Iftar (my first!) at Wadi Attir in the wide desert

.

I got to participate in a lovely iftar this week, my first!
No, it wasn't in this big Bedouin hospitality tent, but it WAS in the courtyard of the new buildings next to it.

It was at Project Wadi Attir, a new and growing Bedouin + Jewish sustainability initiative in the Negev desert.
If you enlarge this photo all the way, you can see the modern and clean sheep and goat shed.
One of their ways to have income is to make and sell cheese.
Traditional Bedouin medicinal herbs and cosmetics are another.

Here is the courtyard where we assembled and later, at sundown, ate.

The iftar was in collaboration with Women Wage Peace, a multi-faith non-political movement formed by women in the aftermath of the big 2014 conflict with Gaza.
They arranged a panel discussion by a Muslim of Wadi Attir, a Polish Catholic priest from Beer Sheva, and a woman rabbi, who presented the different attitudes and approaches to religious fasting.

On the left: Lina Alatawna, the new young (!) female (!!) Bedouin Director General of Project Wadi Attir--a big success story!  See here:
http://www.sustainabilitylabs.org/wadiattirnews/lina-alatawna-named-general-manager-of-pwa/

On the right: "Ghadir Hani, formerly our Executive Secretary, has begun working with Ali in the Field Crops department, managing outreach and sales, and helping with special programs. In addition to farmer's markets, Ghadir has also been introducing the products to new markets through word-of-mouth marketing events in people's homes in nearby neighborhoods like Omer, and has been a fixture at special local events..."  quoted from the April newsletter.

The  man wearing a kipa is my town Meitar's mayor; he also spoke, as did the mayor of our neighboring Bedouin town, Hura.

While the adults heard the talks, the Bedouin kids and their young Jewish guests made squares for a peace quilt out in the tent.

The following day, Unity Day in Israel, this happened (quoted from Women Wage Peace English Facebook page):

Unity Day at the Women Wage Peace Mothers’ Tent outside the Knesset
=================
On June 6th, Unity Day, we will spread out 150 quilts which were sewn from thousands of Pieces for Peace which we received from all over the world; we will then create a human chain of unity, and will express our common longing for peace; later Yael Decklebaum will join us at the tent and will sing her songs and talk about her journeys to peace; we will sing the Prayer of the Mothers with her.
1-4 PM Presentation of the Peace Quilts in the Rose Garden
4 PM A human chain along the street leading to the Knesset

After all was said and done, the sun set and we hastened outside to the waiting tables full of good food (some prepared by the hosts and some brought by us guests).
The Muslims dug in without hesitation.
They had been fasting from food AND water from before 4:00 a.m. until 7:47 p.m.!  
I can't imagine having that kind of self-discipline and devotion for the entire month of Ramadan, which often falls during our very hot summer.
.
Here is a nice explanation from "What You Should Know Before Attending Your First Iftar."

The fast itself is considered a purification of sins and a time to cleanse mind, body, and soul. Feeding a fasting person is believed to come with great reward from God and therefore many individuals, organizations, mosques, and community centers will offer an Iftar gathering in which the breaking of the fast is celebrated. It's usually not a ceremonial affair, although at many community gatherings this is often seen as an opportunity to educate and create an inter-faith gathering with delicious food, friends, and conversation.

Ramadan kareem!
(This blessing/greeting means "May you have a generous Ramadan," i.e. be generous in your giving to others.)
.
(Linking to inSPIRED Sunday.)
.

International Women's Day in Beer Sheva

.

No, it's not a spaceship that landed in Beer Sheva.

It's just part of SCE Sami Shamoon College.

It is an engineering school; can you tell? 

On Monday the sign welcomed us to a conference called Movilot Shinui, meaning  women who are bringing in and leading change.
It was for International Women's Day. 

The speaker of honor was a member of the Israeli cabinet, Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked. 
She told her life story and how she made it to such a high position.
She seems so young to have done all that.

Coffee break was inside the glass "spaceship," with a nice view of the campus lawns and the growing southern city of Beer Sheva. 

