Lehigh Valley Columnists

Greetings From Israel: Ushering Autumn

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Eilon,
Hello friends

If we rush things along, then perhaps we can usher in autumn. Temperatures are just a little cooler, and of course the days are perceptively shorter. At work I drive off into a gray dawn. There is an occasional friendly intermittent breeze that erupts from the sea. Long and sleek, slate gray clouds stretch above the landscape, and goodness knows what shadows they raise, first napping and then emerging tall against the hillsides.

If we rush things even further we may even inaugurate the first substantial harvest of Ettingers [avocados]. The men come to work, feeling that they are at last producing work that has a direct impact on their incomes. Some of them are still laboring under the duress of the monthly Ramadan fast. Anticipating this early jump on the initial harvest, one thief breached the fence in the western Khorshah, proceeding to pick into a nice pile some twenty kilograms of Ardit avocados that are neither in season or marketable..... except to the unsuspecting consumer. The fruit was left beneath the first tree closest to the fence, where the pilferer conveniently disposed of his labors. The fence was stitched up and our manager suffered a justifiable case of pre-harvest jitters.

As the haze of summer sometimes disperses, our pale view extends edgeless beyond coasts; it is a reiteration of those minor customary seasonal shifts.

Earlier in the week, sensing the new season, a field trip was organized through the auspices of Milo-Pri, our regional packing house, into Upper Galilee where we visited the orchards of Gadot, Mayan Baruch and Dafna. This is also a very large avocado growing area. The region has its own special problems because summer temperatures are torrid, rising above 35-36 C daily while the humidity drops to about 25 %. The area's avocado orchards require at least a third more water than Western Galilee, but unlike most of the nation, fresh water is readily available because of the proximity of the Jordan and its tributaries. Still, all farmers are awaiting the national conversion to desalinated water, which will occur, it is hoped, within two years. This will free up the historical reserves, [one major underground lake, deep within the earth, has been detected recently and will be tapped] and decrease pressure on all consumers. Because of winter frosts, all avocado orchards are planted on the highest ground, on hills and hillsides, while citrus groves are planted beneath them and deciduous orchards are grown in the valley's lowlands. Attempts to successfully grow avocados beneath certain elevations are always doomed to severe frost damage which can even kill off an orchard.

Because of the growers' tenacity, and the great encouragement of their field consultants and researchers, many experiments are conducted in order to produce consistent yields of optimum size. For among other detracting factors, the hot dry days negatively impacts fruit size. We noted that the fruit was comparably smaller than that grown in Western Galilee. According to  one such field consultant, fruit tends to grow in the spring and winter prior to cropping. Many of the farmers are experimenting using an instrument known as a dendrometer for measuring fruit size, and gauge their crop's progress with different watering regimes, including the use of cytokinins, a hormone used to regulate stomatal conductance [ Their main function is to allow gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor and oxygen to move rapidly into and out of the leaf.] The stomata normally seal themselves when the trees are placed under heat stress.

Generally speaking, many of the growers disparage the overall results of such experiments, either because there are numerous variables that reduce the ability to control the results, or because more rightly, I believe, the great proclivity of avocado trees to readjustment themselves to changing climates, a little more water or a little less, a little more fertilizer or a little less.

Usually these visits to fields are interspersed with jaunts to historical sites or other points of interest. We visited Mishmar HaYarden, the original agricultural community that had been laid waste by the Syrian army advance into post-mandatory Palestine in 1948. The original inhabitants, who had resided at this location since the late 19th century, along with a small reinforcement of Irgun fighters, were unable to fend off the Syrian assault. In recent years some of the ruins of the destroyed community were cleaned up and a series of monuments commemorating its existence and honoring its casualties were erected. It is easy enough to drive past the ruins without taking any notice of it. We also visited the Hula Valley Nature Reserve, where the original swamps, drained in the 1950s was partially restored. The area is part of the migratory route between Europe and Africa. In late October and November, hundreds of thousands of birds take up temporary residence there; such as storks, pelicans or cormorants. As many as 240 species of birds take up permanent or temporary residence on their intercontinental journey.

In other news, more than just rumors have circulated about the wedding of Yaniv Aran, Bob and Naomi's son and also the wedding of Noa Bruck, Michael and Evi's youngest daughter. Our congratulations to all the families! Claudia Chaves has been visiting in the country for much of the summer but will soon be returning home.

In sadder news a memorial program will be held for Anita Wlody. Here are the details as it was forwarded to me by her friend Lynn:

The memorial for Anita will be held on Sunday, October 18th at 6:00 PM at Gilda's Club - 195 West Houston St. (between 6th and 7th Avenues). Anita planned it herself before she died. She also had requested in lieu of flowers that donations could be made to anyone of three charities:

American Brain Tumor Association: http://www.abta.org/
Gilda's Club: http://www.gildasclubnyc.org/
ASPCA: http://www.aspca.org/

Also -  Last year, Anita led a group of us on the Have a Chance Walk. She had hoped to walk again this year. A group of us will walk this year in her honor. Please join us - those who can. October 18th can be Anita Wlody Day. The following is from the site:

http://www.haveachancewalk.org/site7.aspx

Join us for the Have A Chance Walk to Fight Brain Tumors in Battery Park in lower Manhattan on Sunday, October 18, 2009 for a great day of support, community and hope.  Proceeds will help Have A Chance and the National Brain Tumor Society fund research and treatment programs and help families who are battling brain tumors with comfort, advice and financial assistance.

Take care everyone and see some of you soon!

