Volunteering for Rhianna
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Social Justice
Even a seemingly ‘everybody wins’ scenario can hit some snags when thrust into the realities of Israeli life. Take, for example, the upcoming concert at Jaffa’s Bloomfield Stadium by R&B sensation Rhianna.
The concert’s promoter and its sponsor, cell phone provider Orange, have hooked up with the international organization Rockcorps, which has successfully galvanized thousands of young music fans into performing community volunteer projects, by offering tickets to shows by artists like Lady Ga Ga, Nelly and Akon in the US and England to youth who sign up for and carry out four hours of volunteer work.
Tickets to Rhianna’s show cannot be obtained through normal means – you can’t buy them – you have to be between 16-25 years old and you have to sign up on a special Orange Rockcorps Web site for one of the hundred or so volunteer projects they list and then get authorization that you carried out your task. The projects listed on the Orange Web site include working in Keren Kayemet forests clearing brush or painting pathway marks, distributing food at soup kitchens and sorting donated clothes.
It sounds like a splendid idea that will benefit everyone involved, until you realize that there’s a hefty percentage of Israelis in that age group who are currently serving in the IDF. According to some soldiers, and their moms, the policy is unfairly discriminating against them, as their free time is severely curtailed by their military assignments.
“Most of the people in this country between the ages of 18-25 are soldiers and a great portion are soldiers living on bases. This is completely unfair to them,” said Sharon Bar-Lev, a Kfar Saba resident whose daughter, a diehard Rhianna fan, is currently serving in the IDF.
“I would like to know how soldiers, who come home once every two weeks, and leave their base around noon on a Friday, can possibly do four hours of community service and make it home before Shabbat, using public transportation to arrive at the volunteer site and from there back home.”
Bar-Lev added that she was more than willing to buy a ticket for her daughter to see Rhianna, but a call to the ticket office confirmed that no tickets were being sold to the show.
Bar- Lev hopes her grassroots campaign will get the policy changed. Just last week, frustrated Metallica fan Tal Mussman was able to force promoters of the the American hard rock band to significantly lower prices for the group’s Ramat Gan show by launching a page on Facebook calling on fans to boycott the show.
While applauding the efforts of Rockcorps and Orange, Bar-Lev said that her daughter and other Rhianna fans serving in the army shouldn’t be penalized for doing their jobs.
“Isn’t my daughter giving two years of her life to serve in the IDF enough of a volunteer project?”
The roof is green
Filed under: Business, Environment, General, Israeliness, Life, design
The 'second' tier roofs at Ketura's guest housing, offering shade from the sun
But back to my visit to Ketura, which I’m always amazed by each time we visit. Yes, yes, I do have that sentimental love of kibbutzim thing, which I’ve written about before. And even though I tend not to tour the kibbutz, I always find something new on their grounds that sparks my interest. This visit, it was a set of six new kibbutz houses, settled in by six veteran families. The houses are attached, with three bedrooms each, I believe and with a larger than average kibbutz kitchen, which was the draw for most of the families.
What’s striking about them from the outside are their high roofs, which, it turns out, have an environmental purpose to them. They’re essentially open to the elements, covered with simple wire mesh and house the cooling units for each house. They’re not technically green roofs, which are generally roofs covered with vegetation. According to Wikipedia, however, a green roof also indicates a roof using some sort of ‘green’ technology, and this, I imagine, would qualify.
And, according to our friends who live in one of these new houses, it is considerably cooler than their old, flat-surfaced house down the lane. That’s no small matter when you live in a region where 40 degrees Celsius is the norm.
Of course, green roofs are nothing new for Ketura, which owns 40% of Arava Power, one of Israel’s most promising solar energy companies. The kibbutz, just north of Eilat, is also part of the so-called Green Kibbutz movement and has pioneered many new ecologically sounder practices, as well as adopting more common environmentally friendly habits.
Still. I was impressed.
Using the Mossad to sell food
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Food, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, tv
Actors portraying 'Mossad agents' in the ad for an Israeli supermarket chain.
