Israel chooses team for Winter Olympics
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Life, Sports, Travel
Roman and Alexandra Zaretsky
And in a case of good timing, the Olympic Committee of Israel announced this week it would be sending a three-member delegation to the Winte Olympics next month in Vancouver – Roman and Alexandra Zaretsky, a brother-and-sister skating duo, and skier Mikail Renzhin.
Renzhin will compete in the slalom and giant slalom events. The Zaretskys finished seventh in the 2010 European Championships, and are scheduled to skate to “Hava Nagila” and the theme music from the film Schindler’s List. For all three, it will be their second Olympic appearance.
Roman began skating as a 4-year-old in Belarus, while his younger sister started after the family’s aliya to Israel at the Canada Center in Metula. “He decided that he didn’t want to skate alone, so my parents looked for a partner for him,” Alexandra, now 22, told Ha’aretz. “I was supposed to be a stand-in until a suitable partner could be found.”
Their mother, Elena, sent them to Delaware to study with top professionals after they began outskating their teachers in Israel.
“We had the potential and had to make the move,” explains Roman. “Either we went to the United States to get better, or we stayed in Metula where the conditions are not suitable for breeding champions. Our mother couldn’t go with us for financial reasons.”
They both say they miss Israel and feel foreign in New Jersey, where they now live. Their apartment is always stocked with pickled cucumbers, Turkish coffee and other Israeli-made foodstuffs. “We grew up in Metula with the beautiful view of the Golan, then suddenly found ourselves here, where the people aren’t always so nice. It doesn’t feel like home. There’s nothing like Israel.”
Maybe they’ll be the ones to bring home Israel’s first medal in a winter Olympics.
Lights, camera, Shalom
Academy Award nominee Waltz With Bashir
But one area where the local film industry hasn’t done so well is in attracting foreign film producers to shoot their movies here. It’s a shame, because Israel has such cinematic locations – the beach, the desert, the Golan, the old cities of Jerusalem and Acre.
But until now, it’s been too expensive to bring a huge crew and equipment over, so foreign productions have been few and far between. I was an extra once in 1988 in Appointment with Death, an adaption of an Agatha Christie novel, starring Peter Ustinov, Sir John Gielgud and my personal favorite, David (Starsky) Soul that was filmed in Jerusalem. My portrayal of a British soldier in Palestine circa 1930s did irreparable damage to the reputation of Israeli actors, and since then, we’ve been suffering.
Even Adam Sandler’s Zohan filmed the scenes that are supposedly in Israel in some other location like Hawaii.
But now, things may change. The Industry, Trade and Labor Ministry has announced that Israel will offer foreign film producers tax breaks of 20 percent if they collaborate with Israeli production companies.
The announcement was made a day ahead of the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, and one of the sessions there featuring producers will focus on Israel as a location for making movies and TV shows. The ministry will also man a booth at the festival distributing pamphlets listing the advantages of filming here.
The Jerusalem Post reported that according to the pamphlet to be distributed at Cannes, Israel has several selling points: a vast pool of actors and extras of varying ethnicities representing more than 100 countries, many different types of locations within easy driving distance, and 120 production companies, 10 production studios and 30 post-production facilities.
Israeli producer Gal Uchovsky, the business partner of director Eytan Fox (Walk on Water, The Bubble) said that he was pleased with the move.
“Countries [that] have offered such incentives drew a lot of producers. Morocco and Ireland, for example, have made a lot of effort to draw in foreign filmmakers and it has paid off.
“This is a very good financial decision. It will provide an income for much of the local industry and will raise the local industry’s standards,” said Uchovsky.
We may not see Brad and Angie here tomorrow, but hopefully the government decision will help Israelwood get off the ground.
Israeli wine buying season – even on a budget
The weeks leading up to Passover represent the lion’s share of the kosher wine industry’s annual sales. Just like December is the peak season for general retail revenues every year, post-Purim early spring is where it’s at for kosher wine transaction volume. Young wines from the fall harvest are starting to be bottled and marketed at this time, and those handling the wine buying for a Seder must procure enough for the proverbial four cups consumed by each participant as part of the Haggadah’s rituals, meaning around one full bottle per person – plus whatever’s consumed separately during the meal.
