Foto Friday – Chaim Meiersdorf’s Israeli Weddings

May 25, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Religion 

Mazal tov…almost! This Saturday night is Erev Shavuot, the eve of the Shavuot (Feast of Weeks) holy day, marking the end of the counting of the Omer, the seven-week period from Pesach through Shavuot. Tradition has it that during the Omer, which is a period of mourning, Jewish couples do not marry — with the exception of Lag Ba’Omer (the tradition varies between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews) — but that’s all but over for this year. As of next week Israel’s spring/summer wedding season will open in full joyous force.

Israelis love a good wedding — the gatherings here tend to amass in the hundreds — and making merry is de riguer, as are cash gifts, which are calculated to cover the price of one’s food serving plus a little extra depending on your relationship to the happy couple (an online calculator, Kama Kessef, has been developed to assist in doing the math). Bringing a date to a wedding is optional but an accepted practice, as is eating, drinking and talking durng the chuppah. And of course, pinching the groom’s cheek to the point of pain.

Jerusalem-based Photographer Chaim Meiersdorf has, for the past 30 years, made a career specializing in such happy occasions.

Where sometimes tears are shed, but for joy…

And joy will make you jump, too!

Meiersdorf lives in Jerusalem and his clientele comes mainly from the various Orthodox Jewish communities there and around the country. More of his work can be viewed on his website.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Jerusalem 1967

May 20, 2012 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, education, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel, War 

In 1967, Moshe Lavi was a soldier fighting in the Six Day War. In the days that followed the retaking of Jerusalem, Lavi armed himself with a camera and documented the events unfolding around him. These never before published images are part of the larger historical record but also provide us with a glimpse into the past through the eyes of one young man who was there.

This what the Old City looked like, just days after the war ended.
(Click on image to view larger).

Israeli citizens began flooding to the Western Wall…

Soldiers and civilians alike (you can count my parents among them) took a close look at enemy weaponry…

A makeshift memorial of flowers and a small plaque was set up in memory of five paratroopers from Division 80 Reconnaissance Unit 75 who were killed in the battle for Jerusalem…

This was eventually replaced with a larger memorial, by sculptress Yona Palombo, for Paratrooper Division 80′s fallen. Today, it includes the names of 47 more soldiers killed in Israel’s wars and stands on the outskirts of the Old City.

This photo courtesy of the Paratrooper Brigade website. All other photos graciously provided by Moshe Lavi.

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Nostalgia Sunday – ViewMaster Israel

April 29, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Blogging, Business, design, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Movies, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Technology, tv 

If you are a person of a certain age, then the ViewMaster holds a special charm. Like its predecessor, the Stereoscope, the View-Master was the virtual reality viewer of its day: a device designed to present 3-D photo images. And, like its predecessor, the Holy Land was a subject of great interest and popularity.

A bit of history: the ViewMaster (or View-Master) was first introduced at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 by the partnership of Wilhelm Gruber, an organ maker and amateur photographer, and Harold Graves, who was in charge of the postcard division at Oregon-based Sawyer’s Photo Services.

Their idea was to update the old-fashioned stereoscope to the new Kodachrome 16-mm color film, printing small-format photo transparencies and mounting them in pairs on a disk to be viewed with a simple hand-operated viewer. Initially, the photo subjects were travelogues, such as Carlsbad Caverns and the Grand Canyon, quickly followed by more far-flung locations such as Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

Collector and dealer Kip “Mr. ViewMaster” Brockman has several such travelogues on his site, as does the ViewMaster World blog. The disks were accompanied by a narrative booklet. For example, if you were to purchase Modern Israel, part of the Nations of the World series, as you viewed the stereoscopic image, you would read the following:

“Our El Al Israel Airlines plane lands at Lod Airport, near Tel Aviv. An attractive hostess welcomes us to Israel with a spoken greeting in Hebrew, from the Bible: “Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and when thou goest out.”

Tel Aviv, Israel’s No. 1 boom town, is the first all Jewish metropolis since Biblical times…The beach front is a Coney Island on the Mediterranean; booths sell corn on the cob, watermelon, or falaffel (“the Israeli hot dog”)…

Tel Aviv stands as a symbol of modern, energetic Israel. The country’s spirit is personified in its new generation. The native born Sabra— Hebrew word for cactus (tough outside, sweet inside) — is tall, healthy, suntanned, and confident, with the swagger of an adventurer.”

Oh my gosh! I would really like to visit that place where air-hostesses quote scripture, Israelis are tall and un-neurotic, and the notion of falafel as “the Israeli hot dog” doesn’t send me into paroxysms of laughter. But I digress.

