Waiting for a miracle

The story is told of a religious man living in a house in the middle of nowhere.

One rainy morning he gets up and turns on the radio and hears a flood warning. “I’ll be OK”, he says to himself. “God will save me.”

As the day goes on, the rain gets heavier and the river bursts its banks. He hears a knock on his door. It’s the police come to evacuate him, but he refuses to go “I have faith in God and God will save me”.

The water gets higher and the ground floor of his house is flooded. Unperturbed, our friend goes to the upper floor and prays. Soon he hears a motor boat approaching his house manned by soldiers who have come to evacuate him. He refuses to go -

The water gets higher and he needs to get up on the roof. Soon he hears a helicopter overhead. They drop him a rope ladder and a call over a megaphone for him to climb up and be saved. ”Thank you,” he calls back “but I’m staying here. I have faith in God and he will send his messenger to save me”.

The water rises even higher and our friend gets swept away in the waters and drowns. He goes up to heaven and stands before the Holy One. “God”, he says “I had infinite faith in you, why didn’t you answer my prayers and save me? Why did I die?”

God looks back at him in puzzlement and answers “but I did answer your prayers. I sent the radio announcer, the police, the army and the airforce to save you, but you refused to be saved.”

I thought of this story when I read Rafi G and some of his commenters here. My avatar isn’t green either and Mousavi is really very little different from Ahmedi-Najad. However and maybe I’m naively optimistic, but I think they are being short sighted. I’m hoping that this surprising turn of events is the point where BaLaila HaHu Nad’da Shnat HaMelekh (Esther 6:1).

Historic times?

My son had a bagrut exam this week in history. We were listening to the news broadcast on the radio the other day and they were talking about Bibi’s Bar Ilan speech, the criminal antics of Dudu Topaz and the unrest in Iran. “This” I said to him, refering to the latter item “is what they may be teaching in history lessons in a years to come”.

We may be living through historic times. From the ground it is hard to see. On the face of it what difference will Mousavi make over Ahmedinijad? There are those who say that it is better for Ahmedinijad to stay because that way the world will get regular reminders of just what Iran (under either of them) stands for.

Others quote Sharansky’s book “The Case for Democracy” to show that these are the death throes of the Ayatollahs. Some say things will never be the same again.

Others say that we may be seeing the hand of God saving us from nuclear annihilation and meting out judgement on the Ayatollahs.

I say that unrest and turmoil in Iran cannot be bad news for the jews. Once the cork is out of the bottle there’s no knowing what may happen. I hope they continue fighting each other and I hope that the old order there will need to change. There is a bit of the feeling of 1989. I hope we are living in historic times.

Millipede

Photographed on a wall on my way this morning. Overall length like 20 cm. Thought I’d share it with you all.

Spin – the movie

Saw this on Shaul B’s blog “free thought”.

[Click here to watch, if the video doesn't show]

Made me think of the old paradoxes connected with free-will, pre-destination, time travel and the like. How far do the consequences go? What would happen if you were to fiddle with natural cause and effect?

More down to earth; how far does your responsibility go to mend the wrongs in the world? Can you at some point just pack your bags and run away? 

In the movie, I see the DJ as scared, even fearing for his sanity if he remains. Others may see him as a coward.

I believe he had two legitimate choices; either to fix everything or to dispair, return reality to its course and walk away. He could not leave the scene half fixed because then others would have suffered from his meddling. Once done he could leave because there is a limit to human capabilities.

A hasid (as a opposed to a zadik) would have stayed and cared for his street corner for the rest of his life.

Linkedin

Ever since I joined Linkedin I’ve been trying to work out what it is good for apart from aimlessly collecting connections in order to be able to boast ever greater numbers of contacts.

Today I discovered a new feature there that allows me to embed a feed from my blog and to upload PowerPoint slide shows. So I syndicated my blog and uploaded a PPT file of the exhibition I have running currently in NDS. Enjoy.

Terabyte

With three digital cameras in our household, the hard disk on our home computer is rapidly running out of space.

I was looking online for a new drive yesterday and discovered that 1 and even 2 TB (that’s TB for terabyte or 1000 GB or 1,000,000 MB) drives  are now becoming the standard. I can get myself 1 TB of storage for under NIS 500.

Now I remember the days when I worked at Versaware R.I.P. and we had such large amounts of data that they bought a “teraserver” which was a complete rack containing arrays of disks of 1 TB of storage. It was so big that the server got named T-Rex. Now I can hold two of those in size of a standard hard disk in my PC.

