White Nights
Filed under: Art, Business, design, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Sports
Bialik House lit up on one White Night
Among the events on Thursday night, consider these: A Mondial soccer event on Rothschild Blvd; Gidi Gov performance, Rami Fortis performing in Yaffo, beach parties, midnight movies at the TA Cinemateque, flamenco fusion at Suzanne Dellal, a midnight concert of the Israel Opera, learning together in the Great Synagogue, Yehudit Ravitz at Zappa, dancing on the beach, and so on and so on. Newspaper Yediot Achronot also selected a few, and they offer some more information in English.
Among my personal emails are White Night notices for two designer sales, including one at Delicatessen (4 Barzilay Street), a great boutique in Gan Hachashmal, where the neighborhood will also be hosting free theater, events at the local bars and block parties. And Delicatessen is offering 10% off on all its inventory.
Studio Blush (also in Gan Hachashmal, 2 Levontin), is telling its customers that it will have all sorts of surprises, including shoes by Shoemaker, accessories from Shelly Dahari, okapi bags and a few other choice items.
So whether you want to shop, bop, listen or do a combination thereof, Thursday night’s ‘layla lavan’ is the destination for you.
Israeli models can pack it on
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Food, General, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs, Politics, Pop Culture, Social Justice
Now maybe more models will look like the shapely Bar Raphaeli
Last week, the government endorsed a bill aimed at preventing underweight models from being featured in advertisements. The Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs voted in favor of a bill proposed by Kadima and Likud Knesset members.
According to the bill, commercial groups will be prohibited from displaying underweight models, and model agents will be banned from employing or representing such models. This also includes a ban on shooting underweight models, who will not be allowed to serve as label spokespersons. The bill requires models provide a medical permit indicating their body mass index (BMI) is normal.
The exposure the issue has received, pun only partially intended, is thanks to Adi Barkan, one of Israel’s top fashion photographers, and today the head of one of the country’s most successful modeling agencies – Simply U.
Barkan, who, in his past, contributed to the whole culture of ultra-thin models, turned the other cheek a few years ago, when he realized the diasatrous health situation he had helped to create among models.
His commitment only deepened when, in 2007, 33-year-old Hila Elmalich died in his arms as he rushed the anorexic model to the hospital.
There are some 200-300 female models working in the country, he says. “More than 70 percent of them suffer from undernourishment. They would rather their periods stop than add a kilogram. We’re talking about a life-and-death matter,” he told The Jerusalem Post.
According to the bill:
“The prevalence of eating disorders, including anorexia, has been on the rise in recent years in the Israeli society, particularly among young girls. Studies show that one of the reasons for eating disorders among teenage girls is the influence of the media and the advertising industry, which feature particularly thin women as role models, thus influencing teenagers’ standards.”
“The fashion and advertising industries, in particular, have created a distorted image of an ideal woman using many underweight models. The purpose of this bill is to reduce the extent of teenage eating disorders.”
The bill, which was proposed by MK Rachel Adatto (Kadima) and MK Danny Danon (Likud), is based on adequate body weight definitions according to height, which are globally recognized.
While the success of Israeli models abroad has grown over the years, the size of the models has shrunk, Barkan told The Post.
“Today’s models are about two sizes smaller than those who worked a decade or 12 years ago. Those two sizes are the critical difference between a healthy, slim and sexy model and one suffering from the plague of deadly eating disorders,” he said.
Barkan hopes that the message of healthy models conveyed in the law will be carried around the world, and there has been international interest in the initiative. Thanks to ISRAEL21c’s initiative, CNN did a big report on Barkan and the bill, calling it the first of its kind.
To put some flesh into bill, Barkan has been also actively recruiting major Israeli advertisers such as the Strauss food giant and the Castro fashion chain to back the cause by using “healthy” models.
Jane Russell, come home. All is forgiven.
Marzipan hats
Filed under: Business, design, Food, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
Marzipan Fendi, as worn by Miss Italy
This marzipan Fendi hat was created by Judith Zer-Aviv, a Swiss-born, Israel-raised pastry chef. Zer-Aviv, known as Yud, went into the baking business after a long career in marketing, high-tech and venture funds. After first studying pastry art at the Tadmor Hotel School, she then studied with various pastry chefs in Europe, and then opened Yud Creative Pastry, which emphasizes design and perfection in pastry and confectionery.
What Yud loves about her new profession is that it allows her to combine her artistic abilities and return to her Swiss roots and memories, which involved her grandmother, who was a wonderful cook. And to bring it full circle, she participates in national and international culinary competitions, including the Italian Club Arti e Mestieri, which invited her over last January to participate in the “Delicious and Famous” show. She had to choose an Italian fashion designer, and create wearable garment or accessories made of food stuff. Yud chose The House of Fendi, and created a bucket hat, a bracelet, a clutch bag, and glasses made of Marzipan and chocolate.
Back home in Israel, Yud Creative Pastry is a training center teaching pastry and food art classes. She also hosts culinary trips through Israel. Btw, if you want to check out a marzipan museum, there is one in Israel. And if you just like the word marzipan, there’s always the famous Jerusalem bakery that makes beloved chocolate rugalech.
