notes to share with my family when I arrived in preparation for what now seemed inevitable.

Q: Why do we tear kri’ah, an article of clothing, when a person dies? A: It’s a very graphic act that serves to remind the mourner of the importance of life at a time of loss.

Q: How should one act at a shiva (bereavement) visit? A: Don’t turn it into a cocktail party with finger food where the mourners have to play “host” and everyone avoids talking about what’s most important.

Q: Why is it traditional to put stones not flowers on the gravesite? A: Stones are permanent and more appropriate for preserving memory. Flowers wither away.

With my head swimming in Jewish thought and the exhaustion of being up all night, I switched on my cell phone as the plane landed in New York. It rang almost immediately. Jody was on the line.

While I was in the air, Dad had died, she said. My mother, my brother and his wife Jen were there at the end and saw him take his last breath. Jody was crying. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

Somehow I had a sinking feeling that this would happen, that he would pass away while I was en route. I reviewed my flight options. The only way I could have gotten there in time was if I’d rushed to the airport immediately after I spoke to my mother at 10:15 PM on Saturday night and went from counter to counter looking for a open seat on the midnight flight to New York before they closed the gates.

In the meantime, I still had another plane trip to go. The next six hours on the way to San Francisco were among the hardest I’ve ever experienced. I was fighting back the tears the whole time, in order not to alarm the flight attendants.

I had so much I had wanted to share with my father. Even if he didn’t understand a word, I wanted to hold his hand, to tell him I could have been a better son, to forgive him for his own shortcomings, to say I love you one more time.

In our last major conversation since the diagnosis, Dad told me that this wasn’t the way he wanted to die. He didn’t want it to be drawn out and painful. He wanted to die at home not in the hospital. And it was too soon. He was only 81. He still had things he wanted to do.

But death of course doesn’t play by a schedule. If there’s anything I’ve learned by the process so far, it’s that we’re not in control. Dad had his expectations of how he’d die; I had my vision of saying goodbye.

Some might say it’s all in God’s hands. I’d simply say it’s not in ours.

Drive-in

Brian Blum — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:15:56 -0400

My son is now a driver.

Those six words are probably as significant, if not more - at least to him - than becoming a bar mitzvah. When you’re 13, you get counted in a minyan but other than that it’s just another day in 7th grade.

But 17…that’s the year you transcend being a mere passenger to taking command of a 3,000 pound metal death machine and hurtling it through – and against - the most dangerous waters in the world: the Israeli highway.

I’m so proud.

Fortunately, Amir is very good behind the wheel. He makes complete stops, always signals, and keeps to the speed limit – things that, after more than 30 years on the road, I am sometimes less pedantic about.

He ought to. After 49 lessons, Amir is surely ready for anything the streets of Jerusalem throw at him.

I of course am a nervous Nelly in the car with him, though I try my best not to show it. When I jerk my head back and forth, I’m not checking the intersection for oncoming cars. No, I’m just stretching my neck a bit, keeping it limber.

Learning to drive in Israel is very different than back in the old country. The most obvious: the driving age is 17, not 16. And, unlike in California where I grew up, you can’t get a learner’s permit before you take the test. You can’t even start lessons until you’re of age.

And they’re expensive too. For those 49 50-minute lessons, we paid NIS 90 (about $22) each. The test is nearly $100 and it’s pretty much unheard of for a student to pass on the first time. I heard of at least one Israeli who had to take that darn exam 11 times before getting her license (I would have given up on 8 and resigned myself to taking the bus).

Fortunately, new immigrant drivers who already have a license from a Western country only have to take one lesson before the test and don’t need to pass a written theory exam. Jody and I both passed the first time through.

Israeli testers are a tough bunch. You fail if you make just a single mistake. Amir pulled out too far on his first go and the examiner tapped the brakes. Buzz…you’re out.

The whole process has made me more tolerant of the tens of “learner” cars that prowl our southern Jerusalem neighborhood, slowing down the already clogged streets and generally driving me to distraction.

When I was 15, we had lessons in school. They were free. And we spent half our time in a simulator. This was before video games were widespread, so getting to play what was essentially an educational arcade video game was a real treat.

