Wednesday, April 30, 2008

My Brother Ruvim (1937-1941)


Fun Art:Trompe-l'œil


Julian Beever is an English chalk artist who has been creating trompe-l'œil chalk drawings on pavement surfaces since the mid-1990s. His works are created using a projection called anamorphosis, and create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.
Besides this pavement art, Beever also paints murals and replicas of the works of masters and oil paintings, and creates collages. He works as a freelance performance artist and creates murals for companies. He has worked in the UK, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Spain, the U.S. and Australia

Sunday, April 27, 2008

50 Most Notable Cult Books

Cult books are somehow, intangibly, different from simple bestsellers – though many of them are that. The Carpetbaggers was a bestseller; Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was a cult.
They are different from books that have big new ideas – though many of them are that. On The Origin of Species changed history; but Thus Spoke Zarathustra was a cult.
They are different from How-To books – though many of them are that. The Highway Code is a How-To book; Baby and Child Care was a cult. These are books that became personally important to their readers: that changed the way they lived, or the way they thought about how they lived.
The Bible, the Koran and the Communist Manifesto, of course, changed lives – but, in the first instance, they changed the life of the tribe, not of the individual.
In compiling our list, we were looking for the sort of book that people wear like a leather jacket or carry around like a totem. The book that rewires your head: that turns you on to psychedelics; makes you want to move to Greece; makes you a pacifist; gives you a way of thinking about yourself as a woman, or a voice in your head that makes it feel okay to be a teenager; conjures into being a character who becomes a permanent inhabitant of your mental flophouse.(read more...)

Friday, April 25, 2008

The Whore is Back

For centuries, the village in County Limerick, known as Doon in English, had been known in Gaelic as Dun Bleisce, or Fort of the Harlot, but the name was changed in 2003.
The village's Gaelic name was changed to An Dun, or The Fort in Gaelic, on the advice of the country's Placenames Commission, the official arbiter of names in Irish.
The unpopular move resulted in about 1,000 locals signing a petition seeking to have "harlot" added back to the name. They were backed by local politicians.
The community argued that, although the literal translation of the word is harlot, the woman who the village was named after in ancient times may not have been a harlot in the sense of the term today.
"It could have meant a powerful woman, a feminist," local councillor Mary Jackman told AFP. "Woman were very strong back then -- there is also a goddess in the history of the area."
Welcoming the return of the old name, she added: "People will be delighted. Love of their own comes first, regardless of what she was." (read more...)

Thursday, April 24, 2008

My Unwritten Books


George Steiner interviewed by Alan Macfarlane

Steiner was born in Paris in 1929, delivered - according to family lore - by an American doctor who then returned to Louisiana to assassinate Huey Long. His parents, Frederick and Else Steiner, were Austrian Jews who had taken French citizenship, and the children were brought up speaking English, French and German, to which Steiner later added Italian. His father, an investment banker, was "an agnostic, a Voltairean", Steiner says. But he "had deeply the Jewish sense that there is no higher vocation than teaching" and encouraged his son's classical studies. When rumours of war came, "Mamam was indignant. She said, 'They will die on the Maginot Line if they dare attack.' My father, bless him under the name of God, saw more clearly." Tipped off by a German former colleague while visiting New York on behalf of the French government, Frederick Steiner arranged for his wife and children to join him there in 1940.(more...)

How Do We (me) Create ?


Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance, looking for hints of where her own creativity comes from. It's a wild ride with a surprise ending.
Born in the US to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan rejected her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She chose to write fiction instead. Her much-loved, best-selling novels have been translated into 35 languages. She's writing a new novel and creating the libretto for The Bonesetter's Daughter, which will have its world premiere in September 2008 with the San Francisco Opera.
Tan was the creative consultant for Sagwa, the Emmy-nominated PBS series for children, and she has appeared as herself on The Simpsons. She's the lead rhythm dominatrix, backup singer and second tambourine with the Rock Bottom Remainders, a literary garage band that has raised more than a million dollars for literacy programs.

Suckers

Rose Shapiro’s excellent book, Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools Of Us All, won’t be read by the people who would most benefit from it. It’s a potted history of alternative medicine, as well as a thorough rebuttal of it, and her research is both fascinating and illuminating. Did you know that traditional Chinese medicine, described so often as dating back thousands of years, was actually a rag-bag of ideas put together under Chairman Mao to try to fill in the gaps left by a shortage of “the superior new medicine”?
And the history of alternative medicine isn’t as huggy as you might think: a homeopathic pesticide was tried in Germany in 1924 – the skin, spleen and testes of rabbits were turned to ashes and then sprayed over farmland to apparently successful effect. Or perhaps they’d just cremated all the rabbits in the area. Anyway, so successful was the leporine experiment that, according to Shapiro, it was later decided to see if the same technique would work with “the potentised ashes of the same parts of young Jews.
Shapiro reserves her real fury for the snake-oil merchants who knowingly prey on the weak: terminal cancer is a favourite. After all, the dying will often believe anything. She reveals case after case where someone has been talked out of chemotherapy or palliative care by a quack with a big bank balance. Their defining characteristic is to peddle a “cure” that mainstream medicine doesn’t want you to know about, in case they lose business. If you think that only the absurdly foolish could believe such a thing, she offers a chilling statistic – the American Cancer Society found that 27 per cent of respondents agreed that the medical establishment was suppressing a cure for cancer. Another 14 per cent thought that might be true. Shapiro may be fighting a losing battle, but we should be on her side.”.(read more...)

