Vying for control of the Temple Mount – on Foursquare

By SHARON UDASIN
12/19/2010 12:27
[READ ORIGINAL HERE AT JPOST.COM]

The popular geo-location smartphone application takes hold in Jerusalem.

For Ariela Ross, being the “mayor” of Al-Aksa Mosque and the Old City’s entire Muslim and Christian Quarters is quite natural – as these are the places where she spends much of her spare time.

With 66 total “check-ins” as of Wednesday afternoon, Al-Aksa’s coveted mayorship currently remains in Ross’s hands through her own nine check-ins on the increasingly popular smartphone application called Foursquare, which allows users to tell their friends exactly where they are at any given time.

The app – which has 4 million users worldwide – maintains a history of who has gone where, also providing users with a platform where they can share and view tips about local destinations, according to GPS. The mayor of a site is the person who has checked in there the most times.

“You can see where the party’s going on, what’s a good restaurant to go to and where to avoid if you don’t want to meet people,” says Ross, whose mayorship at the Western Wall and in the Jewish Quarter was recently ended by a user named “Gavin S.”

While Foursquare has been trendy in the US since its release in March 2009 and has also become fairly popular in Tel Aviv and the country’s hitech center, it has only begun to take hold in Jerusalem recently, users find. As in Silicon Valley and New York City, people are generally more attached to their iPhones, Blackberries and Androids in the tech-savvy Tel Aviv and Haifa regions, says Ross, who herself works in hi-tech.

But experts predict that now that Foursquare has caught on here, it has the potential for the rapid growth that American cities have seen.

“Jerusalem is particularly active with events, lectures, launches, think tanks and international gatherings. It’s also a very small city with people who know each other and meet regularly even without the aid of technology,” says Dr. Andre Oboler, social media expert and director of the Community Internet Engagement Project. “In this environment the use of Foursquare and similar services can take off with viral growth. Adding to this is the regular flow of American tourists and longer term students.”

Even among Jerusalem’s currently close-knit group of users, competition is already fierce.

“I’ve noticed a few people checking into places that they’re not exactly at,” says Ross, who herself has 40 mayorships, most of which are in Jerusalem.

“I’ve been fighting with Jewlicious for a couple mayorships,” she adds, referring to fellow Jerusalemite and Foursquare user David Abitbol, who runs Jewlicious, a blog geared toward Jewish 20- and 30- somethings.

Ross says that she and Abitbol are battling at the moment over Al-Aksa Mosque and the Basher cheese shop inside Mahaneh Yehuda market.

“He currently has Basher – he just got back from a trip oversees and within two days he got it back,” Ross says. “It’s just a fun little thing but it’s a game in the end.”

While Abitbol agrees that running after virtual titles is silly and calls anyone with over 20 mayorships “crazy” – he has only 13 – he remains pretty angry when anyone impinges upon his own territories.

“I can’t tell you how many times I was at a place and then got an alert that one of the usual suspects just checked in, when in fact they were nowhere to be found,” Abitbol says.

“I live near the shouk [Mahaneh Yehuda] and every time I go there, I check in. Some people have begged me to not check in so that they can be mayor, others have bypassed that process and simply created duplicate entries.”

Abitbol is currently mayor of the shouk, leading the total 511 check-ins with his 22.

But it turns out that much more than the mere satisfaction of earning a mayorship title drives people – and companies – to take part in this game.

“For businesses, when somebody checks in, it gets broadcasted to all of their friends,” Ross says. “It’s another way to get the word out, it’s another marketing tool.”

Oboler adds, “Foursquare is all about where you are and what you and your friends are doing. Unless of course you are a business, in which case the key is who your customers are, where they are and when they are there.”

Oboler says that in addition to local restaurants and shops, larger offices like the Tourism Ministry could easily make use of Foursquare to attract visitors to various destinations within Jerusalem. But he warns that like other geo-location and social media tools, spreading information about oneself also “poses a serious security risk to certain individuals and types of individuals,” particularly to people like soldiers.

But security risks aside, Jerusalem users hope that yet another American trend will catch on here – namely, the willingness of local businesses to provide secret coupons and special offers to frequent checkin guests and mayors of their locations.

“In the US, some venues offer mayors or people who check in there inducements to do so – like free food or discounts,” Abitbol says. “In Israel that aspect has yet to catch on, but people still get a little crazy.”

Meanwhile, however, users like Abitbol and Ross will continue to enjoy frequenting their favorite spots, some of which are far more holy – and far more contentious – in real life than any smartphone game could reveal.

“I’ve spent so much time at these places,” Ross says. “It’s not like, ‘Oh I own the Kotel.’ It’s a fun little joke, but it doesn’t take away from the experience. Think of it as a virtual world.”

