In the Red South

February 5, 2012 - 1:52 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Environment, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel 

After consecutive weeks of rainy weekends, Israelis flocked outdoors this weekend to feel the nature.

Several went to the beach. Some headed north to the Galilee and Golan Heights. But based on the traffic jams we encountered, the majority went to the North Negev to the Red South Anemone Festival.

red south

Red South Anemone Festival (Photo: Viva Sarah Press)

With cameras at the ready you could hear “cheese” in just about every language.

The Anemone Festival is my favorite event of the year – and it takes place every weekend in February. These little red flowers carpet the northern Negev area (and can usually be found in the western part as well) and make getting in touch with nature all the more fun.

There are hiking options, biking routes, four-by-four tracks, guided tours and cultural activities.

Our group opted for just sitting down and enjoying a picnic. Our kids loved running and jumping among the flowers.

red south kid

Jumping over anemones at Red South festival. (Photo: Viva Sarah Press)

And though there were thousands of other families at each field we visited, the flowers managed to keep the spotlight. It truly was a great day out.

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Foto Friday – Viewing Israel with Rafael Ben-Ari

February 25, 2011 - 7:48 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Art, design, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Picture of the Week, Travel 

Rafael Ben-Ari is a noted Israeli photographer and educator with over 20 years experience. He’s worked for Israeli and international newspapers and magazines, traveled extensively and his photographs has been presented at exhibitions and countries around the world.

Ben-Ari also runs Israel Photo Tours, which offers one-on-one private photography workshops and lessons in Israel. These are day tours, says Ben-Ari, “for photographers on all levels who are serious about their craft and wish to improve their skills while seeing Israel.”

Ben-Ari’s experience with cameras ranges from analog 35mm, digital, and SLR to panoramic and underwater cameras. Light is essential to his work and on location, he makes use of both artificial and available light and light. His students, he states, “learn the art of using light to capture the true essence of Israel”.

He suggests various tour itineraries, such as the ancient, sun-washed city of Acre for those who love the picturesque…

© Rafael Ben-Ari/Chameleons Eye

The dusty Negev desert for those interested in archeology and nature…

© Rafael Ben-Ari/Chameleons Eye

Jerusalem, the city central to Judaism…

© Rafael Ben-Ari/Chameleons Eye

The places holy to three monotheistic religions…

© Rafael Ben-Ari/Chameleons Eye

And for a change of pace, the beaches, sun and fun of Tel Aviv.

© Rafael Ben-Ari/Chameleons Eye

There are a lot more wonderful pictures to view on the Israel Photo Tours website, along with contact information, itineraries and testimonials.

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Foraging for salad

January 19, 2011 - 9:41 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Blogging, Environment, Food, General, health, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

Mallow

I have a certain fondness for weeds. Not just the ones that threaten to strangle my grass during the late winter/early spring, but the ones that you can imbibe with your salad. Now, granted, I don’t just blithely pick the weeds in my garden, rinse them and toss them in the salad.

Slender nettle

But there are a few well-known weeds out there — stinging nettle and a scattering of mallow in my backyard, thanks to the advice given by a variety of gardeners I’ve gotten to know — that you can easily find and pick without worrying about any nasty after-effects. And now, thanks to a selection of Negev farmers, you’ll be able to just pick up some purslane, sea aster, Mediterranean saltbush and desert stork’s bill at the local greengrocer (or yarkan, as we say in these parts). It’s thanks to the Bedouin living in the Negev that we know which weeds to eat, according to an article in today’s Ha’aretz, and the Negev region is now promoting their wild plants. Stork’s bill is considered a sweetener, while sea aster serves as more of a vegetable and purslane, a succulent found in many home gardens, that is great cooked or tossed in salad.

Historically, the mallow, which is also called Jew’s Mallow, although I haven’t found out why, played an important role during the siege on Jerusalem in 1948. When the food convoys couldn’t reach the city, Jerusalem residents went out to the fields to pick mallow leaves, which are rich in iron and vitamins. The Jerusalem radio station broadcast instructions for cooking mallow and when those broadcasts were picked up in Amman, the Jordanians assumed that because the Jews were down to eating leaves, they must be dying of starvation and ready to surrender.

