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Nostalgia Sunday – Holocaust Remembrance Day 2012

A few weeks ago, in advance of the upcoming Holocaust Remembrance Day, a new tree was planted at Yad Vashem. The sapling was a special one, sprouted from a chestnut tree that Anne Frank wrote about in her diary. The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam donated saplings to Yad Vashem and other institutions when the tree became sick and collapsed in 2010.

Anne wrote about the tree three times in her diary, the last time on May 13, 1944, noting, “Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It´s covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.”

The Yad Vashem sapling was planted near the Children´s Memorial and International School for Holocaust Studies, in the presence of Hanna Pick (pictured), Holocaust survivor and childhood friend of Anne Frank.

How ironic that such a fitting memorial should be followed, only a few days later, by the outrageous news that the Berlin branch of Madam Tussaud’s had inaugurated an Anne Frank tableau, meant to inspire “optimism”.

If the Berlin waxwork is a fitting memorial, it is not to Anne Frank’s memory, but to Madame Marie Tussaud herself, who gained notoriety during the French Revolution as a maker of death masks. Put that in your nostalgia pipe and smoke it.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is not nostalgic, “nostalgia” being a sentimental or happy recollection of times or things past. It is a day for recalling the most unpleasant aspects of human nature, for honoring the memory of people we may or may not have actually known and hopefully, a day of self-examination and learning about a terrible chapter in Jewish history.

For over half a century, Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, has been committed to what it terms the four pillars of remembrance: Commemoration, Documentation, Research and Education.

Of those four, it is the last one that has become most critical as older generations pass away. In fact, its fair to say that the first four provide the foundations upon which education can stand; the Yad Vashem website provides a wealth of downloadable materials, educational programs and lesson plans for educators, as well as an online photo and document archive and YouTube channel of documentary films, survivor testimonies and historical lectures.

Visit the Yad Vashem website this week – there is always something to learn there.

Foto Friday – T-Market Tel Aviv 2012

We are back from the T:Market Tel-Aviv Passover 2012 and are now all kitted out for summer. The event, which has been going strong for almost a decade, gathers the city’s independent t-shirt designers together under one roof (it’s more of a tent, really) for a 3-day long festival of fashion, accessories and music.

T-shirts, according to a lengthy Wikipedia entry, are a form of personal expression. Fortunately, for those who have difficulty in expressing themselves, (or perhaps, in forming coherent thoughts), since the 1950s there have been manufacturers willing to fill the echoing gap and Israel has long been a part of that trend (check out my Entebbe Raid tee from 1976). Over the past few years, however, there has been an explosion in underground manufacturers using the t-shirt as a canvas to post artistic, social and/or political commentary and/or humor.

Their messages aren’t everyone’s cup of tea (or is that tee?) and the humor of today’s Israeli youth might not be accessible to all. For example, last year I did not get why a picture of a jihadist Smurf caused gales of laughter among the 12 year-old set, and you have to know who Uza the duck from Educational TV is to understand the Rambo-like image of “Uza and Uzi”. Similarly, you must be familiar with the wandering boy Marco from the children’s cartoon series The Heart to understand why he’s searching Google for “mother”.

This year, Passover was the theme for the T:Market’s promotional photo shoot, with matza anad gefilte fish playing an important part of the styling.

Photo by Ben Palhov

This karate chopping matza-mauling cutie sports a top by TwentyFourSeven…
Photo by Ben Palhov

Fashion house Chop Shop offers more conventional wares in an unconventional setting…

Haifa-based GhosTown were selling off their Winter 2012 collection, featuring designs by Broken Fingaz Crew…

Hand to Hand, based in Paris and Tel Aviv, offer a glimpse into their screen-printing process and, if you visit their Facebook page, into the ink drawing process as well.

Gelada Studio express their Russian origins with a nod and wink to Soviet realism…
Photo by Ben Palhov

And judging from the many Press & TV clips on their Facebook page, their Socialist-styled themes have resonated with the Israeli celebrity set!

There are another 30-odd exhibitors at the T:Market, which continues running through the weekend, with a full exhibitor list available at Dice Marketing. If you can, get on over there and if not, check out the T:Market page on Facebook.

