Shimon Vaknin, a four species vendor from Har Nof got into the business some 25 years ago after a fellow yeshiva student lured him in, and he's been selling every holiday season since. The four species are three branches and one fruit – date palm, myrtle, willow and citron (etrog) – vital to religious Jews' observance of the Sukkot holiday. Throughout the holiday, the four species are gathered together and shaken in all directions. There are many traditional and mystical explanations for this commandment (there better be, because it's an odd one), including one which compares each species to a different type of Jew. Holding all four species together symbolizes unity, with each Jew playing his or her own unique role.

Just a generation ago, few people owned their own sets of the four species, and now it seems to be the standard – almost every observant Jew buys his or her own set. Throughout the week of Sukkot, people can be seen carrying their lulavs (date palms) all around Jerusalem. What changed? Is it just that we're richer now? Were the farming processes or the import channels perfected? In Europe, people lived in cities far from the fields, so there weren't that many of them available. People had to travel far to get them. The etrogim especially were very hard to get. You had to travel very far and even then they weren't so easy to acquire. Rabbis used to sell their whole houses to get one etrog. The commandment of the four species is a very important commandment and the rabbis would go all out to get one.

In places like Morocco, Tunis and Tangier, the Jews lived near fields, but the etrogim were still fairly expensive, so there, instead of one per city, there was on per family. In Europe, often whole towns had to share. But in both places, people used to share their etrogim to some extent. Today, with improved transportation, farming techniques etc., more people have their own. Today, etrogim cost anywhere from 10 NIS to $500 depending on their quality. People want the nicer ones because a pure, unblemished etrog symbolizes a pure heart.

We know that in the days leading up to Sukkot, you're busy selling the four species, and over Sukkot, you're probably recovering from that rush. What four species-related work must be done during the rest of the year to maintain your business? What work outside the four species field do you do? I learn Torah all year. I'm not really involved in this work during the year. Farmers grow all the species and we got out there once in....(for more questions with Shimon Vaknin, four species vendor, click here).

 

Shaanan Street, lead singer of hip-hop groove collective Hadag Nachash, which recently won international acclaim after scoring big with the Zohan soundtrack, is a major player in the Jerusalem cultural scene. As the band's last Jerusalem hold-out, Shaanan is making the holy city a little hipper, one venue at a time. As the band prepares for its November tour of the US, Jerusalemite caught up with Shaanan and spoke with him about his various initiatives. 

How did you get involved at Beit Avi Chai? Has it been hard to maintain Chet7's alternative arts credibility? Beit Avi Chai called me and asked if I wanted to be the artistic director of their Chet7 Saturday night series, and I said yes. I never tried to make the series alternative or mainstream. Basically, I just wanted to put on music that I like. Some of my choices were vetoed, but basically it's very important to Beit Avi Chai that I approve all of the musicians included in the series.

What's your role at the Reznik pub? What are your goals over there? I'm a partner there. Reznik is a student pub on Mt. Scopus with live music. We're trying to establish some campus life. Jerusalem doesn't really have any student bars, and with Reznik we're trying to establish that type of vibe. It's actually closed right now because the university is on vacation, but we'll be opening up again in November.

With your solo career, Hadag Nachash's recording and touring schedules in Israel and abroad, and your various nightlife initiatives, is it hard to keep all of your hats in order? How do you balance it all? I have to add something to your list there: I also have to balance my family. I have a wife and two sons. And the truth is, I don't know how I balance it all. It’s a daily struggle. In terms of work, Hadag Nachash takes priority and everything else, the bars and the solo projects come after that. I think all parents have to struggle with balancing work and family issues, so in terms of that, my life's not too different.

With all your various projects, it sometimes seems that your career's successes has instilled in you a sense of responsibility – that you're trying to give something back to the alternative arts and nightlife-starved Jerusalemites. Is that the case? Not really. I'm trying to do my work in a responsible manner, but I don’t do it out of a sense of responsibility. When I am involved in projects, I try to make them projects that I would like and I would appreciate. So there is a sense of responsibility in my work, but I don't think to myself, "Oh the most responsible thing I can do right now is open a bar."....(for more questions and answers with Hadag Nachash frontman Shaanan Street click here).

