What I’ll remember most about our son Amir’s graduation from 12th grade earlier this week was the hugs. Hugs between the guys. Hugs from the teachers to the graduates while on stage receiving their diplomas. The spontaneous group hug and circle dance the guys did to Mashina’s “Return, Return” at the end of the evening.



It was all so sweet. And it got me reminiscing. I don’t remember ever being so affectionate with my male friends when I was in high school, some 30 years ago. On the contrary, I distinctly recall that, after all 400 12th graders received their diplomas in our high school gym, I gave a big bear hug to my best friend John while thinking that this was the first time I’d ever hugged him or any other guy (girls, well that was another story…)

I also remember that it wasn’t until I arrived in Israel after college and found myself in a more traditional Jewish framework that I got into the habit of shaking someone’s hand. Before that: no handshakes, no hugs. What did we do then? Just glare at each other for 12 years?

Fortunately, when you need to do some impromptu research, there’s nothing like Facebook. I put out my question on hugs and high school. My contemporaries weighed in quickly. No, absolutely we did not hug back in 1978, they said. There were the occasional “soul handshakes” and a few high fives.

By the 1980s, “everybody was doing that stupid BH 90210 hand slap and point the fingers thing,” my friend Boaz wrote. “We used to make out in the hallways but that was it,” Debbie from Modi'in added.

But the times they are a changing, even in the U.S. An article by Sarah Kershaw in The New York Times that my Facebook buddy Yosef referred me to described how hugs have now caught on in high school...outside of Israel. So much so that there are different terms for all the hugging.

For example, there's the “bear claw” where a boy embraces a girl awkwardly with his elbows poking out. The "fist bump and slap on the back." Something known as the “shake and lean.” And now the “triple” – any combination of three girls and boys hugging at once.

It’s become so rampant that some schools are now trying to limit hugging via a “three-second rule” or to ban hugs outright. “Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory,” bemoaned a principal in New Jersey interviewed by Kershaw.

The kids disagree, calling it the “hello” of their generation. “We like to get cozy,” said a San Francisco eighth grader. “The high-five is, like, boring.”

What seems to be unique to Israel (and perhaps other Mediterranean countries – I haven’t done a scientific study), is hugging between students and teachers, something that would be absolutely verboten in a litigious U.S. where it could be perceived as bordering on sexual harassment or abuse.

All hugging aside, the graduation ceremony of our oldest child was very emotional for my wife Jody and I. To think that we have come so far as to have a child finished with his formal education. How did we get so old! “Proud and old are not mutually exclusive,” our friend Shira was quick to point out on Facebook.

Some other highlights from graduation:

-- As each boy (Amir attended an all boy’s school) received his diploma, his teacher read a short paragraph describing the graduate (Hartman high school, with a graduating class of 56, is small enough to indulge such a personal touch).

-- There was a lot of emphasis on the army and mechinot (pre-army preparatory programs) rather than "where are you going to college next year?"

-- Amir put together a great slide show with music summing up the six years the guys have been together. The photos of the class from 7th grade elicited some raucous teenage guffaws.

-- Hartman Institute founder Rabbi David Hartman gave an impassioned speech on the importance for religious youth to fight against extremism and intolerance. “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not religious,” he exhorted the graduates.

-- This being Israel, the dress code was casual, though a number of the graduates wore loosely knotted ties over untucked short sleeve shirts and jeans. Needless to say there were no caps and gowns. And so, at the end of the evening, rather than toss their caps into the air, they threw their kippot to the sky.

Jody and I were so filled with pride and excitement. It’s a major milestone...for the entire family. So what did we do when Amir came over to us after the ceremony was done?

We gave him a great big hug, of course.

Two weeks ago, prior to the "Enhanced Kaddish" ceremony we held for my father, Jody and I attended a very different musical memorial. Together with several thousand Israelis, we trekked to Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, for a special outdoor performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3, also known as Kaddish.

The symphony was being performed with a text written and narrated by Samuel Pisar, an international lawyer, author and Holocaust survivor. The text, which Pisar wrote at Bernstein’s instigation, is a heart wrenching review of human cruelty in general, and towards the Jewish people in particular.

Pisar recounts his own experience surviving Auschwitz while watching his entire family being killed. The narration is timed to blend precisely with the anguished, atonal music which, according to the printed program, required an unusually large orchestral complement – including a tuba, sandpaper and a glockenspiel – plus two choirs (the Tel Aviv Chamber Choir and the Ankor Children's ensemble) and Israeli soprano Danna Glaser.

The underlying theme to Pisar’s work is an unbridled anger at God for allowing such genocide to occur, coupled with a chilling warning against allowing it to occur again. Pisar finished his “Dialogue with God” following 9/11 and the attacks figure prominently in his narrative.

From Pisar’s text:

I must honor their tragic legacy,
And warn the living
- Of every race, color and creed -
Against the new catastrophes
That may still lie ahead.
For the unthinkable is again possible
A relapse into the darks ages,
As a leap toward a radiant future.

Pisar’s complaint against God is unmistakable:

How can one be sure
That the catastrophe was totally man-made?
We know from the book of Genesis
How wrathful a God you can be,
When You lose your notorious temper.

Concerning the destruction on September 11, Pisar writes that only after “the carnage that ushered in a newly inflamed world vaguely reminiscent of the one into which I was born did I settle down to write” the text itself. The narrative, Pisar adds, represents “a mounting crescendo for universal tolerance, reconciliation and peace between the hereditary enemies of history.”

The symphony with Pisar’s text was first performed in Chicago in 2003 before an audience of 10,000. This was its premiere in Israel. In attendance were Israeli President Shimon Peres and the President of Romania Traian Băsescu.

Our attendance at the event took on a separate meaning for me, removed from the Holocaust narrative. When we first received the invitation, the idea of hearing a work called Kaddish – in the midst of my own year of saying Kaddish – intrigued me. As I’ve written already, I’ve struggled with the words of the prayer and have tried to find refuge in musical interpretations.

So sitting in the audience and listening to a work by Leonard Bernstein felt like another way of honoring my father. Even more so, as I’m not a big fan of orchestral music, despite my father’s best efforts over the years to convince me otherwise.

I remember my parents taking us several times to the San Francisco Opera House to hear the symphony. While I was consistently “wowed” by the sheer talent that such a production entails, it remained rock and roll that moved my soul.

Indeed, had my father not passed away, it is doubtful I would have even been interested in an evening of classical music. And I won’t lie: the music still didn’t speak to me. But the significance of being there on a monumental evening did.

The day after our evening at Yad Vashem, air raid sirens sounded across Israel at 11:00 AM. The country wasn’t under attack; rather we were participating in the largest ever emergency exercise the nation has undertaken. The rising and falling siren – unlike the steady wails for Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day) and Yom HaZicharon (Memorial Day) – lasted for a minute and a half during which time we were instructed to hurry to our bomb shelters.

The exercise was meant to raise public awareness and to test the responsiveness of emergency workers, coordinate organizations, and pinpoint any failings in the sirens themselves.

During the second Gulf War, we prepared sealed rooms with duck tape, but this was the first time we’ve used the concrete reinforced bomb shelter next to the underground garage of our building complex. At first, we couldn’t get the door unlocked…not a good omen had it been a real attack. Our descent also seemed too casual, even reckless.

Once inside, we inspected what could be our home away from home for an extended period. The shelter was bare – no furniture of any kind, certainly no beds on which to spend a night. The toilet didn’t work either – the water had been turned off. We made a note of everything.

The alarming juxtaposition of the drill with Bernstein’s symphony and Pisar’s text was not lost on us. It would be reassuring to believe that, 60+ years after the end of World War II, hatred and violence would have plummeted from that summit of hell. Of course, that’s not the case.

“Every citizen in the State of Israel must know that anywhere in the country, at any time, an emergency scenario can materialize, and one must know how to act," Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said after the exercise.

