The Past Three Sundays

It's taken me a long time to catch up on this blogging, and I haven't been updating about our Sunday excursions either. So this post is going to include the last three Sundays.
The first Sunday back after Greece and Bulgaria (November 22nd) had a focus on the Christian Communities in Jerusalem. We went to the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, then we went into the Church.

Views From Outside and on top of the Church of the Holy Seplucher

We also went to visit the Armenian quarter in the Old City. We went into the church there, and watched a service. The Armenian church is more of a monastery, there are male students who study to become priests and they live in this secluded building. Even the church is only open for less than an hour each day, during the time of their afternoon prayer. The church was beautiful though (pictures weren't allowed so I'll have to describe it). It had these big huge domed ceilings and these hanging lanterns or something along those lines everywhere. Each lantern was hung on this pulley system and the heights could be adjusted at any point. There were these huge columns with portraits of saints all over. And this little nooks along the sides with candles. After seeing the church we met with the high priest of the Armenian community. He was pretty interesting albeit fairly right wing and stuck in his ways. He was actually American, and he had come to the monastery as a man in his twenties and ended up devoting his life to the church. In the Armenian church there are two different types of priests. One who devotes his entire life to the church, lives in a portion of the monastery and practices celibacy. The other is one who has a family, and a home, but is still a priest in the community. I am unclear as to the different roles of the two priests. The man we met was of the former type, and one of the most remarkable characteristics was this huge amethyst, diamond and gold ring that is given to the priests by the High Church upon reaching a certain level of priesthood.
The next Sunday we spent with artist Tobi Kahn. Tobi Kahn is a painter/sculptor who comes every year to Kivunim to help organize and curate an art show. Towards the end of the year (in May) in Jerusalem there will be a Kivunim art show with pictures taken by the students. Tobi oversees the production, selection and set up of the show. Any student who want to help him is able to. We woke up at 4:30 that morning and walked into the old city to watch the sun rise. It was a pretty remarkable sight. We spent several hours watching the light change in and around the old city. From there we went to the Supreme Court building, the architecture there is incredible, then to the Israel Museum and the sculpture garden and then finally to a neighborhood right around the Jewish Shuk in Jerusalem. It was pretty cool because a lot of us had never been to these places. We didn't have to listen to guides talk at us, we got to go around and see things for ourselves and take pictures.

First Light around the Old City

The Sculpture Garden at the Israel Museum

In the Neighborhood Around the Jewish Shuk

This past Sunday we spent the day focusing on the issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict. More specifically the West Bank, The Green Line and the security fence. We went to Givat Haviva, which is an institute committed to the education on this conflict and trying to come to a solution for shared citizenship (apparently the term co-existence is now politically incorrect. You may not know, but that idea and more specifically that phrase is a huge part of Kivunim's philosophy and mission statement, so there were chuckles when the woman talking to us told us that the new term is shared citizenship). After being at this center we went to several places that exemplified this issue. We went to the West Bank, we saw a town that was literally divided in half by the Green Line and we saw, from a distance the security fence. It was interesting, although to be honest, I got somewhat geographically confused when we stopped time after time after time.

The Following Two are from the top of a roof overlooking the town divided by the Green Line

Inside this van are a bunch of Palestinian men who take this transport back and forth across the Green Line every single day.

This is a brief recap of the last couple weeks.

Bulgaria

Sorry, it has taken so long to finish these posts from the International Trip.
From Thessaloniki we went to Bulgaria, but to get there we took a 6 hour long train. The train was very cool, it was like something out of Harry Potter, with sliding compartments along a hallway and ours had 6 people in each compartment.
So we left Thessaloniki at about 6 and arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria at about midnight. We then went immediately to the hotel. (Background) Bulgaria was under the communist regime until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991 so the country is still in a transitional state between communism and a new autonomous government. So, keeping that in mind we arrived at our hotel, which probably could have been gorgeous with a good decorator. The rooms though; were gray and somewhat foreboding. Our room in particular had torn wallpaper on the walls, and this carpet, which you could tell had been there for way too many years. The hotel was like a donut, and in the center was this big open space, and there were glass windows all the way up, so that was pretty cool.
Okay, so the first day in Bulgaria we went on a walking tour of the city, it was pretty cool, although I couldn't hear what the guide was saying.

