On April 19, 2018, Israel celebrates its 70th year of independence. This has become known as Israel 70. Celebrations will also occur in this country at most Jewish oriented activities which will include Israeli dance sessions. In Israel, a special song commemorating this event has been released composed by Oren Gispin, lyrics by Yosi Gispin with singing by Lior Narkis and Yardena Arazi. For those interested, Yosi Gispin is also a prolific composer with some 20 or so of his compositions ending up as Israeli dances although at present none are done in the Philly regional Israeli dance sessions.

The choreographer of this dance is Gadi Bitton and he extends an invitation to all the world wide Israeli dance sessions to film their rendition of the dance and send it to him for inclusion in a proposed video.

As far as we know 3 local sessions are up to this challenge. Beth Sholom in Elkins Park did its filming on Monday, April 2. The session at Temple Beth Sholom did its performance on Tuesday, April 10. Germantown plans to do its filming on Sunday, April 29. We have acquired (and will acquire) all three session videos which we present here with appropriate still photos where obtainable. Note:Depending on browser, video controls can be hidden. Moving your cursor over the video will make the video controls reappear.

On April 2, 2018, at Beth Sholom, the dance was filmed as you see immediately below. Dancers were encouraged to wear white tops and blue jeans as blue and white is the colors of the Israeli flag and approximately 50% of the dancers complied. We should note the following to be fair about this. Beth Sholom had taught the dance for several weeks before the taping. But many of the dancers that night at Beth Sholom also take Don Schillinger's Thursday night class and he also had been teaching the dance for the last few weeks before the taping.

Credits: Beth Sholom Monday session of April 2, 2018 filmed by Arie. This video has been posted to the internet in its entirety at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBSTMZy9ws4. In addition two seconds of this video - at :18 and :19 - appear on Gadi Bitton's master video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lczBAZu51ng

On April 10, 2018, the Cherry Hill class led by Sharon Polsky performed the Israel 70 dance, Israeli Sheli. The majority of all the dancers are dressed in blue and white. We are showing 20 or so still pictures of the session that night as well as the first of the two videos of the dance taken that night (below the stills)

Credits: Sharon Polsky's session Apr 10 in Cherry Hill at Temple Beth Sholom. Video was taken by Les Grunes. You can also see a portion of this video on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvdia2hw6xQ and move to 14.14 min/sec.

On April 29, 2018, The Germantown Sunday morning dancers added their participation in Gadi's worldwide attempt. Credit Wendy for the suggestion to do this with Grant determining the administrative actions necessary to bring this to fruition.

We covered this with two cameras, one doing stills and the other doing the video. Around 11:30, Grant began to play Israeli Sheli. The first time was for practice. After discussing several aspects of the dance that were problematic during this first practice, Grant led the group through two more renditions of the dance. Thus what would be the second rendition was done as a large circle, the third was done with two concentric circles. The stills below were taken during the first two attempts and the video below the stills documents the third rendition.

Credits: The Germantown Sunday morning session Apr 29. Video was taken by Yona Dansky (you can see Yona in action in several of the still photographs).