Ayman Odeh, New Head of Israel's Arab party, wants to be Israel's MLK

This interview in today's TOI is a must read. In it, Ayman Odeh, head of the largest Arab Party in Israel's history, The Joint List, makes a plea to Israel's Jewish majority to work towards helping Israel's Arab citizens attain genuine civil and economic equality, as well as some small modicum of a national symbol that while Jewish, could also be embraced by Israel's 20% Arab minority as a source of pride.

The part where he quotes the Shaul Tchernekovsky poem actually had me tearing up a bit - Israeli Jews ignore Odeh and his message at our own expense. He is the ultimate litmus test of whether Israel is genuinely capable of being moral to the 'stranger in our mist' as the Torah so often beseeches us. Or are we too scarred by our own recent history to take up his call for true equality of opportunity and rights here.

Time will tell - I am optimistic we will react positively to Odeh's message as we claim we've been waiting for an Arab leader like this in Israel for a long time.

Best Case Scenario/Worst Case Scenario

My co-worker and co Yesh Atid voter Michael Lipkin's assessment of the Israeli Election - and my reply:

First Thoughts on the Election Results...
by Michael Lipkin

I love democracy even when I don't love the outcome. And I'm not even sure how I feel about the outcome. I would have preferred a more centrist government than it appears this new one will be.

But there are some potential bright spots like the idea of Kachlon as finance minister. And since Likud itself is not being pulled as much to the right internally, combined with its number seats, it should be able to be more moderate. Also, I think we'll see Bibi walk back some of the more extreme statements he made leading up to the election. And I would love to see him use his new-found electoral strength to seriously engage with the Arab countries with whom we now share some very serious dangerous enemies.

I have an optimistic take on the equal service bill too. As much as I'm not a fan of the Chareidi parties, I don't think their MKs are idiots. They know darn well the this bill, more than anything else, is a jobs and education program their community so desperately needs. My prediction is that they'll make a huge to-do about removing the so-called "criminal sanctions" and leave the rest pretty much intact. We might even see increased funding for some of the programs.

Hopefully also, given the relative small size of these parties, the damage they can do to religion-state and education will be mitigated, though they'll definitely retard the progress that was being made.

And my reply:

I'm less optimistic - Bibi will be emboldened to... do nothing for another 3-4 years. Kahlon will meet the same fate as Lapid, where any plan he has to actually even things out economically will be blocked by a Likud that is beholden to unions and monopolies. Bibi would never want to allow Kahlon to gain popularity under his nose like that.

On the Hareidim I tend to agree with you but we'll see - they have a lot of leveredge.

And 2 key issues you left out - leave me most worries: His reliance on racist tropes with Arab citizens of Israel mean repairing relations with that community (most of whom are non-violent) will be nearly impossible - and will lead to increasing unrest

And Bibi has burned nearly every bridge he had with even our top allies - something he is less inclined to repair with this government. 

Bibi also learned a valuable lesson (had it greatly reinforced): that racism and fear mongering pays off big time at the polls. Instead of enacting good policies, he can just scare people into voting for him by drumming up security crises, real and imagined. 

My biggest fear is that Bibi goes after the Supreme court, which is the only body that has blocked his various 'power grab' tactics to date. If he succeeds in this task, may god have mercy on us all. We will be living under an Erdogan type ruler where we get told who is a good Israeli, the media becomes increasingly 'state sponsored' and Bibi's opponents are expected to try and unseat him with both hands tied behind their backs. 

We're nhot there yet thank god - we'll just have to see how this all plays out though. 

The Fulfillment of a 2000 Year Old Dream

Yesterday's reelection of Bibi Netanyahu - nearly 67 years after the founding of the modern State of Israel - was the culmination of 2000 years of the hopes and aspirations, dreams and prayers of the Jewish people.

Finally:

• We are free to be openly racist on our way to victory
• We have a prime minister strong enough to tell us who is a good Israeli (and who isn't)
• We can openly disrespect the leader of our greatest ally - who we rely on for advanced weapons we can't produce ourselves, massive amounts of trade to keep our economy from collapsing and protecting us with a veto in hostile world bodies
• We can feel good about creating a society with a growing divide between the haves and have-nots while living like kings in our state-funded mansions
• We can freely demonize other Jews who also serve in the army and risk their lives for this country but have a different point of view on security or economic issues
• We can rest assured knowing we live in a country where our official Rabbinate is ruled by religious fanatics
• We can enshrine into legislation the 'special' status of the ultra-orthodox where if my son doesn't want to go to the army he is assured he will sit in prison for 2 years but if one of his many second cousins decides not to go to the army he will suffer no significant consequences at all
• We can put to bed this silly idea of universal suffrage and rule millions of people without giving them a vote or any hope of ever having a vote

The Ancient Tradition of Igloo Building in Jerusalem

I think we're coming to accept the fact that we live in a genuine wintry climate here in Jerusalem. Not like Scandinavian or Minnesota winter climate but a place that gets multiple snowstorms a year. Probably the coolest part of last night's storm was watching Mohamed from the local supermarket build an igloo - without gloves on!

