Shedding it all at the Dead Sea
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, Environment, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture, Travel
A Spencer Tunick project in Switzerland.
US-born Tunick, 44, has photographed large groups of naked people in the UK, and cities including Amsterdam, Sydney and Buenos Aires, and his next target is Israel and the Dead Sea. And he’s hoping to realize his dream through the web-based fundraising site Kickstarter.
The campaign, called “Naked Sea,” will run through June 6 and aims to raise $60,000 to finance the installation, an amount which, according to the rules of the fundraising website, must be fully raised by the end date in order to receive any money, a statement from the artist said. After 24 hours, the project had ,raised $1,435.
According to reports in Bloomberg and The Jerusalem Post, Tunick is getting logistical help from his Israeli friend, Ari Fruchter, a high tech executive and patron of the arts.
“For the past few years I have been gearing up for this and working with Tunick. My first challenge was to see if the people of Israel were ready to get naked for art. Much to my surprise, the overwhelming answer was yes,” Fruchter said in the statement, noting that a group of five university students started a grassroots campaign to enlist public support, which has attracted thousands since.
“This project is dear to me, one that I have dreamed of since my early days as an artist,” Tunick said in an e-mailed statement seeking backers. “I look forward to your support in exposing a part of Israel that hasn’t been seen before and at the same time bring attention to the deteriorating situation of the Dead Sea.”
So if Tunick succeeds in raising the $60,000 by his June target date, expect to see a mass of Israeli nudity at the lowest spot on earth later this year.
Nostalgia Sunday – Old-New Haggadah
Filed under: Art, education, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Life, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Religion
In every generation, the Haggadah says, we must regard our telling of the Passover story not as a retelling but as a personal history, “as if he himself had come out of Egypt”. Perhaps that’s the reason that, although the Seder ritual was put into writing in Mishnaic times (70-200 CE), the Haggadah continued to evolve over the centuries, with songs, chants and other bits added in until it’s form was more or less set with the advent of the printing press.
It took the mimeograph machine and the advent of short-run office-scale printing to enable people, once again, to tell their personal Passover story. Since the mimeo’s invention more or less coincides with the Zionist movement and the birth of the Jewish State, there’s little wonder in the fact that every youth movement, kibbutz, moshav or workers union stencil-printed up a non-traditional Haggadah, each with its own ritual and its own ideological bent.
For example, in 1944, the members of Kibbutz Heftzibah printed up a Haggadah that included a few passages from the traditional text. Mostly, it presented songs and reading-texts by Hayim Nahman Bialik (who would become Israel’s first national poet), Labor Zionist thinker Berl Katznelson, Biblical leader Zrubavel, 11th century poet Yehuda HaLevi as well as references to the recent Holocaust and current efforts, in opposition to the will of the British Mandate, to bring the Jews of Europe to the Land of Israel.
This simple little pink-covered pamphlet, by the way, recently sold at auction for $220, after having been listed for $100.
In 1943, the members of Kibbutz Kfar Giladi created a stenciled Haggadah, with hand-painted illustrations. In addition to passages from the traditional text and reading passages, it refers to the new immigrants from Iran, the “Teheran Children”: ” In two Egyptian trains the young olim from Teheran arrive, in all 1,200 people…”
In 1948, the year of Israel declared and battled for its independence, the cultural committee of the Histadrut — a.k.a., the General Union of Hebrew Workers in Eretz Yisrael — published a Haggadah that, alongside the traditional text, included prayers over the four glasses of wine: one for the liberty of Israel, one for the Jewish State, one for free Aliya, and one for the defenders and the army, as well as a special “Yizkor” memorial prayer for the War of Independence victims.
The Haggadah printed up by Haifa’s Central Youth Circle of the Eretz Yisrael Workers Party in 1949 doesn’t have outstanding graphics but is noteworthy for the whiny tone taken in its alternative to the traditional text: “This night we dine all of us together, members of the circle and guests, joyous and celebrating… in a banquet hall and not in our own clubhouse as was promised to us for a very long time”. Despite their obvious disappointment at not having their own digs, we can only hope they had a good time anyway.