Pisar’s text ends on a surprisingly optimistic beat. He acknowledges that, after the Shoah, God taught him to “love and dream again” and blessed him with “a new happy family and with children and grandchildren whose sparkling faces and sterling characters resurrect for me every day the memory of those I have lost.”

He concludes:

Bond with us, Lord
Guide us toward reconciliation
On our small, divided, fragile planet –
Our common home.

Amen.

This week, Jody got stuck in a half-hour long p’kak – Hebrew for “a traffic jam” – waiting to get to the front of the meat counter at the supermarket. That reminded me of a supermarket-themed piece I wrote way back in 2004 about a similar experience. So in that spirit, here’s another “TNL Classic.”

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He looked like a regular guy. His short cropped hair, half frame wire glasses, t-shirt (not too designer, not too sloppy) and well worn sandals all suggested a cafe patron with at least a moderately worldly frame of reference. So when he asked Jody to “save his spot” at the SuperSol Deal supermarket checkout line, it was hard to refuse.

“Save my spot” is one of the hardest things for the Western immigrant to Israel to get used to. It can occur at nearly any time in just about any public place: the line at the post office, the pharmacy, the bank. An optimist would say it’s simply a way of maximizing limited resources. You reserve your spot and then continue shopping. As long as you get back before your turn, no one gets hurt.

Others would call it plain chutzpah.

Usually we shrug it off and try to go with the flow. There are bigger battles to fry. And to protest this quintessentially Israeli behavior is to admit that we have not – nor may we ever – fully integrate into life here in our new home.

Plus the man with the wire frame glasses had a gentle look that said “trust me, I’m not here to screw you. I’m just covering all my bases.”

Well, looks can be deceiving.

He had maybe twenty items in his basket and he wanted to see if he could get through the "Seven Item Maximum" Express Line. That should have been a red flag right there.

He trotted off and was gone for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Jody and her basket slowly inched forward. It was a Thursday night and the store was overflowing with pre-Shabbat shoppers.

Jody spied the man with the wire frame glasses moving from check out lane to check out lane, trying to secure a space. The Express Lane wouldn’t let him in. He pestered the customer service desk.

And then, when Jody was finally next in line to check out, the man returned. He didn’t say anything but it was clear he expected his spot back.

Now, maybe there’s an etiquette in spot saving, something that, not having grown up here, we just don’t have the cultural background (some would say baggage) to pick up on. But it seemed clear to Jody that a fifteen-minute sojourn was pushing it.

She gave him another quintessential Israeli gesture: she shrugged.

To no avail. The man in the wire frame glasses inched his cart up to Jody’s and angled it in such a way that there was no way to gracefully avoid confrontation. Someone had to back down.

The woman in front of Jody, who was now transferring items from her cart to the checkout counter, turned around and snarled at the man. “Go in back of her,” she said. “It’s only fair.”

“I was here first,” the man said. It was so incredibly childish that Jody let out a laugh. Like two kids wrangling over who gets the last scoop of ice cream.

This only increased the man’s determination. He pushed his cart forward again.

“What does it matter to you?” he said to Jody. “It’s not like you’re giving up on something you already had.”

“Be a gentleman,” the woman in front said.

Now, a native-born Israeli would have pushed back or turned to fisticuffs. A native-born Israeli would have yelled and made such a fuss that the man and his no longer charming cafe culture wire frame glasses would have been caustically embarrassed into retreat.

Jody let him through.

With a sneer, he drove home this battleground victory, hissing under his breath “Americans are so inflexible.”

How he could discern Jody's country of origin was anybody's guess. She hadn't said a word the entire time. But this latest declaration was too much for the woman in front who had taken the role of Jody’s defender.

“She’s just as Israeli as you or me,” she snapped. One look at Jody’s basket filled with Israeli brand milk and pizza and cornflakes and frozen chicken would confirm that assertion.

Jody was still too stunned by the whole incident. All she had intended to do was shop. She hadn’t gone scrapping for an international incident.

And then, the man with the wire frame glasses left his cart in place...and went off to shop some more. Unbelievable! Jody thought.

He returned just as the woman in front had placed her last item on the conveyer belt and was getting her credit card ready. He moved into place, quickly bagged his twenty items, paid, and triumphantly took off, having beaten the system...and his fellow shoppers.

Jody was loading her goods onto the conveyer belt when she spied him making a hasty return. She girded herself for another confrontation. But the wild beast look that had so taken over his visage had subsided. He was holding out his hand.

“I hope I didn’t upset you,” he said.

“Well you did,” Jody replied. She wasn’t letting him off the hook for ruining her day quite so easily.

“Oh, well..” he said, hesitating for a moment. “Well, um...then Shabbat Shalom!”

And that was it. As far as he was concerned, the matter was closed. Bygones should be bygones and any animosity from this point forward would be as inappropriate as...well, his behavior just a few moments ago.

What could Jody do? Not return the greeting? That would be so un-Israeli. And she’d already been accused of that. But maybe there was something to learn here. About how Israelis deal with conflict. Or muster an apology.

She’d think about that later. For now, there was only one thing to say.

“Shabbat Shalom,” Jody wished the man with the wire frame glasses. She shook his hand and he smiled. Jody suppressed another laugh and smiled back.

And then they walked their baskets through the sliding glass door and out into the parking lot together.

Last night, my friend Eliezer and my son Amir dragged me to the movies to see the new Star Trek film. I have not been to a movie theater in more than three years, since we bought our big screen plasma TV. For me, 42 inches is an entirely acceptable alternative to the costs and hassles of going to the theater.

The real reason I've stayed at home watching DVDs, though, is that the Israeli movie "experience" is one that I'd rather not repeat on a regular basis. To give you a feel for what I'm talking about, I'm running a TNL Classic today, a piece that I originally posted over five years ago, about going out to see the Matrix. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past.

(BTW - the audience for Star Trek was surprisingly well behaved. Only one cell phone rang and I even had a clear shot of the screen with no one sitting in front of me. As for the movie, well, Roger Ebert says it better than I could.)

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Amir and I went to see the final installment of the Matrix trilogy the other night. Going to the movies is one of the things Amir and I do, and I have to say it’s really a pleasure to have a child old enough to see the kind of movies my wife wouldn’t go near: you know the shoot-em-up action, sci-fi, and fantasy flicks my aging adolescent mind still craves.

Now, when I go to the movies, it’s for the experience: the big screen, the Dolby surround sound system. The experience Amir and I had at the movies the other night, though, was pure torture.

If I had to call it, I’d say this was quite possibly the worst audience I had ever been in. And as an avid movie buff, I’ve been in some bad ones.

It didn’t help that I was without a question the oldest person in the auditorium. The crowd of mostly pre-teenage boys talked –no, shouted – through nearly the entire film. I’m glad they were enjoying themselves, but…

And then there were the cellphones. Constantly ringing. Followed by more loud talking. The kid next to me must have answered some caller five times in a row, each time belting out in Hebrew “I’m in the middle of a movie.”

Did it occur to him to not answer? Or turn the phone off? Never.

Did it occur to his parents not to buy him a phone?

There were times during the film that I literally could not hear what was being said.

I know this kind of thing is not unique to Israel, although I think we have it worse here than some places around the world. In California I once saw an usher actually escort a pair of incessant movie-talkers out of the theater. Now that's service!

And in North America, you can always change seats. In Israel, however, your place is reserved and Israelis take their seat assignments seriously. They’ll blab away for two hours on the cellphone, but they wouldn’t think of disobeying the seat rule. Go figure.

OK, I admit I’m what you might call an overly-sensitive new age guy. I don’t allow talking when we’re watching a TV show at home either. But that’s all in the family. And I can usually press the rewind button.

When it’s strangers, though, in a public place, I have to weigh my response much more carefully. Because you never know when the way you react to something is going to leave an indelible stain on your kids.

And herein lies the problem: what does a parent do when he is being driven to distraction…but doesn’t want to pass that bad trait down to an impressionable child?

If Amir picked up on my agitation, or if I flew off the handle and started screaming at some pre-teen to shut up (in my bad Hebrew no less), Amir could develop his own low tolerance for movie noise when he gets older.

