U2 front man Bono surprised Israeli passers-by earlier this month with his sudden visit to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
On Wednesday, BuzzFeed published the note Bono left behind at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, which consists of a poem about how “hope is like a faithful dog,” and his sketch of “a dog called Hope.”
“In Jerusalem, hope springs eternal,” the poem read.
“Hope is like a faithful dog, sometimes she runs ahead of me to check the future, to sniff it out and then I call to her: Hope, Hope, come here, and she comes to me. I pet her, she eats out of my hand and sometimes she stays behind, near some other hope maybe to sniff out whatever was. Then I call her my Despair. I call out to her. Here, my little Despair, come here and she comes and snuggles up, and again I call her Hope.”
He signed, “With great thanks for great room in great hotel in great city, Bono.”
For more, go to Haaretz.com
She may be an Academy Award-winning actress and many men’s dream Jewish woman. But she is also a new mother, and like all new moms, Natalie Portman, wants to show off her baby to friends and family.
That is just what Portman did last week on a trip to Israel. Ynet reports that the actress made an under-the-radar trip to the Holy Land with fiancé ballet dancer Benjamin Millepied and six-month-old son Aleph to visit with friends and family. The 30-year-old Portman, whose birth name is Natalie Hershlag, was born in Jerusalem and has many relatives living in Israel.
Portman, Millepied and little Aleph stayed at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel (where Portman checked in under an assumed name) and visited (accompanied by two body guards) tourist sites such as the Western Wall, Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market, and the Dead Sea. Portman was also spotted sitting in cafes greeting friends and relatives, as well as graciously posing for photographs with fans who had recognized her.
The family departed Israel Monday, but knowing Portman’s strong attachment to Israel, it can be assumed that they will be back again with little Aleph soon.
In another sign that the Holy City is also the holier-than-thou one, Jerusalem’s chief rabbinate is going to begin a kashrut certification program for clothing stores.
According to the Srugim website (the portal for Israeli news from the national religious perspective — not for the popular Israeli television series of the same name), this has nothing to do with people eating while clothes shopping. Rather, it is a way to allow consumers to rest assured that they are not buying items containing shatnez (the biblically forbidden mixture of wool and linen).
Some Christian clergymen in the Old City of Jerusalem have taken matters into their own hands after being spat at by Haredi Jews, and they are finding sympathy among Israeli judges.
Last week the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court threw out an indictment against an Armenian seminarian who punched an ultra-Orthodox man who spit on him. Siding with the spitting victim rather than the punching one, Judge Dov Pollock wrote in his verdict that “putting the defendant on trial for a single blow at a man who spat at his face, after suffering the degradation of being spat on for years while walking around in his church robes is a fundamental contravention of the principles of justice and decency.” The judge also emphasized that the spitting, in the first place, was a criminal offense.
Secular-religious tensions in Israel have reached new heights — literally.
After three years of controversy among residents, homeowners at 14 Jabotinsky Street in Jerusalem’s Talbieh neighborhood have voted to use the building’s elevator every Sabbath as a “Shabbat elevator.” In a nod to the religious prohibition against pressing buttons on the Sabbath, the elevator will be programmed to stop automatically at each floor. This means no more walking up the stairs for religious residents who were previously unable to use the elevator on the Sabbath, but also longer lift journeys for secular residents.
Glenn Beck’s back in Israel this week, in a trip that will conclude tomorrow with a program held at Jerusalem’s Davidson Center, not far from the Western Wall. This is the second visit by Beck since the end of his inflammatory run as a host at Fox News, and the first since July, when he was warmly greeted by right-wing members of the Knesset.
Struggling for relevancy in the U.S. since the end of his Fox News show in June, Beck hasn’t drawn significant attention from regular Israelis — despite effusive expressions of support for the country, and his decision to weigh in last week on ongoing social protests across the country. (Ready as usual to employ polarizing, highly questionable language, he compared the mostly middle-class demonstrators to communists.)
For those of you who drive in Jerusalem, you know that pedestrians just stepping out into the street without looking can be a big problem. Well now it could end up being an even bigger problem as the city’s new light rail system finally starts running today, after years of delay.
