A chicken tries to cross the Jerusalem Marathon road
A rainy Jerusalem Marathon on Emek Refaim Street
I was out doing my Friday morning errands when I ran smack dab into the center of the Jerusalem Marathon. Or should I say, they ran into me.
I had gone down to Emek Refaim Street to buy the newspaper, challah and dessert. The street was blocked off for the marathon. What fun, I thought. I’ll get to see the runners as they huff their way past kilometer 29.
One problem: Marzipan bakery, which makes the best half-cooked chocolate rugelach in the city, was on the other side of road which was being guarded by a full contingent of yellow-jacketed police and hired security personnel.
From inside the Steimatsky’s book store at the cashier, only a few runners passed – the leaders of the pack – thin and tiny. By the time I exited, though, a throng of thousands were pulsing my way.
I had to think fast. Would I be a timid American immigrant and wait for all the runners to pass before crossing at the traffic light? Or would I summon up the chutzpah of a Sabra and sprint perpendicularly through the human traffic?
Fortunately, the decision was made for me from above. No, I didn’t gaze skyward and ask for a sign. Rather the heavens opened up all by themselves, unleashing a torrent of not only rain but hail, effectively driving home the imperative for this chicken to head quickly for the rugelach, rules or not.
Pastries in hand, I relaxed and joined the spectators cheering on the runners, feeling sorry they had to slodge through such weather, even though they evinced no dissatisfaction.
12,000 professional and amateur athletes joined this year’s Jerusalem Marathon – 3,000 more than last year, making it Israel’s largest race and one of the world’s most picturesque. Next year, I’ll head out earlier and maybe stand by the road handing out rugelach to the weary at kilometer 29.
Stranded in the Judean Hills
Admiring the view...before the sun went down
I got the SMS around 3:00 PM on Friday. “Abba, I’m OK. But we’re kind of stuck on top of a mountain.”
It was our 14-year-old son Aviv who was out with five students from his school, plus one of his teachers, on a “preparation hike.” The idea was to scout the route before the entire school set out on their tiyul shnati – the annual hiking and camping trip that is de rigueur for Israeli students.
Participating in a tiyul shnati starts from a young age: grade schoolers spend the day outdoors; by junior high, there’s an overnight day or two. And in high school, the annual hike can last up to an entire week. Depending on the school, you may camp outdoors and cook your own food (barbequed tuna is a favorite), or you may stay in a local youth hostel (not sure the food there is any better).
Aviv and his comrades had set out to map Nahal Tze’elim, a challenging but beautiful hike in the Dead Sea area. They started at 5:30 AM and should have been back home by mid-afternoon.
But to paraphrase the opening lines of the new J.J. Abrams’ TV series Alcatraz, “That’s not what happened. Not at all” (watch the show and you’ll appreciate this somewhat obscure pop culture reference).
The problem was that, halfway through the hike, the kids’ teacher became ill during the trip. Nothing life threatening, but his hiking speed was significantly reduced as he coughed his way up and down the rugged Judean Hills.
And that was how the intrepid hikers found themselves at the top of a mountain as the sun went down. Not expecting to still be in the desert at that hour, no one had thought to bring a flashlight. They were also all out of food. There was a full moon, but it wasn’t due out until later in the evening.
They had no choice to hike down, on the edge of a cliff, in the pitch black. What should have taken 20-30 minutes took over two hours.
In the meantime, the ill teacher’s daughter had driven down to meet the students at the end of the hike.
When the hikers hadn’t returned an hour into the pitch black, the daughter thought about calling the emergency services. Would they have to send a helicopter to rescue the presumably stranded hikers? No one knew: There was no cell phone reception in that part of the wilderness.
Fortunately, it wasn’t much longer until the weary crew emerged from the nahal and returned to the cars. It was 8:00 PM – five long hours after Aviv’s first call, and well into Shabbat.
Aviv was back in Jerusalem at 10:00 PM to tell the tale while devouring his mother’s world-famous chicken soup. No, he never felt in any danger. Yes, he was scared. Mostly he was tired. We were relieved, but mostly kept it to ourselves.
Two days after his unexpected adventure, there was a second “preparatory hike.” Aviv decided to pass. We didn’t complain.
Prime Minister quacks along
Say what you will about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the guy’s got a sense of humor. Where other politicians might blanche when parodied online, Bibi embraces the joke.
For example, after the publication of Netanyahu’s smiling face in the background when Gilad Schalit was photographed embracing his father for the first time, Bibi fans and foes alike began posting mash-ups of that image in every imaginable historical context – the prime minister at the British royal wedding, at the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, wearing dark sunglasses as a member of the Matrix team (hey, Neo and Bibi sound like a cool pair).
