Foto Friday – Viewing Israel with Rafael Ben-Ari
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.
Foto Friday – Olives take center stage
Filed under: Business, coexistence, Environment, Foto Friday, General, health, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Social Justice, Travel
The humble olive finds itself in the eye of a political storm this year with reports of violence and vandalism from all sides. (Perhaps the fairest assessment of the situation comes from a new Oxfam report which puts the blame squarely on… well… everyone, which is kind of refreshing). Meanwhile, the fruit of the Olea Europaea tree is ripening and olive-picking activities – also on all sides – are at their peak.
The annual Galilee and Golan Olive Branch Festival started last week and features two weekends of activities for tourists to Israel’s northern region. The festival, a joint initiative of the Ministry for the Development of the Negev and the Galilee, the Galilee Development Authority and the Israel Olive Board is being held under the slogan “A Tribute to the Olive in Different Cultures”.
Activities include visits to olive presses, workshops, hikes, cycling tours, spas and gourmet eating. In addition, an Open House initiative offers visitors a glimpse into the lives of Galilee residents – Jews, Arabs, Druze, Circassian – including traditional food, music and crafts.
Hananya Farm is one of the country’s major producers of olive oil. Located in the Western Galilee, it is both the headquarters of the Olive Board and one of the festival’s four information centers, offering a wide range of workshops and activities.
These include picking and pressing the olives in an old-fashioned press, guided olive oil tasting, explanations about the olive harvest, an arts and crafts fair, farmers market and musical performances beneath the olive trees. Guided hikes (many with KKL-JNF guides), cycle and jeep tours are also available.
A few words about the Olive Board. A statutory body representing the interests of Israel’s olive producers, it sets standards for olive oil quality and production. In recent years it has adopted an additional aim: promoting the health benefits related to olive oil consumption. Their website contains a range of information, from the history of the olive in Mediterranean culture to the varieties of olives grown in Israel, like Barnea, which was bred specifically for modern olive and olive oil production methods. Truth be told (and it’s worth reading the Oxfam report with this in mind) stone presses are nice for promotional festivals and niche markets but that’s not really how this stuff gets made – or makes it – in the mass market.
Foto Friday – Desert Queens set forth
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Life, Sports, Travel
This week, dozens of women from Israel and around the world embarked on an adventure: the third annual women-only Desert Queen jeep expedition. Part outdoor experience, part competition, the Desert Queen combines 4WD driving through Israel’s desert with personal empowerment.
Organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel and Geographical Tours with the cooperation of the Ministry of Tourism, the Israeli jeep expedition is a sister project of the international Desert Queen journeys that, for over a decade, have been bringing adventuresome women to exotic destinations around the world, such as the Balkans, South Africa and Lapland.
The Israeli journey got its start in 2008 when, in honor of the State of Israel’s 60th Anniversary, the Jewish Agency’s Partnership 2000 program and Geographical Tours brought women from the world’s Jewish communities together with Israeli women on first Desert Queen expedition to take place in Israel. In three short years the journey has become a well-known brand, with thousands of women applying each year, either individually or as a team, to take part in the pre-selection trials. It doesn’t come cheap. If they pass, the finalists pay a $1,500 price tag to participate in the Desert Queen.
Photo: Eva Taylor
The journeys are based on a 4×4 jeep convoy in which the female team members (3-4 per vehicle) drive through challenging terrain and are put to the test as individuals and as a team. Along the way, participants contend with various geographical, physical, cultural and personal challenges that includes hiking, self-exploration, teamwork, sleeping out in the field and night time activities that apparently have something to do with dancing and fire!
Participants must be aged 20 and over, with a valid driving license but previous 4WD experience is not mandatory. The organizers say, “We teach the participants everything they need to know for the journey, so that even the most inexperienced – can enjoy the driving. You do not need prior knowledge, and by the end of the journey you’ve completed all there is to know about off-road driving.”
Photo: Aya Ben-Ezri
This year’s seven-day journey (from October 27 to November 2, 2010) takes place in Israel’s southern region. It includes Mitzpe Ramon, Nahal Barak and Moa but the organizers keep the final route to themselves, revealing details to participants on a day-to-day basis. The organizers do state that in addition to the traditional jeep and outdoor adventure, Desert Queen 2010 will also include special features, for example, visiting young communities, army bases, a unique desert ecological project and orientation day at the Ben Shemen Forest with MK Tzipi Livni. What more could a girl want? Probably a hot bath… but only when the trip is over and done.
