9/6/95

Forgotten Moments in Israeli History

May 14, 1948: Paula Ben-Gurion tells her husband it's past his bedtime and staying up till midnight is out of the question; whatever it is can wait until tomorrow.

March 12, 1949: Umm Rashrash (later renamed Eilat) is captured. The captors send a communique to military headquarters: "Victory. Don't know why we bothered. Nothing here but nude Swedes."

February 27, 1950: Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset, promising to abolish the military.

October 9, 1951: Abstractionists open their first exhibit, in Tel Aviv. The public hates it. Art critic Nanu Shazbat pans the popular style, saying: "Jewish it's not."

November 14, 1952: Albert Einstein declines the offer to become Israel's second president, at least until he can prove scientifically that Israel exists.

February 8, 1954: Author Franz Dafka publishes ג€œThe Pakid.ג€ It is from this classic that the term "Dafkaesque" is coined.

January 26, 1955: Oil is discovered at a Heletz exploratory well. It is not, as first thought, shale oil, but stale oil, dumped there by a local felafel vendor.

January 31, 1955: Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset, promising amnesty for David Ben-Gurion. He warns that if he is not elected, he will end his political career.

June 2, 1956: Archeologists digging near Beersheba announce to a stunned world that they've discovered Joseph's coat of many colors. Haredim stage a violent demonstration, claiming the coat has Jewish bones in them.

December 11, 1958: Dudu "Voodoo" Vanunu becomes the first Israeli to run the width of the country without breaking a sweat.

September 7, 1959: Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset, promising to extend the school day beyond 1 p.m., to reflood the Hula, create jobs in Gaza and put a computer in every home. No one knows what the hell he's going on about.

October 16, 1959: Safed Chief Rabbi Haim-Yankel Shlivovitz says he does not recognize the conversions of Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor, and forbids his eldest son Avrumele from marrying either of them.  

May 11, 1960: Archeologists announce the discovery in a Dead Sea cave of 1,800-year-old letters despatched by Bar-Kochba, one of which, oddly, is an aerogram.

July 14, 1960: Mazal Mizrahi of Megiddo, believing widespread rumors that the world would end on this day, buys a new washing machine on credit. The rumors prove to be false, and, disappointed, she returns the machine to the store. 

October 10, 1961: A diplomatic crisis occurs when Burmese president U Nu calls president Yitzhak Ben-Zvi to wish him a happy new year. It is a bad line.

    Ben-Zvi: "Who's speaking?"

    Nu: "U."

    Ben-Zvi: "Yes, I know I'm speaking, who am I speaking to?"

    Nu: "It's me, U."

    "U who?"

    "U Nu."

    "If I knew who I wouldn't ask you."

    "I knew that."

    "I know you knew."

    "Yes, I know you know U Nu, I know you too. But did you know U Nu knew your new year?"

    At this point, Ben-Zvi, exasperated, forgets his manners: "Yeah, nu?"

    The Burmese president, incensed, hangs up and immediately calls the secretary-general of the United Nations. "UN? U Nu. U Thant please."

June 29, 1962: Work is temporarily halted on Israel's first skyscraper, the Shalom Tower in Tel Aviv, when a mysterous condition affects the workers causing them to babble in unknown dialects.

March 13, 1963: Moshe Dayan joins the spirit of Purim by wearing his eye patch on the wrong eye.

January 5, 1964: Pope Paul VI becomes the first (and still only) visiting dignitary to tour the holy sites without having to be told to put on a kipa.

July 1, 1964: The Beatles' planned appearance in Israel is canceled by a ministerial committee, which arranges a replacement concert by "The Short and Curlies," a barbershop klezmer quartet from New Jersey.

December 22, 1964: Shimon Peres secretly meets Yasser Arafat for the first time.

August 17, 1965: Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset, promising reincarnation for anyone who votes for him, and eternal damnation for everyone else.

June 10, 1965: Baruch Onandoff invents the automatic stairway light-switch.

September 26, 1965: Six weeks after work began on a new Tel Aviv bus station, it's still not completed. A bus passenger complains that "we'll see a man on the moon before this thing is finished."

March 24, 1966: The first television program is broadcast. It is a lesson in mathematics. Everybody agrees it is boring, and what is needed is a second channel.

