In a radio interview today, Eshet said that he, together with his wife, the artist Dalia Eshet, always tried to find unusual locations and tell a story that expressed thought and originality. Venues like the Dead Sea, the zoo, the streets of Tel Aviv and even the Lebanon War were his backdrops. The couple served as stylists, makeup artists, directors, producers, designers — even model scouts, as there were no modeling agencies when they first started.

Eshet: “In the pre-modeling agency days, the relationship between fashion houses and myself was direct. Entire collections were sent to my studio and from that moment on until I got the photo I wanted I dealt with finding the models, designing and producing the image (including location and accessories) — and ‘decorating’ the model (the term ‘styling’ didn’t exist [in Israel])”.

Dalia Eshet: “He loved select the ones that came with a background in dance and movement. The model’s personality was an important component expressed in his photography”.

The exhibition presents photographs of those personalities, including Israel’s leading fashion models of the period, such as Penina Rosenblum circa 1972, before she became Israel’s most famous cosmetics queen / reality show / hoochie mama / ex-Knesset member…

Heli Goldberg went on to an acting career – including one of her best-known roles as a shopping cart bashing pudding thief in “The Battle For Milky” commercial…

The amazing Michaela Berko, Israel’s first 80s supermodel export (who recently paid homage to her famous Vogue cover on the cover of Israel’s La-Isha magazine)…

Exotic Tami Ben-Ami, who lived a supermodel’s life before they gave it a name. She dated wildly popular basketball player Aulcie Perry and was Gottex’s first house model. Sadly, she died of cancer in 1995 at just 40 years old.

The exhibition photos were selected from tens of thousands of images saved by the Eshets over the years, published in Israeli fashion magazines, catalogs, posters, ads and more. Definitely worth checking out, as is this report about Mula Eshet in his heyday.

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In an interview with Israel Hayom, Sela stated that he and music editor Yoram Siman-Tov, had selected a library of about 4,500 Israeli oldies going back at least 25 years — 25 being the cut-off date (or is that the starting point?) for being considered an “oldie”. Each year, the station plans to add another year’s worth of old songs to the database.

Sela also said he was reviewing several proposals for radio broadcasts as well.

The Nostal website itself houses tens of thousands of images, some 1,000 videos, hundreds of audio clips, as well as scanned newspapers, magazines, posters, postcards, books, toys, trinkets and other ephemera. Sela stated that the site had visitors from 132 countries and estimated that 19 percent of users are Israelis living abroad.

Another great source of old Israeli songs is the YouTube channel called, not surprisingly, OldIsraeliSongs. It’s run by record company NMC United Entertaiment, which holds the rights to the old Hed Arzi music catalog.

The 90s may be less than 25 years away, though not by much, but enough time has elapsed to give music aficionados some historical perspective. Radio host and pop music historian Yoav Kutner has deemed that decade the most important in Israeli rock and produced a five-part series for Channel 8, The Albums, about five seminal works: Simanei Hulsha by Berry Sakharov, Plonter by Rami Fortis, Zman Sukar by Eifo Ha-Yeled, and the debut albums of Ziknei Tsfat and Eviatar Banai.

Following is a Ynet report on the series which features period clips as well as interviews from the launch party with Israeli rockers like Aviv Geffen (“We all lived on Sheinkin Street… there was a Sixties vibe in the air”), Gilad Segev (“I was most influenced recently by Berry Sakharov in working on my latest album”), Chemi Rudner (“Being unfashionable is the most fun”), and performances by Rudner and by a now-religious Eviatar Banai.

All agree that what happened at that time can’t be replicated — they cite commercial hype and the reality-TV-ization of the music industry, and that includes Geffen who is currently one of the judges on the Israeli version of The Voice.

But, as Rudner says, there’s still a place for artists who create for the love of it.

NOTE: If you can’t see the embedded video, click here to view.