What kind of role model would I be?

It’s not just in the movies, of course. The parent’s dilemma is constant. We are human. We just don’t want our children to know that.

Well we do, of course, but only the good stuff. Not our nutty, neurotic bad habits. You know, the things we do and know we shouldn’t.

Like drinking straight out of the bottle. The soda just tastes better that way. Come on, you know it does.

Or sneaking chocolate when no one’s looking. We tell the kids it’s for special occasions. So how come Abba gets to have sweets whenever he wants to?

How about arriving at synagogue late again because the bed is just so darn comfortable?

Or saying “just a minute” when I know with near certainty that I won’t be done with whatever it is I'm doing for at least another half an hour?

Then there’s remembering to turn lights off and should I even mention washing hands every time after using… no, better not go there.

You get the picture.

Not knowing which will be the behaviors that may send our kids to years of psychotherapy can, well, send their parents to years of psychotherapy.

And so I sat there at the Matrix and I took it. I didn’t call the theater staff, or wave my fist, or yell out “Quiet please!” into the cinematic darkness.

But afterward, I blurted out my frustrations and the resulting parental quandary to Jody while Amir was in earshot.

“Really, Abba?” was his comment from the other side of the room. “I didn’t even notice.”

Ever since I saw the 1965 classic sci fi flick Fantastic Voyage, I have been fascinated with seeing the inside of the human body.

In Fantastic Voyage, a team of scientists in a submarine are shrunk and injected into the body of a man to repair a blood clot in his brain. The team, most notably featuring Raquel Welch as eye candy, has only one hour in which to reach its destination before the shrinking process reverses itself. The submarine faces numerous obstacles as it navigates through mid-1960s cheesy graphics – in particular unexpectedly harsh turbulence while traversing the heart, which forces the crew to induce a temporary cardiac arrest – before successfully completing its mission with, naturally, five minutes to spare.

My own view of the guts and goo of the body, however - other than a furtive glance at my wife’s intestines when I was allowed a quick peek behind the curtain during the C-section of our oldest son - had not been realized…until now.

The Body Worlds exhibit, launched in 1995 to worldwide acclaim (and not a small amount of controversy), opened last month in Israel for a three month run. Body Worlds’ founder, German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, invented a process in the late 1970s called “plastination” which dehydrates bodies and replaces the fat and water with a plastic polymer solution.

The result is a little like embalming but with all the skin removed so you can see the bones, muscles, nerves, and organs up close and personal. The result is both disturbing and engrossing.

The Israeli version of the exhibit consists of 20 full body “sculptures” and 140 individual organs under glass. Each body has a different cut-away. Some show the muscular system with red ligaments attached to bone (the resemblance to raw beef was nearly enough to turn this avid carnivore into a vegetarian). Others highlight the nerves, with white strands extending from the brain to the extremities of the body. The blood vessels and arteries were particularly riveting: I never knew the aorta was so thick and long.

Each body is “open” in a different way: in one, the rib cage was pulled apart so you could see the heart, lungs and stomach. In another the brain was removed. Eyes, tongue and lips were generally preserved “as is,” creating the eerie impression that the body may still be alive in some way.

Ditto on the penises and testicles – Body Worlds doesn’t sugar coat the experience. Interestingly, freed from their protective sack, the testes dangle quite far from the body itself, adding a visceral new meaning to the ribald camp version of “Do your ears hang low?”

Body Worlds deliberately crosses the line between science and entertainment. To spice things up, the bodies don’t just stand at attention as in a museum, but are posed into different “artistic” dioramas. There were a couple of runners flexing their calve muscles; a doctor performing open heart surgery; three bodies playing poker (with a video of the James Bond film Casino Royale, which features Body Worlds, running in the background); and the exhibit’s only female body (von Hagens eschewed using women to avoid appearing voyeuristic) posed like an Olympic torch bearer, inexplicably holding all her innards above her head. The wildest display laid a body out horizontally suspended by cables and sliced into 11 equidistant sections.

The Hollywood quality of the exhibit may give some people the willies, but the Body Worlds team assures visitors that everything on display was donated by explicit consent, so presumably donors knew what they were getting into. Indeed, more than 8,000 people have given signed permission to undergo the process when they die, including disgraced pop icon Michael Jackson (why doesn’t that surprise me?) Von Hagen employs 340 people full time at five laboratories in three countries to keep up with the demand.

Body Worlds’ Israeli home is the Haifa’s MadaTech, a rundown museum of science exhibits, many of which no longer work. The Body Worlds show is so popular – 26 million people around the world have visited – that we wound up having to wait several hours before we were granted entrance (tip: book your tickets online before you come). The exhibit costs about $20 and includes entrance to the rest of the MadaTech.

My wife Jody and I went with 15-year-old Merav and 11-year-old Aviv. Merav found it all terribly gross but nevertheless valuable given that she’s taking a pre-med elective at school. Aviv said he felt nauseous and, after viewing the first couple of sculptures, refused to look anymore and generally skulked through the hour and a quarter it takes to take in the entire exhibit.

While the exhibit is, according to its website, intended for “health education,” Body Worlds has encountered opposition wherever it goes.

In 2007, Manchester, England Catholic church leaders accused the exhibitors of being "body snatchers" and claiming that donation of bodies for plastination would deprive the U.K.’s National Health Service of organs for transplant.

More recently, the Archdiocese of Vancouver criticized the exhibit, saying human bodies are sacred and the show is improper. And last month, a French judge ruled to shut down a Paris exhibit of Body Worlds, writing that exhibiting dead bodies for profit was a “violation of the respect owed to them” and that under law “the proper place for corpses is in the cemetery.”

There’s even a web page set up specifically to oppose the exhibit (see http://dignityinboston.googlepages.com/.

Israel has been no stranger to the controversy either. Writing in the Jerusalem Post, David Brinn spoke to Haifa Chief Rabbi She'ar-Yashuv Cohen who said that, even if none of the body parts in the exhibit originally came from Jewish donors, there's a prohibition against Jews viewing the finished product due to respect for kavod adam, human dignity. Cohen didn’t call for protests but suggested that Israelis “stay away.”

Compounding concerns is the fact that founder van Hagen’s father had been a member of the SS during World War II. Aviad Hacohen, an attorney representing a group of Israeli protesters put it this way in an interview with Haaretz: "Would, by contrast, anyone conceive of an exhibit of the bodies of Jews that were found in the extermination camps in one of the Holocaust museums being accepted with such aplomb in the state of Israel?"

Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger went even further, writing prior to the opening of the show, that if it the exhibit were eventually held in Israel, “Our outcry would reach the ends of the earth.”

Perhaps the most poignant complaint came from Yehuda Meshi-Zahav of the ZAKA organization which goes to great lengths to preserve every part of a body after a terror attack. "As an international organization that takes extreme measures, during daily routine and in crisis, to save and honor each body, and which sees to it that human bodies, which were created in the image (of God), are extended the same treatment worldwide, we cannot agree that things will be different in Israel."

When we went visited, there were indeed few religious visitors (although a couple of haredi men surreptitiously seemed to be having a good time).

The Blum family take is that Body Worlds represents a once in a lifetime chance to explore a world generally hidden from ordinary eyes and is well worth the trip.

And, if you get the chance, watch Fantastic Voyage first to see how far we’ve come in imagining our innards in the last 45 years. You can watch a ten-minute “making of” trailer for the film here.

Other links:
The opening sequence and the last 10 minutes.

My son is now a driver.

Those six words are probably as significant, if not more - at least to him - than becoming a bar mitzvah. When you’re 13, you get counted in a minyan but other than that it’s just another day in 7th grade.

But 17…that’s the year you transcend being a mere passenger to taking command of a 3,000 pound metal death machine and hurtling it through – and against - the most dangerous waters in the world: the Israeli highway.

I’m so proud.

Fortunately, Amir is very good behind the wheel. He makes complete stops, always signals, and keeps to the speed limit – things that, after more than 30 years on the road, I am sometimes less pedantic about.

