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Giving insurance companies an (even worse) name

This is about as mundane a subject as is out there, but it certainly reflects that the reality of living in Israel has very little to do with the headlines most people read, and more to do with the trials and tribulations we all face no matter where we live.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the hassles of making an insurance claim after being sideswiped in a traffic accident. Well, it all seemingly worked out well, and yesterday – less than two weeks of laying out over $1,000 to fix the car and sending in the claim to the insurance company (Migdal, in case anybody is interested, one of the country’s biggest insurance companies) – I received a check in the mail.

Hurray for a victory over Israeli bureaucracy, right? Not quite. The check was made out for the amount of the claim, minus 10%. An accompanying letter stated that the deduction was due to ‘contributing negligence’ on my part.

WTF? Now, a quick recap. I was driving down a road in Jerusalem in the Romema industrial area. My nemesis wanted to turn right onto my road from a small side street with a stop sign. After stopping and supposedly looking both ways, she turned right and clomped into my right back door as I was driving, minding my own business.

Was this 10% contributing negligence? I think not. Luckily Migdal’s claim manager’s name and number were on the letter, so I called her- and got through to her! I explained to her that I was not even one percent responsible for the accident, and when I asked her to explain her reasoning, she said, “do you even know the traffic rules? Do you know that at any intersection with a stop sign, that the driver with the right of way has a responsibility to slow down?”

I said I was not aware of that rule, and that even the driver of the other car, whom she insures, admitted to being 100% responsible for the accident.

“Well, that’s what I decided. There are some claims I take off 50% for negligence, I only took 10% off of yours,” she said.

“But you weren’t even there. You don’t know what happened,” I answered.

“So what? That’s the way it is.”

I realized that this was a futile conversation and ended it, and also realized it was a pathetic attempt by Migdal to save a few measly hundred shekels by bullying and shortchanging innocent victims of accidents.

So, if you ever get hit by another driver, and think that you’re going to receive complete reimbursement for the damages rendered, you might be better off settling with the driver without involving the cheating, conniving insurance companies.

Beaujolais Nouveau

If it’s the third Thursday in November, that means it’s a) the Thursday before Thanksgiving and more importantly, b) the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau, the first wine of the harvest. Drunk when the wine is still young and fresh, the million cases of Beaujolais Nouveau that are shipped from France worldwide each November has become a wine world ritual, and one that is also, of course, celebrated in Israel.

For me, it marks my friend Andrew’s annual party, which he revolves around Beaujolais Nouveau, hounding his local wine stores to be sure that he’ll have enough cases to keep his friends happy. It’s sort of like my annual Thanksgiving bash, for which I order my turkey within plenty of time to thaw it and roast it for my turkey eaters. In another sense, it’s our way of keeping track and abreast of the world out there, and not getting too lost in the ways of our adopted country.

So here’s to young red wine drinking this evening — or tomorrow and through the weekend — and we’ll talk about Thanksgiving next week.

(And a little more explaining about Beaujolais Nouveau:)

AT ONE MINUTE PAST MIDNIGHT on the third Thursday of each November, from little villages and towns like Romanèche-Thorins, over a million cases of Beaujolais Nouveau begin their journey through a sleeping France to Paris for immediate shipment to all parts of the world. Banners proclaim the good news: Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! “The New Beaujolais has arrived!” One of the most frivolous and animated rituals in the wine world has begun.

By the time it is over, over 65 million bottles, nearly half of the region’s total annual production, will be distributed and drunk around the world. It has become a worldwide race to be the first to serve to this new wine of the harvest. In doing so, it has been carried by motorcycle, balloon, truck, helicopter, Concorde jet, elephant, runners and rickshaws to get it to its final destination. It is amazing to realize that just weeks before this wine was a cluster of grapes in a growers vineyard. But by an expeditious harvest, a rapid fermentation, and a speedy bottling, all is ready at the midnight hour.

Beaujolais Nouveau began as a local phenomenon in the local bars, cafes, and bistros of Beaujolais and Lyons. Each fall the new Beaujolais would arrive with much fanfare. In pitchers filled from the growers barrels, wine was drunk by an eager population. It was wine made fast to drink while the better Beaujolais was taking a more leisurely course. Eventually, the government stepped into regulate the sale of all this quickly transported, free-flowing wine.

