Welcome to Menachem Kuchar's Portal

You are visiting my portal site. On this page I have tried to combine everything I am doing and have done in the past. Here you enjoy viewing at my photographs and reading my essays, stories and wit as much as I have enjoyed creating them. Please feel free to peruse them all.

If you want to comment, praise of critise my work, please feel free to be in touch with me. I'd love for you to help me organise an exhibition in your area or help me find a publshing venue for my writings. Thanks.

Galleries of my Photographs

	New York City et al   Updated 5th January, 2010		Hong Kong   Updated 27th Dec, 2007		Actualities     in Black & Orange   Updated 1st May, 2007		A Bus Stop   Updated 21st August, 2007
	Hevron (Hebron)   Updated 28th June, 2009		Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) Temple Mount, Kotel, City   Updated 26th October, 2009		Tel Aviv Beach   Updated 16th Jan, 2008		Safed / Ssfath / Tzfat   Updated 1st October, 2010
	Faces in Thailand   Updated 26th June, 2008		Eating Out in Thailand   Updated 26th June, 2008		Worship in Thailand   Updated 18th May, 2008		Reflections   Updated 26th June, 2008
	Budapest   Updated 5th June, 2007		Slovakia   Updated 5th June, 2007		Sydney's Coast   Updated 17th May, 2010		Samaritan Passover,         Sukka & Mezuza   Updated 16th May, 2010
	My Home Town   Updated 22nd May, 2008		In Concert   Updated 11th May, 2005		Wild Flowers   Givat haTurmussim   Updated 6th March, 2005		Rust   Updated 19th March, 2007
	Equivalents   Updated 1st January, 2008		Magazine Covers   Updated 19th December, 2009		IsraeliFlags   Updated 1st July, 2008

Land of Israel Galleries

Netzer, chapter II   Updated 10th Jan, 2008

Welcome Bush   Updated 8th Jan, 2008

Netzer   Updated 9th Dec, 2007

Givat Eitam, Efrat   Updated 15th Feb, 2009

Please feel free to write to me.
You can read how my photographs have affected other people via this website
and at the Gush Etzion exhibition.
You can acquire original, signed prints from this site.

Menachem

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Book
Actualities in Black & Orange
			Published in January, 2006, Actualities in Black & Orange is Menachem Kuchar's long overdue first book. It illustrates the people in and behind the "Orange" Campaign in Israel during 2005. The work represents an inquiry into contemporary Israeli life. Using his camera precisely and lucidly to record the anti-"Disengagement" movement, Menachem weaves a photographic narrative of what was happening in the background to the events being played out on the national stage. Stunningly laid out and finely printed, the book presents more than forty timely photographs from the Actualities in Black & Orange collection, fifteen photographs from the Bus Stop collection as well as colour photographs taken in Gush Katif.
Menachem's unique eye for both the monumental and the mundane reveals a vision of universal interest rooted in the everyday, yet always looking beyond. He focuses on the subtleties of human interaction to make eloquent images. Menachem has mastered his medium. His work shows a deep love and compassionate understanding of his country, its people, their life, their problems and their needs. Read reviews of the book. The book is available in hardcover cloth binding, with a dust jacket, as well as a limited edition (180 copies), signed and numbered collectors' edition. You can order the book here on this site or at your favourite book shop.

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Menachem's Biography

One-Man Shows

Ma'arat haMachpela and Jewish Hevron Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York November, 2007       Actualities in Black & Orange and Book Launch, Judaica Centre, Gush Etzion January-March, 2006           Photographs of the exhibition by Steve Zell From the Visitors Book.   Actualities in Black & Orange, Maoz Yam (Gush Katif Hotel) June, 2005   Eating Out in Thailand, The Galleria K'tana, Efrat March-April, 2005           Photographs of the exhibition by Steve Zell

Other Shows

Orange Revolutions The Polish Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw Opening on 27th October, 2009     Actualities in Black & Orange, The Begin Centre, Jerusalem 16th January, 2006         Photographs of the Exhibition                 by Yehoshua HaLevi

Magazine Covers

All photographs are © copyright and may not be reproduced without permission.
Photographs displayed on this site are

Telling a great story and writing what I think -- a master raconteur

[Skip the site introduction and surf directly to the most recent article.]