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Jammin' The Blues-1944


Jammin' the Blues is a 1944 short film in which several prominent jazz musicians got together for a rare filmed jam session. It features Lester Young, Red Callender, Harry Edison, Marlowe Morris, Sid Catlett, Barney Kessel, Joe Jones, John Simmons, Illinois Jacquet, Marie Bryant, Archie Savage and Garland Finney. For some, this is their only known appearance in a theatrical film. Barney Kessel is the only white performer in the film. He was seated in the shadows to shade his skin, and for closeups, his hands were stained with berry juice. Lindy Hop legends Archie Savage and Marie Bryant do the Lindy Hop (Jitterbug) on this footage. Directed by Gjon Mili and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Norman Granz: The Conscience of Jazz


Charlie Parker - Saxophone
Coleman Hawkins - Tenor saxophone
Hank Jones - Piano
Ray Brown - Double bass
Buddy Rich - Drums
Bill Harris - Trombone
Lester Young - Tenor saxophone
Harry Edison - Trumpet
Flip Phillips - Tenor saxophone
Ella Fitzgerald - Vocals, Scatting
The Lineup:
0:18 - Coleman Hawkins,
Hank Jones, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich.
2:53 - Charlie Parker,
Hank Jones, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich.
5:15 - Hank Jones,
Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich.
7:12 - Bill Harris, Lester Young,
Hank Jones, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich.
10:43 - Flip Philips, Harry Edison,
Ella Fitzgerald, Bill Harris, Lester Young,
Hank Jones, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich.
14:56 - The End

Although he never contributed a note of music to jazz, Norman Granz played a major role in the history of the music. He instituted the famous Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts, launched and ran four record labels, including one of the most significant imprints in jazz, Verve Records, and managed the careers of two of its most widely known performers, Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson.
In the process, he became jazz's first official millionaire, a fact held against him in some quarters. At the same time, he fought tirelessly on behalf of both his artists and audiences, demanding the same treatment for jazz musicians as accorded to classical performers, and refusing to book his JATP tours into segregated concert halls in the 1940s, long before the major civil rights breakthroughs of subsequent decades.
Granz was of Ukranian-Jewish descent. His family had lost their business in the Depression, and he worked his way through college, then joined MGM as a film editor after his wartime military service. His passion was jazz, and he began a long involvement with the music by persuading Billy Berg, a well-known Los Angeles club owner, to allow him to promote a jam session at his club, the Trouville, on Sunday nights. One of the conditions he imposed was that Berg abandon entirely his whites-only audience policy.

As long as we're in a democracy, I have to give what I think the majority of people will enjoy.
I allowed artists to play for as long as they felt they could justifiably continue to create.
I don't say that the supposed Civil Rights development is a myth, but it's a matter of dealing with reality. It's purely peripheral and, in many cases, it's just a facade.
I don't think that jazz, as any kind of an art form, has any permanence attached to it, apart from the practitioners of it.
I don't want to sound as if I'm doing something tremendously special. But I am a jazz fan.
I'm concerned with trend. I don't know where jazz fans will come from 20 years from now.
Of the newer people I would like to display to the public, I find it almost impossible to get them to agree to the jam session form.
The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing.
The public, hearing pop music, is, without knowing it, also soaking up jazz.
You will always find a few people in any area that would like things done completely their way
.

Verve: Norman Granz: The Conscience of Jazz By Tad Hershorn
A portrait of the legendary jazz producer and manager explores the history of music throughout the past sixty years as it was reflected by Granz's career and contributions, documents his work as a civil rights activist, and describes his founding of the Verve record label. 25,000 first printing.

Hedwig Grossmann: Terra Cotta הדויג גרוסמן:החרס

"Our friends among the artists proposed, that we take part in the foundation of the Artists' Village in Ein Hod near Haifa, based on the idea and plans of the painter Marcel Yanko.
This adventure attracted us. Thus we were too among the first and re-built us a small house out of the ruins, with two studios and planted a garden around it. The foundation of the artists' village by a small group of enthusiastic artists was done in a pioneering atmosphere. Young boys from the neighbouring Druze village Daliat-el-Carmei helped with the re-building work.
Wa lived under difficult conditions but in comradeship in a wonderful landscape. We used every weekend anrf vacations to go there and continue the work. I planned a large ceramic-workshop for the village, and in summer I gave there the first intensive ceramic courses for the members of the village and my advanced pupils, who came from Jerusalem.
Later I worked there in my own studio in ceramics, sculpture, drawing and wood-cuts, and taught individual young artists. We built a small potters kiln from local stones for our use.Time flew, divided between Jerusalem and Ein Hod. As I had not considered my physical resources, I got ill. After an operation, I was forced to limit physical work. The development of the Artists' Village did not come up to our expectations, that most of the artists would make it their permanent home. There was also not enough creative work and exchange of ideas and experiences and too much of entertainment and tourism. It had little appeal to youth. On(y in later years it seems to have changed. With a heavy heart, I left the village to which I had attached high hopes. In retrospect, I think that it is not healthy for a group of artists to live concentrated in an isolated spot without the basis of a normal population around them."

החרס : מבחר צילומים של 45 שנות יצירה בקדרות ופיסול קראמי / הדוויג גרוסמן-להמן ; צילומים - א' האוזר, ז' הרץ. -- [תל אביב] : ספריית השדה, (הקד' 1972).