In 1938 regulations and restrictions were put in place to restrict the where, when, and how of all this carrying on. After the war years, in 1951, these regulations were revoked by the region’s governing body—the Union Interprofessional des Vins de Beaujolais (UIVB)—and the Beaujolais Nouveau was officially recognized. The official release date was set for November 15th. Beaujolais Nouveau was officially born. By this time, what was just a local tradition had gained so much popularity that the news of it reached Paris. The race was born. It wasn’t long thereafter that the word spilled out of France and around the world. In 1985, the date was again changed, this time to the third Thursday of November tying it to a weekend and making the celebration complete. But wherever the new Beaujolais went, importers had to agree not to sell it before midnight on the third Thursday of November.

Apart from the fanfare, what makes Beaujolais Nouveau so popular? And especially in the U.S. where consumption of red wine is less than 30%? Simply put, Beaujolais Nouveau is as about as close to white wine as a red wine can get. Due to the way it is made—the must is pressed early after only three days—the phenolic compounds, in particular the astringent tannins, normally found in red wines, isn’t there, leaving an easy to drink, fruity wine. This, coupled with the fact that it tastes best when chilled, makes for a festive wine to be gulped rather than sipped, enjoyed in high spirits rather than critiqued. As a side note, it makes a great transitional wine for anyone wanting to move from white to red wines.

Finally, the race from grape to glass may be silly, but half the fun is knowing that on the same night, in homes, cafes, restaurants, pubs, bars and bistros around the world, the same celebration is taking place. It hasn’t the pedigree to be a classic wine, but it is always good. Any other opinion you may regard as boorish and uninformed.

Room 124

Israeli bureaucratic institutions have been slowly but surely modernizing over recent years. You can get in and out of the infamous Interior Ministry in less than a day…and you don’t have to line up at 8:00 AM just to shove your way in through the heavily guarded front door.

The health funds now have computerized kiosks that print out the name of the doctor, his or her room number and the time of your appointment; a flat screen monitor tells you when it’s your turn.

Ditto with the banks and the post office where you can now kick your feet up and relax while you wait for your number to flash.

The tide of advancement, however, has apparently not yet washed over the shores of the Education Ministry which, naturally, is exactly where I had to be yesterday. I have been considering taking a tour guiding course; to be admitted I needed to have my non-Israeli diploma officially “approved.”

The Education Ministry’s building is a formidable mass; a wide arching wall of concrete with identical small window slats all facing towards a forlorn courtyard. Once inside, a spiral staircase winds its way to “Room 124″ – a tiny cubicle of an office where a lone clerk sits to satisfy the academic supplicants’ demands.

There is no brightly-lit waiting room, just a scattering of chairs along the walls and up against the staircase railing. To the Ministry’s credit, there is an old-fashioned paper number dispenser; when I first made aliyah 15 years ago, you just plopped yourself down and asked “who’s last?” A fight would inevitably ensue when someone arrived late and claimed that he or she was “here earlier” and was “after” some naive looking stranger who quickly disavowed any knowledge of the presumptuous intruder.

There were 17 people ahead of me – a true melting pot of Israeli immigrant society. I heard smatterings of foreign tongues – Russian, Arabic, French, Spanish, and of course English.

When my turn finally came – after an hour and a half wait – I braced myself for an abrupt confrontation with Israeli officialdom. To my surprise, my clerk was a bundle of buoyancy. When she started speaking to me in English rather than Hebrew, I asked where she was from. “Albania.”

What a pleasant turn of events: the woman in charge of the immigrants was an immigrant herself. As my forms were duly stamped, we traded travel stories. She told me that you can fly to Turkey and rent a car to drive to Albania by way of Bulgaria and Macedonia.

Maybe I should think about leading such Mediterranean road trips. After all, I now have the stamp of approval from the Ministry of Education.

Not just any third birthday

One of the most quickly forgotten aspects following any terror attack is the survivors. We all mourn the victims, obsess about the perpetrators, and move on, as those left behind attempt to pick up the pieces of their lives.

Three-year-old Moishe Holzberg has proven to be the exception. A year ago, Moishe’s parents, Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg, 29, and his wife Rivka, 28, were killed along with 170 other victims when Pakistani Islamic terrorists raided the Chabad house in Mumbai, India. The Holzbergs had lived in Mumbai for six years as official emissaries of the Chabad movement.

The two-year-old life of Moishe was saved when he was spirited away from the attack by his Indian nanny Sandra Samuel. He’s been raised at Kfar Chabad near Tel Aviv by his grandparents for the last year. And on Wednesday, the community hosted a memorial ceremony for the couple, which was attended by 2,000 people. During the event, Moishe celebrated his first haircut, a coming-of-age event for three-year-old boys, known as an “upshirin” in Yiddish or “chalaka” in Hebrew.

