• Home
• Archives
• About
• Links
• Contact

Volunteering for Rhianna

Even a seemingly ‘everybody wins’ scenario can hit some snags when thrust into the realities of Israeli life. Take, for example, the upcoming concert at Jaffa’s Bloomfield Stadium by R&B sensation Rhianna.

The concert’s promoter and its sponsor, cell phone provider Orange, have hooked up with the international organization Rockcorps, which has successfully galvanized thousands of young music fans into performing community volunteer projects, by offering tickets to shows by artists like Lady Ga Ga, Nelly and Akon in the US and England to youth who sign up for and carry out four hours of volunteer work.

Tickets to Rhianna’s show cannot be obtained through normal means – you can’t buy them – you have to be between 16-25 years old and you have to sign up on a special Orange Rockcorps Web site for one of the hundred or so volunteer projects they list and then get authorization that you carried out your task. The projects listed on the Orange Web site include working in Keren Kayemet forests clearing brush or painting pathway marks, distributing food at soup kitchens and sorting donated clothes.

It sounds like a splendid idea that will benefit everyone involved, until you realize that there’s a hefty percentage of Israelis in that age group who are currently serving in the IDF. According to some soldiers, and their moms, the policy is unfairly discriminating against them, as their free time is severely curtailed by their military assignments.

“Most of the people in this country between the ages of 18-25 are soldiers and a great portion are soldiers living on bases. This is completely unfair to them,” said Sharon Bar-Lev, a Kfar Saba resident whose daughter, a diehard Rhianna fan, is currently serving in the IDF.

“I would like to know how soldiers, who come home once every two weeks, and leave their base around noon on a Friday, can possibly do four hours of community service and make it home before Shabbat, using public transportation to arrive at the volunteer site and from there back home.”

Bar-Lev added that she was more than willing to buy a ticket for her daughter to see Rhianna, but a call to the ticket office confirmed that no tickets were being sold to the show.

Bar- Lev hopes her grassroots campaign will get the policy changed. Just last week, frustrated Metallica fan Tal Mussman was able to force promoters of the the American hard rock band to significantly lower prices for the group’s Ramat Gan show by launching a page on Facebook calling on fans to boycott the show.

While applauding the efforts of Rockcorps and Orange, Bar-Lev said that her daughter and other Rhianna fans serving in the army shouldn’t be penalized for doing their jobs.

“Isn’t my daughter giving two years of her life to serve in the IDF enough of a volunteer project?”

Foto Friday – Biking to the Extreme

Israel is a natural location for extreme sports. Some would even venture that just living in Israel is an extreme sport, given our highway conditions and of course that pesky security situation.

Even the Israel Postal Company has gotten into the act, with a series of stamps celebrating windsurfing, and — of course — the ever-popular all-terrain biking.

Yes, there are bikers all over Israel’s terrain, particularly on the weekends. when they come out in droves. It makes sense. The sport combines the positive effects of outdoor exercise with the even more popular crazy Israeli driver syndrome. There are extreme bikers in the Jerusalem Hills…

In Tel Aviv…

Very extreme biking in Haifa…

The popularity of ultra-sports is constantly growing (for proof, check out ISRAEL21c’s video about Parkour in Tel Aviv) and there are events scheduled for every weekend in the coming months. Shvoong is central repository for all sports-related information but unfortunately, the site is only in Hebrew, as is ProSport, which runs some of the country’s most fun and creative events. For English, try the Israel Cycling Federation, Cyclenix – MTB Israel, Ayalot, the Israeli Club for Runners and Triathletes or Sarma, the Israel Extreme Sports and Rescue Association.

And consider signing up for a charity hike or bike trip: Tsad Kadima’s Hike for Hope, Hazon’s Jerusalem To Eilat Ride 2010; ALYN Hospital’s 11th International Charity Bike Ride. All worthy causes and good fun.

Using the Mossad to sell food

The charade that Israel wasn’t involved with the Dubai murder of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in January continues, but that’s not stopping one advertising creative team from exploiting the scenario involving the Mossad to develop a TV commercial based on the killing.

Supermarket chain ‘Machsanei Kimat Hinam’ (The Almost Free Warehouse – one of the incredibly catchy names our retail geniuses here have come up with) has built a campaign for Pessah holiday shopping based on the infamous surveillance camera footage showing suspected assassins stalking Mabhouh.

An AP report on the ad says that the actors in the ad are carrying tennis rackets, and wearing hats, glasses and wigs — the same disguises worn by the alleged killers — as they make their way through store aisles.

The commercial’s tagline? “We offer killer prices.”

Local advertising executive Sefi Shaked admitted that the campaign was inspired by footage released by the Dubai police showing the suspects in their hotel. “It’s a funny take of this event,” Shaked said. “We were fascinated by the technique of using surveillance cameras instead of (expensive) high production commercial cameras, and the latest events in Dubai gave us a great opportunity.”

