Ellis Shuman Writes

It’s About Time for the Times of Israel

2012-02-27T20:51:00.000+02:00

There are a number of websites reporting the news from Israel on a daily basis, but these websites appear dated, as if the modern technologies powering the Internet somehow overlooked them. More bothersome is the fact that each of the existing news sites is biased, appealing only to certain types of visitors and presenting the viewpoints and analysis that please its intended audience.

Along comes The Times of Israel. It’s about time that the day’s Israeli news is presented to readers in a manner that’s not only pleasing to the eye, but also in the way it was meant to be reported. Calling itself “the one-stop site for Israel, the region, and the Jewish world,” The Times of Israel launched last week and is quickly building up a loyal audience.

First, let’s consider the competition. The Jerusalem Post is the original and leading daily English language newspaper in Israel, and was the first to establish itself on the web. Something apparently went wrong along the way, as a visit to the Post’s website is an unpleasant experience. There is an overbearing emphasis on advertising, with annoying pop-ups, a horrific colored frame. Getting past the advertisements is a challenge, but once done, the reader will find that many of the articles he wants to read are listed as ‘premium’ and can only be viewed at a cost. Other articles from the printed edition never make it online at all. The Jerusalem Post is considered to have a right of center orientation in Israeli politics.

Considered to be Israel’s intellectual newspaper, Haaretz has been published in English as well as its original Hebrew for several years. For some reason, professional English isn’t a requirement on the Haaretz website. Spelling mistakes and bad grammar make it obvious that this is a translated news site. The pop-ups are annoying, and jump out at you as you make your way from one article to the next. Haaretz is a leftwing newspaper, with editorials and opinion pieces constantly criticizing the government and Israeli policy in the West Bank.

Proper English is the standard at Israel Hayom, which posts an online translated version of its freely distributed newspaper, which boasts of having the highest circulation of all of Israel’s dailies. The newspaper has a distinctively pro-Netanyahu orientation and is owned by his supporter, American hotel and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. The Hebrew digital version employs software that gives an online experience as close to turning the pages of a real newspaper as you can get online. Unfortunately, the English website is just translated articles from the print edititon, and it is not a website updated with the latest news.

Yediot Aharonot has its own English language news site, Ynetnews. This is an abbreviated version of the Ynet news site, one of the most visited portals in Israel. There is a lot of content, but most of it is half hidden and not easily accessible.

And to satisfy Israel’s right-wing and pro-settler population, there is Israel National News, which made its way to the web after years of broadcasting illegally as the Arutz Sheva radio station. The readers of this website see the reporting of Haaretz, on the other side of the political spectrum, as being anti-Israel. For example, an opinion piece published today by P. David Hornik gave details on the “The Anti-Israel Campaign in Haaretz.”

All of this leaves plenty of room in the center for an impartial, unaligned website to emerge, and The Times of Israel fit right into this empty space. The new website comes across with a magazine-like feeling, ultra modern and with pleasing graphics and navigation. Founding editor, David Horovitz, who previously served as Editor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Post, stated in his opening editorial that The Times of Israel “represents a determined effort, by a team of skilled, committed journalists, to report Israel, the region and the Jewish world accurately and engagingly.”

If I have any complaints about The Times of Israel, it’s the order in which its articles appear. Although Horovitz states that “the site’s design and construction also enable us to show when news matters more and matters less,” seemingly unimportant news articles can appear at the top of the front page, “above the fold”, pushing down articles that carry more weight. For example, today I visited the site to find that the top story was a short piece on “Etgar Keret's mustache”, while an article reporting on Israel selling weapons to Azerbaijan was further down the page.

The Times of Israel made two very wise decisions that make visiting the site a pleasant experience. As Horovitz stated, the site has “steered clear of pop-up and other overly intrusive advertising, so that reading the site is a pleasure.” In addition, commenting on articles is permitted through Facebook user accounts. This has so far prevented the mud-slinging and name-calling which frequent talkback comments on the other websites.

In commentary about The Times of Israel’s launch, columnist Shmuel Rosner stated that “the proliferation of English news sources in Israel is a bittersweet trend. It doesn’t reflect a belief that there are enough readers to support so many publications; it reflects a disbelief in the ability of even this many publications to adequately inform the few readers who care about news from Israel.”

I have enjoyed visiting The Times of Israel on a daily basis. This new Israeli news site is highly recommended.

Writing About Bulgaria - the Cold Snap Story

2012-02-20T21:29:00.000+02:00

How easy is it to write about Bulgaria in a work of fiction? Having lived in Bulgaria for two years I am attempting to give an accurate picture of the country in my writing. Recently I posted a review of Cold Snap, a collection of short stories set in a fictitious village some 60 kilometers east of Sofia. The book was written by Cynthia Morrison Phoel, who served in Bulgaria as a Peace Corps volunteer.

I interviewed Cynthia to get some background about her successful efforts to write about Bulgaria.

ES: You served in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria in the 1990s. Did you do any creative writing at that time?

CP: No. I did keep journals, which I have yet to harvest. And I wrote lots of letters to my then-boyfriend, now-husband. But I was pretty busy with my teaching and a few side projects. Creative writing was really pretty far from my mind.

ES: When did you start working on the short stories in Cold Snap?

CP: In 2001. I was a student in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Prior to Warren Wilson, I spent about four years in classes and workshops writing a lot of really terrible stories.

ES: Have you revisited Bulgaria since your Peace Corps service?

CP: I'm sorry to say I haven't been back since 1999. So, I counted on some dear Bulgarian friends to read my stories, fix my grammar, and corroborate that what I was writing was an accurate reflection of Bulgaria in the early post-Communist years.

ES: Your fiction deals with Bulgarians and their daily lives and struggles. What made you decide to focus on their stories, and not write about Americans/foreigners visiting and experiencing life in Bulgaria?

CP: Writing from the Bulgarian point of view was one of the most important decisions I made for my writing. For years, I wrote about young American women going to live in Bulgaria, and the stories were flat and uninteresting. Then, at Warren Wilson, where I was having to write much more quickly, I decided to try writing a story from the point of view of a Bulgarian boy. This felt like an audacious choice: my entire time in Bulgaria, I was aware that no matter how well I acclimated to Bulgaria, I would never be Bulgarian or own that perspective. But for my writing, this choice was wonderful. That story, "A Good Boy" in the collection, wrote itself and became my first published story. I found that writing from a Bulgarian point of view made it possible for me to really fictionalize--and to finally write some good fiction.

ES: What do your Bulgarian friends think about your stories?

CP: I think my Bulgarian friends agree my stories are true. Some of my friends, especially my older friends, tell me it's kind of sad to read about this time. Other friends are grateful that someone has documented this time in a vivid and accurate way.

ES: While you consistently translated Mother and Father into “Maika” and “Tatko”, you never translated Old Mountain, the name of the town where the stories took place. Why was that?

CP: That's a good question. I guess that, on some level, using "Maika" and "Tatko" felt essential to me. These are everyday words, and for me, it would have felt unnatural to use English. I worked pretty hard to make sure the English-language reader would understand their meaning.

With Old Mountain, I really like the English translation. "Stara Planina" would have meant nothing to the English-language reader. There are some kind of Bulgarian insider choices I made--like naming my main character "Dobrin" in "A Good Boy"--but because the Stara Planina is the backdrop for the whole collection, I think something would have been lost had I used the Bulgarian instead of English.

ES: The stories of Cold Snap are interlinked with each other. Why did you choose to present them as individual stories, and not as a novel with alternating story lines?

CP: The stories were largely written in the order in which they appear, and many of them were published as they were written. Each story was a pretty polished, finished piece by the time I came up with the idea of linking the collection. I would have had to undo a lot to make this into a novel and possibly lose some of what makes these pieces really work as stories.

ES: What’s next for you? More stories about Bulgaria?

CP: I'm currently working on a novel. With this piece, I've moved off Bulgarian soil, but I still have Bulgaria very much on my mind.

The image is from Cynthia Morrison Phoel’s website.

The Kosher Camera

2012-02-13T22:16:00.001+02:00

Now available: a camera that automatically replaces the image of a woman’s face with a brown paper bag. You need not fear that immodest images will appear in your digital photographs. This amazing camera’s built-in facial recognition software analyzes a scene and detects all the faces of women within the frame. The final result is a distorted pixilated face, an obtrusive black bar, or the much-preferred brown paper bag, guaranteed not to arouse you in any way.

The reason that this newly launched Kosher Camera website is so hilarious is because it is a humorous response to a very real and serious problem in Israel.

Buses and billboards in Jerusalem are just one of the battlefields between the ultra-Orthodox extremists and the modern State of Israel. Many advertisers refrain from posting images of women to avoid vandalism.

"Jerusalem is a symbol, a capital, built on mutual respect, holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims. If you want to be tolerant in this city you cannot advertize women," stated Nissim Hasson, vice president of sales at the Zohar Hutzot advertising company, as quoted by Ynet.

As reported in the Jewish Chronicle, “Israeli fashion chain Honigman cut out the head of the model on its Jerusalem posters; model Gal Gadot's whole upper body disappeared from Castro's latest campaign, though it can be found on adverts outside Jerusalem; and Fox left Bar Refaeli out entirely.”

In November, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat ordered the police to crack down on the growing phenomenon of vandalism of posters depicting women. “We must make sure that those who want to advertise [with] women's images in the city can do so without fear of vandalism and defacement of billboards or buses showing women," Barkat wrote to Jerusalem District Police Commander Niso Shaham, Haaretz reported.

The Kosher Camera is a comic solution to the problem, and the unnamed creators of that website developed it very professionally. “Imagine how holy your pictures will be,” the site invites you, stating that “the sophisticated camera’s circuitry and algorithms can detect the presence of a female and automatically obscure her face with a suitable covering.”

The Kosher Camera will also detect and cover the faces of female canines, and can even determine the gender of fetuses in the womb, making sure that the face of your unborn daughter will be obscured in ultrasound imagery.

Want to order the Kosher Camera? Click “Order Now” for the appropriate end to this holy photography experience.

Why Israel Fears a Nuclear Iran

2012-02-06T22:10:00.000+02:00

The international media has been full of reports of an impending Israeli attack on Iran, even going so far as to detail how such an attack would take place. Every day there are new stories supporting this theory, while others suggest that the public debate on the issue is aiming instead to spur tougher economic sanctions on Iran and force it to back down from its nuclear program.

Although Iran’s leaders contend that their program is intended solely for civilian purposes, they have not restrained themselves from expressing their animosity for Israel.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week declared, “The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor and it will be removed.” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in a 2005 speech said, “Our dear Imam (referring to Ayatollah Khamenei) said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine.”

Ahmedinejad has also stated that Israel was created on "a lie and a mythical claim" and that the Western powers "launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a show and then they support the Jews.”

This week an article on the Iranian Alef News Agency website associated with a respected conservative member of Iran’s parliament included detailed maps of military and civilian targets in Israel under the headline: “Israeli People Must Be Annihilated.”

Israeli leaders believe these statements indicate that the Iranian regime poses an existential threat to the State of Israel. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted recently on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, “I want to mention the main lesson of the Holocaust when it comes to our fate. We can only rely on ourselves.”

The Holocaust comparison is intentional, with the purpose of reminding the international community of the threats Hitler made against the Jewish People in the nineteen thirties and the horrific cost that resulted from the world’s inaction.

There are additional reasons why Israel, and the world for that matter, should fear a nuclear Iran. Iran would be quick to arm its long-range missiles, such as the Shihab pictured here, with nuclear capabilities. Not only is Israel within the range of these missiles but also a good part of Europe. With nuclear weapons at its disposal, Iran would no longer feel a need to comply with international pressure of any type.

Iran is the chief supplier of weapons to the Hezbollah terrorist organization based in Lebanon, and it also supplies weaponry to the Hamas organization in the Gaza Strip. Iran has remained a steadfast ally of Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria. The danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists or tyrannical regimes threatens not only Israel, but Europe as well.

Israel is not Iran’s only opponent in the Middle East. If the Iranians succeeded in obtaining nuclear weapons there is no doubt that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey would seek nuclear weapons of their own, creating a regional arms race that would be difficult to control.

