Sign humor

October 24, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, News, Pop Culture 

Very briefly, another humorous YouTube video, poking fun at the peace process. The man holding the sign is chanting: “I won’t move from here until there is peace.” And so, the guy on the bike can safely chain his bike to the sign holder’s leg because, well, the guy with the sign won’t be moving anytime soon if he’s not moving from that spot until there is peace in the Middle East.

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Nostalgia Sunday – 60 Years of Army Radio

October 24, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, Profiles, tv 

One of Israel’s many funny ironies is that its hippest radio station is an army unit. Israel Defense Forces Radio or Galei Zahal — GLZ for short (pronounced galatz) — which officially began transmitting in 1950 after having kept the Jewish public informed during the 1948-9 War of Independence, has traditionally been Israel’s most up-to-date radio station for news, programming and music — even the phone-in traffic watch on subsidiary Galgalatz.

GLZ has had a huge influence on Israeli popular culture as the first station to eschew formal Hebrew in favor of colloquial Hebrew. Some say it created “infotainment” in Israel. It certainly has, for generations, served as an unofficial journalism school for soldiers who’ve gone on to become Israel’s leading lights in news and entertainment. Click here for Y-net’s take on the glitzy, glamorous crowd who came to celebrate the station’s 60th anniversary this past Thursday night, and here for the video on Walla!.

In the spirit of celebrating GLZ’s birthday, there was a day of special programming, that can be accessed online. And the IDF’s English-language website presented a list of Five Facts About Galei Tzahal. They are:

1. Army broadcasts were started by Prime Minister and first Minister of Defense David Ben Gurion following the sounds of celebratory trumpets and the national anthem.
2. Galgalatz, a GLZ offshoot that mainly broadcasts music and traffic reports along with reports by the National Authority on Road Safety, was established in 1994. Today it is the most popular music station on Israeli radio.
3. Galgalatz’s name is a combination of the words galgal (wheel), a link to the issue of road safety and GLZ, its parent station’s name.
4. In 1958, GLZ moved from its original headquarters at the Manchil school in Ramat Gan to Jaffa, where its location remains to this day.
5. For years, GLZ’s chief grammar and semantics editor has been legendary Dr. Avshalom Kor, who teaches courses on proper Hebrew for the station’s new writers and hosts the station’s linguistics corner. Language lessons? Yes! Because GLZ is a division of the IDF Education & Youth Corps.

On its Hebrew site, the station created an online quiz entitled “Test Yourself – What Do You Know About GLZ?” that promises to stump even the most die-hard of fans.

And if you’d like to listen to GLZ or Galgalatz not only do they broadcast online but you can take a live peek into the studio too!

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Dancing with the same-sex stars

October 24, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture, tv 

Gili Shem Tov (left) and Dorit Millman make history.

Another first for Israel – this time not in the science or high tech fields – but in the area of the progressiveness of its society.

Israel will be the first country to allow two people of the same sex to dance as a couple on the popular “Dancing with the Stars” reality competition. Called ‘Rokdim im hakohavim” in Hebrew, the Israeli version is just one of 30 that “Dancing with the Stars” franchises out around the world. But until now, there has never been a same-sex couple competiting on any of the shows.

The chosen Israelis are TV presenter, sportcaster and openly gay woman Gili Shem Tov and professional dancer Dorit Milman.

“The challenge to dance with a woman in a public contest interested me because it’s unique and has never been done before. Because I share my life with a woman and have a family with her, to me this is the most natural thing to do,” Shem Tov told the BBC, which has taken an interest in the Israeli series.

The couple will swap “leading” roles in their dances, according to the report. “I have realised that dance is about co-ordination and energy between two people, whether female or male,” Shem Tov said.

The news about Shem Tov and Millman has overshadowed what would have otherwise been a big deal for the local gossip columns – that American pinup celebrity Pamela Anderson will be making a guest appearance on this year’s show as a guest judge, along with doing some dancing.

The former Baywatch actress has been a contestant on the American version of the show, and clearly knows her way around the dance floor. But it’s unclear whether she’s prepared to be upstaged by the duo of Shem Tov and Millman.

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Living without Luna

October 23, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Business, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Technology, Travel 

So the husband’s away in the States on a ten-day work trip and the kids get sick, which everyone tells me is really almost to be expected. That I should just be grateful that I was able to finish my big assignment before they got sick; that it’s a rite of passage; that at least we’re not one of those families in which one of the spouses travels every week/month. Yeah, yeah, I get it, and I will be grateful for it all, once he’s finally home.