And there are wink and nods to Israeli involvement in the assassination with an actress wearing a wide-brimmed floppy hat mimicking Israel’s policy of neither confirming or denying involvement, saying she “couldn’t admit to anything.”

The ad – like the Jerusalem building fiasco taking place now during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit here – points to the well-established trait of Israelis being totally oblivious sometimes to international sensitivities and norms regarding certain behavior and actions. When you first make aliya, it can be kind of charming, but sometime along the line, it becomes another one of those annoying things that make you wonder if we care at all how we’re perceived by the outside world.

Nostalgia Sunday – Commercials Go Way Retro

We are awash in a flood of nostalgia that shows absolutely no sign on abating. As part of that trend, our commercials and TV shows are populated by the stars of yesteryear, trying today to earn some of the cash-o-la they couldn’t back in those modest days.

Take, for example, singer-songwriter Mati Caspi, seen lately endorsing Bituach Yashir direct insurance. Other unlikely singing insurance pitchmen include David Broza and Boaz Sharabi.

And here, just to remind you of why we loved them — Riki Gal and Mati Caspi in concert televised by Channel 2, then in its infancy. (Check out Riki’s single lace glove!).

Gal, by the way, is still a force to be reckoned with (she judged the first two seasons of Kohav Nolad, the Israeli version of Pop Idol), and will be performing in Jerusalem on Monday night this week at a benefit for Tsad Kadima, the Israeli organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of children, adolescents and young adults with cerebral palsy and other motor dysfunctions. (Tickets are still available. Contact anat@tsadkadima.org.il or call 02-6540062).

But back to nostalgia: even stars who no longer walk this earth are getting into the game. Israel Discount Bank revived a commercial from the 80s that starred the late great actor Shaike Ophir.

The ad’s revival highlights the fact Discount Bank was Israel’s first to offer telebanking-a revolutionary concept back then, especially in light of the poor quality of our phone service (“poor” being a polite substitute for the other four letter word I was considering using). Ophir actually offers the cop an asimon phone token so he can make the call. The commercial has proven so popular, there’s a follow-up where today’s comedians pay homage to Ophir:

Even Maccabi Health Services has climbed on the retro bandwagon, launching a radio campaign that employs the use of this catchy jingle for powdered orangeade Zip. The connection between HMO and beverage is tenuous — something about “We’re not in the Eighties anymore, so why should your health organization be?” — but it’s fun to revisit the era and that peculiar but sweet Israeli institution of the family whistle. Enjoy the original.

Oscar fever in Israel

We’ll have to either stay up all night or get up at 3 am Monday morning to watch this year’s Academy Awards to see if the Israeli entry in the Best Foreign Film category Ajami takes home the country’s first Oscar.

It’s the third year running that an Israeli film has been nominated (after Beaufort and Waltz With Bashir). And Ajami’s intense portrayals – intertwined stories of a young Muslim in the crime-ridden Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa gets caught in an Arab clan feud and his own forbidden romance with a Christian woman; a Jewish police officer in search of his missing soldier brother, and the tale of a Palestinian youth who sneaks into Israel for menial work – are making it, if not a favorite, then at least a strong contender for the Oscar.

And, as Hannah Brown wrote in The Jerusalem Post, Ajami has already won just by getting to the Hollywood ceremonies. Directed by an Arab – Scandar Copti – and a Jew – Yaron Shani, “it’s hard to overstate the symbolic value of the collaboration and friendship between these two, who are from different ethnic groups, religious affiliations and backgrounds. They spent seven years working on this gritty film about the crime-ridden Ajami neighborhood in Jaffa, which they managed to get into the Cannes Film Festival, where it won a special mention. These two young, first-time directors who had to live with relatives while making the film because they had put all their money into it, have seen it win honors and rave reviews on three continents.”

It’s been fun watching the the two, along with the cast and their families first forays into Hollywood – most of the cast consisted of Jaffa residents who weren’t really acting too much in their portrayals of the working class; for many, it was their first trip outside of Israel and for some, their first airplane ride. Star Shahir Kabahar, 25, had to take vacation days from his job as a bureka baker at his family’s Jaffa bakery, in order to travel to the ceremony.

Footage of them walking outside the Kodak Theater and staring wide-eyed at the spectacles on Hollywood Boulevard demonstrate the huge journey one can make with film and the impact on lives it can create. Good luck to Ajami tonight!

Update: Boycott of Metallica results in lower prices

It almost reminds me of those halycon activism days of the ’60s and ’70s. 26-year-old business and management student Tomer Mussman has proven that the little guy can stand up to the ‘Man’ and make him back down on unreasonable demands.

