This is a picture of the beautiful Bahai temple and gardens as seen from below. These gardens, completed by the Bahais about 10 years ago (it was a several-year project), go from the bottom of Mount Carmel to the top. They are really spectacular. They are maintained by volunteers of the Bahai faith who come on pilgrimage to Haifa. They recycle the water from the fountains and are proud of the very small amount of water actually used! At night they are lit from top to bottom...

I'm embarrassed at how much I underestimated the importance of the Russia/Georgia affair. I'm sure by now you have read a lot about the situation as have I -- here in Israel the Russian threat is perceived as being extremely serious. Israel has lots of interests in that part of the world in addition to the fact that a large number of Israeli Jews come from there. There are many Israeli businesses invested there, for one thing, and now we have learned (if we didn't know it before) that there are oil and gas pipelines that run through these Balkan countries, deliberately sited to avoid Russia. I'm always appalled at how little I know. Perhaps you have to be a political scientist to know and understand all these things. I think I'm a pretty well-read citizen, but honestly, I know bupkas!!!

One thing is interesting about the situation from here: the Israeli government has been evacuating Israeli tourists from Georgia and now many Georgian Jews are seeking to immigrate. The fact that the government is evacuating Israeli citizens seems unusual to me -- does the US government evacuate US citizens who are traveling in places where there might be danger???

A couple of days ago I wandered around the lower part of Haifa with my camera (where I took the picture of the gardens)and came upon some interesting graffiti on a wall where things were being torn down. So the graffiti pictures are my latest contribution to your enjoyment of Israel!!!


A close-up: do you think this grafitti artist was dyslexic??? Or influenced by the fact that Hebrew is written right to left???


Love, Pat

Our family is visiting Israel now -- Aviv, Aden, Isaiah, Jordana and Jonathan (www.fischer-brown.blogspot.com) and we all visited Rosh HaNikra on the Lebanon border yesterday. Above is the view of the Israeli coastline looking south. Rosh HaNikra is a fascinating grotto -- a place where water has worn down the rocks so that there are a series of caves and caverns where the waves come crashing in. There is a path through the grottos and it is very exciting and unusual. Unfortunately the lighting is very complex inside so none of my pictures from inside were good. However, you can visit their website where they have many beautiful pictures at http://www.rosh-hanikra.com/default.asp and there is a selection in the upper left-hand corner for English. You get to the grottos on a racevel -- a cable car. Below is a picture of the racevel and another of the mechanism that pulls it up and down the mountain.






A couple of very interesting things on the political scene that I would like to comment on. The first is the amount of press coverage of the of the war in Georgia that appears in the Israeli papers. This is a conflict I did not understand at all (and if you are in a similar position, I recommend Wikipedia, which gives a succinct history that is very useful), but since there is so much attention here I have been reading. In the city of Gori, which is in South Ossetia (the breakaway province of Georgia), there still remain 200 Jews. According to this morning's paper, a family there, the Dovershvilis, had never considered emigrating to Israel because they like Georgia, but now they, and many of the remaining Jews there, are very interesting in making aliyah (moving to Israel). Gori has been under heavy bombardment. There is no water or electricity, roads are impassable, and dead and wounded are lying in the streets.

There are many Jews living in Israel who emigrated from the Caucasus, which is the region where the conflict is taking place. Israel has been militarily involved, supplying arms and training to the Georgians. According to the Israeli newspaper HaAretz, serious fighting broke out in South Ossetia earlier this month with Georgian troops and warplanes pounding separatist forces in a bid to retake control of the territory. Then Russia sent in forces to repel the assault. Israel's foreign ministry has recommended complete cessation of the sale of weapons and security-related equipment to Georgia in the light of the fighting between its troops and the Russian army.

Another issue which has come up of late here is violence against the Palestinians by Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Jewish settlers attack poor Palestinian farming families, trampling their gardens, burning their olive groves and their outbuildings and sometimes their homes, and then when the families flee, entering and smashing everything and taking their meager belongings. These horrors have been known for years, but this summer they are being regularly reported in HaAretz and the worst part of these stories is that when these families report the atrocities to the Israeli police or to the Israeli army who are there and sometimes even witness these events, the army or the police do not do anything about it and sometimes even deny that it happened. A few weeks ago there was a story of two Bedouin teenagers who were guarding their sheep who were taken in for questioning and kept all night. Their parents were completely frantic and got their friends to form a search party to look for the boys. In the morning the boys returned. The army denied that it had happened.

It is also true that occasionally the settlers will be brought to trial and fined for their violence. But not often.