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The name takes the hackneyed shopping channel phrase mutzar ha-yom, “product of the day”, and replaces it with the word ayom, meaning “horrible”. And indeed, many of the products are in fact, delightfully dreadful examples of visual wordplay.

Some of the ideas are universal in nature — others are unmistakably Israeli, for example, this toy soldier armed with mother’s cooking…

Water concentrate, as opposed to the ubiquitous sugary red mitz petel, so ingrained in the Israeli child’s psyche — and the Israeli child’s teeth!

A reversed three-fer electric adaptor…

A floor squeegee that actually gets into corners…

And my personal favorite, the real and original dubon coat.

Menkes also runs a Mutzar Ayom Facebook page in which followers are invited to comment on recent postings and share their own imaginary product ideas. Who knows, some might even make it into production — after all, if the Crembox can be an actual product fulfilling an actual need, then anything’s possible.

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The papers, both local and international, reported on her passing — she was indeed the symbol of the War of Independence generation and a singer of some of Israel’s most beloved songs.

But she was also loved for being a fixture on the Israel Song Festival and Children’s Song Festival circuits, in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively.

For many years, she was an unofficial cultural ambassador for Israel, who charmed visiting international celebrities like Sean Connery, Cliff Richard and Sammy Davis Junior.

Like many women performers with a strong personality and powerful stage presence she, like fellow diva Shoshana Damari, inspired a generation of local drag queens.

Most of all, Yarkoni was a dyed-in-the-wool performer who was born to be onstage. In later years, she came out strongly as a member of Israel’s peace camp. In this interview, she covers topics ranging from cataloging her gowns, (so that she would never wear the same dress twice to a given venue), to face lifts (she didn’t have one and shows the back of her ears to prove it). She also describes the time she went down to Sinai to perform for the troops and ended up giving an impromptu performance to an onlooker who happened to be an Egyptian soldier on the other side of the line. “On the way back, I said to myself, ya allah, maybe we can end this war simply with song?”

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Before surfboards arrived on our shores, there was the hasakeh, a sort of platform on which lifeguards would stand and paddle. Used from at least the 1930s onwards, there are several theories as to how this banana-shaped wood vessel came into being: one that it was used by Arab fishermen, another that it was based on a 1926 design by legendary surfer Tom Blake.

Its use by the Israeli Navy was immortalized in song in 1972.

Hasakeh

Riding the waves on a hasakeh, however, was not surfing. According to an online essay about the History of Surfing in Israel, that began with Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, an American surfer and physician visited Israel in 1956. Wikipedia states that he volunteered for the Israeli army during the Suez Canal crisis but was rejected. Nonetheless, during his year-long stay, he found happiness on the beaches of Tel Aviv where he conceived of a dream: to found the first Olympic surfing team from the young state of Israel. Paskowitz imported six long-boards imprinted with the Israeli flag and began scouting the beach for potential talent and for someone to manage the project.

“…he arrived on Frishman Beach, [where] he found a lifeguard named Shamai Kancepolsky, also known as Topsea, and presented the idea to him. Says [Topsea's son] Nir Almog, ‘There was an immediate chemistry between them and my father decided to take on the project.’

‘At that time, lifeguards caught waves using hasakehs alone. Dorian gave them lessons and slowly, the lifeguard booth gang began surfing. In those days, [before breakers were built] Israel had high waves that broke on the shore itself… and going into the sea to surf was considered an act of bravery bordering on insanity…”

“A few years passed and the gang gained experience… but there was still no Israeli representation abroad. Dorian [Paskowitz] returned a second time, bringing a load of surfboards with him that were distributed among the new members.”

“Nir Almog adds, ‘In the Sixties, a huge storm damaged the storeroom where the surfboards were stored, and broke some of them to bits. After that, my dad decided to restore one of the big ones and shortened it to 1.80 meters. I was the only one in Israel with a shortboard.”

