Vineyard Magazine Feb.2013

Isaiah 5:7 “for the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel”.

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Glimpses of Israel

Jerusalem Overlooking the Hinnom Valley toward Abu Tor south of Jerusalem 2 The Misled Anti-Semite • 5 Thwarting the Tomb-Robbers • 10 Bright Way to Convert Greenhouse Gas to Biofuel • 12 Thousands of Hours Battery… And it’s Green Too • 14 Israeli Brew May Be Your Cup of Tea Published by David House Fellowship Inc.

The Vineyard February 2013

THE MISLED ANTI-SEMITE

My friends, in my last message I took you up for an aerial survey — a bird’s-eye view — of the second book of the Hebrew Bible, known to Tenachists as Shmot and to English readers as Exodus. On that occasion we viewed this whole Book of Exodus at a glance and thus captured its contents.

Pharaoh didn’t know, nor was he willing to discover, that the Jewish people, Israel, is not so much a nation, nor a race, nor a religion, as a God formed INSTRUMENT; hence, when Pharaoh proclaimed anti-Semitism as a national policy, he entered the arena against God Himself!

We saw its three distinct areas of revelation which, you will remember, we designated:

Driven by the unfounded fear that his Jewish subjects would “take over” Egypt and its economy into their own hands, he enforced a roster of repression through his drivers who flogged unmercifully the embondaged Israelites.

1. Repression in Egypt.

2. Release to Sinai.

3. Revelation at Sinai.

Come, my friends, embark with me on a fascinating and instructive exploration of these same regions at ground level.

Repression in Egypt! No matter where or upon whom its iron hand falls repression crushes the song out of life. Tyranny is an eternal orphan born of unlove between the spiritually dead parents of Fear and Hate.

And as I bid you descend to Egypt’s ancient sands, I ask you to regard the tyrant Pharaoh “who knew not Joseph” (Exodus 1:8); nor did he know Joseph’s ever-glorious God. Thus, knowing neither, neither did he know God’s redemptive plan and purpose. But worse – he was not willing to enquire.

Thus his ignorance, entering into a destructive alliance with his own unwillingness, catapulted him against the irresistible tide of the Divine Will to his own frightful detriment.

It is an irreparable loss not to know “Joseph” nor Joseph’s God, but it is positively suicidal to mix unwillingness with such ignorance.

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The folly of this Pharaoh can be found repeated down the corridors of time and over the wide areas of the earth in spite of the fact that History enters the witness box and gives her irrefragable evidence that the Jewish people have always made valuable, permanent and constructive contributions of time, talent and treasure to the public interest of the country giving them shelter and citizenship.

We discover this folly again in the Pharaoh of Germany — Adolph Hitler. In crushing and destroying the children of Israel in the Germany of our days, Hitler plunged his wanton and insensate knife deep into the bosom of a precious German daughter of culture and enlightenment born into his very own family as a priceless heritage by the Jewish people who formed an invaluable and integral part of his national entity.

When Hitler intoxicated his thoughtless nation to follow his insane policy of antiSemitism he destroyed himself and the State he professed to serve. Hitlerite Germany

committed national suicide when she drained the poison-goblet of Jewish-hate placed in her hand by the hate-inflamed Pharaoh of the early half of the last century — Adolph Hitler.

Unquestionably, national anti-Semitism is national suicide. Hate is always hurtful, hurting both the hater and the hated; but Jew-hate is not just hurtful, it is perilous because it invokes the operation of a specific Divine principal of God-initiated retribution!

Of the Jewish people, God’s Revealed Word declares: “I will bless them that bless you and curse him that curses you” and again history enters the witness-box and points to the poppied fields of ages past studded with the weed-grown tombs of whole nations who have committed national self-murder by permitting themselves to be inoculated with the deadly virus of Jew-hate.

God has declared that every nation that persecutes Israel, the Jewish people, will come under His condign chastisement. This is a spiritual principle. Where is the mighty Assyrian nation today? Where is the swagger of Sennacherib? The pretensions of Pul? The arrogance of Assurbanipal?