The United States and many countries in Europe see the inherent danger of a nuclear Iran. If sanctions fail to prevent Iran from proceeding towards nuclearization, military action may be the required next step. The debate is whether Israel should take that step on its own.

What do you think should be done about Iran’s nuclear aspirations?

Footnote, Israel’s Oscar Nominee for Best Foreign Film

2012-01-30T21:05:00.000+02:00

“The nominees in the category of Best Foreign Film are…”

Headlines this past week stated that the ‘Israeli film industry is a surprising powerhouse’ due to the fact that the country has had four nominations for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in the past five years, “giving Israel more nominations during that period than any other country.”

But, no Israeli film has ever won the coveted award. With an Iranian film the favorite for this year’s Oscar, the Israeli film “Footnote” will probably remain just that, a footnote on the list of the country’s nominated films that just miss winning top accolades.

I saw “Footnote” last week, wondering if it was too Israeli, or possibly too Jewish, to win an Oscar. The story deals with two Talmudic scholars teaching and conducting research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The scholars are a father and a son, and the film centers on the rivalry between them. While the story concerns Jewish texts, it is the father-son relationship that is the true heart of the film, and which makes it worthy of a wider audience of viewers.

The film, written and directed by Joseph Cedar, alternates its mood between comic and melodramatic. Some scenes, like the crowded Ministry of Education award committee meeting in a closet-size file room, make their impact immediately but then continue a bit longer than they should. Other story lines begin but never offer the viewer a sense of full closure, as in the younger scholar’s relationship with his teenage son. Perhaps this is the director’s ultimate intention, to raise questions and let the viewer consider the alternative answers after the film is over.

The true gem in “Footnotes” is actor Shlomo Bar-Aba, a comedian that generations of Israelis remember dearly for his portrayal of mustached accordion player Yatsek on the satiric television series, “Zehu Zeh”. In the film, Bar-Aba displays an astounding range of facial expressions, all of them intensely serious and suggesting a huge amount of resentment and anger steaming just below the surface and ready to explode at any moment.

“Footnote” also stars Lior Ashkenazi, star of Israeli films such as “Walk on Water” and “Late Marriage”.

Cedar was previously nominated in the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Film category for his film Beaufort (2007), a story of Israeli soldiers stationed in an outpost prior to the army’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.

“Footnote” won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival and swept most of the 2011 awards of the Israeli Film Academy, including the Ophir Award for Best Picture. Unfortunately, it has stiff competition this year at the Academy Awards.

The Iranian film “A Separation” is the favorite to win the Oscar, as long as the Iranians don’t boycott the awards due to the fact that they’re in direct competition with an Israeli entry.

Just being nominated, however, is a huge compliment. "It's a badge of honor for Israel," said Moshe Edery, one of “Footnote’s” producers. "It's Israel's best business card around the world, especially these days."

If you saw "Footnote," what did you think? Is it worthy of an Oscar?

Will This Man One Day Be Israel’s Prime Minister?

2012-01-22T19:48:00.000+02:00

Two weeks ago, popular news anchorman Yair Lapid announced that he was leaving his Channel Two position in order to prepare for an entry into Israeli politics. Within days, public opinion polls predicted that a new political party headed by Lapid would win between 15 - 20 seats in the Knesset, thereby becoming the country’s second biggest party after the Likud. The political shock waves sent out by Lapid’s announcement may signal the advent of new general elections sooner, rather than later.

The major problem with Lapid’s entering the political fray is that no one knows what he really stands for.

Lapid, 48, the son of former Israeli politician and government minister Tommy Lapid, is undeniably one of Israel’s most handsome media personalities. A journalist, author and playwright, Lapid hosted the Channel Two Friday night newscast for the past four years and writes a weekly column for Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s leading daily newspaper.

Lapid’s decision to enter politics did not come as a surprise, and its timing was probably connected to proposed legislation that would require a “cooling off period” for journalists seeking to enter political life.

Lapid has been communicating to the general public via posts on his Facebook page. In a long note posted on January 13th entitled “Why I’m Going into Politics”, Lapid said, “I am equipped with the power of knowing I am doing something I believe in. You are my community and I draw my strength from you. I promise … to continue to listen to you."

However instead of explaining what he would be fighting for, Lapid has come out swinging in every direction. In an attack on the centrist opposition party, Lapid vowed, “There's no way I'm joining Kadima. They're a bunch of cynical politicians who have been cast out from other parties. No one has any clue as to what, if anything, they believe in and there is no chance I am joining them."

And in an attack on the Labor Party, Lapid said, “Shelly Yachimovitch is a fine Knesset member but she is part of the radical Left, both economically and politically, and I cannot join forces with people with whom I have no ideological connection."

Lapid said that he is “hardly part of the leftist camp” and that he would “join any government that accepts my core principles: changing the governing system, canceling the Tal Law, and changing the distribution of resources for the benefit of the middle class."

We really don’t know too much about what Lapid really stands for. Israelis, unfortunately, have a history of voting for new parties with unclear agendas, and ending up by getting more of the same.

Let’s hope that Lapid will present a clear political platform suggesting ways to improve the country and that the gullible Israeli public won’t vote for him just because he has a pretty face.

Cold Snap, a Review

2012-01-15T20:48:00.000+02:00

Reading Cold Snap by Cynthia Morrison Phoel one is immediately transported to Bulgaria, where the author served as a Peace Corps volunteer. The linked stories deal with the residents of Old Mountain, a ragged fictitious town some 60 kilometers east of Sofia. Just six stories in total make up this collection. By the time one finishes the book, the characters and their daily struggles are well-known and almost demand a second reading to make sure nothing was missed.

I found Cold Snap to be an amazingly effective title for this short story collection. “Cold Snap” is the name of the concluding, novella-length story that ties all the characters together. It deals with a bitterly cold season, when the residents of the town are forced to endure freezing temperatures as they wait for the central heating to be turned on. Cold snap could also describe the painful fall of Pavletta, whose ankle is broken so loudly that the sound of the cracking bone is carried across the town square.

The term “cold snap” would also be appropriate to describe Phoel’s literary photographic snap of Bulgaria at its coldest, a fictitious picture of the country in its early post-communist days. Then, as now, Bulgarians struggled in their attempts to adapt to the changing times. Some of the characters in the book seek to leave the town where they were raised for a better life in the country’s bigger cities, while others contemplate lives abroad. Learning how the characters deal with the cold spell shows life in Bulgaria at its hardest, but when the central heat finally goes on, hope is renewed for the future.

Each of the stories stands well on its own, but reading them one after another brings up familiar names and themes, making one feel an intimate acquaintance with the residents of Old Mountain. We meet Dobrin, the “Good Boy” of the first story and learn of his unemployed father who has installed the largest satellite dish in town. In “Cold Snap,” Dobrin’s father vacates the sofa where he has been watching football and porn nonstop to make room for Dobin’s mother Pavletta as she nurses her broken ankle back to health.

Some of the other memorable characters include Cucumber, a stray dog barely alive; Ms. Kuneva, the school’s English teacher who teaches her students words used to describe her own shaky life experiences; and Galia, whose parents buy her a husband who doesn’t want a thing to do with her.

In an interview on the Migrant Bookclub blog, author Cynthia Morrison Phoel revealed that she served in the Peace Corps in Bulgaria during the years 1994 to 1996. On that blog, Phoel described that experience:

I lived in Bulgaria for two years, which is a lot of time to internalize a place. And life was probably a bit slower back then. I did not have an internet connection or a cell phone or a T.V. or a car. I was really by myself. I had time to notice things like the color of the sun in the early evening--a thing I'd never noticed until I got to Bulgaria. I'm so grateful for that chance I had to live slowly and to just be where I was.

Phoel now lives near Boston with her husband and three children. Her narratives of Old Mountain and the residents of Bulgaria will warm readers for a long time.

One Year after Bulgaria

2012-01-10T20:23:00.000+02:00

At the beginning of January 2011 my wife and I packed our bags and boarded a Bulgarian Air jetliner for the final return trip to our home in Israel, after living and working in Sofia for two years. We left our Bulgarian apartment with mixed emotions, but we were eager to be back with family and friends and start the next adventures awaiting us.

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine that we lived in Bulgaria for two whole years, as the time flew by very quickly. We made many friends in Bulgaria, explored the country, discovered a totally different culture, learned to differentiate between the confusing letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, and have many memories, photographs, and souvenir magnets to remind us of those experiences.

In Bulgaria we were able to take an extended vacation from the strife of everyday life in Israel. We distanced ourselves from Israeli politics, from security concerns and the permanently stalled peace process, and from ethnic, religious, and economic tensions. Bulgaria had its own problems, including crime, corruption and politics, but as foreigners, we were not involved or concerned with any of that.

Living in Bulgaria in the status of ex-pats, we had the comfort of dealing with our surroundings in English, as that was the language used by our coworkers, even when they were native Bulgarians. We watched English language broadcasts on cable television, spoke regularly with our family and friends in Israel via an Internet phone hookup, and never had to worry about making ends meet in our daily lives, which is not always an easy task for the average Bulgarian.

Upon our return to Israel we had many challenges awaiting us, including returning to the Israeli work force and revitalizing our house. Especially enjoyable was the possibility to become regular fixtures in our young granddaughter’s early days, joining in her parents’ joy as she learned to crawl, then to walk and then to begin voicing her first words.

Professionally, I managed to meet the challenges of my job’s relocation to Sofia and I was extremely glad to have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of working in a foreign country.

Creatively, I have made a conscious decision to keep Bulgaria close at heart, and my fiction writing is set in Bulgaria, a fascinating country that is slightly off the beaten track. I am hopeful that some of my affection for our temporary home will come across in my writing, of which you will learn more in the weeks to come.

You can read Jodie’s Farewell to Bulgaria post, dated just over a year ago.

Cyber Terrorists Launch Attack on Israel

2012-01-08T15:53:00.000+02:00

“The leaking of the private credit card information of thousands of Israelis last week was a breach of sovereignty comparable to a terrorist operation,” stated Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon yesterday. "Israel has an enormous ability to protect itself and I reckon that we will do so and find all of the breaches. Whoever harms Israel’s cyberspace is not immune from retaliation,” Ayalon said.

Last week a group identified as Saudi Arabian-based Group-XP claimed it had obtained the personal information of about 400,000 Israelis. The group hacked the popular Israeli sports website One.co.il and linked from there to files containing the information.

The data, posted online by a hacker identifying himself as “0xOmar,” was not obtained at One.co.il, which is a free site.

The data contained many repetitive listings and investigations conducted by Israeli credit card companies and the Bank of Israel’s Banking Supervision Department determined that only the details of some 15,000 active cards had been exposed. The credit companies immediately canceled the affected cards before any serious financial damage had been done and informed their customers. Even so, the data theft was one of the worst Israel has ever faced.

Later last week, the hacking group threatened to expose the details of one million Israeli credit cards in total, but subsequent files posted online contained only a few thousand more listings and possibly a malicious Trojan horse script.

"It's a payback," OxOmar said in an email interview with Israeli news site Ynet. OxOmar said he intends to "harm Israel for now financially and socially by creating long queues, and crisis and panic."

Israeli blogger Amir Fedida claimed that the hacker was not from Saudi Arabia but rather Omar Habib, a 19-year-old man from the United Arab Emirates studying in Mexico. Fedida said the hacker made several errors, including communicating with the media by email. Fedida claimed that the hacker is active in pro-Palestinian Internet forums.

The hacker denided Fedida’s claim, stating: "If a stupid student thinks he can find me (within) 8 hours of work, what will Mossad do? But I'm still here and no one can find me, make sure, no worries, I'm waiting.”

1Q84, a Review

2012-01-03T15:58:00.000+02:00

It is difficult to cozy up with Haruki Murakami’s new novel, 1Q84, because the hardcover version is so big and heavy. But diehard Murakami fans, myself included, have been eagerly awaiting the latest fiction from the popular Japanese author and greeted this 925-page tome with the reverence it deserves.

