Urban Surrealism

Posted on: April 22nd, 2013

In Jerusalem, wherever you add something modern, you inevitably create conflict between it and the ancient environment. Sometimes it’s amusing, as in the case of this ad for sunglasses. Other times it can start a war, as in the case of ads with semi-clad models pasted on bus shelters in Haredi neighborhoods. The medium is [...]

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Kibbutz Women

Posted on: April 21st, 2013

Here are a bunch of kibbutz women filling up saltshakers, sometime between 1920 and 1940. The original caption for this image read: “Kibbutz women canning sardines.” But I don’ think these are sardines they’re pouring into those saltshakers, or the whole kibbutz would be up in arms. I spent a few minutes looking online for [...]

Those Mount Sinai Gals

Posted on: April 19th, 2013

Here’s a photograph of a sketch that was performed by the members of the Mount Sinai Auxiliary. They were volunteers who waited tables at the hospital coffee shop, and made gifts for the hospital gift shop. The year was 1951. I’ll bet you those women had a fantastic time together. I don’t know what other [...]

Joystick War

Posted on: April 18th, 2013

This is the pilot control joystick, positioned on the drone aircraft control panel inside the drone radar approach control van. The van is handling take-off, flight, and landing for the QF-100 Super Sabre drone aircraft. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot on board. Its [...]

Haredi Youth, 1948

Posted on: April 17th, 2013

This is a Haredi young man with his Mauser rifle (popularly known as the Czech rifle, after the country that produced it). The picture was taken on April 13, 1948, in Jerusalem by renowned photographer Yehuda Eisenstark. Nuff said.

Independence Day, 1949

Posted on: April 16th, 2013

Yom Haatzmaut is so rife with nostalgia for most Israelis, mostly because many of us can still remember the time before we had any. Independence, that is. Most other days of the year I’m immune to this stuff, but today I find myself staring at these heroic posters through moist eyes. Can you imagine, having [...]

The Kiss

Posted on: April 15th, 2013

I don’t know if other cultures have this custom of kissing the land upon arrival. I know the pope does it wherever he goes, but those folks took everything good they have from us. We have a sensual relationship with this land. It changes us. I wish it changed us even more. It’s almost six [...]

Parental Skills

Posted on: April 12th, 2013

When our kid was little, I used to remark on all the skills I was acquiring, which probably had no application whatsoever outside the child-rearing tasks. I could hold the baby in the crook of one arm, feed her with the same hand, and at the same time open the fridge and uncork a bottle [...]

How Can You Tell?

Posted on: April 11th, 2013

The caption that accompanies this picture, made available by The Jewish Press’ image provider Flash90, goes: Birtzeit University students loyal to Fatah celebrate their victory over Hamas in the university elections, next to the Birzeit University campus near the West Bank city of Ramallah, on April 10, 2013. Fatah won 23 seats out of the [...]

Omer Simplified

Posted on: April 10th, 2013

Did you count the Omer last night? This is what it looks like. It’s harvest time in a field near the central Israeli town of Modi’in. For almost 30 years, I used to experience the conflict between the second day of Passover and the first day of the Passover Chol Hamo’ed (intermediary days between the holiday’s first [...]

Guard Cats and Crows

Posted on: April 9th, 2013

The streets of many Israeli cities are monitored by large clowders of cats, who receive their daily appointed meals from little old ladies. Those ladies are known for communicating much better with felines than with humans. Israeli cats are renowned for their acapella singing, especially these days, in springtime, when the singing becomes even more [...]

What My Dad Did in the War

Posted on: April 8th, 2013

In 1987 someone rummaging in a second hand bookstore in Vienna came across a set of about 400 color slides. Upon examination, they turned out to be images of the Lodz ghetto, taken by Walter Genewein, the Nazis’ chief accountant. After Genewein died, his companion sold the pictures to the bookstore in Vienna. From there, [...]

What the US Military Remembers

Posted on: April 7th, 2013

This is a menorah of remembrance which will be lit inside the Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base chapel in Alaska during Holocaust Remembrance Day. According to the Pentagon website, Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorates the Jews who perished in internment camps under the hand of Nazi Germany. Internment camps? Really? Makes you think they died from the [...]

Graves in the Snow

Posted on: April 5th, 2013

The Israeli delegation walking at the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, Poland, as part of the March of the Living, April 04, 2013. The March of the Living is an annual educational program that brings students from around the world to Poland, where they trace some remnant evidence of the Holocaust. On Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom [...]

The Promise of ’42′

Posted on: April 4th, 2013

President Barack Obama talks with Rachel Robinson, a former nurse and the widow of baseball player Jackie Robinson. Jack Roosevelt Robinson was to baseball what Barack Hussein Obama was to politics, so it made sense that the president watch the movie “42,” named after the number on the back of the man who changed baseball, [...]

Ready for Summer

Posted on: April 3rd, 2013

This is the Herzliya, Israel, beach, in early March. Everything is ready for summer. Let’s go!

Priests Galore

Posted on: March 31st, 2013

On March 28, 2013, Chol Hamoed Pesach (the intermediary days of Passover), thousands assembled in front of the Western Wall to receive a mega-blessing from a very large group of cohanim (Jewish priests). One of the lovely discoveries a religious Jewish person makes when arriving in Israel, is that the priestly blessing, which in the [...]

Redemption of a Firstborn Donkey

Posted on: March 29th, 2013

A man holds a donkey foal (baby donkey) after the ceremony of “The Redemption of the First Born Donkey,” or “Pidyon Peter Chamor” in Hebrew. Jerusalem, March 28, 2013. A firstborn donkey must be redeemed by a sheep, which is given to the Kohen. If this redemption is not performed, we must break the foal’s [...]

Perfect Silhouette

Posted on: March 28th, 2013

It takes a photographer’s eye to catch this kind of image. This Haredi man was walking on the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City near Damascus Gate on Chol Hamoed, March 27, 2013, and for an instant looked like a two-dimensional cardboard figure. Inspired.

A Very Obama Passover

Posted on: March 26th, 2013

Ever since his first campaign for President, President Obama has been running a Passover Seder, in which he celebrates the holiday of the Israel’s freedom, along with staff members and their families. Along with the Seder, President Obama released this official statement:   Statement from the President on Passover As we prepare for our fifth [...]