frgdr.com Blog

I started designing Hebrew pro-Obama graphics eight months ago in response to the Rovian smear campaign that was peaking at the time. I was appalled by the Newspeak that started gaining more and more strength, even to the point of bringing down prominent democrats with ‘as far as I know’ statements, changing discussions about ‘the war’ to discussions about ‘the surge’, pushing the ol’ familiar dichotomy of ‘one of us’ versus ‘one of them’.

Now, each day scores of people visit my Obama posts, usually because Google in its infinite wisdom has ranked them high in the image search results, but since I never expected my symbolic protest to go beyond its virtual existence, I am amazed to get from time to time evidence of my design crossing to the real world. Yesterday I got an email from an Obama supporter in Massachusetts named Brian, saying:

Shahar,
 
Attached are two photos of me campaigning for Obama in New Hampshire in a Yes Oui Ken shirt. A group of friends all went to New Hampshire together, and we went from house to house talking to people about the need for a change. We had many good conversations. […] Afterwards I wore the shirt to a dinner with a group of Rabbis and Jewish friends, and they all loved the design. […]
 
L’shalom
Brian

 
 
 
If you want a shirt like Brian’s, or want to show your Obama pride in a button, just download the graphics, and use CafePress, Zazzle, or similar online printing services - or go green and visit your local print shop:

The IFCJ or The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is a philanthropic organization founded by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein. The organization might have done a lot of good in Israel, but I have always thought there was something a little off about it.

First, it seems that one of the main goals of the organization is to promote an heroic public image of its founder. He is not only mentioned in every ad they do - he is the main focus of most of them. On his website you can ‘help honor Rabbi Eckstein [and] share a personal message with [him] that will be placed in a special book of memories being presented to him […]‘
In this air of a personality cult they might as well have used a capital H when spelling ‘him’.

Second, it seems that when it comes to soliciting donations, the end justify the means with this organization. A year ago Israel’s Channel 10 news did a segment showing the organization’s US commercials in which Rabbi Eckstein paints Israel as a Third World country whose streets are packed with poor people, bombs go off everywhere, and tourists never visit. Now, I understand that you cannot ask for money if you state that all is well, but it seems the IFCJ is incapable of seeing the big picture, and in trying to make Israel better they seem to perpetuate old stereotypes, trying to manipulate people’s emotions in order to raise more funds.

In yesterday’s Maariv newspaper, the organization published an ad in which Rabbi Eckstein personally feeds a child some green beans, in what appears to be a very large soup kitchen. I found this ad particularly disturbing, as the child in front and the others in the back are most likely real people and not models, who most likely did not consent to being plastered all over the newspaper. But what really made me mad is the subtext of Rabbi Eckstein as a contemporary messiah feeding the poor. No more donating in secret - the modern day savior has an NPO, hires a PR company, an ad agency, and does not wait for people to hang his picture on the wall – he prints them copies of it.

Hagigit, the artists collective I co-founded, was invited to participate in the End of Summer events by the Jerusalem Theatre. We spent the last few weeks in preparation for the three day event, our biggest event to date both logistically and in terms of crowd participation. We set up our famous outdoors studio, packed it with theatre-related props, set up a work station consisting of 6 laptop computers, 2 photo printers, a wireless router, and one strategically placed electric fan.

The whole shebang worked like so: people could play dress up and don outrageous costumes, three Hagigit members staged the studio scenes and photographed them, another member was in charge of downloading the photos and distributing them using our wireless network. Most of the photos were instantly printed by another member, and a few were manipulated using Photoshop by two other Hagigit members.
Myself? I was in charge of hooking up to the jumbotron, displaying the photos taken and playing the Photoshop screen-captures, to the amusement of the crowd.

Here is a short movie consisting of photos taken at the studio:
http://www.vimeo.com/1657165

And here is an example of the sort of Photoshop work that was done in real time, played here at 8 times the original speed:
http://www.vimeo.com/1675108

…oh, and we got mentioned here and here.

A couple of hours ago, Ehud Barak, Israeli Minister of Defense and former Prime Minister, was interviewed live on Fox News. As always, Barak looked very respectable - on Fox’s Live Desk camera 1:

…but camera 2 showed Barak’s sitting position with his legs uncrossed and very, very far from each other:

Now, I am not sure how average Fox viewers perceive this image and whether they assume this is the customary way Sultans sit in the desert - but as an Israeli viewer it made me smile as it is the all-Israeli male sitting position, legs uncrossed, crotch-area enhanced, a posture indicative of a long military service in the Israeli Defense Forces.