Reconciliation through music challenged
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Social Justice
Ahinoam Nini
However in the week since the event, a Facebook group calling for the boycott of Nini has gained more than 3,500 members, who apparently think that such events provide moral equivalency between the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians. Nini dismissed such claims, writing on her Facebook page that “I am just shocked by this stupid and ugly distortion. I sang at an alternative ceremony, at which Jews and Arabs remember and cry together for their loved ones who were lost in the ongoing war between us.”
Neshama Carlebach, the Jewish spiritual singer and daughter of the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, also stirred some feathers with her reworked version of Israel’s national anthem, ‘Hatikva’, recorded for Israel’s 64th Independence Day, and performed on Sunday at The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York.
The song, suggested by the Jewish paper The Forward, contains some new lyrics aimed at allowing both Jews and Arabs to relate to the words. Rather than singing “A Jewish soul still yearns” in the anthem, Carlebach sings, “An Israeli soul still yearns,” and instead of “An eye still gazes toward Zion,” she sings “An eye still gazes toward our country.”
Some attendees to the conference apparently were offended by the changed lyrics, and whether due to the late hour or in protest, Carlebach’s show with the Green Pastures Baptist Choir was sparsely attended.
Who said music soothes the savage beast? Here’s Carlebach’s reworked version of the anthem.
Nostalgia Sunday – Canaan canines
Filed under: Environment, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Life, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Politics, Pop Culture, Profiles, Social Justice, Travel
Right off the winding road leading up to Jerusalem are the Shaar Hagai Kennels, home to the Canaan dog, a semi-feral dog that is Israel’s national breed. The history of these dogs and the modern State of Israel are intertwined as today’s Canaan was bred by request of the Haganah, the forerunner of today’s Israel Defense Forces.
According to an essay on the Shaar Hagai website, having decided to set up a canine unit, Haganah commanders turned to Dr. Professor Rudolphina Menzel, “a noted cynologist with a considerable reputation in her native Austria in the field of animal behavior… She quickly discovered that the European breeds with which she was accustomed to working, German Shepherds, Boxers, Dobermans, suffered greatly from the severe climate and difficult terrain and had a hard time functioning effectively.
“She began to observe the local pariah dogs living on the outskirts of settlements and with the Bedouin in desert and wilderness areas, and decided that this was a true breed of dog that had adapted to the conditions. She began a program of re-domestication, collecting puppies and adults from the pariah groups.”
“The Canaan Dog has survived for thousands of years on its own, living by its wits, and surviving in the wild and on the fringes of civilization by hunting and scavenging. Often puppies were captured, raised and used, especially by the Bedouin tribesmen, as guardians of the flocks and the tents. Like other wild or feral residents of the area, only the strongest, healthiest, cleverest, and most fit survived to breed and pass on their characteristics.”
Prof. Menzel called the breed the Canaan Dog after the Biblical Land of Canaan. Canaans have been part of the local landscape since time immemorial. The American Kennel Club history of the breed cites “Drawings found on the tombs at Beni-Hassan, dating from 2200 to 2000 B.C., depict[ing] dogs that show an unmistakable resemblance to the Canaan Dog of today.”
An essay posted by the Canaan Dog Club of America states, “As a breed the Canaan Dog proved highly intelligent and easily trainable, serving as sentry dogs, messengers, Red Cross helpers and land mine locators. During World War II, Dr. Menzel recruited and trained over 400 of the best dogs for the Middle East Forces as land mine detectors, and they proved superior to the mechanical detectors.”
“The Canaan is also one of the very few breeds known that has successfully adapted to a desert environment,” the Shaar Hagai essay notes. “Studies done at Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University of the Negev have shown an astonishing ability in this breed to adapt to extremes of temperature and lack of water. The breed has developed physiological adaptations to prevent waste of fluids and overheating.”
Prof. Menzel was responsible for gaining recognition for the breed; her breed standard was accepted by the La Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) in 1966, where it is classified in FCI Group 5, a subgroup of primitive dogs. She exported the first Canaans to the US in 1965 and to Germany shortly after. (An interview with Prof. Menzel about her work by noted naturalist Dvora Ben Shaul makes for fascinating reading). In 1970, Shaar Hagai Kennels joined in the development and breeding of the dogs, carrying on Prof. Menzel’s work after her death in 1973.
Over the years, urbanization and cultivation have led to the gradual disappearance of the Canaan’s natural habitat and there is a danger that the wild dog, which is the original breeding stock, could disappear. Added to that is a new threat: after 42 years, the Shaar Hagai Kennels have received a notice of eviction by the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), which holds title to the property. Such a move could mean the end of their breeding program and consequently endanger the breed overall.
Myrna Shiboleth, who has run the Kennels for 42 years, now finds herself in an unusual plight and has been actively lobbying for public support. She has successfully recruited 38,505 signatures (so far) on an online petition that will be submitted to the ILA. 50,000 signatures are needed, so sign the petition, join the Facebook page, and pass the word on.
