What time is the next bus?
Going solar?
For riders of public transportation, it’s a common scenario: you arrive at the bus stop and there’s no one else there. Did you just miss the bus? If so, when will the next one be along? Up until now, there’s been no way to know.
That’s set to change now that a new international tender has been issued by the Israel National Roads Company (INRC). The aim is to have digital signs linked to GPS transmitter aboard the buses (and eventually the Jerusalem light rail) that will feed passengers real-time information to waiting passengers.
This development is not particularly revolutionary: similar systems have been running for years in many European countries. But the Israeli proposal has a uniquely Middle Eastern twist: the digital signs will be solar powered.
That makes eminent sense in a country with abundant sunshine (too much, in fact, given the perpetual state of drought Israel has fallen into during recent years).
The Jerusalem Post reports that the tender calls for 100 intercity bus stations to be outfitted with the solar screens. That’s not a huge number: the INRC maintains a total of 3,000 bus stops across the country. But it’s a start. And going green puts Israel at the forefront of technological advancements in the field.
The tender goes one step even further: the signs are supposed to have buttons where passengers can switch languages – great for a country that comprises immigrants from dozens on countries who may not speak Hebrew perfectly – and even an audio option for the blind to have arrival information read out.
Now all we have to do is hope that that signs tell us that our next bus is right around the corner. I’m not sure I want to know I have a 40-minute wait…
Seeing sea food in Rehovot
Filed under: Business, Food, General, Israeliness, Life
Common knowledge has it that people who live in Tel Aviv are the ones surrounded by a bubble protecting them from the realities of the country they live in. But I’ve decided that living in the Jersualem area is really the Israeli ‘bubble.’
On a day trip yesterday to the Rehovot area for a visit to the fascinating Ayalon Institute where a clandestine bullet factory was in operation during the pre-state 1945-48 period, and to the Weizmann Institute Science Fair, we stopped off at a local mall to pick up a few things.
Browsing around, we came upon a Tiv Ta’am supermarket. Even though there are a reported 32 stores in the country, there aren’t any in Jerusalem and its environs, so we decided to go in and look around.
First of all, it’s as close to an American super as you can get – spacious, attractive layout, inviting fruit and vegetable sections. Just a great shopping environment.
And it has some interesting import labels and items that I haven’t seen in other supers. But the first big surprise was entering the frozen fish aisle and seeing a whole row of frozen shrimp, calamary, and other assorted non-kosher delicacies. Turning around to the fresh fish section, we encountered a tray of scallops and assorted crab legs.
The sheer weirdness of seeing those items in an Israeli supermarket had our eyes bugging out. After 25 years of entering kosher-only supers, it was genuinely an eye-opener.
“I feel just like a tourist,” I said, and a a shopper standing in line at the fish counter turned around and smiled.
I actually did purchase something – packages of imported frozen fake crabmeat made from kosher fish – an item which used to be available throughout the country until the local company producing it went out of business. It’s great for sushi or crab rolls if you keep kosher.
We didn’t even get to the meat counter where we were told various pork products are on prominently on display. What we experienced was enough of a shock for one day.
A blizzard of Ozz in Jerusalem
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Music, Pop Culture, Travel
Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne outside the King David Hotel on Monday. (Sasson Tiram)
Arriving in Israel on Sunday ahead of Tuesday night’s Ozzfest at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv – featuring Ozzy’s band, Korn, Soulfly and Betsefer – the Osbournes apparently took advantage of Jerusalem’s rich heritage by visiting the Kotel, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and Yad Vashem, according to an announcement put out by the Tourism Ministry.
Although Ozzy and Sharon were photographed outside the King David Hotel, and interviewed there by Channel 2 news, a photographer who followed the entourage around yesterday, claimed that Ozzy preferred to remain in the hotel while Sharon, who is half Jewish, tooled around without him.
The Ministry statement quoted Ozzy, the vocalist for heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath, as saying that the visit to Israel has made a “great impression. We were very pleased to have the opportunity to come to Israel and visit the holy sites in the Old City.”
Regardless of whether Ozzy played hooky or not, he was definitely present the previous day on Sunday at a press conference at the Tel Aviv Hilton after arriving in Tel Aviv on his private jet along with an entourage of 38 people and an additional jet carrying 18 tons of equipment.
