1) The average American consumes about 2.7 lbs. of candy per week (the equivalent of 6 chocolate bars).

2) In 1915, a typical person consumed 15-20 lbs of sugar a year. Today, one may consume his or her body weight in sugar.

3) Sugar is divested of all its nutrients in processing. When consumed, the body cells attempt to restore those nutrients by leaching the body of calcium, magnesium and other vital minerals.

4) Children are especially susceptible to the effects of sugar. They may:

a) become high-strung and unmanageable
b) become prematurely obese
c) suffer from tooth decay or frail bones
d) host ear and sinus infections
e) lose appetite for nourishing whole foods like grains and vegetables
f) lose pieces of their lymph systems – adenoids, tonsils – as a result of inflammation.

5) Chronic sugar consumption is ultimately not sustainable to the body, and results in cellular death because the bloodstream becomes overloaded with the waste products of carbonic poisoning.

6) Sugar creates heavy blood, slowing circulation through minute capillaries and resulting in diseased gums and dental problems.

7) Sugar consumption is the primary cause of diabetes. The pancreas, the organ that dispatches insulin when sugar levels increase, becomes damaged and cannot curb glucose load; over 400,000 Israelis have diabetes.

8) Sugar seems to be accountable for gall bladder disease; one in five Americans have gall stones.

Children are particularly susceptible to the effects of sugar. As any parent or school teacher knows, sugar can cause extreme hyperactivity in children. But did you know that studies have linked sugar to criminal behavior later in life?

9) Sugar affects one’s mental state; the brain is quick to react to chemical changes in the body. There are links to anything from sugar binging to unstable and even criminal behavior.

10) Sugar’s molecular formula – C₁₂ H₂₂ O₁₁ – is similar to cocaine. It is extremely addictive.

11) Sugar is highly processed by mechanical treatments. Its juice is squeezed out, the pulp and nutrients are discarded. It is mixed with lime, passed through carbon filters, and bleached to acquire a snow-white appearance using pork or cattle bones. Sixty-four food elements, like iron, phosphate and vitamin B, are destroyed, as are amino acids and vital enzymes.

12) The sugar industry has a strong lobby in Washington to influence legislators to promote their poison.

13) A 12 oz. bottle of Coke has 11 teaspoons of sugar.

14) Sugar minimizes the healthy bacteria flora in the intestines. Normally in this intestinal brine, glutamic acid is manufactured, which is responsible for memory functions and other brain activities such as numerical calculations. Thus, sugar will repress these mental functions from flourishing.

15) Sugar substitutes like Aspartame (NutraSweet) are worse than sugar. Aspartame is a volatile substance; it breaks down into methanol (alcohol), a known neurotoxin. The methanol will break down into formaldehyde, a highly reactive chemical, damaging cells and genes. The methanol formed from Aspartame is 1,000 times more potent than the alcohol in schnapps; it may also lead to Parkinson’s, Lupus and Alzheimer’s. (For more information on the dangers of Aspartame, see the Your Jerusalem feature article, Diet Coke Sweetener Called Dangerous Poison.)

16) Sugar’s negative effects include:

a) increased overgrowth of candida yeast organisms
b) chronic fatigue
c) binge eating
d) intensified P.M.S. symptoms
e) greatly increased hyperactivity in children
f) increased anxiety and irritability
g) difficultly in losing weight because high insulin levels cause the body to store carbohydrates as fat.

17) Sugar has a chemical structure that is alien to the guf (body) and that is addressed by the immune system as a foreigner. Ultimately, it suppresses immune response, making a person more susceptible to colds and infections.

A depiction not of the Carpathian Mountains, but of the Judean Mountains. After all, this is Your Jerusalem, not Your Carpathia. Reprinted from http://www.jerusalemdispatch.com/jerusalem-gallery/yoram-raanan/.

Asher Lazar is a well-known healthy foods and lifestyle guru specializing in macrobiotic nutrition. You may visit Lazar at the Carpathian Mountain House in Nahlaoth, Jerusalem, where he holds regular talks and hosts healthy meals. For further information, contact Asher at CarpathianMountainHouse-owner@yahoogroups.com or call 02-624-7796.

GROSS UNDERSTANDING

For twenty-five intense hours of Yom Kippur, Jews from around the world pour out their hearts to Ha’shem, asking for forgiveness for a long list of common sins, including speaking badly of others, desecration of G-d’s name, and more. This, combined with the custom of wearing white, men going to the mikveh (ritual bath) before the fast, and the intense prayers leading up to the holiest day of the year, are designed to give us a sense of “purity”, a “clean slate”, a “new beginning”.

On the Israeli street the day before Yom Kippur, it was noticeable that everyone was on their best behavior: Horn honking, dirty looks and road rage were non-existent, and people called their friends and family to ask for forgiveness. Then the holiday began, and when the sun finally set the next night, marking the end of Yom Kippur, we screamed “ha’shem hu ha’elokim” (G-d is the Lord) seven times, heard the loud blast of the shofar and joyously broke into song and dance, all of which created an intense spiritual “high”. Now, as we spend the four days after Yom Kippur in preparation for the joyous seven-day festival of Sukkot, I wonder — will Israeli society remain on its “best behavior”, or revert back to “life as normal”?