“Moshe may be without biological parents, but the entire Chabad family has adopted him,” the head of the Chabad Youth Organization in Israel, Rabbi Yosef Aharonov, told The Jerusalem Post which attended the event.

Across a blue-grey curtain on the wall of the womens’ section of the tent, dozens of blue and white balloons spelled out “Moishe, three years old.” Moishe himself was carried in by Sandra shortly before the beginning of the event, and stood before a gaggle of reporters and cameras, calmly, even lazily, taking in the spectacle.

Rabbi Holzberg’s father, Rabbi Nachman Holzberg, said that the outpouring of support for his family has been tremendous over the past year, and that Moishe was doing very well. Holzberg also expressed his hope that the tragedy “will only bring the entire world closer to redemption.”

Samuel, surrounded by a sea of reporters and swarmed by well-wishers from the moment she entered with Moishe, said that she was feeling a mix of emotions at the event, both great happiness that Moishe was doing well and sadness at the fact that his parents could not be with him.

Samuel said that “the baby is fine, he’s a normal kid, he plays, he jumps.”

With a mixture of sadness and joy, which, after all, is a regular recipe in Israel, the shortened lives of the Holzbergs and the hopefully long life of their son Moishe was celebrated in the only way Israeli know how – with all their hearts.

Protesting Israel-style

The email we received last week was dire. Our neighborhood was in grave danger of being ruined by unscrupulous real estate developers, it read. A massive 210-unit apartment project had been green-lighted to be built right in the middle of an already congested neighborhood.

The resulting traffic, pollution and just plain lack of aesthetics (the planned project includes two eight-story towers reminiscent of the Holyland monstrosity) demanded a response. The residents’ considerations had already been rejected by two lower committees. We were urged to attend a last chance meeting of the Va’ad Artzi, the national planning commission, to take place at 9:00 AM on Sunday.

Normally, I shy away from such events. Highly technical Hebrew with lots of architectural lingo spoken at very high volume (read: yelling) isn’t how I like to start my workday. But this seemed important, so my wife Jody and I high tailed it across town to the Chen Hotel in the Bayit VeGan quarter of Jerusalem where the committee was meeting.

Truth be told, this was our first government gathering in Israel. Back in the States, I was a regular since I held the planning and city council beat at my first newspaper job. So I was expecting something similar. A small auditorium with council members sitting on a raised stage around a long table. Members of the public would step up to a podium and speak into a microphone. The men all wore ties; the mayor held a gavel.

But this was casual Israel. We residents (about 20 of us showed up to show our support) sat around the perimeter of the room behind the opposing parties who were seated at three tables arranged in a U. On the city’s side sat various officials, the project developer and several architects. We were represented by local residents and a member of the Society for the Protection of Nature (SPNI): a burly man with a gray beard, a polo shirt and a baseball cap. At the front table was the Va’ad itself.

Despite a hustle bustle of participants getting up for drinks and noshes, chairs scraping across the floor, animated whispering and cell phones ringing, the proceedings were surprisingly efficient.

The contractor spoke first, followed by the residents. Both sides were articulate, used PowerPoint slides, and seemed genuinely interested in finding a workable compromise. The SPNI man was careful to say he wasn’t opposed to the project, just the lack of public green space and the destruction of a grove of trees that had been thriving since the British Mandate era.

The developers, in turn, showed numerous plans that they’d rejected until arriving at one that they said had the least impact on the neighborhood. Most of the trees would have to go in order to build underground parking which was of course better for the neighborhood than forcing 300 new cars onto city streets. The plan also called for setting aside 25% of the luxury project for less affluent families – a rarity among shekel-crazed developers and their cronies.

One reason the battle was so relatively amiable is that everyone agreed that Jerusalem has no choice but to become denser. When the Safdie Plan – which called for massive construction in the green belt around the city – was nixed last year after protests by the very same SPNI, the alternative was to find and build on empty urban space.

The area for this particular new development was formerly mostly empty agricultural land and fields next to the venerable Ulpan Etzion which was shut down earlier this year for budgetary reasons. It was only a matter of time.

As the meeting stretched into its third hour, Jody and I had to leave – protesting is fun and all, but we do need to work. In any case, the committee wasn’t taking a vote on the spot.