It is not at all pleasant for me to write about these things, but I feel I must. So often I am in discussions with people about the occupation and so often I hear accusations that the Palestinians have no ethics, that they attack innocent people where as we, the Israelis, would never stoop to such horrendous acts. Clearly this is not true. The zealots among us are just as capable of heartless cruelty as are the zealots on the other side. We may not send in suicide bombers, but we wreck families and destroy their livelihoods just the same. It is well to remember this as we make judgments about events here.

Israel's Political System

With Ehud Olmert deciding not to be a candidate in the September 17th primaries of the Kadimah party, he effectively becomes a lameduck prime minister. Mr. Olmert has been under pressure to step aside from many directions. He was faulted for his handling of the second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 and he is under investigation by the attorney general for corruption going back several years.

This current situation gives me the opportunity to write about the political system here in Israel.It is quite different than in the US. Israel has a one chamber parliament, the Knesset, with 120 seats. There is a prime minister and a president. The office of president is considered an honorary position. The president is elected by the Knesset and not in the general election. Elections are held for parties and not individuals. In theory elections are held every four years but rare is the government that lasts the full four years.

Seats in the Knesset are apportioned according to the percentage of votes received by each party in the election. In order to govern, a party needs 61 seats in the Knesset. Following an election the president will ask the leader of the party with the most seats to form a new government. I do not recall a government in Israel's history where one party had the requisite number of seats. This brings about negotiations among the parties, usually among the major parties, until a coalition is formed totalling 61 seats. In order to agree to be part of the governing coalition, the various parties will make demands, hoping that items of importance to them will become part of the coalition agreement. The orthodox parties are usually key to any coalition agreement. There is no separation of religion and state in Israel.

The current government is led by Kadimah, a centrist party created by Ariel Sharon. When Sharon became incapacitated, Ehud Olmert became prime minister since he was second in line on the party list. The fact that Olmert has stepped aside has made the party primary very significant. There are about 75,000 Kadimah party members; about half will probably vote in the primary. The leading candidates to succeed Olmert as head of the party are Shaul Mofaz, currently Minister of Transportation and Tzipi Livni, the present Foeign Minister.

Mofaz has a reputation of being quite hawkish while Tzipi Livni appears to be more centrist. Both are campaigning vigorously in an effort to become leader of the party. Most likely the winner will be asked to form a new government.

There are those in the country who favor early elections rather than another Kadimah led government. The strongest voice in this direction is that of Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the opposition Likud party and, himself, a former prime minister.

As I write,no one has any idea what the outcome will be. Some of the underlying issues in the campaign include issues of security, negotiations with the Palestinians and Syria,the problem of Iran, and the return of Gilad Shalit who still is held captive by Hamas. There are domestic issues as well including the budget, money for education and infrastructure.

It is quite possible that Mr. Olmert will continue as prime minister for several months while this process works its way out. But who knows, tomorrow it may all change because, after all, this is the Middle East.

Frank

Getting a Driver's License

Yesterday I went to renew my driver's license. Well, that's not exactly accurate; I began the process several weeks ago. My license had expired in February, 2007, but of course since we have not been here since August, 2006 I had no opportunity to renew it. So one of the first things I did after we arrived in June was to go down to the "Misrad Harishui," the local branch of the Israeli DMV, to begin the process.

Now remember that in the US you go into the DMV office they give you a quick and dirty eye test, take your picture, and three minutes later, out of some machine pops your new license! Not here. When your license expires they send you an application to renew your license. But because my license expired so long ago I never got the form, so I had to start from scratch. I went down to the Misrad Harishui and got the form. The lady gave me a temporary license that will be good until December.

So you get this form,and you fill it in. There are several health-related questions and you have to go to your doctor to get a signature that assures that everything you said on the form is true. Then you have to go somewhere else, usually to an optician, to take an eye test.

I did all that stuff and then yesterday I took the form to the Misrad Harishui, expecting to get my license! Not unreasonable, right? But no! I got another form, in exchange for the one I turned in, and this form I had to take to another part of town to get my picture taken! And then I had to go yet another part of town to a post office to pay for the license! The lady at the post office gave me another form to carry until my license arrives in the mail.

It's hard to understand why this extremely inefficient system persists unless it is to provide a salary for a lot of different workers. Or because it's always been done this way. Anyhow, perhaps you can understand why so often in Israel I get this thrill of accomplishment when I actually get something done!!!

Here's a picture I took on a walk last week. It's Osso, my friend Naomi's dog. If you have read this blog over the years you have met him before...


