There have been lots of pieces of news that I have wanted to post on our blog lately but it has had other ideas, every so often it goes on strike and shuts me out and I have to wait for my friend and computer guru to come and put it to right, something I seem incapable of doing.

The better weather has tempted us out and about after what has felt like an unusually long and chilly winter and I have been longing to share our enjoyment of living in Jerusalem with everyone who reads our blog. This week saw us back in our very favourite place, the beautiful Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, with the trees the brightest possible green, not yet having collected a layer of summer dust and in full blossom, it could not have looked lovelier.  We also enjoyed it through the eyes of the visitor we took with us,  our neighbour’s carer who is from Rumania, seldom has a day out and had never before been to a zoo.  The excitement of this middle-aged grandmother was like that of a small child’s. It’s hard to say what she and we enjoyed the most, one of our favourite spots has always been, “Squirrel Monkey Look-out,” where one can watch these lively little creatures, in completely natural surroundings, as they enjoy their food, climb trees and chase each other.  An extra treat is when there are babies clinging to their mothers’ backs. The Sumatran Tigers in their magnificent enclosure situated on several levels with a pool and stream running through it is also a huge attraction. It is impossible to see all the exhibits in one visit so we have promised Galena – and ourselves- that we will return in a few weeks to visit the bears, chimps, lions and many other exhibits for which there was not enough time.

The Whol Rose garden, near to the High Court building and Knesset, is another beautiful spot but on this week’s visit we were a little disappointed, the roses were in full bloom, the air fragrant with their scent and the birds singing but, sadly, since its early days, when we volunteered there, it is showing signs of neglect.  Too many weeds, unkempt flower  beds  and rose bushes badly in need of pruning.  The Botanical gardens which we have also recently visited was, in contrast, well-cared for and a riot of colour, with all the spring and early summer flowers in full bloom.

Jerusalem’s Mayor, Nir Barkat, works hard to rid Jerusalem of its image of being a boring,
over-priced, overly-religious city where there is nothing to do and to that end,  puts on all kind of entertainments both to encourage Israelis from other parts of the country to visit and for the benefit of its residents. The most recent of these events was the Jerusalem Ice Festival.  The Mayor had engaged the services of 35 Chinese ice sculptors who had carved scenes of Jerusalem, including the Old City walls, within which frolicked all kinds of animals from the great lion that is a symbol of Jerusalem, to cows, pandas and horses.  Scenes from fairy tales and Biblical stories were also portrayed, all of them exquisitely carved from huge blocks of ice. The area in which the carvings were displayed (Jerusalem’s old train-station compound)had, of course, to be kept extremely cold, making us glad that we owned warm winter coats and gloves unlike most of the other visitors. The other visitors- who were they?  Almost entirely schoolgirls from local Arab schools, many thousands of them, coaches were arriving every few minutes, disgorging a new lot and collecting those who had done the rounds of the exhibition. They were a credit to their schools, modestly dressed with scarf swathed heads and very well-behaved.  Some of them who heard us talking English were happy to exchange a few words with us.

Being a week day morning the day we visited zoo, it was very quiet there except for several coach loads of Arab children, mostly boys this time, who were again, neat and tidy and nicely behaved.  A group of senior Arab boys were being conducted round the rose garden during our visit and were then given a lecture by one of their teachers as they all sat under one of the huge trees.  On our visit to the Botanical Gardens we treated ourselves to lunch at the restaurant situated next to the lake.  Guess who was sitting at the next table –   an Arab mother and daughter, the mother elegantly dressed in traditional Arab garb, long black robe with gold embroidery and her head covered in a loosely draped cream lace scarf.  Please tell us, have the people who persist in calling Israel an Apartheid country ever actually been here?

ISRAEL’S BIRDS

Friends sent us, as a Pesach  greeting, a delightful You-tube link which shows a ceremony which took place recently at the Western Wall, to welcome back the over 80 pairs of resident swifts from their yearly sojourn in Central Africa.  Here is the link so you can enjoy watching it yourselves.  Although a number of the speeches are in Hebrew there are English ones as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kfZpyHdL5ns

As bird-lovers we were delighted that so much importance is attached to the Wall’s feathered inhabitants and so much care taken not to deter them from returning each spring.

