Israelity welcomes Is.Real

August 3, 2011 - 8:37 AM by David

Don’t be surprised if young and attractive Israelis start popping up on YouTube with alarming regularity in the near future. It’s not your imagination, but the final project of a group of college students taking part in a year long fellowship at Tel Aviv University sponsored by the advocacy organization StandWithUs.

The fellowship is designed to train the students to be effective global ambassadors for Israel. And for their project, 23 of the 150 students devised Is.Real (not close enough to sue them, but watch out guys) – a series of 2-3 minute video clips that focus on the lives of four young Israelis from diverse backgrounds. The MTV-fast paced, frenetic snippets were designed to document their daily lives and provide insight into the authentic ‘real Israel’ that isn’t shown on the news, according to their promo blurb.

The four subjects are:

• Savannah Zvi-Navon, a 27-year-old singer-songwriter originally from Sydney, Australia. She started her journey in Israel at Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael, and has since migrated to Tel Aviv.

• Yair Tayor, a 26-year-old tour guide from Beit Horon in the West Bank. He grew up in a religious family, speaks Portuguese and Spanish fluently, and guides tourists from Brazil around Israel.

• Shay Doron, a 26-year-old professional basketball player with the Israeli women’s national basketball team.

• Ayman Dan is a 20-year-old Christian Arab-Israeli from Kafr Yasif, an Arab village in northern Israel. After studying design in Haifa, Dan moved to Tel Aviv. He hopes to eventually pursue a career in styling and fashion design.

The series was unveiled at a gala screening on Wednesday and the 20–episode series (each subject is the focus of five clips) is due to be uploaded to YouTube any day now. Welcome to the club!

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