Our Museum Piece

Truly is a great museum…

From the NYT:

A Museum to Get Lost In, and How Israel Is Fixing It
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM

THE Israel Museum is one of the finest in the Middle East — if you can figure out how to get in and find the art.

Founded in 1965 by Teddy Kollek, the long-serving Jerusalem mayor, to ensure that Israel would have a national museum of world rank, the museum was a vital symbol of the new nation. Mr. Kollek wanted, and got, “a modernist temple to culture” surrounded by other symbols of Israel’s modern statehood, like the Knesset, the Supreme Court and the National Library, said the museum’s director, James S. Snyder.

From ancient artifacts to contemporary art, the museum seeks to anchor the archaeology, material culture and ethnography of the world’s Jews within a broader global context, both Western and non-Western. It boasts a dominant site at the entrance to Jerusalem, a widely admired sculpture garden and, of course, the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Yet its entrance is an uninspiring parking lot and ugly ticketing building, and the portal to the actual exhibits is 270 yards away, requiring a hike up a hill, often in the blistering sun. It’s also hard to find your way from one collection to the next.

Continue reading Our Museum Piece…

Hoenlein is Online

Israeli Children at Camp to Get Away

A little news about an alternative summer break…

From Courant.com:

Escape From GriefBy THOMAS KAPLAN

Courant Staff Writer

August 13, 2007

Yaniv Aharonov hears the knock on his family’s front door on a sweltering August day. He sees three shadows outside. They are soldiers - and he knows what they are going to tell him.

His father is dead, a casualty of a Hezbollah rocket. Yaniv is 11, going on 12, and, now, fatherless. His mother won’t stop crying. A soldier pulls the boy aside.

“You have to be the strongest in your family,” he tells him. “You have to.”

It’s a scene that has played out hundreds of times across Israel for decades, as violence claims the lives of soldiers with tragic regularity. Yaniv is one of hundreds of children in Israel left fatherless, or orphaned entirely.

Today, it’s been a year since that knock. Yaniv recounts the day, slowly, until he is stopped by tears. But then he remembers, as he does so often, what that soldier told him.

Yaniv tells his story sitting in the shade outside the mess hall at Camp Laurelwood, a Jewish sleep-away camp in Madison. For his bar mitzvah gift, he is enjoying an all-expenses-paid, three-week visit to America, along with more than 40 other 12- and 13-year-olds, their fathers also casualties of war in Israel.

Continue reading Israeli Children at Camp to Get Away…

Israeli Coalition for the Refugees of Darfur & Sudan

We wanted to bring to your attention this great group of Israeli’s doing something great for the world.

From their website:

Israel Won’t Forget

The Israeli Coalition for the Refugees of Darfur and Sudan

“Israeli volunteer movements have joined forces to help the victims of the ongoing four-year long genocide in Darfur. ” The Israeli Coalition for the Refugees of Darfur and Sudan”, - a large scale network of the leading Israeli International Aid and Development voluntary organizations has established a joint headquarters to enlist the Israeli public, in all its diversity, to act for the benefit of the victims of the ongoing genocide in Darfur and Sudan. The coalition is mobilizing aid in order to support the 1200 refugees seeking asylum in Israel and for refugees in African countries.”

Perez Hilton Posts Lider “Just Gorgeous”

Israel to Build Largest Solar Park in the World

cool…

Israeli company to build largest solar park in world in US

Solel signs contract to build solar thermal technology plant in California’s Mojave Desert that will deliver 553 megawatts of solar power

Amir Ben David Published: 07.26.07, 09:44 / Israel Money

Israeli company Solel, which develops and implements solar thermal technology, has signed a contract with Pacific Gas and Electric Company to build the world’s largest solar plant in California’s Mojave Desert.

The project will deliver 553 megawatts of solar power, the equivalent of powering 400,000 homes, to PG&E’s customers in northern and central California.

Continue reading Israel to Build Largest Solar Park in the World…

Israeli Film Update

Today we clipped some Hollywood

Fests applaud new Israeli directors
Diverse stories sell globally
By ALI JAAFAR

LONDON — Gobbling up prizes on the fest circuit, Israeli films have hit a new level of maturity.
At Cannes, Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen picked up the Camera d’Or for first film with “Jellyfish” while Eran Kolirin won the Jury Coup de Coeur in Un Certain Regard for “The Band’s Visit.” Berlin saw Joseph Cedar take home the director gong for “Beaufort”; at Tribeca, David Volach won narrative feature for “My Father My Lord”; and Shemi Zarhin won the best screenplay prize at Shanghai for “Aviva, My Love.” This year’s Sundance also saw Dror Shaul win the Grand Jury Prize for “Sweet Mud.”

This has been a banner year for Israeli cinema in other ways, too, with international co-productions up and Israeli auds flocking to see films from their own country. While the resurgence of Israeli filmmaking is self-evident, more difficult to categorize is Israeli cinema itself.

This year’s box office champ is Cedar’s “Beaufort,” an account of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 after 18 years of occupation. Pic has garnered more than 300,000 admissions, beating out the likes of “Spider-Man 3.” On the other hand, last year’s biggest hit, “Aviva, My Love,” which also sold better than 300,000 tickets, tells the story of a hardworking cook who dreams of becoming a writer.

Unlike Romanian cinema, for example, which has similarly won a clutch of fest awards recently and shares a certain stripped-down verite aesthetic, Israeli films are proving more noteworthy for their diversity of subject matter and themes.

“From a filmmaker’s point of view, what’s happened in the last couple of years has really improved the quality and created a dynamic film environment,” Cedar says.

Continue reading Israeli Film Update…

“Israeli dwarf helped to have normal-sized baby”

This is just too cool not to print…

from the jpost:

“Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center is apparently the first in the world to produce by pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) a normal baby to a dwarf mother suffering from the genetic disease achondroplasia, The Jerusalem Post has learned.”