My First Start-Up

Us kids at the house, 1963

My First Start-Up: Still going strong at fifty!

I have been back to my home in Ottawa only a few times over the past forty years. So when I met Nicole, a scientist from Ottawa at the recent American Society for Microbiology (ASM) meeting in Philadelphia, I implored her to take a few photos of my old home.

So here is the picture of the place we grew up in fifty years ago. The house is much the same as it was them, except that the lawn is fairer, the trees are much larger, and the window frames have been replaced. When I looked at the picture, my eyes clouded. 616 Chadburn. I wonder who lives there today.

I also asked Nicole to take a picture of the apartment building across the street. I wanted to see whether "Scully's mark" was still there after almost fifty years. As a child, I had a friend named Scully who was the first entrepreneur that I ever met. Scully always had new ideas, many about making money. Once he suggested that we go down to Industrial Avenue and cut some bulrushes, and then sell them as decoration from door to door. We went and slew a bunch of bulrushes, but alas, neighbours (I am using the Canadian spelling here) were hesitant to purchase them in their natural brown condition.

"No problem", said Scully. We'll paint them gold and black, that way we can charge more money and they'll be irresistible". We bought some paint and dipped our first bulrush into the black can. It came out black indeed, but the bulrush had sopped up quite a bit of paint and refused to dry, even after an hour on the pavement. "No problem", said Scully. "What we need is to whip the bulrush around our head, the paint will fly off from the centrifugal (centripetal?) force. He proceeded to take the moist, black bulrush and whip it around his head, much the same way that David prepared his slingshot for Goliath. And indeed, when Scully loosened his grip, the bulrush flew into the air.

Unlike David, however, his shot did not hit Goliath's forehead, but rather flew into the brick apartment building across the road, leaving a noticeable, ugly black mark. Scully's mark. For years, we hid the fact that our start-up was responsible for this scar on the neighboring building. But with time, it became one of my favorite tales.

So here, you see it still. Fifty years on. My first start-up left its indelible mark. Thanks for the memories, Nicole!! And yes, we did sell a few painted bulrushes.

A Tooth for a Tooth!

A tooth for a tooth

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein is a famous orthodox rabbi who has made a philanthropic allegiance with famous evangelist Christian leaders, who are also orthodox in their own way (the way of the church, that is). He is founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. With their support, Rabbi Eckstein has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for worthy causes here in the holy land, and has become a celebrated figure. Have a look at this excerpt from the New York Times Magazine:

… Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein has traveled to China to liberate persecuted pastors, hiked through Ethiopia and Siberia in search of vulnerable Jews, advised prime ministers in Jerusalem and met with evangelical Republicans at the White House. His immediate plans include transporting an entire biblical lost tribe from northeastern India to the Holy Land and starting a Spanish-language ministry for the Pentecostals of Latin America. He has even talked about recording some sacred hymns with Debby Boone. And, as Eckstein himself might say, God only knows what he'll do after that…

But when I see pictures of the illustrious Rabbi Eckstein, my mind wanders back to first grade at the Hebrew School (Hillel Academy) in Ottawa, Canada, in 1957, where Yechiel and I were great friends.

Grade one was a frightening experience: one half day learning English subjects with the battleship Mrs. Martin who wandered around class, rapping our knuckles collectively for any single annoyance. The other half day was spent studying our demanding Jewish religion by the benevolent Mr. Werner Bauer (who was kind enough to let this hyperactive kid wander around his classroom all year). I still remember Mr. Bauer's description of the Garden of Eden, as a place where one might dream of fried chicken, and a plate (kosher of course) would suddenly appear. But I didn't like chicken. And I was always afraid the Lord was going to get me for some transgression or other. As an impressionable and neurotic six year-old, I once stood for hours on my bed late at night, with my hand on my head (instead of a kipa), because I couldn't help thinking about what I thought was a solemn prayer (it was actually the Israeli national anthem!).

Alas, I digress. Very often on Saturday, after synagogue, I would head over to Yechiel's house for lunch. His father, Rabbi Simon L. Eckstein, our Rabbi, who was quite stern during Sabbath services, was more lightheaded at home. He would ask me to greet the man under the table before partaking the Sabbath meal. I never saw anyone under the table, but why argue with the Rabbi? I would obediently wish the man who wasn't there "Shabbat shalom", and the Kiddush and meal would commence.

