Lotto flash mob
Filed under: Business, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture
Everybody’s looking for attention, including Mifal Hapayis, Israel’s legal national lottery. This time they used the now-common flash mob to draw crowds at a Rishon Lezion beach just a few days ago.
Using a medley of Abba songs, beach balls — and, they cheated a little — professional dancers, the results were fun, although a tad long in my opinion. According to Lotto, it was the biggest flash mob ever gathered in Israel, which I suppose is a claim to fame, and the dance itself was six minutes long, also a record.
It’s all part of Mifal Hapayis’ newest campaign, “Let the numbers organize your life,” featuring enlarged versions of the popping balls that bounce through the lottery machine when the winning numbers are drawn. They need some good publicity, after a class-action suit was filed against the organization for allegedly misleading subscribers.
Nostalgia Sunday – Pre-state Passover
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Nostalgia Sunday, Travel
Rishon Le-Zion is a fast-growing metropolis and Israel’s fourth-largest city. As home to a newly-opened IKEA — the largest in the Middle East – as well as a dizzying array of malls, mega-markets and movie multiplexes, we sometimes forget the important role Rishon Le-Zion plays in our country’s history as the second Jewish farming settlement.
Fortunately, the municipality of Rishon Le-Zion does remember. It has restored and preserved some of the scenery of its past in a unique open-air museum. Located in some of the oldest buildings of the settlement (the moshava), the exhibits retell the story of the city’s pioneer past and the beginnings of modern Zionism
One permanent exhibit, “Jewish Holidays in the Moshava” is a lovely presentation of domestic life in pre-State Eretz Israel. Many of the first families came from Eastern Europe with fine porcelain place-ware and tea sets. These were not used every day, but were reserved for special occasions and holidays, and handed down from generation to generation.
“Despite difficult living and economic conditions, most [settlers] did not abandon the household customs considered acceptable in their countries of origin,” writes curator Yona Shapira.
Afternoon tea was one such custom. Michael Pohachevsky, who arrived to Rishon in 1886, described being hosted at the home of Berta and Yosef Feinberg (the family is pictured left): “The tea was set in European style, in every detail and feature, and for a moment, it was possible to forget that you were in a young colony just being established in an ancient land.”
In 1890, Haim Hissin described a holiday meal at the Drubin household: “[the table] was set not at all in country style and was set with separate plates, forks and spoons, napkins, wine-glasses, pitchers of water and wine. The courses were, naturally, simple and few but prepared well and served in good taste.”
The exhibit also includes three monogrammed pieces from a set belonging to the Baron Edmond de Rothschild, patron of Rishon Le-Zion and other early settlements.
By the way, the connection between the Passover holiday and Rishon Le-Zion is long-standing as it was for over a century the home of Matzot Rishon Le-Zion. In 2008, in a grand upset for the bread-of-our-affliction sector, the veteran company was purchased by Matzot Yerushalayim.
Although one major industry might have been lost, the city can take heart in the fact that it still headquarters Carmel Wineries, long-time producer of crap sweet wine (what we in Israel call yayin patishim or “hammer wine” because of its effect both on the palate and the brain). And Carmel can take heart in the fact that in the past few years it has shaped up and begun producing some very decent fine wines.
Rishon Le-Zion itself continues to be forward thinking. Take, for example, this video clip produced by the College of Management R&D Institute for Intelligent Robotic Systems, where even the machinery celebrate in style. Here’s wishing a chag sameach to them — and have a happy and kosher one yourselves!
A dark day in Rishon Lezion
Three members of the Oshrenko family who were discovered dead on Saturday.
The security fence, for all its ugliness and negative implications, solved the problem for the short term. But the problem facing Israel today can’t be solved by a fence or wall – unless each Israeli builds their own and isolates themselves.
The news that greated people on Saturday, or Saturday night if they’re religiously observant, talked of police calling it the ‘worst crime’ in Israel’s history being committed. A day after her Revital Oshrenko celebrated her third birthday in her Rishon Lezion home with her family – grandfather and grandmother Edward and Ludmilla, both 56; parents Tattiana, 28, and Dimitry, 32; and 4-month-old brother Netanel – the whole family was stabbed to death and their apartment set on fire in an apparent effort to cover up the murders. Some of the victims were said to have been stabbed repeatedly.
