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Entrepreneurial

I often think that Israelis, and Israeli immigrants in particular — those of us that have made their lives here — are an enterprising lot. I’m not just talking about the high-tech heroes and business brains that have put Israel on the global village map, but the many individuals who open their own businesses, becoming independent contractors who want to control their own professional destiny and bank account.

Sure, part of it has to do with earning some more shekels, as many professions in this land are not well paid and are nowhere near the U.S. scale, even in these economically trying times. But no matter the reason, the results are often very creative.

Take my friend, Moshe, for example. He just launched Midnight Cycling Through Jerusalem, three-four hour tours, starting at midnight, through the streets and alleyways of Jerusalem. He’s done a few of them so far, isn’t so certain about the prices — but can tell you that he’s getting more than a few phone calls for his Hol Hamoed Sukkot rides. You can also rent bikes and helmets through Moshe, if needed.

He’s far from the only one. Just off the top of my head, I’m thinking about JewButt by Beverly, the Dinah Project by another Beverly and not exactly a business but a wiki, SiddurWiki.com, by friend Brian.

There’ll be more to come, but if you want to take a midnight bike ride around Jerusalem, contact Moshe, tour guide and teacher.

It must be Rosh Hashana time

It must be getting close to Rosh Hashana, because Benji Lovitt over at What War Zone? has posted his annual wacky Rosh Hashana video.

No matter what bad news keeps coming down the pike, from Iranian nuclear capability getting closer to the awful tragedy of the Ramon family, watching earnest Israelis trying to explain the Rosh Hashana custom of eating fish heads to a perplexed Lovitt is sure to put a smile on anyone’s face.

Lovitt, a stand up comedian by profession, did his bit on Sunday at the Second International Jewish Bloggers Convention in Jerusalem, attended by 300 bloggers.

The Nefesh B’Nefesh-organized conference, titled “Uniting the Jewish Community through Social Media,” included eight workshops followed by two panel discussions aimed at advancing Jewish, Zionist and charitable causes.

And it’s evident that one of the best ways to do so is through humor. Laughing at ourselves and allowing others to laugh along, can go a long way to creating an affinity for Israel, or at least let us see things through a little less intense lens that we’re normally viewed around the world.

So enjoy, the clip and let’s all look for the big ball to drop at Rabin Square at midnight on the Jewish New Year.

A kitchen chair

This can be filed as an only-in-Israel story. I think. In any case, it goes like this: I’ve been looking for the right kitchen chair for several years now. We’ve been doing just fine with our Esther hand-me-downs, a very common wooden-frame, cushioned seat that is fairly ubiquitous in Israeli homes, but is simple, inexpensive and fairly long-lasting. And now that two of them have highchairs strapped to the seats, and food being smeared all over, I’m not unhappy to be sticking with the hand-me-downs.

However, my mother and I were looking for an outing, and I was thinking that a kitchen chair search could be just the ticket. Remembering that I’d seen chairs that I liked in my local Aroma branch — Emek Refaim in the German Colony — a smooth wooden L that is printed with an image of woven fabric, I decided to ask at Aroma where they’d purchased the chairs. No idea. So I called Aroma headquarters, pressed 1 for customer service and was very surprised to have the phone answered on the first ring by ‘Reuven’ who cheerily greeted me and asked how he could help me. I told him that I had a strange question and he told me that no question I could have would be strange. Hmm. So I asked and he told me to call the franchisee of the Emek Refaim branch, or his manager, and I’d have an answer. I did, and Asi told me that they’d bought the chairs at an all-chair store in Ga’ash, which is a shopping center mecca just north of Tel Aviv, and, incidentally, the first shopping center to be open on Shabbat.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the great customer service, and while I do love Aroma, hadn’t expected quite that level of American friendliness and professionalism. So much so, that I used this story as an example of how Israel is sometimes positively influenced by American customs, in a talk I gave to a Birthright group the other night. But back to Aroma and kitchen chairs.

We drove to Ga’ash, and given that Asi didn’t remember the name of the store or its exact location, it took about half an hour and a few false starts before the postmistress of Kibbutz Ga’ash told me that I was looking for a store called Pick-Up, located just across the parking lot from the Ga’ash Hot Springs (which were discovered when the kibbutz was digging for oil, no joke). We got there, maneuvered the stroller in, and found said Aroma chairs as well as a few other options, all currently being considered. There must have been some 500 straight-backed chairs in the store, as well as outdoor seating, in case you’re looking for chairs.

We then went to Aroma for lunch, mostly because it was easy to find– although it would have been more fun to find a different cafe in Rishpon — and as I sat on their plasticized rattan couches with white cushions, I could appreciate just how much Aroma invests in its furnishings, because now I know.

And that, is the end of the story.

