RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://whiterosemagazine.com/the-jewish-community-cannot-survive-perfidy-by-its-leadership/

This is not the country we grew up in. The Jewish community is under siege. According to the FBI, Jews are the primary targets of hate crimes in America. An analysis of their reports reveals that a Jew is twice as likely to be a victim of a hate crime as a black person or a Muslim, ten times more likely than an Asian or a Latino, and twenty times more likely than a non-Hispanic white.

Jews are being beaten in the streets of New York City, murdered in Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Jersey City, stabbed in Boston, taken hostage in Texas, and harassed and bullied on college campuses across the country. In more than a few places, Jews live with rising anxiety. Most Jewish community buildings require security. Israel, the Jewish state, is defamed and demonized by the mainstream media, and maligned in both the U.S. Congress and the United Nations, as anti-Zionism becomes the new anti-Semitism. 

Hostility toward American Jews continues to grow. In February 2022, police in New York reported that anti-Semitic hate crimes in the city were up 409 percent. A recent American Jewish Committee (AJC) poll found that four in ten Jews avoid making themselves identifiable as Jews, avoid going to Jewish events, or refrain from posting Jewish-related content online. Ninety percent of Jews think anti-Semitism is a problem in America.  

In what seems like a perfect storm, Jews face assaults simultaneously from four major ideological camps. Lethal white nationalists attack them in the name of white supremacy, blaming them for supporting multiculturalism and rising Third World immigration. Radical black nationalists—including Farrakhan-following celebrities, academics, and politicians—attack Jews in the name of black liberation and “equity.” Radical progressives and segments of the Democratic Party promote the genocidal BDS movement and anti-Jewish critical race theory, inciting an ideological assault on Israel and Jews in the name of “social justice” and Palestinian nationalism. This new assault is a kind of “virtuous Jew-hatred,” socially acceptable and even fashionable, not easily countered by facts, logic, or reason.

In what seems like a perfect storm, Jews face assaults simultaneously from four major ideological camps.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/untrained-passenger-lands-airplane-11652285057?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Whenever disaster strikes and life’s great challenges arise, we all hope to be ready to rise to the occasion. But it seems unreasonable even to hope for the achievement of a rookie aviator on Tuesday.

WPBF, an ABC television affiliate in Florida, is covering perhaps the most inspiring story of the year. The station’s Ari Hait reports from West Palm Beach:

A passenger with no flight experience safely landed a private plane at Palm Beach International Airport Tuesday afternoon after the pilot suffered a medical emergency.
“I’ve got a serious situation here,” the passenger can be heard telling Air Traffic Control in Fort Pierce. “My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”
“Roger. What’s your position?” Air Traffic Control responded.
“I have no idea,” the passenger said. “I can see the coast of Florida in front of me. And I have no idea.”
“Maintain wings level and just try to follow the coast, either north or southbound,” Air Traffic Control told him. “We’re trying to locate you.”

-https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220307-janet-sobel-the-woman-written-out-

In 1938, a Ukrainian-born grandmother created one of art’s biggest shocks – but it was attributed to the US painter Jackson Pollock. For International Women’s Day, Kelly Grovier explores the influence of Janet Sobel.

This is the way the story has always been told: in 1947, Jackson Pollock, the pioneering American painter whose rugged name rhymes with the verve of his virile persona, finally lost patience with the fussy finesse of careful brushstrokes that had defined art history. Chucking his bristles and easel aside, he grabbed some sticks and started flinging paint directly on a canvas he’d stretched out on the floor. With a flick of his wrist while galloping around the work like a ranch hand roping a rampant calf – not so much painting a passive image as lassoing an untamable one – Pollock had hit upon a fresh new mode of energetic artistic expression, one with muscle and swagger befitting the wild west of his Wyomingite birth and the wide, dry lightning plains of his unbridled psyche.

“During the summer of 1947,” Camille Paglia writes in her excellent survey of milestones in the history of image-making, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars, “there was a major breakthrough: he invented his signature ‘drip’ style, which would transform contemporary art.” Pollock’s was an instinctive, shoot-from-the-hip technique that didn’t painstakingly plot its next move – rather, one that grabs a bottle, takes a swig, wipes its lips on its cracked knuckles, and couldn’t care less who’s watching. This is painting free from form and formalities, the kind of painting that only an American, a real American, could invent.

RESUMING ON FRIDAY MARCH 11

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/world/middleeast/israel-omicron-surgeon.html

Elad Maor initially feared that he might have exposed hundreds of people to the virus when he became the first Israeli to test positive for the new Omicron variant on Saturday morning.

In the three days before his positive results, Dr. Maor, a cardiologist, had attended a large staff meeting at his hospital east of Tel Aviv. He had inserted stents into the arteries of 10 patients. And he had driven to a cardiology conference north of Tel Aviv, sharing the 90-minute car journey with a 70-year-old colleague, and lunched there with five others in a crowded canteen.

Dr. Maor, 45, had attended a piano recital with dozens in the audience, where his 13-year-old played a short piece by Stephen Heller, a Hungarian composer. And finally, last Friday night, Dr. Maor had eaten sea bass at the home of his in-laws, together with his wife and nine other family members.

But of these many people, most of whom had received three shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, only his 70-year-old colleague has so far tested positive for the Omicron variant in the five days since.

That number may yet rise, as the virus can take several days to show up in tests, and not every contact has been tested. But at least 50 people have already been screened with a P.C.R. test by Dr. Maor’s hospital, the Sheba Medical Center, and at least 10 of those have been tested at least three times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/opinion/happy-hanukkah-candles-swastikas.html

Tonight, and for the next seven nights, millions of Jews around the world will light a menorah to celebrate Hanukkah. Akiva Mansbach will be one of them. But his isn’t just any menorah. In its multigenerational life, its light has also touched the darkness.

