REPORT FROM GILO

REPORT FROM GILO

ANGLO CULTURE IN JERUSALEM

 

It was only a few years after making  Aliya that we realized, sadly, that our understanding of spoken Hebrew was never going to be good enough for us to enjoy plays in anything other than English.  As ardent theatre goers in our previous life this was a huge deprivation and not helped by the few local amateur productions or one-man shows brought to Jerusalem by the British Council.  Happily, this has now all changed with the advent of The Encore Educational Theatre Company, a not-for-profit community theatre which was established in 2006.  It grew out of the Jerusalem Gilbert & Sullivan Society organized by G & S buff, Robert Binder and originally, the very popular meetings were held in his home.   Robert is not only a human encyclopedia on anything related to the famous duo but also a talented, producer, director and maker of superb costumes.  When maestro, Paul Salter made Aliyah from Manchester, he joined forces with Robert, as musical director and Encore was born.   Since its inception, Jerusalemites can look forward to two first-class shows each year, one Gilbert and Sullivan and one modern musical, Fiddler on the Roof, Carousel, Oklohama, The Wizard of Oz, and My Fair Lady having been amongst these.   Last year’s productions also included West Side Story, performed superbly by the Youth section of Encore, one of whose aims is to educate Israeli youth about Musical theatre.  Last week’s performance of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Gondoliers was well up to standard and the wonderful set which included a Venetian canal and very realistic gondolas was, as usual, designed by Roxanne Goodkin-Levy, an ex-Brummie.

We are members of a play-reading group which has now been going for around 20 years and meets once a month, in members’ houses, to read, with no prior preparation, a complete cross-section of drama from Shakespeare to Alan Bennet.  Everyone brings refreshments to be enjoyed in the ‘interval’ and it has become one of the high-spots of our month.  Most of the members are ex-Brits but we also have a few Americans and an occasional Israeli, the standard of reading is exceptionally high and we achieve some really dramatic and emotional renderings.

We also belong to the Jerusalem Shakespeare Society run by David Young, English teacher, historian, expert on Shakespeare and the author of a number of fascinating books about him (written under the name D. Lawrence-Young) In this group which also meets monthly, we not only read the works of Shakespeare but study and discuss them and often spend meetings watching films, old and new, of the Bard’s plays.

So even though we no longer have access to West-End productions or the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, except on our occasional visits back to the U.K., with these excellent organisations in Jerusalem, we now feel much less deprived of our native culture.

 

NORMAN & LOLA COHEN

NEWS ABOUT ISRAEL THAT YOU ARE UNIKELY TO FIND IN THE MEDIA

 

NEWS ABOUT ISRAEL THAT YOU ARE UNIKELY TO FIND IN THE MEDIA

 

·         For the first time in 40 years, a diplomat from Israel has been appointed to serve on the executive board of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) effective on 1^st January, 2013.  UNICEF’s mandate is to supply clean drinking water, proper nutrition, education and humanitarian relief to children in disaster zones and other areas where their needs are not being met.  It was established in 1946 by Ludwik Rajchman, a Jewish-Polish pediatrician and Holocaust survivor to assist the children of Holocaust and other disasters.  Through the years, Israel went from being a country which accepted aid from UNICEF to being a country that made major contributions to it.  Today, Israeli humanitarian NGO’s cooperate with UNICEF on projects in several developing countries.

(Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

 

·         A 2,750 year-old temple and a cache of sacred vessels from biblical times were recently discovered during an archeological excavation at Motza, near Jerusalem.  The finds include figurines of men and horses, providing rare evidence of a ritual culture in the Jerusalem region at the beginning of the Judean Monarchy, the time of Hezekiah and Isaiah.  The walls of the building are described as massive and a square structure, probably an altar, was exposed in the temple courtyard.

(Israel Antiquities Authority)

Figurines of a person (Photo: Clara Amit, courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority)     ·         Apart from its swimwear, Israel is not particularly well-known for fashion but that might be about to change.  About 30 foreign fashion and lifestyle journalists came to Israel recently for Tel Aviv Fashion Week and they liked what they saw.  Participants included leading opinion- makers from fashion magazines Vogue in Paris and Italy, Marie Claire in Italy, Elle in the United States,  InStyle from Russia and Flair and Glamour in France and Germany.  The senior editor of the Italian Marie Claire said that he was very surprised by the creativity of the Israeli designers and is planning to write a long article for the March issue of Marie Claire focusing on new upcoming designers in Israel. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)   ·         Imad & Reem Younis, a Christian-Arab couple from Nazareth are responsible for producing a range of surgical products trusted by neurosurgeons and neuroscience researchers on six continents.  Their company, Alpha Omega, was named the 2012 American Israeli Company of the year by the American Israeli Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta, Georgia. Their products are used in helping to learn more about the workings of the human brain as well as for treating a variety of neural disorders including Parkinsons disease and dystonia and, in Europe, for treating patients suffering from clinical depression. (Abigail klein Leichman  Israel 21C)   ·         The weather is the main topic of conversation in Israel as we write, snow blanketed Jerusalem this morning, completely cutting it off from the rest of Israel, schools were closed and bus services were cancelled but the railway system not only continued to function but extra trains were put on so that families outside Jerusalem could come and share in our snow.  Jerusalem’s children are ecstatic and even though the adults may have been finding the recent heavy rain and snow falls a problem they are doing wonders for the level of the Sea of Galilee which continues to rise and that is the best news that Israel could possibly receive.