Greetings From Israel: Unwonted Embrace

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Eilon, 2009
Hello friends

After noting that a pool full of water that should have emptied its contents as quickly as it received them overflowed, one might conclude that this was nothing short of a miracle at work. We are still trying to decipher its meaning. It seems, along with the absence of clouds, or the abstinence of a fervent Moslem during the month of Ramadan, to be a cantankerous month. If anything unplanned and unforgiving should happen at work, then it will. Pipes burst with increasing frequency, and we are just concluding that this year's innovative fertilizer-ammonium nitrate sulphate, while very helpful to our crop, and according to Sharif, especially with the Ettinger avocados, is also especially corrosive.
This of course is just an observation, one amongst many unproven theories that was validated just yesterday and compromised today.
Suddenly the irrigation flow rate in Ya'ara decreases, or the injector pump failed to move the intended quantity of fertilizer as its piston is in the greatest need of greasing.

I arrive home, always hopeful that the latter part of the day will remain just as uncomplicated as the earlier segment had been fraught in perplexities. By shedding my work clothes I am disentangling myself from its unwonted embrace.

I am enclosing last weekend's column The Guns of August by Frank Rich in the NY Times. [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23rich.html]
Aside from the malicious appellations directed at the president, the administration and the Democratic Party what is the point of demonstrators appearing at public gatherings armed? What purpose is there behind this manifestation of "constitutional expression" other than to intimidate those people with whom one is disputing? How can a so-called respectable politician even begin citing the Constitution defending these citizens as though the intent behind the brandishing of firearms is clearly an act of pre-emptive defense? Defense against whom?
People who favor health care reform? Senators and congressmen who are hectored into voting against their conscience?

In a nation where there are so many incidents of individuals having gone berserk and massacring their fellow citizens, what more encouragement does someone or some militant organization require when  politicians or news talk hosts blandly recite constitutional rights to brandish arms in the midst of their fellow citizens? As a spectator I was especially "regaled" to see one fellow with a handgun and what appeared to be an M
16 assault rifle [or its M 4 carbine variant] dangling from his shoulder. I understand that its  display was perfectly legal provided that those gladiatorial weapons were unconcealed and publicly exposed for the public to marvel over.

Residing in a nation where there is nothing unusual about seeing such weapons I still tend to relate to this visage within an American context with mounting alarm. What is to prevent one of these armed militias opposed to the administration's agenda from showing up at the steps of a town hall meeting to greet the public as it proceeds into the auditorium? Who will, as some overzealous debaters have alleged, the Nazis be then?

My first reaction, despite my experience, both as an army veteran and a civilian who has wielded military weapons would be to flee the site as expeditiously as possible. I don't want to learn how responsible the said bearer of arms is with any undue passivity. My opinion is that someone who appears at such assemblies armed to shoot [and kill] has already progressed to a level beyond civility with me.

I recall that curiosity attracted me to an assembly that gathered to hear what the African-American militant H Rap Brown had to say after the days when the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee ceased professing its pacifism. It was in 1968 and the venue was the Village Theater in Lower Manhattan. Brown was nothing but  antagonistic and did not engender much sympathy with me because of his aggressive presentation. He was almost as hostile to the young assembly of people who had come to empathize with his cause as he would have been with those who would have vociferated against his beliefs.  You would want people to rally to a reasonable cause, but Brown was exclusionary defining what role whites [and honkies] might perform while brashly asking for donations. He stood between some mean looking toughs decked out in belligerent leather, dark berets aslant, their cryptic sunglasses not necessarily enhancing a  future vision of things.  It was a free country, so they say, and I gave nothing. I didn't like being intimidated.

In  contrast to all this I attended a speaking tour of Yitzchak Rabin in
1976 while he was serving as prime minister in his first government. A large crowd from the region had assembled to hear the prime minister speak in Eilon's communal dining hall.  At the time a considerably large segment of the the rural populace in our region was armed. There had been a number of infiltrations by Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] operatives from Lebanon into our region and most nights were fraught with alerts and  surplus community guard duty. During the day we would commute to our fields armed with automatic weapons: usually Uzi submachine guns, M 14 and M 16 assault rifles. We even carried our weapons into Nahariya, prepared as it were for any unexpected contingency. Attending the prime minister's speech, the audience consisted of a huge throng of civilians armed to the teeth with automatic weapons. In those days there was virtually no security. It was still considered unthinkable that a Jew would contemplate assassinating his own prime minister. Perhaps we had to flash our ID booklets to someone at the door. After the speech, we were all invited to chow. Long tables had been set up and I sat about a table ahead of the Prime Minister and his entourage. The submachine gun was set by my feet under the bench, its fully loaded clips jutting out from  my pants pockets!-Barry

Greetings From Israel: Rain!

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Eilon, 2009 Hello friends

It has been hot and dry the past two days. The weather for the remainder of the week promises to be varied. Our field consultant arrived as the harbinger of rain. He announced that the agriculture meteorologist insists that we will receive typhoon like quantities of precipitation on Friday. Pardon me for my skepticism. The experts are predicting an exceedingly wet winter, yet it is not enough to deter a major increase in water tariffs or the reorganization of all residents in the various kibbutz communities who will comply by law to pay directly for their own water consumption. As such, most kibbutz communities will begin to redress the problem of water meters. The problem looms large because the old infrastructure was not designed for provinding a meter per housing [and garden] unit.