Take a look at expeditions past — and there are more on their YouTube channel. Potential future Desert Queens can apply for the expedition through their website.
Nostalgia Sunday – Yashar Yashar
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Technology, Travel
We are traveling this week, in the company of a GPS navigator named Koby. That is to say, our Global Positioning System has a selection of audio interfaces, each language interface has a name and gender identity (you can select a male or female voice), and the male Hebrew-language interface is called Koby.
Koby is a great asset for many reasons, first and foremost because he brings us to through unknown territories to our destination. (Well, he is a computer and that is his primary directive). But his absolutely genius feature is that if he makes a mistake — and he does err — we can get mad at him instead of at one another. So Koby saves relationships. Plus, it is so fun, for once, to yell back at that Israeli man-on-the-street who thinks he knows everything!
Think back… 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago… or to last week, when you asked the man-on-the-street — let’s call him Yossi — for directions. “Okay, go to the right. Go to the right and then go to the left. Then go all the time straight, yashar, yashar, all the time in front of you. Go to the end. And okay, you will see it.”
This happens more often than not. Because the phrase “I don’t know” is anathema to Yossi and therefore directions you will get, right or wrong. Follow them and within some hours you should find yourself on the border of Lebanon, Syria or Egypt. They are, in fact, all the time in front of you.
At a certain point though, if you stay here long enough, this national tic, yashar, yashar, becomes familiar and then, weirdly, almost beloved. You start to wait for it and you’re disappointed when it doesn’t come. Thankfully, there is another version, in which Yossi ends his litany with “Then you ask someone where to go after there.” And indeed, that is true. You can always ask another Yossi and start playing the game over again.
But since we do have to reach our destination eventually, we love Koby, although he and his ilk are replacing Yossi and his yashar, yashar as the national directional fallback. Mourn not for Yossi, however, whom I envision as your typical gadget-happy Israeli man. He already has GPS installed in his car, his jeep and his running shoe. He’s no freier*.
I should point out that whoever did the recording for Koby is a very practiced radio-TV announcer with perfect pronunciation. But, in a way, I wish the manufacturers had given us a third option: Yossi man-on-the-street. Then we could really go to town. If it were to be truly realistic, however, Yossi would cuss us out with better, juicer phrases — as in this advertisement for the MIRS GPS, where the driver gets a big surprise when he misses a turn. Truly a slice of Israeli life: high technology combined with Jewish guilt.
And another one, just for fun, because it’s sort of in English:
*Usually translated as “sucker”, “patsy” or “loser” the word deserves a column all on its own, so more on “freier” another day. Let’s just say, in short, that it’s everything an Israeli doesn’t want to be.
Foto Friday – 3D Israel
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Religion, Travel
Writing about the 3D Israel doesn’t do this site justice. Neither does showing a few still images of what is essentially a dynamic online experience; with just a few clicks, users can experience panoramic 360 degree tours of Israel. How fun is that?!
The most popular visits to the site are, of course, to well-known tourist attractions. Old Jaffa’s newly renovated main square, for example. (Click on the link or the picture for the full effect).
Or the Eilat underwater observatory.
But there are lesser-known sites as well, such as the machtesh, a unique crater formation at Mizpe Ramon.
There are holy sites as well, such as the Church of All Nations on the Mount of Olives. The 360 degree rotation allows viewers to see the church from one side…
…to the other.
3Disrael’s virtual tours require Adobe Flash player 9 or higher (free download at www.adobe.com). Navigation is very simple. To zoom in or rotate, just point the arrow icon in the direction you want to go and left-click on the mouse button.
The tours are produced by ByTech which, since 1999, has been offering digital imaging services to tourist sites and, more recently, to hotels and restaurants (in case you want to “try before you buy” — at least virtually!).
The most recent tour on the site is the Tel Aviv Musix festival, which took place last month.
The festival was also documented by photographer Mehman Asadov who’s posted two collections about the event on YouTube. The background music sets the festival mood. Enjoy!
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