Friday, October 30, 2009

J.Viewz at Blue Note



J.Viewz at Blue Note
Nov. 6th at night - the live act of J.Viewz will be visiting the legendary Blue Note NYC for the second time.
along-side our awesome Noa Lembersky on vocals, this show will also feature Paula Valstein on the mic.
Nov. 6th - 12:30am - BLUE NOTE NYC
Right with these releases, this single became a #1 best seller on Bagpak Music, a great source for Nu-jazz and Breakbeat in New-York
"Our favourite has to be the remix of J. Viewz' MJ tribute 'Smooth Criminal', executed with flying drums and killer rhodes arrangements, or the epic strings of their 'Troubled Times' remix of SK Radicals. Wicked!" Boomkat
"...However, the show stopper of the bunch has got to be J. Viewz covering Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal,” featuring a wicked future soul facelift from Bugz In The Attic and great lyrical phrasing from vocalist Noa Lembersky. With many still in disbelief over the King of Pop’s departure, this cathartic version is as original and memorable as the performer who left us far too soon." Impose Magazine)(visit my new blog on ein-hod.ning.com)

My Player

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Jewish body


Melvin Konner: The Jewish Body from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.
Melvin Konner, a renowned doctor and anthropologist, takes the measure of the “Jewish body,” considering sex, circumcision, menstruation, and even those most elusive and controversial of microscopic markers—Jewish genes. But this is not only a book that examines the human body through the prism of Jewish culture.

Konner looks as well at the views of Jewish physiology held by non-Jews and how those views seeped into Jewish thought. He describes in detail the origins of the first nose job, and he writes about the Nazi ideology that categorized Jews as a public health menace on a par with rats or germs. A work of grand historical and philosophical sweep, The Jewish Body discusses the subtle relationship between the Jewish conception of the physical body and the Jewish conception of a bodiless God. It is a book about the relationship between a land—Israel—and the bodily sense not merely of individuals but also of a people. As Konner describes, a renewed focus on the value of physical strength helped generate the creation of a Jewish homeland and continued in the wake of it. With deep insight and great originality, Melvin Konner gives us nothing less than an anatomical history of the Jewish people.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Vulgar Latin Derivative


Pot, potter, pottery. These words do not show up in England until late Old English or early Middle English (1050-1450). There are forms of the word pot in Old Frisian, Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, Old Norse, Swedish, French, Spanish, and Portugese. However, no forms exist in Old High German or Middle High German. This suggests that the word pot comes from some vulgar Latin derivative of the classical Latin verb potare, to drink. Medieval Latin uses pottus for drinking cup; classical Latin uses potorium for drinking cup; and classical Greek uses poterion for drinking cup. The Oxford English Dictionary, however, disputes this etymology and claims that the origin of pot is unknown. Since the former explanation is better than no explanation, I shall opt for it. Pot comes eventually from the Latin word for drinking cup. It seems likely that the words pot and potter were introduced to England at the time of the Norman conquest (1066). Pottery seems to be a much later addition to English than pot or potter. Apparently it was adopted from the French poterie in the fifteenth century. By the way, the -er of potter means one who makes, and the -ery means the place where. (read more...)
ein hod pottery always open נעמי וזאב ורוכבסקי קדרות עין הוד-תמיד פתוח קורס קדרות

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Unternationale: Oy ir narishe tsienistn