Papercut art by Deborah Tepper, http://deborahtepperpapercuts.blogspot.com

This year on Yom Kippur, Israel was blessed with a break from the intense summer heat, and that made the fast much easier. However, the next day, the usual sun and heat combination returned to the Holy Land. As I waited in front of Bank Discount for my bus to Tel Aviv, buckets of sweat poured off my forehead. Finally I saw it — the number 274 bus, coming down the street — now I’ll stop sweating!  But shortly after boarding the bus, I realized that something didn’t feel quite right: the air conditioning was not working.

Deja vu! A similar thing had happened a couple months earlier. Then, there was yelling, screaming, complaining, blaming, and dirty looks. It all reached its pinnacle as a disgruntled passenger ran off the bus screaming, “This driver turned off the air conditioning!” The poor bus driver’s explanation that “the air conditioning broke just now,” fell on deaf ears. At the time, the incident lead me to write an article which pointed this out as a prime example of our our being a stiff-necked people, just as it says in the Torah.

But yesterday, on the 11th of Tishrei, the day after Yom Kippur, I was in for a pleasant surprise. As some forty passengers made their way towards Tel Aviv in an intense sweat, not a single one lashed out at the driver! Sitting in the front seat, I overheard the bus driver plead with his supervisor on the phone, “Please do something, the air conditioning isn’t working and the passengers are going to kill me.” A passenger approached the driver and calmly asked, “Is the air conditioning working?”  ”Something isn’t right but I can’t fix it; I’m trying,” responded the driver calmly. I had to pinch myself — was I in the Middle East or the Midwest? As an elderly man boarded the bus, I read the quote from the Torah that is posted in the front row, “Rise before an elderly person,” and I got up and gave him my seat. Moving towards the back of the bus, my sweat intensified. Still, everyone was on their best behavior.

“Yesterday was the fast, which brought out that Jewish spark in all of us. Even if you don’t regularly go to synagogue, something in the air felt different yesterday.”

“Yossi, I’m pulling over. I can’t go on like this, send me another bus,” bawled the driver, as he stopped the bus on the side of the road and opened the doors. As the passengers stepped off the bus onto the sidewalk, they were surprised by the pleasant breeze from the shade created by the bus itself. “Wow, a mechaye,” said a sixty-something passenger using a common Yiddish expression. “Driver, why didn’t you check the air conditioning before you took the bus?” asked another passenger innocently, in a kind of “I’m not mad at you, I’m just curious” tone. “It just broke,” responded the driver with a pleasant smile. Fifteen minutes later, our replacement bus finally arrived. “You see what I do for my passengers,” said the driver jokingly. Now that my sweat had ended, I tuned into the three o’clock Reshet Bet radio program just as the host began saying, “Yesterday was the fast, which brought out that Jewish spark in all of us. Even if you don’t regularly go to synagogue, something in the air felt different yesterday.”

Yes, we may be a stiff-necked people, but the air-condition-less number 274 bus never got heated up! The Jewish spark is alive and well, even on the day after.

Eric Grosser lives with his wife and four children in Rehovoth. They recently returned to Israel after six years in Dallas, Texas when, to quote Eric, “we just knew it was time to come home.” You may reach Eric at ericgrosser@email.com.

Do you remember when you first made aliyah? When being a “friar” was actually kind of fun? Well, in case you forgot, this edition of “Only In Israel” is dedicated to the Oleh Hadash (new immigrant) in all of us.

ADVENTURE BY FIAT

When I first came to Israel, I bought an old Fiat 127 for 750 shekels. This hunk of junk was so bad that it could not make it up the hill on the main road to Tel Aviv. I actually had to get off in Mivaseret Tzion, and use side streets to get to the other side of the hump, where I could rejoin the main road and cruise (downhill!) towards Tel Aviv.

Three months (and 3,000 shekels worth of repairs) later, I decided that I’d had just about enough of this jalopy, and I decided to sell it. This was not too hard to do, because just about every time I went into a gas station, the Arabs that worked there would walk up to me and ask me if I wanted to sell the car. Apparently, Fiat 127’s were in very high demand in their culture, both for the car itself and for the parts. In the end, however, I decided to sell it to a Jewish “brother” rather than one of our “cousins”.

The price was agreed upon at 750 shekels — the same amount I paid for the car, the paperwork was completed, and the vehicle transferred ownership. I was so happy to be free of my burden that I did not even blink an eye when Yehuda told me he would have the money for me “in a couple of weeks”.

About two months after the sale, I ran into Yehuda on the street, and I asked him how he was getting along with the car. “I have bad news achi,” he said, “the car was stolen.” I told him that I was not at all surprised and explained to him how I had discovered that the car was in high demand among Arabs. We departed and, car-less, he walked away.

A few weeks later, I happened to meet him again. I asked him, “So, are you going to buy a new car one of these days?” With a big grin on his face, he explained, “I don’t have to, achi. Come with me.” We walked outside, and what I saw flabbergasted me. There, parked at the curb, was what I was somehow able to recognize as my old Fiat! “How’d you get it back?”, I asked. He replied, “You’re not gonna believe what happened. About a week ago, I get a call from the police, and they tell me they have recovered my vehicle from an Arab village. When I went down to the lot to pick it up, I could not believe my eyes. The Arabs that stole it had completely fixed it up, and now it runs like new. But not only that, they installed air conditioning, a new stereo system, and gave it a fresh paint job.”