Supermarket chain ‘Machsanei Kimat Hinam’ (The Almost Free Warehouse – one of the incredibly catchy names our retail geniuses here have come up with) has built a campaign for Pessah holiday shopping based on the infamous surveillance camera footage showing suspected assassins stalking Mabhouh.
An AP report on the ad says that the actors in the ad are carrying tennis rackets, and wearing hats, glasses and wigs — the same disguises worn by the alleged killers — as they make their way through store aisles.
The commercial’s tagline? “We offer killer prices.”
Local advertising executive Sefi Shaked admitted that the campaign was inspired by footage released by the Dubai police showing the suspects in their hotel. “It’s a funny take of this event,” Shaked said. “We were fascinated by the technique of using surveillance cameras instead of (expensive) high production commercial cameras, and the latest events in Dubai gave us a great opportunity.”
And there are wink and nods to Israeli involvement in the assassination with an actress wearing a wide-brimmed floppy hat mimicking Israel’s policy of neither confirming or denying involvement, saying she “couldn’t admit to anything.”
The ad – like the Jerusalem building fiasco taking place now during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit here – points to the well-established trait of Israelis being totally oblivious sometimes to international sensitivities and norms regarding certain behavior and actions. When you first make aliya, it can be kind of charming, but sometime along the line, it becomes another one of those annoying things that make you wonder if we care at all how we’re perceived by the outside world.
Flower hunt
Filed under: Business, Environment, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
After several weeks of putting my nose to the proverbial grindstone, my working partners and I decided it was high time for a day off, one that would help us find new material for our latest project (more later on that), and that would get us out of the city.
We had grand plans for hitting the Yoav Yehuda region and then getting to Tel Aviv as well, to check out end-of-winter sales and breath in the urban air, but once we reached the fairly wide open and green spaces of Routes 3 and 44, we were settled on hanging in the country.
It’s truly astonishing how heavy rains can transform the look of this country. Route 3, if taken from the Latrun exit off Highway 1 from Jerusalem, gets you close to Ashdod and all the way to Ashkelon. We were making stops in the yeshuvim, a.k.a. small suburban communities, around the Nachshon intersection, and the views around us were of rolling green fields, dotted with yellow flowers and the occasional clump of red anemones. But one of our best stops — besides a textile designer in Karmei Yosef and a goat cheese farm and cafe in Moshav Tel Shachar — was in the Defenders’ Forest, a JNF park of pine, cypress, olive and carob trees, with monuments of all shapes and sizes erected throughout the park in memory of ‘defenders’ of all kinds, from Holocaust victims and fallen soldiers to people who have died in terrorist attacks or tragedies of the more mundane type.
We were seeking flowers, winter/spring wildflowers to be exact, and it was amusing to watch ourselves drive through the park, looking for the clumps of purple cyclamen and red anemones. We found them, in abundance, carpeting the forest, from clumps surrounding trees to wild beds of cyclamens dotted with bunches of anemones. And even though we were on a mission (to write a piece about finding wildflowers in the Israeli springtime), it was such a lark to actually get out there in the forest, search and seek flowers, and find and photograph them.
Here are a few samples of what we found, now go see them for yourself…
Update: Boycott of Metallica results in lower prices
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture
It almost reminds me of those halycon activism days of the ’60s and ’70s. 26-year-old business and management student Tomer Mussman has proven that the little guy can stand up to the ‘Man’ and make him back down on unreasonable demands.
As reported on Israelity yesterday, a growing contingent of Metallica fans were joining a Facebook page that Mussman had launched over the weekend calling for a boycott of the band’s May 22nd show at Ramat Gan Stadium over what they claimed were inflated ticket prices.
Well, it turns out that the groundswell of support for the boycott (the Facebook page had garnered 6,000 members and a dozen or so articles on music Web sites) got the attention of the band and the promoter of the show Gad Oron.
