The mad rush to the Seder
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Religion
The exodus to Seder night.
It’s not just a religious holiday here, it’s a national one, with surveys citing 90% of the Jewish population attending Seders, far higher than the rate of religious observance in the country.
The country has been in overdrive this whole week, with households driving themselves crazy cleaning and shopping for the holiday which begins Friday night. We thought we would beat the rush and arrived at our local Rami Levy supermarket at 8 am Wednesday morning. And while there weren’t lines out the door, it was clear that we weren’t as smart as we thought, as the parking lot and the shopping aisles were pretty full, but not in a manic mode.
Since we’re having our Seder with our daughter’s future in-laws, we didn’t have an overflowing shopping cart, and the whole ordeal was pretty civilized. In the checkout line which was getting longer by the minute, the cashier took a breath between customers and said with a shake of her head, “It’s going to be like this until midnight.”
I’m sure it was, and it only got worse the next day. But come Friday afternoon, an aura of serenity will descend on the country, and families will start getting dressed for the big night of the year. And around 6 pm, there will be a different kind of exodus as cars fill the nation’s highways bringing families and friends together for their Seder. It’s one of those times where living here feels just about right.
Elvis fans to head to Holy Land
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture, Religion, Travel
Two Elvis impersonators at the Elvis Inn at Neve Ilan - will they scare away the Elvis fans on the Holy Land Tour?
The brainchild of a Toronto/Nashville-based tour organization called Israel Theme Tours, the 10-day Elvis tour caters to the fans who love the King’s gospel music persona. For just under $4,000, they can join three US singers who accompanied Elvis on tour and in the studio in the late 1960s – Joe Moscheo and Terry Blackwood of the Elvis Imperials, and Bill Baize – as they visit the Christian sites of Israel – Nazareth, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, a cruise on the Sea of Galilee and the option of being baptized in the Jordan River.
According to Israel Theme Tours co-founder Joe Amaral, the tour is being limited to 100 people in order to enable access to the stars, who will be performing in a boat on the Kinneret, and will likely break into impromptu performances and hold evening jam and gab sessions throughout the tour.
But for some, the highlight of the tour might be a stop at the Elvis Inn, near Neve Ilan outside of Jerusalem, to experience the kitschy but heartfelt Israeli restaurant/ shrine to the King, complete with a larger-than-life statue in its parking lot. On Elvis’s birthday, they usually have an Elvis impersonator contest, so it would be nice to have the Israeli and the American Elvises get to meet face to face.
They can discuss whether Elvis was a Christian, or really Jewish, as the 1998 book Schmelvis: Searching for the King’s Jewish Roots, claims. It cites the facts that his maternal great grandmother, Nancy Burdine, was Jewish, he always wore a chai (the Hebrew word meaning “life”) pendant; he put a Star of David on his mother’s headstone; and his tremolo vocal style may have been influenced by his upstairs Memphis neighbor, Rabbi Alfred Fruchter, singing cantorial music when Presley was a teen.
They can even have a Jewish Elvis vs. Christian Elvis singdown. Can’t wait.
Nostalgia Sunday – Adloyada-yada-yada
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Social Justice, Travel
Could it be true that the Adloyada Purim parade is returning to Tel Aviv? According to Ahbar HaIr (City Mouse) weekly, there’s a grassroots movement forming among last summer’s Social Welfare Protest organizers to bring the legendary celebration back to its birthplace and natural habitat. Finally! A concrete aspect to the nebulous Protest — and one that I can back one hundred percent.
Briefly put, the phrase “Adloyada” comes from “ad lo yada” or “unable to differentiate”, referring to the Purim tradition of drinking until one is unable to tell the difference between evil Haman and good Mordechai. The first Adloyada parade was held in 1912 in Tel Aviv and continued until 1936. It was reestablished in the 1950s and shut down again in the 1960s. In the early 80s, the Sheinkin Adloyada came and went — fast and furious like the punk music that inspired it — and that was it. Until now.
(The full background to the Adloyada’s historic Tel Aviv roots — and its relationship to debonair choreographer and filmmaker Baruch Agadati — may be found here).
Last week, the organizers of this latest incarnation put in a request to make the renewed Adloyada an official Tel Aviv municipal event but received no response. No matter. “We don’t need permission from the establishment to go out and party,” city council member Sharon Louzon told Ahbar HaIr.
Well said — and probably the right attitude as it doesn’t look like municipality is going to back the revival any time soon. “The Adloyada was cancelled for two principle reasons,” ran the official municipal statement quoted by Ahbar HaIr, “budget and logistical complications that shut down the city almost entirely on a day of heavy traffic. In addition, it should be noted that the city of Holon hosts a very successful event, and we think it would not be right to enter into a competition as there is a concurrent event only 10 minutes driving distance away.”
Holon! Sacrilege!
