Teddie, Shoshkie and Naomi

One of my recent commissions came from a customer who wanted a special birthday card for her niece, Rebecca. The brief was simple. The card was to feature her dog, Teddie, and include a large "27" somewhere in the design. My customer sent me a couple of photos of Teddie, and I got to work.

The card was fun to create and was very well received. My customer was keen to share that her niece adored the card!

Back in February, Mister Handmade in Israel and I went to the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in the port city of Jaffa to hear the artist Zeev Engelmayer speak about his artistic work and activism. Working under the creative persona "Shoshke", Engelmayer is known in Israel for his ongoing illustrated "Daily Postcard" project. Through these drawings, he responds to current events, politics, and social issues with honesty and insight. I have followed his postcards closely since the outbreak of the war and was keen to hear what he had to say about them.

Since the 7th of October, when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel's Gaza border communities, killing thousands, committing atrocities, and abducting hundreds, Shoshke has been drawing his interpretation of the day's distressing events on a regular basis. Although he has now turned his attention to larger projects, during the war he would sit each morning at a small kitchen table in his Tel Aviv apartment overlooking the Florentin neighbourhood and create his "Daily Postcards", depicting hostages, soldiers, and mourners. He portrayed the Bibas family - mum Shiri, dad Yarden, and red-haired preschoolers Ariel and baby Kfir - as well as 80-year-old Yaffa Adar, a released hostage, riding home in a heart-festooned golf cart with ballerinas alongside her. In other works, Mary Poppins magically brings hostages home beneath floating parasols, while in another, child hostages travel on a rainbow from Gaza to Tel Aviv, above. He also responded to the daily reports of soldiers killed in Gaza and, more recently, in Lebanon.
Shoshke's colourful A4-sized "Daily Postcards" capture the horror, fear, and sorrow of the war, but they also offer a different way of engaging with the day's unfolding reality. Through humour, emotion, and illustration, he approached painful subject matter in a way that can bring a sense of comfort. The public responded immediately, sending messages and requests for him to tell the stories of their loved ones. We also asked whether he would consider portraying Gadi's story, though that now seems unlikely.
I was pleased to be able to purchase one of Shoshke's prints, and now have it framed and ready to hang on the wall as soon as I find the right spot for it.

The Hebrew text reads: "Today all the hostages are returning home"

Since losing Gadi, neither Mister Handmade in Israel nor I have really been in the mood to listen to music. However, we were recently given tickets for a tribute performance to Naomi Shemer at the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv, and we decided to give it a go.
Naomi Shemer was an iconic Israeli songwriter, composer, and performer who, in her own words, wrote "a thousand songs and one more". The tribute evening was curated by her son, the acclaimed musician Ariel Horowitz. The show was a musical journey through her well-known Hebrew songs, interwoven with personal stories about her life and working process. It featured songs she wrote and composed herself, poems by other writers she chose to set to music, and songs she translated. These include Lu Yehi (Let It Be), Al Kol Eleh (For All These Things), and the Six-Day War anthem Yerushalayim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold), among others.
The Israeli actress, comedian and television presenter Rivka Michaeli, Naomi Shemer's close friend, appeared on stage alongside Tamar Giladi, Shemer's daughter-in-law and Ariel Horowitz's wife, and Lali Shemer, her daughter. Each of them shared small anecdotes from Shemer's life. Together, they offered a personal and intimate glimpse behind the scenes of the woman often regarded as the First Lady of Hebrew Song.
It was a moving evening that celebrated Shemer's extraordinary body of work, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Although she passed away more than twenty years ago, in 2004, her songs continue to live on.

Photo by Boris Carmi, courtesy of the Meitar Collection, Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, National Library of Israel

A Tribute to Naomi Shemer at the Cameri Theatre - singer Adi Cohen performs “Jerusalem of Gold”

* This post has been shared on Happiness is Homemade, Mosaic Monday, Handmade Monday, Monday Morning Blog Club, Busy Monday, Talking About It Tuesdays, The Happy Now Blog Link-Up, Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop, Thursday Favorite Things and Crazy Little Lovebirds.

23 Years

Mister Handmade in Israel and I recently celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary. Things are slowly returning to normal around here, though the Covid-19 delta variant is fast becoming an issue, as it is in so many other places. Unlike last year, when we celebrated with takeaway pasta, this year we were able to go out for a meal. We went to our favourite local Italian restaurant, which has only just reopened after many, many months. Though we were seated far apart from other people, which felt slightly strange, the food was good and it was a treat to go out!

This year's anniversary card was of course a papercut design - Mister Handmade in Israel's favourite type. It featured a big '23 Years' embellished with some flowers. I cut the card out of white stock and added a pale grey paper inlay. The 23rd wedding anniversary does not have a classic symbol, but traditional and modern gifts are silver plate, thus my choice of grey. Maybe when it is our 25th anniversary I'll find some sparkly silver paper 😉

Mister Handmade in Israel treated me to these gorgeous flowers which, given the current temperatures in Israel, lasted a good long while. It seems that I have learnt a thing or two from my mum who was a florist. I bought him tickets for us to go and see the first performance in a year and a half of the Israeli mixed a cappella group Quinta and a Half. The group, which was formed in 2006, is made up of 6 singers and they have been performing together for over 12 years. We went to the concert last week and it was terrific! I hope you enjoy their medley of the Israeli music evolution, from the 1950s until the 2010s.