We of course hope that the project will be scaled down, although Rachel Deitcher, the resident who’d invited us in the first place warned that compromise is not generally the Israeli way. Nevertheless we appreciated the fact that there was a forum in Israel where opposing sides could meet and, to our unjaded eyes, seemed genuinely interested in solving the conflict. Most of all, our first foray into city planning politics wasn’t as painful as we’d feared.

When the verdict is handed down, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Nostalgia Sunday – Old ads are more fun

If we are to learn anything from Mad Men, it’s that advertisements are most fun and best viewed in retrospect. We look back in “What were they thinking?” wonderment at the positioning of certain products. For example, here’s a slideshow of Israeli advertisements from yesteryear – including one for Osem’s Bamba as a crispy late-night party snack – a far cry from it’s primary role today as the ultimate teething toy.

Or this one, for Elite powdered instant coffee. Although it employs a completely archaic production method, “Cafe Ness” is still being consumed happily by millions. Or thousands. Or at least by me.

Here’s something you don’t see every day – an advertisement for cigarettes! With actual smoking!

And to close, an ad featuring the Yarkon Bridge Trio (Shlishiyat Gesher HaYarkon) — Benny Amdursky, Yehoram Gaon and Arik Einstein racing around town and touting the wonders of Tadiran’s new-fangled electronic devices.

As you watch, bear this in mind: TV in Israel was black & white until 1980, broadcasting was limited to one commercial-free station until 1993 and ads were shown only in movie houses.

Religious ruptures

With Jerusalem debating the efficacies and realities of the city’s haredim rioting against the opening of the Intel factory on Shabbat, talk at the water cooler on this first day of the work week revolved around this latest turn in the Shabbat riots.

The riots were reportedly peaceful, but as one coworker of mine commented, “How peaceful is it to head to a riot after shul on Shabbat?”

Can’t argue with that. I personally like to head home for some whisky and olives on Shabbat afternoon.

According to a survey taken by Hiddush, an NGO promoting religious freedom and equality in Israel (and headed by Rabbi/lawyer Uri Regev, who used to head the Reform movement in Israel), 76 percent of Jewish Israelis – and 93% of secular Israelis – believe haredi rabbis are spearheading religion-inspired conflicts in an effort to advance partisan haredi interests, and only 24% of the 500 polled believe that recent riots are inspired by love of Israel and the wellbeing of society.

This isn’t the first time that an Intel factory in Israel is working on Shabbat, but it is a newly revamped Jerusalem Intel plant that is manufacturing a certain kind of chip, which requires non-stop production. Given that Jerusalem is a city lacking jobs and industry, the presence of Intel is a boon, and one that clearly, no one wants to lose. At the same time, it’s not too pleasant dealing with religious hatred on a regular basis.

And so, against this background, I happened to end up at the Haredim photography exhibit in Beit Avi Chai, originally shown at the Eretz Israel Museum, with photos by Menahem Kahana of Haredim in all walks and situations of life, from synagogue rituals and family gatherings to celebrations, funerals and yes, demonstrations, from over the last ten years.

The curator is Alex Levac, winner of the Israel Prize for photography. Worth seeing and thinking about.

Stage mom

I became a stage mother this week. Through a series of amusing connections and events (my babysitter’s younger sister has a starring role in an Israeli television show, Room Service, and the casting director asked her mother if she knew any babies in Jerusalem who could be cast in a new Eran Riklis film), my boys are two of the babies in Eran Riklis’s latest movie, Human Resources.

Set in Jerusalem, and based on the 2004 A.B. Yehoshua book, The Mission of the Human Resources Manager, it’s about a human resources manager in a big Jerusalem bakery during the dark days of the second intifada. A Russian worker dies in a suicide bombing attack and when no one claims her body, he has to take her back to Russia.

Filming is taking place in Jerusalem and Romania, and we were part of the Jerusalem filming, which was set in the ghost-town like atmosphere of the Schneller Army base, in the Geula neighborhood. Our boys’ film father was Mark Ivanir, a Russian-born actor who came to Israel in 1972 and now splits his time between Israel and the U.S. Eran Riklis, the director and a big bear of a guy, was genial enough with the babies, although a tad confused about what 12-month-olds are supposed to be doing. He wanted them to crawl, but also sit quietly in an infant seat; start working at 4:30 in the afternoon, and go strong until 8 pm. And when I questioned whether a 12-month-old sitting in an infant seat perched on a chest was realistic (and safe), I could see the word balloons next to their mouths, saying “Overprotective American mother!”

