The song featured in this popular Apple commercial is by a French-Israeli singer named Yael Naim. Enjoy!

From today’s NY Post’s travel blog:

Tel Aviv may be Israel’s city that doesn¹t sleep, but if the coffee culture in Jerusalem continues its fashionable rise, there won¹t be much shuteye in the Old City, either.

Three new ultra-trendy cafes have opened inside the old-meets-new Mamilla Quarter Complex, a $400 million, open-air shopping, residential, and hotel development taking shape under the nose of Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The 25,000-meter pedestrian mall features Israel’s trendiest brands. Teva Naot shoes, Ahava for cosmetics from Dead Sea materials. Some of the shops are carved out of meticulously restored 19th Century homes. The project is a brick-by-brick affair headed up by Alrov, which owns the David Citadel Hotel nearby.

But the masterstroke of the ongoing project is a trio of outdoor cafes, where tourists can blend seamlessly into a local crowd of the bold and beautiful. Everyone sips some of the best coffee in the city while pondering majestic views of the Old City and The Citadel (Tower of David).

Most popular is Aroma, which will be familiar to New Yorkers as that-cafe-on-Houston-that-looks-like-a-chain-but-you’re-not-sure. (It is.) Also check out Roladin for high-end pastry and a gorgeous wait staff) and Rimon, the veteran of the group).

– Kevin Raub

The most talked about Israeli drama got snatched up by HBO recently and will be airing next week on the pay for cable channel. According to Ms. Stanley, it seems the show should make quite a splash State side as well.

From the NYT:

Four Days, a Therapist; Fifth Day, a Patient
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
Some things sound simply awful: a family reunion holiday cruise, an all-you-can-eat haggis buffet, a television series set entirely in a psychotherapist’s office.

And that is the premise of “In Treatment,” a series that begins Monday on HBO. For nine weeks, five nights a week, viewers are invited to sit in on the therapy sessions of Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne). He treats four patients (five, actually, since one session is with a married couple), and then on the fifth day he discusses his demons with his own therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest).

Electroshock therapy might seem more welcome.

“In Treatment,” however, is hypnotic, mostly because it withholds information as intelligently as it reveals it. Each night a new half-hour episode follows a different patient’s session. In every session the patients’ words are veined with allusions and elusions, clues to problems or patterns that are invisible to them but absorbing for the viewer.

Yee-hah!

A group of six Israeli cowboys will soon depart on a unique journey across the United States aimed at marking Israel’s 60th anniversary and raising awareness to the historic date in the American media.

The six travelers will be riding on Israeli born-and-raised horses and carry Israeli flags with them. They plan to cross the country from north to south, possibly taking the Continental Divide National Trail, leading from the Canadian border to the Mexican one through the Rocky Mountains.

Continue reading about Israeli cowboys in America

Yesssss, the English think we’ve got the smarts.

Release from HU:

Jerusalem, Dec, 16, 2007 – As it has in past years, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has again been ranked among the world’s leading universities by the Times Higher Education Supplement of London.

In its latest listings, for 2007, the Hebrew University was ranked overall by The Time survey in 128th place among the top 200 universities in the world. In the arts and humanities, the university was ranked at 39th in the world.

so please poke us here…

This story speaks for itself. From our friends at Israel21c:

The secret weapon of the stars - Israeli bodyguards

By Susan Karlin December 09, 2007

Lindsay Lohan totes one to dance class. Eva Longoria takes one shopping. Jennifer and Brad shared one before their divorce.

It’s the latest celebrity craze since adopting African babies - an Israeli bodyguard with training from the Israel Defense Forces.

Recently, Lohan unveiled her new bodyguard - an unnamed ex-Israeli Army specialist. Kevin Federline’s lawyer hired IDF-trained Aaron Cohen, founder of the Beverly Hills-based IMS Security, to serve Britney Spears’ camp with subpoenas for their custody battle. Even that dubious friend to the Jews, Mel Gibson, has relied on one to part the waters for him. For more than a decade, Avi Korein was Gibson’s personal bodyguard before he opened his own Beverly Hills security firm, Screen International Security Services.

So what’s the allure of these Israeli security mavens? According to industry experts, it’s a combination of discretion and training.

check out TMZ’s vid above.

From the Int Herald Trib:
JERUSALEM: Star comedian Jerry Seinfeld arrived in Israel Friday in the first stop on a world tour to promote his new animated film “Bee Movie.”

It was the 53-year-old’s second visit to the Jewish state. He volunteered on a kibbutz in northern Israel in 1970.

Seinfeld, who is Jewish, met with Israeli President Shimon Peres and then toured Jerusalem’s Old City near the Western Wall, the holiest site for Jews, and made a stop at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“You can imagine how much people like you here and respect you,” Peres told Seinfeld as the two sat in suits and ties in front of Israeli flags at the president’s residence in Jerusalem.

Seinfeld explained his movie to the 84-year-old Nobel peace laureate.

“It’s about a bee who’s not sure that he wants to go into honey,” Seinfeld said, as Peres laughed. “They tell him he has no choice.”

Seinfeld also gave Peres an explanation of computer animation.

The DreamWorks-Paramount flick that Seinfeld co-wrote and co-produced debuted Nov. 2 and has been in first or second place among top hits in U.S. theaters since, bringing in $94 million.