Showing posts with label Israeli culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israeli culture. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 19, 2023


Dave Bender is a sensitive soul, thank God, because that acute sensitivity informs his work from behind the lens. Bender is a photographer and videographer, but then he is many things, for example, a prize-winning radio journalist, beekeeper, and a husband to Miri. Still, it’s the photographs that grab you as you scroll through your Instagram feed, if you’re lucky enough to follow him. The viewer finds he must pause his mindless scrolling to fully appreciate each arresting image as it appears. Dave Brian Bender has an eye for the perfect moment and an uncommon artistry; his work is a thought-provoking pleasure to behold.

Born in the Bronx, Dave grew up in a then small town on Florida’s west coast, until 1972, when he made Aliyah with his dad while still in middle school. In Israel, Bender was sent to boarding school for a couple of years, and it was during this time that he had his first personal experience with war in the form of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a prominent marker in his life. At this point, Dave returned to the States, where he remained for a decade before making Aliyah once more, this time for good. Today, Dave and Miri live near Tzfat (Safed, if you prefer your Hebrew Anglicized), where they tend to their beehives and artisanal honey and honey products company, Neshikha. And of course, Dave is taking those photos and shooting that footage—at events, and whenever the mood strikes or something catches his eye, which is often.

Dave Bender with a young bee safari visitor.

Here, Dave talks about his early life, his craft, and what inspires him today:

Varda Epstein: We’ve been acquainted for some time. When I first knew you, I thought of you mainly as a writer, something we share in common. Then more and more, I began to see your photographs and videos. Would you say that today, photographer/videographer is your main gig? Was it a conscious decision to narrow your creative focus?

Dave Bender: Yes, on both counts – I was never a good typist or note-taker; due to the distraction of sitting next to the ebulliently lovely Susan Walton in Mrs. Haney's typing class. Susan was no less than the head of the Stratford Sr. High School Spartanaires cheerleader team. Let's just say that – for a neighborhood newbie dork like me - focusing on IBM Selectric touch-typing inevitably took second place to sharpening my situational awareness and side-glance visual acuity skills, which would later come in useful in “reading” subtle cues by interviewees and covering breaking news events.

So, Susan, if you’re reading this: thanks for, well - just being you. And yes, I really did want to take you to the prom.

Nor did I ever formally learn the news-gathering craft via Journalism or communications courses at university or college, where fast, accurate typing is a prerequisite – never went to school at all, actually. In fact, I was actually expelled from my sole journalism class, being summarily told off by my instructor: “...face it, Dave: you're never going to be a journalist.”

Guess I made up for it tho, even picking up a GA Associated Press radio award or two along the way. So – maybe – her dismissal planted a hard seed of “Oh yeah? Hold my beer...” that took a lot of tough living in the interim to germinate.

"Shacharit on the beehives in the backyard Beeyard during Covid. Their hum is very centering."

However, in my defense, I did later earn a BA at The Life U School of Hard Knocks, and a second degree in news coverage at Whossamotta U (Google it); I learned shoe-leather reporting the “old-skool” way via the bullpen, first at the JPost Breaking News Desk, and later at a raft of other outlets, locally and internationally, and branching out into radio, and later video, as the Internet came to the fore.

While I worked for decades as a print, radio, and, later, TV reporter and editor in both Israel and the US, I'd always been attracted to photography and videography; as time went by I'd often end up shooting more and more stills and video footage covering breaking news events, at features, in interviews, and commonly used the imaging as a tool to better describe and flesh out the dry text.

When I worked a three-year stint at NPR affiliate radio stations in Georgia (WJSP-FM as a bureau chief, and WABE as a freelancer), I'd often record audio and shoot simultaneously which sometimes seemed, at least to me – others just stared - the only way to sufficiently absorb what the story was about.

Street scene, Shuk HaPishpeshim, Yaffo

Varda Epstein: How did you get bit by the photography bug? When did you get your first camera? Can you tell us a bit about that camera and your earliest days behind the lens?

Dave Bender: About as far back as I can recall as a kid, my dad “loaned” me his Yashika camera – then a Japanese mid-range model, which stopped production around 2005. As I remember, not only did I use it for photos, but it became my first “tear-down” device to see how it worked – ages before YouTube creators glommed onto the idea; I'm insatiably curious like that. The Yashika, regrettably, never went fully back together, and I seem to recall having a few leftover parts after the reassembly... not long after that, I came to own a cheapo Super-8 camera which I used to shoot clips of my model car collection and whatnot.

Varda Epstein: What do you enjoy most? Videography or photography? What can you capture in a photo that you cannot in a video?

Dave Bender: I'm a quick study in both genres; I shoot video nowadays mostly for marketing our honey and bee products buzzness (see what I did there?), Neshikha, and the still photography for my own professional development and personal pleasure.

