Foto Friday – Reli Avrahami’s “Diary”

October 29, 2009 - 11:44 PM by Rachel Neiman · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Profiles, Travel 

Beer Sheva-born Reli Avrahami is one of Israel’s premiere magazine photographers. A new exhibition of her work, “Diary”, will open next week at the Hadassah College in Jerusalem, where she once studied and is now a lecturer.

Avrahami has worked as a freelance portrait photographer since 1986, shooting celebrities, artists and politicians for Israel’s main newspapers and weekend supplements including “Maariv”, “Yediot Aharonot” and “Haaretz” where she is best known for her long-running series of Israeli family portraits.

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In “Diary”, Avrahami invites viewers to look in on three generations of her own family: celebrations and tragedies, weddings and funerals, everyday life and unique occasions.

Her daughter – Botticelli curls cascading down her shoulders – en route to a Scout trip…

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…the morning of her son’s induction into the IDF…

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…her mother, fast asleep in a Netherlands zimmer motel…

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or a “Girls Night In” with her sisters and mother.
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“Diary” opens at 6:00pm, November 5, 2009 at the Hadassah College, 37 HaNeviim Street, Jerusalem.

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The Case of the Purloined Ice Cream

February 15, 2009 - 5:35 PM by Brian Blum · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Food, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 
My wife Jody has been in the States for the last two weeks to celebrate her father’s 70th birthday, leaving me a “single parent” back in Israel. I’m pretty good at handling the day-to-day activities at home, taking care of the kids, keeping the house running. Except in one area.

The kitchen.

Frankly, I’m a total nincompoop when it comes to cooking. I imagine that if I lived alone with no family, I’d be the take out king. Chinese one night, falafel or schwarma the next. There’s no lack of fast food these days in Jerusalem. We even have our choice of upscale sushi bars.

But I have three growing kids who need a well-balanced meal, and money for eating out every night isn’t exactly flowing like Dead Sea water. So before Jody left, she made me a two-week schedule of meals along with a detailed shopping list.

The meals on the list were pretty simple. There was macaroni and cheese, pasta with cheese, grilled cheese toasts, burritos with cheese, lasagna with (you guessed it) cheese.

Actually, there wasn’t anything on the list that didn’t involve flour and cheese, except for one night when I was supposed to make “orange soup” with sweet potatoes, carrots and pumpkin. But it was a long day and I had two intense deadlines that were going to take me easily past midnight. So we ordered pizza instead…with extra cheese.

All of the starch was supposed to be balanced with a nice green salad. Emphasis on the “supposed to” part. I finally got around to cutting up some veggies at the end of the first week and then only when everyone was so constipated we could barely move.

There was also what I fondly like to call the Day of Disasters. It started when 17-year-old Amir and I were putting away the groceries. A large jar of oatmeal was perched just a tad too close to the edge of the pantry.

It crashed to the ground spewing glass and oats everywhere. I thought about scooping up the flakes into a new jar but I was worried that they might be too “crunchy.”

Then when I was carrying a bottle of olive oil to the table to dress the salad, it too slipped out of my hands, landing on a dinner plate and splattering all over 10-year-old Aviv’s pants. The bottle, thankfully, didn’t break, but the plate did.

Next, we sat down to what turned out to be a highly unusual dinner. Merav, our 15-year-old vegetarian daughter was eating out at a friend’s house, so I decided to treat the boys to some meat. At the store, a bag of what looked like meat-stuffed raviolis looked tempting. And a real change – no cheese this time!

I brought it home and heated it up, just like the instructions on the package said, then served the ravioli to my little carnivores. But something just didn’t seem right about it. The meaty dumplings looked forlorn on the plates. Maybe they needed some sort of sauce?

That’s when I realized it. These were kneidelach, meant to be served in soup not on their own. Everyone chuckled, Aviv came to my defense saying they were delicious, but I felt defeated.

As if it couldn’t get any worse, here was the coup de coup de grâce (or in our case the coup de glida): The case of the ice cream. Earlier in the day, we had bought a small carton of Ben & Jerry’s butter pecan. It’s our tradition that when we buy a decadent dessert, we always take a sample as soon as we get home.

Amir was the first in. He pulled off the top. The protective seal was open. He peeked inside. A large chunk was missing. He called down to Merav’s room – had she somehow sneaked in and snagged a bite while we were still bringing up groceries from the car?

No, she said. Same question to Aviv. “There’s ice cream?” he exclaimed.

Someone apparently had opened the ice cream in the store, scooped out a large spoonful, and put it back in the freezer. Both Amir and I instantly felt sick to our stomachs. We wondered if we had been poisoned.

Clearly this all was a conspiracy, a plot hatched in some evil fiend’s mind to make us miss Jody or, when we eventually told her the story, to compel her to take pity on us, rush back from her trip and cook up a nice pot of tofu and broccoli.