The public procession is scheduled to start this coming Thursday at 11:00 AM at the end of Ibn Gabirol Boulevard (corner of HaYarkon Park) and will proceed southwards towards Rothschild Boulevard, Allenby Street, Levinsky Park and the New Central Bus Station, ending at Hatikva Park at around 3:00 PM.
More photos of Adloyadas gone by may be viewed here – plus see below for some rare footage from the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive. You can check out the Holon Adloyada from last year (also below) — it looks very fun, actually, and I think Agadati would have appreciated the Rio carnival dancers.
Purim Sameach! Have a happy Purim holiday!
Adloyada 1932
Adloyada 1960
Holon Adloyada 2011
The Gutman shul
Filed under: Art, education, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Religion
I’ve always liked the Nachman Gutman Museum in Tel Aviv’s gentrified Neve Tzedek neighborhood. It’s small, just two floors, and exhibits just a portion of this well-known artist’s works, many of them related to Tel Aviv and the pre-state period. The paintings, many of them oils, are of subjects that feel so familiar and close by, and I’m not even from Tel Aviv. It’s also in what was formerly known as the Writer’s House, as from 1907 to 1914, the building was used as the editorial offices for the Ha-Poel Ha-Tzair newspaper, as well as the residence of editor Yosef Aharonovitch, his wife, author Dvora Baron, and author Joseph Hayyim Brenner. So clearly it has a familiar feeling to the writer in me.
Why am I mentioning the Nachman Gutman Museum? Because of a happy coincidence that took place last weekend. We were in Tel Aviv for Shabbat with family and friends, and had spent time Friday at the Carmel shuk, eating hummous and buying treats and then hanging out and relaxing. On Shabbat morning, some of us wanted to go to shul, while others were happy to walk on the beach or in nearby Neve Tzedek (it was next to our hotel and is considered to be the first Jewish neighborhood of Tel Aviv outside Jaffa). We knew that there was a Masorti synagogue, Kehillat Sinai, in Tel Aviv. (Full disclosure: My BIL is a Conservative rabbi.)
We also knew that said Masorti shul was supposed to move to new digs in Neve Tzedek, at the new Schechter Center for Jewish Culture, which is otherwise known as Beit Lorenz, an historic Templar building where writer S.Y. Agnon once sat and drank coffee.
But as these things happen, the building wasn’t completely ready yet, and Kehillat Sinai is temporarily meeting at the Nachman Gutman Museum, which is just across the street from the rabbi’s house. I could not have been happier. This way, I could get in some shul, visit the museum and show it to my friends, and be in Neve Tzedek.
We strolled over, enjoying the narrow streets and gentrified but still elegant architecture of the neighborhood. When we got to the museum, I realized that the shul is using a meeting room, but the museum is open on Saturdays — this is Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem — and you have to buy tickets to get in, as usual. Clearly, it would’ve been too easy to go to shul and get to see a favorite museum. So I sat in shul in any case, enjoying the mixed crowd that Kehillat Sinai draws, including some tourists, some transplants and a few Israelis who have clearly returned to religion the Masorti route. And what was most amusing was seeing the odd-museum goer walk in, buy tickets (at the gift shop next to our ‘sanctuary’), and then stick their heads in to the shul to stare and clearly wonder, “What is going on in here?”
To be a Jew, in shul, in a public manner, in Tel Aviv, can be awkward. Particularly when it’s viewable to those who are not doing the same. But the flip side was how right it felt to be using this building for yet another purpose, and that it all works. You can spend your Shabbat strolling, museum hopping, praying or some combination thereof. I felt Gutman would have approved.
Whitney Houston’s Israel connection
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Religion, Travel
Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown meet Ariel Sharon in 2003 in Jerusalem. (Reuters)
There’s been a soft spot for Houston in Israel ever since a visit she and her then-husband Bobby Brown made here in 2003, a stay that was at once endearing and surreal much like Houston in the last couple decades.
After Houston’s death, local media recalled the six-day visit, in which Houston and Brown met with the Black Hebrew community in Dimona, traveled to Eilat and the Galilee to a baptism spot and later met with then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, telling him that she felt at home in the country.
According to The Jerusalem Post’s account, Wearing bright red African clothing, Brown and Houston – who was then 39 – told Sharon they planned to come back and record a Christmas television special here – a promise she never fulfilled.
There were also reports that Houston was going to record an album with the Black Hebrews, who first settled in Israel in 1969 and became known for its gospel choirs and singing groups.
After Houston’s death, Ben Ammi Ben-Israel, the leader of the 2,500-strong Black Hebrews said on TV that he considered Houston his “spiritual daughter.” Ben-Israel said Houston was a source of pride for his community. He said he recently invited her back to Israel “to help her overcome her problem.”
However, that never took place either. And instead, all the Black Hebrews and the rest of Houston’s multitude of fans are left with is her rich catalogue of music and their memories of her.
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