Shocked, and a bit more jealous than maybe I wanted to admit, but nonetheless sincerely happy for Yehuda, I bid him farewell, as he jumped into his souped-up, hot-looking Fiat 127 and sped off into the cool, evening air.

Rahmiel Shearim,
Givat Shaul, Jerusalem

NEW IMMIGRANT RIGHTS

I had come to Israel in 1993, but lived here as a tourist for the first three years. Now it was May, 1996, and I decided that I wanted to make my relationship with the Jewish State permanent: it was time to make aliyah, officially. I went through all the paperwork, waited on all the lines — again and again — and finally, I had it in my hands: my shiny new teudat zehut (Israeli identity card), the ultimate proof that I was, at long last, an Israeli citizen. I was so proud!

Among the many tasks I needed to do once I became an official citizen of the State of Israel was to switch my bank account from a tourist account over to a regular Israeli account. So, one sunny June morning, I walked into my branch of Bank Benleumi HaRishon to do just that. After waiting on line for about half an hour (a true Israeli ritual in and of itself), I approached the teller and proudly announced to her that I was now an Israeli citizen and that I would like to open a regular Israeli bank account. She hurriedly gave me a bunch of forms to fill out and told me to come back to her when I was done.

As I filled out the forms, my heart swelled with pride when I had to check off my citizenship as “Israeli”, or when I had to enter my teudat zehut number. When I was done, with a big smile on my face, I went back to her. She looked over the forms for a (very long) minute or two, and just when I thought she was about to tell me that something was wrong, she said to me, without looking up, “teudat zehut, please.” Beaming, I proudly produced my shiny new teudat zehut, and as I handed it to her I asked, in my Hebrew (which was by that time already quite good), “Now that I am an Israeli citizen, do I get any special privileges?” Suddenly, she looked up from the pile of papers, glared at me with a cynical look and said, “Yes, now you have the privilege to pay taxes.”

Yonatan Levi
Ein Karem, Jerusalem

HOLE-Y HEBREW

We all have our favorite stories about olim hadashim (new immigrants) who misuse our holy Hebrew language. There’s the story I heard (not sure if it’s true or not) about the oleh hadash (new immigrant) who, using his finest Talmudic Hebrew that he learned from the yeshiva back in Brooklyn, asked an Egged bus driver how much a ride costs by saying, “Kama mammon olah nesiyah?”, to which the bus driver responded, “Chamesh va-hetzi zuzim.” (You have to understand Hebrew to get this one.)

Here are a number of stories that I know are true because I heard them firsthand. The first involves the father of an old friend. One day, soon after he arrived in Israel, he sat down with his family in a restaurant and ordered a meal; then he decided to change his order. He called over the waitress and, intending to say to her, “Excuse me, I changed my mind,” he said in his finest Hebrew, “Selicha, ani hichlafti et ha-moach sheli”, which does indeed literally mean what he intended, but in modern Hebrew conveys the message, “Excuse me, I gave myself a brain transplant.”

Next, there was the friend of mine who needed to buy spices in the shuk. Using his finest American yeshiva Hebrew, he went from store to store asking the workers if they knew a place where he could buy “samim“. The only problem is, “samim” in modern Hebrew does not mean spices, it means drugs, as in the illegal type. Luckily, one store owner had mercy on my friend and explained to him the error of his ways.

Finally, there was the friend who, when he first came to Israel, was invited to sit at the table of a famous IDF general. This particular general served in the Israeli army in artillery, which in Hebrew is “tot-cha-nim”. Unfortunately, my friend’s Hebrew was still “under construction”, so when he finally had the nerve to strike up a conversation with the general, instead of saying, “Ani mavin she-ata misharet b’tzava b’tot-cha-nim” (I understand that you serve in the army in artillery), he said, “Ani mavin she-ata misharet b’tzava b’tach-to-nim”, which means, “I understand that you serve in the army in your underpants.”

KB Shawnee
Your Jerusalem Staff

“Only In Israel” is a column dedicated to bringing out the lighter side of our special country. Do you have a story that you would like to see published in “Only in Israel”? E-mail us at OnlyInIsrael@YourJerusalem.org.

THROUGHOUT THE LAND — BIBLICAL TRUMPETS AND SHOFAR

There are numerous references to both a shofar and a trumpet being sounded in heaven above as a reflection for sounding the shofar or the trumpet here in the world below. Is there a jazz band in heaven? Do Klezmer musicians entertain dancing angels? Who does God think he is anyway, Elvis?

In Numbers 29:1 we are commanded that the first day of the seventh month shall be a day of teruah, generally interpreted as a day of “blowing the horn”. While the word teruah is generally understood as a reference to the sounding of the shofar, teruah is, in fact, not explicitly “blowing the horn” in every scriptural reference. Teruah can also refer to a sound made by a human. For example, in Leviticus 23:23, zichron teruah — a memorial of loud sounds or cries — does not not specifically indicate that the loud sounds or cries are of the shofar, the keren (horn) or the hazuzrah (trumpet).

