The fire started at two separate points. 100 KKL-JNR staff, nine fire trucks and five firefighting aircraft participated in the extensive operation. The fire spread towards nearby Hadassah Hospital where 23 vehicles in the hospital parking area were burned.

Roads were blocked for hours and some Ora and Aminadav residents were evacuated but returned during the night after the fire was successfully controlled and put out. All in all, it could have been much worse. One month earlier on June 29, the country experienced its most severe wave of fires since 2008. Which was the worst since 2006. And so on.

Like many arid regions, Israel’s hot, dry summer weather is an easy target for wildfires set both by accident and on purpose. KKL-JNF has become increasingly vigilant about protecting Israel’s forests, stating that it invests more than $5 million annually in fighting forest and field fires. This includes maintenance and operation of 22 firefighting vehicles with off-road capabilities, dozens of fire fighters on duty 24/7, communications systems and 30 fire watchtowers — also manned ’round the clock.

KKL-JNF also operates a forest fire risk forecast service, co-manages an aerial firefighting fund, conducts forest fire investigations and implements their conclusions. Because afforestation is what they do. Over the past 100-plus years, KKL-JNF has planted more than 200 million trees covering over 225,000 acres of land. So there is every hope that the Aminadav trail – seen here in its pre-fire state – will be that way again one day.

In addition to planting trees and protecting them from fire, KKL-JNF also develops regional parks and recreation areas, restores historical sites, rehabilitates springs and rivers, and builds roads and trails for hiking and biking. If you can’t get to Israel right away, there’s plenty to see on their YouTube channel, like this movie about the Ilanot Forest, a wheelchair accessible park and “Tree Museum”.

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It’s been a long time since I was at a gay parade – I used to regularly join the massive San Francisco event in the 1970s when I was growing up. That parade attracted hundreds of thousands of merry-makers. I wrote about it here.

The march in Jerusalem is much smaller, of course, it also has an added religious dimension. There were as many police than participants on hand Thursday; they were on guard against attacks like the one three years ago by an ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed three people.

This year, the protests included right wing groups holding cardboard cut-outs of donkeys, calling the event a parade of “bestiality.” The protesters had originally asked for a permit to bring live donkeys, which the police rejected.

That same religious element cuts the other way too, though – towards tolerance – and it’s part of what makes the parade in Jerusalem so unique. There were many men sporting kippot (yarmulkes) on their heads as well as women dressed in uber-modest Orthodox garb (long sleeves & skirts, tightly covered hair).

Other participants wore t-shirts reading “I’m proud to be religious” or carried signs indicating which religious high schools they attended including Jerusalem’s prestigious Orthodox Horev and Pelech schools.

The message was clear: don’t exclude us from any community, including the religious. It’s in keeping with a statement released this week by 150 Orthodox rabbis and educators including Rabbi Benny Lau and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin stating that “Jews with homosexual orientations or same sex-attractions should be welcomed as full members of the synagogue and school community

The parade was accompanied by a marching band with drum and bagpipe as it wound its way toward the Wohl Rose Garden overlooking the Knesset where a large stage was set-up for speeches and song.

But the mood turned somber as speakers recalled August 1, 2009, the day a shooter entered the Tel Aviv Bar Noar gay and lesbian youth center and killed two members, wounding 15 others. This year’s parade in Jerusalem was delayed several months to coincide with the anniversary of the Tel Aviv tragedy for which the assailant has yet to be found.

As Merav and I prepared to leave, we passed several booths selling souvenirs. Merav bought a multi-colored bracelet to show her support. But she also had her eye on a dog tag necklace with an Israeli flag, which I gladly purchased for her. After all, isn’t that what patriotism is all about: supporting equality for all Israelis no matter which shade paints their rainbow.

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The former NBA Rookie of the Year and current New York Knick recently disclosed that his mother was Jewish, and has publicly embraced his roots – peppering his Twitter updates with Hebrew and now visiting the country with his girlfriend Alexis.

“The Holy Land has always been high on my list of places to visit, and when this opportunity arose, I wasn’t going to push it off any longer,” Stoudemire told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, adding that he was “so excited to be here, see all the important historical sites, learn Hebrew and to get a better understanding of my heritage.”

Stoudemire, who spent the first eight years of his career with the Phoenix Suns, joins Joining New Jersey Nets’ point guard Jordan Farmar and Sacramento Kings’ forward Omri Casspi, Israel’s favorite son, as the NBA’s only Jewish players.

“The holy land. Learn about it,” he wrote on his Twitter feed, adding, “ze ha’halom sheli” – Hebrew for “this is my dream.”

