Davids Jewish Traveler and Hacker
I recently met with Eline Hoekstra Dresden among the things she gave me along with her book "Wishing Upon A Star, A Tale of the Holocaust and Hope" was a bookmark that I will quote:
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During my years of public speaking, I have been asked repeatedly, "how did you live through the Holocaust?" I usually answer "I don't really know." However, the following list provides examples of things that worked for me (along with luck).
Tools for Survival
- Be alert, not paranoid
- Be optimistic, but realistic
- Find strength in faith (whichever)
- Recognize hidden danger
- Do not ever show weakness
- Listen to "gut" feelings
- Use humor daily
- Draw on inner strength
- Take care of your health
- Stay productive
- Don't let your guard down
- Face danger with courage
- Share your fears with others
- do not ever give up hope
- Before going to sleep, Imagine better times.
*Keep these tools in good repair*
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She is a wonderful woman to speak to and I hope to host her at our shabbat table soon. Eline has applied her skills and humor over her lifetime both in the US and Israel and has passed the age of 80 while keeping the vigor of a much younger person. She has had the nachas of five children, over 30 grand children, and now has 5 great-grandchildren.
Of the survivors of the Shoah that I have met, these skills, especially humor and hope is what keeps these people alive.
Travel Ham Radio
I have moved my whole radio kit to a standard briefcase. Inside you will find my Icom 706 HF and 2 meter transceiver, MFJ-902 10-80 meter tiny antenna tuner, MFJ-4125 25 watt 110/220v to 13v power supply, code key, and a SGC ADSP2 digital signal processing speaker. I will be making a 2 meter wire dipole and HF wire loop antennas to complete my total portability radio system. I still have room for my 2 meter handheld radio and several accessories. I think velcro will make the install more stable and less likely to bend/crush wires in transit.
Fox News just posted a wonderful story that I feel the need to mirror here.
Why I'm Moving to Israel
Monday, August 30, 2004
they usually look at me funny and respond politely.
When I tell them I'm planning to move there permanently in August, the flabbergasted look on their face demands an explanation. I'm a 21-year-old student at NYU majoring in journalism. I have blonde hair and blue eyes and a boyfriend. I come from the average American family, and look like the average American girl. So why am I leaving the land of opportunity to live, permanently, in a land ravaged by war?
A rabbi once told me that when God took Abraham to Canaan and showed him the land, promising it to Abraham's future generations, He also showed him every Jew that was ever to be born. The rabbi went on to explain that, according to the legend, when a Jew stands in the exact spot where thousands of years ago Abraham first beheld him, he becomes intimately and eternally bound to the land. Like many Jews, I had been to this land, now called Israel, numerous times, to see the holy sights and visit the home of my forefathers. And while I felt a connection, and perhaps had the feeling of "coming home" that many Jews boast of, I never viewed the country as anything more than a place of religious and historical significance to visit every once in a while. But two summers ago, when I visited Israel with my family, something was different. I suddenly felt a visceral need to identify with the people and the culture, and so I decided to spend a year abroad studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The only explanation, albeit fantastical, that I can offer is that perhaps that summer I stood in the very place where Abraham first regarded me, so many years ago, and my soul anchored itself in the sacred soil. I was overcome with the realization that there was a country whose land had been promised to me, where millions of my people lived, yet their lives were so different from mine. I wanted to see that land and that life, learn about it, be part of it.
I quickly became part of life in Israel. I got used to having my bag checked every time I went into a store or restaurant, I got used to seeing my Israeli soldier friends walking around with huge M-16s on their shoulders. I mastered haggling with the taxi drivers. Taxis, not buses — that was the rule my parents, and many of my friends' parents, issued before we left. With all the suicide bombings on buses, it just isn't worth the risk. And though I don't travel on buses, I'll admit I still feel frightened walking by a bus, or sitting at a red light in a taxi with a bus in the next lane. It's just too hard to get the television images of blown-up buses out of my head.