As reported on Israelity yesterday, a growing contingent of Metallica fans were joining a Facebook page that Mussman had launched over the weekend calling for a boycott of the band’s May 22nd show at Ramat Gan Stadium over what they claimed were inflated ticket prices.

Well, it turns out that the groundswell of support for the boycott (the Facebook page had garnered 6,000 members and a dozen or so articles on music Web sites) got the attention of the band and the promoter of the show Gad Oron.

On Wednesday, Oron and Mussman had a pow-wow, and when the smoke cleared, guess what? The prices of tickets for the standing room field – where most Metallica fans want to experience the show – had been lowered significantly.

Standing space that had cost NIS 1,200 will now be sold for NIS 990, while the tickets that originally cost NIS 900 and NIS 600 for the back and middle sections respectively, will be going for NIS 490. That’s almost 50% being lopped off the price of some tickets, demonstrating the huge profit margins that had been in the works.

“We would like to personally thank Metallica and their management for directly helping us with reaching our goal and reducing the prices,” said Mussman on Wednesday night following the announcement of the new prices.

Mussman, who told me that he’s been a fan of Metallica’s for 15 years and saw them in Rishon Lezion in 1999, explained that the campaign wasn’t against the band.

“We want the show to go on – what we want is the price to be lowered,” he said earlier Wednesday before the meeting with Oron. “What bothers us is that they’re raising the price because they can – the promotor is taking advantage of the fact that Metallica fans have been waiting 11 years for them to return here.”

By Wednesday night, however, Mussman, along with the other fan/activists were elated.

“After a four-day campaign, tens of news items about us worldwide, over 6,000 supporters and numerous media interviews we can say that we did it!” wrote Mussman on the Facebook page. “We won!”

And so did the little guy everywhere.

***

Sitting down for Metallica

The thing with concerts in Israel by international superstars, is that if there’s not a call for the artist to cancel the show by the pro-Palestinian lobby, then we have to start our own boycott efforts.

The case in question here is the upcoming show, announced last week, by veteran hard rock legends Metallica, who will be making their third appearance in our Mediterranean haven on May 22 at Ramat Gan Stadium.

The calls for a boycott of the show, however, aren’t emerging from any anti-Israel sentiment, like they have previously for Paul McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Elton John and Carlos Santana, among others. They’re coming from fans of the band who are outraged that tickets for the concert are well beyond the means of the average metalhead.

The vast ground area in the stadium is being divided into three ’standing room’ sections – tickets in the far back “Bronze” area will cost NIS 600 (about $170). The “Silver” area will cost NIS 900 ($260) and the “Gold” area, the closest to the stage, will cost NIS 1200 ($350).

There will be less expensive tickets available for seats in the stands, which will go from NIS 300-600 ($80-170) – but as the protestors are claiming, who wants to go to a Metallical show and sit off on the side in the stands?

According to the fans, who have started their own Facebook page in an attempt to pressure promotor Marcel Avraham to lower the prices of the field tickets, the prices are way out of line with the cost of tickets to Metallica’s other shows on their spring European tour.

So far, the Facebook page has garnered over 3,000 members, and has made a splash on a number of international metal Web sites. Will the boycott effort work, or are there enough Metallica fans in Israel who will pay any price to see their heroes to thwart the calls to stay home? Stay tuned.

Nostalgia Sunday – Purim Parties Past

One of the hard truths of life in Israel is that it always rains on Purim. It is as if the weather conspires to prove that we Jews can never hold a joyous celebration without breaking a glass or making a little baby boy cry.

And events conspire as well. A few days ago, Magen David Adom issued a stern directive against dangerous masks and costumes, in particular warning against Avatar-wannabes who might paint their bodies using blue chalk or charcoal. Spoilsports. And just today, the Homefront Command announced that the new gas mask distribution project has commenced. What impeccable timing.

Today is particularly stormy which makes it that much harder to get into a festive mood. But party we must! Even under the most difficult of conditions, Purim has been celebrated and documented — just see Yad VaShem’s online exhibition Purim – Before, During, and After the Holocaust) which is historic, not nostalgic, but important to know. And check out these photos of Purim kindergartens from the pre and post-State period, courtesy of the PikiWiki Israel project. (Click images for large version).

Kibbutz Sarid kindergarten – 1930s

Szold kindergarten, Netanya – 1935

Kindergarten in Tel Aviv’s Montefiore neighborhood – 1941

Purim celebration on Moshav Beit Itzhak – 1956

And check out these mini-hippies from Quneitra-Merom Golan, circa 1967!