“I don’t really consider myself to be a religious person, but rather a deeply spiritual individual,” Stoudemire told the Post. “I have been aware since my youth that I am a Hebrew through my mother, and that is something that has played a subtle but important role in my development.”

“I have never hid my spiritual roots,” he said. “They just weren’t something that came under the spotlight. I am proud to be a Hebrew and embrace my Jewish background.”

Stoudemire also said that he was hoping to learn some Hebrew on his visit here. Perhaps it could even help his upcoming NBA season. He could pick up some of the local colorful curse words and throw his opponents off guard in the middle of a game, as he swoops past them toward the basket. Score one for the Jewish guy!

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Oh, all right, let’s restate that and say for the small majority of Israelis who actually serve in the IDF, the institution is a great equalizer. Just look at the names and hometowns of the air force men who died in this week’s helicopter training accident in Romania – a 48-year-old father from Modi’in, a young kibbutznik, another from a moshav, a Rehovot resident. When a tragedy like befalls the country, we all feel it, because the victims are not just faceless soldiers, but somebody’s neighbor.

Another way that the army evens things out is in its lack of favoritism in its treatment of soldiers. That even goes for soldiers who happen to be the son of the prime minister.

Yediot Aharonot reported today that Yair Netanyahu, the son of PM Binyamin Netanyahu, was recently handed a 10-day detention sentence after showing up late at the IDF Spokesperson’s Office headquarters, where he serves. After the young Netanyahu appealed his sentence, a senior officer at the base lopped two days off the punishment.

Military officials told Yediot that Netanyahu was being treated just like any other soldier. “He was tried for an incident for which any other soldier would have been tried and received adequate punishment,” one source said.

Yair should be applauded for not throwing his family name around and receiving special treatment, not that it would help in any case. However, given his intense schedule and shoulder-dropping responsibilities, it’s a surprise that the elder Netanyahu hasn’t taken his son’s hint and blown off a couple meetings. After all, who’s going to ground him?

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This is the test which I wrote about earlier, with a five month waiting list. And thanks to good old Israeli protekzia, I got it whittled down to three weeks.

Someone was already in the examining room of the professor who conducts the test, and he went a bit beyond the scheduled time of my appointment. No problem.

When the patient did leave, instead of calling me in, the professor made a phone call, which I heard through the door, which had been left ajar.

He began a conversation, apparently with a travel agent. Evidently, from what we could glean, he had booked a two-week trip to some European destination, and was upset over fees that the agent had added beyond the cost of the trip.

My wife and I shared glances at what seemed to be an appropriation of work time for a personal matter, but we went back to listening.

It seemed pretty straightfoward, but the professor kept going over the points again and again, getting more blustery as he went, as the person on the other end of the conversation apparently wasn’t backing down like he expected. This went on for 20 minutes!

Meanwhile, another patient for the slot after me had arrived, and was now waiting along with me. I looked at him, smiled and shrugged, as we could hear the professor’s agitated voice wafting out of the open door.

My wife finally turned to me and said, “Can you imagine a clerk at a store, or someone in customer service ignoring a client or customer for 20 minutes and making a personal call? What gives a medical professional the right?”

I was more worried that he was going to be in a bad mood when he finally finished the call, and he was the guy in charge of the shocks being administered to me.

He finally did hang up, I went in, and he was out in 10 minutes. His bedside manner was on par with his phone manners, and I left realizing you can have a title like professor attached to your name and still have no idea what’s going on.

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Actress Sharon Fauster emcee'd a Tu B'av fashion show in Jerusalem

Tu B’av – the fifteenth day of the Jewish month of Av – is the closest Israelis have to a Valentine’s Day: just substitute a bit of ribald wisdom from the rabbis of the Talmud for a martyred Roman saint and a lot of cuddly Cupids.

According to tradition (and Wikipedia), on Tu B’av, “unmarried girls would dress in simple white clothing (so that rich could not be distinguished from poor) and go out to sing and dance in the vineyards surrounding Jerusalem.” Young men who had not yet married would “go to watch and choose among them wives for themselves.”

That spirit of joy and free love has been expanded over the years. This week, the City of Jerusalem pulled out all the stops with a jam-packed evening of Tu B’av events at the German Colony’s Beit Yehudit community and cultural center.

The evening featured a marathon of movies with “love” as a theme; a festive world music dance party put on by the Boogie organization; a provocative lecture entitled “Forbidden Love in the Talmud” by Dr. Micha Friedman; and a special concert by former Friends of Natasha co-founder and front man Micha Shitrit hosted by rocker Erez Lev-Ari.

