Nostalgia Sunday – Arrivederci Analog

February 27, 2011 - 10:03 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Business, Entertainment, Environment, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Movies, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, Technology, tv 

Israel is on the brink of revolution and doesn’t even know it. No, not that kind. On March 30, 2011, analog television broadcasting will cease to be and henceforth, we will be a purely digital nation. As with Morse Code, HAM radio, fax and other tried and true technologies, analog is being put out to pasture.

The Ministry of Communications has produced a series of friendly ads featuring a 70s-style dude in black and white, who lets you know in no uncertain terms that, “The old method of broadcasting via rooftop antennae is passing from this world. It’s over. The end.”

Which makes it a perfect time to wax nostalgic for the old aluminum rooftop antenna. After television broadcasting commenced in Israel in 1968, these sprouted up like so many spindly saplings in a JNF forest, covering every city and town throughout the land.

In addition to creating urban blight, the rooftop antenna — aided by its housebound cousin, the rabbit ears antenna on the set-top — was also the source of many an amusing moment. I distinctly remember, days before the first Gulf War, standing on my friend’s roof, metal mop handle in one hand, antenna in the other, furiously tying one to the other and then both to a old chair, in hopes of improving the TV reception. (PS: It worked). And of course, one could spend hours making shapes out of a piece of tin foil in hopes of accessing Jordan TV in English.

Of course, if you really wanted good reception — and you had the means — you could just invest in a bigger antenna. These got so big and so ugly that eventually a new style was born to suit the nouveau riche: the TV antenna in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. Ooh la la!

Then, in the early 90s, cable TV came and changed everything. A decade later, satellite TV was launched. Aside from bringing Israel into the international brotherhood of couch potatoes (to be discussed in depth on another occasion), these platforms also changed our landscape; the rooftop antennas began falling into disuse and then literally fell to pieces. These the neighbors would sweep up. Sometimes.

And now, we are set to follow the worldwide trend towards Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) where, as explained by the 21st century dude in the ads (he’s the one in color), we’ll be able to receive programming via a reception kit comprising a tuner and antenna.

Wait. Did he just say antenna? Yes, but only a very small one. And it can’t do nuthin’ without the decoder.

DTT’s many advantages — better reception, environmental friendliness — are explained in a series of commercials from IDAN+, a joint venture of the Second Television Broadcasting Authority (which is in charge of aggregation and distribution) and Bezeq, our semi-privatized national telecommunications company (charged with technical responsibility of the network). Another advantage: after the initial small outlay for the kit, no more paying an average of NIS 2,400 annually to HOT cable or YES satellite television for free-to-air channels.

Plus, you have no choice. The era of accessing the airwaves freely is over and the long arm of the government is ever more easily able to stretch out and turn off the information tap, should it choose. Our saving grace, here in Israel, is that the government’s arm is very often busy scratching its nether parts and if a tap needs to be repaired, you could wait forever for a plumber.

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Nostalgia Sunday – The French School

February 20, 2011 - 6:54 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: education, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Religion, Social Justice, War 

Walking down Cremieux Street in Jerusalem yesterday, I was suddenly struck by its connection to the current implosion of the Arab world. Adolphe Cremieux, was the president of first Alliance Israélite Universelle, the Paris-based international Jewish organization founded in 1860 to arm Jews with self-defense and self-sufficiency through education and professional development.

The organization took as its motto the rabbinic injunction Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh (“All Jews bear responsibility for one another”).

According to the organization’s Kol Israel Haverim online history, “The 1860 founders recommended the integration of ideas from the revolution of 1789 – equality, justice and human rights, together with the principals of Judaism…” It also embarked on a mission to educate the Jews of the Middle East through French education and culture. A mere two years later, the first Lycee Alliance opened in Tetouan, Morocco. “It was a cornerstone that in time became a widespread network of schools from Morocco to Iran”.

But AIU’s struggle for equal rights extended to other minorities as well. For instance, “in 1860, [it] acted on behalf of Lebanese Christians, victims of a popular uprising, and in 1863 the organization interceded at the Spanish Ministry of Justice on behalf of imprisoned Protestants who were prohibited from spreading their religion.”