[READ ORIGINAL HERE AT JPOST.COM]

Battling boycotts through the decades
A Leiden University professor comes to Jerusalem to deliver a lecture in honor of a colleague who stood up to the Nazis 70 years ago.
By SHARON UDASIN
12/9/2010 3:24:25 PM

Rudolph Cleveringa (credit: University of Leiden)

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At the end of November in 1940, 20-year-old Martijn Jakobs sat in a classroom at Holland’s Leiden University watching law faculty professor Rudolph Cleveringa deliver a speech against the Nazi decision to dismiss his esteemed Jewish colleague, Prof. Eduard Meijers. Seventy years later – on November 25 – Jakobs sat in a very different lecture hall, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, to witness Israel’s first participation in Cleveringa’s yearly commemorations held all over the world.

“I was very excited when I heard about it,” Jakobs told In Jerusalem. “When I found out about it I knew I had to be present.”

Prof. Willem Otterspeer, professor of history at Leiden University, was the keynote speaker at the Thursday evening event, responsible for delivering the “Cleveringa lecture” to a predominantly older Dutch Jewish audience that had filled the auditorium that night. A large focus of Otterspeer’s address and the other speeches of the evening was the current discrimination against Israeli professors and institutions around the world, something that defied everything Cleveringa stood for in terms of academic freedom.

“Given the pressures that have befallen Israeli universities both at home in Israel and abroad, today’s lecture is very timely,” said Michiel den Hond, ambassador to Israel from the Netherlands, to the audience. “More than anything the Cleveringa lecture is a tribute to the free exchange of ideas and pursuit of academic knowledge.”

Ever since Cleveringa’s original speech, Leiden University has been commemorating his courage and outspokenness by appointing a Cleveringa professor in one of the university departments annually, and the selected faculty member delivers an address in his honor each November 26. The Jerusalem lecture took place on the 25th because the 26th was a Friday. Several years ago, Leiden alumni began launching similar commemorative events in places all over the world – bringing over their professors to speak at individual events, which this year occurred in 17 cities. But this November was the first time the lecture came to Israel, after the small group of Leiden alumni in this country partnered with Irgoen Olei Holland – the organization for Dutch olim – to make it happen here.

Willem Otterspeer (Courtesy of Rachel Meijler/Irgoen Olei Holland)

“For me as an alumnus of the University of Leiden, as an alumnus of the law faculty of Leiden, as a Jewish alumnus of the law faculty of Leiden and lawyer in Israel – to be at the first Cleveringa lecture ever in Israel, in the capital of Jerusalem, is unbelievable,” said Dave Wolf, of the Leiden University alumni group in Israel, who first attended one of these external lectures in New York.

At the original speech, Cleveringa was determined to protest what he felt was an outright injustice and positively illegal measure – he simply could not tolerate the idea that the Nazis could waltz into Germany and pluck out university talent at their will, according to speakers at the Hebrew University event. Cleveringa knew that he was putting his own professorship – and perhaps even his life – in jeopardy by delivering his address, but he was determined to speak out to the university community about Meijers’s academic and personal merits, a move that inspired several other professors to do the same, and ultimately led to their imprisonment and the closure of the university.

“His choice between personal safety and moral indignation was important,” said Henoch Wajsberg, chairman of Irgoen Olei Holland and largely responsible for organizing the event.

But Wajsberg emphasized that Cleveringa’s behavior was hardly the norm in Holland, the western European nation with the highest percentage of Jews deported during the Holocaust.

“The resistance of Cleveringa was [more] the exception than the rule.”

Although some 40 of Leiden professors were imprisoned thereafter for various protests that followed Cleveringa’s monumental speech, discrimination was certainly still present at Leiden University and throughout the Netherlands, leading Otterspeer to liken Cleveringa’s actions to “a 20th-century myth.” Prior to the surge in discrimination against the Jews, the university had experienced prejudice against Catholics and socialists, according to Otterspeer.

“When in the ’20s and ’30s racial theories became in fashion, the response to them was rather mixed,” he said. “Only very few people at the university believed in these theories. Many outright rejected them. Nonetheless, the theories were regarded as a legitimate subject for debate.”

Interesting to Otterspeer was the fact that rather than focusing on demonizing the Nazis, Cleveringa focused on his Jewish colleague’s merits, aiming to prove that Meijers’s positive reputation was deserved – through freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and pure, unfettered research.

“Cleveringa refrained from making any political statement,” Otterspeer said during his speech. “What he did do was nothing other than providing a survey of Meijers’s scientific work, and in doing so showed that the German measure was unjust.”

