The garden of my apartment building in Jerusalem - night photos

Listening to Janis Ian in Israel

I'm listening right now to a beautiful concert of Janis Ian on Galei Zahal (Israel army radio). She's singing in English, and talking between songs - with her words being translated by the broadcaster. She just sang her hit, "At Seventeen," there was a lot of applause, and now she's singing the encore. One of the things she talked about earlier was going to Toronto for a science fiction conference and deciding to get married to her girlfriend there! Oh, I'd love to be at the concert!

Israeli trade with the Muslim world

Haaretz yesterday had an interesting article on Israeli companies selling (often through third parties) to countries in the Arab and Muslim world with which it has no diplomatic relations - The badly kept secret of Israel's trade throughout the Muslim world.

I discovered today that this trade goes both ways. I went shopping this morning for Shabbat at a makolet and vegetable market in Jerusalem and discovered that they were selling juice made in the United Arab Emirates: by a company named Masafi. This juice is from a product line called "Zesty Citrus."

 So much for the Arab boycott!

Sima Shlosberg

This is a photograph of Sima Shlosberg, whose letters my grandfather Mark Falcon Lesses received during the 1930s into the beginning of 1940. For the text of the letters, see - http://faculty.ithaca.edu/rlesses/familyhistory/sima/.Sima sent the photograph with one of her letters to my grandfather.

Just arrived in Israel - walking around the Old City of Jerusalem

I just arrived in Israel earlier this week for my sabbatical (I'll be here until the end of July), and I went to the Old City of Jerusalem with a friend this afternoon. See my other blog for the story - Today in the Old City of Jerusalem.