Celebrating November 29 in Jerusalem

November 29, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, education, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Social Justice 

November 29 is a pretty ordinary day around the world – a couple days after Thanksgiving and “Black Friday.” Even many Israelis would likely not be able to identify its significance under duress.

November 29 is the date in 1947 when the United Nations General Assembly voted by a two-thirds majority to partition the small state of Palestine into two smaller states of about equal size, one Arab and one Jewish. Jerusalem was to remain under international rule. It was the vital step in the process that a few months later resulted in the creation of Israel.

To mark the 64th anniversary of what’s called Kaf Tet B’November in Hebrew, the World Zionist Organization held a celebratory “reenactment” of the day in front of the Jewish Agency building in central Jerusalem.

Busloads of student dance groups were brought in to lead folk dancing and the traditional hora, and the plaza was given a full 1947 makeover: actors portrayed citizens and soldiers, as well as historical figures like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir who arrived in vintage cars from the era. The idea was to recreate the joy the Jewish people in the yishuv felt when the partition plan was accepted and the glimmer of a Jewish state was in sight.

Guests of honor like Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky and Likud MK Danny Danon watched from the terrace above the plaza and addressed the crowd. Down below, it was the usual Israeli balagan, with photographers jostling each other, proud parents hovering around their twinkle-toed kids (alright, I was one of them) and enough noise and tumult to probably top whatever took place in 1947.

I’m not sure what the founding mothers and fathers of the country would make of the 64-year-old child they’ve reared – probably a mixture of awe and puzzlement, and maybe a little dismay. But it’s clear what today’s kids think of their 1947 antecedents – they rocked!

.

Tags:

Nostalgia Sunday – Snacks n’ shtetls

November 27, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Business, Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture 

Israel’s latest in laugh-out-loud commercials was broadcast about a week ago and immediately went viral.

The TV spot, for baked goods manufacturer Bagel & Bagel’s latest offering, Bagel Dak Dak, (meaning: thin, thin pretzels) is a best described as a 21st century re-imagining of the modern State of Israel’s 19th century roots. It could also be described as the native Israeli sabra’s idea of life in the Pale of Settlement, with an approximation of Yiddish and every Israeli immigrant stereotype thrown in for good measure.

Watch first; a translation follows below. And keep in mind: in Israel, the words beigeleh (singular) and beigelach (plural) refer to pretzels.

Title: Bagel & Bagel bakery, Poland 1880
Son: Father! Mother! I have an idea! Thin, thin beigelach… with flavors!!!
All: [Shocked] What?
Father: Flavored beigelach?
Son: Yes, yes. With peppers… with cheddar cheese… with spices!
Father: Pepper? That’s for Moroccans!
Mother: Flavor… in food?! We’re Polish!
Father: Sweetie, on the day that little Ben Gurion over there is Prime Minister in the Land of Israel… then we will make beigelach with flavors. [Aside] What a golem.
Voice Over: Nation of Israel! The time has come for flavored thin, thin beigelach! New from Bagel & Bagel. Thin, thin pretzels in a variety of flavors.

The ad is rife with historical inaccuracies: flat pretzels (also known as pretzel crisps or pretzel chips) were patented in the US in 2004, Ben Gurion was born in 1886, he grew up under Russian rule, his father was a lawyer and there is plenty of photographic evidence to prove he was not a bald-headed child. But despite these, or perhaps because of them, the commercial has become a wild success.

According to survey company Geocartogaphy’s weekly listing of Best Loved and Most Memorable commercial advertisements of the week, as published by Globes, “Bagel & Bagel’s commercial for thin flavored pretzels, produced by Baumann-Ber-Rivnay, heads the list of the week’s most memorable commercials. The memorable nature of the commercial was 50% higher than the semi-annual average. The company invested $794 million the commercial.”

To my mind, the flat pretzel is genius, eliminating all unnecessary parts of the pretzel, leaving only crunch, and salt. There are several such products on the local market: Meir Bagel’s Shtuchaleh (which captured 26% of the entire flat pretzel market within one month of launching), Osem’s Shtuchim crispy smashed beigeleh, and the new flavored Dakim Dakim by Bagel & Bagel, which is owned by Unilever.

In honor of the launch, Bagel & Bagel issued some interesting stats about the Israeli snack food market: pretzels are mostly consumed by adult consumers (25-55) in Israel. Older consumers tend to consume pretzels as a snack on a regular basis. Of these, about 90% combine personal pretzel consumption with pretzels served to guests. Adults with families tend to buy pretzels at a higher rate (84%), as compared with singles / couples without children (76%). (TNS Monitor, December 2010).