Quite the naïve man, Cleveringa thought that the conflict with the Nazis could be solved with pure rationality, according to Otterspeer.

“When questioned about his political beliefs, he answered that he never got involved in politics,” he said, referring to words Cleveringa wrote down in a diary in jail, during his second imprisonment. “He devoted his time to his studies.”

Regarding his speech at Leiden, Otterspeer added, “He wrote, ‘I did hope that the Germans would accept my position.’”

After telling Cleveringa’s incredible story, Otterspeer switched gears to the present day, discussing the extremism that followed 9/11 and ultimately led to radicalization in government and academia all over the globe.

Academia in the Netherlands is now also undergoing radicalization, he said.

On the one side, he spoke of MP Geert Wilders, a staunchly anti-Islamic Netherlands parliament member who compared the Koran to Mein Kampf and recently went on trial for inciting hatred against Islam. Meanwhile, Erasmus University of Rotterdam fired Prof. Tariq Ramadan because he hosted a function that was partially financed by the Iranian government.

But most troubling, he said in his speech, is the current discrimination against Israeli educators and universities worldwide, what he calls “voices to ostracize a whole academic community” – particularly referring to the academic boycotts.

“The variety and intensity of these boycotts is large enough to be alarming,” he said.

“The Netherlands too are no exception,” he added, noting that although until 10 or 15 years ago his country was quite a staunch ally of Israel, current anti- Semitic acts are less suppressed than they were 40 years ago. “It is now difficult to hear something positive about Israel in the media.”

“Here I think academia has an important role to play,” Otterspeer told the audience, in hopes that academia would be capable of “restoring equilibrium” as it always has. “It would be a pity indeed if precisely in a moment where a sobering voice is needed, academia abdicated,” he said.

At the beginning of his speech, the audience had given Otterspeer a resounding round of applause for even showing up, given the fact that, as Wajsberg said earlier, he “has put himself in the center of an ugly anti-Israel campaign in the Netherlands.”

In fact, three weeks before Otterspeer left to deliver his lecture at Hebrew University, students at Leiden University protested his decision to do so, telling the school’s administration that the professor should not be allowed to come here because the Israeli institution had expelled Richard Goldstone from its board of governors.

“They said Israel is a rogue state – it doesn’t have academic freedom and everything is in military complex,” Wajsberg told IJ. “They tried to convince the director of the University of Leiden, who said, ‘We don’t do boycotts, we don’t do this.’”

But Prof. Otterspeer arrived regardless, and like Cleveringa, he said he tried to avoid discussing political issues and instead focused on importance of maintaining academic freedom.

“Your profession as a historian is not a tunnel vision; it is not to underline a certain political argument,” he said on the day after his speech. “And that was why I wanted to make audible sort of a position of common sense and equilibrium.”

But if Cleveringa were alive to see the Israeli and Palestinian conflict going on today, Otterspeer said during a phone interview, his reaction would be “not very different from mine.”

“His was a thoroughly legal mind,” he explained. “He would have rationalized along international legal lines. I think he would have emphasized the difficult legal position Israel is in having to do with the settlements. That was his protest – against the dismissal of the Jewish professor.

“It was a legal protest – it was illegal what the Nazis were doing. He didn’t even mention the racial implications or causes,” Otterspeer added, noting that Cleveringa, who died in 1980 aged 86, had a necessary “utopian” way of thinking.

But back at the Hebrew University auditorium that Thursday, Otterspeer emphasized how Cleveringa’s deeds were not actually heroic – rather, they were something that any decent human being would have the responsibility to do when a group of people are facing such an injustice. He viewed Cleveringa’s actions “not as the inimitable acts of a Homeric hero but something that can be expected of all of us in comparable circumstances.”

Otterspeer told the audience, “In his memoirs, Cleveringa shows himself to be a very reliable, decent, ordinary man. He is not a hero; he is a professor. Rather than a legend, he is a real human being.”

[READ ORIGINAL HERE AT JPOST.COM]

credit: Ze'ev Yanay

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The sight, and smell, of hell on earth
I had been in Haifa to report on an event, was inside of a windowless building from the fire’s beginnings.
By SHARON UDASIN
12/3/2010 7:48:45 AM

Photo by: Associated Press

Orion and his belt stood tall in the sky as my silent bus rolled out of Haifa’s Hof Hacarmel station and past the sprawling Carmel fires on Thursday evening, en route to Jerusalem.

Smog clouded most of the night sky as the ever-growing flames created a scene – and a smell – that could really be none other than hell on earth. From miles and miles away, as we traveled down the coastline, the orange flames ate away at a forest whose trails and beauty are a place of respite for so many Israelis and tourists alike. From the window of the eerily quiet bus, I watched it all crumble.