 

Moshe Levi, owner and proprietor of Slow Moshe, a Nachalot landmark, went into the bar business because he thought it would get him girls. After serving as an Egged tour bus driver in a previous incarnation, a slipped disk moved Moshe out of the driver's seat and onto the bar stool. Moshe opened his bar close to his home in Jerusalem's Nachalot neighborhood (the easier to stumble back after a night of drinking...) in late 1999. Three years ago, Moshe opened a second branch in Tel Aviv, although the Tel Aviv Slow Moshe is on hiatus until October 1st. Guess the Tel Aviv regulars will just have to drive up to little old Jerusalem to get their drink on... 

Our first question is one you probably get all the time. What makes you deserving of the name Slow Moshe? At first I wanted to call the bar barboor (swan), because I had just got back from the United States and I thought the swan was a beautiful animal. There were a bunch living under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and I liked that association. I also liked the sound of it and the fact that it worked on two levels – as the word swan in Hebrew and as bar-boor, bar and boor, in English. I even started applying to the municipality for a permit for that name, but a friend said to me "In English, there's an expression 'slow motion' and you're slow and you're Moshe, so that would be a great gimmick." So I decided to go with Slow Moshe instead.

There have been a lot of changes in Nachlaot in past few years. How have the development and the gentrification of Nachlaot affected your business? They've been good. I started the gentrification on this street (Nissim Becher), I woke up this street. Jerusalem needs parties, it needs things to do, it doesn’t just need bars. Each year, because of Slow Moshe and our street parties (which we sometimes hold even without a permit), the street developed and now Nissim Becher is like a midrachov (pedestrian walkway), it's like Sheinken Street in Tel Aviv, but it's Jerusalem style, which means it quiets down on Shabbat. I want this vibe to grow, I want there to be even more midrachov style here.

Your bar is much more of a local pub/community center than other bars in central Jerusalem. In addition to holiday parties and themed nights with reggae DJ sets and the like, you have clothing swaps, art exhibitions, and the bar will soon be putting up a Sukka for the upcoming holiday.  There was even a minyan that met there sporadically a couple of years ago. How did the bar end up in this role? I don't know. I love nightlife and I love when people enjoy themselves, and I also want to make money so I'm keep thinking up new ideas. A lot of my clients are students from Bezalel, so we started doing art exhibits here in the bar. I really love art, although....(click here for the full interview).

 

With the High Holidays almost upon us, Jerusalemite has decided to go rabbinic with this week's interview, speaking with Rabbi Chaim Brovender, long-time Jerusalem resident and founder of the Web Yeshiva, which is bringing the Torah of Jerusalem to the far reaches of the globe. The Web Yeshiva is headquartered on HaNassi St., next to the President's house, though Rabbi Brovender is quick to point out that he's not sure the President knows they're there. Prior to his involvement with the Web Yeshiva, Rabbi Brovender was the founder and  long-time Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Hamivtar in Efrat.

Elul and the High Holidays can be felt in the air in Jerusalem probably more than anywhere else. How would you characterize what goes on here for those who are not familiar? In Jerusalem, the world operates according to the holidays. It's not as though people run into them. It takes a long time to get to Rosh Hashanah, it takes a long time to get to Yom Kippur, and that process if felt here. Sukkot is sort of like a festival in Jerusalem, everyone has a sukkah. In other places, the ambience isn't there, you have to find a little corner to go do the mitzvot [ritual commandments], but here everyone is doing them and everyone who comes here feels that. Having lived in Jerusalem for a long time, I never cease to wonder how seriously everyone takes these holiday-related mitzvot. Even the act of buying a lulav and etog [part of the four species used on the Sukkot holiday] has a festival-type atmosphere here. The whole world becomes that world. There is no other world. That's unique to Jerusalem.

