FOMO at the Dead Sea

November 15, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: health, Travel 

FOMO or not, the kids had a great time at the Dead Sea

When I was ten, my parents planned a trip for the family to Disneyland. But a few days before we were set to leave, my father got sick – it was a cold or a flu, nothing serious, but still, the trip was cancelled. I was devastated and, since then, I have tried to never miss out on any kind of experience, big or small. Understandably, this creates a lot of anxiety – I mean, which exciting activity should I choose? What if I choose the wrong one? And if I choose not to go at all, will I be filled with regret?

It turns out there’s a name for this – it’s called “Fear of Missing Out” (or FOMO for short).

Now, citing my missed Disneyland experience is a bit flip – by itself it wouldn’t qualify as the sole cause of my FOMO (for that, I’d need a regular series of dashed expectations that built up over my childhood). But today, the FOMO persists and lately, it’s been causing more distress than the actual missing out.

FOMO was in full bloom this past weekend. Our community was having a Shabbaton at the Ein Gedi Youth Hostel. On the way, we wanted to stop at the Dead Sea. The kids were excited to lather up with Dead Sea mud; I had heard from David Brinn in a post on Israelity about a nature reserve at Einot Tzukim that was supposed to be beautiful. The site also has a number of crystal clear spring-fed swimming pools and mud to boot (or so I thought).

We got a late start leaving Jerusalem. When we called Einot Tzukim, we were told that you can only get into the nature reserve part of the site on a guided tour. The last tour left at noon. We were passing Ma’aleh Adumim and had only 20 minutes to get there. I floored the accelerator and we arrived, miraculously at the gate at exactly 12:00 PM.

I jumped out of the car and cried, “let’s go.” But the kids didn’t want to hike and I hadn’t really considered their needs (mud, of which there turned out to be none) – my FOMO was so much in overdrive. I threw our daughter Merav the car keys and said, “The pools are that way. Imma and I will be back in an hour.” She looked perplexed and not a little bit cross.

As we toured the marshlands (gorgeous, by the way and highly recommended), I kept thinking about how I’d treated the kids and didn’t really enjoy myself. I vowed to make it up.

“Let’s go to the mud!” I announced.

And off we went again, racing towards Mineral Beach (only a few minutes from Einot Tzukim). But it was getting late and Shabbat was coming up quickly. My wife Jody was now the one who was upset. “We’ll only have 45 minutes. It’s not worth the NIS 220 to get into the beach.”

But FOMO raised its ugly head again. And so into the beach it was. The kids were delighted. Me – I couldn’t enjoy myself because, this time, I was disappointing my wife.

I had checked off both experience boxes in order to not succumb to FOMO and yet, I was desperately unhappy. This double whammy, driven home by the negative effect I’d had on the people I love the most, was the proverbial straw that perhaps, finally, would serve to break the FOMO camel’s back (a fitting cliché given our travels through the dromedarian Judean desert). My hope and aim is that, the next time I feel the FOMO rising like some unwelcome bitter bile, I’ll be able to draw on this weekend’s painful memory to keep it at bay.

Or maybe I should keep in mind one person who has it even worse. A friend at the Shabbaton shared with me that, whenever he’s at a buffet meal, he suffers from FOMOFF: “Fear of Missing Out on Free Food.”

Fortunately for him, the limp meat and cold schnitzel served at the Ein Gedi Youth Hostel was a fitting antidote.

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Hollywood actors, Jerusalem scenery

November 14, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, Entertainment, General, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, Travel 

Rob Morrow in Northern Exposure - will he be adding Jerusalem to the pole?

I know that some readers weren’t too happy with the headline of my last posting which stated that Crosby, Stills and Nash were performing at a tapas bar in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda shuk. Sorry about that, I didn’t think it would be that realistic to the point someone might actually believe it.

However, speaking doogri, as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is fond of saying in his gangsta persona, this item is 100% true – if you hang out on the streets of Jerusalem this week, don’t be surprised if you run into Ralph Cifaretto from The Sopranos or Dr. Joel Fleishman from Northern Exposure.