Over a dozen  highly educated, highly successful professional women gave 7-minute TED talks, telling their inspiring life stories. 
The lady in the photo is an Israeli Arab who bravely overcame all obstacles to advance in her engineering education, research, and career. 
She had the large audience laughing and cheering with her animated and impassioned message. 
She told the Bedouin students present never to let their future husbands' families pay the traditional "bride price" for them, not is camels and not in gold, because then they feel and act like they own you. 

The Bedouin women here in the Negev are actually in the forefront to advance the rights of women in their society and I applaud them.

Happy International Women's Day! 
.
(Linking to ABC Wednesday and Our World Tuesday and Wednesday Around the World.)
.

Desert Embroidery, for World Fair Trade Day

.

Today is World Fair Trade Day!

And what better example of fair trade than Desert Embroidery, the Association for the Improvement of Women's Status, begun by the women in the Bedouin town Lakia.

The women in the association do fine traditional embroidery by hand.
Each works in her home and then brings her creations to the center to be finished into products that are sold in their shop.

To quote their website:

In the 1980's, a group of Bedouin girls got together to improve life in their village. In 1996 the Association for the Improvement of Women's Status achieved official recognition as the first Bedouin women's non-profit organization in Southern Israel.
Today we run a successful embroidery program to generate income for Bedouin women and preserve traditional handicrafts. We operate a mobile library serving over 1,500 children, as well as educational programs for women and youth. We invite you to visit the Desert Embroidery Visitor Center or browse the fine handmade embroidery products we offer. 

The colors and patterns handed down over the generations tell a unique story, depending on how they are blended; that is why each young Bedouin woman embroiders a dress of her own to tell her own life story.
Please take a look at the website  which explains what the brave women of Lakia have accomplished.
Your heart will swell.
.
UPDATE: This paragraph tells fascinating things about the symbolism of Bedouin embroidery!
 .
(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)
.

Women on deck

.

Happy International Women's Day!
I'm thinking back to an August day when a happy group of Jerusalem women danced on the Sea of Galilee.

.

Women Wage Peace

.

(Photos can be enlarged with two separate clicks.)

Meet two delightful new friends, Faheema and Maya.
Our banner says "Women Wage Peace.  We vote for [or: choose] a negotiated diplomatic peace agreement."

We met yesterday at the women's peace march in Jerusalem organized by the new non-political  NGO Women Wage Peace / Nashim Osot Shalom.
Thousands of women, both Jews and Arabs, came from all over Israel to make their voice heard.
We gathered at the memorial pillar in the square next to Israel's Supreme Court building. 

The warm-up on a cold Jerusalem day: circle dancing, music!

We set out on the march, pausing for photos at the Japanese bonsho peace bell.

 Down the hill and through the big Sacher Park.

Women Wage Peace SOUTH.
Two of the organization's guiding lights from Meitar and our neighbor from the Bedouin town Hura.

Facing the Knesset building, singing in the rain, and hoping our speeches, cheers, and applause would be heard and taken to heart by the country's lawmakers, policy makers, and voters.
Start talking peace so we can stop fighting wars, that is the message of many mothers, grandmothers, and wives of soldiers. 

After hours of walking, circling the Knesset, and standing to hear speeches, we returned to the Supreme Court, where our buses waited to take us home, whether south to the Negev or north to the Golan.

The message one sees when driving out of Jerusalem was especially poignant and hopeful yesterday.
Written in stone, the Hebrew says "Tsetchem la-shalom," literally, May your going out be toward peace.
.
A news video about our demonstration: http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/politics/63184-150304-israeli-women-protest-for-peace-ahead-of-election

Newspaper reports:
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Thousands-of-mothers-gather-at-Knesset-to-demand-Israeli-Palestinian-peace-accord-392948   The best expert quote here is " “Israel as a state is going through a kind of collective PTSD post traumatic stress disorder … and it’s time to help our people heal.”

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/1.645360

And one in French: http://www.afp.com/fr/info/israel-un-mouvement-de-femmes-veut-reveiller-le-camp-de-la-paix

More photos of the march and more info at Women Wage Peace on Facebook.
Shalom!
.

Welcoming tourists in style

.

A young lady in period costume welcomed visitors to the newly restored Turkish Railway Station in Beer Sheva.
It was built by the Ottoman Turks in 1915. 

