Friday, February 24, 2012

Four concerts, three lectures, two meetings and a barmitzvah

February could be the "cruelest" month, yet for us it was the busiest. I don't think I have ever had such a full calendar. It started on Feb 2 with a concert at our cultural center (Hechal Hatarbut) by the "Jazzraelites" with the Israeli singer Keren Friedman, whom I had never heard of before. But she blew me away, she had a terrific voice and she sang with a jazz band both standard American classics ("Cry me a river"...) and standard Yiddish and Hebrew classics, including songs from the liturgy. We bought her CD, very nice.

On Sun Feb 5 we had a lecture at AACI given by historian Hank Citron, who lives part time in Netanya, on "the Roman conquest and Jewish dispersion," but I have written about that elsewhere. On Weds Feb 7 we had a rare meeting of the Va'ad Habayit, the Committee that runs our apartment block, except it is one man and he has been doing it for 6 years. He complained how time-consuming it is, so according to the regulations we agreed that he need not pay the regular monthly fee that we all pay. The most contentious item on the agenda was whether or not there should be door stops on the outside doors, those who are infirm and use walkers or wheelchairs or have babies in strollers want them, but the rest said no since the doors get left open and this allows cats to come in and defecate all over as well as being bad security.

Sat evening (motsei Shabbat) Feb 11 we went to our subscription concert of the Herzliya Chamber Orchestra under Harvey Bordowitz, who put on a concert of "firsts." The first orchestral piece by Benjamin Britten, entitled "The Simple Symphony," the first symphony by Bizet and Tchaikovsky's piano concerto number 1. Although there were other musical prodigies who composed music when very young, such as Mozart, Mendelsohn, Shoshtakovitch, Albeniz, no others produced works with such maturity at that young age. The pieces played were beautiful and passionate. For me there are two kinds of music, that which I know and that which I don't. This was an exceptionally enjoyable concert of music that I was familiar with but had not heard live before. Also the orchestra performed superbly under the direction of the Chinese conductor Yi-An Xu, who teaches at the Tel Aviv Conservatoire. The excellent pianist for the Tchaikovsky piano concerto was Roman Rabinovich, who perfomed his first concert with the IPO at the age of ten.

On Sun Feb 12 we went to the premiere in Israel of a film entitled "Unmasked: Judeophobia" about anti-Semitism, that was sponsored by AACI and the Forgotten People's Fund. This is a new direct and very well edited film by Gloria Greenstein who was present and answered questions, and who has impressive credentials. It pulls no punches and tells it like it is, including the massive and deliberate ignoring of the murderous and commited anti-Semitism ("Kill all Jews") prevalent in all Muslim countries. Would they ignore this if it were Germans yelling these hateful slogans. A must see film for every thinking adult, Jew and non-Jew.

On Weds Feb 15 we went to the lecture in the series that I organized at Netanya College co-sponsored by AACI-Netanya by Dr. Stefan Reif, Head of the Cambridge University Cairo Genizah Project. When he spoke at AACI last years he described the Cario Genizah project in general terms, this time I asked him to choose a specific topic and he spoke about "Synagogue customs in Eretz Yisrael and Babylonia a millennium ago." I will describe this presentation in more detail elsewhere.

On Thurs Feb 16 my son, Simon, who had arrived from the US two days before, arranged for us to visit Kibbutz Tzuba that is located in the hills near Hadassah Hospital just outside Jerusalem. There we visited Reuven Kalifon, who is an archaeologist among other things, who lectured at my son's shool Beth Emek in Livermore CA. At the end Reuven said, if you are ever in my area come and visit, and so Simon did, two weeks later. Over 20 years ago Reuven discovered a cave on the grounds of the kibbutz, that had a very low ceiling. In order to enter the cave one had to crawl thru a narrow hole. He showed this cave to many people but never really explored it, until one day he cast his light near to the ceiling of the cave and saw the crude drawing of a face. This led to the visit of a member of the Israel Archeological Authority, and the eventual excavation of the cave. This is a fascinating story, but more on this later.

On Fri Feb 17 we drove to Beersheva with our son and my sister and brother-in-law from the UK for the barmitzvah of our youngest grandson Hillel. We had a blast. Of course, he did his piece perfectly, a natural scholar. We ate too much and then we had a party Sat night and then we drove home Sunday afternoon Feb 19. That evening we went to a lecture at AACI by Jonathan Spyer of the IDC in Herzliya. Johathan is often on the IBA News and is a well known commentator on the Middle East, and is an expert on Syria. In introducing him I pointed out that his analyses of Syria are so authoritative, that it is rumored that even Pres. Bashar Assad listens to him to find out what he is going to do next. Jonathan gave an excellent talk on the effect of the changes in the Arab world on Israel. I will expand on this later.

While my family were here we took some trips, we went on Mon Feb 20 to visit the new Rabin Museum in Ramat Aviv, that tells the story of Yitzhak Rabin, hero of Israel, former Commander in Chief of the IDF and former PM, and incidentally tells the tumultuous story of Israel during his lifetime, until his assassination in 1998. We also went to the Tachana in Tel Aviv, the old Turkish railway station of Jaffa that has been made into a shopping and restaurant center. On Feb 22, I had several meetings at Netanya Academic College related to the Intl. Inst for the Study of Secret Jews (Anusim). Then on Feb 23 we drove back down to Beersheva for the premiere of the LOGON production of "Oliver" in which our granddaughter Liora Green sang one of the main songs ("who will buy...") She was great and the whole show was wonderful, amazingly polished for an amateur production. Then we said goodbye to our son and our other visitors will leave on Tues. Yesterday we made a visit in lovely weather to the beautiful gardens of Ramat Hanadiv near Zichron Yaakov. Life is certainly busy in Israel. Wow, what a crazy month!

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