As I look forward to some inclement weather, I still recall how the rain day [when farm work is curtailed or postponed] has figured so prominently in our lives. Brooding clouds coil and converge,  lightning which had illumined an inky pre-dawn horizon  clash over a deep and swollen sea, and as if on cue, billowy clouds surge, like a frontal assault against a mistakenly impregnably parched landscape. The crew had arrived that morning, with some prospects of continued sun, and had set to work training the juvenile apple trees in the famed palmette configuration. Training the trees with a minimum amount of pruning, and tying scaffolding branches onto a wire cordon. We busied ourselves with our famous techniques for cutting cord, and along with a panoply of pruning appliances, including oil and a possible hydraulic chain saw, came the real essentials. These included the styrofoam thermos with  the hot water and plastic bag used as an insulating sealant beneath its lid.
A handy ammunition box replete with coffee, tea, sugar, cups and spoons.
A radio that sat in a portable wooden carrier that the carpenter had fashioned for the crew, often attached to a pack of 8 volt batteries.
The wooden carrier cushioned the red or blue plastic radio from those jarring vibrations while it sat in the wagon towed across the fields of Irbin. Often when the ominous deluge came, with no ark or local shelter to resort to, we retired to wait out the squall, breaking out the ammo box and preparing coffee as the rain pelted and lashed our little red Vauxhall chuck-wagon. At such times the orchard seems such a lonely lightless place with those churlish clouds overhead, and the distinct sound of fallen rain shattering like just so many dreams in the mud.

The manner in which our coffee break was arranged was timed to coincide with the passing of each squall. It took just so much time to reach the wagon, prepare coffee and discuss the latest local topic of interest, an unending catalog of parochial issues. More often than not, the storm would wither, passing its commotion eastward. Sometimes the downpour continued, its obstinacy defying expectations. Someone volunteered to drive the crew the two and a half kilometer distance back to Adamit. On the tractor, exposed to the storm, utterly drenched despite rain gear, anticipating an aborted work day, I once plied the hill in a driving rain. A precipitous crashing of lightning exploded overhead, like two colossal biblical sparring rams colliding. The sky poured forth in fury, its electrical contents oozing in one finite breathtaking moment. As I parked the tractor, the rain had begun to sputter.

When I entered the communal kitchen and described my enlivening revelatory moment beneath the "celestial chariots",  a much animated Dora barely described that at that very moment she had opened the oven door where "out of nowhere" a repressed flash of lightning sprang forth from the day's simmering meal, escaping as if imprisoned through the rear door.  This recalled a famous cartoon where Popeye is wheeling a sleeping Sweet Pea through the noisy byways of the city. Despite Popeye's remonstrances, the noise goes on. Men wielding jackhammers, musicians practicing their cacophonies settle for a non-spinach Popeye wielding resolution to their unabated clamor . Popeye and slumbering Sweet Pea pass a shop with a vibrating Atwater Kent radio blaring Johnny Green and Edward Heyman's Out of Nowhere by a  triller likely parodying Bing Crosby's inimitable crooning. Popeye, perhaps unfamiliar with the volume dial, lands a punch on the radio with such force that a bolt of lightning follows the path of the air waves, leaps from the microphone in the radio studio and just "out of nowhere" delivers a terrific punch to the much bewildered and self-absorbed crooner.

Addendum: November 2, 2009

We've wrapped up four days with nearly 200 mm (4 inches] of rain which is the most for this period in seventy years! Danny Roop, who presents the weather on Israeli TV said. In some places as much as a third of the annual average had fallen within this three day period. It is estimated that a whopping 15,000 metric cubes of water flowed or rained into our reservoir. It sounds incredible! With that, the forecast is for hot weather by the end of the week.-Barry

Greetings From Israel: Rain Date Observance

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Eilon, 2009 Hello friends

The orchard crew sat about in the old Adamit dining hall awaiting the latest word concerning the weather. Most likely it was a cold gray sullen day, so much so that a reluctant sun delayed as much as it was possible its anticipated appearance. Intermittent lightning flickered throughout the night, and could plainly be seen beyond the northwestern ridge of Hafiya, far above the sea. Yet despite all this, the crew made its dutiful way to the dining hall, on the off-chance that the pruning work might resume or be called off because of the threat of inclement weather or the long anticipated "rain day".

Ron would volunteer to step outdoors, pace the thirty meters to the curb and standing in the fresh gale, beneath the roiling clouds and the swirling leaves declare, "I think it's clearing up."  Satisfied with his wry projection, we greeted him as a hero. Fifteen or twenty minutes would pass drinking coffee and Jay F. would stand at the same spot, shielding his eyes, as though ensconced in the foremast of a Spanish carrack observing the English fleet maneuvering in the channel. He gazed above at the convergence of ashen clouds racing in a frontal assault across the hillock. "I think it's clearing up." he mirthfully concurred with Ron in the vast currents of rain.

Alexander was notified to "fire up" the ground  generator [located near the basketball court] impregnating  passing clouds with silver iodide, a stimulant intended to increase precipitation. No-one seems to know how successful this cloud seeding was and at some time the technique seems to have been discontinued in our region.

There were several components that conflated our communal thinking.
After months of fruit harvesting, the winter provided a respite, not only from the burdensome heat or the tedium of constant picking, but constituted a revival, much like spring, when cooler weather energized us and we could afford to be lenient in our work schedule. With the arrival of the rains, we felt that we had earned the product of its powers, but that it also compensated us for all of our previous endeavors. Predicting the severity of weather was impossible. In those days weather reports were limited to the most laconic forecasts on Israel's single television channel, and despite its reiterations on the hourly radio newscasts, barely provided a hint of winter. "Tomorrow intermittent showers are predicted in the North." Occasionally toward evening those unpredictable showers would intensify.

