We all know about the Terrible Twos but Roni and Sagee Bar-Meshi found themselves in a unique bind when their two-and-a-half year-old Peleg began throwing temper tantrums crying uncontrollably because he didn’t get his way and screaming at the top of his lungs at 2 AM, waking the neighbors.
Daniella Ashkenazy – Chelm on the Med June 2015
Once again Daniella Ashkenazy treats us to “daily life ” in Israel according to the Hebrew Press.
IF YOU DON’T BEHAVE I’LL CALL THE COPS
We all know about the Terrible Twos but Roni and Sagee Bar-Meshi found themselves in a unique bind when their two-and-a-half year-old Peleg began throwing temper tantrums crying uncontrollably because he didn’t get his way and screaming at the top of his lungs at 2 AM, waking the neighbors.
Someone called the cops.
Three times over several weeks.
Police officers who came to investigate said that they were required to respond to any call of suspected child neglect or parental abuse. In desperation, the parents posted a hand-written note on the front door explaining to Israel’s Finest that ‘yes, the cops had come to the right address’ about ‘cries in the night’ but their kid was in his Terrible Twos; they would be glad to make the law officers a cup of coffee while the midnight visitors ascertained they weren’t torturing their son.
The pair told the papers they find it hard to believe the caller was someone in their building. “We have good relations with all the neighbors and everyone loves Peled,” said Roni, but aware of her son’s extraordinary lung power, she added that “maybe the complainer is someone in another building on the block.” (Yediot)
BAD TIMING ALL AROUND…
An early-rising bank robber should have known better… He should have called it a day and beat a hasty retreat after holding up a branch of the Postal Bank* and only bagging 2,000 NIS (less than $500).
Since it was only 9 AM, there was still very little in the till, but greed got the better of him. He stopped in his tracks to make up the difference…by snatching a wad of bills out of the hands of a customer in line for a teller who was busy counting her money.
With nothing to lose, the tellers may have remained unmoved and mum, but the customer hit the ceiling and took off after the bank robber – yelling at the top of her lungs. Some young men outside the post office tackled the assailant before he could make a clean getaway. (Yediot)
* The Israel Postal Service also runs a unique no-service-charge deposit/withdrawal bank that issues no checks and allows no overdrafts.
YOU SHOULD LIVE SO LONG…
Fifty-seven year-old midwife Etti Afrias says that after a thousand deliveries she stopped counting. She certainly doesn’t remember every baby she delivered in a long career but she surely won’t forget Shani Shalom from Beit Shemesh who showed up at Hadassah’s maternity ward on Mount Scopus in the throes of labor.
While most women would ask to see a doctor, Shalom asked anxiously – “Is Afrias still working here???”
Twenty-two years ago the veteran midwife had assisted the now expectant mother come into the world, and now Shani wanted the same midwife to deliver her baby. Timing was perfect* for Etti, Shani and grandmother-to-be Dalia Hakkaiyan – a Jerusalem native who arrived at the hospital with Shani waving a vintage photo of her daughter as a newborn, with Etti Afrias at the bedside. (Yediot)
* The ‘reunion’ culminated in the birth of a bouncing baby boy.
Daniella Ashkenazy – Chelm on the Med June 2015
GREEN LIGHT FOR RED POLISH
It’s now official. Women career personnel may now wear red nail polish…but only in a shade that matches the cherry red tone that adorns military gear such as unit tags and campaign ribbons. (Israel HaYom)
FAIR AND SQUARE
Settling a brewing food fight in the chickpea domain, the Israel Patents Office ruled that the commercial trademark “Felafel b’Ribua” – which can be read ‘felafel squared’ in the mathematical sense or understood as ‘extra super-duper falafel’ in colloquial Hebrew – a firm which serves square falafel balls (but has humous, sabich and shakshuka on the menu) should be a protected concept.
The Patent Office accepted the Felafel b’Ribua’s chain’s objections to granting a commercial trademark to a new initiative – a chain calling itself Humous b’Ribua which sports humous served on square plates.
Yaara Shoshana Caspi who handed down the decision said the public might erroneously link the two chains. (Yediot)
FIT TO BE TIED
Ben Moshe-Hai (16) is a madrich (scout leader) in the Tzofim (Israeli scouts) in Afula, responsible for a group of 4th graders. This would be a non-story if Moshe-Hai wasn’t on the autism scale. Or if the kids in his group were among some 2,000 Tzofim scouts with special needs.