Psoy Korolenko & Daniel Kahn - Oy ir narishe tsienistn (Oh you foolish little Zionists) After folksong recorded in 1931 in Kiev by Moshe Beregovski, sung by house painter Ts. Lakhman, translated into English by Daniel Kahn, into Russian by Psoy Korolenko
From The Unternationale album presentation
Tel Aviv, "Levontin 7", 2008-11-05 The Unternationale: dialectical klezmer cabaret. The First Unternational, recorded in July 07 in Tel-Aviv with Daniel Kahn, Psoy Korolenko & Oy Division: A spontaneous orgy of -isms: social-, zion-, antizion-, chassid-, national-, satan-, alcohol-, modern-, all in alternating English, Russian, and Yiddish. It’s Laibach meets Theodore Bikel.
Псой Короленко и Даниэль Кан - Глупые сионисты
Песня записана Моисеем Береговским в 1931 г. в Киеве со слов маляра Ц. Лахмана.
Русский текст Псоя Короленко, английский - Даниэля Кана.
С презентации альбома "Унтернационал"
Тель-Авив, клуб "Левонтин 7", 5.11.2008

The Taste of Virgin


Wild Trinity is an acappella renaissance style singing group. Here they are singing one ofleast traditional songs, Do Virgins Taste Better. Do Virgins Taste Better tells the story about a dragon terrorizing a town. In the end, the townspeople come up with a brilliant plan to defeat the dragon! This song is a parody of a Scottish bagpipe song, the Irish Washer Woman. So tell us the truth, Do Virgins Taste Better? From left to right the performers are Faeyette (Kim), Zanzabar (Jim), and Myrna (Cricket).

DO VIRGINS TASTE BETTER?
(Also known as - An Old Cliché Revisited)
-R. Farran
(Tune: "The Irish Washerwoman")

A dragon has come to our village today.
We've asked him to leave, but he won't go away.
Now he's talked to our king and they worked out a deal.
No homes will he burn and no crops will he steal.
Now there is but one catch, we dislike it a bunch.
Twice a year he invites him a virgin to lunch.
Well, we've no other choice, so the deal we'll respect.
But we can't help but wonder and pause to reflect.
CHORUS:
 Do virgins taste better than those who are not?
Are they salty, or sweeter, more juicy or what?
Do you savor them slowly? Gulp them down on the spot?
Do virgins taste better than those who are not?

Now we'd like to be shed of you, and many have tried.
But no one can get thru your thick scaly hide.
We hope that some day, some brave knight will come by.
'Cause we can't wait around 'til you're too fat to fly.
Now you have such good taste in your women for sure,
They always are pretty, they always are pure.
But your notion of dining, it makes us all flinch,
For your favorite entree is barbecued wench.
Now we've found a solution, it works out so neat,
If you insist on nothing but virgins to eat.
No more will our number ever grow small,
We'll simply make sure there's no virgins at all!



DRAGON'S RETORT
(C) 1985 by Claire Stephens
(Tune: "Irish Washerwoman")

Well, now I am a dragon please listen to me
For I'm misunderstood to a dreadful degree
This ecology needs me, and I know my place,
But I'm fighting extinction with all of my race
But I came to this village to better my health
Which is shockingly poor despite all my wealth
But I get no assistance and no sympathy,
Just impertinent questioning shouted at me

CHORUS:

Yes, virgins taste better than those who are not
But my favorite snack food with peril is fraught
For my teeth will decay and my trim go to pot
Yes, virgins taste better than those who are not

Now we worms are deep thinkers, at science we shine
And our world's complicated with every new line
We must quit all the things that we've done since the flood
Like lying on gold couches that poison our blood
Well I'm really quite good almost all of the year
Vegetarian ways are now mine out of fear
But a birthday needs sweets I'm sure you'll agree
And barbecued wench tastes like candy to me
As it happens our interests are almost the same
For I'm really quite skillful at managing game
If I messed with your men would your excess decline?
Of course not, the rest would just make better time
But the number of babies a woman can bear
Has a limit and that's why my pruning's done there
Yet an orphan's a sad sight, and so when I munch
I'm careful to take out only virgins for lunch.

Paper Chase :Why and why not?