“In the early Seventies, a paratrooper commander by the name of Yair told Topsea that the army used a material — a aerated plastic called polyurethane foam — made by a company in Haifa. The material was similar to that used to make surfboards. Yair raised the possibility of manufacturing surfboards made of this material… Topsea and Nir began trying to design surfboards… and began a small surfboards producing industry. Most were rented out, and so a new generation entered into surfing…”

Topsea managed a small workshop on Hilton Beach and, along with renting out Hasakehs, designed surfboards. He, his wife Naomi — Israel’s first female surfer — and their children, all became lifelong surfers.In 1977, son Nir founded Almog Surfboards, Israel’s first pro surfboard company. Topsea co-founded the Israel Surfing Association in 1986.

The sport has continued to grow in popularity; according to the Encyclopedia of Surfing, “Israel is home to about 15 surf shops and 10,000 surfers”.

Paskowitz, by the way, gave up practicing medicine to become a professional surfer. He and his family founded and run Surf Camps and are known as The First Family of Surfing. In August 2007, he founded Surfing 4 Peace together with his son David (along with Israeli surfer Arthur Rashovan and eight-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater) to deliver surfboards to the surfing community in Gaza.

A wonderful online photo archive, can be found at the Topsea Israel Surfing Center website. Topsea’s youngest son Orian runs the center, carrying on the tradition and legacy of his father. The Center also hosts a YouTube channel where there are more videos about the legendary Shamai “Topsea” Kancepolsky and the history of surfing in Israel.

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Using a unique origami technique known as Tesselation, artist Ilan Garibi creates lighting fixtures made of Japanese paper and red mahogany. Tessellation refers to a collection of figures fill a plane with no gaps or overlaps. In origami tessellations, pleats are used to connect elements together in a repeating fashion.

Garibi, a retired Israeli Defense Forces officer, was first introduced to the Japanese art of paper-folding at age 12 by a family friend but it was in 1996, while on assignment in Asia, that he took on origami as his hobby. In an interview with All Things Paper, Garibi related that while in the IDF, he would motivate his soldiers to get up early with the promise of origami lessons.

“Those lessons were always full… soldiers liked the idea of having a break from the serious business, to have their commander taking down his uniform shirt and teach the crane or a Ninja star.”

About five years ago, he began creating his own individual designs — mostly complex geometric patterns — that attracted attention and led to several exhibitions. Today, with 170 unique designs to his credit, he teaches “Origametria” a technique pioneered by Miri Golan and Paul Jackson of the Israel Origami Center, that uses origami to teach geometry in high schools. He also writes for the British Origami Society magazine, The Fold, (the online magazine of OrigamiUSA), and has authored a book on the subject.

See more pictures of Ilan Garibi’s work on his Flickr page. For more about Origametria, view this short film from 2006, which shows some of the IOC’s activities, including their peace program, Folding Together.

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Between 1931 and 1939, 100,000 Jews came to pre-State Israel, most of them from Germany having fled the rise of Nazism. Unlike the previous four waves of aliya, the members of this Fifth Aliya were not necessarily kibbutz bound. Instead, they headed for towns like Tel Aviv, where they engaged in five o’clock tea dances and other bourgeoisie amusements and Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood, home to professors and intellectuals. German-Jewish immigrants founded Nahariya, home to some of Israel’s leading entrepreneurial families: Strauss, Soglowek and Wertheimer.

Once considered an embarrassment among young German emigres trying to fit in among the native-born sabras, their children and grandchildren are now exploring their Yekke roots, discovering that there was much more to the German-Jewish immigrant experience in Israel than simply being a nicely dressed, punctual minority among the Russian-Polish Socialist-Zionist majority, chronically late and clad in dusty, drab workman’s gear.

Two movies have come out recently that reflect aspects of the German-Jewish immigrant experience in pre-State Israel. Duki Dror’s Mendelsohn – Incessant Visions, explores the life of Erich Mendelsohn, the man who changed the face of modern architecture.

