A Japanese company contacted me by email a couple of weeks ago expressing interest in the new startup I’m in the process of launching. The company, which was representing a large Internet Service Provider based in Osaka, wanted to explore possibilities for collaboration.

I was needless to say quite excited. This was the first time a potential partner had contacted me about my new company, a fact made even more significant given that we’ve done no publicity whatsoever. The Japanese company apparently had learned about me from a conference to which I’d applied (and was turned down from).

I wrote back immediately asking for more information. The Japanese company thanked me for my prompt response and suggested that we set up a meeting for the following week. Two representatives from the company would fly to Israel specifically to meet with me. Wow! My head was swelling with thoughts of where this lucky break could lead.

In order to impress my new suitors I scrambled to build a sample website for the company demonstrating our technology. It ought to be in Japanese, I thought, to demonstrate that our software supports Kanji characters.

The only problem was that I don’t speak Japanese. No worries. A few years ago, I tried to start a company called Onago which was to build web and mobile services for “on the go” travelers, hence the oh-so-clever name. I had assembled a technology dream team, but alas, the timing for the company couldn’t be worse – it was mid-2000 and the dot.com bubble had just burst and no one could raise money. We quietly shelved our plans and I took another job.

When we were doing an Internet name search for Onago, we came across a Japanese site of the same name (but without the .com suffix). I also knew that Onago was a kind of sushi. So, needing Japanese text for my current business, I paid a visit to Onago.jp.

The site was a little strange, such that I could tell given that I didn’t understand a word that was written. It appeared to be a teenager’s blog. There were strands of what looked like poetry, lots of little hearts, and a recipe for preparing fish (complete with pictures).

That seemed innocuous enough for me. Throwing caution to the wind, and with still no idea of what I was reading, I copied several lines of Japanese characters from the site and pasted them into mine. In a few minutes I’d finished creating a web page for the Japanese company that had contacted me. I then sent them the URL of this new demo site and waited for their delighted response.

Unlike the previous day, I didn’t hear back immediately this time. Another day passed and then another. I became concerned. Had I done something wrong? Was the seemingly harmless text I’d blindly copied in fact been offensive? Had I unwittingly expropriated content from a pornography site and caused my suitors to lose face such that they were now assiduously avoiding me?

I should have known better. How many times have I castigated Israelis attempting (and I use the term loosely) to translate ads from Hebrew into what can best be described as pidgin English.

I typed “translate Japanese to English” into Google. A number of translation services came up on the list, including “Google Translate.” Duh…how could I have been so obtuse? I hurriedly pasted the text I’d used into the translation engine. The result was baffling. It read:

Garden of the holy. Also use the last!
We are introduced.
The same fixture
Garden dish made of the holy

I have been told that Japanese is a language based on metaphors. What did “Garden of the holy” mean? Could “We are introduced” be a code name for a dating site? What would be the implications of two things having “the same fixture?” My mind raced.

In desperation, I sent the text to my brother who lived in Japan for 5 years and speaks a decent Japanese (he had been traveling when I first needed the Japanese text). I also asked him to look at the Onago.jp website.

“I can’t figure this site out at all,” he wrote back. “Lord it’s strange. It looks kind of like a Facebook type of thing, but it could also be porn or maybe wife swapping. It’s pretty cheesy and a bit risky. Myself, I’d probably stay away.”

Oh boy…My fears heightened, I went back to Onago.jp myself and started digging deeper. I clicked some of the links. They all went to another site called Special Ribbon which had pages of pictures of women. I clicked one. Oh no…it was a very fat woman wearing a thong. Another click and there was an obese woman in her underwear. Another click. No underwear at all.

Did “Onago” have undesirable connotations going beyond fish?

After a week, I finally broke down and wrote to the Japanese again. Were we still meeting, I asked? The response came immediately. “Of course. See you on Friday.”

We had a very productive meeting. My presentation was flawless and the Japanese seemed impressed. At one point, the Japanese characters I’d copied appeared on the screen. The Japanese moved closer. “Ah,” said one of the Japanese, gazing intently at my site. “That means ‘Hi everyone!’” Everyone laughed, though mine was more a sigh of relief than a guffaw.

Nevertheless, the whole incident reminded me of a famous example from the automotive industry (which has since been proven to be an urban legend but is instructive nonetheless). Chevrolet had done what they thought was a comprehensive name search when they came up with the Nova. It apparently wasn’t enough. The name translated into Spanish as “no go,” about the worse appellation you could think of for a new car.