The newly-minted madrich, who has been the Tzofim since he was in 4th grade, says he explained his difficulty in interpreting social situations to his chanichim (protégés) after they got to know him a bit; the kids were far more impressed with Moshe-Hai’s skill tying knots. “I learned he has autism only because he told us, revealed 9 year-old Adar Eliyahu. “He’s the best madrich I ever met.” (Yediot)
* Not the least of Israel’s inclusive milieu are ‘special task forces’ in the IDF that allows autistic youth and even youth with Down’s Syndrome to participate in national service, in uniform like regular draftees.
WHAT ON Google EARTH?!
Does Israel have the right to exist?
Not according to Google…
The President of the State of Israel Reuven Rivlin was astounded to discover that his Google bio brief – the kind that pops up to the right every time a surfer keys in “Reuven Rivlin” – put his place of birth as “Jerusalem, State of Palestine”… The President lodged a complaint…so Google changed the notation for Rivlin to…‘Jerusalem’. Just plain Jerusalem.
Was Google signalling Jerusalem had some special ‘exterritorial’ status?* Apparently not.
All other Israeli luminaries remain in limbo, too – not just Jerusalemites. Every city and town in Israel is listed in the Google bio-briefs as if they were city-states like the Vatican! For example, David Ben-Gurion – founder of the State of Israel remains a ‘man without a country’ in Google’s eyes, listed as born in Płońsk, Poland, but purported by Google to have died in a place labelled “Tel Hashomer, Ramat Gan.”** (Yediot)
* As in the case brought before the American Supreme Court concerning the State Department’s refusal to register kids with duel American-Israeli citizenship and born in Jerusalem, as having been born in Israel. The court ruled the President was within his powers in adopting such a policy.
** By contrast,Giuseppe Garibaldi – father of the Italian state – is listed as having died in Caprera, Italy. Even Queen Lili’uokalan – the last ruling monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, unlawfully overthrown by the United States – is listed as having died in “Honolulu, Hawaii, United States”…in 1917 when Hawaii wasn’t even part of the United States…
A POUND OF PREVENTION
The Rishon le Zion dog pound has established a unique feature for high-strung dog owners whose imported or ‘immigrant’ pets have been temporarily placed in quarantine after arriving in Israel: A smartphone application dubbed Big Brother allows owners to view their pets 24/7 and assure owners that the detainees are happy and well cared for, just like more and more equally strung-out parents in Israel who can now watch their kids like a hawk in their nursery school or kindergarten via cellphone while at work…an arrangement designed primarily to keep an eye on staff to make sure they are doing their job.
MINISTER OF WHAT?
It may not be the largest or the most weighty portfolio in the Natanyahu cabinet but it’s definitely the broadest not to mention the wordiest ministerial portfolio of the lot: Gila Gamliel (Likud) is the Jewish state’s Minister for Veteran Citizens, for Gender Equality, for Equality for Minorities and for the Advancement of Young People in Israel*…in essence, authorized to address the grievances of nearly everyone in the State of Israel, except for Jewish men between the ages of 18 and 67.
In Hebrew, sarah lezrachim vatikim l’shivyon midgar’I, l’shivyom hami’utim oo l’kidum hatze’irim b’Israel.
CUTTING CORNERS
If an Israeli soldier wants to grow a beard he ‘signs for a beard’ (chotem al zakan) in one of three ways: 1. by declaring he doesn’t shave on religious grounds* or proving that “a beard is an integral part of his personality”; 2. getting a medical dispensation from shaving; or 3. getting permission from an officer of the rank of lieutenant colonel or above.
When army authorities discovered that fifty percent of the soldiers with an exemption had received authorization not to shave by merely enlisting the brass, steps were initiated to abolish the third option.
THE ULTIMATE DRAW
We’ve all heard endless talk about ‘enhancing the shopping experience” but how do you really keep ‘um shopping?
The Superpharm drugstore chain has found the holy grail! Providing shopping carts that will recharge smartphones to 25 percent capacity in 20 minutes flat.
No, shoppers don’t have to keep circling the aisles to generate the juice, but Superpharm apparently figures customers will run up a charge at the cash register in any case. (Globes)
* Superpharm revealed that they recognized the need two years ago, and contracted an Israeli company, Draco, to develop the device. A thousand carts have been ensconced in 207 of the chain’s pharmacies for a start.
FLYER FLIES
Does anyone know why ‘fliers’ are called fliers?
Does it matter?
Yes, if you are an Eilat vacationer who is suing her hotel for 270,000 NIS ($94,736) in damages after she slipped on a glossy pizza flyer in the hallway to her room, sustaining injuries that two months later required surgery to mend a torn ligament in her shoulder.
That was back in 2012, but the plaintiff hasn’t returned to work since the incident. In fact, she’s convinced that the hotel chain should not only shoulder the damage (10 percent disability set by a medical expert)…but also pay her for loss of earning power to boot. For life.