According to my friend and colleague Ben Hartman, who covered the press conference for The Jerusalem Post, Ozzy didn’t disappoint at the press conference, “leaving a roomful of journalists and admirers (most of them one and the same) in stitches with his trademark wit.”
When asked why it had taken him so long to finally visit Israel, Osbourne said, “No reason, really. I mean, I was drunk for too many years.”
Ozzy had no patience for politics or talk of the artistic boycotts that have plagued Israeli concertgoers in recent years, saying, “I have no time for politics. They [politicians] don’t understand me, and I don’t understand them.”
For her part, Sharon drew a parallel to “the troubles” in Northern Ireland that plagued England in past decades, saying, “It’s the same as when we had all the problems with the IRA and no one refused to perform in England, so I don’t know why people don’t come here.”
When Ozzy was asked if he had any advice for those attending Tuesday’s concert, which he said would be heavy on the Black Sabbath classics, Sharon said concert attendees should “just go meshuganeh.”
An oasis in the North (mosquitoes optional)
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Environment, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Travel
We just spent the weekend in one of Israel’s most beautiful camping spots – Hurshat Tal.
Close to the border with Lebanon, it’s as close as you can get to the pastoral camping sites immigrants from North America are used to. Landscaped lawns and a well-kept campground occupy featuring ancient oak tress, natural pools and and a huge artificial lake of icy cold, refreshing spring water (and a couple impressively fast, long water slides off on the side), take up about 100 of the 190 acres of the national park.
During Succot, as well as the other weeklong vacation holiday of Pessah, the park is packed with campers – wall to wall with barbecues, raucous families and revelrers. However, no matter the noise level or body compression, but 10 pm or so, everyone winds down, there’s no ‘thumpa thumpa’ of trance music which is the norm in most Israeli campsites, and everyone chills out for the evening.
Our first night was like that, with seemingly half the country crammed into the site, weirdly humid weather inducing thunder storms and mosquitos galore, and tempers flaring between Jewish and Arab campers.
Our 9-year-old and his friends, who were unable to sleep, roamed the site in the middle of the night and came running back to report that the police had arrived and had broken up an altercation between two families. It was unclear if the fracas was racially motivated, but they noted that an Arab mother was pounding on the window of the squad car as it drove away with her teenage son.
We never got the full story, and by 4 am or so, after the last thunder storm, we drifted off into a fitful sleep for two hours.
The next morning, on Shabbat, about 95% of the campers fled for home, leaving our little group of four families with virtually the whole park to ourselves. The weather broke a little with cooler, less humid weather. And the camping trip turned into what I remember from my days in Maine – a joyous nature experience.
When the weather cooperates, there’s no place like Hurshat Tal in the country, and any visitor who reaches the North (and how can a visit to Israel not include a visit there?) should block off some time to hang out there, even if it’s just for a few hours.
Nostalgia Sunday – Shlomit’s Sukkah of Peace
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, War
Composer Naomi Shemer wrote the song Shlomit Bonah Sukkat Shalom (“Shlomit builds a house of peace”) in 1974 as part of an album of childrens’ songs. The date is telling: released one year after the Yom Kippur war, the song expressed hope for a battle-fatigued nation, battered by a difficult political climate and uncertain diplomatic situation. The song has since become a beloved standard for Israeli children and the adults who were once children; in four verses, Shemer manages to encapsulate the traditions of the sukkot holiday and the ideal of better world.
Here is the song as performed at the time by Hanan Goldblatt, Aliza Rosen and Gabi Eldor.
And here is a version sung decades later by kiddie show presenters Rinat and Yoyo, her robot assistant. (I don’t know why she has a robot).
Pop and rock musicians aren’t immune to the song’s evergreen appeal. Perpetual popster Shlomo Artzi has led crowds in song, and rockers Mashina did a full fledged cover…
…plus mizrachi singer Avi Peretz recently pitched in with a Middle Eastern-flavored version.
Shemer was never apolitical in her writing and was certainly associated with Israel’s right-wing, but even she might be nonplussed at the heavy-handed way in which her song was parodied this past week by comedy site LatmaTV. There aren’t English subtitles so here is the gist: the world is accusing Shlomit of destroying the peace process by building her sukkah, which she will proceed to build anyway. (I did say “heavy-handed”, didn’t I?) Oh well, as you watch, bear in mind that there’s no word in Hebrew for “subtlety”.
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