In a trance on the beach

June 17, 2009 - 8:59 AM by David · 4 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Travel, coexistence 

tentWhen Israelis go camping, they tend to keep things as close to home life as possible. Meaning they’re right on top of you.

I try to go camping on the beach with my kids at least once a year, and last weekend we packed up the tent and mangal and headed to Palmachim beach, just south of Rishon Leziyon with two other dads and kids (for an inexplicable reason, some wives prefer to stay in the solitude of a lone house rather than with their family in a cramped tent).

Palmachim is an ideal destination because there’s a spacious grass/dirt area just a few yards away from the beach, enabling you to pitch a tent and cook without sand getting everywhere, but still close to run right in the Mediterranean whenever you want. As a bonus, the entrance fee is only NIS 20 per car (about $5 for a weekend in the sun).

One of the families with us knew the drill from previous excursions, but the other family, veterans of numerous camping trips in their native US, were making their first foray into the sport of Israeli camping. There are differences.

First of all, you need to have certain expectations, or more specifically, lack of them. Don’t expect to get any sleep – if you think you’re going to have a restful night, stay at home.
There are no ‘norms’ about shutting off the music and turning in at midnight. There are parties all night, and it’s not just boom boxes.

Israelis bring sound systems on their camping trips, booming PAs that can simulate a high speed drill or a jackhammer. On the plus side, you can look at it as a sociological experience. Camping in Israel provides a microcosm into Israeli society like no other.

Down on the beach, there was typical rave, with droning, pounding noise disguised as music, and a dozen ecstatic 20-somethings undoubtedly spurred on by some ‘ecstacy’ of their own. Unfortunately, they didn’t pass any around to the rest of us.

But no matter, because over 30 yards or so in the grove of trees near the public bathrooms was a group of also 20-something Ethiopian Israelis camping and they were playing native music at equally ear splitting levels and dancing in an exotic, sensual manner – men and women inches from each other in a hypnotizing form of chicken dance. We couldn’t take our eyes off them. That is, until a group of boisterous campers from Georgia (the country, not the US state) began doing their own ethnic dances and songs.

By around 2 am, our third family couldn’t take it any more and packed their stuff and went home. The dad had enough of the noise, the smoke from other grills wafting into his tent, the proximity of the other campers – in short the Israeli camping experience.

But I wasn’t perturbed at all by the shenanigans around me. I had gone for a moonlight midnight swim in the balmy sea with my children. We laughed, jumped on each other, and hugged, untethered by schedules, computers, TV, work and school. I didn’t hear a thing.

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Come Out To DC Film Event To See Where Young American Journalists Meet Israel In “The Editors”

April 19, 2009 - 9:56 AM by Karin Kloosterman · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence 

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They couldn’t have come at a more dangerous time. Six university newspaper editors from America visited Israel for the first time last December, and the already planned trip happened to coincide with the first week of the recent Gaza Conflict.

In a reality style documentary, the young Americans had their week-long visit taped by a camera crew hired by Project Interchange, a Washington-based organization that develops seminars for Americans and international guests in Israel. The film is being screened tomorrow at Georgetown University.

In Israel, the editors, including Georgetown’s The Hoya newspaper editor Andrew Dubbins, met with a wide range of leaders and citizens in an attempt to get beyond the headlines to learn the complexities of the Middle East peace process.
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(Vadim Lavrusik, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher, The Minnesota Daily, University of Minnesota)

The documentary was written and directed by Patrick Ryan Morris from Project Interchange, and features Dubbins, along with other editors who were in Israel from December 30th to January 5th.

“I was an editor of a newspaper in college,” says Morris. “From that experience, I know that you cannot bring journalists to Israel, or anywhere for that matter, and force an ideology on them or a version of 
the truth.”

He hopes to screen the film at campuses throughout the United States.

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Project Interchange brings new delegations of “influentials” to Israel twice 
a month from around the world. Muslim leaders from France came to a seminar
 in Israel in December, meeting Israeli President Shimon Peres and the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. In November, women 
executives from the U.S. construction business enjoyed a week-long seminar. 
Before that, European environment leaders were in Israel. Each group of 
guests enjoy tailor-made trips, adapted to their interests and expertise.

