Shedding it all at the Dead Sea

April 29, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, Environment, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture, Travel 

A Spencer Tunick project in Switzerland.

Don’t be surprised if the next time you trek to the Dead Sea, you’re asked to take your clothes off. Spencer Tunick, the artist known for gathering together hundreds of naked volunteers, is planning his next project at the lowest place on earth.

US-born Tunick, 44, has photographed large groups of naked people in the UK, and cities including Amsterdam, Sydney and Buenos Aires, and his next target is Israel and the Dead Sea. And he’s hoping to realize his dream through the web-based fundraising site Kickstarter.

The campaign, called “Naked Sea,” will run through June 6 and aims to raise $60,000 to finance the installation, an amount which, according to the rules of the fundraising website, must be fully raised by the end date in order to receive any money, a statement from the artist said. After 24 hours, the project had ,raised $1,435.

According to reports in Bloomberg and The Jerusalem Post, Tunick is getting logistical help from his Israeli friend, Ari Fruchter, a high tech executive and patron of the arts.

“For the past few years I have been gearing up for this and working with Tunick. My first challenge was to see if the people of Israel were ready to get naked for art. Much to my surprise, the overwhelming answer was yes,” Fruchter said in the statement, noting that a group of five university students started a grassroots campaign to enlist public support, which has attracted thousands since.

“This project is dear to me, one that I have dreamed of since my early days as an artist,” Tunick said in an e-mailed statement seeking backers. “I look forward to your support in exposing a part of Israel that hasn’t been seen before and at the same time bring attention to the deteriorating situation of the Dead Sea.”

So if Tunick succeeds in raising the $60,000 by his June target date, expect to see a mass of Israeli nudity at the lowest spot on earth later this year.

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Foto Friday – Yom Hashoah 2011

April 29, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, education, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, News, Politics, Social Justice 

Yom Hashoah – Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day is a national day of commemoration in Israel, on which the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust are memorialized. It begins on the evening of the 27th of Nissan which this year falls on May 1st. The central ceremonies, in the evening and the following morning, are held at Yad Vashem – The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority.

Each year at the ceremony, six torches are lit in memory of the six millions Jews murdered during the Holocaust. The torchlighters are people whose wartime experiences reflects the central theme chosen by Yad Vashem. Their personal stories can be read here.

And here are photos of how they look today in 2011 — alive, well and living in the Jewish state — all things Hitler hoped they would never see.

This year’s theme is “Fragments of Memory: The Faces behind the Documents, Artifacts and Photographs”. In keeping with the theme, Yad Vashem, in partnership with the Prime Minister’s Office National Heritage Project, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Pensioner Affairs, has launched a campaign called Gathering the Fragments, aimed at rescuing personal items from the Holocaust period.

The campaign seeks to gather documents, diaries, photos, artifacts and works of art from the Holocaust years that are currently held privately by people in Israel. Yad Vashem calls this rescue operation “a race against the clock, an effort to collect the artifacts and the documents along with the story behind them to ensure their eternal conservation by bringing them to Yad Vashem for safekeeping.” The artifacts will be added to the Yad Vashem collection, conserved, cataloged and digitized for easy universal access.

On the morning of May 2, the ceremony at Yad Vashem will begin with the sounding of a siren and two minutes of silence. Throughout the day, places of entertainment are closed, and TV and radio broadcast programs about the Holocaust.

At the ceremony at Yad Vashem, dignitaries and the representatives of survivor groups and institutions will lay wreaths at the foot of the six torches. Other sites of remembrance in Israel, such as the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz and Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, will also host memorial ceremonies, as do schools, military bases, municipalities and places of work.

Also on May 2nd, the names of Holocaust victims will be recited in Yad Vashem’s “Hall of Remembrance.” The public is invited to participate in this ceremony, reading names of relatives and friends murdered in the Holocaust, or reading names of victims provided to them by Yad Vashem from the “Central Database of Shoah Victims Names”.

To have the names of their loved ones who perished in the Holocaust read in the Hall of Remembrance on Yom Hashoah – you can submit the names and details online. Names must be submitted by May 1st so there’s still a bit of time.

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Spotting the wild Israeli

April 28, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Sports, Travel 

Adam Leighton (in blue) with Israeli biking group in Nepal

With all the Israelis who head off for the Far East on extended post-army trips, we were pretty sure we’d meet tens, if not hundreds, of our fellow countrymen and women during our recent trek in Nepal.

On the first six days of the trek, though, we met Brits, Canadians, lots of Germans, Japanese, Korean and Thai tourists, but no Israelis.

Was Nepal no longer an “in” spot for the young backpacking, dreadlocked, and multiple pierced Israeli rebel?

Apparently they were all waiting to gang up on us in one place, in the small village of Tatopani. They weren’t hard to spot: our “Isradar” (a term we coined for “Israeli radar”) started jumping as we reached our guesthouse where we were greeted by not a lone trekker but 15 Israelis…and their bikes.