He ought to. After 49 lessons, Amir is surely ready for anything the streets of Jerusalem throw at him.

I of course am a nervous Nelly in the car with him, though I try my best not to show it. When I jerk my head back and forth, I’m not checking the intersection for oncoming cars. No, I’m just stretching my neck a bit, keeping it limber.

Learning to drive in Israel is very different than back in the old country. The most obvious: the driving age is 17, not 16. And, unlike in California where I grew up, you can’t get a learner’s permit before you take the test. You can’t even start lessons until you’re of age.

And they’re expensive too. For those 49 50-minute lessons, we paid NIS 90 (about $22) each. The test is nearly $100 and it’s pretty much unheard of for a student to pass on the first time. I heard of at least one Israeli who had to take that darn exam 11 times before getting her license (I would have given up on 8 and resigned myself to taking the bus).

Fortunately, new immigrant drivers who already have a license from a Western country only have to take one lesson before the test and don’t need to pass a written theory exam. Jody and I both passed the first time through.

Israeli testers are a tough bunch. You fail if you make just a single mistake. Amir pulled out too far on his first go and the examiner tapped the brakes. Buzz…you’re out.

The whole process has made me more tolerant of the tens of “learner” cars that prowl our southern Jerusalem neighborhood, slowing down the already clogged streets and generally driving me to distraction.

When I was 15, we had lessons in school. They were free. And we spent half our time in a simulator. This was before video games were widespread, so getting to play what was essentially an educational arcade video game was a real treat.

I nevertheless only received a B+ in driver’s ed. It dragged down my entire GPA and ruined my chances of being selected as class “brain” for the high school yearbook. Maybe that was a good thing.

A couple of weeks after getting my license, I scraped into a poll at the entrance to a local drive-in movie theater (does anyone remember those?), forever blighting our nearly new Dodge Custom Coronet. Don’t worry, though, you can get in the car with me. I’m quite proficient these days. Really.

Once you get your license here, you can only drive with an adult for the first three months. So we’re taking every opportunity to let Amir get behind the wheel for the experience.

But having a teenager driver, well, it drives up the insurance significantly. Like, $1,500 a year on top of the $900 we’re already paying for just Jody and me. And mind you, we have a 14-year-old vehicle already, so we barely even pay beyond the mandatory liability coverage.

Fortunately, the insurance company has a special deal. If your child drives no more than 60 hours a year (approximately 5 hours a month – perfect for army age kids who are only home every other weekend), the price drops to just $250 a year.

How do they track how many hours - the honor system maybe? No way. This is hi-tech Israel. Every time Amir gets in the car, he’ll have to send a text message to a special number. When he gets out, he SMS’s again. Bizarre, but I guess it works.

In the back of our car there now hangs on the window a yellow “New Driver” sign. Apparently it’s mandatory. I had thought it was meant to torture the average impatient Israeli by making it harder to honk and scream if they know it’s a newbie.

I admit, I sometimes became one of those ugly Israelis. But no more. After all, it could very well be my own son in one of those cars.

As head of a technology startup a few years ago, one of the most important components of our software development was quality assurance - the process of looking for bugs and reporting them to the programmers to fix.

Like most startups, we were on a pretty tight budget. Hiring a team of two to three QA staff would have cost a chunk of money we didn't have. So I wound up doing the checking myself, on top of all my other founder duties, putting in 80-hour weeks pouring through spreadsheets and bug tracking software.

Would that uTest were around at the time.

uTest is a new Israeli startup with a unique mission: to allow both small companies and more established ones to save money by "crowdsourcing" all their QA needs.

Crowdsourcing refers to the idea that functions that were once performed by an individual or team within a company can be done more effectively - and for less expense - by outsourcing it to an undefined and generally large network of professionals via the Internet.

Using the wisdom of crowds

As the Internet has grown, applications for crowdsourcing has expanded along with it. Wikipedia is probably the best-known example: Thousands of volunteers have collaboratively created the world's most used encyclopedia. Other sites include Threadless.com, which aims to offer more fashionable t-shirts by opening up design to its community members, and CrowdSpirit which is using the "wisdom of crowds" to develop a range of $200 or less electronic devices.

uTest may turn out to the most profitable of the bunch - at least that's what Longworth Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital seem to think: they led a Series B funding round of $5 million in December last year. That's on top of $1.7 million the company raised earlier in the year.

uTest is playing in a lucrative field. According to research firm Gartner, software testing is a $13 billion business, and bugs cost US companies some $60 billion.

The uTest service is deceptively simple. Doron Reuveni, uTest's co-founder and CEO describes the process: A company posts a QA request to the uTest platform. uTest then disseminates the request to the 12,000 testers in its community. The company can limit the request to only certain types of testers it wants - mobile, Windows and Macintosh are some of the parameters - or it can browse testers' resumes and select only specific individuals.

Once a group of testers has signed up, the company needing the QA pays only when a bug is found and "approved" by the company. Payment is not static. Reporting a "showstopper" bug pays more than a lower level problem. Testers also earn more based on their past success records. The minimum average payment for a bug, Reuveni says, is $6-$7 but it can quickly climb to $20 or more.

Why wouldn't a company simply take the results of a tester, not approve it and therefore not have to pay a penny? "Companies want good results," Reuveni says. "If they don't approve bugs, testers won't come back. It's all based on the rules of a social community. We sometimes find companies paying the testers even if they reject the bug in order to keep them involved."

A fifth the cost of a QA employee

uTest requires that companies spend a minimum of $1,000 per month (they can of course spend much more if they want). The $1,000 amount usually results in about 50 approved bugs and 25-30 participating testers. It's a great deal, Reuveni explains. "$12,000 a year is a fifth of what a QA person in Israel would cost."

Software companies seem to like what uTest offers. In less than a year, uTest has signed up 50 customers. Clients include 888 (the world's largest gaming and casino company) and Babylon in Israel, Eminent in France, and Move Networks, Xobni and On24 in the US.

The 42-year-old Reuveni, who founded uTest with fellow Israeli Roy Solomon, knows what he's talking about. The Technion-educated Reuveni managed QA teams at companies including Blue Security and Enigma before starting uTest.

uTest doesn't have much competition. Companies can find individuals on sites like eLance and RentaCoder, but there's nothing like uTest's marketplace matching up virtual testing teams and the companies that need them. uTest also runs educational "webinars" and regular "bug battles" to give the testing community a fun break.

uTest can keep costs down, in part, by tapping into a community of testers in developing and less expensive countries. Jeff Howe, author of the book Crowdsourcing: Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business, points out that more than half of all freelance testers reside outside the United States.

The economic downturn, ironically, may serve to be a boon to uTest. With layoffs and cost cutting spreading across the high-tech world, a solution that actually reduces internal overhead will be hard to resist. uTest seems poised to survive the test of these tough times.

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This article originally appeared on Israel21.org.

You would think that after voting for a Barkat and a Barack respectively in the local Jerusalem and U.S. elections, the logical next choice would be to support a Barak (Ehud that is) in the upcoming Israeli national elections.

Would that it were that easy.

The major parties fielded for the 2009 elections have got to be the worst in years. Which is too bad.

When elections were called after newly minted Kadima party head Tzipi Livni couldn’t form a coalition last year, I initially felt it was the right thing for the country.

Kadima, under the now disgraced Ehud Olmert, has veered significantly from the mandate under which it had been elected. Olmert’s public declarations on how much territory he would be willing to cede in a peace deal with Palestinians are from the consensus.

So elections, I thought, would allow the Israeli public to choose a leader who was more in sync with where the people stand today, one who made it clear which way he or she planned to take the country.

Except that we have no idea what the candidates are for at all, because they simply won’t tell us. A public debate like in the U.S.? Not here.

David Horowitz, writing in last week’s Jerusalem Post, nailed it on the head.

Is the Likud under Bibi Netanyahu committed to expanding settlements in the West Bank, Horowitz asked, or will it limit those to “natural growth,” possibly even proposing its own permanent borders?

