Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Serving in the army



Eli (my commander) & Myself


The wailing wall in the afternoon


The army is Israel is a unique phenomenon. Even thought one will say there has been a lot of changes during the last decades and people don't volunteer to serve , specially in the reserve , (we call it Miluim in Hebrew), i don't see it in our team.
At the age of 44 I am entitle to quit from the army but when I see the people around me still serve I just don't feel like leaving .usually you don't find yourself hanging around in a group w/people at the age of your daughter,and people who are older than you , but I must say it is FUN.
Last summer we had a war in Israel, we spent the summer in an around Lebanon, and had flashbacks from 1982 when we as young soldiers spent our summer in Lebanon and our country got stocked there for another 18 years till 2000.
I don't serve in a fighting unit now but we do help and support the units by helping them in cretin situations. We did a great job during the last war and spent around 30 days serving .

On Monday and Tuesday we went for two days, these two days were very important by means of learning cretin stuff regarding our job in the army, but mainly was aimed on Integrating the team.
Since part of the team is young guys who joined us few months ago and part of the team is a group of people who go together for many years, you need to spent some time together in order to get to know each other better.
We went to Jerusalem, wonderful city, full of history and emotions for every Jew, Christian and Muslim but for us as Jews it is our holy city and specially the Wailing Wall. So it was a mixture of studies:professional ,historical and fun.



The Wall


At night we went out for a short drink that happened to end as a very interesting and enjoyable time .We were sitting in a bar , and after half an hour we got drinks for everybody from a guy who were sitting on the bar.
This religious guy treated us in a very generous way, from his bottom of his hurt , just because we are soldiers, we had the first round and than the second, and after the third which also included food we almost collapsed. the guy's name is Josh Fisher. Thank you Josh for your generous gift!!!




Josh with the Team


The team


We spent sometime in and under old Jerusalem, but the highlight was the time in the tunnels underneath the Muslim quarter where you can see the part of the western wall which is buried under and touch history of 2000 years ago, the foundations of the Jews heritage



Under the old city of Jerusalem

(the wall tunnels)




Friday, November 24, 2006

weekend in Israel

After few weeks of hectic work, without finding the way to relax on weekends i found myself free of missions in my TO DO list.
Tel Aviv on Fridays is the city to open you morning with, sunshine , no traffic and beautiful people .We started the morning in one of the best bakeries in TLV, L'ehamim http://www.2eat.co.il/lehem (which mean "Many Bread" in English) and than we picked Danielle , out oldest daughter who arrive from the army, from the bus station after two weeks
out of home.




Danielle

we went to have our next coffee with Tal, a very good friend who is the leading insurance broker specializing in Aviation in Israel http://www.aerospace.co.il/Content/English/English.asp


Tal Engel


we had this coffee in Matilda http://www.rol.co.il/sites/matilda/ which my partner Jacob says its the best coffee house in TLV , free parking and free WiFi , he is from Jerusalem so it doesn't count:)

one of the greats things in Israel is our weather, so i found myself driving to the sea w/Maayan my youngest (+5) and her friend Yuli to have few hours in the sun. of course no bathing suits so i found my self running trying to stop them from going into the water............wonderful day












is your VISION connected to your values?

Yuval
once every few months we are meeting , our special group whom we studied together in the fundamental course of CTI.


Its a wonderful group and every time one of us contribute to the group in a lecture. tonight it was Yuval who explained us about vision and values and the connection between them, in a nut-shell

Your vision is connected to your values!!


is that so?
is your vision connected to your values??????


it was very refreshing to participate in this evening after few weeks of hard work selling a company which i am involved in to a very big software company, we signed the agreement but no closing yet - so update yet to come.


on the above pic on the right is Erela our host for the evening

Monday, November 13, 2006

last pic from the party






more party pictures












Saturday night we did a party in my house, we were around 20 people who spent the last six months in a coaching course. beautiful people who took a journey into their hurts and soul. the food was great, the drinks were excellent and the karaoke was fun.




karyoke party

my dear friends , more later

Thursday, November 09, 2006

my friends blog

just wanted to update you about two blogs that i read. the first one is my partner's blog:
Jacob Ner David http://www.vcinjerusalem.typepad.com
and the second one is a good friend of us: Jeff Pulver http://pulverblog.pulver.com

last week we took Jeff, who was here for a week , for a 4*4, desert trip and you can see the pic in Jeff's blog at :http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/005900.html



Me

Its my first attempt to Blog......so pls be patient with me.
My name is Lior Lifshitz, I live in Israel and acts as a partner in a new Seed VC named Jerusalem Capital
I will try to describe our life in Israel and my life as a VC partner.