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Nostalgia Sunday – The Womens Corps

A new exhibit has gone up at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv: Women in the Service of the British Army. The exhibit tells the story of the women in the pre-State Israel Yishuv who served in the British Army during World War II.

Curator Batya Donner writes, “The volunteers, who were called to enlist into the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service, and the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), may have marked a turning point in historical decision-making.

“The national question whether to enlist into the British Army, like the men who served in the Jewish Brigade, revived deliberations on helping the British, who initiated the White Paper in the war against the common German enemy, or enlisting into the nascent Israeli organizations. The central issue of stormy discussions focused on the enlistment of women into the British Forces, was gender-oriented – would it be right to allow the Yishuv’s women to serve in uniform side by side with British soldiers?

“The act of enlisting women into the British Forces was unprecedented in the Jewish or Eretz Israel context, and in hindsight perhaps heralded the enlistment of the women of the Yishuv in World War II and the establishment of CHEN – the Women’s Corps – in the IDF, whose first commanding officers were a group of women trained in the ATS.”

The exhibit shows posters encouraging women to join the British army, insignia, badges of merit and other medals given to the women, service books and discharge books, as well as video interviews with some of the surviving volunteers.

There are also photographs depicting the variety of their roles in the British army: they worked mainly in hospitals, served as clerks, cooks and nursing auxiliaries, and worked in the quartermaster’s store, etc. Some were also jeep drivers, such as Sonia Peres, the president’s wife, and Sarah Stern, legendary proprietor of Cafe Tamar.

An excellent essay about the ATS by former MK and diplomat (and my mother’s boss at the Israel Consulate in the early 1950s) Esther Herlitz, who herself served in the corps, is available online at the Jewish Women’s archive.

Herlitz also mentions the book by Zivia Cohen, entitled We Volunteered for the British Army: Jewish Women from Palestine in World War II, which was published (in Hebrew) in 2005.

The ATS has a permanent collection on display at Beit Gdudim Museum, Moshav Avihayil near Netanya. Beit Gdudim is devoted to the history of the Jewish volunteer brigades in both World Wars, and the women’s corps finally received its due credit a few years ago.

Some more great posters from the era are on view at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website.

Nostalgia Sunday – Commercials Go Way Retro

We are awash in a flood of nostalgia that shows absolutely no sign on abating. As part of that trend, our commercials and TV shows are populated by the stars of yesteryear, trying today to earn some of the cash-o-la they couldn’t back in those modest days.

Take, for example, singer-songwriter Mati Caspi, seen lately endorsing Bituach Yashir direct insurance. Other unlikely singing insurance pitchmen include David Broza and Boaz Sharabi.

And here, just to remind you of why we loved them — Riki Gal and Mati Caspi in concert televised by Channel 2, then in its infancy. (Check out Riki’s single lace glove!).

Gal, by the way, is still a force to be reckoned with (she judged the first two seasons of Kohav Nolad, the Israeli version of Pop Idol), and will be performing in Jerusalem on Monday night this week at a benefit for Tsad Kadima, the Israeli organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of children, adolescents and young adults with cerebral palsy and other motor dysfunctions. (Tickets are still available. Contact anat@tsadkadima.org.il or call 02-6540062).

But back to nostalgia: even stars who no longer walk this earth are getting into the game. Israel Discount Bank revived a commercial from the 80s that starred the late great actor Shaike Ophir.

The ad’s revival highlights the fact Discount Bank was Israel’s first to offer telebanking-a revolutionary concept back then, especially in light of the poor quality of our phone service (“poor” being a polite substitute for the other four letter word I was considering using). Ophir actually offers the cop an asimon phone token so he can make the call. The commercial has proven so popular, there’s a follow-up where today’s comedians pay homage to Ophir:

Even Maccabi Health Services has climbed on the retro bandwagon, launching a radio campaign that employs the use of this catchy jingle for powdered orangeade Zip. The connection between HMO and beverage is tenuous — something about “We’re not in the Eighties anymore, so why should your health organization be?” — but it’s fun to revisit the era and that peculiar but sweet Israeli institution of the family whistle. Enjoy the original.

