Israel Seen – Backpage News From the Front May 27, 2016
Once again Daniella Ashkenazy treats us to “daily life ” in Israel according to the Hebrew Press
SKEWERED!
Israel HaYom features a weekly ‘ask the rabbi’ column that culls and republishes questions fielded by rabbis in online forums.
One reader asked where roasting potatoes in the bonfire came from…and got a scalding reply. “Lag B’Omer bonfires are not campfires,” retorted the rabbi. “Roasting potatoes in bonfires (i.e. which mark the death of 2nd century Talmudic sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai or RASHBI) is about as appropriate as roasting a marshmallow on a toothpick over your grandfather’s yahrzeit (memorial) candle”… (Israel HaYom) Photo credit: bcc-la.org
‘ALL NIGHTERS’
Would it have been advisable to stock up on ear plugs – in preparation for Lag B’Omer* eve (Wednesday night, 25 May)? Perhaps not this year but maybe next…
According to Israel’s noise pollution laws singing or playing musical instruments after 11 PM in residential areas is forbidden …except on Purim, Israel’s Independence Day and Jerusalem Day. But, the Knesset is deliberating adding Lag B’Omer
(and the Morrocan post-Passover fres – the Mimoona) to the list of exceptions when celebrants will have license to keep their neighbors up all night long.
As it is, environmental laws that ban burning combustible materials in the open air are suspended on Lag B’Omer eve…and Environmental Protection Ministry data shows pollution of fine particles in the air in Israel on Lag B’Omer skyrockets to 18 times the average on a normal day… (Israel HaYom) Photo credit: machine-history.wikidot.com
The Jewish holiday that leaves Tel-Aviv looking like London during the Blitz.
* In 2015, Government environmentalists debuted in Bnei Brak (with the blessings of city hall) a smokeless ‘green’ three-meter high bonfire made out of light bulbs lit up by…a circle of avid Jewish ‘peddlers’ (jdn.co.il)
MERCEDES
What municipality has the most Mercedes in Israel?
Ceaseria? Kfar Smariyahu? Savyon?
No – Netivot.
While so far Nitivot has been unable to kick its image as a dusty Negev development town where the patron saint of Moroccan Jewry – the Baba Sali – is buried, in fact, Nitivot also boasts an extraordinary abundance of successful building contractors.
With zero job opportunities, countless ambitious native sons turned to the building industry to make their mark – the reason Netivot has also become the Mercedes capital of Israel. Not per capita…in absolute numbers! One hundred and eighty Mercedes in a town of 26,700 residents… (Yediot) Photo credit: CC Commons
* For a peek at such native sons’ grandiose digs, check out this story about the unknown ‘great houses’ in the Israeli South… (Mako.com)
SALTED AWAY
Natural sponges are living organisms that only live in a salt water environment…or so it was thought.
Edo Granot, a professional diver who was fixing a boat on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee found a colony of 40 cm. diameter sponges attached to the rocks in a boat docking facility near Tiberias. The diver sent photos to Professor Moshe Gofen – an expert in the ecology of the Sea of Galilee – who labeled the find “extremely rare.”
Where did the sponges come from…and had someone dump the contents of their aquarium in the drink…or are the ‘newcomers’ somehow related to sponges that once lived in the Hula Swamp in the Upper Galilee? And how do the sponges survive in the sweet water environment of the Sea of Galilee…or is this an ominous warning sign that the Sea of Galilee is becoming salty?
Gofen has ruled out the second concern. Photo credit: Edo Granot
POLE DANCING
In a truly incredible case of identity theft, a Polish goy claimed to be an Israeli orthodox rabbi called Jacob Ben Nistell from Haifa, boasting he had a son in the IDF none the less…Yup, this in still rampantly anti-Semitic Poland*, leaving the impression perhaps the Pole needs to get his head examined…
On the other hand, the imposter, decked out in full ultra-Orthodox attire managed (much to the embarrassment of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland) to get himself officially appointed ‘chief rabbi of Poznan’ (which only has a couple of dozen Jews). Alas, a member of the Jewish community began to suspect something was fishy after he spied the volunteer ‘rabbi’ holding up a Torah scroll upside down… (Israel HaYom) Photo credit: from Nistell’s closed Facebook account.
* Polls show 65 percent of Poles believe there is a global “Jewish conspiracy” and 46 percent still view Jews as “Christ killers”…
** Jacob Ben Nistell turned out to be a Catholic ex-cook from Ciechanow named Jacek Niszczota.
HEART OF THE MATTER
In Israel, it is mandated by law that there be a defibrillator in every building with an occupancy of 500 people or more. Six thousand persons in Israel experience heart failure every year, but where on earth is the nearest defibrillator located??? Go find it in a three-storey 150,000 square meter (1,600,000 sq ft) mall like the Azrieli Mall…when every second counts.
Four med students at Ben-Gurion University have come to the rescue with an app called Man-Med – being developed together with Google – that will map the location of every defibrillator in the country…along with an explanation of how to apply the device, in a crux. (Yediot) Photo: Wikipedia commons
GAS GDRILL
Israel has one of the youngest officer corps in the world – lieutenants in their late teens and captains in their mid-twenties, and full colonels in their mid-thirties – a phenomenon that inevitability carries with it the danger that junior offices and NCOs in their late teens and early twenties will overstep boundaries. One only needs to recall the story of the soldiers wakened by remote control – text messaging orders by ‘inventive’ junior commanders. Well there are worse things that could happen.
An ‘inventive’ NCO has some serious explaining to do after he decided to encourage* his company of draftees to get out of bed on the double for roll call by rolling a tear gas grenade into their tent… ((Israel HaYom) Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons, IDF. The second-lieutenant (SAGAM, in Hebrew) in the photo – a junior officer from the Ordinance Corps reflects the age of IDF junior officers, and she has nothing to do with the incident.
* Perhaps because remote control texting (see “Just Following Orders!”) was banned by the Soldiers’ Ombudsman?
ISRAELI OUTBACK
Keren Levi isn’t the first laidback young adult to establish in her back yard or on the roof top a cool sanctuary with a lumpy but comfy discarded sofa and other unwanted furniture that has seen better days – in short, “a corner to ‘space out’ – called a pinat zula* in Hebrew.”
The marine biologist who had moved to the Golan Heights, had just such a played out couch – left by a previous tenant – out back.
While bees kept flying in and out of the house, she failed to make the connection with a strange humming sound she heard outside on quiet nights whose source remained a mystery until a friend came to bushwhack the weeds in the back yard and threw his tools on the old sofa…
The inanimate object sprang to life and began to buzz like an army of smartphones on vibrate…revealing a mammoth colony of honey bees who had built no less than fifteen honey combs inside …which the bees had attached to the sofa’s foam rubber ‘walls. (Ynet) Photo credit: Keren Levi
* from Arabic, a ‘concealed’ resting place, turned in Israeli military slang into a place to ‘chill out’
** Luckily the bushwhacker Lior Rothenberg, was also an amateur bee enthusiast who moved the occupants to more conventional quarters – combs, queen and all.