“The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold” says Byron.

Yet Assyria became party to her own selfdestruction when she unconsciously aligned herself against this Divine spiritual principle.

Be it the bombast of Babylon or the heroics of Hitler, the outcome is the same — Jew-

hate will seal the fate of any nation that indulges it. One’s ears almost echo again with the menacing bark of Hitler’s anti-Jewish utterances like the staccato rattle of his many murderous machine-guns mowing down his helpless Jewish victims in the relentless prosecution of his Satanic vow to destroy Israel utterly from the earth!

But the course of the ages and the sure testimony of God would make no exception for Adolph Hitler — “I will ... curse him that curses you” is a Divine attitude that has never been revoked. Where is Germany today?

And where is Hitler today? One is reminded of the words of Shakespeare: “Imperious Caesar!

Dead and turned to clay; now stops a hole to keep the wind away!”

Yes! The body of Hitler is dead, but he is a patriot indeed who warns his nation that the foul spirit of Hitler still marches on, devilishly beckoning other nations to follow him in selfwreck upon the rocks of hate.

May the free world be stabbed awake to this peril of anti-Semitism. One has well said: “Anti-Semitism is not merely a Jewish concern; it is the concern of all men who care for justice, decency and kindness, and who value the individual freedom won by centuries of struggle against tyranny and privilege.” (“The Folly of Anti-Semitism,” Dark and Sidebottom).

The menace of xenophobia is recognized and the name of one of America’s great national figures is quaintly and effectively employed in this catchy little refrain:

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Thwarting the “A ‘ski’ or ‘witz’ or ‘off’ or ‘cu’, when added to a name, Just teaches us the family or the town from which it came; A name like Thomas Jefferson in some lands o’er the sea, Would not be Thomas Jefferson, but Thomas Jefferski; Or Jefferwitz or Jefferoff, or maybe Jeffercu — So do not let a ‘ski’ or ‘off’ or ‘witz’ seem strange to you; I feel the same towards ev’ry name, no matter how it ends, For people with the strangest names can be the best of friends.”

God has and is preserving Israel for a Goddeclared SPIRITUAL MISSION to the world at the close of this present age and although Israel is currently suffering, as prophesied, for a major national folly which occurred 2,000 years ago, yet he is being preserved by God for the equally prophesied recognition and repudiation of that folly.

But, my friends, we must return to Egypt!

Ancient Egypt! At the very words our minds have become an immense auditorium knowing no limitations of time and space.

We behold the blue stream of the mighty Nile gently stroking the irregular yellow beaches where the eager desert has pressed its sands ever closer into the cooler contact with the seductive caress of those lazy, gliding waters.

Wonderingly, the sentinel palm-trees strain upwards, tense and listening. Listening to the

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sweaty groans of the enslaved children as they writhe under the lashes of the task-masters.

But this was not travail without terminus; this was travail with a tryst; the future, bursting with history yet to be fulfilled, was rushing to this Egyptian rendezvous with destiny.

Egypt! The womb of the Messianic nation!

The daughter of Egypt, conceived by the seed of Isaac, was waiting to be delivered of her man-child Israel. Yet, here was nature made unnatural, for it was not she — Egypt, the bearer — who travailed in birth pangs, but Israel, the yet-unborn, which laboured waiting to be brought forth.

No wonder the stately palms strained their leafy ears to catch the burning sighs of the sons of Israel, for here was pregnancy itself pregnant; pregnant with the sorrows of the Saviour and the song of the saved!

In my next message we shall tune our ears in anticipation of the first recorded song of the Bible, the song that is ever the sequence of salvation.

Dr Lawrence Duff-Forbes (1900–1964) Founding Director of David House Fellowship Inc. This article is an extract from the very popular radio series, “Treasures From Tenach”, which are also transcribed. Both audio (click MP3 tab, then “047MisledAntisemite.mp3”, and transcriptions are available for free download at www.thevineyard.org.au .