Pictures from the Walking Tour of Sofia

This man was selling all of this Bulgarian themed touristy stuff. No one bought anything, but a lot of people took their picture with him

We then had a picnic in this park/square. We (as a group) had all this food laid out for ourselves, but these older people kept coming up to us and trying to take it. They thought it was a charity or a soup kitchen type thing, and we kept having to wave them away. They didn't understand English and we didn't understand Bulgarian so it was hard to get our point across. Later that evening we went to the Jewish Community Center of Sofia and had dinner with the teenagers there. The Jewish community of Bulgaria is almost entirely under the age of 30. Since the fall of the communist regime and the ability to practice Judaism again, many parents have told their kids about their identity and the kids have begun to rebuild the community. After dinner, the Bulgarian youth took us all out. I went to a Karaoke Bar which was a lot of fun.
The next day we saw met with a bunch of different people from the Jewish community, including a Sephardic woman, a Rabbi, a woman in the Jewish community whose husband was not Jewish but who was raising her son Jewish and then some more of the youth we had met last night. After that we went to see the synagogue of Sofia. It was absolutely incredible, huge and beautiful with these big domed ceilings. The synagogue had been bombed during WWII and they had just finished restoring it this past September.

Pictures of the Sofia Synagogue

After seeing this synagogue we participated along with Bulgarians our age in cleaning graffiti off the streets. More specifically we cleaned swastikas. There were a huge number of them. It surprised me, a little, to see how commonplace they were. There were some smaller ones that my group wanted to remove, but the Bulgarians we were with said "don't worry about those, there are a lot of those small ones, let's go find the bigger ones".
The next morning we packed up and left Sofia, and headed to Plovdiv, another city in Bulgaria. We saw another synagogue, but then we went to the very unique thing about this city. In Plovdiv there is a monument to the Holocaust (as is found in many European cities) but this monument was in honor of all the Jews who had survived, instead of commemorating those lives which had been lost.
Background: No Bulgarian Jews died during the holocaust. The Bulgarian Government refused to deport the Jews living within Bulgaria proper to concentration camps. Many of them were sent to forced labor camps, but returned after the war. Unfortunately, from the territories that Bulgaria controlled at the time (Macedonia, Yugoslavia) many Jews were deported and killed.

Pictures from the Plovdiv Synagogue

After the memorial we went to the community center of Plovdiv where we met with the elderly community there, almost all of whom had survived the holocaust. They spoke Hebrew and Ladino (Juedo-Spanish) and a couple of them spoke English. Those who spoke Ladino understood Spanish, so that helped in order to be able to communicate with them. At this center was one of the most incredible feelings I had felt all trip. Back in Thessaloniki we had learned a Ladino song called Adio Querida. We sang it at this community center in Plovdiv and instead of the other people just listening, they all started to sing along, and there we were, 47 teenagers and 20 or so elderly people all singing the same song. It was a shivers sent up my spine kind of feeling.
After the community center we had lunch, and then headed to the airport to come back home to Israel!

They're coming!

More blog posts are on their way, I promise.

More from the International Trip: Thessaloniki

This begins on our first morning in Thessaloniki, the night before I had pretty much fallen into bed, so I didn't really know much about the city. I did know that we weren't staying smack in the metropolitan center, sort of on the outskirts of downtown.
Day 6: This was Friday morning (to put things into perspective). Prior to coming to Greece we had learned a lot about the Thessaloniki Jews during the holocaust (Somewhere around 90% of them perished in the concentration camps) so the Jewish community there was a pretty big focus. A little bit more background: Thessaloniki was once called the Jerusalem of the Balkans, and Thessaloniki had the largest number and ratio of Jews in the community as compared with anywhere else. It used to be that when you were walking down the street every other person was Jewish. Now there are less than 3000 Jews remaining.
On Friday morning we walked to the synagogue in the center of town and met the Rabbi. The congregation there was Sephardic and on the walls of the synagogue there were plaques commemorating all of the prior Jewish communities that has existed in Thessaloniki (there were more than thirty no longer existing synagogues). We also toured a second synagogue that is used solely on High Holy Days. There we, as a group, were taught a Ladino (Hebraic Spanish) song by the Rabbi that would become almost the theme song of our trip and group (We actually sang it last night on Shabbat 11/27).

The Rabbi of the Thessaloniki Community

After the synagogue we visited the Jewish museum of Thessaloniki which was pretty interesting (it had a large focus on the effects of the holocaust) and then we were free to find our own lunch. I ended up at a seafood restaurant, and had shellfish! Which I hadn't had since leaving the United States due to the Kashrut of this program. Later that evening we headed back to the synagogue for Shabbat services and then had dinner at the community center there (the food was quite terrible).
Day 7: Shabbat morning. We walked back to shul for morning services. Some of the male members of our group were reading Torah. (This synagogue was an Orthodox Sephardic community with a mechitza). Following services we had lunch at the community center, then had time to do as wished, followed by Havdalah back at the hotel, then dinner back at the community center, then the night was ours to spend as we wished. Honestly one of the things I'm going to remember about Thessaloniki was the number of times we walked back and forth between the hotel and the synagogue.

Day 8: We woke up, packed up our bags and prepared to leave Thessaloniki. On our way out we stopped at a Byzantium architecture museum an a Greek archeological museum. The Greek archeological museum was much more interesting than the former, it had all of this ancient gold jewelry that was incredible to look at. From there we went to the Old City of Thessaloniki and looked over the city and the ocean from an overlook.

