CHELM-ON-THE-MED©, AUGUST 2015 COLUMN 2
TRAVELLING LIGHT
Rather than holding a garage sale before she relocated abroad, Chen Yahav-Levanon, CEO of a high-tech company engaged in online retailing called Clicksmob.com, decided to divide her worldly possessions among her faithful employees as a parting perk from the boss, rather than take them with her to San Francisco.
Yahav-Levanon notified the office by Whatsapp that she was holding an open house, inviting everyone to rummage though ‘her stuff’ – from pots ‘n pans and bed linen and toys, to furniture and electronics. Even her personal wardrobe was up for grabs…allowing anyone in the office to step into the boss’ shoes. Or fashion boots for that matter, enabling marketing manager Liat Bornstein to take home Yehav-Levanon’s rollerblades, declaring cheerfully “I always wanted a pair of these ever since I was a kid.” (Yediot)
KEPT WOMAN
Does Israel face a water crisis we don’t know about?
Not since the country’s desalinization plants began to operate!
Not so the estranged wife of an unidentified billionaire* now seeking alimony and child support payments to the tune of 100,000 NIS ($25,000) a month in expenses: Among the odd demands she plans to file for to keep her in the style to which she has become accustomed are regular mineral baths. Not at a mineral spa, mind you; she demands mineral baths in the family bathtub...
Not only that, the plaintiff is demanding her drinking water be supplied in bottles with her own name embossed on the bottles… (Israel HaYom)
* by the description of her spouse’s grocery bill for a lavish New Years Eve bash, and the 5,000 NIS checks he habitually handed out at weddings, the news report is peppered with broad hints that her unnamed spouse is a Russian oligarch living in Israel: 1, New Years Eve isn’t a big deal in Israel 2. No Israeli millionaire would be so generous as a wedding guest to fork over a $1,315 check, unless he was the uncle of the bride
SPOOKED BY A JUKE
A 40 year-old matron from Ashdod freaked out completely - jumping out of her car when she spied an uninvited hitchhiker in the passenger seat…a juke, one of Israel’s legendary ‘flying’ cockroaches.*
Luckily the driver had had only just pulled out of the parking lot next to the city’s open market and suffered only minor injuries, which is more than one can say for the vehicle: While the fate of the cockroach remained unclear, the driverless car drove head-long into a wall, luckily without any collateral damage to other shoppers in the vicinity. (Yediot)
* According to entomologists, the Israeli cockroach population is enjoying an unseasonable spike this summer due to favourable climatic conditions.
* The oddest story involving a flying Israeli cockroach took place in 2003 when an open-mouthed 32 year-old woman swallowed a cockroach that literally flew into her mouth without warning. As fate would have it, she then used a fork to try and ‘fish’ the critter out of her throat, but swallowed the fork instead. Physicians at Poryia Hospital in Tiberias were able to remove the fork via laparoscopic surgery, but by this time, the bug was assumed to have been digested never to be seen or heard from again. (HaAretz)
BUT IS IT ART?
The Israel Museum marked its 50th birthday in a unique fashion – an afterhours (8 PM to 3 AM) happy hour dubbed “Contact Point<.” The happening included an invitation to the public to take in the museum’s collection catch-as-catch can in an activity in the spirit of speed dating: dashing through the museum in 20 minutes rather than the three or four hours it would take to walk through all the exhibits. The less athletic could opt for a guided tour with a leap of the imagination: viewing the art collection blindfolded or on tape without actually seeing the objects. Among the other attractions, a 3-D printer reproduced Israeli sculptor Yitzhak Dantziger’s iconic work ‘Nimrod’ over and over in molten plastic… (Yediot)
* What else is in store? Apparently the Israel Museum is doing some belated spring cleaning, offering a host of nutty paraphernalia gathering dust, to be ‘sold’ at public auction during the happening. Among the collector items, a jar of dust that settled on the Dead Sea Scrolls between the years 1965 and 2015. The cost? The Museum will settle for a bit of elbow grease: gestures that benefit the public, in this case, vacuuming the auction hall in exchange for the jar of dust. Other items up for grabs include a gilded fame that once held a priceless Picasso painting…will be go to whomever can best reproduce the original - “Four Nudes in a Harem” - on the spot.
WEDDING FAVORS
The Jewish imperative ‘to bring joy to a bride and groom’ took a strange turn at a wedding hall at the Kanot junction, just south of Gadera. Anat had lost her mother two years ago; when her father passed away shortly before her wedding to Lior Solomon most of the guests assumed the wedding had been called off and only a dozen people showed up.
A Facebook post from one of the people present called on anyone within a 20 km. radius to save the day and bring joy to a bride and groom, adding “no need for a present, no need for money (sic. a cash gift) – just come and fill the hall.” Two thousand celebrants showed up although it was already 10 PM when the post was sent out.
Many nevertheless left cash gifts at the entrance to cover the cost of the wedding as is customary at Israeli weddings…many checks labeled ‘cash’ because the well-wishers who came to do a mitzvah didn’t even know the names of the bride and groom. (Ynet)