10 Reasons to buy a Kindle 2
10 reasons not to buy a Kindle 2


10. There’s just something about a dead tree book, isn’t there? It’s nice to pop into the airport news stand and pick up a novel. It just is. I’m sorry.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The State of the Deli


He may have written a book about Jewish food, but David Sax is quite a ham. He refers to a deli's finances as "pastraminomics," describes a knish as being "baked to a George Hamiltonesque hue," and titles a chapter on Las Vegas's deli scene "Luck Be a Brisket Tonight."

But in addition to Catskills shtick, journalist Sax brings passion and substance to Save the Deli, his paean to the Jewish delicatessen experience. The heart of the book is his cross-country road trip, during which he sizes up the state of the deli in cities obvious (New York, Los Angeles, Miami) and unlikely (Boulder, Salt Lake City, Houston).(read more...)

Monday, October 19, 2009

Where does Steve Suffet come from?


Sunnyside is a neighborhood in the western portion of the New York City borough of Queens, in New York state, in the United States. It shares borders with Hunters Point and Long Island City to the west, Astoria to the north, Woodside to the east and Maspeth to the south.
Sunnyside's residents are of various ethnic backgrounds including Albanian, Armenian, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Colombian, Dominican, Ecuadorian, Filipino, Hungarian, Indian, Irish, Eastern European Jews, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Nepali, Romanian, and Turkish.
Sunnyside developed after the Queensboro Bridge was completed in 1909. Before that, the neighborhood was mostly small farms and marshland. A large portion of the neighborhood is six-story apartment buildings constructed during the 1920s and '30s. The land was originally owned by French settlers in the 1800s. Sunnyside is derived from Sunnyside Hill Farms, so named by the Bragraws family who owned the land.
The area is particularly known for one of America's first planned communities, Sunnyside Gardens. Constructed from 1924 to 1929, Sunnyside Gardens was one of the first developments to incorporate the "superblock" model in the United States. The residential area has brick row houses of two and a half stories, with front and rear gardens and a landscaped central court shared by all. This model allowed for denser residential development, while also providing ample open/green-space amenities. Clarence Stein and Henry Wright served as the architects and planners for this development, and the landscape architect was Marjorie Sewell Cautley. These well-planned garden homes are now listed as a historic district and are also home to one of only two private parks in New York City, Gramercy Park being the other (read more...)

Panties with Pickles: Around the World in New York


This short travel promotional film Around the World in New York was produced in the early 1960's. In Around the World in New York, the City becomes more than Manhattan but a world of various cultures and traditions. Our tour begins in the Lower East Side in the street markets near the Puerto Rican barrios. Although baseball is the sport of choice for them, in the Italian neighborhoods where boccie ball is king. Great footage includes the St. Patrick's Day parade near St. Patrick's Cathedral and New Year's celebrations in Chinatown.
See more at:
www.weirdovideo.com

Sunday, October 18, 2009

The Penis Has The Shape of a Boomerang


Objective: To find out whether taking images of the male and female genitals during coitus is feasible and to find out whether former and current ideas about the anatomy during sexual intercourse and during female sexual arousal are based on assumptions or on facts. (read more ...)

Ein Hod on Russian RTVi (Золотой Теленок Эйн Ход)


Репортаж с ежегодного хеппенинга вконце праздника Песах (Еврейской Пасхи). Дело происходит вэ поселке Эйн Ход в северном Израиле, где живут  люди искусства - художники, скульпторы и фотографы и кинорежиссеры.
ein hod, israel, עין הוד

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Magnets from Disused Speakers



It appears that any perceived benefit obtained from wearing a magnetic or copper bracelet can be attributed to psychological placebo effects. People tend to buy them when they are in a lot of pain, then when the pain eases off over time they attribute this to the device. However, our findings suggest that such devices have no real advantage over placebo wrist straps that are not magnetic and do not contain copper.
Although their use is generally harmless, people with osteoarthritis should be especially cautious about spending large sums of money on magnet therapy. Magnets removed from disused speakers are much cheaper, but you would first have to believe that they could work.

(read more...)

