(blog post also written for Jewlicious.com).

For David Saranga, Twitter and Facebook remain the best weapons in an ongoing battle to maintain a positive image of Israel and make the Jewish State easily accessible and approachable to everyone.

Saranga, the former consul for Media and Public Affairs at the Consulate General of Israel in New York, brought this mission to full speed just over a year ago, when he held live Twitter debates on behalf of the Israeli government during the Gaza war, opened Israel’s YouTube channel and revamped Isrealli.org, the State of Israel’s official blog. His latest task, now serving as a faculty member of the Asper Institute at IDC-Herzliya’s Sammy Ofer School of Communications, is to launch this year’s 10th Annual Herzliya Conference on social networks for the first time and reach out to a broader, ideally younger audience.

“If we want to approach young people as well we have to bring it to the language that they use,” Saranga said.

In the past decade, the Herzliya Conference has become an increasingly vital stage for Israel’s leaders to gather and discuss government policies and national security issues.  This year’s conference begins tomorrow (Jan. 31) and ends on Feb. 3, hosting a wide range of leaders such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Foreign Minister and MK Tzipi Livni, Deputy Foreign Minister and MK Daniel Ayalon and World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder. One of the newest speakers to confirm attendance is Dr. Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, who will join Tuesday evening’s panel: “Prospects of Peace: The Israeli-Palestinian Track.”

In addition to streaming the various panels in real-time throughout the week, Saranga and his team will also be editing and uploading shorter, more user-friendly versions of each panel, which will remain available online after the fact. Conference enthusiasts can meanwhile receive play-by-play updates about the various speakers, panels and issues addressed via Twitter and Facebook.

“People can see the essence of the conference,” added Saranga, who said he’ll be working with a team of 10 people, predominantly students, to accomplish this mission. He has also been working closely with Dr. Noam Lemelstrich-Latar, director of the Asper Institute and dean of the Sammy Ofer School of Communications.

Saranga’s hope is that viewers and readers all over the world will repost and “ReTweet” conference updates to their friends, giving Israel a bigger voice all over the world, and a continued chance to make a positive impact.

“One of the goals of the project is to enlist organizations and private bodies in Israel and abroad, for whom Israel is both relevant and important,” Saranga said. “This is one of the first projects ever undertaken, whose purpose is to enhance the message emerging from the Herzliya Conference, by allowing organizers to tap into the potential of the social network.”

_ _

For live updates, follow @HerzliyaConf and @DavidSaranga on Twitter, or become a fan of the Herzliya Conference on Facebook. To see the preliminary PDF version of the conference program, click here to download. Further details about the new media launch are available here.

Sharon Udasin is a staff writer at The Jewish Week. E-mail her at sharon@sharonudasin.com, or follow her on Twitter.

Well, I still love Israel — no surprise there. Apologies for the lack of blog post the entire time I was in my favorite country, especially since I was so fastidious about writing while I was in France. But Israel is my home — well, for now my second home, but hopefully my primary home one day — so I just felt like relaxing and totally unwinding during my six days there. Six days which definitely were not long enough. I got to spend time with so many wonderful people as always and definitely was not even able to see every person whom I had intended to spend time with. But Israel is Israel and it waits for me, so I will surely be back very very soon. Ben Gurion Airport staff must really be tired of me by now!

This time, I saw some things that I hadn’t expected to see — thanks to David Abitbol (@jewlicious), I was able to spend essentially an entire day touring Eastern Jerusalem, where the air smells like the most amazing spices in the world. We saw the Church of the Sepulchre and the many spots where Jesus did x, y and z, and we also walked around a lot in the Muslim quarter shuk — taking in the spices, as I said, and the knaffe. My stomach even behaved and I didn’t get sick at all after the knaffe, which is this indescribable amalgamation of sugar, cheese, honey and flour, served best in a dingy hole-in-the-wall Arab cafe that has flies swarming around the sweat-drenched tables. I also walked as close to the Dome of the Rock as possible for a non-Muslim during that hour of the day, and we chatted with the Islamic federation guy who was guarding that territory. He was surprisingly friendly and didn’t seem to mind that we were Jews, but I definitely would not dare try to cross that line. No games with these guys.

As the sunset, we all (our group now had grown to include some new friends, the Weil sisters, their uncle and Talya) made our way up to the roof of the Austrian Hospice, where you have the opportunity to see one of the most beautiful — albeit hidden — views of Jerusaelm. Such a nice and welcoming group of people, and such a nice way to spend an evening. After checking out the Green Tea Style brand soap in the Mamila Hotel bathrooms, we parted with the rest of the group and joined my amazing friend Cori Chascione (@coric) for some sushi and unforgettable conversation. Cori is 100 percent sure that I’m going to end up making aliyah, so we’ll see if I prove her right or wrong. Cori is doing some awesome work in Israel now, working as a leader for the Nativ group of American 18-ish-year-olds who are here to spend the year in Israel. In fact, we ran into a group of them on Ben Yehuda Street, where they shouted to Cori and waved their Burger King crowns at her. Now that’s love. Well, actually, that Ferrero-Rocher gelato we had at Aldo — despite the need for multiple LactAid pills, that’s love.