Views From the Old City

From there we visited the Holocaust memorial in the main square of downtown. The sad thing about the memorial was that it was next to a parking lot. There was much attention given to it by anyone in the city, and most people don't even know it exists. It was truly a beautiful memorial, it was this metal twisted sculpture with human forms and flames, and it was sculpted as a hannukiah.

Holocaust Memorial

From there we had free time for lunch, and then we made our way to the train station to board the six hour train to Sofia Bulgaria.

Greece [and Bulgaria]: Continued

Day 4: We had spent the night in Delphi, a small town that consisted literally of two streets, most of which were cafes or hotels. We had some time to walk around the previous night, but in all honesty the time we had exceeded the amount of things to do.

Delphi

The place we went to dinner the night before was incredible. It was right across from the hotel, and they served us all of these interesting dishes including fried cheese, stuffed peppers and then this amazingly delicious desert called loukoumades which were these fried donut balls drenched in honey, powdered sugar and cinnamon. Okay, so this morning we packed up again and went to the Delphi museum and the Temple of the Oracle. The museum was pretty cool, with all these remnants and pieces from the original temple but the Temple was ten times better. It was on this sprawling hillside, and had all of these half destroyed columns and partially constructed buildings. Again the pictures can do a better job explaining then I can, and they still don't capture entirely.

Views from Around the Temple of Apollo

From there we had a picnic on another overlook in Delphi, then we headed for a very long bus ride to Metiora, where we were going to spend the next night. The goal was for us to arrive to Metiora after dark, thus eliminating the possibility of seeing the view, which we were told by Peter (the founder and director of KIVUNIM) to be unreal. Metiora is sort of like the New Jersey of Greece, very industrial and car dealership and auto shop one after another. So on this point, there wasn't anything to do in the town, so it was a pretty quiet night.

Day 5: We woke up, packed up and left (sensing a theme here?) and headed to the Metiora monasteries. The monasteries were nestled into these huge geological cliffs that had occurred after years of erosion, and earthquakes. Once again the pictures of this will speak louder than I am able, but do know that it was absolutely incredible.

The Monasteries

After the monasteries we were en route to Thessaloniki where we were going to spend the next three nights, but on the way we stopped in a small town called Veria. Veria once had a thriving Jewish population but after many years, as well as the Second World War there are virtually no Jews remaining. The current mayor of Veria has taken it upon himself to restore the synagogue there and to try and keep Jewish locations in suitable shape as a monument to the prior Jewish populations. We visited the synagogue and had a brief service (the only time the synagogue is ever in use is when KIVUNIM comes once a year) and then we went to clean up the Jewish cemetery in the town. The sad part about the cemetery is that in the sixties the town built a sports complex over the graves (there are literally graves and tombstones beneath the basketball court). There are still some tombstones along the side of the hill but the whole place was littered and unkempt. Again, every year KIVUNIM comes and cleans up the cemetery and says Mourners Kaddish. It was an eerie sort of feeling with this dichotomy of headstones and athletics on the same plot of land.

After the cemetery we headed to Thessaloniki. That night we had dinner on our own again, and we were all somewhat exhausted from the day that we went to pretty much the closest restaurant. The thing about Thessaloniki more so that anywhere else we had been to yet in Greece, was that a very small percentage of the people spoke English. It was really weird actually. I mean I knew I was in a foreign country, I mean Israel is a foreign country but the language barrier had never been nearly as striking as it was in Thessaloniki. It was a moment were it hit me, sharply, that I was in a foreign country, with a completely different culture. Which was not a bad feeling don't get me wrong. But anyways, dinner tonight illustrates this point. The restaurant we went to had zero English speaking staff, so trying to order and additionally trying to figure out what some dishes consisted of was a struggle. My goal was to not order meat (I ended up ordering stuffed potatoes, which had ham in it, I didn't eat the ham) and it was near to impossible to communicate this idea. Regardless the food was delicious. From there we headed back to the hotel, too tired to go exploring.

Greece [and Bulgaria]: The beginning

This will be one of many blog posts about my recent trip to Greece and Bulgaria. To preface the next several posts, the trip was absolutely amazing. Every place that we went to was unlike any other places I've ever been to (this was my first trip to Europe).

Day 1: We left Jerusalem as about 3 o'clock on Sunday morning (the 8th of November), in order to get the airport for a 7 o'clock flight
When we arrived in Athens we were all a bit bleary eyed, and the realization that we were in Greece hadn't quite sunk in. On our way to the hotel, our tour guide realized that today was the day of a major marathon, and the main streets (on which our hotel was located) was closed. This posed a little bit of a problem, and we had leave our luggage behind for the time being, and take the Subway to the hotel. The train station is Athens was one of the cleanest stations I had ever seen, it was quite beautiful. We finally made it to the hotel, had lunch, then walked to the Acropolis and the Parthenon. The view, the sights, the building, everything about it was incredible. It was unreal to be standing at the foot of the Parthenon, and have everything I've learned since 6th Grade came flooding back. This is when it hit me, that we weren't in the United States, or Israel. We were in Greece and we were standing at the foot of history (The pictures do not do it justice).