Kidnapped in Africa by Arab Slave Traders


Centuries after they were brought to Palestine as slaves, black Bedouins still face discrimination. About two years ago, filmmaker Uri Rosenwaks came to Rahat, a Bedouin town down in Israel's Negev Desert, to teach a group of Black Bedouin women a class in filmmaking.
Afflicted with pessimism, unemployment, poverty and violence, Rahat is partially populated by Black Bedouins who were brought to the Middle East as slaves. Kidnapped in Africa by Arab slave traders, they were auctioned-off in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Zanzibar, and until 50 years ago, Black Bedouins were enslaved by the White ones.

When the Israeli film director first started work with the group, the women never mentioned the issue. Only after about 18 months of working and making short films together, did he work up the nerve to suggest that they make a film telling the history of the Black Bedouins.

Suddenly, a small and modest course in filmmaking became a forum for the airing of the unspoken taboos and history of an entire society.

Friday, October 16, 2009

פיתון בורמזי ואיתן מעין הוד


איתן נצ'ין היה בסכנת חיים לאחר שהוכש על-ידי נחש צפע בקרסולו לאחר שעבר ניתוח דחוף וסדרת טיפולים הסכים להצטלם עם נחש מסוג פיתון ]
איתן נצ'ין, 26, היה מאושפז במחלקה לטיפול נמרץ בבית החולים רמב"ם בחיפה, לאחר שהוכש על-ידי נחש צפע. אחרי שלושה שבועות של החלמה, הסכים להצטלם עם נחש מסוג פיתון בורמזי לבקן, בגן החיות הלימודי בחיפה.
נצ'ין, מוזיקאי תושב כפר האמנים עין הוד, הובא לבית החולים בחודש אוגוסט האחרון, ז קצר לאחר שהוכש בקרסולו בעת שצעד בסמטאות הכפר, אך התברר שהוא נושא רגישות גבוהה לארס הנחש ולכן לא הגיב גם לנסיוב שהיה אמור להציל את חייו. רבע שעה אחרי שהוכש, איבד את הכרתו ומערכות גופו קרסו בזו אחר זו. גם כלי הדם ברגלו נפגעו מהארס וחייבו ניתוח דחוף. בבית החולים הוגדר מצבו אנוש.
מנהל מחלקת טיפול נמרץ, ד"ר ירון בר-לביא ומנהל מכון ההרעלות הארצי, פרופ' ידידיה בנטור, העניקו לו טיפול ואחרי שלושה שבועות ללא הכרה, ועשרות מנות דם שניתנו לו כדי להילחם בבעיות הקרישה שגרם הארס, החל נצ'ין להתאושש ואחרי חודש נוסף כבר עמד על רגליו.
יום לפני שחזר ללימודי המוזיקה בלונדון, ביקשו ברמב"ם לצלם אותו עם נחש מסוג פיתון בורמזי לבקן בגן החיות הלימודי בחיפה. נצ'ין נענה לבקשת בית החולים ואיפשר לצלם רענן טל לצלמו

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Who said you can't go home again?


Just a year after taking up guitar, I had mustered enough courage to perform in public, and one of the first places I strutted my stuff, so to speak, was a coffee house by the Long Island Railroad station plaza in Kew Gardens, Queens. Back then when I was still a teenager, the place called itself the Interlude, and each Thursday night they held their weekly hootenanny. Today we would call it an open mike. Whatever you called it, it was an opportunity to make a fool of myself for the length of time it took to single three songs, and believe me when I say I was very adept at making a fool of myself back then, which was from 1963 until about 1965.
Well, believe it or not, the Interlude is still going strong, although its has changed both owners and names several times since then. It is now known as the Bliss Gourmet Cafe, and after an absence of 45 years I finally made my return this past March to open the very first Kew Gardens Music Festival. I began with a song I often performed back then and I still perform just as frequently today, Woody Guthrie's "Hard Traveling.
I hope I'm no longer making a fool of myself.
Steve Suffet performing "Hard Traveling" by Woody Guthrie at the Kew Gardens Music Festival in Queens, New York City. March 7, 2009.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Granny Midwive