After the Sabbath dinner, the Rabbi and Rebbitzen went upstairs, leaving us juniors in control of the ground floor. Two hyperactive kids on Saturday afternoon. Yechiel and I liked to play soccer in the long hall, where he would invariably win (he was tall, athletic, and imposing, even at the age of six). But the hall was too dark to see the ball, and it was the Sabbath.

No problem. We had our own interpretation of the laws prohibiting manual labor on the Sabbath. We understood the teaching in its most literal sense. Thus, while turning on the lights with one's hands was strictly prohibited (and probably punishable by death), nothing in the Bible said anything about turning on the lights using one's teeth. So we perfected the art of balancing on a chair and turning lights off and on with our fledgling dentition.

After trouncing me soundly (actually quietly, so as not to wake the adults) in the hall, it was time to retire to the den, where we could watch the Ottawa Roughriders (they would go on to win the Grey Cup in 1960) play Canadian football. Turning on and off the tv with our teeth was a cinch. The problem was changing the channels. In those days channels were controlled by a large mechanical knob, one click at a time, and in Ottawa the only two television stations were channels 4 and 13. Changing all these channels with his teeth was an art which Yechiel perfected. I seem to recall that the Rabbi did eventually catch us red-handed (or toothed, in this case).

Over the years, we continued to worship football, alongside religion. After all, Dave Thelen, subsequently became our sports teacher, and I would later shake the hand of the greatest CFL quarterback of them all, Russ Jackson. But that's another story.

Yechiel as a pupil, was good at everything. He was handsome, charming, smart and a great voice (I understood he has five CDs of hassidic music to his credit). During the winter, we would play football during recess. On one occasion, Yechiel had caught the ball and was on his way to a decisive touchdown. I was the lone defender. I lunged at his feet has he confidently ran around me and managed to trip him up in the snow. Tackling Yechiel was such a rare and exceptional incident, that I remember this brief moment of childhood glory to this day.

After elementary school we parted ways for several decades. About ten years ago, early Sunday morning, I was watching tv (again), this time in a hotel in the US while attending a scientific meeting (dental research, as it so happened). Pat Robertson (I am always mesmerized by evangelical shows every Sunday morning in the States) said "Now I bring you live our dear friend at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein." There he was, Yechiel, tv videoconferencing with his buddy the Reverend in front of millions of American viewers.

More recently, I was playing jazz at a local reception of some 500 people honoring the orthodox volunteers ("Zaka") who identify bodies (sometimes body parts) following terrorist attacks. It was a surrealistic experience. Most of the people there were ultraorthodox, and here we were playing jazz standards (including "All of Me", which I joked, might be an appropriate anthem for what they do).

Suddenly I heard a voice from the distant past talking in anglicized Hebrew. Stupefied, I left the band and entered the gigantic adjacent hall. There, addressing the reception, was none other than Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (his organization is one of their major donors). After Yechiel's introduction, I managed to say hello briefly, and then he went back to his table, where he rejoined Shimon Peres and Bibi Netanyahu.

What can I tell you? I'm looking at this famous international figure, who raises hundreds of millions of dollars and chums it up with famous evangelists and heads of state, and all I can think of is how well his teeth are still functioning fifty years on. Shame on me!

Frank Parkinson

It is the early summer of 1959. Ottawa. The crocuses have blossomed.
I have just completed my first year's study of piano with the formidable Sandra Coupal (I am glad to see there is now a prize given in her memor each year). She is a stern, but excellent teacher of classical piano on Daly Street. I am one of her better young first year students, and am elected to play God Save the Queen at the yearly concert. My other piece is Clowns by Kabalevsky. I can still hum the tune.
After months of practice and preparation, the day of the concert arrives. The students are catatonic. Like gymnasts, we stick our hands into powder, to keep the sweat from causing our fingers to slip. I can still remember how nervous I was.
The concerts take place at the cavernous Academic Hall. It seems to me like there were five hundred people in the audience (more like 150 according to my parents). I finish my pieces thankfully, and can lean back and listen to the others. Helen Fields was good. But the best of all was another first year student, who was about sixteen at the time.
His name was Frank Parkinson, and he was awesome. I can't remember the piece he played, but it was daunting for any first year student of any age.
Two years later, another concert at Academic Hall. I can't remember the pieces I played, but I recall Frank's performance like it was yesterday. He played Rhapsody in Blue for two pianos, accompanied by our teacher, Sandra Coupal. It was awesome. Frank blew the audience away. Gershwin was bopping in his grave. It was clear to all of us that Frank was on his way to becoming an international musical
phenomenon.
Where did Frank go from there? I have no idea. He disappeared. The very next day he stopped playing the piano. As it turned out, Frank's dream was to play Gershwin's masterpiece. He did, and that was that.
I have no idea what mountains he has climbed since. But I remember his remarkable tale to this very day.