The Acropolis

View of Athens from the Acropolis

After the Acropolis we went to the Greek museum, then to dinner, but by this point everyone was pretty much faded from all the travel, and it was an uneventful night.
Day 2: Today we visited a couple synagogues, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardic. Both were spectacular but the Sephardic one had just been recently remodeled, and was new, and wood paneled and very beautiful.

Newly Remodeled Sephardic Synagogue

From there we went to the Jewish Museum of Athens. This museum contained the entire history of the Jews in Greece, going back centuries, dating pretty much up until the present. There was a small section on the Holocaust as well.
Background Information: Close to 90% of the Jews in Greece perished in the Holocaust. Most of them were from Athens and Thessaloniki (which we would visit later in the trip). Due to this, the Holocaust section of the museum was very somber, and was a sort of dim lit room with a lot of personal artifacts.
From the museum we went up a cable car to the top of a mountain and ate lunch over looking the entire city of Athens. Then we returned to the hotel, at which point we were on our own for dinner. I as well as some friends, on the advice of the hotel staff, went to this small family style Greek restaurant that was delicious.
Another thing to mention is that our hotel had a 9th floor restaurant that had a completely breathtaking view of the Parthenon lit up at night. So, that evening I spent some time up there.
Day 3: We packed up and left Athens, our end destination for the day was Delphi, but there were several stops along the way. First we went to Chalkida a small city about 1.5 hours away from Athens. Chalkida has a Jewish population that dates back 2,000 years. We met with two community members at the synagogue there, and they told us a little bit about the community and the congregation. Because of Chalkida's proximity to Athens many Jews in the area go to Athens for regular prayer, and go the Chalkida synagogue for High Holy Days. Due to rain, our stop at a Jewish cemetery had to be canceled and instead we had lunch on a pier in Chalkida right on the water (which was also gorgeous) and then made our way to Delphi (Home of Apollo the sun god, and the Oracle of Delphi) for the night. Along the way we stopped at this overlook, and although it was completely freezing the view was incredible (you may notice a theme, that everywhere we went to was so incredibly beautiful. I'll put pictures up, but they don't do it justice).

Skyline from overlook on the way to Delphi
City (Not Delphi) On the Side of the Hill (From the overlook)

After all my trip posts are up I will post a link to a Picassa web album with more pictures.

The Final Session of the Conference

October 23rd 2009 (Sorry about the quality of the pictures)
This evenings closing session was so incredible and so intense, that it needed its own post.
The Session was Called "Israel 2020- The Visions of Our Leaders" The idea was to have these leaders share their vision for Israel in 2020.
Nir Barkat- Mayor of Jerusalem, Who spoke earlier that day was the moderator.
Natan Sharanski- Chairman of the Executive Jewish Agency for IsraelEhud Barak- Vice Prime Minster, Chairman of the Labor Party (Left Wing Political Party)

Ehud Barak

Eli Yishai- Vice Prime Minister, Chairman of the Shas Party (Religious Political Party)
Eli Yeshai

Tzipi Livni- Chairperson of the Opposition, Chairperson of the Kadima Party (Centralist Political Party)
Tzipi Livni

Israel Maimon- Chairman of the Conference Committee- I don't really remember him speaking

