Jews and Arabs in point blank range
There are plenty efforts to attempt and bridge the wide social and cultural gap between Jewish and Arab teenagers in Israel, but there aren’t many that speak to the kids in their own language – music and video.
Windows for Peace, a non-profit, Tel Aviv-based organization that attempts to promote understanding between Israeli and Palestinian youth through media-related educational programs, is in the midst of running a two-week workshop for 15 teenagers, aged 15-17, from Tel Aviv, Jaffa and Bethlehem. By the end of the two weeks, the goal is to write and record a song, and make a video for it.
They’ve invited music professionals from London-based music college Point Blank to conduct the workshop, Jaffa and Bethlehem. Point Blank usually works with underpriveleged British teens, but according to its director, Rob Cowan, the same principles apply to the Jewish and Arab teens enrolled in Israel.
“Our group members are usually disaffected kids in danger of getting in trouble with the police, or just falling by the wayside of society. We’re just applying the same model as we do at home for Israelis and Palestinian kids, not because they’re marginalized, but because in music, there’s a channel to bring them together,” said Cowan.
The group of Israeli and Palestinian teens will record an original track and make an accompanying music video to explore issues relevant to their lives and experiences. The resulting music video will be disseminated via TV and the Internet, with the hopes of showing young people in the region that communication with the ‘other side’ is not only possible, but desirable and fruitful, according to the organizers.
According to Windows for Peace director Ruti Atsmon, the teens in the project have been working together through Windows for Peace for between one and three years. And though, like most teens, they’re tuned into music and video, they don’t necessarily possess any special musical or visual skills.
“We see the project as another tool to develop communication between them and as a start for them to create more in the future,” said Atsmon.
That may be quite lofty – it would be nice if they just got a good song and video out of it.
People of the Book
Filed under: Business, General, History and Culture, Israeliness
First Book Week, 1926
Hebrew Book Week, although it’s actually more like ten days, is a very quintessential Israeli event. It’s the ol’, People of the Book checking out books, mostly in Hebrew, obviously, and with book stands from all the major Israeli booksellers, from Keter, Modan and Am Ovad to the ‘sifrei kodesh’ (literally, holy books), map makers and the newspaper mongers. In Jerusalem — as in other major cities where there are Book Week booths set up at some major central site — Book Week was held at Gan Hapaamon, Liberty Bell Park, where people and families pushing baby carriages brushed up against each other as they ponied up to the booths, checking out children’s books, adult fiction, the latest Mapa map books — that’s where we spent a lot of time — non-fiction, biographies, treastises on all kinds of subjects, and generally lots of printed pages.
There’s music blasting from mounted speakers, but not too loud, as to disturb one’s contemplation of a possible book purchase. And surprisingly for an Israeli event, no food, save for the beigale and cotton candy peddlers at the entrance to the park. I like that. It’s just about books.
New Tel Aviv Bar The Rogatka Takes Veganism To The Extreme
If the combination of the words “vegan” and “bar” doesn’t make sense to you, you’re not alone.
Because beer is made of hops, malt, and yeast, right? No animals harmed or used in the production of any of those.
But The Rogatka (or “Slingshot”), a new “vegan” bar that opened up last week, defines itself not according to the content of its goods but by the ideals that it encourages.
And so for all you meat and dairy avoiders out there – you are welcome with open arms at the bar’s location on Yitzhak Sadeh street.
The ideologically focused bar was opened by the same “anarchist collective” that used to run the Salon Mazal bar off of King George street. The founders of the bar say that they hope their watering hole will attract environmentalists, left-wing activists, and other likeminded people with their cheap drinks and fair trade products. Read more
Chris Cornell rocks Tel Aviv
Former Soundgarden/Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell rocked Tel Aviv last week but unfortunately did not rock me. However it’s not his fault. I’m apparently getting old and last Wednesday was without question of one of the chief indicators of this unfortunate event. I should have known it wasn’t going to go well when it became evident that I needed to stop for a double espresso on the way the show. I was accompanying a friend of mine who was reviewing the gig for one of daily’s here. I received a coveted photo pass which allowed me to stand in wide space between the audience and the performer for the first three songs. It’s a place where I’ve spent a lot of time before and is always exciting. Angling for a great shot while pushing away other photographers is one of my favorite pastimes. It’s a fun place to be but I made two critical errors. I did not drink water beforehand and, even worse, I forgot my earplugs. So the massive amount of body heat emanating from the crowd combined with the humid air and concert speakers pounding in my ears did not do me well. At all.
Granted it was fun shooting but I just couldn’t recover after such a traumatic experience and quickly retired to the sidelines and spent the rest of the concert sitting on the grass drinking bottled water with my friend who was equally as enthused. Not very rock and roll of us. The final sign of the twilight of my youth was that towards the end of the show I couldn’t help but start thinking how long it was going to take me to get out of the parking lot. I kept looking at my watching thinking about how, as time went on, I was going to be losing important sleep time. And so I left in order to the beat the traffic right as the encore began. And I walked to my car, head down in shame as Cornell belted out one of Soundgarden’s biggest hits in the background.
Comedy of Israeli errors
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture
Raised in the metro Washington, DC area, Daniella Ashkenazy (pictured) has been living in Israel for over 40 years and working as a journalist for about half of that time., currently covering the environmental beat for The Jerusalem Post‘s weekend Metro section.
Launched a few months ago, Ashkenazy’s Chelm-on-the-Med website is an ever-growing collection if local soft news items – those curious, often humorous stories that would sound like they are urban legends if they weren’t in the mainstream news media.
Among Chelm-on-the-Med’s gems are the tale of a farmer who used his LoJack–like car theft recovery device to recover bales of hay that had been stolen from him, a Knesset proposal to combat the ever-lowering water levels of the Dead Sea by importing water from Turkey, and a Hassidic man who proposed throwing books of Psalms at enemy entities as a poetic response to falling rockets (because in Hebrew, the word for missiles, Tillim, is similar to the word for Psalms, Tehillim).
Chelm-on-the-Med’s beat is relatively similar to ISRAELITY’s in that both sites attempt to take Israeli life out of the realm of hard news and into the realm of real life. As Ashkenazy puts it in her FAQ….
Beyond life and death issues, Israel is an outrageously amusing and lively place to live, and it’s strange that Jews, famous for their humor from Charlie Chaplin to Seinfeld, haven’t a clue about the humorous side of Israeli life.
She also sees the site as a useful tool for spreading a positive image of the country, especially among Diaspora youth:
A lot of things that make some adults uncomfortable will be viewed as very cool by adolescents. In fact, I think the zany, irreverent intriguing encounter with Israel that Chelm-on-the-Med offers will make Jewish kids think Israel is a very neat place – a vast improvement from the image of a gloomy and dangerous…and yes, dead serious and humorless ‘tight-ass’ country that focus groups have found.
Although the site is relatively new, the concept is not. In the late Eighties, Ashkenazy launched the column under the moniker “Gleanings” in the now-defunct Israel Scene magazine, and it has run in a variety of additional publications under other names as well.
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