Tu B’shvat was here

February 9, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Environment, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

The Levinski market in TLV (photo credit: FreeIsraelPhotos.com)

Tu B’shvat, Israel’s Arbor Day, is finally behind us, and I say finally because I just have to separate myself from dried-fruit-feasting. There comes a point when you cannot look at another dried fig or date, and I’m glad that the moment has arrived.

Seriously, though, a one-day, minor holiday became a four-day celebration in our life and my kids’ gan, beginning Tuesday, into the actual day on Wednesday, and then bringing home the ‘fruits’ of creation today, including ‘potted’ trees made of styrofoam peanuts and the de rigeur plastic cup full of dates, figs and raisins. To complete the season, tomorrow is the gan trip to a citrus fruit orchard at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, where they will sum up a month-long lesson plan on trees, fruits and how things grow.

In truth, unless you’re invited to a Tu B’shvat seder or have a child bringing home the signs and symbols of the day — sometimes the only connection you have to Tu B’shvat is seeing and buying mounds of dried fruit (Ynet reported NIS 200 million in sales of dried fruit over the holiday) from the store. Unless you actually went out and planted a tree, as many do, really. But despite my gentle cynicism, it’s been interesting to note its comings and goings and see how people relate to it.

I noted on Facebook that some of my more religious friends were discussing the issue of eating dried fruit as opposed to fresh fruit on Tu B’shvat. This blogger comments that we eat dried fruit because our ancestors did, given the lack of fresh fruit during the winter, when Tu B’shvat is celebrated. Makes sense, and as I passed a carob tree on the way home, I picked a piece off — it’s not really the season now — and munched on it.

And, in the spirit of the day, I took myself out to our backyard, where I haven’t spent much time lately, and wandered around, appreciating the fresh pink blossoms on the peach tree and the various winter bulbs that are starting to peek out of the ground. The shkedia, the almond tree, that is sung about during Tu B’shvat is in full bloom right now, and there are pink-blossomed trees all over the place.

Finally, I am thinking about making this chicken recipe, or a version of it, for dinner on Friday night, even though it’s days after the actual ‘chag’, it’s still good to celebrate. As the Israelites like to say, ‘siba l’mesiba’, a reason for a party.

From Cookkosher.com via Ha’aretz:

Tu Bishvat dried fruit chicken rollup
Prep time: 20 minutes
Level: Medium
Serving/Yields: 4-6 servings

Ingredients:
4 whole boneless skinless chicken breasts (double)
¾ cup diced assorted dried fruit (apricots, dates, raisins, figs)
4 tbsp pine nuts
2 eggs
½ tsp paprika
1 cup flavored cornflake crumbs
Oil, for frying

Preparation:
1. Pound each double chicken breast thin, and set them aside.
2. Combine diced dried fruit with the pine nuts and set aside.
3. In a bowl, beat the eggs with a fork. Mix in, adding paprika, and set aside.
4. To assemble: Place a pounded chicken cutlet in front of you; position it lengthwise. Place two Tablespoons of dried fruit filling across the middle of the chicken. Roll up the chicken breast tightly and carefully; beginning from the narrower end. Make sure all the filling stays inside.
5. Using both hands, transfer the roll into the beaten egg mixture and then into the cornflake crumbs. Coat it well. Place the roll on a clean surface. You can now secure any ends with 1 or 2 toothpicks if necessary.
6. Repeat with the remaining cutlets.
7. Heat the oil in a frying pan. When the oil is hot, place the rolls seam side down into the pan. Fry them until they are golden brown, turning the rolls so all sides are done. If necessary you can leave the toothpicks in place.
8. Make sure the flame isn’t too high; you want to be sure that the filling is cooked without burning the outside. When the rollups are ready, remove them from the pan and drain them on paper towel.
9. Let them cool slightly, cut them on a diagonal into round slices, and serve.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Kol Israel archive open to all

February 5, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Music, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Technology 

As the child of a folksinger, it was more than exciting to read that the archive of American ethno-musicologist Alan Lomax has finally be digitized and 17,000 music tracks made accessible online through the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE). Lomax’s research, books and investigative sprit were evident on my parents’ bookshelves and record collection. As the child of an Israeli folksinger, it was equally exciting to hear that the Kol Israel (Voice of Israel) music collection has also been digitized and made publicly accessible. Israeli folk songs were, of course, a part of daily life.

