Burned
Just a quick post: I was at Shilav, a local baby store in my local mall, two places where I spend a lot of time these days, and was asking Miki, the store manager with whom I also spend a good amount of time talking, whether they’d gotten in any wooden playpens yet. He told me they hadn’t, and the entire country — the entire country! — is out of wooden playpens because there was something wrong with the last shipment…
“No playpens in the entire country?” I asked. “You mean, no other store has wooden playpens?” (Not that I’d buy the playpen at another store, seeing as I have many gift certificates at Shilav and therefore much money to spend there.)
“Nope,” he said. “We all get them from the same importer and the wood was bad, so they burned them on Lag b’Omer.”
Just thought I had to share.
Nostalgia Sunday – Matchboxes
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture
Before the electronic sparker and the electric stove-top, kids, there were matches and matchboxes, some so decorative they became collectible items.
My parents, like many others, had two huge glass vases filled with matchbooks amassed from trips across the US, Europe and Israel. These served as a conversation pieces — and of course, as firepower for social smokers at cocktail parties.
The rise of the cheap lighter, cheaper imports, and the decline in smoking has put many match-makers out of business. Veteran Israeli manufacturer Nur still exists, but mainly as an importer and repackager of safety matches; their website is sadly disappointing — no gallery, no history.
We present, therefore, a few memorable “tobacciana” relics, (many available for sale on Ebay), starting on the left with the classic Nur deer logo, and a mod version done in the go-go Eighties.
Ebay seller Avi has some really good examples of classic matchbook graphics, including the Tribes of Israel…
…and this series of Israel Air Force aircraft.
El Al commissioned artist Jean David to create this series of historic cities in Israel.
I think my parents had one of this series of long boxes made for tourists. I seem to recall a picture of Jaffa…
A nice, inexpensive, if flammable, hobby!
Candles and sandals
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness
NK in the daytime
But on erev Lag b’Omer itself, which, incidentally, is our anniversary (a very popular day to get married in Israel, since it’s a ‘day off’ from the 49-day Omer, during which Jews traditionally don’t get married), we attended the wedding of the daughter of a dear friend, held at Neot Kedumim, a biblical landscape reserve located just slightly north of Modiin.
It was one of those ‘only in Israel’ experiences, as we drove down a rocky lane to the parking lot, and then trekked over to the wedding ’site,’ where the makeup-free bride was surrounded by her headscarf-wrapped, guitar-playing, weeping girlfriends before the bedeken. The groom, when he approached to veil his bride, was outfitted like the rest of his friends in an untucked white shirt, khakis and Source sandals, the Israeli version of Chacos, and he was brought down in a fit of singing punctuated by the calls of a shofar being sounded by one of his buddies. He played a Bratslaver-like tune to his bride, but broke the tension of the moment with a wide grin directed to her, which she returned in kind.
We walked over to the site of the chuppah, down winding lanes situated between flowering pomegranate trees and silvery green olive trees, stooping to read the ground-level signs that offer biblical quotes about the trees, bushes and flowers planted all around. The chuppah was a tallit, the rabbi was casually serious and the bride, a dancer by training, tended to jump up and down during the lighter moments of the ceremony.
And when the ceremony was over, the new couple was danced over to their yihud space where they spent a good hour, before emerging to dance raucously but separately.
“They’re hippies,” said my husband. “Nah, they’re settlers,” said someone else, referring to the flowing shirts, dresses and sandals that can often be considered a uniform for some of the hilltop settler types. I thought of it as a wedding of Israeli Deadheads, but one thing is for sure: It was a wedding with a joyous vibe.
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