English theater takes the stage in Jerusalem
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture
The Maccabee Queen is one of the attractions of the Stage One #2 festival.
Claiming to offer a unique perspective on issues of identity and culture from both local and international perspectives, the lineup for the three days during Chol Hamoed (the intermediary days of Pessah) include plays, music and stand up comedy by local Anglo Jerusalemites.
Highlights include The Maccabee Queen, a feminist play set in the tumultuous period of the Hasmonean kingdom and S.Y. Agnon’s story The Fable of the Goat
The Maccabee Queen is a play, written in iambic pentameter by Jerusalem resident Lauri Donahue, telling the story of Queen Alexandra – aka Shlomtzion Hamalka – quite faithfully as reported by Josephus and mentioned in the Talmud.
She was reading Josephus, and said “wow, this reads like Shakespeare!” with civil war among brothers, fratricide, matricide. So the play reads like what Shakespeare would have done with Josephus.
The Fable of the Goat finds S.Y. Agnon, the Nobel Prize laureate and one of the founding fathers of modern Hebrew literature, using language to evoke pathos, humor and biblical narrative in a dramatic story. . Other plays include Jewtopia, a comedy about two friends who team up to teach each other how to woo the women of their choice, and Mikveh, a drama about a new mikveh attendant involved in intrigue and suspicion.
Jerusalem’s leading English improv group Hahafuch will lighten things up with their sketches about Jewish identity, Israel, aliyah, and religion in Israel, and local piano man Ben Draiman present From Within – by The Ben Draiman Music Project.
The English-speaking community in Jerusalem will be able to kvell in pride at this display of talent offered in Stage One #2.
Foto Friday – Bread of Affliction… and Refrigeration
Filed under: Food, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, News, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture
Some years ago, Israelis took a liking to an Italian bread known as ciabatta. Since then, the local version of these small, elongated loaves has — like a lump of out of control sourdough — morphed into something so wildly different from the original that visiting Italians barely recognize that which most Israelis today call a “jepata” or, worse yet and more embarrassingly, “Geppetto” (pictured left).
What you can’t see in the picture is that this particular jepeta is gluten-free and therefore — aside from being a godsend for sufferers of Celiac and other wheat-sensitive conditions — is kosher for Passover (at least for pulse-eaters) and will be widely available in your local Super-Sol (a.k.a. Shufer Sal) this coming Passover holiday.
The image is quite different from how most people envision Passover in Israel. While news archives are filled with pictures of bakers of handmade shmura matza like these fellows from Matzot.org…
In fact, most Israelis will eat matza that looks like this, hot off the press at Matzot Aviv…
Manufactured in automated factories like Jerusalem’s Yehuda Matzos where, from the mixing to the baking to the packing, they are almost untouched by human hands…
According to a Ynet/Gesher poll from last year, 69% of Israelis said they observed Passover dietary laws forbidding the consumption of leavening and leavened bread. The remainder have been stocking their freezers with a week’s worth of the following…
But why not just eschew the carbs for a week and go with the unleavened flow? Matzot Aviv certainly has, as the producer of what they say is the world’s biggest matza…
Aviv is also producer of an industrial video that just about defines the terms “wacky” and “zany”. Between the yucks, you can learn a few fun facts. For example, did you know that the average machine-produced matza is 18 cm by 18 cm? No? Well, now you do.
Justin Bieber encounters Israeli paparazzi
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture
Justin Bieber takes a motorcycle ride with fans hanging on. (Yoni Tuvali)
Now it’s Justin Bieber’s turn to be justifiably annoyed. The teen singing sensation arrived in Israel on Sunday night ahead of his show Thursday night in Tel Aviv’s Hayarkon Park. And the paparazzi haven’t left him alone.
On Tuesday, after evidently having an experience similar to DiCaprio’s at the Kotel, he took to Twitter to call out the paparazzi for trying to snap photos of him while he was in Israel taking in the sights, MTV reported.
“You would think paparazzi would have some respect in holy places,” he lamented. “All I wanted was the chance to walk where Jesus did here in Israel.”
“Staying in the hotel for the rest of the week u happy?” he wrote. “People wait their whole lives for opportunities like this, why would they want to take that experience away from someone. They should be ashamed of themselves. Take pictures of me eating but not in a place of prayer, ridiculous.”
Bieber’s post prompted the latest Twitter trend, #papsleavebiebsalone
A day earlier on Monday, Bieber tweeted about his excitement over being in Israel.
After spending the morning in his hotel room, the singer visited a Tel Aviv beach with his parents and crew members, played the traditional “matkot” (paddleball) game, rode a motorcycle and had a late lunch. In the evening he put on a white jacket, a tie and a pair of jeans and went out with his family for dinner at a restaurant near the beach.