Perhaps as a throwback to the good old days of pilgrimage to the ancient Temple, the autumn Holidays are a time when Jews visit Jerusalem from all over the world. What's the impact of this phenomenon on the cultural landscape of the city from your worldview? It creates a responsibility. The people of Jerusalem, whether they like it or not, are responsible for creating a center, an example of the way things could be and the way things should be. People can celebrate these holidays anywhere, but not like [the way they're celebrated] in Jerusalem. So Jerusalem becomes not just a place to go on vacation....(click here for the full interview).

Laizy Shapira, 32, spent his childhood in Philadelphia, where his father served as a shaliach of the Jewish Agency. After moving back to Karnei Shomron, he served in a Hesder program for yeshiva studies combined with IDF service. Shapira graduated from Jerusalem's Ma'ale School of Television, Film and the Arts, the only communications production program in the country targeted towards observant Jews, when he was in his late 20s.

Professional doors began to open for Shapira in the years that followed, largely thanks to acclaim he received for two of his student projects, Eicha and Saving Private Finklestein, but he soon found himself struggling, with day jobs cleaning houses and giving tours at the Kotel Tunnels and at the Davidson Archeological Park. But an association with producer Yonatan Aroch eventually landed Shapira a deal to co-create, co-write (with long-time collaborator Chava Divon) and direct Srugim (literally, "knitted"), a surprise hit for Yes TV.

The show, which focuses on the lives of five central 30-something religious Jerusalemite bachelor and bachelorettes in a manner that is refreshing and clever, has taken Israeli pop culture by storm. When not attending screenings of episodes at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, Shapira is working on plans to hopefully export a translated version of the show to North America and to possibly air Season One on Israel's Channel 2 this winter – all while developing ideas for Season Two, which should air by the end of 2009.

It seems like Jerusalem is such a presence in the show that it's almost a character. How would you describe the city's special role in the series? Both me and Chava really love this city and wanted to show its beauty. People always say there's something different about Jerusalem – that it's so friendly and laid back. The holiness is part of it. Jerusalem has more simplicity, less pretension and a lot of beauty.

I'm glad we were able to shoot the first season in the winter, with the soft light on the stones. We were in The Valley of the Cross in November, and I saw the leaves changing colors, which I had never noticed really happening before, and the church was in the background. It was so different – like out of a European movie.

There's something very Jerusalemite about the sweaters and scarves - something about Jerusalem's character, even in the weather, that reflects in people's personae, all huddled up.

How did your experiences at Ma'ale bring you to where you are in your career now? Ma'ale was a good atmosphere for me to be in while I was there. It was very supportive.

There are two distinct religious dating scenes in Jerusalem: the sabras and the English speakers. Jerusalem is known as a hotbed for English-speaking immigrants, yet aside from the young woman who was willing to lend her tefillin in the first episode, there haven't been any English-speaking characters in the show. Was that a conscious decision? It was. I can't promise anything, but I really want to try to do it in the second season.

I think it's a format thing. We didn't want to confuse people.  There are so many different [singles] scenes, within the German Colony, Nachlaot, etc., but we wanted to establish what we did with the characters first.

I didn't think the Anglos would identify with the show. It's kind of a different world. But they love it! I ended up at a shabbat meal with English speakers recently, and they were.... (click here for the full interview).

Social activist and Israeli Black Pantheress Ayala Sabag was born in Jerusalem's Musrara neighborhood, in the same house where the Israeli Black Panthers got their start. (Ayala's late brother, Sa’adia Martziano, was one of the movement's founders). Sabag continues to fight on the frontlines of the Mizrahi struggle, recently reviving the Israeli Black Panther movement, placing it once again on Israel's political radar. Sabag also fights for social equality for women and worked with Eli Yishai to defeat the Wisconsin Plan. Last year, as part of her work with the homeless, she helped to house 30 families. Because of her activism, Sabag has found it hard to find employment, but she remains committed to the cause, which has become an inseparable part of her life.