In Eilon, where much of the harvest is gathered in the winter months and the trees are bedecked in their fullest foliage, there was a policy of picking fruit according to a daily quota. Tzahi invested in heavy duty rain apparel that resembled biochemical protective suits. We appeared more suited for searching for weapons of mass destruction in the remotest Iraqi provinces. However, we have since learned that no matter how well dressed the fashionable fruit grower is, keeping dry in an avocado orchard in winter is unrealizable. Firstly, the large leaves on avocado trees provide little inlets that harbor fallen rain. Even as the skies clear exposing the most brilliant sun, one continues wearing a rain suit as the tree disembogues its pools of water on whosoever penetrates its confines.

What we have learned from all of this, searching for alternative work making repairs in sheds or assembling cartons in the old Adamit packing house in preparation for future seasons, is that one must be resolute when determining when a "rain day" should be faithfully observed  or not. After the dulling summer months, any rainfall is deemed an event worthy of perusal. Rather than the ambitious frontal  assault across a broad horizon, today's clouds like a tight end outflanked the orchard, and taking this route benefited from the southwesterly winds, driving rain through the colonnade of cypress trees  adding a sense of urgency in the drive to find shelter "from the storm". Love-Barry

Our son Gilad was selected as  "kibbutznik of the week" although a considerable time has elapsed since he last resided within the kibbutz structure. To see the brief article [in Hebrew] and photograph go to http://www.bimcom.co.il/ManOfTheWeek.aspx?id=30&ref=hp

Greetings From Israel: October

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Eilon, 2009
Hello friends

Viewed from that vast perspective of the very mundane, the grinding slowness of seasons, their procrastinations matched against our keenest yearnings or those slightest inconveniences that often so heavily weigh on us and our daily personal designs, the birth of a child [and in this case our very first grandchild] is indeed miraculous and special. We can frame this image above that of all those events, both great and small, of cataclysmic importance or of little consequence that the world  soon shortly forgets. It is  a day that otherwise is like any other involved in her many struggles; those great and ideal endeavors.  The birth of a child is a transcendent experience surpassing those before it, the desert regains its seas, the endless steppes are restored to their once pristine mountainous terrain. Things are no longer as they once perceived-as the very mundane.

I have been working everyday for several months. My Saturday schedule comprises checking the fencing for break-ins and especially during the harvest, we are looking, or rather hoping not to find any evidence of thievery. There is no fool-proof system, at least without paying for it.
So with the fencing maintained, I am having trouble persuading the powers to invest in asphalt beneath the gates, where porcupines prodigiously burrow under. No matter what obstacle I put in their way, they have time and patience and persist in their digging. Obviously there is something worth pursuing within the orchard enclosure, otherwise they would not be so obstinate in their desire to "crash" the premises.

In Ya'ara, David insists that I am about the only person in Western Galilee who provides some attraction for wild boars, which assault the reinforced bulwarks that I continue to erect, so that the perimeter of the northeastern fence is beginning to look a bit like the German obstacles on the beaches near Normandy. Everything is there except a moat. I am thinking of researching the defensive fortifications of the nearby Crusader fortress at Monfort for tips before the battle of Hittin.

David was alluding to the fact that the European wild pig population has dwindled, or is keeping a very low profile after months of contending with the infectious classic swine fever [not to be confused with Swine flu].

Aside from that, October brings additional relief as far as the irrigation program is concerned. The fertilizer that we are readily injecting into the fields will not have to be replenished until next season, and much of the pressure is off. The fruit pick is the key, as it means that trees are obligingly less stressful knowing that their bounty will be picked. The days continue to contract, so there is less time for the irrigation water to evaporate and the transpiration rates decrease. If we are lucky, as we were last month, a day or two of appreciable rain might even suspend the irrigation program for a few days. In September 12 millimeters fell over two days in Eilon and conferred a respite from the daily routine. Significant September rains occur infrequently over an annual basis, and while we add the figure up with the greater tallies of October through April, September's precipitation can only have an immediate effect, adding nothing to the national accumulations that are gaged in the Sea of Galilee.

Returning home, Debby was planning to visit Maureen and Debbie's quilt gallery with Idit. It was left for me to walk Zed before napping. As you might guess, Mahmoud, who is also working today, phoned  to apprise me of the ominous water levels of the eastern pool. Its recent notoriety for flooding in diverse and inexplicable ways has put Mahmoud on alert, especially on Saturdays while I am finally napping in a gentle reprieve from the warming rigors of a hot and arid September day.

In other news Shuki and Rachel are celebrating the birth of a grand-daughter who was born on Wednesday. It is their daughter Carmit's second child. We are mastering the transition into the grand-parenting mode. Love-Barry

Greetings From Israel: Lunar Year

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Eilon, Hello friends

On the eve of the New Year it is often hard to dispel the excitement.
The harvest continues for our work-hardy crew, anticipating the conclusion of the Ramadan feast and the advent of the Eid al-Fitr festivities. Clouds have become more prominent, summoned by the most recent updates at the meteorological service. Yes, it is hard to believe, and we are almost stunned to learn that the national weather bureau is predicting an unusually wet winter with  20-30 percent above the annual average precipitation, an almost stunning prediction considering the dusty pretext in which it is given.

In Eilon efforts have been underway to pressure the authorities to restore the spring in the gorge. Banners to that effect to preserve the historical status of Wadi Karkara [Nahal Bezet] are  pinioned onto the perimeter fence or slung against the entrance to Eilon. I don't know if there is much to be done about it, except that the impact on the spring has skirted with disaster, threatening it with becoming just another dry gulch. For a few years water has been channeled from the bluffs above Irbin in plastic piping, whose diameter was widened. This water took the circuitous route having been pumped up the hillside from the Ein Ziv aquifer to provide just enough water to perpetuate the vegetation, including the majestic plane trees, that grow along the stream's banks.

