To: Members of the Israel Ashalim Sub-Committee and Invitees Cc: Israel Committees I am excited to share some of the experiences I had when I was in Israel at the end of January. I got to spend four full days in meetings and in the field with JDC-Ashalim senior staff, and to see first hand some of the remarkable work they do. We visited several of JDC-Ashalim’s flagship initiatives for children and youth at risk, and their families. Much as I (and, I hope, you) appreciate and enjoy the written updates we get, there is nothing like visiting the children and families we serve, and seeing how JDC-Ashalim's programs change lives each day. I arrived just before Israel announced the unilateral cease fire to Operation Cast Lead. There was great tension throughout the country, as more and more cities came in range of the newer Qassam missiles. It felt like the whole country had clenched teeth, and I can only imagine the additional stress this put on children. In Jerusalem, I visited JDC-Ashalim's Better Together A-Tur neighborhood, and Susan’s House, part of JDC-Ashalim's youth entrepreneurship It's ...

The Future of Chrysler. As seen by Charles Ribakoff, President, The Harr Motor Companies I have a pretty vested interest in the Chrysler Corporation not doing the funky chicken and going belly up (if that is not mixing metaphors). I like to eat pretty often, and my kids need new shoes, too. So I was interested to be on a conference call with Jim Press, the co-president of Chrysler, last Friday. To me, being a co-president would be about as graceful as being a Siamese twin, but that may be one of the reasons I was not offered the job. I have known Jim (although I should point out he would only all me Charles if he was reading my name badge) since his previous job as head of Toyota USA, and the first white guy ever to be on Toyota’s board. He has probably the best marketing mind in the industry, and a good part of my interest in expanding our Dodge business to include Chrysler and Jeep last year was his taking the job at Chrysler (which as used here means Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge., which us too long to type). The purpose of the call was to fill dealers in ...

It Sucks to Live in Sderot. (Note, I would never entitle a note so crudely, but that I noticed that the best selling song on iTunes today is chunky little Kelly Clarkson romantic warbling, “My Life Would Suck Without You.” Whatever happened to "I Want To Hold Your Hand?" But I digress.) The rockets are falling on Sderot again (today, February 3). You can read about it, probably on page D99 of The New York Times. It's been going on for so long that it's hardly even news. There are not so many – only 2 or 3 or 4 a day, far less than the 8 a day average of the last 5 years (which includes the one year so-called cease fire that expired just before the January outbreak of hostilities). But they're back. At the risk of losing my street cred, I did not, in fact, go to Sderot when I was in Israel last week. (Patty had made it pretty clear that, if the rockets didn’t kill me, she would). I did go to Ashdod, about 15 miles up the coast, newly in range of missiles from Gaza. That was close enough.  But volunteers from JDC Ashalim go to Sderot every day. ...

The Prime Minister’s Wife and I For a very nice woman, Alyiza Olmert has one of the worst jobs in the world. Her job is being wife of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a man whose approval rating has Zero within the statistical margin of error. Across from their home, boisterous (as only Israelis can be) protestors of every shape and size camp out and yell things at them that even Bella Pelosi on her worst day (and that’s saying something) wouldn’t have dared even thinking about W. (Olmert is a sort of Accidental Prime Minister. A former Mayor of Jerusalem, he had leveraged himself to kind of the Vice Prime Minister because his party thought he could deliver voters in Jerusalem. Serving under Arik Sharon, many believe his primary responsibility was keeping the regular straight from the decaf. When Sharon pulled up lame, Olmert became PM. Olmert has been able to cling to power because all the parties know that, if he called an election, they would all get thrown out.  I have personal fantasy that I once saved his career all by myself -- I was in a small group once when Bob Kraft gave him a Patriots helmet, and Mr. Olmert had ...