Beautiful Lovers

Leonard Cohen lived just down the road from me. The road from Ottawa to Montreal, that is. Strangely, he didn't exist for me until the summer of 1969, when someone sang "Hey, that's no way to say goodbye" at Camp Galil in Pennsylvania. Since then, it's been a love affair. My love for his eternal words and music.

I saw him twice. Once, in concert in Jerusalem (Binyenei Hauma, 1972 or 1973). He walked offstage halfway through a song towards the intermission. He told the packed audience that the music wasn't right and that if he couldn't get it right he would refund the tickets. The worried impressario came on stage at intermission and asked us to show him our affection and sing him a song when he came back on stage. Boy, did we ever. He sat down on stage and listened to the audience sing "Heveinu Shalom Aleichem" for him. The rest of his performance was awesome.

The second time I met him in person was in 1984. It was at a party in his honor thrown by the Canadian Embassy at a posh Tel Aviv Hotel (not the Chelsea). I remember him well. He was so pleasant and unassuming. I told him that I had always wanted to be a musician. He told me that he wanted to be a scientist. We called it even. I was so excited that I forgot to ask him the critical questions of my existence here on Earth. Who really were the Sisters of Mercy? More importantly, who was the guy in "Famous Blue Raincoat" and why was he building his little home in the desert. Was he a kibbutznik (sometimes I imagined him milking cows in Yotvata, and writing his memoirs)? These are questions that not even Stephen Hawking can answer.

What sticks in my mind in particular is the conversation I had just completed with R.S., a professor of literature at one of our universities. He lamented that Leonard Cohen had turned into a songwriter, abandoned his 'promising' career as a poet. After all, why inhabit the beating hearts of hundreds of millions of beautiful lovers, when you could be critically appraised by a couple of thousand lobotomized intellectuals ?

Sing on, Leonard.

Passover, Easter, Judaism, Christianity

There is something special about starting one's blog on Passover. Passover is the holiday of starting afresh, the Jewish people leaving Egypt and finding their freedom in the Holy Land. This is essentially what happened to me when I left Canada in 1969. In Canada, your 'Jewishness' is defined by the Jewish community (which synagogue you attend, which Jewish school you attend) and by the non-Jewish community. In a small place like Ottawa in the 1950s and 1960s (about 250,000 people, with only 5,000 Jews) I encountered a lot of antisemitism, including people who had never met a Jew in their entire life. Antisemitism for me included having rocks thrown at you, being beat up, having a friend ask "How could you be Jewish if you're such a nice kid?", and most poignantly, being told by my best friend in high school that I was no longer welcome to visit their house, as his parents found out I was Jewish. There was also the following question asked by a neighbour of ours, whom I had babysat for years as a child: "How come you are such nice people, yet you killed Jesus?". I don't want to get involved in the question of who killed Jesus, as there is another Mel who thinks he knows all the answers to this question. But, other Mel, it was 2000 years ago, nobody I or you know was around at the time.

Back to Passover. Who knows whether the Israelites were in Egypt, whether they wandered around for forty years, and how they received the ten commandments and entered the Promised Land. Is it all that important to 'know' what cannot be known? But like millions of Christians and Jews around the world, I was brought up on these stories and I love them. I don't spend too much time pondering what actually happened. But anyone coming to visit me in Israel can visit the Jordan river, which is not "deep and wide" nor "chilly and cold", but rather a slowly meandering creek. In Canada, it wouldn't even merit a name.

Growing up as a semi-observant Jewish kid in Ottawa, we were not allowed to read the New Testament, learn about Christianity (or evolution), sing Christmas caroles (I once almost got thrown out of class for refusing to sing Christmas songs in Latin). How myopic in retrospect. The older I get, the clearer it becomes that Christianity and Judaism are practically the same religion. People with anti-semitic tendencies should remember that Jesus was a Jew, followed Jewish traditions, and preached among Jews. He never met a Christian his whole life. He celebrated the Jewish New Year, fasted on Yom Kippur, and I suppose he was circumcised according to Jewish traditions. As a boy, he played with Jewish kids.

