Synopsis from the DocAviv site: Three divorced middle aged men with glasses work together in a small, failing insurance agency, located in the rented apartment of the owner. Although they are highly intelligent, have a sense of humor, and well educated, they have absolutely no idea about running a business. Their company is losing a good deal of money and is continually on the verge of bankruptcy. The film documents the attempts of the manager’s son, the film’s director, to join this motley crew at the onset of the recession, and save his father’s collapsing firm.

My explanatory addition to the official synopsis:

The film is a humorous, affectionate documentary about a failing insurance company run by the director’s father, Carol Contes, in partnership with his two brothers. The opening titles in Hebrew announce that the film begins December 31, the last day of the year - and the most stressful day of the year for an insurance company. Contes, narrates the director, means “clerk” in Czech. His father is descended from a 200-year dynasty of clerks.The father has a volatile temper, especially when one of his brothers makes his “daily mistake,” but he is also demonstrably affectionate toward his siblings.

If you like the film and/or would like to obtain a copy to screen in your community, you can email director Regev Contes: theworstcompany@gmail.com

UPDATE: Haaretz published a lovely article about the film/interview with the director.

The trailer:

In its May-June issue, the Columbia Journalism Review has published three perspectives on the media’s coverage of Operation Cast Lead, also known as the Gaza War. One of them is by your favourite Israeli blogger (that’d be me).

Taghreed El-Khodary is the Gaza correspondent for the New York Times. Her reporter’s notebook piece is called The Smell of Paradise: under pressure in Gaza.

Taghreed and I spoke jointly at a conference in Norway this past March. Here’s a photo I took of her on the last day in snowy Tonsberg, as we were waiting for our taxis to the airport.

J.J. Goldberg is the former editor of The Forward. He compares the British and American media’s coverage of Gaza in his piece, called A Matter of Trust.

(I’ve never met J.J., so I don’t have any photos of him).

My piece is about the Israeli media’s coverage of the war. It is called Covering Gaza from Israel: what Israelis wanted to know about the war. It starts like this:

“During the first week of Israel’s winter military operation in Gaza, a broadcaster for Channel 2, which has the highest rating of Israel’s three television stations, sparked a small firestorm by expressing what was perceived as excessive sympathy for the enemy. Summarizing a report during the evening news, anchorwoman Yonit Levy said, “It’s hard to convince the world that the war is justified when we have one person dead and the Palestinian nation has 350 dead.” Channel 2 was soon inundated with letters of complaint and came under fire online, where somebody set up an Internet petition to have Levy fired. Several of Levy’s colleagues, horrified by what one called a ‘lynch,’ came publicly to her support.

In the end the controversy was short-lived: Levy continues to anchor the Channel 2 news broadcast, which maintains its high ratings, and she remains Israel’s most popular news anchor. But the reaction to her statement is interesting as a demonstration of the solid public support—polled at more than 90 percent—for the twenty-two-day military operation, which finished with around 1,200 to 1,400 Palestinians killed and 11 Israelis, including 3 civilians. It also suggests what kind of wartime coverage the Israeli public wanted from its media.”

Click here to read the rest. You can comment on the CJR site - or, come back here to speak your mind.

Meanwhile, yesterday was the final day of DocAviv, the annual week-long documentary film festival. After morning yoga class, I spent the day watching films for free (press pass!). In between screenings, I sat at an outdoor cafe and drank cappuccino while reading the weekend newspapers, enjoying the Saturday peace and the perfect late spring weather. Short version: a perfect Saturday, and the ideal antidote to a very difficult week.

As usual, DocAviv was a fabulous event and very well-attended event, with Israeli and international films competing for several prizes. Also as usual, I did not have time to attend all the screenings I wanted. Of those I did see, three made a very strong impression, for different reasons.

Kimjongilia is a documentary that features interviews with North Koreans who escaped their native country, usually via China, and are now living in South Korea. If anything, the synopsis from the film’s website soft-pedals the horrific tales recounted by the soft-spoken survivors interviewed for this film - stories about 9 year-old children taken to a concentration camp, where they were starved, beaten and worked nearly to death, for example. It is estimated that about 3.5 million North Koreans have died of starvation or in the gulag since the mid-1990s. The film was disturbing, but very well done. It really drives home the point that the world is paying little attention to this horrific human rights catastrophe.