Will Livni pick up the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority from where Olmert left off, or will she turn more hawkish like her political rival in Kadima Shaul Mofaz?

What about Labor? Ehud Barak proposed borders at Camp David in 2000 that fell far short than those contemplated by Olmert. They were subsequently rejected by Yassar Arafat and met instead by a protracted campaign of suicide terror. Will Barak now harden his stance?

And where do the candidates stand on the economy – not an insignificant matter in this time of global doom and gloom. Only the Likud – riding on Netanyahu’s tenure as finance minister – has spelled out a comprehensive plan.

But the real question that has to be asked: How did we get to a situation where two out of the three candidates competing for the premiership have already held the position…and were unceremoniously booted out of office? Where is our Barack Obama, a leader who seemingly comes out of nowhere to galvanize the country?

Traditionally, I have voted for one of the big parties. I want to have my say over who will be prime minister and, in Israel’s antiquated party coalition system, where there’s no such thing as U.S. style direct election of the country’s leader, that’s the only way to do it. I’m not beholden to any particular party. Over the past three elections, I have voted for all of them – Likud, Labor and Kadima, in that order.

But when the choices are as dreadful they are, I’ve turned my attention to the smaller parties. Not the ridiculous new pairing of the Holocaust Survivor’s Party with a spin off of the Green Leaf movement which has broadcast commercials of senior citizens pushing for legalization of marijuana.

No, the party that’s captured my interest is the Yeruka-Meimad list.

Yeruka-Meimad is an amalgamation of an environmentally conscious list (“yarok” is Hebrew for green) and the tolerant religious party Meimad. Together they stand for many of the issues I have always cared deeply about.

The green side wants to clean up the country’s increasingly polluted environment. It aims to safeguard national parks, promote clean energy and speed up the development of desalinization plants – an issue that will be of paramount concern when Israelis wake up this summer, after another rainless winter, and discover there’s no water left in the Sea of Galilee to drink.

The religious positioning aims to address the widening gap between religious and secular Israelis. Party head Michael Melchior has already introduced legislation to create a new pluralistic educational track that is neither entirely Orthodox nor ignorant of Judaism. The endeavor has a budget of NIS 34 million. Social issues are also paramount on the platform. As Melchior says, if we ignore our poor, how can we call ourselves a Jewish state?

For someone who grew up in the uber-tolerant and environmentally aware San Francisco Bay Area, the party’s platform is inspiring. Some highlights:

• Reduction of air pollution by 50% during the next four years.
• An agenda to promote Jewish identity through education instead of coercive legislation, including new laws on who can marry whom in Israel.
• A compulsory national service law that “integrates the ultra-orthodox into the life of the state without prejudicing this group’s unique needs.”
• Immediate development of a public conservation policy to reduce energy consumption by 25% with an accelerated move towards establishing renewable energy sources.
• An increase in funding for public transportation from the Transport Ministry’s infrastructure budget to 50% from a woefully inadequate 15% today.
• Higher salaries and better work conditions for Israel’s teachers.

On security, the party accepts the formula of “two states” for “two nations” but demands a commitment to strong security guarantees for Israel as part of any final agreement. With such a plank, Yeruka-Meimad could probably join any coalition that’s formed.

Some have accused Meimad’s Melchior of being opportunist. Since 1999, he’s aligned his party with Labor to ensure a seat in the Knesset. This year, with Labor projected to receive so few mandates that his spot would no longer be “secure,” he jumped ship to join up with Yeruka where he is at the top of the list.

I’m sensitive to that, but I also think that, based on his track record, having Melchior in the Knesset is a real asset, one that we shouldn’t squander. He has consistently been the parliament’s biggest champion of both environmental and pluralistic religious issues. He’s served as deputy foreign minister and deputy minister of education. Indeed, voting for a small party candidate who shares many of your own interests is probably the closest thing we have in this country to proportional representation.

But when I started Twittering about my interest in Yeruka-Meimad last week, the responses I received were overwhelmingly critical. There were the expected right-wingers who told me I had to vote for the National Union party or Lieberman’s neo-racist Israel Beiteinu. But there were also a number of comments that I was throwing my vote away, that Yeruka-Meimad would never pass the threshold to get a seat at the table.

At this point, that’s a risk I’m going to have to take. The party insists that its internal polling shows it will receive up to 3 seats, that the young people’s protest vote that went to the Pensioners last election will go to Yeruka-Meimad this year. If no one were to vote for them, they’d have no chance at all.

If you were to walk around our neighborhood, you’d think the whole country was going green. There are Yeruka-Meimad posters hanging from windows and balconies all across our southern Jerusalem enclave. As soon as you leave, though, it’s the same old story: Bibi, Barak and Livni.

Despite my passion for Yeruka-Meimad, my enthusiasm remains tempered by the bleary future the major parties portend. Perhaps the true test is that in the Hebrew ulpan class I attend twice a week, I learned a new phrase last week that seems ironically appropriate to this election season:

Ha Matzav Midakei Oti. The situation depresses me.

Ten-year-old Aviv has been trying to learn parkour, that incredibly dangerous street sport where you take running jumps off of walls like you’re urban surfing…but without the board. Well, at least he was until yesterday.

Aviv and my wife Jody were in the park when apparently, while trying to fling himself off a picnic table, he tripped and slammed his leg onto the attached concrete bench. He fell to the ground with a wail of pain that roused not an insignificant number of concerned neighbors who peered down from their 4th and 5th floor windows.

Jody called me on my cell phone. “It’s an emergency,” she said, explaining the situation as calmly as she could amidst the cries in the background.

I jumped in the car and pulled up to the closest entrance to the park. I could see Aviv and Jody near the jungle gym.

Aviv was in too much pain to walk. It took two of us to carry Aviv to the car and hoist him into the back seat where he lay down whimpering. There was no doubt in my mind that he’d broken his leg. Jody was less sure. Clearly he needed an X-ray.

Fortunately, there’s a Terem facility in the neighborhood, a quick 5-minute drive away. Terem is the alternative urgent care medical center organization set up by the late Dr. David Appelbaum who was killed along with his just-to-be-married daughter five years ago in the horrible suicide bombing at Café Hillel on Emek Refaim, a few blocks from our house. Terem has become an invaluable part of the Jerusalem medical infrastructure and takes a lot of the load off our understaffed and overworked hospitals. An X-ray of a potentially broken leg is their sweet spot.

The Talpiot Terem offices are so pleasant you’d think you were in another country. Switzerland maybe. Or Finland. Wide open areas, fresh paint, bathrooms with toilet paper.

We grabbed a wheelchair and rolled Aviv in.

The facility was mostly empty when we arrived. Paperwork was minimal – a couple of questions and a swipe of Aviv’s HMO card. We were immediately ushered into the X-ray room and told to wait while Aviv got his picture taken.

While Jody and I sat outside discussing the potential ramifications of Aviv’s injury, a man sitting in the plastic chair next to us picked up on our English. He was dressed in a sweat suit, had short cropped black hair and a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

“Why did you come here? To Israel, I mean,” he asked without a trace of embarrassment as he barged into a conversation with perfect strangers. That’s the Israeli way of course. Everyone’s business is your own.

I braced myself for the inevitable discussion. It always went the same way. Isn’t America the new Promised Land that Israelis are clambering to get to? Why would anyone be so crazy as to want to leave such a wonderful, genteel and polite place, with a handsome new President to boot, in order to join a bunch of uncouth, opinionated Jews in a small strip of land under constant threat of nuclear annihilation?

But that wasn’t the way it unfolded at all.

“I think it’s just great that you’re here. Israel needs more immigrants. This is where the Jewish people can take charge of our own destiny,” he said.

We relaxed, smiled, nodded our heads. We told our stories about how we got here, how we fell in love and decided to stay. We explained the value that Israel has brought to our lives, how living here has added meaning to even the most mundane activities, and how we feel like we’re a part of making history as the first sovereign Jewish nation in nearly two millennium. The man seemed moved.

