The Jewish Nobel Prize Winners

THE JEWISH NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS

This week is a week of pride for Jews who take pride in being Jews.

As each day, the Nobel Prizes are announced, our hearts are warmed to hear the names of Jews who win the coveted prize.

Usually, the prizes are in the Sciences: Medicine, Physics and Chemistry. In this century, Imre Kertesz from Hungary and Austrian Elfriede Jelinek (whose father was Jewish), as well as the fiery Harold Pinter have won the Nobel Prize in Literature but in the sciences, fully 1/3 of the prizes have been won by Jews! Israel has alone bagged 7 Nobel prizes this century, ahead of Germany, France or Russia.! In the field of Economics, which was instituted in 1970, the first forty years, saw 25 Jewish winners!

Many historic reasons (oppression, restricted opportunities for Jews which led them to be commercially successful) have been forwarded, as well as cultural reasons, such as educated family background and penchant for education.

In India or China, the families are as conscious of education as the Jews are, but they have never won any Nobel prizes other than Literature (one for India and two for China; one for a dissident in China).

When I was reading for my Medical Anthropology degree in London, four out of the five professors who taught us were Jewish, one of whom Cecil Helman became a good friend later on. Pointing out to him that the majority of the worlds best Medical Anthropologists are Jewish, I asked him, WHY?

He thought for a moment and replied: who should know better of being the OUTSIDER than us?

We are the perpetual Other…

Dr Robert Lefkowitz, USA

I look at this years Jewish winners: Dr Robert Lefkowitz, who won for Chemistry, is a Medical Doctor who is a Cardiologist; Serge Haroche is French Jew who was born in Casablanca, Morocco, who won the Physics Prize.

There are many cardiologists, who are of Asian origin practising in USA, but the difference is that Dr Lefkowitz chose to do research rather than do other things, which are lucrative.

(Daniel Kahneman, Israel/USA, Economics)

Jews have a concept, Mitzvah that vaguely corresponds to Mitta in the Burmese Buddhist Philosophy: doing things for others, not being selfish. Perhaps this concept, along with Education and other nurturing factors, pushes a certain number of Jews into fields of endeavour where the outcome would be of great help to many others, mankind in general. Dr Lefkowitz won his prize for his work on g-coupling-protein, the concept of enormous importance in cell function and also helpful in the innovation of medications for treatment of diseases.

(Dr Serge Haroche, the French recipient of Physics Prize was born in Casablanca, Morocco)

Today I received a post card and in it was a quote from Epictetus of Greece:

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

If you so not a penchant for gadgetry or accumulation of wealth, your mind may be swayed into other philosophical channels, including endeavours to help humanity. May be the Jewish concept of Mitzvah embodies this and the concept is embedded in Jewish memory. Just my theory.

A week of Pride Indeed!

(Jews consist 0.2 per cent, i.e. 2 per 1000 of the world’s population)

 Elias Canetti grew up in a Bulgarian Jewish home where Ladino was spoken but wrote in German

(He wrote twenty-nine plays including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, twenty-one screenplays including The Servant, The Go-Between and The French Lieutenant's Woman, and directed twenty-seven theatre productions, including James Joyce's Exiles, David Mamet's Oleanna, seven plays by Simon Gray and many of his own plays including his latest, Celebration, paired with his first, The Room at The Almeida Theatre, London in the spring of 2000) While I was a student in London, I was fortunate to see many of his plays.

PS: One India based Tamil Physicist, two US based Tamil Scientists, one US based Punjabi Doctor, one US based Bengali Economist have won the Prize apart from Rabindranath Tagore. I am sure Sir Vidya Naipaul would object if you call him Indian! he won the prize for Literature. He is British of Trinidadian origin.

PPS: Moslems have won so far 9 Nobel Prizes.

It is foolish to compare countries or religion and their scientific ability. during the Moslem rule of Spain, 1 out of 150 scientists in the known world at that time was Jewish, including many from Spain.

15 october 2012
The Nobel Prize for Economics was announced today. One of the winners from the USA is Alvin Roth, a professor at Harvard, moving to Stanford. He is Jewish.

You Will Meet WAKONDA on the road..

It was a crispy cold late afternoon, not that biting cold of the wind from the Antarctica but the caressing kind of the Plains. I had walked around the tracks at this village for a while before preparing myself to go home.

I was slowly walking up the sloping road when a van pulled up next to me. I recognized the familiar face of a friend of mine, and greeted him.