You can also use mallow in kubeh hamousta soup, for a sharp, slighty sour flavor (Courtesy Cafe Liz)

For figuring out how to use these wild things, check out a few food blogs. I like Food Bridge by Sarah Melamed, another local who writes about her cooking and her boys. And Karin Kloosterman had a great post last year identifying and defining your garden edibles. Head to the Eucalyptus restaurant in Jerusalem’s Hutzot Hayotzer artists’ lane and hear from chef Moshe Basson about foraging for herbs from the local ‘biblical chef.’, or eat a bowl of kubeh hamousteh soup anywhere around town.

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At Nitzana

January 3, 2011 - 10:15 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Art, coexistence, education, Environment, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life 

Sometimes you’re brought to remote but interesting places. My latest was Nitzana (נִצָּנָה, ניצנה‎‎), a youth village and communal settlement in the western Negev desert in Israel, right at the Egyptian border. It’s just about 2.5 hours from Jerusalem but feels much farther, probably because there’s not a lot happening in the near vicinity, unless you count an ancient Nabatean city and international border crossing.

We were there with a bunch of family and friends, continuing our week-long celebration of my nephew Akiva’s bar mitzvah. Why Nitzana? One of my sisters had been there recently and liked the location as well as the clean, simple and inexpensive hostel-like accommodations for our large group. Built as a youth village in 1987, it now has a population of around 50 families and serves as home for a variety of populations including disadvantaged Israeli, Arab and Bedouin youth learning science, technology and ecology education, as well as Asian students studying at an agricultural outpost of Hebrew University and a range of guests who come to stay in the new guest quarters. The place was founded by Aria Lova Eliav, a beloved Israeli who died just this year, after 89 years of life in Israel, where he moved at the age of four. Lova Eliav, as he was known, founded the city of Arad in the eastern Negev and was responsible for developing the towns of Lachish and Kiryat Gat. When he saw that the South lacked facilities for youth, and he had an idea to turn the sand dunes of Nitzana in the Western Negev into a youth village.

They weren’t the first ones to stake out the desert as a possibly creative and productive outpost. Nitzana appears to have been a station on the eastern branch of the ancient Spice Route, serving pilgrims and merchants travelling to Sinai or central Egypt. A tel to the south of the modern settlement is home to several ancient churches, a well and some living quarters. There’s also a manmade cave that appears to have been hewn out of the stone above to serve as temporary living quarters for travelers.

It’s all ironically similar to the current scenario down here, where the Nitzana Border Crossing used to once handle pedestrians and private cars between Egypt and Nitzana, but no longer. Now it only handles commercial trade and is just across the road from the Path of Peace, an environmental sculpture of columns created by Israeli artist Dani Karavan. Running over three kilometers, from the hills of Nitzana to the border, the 100 round columns are each inscribed with the word ‘peace’ in a different language, each one representing all those who have traveled through or lived in this region.

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Foto Friday – Ben Gurion’s University

October 15, 2010 - 9:05 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: coexistence, education, Foto Friday, General, Israeliness, Medical Breakthroughs, Picture of the Week, Technology 

The first semester of Israel’s 2010-2011 academic year opened this past week. There were little to no threats of a faculty or student strike for once — that pleasure was left to the Union of Local Authorities of Israel — and 293,000 students began studying on time at Israel’s 66 institutions of higher learning.

Of these, 228,740 young persons entered into or continued their first degree studies. More significantly, of this number, 88,500 are studying at colleges (35 academic and 23 teacher training colleges); this is the first time that this number exceeds registration at the seven universities where 75,200 students are registered for Bachelor’s degrees.

Ben Gurion University of the Negev stands out with more than 19,000 students, including 4,650 new ones. The number of students enrolled for a first degree rose, particularly in humanities and exact sciences; this may be due to new study tracks that allow for interdisciplinary studies — not an unusual notion for North Americans but a new concept here. Here’s a glimpse into the little university that has become the number one choice for undergraduates both Jewish and Arab from all over the country due in part to its research and development capabilities…

It’s ultramodern campus, shining like a beacon in the desert…

Its medical school, affiliated with Columbia University and Soroka Medical Center, which provides medical care to all populations throughout the region…

Encouragement of innovation…

And fulfillment of David Ben Gurion’s vision of the Negev as a testbed for science and R&D.

More photos by Dani Machlis can be found at BGU – The Year in Pictures. Information about the University is available on its website. And check out the BGU YouTube channel to see more amazing R&D, like these wall climbing robots developed at the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

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