I’m posting early as today (Thursday) is the eve of Passover’s second holiday. Chag Sameach to all!

Nostalgia Sunday – Lahiton and the Hit Parades

Where are the Israeli hit parades of yesteryear?, was the question that arose during the annual Passover post-lunch shmooze-fest. It’s indeed a subject for discussion, as song charts came to Israel many decades after being a standard part of Western pop music culture, and a tricky subject at that, as our early hit parades were based not on record sales but rather on postcards sent in by fans to the state-run radio networks and subject to the whims of the broadcasters at those networks.

An annual Hit Parade, based on the weekly ones, has been broadcast on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, since 1963. There are actually two annual Hit Parades, one on Galei Zahal (GLZ), the army radio network and the other on the Israel Broadcast Authority (IBA). GLZ decided to split the charts into Hebrew-language songs and international songs in 1967; IBA followed suit two years later. IBA pop station Reshet Gimel began operations in 1973 and took over the hit parade responsibilities for the network.

So there were two hit parades, both based on the tastes of teenage girls with time on their hands (and postage stamps) and 30-year old DJs — the two groups that traditionally call the shots in pop music. But despite the demographics, these do not a real hit parade make because real charts reflect record sales. And in a country where the two main record companies, Hed Arzi and CBS, essentially had no competition (until Helicon came along in 1985), such information was not made public.

I’m not sure why but like so many other things in Israel, probably it wasn’t out of meanness but more likely out of lethargy (it’s very hot here), ignorance (What, record companies in America tell people about their business? Why?) and because no one ever got around to thinking of it (reserve duty, Jewish holidays, wars, food shopping, etc.).

Enter Lahiton. Founded and edited by Uri Aloni and David Paz as a bi-weekly magazine in September 1969, a year later, Lahiton became a weekly, presenting a kind of journalism previously unknown in Israel: news and gossip about music and performers, record reviews, lyrics, pictures, full-color posters that decorated the walls of children and teens across the country, and charts — not only Israeli but foreign ones, too.

Lahiton also initiated a Gold Record award whose first winners were Shlomo Artzi, Dorit Reuveni and Igal Bashan. Following Lahiton’s lead, Israel’s record companies also began awarding Gold Records to artists with albums selling over 20,000 copies, thus tacitly releasing sales information.

In 1976, Lahiton merged with movie magazine Olam HaKolnoa and began reporting on movies stars as well as singers. The magazine’s popularity began to wane in the early to mid-Eighties as its editors moved on to found new magazines and as Israelis became exposed to more sophisticated fare like Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and Billboard.

Lahiton folded in 1990. The archive is not online although some kind souls have taken to scanning and posting select pages, including some scans of the Hit Parade page.

Recently, a Facebook page launched, dedicated to all things Lahiton, with a very active community of people interested in sharing pictures and comments, with some also wondering where the old Hit Parades are at.

In fact, the IBA website has a search engine accessing all annual Hebrew-language Hit Parades dating back to 1969.

An extensive interview (in Hebrew) with Lahiton founding editors Aloni and Paz by pop culture researcher Eli Eshed can be found here.

For those interested in buying or selling vintage copies of Lahiton — or just looking at some really cool cover art — look no further than the BookSefer site with prices ranging from NIS 160 (Michael Jackson in his “Bad” phase) down to NIS 70 (Izhar Cohen in his Michael Jackson in his “Bad” phase).

And of course, there is an online alternative to take the place of the write-in postcard vote: Charts.co.il, which provides the latest chart information — of the many, many charts now available to us — and gives users the chance to rate their favorites, just like the old days.

Foto Friday – Assaf Pinchuk images Israel

It’s the morning of Erev Pessach, Passover eve, and the country is in its final involuntary shopping, cooking and cleaning spasm. This evening, a blessed quiet will fall over Israel and for a few moments, all will be clean, orderly and in place.