The history of Kibbutz Be’eri can be told through the above three Haggadot. The first (far left) was issued in 1946 by a Binyamina-based group of Israeli scouts, Kvutzat HaZofim Bet. The second (center) was printed in 1948, after HaZofim Bet merged with Kvutzat Be’erot. According to Kibbutz Be’eri’s website (wittily entitled Wikibbutz), “The Haggadah was similar in nature to those commonly accepted by the Kibbutz movement in those days… integrating biblical and traditional Haggadah texts with contemporary poetry and prose divided along the following themes: spring, the Exodus from Egypt, freedom, the Holocaust and the ingathering of the Exiles in the Land of Israel, liberation of man and the Jewish people from slavery, and Israel’s independence.
The third (at right) was first issued in 1951 and represents how far the kibbutz had come in so little time. The Haggadah, published by Be’eri Printers, founded in 1950, features striking illustrations by Paul Kor, one of Israel’s leading graphic artists.
Be’eri Printers continues today to be a leading innovator in print, specifically advanced mailing and personalized printing.
Israeli artist Arieh Allweil, created the Haggadah for I.D.F. soldiers, published by the Chief Military Rabbinate in 1950. According to the Kedem Auction House’s notes, “The Haggadah opens with a blessing by Chief Military Rabbi Shlomo Goren followed by Pesach regulations for soldiers”.
The Ministry of Defense has since published a new Haggadah, under the supervision of Chief Military Rabbi Yisrael Weiss, illustrated with military pictures relating to story of Pesach.
No artist is credited for the dancing Miriam crossing the Red Sea with her darbuka in tow, but you’ve got to love the image that embodies so much of the non-traditional ideals expressed at Passover: joyous spring spirit, leaving slavery for freedom and independence and — at least on paper — gender equality. This Haggadah was created by Moshav Beit Herut in 1957.
While those of us who grew up in the States made Seder with the Maxwell House Haggadah (reissued this year after a long absence), urban Israelis celebrated with the HaSneh Insurance Company whose 1957 Haggadah deviated from tradition by presenting company promotional material. The cover was by Iris Schweitzer, who went on to write and illustrate children’s books in Israel and the US.
More fascinating Haggadot, traditional and non, may be found in the Kedem Auction House online catalogue — a real find for lovers of Judaica, Israeliana and related ephemera. The Duke University Library has an extensive collection that includes a long out of print bibliographic source book by Haggadot collector Nathan Steiner.
Enjoy them all and Chag Sameach! We wish our Israelity readers the happiest of holidays.
A new kind of haggadah
Filed under: Art, design, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Religion
Pesach is less than a week away — I know, I know — so this is a tad on the late side, but worth hearing about. One of the new haggadot out there this year is A Happy Passover Haggadah – for the Entire Family, with bright, visual graphics by Israeli artist Monicka Clio Rafaeli, classic Ashkenazic and Sephardic texts and an English translation by Rabbi Marc Angel.
For Rafaeli, this Haggadah fulfills a long-time dream, from when she was a nine-year-old growing up in Greece, her birthplace, and her grandmother bought her Viewmaster reels. One of them was the story of Moses, and it’s a story that she’s always wanted to tell, in her way. Fast forward through the years, including moving to Israel at 14 with her family and spending five years in New York. Rafaeli was newly married and pregnant when she started working on this Haggadah here in Israel, creating a wildly colorful version as she’d always imagined. It took three years, and now that moment has finally arrived.
“I wanted to bring a fresh look to the table,” she says. “To show that Judaism and the seder are not only an ancient thing, they can be exciting, offer a new flavor.”
The haggadah is fully bilingual and transliterated in parts as well, and given its colorful illustrations and graphics, offers something to the non-reading set as well. It can still — well, maybe — be ordered off Amazon, and is available at Jewish bookstores.
Nostalgia Sunday – Old Buildings, New Cuisine
Filed under: Art, Food, General, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel
By the time I studied the work of artist Anna Ticho back on One Year Program in 1981-2, she had already been dead a year and art historians like my teacher Prof. Milly Heyd, were trying to come to grips with her place in Israeli art history. As far as Prof. Heyd was concerned — at least at that point in time — Ticho was not truly an Israeli artist but rather a European one who found her voice and style after a traumatic transition from the gray skies and winding city streets of Vienna to the dry, rocky landscape of the hills of Jerusalem, baking under an unflinching white-hot sun.
