This what the Old City looked like, just days after the war ended.
(Click on image to view larger).

Israeli citizens began flooding to the Western Wall…

Soldiers and civilians alike (you can count my parents among them) took a close look at enemy weaponry…

A makeshift memorial of flowers and a small plaque was set up in memory of five paratroopers from Division 80 Reconnaissance Unit 75 who were killed in the battle for Jerusalem…

This was eventually replaced with a larger memorial, by sculptress Yona Palombo, for Paratrooper Division 80′s fallen. Today, it includes the names of 47 more soldiers killed in Israel’s wars and stands on the outskirts of the Old City.

This photo courtesy of the Paratrooper Brigade website. All other photos graciously provided by Moshe Lavi.

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Among the 38 documentaries entered into the competition this year is Shadows In Palestine, a new look at the millennial movement of German Templers (not to be confused with the Crusader Knights Templar), a community of religious Protestants who lived in the Holy Land for three generations, from 1868 to 1941, in settlements known today as the “German Colonies” of Haifa, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Sarona (in central Tel Aviv), Wilhelma (adjacent to today’s Ben Gurion Airport), Waldheim (now Moshav Alonei Abba) and Bethlehem of the Galilee.

The Templer sect (Tempelgesellschaft) was a German Protestant sect with roots in the Pietist movement of the Lutheran Church. They believed that living in the Holy Land would hasten the second coming of Christ and were expelled from the church in 1858 because of their millennial beliefs. In 1868, at the urging of their leader, Christoff Hoffman, the emigrated to the Holy Land and built their first colony in Haifa.

According to Wikipedia, “The colonists built an attractive main street that was much admired by the locals. It was 30 meters wide and planted with trees on both sides. The houses, designed by architect Jacob Schumacher, were built of stone, with red-shingled roofs, instead of the flat or domed roofs common in the region.

“The Templer settlement of Sarona was one of the first modern agricultural settlements in Palestine… In August 1871, the Templers purchased 60 hectares of land from a Greek monastery north of Jaffa.

“The colony’s oranges were the first to carry a ‘Jaffa orange’ brand, one of the better known agricultural brands in Europe, used to market Israeli oranges to this day. The Templers established a regular coach service between Haifa and the other cities, promoting the country’s tourist industry, and made an important contribution to road construction.

“In 1873, after establishing colonies in Haifa and Jaffa, members of the Templer sect from Württemberg, Germany, settled on a large tract of land in the Refaim Valley, southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem. The land was purchased by one of the colonists, Matthaus Frank, from the Arabs of Beit Safafa.”

The Templers brought modern farming methods to the region, importing agricultural machinery, introducing soil fertilization, better methods of crop rotation and new crops with a focus on crops and products they could readily sell. ‘The researcher and author Sven Hedin wrote of his visit to Sarona in 1916 ‘…many plants were in blossom. They mainly grow grapes, oranges and vegetables, [but] like in old times they also produce milk and honey.’”

But the idyll began to fracture when in 1917, during World War I, General Edmund Allenby conquered Palestine from the Ottomans. “The German colonists were regarded as enemy aliens. Many of the colonists were recruited for the units of the German Imperial Army, which fought together with the army of the Ottoman ally against the British conquest.”

The German colonists — now into their third generation — chafed under British rule and became increasingly influenced by German nationalism. “In 1937, 34% of the Templers were Nazi party members. At the start of World War II colonists with German citizenship were rounded up by the British and sent, together with Italian and Hungarian enemy aliens, to internment camps in Waldheim and Bethlehem of Galilee. 661 Templers were deported to Australia via Egypt on July 31, 1941, leaving 345 in Palestine.”

