Bouquet entrepreneurs

April 16, 2012 - 1:15 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Art, Business, design, General, Israeliness, Life 

Having worked for a florist once, I know just a little about arranging flowers, and it’s still a pleasure of mine, particularly during my favorite flower season, Israel’s winter, when poppies and tulips abound.

But there are several enterprising Israelis who have made flower accoutrements into a profession. One company I’m thinking of is design group T.H.+E, which created the VAZU, a thin, collapsible plastic vase imprinted with bold prints that is a fave gift of mine to give both for its creativity, durability and size — no searching for high shelves for storing this vase.

I also recently heard about Bouquoo, a father-and-daughter team that created a vase for tall flower arrangements. The vase includes a glass spine for keeping the flower bunch upright, and then set in a low glass that doesn’t detract from the flowers themselves. Again, given small Israeli spaces, it serves the vase purpose, but stores easily without taking up too much space.

Given that it’s not inexpensive to manufacture, Charles and Adele Yawitz, the father-daughter Bouquoo team, embarked on a Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 in order to jumpstart their first manufacturing run. Kickstarter is an online funding platform for creative types. Those who pledge money don’t necessarily receive anything in return — although $300 Bouquoo ‘investors’ will receive a museum version of Bouquoo — except for the knowledge that they’ve helped someone realize their dream.

No pressure, though…

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Chametz-loading

April 4, 2012 - 10:38 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

The kitchens are cleaned or getting there, people are going nuts buying food, clothing, getting their hair cut, having their cars washed (including price gouging of NIS 100 for what usually costs around NIS 50) and experiencing general panic over the upcoming 8-day holiday.

But when I was at the mall earlier — joining the hordes in some erev Pesach spring shopping — I was dismayed to find that even the food joints were closed or being cleaned, including Aroma, despite the fact that I had been long awaiting an iced Aroma Americano. True, they have to clean for Pesach like the rest of us, especially those outlets that are open on Pesach, but the days before are crucial times for eating out, when houses — and fridges — are empty and folks are whining about not having enough options for eating in their cupboards.

Check out these shuttered spaces in Jerusalem’s Malcha Mall:

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Parent apps

March 26, 2012 - 10:17 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, design, General, health, Life, Technology 

They’re not just new parents, nor are they merely a couple, one of whom is a physicist/amateur computer programmer and the other a Arabic literature and comparative religion university lecturer.

Jerusalemites Miriam Goldstein and Michael Feigenson are now app developers, having created two apps that will appeal to the new parent set, all part of Parents2ParentsApps, their “mom and pop, family business that creates mobile applications for parents. We build apps that answer our own needs as parents, and strive to make them useful to others and as user-friendly as possible,” writes Michael on their website.

Perfect Timing was their first app, using FAM, the Fertility Awareness Method, to help learn about and identify and chart natural family planning. They found the method helped them get pregnant easily, and the app is an easy way to keep all the information in one place.

Once their son was born, they came up with Sound Sleeper, a white noise app that can identify when a baby wakes and play a selected white noise — ocean, rain, car ride, even the sounds of Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market — to lull the baby back to sleep.

As I always say, whatever works. And now I know why they always seem so happy and rested. Smart.

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An Israeli short story

March 24, 2012 - 8:46 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

Read this wonderful, Tel Aviv-based story by U.S. author Joan Leegant. Titled Displaced Persons, it traces the timelines of many different people in Israel, Ashkenaz, European types, Holocaust survivors, young Israelis looking to be anywhere but Israel, refugees from African countries, Americans finding themselves in Israel, and then touches on a myriad of issues sensitive to Israeli society. There’s the enduring pain of Holocaust survivors, the painful histories of African refugees and their seemingly resilient natures, the window on life in Israel, and more specifically, Tel Aviv. There’s the typical Israeli apartment home, cups of tea, motorcycles, walks on the beach, family dinners and a litany of familiar details that make this story all the more intimate.

It’s a window that’s been opening gradually for author Leegant, who has been dividing her time since 2007 between Boston and Tel Aviv, where she is the visiting writer at Bar-Ilan University.

Sigalit takes out a tissue and wipes her eyes. She is constantly weepy. Her 88-year-old mother is hanging on in an old age home ten minutes from our building, which Sigalit visits for two hours every day when she’s not bringing her mother to her apartment for meals. “It’s not rebellion.” She stuffs the tissue into her pocket. “He really likes German culture. And how can I argue with him? Look at what they produced. Bach. Beethoven. Thomas Mann. Not everyone was Goering and Himmler.” She waves toward my window. “You want to hear the irony? Out there, Ben Yehuda Street? My mother says they used to call it Ben Yehudastrasse after the war. Little German-run shops, tea houses where people sat all day discussing Max Weber. It was schizophrenic. On the one hand, Germany was totally taboo—the first Israeli passports were marked as valid for any country in the world but there—but then they replicated the society as closely as they could.” She pulls herself out of her chair. “I should relax, right? The Germans have been paying for their history for decades; reparations practically built this country.” She goes to the door, puts her hand on the knob. “And all those earnest young volunteers who come on atonement missions: the most apologetic people on the planet.”

For more of Leegant’s work, go to her website, www.joanleegant.com.

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Reading aloud

March 20, 2012 - 11:10 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General 

I had a parent first yesterday, reading aloud at the JELLY story hour at the Baka Matnas, our version of the community center, albeit on a much smaller scale. Hosted by JELLY, which is sponsored by AACI (Americans and Canadians in Israel), it’s a really wonderful 45 minutes (is it only half an hour?) each week, in which our JELLY host, Deborah, reads from a selection of English language storybooks or has one of the parents bring in their favorites. Deborah is my favorite reader, because she has an ease and comfort with reading aloud that can’t be assumed, as I learned when I did it myself.

There’s a range of English speakers who come, some are Americans, others are Canadians, Brits or Aussies — I’m sure there’s been the occasional South African over the years as well. It’s wonderful to hear old favorites and ones that are new to us; as my boys have grown, I find they can sit and listen for the entire half hour, although it is true that a bag of apples or pretzels helps. Yesterday we brought some of our/my faves; Make Way for Ducklings, Caps for Sale, Harold’s Purple Crayon, Leo Lionni’s Let’s Make Rabbits, and while most were familiar to many, it was great to introduce these more American selections to my English friends, just as they’ve done for me.

I love the concept of introducing my kids to the pleasures of reading and stories, although there have been some changes at this particular story hour that have affected the overall program. While there is a library at the matnas, and story hour was always held in the children’s section of the library, we were kicked out this year and sent to one of the gan rooms downstairs. Now there is something easy about being in a gan room, with the small chairs and rug remnants that are perfect for copping a story hour squat. But it does mean that we have to schlep upstairs afterwards to exchange and find new books, and make sure that our kids don’t make too much noise, which is why we were all kicked out in the first place. There are two somewhat onerous librarians, one in particular, and they glare and yell if children so much as ask a question in a regular tone, which is to be expected from young children.

It saddens me, because I have such wonderful memories of the librarians of my childhood, back in Malverne, New York. But I’m not giving up yet, and it’s never a bad thing to insist on ‘indoor voices’ with toddlers, whether they’re hearing a story or picking out books for the week. Join us next time you’re in Baka on a Monday afternoon.

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