Two weeks after I arrived, I was lucky enough to land an internship at The Jerusalem Post, which was an invaluable opportunity for me as a young journalist. There, I was thrown right into the thick of things, with no choice but to learn quickly. On my very first day, I wrote an article that appeared in the newspaper, and while it wasn't front-page news, it was my debut into the world of journalism. The internship was my first step into the "real world." The Post staff treated me like a full-fledged reporter, giving me assignments and deadlines and sending me around the country to gather information. It was great training, and it was often fun. But, living in Jerusalem was also often very stressful.
I remember one night that was particularly nerve-racking. It was a Saturday night. My parents' plane had just taken off after a brief visit, and all my friends were on a weekend get-away hiking in the Golan. I was in my dorm at Hebrew University when I got a phone call from a friend in the Israeli army. He said he couldn't talk, but he wanted to warn me not to leave my dorm that night. "Why?" I asked. "Because we're on our way to Jerusalem right now to look for a terrorist who's on the loose, who according to intelligence is planning on blowing himself up in Jerusalem tonight." I was terrified. I was all alone. I couldn't call my parents, and I was scared to leave my dorm. I had never before experienced such real fear and danger. But in Israel, that sense of fear and danger is the norm.
In Alaska, it's normal to wear snow boots all year round. In New York, that would be absurd. In Israel, the snow boots are simply bulletproof vests. Life is about adjusting, and I'm still struggling with the adjustment. When I told my best friend that I was going to Israel for a year, she couldn't believe it. She couldn't understand why I was going to spend a year of my life in a country filled with angry extremists who would jump at the chance to kill me.
She was correct in that what we see on TV is scary — images of the burned frames of blown-up buses or cafes, the Israeli military in the slums of the Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza. But the majority of the cafes in Israel are modern, popular places where Israelis spend their evenings or lunch breaks, and many Palestinians are not the suffering, impoverished people we see on TV. Many live in mansions in developed Arab villages. I explained all of this to my friend as best I could, but I didn't say what I was really thinking: Honestly, how safe is it to live anywhere these days? Today, terrorism is a global threat. How many New Yorkers were scared to go to work at the World Trade Center on that Tuesday morning in September 2001? But today, everybody is wary, everywhere in the world. The point is that we still go on living. Not just existing, but actually living. We can't live life scared to go around every corner, or none of us would ever leave the house.
It's no different in Israel. Living means putting the fear behind you. Of course, managing the fear is a personal battle. On the one hand, no one wants to forget the 3-year-old child killed by a Palestinian rocket while he was walking to nursery school with his mother. On the other hand, we do want to forget. We want to move on and not dwell on all the sorrow and tragedy. Yet while their survival requires Israelis to harden their hearts to the pain, to take a deep breath and push the grief out of their minds, doing so is slowly turning Israel into a very hardened country. I fear once I live there, I might harden with it; so while some may worry that I will lose my life, I worry more about losing my heart.
It is Israel's mostly futile effort to block out the pain of all the death that is causing them to lose the media war. The Palestinians bring the journalists and cameras into their homes, showcasing their anguish for the world. Everyone can remember the last time they saw an Israeli bulldozer destroying a house, or an Israeli tank plowing through a Palestinian village. But rarely do we see the footage of the Israeli mothers, wives and children crying for lost relatives. We hear the names of the dead, but rarely do we see the victims who remain maimed and crippled. They do exist, but Israel avoids revealing its vulnerable side. So instead, Israelis appear tough and military. Oddly, once I arrived in Israel, I felt further from the war-torn country I was familiar with than when I was at home, watching suicide bombings and shootings on the news every day. There I was, living in what is technically considered East Jerusalem, and I was oblivious to the danger around me. Despite the terror, bombings and deaths, there is a living side to the country, and that's the Israel I became a part of.
