Toronto’s “Slut” March Heads to Israel

March 7, 2012 - 11:22 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Environment, Politics, Pop Culture 

slut sign slutwalk manchester, Slutwalk israel, tel aviv, jerusalem, haifa

Last April a writer from my personal blog Green Prophet asked: Should the Middle East Have More Sluts? Of course we wanted to attract our reader’s attention, and we did with thousands of readers, hundreds of “Likes” and dozens of comments. Although I am not a feminist, I do recognize a critical link between women’s rights and environmental values. Look at the women from Barefoot College in Jordan: Women are often the first ones to transmit these values to their societies and children, and women without basic rights are not empowered to do anything. I know that linking sluts and the Middle East is a tough pill to swallow in the ultra-conservative Middle East but we wrote this article to grab your attention. To make you think.

Readers and activists were listening. According to DIY Tel Aviv the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem will be organizing their own slut walks, starting next week. Read more

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Let it snow, let it snow

February 16, 2012 - 3:38 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

It’s pouring outside and we Jerusalemites are praying for a snowy weekend. I know, that’s odd to those of you who spend much of the winter months digging yourselves out from winter snow, scraping your car windshields, hoping that you won’t have the kids home for yet another snow day.

But the benefit of living in a fairly snow-free climate is that when it does snow that once a winter, if once a winter, it’s absolutely magical. The world around us turns quiet, as no one has snow tires or shovels. You hear the sounds of kids playing in the snow, you see your neighbors taking walks, kicking their heels in the white stuff. There are people who drive in from nearby cities and towns, looking to take part in our weather delight. It doesn’t last all that long and it’s usually gone within the course of a day.

I’m really hopeful this time, as I just received a press release from Mayor Nir Barkat’s office that he’s visiting the municipality’s Snow Preparedness Center, including a photo-op this afternoon with him posing next to the city’s emergency equipment-including snow plows and salt trucks. I think there’s just one snow plow, but still, hope springs eternal.

Here are some glimpses of our snowy city that last time it happened, back in 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ISRAEL21cdotcom?feature=mhee#p/search/0/Lz61TnDurRk

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The agony and the ecstasy in Jerusalem’s excavations

September 5, 2011 - 11:18 AM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: History and Culture, Holidays, Travel 

by Yossi Yeinan, Keshet

Stairs to the Second Temple

Ancient stairs uncovered in City of David

It’s been 50 years since Irving Stone wrote his popular biography of Michelangelo, “The Agony and the Ecstasy”. If not for copyright restrictions, The Agony and the Ecstasy might be the title for a new history of Jerusalem.

Life here is like that – exciting and intense – and every so often there is a news story or a new discovery that captures that intensity perfectly and encapsulates what life in Jerusalem is all about.

I experienced a moment like that just recently when I toured not-yet opened areas of the City of David National Park. Over the last five years, archeologists have uncovered a monumental staircase nearly half a mile long that ran – in Second Temple times – from the Shiloach (or Siloam) Pool at the southern end of ancient Jerusalem up to the Temple.

A drainage channel lined with beautifully dressed stone runs directly underneath the staircase along its entire length and will be opened to the public later this year.

Flavius Josephus and the rabbis of the Talmud describe these stairs in Temple times at Succot – the harvest festival. Imagine the scene: the granaries and storehouses were overflowing with the bounty of the summer harvest and tens of thousands of pilgrims – men, women, and children – would come to Jerusalem and ascend these stairs festooned with bright torches and jugglers for the festive occasion. The Jewish people would give thanks and pray for the fall rains before returning home to plant the winter crops.

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The unity of temple times gave way to infighting (will we ever learn?), the Romans destroyed the Temple, and some of the surviving Jews hid in the drainage tunnel underneath the stairs – only to be smoked out and murdered by the Roman conquerors.

We know the story because Josephus recorded it, and because in the last few years we’ve found the cooking vessels and household items left behind by the Jews who lived and died here more than 1,900 years ago.

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Parking maven

August 29, 2011 - 2:33 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Entertainment, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

Our lot was something like this, but worse

As I’m driving around town, there are often at least half a dozen times that I experience a near-miss of an accident, as my fellow Jerusalem drivers open car doors into oncoming traffic, swerve in and out of lanes as if we’re on a racetrack, make sudden turns without signaling, stop suddenly in the middle of traffic in order to say hello to someone…the list goes on.

So I was pleasantly surprised the other day with a particularly Jerusalem parking experience. We had cautiously parked in a rock-filled lot that was being used by several venues, Theatre in the Rough, Chutzot Hayotzer and probably some other summer event. It wasn’t even really a lot, just a roughly cleared space that dozens of cars were using for parking because the other nearby lots were mysteriously closed. (Why the city plans events and then doesn’t plan parking is another question.)

