Sabras battle it out in court
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, tv
Kishkashta and Shpitzik - separated at birth?
On one side we have Kishkashta, the thorny singing star of Israeli Educational TV’s children’s broadcasts for over 30 years. And on the other side is Shpitzkik, the spiky sabra mascot designed for the Israel Olympic Committee and the team of athletes headed to the Olympics this year.
IET has filed a motion with the Tel Aviv District Court to prevent the IOC from using Shpitzik because they say the two mutant sabras are too similar in appearance.
This case is actually being covered, and while not as urgent as the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, it is causing nail biting and nervousness among cartoon plant life around the country.
According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, Kishkashta made his first TV appearances in the 1970s, as part of the children’s show Ma Pit’om! (“What on Earth!”), and became known for his deep, somewhat lugubrious voice and signature song “They call me Kishkashta.”
In December, the IOC chose Shpitzik, a jaunty cactus clad in Israel’s official Olympic strip, as the mascot that will accompany the Israeli delegation to the London 2012 Olympic Games later this year.
The case is in court now, and our wise judicial sages will undoubtedly and down a just ruling. Sabras everywhere are bristling waiting for the answer. But in my mind, you can’t beat Kishkashta’s talent.
Eretz Nehederet takes on Birthright
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Travel, tv
Eretz Nehederet actors portraying American-Jewish participants of a Birthright trip in ecstacy over learning they're going to visit Yad Vashem.
Only a few months ago, there was the controversy over the video campaign by the Ministry of Absorption to convince expatriate Israelis to come home. Whether due to lack of understanding by the makers of the videos (claim critics) or over sensitivity by those offended by the videos (claim advocates), the results proved that we don’t really see each other in the same we see ourselves.
That’s why it’s good for someone to come along once in a while and flatten the playing field by being so offensive that you can’t help but laugh. And that someone this time is Eretz Nehederet, the irreverent Channel 2 comedy/satire series poking fun at current events, national leaders, and in this case of the premiere of its ninth season last week, the Birthright/Taglit program.
As Haaretz put it, “In a rare jab at visiting Diaspora Jews, Israel’s premier satirical television show, Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country), took on Taglit-Birthright Israel during its Monday night season premier.”
The skit in question follows a Birthright group as they travel by bus through the country accompanied by an Israeli guide.
You’ve got all the Diaspora Jewish stereotypes, as seen through Israeli eyes – the Jewish American Princesses, the partying, vulgar frat boys and the drug and the sex-addled South American participants.
Cynical to the nth degree, the skit – conducted in a mixture of Hebrew and English -manages to make fun of American Jewish allegiance to Israel, Birthright’s use of Holocaust guilt to encourage the participants to hit up their parents for contributions, and the cocky Israeli mentality as portrayed by the tour guide whose bravado gets him blown up by a land mine.
The skit (available here at least temporarily) loses steam half way through, but it’s still worth searching for in Hebrew on YouTube for its first few minutes for the setup, which provides some of the sharpest parody the show has created.
If American Jewish-Israeli ties were tenuous before this, I shudder to think where they’ll go after the sensitive American Jewish community views this.
Not just a ‘footnote’ in Israeli cinema
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Movies, Pop Culture
From right: director Joseph Cedar, actor Shlomo Bar Aba, and producer Moshe Edry stand together during a press conference after the film 'Footnote' was nominated for an Oscar last week. (AP)
Cedar, an American-born Israeli, who also directed the 2008 Oscar entry, the Lebanon war film Beaufort, focused Footnote on something completely different – on two professors of Talmud, a father and son, dueling for academic prestige and the prestigious Israel Prize.
It doesn’t sound like standard fare for a gripping movie, but it is, thanks to a winning script and ace acting by stars Lior Ashkenazi and Shlomo Baraba.
“‘Footnote’ deals with the question of what happens when, while you’re living your daily life, a prize is offered, which really takes over your moral reasoning and changes your perspective and sometimes completely destroys your perspective,” Cedar told TIME magazine, summarizing the film’s main plot line.
TIME devoted a story to Israel’s booming film industry – stating that “the budgets are bare-bones and the talent pool is limited, but Israel has emerged as a surprising powerhouse in the foreign film industry.”