I nevertheless only received a B+ in driver’s ed. It dragged down my entire GPA and ruined my chances of being selected as class “brain” for the high school yearbook. Maybe that was a good thing.

A couple of weeks after getting my license, I scraped into a poll at the entrance to a local drive-in movie theater (does anyone remember those?), forever blighting our nearly new Dodge Custom Coronet. Don’t worry, though, you can get in the car with me. I’m quite proficient these days. Really.

Once you get your license here, you can only drive with an adult for the first three months. So we’re taking every opportunity to let Amir get behind the wheel for the experience.

But having a teenager driver, well, it drives up the insurance significantly. Like, $1,500 a year on top of the $900 we’re already paying for just Jody and me. And mind you, we have a 14-year-old vehicle already, so we barely even pay beyond the mandatory liability coverage.

Fortunately, the insurance company has a special deal. If your child drives no more than 60 hours a year (approximately 5 hours a month – perfect for army age kids who are only home every other weekend), the price drops to just $250 a year.

How do they track how many hours - the honor system maybe? No way. This is hi-tech Israel. Every time Amir gets in the car, he’ll have to send a text message to a special number. When he gets out, he SMS’s again. Bizarre, but I guess it works.

In the back of our car there now hangs on the window a yellow “New Driver” sign. Apparently it’s mandatory. I had thought it was meant to torture the average impatient Israeli by making it harder to honk and scream if they know it’s a newbie.

I admit, I sometimes became one of those ugly Israelis. But no more. After all, it could very well be my own son in one of those cars.

Getting Through the Night

Brian Blum — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:08:00 -0400

It was Purim evening and Jody and I went dancing. It was an exhilarating night out as thousands of revelers, young and old, from around the country, came to shake and bounce and twirl to free form world music until the wee hours of the night at the post-Megillah Boogie Jerusalem annual extravaganza. We stayed until 2:00 AM.

When we got home there was a message on our answering machine. It was from my mother. Her words were stark.

The doctors didn’t know if Dad would make it through the night, but he did, and now he was in stable condition.

Wouldn’t make it through the night? The previous update was that the surgery he had to remove fluid from his collapsed lung had gone well, that he was weak but in good shape. When we left for Boogie, all signs were that things with my father were looking up.

I called my mother on her cell phone. It went into voice mail. I called my brother. His office manager said he had stepped out to lunch. I was plunged into uncertainty, lacking the basic data to even know how to feel.

When I finally spoke to my mother, she explained that my father wasn’t able to breathe but, ultimately, the doctors got his airways open. The severity of the attack, however, suggested that the cancer was moving more aggressively than originally thought. They would have to wait for the oncologist to know the full story.

My brother has been doing a great job trying to get answers. He camped out in the office of my father’s primary care physician until he squeezed himself in between appointments.

For me, it’s been incredibly frustrating being so far away and knowing so little. My mother said not to get on a plane…yet. My brother was more pessimistic. He felt that my father had already given up and was not fighting anymore. He had no appetite and was getting weaker and weaker.

When I spoke to Dad last night, though, he actually sounded pretty good, like his old self.

The oncologist finally came the next day. He said he’d been waiting on tests that had to be done outside of the hospital (why he couldn’t have communicated that instead of leaving us all in the dark for a week, I don’t know).

The news was good and bad. Dad wasn’t in immediate danger. He’d be starting chemo immediately, which hopefully will dry up the fluid in his lungs. But the cancer wasn’t curable, the oncologist said. The chemo could buy him another six months, maybe a year but not more.

When I told the kids the situation, 11-year-old Aviv asked if the treatment would hurt. We said yes. He then asked why his grandpa would want to put himself through such suffering if he knew he was going to die anyway.

Maybe he wasn’t ready yet, I responded. Maybe he needed time to say his goodbyes.

That’s not going to be so easy for my father and me. Since we made aliyah, our communication has mostly been via email – jokes, personal updates, political rants. Now, it seems, the relationship needs to be flipped on its head, morphing from analytical to emotional overnight.

But how do you suddenly talk about feelings vs. facts after so many years? It might be easier if I lived nearby, but popping in for a few days and then flying out again makes the task doubly difficult.

