Mourning in blue and white
Filed under: education, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, War
In preparation for today’s Israel Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers, a bunch of mothers I know and don’t know ‘gathered’ on Facebook yesterday to discuss and remind one another to dress their kids in blue-and-white this morning. I asked whether toddlers were included in this, given that they go to a private gan and I didn’t receive any reminder from their ganenet. Our conclusion was that it wasn’t necessary, but I played it safe and put them in blue tee-shirts, just in case.
Which got me thinking about our mourning customs here, particularly regarding dress, and how it differs from other countries as well as other religions. It isn’t de rigeur to wear black to a funeral here, and certainly not formal black suits and dresses. If anything, we know to wear blue and white on our national mourning day, donning the colors of the country, the colors of the Israeli flag.
At an Israeli school ceremony
Later that evening, as my husband and I watched the national ceremony at the Western Wall, the camera panned the crowd of soldiers and mourners, all bundled up against the breezy evening, some wearing white, but many in regular clothing, not necessarily black. I thought about the meaning of that, whether it emphasizes or de-emphasizes the sense of mourning to disregard one’s dress for a moment like this. On one hand, who cares what you’re wearing when you’re actively mourning a tragic loss? And wearing the nation’s colors doesn’t help either, or does it, to know that a loved one died defending the country?
Wearing blue and white echoes Israel’s flag, with its Star of David and two blue stripes, symbolizing the stripes on a traditional tallit. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the first person in modern times who voiced the idea that blue and white are the national colors of the Jewish people was Austrian Jewish poet Ludwig August Frankl who wrote a poem entitled Judah’s Colors:
When sublime feelings his heart fill,
He is mantled in the colors of his country
He stands in prayer, wrapped
In a sparkling robe of white.The hems of the white robe
Are crowned with broad stripes of blue;
Like the robe of the High Priest,
Adorned with bands of blue threads.These are the colors of the beloved country,
Blue and white are the borders of Judah;
White is the radiance of the priesthood,
And blue, the splendors of the firmament.
New iPhone app always points to Jerusalem
Send a note to the Kotel
Got an iPhone? Now you can put Judaism’s holiest site in your pocket. That’s right, the Western Wall in Jerusalem has its own app.
The centerpiece of the app, which launched last week with the somewhat kitschy name of iKotel, is a live streaming video feed from the Wall (known in Hebrew as the “kotel”).
The app also takes advantage of the iPhone’s GPS and built-in gyroscope to point you in the right direction so that you can be sure to correctly face the Wall from wherever you are in the world while praying, as Jewish tradition stipulates. For the observant, that’s the kind of added value that can really come in handy when you’re backpacking in the mountains of Peru and can’t find the local Chabad.
Live from the Old City...it's the Western Wall!
You can also drop a line to the Wall using the app, which has a cute yellow note pad graphic and a send button. The app’s creators, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, claim that they will print out your supplication and place it between the ancient stones by hand. They’re not the first to do this, however. Alon Nir’s Tweet Your Prayers did the same thing but with 140-character “tweets” printed out from Twitter.
There are various other goodies too: you can virtually tour the tunnels under the Western Wall and book a bar or bat mitzvah ceremony. “Feel the spirituality. Revive your soul!” the app proclaims, all for free.
One quirk (or is that a feature?) – you can’t watch the Wall on Shabbat and holidays when the app’s management switches off the stream. But that won’t guarantee that some petitioners won’t accidentally slip into sin. The app would have to sport some sophisticated geo-restriction: after all, while it may be Shabbat afternoon in New York, in Jerusalem the camera will already be back on.
Pamela Anderson covers up in Jerualem
Pamela Anderson with "thrilled" bodyguard in Jerusalem Sunday (picture from Ynet)
It took a visit to Israel to finally get Pamela Anderson to cover up. The famously immodest former Baywatch star, in Israel to appear on the local version of “Dancing with the Stars,” visited the Western Wall Sunday evening, eliciting a snarky comment in Ynet which reported that “the visit evoked great interest among many men in the area.”