Dror’s fascination with Mendelsohn began in 2003, when UNESCO declared Tel Aviv a World Heritage Site. “I tried to understand the connection between this ugly city, where I was born and raised, and this declaration of cultural significance. I started looking at buildings… and I tried to figure out where this town came from… Who was the source of these modern ideas? Very quickly my investigation led to Mendelsohn It was clear that his presence infuses the plaster and concrete of Tel Aviv. And then I realized he had never built in Tel Aviv, but influenced all of the architects who built it.”

Dror tells the story of Mendelsohn’s life through the architect’s correspondence with wife Luise Mendelsohn. The letters, along with excerpts from Luise’s diary, provide personal insights into history: Mendelsohn’s technique of crafting tiny sketches with the power of a large rendering was the result of paper shortages during World War I. Luise, a cellist who played in a string quartet with neighbor Albert Einstein, wangled Mendelsohn’s first important commission: the Einstein Tower (Einsteinturm) in Potsdam, Germany– an astrophysical observatory built to prove (or disprove) the theory of relativity. At the height of his success, Mendelsohn’s architectural practice had commissions from all over Germany for buildings in his pioneering International Style. Luise tells of Erich’s obsession in creating their dream house — completed just in time for him, along with all other Jewish members, to be ejected from the German Architects’ Union. Realizing that their assets were about to be seized by the Nazis, the Mendelsohns left Germany for the England in 1933.

It was in London in 1934 that Mendelsohn met Chaim Weizmann. The future President of the State of Israel invited the architect to design the future State of Israel according to his modernist vision. Mendelsohn had already been to Palestine before, in 1923, on the invitation of Pinhas Rutenberg, head of the Palestine Electric Company who had the British Mandatory government concession to create an modern electrical infrastructure. Although his design for the first power station was rejected by the British for being avant garde, Mendelsohn was captivated by the idea of fusing ancient and modern in a Jewish homeland.

The Mendelsohns moved to Rehavia where for several years they lived contentedly in a 19th century windmill that also served as a space for his architectural studio and her chamber music recitals. Mendelsohn was commissioned to build Weizmann’s residence at the Sieff Institute of Science (today the Weizmann Institute of Science). Along with designing a number of other buildings at the Institute, he also designed the Salman Schocken house and library, Mount Scopus Hadassah Hospital — an amusing interview reveals tense relations between the German architect and the American donor — Rambam Hospital’s first building, and the Anglo-Palestine Bank building, now Bank Leumi’s central branch in Jerusalem.

Mendelsohn became disillusioned when his design for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s campus was rejected and in 1941, the family moved on to San Francisco, where he spent his final years.

Mendelsohn – Incessant Visions is a biographical documentation of a well-known historical figure who personified the pre-State Yekke community. Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat presents the other end of the Yekke spectrum: a personal revelation about second and third-generations discovering their past, including some very closely guarded skeletons in the family closet.

Following the death of his grandmother, documentarian Goldfinger decided to film the dismantling of her apartment, a standard upper middle-class residence where she had lived since arriving in Tel Aviv in the 1930s.

The Goldfinger family’s shockingly unsentimental lack of attachment to the wardrobes filled with carefully preserved handbags, gloves, furs, jewelry, china figurines, leather-bound books and other trappings of life lived in another time and world is superseded by an equally shocking discovery: a pile of Nazi newspapers.

The find draws Goldfinger, who like so many of his contemporaries was raised to have no curiosity about the past, and his mother, who like so many of her contemporaries was raised to never pry or ask questions, into the vortex of history, secrets, lies and memories.

(Subtitles translation: When I was a young boy, I loved to come here. / Once a week, I’d walk across Tel Aviv, climb three flights of stairs and arrive in Berlin. / For 70 years, Grandma Gerda lived here as if she had never left Germany. / For all her years in Israel, she never mastered Hebrew and I didn’t want to learn German. / So we sat and spoke in English as if in a cafe in Europe with apple strudel and Swiss chocolates. / But when I grew up, I thought to myself that there was always a silence about the really important things.)

