Foto Friday – Purim Costumes, Israel style

March 9, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: design, education, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Travel, tv 

In our globalized wired world, its very hard to find a truly Israeli Purim costume. Gone are the times when little girls would dream of dressing up like Queen Esther and little boys live like wicked Haman for the day. Needless to say, the era of home-made dress-up has also passed — though many families do invest in having a seamstress whip up a bespoke fairy princess gown or two — and importers like Shoshi Zohar make their fortune each year at Purim time.

Nonetheless, a thorough perusal of the Shoshi Zohar online catalogue did yield some particularly Israeli fare, starting with this little Mossad agent…

I’m sure, despite the red Star of David on her cap, that this naughty nurse wasn’t trained by Magen David Adom…

This fellow seems as perplexed as I was at the idea of buying this get-up as a costume, when the real deal is easily available only a 15 minute drive away…

Shoshi Zohar actually has a whole section entitled “Costumes for Religious People” and here we do find some sentimental remnants of yesteryear’s costumes. Although the Megillah’s characters were curiously absent, I did find two out of the four Matriarchs. Here’s Rivka (Rebecca), her gown bedecked with camel appliques…

And Aharon (Aaron), the High Priest!

It was also nice to discover that local drugstore chain Super-Pharm had produced a series of instructional videos for the holiday about how to do face makeup and while Smurfette isn’t Israeli, the long-standing affection for the Dardasim, as they’re called here, is very much part of our local popular culture.

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Antigone Rising raves about Israel

March 7, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel 

Kristen Henderson, second from left, Nini Camps, second from right, and Cathy Henderson, right, all of Antigone Rising pose with two Arab students after their performance in Beersheba.

I recently wrote about the upcoming visit to Israel of American female country rock band Antigone Rising as part of the US State Department’s Cultural Envoy program.

Well, the quartet was here and gone, and they were fantastic. Not only that, they had a great time, as they themselves pointed out in blog postings on the site After Ellen.

Let’s take a peek at singer/rhythm guitarist Nini Camps’ observations after only a few days in Israel for the first time.

Today we played at Eshkol Ha Pais in Beer Sheva for about 250 Bedouin and Jewish students from local high schools.

Throughout our careers we’ve played tons of shows for high school and college students. Sometimes even in remote towns in the nooks and crannies of the U.S., but it’s safe to say that we have never played for kids that have never heard American music — at all.

I look around the town and it is developed as much as many American cities. But here, unlike in the U.S., there is such a diverse mix of cultures that a girl in jeans and uggs is walking next to a girl in full cover. I can’t think of anywhere in the U.S. that has such polar cultural diversity within such a tiny radius. We’ve been told the entire country of Israel is the size on New Jersey.

And then here we come blazing in. Ha, culture shock indeed!

We played for about an hour and it was hard to read some of the faces. Some were visibly interested and clapping, swaying, but some looked away or looked down and you couldn’t help but wonder if they were bored, shy or just not comfortable with what was happening onstage. Or all of the above, for that matter.

After the show we sat along the edge of the stage. It took a few brave souls to break the ice but once they did it was like a torrent rushing the stage. They all came up to say hello, teach us how to say hello, tell us their names, take pictures and some just came up to stare at us.

One boy couldn’t wait to tell me he loved Eric Clapton! One girl, pretty well covered up and with great English skills came up quickly to say how lucky she felt to have been at the show. Before I realized it she was gone and I was left wanting to tell her it was the other way around — that we were the lucky ones.

And here’s bass player and band founder Kristen Henderson’s take on the show in Beesheba.

We just played our first show in Beer Sheva for a mixed group of high school students, both Israeli Jews and Arabs. All of the Arab female students were covered from head to toe, a few only had their eyes showing.

One of our hosts from the U.S. Embassy told us that this would be a very culturally diverse group of students. That in most cases, these kids would never be in the same room with one another, but part of the U.S. State Department’s initiative was to bring them together from time to time in an effort to create peace and understanding between the cultures.

As the room filled, it was very clear who belonged to which group. The Israeli Jewish kids filtered down to the front rows. The boys stuck with the boys and girls with girls, but they were “Westernized” in the sense that some wore Adidas sweat jackets and carried iPhones. You didn’t get the sense they were intentionally divided by gender, but it was obvious they were divided by culture.