Rescue services only discovered the bodies when they were called to the home after a report of a fire. While a gag order has been placed on the police investigation, family friends and acquaintances, including Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov and the mayor of Rishon Lezion, said that the family members were model citizens.
Suspicions are rampant that the murders were ‘business’ related, pertaining to restaurants and clubs catering to Russian immigrants that Dimitry owned and operated. The murder is just the latest in a series of sensationalist killings that have taken place this year in the country, where non-terror murders were once considered a rare occurrence.
I would kind of prefer it going back to the old ways – at least then you knew who the enemy was. I still feel safe here, walking around at night, or sending my children unsupervised on buses. But slowly, with Israel’s social fabric in danger of being ripped asunder, there’s a growing sense of lawlessness – when I’m out jogging at night now, sometimes I think twice about running past a group of teens gathered at a street corner – it’s a feeling that a security fence will be powerless to prevent.
Ikea in Rishon
The Ikea franchise in Israel has won a major or minor victory, depending on how you look at it. After three years of a heated legal battle between the Ikea franchise owners in Israel and more than 200 furniture purveyors in Rishon Lezion — Israel’s fourth-largest city — a second branch of the Swedish furniture chain will be built in the seaside city of Rishon, but without an adjacent shopping center, which was what the city’s storeowners had feared.
According to the Ha’aretz account of the settlement, the furniture store owners are less fearful of the Ikea branch itself, and more nervous about the planned 30,000-square-meter shopping center that was supposed to accompany the 323,000 square-meter Ikea. Personally, I’m surprised they’re not more nervous about Ikea; the Netanya store is one of the chain’s most successful ever, with more than 16 million visitors since it opened eight years ago.
Rishon, in case you didn’t know, has become something of a shopping destination. I was somewhat aware of this, but became more aware last week when my sister and I took an outing in order to shop at the city’s branch of Eden Teva Market, without having to schlep out to Netanya. Yes, I know, it may seem strange to head all the way to Rishon from Jerusalem (about a 45-minute drive, longer, if you don’t have good directions) for food shopping. But when the store in question is Israel’s answer to Whole Foods, some of us travel far and wide.
And now, it seems, we won’t have to head as far as Netanya any longer for our Billy bookshelves and Poang armchairs. As for those in northern Israel, it seems there are plans to open a third store in the Galilee within three years. So thanks to all the Rishon Lezion furniture store owners and to Ikea Israel for settling; now I’ll have an additional stop to make in Rishon when I head out there for sulphur-free dried fruits, spelt breads and other natural goodies.
Bumper car wimps
With summer winding down, we decided to treat our seven-year-old to a day at Superland. Situated among the sandy expanse near the Rishon Lezion beach, Superland is your typical outdoor amusement park, even sprawling by Israeli standards.
With some prime attractions like the obligatory roller coaster, a frightening looking bungee-style drop built for three, and a log water slide, there’s plenty to do, and because it’s spaced out, there’s not a huge line for any ride.
And of course, what amusement park could be complete without the bumper cars. Matan and his friend Nir, were too young to ride their own, so my wife joined Matan and I partnered with Nir, as we ran out onto the game floor with a mixture or kids, adults, teens – both Jews and Arabs – jostling for the right car.
We all know the clichés about Israeli drivers – how reckless, aggressive and unsympathetic they are on the roads. And we all know that it’s 100% true. But when the bell rang, the cars started moving, an amazing thing happened – the Israeli driver became a wimp!
Given the chance to legally bash into each other, without any ramifications, most of the drivers pussyfooted around the perimeter, actually trying to avoid each other. Meanwhile, I was telling Nir, who had control of the steering wheel, to ram everything in sight.
When he did so, we got looks from the other drivers like, we had somehow ran into them intentionally on the road. Hello! That’s the point of the ride! Slowly, they began getting into the spirit of things, and by the end of the three minutes, most of the drivers were behaving like they were passing cars on blind curves on Jordan Valley road at 100 km. an hour.
Now that’s the Israeli I know and love.
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