In the meantime, I’m trying my best to participate in his care from afar, Yesterday, I checked out the local synagogue websites.

My mother called a Rabbi Schlesinger from Congregation Beth Ami, a Conservative synagogue, to discuss burial options. There is no Jewish cemetery in their area, he explained, nor any Jewish funeral homes. There is apparently a small Jewish section in the Santa Rosa cemetery.

To my surprise, though, there is a cross-denominational Chevra Kadisha which helps families make arrangements and advises them concerning traditional practices and requirements. This includes shmirah (guarding) and taharah (purification) of the body, preparing condolence meals, and putting together a minyan to say Kaddish.

There’s also the local Chabad emissary who arrived in the hospital on Purim day bearing hamantaschen and singing cheerful songs. He told my mother he’d be available to help with whatever they needed. I’m not a Chabadnik by any means, but bless them for the outreach they provide.

Before Dad took this turn for the worse, I suggested he write a blog himself, to chronicle his experience, like Rivka Matitya who I wrote about here last week. Dad was, after all, a journalist, working for the San Francisco Examiner for nearly 35 years.

He didn’t sound particularly interested. That’s not surprising. He’s got so much hitting him all at once right now. And it’s only been a week since the initial diagnosis. So for now at least, my posts, from 7,000 miles and 10 time zones away, will have to do.

I want to end by thanking all of my readers who have written with words of support over the last week. It means so much to me in this state of confusion.

I’ll be in touch again soon.

Using Social Media When the News is Bad

Brian Blum — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:46:48 -0500

When my brother called at 7:30 AM, I knew something was wrong. We had already made a plan to speak at 8:00 PM that night to discuss some work we are doing together. What could be so urgent about revising a project plan?

Dad had been diagnosed with lymphoma that morning, my brother said. It was too early to tell how far it had spread, what stage it’s in, what the course of treatment would be, or even what type of lymphoma he had out of the dozens of variations.

Nevertheless, I felt my heart drop into my stomach. I was stunned. My brother and I discussed what we should do next. We resolved to speak regularly as news came in. I took a long hot shower. I felt my eyes get misty, but it could have been the steam.

My next thought, though, caught me by surprise. I felt a strong need to spread the word via social media. I intuitively knew I had to blog about it. I updated my Facebook status and posted to my Twitter account.

The responses came in quickly. Suggestions on who to talk to, where to look for more information. Personal reflections on their own experiences. Words of support.

I have been using social media since 2002 when I started this blog. Over the years, my readership has grown to include people from California to Australia, most of whom I’ve never met.

My subscribers have shared in my parenting triumphs and political ruminations. Restaurant reviews, travelogues and hi-tech profiles. They have, in many ways, become like an extended family. So it was only logical that I would want to draw some comfort from the community.

I’m certainly not the first to use social media this way.

My friend Rivka Matitya has been blogging about her own cancer at the Coffee and Chemo site. While most of her posts are about trying to lead a normal life - being a mom, paying board games, swimming – some are more grim.

Lying in bed at 1:00 AM with the computer in her lap makes her feel "less isolated and less sorry for myself,” she said in an article last year in the Jerusalem Post. Writing the blog also helps her explore certain ideas that are easier written down than shared in conversation.

“By being able to write about it and put it out there, that was the first step toward articulating those fears about breaking down, and that was very important - I can discuss it now, talk to somebody about it without sobbing," she said.

Another cancer patient interviewed in the Post described the online experience this way: Her writing, she said, “was an outlet for me to write down whatever I feel without fear of being judged for showing weakness.” Perhaps appropriately, when she went into remission, she received the news from her mother electronically – via SMS.

In addition to individual blogs, there are also a number of dedicated online communities - such as MyCancerPlace, What Now? and NPR’s Our Cancer - where individuals can come together to share stories and advice, post pictures, and interact with other members via forums and groups.

It’s impossible to say what’s coming next for my dad. The one thing I know for sure: You’ll be reading more about it online.

When it Comes to QA, Trust the Crowd

Brian Blum — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 03:10:43 -0500

As head of a technology startup a few years ago, one of the most important components of our software development was quality assurance - the process of looking for bugs and reporting them to the programmers to fix.

