Once again Daniella Ashkenazy treats us to “daily life ” in Israel according to the Hebrew Press.
Israel Seen – BACKPAGE NEWS FROM THE FRONT
Once again Daniella Ashkenazy treats us to “daily life ” in Israel according to the Hebrew Press.
PRICELESS DOUGHNUTS
An upscale bakery in Ramat Hasharon – Jacob’s – walked away with 1st place for ‘yum’ in a pre-holiday tasting contest for jelly doughnuts (sufganiyot in Hebrew) – offering a pricy sufganiya laced with Oreo cookie bits for the princely sum of 13 NIS ($3.40) each!
It sounds like a hazardous venture considering traditional no-frill jelly doughnuts sell for 3-4 NIS (79¢ -$1) a piece at supermarkets and bakery chains, and a survey found 58 percent of Israelis refuse to pay more than 4 NIS per doughnut.
Actually, 23 percent of the Jewish public don’t plan to buy calorie-saturated Hanukah doughnuts…but that’s probably due to the price to their waistline, more than the hole in their pocket. (Israel HaYom)
Israel Seen – BACKPAGE NEWS FROM THE FRONT
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?
In an attempt to change misperceptions, Israel has invited 180 young German opinion-shapers to a free five-day tour of Israel. Among the group is Germany’s youngest mayor who dreams he’ll find an Israeli city on his trip that will want to become a twin city with his municipality (p. 50,000) – a suburb only 20 minutes from Munich.
Dachau. (Israel HaYom, Channel One – Ro’im Olam)
PUT YA MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS!
The Petach Tikvah branch of the Hotza’a l’Poel – the government agency responsible for executing writs of execution of unpaid debts, adopted a bizarre means of pressuring a number of fathers who had been dodging paying child support. Seize their dreams.*
One asked for permission to leave the country for a few days to go on a ‘family roots’ excursion to Morocco; two other deadbeats wanted to go on pilgrimages to pray at the gravesite of the venerated rabbis Rebbe Nachman of Breslov at Uman in the Ukraine (one asking in the same breath for permission to fly to New York as well to pay homage to the late Lubavitcher Rabbi Menachem Schneerson).
Save your breath, retorted Registrar Gila Gadot evenly: The three men would have to meet their child support payments before they went traipsing around the world. (Yediot)
* a very creative application of ‘writs of bodily attachment’ in payment of court-ordered debts.
GRAD ALLEY WADI
Only 6.7 percent of the world’s population is a college degree-holder.
And Israel? According to an OECD report, 47 percent of Israeli citizens hold academic degrees – second highest in the world, after Canada.
And who are Israel’s up-and-coming scientists?
The top 20 places for the most students taking five units* of chemistry and 34 out of the top 40 places in biology were Arab** towns. In the top 20 towns in the Arab sector a whopping 46-35 percent of the students taking biology and 41-22 percent in chemistry opted to take the maximum five units. (Israel HaYom, OECD, Yediot)
* equivalent to advanced courses
** The Arab sector – where Arabic is the language of instruction (Christian and Muslim Arabs, Druze and Circassians).
A QUESTION OF AESTHETICS
While there’s amble evidence that Israelis in all walks of life are ‘political animals’ who follow the news – there are always exceptions.
A politically-erudite Tel-Aviv tattoo parlor operator called police after a young man entered his shop, removed his shirt exposing what the proprietor immediately identified as an al-Quada flag on his shoulder The potential client asked the tattoo artist to tattoo another flag – what the proprietor instantly recognized as an ISIS flag – on his other shoulder.
The owner refused and threw the walk-in out on his ear, then called the cops. After they got a good look at the suspect on the shop’s security camera, the officers scoured the neighborhood easily collaring the customer whom it turned out was a clueless (‘harmless’) idiot who told the law officers that he saw the flags in the newspaper (but apparently didn’t read the accompanying copy) and thought they were ‘neat looking’…
They might as well have been Sanskrit. (Israel HaYom)
Israel Seen – BACKPAGE NEWS FROM THE FRONT
HIDDEN GROWTH HORMONE?
Eat your Wheaties? If there is a ‘breakfast of champions’ it resides in the milk, not the dry cereal.
A study of one hundred 20 year-olds conducted by Dr. Tali Sinai from the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Agriculture in conjunction with Asaf HaRofe Hospital found children who drink milk are taller than children who don’t drink milk. (Keep in mind: The proverbial ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ not withstanding, according to HaAretz 75 percent of Jews are lactose intolerance.)
