“72 Hour Urban Action” Takes Over Bat Yam, Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, Pop Culture
Teams have 72 hours to re-design an urban area in a pretty crumby satellite city in Israel. It’s guerilla urban architecture.
We’ve all had the same thought: it’s been built, we’re stuck with it. This ugly urban mess we have created is here to stay and there’s nothing we can do about it; may as well put up our feet, grab a lager, and watch re-runs of “The Days of Our Lives” to wile away the misery. Others challenge that notion, and show the rest of us couch-potatoes that actually we have an extraordinary capacity for innovation and have the necessary power to reverse our unsustainable trends. And not only can we fix our mistakes during this lifetime (instead of leaving it for our kids to deal with), we can make serious headway over a weekend. They started with the 72 Hour Urban Action Program in Israel’s less-than-glamorous Bat Yam. Read more
The busy skies of Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Environment, General, Israeliness, Life
Eyewitnesses point to the flying object that landed at Bat Yam Beach on Saturday. (Photo: Israel Police)
However, that doesn’t mean that some weird things don’t continue to happen in our skies. On Thursday, the Red Sea resort peacefulness of Eilat was interrupted when a rocket – perhaps a Katyusha or a Russian Grad – landed in a warehouse in neighboring Akaba, Jordan.
The rocket may have been fired from the Sinai in Egypt, and neither Israeli nor Jordanian security sources were certain whether the target was supposed to be Jordan or Eilat. Either way, since it landed early in the morning, it didn’t affect anyone’s day of snorkeling or paragliding in the balmy spring weather.
Sunbathers at the Bat Yam beach south of Tel Aviv, who were taking advantage of the nice weekend weather, weren’t bothered by rockets, but by something more celestial – perhaps a meteorite?
According to sun worshippers who packed the city’s religious beach (which is usually set with separate hours for separate swimming, but open to all on Shabbat), an unidentified object fell very close to the lifeguard booth and caused a small fire.
“I spotted a small object landing from above and starting to burn,” lifeguard Yisrael Rokach told Ynet. “At first I didn’t understand what happened; I thought someone threw it down from above,” the lifeguard said. “When I got closer I saw a small object that kept on burning and smoking. I immediately called my fellow lifeguards, who didn’t believe me. They came down and at the same time we called the police.”
Police sappers were called to the scene to investigate the mysterious flying object, which another lifeguard said “kept on burning and gave off an odd smell. It kept on burning even when we put it in the water and it melted seashells as if they were candles.”
The Chairman of the Israeli Astronomical Association, Igal Patel, said the object was a meteorite.
“Meteorites fall all the time, but one falling in a residential area before the eyes of witnesses is indeed a rare occurrence,” he said.
However, others aren’t quite convinced. “Meteorites are never on fire and they don’t generate smoke,” said Darryl Pitt, founder of the Macovich Collection of Meteorites. Pitt viewed video of the unidentified object and said he is 100% sure it is not a meteorite.
“Meteorites are not remotely hot enough to ignite a fire or be on fire. This is the stuff of movies and vivid imaginations,” he told Ynet.
Witnesses to the event are choosing to believe there was something special about the incident, however. As another Bat Yam lifeguard put it, “There is no doubt that there’s some holiness on the Bat Yam beach.”
Israeli bathers – beware of matkot sightings
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Sports
You can keep your baseball and soccer. What more typically Israeli sport could there be than matkot?
Essentially beachside paddleball with those big flat paddles and tiny rubber ball – matkot is an Israeli obsession – you take your life into your hands when you walk on any beach in the country. I still can’t figure out if there are rules or not – are the players trying to hit it to each other, or smash it past each other?
Now, there’s someone who’s trying to codify the game – 65-year-old Amnon Nissim and his Morris Zadok, the self appointed “father of matkot in Israel.” According to a story by Jerrin Zumberg in The Jerusalem Post, Nissim has turned his Tel Aviv apartment into the unofficial “Matkot Museum of Israel.
He also holds court most days below the Crown Plaza hotel on Tel Aviv’s Gordon Beach, where the best matkot players in the country have been gathering for 70 years.
Nissim’s mission is not only to formalize the game through set rules, competitions and organized community events, but to make it an official Olympic event.
“It’s the most Israeli game there is,” says Zadok, 59. “It’s a game of peace and togetherness where you aren’t playing against one another, but as partners to reach a goal.”
Zadok’s web site is devoted to matkot and promoting his Bat Yam sporting goods store. A letter to prospective players about matkot says, “It’s not just a game, but a way of life, and an excuse to go down to the beach. There’s no better way to get a tan, meet friends and let out some energy.”
