Last day of Jerusalem festival of light – don’t miss it!

June 16, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Art 

Map to the festival. Take the green route

Run, no sprint to the Light in Jerusalem festival, which is closing tonight after a successful seven day run. As my colleague Rachel has written here in Israelity, the event consists of tens of creative, playful and often awe inspiring light installations from internationally renowned “light artists,” displayed and often tightly integrated into the fabric of Jerusalem Old City – walls, windows sometimes entire sides of synagogues.

Last year, some 250,000 visitors from all over Israel attended, as did our family. While there were small klatches of overseas tourists, most of the participants wandering the Old City this week seemed to be part of large boisterous tour guide-led groups of Hebrew-speakers for whom, by the looks on their faces, this was their first time in the Old City perhaps since childhood.

Indeed, the winding alleyways of the Old City seemed even more packed than last year. Particularly in the Jewish Quarter, you often had to queue up just to pass through a particularly narrow arch.

We got a tip from a friend on Facebook – thanks Arlene! – which I want to pass on to you here. Avoid the crowds and take the green route which starts Kikar Zahal (the intersection of the Old City and Jaffa Street) and meanders into East Jerusalem. There are far fewer visitors and the installations are truly fabulous.

Two in particular stood out. In “What do trees do at night?” by artist Joseph Meir Jimmy, a large oak tree set against the Old City walls comes to life via clever projections of images, animation and an accompanying soundtrack. The tree, with wonderfully expressive cartoon eyes, was beset upon by birds, children and scorpions, while transitioning through rain and snow. When the lights went off, it was hard to believe we were looking at just a plain tree and a wall.

Zedekiah’s Cave (Solomon’s Quarry) is an enormous underground cavern, where rocks were mined to build the First Temple. For the festival, it was turned into a aquarium-like environment created by Eran Klein and Eli Kochavi. Phosphorescent blue lights lit the way through the cave towards a light installation simulating fish swimming through water while soothing new age music played. It was truly magical.

What was particularly unique was the fact that many of the light shows were built specifically for the locations. The images projected on Damascus Gate, for example, used the shapes and turrets of the gate to weave its tale. It wouldn’t have worked anywhere else.

There’s lots more to see – tall illuminated rods depciting green grass at Jaffa Gate; a history of the Old City projected onto the newly reconstructed Hurva Synagogue.

The festival runs tonight from sunset until midnight. There’s inexpensive parking in the City Hall (Kikar Safra) parking lot (that’s the closest to the green route). as well as the Mamilla and Karta lots with free buses from the farther flung Ammunition Hill and Old Train Station parking locations. Or take the bus. Just don’t miss it. More information from the festival’s website.

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The bitch is back – in Ramat Gan

June 16, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Politics, Pop Culture 

Even as the famous (Elvis Costello, the Pixies) and the obscure (Dvendra Bannhart, Klaxxons) continue to bow out of scheduled shows in Israel due to some misplaced sentiment that they’re ‘doing the right thing’ by boycotting Israel, the ‘bitch is back.’

Elton John is scheduled to zoom in on his private jet Thursday morning for a sold-out show that night at Ramat Gan Stadium. He evidently has learned a lesson from his previous visit here in 1993 that the less interaction with the Israeli media the better.

On that visit, after a long security and immigrations ordeal at the airport, John was accosted by papparazzi at his Tel Aviv hotel, causing him to jump over a couch in an attempt to flee the mob, and eventually jump out of the country back home to England. Calm minds prevailed however, and John returned the next day and performed his show at Hayarkon Park a day after it was scheduled.

This time, with the landing, the concert and the departure all within a single day, John is managing to avoid a repeat of the hotel scene and the need to hold a press conference and answer questions about the whole boycott issue.

However, all credit must go to Sir Elton for not caving in to the appeals and pressure that have undoubtedly been thrust upon him to cancel his concert in order to punish the ‘bad Israelis.’

Maybe it was just because it would have been to expensive to stop the huge touring juggernaut in its tracks, maybe, for Elton, it’s only business, or just maybe, he doesn’t think Israel’s being treated fairly by his musical colleagues. Whatever the reason, his performance on Thursday will do wonders to stem the boycott tide, and the coverage of the show will erase the negative press causes by the previous musical cancellations.

So, who cares that, as Yediot Ahranot reported, that his technical rider has stipulated what kind of car can take him from the airport to the stadium or that he’s demanded luxurious couches and a certain kind of drapery for his private dressing room. Elton John is a diva, but he’s our diva.

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Arsenic for the budding actor

June 15, 2010 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Music 

Went to see a clever local production of an old film favorite, “Arsenic and Old Lace,” now turned into a musical — “Arsenic The Musical” with lyrics written by local Modi’in resident, Elli Sacks.