It notes that many of the country’s film deal with the Israeli-Arab conflict, citing the last three Israeli films that made it to the Oscar shortlist – Cedar’s Beaufort, nominated, and 2009’s animated Waltz with Bashir, both explored Israeli soldiers’ experiences in Lebanon. Ajami, the 2010 nominee, centers on Arab-Jewish tensions in violence-ridden Jaffa.
The article details the history and struggles the Israeli film industry has and continues to deal with, regarding funding, and how in the late 1990s, when the industry was at a nadir, the Israel Film Fund was created and received government backing to develop new filmmakers, Cedar among them.
The Israel Film Fund supported his first feature, “Time of Favor,” which debuted in 2000.
“We didn’t know him, but he had enthusiasm. There was something about his passion,” said Katriel Schory, executive director of the national fund. “We took a chance.”
The chance has certainly paid off, and we’ll see if it results in Israel’s first Academy Award.
Gay-friendly Israel touted in Washington Post
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Social Justice
Israel’s growing image as one of the world’s premiere gay destinations just keeps gaining steam.
Only a couple weeks after Tel Aviv was named by the website Gay Cities as the Best Gay City of 2011, The Washington Post has published an AP feature touting the fact that Israel is one of the world’s most progressive countries for gay rights.
Among the points the story makes are that gays serve openly in the IDF and the Knesset, and the Supreme Court has granted gays a variety of family rights such as inheritance and survivors’ benefits.
The story relates to the government efforts to promote gay tourism to Israel, and finds a Tel Aviv University law professor, Aeyal Gross, to accuse authorities of “co-opting the gay community to deflect attention away from violations against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and African migrants who seek refuge in the Jewish state.”
“The more Israel brands itself as a liberal democracy, the less pressure will be on it internationally,” Gross said. “If you care about gay rights, then you should also care when the rights of others are abused.”
The story then goes on to admit that on the beaches and wild nightclubs of Tel Aviv, not many people are thinking about a ‘spin’ to the lifestyle that – according to The Tourism Ministry – attracted almost 100,000 gay men and women from Europe to vacation in the country in 2011.
Dennis Muller, a 22-year-old tourist from Berlin, gave AP an eyewitness account.
“You enter Tel Aviv and you are in the gay dream,” Muller said on a recent weeknight inside the packed Dreck nightclub. “It’s like entering a bubble of peace for homosexuals or LGBT people in the Middle East.”
So, why shouldn’t Israel be promoting itself as a prime destination for gay travelers, and what in the world does it have to do with the problems the country faces in so many other spheres? I say, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.
Habima gets facelift
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Social Justice
The renovated Habima Theater (Photo: Haaretz)
The Habima was one of the first Hebrew language theaters, emerging out of Russian origins after the 1905 revolution. Because its performances were in Hebrew and it dealt with issues of the Jewish people, it met with persecution by the Czarist government. Beginning in 1918, it operated under the auspices of the Moscow Art Theater and in 1926, the theatre left the Soviet Union to tour abroad, with some members staying in New York and others taking the company to mandated Palestine. The first play in Tel Aviv was staged in 1928 – Der Oyster (The Treasure), a play in Yiddish by Sholom Aleichem.
In 1945, the company built the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv, which has been officially considered the national theater of Israel since 1958, the year in which it received the Israel Prize for theater.
Sunday’s grand re-opening, occurring some two months after the theater began to stage productions again, was attended President Shimon Peres, Culture Minister Limor Livnat, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, and many dignitaries from the acting world.
Despite the big budget and lavish attention that went into the renovations, the management was surprised a few hours before the opening, when the heavy winter rains sweeping Tel Aviv caused the ceiling to leak in a few places, resulting in water dripping onto the actors during rehearsal. By show time, the rain had stopped, but there was still other controversy.
A few dozen people stood outside the theater protesting against the allocation of funds for the renovation, which they claimed came at the expense of those in need of housing in Tel Aviv.
“On the one hand we are protesting against a lack in public housing and on the other hand we see in front of our eyes the opening of Habima, with nicely dressed people enjoying refreshments,” one of the protesters told Ynet.
It was a fitting dramatic debut for the theater which will continue to lead Israeli theater into the coming decades.
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