Fall into the Gap

The question that people were asking each other last week in Jerusalem was whether a navy blue Gap shopping bag had appeared on their front door handle. I hadn’t, but as a frequent clothing buyer, I had received a NIS 50 coupon for the Gap from Isracard, my credit card company. Which, if you ask me, is better than an empty shopping bag.

So yes, there was some keen curiousity about the opening of the Gap in Jerusalem’s Mamilla shopping mall, given that this popular clothing retailer — part of the Old Navy/Banana Republic group — was finally coming to Israel and to Jerusalem, no less. Would the clothing cost the same as it does in the States, wondered the locals. Did they open in Jerusalem because rent is cheaper than it is in Tel Aviv? Would Israelis actually buy at the Jerusalem Gap, paying the probably higher prices? Would there be the end-of-season sale racks that there are in the States, where you can snatch up pieces for $6.99?

Probably not, assumed the Anglo Saxons, who swore never to be an Israeli ‘frier’ and buy from the Jerusalem Gap.

Reports began filtering back following the August 24 opening. The store was packed, one source told me, and it was only tourists doing the buying. Someone else said that the usual $65 jeans cost some NIS 300, which comes to some $80 in shekel terms.

So I had to head there myself to check out how the Gap was faring. On a sunny Tuesday morning, just one week after the grand opening, the store was full on both the Baby Gap and Adult Gap sides. People were walking out with more than one bag, and they looked Israeli to me, which wasn’t surprising. As for prices, they were about $15 higher, on average, than what you would pay at the Gap in the U.S. Of course, some of the fall items are already on sale on-line, whereas there were no sales at the Jerusalem store. Not yet, one salesperson told me, promising that we would be seeing some of the fabulous Gap sales in the holy city.

In the meantime, it was fun to peruse the familiar-looking racks and shelves. The jeans styles are translated into Hebrew, so that you can figure out if Sexy Boot jeans are for you, or whether the Little Pocket T is your perfect tee-shirt. I restrained myself, even with my NIS 50 coupon, cuz I’d still rather rely on online shopping through one of my frequent U.S. travelers.

Now when H&M reaches Malcha, that may be a different kind of challenge.

Foto Friday – Nigeria-Tel Aviv

The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria celebrated the Tel Aviv Centennial this week with a festival of arts, culture and cuisine. The festivities, which will culminate on Sunday, included Nigerian gourmet meals prepared under the direction of Chef Charlie Fadida, executive chef of the Tel Aviv Sheraton hotel, together with the dynamic Janet Olisa, wife of the Nigerian Ambassador and a team of Nigerian culinary experts. This came in addition to performances, at the annual Jaffa Nights festival, of traditional African music, song and dance performed by troupes from Nigeria.

The festival also included the opening of a photography exhibition, “Nigeria Through the Eyes of A Passerby”, by Victor Politis. An award-winning photographer and entrepreneur, Politis is founder and CEO of PRI, an international project development and financial advisory company with a focus on emerging markets. His business travels have also afforded him the opportunity to explore his passion for photography and documenting an ever- globalizing world. More about Politis can be found here.

The Nigerian Festival Week includes a film festival featuring the best of “Nollywood“. The Nigerian movie industry, it transpires, is the third largest in the world in terms of number of films produced annually. I did not know that! The festival is held under the auspices of the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, the Nigerian Friendship Association and other organizations from Israel and overseas.

IDF chief of staff confined to quarters

When I was in basic training in the IDF many years ago, I had a leave cancelled because while cleaning my M-16 rifle, I lost a little internal pin. Apparently, I wasn’t the first, because the pin even had a name – the Shabbat pin – because if you lost it, it meant you stayed on the base for Shabbat.

I flashbacked to those days when I was reading last week that a revolver was stolen out of the Tel Aviv office of IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. The thief, a young soldier on guard inside Ashkenazi’s inner sanctum, also stole his credit card data which was used by a third party to purchase NIS 2,000 worth of items. The decorative handgun was a gift to Ashkenazi from a US military counterpart.

According to Ha’aretz, the investigation into the incident exposed serious lapses in the arrangements for protecting Ashkenazi. Along with the security provided by the General Staff Security Unit, a number of positions on the office’s security perimeter are still being carried out by regular troops assigned to guard duty. These troops are not required to go through rigorous combat training, nor are their backgrounds substantially screened. The Military Police’s investigation revealed that the suspect had been involved in fights and a stabbing, and had piled up debts to underworld figures.

So, I was wondering, what would be the appropriate punishment for Ashkenazi for the breach of security? If I got confined to the base for a weekend for losing my Shabbat pin, I think he should at least have to do a couple shifts of guard duty at the Kirya, the IDF headquarters where he sits. However unlikely that scenario is, it somehow makes me feel better about my army service.