And then of course, there’s Liat Levy, who with her boyfriend Dotan were such generous hosts to me in Jerusalem. I’m so glad that we became such close friends, and I regret that we didn’t hang out more when she was actually living in New York. But hey, she, like Cori, is another firm believer in Sharon’s future as an Israeli citizen, so we’ll see if that happens. Liat has an amazing new apartment in Beit HaKerem, near the  science campus of Hebrew University, where she just started this past Sunday. In addition to just chilling out and watching Gossip Girl — yes, I do believe that Gossip Girl is reputable, intelligent television, seriously! — we just spent lot’s of time catching up and hanging out with her friends. Oh yeah, and there was one trip to the Jerusalem Malcha Mall (my first time there), where I have to say we looked totally out of place without floor-length skirts. On the way out though, we saw a couple of guys that were perhaps even more out of place — two 7-foot African Americans who must be basketball players in Israel (I’m saying this because of their basketball attire and mannerisms, not because I’m saying that all 7-foot African Americans in Israel are basketball players).

Another proponent of a Sharon-move to Israel is Liron Mark, who has become one of my best friends ever since we met on Taglit now nearly two and a half years ago. I’m really happy I got to spend some time with her and with the entire Mark family in Haifa as usual, even if it was for far too short of a time. In retrospect, I should’ve stayed in Israel longer a couple days longer. Next time, I certainly will. I miss the entire Mark family already — they are my Israeli family after all. In addition to having an amazing dinner with them, Liron and her mom took me to a lecture and screening of the Woody Allen/Larry David movie “Whatever Works” on Friday morning. Though I was seeing it for the second time, it was still funny, and even funnier was that the three of us were probably the only ones under 80 in the room.

I also had the chance to see my friend David Saranga (@davidsaranga) in his homeland, and he brought me with him to IDC Herzliya’s Sammy Ofer School of Communications, where he delivered a lecture to first-year students about using Web 2.0 in Israeli public diplomacy. I might pretty much know his stuff by heart, but this time, it was in Hebrew — so I needed to make friends with some of the students sitting next to me to understand completely. But I have to say, the students were really, really receptive to his lecture, and I think he should continue on the professorial track, even if it’s not full-time. That same day, I also made my way to Kfar Saba to visit Momo Lifshitz and Todd Edelman at Oranim (@oranim), to hear some more details on their latest ventures — many of which I hope to write about soon. My favorite part of their office — the humongous fish tank and killer catfish inside, as well as the mural collage behind Momo’s desk.

And I leave Tel Aviv for last because despite what Mr. Jewlicious says (he calls in “Hell Aviv” for some reason, grrr!!), Tel Aviv is my absolute favorite city in all of Israel, perhaps in all of the world. When I do move there (wow I said “when” and not “if”), that’s where I will live. One of my best choices in Tel Aviv this time was invading the Haaretz offices, where I got to hang out with both my J-School buddy Raphael Ahren (@cologneboy) and Cnaan Liphshiz (@hebrish), who together essentially man the paper’s entire English edition, Anglo File. It was great getting to see them and then getting to explore lot’s of old Yafo and Florentine — an amazing South Tel Aviv neighborhood with a really friendly trio of dogs who tend to roam the streets at night. I also fit in my beach day, of course, because Tel Aviv wouldn’t be Tel Aviv without its beautiful beaches. : ) Beautiful beaches complete with nice warm water, dead eel caracsses on the pebbly sand and awkward Arab teenagers staring down at you from the tayelet. Haha, that’s Israel for you.

The trip to the airport was not without its own hilarities, as the driver proceeded to sing me American oldie love songs in broken English. What a perfectly Israeli way to end my trip there, even though I really wish it didn’t have to end. Well, as I typed in my Facebook photo album, that just means I’ll have to be back very soon. Don’t worry, you know I’ll find a way.

Brotherly Love, From NYU To Israel

The ‘Aleph’ chapter: The new AEPi-ers at the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

In what has become perhaps the most Americanized region in all of Israel, the sunny seaside city of Herzliya just landed a classic American import that it probably never expected: the Jewish state’s first-ever college fraternity.