He is 55 years old, was diagnosed with Uncontrolled Diabetes 7 years old and with a change of mind, determined to be in control of his health, turned around his lifestyle activities.

Currently he is on no medications, has disciplined himself.

I occasionally take Indian medicine such as these to calm my stomach down; he offered me a jar from which I chew a root with a distinct anise taste. I go around and collect them myself.

We lamented how the Indians have lost their traditional knowledge and that I was happy to hear that he is learning from other knowledgeable ones about the powers of herbs and rituals and prayers.

If you think that just taking the medicine alone regularly would help you with Diabetes, you would be disappointed I told him, you need the other two factors: the fact that you are Indian and the Spiritual Connection with Wakonda.

He seemed to agree, I pray to Wakonda and wait for it to take effort. I reminded him what Black Elk had said: Pray and leave it there, let the Great Mystery decide what to do with that.

His wife had gone to see a specialist in another town and when she told the doctor about the lifestyle control of good health of her husband, the uninformed doctor said: Please ask him to be careful, his blood sugar might go down too low if he eats well and exercises too much! What a reverse logic. I had to explain to my friend Brother Wolf, it is very difficult for your blood sugar to go down low if you are not taking any medications and even if you starve and you exercise, your blood sugar would be protected. I gave him the example of Indians going on Vision Quests or Sun Dance when they don't eat but dance for four days in the latter, but fast for four days and nights in the former.

Indian metabolism has evolved over centuries to accommodate their culture and their actions. And most doctors are not culturally sensitive to understand this, even if they live surrounded by Indians.

When are you leaving? he asked

I am on my way. I am going home.

So Wakonda sent you to see me, he smiled.

I was happy to have met him on the road.

Sitting Bull on the Europeans who took his land:

Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them. 
Sitting Bull 

The Phenomenology of Perception: The Importance of Context in Clinical Medicine

I minister to poor people with Chronic Diseases in many remote areas, in clinics with good support from colleagues.

On this visit to a remote part of the USA, I was grateful for my Medical Anthropological training, because I could minister them, not as an Allopathic Physician, but as Clinically oriented Medical Anthropologist who understands CONTEXT…

In 1948, the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty gave a series of lectures broadcast over French Radio on the World of Perception. (His well-known work is Phenomenology of Perception)

This is how he opened his lecture series”:

The world of perception, or in other words the world which is revealed to us by our senses and in everyday life, seems at first sight to be the one we know best of all. For we need neither to measure nor to calculate in order to gain access to this world and it would seem that we can fathom it simply by opening our eyes and getting on with our lives. Yet this is a delusion.

Most of us were trained in the Cartesian dualistic tradition of Medical Sciences where we look at the body as if it exists in a vacuum, and dysfunction within it can be treated with our bags of goodies as if it is a vehicle in need of repair. This is the mechanistic view of the Body that is held dear by many of the medical practitioners in the west.

We have taken Philosophy out of Medical Practice, and it is a loss for Doctors but more importantly for the patients. What use is your knowledge if it cannot be used to solve the problem as perceived by the patient, as felt in his body?

Every single patient that I saw, I could attribute their situation, better or worse, to a change in the social situation in their lives. None of the “successes” could be attributed to the treatment alone, but of course for an observer who is not aware of the social context, the perception would be that it is the medications that has made them feel better.

A 70 year old, who had endured a bad marriage for 28 years and an abusive relationship for another 18 years, after one comforting session, returns with spectacular results in her laboratory tests denoting her self-perceived sense of wellness. Was there any change in medications? No. Changes in Diet? No. Changes in her activity patterns? No.

Twelve days after our discussion, I decided to move out of the house with a stressful ambience and move into my own trailer. I did that on a Saturday and by Tuesday morning, I was already feeling better.

Another who had been unemployed for one year, has a promise of a job, just that hope had her feel better, better than what she had felt in the past year, the tests showed an improvement of her chronic condition. Once again cannot be attributed to medications.

A young man with Elevated Blood pressure comes in for a chat; he is a friend, an artist and an excellent athlete. His doctor has been trying to control his Blood Pressure by adding medications, some of which he declined to take.

He sat down and as is my custom, I began asking about the family: there flowed the tension his body was under: caretaker to a child that needs full time attention, pain in his knees that made him alter his sociocultural activities, concern about a daughter slightly off course. He needs medications and more of the same is not the answer but a sympathetic ear to his daily struggles.

