yoqva
16th September 2006, 12:08
This letter will be next week in Nelson Mandela hands:
To
Mr President Nelson Mandela
Dear Mr President,
I am writing to you from Jerusalem, where I live. My real name is xxx, but I am well known as “Johnny Jerusalem” in all my AIDS related public endeavors and website appearances. I have been an HIV carrier for the past five and a half years.
Five and a half years ago I had no idea I had HIV; I was suffering, getting ill, spending time hospitalized at the Hadassa Hospital in Jerusalem, thinking it was the end of my life. Only after endless medical tests while hanging between life and death at the ICU did we find out I was HIV positive. At the time, there was not one person in the hospital staff who believed they would see me standing again on my own two feet, not one medical staff member who believed I would leave the hospital alive, and yet once the virus was found in my blood, the doctors and I fought hard until twenty three days later I left the hospital, indeed, on my own two feet and started receiving Aids appropriate treatment.
My family accepted my status as a carrier without reproach, and moreover – I have been given full admirable support by my family, as opposed to many of my friends, who were rejected and ostracized by their families, and even thrown out of home.
Once out of the hospital, I searched for information on AIDS on the internet. All I could find was articles and websites basically telling me that AIDS kills. I turned off the computer in dismay and sunk into a world of anxiety and depression. But I was not alone. I have the best of social workers at the hospital, Ms Estelle Rubinstein, to whom I owe the understanding that AIDS does not mean a death penalty. Once she showed me one can live many years as a carrier living a full life, I vowed to build a website in Hebrew for others in my situation, so they can have a current, accurate and dependable source of information. Seven months later my website www.hiv.co,il was on, followed by a website in Arabic, the second official language of Israel, and soon followed by more pages in Russian and Spanish too. It has since become a major international site, with an average of 2500 hits a day and over a million hits a year, with people browsing it from over 200 countries across the world, including remote islands! The website, no doubt, has provided answers, light and hope to many who need it.
The CD you are holding now in your hands, and that I hope you will soon listen to, has a history of its own. It is titled “Stigma”. There is nothing I want more fiercely than to fight against and shatter the AIDS social stigma. Hence, after thinking about the best way to do it, I wrote the lyrics to the Stigma Song, which describes how we are all equal human beings, all looking for a love-showing hug. Then , I recorded it professionally. I enclosed a translation of the Hebrew lyrics’ for your convenience. I posted the song on my website and it can be downloaded for free. Alas, I realize the battle is not just local, not just here in Israel, the war against AIDS is an International war, maybe the biggest war we have ever had to fight, against the disease and against its stigma.
With much effort I gathered a few good people who agreed to join in the venture: someone translated the lyrics to English, my sister’s friend -Maya Vapniyarsky - composed the song, a friend of hers - Sigalit Burshtein-
volunteered to sing it , and thus the song in its English version came to be. I believe it is a beautiful emotional rendering of the song, performed in a special way, from the heart, bringing on tears and shiver as one listens to it and thinks of how we are really the same, separated by nothing, especially not by the HIV. I believe you can actually feel all this as you listen to the song.
The song has been downloaded thousands of times from my website, and it has been sung in a few major events and broadcasted with my permission around the world – from India to South Africa to America – everywhere. I am amazed at the reactions it is getting. I received an email from a gentleman in Tanzania asking my permission to translate it to Swahili. I believe the song has not yet reached its full influential potential. For that to come to fruition, I believe the song has to reach and vibrate in every home everywhere in the world, and maybe with your help, it will reach greater audiences.
No doubt, Mr President, you are the chivalrous knight of the battle against AIDS, for no one has made as big a difference in the world regarding AIDS and HIV as you have, and therefore, it is my honor to present you with this CD with the song I wrote about the AIDS stigma . included is also a video –clip of Sigalit’s rendering of the song.
Sigalit and I will be honored and ready to help you in any way in your fight against AIDS , as we are sure that despite the enormity of the task – it can be overcome. It is with our permission and blessing that you can use this song in and for any national anti-AIDS campaign in your country. All I we would ask, please, is that credit is given to the song’s author and its performer as named in this letter. We hope this song will manage to reach heights that have not been reached yet in this fight against AIDS.
I have identified myself to you in my real name out of respect for you and your achievements. I would appreciate it and ask of you that my real name and details be kept confidential. Thus, we close the letter with the same issue that we started with : the Stigma of AIDS and the fears attached to it.
Thank you for allowing us to present this to you, and I hope that will like the song. I would be delighted, if I may, to know what you thought of the song, after listening to it.
