Nostalgia Sunday – Tel Aviv Zoo
Filed under: education, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Profiles, Travel
Here’s a tidbit of useless information: do you know why Tel Aviv’s Gan Ha-Ir mall is called that? Because there used to be a zoo — Gan Hayot Tel Aviv — on the site. Gan means “park”, hayot means “animals”, ir means “city”. So, “animal park” and “city park”. Hence the name.
On the other hand, maybe it’s not so useless, as the story of the zoo is, in microcosm, the story of the modern city of Tel Aviv.
The story starts in 1935 when Rabbi Dr. Mordecai Schornstein, formerly the chief Rabbi of Copenhagen and an animal lover, fled from Nazi-occupied Europe to British Mandatory Palestine.
En route, Schornstein purchased a number of animals in Italy. According to the Farkash Gallery (more about them below), “He opened a pet shop on Shenkin Street 15 and named it ‘Gan Hayot’ (‘zoo’ in Hebrew). The birds and mammals in the store soon became a local attraction, and after the ‘Eastern Fair’ [or the Levant Fair] of 1936, where Dr. Shornstein presented his animals, he founded his zoo on Hayarkon Street 65 [in 1938].”
“However, after a pair of lions and tigers was donated to the zoo, the zoo became a real annoyance to its neighbors. With pressure mounting by the zoo’s neighbors, a new compound was built for the zoo in the northern part of the city, which was at time mostly uninhabited. In November 1939, the zoo was relocated to its new location and was opened to the public.”
“The Tel Aviv Zoo was a source of pride for residents of the first modern Jewish city. The zoo displayed creatures from around the world as well as animals and birds of the Land of Israel. It also had a small aquarium. A visit to the Tel Aviv Zoo was a popular outing for children of the Land of Israel.”
The zoo’s proximity to Tel Aviv City Hall provided the perfect situation for a joke told by the late great humorist Ephraim Kishon. To paraphrase: “One day a lion escaped from the zoo, wandered over to city hall and began eating the clerks, one by one. This went on for weeks. It was only after the lion made a crucial error and ate the tea cart lady that anyone noticed.”
The zoo was also apparently one of few in the world able to breed flamingos in captivity, according to this 1970 study published in the Journal of Zoo Animal Medicine.
Another curio of this zoo story: During the World War II, a Polish army regiment was stationed in British Mandatory Palestine. The unit, the 16th Lwow Rifles Battalion, kept a bear as a mascot: Wojtek. The soldiers decided to bring him a companion and acquired Michael, a Persian bear.
According to the website devoted to Wojtek’s memory — he was much loved in that screwy Eastern European sort of way, meaning that in addition to being kept in captivity, the soldiers made him do tricks and taught him to drink beer and smoke cigarettes — “It was hoped that he [Michael] and Wojtek would become companions, unfortunately they had a vicious fight which put paid to that idea. So Michael was donated to the Tel Aviv zoo in 1943.”
Here’s the letter from the Mayor of Tel Aviv thanking the Lwow Rifles Battalion for their donation of Michael to the zoo. As for his would-be companion, “In turn they received a monkey called Kaska who spent most of it’s time teasing Wojtek.”
(BTW, after being demobilized in 1947, rather than subject him to Soviet occupation, the unit gave Wojtek to the Edinburgh Zoo where he remained until his death in 1963).
Originally located on the city outskirts, as Tel Aviv expanded, so gradually was the zoo surrounded by residential buildings. In 1980, the zoo was closed and the animals moved from the center of Tel Aviv to more the hospitable, humane surroundings of the Ramat Gan Safari.
The Gan HaIr luxury high-rise and up-market shopping center was built on the site and completed in 1989. A statue commemorating Rabbi Dr. Schornstein was placed at the entrance to a little garden to the rear of the building, on Hadassah Street.
The Zoo lives on in images, though. Some wonderful posters from its heyday available for sale online at The Farkash Gallery. And some of the children who loved the zoo, now adults, have posted home movies of their visits on YouTube.
Tel Aviv Zoo 1966
Tel Aviv Zoo 1970s
Nostalgia Sunday – Save the Stadium
Filed under: Business, design, Environment, General, History and Culture, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Social Justice
“Ramat Gan” means “Garden Height” and, true to the city’s name, its citizens will brook no nonsense when it comes to their green spaces. They pay one the country’s highest municipal taxes and will stand on principle when it comes to preserving a patch of grass – particularly if it is surrounded by stadium seating with bunch of guys on it, running up and down after a ball. But more about that in a moment.
The visionary behind Ramat Gan was its first mayor, Avraham Krinitzi, who contracted Moshe Kavshani, a graduate of the Mikve Yisrael agricultural school, to plan the city’s parks and gardens. Kavshani, according to the Wikipedia (Hebrew) entry about public park Gan Shaul, “as evinced by the municipal records from the late 1930s, was a gardener of great soul, who was very aware of the importance of the connection between people and their environment. Every time a new public park was inaugurated, Kavshani would invite pupils from the local schools to the ceremony, during which he would ‘hand over’ [the garden] to their care. In this way, he created an emotional tie between the children of Ramat Gan and their city’s parks.”
Kavshani designed Gan Shaul to sprawl 25 square kilometers over the city’s hillsides. Popularly known as “Gan Ha-Kofim” or “The Monkey Park”, Gan Shaul was inaugurated in March 1938 at a ceremony presided over by Mandatory Palestine Southern District Commissioner REH Crosbie. The park got its nickname from the cages of monkeys, peacocks, turtles, rabbits and other animals put on display. In 1974, the animals were transferred to more humane surroundings at the newly established Ramat Gan Safari. Gan Shaul didn’t fare as well: its area, already cut to 16 sq km was reduced to a mere 12 sq km and an 11 meter tall water tower was erected on its highest point.
