Socialized sandwiches

August 31, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, Food, General, health, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

I have a lot that I could say and write about socialized medicine, but I’ll just tell this one story. I was waiting to see my doctor the other morning, a very popular doctor, I should add, given that we all waited about two hours each to see her. That’s because like all clinic doctors, she has an appointment scheduled every ten minutes, but gives at least fifteen to twenty minutes to each patient. Which is great when you’re finally in her office and speaking to her, but completely aggravating when you’re out in the hallway.

In any case, I spent my waiting time reading the entire newspaper, something I don’t usually get to do; chatting with other waitees, including someone who wanted to hire me for my writing skills; and returning phone calls. In the back of my mind, I figured that I would grab a sandwich from the woman who has a little stand just around the corner (1st floor, Maccabi building, Agrippas Street, Jerusalem) from my doctor’s office. When I had been waiting over an hour, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer and ambled over to her stand to see what she had to offer.

As luck would have it, she’d just run out of fresh rolls. And in typical Israeli style, she noted that she only makes sandwiches from the freshest ingredients (this is why Starbucks never made it here), and would therefore have to pop down to the Machane Yehuda market just down the street to pick up some more rolls. But she couldn’t do that without someone to man the counter, and keep an eye on the espresso machine, soft drinks and croissants still available.

Well, I certainly had the time, given that I was #288 and #278 had just entered the doctor’s office. Plus, it was too chancy to leave the building and grab something to eat, and, I knew from past experience that she makes a good sandwich. And so, sandwich lady I became for a brief 20 minutes, as she ran out for fresh rolls and quickly returned. Nothing actually happened during that time, but we all exchanged smiling glances at the situations that an elongated wait can offer.

And the sandwich was worth it.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Tel Aviv Zoo

August 29, 2010 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Profiles, Travel 

Here’s a tidbit of useless information: do you know why Tel Aviv’s Gan Ha-Ir mall is called that? Because there used to be a zoo — Gan Hayot Tel Aviv — on the site. Gan means “park”, hayot means “animals”, ir means “city”. So, “animal park” and “city park”. Hence the name.

On the other hand, maybe it’s not so useless, as the story of the zoo is, in microcosm, the story of the modern city of Tel Aviv.

The story starts in 1935 when Rabbi Dr. Mordecai Schornstein, formerly the chief Rabbi of Copenhagen and an animal lover, fled from Nazi-occupied Europe to British Mandatory Palestine.

En route, Schornstein purchased a number of animals in Italy. According to the Farkash Gallery (more about them below), “He opened a pet shop on Shenkin Street 15 and named it ‘Gan Hayot’ (‘zoo’ in Hebrew). The birds and mammals in the store soon became a local attraction, and after the ‘Eastern Fair’ [or the Levant Fair] of 1936, where Dr. Shornstein presented his animals, he founded his zoo on Hayarkon Street 65 [in 1938].”

“However, after a pair of lions and tigers was donated to the zoo, the zoo became a real annoyance to its neighbors. With pressure mounting by the zoo’s neighbors, a new compound was built for the zoo in the northern part of the city, which was at time mostly uninhabited. In November 1939, the zoo was relocated to its new location and was opened to the public.”

“The Tel Aviv Zoo was a source of pride for residents of the first modern Jewish city. The zoo displayed creatures from around the world as well as animals and birds of the Land of Israel. It also had a small aquarium. A visit to the Tel Aviv Zoo was a popular outing for children of the Land of Israel.”

The zoo’s proximity to Tel Aviv City Hall provided the perfect situation for a joke told by the late great humorist Ephraim Kishon. To paraphrase: “One day a lion escaped from the zoo, wandered over to city hall and began eating the clerks, one by one. This went on for weeks. It was only after the lion made a crucial error and ate the tea cart lady that anyone noticed.”

The zoo was also apparently one of few in the world able to breed flamingos in captivity, according to this 1970 study published in the Journal of Zoo Animal Medicine.

Another curio of this zoo story: During the World War II, a Polish army regiment was stationed in British Mandatory Palestine. The unit, the 16th Lwow Rifles Battalion, kept a bear as a mascot: Wojtek. The soldiers decided to bring him a companion and acquired Michael, a Persian bear.

According to the website devoted to Wojtek’s memory — he was much loved in that screwy Eastern European sort of way, meaning that in addition to being kept in captivity, the soldiers made him do tricks and taught him to drink beer and smoke cigarettes — “It was hoped that he [Michael] and Wojtek would become companions, unfortunately they had a vicious fight which put paid to that idea. So Michael was donated to the Tel Aviv zoo in 1943.”

Here’s the letter from the Mayor of Tel Aviv thanking the Lwow Rifles Battalion for their donation of Michael to the zoo. As for his would-be companion, “In turn they received a monkey called Kaska who spent most of it’s time teasing Wojtek.”

(BTW, after being demobilized in 1947, rather than subject him to Soviet occupation, the unit gave Wojtek to the Edinburgh Zoo where he remained until his death in 1963).

Originally located on the city outskirts, as Tel Aviv expanded, so gradually was the zoo surrounded by residential buildings. In 1980, the zoo was closed and the animals moved from the center of Tel Aviv to more the hospitable, humane surroundings of the Ramat Gan Safari.