“Just amazing place…not a bad day. just wish got a little more space and privacy from the paps to enjoy this time with my family. Thanks,” he wrote. “I’m in the holy land and i am grateful for that. I just want to have the same personal experience that others have here.”
Media reports have his itinerary including visiting the Sea of Galilee, Nazareth and Bethlehem, and on Wednesday even meeting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The PR firm of the show’s promoter has been putting out daily updates summarizing Bieber’s whereabouts as if he was a head of state instead of a 17-year-old teen idol.
After DiCaprio’s incident a few years ago, PR pros advised that the way to stop paparazzi from stalking you is to hold one event for the press, let them photograph you to their hearts content, and then they’ll leave you alone. Bieber’s people didn’t take that advice and have kept the visit totally private and shrouded in secrecy. Knowing the veracity of our local lensmen, however, I’m not sure a press conference would help anyway. They’d be staking him out everywhere along his journey anyway.
It’s almost as if we didn’t have real issues to deal with. How refreshing.
Invite Justin Bieber to your seder
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Entertainment, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Religion
It’s going to be a busy week in Israel. Not only are southern residents dodging missile fire from Gaza with no end in sight, Israelis all around will be busy cleaning their homes and removing hametz this week in anticipation of Pessah. But for many thousands of mostly young, female Israelis, this is the week that Justin Bieber is coming to town.
The American teen heart throb will be arriving midweek to give a much-anticipated performance on Thursday night in Ramat Gan’s Hayarkon Park. Since the show was announced a couple months ago, promoter Gad Oron has been inundated with emails and phone calls – not from the logistical angle of putting on an expensive open-air show.
“I’ve been getting over 100 emails a day and dozens of phone calls – not just from young girls but from grandfathers and mothers – all saying something like if their daughter isn’t able to meet Justin, her world will be destroyed,” said Oron last week,
Despite the frenzy of Biebermania, it hasn’t translated into ticket sales, according to media reports last week. While the park can hold upwards of 40,000 spectators, Oron was quoted as saying he’d be happy if a still-respectable 25-30,000 people attended the show.
To aid that goal, ads last week announced a special deal whereby if two general admission field tickets were purchased for NIS 240 a piece ($75), then a parent would receive a free ticket as a chaperone. The promotion will likely help boost the sales in the final days leading up to the show.
In an interview with Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun, which was published in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal last month, he intimated that Bieber was interested in attending a Seder while he was here. But according to Oron, he hasn’t been approached by Bieber’s staff about it and isn’t aware how long the singer is expecting to stay in Israel. His next scheduled show after Tel Aviv is three days after Seder night, on April 21 in Malaysia.
“We’ll be happy to organize anything that he wants,” said Oron.
So, if you’d like Justin Bieber at your family seder next week, there’s still a chance.
In Israel, life’s a circus
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Travel
Douglas Gerling of the Medrano Circus
You know spring has arrived when the circus comes to town. Virtually ever since Israel’s inception, there’s been an influx of European traveling troupes who set up a little village centered around the big top and perform two, three and even four shows a day for the adoring Israeli audience.
The Medrano Circus, established in 1864 in Italy, has been coming regularly here since 1952, and this year they’ve already started a staggering eight-month stint of performances in over a half dozen locations in the country.
They’ve finished up a few weeks in Haifa and have pitched their tents in Tel Aviv for the Pessah school vacation period which begins this weekend. It really is a little village in the backstage area of the circus with over 150 performers and staff people living in caravans, tents, and experiencing the carnival life for most of the year.
Douglas Gerling, one of the daredevil high wire experts and practitioner of stunts like the Wheel of Death and The Globe -where he and his cohorts drive high-speed motorcycles in a tiny suspended cylinder narrowly avoiding taking each other’s heads off – loves being in Israel, even though he’s away for months at a time from his wife and two young children in Germany.
He was a featured performer in Circus Europa which came to Israel last year, and this year joined the Medrano. A paramedic by profession, Gerling was assigned to an ambulance in waiting staff at a German circus and fell in love with it. Within a few months, he was performing.
“Some days we have four shows in a row, and at the end of the day, you’re so tired you can’t walk. But when we go out to perform, we don’t think about being tired – we give everything we have,” he told me last week. “I like the audiences in Israel very much. They give us so much love and power to perform. The Israeli audience is hot.”
If you can’t make it to cheer Gerling and his colleagues on in Tel Aviv, they’ll be heading to Beersheba for Yom Haatzmaut in Beersheva, June in Jerusalem and onward through to Succot in Holon. When the real circus of our daily lives gets to be too much, it’s reassuring to know that the old-style circus has come to town.
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