In 1870, founding member Charles Netter, received a tract of land from the Ottoman Empire as a gift and opened the Mikveh Israel agricultural school, the first of a network of Jewish schools in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel.

By 1900, Alliance Israelite Universelle was operating 100 schools with a combined student population of 26,000. Its greatest efforts were concentrated in Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey, but there were schools throughout the Middle East.

In an essay about the Jews of Egypt, Denise Douek Telio writes, “Alliance Israelite Schools were free and open to all religious denominations… My classmates were Jewish, Muslim and Christians girls. We went to each other homes to do our homework and to socialize.”

According to Encyclopedia Iranica, “[in l898] the Alliance finally succeeded in opening its first school for boys in Tehran. Joseph Cazès was appointed as the head teacher of its 350 pupils. Cazès also opened a school for girls with 150 pupils. The Alliance was warmly received by Persian authorities…On the eve of the 1979 revolution, the Alliance operated 7 schools in Tehran with 1,800 pupils and 4 schools [in other cities] with 1,286 pupils.”

Today, thousands of students are still being educated at around 50 Alliance Israélite Universelle institutes and schools — but Morocco is only Arab country still with an AIU school.

The historic schools in Israel still exist: the Alliance High School in Tel Aviv, Alliance Israélite Universelle High School in Haifa, Rene Cassin High School and the Braunshweig Conservative High School in Jerusalem.

There are three schools within the Mikve Israel Youth Village: a state high school and a religious state high school specializing in life and natural sciences, environmental sciences, and biotechnology; and the Raymond Lauwan French-Israeli high school established in 2007 as a joint initiative of the Israeli and French governments.

The AIU network also includes the School for the Deaf in Jerusalem where deaf students, Jewish and Arab, with various mental and physical disabilities study together in a unique model of coexistence.

You can read a lot more about the development of AIU’s school network throughout the Jewish communities in the Middle East, (including the education and modernization of women), in the book The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times. More images from the Egyptian Jewish community that was can be found at the Historical Society of Jews From Egypt site.

It’s also worth watching films like The Last Jews of Libya, From Babylon to Beverly Hills and The David Project’s excellent The Forgotten Refugees.

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Nostalgia Sunday – End of an Era

February 13, 2011 - 9:24 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, education, General, History and Culture, Life, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Profiles, War 

The events in Egypt over the past two weeks, which culminated in the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, are being watched with no little trepidation in Israel. The media, both international and local, have focused on Mubarak to the exclusion of anything that came before, as if there was no Sadat, no Nasser, no King Farouk, no British Mandate, no Ottoman Empire… in short, reportage without historical context.

Before history is forgotten completely, this would be a good time to dig into the Israel National Photo Archive for a glimpse at relations between Israel and Egypt over the years.

In 1956, for example, this float at the annual Purim Adloyada parade featured paper mache figures of Israel’s David Ben Gurion shaking hands with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser above a banner emblazoned with the ironic, “Prophecy of the End of Days”.

Photo by Moshe Pridan

And yet, peace with Egypt did come. In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his historic visit to Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin then visited Egypt.

Photo by Yaacov Saar

In 1979, peace talks were held at Beer Sheva, led by Begin and Sadat, who was accompanied by his then-Vice President Hosni Mubarak.

Photo courtesy of Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Begin and Mubarak met again at the funeral of Sadat who was assassinated in 1981.

Photo by Chanania Herman

Mubarak became president and continued to maintain Egypt’s commitment to peace with Israel. Together with Jordan’s King Hussein and US President Bill Clinton, he oversaw the signing of the Oslo Accords by Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat.

Photo by Avi Ohayon

Mubarak’s only other visit to Israel was in 1995, to attend the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. (He is shown here with interim Prime Minister Shimon Peres).