The synopsis:

“KIMJONGILIA, The Flower of Kim Jong Il, is the first film to fully expose the disaster through a tapestry of defectors’stories, North Korean propaganda, and original performance. This feature documentary shows why the defectors fled, describes their hair-raising escapes, and recounts the dangers they face in China, hunted by Chinese as well as North Korean police. These refugees are from every walk of life, from child concentration camp inmates to an elite concert pianist. But their stories all speak of body-and-soul killing repression and paint a picture of a country so far off the rails it defies belief. Ultimately, these humble heroes are inspiring, for despite their suffering, they hold out hope for a better future.”

Kimjongilia trailer:

Defamation, by Israeli documentary director Yoav Shamir.  Shamir made his reputation with Checkpoints, a prize-winning and critically-acclaimed documentary about the IDF checkpoints in the West Bank. This time he investigates anti-Semitism in a provocative film that asks whether anti-Semitism is really a serious problem today, and whether we are perhaps too focused on the past. Shamir answered questions after the screening, which was packed. He said that he intended to provoke a debate rather than offer answers. In answer to questions about two of the controversial figures in the film - Abe Foxman and Norman Finkelstein - he said that he disagreed with some of what they said and agreed with some, that he wasn’t trying to discredit anyone.

Here’s the trailer for Defamation:

After all that serious stuff, I really, really enjoyed Le Cirque: a table in heaven - about the famed New York restaurant (where I once enjoyed a memorable meal; it’s nice to have rich, generous friends). Here’s an excerpt from the synopsis, which you can read in full here:

“LE CIRQUE: A TABLE IN HEAVEN is an intimate family portrait of Le Cirque founder Sirio Maccioni, Egidiana, his wife and confidant of 40 years, and their three sons, to whom he will one day leave his formidable cultural and culinary legacy. While other restaurants have big money and corporations behind them, Sirio says Le Cirque ‘is a family affair and completely independent.’ Oldest son Mario runs Le Cirque, Las Vegas, while Marco, the middle son, and Mauro, the youngest, work in New York. Meanwhile, Egidiana prepares rustic meals in the tiny kitchen of their Manhattan apartment.”

Here’s the trailer for “A Table in Heaven”:

Over at One Jerusalem, my friend Eyal has blogged about a fundraiser for an indisputably worthy cause - an  organization that provides a caring, supportive environment for homeless and/or at-risk children. Orr Shalom recruits highly-qualified, unusually giving people to provide loving homes for children who have left or been taken from abusive homes. Take a look at their well-designed website for detailed information about Orr Shalom, including personal stories from children and details about how you can donate.

Over the coming month, there will be two fundraising events for Orr Shalom - both should be really enjoyable.

On May 19 Mashina, Israel’s uber-rock group, will give an unplugged performance at Tel Aviv’s north port, Reading 3.

The second event will take place on June 16, when comic actors Eli Yatzpan and Yaakov Cohen play The Odd Couple in Tel Aviv at Habimah, Israel’s national theatre.

I am particularly interested in seeing Number 59, on page 2 - Idan Razin’s fabulous penthouse apartment at 17 Feierberg Street. Veteran readers might remember that last year Idan hosted a very, very loud party to celebrate Independence Day, keeping up the entire neighbourhood and driving me into a 5 a.m. temper tantrum. I’ve sort of grudgingly forgiven Idan since then, but I’d still like an opportunity to see his three-story glam pad with the huge wrap-around balcony.

Much to my sorrow, the Pagoda House isn’t on the list this year. Last year I mixed up the time slots, and didn’t get to see it.

The Pagoda House on King Albert Square. It’s now the private residence of a single family that lives abroad, spending only a few weeks a year in Israel. The house includes a swimming pool and an elevator.