According to Aviv the hunter, the spread of classic swine fever, [unrelated to the swine flu pandemic] has devastated the boar population, and on various hunting expeditions, few if any boar, where once there was an over abundant presence, are seen. Recreational hunting was halted in our region, and this hunting  ban extended further south than its original jurisdiction. In mid-summer the ban was lifted, arguments ensued with the various authorities and Aviv believes the ban will be reinstated. You would not know this judging by the damage caused to our fence in our Ya'ara section of avocados, where each night the boars probe the perimeter for an easier way into this orchard. The fence, dilapidated as it already is, awaits repair from the colorful tandem of Abu Fuad and his son Mouad from Daliat al-Karmel. Until then, I erect barriers consisting of wooden pallets which the boars uneasily overcome in their search for other "soft spots" to penetrate. Perhaps the more exciting news, whose consequences have not been assessed, are the steady sightings of a pack of wolves, at least three of them, in the Nahal Namir [Wadi Nimr] gorge. Aviv tells me that the wolves have been seen by a shepherdess from Aramshe and by Israeli tourists visiting the region. Photographs were taken including one that well-illustrated the wolves prey. [see below]

On the advent of the New Year the weatherman has been predicting a series of light showers and an early thunderstorm,. We should be so lucky, but David is almost wagering that we might still suspend the irrigation session for at least one day of the holiday. The Islamic month of diurnal fasting converges with the sighting of the new moon.
Everyone,  feasts and we are assured, begins the new year sated. Love-Barry

According to Israel Nature and Parks Protection Authority [INPPA estimates], there are about 400 wolves in Israel. More than 100 live in the Golan Heights, which has one of the highest ratios of wolves per square kilometer in the world. The southern Arava is home to a few more packs, as is the eastern Galilee and Mount Gilboa. This is considered an achievement; wolves have been completely destroyed in neighboring countries, while their population has rejuvenated in Israel, where they are a protected species.

Alon Reichman [carnivore ecologist] said wolves are very intelligent and strong, with far more developed instincts than dogs. Their average weight, 35 kilograms, is about half that of their counterparts in North America; they are also smaller than the Northern European wolves that feature in some of the Grimms' fairy tales.

Reichman said the Israeli wolf posed no risk to humans. However, it is a continual threat to cattle and sheep farmers. In nature, wolves prey on wild boars, gazelles and other animals. But when they penetrate agricultural areas, a pack of wolves can kill a calf, he said, while a lone adult wolf can easily take a defenseless sheep. In the Golan Heights, several cases of calf deaths in recent years have been chalked up to wolf predation.

The INPPA's policy is to cull wolves in sheep- and cattle-raising areas, out of concern that farmers will implement their own policies of control, including poisonings that might harm other wild species. In 2003, in the Golan Heights alone, cattle farmers and INPPA rangers culled 45 wolves, estimated at one-third to one-half the total population. Seven other wolves that penetrated communities and preyed on animals were shot in other areas of the north. [from a report in Haaretz January 15, 2006]

Greetings From Israel: Lolik

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Eilon, 2009
Hello friends

Rambling through the orchard the other day I received an "outside" phone call. A woman with a Russian accent announced that she was from Zvulon Plastica and was contacting me about my "appointment". Taken aback by the woman with the Russian accent and the invitation, my mind went into a spin like a prize wheel as many of the irrigation firms have some form of plastic in their company names: Plassim, Plasson, Rotoplast, Metzerplas. Then again, the woman with the Russian accent may have been representing an East European soccer club, mistakenly confusing me with a promising midfielder for a salary review with FC Zvulon Plastika. It was of course neither of these, but an effort to reschedule an appointment with what is locally referred to as the plastic chirurgeon [surgeon].

On Wednesday I traveled with Eilon's shuttle van into Nahariya, where I would board a bus to the Zebulon clinic. Standing near the empty queue barrier I noticed one of my elderly neighbors Lolik searching for the departure gate of Haifa bound buses. Lolik is a retired teacher and academic. For the remainder of the day we immersed ourselves in a review of a goodly part of the twentieth century replete with an up to date analysis of the Obama presidency.

We began our conversation by discussing the chief causes behind the entry of the United States into the war in Europe in 1917. As some may recall, despite the mediatory efforts of President Wilson to bring about a "peace without victory" Germany planned the resumption of "unrestricted submarine warfare". This was Berlin's response to a very effective British naval blockade of Germany. It would mean the sinking of neutral merchant shipping bound for Great Britain. The idea was to sink so much tonnage that the British would sue for peace on favorable terms for Germany. The United States would surely enter the war, but basically unprepared for it, she would not be ready to make much of an impact on the war in Europe before the anticipated British [and subsequent French] collapse. While the German command was much in favor of this approach, the German Foreign Ministry was scheming to instigate a war between the United States and Mexico in the hope that Japan would seize the moment, switch alliances and ensure an American defeat. Many people in the German intelligence community precipitated Japanese territorial expansion in the Pacific, [an idea that came to fruition twenty years later] but the United States, firmly established in Hawaii and the Philippines stood in her way. Germany would then ensure the restoration of invaluable territory to Mexico which had been ceded to the US in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which concluded the war with Mexico in 1848. Even after the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare, President Wilson still hesitated to throw the administration's weight behind a declaration of war. Washington severed diplomatic relations, but then the intercepted telegrams between the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman via the German ambassadors in Washington and Mexico City, decoded by the British, exposed the German plot and pushed Washington over the edge and into war with Germany.

