When does something as innocuous and pleasurable as going to the theater become a political statement? When you’re seeing the British touring company of Mama Mia in Israel, that’s when.

The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot ran a story last week headlined “ABBA musical boycotted in Israel?” which reports a claim in the U.K.-based London Times that Israel is boycotting the extravaganza of 70s pop hits that’s been playing Israel over the last two weeks.

“The ABBA musical Mamma Mia could be the first casualty of a growing Israeli backlash against the British academic boycott of Israeli universities,” the article blustered. The boycott being referred to, of course, was the one approved last month by Britain’s University and College Union (UCU) refusing cooperation with Israeli academic institutions and academics. Last week, Britain’s largest labor union, UNISON, joined in the anti-Israeli jamboree, voting to boycott not only Israeli goods, but cultural, academic and sporting activities.

To which I say: balderdash. Not about the British boycotts but the Israeli response. My wife Jody and thirteen-year-old daughter Merav attended an evening performance of Mamma Mia in Tel Aviv last week, and I can report that while the hall wasn’t 100% sold out, many thousands of Israelis came out to the Nokia Sports Arena, more typically the home to the Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team than musical comedy, to enjoy what is essentially a lightly scripted excuse to string together 20 or so of the Swedish pop group’s kitschy classics from “Chiquitita” and “SOS,” to “Dancing Queen” and, of course, the show’s signature song “Mamma Mia.”

Good times aside, the whole Mamma Mia boycott issue nevertheless raises some important questions of why Israel is being boycotted…and how Israelis should respond to these actions which have roundly been condemned as myopic, biased and discriminatory.

Bradley Burston, writing in Haaretz, does an excellent job of pointing out the absurdity of the British academic boycott. “Just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that you're a British academic,” Burston wrote. “You believe strongly that the occupation must end, that the Palestinians should have an independent state, that Israel's military and diplomatic policies are wrongheaded...What to do? Simple. Find the one group within Israeli society which has consistently campaigned against the occupation since its inception. Then attack them. Single them out for professional ruin. Do your best to get as many of their colleagues around the world to shun them.”

Thomas Friedman similarly supports Israeli academia in an article in last week’s New York Times where he commented on how he attended a graduation ceremony at Hebrew University two weeks ago and was struck by how many Ph.D. students were Arabs. One woman even received her degree while wearing a tight veil over her head, something Friedman pointed out would be banned in public schools in France.

“How crazy is this,” Friedman wrote, that “Israel’s premier university is giving Ph.D.’s to Arab students, two of whom were from East Jerusalem…all while some far left British academics are calling for a boycott of Israeli universities….singling out Israeli universities,” Friedman concluded, “in the face of all the other madness in the Middle East” is nothing less than anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is also how the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League labeled the UCU boycott. In one of the most effective series of advertisements I’ve seen lately, running as quarter pagers in several publications including The New York Times, the ADL stated the facts in black and white: “400,000 murdered in Darfur…700 human rights activists detained and tortured last year in Zimbabwe…38 reporters arrested last year in Iran…and British academics are boycotting Israel?”

Harsh words were also conferred by the British press. The Guardian called the academics’ boycott “bad and one sided”; The Financial Times labeled it just “stupid.” Uriel Lynn, President of the Federation of Israeli Chambers of Commerce, additionally referred to the UNISON labor union’s boycott  as “scandalous and completely one sided.” Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mark Regev added neither boycotts “help the Palestinians, the Israelis or peace.

But how should ordinary Israelis respond? The report in The London Times suggested that several Israeli politicians are now lobbying to enact laws that would launch an Israeli consumer “counter boycott” of British imports. Hit them where it hurts, the thinking goes, by cutting sales of Schweppes soda water and Cadbury chocolate in Israel. Jeremy Newmark of the U.K.’s Jewish Leadership Council also feared a “tit for tat boycott of British goods.”

Even if it were effective, though, is that really what we should do?

I think the answer must involve two elements: fighting back – not the kind of cat fight of a counter boycott that sounds more like a playground brawl between seven-year-olds than the actions of a mature country with one of the world’s most robust economies – but identifying the boycotts for what they really are and speaking up, like Columbia University President Lee Bollinger did when he wrote in a letter to Tel Aviv University President Zvi Galil:

“If the British UCU is intent on pursuing its deeply misguided policy,” Bollinger said, “then it should add Columbia to its boycott list, for we do not intend to draw distinctions between our mission and that of the universities you are seeking to punish. Boycott us, then, for we gladly stand together with our many colleagues in British, American and Israeli universities against such intellectually shoddy and politically biased attempts.”

Concurrent with fighting, we must also ignore these boycotts. Yes, that’s right – pretend they don’t exist. That’s perhaps the most Israeli thing to do, to go on with our normal life treating the actions of a few immoral activists in the U.K. as the trivialities that they are. The opposite approach – giving the boycotts too much credence – would only encourage more.

