From Blogger to Wordpress

It has been almost a year now, after I started blogging on January 15, 2010. During this time I have managed to meet my own expectations to a certain level, and hopefully my readers. For those of you who know me well, I tend to argue and complain about numerous issues. I have been complaining, mainly to myself, about how dull Blogger is. I've tried dear Google, but I have failed. Well, I think it was you who failed to provide me with proper advanced tools to meet my blogging experience. I won't go too much into details but the bottom line is: I have decided to move my blog from Blogger to Wordpress. The address is going to be similar and instead of http://twenty2nine.blogspot.com I will start posting on http://twenty2nine.wordpress.com my previous blog posts are already imported into my new url and I am still working on the design so, bear with me. Feel free to add this new address to your RSS reader or register for e-mail subscription.

I hope my new virtual home will continue to have a simplistic design and sophisticated posts. This is also a great chance to thank you for reading, discussing, sharing, commenting and correcting my spelling. I hope you find my little world exciting as much as I do.

Happy Holidays everyone and Merry Christmas.

Moral Crisis in Israel

I’ve been sick at home for the past week. During this time, I’ve had a large dose of politics, news and sports. I’ve got the chance to read ‘If I Forget Thee’ by Anat Talshir, but I will leave that for a future post. Endless frustrating feeling from the fire outbreak in the Carmel, then pure enjoyment from the National Football league with the Cowboys win over the Colts, and at last the Rabbis calling (Jewish) Israelis to refrain from renting or selling property to non-Jews (Arabs). 

Like the majority of Israelis (I might be wrong), I am against such a (formal) declaration. President Shimon Peres declared that such a call creates moral crises in Israel. I agree. We all do. But come on, are we surprised? Isn’t this the actual reality in Israel? Seriously, just look around you. We are trapped in our little ghettos with our nice walls protecting us from any contact with the other side. Even mixed cities are not really such. Ramleh? Come on, you’ve heard my Mayor Yoel Lavy and I’ve discussed Gindi project in a previous post. Jaffa? There isn’t such a city, it is a part of Tel Aviv and slowly most of its Arab residents are fleeing – either from lack of housing plans or from extremists taking over the bride of the sea. Even Haifa, the symbol of coexistence has its segregated neighborhoods and any mixture is rare my friends. Sadly, even the Arab minority suffering from this oppression is not eager to have gay neighbors in the midst of their neighborhoods. I guess racism and xenophobia is contagious in the Middle East. 

People, Take a small glance around: do you have an Arab neighbor? Do you have a Jewish neighbor? If the answer is yes, you are probably amongst a minority of liberals. A belief of few that is slowly fading away as a result of streams of racism flushing over this land. 

I would like to thank the dear Rabbis for bringing this distressing reality for debate. Obviously the phenomenon is not exclusive in rotted Safed. It is all around.