Happy Birthday
Filed under: A New Reality, Food, General, Israeliness, Life
I remember when we first moved to Israel 25 years ago, as young nearly penniless college grads, my wife’s birthday came around and we deliberated whether we could ‘splurge’ and go out to celebrate at a restaurant – meaning a place where there’s a staff that comes to take your order at your table rather than going up to a counter and ordering and getting a number.
There weren’t that many options in those days – a ‘steakiya’ on Jerusalem’s Aggripas Street near Mahane Yehuda, one of the hotels that catered to American tourists, a few Chinese and Italian places that paled in comparison to their Western counterparts.
I recall we did decide to go for one of the options, and I’m sure we enjoyed it immensely.
I had to laugh yesterday, because, as my wife’s birthday rolled around, we found ourselves in the same quandry. Can we ‘splurge’ and go out for dinner?
While we’ve raised four kids, bought a home, own a car, and both earn salaries, we’re still basically in the same sitatuation in our lives in regards to money (which is probably why I still think I’m 25).
The point was even sharpened by an email birthday greeting from one of my wife’s college friends in the US – with whom coincidentally, she shares a birthday.
She and her husband were headed to Las Vegas for five day for her big day. We felt happy for them, and laughed to each other about the differences in our lives with some of those who made their lives in the US. What are the possibilities of us flying to Naples or Barcelona for five days, when we couldn’t even decide whether to spring for a $50 meal?
Luckily, we could laugh at it, and we did decide to go out – to a nice Italian restaurant. Twenty five years later, there are many more choices in Jerusalem and quality of food is excellent. And we enjoyed it immensely.
Israeli film ‘Ajami’ headed to the Oscars?
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, Movies, Pop Culture
There’s something about Israeli films – they keep getting recognized for excellence. After two years in a row of Oscar nominations for Best Foreign Language film – for Beaufort and Waltz with Bashir respectively, it looks like we might get a hat trick.
The Academy of Arts and Sciences announced on Wednesday their shortlist of nine films out of hundreds of applicants for the category – and it included Ajami, Israel’s official selection for the Oscars.
This year’s shortlist also includes films from Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Kazakhstan, The Netherlands and Peru. The final five nominees will be announced when all the Oscar nominations are revealed, in a press conference on February 2.
Hannah Brown, The film critic for The Jerusalem Post, described Ajami as a gritty drama about crime in Jaffa. It was co-directed by two first-timers, Scandar Copti, an Israeli Arab Christian, and Yaron Shani, an Israeli Jew.
The film – which is in both Hebrew and Arabic – received a special mention at Cannes, as well as winning the Ophir Award, the Israeli Oscar, which made it Israel’s official selection.
Ajami is competing for one of the five nominated movies with Germany’s “The White Ribbon,” which won the 2010 Golden Globe for best foreign movie, “El Secreto de Sus Ojos” from Argentina; “Samson and Delilah,” from Australia; “The World Is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner,” from Bulgaria; “A Prophet,” from France; “Kelin from Kazakhstan; and “Winter in Wartime,” from The Netherlands, in which a Dutch boy aids a downed British pilot during World War II.
Maybe this will be the year – following the nomination of nine Israeli films in past years – that one of ours – especially a ‘coexistence’ project like ‘Ajami’ will walk away with Israel’s first Oscar.
New CD brings rock and roll from the synagogue
The Jewish rock scene in Israel is thriving these days, with erstwhile Anglo performers like Yehuda Katz and pop crooner Aaron Razel to newly religious Israeli hit makers Ehud Banai, Etti Ankari and Erez Lev Ari (see our post here) all burning up Torah-inspired dance floors across the country. It’s rarer, though, to find a synagogue recording its own album of Jewish rock.
Jewish Renewal congregation Nava Tehila in Jerusalem has released just such a disc and the result admirably holds its own against its more established cousins.
“Dancing in the Glory” covers the Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat service, psalm by psalm. The music, written by local musicians Daphna Rosenberg and Yoel Sykes, moves seamlessly from Middle Eastern motifs to reggae with even a polka thrown in for good measure.
The opening track, “Creating the Sea” (Asher Lo Ha’yam – all of the songs have both Hebrew and English names) starts off with a delicate children’s choir, then builds as Rosenberg’s rich voice takes over before joining the kids in harmony.
Sykes’ “The God of Glory Thunders” (El HaKavod Hiri’im) has a gospel feel to it, while “Hear and Rejoice” (Shema v’Tismach) sports an Irish jig as its centerpiece. “Blaze” (Anan v’Arafel) is mixes reggae and klezmer, while “The Mountains are Singing” (Naharot Yimchau Kaf) ends with a percussion solo and call and respond chant that is vaguely reminiscent of Chicago’s early hit “Beginnings.”
Then there’s that polka. Sung by Rosenberg with a wisp of accordion accompaniment, it sets the words of “Lecha Dodi” to the Jewish standard “Tumbalalaika.”
The all acoustic disc includes 13 musicians who play a wide variety of instruments including flute, clarinet, oud, cello, violin and darbuka.
