Shimon Peres, superstar
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with youngster Shimon Peres.
At age 88, Peres is a new media star and has spent this week, after holding a face to face with President Barack Obama and addressing the AIPAC conference, touring California hi-tech hotbeds as the toast of Silicon Valley, with heavyweights like Mark Zuckerberg and Serge Brin clamoring to pose next to him like he was a rock star.
Zuckerberg helped Peres launch his official Facebook page, which is aimed at creating a dialogue with Arab users. The president repeatedly praised the social networking site as a way for people to bypass failed efforts of governments to seek peace.
And if that’s not enough for you to press like, Peres’s people recruited celebrated Israeli DJ Noy Alooshe to put together a techno mash-up of a Peres speech to promote the page. Alooshe, a member of the techno group Chovevei Tzion, was propelled to international success after his parody last year of former Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi, which included excerpts from one of his speeches during the early stages of the Libyan civil war.
Accompanied by a pulsing techno beat, the Peres clip features Peres rapping his way through a “be my friend, for peace” riff in his endearing Old World English acent. Visually, we see the presidentin various scenes, from scrolling through his page on a Tablet to meeting international leaders and celebrities like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, comedian Jerry Seinfeld and the Pope.
The clip appears, of course, on Peres’s own YouTube channel. The man’s a modern marvel. Meanwhile I’m still trying to figure out what Twitter is all about.
Toronto’s “Slut” March Heads to Israel
Last April a writer from my personal blog Green Prophet asked: Should the Middle East Have More Sluts? Of course we wanted to attract our reader’s attention, and we did with thousands of readers, hundreds of “Likes” and dozens of comments. Although I am not a feminist, I do recognize a critical link between women’s rights and environmental values. Look at the women from Barefoot College in Jordan: Women are often the first ones to transmit these values to their societies and children, and women without basic rights are not empowered to do anything. I know that linking sluts and the Middle East is a tough pill to swallow in the ultra-conservative Middle East but we wrote this article to grab your attention. To make you think.
Readers and activists were listening. According to DIY Tel Aviv the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem will be organizing their own slut walks, starting next week. Read more
Antigone Rising raves about Israel
Kristen Henderson, second from left, Nini Camps, second from right, and Cathy Henderson, right, all of Antigone Rising pose with two Arab students after their performance in Beersheba.
Well, the quartet was here and gone, and they were fantastic. Not only that, they had a great time, as they themselves pointed out in blog postings on the site After Ellen.
Let’s take a peek at singer/rhythm guitarist Nini Camps’ observations after only a few days in Israel for the first time.
Today we played at Eshkol Ha Pais in Beer Sheva for about 250 Bedouin and Jewish students from local high schools.
Throughout our careers we’ve played tons of shows for high school and college students. Sometimes even in remote towns in the nooks and crannies of the U.S., but it’s safe to say that we have never played for kids that have never heard American music — at all.
I look around the town and it is developed as much as many American cities. But here, unlike in the U.S., there is such a diverse mix of cultures that a girl in jeans and uggs is walking next to a girl in full cover. I can’t think of anywhere in the U.S. that has such polar cultural diversity within such a tiny radius. We’ve been told the entire country of Israel is the size on New Jersey.
And then here we come blazing in. Ha, culture shock indeed!
We played for about an hour and it was hard to read some of the faces. Some were visibly interested and clapping, swaying, but some looked away or looked down and you couldn’t help but wonder if they were bored, shy or just not comfortable with what was happening onstage. Or all of the above, for that matter.
After the show we sat along the edge of the stage. It took a few brave souls to break the ice but once they did it was like a torrent rushing the stage. They all came up to say hello, teach us how to say hello, tell us their names, take pictures and some just came up to stare at us.
One boy couldn’t wait to tell me he loved Eric Clapton! One girl, pretty well covered up and with great English skills came up quickly to say how lucky she felt to have been at the show. Before I realized it she was gone and I was left wanting to tell her it was the other way around — that we were the lucky ones.
And here’s bass player and band founder Kristen Henderson’s take on the show in Beesheba.
We just played our first show in Beer Sheva for a mixed group of high school students, both Israeli Jews and Arabs. All of the Arab female students were covered from head to toe, a few only had their eyes showing.
One of our hosts from the U.S. Embassy told us that this would be a very culturally diverse group of students. That in most cases, these kids would never be in the same room with one another, but part of the U.S. State Department’s initiative was to bring them together from time to time in an effort to create peace and understanding between the cultures.
As the room filled, it was very clear who belonged to which group. The Israeli Jewish kids filtered down to the front rows. The boys stuck with the boys and girls with girls, but they were “Westernized” in the sense that some wore Adidas sweat jackets and carried iPhones. You didn’t get the sense they were intentionally divided by gender, but it was obvious they were divided by culture.