The most popular event of the evening was the concert. An only-in-Jerusalem mix of secular and religious young adults (my wife Jody joked that we brought the average age of the crowd up by several percent) packed the grass to cheer on Lev-Ari who deftly blends spiritual and physical longing in his atmospheric compositions.

But before the show started, TV star Sharon Fauster, who played the lovelorn Reut in the popular series Srugim about religious singles in the very neighborhood where the event was taking place, took to the stage to introduce a Tu B’av-inspired “white” fashion show.

Onto the improvised catwalk paraded four models in skimpy miniskirt and strapless ensembles. They paraded and preened, blowing kisses to the crowd and tossing back their heads of ample (and mostly blond) hair.

The audience shifted uncomfortably. You could see some of the religious men (not the women, mind you) look around, avert their eyes and even get up to step out until the show was over. Others lapped it all up – Jerusalem doesn’t see a lot of long legged, high-heeled models strolling the Ben Yehuda Pedestrian Mall (they’d probably get stoned, and not in a Tel Aviv kind of way).

Then a strange thing happened: about half way through, the models started wearing scarves and jackets. The cleavage, which had been so abundant just moments before, was now obscured (although tastefully and still in white, in keeping with the evening’s Tu B’av theme).

Jody and I couldn’t figure it out. Was this part of the show? Or did someone run backstage brandishing fashionable cover-ups? Was this subtle religious coercion, along the lines of the Bridge of Strings debacle, where a pre-teen dance troop was forced to wear sweaters while going through their routines in order not to offend local sensibilities? Or was the point to demonstrate that Jerusalemites could be both sexy and modest at the same time?

Indeed, the scarves and jackets didn’t seem alien – in most cases, they served as nicely matching accessories rather than some hastily improvised capitulation.

We may never know (I’m not on a first name basis with Fauster…yet – I did try to friend her Facebook). So I can only report what I saw from first hand observation – and, oh yes, I stayed firmly in my seat, eyes forward.

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Two and a half years to plan, two and a half years to execute at a cost of $100 million. But on Sunday, Israel’s leading museum and one of the world’s best – the Israel Museum - completed its intensive renovations and unveiled its new, sleek look.

Last week, amid workmen with hardhats, drills, paint and much tumult, the museum’s longtime director James S. Snyder, who masterminded the elaborate facelift, showed reporters around the new facilities.

Featuring the comprehensive renovation and reconfiguration of the museum’s three collection wings – the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Archaeology Wing, the Edmond and Lily Safra Fine Arts Wing, and the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Wing for Jewish Art and Life – as well as the reinstallation of its encyclopedic collections, the overhaul of the country’s flagship museum was a labor of love for Snyder.

“Our idea was to celebrate, invigorate and realize the original vision for the powerful site and setting,” he said.

And that, he succeeded in doing. Much more than a facelift, it’s more like a rebirth of the 45-year-old museum, which was originally built as a project by the venerable late mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek.

Overseen by James Carpenter Design Associates of New York and Efrat Kowalsky Architects of Tel Aviv, the architects were determined to complement to the original museum, designed by Alfred Mansfeld and Dora Gad.

The spectacular results of Carpenter’s and Kowalsky’s efforts will become evident to anyone who visits the museum. Arrivals will no longer have to brave the scorching sun or blustery wind and rain on the uphill outside Carter’s Promenade to make their way from the entrance to the displays.

A new, glass-enclosed, temperature-controlled route of passage situated directly below the promenade brings visitors into the lowest level of a new three-story gallery entrance pavilion, providing centralized access to the Museum’s three collection wings and temporary exhibition galleries on its main floor.

With fewer objects on display and almost twice the space the view them, the feeling of claustrophobic overload has been replaced by open spaces and logical presentation.

“The renewal of the preexisting architecture is about the complete reordering of the preexisting museum in order to double our collection galleries from 100,000 square feet to 200,000,” said Snyder, stressing that the redesign ultimately focused on quality of the content – “the reordering within our existing campus and providing a unique experience of the march through material cultural time.”

The museum, which is open to the public as of Monday, will be celebrating with a full week of public programs and events, including concerts, activities for children, and programs featuring artists, writers and performers.

Always a crown jewel in the moasic of Jerusalem, the Israel Museum will now undoubtedly join the pantheon of the world’s top museums and become a magnet for any visitor to Israel.

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Perhaps it stemmed from Palmachnik prudishness but early Israeli romantic ballads were generally solo songs of longing sung by a lovesick youth, while boy-girl duets tended to be a bit hokey-jokey. Nonetheless, songs like Rina were hits — and the fashions can’t be beat.