All in all I'd say we got a bit more than a foot of snow - not too shabby for the desert!

The view from our balcony

 Playing outside

 Selfie mode

 Park bench piled high with snow

The ancient art of Igloo building, circa Middle East 2015

 Mar veGiveret Shalgia

 Selfie mode part deux

The view from my car trying to get home from the train station at 9 p.m. last night - it was treacherous but all my snow driving skills came back to me very quickly!

Awesome Israel-Hamas Comics

We're currently staying with my in-laws in Syracuse. My in-laws love the weekend comics so in that vain, here are a bunch that I think sum up the absurdity of the current conflagaration between Israel and Hamas perfectly:

And my favorite:

How Civilized Societies Behave Under Fire (and How Uncivilized Ones Behave Too)

Civilized societies build warning systems, bomb shelters, and defensive missile shields to protect their citizens.Uncivilized societies use their citizens to protect the missiles and terrorist apparatus.

Civilized societies warn the civilians on the other side before striking so as to minimize civilian casualties as much as possible.
Uncivilized societies fire indiscriminately at civilians in an attempt to maim and kill as many as possible.

Civilized societies are nearly unanimously disgusted and ashamed when one of their own commits heinous crimes against an innocent 16 year-old boy on his way to pray.
Uncivilized societies hand out candies and flash '3 fingered' salutes to celebrate the murder of 3 teenage boys returning home to see their families after a week of school.

Civilized societies place life above all else.
Uncivilized societies are obsessed with death and martyrdom.

Civilized societies dedicate the lion's share of their financial resources to providing basic welfare services and universal healthcare to their citizens, regardless of those citizens' race, creed, or religion.
Uncivilized societies divert nearly all of their resources to building and obtaining the instruments of war to use against civilians.

Civilized societies overwhelmingly support sharing the land that they have with another people for the sake of peace. They have withdrawn from land conquered in defensive wars on multiple occasions for this very purpose.
Uncivilized societies overwhelmingly support reconquering all of the land between the river and the sea.

Civilized societies are home to diverse populations, with Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, straight and gay, liberal and conservative, living together in the same cities and towns.
Uncivilized societies are so inhospitable to anyone even remotely different that you wont be able to find them living there.

Civilized societies try to teach their children to have tolerance for people that are different than them, even for those they vehemently disagree with.
Uncivilized societies nurture their children on hatred of Jews from cradle to grave.

Individuals that believe there's any moral equivalence between Civilized and Uncivilized societies are those Edmund Burke was referring to when he said "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Half a Lifetime Later, I Finally Get to See Soundgarden

I saw Soundgarden in Tel Aviv last night - great concert through and through with a great setlist and excellent musicianship on display - especially from Kim Thayil. Opener Gogol Bordello was really awesome too - they play Gypsy Punk music and have a crazy eclectic set of musicians and instruments on stage.

Last night was also filled with nostalgia and had me remember the time I almost saw Soundgarden in the 11th grade, back in 1996.

When I was in 10th and 11th grade, Soundgarden was easily one of my favorite bands. I knew 1994's Superunknown note for note and remember going out of my way to buy Down on the Upside with my brother Yaakov very soon after it came out - and both of us listening to that album over and over again.

I was supposed to see Soundgarden at NYC's Roseland Ballroom during the fall of 1996. I had gotten back from a 6-week teen tour in Israel and one of the girls I had become better friends with, Allison Ashenberg (who actually lives in Israel now), hooked up tickets for me, her and a couple of other people who now escape me to catch Soundgarden on the 3rd night of a 3 night run. From what I can remember, by night 2 of the run Chris Cornell's voice was totally shot to hell and they only played for like an hour and 15 minutes.

At this point in the story, I should point out was not allowed to see concerts at the Roseland, Irving Plaza, or any other place that had a mosh pit. My parents being good protective types had read in horror that some kid was stomped to death in the moshpit at a Smashing Pumpkins show at the Academy and that was the end of my chance to see most of the bands I was listening to live in concert.