Sincerely yours and with much appreciation,
Jony Jerusalem
To
Mr President Nelson Mandela
Dear Mr President,
I am writing to you from Jerusalem, where I live. My real name is xxx, but I am well known as “Johnny Jerusalem” in all my AIDS related public endeavors and website appearances. I have been an HIV carrier for the past five and a half years.
Five and a half years ago I had no idea I had HIV; I was suffering, getting ill, spending time hospitalized at the Hadassa Hospital in Jerusalem, thinking it was the end of my life. Only after endless medical tests while hanging between life and death at the ICU did we find out I was HIV positive. At the time, there was not one person in the hospital staff who believed they would see me standing again on my own two feet, not one medical staff member who believed I would leave the hospital alive, and yet once the virus was found in my blood, the doctors and I fought hard until twenty three days later I left the hospital, indeed, on my own two feet and started receiving Aids appropriate treatment.
My family accepted my status as a carrier without reproach, and moreover – I have been given full admirable support by my family, as opposed to many of my friends, who were rejected and ostracized by their families, and even thrown out of home.
Once out of the hospital, I searched for information on AIDS on the internet. All I could find was articles and websites basically telling me that AIDS kills. I turned off the computer in dismay and sunk into a world of anxiety and depression. But I was not alone. I have the best of social workers at the hospital, Ms Estelle Rubinstein, to whom I owe the understanding that AIDS does not mean a death penalty. Once she showed me one can live many years as a carrier living a full life, I vowed to build a website in Hebrew for others in my situation, so they can have a current, accurate and dependable source of information. Seven months later my website www.hiv.co,il was on, followed by a website in Arabic, the second official language of Israel, and soon followed by more pages in Russian and Spanish too. It has since become a major international site, with an average of 2500 hits a day and over a million hits a year, with people browsing it from over 200 countries across the world, including remote islands! The website, no doubt, has provided answers, light and hope to many who need it.
The CD you are holding now in your hands, and that I hope you will soon listen to, has a history of its own. It is titled “Stigma”. There is nothing I want more fiercely than to fight against and shatter the AIDS social stigma. Hence, after thinking about the best way to do it, I wrote the lyrics to the Stigma Song, which describes how we are all equal human beings, all looking for a love-showing hug. Then , I recorded it professionally. I enclosed a translation of the Hebrew lyrics’ for your convenience. I posted the song on my website and it can be downloaded for free. Alas, I realize the battle is not just local, not just here in Israel, the war against AIDS is an International war, maybe the biggest war we have ever had to fight, against the disease and against its stigma.
With much effort I gathered a few good people who agreed to join in the venture: someone translated the lyrics to English, my sister’s friend -Maya Vapniyarsky - composed the song, a friend of hers - Sigalit Burshtein-
volunteered to sing it , and thus the song in its English version came to be. I believe it is a beautiful emotional rendering of the song, performed in a special way, from the heart, bringing on tears and shiver as one listens to it and thinks of how we are really the same, separated by nothing, especially not by the HIV. I believe you can actually feel all this as you listen to the song.
The song has been downloaded thousands of times from my website, and it has been sung in a few major events and broadcasted with my permission around the world – from India to South Africa to America – everywhere. I am amazed at the reactions it is getting. I received an email from a gentleman in Tanzania asking my permission to translate it to Swahili. I believe the song has not yet reached its full influential potential. For that to come to fruition, I believe the song has to reach and vibrate in every home everywhere in the world, and maybe with your help, it will reach greater audiences.
No doubt, Mr President, you are the chivalrous knight of the battle against AIDS, for no one has made as big a difference in the world regarding AIDS and HIV as you have, and therefore, it is my honor to present you with this CD with the song I wrote about the AIDS stigma . included is also a video –clip of Sigalit’s rendering of the song.
Sigalit and I will be honored and ready to help you in any way in your fight against AIDS , as we are sure that despite the enormity of the task – it can be overcome. It is with our permission and blessing that you can use this song in and for any national anti-AIDS campaign in your country. All I we would ask, please, is that credit is given to the song’s author and its performer as named in this letter. We hope this song will manage to reach heights that have not been reached yet in this fight against AIDS.
I have identified myself to you in my real name out of respect for you and your achievements. I would appreciate it and ask of you that my real name and details be kept confidential. Thus, we close the letter with the same issue that we started with : the Stigma of AIDS and the fears attached to it.
Thank you for allowing us to present this to you, and I hope that will like the song. I would be delighted, if I may, to know what you thought of the song, after listening to it.
Sincerely yours and with much appreciation,
Jony Jerusalem