Parent apps

March 26, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, design, General, health, Life, Technology 

They’re not just new parents, nor are they merely a couple, one of whom is a physicist/amateur computer programmer and the other a Arabic literature and comparative religion university lecturer.

Jerusalemites Miriam Goldstein and Michael Feigenson are now app developers, having created two apps that will appeal to the new parent set, all part of Parents2ParentsApps, their “mom and pop, family business that creates mobile applications for parents. We build apps that answer our own needs as parents, and strive to make them useful to others and as user-friendly as possible,” writes Michael on their website.

Perfect Timing was their first app, using FAM, the Fertility Awareness Method, to help learn about and identify and chart natural family planning. They found the method helped them get pregnant easily, and the app is an easy way to keep all the information in one place.

Once their son was born, they came up with Sound Sleeper, a white noise app that can identify when a baby wakes and play a selected white noise — ocean, rain, car ride, even the sounds of Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market — to lull the baby back to sleep.

As I always say, whatever works. And now I know why they always seem so happy and rested. Smart.

Tags: , , ,

America’s Next Top Model turns IDF tank instructor

March 26, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

She may be able to stun the enemy with her beauty. But for a former ‘America’s Next Top Model’ who has immigrated to Israel and joined the IDF, her secret weapon isn’t her looks but her devotion to Judaism.

19-year-old Esther Petrack was actually born in Israel to a French mother and American father, but they moved to France and then Boston, where she grew up observant and attended Brookline’s Maimonides High School

Petrack became an American celebrity in 2010 as a contestant on ANTM, attracting special attention not just for her looks but for being an observant Jew. She was criticized by some in the Orthodox world for being screened saying she would compromise her religious values for the show, but later said that her words were taken out of context by the producers.

After the series was completed (she didn’t win), Petrack spent her gap year between high school and college in Jerusalem, studying Hebrew and working as a waitress. . She also signed with the Israeli fashion agency A.D.D. and worked with Grip for its Winter 2010/2011 collection. Although she had plans to attend Barnard College this year, Petrack fell in love with her native country and decided to move here permanently.

“There wasn’t a question I would be joining the army,” Petrack told Haaretz last week, even though as an observant woman, she could have qualified for an exemption and instead perform voluntary national service.

She has been assigned to the IDF’s Armored Corps and is being trained to become a tank instructor, where she is expected to serve her two-year tenure. “Being in the army gives you such a feel for Israel,” she said.

And whoever is learning about tanks from her is going to have an especially difficult time concentrating on the instructions.

Tags:

Nostalgia Sunday – Friedel Stern exhibition

March 25, 2012 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Art, design, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Profiles, Travel 

Some images, if you grow up with them, are imprinted in your brain. So it was with me and cartoonist Friedel Stern’s In Short, Israel. I loved to turn the pages of the small square orange-bound book, look at the pictures and try to understand Stern’s humorous take on 1950s / early 60s Israel. As I grew older and got to know Israel and Israelis better, I understood that many of her illustrations were a loving rebuke, made by a yekke gentlewoman, of the rough and tumble society in which she lived, worked and thrived.

I loved her depictions of Israelis: the hairy sabra, the men in undershirts and sandals, kibbutz women in headscarves and shirtsleeves, prim and proper German-Jewish immigrants wearing jackets in the height of summer heat. And I loved the book, which was English on one side, Hebrew on the other, and which I donated some years ago to the Israeli Cartoon Museum in Holon. It was nice to see a copy (not mine) of “In Short, Israel” under glass at the Museum’s opening of a Friedel retrospective but I felt a bit wistful at not being able to reach out, re-read it and re-live the old memories. But that is how it goes with historical artifacts, even those of contemporary history.

At the exhibit, which runs through June 23rd, I did learn more about Friedel Stern herself. She was born in Liepzig, Germany in 1917 and immigrated to Palestine in 1936. During World War II she was one of many who volunteered to serve in the British army, serving alongside a group of young women who later on went on to prominence in the new State of Israel: actress Hannah Meron, former diplomats and politicians Esther Herlitz and Tamar Eshel, political wives Sonia Peres and Leah Rabin, Cafe Tamar proprietor Sarah Stern and many others. According an article in The Jerusalem Post, her caricatures were often used to camouflage dispatches.

Stern studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts, and began her career as a caricaturist in the ‘50s, working at leading newspapers and magazines such as Davar and Dvar Hashavua, LaIsha and Bamahane signed with her trademark signature and a small star (Stern means star in German), focusing on social issues and humorous portrayals of daily life.