Ultimately, we must talk tough and at the same time keep enjoying British products and imports as always. That includes singing along to “Take a Chance on Me” and “Souper Trouper” at the Mamma Mia show when it comes to Tel Aviv.

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The audio (podcast) version of this post can be found here.

Fifteen-year-old Amir’s school held a graduation party last week. Parents were invited. The event epitomized everything I both love – and hate – about living in Israel.

First of all, the evening, which wasn’t limited to just the graduating class but included every year from 7th through 12th, was called to start at 7:00 PM. “But we don’t have to get there until 7:15 at the earliest,” Amir duly informed us. “Nothing ever starts on time in Israel.”

Which is of course true. Punctuality is not one of the Jewish State’s assets. Most of the time it’s mildly amusing – a bar mitzvah is scheduled to start at 8:00 PM but the guests don’t arrive until 9:30 PM – but sometimes I wonder what kind of message we’re giving our kids. If they had to catch a train in a place like Switzerland, they’d be left yodeling in the station half an hour late.

7:15 PM, it turned out, was being generous for Amir’s party. When we arrived, students, teachers and parents were milling around in the school courtyard. There didn’t appear to be any organization at all except for a table of boisterous 12th graders hawking “Persian Rice,” a concoction that was mixed with raisins, carrots, potatoes and appeared to have been deep fried – at NIS 5 (about $1.25) a plate, it was delicious!

The evening was supposed to be divided into two parts: presentations by the students and a festive concert. A printed schedule told us to go to the main study hall at 8:00 PM for the presentations. Foolish immigrants, we did as we were told, only to join just a half dozen other parents. After 20 minutes of waiting and wondering how the school was planning to cajole the growing crowd in the courtyard into the study hall, the students began their talks…to a mostly empty room.

This was especially disappointing for us because Amir was one of the presenters. He had been working on a very important project all year interviewing two Holocaust survivors and writing up the results. He and his partner Shai answered questions and their proud teacher highlighted a copy of their transcript on the overhead projector.

Amir didn’t seem to mind. “I’m not much of a public speaker,” he had told us sheepishly beforehand.

“What a strong presence your son has,” our friend Maya told us after the presentation as we shepped unexpected nachas.

By this point, people had started to take seats for the main performance – Moshe Lahav was presenting his “Big Tisch” show – a non-stop medley of classic Israeli “standards” – folk and rock songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s. We sat down and after another infuriating 20 minutes of waiting, the show got underway.

Now up to this point, the disorganization that is inherent in Israeli events had been mildly annoying. It would have been more so, but after 13 years here, you almost forget that things could be different. OK, maybe not forget, but forgive a bit.

The goings on at the performance, however, exacerbated my already fizzing frustration. Not the show itself – that was fine and fun. It was the audience. Rather than sit politely in their chairs enjoying the music, on which the party organizers had obviously spent a lot of time and money, the mass of teenage boy energy in the space (Amir goes to an all boy’s school) erupted into a near frenzy of circle dancing, whooping, waving, male bonding, chanting and singing along at the top of their lungs to the music (most of it written 20 years before these kids were even born but somehow they knew all the words to anyway).

Students, parents and teachers alike all took the stage to boldly croon a few lyrics or an out-of-tune melody, tuning the show into a chaotic karaoke party with the musky air of Israel bravado. Song leader Moshe Lahav took it all in stride – but then I suppose he knew what he was getting into when he agreed to perform at a high school graduation in the first place.

About half way through the show, as Lahav was nearly drowned out by the cacophony of merriment encircling him, my wife Jody turned to me and said “It would never be like this in the States.” I started to sigh in empathy when she added unexpectedly, “Isn’t it great!”

And that was the point, wasn’t it? Because, despite all the aggravation, it is Israel’s chronic spontaneity that gives culture here its verve and spunk, an in-your-face intensity that you may love or hate but you can never ignore. The kids dancing and singing and enjoying life to the fullest – not the least the graduating seniors many of whom would be heading to the army in just a few months time – were a joy to watch, and a reminder of why we put up with all the crap: for such moments of sheer abandonment that only a society steeped in disorganization as an organizing principle can generate.

Will Amir be part of the graduating class of chaos in another two years? We can only hope so!

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The audio for this article can be found here.

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Before going for advanced certifications like 70-292 and 70-293, one might find covering basic courses like 220-601 or even 640-801 quite helpful. In fact, once done with these basic certifications, even 70-282 and 70-551 dont seem that difficult or uncomprehendable any more.

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More and more people are finding that online colleges can be a way to save money, since by getting an online degree you don't have to move to a new location to attend college. As more and more people get their degrees online the concept of online education is becoming more acceptable to employers as well.