Shimon Peres- President of Israel.
Shimon Peres

Barak, Yeshai and Livni were the three who spoke the most. Barkat and Sharanski each said something at the beginning but it paled in comparison to the discussion between the three political party leaders, so I'm going to skip over it.
Each of the three Barak, Yeshai and Livni were originally given ten minutes to talk about their vision. Then they were asked a question and had three minutes to respond. The another question and they had thirty seconds to respond. And oh my it got heated!
Livni said there are to options for the future. The first is to fulfill the vision of Israel. To have a fully recognized Jewish State that is secure and safe. She recognized that in order to achieve this goal some land may have to be given up to the Palestinians so they can have a Palestinian State as well. The second option was for their to be one state, where Israel currently exists, and while Jewish people would live there it would not be Jewish State and Jews would not be the majority. She wants to see the first option actualized, and doesn't believe that the second should even need to come to fruition. She also made a commentary towards how elections in Israel work, and how the political system needs changing. She said that the Prime Minster should be elected the people, thus so that the people can elect the majority party, and thus government will not have to give into the small factions. (She had run in the last election and was beat out by small political parties gaining too much power). Livni says that the small political parties do not deserve the amount of power they currently have in the current government structure.
Yeshai- If you do not know, Yeshai's political party is one of those small political parties Livni was referencing. Yeshai began by commending the amount of creativity and culture in the country. He then went on to address the conflict between Jews and Muslims. He said that Israel and the Israeli government has to stop blaming itself for how badly peace negotiations are going with the Palestinians. Israel has already made tons of concessions, and it is now the Palestinian's turn. He also criticized the Goldstone report, saying how dare they criticize Israel look how Israel has not retaliated against Hamas's rockets, look how committed to Peace we are. He closed this portion of his speech by saying the strength of the Jewish people is our unity.
Barak- Spoke about how everything derives from peace. How right now, one hand is on the gun as preparation for attacks and the other hand is reaching out towards peace (although I did not catch if he thought this was how things should be or what they need to change from). He spoke about the quality of life in Israel, and about how young people from all over choose to live here, when they could live anywhere else in the world. He says everyone deserves the chance for a fulfilled life in Israel, and how the State of Israel must continue to exist so everyone throughout history (Holocaust, past soldiers fighting for the establishment of the State of Israel )did not die in vain. He said in order to found a Palestinian State that will coexist side by side with the State of Israel concessions need to be made.
-Here comes the interesting part of the the discussion.....
The Reform of the Political System in Israel
Question From Moderator: What reform do you think the Political System needs?
Barak-Wants a two party system
Livni- Citizens need to be directly elect leaders thus not allowing small parties to reign. This will allow the majority party to make decisions that will reflect the majority of interests of the people of Israel and eliminate the need to haggle and compromise with the small factions.
Yeshai- Doesn't oppose change, he just doesn't know what type of change is necessary. He wants to preserve the status quo between religion and politics, or in other words, wants the system to remain as is right now because his super religious party has a lot power right now.
-sounded a little like the health care debate: everyone agrees that change needs to happen, but no one has a solution that will appease everyone.

Question asked by moderator: Do you think its time that one of the two chief rabbis of Israel is conservative or reform? Which led into, what do you think the role of Jews in the Diaspora is?
Yeshai- Reform Jews in the Diaspora are becoming assimilated, and are no longer Jewish because they don't follow the Torah to a T. The role of Jewish people in the Diaspora is to move to Israel and become religious. And if that doesn't happen Judaism around the world is going to be lost. Used Reform Jewish Movement in the United States as an example and how they are all almost completely assimilated, and have lost "the Jewish identity" (at this point he was booed very loudly)
Barak- Assimilation is important and more than that okay. Successful Jewish communities have lasted where assimilation has occurred. Open mindedness is important is important. He said there is more than one way to express one's Jewishness, he pointed out how there are Jews in the diaspora who know the texts just as well or better than the people in Israel.
Lvini- Is assimilation is happening everywhere, eventually it is going to happen in Israel as well. To speak Hebrew and to go into the Army does not make someone Jewish, it makes them Israeli, and there is a difference between being Israeli and being Jewish. To be Jewish means a connection to the faith and the culture. Not to necessarily be overly observant and follow the Torah to a T. She pointed out how the Israeli youth is becoming increasingly detached and what needs to be done is to determine some characteristics of what it means to be Jewish, and and find something that unites them.
Yeshai- If you start to compromise the "standards of Judaism" and break the rules then it is double assimilation.
Barak- If someone is willing to risk their lives for Israel then they are a Jewish, even if their mother is not Jewish.
The final word on this subject was Barak quoting Golda Meir- "Whoever wants to be a Jew deserves it".
My recount of this session is not nearly close enough to how intense and fantastic it was. There was enormous amounts of tension between all three panel speakers, and so many confrontational things said that it was just incredible.
Peres closed the night by thanking everyone for attending the conference.
On our way out back to the bus to go back to Beit Schmuel we met Natan Sharanski and Dr. Ruth

