Blogger’s Night Out in Petach Tikva

Last night Mimi of Israeli Kitchen and I hosted a Blogger’s Evening in Petach Tikva. Really, Mimi hosted, baked and prepared and I just showed up. We gave out suggested questions and assigned partners at random to interview. Then each blogger presented his or her partner to the group.

Mimi from Israeli Kitchen wished her title appeared earlier on blog listings and is considering changing it to “Aardvarks and the Israeli Kitchen.” I hope that name isn’t taken yet. Although Mimi would sometimes like to write about politics and other non-food topics, she wants to avoid alienating her regular readers. See her report on the event here.

Michelle of Baroness Tapuzina is also a food blogger. Her title comes from her noble Jewish ancestry in Verona, Italy, and a variety of orange. When she left the southern US to make aliyah, her Christian neighbors prayed for her. She keeps her blog positive, saving rants  for a private blog.

Sarah Melamed of Foodbridge, originally from Montreal, is a mother of small children. She is starting to learn about the SEO and marketing side of blogging so she can share her love of Middle-Eastern cooking with more readers.

Sarah Peguine of Oh So Arty was born in France, lived in Brussels and London, and now works in an art gallery. She blogs about exhibits and other art news, and gave us a short lesson in Tel Aviv street art.

When Kate of One Tired Ema is not fighting fatigue, she describes her recent aliyah to her longtime non-Jewish readers. See Kate’s account here.

Risa of Isramom, quieter than the other attendees, hopes that her blog will be a legacy for her grandchildren and is considering switching to Hebrew. Read Risa’s report here.

Baila of Ill Call Baila explained that when she was younger, her friends changed the words of Naomi Shemer’s song, Al Kol Eileh, to “I’ll Call Baila.” She didn’t explain why Ill has no apostrophe. She writes about the challenges of making aliyah with teens and sometimes wishes she were anonymous. Baila finds her apostrophe.

Michelle’s husband David Nordell writes on the group blog Terror Finance. A journalist by profession, he now has a startup company in the terror finance field. He is happiest when he meets political and financial policymakers who have read his work, and is starting a new writing project on financial corruption around the world.

Yesha Settler has been blogging in one form or another since 1998 (!). When the news didn’t represent the reality of her everyday life as a mother in the West Bank during the Second Intifada, she set out to share it with the world.

Robin of Around the Island (her kitchen island, not a tropical island) started blogging in order to develop her creative writing skills.  She now devotes her blog almost entirely to photography, and enjoys close connections with bloggers from all over the world. See her report on the event here.

Fern Chasida of My Heart Is in the East began her blog as a way to connect with Israeli friends and family while she spent three years in California. Now that she is back she is not sure what direction the blog will take. She is working on a post on digital copyrighting, which can be found here.

Abbi commented for three years before opening her own blog, Confessions of a Startup Wife. She promises to get to the subject of the blog’s title soon, but in the meantime she has a lot to say about life in Israel as a mother of three. Here’s her report.

Jonathan of Shomer Shekalim is new on the blog scene but has already gotten attention with his tips on finding jobs and stretching your Israeli income.

Besides A Mother in Israel, I share time and money-saving kitchen tips at CookingManager.Com. I mentioned how “spoiled” I am by the camaraderie and close-knit Jewish and Israeli blog community. Step out of it, and it’s harder to get noticed.

Several themes came up more than once: How much to reveal of our personal lives, the responsibility of representing Israel to the English-speaking world, and finding time with our work and family responsibilities. And though we all love to blog, sometimes it’s just hard to sit down and do it.

Several bloggers had transportation problems. Abbi got off at the wrong exit and ended up on the opposite side of the city. Sarah from Oh So Arty’s bus had stopped running by the time she got to the bus stop so she ended up taking a taxi home. And Kate, who was giving Baila a ride back to Modiin, found her car wouldn’t start and was ultimately rescued by Robin. See Kate’s account again.

Thanks to everyone who made the effort to come from as far as Nes Tziona, Rechovot, Holon, Modiin, the Shomron, Tel Aviv, and Raanana. The conversation didn’t stop for a minute, and we are looking forward to another meeting.

Comments

  1. Great job on the organizing and it was great to meet everyone! Now that I know where I’m going it will be a snap the next time. So sorry that Kate had all that trouble getting back. 🙁 I gave Risa a hitch to Tzomet Coca Cola, but aside from getting back on 4 in the wrong direction for a few minutes, no major issues getting back.

