Jerusalem: Friday morning at the market (exclusive video)

This is a ridiculously great way to warm up a rainy, freezing Friday morning in the Mahane Yehuda open-air market.

The duo of buskers are regulars in the market, and are regaling (con brio!) shoppers with a well-known melody welcoming in the Sabbath.

The chef (one taste and you'll agree...) at the stall - one of my regular stops - is preparing a steaming hot, fresh-out-of-the-oven, "Ramla-style" boreka pastry. Made with filo dough, and stuffed with cheese, pickles, a sliced egg, salt, pepper, za'atar and topped off with tahini sauce and a dollop of fiery "schug," (the "ch" is pronounced as though you just swallowed a whole spoonful) this am-freakin'-brosia, and the music make for serious contendahs' in prepping physically and spiritually for the coming Sabbath.

Dialogue between owner & bystander (offscreen):

Bystander: He's filming us for the Internet?!
Owner: Yeah.
Bystander: No kidding?... Wha' - and I'm not famous here?
Owner: He stopped by - you weren't around...
Later...
Me: He's preparing something for me, something simply out-rageous[ly good]...

Here's something sweet (well, spicy, actually...) about Israel cinema classics and borekas from Jewlicious.

More video, pics and written coverage among the market stalls is here. Colleague Shoshana Cordova penned ("keyboarded?") a superb article about the "up-scale-ization" of the shuk here.

Meanwhile, I've got to get going with my own Shabbat prep, so Shabbat Shalom, and have a great weekend.

Google Earth: Dissing Israel one slanted post at a time

This is a story/meme that I have noted repeatedly to Foreign Ministry officials, bloggers here, as well as others involved in Israeli activism - so far, without much positive response:

So much of of what passes for "successful" efforts to combat anti-Israel reportage, propaganda, etc always seems to overlook "viral," bottom-up, grassroots activism, with proponents preferring top-down "dreiing with the machers," and, all too often coming out looking overwrought, and counterproductive.

Along with ubiquitous online tools like Wikipedia, Google Earth is a great example of how skewed coverage of Israel begins, from a nominally neutral source, that is then picked up by the ill-informed as "fact," and then spread at the speed of "enter." This - yet again - forces Israeli supporters into a reactionary mode, instead of taking charge of the agenda in the first place. To wit: A report appearing in the UK's Totally Jewish reports that:

Google has launched an enquiry into its interactive atlas program Google Earth after a TJ investigation revealed the online mapping and navigation service is replete with anti-Israel propaganda.

Google Earth, which claims to provide “local facts” and “critical tools for understanding a story” about the world, also contains factually incorrect data and biased images relating to Israel and the Middle East.

One Israeli settlement is displayed alongside comments implying citizens are stealing water from neighbouring Palestinians, while other images purport to show copies of land confiscation orders as well as plans to extend the security fence into Bethlehem.

Read the rest. (And just wait till you see what Hizbullah supporters have done with maps of the Lebanon War...)

Another glaring example is here, in a previous entry about avid "amateur" photography sites, like TrekEarth (along with its sister sites, TrekLens, and TrekNature) where I wrote, "PA area shots are accompanied by agitprop, in a sort of "soft-propaganda" exploitation..."

Man loses nose in circumcision

A "briss" gone terribly wrong...

A traditional circumcision ceremony in South Africa went awry over the weekend when a policeman had his nose bitten off.

The policeman had tried to put paid to an argument between a man and his family during the ceremony in the Eastern Cape province, when the man attacked him, biting off his nose.

The aggrieved policeman then shot the 30-year-old man in the chest, the SAPA news agency reported.

Both are now recovering in hospital.

Circumcision is a rite of passage for some South African boys who go through a lengthy initiation before undergoing the procedure.

Two questions: Who was the mohel, and just how lengthy was the "initiation" - it sounds like they saved on catering costs by doing "the procedure" at the Bar Mitzva. Guess the Manischewitz "Mad Dog 20/20" really packed a punch...

Well, at least the kid wasn't the one needing hospitalization.