The title of the book refers to an alternate version of the year 1984, one in which two moons rule the night sky and Little People are secretly in control of what’s going on. This may sound like a fantasy, but then again Murakami’s works always portray lonely characters trapped in surreal landscapes that distort the boundaries of reality. 1Q84 is a parallel world, or possibly, a different way to look at the existing world.

1Q84 - how does one pronounce the title? At first I believed that it was a simple rendition of one character after the other. 1 – Q – 8 – 4. But the more I read, the more I believed that in a parallel world a different pronunciation was more appropriate. If 1984 is pronounced “Nineteen eighty four,” why shouldn’t 1Q84 be pronounced “Q-teen eighty four”? Hey, but that’s just me. In Japanese, as Wikipedia informs us, the title is “ichi-kew-hachi-yon” and the number nine in Japanese is pronounced “kyū”, making it a homophone with the English letter Q.

The novel is a page-turner, even though there’s not that much suspense and it certainly cannot be defined as a thriller. Yet, there is something compelling about the writing and the characters that makes one continue almost breathlessly, waiting to see just what will happen next. One evening I announced to my wife that I had only 300 more pages to go, and she replied by saying that was the length of a whole book. In Japan, 1Q84 was originally published as three separate hardcover volumes, with the third following a year after the first two came out in May, 2009. I don’t know how I could have waited a whole year to find out how the novel ended.

What exactly is 1Q84 about? Although one reviewer described the book as a "complex and surreal narrative,” it is very simple actually, shifting “back and forth between tales of two characters, a man and a woman, who are searching for each other." There is a lot involved here, including multi-layered themes of cult religion, murder, family ties and memory. And there is a lot in parallel to the dystopian society of George Orwell’s 1984, which is quite obviously the source of this book’s title.

The book is long, and in fact, too long. Readers don’t need to fear that they will miss an important incident or fact, as Murakami goes out of his way to repeat his themes and events. If one character says something, you will frequently find that another character will reply by repeating the same original statement for emphasis.” A good editor would have attacked these repetitions vigorously, and probably shortened the novel by a third in the process. And the result would still have been a memorable Murakami creation.

Like many other Haruki Murakami fans, I have read all of his books religiously and in fact, I have a shelf of Murakami paperbacks in my home. 1Q84 is the first book of his that I own in hardcover. Many reviewers claim that it is the ultimate Haruki Murakami novel, his magnus opus, but I certainly hope not. I hope there are more Murakami novels ahead.

Have you read 1Q84? What did you think? How does it compare to Murakami's other books?

Fighting UK Anti-Israel Bias, One Professor at a Time

2011-12-30T07:36:00.000+02:00

When Israeli Smadar Bakovic, a post-graduate student at Warwick University, was assigned Professor Nicola Pratt as her master’s supervisor, Smadar immediately asked for a replacement. Pratt, a known anti-Israel campaigner who has repeatedly called for Britain to implement a program of boycotts and sanctions against Israel, couldn’t be impartial on a study of Israeli Arabs, Smadar claimed. The university refused to make a change and Smadar was given only a passing mark.

Smadar’s paper dealt with the identity of Israeli Arabs after the second intifada. In her feedback, Pratt said that Smadar had a tendency to “adopt Israeli/Zionist narratives as though they were uncontested facts.”

“I knew my work was better than the mark I'd been given,” Smadar said, and she spent a year challenging the university's original rejection of her appeal against the decision to allow Professor Pratt to supervise her.

Last week, Smadar’s paper was marked by two other Warwick professors and an external marker and received a mark of 71 per cent - a distinction.

As reported by the Jewish Chronicle Online, the university said it had "bent over backwards" to help Smadar. “A chance was given to rework the dissertation only because the strength of the student’s feelings was not taken into consideration at the start,” an official statement issued by the university said.

But the university stood by Professor Pratt's initial mark of 60 per cent and found her conduct to be "exemplary," a spokesman said.

“Professor Pratt said that I had taken an Israeli and Zionist perspective without investigating the issue,” Smadar told the Jewish Chronicle. “She said I had taken an Israeli government position, but I did not. I included the views of a number of Israeli Arab writers."

Smadar knew that Pratt could never be impartial right from the start. “She moderated a Jews for Justice for Palestinians event, so I knew her stance. As soon as I saw her name a red light came on."

Pratt’s refusal to relate to Smadar’s paper impartially happened “because hatred against Israelis and Jews is widespread among a section of UK academia,” Smadar said. “Inciting racial hatred, as Prof. Pratt does, is seemingly tolerated if it is against Jews and Israelis.”

Now Britain’s Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) will consider whether Pratt breached guidelines on impartiality when marking Smadar's dissertation, the Jewish Chronicle reported.

Meanwhile, an online petition calls for Pratt to be fired, stating, "Professor Pratt must go now. There must be zero tolerance of bigoted academics who do not have the wit to separate their prejudices from their academic objectivity."

“The petition was not started by me, but was brought to my attention,” Smadar said. “I am surprised, positively of course, that people are finding it and signing this. I see this as a great window of opportunity, at a time when Jews and Israelis are usually intimidated and silenced, to fight against this type of racism and discrimination.”

Smadar, 35, is from Moshav Neve Ilan, the community outside Jerusalem where I also make my home. I previously reviewed her book, Tall Shadows: Interviews with Israeli Arabs (Hamilton Books, 2006). The review, entitled Know Thy Neighbor, was published by the Jerusalem Post.

Self Publishing in the Days of The Virtual Kibbutz

2011-12-20T13:15:00.000+02:00

As I work towards the completion of my novel, I have begun considering how to get it published. The world of publishing is evolving. More and more authors are deciding to self publish and self promote their books. While that will work for some, others continue to search for literary agents and traditional publishers with hopes that their book will be one of the few that make it onto bookstore shelves.

At this stage I plan to go the traditional route with my manuscript, as I don’t have the time or resources to self promote my work. It’s funny to think that I’ve already traveled the self publishing road, but that is indeed how my collection of short stories, The Virtual Kibbutz, was published in 2003.

Self publishing is technically easier than ever before. Once your manuscript is written and edited, all you need to do is format it correctly for uploading and literally within minutes it is available for sale on Amazon and other online retail sites. Of course, that is when the hard work begins. Just because a copy of your book can be downloaded to someone’s Kindle doesn’t mean that anyone will find it or want to read it. That is why self publishing is just the first step while self promoting will determine whether your book will succeed or not.

From my research I know that very few literary agents are willing to consider short story collections, and that was true when I finished writing the stories of The Virtual Kibbutz as well. At the time I was eager to see my book in print. I didn’t have the patience to search for a small publishing house that would take a chance on what I had written.

Back then, the dilemma was whether working with a self publishing company was tantamount to publishing with a vanity press. I knew there was a price to pay, but I wouldn’t be purchasing hundreds of copies of my book and need to sell them one by one. I learned about a new concept, print on demand. My book would be published, but copies would be printed only when someone actually made a purchase.

I submitted my manuscript to iUniverse and the process was smooth. My book soon found its way into print and became available for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It was a finalist for a Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Award and was reviewed in a number of Jewish newspapers and magazines. Sales never were spectacular but then again, the stories had appeal for a niche audience.

I am actually hopeful that The Virtual Kibbutz will achieve additional success in the future. Once my novel is published, readers will look forward to reading my earlier work. They can still purchase my self-published The Virtual Kibbutz online.

Street Without A Name, a Review

2011-12-16T16:45:00.003+02:00

In my fiction writing, I am trying to give a faithful portrayal of Bulgaria. Having lived in Sofia for two years and after extensive travels across the width and breadth of the Balkan country, I feel confident that I will be able to express some of my appreciation for my temporary home in my writing. However I wonder if I will ever be able to fully describe Bulgaria as it really is.

Describing Bulgaria is not a problem for Kapka Kassabova, who was born and raised in Sofia but now lives in Scotland. Her 2008 book, Street Without A Name, is part memoir, part travel documentary. As listed on her website, the book is a “coming of age story at the end of Communism, and an unsentimental journey across post-communist Bulgaria.”

The first half of the book is the memoir and tells what it was like growing up in Bulgaria during the Communist era. The scenes of family life and school days are portrayed in the gloomy shades of totalitarianism. Hearing that the Central Universal Store in the center of Sofia had just received a shipment of red children’s boots, Kapka goes there with her mother and younger sister only to discover that “half of Sofia’s mothers fought for red boots while a handful of distressed-looking militiamen tried to hold the crowds back from the shoe counter, to prevent small children being crushed to death.”

The end of Communism in Bulgaria didn’t improve conditions. “Back in Sofia, things were grim, very grim. The euphoria of democracy and blue badges was gone, and what we had now was chaos, crime, and deficit.” Kapka’s family sees salvation only in emigration, and much time goes by before they get through the paperwork necessary to move away. At the end of the memoir section of her tale, Kapka’s youth is gone and she bids farewell to her native land by saying “I don’t know where the hell I’m going, but I never want to come back.”

Travels Around Bulgaria

Kapka does return to Bulgaria, apparently for frequent visits, as the second half of the book is a travelogue of her journeys around the country. “And here I am again, fourteen years after that decisive farewell, waiting for the tram and inhaling the mountain air of Sofia, thick with pollen and pollution,” Kapka writes.

Kapka travels around her homeland as a tourist, but one who just happens to speak Bulgarian. Traveling by train she enters into conversations with the fellow passengers, learning their stories and their views on local politics, and exchanging homemade meals. Most of the places Kapka visits bring back memories from her childhood, and it is only when she travels to the northern town of Silistra, on the banks of the swollen Danube, that she can say “I have no memories here. Along the Danube, I tell myself, I can be just a tourist.”

I have many memories of my two years in Bulgaria and as Kapka traveled across Bulgaria, I was reminded of my own visits to Melnik “endearingly known as ‘Bulgaria’s smallest town’; to Balchik on the Black Sea shore; and to the Djumaya Square in Plovdiv. But my memories are those of an outsider, one who never spoke the language and could only get a surface-deep, although positive impression of the country.

Bulgaria Has Many Faces

Kapka Kassabova had previously published two poetry collections and her first novel, Villa Pacifica, was published this year in the United Kingdom. She has written travel articles about destinations around the world, from Macedonia to Ecuador. Kapka translated Deyan Enev’s Circus Bulgaria into English, a short story collection that I look forward to reading.

In the opening of Street Without A Name, Kapka says that “Bulgaria has many faces” and she’s sure she “got it dead wrong, in places.” In her book, Kapka’s portrayal “of modern Bulgaria, then and now, is almost always personal and almost never flattering.”

Street Without A Name brought me back to the streets of Sofia and to my memorable travels around the country with a new understanding of what Bulgaria is all about.

Naomi Ragen and Edgar Allan Poe

2011-12-12T21:13:00.001+02:00

The Jerusalem District Court this week ruled that author Naomi Ragen plagiarized the work of writer Sarah Shapiro. The court found that Ragen, in her 1992 novel Sotah, uplifted sections from Shapiro’s Growing With My Children: A Jewish Mother’s Diary, published in 1990. The case had many similarities to recent charges of plagiarism against the author of a novel about Edgar Allan Poe’s child bride.

According to media reports, the Jerusalem court determined that Ragen’s actions constituted a premeditated act. Ragen, the court noted, as reported in Haaretz, “testified that work written by the plaintiff served as 'raw materials' for her, and that her method of writing is based on drawing from a 'well' and 'imagination' in ways that include the works of others, including those rendered by the plaintiff."

Shapiro, who like Ragen is a former American Orthodox Jew who now lives in Jerusalem, wrote about the plagiarism case on Cross-Currents in 2007. She told how she met with Ragen shortly after the publication of her book, which was a daily journal of her parenting experience during the years 1986 to 1989. “During that visit, she related to me warmly and encouraged me to continue writing,” Shapiro wrote.

It was in 1994 that Shapiro took her first look at Ragen’s novel. “In just moments, to my shock, I started finding words that I recognized. There – in the mouths of two fictional characters, a haredi husband and wife – was the conversation I myself had had in the early 1980s with a certain Yerushalmi rabbi.”

A full comparison of the very similar ideas, motives and texts presented in the two books can be found here. This list was prepared by Shapiro’s lawyers as part of the case presented to the Jerusalem court. Shapiro was seeking NIS 1 million in damages and the court ruled that the two sides must negotiate to reach a settlement.