The door from the examination room opened and the technician beckoned for us to wheel Aviv out into the waiting area. When we returned, the man was gone. The doctor must have called him in for his appointment. But was he even really there? OK, no time for metaphysics. I must be watching too much of “Lost” these days.

The doctor came over to the three of us 10 minutes later. Good news. There was no break. Just a nasty bruise. “It should be better in a few days,” he said. We all sighed. Aviv seemed to immediately perk up and, while not flinging himself off tables just yet, was able to walk himself quite proficiently back to the car.

As we were walking out, I called the doctor over. “I just want to tell you,” I said, “what a lovely experience we had here.” The doctor looked at me quizzically. My intention was to give an affirmation to the quality of care we’d received, but as I said it I realized there was something more.

Israel is a place of ingratiating, often exhilarating contrasts. One moment you’re jostling for a spot in the supermarket, staring down a surly line cutter, and the next you’re sharing your life story with a curious stranger in a medical center waiting room.

Of course I would never wish a broken leg on anyone. But sometimes, it takes an emergency to get one out of that bubble of work and friends and familiarity and into contact with other Israelis where a casual conversation can encompass 2,000 years of yearning for Jerusalem.

That’s the magic of this place. You never know whom you’ll encounter. But if you’re open to the experience, you nearly always come away enriched.

Residents of the southern part of Israel in range of missiles from Gaza can now make phone calls up to 30 minutes to their friends and relatives entirely for free, thanks to a new Israeli startup called PokeTalk. The service, which is already operational in 60 countries around the world, is good for any calls between two phone numbers in Israel's 08 area code.

PokeTalk has been flying high since its launch three months ago. The company, founded by two 25-year-olds in Tel Aviv - Shai Genish and Boaz Bahar - has signed up 70,000 users nearly entirely on word of mouth and viral marketing alone.

The service is the only one on the market that uses voice-over-IP to connect regular phones, not just two computers ala Skype, at no cost to the caller.

As with any good idea, though, there's a catch: calls are limited to 10 minutes. The promotion on Israel's front lines triples that amount.

Ten minutes on the phone is usually enough

Ten minutes (or even 30) may seem like a deal breaker but, says Genish, the average call placed is only two minutes and 40 seconds. And 70 percent of calls from a mobile phone are a mere 80 seconds. "Other than for business calls, 10 minutes is usually more than enough."

PokeTalk is essentially an automated version of the call back systems that were once popular in Israel as a way of saving money. But rather than calling a certain phone number, with PokeTalk you enter your number and the number you want to call on the PokeTalk site. A few seconds later, your phone rings. You pick up and PokeTalk places the call.

I took a test drive and the quality is quite good - better than most voice-over-IP systems like Vonage, Gizmo5 or even Skype.

So how can PokeTalk offer even 10 minutes of talk time for free? On-site advertising. Since you're required to initiate your call from the web, PokeTalk can show you advertisements on screen. That's a whole lot less annoying than some other free phone systems that put 10-second audio ads before a call is connected.

It's also much less invasive than a firm like Pudding Media, which actually monitors your phone calls to serve up targeted ads from its website, delivered by e-mail, or inserted as audio ads. (That company is based in Silicon Valley but was founded by a team of Israeli software managers.)

In addition to advertising, PokeTalk plans to make money by providing a premium service where users can talk for more than 10 minutes, along with other goodies such as voice mail and call transfers from one country to another.

PokeTalk's main phone-to-phone competitor is another Israeli-founded company Jajah, which also places calls between two regular phones. But other than the first call, it's not free.

Free calls originate from 13 countries

PokeTalk is far from profitable - only 50 percent of calls are covered by ad revenue - but the small eight-person company has raised $1.25 million from Maayan Ventures and private investors. Genish says he hopes to be in the black by the end of 2009.

PokeTalk calls can originate from 13 countries - including Israel, the US, Canada and Germany, though notably not the UK - and can be connected to 60 nations, from Kazakhstan to New Zealand. Mobile phones are supported in nine countries.

Of PokeTalk's 70,000 users, 40,000 are in Israel (including 15,000 from Tel Aviv University alone where the company did more active marketing). A viral "refer a friend" program has been successful at recruiting new users too (if your friend signs up, you receive an extra 10 minutes on your next call).

On an average day, up to 7,000 users login and make close to 18,000 calls.

The company has been featured on Israel's Channel 10 news and in The Marker and Globes business supplements. Genish estimates that a series of interviews that appeared in the VoIP Guides online publication led to some 10,000 new users.

The company's current promotion in the south of Israel probably won't generate a significant number of new customers, but it's a noble gesture that helps local residents in tough times.

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This article was originally published on Israel21, a great website whose mission is to "focus media and public attention on the 21st century Israel that exists beyond the conflict." Israel21 reports on Israeli innovations in technology, health, culture, democracy and clean tech. If you haven't visited the site, check it out. (You can also find a bunch of my articles there.)

I shouldn’t be so crazy over a store. After all, it’s just a large rectangular space whose sole purpose is to sell me expensive stuff I may or may not need. But this store, full of shiny toys, mesmerizing images and deliriously happy shoppers, is something else entirely. And it’s a welcome break from all the news from the Gaza front.

I’m talking, of course, about the first Apple Store in Israel, which opened late last month. Located in the upscale Ramat Aviv Mall, just north of Tel Aviv and down the street from Tel Aviv University, this Apple Store sports the usual mix of state-of-the-art Macintosh computers (with enormous 30-inch cinema displays), the latest iPods (but sadly no iPhone yet – for that we’ll have to wait another 6 months, according to the latest gossip), plus a wall full of accessories in every size and style. The back of the shop hosts Apple’s user-friendly “Genius Bar” where visitors can get free advice and answers to all their Apple conundrums.

The opening of an Apple Store in Israel is a big deal for Mac fanboi’s – like me - in the Holy Land. For my first 10 years of professional computing, I owned a Mac (a little black and white Mac SE with a 40 MB hard drive – today I have 10x that in RAM alone). I used Macs at work and, one time, in front of a class of 100 multimedia students whom I was teaching, I proudly pronounced myself a “Mac Bigot.”

Yet, when I came to Israel, I had no choice but to go PC. In 1995, there was no hi-tech Apple Store and precious few Macs at all in the country. Yedda, the only company in Jerusalem that sold Apple products, was dour, its products ridiculously overpriced.

At the same time, Apple was floundering worldwide, losing ground to the significantly improved Windows 95 operating system. I reluctantly bought a cheap PC clone and for the next 10 years toiled in the Microsoft Diaspora.

2 years ago, though, when my IBM laptop’s hard drive failed, I decided the time was ripe to go back to Mac.

You see, by this time Apple, under the leadership of the triumphant Steve Jobs, had turned around. iPods were on their way to becoming ubiquitous, in turn spurring growing sales of desktop and laptop Macs. MacBooks are now the #1 laptops on college campuses in the U.S., and the iMac is so way cool it still turns heads when visitors come to my office. I was hooked.

There was one niggling problem: In Israel, Yedda was still in charge and despite Apple’s resurgence, they had long since closed the Jerusalem store. If you needed a repair, you had to truck out to an industrial park in Rosh Ha’ayin, over an hour a way from just about anywhere in the country.

I had the unfortunate occasion to pay a visit there once when my daughter’s iPod went on the fritz. The establishment consisted of a small, windowless waiting room and a single under-staffed counter. The entrance was via a loading deck and through a freight elevator.

Now, customers with an Apple problem can take their machine to the brand new Apple Store in Ramat Aviv. It’s still a schlep from Jerusalem, but it’s significantly more pleasant.

Apple’s Israeli turn-around stems from the purchase last year of the Apple license for Israel by iDigital, a company backed by a professional venture capital team including Chemi Peres, Israeli president Shimon Peres’s son. iDigital has clearly invested in aesthetics and customer service.

