Here at isrealli.org we appreciate good wine, especially when this comes from Israel. For those who have not read our previous entries on the subject, you should be aware that Israeli wines have been gaining traction over the last few years and are now included on the wine menus of fancy restaurants all over the world. As such, we never miss an opportunity to update you on the latest news on the wine market.

Thanks to Sagi Cooper of Ynetnews, we not only found out about the new wines but also about their distinct qualities. The Dalton Winery has issued three new red wines: Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. Cooper evaluates them as enjoyable to drink, light and very accessible (in other words, good value for money). For the wine connoisseurs who need more details on the color, taste, sense of the wines, read the full article.

But what grabbed my attention was the Syrah organic wine produced Tishby Winery from a private vineyard in Sde Eliyahu. Organic products are becoming a niche market, and with an increasing number of countries producing organic wines, it is becoming a very competitive market. Unfortunately, this series will be discontinued as the specific grapes will be used to make organic grape juice. But because of the grapes’ origin and the rest of the production process, the wine is certified as ‘organic’ by Agrior.

So, next time you drop into the liquor store, remember to check out these new wines and let us know what you think of them.

Nothing makes the heart smile like witnessing the looks on the faces of a group of people who have decided to make their home in Israel.

I guess I must be a bit of a softie, but I had shivers running down my spine as I watched this video. It documents the journeys of more than 3000 individuals who went to live in Israel, with the help of the Nefesh B’Nefesh organization.

What makes their decision even more special is the fact that they made their move to Israel after the war in Lebanon and northern Israel this summer. Most of the immigrants arrived in Israel from the United States, Canada and England.

Makes me want to go visit…

Junk food is bad for you. Junk food causes heart problems. Junk food’s full of trans fats. So what’s news? Lovers of juicy burgers, crunchy fries, thin-crust pizza and all other sorts of fatty, highly-processed food don’t need any further reminders.

As if these constant warnings weren’t enough to make us cut down on America’s favorite dishes (or at least feel pangs of guilt), a new report, detailed in an article in the Jerusalem Post, makes me wonder, why all tasty foods must be harmful to our health, in one way or another!

Here’s the scoop. Dr. Aviv Goldbart of Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba, together with researchers from the University of Louisville in the US, found that junk food has as much negative effect on memory as sleep apnea.

Lab rats helped the researchers reach that conclusion. The experiment was simple and the results striking. Half of the participating rats were fed a normal diet, and the other half was given junk food. The rats had to recognize colorful signs over a clear plastic platform that would serve as “dry land” in a water-filled aquarium. The ones that were fed a high-fat, highly-refined diet took twice as long to find the platform than those fed a conventional rodent diet. They took a long time to learn where the platform signs were, and the learning process was very slow.

In the article, Dr. Aviv explains: “We learned that the high fat diet alone causes learning disorders. Rats that were fed funk food and were intermittently deprived of oxygen showed the worst results. In rats that were fed a high fat diet, the amount of certain brain protein connected to memory declines. This supports the theory that eating fatty, processed food hurts memory.”

So, junk food affects learning processes as well as physical health. No wonder junk food companies are so desperately marketing healthier versions of our favorite dishes.

Tel Aviv is where it’s at once the sun goes down. You want parties? You want clubs? You want a bar where you sit on rugs smoking hookahs and playing backgammon while drinking Belgian beer? Then it’s Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, and Tel Aviv.

When I’m in Israel, usually I stay in Jerusalem.

So what can I do? Well, the commute isn’t that bad. Driving halfway across the country takes under 40 minutes. But if you don’t have a car, or you aren’t in the mood for a drive, all is not lost. There’s the Yellow Submarine (Hatzolelet Hatzehuba), a great place to find live music most nights of the week. Right outside the old city walls, the neighboring valley is a great place to find the recurring arts and music fairs (usually during the summer). But my favorite? Lev Smadar.

What is Lev Smadar, you ask? Well, it’s a bar…kind of a restaurant, also…and a movie theater.

That’s right. It’s heaven. You can go, drink a couple of beers with your friends, and then order a soup and take it right into the movie theater. Thanks to the Israeli practice of holding intermissions during movies, you can even go back for a refill if you finish your soup before the final credits.

And the place has character. It’s not a multiplex cinema in the mall; it’s a one-theater movie-house on a side street in a quiet neighborhood. If you didn’t know it was there you might never find it, and even if you did, you might not realize that through the back door was a movie theater. They don’t screen every movie that comes along – there’s something of a predilection for artsy/creative movies, so you get to feel artsy, too. Don’t worry, they’re not obscure independent films. At least, not usually.

The only problem I have with Smadar is that when I walk in, the heads that turn give me a look that says ‘you’re definitely not cool enough to be here’. Of course, it may be true. But I just order my soup, buy my ticket, and walk into the theater.

In the wake of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, Israelis were among the first on the scene, offering to help. But rather than arriving dressed in army gear and flak jackets, some wore red noses and oversized shoes.

Taking seriously the old saying that laughter is the best medicine, the University of Haifa in Israel is now offering perhaps the only degree program in the world in medical clowning. I kid you not. Students take courses in the Theater Department, the Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Studies, and a course entitled the Sociology of Humor and Clowning.

