In the Red South
Filed under: Environment, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel
After consecutive weeks of rainy weekends, Israelis flocked outdoors this weekend to feel the nature.
Several went to the beach. Some headed north to the Galilee and Golan Heights. But based on the traffic jams we encountered, the majority went to the North Negev to the Red South Anemone Festival.
Red South Anemone Festival (Photo: Viva Sarah Press)
With cameras at the ready you could hear “cheese” in just about every language.
The Anemone Festival is my favorite event of the year – and it takes place every weekend in February. These little red flowers carpet the northern Negev area (and can usually be found in the western part as well) and make getting in touch with nature all the more fun.
There are hiking options, biking routes, four-by-four tracks, guided tours and cultural activities.
Our group opted for just sitting down and enjoying a picnic. Our kids loved running and jumping among the flowers.
Jumping over anemones at Red South festival. (Photo: Viva Sarah Press)
And though there were thousands of other families at each field we visited, the flowers managed to keep the spotlight. It truly was a great day out.
Foto Friday – Winter Wildflower Wonderland
Filed under: education, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Travel
I am not a great fan of rain and so this winter has been a particularly miserable one. Rain, rain, rain and more rain. However, even a sun worshiper such as myself can admit upside to the horrible, awful, gray, chilly, soggy, foggy, never-ending wet and damp: the landscape is green, the waterline at Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) has risen and the winter wildflowers are coming into full bloom.
This month, Israel’s nature-lovers will take their annual trek through field and forest in search of their favorite flowers. The Society for the Preservation of Nature (SPNI) is hosting a series of tours in celebration of the season and the upcoming Tu b’Shvat holiday. As always, they will seek out the shy and elusive Persian Cyclamen…
Photo by Sara Gold – Wildflowers of Israel
Fields dotted with blood red Crown Anemones are always a magnificent sight, but their light purple cousins are no less lovely…
Photo by Amikam Shoob – Wildflowers of Israel
The Common Narcissus, whose fragrance is nothing if not controversial…
Photo by Sara Gold – Wildflowers of Israel
The elegant and stately Wild Hyacinth…
Photo by Sara Gold – Wildflowers of Israel
And of course, Tu b’Shvat wouldn’t be complete without the blossoming almond tree!
Photo by Mike Livne – Wildflowers of Israel
Aspiring nature photographers take note: Wildflowers in Israel, in conjunction with Jerusalem Botanical Gardens and FujiFilm, is holding a photo contest and there are still a few days left before the deadline closes on February 8. Information and a list of subjects (in Hebrew) is available here or submissions can be emailed directly.
Eretz Nehederet takes on Birthright
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Travel, tv
Eretz Nehederet actors portraying American-Jewish participants of a Birthright trip in ecstacy over learning they're going to visit Yad Vashem.
Only a few months ago, there was the controversy over the video campaign by the Ministry of Absorption to convince expatriate Israelis to come home. Whether due to lack of understanding by the makers of the videos (claim critics) or over sensitivity by those offended by the videos (claim advocates), the results proved that we don’t really see each other in the same we see ourselves.
That’s why it’s good for someone to come along once in a while and flatten the playing field by being so offensive that you can’t help but laugh. And that someone this time is Eretz Nehederet, the irreverent Channel 2 comedy/satire series poking fun at current events, national leaders, and in this case of the premiere of its ninth season last week, the Birthright/Taglit program.
As Haaretz put it, “In a rare jab at visiting Diaspora Jews, Israel’s premier satirical television show, Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country), took on Taglit-Birthright Israel during its Monday night season premier.”
The skit in question follows a Birthright group as they travel by bus through the country accompanied by an Israeli guide.
You’ve got all the Diaspora Jewish stereotypes, as seen through Israeli eyes – the Jewish American Princesses, the partying, vulgar frat boys and the drug and the sex-addled South American participants.
Cynical to the nth degree, the skit – conducted in a mixture of Hebrew and English -manages to make fun of American Jewish allegiance to Israel, Birthright’s use of Holocaust guilt to encourage the participants to hit up their parents for contributions, and the cocky Israeli mentality as portrayed by the tour guide whose bravado gets him blown up by a land mine.
The skit (available here at least temporarily) loses steam half way through, but it’s still worth searching for in Hebrew on YouTube for its first few minutes for the setup, which provides some of the sharpest parody the show has created.
If American Jewish-Israeli ties were tenuous before this, I shudder to think where they’ll go after the sensitive American Jewish community views this.
Nostalgia Sunday – Cinema Savion saved!
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.
Broza on board
Filed under: Art, Entertainment, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture, Travel
It’s clearly video week for me, but this does not mean I spend all my time on YouTube. That said, here is an absolutely fabulous one, of singer/songwriter David Broza giving an impromptu, private performance to a group of El Al flight attendants in the back galley kitchen.
A little background: From posts I’ve gathered from Facebook, emails and YouTube comments, Broza was flying to New York — his fiance, clothing designer Nili Lotan, also Israeli, lives in New York — on January 3, and one of the flight staff, who are all generally young, out of the army, sometimes simultaneously in university, asked him for a song. And as he has before, and as he does in his often intimate concerts, such as one he recently did for
the Masorti center in Tel Aviv (he belongs to Kehillat Sinai, a Tel Aviv Conservative synagogue), he sat himself down in the galley, and sang an old favorite, Sigaliot, Violets:
Here are the lyrics, in English, for edification.
VIOLETS
She got married and she is happy
in spite her husband being wild
all the time he is in a bad mood
and even doesn’t know why
for the last three years, she receives
under the door, from an unknown man,
letters of poetry to her
they lighten up her youth.Who is writing to you, girl, who sends you flags
a bunch of purple flowers when spring comes
who, every ninth of November,
with no name, greetings or hint,
sends you a wreath of violets tied with a bowThe whole night she can’t fall asleep
she day dreams about him
probably a man with a romantic heart,
good soul and simpatico smile
for three years she has been suffering in silence
yes sometimes she nearly screams
and what if her husband found out?
she hides her lettersWhen her husband comes home from work
throws a questioning glance
He doesn’t say anything,but he knows,
if she knew she would go crazy
Yes, it’s him that writes to her,
he is the lover, he is the subject of her dreams
And what if her husband found out?
She hides her letters.Who is…
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