Love,
Pat

A Death in the Family

Frank's cousin, Maya Engel, died last Tuesday. Frank and I went to the hospital on the day that she died and were with the family. Frank's father had four younger brothers. All of them escaped Nazi Germany, one to Australia, two to the United States, and one to what was then called Palestine. Uncle Erich and Aunt Ilse came here when their first daughter, Anne (Chana) was 2 1/2 and Ilse was pregnant with Maya. Maya was 69 when she died last week.

She died in Bellinson Hospital, which in itself is worth describing to you. It is a huge hospital; I worked there when I lived here in the '80's and I couldn't believe the difference. When I was here I worked in a very small building behind the main hospital; now the campus is a modern medical complex, much of which has been built through the donations of wealthy Jews from all over the world. The hospital itself is gorgeous, very open in design, decorated with beautiful art, and very light. It really is a visual pleasure. This was surprising to me, since most hospitals that I have been in here are quite the opposite.

Maya died in the mid-afternoon. Her death was expected, but the onset of her illness was quite sudden and no one knew how ill she was until three weeks before she died. Everyone when talking about her called her an "isha meyuchedit," a special woman. After her husband died 10 years go she started a small antique business in her garage. People would bring her old treasures and she would appraise them and buy them and then sell them to other customers who would come. People loved her. She had extraordinary taste; her home is decorated top to bottom with beautiful things. She was generous beyond generous. Once I admired some beaded bracelets that she was wearing and she immediately took them off and gave them to me. No amount of protesting on my part did any good. She and her sister Chana were exceptionally close. All the women in the family talk to one another on the phone many times a week. Both Frank and I loved her very much.

I would like to tell you something about Jewish and Israeli customs around death and dying. Even though these customs are observed in the US, here the process is somewhat different. I hope that what follows will be interesting to both Jews and people who are not Jewish.

After someone dies in hospital the body is removed to the hospital morgue and the Chevra Kadisha is informed. The Chevra Kadisha is a group of religious men who are responsible for seeing that all Jewish customs around death and burial are carried out faithfully according to Jewish law. They will prepare the body for burial, washing it and dressing it in white muslin burial shrouds. Then they will sit with the body every minute until burial. This in the United States too; in our North Carolina community each synagogue has a Chevra Kadisha (men who deal with males and women who deal with females) and they recruit synagoge members to sit all night with the body until the burial.

On the day of the death the family writes a notice of the death and time of the funeral, which is published in the local newspapers. The picture at the top of this posting is the notice of Maya's death. In the newspapers there is a page of such notices every day. People also post the notices in doorways and on lamp posts in neighborhoods to inform people of the death. The funeral, in Jewish tradition, should be on the day that the death occurred. However, sometimes if the death is late in the day the burial will be on the following morning.

At the cemetery people gather at the gate. Then the Chevra Kadisha carries the body in on a stretcher, covered with a large velvet cloth. In Israel coffins are not used except in cases where the death has been violent, such as in war or a traffic accident, and then a plain wooden coffin is used. In Jewish tradition it is very important that all the body parts be included in the burial, so if the body is torn then a coffin is necessary. At the entrance there is a kind of hall -- a cement structure quite open with a roof. There are no chairs. The body is brought into this structure and placed on a table and people give eulogies and offer prayers. Then the Chevra Kadisha carries the body on the litter to the grave and the people follow in procession.

At the grave one of the members of the Chevra Kadisha is standing in the grave to receive the body which is tipped into the grave from the litter. They cover the body with concrete slabs and then the members of the Chevra Kadisha fill in the grave. The service leader (a member of the Chevra Kadisha) announced that it was the time to put flowers on the grave and people covered the raw earth with bouquets. Later, up until 11 months later, a stone will be erected. In Israel the stone usually is set on the 30th day after burial.

The family then goes home where someone has prepared a meal of consolation. This meal is very simple -- hard boiled eggs, olives, and crackers. This day also marks the first day of shiva, the seven day period of mourning following a death. On these days the family sits together and people come to the house to comfort them. Our family sat in Maya's home, all of us together. A very wonderful woman who worked with Maya prepared meals for the family every day. People brought cakes and fruit and people came throughout the week to be with the family. On Friday they sat only half a day, and not at all on Shabbat. Tomorrow, Tuesday, will be the last day, and then only in the morning.

I am always impressed by how sensible these customs are. By the end of a week when others have taken care of the mourners and the mourners have been surrounded by friends from near and far, people are ready to "return to life," as they say here. Maya's family is not at all religious, like the majority of Israelis. And yet the Jewish customs are followed and they bring comfort. Frank and I traveled to Herzliya almost every day to be with the family. Eva, Frank's sister, came from the US. Frank and Eva had only three cousins in the world and now there are but two. It was an extraordinary week. May Maya's memory be blessed.

Love,
Pat