The first thing that gets my attention as we enter the village is that most of the tumbledown huts have the green flag of Hamas flying. I tell myself this is maybe the same as the ubiquitous Obama signs hammered into all the lawns of Brookline, but I am not convinced. We are in the Bedouin village of Laquiin, just north of what is mellifluously called the Southern Conflict Region. The senior staff and I have piled on a bus early this morning. We are in the field, trying to help children at risk. I am not ready for the Hamas flag thing. Then I remember, kind of, that Israel is a democracy; there are more Hamas flags allowed to fly here than there are Israeli flags flying in, say, Teheran. I think this is good. But I don’t like the flags. For the staff, this is just another day at the office. In any event, the politics of this (which I have previously said I will not discuss, except to say, like everyone else in the Middle East, I am sure that I am right and everyone else is wrong) do not matter. Whatever is going on here, it is not the fault ...

I am trying to recreate the first part of last night’s post, which I somehow managed to launch into the Great Unknown. Unfortunately, like the character in Pogo who could write but not read, I’m exactly sure what I wrote. But here goes. I haven’t written about the purpose of this trip yet, why I am here instead of, for example, trying to convince you all what a great time this is to buy a new Toyota, Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, or fine used car. It is not out of spite for my lack of invitations to The Inaugural. Actually, I got one, although it came with an offer for a Commemorative Pin for $19.95, or one of those special Yobama profile plates. Nor is because Patty won’t let me smoke cigars in the house. An answer is that both Patty and I learned at the knee (whatever that means; in my case it might have been more often over the knee) about the importance of giving back. Patty expresses that in the work she does for Mass General and the 79 or 82 or 106 other wonderful things she does in the community. Part of my road in that direction resulted in my being offered ...

Before sunrise this morning, my thoroughly dysfunctional body clock announced it was time for someone, somewhere in the world, to get up. You can imagine my surprise when I figured out it meant me. It was early enough that the hotel restaurant hadn't opened -- just coffee in the lobby for insomniacs and jet lag addled tourists. Short on options, and long on time (my day wasn't scheduled to start until 7:30), I put on my coat, and went for a walk. Jerusalem is a city for walking. The weaving of the streets make Boston seem organized, and buildings built before Mr. Otis figured out the elevator (or Sir Thomas Crapper figured out indoor plumbing --that's true, I swear) are of a pretty human scale. It's a pretty short walk from here to the Built Before Year Zero walls of the old city of Jerusalem. There are a lot of politics with this, and I'm not going to address any of them here (except to declare unequivocally, like every other person in the Middle East, that I am right, and everybody else is wrong). But the walk from here to the old city is probably something my great grandparents dreamed about doing, and ...

...so I arrived near to the hotel after 22 hours in transit, to find the street blocked off by a security detail. As I suspect would only happen in Israel, my driver and the security guys started screaming at each other. After a bit, i thanked them both,got out of the cab, rolled my luggage up the street, and checked in. I suspect they're all screaming still. My cigar and adult beverage and I are sliding under the radar -- or maybe that's the table we're sliding under. Looking at the lights of the old city, and feeling luckier than I deserve. The hotel is locked down tighter than my high school sweetheart after curfew (you kids can Google to find out what a curfew used to be). I guess the Prime Ministers of Italy, France and Germany are supposed to be here, too. I feel very safe. Tough luck for them that I only brought enough cigars for me. Off to Haifa at 7:30 tomorrow morningto meet with the Mayor, who occasionally slides into his screaming mimi personna. Will try to find some time to backfill what this story is really supposed to be about.

...to quote an old and really, bad song. But, sitting at Heathrow waiting for a flight, I remember when I first started to come here, in the late '60s. It was Ground 0 for everything good. It was a time of intense possibility and varying philiosophies (The Beatles 'Let it Be' v. The Stones 'Let it Bleed'. When George Harrison could lug an instrument that he not only couldn't play, he couldn't even tune, the sitar, into the studio and it sounded...well, ok, weird. But it worked. When someone said, 'Wonder what this sounds like if we play it backwards?' Whedn women started wearing skirts that were...all...the...way...up...to........there. Now is a long time from then. There's a trifle less optimism in the air, and the unstoppable power of compound interest isn't what it used to be.  But still, sitting here on a quiet Sunday morning, mildly jetlagged and waiting to move on projects for children in Israel, it's still a very cool place to be.