Grapevine: Mega Shabbat

This is the fourth consecutive year in which the The Big Shabbat Dinner is being held. It attracts literally hundreds of people.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
White city shabbat organization (photo credit: COURTESY WHITE CITY SHABBAT)
White city shabbat organization
(photo credit: COURTESY WHITE CITY SHABBAT)
IT’S HERE again – the mega-Shabbat project in which Jews around the world observe one full Shabbat together.
A grassroots international undertaking, The Shabbat Project brings together Jews from all backgrounds to enjoy Shabbat in a convivial environment. Activities are scheduled on October 27-28 in more than 1,000 cities in 95 countries.
In Tel Aviv, the central event is taking place on Friday, October 27 at Hangar 11 in the Tel Aviv Port within the framework of White City Shabbat. Doors open at 5 p.m., Kabbalat Shabbat is at 5:30 p.m. and the meal begins at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are NIS 110 – reduced to NIS 100 for early birds and increased to NIS 120 for latecomers. Lone soldiers will be admitted free of charge.
This is the fourth consecutive year in which the The Big Shabbat Dinner is being held. It attracts literally hundreds of people.
Registration: TelAvivShabbatProject.eventbrite.com
AMONG THE music lovers who attended the opening concert of the 82nd season of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in the Charles Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv last Saturday night were President Reuven Rivlin and his wife Nechama, and Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai. The orchestra, was conducted by Zubin Mehta and the guest soloist was pianist Maria Joao Pires.
Rivlin mounted the stage and embraced Mehta, who is retiring in October 2019 after well over half a century with the IPO. The occasion was also the 60th anniversary of what was originally known as the Frederic Mann Auditorium until it needed refurbishing and philanthropist Charles Bronfman covered the costs and changed the name of the institution.
The 81-year-old Mehta announced his retirement in December 2016 at the 80th anniversary concert of the IPO. At that time he said that he would leave in October 2018, but since then, he has decided to stretch it out for another year. Rivlin recalled the days when both the musicians and the audience had to walk through sand in order to get to the concert hall.
THE FRIDAY lecture series at the Japanese Embassy in the Museum Tower at 4 Berkowitz Street, Tel Aviv, resumes this Friday, October 20 at 11 a.m. with a lecture in English to be delivered by Kenneth Alan Grossberg, who was a professor of marketing and director of the Waseda Marketing Forum at Waseda Business School until mandatory retirement in 2016.
Grossberg has been active in international business and management education for more than 40 years, much of that time spent working in Japan and the Pacific Rim. He currently serves as an adviser to the Knowledge Center for Innovation at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and mentors Israeli start-ups in his capacity as a strategist and global marketing expert.
He will talk about some of the complexities of Japanese society. Quite often totally contradictory things can be said about the society, yet both descriptions will be absolutely correct. Japan’s consumer culture also fits this split personality pattern. Foreign visitors to Japan are often amazed by the high degree of service and caring they receive when engaged in even the simplest of consumer transactions, a phenomenon often described by the Japanese themselves with the term omotenashi.
But there is another side to Japan’s consumer culture as well. Pricing, portion size, unavailability of products that could be easily found in countries less affluent and other anomalies are part of the consumer experience, which makes Japan a challenge for foreign marketers and a complex commercial environment that is fascinating in its contradictions.
THE FALL workshop season for The Stage, the central resource for English language productions of the performing arts, begins on Tuesday October 24 at 7:30 p.m. with a musical theater workshop conducted by Dan Schwartzman at Beit Yad Lebanim, 53 Pinkas Street, Tel Aviv.
Performance techniques for actors and singers with Denise Shama begin on Friday, October 27 at 10:30 a.m. at Panda, 5 Brenner Street, Tel Aviv; Acting Improv 101 begins on Sunday October 29 at 7.30 p.m. at Panda wth Adaya Turkia. All classes are weekly, and the series in each category covers 10 weeks.