Nostalgia Sunday – The “Fashion Show” exhibit
An unusual and important exhibition opened this past week at the Jerusalem Theater. “Fashion Show” is a retrospective of costumes from the Hebrew-language stage, dating from 1922 to the present day. Some of the costumes are original, others were recreated from sketches and photographs.
This is the first exhibition of its kind in Israel and was a huge collaborative labor of love between the theaters, AMBI – the local branch of OISTAT (the international union of theater professionals), archives, museums, designers, researchers and private collectors. There are works by visual artists who sometimes contributed to the stage — Nahum Gutman, Natan Altman, Yossele Bergner, Moshe Mokady and David Sharir to name a few — as well as those costume designers less-known to audiences abroad.
Here, for example, is the dress worn by legendary HaBima actress Hanna Rovina, in “The Dybbuk”. In her time, Rovina — “First Lady of Hebrew Theater” — and HaBima were so identified with the play that her character, Lea’leh, in long tresses and flowing white gown, became the theater’s logo for awhile.
This dress from “She Stoops to Conquer” is by Lydia Pincus-Gani, one of the country’s foremost stage and costume designers in the 1960s and 1970s.
I studied with Lydia at Tel Aviv University in the 1980s, and she was not one to be trifled with. We’d slave for weeks over a maquette (a scale model of a stage set) and bring it, shaking and trembling, for Lydia to review. She’d stare at it, hunched over, centimeters of slow-burning ash dangling precariously at the end of a cigarette hovering above delicate bits of carton and balsa wood…
And then… flick! Somehow, most of the soot made it onto the floor. “What is this kakamayka?”, she’d ask, referring derisively to some nonsensical balustrade or extraneous stairway. (For bulky objects there was “What is this plonter?). Those who made it through the first year of her reign of terror benefited by being made her assistant on various shows at HaBima or the Cameri, and some of her students became the designers whose work is now on display.
The GA Comes to Town
The “Feds” are in town this week, and they’re holding a conference. Not the FBI, of course, but the Jewish Federation folk, meeting at the United Jewish Community General Assembly, being held in Jerusalem this week. A combination tour/ networking/ policy-setting convocation, the GA is the premier annual event for the organized Jewish community in the U.S., with every Israeli politician worth his or her salt speaking there about their vision of the future, hoping to impress visitors, Israelis (and themselves) with ideas, thoughts and plans they would implement in Israel, if only given the chance.
For Israelis – especially olim from the U.S. – the GA means a chance to hook up with folks from the old country, a little more of a wait at local restaurants, and a chance to test the English language skills of potential Prime and other ministers in 
future governments, since they all speak before the GA. The program consists of sessions and discussions on issues important to the country and the Jewish world, with experts sorting out security, social, and economic issues. And, of course, there are the cultural events, such as Israeli dance performances, an Israeli food fair, etc. I’ve never been to a GA myself, but the program looks enough like those sponsored by the local Jewish federations that I used to attend back in the States.
The obvious question comes to mind here. GA: Good thing or no big deal? I say, good thing. For our North American guests, the GA is a great way to get an inside view on what is really going on in Israeli society, if you attend all the sessions and listen to all the speeches. In my travels back to the U.S., I find that the large majority of American Jews really don’t “get” a lot of the issues we face here.
As Americans, they can’t really be blamed for looking at things from an American perspective, but Israel really is a separate, independent entity with a destiny of its own. And while the solutions for those problems that appear valid from “over there” sometimes are, they often aren’t – and unless you get a chance to walk a mile (or a kilometer!) in Israel’s shoes, you might not realize that. Not that a week in Israel will necessarily bring that perspective to GA visitors – but if they make sure to attend the session with Bank of Israel Chairman Stanley Fischer, for example, they might just learn something. And all the money they spent on getting to and attending the GA will have been well invested.
Foto Friday – Israel Then and Now
In honor of Israel’s 60th anniversary, the World Zionist Organization put together a traveling exhibition of holographic panels about Israeli achievements, past and future.
