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i know there's a more important story here. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]..but i am totally intrigued by this couples kinda 80s Madonna wedding attire . [img]/forums/images/graemlins/70361-embarassed.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif[/img]..or is that the television star hostess [img]/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]
TEL AVIV, Aug. 9 — The dancing went on for hours, with brides swathed in satin and tulle hoisted high on chairs and on shoulders along with their young grooms, smiling at last.
Fifteen couples from northern Israel whose weddings had been canceled because of the war took leave of rocket fire and bomb shelters to marry in a group ceremony just after sunset on Tuesday on the campus of Tel Aviv University.
The couples streamed down a grassy hill toward their individual wedding canopies hung with lanterns and flowing white gauze, each with room for their own guests.
“It’s like a dream,” said David Saadiv, 31, a groom from Haifa, walking hand in hand with his bride, a fellow immigrant from the former Soviet Union, Olesia Yurov, 23.
Just before the ceremonies, Yael Bar-Zohar, an Israeli television star who was mistress of ceremonies, announced a moment of reflection on the war’s dead and wounded — a reminder of the dark backdrop for the night’s festivities.
The mass wedding was the idea of a wedding planner in Tel Aviv, Amit Bar-Tzion, 33. His company and the Tel Aviv University Student Union organized the heavily subsidized event, providing flowers, photographers, hair stylists, makeup artists, a steak and salmon dinner, a band, a dance floor and even fireworks.
“This is the Israeli personality — we do,’’ Mr. Bar-Tzion said. “And we try to be happy even when it is difficult. It’s in our DNA.”
The event is one of many volunteer projects to help Israel’s northern residents, who have been heavily affected by its war with Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon in the past month. Thousands of rockets have been fired on northern towns and cities in a rare attack on Israel’s home front.
Israel’s nonprofit and volunteer organizations, working with private corporations, have taken the lead in assessing the needs of northern residents and pitching in. Some have focused on distributing food, others on providing trauma counseling and care for the elderly or organizing overnight trips to give people in the shelters some relief from the stress of living under fire.
Some volunteers have even taught yoga classes or given acupuncture treatments to those in bomb shelters, while others work to install air-conditioners to soothe the sweltering conditions underground.
Many northerners have left their homes to take refuge in the center or south of the country. But some have stayed behind to tend to those who do not have the choice to leave, including poor immigrants and the elderly.
Latet, whose name is Hebrew for to give, is an Israeli aid organization that has distributed 300 tons of food to residents in the north with help from 1,500 volunteers. Often, the aid is driven directly to shelters.
“We wanted to physically get to the shelters in order to know it is going to the right place and to send a message to the people living in them that people from other parts of country care and that they are not alone,” said Eran Weintraub, general manager of Latet.
Hillel Schmid, dean of the school of social work and social welfare at Hebrew University, said that this most recent war and the existential threat it seemed to pose had once again unified Israelis around a precept deeply rooted in Jewish tradition that says, “The people of Israel are responsible for one another.”
“Once again there is a feeling that we are part of a collective,” he said.
At the mass wedding, which fell on Tu B’Av, the Jewish version of Valentine’s Day, the couples mingled with their guests as the words of a 1960’s pop song came through the speakers: “What the world needs now is love sweet love.”
No one seemed to notice the military helicopter flying overhead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/world/...artner=homepage
TEL AVIV, Aug. 9 — The dancing went on for hours, with brides swathed in satin and tulle hoisted high on chairs and on shoulders along with their young grooms, smiling at last.
Fifteen couples from northern Israel whose weddings had been canceled because of the war took leave of rocket fire and bomb shelters to marry in a group ceremony just after sunset on Tuesday on the campus of Tel Aviv University.
The couples streamed down a grassy hill toward their individual wedding canopies hung with lanterns and flowing white gauze, each with room for their own guests.
“It’s like a dream,” said David Saadiv, 31, a groom from Haifa, walking hand in hand with his bride, a fellow immigrant from the former Soviet Union, Olesia Yurov, 23.
Just before the ceremonies, Yael Bar-Zohar, an Israeli television star who was mistress of ceremonies, announced a moment of reflection on the war’s dead and wounded — a reminder of the dark backdrop for the night’s festivities.
The mass wedding was the idea of a wedding planner in Tel Aviv, Amit Bar-Tzion, 33. His company and the Tel Aviv University Student Union organized the heavily subsidized event, providing flowers, photographers, hair stylists, makeup artists, a steak and salmon dinner, a band, a dance floor and even fireworks.
“This is the Israeli personality — we do,’’ Mr. Bar-Tzion said. “And we try to be happy even when it is difficult. It’s in our DNA.”
The event is one of many volunteer projects to help Israel’s northern residents, who have been heavily affected by its war with Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon in the past month. Thousands of rockets have been fired on northern towns and cities in a rare attack on Israel’s home front.
Israel’s nonprofit and volunteer organizations, working with private corporations, have taken the lead in assessing the needs of northern residents and pitching in. Some have focused on distributing food, others on providing trauma counseling and care for the elderly or organizing overnight trips to give people in the shelters some relief from the stress of living under fire.
Some volunteers have even taught yoga classes or given acupuncture treatments to those in bomb shelters, while others work to install air-conditioners to soothe the sweltering conditions underground.
Many northerners have left their homes to take refuge in the center or south of the country. But some have stayed behind to tend to those who do not have the choice to leave, including poor immigrants and the elderly.
Latet, whose name is Hebrew for to give, is an Israeli aid organization that has distributed 300 tons of food to residents in the north with help from 1,500 volunteers. Often, the aid is driven directly to shelters.
“We wanted to physically get to the shelters in order to know it is going to the right place and to send a message to the people living in them that people from other parts of country care and that they are not alone,” said Eran Weintraub, general manager of Latet.
Hillel Schmid, dean of the school of social work and social welfare at Hebrew University, said that this most recent war and the existential threat it seemed to pose had once again unified Israelis around a precept deeply rooted in Jewish tradition that says, “The people of Israel are responsible for one another.”
“Once again there is a feeling that we are part of a collective,” he said.
At the mass wedding, which fell on Tu B’Av, the Jewish version of Valentine’s Day, the couples mingled with their guests as the words of a 1960’s pop song came through the speakers: “What the world needs now is love sweet love.”
No one seemed to notice the military helicopter flying overhead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/world/...artner=homepage