The prime minister’s office then joined in the fun, issuing its own picture of Bibi’s smiling facing with a humorous caption in Hebrew playing up Netanyahu’s U.N. speech. It defused the ridicule and won Bibi no small amount of online appreciation,
The latest poke at the prime minster is from 30-year-old Israel video director Amir Kotigaro who used Netanyahu’s recent AIPAC speech as the basis for a minute-long video parody. This is the speech where Bibi asks “if it looks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then what is it? It’s a duck, but this duck is a nuclear duck,” referring of course to Iran.
Katigaro used Netanyahu’s text, mixed it up with a trance music background and spliced in some clips of the Looney Tunes’ classic character Daffy Duck urging the ever befuddled Elmer Fudd to shoot him. The video is quite amusing and remarkably seems to flow together without any auto-tuning (unlike with Noy Alooshe’s music mash of Muammar Gaddafi’s Zenga Zenga speech).
As with the previous iconic smile mash-up, the prime minister has apparently green-lighted the Katigaro’s video to appear on his official Facebook page. The post has 2,018 likes and 354 comments.
Katigaro’s video has now been viewed over 100,000 times since it was released last Wednesday in time for the Jewish holiday of Purim.
Rocky Horror Purim Show
For the past several years, friends of ours have hosted a pre-Purim party featuring a screening of the cult classic “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” The impetus was straightforward: they love the musical and enjoy the “group” viewing experience, which includes participatory dancing to the “Time Warp,” newspapers held overhead while someone squirts water at you (to illustrate a segment shot in the pouring rain), and yelling out various bawdy quips at specific moments in the film.
Jody and I were in the audience (if you could call it that) this week. Everyone was encouraged to come in costume. Eschewing the de rigueur attempt at cross-dressing, we played protagonists Brad and Janet, dressed up in white lab coats during the scene when Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s creation Rocky Horror comes to life.
The evening was lots of fun, but I wondered, why Purim davka? You can have fun most any night of the year. And then, in the middle of Rocky’s big solo “The Sword of Damocles,” I saw it. The assembled Transylvanian groupies were spinning…groggers.
Yes, that’s right, the very samenoise makers that Purim revelers spin to drown out the name of the wicked Haman every time it’s spoken during the Megillah reading on Purim evening and morning.
I did a double take. Maybe these were just party favors. But there was no mistaking it – I’ve never seen anything like these particular types of groggers anytime except at Purim. Were either Jim Sharman, the director, or Richard O’Brien, who wrote the music, Jewish? Is the eerie castle where the soon-to-be-revealed aliens from the planet Transsexual reside really a metaphor for Ahasverus’s palace? The Internet isn’t saying.
Come next Purim, if you’re not too tipsy (or maybe better if you are), consider renting and watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show at your place.
Happy Purim!
Meeting whiz kid Ben Lang
Ben Lang
When I first met Ben Lang, I didn’t take much notice. Apparently I should have. The 18-year-old returning immigrant has taken Israel’s hi-tech scene by storm, in the process being written about by no less than 22 publications in Israel and the U.S. – including this one from Abby Leichman on our sister site Israel21c.
As Abby writes, Ben began his entrepreneurial career just a few years after his bar mitzvah. He created a site to help students find and share class notes; opened his own eBay business; and started a blog for budding young entrepreneurs. He was almost sued by The New York Times for making a website called freenewyorktimes.com, which explained how to read The Times for free after the paper erected a formidable pay wall.
His latest project is a co-venture with another young Israeli, Nir Kouris. The site, called Innovation Israel – similar to EpicLaunch, his previous blog for entrepreneurs – is a community for startups, entrepreneurs and investors, with of course an Israeli twist. One of their first ventures was a live coding event called Hackathon – which we wrote about here.
All of this will be coming to an end – perhaps more a temporary hiatus – when Lang joins the IDF later this month. In the meantime, he’s been working with the marketing team at Wibiya -here’s my story about them from two years back.
Ben is the son of Jennifer and Phillipe Lang (dad’s a hi-tech entrepreneur as well and we once met in my office to brainstorm ideas). Philippe’s brother Yvan is an accomplished architect and the father of one of my daughter’s kindergarten classmates (yes, we’ve kept in touch all these years). Mom Jennifer is my wife’s ex’s sister. Now that’s Jewish geography at its finest!
I can’t say I’m buddies with Ben – other than on Facebook – but I’m glad to have chatted with this up and coming superstar once at a family event. I expect to hear more about Ben Lang in the future – in three years time…or before.
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