SPRING AND AUTUMN MIGRATIONS

Israel is a wonderful country for bird-watchers, being at the junction of three continents, every autumn, 500 million birds of hundreds of different species, fly over Israel, heading south to spend the winter in the warmer weather of Africa, flying back the other way in the spring.  According to Dr. Leshem, Director of Israel’s International Centre for Bird Migration, most birds prefer to fly over land when migrating because it enables them to save energy by  using the warm, thermal air rising off the land below to assist their flights. This means that birds flying south from Northern Europe and Asia to Africa want to avoid the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas and so are funnelled down over Israel and the Palestinian Territories.  This results in Israel being on the second busiest bird migration route in the world, coming second only to Panama.

BIRDING IN EILAT

Although we love and are very interested in birds, in fact, all living creatures, we do not take them quite as seriously as the group of dedicated and experienced bird-watchers that we once joined for a birding excursion while holidaying in Eilat. They were all equipped with special binoculars and some had telescopes on tripods and carried notebooks in which they ticked off the varieties of birds they had seen and when a new variety, not already on their lists was spotted, the excitement was huge.  Suddenly, there was a muted cry of excitement from our guide, he had just spotted, he whispered, “A  Baillon’s Crake.”  We were ordered to follow him quickly and quietly over the small, wooden, bridge ahead  of us as this rare bird was in the narrow ditch below . The group was ecstatic, none had seen this species before and several said that seeing one was one of one of their life’s dreams.  The rest of the party were a lot younger and more agile than ourselves and so everyone except us followed the guide across the very narrow and highly unsafe-looking bridge.  As we stood hesitating, two young men grabbed Lola round the waist and picked her up most unceremoniously and carried her bodily across the bridge which wobbled and creaked alarmingly, “We can’t allow you to miss this wonderful opportunity, one of them whispered in her ear.”  Thankfully, safely on the other side, this amazing and apparently rare bird was pointed out to us, the amount of excitement  that its sighting had generated had given us false expectations, we had expected something exotic, multi-coloured plumes or at least a crested head, but there, dabbling in the mud,  was something that looked, to our untrained eyes, very similar to a common sparrow and a bedraggled one at that.  The rest of the party returned to the starting point, chattering excitedly and boasting about the photographs they had captured while we ignoramuses were left wondering what all the excitement had been about.  Yes, we love birds but are definitely not real twitchers, as dedicated bird-watchers are called. 

At last! An Update.

 

I apologise to anyone who looked at our blog recently to see what was happening in Gilo, they would not have seen anything new for several weeks. Preparing for Pesach plus Norman having an operation for the removal of a cataract, which to avoid a wait of many months, he had done in the hospital in Naharia, left no time for updating the blog .  Happily, all went well and we are now awaiting an appointment to have the second eye done.

It is very many years since we were in Naharia and we were very interested, during our brief visit, to see how totally different it is in every way from Jerusalem. The hospital is a large, sprawling complex, and we must have walked several miles during the course of the day, going from ‘Admissions’ in one building to the clinics for a pre op check-up in another, to the eye department which turned out to be the wrong eye department and, having located the right one, back to the main building for the operating theatre. The entrance takes one through a shopping mall with a variety of eateries, pizzas, falafel and schwarma plus a proper restaurant, a pharmacy, well stocked with all kinds of cosmetics and herbal preparations and a gift shop What we noticed especially was the mix of Arab and Jewish owners and workers and the presence of many Druze residents, the men easily identified by their hats. Inevitably, the operations scheduled for 5 p.m. because our surgeon had noted we had to return to Jerusalem afterwards, a three hour journey, was late, by nearly two hours because of an emergency but otherwise the day went smoothly if long and tiring.

Since I last added to our blog, Purim has passed and we are in the middle of Pesach and summer has come, arriving overnight with a leap of 20 degrees in temperatures. The barbecues are out in full force and the smell of meat cooking and smoke fill the air in the early afternoon and evening. We are going to a barbecue lunch ourselves, at our daughter and son-in-law’s on Friday.

We send belated good wishes for Easter and Pesach to any one who is still bothering to look for news on this site.

FOR LO, THE WINTER IS GONE.

