Black and White

The magic hour before the slush.


The silent Killer

Calorific

Holiday Special - Jelly Donut aka Sufganiyah from Dana Rapoport on Vimeo.

Stay warm
Eat doughnuts
Be Happy

Strolling

A short one.

It's almost the end of fall 09'


Starting to clear the table. or the desktop.

Thanks Giving For All

Holidays and sports events are the best way to get a better understanding of a foreign culture, to immerse in a new territory.
In this case, the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas are Americanism in a nutshell. The worlds biggest and most boiling melting pots, seams to be as unified as the People’s Republic of China around the holiday season.

This break, this pause from routine, provides the foreigner with the perfect opportunity to get a clear look at the hectic society she lives in, commute with and consume every other day of the year.
But how willing should and can American - orthodox- Jews be, to fully unify with their country's holidays?

Different seasons, different traditions, same values.

Where I come from, the holiday season is in still- summery- September, and since it’s Judaism, and it's Israel, there’s not a whole lot of “jolly and merry”-ness going on. But, overall, a Holiday is a Holiday is a Holiday.

In both there’s family (for better or worse), more food than a human can eat, and the tradition of caring for the other, inviting those who don’t have, or can’t afford, a warm meaty, holiday dinner.

There’s a special scent, an extra strong – almost poetic- sense of distinction between the native and the by-standard on the eve, and morning- of, of any holiday, in any country.


Hallmark holidays, the American way

People rushing with groceries, gifts buying, wrapping, exchanging, decorating, commute mayhem, hustle and bustle – and then – silence. Empty streets, dead coffee shops, locked businesses. That’s the real sound of a holiday.
In Israel, it’s the Yom Kippur experience. When you walk on the road, because there are no cars driving.

But how should newcomers, or old comers from different religions, celebrate Thanksgiving? After all, this is an American, non-religious holiday. There shouldn't be a conflict. Or should there?
In Brooklyn’s large orthodox community, the question of celebrating Thanksgiving is less obvious than it appears.
Can Orthodox Jews be American and Thankful without disobeying any Jewish laws? Can they be observant of a turkey in a kosher way?

"For God's Sake", a blog on religion and politics, provides an answer, or rather, expends on the question of whether Thanksgiving and the Jewish religion conflict or not.

Thanksgiving offers an interesting example precisely because those who think that traditional Jews should not celebrate the holiday are the ones who appreciate more accurately the historical origins of the holiday.

From the dawn of history, Jewish people have dealt with the tension between trying to adapt to the culture in the country they are living in. Language and outfits on the one hand, and the insular life of living in a ghetto on the other.
Borough Park, like many other communities, possibly like ‘China town’ and other nation’s towns, is homogeneous and religiously preserving its faith and tradition. The spoken language, and the one on most signs and newspapers is Yiddish. Outfits, values and facilities reflect the Jewish orthodox tradition, similarly to the way it was decades and decades ago.

Although businesses are closed during Shabbat (Saturday), and the fact that most of their issues are distinct to their community, Borough Park is are very politically involved, city and state wise. And pizza, shopping and SUV’s are just as part of the busy 13th avenue strip scenery.

Some values are translatable and universal and therefore open to all religions, especially to those who are enjoying the social, commercial and political liberties, such as the community of Borough Park.

Rabbi Hirschfield from the blog quoted above, sums the post on"Why Jews should celebrate Thanksgiving" -

Thanksgiving is sacred to America and should be sacred to Jews who are among the primary beneficiaries of all that this nation has to offer.

Things are not Jewish because only Jews do them, and things should not be forbidden or threatening to Jews because non-Jews embrace them. If a holiday, practice, or tradition reflects our values, then it should be embraced. If not, not.

Needless to say, that if you are a native-native American, the question of how and if to celebrate Thanksgiving maybe more complicated.

My home, my beat, and whatever's in between

Israel and Brooklyn may have a lot in common, but Tel Aviv and Borough Park could not be more culturally distinct.



When I asked to cover CD 12- Borough Park, Brooklyn, I had no idea I was about to get acquainted with the largest Hassidic community outside of Israel. I wasn’t aware of the existence of the most distant - closest - community to my roots, in my borough.

The religious community here in New York, and the one in the holy land are substantially distinct from each other, for many different reasons, but secular Jews, here and there, are generally alike wherever they are.

Ironic as it may be, coming to America, to learn about the Jewish orthodox community, turned o

ut to be more educating that I ever expected.

Recently, I had the opportunity to peek into a fascinating window. The realm of the orthodox celebrities, an industry I had no idea of how large it was, or how much money it involved.

I assumed there were politics, and gossip and scandals, like in any other community, but I didn’t know about the Michael Jacksons and Madonnas and paparazzis of Borough Park. Until I met Yossi Percia.

