Ezra’s posterous

I was walking down one of the main streets of Jerusalem tonight, and I witnessed desolation.
It wasn't only that the street was empty, destruction was in the air. The streets are being torn up. Buildings are being demolished. I still saw the dust rising over a building and a usually full pedestrian square.
My initial reaction was to take pictures. I wasn't sad, per se, instead my interest piqued.

Then I started thinking about my posterous account. It too, over the last few weeks has deteriorated into a place to upload some videos and pictures, lacking the content that had defined my account a month or two ago.

When I was in college, I had a professor who changed my life. I even called myself a disciple of his, a "hasid" in the vernacular.
One day, when we were studying the last chapter of Lamentations (I studied Bible and Ancient Jewish History with him), we read verse 5:18. "For the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it." As a Pavlovian response, I laughed, and the rest of the class looked at me like I was crazy. My professor looked at me and smiled. Slowly, other members of the class understood why I laughed. For the members who didn't, my professor related the Talmudic tale of Rabbi Akiva who saw a fox walking among the ruins of the recently destroyed Second Temple. His comrades cried, yet he laughed. He said that if the the prophecy of Lamentations would come true, so too would the prophecy of Zechariah, that spoke of the Jewish elders sitting in the streets of Jerusalem again, would be fulfilled as well.

I thought about this story while waiting for my bus to pick me up. When I arrived home, I IMed my mother to see how her trip was, and she informed me that she met this professor for the first time today.

To be honest, I have not thought about this professor in a long time, as my latest phase in my life is analyzing theory, content and context in contemporary Social Media, not in 2000 year old sectarian Crumbling Media. (A joke about the Dead Sea Scrolls. He happens to be one of the world experts on them.)

But, as I constantly tell people, all that I have studied led me to where I am.

This brings me back to my posterous account, somehow.

I heard that Seth Godin is launching a program that people, instead of going for an MBA can have an unpaid internship with him. But it won't be a real internship, it will be a learning program together with other brilliant thinkers. You should check it out, it looks quite interesting. I have already had such opportunities in life, its not for me.

Over my life, I have taken many interesting turns, that have led me to many interesting places, where I met, as you can guess, extremely interesting people. About a year and a half ago, I started a path without ever dreaming that it would lead me to where I am today.

My plate is overflowing. That is a good thing. I am currently involved with a very cool social media project for a major Israeli political party, on board with a under-the-radar, pre-beta startup which is creating a social tool so cool that my mouth was watering at a meeting that I had with them yesterday, helping a company socialize a network that they are building, as well as, hopefully creating a social solution for a tour company with thousands of participants a year. This was just how I spent my week. Well, that and making 12second videos to show to someone to try to convince him to turn me into the Israel correspondent for his show. (Watch them backwards. Almost 144 seconds of Ezra.)

No, I am not doing this all alone, but you will read more about those people in a future post. (It has been written already, but I must wait until a launch to publish it.)

Desolation sometimes paves the way for growth. I have not been interacting as much on my social persona, because I have not had time to breath. The time that I invested in understanding both online social environments and ancient self-sequestered  communities is paying off. Hopefully, a renewed city center in Jerusalem will revitalize the city. (I probably won't wait for *that* to happen, though...)

I am the kind of guy who laughs.

Just wanted to let you know that silence sometimes occurs because the noise is so deafening.

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