“Sarona, together with the three other agricultural settlements – Wilhelma, Bethlehem of Galilee and Waldheim – became ‘perimeter’ compounds into which all Germans living in Palestine were interned. Sarona held close to 1,000 persons behind a guarded, 4 m high barbed-wire fence. In July 1941, 198 people from Sarona, together with almost 400 from the other internment camps were deported to Australia on the Queen Elizabeth. They were interned in Tatura in Central Victoria Australia until 1947. By November 1944, most of the remaining Sarona residents had been moved to the camp in Wilhelma. The last group was sent there in September 1945.”

However, according to the new documentary, “during the thirties, the Templers were pressured to embrace and form a Nazi party” and fell victim to a secret exchange between Germany and Britain. “The Nazi party set free a number of Jews from concentration camps and in exchange Britain, who controlled Palestine at the time, sent the Templers back to Germany. Despite the fact that only a third of Templers joined the Nazi Party, all of them were forced to leave their new homeland.”

It will be interesting to see this new account of the Templer’s history. (Right now there is only a movie trailer on YouTube). The movie includes first-hand interviews with Templers who speak about the past and their exit from Mandatory Palestine. For Israelis who don’t necessarily know the background to these German Colony neighborhoods, it’s a chance to learn about the Templer movement, its accomplishments and contributions to the development of the modern State of Israel.

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First, some facts: it is true that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, opposed introducing television into the new State of Israel. It is also true that television made it through the back door as an instructional tool in 1966, when Israel Educational Television (IETV) began broadcasting under the auspices of the Education Ministry, with programs initially received by 32 schools.

Needless to say, broadcasting was in black-and-white as the technology was less expensive and in keeping with the authorities’ frowning upon the whole affair. According to the Wikipedia entry on Television in Israel, “Arnon Zuckerman, the IBA director general from 1973 to March 1979, cites Golda Meir (Israel’s Prime Minister 1969-1974) saying about color television, ‘It is so artificial, I know it from America. There is no need for this’.”

No need, perhaps, but by the mid-seventies you couldn’t get black and white equipment so by dint of circumstance, Israeli consumers were only able to buy color televisions while IBA was forced to purchase color-enabled gear. You would think that Israel would have then naturally segued into color TV broadcasting and viewing… but you would be wrong.

Please note the underlying lunacy in this cut-and-dried account of what actually happened, again from Wikipedia: “According to Yair Lapid’s biographical book about his father, Tommy Lapid, who was the IBA director general from April 1979 to March 1984, the IBA had the necessary equipment for filming and broadcasting in color for nearly a decade before putting it into use; however the introduction of color transmissions was halted due to political pressure and threats of industrial actions.”

“Industrial action” refers to IBA technical staff who felt threatened by the introduction of video technology and color video at that. “Owing to this state of affairs, newscasts and other regular productions were filmed using black and white cameras; however many special productions ordered from private Israeli studios (in particular the Herzliya Studios) were filmed and taped in color.”

Then things got really crazy. “The Israeli government frowned upon the increasing import of color TV sets, which it considered a threat to Israeli economic stability and an improper pursuit of luxury, which allegedly increased social gaps. Therefore, the government ordered IBA and IETV to broadcast entirely in black and white and erase the color from any color-taped telecast.”

I know. IBA is beginning to sound like that movie Pleasantville.

So, with the great technical ingenuity that would serve Israel so well decades later as the “Start-up Nation”, IBA introduced the mehikon — literally, the “eraser” — which interfered with the color signal and triggered a “color killer” mechanism. And with the even greater ingenuity that would serve Israel so well decades later as the “Nation of Upstarts”, the average Israeli simply went out and purchased a color television set equipped with an anti-mehikon device that would restore the color signal.

It wasn’t perfect. “According to a report in Yediot Aharonoth from January 1979, the client had to manipulate the switch every 15 minutes on average in normal conditions, or up to 10 times an hour when special problems occurred, in order to restore natural colors or if the picture suddenly turned black and white.” But it served the public well enough until 1981 when the government allowed IBA and IETV to film productions in color.