The system, which is opening years behind schedule, still has many kinks to work out. They include air conditioning issues, electrical and communications glitches and the operation of the ticketing system — the latter leading to the declaration that passengers will ride free for the first two weeks.
Another problem not completely solved is
There was romance in the air in — or, rather, below — Jerusalem earlier this week on Tu B’Av, often referred to as the Israeli Valentine’s Day. Youth for Jerusalem, an organization encouraging young, secular Israelis to stay in or move to Jerusalem, hosted a speed dating event last Sunday evening in Zedekiah’s Cave, an ancient quarry site underneath the Old City.
Many of the 60 or so attendees were game to meet successive dates for only a few minutes each, in the hope that the timeless atmosphere would lend them luck for this very contemporary mating ritual.
Famous early dwellers of the city, like King David and King Solomon for instance, were not lacking for (multiple) wives (or concubines), so shouldn’t a young Israeli today be able to find at least one soul mate in the same location?
Israelis traditionally fill their city squares during warm summer nights. This week, young Israelis in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities are doing just that — but they’re not going home at the end of the night.
Israel’s “cottage cheese revolution,” having spurred a number of economic protests, has now led to a young people’s revolt against the high cost of housing. The National Students Union has joined with other young citizens’ groups and individuals in a mass camp-out demonstration on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard begun by a young woman named Daphni Leef.
Turkey? Kosher. Pig? Not kosher. Four-legged chicken? We’ll get back to you.
That’s the discussion currently under way at a Jerusalem butchery, where experts in kashrut are gathering to decide the fate of a four-legged bird slated to make a nice schnitzel or roast. The chicken, raised in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim, may avoid a bloody end because of its extra appendages, with rabbis deciding its destiny based on the structure of its legs.
Pop star Shakira is on her way to Jerusalem — not to perform, but to speak about childhood education at a summit organized by Israeli President Shimon Peres.
The “Hips Don’t Lie” singer will participate in the Israeli Presidential Conference this month with an eclectic set of guests, who range from Dr. Ruth and Sarah Silverman to Nobel Prize winners Israel Aumann and Eric Maskin.
A goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the Colombian singer has family ties to the region: she was born Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, and comes partly from Lebanese Christian roots. She has regularly incorporated Middle Eastern sounds and even a bit of Arabic into her performances, and she knows a thing or two about belly dancing. Shakira has made childhood education a focus of her charity, the Barefoot Foundation.
No doubt you’ve heard about the ongoing protests in Sheikh Jarrah and the famous hummus of Abu Gosh. Soon, mentioning these place names on Israeli state television and radio could become illegal.
The right-wing firebrand Tzipi Hotovely, the youngest lawmaker in Knesset, has initiated a bill that would rename these Jerusalem districts with Hebrew appellations. In areas for which a Hebrew name already exists, this would be used instead.
Remember when American Jews viewed an apartment in Jerusalem as a cheap investment? New figures underscore just how much times have changed. While the property market in America is still sluggish, Israel had the third-fastest-growing prices in the world last year, Global Property Guide reports.
Israeli house pricess rose on average by 16.23% last year, or if you take inflation in to account, 13.43%. Either way, Israel comes in after Latvia, where the previously-fragile market made an unbelievable recovery, and Singapore.
Crossposted from Haaretz
After surviving 69 harrowing days in the belly of the earth, the Chilean miners who arrived this week in Israel as guests of the Tourism Ministry thought they’d already been through the worst of it. But they were welcomed here with harsh comments posted online: “We are tired of you” and “What a waste of our money,” among others. The press was critical of their being housed in a high-end hotel.
Israeli cynicism has reached such levels that even extraordinary people such as the miners have no effect on them anymore.
Talk about being fruitful and multiplying!
A Jerusalem family has just greeted its 18th child, the Jewish Chronicle reported today. The arrival of the Hasidic baby boy brings the family total to nine sons and nine daughters, and should provide yet one more reason for the clan’s two washing machines to continue working “non-stop.”