“In her heyday as a journalist, Friedel Stern would dress up as different characters – a cleaning lady, a bus conductor, and once even as a man – to provide her readers with amusing reports about her experiences,” writes Yirmi Pinkus in the museum catalogue. “[Her] articles recounted her experiences as a fictitious American tourist and were, of course, accompanied by original caricatures. Friedel strolled through the ‘Persian [Bahai] Gardens’ in Haifa, she was impressed by the dining room in Kibbutz Gesher Haziv, she inspected souvenirs in the Old City in Jerusalem, and was eventually dropped a heavy hint to tip the tour guide.”

She also illustrated books, posters, brochures and was a lecturer at the Department of Graphic Design at Bezalel. From 1944 onwards, she exhibited and participated in exhibitions of both painting and caricature. Her works were presented in galleries and museums in Israel and abroad. She received many awards, including, in 1999, a lifetime achievement award in the field of caricature and painting by the Council of Women’s Organizations in Israel.

Friedel Stern died in October 2006, only weeks before her 90th birthday. According to an article about the new exhibit in Haaretz, “In her will, Stern, the only woman among the group of cartoonists active in Israel during the state’s first decades, bequeathed all her works to the Cartoon Museum. A few months ago, after prolonged legal proceedings, the approximately 10,000 drawings she left finally arrived at the museum’s archive in Holon.

“Before her death, Stern, who had no children, also saw to the establishment of a foundation in her name, which organizes a biannual competition for humorous cartoons, with a prize of NIS 10,000 for amateurs and NIS 25,000 for professionals. A ‘control freak,’ according to people who knew her, Stern stipulated that works of hers be displayed alongside the works in the competition. And indeed this week at the Cartoon Museum they acceded to her wishes, and hung works by Friedel along with dozens of entries in the latest competition.”

Haaretz noted with disappointment that the small size of the Friedel show — and I must agree. It was nice to see some unfamiliar works but I would have welcomed the chance to see a few more pages from In Short, Israel.

Tags:

The Negev turns red, white and blue

March 25, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, General, Israeliness, Life, Social Justice 

The Rennie Harris Puremovement dance troupe.

It’s been a long time since I’ve hung out on a university campus, and most of that hanging was done in Boston, not Israel.

But after watching this slick promo for Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s ‘America Day’ sponsored by the US Embassy in Israel, I’m ready to head back to college.

The Negev university’s Zlotowski Student Center was splashed red, white and blue last week as the close ties between the US and Israel were on full display. In addition to a talk by US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, the day featured information booths into everything from USAID to study abroad options.

But perhaps the highlight was the guest appearance of the Rennie Harris Puremovement dance troupe which gave a number of half hour shows throughout the day. Based out of Philadelphia, PA, the troupe offered an historical glimpse into the evolution of hip-hop dance from funk, through b-boy to house and more. Check out the rapt attention of the students in this clip, and start packing your bags for the Negev.

Tags:

An Israeli short story

March 24, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

Read this wonderful, Tel Aviv-based story by U.S. author Joan Leegant. Titled Displaced Persons, it traces the timelines of many different people in Israel, Ashkenaz, European types, Holocaust survivors, young Israelis looking to be anywhere but Israel, refugees from African countries, Americans finding themselves in Israel, and then touches on a myriad of issues sensitive to Israeli society. There’s the enduring pain of Holocaust survivors, the painful histories of African refugees and their seemingly resilient natures, the window on life in Israel, and more specifically, Tel Aviv. There’s the typical Israeli apartment home, cups of tea, motorcycles, walks on the beach, family dinners and a litany of familiar details that make this story all the more intimate.

It’s a window that’s been opening gradually for author Leegant, who has been dividing her time since 2007 between Boston and Tel Aviv, where she is the visiting writer at Bar-Ilan University.

Sigalit takes out a tissue and wipes her eyes. She is constantly weepy. Her 88-year-old mother is hanging on in an old age home ten minutes from our building, which Sigalit visits for two hours every day when she’s not bringing her mother to her apartment for meals. “It’s not rebellion.” She stuffs the tissue into her pocket. “He really likes German culture. And how can I argue with him? Look at what they produced. Bach. Beethoven. Thomas Mann. Not everyone was Goering and Himmler.” She waves toward my window. “You want to hear the irony? Out there, Ben Yehuda Street? My mother says they used to call it Ben Yehudastrasse after the war. Little German-run shops, tea houses where people sat all day discussing Max Weber. It was schizophrenic. On the one hand, Germany was totally taboo—the first Israeli passports were marked as valid for any country in the world but there—but then they replicated the society as closely as they could.” She pulls herself out of her chair. “I should relax, right? The Germans have been paying for their history for decades; reparations practically built this country.” She goes to the door, puts her hand on the knob. “And all those earnest young volunteers who come on atonement missions: the most apologetic people on the planet.”

For more of Leegant’s work, go to her website, www.joanleegant.com.

Tags: , , ,

Page 10 of 471« First...89101112...203040...Last »

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Sitemap