I should mention my personal interest in this story; when we adopted her two years ago, we couldn’t figure out our dog Nili until we learned about Canaan dogs. Then it all made sense: she may be part Canaan in breed (check out those giant ears) but she’s all Canaan in ‘tude: highly intelligent, very loyal but never blindly obedient. All in all, a true Israeli sabra.
New Waze to social justice
You can message from Waze user to user
Twitter and Facebook have rightly become famous as the most powerful new media tools used today to organize protests against social and governmental injustice. Now there’s a new one, and it has the potential to be not only influential but annoyingly intrusive.
The latest mobile service to be drafted into the fray is Waze, the social driving app that I wrote about for Israel21c last year. Waze shows you where traffic is slowing down…or where you yourself should slow down to avoid a cop at a speed trap. It’s all crowdsourced, meaning that the data Waze gets comes from fellow Waze users out on the road, posting manual updates or letting Waze do it for them automatically.
It’s an incredibly seductive app and has an estimated 1.5 million drivers in Israel on the road with their Android and iPhones working away. Full disclosure: I have Waze and love it too.
But Waze also has a feature where you can send messages to other Waze users (they show up with smiley car icons on your Waze map). And that’s how, last weekend, a group called Free Israel took advantage of Waze to send out mass messages to other Waze users protesting the fact that public transportation doesn’t operate on Shabbat.
The “message-in” took place in Tel Aviv and included such slogans as “Buses to and from hospitals were forced to stop due to religious coercion,” and “Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz won’t let me on the bus.” The protest organizers implied that, were there buses running on the weekend, people wouldn’t be forced to drive in their cars, although I suspect a one-to-one correlation would be a tad hard to prove.
Now, here’s where it gets potentially meddlesome. There’s nothing to stop other Waze users from mass messaging themselves. That could take the form of an advertisement (“Hey everyone, we’ve got the best sushi in Herzeliya”) or political activism beyond lobbying for Saturday buses. In this article in last week’s The Times of Israel, for example, West Bank activist Shmuel Ben-Yosef suggested using Waze “to bring more Israelis to Judea and Samaria.”
His innovative method: when Waze users see the traffic jams around their favorite parks this coming Israeli Independence Day, Ben-Yosef would send out a message informing drivers about “some beautiful destinations just a few minutes away from the population centers that many residents of the large cities don’t know about,” he says.
The Tel Aviv bus protests may have let the genie out of the bag for a whole range of unexpected uses for unsuspecting drivers.
Made in Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, design, education, Entertainment, Environment, General, health, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Medical Breakthroughs, Music, Science, Social Justice, Technology
It’s getting to be that time of year again – where the national holidays come fast and furious. Holocaust Remembrance Day just passed and this week we have Memorial Day and Independence Day right on top of each other as Israel prepares to celebrate its 64th birthday.
While there’s no shortage of subjects to be worried, fearful, skeptical or angry about, I would say that overall, the country’s in pretty good shape. But if the Iranian threat, the political situation, the social welfare crisis and the glut of TV reality shows are getting you down, take a couple minutes and check out this clip that ISRAEL21c’s Nicky Blackburn and Viva Sara Press have put together.
In addition to providing some surprising information about just what Israel has achieved in the past 63 years, it will undoubtedly raise your morale and have you whistling a happy tune going into the coming eventful week. Happy Independence Day Israel! We’re proud of you.
Salami Seder
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, News, Religion, Social Justice
IDF soldiers enjoy their Seder. (IDFblog.com)
She had just finished 12 hours of patrols and assignments, and was able to relax and enjoy herself, with a spread, although not quite as sumptuous as ours, still featured a respectable chicken soup and matza balls and roast beef.
She was much luckier though, than soldiers in the Kfir Brigade, who according to reports on Israel Radio and Channel 2, had to make do with salami and matzah for their Seder meal.
Evidently, a chef on their base heated up the planned Seder food after the holiday began, rendering it unkosher according to strict Jewish law, and thus army rules, which follow the laws of kashrut. The kashrut supervisor on the base didn’t hesitate to throw away the entire batch of food, leaving the hungry soldiers, who had also just returned from a mission, only the salami and matza to eat.
Now, I’m one of the first ones to love the fact that when you’re in the army, or you go to a government office, or a sanctioned hotel, you can be assured that the food is going to be kosher – it’s one of the great aspects about Israel.
But, perhaps there are instances when a little common sense is required? I’m not sure what percentage of those Kfir soldiers keep kosher, but couldn’t they have been given the option – after an explanation of what happened – to decide for themselves whether they wanted to eat the heated food or not? After all, it’s not like the food isn’t really kosher – it was just heated up (by somebody else).
My wife says that this would have made the religiously observant soldiers feel especially bad, seeing their fellow soldiers feasting on Seder food while they were stuck with salami. What do you think?
I just know that if it was my daughter who had been served salami on Seder night because of an oversight by an army cook, I would have thought that we’ve lost track of what’s really important in our society.
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