I met Percia, one of the leading photographers with David Fadida, a huge producer of Jewish music, in the neighborhood a few weeks ago.

I was working on a daybook and they were doing “A day in a life” on the local Beyonce. Aka Ohad Moshkovitz.

The night before we met, Moshkovitz, the Israel-based young vocalist performed in front of 3,000 people in New York. The last concert in his tour was sold-out, when some had to pay more than a thousand dollars for a ticket, according to Fadida.

YouTube hits, discs, fans, concerts. All the same. But there’s not a lot of online info, no Facebook or Twitter action either. Oh, and no girls.

Percia, the photographer who chased a gay Israeli TV host, and asked him to pose in a picture together with an Orthodox Hassid, has no problem with putting rabbis in awkward situations as well.

A few weeks ago, he took a picture of a rabbi in a basketball game in Madison Square Garden. The rabbi wasn't happy about it, but the website got a lot of entries. Yossi was pleased.

That’s entertainment, and business.

As the leading photographer for Chabad online, he likes to find the angle no other secular or religious photographers look for, but this isn’t his main agenda.

Percia’s real drive in his rising career is the satisfaction in exposing non-religious “brands”, like the Israeli super model Bar Refaeli, to the religion side. With the growing interest in the “religious-spiritual world”, in Kabala centers on both continents Percia recognized a great niche. Exposing secular Jews (and non-Jews) to religion and vice versa. Both sides benefit, he explained.

Luckily for Percia, Madonna, the real Madonna, the queen mother herself, is already on his side.

Duet of the 'King of Jewish music' MBD, and the prince, Ohad Moshkovitz.

USA TODAY

A weird thing happens to the brain when you overload it with new software. It freezes, reboots.
Language overwrite, to the untrained muscles of the brain, and while one was able to converse in two languages before, just thinking in one becomes a tiring exercise.

Overwhelming like the Union Square passage from the L uptown to the NQRW Monday morning. Adaptation happens whether we make room for it or not. It's the three month review.

Everything serves to further said my fortune cookie today, and I don't mess with anything that comes from China Town

Sleep is the BEST
thing for your immunization system.
And water for your skin.
It's the same cycle, the second year. beginnings, new setting, same self
And like it or not, it will soon snow.

BUT

It's really not a big deal.
Just a fact.
“Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you,” Rashi. This is how the new Cohen Brother's movie opens.
Dark, heavy and bizarre. It looked like a Hopper painting.


A picture from the land of the free, and the borough of Kings

End of Summer

My First "Time of My Life"

I will never forget the first time I saw 'Dirty Dancing'. Or at least a part of it. It was in the late 80’, I was in fifth grade or sixth. I walked in, late at night (must have been past 8 pm) to our next door neighbors’ apartment. We lived in Neve- Amirim, in Hertzelia and a new couple just moved across us. South-African woman, Israeli guy and a blond curly baby, named guy.

I only remember I loved hanging out at their place, can't really tell why. They were cool and showing affection. I came to their apartment that night, probably with my mom, just for a few minutes, I think they had friends over. It was dark and they were watching a movie.

The next moment I am looking at the screen and seeing baby walking on a long tree log bridging a huge river. Or was it a lake? a puddle? And after the log, they were in the water, with their cloths and Johnny catches her in the air, like the prince in a classical ballet fairytale. That was all I saw. I wanted to stay longer but we had to leave. I will never forget the darkness, and the excitement, and the lift in the lake.

A few years later I would see the whole movie. Over and over again.

Another hero, another classic is gone, but these memories are as vivid as ever.

Brooklyn Follies

Traveling across seas and land, brought me closer than ever to my ancestors.
I didn't ask for it
Not sure I would ask for it - had I known the possibility exists. I am very clueless these days.

It turns out, I will be covering this semester Borough Park, Brooklyn. The largest Jewish community living outside of Israel.
...

Completely by chance.
Or is it?
Mysterious are Jah's ways.

Happy New Year to all of us.


September 09, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

serendipity

Is it the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
Another weather report. It's becoming my most dominant theme so far.
But yes, as mentioned in one of the first posts written here, I now live in a four-season world.
That, on top of living in an ever changing climate era, that none of us, season or seasonless people know what tomorrow will bring.
(changes, weather changes, make me dramatic)

After the Holidays.
The holidays, Jewish new-year's etc., appropriately are in that exact timing, of changing, examining and resolution making.

omitting the 'future' from the 'future grad student' title
September
converting
to Mac
socks
...

Every year it's the same thing, only different.
As someone who never gets as much summer as she needs, I have no choice than to embracing this change. After all - fall - is better than winter.