Photo by Tsvika Israeli

It is too early to tell whether the current days mark a watershed in our relations with Egypt. But as the age of Mubarak comes to a close, we can look back fondly to the time when the impossible suddenly became possible; the day in 1979, for example, when the Israeli-Egyptian air corridor was inaugurated, Sadat, Mubarak and Begin took to the skies and the smiles — at least for that moment — were real.

Photo by Yaacov Saar

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Nostalgia Sunday – And then there was IKEA…

February 6, 2011 - 8:03 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Business, design, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture 

The tragedy of yesterday’s IKEA fire is compounded by the fact that it leaves us, the Israeli furniture-buying public, exposed to the elements of bad taste that previously dominated the local furniture scene. And when I say bad taste, I am being kind. I should really say “horribly bad taste”.

Who among us, on their first visit to Israel in the 60s and 70s — and even well into the 80s — was not impressed by the Scandinavian-style furniture that decorated many a living room? Except, it turns out that Danish modern wasn’t the people’s actual choice. It was the style foisted upon them by Socialism, in all its practicality.

Because most of the new country’s residents came to it with the shirt on their backs — quite literally in many cases — there was a need for functional and affordable furniture. This was manufactured by kibbutz industries like Shomrat HaZorea which was once the watchword in teak dining room / living room sets. In the late 80s, such items were dumped on the street to be collected by the local alte zachen rag n’ bone men. (You can now find those same pieces in high-end Tel Aviv boutiques selling refurbished mid-century modern).

In their stead: the black, red and chrome “Hi-Tec” look for the hipsters, along with futons for the crunchy granola set. (I had both).

Meanwhile the older generation finally fulfilled their desires for real antiques by purchasing fake ones. Really bad fake ones, the most obnoxious one being the “vitrina”, a glass-fronted cabinet for storing knick-knacks, bric-a-brac and other tschockes collected on the trips abroad that Israel’s middle class was finally able to afford.

It was a classic case, to paraphrase Tom Wolfe’s From Our House To Bauhaus, of the intelligentsia designing simple, clean-lined and functional workers residences only to discover that the actual inhabitants would immediately cover the walls with flocked velvet wallpaper, hang gold framed pictures of teary-eyed children, put plastic roses in pink glass vases on top of lace doilies and in general decorate with other commonly accepted signifiers of wealth.

But never, I must point out, at the expense of comfort! Some years ago, when I was on a journalists’ junket to the Natuzzi furniture factory in Italy (call it my Italian couch trip) one of the executives asked our group why it was that they always received orders from their Israeli distributor for a certain kind of chair; it wasn’t popular in any other country.

“What kind of chair is it?” I asked, already knowing the answer. He showed us a picture of a television recliner.

That’s right. Israelis love their La-Z-Boys, American Comforts and any other chair that lets you lay back, put your feet up after a long day and watch TV en famille. In fact, it’s better if you have two. Israelis also see nothing wrong with white plastic stackable Keter chairs in the dining room or the office (a good idea that somehow went wrong in the aesthetics department). Your ultimate kiddie bed? The “sapat noar” or youth sofa: bed by night, couch by day (if you can convince your kids to ever straighten up their beds). The ultimate adult bed? A double bed split in two, each with its own adjustable mattress and separate controllers — all the better to watch TV with.

In the 90s, knock-down DIY was already infiltrating Israel but you couldn’t get your hands on it. (My friend Debbie actually took the IKEA catalogue to a carpenter and had him build a bookshelf according to the picture on the cover). More outrageous was going shopping in areas known to have low-priced furniture like Tel Aviv’s Herzl Street, picking out something that had clearly come from a flat-pak and having to pay top dollar — or shekel — all the while having one’s ire placated with “Giveret, zeh firma”, which means something like “Lady, this comes from a very fine quality manufacturer”. If I could have afforded fine quality, would I be shopping on Herzl Street?

No, I would have been at Tollman’s, I-D Design, Castiel or the local outlet of Habitat. Because fine furniture was also coming in, sold to the petit bourgeoisie by other members of the petit bourgeoisie. It was pricey and their importers wanted to keep it that way. Which is why they tried sway public opinion away from IKEA by giving interviews praising themselves and denigrating quality of the Swedish company’s wares.