Tomb-Robbers MY DEAR FRIENDS, in the year 1875 an amazing discovery was made which led to another almost unbelievable disclosure which culminated in a final revelation that made such words as ‘fabulous’, ‘stupendous,’ and ‘priceless’ quite inadequate to describe it.

The first discovery, in 1875, was when one Abd-el-Rasul chanced upon a hidden opening in the rocks between the Valley of the Kings and Deir el-Bahri in the mysterious land of Egypt.

The following disclosure was that Abd-el-Rasul was a professional tomb-robber dwelling in the village of Kurna, itself the very cradle of an unbroken line of professional tomb-robbers extending in what may be described as a robber dynasty stretching into the thirteenth century. Think of it! A robber dynasty! A regal, kingly dynasty is a conception with which we are all familiar; but a robber dynasty of such magnitude and lineage was an almost unbelievable phenomenon.

It is well known that the tombs of the kings of Egypt were veritable treasuries of wealth.

Gold in abundance and precious objects in prodigal and lavish plenitude were interred with the mummies of the monarchs.

Breaking in and pilfering the buried treasures was a lucrative occupation contemporary with the very Pharaohs themselves.

To this ancient profession of theft, preserved in a dynasty of depredation, we owe the final revelation which enriched the world so

recently as the third decade of the current century and of which it was said that “starts like Aladdin’s miraculous lamp and ends like a Greek saga of Nemesis.” I refer to the discovery of the tomb and mummy of King Tutankhamen. Describing the wonderful sight, Howard Carter exclaimed, “Surely never before in the whole history of excavation had such an amazing sight been seen ...”

(C.W. Ceram, Gods, Graves and Scholars, Victor Gollancz Limited, London, 1952) True, the tomb-robbers had been here, also, but they had missed the treasure!

My friends, in this series of messages entitled “Treasures from Tenach” we have just completed the excavation of the priceless spiritual treasures of the first five books of Moses — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — known to us in Hebrew nomenclature as Chumash.

In our excavations we found many evidences of the presence and activities of the tombrobbers! I refer to the specious, unsubstantial, unsubstantiated, unscientific, unreliable theories of the evolutionary, historico-critical documentary hypotheses.

It is subject for sorrow and alarm to observe how many of our Jewish commentaries, encyclopaedias, and reference books are haunted by the gaunt ghost of the so-called “Higher Criticism.” This phantom, garbed in the unreal and unsubstantial garments of an alleged scholarship which claims for itself the

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Thwarting the Tomb-Robbers last word in wisdom, tries to drown the voice of Revealed Truth with its mournful wail of scepticism and unbelief.

As with the tomb-robbers, we can trace this dismal dynasty in an unbroken lineage, this time back to the end of the eighteenth century of the Common Era. These sickening and tedious evolutionary hypotheses have entered and plundered the treasure vaults of God’s glorious revelation, the Bible, so that vast multitudes of mankind, who would otherwise be made rich by the treasures of God’s supreme illumination, are left to sit in the darkness and despair of doubt.

Moreover, these wretched spectres which intrude to scare Israel away from his own Holy Scriptures are found to be GENTILE GHOSTS clad in Christian ecclesiastical garments!

Astruc (1753) with his spurious theory of composite authorship, DeWette’s (1805) so-called clue of the central Deuteronomic sanctuary, Graf’s (1866) theory of evolution in the religion of Israel, and these ghostly garments are capped with the hood of Julius Wellhausen. As Joseph Klausner declares — methinks somewhat too sweepingly — “Modern Christian theologians, being as a rule pronounced rationalists ...”

I regret the necessity of calling attention to the tomb-robbers but, since we have now excavated some of the treasures of Torah and are about to enter a new treasure-chamber, the Book of Joshua, I did want to assure you that the light of archaeological discovery and more modern research is forcing the phantom of so-called “Higher Criticism” to retreat into the black realms of stark unbelief where only the credulity of incredulity will absorb its nugatory emanations.

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Of course, the ghostly tomb-robbers have been present in the Book of Joshua but, fortunately, I can now ask you to behold a spot where the ghostly robber once haunted, but is now declared spectre-free!