Celebrity Apprentice

The king of rating is dead.
The entertainment world is going through one crazy weird phase.
Like a clinical trial that started somewhere in the mid 90's, revealing its outcomes all at once. A medical research that only now beginning to show its side effects.

The deaths of two pop(culture) kings are not necessarily related. Obviously. They didn't have a lot in common but they both needed more love than they got. Both their life (and death) stories are stronger and nuttier than any movie we could have scripted.

The (still examined) dysfunction of the CCTV in Topaz's cell, despite the specific notice and past attempts, he was not watched. Not even by the security guards.
Of course it's not cameras or news papers that kill people. This was suicide, he killed himself.
The position for the new king is still open, but you should probably give it a second thought before you apply.

For the first time; a picture that was taken by a real photographer, a guest on the blog. photogandanist.

A year in retrospect

"New York New York. The city so nice they named it twice". Michel Scott.


Every Once in a while, moving away, catching some distance, can be very beneficial.
Looking at the same world, from a different perspective does wonders, even if it's only a seven minute ferry ride.
Re-discovering can be a very exciting discovery.

Ultimately, you go back to living your micro, day-to-day life, but with a few more new images and insights, for colder days to come.

Please let it be summer just a little longer than it is supposed to be. Not forever, an extra 30 days would be fine. Not necessarily consecutive - only sunny.

I, Fashion Icon.

Last Saturday I met Gil at 13th and 3rd Ave, for a Cosmic Burrito. It was 7pm and 70ish on my first trip out of the Borough that weekend.
I was still wearing my Mediterranean glow from my recent vacation, so accessorizing was unnecessary. By sun set, I had my Zen energies and a burrito in my belly. I didn’t think the evening could get any better. When he suggested I join their boy’s night out at The Jane Hotel, I turned down the offer instinctively;
A. I was dressed for Williamsburg/Tel Aviv, maybe East village, definitely not Meat Packing.
B. I don't do serious stuff like that. I'm not that committed to partying. Sleeping was tempting.
Somehow I ended up at the Jane. Underdressed and curious but self-confident the way I always am on a warm night. I think it was Jim Carry's "Yes Man" I saw earlier that made me just say yes. That - and the proximity of the fancy bar to the L train.

Twins

So we did get in. It was early. I was the only girl without a cocktail-dress or a modeling contract. I was having fun though. After all, not everyday one gets a chance to perform an anthropological research. Not even in Manhattan.
As the evening progressed, I trying harder to make the best out of being The girl with the cutoff jeans and a white oxford shirt. Knowing I have, for a change, a cute dress waiting to be worn at home made it more difficult.
An hour of drinking and outfits inspection later, I spotted my savior. A girl with the same items- my long lost fashion twin in this unfamiliar planet. She was wearing neither heels nor blings. Very low key. Like me.
Her jeans were shorter and her shirt way less buttoned, but it was still overall a casual shorts-and- white shirt look.
Luckily, she set on the couch facing us so I could point her to my friends. It was then that I recognized, being the hard core "Full House" fan that I am, Mary-Kate Olsen.

I rest my case and head back to the burg. Two beliefs were reinforced; Jim Carry is still awesome, and, I don't have to upgrade my styling, especially not as long as it's summer.

Toying with Geopolitics

Some of you may have already heard me talk
about this before. If you've been to my room, you
must have noticed this map and heard me voluntarily elaborate about my special interest in this ordinary image.

I have always used this as an example of how BIG a differences lays between my two nationalities; Of why size actually does matter. Although Israel is practically the 51st state, there’s still a world of difference.

Be There or Be Square
I was putting together a jigsaw puzzle for ages 3 and up, of "The map of the United States" when the realization struck me. It made me laugh and not because I was successfully completing an infantile cardboard game. I was looking at
Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. All perfectly cut squares states. Are these actual states? geometrically shaped countries were a strange concept to me in more than one way. aren't there mountains or rivers or population to determine borders? ; it seemed big, spacious and very contemporary. As if the founding mothers had said: Hey, how do we want to divide our new place?... let's just cut it in squares! As if talking about Lasagna.

Meanwhile, in Europe, squares were being beaten and eaten or drawn by a very drunk shaky hand. A much more complicated puzzle for sure. For Hundreds of years Europe has continued to dissect - and didn't say the last word yet. Every year, in the Eurovision song contest, there are more new formed countries and the contest goes on longer and becomes more bizarre, but that's for a different post.
So is the bigger the better? does extra space make people crazier, more violent or insanely polite?
Not only does the big fat boxes states demonstrate the imaginable frontier Americans grew up with, it also makes you think of how new, recent, this great state is. How lovely. No fighting, no bloody wars and so much room for everyone. Wait, was it really big and roomy when the first 'Coloradoins' got there?