I have been writing essays published exclusively on this website for well over two years now. When I started to write, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to present to my new worldwide audience, I didn't have any real direction as to what I wanted to do here. I thought a Weblog (now universally refered to as a BLOG) might be a good idea.

On my seemingly never-ending journey across the web, I meet many people monetising their blogs by sharing space with sponsors. There are a number of companies who will populate your "free" space with commercials. If you write interesting stories, provide interesting material or have informative content, people will come to your site to read, be entertained, argue and learn. And if the sponsor provides relevant advertisements, you (and she/he) can make some money.

Harnessing the power of Web II the current 'in' terminology) allows content generated by others to be displayed on your sites. That's what Web II is. Rather than producing "static" websites in the classic style, you allow anyone out there in the Internetland to write for you. This is great for monetising, as obviously the more pages you fill, the bigger your site, the more advertising "area" you achieve, the greater the variety in your texts and more money you bring in. QED -- quod erat demonstrandum.

One morning I said to myself, well what the heck, I'll start a blog too, write a few stories, optimize them so the web searches point to me. I won't make it too interesting so people won't mind clicking out and away on the adverts, and I can make a few bucks in the deal. An Internet magnet, so to speak.

But things never work out as you plan. In the words of the old Yiddish saying, Men tracht und Gott lacht, roughly translating to "Men plan and God laughs". I would venture to assume that Google's business model isn't what it assumed ten years ago -- businesses and people must be flexible to survive and go with the flow.

But that's OK. As I wrote more and more, I started to become more interested in the creative aspects of writing than in the financial side. Maybe art is art and creativity is creativity, and I use the same skills to write creatively that I use to produce fine-art photography. To my mind, art is the ability of an 'artist' to look at an existant object in this world, and using whichever God-given skill or method they possess, and reproduce it in an 'artificial' form. This can be done with a lump of stone to produce sculpture, a blob of mud on a potter's wheel, a paint applied to a stretched piece of canvas or a camera viewfinder.

If the artist sees the end product in her mind's eye, and she can create a work of art. Writing falls into the same category. The writer creates a word picture, allowing the reader to smell the salt spray, feel the fog blowing on her face or feel the thunder vibration of a mob of passing brumbies.

So what I really have here, right from the beginning, is more a collection of short stories than a 'classic' blog. (That's got to be an anachronism -- blogs haven't been around for long enough to be "classic" -- but that's the age in which we live -- thing get compressed in time and place.)

I have not created a diary, nor a reporting system for any political philosophy. My writings cover much and varied ground. My past, my thoughts, my childhood, my hates, peeves, hatreds, loves, my family, our collective history . . . all presented in full technicolor on this wide screen.

Answers.com defines a blog (weblog) as a website which displays in chronological order, the postings by one or more individuals, and usually has links to comments on specific postings. Now, some fifty stories later, I certainly do not have a blog.

I believe what I have produced here is a collection of creative writing. A body of stories. What the Okkers call "spinning a good yarn". The fruit of a storyteller. I intend to entertain; I am not scared to say what I think, and I don't mind being insulting or mean if I feel the chronicle is enhanced by it, or that this is how I recall the events. Life wasn't always easy and everyone wasn't always nice.

Parenthetically, I should say here that whatever I write is my own take on events and sometimes (not always) I may embellish the truth to improve the story line. I do not claim to be writing history (but sometimes that is exactly what I am doing).

Many cultures have story telling traditions. Civilisations pass their heritage to future generations via narratives; elders relating to a younger generation. Even the Talmud contains stories that must be more meaningful than they appear. There is an oral tradition. See, for example, the wonderous tales of Rabba bar bar Hana -- and the take of the Vilna Gaon.

Rav Nachman of Breslov said, "The world says 'Stories are meant to help you sleep'. But I say, 'Stories are meant to wake you up!'" Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach said, "The essence of a story is understanding life."

Please enjoy my writings, my stories, my yarns. Please let me know how they come across; I love to receive feedback and may publish some of it with my comments. If you enjoy my stories, feel free to pass them on to your friends, relatives and acquaintances. After all art, both my stories and my photographs have been created to be enjoyed.

And remember, anything I write here is my humble opinion and only represents my thinking and understanding, and is not that of any organisation for whom I may work, consult to or do anything else for. [Terrible -- prepositions at the end of a sentence!]

Thank you.

