Celebrity Shavuot
Filed under: Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Movies, Music, Sports
Shavuot partying in Tel Aviv
Despite being yet another three-day school vacation right before Chofesh Hagadol, the big school break, Shavuot is a very Israeli kind of chag, and even Sabra celebrities, including those not currently living in the land, endeavor to celebrate. Take former Miss Israel Gal Gadot – who currently holds her own as an ex-Mossad agent with Vin Diesel in the latest “Fast Five” movie – and is planning on making her specialty cheese lasagna for her family’s big Shavuot feast. “The reason why I like this holiday is the food,” admits Gadot.
Tennis player Shahar Peer says she always anticipates her family’s festive Shavuot dinner with its plethora of fruit and dairy dishes.” “That’s the food that I love,” adds the tennis player, who often tweets about what she’s about to eat, whether its Belgian waffles and chocolate in Brussels or her plan to “eat the entire fridge” whenever she’s home.
Besides the dairy emphasis, Shavuot in Israel is still fairly agricultural in nature, with plenty of opportunities to celebrate the summer harvest. Peer remembers donning a wreath of flowers when she was in the third grade and participating in a school play, a fairly common scene around this time of year. Some cities have tractor parades in the days leading up to Shavuot, marking the farming contribution of the country’s moshavim and kibbutzim, with tractors making their way from the farms outside the city.
Model and actress Gadot reminisces about going with her family as a child to a moshav or kibbutz to watch the cows being milked. She also remembers having water fights with her friends, while Sha’anan Streett, lead singer of hip hop/funk band Hadag Nachash, has a vivid memory of dumping an entire pail of water on his synagogue rabbi, who only grimaced and went on with his sermon.
Water fights a while back
For psychic Uri Geller, Shavuot is very special, particularly the learning aspect of the holiday, which he says he tries to do from his home in London. “What’s interesting to me about Shavuot is its spiritual angle and the aura and the energy that emanates fro this holiday,” he says. “It is the holy holiday of the achievement of spirituality and you count back from Passover, it’s 50 days, it’s like going up a ladder that counts 50 steps and 50 in the Kabbalah is the number of infinity, so it has significant ritualistic meaning to me of spirituality.”
Whatever your angle, enjoy your celebrations.
Spotting the wild Israeli
Adam Leighton (in blue) with Israeli biking group in Nepal
With all the Israelis who head off for the Far East on extended post-army trips, we were pretty sure we’d meet tens, if not hundreds, of our fellow countrymen and women during our recent trek in Nepal.
On the first six days of the trek, though, we met Brits, Canadians, lots of Germans, Japanese, Korean and Thai tourists, but no Israelis.
Was Nepal no longer an “in” spot for the young backpacking, dreadlocked, and multiple pierced Israeli rebel?
Apparently they were all waiting to gang up on us in one place, in the small village of Tatopani. They weren’t hard to spot: our “Isradar” (a term we coined for “Israeli radar”) started jumping as we reached our guesthouse where we were greeted by not a lone trekker but 15 Israelis…and their bikes.
The Israeli group (a rather mature bunch of mostly 40 and 50-somethings) was on a two-week biking tour of Nepal, organized by Gur Kotzer who runs elnepal.co.il, a joint Israeli-Nepali trekking agency.
I met up with Gur while bathing in the natural hot springs that have made Tatopani a Himalayan vacation get away – a sort of Ein Gedi for those who like to really rough it. Gur told me that his agency runs a whole host of adventures in Nepal, not just biking, including standard walking treks, jungle safaris and white water rafting. Gur is based in Israel, but travels to Nepal frequently.
The Israelis we met were not a part of any specific riding group. They hailed from all over the country (though none were from Jerusalem) and they had brought their bikes with them all the way from Israel. The group had just biked down nearly 1,500 meters that day (some of it through a driving rain) on bumpy roads and 900-year-old stone staircases cut into the mountainside.
Our paths continued to cross with the bikers. We met again at what’s arguably the “world’s largest Passover Seder” organized by Chabad in Kathmandu, and then again on our El Al flight home.
Interestingly, the Israelis’ “Isradar” was working just as well in the other direction and we were easily identifiable too. This always perplexes our kids who steadfastly believe that, as North American immigrants, we don’t look outwardly Israeli. How did the Israelis spot us then?
Easy: they spied my daughter reading a sign in Hebrew at the entrance to the guesthouse. It read “Shakshuka – excellent guest house and tasty food.”
Only in Israel…or should I say, only in Nepal?
Skating on thick ice in Jerusalem
You wouldn’t expect Israel to hatch a gaggle of good ice skaters and hockey players, but for the second straight year, a team of 12- and 13-year-old ice hockey players from Israel has captured the Class B trophy in the Bernières-Saint-Rédempteur (BSR) International Pee-Wee Tournament in Quebec.
