Shani's golden touch

Shani Blumenfeld - fashion illustration made in a computer collage technique

Shani Blumenfeld - costume

design for a play taking place

in New-York in the 60s
(photo: Sasha Flit) 

Like Midas' golden touch, that whatever his hands touched turned to gold – one can say that the hands of Shani Blumenfeld (23), a third year student of fashion design at Shenkar College of Engineering And Design, whatever they touch becomes a design: As a young girl, rhymed verse she wrote and read in family events and presentations she created and screened to the guests - were the focus of attention and enthusiasm.

While being a student at Pelech high school  in Kiryat-Ekron, she created the documentary Foreign Labour (a Hebrew title which has double meaning: in modern Hebrew - a job being done by a foreigner, in biblical Hebrew – a faith other than the Jewish faith, especially idolatry), which won the prize for the best documentary inthe 2006 Jerusalem Film Festival. The same year she won the prize for the best director in Docaviv Festival (the international documentary film festival).

Shani Blumenfeld - garment
inspired by the Zulu, including
the special bead technique
used by the South African tribe
(photo: Sasha Flit)  

The film documents the daily life of Maria, a Christian Romanian woman that like many foreign workers in Israel makes a living by hard physical labor and sends most of her income to her overseas family. Maria makes a living from aiding an old man who lives in the religious community Beit-Gamliel.

Shani's film shows Maria's religious conflicts – as a religious Christian who takes care, among other things, of the religious needs of the old Jew, Maria's yearnings for her home and family, and especially – Maria's enormous dedication to the person she takes care of, beyond differences in age, culture and religion.

With these golden hands Shani (whose Hebrew name means "scarlet") is engaged nowadays in fashion design, and after completing her studies she would like to acquire professional experience where she can "utilize her capabilities to the fullest and express herself". She hopes to get to a fashion house which she appreciates and feels close to its design style. Later on, she might like to open her own studio.

"Flea buster" is free

Dror children group of Kibbutz Ein-Hahoresh in the forties (photo: Ein-Hahoresh Arcive). Some half of the children bear Biblical names such as Samuel (SHMUEL) and Judith (YEHUDIT) while the rest bear new Israeli names such as Amira



Who hasn't wondered at some time what the origin of his name is? Who did not happen to wonder about a strange name of another person? The Hebrew book The Origin of Names (MOZA HASHEMOT), by the deceased Avraham Stahl, presents a compilation of historical facts related to the development of Jewish first and last names, seasoned by amusing anecdotes related to the relations between humans and their names.

It turns out that not many years ago most people shared a very small variety of names. Roman men, for example, shared less than a hundred names - among them Gaius, Titus and Marcus. Even an analysis of the Israel telephone directory from 1971-1979, shows that 15 percent of the Jewish men were named after Jacob and his sons: Joseph, Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Dan, Gad, Benjamin etc. The use of a few first names in traditional societies, Stahl explains, reflects the community dominance versus the individual, so there is no interest in emphasizing people's uniqueness.

In 1992 Stahl made a comparison between the names of children in the secular Jerusalem residential district Gilo and the names of the children in the religious community Beit-El. He found that half of the secular boys, but only one religious boy, had new Hebrew names, that is - names that were created from the late 19th century to the present, and the rest of the names were from the Jewish scriptures, mostly from the Bible.

In his book Stahl explains that many of the family names held by Israelis of Ashkenazi descent are related to a law published in 1787 by Emperor Joseph II, ordering all Jews to carry a permanent family name in German. One could have chosen the name from a special list of names, unless his family had already have a name, and in that occasion a payment for the new name should have payed. The most expensive names were those derived from names of flowers or precious metals, such as Rosenthal (rose valley) or Goldstein (gold stone). Names of less privileged materials were sold cheaply: Holz (wood), Stein (stone) or Stahl (steel) - as the author's family name.

And one who could not meet even the low rate, received from the emperor's officials a name for free - a ridiculous and sneered name, such as Ochsenschwanz (ox tail) or Wanzenknacker (flea buster).

And here, Itzik, a recipe for mimicking a pea

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The humor of the comic pair Avi Grainik and Idan Alterman, best known for their show YELADIM SORGIM, i.e. Knitting Children (rhymed in Hebrew with YELADIM CHORGIM, i.e. Step Children, hinting to the drama film God's Step Children) reflects the range of causing-to-laugh skills of the two: from sophisticated physical humor, through clever mimicry, to sharp linguistic wit.