On Wednesday, Oron and Mussman had a pow-wow, and when the smoke cleared, guess what? The prices of tickets for the standing room field – where most Metallica fans want to experience the show – had been lowered significantly.
Standing space that had cost NIS 1,200 will now be sold for NIS 990, while the tickets that originally cost NIS 900 and NIS 600 for the back and middle sections respectively, will be going for NIS 490. That’s almost 50% being lopped off the price of some tickets, demonstrating the huge profit margins that had been in the works.
“We would like to personally thank Metallica and their management for directly helping us with reaching our goal and reducing the prices,” said Mussman on Wednesday night following the announcement of the new prices.
Mussman, who told me that he’s been a fan of Metallica’s for 15 years and saw them in Rishon Lezion in 1999, explained that the campaign wasn’t against the band.
“We want the show to go on – what we want is the price to be lowered,” he said earlier Wednesday before the meeting with Oron. “What bothers us is that they’re raising the price because they can – the promotor is taking advantage of the fact that Metallica fans have been waiting 11 years for them to return here.”
By Wednesday night, however, Mussman, along with the other fan/activists were elated.
“After a four-day campaign, tens of news items about us worldwide, over 6,000 supporters and numerous media interviews we can say that we did it!” wrote Mussman on the Facebook page. “We won!”
And so did the little guy everywhere.
***
Sitting down for Metallica
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture
The thing with concerts in Israel by international superstars, is that if there’s not a call for the artist to cancel the show by the pro-Palestinian lobby, then we have to start our own boycott efforts.
The case in question here is the upcoming show, announced last week, by veteran hard rock legends Metallica, who will be making their third appearance in our Mediterranean haven on May 22 at Ramat Gan Stadium.
The calls for a boycott of the show, however, aren’t emerging from any anti-Israel sentiment, like they have previously for Paul McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Elton John and Carlos Santana, among others. They’re coming from fans of the band who are outraged that tickets for the concert are well beyond the means of the average metalhead.
The vast ground area in the stadium is being divided into three ’standing room’ sections – tickets in the far back “Bronze” area will cost NIS 600 (about $170). The “Silver” area will cost NIS 900 ($260) and the “Gold” area, the closest to the stage, will cost NIS 1200 ($350).
There will be less expensive tickets available for seats in the stands, which will go from NIS 300-600 ($80-170) – but as the protestors are claiming, who wants to go to a Metallical show and sit off on the side in the stands?
According to the fans, who have started their own Facebook page in an attempt to pressure promotor Marcel Avraham to lower the prices of the field tickets, the prices are way out of line with the cost of tickets to Metallica’s other shows on their spring European tour.
So far, the Facebook page has garnered over 3,000 members, and has made a splash on a number of international metal Web sites. Will the boycott effort work, or are there enough Metallica fans in Israel who will pay any price to see their heroes to thwart the calls to stay home? Stay tuned.
Hebrew U.’s sugar daddy
Filed under: Business, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Technology
So I’m watching some Baby Einstein videos on YouTube with my boys the other day, and I notice at the end of the credits that it says Albert Einstein and Baby Einstein are trademarks of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This came as something of a surprise to me. Baby Einstein is actually related in some way to Albert Einstein the genius? And both are trademarks of Hebrew U.? How is this possible?
Baby Einstein, for the uninitiated, is a line of multimedia products and toys that explore music, art and poetry for children aged three months to three years of age. I know, it sounds pretentious, but I have to say that some of the products are great and really grow with the kids. Anyway, it was created by a set of young parents in Atlanta, Georgia who then sold most of the company to The Walt Disney Company. They pay significant royalties to the estate of Albert Einstein.
And where does Hebrew University, Israel’s largest academic institution, come in? Einstein, who was on the university’s first board of governors, bequeathed his estate to the university. They receive royalties from licensing activities associated with his name, and, here’s an interesting twist: Corbis Corporation, which is owned by none other than Bill Gates, licenses the commercial use of Einstein’s name.