We have just celebrated Purim, recently explained to us in the following succinct terms:  “They tried to destroy us, we survived, now let’s eat!”  Not the only Jewish festival that can be explained in similar vein.  Purim is a festival celebrating a miracle and this year, we experienced a miracle ourselves!  For the first time in the 27 years we have lived in Jerusalem, we enjoyed dry and sunny weather for the festival, in fact, it was warm enough for the  Purim Seudah  that we attended to be held outside, in our friends’ garden.  

PURIM COSTUMES

During the days running up to Purim many schoolchildren wear their costumes to school but they are not as much fun as they used to be when families devised and made their own.  Now cheap and, often nasty, ones and hideous masks are available in the shops and the children, it seems, much prefer them to the more creative, home-made variety.  It was nevertheless,  fun to travel on the bus with a bevy of little Queen Esthers, penguins, rabbits, angels (even if one was wearing thick black tights) playing cards and even Minnie Mouse.  Nice too, that for once, the children were not shivering with cold and carrying umbrellas.  A not so enjoyable sight at Purim is that of youngsters from ultra-orthodox families dressed as soldiers.  This is real make-believe as they will not be doing their bit by serving in the army and makes us and all other families whose children and grandchildren give part of their youth to serving their country, furious.

PESACH IS APPROACHING

Now Purim is over everyone is going into over-drive with their Pesach preparations, the women all boring their friends with details of how many cupboards, drawers etc. they have or have not already cleaned and Kosher L’Pesach foods are already appearing in the super- markets along with shelves loaded with cleaning materials.  Of course, the day after all our windows  have been cleaned, there will be a sharav, accompanied by a sandstorm but that is a yearly occurrence and par for the course if one lives in Jerusalem.

ROCKET ATTACKS

The pleasure of Purim has been greatly overshadowed by the barrage of rocket attacks suffered by residents of the southern part of the country where over 200  rockets have fallen in the space of 4 days.  There have been a number of injuries and a great deal of damage to property.  As we write this, those under bombardment  are enjoying a respite but no one knows how long it will last  and ‘enjoying’ is probably the wrong word to use as so many of the children and many adults too, are suffering the effects of post traumatic-stress  disorder.  The, fortunately, frequent announcement following a rocket attack, “No one was injured and no damage caused,” does not take into account the enormous emotional damage sustained  as the result of days and nights spent in cramped shelters and the stress of having to dash to them immediately on hearing the “Red Alert” warning siren.  In some areas residents have only thirteen seconds between the sounding of the alert and the shell landing.  Fortunately, the Iron Dome defence system has proved successful in this recent wave of attacks in destroying 90 percent of the missiles that were aimed at city centres.  We pray that Israelis in all parts of the country will be allowed to celebrate Pesach peacefully, undisturbed by Red Alerts and explosions.

NEWS ABOUT ISRAEL THAT YOU ARE UNLIKELY TO FIND IN THE MEDIA

·         A new technology has been developed by a 91-year-old scientist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem which is putting Israel in the forefront of the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  Hospital-borne infections are a top-killer in America and Europe but Prof. Emeritus Nathan Citri’s SuperBug Detection Medical Kit enables the various bugs to be identified fast enough for lives to be saved and an outbreak prevented.

· 

                    www.israel21c.org/health/israels-superbug-detective-kit

·         This week, the first patients will begin arriving at Hadassah Hospital’s new $363 million, 19-storey, Sarah Wetsman Davidson Tower.  After residing for 61 years in its old, cramped and outmoded quarters the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem district, is now moving to state-of the art accommodation that will provide patients with the highest possible levels of comfort with a standard of medical treatment and research to match them.

              www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=262410

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·         In the very near future all Israeli passenger planes will be equipped with anti-missile devices to protect them from shoulder-launched missiles. The price of each system is $ 1 million and will reduce the number of passengers on planes due to the weight and space required.  The system uses infrared technology to detect a missile launched towards the plane which is then deflected from its course by the use of a laser beam.

                        www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=3571

·         Dr. Samuel Gan-Mor from the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture’s research organisation says that a potent blend of edible oils can be used as a pesticide that is safe for humans.  Not only that but this Israeli discovery is also non-toxic and cheap to produce.  It can be sprayed once a week to keep insects and fungi from munching on vegetables such as tomatoes, zucchini and peppers as well as grains like oats barley and wheat.

