Good News Israel

Compliments of Anglo Saxon Ra’anana Real Estate

SHAVUOT EDITION
Quote for the Week

“Lead us to Zion your City and to Jerusalem home of your Temple with Everlasting Joy”

(From the Shavuot liturgy. A Festival that we celebrated this week [See below])

We’re a little late with this one but it is such an extraordinarily beautiful festival that we’re reporting on it anyway. Depending on who you are the focus at this time is on the giving of the Torah or the Ingathering of the First Fruits or both and while it is already the middle of June whoever is calling the climatic shots has seen to it that the weather has been as perfect as it’s likely to get with glorious blue skies and cool breezes keeping the temperature well under control, so:

Half a million Israelis took to the outdoors to enjoy all the special events laid on by the Jewish National Fund and the Parks Authority. From Mt.Hermon in the north to Eilat in the south the country is awash with festivals and activities with the kibbutzim bringing in the first fruits to the accompaniment of singing and dancing to the strains of the piano accordion and the hits of yesteryear, adding just the right nostalgic touch.

While hundreds of thousands of others attended synagogues especially decorated with flowers, fruit and greenery for the occasion and where the Book of Ruth is read with its bucolic setting, a perfect match for the season of the year.

There is an age-old tradition of learning throughout the night of the Festival that used to be confined to the orthodox community but in the past decade or two has become a veritable all-night learning fest with Jewish texts from Bible to philosophy being studied simply for the sake of self enrichment. Just another one of those phenomena, difficult to explain but that make us a little different.

It’s also customary to eat dairy foods on the holiday and so our record breaking cows get their moment of glory. Record breaking? Yes, Israeli cows produced an average of 11 677kgs of milk last year compared to 9,331kgs by their sisters in the US and 6,139 kgs in the European Union. But what about the limelight that we mentioned? Read on.

There are two bovine beauty bashes round about now, one to choose the top milk producer and the other, well; the other is to select the countries most gorgeous cow. And the winners are!! Sufa (Storm) from Kibbutz Karmia, located in the Gaza vicinity who has been crowned Miss Milk, having produced more than 20,000 liters (5,283 gallons) of the highest quality stuff over the past year – almost double the annual 11,000-liter (2,906-gallon) average and that despite the often tense security situation in that neck of the woods. And she’s given birth three times; including twins all of them destined to be champions. It’s the genes you know and

Miriam from Be’er Tuvia, a truly magnificent animal – we saw her picture taken on the way back from the beauty parlor – no kidding – where she had her daily wash and brush up or more like hose down and brush up – and not a bad milk producer either, prima inter parot [and you’ve got to know Latin and Hebrew to get that one] who was awarded the title of Miss Moo, 2011.

We are now two and a half years after the great financial crisis hit us, a lot softer than it battered others need we remind you. And Israel’s rich are waltzing to the bank singing we have overcome. In fact they’ve done more than that, they’ve actually got richer and the list of billionaires has grown from 37 in 2010 to 42 this year. How did that happen? A number of factors actually:

The upswing in Israeli economic growth. Everybody got richer but as always the richer got even richer than just richer if you follow what we mean; the exchange rate, the shekel soared against the dollar so if your assets were in shekel all you had to do was sit back and watch them grow in dollar terms; oil and gas, huge deposits the biggest discoveries in ten years and if you were a part of that action there wasn’t much more that you needed to do; hi-tech shares are in again with the Nasdaq rising by 24% last year. Let’s get all this in proportion, the combined wealth of the 500 richest people in Israel comes to $87.8 billion and that’s 25% higher than Israel’s national budget for 2011.

We from GN ISRAEL were living in Cape Town at the time of the first heart transplant operation ever. The procedure was done by Prof Chris Barnard at Groote Schuur in the city. After initial difficulties Barnard’s pioneering work bore fruit and organ transplantation has become routine but that doesn’t mean that we can overlook the miracle that it is or the life altering benefits that it bestows so when we read that a record number of 35 lifesaving organs were transplanted into 27 patients in the past week with all our major hospitals participating, including four heart transplants; seven lung operations; five livers and kidney and pancreas transplants were performed, we understood that 27 people including five children were given a new lease on life. God bless the medical staff involved.


Hard on the heels of our Judokas Arik Ze’evi’s [Gold] and Yarden Gerbi’s [Bronze] successes at the Moscow Grand Slam, Israel picked up two medals in martial arts over the weekend. Iosef (Suso ) Palelashvili won a silver medal in the 73-kilogram category at the World Cup in Romania after recovering from a very tough period Iosef is starting to re-establish himself as a contender for the Israel squad for the 2012 Olympics. Israel’s Anya Mirkin also won a medal over the weekend. Competing in a level A taekwondo tournament in Vienna, Mirkin kept her Olympic hopes alive by winning the medal in the 46-kilogram category.

Talking about billionaires – see above – one of our personal favorites is Mr Alfred Mann, whose fortune is estimated at $1.5 billion, and who is involved in Israeli industry. He has invested $100 million in the Alfred Mann Institute at the Technion (AMIT), which commercializes medical technologies developed at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. We would interject that even an Institute like the Technion can do a great deal with $100m. So when Mr Mann said that he had had a change of plan – and we won’t go into what the original plan was – and that he was now considering donating an additional $100 million it was music to the University’s ears. It never ceases to amaze us how certain people can create such good with their wealth. A Mann after our own hearts.

What a difference four days can make. For 5yr-old Igor from Siberia who has CP it made the difference between crawling around and walking upright for the first time in his life. Together with five other kids from Russia Igor was introduced to the expert staff at Alyn Hospital in Jerusalem. They gave him the benefit of their medical magic and he responded like a champion. His mother Natalya says she can’t stop crying with joy and looking at Igor walking with the aid of apparatus supplied we can understand why. A further 44 children from the FSU are scheduled for treatment throughout the year. What can we say?