While both the Hebrew and English Wikipedia pages for the Pagoda House credit Alexander Levy as the architect, only the Hebrew Wikipedia has a page about him. So I read it, and discovered a fascinating but sad story.

Levy was born in 1883, in Berlin, to a wealthy family that owned a textile factory. An early and committed Zionist, he arrived in Palestine in 1912, where he established his architecture firm in Jaffa in 1920. But he never really managed to assimilate. In the wake of professional disagreements and a lack of work, he returned in 1927 to Berlin, where he joined a large architecture firm. With the 1932 rise to power of the Nazis he emigrated to Paris, continuing to work in his profession and to be active in Zionist activities. When the German army invaded in 1940, he was rounded up by the French authorities and imprisoned in a camp for enemy aliens - as a German citizen, regardless of the fact that he was a Jew. Levy submitted a request for a visa to the United States, but was turned down. After the Nazis conquered France, he stopped being a German to the French and became a Jew to the Germans, who took the keys to the prison camp from the French authorities and deported the Jewish inmates to the death camps. Levy died in Auschwitz in 1942.

But the house he built on King Albert Square remains one of Tel Aviv’s most beautiful landmarks.

For a long time, I particularly lamented the lack of blogs in English by native Hebrew speakers who had grown up in Israel. Recently, however, a few Sabras have started really interesting blogs. Below are three that I’ve been following and enjoying.

I mentioned Promised Land, by journalist Noam Sheizaf, in my previous post. His excellent three-part analysis of Maariv’s feature interview with Ben Zion Netanyahu, Bibi’s 99 year-old father, garnered a mention on Jeffrey Goldberg’s blog at the Atlantic website. Posts that I particularly liked include Prove that you’re alive - about his grandfather, a French Jew who survived the Holocaust, and Yad Vashem’s refusal to amend the entry that incorrectly lists him as having perished during the war; and How Israel is drifting away from the world.

Ami Kaufman, who once worked for Haaretz, is the Israeli-born son of American immigrants. He calls his fantastic blog Half & Half, because he is not quite sure where he belongs - in the West or the Levant. I recommend starting from the first post and reading forward;  it’s a new blog, so it won’t take you long. And I promise you’ll enjoy every single entry.

Shachar Golan blogs about Israeli society, art and pop culture at FRGDR.com.  He’s an art student with a great eye for idiosyncrasies - like the time he was offered kosher for Passover fried calamari at a restaurant in Rishon LeZion. (calamari is not kosher).

While we’re on the subject of bloggers with a rare perspective, may I commend to you The Goy’s Guide to Israel. Our goy is a Nigerian/Brit married to an Israeli woman. He calls their child “the small noisy one.” The goy is a marvelous writer; his posts are characterized by intelligence, humour and a rare combination of authentic caring and honest detachment about Israeli society. For an example of what I mean, check out Rhyming Life & Death, his observations on Memorial Day to Fallen Soldiers. Oh yeah, and he’s also really well read.

Noam Sheizaf, journalist and proprietor of the ever-interesting and often provocative Promised Land blog, brings us a hilarious post about the super-sensitive issue of Jewish-Arab sex in Israel. It’s a subject that often elicits Faulkner-esque responses in our otherwise liberal society; luckily, we have people like Yedioth Aharonoth columnist Karin Arad to poke hilarious, irreverent fun at our prejudices.

Arad answers questions about sex for Blazer, a wanna-be Gentlemen’s Quarterly that’s owned by the Yedioth group. Noam translated part of her answer to a man’s discomfited query about his feelings regarding his girlfriend’s admission to having once had an Arab lover. In her fabulous response, Arad reminds the reader that she (Arad) is half Arab. Who knew? Well, Noam did, and he assumed that most people were similarly well-informed. But based on the responses of my Facebook friends, Noam is better informed than we are.

In response to the request of reader Doshka, I agreed to translate the rest, which I’ve patched together with Noam’s excerpt, below. The original in Hebrew is here.

If you are offended by frankly sexual talk, curse words or any type of discourse that muddies the boundaries of the politically correct, stop here. Do not click on the page jump. Seriously.

