CNN scents ISRAEL21c flower story
CNN World Report this week broadcast Molly Livingstone’s excellent piece for ISRAEL21c on floral scent research at Hebrew University.
From ‘Fish to Akko’ to ‘Lychees to China’
The old English expression, “selling coals to Newcastle,” has its counterpart in the U.S. – “selling ice to Eskimos” – and in Jewish tradition, with the Talmud talking about “selling fish to Akko (Acre).” In each case, the idea is that it would be fo
olhardy to try and sell a commodity that already exists in the locale mentioned.
To that list we can add a modern day Israeli equivalent: “Selling lychees to China.” The lychee, that Far Eastern treat known to most Westerners as a dessert choice in Chinese restaurants, thrives in Israel – and thanks to Israeli agricultural technology, China has been able to improve its own lychee crop!
Lychees are grown in Israel at a number of kibbutzim and moshavim in the north, and in the Jordan Valley. There are at least two major Israeli contributions to the science of growing lychees that I am aware of: A patent by Dr. Israel Moran (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6093433.html), for “an improved process for preserving the product quality of lychee fruit,” and the work of Dr. Raphael Stern of Kibbuz Lavie (where we spent a recent Shabbat, the inspiration for this post), who determined the role of water management in the size and quality of the fruit.
Dr. Stern’s methods have been applied in other lychee -growing centers, including Florida, Spain, South Africa – and China, where he was specifically invited to help improve the lychee crop, in a country where the fruit has been grown commercially for hundreds of years. Talk about Israeli “chutzpah” – outshining the country that’s supposed to be the world leader in everything lychee! Luckily for lychee farmers in China, their government hasn’t stood on ceremony – and has gladly invited Israeli expertise to improve their crop of the fruit.
Out With the Old, in With the New
Israel is full of villages – “k’farim,” in Hebrew. There’s Kfar Tabor, Kfar Vitkin, Kfar Shemaryahu, Kfar Habad – and my personal favorite, Kfar Saba. Most of these villages were established decades ago, usually as agricultural settlements.
And some of Israel’s many k’farim may still be largely involved in agriculture – probably the ones way up north or down south. But as the Tel Aviv-centered megalopolis expands ever outwards, and better highways and rail links bring the periphery closer to the center, many of the k’farim in the center of the country have found a new way to grow profits – with real estate, as developers buy up the old free-standing houses, many with large lots, and magically turn them into luxury apartment buildings, offices, malls, and all the other features of Israel’s increasingly urban/suburban landscape.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course; people gotta live, and as crowded as Israel is, there is still plenty of open space in the Galilee, and especially the Negev. While many farms and fields in the Sharon region, for example, have been turned into homes and stores, effective Israeli methods of land reclamation has turned large parts of the Negev into flourishing farmland, with everything from vegetables to fruit to grain growing nicely.
In Israel, as in much of Europe, the city centers are the most expensive places to live, and the further out you move, the cheaper the home. But when enough people move far enough out, that location gets an “upgrade,” and turns into a city, in and of itself. And that’s what’s been happening to almost all of the small towns, the k’farim, that once surrounded Tel Aviv. The villages are still there, in name – but now many of them are big cities.
Living as I do in a town not too far from Kfar Saba, I’ve seen the process unfold there over the past few years. First came the mall in the middle of town; then came the new luxury buildings and homes, with real estate shooting up in value by hundreds of percent within a couple of years. Then, they built the new park, a sure sign that Kfar Saba was no longer a “k’far,” which would have its own natural open spaces. Now, the developers have moved on to the edge of town; the funky industrial zone, which really was dedicated to industry (not shopping, like in a lot of other towns), is getting a huge 
combination office/mall space, which will take up about five big city blocks!
Thus the photos accompanying this piece: I may have come across some of the last “authentic” original agricultural-era homes in Kfar Saba. Someone still lives in the house with the sign in the top photo (there’s a satellite dish on the roof), but apparently they got an offer they couldn’t refuse, because it appears that a “luxury building” is going up on the site.
At least we’ll still have the shoemaker, (“sandlar”), whose little shack is seen in the bottom photo. This structure must have been built decades ago, but whoever owns it still has some principles, it seems – no “for sale” signs are up on this one, yet. Maybe the municipality should buy it out in order to preserve it – and let the next generation get a sample of “the way it was.”
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