Cellphone coexistence
Anyone’s who had a cellphone in Israel and traveled to the Dead Sea region has had the experience of having their phone bleep and let them know that they are now using a Jordanian cellphone carrier. In fact, if you continue heading north toward Beit Shean on Highway 90, the Jordan Valley road, your phone may bleep a few more times, going in and out of Jordanian and Israeli cellphone coverage. It’s cellphone coexistence.
What’s funny about all this is the billing. Here’s the story. My 18-year-old stepdaughter, Amira, is currently living in the Beit Shean area, known as Emek Beit Shean or the Beit Shean Valley, just over the hills from Jordan. She’s in a mechina, an army prepatory program, located in a moshav in the area, and has been there since September. Her cellphone bill comes to the house, and we noticed that there were a lot of calls sourced in Jordan on her most recent bill. It took a minute for the aha! factor to settle in, and then we realized: Because of her location, some of her cellphone calls end up being made using a Jordanian carrier, while others remain on the Israeli side of the border. When we talked about it with her, she was completely clued in, as she’s not the only member of her mechina to experience this. In fact, it depends on where you are in their campus; some rooms and buildings veer toward the Israeli carrier, while others end up using Jordanian coverage.
So yeah, it’s cellphone coexistence. But it’s an expensive venture.
Seeing Jerusalem upside down
When the Israel Museum unveils its extensive renovation work in July, museum-goers might be excused for thinking that things were done upside down.
That’s because one of the highlights of the $100 million makeover will be a reflective stainless-steel-surfaced sculpture by world famous artist Anish Kapoor.
According to Bloomberg news, like Kapoor’s “Cloud Gate” piece in Chicago, nicknamed “The Bean,” the 5-meter-high (16 feet) work will provide viewers with a distorted reflection of reality, in this case by inverting its surroundings on an hourglass-shaped mirror, placing the museum’s campus atop the sky.
Kapoor is a British citizen of Indian/Jewish descent who lived and studied in Israel for a few years during the 1970s.
Museum director James Snyder said that the sculpture is a tribute to Teddy Kollek, who served 28 years as the mayor of Israel’s capital, and will “reflect the essence of Teddy’s vision for the museum and its unique placement in the landscape of Jerusalem.”
The renovations at the museum – the most extensive since its opening in 1965 – will double the gallery space and make it more accessible for visitors who come to see such treasures as the Dead Sea Scrolls housed in the Shrine of the Book gallery.
According to Bloomberg, a new underground entrance walkway connects the museum’s buildings and will feature another new piece by artist Olafor Eliasson – a 15-meter-long and 2.4- meter-high wall of 300 individual paintings that comprise a complete spectrum of colors, entitled “Whenever the Rainbow Appears,” based on the story of Noah and the flood.
Snyder told Bloomberg that both Kapoor and the Danish-Icelandic Eliasson were “old friends” of the museum, which already has their works in its collection.
Once the museum unveils its momentous changes this summer, it will surely live up to its name as Israel’s national museum and become firmly ensconced as the one of the ‘must see’ tourist destinations in the country’s capital.
Nostalgia Sunday – Commercials Go Way Retro
We are awash in a flood of nostalgia that shows absolutely no sign on abating. As part of that trend, our commercials and TV shows are populated by the stars of yesteryear, trying today to earn some of the cash-o-la they couldn’t back in those modest days.
Take, for example, singer-songwriter Mati Caspi, seen lately endorsing Bituach Yashir direct insurance. Other unlikely singing insurance pitchmen include David Broza and Boaz Sharabi.
And here, just to remind you of why we loved them — Riki Gal and Mati Caspi in concert televised by Channel 2, then in its infancy. (Check out Riki’s single lace glove!).
Gal, by the way, is still a force to be reckoned with (she judged the first two seasons of Kohav Nolad, the Israeli version of Pop Idol), and will be performing in Jerusalem on Monday night this week at a benefit for Tsad Kadima, the Israeli organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of children, adolescents and young adults with cerebral palsy and other motor dysfunctions. (Tickets are still available. Contact anat@tsadkadima.org.il or call 02-6540062).
But back to nostalgia: even stars who no longer walk this earth are getting into the game. Israel Discount Bank revived a commercial from the 80s that starred the late great actor Shaike Ophir.
