Around the Jewish world

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Melbourne woman remains in Nepal to help

KATHMANDU – An Australian Jewish woman who found herself in Nepal during the devastating earthquake, has promised to stay in the country and help reconstruct it. Chani Gurewicz from Melbourne arrived in Nepal just a few days before the quake, but says that she now feels a calling to stay and make a contribution. “I’m going to try to do everything I can,” she said this week.

She planned to go the following morning to a remote village with a group of volunteers who will start reconstructing some buildings and erecting toilets for residents.

Gurewicz, 29, said she arrived in Nepal to enjoy the country, but “I’m not in this world to only experience the positive stuff”, so she plans to stay on an open-ended basis to help. “I just got here; I don’t want to leave Nepal,” she said. – Australian Jewish News

Israeli paramedics designed world’s 1st ‘pocket’

version of lifesaver

JERUSALEM -Among the Israeli medical innovations that paramedic Dov Maisel brought to Nepal to treat victims of the devastating earthquake, was the Pocket BVM (bag valve mask), a uniquely collapsible version of an essential device that emergency medical crews need for manual resuscitation and respiratory support. Maisel isn’t only a user of the Pocket BVM, he’s also one of its inventors.

On the market since 2007 from the Jerusalem-based company MicroBVM, the inexpensive Pocket BVM folds into a protective case, allowing EMS workers to fit 20 of the devices into the space of two regular-sized resuscitators – yet once unfolded, the units look and operate the same as regular ones. For responders to mass casualty scenes such as in Nepal, the ability to carry several BVMs is critical.

Some 100 000 units of the Pocket BVM are in use all over the world. It has become the resuscitator of choice for all branches of the US military, Nato forces, the Israel Defence Forces and civilian emergency medical response teams around the globe. – Israel21c

Jewish doctor honoured for bravery

LONDON – A Jewish doctor has been recognised for her quick thinking and bravery after she saved a man who had jumped onto the tracks at a London tube station.

Debra Fine, from Highgate, was honoured by British Transport Police with a prestigious Chief Constable’s Commendation.

Guests at the award ceremony heard how Fine, who was a medical student at the time, and is now a doctor, was waiting for a train at Tottenham Court Road station, when she saw a man step down from the platform onto the tracks just as a train was entering the station.

Without a thought for her own safety, she grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him back onto the platform before the train could hit them.

Fine then tried to calm him down and went to seek help from station staff. However the man had run off when she returned.

In an act of kindness and commitment she searched the station and found him again and stayed with him until police officers arrived. – Jewish Chronicle

Canadian Orthodox rabbis note shift on LGBTQ inclusion

MONTREAL – While Canadian modern-Orthodox rabbis aren’t having the kind of public discussion about including LGBTQ Jews like their counterparts did recently in New York, many say they’ve been grappling with the issue for years and agree there’s been a shift toward greater sensitivity to the issue.

Rabbi Michael Whitman of Adath Israel Poale Zedek Anshei Ozeroff Synagogue in Hampstead, Quebec and former president of the Rabbinical Council of Montreal, said that in the past two decades, modern-Orthodoxy has moved from the attitude that homosexuality is deviant to “we don’t agree with the behaviour, but want to support the difficulties [gay and lesbian] people face”. – Canadian Jewish News

Reporter: Obama lied about Bin Laden elimination

LONDON – In an article in the London Review of Books, Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh attacked US President Barack Obama, claiming that the president lied to the American public about the events that lead to the elimination of Osama bin Laden.

Seymour Hersh, formerly a reporter for the New York Times, claims that US President Barack Obama lied to the American people about the functioning of the US Special Forces in Pakistan in the raid in which Osama bin Laden was eliminated, so that he would be able to take credit for the mission.

In the article, published in the prestigious magazine the London Review of Books, Hersh claims that Obama caused chaos in the American intelligence community, forcing it to co-operate with his version of events. In the article, Hersh quotes sources from the Pakistani intelligence community and the US Navy, who all claim that the White House and CIA lied to the public repetitively with regard to the raid on Bin Laden’s hideout. – Jerusalem Online

Calls for emissaries to combat global rise in anti-Semitism

JERUSALEM – As Jews around the world are exposed to a rise in physical and verbal violence, the Bnei Akiva school system in Israel is calling on its members to strengthen Jewish communities around the world and is working to encourage the relocation of those communities to Israel.

In partnership with World Bnei Akiva Movement, the organisation held a conference at the Tzfira Girls’ High School on Sunday evening, attended by some 250 teachers, to call on educators to become emissaries, helping to fight anti-Semitism and assimilation.

“Despite the challenges we have here in Israel, it is a mitzvah to become an emissary and to wake up the Jewish dreamers and bring them to Israel,” said Rabbi Haim Drukman, head of the Centre for Bnei Akiva Yeshivot.

He asked: “How is it that they have not yet moved to Israel? What else needs to happen?”

The conference hosted a number of booths with information on different organisations through which the educators can become emissaries. – Jerusalem Post