Cacti efforts
Filed under: Business, Environment, General, Israeliness, Life
My brother-in-law and I have been determined to fulfill a particular task during this year following my father’s death, and that is to plant cacti around his grave. The view from his grave — in the Beit Shemesh cemetery — is of a lush forest in the distance but it’s a pretty dry place, and not even a rosemary bush would survive there.
Michael, my brother-in-law, proposed planting cacti, and making a pilgrimage to the Regev Cactus Nursery, just outside Rehovot, a place that my nature-loving father would have adored.
With some 5,000 different types of cacti, plus a slew of other garden plants as well as a menagerie of birds, fish ponds and several zen gardens, we were just amazed by what the Regevs, residents of Moshav Beit Elazari, have accomplished on their plot of land. And my father, the romantic Zionist, would have loved the Regev’s motto, as shown in the sign outside the nursery: “If there is agriculture here, there is a homeland here.” The quote is attributed to Moshe Smilansky, a Russian immigrant to Palestine in 1891 who helped found Hadera and then settled in Rehovot, where he spent the remainder of his life as a citrus plantation owner, writer and agricultural leader, heading the Histadrut ha-Ikarim, or Farmers’ Association.
You can arrange guided tours of the Regev’s nursery, including explanations of the cacti, bonsai trees and Japanese gardens. And then you can buy cacti and succulents for your garden or balcony, and save on the ever-escalating water bill.
As for us, we’ll be planting sometime in the next week, and will let you know how that goes.
Road carnage in Israel
Filed under: A New Reality, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel
The aftermath of Friday's Beit Shemesh crash.
All the jokes about Israelis learning how to drive from manning tanks in the army, or that Israelis drive fast because of the hectic pace of life here have worn thin over the years. The fact of it is that Israelis are horrible, reckless drivers – and I’m talking a mass generalization here of an estimated 50-70% of drivers, not a manageable sub-sector minority.
Three examples. There’s a stop sign near the bus stop on the street next to my house. While waiting for the bus, I play a game of counting how many drivers actually stop, or even pretent to take their foot off the gas. 50% stop and the other 50% slow down a bit, look around and continue right through the intersection.
Example two are Egged bus drivers. Riding a bus home two or three nights a week on five miles of downhill highway (partially through a tunnel), I’m amazed at the speeds which the drivers achieve. As far as I know the speed limit is 80 km (55 miles per hour) but, the norm for Egged’s finest is more like 110 km (80 mph). Whenever I’ve queried the drivers (when I’ve been brave enough to open my eyes), they just laugh it off and say “Don’t worry, we’re fine, I’m in perfect control. You want to get home quickly, don’t you?”
The last example is on the Jordan Valley road (Ghandi’s Road) which goes south to north from near Jericho to Beit Shean. It’s got some hairpin turns through the hilly region, and the road isn’t too great to begin with.
The two or three times a year I travel on it at night, I make sure to keep to the speed limit of 80 kmh. Every single car flashes me and passes me (some on the hairpin turns).
I may sound like a crotchety, old driver, but enough’s enough. And the trend of driving while drunk, which until a few years ago was not really a factor in Israel, is like giving terrorists extra ammunition.
As long as drivers in Israel feel invincible and behave like the road is their personal domain, then we’re taking our lives in our hands each time we turn the ignition key. And it’s not just one segment of the population, although a higher percentage of accidents involve men, young drivers, and Arab drivers. But it’s a problem that faces all of us, and it’s not going to go away until everyone takes responsibility for themselves.
Elliot Zimet and friends to magically appear in Israel tomorrow
Launched back in 2003 by Los Angeles’ comic Avi Liberman, the annual Crossroads Comedy Tour has been garnering media attention for its international and relatively high-profile talent pool.
The series of events is a fundraiser for Jerusalem’s youth-at-risk-oriented Crossroads Center, with this year’s shows including tomorrow in Beit Shemesh, Sunday in Ra’anana and two Monday performances in Jerusalem. Tickets are available by clicking here.
The 2009 fundraising tour, however, focuses less on stand-up comedy and more on the allegedly nefarious art of illusion, under the moniker “The Crossroads Comedy Magical Mystery Tour.”
Ben Cohen, who has served as a consultant for David Copperfield and has been named New York’s Magician of the Year, joins a lineup headlined by Elliot Zimet, the Bronx’s hop hop magical wonder.
