Holy Exposures

Shiva House Guide – Making a Condolence Call to a Mourner’s House

Unfortunately, my father passed away this month.  For the first time, I was a mourner.

Little did I know there’s a whole sub-culture to the mourning process.  Here’s some advice from a recent mourner on what to do and what not to do at a Shiva house.

1. Don’t ask how old the deceased was or how did he die.  Get that info from someone else if you must know.
2. Don’t say “well at least he lived a long life”.
3. Do offer to tell nice stories about the deceased.
4. Do offer to help serve, take out garbage, etc…

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Rabbi Azouelos, Head of the Maskiot Pre-Army Mechina, said these very inspiring words at last night’s closing ceremony for this year’s students.

(Translated and paraphrased from Hebrew)

Israel has two seas. The Kineret and the Dead Sea.

The Kineret is a sea that only gives. It gives water, and fish, and provides for its tributaries. It gives, but it does not take. It is a sea of life.

The Dead Sea only takes. It takes but it does not give. It’s name in every language (other than Hebrew) is the Dead Sea.

In life, when we give, there is purpose. When all we do is take, there is no purpose.

– end of Rabbi Azoules’ words.

The gemara (Jewish Talmud) says, “He who hates gifts will live.”

Rabbi Desler z”l, says in Michtav Meliyahu (???? ??????) that the one who gives emulates the Creator, and the one who only takes is on the path of evil.

We need to emulate the actions of givers, not takers. Give to your family. Give to your community. Give to your country, our State of Israel, give to humanity.

What were the odds? Michael’s first wife is Jewish, and by Jewish tradition, that makes his children Jewish too.

Is this one of those things that everyone else but me already new?

Prince Michael I is 12, that means next year he can be called up to the Torah.
Now that’s a Bar-mitzvah you won’t want to miss.

JTA News

I attended the Mayumana Dance show last night in Tel Aviv-Yafo. Their latest act is called “Momentum”. They were simply fantastic. They play at the fully-packed Mayumana house on Louis Pasteur Street in the heart of Old Yaffo several nights per week.

The show is a mix of street dance, music, song, and multi-media. There is audience participation and the atmosphere is electric. It’s sort of like Stomp with many percussion-led skits, but with music, dance, and song too.

Mayumana was founded in 1996 as an unique Israeli dance troupe that performs around the world. Their World and Israeli casts include players from many countries. We thoroughly enjoyed the performance, and highly recommend that everyone who likes percussion, music and dance should try to get tickets. Here’s a chance to see world-class entertainment and support Israeli Arts at the same time.

Here’s a short video from the end of the show, the players escort the audience out of the theater and into the parking lot.

USA Citizenship for Ex-pats

If you are an oleh (new or old), e.g. you are an ex-pat of the United States, you probably assume your children and children’s children will be USA citizens just like you.  In reality, it’s not as simple as it seems.

Have a look at the USA State Department’s website http://uscis.gov on “Expeditious Naturalization for children born outside the United States.”

Immediate USA Citizenship
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Renewing your USA Passport in Tel Aviv, Israel

A (not so) funny thing happened at the USA embassy today as we were updating one of our kid’s USA passport. On the form it asks for your child’s place of birth. We wrote Jerusalem, Israel.

The (very friendly) employee at the embassy must process hundreds of these passport requests every week. He asked us a few questions, in Hebrew since the local processing staff at the embassy are Israelis. He reviewed the form in our presence to make sure everything was filled out correctly. He then  asked what city was our child born, and we responded “Jerusalem”, he very quickly and matter-of-factly crossed off “Israel” from the form, so that it was plain to see.

I wonder if there are other cities of birth in the world for which the country is left blank on the passport application of our beloved USA?

Seen at Malcha Mall

We’re experiencing the nearly annual ritual of pigeons setting up a nest in our back yard. 

There’s a Torah commandment (????? ???) for sending away the mother bird of a nest in order to take the eggs. 

I’ve always performed the mitzva, without a bracha, under the assumption that it’s already in my possession, being that the nest is in my backyard.  I saw a ‘cellular shu”t’ last week from Harav Eliyah of Tzfat, I think, who says it’s not a mitzva at all if it’s found in your back yard. 

Oh well, I guess it’s just a nuisance then…

Nadav Shragai does a good analysis in today’s Haaretz of how Jerusalem is the key to the entire Mid East peace process.

