One of the real gifts of spending this year in Israel is that I can swim every day, thanks to the combination of a small pool in our building (one of the reasons we chose it) and being on leave.  Most mornings, our youngest son swims with me.  Swimming with him is more physically challenging (he loves to race and beats me every time), splashier, much more fun, and somewhat less introspective than it is on my own.  Today though, he stayed in bed with a cold and I was on my own, to swim and to think.  As I swam, I tried to think through an article I am working on about immigrant health and, perhaps inspired by news of the recent Climate March in NYC, I kept remembering an image from South India that has stayed in my mind for many years.   It is of a man at work by the side of a dusty road in the heart of the town where we lived.  He was sitting on a mat, at work fixing an umbrella, with a stack of broken umbrellas on his left and a stack of functional looking umbrellas on his right.  In South India, it is worthwhile to fix umbrellas instead of just throwing them out when they break, and clearly was this man's livelihood.  I think that one of the reasons the image has stayed with me so long is that I saw it shortly before leaving India to return to the United States and to my medical training.  I was struck then and am still struck today by how little is wasted in India and by how badly we do in the United States at valuing not only the material objects we often throw out rather than fix, but also in valuing the energy, industriousness, and creativity of the immigrants we grudgingly admit to our country.  It is not just the umbrellas that I remember, but the man who made a living repairing them.  What could he do with what we waste every day?  

Thinking about the ways in which in this coming new year, we need to waste less not only of material goods

and planetary green space, but of human potential, I thought it would be an interesting challenge to come up with a use for a food I have always intensely disliked, a sort of culinary version of the need to value all of creation.  And, voila, I have actually found a Rosh HaShanah recipe for cauliflower that the boys and I like -- kind of the cauliflower equivalent of junk food.  I hope you will enjoy it with the kavanah with which it is intended, (with apologies to those of you who like cauliflower already to whom this will make no sense).
http://www.joyofkosher.com/recipes/rosemary-roasted-cauliflower/

Of traffic signs and illiteracy

Yesterday marked the end of my first week as solo adult in charge of our household.  In honor of surviving week one with children, apartment, car and sense of humor intact, I thought it would be fun to share a few of the Israeli traffic signs that have made my life just that much more entertaining, and along the way have made me think a bit about real world literacy issues.  In preparation for our time in Israel, I've been working hard on my Hebrew, but all of that time I've focused on understanding and speaking, figuring that they would be so much more important than reading, at least in the beginning.  Interesting logic, as it turns out, since my reading skills are pretty darn basic -- I can sound words out slowly and often can figure our what brief text means if I have time, but show me a paragraph and I panic.  And put that paragraph somewhere important and time sensitive like a traffic sign and wow!  Instant deer-in-the-headlights moment.  Pair that with the interesting Israeli tendency to create traffic signs with paragraphs of text (not always tri-lingual despite what I read in the guidebooks), liberal use of exclamation points, and pictures that only communicate if you know what they mean and you can appreciate the need to either laugh or scream. Of course I can't photograph them while driving, so am missing some of the best ones!

Exactly!

Today marks the end of the first week of school.  Although much of the week, as in American schools, has been dedicated to the business of getting started, figuring out where everyone is going, getting the correct books, and so forth, the teachers have also found time and space to talk about Gaza and the events of the summer.  Haifa is far enough away that the kids here, like our family, experienced events from afar but that does not seem to stop opinions from being strong and highly varied, but the teachers seem able to let them all be heard.  I am impressed with how quickly the school is able to take in new kids, assess their abilities, place them in classes, and begin the process of making them part of a hevre. Although not everything goes smoothly (the boys are still attempting to get copies of the math and science books, for example), the sense that other kids are having the same problems and the humor with which they deal with them seems to make it work.  Having no physics book is a problem.  Having the librarian faced with a line of kids clamoring for books announce that the library is now closed is funny, and a problem for another day.

Last Shabbat, we stayed with GJC alumni Hila, Itai, Nadav and Roni in Jerusalem and in addition to a wonderful visit with them, were able to be at the bar mitzvah of Adam Bonn-Yavneh, grandson of Chana  Bonn.  Adam's davenning and dvar were amazing but I think my favorite part were the calls first from his mother Jessie to Adam and then later from Adam to Jessie of l'at l'at (slower, slower).  Such a treat to be part of such a warm, loving community celebration!  This Shabbat the boys and I are going to try to find Or Hadash, a reform congregation about 3 km from our apartment.  Everything here is either up a steep hill, down a steep hill, or both, so hoping we find it on the first try.

Amid dealing with figuring out the details of daily life, I've continued trying to learn more about health and healthcare here.  This past weekend, Itai was able to explain to me a bit about conditions for foreign workers, since much of my work in healthcare in the US has been around access to care for immigrants.  As in the US, foreign workers provide most of the home health care here (among other occupations) but unlike the US where they are one of the groups least likely to have health insurance, in Israel their employers are required to provide them with insurance.   One of the things that fascinates me about Israel's health system is the fact that it has kept costs stable at about 8% of GDP for the past 2 decades while costs in the US have skyrocketed.  As I wrote in my last post, health outcomes including life expectancy continue to improve in Israel and exceed those of the US.  Every resident of the country, whether a citizen, foreign worker, or temporary residents like our family on sabbatical must have health insurance, but that insurance is easy to obtain and remarkably affordable.  Part of the reason this system works is that overall costs for healthcare have been kept remarkably low through strict governmental regulation.  See Health Affairs for a detailed explanation.  90% of Israelis say they are satisfied or very satisfied with their health plan compared to about 87% in the US (including only those who have insurance).