The London-based Chronicle didn’t identify the family, other than to give the first name and age of the mother, 44-year-old Rivka. Rivka described her household as loud and messy, but said her husband helps out by making sandwiches for the children each morning - a task that takes nearly an hour. (Making sandwiches strikes The Shmooze as the least he could do, but then, The Shmooze has never attempted to raise 18 kids.)
What was that bright white light that descended on Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock early last Friday? An alien spaceship? Proof of a “regional galactic governance council”? An Israeli drone?
The Internet is still abuzz with speculation about the mysterious object, which separate video clips captured as it traveled downward toward the Dome of the Rock, paused, then rapidly shot back into the sky before dawn. Hundreds of thousands have viewed the images on YouTube (see below) and elsewhere, offering theories about the light that range from the skeptical to the extraterrestrial.
Following “New York, I Love You” and “Paris, I Love You,” Israel’s capital has been tapped to serve as the third city in the star-studded film series. Assuming it follows the model of the previous films, “Jerusalem, I Love You” will tell a dozen short love stories written, starring and directed by major names in Israeli and international cinema. The film’s foreign participants are still being lined up, but Nrg.co.il, the Web site of Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper, reports that top Israeli writers including Amos Oz, Etgar Keret and A.B. Yehoshua will contribute stories, and the film’s directors will include Ari Folman and Joseph Cedar, Israelis whose previous films have received Oscar nominations.
Based on the earlier installments, producers no doubt hope to line up major overseas talent for the movie, which is scheduled to be released next year. Participants in the New York and Parisian films featured eclectic casts ranging from Natalie Portman and Juliette Binoche to Ethan Hawke and Orlando Bloom. Participating directors have included Oscar favorites including Joel and Ethan Coen, Anthony Minghella and Gus Van Sant.
Using your iPhone to place a note inside the Western Wall sounds terrific, except for squeezing the mobile device into one of those crannies.
The Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which administers the wall, has a better idea: A new iPhone app that “allows users to send e-mails to be placed in the crevices of the old wall, a Jewish custom,” according to the Associated Press. The messages won’t just be symbolic gestures; “both the notes that are received through the website and those that are received on the new iPhone application are printed out and are physically placed between the stones of the Western Wall,” the Foundation’s Mimi Schler told the Forward in an e-mail.
The app “streams live from the site around the clock,” the AP reports, except on the Sabbath and holidays, when transmissions are forbidden. “It also includes a compass that allows users to pray in the direction of Jerusalem, another Jewish practice.” The Western Wall rabbi, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, welcomed the initiative, according to Israel news site ArutzSheva. “The Western Wall has been in the heart of every Jew in the world for 2,000 years,” he said. “It is only natural that in the technological age there will be ways to express the love and devotion of the Jewish people to the Western Wall and to Jerusalem. We hope that the new application will strengthen the younger generation’s bond to the Kotel.”
Tip to Hollywood stars trying to keep a low profile in Israel: wear a hat, and don’t be there to visit your Israeli girlfriend.
Obeying those rules has worked out just fine for Denzel Washington, who spent several low-key days in Jerusalem this week before being detected today by reporters over at Ynetnews.com. The website of Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot reported that Washington has been in the country with his wife, and that the two-time Oscar winner has spent his trip visiting Jerusalem’s Old City, sampling its hummus and shopping for souvenirs.
“Tel Aviv is the total flipside of Jerusalem, a modern Sin City on the sea rather than an ancient Holy City on a hill.”
In its 2011 list of the world’s top 10 cities, Lonely Planet, the world’s largest travel guidebook series, has pinpointed what many tourists to Israel knew already. Israel has a dichotomous tourism industry: Jerusalem for the religious and spiritual, Tel Aviv for, well, the opposite.
Noted by Lonely Planet as a “greenhouse for Israel’s growing art, film and music scenes” and relentless party atmosphere, Tel Aviv ranked third behind New York and Tangier, Morocco and ahead of some surprising choices, like Iquitos, Peru and Ghent, Belgium. The list was released on Sunday.
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