Generally speaking, children in recent generations have been taller than their parents due to improved nutrition, but Dr. Sinai found kids who didn’t drink milk were on the average four centimeters (1.57“) shorter than their moms and pops who did drink milk… In some cases they were even ten centimeters (!) shorter (3.9”) ) than their parents. (Yediot, HaAretz)
CHARMING WARM-UP
Forget about gatkez (long johns in Yiddish). Jewish mothers who want to ensure their kids will always be warm, even if they fail to heed their mother’s pleas to ‘take a sweater, just in case’ in fact have an extra ace up their sleeve if one swallows the advise of Rabbi Eliyahu Chai-Avitan: All anxious new mothers need to do is save their newborn’s placenta (!) before it ends up in the hospital incinerator (or in a cosmetic jar) and it will work like a charm.
No, the kid doesn’t have to wear the placenta or something equally gross*. The mother only needs to bury the placenta (where he didn’t say) for a lifetime insurance policy against being cold. (Israel HaYom)
* or grosser, such as Easy and Delicious Recipes for Cooking with Placenta and DIY Placenta Edibles: Smoothies + Tincture + Chocolate on Amazon.
NEIGHBORS FROM HELL
Buying a new apartment ‘on paper’ is a gamble when it comes to ‘who will be the new neighbors’ but an Israeli detective service is offering to take the guesswork out of the equation, at least when it comes to buying a second-hand apartment.
For 570 NIS ($150) Chakirnet will provide information about the seller, the neighbors (occupation and number of children), unusual squabbles between neighbors in the condominium or any criminal activity in the building (prostitution or drug dealing). Likewise the detectives offer landlords the same services – background checks on potential tenants. (Yediot) Photo credit: Clipartpanda.com
A TASTE FOR HUMOUS
Remember Arab claims that Israelis ‘stole’ humous?
Well now there is hard evidence that the Galilee is actually the cradle of humous-eating dating back to prehistoric times.
Ten thousand years ago inhabitants indigenous to the Galilee were most probably wolfing down humous from domesticated chickpeas.
Excavations near moshav Ahiyahud in the Western Galilee revealed prehistoric inhabitants west of the Jordan River (i.e in Israel) were not domesticating and eating primarily grain during the ‘agricultural revolution’ as previously thought (and found elsewhere).
Digs from the Neolithic period found domesticated ful or broad beans and other lentils…including chickpeas, were the inhabitants’ main staple – a matter of affinity or taste, not just a main source of nutrition, underscore
archaeobotanists from the Weizmann Institute. (Israel HaYom) Photo credit: Israel Antiquities Authority.
A freak shift in wind patterns dumped 92 mm (3.6”) of rain on Ashkelon in the course of 30 minutes and 118 mm (4.6”) in the course of five hours. The downpour not only temporarily turning the town into a modern-day Venice*; despite its southern location and proximity to the Negev, Ashkelon broke a country-wide record for cloudbursts.
Of course neighboring Ashdod didn’t fair much better: A section of Ashdod was walloped by golf ball-size hail that plummeted 1,709 brand-new cars (including pricy Mercedes) just off-loaded in Ashdod port and parked like sitting ducks in an open lot waiting to be ferried to local branches.
Dealerships across the country said they would invite each owner to Ashdod to inspect their damaged car to decide whether they would settle for a discount based on the drop in value after the dents were repaired, or whether the new owner preferred to wait impatiently for a replacement car to arrive. (Yediot)
* One sharp-tongued journalist entitled his report from Ashkelon – ‘Suddenly a river runs through it’…
INTERFAITH SUFGANIYA
A sure sign Hanukah is just around the corner (Sunday evening!): Israeli pastry shops vie to producer the most ridiculous or fanciful sufganiya (jelly doughnut) concoction hoping to attract media coverage.
This year’s ‘winner’ is undoubtedly the ‘Druze doughnut’ offered by the Shany bakery and café chain – filled with techina and date syrup (instead of the traditional strawberry jam) and topped with a curly crunchy traditional Middle Eastern oriental pastry topping of thin kadaif noodle threads saturated with honey. (Israel HaYom)
HELLCATS
Who really runs the Israeli President’s Residence?
A stray cat (and her family) who took up residence well before the Rivlins moved in.
Attempts by the President’s wife Nechama Rivlin to ‘discourage’ the intruder by sprinkling pepper about the garden failed to even faze the pussycat* who acts like she owns the joint, lounging on the red carpet whenever its rolled out for visiting dignitaries and loitering under the tables during gatherings in the garden (perhaps expecting a surreptitious handout from the staff who view the stray and her family as a permanent fixture).
