Celebrity Shavuot

June 2, 2011 - 3:10 PM by Jessica · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Movies, Music, Sports

Shavuot partying in Tel Aviv

In researching a certain Shavuot article that then got killed, as sometimes happens in the professional writing world, I researched some somewhat interesting info about what Israeli celebrities think of Shavuot, the holiday that often gets ignored. Here’s what they — and I — had to say:

Despite being yet another three-day school vacation right before Chofesh Hagadol, the big school break, Shavuot is a very Israeli kind of chag, and even Sabra celebrities, including those not currently living in the land, endeavor to celebrate. Take former Miss Israel Gal Gadot – who currently holds her own as an ex-Mossad agent with Vin Diesel in the latest “Fast Five” movie – and is planning on making her specialty cheese lasagna for her family’s big Shavuot feast. “The reason why I like this holiday is the food,” admits Gadot.

Tennis player Shahar Peer says she always anticipates her family’s festive Shavuot dinner with its plethora of fruit and dairy dishes.” “That’s the food that I love,” adds the tennis player, who often tweets about what she’s about to eat, whether its Belgian waffles and chocolate in Brussels or her plan to “eat the entire fridge” whenever she’s home.

Besides the dairy emphasis, Shavuot in Israel is still fairly agricultural in nature, with plenty of opportunities to celebrate the summer harvest. Peer remembers donning a wreath of flowers when she was in the third grade and participating in a school play, a fairly common scene around this time of year. Some cities have tractor parades in the days leading up to Shavuot, marking the farming contribution of the country’s moshavim and kibbutzim, with tractors making their way from the farms outside the city.

Model and actress Gadot reminisces about going with her family as a child to a moshav or kibbutz to watch the cows being milked. She also remembers having water fights with her friends, while Sha’anan Streett, lead singer of hip hop/funk band Hadag Nachash, has a vivid memory of dumping an entire pail of water on his synagogue rabbi, who only grimaced and went on with his sermon.

Water fights a while back

Streett was only following tradition. Shavuot has always been Israel’s water festival, as kids swarm the streets with water guns and balloons, celebrating an early-in-the-season water day. Some claim it’s a custom from North Africa, where Jews equated Torah with water – both life-giving sources. It could also be because Shavuot falls in the late spring/early summer, when the weather starts heating up.

For psychic Uri Geller, Shavuot is very special, particularly the learning aspect of the holiday, which he says he tries to do from his home in London. “What’s interesting to me about Shavuot is its spiritual angle and the aura and the energy that emanates fro this holiday,” he says. “It is the holy holiday of the achievement of spirituality and you count back from Passover, it’s 50 days, it’s like going up a ladder that counts 50 steps and 50 in the Kabbalah is the number of infinity, so it has significant ritualistic meaning to me of spirituality.”

Whatever your angle, enjoy your celebrations.

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Tags: celebrities, Gal Gadot, Shaanan Streett, Shahar Pe'er, Shavuot, Uri Geller

Brother less big now

October 6, 2008 - 8:23 AM by Harry · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, General, History and Culture, Politics

Big Brother from 1984 and not from Israel Israeli culture is one of the nation’s most important exports in terms of public relations, and the Foreign Ministry has been active in sponsoring international tours for Israel’s most exciting performers or some time.

ISRAEL21c has been reporting on the phenomenon for several years now:

“We have found that bringing Israeli musicians to the United States is an exciting and effective way of engaging students, said Aviva Raz Schechter, Minister-Counselor at the Embassy of Israel in Washington, DC.

“It provides us with the opportunity to highlight Israel’s cultural achievements and to show that Israel is more than just a conflict. Many American students are tired of debating about the Arab-Israeli conflict; music serves as a great way of connecting Jewish and non-Jewish young people with the country. We are particularly excited to be hosting Idan Raichel, who is not only a wonderful performer but also an example of the diverse society of which Israel is so proud,” Schechter told ISRAEL21c.

Rapper Shaanan Streett of Hadag Nachash has even publicly expressed dismay at the warmth with which his act has been received by local bureaucrats, despite the ensemble’s well-known proclivity for lyrics which are often critical of the homeland. This, despite the Foreign Ministry’s insistence that sponsored artists sign agreements nicknamed “Big Brother Contracts,” dictating that if they talk trash about Israel while on tour, they obligate themselves to pay the government back.

Regardless, Hadag Nachash and many other edgy acts have participated in performance and speaking tours to North America and Europe with governmental backing, spreading good Israeli cheer to the Diaspora, where identification with sabra culture can go a long way. And now, tours like these are getting easier to set up, with the Foreign Ministry having announced recently that the Big Brother Contracts are, like the real 1984, history. It’s good timing, coming just months after the government was criticized for unveiling new plans to keep an extremely close watch on its populace.

Quoting from a story in the Hebrew Yediot Acharonot tabloid, the McClatchy newspaper group’s Checkpoint Jerusalem blog recently celebrated the move, which was apparently orchestrated by authors A.B. Yehoshua and Meir Shiloh and championed by Arye Mekel, deputy director of the ministry’s Cultural and Scientific Affairs Department.

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