Israel - 1 - Tel Aviv

Greetings.  As this is written, I’m in Israel on a People-to-People trip, sponsored by the American Statistical Association.  We will have one week of a mix of technical meetings and tourism/cultural exchanges.

Nov. 3.  Long trip, Cedar Crest to Tel Aviv.  Took 6am flight, ABQ to Houston to Newark.  Found my way to international terminal with five hours to wait until flight to Tel Aviv.  Luckily had an aisle seat assignment.   Young man next to me tried to talk me into trading places with his wife who had window seat on other side of plane.  No, thanks, I said.  I like an aisle seat for the opportunity to get up and walk/pace the aisles on these long flights.  He talked the window seat occupier next to him in to trading his wife, I mean trading seats with her, so all was well.  The guy, though, turned out to be a more antsy guy than I am, so I got most of my exercise by getting up to let him out or in.  I watched the movie, Captain America, but stayed awake for what I think was an 11-hr. trip reading, doing crossword puzzles, and playing games on the plane's entertainment console. 

Our Tel Aviv hotel is on the beachfront, next to a large marina.  Here are a couple of shots:

The temperature was mild and, because Friday is weekend day 1 in Israel, there were quite a few surfers out.

At the hotel, Friday evening, Nov. 4, now, we met, Irit, our tour guide for the week, for an orientation session, then dinner at a beachfront restaurant near the hotel.  She gave us some statistics on Israel which she knew would excite us.  If you'd like to know some, just write me.

Tel Aviv  was founded by 66 Jewish families in 1909 and has grown to become the second largest city in Israel (pop. 400,000) and the most modern.  Foreign embassies are located here, rather than the nation's capital of Jerusalem.   

Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, was an all “cultural program” day; most days will be a mix of technical meetings and culture/tourism.  Irit decided this day would emphasize Christian sites.  So we headed for the Sea of Galilee, about 120 miles NE of Tel Aviv, but almost across the country.  On the way we drove by Nazareth, now a hilltop town of 100,000; 2000 years ago, a village of 300-400 people.  Later in the day we were back here for lunch and some sight-seeing.

We stopped at the Mount of Beatitudes – a site overlooking the Sea of Galilee selected to commemorate Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount where he proclaimed the beatitudes.  The three years of Jesus’ ministry were spent on a 6-mile stretch of the Sea of Galilee NW shoreline.  This locale was on the trade routes connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa, bustling with activity and populated by a relatively cosmopolitan bunch of people and hence a better audience for Jesus’s message than sleepy, isolated Nazareth. 

Here’s the Church of the Beatitudes - octagon-shaped to represent the eight beatitudes (can you recite them without looking?).

A view of the Sea of Galilee.

That's the Golan Heights in the distance, under Israel control since 1967, part of Syria before that.  As Irit reminded us several times, missiles are occasionally fired into Israel, from north and from south.  Such attacks really sharpen one's desire for a better sense of security.  Seeing the geography from the ground adds to the visitor's awareness.  (Later in the week we drove through the West Bank.)

The Sea (actually a lake) of Galilee is about 40 miles in circumference.  Today was the day of an annual bicycle ride around the lake, so we saw lots of cars with loaded bike racks.  Most of the riders had completed the ride by the time we got there.  More pictures here.

Next stop, en route back to Tel Aviv, was Nazareth.  The present population of Nazaareth is roughly one-third each Jewish, Muslim, and Christian.  Here's the crowded street scene as we worked our way up toward that church in the right center of the picture.

We had lunch of falafel-pita sandwiches and then toured the Basilica of the Annunciation which commemorates the announcement to Mary that she was to bear the Son of God.  This church is built on a site that has been excavated down to the level of the village 2000 years ago.  There are Byzantine and Crusade structures above that.  Some pictures:

The ceiling – note the M’s.

The church features mosaics and other art provided as gifts from various countries.  Here are gifts from Australia, Japan, Spain, and the US.

