Delta Launches New Service to Tel Aviv

Just in time for the hot tourism season, Delta Airlines launched its new daily service between Tel Aviv and New York this week. The airline says this new route will add 100,000 seats annually to accommodate for the tourism boom from last year. Israeli airliner El Al also plans to increase its number of weekly flights, creating some healthy competition in the skies. Fly on!

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Yael Naim Gets Some Good Ink

We’ve been on a little Yael Naim kick lately, but we’re cool with that.

From the Daily News:

Apple ad creates recognition for Yael Naim

Yael Naim hopes her Hebrew lyrics will cross musical borders.

Score another sonic bull’s-eye for Apple.

First, the company shot the career of the singer Feist into the stratosphere by featuring her song “1 2 3 4″ in an ad campaign.

Now another artist has found an instant audience by getting a smidgen of her music into a Mac spot.

“New Soul,” the debut single from Yael Naim, has shot to the top of the download charts and sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the last few weeks, all based on a 30-second snippet of her song in the Apple campaign for its groovy new superthin notebook.

Admittedly, it’s an arresting snippet.

“New Soul” sounds very much like its title: something freshly born. Given Naim’s sprightly voice, and the airy instrumentation around it, the recording sounds carbonated. It’s a fizzy splash of a thing.

Continue reading Yael Naim Gets Some Good Ink…

Israeli Singer Storms American Charts

When this blog last covered Yael Naim, we weren’t sure how many of you had heard of her (don’t worry, we hadn’t either).
Since then, she’s taken Israeli music to a new level of popularity in the United States. As this JPost article points out, her song made it to #1(!) on iTunes and cracked the Billboard top 10.
All that success has earned her a publicity tour to the US. We’ll keep you posted.
(By the way, here’s the YouTube video of her hit song “New Soul.”)

Suddenly I See Tel Aviv

Israeli Films Garner Acclaim—and Prizes

While Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort has been featured in the news (and on this blog–here and here) for its Oscar nomination, a few other films have quietly hit the scene to critical acclaim. The Lemon Tree, directed by Eran Riklis (The Syrian Bride), won the audience prize at the Berlin Film Festival with a record number of votes. (By the way, the Berlin Festival did a quiet salute to Israel’s film industry for Israel’s 60th birthday.) Then Amit Sargosi’s film The Time Catcher took first prize at the 48 Hour Film Project in San Jose. And of course, The Band’s Visit just picked up some positive reviews from, among others, the NYT.

So now might be a good time to grab some popcorn and a seat for some serious, eye-opening, cinema.