Gesher Hai at Netzach Yisrael School

This week Geula, Nicole and I were the guests of honor at a special performance by the girls of Kita Vav (6th Grade) at Netzach Yisrael religious school for girls. The girls have been matched through our Gesher Hai (Living Bridge) project, with a sixth grade class at Beit Yakov school in Baltimore, and they have worked hard on a project showing selected sites in Eretz Yisrael, under the expert hand of their dedicated teacher Tehila Chayun. The two schools have kept in touch through the internet and by phone and have forged a close bond, working together on this project.

Geula Shalev, the Gesher Hai coordinator is very proud of their efforts: "it is heartwarming to see the enthusiasm of the students and the staff for this project".

At the performance, the girls sang a specially composed song in Hebrew and English and showed off models they had made of religious sites in Israel, The models were constructed out of a variety of materials including cardboard, papier-mache, plastic, and mosaic, and also included printed texts that the girls had researched about each place. The class made a cd showing places in Israel and featuring them singing their special song. The CD will be sent to their partner class in Baltimore. Nicole

Kobi Lerner

Kobi, we just want to say a big thank you for your help with the Plant-Futrovsky Family Visit to Ashkelon and wish you luck for the future!

Check out more pics of the mosaic building activity at: http://picasaweb.google.com/nikirose

Plant-Futrovsky Family Visits Ashkelon

The Plant and Futrovsky families, together with some of their friends, spent a jam-packed 12 days travelling together seeing Israel. They toured all over the country, from the Golan Heights to Eilat. During their trip they celebrated the batmitzva of Cory Futrovsky at Corazim and on their last day in Israel, they visited Ashkelon in memory of the late Morton "Sonny" Plant - a prominent and active member of the Jewish community and The Associated in Baltimore and a good friend to Ashkelon.

Their day in Ashkelon included a family mosaic-making activity run by volunteer Tova Shafran. Grade 8 students from the Ashkelon Art School also helped. Grandparents, parents and children, everyone spent a few hours choosing bits of glass, stone, tile and mosaic and carefully gluing them to their section of the wall mosaic panel featuring a view of Jerusalem - in honor of Israel's 60th birthday. The final result is a joy to behold. Not only was this a lovely bonding activity for the family and the Ashkelonians who participated, but it will be a beautiful art work for Park Baltimore in Ashkelon, and will forever symbolize the connection and partnership of the two communities.

We hope the Plants and Futrovskys will come back to Ashkelon soon, and see their artistic creation proudly displayed in Park Baltimore. Thanks to Tova Shafran, Debbie, Nira, Kobi, Maia, and all those who helped to make the day and the activity, such a success.

Check out the whole photo album of the mosaic building activity at: http://picasaweb.google.com/nikirose

Hebrew article about the visit : http://www.local.co.il/ashkelon/3674/articles.htm

"This is the 4th mission to visit Ashkelon from Baltimore this month. Despite the security situation at least 100 people from Baltimore visited Ashkelon in June"

Nicole

Life on the Gaza Border

Today Sigal and I joined a Gaza Border Region Field Tour for over 50 foreign journalists, organized by TIP - THE ISRAEL PROJECT (http://www.theisraelproject.org/). There were reporters from Brazil, Spain, the Netherlands, UK, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Turkey, China, Russia, Australia, the US, Canada, and more. We visited the factory on Kibbutz Erez, where we heard about the impact of the security situation on the kibbutz members and their children and on the factory workers, (most from the kibbutz or from Sderot). The factory supplies their overseas customers on time despite the situation, but workers are under constant stress.

Chen Abrams from Kfar Aza told us how her 8 yr old son sleeps in the bed with her and her husband every night - his own bedroom faces "the direction of the threat" - she wants him near when the siren goes off. She still remembers a time when she would go shopping in Gaza, eat humous in restaurants and go to the beach there.She passed round metal missile fragments from a kassam that landed on her neighbors house.