“Technology has caught up to the imagination of Lomax,” and his vision of a “global jukebox”, wrote the New York Times of the newly opened ACE storehouse of audio treasure. Locally, the same is true. Only a few weeks ago, Israeli nostalgia repository Nostal.co.il launched an online radio station of old Israeli songs. Late last summer, we reported on Shapam’s collection of old radio ad spots. And now, the largest collection of Israeli music from pre-State to recent times, has been made available to the general public.

The Kol Israel preservation project was conducted by the National Sound Archives which is part of the Music Department at the Israel National Library. The Archives has the world’s largest collection of ethnographic and commercial recordings of Israeli and Jewish music. The online collection is available both via the National Sound Archive and through the Israel Broadcasting Authority website.

In a radio interview on Friday, Dr. Gila Flam, Head of the Music Department and National Sound Archive, described the volume of the Kol Israel project. In 1983, 6,300 phonograph records belonging to Kol Israel to the National Library. The majority were recordings of radio broadcasts as well as commercial recordings. Flam noted that these were rare acetate master records produced specifically for radio broadcast.

An additional 20,000 records containing a variety of materials were transferred in 2002 of which approximately 5,000 were selected for cataloging and preservation.

Most of these records contain broadcasts from the 1950s and include many unique recordings, chiefly in the field of Israeli music. The labels, which were photographed and cataloged, contain relevant information, such as the name of the artist, production date, etc. There are speeches, such as Israeli Ambassador to the US Abba Eban’s speech on Israel’s 9th Day of Independence, holiday songs like Tu b’Shvat (a dolorous ditty but included here in honor of the upcoming holiday), Im Nin’alu performed by Yemenite immigrants (the song was later made famous in a dance-trance version by the late great Ofra Haza), and of course, no Israeli musicological collection would be complete without accordion renditions of folk dances like Simi Yadech b’Yadi (Put your hand in mine) and Hora Agadati.

There are curiosities as well, such as Arik Lavie’s HaSela HaAdom (The Red Rock) which is labeled quite plainly: “This record is forbidden from broadcast”. The reason for the banning? The song, which described a midnight trip across the border into what was once enemy territory, to visit Jordan’s legendary Petra, had apparently inspired many young people to make similar treks to their peril. And so, Israel Radio bore the national responsibility to quash the trend.

The Legacy Heritage Fund, which provided funding for the digitization project, states, “Because of their impaired physical state, the records cannot be played at all, even for research purposes. The majority are made of acetate and are considered to be at risk because of chemical processes which could cause them to disintegrate at any moment. According to the research and directives of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA), these materials should be transferred to digital format immediately in order to preserve their content.”

“As part of this project the Kol Israel recordings, among others, are being transferred from analog to digital format. The Sound Archive includes studios equipped with instruments for optimal playback of old records and conversion to digital formats. After undergoing a cleaning and fixing process, the original materials are converted to both WAV files, for preservation, and MP3 files, to enable access. The preservation process is compliant with the IASA standards.”

Each month, dozens of new audio files will be added. The complete Kol Israel collection is currently being digitized and is scheduled to be uploaded by the end of 2012.

The library has also compiled collections of songs for ease of listening, such as a Nostalgic Hebrew Songs compilation.

The Music Department and National Sound Archive at the National Library welcomes public contributions and additions to the collections and knowledge database on any subject relating to Jewish or Israeli music and are happy to receive songs, recordings, manuscripts and any other material relevant to this field of study.