The company further pointed out that, to date, innovations in the pretzel category had to do with shape only and that studies indicated the main obstacle to pretzel consumption was that their taste could be perceived as boring. Hence, the introduction of a flavor component which was not invented by an excitable young man running down the muddy shtetl streets, but chosen by taste tests and focus groups.

The snack food wars are on! We’re looking forward to the next installment.

Tags:

Foto Friday – Hula Valley Bird Festival

November 25, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, education, Entertainment, Environment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Music, News, Picture of the Week, Travel 

More than just birds migrated this week to the Hula Valley, one of the most important stopover and wintering sites for migratory birds through the Great Rift Valley. This week marked the opening of the Hula Valley International Bird Festival, part of a five-part series of international birding events in the Galilee.

Each year, the Valley hosts thousands of Common Cranes, Pelicans, Ducks, Waders and Passerines. Over 300 species are seen here annually including very rare European birds of prey. (A full checklist of birds migrating through the Hula Valley is available here).

According to the event organizers, KKL Agamon-Hula Park and Hula Nature Reserve, “We believe it is time to spotlight the region as the world class birding destination that it is, and the way to do so is through a large scale birdwatching event.” The result: the Hula Valley Bird Festival, a one week event running from November 24th to 27th offered birding tours, art exhibition, photography seminars, a large scale scientific conference and much more.

“Much more” includes last night’s concert by seven time Grammy award winning musician Paul Winter, performing a new bird migration-inspired piece, Flyways, which takes inspiration from ethnic music from the countries along the migration route — Africa, the Middle East and Europe — embellished with bird songs and calls.

The scientific conference focused on various aspects of stopover site conservation such as habitat protection, migration ecology, climate change, regional cooperation and site networks, national and international policy and programming, public awareness and eco-tourism.

The photography seminar, “Cranes, Kingfishers and more in the Hula Valley”, led by renowned photographer Thomas Krumenacker and other leading nature photographers, focused on the Valley’s most important wintering species, the Common Crane.

“The Hula Valley in winter is probably among the best places in the world to get up close and personal with these beautiful birds.”

“Besides the Cranes we will spend time with some of the valleys other beautiful species like three different species of Kingfishers, Pelicans, wintering raptors and more.”

Berlin-based Krumenacker has been to Israel many times to photograph the Hula Valley. More photos can be viewed and purchased from his website.

All images are copyrighted by Thomas Krumenacker and come courtesy of the Hula Valley International Bird Festival website.

Tags:

Nostalgia Sunday – The Yekke spectrum

November 20, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, design, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Movies, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles, Travel, tv 

Yekke. The term, according to Urban Dictionary.com, “refers to Jews originating from Germany. Sometimes used in a derogatory or cynical manner, it refers mainly to their attention to detail…The origins of this title are unclear, ranging from referring to their short jackets… to a conjugation of the Hebrew dayek – to be precise.”

Between 1931 and 1939, 100,000 Jews came to pre-State Israel, most of them from Germany having fled the rise of Nazism. Unlike the previous four waves of aliya, the members of this Fifth Aliya were not necessarily kibbutz bound. Instead, they headed for towns like Tel Aviv, where they engaged in five o’clock tea dances and other bourgeoisie amusements and Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood, home to professors and intellectuals. German-Jewish immigrants founded Nahariya, home to some of Israel’s leading entrepreneurial families: Strauss, Soglowek and Wertheimer.

Once considered an embarrassment among young German emigres trying to fit in among the native-born sabras, their children and grandchildren are now exploring their Yekke roots, discovering that there was much more to the German-Jewish immigrant experience in Israel than simply being a nicely dressed, punctual minority among the Russian-Polish Socialist-Zionist majority, chronically late and clad in dusty, drab workman’s gear.

Two movies have come out recently that reflect aspects of the German-Jewish immigrant experience in pre-State Israel. Duki Dror’s Mendelsohn – Incessant Visions, explores the life of Erich Mendelsohn, the man who changed the face of modern architecture.

Dror’s fascination with Mendelsohn began in 2003, when UNESCO declared Tel Aviv a World Heritage Site. “I tried to understand the connection between this ugly city, where I was born and raised, and this declaration of cultural significance. I started looking at buildings… and I tried to figure out where this town came from… Who was the source of these modern ideas? Very quickly my investigation led to Mendelsohn It was clear that his presence infuses the plaster and concrete of Tel Aviv. And then I realized he had never built in Tel Aviv, but influenced all of the architects who built it.”