                         www.israel21c.org/environment/cooking-oil-the-perfect-pesticide

·         Since 16^th March the firing of rockets into southern areas of Israel has calmed down although not completely ceased.  At a Hezbollah graduation ceremony, Hezbollah Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah, lauded the fact that “the resistance was able to force a million and a half Israelis to stay in shelters.”  He is no doubt equally delighted about the 200,000 children who are missing school because of the rocket barrages and their parents, who have had to stay home from work to look after them .  Also that these children are traumatised by the constant soundings of the Red alert warning siren and the days and nights they have spent shut up in safe rooms and shelters.

עברית Tue

NEWS ABOUT ISRAEL THAT YOU ARE UNLIKELY TO FIND IN THE MEDIA

·   In the last 24 hours Palestinians have fired almost 100 rockets into southern Israel from Gaza .  25 rockets aimed at city centres were intercepted by the Iron Dome system.  8 people have been injured, one critically and there has been damage to property.  Residents living within 40 kilometres of Gaza have been ordered to stay within easy reach of their designated safe rooms and away from windows.  In some areas there is only 30 seconds between the sounding of the Red Alert signal and the arrival of the bomb.  At the time of writing this, it had not been decided whether schools and businesses would be allowed to open tomorrow (Sunday)

·   Israel’s new ambassador to Ethiopia, Belaynesh Zevadia, will be Israel’s first Ethiopian-born ambassador. She made aliyah aged 16 on a Jewish Agency scholarship to study at the Hebrew University.  Zevadia, who has a B.A. in International Relations and an M.A. in Anthropology, joined the Foreign Ministry in 1993, she has served previously in the consulates in Houston and Chicago.  Her appointment is a source of great pride to the Ethiopian community in Israel.

·   A luxurious, royal garden has been discovered and recently reconstructed at an archeological site at Ramat Rachel in the south of Jerusalem.  Using pollen that had been trapped in the wet plaster during renovations to the garden’s irrigation system, scientists have been able to reconstruct the garden to show what it would have looked like 2,500 years ago.  Evidence of local trees and plants such as grape vines, fig and olive trees as well as imported species from distant lands were discovered, among them, Cedar of Lebanon, Persian walnut and imported citron and birch trees.  Many of these trees need large amounts of water which was supplied by a sophisticated irrigation system which collected rainwater and distributed it, using  pools, underground channels, tunnels and gutters.  Researchers think that the ruling Persian authorities probably imported the exotic plants and trees from remote parts of the empire to flaunt their power.

·   Some 1,000 Palestinians received hearing aids recently as part of a humanitarian project organized by American Friends of Sheba Medical Centre, the Starkey Hearing Foundation and the Physicians for Human Rights – Israel organization.  A team of 20 doctors, medical students and a speech therapist set out on a three-day humanitarian mission to the West Bank city of Tulkarm where they conducted hearing tests and hearing aid fittings for those who needed them. The hearing aids, which were donated by the US- based Starkey Hearing Foundation and cost $1 million, were distributed later.

·   A simple new blood test for detecting cancer has been developed by scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and Soroka University Medical Centre in Beersheva. The simple new check shows a 90 percent detection rate in clinical tests for multiple types of cancers. The test can detect miniscule changes in the blood of a person with a cancerous growth somewhere in the body, even before the disease has spread.  Early diagnosis of cancer could save thousands of lives and increase the chance of successful treatment.

·  The world marked International Mother Tongue Day last month and a delegation from Lapland visited the Hebrew University to learn how to preserve and rehabilitate an ancient mother tongue that hasn’t been used for quite some time.  The ancient Lapland language, Sami, has been dormant but now there is a demand to revitalise it.  The delegation met with Hebrew University President, Prof. Menachem Ben-Sasson, who assured them that a century ago, no one believed that Hebrew could become a living language again. The delegation visited an ulpan (Hebrew language school for immigrants) to learn the most efficient ways to teach their people their own forgotten mother tongue.

(Thanks to The Huffington Post, The Jerusalem Post and Israel 21C for some of this information.)

Happy Purim Everyone