From high school into the frying pan
High school graduations are a unique creature in Israel. They’re nothing like the solemn mortar board and cape graduation, and rented tux prom that I experienced growing up in the US. And thank God for that.
It’s almost like going to a musical. My daughter’s event took place last night at a posh events hall in downtown Jerusalem, equipped with a comfortable auditorium complete with state of the art sound and video systems.
And the show was dazzling. Because there’s no prom in Israel, the girls wore their slinky dresses, and even the boys tended to not wear t-shirts.
Some of the kids had travelled to Tel Aviv last week to lay down vocal tracks at a recording studio for musical extravaganzas they performed in between the speeches and awards. A professional director and producer helped the graduating class script and rehearse a 45-minute play that – within its humorous framework replete with cutting principal and teacher imitations – touched on national issues of tolerance, freedom of expression, and the schism within Israeli society as personified by the extremes of gay pride and haredi devoutness.
And then there was the de rigueur professionally made video recapping the year, including the class trips, the volleyball games, and the the events that make up senior year. And of course, the diplomas and special awards (my tear ducts started leaking when the daughter was singled out for an award for Excellence in Sports Achievement).
At the same time, I had to laugh at the background music someone chose to play while each student in the 5 classes of 35 kids was called up. Israelis usually ignore the lyrics of English songs, preferring to make their choose on the musical vibe. So, as our kids were receiving their certificates, we were treated to a Nina Simone soundalike performing easy listening cocktail jazz versions of songs like “Pride (In the Name of Love” by U2 with its lyrics “Shots rang out in the Memphis night,” and The Police’s “Roxanne” about a prosititute.
No matter, the evening was a grand success, and even though it lasted well over three hours, it remained engaging throughout. At midnight, a bus pulled up to take the graduates to a well-deserved all-night beach party at Nitznanim.
My lasting impression though, was watching the whole class hug and dance onstage after the grand finale in a show of elation. 99% of the graduates will be entering the IDF within the next year, the principal had announced earlier in the evening. Looking out at the boys and girls turned into men and women, there was more than a touch of sadness, knowing that this would be the last time they would all be together, that they were awaiting an unknown and potentially dangerous immediate future. High school is over – here’s your gun. Let’s hope they’re all around for their 25th high school reunion.
Cafe Birnbaum
Filed under: Art, Business, Food, General, History and Culture, Israeliness
Tel Aviv is a city with many a cafe, and not all of them have appeared in the Aroma/Cafe Hillel stream of the last ten years. One of the best-loved, and with mighty tasty grub, is Cafe Birnbaum, owned the Birnbaum sisters, Penina and Sima. They took over from their father who ran the space as a bakery for many years, and turned it into a vegetarian cafe, although that term doesn’t really do it justice.
The retro front window tells newcomers that Cafe Birnbaum has been in existence since 1962, but the interior of Birnbaum’s is white, light and airy, and bustling with the activity of Penina and Sima, both with short gray hair and sharp, Tel Aviv-y black pants, shirts and red aprons. Penina runs around with a cigarette in hand, although there is a clear No Smoking sign, and the food is vegetarian and pointedly meat-less, although not crunchy granola, and neither is the crowd. There’s no menu; it’s grab a plate and fill up with as many of the fresh vegetable and grain salads as you can fit on your thick white diner dish. For the second course, you can choose from a selection of vegetable pies and bean and grain dishes, which Penina will warm for you in the oven (although I ate my mine room temp; it was a hot day). And that’s all for NIS 45. Drinks are extra, as are the delectable-looking desserts, which included a plummy fruitcake and sweet noodle kugel last Thursday.
Once you’ve settled in with your very tasty choices, it’s time to sit back and look around, while enjoying eating. Birnbaum’s is always busy, and it’s apparent, even on a first visit or if you haven’t been there for a while, that it’s a well-loved restaurant. The walls — and ceiling — are covered with art and some poetry, much of it by well-known Israeli artists such as Menashe Kadishman and Motty Golan who created pieces of and for the sisters.
Kadishman's gift to the sisters
Golan's portrait of the sisters
An ode to Birnbaum's
Cafe Birnbaum, 31 Nachalat Binyamin
Nostalgia Sunday – Pop Star
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
Do Israelis know from the Jackson-5? Puh-leez! This is the country whose government banned the Beatles from performing in the early Sixties on the grounds that they were a degenerate influence on the nation’s youth. But they did know Michael Jackson. In the mid-Seventies, with the advent of third radio broadcaster Reshet Gimmel, which played pop music, and pirate radio station The Voice of Peace, Israelis did become exposed to the international pop music. “Maariv LaNoar”, a weekly magazine for young people, reinvented itself as the local version of “Tiger Beat” with covers like this one:
Israelis tended (and still tend) to be exposed to Euro-pop, rather than good old American rock and soul but Michael Jackson was a massive musical crossover artist, with huge cultural influence all over the Middle East. Once “Thriller” hit, every country had their own ringleted version of Michael Jackson. Israel too*.
