Spinning and winning!

Anyone who has watched the TV series Sex and the City too many times, might remember a song that went like this...

...Oh dreidel dreidel dreidel

I made it out of clay

Oh dreidel dreidel dreidel

The dreidel shall I play...

Taking a little jump start to Chanukah, a while ago I played with the dreidel for the first time ever. I was playing against a very experienced opponent - someone who has celebrated Chanukah every year of his life. And me? Never.

Neither of us (!!), however, knew the rules to this game. Thanks to my Dreidel App, it didn't take much time to figure out how the game works. Dreidel is a spinning top with rectangular edges. Each side of the four sides is equipped with letters (gimel, hei, shin and nun) belonging to the Hebrew alphabet. The words they mean come from Yiddish.

all = ganz = ג 

half = halb = ה

put in = shtel arayn = ש

nothing = nisht = נ

  

Each player gets a certain amount of game tokens, which can be e.g. coins or raisins. We used jellybeans. A game pot is created by each player putting a token in the middle of the table - and then the spinning begins... Depending on the letter you end up with on your turn, you either get all that is in the pot, half of it, add one token to the pot or get nothing.

Trust me, the game can go on for a while. But it was fun! Who could have believed that two nearly 30-year-olds would spend a Monday evening playing with this little simple toy. My wooden dreidel was in heavy use to find who's the winner - and it was me who lost both rounds. Next time around, now that I have learnt professional techniques like spinning the dreidel upside down, my goal is to clean the pot.

Stand by you

Last week's events in Israel and Gaza have not only stirred up things in the Middle East, but also awoken different people and parties in Finland too. It is amazing how that tiny little piece of land thousands of kilometers away from here manages to heat up discussion, emotions and demonstrations. Even my father sighed to me on the phone... ”I wrote a paper about this conflict 50 years ago at school – and things have not improved at all. How saddening.” And he is right. UN should have cleaned up after its decision a long time ago. Now over time with circumstances changing, the conflict becoming "a way of life", it is even harder to solve.

I try to take pride in my country's liberty and freedom of speech. In the end, whatever someone preaches or boasts in public is left to the listener's judgement to believe it or not. There was a pro-Palestine demonstration in Helsinki, and today it was Israel's friends (over 300 people) who gathered together at Narinkka Square in Helsinki to show support, with following slogans for example:

Israel, you are not alone.                    Media - why do you defend terrorists?  

                                                                      

           EU - time to condemn rockets to Israel.        Let go of antisemitism.                 I <3 Israel.

                                                          Free Gaza from Hamas.

Some had showed up from other cities to give support.

The Israeli Embassador came to greet the people, and thanked them for showing support despite the "temperature just dropping cold".

These demonstrations were rather different. I have to admit, I didn't go see the pro-Palestine one live, but seeing the clips on TV, people showed their support differently for the two sides in this conflicts. ”The Palestinians” took the streets blocking traffic, had a megaphone, said accusations against Israel. ”The Israelis” stood in one place not bothering anyone, sang songs and hoped for peace in the region.

Same thing you could say about the debate televised here in Finland last week. Four young men, one Jew, one Arab (both living in Finland), one pro-Israel Finn and one pro-Palestine Finn were put in a live show to debate the conflict. It was evident, who in the group had negotiation skills, justified facts and rational view to the matter. And who in the group was making accusations of the other being ”murderers of our children”.

An opinion, found on the streets of Helsinki

Another interesting aspect of this conflict is how the presence of online media is more and more used as a means of propaganda. Twitter, Facebook and other forums are used by both parties to make their voice heard and to do good PR - and in this aspect I must say Israel is failing. It is incomprehensible, how a commoner now gets the idea that a terrorist organisation (yes, Hamas is classified as such by e.g. the EU, Canada, Japan and USA) has a silent blessing for its actions, usually randomly targeted to kill innocent civilians. An organisation, who states in its fundamental declaration that Jews have no right to live. How, in any sense of humanity, can someone defend this kind of objectives and think it is OK and allowed?

The other side of the coin is Israel, and what kind of picture is painted of them in the media. The country's name so is tainted, smeared with blood, performing nothing but unjustified acts against the innocent regime in Gaza. Murderous Jews who want to kill Arab babies. How is this possible, when Israel currently remains the only democratic country with some stability in the Middle East? How is this reputation possible, when Arabic is an official language in Israel, Israeli-Arabs hold public positions in the government, are excused to serve in the IDF, are a recognized minority in the country?

I think the Finnish media is also falling for this false picture. The reporting is biased, and I don't know why. Civilians are suffering on both sides. A country should have its right to defend its self when under attack. It is the regime that is failing to find a solution for the conflict, and this is not surprising when the other side doesn't want to negotiate, find a common compromise and thinks you have no right to exist. How do you build peace with someone who has an attitude like that?