Staged in Talpiot, at the simple stage of El Halev, Arsenic is produced by Way Off Productions, a theater group that is aiming to be more theater workshop than local Jerusalem English language theater. And that’s what it felt like during the course of the well-rehearsed two-hour production, and I’m offering that as a compliment. The actors, both amateur and professional, knew what they were doing and did it well, including Teddy Brewster (the nephew who is mad and thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt.) Full disclosure: Teddy is played by my brother-in-law and the play’s assistant director is my sister and Ira’s wife, Beth Steinberg.

Despite the family connections, I was charmed by the production, and by the fact that these actors took their own leisure time to rehearse and perform the play over the course of many months. But perhaps even more striking was the fact that so many of them have actually acted professionally and then moved to Israel, where they’re hoping — according to the Playbill bios — to continue acting, for money. Actor David Hilfstein worked Off-Broadway in NYC before making aliyah and has appeared in Srugim; Alona Cole is a professional singer and Chanan Elias plays professionally with various local bands.

I’m pretty sure that my sister and brother-in-law aren’t planning on going pro in the acting field. But it’s gotta feel good to have your acting work noticed. Even when it’s tied to the flotilla disaster.

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Getting Lost in the Carmel

June 14, 2010 by · 7 Comments
Filed under: Travel 

Finding the red rock marker

After a successful first tiyul, we tried our hand at hike number two – this time in the Carmel Mountains near Haifa. To remind: we’ve planned a series of 12 treks in Israel prior to our son Aviv’s bar mitzvah next year. The first was just outside of Jerusalem. This time we drove two hours north.

The first thing we noticed was how gorgeous the tiyul route was. From the opening path through a grove of lovely overhanging pines to the hike up to the top of Har Shokef, Aviv couldn’t stop noting how favorably it compared with our first outing – which was beautiful too, but in a rockier, wide open vistas kind of way.

The tiyul was proceeding fine until we began our ascent up the mountain – some 500 meters above sea level. We had carefully followed the trail markers and we were now on a black trail. The trail seemed clear as we began the climb. We were so intent on getting past the toughest part that we didn’t notice that the black and white painted rocks had disappeared.

No problem, we thought. The trail was so obvious – there was only one way to go: up – we figured that the trail marking people must have decided they didn’t need to put up as many rocks as on a normal route. So on we went, 10, 20, 30 minutes.

And then we reached a junction, with no trail markers. The “straight” continuation seemed to head towards an Arab village, not the mountain we had assumed we were climbing towards. The other way led to a large clearing. We sat down and ate our lunch while trying to figure out where we were and what – if anything – we’d done wrong.

We also tried our hardest to cover up our nervousness – I mean, we were lost in the mountains a long way from our car, on a Friday, with Shabbat looming in just a few hours.

A pair of bicyclists reached our clearing. We called to them – “can you look at our map and tell us where we are?” we asked. They admitted they were lost too. Eventually we identified where we’d gone wrong and decided that the path to the right, rather than the straight and seemingly logical choice, should lead to a short jeep path that would eventually lead us to the red trail at the top of Har Shokef.

Which, thankfully, it did. Once we were back where we needed to be, we relaxed and were able to enjoy the hike down again.

Total time for the tiyul: 4 hours (including getting lost).

Key learning: if you don’t see a trail marker within 1-2 minutes, turn back!

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Blocking out the buzz of the World Cup

June 14, 2010 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Sports, tv 

I was hoping that one of my fellow bloggers would post something about the World Cup, so I wouldn’t have to.

So here goes. I’m one of those one percent of the Israeli male population (and a decent percentage of the female population) that does not watch the World Cup. For those who are even behind me and don’t even know what the World Cup is (and if you’re American, there’s a good chance), it’s the Olympics of soccer – which takes place every four years, this year in South Africa.

Israel, which hasn’t qualified for the seemingly endless tournament since 1970, goes crazy at World Cup time. Restaurants and bars offer special deals and fill up with rowdy patrons, and if you go outside in your neighborhood, you can hear the irritating buzz of the Vuvuzelas, the South African noisemakers in the shape of trumpets which fans blast through every game, coming out of the TVs of every house on the block.

And even Mabat, the staid nightly news on state-run Channel 1, has gone World Cup crazy, redesigning its set to look like a carnival and embarrassing itself in that festive atmosphere by having to report on a woman killing her pregnant neighbor because she spilled coffee on her clothes line.

Even people who don’t normally follow soccer join the bandwagon at World Cup time, rooting for their native country or a favorite of theirs. The topic of whom should Israelis get behind was treated with irreverence by Jerusalem Post reporter Gil Hoffman last week, who went through all 32 participating countries, and their affronts to Israel and the Jewish people, before tongue in cheek concluding that the only teams worth backing were the US, Holland and Denmark.

I don’t know how those teams are doing, because I’m boycotting the tournament – if everyone likes something so much, there has to be something wrong with it. I’ll wait until 2019 when Israel makes it in again.

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