Ultimately we decided not tell Jody about our fortnight of eating badly…at least not immediately. Better she enjoys her time in the States fondly thinking of us as an independent and resourceful brood rather than a collection of culinarily-challenged cranks.

And truth be told, we survived just fine. No one was rushed to the emergency room or came down with rickets.

Jody returned last night. Jet lag may delay our departure from kitchen duty another day or so, but it won’t be long before we’re back to “normal life” and the boss is in charge again.

Welcome back sweetie. We’re glad your home!

And oh yes, when you go shopping next week, don’t forget to check the ice cream!

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Renewal

December 12, 2008 - 2:09 PM by DavidS · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Profiles, War 

It’s been said that everyone in Israel knows at least one family touched by terror, that is. The truth is, things are far better than they used to be on that front, certainly better than during they were six and seven years ago, when there seemed to be a bus bombing or shooting attack every week – and sometimes more often.

Terrorism aims to destroy lives – and often it does. But it’s not just lives: Families are never the same, even if the intended victim survives. Communities change, kids relate to their surroundings differently. We hear about the attacks, which make news for a few days, and move on; they often can’t. So when we see individuals and families who do manage to rebuild their lives, we can only stand back and gape in awe at their superhuman strength.

I had an “awesome” moment last night, when the son of a friend of mine got married. I won’t reveal their names, but I can tell you the story: While driving home from buying school supplies for the upcoming term, Jacob and Rachel (not their real names) were shot at by Arab terrorists. With them in the car were three of their five children. The shooter got their car point blank – killing Rachel, and leaving Jacob and their oldest daughter, Dina, in a wheelchair. Rachel was several months pregnant at the time. Also in the car were two boys – Shimon, 8, and Levi, 3. Not in the van were their oldest son Reuven, 13 (he had just had his bar-mitzvah two months earlier), and Sarah, 10.

Suffice to say that the family was shattered; the oldest boy became rebellious, the second son took after him, and the youngest boy, in the car when it happened, was basically shellshocked. Jacob tried as well as he could, but it was difficult juggling his family and work obligations. The community helped – a lot – but it just wasn’t the same. Rachel was one of those “super-moms” – always there for the kids, working to help others (she was a nurse), with a golden personality, always smiling. This was a family that had lost so much – and things looked bleak.

But the family experienced a rebirth – in large part thanks to Leah, whom Jacob married three years after losing Rachel. The kids were wary at first – she was a widow herself, and had three older kids of her own – and things were rocky at first. But with love and patience, things worked themselves out. The community helped a lot, too. Plus, the determination of Jacob – and the kids – not to give the terrorists the victory they so sorely sought.

And now see Reuven at his wedding! He grew up to be a fine, sensitive, scholarly young man, a veteran of the elite Duvdevan unit. The joy on his face, and on the faces of family and friends, was unique. This wasn’t just a wedding; it was a vindication, a confirmation of life, a message to the forces of darkness – Israel, and Israelis, are here to stay.

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Dena’s married

August 27, 2008 - 11:38 PM by Jessica · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

Another rite of passage for my family. My oldest niece, Dena, born when I was a senior in high school and couldn’t imagine that I was old enough to be an aunt, got married on Sunday night. She’s not just my oldest niece, or the first grandchild; she’s also our first Sabra, and even though she’s known as “Dena-with-a-resh” by her friends, because for some reason she doesn’t roll her resh in Hebrew, (probably because of her Long Island-bred and Brooklyn-born parents), I came to the conclusion the other night that she really is Israeli, or maybe we are, whatever that means in this land of ours.

DENA.jpgProof? Well, she’s the child of Americans and she married a guy from her neighborhood, whose family originally hails from Spain and Turkey. They’ve got deep black hair, we’re more dark brown to light brown, and from there, the traditions and customs are mixed.

Before the ceremony, we fressed on thin slices of sinta steak, lamb kebobs wrapped around cinnamon sticks and dainty bowls of mixed Jerusalem grill at the kabbalat panim, sweating in the humid, stick air of the shfela, and surrounded by voices speaking in English and Hebrew with a mix of Israeli, American, Russian, British and South African accents.

There was a procession — she’s watched a lot of American TV in her time — and prompted by ‘his’ side, we all clapped as each person walked down the aisle. They were married by a childhood friend who’s now a Chabad rabbi, but they played James Brown’s “I Feel Good,” at the end of the ceremony.

The band was Israeli, the dancing was fun, joyful and all about the bride and groom, until it switched to Israeli rock music and then a DJ later on in the evening, for a bit of trance. The program? Short and sweet, including a video montage about the couple made by their friends, and an Israeli folkdance, performed by the bride’s aunts, uncles and cousins.

In short, a fabulous party and a great event, and through it all, it was hard to believe that the next generation is already heading into this part of life. What’s more, they have their way of doing it, mixing and matching what they’ve learned from the family, from home and from their surroundings. The melting pot in action.

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