It’s a small world. And just think, every time you purchase a Baby Einstein product (but not if you watch the videos on YouTube), you’re helping out Hebrew U. I may not donate to my alma mater, but hey, I’m helping, sort of.
The Hilton lottery
Filed under: Blogging, Business, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture
It seems that the Israeli Lottery thinks people will buy more lottery tickets if they will get to go on a shopping spree with socialite Paris Hilton.
A number of celebrity blogs are talking about Hilton’s latest celebrity turn, as she was spotted filming a commercial on the streets of New York City for Mifal Hapayis, also known as ‘Lotto’ or Israel Lottery.
Wearing a leopard print coat and carrying many bags, the sense is that the winner will get to shop on Madison Avenue, although that is completely unconfirmed. They might just be heading to Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff, Kikar HaMedina, Sheinkin and Gan Hachashmal for some Sabra duds.
Coke does it
Filed under: Art, Business, General, Israeliness, Pop Culture, design, tv
Could the world’s soft drink giant be ripping off Israeli chocolate milk maker Yotvata?
Very possibly. It seems that Coca-Cola had a Super Bowl commercial last Sunday titled “Sleepwalker,” and it showed a guy getting up in the middle of the night and sleepwalking to a fridge with bottles of Coke in it. Let me say that the two ads are extremely similar, from the music, plot to even the placement of the moon in the background.
A Coca-Cola spokeswoman told “Advertising Age” that any similarities to the Yotvata Dairy ad were coincidental.
“Advertising Age” quotes Coca-Cola spokeswoman Susan Stribling as saying, “When we created the Coca-Cola ‘Sleepwalker’ commercial, we and our agency were unaware of this other ad. Now that we’ve seen the ad, we think both commercials are equally entertaining. While the two share a few common elements, any similarities are coincidental and unintended.”
Until now, Yotvata hasn’t made any complaints about the Coke ad, and according to a Globes articles, Israeli analysts said that the “near-imitation” could be considered flattery by Israel’s marketing industry. Which, of course, is just hilarious. But not unheard of. I’ve experienced more than one instance of Israeli copycat flattery. I’ve had articles published in the New York Times that were then translated and copied, word for word, in the Israeli press. When it was about the secondary mortgage market in Israel, the article in Yediot Achronot read, “The New York Times says…” blah blah blah.
Nice workaround, no? But alas, I, the writer, never got any credit. Ditto for Yotvata.
Hello Tel Aviv
Filed under: Business, General, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs
First it was Hello Jerusalem, now it’s Hello Tel Aviv. The Gap is opening its flagship Tel Aviv store next Sunday, February 21, in the city’s Azrieli Center.
Now the company’s trademark navy blue shopping bags will be swinging from shoppers’ arms in Tel Aviv, after they roam the aisles of the quintessentially American chain, checking out Long & Lean and Real Straight jeans and hoodies spread out over 650 square meters of inventory.
They’re planning a major media blitz, but I’m not too worried about whether Tel Aviv shoppers will check out their very own Gap. After all, Jerusalem’s Mamilla store is considered a huge success, given that Israel is a great example of a small market in which the Gap can achieve “enormous successes,” which is what Ron Young, the Gap’s senior vice president of international strategic alliances, told TheMarker last summer.
After Tel Aviv comes a Herzliya marina store in March, and then Eilat in June. According to the company’s website, Banana Republic stores will follow next year. And prior to that, Jerusalem has the first Israeli H&M store opening on March 11, another banner day for the capital city.
Just to fill you in a bit more, the Gap franchise in Israel is held by Elbit Trade and Retail. Elbit Trade also holds the rights in Israel to the Spanish chain Mango. And who is Elbit? They’re a wholly owned subsidiary of Elbit Imaging Ltd., which was known for its medical imaging devices until 1998, when it was acquired by Europe-Israel Ltd., a company known for its real estate business. Now Elbit focuses on shopping and entertainment malls and venture capital investments, as well as its image guided treatment products.
It’s an interesting mix, but clearly they’re doing something right.
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