Was the Black Panthers a name you chose for yourself, or was it a name that came from the outside which you then adopted as your own? What considerations went into accepting the name, and what are some of the good and bad aspects of having aligned yourselves with the militant African American struggle? Sa'adia Martziano chose the name Black Panthers. In 1971, Angela Davis, one of the American Black Panthers, came to visit Israel where she met up with my brother, who then adopted the name. The inspiration behind the American Black Panthers was Kunta Kinte – they didn't want to be slaves any more, and they had to use violence because no one was listening to them. They were fighting for their lives. They had no choice. But it was a bad scene [in the United States] in the 1970s. It was a bad scene here too. Mizrahi immigrants were separated from their families, and they weren't sent to ulpan. These are people who kissed the ground when they came to Israel, only to be abused by the government. Is this how we reward Zionists?

The movement has changed since the 1970s though. We are not violent anymore. The time has come to move beyond violence. We need to talk face to face. We do sometimes encounter problems because of our name, but we are no longer violent. We use Torah, we use respect. When the Israeli Black Panthers first began, most of the movement's members were male. Now I'm in charge of the Israeli Black Panthers, and I am fighting for women's place in the movement. Respectful treatment is not a privilege. It's a right.

What are some of your personal memories of clashes with the police from the spring of 1971? We clashed with the police from 1971 through 1973. But I remember violence even before that. I remember violence directed at my parents; my brothers were constantly being stopped by the police. When the Black Panther movement began, we would just show up at a protest and already the police would be upon us. Even Golda Meir said "The Black Panthers are not nice people." She said this before we even did anything.

When the Panthers entered the arena, immigrants from Arab lands were unfairly perceived by the Ashekenazi establishment as brutish and unruly. Would you say that you basically fought fire with fire, and did it work? There is some truth to this claim. They said we're a certain way and we turned this perception on its head. But on the other hand, the establishment used violence and force against us, and we responded in kind. I think our strategy worked. The Panther movement helped begin the process of.... (click here for the full interview).

Eetta Prince-Gibson, editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Report first showed up in Israel as a fresh-faced high school graduate some 30 years ago. After serving in the IDF during the Yom Kippur War, Prince-Gibson made her home in Jerusalem, leaving only to pursue a Master's Degree in Social Work at Yeshiva University. A married mother of two, Prince-Gibson also holds a BSW from and is currently working on a PhD in Political Psychology at Hebrew University. She lives in Jerusalem's Abu Tor neighborhood.

Without getting into politics and various nationalist agendas too much, what do you see as the big issues facing the cultural future of Jerusalem? How can we keep the young people from moving away? How can we ensure that the city maintains at least a minimal critical mass of vibrant and creative movers and shakers? The first thing we need to do is recognize Jerusalem's diversity as an advantage, as something we celebrate and not something we fight against. This means educating our children from the beginning, from kindergarten, to appreciate this diversity. I used to take my own children shopping for the four species before Succot and to kasher our dishes for Pesach in Mea Shearim so that they had an opportunity to enjoy different parts of the city.

I don't know if this is realistic in the sense that we are in a battle as to how we want the future of the city to look. On the other hand, the reason people are leaving is not so much because of the Charedim. It's because of housing and because of jobs. But even people that don't leave feel a down factor. They aren't pleased, they aren't enjoying the city's diversity. We need to listen to what people are saying, to the reasons they are listing on surveys as to why they are leaving. We need to provide jobs, schools, reasonable housing, and we need to invest in getting people to love the city. Jerusalem is depressed, and I think that's probably our biggest problem right now (apart from our problems with the Palestinians). There's a sense that we are living in a backwater here and things are only going to get worse. People feel that they can tolerate it now, but they don't hold out much hope for the future. As a mother of teenage children who may not choose to live here when they grow up, it's depressing, and it's something we need to battle.

Both The Jerusalem Post and The Jerusalem Report have brand names with the word Jerusalem as an identifying element, but when it comes to how that word defines the jurisdiction of both publications, it's more of a symbol of all of Israel and all of the Jewish world than a specific city. You, on the other hand, came to this position following a stint as the editor of the Post's local In Jerusalem section. How does the tension between local and more cosmopolitan issues inform your work, and do you feel that it's possible to keep a global audience interested with content only focused on Jerusalem-specific cultural matters? At the same time that I am editor of The Jerusalem Report, I am also a resident of the city. As a Jerusalem resident, I think we suffer from a deficit of democracy here precisely because Jerusalem often becomes a symbol that everyone uses in terms of the conflict in Israel. People forget that we are also a functioning city that needs to deal with the prosaic needs any city faces; garbage removal, proper planning, etc. Everyone is so busy talking about Jerusalem as a symbol that they forget that it's also a real city with real people and real.... (click here for the full interview).

