Postscripts; slices of life (short items)

23/1/91 (during the Gulf War)

GETTING THREE 3-month-old babies into their respective gas tents is a feat that severely tested the mettle of myself and my wife. The first - and longest -alert early Friday morning had the five of us cooped up in a small sealed room with three cribs, three mamatim, four chairs, all the relevant paraphernalia, and as if that wasn't enough, we had with us our night nurse and my wife's mother-in-law.
    The heart-wrenching act of forcing suddenly-awakened babies into the plastic cages was compounded by their obvious objections, their pathetic wails drowning out even the piercing wail of the air-raid sirens. We couldn't do anything to subdue them because try as we did we couldn't manipulate the inflexible plastic glove to place their pacifiers in their little mouths.
    But then Donna, the youngest of the lot - and the vocally unhappiest - lost patience with my efforts and found her own solution. With the pacifier out of reach and the confounded plastic glove hovering above her face, she raised her head, grabbed the plastic thumb between her gums and contentedly sucked on that until she fell asleep.

20/7/01

My colleague Sam Orbaum, an inventive cook, added a tablespoon of peanut butter to his regular hamburger mix and reports that the results were enthusiastically received by his children.

    Try it, he recommends, but warns: 'Don't tell your kids what's in it beforehand.'

                                  (Judy Montagu)

Self-promotion

  Some of the best ads ever placed in The Jerusalem Post were the paper's own subscription promotion ads.
Between 1983 and 1988, a page-length two-column space was reserved every week for a clever ad describing all that readers would miss if they missed a copy of the Post. The ads were so witty - incorporating everything from the real to the surrealistic - that some people cut them out and saved them, while others wrote fan letters to the anonymous copywriter. Only after he brought that period of his illustrious career to a close did the man with the funny pen, Sam Orbaum, allow the paper's editors to reveal his identity.

                                  (Carl Schrag)

29/2/00

    His colleagues have always known he was creative, but none of them had given him the title of Creator with a capital C till last Saturday night. It was then that The Jerusalem Post's Sam Orbaum launched his new stage career at the opening ceremony of the Eighth International Jewish Media Conference. Orbaum played God in a skit starring comedian Tuvia Tsafir.

    Orbaum wrote the script for the entire opening program, including two skits for Tsafir. One of them was a dialogue between Herzl and the Almighty. During their first practice session, Tsafir decided his 'ghostwriter' would be ideally cast as the Lord. Saith Orbaum: 'I've been assuming the role all week.' Let's just hope that it doesn't go to his head.

 (Greer Fay Cashman, in Grapevine)

THE GRANDELS, Pavel and Anna, recently arrived from the Soviet Union. In virtually no time at all, they came up against a Bezek computer bungle.

    For a solution they were referred to Jerusalem attorney Jonathan Livny, who volunteers his services to help Soviet newcomers.

    Pavel visited Livny at his office and explained his problem in a mixture of broken Hebrew and Yiddish, and Livny promised to take up the matter of the phone bill. Pavel turned to leave, stopped, and asked Livny if he was a sabra. The lawyer replied that he was.

    Curious, Pavel asked him: "Then how do you know Yiddish?"

    Livny explained that his mother's family had spoken Yiddish as well as Russian and English.

    "Where did your family come from?" Pavel asked. Livny explained that his grandparents had gone to England from Russia at the beginning of World War I.

    "Where in Russia?"

    "A tiny village in the Ukraine, so small it wouldn't even be a dot on a map. It was called Zlatopol," Livny responded.

    Pavel gasped. "What was the family name?" he asked hoarsely.

    Livny dismissed the question. The name, he explained, was pure Ukrainian, and not what one would expect a Jewish family to be called. The name, he said, was Khromchenko.

    Pavel clutched the office desk, stunned. "Incredible!" he cried, "Incredible! My wife's family came from Zlatopol - and their name was Khromchenko!"

    A disbelieving Anna Grandel was swiftly united with family she never knew existed - the last thing she could have expected when her husband went to settle a phone bill.