Lolik's expertise, it would appear, seemed to revolve around his personal experiences around the period of World War II. A native of Warsaw, he immediately attended university in France upon graduating high school in 1937. This enabled him to establish contact with other foreign students in a nation that was entirely different from pre-war Poland. He did not encounter the prevalent anti-Semitism that made distinctions between its Polish citizenry. [Students, I was told, sat on opposite sides of the classroom according to their ethnic affiliations].
Despite the institutionalized discrimination, many Poles were immune to its pernicious effects.

War in Europe erupted when Germany invaded Poland. The various issues that preoccupied the Powers which Berlin had raised prior to the invasion of Poland dealt with territorial rights regarding Poland. A short time before, after Germany occupied most of Czechoslovakia, the Poles too were eager to attain some territorial aggrandizement at Prague's expense. Prague was compelled to cede more territory in Slovakia with mixed but mainly Polish populations to Poland.

Evidently these acquisitions were very popular within Poland, before anyone had a chance to fully appreciate that Poland's turn would be next in the ambitious German plan of domination. Lolik could recall militants marching through Warsaw's streets, banners held aloft with their hefty slogans, vociferating their nationalist demands for the cession of Český Těšín from Czechoslovakia.

As the Germans chose to invade Poland at the end of the summer Lolik found himself unable to return to France to continue his studies. He believes that the way things turned out for him, that had the war begun during the school year he would have been stranded in France, which was eventually occupied. Lolik informs me that most of the foreign students that tarried in France were liquidated by the Gestapo after Germany occupied the country. Lolik, already in Poland during the school recess, succeeded in reaching the Soviet Union and found employment as a tractor driver in Uzbekistan.

Although we debated some of the implications of Moscow's infamous alliance with Berlin, which pretty much removed the major obstacle in Germany's onslaught into Poland, one factor that contributed to Moscow's late switch was the perceived Franco-British snub of the Soviet Union in their bid to conciliate the Germans in Munich, which resulted in the division and dissolution of Czechoslovakia.

In Uzbekistan, Lolik often found himself driving his tractor on the agrarian collectives. He was once invited to the home of a Uzbek hierarch, whose traditional status had been annulled by the Soviets. At the advent of the German invasion the Wehrmacht had made tremendous progress into the Soviet state. With the Red army reeling in a succession of defeats and retreating eastward, Josef Stalin, the Soviet ruler, was desperate to secure any aid from wherever it could come. The problem was that the British, whose backs were against the wall defending themselves against Germany, had little to spare and few routes with which to supply the Soviet Union. A sea lane existed in northern Murmansk, before the seas iced over. When Iran refused accessing her territory to supply the Soviet Union with war materiel, both Britain and the Soviet Union invaded the country. A brief war ensued. Throughout the remainder of the Second World War, with a new Shah succeeding the uncooperative Reza Shah, the British attempted to extend their influence deep into the region. According to the Uzbek hierarch, sipping coffee with his Polish Jewish refugee friend, promises had circulated regarding a post-war settlement which would deprive the Soviet Union of more than one of her central Asian republics, with just the hint of sovereignty beneath a British sphere of influence. Lolik had no reason to doubt the venerable but deposed hierarch's wishful predictions, he understood that the British were also keen in upsetting the Soviet order.

As I mentioned earlier, Lolik touched on many topics, not least of which are his current observations regarding the Obama presidency. Lolik was recently in the US visiting his son who emigrated from Eilon. His son is a successful fruit grower on his own upstate New York orchard. Lolik believes that with the American economy in such disrepair that the administration should be concentrating primarily on the economy. Without suggesting what reforms or policies need to be adapted, Lolik believes that a rebounding economy would endow this presidency with enormous political capital to implement the kind of health care reforms [and other reforms] that are necessary, even to ensure a healthy economy. He is dismayed at the obstructionist policies of the Republicans and their intent to wreck or weaken the administration early on.

Lolik has expressed disappointment regarding the Obama foreign policy.
Afghanistan can be a quagmire and is becoming increasingly unpopular with most Americans anyway. Despite the promising rhetoric at the recent Organization of American States summit in Port-of-Spain, Lolik has been unable to track much progress regarding American relations with Cuba.
Citing change, the establishment of new American military bases in Columbia seems to revive older memories of unfettered intervention in Latin America. The reduction in troops in Iraq or their withdrawal from Iraqi cities are agreements that can be accredited to President Obama's predecessor. The recent upsurge in violence in Iraq raises questions regarding the fate of the American expedition there.

Although President Obama's Cairo speech was received warmly in the Arab world, sanctions are still in place against Damascus, even though, rightly or wrongly, the culprits that were imprisoned after the former Lebanese prime minister Hariri's assassination have all but been absolved, thus tentatively removing the taint of Syrian complicity.
Efforts to reach Iran half-way over the nuclear issue have foundered; either because the Iranians are intent in their own game of deception, or some percipient inching toward détente was rocked off its trajectory by the recent fraudulent presidential elections in Iran. According to Lolik there is considerable disinformation regarding Iran's nuclear potential.

These discussions and much more occurred outside a doctor's office, inside a shopping mall, the bookshop and pharmacy, a bus station, two buses and the intersecting lanes outside of my son's home. We took no notice of time beneath a blazing sun on a typically hot summer day.
Scholarly Lolik, indefatigable and constantly smiling, had concluded his prologue and had just begun to offer his discourse.-Barry

Greetings From Israel: Ghasan

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Eilon, 2009
Hello friends

On late afternoon summer walks in Adamit, when the first westerly sea breeze expels the torrid motionless heat from the hillsides, hyraces emerge from their stony crevices to bask in the glimmer before a rapidly descending twilight, the discernibly faint sound of a lone red tractor in the east intensifies as Ghasan makes his way to feed his cattle.