Similarly, outside the city of Jericho, Joshua commands the people to shout, and “v’yiryu ha’am truah gedolah” — “so the people shouted with a great shout” [Joshua 6:20], not referring to the use of the shofar or the trumpet at all. The tekia (sounding) of the shofar, preceded the “great shout” of Am Yisrael: “So the people shouted when the priests came with the shofars and it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the horn, the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down flat.” This seems to indicate that the sound of the shofar, the tekiah of the shofar (in addition to the command of Joshua), is in fact the inspiration for the “great shout”. While the word teruah refers to the sound expelled from the throats of the people of Israel, and not the sound of the shofars, the instruments are essential in this process.

While it is clear that the teruah is not restricted to sound produced on a musical instrument, it is, however, generally an alarm or a warning, and not merely a loud noise. In Numbers 31:6, the word teruah is used in reference to the sounding of the hazuzroth (trumpets): “l’tzevah u’clee hakodesh v’hazuzroth ha-teruah b’yado” — “to the war, with the holy vessels and the trumpets for the alarm in his hand.” Therefore, the teruah is a type of sound that can be produced with the shofar, the hazuzrah or the human voice, and it is an alarm or a cry.

In Numbers 10:2 we are commanded to make two trumpets of silver. They are to be blown by the Cohanim for gathering various parts of the people, for setting forward or for being remembered by God in times of trouble and saved from the enemy in the land. That a teruah (alarm) is sometimes the designated sound to be produced by the tekia (blowing) on the trumpets indicates that signaling was effected by a range of blasts.

In Second Kings 11:14 it is written, “v’col am ha’aretz sameach v’tokea b’hazuzroth” — “and all the people of the land rejoiced and sounded trumpets.” How does one sound a trumpet? “Tokea b’hazuzroth, titku b’shofar” — “blow the trumpet, blow the shofar.” The type of sound is variable. That the blowing can result in the type of sound which is called a teruah is sufficient but not exclusive.

We find that the shofar is sometimes referred to as shofar teruah — “horn of alarm”. Sometimes it is referred to as shofar yovel — horn of the Jubilee (redemption) year. The verb for the sounding the shofar in these cases is “tokea”. Compare this with “teaviru shofar” as in Leviticus 25:9 — “proclaim with the horn”, the horn in this case being the shofar.

Distinct from sounding the shofar or hazuzrah for war, alarm or signaling using the action of tokea (blow, sound) or teaviru (proclaim), there is another use of the hazuzrah mentioned in Second Chronicles 5:12-14 that shows that the shofar and trumpet also had musical function: “… And it came to pass when all at once the trumpeters and the singers sounded a note in unison, in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord; and when they lifted up their voice with the trumpets, cymbals and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, ‘For He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever’, that the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God.” “Vayehi k’echad lamchazrim u’lamshirarim” — and it was the same for the trumpeters and the singers. The unity of the musicians, singers and all those present, praising the Lord in the holy place, brought about a manifestation of the Divine presence. Likewise, outside the walls of Jericho, it was the tekia of the trumpets, then the teruah of Am Yisrael, that caused the walls to fall down, a unity of action.

Detail of the Arch of Titus (Rome), showing the treasures of the Second Temple, including silver trumpets, after the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70 C.E.

So, what is a trumpet anyway? Most scholars believe that a hazuzrah means a trumpet. if indeed it does, how do we know what trumpets looked like? There are two ancient sources which give us visual information regarding the size and the shape of ancient trumpets. The Arch of Titus, in Rome, erected to the glory of the Emperor Titus after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, shows the sacred silver trumpets together with the sacred vessels of the sanctuary which Titus carried as booty in his triumphant procession. The second source is a coin of Bar Kochba, issued during the War of Liberation against the Emperor Hadrian, 132-135 CE, which shows a pair of instruments which could be trumpets, though by their proportions, they could just as easily be the double oboe known as aulos. In the Talmud Yerushalmi, Yoma VI:1 (43b), the two sacred trumpets used at various occasions had exactly the same dimensions. Later renditions of trumpets in various manuscripts are often based on the fashion of the day or imagination.

There are two families of trumpets most widely in use today. The principle difference is the shape of the “bore”, which is the tube of the instrument. Some trumpets have a straight cylindrical bore which runs the length of the instrument before flaring out at the end into a bell. The other style of trumpet commonly in use today has a conical shaped bore, gradually increasing in size from the mouthpiece until flaring out at the end into the bell of the instrument. Most natural animal horns used as musical instruments are conical in shape. The rate of increase in the bore size varies between the species of animal used.

One could postulate that the technology of the time would have restricted the craftsmen. However, silver, being malleable, can easily be bent around a form that is either a straight rod or slightly conical. The mouthpiece at the end of the trumpet can be cupped to enable efficient sound production by lips, or it can be left as a simple round opening at the end of the tube. Therefore, trumpets of that day were quite possibly both cylindrical and conical in shape. There is a greater possibility of reaching higher harmonics on a short conical bore trumpet than on a short cylindrical bore trumpet.