The ad’s revival highlights the fact Discount Bank was Israel’s first to offer telebanking-a revolutionary concept back then, especially in light of the poor quality of our phone service (“poor” being a polite substitute for the other four letter word I was considering using). Ophir actually offers the cop an asimon phone token so he can make the call. The commercial has proven so popular, there’s a follow-up where today’s comedians pay homage to Ophir:
Even Maccabi Health Services has climbed on the retro bandwagon, launching a radio campaign that employs the use of this catchy jingle for powdered orangeade Zip. The connection between HMO and beverage is tenuous — something about “We’re not in the Eighties anymore, so why should your health organization be?” — but it’s fun to revisit the era and that peculiar but sweet Israeli institution of the family whistle. Enjoy the original.
Oscar fever in Israel
Ajami directors Scandar Copti (left) and Yaron Shani in Hollywood over the weekend (Photo: Reuters)
It’s the third year running that an Israeli film has been nominated (after Beaufort and Waltz With Bashir). And Ajami’s intense portrayals – intertwined stories of a young Muslim in the crime-ridden Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa gets caught in an Arab clan feud and his own forbidden romance with a Christian woman; a Jewish police officer in search of his missing soldier brother, and the tale of a Palestinian youth who sneaks into Israel for menial work – are making it, if not a favorite, then at least a strong contender for the Oscar.
And, as Hannah Brown wrote in The Jerusalem Post, Ajami has already won just by getting to the Hollywood ceremonies. Directed by an Arab – Scandar Copti – and a Jew – Yaron Shani, “it’s hard to overstate the symbolic value of the collaboration and friendship between these two, who are from different ethnic groups, religious affiliations and backgrounds. They spent seven years working on this gritty film about the crime-ridden Ajami neighborhood in Jaffa, which they managed to get into the Cannes Film Festival, where it won a special mention. These two young, first-time directors who had to live with relatives while making the film because they had put all their money into it, have seen it win honors and rave reviews on three continents.”
It’s been fun watching the the two, along with the cast and their families first forays into Hollywood – most of the cast consisted of Jaffa residents who weren’t really acting too much in their portrayals of the working class; for many, it was their first trip outside of Israel and for some, their first airplane ride. Star Shahir Kabahar, 25, had to take vacation days from his job as a bureka baker at his family’s Jaffa bakery, in order to travel to the ceremony.
Footage of them walking outside the Kodak Theater and staring wide-eyed at the spectacles on Hollywood Boulevard demonstrate the huge journey one can make with film and the impact on lives it can create. Good luck to Ajami tonight!
Foto Friday – Ron Shoshani’s Israel Eye Candy
The first thing people think when they see works by Ron Shoshani is that they aren’t really photographs. They are. But given our generation’s obsession with artifice, Shoshani takes care to ensure that his models – in his case, buildings, cities and even rocks – wear a healthy layer of makeup.
“Everything undergoes cosmetic treatment these days – models, TV presenters, even chefs dress up their food. We put makeup on everything. And that’s how I relate to photography. But the subject has to have a good basis. And when I take pictures, I look for and show the beauty.”
Using what he calls his ‘Secret Sauce’, Shoshani is able to make things appear as if they’ve been sprinkled with a dash of ‘Ever-So-Much-More-So’. “I always check the weather before I go out to photograph. Some things look better in daylight, others at night. I generally examine a site 2-3 times before the actual shoot. And I wait for the right day.” Working with a digital camera, he takes an initial set of photos after which the real work begins.
“The ‘Secret Sauce’ is to select the site, get it under the right weather conditions and then I start the maquillage. I can work on a frame for three days, I can work on it two weeks – post-processing or retouching – what people call Photoshopping, though I don’t necessarily use that.”
Israel becomes beautiful through Shoshani’s lens, particularly Tel Aviv, a city that can appear unlovely and unkempt to the uninitiated. “Every major city in the world has an image, like a poster, that shows it is an interesting cosmopolitan place. I wanted to create that sort of image, that makes people say ‘Wow, I want to go there!’”
Shoshani is also well-aware that his audience has both little viewing time and a limited attention span. “People view thousands of images a day and the amount of time people will spend on looking at a photo is maybe a quarter of second. So I try to create ‘eye candy’, one shot that will make you stop and think and see things not as they usually are. I try to make people look in wonderment. The photo of Tel Aviv skyline… you can look at it a long time.”