Nostalgia Sunday – Purim Parties Past

One of the hard truths of life in Israel is that it always rains on Purim. It is as if the weather conspires to prove that we Jews can never hold a joyous celebration without breaking a glass or making a little baby boy cry.

And events conspire as well. A few days ago, Magen David Adom issued a stern directive against dangerous masks and costumes, in particular warning against Avatar-wannabes who might paint their bodies using blue chalk or charcoal. Spoilsports. And just today, the Homefront Command announced that the new gas mask distribution project has commenced. What impeccable timing.

Today is particularly stormy which makes it that much harder to get into a festive mood. But party we must! Even under the most difficult of conditions, Purim has been celebrated and documented — just see Yad VaShem’s online exhibition Purim – Before, During, and After the Holocaust) which is historic, not nostalgic, but important to know. And check out these photos of Purim kindergartens from the pre and post-State period, courtesy of the PikiWiki Israel project. (Click images for large version).

Kibbutz Sarid kindergarten – 1930s

Szold kindergarten, Netanya – 1935

Kindergarten in Tel Aviv’s Montefiore neighborhood – 1941

Purim celebration on Moshav Beit Itzhak – 1956

And check out these mini-hippies from Quneitra-Merom Golan, circa 1967!

Nostalgia Sunday – Netanyahu’s fixer upper

The members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet went on a little trip today up to visit historic Tel Hai in the Galilee. Going on tiyul is quite common this season — dozens of people are hiking Shvil Yisrael, the Israel National Trail this month — but it’s unusual for members of Knesset to move en masse out of their comfort zone and into the periphery.

However, this was a special occasion. Today being the 90th anniversary of the battle at the Tel Hai compound — itself refurbished thanks to the efforts of The Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites (SPIHS) — it was selected as an appropriate time and place for a cabinet meeting to approve a comprehensive plan, the largest ever, to “strengthen the national heritage infrastructures of the State of Israel”.

What is a national heritage infrastructure? As set out in Netanyahu’s plan (called TAMAR which in Hebrew is the acronym for “national heritage infrastructure”) it consists of about 150 “tangible/material cultural resources” (archaeological and historic sites) and “intangible/nonmaterial cultural resources” (archives and collections of literature, poetry, philosophy, arts, crafts, music and song, dance, theater, film, traditions, holidays, festivals, ceremonies, etc.) all in need of rehabilitation and/or enrichment. TAMAR will cost almost NIS 400 million, and will be funded by private donations to be matched by allocations from the budgets of 16 government ministries.

The list of sites — which is not yet finalized — includes 37 archaeological sites, 39 museums and collections, and 62 sites relating to Israel’s Jewish and Zionist heritage — many literally crumbling to bits, such as the magnificent painted ceiling in Jerusalem’s Meah Shearim Yeshiva. There are also 13 projects in the “intangible/nonmaterial” category that would restore cultural resources like the backlog of yet-uncatalogued movies still in cartons at the Israel Film Archive – as well as upgrade the archive building itself.

Two additional trails will be created in addition to Shvil Yisrael, promised Netanyahu, one a historic trail of archaeological sites from the biblical, Second Temple and other eras in the history of the Land of Israel, the other a trail tracing the places and events that gave rise to the modern-day State of Israel.

Netanyahu couldn’t have given a better example than this one: dowdy, dingy Independence Hall in Tel Aviv. “It is good that the city is open to the world and good that the city is alive and moving forward. But at 16 Rothschild Boulevard, there is a small auditorium in which the State of Israel was declared. There, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, declared the State of Israel.

“The hall is run-down. I am not saying that it is about to fall over but as far as the many young people and others, who flock to the street, to Rothschild Boulevard, are concerned, they do not know it. They do not visit it at all. And therefore, we will rehabilitate Independence Hall.”

The long-term payoff for TAMAR, say the plan’s authors, will be NIS 630 million in annual tourism revenue, job creation in the amount of 3,500 permanent positions plus 800 more during the 5-year period of the plan’s execution, and development of tourism to the Negev and Galilee regions. Later this week, the cabinet is due to approve the national transportation plan joining the Galilee and other regions to an accessible national transportation grid.

The cabinet also made a separate decision today on a new building for Israel’s National Library, funded by a donation from Yad Hanadiv (the Rothschild Foundation).