We stopped at Nahal Oz and heard from Yankele Cohen, "the potato man", about living and farming within a stone's throw of the Gaza border with the constant barrage of kassams, mortar fire, and continual threat of terrorists tunneling their way through the border. At the fence leading into the kibbutz we stopped to view Gaza, less than a mile away.

Col. Nir Press (head of the Coordination & Liaison Administration) gave an impressive briefing outlining the whole situation, how frustrating it is when the Hamas bomb the crossings that service their own Gaza population; how Israeli citizens man the crossings under constant threat. It is an ongoing challenge to balance humanitarian requests against security threats.

Two women who received permits to visit hospitals in Israel turned out to be suicide bombers, luckily caught and jailed before they could murder Israeli citizens. We saw a clip of Palestinians terrorists firing missiles at Israel from Gaza residential areas, and from an active children's school.

You can read more at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2008/Israeli+reply+to+WHO+report+on+Gaza+2-Apr-2008.htm

The tour continued on to Sapir College where we heard from social workers about students and teachers suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome which is not so "post" because it has been going on for 8 years, and is still ongoing.

In Sderot we were briefed by Major Chezi Deutsch of the Home Front Command. Home Front distributes material explaining what to do in emergency situations, in many different languages, and even in Thai - for the Thai workers on the kibbutzim and moshavim.

Sigal and I had to leave the tour at this point but the intrepid journalists continued on to visit the Nirlat paint factory at Nir Oz, continually hit by Palestinian terrorist mortar fire http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3554195,00.html, and then down to Kibbutz Kerem Shalom on the Egyptian border.

Thanks to Eli Ovitz, Mark Regev, Marcus Sheff, Rachel Fishman and everyone at The Israel Project.

We returned safely to Ashkelon from our trip to the Gaza border but not long afterwards we heard the siren. From our safe room we heard the "boom" - a missile fell near the Shuk in Migdal, landing ironically enough in the old Moslem cemetery. Another miracle for us - only one person was lightly injured. Missiles also fell near where we visited today.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3554195,00.html

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126517

Nicole

AMEN Kids Clean Up Beaches

Ashkelon's beaches are some of the finest beaches in the world, with uninterrupted stretches of fine white sand. They are heavily used by the whole population of Ashkelon and environs, who unfortunately still have something to learn about not leaving trash behind them.

AMEN (Youth Volunteers in the City) is one of the projects funded by the Ashkelon-Baltimore Partnership. As part of a community involvement project, in the framework of AMEN, over 250 kids from Grade 6 at Mekif Irony Daled School were divided into two teams and spent four hours cleaning up Ashkelon's beaches.

This is just one of the projects run by the school as part of its environmental awareness theme. Besides AMEN, a number of organizations cooperated to organize this venture, including the municipal Dept of Youth, the Dept for the Environment, and Mekif Daled School. Nicole

High in the Sky

The things I do for the Park !

Last week, together with our professional photographer, I was lifted up in the air, high above the park, on a crane - to take birds' eye view photos of our Michael Lapidus Park (Park Baltimore). It was great to see how beautiful it is from above. It took 2 seconds for the children to notice us on the crane and they were posing for us ...

These are some of my pictures, we are still waiting for the professional photos. Enjoy!

Regatta in Ashkelon

Each year in late June, a regatta of about 80 yachts from 20 different countries arrives in Ashkelon from Turkey. For the past 17 years the regatta has been led by the same Turkish businessman named Hassan Kakmaz. The regatta started at the end of April in Istanbul. For a couple of days there's an atmosphere of festival at the Marina. Boats, flags, tourists and local sea lovers - all meet and celebrate together. The visitors take tours and go on hikes in Israel, they see Massada and Jerusalem.The City of Ashkelon honors them with a festive welcome reception. This morning the mall was full of sailors, all shopping after many days at sea.

From Ashkelon they continue their journey to Egypt, bringing with them a message of peace and brotherhood to all . Nicole