Foto Friday – Israel Hadari’s Best & Brightest

March 4, 2011 - 4:35 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, Business, coexistence, education, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Profiles, Science, Technology 

Israel Hadari is a 25-year veteran of Israeli photojournalism who has covered Israel’s private, public and government sectors, as well as the business and finance community.

He’s worked with visiting business, cultural and political leaders such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Sir Paul McCartney, Steve Ballmer and many others, and served as the official campaign photographer for the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and for former Prime Minister and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Following visitors also gives Hadari the chance to see cutting edge tech close up, like this delegation from Africa visiting the seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant at Palmachim.

Among Hadari’s corporate clients: the local branches of multinationals such as Intel, IBM, Google as well as leading Israeli high-tech companies, photographing official portraits and corporate events. This also affords him the opportunity to capture images of corporate social responsibility (CSR); those moments when big business puts the community at the forefront.

Intel was one of the first companies in Israel to implement and encourage socially responsible activities, such as running educational programs for outstanding high-schoolers. It consistently ranks high on the MAALA Index, the local organization promoting CSR.

Hadari snapped this image of a group of Arab and Jewish teens visiting the Intel plant in Kiryat Gat.

Fuel company Dor Alon is also involved in sponsoring educational activities, including the Philharmonic Orchestra Scholarship Fund which grants scholarships to musically gifted children from low-income areas. One sunny day, Hadari was invited to photograph their bike race to promote green energy.

And sometimes, his work is a chance to photograph the local tech community celebrate its success, like fire-dancing at the Deloitte Fast 50 Israel.

More of Hadari’s work, including some rare candids of Yitzhak Rabin and many others, can be found on his website and Facebook page.

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Save summer hours

September 14, 2010 - 9:08 AM by · 6 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Religion 

Not my kid, but you get the idea

We’re now three days into daylight savings time, and I’m somewhat obsessed with the topic. That could be because my boys — at least one of them — is waking up around 4:20 each day, which is 5:20 in his little body. I can usually get him to stay in bed until around 5 am, but no longer. But even if I do, I don’t really fall back asleep. Instead, I’m completely attuned to all the sounds and noises that are happening at that hour. There’s the muezzin sounding his calls somewhere to the east. Just outside my window, I hear the water sprinkler system click on, and think that I need to switch that to daylight savings time. Over beyond the kitchen window is the sound of the newspaper delivery guy backing his car up our driveway/simta, and above me start the sounds of my neighbor getting ready for his long daily commute to Israel Aircraft Industries.

The mornings have actually been getting better, as one of my almost-two-year-old twins is ‘sleeping in’ until 5:20, even 5:30. And I’ve figured out that breakfast — be it French toast, yogurt or eggs — needs to happen at 6, not later, in order to assuage the hunger pangs that hit them at the usual 7 am, now 6 am.

But while I did my part in signing the petition to keep summer hours until the end of October, I didn’t really boycott it. That would have meant missing an hour of mishpachton each day, and pretty much living in a bubble from the rest of my particular society. Local high-tech firms, however, are delaying moving their clocks back for the time being. According to an article in yesterday’s Ha’aretz, telecom firm 102 Smile is staying with summer hours until late October, as are venture capital firms IHCV and Walden Israel. Good on them, I say, although it’s gotta be a pain for their employees to live part of their life on summer hours, and the other part in winter hours.

Interior Minister and Shas politician Eli Yishai had a great reaction to the boycott, comical really. He feels the public debate over daylight savings time “targets the religious public”, given the reasoning for the change, which is make the upcoming Yom Kippur fast easier. I will be fasting, and trust me, I’d rather be fasting into the evening hours and not have to see darkness fall at 5:30 pm in September. He suggested changing the clock for the fast, and then bringing the summer clock back two weeks later.

Clearly Mr. Yishai has never been the one in his family dealing with the effect of the clock change on his own kids.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Yashar Yashar

August 22, 2010 - 10:50 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Technology, Travel 

We are traveling this week, in the company of a GPS navigator named Koby. That is to say, our Global Positioning System has a selection of audio interfaces, each language interface has a name and gender identity (you can select a male or female voice), and the male Hebrew-language interface is called Koby.

Koby is a great asset for many reasons, first and foremost because he brings us to through unknown territories to our destination. (Well, he is a computer and that is his primary directive). But his absolutely genius feature is that if he makes a mistake — and he does err — we can get mad at him instead of at one another. So Koby saves relationships. Plus, it is so fun, for once, to yell back at that Israeli man-on-the-street who thinks he knows everything!

Think back… 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago… or to last week, when you asked the man-on-the-street — let’s call him Yossi — for directions. “Okay, go to the right. Go to the right and then go to the left. Then go all the time straight, yashar, yashar, all the time in front of you. Go to the end. And okay, you will see it.”