Break down stereotypes

The idea, which comes from Scandinavia, is simple: instead of books, readers can come to the library and borrow a person for a 30-minute chat. The human “books” on offer vary from event to event but always include a healthy cross-section of stereotypes. Last weekend, the small but richly diverse list included Police Officer, Vegan, Male Nanny and Lifelong Activist as well as Person with Mental Health Difficulties and Young Person Excluded from School. The ‘books’ in the living library are people who are often exposed to prejudice. When you borrow a ‘book’ in the living library, you have 30 minutes to talk to the ‘book’ and ask questions. The aim is to improve understanding between people and break down stereotypes.(more...)

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Siavash Ghomayshi covered by Mohsen Namjoo


Siavash Ghomayshi was born in Dezful in 1945. He began music when he was in his 14. His passion for music led him to leave Iran in the age of 11 and begin his musical education in classical jazz at the Royal Society of Arts in London, England, where he majored in jazz. He worked with some popular bands in England such as the Rebels and the Insects as a pianist and singer. When he returned to Iran at the age of 25, he started his career mainly as a composer. Ghomayshi has created numerous melodies and lyrics for famous Persian artists such as Ebrahim Hamedi(Ebi),Zia and Betty. Ghomayshi wrote his first song, called "Boatman," for Zia when he was a 14 year old. Although initially considered a composer, in the latter years of the Pahlavi regime (before the 1979 Islamic Revolution) he released his first album, and has since continued his work as a singer, composer, arranger, and lyricist. In 1972 he released his first album, Farangis, in Iran. He lived in Iran until the age of 34 and then -- given the uncertain status of those involved in the music business following the Islamic revolution of Iran -- he decided to leave the country once again to pursue his career, and this time his destination was United States.
For all Mohsen Namjoo posts click here

Nissan Nativ 1922-2008 ניסן נתיב


The honor of being awarded the Israel Prize fell to him only this year; he was due to receive it on Independence Day, but did not live to see the occasion. In explaining their reasons for granting the Israel Prize to Nativ, the judges on the selection committee noted the important contribution he made to Israeli theater by nurturing generations of pupils who went on to form an important stratum in the country's theater companies, both on stage and behind the scenes. The judges wrote: "It is impossible to think of Israeli theater today without encountering the achievements of Nativ." The decision to award the Israel Prize to Nativ goes beyond merely awarding a prize to an individual person. It is also a tribute to, and mark of esteem for, the entire world of Israeli theater, with an emphasis on theatrical education(HARETZ)

מה עשית היום כדי לחייב את הרשויות לתמוך בפעילות תרבותית, בהכשרה לה ובהנחלת הידע הכרוך בה? מיום ליום אנחנו נותרים מיותמים מנושאי הלהבה הקדושה הזאת, ומשתקעים בחילוניות השוממת של מלאכת התרבות השגרתית, העסקנית והחשבונאית.
אולי יצטרף זכרו לאותה הילה צרופה של להבות קטנות וגדולות האופפות עדיין את מעשי האמנות שלנו, אותה חגורה אטמוספרית של שַׂרפי תרבות הסוגרת עלינו כמין מעטפת מגוננת, ובה בעת מפגיעה בנו שלא נשכח להעלות את מנחתנו היומית למותר האדם, לייחודה החד פעמי של אש היצירה.אפשר היה לפגוש בו בכל הזדמנות ובכל אתר, מבלי לחוש אשמה, מבלי לשאול את

(MORE...)
משתתפים: מירב גרובר, שירה גפן, לוסי דוביצ'יק, שולי רנד, רמי הויברגר, משה איבגי, אורנה פיטוסי,דן תורן,אול מזרחי,ניסים דיין,דליה קהן, קרן מור

Arakawa Toyozo, the Japanese Potter


Arakawa Toyozo, the great Japanese potter who lived and worked in the Mino area of Japan near Nagoya, made an important discovery in 1930. While digging at a 16th century kiln site in the hills around the small village of Ogaya, he discovered a tiny shino shard with a bamboo-shoot decoration.
"As though in a dream," he later wrote, "I worked until dusk, completely engrossed in the excavation and collection of other reference material. From that day until now, no other teabowl shard with a bamboo-shoot design has come to light.... The realization that the superb Momoyama tea-ceremony ware, including shino, was fired in the mountains surrounding my birthplace, and the fact that I, myself, had discovered the remains of this kiln, made an incredibly deep impression on me. It was as though I had been struck by a thunderbolt.
"I resolved to devote my life to the challenge of making shino and, in the eighth year of the Showa era (1933), I built my kiln and started my workshop at the site of the ruins of the Mutabora kiln at Ogaya. Since then, thirty years have already sped by. Today, when I see the popularity and respect enjoyed by the new-style shino, my heart is filled with emotion." (more...)

Monday, April 21, 2008

4 Seconds 30 Years Ago


Naomi Verchovsky and Ora Shaltiel in Lithography Studio, Ein Hod (about 1978)
אורה שאלתיאל ונעמי ורכובסקי בסדנת הליטוגראפיה ב עין הוד
1978

Sunday, April 20, 2008

The Art of Chinese Pottery




The origins of Chinese pottery and porcelain go back to distant antiquity. And from the masterful excellence of Chinese ceramics, we can deduce the painstaking labor that went into making them. In the National Palace Museum in Taipei, you will find many outstanding examples of nearly translucent egg-shell china. Painted on the surfaces of these Ming (1368-1644 A.D.) and Ch'ing (1644-1911 A.D.) period pieces are delicate flowers, grasses, birds, and beasts that make one sigh and wonder how such fine work was ever produced. (more...)

