STOCKHOLM SYNDROME             Sweden’s fear of angering Arab has reached new heights.  Stockholm announced that it was canceling plans for an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, saying they could not protect the rare artifacts.     ...

CHELM-ON-THE-MED  He’s at it again: Yes, Shlomo Avni, the 82-year old Givatyim resident who won a 2009 Chelm Award after unsuccessfully petitioned the Israel Supreme Court demanding his carcass be dumped in a field on the Golan Heights after he died,...

BUM WRAP A robber walked up to a shawarma stand on Hamasger Street in Tel-Aviv just before midnight.  Instead of demanding the daily take, the hunger-struck young man ordered astonished employees – at gunpoint, to fill a pita with shawarma – sliver...

  PERIOD PIECE-BY-PIECE Taking a cue from the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the Haifa Municipality found a dirt cheap way to break down an old wall at the southern environs of the city* to expand Haifa’s seaside promenade.  A boardwalk with bench...

WHITEWASHED! Hilah Ben-Baruch left her car legally parked in front of her flat on Yehuda Halevi Street in Tel-Aviv and went to work. Returning in the evening she found  the vehicle had vanished…and in its place was an unoccupied handicapped parking sp...

THE RIGHT STUFF In January 22 elections, out of 33 parties that ran, only 12 made it home to the House.*  Among the 'also ran for office' were a host of what a columnist in the Times of Israel aptly labeled "novelty parties." Incredibly, the mélange of...

WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE Photoshop provided the best commentary on hours of total gridlocked in Gush Dan* after police were forced to close the main artery through the Big Orange after a monstrous weather system (all over Israel from Dan** to Eilat) turne...

STRANGE DETERRENT The Israel Bar Association* gets its share of complaints about alleged misconduct by lawyers – stuff like unwarranted legal fees or professional negligence. But undoubtedly one of the weirdest among the 370 complaints logged with the ...

PARTY POLITICS A LA ISRAEL Israel will go to the polls on January 22, 2013. The number of recognized parties in Israel – all it takes is 100 signatures and a 2,182 NIS ($574) registration fee – is mind-boggling: There are 91 (!) parties in the Party ...

A CHELM-ON-THE-MED SPECIAL REPORT:   A MIXED BAG OF PIQUANT BACKPAGE NEWS FROM THE FRONT GLEANED FROM THE HEBREW MEDIA November 20, 2012   Keep your Spirits Up and Your Head Down!     HUMOR – THE BEST WEAPON             Tel-Avi...

A CHELM-ON-THE-MED SPECIAL REPORT:   A MIXED BAG OF PIQUANT BACKPAGE NEWS FROM THE FRONT GLEANED FROM THE HEBREW MEDIA November 20, 2012   Keep your Spirits Up and Your Head Down!     HUMOR – THE BEST WEAPON             Tel-Avi...

    FOREPLAY When Robi Gluden and Izolda Abraham decided to get married, instead of hiring a wedding hall and a band, the two aspiring actors wrote a 90-minute-long romantic comedy about how they met and fell in love, then set out to find a venue...

THE SOUND OF MUSIC Tochnit Mit’ar (Municipal Plan) is probably one of the weirdest cantorial pieces every composed.*        The lyrics are the opening bars… er, passages of Jerusalem’s Municipal Master Plan which was penned by engineers of ...

GOOD START! Israeli diplomacy can take some strange forms – and if you don’t believe it, check out this one-of-a-kind request for foreign aid from an African monarch to fight AIDS already reported by The Chelm Project. Here’s another recent gem: ...

LOWEST CUT At the height of heated controversy over drafting orthodox youth at 18 for national service, for a moment residents of Mea Sha'arim thought 'forced mobilization' was underway. The ultra-orthodox Jerusalem neighborhood was swarming with men in...

BE HAPPY, DON'T WORRY How is Israel faring as Jews mark the beginning of a New Year?              Forget about a nuclear Iran, a European monetary crisis, spiraling petrol prices and the fact that 52 percent of all households in Israel fou...

LIGHTS OUT             Israeli kids went back to school a week early – on the 27th of August* - which hardly put a dent in the paradox that pupils barely have time to warm their seats before they're off again for almost three weeks vacation...

VERY JEWISH STATE Chelm-on-the-Med Online has related countless incredible stories* of how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs acts as in loco parentis for young Israelis who get into trouble when abroad (or whose Jewish mothers think they’ve run into trou...

MAKING CONNECTIONS On subways everywhere commuters enter cars and mentally withdraw to isolate themselves from the crowd by crawling into a book, plugging in their iPods or sinking into a zombie-like state. Not in Israel.              In t...

MIXED MESSAGES? American poet Ogden Nash once quipped that “diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way,” but the Israeli cabinet wasn’t listening…             Defense Minister Ehud Barak sparked a diplomatic inc...