Ani Holem al Naomi (I dream of Naomi) is a fun duet, performed by where-are-they-now duo Hedva and David. In its time, Naomi proved popular in other countries as well, with versions recorded in Korean and Japanese. More recently, a drag version was released.

Tni Li Yad (Give me your hand) is a very pretty song. Music is by the great Yoni Rechter with lyrics by Eli Moher, who performed the duet with his somewhat abashed daughter Sharon.

Pay no attention to the silly opener the precedes Shir Ahava Bedoui (Bedouin Love Song), one of the loveliest duets to come out of late 70s Israel. Try to ignore the costumes, too. Best to just shut your eyes, lean back and remember those summer nights on kibbutz…

Shuv (Once Again) is perhaps the most romantic of all Israeli duets. Performed by then husband and wife Josie Katz and Shmulik Krauss, the song describes the emotions of a couple reuniting after a long separation. This being Israel, the implication is that he has returned from reserve duty or perhaps a war. “Give me a moment… Let me catch my breath… Give me a chance to get used to you once again.”

And a happy belated birthday to Josie Katz!

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The discussion among the bathers at the lowest nature reserve in the world wasn’t about the amazing site, only 30 minutes from Jerusalem, and only 20 minutes from my home – the over 150 fresh water springs which provide for the variety of fauna and flora which can be found in the reserve such as jackals, wolves, foxes, hyenas, leopards, date palm trees, reeds, bulrushes, and tamarisk trees.

No, they could have been talking about the ruins of an ancient town from the Second Temple Period which were excavated in the 1950s, including an impressive site for preparation of balsam oil

Perhaps discussion could have been about the Arabic name for the site – Ein Fash’ha – which Israel took over after the Six Day War in 1967. According to Israeli travel expert Aviva Bar Am, Israeli authorities recognized its unique and special qualities, declared it an official nature reserve and renamed it Einot Tzukim (Cliff Springs).
Next they closed off the northern and southern areas to preserve the region’s plant and animal life, and opened the middle section to the public.

In 1986 the Nature Reserves Authority leased the peaceful retreat to a private company that turned it into a loud, crass barbecue smoke-filled tourist attraction, as Bar Am called it, as noisy and crowded as a shopping mall. Because people were careless with their fires, the reserve suffered frequent, devastating conflagrations.

By 2000, the Nature Reserves and Parks Authority returned to Einot Tzukim in 2000 and have restored the tranquil beauty to the site. There’s no access to the Dead Sea, but inviting pools with constantly flowing water are full of minerals believed to have wonderful therapeutic properties. The springs are lined with tall, refreshing foliage; restrooms, showers and picnic tables are clean and in good repair.

And there’s the ’hidden reserve.’ A wilderness that is three times as large as the public area, this well-concealed jungle is not visible from the highway and in the past was effectively closed to outsiders. Now, aside from the summer months when it’s too hot, the hidden reserves have been open to visitors for tours with accompanying well-informed guides.

According to Bar Am…

People who come for the guided tours are often surprised to find that Einot Tzukim is actually the Ein Fash’ha of earlier times! Delighted to have returned to the site, they enjoy the hidden reserve and spend the rest of the day at the pools and springs

So, these fellows, trying to keep cool in the 100 degree weather could have been talking about any of the above. But without even eavesdropping, because they were speaking so animatedly, I was able to overhear what the subject of their conversation was: Printing!

Evidently all members of the printing profession, they were trading war stories about three-colored booklets, oversized posters, and describing the process in detail, as if they were recounting their war-time conquests. Each one was trying to top the other in outlandish accomplishment. It was almost as entertaining as the delightful cool water. But not quite.

How to get there: Ein Fash’ha is near the northern tip of the Dead Sea, across from Qumran National Park on the Arava highway (Route 90). Bus 486 or 487 from Jerusalem. Open seven days a week.

And if you know anyone, they’re looking for a lifeguard to work weekends.

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Happy Face

Working under the nom de plume Miss Kaplan, she wanders the streets of Tel Aviv, seeking and finding vignettes she likes. Or loves. “I fell in love,” she writes, “with that wooden wall. and i fell in love with the backyard of that wooden wall.”

I Fell In Love

Tu B’Av, the so-called “Jewish Valentine’s Day”, seems the perfect time for celebrating the love Miss Kaplan sees all around in Tel Aviv. Sometimes it’s right in front of you…

Lovely Mailboxes

Sometimes it needs to be coaxed out gently… She calls this one, Will u stop hiding?

But always look on the positive side… this one is called Half Full

And you can find love even in the most unexpected places. It Touched My Heart, she says.

Read more about Natalie Kaplan at Mint Magazine or visit her Flickr photostream for more Tel Aviv Magic.

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