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The Herta and Paul Amir Building is being touted as Israel’s answer to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Its proponents hope that Tel Aviv will be touched by the magical “Bilbao Effect” in which the building itself becomes a tourist destination. Interestingly, its architect, Preston Scott Cohen, calls the new wing, “An antidote to the Bilbao phenomenon, the new building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art represents a new direction: an interiorized and socialized space of spectacle, as opposed to the ’90s model of an exterior sculptural object displayed to the city.”

Spectacle or sculptural, the 195,000 square foot new wing is an exciting break with the past. Built to house the museums’s ever-expanding collection contemporary art, the structure centers around a monumental sculpture, the Lightfall, that reaches toward a skylight which sends natural light into the building’s interior. Ramps and stairs spiraling down around the Lightfall provide access to the galleries, art library, center for Architecture and Design, 400-seat auditorium and ancillary spaces.

Although Cohen takes inspiration from the White City’s Bauhaus Modernism, it’s a far cry from the old building, designed in the Brutalist style by architects Dan Eytan and the late Yitzhak Yashar, which was completed in 1971, and for which Eytan and Yashar won the Rechter Prize of Architecture.

And it’s an every farther cry from the first Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard, the historic Modernist building that was home to Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv, and the site where the State of Israel was declared.

Throughout its various incarnations, however, the spirit of the museum belongs to artist Marc Chagall.

According to a lovely essay on the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum website, “Mayor Dizengoff had a vision of Tel Aviv becoming a great commercial and cultural center. After building houses, a movie theater, hospital, synagogue and slaughterhouse, bath houses and other structures the Mayor began to feel the need to foster beauty—which meant art and an art museum.

“Dizengoff visited Paris in 1930, met Chagall and asked his help in establishing a museum. The… artist readily accepted. In a letter to Dizengoff after meeting him in Paris and prior to his first visit to Israel, Chagall stated: “‘. . . we are prepared to help you. I am happy that finally a Jew has emerged who wants to establish a Jewish museum, and who understands how indispensable it is (not only as a useful element of tourism) . . . in the major centers of Europe and America, societies of friends of the Jewish museum should be established . . . to collect money and artistic material fit for a museum.’

“Chagall visited Tel Aviv a year later. Tel Aviv had a population of 50,000 people and three repertory theaters. Mayor Dizengoff had donated his home as the future Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The Mayor met Chagall, his wife and daughter at the head of the city’s fire brigade. Horse races on the seashore were organized in Chagall’s honor.

“At a reception in Tel Aviv Chagall said “I am amazed how a handful of people, surrounded by hatred, rather than love, builds and creates a new land. I am jealous of your idealism, and I wish you from the bottom of my heart to continue what you started. And for me I wish to come and wallow among you, and maybe I shall be able as an artist to do something for your future Jewish museum as well . . .”

“Chagall advised Mayor Dizengoff as to what works should be included in the Museum’s collection. Chagall’s work ‘Jew with Torah’ was the very first work to enter the Museum.

“The Museum has thirteen masterworks by Marc Chagall. Three works were a gift of the artist, the remaining ten works and many others were donated by friends from around the world. Marc Chagall visited Israel eight times. He died at the age of 97 [in 1985] in Saint-Paul de Vence, France.”

To honor the new wing, the Museum opened a special exhibition entitled Five Moments: Trajectories in the Architecture of the Tel Aviv Museum which presents “five key moments in the Museum’s history through five architectural prisms, providing two different and complementary viewpoints that turn these moments into a complete cultural continuum.”

Hopefully, Chagall’s contribution is mentioned as a force driving those trajectories. It’s nice to think of his spirit infusing the new wing, with lovers, doves, cows, sheep and fiddlers, all in constant ascension along the Lightfall towards the open sky.