All of which is good news. Israel has a lot of things going for it – history, identity, falafel – but customer service was never part of the package. I’ve written about that here and here and here.

The employees at the Apple Store, by contrast, are cheerful, helpful and seem to genuinely enjoy what they’re doing. During my visit, I watched as one staffer demonstrated how to use the latest version of iMovie, Apple’s video editing software. The looks on the faces of the customers were priceless. They couldn’t believe how easy it was to use. The employee was clearly relishing the power to impress.

That Israel can support a genuine Apple Store, which is so far above and beyond the typical buying experience in Israel of surly clerks and no exchange/no refund policies, is good news for the entire nation. Granted, something as mundane as buying a new computer is certainly not on the same level as draining the swamps and establishing kibbutzim…or waging a bloody struggle against Hamas for that matter. But it demonstrates that Israel has the potential to win at least one war – the struggle for the consumer’s heart.

Our friend Joan called last night just as the news broke that the IDF had begun its ground operation in Gaza. Joan was panicked. She knew a number of families in our neighborhood who had boys in combat units. “Why are we doing this?” she said. “Can’t we pull them all out now?”

My first reaction was detached, though certainly not uncaring. I had been obsessively following the geo-politics of the last week’s aerial bombardment of Hamas. While inspiring in its precision and speed, it was clear a ground operation would be ultimately required for Israel to achieve its objectives. The duration and effectiveness of the operation would in large part depend on internal Israeli decisiveness, as well as how Israel responded to world pressure to submit to a cease-fire. My initial thoughts, then, were more like those of a strategic analyst than a parent.

Joan’s call, though, reminded me of the very real dangers for the Israeli troops now heading into booby trapped roads and hidden bunkers where Hamas terrorists lie in wait. I thought of my own children: 17-year-old Amir who will be drafted as early as six months from now, and 10-year old Aviv who has eight more years to go when, we all pray, there will be no need for any re-occupation of Palestinian territory.

But what choice do we have? Israel has stood by for close to a decade now while rockets have rained down on its southern cities and towns. Children in Sderot have grown up in fear, sleeping in bomb shelters, watching their homes blown up and their friends killed while Israelis around the country feel emasculated and impotent, their government unable (or unwilling) to act.

Now the rockets from Gaza have reached Beersheva and Ashdod. In another year of unabated smuggling, they could conceivably reach Tel Aviv and even the outskirts of Jerusalem. Should we just wait, maybe accept another temporary cease-fire? Our enemies certainly won’t be standing still.

There are many who say Israel cannot win this war. That the result will be just like the ill-fated 2006 war in Lebanon where Hezbollah emerged triumphant and emboldened. That Israel hasn’t truly prevailed since 1967.

That’s not entirely true. As David Horowitz wrote in The Jerusalem Post over the weekend, “Operation Defensive Shield, carried out in the spring of 2002, was a carefully planned and effectively executed attack on the Palestinians' suicide-bomb infrastructure in the West Bank that remade our reality in the years ever since.”

Life returned to normal in Israel not because the terrorists decided to stop trying but because the army continues to operate every single night in Jenin and Nablus and other cities across the territories, making arresting and ferreting out bomb factories. The security barrier has helped too.

That would seem to be the ideal end game for the current operation as well. An end to the rockets (the Gaza equivalent of suicide bombers) along with the ability for terrorists to smuggle in the supplies to make more. Is that achievable? I don’t know. I’m not an army planner or a politician.

The Second Lebanon War had similar goals but failed due to its poor execution (something lame duck prime minister Ehud Olmert still refuses to acknowledge). A new army chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, and a more qualified defense minister, Ehud Barak (politically unloved but undeniably more experienced than his pathetic predecessor Amir Peretz), gives those of us sitting on the sidelines greater confidence in the current operation than during the summer of 2006.

That the current war has been in the planning for months represents a dramatic change from the impulsive leap to engagement that characterized the conflict in the north. So too the diplomatic initiative. The Israel Defense Forces established a YouTube channel with videos of air force bombings of weapon stockpiles, interviews with soldiers and briefings in English. As of Sunday morning Israel time, the channel had received just under 750,000 views.

As I write this, I am aware that my heart is beating faster than normal. My fingers are trembling and my eyesight is blurred after an uneven sleep. I am at once cheering the army on and terrified at what the day will bring. I know I’ll be checking the news obsessively, refreshing Haaretz and the Post and YNET all day, to the detriment of the “real” work I get paid for.

The name for the war in Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, refers to the lead Hanukah dreidels that were popular before the advent of plastic. Poetic but also ironic: you never know on which side a dreidel will end up.

I have no idea how long this war will last and how hard it will be. But I know we have no choice. It has to be done. And this time, we must succeed.

(Today's post is a holiday-inspired TNL Classic first published in 2002.)

I know they're bad for me. But I can't resist.

I'm talking about doughnuts, of course. Whatever shape, size or variety, I go do-m'shuga-nut over them. And at this time of year, in the midst of Hanukkah, Israel is overflowing with that uniquely Jewish version, the sufganiya.

Sufganiot (that's the plural) are a very simple but tasty version of the classic doughnut. Start with fried dough, don't even bother digging a hole, then inject jelly, caramel or chocolate directly into the middle. Finish off by coating the creation with plenty of powdered sugar.

Sufganiot season starts earlier every year, in some cases kicking off just after Sukkot. By December, they are ubiquitous. At Aviv's class Hanukah party, I watched in awe as a large white van from a local bakery drove up to the school gates, opened its doors and revealed platter upon platter of white frosted mass-produced tempting and scandalously scrumptious sufganiot.

There are sufganiot in the kitchens at work, sufganiot at Kiddush in shul, and sufganiot at the checkout counter of every supermarket from here to Haifa.

All of this reminds me of when our family was in the States a few years ago and I became obsessed with finding the ultimate doughnut:

A Krispy Kreme.

Now a tad passe since its stock price took a bath and the company was forced to close many of its free-standing stores, when we first heard about the chain, it was still as hot and fresh as its signature doughnuts and was taking North America by storm. I had also heard their doughnuts were to die for. And I had never had one.

So the running theme of that summer was Abba's obsession with finding that illusive Krispy Kreme. But on highways from Toronto to Cleveland to Chicago, our holy grail eluded us. It wasn't until I was out shopping late one night, in a forlorn suburban mall in the middle of nowhere, that I chanced upon a Krispy Kreme franchise store, beckoning to me from the middle of the nearly-empty parking lot.

The big deal about Krispy Kreme is that when the sign outside is lit, that means hot glazed doughnuts are rolling off the assembly line that's a prominent feature in every store.

The sign was lit.

I approached the store and, through the windows, I could see hundreds of just-baked lightly browned doughnuts rolling out of the ovens, then floating down a river of boiling oil before being tenderly flipped and arriving at the end of their journey: an earnest Krispy Kreme employee offering free samples to us, the lucky consumers who had timed our arrival just right.

I sampled. I smiled.

Maybe it was because it was hot. Or because I had waited so long for this moment. But I declared to my fellow consumers, and maybe to God herself, that these were the absolute best doughnuts I had ever tasted.

I proceeded to buy a couple dozen for Jody and the kids.

As much as I fawned over the Krispy Kremes that summer, I still have a special spot in my heart for the Krispy's more humble Israeli cousin. I think it must be the scarcity: you just can't run out to get a hot sufganiya in the middle of July. You have to wait for Hanukah to come near.

Which gives me an idea: why not create a year-round sufganiya phenomenon. We'd have to modify the formula a bit. Turn it more into a full meal. And stuff the sufganiya with more than jelly

How about spinach, broccoli and zucchini? Creating something more like a quiche.

Or fill it with chopped meat or shwarma or chicken schnitzel. We could replace the tired boring pita and the no-longer-trendy baguette with the hottest new trend: the fried dough sandwich!

From Ben Yehuda to Binyamina, this could be all the rage. Think of the entrepreneurship. The satisfied customers. The profits.

Shuki's Falafel, move over. Here comes Brian's Doughnut Quiche.