This happens more often than not. Because the phrase “I don’t know” is anathema to Yossi and therefore directions you will get, right or wrong. Follow them and within some hours you should find yourself on the border of Lebanon, Syria or Egypt. They are, in fact, all the time in front of you.

At a certain point though, if you stay here long enough, this national tic, yashar, yashar, becomes familiar and then, weirdly, almost beloved. You start to wait for it and you’re disappointed when it doesn’t come. Thankfully, there is another version, in which Yossi ends his litany with “Then you ask someone where to go after there.” And indeed, that is true. You can always ask another Yossi and start playing the game over again.

But since we do have to reach our destination eventually, we love Koby, although he and his ilk are replacing Yossi and his yashar, yashar as the national directional fallback. Mourn not for Yossi, however, whom I envision as your typical gadget-happy Israeli man. He already has GPS installed in his car, his jeep and his running shoe. He’s no freier*.

I should point out that whoever did the recording for Koby is a very practiced radio-TV announcer with perfect pronunciation. But, in a way, I wish the manufacturers had given us a third option: Yossi man-on-the-street. Then we could really go to town. If it were to be truly realistic, however, Yossi would cuss us out with better, juicer phrases — as in this advertisement for the MIRS GPS, where the driver gets a big surprise when he misses a turn. Truly a slice of Israeli life: high technology combined with Jewish guilt.

And another one, just for fun, because it’s sort of in English:

*Usually translated as “sucker”, “patsy” or “loser” the word deserves a column all on its own, so more on “freier” another day. Let’s just say, in short, that it’s everything an Israeli doesn’t want to be.

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Foto Friday – A little Italy in TLV

August 19, 2010 - 11:31 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Art, Food, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Profiles, Travel 

There is a lopsided love affair between Israelis and all things Italian. Italians think of Israel as the Holy Land. Israelis think Italy is what Israel could be were it not for the matzav — the word used to describe the roiling, boiling political-diplomatic-religio-ethno-social situation that is our constant reality. Without the matzav, your average Israeli believes, we too could focus on a life filled with beautiful objects, high-quality design, and of course, great food and wine.

Your average Israeli is, as usual, deluding and flattering himself all at once. If anything, Italy’s history is proof that a well-developed sense of aesthetics is possible to sustain, even in times of great conflict. And there’s no reason to think that, even if peace broke out tomorrow, your average Israeli would suddenly put those ass-crack jeans away and don an linen Armani suit in its stead.

Plus, despite the matzav, Israel has fine-tuned its palate over the past 20 years, with award-winning wines, gourmet coffees, excellent cheeses (especially the goat variety), and restaurants that rank four and five stars in leading international guides.

For five years now, restaurant RoniMotti has been serving up freshly made pasta and other Italian delights to the yuppie crowd working feverishly ’round the clock at Tel Aviv’s Ramat Hahayal high-tech park. Owners Roni Belfer and Motti Sofer recenty celebrated the anniversary with a series of photos celebrating their dedicated staff. The pictures are nice way to give a big public “Thank you” to their workers…

as well as pay homage to the persons, places and things that inspire them, like the mother who taught Motti how to cook…

the fresh food ingredients that are Roni’s passion…

and of course, la bella Italia itself…

…as they carve out their own little slice of Italian heaven in North Tel Aviv.

RoniMotti also recently launched an online magazine, Villagio, profiling everything from the Slow Food movement to Frank Sinatra. Hey, if it’s Italian, we Israelis love it! Salute e buon appetito!

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ISRAEL21c Start-up Nation giveaway

November 9, 2009 - 2:05 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, General, Technology 

start-up_nation_book_coverHere in Israel, it’s no secret that the country is an economic success story. It’s been a topic of conversation for a couple of decades now. During the 1990s, and 2000s, the country’s high-tech industry blossomed, pulling virtually everything with it.

With so much to do, and so little time to do it in, no one bothered to chronicle this success story. They were too busy keeping up with the pace of development.

Now Saul Singer and Dan Senor have taken time out to explore the phenomenon in their new book Start-up Nation, the Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle . It makes a fascinating read for anyone who has ever wondered what exactly it is that makes Israel one of the world’s leaders in innovation.

The army, immigration, and a healthy dose of chutzpah have all come together in a heady mix to transform Israel – a tiny little nation of 7.1 million people surrounded by enemies and with no natural resources (not even water) – into an economic and technological powerhouse that has more companies on NASDAQ than those of Europe, Korea, Japan, Singapore, India and China combined.

ISRAEL21c is now running a competition, offering six copies of Start-Up Nation to readers. Click on our Start-up Nation competition page to find out more.

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