Letters from Lightstone: Sites and Sounds of Israel

Follow ZoomerMedia’s Marilyn Lightstone as she travels to Israel this summer to bring you first-hand coverage of this culturally rich country. In this dispatch, she sends a letter to Carmen Ruiz y Laza of Joy TV.

Dear Carmen,

I thought of you, Carmen, when I remembered that I must pack the beautiful black, flowered Spanish fan you gave me at last year’s ideacity party for when I go to Israel.

Have I told you how much I enjoy CarmenTV? And, your posts about Spain – your home country – are terrific. So real, somehow…

Anyway, I’d like to respond in kind and let you know what I hope to be getting up to in Israel; leaving in just a few days.

Life takes you into unexpected channels. The last time I was there (a half a lifetime ago) it was to act the role of Anne (St. Anne to you and me), the Mother of the Virgin Mary, in an all-but-disappeared film called Mary and Joseph.

The film was a dud, as I recall, but I got to spend a month in Israel, ploughing the hills of Judaea with a donkey and a wooden plough. Or carrying a great basket of flatbread on my head (I always like it when I have to learn a new skill for a role).

I’m hoping, Carmen, that this trip will be JUST as special. I’ll be doing something I’ve never done before: reportage, or whatever the heck it’s called, and I’m hoping I can overcome my unease with technology enough to send videos back home as well as photos.

The big draw? The Masada Opera Festival, which takes place in the Judaean Desert under the stars. They’ll be doing La Traviata this season, with Ken Nagano conducting.

I was at the Place des Arts the night he made his conducting debut with The Montreal Symphony and the audience went crazy!

A couple of days later, we’ll be in the old Crusader city of Acre to see Don Giovanni.

More to come. All I have to do is pack…