BTW, I have decided to by a smaller disk (500 GB Western Digital Caviar Black) because I reckon that by the time the warantee runs out, I’ll have just about filled it up and upgrading to 1TB will be so cheap that it would be a shame to spend money on it today.

Call for photos of Jewish life in Hesse pre-Shoah

I got an email last week from a researcher working for the Fritz Bauer Institut in Frankfurt. She is looking for photos of pre-Shoah Jewish life in the area. This is the email I got:

**** Search for private photos from Hesse *****
( the areas around Frankfurt,Darmstadt, Wiesbaden,
Kassel, Fulda, Marburg, Hanau, Giessen, etc.)

This is to announce the development of a new photo web site:

BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST – PHOTOS OF JEWISH EVERYDAY LIFE IN HESSEN

We are appealing for help with our search from private sources for copies of pre WW II photos originating from the Hessian territories (today the State of Hessen).

Please have a new look at your family heirlooms and share your photo treasures with us. All details can be handled according to the wishes of the owner or provider.

Advice for the technical procedures will be given. And please pass this request on to other persons with family ties to Hesse.

Old photos for young Germans

German school books often use (negative) stereotypes of Jews in history to explain victimization over the centuries.

And Holocaust teaching mostly speaks about abstract victims of
persecution or simply of numbers.

To overcome these shortcomings in education, and to allow for empathy and a more personal understanding, teachers and students should be supplied with a different sources as well.

As a contemporary approach, on-line tools are to be developed, a new photo database will be created which will provide images of real people. They will be seen as individuals, with faces and their names, in family settings or small groups, and in their home towns and villages.

Once, before the Nazi period, there was a thriving Jewish population in Hesse. How did Jews live here in over 300 small and medium size villages, towns and cities? This will be shown with photos of individuals, families, and activities in their communal environment.

Pictures of everyday life, religious events, festivities, of business and sports and other forms of public life will be presented. Visual
impressions will be amended by textual descriptions and comments.

This will contribute to a more accurate image of the diversity and also the normality of Jewish existence in the decades before 1933. But the years after the Nazis took over will also be documented. Thus the beginning of the Nazi persecution and its effects on Jewish life can be estimated more accurately. Photos of the emigration and escape are welcome as well.

For technical quality it would be good to have the photos in 300 dpi or 600 dpi (original size) uncompressed.

If your photos are already scanned in a lower dpi version you can send them and I will find out if that also would be okay for the project. That always depends on the original photos.

For each photo I would like to have some short information, if possible of course

• who is on the photo , year of birth, place of birth if possible
• if it is a group only the main figures
• where was it taken? Which city or village
• was it taken in the house of the family, or in barn or (if possible)
• when taken – around what year??
• occasion of taken the photo
• occupation of the person like cattle trader or so
• later emigrated from Nazi-Germany to which country
• later perished in the Holocaust

If your photos are already scanned in a lower dpi version you can send them and I will find out if that also would be okay for the project. That always depends on the original photos.

This is a project of the *** Fritz Bauer Institute *** Education
Department 

www.fritz-bauer-institut.de

The Institute is a Research And Documentation Center For The History And The Impact Of The Holocaust, Education Department, in Frankfurt/Germany

www.fritz-bauer-institut.de/english.htm

For further information please contact Monica Kingreen:

M.Kingreen@fritz-bauer-institut.de or Kingreen@gmx.net
phone +49 (0) 69-798 322 31     fax +49 (0) 69–798 322 41

A peek into my office

The image on the right shows my room at work. Click on it to enlarge.

I recntly got to sit in my own room on my own. The downside is that I don’t have any windows.  Instead I have artwork (and a corkboard of pictures of my children) on the walls. Next I am going to get a tree to put in the corner and a spotlight so that it will do a lot of photosythesizing in order to replenish my oxygen.

Art exhibit opens

I hung my pictures this morning in the exhibition area at work. A total of nine pictures that you can see here.

The title of the exhibition is “Living water – מים חיים” which as you can guess shows my water paintings except for “Nahal Banias” that is hanging in my office.

The pictures included are:

• Running brook
• A stream in the Golan
• Reflections in a quiet pool
• Banyas in springtime
• Washed in the flow
• Banias 4
• The upper reaches of the Jordan
• Jaffa harbour
• Kineret

“The weak strata”

That is Hebrew PC-speak for “poor people”. In Hebrew “השכבות החלשות” or “HaShkhavot HaHalashot”. I heard on the radio this morning that the proposed imposition of VAT on fruit and vegetables may cause the weak strata to buy less fresh food. Why not just say “the poor”?