Profiles
In Conversation with Gretti Izak
Gretti Izak, writer and painter, was born in Bulgaria, yet writes in English. She has lived in Jerusalem for many years and is one of long standing members of the English-language poetry group, Voices Israel. Gretti has published published six books of poetry.
The Beat of Becci's Drum
What is a nice Jewish girl from Melbourne doing in a circle of fourteen Arab drummers in Jerusalem? Thirty-two-year-old Becci Fleischer is the only Jew in her class of Middle-Eastern percussion at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance.
"There's one other woman in the class - and she's Arab," says Fleischer in her Ein Kerem studio, which is floored with colorful mats, and decorated with her guitars, oud, tambourine, bells and large silver darbouka.
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It Takes Two Wings To Fly
Walk along Rehov HaTamid in the Jewish Quarter, overlooking the Kotel on a Friday between 12.00 and 1.30 noon. You will see the pious hurrying to pray at the Kotel. You will hear the imam in the mosque on the Temple Mount preaching to the faithful. And you will see a small group sitting in a circle on the ground in the open area facing the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. Maybe you'll see a Japanese Buddhist priest among them. Maybe you'll see a Sufi sheikh in the circle of Jews and non-Jews. One face you'll see there regularly is Eliyahu Charanamarit McLean.
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The "Ha-Ha-Aha" Connection
Larger than life, Maureen Kushner waved a hello to latecomers to her slide presentation in Jerusalem last week.
"Come on in," she enthusiastically called across the hall. But then everything about the redheaded, fifty-year-old native New Yorker is enthusiastic. She has enthusiastically taught inner-city New York elementary-school children for twenty years. These children, whom Kushner sees as also living in a war-zone, passing armed drug-dealers on their way to school and living with constant danger and fear, provided her with the original base for her slide presentation, "Peace Through Humor."
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What is a nice Jewish girl from Melbourne doing in a circle of fourteen Arab drummers in Jerusalem? Thirty-two-year-old Becci Fleischer is the only Jew in her class of Middle-Eastern percussion at the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance.
"There's one other woman in the class - and she's Arab," says Fleischer in her Ein Kerem studio, which is floored with colorful mats, and decorated with her guitars, oud, tambourine, bells and large silver darbouka.
Read More
It Takes Two Wings To Fly
Walk along Rehov HaTamid in the Jewish Quarter, overlooking the Kotel on a Friday between 12.00 and 1.30 noon. You will see the pious hurrying to pray at the Kotel. You will hear the imam in the mosque on the Temple Mount preaching to the faithful. And you will see a small group sitting in a circle on the ground in the open area facing the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. Maybe you'll see a Japanese Buddhist priest among them. Maybe you'll see a Sufi sheikh in the circle of Jews and non-Jews. One face you'll see there regularly is Eliyahu Charanamarit McLean.
Read More
The "Ha-Ha-Aha" Connection
Larger than life, Maureen Kushner waved a hello to latecomers to her slide presentation in Jerusalem last week.
"Come on in," she enthusiastically called across the hall. But then everything about the redheaded, fifty-year-old native New Yorker is enthusiastic. She has enthusiastically taught inner-city New York elementary-school children for twenty years. These children, whom Kushner sees as also living in a war-zone, passing armed drug-dealers on their way to school and living with constant danger and fear, provided her with the original base for her slide presentation, "Peace Through Humor."
Read More
