Celebrity at the wedding

October 4, 2011 - 11:43 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Entertainment, Life 

Ori Lachmi from the Israeli TV hit "Srugim"

The young man in the light purple shirt and the small knitted kippa looked awfully familiar. He was sitting in the row in front of us at the chuppa of the daughter of close friends. My wife Jody went up to him. “I recognize you, but I can’t place from where,” she said.

He held out a hand. “Ori Lachmi.” Jody continued her quizzical look. “Maybe from ‘Srugim,’” he offered. “Of course!” she blushed, shook his hand and sat down. I did the same, adding “I recognized you immediately,” although I hadn’t.

Lachmi played the character of Ro’i, doctor Nati’s religious gay brother, on the popular Israeli TV series, Srugim. He had one of the only good roles in the show’s rather dreary second season, creating a believable persona and raising some issues that are usually swept under the unpolitically correct carpet in the God-fearing world.

As the real-life wedding proceeded towards the meal and into the dancing, I kept my eye out for Lachmi. Despite the fact I grew up in California, I’ve never seen – or cared much – about movie stars. The last time I was in the presence of a celebrity, it was David Schwimmer who played Ross on Friends, at a sushi bar and frankly it was no big deal. The tempura didn’t taste any different. But this was Ro’i – from my all-time favorite Israeli show.

“You’re a bit smitten, aren’t you?” Jody commented. “Go up and talk to him.” “What would I say?” I replied. “Anyway, I’d get all flustered with the Hebrew.”

When I got home, though, I did what any good journalist with a crush would do – I googled him. It turns out that Lachmi is a local Jerusalem boy who grew up religious (unusual on Srugim where all the actors playing religious Israelis are actually totally secular).

Lachmi attended the religious Horev schools (where a number of children of our friends go) but got into hot water after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated when he set up a memorial corner without official school permission. He was suspended from the student council for three months and some students compared him with Rabin’s killer, Yigal Amir, saying they “both took the law into their own hands,” Lachmi told Maariv NRG in a 2010 interview.

He subsequently transferred to the Hartman High School (from which our oldest son graduated). Lachmi majored in theater.

As upset as Lachmi was from his treatment at Horev, that wasn’t the last straw. He had received an offer to act in a film and he ran the script by his mother. There was a scene in which he had to kiss a woman. His mother vetoed his participation. It was Shabbat and “after that, I just got up, turned on the TV and turned it off, turned it on and turned it off several times,” he said. “And the sky did not fall.”

Lachmi is now a proud, but ambivalent, datlash – an Israeli acronym for someone who is formerly religious. He still visits his family regularly on Shabbatot, but says he can’t abide by stringent religious laws that require strawberries to be soaked in soap for five minutes or that forbid eating brocoli at all, for fear of ingesting forbidden worms, he told Maariv.

What was his connection to the wedding? His still religious brother is married to the groom’s sister. And, it turns out, I could have actually talked to him without getting tongue-tied – he’s half Anglo (his mother is from Australia). I did the next best thing: I friended him on Facebook. Perhaps I should now go and stalk the other actors from Srugim. I kind of have a crush on Hodaya too…

Srugim returns to Israeli screens later this month on Yes.

Tags: , ,

Heading to Klil

June 7, 2011 - 1:13 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: design, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Travel 

Klil flowers

Big adventure last night. ‘Erev’, that is, the night before Shavuot, and three nights before we head to the U.S. for a summer break, we drove up north to Klil, a pretty funky ‘yishuv’, or community past Akko, below Nahariya. The occasion was the wedding of a good friend’s daughter to a guy who grew up on Klil.

You know how you know about an event, but don’t really pay attention to it until the day of? That was our story last night. We’d all been rushing around all day, working, taking care of life, knowing in the back of our minds that if we were going to be on time to this wedding, we’d need to leave Jerusalem at around 4 pm. That hour came and went as my husband sat in 40 minutes of traffic, our babysitter canceled and we scrambled to make alternative plans. By the time we picked up our four other passengers, four o’clock had come and gone and it was closer to five and we hadn’t even gotten out of the city. At that point, we started looking at maps and programming in our destination to Waze, our favorite iPhone travel app, and realized that the trip was at least 2.5 hours long. My husband’s face dropped as he considered the length of the night ahead and with my blessing, got out of the car and took a cab home. I took over the wheel.

We got to Klil at 7:45 pm, trying to be calm about the fact that we would be missing the chuppah, and rationalizing that perhaps the bus hired to bring up other Jerusalemites would also be late, and that the wedding would be on Israeli time, not Anglo time. As we drove along the winding, country roads of Klil, and parked in the rough, just-cleared lot, it was clear that whatever happened, it would be okay because just being in Klil was enough. We walked along a dirt road for about ten minutes until we reached the fields behind the groom’s house that had been cleared — by him and his friends and siblings — in the last week. Vibrant paper flowers were strung in the many trees, Chinese lanterns were hung by branches throughout the area, large rugs had been laid for the dance floor and a band of an accordian player, cellist, drummer and recorder player played lilting, Klezmer-like tunes.