His Pied Piper persona already in full-swing, Michael Jackson held particular appeal for the younger set (by this I mean people who are now in their late Thirties) and in the mid Eighties you couldn’t go to any wedding or bar mitzva without the kids breaking out into song: “Triller! Tee lai lai… la lee la la la la la la la la la la la la… Triller! Tee lai lai…” and so on, ad infinitum.
But by the late Eighties, Israel’s media had fallen into lock-step with its international counterparts and stories about Jackson — whom “Spy” magazine once described as “the American version of Prince Ludwig of Bavaria” — focused on the weirdness.
And then, in 1992, speculation began that he was coming to perform in Israel. And he did in 1993.
During the past decade, new albums like “History”, regularly made the mainstream Israeli press, like this cover of Yediot Aharonot’s weekend supplement from 2002 of Jackson pulling his famous crotch-grab move. Famous but not original; the move was copped from Prince-produced Minneapolis band The Time, who doubtless stole the move from some other uncredited act.
Now Michael Jackson is dead and, as a good friend posted the other day on Facebook, in-between all the big hits, “the airwaves are filled with a whole ouevre of repetitive music that we fortunately never had to listen to.” Because our memories are not of Euro-perception post-”Bad” crap. We over-forties remember the J-5 hits, the Jacksons and, of course “Off The Wall” — little of which are being played here. Sadly, Israeli radio — whose knowledge of soul music is limited to the Blues Brothers movies parts 1 & 2 — is as usual, regurgitating only what it knows, not doing any research and depriving listeners of that truly joyous, wonderful music. Personally, I blame it on the boogie.
*Izhar Cohen, he of the Eurovision Europop mega-hit A-ba-ni-bi.
Michael Jackson mourned in Israel
Uri Geller with Michael Jackson.
The British press has been full of interviews with Uri Geller, the Israeli psychic, who called Jackson his best friend. Geller says the stress of readying for a 50-show stint in London this summer may have contributed to his untimely demise.
‘He was in good shape. I’m not a doctor, but I can only assume he was under immense stresses and pressures, and you can ask any doctor, stress is a killer.’
Uri, 62, reckons Michael should never have agreed to perform 50 shows at London’s 02 Arena this summer.
‘The pressure of these concerts, putting under huge pressures, he was a perfectionist,’ Uri tells Sky News. ‘That could have been what did it. But that’s just my opinion.
‘I think it was a mistake to target 50 shows…3, 4, 5 maybe 10 shows is enough.’
Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, where Jackson performed in 1993 on the second leg of the Dangerous world tour, fans gathered in Dizengoff Square in an impromptu show of sorrow for the musical icon.
“We connect to Michael not just through dance and music but also on a spiritual level,” one fan told Ha’aretz. “He supported peace, he supporting accepting people without discriminating based on religion or race. He is a kind of spiritual leader that we lost, and it’s tough. It’s heartbreaking.”
The fans lit candles and comforted each other and commisserated with each other.
Neor Zuberi, a 22-year-old musician from Tel Aviv, told Ha’aretz that Jackson had influenced culture, music, dancing.
“He also supported the IDF and visited an army base when he came to Israel. The things he did and the values he upheld influenced me. He inspired me to volunteer, like running a break dancing workshop in Sderot,” he said.
Watch a clip from Jackson’s show at Hayarkon Park in 1993 here.
Fraternities come to Israeli university
The university I attended in the US was not big on fraternities – we were mostly too busy getting wasted without an organized framework to bother with the hazing, initiation rites, etc..
But frats are an American institution, including popular Jewish brotherhoods like Alpha Epsilon Pi, with over 140 branches throughout the country. And now, they’ve moved into our neighborhood, launching the first-ever Israeli frat at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center.
According to Ival Erenfroind-Cohen, an Israeli who spent time working with the AEP community in San Francisco and who works with Hillel at the IDC, the founding of the local branch, “is an opportunity to show Israelis the North American way of preserving the Jewish community that would be great to translate to here [in Israel].
Ynet reported that The IDC is being used as the launching pad for AEP’s expansion in Israel because it is a strong international school with many American students who already understand the concept of a fraternity and who can help bring together the international and Israeli students on campus.
Steven Kaplan, Director of Expansion for AEP said: “I think that this is the perfect time for AEP to come to Israel because we can provide an outlet to bridge the gap between the North American Jewish community and the Israeli Jewish community.”
Some 150 North American brothers travelled to Israel this month to attend the local branch’s inauguration ceremony at Jerusalem’s Sheraton Hotel.
Ron Bernstein, one of the founding fathers and scribe of the new IDC chapter explained that, “At first I thought opening a fraternity in Israel was a ridiculous idea, but I jumped on board because I realized that this is not just a cookie cutter fraternity. We are an outpost with shades and colors of Israel that are specific to living here and we get to be a part of shaping that.
Bernstein added that the frat was going to help mold the next generation of Israeli leaders. But I don’t know if they’ll ever be able to teach any of the pledges to eat jello or chug Jack Daniels like Bluto did.
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