So, how does all this connect to Edgar Allan Poe? The Ragen case sounds very similar to the Raven case, in which charges of plagiarism have been made about a novel depicting Poe’s child bride.

Allegations have been made charging that Lenore Hart, author of the novel The Raven’s Bride, lifted material from the book The Very Young Mrs. Poe, written in 1956 by Cothburn O’Neal. Both books deal with the marriage of Poe to Virginia Clemm when she was thirteen years old.

According to British author Jeremy Duns, “Hart stole scenes and passages that O'Neal invented for his novel; i.e. they never happened." On his blog, Duns offers many examples of texts that appeared almost word for word in both novels, with only slight variations.

St. Martin's Press last week defended its author, stating that as “Hart explained in her response, of course two novels about the same historical figure necessarily reliant on the same limited historical record will have similarities. We have reviewed that response and remain satisfied with Ms. Hart's explanation."

What would Edgar Allan Poe say about the Ragen case and the Raven case?

As quoted on the World of Edgar Allan Poe blog:

Is it altogether impossible that a critic be instigated to the exposure of a plagiarism, or still better, of plagiarism generally wherever he meets it, by a strictly honorable and even charitable motive?"

Edgar Allan Poe, "Mr. Longfellow and Other Plagiarists" (1850)

Only this, and nothing more.

High Court Divorces Itself from Civil Marriage in Israel‏

2011-12-07T15:25:00.001+02:00

According to Israel's "Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty" passed by the Knesset in 1992, "All persons have the right to privacy and to intimacy." I would have assumed that this law also grants Israeli citizens the freedom to marry whom they choose. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Leaving aside the question of who should have the authority to perform Jewish wedding ceremonies in the State of Israel, which is a problem in itself, does the law of the land allow "religion-less" Israelis to marry?

This week, Israel’s High Court of Justice stated that it would not accede to a petition filed by the Forum for Free Marriage in Israel against the Israeli government. The forum’s 12 member organizations claimed that the State of Israel is legally obligated to allow civil marriage for those who cannot marry in a religious ceremony. The current situation, according to the forum, gravely violates basic constitutional rights of Israel’s citizens.

“We recognize the problem and we are also sympathetic to it,” stated Court President Dorit Beinisch on behalf of the High Court. “But the question is, what can be done [by the court] to help here?”

As reported in the press, Beinisch insisted that only legislative action could deal with the issue, not judicial involvement.

In March, 2010, the Knesset passed a law that enabled a couple in which both partners are defined as being “without religious status” to register in a civil partnership. However, this law has not assisted the majority of cases which include one partner who is Jewish.

In July this year, the Knesset rejected a bill initiated by Knesset Member Nitzan Horowitz (Meretz), which would have legalized civil marriage in Israel. The bill was aimed at allowing Israelis to choose between civil or religious marriage.

According to a study conducted this past summer by Dr. Guy Ben-Porat and Dr. Yariv Feniger of Ben-Gurion University, two-thirds of the Jewish population in Israel are in favor of civil marriage, but only one-third would choose non-religious marriage if they had the option.

In response to this week’s statements by the High Court, the forum withdrew the petition so as not have it rejected outright.

“We’re very disappointed, but we don’t intend to give up,” said Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC). “Our petition was an attempt to help real people who have real needs. Hundreds of thousands of people legally cannot get married in Israel and this is very unjust.”

To those unfamiliar with the reality in Israel, the status quo only allows for marriages to be conducted through religious authorities, which in the case of Jews is the Chief Rabbinate (Orthodox). There is no allowance for interfaith marriages or the possibility for a couple to wed officially in a civil ceremony.

Too Many Ladas

2011-11-29T14:32:00.001+02:00

As I walked the back streets and alleyways of Sofia, one of my regular pleasures while living in Bulgaria, I couldn’t help but notice the many tired-looking cars parked in the older neighborhoods. Many of these vehicles were Ladas, a very popular brand during the heyday of communist rule due to its reputation for reliability in adverse conditions. In the traffic-filled streets of the Bulgarian capital I saw Ladas rumbling ahead alongside sleek, highly polished Mercedes and BMWs. For some reason, I latched onto this make of car, seeing it as a symbol of my temporary home.

During my wanderings, I took pictures of the aging vehicles I saw, often mislabeling them when posting on our Bulgarian blog. For me, every old car I saw was a Lada. My Bulgarian friends corrected me and I learned that my pictures were actually of Moskviches and Trabants.

When I began to write my manuscript, a work of fiction that takes place in Bulgaria, the Lada was still very much on my mind. So much so, that I ended up overusing the word Lada. Every time a character needed to drive somewhere, he opened the door of his Lada. Every time a character traveled somewhere, he went there in the Lada, and never in the car.

When I finished the first draft of my manuscript, I found to my surprise that I had used the word Lada 17 times. This came across almost like the Seinfeld episode when Elaine says:

“Yeah. I met this lawyer, we went out to dinner, I had the lobster bisque, we went back to my place, yada yada yada, I never heard from him again."

One of my goals while revising my manuscript has been to reduce the number of word repetitions. In the second draft, the word Lada appeared only 11 times. After further revisions, I reduced the appearance of the word to 5 times. Even so, I believe I have still managed to convey in my fiction the experience of owning and driving this eastern European car.

While editing, I also discovered a serious overuse of the adjective "small". I found paragraphs where I wrote that small flower arrangements were filled with roses with small petals. I realized that I had described every village in Bulgaria as being a small one. Every glass of rakia was small. Every criminal in the country was small-time. Most of the smalls I deleted, helping in my efforts to shorten the word count. In other cases, I replaced the adjective.

Small religious icons became handmade religious icons. Rose petals no long produce small amounts of rose oil, but rather the more appropriately stated minuscule amounts.

The reduction of repetitive texts has been a major accomplishment in the editing process. I hope readers will enjoy the results when I finish.

Israeli Frog Hops Back from Extinction

2011-11-21T20:24:00.001+02:00

Considered an extinct species since 1996, and not seen sincethe 1950s, the Hula Painted Frog (Discoglossus nigriventer) made a surprisereappearance in the Hula Nature Reserve in northern Israel last week.

Stop! A blog post about a frog? Yes, a blog post about afrog!

We can learn a lot from the following story about the resilience ofNature and the ability of man to make amends for his past mistakes and takepositive steps to fix the environment.

Last week the discovery of a small frog caused a hugesensation in Israel. "It’s like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls of natureconservation in Israel,” declared Dr. Sarig Gafni from the Ruppin AcademicCenter’s School of Marine Sciences, an expert in amphibians.

“I saw something jump that didn’t look familiar,” said YoramMalka of the Hula Nature Reserve, according to media reports. “I rushed overand caught a frog, and when I turned it over I saw that it had a black bellywith white spots, the identifying mark of the painted frog. I immediatelyreturned [with it] to the reserve’s office and took out the animal handbook,and I saw that what I had found looked exactly like the painted frog thatappears in the handbook.”

The Hula Painted Frog, also known as the Israel PaintedFrog, is endemic to the Hula marshes. It disappeared after Israel drained theHula in efforts to eradicate malaria and make the land arable, a project heldresponsible for extensive ecological damage.

In 1996, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)declared the Hula Painted Frog extinct, but Israel continued to list it as anendangered species.

According to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority,additional fresh water from the Jordan River has been diverted to the HulaNature Reserve in the past three years to rehydrate the marshes and this hasresulted in an improved ecological environment.

The specimen found last week is a female. Park officialshope to return her to nature as soon as possible with hopes that the populationof her species now has a chance of survival.

Picture from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

The Rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews

2011-11-15T20:48:00.001+02:00

One of thefirst things I learned about Bulgaria when my wife and I went to live there fortwo years was that the country’s Jews were spared the horrors of the Holocaust.Despite the fact that Bulgaria sided with the Nazis and that its governmentpassed anti-Jewish legislation and planned for mass deportations, its entirecommunity of 50,000 Jewish citizens survived World War II intact.

How exactly did it come to be that the Jews of Bulgaria were saved?

According to A Guide to Jewish Bulgaria, the mainstream theory promoted by the Communist government afterthe war was that the Communist Party and media played the decisive role in “preparingthe general public for the protests against the Jews’ disenfranchisement andplanned deportation.”

The bookstates that “at the present time, most Bulgarian politicians and statement tryto avoid the controversies by claiming that the Bulgarian Jews were saved as aresult of the efforts of ‘the whole nation.’”

Certainlyall elements of the nation played a role. King Boris III, who sided with theGermans primarily in efforts to regain Bulgarian territories, refused to handover his country’s Jews just as he resisted the German demand that he launch amilitary campaign against the Soviet Union. The Bulgarian Orthodox church tooka stand on behalf of its Jewish neighbors and Bulgarian politicians stood upbravely to oppose the pro-German ministers who sought to appease the Nazis’demands to deport the Jews.

In the bookBeyond Hitler’s Grasp, Michael Bar-Zohar details the rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews indramatic fashion, almost like a suspense thriller. In fact Bar Zohar, who wasborn in Bulgaria and served in the Knesset between 1981 – 1992, has writtenmany spy novels and this true story comes across sounding almost like a work offiction.

Bar-Zoharrelates that in March 1943, camps had already been prepared for the country’sJews and empty freight trains awaited their mission to transport the Jews tothe east. At the last minute, a warning reached local politicians in the townof Kyustendil and they set off as a small delegation to Sofia to confront the InteriorMinister and protest the plan. The deportation was delayed, but the rescue ofBulgaria’s Jews was not yet ensured.

Bar-Zoharexplains that for most Bulgarians, the Jews were just like everyone else in thecountry. The Germans, who came to promote their Final Solution, discovered thatin Bulgaria there was no problem that needed solving. In his book, written in1998, Bar-Zohar points out the unique rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews, the largestand most dramatic rescue during World War II, is a story that is almostcompletely unknown.

In the yearsafter the war, most of Bulgaria’s Jewish community made aliyah and moved toIsrael. Today there are some 6,000 Jews living in Bulgaria. Bulgaria and Israelshare a special relationship and Israelis of Bulgarian extract regularly visittheir former homeland.

Two years ofliving in Bulgaria proved to me that the country remains remarkably free of anti-Semitism.At no time did I hesitate telling Bulgarians that I was Jewish, or that I camefrom Israel. The replies I heard were ones of welcome.

I was proudto live, even for a short time, in a country that refused to turn its Jews overto the Nazis. The heroism of Bulgaria’s citizens deserves to be shared with theworld.

Picture: Sofia Synagogue

16 Years since Rabin’s Assassination: Has Anything Changed?

2011-11-09T20:37:00.000+02:00

I can still remember sitting glued to my television set inshock on Saturday night, November 4, 1995. It was one of those pivotal momentswhen everything changed. After having witnessed television reports of thelargest peace rally in Israeli history, we suddenly saw the screen fill withnews of the assassination of our prime minister. Yitzhak Rabin (1922 – 1995),one of our country’s greatest generals and statesmen, had fallen victim to thebullet of a right-wing Israeli radical.

How could it be that an Israeli leader working for peacewould be killed for the ideas in which he believed?

The disturbing picture accompanying this post is graffitispray-painted this week on the walls of the home of Hagit Ofran, the“Settlement Watch” director of the Peace Now organization. The text translates as “Ofran, Rabin iswaiting for you.”

The Israeli media has reported on many incidents labeled as“price tag” attacks. A “price tag” attack is an act of reprisal against Palestiniansor left-wing Israelis in response to either Palestinian terrorism or legalIsraeli actions taken against illegal settlement construction in the West Bank.A mosque in an Israeli Arab village, olive groves, and an Arab-owned restaurantin Jaffa were recently vandalized in “price tag” attacks.

According to Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, “price tag” actsare the biggest threat to the Zionist vision – greater than Arab terror or eventhe Iranian threat. “These villainous criminals, who harmed houses of prayer,fields, homes and property belonging to Palestinians, are Jewish, and this is‘Jewish terrorism,’ that should be called nothing else,” he stated in a specialKnesset session held in Rabin’s memory.