Shoshani’s work hangs in the lobbies and meeting rooms of Israeli companies. “They are proud of Israel and want to show that it’s a modern, technological and inspiring place.” Many more images are on view at his Facebook page and framing-quality prints may be ordered directly by writing to ronsho@gmail.com. (Shoshani says his prices are “comfortable”). Since posting his work on Facebook, Shoshani has received thank-yous from all over the world. “I got over 600 comments in three days. People were very emotional, writing things like ‘You should show this to the world’. I’m happy to. It’s not Zionism. I just think this country has an enormous variety of things to see.”
Flower hunt
After several weeks of putting my nose to the proverbial grindstone, my working partners and I decided it was high time for a day off, one that would help us find new material for our latest project (more later on that), and that would get us out of the city.
We had grand plans for hitting the Yoav Yehuda region and then getting to Tel Aviv as well, to check out end-of-winter sales and breath in the urban air, but once we reached the fairly wide open and green spaces of Routes 3 and 44, we were settled on hanging in the country.
It’s truly astonishing how heavy rains can transform the look of this country. Route 3, if taken from the Latrun exit off Highway 1 from Jerusalem, gets you close to Ashdod and all the way to Ashkelon. We were making stops in the yeshuvim, a.k.a. small suburban communities, around the Nachshon intersection, and the views around us were of rolling green fields, dotted with yellow flowers and the occasional clump of red anemones. But one of our best stops — besides a textile designer in Karmei Yosef and a goat cheese farm and cafe in Moshav Tel Shachar — was in the Defenders’ Forest, a JNF park of pine, cypress, olive and carob trees, with monuments of all shapes and sizes erected throughout the park in memory of ‘defenders’ of all kinds, from Holocaust victims and fallen soldiers to people who have died in terrorist attacks or tragedies of the more mundane type.
We were seeking flowers, winter/spring wildflowers to be exact, and it was amusing to watch ourselves drive through the park, looking for the clumps of purple cyclamen and red anemones. We found them, in abundance, carpeting the forest, from clumps surrounding trees to wild beds of cyclamens dotted with bunches of anemones. And even though we were on a mission (to write a piece about finding wildflowers in the Israeli springtime), it was such a lark to actually get out there in the forest, search and seek flowers, and find and photograph them.
Here are a few samples of what we found, now go see them for yourself…
Update: Boycott of Metallica results in lower prices
It almost reminds me of those halycon activism days of the ’60s and ’70s. 26-year-old business and management student Tomer Mussman has proven that the little guy can stand up to the ‘Man’ and make him back down on unreasonable demands.
As reported on Israelity yesterday, a growing contingent of Metallica fans were joining a Facebook page that Mussman had launched over the weekend calling for a boycott of the band’s May 22nd show at Ramat Gan Stadium over what they claimed were inflated ticket prices.
Well, it turns out that the groundswell of support for the boycott (the Facebook page had garnered 6,000 members and a dozen or so articles on music Web sites) got the attention of the band and the promoter of the show Gad Oron.
On Wednesday, Oron and Mussman had a pow-wow, and when the smoke cleared, guess what? The prices of tickets for the standing room field – where most Metallica fans want to experience the show – had been lowered significantly.
Standing space that had cost NIS 1,200 will now be sold for NIS 990, while the tickets that originally cost NIS 900 and NIS 600 for the back and middle sections respectively, will be going for NIS 490. That’s almost 50% being lopped off the price of some tickets, demonstrating the huge profit margins that had been in the works.
“We would like to personally thank Metallica and their management for directly helping us with reaching our goal and reducing the prices,” said Mussman on Wednesday night following the announcement of the new prices.
Mussman, who told me that he’s been a fan of Metallica’s for 15 years and saw them in Rishon Lezion in 1999, explained that the campaign wasn’t against the band.
“We want the show to go on – what we want is the price to be lowered,” he said earlier Wednesday before the meeting with Oron. “What bothers us is that they’re raising the price because they can – the promotor is taking advantage of the fact that Metallica fans have been waiting 11 years for them to return here.”
By Wednesday night, however, Mussman, along with the other fan/activists were elated.
“After a four-day campaign, tens of news items about us worldwide, over 6,000 supporters and numerous media interviews we can say that we did it!” wrote Mussman on the Facebook page. “We won!”
And so did the little guy everywhere.
***
Sitting down for Metallica
The thing with concerts in Israel by international superstars, is that if there’s not a call for the artist to cancel the show by the pro-Palestinian lobby, then we have to start our own boycott efforts.
The case in question here is the upcoming show, announced last week, by veteran hard rock legends Metallica, who will be making their third appearance in our Mediterranean haven on May 22 at Ramat Gan Stadium.