On that note, without being petty, it is funny that the 51st state is just a 1/30 the size of Texas.

So here I was, with my foreign thoughts, at 9 am on a Monday morning, while a woman's hair was in my face, some boy's loud bad ipod music in the background, ice coffees dripping and newspapers filling the limited air remaining on the train. I smelled a dash of irony, remembering how, when my mom asked me on my recent visit, what I miss the most in New York. She actually knew before I answered.
"The space".

abnormal post

I was going to write about myself again. About summer in New York, about going back to school and about the Container Store. Something happened though, and changed my plans. While realizing it's not in the best interest of the blog, writing about something sad, serious and "local", I cannot write about anything else and I really feel like writing tonight.

Something very unusual happened to me an hour ago. I was crying from reading the news.
I can’t remember how long it's been since news had made me that sad. I have developed, like all of us really, a very thick epidermis and cynical gaze for the current events. Regardless of what side of the news I am, writing or reading; I never get too emotionally attached anymore.
However

An hour ago, I read about two young people, Liz and Nir, who were murdered in the heart of Tel Aviv yesterday, simply because they were gay.
I'm trying to think, since I read about their funerals, what made me weeping.
2 is not such a dramatic number. Not when you grow up in the Middle East. Disasters happen all the time. Planes crash, Tsunamis occur. It's not the scope of the tragedy.
It's not because it's Israel, not even because it happened a few blocks from my old apartment. Unfortunately we’ve experienced suicide bombers everywhere all through the 90’s.
It's not because they’re two beautiful, smart or innocent people. I didn't cry when young beautiful bright 20 year old boys died in the war. They're innocent as well.

I guess i'm thrown by how evil stupidity can get. In that sense, living in New York or Tel Aviv, makes no difference at all. I’m scared and I know it could have happened here just as easily. Today I’m not happier I’m here; I don’t feel more blessed or safer like I did after Israel’s elections as oppose to America’s. America is more religious, conservative and ignorant than Israel. Electing a black president was huge - but even he, the amazing Obama can’t formally support gay rights.
I am scared when people are killed because of idiocy and hypocrisy. For god’s sake. Alek*.

I hope that someone in power will act now. First to educate and then to grant people with the right to equally live their lives as peacefully as they can in the 21^st century, in a democratic country of their choice.

* yea right.

Nostalgia. Pro's and Con's.
Joel and I, in unintentionally coordinated stripy swimsuits were catching last rays of sun. Surrounded by the Maccabiah's US Rugby team (the Jewish Olympics recently marketed as the largest J-date annual function).
Jewish Rugby Team: this may just be the biggest oxymoron. We wished them good luck and pointed in the direction of the nearest Kosher meat buffet. And we were back to the silent sands.

It has to be the childhood memories, smells of summer and sounds of language. It's unlikely to be titled Zionism.

I am going to miss swimming with plastic bags.

"Remember when..." is the lowest form of conversation. The great Tony Soprano once said.

Location, Location, Location

Since the blog is on vacation, words are unavailable at the moment. Images - however - are produced in abundance.

Jellyfish Season

As I was watching the cotton-balls clouds, floating away in my thoughts, I was re-appreciating a very important 21st century invention. The one invention even more important than the cellular mobile phone, is the silence feature.

A postcard from a visit to Obamaland

This as close as I got to Mr. and Mrs. President this week in the nation's capital, but I must say, it did feel different. Being in the revived DC, where every little girl can be Malia, is a lot more pink and glittery than I remembered it, four years ago.

Happy Independence Day

11 months and 349 days in. A few self reflecting, notes.

- Elina said "make it personal - not private" (or was it the other way around?), but "Into the Wild", was just too relevant for me to brush off. If it was as interesting as it was for me, perhaps one more person out there could also relate to it.

- Anyone who ever left home, relocated, traveled, immigrated - knows the life in the wild. Watching the Sean (the smartest thing Madonna ever did) Penn film last night, got me thinking about New York and me. The setting is somewhat different, but the rest is very much the same.

Extreme weather conditions, wild micro airborne creatures and the solitude. The bitter-sweet quality time with yourself, is what we've come here for, and is what follows us around whether we like it or not.

- I never thought I would fall in love with a skyline. Until one taxi drive from Brooklyn to the Island. It's not even the landscape, though. Coming back from anywhere to New York feels more safe and secure and mine than it felt eleven months ago.
The past year was wild, but despite how much was gained from solitary confrontation with an unfamiliar world, ascendancy was never my thing.

- Just before he collapses, at the very end of the movie, he scribbles in he's notebook that happiness is unreal unless shared.

This is probably why I decided after all to write this post, as private or personal as it may be.