  2. It was great to put faces to the names and meet everyone. Yeshar koach and looking forward to the next get together.

  3. I also found myself zooming confidently down the wrong direction on road 4, until I realized that Kfar Saba is not where I wanted to be going. Had a lovely time and happy to have met my fellow bloggers.

  4. It was a lovely night and really worth the trip from TLV 🙂 Was great meeting you all!

  5. I wish I had joined in. Apparently several people whose blogs I read attended. Thanks for sharing this with MiI.

  6. Thanks Mimi and Hannah for a great evening, so great that we just didn’t want to end and we figured that standing around a parking lot for a few hours trying to jumpstart a reluctant car would be the perfect cap to it all. What I didn’t mention to Kate last night was that the entire misshap is probably my fault. I broke my cardinal rule –

    Never, ever, EVER leave somewhere without going to the bathroom.

    Even if you’re just supposed to be driving ten minutes down the road, by mere virtue of the fact that you didn’t make that critical “bye-bye peepee” you’re pretty much guaranteeing yourself some kind of time-consuming catastrophe.

    Sorry Kate, next time I will definitely pee before I leave!

    On a more serious note, it was really great to meet everyone and put names and faces to the blogs, and to be introduced to some cool new-to-me blogs as well. Once I pick my head up from all this new reading I’ll be avidly looking forward to our next blogger meetup!

  7. Robin, not sure how my leaving my lights on and ruining the battery (although maybe alternator??) made it your fault 🙂

    I broke one of my husband’s cardinal rules, which is “always have more cash on you than you expect to need.” In NYC now the cabs take credit cards. Not so here. But who expected to need one? Who expected that my husband could have used the set of keys to the rental car?

    Perhaps in the future I will think twice about leaving the house.

  8. Sounds fun! I look forward to reading the blogs that are new to me.

  9. Sounds like a fun evening, and I’m really sorry that I missed it.

  10. Sounds like a great evening! I was supposed to come too, but got back pain so couldn’t come:-(Well,maybe next time….

  11. Sounds like a good evening and a lot of fun.

  12. mominisrael says

    It was great meeting all of you. I hope to see Yael and Mrs. S. next time, as well as Leora, I-D and Jack.

  13. It was a great evening and one I really needed. The husband and the kids all survived my 5 hours of absence, although when I walked through the door just after midnight the baby was screaming and everyone else was sound asleep. Not sure how long he’d been crying.

    But it sure bodes well for future ‘baby-free’ times!

  14. mominisrael says

    Devo, I’m glad I left Robin with Kate and Baila and got you to the bus right away. My mother used to say that the mother hears the baby in the night and the father, a doctor, hears the telephone.

  15. Thanks to Abby for getting me to ‘Coca Cola’ even though neither of us knew where we were going! My husband thanks you too. Thanks to Miriam and Hannah for organizing and giving us focus. I felt like I had a good dose of Treppenwitz (brilliant flashes too late) and really got a lot out of listening to everyone. I am definitely looking forward to the next get together.

  16. sounds great – wish i could have been there too:-)

  17. It really was a fun evening out. Looking forward to the next one; I’d be happy to host.

  18. I loved meeting everyone, and hope we can get together again with other bloggers too, after Chanukah. Did you see the new member of the group? A non-blogger, but likely to be active in Israeli Kitchen. Check her out, she needs a friend.

  19. glad you had a good time.

    “Several bloggers had transportation problems”

    i know i’ve linked to this before, but i feel compelled to do so anytime someone talks about driving in petach tikva:

    http://agmk.blogspot.com/2007/08/getting-lost-in-petah-tikva.html

  20. This sounds like it was great!

  21. Sounds like a wonderful few hours. Sorry I couldn’t make it. I live near Eilat.

    Ilana-Davita, if you’re reading this, I have no idea who you are or what you blog about, but your blog begs to be named “In-I-Lana-Da-Vita” or “Ina Godda Davita”. Or am I showing my age??? : )

  22. @ Yam Erez, I get your reference, but only because my stepmom was a HS Spanish teacher starting in about 1970. She had one student in particular who was extremely concerned with her cultural education and “tutored” her in music. Many years later this became a family joke. 🙂

  23. Wish I could have been there. Sounds like a wonderful evening (an informal, laid-back “Jbloggers Convention” without the boring speakers!)

Trackbacks

  1. […] actually, the eleven or so other bloggers who came to meet, network, nosh, and exchange URLs. (See Hannah’s post on everyone who came, which contains links to everyone’s blogs, which describe the […]