I had no choice really - I did what any teenager that was even remotely independent would: I made up an elaborate alibi about some get together from my summer teen tour in the city that was going to end late and force me to sleep in the city. Thankfully people under 20 didn't own cell phones in 1996 so once I left my house in Riverdale, I didn't have to worry about being called by my parents and getting caught in my web of lies.

I headed downtown and went to hang out with this girl from my bus that summer who I kind of had a thing for, Aliza Finkle. Plus her apartment was right next to Washington Square Park in the West Village, which in high school seemed to be about as cool a place as anyone could live. And her parents were really interesting people - her mom used to be a model of some sort and they had really cool books and music and seemed incredibly worldly.

At about 5 Allison got a call that Soundgarden had cancelled the show because Chris Cornell had the flu. Fuckers! I had made up an elaborate alibi for no reason. They would reschedule the show at a later date they said. A couple months later, Soundgarden broke up and so I never got to see them. Until last night that is.

After hearing the show was cancelled, I hung out downtown for a few more hours and then made my way up to Jonathan Smith's house on the Upper East side where I was sleeping. I was supposed to catch a bus out to my school in New Jersey the next morning.

At roughly 10:30 p.m., I got a panicked call from my Dad. He had somehow tracked down Jonathan Smith's number. He had realized I had never left the number of where I was staying and called another kid from my summer tour's parents (AJ Stone) - and found out that there was no bus get-together that night.

Smith and I were sitting facing each other taking waterfall rips and blowing them through a laundry sheet stuffed into a cardboard paper towel roll in his bathroom (as if that's actually masked the smell of anything before) when his Dad knocked on the door and said I had an urgent phone call. I'm pretty sure the Smith's entire east side apartment smelled like the lawn at a Grateful Dead show - maybe his parents had an insanely bad sense of smell - but there didn't seem to be any parental issues on his end, only mine.

I had smoked marijuana only a handful of times at this point of my life - and I'd never had to actually talk to my parents before while high. Needless to say as paranoid as I was, my Dad was a lot more paranoid as he suspected that the reason I had made up an elaborate web of lies wasn't to see Soundgarden - which I had had to confess to when he found out there was no get-together - but to engage in the evils of teen soft drug use.

I somehow managed to eventually get off the phone with him - and when I got home from school the next night I had to endure a multi-hour interrogation from both him and my Mom, with the two of them playing good cop/bad cop.

The entire experience didn't stop me from occasionally getting high in high school - very rarely on school nights - I was a very responsible student with aspirations of attending a top college. The occasional toke is too damn fun - we'd generally spend hours acting goofy and giggling after a smoke - to believe all the stupidity adults feed you about how it will get you to try harder drugs, stop caring about anything and ruin your life.

Actually I can say based on my own personal experiences that in retrospect, the opposite of all those things is true. The occasional smoke in high school made me less constrained by standard modes of thinking and allowed me to take more mental risks that I think ultimately have made me a much more successful person - in both work and life. It turns out that in most fields and human interactions generally, the ability to step outside of your preconceived views and break down the doors of perception (to use an overquoted phrase) is highly valued and rewarded. I'm not saying you need a literal drug to achieve that - but very few people are born with the ability to step outside themselves and be truly creative. And so there's generally some out of body experience or trigger experience that allows the people that are truly creative to tap into an ability that we're all born with, a bit better and more deeply than the rest of us.

All of this was going through my mind as Soundgarden burned through 19 songs in a little over 2 hours - including half of Superunkown, which just had a special 20th anniversary release (that made me feel old!). My personal highlights were an especially hard-rocking Jesus Christ Pose (with Chris Cornell introducing the song as 'about a dude born not far from here, a craftsman, a carpenter and generally badass guy' which left most of the Israelis scratching their heads trying to figure out who he was talking about), pretty much everything from Superunknown including a slowed down, especially angsty 4th of July and great audience sing along on Blow up the Outside World, and Beyond the Wheel which was their final song and ended with Kim Thayil on stage alone in some sort of weird guitar worshiping ritual that created lots of cool distortion and ambient sounds.

And yes, I got to taste my first mosh pit, finally at age 34 ;-) The mainly tattooed and pierced dudes in the pit were all smiles whenever they collided with someone - all that angst that must have existed in mosh pits when the participants were 16 seems to have melted away now that they're in their 30s and early 40s. Seems like we all turned out pretty much ok in the end.