* This post has been shared on Little Things Thursday, Thursday Favorite Things, The Weekend Link-Up and Craft Schooling Sunday.

From Crocodiles to Tarantulas

"Israel is a small country. You must have seen everything by now!" people often say to me. "Heck no!" I always reply, "There is still plenty for me to see and do!". Having said that, there is absolutely no harm in going back to a place we have previously enjoyed and this Pesach (Passover), when my Dad was visiting from the UK, that is pretty much what we did. Long hikes were off the menu, so I looked for more gentle activities. We were busy!

We made a return visit to Shoham Forest Park, this time climbing up to Givat HaSaflulim, "The Hill of Cup Marks", where a lookout point is located in memory of a soldier who fell in battle in Lebanon in 1994. The name of the hill comes from a large rock located there which has various sized depressions carved into it. The small depressions are known as "cup marks" and may have been formed by cracking nutshells, and the larger ones from crushing grains and herbs. The view from the lookout point was impressive, extending westward toward the coastal plain and eastward towards the Samaria mountains.

We showed my Dad the ancient church of St. Bacchus with its beautiful mosaic floor, and we checked out the the Madaba map, which is part of a mosaic floor from the Byzantine period that was discovered in a 19th century church in the city of Madaba, Jordan. It was Pesach of course, so the obligatory Pesach picnic of matza, boiled eggs and salad was consumed. The kids used to moan about it, but now they just get on with it!

Another day saw us revisiting Nahal Taninim Nature Reserve in the Carmel coastal plains. The name of the reserve means Crocodile River in Hebrew, but we didn't see any crocodiles on this visit nor the previous one. Apparently they haven't been spotted there since 1877! We did however enjoy a leisurely stroll through the reserve, stopping to see the Roman dam and the lake it created, the aqueducts, flour mills and the ancient gravel quarries, one of which was used more recently, in the early part of the 20th century, by Edmund de Rothschild, who purchased much of the surrounding land and constructed a pipe factory.

Nahal Taninim is beautifully maintained and flowers bloom in many parts of the reserve. It was already too late in the season to see poppies, anemones and asphodels, but bicoloured Viper’s bugloss and wild yellow Chrysanthemum added splashes of colour to the antiquities. There was life in the water too and the catfish were easy to spot as we wandered along the stream.

We came across this exhibition of old posters, below, quite by chance. While I went to see the Picasso exhibition at Altmans Gallery in Tel Aviv, I suggested that Mister Handmade in Israel and my Dad go to the Shalom Meir Tower, Israel's first skyscraper, just around the corner. I had popped in to use the bathrooms on a previous visit and had noticed an exhibition of photographs of old Tel Aviv on the ground floor of the building. I thought that my Dad might enjoy seeing them. As it turned out, there are a wide range of exhibits in the lobby and on the first floor. They tell the story of the city of Tel Aviv, illustrating its historic, architectural, and artistic development over 100 years. Exhibits from some of Israel's larger museums are also on display, along with models, maps, and photographs.
The exhibit that I was particularly interested in features adverts and posters from the streets in Tel Aviv's earliest days. Their language, style, and topics embody the atmosphere of those formative years. The adverts include municipal notices, social announcements, and concert and theatre posters that all tell the story of the rich cultural life in Tel Aviv's first years. If we'd had the time, we could literally have spent the day at the Shalom Meir Tower! I will definitely be going back to take a closer look.

The following day we stayed at home but in the evening went to Jerusalem to see the wonderful Yonina in concert. Yoni and Nina, hence the band name Yonina, are a young religious couple who started out small, by uploading a weekly video to Facebook and YouTube, and in recent months have gained quite a following. Their music, a mix of covers and their own material, is gentle and pure. My Dad was smitten and declared it the best thing we had done all holiday!

We finally convinced the youngest son to join us for one activity! The Biblical Museum of Natural History, currently located in Beit Shemesh, is part natural history museum, part zoo, and part Torah education centre. We joined a tour led by the museum’s director, Rabbi Slifkin, who is affectionately referred to as the "Zoo Rabbi", and learnt about the animals that lived in the time of the Torah and their symbolism in Jewish texts. We saw large taxidermy specimens and skeleton exhibits, and had the pleasure of holding some live animals too. Unfortunately it wasn't the greatest activity we had participated in over the holiday (I think we would have been better off going off-season, when there might be less babies and toddlers in the group), but the youngest son particularly enjoyed holding the snakes, the chameleon and, yes, a tarantula! I was rather partial to the sweet little Siberian hamsters myself.

Our final outing before the end of the holiday was to The Yitzhak Rabin Centre in Tel Aviv. The centre is the official memorial dedicated to the legacy of the late Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in November 1995 by an extremist who opposed the terms of the Oslo Accords. It includes one of Israel’s newest museums, the Israeli Museum, which explores the history and development of the modern democratic State of Israel, using the biography of Yitzhak Rabin as a connecting thread. Rabin's story is told in a very interesting manner and we all found ourselves consumed by it. The museum is both emotionally moving and full of information. We spent several hours there.

As an interesting aside, the centre, which was designed by the acclaimed Israeli architect, Moshe Safdie, was built on the foundations of a top secret power station known as "Reading G" or "J'ora." Built in 1954-1956 to supply power in the event of an enemy bombing, it was financed in part by the German Reparations Agreement.

* This post has been shared on All Seasons, Creative Mondays, The Good. The Random. The Fun., Wordless Wednesday (on Tuesday), The Keeping It Real Link Up and Tuesday's Treasures.