Would you like some milk with your pork?

February 23, 2011 - 9:21 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Food, General, Religion, Travel 

A ham melt on rye - does that make it kosher?

Airline food can be dodgy at best. And keeping some semblance of a kosher level, I never know when booking a flight whether to order to the kosher or vegetarian options, or just get the regular meal and take the fish or pasta option.

Usually the latter has been the best bet, as the vegetarian offerings also assume that the diner is a vegan and usually offers something indescribable as food (the airline chefs fault, not the vegans god bless them) and the kosher option usually looks like it had been sealed with solid bond packing tape that takes most of the flight to pry off.

But kosher travelers on an EasyJet flight from Tel Aviv to London last week discovered that they were not given even those meager options – the choice of inflight fare was either bacon baguettes and ham melts, both frowned upon by the Jewish tradition.

EasyJet authorities scrambled their eggs to wipe the yolk off their faces, apologizing to irate passengers for the gaffe on the flight, which had been inaugurated a few months earlier.

The kosher menu they presented at the time included egg mayonnaise and tomato sandwiches, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels, mozzarella and tomato Panini, and a muffin or chocolate orange mini cake – and no mention of Porky Pig. But apparently, the wrong food trays had been loaded onto the plane at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.

One passenger returning from Tel Aviv to his home in London, Victor Kaufman, 25, told the Daily Mail that the airline needed to learn from their embarrassing snafu.

“I think they need a lesson or two on cultural awareness if they expand their routes into the Middle East. It is not just Jewish passengers who do not eat pork but Muslim ones too,” he said.

EasyJet operates over 525 routes in 29 countries, and a spokesman told the Daily Mail that it was company policy to not load pork produce on to the four-hour flights to and from Israel.

“For flights to Israel, easyJet’s standard practice is to offer kosher and vegetarian sandwiches onboard. We do also offer non kosher products onboard these flights but it is our policy to not load any pork products. It appears that a mistake was made on this particular flight and that incorrect food canisters were loaded onto the aircraft. We would like to apologize to the passengers and can confirm we have done everything we can to ensure that this does not happen again.”

The passengers should be thankful actually. At least it wasn’t a transatlantic flight to the US. And the offerings could have been even worse – the airline version of vegan.

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Fast lane to Tel Aviv coming next week

December 30, 2010 - 8:40 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Life 

Fast lane to Tel Aviv

For several years I worked in Tel Aviv, making the daily commute from Jerusalem, an atrocious grind that can easily take two or more hours – each way. While thankfully I now have a 30 second “commute” up the stairs to my office, I have a world of empathy for workers still stuck in that lack of vehicular velocity that constitutes Highway 1.

Hope may be on its way. In just a week, reports The Marker the “fast lane to Tel Aviv” will open to the public. A new, dedicated lane starting just past Ben Gurion Airport will whisk buses and carpools past what can often be an hour-long jam in a promised 11 minutes. It’s not a complete solution – once the fast lane ends, you’ll be hurtled back into traffic at the entrance to Tel Aviv proper, but it’s an important component to promoting public transit and filling up all those empty spots in the backseat.

The fast lane is mainly for buses, but private cars can travel for free with four or more passengers. Less than four and you’ll pay between NIS 6 and NIS 20. Why the difference? The lane deploys some sophisticated technology to dynamically change the price based on how many cars are using it. You can decide if you’re willing to pay extra for a faster ride.

I imagine there will be a large sign flashing the latest toll, although I shudder to think what will happen if a car is heading for the fast lane, the price jumps, and the driver impulsively jerks back into speeding traffic.

There are some other oddities. Despite the system’s advanced sensing, counting who’s in the car will be done manually. Cars will have to stop and pass an inspection before being allowed in the lane for free. If there’s a line, that could be pretty off-putting.

Other Israeli norms may derail the lane’s value. Drivers using company cars already get discount to use Highway 6, currently Israel’s only toll road. Will corporations pick up the bill for single passenger vehicles using the fast lane?

And then there’s the “park and ride” which will allow you to drive to the start of the fast lane and jump on a shuttle bus – except that the bus’s  last ride is 11:00 PM. Leave your car there past midnight and you incur a NIS 50 fine. At least there will be a Cup o’ Joe branch to down your sorrows.

But with Israeli gas prices reaching record highs – the price for a liter of 95 octane fuel is going up to approximately NIS 7.10 (about $1.98) this week – the bus will be looking mighty attractive. I’m still not heading back to work in Tel Aviv anytime soon – my commute is just fine, thank you – but for the occasional business meeting, I may just give the fast lane a quick spin.

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Full body racial profiling

November 24, 2010 - 8:37 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, News, Technology, Travel 

No matter who you talk to in the United States, there’s a strong opinion about the security measures at airports recently instituted by Transportation Security Administration agents.

Whether you choose a full body search or a pat down in intimate areas, there’s something for everyone to complain about. And between Saturday Night Live’s spoof and the “Don’t touch my junk” viral video, it’s clear that Americans aren’t going to spread their legs willingly – at least not for security’s sake.

That’s probably why more Americans are looking to the Israeli model of airport security as the way to go. A Washington Post and ABC network poll revealed this week that 70% of Americans support adopting the Israeli profiling system and its implementation in US airports.