Once there were thousands of licensed Granny Midwives throughout the South. Now there are none. Who were they? Where did they go? Because of segregation, many Americans knew nothing about natural home birth with experienced Grannies like Margaret Charles Smith who learned from each other and could deal with breech deliveries, multiple births and other situations with no medical instruments or drugs. Miss Margaret's mother tells of saving a one-and-a-half-pound baby by making an incubator out of a cardboard box and hot water bottles.
Miss Margaret successfully attended over 3,500 home births without a single maternal death, worked a farm like a man and triumphed over the advesities of Jim Crow, poverty, lack of education and the slavery of sharecropping. "I've been through the wringer," she says of living in Greene County, Alabama, a Ku Klux Klan stronghold where, according to Ralph Abernathy, "racism was so entrenched that winning the right to vote there was more historic than man's walk on the moon."

Hugo Zemp 'Are 'Are


Hugo Zemp (14 May, 1937, Basle, Switzerland) is a Swiss-French ethnomusicologist.
Zemp Studied musicology and anthropology at the University of Basle (1958-61) while finishing a diploma in percussion at the Basle Conservatory (1960). He then attended the Ecole pratique des hautes études and took the doctorate with Denise Paulme and André Schaeffner in 1968. He also joined the CNRS at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris, then directed by Gilbert Rouget, in 1967; and was appointed to teach ethnomusicology in 1981 at the University of Paris X-Nanterre. In 1982, he was made editor of the recording series Collection CNRS/Musée de l’Homme, to which he has contributed recordings both before and during his term as editor.
Zemp’s extensive fieldwork in West Africa, Oceania and Switzerland have resulted in writings which are now standard reference works. His dissertation was one of the first books on African music written from the anthropological perspective. Zemp has also explored the sophisticated polyphony and structures of vernacular oral traditions of the ‘Are’are of the Solomon Islands in a number of publications. His films (such as Voix de tête, voix de poitrine, 1988) and writings about film, particularly concerning yodelling, investigate for the first time the visualization of musical structure as well as the physiological and acoustical aspects of overtone singing.
Are‘are is the name of a people from the south of the island of Malaita, which is part of the Solomon Islands. Their language is the ‘Are’are language, which part of the Austronesian language family. In 1999 there were an estimated 17,800 speakers
In the 1920s bamboo music gained a following in several countries. Bamboo music was made by hitting open-ended bamboo tubes of varying sizes, originally with coconut husks [1]. After American soldiers brought their sandals to the Solomon Islands, these replaced coconut husks by the early 1960s, just as the music began spreading to Papua New Guinea
The ‘Are‘are  distinguish four types of panpipe ensemble and more than 20 musical types. The music of panpipe ensembles enjoys the highest prestige among the ‘Are‘are. They have an extensive system of thought about music that centres on ‘au, their word for bamboo, the material of which panpipes are made.

Born Again Suffet

This morning I was born again and a light shines on my land
I no longer look for heaven in your deathly distant land
I do not want your pearly gates don t want your streets of gold
This morning I was born again and a light shines on my soul

This morning I was born again, I was born again complete
I stood up above my troubles and I stand on my two feet
My hand it feels unlimited, my body feels like the sky
I feel at home in the universe where yonder planets fly

This I was born again, my past is dead and gone
This great eternal moment is my great eternal dawn
Each drop of blood within me, each breath of life I breathe
Is united with these mountains and the mountains with the seas

I feel the sun upon me, its rays crawl through my skin
I breathe the life of Jesus and old John Henry in
I give myself, my heart, my soul to give some friend a hand
This morning I was born again, I am in the promised land

This morning I was born again and a light shines on my land
I no longer look for heaven in your deathly distant land
I do not want your pearly gates dont want your streets of gold
And I do not want your mansion for my heart is never cold.