BTW: The ACE collection has almost no Jewish/Israeli content (Lomax researched the US, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain) but there is a radio show from 1948 that features part of this song, Dance the Hora: “Don’t be sad now, little one, little one / I command you to be happy / All our lives are sorrowful, sorrowful / Come forget your fears and troubles / Let’s have rhythm, let’s have dancing / Bring the music, bring the wine / Let the old and young clasp hands now / dance the hora /” etc. etc. It isn’t much of a folk song — or a song, for that matter — but the lyrics, sung in accented English to the accompaniment of an accordion (what else?) gives some insight as to the Jewish condition in that important year.

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Icecream for breakfast

February 4, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Blogging, Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Life 

Ben and Jerry's Israel ad for their ice cream club

According to my calendar, today was International Ice Cream for Breakfast Day. I always thought that certain friends of mine down our Jerusalem block were the creators of this particular chag, LOL, but it turns out — thanks to the Facebook world — that they’re not, and many other communities worldwide celebrate the day.

In fact, when I typed ice cream for breakfast into the search bar of Facebook, dozens of posts popped up for celebrants around the globe, from Mexico, Seattle, Louisiana and Philly to Maine, Albany and Shanghai.

According to Serious Eats, all you need to do is eat ice cream, for breakfast, and on the first Saturday in February.

We’ve always celebrated on Saturday, Shabbat in our house, which is the only day that we’re all around, fairly calm and relaxed, and have the time to enjoy the wonders of ice cream for one’s first food of the day. Usually it’s a good selection of Ben & Jerry’s, sometimes with homemade ice cream as well, thanks to my nephew Natan, the artisanal ice cream connoisseur. Toppings? Not always, but it does add to the experience.

Serious Eats also adds that “the holiday was started in the 1960s in Rochester, New York by Florence Rappaport, who let her kids eat ice cream for breakfast on the first Saturday of February to make winter more bearable for them. Now this custom is done all over the world, from Minnesota to Israel to Australia.”

Turns out, there’s an official IEICFBD blog, where you can list your own celebration — there are four in Israel, including one in my own neighborhood of Talpiot (I think that one is hosted by other neighbors of ours) and one down at Kibbutz Ketura, where given the hot weather nearly year-round and a surfeit of American-born kibbutzniks, they’ve been celebrating for some 30 years.

It comes down to the fact that you just need to celebrate sometimes, and even with the upcoming holiday of Tu B’shvat, which, lord knows, offers ample opportunity for celebration, February can be a bleak month. So, if you missed it today, go for it next week. We won’t tell.

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Jerusalem’s ugliest building (hint: it’s not the Holyland)

February 3, 2012 by · 5 Comments
Filed under: Environment, History and Culture 

The Amir Center in Jerusalem

For years, whenever I have driven down King George Street, near the Great Synagogue and the Leonardo (formerly Sheraton) Plaza Hotel, the building at the corner with Agron Street has pained me – a tremendously ugly, 7-story, dilapidated monstrosity that I have waited patiently for some announcement of its pending demolition that never comes.

And now I learn that the building was not only once considered a paradigm of daring optimism and ”modernity,” but the architect behind it has become one of the most celebrated in the country’s history.

That’s not to say that the Amir Center (as the building is officially called) won’t someday be torn down to build another luxury apartment tower; other high-rise buildings have already been approved in its immediate surroundings. But a retrospective, almost loving article in today’s Haaretz may temper those ambitions.

In 1958, architect David Resnick was asked to design a new residential building at the intersection in question. In an interview, he praised its innovations, which broke out of the classic Jerusalem Stone look and feel to splash a dose of modernist paint on the city. The Amir Center was built on a large 10 dunam plaza, its 7 floors propped up on stilts, with a Supersol supermarket (the first in Jerusalem) down below.

While Resnick was pleased with his creation (it even won an award in 1963 for technological innovation), the building was immediately dubbed “Jerusalem’s ugliest building” in street interviews that took place at the time, Haaretz reports.

That controversy, however, helped raise Resnick’s public visibility, and the architect went on design such more acclaimed Jerusalem landmarks as the dome shaped synagogue on Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus, the Mormon Center on Mount Scopus and the Van Leer Institute, among many other always-modernist style projects.