And that's my answer to those who can't understand my decision to live in Israel, exactly what Israelis want the world to remember: People are actually living life there. It's not a third-world regime. It's not Afghanistan or Iraq. It's a modern democracy, just like the United States, trying to exterminate terrorism. The roads are paved, there are prestigious hospitals and universities and they even have The GAP and IKEA. But none of that makes news, so we don’t see it — hence the flabbergasted looks when I say that after spending a year in Israel, I’m moving there permanently this summer. So while perhaps it was my religious beliefs that led me to explore the country in the first place, it was the country itself, the people, the culture and the life, that kept me there.
Erica Chernofsky will graduate from NYU with a degree in journalism in January 2005, completing her last semester at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She was an intern with Foxnews.com this summer, and moved to Israel earlier this month.
I was looking at an escape kit I decided to put together 4 years before Sept 11 for my wife who worked in a high-rise office. The kit consists of a climbing grade nylon belt and buckle, 50m of spectra cord, gloves, a hammer, some tubular webbing and a 2 carabieners.
The spectra cord is attached to the webbing with a carabiener the webbing is wrapped around a strong anchor. Break out the window (you may include a automatic centerpunch this is good for popping tempered glass and will crack most glass) put down some edge protection to protect the rope (your suit coat will work nicely). Attach a carabiener to the rope and rappel to safety. Rappelling is safe if you are properly trained and have practiced with your equipment. Spectra is fire resistant but not fire proof. Not as romantic as the executive escape parachutes but much easier to use and affordable.
ALWAYS PLAN AND KNOW YOUR ESCAPE ROUTE
It looks like I have really hosed my SD card and have ordered a MMC card for my Zaurus. The SD card might be saved by a low level formatter but I don't have such a program.
I bought a "Travel Smart" Smart Lock for $5.00 it appears to be a cheap way to lock a room that you are in and deny access to others holding the room key while you are inside. It appears that with a little effort this lock could be forced open but the burglar would make some noise in the process.
Another scary interview I scraped off the web follows today....
The primary purpose for my writing the Jewish traveler blog is to give Jews the tools they need to make Aliyah. I hope with every word that I write that someone will use the skills I have learned to ease their travel to Israel, hopefuly that trip will convince them that Israel can be their new home.
Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com
Friday, Nov. 21, 2003
Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government. Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men’s lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.
In the magazine’s December edition, the former commander of the military’s Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.
Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.
If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”
Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.
“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”
Clothing
Clothes seems to be the big think that people like to overpack. A wool sweater or jeans may be comfortable but cotton and wool tend to be heavy and take alot of space in your bag, I usualy like to go with synthetics. Synthetics sink wash easily, resist stain, dry quickly, and tend to be lighter, often you can also pack them tighter. Nylon zip convertable pants/shorts are appropriate for most casual and outdoor activities including swimming. My wife likes to pack synthetic skirts and either cotton or synthetic blouses wrinkle-free wash-and-wear is a must. Choose dark colored running/trail shoes these will be apropriate on the trail and if properly colored even on Shabbat. Tiva type sandles are heavy but if any swimming is in my plans as I dont like to rip up my feet on rocky river bottoms, flip-flops are suficient, usualy localy available, and lighter if you only want to avoid hostle shower foot fungas
I always pack a nice pair of pants (usualy synthetic black slacks) a white cotton shirt (although I have a synthetic silk shirt too) black socks, and a tie. Steam or a clean pot full of boiling water can both be used to de-wrinkle or iron your clothes for Shabbat. Throwing your clothes into the dryer with a damp towel will also remove wrinkles.
Shabbat
If you are not aquainted with a religious Jewish community you probably don't know about the best oasis to a weary Jewish traveler, Shabbat hospitality with a family in the place you are visiting. Call ahead and almost all observant communities will have a hospitality comitte check the ou.org website. Shabbat begins about an hour before dark know when it comes in. Showing up after Shabbat starts and not respecting the observance of Shabbat in the home of your host is bad form, be nice and enjoy the oppertunity to learn, if you are not sure of the customs ask.