In the recent Pixar movie Over the Hedge, R.J., a wily raccoon, accidentally awakens Vince a hibernating and very grumpy Grizzly bear while trying to steal from the Grizzly's store of winter food. Vince immediately springs into classic Grizzly position, ready to impale and impair the unwelcome intruder. Bears, it seems, can go from 0-60 – from deep sleep to full alertness – nearly instantaneously.

Not so with nine-year-old boys, we recently discovered.

A few weeks ago, we were at a dinner party with friends who lived down the street from us. As the evening stretched on later than we expected, nine-year-old Aviv fell asleep on the couch. When it was time to go, we needed to wake him up, at least enough to walk the short distance home. He has long since grown too heavy to carry him over our shoulder like a baby.

Getting Aviv going proved harder than expected. Usually, we can rouse him to a groggy walking state fairly easily, but he must have been in a deeper state of REM sleep this time. We were unable to get any response from him at all. We raised an arm, it flopped to his side. We sat him up and he fell over.

And then all of a sudden, he started to scream at the top of his lungs. Was he in pain? Was he angry? We couldn't tell.

"Does something hurt you, Aviv?" my wife Jody asked. Aviv just wailed.

Our concerned hosts had come over to see what was going on. "Does he need a doctor?" they asked. "Should we call someone in the neighborhood?"

I frankly didn't know what to do. This had never happened before. We asked Aviv again what was bothering him.

"It's my tummy," he finally said. "It's burning."

My mind began to race. Maybe he had appendicitis, a sudden ulcer…or something. Why would a stomach burn?

As the crying continued for five minutes, then ten minutes without a break, Jody and I tried different approaches. Jody doled out compassion while I went more towards tough love.

"Come on, you can do this, you can get up, it's just a short walk," I cajoled. "You'll feel better when you get into your own bed, you're just tired."

Just tired…that was it! I remembered learning something once that might apply to Aviv in this case. When a sleeper enters the deepest phase of REM sleep, he literally becomes paralyzed.

Apparently, the brain doesn't shut off during sleep, but is just as active during dreaming as it is during waking. So the body actually goes into a state of "sleep paralysis" to keep the slumbering person from acting out his dreams and hurting himself by running down the stairs or trying to fly.

Getting woken up in the middle of sleep paralysis is "alarming," according to the London Sleep Centre, and "children may have difficulty explaining these events (which) adds to the parents' concern."

It would probably also be unpleasant …the body might feel like it's asleep and the burning sensation Aviv was experiencing might occur while the paralysis wore off, not unlike the tingling sensation when your foot falls asleep.  A half-asleep, confused nine-year-old might interpret it all as pain.

There was no way to test the theory and we still needed to get our screaming child home.

Our hosts found an old still somewhat usable stroller. The seat was ripped and one of the handles was bent half way back. It was a tight fit but we managed to cram Aviv into it and cart him down the street back to our house.

He cried all the way home, alerting the neighbors to what I'm sure seemed like a clear case of child abuse. Then when we finally got to our doorstep, something shifted. Aviv sat up in the stroller and his usual, cheerful voice magically returned.

"You know, I think I almost fell asleep on the couch," he announced as if none of the past 20 minutes of parental hell had ever occurred.

Now fully awake, the pain seemed to have passed completely, confirming my diagnosis of probable sleep paralysis, but leaving us with few lessons to share.  

Which begs the question many a worried parent is undoubtedly asking at this point: that is, do I have any advice on what to do if this happens to you and your child? Unfortunately the answer is “no.”

There wasn't really anything we could have done differently. In Aviv's half-asleep/half-awake sleep paralyzed state, neither Jody's compassionate touch nor my sterner approach would have calmed him down. Sitting and waiting it out wouldn't have worked either – he'd no doubt have just fallen asleep again. About the only thing we could have done is let him cry it out, which is exactly what we did.

The best course of action: let your drowsy bear hibernate an extra week…or if that's too long, at least let him sleep where he is…and pick him up in the morning.

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The audio podcast version of this post is available here.

We recently learned that a neighbor in our apartment complex is trying to sell his flat, identical in size and layout to ours, for 50 percent more than we paid for our place two years ago. While this is certainly good news for the value of our property, it’s bad for the neighborhood. It means that essentially the only people who’ll be able to afford to move in will be those from overseas and these days that means, more often than not, absentee owners from North America and France who only come twice, maybe three times a year during the Pesach, Sukkot and Rosh Hashana holidays.

Now I don’t mean to dis anyone wanting to support Israel and stake his or her claim in the Holy Land. But unlike in some parts of the U.S., where space is king and having an acre of property with no other houses in sight is ideal, Israelis actually like having neighbors. It’s not just that we don’t have the geographic expansiveness to support mile after mile of single-family houses; it’s that we enjoy living in close proximity to each other. It supports our local infrastructure – the myriad schools and shuls and community centers within walking rather than driving distance.