My soul mate in Canada is Chris McCulloch. I will dedicate at least an entire post to this remarkable guy. He changed my life. While on sabbatical at the University of Toronto almost twenty years ago, Chris invited my wife to Easter mass. I wouldn't go , but my wife, having grown up in Israel and free of the teachings of Canadian rabbis, or fear of assimilation, went and enjoyed herself. Chris and I spent a lot of time talking about religion. It turns out that Christians are essentially people who believe the same basic things we Jews do, but have evolved some analogous rituals, observe a similar Sabbath on the next day, and celebrate Easter instead of Passover. Christians think that Jesus is the son of God, and will return someday. That's fine with me. But because I grew up in a Jewish household, I think that he was a rabbi. I don't know anyone in the living world who knows the answer to this one. So the point I'm trying to make is that people should live and let live. If believing in God makes you a better human being, great. If going to church or synagogue makes you a more benevolent person, wonderful. If celebrating Easter or Passover makes you a generous and loving mortal, wonderful. For me, that's what it's all about. By the time every one of us finds out if there really is a supreme being and/or an afterlife, it may be too late. So my recipe for all you Christians and Jews who have very similar beliefs and may or may not know it, is as follows: Live a good life according to the teachings of Jesus and Hillel. Treat thy neighbor well. Do good deeds. And when you die, one of two things will have happened. Either you'll have lived a decent and worthy life, without the angst of having gone against your upbringing, and will be justly rewarded by the Supreme Being, or you'll have to settle with the reward of having had a rewarding life. But to quote that song from Blood, Sweat and Tears, "I'll never know by living, only my dying will tell..."

So I try to be a decent person (not always successfully, I am ready to admit), I go on eating my Passover matzos and shunning leavened bread for a week each year, not knowing whether there is any truth in the Exodus story, but loving it anyway, and reliving it every year, with parents and kids.
Happy holidays, friends.

MVFP (my very first post...)

Dear Friends,
This is my first post, so please be kind. First, I'd like to thank my manager, Alon Amit, for setting it up so quickly. What I hope to do here is discuss various aspects of my personal, scientific and musical life in the hope that it is of some interest or benefit to others.

I was born in Winnipeg and grew up in Ottawa, at a time when there were only six teams in the NHL, and the CFL was much more popular in Canada than American football. I loved going with my Dad to Landsdowne Park, becoming intoxicated with the cigar smoke, and watching the Roughriders clobber the Hamilton Tiger Cats. We used to go for lime-flavoured ice cream at some small dairy right in town, I wish I could remember its name.

I attended Hillcrest High School, the school was just a few years old when we started. For some reason, I declined to study music, and 'majored' in things like woodwork. I was a total disaster in woodwork and still can't hammer a nail into the wall without injuring the wall, the nail or my finger (hammer remains intact, though). I studied with some very talented kids, and wonder whether any went on to have illustrious careers.

I left Ottawa after grade thirteen (does that still exist anywhere?) and came to Israel for one year. That turned into a very long year, and with the exception of a year in Toronto on sabbatical, have lived here practically ever since.

Some seven years ago, during one of my visits abroad to talk about bad breath (what I do for a living, along with smelling people), I met some people from Ottawa at a tiny train station in England (somewhere near Chester, the name will come to me). They told me that Hillcrest had become one of the best high schools in Ontario. In grade nine I did really well on a math competition and received a slide rule (who remembers what that thing is?) from none other than Russ Jackson. Turns out, I had a lucky day, and bombed out in subsequent math competitions. I have really fond memories of a lot of teachers at that school, particularly Ken Crouch (I understand he won the prime minister's award, he deserves it) and E.W. Benoit who turned a bunch of science nerds into lit lovers.

I studied classical piano with Sandra Coupal on Daly Street. I was taking a piano lesson when John F. Kennedy was assasinated. Isn't it funny how you remember exactly where you were on that day, at that hour? Sandra was a great and demanding piano teacher, I learned recently that a prize is awarded in her name each year. Sandra had a fantastic student (I think his name was Frank Parkinson) who began piano at sixteen and was wonderfully talented. Within three years he learned to play "Rhapsody in Blue" and performed with our teacher at the concert she organized every two years at Academic Hall. The very next day, Frank stopped taking lessons. It turned out that he had this dream to play this particular piece, he succeeded, and that was that. This is one of the poignant stories of my youth. Where are you today, Frank? Have you gone back to the piano?

Anyway, this was (at the age of ten) my first exciting exposure to George Gershwin and jazz. Too bad I didn't follow up on it till I was twenty. I guess it was just one of those things.