It's been a particularly tumultuous holiday shopping season. With pocketbooks worldwide squeezed especially tight this year, price conscious consumers have been weighing every decision particularly carefully, pouring over reviews posted online by both professionals and other users.

With sometimes hundreds of reviews appearing for a new camera or cell phone, that process can be daunting to say the least. A new Israeli startup hopes to ease the pain.

Two-year-old ViewScore does the hard work of reading the reviews for you and assigns a numerical score from 1-100 to each product so you can quickly decide if the item is for you. To work its magic, ViewScore scans over 1,500 sites, from the big boppers such as CNET, to mom and pop’s like Steve’s Digi-Cams.

ViewScore founder and CEO Ami Zivov says that the technology running behind the scenes is anything but simple. “It’s a very sophisticated system that took us a full year to develop to make it accurate. We’ve published several patents around our algorithms.”

ViewScore starts by crawling the Internet for anything that looks like a review (that part’s not so hard to do – the crawler looks for the word “review” in an article). From there, artificial intelligence and natural language processing parses each review to assign it a score. The technology is “self-learning” – as new reviews are indexed, a product’s score is updated.

Reviews are given different weights depending on who wrote it – professional reviews are ranked higher than the user comments, say, on Amazon.com. That’s intended to generate less biased reviews - a number of less reputable manufacturers and their PR agencies have used blogs to artificially inflate a product’s status, ViewScore spokesperson Uriah Av-Ron explained.

ViewScore isn’t alone in the field. Competitors include ConsumerSeach and Wize. But ViewScore does something the other two can’t – it assigns a numerical score to a product even if the individual reviews don’t display such a number.

Zivov came up with the idea for ViewScore after being injured in a motorcycle accident. While recuperating he wanted to buy a new computer monitor that would be easier for him to use. But a Google search for “monitor” resulted in an unmanageable 10 million results. He plowed through the data for two weeks until he realized that software could streamline the process.

The six person Tel Aviv-based company has landed seed funding so far from private investors. ViewScore is now looking to raise a Series A venture capital backed round. But with money for startups drying up, a key question will be how ViewScore intends to make money.

The first way comes when a customer makes a purchase. Visitors to the ViewScore site can click to order their desired product online from a participating store. ViewScore has cut an agreement with PriceGrabber which provides the store links; the two split revenues.

A potentially more lucrative direction is to “white label” the service where a third party integrates ViewScore’s product rankings into its own site. The Israeli comparison shopping site Zap.co.il is ViewScore’s first retail partner. To see an example, choose the “Electric and Electronics” category, then the link for “Cameras” and scroll down. You’ll see the ViewScore rating for most of the items listed.

ViewScore also has a deal with Korean electronics conglomerate LG’s mobile phone division. Search for the “VX5500” on the LG site, then click the Reviews tab – you’ll see the ViewScore rank there.

ViewScore currently only covers consumer electronics – a criticism leveled at the company by a number of Internet pundits - but with additional financing, Zivov aims to add more categories. “Travel, cars, restaurants, books, we can do it all and it won’t take a lot of resources,” Zivov says.

We’d give that a 100.

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This article originally appeared on Israel21c.

It’s been six years now since I’ve been unable to sleep without pills. It’s not something I like to talk about, despite the big drug companies’ reassuring promotion of sleep medications as a safe and tested long term solution for the some 30% of sufferers around the world who report regular bouts with insomnia.

I didn’t come to sleeping pills lightly. I tried every alternative before settling on traditional meds. I did Chinese herbs, acupuncture, homeopathy, vitamin supplements, SAM-e, melatonin, peanut butter (for the magnesium in it), Valerian, Calms Forte, reflexology, magnets, and more. I exercised regularly. I limited my caffeine intake. Nothing seemed to help except the pills.

My pill of choice has been Zopiclone (sold in the U.S. under the brand name Lunesta). When I first started it, I got a guaranteed 7 hours of sleep. But over time, that dropped down to 4-5 hours. So I’ve had to supplement. Sometimes that meant a half a Zopiclone or an Ambien in the middle of the night. Other times it was a Lorivan (a benzodiazepine also known as Ativan in the U.S.) which acted as a further tranquilizer.

The problem was, the more meds I took, the more tolerance I seemed to develop. Even with all the crazy cocktails I put together, I couldn’t seem to get more than 5-6 hours sleep when I really need 7-8 to feel productive the next day.

I didn’t want to keep upping my dosages. And I certainly didn’t like some of the side effects (Lorivan reportedly can impede memory function, and mixing too much can zonk you out for hours in the morning).

So I decided to go cold turkey. To stop taking the drugs entirely and see what happened. My doctor recommended the approach. He said that maybe once the drugs were out of my system, my sleep cycle would return to a more normal one. It wasn’t going to be easy, he warned me. I might go for days without sleep before finally collapsing into uneasy slumber.

What I essentially planned on doing was the equivalent to checking myself into a personal home-based rehab program. The first step was accepting that I was just as much an addict as Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears (though not to the same drugs of course).

I needed a period of time when my detoxification wouldn’t interfere with my work. That opportunity presented itself following a recent vacation. We returned a day before the beginning of a long weekend in the U.S. That meant my clients overseas wouldn’t be needing me for a few days. It wasn’t a lot of time but it was a good starting point.

I took my pills on a Tuesday night, got a paltry 5 hours of sleep, then jumped into a 24 hour plane journey home the next day. I don’t sleep on planes anyway, so that automatically cut down my sleeping time and gave me an excuse not to lie in bed unsuccessfully trying to snooze.

On Thursday night, after 36 hours of being awake, I finally hit the sack…to no avail. I got maybe 2 hours of restless sleep total. I would have gotten out of bed (the sleep specialists tell you that if you don’t fall asleep within 20 minutes, you should get up lest you begin to associate the bed with negative behavior patterns) but I was too exhausted to move.

Sleep is a critical component to one’s life. It’s the time when the body heals itself and revitalizes the immune system. You can only go so many hours without sleep before you die. That’s why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture.

In the morning, after 48 hours of not sleeping, my bones ached. The cut I’d gotten on my knee a few days earlier remained stubbornly resistant to repair. I was developing a cough.

Worse yet, I was stumbling when I walked, missing stairs and nearly tripping. I was agitated, alternately short tempered and depressed. It felt like I was in the midst of a never-ending jet lag.

I called my doctor. He said that what I was experiencing was a both a result of lack of sleep and withdrawal symptoms from the meds.

Friday night I finally got some sleep. Not enough - 5 hours – but it was on a par with how I was resting with the drugs. On Sunday night, I slept nearly 7 hours and felt absolutely great the next day. Monday night I dropped to 4.5 hours.

Over the course of the next weeks, I averaged maybe 3 good nights to 4 bad ones. That was worse than in my pill popping days. Nevertheless, I am categorizing my rehab experience as a cautious success. It’s not so much how I feel physically but my emotional response. I have taken a huge step towards healthier living. I have faced the abyss head on and while I haven’t necessarily won, I can hold my head up with pride that I at least tried.

I can’t tell you yet where I’m going to end up. Too many nights of 4-5 hours and I may go back to pills, albeit hopefully on a lower or more sporadic level. For now, I’m muddling through with a lot of optimism…and not a small amount of caffeine.

To my insomniac readers – please feel free to drop me a line with your thoughts (and encouragement).

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For more information on insomnia, I recommend Gayle Green’s excellent new book Insomniac. Green writes about her life-long fight with sleeplessness. She’s tried detoxing too, but to no avail. She goes into great details about which pills she’s taken, what the side effects are, what she’s using now. A good read, especially for doctors who must treat their patients (when sleep education in medical school consists of a 4-hour seminar, according to Green).

Another book I've learned a lot from is The Promise of Sleep by Dr. William Dement of Stanford University.

Finally, Crazymeds is a great community site about psychoactive medical drugs. Irreverent, lots of personal anecdotes, and distills medical knowledge about the drugs. Also check out Sleepnet.