Did I say 1981? I meant 1983 when the first IBA nightly newscast broadcast in color, because it took another two years to arrange for a settlement with the technicians’ trade union, who were demanding higher salaries for operating color equipment.

“Lapid also mentions that the anti-mekhikon system cost IBA 180 million Israeli lira yearly (approximately 64 million Israeli new shekels in 2011 prices).”

But the idiocy doesn’t end there. in 1990, the government approved the establishment of a Second Authority for Television and Radio and Channel 2′s Israeli News Company began broadcasting a nightly newscast in 1993. At 8′o clock in the evening. Which brings us to another dumb IBA decision.*

Imagine, if you will, that you are in charge of a nightly news broadcast with — get this — a 100% audience share!!! You have gravity and authority. For 25 years without a break, the entire country automatically turns to your show after dinner at 9 o’clock at night. Suddenly, a untried, untested competitor appears with an 8 o’clock news broadcast. What do you do?

Well, if you’re IBA, you move your news broadcast, a national mainstay whose nightly viewing is an ingrained habit, to 8 o’clock, too, and lose your market share. They still haven’t recovered from that self-administered shot in the foot.

Which bring us today’s news about the 8 minutes to 8 thingie. Haaretz reports that, in true IBA fashion, a tussle is in the works between management and staff. “Negotiations have been underway in recent weeks. The workers’ committee claims that the changes, including some in human resources, were made without any consultation. The broadcasting authority, however, says the committee is making demands unconnected to the channel changes – salary levels, for example.” Well, it’s nice to have traditions.

Here are few Mabat nightly newscast openers from yesteryear…

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A bit of history: the ViewMaster (or View-Master) was first introduced at the New York World’s Fair in 1939 by the partnership of Wilhelm Gruber, an organ maker and amateur photographer, and Harold Graves, who was in charge of the postcard division at Oregon-based Sawyer’s Photo Services.

Their idea was to update the old-fashioned stereoscope to the new Kodachrome 16-mm color film, printing small-format photo transparencies and mounting them in pairs on a disk to be viewed with a simple hand-operated viewer. Initially, the photo subjects were travelogues, such as Carlsbad Caverns and the Grand Canyon, quickly followed by more far-flung locations such as Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

Collector and dealer Kip “Mr. ViewMaster” Brockman has several such travelogues on his site, as does the ViewMaster World blog. The disks were accompanied by a narrative booklet. For example, if you were to purchase Modern Israel, part of the Nations of the World series, as you viewed the stereoscopic image, you would read the following:

“Our El Al Israel Airlines plane lands at Lod Airport, near Tel Aviv. An attractive hostess welcomes us to Israel with a spoken greeting in Hebrew, from the Bible: “Blessed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and when thou goest out.”

Tel Aviv, Israel’s No. 1 boom town, is the first all Jewish metropolis since Biblical times…The beach front is a Coney Island on the Mediterranean; booths sell corn on the cob, watermelon, or falaffel (“the Israeli hot dog”)…

Tel Aviv stands as a symbol of modern, energetic Israel. The country’s spirit is personified in its new generation. The native born Sabra— Hebrew word for cactus (tough outside, sweet inside) — is tall, healthy, suntanned, and confident, with the swagger of an adventurer.”

Oh my gosh! I would really like to visit that place where air-hostesses quote scripture, Israelis are tall and un-neurotic, and the notion of falafel as “the Israeli hot dog” doesn’t send me into paroxysms of laughter. But I digress.

After 1966, when Sawyer’s became a wholly owned subsidiary of the General Aniline & Film (GAF) Corporation, more child-friendly subjects like cartoons and TV series were introduced.

The full account of View-Master’s history of Mergers & Acquisitions is a long one; the short version is that the product is currently carried by Mattel subsidiary Fisher-Price, which in December 2008 announced that it would cease production of the scenic disks depicting tourist attractions. According to Wikipedia, “These disks of picturesque scenes and landscape scenery were descendants of the first View-Master disks sold in 1939.”