The Final Day of The President's Conference

October 23rd 2009
So the deal that KIVUNIM made with us was as follows. They wanted us to experience the conference but also to attend classes. So, if you went Wednesday morning and missed language classes then you were not allowed to go on Thursday morning. I had gone Wednesday morning so I couldn't go until the afternoon panels on Thursday.
I went to a panel entitled "Tomorrow's Cities: How can We Build Sustainable and Functioning Cities". It was absolutely fantastic. A lot of talk about sustainable living, and how to achieve it, and what steps are being taken around the world. Plus we met the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, her name is Naomi Tzur, and she is hopefully going to come talk to KIVUNIM at some point this year.
Nir Barkat- The mayor of Jerusalem was the moderator for this panel.
Shai Agassi- The founder of Better Place and the main man in the Electric Car idea in Israel. He gave us the statistic that more people are killed from problems relating to the emissions from cars than car accidents. Thus it is imperative that transportation be revolutionized to not have emissions. Vibrant cities get congested, because the more popular a place becomes the more people drive into see it, thus creating more traffic, and more pollution.
Beto Richa- Current Mayor of Curitiba, the pioneer city of Sustainable living in the world (Curitiba is in Brazil). Richa mainly was advertising tourism for his country and spoke very little about what strides he had made, and what strides his city had made.
Jamie Lerner- Former mayor of Curitiba and former Governor of the Parana region, which is the state that Curitiba is in. This man was easily the most interesting and accomplished man on the panel. He was one of the pioneers in achieving the level of sustainability in Curitiba. Some of what he had done; a complex and widespread bus system that had three qualities. The first was its accessibility, bus stops were everywhere and everyone was able to get on the bus, able bodied and disabled alike. The second was its size, each bus held about 300 people, making public transportation much more admirable. The third quality was that no matter where you wanted to go, and what time you got to a bus stop a bus would be there in under a minute. The transportation system was so vast that you never had to wait longer than a minute to get on a bus. Lerner also mentioned the possible implementation of these cars or rather carts in the city. Similar to bike rentals in Montreal a person could go and rent one of these cars and drive it around, then simply drop it off at another rental area. Public transportation again. These cars were very small, smaller than a Smart car, about 6 of them could fit in the space of a Volkswagen Passat. There was also talk of a future more vast subway system than the already existing bus system. There's a lot more that he said, this is merely of a sample of the kind of things that can be done.
Jeanne Mulgrav- Social Planning of Youth and Community Development Commission in NYC which provides money to youth themed NGOs. Unfortunately she really didn't talk about anything that had to deal with Sustainability, just what her job entailed and about how much they help kids. Which is great and all, but this panel was not the place for it.
Bob Watson- Spoke yesterday at the environmental panel. Today he talked about the importance of asking the right question. Figuring out what needs to be done, how to get from point A to point B and how to do in the most effective way possible.

The Evening Session of Day 2 of the Conference

October 22nd 2009

Since the last post was getting pretty long between the two panels that I attended I figured I talk about Wednesday Evening's Session in a different post. The title of this session was "Turning Crisis into Opportunity"
The people who spoke were
Moderator-Dr. Jacques Attali- From France, Commissioner for French Economic Growth.
Susan Rice- United States Ambassador to the UN

Susan Rice

Jose Maria Anzar- Former Prime Minister of Spain
Vaclav Klaus- President of the Czech Republic
Leonid Kuchma- Former President of the Ukraine
Stejpan Mesi- President of the Republic of Croatia
Ivanov Gjorgie- President of the Republic of Macedonia
Shimon Peres- Host of the Conference and President of the State of Israel

Susan Rice was just supposed to give opening remarks, but she ended up talking for quite a while. She mainly talked about the United States and their stance on everything, but it was interesting nonetheless and Susan Rice was an extraordinary speaker. Here are the highlights:
The United States remains fully committed to Peace of the State of Israel, This is forever and non-negotiable. (This statement caused a long lasting applause in the audience). In order to achieve change risks must be taken and strategic cooperative solutions must be attained. If this does not happen then violence, and crime, genocide, nuclear power attainment, and environmental disasters will continue to plague our world. She said that the whole world needs to work together to ensure that Iran and North Korea do not achieve nuclear power, and if they do, that they will be prosecuted to the extent of International Law. No more empty threats! On the part of the United Nations, as well as countries around the world. If something is said, then it needs to be followed through. Empty threats do not incite fear. She made mention of many other things, such as the war in Iraq, and how the United States is committed to achieving a democracy there, and how Al Queda needs to be stopped, and no country, anywhere should provide them with a safe haven. Her last line was "Change is begun by those on the field and not on the side lines."

The other speakers, from the other countries did not say anything all that interesting.
Stejpan Mesi from Croatia talked about how the middle east can benefit from cooperation, and how close Croatia is to the Middle East, and his experience in Croatia with conflict. His favorite line was "any crisis provides opportunity" and you cannot let the opportunity go to waste.
Ivanov Gjorgie from Macedonia spoke about how English is becoming the universal method of communication, and the internet enables people to feel more connected with the world. (For his speech as well as Mesi's I had to listen to a translator. Thus some of the meaning may have been lost because the translators were not very good).
I have no idea what Leonid Kuchma from the Ukraine spoke about because the voice of the translator gave me a headache.
Jose Maria Anzar from Spain talked mostly about how he is optimistic about the survival of the State of Israel, and how a Nuclear Iran is a BAD idea.
Then Peres spoke. His speech tonight was in English and was absolutely amazing. The only reason we stayed and listened to these other people talk was to hear him speak. He opened his speech with a critique to all of those who are criticizing the fact that Obama won a Nobel Prize. Peres said "Obama without a doubt should have been awarded a Nobel Prize. Nobel Prizes are always awarded to those who have done stuff in the past. Obama is doing things for the future." Pretty strong way to start of his speech, huh?
He also said that the greatest accomplishment that can be attained is to enfranchise women and to treat them equally. He shared a brief anecdote as well. Peres is 87 and is questioned often about how good he looks for his age
Other person: Why do you look so good?
Peres: Why do you look so bad?
He closed his speech with this thought: The more we learn the more we realize we don't know, thus the more to learn.
This session listening to all of the people talk was absolutely fantastic. I may not have known the most about the political situation in Israel/Everywhere beforehand, but being right there when all of these incredibly accomplished World Leaders were talking was an experience like no other.
and Thursday night's conference was ten times better...