Rivlin also warned against incitement directed at allIsraeli settlers due to “negligent generalizations.”

According to a survey conducted by Panels Ltd. researchinstitute, 39% of Israel's Jewish citizens believe that another politically motivated murder might occur in the near future. Analyzed according toreligious affiliation the survey suggested that secular Israelis are moreconcerned than religious Israelis about another political assassination.

The memorial marking the 16th anniversary of Rabin's murderwill be held this Saturday in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square after being postponedfrom last week due to rainy weather. We remember this great man, but have welearned our lesson?

Are These Writers Nuts?

2011-11-02T20:22:00.003+02:00

Here’s the challenge: write a 50,000 word novel duringNovember. That’s 1,667 words a day, every day, for thirty days. Don’t bother toedit now, just write. Who would take on this wild challenge? I have an excuse(I am currently in the advanced editing stages of an already written novel),but some 250,000 writers from all over the world are hitting their keyboardsfuriously every day this month. Some of them are published authors. Are theycrazy?

Welcome to November, designated as the National NovelWriting Month. That’s NaNoWriMo for short, NaNo for even shorter…

According to the NaNo website, some 250,000 writers aroundthe world are expected to pledge to write 50,000 words during the month ofNovember. “There are no judges, no prizes, and entries are deleted from theserver before anyone reads them.” So, what’s the point?

“The 50,000 word challenge has a wonderful way of opening upyour imagination and unleashing creativity,” says NaNoWriMo founder Chris Baty.“When you write for quantity, instead of quality, you end up getting both.Also, it’s a great excuse for not doing any dishes for a month.”

According to the site, more than 90 novels begun during theannual November promotion have since been published, including Water forElephants by Sara Gruen, a New York Times #1 best seller.

This year, some of the writers started their NaNo project precisely at thestroke of midnight, November 1. Others hope for a fortuitous start if theybegin writing at exactly 11:11 on November 11^th. But by then, some oftheir fellow writers will have already written more than 16,000 words.

Maggie from Maggie Madly Writing says that she plans to “writeprecisely 1,667 words a day – sometimes a little more. On days when I know I’mnot going to be around the computer, I’ll write two days’ worth of words in oneday.”

Kim Wright, author of Love in Mid Air, which I previouslyreviewed, says that this is her first year for NaNo. “As a longtime writer,I’ve been vaguely familiar with the concept for years but I have the sense thatit’s growing as a movement, building towards some sort of critical mass.”

Jeff, the self-described Doubting Writer, says he must be“nuts” to join the NaNo craze. “Whether I produce anything of value is anentirely different question.”

If you’re an aspiring writer, should you attempt NaNo thisyear? Here are 5 reasons to do it. As for advice how to get through the month,check out these NaNo Rules that Lead to Progress.

Good luck to all you NaNo writers! As I edit my previously written manuscript I'll be thinking of you. Let me know how you didwhen December comes around.

Combating Israel’s Gender Segregation

2011-10-27T21:42:00.000+02:00

The modern state of Israel usually maintains its image as acountry where women enjoy full equality with men. However, incidents involving gender segregation have been surfacing morefrequently recently. Now, women are ready to fight back. A sing-in protest has been organized to remind everyone that women are people.

Last month I wrote how theultra-Orthodox residents of the town of Beit Shemesh were trying to impose their extremist ways on the women of their community, including violentlyattacking a religious girls school which they felt imposed on theirinterpretation of modesty.

The ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearimwas in the news when residents divided their streets into men-only andwomen-only sidewalks, separated by fences and cloths that would prevent theopposite sex from being seen.

Israel’s High Courtof Justice discussed Mea Shearim again this year, upholding its ruling thatthe segregation was illegal, however it ruled that enforcement of the law wouldonly begin next year.

Israel Supreme Court President Dorit Beinish, said of thesituation: "It seems all we are seeing is a radicalization trend. It beganwith buses, continued with supermarkets, and has now reached the streets. Itdoesn't look like we're headed to moderation, but rather the opposite.”

About six weeks ago, nine cadets walked out of a formal IDFofficers’ training corps event because women soldiers were among those singing.The cadets believed they were prohibited from hearing the female voices basedon their strict interpretation of Jewish law. The incident at the militaryevent led to four of the cadets being dismissed from the course.

According to Orthodox Jewry, the singing voice of a woman isconsidered sensual and possibly stimulating to males.

The IDF allows religious soldiers to refrain from participatingin recreational activities that contradict their lifestyle and faith.Authorities make efforts to consider the sensitivities of the religious public,but does anyone consider the effect such actions have on women?

Hila Benyovits, a Tel Aviv woman with a master’s degree in gender studies, says that theHalachic prohibition on hearing women sing “implies that the very essence of womenis lustful and indecent.”

“When people make a show of leaving the room when anotherperson is singing, they are expressing disgust and rejection, as though thesinger were leprous, unclean, not legitimate. When a man advocates for ‘thesinging of males’ only, he is disgracefully dehumanizing 51% of the populationand saying that women are not human. He determines, in effect, that women arethe sum of their sex organs, and denies us a basic form of self-expression.”

Benyovits has decided to do something to protest this latestexample of gender segregation. She has announced a protest sing-in, in whichwomen would stand in public and sing, making their voices heard. Organized asan event on Facebook, the protest sing-in is now scheduled to take place in TelAviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and Beer Sheva on Friday, November 11^th at11:00.

“We’re not going to stage a provocation, but rather tomaintain sanity,” she says. “We are here to remind everyone that women arepeople.”

It is not yet known how many women will participate in the sing-inprotests, or whether they will change anything. One thing for sure is that theultra-Orthodox who don’t hesitate to segregate women will not be listening.

The Druze Villages on the Carmel

2011-10-20T07:24:00.000+02:00

Halabi is playing a shepherd’s tune on his flute to thedelight of his guests. The Sheep Restaurant is a popular stopping point at theentrance of Daliat-el-Carmel, a Druze village high on the slopes of Israel’sMt. Carmel, a short twenty minute drive from Haifa. A few minutes before, asthe diners were enjoying dishes of lamb mixed with rice, pine nuts and walnuts; kebab with minced meat and mint; grilled chicken breasts; stuffed vegetables and fries; Halabi was strummingchords on his oud, a pear-shaped stringed instrument common to Middle Easternmusic.

‘Welcome back my friends,” Halabi greeted us upon our arrival,although it’s not clear whether he actually remembered us from our previous visita few years ago. He was eager for us to try the business meal, which startedwith tasty homemade humus, tehina, pickled vegetables and sour labneh, allaccompanied by Druze pita, which is similar in shape and texture to anoversized pancake.

Daliat-el-Carmel is the largest community of Israel’s Druze,an Arabic-speaking religious minority that split from mainstream Islam duringthe 11^th century. There are some 122,000 Druze living in Israel, andthey live in the Galilee, on the Golan Heights, and in the mountains nearHaifa. The Druze serve in the Israel Defense Forces and are Israeli citizenswho, with the exception of some living near the Syrian border, dissociatethemselves from Arab nationalism. They are very welcoming and hospitable, gladto have visitors in their communities.

“This olive oil is so good!”we inform our host after themeal.

We end up buying a Coca Cola bottle filled with the homemadeolive oil. “It was just produced,” Halabi informs us. “It might still be a bitbitter, so let it sit for two weeks,” he says.

Dipping the flat pita bread into the olive oil we are rewardedwith the strong taste of olives, but the price is very reasonable and we arepleased with the purchase.

Halabi seems to be a common Druze name, as in the center ofDaliat-el-Carmel all the storefronts bear that name. There is a Halabi Anterrestaurant, and next store is the establishment of the Halabi Brothers, and thereare at least two dental surgeons who advertise their clinics with the nameHalabi.

The parking lot attendant invites us to purchase more oliveoil. “If you buy fresh olives here, I will refund your parking fee,” she tellsus.

The shops in themarket sell everything, from oversized framed posters of rock stars to luxuriouscircular “American-style” beds. We enter one touristy shop, its entrance gracedwith bows and arrows and a counter cluttered with round alarm clocks. Deepinside the darkened interior we are greeted by a Druze woman, who shows us thehandiwork of the village residents.

“This is not made in China,” she says, displaying thehand-embroidered tablecloths, which appear in carefully planned patchwork designs.There are pillow covers and carpets, but we settle on one small cloth. “Youcan wash it in the machine,” she tells us. “The colors won’t run.”

A wedding is taking place in the village that night. A shinysports utility vehicle passes in front of the shop, the bride with her fancycoiffure easily seen through the window. Behind the bridal car are the guests,honking their horns repeatedly as they drive through the street. We had seen thisbride and her groom being photographed earlier in the day in the alleyways ofHaifa’s German Colony. The procession of cars continues, passing by a youngDruze man coming in the opposite direction on his horse.

As we pay for the locally crafted tablecloth, the mustachedowner of the shop says to me, “You are good people.” I would have said the samefor the residents of his village.

Pay It Forward Blogfest

2011-10-14T11:16:00.000+02:00

This post is slightly different than my previous ones. Today’s“blogfest” is a one-day festival interconnecting the blogs of aspiring writers acrossthe Internet, introducing readers to other like-minded bloggers.

I learned about this “blogfest” at a blog called The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment, written by Matthew MacNish fromCumming, Georgia. As Matthew writes in his introduction, he runs his blog “inan attempt to help other novice writers avoid the mistakes I made in thebeginning of my road to publication.” That is the reason many new writers turnto the blogs of others: to get advice and encouragement and to learn from the experienceothers gained as they wrote their way to publication.

The idea of today’s Pay It Forward Blogfest is “to introduceeveryone to everyone else” and this is done by listing and linking to three blogsthat one enjoys reading, but which may fly under the radar of other bloggers.And so, without further ado, here are three blogs of aspiring writers that I’vecome across in recent weeks.

Nancy S. Thompson = Nancy has written a thrillercalled The Mistaken and it is her dream to have it published one day. Thetagline for her manuscript is “Vengeance tastes sweet the day Skylar Karraspledges his wife's killer to sex traffickers in the Russian Mafia, but when hemistakenly targets the wrong woman, deal or no, he finds himself protecting herfrom the very enemy he's unleashed.” I have been following Nancy’s blog andreading her interesting posts such as Blogging vs. Writing vs. Life. I hope tosee Nancy’s thriller in print soon!

August McLaughlin = August is currently working onrevisions of her novel called In Her Shadow, which is the story of Minnesotanpsychologist Claire Fiksen, who, near the anniversary of her mother’sunexpected death, “develops bizarre symptoms that threaten her career, her relationshipsand her life. Claire’s pursuit for healing becomes a desperate search foranswers as she’s lured into the mystery of her family’s sordid past. The nearershe draws to the truth, the worse her condition becomes. And Claire’s isn’t theonly life at stake. Meanwhile, someone is watching…” August is a journalist/healthwriter with a certificate in nutrition, so for certain her novel will be trulycredible and exciting. I have enjoyed following August’s blog for some time,where she writes on subjects such as Writers’ Deadly Vices.

Stephen King = We all know of the very successfulAmerican author who writes contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction andfantasy fiction, but what about the other Stephen King, the aspiring writer?The other Stephen King introduces himself by saying, “I'm Stephen King. Really,that's my name. No, no, really. And I write, though I'm a rank amateur. I'mprobably as good at writing as the Stephen King who lives in Maine and writesfor a living would be at running a college.” Stephen is an unpublished authorliving in Richmond, Virginia whose day job is being the dean of a small privatecollege. I’ve been following The Other Stephen King on Writing blog as hedetails his experiences querying, attending writers conferences and working outHow to Get Published.

I have visited many other interesting and informative blogsof aspiring writers and hopefully in the weeks to come I will be able to postabout them as well.

Setting Gilad Shalit Free

2011-10-12T08:18:00.000+02:00

A yellow ribbon is tied to the rearview mirror over mydashboard. I received the ribbon one afternoon a few months ago when I drove bythe protest tent outside the prime minister’s home in Jerusalem. Activists atthe tent and all over Israel were marking five years since Israeli soldierGilad Shalit was captured by the Hamas. Pressurecalling for a deal with Hamas which would set Gilad free had been constantsince he fell captive but has been growing even stronger in recent months.