We were done early — having attended the wonderfully clever performance of Romeo and Juliet in Gan Bloomfield — and headed to our car. As we began pulling out, another car headed down toward our spot, clearly planning on taking it once we left. But that meant we couldn’t pull out.

And then our parking angels appeared. One was a jovial Israeli guy who told my husband — pleasantly — that his best bet would be to pull out, let the other car back in and then back out himself. You have to understand that very often when Israelis — usually men — give parking and driving directions, they’re know-it-all and you find yourself not wanting to do what they advise. Then another guy appeared, and began giving excellent directions for the exact maneuvers necessary.

“Turn the steering wheel 30 degrees, then straighten your wheels,” he said. “Great, great.” “What about that big olive tree he’s about to brush up against?” said the other guy. “I see it, I see it,” said the second guy.

Meanwhile, my husband and I were starting to laugh, because these two — who didn’t know each other — were making what could have been a tense situation much more pleasant, and, they knew what they were doing.”

“I’m the national directions-giver,” quipped the second guy, using the word ‘mechaven’, which means to direct, as in traffic. “They hire me out.”

He got us out, and the other cars in, with nary a scratch. We drove out, commenting that was the last time we would park in that lot. Until we exited onto the street and were confronted with a tow truck smack in front of us, and no where to go unless onto the truck bed. Turns out the tow truck driver had parked in the middle of the street and run into the local gas station store to grab a cup of coffee. Hey, there was no place to park! What’s a guy to do?

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Sweating the small stuff too

August 22, 2011 - 8:21 AM by · 7 Comments
Filed under: Israeliness, War 

Hutzot HaYotzer arts and crafts festival

While it’s the big news that gets all the headlines, sometimes it’s the small stuff that’s the hardest to sweat. Last week, terrorists attacked along the Israel-Egypt border just north of Eilat. The ensuing days have been filled with IDF strikes and Gazan counterattacks. More people have died.

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, the seminal rap-rock band HaDag Nahash was playing a concert at Sultan’s Pool as part of the annual Hutzot HaYotzer arts and crafts festival. Our 17-year-old daughter Merav had a plan to dance up a storm with her friends at the show. She got all dolled up, then received a phone call.

“There’s a terror alert in Mamila (the mall that is adjacent to Sultan’s Pool). Everyone’s been ordered to get off the street and hide in the stores. There are police everywhere. It’s really serious,” her friend on the phone said.

“What should I do?” Merav asked us. “I want to go…”

“…but you don’t want to die,” I finished her sentence.

“Right,” she responded.

We checked the news. There was indeed a “high alert” going on in Jerusalem, but it was mostly along the highways entering the city from the north and west – Highway 443 was reported to have back-ups for up to 10 km coming towards the checkpost from Modi’in. But nothing written about trouble in town.

“If they’re locking down the mall, they must have some good lead,” I speculated.

“Maybe I could get to the concert from the other side,” Merav offered.

“No, they’ll have closed everything,” I said.

“And the other way is kind of dark,” Merav remembered. “Oof, this sucks! I really like HaDag Nahash.”

“And I really like you…alive,” I replied. I wish I were trying to be ironic.

Merav sat in the kitchen, now with two of her friends. While we’d tried to leave the decision up to Merav (with some strongly worded parental advice), one of her friends had much stricter marching orders.

“My mom says I can’t even leave your house,” she said gloomily.

The truth is, this kind of terror lock down has been pretty rare in recent years. During the early 2000s, it was a nearly daily occurrence, but nowadays we take for granted that we can sit at a Café Aroma and sip an iced limon-nana on a warm Jerusalem night with carefree abandon.

But an arts and crafts festival with tens of thousands of nightly attendees makes a pretty good spot for an attack. It’s a reminder that, despite our protestations and blogs to the contrary, Israel is not quite yet that “normal” nation we proffer it to be.

And yet the contrary is just as true: we say (and we mean it) that we won’t let the bad guys stop us from living our lives. If Merav had received a call just then saying the threat had passed, she would have been on the next bus to town, with our blessing.

The girls wound up reluctantly taking a pass on the show. We watched a family movie instead: “The Invention of Lying.” It was an amusing distraction.

Later, Merav talked to a friend of hers who had made it to the show. It was amazing, Merav quoted. “But he said everyone was terrified. They spent the whole concert looking around, trying to spot if there was a terrorist in the crowd.” She added, almost parenthetically, that she was, in fact, glad she hadn’t gone in the end.

There was no terror attack and the threat level was lifted by morning. My wife and I are scheduled to attend the festival and show on Tuesday (Ehud Banai is playing live). And unless the roads are closed, we’ll be there, defiant, proud and enjoying a warm Jerusalem evening.

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