Alan Turing and Biblical Literalism: A Prayer for the New Year

I happened to stumble across this article on CNN last night. The gist of it is that the previous day the Queen of England pardoned Alan Turing - who broke the Nazi Enigma code in WWII, saving thousands of British lives, and who also invented the prototype for the modern computer, the eponymous Turing Machine - for indecent homosexual acts he committed in the 1950s, shortly after which he killed himself. Wanting to know more, I looked up his story on Wikipedia.  

It is a story that is both fascinating and depressing. Turing was a brilliant scientist who at the age of 15 was already solving complex mathematical problems without any formal training. By age 16, he understood Einstein's theory of relativity implicitly debunked Newtonian physics although Einstein never stated this explicitly in his work. After studying at Cambridge and Princeton, he joined Britain's elite code-breaking unit and single-handedly cracked the German's Enigma code, saving countless lives during WWII. 

After the war he invented the prototype for the modern computer, the Turing Machine, which gave formalization to the concepts of algorithm and computation. He is considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.  

In his personal life, Turing had known he was gay since he was a teenager and while not open about it, he never denied it either. Following an incident in 1952 where Turing's house was robbed by an acquaintance of a lover of his, in which it came out that Turing had slept with another man during the police investigation, Turing was offered a choice between prison or receiving weekly female hormone shots for an entire year to 'control' his deviant libido. Not surprisingly, Turing ended up killing himself just a year after he received chemical castration treatments.

What really shocks me about this entire incident is the level to which blind hatred for homosexuals (or any group as was the case of Jewish scientists living in Germany in the 30s) caused England to essentially kill off one of its most dedicated and remarkable citizens. Turing dedicated his life to helping the State and was a hero and patriot in every sense of the word. 

I recently finished reading 'God is not Great' by Christopher Hitchens. The way a man like Turing was treated - despite his great brilliance and heroism - clearly has its roots in statements that appear in Leviticus calling for men that sleep with other men to be put to death by stoning, as well as statements in the new Testament recently made famous by the scandal surrounding the Duck Dynasty show (a show I ave no interest in watching). Literal interpretations of these sorts of edicts lead directly to the kind of self-defeating persecution of great minds and great individuals simply because they were born a certain way (created by God in that way if you will) and that the sin of their birth doesn't correspond with a statement made by a nomadic tribe 4,000 years prior, in an entirely different place, time and cultural setting.  Similarly, Naziism obsessive Jew-hatred had clear roots in 1800 years of Church dogma, initially begun in the new Testament.

My prayer for the new year is that we learn to have true respect for all of God's creations - the ones that are living and breathing and creating on a daily basis in the here and now. And that those of us that are inclined towards religion in one way or another use it only as a force for good.

P.S. Apparently there's a movie about Turing's life and death staring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Kneightly coming out in 2014. I'll definitely be seeing it.

Update: The movie is called The Imitation Game and it's awesome! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Turing specifically or in understanding the concept of genius in general.

No, Muslim Hate Speech Is Not Acceptable

Maybe it's time to start shutting down certain select mosques. Like this one the 'brothers' prayed at:

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, attended the Cambridge mosque for services and are accused of setting two bombs that killed three people and injured at least 264 others at the April 15 Boston Marathon.

The FBI has not indicated that either mosque was involved in any criminal activity, but mosque attendees and officials have been implicated in terrorist activity:

• Alamoudi, who signed the articles of incorporation as the Cambridge mosque's president, was sentenced to 23 years in federal court in Alexandria, Va., in 2004 for his role as a facilitator in what federal prosecutors called a Libyan assassination plot against then-crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Abdullah is now the Saudi king.

• Aafia Siddiqui, who occasionally prayed at the Cambridge mosque, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 while in possession of cyanide canisters and plans for a chemical attack in New York City. She tried to grab a rifle while in detention and shot at military officers and FBI agents, for which she was convicted in New York in 2010 and is serving an 86-year sentence.

• Tarek Mehanna, who worshiped at the Cambridge mosque, was sentenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda. Mehanna had traveled to Yemen to seek terrorist training and plotted to use automatic weapons to shoot up a mall in the Boston suburbs, federal investigators in Boston alleged.
• Ahmad Abousamra, the son of a former vice president of the Muslim American Society Boston Abdul-Badi Abousamra, was identified by the FBI as Mehanna's co-conspirator. He fled to Syria and is wanted by the FBI on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill Americans in a foreign country.
• Jamal Badawi of Canada, a former trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston Trust, which owns both mosques, was named as a non-indicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in Texas over the funneling of money to Hamas, which is the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Funded by the Saudis, affiliated with the muslim brotherhood, What does America have against stopping hate speech that leads to action (repeatedly)? This is no different than the KKK - and more dangerous.

