Israel’s News Blog Magazine: Daily Stories Video and Photos

Last week, an Israeli student film won first prize in the prestigious Cannes Festival in France. The short film “Anthem” (Himnon) was directed by Elad Keidan, a young student director. The movie tells the story of a man from Jerusalem who walks along the streets of a famous neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Keidan was exhilarated during the post-win press conference. “I imagined that we might win one of the prizes, but I didn’t expect the first prize,” he told the media. “On my first night in Cannes I dreamt that I had won the competition, and the truth is I was pretty stressed out. Now that it’s already happened, it’s very exciting. I am proud of the fact that the judges, who are highly respectable filmmakers, liked the film — Particularly Hou Hsiao Hsien, who chaired the jury, and is an admirable filmmaker. It’s a real honor.”

Still, we can’t always win first place. On Saturday, in another part of Europe, Israel came ninth in the Eurovision song contest – the annual display of Europe’s worst pop music and its most tasteless fashion. Israel was represented by Boaz Mauda who delivered his best performance so far. The song “Ke’Ei’Lu Ka’N” (As If Here) was written by famous singer Dana International, the winner of the 1998 Eurovision. Well, coming ninth is quite an achievement compared with our embarrassing score at last year’s contest.

Source: Y-NET ; Picture by Festival De Cannes

Art and commercial interests have long been good buddies. Singers and painters always need a wealthy sponsor if they want to have the time to concentrate solely on their art, and accordingly, the “big suits” have a clear marketing interest in associating themselves with popular culture. The connection is therefore expected and quite obvious in most cases. Still, there are certain artists, especially those belonging to the older generation, whom we all look up to and admire for being faithful to their audiences and for never “putting out”.

In Israel, we have the same phenomenon, whereas “production factories” mass-produce instant celebrities such as Maya Buskila and Ninet Tayeb who go on to promote garment companies and cellular networks, while at the same time, long-respected artists such as Yonatan Geffen and Arik Einstein tend to remain away from the limelight of the advertising media.

Up until recently anyway.

Maybe it’s the rising inflation, or the desire to feel “young and hip” — in any case, classic figures within Israeli culture have been falling one by one into the hands of “quick-buck commercialism” in recent months and years. The result is unique ads that attract many fans, but at the same time upset many others, who feel betrayed by their idol.

The biggest sensation of the last half year has been the consent of singer-songwriter Arik Einstein, age 69, to appear in a TV ad for the cellular company Orange, a subsidiary of the global Partner Communications network. For a sum of nearly a million Shekels, old footage of Einstein was merged with specially filmed scenes, as to create the appearance that Einstein was performing in the 70’s together with current-day artists. As just mentioned, he earned this much money without even leaving his home. Aside from the commercial itself, a festive album was recorded to commemorate this rare collaboration between “old” and “young” artists — titled “Hebrew Work” (”Avoda Ivrit”). The declared pretext for such an ambitious project is Orange’s desire to do something special to celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary.

This month, we learned of another novel purchase made by Orange. This time songwriter Yonatan Geffen was chosen to promote the massive “Hebrew Work” concert which Orange is throwing out in the park in early June. Such a wonderful marketing strategy — not to mention they’ve decided to collect no entrance fee at the concert!

These are just two examples out of many. But it is sending a strong message to struggling young artists that if they want to succeed, that if they want to be able to make ends meet, they must engineer their music to target the popular ear, so that business moguls would want to sponsor them. It has the danger of degrading the artistic quality of our culture onto the lowest common denominator.

On the other hand, everyone has to make money somehow. Why is it okay for Einstein to make money from selling albums but not from selling other products (like cellphones)? Why do we place such high expectations on him but not on young Ms. Ninet? Does she not deserve the same expectations? They’re both talented humans.

I don’t have an answer. It’s one facet of our Capitalist world we can’t avoid, and though it the situation bothers me, I think there is no use in playing prude.

Israeli theater is a well established domain of Israeli culture, with a large number of internationally-renowned actors and actresses, such as Gila Almagor, Yisrael Poliakov, Chaim Topol and Lior Ashkenazi, to name but a few. Israel has a number of prestigious theater venues, mostly situated in Tel Aviv — particularly Ha’Bima, Ha’Kameri, and Gesher. There is also an ever growing number of performing arts schools, partially a result of the growing number of Israeli productions in recent years and their newly found success overseas.