Check out the story from our friends at Israel21c.org.

Israeli degree in ‘medical clowning’ a prescription for health
By Asher Goldstein

Laughter is the best medicine - an old saying, but one that the University of Haifa is taking seriously by introducing Israel’s first degree program - and perhaps the only degree in the world - in medical clowning.

“It’s a kind of start-up actually,” said Herzel Ziyoni about the pilot program being offered by the university’s Department. of Theater.

Ziyoni is one of the 19 students in the special, one-year BA degree program, all of whom already practice medical clowning. They belong to a group of 36 medical clowns who call themselves “Dream Doctors.” The group, set up four years ago by the Keren Magi Foundation, is now a fixture in 16 Israeli hospitals from Nahariya to Beersheva. The foundation is also paying these students’ tuition.

Though the hospitals accept the presence of medical clowns, they don’t consider them part of the staff. The students hope that the new degree program will change this situation.

When any form of Israeli talent comes to New York, it’s a chance for all of us here to shlep nachas. But when the talent is in the form of high school jazz musicians, who are clearly teetering on the edge of genius… well, it’s hard to keep the excitement in!

Read about Thelma Yellin’s April Quintet in the article below, from the Jewish Week.

April Is The Coolest Month
Randi Sherman

Amir Bresler plays the drums with his shoes off, the music so much a part of him that it resonates from his toes to his palms as they grip the drumsticks. It is the same for the other four members of the April Quintet: Roy Harmon on trumpet, Hod Moshanov on piano, Ital Shahar on bass and Dean Tsur on saxophone.

The quintet’s musicians answered the call of jazz three years ago when they enrolled at the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts near Tel Aviv. They answered it again by traveling to New York this week to perform at the prestigious International Association for Jazz Education conference, which runs from Jan. 10-13.

In addition to the IAJE performance, the April Quintet is running a mini-tour while in New York, with performances or jam sessions at the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, Bard High School Early College, Makor and P.S. 67 in Spanish Harlem.

Their first stop after a long flight from Israel was the so-called “Fame” school, LaGuardia High School, home to their American counterparts. Showing off their stuff, LaGuardia’s Junior Jazz Band played “The Mooch” by Duke Ellington and some mambo tunes. The face of Ellington himself, along with others in the jazz pantheon — Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie — looked on approvingly from posters on the walls.

Climate change is something all global citizens of today’s world have to deal with. Winter in New York has been sadly lacking in snow, while farmers in California are tossing out frost-bitten strawberries.

Globally, we have come to the point where clean air can be traded like a stock market commodity. By cleaning the air, through planting trees, countries can earn credits to sell to others who are causing harmful emissions.

According to a story in Ynetnews.com, trees planted in Israel to replace ones burned down during the War with Lebanon last summer, may enable Israel to join the Kyoto Protocol and earn an income of hundreds of thousands of shekels each year (which could then be used by the Jewish National Fund) to maintain forests.

Israel and the JNF can be proud of a long history of tree-planting in the region. “Making the deserts bloom” may have been Ben Gurion’s dream, but it also a wonderful example to the world of what can be achieved (horticulturally speaking) in climates that are less than ideal.

Traveling internationally has its side-effects. There’s of course jetlag, which has its own set of side-effects: headaches, nausea, exhaustion, dehydration, etc. – depending on who you are. Then there’s the travel itself, with all that that entails: packing and unpacking, and my favorite: exchanging currency back and forth, knowing that each time you do it you’re losing money and there ain’t nothing you can do to prevent it.

Having just come back from a short visit in Israel, I am reminded of a third side-effect which strikes me every time I travel: culture shock. And I’m talking about American culture.

Obviously, whenever you go to a foreign country, you encounter an entirely new set of customs, social mores, whatever. But what surprises me every time is that after spending some time in a foreign country and getting used to its quirks, I am struck when I return to the U.S. about how different we are here. And sure enough, as I stepped out of the airport the other day and rode back to my apartment in the city, I found myself surprised at how different cabs are in the United States from those in Israel.

There are taxis in every country, and in every country they are different – that’s a given. I’m not going to pontificate on the differences between rickshaws, London cabs, Yellow cabs, and whatever else – the differences are kind of obvious. What hit me was the difference among the cab drivers. Whether your cab driver is an immigrant from southeast Asia, Latin America, Europe, or a native-born American, one thing is pretty much uniform among them. They keep quiet. Unless you are prone to engaging your cab drivers in conversation, they’re going to keep their mouths shut. They might even keep the glass partition shut. If there’s any talking, the driver will talk to someone on his hands-free cellphone.

Not so in Israel.

Josh ‘The Hammer’ man writes: The band Teapacks was selected to represent Israel at the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki, Finland in May. For those who aren’t in the know, Eurovision is the most prestigious song competition in Europe, and several hundred million people watch it every year. Israel’s Eurovision debut was in 1973, and since then, has won the contest three times (in 1978, 1979, and 1998) and hosted it twice (in 1979 and 1999). Even though Israel is not geographically part of Europe, it is still eligible to participate because its national broadcasting service, the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA), is a member of the European Broadcasting Union.

Yeah, but come on Josh, Eurovision gots nothin’ on American Idol…