Steve Suffet performing "This Morning I Am Born Again" at the Ninth Annual Woody Guthrie Birthday Bash. Bowery Poetry Club. New York City. July 12, 2009. Words by Woody Guthrie. Music by Slaid Cleaves. © Woody Guthrie Publications.

A Stumbling Block

Gunter Demnig, a performance artist from Cologne, first thought of the idea of a literal stumbling block in 1993. History all too often reduces its victims to numbers, with so many million killed here and so many million reduced to ashes there. What he wanted to do was to create something that would enable ordinary Germans to remember ordinary Germans – something far more personal and immediate than a number, a name. So was born a project in which those long since disappeared and dead were to be remembered, literally under the feet of the general public(read more...)

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Too Much


The term for John Gilkey's bad habit is bibliokleptomania: stealing books not for profit but because you love them, take pride in them, must have them. Freelance writer Allison Hoover Bartlett introduces the reader to two main characters in this strange true-crime tale. One is Gilkey himself, who grew up in a family where stealing among siblings was commonplace and who pulled off his first theft (a shoplifted catcher's mitt) at age 9 or 10. The other is Ken Sanders, a book dealer and amateur detective determined to catch Gilkey, who from 1999 to 2003 stole books valued at $100,000 from dealers around the country. On the way, the author pauses to illuminate a technique used by opportunists who cut valuable pictures out of books to sell them to unwitting art dealers. It's called the "wet-string" method, and it works like this: The culprit "went one day to the library with a length of wool yarn hidden in his cheek. He placed the wet yarn inside a book, along the spine. . . .


He put the book back on the shelf and came back a few weeks later. As the yarn dried, it grew shorter, which made a clean cut." The thief didn't have to use a razor to excise the print -- the shrinking yarn had done most of the work for him. As for Gilkey, who was in and out of jail during the years in which he was interviewed for this book, Bartlett sums him up as "a man who believes that the ownership of a vast rare book collection would be the ultimate expression of his identity, that any means of getting it would be fair and right, and that once people could see his collection, they would appreciate the man who had built it."
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Dennis Drabelle

Thursday, October 8, 2009

אנסמבל זמרי מורן באבו גוש - ליסה ורכובסקי


אנסמבל זמרי מורן מונה זמרים צעירים בוגרי המקהלה וסטודנטים באקדמיות למוסיקה, בגילאי 18 – 30. האנסמבל הוקם ב- 1998, כגוף ייצוגי מקצועי ברמה הגבוהה ביותר.
אנסמבל זמרי מורן מופיע עם התזמורות המובילות בארץ ומבצע ממיטב המוסיקה המקהלתית, לצד יצירות מקוריות של מיטב המלחינים הישראלים: גיל אלדמע, גיל שוחט, מנחם ויזנברג, חיים פרמונט, יחזקאל בראון ושלמה גרוניך.
בקיץ 2002 זכה האנסמבל בפרס הראשון בתחרות בינלאומית ביפן, וב- 1998 בתחרות הבינלאומית "שירת הימים" בישראל.
האנסמבל הופיע בפסטיבל 'באך' ביוג'ין – אורגון ארה"ב, בפסטיבל ליטורגי בגרמניה וכמקהלה הייצוגית ב'אקספו 2000' בהנובר גרמניה.
בעונת 2002-3 הופיע בהפקות האופרה 'דידו ואנאס' מאת הנרי פרסל, ו-'מיסה ברויס' מאת מוצרט. במהלך 2003-2004 השתתף האנסמבל בסדרת קונצרטים עם התזמורת הקאמרית הקיבוצית, בסדרה הקאמרית עם התזמורת הסימפונית ראשון לציון ובסדרת המנויים של התזמורת הקאמרית הישראלית. כמו כן העלה הפקה מיוחדת לאורטוריה 'בת יפתח' מאת קריסימי. פעילותה המיוחדת של מקהלת מורן למען הקהילה (במסגרת המרכז הישראלי למוסיקה ווקאלית) מוצאת את ביטוייה באמצעות 3 הרכבים נוספים, הכוללים מקהלות משולבות של ילדי מורן עם הרכבים של ילדים ובני נוער בסיכון והרכב של ילדים בעלי צרכים מיוחדים.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Lisa Verchovsky at 36th Abu Ghosh Music Festival


