Guru in our backyard
The Israeli meditation community was all a flutter this week with the arrival of meditation guru (both figuratively and literally) Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who spoke yesterday at Hebrew University to a crowd of about 600.
Shankar is best known in Israel as the founder of the Art of Living, a type of meditation that includes very strenuous breathing exercises (not the usual calm “notice your breath”). My wife Jody has been an active practitioner for several years now and swears by the process.
Like a traveling Gandhi, Shankar has jetted around the world, from his home base of India to Baghdad, Kashmir, Sri Lanka and beyond, spreading his message of peace and love. He is speaking this week at the 2nd Israeli Presidential Conference. He was last in Israel in 2003 during the height of the suicide bombings.
The Hebrew University event included a talk by Shankar, guided meditation, and music by an Israeli ensemble on sitar and percussion.
At the end of the evening, Shankar invited the audience to come and stay with him in India. While some certainly will, many Israelis were happy to have gotten a glimpse of their guru in their backyard.
My Israeli flag, love it or not
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies
The blue and white of the Israeli flag has never been more closely analyzed and inspected than in the documentary film My Flag by Toronto filmmaker Igal Hecht.
The 30-year-old, Israeli-born Hecht has made about 40 documentaries over the last decade, with most of them in recent years focusing on Israel, which he calls his “obsession.”
My Flag , which is having its Israeli debut on Thursday night at the Sixth Jewish Eye Film Festival in Ashkelon, finds Hecht traveling around the country during its 60th birthday year and asking those he encounters one question – ‘what does the Israeli flag mean to you?’
http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=36087766The answers range from humorous to biting to reflective, accurately mirroring the fractures of Israeli society and the attempts by its citizens to understand the nature of their country amid their first identity crisis.
Hecht traveled to Sderot where a man whose wife was seriously injured in a Kassam attack angrily says, “This flag is nothing to me – if you weren’t here, I would burn it like the Arabs do.”
In Mea She’arim, he walked around with flag wrapped around him, like a more thoughtful Bruno, evoking residents to respond, “It’s a rag, I wouldn’t even wash the floors with it.”
“We don’t need a flag, we have Hashem,” another says.
But for every negative connotation, there’s patriotic responses, from singer Saraleh Sharon who says, “The flag of Israel is our home.” Or from a Druze Israeli in the North who says “I am proud to be a son of this nation.”
In a process similar to that in the US, where in recent years, the symbol of the flag has been coopted by a decidedly right-wing, nationalist viewpoint, the Israeli flag has also inadvertently become a symbol of the Right. My Flag is an attempt to return the flag, representing both the achievements and blemishes of an imperfect country, to the Center.
“I learned that there’s frustration in Israel,” Hecht told me. “I end the film with a speech Ezer Weizman gave in 1996 in Germany. He talked about the country standing at a crossroad and unsure of where it was going. Unfortunately, that’s the thesis of the film ultimately. There’s a lot of uncertainty and lack of vision for many Israelis. That can be still translated into love and appreciation of the flag, but it also provokes hesitancy and grasping at trying to understand what’s going on in the country. Is it Zionism, or post-Zionism? What is the new Israel?”
That’s the question we’re all trying to grapple with.
Nostalgia Sunday – Lod Mosaic
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel
It may be more historic than nostalgic, but the big news in archeology last week here was that the Israel Antiquities Authority made an interesting discovery while detaching a magnificent floor mosaic for transfer to the IAA conservation laboratories in Jerusalem. They found ancient footprints! Apparently, while working on the plaster bedding (done before laying down the mosaic) the artisans trod on it in sandals and in bare feet.
The floor is a story in itself. According to the IAA: “The 1,700 year old mosaic, which is one of the largest and most magnificent ever seen in Israel, was exposed in the city of Lod in 1996 and was covered again when no resources could be found for its conservation. Thirteen years after efforts were made to raise the large amount required to treat the unique artifact, the IAA received a contribution from the Leon Levy Foundation that is specifically earmarked for the purpose of conserving and developing the site, in cooperation with the Municipality of Lod. The mosaic was re-excavated, exhibited to the public and is now being removed from the area for treatment in the IAA conservation laboratories.”
“The mosaic, which constitutes a real archaeological gem that is extraordinarily well-preserved, is c. 180 sq m in size. It is composed of colorful carpets that depict in great detail mammals, birds, fish, floral species, and sailing and merchant vessels that were in use at the time. It is believed the mosaic floor was part of a villa that belonged to a wealthy man in the Roman period.”
Hopefully, the floor’s restoration holds the key — along with other innovative social welfare efforts reported on by ISRAEL21c — to turning Lod around from the center of drug-related crime to the tourist haven it ought to be. The IAA stated that, “The municipality, in cooperation with the Israel Antiquities Authority, plans to integrate it into a tourism circuit that will include a number of historic sites in the city.” Given the magnificence of the artifact, there is every chance that the plan could work.
The Israeli Newman
Eric, the American mailman!
But one thing they can’t complain about is that they get to work in their own clothing — often jeans or shorts and a tee-shirt — carrying the mail in regulation Israel Postal Service backpacks, a more casual look than the typical American postal carrier bag. Now it is true that the American mail carrier bag has become a long-time trendy accessory, known as the messenger bag. Yet it cannot be argued that the American postal carrier ever appears to be trendy, particularly not when you’re channeling Seinfeld’s Newman as the typical mailman.
The regulation Israel Postal Service backpack
So imagine my surprise when, after asking him if he would mind if I took a picture of him for my blog, he answered in English — having heard my American-accented Hebrew. Turns out that this particular postman, Eric Lemel, wearing an L.A. Clippers baseball hat, has been delivering mail in Jerusalem for 13 years, and loves it. I think that may an ultimate aliyah professional story. Because how many Jewish mailmen do you know? (Besides Newman.)
A dark day in Rishon Lezion
Three members of the Oshrenko family who were discovered dead on Saturday.
The security fence, for all its ugliness and negative implications, solved the problem for the short term. But the problem facing Israel today can’t be solved by a fence or wall – unless each Israeli builds their own and isolates themselves.
The news that greated people on Saturday, or Saturday night if they’re religiously observant, talked of police calling it the ‘worst crime’ in Israel’s history being committed. A day after her Revital Oshrenko celebrated her third birthday in her Rishon Lezion home with her family – grandfather and grandmother Edward and Ludmilla, both 56; parents Tattiana, 28, and Dimitry, 32; and 4-month-old brother Netanel – the whole family was stabbed to death and their apartment set on fire in an apparent effort to cover up the murders. Some of the victims were said to have been stabbed repeatedly.
Rescue services only discovered the bodies when they were called to the home after a report of a fire. While a gag order has been placed on the police investigation, family friends and acquaintances, including Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov and the mayor of Rishon Lezion, said that the family members were model citizens.
Suspicions are rampant that the murders were ‘business’ related, pertaining to restaurants and clubs catering to Russian immigrants that Dimitry owned and operated. The murder is just the latest in a series of sensationalist killings that have taken place this year in the country, where non-terror murders were once considered a rare occurrence.
I would kind of prefer it going back to the old ways – at least then you knew who the enemy was. I still feel safe here, walking around at night, or sending my children unsupervised on buses. But slowly, with Israel’s social fabric in danger of being ripped asunder, there’s a growing sense of lawlessness – when I’m out jogging at night now, sometimes I think twice about running past a group of teens gathered at a street corner – it’s a feeling that a security fence will be powerless to prevent.
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