Or do muslims get to say and do whatever the fuck they want until after they plot to kill or actually kill innocents?

And where are all the people on the left that go nuts every time a christian or Jewish politician/Rabbi/priest says something remotely offensive about gays or other minorities (something which of course should be condemned)? Why do they not seem to care about speech like this, speech that apparently has very real world consequences again and again:

A former trustee appears in a series of videos in which he advocates treating gays as criminals, says husbands should sometimes beat their wives and calls on Allah (God) to kill Zionists and Jews, according to Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group that has investigated the mosques.

No, my blog has not been hacked by Republicans... but when you actually think about that 8 year old boy who was killed, it makes you wonder why their life is more valuable than his?

Naftali Bennett IS Andre from The League

Most people that know me know what a huge fan of the FX TV series 'The League' I am, especially the comedic stylings of Paul Scheer, better know as Andre, the nebbie character who is way more successful than his peers but who is nonetheless the butt of pretty much every joke due to his absurd fashion style and ridiculous mannerisms.

You also probably know me as a centrist to the core politically - someone who eschews ideology across the board (heck, it's the reason I called this here blog the Common Sensorium). I am far from a supporter of ideological causes, both in Israel where I live and in the U.S. where I still vote and spend about 6 weeks of the year.I definitely have ZERO interest in supporting an ideologue like Naftali Bennett, head of the right wing Bayit Yehudi party in the upcoming Israeli election.

Which is why I was so shocked to discover that Naftali Bennett and our beloved Andre (aka Paul Scheer) are in fact one and the same person!

As Exhibit A, I provide irrefutable photographic evidence. I bet you can't even guess which of this is Bennett and which is Andre:

In my utter state of shock I fired off an email to Andre's Bayit Yehudi campaign manager, Andre Bennett (no relation I'm told). Andre Bennett neither confirmed nor denied what is now clearly the undeniable truth, that Naftali Bennett and League star Andre are one and the same person. However, when asked how he could be running as such a cleancut, religious nut type while helping write and starring in what is possibly the most depraved TV show of all time, he did give me one of his patented 'Child Please!'s (actual patent the property of Chad Ochocinco).



What more proof do you need?

So for all you potential Bayit Yehudi voters out there, I just hope you realize that you're supporting a candidate that shoots porn in his upscale downtown loft and then screens it at a Succa Party for Baby Geoffrey's Jewish preschool teacher. Sick, just sick!

Snow in the Desert

Well, not really. Jerusalem has been getting snow since recorded history. The word 'sheleg' already dates back to Isiah  (and maybe older - feel free to chime in if there's older biblical references to snow). [Actually, I looked back and it dates back as far as the book of Exodus, referring to Moses' hand being white like snow at the scene of the Burning Bush]

Here's our snow day in pictures.

 Early morning view from our kitchen

 Our parking lot

Our car

 Buildup on our balcony

 View from Zohara's window, looking east

 My favorite shot - the view from our balcony at roughly 8 a.m.

 Getting ready to rock out with our snowsuits out!

 Snow day!

 Winter wonderland

 Car driving wrong way in traffic circle near our house!

 A serious storm!

 Yours truly

Singing in the Rain

So here we are in day 3 of our 5 days superstorm. We've passed the high wind phase and are in the steady, non-stop rain phase. Tomorrow we enter the dropping temperatures with a chance (I'll believe it when I see it) snow phase. It's weeks like this I am extra grateful I work from home.

Here's the view from right behind my building - we had 2 fairly large downed trees that resulted from the 100 km/hour (60 mph) winds we had yesterday. There were downed trees all over the neighborhood.

We have been very impressed with the city's response to the storm. Yesterday I saw city workers out with chainsaws in the peak of the wind gusts taking down dangerous trees and branches before they got blown onto people and cars. Then on the way back from dropping the kids I noticed a downed telephone pole with lots of electric wires across from our bedroom window. I called the police who then came to check it out. They called the telephone company who called me for directions to the downed pole. Again, in the midst of 100 kph wind gusts they removed the pole and neutralized the wires. Then today I got another call from the police asking me to rate their response time, courteousness and whether the problem was resolved. What is happening to Israel?! Seriously amazing.


This is the mall in Modiin, where a bunch of my coworkers live. Pretty crazy.