We worked it out, the boys cooperated for the most part, and now we just sit tight and wait for the movie premiere, with Ziv and Lev’s names in the credits. And it’s probably safe to say that I’ll never do this again, but you never know.

Music downloads? Israel goes CD retro

As more and more people are downloading music on the Web and choosing Ipods over CD players, where can you find the good, old fashioned mega-CD stores? In Israel!

True, Tower Records has taken a hit here, with its Jerusalem flagship store closing down last year, but instead of throwing in the flag, other outlets have taken up the slack.

Whenever I’m in Tel Aviv – like yesterday – I try and make it over to the Ozen Hashlishi (Third Ear) on King George St. It’s the closest you can get in Israel to imagining you’re at one of those sprawling vintage CD/vinyl shops in the Village in New York, where the clerks wear Black Flag t-shirts and look like they’d just as soon stab you as take your money.

Tons of used and new CDs, vinyl, DVDs, books, featuring ample sections of niche music like ‘Israeli indie’ and ’60s Psychedelic,’ the Ozen is one of the few places you can pick up a copy Television’s landmark Marquee Moon CD – and at a bargain price. They’ve also got a club which at night hosts eclectic Israeli rockers for intimate unplugged chats with fans.

But Tel Aviv doesn’t corner the whole market for the discerning music lover. In the nation’s capital, Hatav Hashmini, a music store that began more than a decade ago by importing CDs at cheap prices and has since grown into a massive chain with its own music label, recently opened a massive, 340-square-meter store. They claim it’s the largest music CD and DVD store in Israel.

According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, the store features ten listening stations that allow visitors to sample virtually any CD in the store, one of them in a room dedicated entirely to classical music and opera.

During the grand opening last Thursday, Hatav Hashmini’s stated commitment to “music you can hold in your hands,” as opposed to downloadable MP3 files, was in strong evidence, as several big names on the label’s roster assembled for brief impromptu concerts.

Hatav Hashmini’s label boasts such artists as pop performers Micha Sheetrit, David Broza and Shlomo Gronich, as well as jazz saxophonist Danny Zamir. The store promises to host its artists for small-scale performances in the future. The venue is certainly spacious enough.

While it’s unlikely to replace the Ozen in my heart as THE place to shop for music in Israel, I’ll be certainly giving Hatav Hashmini every chance to prove itself in the coming months.

High school musical – the hike

A uniquely Israeli creation, the tiyul shnati (Annual trip) has been part of our family’s lives since our oldest child was big enough for one of the outdoor overnight, multi-day trips.

Whether they attend secular or religious schools, the annual trips are generally chock full of walking the land, camping in the rough, rope and ladder climbing water hikes, barbecues, cameraderie, pranks, and living and breathing Zionism.

With 10 months spent cooped up in the classroom, middle and high schoolers earn their three days out in nature, and our 15-year-old son was up bright-eyed and ready at 5:30 am this morning waiting for one of us to drive him to school.

Of course, it’s not primarily about Zionism, it’s primarily about pranks. When I asked him what kind of pranks the kids play on each other these days, he recounted one successful mission last year of entering another tent in the middle of the night, and scrawling in red marker the name of a body part on the forehead of a ‘friend.’

The preparations begin days earlier, with the required trip to the candy story for obligatory ‘junk’ bag of everything we don’t let him have the rest of the year. The school list of required equipment includes enough bottles of water to stock a small pool, but he also insisted on buying a six-pack of Coke. Both the portable music player and the cell phone stayed at home, which was an accomplishment in itself, and almost worth the cost of the trip.

Which is a sore point – a number of students weren’t attending the trip due to the expense involved. On top of the annual school fees and miscellanous charges, the school charged NIS 790 (almost $200) for the trip. I know that there’s the costs of the buses, the guides, etc… but they’re not even staying in youth hostels or hotels, they’re camping out!

If it’s a class trip, meant to build a spirit of student togetherness, there should be a way for all the students to go, even if it means cutting out some of the schedule and shortening the outing by a day.

It’s a macro problem, but this morning, we were dealing with the micro, hastily digging the forgotten sleeping bag out of the closet at the last minute. With that squared away, our young man took his last shower for three days, packed an extra pair of shoes for the water, reluctantly stuffed in something to wear if it got cold at night, made sure he had his red marker, and put his candy in a water-proof section of his backpack. With attention to detail like that, he’ll go far in life.

 

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