The national heritage site will be officially opened in three weeks.
Meanwhile the staff did a few-days practice run during the Sukkot holiday week.
The welcomers and guides and musicians were all very welcoming.
The Train Yard - Engine 70414 Compound is a beautiful place now.
.
(Linking to Shadow Shot Sunday.)
.

"Bezeq shalom, how can I help you today?"

.

In the previous post we talked about the exciting new discovery of beautiful mosaics and a Byzantine monastery at the entrance to Hura, our neighbor to the east.

Yesterday's 23rd annual Meitar March took hundreds of school kids out into the Negev desert surrounding our town and I got to see Hura for the first time, albeit from a distance.
Click on the photo once and then once again and you'll be able to see its several tall minarets and many multi-storey buildings.
Begun in 1989, just a few years after Meitar, Hura is now much bigger than us in area and population.
Israel's Bedouin population doubles every 15 years.

In reading Wikipedia about Hura and about Negev Bedouin I learned that in 2012  Bezeq, Israel's giant telecommunications group, opened a call center to provide assistance to Internet customers. 
Where? -- in the Bedouin village of Hura!
Where exactly?  -- in the mosque!

Al Arabiya News has a nice article and a short video about this. 
Here is part of it:

Because of their traditional, patriarchal lifestyle, persuading husbands and fathers to allow wives and daughters to go to work was not easy and the best way to allay fears was overcome by housing the call center at the mosque.
”The girls felt safe when we told them that they will work under a mosque. They were so happy because a girl feels she is in a safe place, like in her house and her village. Now we have two shifts, morning and evening and the girls work until 23:00, and we could only get this because we operate from the mosque,” said Naifa al-Nabari, vocational coordinator for Rayan Center.
Al-Nabari added that there were plenty of well educated women in Hura and other towns in the area but that until now almost all had become teachers. Working in customer service was a new departure.

A Ynet article adds that "The center is managed and operated by 50 Bedouin women, but it is expected to employ more women in the future. It offers assistance in Hebrew, Arabic and Russian."
.

Happy Women's Day, daughter.

.

International Women's Day today and the 2014 theme is Equality for women is progress for all.
My daughter is all for gender equality.
Naomi finished her compulsory IDF army service, then went on to become a mechanical engineer, continued to a PhD in biomedical engineering, and lately even began teaching aerospace engineering at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
AND she can pilot a light plane.

May all the world's women have such opportunities to learn and to enjoy whatever professions they dream about.

Here in the photo Naomi shares a quiet moment with an Israeli ibex.
.
(Linking to Camera Critters.)
. 

Women's World Day of Prayer, this year Egypt

.

Grandchamp, Switzerland, 2006

Tomorrow (Sunday) is International Women's Day and the 2014 theme is Equality for women is progress for all . 

But did you know?  Today is Women's World Day of Prayer!

Or so my sister-friends at the contemplative monastic Community of Grandchamp in Switzerland informed me.  

The 2014 theme is Streams in the Desert and it was prepared by women in Egypt. 

The World Day of Prayer is a worldwide movement of Christian women of many traditions who come together to observe a common day of prayer each year, and who, in many countries, have a continuing relationship in prayer and service.

• It is a movement initiated and carried out by women in more than 170 countries and regions.
• It is a movement symbolized by an annual day of celebration – the first Friday of March – to which all people are welcome.
• It is a movement which brings together women of various races, cultures and traditions in closer fellowship, understanding and action throughout the year.
Through World Day of Prayer, women affirm that prayer and action are inseparable and that both have immeasurable influence in the world. The motto of the World Day of Prayer is “Informed Prayer and Prayerful Action”.

source

More about the idea and how it started at Wikipedia. 

.

Time vs. timeless

.

Please click once or twice to see the details!

.

It is a tradition of the City Daily Photo group for bloggers to select and post our Photo of the Year on January 1. 

I chose this one for several reasons. 

It is from a hot day in August,  when I was standing in the shade of the spice seller's umbrella at Beer Sheva's Bedouin market.

I found it fascinating to be standing next to these two Bedouin women.

The old one was deciding which smooth pebbles and which chunks of incense to buy to take home to her tent or hut and she was consulting or haggling with the seller in Arabic. 

It hit me that yes! -- now I was really living in the Negev, home to some 200,000 Bedouin. 