Both skill sets and philosophies really merge though; I really think that the technical, compositional, and “telling a story in one shot” are crucial to mastering both crafts. Indeed, as, for example, smartphone still and video quality continue dramatically improving – and over 90 percent of my work nowadays is shot and edited on my Samsung S22 Ultra (and previously, others, and whatever comes down the pike next) – I believe we're starting to see a melding of the genres, and – maybe next year or a decade from now – won’t even understand the primitive dichotomy between still and moving images, and view “imaging,” maybe with fully immersive tactile, aural, and other abilities – as a continuum, and not as separate conceptual boxes. You already see glimmers of it in AI-assisted photography - which nowadays means pretty much anything digitally recorded, and not necessarily a clunky AI text or visual prompt.


Varda Epstein: The black and white event photos you’ve shared on Instagram are probably the main reason I wanted to do this interview. Those photos, are to me, more beautiful than any color photos you might have taken of the same scene. What can we see in black and white that we might not see in color?

Dave Bender: I’m really flattered - thank you (and - as you know - I’m usually the kind to prefer chewing hot glass to accepting a compliment. The check is already in the mail as we speak).

Anyway, in the words of advertising and documentary photographer, Elliot Erwitt, “Color is descriptive. Black and White is interpretative.” Often, visualizing, composing and shooting (or post editing) in black and white strips away the visual clutter and distraction inherent in a color photo and forces the viewer to quietly notice shape, form, and the geometry of buildings, poses, and, hopefully, whatever the photographer wanted to feature in the image. And - no less importantly - the sense of time passing; something about black and white always looks contemporary, as it’s been said, and I’d sign off on that.

As legendary Canadian newspaper photographer, Ted Grant, once memorably put it: “When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!” Just to stress: I'm nobody's pretentious fotogsnob, and love photos and footage of scenes drenched in color, or dulcet, pastel soft tones. Maybe it's a left brain/right brain kind of thing. American film director, Samuel Fuller, once cleverly quipped: “Life is in color, but black and white is more realistic.”

Hachnasat Sefer Torah, Kfar Hananya

Varda Epstein: Who influences your work as a photographer and why?

Dave Bender: Well, one quote that really grabbed me was by Jennifer Price: “What I love about Black & White photographs is that they're more like reading the book than seeing the movie.” so she’s on my list now, lol.

UK-based Sean Tucker is among my current photographic “spirit animals,” among others, and his achingly honest self-critique, soul quietude and Zen-like focus on the philosophy of imaging really gets me where I live - or, at least, aspire to rent.

"This one, of a greengrocer sorting through greens after hours, looked like a stage set as the play begins, with lights, dark shadows, and 'popp-eye' color - was already composed and all I had to do was notice the scene, and take the shot."

Locally, there are so many; if I named one, I’d be inadvertently dissing another, but - offhand, on mobile, Ido Izsak does some funky fashion stuff; Dina Alfasi does phenomenal iPhone street portraits - many of them on her daily commuter train route; I’ve hired and would love to work with powerhouse, Rebecca Kowalski; Laura Ben-David has a great eye; there’s a long list actually, and I see many of them via my social media feeds.

Oh, also there’s an astounding collection of fotog talent over at Fearless Photographers that I’d frequent for sheer, bold inspiration when I was actively shooting weddings and similar family events.



But - growing out of being a DSLR photographic gearhead, and centering on mobile photography (which also has its own gear - just commonly much smaller, lighter, and more inexpensive…) - forces you to zone in on classic technique: subject, composition, and lighting, and not rely on $5k DSLR bodies wedded to $10k lenses to get the “money shot.”

Apropos, there’s an amazingly instructive - and often unintentionally hilarious - video series many of my fave, top-end shooters have taken part in over the years dubbed, “The Toy Camera Challenge.”

 

There, world-famous fotogs head out for some impromptu street or fashion photography, but wielding a Playskool, Lego, or - gawd help us - a Barbie camera, instead of a heavy camera backpack or two of camera bodies, lenses, lights, and assistants.

What’s fascinating, and inspiring, is how they’ll gamely - if sometimes ironically - take on the challenge, and, along the way happily share their trade secrets, honed skills, comprehensive technical knowledge, and flat-out talents - to get remarkable, and even artistic, images, despite the limitations of the device. It really separates the pros from the dilettantes…


"Still life with Scruff"

Varda Epstein: Recently you shared some of your street photography. My husband remarked that your work was reminiscent of Edward Hopper. What is it about street photography that is so compelling for you as a genre?