Back in Tel Aviv we finished the day with a very nice dinner at a beachfront restaurant.  We sampled from a variety of salads and appetizers and then I had the sea bass entrée.  Multiple dessert samples completed the meal.  I think you could call the cuisine Mediterranean and thus similar to Greek, Turkish, and Italian.  We met a faculty member later in the week who said, "I came here (from the US) out of idealism; I stayed for the tomatoes."

Throughout the day’s travels Irit pointed out the intermingling of Jewish and Arab towns and villages, that is, there are both Jewish and Arab villages in the same region.  Her point was that the two peoples can live in some degree of harmony.  And, she herself has Palestinian and Arab friends.  She also pointed out the large number of unfinished, multi-story homes in the Arab villages.  Unfinished houses are taxed at a lower rate than finished homes, so some/many homeowners opt not to finish their houses.  Not criticizing, she would say, just pointing out facts.

Back in Tel Aviv we finished the day with a very nice at a beachfront restaurant.  We sampled from a variety of salads and appetizers, as we would find out is the norm, and then had an entrée.  Multiple desserts were then shared at the end of the meal.    

First up on Sunday was a visit to Israel’s Independence Hall, where on May 14, 1948, Israel was created.  Since the end of WWI, it had been a British protectorate. The next day Israel was attacked by five adjoining Arab countries.  Welcome to the family of nations.  

The guide at Independence Hall gave a dramatic accounting of Independence Day – for Israeli citizens, many of whom were sobbing during the presentation and who, of course, felt personally the tragic history of the Jews, the Holocaust and before, I can imagine it would be like hearing about our Independence Day, on the spot, just one or two generations removed from the event.  Here's a picture of the hall where the proclamation was read and signed.

 

Related story: Herbert Keller, the only “Guest” on the trip, had his own personal guide while we were doing our statistics business in Tel Aviv.  One place he visited was the Rehovot underground munitions factory, where the Jews secretly produced ammunition in advance of the British pull-out of Israel before Independence Day.

Next we went to Tel Aviv University and visited the Statistics and Operations Department.  Our host was David Steinberg, until recently department chairman.  David is a fellow former editor of Technometrics and we’ve known each other a long time, so it was good to see him on our agenda.  We talked mostly about the Israel education system and the opportunities for statistical education within that system.  Here’s a picture of our group with David – the one with a beard and without a People to People lanyard around his neck.

You can see we're a small delegation.  Our leader, in the front row between David and me, is Nancy Geller, president of the American Statistical Association and manager of a biostatistics group at NIH.  The others, starting on my right are Brian Sloboda, who works for the US Postal Service, Marianthi Markatou, who works for IBM and Cornell Medical School in NYC, Graciela M Gonzalez-Farias, from the University of Monterey, Mexico, and Juanita Tamayo Lott, recently retired from the Census Bureau, now living in San Francisco.  

After lunch on campus we went to a small firm that does database handling and statistical analyses for pharmaceutical companies that conduct clinical trials of new drugs.  One of our lines of inquiry has dealt with the ability of Israel’s universities to produce statistical talent that will meet the data/statistical needs of Israel’s government, universities, and industry (as you know, you can't have too many statisticians, can you?).

Monday morning – we visited the biostatistics unit in a medical research center in Tel Aviv.  We got detailed presentations about three projects, one of which was a comparison of LDL cholesterol for Jews and Arabs living in Israel.  The differences have implications for health policy.  We were very impressed by the good spirits and collegiality of the folks in this group.  They were having fun while doing work that has important effects on the health of their fellow citizens.

Monday afternoon, we had one more visit in Tel Aviv with another consulting firm in the biostatistics area, plus the president of the Israel Statistical Association, then we headed north to Haifa.  Our cultural-program objective was the ancient port of Akko, site of Crusader ruins.  

Stay tuned.  We have one night in Haifa, then finish up with three nights in Jerusalem.

Rob