“Two shots went right into Shaare Zedek and the torpedo shells landed on the third floor. They landed right in the area where newborn babies and mothers were, but they didn’t explode,” recalls 75-year-old Pessin, who recently retired as associate director-general of the hospital. “We didn’t have elevators, we didn’t have anything, but two young soldiers took the shells from where the mothers were and walked down to the first floor with them because they were live shells – they just didn’t detonate.”

The sense of both relief and shock in Pessin’s voice is still evident, almost 44 years later.

“During the war I was considered the commander of the hospital – I was responsible to the military.

They sent in their own people just to augment our staff ,” he tells In Jerusalem.

Not only was Shaare Zedek affected by the surrounding battles, but so was the German-Evangelist Augusta Victoria Hospital, located on Mount Scopus in the area that had been in Jordanian hands. Pessin recalls that as soon as the Israeli victory was certain, Shaare Zedek’s head of surgery and the head of anesthesiology immediately drove through areas still riddled with gunfire to make sure that everything was okay at the second hospital.

“We captured Jerusalem on Wednesday,” Pessin says. “By noon they said, ‘It belongs to us; we conquered the city.’ Three hours later these guys got into a car – imagine, there were guns all over the place. (more…)

“Right now we’re just meandering – tomorrow we’ll come back seriously,” says his wife, Marilyn, who joined him at the 25th Jerusalem Book Fair for a quick browse. The next day, she explains, they’ll devote “a good six hours” to the fair – this was just the warm-up.

Established in 1963, the Jerusalem International Book Fair takes place every two years, hosting more than 1,200 publishers from 40 countries and showcasing some 100,000 books. Fellowships are available to select emerging editors and literary agents, while authors and scholars speak at the Literary Café to packed audiences all week.

At any given corner on the bright green tarpaulin of the Steimatzky megastore, passersby can hear a cacophony of Russian, German, French, English and, of course, Hebrew. While the population seems slightly skewed to Jerusalem’s older segment, visitors vary from those pushing motorized walkers and haredi women rolling strollers to university students in trendy apparel.

The Flanzbaums, septuagenarians who live in Givat Olga near Hadera, decided to stay the night in Jerusalem for extra time at the book fair, held at the International Convention Center and organized by the Jerusalem Municipality.

“We realized we had to come back here,” says Gerry. “We’re people who just love books.” (more…)

“In our community, we have a lot of celebrations where people eat all the time,” says gym regular Nava Eiznbach, a haredi woman who has been going to the Jump Health & Fitness Center in Binyenei Ha’uma four or five times a week for the past three months. “You should have the knowledge that exercise is healthy,” she says. “It gives me a lot of energy, it’s very healthy, and I’m losing weight now,” she continues, noting that the gym does wonders for women after pregnancy.

“They have a lot of courses: dancing, aerobics – the schedule is around the clock. I really can’t live without it; I look forward to it every day.”

Staff members at Jump and the men-only Kosher Gym in Givat Shaul – two of Jerusalem’s biggest gyms that attract sizeable religious populations – say that over the past couple of years they have seen a marked increase in haredi membership as the larger community shifts some of its priorities to focus more on bodily health as part of overall spiritual well-being.

As doctors and rabbis continue to advocate physical fitness, word spreads among friends about which places have comfortable workout facilities according to their religious standards. Meanwhile, memberships are becoming more affordable, as gym managements around the country are negotiating with health funds to find ways to subsidize costs.

“There is a large demand for haredi men and women to join because the gym addresses the separation between men and women,” says Michael Elgrably, the owner and manger of Jump for the past year and a half.

Elgrably comes from a family that owns two pharmaceutical companies where he serves as marketing manager, and owning a gym is part of his goal of “promoting people to live healthier” and integrate sports into their nutritional routines.

Since he took over the gym, Elgrably says that women’s membership jumped from 540 to 920, while men’s rose from 532 to 923, and he is certain that haredim make up a large portion of the over 70 percent membership increase.

“Doctors are motivating the men and women, especially yeshiva men, to start moving because they sit and eat, and sit and eat,” Elgrably says. “Their cholesterol gets high, and the food they eat is fatty. So for health reasons, their doctors are advising that they work out.

But they’re limited in terms of where they can go. And here is a place that meets their needs.”

BUT JOINING a gym wasn’t always popular within the haredi population – not only wasn’t it popular, but it was largely seen as taboo, something that would detract from learning and spirituality. (more…)

The first student to take the doctor’s chair, Jonathan Drew, was able to find out that the patient was from the Dominican Republic, but he got little information from him beside the fact that he has “no job,” he lives in a fourroom apartment with his daughter’s family and he plays guitar in Hudson River Park.

“Is anyone else sick like you?” Drew asked. “Yes I sick, not good here,” responded the actor playing Castro, who repeatedly referred to his abdominal pain as simply “fire.”

Drew and his peers, third-year students at Ben-Gurion University’s Medical School for International Health, were partaking in a cross-cultural workshop to prepare for the intense set of clinical rotations they will embark upon during their fourth and final year as medical students. Ben-Gurion’s program is one of three English-speaking medical school programs here.

The school primarily admits Americans and Canadians, and operates in collaboration with Columbia University in New York, selecting about 42 students for each class. After three years of studying and doing clinical rotations here, the students have the opportunity to expand their education elsewhere – serving thus far in two-month internships in Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Peru, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Vietnam and Nepal.

“Our students who come to us say they looked around the world and they couldn’t find anything else,” said Mark Clarfield, Israel director of the Medical School for International Health and a professor of geriatrics at BGU’s Faculty of Health Sciences. “A lot of medical schools now have international tracks, so if a student is interested he could go abroad. But the entire curriculum is not geared toward international health.”