The Bedouins (or Israeli Arabs), on the other hand, sat further back – boys in the middle of the room and the girls fully covered from head to toe in the back of the room. At one point Nini came over to show me that two of the girls were cautiously clapping along during our set, unsure if they should be visibly enjoying the show.
After we performed, an Arab girl approached us accompanied by her teacher. She thanked us for sharing our culture with her and told us that our show, seeing four women on stage playing music, “empowered her” (her words; she spoke impeccable English).
A U.S. Embassy worker later told us the girl comes from a village with no running water or electricity. Her mother recently passed away and she is the oldest of six siblings. She is one of the brightest students in her school and hoped to go on to study science and technology, but due to her family’s situation she is now responsible for bringing up her siblings. The Embassy worker went on to say that seeing us perform today gave her hope that she can still have more for her life.
Here’s a short video montage of the band’s visit to Israel.
Meeting whiz kid Ben Lang
Ben Lang
When I first met Ben Lang, I didn’t take much notice. Apparently I should have. The 18-year-old returning immigrant has taken Israel’s hi-tech scene by storm, in the process being written about by no less than 22 publications in Israel and the U.S. – including this one from Abby Leichman on our sister site Israel21c.
As Abby writes, Ben began his entrepreneurial career just a few years after his bar mitzvah. He created a site to help students find and share class notes; opened his own eBay business; and started a blog for budding young entrepreneurs. He was almost sued by The New York Times for making a website called freenewyorktimes.com, which explained how to read The Times for free after the paper erected a formidable pay wall.
His latest project is a co-venture with another young Israeli, Nir Kouris. The site, called Innovation Israel – similar to EpicLaunch, his previous blog for entrepreneurs – is a community for startups, entrepreneurs and investors, with of course an Israeli twist. One of their first ventures was a live coding event called Hackathon – which we wrote about here.
All of this will be coming to an end – perhaps more a temporary hiatus – when Lang joins the IDF later this month. In the meantime, he’s been working with the marketing team at Wibiya -here’s my story about them from two years back.
Ben is the son of Jennifer and Phillipe Lang (dad’s a hi-tech entrepreneur as well and we once met in my office to brainstorm ideas). Philippe’s brother Yvan is an accomplished architect and the father of one of my daughter’s kindergarten classmates (yes, we’ve kept in touch all these years). Mom Jennifer is my wife’s ex’s sister. Now that’s Jewish geography at its finest!
I can’t say I’m buddies with Ben – other than on Facebook – but I’m glad to have chatted with this up and coming superstar once at a family event. I expect to hear more about Ben Lang in the future – in three years time…or before.
Nostalgia Sunday – Adloyada-yada-yada
Could it be true that the Adloyada Purim parade is returning to Tel Aviv? According to Ahbar HaIr (City Mouse) weekly, there’s a grassroots movement forming among last summer’s Social Welfare Protest organizers to bring the legendary celebration back to its birthplace and natural habitat. Finally! A concrete aspect to the nebulous Protest — and one that I can back one hundred percent.
Briefly put, the phrase “Adloyada” comes from “ad lo yada” or “unable to differentiate”, referring to the Purim tradition of drinking until one is unable to tell the difference between evil Haman and good Mordechai. The first Adloyada parade was held in 1912 in Tel Aviv and continued until 1936. It was reestablished in the 1950s and shut down again in the 1960s. In the early 80s, the Sheinkin Adloyada came and went — fast and furious like the punk music that inspired it — and that was it. Until now.
(The full background to the Adloyada’s historic Tel Aviv roots — and its relationship to debonair choreographer and filmmaker Baruch Agadati — may be found here).
Last week, the organizers of this latest incarnation put in a request to make the renewed Adloyada an official Tel Aviv municipal event but received no response. No matter. “We don’t need permission from the establishment to go out and party,” city council member Sharon Louzon told Ahbar HaIr.
Well said — and probably the right attitude as it doesn’t look like municipality is going to back the revival any time soon. “The Adloyada was cancelled for two principle reasons,” ran the official municipal statement quoted by Ahbar HaIr, “budget and logistical complications that shut down the city almost entirely on a day of heavy traffic. In addition, it should be noted that the city of Holon hosts a very successful event, and we think it would not be right to enter into a competition as there is a concurrent event only 10 minutes driving distance away.”
Holon! Sacrilege!
The public procession is scheduled to start this coming Thursday at 11:00 AM at the end of Ibn Gabirol Boulevard (corner of HaYarkon Park) and will proceed southwards towards Rothschild Boulevard, Allenby Street, Levinsky Park and the New Central Bus Station, ending at Hatikva Park at around 3:00 PM.
More photos of Adloyadas gone by may be viewed here – plus see below for some rare footage from the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive. You can check out the Holon Adloyada from last year (also below) — it looks very fun, actually, and I think Agadati would have appreciated the Rio carnival dancers.
Purim Sameach! Have a happy Purim holiday!
Adloyada 1932
Adloyada 1960
Holon Adloyada 2011
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