Weekly Report November 1st - 13th

Another 2 intensive weeks have passed since my last Blog update. Here are the highlights of the last two weeks at the institute:

• Of course most of the activity at the institute in the last two weeks was connected to the the 9th Israel Ride. This year the Ride started in Tsfat (for the first time) with 40 Riders. There were 17 ride alumni on the Ride including 5 members of the Board of Directors: Howie Rodenstein, Michael Marcus, Jack Platt, Nigel Savage and Bruce Stanger. Rabbi Michael Cohen also participated and rode with the "Chalutzim"!! The first day of the Ride was a magnificent ride through the mountains of Tsfat, down to the Hula Valley, through Rosh Pina and eventually down to the Sea of Galillee. The second day we rode from sea to sea - from the Sea of Galilee, through Emek Yizrael, past Meggido, through an Israeli Army base ending at Kibbutz Sdot Yam on the Mediterranean Sea. From there, the riders were bussed to Kibbutz Mashabei Sadeh. On Friday, the riders rode to Sde Boker, visited David and Paula Ben Gurion's graves and rode mountain bikes to a desert spring. The day ended at the Ramon Inn in Mitzpeh Ramon where the riders spent Shabbat. Shabbat was filled with food, massages, relaxation, services (for those who wanted) and of course the highlight of the Shabbat at Mitzpeh, the Arava Alumni student panel. Riders were very moved by the stories alumni (both crew and students from Sde Boker) told of their experiences at the Arava Institute and their dreams of a new Middle East. The Shabbat ended with beautiful Havdallah Service overlooking the Ramon Crater led by the Hazon Staff. Sunday morning, the riders were up bright and early in order to ride through the Ramon Crater and across the Faran River Bed across a beautiful dry 70 miles of hot desert. Encountering a strong head wind at the very end, the riders finally made it to Kibbutz Ketura, home of the Arava Institute. At Ketura, the riders were treated to beer, tours of the institute, wonderful rooms at the Keren Kolot guest house, the pool, a barbeque and a coffee house on the lawn of the student dorms were riders had the opportunity to informally meet with students. The last day of the Ride, was from Kibbutz Ketura to Eilat, once again transversing a challenging desert landscape including climbing the magnificent Red Mountains surrounding Eilat and finishing with an amazing descent from the top of Mount Yoash down through the Red Mountains to the Red Sea. The Ride concluded with a dip in the Red Sea, more beer and a Shehekaynu.
• On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, we were privileged to host Dr. Jürgen Kleinwächter, a physicist from Germany who has developed the Solar Village concept at Tamera - Solar Village. Jürgen spent two days at the institute learning about our work, meeting staff and students and lecturing on the Solar Village concept. The conclusion from the visit is that there are a lot of areas for cooperation and we will certainly be in touch with Jürgen about further cooperation.
• Shira Kronig from Arava EC&T and Dr. Clive Lipchin, head of the Research Department, spent two days in Aqaba meeting with French, English, Jordanian and Palestinian research partners on the Red Sea Dead Sea Conduit feasibility study funded by the World Bank.
• On Thursday, Kibbutz Ketura celebrated the 36 anniversary of the founding of the kibbutz. The celebrations started with a dedication of the Community Garden which is funded by the Merrin Family Foundation grant given to Dr. Elaine Solowey to further her work in sustainable agriculture. The Community Garden of the Kibbutz allows the children of Ketura, the opportunity to get their hands dirty and learn about organic farming first hand. In the evening, the students of the institute joined the members of the kibbutz for a festive dinner and then a program that included songs, skits and Israeli folk dancing. The folk dancing began with an Arab "Debka" dance led by our students. Then the songs switched to traditional Israel folk dancing. It was quite a site to see some of our female Arab students wearing the traditional "Hejab" dancing to the Hebrew tunes of "Hora Medura" and "Shavteh Mayim"!
• Though the institute is usually quite on Fridays, we are blessed with a number of visits that include, Martin Cohen, a friend of Mandy Patinkin, who is staying in Eilat and asked to see the institute. Martin is meeting with students, staff and will have a chance to meet Methuselah. The other visitor is Kenneth Ludwa a representative of USAID who is doing a site visit of the MERC project that Dr. Elaine Solowey is running jointly with the Jordan Unversity of Science and Technology. Kenneth was thrilled to hear about the diverse student body studying at the institute and said that it is now much clearer to him that the Arava Institute is a natural partner for USAID.
• The outlook for next week is not any quieter. A number of staff members including Tareq, Cecil, Sharon and myself will spend the first part of the week in Jordan. On Thursday, November 18th, the institute along with the Heschel Center are sponsoring the first annual Sustainable Food Conference - "Food for Thought" www.foodforthought.org.il. The conference will host best seller author, Ruth Ozeki. The week after, the institute will celebrate the signing of the Ben Gurion University - Arava Institute Agreement.

Shabbat Shalom and have a good week.

