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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B&B owner, antiquities authority battle over ancient tomb

May 10, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Crime, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion 

Mitch Pilcer in front of the grave he discovered. (Arieh O'Sullivan)

What do you do when you’re digging in your backyard to put in a swimming pool and discover the grave of a third century rabbi?

That doesn’t likely happen too often in most parts of the world, but it did in Israel, to Mitch Pilcer, who owns picturesque bed-and-breakfast country establishment in the Galilee village of Tzippori, the home of early rabbinic sages.

Pilcer’s 2009 discovery of Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi’s grave, whose commentaries appear in the Talmud and legend has it was a close friend of Elijah the Prophet, has sparked an ongoing struggle with the Israel Antiquities Authority who have been demanding that Pilcer allow them to excavate the tomb.

According to a report by The Media Line, the IAA won a court order, and late 2009 it conducted a dig on the property and confiscated the headstone door, which had been inscribed in plainly legible Hebrew: “This is the burial place of Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi Hakapar.”

Later the IAA filed charges against Pilcer for carrying out an illegal excavation, damaging an ancient site and possession of antiquities. Pilcer’s trial began at the Nazareth Magistrate’s court last week where he pleaded not guilty. He has also made formal demands to have the stone returned to its original site.

Full disclosure here is that Pilcer is an old friend, and I’m on his side of this battle over the ownership of the stone and the site. Read the full story about his battle with the ‘Man’ here.

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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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Apping the Omer

May 3, 2012 by · 6 Comments
Filed under: Religion, Technology 

The "Sefiros" iPhone app

From the second day of Passover until the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, observant Jews perform a ritual called “counting the Omer.” Between those two dates, there are 49 days and, during evening prayers, one is commanded to say a few special phrases to mark each day (the “Omer” refers to a measure of barley offered as a sacrifice during Temple times).

There are Kabalistic connotations as well as historical/mythological ones: it’s said that a great plague that killed 24,000 followers of the first century CE luminary Rabbi Akiva abated on the 33rd day of the Omer. In Hebrew, it’s known as L’ag b’Omer, or more popularly in Israel, the “night of the bonfires” (ask any kid toting a rotted old bathroom door and you’ll quickly get the gist).

Counting the Omer is not terribly difficult in and of itself, but there’s a built in trick: if you miss counting for just a single day, you can’t say it with a blessing again for the remainder of the 49 days. For the frummer among us, that can be a big deal. It’s like Survivor or Big Brother, except the last one standing doesn’t win a million bucks, just the undying gratitude of a possible deity.

I can tell you that, when I was more religious myself, there wasn’t a single year that I got through until Shavuot intact. So I probably would have been delighted to have discovered a new iPhone app called “Sefiros” (that means “counting”) which is here to remind you to, well, count.

It’s really a very simple app: you set a timer and the app beeps to tell you it’s time to say the prayer. Sure you could do that with your regular iPhone calendar…but would you? A dedicated app with a repeating alarm that expires after 49 days is just that much easier.

To make it a bit more robust, the Sefiros app lets you add “action alerts” to your reminders; you can set them be with “with God,” “with others,” or “with yourself.” You can even reach out for a little social media feedback and post your success to Twitter. “Hey fellow frumsters, I made it to day #29. Nya, nya, nya.”

Not sure when sunset is? Never fear, Sefiros checks the time using GPS. The blessing you’re supposed to say is all there in punctuated prayer book Hebrew. And to beef it all up, the app includes a page of Kabalistic and personal growth insights for each day, written by Rabbi Yaakov Haber (his whole book is included in the app). Jerusalem-based AppStudio built the whole thing.

Can I recommend Sefiros? If you always lose the “did I remember to count” game like I once did, sure, why not? At $4.99, it’s not cheap, as far as apps go. But who’s counting anyway?

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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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