Month: August 2009

Not buying it

by adminin Writing

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 Not buying it

The Jerusalem Post, August 21, 2009

The crowd is small and subdued Friday morning at Tel Aviv’s Hangar 11. Drifts of Israeli Arabs and Israelis walk through an air-conditioned shuk, passing stalls lined with pickles, olives, baklawa, cosmetics, clothes, arts and crafts. One vendor—a tall, lanky man with black hair—sprays puffs of perfume in the air. “Bosem, bosem,” he says.

A makeshift stage is tucked behind the stalls. Below a green and orange sign that reads Koolanu 09 in both Arabic and Hebrew, an Israeli woman grasps a microphone, and sways as she sings a one-sentence song. “We are one, we are one,” she repeats in English.

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After the ‘non-revolution’

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

 

dsc03616After the ‘non-revolution’

The Jerusalem Post, August 21, 2009

I’ve tucked away my guidebook and happily stumbled upon an unmarked bar on a low-key street in Budapest. The scene is relaxed—simple blue jeans on casually crossed legs, uncomplicated drinks like beer and wine on plain wooden tables. The bright lighting, high ceilings, and a cluster of birds painted above the bar give the impression of openness.

“Where am I?” I ask a man at a neighboring table.

“Siraly,” he says.

I jot the name down and he looks on.

“No,” he says. He takes the pen and paper from my hands. “Like this,” he says, drawing a firm accent line over the r. “Siraly. It means seagull.” He offers my notebook and pen back to me.

I write “seagull” and then my neighbor’s unsolicited take on the scene. “It’s traditional alternative. But post-socialist,” he says.

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The Balkan two-step

by adminin Israel, Writing

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 The Balkan two-step

The Jerusalem Post, August 7, 2009

Another shot of ouzo? Why not?

I wince as I down the alcohol. I get back out on the floor and study the footsteps of the ring of dancers. I nod my head and mutter to myself—right, left, right, return—and when I think I’ve got the sequence, I break into the semi-circle. I clasp hands with one of the instructors, Mika Yehezkeli, and the friend I’ve brought along, Josh Krug.

As my hips clumsily bump Krug’s and Yehezkeli’s hips and my boot-clad feet threaten to tangle with their legs, it’s clear to me that I don’t have the sequence at all.

“You remind me of Borat,” Krug shouts over the blaring music, which I vaguely recognize as something gypsy. The music speeds up and the circle picks up pace, too.

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An Interview with Adina Hoffman

by adminin Writing

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 An Interview with Adina Hoffman

Bookslut, August 2009

In the opening pages of My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness author Adina Hoffman journeys from her home in Jerusalem to the north of Israel. The landscape there is dismal—blocks of rundown apartment buildings show signs of life but remain eerily quiet. If it serves as any indication of the story to follow, it seems the reader, too, is headed into dark territory.

But the scenery shifts when she arrives at the house of Taha Muhammad Ali, the Palestinian poet at the center of her book. Grey gives way to a riotous orchard—tightly planted citrus, olive, and pomegranate trees laced with roses, oleander, daisies, and chattering birds. We are, writes Hoffman, “now in the proximity of serious imagination.”

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Big trouble in little China

by adminin Migrant workers, Writing

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 Big trouble in little China

The Jerusalem Post, July 31, 2009

As the sky darkens over the sagging cement buildings of South Tel Aviv, Chinese workers gather on the sidewalk outside of Kav LaOved. Inside, the translators that volunteer their time to Kav LaOved every Monday night prepare. “It’s like a party out there,” one comments about the waiting crowd.

But no one is celebrating. Chinese workers comprise one of the smallest groups of foreign workers in Israel—numbering roughly 20,000 of the estimated 300,000 migrant workers in the country—but they pay the largest amount of money to enter Israel. An Indian worker who obtains work in Israel typically scrambles together 10,000 US dollars in loans to pay the fee; the going rate for a Chinese worker to secure employment and a visa is now a whopping 31,000 US dollars. Though this “entry fee”—paid to employment agencies who arrange for jobs and visas—is illegal, foreign workers pay it overseas, far from the prying eyes of the Israeli government.

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