Not just any third birthday
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Religion, War
One of the most quickly forgotten aspects following any terror attack is the survivors. We all mourn the victims, obsess about the perpetrators, and move on, as those left behind attempt to pick up the pieces of their lives.
Three-year-old Moishe Holzberg has proven to be the exception. A year ago, Moishe’s parents, Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg, 29, and his wife Rivka, 28, were killed along with 170 other victims when Pakistani Islamic terrorists carried out a series of attacks in Mumbai in India. The Holzbergs, who had lived in Mumbai for six years as official emissaries of the Chabad movement were killed with seven other people at Chabad House.
The two-year-old life of Moishe was saved when he was spirited away from the attack by his Indian nanny Sandra Samuel. He’s been raised at Kfar Chabad near Tel Aviv by his grandparents for the last year. And on Wednesday, the community hosted a memorial ceremony for the couple, which was attended by 2,000 people. During the event, Moishe celebrated his first haircut, a coming-of-age event for three-year-old boys, known as an “upshirin” in Yiddish or “chalaka” in Hebrew.
“Moshe may be without biological parents, but the entire Chabad family has adopted him,” the head of the Chabad Youth Organization in Israel, Rabbi Yosef Aharonov, told The Jerusalem Post which attended the event.
Across a blue-grey curtain on the wall of the womens’ section of the tent, dozens of blue and white balloons spelled out “Moishe, three years old.” Moishe himself was carried in by Sandra shortly before the beginning of the event, and stood before a gaggle of reporters and cameras, calmly, even lazily, taking in the spectacle.
Rabbi Holzberg’s father, Rabbi Nachman Holzberg, said that the outpouring of support for his family has been tremendous over the past year, and that Moishe was doing very well. Holzberg also expressed his hope that the tragedy “will only bring the entire world closer to redemption.”
Samuel, surrounded by a sea of reporters and swarmed by well-wishers from the moment she entered with Moishe, said that she was feeling a mix of emotions at the event, both great happiness that Moishe was doing well and sadness at the fact that his parents could not be with him.
Samuel said that “the baby is fine, he’s a normal kid, he plays, he jumps.”
With a mixture of sadness and joy, which, after all, is a regular recipe in Israel, the shortened lives of the Holzbergs and the hopefully long life of their son Moishe was celebrated in the only way Israeli know how – with all their hearts.
Picture of the week: The Ethiopian journey comes to an end
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Holidays, Picture of the Week, Religion
It’s been a long journey for Israel’s Ethiopian Jews, airlifted out of Ethiopia to Israel in 1984 and 1991, but this week, many must have felt their travels were really and truly over.
Thousands of Ethiopian Jews descended on Jerusalem on Monday to take part in the prayer of the Sigd on a hill overlooking the Mount of Olives.
Ethiopians Jews, who are thought to be descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel, celebrate this holiday every year. Back in Ethiopia, they would climb a mountain called Amburver to pray and beg God to bring them to the Holy Land.
Now in Israel the 80,000 strong population continue to celebrate the holiday. This year, however, the whole of Israel celebrated with them. The holiday of Sigd has been declared a national holiday and mandatory educational programs will be initiated to teach children about the celebration.
It’s a significant step forward for a people who haven’t always found it easy to adapt to their new life, and who still face prejudice from some quarters. Keep an eye out on ISRAEL21c for our video on the holiday.
Photo by Miriam Alster/Flash90.
TIME cites Israeli for creating ‘new art form’
Filed under: A New Reality, design, General, Music, Pop Culture, Technology
We wrote about him back in March and now the rest of the world is catching on. One of the top 50 inventions of 2009, according to TIME magazine is the music video montage Web site created by Israeli musicians Ophir Kutiel, who goes by the name Kutiman.
Kutiel’s site, thru-you.com, has atttracted more than seven million viewers with its striking remixes of video clips by amateur musicians from YouTube. TIME called the work “video jams of amazing funkiness, in the process creating an all-new art form.”
Kutiman takes YouTube footage of people giving gear demos and lessons on how to play certain riffs and combines them into incredibily cohesive and soulful songs. Hailed as the “psychedelic funk architect” Kutiman brings UGC (Users Generated Content) to the next level.
According to his record company NMC, Kutiman sat in his bedroom studio and watched and sorted thousands of music videos uploaded to YouTube by mostly anonymous users. Kutiman chose around a 100 of these videos – made by users from all around the world, featuring both musical instruments, vocals, toys and other surprising artifacts, and fused them together into Thru You. Using only materials found on YouTube, not playing a single note himself, Kutiman’s Thru You is a 21st century version of Found Art.
On an inventions list consisting of primarily gadgets and technology, Kutiman’s Thru You is certainly striking an appealing chord.
Protesting Israel-style
For illustrative purposes
The email we received last week was dire. Our neighborhood was in grave danger of being ruined by unscrupulous real estate developers, it read. A massive 210-unit apartment project had been green-lighted to be built right in the middle of an already congested neighborhood.
