RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2008/12/the-story-of-the-schechter-brothers.html

In preparation for my spring senior seminar on the Great Depression, I’m currently reading Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man. The book is a wonderful history of the Great Depression, written by a journalist who knows enough good economics to tell the story well. In reading it last night, I had the wonderful experience of learning something new that made me think about a whole bunch of interesting questions I hadn’t considered before. As a scholar, there really isn’t a better feeling and it’s one I wish I could convey better to students so they would see that what appears to be the dorkiness of their professors is really our desire to share one of life’s most profound joys. What I learned was the story of the Schechter brothers of Brooklyn, NY.

The Schechters ran two kosher butcher shops, poultry specifically, in Brooklyn. They were Jewish immigrants in the 1930s. Running a kosher butcher shop is a complicated affair, as the Laws of Kashrut are far more than a “dietary” code. Normally, keeping Kosher is thought of as just a set of rules about what food observant Jews cannot eat (e.g., pork, shellfish, scavengers, etc and no mixing milk with meat), but it is at least as much an ethical code. And that ethical code involves both how humans are to treat the animals they kill (humanely, as kosher butchers must follow specific rules about how animals are killed) as well as how they must treat their customers. For observant Jews such as the Schechters, the Laws of Kashrut were both a matter of religious observance and good business.

Enter FDR and the NRA. The National Recovery Administration was part of the early New Deal and was Roosevelt’s attempt to cartelize American industry to prevent it from suffering the consequences of too much competition. The thinking was that too much competition was keeping prices too low, which was undermining incomes and purchasing power, and dragging the economy down. Matched with Hoover’s and FDR’s attempts to keep wages up, the NRA’s similar attempt with prices made for a highly misguided combination that contributed to the length and depth of the Great Depresssion. As part of its legislation, the NRA had all kinds of detailed codes for individual industries, describing to the letter how firms must do their business. The Schechters fell under the “Code of Fair Competition for the Live Poultry Industry of the Metropolitan Area in and About the City of New York” (and you thought Atlas Shrugged was fiction….). Among the things the code prohibited was “straight killing” which meant that customers could buy a whole or half coop of chickens, but did not have the right to make any selection of particular birds (such individual selecction was “straight killing”).

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304069604579153180784447714 Israel’s Big Tech Sector Looks to Produce Bigger Companies TEL AVIV—Try as you might, it is extremely hard not to be a bit star-struck by the Israeli technology scene. Just when you think you have seen everything, along comes something even more impressive, such as a startup with a nanotechnology that has the potential […]

http://www.jewishledger.com/2013/09/destination-jewish-barbados-a-family-celebration-with-the-oldest-jewish-congregation-in-the-western-hemisphere/
THE LOVELY AND HOSPITABLE PEOPLE OF BARBADOS CALL THEMSELVES “BAJIANS”….AND THE CONNECTICUT JEWISH LEDGER HAS GREAT COLUMNS ABOUT “BAJEWS”…. READ THEM ALL BY CINDY MINDELL
Destination: Jewish Barbados A family celebration with the oldest Jewish congregation in the Western Hemisphere
P by StaceyDresner
2 Votes

By Cindy Mindell

BRIDGETOWN – In 2014, Congregation Nidhe Israel in Barbados will turn 360, making it the oldest Jewish community in the Western Hemisphere.

The story of Jewish Barbados is one of escape, freedom, piracy, trade, secret identities, sugarcane, intermarriage, assimilation, windmills, conversion, slavery, emigration, restoration.

It is a story of mysteries and remnants.

It is one that Robin Walcott knows well. A descendant of one of the first English families to arrive on the island, Walcott has spent his life exploring the various cultures and historical threads that weave through his homeland.

As a veteran of the hospitality business, he has shared his pride and knowledge with countless visitors to the island. After managing several successful restaurants along the west coast, Walcott opened Beach View, a popular family resort in Paynes Bay, which he manages together with his younger daughter, Carrie.

