Here at isRealli we like to showcase new and upcoming Israeli musicians, so when we came across an article the other day in Ynet, we followed the links and put this post together.

Jew Da Maccabi recently immigrated to Israel with his family to further pursue his blossoming music career. He joins the ranks of the up and coming religious Jews making successful forays into popular music like reggae (Matisyahu) and hip-hop. We wish him the best of luck and success.

We grabbed some background info from his myspace for your reading pleasure:

Amnon Arama aka JewDa , Executive Producer of Kosher Productions, was born on June 20th, 1976, in Reshon Le Tzion, Israel. JewDa is the youngest of four children born into a family of musical prodigies. Albert Arama, JewDa’s father, was a famous trumpet player, who played in the Israeli Air Force orchestra as well as a member of the group, The Cabarets. At the age of ten months, JewDa’s family moved from Israel to New York City, the city of stars. When JewDa was twelve years old his family moved to Miami, Florida. Seeing JewDa’s passion for music, his father felt it important for JewDa to learn how to play a musical instrument. JewDa, who enjoyed watching his father play, decided to follow in his footsteps and learn the trumpet…

It’s the largest natural spa on earth – the Dead Sea. You’ve all heard of it, you may have even bought Ahava products here in the U.S. and spread the mineral-rich mud on your skin. If you’ve been to Israel, you might have taken a dip in the Dead Sea’s naturally buoyant water, and if not you can watch Japanese sumo wrestlers doing so here.

I thought I knew pretty much everything the Dead Sea had to offer. But after taking a look at the back page of Israel’s daily Yediot Aharonot yesterday, I saw I was wrong. Set with a background picture of bikini-clad, mud-covered girls, this story by Zvi Alush appeared:

“For all of you lovers of Dead Sea mud, who relish the therapeutic characteristics of the black salve but love the smell somewhat less:

In the spa of the Caesar Premier Dead Sea Resort & Spa Hotel an aromatic and even tasty solution has been found for the troubles of spa-goers: chocolate-flavored mud. You mix the Dead Sea mud with chocolate spread and apply it to your skin. The results are good, and if you want you can even take a taste.”

Like most people, I have an online bank account. Periodically, I log on to check how my balance is going (usually it’s perilously low) and to check whether I have had any kind donations from anonymous admirers or lottery wins (this almost never happens).

So imagine my horror when a couple of months ago, when I logged on one morning to find that I had been cleared out. In a series of ATM transactions, which had taken place in London, thieves had emptied my bank account in a matter of hours. All the while, I was sleeping soundly in New York.

Now don’t go worrying too much about me. All of the cash was returned to me by my bank, eventually. However, I was left wondering how this could have happened, given the fact that I still had the card in my possession, and had never divulged its PIN to another living soul.

Well, now a group of Israeli researchers from the Tel Aviv University School of Computer Science may have the answer. According to a report first published on MSNBC the Israeli researchers have identified a major defect in the system that banks use to keep debit card PIN codes secret while transporting them across bank networks.

A month ago the biggest sale in auction history was made; nearly half a billion US dollars worth of art was auctioned at Christie’s sale of Impressionist and modern art. According to the New York Times the evening’s total $491.4 million was well over $200 million more than that of any previous auction.

Although the numbers will be considerably smaller, Bonnie Danohe of Israel News Agency wrote that Israel’s most successful art auction house, Matsa for Public Auctions, is now preparing for what many believe will be the largest Israeli, Jewish and international art auction to ever to take place in Israel.

The art auction is scheduled for January 28, 2007 and will include 350 pieces of Jewish art, Israeli art and international art. It is expected to generate the largest revenues at any art auction in the history of Israeli auctioneering–the last record was $3.6 million and with an expected rise to $5 million the Israeli art scene is a buzz.

This is a new work brought to you by Culture Project. It opened here in New York last month and has received very good reviews. After the jump is a write up from the website. If you happen to be in the city for the Holidays, or on a more permanent basis, we urge you to check it out.