The Bedouins (or Israeli Arabs), on the other hand, sat further back – boys in the middle of the room and the girls fully covered from head to toe in the back of the room. At one point Nini came over to show me that two of the girls were cautiously clapping along during our set, unsure if they should be visibly enjoying the show.

After we performed, an Arab girl approached us accompanied by her teacher. She thanked us for sharing our culture with her and told us that our show, seeing four women on stage playing music, “empowered her” (her words; she spoke impeccable English).

A U.S. Embassy worker later told us the girl comes from a village with no running water or electricity. Her mother recently passed away and she is the oldest of six siblings. She is one of the brightest students in her school and hoped to go on to study science and technology, but due to her family’s situation she is now responsible for bringing up her siblings. The Embassy worker went on to say that seeing us perform today gave her hope that she can still have more for her life.

Here’s a short video montage of the band’s visit to Israel.

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Embracing Maccabi Tel Aviv

March 3, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Sports 

After living in Israel for over 26 years, there’s not many times I can say that I did something for the first time. But this week, I did indeed attend my first Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball game.

Maccabi Tel Aviv is the Yankees, Lakers and Cowboys of Israeli sport, all rolled into one.
With 5 European Championships, 49 Israeli Championships, 39 Israeli Cups, and 3 League Cups, Maccabi has been the most successful basketball team in Israel. It is also the fourth-most successful club in European history, and one of the most successful teams of the past decade in European basketball, having won three titles and reached the finals five times in that period.

The team boast a great lineup of legendary past players – native Israelis and American imports – such as Tal Brody, Miki Berkovich, Motti Aroesti, Kevin Magee, Doron Jamchi, Earl Williams, and Aulcie Perry, and more recently Derrick Sharp and Anthony Parker been among the elite of Europe’s basketball players.

But even though I had been a sports fanatic in the US growing up, I’ve failed to attach myself to Israeli sports in the same way. No shame in that – a Red Sox fan can’t change his colors overnight, or in a quarter century.

But that doesn’t mean that my youngest son can’t. Since he started an after-school basketball league this year because his friends were all doing it, he’s become enamored with the game – and with Maccabi TA. So after months of nudging from him, I was finally able to secure a couple tickets to a game this week at their home Nokia Arena.

And, to put it bluntly, it was a blast. From the comfortable on-top-of-the-game arena to the enthusiastic but civilized crowd and the superlative play of the team, it was as much fun for me as going to see the Boston Celtics back in the day.

I don’t know why I waited so long to lose my Israeli basketball virginity, but now that I have, I know it won’t be my last game.

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Canadian Cop

March 2, 2012 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Life, Travel 

Toronto's Pearson Airport

The woman at the rental car agency desk at Toronto’s Pearson Airport eyed my Israeli driver’s license suspiciously. She looked at the laminated card, then up at me, then back and forth several times.

“You’re going to have a problem if a policeman pulls you over,” she finally said, explaining her hesitation. “There’s no English on this.”

I pointed to my name and birthday in clear English. “I don’t see it,” she assured me with confidence.

“I’ll take my chances,” I replied and, a few minutes later, we were walking to our rented minivan for the week. “Anyway, since when have I ever been stopped by a cop,” I sniggered to myself.

Imagine, then, my surprise when I was flagged down by an officer just a day later while returning to the very same airport to pick up some late arriving family members who were attending the wedding that had brought us to the Great White North.

“What’s your hurry?” the policeman asked. His tone was less aggressive than conversational, in that agreeably polite Canadian way.

“We’re picking up my wife’s 93-year-old grandmother,” I replied, which was true. She was waiting inside the terminal.

“You know you were going 60 in a 30 kilometer zone,” he said. Courteous, just a simple statement of fact, right? Nevertheless, he took my license. As he held it in his hand, I saw him trying to make out the writing. “This isn’t in English,” he said. Wouldn’t you know – the rental car clerk’s premonition had come to fruition. Without fully thinking through the consequences, I pointed out my name and birthday. “Thanks,” he said, almost jovially.