The herd has been out all day foraging the countryside, visible in open spaces that do not count much as meadows amid dense and shady patches of oak and terebinth trees. They sometimes meander from within the thick umbrage, heedless to the occasional vehicle that careens through the wending country road between Adamit and the Bedouin of Arab al-Aramshe.
As temperatures subside, that westering sun shimmers in a pink-orange dollop, dripping fiery until it is lastly submerged at sea. Somehow the pasturing herd switches direction and lumbers on to its feed center, converging amidst much clamor with the arrival of Ghasan, who died this past weekend at age seventy-five.

Ghasan penned his cattle on the lee side of Adamit's eastern flank, adjacent  Jeruba; a gully where torrential winter rains drain down the escarpment into the gorge. Sitting with Iyad, one of Ghasan's twelve children amongst the many mourners who gathered to pay respects and bide by the tractates of Khatam, the village imam, he tells me that  this site was used by his father for more than forty years. However, I specifically recall that Ghasan settled it, not without controversy, around 1980. It was  just a few years after the tract of land directly east of his feed center was abandoned by the army, which had located a battery of field guns there during the 1973 war. Except for the briefest period, when the land was dutifully plowed by a pair of diligent Caterpillar tractors in preparation for a new orchard, and a passing effort at planting cypress trees, the land remained fallow up until the late 1990s, when the current apple orchard was established on the grounds of the former artillery battery.

Throughout most of my period in Adamit's orchard, our fields were frequented by the errant presence of  wandering cattle. Several graziers kept livestock in the vicinity, and to an outsider, it was baffling how these herds appeared not to mix, perhaps adopting the clannish territorial proclivities of their respective owners.

As Ghasan was our neighbor, or at least his cows were, and since we both shared the bounties of our limited terrain, I often came in contact with him over matters of common concern. In the early 1980s  an understanding was reached between Ghasan and Adamit regarding the confinement of his cattle at Jeruba and in later years a working arrangement with the main herders concerning their livestocks curious interloping within the orchard. The prevailing suspicion was that the cattle were deliberately herded into the orchard. Although this problem was not fully resolved until a watchman was hired in the late 1980s I was able to secure the cooperation of the graziers and personally oversee the chase, as cattle were driven from the orchard amid a flurry of handshakes, discussions about the weather, farm news and the inevitable invitation to coffee.

Grizzly Ghasan Mgheis, unusually tall for his generation, was lanky and loped beneath stooping shoulders, perhaps acquired from hauling heavy sacks of grain to his bellowing cows. He looked very much as though he could have appeared, the rough and tumbleweed sometime villainous cowboy, bespangled and glittering in a still moonlight, galloping with Victor Jory into Dodge City.

Still, as I surmised, en route to the village and the gathering at Ghasan's home, the cattle at Jeruba were very much in evidence, milling about the feed center, still awaiting Ghasan's arrival.

Enclosed is a photo of Ghasan, taken in the late 1980s on the road near Jeruba.

Greetings From Israel: Death Of A Softball Player

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Hello friends

Last Friday I finished work early enough to attend with Debby the second commemoration of the death of Dave Lelchook from Sa'ar. Dave was killed in a rocket attack outside of his home during the war with Hezbollah three summers ago. His friends had chosen to honor him by playing three abbreviated softball games that enabled a representation of all of the Israel Softball Association's teams to participate. Delegations of players came from as far as Eilat to participate in the tournament.
Dave's family is also drawn here for the event, including his family in the US. [He is from Newton Center, Massachusetts]. There is always a short ceremony between games.

Debby and I brought our patio chairs and sat along the third base sideline under one of the few trees that grow near the infield. We sat next to Jane and Debbie [Sternberg] and caught up on news regarding Karni, Shelly's work at Nes Amim, Haley's senior year in high school.
Debbie S. is off to Asheville for two weeks and she discussed her flight itinerary. Evidently US Air has initiated flights to Tel Aviv. The airline flies to Philadelphia.

While we chatted, Bill hurled for six innings, which we consider an impressive feat for someone zeroing in on 60!  His birthday comes in mid-November. We made a date for dinner or at least a drinking session at the Subaru Six [Noam's pub] for Friday evening.

The humid weather has been as disagreeable as it can be. "Hey", I can hear Bill say, with his long arms stretched like a besieged water carrier, "It's summer"! This may well be but while we were distractedly viewing one young left-handed batter who continually fouled Bill's pitches to the third base side of the infield [which means that Bill's stuff was far too fast for the batter who was having trouble getting the bat around on Bill's lightning pitches], the skies clouded, almost the way I remember the first signs of a mid-summer afternoon's New York downpour . The field fell into a shady respite and a breeze [now where did that come from?]  coolly caressed our faces! All I can say was that I am glad I didn't miss it!

It reminded me of a family outing more than twenty years ago in Boulder.
It was mid-summer and as hot as one might expect it to be, although the town benefited from its elevation and the nearby mountains. In the afternoons storm clouds arrived as if on queue. They began their brief but raucous turbulence, a torrential shower enveloped the streets and then just like that, a shaft of sunlight broke through the cloud barrier, a steamy mist rose from the pavement, and "summer" returned.
Our boys only associated showers with our local winters and had summarily proclaimed that winter had arrived......early!