All in all, the Kineret is at its highest level in years and maybe it's just me but I find extreme weather events (or at least tracking them from the comfort and safety of your own home) entertaining. Up to a point of course. I'm not about to go singing in the rain.

Do You Think You Can Run From A Global Ideology Of Hatred?

Because if you do, you definitely don't want to be in Israel right now. The hate-filled muslim masses that surround this region's only non-muslim state (a state lived in by Jews 1,500 years before the advent of Islam) are no closer to accepting non-muslims in their backyard now then they were when they tried to drive us into the sea shortly after the U.N. voted to partition part of this land to us 65 years ago.

Just for the fear-minded non-Islamists among you, those who can't understand why anyone would want to live in a war zone, even if it is their historic right to live there, I've come up with some other places that aren't safe. Avoid these places at all costs: the scary Islamo-fascist boogieman may target you there. After all, they have in the past. Or they've tried to. And if someone scary targets you, it's always best to simply give in. You certainly wouldn't want to make them mad.

1) Avoid countries with large muslim populations - from Bali to India to Istanbul to Cairo, non-muslims and moderate muslims have been targeted across the muslim world. If you're the type that prefers to run away from evil and anything scary, I suggest you avoid these places at all costs.

2) Avoid New York City - the largest terrorist attack in modern history occurred there and there have been several other plots foiled there. Who know when the next successful one will be?

3) Avoid large European cities: London, Madrid, Amsterdam, Moscow - the list of places attacked by islamists across the European continent stretches on and on. And the next attack is just as likely to take place in a city that hasn't been targeted before as it is in one that has. They like to keep the element of surprise at play.

4) Avoid non-muslim places of worship - especially synagogues. Islamists have plotted to blow up houses of worship the world over (and occasionally succeeded). Do you really think one empty cop car parked outside your synagogue on the high holidays will foil an enemy determined to kill above all else?

5) Avoid flying - 9/11 may have culminated in NY and DC but the planes were hijacked from a variety of places. And the news is constantly filled with stories of muslim terrorists plotting attacks on airplanes. Just to be safe, avoid the aviation industry entirely.

6) Avoid western countries with large muslim populations - while most muslims aren't terrorists, most terrorists that have plotted against western targets have been muslim, of the fundamentalist variety. And just because they haven't managed to successfully kill a bunch of innocent civilians in your country yet, doesn't mean they haven't been trying. Australia, Canada, Germany - these places and many others may not have been successfully attacked yet but that's only because local law enforcement has broken up numerous plots to attack innocent civilians. I say better safe than sorry.

So there you have it. I hear we'll be colonizing the moon within a century or so. So if you just hold out, you may finally be able to escape those scary Islamists for once and all. Because right or wrong, who wants to live in fear? It's best to just run and hide.

Me - I'm sick of running and hiding. I've been doing that for 2 millennia. So I'll just stay right where I am. Where would I go anyway?

Feeling Saucy? Come for the Vermouth, Stay for the Anus

You gotta love the lack of spellchecking on English signs in Israel but this one was a classic - even for here.

From our drink menu on Saturday (photo taken by my sister Sara):

click to enlarge

As they say around these parts, L'Chaim! Drink Up!

Fun With Popular Expressions

Here at the Common Sensorium we like to turn common sense on its head. In that light, I've been playing around with popular expressions lately during some of my spare thinking time (that's about 7 minutes a day for those of you counting) and came up with this list (some of which are admittedly just downright silly and some of which I've heard before and just can't remember from where):

• Religion is the opiate of the masses - except in China, where Opium is the opiate of the masses
• Why buy the cow if you can have sex with it for free? (Gabe P. astutely points out this is from Mallrats)
• 1 in the bush is better than 2 hand jobs
• Bigger bang for your fuck
• A Pap Smear a day means the doctor is gay
• Revenge is a dish best served before dessert
• Up shit's creek without any toilet paper
• Absynthe makes the heart grow drunker
• Don't bite the dick that fucks you (HT David Allan Coe)

• This just in from Ben Feuer: Vermouth shall set you free

The Latest 'Fun' From Tahrir Square

Jeff Goldberg brings us the latest 'fun' from Cairo:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/cairo-is-no-place-for-a-woman/259063/

For those people still clinging to the dream, despite reality intervening in the ensuing 18 months, that the Arab spring was actually a good thing, it's time to admit that maybe the mass of Egyptians aren't ready for democracy, to respect minority (including women's rights) and that it's safe to say now that they've elected an islamist president and parliament that things will be considerably worse for the masses there (largely a result of their own doing).