David

Weekly Report - October 18th to 30th, 2009

It has been two weeks since I have been able to write in the blog. It has been a very busy two weeks:

• I came back from my trip to Portugal on Sunday evening October 18th. If you have not yet seen my report click here: David's Trip to Portugal Report .
• Dr. Clive Lipchin and Dr. Shmuel Brenner also returned from their trip to Kenya. Clive and Shmuel's Trip to Kenya Report. The highlight of their trip was meeting President Obama's Grandmother!
• Together with the Dead Sea Arava Science Center, we hosted a visit from the Jewish Colonization Association, the Foundation that distributes the Baron D'Hirsch fortune. The foundation is considering funding lab equipment for the Arava Institute and the Science Center.
• On Friday, October 23rd, Eco-Paths, the Arava Institute's events department held the first annual "Arava Challenge" Ride. It was a 35 kilometer off road ride from Arad to the Dead Sea. We had 25 participants. People had a great time. Arava Challenge
• On that same Friday, October 23rd, our Jordanian Alumni held their first Alumni event in Jordan on 350 CO2 day. A group of alumi decided to do their own event as an initial step. So they partnered with other organizations in the 350 event that was held as a march on the Rainbow Street in Amman Jordan. 350 Event
• On Monday, October 26th, Israel and Jordan celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Jordanian Israeli Peace Treaty. Judy Bar Lev organized a delegation from the Arava Institue to attend the celebration and gives the following report:The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel and the Truman Institute Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace of Hebrew University sponsored a symposium on Monday October 26th 2009 to celebrate 15 years to the signing of the Peace Treaty between Israel and Jordan.
  Here at the Machon Arava we have a number of colleagues at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jordan Section who have assisted us over the years in arranging for our students from Jordan to obtain visas to study and live at Kibbutz Ketura.
  They invited us to send a delegation to the symposium of staff and Jordanian students.
  With the effort of leaving Ketura at 05:30 am and some of our alumni who are now at the Albert Katz school for Desert Studies at Sde Boker we arrived at 9:00am to the Truman Institute on Mount Scopus.
  We were given the red carpet treatment upon arrival and our students had the opportunity to greet Jordan's Ambassador to Israel Ali al-Ayed who spoke later on about his participation in creating the Peace Agreement. Additional speakers were James Cunningham, U.S. ambassador to Israel and Yaakov Rosen, Israel's Ambassador to Jordan.
  We made numerous additional personal connections during the coffee breaks, making the long day very much worth the travelling. The presence in the audience of our delegation from The Arava Institute was mentioned from the podium twice during the morning sessions.
• On Tuesday, October 27th, the Institute held the bimonthly Board of Directors meeting chaired by Dr. Michael Beyth. Board members heard positive reports on student recruitment, the academic program, new research projects and fundraising successes in the US. The Board also approved of the planning process for next year's goals and budgets.
• Wednesday morning, the Research Department held a research department meeting. In addition to hearing about Shmuel and Clive's trip to Kenya, researchers and grant writers updated each other on grant requests, grant approvals and research progress. The institute is currently involved in research on crops for arid lands, biofuel production from agricultural waste, biogas production from animal waste, dust settling research, hydrogen fuel production from solar energy, long term ecological and social research and the Dead Sea Red Sea Feasibility Study. Clive Lipchin, head of the Research Department emphasized the importance of publishing peer reviewed articles for journals. As usual, there was not enough time to talk about everything that is happening in the research department.
• Parrallel to the Research Department meeting, Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, head of the Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation hosted Dr. Claude Trink from the French Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning and Ms. Sophie Miller from the French Embassy. France is very interested in bilateral cooperation with Israel on renewable energy. Dr. Trink and Ms. Miller spent a few hours at the Institute and were very impressed with what they saw. We can expect further contact with the Embassy.

David Lehrer

Weekly Report October 4th-9th, 2009

Another quiet week at the Arava Institute as we celebrate the week of Shavuot (the fall Jewish holiday celebrating the harvest and remembering our years of wandering in the desert) and gear up for the fall semester which starts next week.

• On Monday and Tuesday this week, the Science Center hosted a "Science Festival" sponsored by the Ministry of Science. The Ministry supports local Research and Development Centers around the country including the Dead Sea Arava Science Center which has a branch located at the Arava Institute. None of us expected to see any visitors stop by the Institute as part of the festival but to our surprise, on the first day a family of five dropped by and on the second day, we had 20 visitors who came to the see the Science Center. Next year, we will try to leverage this into a larger event with more activities and hopefully more visitors.
• Dr. Clive Lipchin, Director of the Arava Institute Research Programs and Dr. Shmuel Brenner, Director of the Arava Air Quality Research Program were invited by the Israeli Foreign Ministry to travel to Kenya and help develop joint academic, scientific and development programs connected to the UN Millennium Villages project. We will get a full report of their trip from Shmuel and Clive when they get back but for now, I want to share the following from Clive:
• Greetings from Kisumu, western Kenya. Today Shmuel and I had a very special treat. We were taken to meet President Obama's grandmother in her village. It was a very emotional meeting. Barak Obama's grandmother lives in a very modest family compound. The only sign of Obama are some election stickers on her front door. She came out to meet us on her lawn and we sat around chatting with her. She does not speak English so one of our Kenyan colleagues translated for us. She is a very modest woman and we felt humbled to be in her presence. In her compound is the grave of Obama's father and his grandfather. Obama last visited his grandmother in 2006 and she last visited the US for his inauguration. According to the visitor's book it seemed we were the first Israelis to visit her. - Clive
• So while our FAI Staff were off in LA cavorting with the stars and while our Research Programs staff were off in Kenya meeting Barak Obama's grandmother, I had a very quite week at the institute - I got a hair cut, went to the dentist, cooked a birthday dinner for my 16 year old daughter and attended a local farmers market at Kibbutz Yahel. Next week, the excitement begins when the students arrive on Wednesday, I take a trip to Portugal to visit the Tamera Eco Village and Uri Nusinow travels to Brussels at the invitation of the EU. More next week

David