The producer of this album of Jewish music, surprisingly, is a Catholic monk. Father Zacharie is a member of the Beautitudes monastic order located near Latrun that is interested in the Jewish roots of Christianity. Before becoming a monk, the Hebrew-speaking Zacharie was a professional musician specializing in Irish music.
The CD comes with a 28-page booklet, allowing listeners to follow along in both Hebrew and English transliteration.
The Nava Tehila ensemble is currently in the U.S. performing songs from the album at Jewish community centers and synagogues.
The CD is available for NIS 60 in Israel, and for $18 a disc, $12 for an MP3 digital download at CD Baby. Individual MP3 tracks can be purchased at OySongs for $1.99 each.
You can listen to several full tracks at Nava Tehila’s MySpace page.
On the hunt for a gan
I’ve been on a gan hunt. For the last two months, okay, maybe more like six weeks, I’ve been searching for the right day care options for my boys, who will be 23 months old in September.
I had no idea that finding a gan — or mishpachton, nursery school, or any other kind of day care center — would be such an ordeal. I mean, this is Israel, land that loves children, land that is always last minute about everything. It just never occurred to me that I’d have to start looking for the appropriate childcare situation for my boys in December, for September.
But when you have twins, people told me, you want to be sure you get the right place with space for two kids, not just one. You want to be sure there’s the right ratio of ganenet — the gan teacher — to kids. As in 6 or 7 kids to one adult, as opposed to 12 or 15 to one adult (although I’ve never seen that on any of my gan visits.) You want to make sure that the food served for lunch is freshly cooked, not microwaved schnitzel. That they offer plenty of outdoor playtime, fun arts and crafts, and the right kind of space for naps.
This all made sense to me. After all, I’ve got enough reservations about putting my kids into an institutionalized setting at the tender age of two. If I’m really doing this, I want to make sure it’s in the right kind of place, with the right kind of teacher.
But something about the search made me feel like a New Yorker fighting for space for my kid in a top-notch private school, to ensure them the right path in life. As in, if they go to the Kol Haneshama gan, will that automatically send them on the Reform schooling route? Will a mishpachton in someone’s home not offer the same kind of finger painting options that they’d have in a more formal setting? And should it be an English-speaking setting as opposed to Hebrew-speaking, creating a bi-lingual option in their developing brains?
Yes, all these and more, were the questions floating around in my brain, knowing all the while that none of it, really, makes a tremendous difference at age two. I finally did what I usually do in these life-altering situations — as in profession, relationships, health — and went with my gut.
That led me to Gaby, a lovely South American ganenet who leads seven small people in her home-based mishpachton, just over the busy corner makolet owned by her husband and brother-in-law, where we often stop in for milk and bread. True, you sort of have to walk through the makolet to get to the staircase that leads to her apartment. And you pass crates of soda, boxes of cereal and the cups of Turkish coffee being drunk by the makolet workers from an overturned crate. But Gaby just calls down to Sasson, her husband, if she’s run out of Multi Cheerios for breakfast, and someone runs it up to her. And if she’s taking the toddlers down to the backyard for some outdoor play, her husband or brother-in-law come up to help everyone down.
You know how it is. It’s the Israeli way.
The army is a picnic
Filed under: A New Reality, Food, General, Israeliness, Life, War
There’s nothing like a picnic outside an army base to rekindle any lost sparks of Zionism.
I’d have to say that the scene last week outside the Ketziot base was an example of something that’s uniquely Israeli – I can’t imagine it happening in any other country.
Our daughter’s in the early stages of six-months of basic training at the base, which is deep in the Negev, south of Beersheba, only a handful of kilometers from the Egyptian border.
Given the chance of spending a restful Shabbat at home or driving two and a half hours each way to spend a couple hours with her during ‘free time’ on her Shabbat on the base, we chose the only possible option.
So loading up the back of the car with a cooler filled with lunchtime delicacies, we headed south. Once you get past Beersheba, there’s not much else – it gets more and more desolate and desert-ed.
Even though I had spent three different reserve duties at Ketziot, where there is also a prison housing Palestinian detainees, I wondered a few times if we were on the right road. But sure enough, the turnoff for Ketziot eventually showed up, amid ‘camel crossing’ signs and the ocassional lone tree.
We drove down the narrow road and turned into the parking lot, only to find… a party! The lot was filled with dozens of cars, and the a neatly designed picnic area – complete with wooden, covered benches and tables, and a large swath of artificial grass – was packed with families and their soldier children.
Some families seem have brought their entire kitchen with them – with portable coffee makers the item of choice for many. Parents were moving around from group to group, handing out cookies, and soldiers were waving their friends/comrades over to introduce them to their parents.
It was like visiting day at college, except the students all had rifles slung over the shoulders and had great tans. After the allotted time, the families started packing up for the long ride home, and our children walked back through the gates of the base to get some rest in their tents until Shabbat went out – but not before handing their parents plastic bags full of laundry.
Hopefully, the visit had recharged them sufficiently to start the week of shooting, drilling and soldiering in good spirits. Only six more days, and they can sleep in their own beds for a couple nights.
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