Hebrew U.’s sugar daddy

So I’m watching some Baby Einstein videos on YouTube with my boys the other day, and I notice at the end of the credits that it says Albert Einstein and Baby Einstein are trademarks of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This came as something of a surprise to me. Baby Einstein is actually related in some way to Albert Einstein the genius? And both are trademarks of Hebrew U.? How is this possible?

Baby Einstein, for the uninitiated, is a line of multimedia products and toys that explore music, art and poetry for children aged three months to three years of age. I know, it sounds pretentious, but I have to say that some of the products are great and really grow with the kids. Anyway, it was created by a set of young parents in Atlanta, Georgia who then sold most of the company to The Walt Disney Company. They pay significant royalties to the estate of Albert Einstein.

And where does Hebrew University, Israel’s largest academic institution, come in? Einstein, who was on the university’s first board of governors, bequeathed his estate to the university. They receive royalties from licensing activities associated with his name, and, here’s an interesting twist: Corbis Corporation, which is owned by none other than Bill Gates, licenses the commercial use of Einstein’s name.

It’s a small world. And just think, every time you purchase a Baby Einstein product (but not if you watch the videos on YouTube), you’re helping out Hebrew U. I may not donate to my alma mater, but hey, I’m helping, sort of.

Lovely Rita, American star?

Everyone knows Rita, the longtime queen of Israeli song. But even she was surprised when a remake of one of her hits “Bo,” that she recorded in English a couple years ago suddenly began popping up on American Top 40 playlists over the last few months.

The buzz around the song – “Love Has Begun” – became so loud that US trade magazine New Music Weekly named Rita as ‘Top 40 Breakthrough Artist for 2009′ in its recently released list of winners.

“It’s funny and a bit weird. I didn’t expect it at all, it’s something I really didn’t think about,” Rita told The Jerusalem Post this week as she prepared to travel to the US for a series of shows next month.

The song was recorded at the behest of a longtime American friend of Rita’s, Florida-based attorney Arnold Beizer. From what I can gather, Beizer, the director of the US non-profit organization Let Freedom Ring which focuses attention on US veterans allegedly still being held in Vietnam, is also a Bible Codes scholar and involved in other activities.

He took Rita into a studio and recorded “Love Has Begun” and a cover of Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath My Wings” and brought them back to Florida where producer Carlo Pennizi remixed them and added more contemporary accompaniment.

Meanwhile, Rita had forgotten all about it, and was surprised in recent months to find out that the song, which appeared on an album of the same name that Beizer and Pennizi compiled with other singers, was charting in some radio station across the US.

Hot on the heels of her well-received performance in Jerusalem earlier this month for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berloscuni, Rita’s headed for a short US tour, which begins March 13, and includes two shows in New York and one each in Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles.

Focusing on her latest album Remazim, Rita has performed the well-received show over 200 times in Israel and abroad. But this time in the US, interspersed with the expat Israelis, maybe there’ll be a few new American fans of Rita, who may not even know she’s Israeli.

 

• Subscribe

  Subscribe to Israelity via email:

• Social Media

  • Twitter
  • YouTube
• • Facebook

• Categories

  • A New Reality
  • Art
  • Blogging
  • Business
  • coexistence
  • Crime
  • design
  • education
  • Environment
  • Food
  • Foto Friday
  • General
  • health
  • History and Culture
  • Holidays
  • Immigrant Moments
  • Israeliness
  • Life
  • Medical Breakthroughs
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Nostalgia Sunday
  • Picture of the Week
  • Politics
  • Pop Culture
  • Profiles
  • Religion
  • Social Justice
  • Sports
  • Technology
  • Travel
  • tv
  • War

• The Face of Israel Today

• 

• About Israelity

  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.

• Free newsletter

  Sign up for ISRAEL21c's free weekly newsletter Email:

• Stories from ISRAEL21c.org

  • Testing iPod impact on young and old
  • Giving voice to peace [Video]
  • Microsoft Israel OneAlbum finds photos
  • Olympic medal-designer born in Israel

• Popular Posts

  • Idan Raichel project salutes Jerusalem
  • Foto Friday – Ron Shoshani’s Israel Eye Candy
  • Remember who the victim was
  • A moral dilemma on King David Street
  • Update: Boycott of Metallica results in lower prices

• Recently Written

  • A (c)hair raising experience
  • Light, Shadow and Color
  • A little Yolki Palki
  • On the road again
  • Nostalgia Sunday – The Womens Corps
  • Volunteering for Rhianna
  • The roof is green
  • Life as a board game
  • Foto Friday – Biking to the Extreme
  • Using the Mossad to sell food
  
  

• OUR COMMUNITY

• Recent Comments

  • Thomas on A little Yolki Palki
  • Jessica on The roof is green
  • Life Without Chocolate on Life without chocolate
  • David-Joe on Using the Mossad to sell food
  • David-Joe on Using the Mossad to sell food