Last night the Israeli government approved a deal whichwould set Gilad Shalit free.

Gilad will be coming home in a few days, the primeminister stated, addressing the cabinet, the Shalit family, and the entirecountry. There was a window of opportunity for Gilat’s release now, we learned,due to the recent changes in the Arab world which may leave us without thepossibility of getting Egypt’s assistance in future negotiations.

Most Israelis are welcoming this news with joy, but for manyit is received with very mixed feelings. Gilad’s release will come at a painfulprice, and possibly endanger the lives of Israeli citizens and soldiers in the comingmonths and years. Some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners will be released, many ofthem serving life sentences for the murder of Israelis in horrific terroristattacks. These prisoners will be welcomed as heroes in the Gaza Strip and onthe West Bank, and the fear is that they will return to their murderous ways.

One Israeli is being released in exchange for 1,000Palestinians. The equation has never been equal. Gilad Shalit has never beenvisited by the Red Cross and the last sign that he was alive was a carefullyscripted video over two years ago. At that time, Gilad appeared to be in goodhealth. He smiled to the camera and held a newspaper dated September 14, 2009.

We hope that not only will Gilad return home alive, but thathe will be in good mental health. His return will obviously be a huge mediaevent, but Gilad also needs the privacy of a reunion with his family.

It is one of the hardest things that Israeli parents mustdo - letting go of our teenage sons and daughters when they enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces. We pray for our children’s safetyevery day of their service, and expect and assume without a second thought thattheir commanders and our leaders will do everything possible to protect them,and bring them home safely.

Last night the Israeli government reached a difficult andpainful decision. Yet for parents Noam and Aviva Shalit, and for all of us whohave prayed for Gilad over these past five years, it will be a welcome end tothis tragic affair.

I hope to be able to remove the yellow ribbon from over mydashboard in the days to come.

A Tribute to Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

2011-10-07T08:26:00.000+02:00

Right from the start, let me say that I have never owned, orused, an Apple electronic device. The computers I operate have always been PCsor laptops, empowered by Microsoft operating systems from one version ofWindows to the next. My phone is certainly not smart, yet it’s endowed withfeatures and services that I don’t know how to use. I enjoy digitally recordedmusic, but I’ve never purchased it online nor listened to it on a gadget smallenough to fit in my pocket.

In addition, I can’t recall offhand a single Pixar movie I’veseen. For me, a tablet is something to be swallowed before bedtime and anapplication is something to send in the mail.

I am a digitally challenged adult. Yet even so, everything inmy day to day use of modern technology has been made possible in its presentformat by the innovation and vision of Steve Jobs.

At one time the marketing slogan of Apple computers was “ThinkDifferent.” If nothing else, Steve Jobs knew how to think outside the box. Takethe design of personal computers. Who said that computers had to be big, orugly, or dull in color? I remember the first Apple computer I ever saw. It wasused by the staff of the front office at the original Jerusalem Hilton back in1983 to print out guest lists. That early Apple was not pretty, but laterversions made computer design a work of art.

More importantly was what a user saw on his computer screen.Apple’s insistence on graphically pleasing user interfaces led to improvementsby its competitors at Microsoft. If it hadn’t have been for Steve Jobs taking acalligraphy class after dropping out of college, we never would have hadbeautiful typography in our word processing programs.

The Internet and Facebook are full of tributes to SteveJobs. One of them described the three most important apples in history – the oneeaten by Adam and Eve; the one that led to Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity;and the company led by Steve Jobs. You might want to add to the list the AppleRecord label founded by the Beatles, but the point is clear.

A cartoon I saw shows Steve Jobs arriving at the PearlyGates of Heavens, where St. Peter is checking the registry of arrivals. Stevetells him, “I have an app for that.”

I have no doubt that with his eye for design, Steve Jobs isbusy dreaming up ways to make the afterlife more user-friendly.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heavendon't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share.No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is verylikely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clearsout the old to make way for the new.
Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005

Mozart’s Last Aria, a Review

2011-10-01T11:10:00.000+03:00

According to Wikipedia, the cause of composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death on December 5, 1791, at the age of 35, “cannot be knownwith certainty. The official record has it as hitziges Frieselfieber (severemilitary fever)” while researchers “have posited at least 118 causes of death.”The article states that “the most widely accepted hypothesis is that Mozartdied of acute rheumatic fever.”

But what if something more sinister was involved? InOctober, 1791, not long after the premier performance in Vienna of his opera,“The Magic Flute”, Mozart told his wife that he knew he would ‘not last muchlonger. I’m sure I’ve been poisoned,’ he said.

Who but a madman would poison such genius? This is thequestion raised in the new novel by Matt Rees, Mozart’s Last Aria. Rees, authorof the award-winning Omar Yussef series about a Palestinian detective, callshis historical whodunit mystery a “crime novel in A minor.”

In the weeks following the composer’s death, his estrangedsister Nannerl arrives in Vienna to visit his grave and to attend performancesin his honor. Nannerl is also seeking ways to make amends for the circumstancesthat had kept her apart from her brother. As she hears and performs Mozart’s work,she is drawn closer to him. “I had rejoined him in his music. Once more we weretogether.”

More than anything, Nannerl seeks to discover the truth whokilled her brother, and why. “Wolfgang was dead. But how? At the hand ofsomeone connected to his illegal Brotherhood of Masons?” Or perhaps Mozart hadbeen killed by an avenging husband discovering an adulterous affair. “Iwondered if my brother had died with something to repent,” she thinks.

Nannerl’s investigations reveal that Vienna is a citybuzzing with sinister plotting and espionage. Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’, whileachieving a huge success, is noted for its Masonic elements and theenlightenment philosophy of its message may have been seen as a threat againstthe Austrian Emperor. “The intrigue of the capital wasn’t for my poor, naïvebrother,” Nannerl eventually concludes after she discovers the truth aboutMozart’s death.

The pages of Mozart’s Last Aria can be complemented bylistening to the composer’s timeless creations. In fact, Rees has paced hiscrime novel “in terms of one of Wolfgang’s piano sonatas.” The concept ofbeginning the story with a disturbing Allegro maestoso, following that with a“thoughtful second movement” and then resolving the mystery with a series ofclimatic scenes in a final Presto movement gave Rees an emotional framework forthe plot.

Unlike his Omar Yussef novels, Mozart’s Last Aria will notbe followed by additional detective investigations by its main protagonist.Instead, Rees’s next novel will deal with the 16^th Century Italianartist Caravaggio. Rees learned how to play the piano in order to write aboutMozart and taught himself to paint with oils and duel with a rapier in order towrite about Caravaggio.

Was Caravaggio murdered? We will have to wait for the Matt Rees’snext crime novel to be published to find out who killed the Italian artist andwhy.

The Reality Show that Really Showed Compassion

2011-09-25T08:05:00.001+03:00

Israelis have been glued to their television sets for yearswatching the rising fortunes and shattered dreams of individuals displayingtheir talents as they sought recognition as the country’s next singing starsand dancers. We laughed and we cried along with the contestants on dating shows,were thrilled with each of their big brother antics, and urged them along asthey plotted their survivor tactics. We fantasized about our own fifteenminutes of fame and glory even as the reality shows became less and less real.None of it mattered, because this was the new wave of television.

Even so, none of these talent searches attracted me. Infact, I quickly switched channels instead of seeing the trumped up, false dramaof the auditions and the nasty aspects of the selection processes. It didn’tmatter to me that famous celebrities were serving either as the contestants, oras the judges. Reality shows, I thought, were fake representations of society.They just weren’t real.

All of that changed with Master Chef.

This was the second season of the show, which featured acook-your-way-to-fame formula that turned out quite delicious to watch. Itseemed that anyone, really anyone, could be a contestant, and itdidn’t matter if you were a young student, if you were beautiful or not, oreven if you were in your eighties. If you knew how to cook, you could competeto become Israel’s next Master Chef.

Auditions attracted housewives and househusbands, religiousand secular, young and old. Presentations were made of tasty dishes that couldhave been served in gourmet restaurants and some that embarrassed the viewers,more than the contestants. It also wasnice to see that a former coworker of mine advanced through the early rounds ofselection with a salmon dish that she prepared.

As the final lineup of contestants began cooking throughtasks requiring them to show their creativity and presentation skills, we beganto accept them as regular guests in our homes, urging them along and beingshaken almost to tears if their dishes didn’t turn out right, or if the judges criticizedthem too cruelly. When words of praise were awarded to the best efforts, wecouldn’t help but share in the pride of these truly talented chefs.

What raised this program to a level higher than otherreality shows was the fact that all the participants, contestants and judgesalike, came across as being very human. We felt deeply for them without theneed to dig to actually taste their culinary skills. We began to really knowthese people, ordinary Israelis like ourselves, as we welcomed them into ourliving rooms week after week.

We cried with the elimination of Gili, a doctor who was thelast woman contestant on the show. We encouraged Emanuel, an El Al pilot withextraordinary skills in the kitchen. We rooted for wedding gown designer Elihab, ashis creative cooking imagination nearly gave him the title. But more thananything, we applauded Avi, the 35-year-old reformed drug addict from Jerusalemwho managed to turn his life around and who found renewed love for life in theMoroccan cooking of his mother’s kitchen.

When Avi became Israel’s next Master Chef, we couldn’t helpbut cry with him, feeling that in a very real way, we were part of his familyas well.

Will Nudity Save the Dead Sea?

2011-09-18T19:51:00.000+03:00

In a covert pre-dawn operation that was nearly as well-organized as a military strike, 1,200 Israelis stripped off their clothes on the shores of the Dead Sea. American photographer Spencer Tunick aimed the lens of his camera at them and another of his artistic mass nudity installations was created.

"I hope to raise awareness about the place and help it to become recognized as one of the seven new wonders of the world," Tunick said, referring to his decision to stage the installation at the Dead Sea.

The photo shoot almost didn’t take place, as Israeli right-wing and religious politicians deemed it “artistic beastliness” and one Knesset member called it "Sodom and Gomorrah", referring to the depravities of the Biblical cities that were once situated in the area.

Other than the threats of religious politicians that they would “do everything to ensure that this display does not happen in the Land of Israel – forever”, the only things that disturbed the early Saturday morning installation were the late arrivals of some of the buses and the bothersome mechanized gliders circling overhead.

The Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, is one of 27 natural sites around the world that is competing in the finals of the New Seven Wonders online global campaign.

According to publicity for the campaign, “tourism to the Dead Sea and the entire Middle East is expected to increase by hundreds of percentage points in the event that the Dead Sea is among the seven winning sites.” The winning sites will be announced on 11.11.11.

The Dead Sea has been rapidly shrinking in size and its level has been dropping due to diversion of Jordan River waters and the mineral extraction evaporation pools in the south. A range of possible environmental efforts to restore the natural conditions of the sea have been discussed but so far nothing has been to done to prevent the swift decay of this natural wonder.

According to Yisrael Hayom, the “idea to bring Tunick to Israel came about two years ago as part of a final project by five students in the communications program at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.”

Tunick, who is Jewish, said, “I’m very honored that they wanted me to come and photograph in Israel. The more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was the right thing for Israelis who wanted to cooperate in something that was very liberal, enlightened and representative of creative and artistic freedom.”

After all the participants had gotten dressed yesterday, Tunick told reporters that Israel was the only place in the Middle East where the photo shoot could have taken place.

When We Danced On Water, a Review

2011-09-11T21:39:00.001+03:00

I was quite shocked when I read the title the Jerusalem Post gave to its review of Evan Fallenberg’s second novel, When We Danced on Water. “A Tale of One City and Two Residents” was the headline, and while the review referred correctly to a novel with two main characters, the one city it talked about was Tel Aviv. Not once was Berlin mentioned, which I found strange, as much of the narrative dealt with the characters’ suppressed pasts in that city.

The story starts in Tel Aviv with a chance meeting between Teo, the former founder and choreographer of the Tel Aviv Ballet now in the twilight of his life, and Vivi, a middle-aged waitress unable to fulfill her potential as an artist. The two develop an unlikely friendship that manages to span the differences in their ages, enabling them to open up and reveal how each of them was damaged in the past.