Having too many absentee owners has already turned certain neighborhoods, particularly in Jerusalem, into virtual ghost towns, empty most of the year. It happened most famously to the luxurious and over-priced David’s Village, just outside the Old City – only 20 percent of the property owners actually live in their homes year round, a resident once told me.

There are scores of new developments popping up around Jerusalem, all claiming to be more exclusive and elegant than the next. The Jerusalem YMCA sold off a huge parcel of land to transform into real estate. Who can afford those apartments? Not the people who actually work in Jerusalem. They live in the outskirts of the city, in places like Pisgat Ze’ev and Tsur Hadassah, where they are forced to take public transportation to the city each day or else – more likely – private vehicles which clog the roads with more and more cars. Any look at the ever increasing traffic jams in the city will tell you that residents aren’t by and large walking and biking to work.

The trend is not just limited to David’s Village or the YMCA project. Already, there are four units in our complex that stand empty most of the time and a new building springing up across the street will reportedly be 50 percent foreign owned. I should point out, so as not to be too contentious towards potential immigrants, that it’s not foreign ownership per se that I’m against (after all, I’m an oleh myself); it’s just owners who don’t live in their flats year round.

“Yes, but what’s so terrible about not having neighbors?” my friend Bob asked me as I was lamenting the current state of affairs. “I wouldn’t mind having a little peace and quiet from the people next door to me.” On a personal level, his argument makes sense: all this proximity can be a bit much at times especially when late night parties by rowdy teenagers with thin shared walls mar the Shabbat evening solemnity.

A talk by Allen Ledden, an urban planner from London, at a recent parlor meeting to bolster the Sustainable Jerusalem Coalition, an offshoot of the local Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), provided some insight. Ledden described how London, one of the most expensive cities in the world (even more so than beleaguered but ever popular Jerusalem), has fallen afoul of the same demographic disaster, its inner city devoid of affordable living space for the firefighters and clerks and taxi drivers who actually work there.

An area with an over-abundance of absentee owners can lead to an increase in crime and drug use, Ledden said, and even homelessness (any look at the downtowns of major American cities will confirm this). Furthermore, empty apartments don’t contribute anything to the local economy. They don’t support area restaurants or photo shops or electrical supply stores.

But how can you stop developers from selling to the highest bidder? That’s how the free market works, isn’t it? If there are hundreds of buyers ready from Teaneck who want to be my sometimes neighbor and are willing to pay a premium, how can we stop that?

A look at London suggests it’s still possible. A new consciousness for “environmental sustainability” is slowly emerging. Its basic tenets are that unless we as a society take into account more than buildings and arnona, our cities will become unlivable and will further contribute to their inevitable decline. London, as a result, is now trying to grapple with its own empty apartment syndrome by promoting mixed use projects combining office, residential, and commercial functions, and mandating that 50 percent of all new construction in the city must be affordable housing. So far, Ledden conceded, the numbers have been more like 20 percent. But it’s a start at least.

Could the same thing happen in Jerusalem? Part of the success of London’s invigorated urban planning involves fostering more of a partnership with the public. No plans can be approved without input from the people who will be affected by it.

But Jerusalem is not known for such “transparency” in city planning. The SPNI’s victory earlier this year over the “Safdie Plan” which environmentalists claimed would have built tens of thousands of unnecessary housing units in the Jerusalem Hills (perhaps more affordable but still far from the center city), took years of wrangling through a highly opaque bureaucracy.

Unfortunately, it starts from the top: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is currently being accused of buying an apartment for $300,000 under its market value in exchange for granting favors to a building developer. Similarly, can anyone in Jerusalem not wonder whether the massive Holy Land housing project near the Malcha Mall – which once was intended to be a tourism center with a large public park – was not accompanied by massive bribes that filled either personal or city coffers?

Still, there may be hope yet for Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Post reported several weeks ago on how the city in 2005 took a time out from its massive development plans in the northwestern neighborhood of Romema. The area, which has been an ugly panoply of empty lots, junk yards, small factories and repair shops, had been rezoned for residential housing and parceled up between developers with no coordination whatsoever. The city realized that by working together with local residents they could create a much more livable environment, with green areas and community services. A master plan was created in 2006 and has since paved the way for similar initiatives in Givat Shaul, Beit Hakerem and Rehavia. If the city can think proactively about its future in these neighborhoods, maybe it can do something about ghost town developments elsewhere in the city.

In the meantime, my personal battle against the ghost town-ification of Jerusalem continues. If you know anyone who’d like to be my neighbor, and who would like to live in that apartment year round, please do have them drop me a line: brian@ThisNormalLife.com.

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The audio version of this article can be found here.