Hear this quotation from The Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia: “While at one time, Biblical criticism considered the contents of the book to be legendary, present-day scholarship is unanimous in the conclusion that Joshua is of great historical value.” (The Universal Jewish Encyclopaedia, Vol. 6, Page 206) But, my friends, we have discovered more than historical value in Holy Scriptures; we have apprehended a spiritual design and the Book of Joshua will be found to be no exception to his sublime feature of spiritual pattern.

Affirming the fact of meaning in history, Will Herberg writes, “The prophet is pre-eminently the interpreter of history, in which he finds revealed God’s will, judgement and redemptive purpose.” (Judaism and Modern Man, Jewish Publishing Society, Philadelphia, 1951, page 194) It is worthy of note that the Book of Joshua, the first of the historical books in the second division of the Hebrew Bible, nevertheless, commences that second division known as the “Former Prophets.” Where spiritual pattern pervades there is naturally an interplay between human history and Divinely-inspired prophecy.

There is both meaning and goal in history, hence we must grasp the fact that the history recorded in the Tenach, the Old Testament, has a SPIRITUAL PURPOSE; and this spiritual purpose is the supreme factor governing the

Divine SELECTION or OMISSION of historic events in the Sacred Record.

The Book of Joshua, therefore, purposively hinges Chumash (the Pentateuch) to the purposive, meaningful, historical writings which follow it. These succeeding historical writings, in the English Bible known as the Authorized Version, extend from the Book of Joshua to the Book of Esther.

Before unearthing our treasures from the Book of Joshua let us make an informative classification of the riches already excavated from Moses’ Five Books: i. We found that each book possessed a specific spiritual message of eternal value to us all today; ii. We found also that each book is an integral part of, and thus related to, the whole; iii. This led us to observe a progressive unfolding in the resultant spiritual message. iv. Now, isn’t this just what we would expect to find in a Bible which — when freed from the turmoil of the tomb-robbers — declares itself to be REVEALED TRUTH FROM GOD? As further preparation for our entrance into Canaan with Joshua, we will be rewarded by a preparatory glance at Israel’s annals from the death of Moses (c. 1451 B.C.E.) to the approximate terminus of Old Testament history about 396 B.C.E., a period of some 1055 years.

In this space of time we must not fail to observe three distinct forms of government: i. A THEOCRACY of 355 years extending from the death of Moses to the accession of Israel’s first humanly-chosen king, King Saul (B.C.E. 1451 to B.C.E. 1096)

ii. A MONARCHY of 510 years from King Saul to Tisha B’Av, the destruction of the Temple (B.C.E. 1096 to B.C.E. 586) iii. A DEPENDENCY of 190 years from Tisha B’Av to the terminus of Tenach (B.C.E. 586 to B.C.E. 396) The dates given are, of course, not absolutely final but, of the 1055 years so delineated, the Book of Joshua covers some 25 years of this historic period — i.e. from B.C.E. 1451 to B.C.E. 1426 — and the Book is, therefore, like a GATEWAY OF ANNALS through which we pass into that avenue of Israel’s history which brings the entire Old Testament story to a close.

Moses brings Israel TO the Promised Land; Joshua, Yehoshua, is now about to bring Israel INTO it.

Will you join him in the journey as we follow the fascinating and instructive movement of the Chosen People penetrating the province, paralysing the populace, and possessing the patrimony? I assure you there are rich treasures ahead for us so be sure and keep listening to “Treasures from Tenach.”

Dr Lawrence Duff-Forbes (1900–1964) Founding Director of David House Fellowship Inc. This article is an extract from the very popular radio series, “Treasures From Tenach”, which are also transcribed. Both audio (click MP3 tab, then “151ThwartingTheTombRobbers. mp3”, and transcriptions are available for free download at www.thevineyard.org.au .

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Jerusalem

glimpses of ISRAEL glimpses of ISRAEL glimpses of ISRAEL glimpses of ISRAEL

Background photo: Steps leading out of the Hinnom Valley toward the Zion and South Gates.