Debby found herself minding a very well behaved and very handsome Bernice Mountain dog, whose leash was firmly embedded beneath one of the legs of Debby's chair. It is a good thing too, because if the dog had become aroused at the specter of his owner rounding the bases, Debby may have made her unplanned debut onto the infield.

On Sunday it actually did rain. It began as a sprinkle and then "intensified". It fell short of a downpour, and if I was drenched, it would have been more from the humidity than anything else. A fifteen year old kid that is working with me described it as a "downpour" which is typical Israeli hyperbole for stretching the facts when the routines of summer are slightly unsettled.

Gilad has returned for the weekend with Marley [his female puppy]. Next week he will be here attending a wedding at Achziv for Noam, an Eilon native who has become involved with Ariel Silber's daughter. Silber, in case you are not aware, was the keyboard player for the successful and legendary rock group Tammuz. In recent years he has moved to Matat, a hilltop community that neighbors the old Sasa Taggart fort. From his home there he very publicly espouses his ultra-nationalist views while proceeding with his musical career. Evidently his daughter shares her father's beliefs and Noam whose principal love in life has been the farmyard livestock, has had to "sacrifice" his herd of goats and flock of sheep and other ungulates for the greatest passion of his life, who has ostensibly insisted on moving to a West Bank settlement. Evidently, his political views were not strong enough to resist this newer passion, and despite the wisdom and discouragement of his friends [and perhaps family] he has assented to live in the territories. Some people reckon that the wedding reception, if nothing else, should be colorful, perhaps with an interfusion of ultra-nationalist skull-capped die-hards commingling or not with their contemporary and sometimes leftist counterparts from kibbutz.  As I expect that the wedding will be held at the reception center on the east side of the road, the most vital element will be missing, the beach front setting at or near sunset amid the numerous artifacts of antiquity that ally themselves with those wondrous crepuscular flourishes of light and adumbrated shadows before the sun's submergence into the sea; a wavery outline of time. Love-Barry

Enclosed is one of the various team portraits of the Shomrat-Adamit softball team that was taken in 1991. The late Dave Lelchook, who caught for the club, is kneeling at the right with a catcher's mask on his knee. Bill is standing behind him.

Greetings From Israel: Catamaran

By BARRY STEINBERG
Special to Lehigh Valley Source

Eilon, 2009
Hello friends

Early each morning with the unannounced wailing of jackals,  the doleful assonance of the  muezzin's appeal soars above the darkening outline of the northern ridge.  Wakeful after a sleepless drifting through an enfolding night, I step into the cool continuum of Galilee's month long muggy weather.  During that night, solitary shots were fired at intervals, muffled and repressed, a knell for bored hunters, immobile and inert in their blind. Too tired to take too much notice, I drifted into a hazy slumber, wakened occasionally by  barking dogs in Van Gogh, our own dog's rhythmic licking like a reliable alarm clock, and then another brief and enigmatic thrumming, perhaps the inexplicable solitary shot of hunters struggling to remain awake. It occurred to me that the neighboring farm might be experimenting with an animal cannon, which emits a blast of sound set to a timer. This would explain the fairly regular intervals and the lone echoing shot.

I discussed this with the retiree who sits at the gate half the night as Eilon's famous anonymous night watch. Originally from Tel Aviv, he stopped me before I could reach the fields this morning to inquire about what he could do to prevent his rural home from being cohabited by those frightful creatures that  are brimming in the verge outside of his home.  He was especially distressed because the wasps had gotten to his prize grapes. He was careful to express his aversion for these dark hued vandals. More than sympathy, he was looking for an ally. He was willing to totally commit himself to waging war if I could provide a plan that held some prospect for success.

A religious commission in Saudi Arabia has sanctioned the use of telescopes for "investigating" the first sitings of the quarter-moon or crescent which symbolizes the advent of the month of Ramadan, when devout Moslems fast from sunrise to sunset. Despite the heat and the projected fruit harvests, Mahmoud and the coterie will doubtless be staying away from the breakfast table.  Yossi will be pleased that he can cut down on his breakfast food purchases at the shop; fewer tomatoes will mean greater savings! I may do a little investigating on my own, and chart the exact position of the moon when I step out into the pre-dawn dampness.

By mid-summer it is alright to experience a bit of fatigue. Although we noticed a perceptible change in the length of the days, the weather has gone virtually unchanged for a month. The weather bureau recites the forecast and occasionally updates it with a slight increase or slight decrease in temperature. At work things begin to break. Subterranean pipes inevitably burst; the eastern pool overflows for no apparent reason. The locals stop what they are doing and stand at the intersections observing water streaming from the pool. They have never seen water before, at least in August, or in this capacity, wend its way around the corner of things and navigate about the dairy farm with its oblivious herd of heifers, speeding down toward the electricians shop.
The mechanics stepped out from the garage and peered deeply into the rivulet. They looked as though they were observing their own personal regatta; miniature schooners and yachts emblazoned with pennons had sailed freely from one cataract to another, as they attempted to identify and isolate their favorites or distinguish the catamaran from the calamity.

According to plan the potable water had been released, channeled into the reservoir spillway at Hamdan, but the water just as mysteriously as the month of August itself  ceased flowing. The main valve continued to unload its full capacity of water, causing the great inundation. People came out to admire its beauty and sinewy strength, a marvelous distraction on a hot and otherwise unremarkable August day.

We still do not know what caused the water to become so skittish about continuing its journey through the unobstructed conduit into the reservoir, but after opening and closing a large secondary valve, the water returned to its normal route thus enabling the pool to empty itself of its enigma. Love-Barry