Israel Active

Ideas include Haifa’s International Film Festival, Bat Yam International Street-Theatre Festival, Dona Gracia Festival in Tiberias, the Negev Bird-watching Festival and Emek Hamaianot.

Happy Sukkot from the Ein Prat Fountainheads

Icon Tel Aviv features re-enactments of scenes from comic books and fantasy games, a science fiction film festival, discussions on animation and a superhero costume contest. This year’s festival will also feature a special workshop on “Scientific Singularities,” that could change life for the better.

Standwithus and www.OnceinaLifetime.org.il are taking major Instagram users on an extraordinary journey across Israel. They will be introduced to our small country's tremendous variety of landscapes, cuisine and nightlife, as well as its multicultural society and culture.

(Thanks to Israel21c) No need to panic – just advance notice of two hot-air balloon festivals during the Sukkot holiday period. Gilboa’s Hot Air Balloon Family Festival and Timna Park’s International Hot Air Balloon Festival both take to the skies on October 3rd.

The 7th International Classical Guitar Festival in Netanya - will be held during the festival of Sukkot, October 1-4, 2012, at venues throughout the city. It features a quartet from the UK, and duos and trios from USA, Japan, Germany, Ecuador and Croatia. And it’s totally free.

The TV show Homeland, based on the Israeli series Hatufim, won the top drama prize at the Primetime Emmy awards. The Guardian article below explains how Gideon Raff’s Israeli drama was taken to the USA. But the BBC World Service called Homeland a “home-grown” US series.

It was nice of the JPost blog editor Lidar Grave-Lazi to write a summary of blogs for the week ending Sept 12th. She wanted to end on a positive note, so my contribution “A time and a place for everything” featured as the finale.

Israel beat Japan 3-2 in Japan to advance to the top World Group of tennis’s Davis Cup. Israel’s Amir Weintraub, ranked 223 in the world, won the high-pressure deciding match in four sets, against Japan’s Go Soeda who is ranked 170 places above him at number 53.

Israeli hero Nadav Ben Yehuda is back to his favourite sport. In May, Nadav abandoned his record-breaking attempt to climb Mount Everest in order to save a Turkish climber. Now Nadav has scaled the 5,033 meters (16,512 feet), Georgian peak of Mount Kazbeck, planting an Israeli flag on the summit.