The two parallel stories are not exactly balanced. Vivi’s guilt over an illicit relationship with a German during her service in the Israeli army seemed, in my opinion, not to be complicated enough to leave scars that would last for decades. On the other hand, Teo’s story is incredibly rich. I could not have imagined such fresh, original ways to relate the horrors of the Holocaust and its effect on survivors.

The book’s main strength is how it portrays the world of dance, gripping readers to their seats in watchful anticipation as the dancers literally jump off the page. The fluid descriptions of movement and of one particular ballet that changed the main character’s life forever are quite exceptional.

Teo and Vivi come across as stronger characters and more full of life than those who filled the pages of Fallenberg’s first novel, Light Fell. In both books, the plot’s development hinges on a certain, almost instantaneous click between two protagonists, and in both cases I couldn’t fully accept that this click had occurred. Even so, accepting the fact that Teo and Vivi had become soul mates in When We Danced on Water is not essential to appreciating the stories they have to tell.

Evan Fallenberg, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, is the director of fiction for the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University. In addition to his two novels, he is a well known translator of Hebrew novels. His translation of Meir Shalev’s A Pigeon and a Boy won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction.

Cold Turkey

2011-09-09T16:18:00.004+03:00

When Jodie and I walked through the bazaars of Istanbul in March 2010, we were greeted warmly. Although we spoke to each other in English and even though we had flown to the city from Bulgaria, the merchants recognized us as visiting Israelis and called out to us in Hebrew, encouraging us to visit their shops. Wherever we went on our visit to the Muslim country, we felt truly welcome.

We returned to our jobs in Bulgaria and two months later heard the news that Israeli naval commandos had boarded the ships of the so-called Gaza Freedom Flotilla. During the struggle on the Mavi Marmara ship, nine Turkish activists were killed. Despite the footage that showed the ‘peaceful’ activists brutally attacking the Israeli soldiers, resulting in ten of them being wounded, one of them seriously, the international community unanimously condemned Israel’s use of force.

Turkey led the diplomatic assault against what Israel had done, officially claiming that Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip was illegal and demanding an apology and reparations for its civilians who were killed.

This month, the United Nation’s Palmer Report concluded that Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip was legal, but that the Israeli armed forces had used excessive force in the incident. The report also mentioned "serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers.”

The report suggested that Israel should issue “an appropriate statement of regret” and “offer payment for the benefit of the deceased and injured victims and their families.” More importantly, “Turkey and Israel should resume full diplomatic relations.”

Unfortunately, the two countries are more entrenched in their positions than ever before. Every day Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announces a new sanction on Israel, having already declared that military cooperation between the two powerful eastern Mediterranean countries had come to an end. Erdogan now threatens that Turkish naval gunships would escort future humanitarian flotillas to Gaza.

Israeli diplomats, for their part, have done little to ease the tensions. In all the statements that I’ve heard, Israel’s ministers repeatedly declare that we have nothing to apologize for and that we will continue to blockade Gaza. As for deteriorating Israeli-Turkish relationships, they shrug and just mention their hope that this tension would soon be behind us.

Israeli officials assume that Turkey is not really interested in an apology at all and is just using the incident to improve its standing in the Muslim world and to highlight its role as champion of Palestinian rights.

Unfortunately, some of Israel’s leaders can be as belligerent and uncompromising as the Turkish prime minister. Today’s Israeli press reported that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was taking steps to punish Turkey for its behavior.

Israel has issued travel warnings urging Israeli military veterans to refrain from traveling to Turkey. Israel plans to cooperate with Armenians and Kurdish rebel groups. And Lieberman plans to push anti-Turkish legislation when he visits with American congressmen on his visit to Washington later this month.

Israel doesn’t need another enemy, and certainly not at a time when the face of the Arab world is changing so rapidly.

In my opinion, both sides should back down from their recalcitrant positions as quickly as possible, before the situation escalates any further. Despite matters of national pride, I think Israel must take the first step and offer some sort of formal apology as an olive branch to the Turkish people.

I hope the day will soon come when I can return to the streets of Istanbul and state proudly and openly that I am an Israeli, happy to be visiting a Turkey that welcomes me.

Israel’s Taliban Grows in Strength

2011-09-03T12:45:00.000+03:00

Men and women must walk on separate sidewalks and sitsegregated on public busses. Stores areforbidden to sell lingerie or any red clothing item, considered to be the colorof passion. A shoe store is forbidden from displaying high heeled shoes in itswindows. A medical clinic is forced to remove the word ‘women’ from its sign. Apizzeria is required to have separate hours for men and women customers. Stonesare thrown at women joggers and bags of soiled diapers target storeownersrefusing to give in to the demands of a modesty “police” force.

These stories are not coming from the harsh regime of theTaliban in Afghanistan, but rather from a small city not far from Jerusalem.Beit Shemesh, once a quiet town attracting little attention, has become thefront line of the battle for Israel’s Jewish identity, and in this town, theside of reason is losing.

Beit Shemesh is home to 85,000 residents, and it is where mysister-in-law and her family live. About 40% of the population is haredi,or ultra-Orthodox, but that segment of the population is growing rapidly. Asthe average haredi family has more than six children, some 63% of the school populationis already ultra-Orthodox. Ten percent of the of the town’s schoolchildren aresecular, with the rest being, like my family there, modern, national religious.The national religious sector is one that works, serves in the army, and paystaxes. The haredim, on the whole, do not work or pay taxes, yet they arefully supported by the State.

The ultra-Orthodox were attracted to Beit Shemesh by its lowcost of living, and in many ways, they became much more extreme than the haredimwho live in the Meah Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem and Bnei Brak. In BeitShemesh the haredim live in separate neighborhoods. It is on the bordersof those neighborhoods that the town’s religious wars are taking place.

As reported this weekend in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper,the Beit Shemesh municipality recently erected a park bench at the top of ahill in the town but the haredim feared that this would lead to asituation where a man and a woman would sit down together. The municipalitybuilt a second bench, which would allow separate seating for men and women.Both benches were destroyed. The ultra-Orthodox felt that the two benches weretoo close together.

The latest incident to take place was at the opening thisweek of a new religious girls school, located on the fringe of anultra-Orthodox district. We’re talking about a school for girls only, one inwhich the students must wear long sleeved blouses and fully cover their legs. Afew days before the start of the school year, ultra-Orthodox youths broke intothe building and extensively damaged the premises. The reason for theiractions? They refuse to live in close proximity with the “immodesty” of theseyoung girls.

For its part, the ultra-Orthodox community insists on itsright to live in separate neighborhoods, safe from the influences of what itdetermines to be the immodest influences of secular society. A spokesman forthe community told the newspaper that just as secular residents would not wanta yeshiva school in their neighborhood, the ultra-Orthodox don’t want a girlsschool near their homes. The spokesman contended that acts of violence werebeing perpetrated by a small extremist segment of the ultra-Orthodox populationand should not be considered as acceptable policy by his community as a whole.

A negotiated compromise, which would have seen a row oftrees planted to hide the girls school from the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood,was rejected by haredi extremists.

The image in this article was originally posted toFlickr.com by CopperKettle and was taken from Wikimedia Commons and used underthe license provided on that site.

The Journey Begins

2011-08-29T19:36:00.003+03:00

One of the main reasons I started this blog was for it to serve as a platform for my writing, specifically for the writing on which I am currently working. Loyal readers of this blog will be able to follow the progress of that writing project as it continues towards publication, because that is the ultimate goal.

At this stage I can share that I have completed the manuscript of my novel, and I am now hard at work editing and revising it, preparing it for the submission process ahead. The novel is a work of fiction, sort of a cultural thriller set in modern day Bulgaria. More details about this story will be revealed over the course of time.

One of the first things I learned while researching into requirements for debut novels was the acceptable word count. I discovered that literary agents and publishers alike were unwilling to consider fiction that ran longer than what was acceptable, and that a novel in my genre should run between 100,000 to 110,000 words.

When I finished the first draft of the book, the word count I had reached was 139,000. I set the immediate goal of my revision work as being shortening the manuscript to the acceptable length. This required killing off many of the subplots (but luckily none of the characters). By shortening the manuscript I also achieved something else - I made the novel more suspenseful. The original version meandered about a bit too slowly, but the revision pushes things along at a better pace.

My manuscript now runs at a length that could be submitted. This doesn’t mean that I have finished editing the book. There is much work ahead and each day the novel gets better, and I get closer to my goal. The process seems endless, yet soon the end will be in sight.

I hope you will enjoy sharing my journey as I follow my path to publication. I will post my successes and failures in this enormous task, list the things I have learned along the way, and hopefully I will soon be able to celebrate here on the day when this dream becomes a reality.

Let’s Get Digital, a Review

2011-08-25T06:07:00.000+03:00

The publishing industry is undergoing a rapid transformation. Hardback sales have collapsed. Sales of trade paperbacks and mass market paperbacks are down. In July last year, sales of ebooks on Amazon outnumbered sales of hardback books for the first time. In February this year, ebook sales comprised 29.5% of the market, more than paperbacks.

The Borders bookstore has closed its doors. Amazon has begun publishing its own titles. The Kindle is the top-selling item in Amazon’s history. Authors are expected to market their own books. And self-publishing no longer carries the stigma it once had when it was considered solely a vanity press.

In this changing landscape, prospective authors have a new option available to them. Instead of turning with a manuscript to a literary agent to search for a publisher, authors can publish their own books. According to self-publishing advocate David Gaughran, if a new author has “the technical capability to operate an email account and download [his new] book, [he/she has] the capacity to learn what it takes to become a publisher.”

After years of writing novels and short stories, and after collecting hundreds of rejections slips, Gaughran decided to become a publisher himself. And he has decided to share his new-found knowledge with others.

Gaughran has self-published a guide to the digital revolution appropriately called Let’s Get Digital, which is subtitled: How to Self-Publish, And Why You Should. What credentials does Gaughran have to write this book? He lacks any experience in the publishing industry and he has not yet published his first novel. “Yet I can still publish professional-looking books like the one you’re reading right now,” he writes in the introduction. “The first thing you need to learn is: anybody can do this.”

The book starts out with an overview of the rapidly changing industry and then dives into the “nuts and bolts of digital self-publishing.” The book covers topics like finding an editor, formatting a book so that it will read well on both the Kindle and the Nook, and a wide range of marketing tips.

The book also includes the stories of 33 self-published authors who successfully published their writing entirely on their own.

Anyone can self-publish their book these days, Gaughran contends, and therefore one of the biggest “challenges we all face is getting our work noticed. Twitter helps, Facebook helps, blogging helps. Anything that can increase the chances of someone discovering you or your books helps.”

In order to self promote his book and his writing, David Gaughran has a very active blog and he is a frequent guest contributor on other blogs that deal with the changing world of publishing. He is a 33-year-old Irish writer living in Sweden who has also self-published two short books of stories. He is currently editing an epic historical adventure novel about the fight to liberate Argentina from the Spanish Empire which should be available in the coming months.

As I consider myself a prospective author, I am eagerly following Gaughran’s posts and learning everything there is about the self-publishing option.

Opening Night of the Fair

2011-08-20T16:37:00.004+03:00

My connection to the Khutsot Hayotser Arts and Crafts Fair goes back many years. The annual summer fair, held in the valley below Jerusalem’s Old City walls, is being staged this month for the 36^th time. It was approximately that many years ago that my sister displayed her macramé creations at a small booth during her high school summer vacation, first bringing my attention to the arts and crafts on display.

The fair has come far since then, with professional artisans and international crafts exhibitions now attracting thousands each night during a two week period each August. The fair has become a tradition in Jerusalem and it is advertised as the main tourist attraction of the summer season.

Jodie and I went to the fair on its opening night, arriving shortly after the gates opened. We were surprised that by coming early, we had managed to avoid the crowds that we knew would be attending. The evening was cool and refreshing, making it a pleasure to walk around and see the works of many of Israel’s artists and artisans.