To formalize the game for serious players, Zadok created a set of rules. Rounds of three minutes are spent hitting the ball. Each team of two players stands eight meters apart, trying to get as many hits as possible. Each hit, or point, is earned by the ball going back and forth once. The national record is 178 hits in the three-minute window.
While I may stick to tennis, I’ll now have some new found respect for matkot players next time I get bashed in the head by a stray ball on the beach.
Nostalgia Sunday – Michal Negrin World
Filed under: Art, General, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Travel
There’s something about Michal Negrin. Whether you love her retro n’ roses style or hate it — there seems to be no in-between — there’s no disputing that Negrin has tapped into a reservoir of emotion among women longing for a certain time that seems, at least on the face of it, to have been lovelier, more civilized, more sedate and possibly more fun.
Negrin has come a long way from her stand at the Nahlat Binyamin crafts fair and the little shop on Sheinkin Street, where Russian ladies used to painstakingly crochet, wrap, stitch and glue each encrusted earring, necklace and pin by hand. Today, she has die-hard fans and store locations around the world. And when those fans come from Paris or Palm Beach to Israel their mission is clear: get new Negrin pieces from the source.
The answer lies off the beaten track south of Tel Aviv in Bat Yam, at the accessories designer’s new central office, workshop and showroom. This is where the company’s 160 artisans carry out the delicate process of mounting and hand painting jewelry and decorative items, creating fashion, printing fabric, molding ceramics and more. It’s also a showcase for items created by Michal Negrin herself.
And now, there is the new visitor’s center, Michal Negrin World. This really is a world as Negrin would like to see it: a fantastic display of romantic roses and baby’s breath, lace, crystals and a just a hint of old-fashioned naughtiness.
The exhibit includes dollhouses, puppets and multilevel dioramas designed by Negrin and her husband Meir. There’s a cafe, and guided tours of the workshops and showroom. Negrin herself says, “I wanted to create a place that would be surprising… flooded with optimism and happiness, inviting visitors a peek into the worlds of my content and creativity.”
Some fun facts: Negrin wove a magical spell on the costume designers of “Harry Potter and the order of Phoenix”, when a ring and brooch were commissioned for actress Imelda Staunton, who played cat-obsessed senior undersecretary to the Minister of Magic Dolores Umbridge. Her celebrity fans, according to ISRAEL21c, include Demi Moore, Nicole Kidman, Britney Spears, Alicia Keys and Jane Seymour. And Negrin nostalgia has even extended to the sports arena; in 2008, she was commissioned by the Israel Olympic Committee to design the formal lapel pin for the Israeli team (pictured here).
Michal Negrin World is open to the public Sun-Thu, 9:00am-3:00pm. Tours must be booked in advance. Tel: 972-3-555-3326. Address: 7 Kaf Tet B’November St., Bat Yam.
Israel going to pot
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Medical Breakthroughs, Technology
Forget California – did you know that Israel has one of the most progressive medical marijuana programs around?
Run out of an office in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam, the Health Ministry’s program provides legally grown pot to hundreds of Israelis with medical conditions that have been proven to be helped by the active ingredient in cannabis – THC.
The categories include patients with malignant tumors who are in one of two stages – either during chemo to ease nausea and promote appetite, or those with a final stage tumor, terminal patients who have a prognosis for living for another six months; HIV patients, who attend one of the country’s eight HIV centers in the country; chronic pain patients who are being treated at pain clinics or by a known pain physician; patients with Crohn’s Disease or ulcerative colitis, who are being treated by gastroenterologists; and MS patients specifically for the spasticity symptoms upon recommendation from an MS center or a neurological specialist.
In addition patients with post stress trauma disorder are being tested with the drug on an experimental basis – these include many former IDF soldiers experiencing PSTD following their participation in battle.
Dr. Yehuda Baruch is the guy who makes the decisions which patients are accepted to the program, which receives over 60 applicants each month. The licenses need to be renewed at various intervals ranging from monthly to annually depending on the condition. According to Baruch, once a patient receives approval, he’s given the option to either grow the plants himself or be supplied free of charge by one of the minstry’s five authorized pot growers.
In addition to the medical marijuana program, Israel can boast one of the world’s superstars in cannabis research – 78-year-old Professor Raphael Mechoulam. In 1964, Mechoulam was the first researcher in world to isolate THC, and in 1993, he headed an Israeli-Scottish team that succeeded in identifying, isolating and synthesizing a previously unknown substance in the brain that functions much as THC itself. The researchers named it anandamide, from the Sanskrit word ananda, meaning inner joy.
Today, in his lab at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, Mechoulam and his team synthesize the THC from a steady supply of cannabis supplied by the Israel Police, and create a liquid form that’s given to cancer patients undergoing painful marrow transplants.
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