Blog/June 2010/Jun 18th

June 18th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

Another busy week in the Holy Land! Sarah graduated (kind of). Daniela got new glasses (kind of). Jerusalem put on a light show (kind of). Haredim rioted in Jerusalem (kind of). And work was overwhelming (really).

Sarah's school held a 'graduation party' for her class; however, they will not have actually graduated for a week or so, as they finish up their final exams. The party was held outdoors, in the school's basketball court. The Ashkenazic chief-Rabbi of the city gave a speech, as did the mayor. After the speeches (there were several others, from the head Rabbi of the school, the principal and others), there was an odd torch-lighting ceremony. A pair of students would go to the front, explain what that particular torch was being lit for, and then some martial music played while they went up to light the torch. The very abrupt segue to military music from "Jewish" music was jarring; and despite myself I kept seeing in my mind's eye clips of Soviet-era propaganda films set in Red Square. Despite that, the party was very nice and Sarah received a few parting gifts from her school.

Daniela has had the same pair of glasses for three years, and she wanted to have her eyes checked and get a new pair of glasses. So we went today to a local store here in Maaleh Adummim, where she examined, thoroughly, every frame in the store. She finally settled on one she liked, and they gave her an eye exam. The loquacious optician informed us that her previous eye-doctor was a better doctor than optician, since the prescription she was using was too strong for her eyes. In any event, he gave her a different prescription and B"H we should have her new glasses on Sunday or Monday. Two pairs actually, one of sunglasses and one regular pair; it was a pretty good deal.

During the week we ventured out to Jerusalem with the intrepid Casdens (whom we've mentioned before as having made aliyah on the very plane we did). Anyway, after an enjoyable (and relatively inexpensive) sushi dinner downtown, we strolled over to the "Old City", where we went to see the Jerusalem Festival of Light. As always, the Old City was packed, and due to the event, the police were omnipresent. While we did see a couple interesting light-shows (basically movies projected on a building's exterior walls and fitted to them), it seemed to me that there could have been a lot more done to make it more interesting. But you do know I'm a complainer, right?

And in Jerusalem, yesterday, approximately one-hundred thousand Haredim took to the streets around the "Russian Compound" police station downtown, to protest the arrest of several dozen (Haredi) parents who chose to disobey a court order forcing them to have their children attend a school which they disapprove of. Despite the very large crowd, there was no violence or rioting.

At work, oy! At work... well, let's just say it was the hardest week I've had yet. One of our machines crashed. This was not just any machine, but the one on which all our source code (our intellectual property) was located. It was also the one which controlled access to the rest of our systems. It was also the one where our "wiki" was, which we use to document everything. So when it went kaput, it was a bad, bad thing. Fortunately I had long ago set up a nightly backup, so even though it took the genius IT people four hours to figure out the hard-disk had crashed, I was able to get our source-server up again (with slightly old data, but not too bad) in just an hour or so. I spent two days "cleaning up" after our own little oil spill. At least I'm not going back in until Monday, as I'm taking Sunday off for Esther's birthday... more on that next week!

In other news:

• Thomas, Turkey and Israeli independence
• A Hong-Kong company develops a solar-powered light-bulb. Guess what? We saw something like that at the Jerusalem Festival of Light this past week...
• Yet another brilliant satire by Latma: The Three Terrors (watch it before Youtube takes it down as they did with "We Con the World"!)

This shabbat cousins from my mother's side of the family will be visiting. For their pleasure we have prepared: tuna in tomato sauce, brisket with tsimmes, carrot salad, baked chicken and potatoes, berry cobbler, beet salad.

Until next week,
Shabbat shalom !

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