Fisher-Price continues to produce disks of animated characters, including Dora the Explorer who prefers to go places instead of just looking at them on-screen. Well, travel is easier nowadays. There was something magical, though, about looking at the tiny celluloid images through the ViewMaster lens. (It was, as my significant other says, “like having a tiny, personal TV” and if you squished the eyepiece sideways into your brow ridge just right, you could get the full 3D effect, however briefly). So you can still get a ViewMaster. As for getting hold of ViewMaster travelogues, there’s always eBay.

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According to an essay on the Shaar Hagai website, having decided to set up a canine unit, Haganah commanders turned to Dr. Professor Rudolphina Menzel, “a noted cynologist with a considerable reputation in her native Austria in the field of animal behavior… She quickly discovered that the European breeds with which she was accustomed to working, German Shepherds, Boxers, Dobermans, suffered greatly from the severe climate and difficult terrain and had a hard time functioning effectively.

“She began to observe the local pariah dogs living on the outskirts of settlements and with the Bedouin in desert and wilderness areas, and decided that this was a true breed of dog that had adapted to the conditions. She began a program of re-domestication, collecting puppies and adults from the pariah groups.”

“The Canaan Dog has survived for thousands of years on its own, living by its wits, and surviving in the wild and on the fringes of civilization by hunting and scavenging. Often puppies were captured, raised and used, especially by the Bedouin tribesmen, as guardians of the flocks and the tents. Like other wild or feral residents of the area, only the strongest, healthiest, cleverest, and most fit survived to breed and pass on their characteristics.”

Prof. Menzel called the breed the Canaan Dog after the Biblical Land of Canaan. Canaans have been part of the local landscape since time immemorial. The American Kennel Club history of the breed cites “Drawings found on the tombs at Beni-Hassan, dating from 2200 to 2000 B.C., depict[ing] dogs that show an unmistakable resemblance to the Canaan Dog of today.”

An essay posted by the Canaan Dog Club of America states, “As a breed the Canaan Dog proved highly intelligent and easily trainable, serving as sentry dogs, messengers, Red Cross helpers and land mine locators. During World War II, Dr. Menzel recruited and trained over 400 of the best dogs for the Middle East Forces as land mine detectors, and they proved superior to the mechanical detectors.”

“The Canaan is also one of the very few breeds known that has successfully adapted to a desert environment,” the Shaar Hagai essay notes. “Studies done at Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University of the Negev have shown an astonishing ability in this breed to adapt to extremes of temperature and lack of water. The breed has developed physiological adaptations to prevent waste of fluids and overheating.”

Prof. Menzel was responsible for gaining recognition for the breed; her breed standard was accepted by the La Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) in 1966, where it is classified in FCI Group 5, a subgroup of primitive dogs. She exported the first Canaans to the US in 1965 and to Germany shortly after. (An interview with Prof. Menzel about her work by noted naturalist Dvora Ben Shaul makes for fascinating reading). In 1970, Shaar Hagai Kennels joined in the development and breeding of the dogs, carrying on Prof. Menzel’s work after her death in 1973.

Over the years, urbanization and cultivation have led to the gradual disappearance of the Canaan’s natural habitat and there is a danger that the wild dog, which is the original breeding stock, could disappear. Added to that is a new threat: after 42 years, the Shaar Hagai Kennels have received a notice of eviction by the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), which holds title to the property. Such a move could mean the end of their breeding program and consequently endanger the breed overall.

Myrna Shiboleth, who has run the Kennels for 42 years, now finds herself in an unusual plight and has been actively lobbying for public support. She has successfully recruited 38,505 signatures (so far) on an online petition that will be submitted to the ILA. 50,000 signatures are needed, so sign the petition, join the Facebook page, and pass the word on.

