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CHELM-ON-THE-MED©, JULY 2014 COLUMN 1

KICK ASS BOOK

For those who are familiar with Meir Shalev’s 1990 children’s book in Hebrew HaKina Nechama (‘Nechama the Louse’) illustrated by Yossi Abulafia about the adventures of a little girl louse who doesn’t understand why people despise her, now there is a sequel.

          Canadian novelist-turned-children’s author Douglas Anthony Cooper not only found Israeli illustrator Dula Yavne on the Internet.  Not only are the two collaborating on a book designed to improve the reputation of pit bulls with a loriously silly specimen named Galunker.  Aware that no traditional publisher would come within arm’s length of a children’s book about a pit bull, the two opted for crowdfunding seeking $27,000 to polish and publish the picture book on their own - attracting $36 ,000 on kickstarter.com in the short space of two weeks. When the campaign closed on July 2nd, the amount had doubled to $67,016.

 

FREE GELT* AND GUILT

An anonymous nickel-and-dime philanthropist hid envelopes with twenty to two hundred dollars in cash around San Francesco (then other cities*) and ‘invited’ the public via a Twitter account called ‘Hidden Money’ to drop everything and scurry about frantically hunting for the envelopes.

          Well, it turns out that the gilded party behind this reversal on ‘crowd funding’ is one Jason Buzi, a self-made American real estate investor. But Jason, it turns out, was born in Haifa under the name Asaf Hillel before his  Jewish-American mother took him to the States when he was 12.

          While according to Forbes the wealthy have their own tzuros (worries), JB‘s are self-made. He admitted to Yediot that things got totally out of hand. Now that his cover has been blown, he worries the foolish ‘pass the envelop’ in reverse prank might spark an antisemitic backlash. Moreover, he’s not as rich as the rumors claim. He’s only a multi-millionaire... 

* gelt – Yiddish for money

** On Jason Buzi’s LinkedIn page, he says he has visited 70 countries; Is California, Texas, Colorado, and Florida – and now London, just the beginning of a global epidemic!?

 

SEEDS OF THEIR DOWNFALL?

What do men snack on during the month-long FIFA World Cup – the Mondial?

          It depends where they live.  Beer and pretzels in most parts of the world, one assumes but this is the Middle East where noshing on pitzuchim (roasted pumpkin and watermelon seeds cracked between one’s teeth) is the norm. Consequently, clinical dietician Tzach Keinan from the General Health Fund warned ardent sports fans that a mere 100 grams (3 oz.) of watermelon seeds pack the equivalent of 270 calories, and it would be good to keep score.

* Nosh, Yiddish for snacking

 

SUPPORT’S  ON THE WAY!

A new solution to childcare - the brilliant idea of Galit Tzuk (40) a mother of four from Nahariya – is just around the corner! A free web-based matchmaking platform where overextended parents and unemployed-but-still-active seniors can find one another. 

          The website – http://savtush4rent.co.il – literally ‘bubbie* for rent’ allows unemployed or retired persons over 50 to find part-time work that’s not a minimum wage position as a security guard standing at the entrance to the supermarket...

          The win-win solution provides someone responsible to fill-in for half a day as a warm and loving, proactive and supportive parental figure until biological parents get home from work, which can mean a grandfatherly 70 year-old former CEO who can help the kids with their homework, or a recently-sacked careerist pushing 50 who’d be glad to give the kids lunch and fold the laundry for a fee. Or empty-nester housewives whose kids still haven’t produced grandchildren that induct them into unpaid servitude for the rest of their lives.

 * Bubbie – Yiddish for granny.

 

PAINTING THE TOWN

Remember the story about the guy who hogged all the parking spaces on a residential street in Modi’in back in November 2012? (See Road Rage). Well, the residents of the posh Ramat Chen neighborhood in Ramat Gan found themselves facing a similar problem: someone who was depositing dozens of dilapidated cars on their streets instead of paying hefty storage fee.

          But while Modi’in came up with a creative solution - ticketing the cars as “a safety hazard” and threatening to tow each vehicle away at the owner’s expense - Ramat Gan told frustrated residents that the only way to force the unidentified vehicle owner to ‘move on’ was a Chelm-like solution: paint all the curbs in Ramat Chen blue-and-white and charge for parking by the hour…

 

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN AND…

Israeli ‘passing out’ ceremonies in the military have their own flavor.  Hundreds of cadets all ‘eyes right’ without moving a muscle like at  Sandhurst? Forget about it…

          In the IDF, bleachers are turned into makeshift picnic grounds, eyes on the parade grounds roam the bleachers looking for mom and dad and cadets grin at the camera as they march by. Siblings and friends release balloons and wave home-made signs, whistling and clapping as this or that cadet gets their bars. But there’s always room for innovation in breaking ‘military decorum.’

          As soon as all the newly-minted junior-lieutenants threw their caps in the air, Liat Patito’s boyfriend Asaf Nachman a career officer in the IDF, made a B-line for the new artillery officer posing with her chums for a selfie, got down on bended knee and proposed…a move he’d coordinated in advance with her battery commander. After Patito gave him the nod, the ecstatic groom-to-be threw off his shirt revealing a T-shirt declaring “The Officer in Blue is my Future Wife.”