You can attend the fair each year and see the same types of jewelry, woodwork, children’s crafts and ceramics every time. Or, you can look closely and see something new. The oddly shaped metallic salt and pepper shakers; the unique wind chimes; the paintings with fresh takes on Old City scenes; the colorful hand puppets; the necklaces that are secured like a man’s tie; and other creative creations made visiting the booths very pleasurable.

The international area of the pavilion attracted exhibits of crafts from all over the world, although there was no balance between what was on display for each country. Some booths had extensive collections of traditional objects, but the effect was more of a souvenir stand than an arts exhibit. Bulgaria’s booth had a small display of embroidery. Croatia’s booth seemed intended to attract tourists to visit the country. There was no artist manning the Jordanian booth, at least not on opening night.

We watched an enjoyable flamenco performance but the highlight of the evening was still ahead of us. We took our seats on the bleachers in Sultan’s Pool for the central musical concert. After a few words of welcome from Jerusalem’s Mayor Nir Barkat, Gidi Gov and his band took the stage. By now, the August night in Jerusalem had turned quite chilly, but the show we were about to see kept us warm.

We’ve enjoyed the music of Gidi Gov ever since his Kaveret days in the 1970s, and we’ve followed his career through the popular Zehu Zeh and Laila Gov television shows. His music was as mellow as his maturing voice. The songs Gidi sang are some of Israel’s most popular ballads and even if we didn’t know all the words, we tried our best to sing along with the crowd. We thoroughly enjoyed the opening night of Jerusalem’s summer fair.

Love in Mid Air, a Review

2011-08-15T10:16:00.002+03:00

Chick lit is defined by Wikipedia as “genre fiction which addresses issues of modern womanhood, often humorously and lightheartedly.” As a genre, it sells well, with titles frequently topping the bestseller lists and becoming part of modern culture in the “Sex and the City” tradition. The target market for chick lit is obviously women. A question that sounds as if it could be phrased by Candace Bushnell/Carrie Bradshaw herself would be: Should men read chick lit?

Debut novelist Kim Wright admits that the intended demographic for Love in Mid Air is American women in book clubs, so she was interested in knowing what I thought of the book. In fact, much of the narrative revolves around the day-to-day routines of this demographic. Its characters are members of a book club, active in church renovations, mothers who escort their children to softball games. These are housewives dealing with the simple, yet complex trivialities of life in the American suburbs.

In an interview on her website, Kim Wright says she’s “describing a world that your readers have not only been to but that a large number of them are probably living in right now.”

I began reading the novel, therefore, as a visitor in uncharted territory. The scenes of Americana were as foreign to me as the inner thoughts of the main character’s mind.

As I read, I met Elyse, a housewife with a reliable husband and a comfortable home. It is only by chance that she meets a stranger on a cross-country flight, and it is a brief kiss that ignites her desire to escape, to leave and start anew with someone else. “In real life, women stay,” one of her friends says to her. But in Elyse’s real life, the decision to leave is made early on.

Kim Wright first began writing Love in Mid Air right after her own divorce but it took her nearly a decade to finish it. She has been writing about travel, food, and wine for more than 25 years, but managed to create a unique literary voice for her debut novel. And this is what works best about the book. It may be a work of fiction, but it rings of realism.

“I wanted it to sound very intimate, very confessional. Like a woman leaning over a café table talking to a friend,” the author says.

So, should a man read Love in Mid Air? A short amount of online research led me to this quote:

“I have come to the conclusion that men NEED to read chick lit. Not because they HAVE to. But because it’s fun, because it can help them to understand women.” That same author stated that men who read chick lit “will come to the shocking realization, gradually, that women are not just objects of desire or fear, but fellow human beings, capable of feelings, capable of dreams, and subject to the same follies all human beings are subject to.”

I highly recommend reading Love in Mid Air, no matter if you’re a woman or a man, because it’s a good read and a true-to-life tale of the pitfalls of modern marriage and what lies beyond.

To Die with Dignity

2011-08-13T21:18:00.002+03:00

It’s one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon and the hourly newscast is being broadcast on Galei Zahal, Israel’s Army Radio station. Except this time the broadcast is different. Veteran newscaster Adi Talmor is not the Shabbes goy reading the headlines. Instead, Talmor’s death is one of the headlines, especially due to the way he died.

After being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, Talmor, age 58, decided to end his life with the help of Swiss assisted-dying organization Dignitas. The decision came as a shock to Talmor’s colleagues. Since his death, Galei Zahal and sister radio station Galgalatz have reported the news in the words Talmor wrote especially for the occasion, and this afternoon there will be a program of his favorite music. Because his body was cremated in Switzerland, there will be no funeral and the only memorial ceremony that he asked for was a gathering on his beloved Tel Aviv boardwalk.

Talmor was a fixture on Army Radio for over thirty years, and for a decade he also served as the anchorman for an afternoon television newscast.

The slogan of Dignitas is: “To live with dignity - to die with dignity”. Legal in Switzerland, Dignitas is apparently one of the few organizations that offer such services to citizens of the world.

Talmor’s story reminded me of the excellent television film we recently saw, “You Don’t Know Jack”, with Al Pacino playing the role of doctor-assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian.

The question is does a human being have the right to choose when and how to die? Or is a doctor-assisted suicide a selfish act that takes no consideration of the feelings and suffering of those who will be left behind?

One could argue that the opposite is true. A patient who is terminally ill can prevent his loved ones from suffering years of financial and emotional burden. That sounds more a selfless act, than a selfish one.

One wonders whether Talmor’s decision to end his life with an assisted suicide will open a debate in Israeli society. I, for one, would welcome such a debate.

Summer of Tents

2011-08-11T20:33:00.004+03:00

On a Friday night two weeks ago my family and I strolled along Rothschild Boulevard in central Tel Aviv. This is usually one of the most beautiful streets in the city, with its Bauhaus buildings, tree-lined sidewalks, and ample space for bike riders and child play. But this summer Rothschild is different; it is the center of a nation-wide social protest which has resulted in the boulevard’s being renamed by some as “If I Were Rothschild”, referring to the European Jewish banking family that helped finance many institutions in pre-state Israel.

The first tent was set up on Rothschild exactly one month ago and its placement there, in protest of the high cost of living, led to additional encampments up and down the street, and in other cities all over Israel. Last Saturday night the growing social protest movement held a march in central Tel Aviv attracting some 280,000 people and staging a rally that included a performance by Shlomo Artzi.

So, what is the rallying call of the protesters? They shout: “The nation demands social justice!” Well, no one could object to that, but what does it mean? The organizers are finalizing their lists of demands, which reportedly include lower rental costs and more housing opportunities for young couples and students, as well as the setting of new priorities for social causes.

The tent protesters have been joined in their highly publicized rallies by a wide range of other causes, including everyone from striking doctors working in government hospitals to dairy farmers to policemen seeking higher salaries.

The government, for its part, initially downplayed the growing protest movement, and there were statements from politicians suggesting this was merely the protest of sushi-eating Tel Avivians. Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set up a committee to handle negotiations with the young social activists.

Is this summer protest political? Its leaders state that it is a social protest and have welcomed visits from the head of the Judea and Samaria settlements to their tents in a sign of solidarity.

However, many in the media are suggesting that the protests are indeed political. If the government is expected to readjust its priorities, where is it going to get additional funds to lower taxes and increase social benefits? Many say that this can only come by diverting funds that are today being given to the settlements.

Political or not, it is hard to see a happy ending to this summer protest. Social justice is a vague concept and cannot be fully realized no matter what the government does. The world’s economic markets are currently in turmoil, so the government will be cautious and take responsible actions, making sure not to rock Israel’s financial stability no matter how loud the activists protest.

I just hope that something good will come out of this. As a member of Israel’s middle class, I hope that the Summer of Tents will succeed in lowering Israel’s expensive cost of living.

Book Review: A Guide to Jewish Bulgaria

2011-08-10T09:14:00.005+03:00

My wife and I lived for two years in Sofia, Bulgaria. On a number of occasions we visited the Sofia Central Synagogue and each time we were amazed at the beauty of the building. The synagogue, opened to the public in 1909 in a ceremony attended by the Bulgarian Tsar, has been fully renovated and restored. In September, 2009, we were present at its 100th Year Anniversary with Bulgaria’s president seated a few rows ahead of me.

I never noticed a photographer capturing shots of the historic occasion from the balcony above, but he was from Vagabond, Bulgaria’s only English language magazine. The picture he snapped is now on the cover of A Guide to Jewish Bulgaria, just published by Vagabond Media. If you look closely you can see my balding head and white kippa, just visible above the word “everyone” on the book’s cover.

The book is designed “as a journey through both territory and time” and it fulfills its mission by giving a history of the Jews in Bulgaria, and then taking the reader on a tour of Jewish sites around the country.

For those not familiar with Bulgaria’s history it will come as quite a surprise to learn that the country’s entire Jewish population, numbering nearly 50,000 individuals, was spared the horrors of the Holocaust, even thought the government had officially sided with the Nazis. The book mentions the many claims of credit for the heroic rescue of Bulgaria’s Jews. Due to lack of a definite answer, most Bulgarians today claim that Bulgaria’s Jews were “saved as the result of the efforts of the whole nation.”

Although most of Bulgaria’s Jews made aliya to Israel in the years following World War Two, the country remains a warm home to its remaining Jews, about 6,000 in total, and to those who come to search for their Jewish roots.

The book guides readers to the various cities, where, unfortunately not much remains of Bulgaria’s Jewish heritage. The pictures, though, tell the story, with full color displays of abandoned Jewish cemeteries alongside photos of Jewish youth celebrating Hanukka in Sofia.

The book will serve an important role for anyone interested in learning about Jewish heritage in Bulgaria.

The First Post, an Introduction

2011-08-09T19:54:00.006+03:00

Hello, and welcome to my new blog! I am not new to the world of blogging, having recently returned from Bulgaria where I posted regularly at Ellis and Jodie’s Bulgarian Adventures. As part of my full time job, I post about the world of poker on the Titan Poker Blog. But this is the first time I’ve decided to create an online home for my writing.

You can expect to find opinion pieces, book reviews, short stories, general musings, and information about my upcoming novel - a work in progress. Articles that appear on this blog will range across a wide variety of subjects. I hope you will enjoy!

For those who don’t know me, I was born in Sioux City, Iowa, and moved to Israel (made aliya) in 1972 at the age of fifteen. I finished high school in Jerusalem, served in the Israeli army, was a founding member of Kibbutz Yahel in Israel’s southern Arava desert, and now live on Moshav Neve Ilan outside Jerusalem with my wife, Jodie. We have three children and one granddaughter.

On the kibbutz I worked for many years in agriculture, including pest control and at a dairy barn milking cows. Later, while living on the moshav, I received formal training in the hospitality industry, including a course of Hotel Management at the Technion’s Tel Aviv branch. I worked for fifteen years in various capacities at the Neve Ilan Hotel before going on to work as Food and Beverage Controller at the Jerusalem Hilton.

In 2000-2001 I worked as webmaster for Yazam, a Jerusalem-based company that went international with the goal of financing high tech start-ups. Unfortunately this coincided with the collapse of that very same industry and the company went out of business.

Between 2001 and 2004 I served as Editor in Chief of Israel Insider, an online daily Israeli newsmagazine. I wrote news articles about Israel and managed a database of over 300 contributors of opinion pieces on all sides of the Israeli political spectrum.

Since 2004 I have been working for The Nation Traffic, a marketing company in Ramat Gan that promotes online gaming, in my case, online poker. These efforts targeted countries where it is legal to play these games (not the United States). In this job I traveled and reported about the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, the Asian Poker Tour in Macau, as well as making visits to London and Manila.

Between 2009 and 2010 I worked at corporate headquarters in Sofia, Bulgaria. During these two years, my wife and I traveled extensively around Bulgaria and the surrounding countries, falling in love with the region and its unique culture and history.

I have always been a writer at heart, and this blog will highlight my creativity. I self-published The Virtual Kibbutz, a short story collection, in 2003, and the book was a finalist in the Fiction – Short Stories category of the ForeWord Magazine 2003 Book of the Year Awards.

And now I am in the advanced stages of editing my novel. More information on this in future posts on this blog.

Enjoy the read!

Ellis