But the real blow came in 2007, when the Ramat Gan municipality announced its intention to construct a public parking lot on the Gan Shaul site. That’s when the neighborhood rallied to save its Monkey Park in a well-publicized battle that garnered popular support from members of the city council, the local Green Party, the Society for the Preservation of Nature in Israel (SPNI), the Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam Teva v’Din) and the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites (SPIHS). The municipality caved in 2008, scrapped the parking plan, transferred the NIS 8 million in funding to education and social welfare and invested NIS 300,000 in new playground equipment and greenery. What an amazing city! The Wikipedia entry also notes that closed circuit TV cameras were also installed around the water tower site to stave off vandalism.
Given this proud history, it’s no wonder that Ramat Gan’s citizenry are once again up in arms over the latest plan – this time opposing the Hapoel organization’s plan to sell off the Machtesh Stadium. Although a complete eyesore on the outside, on the inside this unusual field –- built into a steep hillside– is lush and green (and flat). It’s also the historic home of soccer team Hapoel Ramat Gan (now used to train the junior leagues) and you do not mess with their fans. On Thursday, Y-net reported that the police was investigating the possibility of an improper sale of the land to real estate developer Eurocom and the neighbors are planning a public protest this coming Tuesday, June 1. Although motivated less by love of football and more by not wanting a high-rise in their neighborhood (there really is NO parking in Ramat Gan), you’ve got to admire their spirit. Moshe Kavshani would have.
Click here for more about the demonstration. You can also join the Ramat Gan Facebook fan page here.
Foto Friday – Jacob Ackerman’s Birds of Prey
Filed under: Art, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Travel
Whether in Israel or abroad, Jacob “Yaki” Ackerman spends days and nights in the heart of nature, lying in wait to capture its magic and power.
Patient and alert, he spends long hours for that perfect split second in which to freeze the action of a body in motion. Perhaps that is why he relates so strongly to birds of prey.
Ackerman’s work will be part of a group art show about Israel’s predatory birds opening next week at the Man and the Living World Museum in Ramat Gan.
This unique museum, situated within the Ramat Gan National Park, features a variety of natural history exhibits as well as a center for educational activity and cultural events.
Ackerman’s extensive portfolio includes images from around the world but his passion is nature photography, and birds in particular. He’s participated in numerous wildlife photography exhibitions and his website contains some magnificent interactive photo albums that should not be missed. Enjoy.
Seeing stripes in Gaza
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Environment, General
One of the painted donkeys at the Happy Land Zoo in Gaza.
Reports abounded last week about the goings on at Gaza’s Happy Land Zoo, where, with a little masking tape and women’s hair dye, two donkeys were transformed into striped zebras.
The reason? A genuine zebra would have been too expensive to bring into Gaza via smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, said owner Mohammed Bargouthi. “It would have cost me $30,000 to get a real one,” who added that his zoo charges an entrance fee of only $15 for a busload of school kids.
Due to Hamas being still in a state of war with Israel, the Israeli government has kept an embargo imposed on Gaza, which has decimated the zoo that Bargouthi opened last year.
Other than the would-be zebras, lion and two ostriches, there’s only a camel and some birds.
According to an AFP report, the animals are often sick and the medicine they need is unavailable in Gaza.
“If there was an animal protection group here, they would have us all arrested for mistreating the animals,” said Bargouthi. “I tell myself that it’s a sin not to take care of them properly, but I try to do my best.”
“The zoo is meant for children. When they come here, they are happy, they run, they have fun. They want to see the lion and the zebra — they believe it’s real,” Bargouthi told AFP.
Nidal Bargouthi, whose father owns the zoo, told Ynet that the initial attempts at painting the donkeys didn’t turn out so well.
“The first time we used paint but it didn’t look good,” he said. “The children don’t know so they call them zebras and they are happy to see something new.”
When the mayor of Ramat Gan, Tzvi Bar, read about the zoo’s plight in the Ynet story, he said he was shocked. He called the director of the much more affluent Ramat Gan Safari and asked him to send two zebras to the Gaza zoo in hopes it will prevent similar occurrences in the future.
“The zebras will be transferred to Gaza under the official commitment of the Gazans, to take good care of the animals,” Bar told Ynet.
This week the Safari will begin the many arrangements involved in transporting the animals to Gaza, including permits from the Defense Ministry, IDF, Nature and Park Authority and the Palestinian Authority.
Whether the neighborly move will prompt Gazans to change their stripes in their attitude toward Israel remains to be seen.
Life at the zoo
I miss being lazy. I yearn for the days of sitting around doing nothing on Friday and Saturday. Catching up on TV, lounging around, eating leisurely meals, etc. However, those days are over and will only be available again about 20 years down the line or so. It was a bit easier when my daughter was younger and napping twice a day. That was a guaranteed 4 hours I had to chill. These days she’s napping once a day for only an hour and a half. When she’s awake she is a high octane ball of energy and she gets bored around the house pretty easily despite the dozens of toys. With this in mind we recently purchased a membership to the Ramat Gan safari/zoo. We’ve been going pretty much every weekend for the two months and the reasonable cost for yearly membership has already paid for itself. A good, sound investment, and only 20 minutes away. She already knows her way around. She know the “elephen” is to the left and the “monkey” is to the right. She doesn’t care much for the birds. But said “woah” when a giraffe almost licked her. Her favorite animal is still the “beebras” (zebras). Its amazing how much she retains from the few hours we spent at the zoo. Just yesterday, five days after we visited she jumped on my wife’s back and said “tzofie baby monkey.” She now requests “baby monkey” every five minutes. I love this kid.
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