In Kiel, Germany, in 1932, Rabbi Dr. Akiva Posner and his wife, Rachel, lit the menorah and placed it on their window sill. Directly across the street was a Nazi flag.

One of the essential components of Hanukkah is “persumei nisa,” or publicizing the miracle — the miracle being the triumph of a small band of Jews, the Maccabees, who led a revolt and conquered their Seleucid persecutors in the second century before the Common Era. As tradition has it, when the Holy Temple was being rededicated and its golden menorah lit, there was only enough oil to last for one day. Miraculously, the small supply burned for eight.

The Talmud contains detailed guidelines of how to publicize the miracle, with extensive commentary on where the menorah would be most visible to people walking by. The rabbis also discussed foot traffic in marketplaces: They wanted to make sure that people lit their candles when pedestrians were flooding the streets.

There’s one more crucial detail the rabbis insisted on: In a time of danger, they said, the lighting of the Hanukkah candles can take place in one’s home, on one’s table, away from the gaze of the hostile outside world.

But this escape clause didn’t suffice for the Posners. In 1932, just before Hitler’s rise to power, their menorah shone brightly for all their neighbors to see. Its light — and the meaning behind it — was made all the more incandescent given the symbol of Jew-hatred hanging from the building across the street.

The poignancy of the juxtaposition didn’t escape Rachel Posner. She took a photograph of the menorah and the swastika. On its back, she scribbled in German, “ ‘Death to Judah’ so the flag says, ‘Judah will live forever,’ so the light answers.”

Rabbi Posner, Rachel and their three children left Germany for the Holy Land in 1933. Rabbi Posner managed to persuade many of his congregants to leave as well.

Israel’s contributions to science, technology, medicine, agriculture, and social and culture institutions are models for the entire world. This compilation from Michael Ordman comes on the cusp of Chanukah which is very apposite. Today’ Maccabees triumph over disease, famine, parched and arid earth, giving succor and hope to millions of people in every continent.

Happy Chanukah to all regardless of your faith. Celebrating freedom is religion neutral. Best wishes for peace and joy, and a special greeting to my friend Michael Ordman. rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Silencing tumor communications. Researchers at Israel’s Technion Institute have developed a breakthrough cancer treatment by injecting analgesic nanoparticles into the bloodstream. These anaesthetize the nerves inside the tumors, shutting down communications between them, thus inhibiting tumor growth and spread.
https://www.jns.org/innovative-breast-cancer-treatment-uses-anesthesia-of-nervous-system-around-tumor/
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/2021/10/nervous-system-inhibit-breast-cancer/
 
Immunotherapy dose reduced by a million. The NanoGhost cancer treatment targeted delivery mechanism developed by scientists at Israel’s Technion Institute is truly revolutionary (see here previously).  It enables the dose of existing immunotherapies (e.g., TRAIL) to be reduced by a millionfold, to prevent toxic side effects.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/immunotherapy-drug-now-works-with-a-millionth-of-a-dose-thanks-to-israeli-tech/   https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adfm.202105701
 
Insulin pump gets attention. Israel’s Triple Jump is developing a unique small insulin pump patch that is placed on the patient’s body. The patch has mobile connectivity capabilities and will be included in a future artificial pancreas system. The device has attracted interest from medical devices giant Medtronic.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3920375,00.html
https://finder.startupnationcentral.org/company_page/triple-jump
 
Diabetes cured – in mice. Researchers at Israel’s Technion Institute genetically modified muscle stem cells from diabetic mice to express high levels of GLUT4 molecules, which transport glucose in the body. When re-implanted into the mice, it reduced blood sugar levels by an average of 26% and lowered levels of fatty liver.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/diabetes-reversed-in-mice-for-4-months-after-one-time-implant-from-israeli-lab/
https://www.jns.org/technion-biomed-engineers-assess-novel-approach-to-treating-type-2-diabetes/
 
Hospital to launch neurology startups. Tel Aviv’s Sourasky (Ichilov) Medical Center and Ra’anana’s Sanara Ventures are partnering to turn ideas and projects developed in the neurology department into groundbreaking projects in the fields of digital health and neurology. These include brain diseases, strokes and sleep disorders.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3919539,00.html
 
An Israeli medical hub in New Jersey. Israel’s Sheba Medical Center is partnering the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey to develop Liberty ARC HealthSpace2030 – a high-tech hospital simulation hub on at Jersey City’s SciTech Scity innovation campus. It will focus on digital health and home healthcare solutions.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israels-largest-hospital-to-develop-digital-health-simulation-hub-in-new-jersey/
 
Keeping employees healthy. Israel’s Insurights has developed an AI platform to help employees utilize their health benefits. It answers questions, highlights preventive care benefits, and finds lower-cost providers. Its key feature is Zoe, a “Virtual Chief Health Officer,” who can analyze any insurer’s healthcare plan.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3920525,00.html  https://www.insurights.com/
 
Networking for patients. Israel’s Alike.Health connects patients with a similar medical condition at various stages of treatment or illness, allowing them to learn from each other about ways to cope. The startup has just been selected to join the “Google for Startups Accelerator”, Google’s 3-month mentoring program.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3921201,00.html  https://www.alike.health/
 
It’s never too late. A 102-year-old woman has become the first Israeli to undergo cryoablation (freezing) treatment for breast cancer developed by Israel’s IceCure (see here previously). The usual surgical solution was not an option for her, as a previous heart catheterization meant that an operation was too risky.
https://worldisraelnews.com/102-year-old-israeli-first-to-try-locally-developed-breast-cancer-treatment/
 

I AM OUT OF TOWN. BACK TOMORROW.