I should mention my personal interest in this story; when we adopted her two years ago, we couldn’t figure out our dog Nili until we learned about Canaan dogs. Then it all made sense: she may be part Canaan in breed (check out those giant ears) but she’s all Canaan in ‘tude: highly intelligent, very loyal but never blindly obedient. All in all, a true Israeli sabra.

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Anne wrote about the tree three times in her diary, the last time on May 13, 1944, noting, “Our chestnut tree is in full bloom. It´s covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year.”

The Yad Vashem sapling was planted near the Children´s Memorial and International School for Holocaust Studies, in the presence of Hanna Pick (pictured), Holocaust survivor and childhood friend of Anne Frank.

How ironic that such a fitting memorial should be followed, only a few days later, by the outrageous news that the Berlin branch of Madam Tussaud’s had inaugurated an Anne Frank tableau, meant to inspire “optimism”.

If the Berlin waxwork is a fitting memorial, it is not to Anne Frank’s memory, but to Madame Marie Tussaud herself, who gained notoriety during the French Revolution as a maker of death masks. Put that in your nostalgia pipe and smoke it.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is not nostalgic, “nostalgia” being a sentimental or happy recollection of times or things past. It is a day for recalling the most unpleasant aspects of human nature, for honoring the memory of people we may or may not have actually known and hopefully, a day of self-examination and learning about a terrible chapter in Jewish history.

For over half a century, Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, has been committed to what it terms the four pillars of remembrance: Commemoration, Documentation, Research and Education.

Of those four, it is the last one that has become most critical as older generations pass away. In fact, its fair to say that the first four provide the foundations upon which education can stand; the Yad Vashem website provides a wealth of downloadable materials, educational programs and lesson plans for educators, as well as an online photo and document archive and YouTube channel of documentary films, survivor testimonies and historical lectures.

Visit the Yad Vashem website this week – there is always something to learn there.

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An annual Hit Parade, based on the weekly ones, has been broadcast on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, since 1963. There are actually two annual Hit Parades, one on Galei Zahal (GLZ), the army radio network and the other on the Israel Broadcast Authority (IBA). GLZ decided to split the charts into Hebrew-language songs and international songs in 1967; IBA followed suit two years later. IBA pop station Reshet Gimel began operations in 1973 and took over the hit parade responsibilities for the network.

So there were two hit parades, both based on the tastes of teenage girls with time on their hands (and postage stamps) and 30-year old DJs — the two groups that traditionally call the shots in pop music. But despite the demographics, these do not a real hit parade make because real charts reflect record sales. And in a country where the two main record companies, Hed Arzi and CBS, essentially had no competition (until Helicon came along in 1985), such information was not made public.

I’m not sure why but like so many other things in Israel, probably it wasn’t out of meanness but more likely out of lethargy (it’s very hot here), ignorance (What, record companies in America tell people about their business? Why?) and because no one ever got around to thinking of it (reserve duty, Jewish holidays, wars, food shopping, etc.).

Enter Lahiton. Founded and edited by Uri Aloni and David Paz as a bi-weekly magazine in September 1969, a year later, Lahiton became a weekly, presenting a kind of journalism previously unknown in Israel: news and gossip about music and performers, record reviews, lyrics, pictures, full-color posters that decorated the walls of children and teens across the country, and charts — not only Israeli but foreign ones, too.

Lahiton also initiated a Gold Record award whose first winners were Shlomo Artzi, Dorit Reuveni and Igal Bashan. Following Lahiton’s lead, Israel’s record companies also began awarding Gold Records to artists with albums selling over 20,000 copies, thus tacitly releasing sales information.

In 1976, Lahiton merged with movie magazine Olam HaKolnoa and began reporting on movies stars as well as singers. The magazine’s popularity began to wane in the early to mid-Eighties as its editors moved on to found new magazines and as Israelis became exposed to more sophisticated fare like Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and Billboard.

Lahiton folded in 1990. The archive is not online although some kind souls have taken to scanning and posting select pages, including some scans of the Hit Parade page.