The world premiere of the The Editors, the film, will take place tomorrow evening – April 20th at 8:00 pm, at Georgetown University’s ICC Auditorium. The screening will be followed by a wrap party at Cafe St. Ex.

For more details and a map of how to get there, see The Editors on Facebook.

For more about Project Interchange, see the ISRAEL21c feature story on the organization.

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A Man We Could Use Now

January 9, 2009 - 12:20 PM by DavidS · 2 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, Profiles, War, coexistence 

If Elvis had lived, he could have been president – after all, if it was good enough for Ronald Reagan, imagine how the voters would have gone for Elvis Presley! But I have a better idea; He was such a unifying force and a symbol of coexistence, Elvis would have been the perfect candidate for Prime Minister of Israel! And he could have qualified for the job, too – after all, Elvis was (sort of) Jewish!

On the occasion of what would have been his 74th birthday on January 8, it’s worth remembering Elvis and his impact on bringing people together. While casual music listeners tend to put down Elvis’ relatively unsophisticated music, all his biographers attribute his early use of rhythm and blues (which some accused him of “stealing from blacks”) as opening the door for the Motown sound, and later on the rise of Michael Jackson and other modern African-American superstars. So right there, Elvis was a unifying force, right on his home turf.

But less known is his charitable work for Jewish organizations in his hometown of Memphis, and his attitude to racism – and to Arabs and Jews. There are millions of Elvis fans out there, which means there are thousands of stories floating around about him, most of which can’t be corroborated. But the overwhelming consensus of the man is that he was someone who was charitable – both financially and personally – and identified with minorities, including Jews and Arabs.

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During his latter years, for example, Elvis would take to wearing a big “Chai” – and when he was asked why by his friend guitarist Charlie Hodge, he supposedly answered that he didn’t want to “miss out on going’ to heaven on a technicality!” In fact, quoting from the book “Elvis and Gladys”, this site makes a case for Elvis’ Jewish ancestry (his maternal grandmother), which explained to some extent his affinity for Jews. According to the book:

One day the Memphis Jewish Welfare sent a delegation to Graceland to see him and ask if he could contribute. At Christmas every year he would donate $1,000 to a number of Memphis charities and one of them was the Memphis Hebrew Academy, and so they thought maybe they could get something. They explained what they do, taking care of poor Jews and orphans. Elvis excused himself for a minute. When he came back, he handed the leader of the delegation a check. They didn’t know what to expect. They thought $1,000 would be nice. When they looked at the check, it was for $150,000. The equivalent of more than a million dollars today. The man said, ‘Elvis, you must have made a mistake.’ Elvis said, ‘I didn’t make a mistake, I know what I’m doing.’

And Elvis had a soft spot for Arabs as well. Michael Saba, former executive director of the National Association of Arab Americans, tells a tale of a childhood friend of his in Memphis:

Farid told me that one day at his high school, some of the school bullies started teasing him, calling him names like “you dirty Arab” and threatened to hit him. He said Elvis came along and said, “Hey, you leave him alone. I know him and his family and they are very nice people. Those ‘Arabs’ treat me well and you better treat him well also.” The bullies moved off and Elvis told Farid that if anybody ever tried that again, he should let Elvis know.

So besides a talent for music, Elvis had a talent for peacemaking! Of course, Elvis isn’t around for us to give him a try at leadership (or is he?) but we do have the Elvis Inn, “famous for bringing Arabs and Jews together,” especially on Elvis Impersonator Nights! And as one of the impersonators told reporters, “If Elvis Presley was alive, he could help the crisis of the Arab and the Jew. I think he’d make a song of it, of the whole situation, and perform in a lot of Arab countries and of course in Israel. He’d try to make peace between the Israelis and the Arabs once and for all. I think he would have done it if he was alive today.”

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Hot pastrami

December 4, 2008 - 10:50 AM by David · 5 Comments
Filed under: Food, Israeliness, Life 

I shouldn’t be stating this here, on a blog that should be touting everything Israeli. But let’s face it, to say that the deli meats here bite the big one means you’re actually able to take a bite. Which is kind of incredible, we’re a country of Jews, and kosher deli and Jews go together like pastrami on rye with mustard.

