All bets off for Eurovision
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture
Eurovision time is almost upon us again, and as usual, Israeli hopes are running high. The on-line betting sites are listing our entry into the massively popular but unbearably kitschy song contest – Harel Skaat’s “Milim” as one one of the favorites to win the competition taking place on Saturday night in Oslo.
The boyishly good-looking 29-year-old Skaat was the runner-up of the second season of Israel’s version of American Idol, Kohav Nolad (A Star is Born) in 2004. A native of Kfar Sava, Skaat emerged from the competition with a built-in fan base which has helped his two albums, a self-titled 2006 debut and last year’s Figures, released and sold exclusively through the Aroma coffee shop chain, go gold (in Israel, that means, more than 20,000 copies sold).
While most entries in Eurovision – which launched the career of Abba back in the 1970s – are full of buffoon-like dancing, outlandish costumes, and garish music, Skaat’s approach is sophisticated and subdued. Featuring just a piano player and two background singers, he told interviewers in Oslo he wanted the song to be focus of his performance.
“This song touches me deeply. My grandfather died just days before the selections in Israel, and this gives me a very deep feeling, I feel that I’m really singing this song for him. He wanted me to participate in the Eurovision Song Contest for five years, and then he got to hear that I was going to take part in the national selection before he passed away,” Skaat said, referring to the televised contest in March in which Skaat was chosen by Israeli TV viewers.
Whatever way the results turn out, just like last year’s pairing of Ahinoam Nini and Miri Awad, Israel’s entry to Eurovision is a class act.
Where’s Rahm? Emanuel stays a step ahead of protesters
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Travel
Rahm Emanuel, left, with a waiter at the Boston restaurant in Eilat. (Photo: Meir Ohayon/Yediot)
Despite threats of protest by the right wing fringe in Israel, Emanuel and his family arrived here over the weekend to celebrate his son’s bar mitzvah. But because of the specter of angry demonstrations, details of the event have been kept under wraps, and in the meantime Emanuel and family have been enjoying themselves in Eilat and Tel Aviv.
“We are having a great time in Israel, we are really enjoying ourselves and the people are excellent,” Emanuel, dressed in shorts, told the Channel 2 news last night.
The speculation is that the bar mitzvah will take place on Thursday morning in Jerusalem’s Old City, perhaps at Robinson’s Arch, south of the Kotel, where egalitarian ceremonies conducted by the Masorti (Conservative) Movement take place. However, a representative of the movement told me that the Emanuel family is not scheduled for an event there this week, and Rabbi Andrew Sacks, who regularly conducts bar mitzvas there refused to indulge any information.
Those hoping to catch a glimpse of Emanuel Monday during a rumored visit to the Western Wall were disappointed. According to The Jerusalem Post, reporters, photographers and at least one would-be protester were camped out during the day.
Having no Rahm Emanuel to protest in the flesh, right-wing opponents of the Obama adminstration’s stance on Israel have taken on other means to show their dissatisfaction with Emanuel’s visit here.
National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari wrote a letter this week to Attorney-General Yehuda Weinstein complaining about taxpayer funds being used to pay for an Emanuel entourage non-kosher meal in Eilat and asking him to send the bill to Emanuel’s home. This followed a report in Yediot Aharonot that a Tourism Ministry official paid for the Emanuel family’s meal at Eilat’s non-kosher Boston restaurant on Friday. The report said the Emanuels ate cheviche, calamari and other seafood
However, according to the Tourism Ministry, they did not pay for the meal. “Our representative did not eat with them. We bring thousands of people to Israel. Our official events are kosher but when people are on their own we don’t pick at their plates or make sure they eat all their meals at the Knesset cafeteria,” a ministry official told The Jerusalem Post.
Despite the controversy and the cat and mouse games, Emanuel is still evidently having a good vacation. “We are having a great time in Israel, we are really enjoying ourselves and the people are excellent,” Emanuel, dressed in shorts, told a TV reporter last night.
Hebrewman
Filed under: Art, coexistence, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture
Marwa Abdel Karim sings a song by Sarit Haddad (photo: AFP)
There are nearly no Jews left in Iraq, but modern Hebrew is still being taught at Baghdad University to some 150 students, according to a recent AFP story. Never mind that learning the language was banned from the 1930s, there is a Hebraic department in the university, and in addition to learning the language, they recently held a festival of Hebrew songs and poetry.
The AFP reporter who wrote the story told of Marwa Abdel Karim singing “Filled With Love” (or Ahava Betochi), a Sarit Hadad song, to her fellow students. She found the song online, and is also somewhat bemused by her choice of language. But despite her friends’ ridicule and parents’ disappointment, she plans on continuing her studies in Amman and then wants to teach at her alma mater.