Descended from a long line of Christian pastors on his father's side and rabbis on his mother's (the two met while hitchhiking to a hippie commune in California), peacemaker Eliyahu McLean has been dedicated to interfaith work since he was a college student at UC Berkeley. Co-founder and Co-director of the Jerusalem Peacemakers, Eliyahu is also the interfaith coordinator at the annual Sulha gathering, coming up this week at the Latrun Monastery.

Please tell us a bit about your background and the various initiatives with which you are involved. I grew up in Hawaii, where I was involved with Young Judea, which brought me to Israel for the first time when I was 15. When I returned at 18 for Year Course, I met Rabbi Shlomo Carleabach and was influenced by his teachings. From there, I went to UC Berkeley, where I became a pro-Israel activist on campus. That got me interested in bridge-building work, and I began studying Middle Eastern Studies. I was back in Israel again for my junior year, though my program was canceled due to the Gulf War. Instead, I got involved with the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace – I traveled to Bethlehem that year and Egypt, where I studied Islam and Sufism. When I returned to Berkeley, I began leading interfaith projects but I was really drawn to doing that sort of work here in Israel.

In 2000, I helped found the Jerusalem Peacemakers, a network of independent interfaith peacemakers, and I'm the interfaith coordinator of the Sulha Peace Project [a grassroots peace initiative]. Our annual gathering is taking place this year August 26th-28th at the Latrun Monastery. I help secure permits for part of our Palestinian delegation – we ask for 700 permits, and I'm in charge of 150 of them. I'm also in charge of making sure the kitchen is kosher, the Beit Tefillah prayer space, and interfaith panels about reconciliation, ecology, conflict resolution and the concept of sulha (mediation) in religious traditions.

In the case of The Big Hug and some of the other projects you're involved with, the message seems to be less about specific issues or solutions and more about just getting together to spread loving vibes. How much of a difference can loving vibes make? These projects are about more than just loving vibes: They're about rebuilding trust. Last year, before the Big Hug, a Palestinian taxi driver was murdered by a French Jew and there was a lot of tension around the area of the Damascus Gate and only when the mother of the murderer called up the father of the victim, and went to meet with him, did it calm down the anger and the tension and we were able to hold that event, because trust had been rebuilt. There were about 2,000 people involved in that event - soldiers, settlers, Palestinians - all coming together, and the idea of it was not just positive, good vibes but specifically about finding a new way that we can all respect and honor Jerusalem, about showing our shared love for Jerusalem. I think on a small scale we succeeded, and we want to make it a more long-term type of thing.

Do you see Jerusalem primarily as a hotbed of conflict or as a model of coexistence? It has the potential to be either. If you look at the word Yerushalayim (Jerusalem in Hebrew), it breaks down into the Hebrew words yeru, you will see, and shalayim, shalom, peace. The double form of the word peace implies that there are two Jerusalems, a heavenly Jerusalem, and an earthly Jerusalem. In the earthly Jerusalem there definitely are big problems. All you need to do is open the paper on any given day and you'll see a long list of them, rampaging bulldozer drivers, housing demolitions, problems with trash and litter removal. In the heavenly Jerusalem, we have mashiach (the messiah) and peace. Right now there's a huge gap.... (click here for the full interview).

After watching too many friends pack their bags and slink off for the shimmering promise of Tel Aviv or other, more foreign, ports, Shahar Fisher decided that the time had come to do something. A fourth generation Jerusalemite and a philosophy major at the Open University, Fisher helped form Hitorerut B'yerushalayim (Wake Up Jerusalem), a political movement designed to fight for Jerusalem's future, and to keep the future in Jerusalem. When he's not busy tending to his cause through planning stunts and maintaining its website's content, Fisher works for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel.

