Liev and Naomi’s Israeli vacation

June 16, 2009 - 2:46 PM by · 6 Comments
Filed under: General, Israeliness, Movies, Pop Culture 

Liev, Sacha, Naomi and baby Samuel under a diaper

Liev, Sacha, Naomi and baby Samuel under a diaper

The Jewish National Fund (or KKL as its known in Israel) has some fun guests this week. Hollywood stars Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts are in Israel with their two young children, Sacha and Samuel, for the first time. According to KKL, the family is in Israel for several days, seeing Christian and Jewish sites as well as enjoying Tel Aviv’s beaches, restaurants, and, of course, planting some trees.

The itinerary was planned by KKL-JNF, “caretakers of the land of Israel for more than 107 years,” and the family’s first official stop was planting a tree up north in the Galilee. According to the JNF spokesperson, Naomi read the tree planting blessing, while Liev looked to place the pistachio sapling in the ground but first had to remove his two-year-old son Sacha who had placed himself in the hole.

Schreiber said his grandfather was a strong Zionist who had always begged him to go to Israel. His grandfather died before he could make that happen, so this trip resonates for him. It may also have additional meaning following his most recent role as Zus Bielski in “Defiance,” the Holocaust movie recounting the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who lived and rebelled against the Nazis from a Bellarussian forest with a band of fellow refugees.

I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York, and I’m half-Jewish. Anything that has resonance for me about my family history, because I don’t know much about it, I’m drawn to. That’s part of why I think I choose projects like this. Less because I’m right for them, but because I want to know if I’m right for them.”

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Israel is for the birds

February 27, 2009 - 1:59 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Environment, Travel 

Gray cranes flock over the Hula Lake. More than half a billion birds of some 400 hundred species pass through the Jordan Valley to Africa and back to Europe when summer comes. (Getty Images)

Gray cranes flock over the Hula Lake. More than half a billion birds of some 400 hundred species pass through the Jordan Valley to Africa and back to Europe when summer comes. (Getty Images)

One of our favorite places in the country is the Hula Lake Park, just a little south of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee. There, you can rent bicycles or a family-sized golf cart and tool around the spacious lake to view some of the most amazing birds in the world.

Enviro-nerds that we are, we bring a bird-watching book, and over our four visits to the park in recent years, we’ve checked off a good three dozen birds sighted there. The Jewish National Fund-operated Hula Lake is one of the most important bird-watching sites in the world as annually, white cranes on their way to Southern Africa, stop there one last time before they begin the Sahara Desert portion of their flight.

And now, the Hula is getting some international recognition. BBC Wildlife Magazine, the world’s best-selling natural history and environmental magazine, has named it one of the most outstanding sites in the world for nature observation and photography. According to a JNF press release, it was ranked 9th on a list of 20 exceptional nature sites chosen by 300 international experts including scientists, photographers and television producers.

Even though it hosts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, we’ve never found it too crowded. But that could change with this international recognition. So get there soon. As an incentive, an international arts festival hosted by JNF and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel will be held at the Hula Lake on March 6-15. The festival will feature crafts workshops, tours, lectures, and meetings with artists from around the world.

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