Visiting the Bedouin

Deena Levenstein — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:23:54 +0000

How interesting to get a glimpse into someone else’s life, especially when it’s so different from your own. Amnon (I’m not sure he actually has a last name – you know those people) gives tours all over the country and, according to him, he’s one of the only Jewish Israelis who know the Arabic dialect that the Bedouin in the Judean Desert speak. And so they are friends and he sets it up so you can go visit with them in their homes. AKA, their tents. He explains different things to you like about their knives, their tea ceremonies, their music… Here is a video of the dad playing his string instrument and singing to us.

The son, Yousouf, came down to meet us by their water cistern (I think it's called). The structures ahead of him are their tents.

The men and women sleep separately (yet somehow they succeed in having children). The women are worked so hard, milking gallons of milk every day, making cheese and I guess other things like cooking and cleaning, that they have a shorter life expectancy than the men – the opposite of most cultures I’ve heard of. I’m not jealous. But here is their view. Jealous of that?

Minus the jeep, of course.

Meaningful pop music

Deena Levenstein — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:03:16 +0000

She must be listening to Ehud Banai.

Geez, I didn’t know that Jews can keep a tune. : )

The music here is RICH!!! Because it’s not only about beautiful melodies, interesting rhythms and funky instruments. It’s actually about meaningful words as well.

Hadag Nachas – הדג נחש

Hadag Nachash is an example of an Israeli hip hop-funk group that sings about… believe it or not… meaningful topics. OK, not everything is exactly that meaningful but a lot of their music is about things like life’s difficulties and Israel’s culture (including politics). Here is a song about the word freiyer. This is loosely translated as sucker. It’s the person who gets the raw side of the deal and in Israel people are often worried they’re going to be the freiyer.

לא פריירים – הדג נחש

Galgalatz radio – גלגלצ

The station that many people in the country seem to listen to is Galgalatz (you will hear it in many, if not most stores and restaurants throughout the country). They play music almost 24 hours a day plus news every hour on the hour (of course – we’re in Israel where we do that) and traffic reports (where they keep screaming at everyone to drive safely, FOR GOODNESS SAKE!!!). Galgalatz plays the craziest mix of English, Hebrew and other language songs and all styles (it’s normal to hear Louise Armstrong, Britney Spears and then Israeli rap).

On the list of most important things to do while in Israel, add, “Get to know the music.” It’s totally worth it to attain an Israeli music guru. Someone that can show you the ropes of the large and exciting variety of Hebrew music. When you come to Israel to visit, live here temporarily or you brave it and get yourself a spanking new teudat zeihut (Israeli ID card), just don’t miss out on this important aspect of the Israeli experience. Because you would be missing out.

Hebrew You » music

Visiting the Bedouin

Meaningful pop music