As any traveler from Ben-Gurion airport knows, the Israeli security personnel probe without using their hands – by asking lots of questions, and focusing on passengers who pose greater security risks. Yes, we’re talking about Muslims, and any passenger who may appear to be nervous, shifty, or excited.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs explained on Monday that the reason US authorities refused to adopt Israeli methods was because “Israel has one international airport and we have 450 of them that makes all the difference”.

It’s not clear exactly how that makes a difference, but as the clamor will likely continue to grow in the US against body scans and pat downs, the kinder, gentler behavioral profiling that Israel employs is going to start looking more attractive.

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Circling Jerusalem

November 22, 2010 - 10:30 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, News, Travel 

'Natbag' runways

I spend a lot of time at home. It’s quiet here. I get work done, but I hear things. People walking down the simta, the path outside my house that leads to Hebron Road, a major thoroughfare. Cats in the backyard. Doors slamming next door. And airplanes flying overhead.

It wasn’t so long ago that you rarely heard or saw airplanes in the Jerusalem sky. If you did, your first thought was, “Is there a war starting up?” Because that’s what airplanes signified. But now there are many planes flying overhead every day, and it’s hard to ignore them.

I grew up in Long Island, near JFK and the school I attended was in a traffic pattern, so much so that teachers would have to stop talking a few times a day and wait for the plane to fly by. In fact, when our senior class lobbied to hold our graduation on the lawn in front of our school — rather than another school’s auditorium — we had to call up JFK and ask them to not use that particular traffic route for several hours on our graduation day. They complied.

Anyway, what with my noticing the increase in air traffic, and the constant updates from my two-year-old companions, “Mommy! Airplane!” and “Mommy! Airplane!”, I asked my air traffic expert, nephew Benjy Goldberg who is currently working for El Al as a flight attendant.

And the answer was mine in just a few short days. It seems that ‘Natbag’, the acronymal nickname for Ben Gurion Int’l Airport, is undergoing a major runway expansion that will create a new approach pattern, more simultaneous takeoffs and landings and more than doubling the number of aircrafts that can handled at peak times. The $1 billion project is scheduled to be completed in 2014, and has necessitated several runway machinations in the meantime, including having planes circle above Israel while waiting to land, and that circling encompasses Jerusalem.

Benjy assured me that it’ll be about a year of serious air traffic noise, but should be over some time in 2011. It pays to have friends in high places. Guffaw.

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Nostalgia Sunday – KH-UIA Poster Exhibit

November 7, 2010 - 5:29 PM by · Comments Off
Filed under: Art, design, education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Travel 

Anyone walking the long, long hallway leading to the departure area at Ben Gurion Airport these days finds themselves passing a series of huge posters lining the walls. For those wondering what they are, here’s the answer: They are the history of the Jewish State as told through the Keren Hayesod – United Israel Appeal (KH-UIA).

KH-UIA was created as the official fund raising arm of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) in 1920. Anti-Jewish pogroms were raging in Eastern Europe and Jewish Zionist leaders seized the opportunity presented by the 1917 Balfour Declaration to mobilize towards the creation and settlement of a Jewish homeland. KH-UIA’s founders included Chaim Weizmann, who later became the first president of the State of Israel.

When the Jewish Agency for Palestine was founded in 1929 — with equal representation for non-Zionists — KH-UIA continued to be the main instrument for financing the Jewish Zionist Settlement Movement. From 1925, the fund began operating in the US as the United Palestine Appeal (a partnership of Keren Hayesod and the Jewish National Fund). In 1939, it combined with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the National Refugee Service to form the United Jewish Appeal.

Today, the UJA (now called UJC) operates in the US while KH-UIA’s head office in Jerusalem coordinates its fund raising operations in the rest of the world.

The current mission of Keren Hayesod, in partnership with the global Jewish community, is to further the national priorities of the State of Israel by focusing on three main areas: strengthening Israeli society, facilitating Aliyah and absorption, and educating young Jews around the world in order to deepen their Jewish identity and strengthening their sense of connection to Israel.

The poster exhibit, curated by leading Israeli graphic designer and Israel Prize Laureate David Tartakover, was initiated in honor of KH-UIA’s 90th anniversary this past summer and the images published in a book, also edited by “Tarta”.

The graphic styles change over the years, from the Soviet Realism of Otte Wallish (who later designed many of the new State’s first stamps), portraying the Jewish laborer sowing seeds with a “Wall and Tower” in the background. Or the Jewish working man with his hammer (by an unknown artist) to the 1980s tinted photo-collage by Rami Elhanan and Jacky Levy celebrating the newest wave of Russian immigration.

There are posters by famous Jewish artists such as Arthur Szyk, who painted the 1942 United Palestine Appeal poster to help Jewish Brigade members “build a Jewish Future”. Dan Gelbart — who made so many lasting images for Israel’s Labor Movement — created 1957′s “From the ship to the village” – a brightly colored illustration of successful refugee resettlement.

You can read more about KH-UIA’s on their website. The local History Channel franchise has produced a series about Israel’s Founding Institutions and the video about KH-UIA can be viewed there as well.

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