Recently, a Facebook page launched, dedicated to all things Lahiton, with a very active community of people interested in sharing pictures and comments, with some also wondering where the old Hit Parades are at.

In fact, the IBA website has a search engine accessing all annual Hebrew-language Hit Parades dating back to 1969.

An extensive interview (in Hebrew) with Lahiton founding editors Aloni and Paz by pop culture researcher Eli Eshed can be found here.

For those interested in buying or selling vintage copies of Lahiton — or just looking at some really cool cover art — look no further than the BookSefer site with prices ranging from NIS 160 (Michael Jackson in his “Bad” phase) down to NIS 70 (Izhar Cohen in his Michael Jackson in his “Bad” phase).

And of course, there is an online alternative to take the place of the write-in postcard vote: Charts.co.il, which provides the latest chart information — of the many, many charts now available to us — and gives users the chance to rate their favorites, just like the old days.

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In days gone by, the lady of the house — unsurprisingly, most house-cleaning in Israel was and is done by women — would “raise the house”, literally upending all furniture and more or less flooding the house so as to do a proper sponja.

Ah, sponja! How to explain the concept? To the outside observer, doing sponja may seem like taking a sopping wet rag, flinging it over a sponjador — a giant squeegee on a stick — and then flinging it madly back and forth across the endless surface of 20 cm by 20 cm balatot.

But no. Doing a proper sponja is what separates the men from the boys — surprisingly, many Israeli men take great pride in their sponja technique — knowing just how much to wring out the rag on the first pass, how to wrap it around the squeegee so that it doesn’t fall off, and of course, how to wipe the floor on the last pass so as to leave no streaks.

Sponja is so much a part of being Israeli that no one has ever thought seriously to change this system, generally considered the only way to get floors really clean, far superior to new-fangled methods like mops, Swiffers and Dyson vacuum cleaners (now advertising heavily in time for the holiday).

Of course, all of this would be meaningless without the holiest of holy waters, the apex of all that is clean, that which burns your nasal passages and lungs, and leaves you feeling that you’ve truly sacrificed yourself on the altar of hygiene: economica, known to the outside world as bleach.

Economica is a cult – either you’re in or you’re out. If you’re in, you can’t go to bed at night without a few splashes in the sink, the tub, the shower, the whatever — just to kill off the germs that must be lurking there. And if you’re out, you think your spouse is crazy. But I’m not. Really. Just a few more splashes. Please.

Before cream cleansers, bathroom cleanser was commonly known as cleaning sand — and with good reason, too. Not only did it leave scratch up ceramic finishes on bathtubs and sinks, it also left one’s hands red and raw, or truly clean, as pain and cleanliness must go hand in hand.

Before there was liquid dish soap, there was the old fashioned dish soap paste with the consistency — and bouquet — of axle grease. A few handfuls would be glopped into a dish and cut with water to make it usable. Later on, special dispenser were invented to accommodate this unwieldy activity. And bizarrely enough, some people still prefer the paste to the liquid, out of a feeling that it has more cleaning action.

A small consumer awareness note: Those people are apparently right! A quick look at a Ministry of Finance chart on cleaning products shows that the paste has 20% active ingredients while most liquids contain between 18-24% active ingredient. I bear a personal grudge against Palmolive, which used to contain 36% active ingredient and now contains a mere 18%.

Back to cleaning! Before Persil, before Tide, before even Sano, there was Soad (or Sod, as it was written then). For some reason, in Israel it is the laundry soaps that traditionally had the best mascots: the Textil Shampo boy, the Or boy and my personal favorite, the Ama lady. As I’ve written before, she owes a great deal to Betty Boop, and in fact, could be Betty Boop — if Betty Boop were born in Poland, came over to pre-State Israel in the 1930s, got married and lived in Givatayim.