Dror tells the story of Mendelsohn’s life through the architect’s correspondence with wife Luise Mendelsohn. The letters, along with excerpts from Luise’s diary, provide personal insights into history: Mendelsohn’s technique of crafting tiny sketches with the power of a large rendering was the result of paper shortages during World War I. Luise, a cellist who played in a string quartet with neighbor Albert Einstein, wangled Mendelsohn’s first important commission: the Einstein Tower (Einsteinturm) in Potsdam, Germany– an astrophysical observatory built to prove (or disprove) the theory of relativity. At the height of his success, Mendelsohn’s architectural practice had commissions from all over Germany for buildings in his pioneering International Style. Luise tells of Erich’s obsession in creating their dream house — completed just in time for him, along with all other Jewish members, to be ejected from the German Architects’ Union. Realizing that their assets were about to be seized by the Nazis, the Mendelsohns left Germany for the England in 1933.

It was in London in 1934 that Mendelsohn met Chaim Weizmann. The future President of the State of Israel invited the architect to design the future State of Israel according to his modernist vision. Mendelsohn had already been to Palestine before, in 1923, on the invitation of Pinhas Rutenberg, head of the Palestine Electric Company who had the British Mandatory government concession to create an modern electrical infrastructure. Although his design for the first power station was rejected by the British for being avant garde, Mendelsohn was captivated by the idea of fusing ancient and modern in a Jewish homeland.
Read more

Tags:

Foto Friday – Bezalel takes on Ashdod

November 18, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, design, education, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Travel, War 

The city of Ashdod has been in the headlines recently for some unpleasant reasons — missile attacks, burst water mains, port workers strikes and slowdowns — and so it is time to repay a visit to this port city, which is generally a very pleasant place. It has become a popular destination for Russian tourists, eager for some winter sunshine, and was also, according to the municipal website, “awarded all of the prizes granted by The Council for a Beautiful Israel”.

The modern city of Ashdod was founded on November 25, 1956 but the area has been continuously inhabited with human settlement in Ashdod dating back to the Paleolithic Period and urban settlement originating from the 17th century BCE under the Canaanites and then under the Philistines, who conquered the city in the 14th century BCE.

Ashdod developed into one of the five most important Philistine cities. During the Israelite period (600-1200 BCE), Ashdod was partially held by the Tribe of Judah and is mentioned 13 times in the Bible. By the way, Ashdod is home to the Corine Maman Museum, reputedly one of the only museums in the world dedicated to presenting the rich history and culture of the Philistine world.

The city was subsequently conquered by Assyrians — evidence of their presence was found at the Tel Ashdod excavations — Persians, Greeks, Byzantines, Crusaders, Arabs, Ottoman Turks, and in modern times, controlled by the British Mandate prior to the founding of the State of Israel.


Photo by Yair Aharonovic

I was actually in Ashdod last month* with my drinking and running group, the Holyland Hash House Harriers. As always, I was impressed by the city’s wide boulevards, spacious beachfront, green parks and public sculpture, of which there is quite a great deal — 300 statues, at last count.

In fact, modern Ashdod is an urban planning success story: it is the only city in Israel that was planned before being settled and is the fifth largest city in Israel, with a population of 230,000 living in 17 residential boroughs. The demographic composition is also unusual in that there is a balanced distribution of religious and secular Jews, Israeli-born sabras and new immigrants, the latter comprising 38% of overall population.


Photo by Yevgeni Doroshenk


Photo by Shai Mizrachi


Photo by May Castlenuovo

The city, old and new, is the subject of the exhibition, Bezalel in Ashdod, a collaboration between the Ashdod municipality and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. The exhibition will be on display for two days only – November 23-24 – at the old commercial center of Ashdod, Aleph District, and features works from 120 students and faculty of the Department of Photography who were guests of the city for a week last year.


Photos by Eli Singalovski (left), Neta Laufer (right)

During their stay, the students and faculty took photos of the different facets of the city: people and buildings, streets and parks, industrial and commercial areas, inside homes and of course, the port.


Photo by Vera Vladimirski


Photo by Sergei Litoinov

Curators Noa Zayit, Nir Evron and Noa Zdaka state, “The starting point of the exhibit was to concentrate on a single city, as it references examples of compassion, beauty and kindness, but also encompasses art criticism and conflict documentation – the result being a vivid, courageous and real-life picture of the city.”


Photos by Atalia Renaski (left), Gideon Levi (right)

*As luck would have it, we were just exiting the city when the siren sounded, warning of an incoming missile strike. That’s life in the Wild Wild Middle East.

Tags:

Page 7 of 183« First...56789...203040...Last »

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Site by illuminea | Sitemap