Meet me at the synagogue

A couple of weeks ago I visited inside a synagogue for the first time. Even though I have seen a couple of them in Israel (peeked inside one of them) and walked by the one in Helsinki, I never had actually been inside any synagogue before.

The name synagogue comes from the Greek word  "sinagogi" which means to get together or assemble. Compared to Christian churches, synagogues often are quite modest or normal-looking buildings and do not necessarily feature any religious symbols on the outside. No bell towers, high rooftops, crosses (or in this case Star of David) are necessarily visible. But the synagogue is full of interesting little details, if you know where and what to look!

The Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam dates back to 1675 and was built for the Sephardi Jews who migrated to the North from Spain and Portugal because of the inquisitions. It is actually the center of a bigger complex: the synagogue is surrounded by buildings (that include e.g. a library, treasure chambers, a gift shop:) and forms an inner court together with them.

There was no service - or no one else inside for that matter when I entered the synagogue. The inside is quite modest with wooden floors and benches, but there are beautiful chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. No wonder that thousands of candles are burnt here every year. The candles weren't lit this time, but one of the chandeliers has ner tamid (the eternal flame) burning - just like in the Temple of Jerusalem back in the day.

Women's balcony on the left, supported by the columns. Eternal flame is burning opposite the Herchal (the Ark in the back wall).

As any Orthodox Jewish synagogue, there is a separate seating section (up on the balconies) for women with own entrance. One of the Ionic columns supporting the balconies is slightly fractured - a deliberate imperfection that is placed in all synagogues in the memory of the destruction of the Temple. The separate seating arrangement for the different sexes is somewhat unfamiliar to me - but I have once seen a similar setup in a Christian church, too.

Ladies only!

The buildings around the synagogue include many interesting places, and some of them are protected by the Dutch law as they are considered the country's heritage. Like for instance, the treasure chambers...

The collection also includes valuable cloths and fabrics in addition to these beautiful silver objects.

And for the first time, I saw in real life a mikveh (or more familiarly in English known as a bath) that is used for ritual cleansing in Judaism. For converts, it also resembles the final stage of the conversion process when the person walks in the water and immerses, re-born, as a Jew.

The Portuguese Synagogue forms an interesting historic, Jewish cultural sight in Amsterdam. Not only is it possible to visit the synagogue itself, the surrounding lower buildings add a little extra to the experience. I have not listed everything here, so go have a closer look yourself if you have the chance and see all the things this complex has to offer...

Israeli mousetrap

Tipped one of the most innovative countries of the world, an Israeli invention recently made headlines in Finland, too. A Herzliya-based company has given the concept of "a mousetrap" a whole new meaning...

Yes, seriously. Mice are being used to trace explosives, drugs or even money. Apparently mice have even better sense of smell than dogs - and Bio Explorer put these little squakey fellows to work. 4-hour-shifts, food & cleaning available.

So how does it work? A person enters a booth where a flow of air is directed. Thereafter, the air is sucked into a container where the mice work. If you're clean, after eight seconds a green light will turn on as the mice stay in the container. If you're hiding something, the mice will smell it, run away and the light will be red.

I have no idea how someone can train a mouse to do this - but apparently they were tested and were right 1199 cases out of 1200. So you bright minds of Israel, start working on a teleporter - I would have use for one of those!

Mobile phone gone meshuga!

Whoops, where did the time go? We are nearly in the middle of November already and the Gregorian calendar year is reaching its end sooner than you would think.

I was in Holland last weekend, meeting up with my sweetheart once again. While he was busy working on some essays to write, I took the time to explore my outdated and much mocked Nokia Lumia 710 with the Windows 7 operating system.

It hadn't occurred to me before that "Marketplace" is equal to "AppStore" on the Windows phone. And behold - what a new world of applications opened in front of my eyes! Some people have taken the time and effort to create even Jewish apps. Talking about creating marginal products to a marginal phone :).

It was only a matter of minutes until my phone was all jewed-up:

• I can now revise the Hebrew alphabet with the help of this smart phone.
• Check which date and month it is in the Jewish calendar.
• There's also an app to support Hebrew vocabulary learning.
• A Hebrew keyboard to enhance my typing skills - although the sms-function flips the letters then to go from left to right...
• A Shofar app (and I know just the person who I could annoy the crap out of by playing the sound non-stop...).
• Kosher or Not app whenever I wonder if e.g. elk meat is good to go for Jews.
• A Hanukkiah app that kindly reminds of an exact date when candles can be started to lit - in the smart phone.
• And last but least - the Dreidel Premium! Just tap the screen and find out if you get everything or nothing...

All these apps for instance were totally free, and there's more, like Jerusalem or Tel Aviv city guides. If you're willing to chip in a euro or two, the variety to choose from is even bigger. Suddenly, my phone is like all new and exciting again, and I only dare to imagine the selection for this kind of apps for the masses on iTunes!

(www.windowsphone.com)