Day #2 of the Presidents Conference

October 22 2009
Sorry this post is overdue; this about the rest of the President's Conference that happened last week.
So we were invited to the Opening Gala, and there was a tremendous desire to return the next two days, to take advantage of this opportunity, so after some calls were made it turned out we were allowed to go back.
The structure and schedule of the conference for the next couple days were as follows; for both Wednesday and Thursday there was an opening panel in the morning on something (Thursday for example was about the Global Economic crisis) then there was a variety of panels that you could choose from to attend, then a lunch break, then a lunch break, then more panels, and so on and so forth. The last event of each evening was another big panel, and always had some fantastic speakers.
So, Wednesday
We weren't aware that we could attend the conference until after the morning opening panel was already over, so we went over to the conference for the mid morning panels. I went to one entitled Does the Environmental Crisis Threaten Our Future? There were four speaker there plus the moderator, none of them were incredibly famous, but I'll let you know who each of them were anyways.
Moderator: Israel Klabin, President of the Brazilian Foundation for Sustainable Development. He didn't really say much, just introduced the next speaker, and made sure that each person followed their allotted time amount.
Israel Aumann- Professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem- Nobel Prize Laureate for Economics in 2005. This man was the best speaker at this panel, he told this story about how garbage is treated in Switzerland. How in order to throw out trash you were required to use these blue bags you could purchase for 5 Swiss Franks (i don't know what the equivalent is) and then the bags had to be deposited in special receptacles in town. The thing was, there was not limit to how many bags you could by, but by charging people for them, it created a theme where there was an overall reduction in the amount of waste being thrown out, and a trend in less packaged good being purchased (thus having less to throw out). Thus manufacturers began to produce their products with packaging.
This guy also kept referring to himself in the third person, and talked a lot about incentives and the need to give people something to work towards if we want a change in how we live, and how we interact with the environment.

Israel Aumann

Miriam Haran- PhD, Former Director General, Israel Ministry of the Environment. She spoke about what really needs to be done to not entirely kill the environment. She said that while doing what we can to reduce our carbon footprint is great and all, it isn't the entire answer. Also, she pointed out how limited the world is on resources, mainly water, and how the population is growing at a rate that will not be able to be sustained on the water supply currently.
Raffaele Tognacca- Chairman of ERG Power and Gas (ERG is an Italian Oil Company)- He didn't say that much that was that exciting, or that was that relevant to the panel (in my opinion).
Bob Watson- Chairman and CEO of EcoTech which is a Sustainable Living Company, and he pioneered the green movement (he also spoke at a panel I attended the following day). He spoke about how human's do not need to "save the planet". We need to save our species. He said that species come and go, and it is somewhat a test of natural selection. That if we can't figure out how to exist on the planet in conjunction with it, then we will simply join the ranks of the extinct. He said that the biggest problem and the first thing that needs to be done is to change the way people think.
Overall this panel was pretty interesting- Although nothing here was groundbreaking and there were no facts or statistics presented that I wasn't already aware of, it was still interesting, and the issue was impressed upon me more, that something needs to be done to change the way we live, and how our resources are used. Plus Israel Aumann was an absolutely fascinating person to listen to.