Question for Karin Arad:

“My girlfriend has a very rich sexual history. I’m totally cool with that. Recently, however, I discovered that she also slept with an Arab. That is, they went out for awhile and also had sex. I’m finding this kind of disturbing. I’m not racist at all, so is it normal that this bothers me?” Micha.

Answer from Karin Arad:

Normal, racist, what a bunch of nonsense. Racism is a natural human trait.  Your racism is normal, but you should try to get over it. Why? Because it’s Neanderthal and disgusting. Besides, what is a racist? Lieberman? Someone who has no problem killing people that don’t belong to his social class? General hatred of the other? Believe me, they are all racists and they are all abnormal. I don’t know a single guy in the universe, tolerant though he might be, who would remain indifferent upon discovering that his girlfriend had some kind of triple digit past. Which is understandable, since there’s a high probability of his falling short in the comparison department.

Your specific case is much worse, since rumour has it that Arabs have much bigger dicks than Jews. And as long as we’re on the subject, there’s a chance she’s gone out with an Arab from the Bakri family, who are known to have quite an attraction for Jewish women. If that’s the case then you’re in for a whole lotta trouble, because then you’ve got to add to the impressive equipment an elite education at an English boarding school, intelligence, perfect manners, totally hot looks, and incomparably gentlemanlike politeness.

Palestinian-Israeli actor Salah Bakri

Regarding your feelings of discomfort, calm yourself. You are not alone. Arabs are fashionable. I might even go so far as far as to say that Arabs are the new blacks - that everybody is fucking these days for nationalistic reasons, and in search of exotica. This is totally acceptable. In fact, most of my good friends have slept with Arabs. I don’t know if it bothered them. Perhaps it bothered their Yiddishe mamas, but I am the last person to whom they would admit this.

You see, Micha, most of my friends are guys I slept with, and the sum total of the Arabs they slept with is, more or less, me. And since they are not complete morons, they tend to hide their racism from me. They don’t greet me with “ahalan wa-sahalan”; they don’t ask for baklawa; they don’t hide Palestinian flags in my wallet next to my Palestinian ID; and they don’t joke about vibrating Molotov cocktails in my bed. They are extremely sensitive.

This can’t be said about you, Micha. You see, I understand that you’re in genuine distress, and that your friends in Yisrael Beitenu don’t return your calls, but what the hell gave you the idea to ask this question of the only girl you know whose mother’s maiden name is Suleiman? There are simply no words to describe your stupidity. In summary, I hope the whore you’re sleeping with gives you gonnohrea and syphillis, amen. Oh, sorry: I meant, “Allah hu-akbar.”

Alfred Roch with his wife and daughter, 1911.

During the 1930s, Neve Sha’anan became a typical Tel Aviv neighbourhood of low-rise, International-style apartment buildings, parks, schools and small shops.  (Here is a clip of rare colour archival footage of Tel Aviv in the 1930s). Then came the middle class migration to the city’s northern quarters and suburbs, followed by a long period of decline. Today Neve Sha’anan is a seedy, rundown place that is inhabited mostly by refugees from Africa, foreign workers from southeast Asia, streetwalkers and junkies.

The old Roch house is a crumbling ruin, surrounded by ramshackle fruit-and-vegetable stands with corrugated tin roofs, or shops selling cheap electronic goods. Across the street is a pork butcher called, most imaginatively, Kingdom of Pork. Its name is listed in Russian, Romanian, Chinese, Thai and Tagalog. At night the street is filled with female, transvestite and transsexual prostitutes and rent boys - some from the occupied territories. Junkies squat in dimly lit alleys to shoot up. The beautiful International-style buildings that would be candidates for loving restoration in more salubrious parts of the city have instead been subdivided to accommodate as many rent-paying, desperate humans as possible. Their exterior walls have been uglified with Spackle and the windows covered in plastic shutters and rusty metal bars.

All in all, it’s an area that I tend to run through as quickly as possible - usually on my way to catch a sherut for one of my infrequent forays up to Jerusalem. During the six-month dry season, when there is no rain to wash the streets clean, the stench of urine becomes so powerful that I hold my breath at certain points, glaring at the oblivious men who barely bother to turn their backs before relieving themselves against a wall or a tree.