In the story, Chevy learned its lesson the hard way. I got off more easily. Now I’m working on a follow up site, also in Japanese. But this time, I’m getting a translator!

Despite the controversial subtitle “A True Story of Sex, Drugs and Orthodoxy,” Reva Mann’s new autobiography “The Rabbi’s Daughter” is neither as shocking or inflammatory as its name would suggest. Rather, Mann’s powerful memoir will seem familiar to many Jews who grew up in secular homes, crossed over to a more extreme practice of religion and ended up in a relatively moderate middle ground.

“The Rabbi’s Daughter” reads like a good blog – personal, confessional and addictive. When the book opens, Mann is studying at a religious girls seminary for the newly repentant in Jerusalem, striving to live the life of a good Jew while frequently flashing back to a more tawdry past.

That past includes doing lines of coke in her hometown of London, losing her virginity on the bima of her father (the Rabbi’s) synagogue, anonymous sex in a public restroom, getting busted for trafficking 10 kilos of hashish in Jerusalem, and becoming hospitalized after contracting hepatitis B from a junkie who shot wine into his veins. “I wasn’t addicted to a particular drug,” Mann writes. “I was addicted to the false sense of intimacy that I reached when I was stoned out of my mind.”

But worst of all, in her parent’s opinion at least, was her relationship with a non-Jewish man, a photographer who worked for a rock music magazine, that got her kicked out of her observant household as a teenager and led to even further debauchery.

Mann describes her tumultuous formative years with candor and honesty, all the while framing it from her new lifestyle as an ultra-Orthodox yeshiva student. Indeed, the opening half of “The Rabbi’s Daughter” seems almost like an apologetic for her youth, presenting religious life as lovingly bathed in the warm light of enlightenment.

“The Rabbi’s Daughter” is written for a broad audience. Mann carefully explains the details of keeping kosher or her monthly immersion in the mikveh prior to having sex with her husband. But it is insiders who will ultimately get the most out of the book.

That’s because Mann’s journey mirrors the religious evolution of many modern observantly struggling Jews (albeit without the extreme use of drugs and promiscuity). My own history is telling: I grew up in a devoutly non-religious home where I nevertheless (and some will say miraculously) decided, during a spontaneous trip to Israel in 1984, to pursue a more religious lifestyle.

At first that meant taking on as much of Jewish law as I thought I understood, though never to the extent of Mann who describes in great detail a loveless haredi marriage to a husband whose true lover, Mann writes, was always God and never his attention starved wife. He was “horny only for heaven,” says Mann, adding that she ignored an early warning sign: when he asked her to marry him, he gave her a prayer book instead of an engagement ring.

3 children and a divorce later, Mann abandons her faith, slaps on a pair of skin tight jeans and returns to wanton ways, taking up first with the local handyman and eventually settling into a destructive relationship with a vulgar yet passionate man she meets in a bar. Mann’s fall from grace is as rapid as the writing is breathless.

My own subsequent descent from more stringent spiritual seeking to a place of relative moderation was certainly less flamboyant than Mann’s, but I can still relate. I know what it’s like to go to an extreme and come back down.

Mann never lets us forget that hers is a true tale, even if the names have been changed. Mann’s father was Rabbi Morris Unterman, the late spiritual leader of London’s posh modern Orthodox West End Marble Arch synagogue. Her grandfather was Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, who served for 26 years as the second Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel.

As I was reading “The Rabbi’s Daughter,” I at times wondered whether it would be easier to take in if it were fiction, like Naomi Ragen’s novel “Jephte’s Daughter” with which it must be compared. In Ragen’s book, as in “The Rabbi’s Daughter,” an ultra-Orthodox woman finds herself in a loveless marriage in Israel, flees, takes up with a non-observant (or non-Jewish) man and eventually returns to a more moderate path.

But the voyeuristic quality of Mann’s book is part of what provides the story its power, even more so because Mann is a neighbor (she lives in Jerusalem’s German Colony) and, though we’ve never met, I fully expect to bump into her one day sipping a Chai Latte at Aroma Café or buying bagels around the corner. At which point I’ll be privy to more intimate details than most people ever know about strangers. Will that make the meeting uncomfortable or titillating?

The Rabbi’s Daughter received a flattering six page spread in The London Sunday Times which called it “hard to put down” and a “publisher’s dream, a gripping tale of a woman searching in all the wrong places and ultimately finding herself.”