The international executive board of Alpha Epsilon Pi initiated 15 young men from the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya into the “Aleph” chapter of AEPi, at a ceremony last week at the Sheraton Jerusalem Plaza Hotel. Among the initiates were six Israelis, six North Americans, one Australian, one Colombian and one South African. 

“AEPi was founded as a refuge for Jewish males who couldn’t get into other fraternities,” said one of the 15 founding fathers, 20-year-old American student Ron Bronstein, who hopes that his chapter will become an “international outpost” for the fraternity’s future growth all over the world.

After visiting universities throughout Israel, the board determined that IDC Herzliya was the ideal location, according to Steven Kaplan, expansion director of AEPi. Located just 10 minutes north of Tel Aviv, IDC is Israel’s first private university, and it boasts a popular school for English speakers in addition to its Israeli program. Replete with North Americans who crave a more cohesive campus experience, IDC was the perfect venue for fraternity life, Kaplan decided. Continue reading…

Alpha Epsilon Pi opens Israel’s first-ever college fraternity.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

In what has become perhaps the most Americanized region in all of Israel, the sunny seaside city of Herzliya just landed a classic American import that it probably never expected: the Jewish state’s first-ever college fraternity.

The international executive board of Alpha Epsilon Pi initiated 15 young men from the Interdisciplinary Center of Herzliya into the “Aleph” chapter of AEPi, at a ceremony last week at the Sheraton Jerusalem Plaza Hotel. Among the initiates were six Israelis, six North Americans, one Australian, one Colombian and one South African.

“AEPi was founded as a refuge for Jewish males who couldn’t get into other fraternities,” said one of the 15 founding fathers, 20-year-old American student Ron Bronstein, who hopes that his chapter will become an “international outpost” for the fraternity’s future growth all over the world.

After visiting universities throughout Israel, the board determined that IDC Herzliya was the ideal location, according to Steven Kaplan, expansion director of AEPi. Located just 10 minutes north of Tel Aviv, IDC is Israel’s first private university, and it boasts a popular school for English speakers in addition to its Israeli program. Replete with North Americans who crave a more cohesive campus experience, IDC was the perfect venue for fraternity life and could benefit from AEPi’s capacity to unify the school’s perpetually separate international and Israeli populations, Kaplan decided.

“IDC has been trying for such a long time to bridge the gap between the international school and the Israeli school,” agreed Chapter President Ofri Ben Porat, a 25-year-old native Israeli. Continue reading…

Here’s what two weeks of reporting in the Holy Land can produce. I had such an amazing experience there, and I certainly produced a lot in

Tel Aviv at 100

a short time. Next step, really learn Hebrew. Please see my five articles below, as well as my friend Yoav Sivan’s editorial about the non-religious nature of the city.

Growing Up With Tel Aviv

  

“Tel Aviv developed a lot; it became the big city of the state,” Natan said, looking back through his seven decades as a Tel Avivian. But there is a sense of longing for his and Mirtza’s young days together. “Life was much better then,” Natan says.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

The moment he laid eyes on Mirtza Antin 74 years ago, Natan Abramovitch was determined to win a date with her. Little did he know that they’d end up fighting through a War of Independence together, witness the growth of a Jewish state and one day celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary as Tel Aviv — their city — turns 100 years old.

It’s still their city, sure, but the urban center that Tel Aviv has become is hard to recognize for them now, and they prefer to think back to the carefree days when they were newly married, and both they and their country were young.

“He had horses, he had a car,” Mirtza, told The Jewish Week over coffee and cake in the Tel Aviv apartment that she and Natan have owned for the past 68 years. Her youthful eyes glimmering under vibrantly dyed red hair, she poked fun at the handsome young man who she said “followed her around” for four years until they were married. “He was born specially for me,” Mirtza said. Continue reading…

How Green Is My Landfill

  

The Hiriya landfill, above, dominates the landscape from the highway below. Left, part of the state-of-the-recycling effort at the site. Photos by Sharon Udasin

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Just southeast of Tel Aviv, a huge mountain peak looms over the highway below, harboring swarms of flies and wafting scents of decaying garbage down its sprouting hills. The manmade mound — called Hiriya — may contain a colossal pile of trash, but the landfill is quickly becoming Israel’s icon of environmentalism: a space to recycle waste, produce energy and cultivate greenery.

Hiriya, named for the former Arab village of al-Hiriya, served as Israel’s largest landfill from 1948 through 1999. During that time, flocks of birds posed a danger to aircraft at nearby Ben Gurion Airport, according to Danny Sternberg, former Hiriya engineer and current CEO of Ariel Sharon Park, which is located directly below the landfill. Ten years ago, the government closed the dump and converted it into Israel’s largest waste transfer station, and since 2001 the site has been home to several environmental innovations, including what is being billed as a revolutionary water-based recycling project. By 2011, Steinberg said, developers hope to open Hiriya to the public — not as an odorous garbage dump, but instead as 2,000 acres of sprawling green landscape filled with bike paths and wildlife, two and a half times the size of New York’s Central Park. 