Like most startups, we were on a pretty tight budget. Hiring a team of two to three QA staff would have cost a chunk of money we didn't have. So I wound up doing the checking myself, on top of all my other founder duties, putting in 80-hour weeks pouring through spreadsheets and bug tracking software.

Would that uTest were around at the time.

uTest is a new Israeli startup with a unique mission: to allow both small companies and more established ones to save money by "crowdsourcing" all their QA needs.

Crowdsourcing refers to the idea that functions that were once performed by an individual or team within a company can be done more effectively - and for less expense - by outsourcing it to an undefined and generally large network of professionals via the Internet.

Using the wisdom of crowds

As the Internet has grown, applications for crowdsourcing has expanded along with it. Wikipedia is probably the best-known example: Thousands of volunteers have collaboratively created the world's most used encyclopedia. Other sites include Threadless.com, which aims to offer more fashionable t-shirts by opening up design to its community members, and CrowdSpirit which is using the "wisdom of crowds" to develop a range of $200 or less electronic devices.

uTest may turn out to the most profitable of the bunch - at least that's what Longworth Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital seem to think: they led a Series B funding round of $5 million in December last year. That's on top of $1.7 million the company raised earlier in the year.

uTest is playing in a lucrative field. According to research firm Gartner, software testing is a $13 billion business, and bugs cost US companies some $60 billion.

The uTest service is deceptively simple. Doron Reuveni, uTest's co-founder and CEO describes the process: A company posts a QA request to the uTest platform. uTest then disseminates the request to the 12,000 testers in its community. The company can limit the request to only certain types of testers it wants - mobile, Windows and Macintosh are some of the parameters - or it can browse testers' resumes and select only specific individuals.

Once a group of testers has signed up, the company needing the QA pays only when a bug is found and "approved" by the company. Payment is not static. Reporting a "showstopper" bug pays more than a lower level problem. Testers also earn more based on their past success records. The minimum average payment for a bug, Reuveni says, is $6-$7 but it can quickly climb to $20 or more.

Why wouldn't a company simply take the results of a tester, not approve it and therefore not have to pay a penny? "Companies want good results," Reuveni says. "If they don't approve bugs, testers won't come back. It's all based on the rules of a social community. We sometimes find companies paying the testers even if they reject the bug in order to keep them involved."

A fifth the cost of a QA employee

uTest requires that companies spend a minimum of $1,000 per month (they can of course spend much more if they want). The $1,000 amount usually results in about 50 approved bugs and 25-30 participating testers. It's a great deal, Reuveni explains. "$12,000 a year is a fifth of what a QA person in Israel would cost."

Software companies seem to like what uTest offers. In less than a year, uTest has signed up 50 customers. Clients include 888 (the world's largest gaming and casino company) and Babylon in Israel, Eminent in France, and Move Networks, Xobni and On24 in the US.

The 42-year-old Reuveni, who founded uTest with fellow Israeli Roy Solomon, knows what he's talking about. The Technion-educated Reuveni managed QA teams at companies including Blue Security and Enigma before starting uTest.

uTest doesn't have much competition. Companies can find individuals on sites like eLance and RentaCoder, but there's nothing like uTest's marketplace matching up virtual testing teams and the companies that need them. uTest also runs educational "webinars" and regular "bug battles" to give the testing community a fun break.

uTest can keep costs down, in part, by tapping into a community of testers in developing and less expensive countries. Jeff Howe, author of the book Crowdsourcing: Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business, points out that more than half of all freelance testers reside outside the United States.

The economic downturn, ironically, may serve to be a boon to uTest. With layoffs and cost cutting spreading across the high-tech world, a solution that actually reduces internal overhead will be hard to resist. uTest seems poised to survive the test of these tough times.

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This article originally appeared on Israel21.org.

"Getting Back in Touch" via Facebook - Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants

Brian Blum — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:33:35 -0500

Lately, my wife Jody and I have spent a lot of time getting in touch with old friends via Facebook. It started when I received a friend request from Larry. Larry and I were best buddies growing up. But after I moved away, we fell out of touch. I’ve looked for him from time to time via Google but never found any contact information. It had been 20 years since I last spoke with him. But through the wonder of social networking, we’re back in contact.