Dave Bender: “Nighthawks” Hopper? We are not worthy… shooting street - and I’m a relative newbie on this playing field - demands a quick eye, absolutely knowing your gear and how to deal with fast-changing lighting and composition - and an ability to discreetly meld into the scene, and not draw attention to yourself. As Tucker calls it, one can be a “hunter,” or “fisherman” fotog, and that’s a useful way to divvy up the approaches: you either actively seek out or patiently wait out the “decisive moment.”

I’m still learning.

Street scene

Varda Epstein: Some years back, you did your first model shoot, right? Can you talk about that? What was it like?

Dave Bender: There’s a fun, Israeli social media-based photography group I belonged to that hires/barters a rotating cast of models for remote shoots, like at the Dead Sea, Mitzpe Ramon, or sites at various beaches. It was the first time I'd actually worked with models, costumes, makeup and props, and it was invigorating to see how the some three dozen photographers - at all experience and equipment levels - succeeded in working with the professional (and patient) models and dancers.

It was a very intensive gig and set in an inspirational wild and desolate setting, located in the desert at Mitzpe Ramon. I had a blast and learned a ton about that side of the biz during the two-day event, including how to integrate with the group as the (apparently) sole outwardly observant (kipa and tzitzit-out) Jew; not being a particularly modest or subtle guy anyway, it never occurred to me that - fortunately very few - others in the group would look askance, or even aghast, at me for “daring” to be there, working the shots with the rest of the fotogs, with the flamboyantly, lightly clad models. I really didn’t think of it as immodest; there was nothing perverse or kinky going on - and, no, I’m far from naive, having grown up totally secular and assimilated - since it was a very respectful and informal scenario for both the models and the team. I felt mostly at home and comfortable.

I’m proud of the shots I got and edited, and share here. Interestingly enough, afterward, when I showed the photos to my wife and our coterie of strictly religiously observant local female friends - all admired and loved the shots, with some noting that they showed strong, independent, secure and proud women, “owning” the visual space. Crazily, ironically, some secular, self-declared feminist friends in the US took a far less kind take on the images, accusing me of “the male gaze” and objectifying the models. The native Israeli female fotogs I was ducking and weaving right along with at the shoot might take issue with that reflexive presumption of guilt.


Varda Epstein: Okay, enough about you. Where and when did you meet your wife? How did the two of you end up in Tzfat? What made Miri become a beekeeper? Did she ever think, when she was a little girl, that she’d grow up and be a beekeeper in Tzfat?

Dave Bender: Miri and I met via the JWed/Frumster dating app, and met, dated in real life, and, married in Tzfat in 2013. Miri, as a 24-year US Army veteran, had made several close friends during her service who had, eventually, made Aliyah (emigrated) to Israel, and some to Tzfat, and she, essentially, made Aliyah in their wake.

She’d always viewed professional beekeeping as an intensive, creative, and possibly profitable retirement activity, and, soon after we married signed on to an intensive, year-long, weekly, hands-on beekeeping course taught by a senior beekeeping professor. I, initially, thought it was, frankly, sweetly eccentric, and shrugged, not even liking honey… I came around after a few years of doing scut work, and, later, took my own year-long COVID-era online course via Michigan State University’s “Hives for Heroes” course for US military personnel and dependents - and, I was, um, “stung” with the beekeeping bug.

Miri, in beekeeper mode.
Miri explains the business of making honey.

Varda Epstein: A lot of people who make Aliyah find themselves doing things they’d never thought of doing, to make a living. Would you say that’s true of you and your wife? What do you think you would have ended up doing professionally in the States?
 
Dave Bender: And how. After living here a year during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and, later, making final Aliyah a decade or so later in my mid-20s, we’ve collectively invested five decades of our lives here. Frankly, not only do I have no earthly idea what or where I’d be in the States by now - I’ve long since ceased entertaining the question.

Dave and his daughter in-law feeding the bees in winter. 

Varda Epstein: What’s next for Dave Bender?

Dave Bender: In the inestimable words of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, “Whaddya’ got?”

***

To learn more about Dave Bender and his professional event and editorial photography, video, editing, and mentoring services, or to purchase prints, see: http://www.davebrianbender.com/.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Sunday, January 08, 2023


Palestinian Arabs falsely complaining that Israeli Jews are "culturally appropriating" their cuisine have become so common that they are almost a cliche. 

But at least some of these accusations cross the line from absurd into antisemitism.

Here's an article this past weekend from L'Orient Today by Emmanuel Haddad:
After hummus, falafel and so many other flagship dishes of Palestinian and Levantine cuisine, knefeh nabulsi is the latest victim of appropriation by Israel.

This delicious dessert, which originated in Nablus and is named after the main ingredient — nabulsi cheese — has been incorporated into a more-than-dubious recipe developed by Pizza Hut Israel.

For Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan, the affront is threefold: "First against the knefeh, then against pizza... And then, against the taste!"

The flavor is as off-putting as it is bitter for Salma Serry, historian of Near Eastern cuisine. The Israeli pizza-knefeh fits perfectly into the definition of appropriation she offers on Sufra Kitchen, the online platform she created to decolonize regional cuisines:

"Appropriation [is the] inappropriate adoption of a group's food without giving it credit, especially for commercial gain. Example: Israeli restaurants profiting from falafel, knefeh or hummus without mentioning their original culture."
The word "inappropriate" in that definition does some heavy lifting here. The USA has lots of restaurants that serve pizza or tacos; is it cultural appropriation to mention them without the prefixes "Italian" or "Mexican?" Apparently, only in Israel, and only for Jews, is cooking food from surrounding countries considered a crime without mentioning their origin - and in the case of foods from Arab countries, the origin in often murky and hardly ever "Palestinian. "

The Israeli Pizza Hut chain never once claimed that "knafeh pizza" is an Israeli food. On the contrary, when they introduced the dish last month, their press release said, “Pizza Hut recognized the unrealized potential of this irresistible Middle Eastern food, and decided to make its own version.” 

And Pizza Hut is not calling it "knafeh" but "knafeh pizza." It is a (perhaps bizarre) combination of the two, but no one claims it is authentic knafeh - or authentic pizza, for that matter. 

The article goes on:
Salma Serry says she often hears denials of this culinary appropriation, defended as the natural spread of cuisine among different communities.

"Of course, food is meant to be shared. But when there is active violence that takes away a group's cultural identity and denies its heritage, its land and the food it produces while manipulating its history, then it becomes problematic,” she said. “In the specific case of Palestine, it's not about sharing; it's about taking and not giving back."
This is simply not true. Israeli chefs and cookbook writers happily describe where Israeli cuisine comes from. No one is "stealing" anything. Read Janna Gur's "A Short Introduction to Israeli Food" preface to her cookbook Shuk where she concisely describes the Israeli food scene's influences, from dozens of ethnic cultures in the Israeli melting pot but also from the neighboring Palestinians. Yes, sometimes non-experts will lazily say that some Arab dishes are Israeli, but they mean that they are popular in Israel: no one says that they originate there, unless they really do, as in the case of falafel in pita.  Similarly, there was much angst when Haaretz once said that shawarma is "Israeli street food" - yet it is, just as much ss pizza is American street food.

Here's a 1949 advertisement for a Tel Aviv restaurant selling "oriental food."


No Israeli ever claimed hummus was natively Israeli.

The real irony is that Palestinians are the ones who have culturally appropriated Middle East foods. They really have claimed to have invented most popular Levantine foods like hummus and falafel, and here they claim to have created knafeh. They may have invented knafeh nabulsi, which uses cheese made in Nablus, but knafeh itself has much murkier origins.

Why does no one accuse Palestinians of cultural appropriation for claiming foods that were invented elsewhere? 

Because they are not Jews. 

There are two reasons that articles like this descend from simple lies into antisemitism. 

One is that they are saying that while every nation's cuisine is an amalgam from many places, only Israeli Jews are accused of "theft" - even though Israeli foodies freely admit and eagerly explain where all their dishes originate.

The other is that these articles deny the or even existence of Mizrahi Jews on the Israeli food scene, even though they are the primary source.

The L'Orient article includes this falsehood:
For chef Kattan, the case of hummus is emblematic of the broader problem:

"It was the very first dish appropriated by the Israelis as early as 1948. Originally, the Zionist project was marked by European-style colonialism that denied the Arabness of Palestine and its land. But when they went to eat at the homes of Palestinians who survived the Nakba — during which 580 Palestinian villages were razed to the ground — they said to themselves, ‘This chickpea puree is not bad!’”
Jews in the Middle East have been eating hummus for centuries. This is a Palestinian chef erasing hundreds of years of Jewish history, and claiming that Jews have no right to be in the region. 

Here is a Palestine Post article about the popularity of falafel among Palestinian Jews in 1940 - and it interestingly describes the uniquely Israeli version of falafel in pita even then. The writer interviews a Jew who was born in Yemen, went to Egypt and brought his falafel skills to Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street.




These articles invariably downplay the role of Mizrahi Jews in bringing with them the bulk of what is now called Israeli cuisine.

Yes, that is antisemitism. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Saturday, October 12, 2013

This is very cool, although their accents sometimes get in the way:




Somehow, I don't think that they're going to cover "Ceclia" though...

UPDATE: They are apparently well-known street musicians, called The Breslov Brothers, and have even covered....Pink Floyd!



They don't have to worry about Roger Waters dropping by to listen, though!

Also check out their Tears in Heaven.



(h/t Malca)

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