Nostalgia Sunday – Blue Box Redux

February 8, 2009 - 4:23 PM by Rachel Neiman · 2 Comments
Filed under: Environment, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture 

Here’s a fun fact: Israel is the only country in the world that entered the 21st century with more trees than it had at the beginning of the 20th century. For years, tree-planting in Israel was synonymous with the Jewish National Fund, which itself was synonymous with the small blue coin collection tin. Some of these are now on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, as part of an exhibit entitled The Map of Israel as Illustration, Artwork, and Icon.

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The exhibit, curated by Orna Granot, looks at the map not in geopolitical terms but as a graphic element used “to increase the viewer’s familiarity with the land [of Israel] and to strengthen love of the land in experiential, educational, and aesthetic ways”.

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Etzleinu be-Khitah Alef (In Our First Grade) by Shlomo Kadesh, Illustrations: Shlomo Cohen; Ever Publishers, Jerusalem, 1952. Courtesy of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Of course, the Blue Box is a wonderful icon in itself. So much so that Keren Kayemet-JNF, has re-launched the beloved “pushke” after a 30-year absence. This time though, says KKL-JNF world chairman Efi Stenzler, rather than land acquisition, the coins collected will go to furthering Israeli environmental conservation projects. As part of the relaunch, Stenzler has been distributing Blue Boxes to dignitaries of note, including Pope Benedict XVI, who plans to visit Israel in May.

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Given the season – political, not meteorological – Israeli party candidates have been also been getting on the KKL-JNF bandwagon. Benjamin Netanyahu today planted one of 7 million saplings KKL-JNF has planned for the next several years. And here’s Ehud Barak with his 2009 model pushke.

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The KKL-JNF website has a lovely timeline of Blue Boxes throughout history – it’s in Hebrew only but definitely worth a look.

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It’s also a good opportunity to plant a tree in honor of Tu B’Shvat and to take a moment to consider Israel’s green future and how to best “strengthen love of the land”.

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Voting in the Israeli elections with a compass

January 30, 2009 - 11:02 AM by David · 3 Comments
Filed under: Politics 

greenWith elections only 11 days away, it looks like a shoe-in for the Likud party led by Binyamin Netanyahu. But according to polls, there’s about 400,000 voters – which almost 10% of eligible voters – who haven’t yet decided which of the 34 parties running for Knesset to vote for.

You could count me as one of them. Alot of friends and acquaintances are voting for the Green Movement-Meimad ticket, but I fear they’re going to get 90% of the vote among liberal religious Anglo residents of southern Jerusalem neighborhoods like Baka and Talpiot, and 0.2% everywhere else.

Will they cross the threshold of minimum votes to gain at least one Knesset seat and not result in a wasted vote? Their TV ads aren’t very convincing – using Rabbi Michael Melchior giving a speech instead of utilizing one of the young, dynamic members on the list like Alon Tal. Melchior’s fine, but he’s a known entity, and his Meimad party has limited support around the country.

Perplexed, I ended up on this site my wife told me about – the Election Compass - a multiple choice questionaire about different issues related to Israel’s security mostly. Based on your answers, you receive a report with a compass on the political map pointing to the party you should be voting for – or at least the general vicinity.

Launched by the Israel Democracy Institute, the site had nearly 500,000 visitors by Thursday. Questions like ‘Would you be willing to give up Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem for a Palestinian state?’ have to be answered with a ’strongly agree’ to ’strongly disagree’ checkpoint range.

According to The Jerusalem Post, the model was initiated in the Netherlands for that country’s 2006 elections and was eventually used by 3.4 million people out of 12.6 million voters. The Israeli version was developed by a team of IDI scholars and researchers lead by Senior Fellow Prof. Asher Arian.

“The compass has three main goals,” Arian told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. “The first is to help the perplexed voter find his position within the Israeli political map. The second is to encourage parties to be more forthcoming with specifics regarding their various platforms. And the third is to encourage political participation. We’re very concerned about the low participation rate in Israel, and we thought that this could add a buzz.”

After dutifully answering the questionaire, I awaited the tally and the compass page to find out who I should be voting for. And, my compass pointed to an area populated by – guess what – the Green Movement-Meimad.

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