At one time, Hebrew-speaking Iraqis could get a job with former president Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services. But now that terrorism is the country’s major security concern, those jobs are much harder to find. Ahmed Saadun, another student of Hebrew, said he would check out the foreign affairs ministry and newspapers when he graduates. Still, he told the AFP reporter, he’s aware of the ironies in his situation.
Here’s the real thing, by Sarit Hadad:
Afternoon hike: Hirbet Itab
I wrote earlier about the plans we have for the year leading up to our youngest son’s bar mitzvah. Aviv loves to hike, so we will be taking 12 tiyulim around the country between now and next March, with a concluding trek, just after his bar mitzvah, in the Nepalese Himalayas.
The biggest challenge to planning our Israeli hikes was that we have only one car, so each trip needs to be a loop, finishing where we started. But with the help of our friend and erstwhile tour guide Asher Arbit, we’ve identified enough to get us going.
We kicked off our touring program last week with a four hour-hike in the area around Hirbet Itab, a Crusader fortress (and ruined Arab village) near Bar Giora (up the road from Hadassah Ein Kerem outside Jerusalem).
The starting point is the “Bar BeHar” rustic restaurant (with clean bathrooms, plenty of parking and ice cream – a real motivation at the end of a hot day). The hike itself winds through vineyards and valleys with a fair bit of rock climbing to keep an antsy 12-year-old happy. The Hirbet Itab ruins, which come mid-way through the hike, are situated at the top of a 665- meter high mountain with stunning views all the way to the Mediterranean.
The first part of the walk is on a quiet and mostly deserted hiker-only trail. Indeed, despite it being a Friday with near-perfect weather (sun and a cool breeze), we saw only one family – of all people, friends of ours from Jerusalem including one of Aviv’s classmates. The last third is on a jeep trail where there were a fair number of 4x4s kicking up dust.
One important aspect of the tiyul was that it was our first one alone in nature without a guide. That meant we had to carry – and more importantly – learn how to read a map. Asher patiently walked me through it. Now I know how to read elevation markings and locate wells and springs. It reminded me of the first time I encountered Hebrew – it all looked like random squiggles until I cracked the code.
The Hirbet Itab tiyul takes about 3 and a half hours, including stops for snacks and sandwiches. Except for one relatively steep decline, it’s a pretty easy walk for hikers of moderate fitness. And at only 25 minutes out of Jerusalem, it’s a worthwhile jaunt for a family looking to take a break from YouTube and Facebook for a few hours.
Nostalgia Sunday – Ghosts of Cinemas Past
Filed under: Art, Blogging, design, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
Architect Sharon Raz is a man with a mission: to capture Israel’s disappearing architectural heritage on film, and write about it, too. Going through Raz’s blog, Natush (meaning: “abandoned”) and his Disappearing Architecture website is like falling into a deep, deep well of what once was.
It can also be sad. It means revisiting ideals once held dear — from the fantasy architecture of early Tel Aviv and practical, functional Bauhaus to the swoops and whooshes of our Fabulous 60s (the Fabulous 50s came here a decade late) — seeing how they were expressed in concrete and stucco, and coming to terms with their current state of neglect and decay.
Raz’s special project on Israel’s shuttered cinemas reflects the state of things in general. Movie theaters have given way to small screened mega-multiplexes that, although far cleaner (one must never forget that for generations, Israeli movie goers were warned, “Do not roll bottles or crack sunflower seeds during the show”), they also lack soul.
Raz has methodically visited movie-houses around the country and created a comprehensive index of Israeli movie-houses that includes, in his words, “[the] old, abandoned, closed, destroyed, refurbished, some still standing, some under threat of the wrecking ball.”
With an architect’s eye for detail, Raz tries to present his viewers not only with general site shots but also the little things: the staircase that once led up to the balcony of Jerusalem’s Orna Cinema, now a stairway leading nowhere at the downtown McDonald’s. The Eden at the bottom of Lilenblum Street, Tel Aviv’s first movie-house — still elegant and seemingly waiting for customers to start lining up at any moment. And another Eden Cinema, this one in Jerusalem, whose whimsically round ticket booth now stands at the back end of a grotty parking lot. The Ron in Haifa, gaily decorated with mosaic musicians. Beer Sheva’s Orot, a circle of concrete diamonds, the motif repeated in the wrought iron ticket booth bars. All stand empty.
“In this life’s work, which is original, unique, voluntary, activist and Sisyphean, I work with conviction to preserve on film for future generations our constructed environment. I photograph many structures – abandoned factories, neglected vacation spots, empty houses, shops, industries, farms, centers for culture and recreation, public and private buildings — most of them old and abandoned. But of all the structures I photographed, I’m particularly proud of the old movie-houses. They are romance incarnate; structures we all remember and hold dear in our hearts, buildings where vast numbers of citizens visited, that gave birth to endless memories and longings.”
Raz’s Disappearing Architecture website and Natush blog are available only in Hebrew but there are amazing photos, including pictures of how the cinemas looked in their heyday. Definitely worth a click.
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