Nostalgia Sunday – Dubon

May 24, 2009 - 9:22 PM by Rachel Neiman · 2 Comments
Filed under: History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, War 

dubon_idf_oliveSee this guy? See the jacket he’s wearing? It’s called a dubon and, in the Seventies, whether you were in the Israel Defense Forces or not, this was your winter coat in Israel. It wasn’t simply a matter of fashion. The dubon was all there was to wear.

My significant other did some spring cleaning the other day and decided to donate his dubon to charity. This gave rise to some sentimental sighs and a discussion about the pros and cons of this iconic coat. First of all, there was the name, which means “teddy bear” — a perfect combination of playfulness in the service of the ferociously serious military function of keeping soldiers warm.

dubon_trio_longThen, there was the jacket itself, designed for the Israeli winter. For someone like myself, coming from New England ski country, the dubon was no match for a down parka or something called a “snorkel” that was all the rage for a couple of years (it zipped up over your nose).

But, as was pointed out to me, what the dubon lacked in insulation, it made up for in acreage; it covered every exposed centimeter of your upper body and was, therefore, perfect protection against the elements of the Israeli winter. Which boils down to a lot of chilly rain and not enough central heating.

The fact that there were only men’s sizes to be had just added to the dubon’s glamour. For example, a Scandinavian kibbutz volunteer — looking much like the fantasy version pictured here — traipsing around the communal kitchenette in wooden clogs, chain-smoking “Noblesse”, baking apple cake and hogging all the baking pans, while casually sporting an oversized dubon — the kind with the really good lining — was also sending a very clear message that she had access to men with dubonim. Bitch. You know who you are.

In fact, most dubon-wearers looked more like these guys here. Men and women, all wore standard issue dubonim, available in small, medium, large and extra large. To this day, girl soldiers look like they’re swimming, nay drowning, in their dubons. But, as my friend Efrat put it, “Of course I had one. Everyone had one. It’s the most Israeli you can get.”

If you were in the army, you wore olive drab. If you were in the navy, you got blue. Air force guys got polyester bomber jackets. (The camouflage version didn’t show up till the Nineties, after the first Gulf War, when loan guarantees required the IDF to procure a certain amount of gear from US manufacturers).

And if you served up in the Golan, you got the brass ring, the uber-dubon called the Hermonit, after white-capped Mount Hermon, which provided total body coverage against the snow. Again, as someone from New England, I can only sniff and say, “You call that snow”?

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And here’s that Scandinavian babe again! But believe me, she was never issued one in real life. You had to do a lot more than bake cakes to score a Hermonit.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Yemenite Embroidery

February 15, 2009 - 10:14 PM by Rachel Neiman · 2 Comments
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles, design 

Back in the early Sixties, most kids’ mothers wore frilly cocktail aprons to entertain. Not my Israeli mother. Hers looked like this.

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And her miniskirts and pantsuits looked like this.

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My mother, a singer of international folksongs, had a great collection of gowns. Many were created at Esther Zeitz, a Jerusalem house of fashion that employed a team of Yemenite seamstresses that sat, day in and day out, stitching threads of silver and gold onto splendid garments. Who needed jewels when you had something like this bedecking your neck?

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Wearing Yemenite embroidery was very cool among Israeli women who came of age during the 1940s and 50s. This dress was made for my mother when she was a teenager during the 1948 War of Independence.

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In the Sixties, after the 1967 war and the reunification of Jerusalem, she combed the Old City looking for a velvet jacket with Bedouin embroidery to wear over a black velvet gown. She found one, too.

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In the early Seventies, she scored some Bedouin-style embroidered garments from the Arab Women’s Union of Bethlehem, an embroidery cooperative.

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But my favorites will always be the Esther Zeitz outfits. As I recall it, Zeitz – whom I remember as a large woman with swollen arms – closed down in the Eighties when she became too ill to manage. It would be nice to find out more about what happened to the workshop, which was located at the junction of Ben Yehuda and Bezalel streets – I think it is a hairdressers’ today.

My sisters and I wore many of these garments during the Go-Go Eighties. Today, however, they are fragile – the polyester fabric is forever but not the cotton threads that hold down the metallic threads. We are not sure what will happen to this collection, and so decided to document the clothes that, for us, are part of a happy memory.

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Men in shorts

August 7, 2008 - 10:07 AM by Jessica · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, General, History and Culture 

It seems that men wearing shorts to work has now been deemed acceptable in New York City, and we’re not just talking about Fedex delivery people. Honest to god, yes, in addition to male fashion editors, they’ve tracked down one 90-year-old real estate agent, a Mr. Hyman Gross, who wears his shorts to the opera and ballet and a couple of people in Salt Lake City who have introduced a no-long-trousers policy at their offices.


But what about Israel? If they think it’s hot in New York, or Salt Lake City for that matter, what about Tel Aviv or Jerusalem? We’ve got heat, but the men are not showing any skin. What gives?