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Note that commercials on this site are from third party feeds. While I have no control over them, they are supposed to be tailored to my page content. Feel free to view any of the sponsors' sites that interest to you.

Here is a list of my latest writings. Please stay tuned for more. I don't date them because my work is timeless. Seriously though, unless I indicate otherwise, as this is not a blog, when it was written should not effect your reading. Occasionally I'll give you clue to a timeline.

• Our Sages Tell Us Our Name is Engraved on Our Very Souls -- Our name is our very essense
• Ultimately It Boils Down to Greed and Stupidity -- Doesn't it always?
• Capos, Kapos and Nazi Murder Revisited -- How do Holocaust victims, and how should we, relate to Capos?
• On Fasting and Feasting on Tisha b'Av-Transition to the End of Days, the Messianic Era or Let the Festivities Begin
• Facebook conversations with Australian political novices and Hungarian rotten egg eaters -- how many degrees of separation?
• Simulating Reality, Prophecy and Physics Revisited -- "You don't ever want a crisis to go to waste; it's an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid." -- Rahm Emanuel
• Today is the 17th Day of Tamuz -- Why do we bother fasting?
• What the Price of Privacy -- Why do we insist on spying on ourselves?
• Who Will Ascend the Mountain of the Lord, Who Will Stand Erect in His Holy Place -- He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not sworn in vain against My soul and who has not acted with deceit
• Simulating Reality -- Responses and discussion on the original post
• Facebook and Styrofoam -- Man is a Social Creature
• Simulating Reality -- "I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice"
• Why Do Jews Love a Free Lunch? Anything, Anywhere and with Anyone
• The Present and Future of Communications and Social Media -- and the Messianic Age
• The Putrid Parable of the Capped CupCakes -- A picky porcine person's particularly prickly problematic predicament
• The New World Order via the Prophets of Israel
• It's All About The Dimensions, Three -- No Actually Four because it doesn't go away with time
• The Place of the Holy Temple Today
• The Road from Presov to Kosice -- A Mere Sixty Kilometres or an Eternity?
• Writing and Divine Providence
• The Damsel in Distress: The Distressing deTale
• It's a Matter of How You Say It
• On Matza, Soccer Balls and Red Wine or How long is a piece of string?
• Woosh, Plump, Ploop, Shhhhh
• On the Psychology of Sex and Wombats
• Stay Away from Bureaucracy. It will swallow you alive
• Noachide Meat -- Have we overstepped our dominion?
• Ode to a Body Plethysmograph or How to Manage a Hospital
• "My Life Story" by Edith Duci Gluck Kuchar Schwartz
• A Eulogy
• The Power of the Web -- Finding a manuscript and a family
• Another Year Has Passed -- Happy Birthday
• Why I Like to Photograph Reflections or Why Do I Always Do Things in Reverse?
• Interview with Me in Midrasz Magazine published in Poland
• A DisKosher Disdelight -- Almost eating out on Broadway
• What Was the Crime of the Sodomites? Jingoism, xenophobia or sodomy?
• The more things change, the more they stay the same -- On Babel, the New World Order, One World Government, Carbon Trading and Socialism
• Wednesday What I Meant to Say -- Facebook and being Political Correctness
• Monday On Spaghetti Makers, French Management and Assessing Personality
• Tuesday My Holocaust Survivor Friends Tell It As It Is
• Wednesday Three Holocaust Experiences: My friends tell me their stories
• Thurday "What Hath God Wrought" -- Language Detectives at Work
• Friday, erev Rosh haShana "The End is Nigh" -- The clock ticks on -- another step towards the Final Redemption
• Sunday Preying on the Aged. Like Jeffrey Archer's Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less
• Tuesday On Speaking Hebrew: How to pronounce Hebrew words correctly and why this is important
• Wednesday The Human Cost of International Travel -- Jet Lag
• Friday I Love Gush Katif Cherry Tomatoes -- Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink
• Sunday More of Menachem on Meditation -- Pure meditation techniques from the first Jew