 (I had just moved from the green Jerusalem Hills area down to the town of Meitar.)

And yes! -- the Negev was once part of the ancient Incense (or Spice) Route.

As in a mirage I started imagining caravans of camels traversing the deserts, laden with frankincense and myrrh!

. . . Which brings us to this season, now winter, when the three Magi are en route to Bethlehem carrying exactly those good-smelling gifts (so according to Christian tradition), arriving on Epiphany.

And just now, when much of the world (but not so much Israel) is watching the clock tick down to midnight and reflecting on the passing of time  and wondering what future time will bring,  I look at this photo and realize the image that many Bedouin still exude -- one of timelessness. 

.

Wishing you all a blessed new year.

.

Moving up

.
In the previous posts we've been talking about the synagogue of Nevatim in the Negev,
the one built by the resident Jews,  who originally immigrated from Cochin, India.

Now come up the stairs to the women's section of the synagogue.
What surprised me to hear from Miri, our guide, was that in their Cochin tradition,  women have long been taught to read Torah!

So the Torah scroll in taken from the holy ark on the main floor and brought up to the upper gallery to this table  where the Torah portion of the day is chanted for all to hear--both the women in the balcony and the men below ("out of the depths I cried to You . . . ").

I am not saying that women chant the Torah on Shabbat (our guide did not say that), but with their learning it is natural for them to want to be close to the scroll.

The vertical blinds of the mechitsa screen  look quite see-through and easy to open, if the women are so inclined.  

Our tour group from Meitar learned a lot of good things at Nevatim, both in their synagogue and at their Cochin Jewish Heritage Center.
.
UPDATE: The Times of Israel just now published this article about a new historical novel about the Baghdadi Jews of Kolkata  (Kolkata/Calcutta  being on the opposite side of the Indian sub-continent from Cochin).
.

Reaching

.

Libby, in a Dead Sea hotel kids playroom, stretching to find herself   [in the mirror, for Weekend Reflections].

Libby's mother, my daughter, also had to be "on her toes" and to stretch herself to accomplish many many things.
Things like serving in the Israel Defense Forces,  earning a BSc (Honors)  in mechanical engineering and a PhD in biomedical engineering, like doing good post-doc research and now,  teaching aerospace engineering at UNSW in Sydney, Australia.
Oh and did I mention Naomi learned  how to fly?  And play the violin and make art. And cook.  And much more.
All while being a dedicated wife and the mother of three young and wonderful children.

To Naomi and all the women who work hard to accomplish much, to give much to their family and/or  to the world, I smile and bow in admiration.
Happy International Women's Day! 
.

H is for Hugh Hefner + Hebrew Playboy

.

There are no photos in my archive of naked women or bunnies.
So I had to use this little logo instead.
Yes, Friday is International Women's Day.

Is it just a coincidence that tomorrow the first issue of Playboy in Hebrew will hit the newsstands?
Now Israelis buying the magazine will find it much easier "to read the articles."

It was launched today in a Tel Aviv  press conference,  complete with a tall model wearing the trademark ears and tail of a Playboy bunny.
In Hebrew this bunny is called a "shfanfanah." 

If you really want to, you can see her and also the local girl who posed for the Playboy cover photo in all the newspapers, e.g.  The Times of Israel article "Reading right to left, adult style."

(For today's ABC Wednesday,  H is for Hugh Hefner and Hebrew Playboy.)

UPDATE: Today there is an article about by the former Chicago lawyer  who recently immigrated to Israel and became the CEO of Playboy Israel: "Why I started Playboy Israel."
. 

The stuff of dreams

.
I just wanted a picture of the old and pretty cradles in the Good Night exhibition at the Israel Museum.
But, as if in a dream, a woman walked into my photo and behold, she was with child!
.

Breaking bread together

.
Bread--before and after.

A bunch of B words for ABC Wednesday.



Bread being baked by a Bedouin.

Back in 2008 a dozen Jewish Israelis took part in a 5-day immersion course in spoken Arabic.
Part of each day we studied in class.
Each of us was hosted by a different family.
It was a blessed being together.

Click here to see more pictures of my time in the village of Darajat, down south in the Negev desert.
.