That said, Resnick admits that the Amir Center has been “modified” beyond its original clean lines: residents have enclosed balconies, added unattractive air conditioning units. Indeed, Resnick says “When I walk past the building today, I look the other way. I can’t bear to see what they did to it.

The city is promoting a plan where a contractor is given the rights to build an extra floor or two at no cost provided the residents’ current living space is upgraded (including making it earthquake proof). But the building’s shell, apparently, isn’t strong enough to bear the additional weight, so for now, it’s either demolish or stay ugly.

While “to date no plan has been formulated or submitted,” according to a municipality spokesperson, Resnick would undoubtedly be opposed. “The question of nice or not nice is irrelevant,” he says. “I think that the Israeli establishment does not understand what architecture is and its importance to the state.”

In another 50 years, will they be talking this way about the Holyland project too?

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Nostalgia Sunday – Cinema Savion saved!

January 29, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, design, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel 

The best sort of mayor, it is said, is one who can keep real estate developers under control. Look at some of the architectural monstrosities surrounding us and one has to conclude that modern Israel has had very bad luck with city management. Some lovely buildings have been torn down with the occasional commemorative plaque or, worse yet, commemorative structure erected as an afterthought.

Some of the silliest examples: Talitakumi in front of Jerusalem’s HaMashbir LeZarchan, a strangely out of place wall-and-clock structure intended to replicate the front of a girl’s school that was razed to make room for the department store. The gate leading to Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv was thrown up by sentimental, well-meaning people in recognition of the original structure, demolished to make way for the Kolbo Shalom. And does anybody know that the Gan HaIr mall and residential complex was named for the municipal zoological garden that once stood there?

The most unsung of all are the movie houses, most of them shuttered for decades, fall deeper and deeper into disrepair until they are destroyed to make room for malls, tall buildings and parking lots. No one remembers Tel Aviv’s majestic Mugrabi Cinema or Jerusalem’s historic Edison.

Nonetheless, a small victory was achieved a little over a week ago when high-rise developers were forced to change a plan to tear down Bay Yam’s historic Savion Cinema. The victory belongs to a local activist group of Bat Yam residents, artists and the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites who objected to the demolition and proposed a synthesis of old and new structures.

In its heyday, Bat Yam boasted six movie houses. The Savion Cinema was built in 1957 and — in line with the global trend – closed in the 1980s. “However it remained an architectural icon because of its facade which was characterized by a weave of concrete block units,” states The Marker.

Icon or not, the building was in bad shape. Its most recent tenant: a dollar store in what was once the movie-house’s lobby.

According to The Marker, the design for a 25-story tower by architect Ilan Pivko, will be modified in accordance with preservation plan for the building. The building — a luxury residence and prestigious office space — is a flagship project for the Bat Yam municipality which wants to develop the run-down neighborhoods adjacent to Jaffa. The preservation plan calls for the street-facing facade to remain intact.

One look at Pivko’s work and its clear that adapting his design to the new guidelines goes against his post-modernist grain. He does not favor keeping the facade as is and suggests a modular solution instead. “One can reconstruct, dismantle or in some other way create an interior element within the structure.” How Pivko handles this challenge remains to be seen… he has done this sort of thing before… but if he wanted to do it with the Savion, he would have worked it into the original design…

Hmmm… one gets the feeling that this issue isn’t over just yet.

Whether or not the Savion Cinema facade remains on the street level or whether, in the end, Pivko’s lobby will simply feature a bold construction of recycled concrete filigree, the real significance of the decision is a precedent set in curbing real estate developers’ ability to destroy old structures without recognizing their historic value. Hopefully, that means recognition not just in the form of an incidental plaque, statue or clock, but as part of the planning, putting real thought into paying homage to what came before.

The Savion Cinema photos were taken by architect Sharon Raz who is a one-man documentary powerhouse with a particular interest in Israel’s old cinemas. See his Disappearing Architecture and Disappearing Cinemas sites as well as his Natush blog for more photos and information.

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