April 3, 1966: A bagel baker and amateur minting enthusiast, Simon Bar-Simon, invents the asimon.

June 6, 1966: Lod mystic Ziggy Jacobovitch predicts Jerusalem will be reunited under Jewish sovereignty within one year. He is wrong, by 24 hours.

October 30, 1967: Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset. However, it is not an election year. His supporters suggest maybe it's time to retire from politics and give younger candidates a chance. Zunenshein says he'll try one more time.

September 29, 1968: Work commences on a Jerusalem subway system. The mayor, sinking the ceremonial first shovel, unexpectedly scoops up a third century kneecap, and the project is halted.

July 20, 1969: On the day Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon, Baruch Epstein of Givatayim is told it will take at least 10 years until he can get a telephone installed.

July 21, 1969: The PLO reveals Neil Armstrong is a Mossad agent and that the Zionists are intending to settle the moon. The UN condemns Israel.

January 14, 1974: Mind-bending psychic Uri Geller displays his powers by compelling Golda Meir to suddenly buy a new hat.

May 24, 1975: Prime minister Rabin urges Israelis to go live in Yamit, saying that his government views the Sinai settlement to be "as vital to the future of the State of Israel as Hebron and the Golan."

December 29, 1976: Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset, promising to bring the 1996 Olympic Games to the Old City of Jerusalem.

April 7, 1977: Maccabi Tel Aviv wins the European basketball championships, and, a few minutes later, prime minister Rabin abruptly resigns, fueling speculation that he had wagered with Shimon Peres on the game, and lost.

January 10, 1978: El Al announces plans for twice-daily flights from Rehovot to Rishon Lezion.   

February 23, 1980: Pundak Mermelstein, the curator of the Israel Museum's numismatic department, is arrested on charges of buying a pair of pants with embezzled funds. The tailor's suspicions were aroused because, on the very day the shekel made its debut, Mermelstein was paying with worn coins that, according to the shopkeeper, "Looked 4,000 years old if they were a day old." 

March 14, 1981:  Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset, promising to institute  time zones.

April 23, 1962: Zevulun Tchiktchak of Acre becomes the first Bukharan immigrant to do sponja while his wife takes a nap. The neighborhood is scandalized.

August 3, 1983: Wedding day for Vashti Ogrevitch, the ugliest woman in the country. But the officiating rabbi calls it off when the groom, Oizer Schmaltzbroit, fails to smash the glass under the huppa. The glass, it is later discovered, was a Duralex.

June 22, 1984: Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset, promising to annex the eastern Mediterranean, drain it and establish settlements. PLO leader Yasser Arafat protests, pointing out that Palestinians lived there the last time it was dry land. 

July 8, 1984: The UN condemns the Afro-Syrian Rift, contending it's Israel's fault.

December 30, 1984: Miklosh Bozmeg buys a Nahariya apartment from Omer Sampson, paying the entire sum in cash. The transaction is problematic. Bozmeg forks over several billion shekels in small bills worth a few cents each, because the country does not issue anything bigger. Sampson counts slowly, which, with hyper-inflation as rampant as it is, increases the price of the apartment by 1 percent per hour. Bozmeg complains that at this rate he'll be paying for the rest of his life even without a mortgage. They get into an argument. Suddenly, there is a devaluation. Each side calls in a lawyer, an accountant, an agent, a bank manager. But before everyone can arrive, the currency becomes extinct when the Treasury introduces the New Shekel, dropping three zeros off the old one. Sampson, who in any case still thinks in terms of the old lira, thinks he is being duped, and calls off the deal. Both sides pay off their lawyers, accountants, agents and bank managers, which amounts to the same as the cost of the house. 

March 14, 1988: Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset, promising to keep all his promises. No one believes him.

February 20, 1985: Boaz Schvantz breaks the Petah Tikva indoor record for sunflower-seed spitting, firing off a shell 12.64 meters from one end of the Hasharon Hospital emergency room to the other. Later that year he gets through to the final four in the national championships, but is outspat by Moshe "Ptui" Pinchuk of Givat Olga, a semi-professional spitter who was later disqualified for injecting steroids into his tongue.

August 2, 1992: Shimmy Zunenshein runs for Knesset, threatening to emigrate if he doesn't win.