Happy holidays

Merry Christmas to all my friends and readers celebrating!
Here in Beer Sheva, we don't get this holiday off, so you'll find me tonight at a training session for new volunteers for Project La'ad at Ben-Gurion University, and tomorrow laying the groundwork to expand our program for the benefit of the Holocaust survivors in nearby Kiryat Malachi and recruiting new student volunteers at Achva College.

Last week, my program brought volunteers from across the country to Jerusalem for a tour of Yad Vashem. This was the second of my nine tours of Israel's national Holocaust museum led in Hebrew, and as always, I picked up some new vocab:
נצר / netzer = stem, shoot.
This is a special usage referring to the lone survivor of an entire family. Our tour guide told us that Yad Vashem knows of 114 such last stems of their family tree who fell in Israel's War of Independence.

Our tour guide also emphasized a list of numbers of Jews by country, compiled during the Wannsee Conference and its Final Solution, a.k.a. extermination of Europe's Jewish population. The list included Estonia, with its relatively insignificant population of a few thousand Jews. So now our job as part of Project La'ad is to reach as many of Israel's roughly 230,000 survivors as possible in clarifying their rights, documenting their life stories in Project LeDorot (a joint program with Yad VaShem), and through a friendly visiting program--all without missing a single town, no matter how small its population of survivors.


At the end of the tour, where the main exhibit opens up to the spectacular rolling Jerusalem foothills, with a group of students from Ein Gedi who recently joined Project La'ad.

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Speaking of powerful, Dov Lipman's piece here gives plenty of motivation to continue my dad's convivial attitude in greeting everyone he saw with a smile and a 100% genuine "how are you?".

Here's a really powerful Harvard Business Review piece about honesty and making day-to-day decisions with integrity (thanks to my co-aunt (urbandictionary.com's term for my sister's sister-in-law) Jenny).

Dave Brubeck and sitar legend Ravi Shankar left the world in the same week. In addition to catching Brubeck with Dad, thanks to Michigan's University Musical Society, which brought Shankar to Hill Auditorium (and gave students a crazy discount for good measure), I ended that rough week for the music world feeling extremely grateful to have seen both those, among so many other, legends in concert.

Peace and love from the capital of the Negev!
אריק/Eric

Back to normal

The war (עופרת עמוד ענן/Oferet Amud Anan- Operation Pillar of Defense) started as far as I was concerned when I got the following text from my boss:
חיסלו את מפקד החמאס אז תזהר.. בטח יהיו נפילןת [sic]
The Hamas commander was killed so watch out...there are gonna be rocket hits

From there I underwent the longest 17 hours of my life with 20 sirens, made it to Jerusalem (where I was interviewed on WGN), and all the way north to Carmiel, the bag I packed for a week and a half lasted me exactly the correct duration, and then a couple weeks ago I got back home to the South.
Everything, believe it or not, is back to normal. It certainly was odd to report on my timesheet for that "Rocket Thursday" I couldn't get to the office because of war. Anyone reading here ever had to report that on their timesheet???
But I am thrilled to be back in the Beer Sheva I love, that of the pool, the free concert series where I was thrilled to see Peter Rot, one of my favorite singer-songwriters, the weekend spectacular moonlight hike that the student association put together at Yerucham Lake to our south. And this week I've lit candles with some friends from the university. Life is good and I'm very busily back to work.

The incredibly Koby Mandell Foundation opened up its Comedy for Koby shows to Southern Israel residents--I made the trip to Jerusalem for my free show, but will certainly be a regular attendee and help fund raise for their future shows. A friend and former colleague from work at Masa reviewed the show as part of her job at the Jerusalem Post. As Rachel reported- Named for 13-year-old Koby Mandell who was killed by terrorists in 2001, its biannual shows help raise funds for activities benefiting Israelis who have lost loved ones to terrorism. Check out the Foundation's website--I especially enjoyed this list of Koby's favorite jokes.

חנוכה שמח/Chanuka sameach- Happy Chanuka! I enjoyed Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks' basic historical piece on Jewish celebration of this holiday.

Israel's nurses are on strike for the ninth day, sending shock waves throughout the country and the health care system. As the son of a nurse in her fourth decade in the field, it hurt to read the scathing picture this Israeli nurse painted of her work conditions (written very clearly for the layman, for the Hebrew readers among you).

One of Dad's all-time favorites, Dave Brubeck, joined Dad upstairs for a duet (that NPR piece is loaded with fantastic videos). This video of the Kennedy Center Honors performance for Brubeck three years ago is so heartwarming--check out the huge smile on Dave's face when his sons formed a quartet and jammed for his birthday!

Dad--you missed my performance of RSVP for your אזכרה/azkara - memorial last spring, but I'll keep learning your music and give you a nice show upstairs. The Jazz 101 course you taught me was front-loaded with Brubeck. Your enjoyment for his odd time-signatures and unique voice, which so clearly left its mark on yours, passed to me immediately when you got me into his stuff when I was in high school. And then we caught him live at Ravinia at their summer jazz festival, one of so many you came up to Chicago to enjoy with me.

Doctor Sekeres' New York Times blog post on cancer patients holding out for family visits or celebrations before succumbing to the disease hit home especially hard on a week when I received the heartbreaking news that another friend lost his mother to cancer.

Richard Behar, a financial journalist looking professionally from the outside in at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict proved himself extremely adept at presenting background on the situation.

Stevie Wonder let me down big time by succumbing to pressure and backing out on his LA concert for the Friends of the IDF. Stevie--if you're reading my blog :), I met you back on Martin Luther King Day in 2003 after you spoke and played at the Northwestern University MLK Day event. Then you urged Bush to stop the war in the Middle East. While I disagree with your decision to cancel your performance, I see that an IDF-related event might not be the best match for you. But I sure would love to see you find an alternative cause in Israel to support. We love you and need you Stevie!

Peace and love,
Eric