Dave Bender: Compelling Photography: immigration

Showing posts with label immigration. Show all posts

Monday, May 9

63 Utterly Boring, Stupid, Absurd and Ugly Things About Israel

Ok, I lied: Benji Lovitt rips both humor and aliya a new one for Israel's 63 Independence Day:

Soon after making aliya 5 years ago, American immigrant Benji Lovitt began compiling slightly warped, but endearing aspects of what he loves about his adopted country. Here is his fourth annual list.

7 I love that you can talk to a complete stranger for five minutes, ask if his sister is single, and not get punched in the face.

8 I love how you can talk on a first date about how many kids you want to send to the army.

9 I love that during the summer, you could hike 40 kilometers underground and somehow still end up at an ice cream truck.

10 I love that I contacted Pelephone via Twitter, and within 24 hours, they had arranged for Ori, the customer service guy, to come to my house to pitch me their deal. (By the way, if you’re ever entering a hotel for a Twitter event and security asks you what you’re there for, just lie. Nothing sounds dorkier than “Tweet-up.”)

Do read the rest.

Friday, January 30

Jerusalem: 'Playing for Mime' (original photography)

Playing for Mime (Dave Bender) Click on the image for the full-size photos.

Friday morning at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda open air market: Local street-theater artist, "The Purple Man," freezes, until passersby drop a coin or two into his guitar case. They he plays for another 15-seconds, until he again goes rigid.

Last I heard the cops ran him off for drawing too big a crowd and causing a public disturbance [sigh].

Friday morning at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda open air market: a beggar with a headset microphone and tambourine wishes passersby a good, peaceful Sabbath. (Dave Bender)

Ha. Haha. Like Friday shopping at Mahane Yehuda isn't a public disturbance, anyway...

Friday at Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda open air market, a veteran hawker sells trinkets from a rolling cart. (Dave Bender)

A hero of the Revolution now shops for Shabbat. (Dave Bender)

Just imagine the things this elderly Russian immigrant has seen in his lifetime, including what he experienced in the service of the Soviet Red Army in order to merit those battle pins and medallions.

Shabbat Shalom, and have a great weekend.

Sunday, June 3

Multiculturalism: the 'Star Wars Cantina' model doesn't work

From reputed former hard-Left author David Solway’s recently released book, The Big Lie: on Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity:

It is a grave error to conceive of a nation as a sort of gigantic Noah’s Ark in which every creature without exception is welcomed and given sanctuary, even those engaged in boring holes in the timber, throwing their bunkmates overboard, and blowing up the wheelhouse.

This is the multicultural model currently in vogue and in the long run it doesn’t work. Admission must be strict and those who may pose a significant threat, whether individually or communally, must be carefully screened and, if necessary, refused their boarding cards.

A viable society does not resemble the interplanetary tavern in Star Wars serving all the weird and wonderful but also rowdy and uncontrollable denizens hailing from every quadrant of the known universe.

Read it all.

Sunday, April 22

22,305 Fallen: Every number a name, a face, a memory

Faith Under Fire

War Against Hizbullah, Summer 2006:
Israeli Defense Forces soldier at brief morning prayers
along northern border; smoke from a recently fallen Katyusha rocket rises in distance.
(Photo: Dave Bender - More images are here)

From the Israel Foreign Ministry:

A total of 22,305 men and women have been killed defending the land of Israel since 1860, the year that the first Jewish settlers left the secure walls of Jerusalem to build new Jewish neighborhoods.

In the past year, since Remembrance Day 2005, 233 members of the security forces - police, IDF, Border Police, Israel Security Agency and other organizations - have been killed in the service of the state.

Israel's 59th Independence Day celebrations will commence on Monday evening, April 23, when the state flag is raised to full mast at a national ceremony on Mount Herzl, at which twelve torches are lit.

Israel at 59: Statistics

Click image to view a memorial
film on Israel's fallen

Friday, February 16

Israeli rockers getting 'by with a little help from...' Oleh! Records

Friday afternoon is a time when many Israelis are winding down, preparing for the Sabbath or taking a break at the end of a hectic workweek before heading out for a night on the town. But at Tel Aviv's Levontin 7 club, situated in a seedy, rundown neighborhood in the south part of the city, hundreds of young, hip looking Tel Aviv musicians have gathered to hear a presentation from Jeremy Hulsh, a shy and earnest Chicago native who speaks little more than a stumbling Hebrew.

But they have patience even when Hulsh switches to English. Because the purpose for this unlikely gathering is the launch of Oleh! Records, an ambitious new initiative which hopes to transform the way Israel is seen by Americans, while at the same time propelling some of Israel's most talented young musicians into the international limelight.