Ye Olde Stooges Pottery




Matri-Phony is the 63rd short subject starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.
The Stooges live in "Ancient Erysipelas," where they run Ye Olde Pottery shop. The powerful Emperor Octopus Grabus (Vernon Dent) is in search for a new wife again, with his sights set on redheads. Lovely Diana (Majorie Deanne), who has kindled Grabus' interest, hides out in the Stooges' shop. A palace guard catches onto the scheme and all are brought to Grabus. The boys help Diana escape, while Moe and Larry convince Curly to dress up as Octopus's prospective bride. These two then destroy the nearly-blind Grabus, who cannot see past his nose. The Stooges make a rapid escape by jumping out a palace windows, but end getting caught, upside-down, on the spears of three guards.(more...)

Apsveikumi: Postcards from Riga

Satmar Cobler from Bukhara ( бухарский сапожник )


On the 14 blocks of Lee Avenue, one of the neighborhood’s bustling commercial strips, the Hasidim’s unusual demand for shoe repair converges with a centuries-old cobbling tradition. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, a new wave of immigrant cobblers from Central Asia have taken on much of the city’s shoe repair, once largely the province of Italian immigrants.
Many of this new generation are Bukharan Jews who have come from Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. They bring with them a long cobbling heritage that is evident in shoe repair shops throughout the city, but especially on Lee Avenue, home to four busy shoe repair shops operated by Bukharan Jews.
Dovid Miyerov runs one of those shops, and he and Lee Avenue’s other cobblers are always particularly busy before Passover, which this year began last night. On the Monday before last year’s holiday, he and his assistant put in a 16-hour day. As the local Hasidim prepared to observe the coming Seders with unblemished footwear, the two cobblers were coping with a holiday rush.(more from nytimes)

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Theresienstadt: New Source of Copper

Semi-precious metal, as it happens, is everywhere. It can be found on church roofs; copper pipes run through many a house wall; and wiring is almost ubiquitous. Scrap metal thieves, though, have recently discovered a valuable new source of copper: Cemeteries and memorials.
This week, a particularly audacious bandit apparently made off with over 1,000 bronze plaques from the Holocaust memorial Theresienstadt just outside of Prague. The plaques were emblazoned with the names of prisoners who died at the Nazi concentration camp there -- and Czech police said this week that many of them had been discovered at a scrap yard in northern Czech Republic.Theresienstadt, known as Terezin in Czech, has indicated that the plaques are not likely to be replaced before the May 18 annual commemoration of Nazi victims there. During World War II, the camp at Theresienstadt served as a collection point for Jews from where they were deported to death camps further east. A fortress nearby served as a Gestapo prison
(read more...)

Julian The Putter


Julian Chagrin had to go to Tel Aviv to work on the wheel.
Ein Hod is not good enough..

Rare Books for Passover

What do you call a drummer with half a brain? Gifted

Researchers at the medical university Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University have now demonstrated a correlation between general intelligence and the ability to tap out a simple regular rhythm. They stress that the task subjects performed had nothing to do with any musical rhythmic sense but simply measured the capacity for rhythmic accuracy. Those who scored highest on intelligence tests also had least variation in the regular rhythm they tapped out in the experiment.
"It's interesting as the task didn't involve any kind of problem solving," says Fredrik Ullén at Karolinska Institutet, who led the study with Guy Madison at Umeå University. "Irregularity of timing probably arises at a more fundamental biological level owing to a kind of noise in brain activity(read moe...)

Dumb drummer jokes are the music world’s equivalent of dumb blond jokes. No, it’s not fair to say ALL drummers are stupid (in fact, most are very smart and talented) but there are enough marginally retarded percussionists that you just might meet more than a few.
What has an asshole and three legs? A drum stool.
What do you call a drummer with half a brain? Gifted.
How is a drum solo like a sneeze? You can tell it’s coming, but there isn’t anything you can do about it.
Did you hear about the bassist who locked his keys in his car? He had to break a window to get the drummer out.
What do you call a beautiful woman on the arm of a drummer? A tattoo.
Did you hear about the drummer who graduated high school? Me neither.
What do you call a kid with a set of drums? The poster child for birth control.
How do you make a drummer’s car more aerodynamic? Take the pizza sign off it.
What did the drummer say to the guitarist? “Do you want me to play too fast or too slow?”
What does a drummer NEVER say to a guitarist? “Hey, do you want to play one of my songs?”
What does a drummer use for contraception? His personality.


More jokes Here...

Friday, April 18, 2008

Lent and Russian Pickles

Having spent 13 years in Canada, Pasha Voytinsky moved back to Russia in 1994 to find much tolerance towards vegetarianism in the country of pelmeni and cutlets. Other vegetarian Muscovites have discovered that contrary to popular belief, Russians are far less of meat eaters than could be expected.
Whether due to the increasingly popular healthy lifestyle trend or to religious beliefs, Lent is becoming ever more popular in Russia. Every other person having lunch these spring days will claim that they are not having meat or fish, but fasting.
Having been born in Britain, Neil McGowan finds this astonishing. “I could easily think of 15 people who stick to the rules of Veliky Post [Lent] and don’t eat meat or fish. Come to think of it, it’s more like 50 percent of the people I know.”
In Russia, vegetarianism is often merged with the idea of Lent, but these two concepts are fundamentally different. “The essence of Lent is asceticism, curbing your desires. Hunger is a metaphor for a spiritual hunger,” said Voytinsky. “Vegetarianism is not about infringing on your interests, but about not hurting the little animals. Vegetarianism is utilitarian.” (read more...)

