We're #1

Well, it's been awhile. Great to be back!

I took two phenomenal trips of late:
-Staffing an incredible Shorashim/Koach birthright trip for special needs participants in late December. As Bruce Sharon said, there was some serious holiness on that bus, with simply incredible people all around.
-Yet another holy pilgrimage to Dallas. Dad rocked it out in the studio of KNTU, one of America's top five jazz radio stations for market share. His hour as DJ is online here on his Myspace page. The weekend with Amy, Aron and nephews Jake and Ben was amazing as always--Jake beat me in backyard softball 17 - 5, and Ben is walking and talking up a storm! We met Dad's wonderful staff at the Crowley Clinical Trials center--he's in phenomenal hands.













Now it's incredible to be back where I belong in Israel. I got back late Monday night and went right back to Ben-Gurion University for spring semester classes starting Tuesday. This semester I have a ton of Nursing Home Management (six hours of various courses weekly), as well as Human Resources Management in Elder Care.

Our professor for Policy of Elder Care informed us that Israel has moved up one spot over the last year, and now...
We're Number One* for male life expectancy (*it's a tie).

Back in Dallas, everybody and their dog was asking me what Israel and I are thinking about the destabilization of the Middle East. Can't lie--it's a bit unsettling. But...
What, me worry?!? My life expectancy went up by a few years with my move to Israel, all the way to the longest for males in the world! Now, our women's life expectancy stayed put at seventh place--nothing to sneeze at! But our prof explained that discrepancy as such: Israeli women take great care of the men, but Israeli men aren't quite as good to their wives. The prof didn't comment on American-Israeli men...

As for Zionist history in the context of the new Middle East, Daniel Gordis' Jerusalem Post Magazine piece is goose-bump worthy.

Also in the newspaper Friday was...me. This sad piece of news includes my picture on page 5 of the Haaretz English print edition. That's not my favorite paper, but it's pretty exciting to grace the pages of an Israeli paper for the first time nonetheless.

I represented Northwestern Hillel (from my staff days) proudly at former student Ilene's wedding at the spectacular Beit Shmuel Wednesday night. Mazal tov to Ilene and Noach!

That night, while we were celebrating the building of a new house in Israel while overlooking Suleiman the Magnificent's Old City walls, two rockets fell on Beer Sheva--the first since Operation Cast Lead more than two years ago. They fell one neighborhood over from where I stay. The false bubble of security burst along with them; I will be very aware of the locations of shelters around town now that they are suddenly relevant again.

Are you thinking I might be less determined to study in Beer Sheva now? Are you high?!? My trademark Israeli resilience will certainly not let the pathetic excuses for human beings who launch those rockets (with the goal of indeterminately targeting anyone from my toddler cousins to the 80-somethings I have interviewed for my research job) determine how I will lead my life in Israel.

Shabbat was restful and lovely; I got back to the Kotel/Western Wall this morning after a too-long hiatus, followed by lunch at elder care mogul Leah Abramowitz. Her family has been in the same Old City apartment since before 1973's Yom Kippur War.

On the walk back to my Jerusalem neighborhood, there is a view of the separation barrier in East Jerusalem. (The section that you can see from the Old City is among the less than three percent of the separation barrier that is made of concrete.)

Less than ten minutes later, I walked by a memorial to eight holy Jews who were murdered in a bus bombing during the intifada of the early 2000s. I stop and look at this memorial just about every time I walk by; I also stop and pay respects at the other memorials littered around Jerusalem on my regular walks. For the first time, I connected the two stark visuals together. And I thanked G-d for the people who constructed the security fence, and by doing so thwarted the attempts of the pathetic excuses of human beings who would murder Jews for the "crime" of living in our eternal homeland.

All this may have you thinking I've been overcome by hatred, but that's not the case. Thanks to my best efforts, I don't hate Hamas terrorists. But I have zero love for them whatsoever. If there was a number smaller than 0, that would be how much I love them. Interestingly, I read that the Palestinian street's version of the region's revolution is to call for an end of the schism between Fatah and Hamas. As Gaddafi's era is waning in Libya, G-d only knows what the next developments will be...

This is the perfect time to bust out this classic, with which I quickly became enamored after my aliyah to Israel. Mordechai Ben David and his Hollywood-caliber video production team are just the ones to get the smile back on my face. The streets he circles in the video are the same I circled today (I may or may not have relived his slow-mo running scene). To translate the chorus, "We're believers, sons of believers, and we have noone to lean on. Noone except G-d, in Heaven." That says it all.

Between MBD and my אחלה/achla/awesome life expectancy, I'm sleeping just fine tonight! And big thanks to all y'all for reading--I feel the love! Much love back at you from Jerusalem,
אירק/Eric