Comments on the London Times’ website were more mixed. One poster wrote “Great book, but I can’t believe it’s true.” Another commented “What an obscenity! What some people will do for a dollar!”

Mann, now 50, is more introspective. She began penning the book while recovering from breast cancer. “Writing everything down was about my beginning to be a new person. I wasn’t just getting it off my chest,” she explained in an interview with Haaretz.

Mann closes her book, surprisingly, away from Israel on a trip to India with her now teenage children where she reflects back on her life. She is no longer the outcast; her rebellious nature has been tempered. She broke off her abusive relationship with Sam six years ago, and now laments that she lives “the life of a nun and worry I am once again going to an extreme, this time of sexual abstention.” She knows that “Jewish souls can only find true closeness to God through the Torah” even while she admits having difficulties keeping the laws herself.

“The Rabbi’s Daughter” is a riveting drama of sex, drugs and Orthodoxy to be sure, but also one of acceptance and healing. For those of us who have been on Mann’s path, it’s even an affirmation. I’m happy with the middle way I’ve chosen. I’m not entirely sure by the end of Mann’s book that she is. Still, “The Rabbi’s Daughter” is a sort of comfort; a reminder that the road many of us take is not quite so lonely.

"The Rabbi’s Daughter: A True Story of Sex, Drugs and Orthodoxy," by Reva Mann, is published by Hodder & Stoughton in the U.K. and The Dial Press in the U.S. It’s available at local bookstores and online at Amazon.com. Her website is www.revamann.com.

It’s been a year and a half since I reported on our family’s using a “chart” system, described in the column “Charting a New Course.” So, you might be wondering right, how did it go?

The short answer: well, there’s good news and bad news.

We had two goals when we set up our chart system. The first was practical: we wanted to get the kids to help out more with chores around the house and at the same time reduce the level of stress that resulted from never knowing who was “on” for a particular chore on any given day.

The second goal was more behavioral: we hoped that by instituting a clear system of rewards and consequences, over time we could create new patterns of interaction where the kids would pitch in without needing to be asked.

So far, we’ve succeeded nicely on the first…and failed miserably on the second.

The most important take-away lesson? If you’re going to try to enforce a chart, you’ve got to be willing to play the part of policeperson, at least when you’re getting going.

If it was up to my wife Jody, we’d probably be doing great. She loves laying down the law and handing out tickets for infractions. But it’s exactly someone like Jody you need to make this system work.

As I wrote in that previous column, for the first few days we had a lot of self-directed enthusiasm from the kids. Our youngest son, Aviv, was raring to do anything and everything asked of him for the simple pleasure of being able to check off the tasks on his personal worksheet. The two older kids were more motivated by the prospect of the reward at (it’s amazing what a little Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey can bring out in a child).

By the end of the second week, though, beds were no longer being made consistently nor were the dishes being cleared with the same gush of gusto we had in the initial rush of compliance.

Jody and I debated what to do next.

“They should lose their reward,” Jody said. “And receive a consequence.”

“So which is it,” I asked, “lose the reward or receive a consequence?”

“Both,” Jody replied.

“That’s not fair,” I sputtered, sounding more like my sixteen-year-old son Amir than a stern but loving father seeking to instill positive values in his children.

Before long, it was clear that the parents who had painstakingly set up the chart system didn’t see eye to eye themselves. And this was just one of a number of nuances that neither of us had quite thought through yet.

Such as: what do we do if the reward is a family activity? Do we not rent a movie for Saturday night? That punishes everyone. But how can we exclude one child from the evening’s fun just for failing to pick up a sock?

And: should we be checking the kids’ charts each day or use some sort of honor system? What happens if a kid does the tasks on his or her chart but doesn’t actually check them off?

And: should we hang the charts on the refrigerator for easy access and review? (“No way,” said fourteen-year-old Merav, fearing the public humiliation should any of her friends come to visit).

But the most critical question came down to this: should we give the kids a warning or grace period before coming down hard?

Jody took the maximalist approach. “They need to have something taken away if they’re going to learn,” she posited.

I went the opposite way. “What do we really want to accomplish here? We want the kids to do their chores, right? Does it matter so much how we get there?”

Jody wanted to say yes, but I could see she wasn’t entirely sure. That was enough for the old softie and dysfunctional disciplinarian that I am to win this round.