A conical bore trumpet

In tractate Rosh Hashanah 32b of the Babylonian Talmud, it is stated that, “… children need not be stopped from blowing on the shofar; on the contrary they may be helped until they learn how to blow the shofar.” The gemarah on this mishnah elucidates that, “… neither children nor women need be stopped from blowing the shofar on the festival.” Similarly, R. Jose and R. Shimon state that although women are not commanded to blow the shofar, women have the option of doing so, and therefore they may practice, even on the Shabbath. Let this passage encourage all people, regardless of age, gender or religion, to practice shofar, trumpet and the other musical instruments so as to enable us to collectively praise God.

There are those in the Jewish nation whose natural inclination is to sound the alarm on the shofar. Some prefer to call together, with the silver trumpets, those among our people who are spread to the ends of the world. There are Jews eager to blow shofar and trumpet to urge the Jewish nation to go forward. It is magnificent to hear the sound of musicians and singers praising and thanking God together and it is encouraging to witness the young practicing in order to, one day, have their opportunity to participate.

As God seems to have demonstrated in the past, in the house that King Solomon built for Him in Jerusalem, united action by all the members of Israel, having feasted and rejoiced on the festival of Sukkoth, may bring us the great privilege of experiencing the revelation of the Divine presence.

I will leave you on this “note”, with some selected references to shofar and trumpet in the Tanach and in the traditions of the Nation of Israel:

Hoshea 5:8 — “Blow the shofar in Giv’ah and the trumpet in Rama, cry aloud at Bet-aven.”

Joel 2:1 — “Blow the shofar in Ziyon and sound an alarm on my holy mountain.”

Zephania 1:16 — “A day of shofar and alarm.”

Psalm sung during sacrificial offering — At the break in the singing or at the pouring out of the drink offering, two priests sounded trumpets and the people prostrated.

Water libation — Water from the Silwan, together with a libation of wine, was poured out as a drink offering on the altar. During this ceremony, the priests sounded the trumpets, whereupon the music started and the Levites sang hallel.

David Perkins blows the shofar overlooking the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

David Lloyd Perkins is an internationally renowned musician and instrument maker specializing in the Biblical trumpet and shofar. He has represented the State of Israel on the shofar both abroad and in Israel. You may visit his website at www.partymusicshows.com.

Physicist Stephen Hawking

LONDON (Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts on Thursday.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time,” an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics — Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

He wrote in A Brief History … “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.”

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

Saying on a popular T-shirt

“That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions — the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings,” he writes.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.

He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world’s leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in “Star Trek” and the cartoons “Futurama” and “The Simpsons.”

Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.

“The Grand Design” is due to go on sale next week.

(Israel National News) Researchers at Haifa University have discovered why learning to read Arabic is hard – and it has to do with the “right brain.”

Haifa University’s Professor Zohar Eviatar and neuropsychologist Dr. Rafik Ibrahim of Rambam Medical Center have shown that the complexities of the Arabic language impede the right brain from taking part in learning to read it. This is largely because of the graphic complexities of the language, in which very similar shapes stand for different letters, while the same letter is depicted in a variety of ways depending on whether it is in the beginning, middle, or end of a word.

Letters such as the equivalents of B, N, TH and T, for instance, all have the same basic shape, but with a different amount of dots under or over them. F and Q are also similar, as are R and Z, and J, H, and KH.

Asked why Hebrew-speakers do not have the same difficulty, Eviatar told Israel National News, “It’s true that many Hebrew letters are built around similar square shapes. However, only five Hebrew letters change their shape depending on whether they end a word or not, while many Arabic letters do so, and even take on different shapes in other parts of the word.”

“Our research has shown,” Eviatar said, “that when we test both Arabic and Hebrew reading on children who speak and read both, they do better in Hebrew reading than in Arabic. And this is true whether their mother tongue was Hebrew or Arabic.”

Eviatar and Ibrahim, seeking to explain the increasingly-accepted fact that learning to read Arabic is relatively hard, conducted a series of research projects regarding the visual complexities of Arabic. Their work indicates that the right brain hemisphere, which is generally assumed to process visual stimuli, is simply overloaded by the task and does not rise to the occasion as quickly as it does when learning other languages.

The tests carried out upon children showed that the right brain took part in the learning process in English and Hebrew, but not in Arabic.

“The significance is,” the researchers summed up, “that children who learn languages other than Arabic rely on the capabilities of both sides of their brain at the early stages of learning to read, whereas the child learning Arabic has a stronger challenge.”

Each year's restored Holy Half Shekel has its own unique design. Pictured here is the design for the year 5769 (2009).

INTRODUCTION

Though I am writing this on the 24th of Av 5770 (4 August 2010), I am actually writing it for you, dear talmid/ah, who is researching the origins of the restoration of the Holy Half Shekel one hundred years from now, in the year 5870 (2110 if these years are still counted.) I am writing this for you because during my generation, back in the 2010’s, we did not appreciate, recognize, or listen to our innovators while they were still with us.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, taught that the Holy Half Shekel was “the foundation of our entire Service to G-d.” He taught this, and it was duly recorded, repeated, printed, and ignored by his hasidim (followers). Though he himself never fulfilled the commandment of donating the Holy Half Shekel, he did not leave this world without first assuring us that it would be restored in the near future.

