Viva the cottage cheese intifada!

One of my sons maintains his sanity by allotting less than 1 percent of his attention to Israeli and regional politics. But when I returned from a trip overseas last week he chided me for buying cottage cheese.
“Don’t you know there’s a cottage cheese boycott?” he asked indignantly. “Dairy products are grossly overpriced.”

I must admit that news of what our local media call the “cottage cheese intifada” did not reach me in Albania. The Albanians have their own problems and interests, such as finding out what an Israeli journalist visiting their country thinks of it. Less then 24 hours after I’d set foot in the southern city of Saranda I was interviewed by the local TV station. Six days later, a half-page article with my picture, all based on the TV interview, appeared in what I was told is the country’s “serious” newspaper.

Albanians don’t have time for cottage cheese wars. Nor do our Egyptian neighbors, 1,000 of whom were reportedly wounded this week in the continuation of their uprising in Taghrir Square, or our Syrian neighbors, hundreds of whom have been killed, on orders of their president, while protesting.

It’s nice to know that Israelis will rise up for a cause, after being glued to their armchairs for so long. But for cottage cheese?

They also serve who stand and sing

It was okay for Israel to send the transsexual diva Dana International as its representative this year to the Eurovision song contest—watched by some 125 million people. And that was not her first time at Eurovision.

Now there’s a flap over the scheduled performance of singer Harel Skaat as part of a salute to National Service volunteers. Most of the volunteers are young women who declare that they are religiously observant and thus are exempt from compulsory military service. Skaat came out of the closet in 2010.

The daily Ha’aretz reported that a rabbi and a Knesset member said they had received many complaints from women in National Service about Skaat’s scheduled performance. But Sar-Shalom Jerbi, the director of National Service, was unmoved. Apparently, finding a singer who had completed military or national service was no easy task, and that was Jerby’s main criterion.

According to Ha’aretz, Skaat’s PR commented that this would not be his first performance before the women of the National Service and that he was delighted to be doing so again.

And now for something positive: Book your ride

Bus stops in the northern city of Haifa now have a delightful addition: shelves with free books. Ha’aretz reports that artist Daniel Shoshan, a senior lecturer in the Technion’s Architecture Faculty, and recent graduate Amit Matalon have been putting up the shelves for the past few months in the hopes of creating a free lending network.

The artists plan to continue the project in other cities around the country, and requests are already pouring in.

Text copyright 2011 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text may be used without written permission of the author.

Words that made my jaw drop

How many fetuses is too many?
I phoned my gynecologist this morning to make an appointment for a routine checkup. When I told the secretary I wanted to make an appointment, she did not bother with any preliminaries but asked briskly, “How many fetuses?”

That’s a question she would do better to ask my daughter-in-law.

Star-gazers and zodiac-worshipers
In my search last week for a sufficiently kosher restaurant for the meeting of a group of colleagues in Jerusalem, I came across a site that warned about a particular restaurant that claimed to be strictly kosher. The site stated that acum start work there in the morning before the kashrut supervisor arrives.

Acum is a Hebrew acronym for ovdei cochavim umazalot (worshipers of stars and zodiac signs)—idolators, in short. I doubt that we have many such star-gazers in Jerusalem, though I have seen a young woman (probably a migrant worker) singing hymns to the rising sun.

The site was obviously referring to Palestinian workers, who are almost certainly Muslims. Israeli PR keeps referring to Jerusalem as sacred to the “three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” In terms of kashrut, then, it seems that the real objection is not to the possibility that the workers are idolators, but rather that they are non-Jews. Why not say so?

When the ball is in your court
Any English-language journalist in Israel can tell you that the lowest court in the country is the magistrates court. That must be a consequence of the 31-year British Mandate in Palestine.

Yet the Hebrew name for the lowest court is, literally, court of peace. And so it appears, in translation, on a directional sign in the Russian Compound in the city center. That name may be a holdover from the Ottoman period, which lasted until 1917, because Turkey, like some other countries, does have courts of peace.

It makes one wonder whether the higher courts are any less dedicated to seeking peace between litigants than the lowest court.

Israeli diva takes back seat to Azeri duo in song contest
Dana International—winner of the 1998 Eurovision pop song contest with her song “Diva”—made another pitch for the title this year in Düsseldorf, this time unsuccessfully. The flamboyant Israeli singer, whose sex reassignment surgery was the object of intense media interest after her 1998 win, has been involved with the contest since 1995, when she came in second in the Israeli pre-selection.

Israel has won the contest three times: in 1978 (“Abanibi”), 1979 “Hallelujah”), and 1998 (“Diva”). This information should be useful when you place your bet for the winner in next year’s contest. The final competition has some 125 million viewers each year.

Azerbaijan, represented by the duo Eldar and Nigar (also known as Eli and Nikki), was this year’s winner and this was the first win for a country in the Caucasus. Next year’s finals will probably be held in Baku.

Text copyright 2011 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text may be used without written permission of the author.