Before Mubarak was deposed, they had less freedom: less freedom to rape, pillage, rob, murder, harass. I spent a week in Cairo in 1999 and this sort of thing never could have happened then. Arab societies seem to breed a disdain for the other, be they Coptic Christians, Jews, their own women, Westerners. That doesn't bode well for a true democracy (a system that affects people daily and not just when they vote once a decade), where everyone's rights are respected both in creed and deed

P.S. As my colleague Michael Lipkin says, "There's nothing more dangerous than 10th century morality combined with 21st century technology."

Purim Mix 2012 - Who'll Stop The Rain?

So I like to get thematic in my purim mixes. This great tradition has been carried down from the generations, starting with my father in maybe the late 70s (if I had to guess an exact date). This year's theme is 'Who'll Stop The Rain?' after what is probably the 'wettest' winter I've ever experienced anywhere. Now I'm sure the authorities will still claim that with all the rain and flooding we got here in Israel, we barely made a dent in the national water deficit. That's little consolation though for someone whose apartment walls and ceiling are still drying out 4 full days after being battered by half a meter of rain in 4 days.

My mixes follow a general logic - bring 'em in with upbeat tunes that aren't too pumped up, gradually ease into the central theme, then close strong with pumped up jams.

Here goes (click for bigger view):


Happy Purim to one and all!

In Case There Was Any Doubt As To The Nerdiness/Intelligence Of Phish Fans...

This discussion is currently raging on the message boards on Phish.net, the band's largest fan site: http://blog.phish.net/1326056166/a-few-choice-words-on-scalpin

Most band fan sites would just complain about exorbitant scalping prices and that would be the end of it. But Phish fans have to get into a discussion about the history of scalping in the U.S. dating back to pre-civil war times, particularly Charles Dickens' 1851 book reading tour. The annecdote about Madison Square Garden colluding with scalpers in the early 20th century is also pretty darn amusing - the more things change the more they stay the same.

Saying Goodbye To A Most Incredibly Independent Babi

When I was younger - maybe 7 or 8 - and first got into some mischief for being a 'wise guy' in class, I assumed I had naturally inherited such behavior from my father, who had gotten into similar trouble at that age. As I got a bit older, I realized my Babi - my mother's mother - who was then a spry 73 or so, deserved at least as much credit for my rebellious streak.

Considering many of the trials, tribulations and tragedies she had to endure in her lifetime, her fierce independence to the very end - her utter refusal to let life kick her when she was down - is probably the thing that most fascinates and amazes me about her to this day. It's what I'll miss the most about her. I figured I'd reflect on it since she passed away a few weeks before her 97th birthday this past Friday.

My Babi was a Holocaust survivor but her independent streak seems to have existed long before the Nazis invaded Hungary in March 1944, when she was almost 30, and newly wed (getting married in your late 20s in that time period was alone a statement of her independance). In fact, it's likely the reason she survived an ordeal that saw so many of her family members perish.

Growing up in the town of Sátoraljaújhely in Northeast Hungary, Babi didn't see her father from 1914, the outbreak of WWI, when she was just an infant, until 1919, when the war ended. Her family was religiously defined as 'Status quo' which was some Hungarian Jewish equivalent of modern orthodox in America today. In a surviving picture we have that was taken in 1928 or 1929, her father is wearing a simple hat and her two older brothers and dapperly dressed, with their heads uncovered. She attended 'Gymnasia', the local non-sectarian Jewish school, through just 4th grade, as was standard for girls at that time.

Her first husband, who died in Budapest in late 1944 and is buried in a mass grave in the Dohein temple, wasn't a particularly religious man. He certainly didn't put on tefillin (phylacteries) on a regular basis - an act which is considered a daily staple of an orthodox Jewish lifestyle. If not for the war, she never would have ended up with my zeidy (grandfather in yiddish), who was from a hasidic family (he stopped wearing hasidic garb after the war but remained deeply religious). Though they grew up in the same small town in Hungary, their paths most certainly would have never crossed.

Babi's father passed away of natural causes in March 1944. She travelled from Budapest, where she lived with her husband, whom she had been married to for a couple of years at most, to sit shiva in Sátoraljaújhely at her parents house. In the middle of the shiva, her husband called her and told her to leave at once as word had spread that the Nazis had invaded Hungary. So she attempted to board the next train to Budapest. As she arrived at the train station in Sátoraljaújhely, the local anti-semitic authorities were separating out the Jewish passengers, forcing them to remain in the town until they could be deported to Auschwitz. Babi was unaware of this but saw a long line by the main entrance to the station and in her typical independent mindset, snuck in through a back entrance to the station and onto the train out of the city. When she returned to her neighborhood in Budapest later that day, her friends couldn't believe she had made it back from the countryside unscathed.