Larry connected me to another high school friend who connected me to a college colleague. It’s been a blast.

And it got Jody and I thinking: What if there had been a Facebook when we were teenagers some 30+ years ago. The whole concept of “getting back in touch” with old friends as we are doing now simply wouldn’t exist. We’d be connected from the start and would stay that way (unless we were "unfriended" for some unforgivable offense).

As we shared status updates, we’d always know what achievements the high school jock had attained, or what type of relationship an old flame was in (undoubtedly “it’s complicated”).

That’s just one of the differences between us old fogeys and the “digital natives” - a term from the book Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey, director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society - to describe young people born after 1980 for whom the Internet was already a given by the time they hit surfing age.

Lev Grossman at Time Magazine wrote a funny piece this week that echoes what I’m saying. He lists a number of reasons why social networking tools such as Facebook are even better for “digital immigrants,” as Palfrey refers to us, who didn’t grow up with social networking. Among his conclusions:

1. We’re no longer bitter about high school. Digital natives may be “hung up on any number of petty slights,” Grossman says, but when a person who insulted us way back when asks to friend us today, we say sure. Because we’re bigger than that now.

2. Facebook isn’t just a social network; it’s a business network. Sure, LinkedIn may “officially” be the professional social media tool, but it’s Facebook, with its 175 million users (and counting), where we make most of our work connections.

3. Facebook lets you share pictures of your children. Digital natives may be snapping shots of friends at school or the beach, but we’re just kvelling by posting albums of our grand kids.

4. Facebook means you don’t have to remember e-mail addresses. Just log on and search. You never have to leave the walled garden.

5. We’re more careful about our privacy. You won’t see us posting half-clothed drunken pictures of ourselves at a fraternity party that may lead to a potential employer, looking to vett a job candidate via Google, to disqualify us without even getting to the interview.

Indeed, the relationship to privacy is probably the biggest difference between digital immigrants and natives, the latter of whom have no problem living their lives entirely in public.

For example, my teenager daughter Merav last night bemoaned the fact that her grandparents asked about her new boyfriend. “That’s my private business,” she wailed. “They have no right going there.”

“But you posted it all in your status for everyone to see!” I countered. She stormed out of the room.

Now, in a controversial move that had the blogosphere up in arms this week, Facebook tried to quietly change its Terms of Service to so that if a member quits the site, his or her content will no longer be deleted.

The newly added clause read:

“The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook service: Prohibited conduct, user content, your privacy practices [and] gift credits,” among other types of data.

Facebook probably had no alternative: Once you post content, everyone else can see it and, as a result, it now becomes “owned” by the public. An example, from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a blog post defending the change:

“When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message.”

Not much of an apology, the blogosphere complained, and even The New York Times picked up the story.

In the end, the power of crowd won the day. Yesterday morning, every member’s Facebook home page included the following prominently placed message:

“Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.”

The drama is undoubtedly not over yet, but round one goes to The People.

Nevertheless, none of this is likely to change the way people use Facebook. Most younger Facebook users don’t care and it won’t be long before they’re out of school and in the mainstream. The Berkman Center’s Palfrey points out, going back to the job interview example, that soon “employers are going to be digital natives themselves and [will] be a lot more lenient about what tattoos [i.e., those incriminating photos] may still show up.”

Even as a relative newcomer to Facebook, I’m not going to complain because I get so much out of the system. If I ask a business question, I immediately get a slew of responses. If I post that I’ve caught a cold (like I did this week), in come the condolences from around the world (a phenomena that goes a long way to helping span the wide divide between Israel and "the old country").

And when I want to get in touch with an old friend, like Larry, there’s nothing to compare. I’m living my life in public too. It’s just one more way the digital generation gap is blurring.

Click here to read the full interview with Palfrey.

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This article appeared earlier this week on the AIMGroup.com website where I blog about interactive media, social networking, online video and classified advertising.

