Revised Proposal and Meeting Details for 4/22

[Alexis Gewertz]

Hi Committee, 

 

Happy Passover! 

 

A couple of important reminders and updates. First and foremost, please RSVP to me for the upcoming meeting (Wed. April 22^nd at 7:00 pm at CJP, 126 High Street, Boston) if you have not done so already. We will have snacks & beverages and we welcome you to bring your dinner (but are unable to provide dinner this time).

 

Secondly, we want to thank you for your feedback on the proposal sent last week.  We have been working to integrate and process everyone’s suggestions. There will be plenty of opportunity for discussion at the meeting - here is where things are at.

 

The event will consist of a central room where there is food, drink, and Israeli musicians.  Photography by Israeli artists will be showcased in the main room. We propose to have breakout rooms/sectioned off spaces with a variety of arts & culture opportunities for reflection and questioning.

 

Many of you offered up great ideas so I have compiled a more specific list of options for break out rooms. These can absolutely be toyed with and we will discuss at the meeting.

 

1)     Showing of http://www.closedzone.com/ every 15-20 minutes with a brief discussion to follow it.

2)     Short film or showing of Israeli show B’Tipul (In Treatment) throughout the night

3)     Presentation on Israeli music videos (Matt, you are clearly what we had in mind for this!)

4)     Israeli dancing with some instruction for people who want to participate

5)     Information/discussion on Better Place

6)     Poetry reading of Israeli poetry

7)     Wine tasting (perhaps people can preregister for this—we need to ensure that it doesn’t interfere with the bar service)

8)     “What’s new in Israeli technology?” Get a professor or two who would be willing to talk about this

9)     Krav Maga instructor who could talk and give a demonstration, perhaps a mini-lesson?

 

Please think about this revised proposal. We look forward to hearing everyone’s ideas next week!

 

Thanks,

Alexis

 

Alexis Gewertz

Event Coordinator, GesherCity Boston

126 High Street

Boston, MA 02110

(617) 457-8666

agew...@jccgb.org

www.geshercity.org

 

[Shoshana Fagen]

Hey,

Alexis you have clearly been working very hard on this.  Because I do not know if I will be able to make the meeting (I work down in providence and never really know when I will get out of work), I wanted to give some feedback now. 

 

1) It would be great if you could get us all little (1-2 sentence) blurbs about each idea (specifically, closedzone and better place I have never heard of). 

 

2) are we going to have one of those mini Shooks where people can buy stuff from israel (jewelry, soaps, etc)?  people seem to like those and it helps support the economy.

 

3) There are a whole bunch of quality independant films that have come out of israel recently, perhaps thinking about one or more of those to show in the movie section

 

4)in some ways, perhaps just having music videos on rather than a presentation on them may be cool.  If we are going to have a major israeli artist, then rather than having an opening band, we could have music videos on a screen.... or something like that

 

5) we could do like a pre-party wine tasting

 

6) I am concerned that discussions/information sessions will not go over so well.  I would love to encorporate new israeli technology but i'm worried that a didactic format won't work... what would be really cool is if we could get reps from organzations to actually come with examples of or models of what they are working on.  People could then walk around, and see things and talk individually.  The didactic form may work if the person is a very engaging speaker and has lots of props.

 

7) if we need the connection I have a friend who does Krav Maga. I like the idea of a demonstration/lesson (like if we had it occur more than once in a cycle, so that people who come early and people who come late could see it).  In fact we could do something like thie following:

Krav Maga Demo

Krav Maga Lesson (1-2 moves)

Israeli Dancing Lesson (2-3 dances)

Krav Maga Demo (same or different)

Krav Maga Lesson (1-2 different moves)

Israeli dancing lesson (2-3 different dances)

I am worried that if there is lag time or empty space in parts of the venue then people won't think to go back there, but if we have stuff going on constantly, it will seem like more is going on.  If things can't occur throughout the whole time period, then we share space/rotate, like i suggested above. 

 

ok, I think thats all I have for now, and I apologize in advance if I don't make the meeting.

Shani

[David Cohen-Henriquez]

Hello Alexis how are you doing?

First of all congratulations for putting this thing together in such a nice way. I haven´t been too much in touch because I am still down in South America and it´s been a marathonic Passover with the Shabbatot and intermediary days.

I have some friends who know people who do arts and crafts from Israel and sometimes show their things (i.e. Jewelry) at people´s houses. Perhaps we could invite them to the event.

Also, it will be nice to talk to the people in Kolbo and they could have a stand with Judaica, books and other things made in Israel. I know the person to contact to in case we want to do something like this. I could ask her if they would be willing. I guess the answer will be yes. I was recently at a talk from the israeli author Etgar Keret and they were selling in a table all of his books there at the event.

I will be returning to Boston on Monday and I will try to go to the meeting.

Moadim le´simchah,

David