So after being away in the US for a full month, I couldn’t think of a better present to bring back to my long-suffering wife, deprieved of both me for a month and good deli for 20 some years, a pound of fresh corned beef from our favorite kosher deli – Rubin’s in Boston. Call me a hopeless romantic.

Actually, I’ll explain why it’s a better present than a diamond ring. Way back when, when we were both in college in Boston, my wife worked the Sunday waitress shift at Rubin’s. I’d drive and pick her up in Brookline at the end of her 12 hour shift, and she’d come into the car carrying various delicacies like knishes, stuffed cabbage and, of course, some fresh deli, and her uniform would be entrenched with the aromas of a day’s worth of food. I could hardly wait to jump on her, but first we’d go home and pig out – in a kosher way.

Since most of my visits back to the US have been solo recently, we always joked about me bringing her back a taste of the past. But I never thought it would be possible, given the 24-hour door to door travel and the logistics of bringing a pound of beef through the homeland security glare.

But last week, I threw caution to the wind, and after feasting on a pastrami sandwich with a side of potato salad and a Dr. Brown’s, I bought the pound of corned beef, threw it in the trunk of the car in the 35 degree weather and dashed the two hours back to my brother’s home in Maine. Then straight to the freezer with the fragile treasure.

On the morning of my flight, I packed the corned beef with an ice pack, wrapped it in plastic and placed deep in the oversized army knapsack I borrowed from my daughter. 22 hours later, in my kitchen in Israel, the corned beef was thawed, cool, and heaped high on some pita (hey, we’re in Israel). My wife was in heaven, and later, we remembered the aphrodisiac qualities that good kosher deli provides.

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Our Hospital Adventure

October 31, 2008 - 1:24 PM by DavidS · 1 Comment
Filed under: General 

Big government is making a big comeback, what with $700 billion bank bailouts, so the term “socialized medicine” isn’t as scary as it used to be. And we all know how expensive health care is in the States. But, as the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. Despite the high cost, “everyone knows” how much higher the quality of health care is in the U.S., and how inferior it is in countries with socialized medicine, like the U.K., where people have to wait for months for simple procedures, and those who can afford it flee the public health system, and go private.

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Having lived in Israel for some 15 years – moving here from the U.S. before the huge increase in health insurance costs – I can’t speak of what typical Americans, or Britons for that matter, have to go through to either get or pay for health care. I can only speak about what I’ve experienced here in Israel.

I bring this up now because I – and my wife – have just had a hospital experience. She was “in” for a couple of days last week for a procedure (let’s just leave it at that). This isn’t the first time, of course – we’ve had three of our five kids here. And in her previous experiences, she would have at least partially agreed with the conventional wisdom that private medical care is better.

But things have changed dramatically over the past few years; the service is no longer surly, and even the old, broken down hospital seemed brighter and spiffier this time around. Hospitals aren’t a pleasant place to stay, no matter what, but the hospital she had to spend a night at while she recuperated was completely refurbished, with pleasant chairs and plenty of light. Some of the personnel weren’t as pleasant as we would have liked, but I have seen far worse behavior on the part of hospital workers in the States – and in Israel, hospital staff don’t immediately call in security when you would put up an argument with them. They even seem to have gotten the paperwork right – one form was all it took, and she was enrolled in the computer, with all the information transmitted to all the appropriate departments immediately.

And the total cost for everything – would you believe 130 shekels? That’s about $35 in today’s money. Although many pundits would say that Israel is losing its socialist spirit (the official poverty figures can be pretty shocking), it’s clear that that spirit still reigns supreme in health care. True, it’s more expensive that it used to be, but try even talking to a doctor in the U.S. for $35.

It was a real surprise to an American immigrant who still expects Israeli medical care to be second rate – the whole process was pretty first rate, as far as I could tell. There seems to be a lot of that going on in Israel today – take highways and roads, for example. All sorts of new highways seem to be popping up all over the place; you can get around the Tel Aviv and even Jerusalem metropolitan areas pretty quickly now. But don’t we pay excessively high taxes for all this? Nope; if you live in the New York Metropolitan area and include your state, city, federal, and real estate taxes, it doesn’t really add up to more than we pay here overall. Pretty shocking, huh?

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