A Heart for Peace

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Right after posting about Jerusalem's Biblical Zoo yesterday I came across a heart-warming IDF post (see their video here).
I learned that just a few weeks ago a group of Palestinian children from the West Bank along with their parents had a field day at the Zoo.
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Their trip was organized by the army's Civil Administration unit and Hadassah Hospital.
Most of the kids had undergone heart surgery at Hadassah.
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Since 2005 there is a way for these families to get the help they need: Hadassah pays half the cost of the operation and a French NGO, the other half.
Un coeur pour la paix / A Heart for Peace has a nice little video about how it works.
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First and only Palestinian beer

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Shabbat shalom. I just came home from a great barbeque at a friend's garden.

Must have been forty people there celebrating our mutual friend's birthday.

It was my first time to see (and drink) Taybeh beer.

Taybeh means delicious in Arabic, and it was!

The Wikipedia article about this beer says that it "follows a classic style of the way monks brewed beer in the Middle Ages in order to fortify themselves during their fasting."

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Taybeh Brewery is a Palestinian brewery founded in 1994 by brothers Nadim and David Khoury and their father Canaan.

Taybeh is a Christian Arab village in the West Bank, 20 miles north of Jerusalem.

You can take a video tour of the brewing process and meet Khoury at their website.

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It made me happy, both having one bottle and thinking that here was a Palestinian initiative that succeeded.

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UPDATE 2013: They are doing well and the beer is now sold in Japan and Germany and maybe soon in the USA.
See the brewery and the town in this video .
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UPDATE Jan. 22, 2014: They starting making white beer now, too.  See http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/First-White-Beer-Reaches-the-Palestinian-Market-339029
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