ISRAEL21c animated the images into a slide show, and while we can’t hope to reproduce the holograms (produced by Israeli innovator MagInk), the overlaid images still convey the powerful message about six decades of Israeli advancements in technology, healthcare, education and democracy.
From Barack to Barkat: A Look Back at the November Elections
The just concluded Jerusalem election, while certainly not as important on a world stage as last week’s U.S. presidential contest, was in many ways spookily similar to its overseas counterpart. For those who supported Nir Barkat, who beat his main competitor Meir Porush by a commanding 9 points (52 to 43 percent), the sheer jubilance that erupted across the city (though certainly not in all parts of it) reminded me of what I’d heard from so many friends and family in the U.S. after Barack Obama bested John McCain.
That tolerance had triumphed over extremism. That inclusiveness would now prevail, not sectarianism. And most importantly, that hope, pride and patriotism had been restored – in the case of Jerusalem, at a time when many residents were saying, either outright or under their collective breaths, what one Beit Hakerem resident was quoted by Haaretz as lamenting: that this election would “determine whether I’m staying” in the city.
The resemblance between the two races extended beyond just the similarity in the winning candidates names. One candidate preached change, the other more of the same. One ran a relatively clean campaign, while the other (or his supporters, it’s not clear) spent much of his political capital on negative attack ads.
To wit: I took a walk several days before the election. There were posters claiming Barkat was really a closet leftist; that with only five years in politics he “lacked the experience” to manage such a complex city as Jerusalem. Sound familiar?
Barkat, to be sure, didn’t run a flawless campaign the way Obama did. He flip-flopped on political positions and took pot shots at low hanging fruit (the light rail fiasco, the over priced “Bridge of Strings”). Posters appeared on city streets in the waning days of the contest almost messianically proclaiming him “HaTikva,” a play on words: the literal translation is “The Hope” but it’s also the name of the Israeli national anthem.
But Porush had his own Sarah Palin debacle when he was caught on tape boasting that, following his presumed election, “there would be no more secular mayors anywhere in Israel within 10 years.” Once publicized, that statement more than any others did the job of scaring away any remaining voters still on the fence.
Game On!
Intense, heated arguments, where opponents vociferously defend their preferred choice; hats, t-shirts, stickers, and buttons announcing to the world whose side you’re on; anthems, loyalty oaths, and in-depth analyses in the paper, on TV, the web, and “talking heads” who get paid to blather on incessantly, trying to figure out who’s going to win. And, finally, the big showdown, the final battle in which one contender tastes the thrill of victory – or the agony of the feet (I m
ean defeat!).
It could be only one of two things: Sports – or politics. Both inspire feelings of glory, contempt, anger, and, of course, hope. The correlation between the two is an interesting example of how opposites meet. Politics are in the front of the newspaper and sports in the back, so you could essentially read the paper from right to left and get the same information – which is good for us Hebrew readers. But that’s another subject.
Here’s another example of the correlation between sports and politics – with a Hebrew (Israeli) connection, no less. On election night, a hologram of CNN political correspondent Jessica Yellin was beamed into the network’s New York newsroom, making it seem as if she were standing there giving her report. But she wasn’t in New York – she was in Chicago covering the celebration of Barack Obama’s election by residents of his hometown. And the technology that made this possible was developed by a company based in Kfar Saba, called SportVU – which designed the technology for broadcasters of sporting events!
According to CNN, network officials saw the system in action at soccer games in Europe, and decided it would work for them on election night. SportVu has been used extensively in Germany, Spain and Italy, company marketing director Shimon Katzubes told me in a recent interview. It’s easy to run, too, Katzubes says. “All we need are three stationary cameras – no panning is necessary – to take in the live action, and the SportVU applications do the rest.” The fact that a system developed for sporting events could be deployed so easily to broadcast an election may just be coincidental – technology is supposed to be multitaskable. But what does the correlation between sports and politics mean for voters? That we should be looking at elections as spectator sports? Something to think about for 2012, I guess.
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