Woodstock nation lands in Jerusalem

July 16, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture 

Some of the contestants in the 'best dressed hippie' contest at the Woodstock Revival in Jerusalem. (Geoff Clein)

One of the highlights for the English speaking community in Jerusalem, or anyone else who loves the music of the 1960s, is the Woodstock Revival show that has taken place for three years now.

It brings out a mixture of old hippies, middle-aged Jerusalemites of all religious and social backgrounds, teenagers – mostly the children of Anglo olim who were exposed to the songs of the Woodstock era as young children – and a groundswell of young, native born Israelis who are also captivated by those sounds.

Thursday night’s six-hour show may have been the best of the bunch so far. The ambience, with lots of blankets spread out, Jems beer on tap, lots of crafts booths, juggling and a ‘best hippie’ contest, provided the perfect backdrop for the music.

There were excellent sets by young, Israeli acts like Natan Galili doing acoustic Dylan and Pritzat Disc channeling the lean, mean Led Zeppelin years. Galili also joined the Crosby, Stills and Nash tribute band Long Time Gone, as this year they tackled the packed catalogue of Creedence Clearwater Revival, nailing such classics as “Wrote A Song” and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and capturing the swampy essence of “Green River.”

For many the highlight of the evening came next with the return of local Anglo legend Libby to the Israeli stage after many years abroad. With her band The Flash, she lit up the stage with her ‘star’ persona and spirited versions of classics by The Jefferson Airplane and Janis Joplin.

A truly emotional moment occurred when she called up her many friends from the past for a group version of “With a Little Help From my Friends.” It helped wash away the slightly creepy sensation of the tight-shorted grandma undulating suggestively one moment and then introducing her grandchildren the next.

The final acts brought the level of professionalism up to overdrive with Yael Deckelbaum mesmerizing the crowd with her versions of Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin tunes. She then brought out Israel’s top jam band, Tree, for a dreamy version of “Woodstock” and a raucous cover of “Piece of My Heart.”

Tree then closed the show on their own with an incendiary set of Grateful Dead tunes, heavy on the acid rock of San Francisco band’s early days, especially an explosive, frenetic version of “The Other One” that may have had old-timers experiencing flashbacks.

The organizers of the show, which benefits American Football in Israel, promised that the Woodstock Revival is now an annual event. And for those of us who look forward to it each year, that’s music to our ears.

Here’s a sample of what you missed – Deckelbaum and Tree creating magic.

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Foto Friday – In search of the yakhmur

July 15, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: education, Environment, Food, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, News, Picture of the Week, Religion, Travel 

The Tisch Family Zoological Gardens, also known as The Biblical Zoo, features animals from the Land of Israel with special emphasis on those species mentioned in the Bible. Many of those Biblical mentions, it should be noted, relate to their consumption. Specifically, defining which animals are considered kosher and listing ten native ungulate (hoofed) species permitted for consumption: “These are the beasts which ye may eat: the ox, the sheep, and the goat; the ayal, the zvi, and the yakhmur; and the aqqo, the dishon, the teo and the zemer.”(Deuteronomy 14:4-5)

But what are the aqqo, dishon and zemer? A new archaeozoological study conducted jointly by researchers at the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University, has examined zoological findings at 133 sites around Israel dating back to the beginning of the biblical period, the late Bronze Age (12th century BCE) and up to the Persian Era (7th century BCE) and is exploring the possible answers to these questions.

According to the researchers, “The first three species have been easily identified, but the rest have been disputed over the years. Besides the fact that there is no species today as the zemer, the names of other species have been translated over time between different languages and only hundreds of years later returned to the Hebrew language, so that the biblical yakhmur and teo were not necessarily the species as we know them today.

“Our archaeozoological findings reinforce the assumption that there is some significance in the order of appearance of each species in the Bible’s list of animals deemed clean for consumption. By arriving at a more precise identification of the animals, we can more confidently confirm that at first domesticated animals are named and following that the verse mentions the animals in order of their importance for human consumption in the biblical Land of Israel,” the researchers stated.