In the meantime, one of the pleasures of having a spouse visit the States for work is that you can acquire certain items that are either ‘unacquireable’ here in the holy land or cost too much. Don’t get me wrong: I can very happily live and work with the items I purchase here, whether it’s toothpaste, paper goods or clothing. As a matter of fact, as many of us know, almost anything can be purchased here, with the exception of the New York Times in print (not the IHT or online), Tom of Maine’s toothpaste (although I have seen it here and there) and certain flavors of Luna bars. But you pay the price, and hey, if the suitcase is half empty, why not fill it with some treats?

So, to that end, I have improved upon my already excellent online shopping skills, and by that I mean, knowing which catalogs to order from, when to hit the sales and how to figure out what you really need. These days, that means very on-sale toddler clothing from Old Navy, the Gap, sometimes Land’s End overstocks if the pickings aren’t too square, as well as sheets from Garnet Hill, and yes, some items for me from Title Nine and the handy five-some of Old Navy/Gap/Banana Republic/Athleta/PiperLime. There’s also the all-important Zout stain remover order from Drugstore.com (they have a way of packaging it that avoids any and all leakage), and as long as you’re ordering from drugstore.com, you can stock up on other items as well.

So imagine my amazement when I “went shopping” last week at the Old Navy group and received a message to the effect that we can now order in our home currency and receive said packages overseas. Of course, given that Gap Inc. is setting the exchange rate, you can be sure you’re not getting the full NIS 3.6 to the dollar, and there’s a hefty VAT to pay. Moreover, given that the Gap is in Israel, there are many items on the website that are not available to “my destination,” and I’m guessing it’s because they’d rather I buy the boatneck t-shirt or perfect jeans here. Doesn’t really matter to me, as I was just browsing to check out the international prices. Moreover, the only thing I use the Gap here for is to check out sizing for eventual ordering online.

But hey, it’s nice to know that they’re keeping us in mind. And by the way, drugstore.com offers that option as well, although their website keeps on offering me that option even though I’ve made it clear that I’m not interested. Gap Inc. got the message pretty quickly after that initial invite: “Hi Jessica, it appears that you are based outside of the United States…” How did they guess??

In any case, talk to me when it’s Wednesday and my ‘packages’ have arrived. Although, as always, the package I’ll be happiest about is my sorely missed partner and husband.

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Foto Friday – Dead Sea Scrolls Digitized!

October 22, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: education, Foto Friday, History and Culture, News, Religion, Travel 

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Google is dedicated to digitizing the world’s books — and the People of the Book are one lucky beneficiary of that mission. This week, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), together with Google, announced the launching a unique project: The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, that will document the entire Dead Sea Scrolls collection.

This is the first time that the collection of Scrolls will be photographed in its entirety since the 1950s — and that includes the earliest known copy of the Ten Commandments on the bottom of 2nd column and 3rd-4th column in this Deuteronomy Scroll.

The IAA will use advanced technologies to image the entire collection of 900 manuscripts comprising c. 30,000 Dead Sea Scrolls fragments in high resolution and multi-spectra and make the digitized images freely available and accessible to anyone anywhere in the world, via the Internet.

The IAA will collaborate with the Google R&D center in Israel to upload not only all of the digitized scrolls images but also additional data online that will allow users to perform searches across a broad range of data in a number of languages and formats. The hope is that this unprecedented access to the Scrolls, to both the academic and general public, will result in new research and scholarship.

The innovative imaging technology to be used in the project has been developed by MegaVision, a California-based company that lists the US Library of Congress and Los Angeles’ Getty Museum among its clients. The MegaVision system – be installed in the IAA’s laboratories in early 2011 – will enable the digital imaging of every Scroll fragment in various wavelengths in the highest resolution possible and allow long term monitoring for preservation purposes in a non-invasive and precise manner.

The IAA states that the images will be equal in quality to the actual physical viewing of the Scrolls, thus eliminating the need for re-exposure of the Scrolls and allowing their preservation for future generations.

The technology will also help rediscover writing and letters that have “vanished” over the years; with the help of infra-red light and wavelengths beyond, these writings will be brought “back to life”, facilitating new possibilities in Dead Sea Scrolls research. For example, these images of a fragment from Deuteronomy Scroll with Moses’ blessing in three different wavelengths — notice how the writing clarifies gradually.

Uploading the images to the Internet will be achieved with the assistance of Google-Israel and will be accompanied by meta-data including transcriptions, translations and bibliography.

The project funding was lead by the Leon Levy Foundation with additional major funding from the Arcadia Foundation and the support of Yad Hanadiv Foundation.

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