“Why don’t we try it my way,” I suggested. “If it doesn’t work, we can always get tough later.”

As if that was ever going to happen. Once we started down the slippery path of non-enforcement, there was no turning back to the purity of chart heaven. Rather than consulting their charts and proactively stepping up to the job, the kids waited for a parent to tell them who was on for clearing the dish rack tonight, or who was supposed to take the trash out.

If I saw that clothes hadn’t been picked up, I’d gently remind the culprit to make sure his or her room was straightened up by morning…or when school was out…or before bed the next night at the absolute latest, I’d warn, finger wagging unconvincingly.

Sounds like a great big flame out, doesn’t it? But you know what? It wasn’t. That’s the crazy thing. After a few weeks of our modified system, the floor was being swept and the kitchen counters were getting wiped down. Maybe not right away or without prompting. But they got done. And there were no disagreements over who was supposed to do a task – it was all written in the chart in black and white (Arial 12 point actually).

Sure, it wasn’t where we thought we’d end up when we started charting this new course. But it was as ship shore a start as this family’s likely to make, and reducing our family stress level is nothing to throw the whole system overboard for.

Stay tuned for more…when we finally drop anchor, I’ll be sure to let you know.

When I woke up on the second morning of the biggest snowstorm Jerusalem’s seen for 20 years this week, nine-year-old Aviv was sitting on the couch in his pajamas watching cartoons on the TV. Outside in the courtyard of our apartment complex I could hear the happy squeals of children throwing snowballs, building snowmen and generally frolicking in the white blanket that had temporarily obliterated the comforting Jerusalem stone that gives the city its unique character.

“Aviv,” I said cheerily. He looked up from his TV show. “Don’t you want to get dressed and go play in the snow like the other kids?”

Aviv shrugged a shoulder, that classic Israeli kid body language meaning go away.

“The snow is melting, Aviv,” I continued, noting that the sky was a brilliant blue. “It won’t last all day. You should go out now, take advantage of it while you can.”

Aviv continued to stare at the television, barely registering my entreaties. Which led me to wonder: How did I raise such a snowper-pooper?

Well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the beauty of snow, I do. It’s very pleasant to look at…from a distance. But up close, it’s just so darn inconvenient. Especially in Jerusalem where everything shuts down. Completely.

In other locations around the world, a little snow means you might have to drive a little slower or put chains on your car tires. In Jerusalem, the city is paralyzed. Schools are closed. Supermarkets don’t receive deliveries. Bus service is canceled. Even the trendy new Waffle Bar in our neighborhood was shut tight. I mean, what more could you want than a hot caramel and whip cream covered waffle on a cold snowy night, but no…

For me, the effect of the snow was more immediate. I had been scheduled to participate in a 3 day seminar this week. I had been looking forward to it for some time, but when the news predicted snow, I began to get anxious. How would I get to the seminar if the roads were closed? If I could, where would I park? And would there be heat in the seminar room if the temperature outside dropped to sub-zero?

The seminar, needless to say, was postponed until the following week.

People don’t expect snow in Jerusalem. With its baking hot summers and close proximity to stunning desert moonscapes, it’s easy to forget the city is perched on the top of a mountain, at an elevation of 2500 feet. The weather can be bitterly cold in winter; this most recent snowstorm dumped 12 cm of the white stuff on the holy city.

My worst snow experience in Israel by far was several years ago. It was during the time I was working in Tel Aviv. I needed to get back home but as I set out from my office, the news was reporting that the main highway to Jerusalem was closed. The only alternative was Highway 443 which runs through the West Bank – it’s a road we tend to avoid at night as there have been a few well publicized terrorist shootings. But it was the only way home.

As I approached the summit near Givat Ze’ev, the snow became thicker and visibility dropped to just a few inches. Cars were skidding off the road (particularly dangerous because that stretch of 443 is essentially on the edge of a cliff). The sides of the road were lined with people who’d gotten out of their non-functional vehicles and were actually walking in the meter high snow drifts, where to I don’t know. There was a bus turned over on its side.

I got on the cell phone with Jody and she talked me through three hours of the most treacherous driving I’ve ever experienced. There were times when other drivers whose vehicles had already skidded into oblivion physically guided my car when I could neither see nor steer. I was so traumatized I didn’t go back to work for the rest of the week.

So if Aviv wants to spend the day vegetating in front of the boob tube rather than joining the snow patrol outside, how could I fault him? He’s only got his father to blame.