Tuvia Yuster 1931-2005: A Tribute to Ein Hod Artist


In what he does, Tuvia Yuster walks between the local and the universal. In touching the philosophical polarity that characterizes our lives, originality compared to infinity, his works raise questions of identity and belonging. As an artist, he does not completely ascribe himself to formal abstract or figurative sculpture. At the same time, Yuster finds the main inspiration for his work in the Bible. He therefore sees himself as "a sculptor of the holy and the profane". Tuvia Iuster lived and workied in the artists' village Ein Hod since the late 1959's.
Director: Emanuel Rechtman
טוביה יוסטר 1931-2005
"האמן מעין הוד"
The Final Curtain...

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Tuvia Yuster and the Golden Calf


It is a scene etched into Jewish historical memory: the people are celebrating – dancing madly around the statue of a golden calf to the hypnotizing cadence of drums. Many are dressed like ancient Israelites: in caftans and long head coverings, colored and bejeweled. They dance and whirl around the statue as the music reaches a frenzy, and a voice thunders from above: “Halt! It is an abomination! Oy vay! You should be ashamed! Boy are you going to get it!!”
This is the imposing figure of Moses, bearded and enraged, righteously indignant, brandishing the two tablets of the Law like weapons, although in this case the tablets are made of styrofoam. The large crowd in the village amphitheater parts, and Moses makes his way down the steep steps in the direction of the calf.
The people fall silent, shocked, chastised. With the appearance of Moses they have suddenly realized the error of their ways. It wasn’t their fault. The organizers of the party convinced them to dance and make merry. Moses, played by one of our village artists, walks silently among the throng, glowering. He approaches the golden statue and raises his staff. The staff comes down. He gives the calf such a “zbang” on its head that it won’t remember if it’s Pesach or Purim.(read more on Ein Hod Site)

In what he does, Tuvia Yuster walks between the local and the universal. In touching the philosophical polarity that characterizes our lives, originality compared to infinity, his works raise questions of identity and belonging. As an artist, he does not completely ascribe himself to formal abstract or figurative sculpture. At the same time, Iuster finds the main inspiration for his work in the Bible. He therefore sees himself as "a sculptor of the holy and the profane".

טוביה יוסטר ועגל הזהב של עין הוד

As a Sheep Before Her Shearers is Dumb


A documentary presentation with Ron Cantrell about the Modern-day Samaritan community celebrating Passover April 30, 2007. Filmed on location at Mt. Gerizim in Samaria Israel with 4,000 observers, Ron walks you through their ancient customs and sacrificial ceremonies as was done in the Temple Period times.
An American evangelical pastor and his wife who have lived in Israel for nearly two decades were told to leave the country over suspicion of mission activities.
The couple – Ron Cantrell, 59, and Carol Cantrell, 54 – was told that they have two weeks to leave after their application for permanent residency was rejected,
Interior Ministry officials say the decision resulted from suspicion that Cantrell was participating in missionary work – which Israel bans. However, the pastor has denied the accusation.The evangelical pastor said he could continue to live in Israel under the tourist visa

At the conclusion of this service seven lambs were brought. They were all males of the first year. All were carefully examined by two men, one a priest and one a layman. One lamb was found to have a torn ear, and was rejected. Then at a given signal the six lambs were killed by having their throats cut, the people shouting in unison, "There is but one God!" One priest and one layman did the killing, and a third man caught the blood in a vessel, and p. 200 hastened to the camp, where each of the forty tents was smeared with the blood. The photograph shows the blood on the door posts; it was smeared also on the lintel. A bunch of hyssop was used in this service, and the whole proceeding was as commanded in Exodus xii. 22: "And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason."
A pathetic curiosity held the spectator's attention as the lambs were killed. Not one of them made a sound. They were led as lambs to the slaughter, and they opened not their mouth. The Samaritans do not recognize the Hebrew prophets, but the visitor was forcibly reminded of Isaiah liii. 7: "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."

From "The Samaritan Passover" Written by William E. Barton and published in 1908.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Kosher Pricks


A leading Israeli rabbi has ruled that the anti-impotency pill Viagra can be taken by Jews on Passover, reversing a previous ban.
Viagra had been deemed not kosher since 1998 under strict dietary laws over the week-long Jewish spring holiday.
Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu said the pill can be swallowed if it is encased in a special soluble kosher capsule first.
Viagra’s Israeli manufacturers said they sought an answer after receiving queries from worried religious men.

Happy Matzah!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Bullshit Sex with Penn and Teller


Sex, sex, sex, sometimes it seems as if that's all you hear about these days. And that's often what many people think about. In this episode of Bullshit, Penn and Teller express how sick and tired they are of hearing this. Women want larger breats to look more attractive, so of course, a business would made of this desire for breast enlargement products. And men feel insecure of the size of their penis and so they also buy into items such as pills, and other products that would make their penis larger. Find out why all these products are out just to make money and that they don't really work at all, on this episode of Penn and Teller: Bullshit!

“Sex, Sex, Sex,” is adorned by a lot of beautiful, naked men and women milling about while Penn and Teller chase down sundry hucksters, including a hypnotherapist who claims she can enlarge naughty bits through subconscious suggestion.

1,000 Rare Haggadahs

The central Chabad-Lubavitch library in New York made 1,000 Passover Haggadahs, many of them rare, available on the Internet for browsing by the public. The Agudas Chasidei Chabad Library has one of the largest collections of the Passover orders of service in the world.
Those available online offer a snapshot of Jewish publishing history from the Middle Ages to the modern era. The oldest was printed in Berlin in 1527, while the most recent Haggadah was published in 1960 in Tel Aviv.
The online collection gives a virtual tour of the Jewish Diaspora throughout the generations. Haggadahs printed in the 1800's in Zhitomer, Ukraine; Königsberg, Germany; Prague; Vienna; London; Paris; Jerusalem; Biłgoraj, Poland; and New York track the movement and growth of Jewish communities across the world. Translations of the Haggadah in Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Ladino, Persian, Russian and Yiddish attest to the lingual integration of Jews into societies spanning the globe.(more...)

