Israel and Water

In February 2015 I attended a lecture about Israel and water and learned much about the business side of water:

Israel and Water: Collaboration, Innovation, and Global Leadership”

Booky Oren, Chairman and CEO, Booky Oren Global Water Technologies

Water shortages persist as a major issue all over the world. In 2013 however, Israel overcame its water challenges through implementing a variety of technological solutions, making 2013 Israel’s “Water Independence Year.” In this talk, Booky Oren will discuss Israel’s innovative water solutions and how they can be leveraged in a global context to create economic growth while also assisting billions of people worldwide.

Booky Oren is not an engineer but an MBA.

He started the talk with two maps of the Middle East.  One from space.  The second one the underground water flows.  In both maps there were no borders.

(Ah how many of us would like a world without borders...)

In 1912 the British calculated that the water resources in the area of the Palestine mandate can support a population of 2.5 million.  Today there are 14 million people living in the area.  
I would like to stress our human ingenuity, the advances we made in science and technology.  I do not prescribe to any idea of shortages and lack of this or that.  It is in our power to bring abundance into our lives and that of our fellow humans.

Water has been used in war and in peace.  In 1967 Syria tried to block the water resources to Israel as part of their goals in the six day war.  In 1994 Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan where they promise to provide Jordan with all their water needs.  2013 was marked as the year of water independence for Israel.

Booky Oren is interested in the commercial aspects of water.  He was CFO of Israeli companies such as Mekorot and Netafim.  He is now involved in i2i “Innovation to Implementation.”

He claims water technology can solve many problems around the world.  Like me he is convinced that there is plenty of water, there is abundance!  He has a global perspective and he pointed out that politicians are still using water for political gains.  They will keep the same old infrastructure and red tape in any possible way they can to slow down implementations of new technology.  If there is a drought in one place there is flood in other places so this is where we should allow our ingenuity to take over.  He brought the example of desalination plants in Israel.  For years the budget did not include operation of these plants.  The year there was a drought the operation of the desalination plants was instantly funded.

Israel needs to leverage its technology for partnerships with water utility companies.

In closing the speaker pointed out a list of proven innovative global water technologies that can improve the sector:

Israel: ELTAV www.eltav.com, OUTLOCKS.

Switzerland: Gutermann. 

Canada: viva modeling

Spain: Aqualogy

Germany: HSTsystem

USA: FATHOM http://www.gwfathom.com/

UCLA: NORIA

Ethnicizing Soccer

On Feb 23 I attended a lecture at UCLA Center for Jewish Studies:

People of the Book or People of the (Foot) Ball? Ethnicizing European and Latin American Soccer.

This sounded like such a benign subject.

The first speaker was Raanan Rein from Tel Aviv University.  He talked about soccer in Argentina.

The second speaker, John Efron a historian from UC Berkeley talked about soccer in the UK.  In London the Jews support these soccer teams: Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea.

For some reason Tottenham is considered the only “Yuden” team.  They play in the White Hart Lane stadium.

He described the chanting in the stadium in a scary manner.  Imagine a drum beat and the sound of 40,000 men chanting: YID, YID,  YID, YID,  YID, YID.  This chantings goes on for 90 minutes!

He had a video taken on a London train of a group of men singing:

I got foreskin

I got foreskin

Don’t have you?

Fucking Jew!

The worst chant is the sound of hissing, sssssssssssssss  imitating the sound of gas in the gas chambers.

In the following discussion the differences between the US and  Europe were pointed out: America society is quite violent with many guns everywhere.  At the football stadium people are “better behaved.”  European societies are not as violent, the violence erupts in the football stadiums.  

About the speakers:

John M. Efron (UC Berkeley)

While most historians would agree as to the centrality of sports in general and of soccer in particular in Latin American societies, very little has been written on ethnicity and sports in such immigrant societies as Argentina and Brazil. As far as the historiography of the Jewish experience in Latin America is concerned, hardly any scholarly works exist that are devoted to popular culture, particularly that of unaffiliated Jews.

Raanan Rein examines Argentine football as a space of both prejudice and dialogue. Rein argues that for the first immigrant generation, belonging to this club was a way of becoming Argentines. For the next generation, it was a way of maintaining ethnic Jewish identity, while for the third it has become a family tradition.