Inset clockwise from above: Street Sign near Zion Gate; Zion Gate; Looking toward the South (Dung) Gate and Temple Mount; overlooking the Hinnom Valley west toward The King David Hotel; overlooking the Kidron Valley east toward Mt of Olives.

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Bright Way to Convert Greenhouse Gas to Biofuel Israel’s NewCO2Fuel poised to help Australia make its brown coalburning industry into a greener enterprise.

Israel’s solar energy pioneer Prof. Jacob Karni isn’t a threat to Australia’s coal-burning industry. His aim, with the financial backing of an Australian firm, is simply to make the coal-burning industry less polluting by using energy collected from the sun.

Karni’s NewCO2Fuels is first testing its technology in Israel, where the team is building a solar reactor based on Karni’s 25-year career in solar energy research at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science.

“Brown coal is a good source of energy,” Karni tells ISRAEL21c.

“There are all kinds of coals, and much of the Australian brown coal is found on the surface, compared to the coal mines found deep in the ground. In Victoria, Australia, there is an enormous amount of brown coal on the surface, which is easy for mining companies to come in, scrape it from the surface and use it. These coal deposits are clean relative to many other coal mines, but still polluting the environment with carcinogenic or other toxic materials like sulfur oxide and ash.”

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Carbon dioxide (CO2), a byproduct of burning coal, is considered the main contributor to climate change. And when brown coal is wet, as it is in Victoria, the coal burns less efficiently and the greenhouse gas emissions increase.

“Our plan is to make the coal burning less polluting in every sense, in terms of greenhouse gas, and our technology can also scrub the other pollutants from the emissions,” says Karni.

“In our process, we take the carbon dioxide created in the burning of the coal and make it into fuel and oxygen. The oxygen is used to burn the coal more efficiently and simplify the process of retrieving the CO2 from the plant’s exhaust.”

Prof. Jacob Karni.

Green energy from Australian brown coal.

with fossil fuels, says Karni, who earned three degrees in science at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis before returning to Israel in 1989 with his wife and four children.

As for prospective buyers and strategic partners, NewCO2Fuels is expected to go well beyond Down Under, to the solar energy markets in southeast United States, South Europe, North Africa, China, India and southern Israel.

His primary research collaborators on the work leading to technology licensed by NewCO2Fuels are his former graduate students, Yury Alioshin and Gidon Ferdiman.

Among his other collaborators are Tareq Abu-Hamed, an Israeli scientist who was a post-doctorate fellow at the University of Minnesota, and Michael Epstein, head of the Solar Facility at Weizmann.

His group is also responsible for the technology upon which two promising Israeli solar energy startups, AORA Solar and HelioFocus, are based.

Huge challenge

Beyond Down Under

According to laboratory experiments, Karni expects to reduce the CO2 emissions of a given power plant by about 50 percent.

NewCO2Fuels is based at the Science Park in Rehovot, near where Karni works as a researcher at the Weizmann.

The demonstration unit is under construction at the solar tower laboratory in the institute’s Canadian Institute for the Energies and Applied Research.

And the agent of change? The sun, of course.

NewCO2Fuels applies highly focused solar rays at high temperatures to dissociate CO2 gas to convert it into a carbon monoxide and hydrogen fuel called Syngas. This fuel may be used in power plants or vehicles.

While solar energy might seem like a natural choice, it is a huge challenge making its application cost-effective and competitive

“The power plants can be anywhere where carbon dioxide is being produced, either by coal or natural gas burning, preferably in or near a sunlight-rich region,” Karni tells ISRAEL21c.

Australia sees the appeal because it is a green-forward-thinking country with a vast resource of easily accessible brown coal. This new advance could give business and coal owners in the State of Victoria, where a vast majority of brown coal lies, legitimization and reason to continue using this fuel resource in a more responsible and efficient manner.

To date, about $6.5 million has gone into financing the project. It will be ready for further investment in about one year, and Karni expects to see sales in about four years.