One after another, they were teaching me, the fallacies about sugar free candies, coffee mate artificial creamer used for coffee, “vegetable” oils, the patchwork medical care offered to the poor in America.

I felt proud to be their physician, grateful that I have the opportunity to learn from them, and remembering what Delacroix had said: relieving the suffering of others…

What you see is not what is present, especially if you view with a pre ordained mind, keeping the eyes open, let the mind absorb the perceived and the reality…

Every one would be better off with it.

What can I do for that young man? an artist, an athlete and with the stress and Hypertension?

I told him that I would tell him more about Pranayama, and teach him some techniques a friend of mine in KL taught me.

and also, as a recent graduate from my alma mater in London reminded me: I will introduce him to Jon Kabat Zinn and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.

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Now to think of my Little Island and the love and affections waiting for me there..

WARM WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES..BUT THE FRIENDS CAME FROM MEXICO, BIENVENIDOS Y GRACIAS

After a short stop in Houston, arrived at San Antonio Airport, 11 hours from Paris to Houston and a short 40 minutes from Houston to San Antonio.
My friends were waiting for me at the Airport. They had come up from Mexico.
Dr E is one of the more holistic physicians I have met anywhere in the world and in her hands, her patients get better, whatever form of the treatment she administers to them: allopathic or homeopathic or natural or ozone therapy. I know many cases of "miraculous" cures or successful treatments by her, but the fundamental aspect is that she pays an enormous amount of importance on the patient and her interaction with the patient rather than the efficacy of the medication or the treatment. She has at least one patient who was put on the list for Dialysis eight years ago but on Ozone therapy continues to do without Nephrologists and Dialysis. Our common ground is that her father who also was a physician had befriended the Kikapu Indians who lived in the nearby Nacimiento, as hunter gatherers and subsistence farmers with an occasional supplemental income from seasonal agricultural work in the USA. She grew up with the worldview that included the Kikapu indians and at the moment she herself treats a fair few Kikapu Indians. 
My Kikapu sister who works for the tribe was also present. Dra E's husband a gentleman rancher from the northern state of Mexico is always a welcome presence during our get together. The last time we were together, six months ago in the bordertown of Eagle Pass in Texas, we had talked about a reunion in San Antonio, and this was it.

I am very grateful for this web of friendship: Muzquiz, Nacimiento, Piedras Negras, Eagle Pass all have entered my world because of the Kikapu. M, my kikapu sister, along with their traditional leader have taught me a thing or two about symbolic healing.
Needless to say we had enough to talk to each other about, we planned to meet in december to celebrate the good doctors wedding anniversary and for us to see some mexican and kikapu patients together in Mexico.
Thanks for making this effort to drive up from Muzquiz, Coahuila, Mexico.

“To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.” ― Pablo Neruda

Friendships that spring fountains of love of shared thoughts, aspirations and love for others, love of each other, do clearly attach to our emotions with an everlasting brilliance.

I was a postgraduate doctor in Miami in the halcyon days of exuberance over the expectation of lifetime of service to others, when I met Dr R and Dr L, from Auckland, New Zealand.

Dancing Glasses in the hands of an Antipodean at a Berlin Resto

He is an antipodean to the core,enveloped in that sense of humour that defines our cultural identity. She has the additional sparkle of a Croatian born grandfather.

It was an afternoon, their Key Biscayne flat showed signs of the impending return to the Antipodes, a journey I too had hoped to make (but the winds carried me away to other islands). There were boxes, packages, gifts given and received.

I still can recall with the same intensity the sadness I feltat their departure but had a strong feeling that we would remain friends.

We met in Melbourne and Auckland a couple fo times. Dr R shares the same subspecialty in medicine as I, Endocrinology, so chance meetings at International Conferences were welcomed with great pleasure, the last one being at San Francisco over a glass of wine at a nouveau mex resto, a few years ago.

Before the big meetings of our International Societies (American or European), I would write and enquire whether they were coming or going, disappointed at the discrepancies in time and distance.. Florence, Rome, Boston etc etc..

This year's annual meeting of the European Association of the study of Diabetes was to be held in Berlin. Dr R will be in attendance. I suggested that it would be nice to meet. Dr L piped in to say that a dinner together is in order, she would drop by Berlin as she would be attending a meeting in Istanbul around that time.