Nostalgia Sunday – Israel Electric

Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) is amongst our country’s most hated monopolies, and today we got another dose of why that is. According to a World Bank report reported by Globes, “Salaries at Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) (TASE: ELEC.B22) are among the highest among utilities in the world…”

“IEC commissioned the report in an effort to prove that Israel’s electricity tariffs are low. While the utility got the answer it sought, it also received an unsolicited sting about its employees’ high salaries.” (Full story available here).

It’s very nice to find out that we pay lower tariffs… right now. (Despite the recent price cuts, the World Bank believes that is going to have to change). But it doesn’t make up for decades of abuse at the hands of surly overpaid technicians and clerks who for many years — and I’m not sure the World Bank knew about this one — also got their electricity for next to nothing.

The free electricity thing was so out of control that back in the Seventies, when our family would go visit cousin Sasha, a veteran IEC employee, we would count the number of unnecessarily electrified appliances he had, such as wall clocks, stove top cookers (Israelis usually have gas ranges) and the occasional extension cord trailing out of a window — just to help out the neighbors.

At a certain point, sometime after the other hated monopoly, Israel’s phone company, was privatized, IEC got wise and started behaving more like a service provider, less like a price gouging monolith. And you have to give IEC credit where it’s due: in the span of some 80 years, it has created a modern power infrastructure serving the entire country.

It is also one of the only companies in the world capable of providing complete turnkey service, from building power stations to providing billing services.

IEC has also made public a good number of pictures from their archive, on view at the PikiWiki site. Here are a few nice ones, for starters. This is a picture of Israel’s first power station, in Haifa.

Electric company workers laying high-tension wires.

The next time they built a power station in Haifa, it was bigger…

An interior shot…

And some might recognize this location, the mouth of the Yarkon river near the Reading power plant and the Tel Aviv port.

Nostalgia Sunday – Stitching in the Seventies

Israelis are a crafty lot – and not in the way you think I mean. Israelis – particularly women – have always liked their handicrafts. These days, every neighborhood boasts a hobby store. Decoupage seems to be the most popular craft of the moment, putting pretty flowered napkins at a premium and shooting gilt paint prices through the roof.

But in every generation there will be needlepoint. Back in the Seventies, gobelin or tapestry needlework, was all the rage. There was far less television to watch and so an afternoon coffee could be quietly — or noisily — passed with good women friends, all of whom came equipped with a plastic bag filled with thick needles, French embroidery thread and canvas printed with the most horrifically sentimental romantic prints, also imported from France.

During our summer visits to see family, my Israeli mother refused to fall prey to the fad though she did help me as I (inspired by those books about young American frontier girls who walked 5 miles to school each day and then embroidered samplers by candlelight) made my own childhood attempts at needlework. We would sit around her cousin’s Rivka’s living room as Doda Dvora, Doda Tzila and cousin Rivkale all stitched away.

Doda Tzila — who was by far the most prolific — bestowed upon our family a version of the lady seen above left, in a heavy gold frame. I absolutely loved it and was quite disappointed to discover that it was a very common and popular print that hung in many an Israeli household, as were the fruit bowl and the cute kittens gobelins that we later received.

There was definitely an Eastern European aspect to the whole needlework thing as Israelis of Russian and Polish origin looked to all things French as the height of culture, while others hearkened back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (it turns out that Hungary is also a big producer of horrifically sentimental romantic gobelin canvases). Despite the fact that everyone’s flats were furnished in Danish modern-style furniture, you never knew when a tapestry-covered chair or ottoman was suddenly going to turn up.

But it’s very likely that the local Bedouin and Palestinian embroidery was also a big influence. For instance, my Israeli mother was definitely an embroidery groupie, and spent hours and days scouring the Old City shuk for just the right black velvet embroidered jacket and long black dress. She also patronized the Bethlehem Arab Women’s Union (BAWU), which has been running an embroidery cooperative since 1968. More about BAWU and 16 other local artisan projects can be found at the Sunbula fair trade organization website.

There are some young Israeli designers who also resonate to the nostalgia vibe, such as bag designer Shiri Hyman of boutique Fabrica in Tel Aviv’s trendy Gan HaHashmal, whose gobelin-inspired pieces are sold in London boutiques as well as close to home.