Panel #2 On Wednesday
Later that day I went to panel entitled Culture, The Arts and Tomorrow's Inspiration. The general idea of this panel was to understand how globalization and the new age of technology is affecting the arts.
Moderator- Ruth HaCohen Pinchover - Professor at Hebrew University. Again, she really didn't say much, just introduced each speaker.
Claude Lanzman- Producer of SHOAH (Holocaust Film from 1985)- He was a little hard to engage with, and listen to, because he had a very heavy french accent and spoke in a monotone. But what I did get from him is "the unavoidable never happens the unforeseen always". Although I don't know what the context was when he said this.
Chari Pere- Founder of "The Unmasked Comics Project" which is a comic venture that portrays social issues through comics. For example her co-author and illustrator of the comics distributed one at the panel called "The Green Prince" which is a about the Electric Car. She also has another well known comic that deals with the issue of a Jewish woman getting divorce papers. She talked about how classic movies and stories are no longer interesting to the younger generation and how visual arts are the still the strongest way to spread a message, but some areas of visual art are getting lost. Other than that, she talked a lot about how her work is combating social issues, and trying to get the young generation interested and active. She was a very engaging speaker and begun her speech by saying "The world wright now is too lazy, we all are on our Blackberries and I phones instead of reading a book or going out and doing something."
Gille Rozier- Founder of Yiddish Newspaper. He talked about the blogging phenomenon and how different writing a blog is as opposed to writing a book. He also talked about how mass publishing companies are essentially taking over the world, and controlling what we read, and putting small bookstores that sell "truly great literature" out of business.
James Snyder- Past Deputy Director of MoMa, current director of the Israeli Museum. What he said pretty much only related to museums, he talked about how some museums were spoiled in terms of what types of exhibits and artists they had access to. He also talked about how MoMa focuses on Modernism and looking forward while the Israeli museum focuses on both the past, the present and the future. Nothing he said seemed to relate that much to anything else he said, nor did he really relate entirely to the whole globalization issue. Nonetheless he was a good speaker.
Italy Talgam- Classical Musician. Spoke pretty much about how Goggle is taking over the world. It was unclear as to whether or not he believed this was a bad thing. He also talked about a lot of art is being represented over the internet. From images of paintings in a Madrid Art Museum being put up on Google to auditions for joining the Philharmonic were held over YouTube. He said that in order to determine who and what will survive in the growing age of technology its imperative that connections be made from people to people, and that everything isn't just left up to cyberspace.
Michael Arad- Architect working on the Ground Zero project. He talked mainly about architecture and made the point that the most impressive archeological structure occur under the most oppressive regimes (citing Russia). He pretty much talked about how architecture was the last true form of art, and how architects are true artists.
Overall this panel was incredibly interesting. It wasn't one that was designed to necessarily teach you something, or to inspire you to go out and doing something to change the world, but it was really interesting to listen to everyone talk about their various forms of art, and what their opinions were. My favorite person was the cartoonist.
This panel was very interesting

A Super Sweet Sunday

Sunday October 25th 2009
This Sunday was another programmed day, with the entire group, and the whole day was absolutely fantastic. But before I get to that, I'll recap the weekend a little bit.
This weekend was a Shabbat we spent together, so there were group plans on Friday and Saturday.
On Friday we went to the Kotel for personal time. There wasn't an organized group service, just time to spend however you wanted. There was a group of women on the women's side of the wall, doing somewhat of a Kabbalat Shabbat, with dancing and singing. So I joined in on that for a little while (after spending a few minutes at the wall). Then we returned to Beit Schmuel for dinner an Oneg then time for ourselves.
Saturday morning there were optional services to a variety of different synagogues, so I went to an egalitarian Orthodox synagogue, which means there's a mechitza (separation between men's and women's sides of the temple) but the women can lead parts of the service and read from the Torah. It was a very nice service, although something I wasn't entirely used to. The rest of Saturday was very very relaxed.
Which brings me to today. This morning/afternoon we met up with a group of Israeli students, about our age who had taken time off before entering the army, to study. These students had already taken one year, to attend Yeshiva or some other program, and then they had taken another 6 months to continue studying. Most of the people we met today will be drafted into the army in March. Regardless, they were really really interesting, a couple of them had spent time in the States, so their English was really good, and others didn't speak English at all.
We were all divided into three groups and went one of there places. A). To meet with a Israeli (Jerusalem living) writer. B). To meet with an Israeli (Jerusalem living) photographer. C). To meet with an Israeli (yes, Jerusalem living) actor and drama teacher, who had founded a theater group here.
I went with group B, and met with Yoram Amir, an Israeli wedding photographer. He took us around Jerusalem showing us where he worked, and where he had all of his photographs. He felt very strongly about how the old buildings in Jerusalem were being torn down in order for newer and not as historic or well built building to be constructed. He used the following example: Jerusalem is woman, and all of the old buildings are fine pieces of jewelry. The newer buildings however are like cheap pieces of jewelry. And who wants to marry a woman with cheap jewelry? The answer? No one. So if this continues, Jerusalem will never get married. A little obscure, but certainly interesting. Amir used the windows from these old buildings that were being torn down as his frames for his photographs, and showed us several examples. It was pretty cool, plus we walked around a lot of cool places in Jerusalem.

Views From The Photography Tour In and Around Jerusalem

In the Jewish Shuk

Mural on the Side of the Building

Photographer Yoram Amir

So then we came back and had time to freshen up before the Idan Raichel concert! The concert was part of the MASA opening event, so there were several speakers, and some performances by a group of dancers and a teen choir before Idan Raichel came on. But when he and his band did, it was absolutely fantastic. All the musicians are amazing, and superbly talented. They played for about an hour and half, and every song was just as great as the last one! It's really hard to convey how fantastic they are! I suggest you look up the Idan Raichel Project, listen to a couple songs, and that will give you a glimmer of how talented all of them are! It was so amazing!
And that was this weekend!