this year in jerusalem

passover, which is coming up very soon, is one of my favorite Jewish holiday. it’s got it all. food, family, and great content … it’s the ultimate jewish social justice holiday.

in fact, many things that i know about life, i learned from passover:

• all who are hungry should enter and eat.
• every person should see themselves, and then be seen by others, as if he (or she - in my version of the haggadah) had personally come out of egypt.
• it’s important to ask questions. four is never enough.
• in business, diversification is key. bonus points if it’s good for the jews. why else would a coffee company, maxwell house, continuously publish haggadot since 1933?
• one goat is worth two zuzim (very useful for talmud …)
• there are multiple types of slavery. including, physical, emotional, and spiritual.
• slavery still exists in our world today.
• my grandma makes the best matzah ball soup. you could argue with me, but then you’d be wrong.
• rabbi josé lived in the galilee (at least according to how his name is spelled in the maxwell house haggadah).
• don’t celebrate the downfall of your enemies.
• there are way too many products made with high fructose corn syrup.
• remember to be thankful, dayenu.
• pay attention to springtime and the cycles of nature.
• manischewitz is not real wine.
• you may really like the social justice passover supplements, from tikkun magazine, but your family may not.
• my father was a wandering aramean.
• kitniyot. no one’s really sure what they are, and why they’re prohibited, but ashkenazi jews make sure not to eat them (except in israel, where it’s apparently ok).
• the number of dishes that you can make with matzah meal, matzah farfel and matzah cake meal is only limited by your imagination.
• ometimes it’s important to taste the bitterness of oppression.
• matzah pizza is surprisingly not that bad…. my dad often enjoys his with pepperoni…
• playing games is fun – you’re never too old to search for the afikomen.
• remember to hope. a better world is always possible.
• god is on the side of freedom, not oppression.
• there are thirteen attributes of god, twelve tribes, eleven stars, ten commandments, nine months of pregnancy, eight days until the bris, seven days of the week, six books of mishnah, five books of torah, four mothers, three fathers, two tablets, and one god.
• it’s never to late in the seder to open the door for elijah.
• and for some of us, it’s finally going to be … this year in jerusalem.

the first freedom seder

the shalom center just posted a youtube clip from the freedom seder in 1969, one of the first "alternative" passover seders, explicitly connecting passover to contemporary social justice issues. enjoy... and then take some action.

purim day 1

here in jerusalem, we have two days of purim... day 1, today, is for the rest of the country, and day 2, is shushan purim, purim a day later for all walled-cities, including jerusalem.

while i'm taking the day easy, and finishing up a paper so i can celebrate later, aileen's off to the big purim parade near tel aviv. (click on the link, and then play the video in the center of the page). this year's theme is the environment, and will feature floats of both noah's ark and barak obama.

music boxes, victrolas, and hurdy-gurdies

we've just finished a whirlwind-around-the-country-tour with my family, who have now made it back to the states. one of the stops was the antique music box museum in the artist colony of ein hod.

there are lots of photos of the museum online, including youtube videos of nisan cohen, the quirky owner, in action (see below).

Also, take a look at this blog posting, from someone else's trip there:

Clad in shorts, sandals and a French beret, our guide and the museum founder, Nisan Cohen, welcomed us with good humor and warmth as he opened our eyes…and ears… to the musical aspect of a unique period in Western history – the industrial revolution. He took us back in time as we gathered around a 140yr old box anticipating the opening of its handcrafted wood top as if it were a treasure. We were not far off. Nisan explained that when he first came across these amazing inventions over 40 years ago, he knew right away this was something he wanted to collect. During his travels as a documentary film maker for CBS and NBC based in New York, he was able to find scores of these musical gems dating as far back as 1863. When he lifted the silky smooth cover of the first item on the tour, we saw inside a creation so inspired, so unique that it changed the path of music forever. Nisan explained how the nubs on the moving spool pluck at the tiny piano-like prongs to create the delicate sounds of Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven etc. This magical mechanical music box meant that for the first time in the history of the planet one could listen to music without being within hearing range of a live singer or musician.

the first recording of hatikvah, with the original lyrics of the poem written by naftali herz imber:



an antique music box:



playing the hurdy-gurdy barrel organ:



another old music box (which we didn't see):

green kibbutzim

a recent posting in the nytimes highlights the innovative solar power plans at kibbutz keturah in the arava. i visited there a few weeks ago on a pardes trip.

Spurred by government incentives, ample sunshine and investments from energy companies eager to turn a profit, a growing number of south-Israel kibbutzim — those communal-living enterprises that have traditionally emphasized ideals like collective labor, egalitarianism and natural living — are turning to state-of-the-art energy projects.

The aim: to position their region as the Silicon Valley of renewable energy.

Nudging that effort along this week, Israel’s National Infrastructures Minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, signed the country’s first two solar power licenses.

The first was given to E.D.I.G. Construction Management, Ltd., which has built a thermosolar energy site with a capacity of up to 100 kilowatts at Kibbutz Samar in the Arava Valley. The second licensee, the Arava Power Company, plans to build a photovoltaic facility with a capacity of up to 4.9 megawatts at nearby Kibbutz Ketura.

For its part, Kibbutz Ketura owns a forty percent stake in Arava Power, while the remaining 60 percent of the company is owned by American investors led by former multimedia executive and current president of Arava Power Company, Yosef Abramowitz. Arava Power has also signed a deal with 16 other kibbutzim in the area that is expected to give the company enough land assets to build capacity for another 500 megawatts of solar electricity, at a cost of $2.5 billion — or around $5 dollars a watt.

Last week, Mr. Ben-Eliezer also pledged that by 2020 between 10 to 20 percent of Israel’s energy production would come from solar and other renewable sources. As part of the agreement, the Negev and Arava regions of southern Israel were designated as renewable energy zones by the economic cabinet of the Israeli government.

Other area kibbutzim with a committment to green energy include Kibbutz Neot Smadar and Kibbutz Yotvata, which recently built a 50-kilowatt solar panel rooftop installation. Kibbutz Lotan, meanwhile, maintains a bird reserve, a center for creative ecology and a green apprenticeship program.

One Lotan resident, Noam Ilan, who directs renewable energy efforts for the Eilat-Eilot region of the country and last month helped organize an international renewable energy conference in Eilat, is optimistic about the coupling of renewable energy and kibbutzim.

“We see renewable energy as a catalyst for the region’s development and we have all the natural conditions to implement this new energy here,” Mr. Ilan said in a telephone interview from Israel. “The kibbutzim are the main entities. We hope it will be a new income source for them because these communities only live on agriculture and tourism. This is the biggest opportunity for their future growth.”