Here, he said, students find “things you wouldn’t get at Harvard,” such as courses about water purity, malaria and medical anthropology.

His students, like Drew, 26, from North Carolina, testified to this. “The reason why I liked this program over others is actually being here in this country and the different perspective of living in this culture that’s different.”

Rory Spiegel, 29, formerly a physical therapist who was raised in a home that believed in both homeopathic and “inter-dimensional” medicine, agreed. “I always found Western medicine kind of alienating,” he said. “I was really interested in this program because of the human nature of it. I thought in some ways it would delay that loss of soul that comes with studying medicine.”

Beginning this year, however, the fourth-year students’ clinical rotation choices have become at least temporarily limited, because the US Department of Education suddenly stipulated that citizens who receive US government-guaranteed student loans can no longer attend internship programs outside the US and Israel. The students receiving loans are still able to do rotations among underserved US and Israeli populations, with opportunities here that Clarfield still deems “pretty exotic” in the Beduin, Druse, haredi and Ethiopian communities. Canadian students and those not receiving loans can continue to travel elsewhere.

“There’s cautious optimism that it will be better next year,” Drew said, noting that about 75 percent of his class would be affected.

BUT WHEREVER they end up next year, the students were able to learn from their experiences that day, which began with a morning meeting, led by course academic coordinator Dr. Agneta Golan, in which students presented objects or traditions from their own cultures. (more…)

“As a religious person, there are two parts of me practicing. One is what happens between me and God,” the 33-year-old Jerusalemite tells In Jerusalem. “The other 50 percent is what do I do for the community. I think that Zionism today is much to do with how can we make Israel a state worth living in and worth being the only Jewish state in the world. There’s a lot to change.”

Banner’s most recent venture in serving the local community is Hotam: Teach First Israel – a program modeled after those in the Teach for All Network, such as Teach for America and Teach First UK – which encourages the best and brightest students to teach in Israel’s most underserved populations for at least two years.

This month, Teach First Israel is in its second year of recruitment, and has already received 710 applications for 110 places, with an ultimate goal of reaching 1,200 by the end of this season. This year, Teach First Israel is particularly seeking English, science and math teachers, and is actively recruiting graduates of top universities and colleges throughout Israel.

But Banner’s inspiration for establishing Teach First Israel came from years of community service and a drive to improve other people’s lives.

Born and bred in Jerusalem, where he has lived all his life, and active in the religious scouts here, Banner left the city only briefly for a South American tour after the army and then two or three months of living in New York. “But basically I’ve been here,” he says, noting that he did both his undergraduate degree in psychology and business and his MBA at the Hebrew University.

“Everything started when I finished my army service,” Banner says. “We were a couple of friends looking into where we could do good. And we found the results of the social security report from the year 1999, and then we started to deliver food packages to people in need.”

This group of friends – “three guys and a girl” – ended up starting the organization Shachen Tov (The Good Neighbor Association) which today distributes meals to about 1,500 families around the country through the hands of thousands of volunteers, Banner says.

In addition to providing food to those in need, Shachen Tov hosts “coffee shops on wheels” for battered women, seniors and at-risk youth, and also runs learning centers and a textbook-sharing library. With a yearly budget of $261,000, the organization’s functioning is based solely on private donations.

“We were doing this for a couple of years and then we thought we needed to do something to get to the core of the problem and not just to the symptoms of the problem. So we thought about starting with social justice, mainly in terms of handicapped individuals, workers’ rights and disabilities rights. Another angle was that we understand that the State of Israel is the only Jewish state in the world, but this ‘Jewishness’ was mainly being expressed through laws about the holidays and kashrut. But it’s not related enough to the core of Judaism” – which Banner describes as dealing with social justice from a Jewish perspective.

Anxious to explore this “core” of Judaism, Banner and his friends decided in 2004 to start another new organization – Bema’aglei Tzedek – which serves to engage thousands of young Israelis in social change, in the classroom, youth movements and the army.
(more…)

“I put Stars and Stripes stickers on my haj bags,” he said. “The religious guards would say ‘American, American,’ and say ‘Come, come’ and give us all kinds of things. They look so stern but because we had Stars and Stripes stickers they left us alone.”

The audience of about 20 laughed unanimously, some visibly wearing black velvet kippot and others hailing from Israel’s Christian and Muslim communities – but almost all students and professionals involved in interfaith discourse and education. Ibrahim, a Muslim American chief executive officer of a US-based credit risk management company who is active in promoting interreligious dialogue, came to speak at Jerusalem’s Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel about his personal journey to Mecca, which he has made twice.

“The only mosque in the world where men and women can pray together is the holiest mosque in the world,” Ibrahim said. “The crowds are so fierce that I had my arms around Nina,” he added, gesturing to his wife in the audience.

“There’s no country in the world that’s not there.”

This was Ibrahim’s first visit to Israel. He had already been heading to Egypt to speak at a US State Department-sponsored entrepreneurship workshop, the third in a string of such sessions held by the US State Department in honor of US President Barack Obama’s historic June 2009 Cairo speech – which Ibrahim had been part of as well. Since he’d already be in the area, Ibrahim decided to stop by Israel at the encouragement of his friend Rabbi Dr. Ron Kronish, director of the ICCI, whom he had gotten to know about two years ago in conjunction with interfaith student trips to the Middle East that Ibrahim sponsors.

“I had to come and see the great work he does in working with people of different faiths, in person,” Ibrahim told In Jerusalem after the lecture that evening.

Kronish added, “The reason he came to Israel was that he is a big believer in building bridges and bonds of friendship of people of different religions. He wants to help those of us who are doing this in Israel to do it better.” (more…)