Monkeys on the Bus

This morning started off as a fairly unremarkable and typical journey on the 19 bus. I was sitting on the bus on my way to work reading a section on evolution in a biology book. Having suffered from motion sickness when I was younger (and by younger I mean until about three weeks ago), I have been relishing the opportunity to read on the bus lately, and I feel as if I am making up for years of lost time.

I noticed that my favorite rider was on the bus today, a middle-aged woman with a raspy smoker’s voice who exclaims “Omigod! Omigod!” every time the bus approaches a stop with many people waiting (which is every stop at 8:15am), and then takes it upon herself to be the human traffic manager, shouting, “Yalla! Let’s go! Yalla! Let’s go!” as passengers board the bus.

Entertained by my favorite rider while reading my biology book, it was hard to pay attention to much else, but I did catch that the woman sitting diagonally across from me had stopped davening and was now scribbling furiously on notebook paper. I didn’t think much of it, and looked back down at my book. A couple minutes later, she tapped me on the shoulder and presented me with the following note:

The idea that man came from monkeys was after the horrors of the 1st World War when the Europeans wanted an excuse for sexual freedom.

Look on internet. Tel Aviv University Prof. Raz made a theory that there are apes and there are men. Men didn’t come from monkeys.

ShXXXXXX, 054-XXXXXXX

(Below this was a convoluted postscript about a religious text that, according to her, implicates one who believes in evolution will become a monkey.)

I thanked her for her reading suggestions and she asked me to call her so that she could present me with more material on the topic (and to introduce me to her very wonderful, very eligible son according to the careful analysis of the situation by a certain chemistry professor’s husband).

I was neither angered nor threatened by our interaction, only a little stunned. I could have been offended that she was suggesting I was ignorant about the subject and that she was there to enlighten me and inform me of the truth, but I knew that she meant no malice.

I suspect that Professor Raz is probably a credible scientist and also that his work does not attempt to disprove evolution, but rather that she took his work regarding evolutionary relationships between man and primate out of context and misinterpreted it. I am interested to find his work but a few cursory Google searches turned up nothing promising – perhaps she got the name slightly wrong?

I think that some of the onlookers on the bus probably thought I was an impressionable young girl being indoctrinated by this woman’s ideas because I was so receptive to what she had to say. But it was clear to me that refuting what this woman believes or arguing with her served no purpose; unlike her perception of me I did not believe for a moment I had any chance of changing her mind, especially if she is convinced that she has credible scientific “proof.”

Another added irony and level of complexity to the interaction is that while I am actually religious, she would have no way of knowing of this. The whole interaction made me reflect on what it means to be a religious Jew in science (certainly not an inherent contradiction in my opinion), but I am going to chicken out on expounding upon this one for now!

Once I shared my note in lab we got to wondering – what is this sexual freedom that the monkeys supposedly have that the Europeans wanted so badly? We secretly wish we didn’t have to wear underwear? I will leave you this question to ponder, but in the meantime, it’s really not half bad to be a monkey on the bus.

The Great Sufganiyot Search: 2007 – 5768

Every year around Chanukah, the Jerusalem Post puts out a sufganiyot guide. The authors of the guide sample sufganiyot at a bunch of bakeries around town and then write a compiled review of their findings. I had a few concerns about this process last year: Did the authors have an appreciation for the scientific method? What was their methodology? For instance, if they sampled a bunch of sufganiyot in one trip, they would clearly be biased against their samplings by the end of the day, by which time they would surely be ready to vomit.

I felt it was important that each sufganiyot be allowed its own day; its own moment of glory; its own sacred time for contemplation, enlightenment, and introspection. Also, what if the testers just sampled a piece of a sufganiya? You can’t compare the center of one sufganiya with the edge piece of another.

I wanted to level the playing field for all the sufganiyot out there and I wanted to introduce a little objectivity into the study. Most of all, I wanted to sample every sufganiya in Jerusalem. And, okay, as anyone who ever attended the Scooperbowl with me will attest, I am a very competitive eater. I feel strong loyalties towards my favorite foods.

