Best wishes for a happy, healthy New Year. A Very Happy and Healthy New Year to All Our Friends and Family. ESTHER & DAVID WEINGARTEN Best wishes for a happy, healthy New Year. SHELLY & RUTH WEITZ 1:Inn A Very Happy and Healthy New Year to All Our Friends and Family. JOHN, CHERYL, ERIC & JENNIFER SLAIM ESTHER & EDDIE SHERMAN & FAMILY May the coming year be one filled with health, happiness and prosperity for all our friends and family. THE SELIGMAN FAMILY MADELON, LOU, MELISSA, ADRIANNE to all our friends and relatives. ZITA & LEO WEBER Desert Wonders In A Reserve LYNN PORITZ mu3L2 Special to The Jewish News to all our friends and relatives. MURRAY & LINDA GOLDENBERG GOLDENBERG PHOTOGRAPHY KEN MALACH & SHANE Scottsdale, AZ ravz lann nalls mu'? MU'? ISRAEL ran 711V2 to all our friends and relatives. 12,11D11 May the New Year Bring To All Our Friends and Family — Health, Joy, Prosperity and Everything Good in Life. nalz anon to all our friends and relatives. to all our friends and relatives. HOWARD & ALEX SPINNER JACK & JANE SWEET A Very Happy and Healthy New Year to All Our Friends and Family. SIMCHA an organization for Jewish Lesbians & Gays May the coming year be one filled with health, happiness and prosperity for all our friends and family. HARVEY & DIANA STALBURG DR. CAREN M. STALBERG BARBI STALBURG, GRANDMA FAE STALBURG & GRANDPA FRED KOHEN 0 n a typically dry, hot afternoon in an Arava farmhouse, when all but the staunchest desert denizens have sought shelter from the torrid Negev heat, a Hatzeva farmer talks of the social mores of the Arabian babbler with as much ease as a housewife might discuss the price of tomatoes. Lofty discourse? Not especially. In the Arava, a southern stretch of desert settled with kibbutzim and moshavim and home to the Sheizaf Nature Reserve, many of the settlers know what flies, creeps or crawls out from under just what rock, thanks to the lectures and guides from the Hatzeva Field School. On first glance, the Reserve looks as desolate as an emp- ty sandbox. There are no herds of huge elephants, no awesomely high peaks, and no kitchy souvenir stands on its 38,000 dunams of low hills Many of the settlers know what flies, creeps or crawls out from under just what rock, thanks to the lectures. and gravel terraces. But look a bit closer and a fascinating- ly ugly Egyptian dabb lizard lazily slinks in and out of his subterranean home; short, graceful dorcus gazelle leap across your path, and zoologist Giora Ilany floats by in an ultra-light plane on the lookout for lizard. "There's no gimmick here," says Rami Kushner, head of the Hatzeva Field School, which may explain why each year only some 10 percent of the Field School's 20,000 overnighters and 1,000 day- trippers visit the Reserve. Those who do, however, are in- trigued by the ancient terrain. But to be best appreciated, this particular patch of the Rift needs some explaining, for while most Israelis are on first-name terms with just about everyone, this familiari- ty rarely extends to animals of the wild. Advises Dr. Amos Zahavi, founder of the Hatzeva Field School, "the wonders are not obvious and the animals are a bit shy."