And weren’t they surprised when IKEA finally opened its doors and didn’t fail. Israelis became adept at wielding the Allen wrench, assembling Billys, Rakkes and Malms, redoing their rooms and refinishing their kitchens. Because IKEA is the Bauhaus ideal incarnate: reasonably priced, nice-looking, well-designed, functional goods for the working middle-class that can be used and then, when the time comes, easily dispensed with and replaced by new ones.

Thank the good heavens that the smear campaign launched against IKEA by the Israel Furniture Industries Association also didn’t succeed. A second IKEA branch opened last year in Rishon Lezion (and you can’t convince me there isn’t a connection between the repeated attempts to block Rishon’s municipality from zoning the store and the location of the Israel Furniture Center, the IFIA’s ill-appointed so-called showcase in the Rishon Lezion western industrial zone).

So we’ll be Rishon-bound for the next six months to a year, which is how long it will take ’til the Netanya store reopens and all will be right in the world.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Egypt Under the Stereoscope

January 30, 2011 - 10:56 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, News, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Religion, Social Justice, Technology, Travel, tv 

In December, one spark caused the dry underbrush that had amassed for years beneath the Carmel Forest trees to burst into flame. Similarly, the tinderbox that is the wild, wild Middle East has combusted spontaneously. Except that spontaneity would imply surprise. Although we Israelis are watching the events in Cairo unfold with no little anxiety, (our hope is that the “cold peace” with Egypt will stay intact), it would be a mistake to think that anyone here is entirely surprised. We just thought it would happen a bit differently.

One element that has proved surprising is the enormous amount of credit being attributed to social media, via the Internet and cellular, for driving events in both Tunisia and Egypt — and who knows where else in the near future. Given that, it might be nice to take a look back at the high-tech of 100 years ago: stereoscopy.

As written in a previous column, stereoscopic technology comprised two separate images printed side-by-side, mounted on cardboard and peered at through the lens of a stereoscope viewer. It sounds primitive by today’s standards but the impact of this form of 3-D photography was great. Take, for example, this description of what would today be called “e-learning” as written in 1905 by Prof. James Henry Breasted, Professor of Egyptology and Oriental History at the University of Chicago:

“Heretofore I have never been able to find any books or material which could furnish graphic reproductions of the remains still surviving in the ancient lands of the East… It was, therefore, with peculiar satisfaction that I made the acquaintance of this system of stay-at-home travel, the great merits of which are but beginning to be appreciated. By its use an acquaintance can be gained, here at home, with the wonders of the Nile Valley, which is quite comparable with that obtained by traveling there.”

The full text of Prof. Breasted’s book, Egypt through the stereoscope: a journey through the land of the Pharaohs, complete with stereoscopic images, may be found online. Meanwhile, here is a small selection of images from Cairo as it was 100 years ago.

“Cairo, home of the Arabian Nights, the greatest city of Africa, northwest from Saladin’s citadel to the Nile”

“A ‘Ship of the Desert’ passing the tombs of by-gone Moslem rulers, outside the east wall of Cairo”

“The great Nile Bridge at Cairo open for the passage of the daily fleet of cargo boats”

“The Holy Carpet parade with the Mahmal, before the departure of the pilgrims for Mecca, Cairo”

“The magnificent jewelry of the Pharaohs (Queen Ahhotep, 17th century B. C.), Cairo Museum”

We can only hope that the looters who broke into the Cairo Museum this week didn’t get to these. They did enough damage by tearing the heads off two mummies and breaking many other irreplaceable items.

In closing, here’s one that’s not from Dr. Breasted’s book but a must-share nonetheless: a stereoscopic image by the Keystone View Company entitled “The Graf Zeppelin’s rendezvous with the eternal desert and the more than 4,000 year old pyramids of Gizeh, Egypt” that documents the 1931 event. There’s nothing we in the West love more than a picture that fits our technology leapfrogging ideal and this one is an absolute wow.

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