Foto Friday – Chaim Meiersdorf’s Israeli Weddings

May 25, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Religion 

Mazal tov…almost! This Saturday night is Erev Shavuot, the eve of the Shavuot (Feast of Weeks) holy day, marking the end of the counting of the Omer, the seven-week period from Pesach through Shavuot. Tradition has it that during the Omer, which is a period of mourning, Jewish couples do not marry — with the exception of Lag Ba’Omer (the tradition varies between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews) — but that’s all but over for this year. As of next week Israel’s spring/summer wedding season will open in full joyous force.

Israelis love a good wedding — the gatherings here tend to amass in the hundreds — and making merry is de riguer, as are cash gifts, which are calculated to cover the price of one’s food serving plus a little extra depending on your relationship to the happy couple (an online calculator, Kama Kessef, has been developed to assist in doing the math). Bringing a date to a wedding is optional but an accepted practice, as is eating, drinking and talking durng the chuppah. And of course, pinching the groom’s cheek to the point of pain.

Jerusalem-based Photographer Chaim Meiersdorf has, for the past 30 years, made a career specializing in such happy occasions.

Where sometimes tears are shed, but for joy…

And joy will make you jump, too!

Meiersdorf lives in Jerusalem and his clientele comes mainly from the various Orthodox Jewish communities there and around the country. More of his work can be viewed on his website.

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Foto Friday – Flowers of Jerusalem

May 18, 2012 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, education, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Picture of the Week 

Sometimes, you just have to stop and smell the roses. That statement is particularly apt for Jerusalem where life is politically charged on both the national and international fronts. The city’s public parks provide a bit of shelter, relieve the tension and offer a break from the heat.


© Pes & Lev

One such oasis is the Wohl Rose Park (Gan HaVradim), located opposite the Knesset and government precinct, at the foot of the Israeli Supreme Court. Established in 1981, the park has over 400 varieties of roses, and is one of the few parks of its kind in the Middle East.


© pmos_nmos


© RomKri

Jerusalem is seldom described as green and yet the city’s neighborhoods are dotted with flowers, flower boxes and flowering trees…


© RomKri


© Pes & Lev

The Jerusalem Botanical Gardens (JBG) is another great place for those who love flora and fauna. It’s also located adjacent to Givat Ram and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.


© RomKri

All photos are courtesy of the excellent Jerusalem Shots website where there are plenty more images to enjoy.

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Foto Friday – Yigal Pardo’s Dog (and Cat) Days

May 11, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, education, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Life, Picture of the Week, Profiles, Sports, Travel 

Photographer Yigal Pardo loves animals and has successfully parlayed that affection into a career.

Pardo studied photography at Hadassah College, Jerusalem, then worked in New York for a year, returning to Israel to open his pet photography business.

Pardo works with Israel’s pet food manufacturers, ad agencies, breeders, animal-related publications, professional and non-profit organizations as well as pet-lovers, shooting commercial studio work and portraits, and photographing animals in the great outdoors.

One organization that has benefited from his talents is Shaar HaGai Kennels, breeders of Israel’s national dog, the Canaan.

Pardo has documented kennel owner Myrna Shiboleth on her treks to seeks out new desert and Bedouin bloodlines so as to retain the natural characteristics of this “semi-feral” breed.

A previous post reported on Shaar HaGai’s current woes: the kennel — and with it its Canaan breeding program — is under threat of closure by the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). Shiboleth, a world champion dog breeder, dog show judge and the world authority on Canaan Dogs, is lobbying for public support via on an online petition. (50,000 signatures are needed and she’s up to 39,855, so if you support this cause, please sign and share the link).

Far from the wild, Pardo also photographs dog shows for the Israeli Kennel Club.

And cat shows, too!

A cat-owner himself, Pardo has stated that although his specialty is dogs, it is from cats that he’s learned the most about photographing animals.

“It is the dog’s nature to please his owner. When the owner brings them to a photographer, from the dog’s perspective, the photographer is an ally… The cat is not interested at all to please humans… but fortunately, he is also very curious and we can take advantage of this curiosity when we take the pictures.”

Great photos of animals of all kinds can be found on Yigal Pardo’s page at PetNet.co.il.

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Foto Friday – Ein Gedi Botanical Garden

May 4, 2012 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Life, Picture of the Week, Profiles, Religion, Travel 

The biblical city of Ein Gedi was a desert oasis, known for its date palms, vines and perfumed balsam. Modern-day Kibbutz Ein Gedi, located a kilometer down from the springs, is no less of an oasis, known for its desert agriculture, hotel/guest house and a prize-winning Botanical Garden that is the only one in the world to be integrated with the residences of the surrounding community.