And just as consumer retail columnists formulated analyses and advice columns this past December, focusing on how to make solstice holiday purchases where one garners maximum bang for one’s buck in today’s tough economic climate, Ha’aretz’s renowned wine critic Daniel Rogov recently released a highly practical guide to affordable spring 2009 kosher Israeli wines:
For several years, knowledgeable wine drinkers have known that the best buys in the country were the Tabor, Galil Mountain and Dalton wineries as well as in the Gamla series of the Golan Heights Winery. Those wines are now being joined by wines from the Zion winery and, while those may not make for the most sophisticated drinking, they do offer excellent value.
He goes on to rate nine kosher Zion winery (their Hebrew-only official site) products, all of which falling well within his “good to very good” stratum of scoring.
Rogov is getting out there more and more nowadays, serving as a formidable advocate of Israeli oenophilia. I’ve written about Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV before, and the enthusiastic eccentric personality also seemingly has Passover fever nowadays, having welcomed Rogov himself recently on the program (check out the fascinating 38-minute episode here). The banter-laden rapport between the two alone makes the video worth watching.
To Israeli wine lovers like you and me, this is not all big news (the fact that kosher wine no longer exclusively resembles cough syrup, and the fact that great Israeli wine is not exclusively kosher – we’ve known these things for years), but it’s great to see more and more mainstream wine-oriented media channels recognizing the quality coming out of this part of the world.
Gone in the Golan
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Life, Travel
What do you do when you want to take a summer vacation, but can’t afford Italy, France, or even Slovenia or Cyprus, and you don’t want to go to one of those glitzy Eilat or Dead Sea hotels where doing the “Macarena” and singing karaoke is still part of the nightly entertainment fare?
Well, vacationing at a ski resort in the summer may seem a bit backwards, but in this case, it provided a refreshing break from the city hustle bustle, some spectacular views and hikes, a rustic environment without a huge crowd of noisy vacationers, and a chance to spend some time in a part of Israel whose future is not so solid.
Neve Ativ, a moshav at nearly the northernmost edge of the Golan Heights, just south of the formidable Hermon mountain range, turned out to be the perfect location for a quick family getaway. The Rimonim resort there offered quaint, red-tiled Swiss-style chalets, a spacious pool and Jacuzzi, and a breakfast that made lunch extraneous.
Only three hours or so away from Jerusalem, the Golan is like another country. Highlights – we took the ski lift to the top of the 2,000 meter Hermon peak and enjoyed a 2-hour guided tour that focused not only on the topography but also the history of the area, and then the kids go-karted down part of the mountain on the “Extreme” track; we spent a morning exploring the expansive Nimrod Fortress built in 1228 by the Ayyubi governor Al-Aziz, and reenacted scenes from Gladiator and Spartacus (alright, different eras, I know); we ate some great humous in the nearby Druze city of Majdal Shams, and heard from the locals that they’re not very happy about the prospects of going back to Syrian rule; and we did an amazing water hike in the Masjare River in the southern part of the Golan. At Rimonim, we joined the other vacationers for a hike and ‘kumzitz’ (bonfire) in the area with Avi, a gruff with a heart of gold ex-paratrooper type, who regaled the kids and parents alike with stories about the area, delicious herbal tea made from plants within hand’s length, and some good old fashioned ‘walking the land’ Zionism.
And like Where’s Waldo, Avi showed up everywhere else - checking us off at the dining room, filling the Coke in the vending machines, and manning time at the front desk. Therefore, when we decided to attend the nightly entertainment show in the nightclub, it wasn’t surprising to find Avi leading the karaoke (alright, so it isn’t really another country). If you’re here, you should get up to the Golan now and enjoy its multitude of charms. And if you’re not, then make sure to include it on your next visit instead of one of the tourist traps.
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