Suddenly Last Supper...

This famous Untitled piece by Adi Nes, recently on display at the Israel Museum, cheekily references Da Vinci's 'The Last Supper.' Here, secular Israeli soldiers eat in an IDF cafeteria, and if this turns out to be their last meal, there is no real sense of their impending deaths. (We can't quite discern the feelings of the po-faced chap dead centre.) A New York art blogger, KMK mused that Nes's image evokes 'The Silver Platter', a poem by Nathan Alterman, posted below.

Personally, I prefer the pop icon Last Supper, with Marilyn as Jesus and Clark Gable as her Judas Iscariot, which is often on display in a gallery window on King David street and reproduced on posters everywhere. In fact, there are myriad commercial permutations of this rather lame idea, ranging from Lego brick renditions to The Last Happy Meal!

The Silver Platter

by Nathan Alterman
(Translated from the Hebrew by David P. Stern)

...And the land will grow still
Crimson skies dimming, misting
Slowly paling again
Over smoking frontiers

As the nation stands up
Torn at heart but existing
To receive its first wonder
In two thousand years

As the moment draws near
It will rise, darkness facing
Stand straight in the moonlight
In terror and joy

...When across from it step out
Towards it slowly pacing
In plain sight of all
A young girl and a boy

Dressed in battle gear, dirty
Shoes heavy with grime
On the path they will climb up
While their lips remain sealed

To change garb, to wipe brow
They have not yet found time
Still bone weary from days
And from nights in the field

Full of endless fatigue
And all drained of emotion
Yet the dew of their youth
Is still seen on their head

Thus like statues they stand
Stiff and still with no motion
And no sign that will show
If they live or are dead

Then a nation in tears
And amazed at this matter
Will ask: who are you?
And the two will then say

With soft voice: We--
Are the silver platter
On which the Jews' state
Was presented today

Then they fall back in darkness
As the dazed nation looks
And the rest can be found
In the history books.

Rice, Wine, and Beer for Jerusalem's simmering summer nights

During the brief visits of Condoleezza Rice, the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem goes into security overdrive. Half of the parking structure gets cordoned off for her entourage, and so does the gym, where she goes through her power paces in relative privacy. Condi's first name may translate as "Play it with sweetness", but the trainers there marvel at her fitness and what a mean machine her disciplined daily regimen has shaped...especially compared to, say, Madeleine Albright. All those sweaty repetitions won't necessarily yield the same result for Condi on the diplomatic front, however; it's difficult to see anything especially encouraging this time around, with the weaklings Olmert and Abbas weighing in on the Middle East's future. If the Saudis do participate in autumn talks with the State of Israel, which Riyadh has yet to recognize, it would certainly mark a diplomatic breakthrough. But no one is holding their breath that Israel will agree to speak about only "core issues."
To offset this discouraging political and physical workout, lots of Jerusalemites this week quaffed wine beneath the stars at the Israel Museum's Billy Rose sculpture garden. There were spittoons for proper wine tasting during the three-night wine fest, but most people tossed back entire glassfuls. Izzy Bee even spotted a smiling haredi baby lapping up the dregs from his papa's wineglass. Avi Ben, one of Jerusalem's premier wine shops, was a co-sponsor and laid on classic jazz quartets as well as discounting cases.

Kosher Israeli wine is a a far cry from the cough-syrupy Manischewitz clones that I was dreading, and sipping pinot grigio or syrah varietals while strolling around statues by artists such as Oldenberg, Picasso, Botero, and Henry Moore made us feel very sophisticated for a measly outlay of 55 shekels, which included a stemmed wineglass. Towards the end of the evening, you really had to cajole the pourers for a splash of higher-end wines, but there were 25,000 litres of the stuff on offer. So no gripes about these grapes. For the past two decades, wineries have been a growth industry in what ought to be considered a Mediterranean country.

Tasting stands for Tulip, the boutique Kaslov, Saslove, and Teperberg were popular. Yatir and Recanati, Galil Mountain Wineries and Golan Heights drew a trendy younger crowd, many wearing yarmulkes. Thankfully, we could detect no after-tang of Katyusha smoke or gunpowder in the wines harvested from northern vineyards under rocketfire last summer.

For the hoi polloi like me, there was a competing beer festival in town for just half the entry fee. Everyone toted around plastic pints that resembled test tubes, and some competed in spontaneous belching contests. Apparently boutique beer is due to be the next craze, but this event had more the spirit of a keg party than a tasting. An inflatable corona bottle loomed over the grounds, a jolly reminder that West Jerusalem is a very motley mix.
If you want to making a meal out of such comparisons, let's consider what you might wash down with the Mexican beer. A typical Jerusalem menu might include
Arab salad, Romanian kebabs, Iraqi pita, French fies and Bavarian Cream.
If Israelis devour the same food as anti-Semites with such gusto, then maybe we ought to challenge the old adage that you are what you eat.

I'll drink to that, Condi!