shabbat shalom 12.11.09

Hi everyone, The EBONE meeting in Thessaloniki, Greece, is winding down.  We have a half day left of summaries.  It's been interesting, and I think the Israeli group accomplished what we really needed to do here: update the European team on our activities, strengthen connections with other parts of the project, make some plans for the coming year, and see if we can raise funds for additional work we need to do.  All that looks feasible. The Israeli team is way ahead of the rest of the project, to the point where we really needed to reconnect and make sure we are not running way ahead in the wrong direction.  During the coming year we will need to develop ad hoc working groups by teleconference and VoIP systems to tackle specific problems, and we already know the face to face meetings will not be enough.   So more high tech comes into play..... In contrast, Thessaloniki has been a great city since Hellenistic times.  It is mostly clean and neat, very Greek, but the cities treasures are many churches from the Byzantine era (which lasted a thousand years and ended about 500 years ago when the Turks conquered Constantinople and Turkey became Moslem).  These ancient churches are really gems, still in use, but so old that the ground has risen around them and you have to step down to enter them.  (We are used to that in Israel, but it is startling for other Europeans.) Thessaloniki also is on the northern end of Greece, serving the Balkans as a port.  It was the point of entry of Christianity to the Slavs, and Cyrus, bishop of Thessaloniki, was the person who translated the Bible into Slavic, inventing an alphabet derived from Greek in order to do so.  St. Cyrus is still revered in the Slavic churches for that.  This is the city where the Greek Orthodox Church evolved into the Russian Orthodox church and all the other Slavik churches, essentially. Thessaloniki not only sits on an earthquake-prone fault line, it also sits on a biological fault line.  I'm seeing an odd mixture of continental and mediterranean vegetation: broad leaved deciduous oaks standing over mediterranean Cistus maquis, for example.  It's got one foot in the sea, and the other in the mountains.  Mt. Olympus itself is clearly visible across the bay. I still have a day and a half to explore after the conference ends.  So far, this being a university town (Aristotle University, no less; Aristotle taught Alexander the Great here) - the town is full of bookstores.  I managed to find a cookbook for the Jews of Greece (including Bulgaria) which is going to be grabbed pretty quickly when I get home.....I also found Peter Graves' classic Mythology of Greece.  Kinda fun reading about Zeus and Athena while gazing across at Mt. Olympus..... The food is great, and it is very relaxed.  I'll be sorry to leave! shabbat shalom, Linda