Soul sister and shooting in Netanya
Monday, at our last noon Shearim concert of the season, we had a presentation from a singer named Tamar Perez, a black American woman. She describes herself as a soul singer, and sings the songs of Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick. She is from Atlanta, Georgia, and she has a great voice.
What brings her here to Netanya? Well apparently she married a Sephardic Jew there and converted and then they made aliyah. She has studied in an ulpan here and speaks some Hebrew. I think she recently underwent an orthodox conversion here, and is now getting remarried (but I am not sure about this).
She used to work in her parents-in-law small restaurant, but apparently they had to close, so recently she has been singing on the street in Netanya in order to make a living. This is not as bad as it sounds, since Israelis appreciate her obvious talent and she certainly gets a lot of donations. She has recently auditioned in Tel Aviv and we hope she may have a future in show business here. So, if you walk down the street in Netanya and see a black American singing soul, don't be surprised, its only a usual feature of this amazing country.
On a completely different topic, there is a street on the other side of the square in Netanya called Nitza (or Nice in English), where a lot of the Anglos live. It is a very nice area during the day, with a grassy promenade, some stores and restaurants, and a vista of the sea. But, at night it transforms into a hang-out area for lots of teenagers, hundreds of them in groups and gangs. The people living there have complained to the City and the police about the noise and the goings-on, but nothing seems to be done about it (this is Israel). The police usually have a patrol car parked nearby, but they simply don't seem to do anything (the police in Israel are national not local, so it is difficult to get their attention). The situation has been getting worse for the past few years.
Last night the worst happened. An Arab youth, Fahid abu Hussein, 19, from a nearby Israeli Arab town, Baka-al-garbiyeh, was shot dead. No-one seems to know why or how. Apparently there was no altercation, no arguments, no nationalistic motives. No-one knows if he was involved in crime and this was a criminally motivated shooting (there is drug dealing going on there, and everyone knows that the Israeli mafia is involved), or if it was just a case of a random shooting (one of the irate neighbors who couldn't get any action by the police). At present an investigation is going on, and it will be interesting to see if there was a specific cause of the shooting, either because he was an Arab on "foreign turf," or it was a bad drug deal or he stole someone's girl, or if he was a random victim. Welcome to peaceful, happy Netanya.
What brings her here to Netanya? Well apparently she married a Sephardic Jew there and converted and then they made aliyah. She has studied in an ulpan here and speaks some Hebrew. I think she recently underwent an orthodox conversion here, and is now getting remarried (but I am not sure about this).
She used to work in her parents-in-law small restaurant, but apparently they had to close, so recently she has been singing on the street in Netanya in order to make a living. This is not as bad as it sounds, since Israelis appreciate her obvious talent and she certainly gets a lot of donations. She has recently auditioned in Tel Aviv and we hope she may have a future in show business here. So, if you walk down the street in Netanya and see a black American singing soul, don't be surprised, its only a usual feature of this amazing country.
On a completely different topic, there is a street on the other side of the square in Netanya called Nitza (or Nice in English), where a lot of the Anglos live. It is a very nice area during the day, with a grassy promenade, some stores and restaurants, and a vista of the sea. But, at night it transforms into a hang-out area for lots of teenagers, hundreds of them in groups and gangs. The people living there have complained to the City and the police about the noise and the goings-on, but nothing seems to be done about it (this is Israel). The police usually have a patrol car parked nearby, but they simply don't seem to do anything (the police in Israel are national not local, so it is difficult to get their attention). The situation has been getting worse for the past few years.
Last night the worst happened. An Arab youth, Fahid abu Hussein, 19, from a nearby Israeli Arab town, Baka-al-garbiyeh, was shot dead. No-one seems to know why or how. Apparently there was no altercation, no arguments, no nationalistic motives. No-one knows if he was involved in crime and this was a criminally motivated shooting (there is drug dealing going on there, and everyone knows that the Israeli mafia is involved), or if it was just a case of a random shooting (one of the irate neighbors who couldn't get any action by the police). At present an investigation is going on, and it will be interesting to see if there was a specific cause of the shooting, either because he was an Arab on "foreign turf," or it was a bad drug deal or he stole someone's girl, or if he was a random victim. Welcome to peaceful, happy Netanya.
posted by Jack Cohen at 5:40 PM
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