Jack Pajack and Ein Hod


מכונית שידור בכפר עין הוד
Jack Pajack and Ein Hod rulers cruel huntdown on Mazar TV on ZVTV Transmitter
מסמך מזעזע של פגיע בחופש הביטוי בעין הוד

Tiny Antenna

Sweat ducts in human skin act like an array of tiny antennas that pick up radiation at specific frequencies, according to researchers. The finding might one day be used in medical and security technologies to assess a person's mental state from a distance.A team of researchers in Israel has shown that sweat ducts pick up radiation at frequencies of about 100 gigahertz — the so-called extremely high frequency or EHF range, lying between microwaves and terahertz radiation. The antenna behaviour is all down to the ducts' curious shape: they thread through the epidermis as regular helices. Filled with electrically conductive sweat, these channels act rather like coils of wire that absorb radiation across the millimetre and sub-millimetre wavelength band.
Yuri Feldman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his colleagues directed a beam of EHF radiation onto the skin of the palms of subjects who had been jogging for 20 minutes, and measured the radiation that was reflected back. They found a strong band of absorption that was not seen before exercise.
The researchers note in a paper that the findings could serve as the basis for long-distance sensing technology that reads various physiological and emotional parameters, and could lead to the development of a variety of medical and security applications. (read more...)

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Males Caught Ejaculating on Tongue Orchids


Orchids are known for toying with males. Many species produce female-mimicking perfumes that lure males into spreading pollen. But most insects merely touch down on the flowers.
Gaskett noticed, however, that dupe wasps (Lissopimpla excelsa) spent a lot of time around tongue orchids. Many left a visible blob on the flower after flying away. "We decided to check if they were wasting their sperm on the flowers,"
Next, Gaskett set up field experiments to determine how often the wasps "had sex" with the flowers – and whether they eventually learned from their follies.
On first visiting a tongue orchid, nearly three-quarters of wasps left sperm on the flowers. But after repeated visits, most insects stopped copulating with the flower.
"They are perhaps not really educated about what a real female looks like, and they make a bad decision," Gaskett says.
Gaskett thinks that the peculiar reproductive lives of the wasps might explain why males have not evolved to discriminate against orchids. Female wasps reproduce asexually – that is, without male help – to spawn males, while sexual reproduction between both sexes produces only females.
"If you are the female and you miss out on mating because your male is out with an orchid, you can still reproduce," she says.(from New Scientists)

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Those Evil Trashy Fungal Balls

German scientists are warning householders of the health dangers posed by storing organic waste, saying exposure to it, particularly to the moulds that develop as the material decays, can cause skin problems and even breathing difficulties.
Harald Morr, a leading pneumologist, who is also chairman of the German Lung Foundation, said studies showed that airborne mould spores from organic waste could lead to allergic reactions, asthma attacks, hayfever-like symptoms and itchy skin lesions.
Christian Witt, a professor at the clinic of infectology and pneumology at Charitié hospital in Berlin, said that while healthy people with a strong immune system were less at risk when breathing in fungi and bacteria from decaying matter, transplant patients, people undergoing chemotherapy and those prone to bronchial infections should avoid proximity to rubbish bins altogether. "People with weakened immune systems should avoid contact with mouldy rubbish," he said.
Regine Szewzyk, a microbiologist at Berlin's environmental agency, said: "Basically it should be left to healthy people to take the rubbish out."(read more in Guardian)

David Ilan: The PeaceDigger?

Over the past five years, UCLA archaeologist Ran Boytner and USC archaeologist Lynn Dodd have served as facilitators for a team of prominent Israeli and Palestinian archaeologists who have negotiated the first-ever framework for the disposition of the region's archaeological treasures following the future establishment of a Palestinian state. The team's recommendations, which can be implemented in the context of a two-state peace solution, were presented to Israeli archaeologists at an April 8 conference in Jerusalem

Among the document's specific recommendations:
Repatriation of artifacts excavated since 1967 in the Occupied Territories to the state in which they were originally found. Currently, the Israeli Archaeological Authority and the archaeology staff officer of the Israeli military's Civil Administration maintain control of all archaeological material excavated in Israel and some from the West Bank.
More than tripling of the footprint of that part of Jerusalem that would qualify for special protections as a UNESCO World Heritage Site to include the city's boundaries during the 10th century, or roughly the era of the Crusades. Currently, such status extends to a one-third-square-mile area that includes the Temple Mount, the Western Wall and the walls of Jerusalem's more than 2,000-year-old Old City.
Ceding control over archaeological sites and artifacts to the state in which they reside and prohibiting the destruction of archaeological sites because of their cultural or religions affiliations. Currently, archaeological authorities on both sides of the conflict have been accused of being less careful about protecting and excavating archaeological sites and artifacts from cultures that are not their own.
Consideration of archaeological sites that will straddle future international borders proposed under a peace plan to ensure that these borders do not divide or harm archaeological remains.
Support for the establishment of museums, labs and storehouses for the protection, study and care of archaeological heritage where they currently do not exist, so that repatriation of materials to territories occupied by Israel in 1967 does not stall for the lack of such facilities.
Representing the Israeli side are Rafael Greenberg of Tel Aviv University, and David Ilan, director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archeology at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.
The Palestinian team includes Ghattas Sayes and Nazmi al-Jubeh. One member of each of the teams declined to be identified for fear of political or professional reprisal or intimidation.(read more...)