The Rebbe based his teaching on the fact that the very first time we fulfilled the commandment of the Holy Half Shekel in the desert, the silver donated by the Israelites was used to make the sockets that held up the walls of the Tabernacle. Since the Tabernacle represents our Service to G-d, the Holy Half Shekel is the very foundation of our Service to G-d.

In the following editions of Your Jerusalem, I will write a series of articles that will cover the entire history of the Holy Half Shekel, from its ancient genesis in the period of the Tabernacle, through the First and Second Temple eras, to its period of exile for 1,927 years and, finally, to its restoration, on Purim of 1998, for the upcoming Third Temple era.

THE PRE-COINAGE PERIOD

Anywhere that the Torah refers to shekalim (shekels), it is never, ever, referring to money. The shekel was not a currency, but a weight. Just as an ounce is broken down into grams, so the shekel was broken down into gera: there are 20 gera to the shekel. The concept of money was only introduced to the world in the 6th century BCE in Persia, today’s Iran. The concept of money made its way to the Holy Land only in the 4th century BCE, introduced by the Greeks.

“Even when Avraham Avinu paid 400 shekels for the cave of Machpelah as a burial site in Hebron, he did not whip out a wad of bills, he weighed out silver bars and nugget against stone weights.”

During the entire period of the Tabernacle, the First Temple period, and for one hundred years into the Second Temple era, the way we weighed out the Holy Half Shekel (Exodus 30:11-16) was by weighing silver nuggets against stone weights. In fact, not only the donation of the Half Shekel for the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle), but any commandment that required the payment of shekels of silver, was paid by weighing out silver bars and nugget against stone weights. This includes the 5 shekels for the Redemption of the First Born (Numbers 18:16), the 50 shekels for the bride’s price (Deuteronomy 22:29) and the 30 shekels for the slave’s price (Exodus 21:32). Even when Avraham Avinu paid 400 shekels for the cave of Machpelah as a burial site in Hebron, he did not whip out a wad of bills, he weighed out silver bars and nugget against stone weights.

Israelite weights were always made out of stone, never out of metal, because stone cannot acquire or impart ritual impurity, and anything offered in the Temple had to be offered in a state of ritual purity. The stone weights were flat on the bottom so they would not roll off the scale pans, and they were dome shaped, often inscribed with their weight value. You may remember seeing similar weights before the invention of the digital scale. When you went to the jeweler to buy or sell a gold bracelet, the jeweler would put the bracelet on one side of the balance scale, then place a ten gram weight, a five gram weight, and a two gram weight on the opposite side of the scale until the two sides balanced out. Likewise, the Israelites, in order to donate the Holy Half Shekel, would put a half shekel’s worth of stone weights on one side of the scale and then pour silver nugget onto the other side until the scale balanced. Then, the silver nugget would be given over to the Tabernacle or to the Temple to fulfill the commandment.

Jerusalem visionary Reuven Prager has spearheaded the restoration of many ancient Israelite traditions including the Holy Half Shekel and Biblical style dress ("Beged Ivri").

For more information on the Holy Half Shekel and to learn about Reuven Prager’s other projects, you may visit his website at www.begedivri.com. In part 2 of this series, Reuven will take us through the history of the Holy Half Shekel during the First and Second Temple periods.

"Jerusalem Unveiling" by Ruth Mayer, www.ruthmayer.com/jerusalem.htm.

THE ROAD TO KINDNESS

The author wishes to remain anonymous.

A neighbor has a heart of gold. She takes into her home (not into private apartments, but regular bedrooms, and even the sofas when necessary) several people who would otherwise be in the streets. Some are emotionally disturbed, some are old, sick or feeble. For the past 20 years, they live there, eat there, do everything as if they owned the place, all while my friend caters to their every need, driving them to medical appointments, making sure they take their medications, etc.

You might think that my neighbor is in the prime of her life with no worries of her own. Even then, her kind deeds would be outstanding. However, she is a senior citizen, she has several kids still at home, her husband is sick, and she has a blind, multiply-handicapped son who never recovered after suffering a brain aneurysm as a teen.

And yet, she still takes care of all her “guests” as if they were her own children. With a smile, and a heart full of love.

"Road to Jerusalem" by Alex Levin, http://dart.fine-art.com/artListinginfo.asp?i=145563

YOUR IDENTITY

Reprinted from the book “From Kindness: Making a Difference in People’s Lives” by Zelig Pliskin, with the permission of Shaar Press.

Your identity has a tremendous influence on your behavior. What we do readily or refuse to do is strongly connected with how we identify who we are. We tend to say, “I’ll do that. That’s who I am,” or, “I would never think of doing that, I’m not that kind of person.” This pattern can work for us or against us depending on the nature of our subjective identity.

There was a famous study designed to illustrate the power of our sense of identity.

“Can we place this large billboard with the words ‘DRIVE CAREFULLY’ on your front lawn?” a number of homeowners were asked. Unbeknown to them the question was posed by a student working on a research project.

Understandably, most people answered, “No.” They didn’t want unsightly signs on their expensive front lawns.

This same request was then posed in two steps. The house owners were asked, “Are you for safe driving?” Everyone replied, “Of course, yes.”

“Then would you please sign this petition for safe driving?” Most agreed to sign.