According to Botanic Gardens Conservation International, “It is the only international botanical garden to have a community resident in it, which is a tribute both to the gardening staff and to the population of Ein Gedi. In fact, the development of the botanical garden and Kibbutz Ein Gedi are inseparable.”

Over years of trial and error, Ein Gedi’s gardeners have cultivated a collection of over 900 species of rare plants from all over the world…

The plants flourish in the summer heat, mild winters, and the mineral-rich Dead Sea atmosphere that encourages quick plant growth, so much so that some parts of the garden resemble a lush jungle…

Typical regional plants – date palms, olive, pomegranate and fig trees – can be found alongside tropical ones…

The adjacent Cactus Park is a rare collection of 1,000 species of cactus and desert plants from around the world…

At the garden’s northern edge is an observation point with a view of the entire oasis. (Click here for a 3D tour). And yes if you stay at the Ein Gedi hotel, you’ll likely meet one of these fellows…

The botanical garden office is open every day from 8:30 a.m-4:30 p.m. and on Friday until 2:00 p.m. For more information, please call: 08-658-444 or visit their website.

Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Ein Gedi Hotel. For more information, visit the hotel website and Facebook page.

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Nostalgia Sunday – ViewMaster Israel

April 29, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Blogging, Business, design, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Movies, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Technology, tv 

If you are a person of a certain age, then the ViewMaster holds a special charm. Like its predecessor, the Stereoscope, the View-Master was the virtual reality viewer of its day: a device designed to present 3-D photo images. And, like its predecessor, the Holy Land was a subject of great interest and popularity.

A bit of history: the ViewMaster (or View-Master) was first introduced at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 by the partnership of Wilhelm Gruber, an organ maker and amateur photographer, and Harold Graves, who was in charge of the postcard division at Oregon-based Sawyer’s Photo Services.

Their idea was to update the old-fashioned stereoscope to the new Kodachrome 16-mm color film, printing small-format photo transparencies and mounting them in pairs on a disk to be viewed with a simple hand-operated viewer. Initially, the photo subjects were travelogues, such as Carlsbad Caverns and the Grand Canyon, quickly followed by more far-flung locations such as Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

Collector and dealer Kip “Mr. ViewMaster” Brockman has several such travelogues on his site, as does the ViewMaster World blog. The disks were accompanied by a narrative booklet. For example, if you were to purchase Modern Israel, part of the Nations of the World series, as you viewed the stereoscopic image, you would read the following:

“Our El Al Israel Airlines plane lands at Lod Airport, near Tel Aviv. An attractive hostess welcomes us to Israel with a spoken greeting in Hebrew, from the Bible: “Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and when thou goest out.”

Tel Aviv, Israel’s No. 1 boom town, is the first all Jewish metropolis since Biblical times…The beach front is a Coney Island on the Mediterranean; booths sell corn on the cob, watermelon, or falaffel (“the Israeli hot dog”)…

Tel Aviv stands as a symbol of modern, energetic Israel. The country’s spirit is personified in its new generation. The native born Sabra— Hebrew word for cactus (tough outside, sweet inside) — is tall, healthy, suntanned, and confident, with the swagger of an adventurer.”

Oh my gosh! I would really like to visit that place where air-hostesses quote scripture, Israelis are tall and un-neurotic, and the notion of falafel as “the Israeli hot dog” doesn’t send me into paroxysms of laughter. But I digress.

After 1966, when Sawyer’s became a wholly owned subsidiary of the General Aniline & Film (GAF) Corporation, more child-friendly subjects like cartoons and TV series were introduced.

The full account of View-Master’s history of Mergers & Acquisitions is a long one; the short version is that the product is currently carried by Mattel subsidiary Fisher-Price, which in December 2008 announced that it would cease production of the scenic disks depicting tourist attractions. According to Wikipedia, “These disks of picturesque scenes and landscape scenery were descendants of the first View-Master disks sold in 1939.”

Fisher-Price continues to produce disks of animated characters, including Dora the Explorer who prefers to go places instead of just looking at them on-screen. Well, travel is easier nowadays. There was something magical, though, about looking at the tiny celluloid images through the ViewMaster lens. (It was, as my significant other says, “like having a tiny, personal TV” and if you squished the eyepiece sideways into your brow ridge just right, you could get the full 3D effect, however briefly). So you can still get a ViewMaster. As for getting hold of ViewMaster travelogues, there’s always eBay.

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