According to Roni Cnaani in an Haaretz column last summer, shorts have become an object of derision, the kind of thing that only a moshavnik would wear. As he comments, “Sometimes I wonder what distortions have dictated local taste, what primal urges and prejudices have led to such an inferior aesthetic outlook and why, of all places, in a Mediterranean country like ours, and particularly among the fashion elite did short pants get such a bad rep around here? Is it a counter-reaction to the ethos of the sabra, with his trademark short pants and sandals?”

Designer Ronen Chen, who hasn’t branched out into design for men just yet, smsed me that shorts may feel “less formal” for men, perhaps making them “feel too much like kids.” But this is the land where almost anything goes, including jeans and a tee-shirt for a wedding.

So I asked some local ‘masters of the universe,’ including some guys who work from home — clearly they’re wearing shorts — but a few lawyers and venture capitalists as well. Amir Kadari, a lawyer who works between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, said “definitely not” to shorts, “unless you’re a basketball player or a tour guide.” Jack Levy, a venture capitalist and founder of Israel Cleantech Ventures, whose office is in Herzliya, said, “Imagine the positive CO2 emissions impact from reduced AC if this became a standard. Start with summer Fridays – AC is set up a few degrees and shorts are acceptable… then like the business casual trend it will become all summer.” But he wouldn’t commit as to whether he would start the trend. Another venture capitalist, Jacob Ner-David, who rides his bike all over town, said he just wore shorts the other day and is all for it in the summer. And Ira Skop, who works from home in Jerusalem, and is in the risk management business, commented that Bermuda shorts have long been acceptable in business in Bermuda. That said, he wears shorts in his home office, “but never with black socks and dress shoes.”

So what to do? Will Israeli men ever wear shorts suits? Do we want them to?

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Nostalgia Sunday

June 29, 2008 - 12:46 PM by Rachel Neiman · 6 Comments
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture 

Sometime today, I’ve got to go out and find some na’aley bayit to send to America. It may seem odd to be writing about bedroom slippers just as the summer heat hits its full stride but my sister’s birthday was last week, and she apparently already bought the Yael Naim disk sent her. So, if it is na’aley bayit she wants, then na’aley bayit she shall have.

Na’aley bayit translates literally as “house shoes” and indeed, the classic Israeli “naal bayit” is far more a shoe for the home than a slip-on slipper. Firstly, it’s ankle-high with a zipper, so there’s no casual sliding in and out of the thing. Secondly, it’s got a hard rubber sole – perfect for the faux casual “whoops, I’m just slumming here at the café and didn’t notice I had my bedroom slippers on” sort of way of life. Thirdly, they’re plaid! How cool is that?! They make a total statement.
HaMegaper slippers
Now, the question is, what is that statement? Is it:
1. I’m accidentally on purpose walking around my neighborhood where I feel so comfortable that I wear shoes that don’t coordinate with my outfit which I had to zip myself into.
2. I was locked out of my house. Really. I’m not kidding.
3. I’m an ex-kibbutznik or have spent some time on kibbutz.

The answer: All three are possible.

In the Israeli mentality, na’aley bayit are inexorably bound to two things: the kibbutz and Rehov Sumsum, the Hebrew language version of Sesame Street. On the Socialist side, their original and largest manufacturer was HaMegaper, a rubber manufacturing cooperative established under the aegis of construction company Solel Boneh and then the Koor concern. Initially, according to Haaretz’s Dalia Karpel, HaMegaper manufactured tires for the British Army during Israel’s pre-state period. Later on, it began manufacturing hiking boots and slippers made of cloth, leather – all with polyethylene rubber soles. The unique manufacturing method enabled the cloth, leather and rubber to fuse seamlessly without stitching.

Wearing na’aley bayit in public gained ground in the 1970s, Karpel writes, “HaMegaper’s ads promised us that we’d feel at home in their shoes, but many who wanted the ‘laid-back look’ walked around in slippers outside as well. Kibbutzniks did it first, but city dwellers jumped on the bandwagon and turned wearing HaMegaper slippers into one of the most visible indicators of Israel’s youth.’” Popstars such as Shalom Hanoch, Meir Ariel and Alon Oleartchik popularized the look by wearing their plaid slippers outside and onstage, and HaMegaper promoted it to the hilt:
HaMegaper poster ad

And who better to wear indoor wear outside if not Kipi Kipod, the urban hedgehog host of Rehov Sumsum, who sported a pair of outsized na’aley bayit throughout the show’s run.

All pop culture trends tend to wane once they hit the kindergarten set. And so it was with na’aley bayit. HaMegaper was dissolved some years ago, and other, lesser manufacturers took up the na’aley bayit mantle. So you can still get them, but only really unhip stores or the open market shuk. Sad to say, despite a few feeble retro attempts to bring back the look, (and my sister’s loyalty), na’aley bayit are part of Israeli fashion history.

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