In conversation with friend and local historian Karl Watson, Robin realized that the Bridgetown synagogue was about to mark a significant milestone. And he had an idea: bring Jews back to Barbados to celebrate the island’s unique Jewish history. With Beach View as a home base, families can celebrate b’nai mitzvah and traditional Jewish weddings in one of the oldest synagogues in the world, and follow a nearly 400-year-old trail of Jewish heritage.

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000885898

162 Israeli start-ups raised $660 million from local and foreign investors in the third quarter of 2013, the highest quarterly amount since 2000, IVC announced today. Investment was up 34% from the $493 million raised in the preceding quarter and $35% from the $488 million raised in the corresponding quarter of 2012. Investment in start-ups rose 12% to $1.63 billion, raised by 474 companies, in January-September from the $1.45 billion raised by 413 companies in the corresponding period last year.

During the third quarter, five companies each raised more than $20 million, accounting for 25% of the total amount, and nine companies each raised $10-20 million each. The average financing round rose to $4.07 million in the third quarter from $3.45 million in the preceding quarter.

“There has been a continuing rise in the number of seed and first round financing transactions in recent years, resulting in a dramatic increase in the overall number of VC-backed high-tech companies in Israel. We see this trend continuing, leading to record number of deals in 2013 at both stages,” said KPMG Somekh Chaikin’s Technology Group partner Ofer Sela. “Another encouraging trend reflected in year-to-date results is the growing number of mature companies that are already generating substantial revenue and are focusing their efforts on global expansion through building sales and marketing infrastructure. This trend is going to continue to increase the size and volume of M&As in the Israeli market, as we have recently seen. We are likewise hopeful that some of these firms will continue to expand independently, raising capital through the IPO route.”

Israeli venture capital funds invested $151 million in start-ups in the third quarter, 23% of the total, the lowest proportion in ten years. Although Israeli funds’ investment rose from $130 million in the corresponding quarter, their proportion of total investment fell from 27%.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com
http://blogs.jpost.com/users/just-look-us-now
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Israelis saving African lives. A team of 20 Israeli doctors and medical staff from Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) has just flown to Tanzania to provide free heart surgeries. With them was Tanzanian Dr Godwin Godfrey who returned home following five years of training in Israel. Elsewhere, a team of 11 cardiac surgeons and nurses from Israel’s Sheba Medical Center performed 10 complex heart operations over 4 days in Nigeria.
http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/24195/Default.aspx
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/173177#.UmlwJVMy1pE

A wristband to monitor your health. (Thanks to NoCamels.com) Tel Aviv-based startup Seraphim Sense is behind the Angel monitor, a biofeedback wristband that senses motion, acceleration, skin temperature, blood oxygen saturation and heart rate. The health band is synced to your smartphone and computer to display results.
http://nocamels.com/2013/10/seraphim-sense-creates-guardian-angel-wristband-to-monitor-health/

Israeli trial is good news for IBD sufferers. Results of early clinical trials using bertilimumab at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek medical center have indicated that it could be effective in treating Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20131016-900024.html

Israel awards $1 million prize to US BrainGate. In a reversal to the norm, an Israeli non-profit organization presented a US company with a large sum to help it develop its innovations. BrainGate’s million-dollar prize from Israel’s BrainTech will advance its brain sensors that allow paralyzed patients to move a robotic arm.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/10/15/world/middleeast/ap-ml-israel-brain-prize.html

Israel gives sight to Romanian baby. 10-month old Dennis lost his vision shortly after birth in Romania. When he arrived at Save A Child’s Heart, the Israeli doctors checked out his heart and his eyes. They prescribed special glasses and there wasn’t a dry eye in the ward when Dennis saw his mother for the first time.
http://www.saveachildsheart.org/265-6483-en/News.aspx?pos=2

