Neighborly relations
Filed under: General, health, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
A typical Jerusalem co-op
We were on our way home from Kol Nidre services in Jerusalem; me, my boys, sister, brother-in-law and one of my nephews, walking in the middle of the street, reveling in that particular freedom offered by the car-less Yom Kippur stretch. As I walked in the house, the phone rang, which is highly irregular on Yom Kippur, and made me think “emergency.” And it was, as my mother was on the other end, calling from Hadassah Ein Kerem to let me know that she’d fallen and been brought to the ER by an ambulance. I called my sister, whose phone was busy, also unusual. It turned out that she was speaking to “Harry the plumber”, known to many in this area and also my mother’s neighbor.
As we pieced the story together — and got a contingent to the hospital — it transpired that despite being on her own, our mother was taken care of by her neighbors, both near and down the block. She fell in a friend’s stairwell, was helped by her friend’s neighbors who knew her peripherally and who ran to get my mother’s downstairs neighbor, a Shaare Zedek doctor. He checked her out called the ambulance, while Harry let himself into my mother’s apartment to get our contact information. In the meantime, while we were trying to piece together the story, I called Harry who walked down to the doctor’s apartment to help me figure out the order of events.
In the end, everything was okay, and we got Mom home fairly quickly, with neighbors dropping in over the next days to check in on her. It may be just a simple Jerusalem co-op, but it’s great to have good neighbors.
Foto Friday – Sound the Shofar
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Pop Culture, Religion, Travel
Is the shofar — the ram’s horn instrument sounded in the Jewish High Holy Day ceremonies — an ancient form of vuvuzela? Is the vuvuzela a shofar? This question has been plaguing Jewish football (that’s soccer to us Yanks) fans and non-fans alike since we first heard the annoying but compelling buzz during the World Cup Finals this past summer.
The issue’s been discussed roundly by writers at The Jerusalem Post, The Washington Post, and of course, the authoritative Vuvuzela South Africa blog, as well as by rabbis and church clergy alike, to no obvious conclusion (except that the vuvuzela is annoying but here to stay).
Photo by Zoltan Kluger, National Photo Archive of the State of Israel
Image left: shofar; right: Shofar by Alphonse Lévy. All courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The shofar is mentioned frequently in the Bible, most famously in the Book of Joshua , but one of the earliest depictions we have also comes from Jericho: a 6th century synagogue mosaic floor.
They say that the Yemenite Jews procured their shofarim from the horn of the African Kudu, with its dramatic twists and exaggerated size. But this photo from the 1930s of a Yemenite Jew would prove otherwise.
Photo by Matson Photo Service. The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Nonetheless, this style of exotic shofar has become extremely popular. Once they were quite unusual but nowadays you can buy them in bulk — likely made of more common stock like the local Nubian Ibex or mountain goat — in the open market.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
There’s no doubt that there’s something extremely macho about this type of shofar… we’ll just leave it at that.
Photo by Martin Kozák, Wikimedia Commons
The shofar may not be sounded on Shabbat, because blowing it might be construed as work. So we won’t get to hear its call till sundown tomorrow. At that time, the Yom Kippur fast will be broken and we’ll truly be able to begin our New Year.
Nostalgia Sunday – Class photos
Filed under: A New Reality, design, education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, War
For decades, the class photo-collage — tmunat mahzor — was the way Israelis marked school graduations. It still is. Unlike the US with is pricey yearbooks, (which have their own historical reasons for coming into being), by grouping them together. the Israeli class photo was a relatively inexpensive way to derive maximum impact from small-sized individual portraits.
In the early days, the graphics were lovingly, if amateurishly, hand-drawn, as in this class photo of the 1929 graduating class of Tel Aviv’s legendary Herzliya Gymnasium.
The collage also documented historical events. The Ramat Gan elementary school’s grade 8-II honored its graduation in 1948 with the words “The first in the State of Israel”.
As the tradition entered its second generation, layout was handed over to the professionals as in this photo-collage of the Acre Naval Academy’s 1957 graduating class.
And mid-century modern was the graphic style of choice.
Even today, there are still photographers in Israel who specialize in creating this style of class photo-collage. Of course, the cameras are digital and the layout (and airbrushing!) is done with Photoshop or similar programs. But the spirit of the thing persists. Here’s the Herzliya Gymnasium senior class, circa 2004.
This last one doesn’t have a lot going for it graphically but it’s very special to me because it’s my eighth grade class photo from 1973-4, marking our graduation from primary school. (You can click on it to get a better look).
Each child was given the large group photo-collage, plus a small white paper packet that contained the individual passport-sized portraits.
1973-4 was of course, the year of the Yom Kippur War. But it was also the year my family spent in Israel; a significant year for me at the end of which I decided Israel was a pretty good place to live. And, as Yom Kippur rolls around again, with this week as time to reflect, perhaps even reconsider, I have to say: I still think so.
Stop the clocks
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Politics, Religion
The big topic at the playground this afternoon was the changing of the clocks next Saturday night, an annual occurrence that is a subject of outrage for many in Israel, particularly those with small children. It’s timed to happen before Rosh Hashanah, so that the Yom Kippur fast will end at 6 rather than 7, making it seem shorter when in reality it will still be 25 hours long, no matter how you slice it.
When I turned on my computer after Shabbat, I found that I had been bombarded with several emails regarding this exact topic over the weekend, and imploring me to sign a petition from Atzuma, which is a petition site (call PetitionBuzz in English), with dozens of petitions online, waiting to gather signatures. (The winter clock petition is currently the hottest one online right now, but you can add your signature to a list of people who don’t want a new road near the Alexander River, to those who want Selena Gomez to come to Israel as well as those who want the Jonas Brothers to come perform.)
The goal of the petition? To gather at least 300,000 signatures with which to bombard our petitions, imploring them to continue with the summer hours until the end of October. It doesn’t even make sense to “start the fast early and end early” because, as I said, it’s still 25 hours long, and it means that the bulk of the fast is during the heat of the day. Moreover, by turning the clocks back so early, it means that dusk falls earlier, putting more people on the road in the dark, as they head home from work. It also means throwing that blanket of darkness on the day that much earlier, sending parents and kids home from the park at 5 instead of 6 or later, and sending us all indoors when we don’t need to be.
Sign up!
Picture of the week: Acco festival back on track
This time last year, rioting over Yom Kippur led to a temporary postponement of the much-loved Acco Festival – an alternative theater festival that spills out onto the streets of the old Crusader city every Succot.
The festival was held eventually in December , but much was written about how the rioting between Jews and Arabs had damaged the fabric of a city where coexistence is the norm, not the exception.
One year on, and the festival, an event devoted to coexistence, is back in its usual time slot and last year’s unexpected outbreak of violence is being put to rest.
Now in its 30th season, visitors to the run-down, but beautiful World Heritage city, have been enjoying some 450 performances from theater groups across Israel and the rest of the world, including a show that follows six Acco residents who took part in last year’s riots.
Picture by Shay Levy/ Flash 90.
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