The Gan HaIr luxury high-rise and up-market shopping center was built on the site and completed in 1989. A statue commemorating Rabbi Dr. Schornstein was placed at the entrance to a little garden to the rear of the building, on Hadassah Street.

The Zoo lives on in images, though. Some wonderful posters from its heyday available for sale online at The Farkash Gallery. And some of the children who loved the zoo, now adults, have posted home movies of their visits on YouTube.

Tel Aviv Zoo 1966

Tel Aviv Zoo 1970s

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Gilad Schalit turns 24

August 28, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Politics, War 

Hundreds of people gathered on Saturday night in Jerusalem to mark the 24th birthday of Gilad Schalit, the kidnapped IDF soldier who has been held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip since 2006.

According to The Jerusalem Post, at the rally, Gilad’s mother Aviva Schalit read out a letter addressed to her son, beginning:

“Again this year I have not bought you a present, I have not baked you a cake, and you will not be able to blow out your candles and make a wish.”

Further on in her letter, she apologized to her son for having been unable as yet to secure his release, and went on to address Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, imploring her to become more involved in her son’s plight.

Addressing the prime minister himself, she said: “Secure Gilad’s release, before we run out of time.”

On Friday, Gilad’s father Noam Schalit commented on his son’s impending birthday.

“Tomorrow we will celebrate a sad birthday, the fifth, for Gilad in Hamas captivity… Unfortunately, we don’t see anything happening moving forward. There are no negotiations and we do not see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Here’s some photos of Schalit and the various rallies that have taken place in his name over the last four years. May this be the last year that he’s in captivity.

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Bizarre buds

August 28, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Business, Food, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

Like any good Israeli, I tend to do a run of errands on Friday mornings, hitting the supermarket for last minute weekend purchases, the bakery for challot, kadeh — incredibly tasty semicircles of dough filled with feta cheese — babka and any other necessary treats, the weekend newspapers and, depending on the time of year, flowers. I say time of year because I’m a serious fan of Israel’s winter flowers which are more wild in nature, but not so much in the spring and summer, when the pickings are much slimmer.

But yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to find a much wider array of flowers being sold by the teenager outside SuperDeal — Friday flowers are often sold by enterprising teenage boys outside supermarkets, gas stations, and more often than not, on random sidewalks and sides of highways. He sold me these bizarre-looking buds, and told me the name, which I promptly forgot, being laden down with packages and reminders of what I had to buy next.

The orange-y ones look like round orange peppers to me, but may be a completely different variety. The pale green ones have the look of nothing I’ve ever seen before, as these delicate-looking feathery bulbs that are sort of ugly yet compelling in their otherness. The question is, does anyone know what they’re called? I’d really rather not wait until next Friday.

Please chime in with answers!

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What to do on the last week of summer vacation

August 27, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Travel 

Camping at HaBonim Beach

As the school year is quickly approaching, I thought I’d share a little of what we did on our summer vacation. You don’t have to be on holiday, though, to enjoy little downtime in Israel: these tips are handy any time of the year – all the more so in the final week of educational freedom.

We were fortunate to have friends in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ra’anana who suggested a house swap. While nothing is terribly far in little Israel, being closer to the “merkaz” (the center of the country) enabled us Jerusalemites to take advantage of more of what the greater Tel Aviv region offers.

Truth be told, the real advantage to our arrangement is that by going away – even an hour from home – we were “forced” to take the time off. Sure, we could have done day trips, but we wouldn’t have. Email and Facebook would have been just too enticing.

Since our vacation coincided with the recent heat wave in Israel, we spent a lot of time in the water. The Herzeliya beach is perfunctory – it has the requisite sand, lifeguard and bathrooms. Nothing special, but it’s the closest to Ra’anana (with better parking than at the central beaches of Tel Aviv), so that’s where we headed on our first day.

For a second beach trip a few days later, we drove up to the HaBonim beach, not from Zichron Ya’akov and south of Haifa. We had been told it was the most beautiful beach in Israel. It was.

This is a “camper’s beach” and when we arrived, most of the pergolas were already filled with tents. We shared some open space with a mangal (barbeque) and several toddlers.

Since many of the beachgoers are there for more than an afternoon, HaBonim has a more laid back family-friendly feel than trendy teenager-centric Herzeliya. But the real jewel is the nature walk – an hour-long loop along a marked trail (the beach is actually an official Israeli nature reserve) where we could lap up the shore as the sun set. It was lovely.

Waterslide at Yamit 2000

We also hit the Yamit 2000 water park – not recommended. In the summer, there must be a billion screaming kids (and even louder teenagers). Waits for 30-second water slides stretched to close an hour. Definitely not laid back.

We also rented bikes in Tel Aviv and rode along the Yarkon River all the way to the namal (the old Tel Aviv port) which is one of our favorite hang-out spots. We had packed picnic lunches to keep costs down, but we did manage to scarf down some Aldo Ice Cream before returning on the route we came. Biggest surprise: this bike route is actually part of the Israel Trail, normally only for hikers. Who knew?

One other highlight: the Jaffa Flea Market which stays open late Thursday nights during the summer and is filled with merrymakers, musicians and street comics.. It’s also packed with people, but it’s a fun atmosphere. This one is time-limited: go before the summer’s over!

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