Vivaldi Dixit Dominus, RV 594 The Moran Ensemble
The 36th Abu Gosh Vocal Music Festival is hold this fall from 6-10 October 2009 during the holiday of Succoth, hosted the Stuttgart Chamber Choir and conductor Maestro Frieder Bernius in two concerts, as well as another 16 original productions, to be held in four venues in the picturesque village near Jerusalem.
The festival offers four different venues of exciting musical events, creating a true festival for all culture lovers, with musical and vocal performances by Vivaldi, Bach, Theodorakis, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, Dvorak, Verdi, Marcello, music from Spain and Peru, Argentina and Brazil and much more. First-class soloists from Israel will participate in the Festival, in addition to a guest singer from Spain, bass-baritone Luis Alberto Fernandez-Llaneza.
Concerts include a unique vocal experience where the audience is the choir in a sing along in the special acoustics of the Kiryat Yearim Church;
12 concerts featuring music from around the world; 6 concerts in the Crypt with the spring flowing through the center of the village, and outdoor concerts that take place around the church, with opera, chamber and instrumental music.
The village of Abu Gosh has important Christian connections. Beginning in the twelfth century, Christians began to identify Abu Gosh as Emmaus, where Jesus appeared after the Resurrection (Luke 24:12-31). They imagined an old caravansary they found by the village spring as the destination of the disciples as they walked along the road about seven miles from Jerusalem (Luke 24:13).
The villages impressive Crusader church, in a tranquil garden setting, is built over that spring. Its walls are adorned with paintings of New Testament figures some of the oldest medieval frescos in the world.
Abu Gosh has also been identified as Kiriath Jearim, where the Ark of the Covenant was brought after Philistine captivity (1 Sam. 6:21); a church on the hill with a panoramic view marks that spot.

Nobel to Ada


Ada Yonath, joint recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry, is an Israeli crystallographer known for her work on the structure of ribosome, a part of the cell that synthesizes protein and translates genetic code in the production of protein. She is the director of the Centre for Biomolecular Structure and Assembly at Israel's prestigious Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, and a member of the USA National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Art and Science, and the European Academy of Art and Science.
In addition to being a Nobel Laureate, she is also the recipient of 30 honorary doctorates and international and Israeli awards, including the Albert Einstein World Award of Science from Princeton University, the UNESCO-L'Oreal award for European women in life sciences, and the Linus Pauling Gold Medal.
Yonath was born in Jerusalem in 1939, but grew up in Tel Aviv, working to support her family while completing high school.
She received her graduate degree in chemistry, and her post- graduate degree in biochemistry, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She studied for her doctorate at the Weizmann Institute and did post-doctoral research at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh and at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology.
On her return form the US in 1970, she took up a research position at the Weizmann Institute, becoming a senior scientist at the Institute's Chemistry department in 1974, an associate professor four years later, and a full professor in 1988.
Yonath shares the 2009 Nobel Prize for chemistry with US nationals Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas A Steitz.
"I'm pretty surprised, because I wasn't expecting it," she said Wednesday.
Yonath is only the fourth woman, and the first since Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin in 1964, to win the Nobel Chemistry award.
She is also the ninth, and first female, Israeli Nobel Laureate. (read more...)