When it comes to Jerusalem, there is no need to mention either natural growth or natural development; what is at stake is nature itself, the nature of our connection to this city and the realization of the right that is rooted in our religion, our history, and 2,000 years of memory and longing, during which the Jewish presence in Jerusalem never ceased to exist.

I wonder how many of our political leaders adhere to this sentiment?

Eilat has got it right

Ramat Gan Safari 2009

If animals could speak.  I wonder what was on his mind.

Baboon at the Ramat Gan Safari, 2009.

These photographs are copyright 2009 Moshe T. and are made available under a Creative Commons License.

I still can’t believe that headline!
– Satire begin
Those crazy Palestinians. Look how far this has gone. Now when you offer them a state of their own, not only don’t they take it, but they get angry at you for offering it! It reminds me of the typical Jewish mother. Guilt, guilt, guilt. “What, we’re not good enough to live with you? You want to send us to our own place? After all we’ve done for you. After all we’ve been through together? tsk…
Satire over -

You would think that on the day Bibi Netanyahu actually utters the words “We’ll accept a Palestinian State” that finally the world would show some positive emotion. The EU has already said that it’s not enough. The US and Obama gave a tepid response. The Arab League, buoyed by the lukewarm response of the western world, snapped at Israel and demanded that not one iota of land ‘settled’ could be built on, including the 40,000 citizen ‘settlement’ of Ariel (which was the actual example given by the Egyptian Minister).

In effect, however, the underlying argument the world is trying to shove down our proverbial throats is “Jews can’t live in Judea & Samaria, period.”

Herzl would be proud. On Friday, Tel Aviv staged the 11th annual Gay Pride Parade. The newspapers report that over 20,000 attended and the groups represented in the event included Bat Kol – Jewish religious lesbians (weren’t they called ‘Orthodykes’ once?), Transgenders for Change, the Israeli Arab lesbian group Asawat, among others.
The event capped off the month long celebration of Gay Pride month in Tel Aviv, which was an official part of the 100 year anniversary of Tel Aviv’s inception celebrations.

I attended an entrepreneur’s conference last week in Herzlya at the offices of Sun Microsystems. At the meeting we heard from one VC, Blumberg Capital, who specializes in seed round investments of internet companies.
The partner of the firm who spoke, Bruce Tarragin, said that they were closing a deal in Tel Aviv now, and had already closed another deal earlier this quarter.

The Capital Market Bulls Return
There had been several months, since last October, with virtually no dealflow that was actually leading to investment. Now, there seems to be a reawakening of the capital markets. The negative sentiment of the market has been replaced with a feeling that we have already reached bottom, and now there are good ideas out there that are worthy of investment.
Are VCs too pricey?
There was a separate thread to this meeting that perhaps internet startups had precluded the need for capital investment in today’s age. Now, with the relatively cheap servers and cloud computers available, coupled with veteran entrepreneurs who have weathered many storms, there are internet ideas that can be launched with virtually no capital.
Mr. Tarragin pondered if VCs would eventually have to change their model to enable smaller ventures to participate in their capital programs. Typically, a VC will offer capital to a start up along with a seat on the board and a regular routine of hand-holding. This interaction drains the resources of the VC and reduces their ability to seek out new deals. Therefore, the traditional VC model was to buy a chunk of a new company for an investment of at least 3-5 million dollars. Nowadays, an internet company can get off the ground with very little, and often can get to prototype/beta to market with self-funding of the founders. New startups often cannot justify an investment of such great magnitude, and VCs are having to find creative ways to pad the projected budget to make the investment look attractive and still show a ROI based on projections.

It’s All About Who You Know
Mr. Tarragin also mentioned that his firm sees many thousands of business plans being sent to them yearly. They usually meet with only a couple hundred in person. The best chance of getting a meeting with the VC and a chance to show off your idea is by having someone the VC knows and trusts submit your executive summary or refer you to them.
The deal Blumberg is closing on now was refered to them by the founders of Check Point, a company they invested in early, and one of the most successful Israel hi-tech stories.
He said that the business plans VCs are finding most interesting these days are the ones that have a revenue model based on actual sales, such as software licensing, SAAS, and not exclusively relying on banner ad-based sales. [ed. I suppose they would have passed on Facebook and Twitter...].