Come Out To DC Film Event To See Where Young American Journalists Meet Israel In “The Editors”
They couldn’t have come at a more dangerous time. Six university newspaper editors from America visited Israel for the first time last December, and the already planned trip happened to coincide with the first week of the recent Gaza Conflict.
In a reality style documentary, the young Americans had their week-long visit taped by a camera crew hired by Project Interchange, a Washington-based organization that develops seminars for Americans and international guests in Israel. The film is being screened tomorrow at Georgetown University.
In Israel, the editors, including Georgetown’s The Hoya newspaper editor Andrew Dubbins, met with a wide range of leaders and citizens in an attempt to get beyond the headlines to learn the complexities of the Middle East peace process.
(Vadim Lavrusik, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher, The Minnesota Daily, University of Minnesota)
The documentary was written and directed by Patrick Ryan Morris from Project Interchange, and features Dubbins, along with other editors who were in Israel from December 30th to January 5th.
“I was an editor of a newspaper in college,” says Morris. “From that experience, I know that you cannot bring journalists to Israel, or anywhere for that matter, and force an ideology on them or a version of the truth.”
He hopes to screen the film at campuses throughout the United States.
Project Interchange brings new delegations of “influentials” to Israel twice a month from around the world. Muslim leaders from France came to a seminar in Israel in December, meeting Israeli President Shimon Peres and the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. In November, women executives from the U.S. construction business enjoyed a week-long seminar. Before that, European environment leaders were in Israel. Each group of guests enjoy tailor-made trips, adapted to their interests and expertise.
The world premiere of the The Editors, the film, will take place tomorrow evening – April 20th at 8:00 pm, at Georgetown University’s ICC Auditorium. The screening will be followed by a wrap party at Cafe St. Ex.
For more details and a map of how to get there, see The Editors on Facebook.
For more about Project Interchange, see the ISRAEL21c feature story on the organization.
Foto Friday – To market, to market with Tamar Matsafi
Filed under: Art, Food, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel
Passover is over and things are about to get back to normal, sort of. In the Israeli endless vacation reality, there’s still Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel Independence Day) to look forward to, after which a mild depression sets in as there won’t be another long vacation break till the High Holidays. Oh, except for August. We don’t work much in August.
The latter part of this week, though, was devoted to re-stocking the kitchen, post-Pesach. Photographer Tamar Matsafi took a jaunt to Jerusalem’s open market, Machane Yehuda, a refreshing alternative the the local supermarket.
First thing, buy new spices to replace the ones you threw out.
Photo: Tamar Matsafi
Photo: Tamar Matsafi
David had a nice write-up a few weeks ago about an unusual cooking competition held in the shuk between gourmet grannies.
Photo: Tamar Matsafi
An explanation of these dangerously delicious fried treats may be found here.
Photo: Tamar Matsafi
And check out Harry’s profile of Machane Yehuda’s resident shaman Uzi-Eli Chezi.
Photo: Tamar Matsafi
Our bags are full so home we go…
Photo: Tamar Matsafi
Watch out for the secular guy
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life
If there’s one thing Israelis like to do, it’s categorizing people. Not that we’re prejudiced, but it’s second nature when describing someone that’s not like you to use a term like ‘haredim’ (Ultra-Orthodox), “Roosim’ (Russian), or ‘Aravim’ (Arab).
And it’s not only religion or nationality, it can also describe behavior or cultural bents – someone can be a ‘freche’ (Israeli version of a Jewish American Princess), an ‘Arse’ (a male JAP), or a Tzfon Tel Avivi (beourgouise, Left-wing Tel Aviv resident).
But did you ever think that those same people you’re labelling with the greatest of ease are also stereotyping you?
I was walking to work yesterday afternoon through a Jerusalem neighborhood inhabited mostly by devoutly religious Jews who generally dress in black and sport peyot around their ears. There, how’s that for political correctness?
Three boys, around nine or 10 years old, were playing in the street when a car drove by slowing down by them. After passing the first two boys, the driver stopped at the last one and appeared to be asking him a question.
The first two boys looked on excitedly. “Hey, he’s talking to Yediya,” one of them said.
“Who is he, an Arab?” asked the second boy.
“No, I don’t think so. He looks hiloni (secular),” was the first boy’s response.
I cracked up. To them, this perfectly normal looking guy, who I would describe as a middle-aged white male, was to these haredi youth, a non-religious outsider. To them, he was as exotic and foreign as an Arab or an Ethiopian is to a white, Ashkenazi, secular Israeli.