On Saturdays and holidays, though, the squalor recedes. While the rest of Tel Aviv sleeps, Neve Sha’anan Street becomes a bustling international bazaar. The newly arrived members of Tel Aviv’s melting pot pour onto the street to socialize, run errands and shop on their day off from labouring as caregivers to the geriatric, street cleaners, dish washers and construction workers. They rummage through piles of second-hand goods, ranging from cooking pots to jeans, that are laid out on the street to haggle over. Since they are effectively disenfranchised people from failed and/or war-torn and/or impoverished states, they have neither bank accounts nor credit cards. So they queue up at the places that sell SIM cards and cheap mobile phones, exchange currency or charge a high fee to send money abroad.

Last Saturday Melinda and I went to explore the other Tel Aviv and take some photos. A selection of Melinda’s gorgeous shots are below; she has posted the complete set on Facebook and more on her photo blog, which you really should check out - she’s incredibly talented. Meanwhile, I was experimenting with my recently acquired second-hand Canon 400D - my first SLR camera. So you’ll see some of my shots, too.

Melinda photographed this Chinese woman in her dumpling shop. This was the first time I found real Chinese dumplings in Israel - incredibly, the state of the Jews does not have any good Chinese restaurants. Perhaps because we do not need to worry about where we should go on Christmas Eve? Anyways, these dumplings are stuffed with chopped mutton and onions. There was congee, too. The TV in the shop broadcasts news and entertainment from China, via satellite. All the signs are in Chinese. The proprietess does not speak a word of Hebrew. Her husband, who lazes about smoking cigarettes and drinking green tea, knows how to say “5 shekels” and “10 shekels.”

We each bought a dumpling and sat down on the steps of a money changer to eat it and take some more photos. Next to us was a man who sold Chinese cabbage - four heads for NIS 10 (about $2.50). Melinda took his photo.

Meanwhile, I photographed this little African girl, holding her father’s hand.

And these people sorting through a pile of jeans for sale.

These women sold homemade eggrolls from the basket lined with orange plastic. Photo by Melinda.

This is Aziz, from Senegal. He was riding past on his bicycle when he saw us and stopped to chat. He said he works in a luxury hotel, and that life in Tel Aviv would be less difficult if only he weren’t so lonely. A girlfriend would help. “C’est trop difficile, etre seul,” he said, as I snapped his photo.

What about that woman? I asked.

Aziz said no, she wasn’t for him. I told him no, he wasn’t for me. So he cycled off, a bit miffed.

Suddenly, there was a commotion. Two men were shouting in a mixture of Arabic and Hebrew.

They were arguing over money. After awhile, I understood that the guy on the left was a junkie and the muscular guy on the right, in the striped T-shirt, was a dealer. The dealer made it clear that he didn’t deal for free; he shoved the junkie on the chest, hard, and stalked off angrily. The junkie stood silently for a moment; and then he began to cry in desperation. Melinda caught his heart-rending expression.

We decided to walk over to the nearby park, where men and women from all over the world sat in clusters on the grass, sharing snacks and conversation. Melinda photographed the kids playing football in the games court, while I leaned over and took a closeup of a drunk who’d fallen asleep on the grass.

Kids playing football in south Tel Aviv, by Melinda.

Drunk asleep on the grass, by me.

Sarit, one of the cafe owners, took the photo off the wall so that Paula could take a closer look. She identified each of the people in the photo and told me, “This neighbourhood was where all the important people lived. I used to make deliveries to them, so I knew them all. Do you know how I felt when I came in here and sat down, after all these years? My heart was going like this! Poom, poom, poom.”

This is Cafe Noach today, as captured by the fabulous Idan Gazit.

The Wikipedia entry on Bernie Madoff.

And here is a very sad article in the Wall Street Journal about the age-old Jewish fear. It doesn’t matter whether or not the fear is well-grounded; in this case, as in so many others, perception is everything.