Despite a few well-intentioned concerns about my cholesterol fielded during last year’s study, I am up for the challenge once again. My yearly sufganiyot experiment may still not be a double-blind controlled study, but I have goals in place and I’m working towards them. Ultimately, I aim for my study to be worthy of Nature publication by Chanukah 2009 or at least an Ig Nobel Prize. I still have two more sufganiyot seasons to perfect things. How can you help, dear reader?

There are a couple things you can do. You can recommend locations around Jerusalem for me to try – good and bad, but mostly good, please:-) You can add to the comments section of this post your own reviews of sufganiyot you have consumed in the Jerusalem area. And finally, dear reader, you can work on your own major scientific breakthroughs. I am sure the sufganiyot connection won’t be very difficult to establish. Not a very sophisticated system for now, I know, but as time allows maybe I will start a sufganiyot blog that will take on a life of its own.

Ready…set…go!!!

And Happy Sufganiyot Season 2007 – 5768.

P.S. Definitely last week’s news, but for those following the saga, Harriet was successfully spayed.

From Jerusalem to Sderot

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.
- Anne Frank

This past Monday I took a vacation day and had the opportunity to ride my bike from Jerusalem to Sderot as part of a solidarity ride with the residents of Sderot organized by OneFamily Fund. The plight of the residents of Sderot is a cause that is close to my heart and something I care quite deeply about.The ride itself included a hodgepodge group of approximately 90 participants ranging from competitive cyclists to families to some folks who looked as if they hadn’t been pedaling anything with wheels for quite some time.

We were joined on the ride by victims of terror in Israel, including three young people who lost both parents in terrorist attacks. While not everyone was able to complete the ride on his or her bike, vehicles stayed at the end of our entourage and picked up stragglers so everyone was reunited in Sderot.

I was certainly among those moaning and groaning about the late start and also the frequent and lengthy breaks at the beginning of the ride, but the timing ended up being such that we arrived in Sderot against a dramatic foreground of orange, red, and gold as the sun set and I was grateful for the colorful sky along with cool early evening air that ushered in our arrival to Sderot. In addition, by the last 40km of the ride, when we really got going without frequent stops, we spread out, and I enjoyed the freedom and solitude of the open stretch of road, which provided some nice alone time to enjoy the beauty of the land and get lost inside my head.

It was interesting to see the change in the topography of the land as the ride passed on, from the slow, long, curving hills of Jerusalem to the quick, steep up and down and long areas of flat terrain through Kiryat Gat and Sderot. The first part of the ride afforded dramatic, panoramic views of hills and yishuvim while the second half of the ride consisted mostly of open fields turned golden and brown by the dry summer heat and undeveloped land. 

When we arrived in Sderot we had a festive meal of Middle Eastern fare at a local restaurant and then proceeded to the yeshiva, where we were greeted by over a hundred Sderot residents for a Simchat Bet Hashoeva.

The residents of Sderot have been living in constant terror among a barrage of daily Kassam rocket attacks that receive little attention from both the government and the international media. The reason for this is two-fold: the rockets are rudimentary and highly inaccurate so they rarely kill, but instead maim with shrapnel, which is not considered very newsworthy. In addition, the residents of Sderot are mainly poor Russian and Ethiopian immigrants with little political clout. In other words, more often than not, the forgotten ones.

The festivities included music, singing, dancing, and in my opinion, a really bad comedian who kept making stupid jokes about Americans. It was funny (and also a little awkward) to be singing and dancing in the yeshiva still in my cycling clothes with my Camelbak.

Overall, it was a very uplifting day but I look forward to the day when we don’t need to ride to Sderot for solidarity and we can just do it for fun. As one of my fellow cyclists commented while being interviewed when asked why he was doing the ride, “Because we are Sderot and Sderot is us.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. Now if only our government and the international community could appreciate this.

In the moments that the sun set directly upon our cycling envoy and cast a glow over the land, before night fell, I pedaled alone on the shoulder of highway leading to Sderot through the thick silence of dusk. No sirens, no Kassams, just the rhythmic sound of the turn of my pedals and the rotation of my chain. I could see a few cyclists ascending the hill in front of me and if I turned my head I could see a few colorful dots behind. I was in a complete state of peace in what some consider a war zone, but how could I not be? I knew that even in Sderot, as my fellow cyclist implied, we are still home.