And if she did live out that life, don’t you think she’d be in the midst of “raising the house” right now?! Enough dilly-dallying! Back to cleaning! Pessach is almost here!

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I loved her depictions of Israelis: the hairy sabra, the men in undershirts and sandals, kibbutz women in headscarves and shirtsleeves, prim and proper German-Jewish immigrants wearing jackets in the height of summer heat. And I loved the book, which was English on one side, Hebrew on the other, and which I donated some years ago to the Israeli Cartoon Museum in Holon. It was nice to see a copy (not mine) of “In Short, Israel” under glass at the Museum’s opening of a Friedel retrospective but I felt a bit wistful at not being able to reach out, re-read it and re-live the old memories. But that is how it goes with historical artifacts, even those of contemporary history.

At the exhibit, which runs through June 23rd, I did learn more about Friedel Stern herself. She was born in Liepzig, Germany in 1917 and immigrated to Palestine in 1936. During World War II she was one of many who volunteered to serve in the British army, serving alongside a group of young women who later on went on to prominence in the new State of Israel: actress Hannah Meron, former diplomats and politicians Esther Herlitz and Tamar Eshel, political wives Sonia Peres and Leah Rabin, Cafe Tamar proprietor Sarah Stern and many others. According an article in The Jerusalem Post, her caricatures were often used to camouflage dispatches.

Stern studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts, and began her career as a caricaturist in the ‘50s, working at leading newspapers and magazines such as Davar and Dvar Hashavua, LaIsha and Bamahane signed with her trademark signature and a small star (Stern means star in German), focusing on social issues and humorous portrayals of daily life.

“In her heyday as a journalist, Friedel Stern would dress up as different characters – a cleaning lady, a bus conductor, and once even as a man – to provide her readers with amusing reports about her experiences,” writes Yirmi Pinkus in the museum catalogue. “[Her] articles recounted her experiences as a fictitious American tourist and were, of course, accompanied by original caricatures. Friedel strolled through the ‘Persian [Bahai] Gardens’ in Haifa, she was impressed by the dining room in Kibbutz Gesher Haziv, she inspected souvenirs in the Old City in Jerusalem, and was eventually dropped a heavy hint to tip the tour guide.”

She also illustrated books, posters, brochures and was a lecturer at the Department of Graphic Design at Bezalel. From 1944 onwards, she exhibited and participated in exhibitions of both painting and caricature. Her works were presented in galleries and museums in Israel and abroad. She received many awards, including, in 1999, a lifetime achievement award in the field of caricature and painting by the Council of Women’s Organizations in Israel.

Friedel Stern died in October 2006, only weeks before her 90th birthday. According to an article about the new exhibit in Haaretz, “In her will, Stern, the only woman among the group of cartoonists active in Israel during the state’s first decades, bequeathed all her works to the Cartoon Museum. A few months ago, after prolonged legal proceedings, the approximately 10,000 drawings she left finally arrived at the museum’s archive in Holon.

“Before her death, Stern, who had no children, also saw to the establishment of a foundation in her name, which organizes a biannual competition for humorous cartoons, with a prize of NIS 10,000 for amateurs and NIS 25,000 for professionals. A ‘control freak,’ according to people who knew her, Stern stipulated that works of hers be displayed alongside the works in the competition. And indeed this week at the Cartoon Museum they acceded to her wishes, and hung works by Friedel along with dozens of entries in the latest competition.”

Haaretz noted with disappointment that the small size of the Friedel show — and I must agree. It was nice to see some unfamiliar works but I would have welcomed the chance to see a few more pages from In Short, Israel.

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Over 80,000 records of documents held in original and as copies in the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University (AEA) and at the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech (EPP) can now be accessed with a user-friendly interface via the internet.

The Archives include scientific writings and correspondence, non-scientific writings and correspondence, family letter and travel diaries. The website also presents images Einstein’s handwritten manuscripts, correspondence, typewritten manuscripts, photos, audio material, etc.

