Foto Friday – Kobi Israel’s Fragments of Life

December 10, 2010 - 9:45 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, coexistence, Foto Friday, General, Life, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Travel 

Photographer Kobi Israel uses the medium of photography to explore his experience of growing up gay in the macho Israeli society of the mid-70s and early 80s.

Israel was born in 1970 in a suburb of Tel-Aviv to parents of Moroccan and Egyptian origin and first began exploring photography in 1994, while working as a flight attendant. He studied cinematography at the New York Film Academy, then completed a five-year program in Cinematography & Still Photography at Tel-Aviv’s Camera Obscura school of visual arts.

In his first series, entitled “Views”, Israel recreated scenes from his days as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. The images he states, “addresses the fine line that divides the homo-social and the homo-erotic aspects of lives of soldiers in the army. These images depict soldiers living their lives in their brotherly proximity to each other and hint at the tensions and desires that may have existed between these young men, as they had for me during my youth in the army.”

His next series, “Fragments of Life” from 2000-2003 is a series of staged images through which he leads the viewer into his world of memories, conflicts and trapped emotions. “I recreated and reinvented fragments of my own life as an adolescent discovering his sexuality, growing up in a non-tolerant conservative society,” he states.

In 2002 after a brief stint in Madrid, he settled in London, studying for an MA in Fine Art, Central Saint Martins – University of Arts, and working on photographic series and mixed-media works. Israel is a masterful technician in terms of lighting and composition, and his photographs have been published in books and magazines, plus he’s received several prestigious awards.

Israel’s latest works look at his new life as a stranger traveling in strange lands: England, Cuba, Iceland. His works — which with time have become more thematically abstract, exploring ideas such as memory, yearning, dream and reality — are part of private and public art collections. More images are on view at his website.

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Nostalgia Sunday – 1 Year Later: GLBT Youth Center

August 1, 2010 - 3:00 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Religion 

Sometimes its important to look back at the not-so-distant past and take a measure of how far we’ve progressed — or not.

Despite yesterday’s infernal heat, thousands of people, gay and straight, gathered in Tel Aviv to mark the one-year memorial anniversary of the GLBT Drop-in Center killings that took two young lives, injured 13 physically and damaged countless others psychologically.

Last year, photographer Gil Lavi documented the spontaneous outpouring of emotion and mourning that followed the horrifying event. The shooter has still not been found.

At the time, Lavi wrote: “This occurred inside a community center for gay and lesbian youth who are afraid to come out to the wider community. A man with a loaded gun came in at around 11pm and opened fire. The statements coming from the police say that he wore a mask. You could say that all those youths who depended on this center for their free expression are forced to wear a mask on a daily basis. Their mask doesn’t cover their face, rather their soul.”

This year, there are signs of increasing tolerance on the horizon and — at least as far as the secular community is concerned — they come from an unexpected source. Orthodox rabbis and educators from Israel and abroad have created and signed a statement of principles “on the place of our brothers and sisters in our community who have a homosexual orientation”. “We hope and pray that by sharing these thoughts we will help the Orthodox community to fully live out its commitment to the principles and values of Torah and Halakha as practiced and cherished by the children of Abraham, who our sages teach us are recognized by the qualities of being rahamanim (merciful), bayshanim (modest), and gomelei hasadim (engaging in acts of loving-kindness).”

Let us hope that these prayers provide much-needed direction to the children of Abraham and come true, speedily and in our days.

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Cancellations and celebrations

June 10, 2010 - 8:46 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Politics, Pop Culture 

Dana International - cancellations in Turkey and Spain, celebrations in Tel Aviv

While it may not be surprising that a number of international artists like the Pixies and Gorillaz Sound System cancelled their shows in Israel following the IDF raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla of ships last month, the aftermath has also affected Israeli artists.

In the last couple of days, concerts by the popular Idan Raichel Project have been cancelled in Turkey, the country which seems to be the angriest at us. Another show, by metal band Orphaned Land, which mixes Arabic and Jewish-musical and cultural themes in their music, were also axed from the upcoming Sonicsphere Festival, featuring Metallica, Megadeth and a slew of other leading hard rock bands.

Evidently, the security company responsible of the June 25th Istanbul festival announced that it couldn’t guarantee the band’s safety following the deterioration in relations between Israel and Turkey following the Gaza flotilla incident.

In a statement on their Web site, the band, which opened up for Metallica at their Ramat Gan Stadium show last month, called Turkey their second home, and that while they didn’t agree with the decision to pull them from the lineup, they understood and respected the situation of not wanting to put other bands at risk.

“You have to know that we feel safe and we 100% wanted to come despite all, to play for the purpose of peace, friendship and brotherhood of our nations… We promise you all that we will make the maximum efforts to schedule new dates in Turkey very soon. We personally feel safe; we don’t need any kind of security, surrounded by all of you makes us safe,” the band wrote.

And, in the latest cancellation, famed entertainer Dana International had a concert in Ankara, Turkey cancelled, and has been booted from the annual Gay Pride parade concert in Madrid.

The cancellation came after organizers asked members of the Israeli Gay-Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Association not to attend due to security issues.

In a column she wrote in today’s Yediot Aharonot, Dana expressed regret at the cancellations, both her own and those of the foreign artists who bailed, and said that music and politics should not be mixed.

She added, however, that there’s enough major talent in Israel without any help from abroad, and jumped aboard a planned gala concert later this month at Park Hayarkon or Rabin Square initiated by the Culture Ministry and featuring the country’s top performers to specifically prove that point.

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Jerusalem Elections 2008: The Most Crucial in Years

October 31, 2008 - 11:56 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Israeliness, Politics 

BarkatPorush.png

Several weeks ago I gave an Israeli take on the upcoming U.S. elections. But there’s another vote in November that may prove to be just as momentous for this country. I’m talking about the Jerusalem mayoral elections.

Five years ago, the status quo was broken when the ultra-Orthodox (haredi) community fielded a candidate for mayor for the first time…and won. Before that, haredi Jerusalemites were careful not to promote one of their own for fear that an Orthodox mayor would be forced to sanction “non-kosher” activities (such as the annual Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade). Accordingly, the last two Jerusalem mayors, Ehud Olmert and Teddy Kolleck, were both secular.

But in 2003, Uri Lupolianski ran and narrowly defeated millionaire businessman and philanthropist Nir Barkat. Lupolianski captivated both secular and religious voters with his background as the founder of the Yad Sarah organization which is dedicated to helping the elderly and disabled. He received numerous awards for his work there: the President’s Volunteer Prize; the Knesset Speaker’s Award; the Kaplan Prize for Efficiency; and in 2004, the Israel Prize.

Lupolianski wasn’t a bad mayor – he kept a decent balance between the different groups in the city and even allowed his dreaded Gay Parade to proceed (earning him considerable scorn from his constituency). More non-kosher bars and clubs opened during Lupolianski’s term than ever before.

The biggest criticism many residents had of Lupolianski  was that he was dull– he showed little vision other than canceling the Safdie plan to build 20,000 homes on prime forest land that was decried by local environmentalists.

But he’s not running this year. Lupolianski is a member of the ultra-Orthodox Degel HaTorah party. In order for the entire haredi community to throw its support behind a single candidate, Degel hooked up 5 years ago with rival Agudat Yisrael, with the provision that when the next elections rolled around, an Aguda candidate would run.

The Aguda candidate is Member of Knesset Meir Porush. And that’s where the trouble starts.

Read more

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