MDA’s new hi-tech mobile command center. Israel’s emergency service Magen David Adom unveiled a multi-million dollar command vehicle designed to direct rescue operations on the most difficult terrain and during cellular network failure. It has over two-dozen computers and TVs and can accommodate 23 staff.
http://www.jpost.com/National-News/New-MDA-command-truck-is-most-hi-tech-in-world-329280

Medicine for the wild blue yonder. A comprehensive write-up of the 61st International Congress of Aviation and Space Medicine (ICASM) in Jerusalem. 250 overseas delegates from 36 countries plus Israelis discussed everything from pregnant women pilots to space travel to psychological problems of controlling UAVs.
http://www.jpost.com/Health-and-Science/Medicine-for-the-wild-blue-yonder-329167

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ THE BETA ELEPHANT The GOP would like to win without fighting. It wants to wait for the voters to come around and recognize that it’s the better choice because it compromises. Like the nerd waiting for the pretty girl to recognize his niceness, the Republican Party is futilely courting an American voter who barely […]

When one calls, instead of the usual waiting and waste of time, the recorded voice should say:” You have reached a non working number of Healthcare.gov. If this is an emergency, call 911.

And for seniors, we should be directed to the newly formed department of Senicide- Senicide is the abandonment to death, suicide or killing of the elderly.

But it’s not just oldies that have problems. How do you like this explanation:

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/10/24/surprise-obamacares-1800-number-doesnt-work-either-n1731097 Surprise: Obamacare’s 1-800 Number Doesn’t Work Either

“Government has to fix the back end before the front end…if they fix the front end for consumers and thousands of people or hundreds of thousands of people being enrolled before they fix the back end, we’ll have a catastrophic mess. When insurers are getting 10 or 20 or 50 enrollments a day they can clean the errors up manually. But they can’t do that for thousands of enrollments a day. They have to automate at some point. So I think the Obama administration doesn’t want to cross the red line to shut the system down, but I think this is effectively a shutdown in which they don’t say they’ve shut it down but it basically is shut down.”

When I was a medical student in Africa, “Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine” was my bible. A multi-authored text, it was wildly popular all over the world. To us readers, the editors of “Harrison’s,” with their exotic titles (“Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic,” for example), were like rock stars. “Harrison’s” separated itself from other textbooks of its day by the weight it gave to basic science and to the understanding of fundamental biological mechanisms, which the editors believed was key to understanding disease. Eugene Braunwald’s name was familiar to so many of us, not just because he was an editor of “Harrison’s” but also because many of the advances in cardiology described in the book came directly from his own research.In writing about Dr. Braunwald, Thomas Lee, a professor of medicine at Harvard, attempts to capture both the life of this remarkable man, now 84, and the explosive scientific progress that fundamentally altered medicine in the second half of the 20th century. “Evidence from research began to matter to doctors and to patients. . . ,” Dr. Lee writes. “In 1950, heart attacks were ‘bolts from the blue’—unpredictable, unpreventable, and untreatable—but in the decades that followed, mortality from myocardial infarction fell from 30-40 percent to 5-8 percent. Throughout cardiology and the rest of medicine, unbeatable diseases became treatable, and some even became curable. Progress helped to drive fatalism out of medicine.”

Did you know that the UN human rights council appointed the country with the world’s worst slavery record as Rapporteur and one of its vice-presidents? Are you really surprised? http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4281/modern_slavery_and_the_un_s_shameful_response An astonishing document, the Global Slavery Index 2013, has been published this month. It disposes of the generally accepted view that slavery was abolished throughout […]

Islamists in Egypt are responsible for destroying nearly 100 Christian churches. Western policy is all over the place, and the media is largely ignoring it http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4280/ignoring_egypt_s_brutalised_christians Who is more deserving of punishment by the United States? Millions of Egyptians, for ousting the Muslim Brotherhood?  Or the Muslim Brotherhood, for habitually terrorizing and murdering Christians, among […]