Karin Kloosterman (29 November 2012) Israel 21C (www.israel21c.org)

Founded in 2011, the 15-person company is 50 percent owned by Greenearth Energy, a geothermal company backed by the ERDI Group of Melbourne, while the second half is owned by company employees and YEDA, the technology transfer arm of the Weizmann.

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Prof. Yair Ein-Eli hopes that one day his new green battery could be used in anything from hearing aids to electric cars.

Thousands of hours battery… and it’s green too A new battery from Israel lasts thousands of hours and its non-polluting silicon energy source reverts back to sand when it’s depleted. Prof. Yair Ein-Eli hopes that one day his new green battery could be used in anything from hearing aids to electric cars.

Perhaps it was Israel’s deserts and dunes that supplied the inspiration for Prof. Yair Ein-Eli’s battery that lasts for thousands of hours and has a silicon power source that reverts back to sand when it’s spent.

The research was conducted at the Technion – Israel Institute of Science and recently published in the journal Electrochemistry Communications. The article explores how this new breed of portable electrochemical battery produces thousands of hours of charge from an abundant and non-polluting fuel source.

Being small and portable (the battery ranges in size from less than a third of an inch to

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an inch or so), it could replace the batteries used in hearing aids. Thinking ahead, this technology could replace the two-to-three hour battery lifespan of laptops, allowing them to run for hundreds of hours on a single charge. And it could ultimately evolve into a new kind of battery for electric cars and solar panels, or a power source for space stations on the moon.

The technology could be used in small devices within a couple of years. For the rest, “This would take about 10 years more and be revolutionary,” Ein-Eli tells ISRAEL21c.

He developed the battery technology over the past two and a half years and has been working in the area of silicon for fuel for about eight years.

A new alternative to hearing-aid users

Based on silicon the battery works by enabling this abundant material to revert back to its original form as sand. The battery can sit on a shelf for years before it’s activated.

“In the paper, we showed that at 600 hours it had used only 10 percent of the energy.

So we are talking about 6,000 hours,” says the professor.

Ein-Eli’s technology, created in collaboration with Prof. Digby Macdonald from Pennsylvania State University and Prof.

Rika Hagiwara from Kyoto University in Japan, offers an entirely new alternative to today’s zinc or lithium-ion batteries that is a real boon to hearing-aid users.

“Do you know someone or have a relative who wears a hearing aid?” asks Ein-Eli. With a charge that lasts only a couple of weeks, people who wear these aids need to carry around a supply of batteries like a box of pills. Worse, they don’t work well in conditions with extreme humidity like in Singapore, or in regions with extreme dryness, like Arizona, he says.

Always a battery man Ein-Eli started working with batteries decades ago, and was raised he says, as an electrochemist. “When I did my PhD in this area it was not so popular – first I worked on lithium metal batteries and then changed to lithium ion in 1993,” he recounts.

Working under one of the world’s leading battery researchers – Prof. Doron Aurbach at Israel’s Bar Ilan University – Ein-Eli says he was fortunate to have a good base, and from there went on to a post-doctorate post at Harvard.

Later, while at a Bet Shemesh company called Electric Fuel, Ein-Eli discovered metal air, the basis of his new invention.

Regular zinc batteries, like the ones Duracell makes, are made from two electrodes, a cathode and an anode, which are separated by ions in liquid. But in Ein-Eli’s new solution, only one electrode is needed, which means there’s more power. In his battery, the oxygen inside passes through a membrane to interact with oxidized silicon. This stable, inert, light and non-toxic material is high in energy and reverts to sand after the fuel is depleted.

For now, the battery is not rechargeable, but the fact that it can last thousands of hours makes it attractive to companies in the small electronics market. One example is MEMS – small electric machines that need their own energy source.

Ein-Eli is currently working on boosting the battery’s energy output even further.

He believes that in three or four years it will be rechargeable. It’s a dream, he says, but “dreams may come true if you work at them.”