But rather than giving me my license back and graciously wishing me a good day, he sauntered back to his car. For the first time, I started to worry (while trying not to curse). Would the fine I now imagined as a viable possibility be more than the rental cost of the vehicle? Would I have to appear in Canadian traffic court? Should we have taken the bus?

Now, if this were in Israel, my polite policeman would have been replaced by a 20-something snarly Israeli girl cop who would have ignored any attempts at charm. She would then sit in her vehicle for a good 30 minutes with no explanation.

It’s happened to me before, just for a random check, and I’ve never understood what takes so long. Do they have to run my name by the Interpol database using the same sporadic Internet connectivity that plagues my home computer? Are they just sitting and drinking coffee for fun? Are they actually ordering coffee?

The Canadian cop still kept us waiting, but for only half the time (it probably was even less, but time slows down when you’re watching your bank account virtually drain). When he walked back to my car, the long rectangular paper in his hand did not bode well.

Fortunately, my nerves were for naught: the paper was just a warning. Wow – either Canadians really are nicer, or issuing a ticket to a foreigner with a driver’s license in a language with squiggly lines, with the added high chance I would skip town without depositing a check (which would undoubtedly have been written with even more squiggles) was simply too much complication.

As it turns out, I had to circle the airport while Grandma made her way to the curb. As I returned, I drove at the proscribed 30 km/hour. Do you have any idea how slow 30 km/hour really is? And yet, all the other cars I saw were following the rules and crawling along. My thoughts returned to Israel again: no way an Israeli driver would go that slow – even a ticket would be better than being a freier.

For the rest of the trip, I stuck to the speed limit. I probably would have gotten another free pass if I were stopped again, but I wasn’t taking any chances – squiggly Israeli driver’s license or not.

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Meet the Mossad

March 1, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Politics, Profiles, War 

It’s not every day that you get to meet the one-time top spy in Israel. If you’re expecting Efraim Halevy to walk out of the pages of a John Le Carre novel or a James Bond movie, then you’ve got the wrong impression of the former head of the Mossad and a career spook since 1961.

The British-born Halevy is an unassuming, mild-mannered gentleman, evoking the cultured tones of Abba Eban and the appearance of an uncle you look forward to visiting with.

I was honored to introduce Halevy when he spoke to a rapt audience in Jerusalem this week as part of a lecture series at Kehilat Moreshet Avraham, a Conservative synagogue. Halevy spoke on the subject of “Are We The Victims of our own Biases?” – a title I didn’t really understand until he explained it.

According to Halevy – and he’s been involved with events in the region whose details will likely go to the grave with him – the Palestinians and the Arab world aren’t the only ones who’ve intentionally or not, prevented the normalization of relations between Israel and everyone else in the neighborhood. We’re also to blame.

Halevy, who led the Mossad from 1998 to 2002, doesn’t think Israel needs to insist on the Palestinians or anyone else for that matter recognizing Israel as a Jewish state or approving its right to exist. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, he said that Israel is a Jewish state and that any treaty or agreement signed with Israel by any other state or entity is tantamount to recognition, and it’s one of our biases based on insecurity that we insist on that extra step.

After reaching a peace agreement with Egypt, which had been Israel’s “most formidable enemy,” Israel should have surely gained an enormous injection of self-confidence, because in this achievement, Israel had broken the Arab anti-Israel alliance of solidarity, said Halevy.

Although Israel has many near miraculous achievements to its credit, Halevy believes that Israelis have not overcome an inherent Jewish perception of being the victim. After 2,000 years of suffering, being despised among the nations and victims of anti-Semitic actions that resulted in massive loss of life, Israelis still have difficulty in being self-confident when it comes to personal and national security. Israelis always labor under threat despite the fact that “we have the most efficient, most capable and most brutal defense capability in the region.”

Halevy also ruffled some feathers in the crowd when he said that Israel is wrong to always focus on and end to the conflict.

. “There will never be an end to the conflict. We need to translate conflict into something you live with in different terms, he said, citing several conflicts in which the adversaries have found a way to live together without peace treaties or final borders. “So why should we demand a final border?” he asked. “Why should we always want the ultimate?”

It was food for thought from someone who’s been in the trenches of diplomacy and espionage for decades. And thankfully, at the end of the evening, he hadn’t disclosed any secrets that would have necessitated disposing of the entire audience.

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