Nostalgia Sunday – Cinema Savion saved!

January 29, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, design, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel 

The best sort of mayor, it is said, is one who can keep real estate developers under control. Look at some of the architectural monstrosities surrounding us and one has to conclude that modern Israel has had very bad luck with city management. Some lovely buildings have been torn down with the occasional commemorative plaque or, worse yet, commemorative structure erected as an afterthought.

Some of the silliest examples: Talitakumi in front of Jerusalem’s HaMashbir LeZarchan, a strangely out of place wall-and-clock structure intended to replicate the front of a girl’s school that was razed to make room for the department store. The gate leading to Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv was thrown up by sentimental, well-meaning people in recognition of the original structure, demolished to make way for the Kolbo Shalom. And does anybody know that the Gan HaIr mall and residential complex was named for the municipal zoological garden that once stood there?

The most unsung of all are the movie houses, most of them shuttered for decades, fall deeper and deeper into disrepair until they are destroyed to make room for malls, tall buildings and parking lots. No one remembers Tel Aviv’s majestic Mugrabi Cinema or Jerusalem’s historic Edison.

Nonetheless, a small victory was achieved a little over a week ago when high-rise developers were forced to change a plan to tear down Bay Yam’s historic Savion Cinema. The victory belongs to a local activist group of Bat Yam residents, artists and the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites who objected to the demolition and proposed a synthesis of old and new structures.

In its heyday, Bat Yam boasted six movie houses. The Savion Cinema was built in 1957 and — in line with the global trend – closed in the 1980s. “However it remained an architectural icon because of its facade which was characterized by a weave of concrete block units,” states The Marker.

Icon or not, the building was in bad shape. Its most recent tenant: a dollar store in what was once the movie-house’s lobby.

According to The Marker, the design for a 25-story tower by architect Ilan Pivko, will be modified in accordance with preservation plan for the building. The building — a luxury residence and prestigious office space — is a flagship project for the Bat Yam municipality which wants to develop the run-down neighborhoods adjacent to Jaffa. The preservation plan calls for the street-facing facade to remain intact.

One look at Pivko’s work and its clear that adapting his design to the new guidelines goes against his post-modernist grain. He does not favor keeping the facade as is and suggests a modular solution instead. “One can reconstruct, dismantle or in some other way create an interior element within the structure.” How Pivko handles this challenge remains to be seen… he has done this sort of thing before… but if he wanted to do it with the Savion, he would have worked it into the original design…

Hmmm… one gets the feeling that this issue isn’t over just yet.

Whether or not the Savion Cinema facade remains on the street level or whether, in the end, Pivko’s lobby will simply feature a bold construction of recycled concrete filigree, the real significance of the decision is a precedent set in curbing real estate developers’ ability to destroy old structures without recognizing their historic value. Hopefully, that means recognition not just in the form of an incidental plaque, statue or clock, but as part of the planning, putting real thought into paying homage to what came before.

The Savion Cinema photos were taken by architect Sharon Raz who is a one-man documentary powerhouse with a particular interest in Israel’s old cinemas. See his Disappearing Architecture and Disappearing Cinemas sites as well as his Natush blog for more photos and information.

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Gay-friendly Israel touted in Washington Post

January 25, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Social Justice 

Israel’s growing image as one of the world’s premiere gay destinations just keeps gaining steam.

Only a couple weeks after Tel Aviv was named by the website Gay Cities as the Best Gay City of 2011, The Washington Post has published an AP feature touting the fact that Israel is one of the world’s most progressive countries for gay rights.
Among the points the story makes are that gays serve openly in the IDF and the Knesset, and the Supreme Court has granted gays a variety of family rights such as inheritance and survivors’ benefits.

The story relates to the government efforts to promote gay tourism to Israel, and finds a Tel Aviv University law professor, Aeyal Gross, to accuse authorities of “co-opting the gay community to deflect attention away from violations against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and African migrants who seek refuge in the Jewish state.”

“The more Israel brands itself as a liberal democracy, the less pressure will be on it internationally,” Gross said. “If you care about gay rights, then you should also care when the rights of others are abused.”

The story then goes on to admit that on the beaches and wild nightclubs of Tel Aviv, not many people are thinking about a ‘spin’ to the lifestyle that – according to The Tourism Ministry – attracted almost 100,000 gay men and women from Europe to vacation in the country in 2011.

Dennis Muller, a 22-year-old tourist from Berlin, gave AP an eyewitness account.

“You enter Tel Aviv and you are in the gay dream,” Muller said on a recent weeknight inside the packed Dreck nightclub. “It’s like entering a bubble of peace for homosexuals or LGBT people in the Middle East.”

So, why shouldn’t Israel be promoting itself as a prime destination for gay travelers, and what in the world does it have to do with the problems the country faces in so many other spheres? I say, if you’ve got it, flaunt it.

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Habima gets facelift

January 23, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, Entertainment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Social Justice 

The renovated Habima Theater (Photo: Haaretz)

The national theater of Israel, The Habima, unveiled an extravagant facelift on Sunday in Tel Aviv, following four years of renovations that cost around $20 million.