The study was based on the hypothesis that animals described in the Bible existed at the time and place of its writing. “Based on the animal remains that were examined, the zvi mentioned in Deuteronomy includes the mountain gazelle and Dorcas gazelle. The ayal includes the red deer and Mesopotamian fallow deer, which is also a member of the deer family.”

The archaeozoological remains indicate that the aqqo can be identified with the ibex or what is still known as the wild goat.

The biblical dishon has been given various identities over the years, including affiliation with the rhinoceros.

Archaeological remains from the time of the Bible, however, do not show any hint of rhinoceros; the researchers explain that it is most likely to be an Arabian oryx.

The teo mentioned in Deuteronomy is a species that over the years and due to the various translations of the name, has been identified as bison, even though such an animal has also not been found amongst the archaeological remains. The current study suggests that the teo be identified with buffalo, which was a commonly hunted animal in biblical times.

And what was the yakhmur? According to the researchers, an analysis of the biblical text and the animal remains that they examined indicates that the Bible’s yakhmur was in fact an antelope of the hartebeest species, a large African antelope that became extinct in Israel but is still found in eastern Africa.

Finally, the zemer has also been given various identities in translation, including the giraffe. This is a highly unlikely identification of the zemer, seeing as here too, there is no hint of archaeological remains of giraffes in the biblical land of Israel. Based on their new analysis, the researchers propose that this species is a member of the ibex family.

Not that anyone’s going to make a meal of him but that’s still probably a relief to the latest addition to the Biblical Zoo, a baby giraffe who was born last week. The tot is only a mere 2 meters tall and both baby and mother are doing well.

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Smoking out the Israeli tobacco companies

July 14, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Environment, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Social Justice 

A vintage ad for Dubek cigarettes

There have been great inroads in Israel in recent years in curbing secondary tobacco smoke from closing in on innocent victims.

I remember only four or five years when cigarette smoking was commonplace in the country’s malls and a few years before that on busses. Today, nobody would think about smoking there. And even in big indoor concerts and event – and some outdoor ones – smoking is totally prohibited. Pretty good, when you consider the number of Israelis who still insist on smoking.

However, not everything is falling in favor of the anti-smoking advocates in the country. A 13-year lawsuit filed by the Clalit Health Services against foreign and Israeli tobacco giants demanding compensation for treating its health fund members who were ill due to smoking, was thrown out of The Supreme Court this week.

According to a report by Judy Siegel, the longtime Jerusalem Post health correspondent, who is one of the country’s leading anti-smoking advocates, the three justices did not deny the tobacco companies’ responsibility for harm done to the health of Clalit and other insurers’ members, but stated that rather than filing a direct action against the tobacco companies, Clalit should sue on behalf of each individual harmed by tobacco.

Among the targets of the suit were the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation; the British American Tobacco Company Ltd. and other members of the same group; Philip Morris International; Philip Morris USA and other parts of the group; and Israel’s Dubek Ltd. and other members of its group.

The lawyer representing Clalit, Israel’s biggest health fund, was Israel Council for the Prevention of Smoking chairman and lawyer Amos Hausner. He modelled its case after the huge lawsuits by healthcare systems of the 50 US states, which ended in a settlement of $245 billion for the states.

Hausner said it was unfortunate that the tobacco companies, which have caused huge damage to the health of smokers and non-smokers exposed to their smoke, had not been forced to pay the medical expenses of the health fund for treating the victims. He noted that the health system could be transformed by the infusion of this money, embroiled as it is in a seemingly endless labor dispute over hospital overcrowding and severe shortage of medical manpower.

While there won’t likely be a smoking gun in this case, there are surely many other cases against the Israeli tobacco companies that will follow in the footsteps of this one – with the results hopefully being different.

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Getting naked at the Dead Sea

July 13, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, Israeliness, Politics 

Spencer Tunick installation in Mexico City, 2007

If Israel’s ultra-Orthodox had a hard time agreeing on how to permit a girls dance troupe to perform at the festive dedication of the Jerusalem “Bridge of Strings” a few years back, they’re going to have a field day with Spencer Tunick’s latest art project. David wrote about the project in April; it’s now been given an official launch date according to a press release issued yesterday.