Treasure Hunt: Pottery in Ein Hod (heb) עין הוד


מחפשים את המטמון בקדרות נעמי וזאב ורכובסקי בעין הוד
תמיד פתוח

Friday, April 11, 2008

16 photographs of Bialik (his last year)


Ch. N. Bialik album
Bialik died in Vienna, Austria, on July 3, 1934, following a failed prostate operation. He was buried in Tel Aviv: a large mourning procession followed from his home on the street named after him, to his final resting place
This small album contains 16 photographs of Bialik made in the last year of his life
שש עשרה תמונות ח.נ. ביאליק בשנת חייו האחרונה
ח.נ. ביאליק : אלבום / התמונות צלמו ע"י הצלם שוכמן. -- תל-אביב : הוצאת "אילה" על-ידי "דביר", תרצ"ה 1935.

Ein Hod, Mona Lisa's Smile and the Best Hummus in the World


Again you'll visit Naomi Verchovsky's and studio and Ein Hod artist's village
Bonus: Sex life of Sheep
חיי המין של כבש בכפר עין הוד
קדרות של נעמי ורכובסקי
חומוס אבו יעקב - הטוב בישראל

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Those Horny Danish Pigs


One little-known amateur scientist, Princess Marie Bonaparte, the great-grandniece of Napoleon, was determined to explain her own nonexistent relationship between intercourse and orgasm by physically measuring the distance from clitoris to vagina (typically about an inch) in 243 subjects.




Interestingly, modern researchers believe, for the moment, this study remains valid and reliable.But as with any history of health or medicine, the earliest research is often the most astonishing in its quackery. In 1491, Roach gleefully recounts, it was believed that after making penises disappear, witches would collect the offending organs in a bird's nest, where they continued to subsist on a diet of oats and corn.(read More...)
Bonk
The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
By Mary Roach

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Nothing Else to Loose


As a professor of computer sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, Randy F. Pausch expected students to pay attention to his lectures. He never expected that the rest of the world would listen, too.
Dr. Pausch, 47, is dying of pancreatic cancer, a disease that kills 95 percent of its victims, usually within months of diagnosis. Except for a pill bottle on the table in front of him, there were no outward signs of the deadly tumors growing inside him. Though he had just recently recovered from heart and kidney failure, he looked boyish, with a red knit shirt and a head of thick dark-brown hair.
Last fall, after doctors told him that he would probably have no more than six months of good health, Dr. Pausch stepped down from his academic duties and relocated to be closer to his family. But he decided to give one last lecture to a roomful of students and faculty members at Carnegie Mellon.
The lecture was not about cancer. Instead, he says, it was simply a father’s effort to digest a lifetime of advice for his children into one talk — a talk that Dr. Pausch knew he would not be around long enough to deliver in person. (more from nyTimes)
Thanks to Cliff

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Marcel Janco: 50% Dadaist


Marcl Janco speaks abou Ein Hod, Dada and Art
מרסל(משה) ינקו מדבר על עין הוד, דאדא ואמנות

Monday, April 7, 2008

Gadi Taub on Naomi's Wheel in Ein Hod


A day in Ein hod with Gadi Taub
Potting with Naomi Verchovsky with Lisa's help
גדי טאוב על האובניים בעין הוד
נעמי וליסה ורכובסקי כוכבות הטלביזיה

Leonardo's Smile


We all know Leonardo Da Vinci's life and work -- but until now, we have not known what he looked like as a man. Illustrator and activist Siegfried Woldhek used some thoughtful image-analysis techniques to find what he believes is the true face of Leonardo. Announcing his discovery for the first time at last month's TED conference, he walks us through exactly how he did it.
The work of illustrator Siegfried Woldhek is a familiar sight in the European press. His witty pen and sharp eye for faces helps him capture political and literary figures in his home country, the Netherlands, and around the world (he estimates he's drawn 1,100 faces). He's also an accomplished illustrator of nature, and was the longtime CEO of the Dutch branch of the World Wildlife Fund.
Woldhek is the founder of nabuur.com, "the global neighbor network." On nabuur.com, villages in developing communities can connect with volunteers and resources online throughout the world -- sort of a Match.com that pairs communities with the people who'd like to get involved.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Ein Hod : Neverending Story 1993


"Life has changed and we have changed accordingly," says Huss. "The veterans had a vision to create a place where artists could be together, inspire each other, and also make a living. I have a hard time believing that today people want to live here because of the artistic society, but mainly for the beauty of the place. The rest is a bonus and sometimes also an excuse. Many people who have moved here participated in courses and after two or three weeks became artists. Today being an artist is pretty easy. In one village there is a cheese industry, and in another there is an art industry.
"The vibe of the community has also changed. When my husband and I arrived here 30 years ago, there were parties on holidays, the restaurant was a meeting place, we were all together - it was spontaneous. Today that doesn't exist. Ein Hod has become a different communal town
."
(read more...)