Several weeks later those who signed were approached again. “You signed a declaration that you are for safe driving. Are you still for safe driving today?”

“Yes. I haven’t changed my mind,” was the unanimous response.

“Since you are a person who cares about safe driving, could you please allow us to place this billboard with the words ‘DRIVE CAREFULLY’ on your front lawn?”

Most agreed. Why? Because once they identified themselves as individuals who cared about safe driving, they acted consistently with their new identity. Previously even if they agreed, they might have done so reluctantly. Now that they were acting in a way consistent with their identity as being concerned about safe driving, they felt good about doing their part to help save lives. This principle applies to all areas.

On our subject, the principle can be stated: Identify yourself as a person who is kind and caring and you will spontaneously upgrade your level of kindness.

There are many instances when you will have opportunities to do acts of kindness for others but might not be open to do them. At times you might not recognize the opportunity. At other times, you just won’t feel like doing the kind deed. Or you might not feel like it’s incumbent upon you to speak up.

When you identify yourself as a person who loves kindness, you will notice opportunities you hadn’t noticed before. You will feel like doing acts of kindness you didn’t feel like doing before. And you will always feel that it’s up to you to do as much good as you can throughout your life.

As you develop your love for kindness, you will view yourself as a person with a life goal to help others. You might not choose to share this with others. But in your heart you will know that this is who you are.

Printed with permission of www.PartnersInKindness.org.

Among the scores of ridiculous things said, thought, and written about the Arab-Israeli conflict, the pretense that it has something to do with “race” ranks high among them. This has been interjected for two reasons. First, this is a blatant attempt to demonize and delegitimize Israel.

Second, due to trends in Western intellectual discussions, there is a conflation of nationality and race. Often, there is an attempt nowadays to portray any form of nationalism in the West as racism, though this is never applied to Third World nationalism. Neither the internal conflicts in Iraq (among Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds) nor in Lebanon (among numerous groups) are about race but rather arise from national, ethnic, and religious (sometimes all rolled up into one) conflicts.

Race is much less of an issue in Israeli society than in America or the European Union

One of the most basic lessons in looking at foreign or international affairs is to understand that countries just don’t think alike about issues. America, and in a different way Europe, has been obsessed with race. That doesn’t mean that everyone else is racially oriented. Israelis don’t think about skin color as such and are well aware that Jews, while having a common ancestry, have been affected by many cultures and societies.

With intermarriage rates between Jews whose ancestors came from Europe and those who came from the Middle East approaching half in Israel today, there is no way to classify people. In fact, Israelis are far less interested than other countries about people’s ancestral travels.

Moreover, what does one say about such “darker-skinned” Israelis as my Hungarian-Yemenite colleague or my Syrian pianist neighbor whose wife is from Poland by way of Argentina? There is absolutely no issue of race involved here. And many Israelis of European origin are not fully “white” in their appearance.

Indeed, Israel has more “blacks” among its Jews (from Ethiopia) than among its “Palestinians” by far. Israeli media never use racial stereotypes or epithets while Arab and Palestinian media have had numerous racist remarks and cartoons about such American leaders as Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and now even Barack Obama. In a recent radio interview, one of the leaders of the Islamist movement in Israel said that it was a disgrace that a black Israeli soldier could ask for the identity document of an Arab Muslim. Yet such racism from the Arab / “Palestinian” side is ignored in the Western media.

While there have been some incidents in reaction to the arrival of Jews from Ethiopia, these have been few and universally rejected. Moreover, Israel has given refuge to the American “Black Hebrew” movement when it easily could have deported them.

I have had friends, mostly Filipinos, who were illegal workers (they overstayed their work permits) and were subsequently deported from Israel. None of them ever reported a single case of “racial” mistreatment and I don’t believe there has ever been. Though deported, not one of them bears any grudge against Israel, quite the contrary they could serve as citizen ambassadors on its behalf. Furthermore, workers’ advocacy groups have never reported a single racial assault or even insult on any foreign worker in Israel. The problem, of course, is that there is at times terrible economic exploitation by unscrupulous employers, but this is, unfortunately, in no way atypical in the world today.

The Israel-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts are in no way “racial”. … The attempt by anti-Israel slanderers to inject a racial aspect is ludicrously nonsensical.

The Israel-”Palestinian” and Arab-Israeli conflicts are in no way “racial”. National identity is something quite different from “race” generally. Israelis and Arabs are not easily distinguished by skin color. The attempt by anti-Israel slanderers to inject a racial aspect is ludicrously nonsensical. If you have ever traveled in Syria you might have noted that the average skin color of people there is lighter than that of Israelis on average. Generally speaking, there is less variation in “racial terms” between Israelis and “Palestinian” Arabs than there is among member states of the European Union.

But if you can label a group that is engaged in a conflict with another group as racist, this automatically “proves” that the former is in the wrong. If the conflict is a national rather than a racial one, however, you actually have to think about the issues. Who’s right in the following conflicts: Irish Catholics or Protestants; Basques or Spanish; Bosnians or Serbs; Russians or Chechens, Somalis or Ethiopians; Iraqi Sunni, Shia, or Kurds; Indians or Pakistanis; Azerbaijanis or Armenians? And so on.

The answers cannot be deduced automatically. But label one side as racist and the discussion is over. This, then, is a trick for deceiving, not a tool for understanding.