Heyd’s interpretation seemed as strange to me then as it does now, given Israel’s standing as an immigrant society. In any case, during her lifetime, Ticho was recognized as a Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem) and awarded the Israel Prize for painting. After her death, her house, art collection, including many of her own works, and her husband’s extensive Judaica collection was given, in accordance with her wishes, to the city of Jerusalem.
By the time I made aliya and came to live in Israel in 1984, Ticho House had been converted to a lovely little gallery and restaurant-cafe; it remains so to this day.
The house has an interesting history of its own: built in 1880 for the Nashashibis, a prominent local Arab family, it was one of the first to stand outside the Old City walls. (One early tenant was a antiquities dealer — and forger — named Herman Shapira). It was purchased from the Nashashibi family by ophthalmologist Dr. Abraham (Albert) Ticho and wife Anna in 1924. They converted the lower level into an eye clinic that served all of Jerusalem’s populations Christian, Jewish and Muslim, rich and poor alike — including Emir Abdullah, later king of Jordan. The residential area and gardens were used to host artists, writers, politicians; for decades the house was a center for Jerusalem’s social and cultural activity.
Sit and sip a cup of tea at Beit Ticho and you can still get a sense of what it might have been like. That’s the charm of dining in a historic building and Israel has an ever-growing list of these quaint dining places serving outstanding cuisine.
Take Le Relais in Old Jaffa. According to website eLuna, which sources out kosher restaurants in Israel, “Le Relais is the brainchild of David and Chani Bitton, both professional restaurateurs. David and his family are the proprietors of the famous Fantasy restaurant, a well-known landmark in Marrakech.” Their French cuisine would be excellent in any venue, but dining under high vaulted ceilings and arched passageways that date back to the 1930s, makes a meal a bit more special.
The village of Ein Karem is a special place both because of the important Christian holy sites located there, and because of the striking natural surroundings. Restaurant Beit Hama’ayan, which specializes in upscale Middle Eastern fare, affords diners a meal in a beautifully refurbished historic building and a fantastic view of Jerusalem.
Diners traveling northwards can experience the early Yishuv (pre-State settlement) at Makom B’Sejera (“A Place in Sejera”). Again, according to eLuna, “Shimon Danieli and his son Barak are direct descendants of some of Sejera’s original founders and they have re-created the family kitchen in a 100-year old farmhouse at the entrance to the settlement… The restaurant’s philosophy is one of heightened environmental awareness – the vegetables are organically homegrown on the premises and the main courses — meat, game and fish — are organically fed and hormone-free”.
More Israeli restaurants located in historic buildings are listed on eLuna as is a list of kosher for Passover restaurants that should come in handy over the upcoming holiday!
Foto Friday – Israel in the frame with Miriam Safira Simon
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Picture of the Week, Travel
Miriam Safira Simon says that she has been a nature photographer since she got her first camera more than 25 years ago. since then, she has taken pictures on travels that have taken her to more than 36 countries on five continents. But she makes her home in Jerusalem where, for the past several years, she has been a photographer and writer for the wonderful nature and travel glossy, Eretz Magazine.
Simon is also a licensed tour guide, with a side specialty in photographic tours of the country. She’ll be leading two walking tours in the coming weeks: on Tuesday, April 12, 2011 Brave Ventures Outside the Old City Walls will visit the three first Jewish neighborhoods built outside the Old City walls, find out what finally convinced Jews to leave the Old City, and what their daily life was like. (Meet at the Lion’s Fountain, at the junction of King David St and Emek Refaim St. at 9:00am).
Nachlaot’s Picturesque Neighborhoods will take place on Tuesday, April 26, 2011 and will include an overview of 19th century Nachlaot, Mahane Yehuda and some relevant sites on nearby Jaffa Road. (Meet at the corner of King George and Agripas Streets at 9:00am. The cost of both tours is NIS 50 per person. RSVP 054-521-6933).
In her role as tour guide, she shows visitors — and locals — with a passion for photography, the country’s varied flora, fauna and natural beauty. Through her eyes, Israel’s environment is never separate from its history. Rather, the environment is surrounded by history, as in this series entitled Natural Frames.
More information and works by Miriam Safira Simon may be found at her website.
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