Nostalgia Sunday – Sypholux redux

I don’t like fizzy drinks myself but some of my best friends do. It was to fulfill such desires that I almost bought a soda-maker the other day. Almost but didn’t, partly because soda-makers have become something of a rarity but mainly because the home-soda-water-maker market in Israel has been monopolized by one company. Which is how is pretty much always been except that the cartel now completely held by the Gazoz company (of the Soda Club group) was once held by Sypholux.

It may sound like a disease to be treated with antibiotics, in fact Sypholux was once the brand that launched a thousand wedding gifts, an ubiquitous appliance in any upstanding middle-class Israeli household. Before Sypholux, to get your weekly or daily fix of fizzy water you had to trudge down to the makolet, the corner grocery store, lugging empty blue or green glass siphon bottles which were then refilled and lugged home. Such bottle are now part of any good nostalgia writer’s knick-knack collection (see above left).

And then came the 60s when Sypholux set members of the household free from their yes-deposit-yes-return drudgery. Made of metal instead of glass, the Sypholux came in two parts (left), a shiny metal-encased glass bottle and a red plastic nozzle with a metal handle and housing for the special little red rubber coated cartridges filled with compressed CO2. To make soda, all you had to do was fill the bottle with water and screw a cartridege into place, where upon it would release a “zetz” of gas into the bottle. And hey-presto, you had seltzer!

No longer were glass bottles lugged to the corner store. Instead, you brought in your battery of cartridges to be replaced, so you could run right back home and whip up some more soda.

The Sypholux most commonly came in silver tone, but Sypholux Industries, Ltd. also came out with other models in gold-tone and metallic colors. The factory was so much a part of the Tel AViv landscape for 30 years, and Sypholux so much a part of Israeli kitchenware, it seemed impossible that they would fade from view. But they did.

In the early-90s, competitors such as Soda Club came on the scene with newer technologies and updated designs. Sypholux also fell victim to bottled brand-name soft drinks that didn’t take any work to prepare and promised you nothing but fun in the sun, sex and good times if you drank them. (I know it sounds crazy but can you believe it — people actually fell for this line of advertising!). In 2000, the company stopped manufacturing cartridges.

Today, the Gazoz soda-maker has coopted the tiny do-it-yourself-soda market by cutting deals with mineral water companies, water filter companies and supermarkets. The Sypholux factory has been abandoned — there is a very cool series of photos by photographer Eli Brody on Flickr documenting the structure’s current condition — and Sypholux memorabilia is being sold on Ebay and in flea markets. The marvelous Safta Flickr stream has an entire series devoted to Sypholuxania, including brochures, cartridge boxes and warning lables — definitely worth checking out.

Nostalgia Sunday – Sing out!

Glee, the TV comedy about a high-school choral group, is coming to Israel and the streets are filled with billboards touting its arrival. Satellite service provider YES needn’t worry about the show’s popularity here. Israelis have a long-standing tradition of community choirs, vocal groups and other forms of “Gleekiness”.

This coming summer, for example, Israel will host the 22nd Zimriya World Assembly of Choirs.

Zimriya is a really unusual international celebration that invites choirs from all over the world to participate in concerts, workshops led by world renowned conductors, choir-to-choir sessions and informal singing into the wee hours.

But let’s go back in time, a bit, to the source of our geekiness. And by that, I mean, central and eastern Europe where the tradition of community-based choral singing was reinforced under socialism and communism as handy tool for educating the masses. Young Labor Zionists came to Palestine to establish kibbutzim and immediately set up choirs as part of collective cultural life. Some are still going strong, the most important of which is the Gevatron, today considered Israel’s national choir.

The Gevatron began in 1948 when, according to the choir’s site, “a group of singers in Kibbutz Geva performed at the dedication of a new basketball court on the kibbutz. They called themselves the ‘Gevatron’ – a combination of the name of the kibbutz with the name of the ‘Cheezbatron’, a singing troupe that performed during the War for Independence. The young group started performing for communal occasions in the kibbutz, with accordion accompaniment. They were amateurs and sang mainly verses, written by members of the kibbutz, to borrowed melodies, Russian songs for the most part.”