Overeating in the land of the buffet
Alon Tavor Field School
What is it about Jews and buffets? We see one and we go hog-wild, pardon the expression. And buffets are big business in Israel.
Our most recent encounter with the ubiquitous Israeli buffet was during a Shabbaton with our synagogue at the Alon Tavor Field School. Some explanations first.
Field schools are the cheapest (and therefore a very popular) way for a medium-sized group to get away for a weekend. Run by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), the dozen or so field schools in Israel provide rooms, dining and educational hiking and walking tours.
Accommodations are extremely spartan: a room with bunk beds, a small fridge, and showers that invariably flood and need to be mopped up with a squeegee.
For our weekend away, we had three meals included: dinner, lunch and the traditional Shabbat “third meal.” Dinner and lunch consist of meat – chicken legs, breaded schnitzel (my favorite because the coating keeps the meat hot) and some kind of mystery concoction – while the third meal is always dairy with a cheese platter, salad, hard-boiled eggs and potato burekas.
The food is at best on a par with army fare. Greasy, fatty and over salted. And yet we lap it up. Indeed, I refused to leave the buffet without sampling everything in the heated bins. Judging from what I saw on the plates of many of my fellow congregants, I was not alone.
Why do we do it – pig out when the food is so awful? I recall while growing up there was an all-you-can-eat place near our house. We only ate there once, maybe twice, during my entire childhood. My parents knew that, no matter the quality of the dining, we wouldn’t be able to restrain ourselves – and then would complain about our bulging bellies the next day.
Maybe there’s some sort of Holocaust mentality going on here – eat now because you never know when your next meal will be? But I don’t have any direct connection with the Holocaust, nor do most of my friends.
Fortunately, not every buffet in Israel is bad. Hotel breakfasts in the country are renowned the world over for being delightful and usually healthy (although I have never figured out why anyone would want a green salad to start the morning – bring on the eggs and kosher bacon for me). And five-star hotels do a stellar job with the rest of the meals – one Shabbat dinner we had a choice between gefilte fish and sushi.
It goes without saying that I left our weekend at the field school satiated if not satisfied. I made sure to fit in an extra long exercise session Sunday morning. Now I’m back to normal weight…at least until the next time. Can you say boiled carrots and potatoes swimming in a languid pool of chicken fat? I’m already lining up at the buffet cart.
Nostalgia Sunday – Strange… I’ve seen that face before
Filed under: design, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, tv
Went out to dine, en famille, at local Jerusalem eatery Pinati and noticed a change in their corporate image. Instead of a photoshopped photo of a rather excited-looking young man in a Turkish tarbush, what we now have is a cartoon — or is it a caricature? — of a man, still wearing the traditional fez — but looking remarkably like a contemporary US president.
It got me thinking about other brands we’ve had, throughout the years, that were inspired — a nice way of putting it — by other, perhaps more well-known images.
For example, take a look at Dan Haschan (“Thrifty Dan”), the elf that throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, helped Bank Hapoalim to encourage young people to save their agorot. He might as well be the eighth of Snow White’s dwarves. I mean, I get that the bag he’s holding is full of money but if he’s not one of them, then what’s the pickax for?
BTW: Dan was recently revived by Poalim, sans tools and his bag upgraded to a cool moneybox. There’s a good blog posting about the comeback (in Hebrew) on Samlil, a site devoted to Israeli branding and its sister site, Safta, a fantastic Flickr photostream of vintage Israeliana.
I’ve always loved the Ama lady, the face that launched a thousand loads of laundry. But look carefully and what you’ll see is Betty Boop, had she been born in pre-State Mandatory Palestine, served in the Palmach, married, moved into a workers’ residence and had to do all her washing by hand in the communal laundry room.
And who can forget MacDavid, the little kosher fast food chain that could? Certainly not McDonald’s, who sued the now defunct franchise (8 outlets in it’s heyday) for trademark infringement — and lost!
We have to forgive Walla!, Israel’s answer to Yahoo!, for the close resemblance because at the time every country had its own local Nanas, Yallas!, Kartoos or other copycat search engine-cum-web portal.
Clearly, there’s no way that Zakumi, the 2010 World Cup Mascot, could have known about Strauss-Elite’s new chocolate-inspired foursome, the Elite-Team. They probably just go to the same hairdresser.
However, there’s every chance that El-Al’s branding and marketing team had seen a relatively uknown little film called Walt Disney’s Peter Pan. Check out the winged flight attendant and tell me there’s no resemblance to our favorite jealous fairy.
But the biggest “tribute”* around these days has got to be animated cartoon Ahmed & Salim.
The elevator pitch: would-be Palestinian terrorists meet South Park. It’s been narrowcasting on YouTube for a while, earning its share of media coverage, bans and death threats along the way, and last week made its Israeli cable debut on comedy channel Bip.
An 11-year old told me it was really funny. I am unconvinced. But I suppose it beats what they’re showing kids on Palestinian TV. And Israel hasn’t ripped off Mickey Mouse, Maya the Bee and Bugs Bunny… yet.
*Another nice word
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