I want to discuss a specific kind of theater today, one which is already present strongly overseas, but is gaining widespread interest only in recent years. I am referring to improvisation theater, and especially to such methods as Jonathan Fox’s Playback Theater and Jacques Lecoq’s Physical Theater Method. Former Israeli students of these two innovating performers opened their own schools in Israel with accordance to their teachers’ unique style.

As regard to the Lecoq method, an acting school in the southern Tel-Aviv neighborhood of Florentin offers a three-year structured education in Physical Theater. It is still a small place with not too many students, but the school is already offering the local scene a chance to watch a type of performance that is outside the circle of mainstream theater.

Somewhat related, Playback theater has currently more followers in Israel, all across the country, though no official school exists yet. Several teachers have opened their own intimate groups, usually both practicing and performing inside different universities. The Playback theater offers more than just pure entertainment, it is also a type of therapy for both the performers and viewers. In a normal playback setting, there is a host who invites a person of the audience to share a personal story, and watch it being improvised on stage. This projection of inner conflicts and memories onto the performers can be a very powerful experience, and can be considered “recreational therapy”.

The scene is not very large yet, but the word is spreading among friends and classmates, and more and more people turn into impro acting for the pure purpose of having fun, not necessarily aspiring to become professional performers.

Before all attention is deflected to President George W. Bush’s visit to Jerusalem today, the capital is hosting its annual Writers’ Conference, one of Israel’s leading literary events, which attracts internationally-renowned novelists and poets. One of the guests is Nadine Gordimer, South African writer, political activist and Nobel Prize laureate, who has long written about racial issues in her home country.

The authors have discussed political issues as well as literature:

“Israel is the country of immigrants and refugees, survivors and displaced people from all over the world. We weren’t occupiers, and we didn’t want to be occupiers”, said Eli Amir, the famous Israeli writer, “We were thrown into a historic situation that we have not managed to get out of. We are a torn nation. The occupation is destroying us. We have no right to control another nation. Our leaders and the leaders of the Palestinian people must do everything to get out of this situation.”

Amos Oz, winner of the prestigious Goethe Prize in 2005 spoke about his love-hate relationship with Israel, “I must personally admit that I love Israel even when I can’t stand it. It’s no coincidence that during a year when it’s tough to love Israel, it’s easier to love its literature. Israeli literature delivers the bill to the Israeli people - for the subjugation of the Palestinians, the occupation, the wars, the internal social injustices, book after book, creation after creation.”

We hope that authors will succeed where politicians have failed so far, and will help to bring a touch of normality to this conflicted area.

Source: Haaretz ; Picture by Princeton University Press

Today we mark the Holocaust Memorial Day. Last year, the entire country was shaken after watching the documentary film “The Morals of Restitution“ (Musar Hashilumin) . The film, created by the socially-conscious journalists Orly Vilnai Federbush and Guy Meroz, revealed the shameful economic conditions of so many of the holocaust survivors who live in Israel. More than 80,000 Shoah survivors live in atrocious poverty without some of the most basic means such as food and medicine. One survivor told the cameras shockingly that she had to go back to Germany, a place of her persecution, due to Israel’s lack of financial support. The film raised a pointing finger at the Jewish institutions including the Israeli banks, JNF (Jewish National Fund) and the Claims Conference, an organization established for the primary purpose of transferring restitution funds from Germany, for withholding payments of survivors who are literally dying in the meantime.

How could this happen in Israel, a state built by and for Jews? This is the question the audience of this documentary is left with. There was a point where things seemed as they were about to change. People protested and the Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a speech emphasizing the importance of the Holocaust survivors for this country while promising to distribute special funds. It all turned out to be a mere media spectacle – survivors were given a one-time allowance of a few dozen NIS and were left forgotten again.

A year has passed since. In a sequel broadcast last night the journalists returned to further investigate how and whether things have changed. They didn’t. Many of the survivors passed away while others continue in their daily suffering. The sequel shows how the Claims Conference organization has turned into a corrupt money making machine accumulating fortunes for its own benefits and agenda.

In light of this, one must wonder how these people live with themselves. More importantly, how does our society allows this to happen? It is about time that we not only remember but wake up from our apathy and take action to protect these people from death in disgrace. The only positive thing emerging from this issue is the courage of the creators to speak out which highlights the true purpose of journalism.