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Founded in 1979, Clil’s unique character has been determined by not only by its residents — many of whom are professional artists, artisans, musicians and writers — but by the surrounding landscape, fields and orchards planted over the years.

Silverman trained as a commercial photographer in the US and began studying Feng Shui in 1972. After moving to Israel in 1974 he worked in advertising, multimedia and later on, as high-tech in Israel gathered steam, in software, multimedia and Internet design.

Today, he teaches design and photography, and acts as a consultant to businesses interested in using Feng Shui principles in the workplace.

According to Chinese scripture, “Chi rides the wind and scatters but is retained when encountering water” (the term Feng Shui actually translates to “wind-water”). The art of creating a framework for the untamed describes perfectly the latest photographic series from Silverman, Weeds 2011.

Within his viewfinder, a simple blade of grass suddenly gains form and stature…

The world reflected in a drop of water…

A half-dead dandelion takes on new life…

More photos can be found on Michael Silverman’s Picasa page, Facebook page, and YouTube channel, where he’s also shared some lovely slideshows. Here’s one to start with. Enjoy.

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Tmol Shilshom quickly became a fixture on Jerusalem’s literary landscape as a venue for Israel’s best known writers to read from their works. The late Yehuda Amichai, who read from his poetry at the cafe’s opening, was one of its major patrons: his favorite chair still stands in the corner. And so, despite its youth (as compared with other of the city’s older establishments), Tmol Shilshom has acquired a antiqued patina.

In 1996, the cafe expanded to include two separate seating areas, one hall frequently accommodating literary or other events, the other serving regular customers.

Like most public venues in Jerusalem, particularly those in the center of town, Tmol Shilshom was greatly affected by the second Intifada. Frequent terrorist attacks made people afraid to venture out. Many businesses closed but Tmol Shilshom weathered the storm, or, as their website pluckily puts it: “Having survived all that, we’re now one of the veteran and favorite cafes in town. Some people like us for the food, others for the books, and others yet for the atmosphere. There`s always something to do at Tmol Shilshom.”

Despite being classified as a bookstore-cafe, Tmol Shilshom is really more of a bistro if you look at the menu (highly recommended), and their Friday morning breakfast buffet is legendary.

The interior is lined with bookshelves, framed pictures, snapshots of famous patrons and even the menus, covered with images from literary classics, hark back to yesteryear. And then there are the plates — decorated with quotations — and of course, the hot beverage glasses with their metal holders, just like grandma’s.

And the place-mats, which quote both Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and The Jefferson Airplane’s Go Ask Alice. (Click on image to view full-sized). Trippy…

Other well-know authors and poets — Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, Batya Gur, David Grossman, Jonathan Safran-Foer and others — have frequented Tmol Shilshom as well; the place prides itself on being an inspiring atmosphere in which writers can park themselves at a table and nurse a cup of coffee for hours upon hours.

Tmol Shilshom also encourages talent by hosting writers groups and classes. Upcoming is The Book of Beginnings: From the first family’s story to your own (26 October – 28 December 2011) is an English-language creative writing workshop with writer Ilene Prusher, who will guide students in writing fiction and/or nonfiction works inspired by the family stories, inter-generational struggles and complicated relationships in the Book of Genesis.

Writer Judy Labensohn has for several years been conducting an English-language “Writing Gym” at Tmol Shilshom, where she promises there will be “No sore muscles, as in other gyms”. Called Loosen Up, the program is scheduled to resume in 2012.

You can check out CultureKey Jerusalem for other upcoming events at Tmol Shilshom.

Tmol Shilshom is located at 5 Yoel Solomon Street. Open Sunday-Thursday, 9 a.m. till 1 a.m. Closes early on Fridays, closed on Shabbat. Click here for 10% discount coupon from Eluna.com.

Photos by Ella Cohen, Ivan Tihienko

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