Raanan Rein

The Death of Leonard Nemoy

Balance of cerebral vs imaginative

Star trek’s Mr. Spock, a human/Vulcan hybrid, featured in the imagination of every American since the sixties.  The death of the star Leonard Nemoy was all over the news: Radio, TV and internet.  This was all clear to me after living in LA for over forty years. 

This morning I listened to my favorite Israeli radio program: “World Sabbath” a weekly review of the world’s newspapers and magazines.  Dr. Yitzhak Noy is knowledgeable and informative.  I always like the analysis in his reporting.  He mentioned that Leonard Nemoy’s death was in the headlines of every European newspaper.  He didn't get it.  Why is it so important?  He had nothing to say.

I have heard many people who consider themselves intellectuals claim that TV is a waste land.  I am often referred to as “too cerebral.”  But in my ongoing search for a balance in life I try to understand what made the Star Trek story so popular for all these decades.  Seventy nine episodes just in the original series all are still popular on Netflix!  Followed by books and movies and a whole culture.

I am amazed by the imagination of humans.  We can reach out into the stars and make up stories of creatures and languages and travels into distant stars.  We are surrounded by negative news all over, wars and killings in one part of the world, economic struggles, rich and poor, conservative and liberal.  It is so simple to just let your mind leave the real world and make up a world where you feel happy and safe.  Nobody can take that away from us.  Our creativity imagination resourcefulness will always be with us.

I have never been too imaginative, but a ten year old child Mona came into my life.  She is giving me a most valuable lesson about the power of imagination.  She loves animals and knows more about them than anyone I know.  She comes over to dinner with drawings of wings taped on her hands along with a beak and a tail.  She is a bird.  Or she is a dog jumping up and down on hands and feet for a whole evening. 

I was fortunate to have Mona’s company for 3 days, driving to Malibu and celebrating New Year with a group of friends, international folk dancers.  This yearly tradition is now including a group of grandkids who come from other states to spend the New Year party with their grandparents.  I knew that Mona would love to hang around with the other kids.  On the drive up P.C.H. we talked about Mona’s wish to fly like a bird.  It is an all-encompassing wish that never leaves her.  I suggested that maybe she could think about being a bird in her next life.  She was very surprised and incredulous: Is it possible?  I told her that many people believe you have a few lives, and your soul goes from one body to another.  No body really knows if this is possible.  But nothing can stop her from imagining it.  So we agreed to run with our imagination and think about what kind of bird she is going to be.  Mona thought a bit and decided she would like to be a rain forest parrot.  She knew these birds live the longest lives: 85 years!  They are smart and they can talk.  It was settled.  We arrived in camp and anyone who asked how was our drive we told them about Mona’s next life.

Mona had a wonderful time with the kids outside running up and down the hills and playing in the grass.  At the same time the grandparents were singing and dancing in the dining hall.  Suddenly the kids and Mona are coming in with a shoe box holding a dead bird.  Mona walked around with a sad face and showed the dead bird to everyone.  The kids announced that they are going to bury the bird later at sunset.  Sometime later one of the kids riding a bike comes across a dead monarch butterfly.  He calls up to Mona, they pick the butterfly and place it next to the bird.  The burial ceremony was very moving with a 15 y old reading a eulogy.

The next morning we stood under a tall tree watching the hundreds of butterflies hanging on around the leaves, slowly waking up and flying away on their yearly migration to Mexico.  It was an amazing sight.

On our drive home Mona asked me what would I like to be in my next life.  I told her I would like to be a Monarch butterfly because it is so beautiful.  She said but it leaves such a short life.  I said but that means I could be so many other things at the same time that she has just one life as a rain forest parrot.  She considered this and then asked: “Do you think we could be butterflies at the same time?”  This was such a stretch, but my immediate reaction was of course!  It seemed almost inevitable.  For all I know we could have known each other in many of our past lives.

The human imagination has no boundaries.  We can observe it in art and culture, movies books and music.  It is instrument of our inventiveness. Without imagination there would be no scientific discoveries or technological tools that make our lives different and easier than any time in the past.    

The bird and the butterfly