The Israeli group (a rather mature bunch of mostly 40 and 50-somethings) was on a two-week biking tour of Nepal, organized by Gur Kotzer who runs elnepal.co.il, a joint Israeli-Nepali trekking agency.

I met up with Gur while bathing in the natural hot springs that have made Tatopani a Himalayan vacation get away – a sort of Ein Gedi for those who like to really rough it. Gur told me that his agency runs a whole host of adventures in Nepal, not just biking, including standard walking treks, jungle safaris and white water rafting. Gur is based in Israel, but travels to Nepal frequently.

The Israelis we met were not a part of any specific riding group. They hailed from all over the country (though none were from Jerusalem) and they had brought their bikes with them all the way from Israel. The group had just biked down nearly 1,500 meters that day (some of it through a driving rain) on bumpy roads and 900-year-old stone staircases cut into the mountainside.

Our paths continued to cross with the bikers. We met again at what’s arguably the “world’s largest Passover Seder” organized by Chabad in Kathmandu, and then again on our El Al flight home.

Interestingly, the Israelis’ “Isradar” was working just as well in the other direction and we were easily identifiable too. This always perplexes our kids who steadfastly believe that, as North American immigrants, we don’t look outwardly Israeli. How did the Israelis spot us then?

Easy: they spied my daughter reading a sign in Hebrew at the entrance to the guesthouse. It read “Shakshuka – excellent guest house and tasty food.”

Only in Israel…or should I say, only in Nepal?

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Seven blessings for Wills and Kate

April 27, 2011 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Life, Pop Culture 

The big wedding day — for young royals Wills and Kate — is fast approaching, and for the many Brit immigrants in Israel, it’s a big deal, as big as, say, Thanksgiving or July 4 for the Americans, and even more, given it’s once-in-a-lifetime status.

So the question is, how to celebrate? With the wedding day this Friday, it’s actually good timing for Israeli Brits, given that it’s generally a day off for most Israelis, as the first day of the two-day weekend. As such, a bunch of Brits living in suburban Modiin will be celebrating Friday night with a huge sheva brachot block party, in the guise of Friday night dinner. It’s all very fitting, given that it will be Friday night, time to eat soup, chicken and potatoes — or other options — and it is customary to say the sheva brachot or seven blessings for seven nights following a couple’s wedding celebration. And so they will be, from a commemorative bencher made just for the occasion.

Outside of Modiin, there are other celebrations being planned, certainly many Friday night dinners. One of my friends is planning a royal wedding tea party, and is grappling with the problem of bunting. Bunting, for those not in the know, are those Union Jack triangular flags, fluttering in the wind at any self-respecting Brit event. I told her to check out online sites that would allow one to print and cut, and she’s planning on it, I certainly hope. As for the venue, suggestions included the all-too-obvious Balfour Street, King George Street and King David Hotel. I’ll let you know what she decides.

There has been talk of not allowing the other English speakers in this land — Americans, probably South Africans and Australians as well — to attend any of these royal wedding get-togethers. We may all be called Anglo-Saxons, but clearly lines are drawn at these kinds of events. Nevertheless, I’m a Wills and Kate fan, and am anticipating drinking my tea and eating my crumpets on Friday. Or maybe after dinner Friday night.

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High tech honchos leading Israel to a better place?

April 27, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

Shai Agassi, right, checks out one of his electric cars

Israeli high tech tycoons are making lots of news these days.

Better Place, the electric car infrastructure company founded by Shai Agassi, is going to begin selling electric cars in Israel this summer according to a report in Israeli newspaper.

ISRAEL21c wrote that the first electric car to be sold in Israel – the first country in the world to install the cutting edge electric car network – will be the Renault Fluence ZE, followed by the Renault Zoe.

Agassi has pledged that the price of purchasing and using an electric car will be lower than current costs of buying and running a gasoline-fuelled car. In Israel there will also be a 10 percent purchase tax on electric vehicles, compared with 90% on regular cars, so there should already be a big savings there. Three cheers for Agassi.

Meanwhile, the founder and managing partner of the innovative Jerusalem Venture Partners – Erel Margalit – entered the crowded field of candidates for the chairmanship of the Labor Party at an event in the capital on Wednesday.

The venture capitalist gained fame for selling the Israeli company Chromatis to Lucent Technologies for $4.8 billion in 2000, in what was the largest takeover in Israeli history at the time. His latest venture is Labor Now, an effort to registering thousands of new Labor members, The Jerusalem Post reported.

It looks like Margalit is following in the footsteps of another Jerusalem high tech maven turned politician – Nir Barkat.

Barkat founded software company BRM in 1988, which specialized in antivirus software. Later the company became an incubator venture firm that invested in several companies such as Check Point and Backweb, making Barkat independently wealthy. He later helped found the social investment company IVN before entering politics in 2003 and become mayor of Jerusalem in 2008.

Whether Margalit’s political career will wind up like Barkat’s is open to venture.

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