Tunick specializes in staging and photographing large-scale human body “landscapes” in both urban and natural settings. The human bodies we’re talking about here are naked.

Tunick’s work may sound scandalous, but when seen from above or at a distance (which is the case most of the time, notwithstanding a few exceptions), you don’t really see that much (in case you were curious). The results, nevertheless, are quite stunning, and that would be true whether there was nudity or not: simply gathering thousands of people together in one space for an art installation is worthy of our critical interest. His most recent installation, in Sydney Australia, has been viewed by an astonishing 500 million people.

The Dead Sea project is being spearheaded by Tunick’s long time friend and now Tel Aviv resident Ari Fruchter who set about the task of raising $60,000 to get it off the ground. Using the KickStarter website (a platform for funding art projects), Fruchter raised a total of $116,000 from 706 backers.

Tunick’s installation at the Dead Sea is about more than just art. Fruchter writes on the KickStarter site: “By bringing Spencer to the Dead Sea I am hoping to bring back life – showcasing the importance of water in this region and creating art that is a celebration of humanity that brings world attention to the disappearing Dead Sea.”

In the press release, the organizers also pointed to the Dead Sea’s location, shared by Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians, suggesting perhaps that nudity could be what brings these three people together. It might also help boost the Dead Sea’s chances of being named one of the “new” 7 wonders of the world (that announcement will come on 11.11.11 – cute).

In Jerusalem, the pre-teen girls who dared to dance at the Bridge of Strings ceremony were forced to don modest outfits not to offend local sensibilities. At the Dead Sea, there will be no such cover-up: the date of the photo shoot – Sept. 17, 2011 – is on Shabbat.

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Examining Israel’s cottage cheese revolution

July 13, 2011 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Food, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Technology 

It’s been a few weeks since the cottage cheese revolution that Jessica described here began – the grassroots movement of consumers fed up with the spiraling prices of basic food commodities resulting in a Facebook campaign calling to boycott dairy products like cottage cheese until the prices went down (good thing this was before the anti-boycott bill in the Knesset passed!)

The campaign turned into a national furor, with the whole issue of high prices in Israel for everything coming to the forefront, and now economists are already analyzing the effects of the our own version of the ‘Arab Spring’ on the future economic life in the country.

At a symposium at Hebrew University this week examining the 40 percent price jump of cottage over the past three years, price rises in Israel, the monopoly in the dairy industry, and why this particular incident over cottage cheese has Israelis up in arms, HU economists called the Facebook boycott and resulting hoopla a “watershed” and looked at how social media has been instrumental in driving the consumer protest.

“I’m not exaggerating to say that I’m thrilled about this cottage cheese revolution,” said Dr. Avi Simhon of the department of agricultural economics and management at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Science. “This is a watershed in the economic life of Israel.”

“Because we are a small country, we are surrounded by cartels, monopolies and non-competitive behavior by producers. Cottage cheese is not an insignificant product – it totals over 1 billion shekels a year. The producers of the other cartels have learned a great lesson now. They have learned they can’t squeeze the consumer. This is an important lesson that will have a very large affect on the Israeli economy.”

Commenting on the Facebook campaign to boycott cottage cheese, Dr. Paul Frosh of the HU department of communication and journalism cited the case of popular news website Ynet posting a link to the Facebook campaign on the day that it was launched as proof that there was a symbiotic relationship between the mass media and social media and that they do not compete, rather they collaborate.

“Clicking a button on a website is now a kind of political action that can be seen, counted and reported by mass media. [It is a] form of visible political action in the way that attending a demonstration is a form of political action,” he said, referring to social media campaigns as “low energy.”

“Not buying cottage for a month is not a huge decision to make. When you ring those clicks together, you can create large political waves.”

And evidently, the next wave is about to break. High cottage cheese prices are one thing, but have you noticed the rising prices of our real national food – hummus? We hear that the next boycott will be against buying the chickpea paste. But, it’s not a sure thing that this will catch on to the same extent. Doing without cottage cheese is one thing, but hummus? It’s a vital life force.

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