The University’s public affairs office states that, in addition to being an essential resource for the history of modern physics, “the archives also shed light on the social, political and intellectual history of the modern world.” Some of the newly digitzed documents inlcude: Einstein’s letter to Azmi El-Nashashibi, the editor of the newspaper Falastin, suggesting a solution to the Arab-Jewish conflict, a letter to the Jewish community in Berlin describing the distinction between Jewish religion and Jewish nationalism, a speech to a Zionist meeting containing a report on a fundraising campaign in the United States for the Hebrew University, a postcard to his sick mother and a letter from his young mistress Betty Neumann.

The online image gallery was created by Ardon Bar-Hama who has photograped an impressive list of some the world’s most treasured objects in libraries, museums, archives, private collections and institutions.

The system offers easy navigation, displaying the search results and additional information such as filters, related topics and similar items. Some of the digitized documents are accompanied by annotated transcriptions and translations, as edited by the EPP and published in the Collected Papers of Albert Einstein by Princeton University Press (PUP). These documents are searchable as full text.

It’s a far cry from Einstein’s original filing system which was “unsystematic” according to the Archive’s History, before his Theory of Relativity came to public attention. “As a result of his dramatic rise to fame in November 1919, his correspondence increased vastly and he employed his step-daughter, Ilse, as his first secretarial assistant. She achieved the first semblance of well-ordered files.

“In April 1928, [secretary] Helen Dukas came to work for Einstein and began to preserve his papers more systematically. However, not even then were copies of all outgoing correspondence kept. Shortly after the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933, Einstein’s papers were rescued from Berlin by Einstein’s son-in-law, Rudolf Kayser, with the help of the French Embassy. The material was brought to Einstein’s new home in Princeton and kept there until well after his death. With a few exceptions, the material left at Einstein’s summer house in Caputh outside Berlin was destroyed in order to prevent it falling into the hands of the Nazi authorities.

“Einstein’s Will of 1950 appointed his secretary, Helen Dukas, and his close associate, Dr. Otto Nathan, as trustees of his estate. Following Einstein’s death in 1955, Dukas and Nathan devoted themselves tirelessly for a quarter of a century to organizing the papers and acquiring additional material. As a result of their efforts, the Archives grew threefold.

“In the 1960s, Helen Dukas and Prof. Gerald Holton of Harvard University reorganized the material, thereby rendering it accessible to scholars and preparing it for eventual publication in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, a joint project of The Hebrew University and Princeton University Press. To facilitate editorial work, the papers were transferred from Einstein’s home to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

“In 1982, the Einstein Estate transferred Einstein’s personal papers to the Jewish National & University Library in Jerusalem. President Avraham Harman of The Hebrew University and Prof. Milton Handler of the American Friends of The Hebrew University played a crucial role in securing the transfer of the material to Jerusalem. In subsequent years, additional material was dispatched from Einstein’s Princeton residence, namely his personal collections of reprints, photographs, medals, and diplomas as well as his private library.

“In 1988, the Bern Dibner Curatorship for the running of the Albert Einstein Archives was established by the Dibner Fund of Connecticut, USA… In January 2008, the Archives became part of the Hebrew University’s Library Authority, Library Authority and, in July 2008, moved to new premises in the Levi building on the Hebrew University’s Edmond J. Safra campus, allowing for enhanced services to the public.

The www.alberteinstein.info website was launched in 2003 by the Albert Einstein Archives jointly with the Einstein Papers Project and Princeton University Press. The digitization of 900 papers displayed on the original site was made possible by a generous contribution from the David and Fela Shapell Family.

A grant from the Polonsky Foundation of London enabled the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to digitize the archives. The archival database and the collection of new materials was made possible by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and by the Arcadia Fund UK.

The launch will be marked simultaneously at Princeton University, Caltech, the Hebrew University’s Friends organizations and Israeli embassies around the world.

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