Israel Active

Academy award winning Israeli actress Natalie Portman (star of The Black Swan) has given birth to a baby boy. She has named him “Alef” – the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Verdi’s opera Aida was performed spectacularly at the Dead Sea desert fortress site of Masada – a highlight of the Israel Opera festival.

To celebrate the opening of Israel’s first solar field, rap artist Shyne has released his new song “Solar Energy” with lyrics “No oils, barrels. Powered by the sun. Solar energy. The revolution has begun.”

Starring Shani Lachmish, daughter of our friend Leonie.

Contemporary Israeli Dance Week is a feature of this year’s La MaMa Moves Festival in New York. It also hosts a project by Israeli film schools where students combine dance films and animation.

It is not the high-tech side of Israeli engineering that we are used to. But designing colourful giant model aircraft just to plummet straight down into the water sure is entertaining to many.

We visited friends in Jerusalem last week and were treated to a guided tour of the beautiful and restful Botanical Gardens. Then just this week a new video appeared on youtube.

The former European champion and Olympic medalist Arik Zeevi won the gold medal in the under-100-kg weight class of the prestigious Moscow Grand Prix.

In the latest round of Euro 2012 qualifying games, Israel beat Latvia 2-1.

Vania Heymann of Israel’s Interlude has made an interactive video masterpiece. Designed like a TV screen, you can switch channels to watch 16 different scenes of celebrities lip-synching to Bob Dylan singing “Like a Rolling Stone”. The realistic staged scenes make a statement on US TV society. It has gone viral and was featured on the Wall St Journal, Rolling Stone magazine, The UK’s Daily Telegraph, etc. etc.