See what I mean about the Eastern European thing? Anyway, more information about the Gevatron is available on the site, including Bat 60, their most recent pop music coup, singing backup to rap artist Subliminal.

The Mila-Li website, which centralizes information about choirs in Israel, lists 114 choirs active in Israel today. Mila – the Israeli Organization for Choirs and Singing Groups, is now gearing up for a massive choral happening at the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) this coming weekend.

For more information about choral music from years gone by, the Zemereshet website is an absolute gem of an volunteer-run downloadable archive that includes hundreds of Hebrew songs (texts and sound files) from the early Zionist period and up to 1948. These include recordings from live sing-along performances and recent recordings of old songs, as well as valuable old commercial recordings by soloists and choruses.

There’s also a website run by songwriter Nahum Heyman and the Amuta for the Tradition of Hebrew Song (amuta is a uniquely Israeli form of non-profit organization), that has many songs for download.

Another great source of online videos is the Israeli Music History site, a labor of love compiled by lawyer Boaz Guttman. Leave aside his professional pages about forensic investigation – there are some real musical treasures to be found here if you dig around.

Israel’s choral tradition continues today, not just mired in tradition but also creating new and different forms of Gleekiness for all to enjoy. Case in point: the Voca People. Though their backstory is nerdiness incarnate — (they came from another planet and communicate with the earthlings through sound) — there’s no denying either their a capella musical prowess or the enjoyment they bring to audiences. It’s total, gleeful fun.

Nostalgia Sunday – Pressed Wildflowers

Last week’s freakishly warm weather sent the almond trees into bloom. Although it was a false spring, residents of the entire country went out for their annual wildflower trek.

Yes, Israelis love their wildflowers. Well, at least they know not to pick wildflowers. In fact the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) did such a good job of brainwashing the past few generations of schoolchildren that you will never catch an Israeli picking a wildflower. They’ll throw garbage on it, pee on it, build an ugly edifice next to it, but pick it?! Never.

When I was a child, a bookmark with pressed wildflowers was one of the more charming tourist trinkets you could pick up (hard to find but still charming today).

Back in the pre-TV days, before the ban on picking wildflowers took hold, Israeli schoolchildren were encouraged to not only to pick but also to collect and study the different kinds of flora native to this land, and press them between the pages of a book.

Later on, commerce got into the act and albums were made available as promotional items like this one from margarine manufacturer Telma Gold Band.

And of course, the Israel Postal Authority (today’s Israel Post), did its part by issuing stamps of our most popular wildflowers.

Competing margarine manufacturer Blue Band also took on the cause as part of an advertising campaign bossily entitled (in the command form) “Know Our Country’s Flowers”. This ad is for the caper (Capparis spinosa L.). I’m not sure why all these margarine makers were so interested in educating the young people about wildflowers but I’m guessing it had something to do with safflower oil.

Today, you’re more likely to find cultivated flowers, rather than wild ones, pressed and waxed or laminated into bookmarks, candles and jewelry. I’m not sure, however, what the SPNI would make of this set of nails, but you’ve got to admire the work put into these tiny purple petals, lacquered and bonded onto synthetic tips, the handiwork of manicurist Ronit!

Nostalgia Sunday – Sussita and Sabra

Israel has launched a local version of Cash for Clunkers. According to Haaretz, “The Environmental Protection Ministry this weekend began the first phase of its plan to get old gas-guzzlers off the country’s roads by paying the owners for their wrecks. The first car-composting lot opened in Ashdod on Friday; new sites are planned to open across the country over the next few months. Anyone who turns in a vehicle over 20 years old – after verifying ownership at the Licensing Department, of course – will be given NIS 3,000 in exchange… Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan expects the program to rid the streets of thousands of fuel-inefficient, polluting and unsafe older vehicles each year.”

Getting rid of the unsafe and polluting is a worthy goal (though, quite frankly, there are no few sparkling new Hummers, Jeeps and SUVs that could also fit the bill) but it also means that the few Sussitas still tootling down Israel’s highways will soon find themselves in Tefen’s Classic Automobile Collection — if they’re lucky.