It’s especially remarkable considering they practice most of the time on roller skates since there’s a dearth of ice rinks in the country.
In Jerusalem, the lack of skating rinks has been temporarily solved, with the opening for a month of a beautiful skating facility in a temporary pavilion in Safra Square in front of City Hall.
The rink was packed when I went with my son last week – it felt like a return to the roller skating and ice skating rinks of my youth with rock & roll oldies blasting out of a soundsystem, teenagers whizzing back and forth trying to impress each other and lots of falling down and laughter.
It may seem commonplace in middle America, but such unfettered fun in the middle of Jerusalem, within sight of the Old City, isn’t a common occurrence – especially the appearance of ice in the normally above freezing temperatures.
Ice skating was the perfect antidote to the heaviness that usually permeates the town, and afterwards, walking along the pristine light rail tracks in the middle of suddenly picturesque post-roadwork Jaffa Road on the way to buy – what else – an ice coffee at Aroma, I really did have the feeling of being in small town USA heading to Arnold’s Drive In.
Maybe they should make the skating rink a permanent city attraction.
An American basketball player’s season in Ashkelon
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Profiles, Sports, Travel
Jon Jaques in his Ironi 'Eldan' Ashkelon uniform.
Not quite talented enough to shoot for a career in the NBA, Jaques decided to take a year before getting on with his life by signing a year-contract with Ironi ‘Eldan’ Ashkelon in the Israeli Super League, where he’s spent the last three months.
In a long, insightful first-person account for the American sports bible Sports Illustrated, Jaques has written about his experience going from playing last year in the cavernous Carrier Dome to the “the cramped, cookie-cutter gyms of Israel.”
…while Ashkelon and Ithaca, N.Y., may be similar in size, the similarities end there. If moving to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem for a whole year is a culture shock, then moving to Ashkelon is the equivalent of a cultural ice bath. In a lot of ways, Ashkelon is unlike the bigger, more citylike parts of Israel, and for that reason the cultural adjustment to living here is probably as big as it could have possibly been. But the small-town feel of Ashkelon is one of the characteristics I appreciate most.
Ashkelon basketball fans, like I’d imagine most fans of small-town/lower budget European teams, are extremely passionate about the team. They are everything a basketball player could ask for in a fan base: loyal, proud, and feverishly supportive. The fans, which are mostly made up of adolescent boys, travel to all away games, bang drums in the stands, paint their chests and blow vuvuzelas. They pack the energy and enthusiasm of European soccer into basketball arenas wherever we travel.
However, Jaques is not wearing rose-tinted glasses, as he continues…
On the flip side, like most Israelis, they are also not shy about voicing their displeasure when things don’t go well. It’s wrong to call it rudeness, but some Israelis possess this unbridled honesty that enables them to ask questions and make comments that many Americans would keep to themselves. For example, after we lost our opening game of the season to local rival Ashdod, I returned home to order a pizza. Before handing me my food, the deliveryman greeted me with, “It’s you! How’d you guys lose tonight? I was embarrassed to watch the game.” That’s pretty bold coming from a man whom I had yet to tip, but that is the reality of life as a professional basketball player.
Go here to read Jaques’ full account of his eye-opening experience in Israel.
Foto Friday – The First Jerusalem Marathon
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, Foto Friday, General, health, Israeliness, Life, News, Picture of the Week, Politics, Sports
The First Jerusalem Marathon is now over and the entire city can breathe a collective sigh of relief. One reason is because cars can now move freely again around town. But more importantly, because the day passed without incident — and believe me, Wednesday’s terrorist bombing, so close to Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, which just happened to be the pick-up point for the runner’s kits, was on everyone’s mind.
I ran the 10k (1 hour 20 minutes*) and can report the event was well-organized and the trail — which we had all feared would be one big uphill, as is per usual in Jerusalem — was planned out nicely with uphills, downhills and even the occasional level ground. The drizzly, chilly weather was perfect for running, though not for hanging out in Sacher Park and enjoying a post-run adrenaline rush afterglow. But in all, the event was a feather in the cap of Mayor Nir Barkat, whose goal, as a self-described “sports fan and marathon runner who completed five marathons in different cities across the world” was to have Israel’s capital city “join the international map of marathons”. The countdown to 2012 has already begun.
Here are a few shots of what is was like, courtesy of the Jerusalem Marathon website. The runners lining up…
Mayor Barkat firing the starting gun…
And they’re off…
The front runners…
One of the high points: passing through the Old City…
And here’s Mr. Mayor again — walking the walk, not just talking the talk!
So that’s how it was in 2011. Here’s hoping that 2012′s run manages to engage even more of the city’s population groups and bring them closer not just to physical activity and a healthier lifestyle but, through sports, also to one another.
*Slow but steady.
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