Speaka da language

Here’s a fun concept to contemplate from the University of Haifa. A recent study showed that the more empathy one has for another, the lighter the accent will be when speaking a second language. That’s what Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim and Dr. Mark Leikin of the Department of Learning Disabilities, and Dr. Zohar Eviatar of the psychology department found and published in the International Journal of Bilingualism.

I gotta say, it makes sense. When I’m feeling ‘Israeli,’ and that is a completely random occurence for me, depending on a number of factors such as level of restedness, if I’ve eaten recently and am feeling confident about what’s going on in life in general, my fluidity and accent in Hebrew are much smoother and my conversational Hebrew flows. And that also relates to empathy, because if I’m feeling good, I can also be empathetic. Make sense?

Maybe. But these researchers were getting at something else slightly more serious, more on the coexistence level of life in Israel.

According to them, accents, whether from the average Hebrew speaker trying to speak English or the average English speaker trying to speak Hebrew, are a dead giveaway. (Although my mortgage banker recently thought I was English, not American.) But why, asked the researchers, is there an accent and what are the factors that make one speaker have a heavier accent than another? One possible explanation is derived from the socio-lingual field, which claims that socio-affective elements have an effect on accent and that the second language constitutes an image label for the speaker in the presence of a majority group.

“Israel is a perfect lab location for testing the topic of second languages, because of the complex composition of its population. This population is made up of immigrants who learn Hebrew at an advanced age; an ethnic minority of Arabs, some of whom learn Hebrew from an early age, and others who learn the language as mature adults; and a majority group of native Hebrew speakers,” the researchers explained.

The study divided the participants –- students from the University of Haifa -– into three groups: 20 native Hebrew speakers, 20 Arabic speakers who learned Hebrew at the age of 7-8, and 20 Russian immigrants who learned Hebrew after age 13. The participants’ socioeconomic characteristics were identical. The results showed that the accent level of Russian immigrants and of native Arabic speakers was similar. It also revealed that for the Russian immigrants, the higher the ability to exhibit empathy for the other, the weaker the accent. Amongst the Arabic speakers, there was no link between level of empathy and heaviness of accent.

The researchers’ hypothesis is that in the group of Arabic speakers, there is the factor of sociopolitical position, and, as to be expected, a lack of natural empathy for the native Hebrew-speaking population. That led the reseachers to conclude that both personal and sociopolitical aspects have an influence on accent in speaking a second language, and that teachers giving instruction in languages as second languages, especially among minority groups, must relate to the social and political connections when teaching.

Go share that tidbit of information with your ulpan teacher.

Legendary rock bassist chooses Jerusalem stone

The summer is full of flights with new immigrants coming to Israel from the US and Canada. In m my mind, they’re all latter-day Zionist heroes, but not all of them have played on records by Bob Dylan and Miles Davis, or shared a stage with The Doors or Steely Dan.

Meet Israel’s newest immigrant, Harvey Brooks – bass guitarist extraordinaire and the Forrest Gump of rock and roll. He’ll be arriving from Tuscon, Arizona with his wife Bonnie on an August 4th Nefesh B’nefesh flight, but his whole 40-year musical career has been one soaring flight.

He’s played bass guitar on some of the most groundbreaking records of the post-Beatles era – including Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew (1969), The Doors Soft Parade (1969) and 1968’s Super Session featuring Michael Bloomfield, Al Kooper and Stephen Stills. And that’s only a fraction of the some 100 albums he’s appeared on or produced over the last 40 years on his way to cementing his status as one of the most respected figures on the American music scene.

He spoke with me for an article in the The Jerusalem Post.

“We’ve been going back and forth for a number of years, and every time we’re here, we’d talk about moving,” said the 65-year-old Brooks, whose stepdaughter Lori lives in the Gush Etzion settlement Neve Daniel. “Our two other kids are secure and established now, and we figured this is the time for us, for an adventure. It’s a good time to come.”

Calling Tuscon home since 1998, Brooks and Bonnie opened a guitar and music shop (17th Street Guitars and World Music) inside an international food market, the 17th St. Farmer’s Market, and started a Web business together with Jerusalem-based Web developer Charlie Kalish call Treasure Hidden that sells items from both establishments as well as other artifacts. To add to the symbiosis, Brooks formed a band with the market owner, called the 17th Street Band, playing a mix of rock, soul and blues.

“We’ve just released an album called Positively 17th Street,” said Brooks proudly, adding that while he’s going to be spending most of his time in Jerusalem, he plans on keeping his US endeavors ongoing. But when asked if he’s going to become musically active in Israel, Brooks said, “absolutely.”

“There are some great musicians in Israel. The last time we were here, we got to meet Ehud Banai, he’s a wonderful man and a great artist. Hopefully, we’ll spend some time with him,” said Brooks.