Zimet’s style is somewhat new to the magic world, thanks to a show dominated by special effects, lighting, dancers and East Coast beats. Clips of his performances (pictured) can be seen on his MySpace profile. Zimet has put on shows at private events hosted by Sean Combs, at Madison Square Garden, and on several TV shows, including NBC’s America’s Got Talent. He has also toured with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
The tour follows in the footsteps of Israel’s recent International Magic Convention, which was staged in Holon two months ago.
Jewish soul music
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Music, Religion
A work assignment brought me last night to the city of Beit Shemesh and the Beit Shemesh Festival, an annual music bash featuring some of the top names in the ‘Jewish soul’ field. Among this year’s performers were Meir Banai, The Moshav Band and Yood.
The central amphitheater in Beit Shemesh, a flowing natural park, boasted a white, cloth mehitza (divider), running up the middle, to separate the male and female attendees. The audience consisted mainly of religiously observant teens, many belonging to youth groups. There were some families and assorted adults there among the thousand or so people, a few not even wearing kippot, but by and large it was a religious crowd. And it looked like they were having a fine time, dancing on shoulders, enjoying a fireworks display, and checking out the other side the mehitza.
Despite some sound problems resulting from a likely blown speaker, the acts I saw performed admirably, and the band I came to see – Yood – put on a smoking set of spiritual blues rock.
There have been tons of events and activities to do during the intermediate days of Sukkot, but those folks who attended the Beit Shemesh Festival certainly got way more than their money’s worth – oh yeah, the festival was free.
Maybe next year, some of the secular crowd will come to see what all the noise was about.
Weeds
Well, the TV scenarios of Weeds and the fictional land of Agrestic have arrived in Beit Shemesh, Israel, as three men were recently busted for growing thousands of saplings of a marijuana-like plant in a warehouse under hydroponic conditions. The police also found 155 kilograms of drugs, as well as a watering system, heating machine and blowers used to keep the temperatures at greenhouse levels for better growing conditions.
The police reckoned that this may be their biggest bust, given that the laboratory-like conditions of the warehouse — which included specialized lighting and high quality plants — created plants that grew faster and better marijuana than regular ‘grass.’ And unlike previous busts, which were usually in private homes, this warehouse setup included sections for growing the seeds, another for the developing plants, a third for drying the plants and a fourth section for weighing and packing the dried drug. Wonder where they got the idea for that setup, huh, Nancy?
According to an inside source at the Beit Shemesh police, the drug found is extremely expensive, worth 10-40 times as much as hashish. But what’s particularly amusing is that this isn’t the first time that hashish has been found in the area. An archaeological dig in Beit Shemesh a few years back uncovered organic remains of a substance containing hashish on the abdominal area of a teenage female’s skeleton dating back to the fourth century.
According to the Israel Antiquities Authority, cannabis was probably used as a healing ointment, particularly for women in labor and after childbirth. Hey, not necessarily such a bad idea.
All aboard
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Travel
After talking about it for months, years even, I finally took the train from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv yesterday. My excuse was that even though the bus or car are usually faster than the hour-and-a-half train ride, they’re not faster in the early morning rush hour, when traffic slows down the 45-minute trip considerably. Plus, I’m a train lover at heart, and was relishing the idea of comfortable ride into Tel Aviv, with a cup of coffee and the newspaper.
The cup of coffee didn’t happen, because the kiosk wasn’t open at 6:40 and I’m not a drinker of vending machine brew. But the seats were comfortable and roomy, the ticket was only NIS 1.50 more than the bus, and it was blessedly, peacefully quiet on the train until the Beit Shemesh stop, when the train got more crowded.
It’s hard to get much reading done, as the scenery from Jerusalem to Beit Shemesh is worth viewing, winding through hills and wadis, below green cedars, olive trees and blue skies. It’s also a completely different landscape than what I’m used to from my childhood and adolescent train trips from Long Island to Manhattan, passing through quaint and more industrial towns, along chain link fences and depots.
But as the train picked up speed from Beit Shemesh — no more changing trains for the Jerusalemites — stopping at Ramle, Lod and then the three train stations in Tel Aviv, I got in my morning nap, undeterred by the building action around me. By the time I reached my destination, I was rested, calm and ready for work.
They’re saying that the high-speed train between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv will be completed by 2012, with an underground station beneath Jerusalem’s central bus station, with connections to the current Malcha station. I’ll be excited by that, too, but it won’t be as relaxing as the current ride.
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