The actors who played those iconic roles – Joe Pantoliano and Rob Morrow respectively – are in town with almost two dozen of their Hollywood brethren (actors, producers and directors) for a week-long visit to meet with Israeli and Palestinian policy leaders, members of the arts, culture and business communities, and representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

There’s no Brad Pitt or Scarlett Johanson in the delegation, but joining Pantoliano and Morrow are some pretty big and once-big Hollywood names, including Emmy Award-winner Patricia Arquette (Medium, Holes); Matthew Modine (Batman – The Dark Knight Rises, Full Metal Jacket); Stephen Baldwin (The Usual Suspects, Born on the Fourth of July); and Griffin Dunne (After Hours).

The trip is the brainchild of The Creative Coalition in conjunction with the American Israel Education Foundation, an AIPAC-affiliated organization. The Los Angeles-based Creative Coalition is a non-profit group founded in 1989 by prominent members of the creative community, and according to their write up, “is dedicated to educating, mobilizing, and activating its members on issues of public importance,” using “the power and platform of the arts and entertainment communities in award-winning public service and advocacy campaigns.”

Actor Tim Daly (Wings) serves as the organization’s president and is leading the delegation in Israel.

I wouldn’t mind having coffee at the David Citadel Hotel in the capital with any of the participants, but I do have particularly soft spots for Morrow, whose role as Dr. Joel Fleishman in the series Northern Exposure codified the American Jewish experience as well as Woody Allen, and Griffin Dunne, whose writing and acting, particularly in the spoof After Hours has always been inspired.

Maybe as a result of their visit, we’ll see an upcoming series about an American medical student who pays off his financial assistance by being sent to a development town in Israel.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Singing About Women

November 13, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Art, Blogging, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Religion, Social Justice, tv 

Last Friday, groups of women in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheva, got together for an unusual purpose: to sing in public. The gatherings were organized to protest the trend towards gender separation in the public areas of religious Jewish neighborhoods — once limited to the synagogue it has now extended to buses and sidewalks — and its effect of late on the Israel Defense Forces. The halachic ruling forbidding men hearing the female singing voice took center stage this past summer when nine religious IDF cadets walked out on a performance by two male and two female singers. The cadets were subsequently punished but the issue remains on the table.

Tel Aviv resident Hila Bunyovich-Hoffman decided to take some creative action and, via Facebook and her blog, organized a street protest for women to sing public on 11.11.11. Initially, the event — Women’s Protest, Women Sing Out Loud — was only supposed to take place in Tel Aviv, but groups quickly formed in Jerusalem, Haifa and Beersheva.

A downloadable songbook was made available with backing from sponsors: the Masorti movement, which is affiliated with the Conservative Judaism movement; Noam, the Masorti youth movement; the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the public and legal advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel; Be Free Israel, a nonpartisan movement working on behalf of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; and Israel Hollaback, the local branch of a world movement that uses technology to end gender-oriented and sex-oriented street harassment.

I attended the Tel Aviv event which was, in a word, mellow — more a sing-a-long, less a protest. The song selection was interesting; the once separate worlds of Israeli soft-rockers like Yehudit Ravitz came alongside Mizrahi singers like the late Ofra Haza. Now, 30 years down the road, both of their songs were sung with equal measures of fondness.

HaYalda Hakhi Yafa BaGan - Yehudit Ravitz

Shir HaFreha – Ofra Haza

This oldie, Yeshnan Banot (alternately translated as “There are girls” and “Some girls”) was given a new lease on life in the 90s by Israel’s favorite Eurovision entry, Dana International.

Yeshnan Banot – Lahakat HaNahal

Once song that was missed out: Eifo Hen, HaBahurot HaHen (“Where are they, those girls?). Written in 1966 and sung by Yehoram Gaon, it praised the women of the early pioneering days while simultaneously putting down their daughters — “Once they rode horses on high… / These days, they ride their husbands”, “Once they read Pushkin… These days, they get straight to business” — and so on and so on. Nontheless, the song had enough kitsch appeal to spawn a Dance version by girl group Sarafan.