The Case of the Purloined Ice Cream

Brian Blum — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:05:32 -0500

My wife Jody has been in the States for the last two weeks to celebrate her father’s 70th birthday, leaving me a “single parent” back in Israel. I’m pretty good at handling the day-to-day activities at home, taking care of the kids, keeping the house running. Except in one area.

The kitchen.

Frankly, I’m a total nincompoop when it comes to cooking. I imagine that if I lived alone with no family, I’d be the take out king. Chinese one night, falafel or schwarma the next. There’s no lack of fast food these days in Jerusalem. We even have our choice of upscale sushi bars.

But I have three growing kids who need a well-balanced meal, and money for eating out every night isn’t exactly flowing like Dead Sea water. So before Jody left, she made me a two-week schedule of meals along with a detailed shopping list.

The meals on the list were pretty simple. There was macaroni and cheese, pasta with cheese, grilled cheese toasts, burritos with cheese, lasagna with (you guessed it) cheese.

Actually, there wasn’t anything on the list that didn’t involve flour and cheese, except for one night when I was supposed to make “orange soup” with sweet potatoes, carrots and pumpkin. But it was a long day and I had two intense deadlines that were going to take me easily past midnight. So we ordered pizza instead...with extra cheese.

All of the starch was supposed to be balanced with a nice green salad. Emphasis on the “supposed to” part. I finally got around to cutting up some veggies at the end of the first week and then only when everyone was so constipated we could barely move.

There was also what I fondly like to call the Day of Disasters. It started when 17-year-old Amir and I were putting away the groceries. A large jar of oatmeal was perched just a tad too close to the edge of the pantry.

It crashed to the ground spewing glass and oats everywhere. I thought about scooping up the flakes into a new jar but I was worried that they might be too “crunchy.”

Then when I was carrying a bottle of olive oil to the table to dress the salad, it too slipped out of my hands, landing on a dinner plate and splattering all over 10-year-old Aviv’s pants. The bottle, thankfully, didn’t break, but the plate did.

Next, we sat down to what turned out to be a highly unusual dinner. Merav, our 15-year-old vegetarian daughter was eating out at a friend’s house, so I decided to treat the boys to some meat. At the store, a bag of what looked like meat-stuffed raviolis looked tempting. And a real change – no cheese this time!

I brought it home and heated it up, just like the instructions on the package said, then served the ravioli to my little carnivores. But something just didn’t seem right about it. The meaty dumplings looked forlorn on the plates. Maybe they needed some sort of sauce?

That’s when I realized it. These were kneidelach, meant to be served in soup not on their own. Everyone chuckled, Aviv came to my defense saying they were delicious, but I felt defeated.

As if it couldn’t get any worse, here was the coup de coup de grâce (or in our case the coup de glida): The case of the ice cream. Earlier in the day, we had bought a small carton of Ben & Jerry’s butter pecan. It’s our tradition that when we buy a decadent dessert, we always take a sample as soon as we get home.

Amir was the first in. He pulled off the top. The protective seal was open. He peeked inside. A large chunk was missing. He called down to Merav’s room – had she somehow sneaked in and snagged a bite while we were still bringing up groceries from the car?

No, she said. Same question to Aviv. “There’s ice cream?” he exclaimed.

Someone apparently had opened the ice cream in the store, scooped out a large spoonful, and put it back in the freezer. Both Amir and I instantly felt sick to our stomachs. We wondered if we had been poisoned.

Clearly this all was a conspiracy, a plot hatched in some evil fiend’s mind to make us miss Jody or, when we eventually told her the story, to compel her to take pity on us, rush back from her trip and cook up a nice pot of tofu and broccoli.

Ultimately we decided not tell Jody about our fortnight of eating badly…at least not immediately. Better she enjoys her time in the States fondly thinking of us as an independent and resourceful brood rather than a collection of culinarily-challenged cranks.

And truth be told, we survived just fine. No one was rushed to the emergency room or came down with rickets.

Jody returned last night. Jet lag may delay our departure from kitchen duty another day or so, but it won’t be long before we’re back to “normal life” and the boss is in charge again.

Welcome back sweetie. We’re glad your home!

And oh yes, when you go shopping next week, don’t forget to check the ice cream!