Welcome to the ‘hood, Harvey.

Nostalgia Sunday

Sometimes it’s the dog days of summer, as you drift or, preferably, drive in a comfortably air-conditioned car, through the familiar streets of your neighborhood that you pay more attention to where you are and where you’re going.

At least that’s what seems to have happened to a friend and neighbor of mine, Kenny Borsykowsky, who recently spent time putting together a fabulous document of historical photos and descriptions of our Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot. Most famously home to the early Israeli writer S.Y. Agnon, the Talpiot of yesteryear was, in essence, a Jerusalem suburb, as well as an outpost of sorts, guarding the border with Jordan. And for the residents, life was full of challenges. The bus, tells Kenny through an Agnon quote from The Fire and The Trees, came four times a day.

“And for the bus to come and go as scheduled 4 times a day. And what would [the driver] do if he had to consult with the neighbors? Indeed there was no telephone. He would take the shofar, climb onto the roof of his house and blow it, the neighbors would hear and come…”

That was later in the settlement of the area. Beforehand, in the 1900s, the entire area was a cluster of army bases and today’s Beitar Street was once a landing strip. Other points of interest? The Orthodox synagogue, commonly known as S.Y. Agnon, and where I have been attending one of the many daily minyanim in order to say kaddish for my father — more on that later — was named for Agnon, one of the first residents of the area. He was born in Galicia, moved to Jaffa in 1908, then to Berlin and back to Palestine in 1924, when he settled in Talpiot. He loved the neighborhood, as he wrote in The Sign:

“I stood among the little trees, all surrounded by gardens…Since I love the small houses and the refreshing gardens, I will tell their story.”

In The Sign he tells of a young veterinarian who wants to build his home in Talpiot, overlooking the desert with the Dead Sea in the distance:

“Descending from his donkey, he began hiking and walking, making his way among thorns and boulders, pondering in thought: ‘Imagine if I could make this place my home, together with my wife and children! But living here was impossible, far from town with neither any sign of settlement nor a living soul around, except for birds and insects.”

Clearly, those times have long passed, as witnessed by the many residents, long lines of traffic in the morning hours and Egged buses passing through all day long. And Agnon got to witness his neighborhood’s changing facade as well, as witnessed by his decision to build the entrance of his own home away from the street, in order to reduce the noise entering his own home. It was from his home library that he worked, writing his books as well as the Prayer for the State of Israel, and he even convinced the city to make his street one-way (which it is to this day) to cut down on traffic and post a sign stating, “Please keep quiet: Writer at work!”

If only I could convince them to do the same for me…

Nostalgia Sunday – On the street where you lived…

Today I visited all the houses where I’ve ever lived in Israel. Almost — I’ll get to that in a minute. Thanks to Zoomap.co.il, which has been photographing the city streets and each and every building in Israel, you too can take a look at your old digs and check up on how badly the place has continued to deteriorate since you yourself lived under its leaky roof.

For example, the apartment building near trendy Sheinkin Streeet in Tel Aviv where I don’t live anymore. Don’t be put off by the disgusting facade. Location is everything.

And then the place in glorious north Tel Aviv, off HaYarkon Park, where I moved to escape trendiness and find parking.

And the place after that — not a great apartment — but still right on the park.

I started to get hooked on finding a picture of every place I’d ever lived here. That’s when I found out that Zoomap also has its flaws: this is a picture of the building in front of the Jerusalem building where my family lived in 1973-4. You can see our building peeking out on the left-hand side. Apparently the Zoomap folk were too tuckered out to walk up the hill to take pictures of the cul-de-sac.

But I got back on track with this picture of my grandmother’s old apartment which was Party Central for several years in the early 80s.

I could not find an address for the Hadassah Youth Center on Mt. Scopus and so could not do a search for a picture — another failing of Zoomap is that, like GPS, it doesn’t recognize institutions, only addresses — but I’m pretty sure this is the immigrant absorption center in Dimona where Young Judaea parked us for a few months om 1979. Again, the dowdy appearance is deceiving; the Black Hebrews were also living there at the time, which made it kind of cool.

And this is where I live now! Back to Jerusalem, just up the street from grandma’s old apartment. Life is funny.

Google Earth doesn’t get down to building resolution for Israel so use Zoomap to take a trip down memory lane. Or purchase some real estate. It’s part of Bezeq’s 144 directory assistance site which is now translated into English. Happy trails!

 

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  Israel is often seen as a place of conflict and strife. In reality there is much more: there's business and research; art and culture; community and family. At ISRAELITY, Israelis blog their daily thoughts, experiences and insights. It's the real Israel, not the media's Israel. It's people living ordinary lives in an extraordinary place.

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