IDF gets a special gift for Passover: Maya Bouskilla, a famous Israeli pop singer, has enlisted to the IDF at the age of thirty. The Israeli army service is mandatory for every young person at the age of 18, which means that Maya has joined about a decade past enlistment usual age, making her one of the oldest candidates to ever join the army.

Bouskilla evaded serving in the Israeli army, claiming to be religious. However, a few years later, Maya appeared in an advertising campaign for swimsuits that was not exactly modest, putting her religious orientation under serious doubt. The Israeli media passed a harsh critique on this move, which was rightly viewed as the adoption of a double standard. This was definitely not Kosher on her part!

Maya tells she has regretted dodging the army. Did Major General Elazar Sern make the Israeli singer change her mind? Stern has protested last month against the popularity of false claims of religion amongst young women, urging them to join the Israeli forces.

Is it simply a coincidence that Maya joins the army just as she releases her new album? Enlist to the army for public relations? It sounds too radical to me …

I say –if you’re gonna shoot, shoot, don’t sing!
Image: IDF Photo

Exciting news for the Israeli cinema: the first Israeli film festival kicks off in London, Britain, showing recent films that have won international recognition as long with some classic Israeli movies. The film that opens the film festival is an award winning film Noodle, starring Mili Avital, which tells the story of a flight attendant who tries to reunite a Chinese boy with his missing mother.

“This Israeli cinema showcase is an opportunity for cinema-goers to experience some of the best of the great films that Israel has produced over the years and also to find out more about the diverse society that exists behind the daily news headlines”

Israeli cinema has gained world-wide recognition, both from audiences and critics. In the last few years, Israel has produced high quality movies: Walking on Water, Free Zone, Beaufort, to name a few. Remarkably, this year, Israel was nominated for an Oscar in the best foreign film category, and won second place. Indeed, we have reasons to be proud. Even more significantly, Israeli cinema opens a window wide for the world to see what it means to be an Israeli, which is much more than the limiting frame of the Jewish-Arab conflict.

In the midst of cleaning for Pesach—or, as they say, making the house kosher for the holiday—I have been pondering the use of the term kosher as it is being applied to Israel’s “kosher buses”.

The segregation of women on some public transportation in and between religious neighborhoods—literally, sending them to the back of the bus—has caused a outpouring of anger in many circles here and overseas. As always, it falls to the victims themselves to campaign against the infringement of their civil and human rights. Women who do not want to be relegated to the back seats, and who have been humiliated and even attacked for this refusal, are now appealing to Israel’s courts to challenge this arrangement on public buses. They are being supported by overseas groups, including a campaign by the U.S. affiliate of the International Council of Jewish Women, the National Council of Jewish Women, and initial reactions from the judges in these cases agree that there is a clear violation of women’s rights as protected by the law.

For those of us who remember the first acts of the civil rights’ movement in the United States, we are very aware of the significance of segregated buses. We can also attest to the fact that these violations of civil and human rights inevitably lead to violence—in this case, violence specifically targeted against women.

And here is the true point of the “bus situation.” This is not really about seating on buses, or any real attempt to preserve modesty between the sexes. If those behind the segregation of men and women were really acting in the interest of modesty, they should have perhaps followed the example of countries like Mexico who provide women with separate “grope-free” public transportation.

Every woman who has ever used public transportation has experienced sexual harassment of one type or another. The idea of “grope-free” transportation offers separate transportation for women so that they can travel comfortably, without having to fight off the wandering hands and lewd looks of male passengers. Had the “kosher” bus initiators made similar arrangements for the women in their community, I doubt whether there would have been any uproar. In fact, the argument could have been made that there was some forward thinking in this policy, just as there is a strong argument to be made for separate education for boys and girls. (In many research studies, the latter has actually been shown to serve the scholastic and intellectual development of the girls.)

But the point of segregated buses is not to protect the women. Insisting that the women travel at the back of the bus is a symbolic act of patriarchal oppression in a community that feels it has to remind its women of their “proper place.” It has nothing to do with religion, and it is not remotely “kosher.” It is another tactic to enforce the status quo in a community that fears the cracks of gender equality are growing wider.

As we get ready for the Pesach holiday, let us remember that the message of the holiday is freedom. Any perversion of that message is simply not kosher.

