Beach Reading, Israeli Style

Steve Lipman, The Jewish Week

New in Tel Aviv: a chance to check out books instead of bods.

As part of a literacy initiative of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality, a two-wheel book cart appeared last week, at the start of the summer sunbathing season, at the promenade of Tel Aviv’s Metzizim Beach, near the city’s port.

The “Library of the Beach” offers more than 500 books, in five languages: Hebrew, English, Arabic, Russian and French. Everything is on the honor system; there’s no librarian, no fee, no sign-out process; borrowers are expected to read the books then return them.

The bookmobile is designed for residents, tourists and commuters.

The Tel Aviv beach is a mecca for sunbathers every summer, drawing thousands of people who come to swim or tan or jog.

“Tel Aviv is the city of everybody — one of the services we provide is this lovely beach,” Mayor Ron Huldai told the Times of Israel. “To have the library is very nice; ordinary people can take a book when they come and then put it back when they finish.

“We’ll see if it works,” he said. “If it’s nice, maybe we’ll bring in another one to another part of the beach. Why not?”

For the electronically inclined, the municipality also installed 80 free Wi-Fi hotspots around the city, many along the beachfront. Users can download electronic reading material at no charge; the FreeTLV program makes summer reading easier for those with Kindles and Nooks.

The program is patterned after those offered in other cities, like Barcelona.

Tel Aviv’s 22 municipal libraries coordinate more than 400,000 books borrowed every year, Huldai said. “It is our pleasure to open another library in the summer months — now you can enjoy a good book at the beach as well.”

Seeing Through Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Eyes’

Ted Merwin, Special To The Jewish Week

Norman Issa is best known as the star of “Arab Labor,” an Israeli TV show about an Arab journalist who toils to become accepted in Israeli society; it is one of the first shows to bring an Arab perspective into mainstream Israeli pop culture.

His new labor, so to speak, is to transform the poetry of the controversial Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish into a stage play about peace. The transformation isn’t such a smooth one.

Issa directs “Eyes,” a new play based on Darwish’s poetry, in which the Arab-Israeli conflict is personified by Darwish, his mother, his teacher and his Israeli lover. It runs next Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening at the Between the Seas Festival, a showcase for contemporary Mediterranean culture. The festival, which takes place at the Wild Project in the East Village, also features Amos Pinhasi’s “Mediterraneo,” a solo dance piece about an Israeli boy growing up by the sea.

“Eyes” is a co-production of Igal Ezraty’s Arab-Hebrew Theater and Issa’s own Elmina Theater for Children, both of which are based in the tourist district of Old Jaffa. Best known for the long-running hit, “Let’s Dance,” a wordless play about the history of Jaffa Café and Dance Hall from the onset of the Zionist immigration to the present, the Arab-Hebrew Theater Center recently presented two plays, one in Hebrew and one in Arabic, at the prestigious Israel Festival in Jerusalem.

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British Transport Group Chooses Emirates Over Israel

(JNS.org) Greater London’s major government-owned transportation body has agreed to refuse business ties with Israel or any Israeli companies in exchange for a 10-year, £36 million sponsorship deal with Emirates Airline for a railway car running over the Thames River.

The United Arab Emirates has no diplomatic relations with Israel. On Monday, Transport for London posted the contract with Emirates Airline online. The contract states that the company will default on the agreement if it engages with “(i) any Competitor; or (ii) any person who is a national of, or who is registered, incorporated, established or whose principal place of business is in a country with which the United Arab Emirates does not at the date of this Contract or at any relevant point during the Term maintain diplomatic relations.”

“This sets a dangerous precedent effectively allowing UAE money to dictate government policy through commercial contracts.Bi-lateral trade has doubled over the past year making Israel one of Britain’s key trading partners. This contractual exclusion would not benefit the UK in the long run. I call on TfL to urgently discuss this matter with foreign and trade ministers and reconsider this agreement before any lasting damage is done,” Paul Charney, Chairman of Zionist Federation UK said in a statement.

Alicia Keys and a Brief History of the Israel Boycott

You Can't Tell the Artists Without a BDS Scorecard

By Anne Cohen for the Jewish Daily Forward

The question of whether or not to perform in Israel can be controversial for Jewish and non-Jewish artists alike. Will it be perceived as a political statement? Will it cost them fans? Not to mention the pressure from supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and, perhaps most influential, fellow artists.

The latest artist in this ongoing saga is Alicia Keys, who decided to boycott the boycotters and perform in Tel Aviv on the Fourth of July.

The first call for Keys to boycott Israel came from the author Alice Walker, who famously refused to allow “The Color Purple” to be translated into Hebrew.
Walker wrote to Keys that “a cultural boycott of Israel and Israeli institutions (not individuals) is the only option left to artists who cannot bear the unconscionable harm Israel inflicts every day on the people of Palestine, whose major ‘crime’ is that they exist in their own land, land that Israel wants to control as its own.This is actually a wonderful opportunity for you to learn about something sorrowful, and amazing: that our government (Obama in particular) supports a system that is cruel, unjust, and unbelievably evil.”

Despite pressure from Walker and from BDS groups and Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, Keys refused to give in. “I look forward to my first visit to Israel,” she told The New York Times in May. “Music is a universal language that is meant to unify audiences in peace and love, and that is the spirit of our show.”