That sense of balance, of everything being as it should be — dare I say it, of seder — is present in these images by commercial photographer Assaf Pinchuk, who specializes in architectural and industrial subjects. In his work, Pinchuk gives us a glimpse of the Israel we aspire to be. Even the unruly building blocks and winding streets of an old Tel Aviv neighborhood fall into place…

A office building lobby becomes a composition of light, shadow, contrasting colors and structural elements…

The city’s famously dynamic night life is omnipresent in the saturated green of a rest room…

A Tel Aviv rooftop apartment glows against a darkening sky…

In daylight, through the windowshades, the harsh Mediterranean sun paints white walls with shadow…

As always, the best days end with sunset on the Tel Aviv beach.

Assaf Pinchuk studied photography at Hadassah College, Jerusalem, after which he interned and worked with Cologne-based photographer Hans-Georg Esch. Together with wife and business partner Miri, Pinchuk opened his own studio in 1998, with the goal of producing unique, dynamic, smart and inspiring images for a client list that includes some of Israel’s leading companies and institutions.

Nostalgia Sunday – Old fashioned cleaning

We are in a cleaning frenzy! Not just me. The whole country is getting scrubbed fresh and ready for Passover.

In days gone by, the lady of the house — unsurprisingly, most house-cleaning in Israel was and is done by women — would “raise the house”, literally upending all furniture and more or less flooding the house so as to do a proper sponja.

Ah, sponja! How to explain the concept? To the outside observer, doing sponja may seem like taking a sopping wet rag, flinging it over a sponjador — a giant squeegee on a stick — and then flinging it madly back and forth across the endless surface of 20 cm by 20 cm balatot.

But no. Doing a proper sponja is what separates the men from the boys — surprisingly, many Israeli men take great pride in their sponja technique — knowing just how much to wring out the rag on the first pass, how to wrap it around the squeegee so that it doesn’t fall off, and of course, how to wipe the floor on the last pass so as to leave no streaks.

Sponja is so much a part of being Israeli that no one has ever thought seriously to change this system, generally considered the only way to get floors really clean, far superior to new-fangled methods like mops, Swiffers and Dyson vacuum cleaners (now advertising heavily in time for the holiday).

Of course, all of this would be meaningless without the holiest of holy waters, the apex of all that is clean, that which burns your nasal passages and lungs, and leaves you feeling that you’ve truly sacrificed yourself on the altar of hygiene: economica, known to the outside world as bleach.

Economica is a cult – either you’re in or you’re out. If you’re in, you can’t go to bed at night without a few splashes in the sink, the tub, the shower, the whatever — just to kill off the germs that must be lurking there. And if you’re out, you think your spouse is crazy. But I’m not. Really. Just a few more splashes. Please.

Before cream cleansers, bathroom cleanser was commonly known as cleaning sand — and with good reason, too. Not only did it leave scratch up ceramic finishes on bathtubs and sinks, it also left one’s hands red and raw, or truly clean, as pain and cleanliness must go hand in hand.

Before there was liquid dish soap, there was the old fashioned dish soap paste with the consistency — and bouquet — of axle grease. A few handfuls would be glopped into a dish and cut with water to make it usable. Later on, special dispenser were invented to accommodate this unwieldy activity. And bizarrely enough, some people still prefer the paste to the liquid, out of a feeling that it has more cleaning action.

A small consumer awareness note: Those people are apparently right! A quick look at a Ministry of Finance chart on cleaning products shows that the paste has 20% active ingredients while most liquids contain between 18-24% active ingredient. I bear a personal grudge against Palmolive, which used to contain 36% active ingredient and now contains a mere 18%.

Back to cleaning! Before Persil, before Tide, before even Sano, there was Soad (or Sod, as it was written then). For some reason, in Israel it is the laundry soaps that traditionally had the best mascots: the Textil Shampo boy, the Or boy and my personal favorite, the Ama lady. As I’ve written before, she owes a great deal to Betty Boop, and in fact, could be Betty Boop — if Betty Boop were born in Poland, came over to pre-State Israel in the 1930s, got married and lived in Givatayim.

And if she did live out that life, don’t you think she’d be in the midst of “raising the house” right now?! Enough dilly-dallying! Back to cleaning! Pessach is almost here!

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Picture of sponja is from Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Ama and Or images courtesy of the wonderful and highly recommended Nostal.co.il

 

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