Offbeat Israel: Medical Clowning, Neighbors, and Dead Sea PR
By Nathan Jeffay
Israeli doctors are having a laugh at the taxpayers’ expense. Literally.
In 2006, Haifa University’s Department of Theatre began a special bachelors’ program for a group of medical clowns who wanted to build on their knowledge. It has now decided to launch a degree program that will train and accredit medical clowns.
The new program is intended for newcomers to the profession. It will focus on fields of knowledge related to therapy, such as nursing, developmental psychology and the history of medicine, as well as theatrical skills that are necessary for clowning, such as comedy acting, improvisation, street theater and juggling.
It includes practical studies in clowning, medical clowning, acting skills, the history of theater and the history of clowning. Graduates of this program will also possess tools for providing therapy and will know what the medical effects of their work will be.
One in two secular Israelis says that they would not like an ultra-Orthodox neighbor, according to a new poll.
Commissioned by the Ynet news website and Gesher, a movement which promotes secular-religious understanding, the poll also found that 73% of Haredi participants said they do not want a neighbor who is not an Orthodox Jew. You can read the results in this Ynet article.
The poll was taken as secular-Haredi tensions are high following several weekends of rioting over car parking in Jerusalem.
It also comes on the back of riots over the arrest and subsequent bail of a Haredi woman suspected of starving her son as a result of Munchausen by proxy syndrome, in which the person affected makes someone else ill, usually a child, in order to get attention. Haredi leaders who have protested the woman’s arrest claim that she is innocent and that the boy is weak because he suffers from cancer. They have likened the arrest to an antisemetic blood libel, and even called for a boycott of Hadassah hospital where the boy was taken.
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