ISAACS FAMILY NEWSLETTER, December 2017

Dramatic change in The Isaacs Family since your last update. Read on for all the gossip.

 Ari came home for Shabbat

Not exactly a gripping title but here’s the story. Those with elephantine memories will recall that Ari is CEO of ShapeDo - a startup that has developed software for the construction industry. Despite 60 active projects in Israel, the company must go global to grow. Ari moved to London to develop the UK market and came home this weekend for the first time in three months. He is enjoying England but has two regrets: he should have moved six months earlier and - the weather.  

Brawn Elon

Elon’s latest hobby is American football. There is one rule that is enforced strictly in American football: you are not allowed to kill the opponents. Basically everything else is permitted. Just up Elon’s street. Fast and physical. Despite very substantive protection (more substantial than military armour) Elon still returns home after every game with new scratches, bruises and swelling. That is considered lucky. About half the players end the season early.

Beyond football, Elon divides his life between his magic business, basketball and hanging out with his lovely girl-friend Leetal. I am not writing too much about that because if Elon reads this newsletter – very unlikely but not impossible - he may get annoyed. I imagine him saying “Why do you need to tell all your old family and friends about my private life?”

Naphtali “Gates” Isaacs

Throughout school and beyond Naphtali swore he would NEVER go to university. His aversion to academia was close in intensity to Judy’s aversion to dogs. Naphtali returned home from his trips to the East with no clear idea what to do next (par for his generation). One day a Judy brain-wave coughed up the idea for him of “full stack web development” (can brain waves cough?). Naphtali checked it out and…it happened.  A “halleluya” moment. Naphtali found his calling. He enrolled and loves it. He has become the family “swot” – studying day and night well above and beyond the demands of his course, and scoring top grades. He is already interviewing for his first programming job. 

Naphtali now divides his life between programming and hanging out with his lovely girl-friend Adi. I am not writing too much about that because if Naphtali reads this newsletter – very very unlikely but he has surprised us enough in the last few months - he will probably get extremely annoyed. I can already hear him accusing “Why do you need to tell all your old family and friends about my private life?”

Orly “Gates” Isaacs

Orly is in her last year of maths and computer science in Ariel. Orly is the original family “swot”. An SFB (Swot From Birth). She is typically at her books in the university library until midnight when the librarian kicks her and her study group out. 

Beyond her studies, Orly divides her life between dancing, teaching dancing and hanging out with her lovely boy-friend Chen. I am not writing too much about that because if Orly reads this newsletter – very unlikely that she will read the whole thing but extremely likely that she will demand to read the part about herself - she will definitely get totally incensed. I can already hear her whining “Why do you need to tell all your old family and friends about my private life?”

Abigail “Florence-Gates” Isaacs

Abigail (16) was one of three girls who organized a Shabbat last week in Elkana for the “Achim” (אחים) organization at which the youth of Elkana hosted 30 severely physically and mentally disabled children. Abigail found families to house the children, volunteers to tend them throughout Shabbat, and arranged meals and entertainment. Almost all the children were in wheelchairs; most were very limited in their ability to talk. But they still had a great time. We are so proud of Abigail for leading all this. The following week, Abigail went off to Petach Tikva to assist at a similar Shabbat for a different group of severely disabled children.

 Abigail has lots of bagruyot this year and is extremely reluctantly, and completely against her will and better judgement, becoming a “swot”. In a newsletter in about 1998 I introduced the concept of “Kaytanat Judy” which was the summer camp that Judy ran for her children in July and August taking them to all her favourite haunts throughout the summer months. Well, there is now “Judy School”. Judy helps all her programmer children including Abigail. Abigail twigged a long time ago that her mother is much better at computers than her school teacher. As I type, they are discussing GetValue and generic lists (whatever the hell those are).

Elisheva “Gates” Isaacs (just joking…well not entirely)

Elisheva (13) is in 8^th grade and is one of just 4 girls out of her year of 85 who qualified for a course for children gifted in mathematics. After three months, Elisheva has already covered the curriculum for all 8^th grade and most of 9^th grade. The course involves inhuman amounts of homework, but Elisheva has become the family “swot”. She pores over her books at all hours of day and night on the 50 or so problems she gets every week.  Elisheva solves most herself. The others are our nightmare. Elisheva seeks help from everyone and anyone who walks through the front door including yours truly, who hasn’t successfully solved a mathematical equation since 1980 (and didn’t solve all that many successfully before then). Elisheva is thrilled that Ari is here for a week. Someone who can actually help her.

If she sticks with the program, Elisheva will do “bagrut” in mathematics in 10^th grade and can then choose either to start a university degree or go to the beach for two years. A no-brainer for both of us, but we nevertheless reached opposite conclusions.

 Shabbat table conversations

With Ari, Naphtali, Orly, Chen (who is also studying computers), Abigail and Judy, our family chit-chat is now 99% around algorithms, recursion, Java, HTML, Java, Json, PHP, For’s, If’s, loops, bla bla bla, bla bla. Friday night was worst. It started with a simple question: you receive four numbers (and you don’t know what they are), how can you calculate the latest valid time of day that these numbers can represent? Interesting? Maybe…for 30 seconds. But not at our table. This hypothetical and irrational question (I mean, seriously, who has ever been presented with 4 digits and then had someone beg them “ooh-please-please-please-tell-me-what-is-the-latest-time-I-can-make-out-of-them?) sparked an hour-long discussion that evolved to even more ridiculous hypothetical problems that no one with a functioning kidney would care about. Like “how can you reverse the order of three words in a single sweep?” What a stupid question! Just move them! They’re only words, right? Not 20-storey blocks of flats! But No. Not for programmers. Programmers battle passionately over such trivia, arguing the most efficient method, debugging verbal software, and being booooooooring.

And this isn’t the end. Frustrated that she couldn’t follow the discussion, after Shabbat Elisheva started listening to Judy’s recorded lectures. By the time I went to bed she was already using variables and various parameters to print her name with gaps between letters in some 3-D pattern.

 I give up. I’m surrounded.

 Lots of Love

Judy, Michael, Ari, Elon, Naphtali, Orly, Abigail and Elisheva Isaacs, Elkana