The insider’s reference

May 4, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Life, Pop Culture, tv 

It’s not exactly Israel-related, but it’s always funny when TV screenwriters put in hamevin yavin — ‘for those in the know’ — references for characters. This time, it was in the new HBO show, “Girls”, which is about a group of young women living in New York, post-college. In one of the recent episodes — it just started up in mid-April — Jessa Johansson, a Brit and her cousin, Shoshanna Shapiro, are crossing the street somewhere downtown when a guy calls out to Shoshanna, reminding her that they knew each other in Camp Ramah and that she carried out the best kitchen raid he’s ever experienced.

Yes, it’s the Camp Ramah reference, appealing to all those who attended one of the seven, now eight, Ramah camps in North America, established and run by the Conservative Movement, and with programs in Israel as well. It’s not the first Ramah reference on TV. On “Will and Grace,” actress Debra Messing sometimes dropped Ramah references, thanks to one of the screenwriters who attended, and supposedly Messing did as well.

Ramah Israel has also made onto the Israeli small screen, although more unobtrusively, as part of the opening scenes in “Srugim”, which shows images of Jerusalemites walking to shul on Friday night, when some cameraperson captured the students on TRY — Tichon Ramah Yerushalayim — making their way to a local synagogue.

It’s a small thrill, but a thrill nonetheless. Clearly, you write about what you know.

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On the road again to Ma’aleh Adumim

May 3, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, News, Travel 

Cutting the ribbon in Ma'aleh Adumim.

The debate over whether settlements are at the crux of the Israeli-Arab conflict goes on and on, without definitive results. In the meantime, due to natural growth, the residents of the settlements require expanded infrastructure to carry on their every day lives.

Thus this week witnessed the opening of a new entrance to the city of Ma’aleh Adumim, the city east of Jerusalem on the way to the Dead Sea – a road that actually benefits the Palestinians in the neighboring town of Ezeriya.

Until now, residents of both locations used the same traffic circle that fed the entrances to both towns, causing traffic jams, and long delays for the Palestinians in particular. While that entrance will remain open, the traffic into Ma’aleh Adumim is going to decrease significantly because of the new entrance. It bypasses the main road and takes motorists through a picturesque incline, past a new Keren Kayamet man-made lake and park (with a Caffit restaurant) and into the heart of the city.

At the official ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday, Mayor Benny Kashriel was joined by Housing Minister Ariel Attias and other officials, touting the improvement to the quality of life of the area’s residents. Kashriel noted that for the last six months or so, he hadn’t failed to meet someone from Ma’aleh Adumim without being asked when the new road was going to open.

A few minutes after the modest ceremony, the orange cones were taken away, and the new road saw its first motorist. Attendees grabbed the last rugelach and drinks and made their own way back up the hill into the city. And life in a settlement goes on.

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Reconciliation through music challenged

May 1, 2012 by · 4 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Social Justice 

Ahinoam Nini

Sometimes, making overtures toward reconciliation with one’s enemies can be an unpopular move. Look what’s happened with singers Ahinoam Nini and Neshama Carlebach. Nini, who is known internationally by the name Noa, performed last week at an alternative Memorial Day event for both bereaved Jewish and Palestinian families. According to JTA, Nini called the ceremony – organized by Combatants for Peace, a joint Israeli-Palestinian group that originally was comprised of former Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants – “moving” and marked by “unity, understanding, empathy, and especially peace.”

However in the week since the event, a Facebook group calling for the boycott of Nini has gained more than 3,500 members, who apparently think that such events provide moral equivalency between the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. Nini dismissed such claims, writing on her Facebook page that “I am just shocked by this stupid and ugly distortion. I sang at an alternative ceremony, at which Jews and Arabs remember and cry together for their loved ones who were lost in the ongoing war between us.”

Neshama Carlebach, the Jewish spiritual singer and daughter of the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, also stirred some feathers with her reworked version of Israel’s national anthem, ‘Hatikva’, recorded for Israel’s 64th Independence Day, and performed on Sunday at The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York.

The song, suggested by the Jewish paper The Forward, contains some new lyrics aimed at allowing both Jews and Arabs to relate to the words. Rather than singing “A Jewish soul still yearns” in the anthem, Carlebach sings, “An Israeli soul still yearns,” and instead of “An eye still gazes toward Zion,” she sings “An eye still gazes toward our country.”

Some attendees to the conference apparently were offended by the changed lyrics, and whether due to the late hour or in protest, Carlebach’s show with the Green Pastures Baptist Choir was sparsely attended.

Who said music soothes the savage beast? Here’s Carlebach’s reworked version of the anthem.

YouTube Preview Image

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The morning after

April 30, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Life 

by Abby

I used to think it was weird that Israel’s Memorial Day and Independence Day are back-to-back. As the sun sets on Memorial Day, we go from eulogizing to dancing – in the same ceremony. The shift feels jarring.

Pool at Mt. Herzl

But this year, I finally understood what Prime Minister Netanyahu referred to as “the unbreakable bond between Memorial Day and Independence Day.”

My husband and I visited Jerusalem’s Mt. Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery and its main military cemetery, on the morning of Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day). The day before, it had been filled with somber families and politicians. The morning after, it was quiet. Bouquets and wreaths, memorial candles and black-beribboned Israeli flags adorned every one of the too-many graves.

The flowers were just starting to wilt. The plastic bags in which they’d come — imprinted with the words “Yehi Zachram Baruch,” “May their memory be a blessing”– overflowed the trash bins. Exactly how many stems, I wondered, did the government purchase and distribute at its 44 military cemeteries to lay at the graves of22,993 men and women killed in the line of defense? How much wax, how much blue-and-white cloth and black ribbon were needed to supply all the candles and flags?

Walking among the rows of tombstones, through the underground memorial to the 69 Dakar submarine sailors lost in 1968, and around the blue pool dedicated to the 140 sailors killed on the SS Erinpura in 1943, we saw that many were under 25 years old at the time they fell, and many were immigrants, like us.

We left Mt. Herzl and got on the light rail, where the mood changed abruptly. Instead of handing out fines, the conductors handed out lollipops and wished everyone a happy holiday. We then met up with our son, daughter-in-law and two little grandchildren for a traditional cookout amid throngs of Israeli families fanning the flames of their grills.

That’s when we understood the connection on a personal level. If not for all the brave men and women who sacrificed their future, we wouldn’t have a present to celebrate. They are the reason we were free to scamper around a Jerusalem park with our grandson and granddaughter on Independence Day, wiping their sticky faces from the residue of s’mores and listening with delight to their “Hebrish” toddler talk.

If Independence Day were separate from Memorial Day as it is in the US, the message might not be as obvious. I really get that now.

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Anti-Israelity in New York

April 30, 2012 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Life, Religion 

You meet them in the strangest of places. Or maybe it’s not so strange.
In New York today for The Jerusalem Post Conference, I left my hotel in the early evening to walk around Times Square and ran smack into a group of haredim on the corner holding signs calling Israel’s existence a blasphemy.

They were singing and chanting and attracting quite a crowd. A couple of young, female Japanese tourists stopped and took some photos. A hot dog vendor asked them if they were going to join the protesters. And the girls responded, “No, we’re not Jewish.”

After watching the sickening display outside the hotel, I almost wished I could say the same. But in the end, I said, “no, I’m Israeli.”

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