“It’s really the entrance to Israel — everybody who flies in sees this space,” Sternberg said. And revamping Hiriya is just one major example of the Tel Aviv area’s newfound efforts to become a greener, more sustainable place; the city is becoming increasingly filled with yellow recycling bins and new, tree-lined bike lanes.

Hiriya is part of no municipality and remains completely under national jurisdiction. Locally, the site is managed by the Dan Region Association of Towns Sanitation and Solid Waste Disposal board, half of whose members are from Tel Aviv, according to its chairman and deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, Doron Sapir.

Yet the space is crucial to southeast Tel Aviv and the surrounding area as “an environmental social project,” Sapir explained, because it will drastically improve the quality of life in the area, which is known to be among the poorest sections of Tel Aviv. Continue reading…

Pride OF PLACE

  

“The real breakthrough was not the fact that [the LGBT Pride Center, above] was even built, but the fact that it was financed by the government,” says the center’s chairman, Etai Pinkas, inset. Photos by Sharon Udasin

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

In San Francisco, the Castro district teems with gay life — there are drag shows, gay-run boutiques and the signature of the gay rights movements — the rainbow flag — seems to be everywhere.

In the Chelsea neighborhood of New York, gay life has taken root, transforming that West Side area into a mecca for men with well-developed pectorals in tight T-shirts and jeans, and for the wider the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

But try to find a “gay neighborhood” in Tel Aviv, believed to be one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world, and you’ll come up short. Likewise, there are very few exclusively gay social establishments or bars in Tel Aviv — a sign of how well woven into the fabric of the city Tel Aviv’s LGBT community has become. This is due in large part to the city’s overwhelmingly accepting culture, observers say.

“I don’t think people ever felt particularly threatened, so that’s why there was no need to group up” in a gay neighborhood, Etai Pinkas told The Jewish Week. Pinkas, chairman of the new city-funded LGBT Pride Center, is having lunch at the center’s café and reflecting on the city’s gay community, the victories it has won and the unfinished work that stands before it. “Generally, LGBTs in Tel Aviv are very well integrated.” Continue reading…

‘The Great Neck Of Tel Aviv’

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

You can play the national pastime — the American national pastime, that is — on a baseball diamond in Ra’anana, one of the few fields of dreams in all of the country.

In this affluent Tel Aviv suburb, you can get Gatorade there, too, and American candies can be had on the grocery store shelves. And you can join the Penn Club and reminisce about the old college days in Philadelphia.

“I would say Ra’anana is the Great Neck of Tel Aviv,” said American Joel Leyden, president of the Leyden Communications group, founder of Israel News Agency and a Ra’anana resident for the past 10 of his 22 years in Israel. “Ra’anana really stands out as the most cosmopolitan, most modern town in the country.”

And while the influence of American culture can be felt in much of Israel, it’s particularly strong in Ra’anana, the suburb to beat all other Israeli suburbs, to hear the locals tell it. Continue reading…

Bauhaus Is Our House

  

Photo Sharon Udasin

by Sharon Udasin

Cream-colored stone apartment buildings line nearly every street in central Tel Aviv, each varying slightly in shape and size but adhering to a loosely defined style of openness and movement that is particular to Israel’s “White City.” (In 2003, the area was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.)

Tel Aviv urban development began with the “eclectic style” of the 1920s, largely through the plans of Scottish architect Patrick Geddes said Jeremie Hoffmann, 42, the director of  Tel Aviv’s municipal Conservation Department. In the 1930s, Tel Aviv saw an influx of bourgeoisie, as well as famed architects from the German Bauhaus School eager to construct the stone buildings. Continue reading…

Temple OF THE NOW

by Yoav Sivan

Few cities define themselves by what they are not, but Tel Aviv prides itself on being the city that is “not” Jerusalem. Indeed, the distance between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is precisely that between a living-in-the-moment present and a layers-of-history past that can sometimes be a burden to creativity.  

In contrast to Jerusalem where you inhale thousands of years of history in a single breath, Tel Aviv lives today intensely. And much of that life gets lived in cafés. First-time visitors are in awe at the number of cafés a city of 400,000 people can sustain. You won’t find a block without a café and free wireless Internet. Tel Aviv’s coffee shops have become Israel’s modern temples for secular thought, where students finish their homework, businessmen conduct their meetings, couples meet for dates, friends hang out and artists hash out new ideas. These are the places to seize the moment. Continue reading…