Karin Kloosterman (12 November 2009) Israel 21C (www.israel21c.org)

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Israeli Brew

May Be Your Cup of Tea Herbal tea infusions from Israel’s Galilee region are proving popular with discerning British tea-drinkers.

How about some Israeli tea with those scones?

A British distributorship has introduced herbal tea infusions from the Galilee and they’re proving to be a hit with London tea-drinkers.

“Our teas are based on dried fruit that gives them a fruity taste, and you can eat the fruit after you finish drinking,” explains Meirav Yaniv, franchise and business development director for The Spicy Way, based in the northern town of Bethlehemof-the-Galilee in the Jezreel Valley.

“It’s apparently very appealing to the English.”

Avi Zithershpieler, founder and owner of The Spicy Way, tells ISRAEL21c that it all started with a visit from “two nice ladies from England” to the chain’s Eilat-area location last spring.

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British franchise expected Those “nice ladies,” entrepreneurs Karen Pomeranz and Louise Caplin, went gaga over the brand and soon began a correspondence with Yaniv. In October, they flew to Cologne, Germany, for a few hours just to meet the Spicy Way team and sample all its teas and herbal blends at the Anuga FoodTec international trade show. They sealed the deal, and visited Israel in December to choose the items for the first shipment of 15 products – including five tea infusions – received in April. Then, the tastings began.

“In the beginning, they thought the infusions wouldn’t be interesting for the English public because they have so many teas there, but it turns out they are the strongest seller,” says Yaniv. Several new flavors were added to the lineup the women sell to 23 delis, farm shops and specialty food stores in and around London. Now there is talk of opening a British franchise.

Small adjustments did have to be made for the British market: The brand name was changed to The Spice Way rather than The Spicy Way because the word “spicy” has an off-color connotation in the UK. Also, Pomeranz and Caplin altered the place of manufacture from “Israel” to “the Galilee,” after encountering some initial hostility.

That’s fine with Yaniv. “Karen and Louise are both Jewish and love Israel very much. At the end of the day, we want to reach as many consumers as possible. If emphasizing Israel is an obstacle, we will remove that obstacle,” she explains, adding that labels specifically marked “Made in Israel” have great appeal in other places interested in importing The Spicy Way products, such as Mexico City.

The brand is also gaining traction at home, with four standalone stores in addition to branded shop-in-shop and standalone “farm stands” nationwide. This growth is the result of eight years of hard work on the part of Zithershpieler, whose Holocaust survivor parents Zvi and Zipporah founded their organic herb farm in northern Bethlehem more than 50 years ago.

Zvi Zithershpieler taught his son all the ins and outs of the business.

Products draw BBC coverage “I like the touch and feel of the plants and seeing the miracle coming out of the ground,” Zithershpieler says. “To raise these plants and smell their aroma is the best sensation in the world.”

Today, he cultivates about 50 culinary and medicinal varieties on his 17-acre boyhood farm, including oregano, marjoram, sage, rosemary, paprika, hibiscus, peppermint, spearmint, lemon verbena and coriander.

His packaged products, including the tea infusions, combine domestic produce with ingredients imported from Thailand, Turkey and India. “We collect about 300 raw materials in our storehouse, and from that we cut and grind and mix to make 1,000 [retail] items,” he says.

He stresses that the farm has always employed both Arab and Jewish workers, a detail that was highlighted in a BBC report on the company when its products began hitting London.

The Spicy Way Visitor Center in the Galilee features an open market displaying a huge selection of organic herbs and spices with informational signs describing their usage, history and special properties. Zithershpieler and his team offer lectures and workshops on the healing benefits of their products to individuals and groups, concession stores, franchisees and business clients.

Yaniv expects the export enterprise to expand rapidly. She recently began talks with distributors in Switzerland and Germany.

“Every day we have a few new contacts wanting to import our products,” she says.

“Most are people who tried our products in Israel and loved them.”

Abigail Klein Leichman 20 January 2011 Israel 21C (www.israel21c.org)

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The Vineyard Vol 55, No 1 February 2013

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