Berlin is so different from other European cities. Always in the air, is its flavour of recent history and the gargantuan efforts at reunification, the excellent economic status, the rebuilding of the city after the allied bombings. A most modern city without gruesome skyscrapers with a multicultural population. The service people, the bus drivers, desk agents at the hotels, waitresses, shop keepers all tried their best to communicate in English and were most helpful..A gaggle of teenage girls gave me detailed instructions on how to get to Alexanderplatz in their halting English, a couple dressed in rainbow colours out for the night, were beaming when i commented that they looked lovely..just lovely.

Dr L had arrived that morning from AKL on SQ, a lenge schlepp indeed, the shadows of my melbourne years would say. I left home in Paris at 0630 and arrived in the afternoon after changing flights at ZRH. We were to meet at the lobby of Hilton Berlin. (other Hiltons and other rendezvous..Hanoi for a surprise visit on my brothers birthday , Salalah to recollect the voyages of Zheng He, Houston where I ran into Dr Ashim a couple of months ago)

The reunion exuded the expected warmth. We had so much to catch up, so the minutes clicked at a cantor, all three of us talking simultaneously at time on three different subjects, aided and abetted by the suave white drops of Bacchus..No amount of texting, skyping, emailing (all new ..ing formations in our language) can substitute for that human warmth of a face to face reunion. We mainly talked about emotions and the people we have shared those emotions with in the past and present, with new comers introduced with appropriate photographs,with Fiji forming a languorous backdrop..

Dr R had scouted the nearby Brasserie, a good german imitation of the French original, the meal was tasty, mine was lamb with pesto, in honour of my brothers and sisters in Aotearoa.. 

Dr R had chosen a soft white, much reminiscent of a Sauvignon Blanc from his native land and Marlborough Valley but what was good and tender was that we were together once again, with the promise of piano classes in la Habana, yet another south pacific adventure or more personal visits from other members of the NZ family.

Friendship is an investment, in Time and Emotions, the returns magnificent enough to fill the heart..

On a day like today, as my  UmonHon teacher from  the Buffalo Clan would say:

Be happy with what you have; dont be unhappy with things you dont have.

I am happy for this friendship, and as we say in San Cristobal de la Habana, Cuba.

tu no eres mi amigo, tu eres un tatuaje in mi corazon

You are not my friend, but you are a tatoo in my heart..

I flew back to Paris, ew hours after that get together, after a fitful sleep in a non descript hotel near Tegel Airport, Berlin. Tomorrow I fly to San Antonio, Texas to be with my Kikapu family.

On my Swiss flight home, it was the same crew that brought me to Tegel the day before, it was good to be greeted warmly by the maitre de cabine, who pushed a few chocolates on to my hand as I prepared to alight...

2.10.12 PALINDROME MALAYALAM

If I had not any connections with Cochin in India, I might not have known early enough what a Palindrome was nor heard of the language of the region, Malayalam, which is one of the few languages, a palindrome..
Today while writing the date, the english style we are used to, 2nd october 12, 2.10.12, I noticed that was a palindrome.


Don't nod
Dogma: I am God
Never odd or even
Too bad – I hid a boot
Rats live on no evil star
No trace; not one carton
Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?
Murder for a jar of red rum
May a moody baby doom a yam?
Go hang a salami; I'm a lasagna hog!
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas!
A Toyota! Race fast... safe car: a Toyota
Straw? No, too stupid a fad; I put soot on warts
Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era?
Doc Note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod
No, it never propagates if I set a gap or prevention
Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna
Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus
Kay, a red nude, peeped under a yak
Some men interpret nine memos
Campus Motto: Bottoms up, Mac
Go deliver a dare, vile dog!
Madam, in Eden I'm Adam
Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo
Ah, Satan sees Natasha
Lisa Bonet ate no basil
Do geese see God?
God saw I was dog
Dennis sinned

These are some of the Palindromes I found on the Net.

I hope it brings a smile on the faces of some of the readers. Then I thought of American Indians, are there languages, living or extinct, that are Palindromes?

Alistair Reid, the wonderful translator of Pablo Neruda was fond of a Palindrome and he defined a Palindrome,  his quest in a sentence, as this:

The dream which preoccupies the tortuous mind of every palindromist is that somewhere within the confines of the language lurks the Great Palindrome, a nutshell which not only fulfils the intricate demands of the art, flowing sweetly in both directions, but which also contains the Final Truth of Things. 

Reid's longest creation was:
T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I'd assign it a name: 'Gnat dirt upset on drab pot toilet'.

what all happens in the course of the day, the postman does not ring any more, kisses are goobled up by the mistiness of forgetting, whatever happend to the girl who gave me this book as a gift?

when was that? where was that?