The Sussita lays claim to being the first automobile manufactured in Israel in 3,000 years of Jewish history – and one of the first in human history to boast a molded fiberglass body. There’s quite a lot of information online about the Sussita as well as several fan sites devoted to the Sussita’s sexy cousin, the Sabra or Sabre sports car.

So here’s the gist of it, according to the Cartype blog: “Autocars; Israel; 1958-1975 – Autocars (Sabra) of Haifa, Israel, was founded in the 1950s as Israel’s first car manufacturer… In 1960, Yitzhak Shubinsky launched an Israeli-made car at the autoshow in New York. In 1961, at the New York Autoshow, the first Sabras were introduced. Reliant produced the first 100 cars. Their VIN-plates read “AUTOCARS COMPANY LIMITED HAIFA ISRAEL”, though they were actually made in the UK. The rest of the cars were produced in Israel, but only 41 of those were exported to the USA.”

In other words, within just a few years of statehood, Israel was making cars. According to car site AROnline, “Autocars Co. Ltd started out assembling Reliant three-wheelers at its Haifa workshops, and later introduced a four-wheeled version of the Reliant Regent van. The company’s first model of its own, the Sussita, was also designed by Reliant. Available in estate, van and pick-up versions, the Sussita was powered by the Ford Anglia 105E’s 1000cc engine and was initially exported from the UK in CKD form for assembly at the Autocars plant, although production was later undertaken entirely in Israel. The Sussita quickly became Israel’s best-selling model, earning itself a reputation as a basic but dependable workhorse (indeed, “Sussita” is the Aramaic word for mare).”

“Best selling” is a bit of a misstatement, as ordinary Israeli citizens couldn’t really afford cars in those days, but Israel’s armed forces and other large organizations did their bit by purchasing fleets of Sussitas. Bus cooperative Egged, purchased them for their garage managers in the early Seventies, and a few “old mares” are on display at the Egged Bus Museum and at the Israel Airforce Museum.

And then came the 1960 New York Motor Show where 600 orders were placed for the Sussita — under its export brand name the Sabra — mainly because of the low price tag.

Meanwhile, the ever-enterprising Itzhak Shubinsky, writes AROnline, “spotted a coupé called the Ashley GT at the London Sports and Racing Car Show, and decided that it was just what he needed to gain a proper foothold in the potentially lucrative US car market. He promptly bought the design – and the moulds required to produce its bodywork – and gave Reliant the task of re-engineering it for sale in the US. What emerged was the Sabra Sport, which debuted at the 1961 New York Motor Show in roadster form, but was later also available with hardtop coupé and fastback bodywork.” Again understand: within one year, Shubinsky had launched a fiberglass bodied sports car, the Sabra (later renamed the Sabre).

It would be understatement to say that the Sabra’s quality didn’t meet American standards, despite promises that the could go from zero to 115mph “extremely rapidly” and “without special options”, as promised in this press release:

Sadly, the car didn’t sell well. In fact, you might call it the Yugo of its day. Israelis weren’t too fond of it either although there are so many online accounts about Sussitas being chomped on on by camels and goats that one begins to think this is urban legend or remnants of vicious rumors spread by the Ford and Peugeot importers who, by the way, eventually won those lucrative military contracts away from Sussita. Hmmm…

Autocars encountered financial difficulties in the early 60s (a long and complicated story) and became a subsidiary of Leyland-Triumph in 1965, after which the entire range was refitted with Triumph components. During this period Autocar entered into some interesting projects, such as the Dragoon, a Triumph 1300-based [front-wheel-drive] off-road utility vehicle. And after a merger between Leyland and BMH, Autocars, together with UK-based Marcos Cars were charged with developing a plastic-bodied version of the Mini which reached the crash test stage before it was canceled.

The end wasn’t a happy one. Shubinsky was forced to resign in 1971, Autocars was sold to Rom Carmel Industries in 1974, and sold once more in 1978 to Urdan Industries. The company continued operations and in its last full year of production delivered only 540 cars, from 3,000 in its heyday.

So where can one see Sussitas and Sabras today? They occasionally turn up on Ebay – or at least some wonderful brochures do. And it’s always worth visiting the Classic Automobile Collection at the Tefen Industrial Park adjacent to the Open Museum of Israeli Art.

 

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