After 1966, when Sawyer’s became a wholly owned subsidiary of the General Aniline & Film (GAF) Corporation, more child-friendly subjects like cartoons and TV series were introduced.

The full account of View-Master’s history of Mergers & Acquisitions is a long one; the short version is that the product is currently carried by Mattel subsidiary Fisher-Price, which in December 2008 announced that it would cease production of the scenic disks depicting tourist attractions. According to Wikipedia, “These disks of picturesque scenes and landscape scenery were descendants of the first View-Master disks sold in 1939.”

Fisher-Price continues to produce disks of animated characters, including Dora the Explorer who prefers to go places instead of just looking at them on-screen. Well, travel is easier nowadays. There was something magical, though, about looking at the tiny celluloid images through the ViewMaster lens. (It was, as my significant other says, “like having a tiny, personal TV” and if you squished the eyepiece sideways into your brow ridge just right, you could get the full 3D effect, however briefly). So you can still get a ViewMaster. As for getting hold of ViewMaster travelogues, there’s always eBay.

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Foto Friday – Travels to Yemen with Naftali Hilger

April 27, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, design, education, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Picture of the Week, Travel, tv 

Travel almost anywhere and you’re bound to find an Israeli. Yet there are still some places where Israelis do not tread. Most Arab countries, of course, where Israelis are barred from entry. And then there’s Jerusalem, our capital city, which many an Israeli doesn’t bother to see in person (e.g., the Google StreetView review in Ha’aretz).

Even within Jerusalem, there are places that go unvisited for years on end. It was with that thought in mind that I took myself to the LA Meyer Museum of Islamic Art yesterday. After all, museum entry was free-of-charge in honor of Israel Independence day, I live a 5 minute walk away and I hadn’t been there in 20 years.

Through art and artifacts, LA Meyer Museum presents the history of Islam; the styles that characterized the different ruling dynasties from the first Umayyad caliphs through to the Ottoman period and the end of the Muslim Empire.

There is a unique collection of antique watches and clocks — including timepieces made for customers in the Ottoman empire — that was stolen and missing for many years, then subsequently recovered. (The theft is a great story on it’s own, so more on that another day).

There is also Travels to Yemen 1987-2008, an exhibit of contemporary photos by photo-journalist Naftali Hilger…

Hilger’s reports combine vibrant photographs, personal experiences and in-depth information about places generally inaccessible to the Israeli tourist: Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Dubai, Pakistan, Tunisia and of course, Yemen…

Hilger is among the few Israelis to document the Jewish community still there…

The Internet makes Hilger’s photo-essay accessible to all…

Hilger, a member of photo agency LAIF, been a photo-journalist since 1990, working for leading Israeli and European publications such as Financial Times, GEO, National Geographic, Spiegel, Focus, Zeit, Welt, Bild, BamS, Cicero, Wirtschafts Woche, Masa Acher, Yedioth Aharonot, Ma’ariv,Globes and others.

Visit his website to view more photos from his expeditions to Yemen and other countries. There are riveting images documenting weapons traders — each man with a huge chaw of narcotic qat (gat) leaf tucked in his cheek — Sana’a, the capital city, with its beautifully decorated buildings and its few remaining Jews.

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Bouquet entrepreneurs

April 16, 2012 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Art, Business, design, General, Israeliness, Life 

Having worked for a florist once, I know just a little about arranging flowers, and it’s still a pleasure of mine, particularly during my favorite flower season, Israel’s winter, when poppies and tulips abound.

But there are several enterprising Israelis who have made flower accoutrements into a profession. One company I’m thinking of is design group T.H.+E, which created the VAZU, a thin, collapsible plastic vase imprinted with bold prints that is a fave gift of mine to give both for its creativity, durability and size — no searching for high shelves for storing this vase.

I also recently heard about Bouquoo, a father-and-daughter team that created a vase for tall flower arrangements. The vase includes a glass spine for keeping the flower bunch upright, and then set in a low glass that doesn’t detract from the flowers themselves. Again, given small Israeli spaces, it serves the vase purpose, but stores easily without taking up too much space.

Given that it’s not inexpensive to manufacture, Charles and Adele Yawitz, the father-daughter Bouquoo team, embarked on a Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 in order to jumpstart their first manufacturing run. Kickstarter is an online funding platform for creative types. Those who pledge money don’t necessarily receive anything in return — although $300 Bouquoo ‘investors’ will receive a museum version of Bouquoo — except for the knowledge that they’ve helped someone realize their dream.

No pressure, though…

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