The resulting traffic, pollution and just plain lack of aesthetics (the planned project includes two eight-story towers reminiscent of the Holyland monstrosity) demanded a response. The residents’ considerations had already been rejected by two lower committees. We were urged to attend a last chance meeting of the Va’ad Artzi, the national planning commission, to take place at 9:00 AM on Sunday.
Normally, I shy away from such events. Highly technical Hebrew with lots of architectural lingo spoken at very high volume (read: yelling) isn’t how I like to start my workday. But this seemed important, so my wife Jody and I high tailed it across town to the Chen Hotel in the Bayit VeGan quarter of Jerusalem where the committee was meeting.
Truth be told, this was our first government gathering in Israel. Back in the States, I was a regular since I held the planning and city council beat at my first newspaper job. So I was expecting something similar. A small auditorium with council members sitting on a raised stage around a long table. Members of the public would step up to a podium and speak into a microphone. The men all wore ties; the mayor held a gavel.
But this was casual Israel. We residents (about 20 of us showed up to show our support) sat around the perimeter of the room behind the opposing parties who were seated at three tables arranged in a U. On the city’s side sat various officials, the project developer and several architects. We were represented by local residents and a member of the Society for the Protection of Nature (SPNI): a burly man with a gray beard, a polo shirt and a baseball cap. At the front table was the Va’ad itself.
Despite a hustle bustle of participants getting up for drinks and noshes, chairs scraping across the floor, animated whispering and cell phones ringing, the proceedings were surprisingly efficient.
The contractor spoke first, followed by the residents. Both sides were articulate, used PowerPoint slides, and seemed genuinely interested in finding a workable compromise. The SPNI man was careful to say he wasn’t opposed to the project, just the lack of public green space and the destruction of a grove of trees that had been thriving since the British Mandate era.
The developers, in turn, showed numerous plans that they’d rejected until arriving at one that they said had the least impact on the neighborhood. Most of the trees would have to go in order to build underground parking which was of course better for the neighborhood than forcing 300 new cars onto city streets. The plan also called for setting aside 25% of the luxury project for less affluent families – a rarity among shekel-crazed developers and their cronies.
One reason the battle was so relatively amiable is that everyone agreed that Jerusalem has no choice but to become denser. When the Safdie Plan – which called for massive construction in the green belt around the city – was nixed last year after protests by the very same SPNI, the alternative was to find and build on empty urban space.
The area for this particular new development was formerly mostly empty agricultural land and fields next to the venerable Ulpan Etzion which was shut down earlier this year for budgetary reasons. It was only a matter of time.
As the meeting stretched into its third hour, Jody and I had to leave – protesting is fun and all, but we do need to work. In any case, the committee wasn’t taking a vote on the spot.
We of course hope that the project will be scaled down, although Rachel Deitcher, the resident who’d invited us in the first place warned that compromise is not generally the Israeli way. Nevertheless we appreciated the fact that there was a forum in Israel where opposing sides could meet and, to our unjaded eyes, seemed genuinely interested in solving the conflict. Most of all, our first foray into city planning politics wasn’t as painful as we’d feared.
When the verdict is handed down, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Austrians forget how Hatikva goes
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Politics, Sports
People wonder why Israel is always on the defensive, when things like this explain it perfectly.
At an international fencing competition over the weekend in Austria, two Israeli teens – Dana Stralinkov, 14, and Alona Komarov, 13 – won the gold and bronze medals respectively.
However, at the ceremonies awarding them the medals, instead of playing the national anthem – Hatikva – as is the custom with every other winning athlete, there was only silence.
After standing in shocked silence for a few seconds, the two teens along with the entire Israeli delegation of 22 people, burst in to song and sung Hatikva, the teenagers’ coach Yaakov Friedman told Yediot Aharonot.
“It was a very moving moment,” Freidman said, adding that a similar incident occurred five months ago at a competition in Sweden. According to the report, the Austrian official in charge of playing the national anthems of countries of the winning participants, explained he was unable to find a recording of the Israeli anthem.
Yeah, sure. And we believe that Nidal Malik Hasan wasn’t an Islamic jihadist, but suffering from PTSD. These occurences, which someone with paranoid tendencies might attribute to European snobbish digs at Israel’s legitimacy, is becoming a bit tiresome.
Yossi Harari, chairman of the Israel Fencing Association told Yediot that he intended to submit a complaint to the European Union. Harari also advised supplying every Israeli delegation participating in competitions abroad, with a recorded disc of Israel’s national anthem.
If the Hatikva snub had happened to Yuri Foreman, he might have come out swinging. Foreman, an aspiring rabbi who mixes religious studies with work in the gym, made history in Las Vegas on Saturday night when he became the first Israeli boxer to win a major world title, outpointed Daniel Santos over 12 rounds to claim the WBA super welterweight crown.
The 29-year-old, who was born in Belarus but lived in Haifa from the ages of 10 to 19. Foreman, who remained unbeaten in 28 fights, emigrated from Israel to Brooklyn and began studying to become a rabbi three years ago.
Maybe we should send Foreman to Austria next to teach them Hatikva.
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