I love using mapquest. It takes all of the improvisation out of driving instructions (leaving my driveway: start out on smith avenue going northeast. Turn right after < .1 miles). You got your right/left directions, your compass directions, and the names of the actual routes. Even maps for each leg of the trip, for those who need it.

It would probably be good if we had mapquest for other things in life, too. Like job hunting – wouldn’t it be easier if instead of trying to make connections and angle our resumes, we could just mapquest our way to our next job and get a list of exactly what to do to get there? High school students could just mapquest their way into their college of choice. You could mapquest your relationships, too (say ‘I love you’ at 4 months, six days. U-turn at words ‘we need to talk’).

Ok, so maybe we’re not there yet. But mapquest has advanced beyond the realm of travel. At least if you’re talking about roads. Professor Moshe Shoham of the Technion, Israel’s Institute of Technology, has developed a robot called SmartAssist, which navigates itself within the body, directing surgeons to the site at which they need to operate, via the shortest possible route. Sound familiar? Trust me, you won’t find this by going to mapquest.com and clicking on ‘outside the US and Canada’.

It’s true; he is just as hot in person as on the big screen. And now, we all might get a glance of The Sexiest Person of the Year shopping on Shenkin, or lounging at the TA Port. We can confirm that Mr. George Clooney spoke to our very own Vice Premier, the elder statesmen himself, Shimon Peres, when the two bumped into each other for separate tapings of the Charlie Rose Show last week. Apparently, Peres invited Clooney for a visit to Israel, and the dapper, Oscar winning, A-lister enthusiastically accepted. I say apparently, because there were so many Peres staffers clamoring for photos and handshakes that it was a bit hard to hear. Peres graced us here in NY and the tri-state last week to visit several top ranked universities and make the case for Israel. It’s always a pleasure working with Peres when he’s in town, especially when he gets us within inches of that smile.

Here’s the official story from YnetNews:

George Clooney: I want to visit Israel

Vice Premier Peres meets with American actor in New York, invites him to visit Holy Land. Film star accepts invitation

By: Itamar Eichner

Vice Premier Shimon Peres met over the weekend with actor George Clooney in New York and invited him to visit Israel . Clooney replied that he would be happy to visit the Holy Land and promised to look into the possibility of combining the visit with his upcoming trip to Egypt.

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One of our readers has been griping lately that every time she tells someone where she’s from, they respond, “so do you have to drink a lot of water while trekking on your camel to the falafel stand?” or “how do you keep the sand out of your tent at night?” You get the point. Well, we were tired of hearing her complain, so we promised to post her visual rebuttal.

However, my camel still gets grumpy without his falafel. Enjoy!

Eran Davidov is a fellow blogger who we enjoy reading. He sent us a link to one of his posts on Akko, and well, we couldn’t have written it better ourselves. So here you go:

It’s amazing how “historical” changes meaning depending on where in the world you are. For example, the Sun campus in which I work is on the grounds of what used to be the loony bin (ok ok the care facility for would-be-napoleons) in Santa Clara. When Sun built the campus, they were forced by the local government and the historical society to keep the old hospital building and the old governor’s mansion intact. Any change to them, like adding wiring, repainting, fixing doors, had to be approved by a committee. The hospital is now the Sun auditorium and the governor’s mention is a set of executive meeting rooms. The buildings are less than a 100 years old.

Then you get the other historical. In my home town in Israel, on the way to the beach, there was this open space that had some semi-erect walls though the ceiling was long gone. There was a wire fence around it though I didn’t understand why until one day I found it in a guide book to Israel - it’s a 3000 years old Canaanite temple.

It’s the quintessential Israeli song. Never mind that it has since become a regularly featured rallying tune at Yankee Stadium. Hava Nagila will forever be associated with bar-mitzvahs at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, weddings with large satin yarmulkes, the hora, and all of that stuff.

But I don’t think you’ve ever heard it quite like this.

We have a complete explanation of the song and its origins brought to you by MyJewishLearning.com after the jump: