Where was OurCrowd When I Needed Them?

August 15, 2013

Where was OurCrowd when I needed them 10 years ago, back when I was trying to start a company and couldn’t find anyone to fund it? For those who haven’t followed the torrent of press about the company lately, OurCrowd is the latest startup from serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jon Medved, who has founded some of Israel’s most interesting ventures […]

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Watching The Clock at the Wine Festival

August 7, 2013

One of the highlights of the local summer scene, the Israel Wine Festival, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. My wife and I – along with many thousands of visitors from around the country – anxiously watch the clock waiting for the week when we can descend upon the Israel Museum in Jerusalem to sample some of Israel’s best […]

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Lining up for the FoodTrip

July 30, 2013

We came for the food but stayed for the line – that magnificent, long and winding, eager and utterly un-Israeli orderly line that was so unexpected the program’s organizer felt compelled to break into the music, take the mic and comment on its very existence. The food and the line were both part of this […]

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Waze in the South Pacific

July 24, 2013

That Waze is one of Israel’s biggest hi-tech success stories of the last year – perhaps even the last decade – is old news by now. The crowd-sourced mapping and traffic app has saved countless hours and hassles by travelers around the world. But just how far has Waze penetrated? Would it work on, say, a small […]

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Frequently Asked Questions about Better Place (from an Electric Car Owner)

June 30, 2013

As owners of a Renault electric vehicle, we have been deluged with questions since Better Place — the company that runs the electric car network in Israel — announced its bankruptcy at the end of last month. Since many of the questions tend to be the same, I put together a brief Q&A on those […]

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Dan Ariely and the Black Market

June 23, 2013

The most thrilling session at the Israeli Presidential Conference last week was not the panel on “Should We Wait It Out: Israel and a Changing Middle East” which featured three U.S. and Israeli ambassadors and a former head of the Mossad. It was not Yair Lapid’s speech on how integration of the haredim will produce an economic […]

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Electric Parade

June 10, 2013

There were two parades taking place on Friday in Tel Aviv. Just a few kilometers from the better exposed of the two, the city’s annual Gay Pride Parade, a smaller group was standing up for its right to make the world a better place in its own way. Several hundred owners of 100% electric cars from the […]

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Jerusalem’s Old-New Train Station in the Movies

May 21, 2013

In 1984 I worked on an educational film produced by the Gesher Foundation. Titled “The Journey,” it told the story of a 13-year-old boy during World War II Russia who was being sent off by his aunt to stay safe with distant family. It was also his bar mitzvah, but the boy knew nothing about Jewish coming […]

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Dirty Diapers of Shavuot Past

May 13, 2013

It was Shavuot 1985. I had finished college and had come to Israel the year before, where I was in the flush of religious epiphany. Everything was new, exciting and, as I gushed to family and friends back home, true – my opinions still untarnished by politics, the wisdom that comes when you’ve got more than 23 years of […]

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Alt and Indie Discoveries at Jacob’s Ladder

May 6, 2013

Jacob’s Ladder is having a musical identity crisis. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Now in its 37th year, Jacob’s Ladder is best known as Israel’s preeminent folk, country, bluegrass and Irish music festival. Held twice a year at Kibbutz Ginosar north ofTiberius, the spring version just concluded this past weekend. And while there was ample evidence of […]

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