Your organization is concerned with keeping Jerusalem's youth in the city Where does your passion come from, and what made you decide to stay? I think all Jerusalemites are very patriotic about their city. This passion is not mine alone. Wake Up Jerusalem started with a group of seven, and as we began to hold events and our work got publicized in the media, our organization grew, and we now we have 70 people working for us (on a volunteer basis) and 500 more who are interested. There are 5,000 people on our mailing list. This is in only two months of operation. The situation in Jerusalem - housing, jobs, culture, education - is causing the youth to leave, and no one is giving them a good enough answer to their needs. If there are no young people in Jerusalem, there is no future in Jerusalem, so a group of us decided to do something, to start a movement.

One of the factors affecting youth flight is Jerusalem's soaring housing prices, a large part of which can be attributed to foreign absentee investors. I know that London has a "ghost apartment" tax which is being batted around as a model for Jerusalem. How can Jerusalem strike a balance between measures like these and the important influx of foreign cash? I don't think anyone wants to see Jerusalem closed off to outsiders. Jerusalem is a universal city, a city for everyone - even if you're living out in Wisconsin, Jerusalem is still your city. On the other hand, the problem of "ghost apartments" is really serious. The only apartments being built here these days are luxury apartments, and it's driving prices up to ridiculous highs. We don’t want to kick the foreign owners out; we just want to create solutions where the apartments won't be empty.

There are a number of possible solutions. We can promote the rental of empty apartments to students who will live there and be responsible for the apartment's maintenance. The London tax would help do this by giving owners an incentive not to leave their apartments empty. The municipality can also help by creating affordable housing. In every new complex built, a number of apartments should be earmarked for young couples or other Jerusalemites who can't afford the soaring foreign prices. These are solutions that cities.... (click here for the full interview).

John Cusack may have raised the profile of puppeteers the world over with his groundbreaking role in 1999's Being John Malkovitch (the real Malkovtich was here this summer, as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival), but Jerusalem was way ahead of that trend. The International Festival of Puppet Theater began 17 years ago and has been uniting puppeteers and their devotees every year since.

The Train Theater, which is sponsoring the festival, is Jerusalem's puppet headquarters, sponsoring shows on Saturday mornings and Monday afternoons throughout the year, and arranging for puppeteering tours throughout the country. But every art form needs its gathering, and Jerusalem's International Festival of Puppet Theater rounds them up from across the world and brings them here for four days of strings, song and theater. "These festivals are our way of ensuring cross-fertilization and our way of sharing our experiences with others in the field. It's like scientists going to a conference and meeting other scientists," says Patricia O'Donovan, a former scientist and current puppeteer who has lived in Jerusalem since the late 1970s, when she moved here from Argentina. "And it's a chance for audiences to see puppetry from around the world."

This year, in addition to the 90 performances (of 27 distinct productions), the festival is featuring a public works project in Yemin Moshe dedicated to Israel's 60th (will the celebrations never stop?). While some of the puppet shows, particularly the European ones (of course), are as likely to attract adults as children, the Yemin Moshe affair is clearly for the kids. Tours of the neighborhood will be mixed with puppet shows and workshops. O'Donovan will be one of the stops on the tour, where she will be debuting her shadow play, Sfat Em (Mother Tongue), a story based on an ancient Acadian lullaby. (She also has a show about Louis Braille, A Touch of Light, playing at the Train Theater on Wednesday).

"Puppetry is an artistic medium that for thousands and thousands of years was not for children. It only recently came to be considered a children's art form, and even that is not universal," Patricia says, "In Europe, it’s still considered an art for adults and at the festival, you can see a lot of shows that are more appropriate for adults than for children. In Israel, in order to make a living, you need to cater shows to children, but in many other places in the world, it’s still for adults."

While a large section of those performing in the festival will be Israeli puppeteers, Patricia is most excited for the foreign shows: "I know most of my colleagues in Israel's shows, so while I am excited to see their work, I'm also excited to see something new."

Photo of A Touch of Light (top) courtesy of the Train Theater; photo of Mother Tongue courtesy of Patricia O'Donovan.