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Pete Seeger and Steve Suffet at Ecofest


Pete and the rest of the gang on stage had a blast singing Woody's amazingly catchy song together along with most of the audience! For those interested, here's the lineup from the left to right: Ray Korona, Joel Landy, Roland Mousaa, Mary Poppiins, Caitlin OHeneey, Pete Seeger, Nancy Callahan, Steve Suffet, Anne Price. Thanks to EcoFest NYC for the great environmental festival which included this performance!
Born Stephen Lawrence Suffet in 1947, Steve Suffet is best described as an old fashioned folk singer in the People's Music tradition. His repertoire is a mixture of railroad songs, trucker songs, union songs, old time country music, blues, ragtime, Gospel, topical-political songs, and whatever else tickles his fancy. He takes songs from whatever sources he wishes and then he sings them his own way, maybe rewriting the lyrics on the spot or changing the music to fit his own particular style.Heavily involved in the antiwar movement in the 1960s, Steve appeared at several of the legendary Broadside magazine hoots in New York City. Steve later left the organized folk scene for nearly thirty years, playing instead at political rallies and demonstrations, campgrounds, schools, day care centers, weddings, parks, pubs, and pick-up jam sessions.Steve performed in Dani's beer bar in Ein Hod in 2007.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Gracias a La Vida


Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me two beams of light, that when opened,
Can perfectly distinguish black from white
And in the sky above, her starry backdrop,
And from within the multitude
The one that I love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me an ear that, in all of its width
Records— night and day—crickets and canaries,
Hammers and turbines and bricks and storms,
And the tender voice of my beloved.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me sound and the alphabet.
With them the words that I think and declare:
"Mother," "Friend," "Brother" and the light shining.
The route of the soul from which comes love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me the ability to walk with my tired feet.
With them I have traversed cities and puddles
Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains.
And your house, your street and your patio.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me a heart, that causes my frame to shudder,
When I see the fruit of the human brain,
When I see good so far from bad,
When I see within the clarity of your eyes...

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.
It gave me laughter and it gave me longing.
With them I distinguish happiness and pain—
The two materials from which my songs are formed,
And your song, as well, which is the same song.
And everyone's song, which is my very song.

Thanks to life
Thanks to life
Thanks to life
Thanks to life

Friday, October 2, 2009

Brod and Hoffe were lovers...or not

Eva Hoffe, 75, picked up her mobile phone and dialed 100, the number of the Israeli police. "There's a burglar in my house, Spinoza Street, Tel Aviv," she whispered. "Are you sure that he's still in your apartment?" asked the voice on the other end of the line. "He is standing in front of my bedroom door," replied the old woman. By the time the police arrived, the mysterious intruder had fled.
For over a year now, the Hoffe daughters have been awaiting a decision by the Tel Aviv family court. An increasing number of parties want to take part in the trial. The lawsuit launched by the Israeli library even alleges that Ester Hoffe unlawfully took possession of papers from Brod and illegally sold a portion of them abroad. Sure enough, in 1988 Sotheby's in London auctioned off the original manuscript of Kafka's novel "The Trial." It went for 3.5 million marks (€1.8 million) to the German Literature Archive in Marbach.
What treasures remain hidden in the safety deposit boxes of the late Ester Hoffe? During his short life, did Kafka perhaps write other works of fiction that are still unknown? And what new insights could be gained by reading Brod's personal notes on Kafka?
It goes without saying that this is also about money, and moreover about German-Israeli sensitivities. Should the literary bequest of Jewish author Max Brod, who had to flee the Nazis, end up in Germany of all places? At any rate, the Hoffe daughters are considering selling the remaining manuscripts to the literary archive in Marbach. Two months ago, the renowned institute also applied to the Tel Aviv family court to be admitted as a party to the inheritance dispute.
And another claimant has come forward: Israeli publisher Amos Schocken. His grandfather Salman Schocken, who owned a chain of department stores in Germany in the 1920s, purchased the rights to the author's manuscripts from Kafka's parents. Grandson Amos today publishes the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, whose reporting has attracted great attention to the trial.(read more...)