The ridiculousness of attempts to transfer American or European mores about race to Israel was embodied in an American student’s asking an Israeli professor how many blacks were on his university’s basketball team. Actually, there are many on the professional Israeli teams, but they are all, of course, from the United States, (though I believe one or two have converted and remained in Israel.)

I don’t think there’s any question that there is far, far more racism in Europe or in the Arabic-speaking world than in Israel — and that’s an understatement.

The current explosive situation in Lebanon is sad, unfortunate and very dangerous. Meanwhile, the Lebanese people are marginalized and exposed to all kinds of terrorism, oppression, poverty, persecution, foreign interferences and fear. The Lebanese government is just a shadow and a fancy tag with no actual content, backbone or teeth. It holds no power or authority and has no free say in any matter at all due to the fact that Hezbollah and Syria fully control its decision-making process.

Hezbollah, the Iranian-armed proxy, controls by force, money and intimidation, the whole country and is taking both its people and its government hostage. Hezbollah, which is merely an Iranian army stationed in Lebanon, is dragging the country and its people, as well as the whole Middle East, into a state of havoc.

It is worth mentioning that Hezbollah and its affiliates have planned or already carried out a lengthy series of terrorist attacks against the United States, Israel, Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Arabian Gulf countries, Iraq, Yemen, Turkey, and other Arabic and Western targets. These attacks include: a series of kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon, including several Americans, in the 1980s; the suicide truck bombings that killed more than two hundred U.S. Marines at their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983; the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, which featured the famous footage of the plane’s pilot leaning out of the cockpit with a gun to his head; two major 1990’s attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina — the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy (killing 29 people) and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center (killing 95 people); and a July 2006 raid on a border post in northern Israel in which two Israeli soldiers were taken captive. The abductions sparked the 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli war.

It is strongly believed that Hezbollah in 2005 was behind the killing of Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, along with 22 others in downtown Beirut. Hezbollah’s General Secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, has recently been threatening to topple the Lebanese government by force and militarily invade Lebanese Sunni and Christian regions in case the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is investigating the Hariri assassination, indicts any of his men.

The West and the moderate Arab countries as well as neighboring Israel have an obligation to step in and offset the balance militarily. It is not a secret that the Syria which occupied Lebanon for almost 29 years (1976 – 2005) with an iron fist, has been, since at least 1990, viciously Syrianizing all of Lebanon’s institutions, especially the armed forces, media, cabinet and parliament.

In addition, Syria unlawfully granted Lebanese citizenship to more than half a million individuals in 1994 causing a serious negative effect on the country’s very delicate demographics.

In 2005, when Syria was forced to leave and end its armed occupation in accordance with U.N. Resolution 1559, in the aftermath of the assassination of PM Rafiq Hariri, Hezbollah, the Syrian-Iranian armed proxy, took over the job. Since then Hezbollah has been aggressively instigating an ongoing process of devouring the country, and now fully controls Lebanon and all its institutions.

What is definite is that the Lebanese people alone are no longer able to reverse the Syrianization and Hezbollahization of their country. They need Western military intervention under the U.N. umbrella.

The feasible solution would be via a new U.N. resolution by which the U.N. troops stationed in south Lebanon (in accordance with UN Resolution 1701) will be given the upper hand not only in the southern border region with Israel, but throughout all of Lebanon and especially on the Lebanese-Syrian border, with an eye to stopping the ongoing massive Syrian and Iranian transport of weapons and men to Hezbollah and to the other Lebanese and Palestinian armed groups. The Lebanese army needs to be put under the U.N. troops’ command and Lebanon needs to be declared by the U.N. a country that is unable to govern itself. I personally have called for such a solution in one of my recent editorials.

There is no doubt that losing Lebanon to the Axis of Evil means losing the whole Middle East and will gradually result in the toppling of all the so-called moderate Arab regimes. Lebanon has been, for thousands of years, a pivotal crossroads for the whole Middle East, and history tells us that whoever controls Lebanon will control the whole region. The question is whether the West will remain idle and leave Iran and Syria to fully control Lebanon and, accordingly, the whole Middle East.

In fact, the moderate Arab countries, Israel and the West will gain greater benefits than even Lebanon and the Lebanese people by helping Lebanon to be freed from the Axis of Evil.

No one should fool himself and say, “let the Lebanese solve their own problems”, or “we tried to help them but they did not help themselves.” No, not at all, because the Lebanese, regardless of all the hardships they have faced under the Stalinist Syrian occupation, fought bravely for peace, independence and freedom more than any other people in the Middle East.

In conclusion, leaving Lebanon to fall prey to the Middle East’s Axis of Evil (Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas), will not only hurt the Lebanese people, destroy their freedom, their multicultural and democratic system, and essentially enslave them, but will also destabilize the whole Middle East and threaten peace and democracy all over the world.

Elias Bejjani, human rights activist, journalist and political commentator, is spokesman for the Canadian Lebanese Human Rights Federation (CLHRF) and Media Chairman for the Canadian Lebanese Coordinating Council (LCCC). You may reach him by e-mail at phoenicia@hotmail.com or visit his websites at www.10452lccc.com and www.clhrf.com.