I once weighed calling this column “Never Mind the Times” but chose “Chelm-on-the-Med” because in so may ways, Israeli public and private life seem modeled after Chelm, an actual Jewish town in Poland that for generations served as the butt of Yiddish folk humor.

    Nobody knows when or why Chelm got tagged with the role of being ‘a paradise filled with life-embracing fools’, but reading in the Hebrew papers about a enterprising security guard who chose to hold up the very bank he was hired to protect against suicide bombers and a court ruling on a divorce settlement requiring the divorcee to pay his former spouse one pregnant goat a year for the next 35 years – raising serious questions over ‘who got who’s goat’ – I knew if there truly was a Chelm, it was here at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean – in Israel.

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2. This stuff sounds familiar. Haven’t I seen this somewhere else?

    Uh-huh.

    Chelm-on-the-Med is not new. It ran for eight years (1987-1994) in the international news monthly Israel Scene, under the title “Gleanings”, then for a short time in the Jerusalem Post as “Fine Print”. And some Israeli aberrations reported in the press got addressed in a Friday op-ed column laced with satire called “Sabbath Piece of Mind” that I once wrote for The Nation z”l in the late 1980s, and the Hebrew news weekly Haolam Hazeh z"l  in the early 1990s.

    Vignettes from the Israel Scene column were often used as fillers in Jewish papers in the USA, and the column was reprinted in a host of pro-Israel Christian Zionist newsletters, including Bridges for Peace and The Vineyard.

    So if you are middle aged or older – yes, I’m back.

    Now resurrected under the title “Chelm-on-the-Med”, my columns seek to give those who don’t read Hebrew a taste of daily life in Israel that is not a personal blog.

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3. Can my local Jewish paper run your column?

    By all means, recommend it! Tell the managing editor:

    Until further notice, any commercial print media – Jewish or other – is free to run one single vignette per issue as a ‘filler’ – provided that attribution is given (© courtesy of Daniella Ashkenazy, www.chelm-on-the-med.com) and that no changes whatsoever are made in the text.

    The full column is available for syndication: Any commercial print media has permission to run up to five full columns to ‘test reader response’ – – under the same credit provisos and free of charge. If after that, a paper or periodical wants to run Chelm-on-the-Med in full on a regular basis, they should contact me directly about syndication rights.

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4.We’re Zionist Christians. Can we reprint your column in our church newsletter? What about synagogue newsletters?

    If the newsletter is non-commercial, you may run one single vignette per issue as an enhancement or ‘filler’ – provided that attribution is given (© courtesy of Daniella Ashkenazy – www.chelm-on-the-med.com) and that no changes whatsoever are made in the text. And please send me a copy by snail mail (D. Ashkenazy, Kfar Warburg 70998, Israel). I’d love to see it.

    If you would like to run the entire column, contact me first to receive written permission.

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5. We’re campus activists. Can we use your material in our Israel advocacy work to break down stereotypes or to disarm detractors with humor?

    Pro-Israel advocacy groups, on or off campus, are free to use any vignette in the course of their work on campus. In written material, please add a footnote as to the source with a link (© courtesy of Daniella Ashkenazy, www.chelm-on-the-med.com).

    We suggest you begin by undermining images of Israel as a ‘militaristic' country with the true tale of an Israeli soldier whose ultimate Jewish mother snuck into boot camp every night to accompany her son on guard duty because he was afraid of the dark, and another young man who served three years of conscript service as ‘IDF magician'. Or undermine stereotypes of Israel as ‘a country filled with religious fanatics' with the tale of an orthodox rabbi who doesn't ride on the Sabbath who decided the best way to serve the needs of two congregations on opposite sides of Caesarea was to press into service a pair of rollerblades. Or a Chief Rabbi who issued a ‘Never on Sunday' directive to religious courts hinting divorce proceedings filed on a Sunday were probably the work of couples overworked by too much togetherness during a very long Sabbath

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6. Won’t stories such as these only add to Israel’s bad image?

    Israel is a real country. It has its share of silly politicians and Kafka-like ordinances, dumb two-bit crooks and weird court cases, people with harebrained schemes, and even its share of hookers – Jews and Arabs, religious and secular, newcomers and old-timers…like everywhere else.

    Painting Israel as black or white – whether just the good parts or just the bad parts – is dehumanizing. Moreover, there are a host of stories that could take place only in Israel that will touch or amaze readers – for instance, the time when the listening audience to an early-morning radio program were asked to make up an ad-hoc funeral party. The unusual request broadcasted on the Voice of Israel came from a kindly Tel-Aviv neighbor of the deceased, after the woman died without any surviving kin. Seventy mourners showed up, coming from as far away as Gedara - thirty kilometers to the south, and Natanya - thirty kilometers to the north, underscoring that being a party to a death in Israel is not necessarily an invitation to a murder. It may even be a mitzvah.

7. There are countless advocacy groups out there writing about every possible aspect of Israeli life. Why are you doing this?

    I worked for Myths & Facts for 3½ years as an investigative journalist writing dead-serious advocacy material – two books, countless white papers and op-eds, but I’m aware what a limited effect such arguments have. Yes, www.Israel21c.org and others try to dilute news focusing on conflict with stories of Israeli technological breakthroughs and cultural life There are countless personal blogs – but no one wants to report that Israel’s minister of interior sought to make headlines by mesmerizing a chicken, leaving the bird on its back without so much as a squawk of protest, looking like an oversized zapped cockroach. Or that the same week lardheads at an Akko dog food plant chucked 200 metric tons of fat down the drain instead of into the cooking vats, rendering 55 M NIS ($13.7 M) of damage to a new sewage treatment plant inaugurated three weeks earlier.

    Humor is the Jews’ oldest and most effective weapon and it’s high time we began using it to re-brand Israel as a regular member of the Family of Nations!

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8. What will my kids think?! I want them to be proud of the Jewish state.

    A lot of things that make some adults uncomfortable will be viewed as very cool by adolescents. In fact, I think the zany, irreverent intriguing encounter with Israel that Chelm-on-the-Med offers will make Jewish kids think Israel is a very neat place – a vast improvement from the image of a gloomy and dangerous…and yes, dead serious and humorless ‘tight-ass’ country that focus groups have found.

    The only question that remains is - who will elicit the biggest smirk: The group of youngsters who in 1990 decided to make a quick profit by turning public garages in empty office buildings into one-night-stand standing-room-only drive-in discos between 10 PM and 4 AM, charging entrance fees at the gate then blending into the night. Or partially-unidentified ‘benchmarkers' who in 2007 began attaching little engraved plaques to benches along posh Rothschild Boulevard in Tel-Aviv - declaring "Amnon's Bench' or ‘Hilah's and El'ad's Bench', leaving city officials scratching their heads at this strange graffiti, and police weighing whether to stake out the benches to try and nab the young pranksters...should they actually try to grab a seat.

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10.I’m an Israeli. I saw an awesome piece in Hebrew you would love. Can I send it to you?

    Sure, you can send them to me in an attachment (scanned or jpg) or in the body of the text at e-mail: chelmonthemed AT gmail DOT com or submit the originals or photocopies by snail mail. Please note the name of the paper and the date on the clipping and mail to: Daniella Ashkenazy, POB #6, Kfar Warburg 70998 ISRAEL.

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NOTE: All stories cited in the FAQs can be found on the website, either in the Archives or under ‘Classic Oldies'