I had been in Haifa that day to report on an event and was inside of a windowless building from the fire’s beginnings until about 5 p.m., disconnected from Wi-Fi and quite unaware of the horror taking place in our backyard, until the journalist next to me received a worried SMS from a friend. Alarmed, we immediately found an Internet connection and anxiously sought some information.

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Post-college volunteers compare practices with Israel
Masa Israel Journey brainstorms practices in leadership development, as US volunteers take interest in service opportunities worldwide.
By SHARON USADIN
11/21/2010 3:22:26 AM
Photo by: Ancho Gosh/JINI

During his Peace Corps service in Paraguay, Matthew Lebon unexpectedly found himself working on a permaculture farm – a sustainable, minimally wasteful type of food cultivation. He was so captivated by it that he signed up for a Masa Israel ecological farming program near Modi’in.

Lebon, 25, completed his Peace Corps program two months ago and will arrive at the five-month Eco-Israel program in February, which he heard about through an e-mail advertisement sent to Taglit- Birthright Israel alumni.

“I got really into permaculture and learning about it,” Lebon said on Friday. “The idea of educational farms like this one is to promote and innovate sustainable ways of living to bring awareness to people and connect them with the land, in hopes that they will disseminate this information in the same way I was inspired by my experience in Paraguay.”

Lebon plans to take the tools he acquired during his two years in the Peace Corps to his new service opportunity in Israel, a trend many of his North American Jewish peers seem to be following – in both directions, particularly during today’s less than robust economy.

Taking note of this interest by young adults in both volunteer and paid service opportunities worldwide, Masa Israel Journey, a joint project of the government and the Jewish Agency, brought representatives from 19 leading American services organizations to Israel last week for a seven-day “study tour” to brainstorm the best practices in leadership development and community service.

“The fastest-growing segment of Masa in recent years has been the post-college population, and to some extent we think that’s because of the economy,” said Avi Rubel, Masa’s North American director.

“We’re seeing that slow down a bit now, possibly because the economy is getting back on track. But in Israel, to come on a Masa program is definitely something that’s more and more attractive.”

He added, “We wanted to bring a group of organizations that have a lot of experience in building leadership development to come and look at our programs for a week and let us know how we can best build programs.”

Masa organized the American- Israeli think-tank in collaboration with City Year, a Boston group that facilitates volunteer work in local schools and communities. Other Jewish and general American organizations represented in the study tour were Teach for America, the Peace Corps, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the American Jewish World Service, UJA Federation of NY, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Avodah, Hillel, Jewish Funds for Justice, the New Israel Fund, Repair the World, Uri L’Tzedek and Ve’ahavta.

“It’s a collective exploration as to how to develop leaders through long-term volunteer programs. Pretty much every discussion has focused on that question,” said Max Klau, director of leadership at City Year.

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If you build it, will they come?
As the Kibbutz Movement celebrates its centennial, officials say no shortage of foreign volunteers; what’s lacking are kibbutzim to host them.
By SHARON UDASIN
11/11/2010 3:54:26 PM

Photo by: Courtesy

Karin Ya’akobi can still smell the bitter stench of decaying orange rinds from the piles of horse feed that greeted her the night she arrived at Kibbutz Kfar Masaryk in 1979.

“I get up in the middle of the night and I still smell the orange peels,” Ya’akobi said, noting that the rotting fruit odors were a stark contrast to the spotlessness of her native Sweden.

“Then they put us in these houses made of asbestos, but we had the best time in our lives. We didn’t understand; I didn’t know what Israel was.”

Ya’akobi, then 19, had made the decision to try volunteer life on her northern kibbutz after the Swedish kibbutz volunteer program – Svekiv – and similar movements in other countries became increasingly popular, attracting non-Jewish volunteers en masse throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.

This year, the State of Israel is honoring the efforts of such volunteers as the kibbutz movement celebrates its centennial. More than 350,000 foreign volunteers have taken part in the movement alongside their Israeli contemporaries since the movement’s beginnings, reaching up to 12,000 a year during its heyday, according to Aya Sagi, manager of the volunteer department at the Kibbutz Movement office in Tel Aviv.

Until around the turn of the 21st century, most volunteers hailed from England, South Africa, Sweden, Demark and Germany, she said. Right now kibbutzim only get a fraction of the volunteers they formerly had – about 1,200 a year – and Sagi says that larger numbers now come from both the US and South Korea.

“We will be happy to accept more, of course, but at the moment it’s more or less even,” Sagi said, in terms of space for volunteers. “We have enough volunteers for enough kibbutzim. My goal is to find more kibbutzim. The moment I find more kibbutzim, it will be easy for me to find volunteers, because volunteers want to come.”

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