Written by Leah A.

The Tel Aviv Cinematheque is showing a new 30-minute comedy called Bombshell about a young Arab female suicide bomber who fails in her terrorist attack.

This is a story of a young female terrorist who plans to blow herself up on an Israeli bus. Her plan takes an unsuspected turn when she is running late and misses the bus. Meanwhile another woman, an Israeli, is on her way to a Leftists’ protest. Her name is Gali Fahima- a parody of Tali Fahima, a radical left-wing activist who has been accused of aiding a well-known terrorist leader Zakaria Zubeidi.

Terrorism and comedy - sounds like a paradox? Not to the creator of the film, Atar Offek: “A good satire, as I intended to make it, does not make fun at the expense of the weak ones but at the expense of the powerful forces in society.” “So here, too, the movie does not ridicule terror victims, it ridicules the terrorists and the (Israeli) army,” says Offek.

The movie satirizes the two sides of the conflict- Jews and Arabs who are both depicted as comical and absurd. The movie trailer introduces the audience to the “IDF absurd theater,” showing a Hamas woman with a gun who tells the viewers: “whoever doesn’t come to watch me is a smoked egg.”

This black comedy offers a different perspective on widely debated Jewish-Arab conflict. The relatively quiet period of the last four years has allowed this movie to pass under the sensitivity radar without raising too much public objection. Yet it managed to invoke considerable attention with its provocative outlook. But will people actually buy tickets to watch it?

Many Israelis look for escapism while others might not be so open to humoring this sensitive subject. An important quality of humor in our lives is that it acts as a great equalizer between people of different groups by bringing them to the same level of entertainment for the masses. Perhaps this is the recipe for making the enemy more of a human being and for normalizing life in the shadows of a violent conflict. After all, the basis of comedy is people and their human faults.

Tacking such a sensitive issue with black humor may seem out of line. But what is the purpose of art if not to provoke, shock and give a unique and unexpected perspective on life? The view taken in this film offers an attitude we may consider adopting though perhaps not to such a radical extent – despite the harsh reality we live in we should not loose sight of our humanity and our brilliant ability to make silly mistakes.

Meet Evan Fallenberg, an American ex-pat living in Israel, who is now becoming discovered on the world Jewish literary scene. Fallenberg, formerly of Cleveland Ohio, has been living in Israel for some years now, and resides in a small suburban community outside the coastal city of Netanya.
A translator by profession, Evan began to make a name for himself by writing superb English translations for Israeli authors who produced literary works only in Hebrew. One such work, entitled A Pigeon and a Boy, by writer Meir Shalev, won the 2007 Jewish National Book Council Award in the U.S.A. for outstanding Jewish fiction. Evan competed his first novel, entitled Light Fell, which was published by Soho Press in January, 2008. Even though the book has just been released, it has already received excellent reviews by such periodicals as Haaretz, The Miami Herald, The Forward, San Francisco Chronicle, and his home town’s Jewish newspaper: The Cleveland Jewish News. He has also been interviewed by La Bloga, one of Latin America’s most popular web blogs.
I had the opportunity to attend a literary group meeting in Tel Aviv recently, and Evan Fallenberg was the guest speaker. He read some excerpts from his novel which is based on a very intimate relationship between two deeply religious men who left their wives and a total of nine children in order to be together. Although this kind of topic is not fully acceptable by many, especially those in the Orthodox Jewish Community in Israel and elsewhere, the sensitivity and poetic manner in which Evan describes the love these two men have for each other, is even more poignant and touching that the recent Academy Award winning film Brokeback Mountain. So well received is this novel, despite its relatively short “exposure” time on the book market, that the word is out that it may be even in the process of being considered for either a film or television miniseries.
Since many of us attending the meeting are aspiring authors, Evan’s advice concerning having works published was taken in enthusiastically by all in attendance. One bit of advice that I picked up on was that in order to have a literary or commercial work published, the writer must first be sure that the book is “ready for publishing”. This includes having others read the finished manuscript and give their opinions on it. Also, it is important that the author feels that the book is really superb, as how can one expect to have a work published if not liked by the one who wrote it?
Light Fell is definitely only the beginning for this very personable guy who appears to have a bright future in the literary world. In addition to his translating and work and novel writing (he is well into writing his next novel already) Evan conducts literary workshops and writing retreats for aspiring authors.