Babi didn't much like discussing most of her war experiences - she believed in living in the present and harping on it could send her into a deep depression (my mom says Babi once stayed in bed for 3 days straight after she brought her to see a play her class was doing about the Eichman trial). The stories she did have were mostly disjointed - a snippet here, and anecdote there. We know Raul Wallenberg pulled her off a transit at some point and saved her, as he did for many of Budapest's Jews. Above all, Babi would not be defined as a victim despite her harrowing war stories. We never thought of her as a victim - someone that strong never could be one.

Even in her later years when she had Alzheimer's and rarely recognized her grandchildren, she was always quick with a joke or a sly remark. On my last visit to her in May, she quipped to Simone that she was very chinosh (skinny in Hungarian). Then she turned her glance to me and a quipped, "him not so much."

One other story I'm reminded of is from when I was 14. I decided to stay in camp for a 2nd month and skip my family's vacation so my friend Jonah Lowenfeld joined in my place. Babi felt this young man was very rude - at one point she slapped him after he tried to pour wine for my father without 'permission'. That was my Babi though; if she thought you were wrong, she said so. There was no pretense with her.

Looking at pictures on Saturday night with my Mom and brother Hillel, there Babi was at every one of our graduations, always smiling and just happy to be there to witness such a momentous occasion. She always mentioned with pride that my mother always brought home straight A's - this was still an incredible point of pride decades later. Our graduations were the perfect confluence of events as Babi truly valued family and education above all else precisely because of the personal independence those two things offer. With a strong education, she believed life's doors were opened up for you. With a strong family to support you through thick and thin, you could go out and be yourself to the world every day without worrying too much about being judged. In know Babi never did.

Pictures of Babi from this May

Fascinated With Crustypunks

So I found this website - http://crustypunks.blogspot.com/ - online last night and I've spent hours reading it since then. It is a site started by an East Village photographer (I think) named Steven Hirsch to document the stories of the wandering groups of what have been labeled 'crustypunks' or gutter punks' by people around the country. These kids show up every summer in tomkins sq. Park in the east Village and set up there to panhandle in the days and 'party' at nights.

Most of their stories are quite similar. These kids basically run away from home in the teens after getting thrown out of their houses when their parents find them with hard drugs after years of fighting, or they come from really broken, messed up homes to begin with, where there is physical and/or sexual abuse. Some grew up in foster homes and never knew their parents or had any real family to speak of. They join these wandering bands of hobos, hop freight trains up north in summer and down south in winter and live a nomadic existence free of the cares that most of us with families and mortgages, jobs and deadlines.

They live really hard lives. Many are heroin addicts. The ones that don't do heroin are usually alcoholics. They get in lots of street fights - both with each-other and with locals. They get in trouble with the local police - tickets, arrests, constantly being hassled. They have few friends and many seem to be teetering on the edge of mental stability.

I love the fact that these sorts of subcultures seemingly spring up overnight in America. I love even more that amateur anthropologists like Steven Hirsch will see something interesting and new going on around them, camera in hand, and take it upon themselves to document it in a public fashion (damn I love the interwebs). It's a really well done site, because Hirsch captures the original voice of his subjects giving the reader a real sense of how a conversation (or rambling monologue) might go, while telling their life story, or recounting specific life events that have happened to these characters. And they are really are characters: each and every one could probably have a novel written about them or a movie made about them. The pictures the author takes are really good too - individual portraits that at a glance give you a real sense of who these kids are. As my friend Rena just put it, he does a very good job at presenting the good/idealistic vs. bad/realistic sides of these lives, and in a very short space.

I just remembered, when I was at my first Bonnaroo music festival in 2002 in the middle of tennessee, there was a crustypunk there who we saw wandering and we were making a huge bbq one afternoon and invited him over to dine with us. His name was Spider (they all have these sorts of street names given to them by fellow travelers) and he told us about his life. He wandered the country on freight trains - usually alone, occasionally with others. Everything he owned was in a single backpack and it wasn't even full. He spoke of the freedom he had from the materialism of America but also of being hungry a lot and never knowing where his next meal was coming from. Somethings basic things you can't break 'free' from I guess.

And here's an interview I just found with Steven Hirsch - Smart guy!

Anyway, fascinating stuff.