• Wednesday What Makes a Soul? -- Will this be the last Tisha b'Av?
• Sunday Menachem on Meditation -- I didn't intend to worship idols
• Friday A Taxi Ride From Hevron to Yerushalayim -- or smuggling Jews into the Holy City
• Thursday What if my Liver were to Explode Half Way Through the Event? -- Government Sponsored Citizen Rip-Offs
• Wednesday You're Known by the Company You Keep -- We were only taking back what was rightfully ours
• Sunday How Much Would You Pay to Get a Million Dollars?
• Monday A Most Humbling, Though Frustrating Experience
• Thursday What Do Coffee, Tomatoes and Red Wine Have in Common?
• Tuesday They're Out to Kill Us! and no, I am not paranoid.
• Sunday Liars, Damned Liars and Insurance Agents
• Friday On Messier Madoff and Ponzi and all those who were sucked in
• Thursday A Time to Pick Sides -- the time to sit on the fence has ended
• Tuesday Of HUSSEIN Obama, Elie Wiesel, Cairo and Buchenwald
• Monday Hevron in Those Days and Now
• Sunday The Secret Art of Bread Making and preparation of edible food
• Monday The Conquest of Hevron, the City of Our Forefathers
• Tuesday My First Writing Anniversary: Torah V'Avodah
• Monday Whose Land Is This?
• Thursday Capos, Kapos and Nazi Murder Inc. Could the Germans have done it on their own?
• Monday The Entire World Must be Upside Down! Passover Eve in Yerushalayim
• Wednesday The Shattering of the Myth -- the Jews of the Galut/Disapora and the Jews of Israel
• Holocaust Memorial Day Smuggling out of the Soviet Block
• Monday The Smell Just Isn't Going Away
• Wednesday Skeletons in My Closet or I think I may smell a rat
• Thursday Some Benefits in Discovering Your Long Lost Relatives
• Sunday Lust and the Use of the F Word
• Thursday The Edomite Nation in Our Time
• Tuesday -- Purim Having a Happy Purim and Surviving Mishloach Manot
• Wednesday The Morality of Diet and Humane Eating -- How a Jew should view eating to live
• Monday Memories of my Father
• Friday The Edomite Nation in Our Time
• Wednesday Cogito ergo sum -- I Think, Therefore I Am; I Don't Think, Therefore Perhaps I Am Not -- What's all this Doublespeak?
• Tuesday Vibrant Colours and the Return of a King to Israel
• Sunday My Uncle the Soccer Star
• Thursday Preparing Pizza for Our Soldiers
• Tuesday The Moon is Made of Green Cheese
• Monday The Conned Con Artist or "He who laughs last, laughs best
• Thursday Confessions After Fifty-Six Years of . . . 
• Tuesday Where am I? or perhaps Who am I?
• Wednesday in New York On-board a Transatlantic Flight: Thoughts on different Art Forms
• Monday Hidden Beneath a Cowshed -- Chapter II
• Sunday Hidden Beneath a Cowshed -- Chapter I
• Wednesday America Deposes One Hussein and Elects Another
• Tuesday Is My Phobia of Fat Men Normal? Am I a racist?
• Sunday Plagiarism, Theft, Larceny, Fraud and Impersonation -- On the web and at university
• Wednesday A Clandestine Affair -- Are we in the U.S.S.R. or something?
• Friday Three Old Friends, a Sewing Machine and a Kidnapping
• Sunday So what's in a Name
• The Friday after Rosh haShana, 5769 Returning Home after a Lengthy Absence
• Monday Another Uncle and Another, Very Different, Holocaust Experience
• Thursday An Art Exhibition and a Slice of Pizza for an Israeli Pizza for an Israeli Soldier
• Tuesday The Fear of Revenge and the Great Flood of 1959 revisited after Thirty Years
• Sunday Vintage Lenses on Digital Cameras -- a critque
• Wedneday It's Absolutely Not Only About Numbers

• Sunday The Social Power of the Web or How to Influence Friends and Win People
• Thursday Old Harry, Music and the Lifesaver
• Wednesday Setting the Record Completely Straight re My Aunts
• Tuesday I Once Had an Uncle
  
  
• The Entire Body of my Writings There's more than is listed here.
  
  
• Monday, 18th May This was the start of my Writing Career -- the entry point

Please tell me something -- or at least have a look at my galleries (each gallery from a different part of the world or of a different theme - Eating Out in Bangkok, worship in Thailand, Hong Kong, Sydney Harbour and Beaches, New York and non location themes: the World in Reflection and Actualities in Black & Orange). I've also produced two benchers, birchonim: Gush Katif and Hevron (Hebron).