A Woman Over the Hood

The study showed that when heterosexual men are exposed to positive emotional stimuli — in this case, erotic photos of a man and woman — an area of the brain associated with anticipation of reward is stimulated. In the immediate aftermath of that stimulation, men are consistently more likely to take bigger financial risks than they otherwise would, said Brian Knutson, assistant professor of psychology.
"This is the first study to demonstrate that emotional stimuli can influence financial risk-taking," said Knutson, lead author of a paper describing the research in the current issue of NeuroReport. The hard evidence was gathered by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of participants' brains as they viewed photographs of positive, negative or neutral subjects and then had to quickly make a decision to choose one of two levels of financial risk in a required gamble.(more sex and money)

Janco's Junk: German Dada


By the end of World War I, Dada was very popular in the German cities Berlin, Cologne and Hanover, expressing the view of many Germans at the time that the war was folly. The artists included: Raoul Hausmann, John Heartfield, Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, Otto Dix, and George Grosz (Dix and Grosz later became part of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement). The German artists released the issued Dada publications: Club Dada, Der Dada, Jedermann sein eigner Fussball ("Everyman His Own Football"), and Dada Almanach.
This documentary concerns the contributions of German artists to the Dadaist movement. Created in 1916, the organizers rejected previous convention and delighted in nihilistic satire in painting, sculpture and literature. Comparisons are made between the movement and the political and social upheaval at the time of the release of this feature (1969). - Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
Credit Helmut Herbst - Director; Helmut Herbst - Cinematographer; Helmut Herbst - Screenwriter
For the end of Part 1 and Part 2 click HERE

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Russian Books





Link

On 27 May 1795 Catherine II gave her formal approval to a design for the building of the Imperial Public Library submitted by the architect Yegor Sokolov. Her officials began to implement the decision within days. Three issues of the St Petersburg Gazette carried an announcement inviting tenders. Building materials were acquired, workers hired and funds made available from the treasury by Catherine's verbal command. Construction of the first building in Russia specially intended to house a library began as early as June 1795. The site chosen lay in the very centre of the capital, at the junction of Nevsky Prospekt and one of the main cross streets, not far from the imperial palaces and closer still to the busy shopping complex of Gostiny Dvor.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Hypothalamus,Hypogastric nerve and Better Orgasm

Orgasm is a compelling, brief event that is an integration of cognitive, emotional, somatic, visceral, and neural processes. Modern definitions of orgasm recognise and incorporate all these levels. Despite bodily differences and some different neural events at orgasm, women’s and men’s descriptions of the basic feeling of orgasm are indistinguishable from each other. The scientific study of orgasm in humans was initially focused on measurement of such somatic and visceral events, as exemplified by the pioneering studies of Masters and Johnson in men and women.
In recent decades orgasm research has entered a new era. The widespread use of antidepressants and antipsychotics, and their significant and mainly untoward effects on sexual responses and orgasm in humans, has provided clues not only to the neurotransmitter bases of orgasm but also to the development of new drugs that can avoid those side-effects. Furthermore, new technology such as fMRI and PET has been applied to the study of orgasm, enabling us to begin to identify the underlying brain systems toward understanding its compelling nature.(click HERE for better orgasm understanding)

Naomi Verchovsky and "Voila" Onion Soup Bowl


Naomi Verchovsky in her's Ein Hod studio
Soup bowls for Haifa's "Voila" restaurant
נעמי ורכובסקי עין הוד

A day trip to Ein Hod טיול לעין הוד


A day trip to Ein Hod
טיול לעין הוד

A Street in Ein Hod (heb)


רחוב בעין הוד
עין הוד ישראל

If My Grandmother Had Wheels . . .

Counterfactual history, also sometimes referred to as virtual history, is a recent form of historiography which attempts to answer "what if" questions known as counterfactuals. It seeks to explore history and historical incidents by means of extrapolating a timeline in which certain key historical events did not happen or had an outcome which was different from that which did in fact occur.(more from Wikipedia)

During the turbulent period immediately following the Great War, Disraelia was several times attacked by its neighbors, but these attacks were easily repelled owing to its own superior organization and modern equipment. More serious was the separatist strife inside the country in the late 1920s and the early 1930s. Matters came to a head with the assassination in 1929 of the president of Disraelia, Emanuel Marx (a grandson of Karl Marx, the Socialist thinker) by a group of Jewish fanatics who demanded the division of the country and the expulsion of all non-Jews. These extremists were harshly dealt with. Their crime was considered not just political murder but high treason; twenty of the ringleaders were executed following the verdict of a military court appointed during the state of emergency. About 150 of their militant followers were expelled from the country for perpetuity. Later there was an attempted coup in the Kurdish-Arab sector which also aimed at the partition of the country. This extremist group had tried to engage in terrorism during a few weeks but found no mass support. The main figures were apprehended and shot; appeals for clemency were disregarded.

Disraelia: A Counterfactual History, 1848-2008
by Walter Laqueur

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Jack Pajack from MazarTV on ZVTV

Removal of Objects Through Vagina


On March 26, 2008, surgeons at UC San Diego Medical Center removed an inflamed appendix through a patient's vagina, a first in the United States. Following the 50-minute procedure, the patient, Diana Schlamadinger, reported only minor discomfort. Removal of diseased organs through the body's natural openings offers patients a rapid recovery, minimal pain, and no scarring. Key to these surgical clinical trials is collaboration with medical device companies to develop new minimally-invasive tools.
The procedure, called Natural Orifice Translumenal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES), involves passing surgical instruments through a natural orifice, such as the mouth or vagina, to remove a diseased organ such as an appendix or gallbladder. Only one incision is made through the belly button for the purpose of inserting a two millimeter camera into the abdominal cavity so the surgeons can safely access the surgical site.(read more...)

Marcel Janco and Ein Hod

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Little (Ein Hod) Women נשים קטנות-עין הוד


jack Pajack and ZVTV video workshop
ein hod end of 90's
עין הוד