How those men even knew it was Anderson is an interesting question: except for a wisp of blond hair poking out and a flash of that famous Anderson smile, Anderson was camouflaged in a pleasantly purple shawl – a very fashionable Israeli burkah, if you will.
Ynet has plenty of pictures, including one where she appears with what the article captioned a “thrilled bodyguard” (for the record, he looked entirely nonplussed).
Anderson’s visit to the Wall won’t be her only overlap with the ultra-Orthodox this week. An avid advocate for ethical treatment of animals, Anderson is planning to meet with Israeli members of Knesset to express her support for a bill to ban fur imports to Israel. The bill is currently stuck over concerns by religious leaders that it could negatively impact on the fur hats worn by some Hassidic sects.
“It’s almost 2011. There are so many alternatives to things. We can be compassionate in our choices,” Anderson said.
Anderson admitted that she hasn’t always been taken seriously. “A lot of my career has been frivolous and silly,” she said in an article appearing in The Jerusalem Post. She’s hoping that her political advocacy (as well as her dancing skills) will help change that.
Still, might Anderson be worried that, in the age of pervasive (some would say pernicious) YouTube, some Israeli videographer might mash-up the visit to the Wall with her X-rated Internet romp with former husband Tommy Lee?
That’s a risk she’ll have to take. “I’ve always wanted to come here,” she said in the Post article. “We don’t get to hear about all the wonderful things in Israel, and just looking out my window here at the hotel and seeing the beautiful beach, my goodness, it’s gorgeous! I’m sure I’ll be going back with raving reviews.”
As will the men who timed their evening prayers right last night.
Nostalgia Sunday – Jerusalem the Center
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Religion, Travel
Jerusalem is central to Judaism. And no day is that fact made more evident than Tisha b’Av, the Ninth of Av, the day on which both the First and Second Temples were destroyed and the Jews exiled. It is a day of fasting and mourning, but also of study, prayer and hope that Jerusalem will one day be truly rebuilt and the Jews returned to their ancient homeland.
To mark the upcoming holy day, here are some pictures of Jerusalem, ancient and modern, courtesy of the excellent Jerusalem Shots website.
© trionfo
© RomKri
© trionfo
© Misha Burlatsky
© G. Eric and Edith Matson
© RomKri
© trionfo
© Олег Велобегов
Mashbir desires
Filed under: Art, Business, design, General, History and Culture, Israeliness
I’ve written about the Mashbir before, Israel’s main department store, and really, only department store. It’s a place of nostalgia for many of us, although I still head there for my socks and tights.
But today, as I was running around downtown Jerusalem doing errands, I came upon the corner where the new Mashbir is being constructed, on Jaffa Street, right on Zion Square. It wasn’t so much the construction that clued me in as the massive billboard on the soon-to-be side of the building. You may not be able to read the words, so let me help you out. It has people juxtaposed against the massive stones of the Western Wall, where it’s customary to put notes written to God, but these models are hawking the Mashbir, letting any future customers know that they won’t have any wishes or desires once the new Mashbir finally opens.
A fitting ad for a store just a few blocks from the Old City and the real Western Wall.
Subscribe
Subscribe to Israelity via email:
Social Media
Categories
- A New Reality
- Art
- Blogging
- Business
- coexistence
- Crime
- design
- education
- Entertainment
- Environment
- Food
- Foto Friday
- General
- health
- History and Culture
- Holidays
- Immigrant Moments
- Israeliness
- Life
- Medical Breakthroughs
- Movies
- Music
- News
- Nostalgia Sunday
- Picture of the Week
- Politics
- Pop Culture
- Profiles
- Religion
- Science
- Social Justice
- Sports
- Technology
- Travel
- tv
- War
The Face of Israel Today
-
About Israelity
Free newsletter
Stories from ISRAEL21c.orgPopular Posts