The Habima was one of the first Hebrew language theaters, emerging out of Russian origins after the 1905 revolution. Because its performances were in Hebrew and it dealt with issues of the Jewish people, it met with persecution by the Czarist government. Beginning in 1918, it operated under the auspices of the Moscow Art Theater and in 1926, the theatre left the Soviet Union to tour abroad, with some members staying in New York and others taking the company to mandated Palestine. The first play in Tel Aviv was staged in 1928 – Der Oyster (The Treasure), a play in Yiddish by Sholom Aleichem.

In 1945, the company built the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv, which has been officially considered the national theater of Israel since 1958, the year in which it received the Israel Prize for theater.

Sunday’s grand re-opening, occurring some two months after the theater began to stage productions again, was attended President Shimon Peres, Culture Minister Limor Livnat, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, and many dignitaries from the acting world.

Despite the big budget and lavish attention that went into the renovations, the management was surprised a few hours before the opening, when the heavy winter rains sweeping Tel Aviv caused the ceiling to leak in a few places, resulting in water dripping onto the actors during rehearsal. By show time, the rain had stopped, but there was still other controversy.

A few dozen people stood outside the theater protesting against the allocation of funds for the renovation, which they claimed came at the expense of those in need of housing in Tel Aviv.

“On the one hand we are protesting against a lack in public housing and on the other hand we see in front of our eyes the opening of Habima, with nicely dressed people enjoying refreshments,” one of the protesters told Ynet.

It was a fitting dramatic debut for the theater which will continue to lead Israeli theater into the coming decades.

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The NFL vs Sudanese refugees in Israel

January 16, 2012 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Israeliness, Life, Social Justice, Sports 

New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning wasn't thinking about Sudanese refugees on the field Sunday against Green Bay. (AP)

I was participating in a quintessentially American pastime Sunday night of watching the NFL playoffs with three friends in a spacious Modi’in home. Of course, instead of it being Sunday afternoon or evening, it was really night – the game (New York Giants vs. Green Bay Packers) began at 11:30 pm local time. But aside from that, it could have been a scene from any number of Sundays in my pre-Israel existence.

Near the end of the wonderful game (for us Giants fans), I heard the SMS bell on my cell phone go off – curious, since I didn’t know any other Giants fans, or anyone else, who was still awake at 2:30 am.

The message was from my daughter, serving in the IDF along the border with Egypt. It read: “I just caught 38 Sudanese coming across the border, 25 men, 11 women and two babies. It was horrible.”

Sudanese refugees inside Israel - definitely not thinking about the NFL playoffs.

That sort of snapped me back into the reality that, no – I wasn’t sitting in an American den, watching football. I was in the country where nothing is taken for granted – where some people can be sitting comfortably in a warm house with a flat screen TV, eating the worst imaginable junk food that Mahane Yehuda sells, and at the same time, our children are out on patrols all night in the freezing cold, putting their lives on the line, and being forced into situations where they are ‘catching’ women and babies who are fleeing for their lives in the hopes of finding a new life in Israel.

I left the living room and called her to see how she was, and she sounded fine, explaining that it wasn’t so ‘horrible’ as she had written. They had given the refugees food, and helped the mothers with the crying babies. But from hearing her past experiences, I know that she had to be a soldier – not a welcome wagon – and that she had been forced to act tough in front of the refugees.

Talk about mixed emotions. On the one hand, I’m elated that the Giants are headed for certain victory in the final minutes of the game. And on the other hand, my heart is breaking that my daughter and her rifle are herding Sudanese refugees into a makeshift prison called by the soldiers “the Sudaniya.’

Somehow, I just don’t think Giants fans in suburban Jersey were experiencing anything similar.

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Tel Aviv voted world’s best gay city

January 11, 2012 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel 

With all the recent coverage around the world of the gender segregation issues in Israel with haredim, it would be safe to assume that some people are getting the impression that our society is being overrun by Taliban-type extremist elements.

To bring things back to perspective, just go to ISRAEL21c or look at the website Gay Cities, and their ‘best of ‘11’ awards, a poll sponsored by American Airlines. Their readers named Tel Aviv as the ‘best Gay city’ in the world – and it wasn’t just by a thin margin.

Tel Aviv with its 43% of the votes bested the nearest competitor, a little-known backwater hole called New York City which garnered 14%. Other cities with smaller percentages of the votes include Toronto, Sao Paulo and Madrid.

“The gay capital of the Middle East is exotic and welcoming with a Mediterranean c’est la vie attitude,” the website wrote about our national place of pride, an opinion shared by many others.

While Tel Aviv has long been a favorite destination of gay tourists due to the above attributes, great nightclubs and beaches, and an up-all-night’ liberal attitude, the award is the result of efforts by government initiatives to specifically market Tel Aviv for gay tourism.

“The win is the highlight of six years of work and proof that the Tourism Ministry and the Municipality of Tel Aviv made the right decision to invest in gay tourism,” Shai Doitsh, brand manager of the Tel Aviv Gay Vibe tourism campaign, told Ynet.

The fact that we can be having fights about separate seating on buses and hearing women’s voices at army ceremonies on the one hand, and going wild on the beaches and in the clubs on the other hand, is part of the reason that as much as you can try to explain what Israel is, there’s just no way to do it. So you might as well just come and see it for yourself.

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