Instead of mimicking personalities and celebrities, Avi Grainik mimics vegetables: a cucumber, a pickled cucumber, then a banana, and then a squashed banana. Actually there are several levels of humor at the same time here: a simple physical humor of impersonating, a humor caused by the mere  "selection" of the mimicked objects, and a parody of the subject of mimicry - the efforts invested by entertainers to study thoroughly the mimicked object and the willingness of an audience "to be entertained" by someone trying so hard to look like someone else in order to make his audience laugh.

It's not incidental that much of their skits are based on the motto: "I am Hezi and this is my brother Itzik" ("Hezy" is the Israeli nickname for Ezekiel and "Itzik" - for Isaac) – when the two enter the stage as a pair of brothers, not too bright, not very polished, as if they are just two ordinary people invited by someone to do some skits "for the guys".

This pose, of a couple having "some idea" about what things should be done in order to be considered entertainers – is, in my opinion, Knitting Children greatest contribution to the Israeli entertainment scene: the very authentic design of the causing-to-laugh craft concept, the transition from "just two ordinary people" to "a pair of entertainers".

Adjusting Sights

Field training of Israeli tanks in the Golan Heights, 2009
(photo: Rose Schneiderman)



The Israeli film Adjusting Sights - based on the book with the same title by rabbi Haim Sabato - describes the battles of Yom Kippur War (Day of Atonemet War) in the Golan Heights from the perspective of a religious gunner who had lost his best friend in the war.  In Hebrew, the term adjusting sights (TEUM KAVANOT) has double meaning: the material action of coordinating the tank cannon intentions – which is a modern meaning, and the spiritual notion of intent in prayer - which is the traditional meaning.

Although it is an understatement and non-frenzy film, with subdued and quiet acting and soft like a coo background music - Adjusting Sights sweep its viewers precisely because it doesn't fall into the abyss of depression on the one hand and doesn't rise up to the heights of ecstasy on the other hand. Just as Maimonides, who is constantly  quoted by the protagonist, recommended: One should choose the golden mean - not to be rolled down to depression on the one hand and not to be carried away to euphoria on the other hand.

photo: www.tobypress.com

In the transition from book to film, the director Eyal Halfon well  used the opportunity to express subtle differences between secular and religious Israelis by different body language and diction - beyond the differences in the content of their associations, which literature can express no less delicately than cinema. When the documentation officer and his assistant arrive to the camp to investigate and interview the soldiers, each soldier has his own manner to sit down, start speaking and spell his guts, but when the religious soldier opens his words with the verse "My Lord, open my lips that my mouth may declare your glory" (Psalms, 51, 17) and in the background the assistant's typewriter is ticking – the army tent is filled with the special religious respect to the written word.



It is accepted that written literature has more emotional and intellectual potency than cinema – due to the deeper penetration of the verbal tool to the characters' souls and minds and due to the force the written medium put upon the reader to stimulate his imagination in completing visual details and take an active role in the artistic experience. Still, there is also and advantage of the movie over the book: In this movie, all along, we share with the characters the gap between the vitality of memory - the re-experienced experience while being reconstructed in the mind – and the dryness of things being documented, typewritten in a typewriter, and by the documentation officer are well dated and adapted to the military documentation rules. In the book, made of merely written words, these two layers unite in one but in the film they run a constant dialogue between them.

The cinematic clothing of Adjusting Sights is of special importance with regard to the view of life of young secular Israelis, since it might dim a bit the image of the young religious warrior whom they usually encounter. Things written by a young participant of one of the book discussion groups in the Hebrew internet might testify for that:

"Last week I found the book Adjusting Sights by Haim Sabato at the Hebrew Book Week fair… It seemed to me appropriate to read it on Yom Kippur…. Yom Kippur has not yet come but I have already read the whole book... The uniqueness of the book is the biography of its author as a yeshiva student, so the text is full of quotations from the Prayer Book and from the Talmud, and the daily atmosphere being depicted is therefore religious. Perhaps a radical heretic person would be revolted by the book, but I prefer to look at this aspect of the book from the human perspective rather than from the religious one. The author, for example, tells about his strictness and piety in putting on tefillin, every day of his life. During the war, when leaving a damaged tank, his small bag of tefillin was left there. Towards evening time his battalion team is returning to the tank, and our protagonist finds his tefillin and quickly put them on before sunset. To me, more than it is a religious act it is an act of holding tightly on the blessed routine in the chaos of war, the author's own way to maintain sanity".