The hotel shrugged their shoulders at the sweeping charge, retorting that it was not humanly impossible to prevent tourist-related establishments in a resort spot like Eilat from distributing fliers – short of putting the hotel on lock-down status. Nor could staff shadow every single guest, should one, perchance, drop a slick pizza flyer in the hallway capable of sending another unwary guest flying.
The courts still have to rule in the case.
TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE?
Usually when trains grind to a halt in Israel it’s because a locomotive has ‘run out of steam’ – figuratively speaking* or passengers have been railroaded by a wildcat strike by disgruntled employees. Yet, recently it was police who stopped traffic on a section of the busy coastal railroad line for a full hour after a 150 mm First World War vintage artillery shell was unearthed close to the tracks near kibbutz Yakum – apparently from the September 1918 Battle of the Sharon between British and Ottoman Turk forces, if one knows one’s history.
* See Chelm’s February 2014 piece on the “Little Engine that Couldn’t Chug”
IN PRAISE OF HUMOUS*…
Cambridge scholars ranked Israel ninth as a country that consumes “healthy food.”
The down side is that the other countries from first place down to eight are Third World countries in Africa: Chad took first place – one of the poorest countries on the face of the earth, ravaged by malnutrition where most people can’t afford anything but vegetables and legumes…but where life expectancy is 50 for males and 53 for females.** Chad was followed by Sierra Leone, Mali, Gambia, Angola, Ghana, the ivory Coast and Senegal…raising some serious questions about the research design and making the Cambridge fellows a shoe-in for an Ig Nobel Prize.
* no doubt, thanks to Israeli salads as well.
** in Israel, 80.2 for men and 83.8 for women
SIGNED, SEALED AND DELIVERED
Most kids’ lives are documented with dozens if not hundreds of photos from the moment they pop into the world ‘til they leave the hospital, however, adopted children often grow up with a blank when it comes to their first days or weeks or months of life. Not any longer…at least not at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon.
Staff have come to the rescue of babies abandoned by parents after birth or taken by child welfare authorities – filling in the blanks before they appear. The initiative began spontaneously with three infants born to drug addicts; staff put together photo albums during the months the newborns were being weaned off narcotics. The head of department Dr. David Kohelet served as photographer.*
That was two years ago. Since then the ‘My First Album initiative’ has expanded to provide photo albums for some 40 to 50 infants abandoned by their biological parents who were adopted within several weeks of birth – documentation that always culminates in a group photo of staff and the adoptive parents on that landmark day when the adopted infant goes home. Wolfson social worker Tzila Viedburg who knows each child intimately adds personal captions to each photo.
The Ministry of Welfare plans to encourage all the hospitals in Israel to follow suit.
* Since then, professional photographers, graphic designers and printing houses who learned of the initiative have stepped forward to volunteer their services.
A DIFFICULT DISENGAGEMENT
Jewish mother syndrome took an incredible twist during the July-August 2014 Protective Edge campaign.
An unnamed Latin American diplomat with exceptionally warm ties with Israelis who once told her fellow diplomats that ‘she felt she was not only an ambassador of her country in Israel but also an ambassador for Israel in her country’ found herself between a rock and a hard place during last summer’s Gaza War.
The veteran career diplomat was ‘summoned home for consultations’ as a expression of her country’s displeasure with Israel’s conduct during the Gaza War…forcing her not only to spend six weeks fiddling her thumbs, but also gritting her teeth.
Why?
Her son – who had gone to high school in Israel and stayed to join the IDF – was participating in the campaign.
Who wasn’t phased at all by last-year’s war? The dairy herds in the kibbutzim Ein HaSlosha, Saad and Carmia bordering Gaza who just took first place in milk production in Israel out of 510 dairy farms – despite the war (14,896 liters per annum in Ein HaSlosha, 14,693 liter in Saad and 14,364 in Carmia) – no small part due to the dairy crews, not just the stalwart cows, continuing to milk the cows on schedule regardless of constant mortar fire.
THE PERILS OF SLEEPING-IN*?
According to experts, more cars are stolen on Friday night in Israel than on any other night of the week. Why is this night different from any other night? Perhaps because most folks will be home for the Sabbath with their alarm clocks off.
Indeed, there has also been a 14 percent rise in cases where car thieves simply swipe the car keys from under the noses of sleeping owners, Saturday morning provides plenty of lead time to be across the Green Line in Palestinian territory before the owner so much as stretches and yawns and reaches for their missing cellphone, parked next to the car keys on the night table…
Daniella Ashkenazy – Chelm on the Med June 2015 * a Canadian term for sleeping late
Daniella Ashkenazy – Chelm on the Med June 2015