Eifo Hen, HaBahurot HaHen – Yehoram Gaon

Eifo Hen, HaBahurot HaHen – Sarafan

Also missing: a raft of songs that would have Hollaback Israel hollering back for reinforcements from abroad. These include Jacky Mekaiten’s Shir HaMe’antezet (Song of the Tease), Ahavat Poalei Binyan (Construction Workers Love), and the infamous Kshe’at Omeret Lo (When You Say No) which begs the musical question: When you say ‘no’, what exactly do you mean?

Written in 1962, lyricist Dan Almagor revisited the song in 1992 to add a new verse: “When she says ‘no’, what does she mean? / She means exactly that, when she says ‘no’”. In a way, this shamefully sexist musical lyric became its antithesis. It is also a perennial hipster favorite: Kshe’at Omeret Lo was revived in the mid-90s by drag queen quartet Bnot Pessia, and was recently deconstructed by funk-rockers HaGroovatron.

Kshe’At Omeret Lo – HaGroovatron

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Crosby, Stills and Nash play Jerusalem shuk

November 12, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Music 

Long Time Gone playing in front of the Zavit Hamidrash synagogue in Mahane Yehuda.

We spent Thursday evening out and about in Mahane Yehuda, the historic fruit and vegetable shuk in the heart of Jerusalem. But we weren’t there buying produce.

In the last few years, the venerable ‘old world’ market that has been a Jerusalem institution since long before the state was established, has become a nightlife magnet. Cafes, pubs, tapas bars and chic restaurants have opened their doors attracting a young, hip clientele.

Being neither young nor hip, my wife and nonetheless ventured out after dark into the shuk, and made our way to the Que Pasa tapas bar. Situated in an alley between Mahane Yehuda’s two main streets, the bar is directly across from an old, hole in the wall synagogue.

About 50 patrons were sitting out in the alley at tables to listen to a set by Long Time Gone, a well-known local trio who do a spot on acoustic show of songs by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. They were smoking and the audience was grooving for a good two hours in the cool, but refreshing, Jerusalem evening air.

The band was set up directly in front of the synagogue entrance, which had been closed for the evening after Ma’ariv services. I thought the juxtaposition of the tapas bar, the band and the synagogue perfectly reflected the irresistible mosaic that encapsulates Jerusalem life. May it ‘carry on’ for a long time comin’.

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Foto Friday – Holon’s Animal Farm

November 11, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, design, education, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel 

Holon’s Farm Gallery (Galeriat ha-Chava) is an interdisciplinary ecological art gallery that displays temporary exhibitions relating to sustainability.

The gallery is located in a historic building, built at the start of the last century, with a splendidly preserved tiled floor and stone walls. It is surrounded by native trees, such as olive, mulberry and almond trees; this grove is also a 1972 archeological excavation where the remains of a Hellenist settlement were discovered.

The farm was purchased by the city in the 1960s for the purposes of creating an educational center to teach young people how to work the land. To this day, children who visit the center grow fruits, vegetables and other plants. The also learn about cycles in nature and ecological issues.

In 2009, the city — which has in recent years become Israel’s niche museum center — decided to take advantage of the building’s beauty and convert it into a gallery for interdisciplinary ecological art and design.

The Farm Gallery’s exhibits feature artists whose work relates to the environment, recycling, sustainability and other green topics. The gallery also conducts workshops by artists and designers for children and adults.

The most recent exhibition, “Animal Farm” poses the questions: In a world where nature and animals have disappeared from daily life (with the exception of house pets), can artists use images of animals in the same way as in previous generations? And is there a unique Israeli way of relating images of animals in art and design?

“Animal Farm” presents works by seven Israeli artists with a wide range of approaches to the subject of animals and working in a variety of media.

Artist: Ola Brener

Artist: Michal Farago

Artist:Galia Armeland

“Animal Farm” opens on November 18 at the Farm Gallery, 40 Hamelacha Street, Holon Business and Industrial District.

(Elephant image by Shulamit Etzion)

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