No moral to the story here, it’s just interesting to once in a while look at things from the other guy’s point of view. And maybe if we stopped labelling everyone we saw, we might all be a little better off.
Merry maimouna
Filed under: Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness
Pesach 2009 has come and gone, with the last vestige of celebration relegated to Mimouna, the Moroccan festival held on the evening and day after Pesach. Some say the festival is in memory of the great philosopher Moshe ben Maimon, known as the Rambam, while others say it is named for the word itself, Maimon, which means wealth and good fortune. Whatever the reason, it’s become a day of festivities, and much eating. Friends and families gather at one another’s homes, and in local parks to celebrate with food, lots of it. It’s an opportunity for local politicians to visit constituents in certain neighborhoods, in a kind of ‘Mimouna-Hop.’ As if we haven’t all been eating enough for the last seven days…
In Jerusalem, it’s been my custom during recent years to head over to Sacher Park where the local Mimouna celebrations take place, and where all the celebrants are happy to include one and all, even strangers. And if you have a desire to create your own Mimouna, Molly Petito, the owner of party planning company Marrakesh, has a few handy tips:
Make sure the table is full of food and looks celebratory;
Leave your doors of your house (or tent) open so that anyone who wants to share in the celebration feels welcome;
Have lots of candies on the table, no hametz, as well as cookies, nuts and dried fruits;
Since Mimouna symbolizes the end of Pesach, some Mimouna celebrants make sure to decorate their tables with sheaves of wheat and barley;
And feel free to add fish as a symbol of fertility and ful beans for luck.
For anyone living outside of Israel, consider an alternative kind of Mimouna, and celebrate it on Friday night, if you’re already cooking…here’s a good recipe and an easy mint tea option.
Yoga puts religious Israelis in an uncomfortable position
Filed under: A New Reality, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion, Sports
Today’s Western societies are into all kinds of Eastern recreational and spiritual pursuits. There are also scores of Israelis from multiple generations returning home from backpacking jaunts to India and elsewhere in the East on an ongoing basis. Combine the two phenomena, and the booming popularity of yoga in Israel seems like an obvious eventuality.
For Israelis who are interested in spirituality avenues that are new to them, regardless of potential conflict with their Jewish roots, yoga is hardly a problem. But for the increasing numbers of Israeli Orthodox Jews who are experimenting with flavors from other faiths and integrating them into their own traditional frameworks, yoga isn’t always a straightforward pursuit.
Other spiritual paths might be less problematic for religious Jews looking to pepper things up: Buddhism, for example, is often justified on the grounds that it is essentially a code of ethics with possibly nothing to teach in terms of deities. And other religions have their own potential beefs (pardon the apropos expression) with yoga. However, some Jewish theologians, including a well-publicized responsum by Chabad Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, have justified yoga practice among Jews on the grounds that one ought not throw the baby out with the bathwater – in other words, just because many yoga practitioners include chants dedicated to multiple deities in their practices, that doesn’t mean that the spirit-calming and body-stretching advantages of yoga ought to be avoided.
Another complication to the situation is that it might not be so straightforward that yoga’s Hindu chants to more than one god represent idolatry. Many other theologians have posited that since they all essentially represent manifestations of the one primary godhead, Brahman, the additional Hindu gods can be seen as analogous to Jewish mysticism’s concept of the sephirot, the kabalistic manifestations of the Jewish God’s various components of holiness.
Regardless, there are thousands of religious Israelis who are simply scared of yoga’s spiritual elements and prefer to focus on its exercise-based advantages. Case in point is Californian immigrant yogi Aviva Schmidt, whose yoga studio in Jerusalem, “Power Flow,” has been christened by Ha’aretz as “Israel’s first kosher power yoga studio.”
Located in Jerusalem’s posh Rehavia neighborhood, “Power Flow” specializes in power yoga, which is different from conventional yoga in that the exercises are quicker and more exhausting. “They call it yoga for athletes,” Schmidt said. “It’s not your slow, meditative and gentle yoga, it’s a workout.”
As Schmidt explains her approach to the conundrum….
“Yoga is based on Eastern tradition and focuses a lot on meditation. Different positions are worshipping different idols, which goes against Judaism. So I keep it very pareve: for example, I don’t say the names of the positions, there is no chanting, no ohming. I do focus on the breathing, as this is very important in yoga, but any kind of eastern philosophy stays outside.”
Hey, whatever floats your boat. We’ve heard of kosher cell phones and kosher sex, so kosher yoga? Why not.
Image of Israelis doing yoga courtesy zivpu from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
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