Dear Friends, shalom,
Traveling by train is really catching on in Israel; the railway station in Modiin is complete and now Emanuel can take the train to Tel Aviv to see clients and go to court.
My friend Shaul now double hops to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, instead of driving all the way to Tel Aviv he drives as far as Lydda, parks his car there for IS15 and goes the rest of the way to Tel Aviv by train.
Trains were introduced towards the end of the 19th century by the last Turkish sultan, Abdul Hamid, in an effort to establish better lines of communication between his capitol, Istanbul and his far flung colonies, like Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
They are a better method of mass transport than busses, which we’ve been using exclusively until now, but they can be disrupted more easily, as was shown in World War I when Lawrence of Arabia destroyed most of the Hejaz railway to prevent the transfer of reinforcements to the Turkish Army and in the prelude to Israel’s war of Independence when the Haganah, in protest of a British White Paper restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine in 1946, destroyed 11 railway bridges connecting Palestine with the surrounding, belligerent, Arab countries.1
No matter what is done to beautify them mass transport systems remain ugly monsters. At least trains can’t go off the rails (unless deliberately pushed off) so they can’t, like busses go cluttering up every picturesque, town and country road they like.
When she was a little baby we used to take Tamar to where we wanted, like the park or the beach, now she’s grown up (5 years old) and she takes us to her favorite places like the fun fair, known in Israel as the Lunar Park because it makes people like me go crazy; I even went with her on a nausea inducing contraption, euphemistically called the “ballerina”. Tamar loved it then gaily skipped and danced her way to the flying swings and the spaceship while I tottered after her, battling my head out of my stomach.
Last week my friend Shaul sent me a very shocking circular letter about cruelty to animals. The first thought which came to me on reading it was a quote from Marcel Proust.
“And so it is that the sheep, the chickens and the bullocks whose agony we endure without giving it a second thought because it is necessary to our enjoyment are not the only guiles victims who we daily allow to be sacrificed.” (Jean Santuel p.88)
The cruel way birds are snared is another example of cruelty to animals for the sake of satisfying man’s enjoyment.
This was described by Prof. Mordecai Kislev2 in a lecture at the annual seminar of the Association for the Botanical Garden on Mt. Scopus.
Using fruit from the Cordia Sinensis a tree, known in Hebrew as the Gofnan of the desert3 poachers make gum which they smear on sticks placed where little birds, usually tired from their long journey of migration, come to rest.
Later the hunter collects the stuck, vainly fluttering birds, plucks their feathers, roasts or pickles them and sells them as delicacies to rich gourmet buyers. No less than 2 million birds are snared annually in this way.
Both the cruelty described in Shaul’s letter, which I mention further down the page and bird snaring are very ancient and carried out simply to indulge pleasure not to meet a necessity of survival.
The descriptions on the walls of the Pyramids show that the rich and powerful employed simple people who did the actual hunting. The payment from the pharaohs obviously desensitized any feeling of pity they might have had for the sweet, innocent little animals they were causing so much suffering.
These cruel habits are so ancient they originate in an era when man was a hunter in the pre Neolithic period, about 15000 years ago. Some people are willing even eager to return to that ancient way of life for the sake of money and pleasure.
Unfortunately many greedy people know that they can get rich by selling delicacies like little birds and meat from still live animals and fancy furs of animals whose skins are taken off them while they’re still alive.
One example of this kind of person is Esau who is obviously a hunter because of the pleasure he gets from the activity, the tasty meat it provides and because his father Isaac likes game so much that he’s prepared to appoint him, the primitive hunter as the leader of the Jewish People to follow in his footsteps.4
Obviously, however, one needs more than pleasure and tasty game for survival. One needs basic food that will help him face the difficulties of life in order to survive.
Jacob possesses this necessary food, lentils, because he developed from being a hunter to being a farmer while Esau remained in the hunting stage.
According to scientists like Prof. Abu5 lentils is a basic food which provides Triptopane, which makes the stomach produce Cerotanin6 which promotes alertness, but lentils in the wild produce hardly any seeds, certainly not enough to make soup.7
Jacob had learned the skill of domesticating and cultivating plants necessary for survival. His bowl of lentil soup was the result of many years of experiment, study and change in lifestyle.
Jacob represents the man who studies and finds answers to the problem of human survival. Being an example of progress and survival he is the true leader of his people not Esau who lives by instinct and the pleasure motive.
Rebecca, being aware of the need to have such a man as the leader of a nation and not a primitive hunter, dresses him up as a hunter and easily fools blind, old Isaac, the symbol of the past which man must leave behind in order to survive.
Esau’s willingness to sell his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup is a symbol of how desperately the primitive man needs the more educated man in order to survive.
The cruel slaughterers of innocent birds and animals are poor people whose desire for pleasure and money dull any sensitivity they have for the suffering they cause.
But the real criminals are wealthy educated people who use their wealth to tempt others to return to primitive ways of living.
Their crime is doubly damning because instead of teaching simple people to also become educated they use the knowledge of survival which they have acquired to exploit the majority of mankind by keeping them retarded and uneducated tempting them with delusions of wealth.
Nobody sees the pain of the animals; the hunters are blinded by money and the rich only see the elegance of the coat or shawl and the gorgeous taste of a little morsel of live meat as it slips down their powdered throats.
Wishing you a great no news day
Yours truly
Leon Gork
Notes:
1 The night of the bridges 16/17 June 1946
2 Prof. Kislev of the faculty of Life Sciences of Bar Ilan University at the annual seminar of the Botanical Garden on Mt. Scopus which I attended on Sunday.
3 For a picture go to (http://flora.huji.ac.il/browse.asp?lang=en&action=specie&specie=CORSIN)
4 Genesis 27 and Genesis 25:27-34
5 Prof. Abu is Prof. of nutrition and the environment of the faculty of Agriculture of the Hebrew University who also spoke at above seminar.
6 For an interesting article (but quite long) on Serotonin go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin
7 According to an article in Haaretz newspaper (11/4/08) the results were published in The Journal for Archaeological Science. The article refers only to the small pea but in his lecture Prof. Abu referred to the lentil
* For pictures go to jerusalemwalks.com/israelflora.
Also http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro99/web1/Byrd.html
Come for a Jerusalem Walk with Leon Gork
Jerusalemwalks.com
legork@netvision.net.il
Tel: 052 3801867