Blog/November 2015/Nov 13th

Nov 13th (See this week's devar torah)

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This week we were all busy. Sarah with school and helping with her classmates’ films. Esther with her accounting work. I with product development and business development. It was a reasonably fruitful week. And my wife and I went on a date and enjoyed the new James Bond movie.

It was an eventful week as well in the wider world. One particularly interesting event which affects us directly is the decision by the EU to label products produced in the “West Bank”. It’s quite reminiscent of the actions taken by Nazi Germany in the 1930’s, but that won’t stop the EU. More ironic is that the announcement took place the day after the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Of course the EU is so concerned about territorial disputes that they will label Israeli products but not Moroccan ones. As the saying goes, “No Jews, not news!” We really should pay more attention to the moral directions of the Europeans. For how can we go wrong, really, being guided by frequenters of animal brothels?

In other news:

• Martin Indyk, affectionately renamed by me “Indyk-head”, opines on the peace process.
• What do American youth want? Everything for nothing.
• But some Americans see the truth and aren’t shy about expressing it.
• And some other Americans need to get an editor who knows English. “Miscegenation” doesn’t mean “assimilation”, which is what the group mentioned is actually against.

My wife and I went to see my nephew Chaim playing American football here in Maale Adummim. It was a pre-season game, and I must say my nephew really is a good player. He helped score their second touchdown, although it was kind of hard to see from where we were. Anyway, normally I would rather have my eyes poked out than watch (any kind of) sports, but it was fun to support Chaim’s rise to stardom.

This week was spent firstly in making our new release 1.2.0 of 8th. We also became more aggressive in “getting the word out”, and can say we have reached 500 users. Not paying customers, yet, however. We also reached out to various contacts, and are starting to get interest from potential contract clients. So it was, overall, a productive week for our company.

After years of good intentions, I’m finally learning Arabic. A friend of mine posted about a course for Hebrew speakers, and it’s really well done. For the Hebrew-impaired, there is a different one for English speakers which is much less professional, but it’s in “bite-sized” bits. My goal is to be able to have a simple conversation in Arabic in a few months, and to be able to get the gist of conversations around me. Know thy enemy and all that.

We’re looking forward to another quiet shabbat, insha’allah (God willing, in Arabic…)

This week its the nuclear family once again. We’ve been invited out for dinner, but for the other meals we’ll have:
lentil soup (to commemorate this week’s Torah portion), stuffed veggies, salatim, and “mystery dessert”.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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