The calls for a boycott of the show, however, aren’t emerging from any anti-Israel sentiment, like they have previously for Paul McCartney, Leonard Cohen, Elton John and Carlos Santana, among others. They’re coming from fans of the band who are outraged that tickets for the concert are well beyond the means of the average metalhead.
The vast ground area in the stadium is being divided into three ’standing room’ sections – tickets in the far back “Bronze” area will cost NIS 600 (about $170). The “Silver” area will cost NIS 900 ($260) and the “Gold” area, the closest to the stage, will cost NIS 1200 ($350).
There will be less expensive tickets available for seats in the stands, which will go from NIS 300-600 ($80-170) – but as the protestors are claiming, who wants to go to a Metallical show and sit off on the side in the stands?
According to the fans, who have started their own Facebook page in an attempt to pressure promotor Marcel Avraham to lower the prices of the field tickets, the prices are way out of line with the cost of tickets to Metallica’s other shows on their spring European tour.
So far, the Facebook page has garnered over 3,000 members, and has made a splash on a number of international metal Web sites. Will the boycott effort work, or are there enough Metallica fans in Israel who will pay any price to see their heroes to thwart the calls to stay home? Stay tuned.
No place for old folks
This Purim, I began to feel my age. Not the Megillah reading – you can appreciate that no matter how old you are (especially if you’re hard of hearing…helps drown out the din of the groggers). No, it was the party afterward.
Every year, my wife and I go dancing at the massive Boogie Purim Party at Jerusalem’s Binyamei Hauma. Boogie is a twice-monthly free form, world music dance extravaganza held at the ICCC in the capital’s German Colony. It’s notable for its eclectic mix of music from around the world. In any given set, the DJ is likely to verve from Motown to Egyptian pop to psychedelic Israeli trance.
The crowd is equally non-conformist, with all ages grooving to the alternative beat, whirling around without any whiff of the performance anxiety one might have at a trendy Tel Aviv disco.
On Purim, Boogie attracts several thousand revelers from all over the country and books well-known world music bands. This year, the evening’s highlight was the Madboojah Project, a ethnic electronic ensemble formed by Shlomi Avratz and Udi Ben Knaan, the latter of whom is a member of the popular “Sheva” group. The band’s trademark tune, with bagpipe and didgeridoo, sounds a little like a Scottish brogue hopped up on Ecstasy and laced with Hebrew rap.
Unfortunately, Madboojah wasn’t scheduled to perform until 2:00 AM, a time when I’m usually well into a much demanded round of REM sleep. But still, it was Boogie. And it was Purim.
Maybe if we could convince some friends to join us, we could justify the late hour, I thought. Renee was game, but her husband’s back had gone out. Other friends were concerned about waking up in time for the next morning’s second Megillah reading. Party poopers.
The thing is, I still feel like a teenager inside. My body may be pushing 50, but I see no reason to act any older than 16 (although my teenager daughter will emphatically insist that I was never 16 like her).
In the end, we nixed going out dancing this year and instead nestled in front of the TV and watched a double-header of the Israeli series Srugim (no spoilers, but Nati is still a pig). As for Madboojah – I’m sure they’ll be back in town, playing a local club sometime soon. Maybe even at a reasonable hour for us old fogies who still like to boogie.
Art lovers rejoice
Almost since I moved to Ma’aleh Adumim around 16 years ago, work on the Moshe Castel Museum has been going in sporadically.
Touted as the city’s first art museum, it was going to put Ma’aleh Adumim on the map as far as having something cultural to offer visitors and tourists.
Castel, who died in 1991 at age 82, was a prolific painter whose works can be found hanging in the Knesset, Beit Hanassi and the Binyanei Hauma convention center.
After he died, his widow Bilhah moved from Tel Aviv to Ma’aleh Adumim. Evidently, she said that her husband had been inspired by the desert views and that he had expressed the wish that his paintings would one day hang in a museum overlooking the desert.
Well, finally, after a dozen years of stop and start building activity, the museum, housing 100 of Castel’s works, was officially opened at the end of the month.
It’s located on a residential street in the city and indeed, it boasts a magnificent view of the landscape of the region. Bilhah built an attached home for herself next to the museum and evidently integrally involved in many aspects of the site.
Details on visiting hours can be found here. The museum will be open to the public, groups and schools from this month and includes a cafe and gift shop. If visiting me wasn’t enough of a reason, here’s another to journey the five miles from Jerusalem to Ma’aleh Adumim.
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