The “presidential cat” was photographed and posted by Ruvi Rivlin on his personal Facebook account quote “waiting for [Secretary of State] John Kerry.” Was Rivlin suggesting something catty in the subtext??? (Yediot)
* Robert A. Heinlein once wrote – “Never try to outstubborn a cat…”
TEMPORARILY SIDETRACKED
The show must go on, the only question is…when:
When Gesher Theatre actress Fira Kantor went to visit her parents on Shabbat in Kiryat Gat, she unexpectedly got stuck behind a road block while security forces ‘locked down’ the town until they could collar a terrorist who had stabbed five people on the street and was hiding ‘somewhere in the vicinity’ – all this at 6:30 PM, two and a half hours before curtain time for S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk.
Loyal theatre patrons – informed of the circumstances and the whereabouts of the missing actress – patiently and patriotically waiting an hour and a half in their seats – ‘til 10 PM – for Kantor to arrive. (Israel HaYom)
SANDWICH GENERATION?
Zichron Yaakov elders have taken the concept of intergenerational living* one step further by locating a new municipal kindergarten and nursery school in an assisted living facility now under construction in the town.
Designed to change traditional points of interaction between the young and the old, seniors will serve as one-on-one mentors for the preschoolers while also participating in activities like storytelling time, and even sharing meals together.**
The mayor announced the grandkids of regular residents will get preferential treatment (protextzia, in Hebrew) in registration.
Of course, those kids who don’t get in can turn to ‘granny4rent’ – the free Israeli matchmaking platform that latches up unemployed/retired persons over 50 and overextended working parents. (Yediot)
* for example, a ‘youth wing’ in a nursing home in Raanana. See the 2012 story “Something Old – Something New”
** Was this an elegant ‘local solution’ to the acute shortage of nursery school assistants in Israel? See Head Start.
NAME DROPPING
In Israel, kids study Bible as part of their history. What was the assignment in a Bible Studies class at Tel-Aviv’s Ironi Alef (PS 1) middle school/high school…homework designed to make the curriculum ‘relevant’?
Parents complained that after studying the story of Rahav the prostitute (Joshua 2:1), the teacher sent her students to go ‘collect’ business cards for sex services scattered on sidewalks in Tel Aviv like falling leaves, (i.e. an advertising ploy ‘imported’ from Thailand).
The school clarified the idea was the students’ – collect samples and employ the cards to protest such sleazy practices.* The teacher was only going along with her students, but the administration would consult with the school supervisor. (Israel HaYom)
* There are been several protest demonstrations in Tel Aviv calling on city officials (and the police) to eliminate the blight; as HaAretz noted: It’s a no-brainer: the litterers have left their telephone numbers on the cards!
SUSTAINABLE LIVING
In the wake of the Paris attack, more than one commentator – both Jews and gentiles – has labeled Jews the ‘canaries in the mine’ in regard to the danger of radical Islam, but Israel HaYom columnist Dan Margalit chose to quote a medieval Jewish sage who stated hundreds of years ago: Mi’sheba poranut l’olam ain margish ba tchilah eleh Yaakov (When calamity appears, no one feels it at first except Yaakov [i.e. the People of Israel]).
France has “extended emergency status for another three months? Brussels grappled with terrorists on the loose with empty streets, paralyzed public transport, and closed schools, restaurants and entertainment halls?
To prevail, Europeans will not only have to adopt Israeli politically incorrect security protocols – reflected in a cartoon by Uri Fink that showed Liberte Egalite and Fraternite being ‘wanded’ by Securité… Sustainability and resilience hinges on Europeans embracing the time-tested Israeli mindset epitomized by the oxymoron sigrat chirum – literally ‘following routine in a state of emergency’* that every Israeli is familiar with. (Israel HaYom)Photo credit: Uri Fink, The Israel Cartoon Project
* This includes what some have labelled a ‘they tried to kill us, let’s eat’ mentality reflected not only in Jewish holidays. It underlies the actions of a group of Jerusalemites who declared an eatifada on Facebook in response to the Palestinians’ so-called ‘intifada’ – defiantly going out despite the Situation.
Extra! Extra Read all about it!
GO FIGURE…
It’s anyone’s guess what has made Israelis the second largest group of tourists visiting the Black Forest, after the Swiss,,,a region of Germany known only for its cuckoo clocks. (Yediot)
‘AL AQSA’ IS WHERE???
Iran staged a rehearsal of ‘the liberation of Jerusalem’ with 120 revolutionary guard brigades – a two-day military training exercise carried out against a full-scale plastic model of the al Aqsa mosque – opening with an artillery bombardments to soften up approaches to the mosque…in the middle of open desert terrain, raising the question whether the Iranians have ever heard of Google Earth. (Israel HaYom) Photo credit: The Iranian Fars News Agency, Google Earth
Israel Seen – BACKPAGE NEWS FROM THE FRONT