The food was simple and great: Small, fresh pitas and pizzas baked in a stone oven, immense bowls of salads, slabs of savory pies with fruit pies, watermelon and cherries for dessert. And wouldn’t you know it? As we walked in, they were just starting the bedeken because the bus carrying one of the grandmothers had just arrived before we did.

The party was fantastic, the bride and groom happy and beautiful. And this morning as I shopped for bread and cheese, I noticed huge jars of dark honey made, where else? In Klil.

Tags: , , ,

Car decorations

March 31, 2011 - 8:12 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Business, design, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

The car being decorated next door

Until today, I thought that here in Israel, one only decorated cars with ribbons and flowers for weddings. Turns out, I was wrong, and they can be decorated for bar and bat mitzvahs, as well as other major life cycle events, such as a brit milah or simchat bat. I learned this as I watched my French neighbors next door spend a good chunk of the morning decorating their Chevrolet, quite well, I might add. (You can usually tell the self-decorated cars from the professional, florist-decorated cars — yes, people really do pay florists several hundred shekels to decorate their cars for those special events — and while I wouldn’t say this looked professional, it was certainly neat and tidy, with evenly spaced loops of ribbon along the side of the car.)

Anyway, turns out the neighbors were decorating their car for their daughter’s sweet sixteen party — yes, I was surprised as well — and she came out of the building all decked out in purple taffeta and black lace. At which point, anyone passing by called out a “Mazal tov!” Friendly. This was clearly no MTV “My Super Sweet 16″ in which said celebrant has a massive party and is given a brand-new car at the end. Still, kind of over the top for Arnona, Jerusalem.

A professionally decorated car

Nevertheless, for anyone who does need to know how to decorate a celebrant’s car, there is, thank goodness, an Israeli company that has invested in this process and can show you exactly what to do. Check out Haponpon (which means the pom-pom), and you’ll never wonder again.

As for figuring out when and how to hang up signs on the highway pointing to your wedding hall location, I have yet to find an entrepreneur who’s taking care of that. But we’ll keep on looking.

Tags: , ,

Sharon and Nimrod invite Facebook ‘matchmaker’ to their Tel Aviv wedding

January 25, 2011 - 12:22 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, General, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture 

Here’s a case of either extreme Israeli chutzpah or a prime example of how we get things done and aren’t stymied by details, class, or obstacles.

Nimrod and Sharon are two young Israelis who met on Facebook and are getting married on Purim day, March 17 at the Tel Aviv Port. Since they credit Facebook with the ‘matchmaking,’ they decided to invite the site’s founder Mark Zuckerberg to the wedding. And they recorded a YouTube invite for the celebrated tycoon.

YouTube Preview Image

You’ve gotta love Sharon and Nimrod’s gumption and their humor as well. “If money is an issue, we’ll pay for the ticket” is the kicker that brightens up the clip and just might get Zuckerberg to accept. Who knows? Maybe he’ll find the match of his own at Sharon and Nimrod’s wedding.

Tags: , , , ,

The wedding will be webcast

August 10, 2010 - 10:15 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Religion, Technology 

A couple of weeks ago, we attended the wedding of good friends, Sammie and Isaac. The wedding was a blast with all the usual features of Israeli nuptials: chuppah, dancing, speeches and those greasy fried “cigars” stuffed with minced meat (of which I always partake too heartily).

There was one element, though, that I’ve never seen before (although maybe I’m just not invited to the right weddings). Prior to the simcha, the couple sent out an email that announced that, for those who couldn’t attend, the evening would be broadcast live over the Internet.

Now, live web streaming is nothing new and there are plenty of vendors eager to upgrade you to a “pro” account – Ustream and Livestream are just a couple that come to mind. I often catch up live online with a hi-tech group that meets monthly in the Tel Aviv area when I’m feeling too lazy to hoof it over from Jerusalem. But I haven’t seen the technology used for a wedding.

The way it worked was a bit funky: one of the wedding guests had set up a small laptop with a built in camera and microphone facing the chuppah. When he wanted to pan around the crowd, he picked up the whole laptop and did a 360.

Since he had plugged the laptop into a 3G wireless card (I guess the wedding hall’s WiFi wasn’t dependable), he was able to later walk around the dance floor, as well as grab shots of guests chowing down at each of the tables – although with that brick of a broadcast unit, he wasn’t quite as nimble as a wedding photographer.

This isn’t state-of-the-art yet: the sound was muddled and the video not up to TV network quality (or even watered down YouTube, for that matter), but it’s still a great idea, not just for family that can’t make it from overseas but local guests for whom a time conflict may preclude in-person attendance.

And the coolest part: the video is still online. So even guests who were there can catch a glimpse of themselves doing the chicken dance.

If you want to view some of Sammie & Isaac’s wedding, here’s the link.

Tags: , , ,

Page 1 of 212

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Site by illuminea | Sitemap