“Ma koreh, Tel Aviv,” Keys said as she opened her concert.
To play or not to play? Here are the artists who have said yes, no or a very solid maybe to performing in the Holy Land.

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Bambi in the Holocaust

The death of Bambi's mother is, for many children, their first encounter with death. But the history of the book that inspired the film is even darker story than the story it tells.

Born Siegmund Salzmann, Bambi author Felix Salten was brought to Vienna as an infant in 1869, shortly after the government allowed Jews citizenship. Already a prolific writer by the time he published Bambi in 1923, Salten achieved international renown with the novel's English translation. In 1936, however, Bambi was banned by the ruling Nazi party because of its "political allegory on the treatment of Jews in Europe." Burnings of the book were organized across Nazi states.
As anti-Jewish sentiment increased, Salten moved from Austria to Switzerland, where he wrote a sequel, Bambi's Children. Meanwhile, one of Bambi's fans, publishing magnate Max Schuster, introduced Salten to Walt Disney, who was taken with the book and wanted to adapt it. Bambi, the film, was released in 1942. And the rest—as they say in Hollywood—is history.

- Matthue Roth

New Hillel president: We’re going to be inclusive

By Josh Lipowsky for JTA

The Talmudic sage Hillel famously disagreed with Shammai, but still respected him and promoted ahavat Yisrael — the love of every Jew. As the incoming president of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, Eric Fingerhut wants to channel the spirit of the organization’s namesake.

“I seek to follow his teachings — his inclusive approach to Jewish life,” Fingerhut told JTA Monday. “Ahavat Yisrael is the model we follow.”

A former Ohio congressman and chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents from 2007 to 2011, Fingerhut was confirmed this week as the successor to Wayne Firestone, who resigned the post last year. He comes to Hillel with more than three decades’ of experience in education and public service, most recently as vice president of education and STEM Learning (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) at Battelle, a research institute in Columbus.
From 1993 to 1994, he represented Ohio’s 19th district in the U.S. House of Representatives. After losing his reelection bid, he ran for a seat in the Ohio state senate, where he served from 1997 to 2006. In 2004, he was the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, losing to George Voinovich, a former Cleveland mayor and Ohio governor.

“Hillel has a very compelling and frankly clear mission and vision, which excites me and motivates me,” Fingerhut said. “We are going to reach out and be there for the Jewish students on all of our campuses to provide them with the highest quality activities so they can figure out what their connection to the Jewish people is, and what their Jewish life is going to be like.”
Hillel has more than 550 locations in North America, Israel, the former Soviet Union, Europe, and Latin America. More than 400,000 students participate in Hillel activities in North America alone, while the organization says 100,000 students join every year. Fingerhut would like to see Hillel continue its growth on the campuses where it already has a presence and expand to new locations, which means promoting the organization’s importance to potential donors.

“We have to be aggressive in communicating to the Jewish community that the future of their communities is on our campuses,” he said.

It’s no secret that some campuses have become havens for anti-Israel activity in recent years, a fact that certainly concerns Fingerhut. A pro-Israel stance is essential not just to Hillel but to his own personal beliefs, he emphasized.

“Hillel is pro-Israel. It exists to help build love for and support for a safe, secure, free, democratic Jewish homeland, and that is part of our core mission,” he said.

But with a vibrant and vocal pro-Palestinian community on many campuses, Fingerhut conceded that Hillel has not done an adequate job winning hearts and minds.

“We’re clearly not succeeding where we need to be, but the goal is clear. And as president I will be constantly working with our partners to improve our strategy and introduce new and better ways to install that love of Israel in the next generation,” he said. “They will act on what they have learned in these formative years.” 

The Nazareth Code: Can Israel’s Booming Tech Sector Heal the Wounds of Israeli Arabs?

An ambitious new high-tech industrial park doubles as an initiative to bring more Arabs into the Israeli economy

By Yoav Fromer for Tablet Magazine

Driving through Nazareth’s industrial zone is no easy task. Congested, confusing, and somewhat chaotic, it is not very inviting to first-time visitors. But at the end of the freshly paved road lined with auto-body shops, garages, warehouses, and one oddly situated girls school, awaits a surprising sight: a new industrial park, recently built by the Israeli billionaire and philanthropist Stef Wertheimer.

Constructed to promote Arab-Jewish economic cooperation and coexistence by providing “quality employment” in export-oriented industries, the park, which formally opened in April, is also an attractive tourist destination: Towering above the biblical Jezreel valley to the south, it affords a stunning view of one of Israel’s lushest landscapes. Once you enter, it looks more like a museum than a place of business. The illuminated sunlit lobby exhibits bronze sculptures by the local Arab artist Sana Farah Bishara that suggest the work of August Rodin, while the surrounding stone walls are draped with abstract-art tapestries by the Israeli choreographer Noa Eshkol. With top-notch facilities, breathtaking views, and a work atmosphere evocative of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the park appears to have everything necessary for an ideal industrial hub—except for one thing.

There are very few people. Operating at only 30 percent occupancy, the Nazareth Industrial Park has the feel of a luxury ghost town.

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