What Makes People Tick?

  Last weekend, on Saturday the 7th of October, a great number of people got together to cross a border. Some flew over using gliders. Others toppled a fence in a lot of places. Through the breaches in the fence came people. Men. In cars. On motorcycles. They didn't come through that fence to find freedom, or to flee from persecution. They didn't cross the border hoping for a better life, for the fulfilment of a dream. The men who crossed the border, they came to kill, to murder. To shoot people in their homes. To kill babies and children in their beds. To go into communities full of people, civilians, and indiscriminately shoot everyone and everything. To go to a festival where people were dancing, enjoying themselves, and to shoot, kill, rape those people. The stories of the survivors are horrifying. Stories of people rushing for their cars, driving, being shot at. Stories of people running, being shot in the back. Stories of people hiding, being found, finding new places to ...

Never Again... What does that actually mean in today's world? This What Makes People Tick? blog post looks at what I learnt about the Holocaust as a child, as a teenager and as an adult; it examines my current views on Judaism and it explains why I believe that it is still vital to educate everyone about the horrors of the Holocaust. Writing a post earlier this month about The non-Jewish Nanny who educates the world about Judaism , I realised that I also wanted to write about my own history of learning about Judaism. As writing about a sensitive topic like the Holocaust doesn't feel appropriate when also gushing about a young woman's social media pages, I figured that a separate post was in order. I was born in the early eighties and growing up in Europe, much of what I learnt about Jews and Judaism had to do with the Second World War. Back when I was in primary school in the nineties, we learnt a lot about the War. And back then, my grandparents and many others of their g...

 I'm quite certain that I'm not the only one who's recently learnt about Adriana Rosie's social media channels where she writes about being a non-Jewish nanny for Jewish families in Florida in the US. It was an article from the Times of Israel ( ‘Non-Jewish Nanny’ to Orthodox kids gains TikTok fame with cute culture-shock videos ) that got me reading about what she does. And honestly, I've really enjoyed going through this young woman's Every Single Instagram Post. Check it out for yourself:  Adriana Rosie @nonjewishnanny .  While I usually prefer using Instagram to check out photos as opposed to videos (one of the reasons I'm not on TikTok...), I have to admit that I've just been eating up the content, and have really enjoyed learning about all her experiences. This is someone who's respectful of a community with many customs, rules and regulations that may not make sense to, or seem strange to outsiders, and opens up that community to the wider wor...

 In the past few weeks I've been watching all the Marvel superhero movies, starting with 2008's Iron Man. Two night ago I watched Avengers: Endgame. It feels like the cycle is complete right now. While I don't want to give away any spoilers, for those who do know the movie/the story I hope you will all agree: The ending is poignant and bittersweet. After watching that ending, I needed some time to process. So, on coming home from work yesterday, I chose to watch the season 2 finale of Star Trek: Picard instead of starting on the next movie in the Marvel universe. The next movie is a Spiderman story. Strangely enough, I've never really been a Spiderman fan. The X-Men? Yes, definitely! Batman too. Superman, of course! I loved the Captain Planet stories featuring teens from all around the world getting together to make the world a better place. Xena. Hercules. And then of course there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy gave me a regular superhe...

 Have you ever met a woman who has never, not once in her life, had to deal with sexism? If you have, I congratulate you. I've never met one. Sexism, as the definitions below show, is when a person is treated a certain way or discriminated against based on their gender. The term is often used to refer to discrimination or prejudice against/about women, however can be applied to men equally. Every woman will have a different view of what words, actions or behaviour she sees as sexist. Two women, two people, might see an action or event differently, based on their life's experiences and their own frame of reference. What one might see or experience as sexism might just be a joke to another, might be a throw-away comment, or might be something that barely registers.  SEXISM: "Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination,  typically against women, on the basis of  sex: 'sexism in language is an offensive  reminder of the way the culture sees women' ...

 Traditionally, we think of ourselves as having five senses. Sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste. However, what about other senses? What about that elusive 'sixth sense' or other senses that we don't usually count? Apart from being a well-known movie, the sixth sense is sometimes named as proprioception, sometimes as sharper intuition and sometimes simply as a way of getting more in touch with your other regular senses. If you're not entirely keen on seeing dead people but would like to figure out more about the ways in which you experience the world, then this article is for you. How many senses do we have, really? And exactly what is our sixth sense? Have you ever considered balance as a sense? How about the before-mentioned proprioception, or the ability to know where your body is. Think about walking in between two parked cars and knowing you won't hit either. What about sensing things like pain, wetness, heat, air temperature? While perhaps pain or feeling i...

 Want a good reason to stress less and take more me-days every now and then? How about this one? A 22 June 2021 article on Neurosciencenews.com with the rather self-explanatory title " It’s True: Stress Does Turn Hair Gray (and It’s Reversible) " claims exactly what it says it does. The article explains that while previous studies using mice indicated the opposite, it's now been proven that it is possible to actually reverse the signs of ageing in hair. Now, what's important to remember is that hair that's already outside of your head won't magically change colour. However hair that will come out in the future can most certainly go back to your natural colour.   The Neurosciencenews article writes about a research study by Ayelet Rosenberg and co entitled " Quantitative mapping of human hair greying and reversal in relation to life stress " published on eLife, also on June 22nd. If you're interested in the full text of the study with proper expla...