Yesh Matsav

Blowing an opportunity with India Dec. 2, 2008 Kevin Kolben , THE JERUSALEM POST Like many others with India connections, for much of the last few days I have been bolted to my computer screen, trying to follow and absorb every development in the horrible attack on Mumbai. These are places and institutions very much […]

[Read more →]

Yesterday evening we held a small day after birthday celebration for Michal at our small place. To get ready for the event, I ran around trying to locate all those traditional birthday party necessities, such as decent goat cheese, charcuterie, wine, and of course some birthday candles for the gateau au chocolat that I bought […]

[Read more →]

This week Michal and I took an amazing trip to the Negev. We will write more about this soon, but I thought I’d share a short anecdote about the process of renting our car for the journey. We booked a car online with El Dan, one of the major car rental chains in Israel. When […]

[Read more →]

Recently, Ulf, Gabriela, Michal, and I went to a wedding of Gabriela’s first cousin’s son, Daniel, which would make him Michal’s second cousin. For Israelis, the wedding probably just blended into some of the approximately 2000 that they go to in the course of an Israeli lifetime. For me, however, it was a small peek […]

[Read more →]

Yesterday was my first day of Ulpan (language class) at Ulpan Gordon. I was told to come in the morning for the placement test, and when I arrived I joined the teeming masses of seekers of Hebrew knowledge, and was given an exam to assess my reading and writing skills. Needless to say, they’re rather […]

[Read more →]

On Friday I returned to Tel Aviv after 17 hours or so of traveling through four different airports – Dhaka – Doha, Doha – Amman, Amman – Tel Aviv. It’s not easy to get places in the Muslim world directly from Israel, or the other way around. I brought two bags with me – one […]

[Read more →]

This debut post is being typed from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, where I have been for the last 9 days conducting a labor assessment for USAID, the American government’s development agency. Our specific task is somewhat technical, but I have been visiting with many organizations and people, including groups of workers, many of whom […]

[Read more →]