Over the last few weeks since the sailboat trip I have made several overnight camp trips and refined the pack contents. I think that from now on I will try to keep this pack ready to go (Go-Bag)
I have included things that will make life easier in either unplanned camp or urban visit situations especial since I keep kosher and cooking can be a problem otherwise.
You will find this list to be an expanded version of the sail comp out list.
-Rogue Camelback (I want a hydration pack with a wide screw mouth)
-3/4 length Thermarest sleeping pad
-Contrail backpack
-Dorfman Pacific 'boonie' hat
-Petzel Duo headlamp with white LED and high power halogen bulb
-Cell phone charger
-Vector pocket power 70W 12v lighter socket to 110v inverter
-Roll of tight rolled toilet paper
-'stinger' immersion water boiler
-6xAA battery pack for Yaesu radio
-Yaesu FT-411E 2M ham radio w/ni-cad pack
-Coated Nylon tarp, 50ft cord, and 3 aluminum pegs for tent
-Stearns self inflating pillow
-Slumberjack 15deg sleeping mummy bag
-OR bivvy sack Gore-Tex
-Triangia mini pot/pan set without the alcohol burner
-Primus butane stove with electrical ignition (inside triangia set)
-sleeping mask
-Russian hand powered flashlight
-baby wipe porta-pack inside ziplock bag
-mini Army Prayer book
-socks and underwear
-first aid pack
-MSR miniworks water filter
-BNC to U239 adaptor and banana plug for long wire
I would like to buy a cheap (kosher) set of tefillin to keep in this pack as backups as I have forgotten my big carrier before.
I carry the Zaurus 5500, its charger,spare battery, modem, and Wi-FI card every day so it would be with me when camping if I felt the need to compose.
If near ocean or sailing at sea, I would also like a PUR Manual Reverse Osmosis Desalinator. By pumping it separates out fresh drinkable water from salt water by high pressure reverse osmosis. Normally around $600 to $1000 it can be found for much less as coast guard surplus.
Ham Radio Stuff
After some research I want to try the
SGC ADSP2 speaker and either pull the circuit board and solder it into my Icom 706 radio or use it as intended as a plug in to the speaker jack.
The DSP is supposed to be some of the best on the market and really cleans up dirty noise/signal ratio signals on ham radio or shortwave.
Summer Skiing
Last week I took some yeshiva boys from New York for their first try at snow skiing along side Olympic athletes on Mt. Hood.
I switched my bindings from old Ramer cable touring bindings to Silvretta 300's mounted to Asnes 210cm double camber edged skis.
I much prefer these new bindings as they are clearly much stronger and durable than the cable bindings. The Silvrettas have a heel unlock that can be switched with a ski pole, heel lifter blocks that fold back for easier climbing uphill, and a rear adjustable release. These bindings can take mountaineering boots but last weeks skiing trip showed me that my leather LaSportiva Makalu boots are a little too flexible and in turns or small falls will pop out unless very well fitted into the binding.
Ski touring fanny pack contents:
-Strap on nylon climbing skins (once the straps are cut by edges I will paint on adhesive)
-universal glide wax
-Swix snow thermometer
-Swix red and blue kick wax and red klister (klister is gooey messy keep it in 2 ziplock bags because you can't clean it up)
-waxing cork
-first aid pack
-water bottles (you are exercising and the mountain air dries you out fast)
-wax scraper
If doing serious touring I will have my contrail day/ski pack carrying at minimum the following.
-Bolle Shovel (for avalanche rescue and snow caving)
-Ortovox Avalanche beacon
-Kong Avalanche probe
-Gore-Tex Bivvy sack and -20 sleeping bag
-MSR XGK stove with Fuel and lighter
-Small stainless kettle (melting snow for drinking)
-energy foods
-Headlamp
-ACR EPIRB satellite emergency beacon
-2meter handheld radio
-Possibly a 4 season tent
