Ordinary bad things

You never think about the ordinary bad things when it comes to living in Israel.

Years before we came here, I read about a family who made aliyah, and then one of their sons was killed riding a bike.

It really made me stop and think.  These kinds of things happen in Israel?  Ordinary, bad stuff, like bike accidents, car accidents, slipping, falling, all the normal terrifying things that can happen to anybody, anywhere in the world?

Yes, sadly, it’s true.

It’s the extraordinary tragedies that people expect here, and then the everyday, ordinary bad things kind of sneak up instead.

When we first made aliyah, I slept with a tichel (head scarf) handy every night, in case I had to get up and make a run for the shelter in the middle of the night.  True, things were “hotter” then in the north, with Syria making all kinds of threats, and Israel getting in the way as it does. 

But also, I just expected it.  This was Israel, after all.

Gradually, I let down my defenses.  The extraordinary bad things that one expects from watching too much news simply weren’t happening.

Now, our gas masks are

Why “Aliyah” is one of the hottest baby names in America

Here’s one fact that maybe you didn’t know about aliyah:  it’s an incredibly popular baby name in the U.S.

Since this blog is dedicated to covering All Things Aliyah, I thought I’d explore this phenomenon.  Maybe I’ll inspire someone to choose the name for their baby!

In the year 2011, “Aliyah” was actually the 133rd most popular name in the U.S.  It beat out far more common and predictable names, like – um – Jennifer.  And also classics like Mckenzie, Haley, Michelle and Stephanie.

Here’s the name Aliyah in Hebrew letters:

עֲלִיָּה

When writing it without vowels, people often include two lettter “yuds,” like this:

עלייה

The Hebrew meaning of the name is absolutely beautiful.  It means “going up,” “ascent” or “rising” (though here in Israel, this could refer to a spiritual ascent or just gas prices!). 

The main meaning of the word, for Jews all over the world is the “going up” involved in moving to the Land of Israel.  Which is, in fact, what this blog is all about.  A secondary meaning is “going up” for an honour in the synagogue, such as when people are called to read from the Torah.

But mainly, those are not the reason that people are giving the name Aliyah and related names to their babies in record numbers.

Most people are still naming their babies in tribute to the dead superstar singer Aaliyah Dana Houghton, better known just as Aaliyah (with two A’s at the beginning). 

But now that it has been a few years since her death, many more people are picking the name simply for its beautiful sound or meaning. 

This is a name with quite a few variants.  Some other common variations are Aliya, without the H on the end, Aleah, and the Hawaiian Alia, who apparently was a princess, and which means “great joy.” 

Creepy Dolls Museum

I’m sure you can find creepy olde-tyme dolls anywhere; it’s just somehow charming and reassuring that you can find them in Israel, too.

We found some really creepy ones as part of an exhibit of historical toys in the otherwise quite interesting Madatech – Museum of Science and Technology in Haifa, to which we were admitted FREE!! thanks to our still-valid Ontario Science Centre museum membership, which reciprocates with many other science museums around the world. 

After enjoying the science museum for a couple of hours – perhaps the subject of another post! – we happened to wander into this room, which is the creepy-doll exhibit.  The exhibit features this charming poster in English and Arabic; I didn’t spot a Hebrew version, but perhaps it was elsewhere.

Elisheva in particular was deeply tickled by this invitation to go “back in time… to a time when playing with toys meant taking them down off the shelf, and not downloading them from the internet.”  Hmm… is that really what “playing with toys” has come to mean to our kids today?

[Although it seems to me that if you got a good enough 3-d printer, you could indeed download your toys from the Internet, or at least, printable schematics for print-your-own assemble-at-home toys.]

In any event, I’d hate to mock “toys that succeeded to survive, and thus enable a glance at toys… manufactured by… craftsmen, carpenters and peasants…”

Yes, these are truly a peasant-crafted wonder, with their strange, beseeching expressions, cast in plaster or rubber or china, bodies stuffed with sawdust or horsehair or something else similarly historic, each one more precious and/or creepy than the last. 

Can’t you just hear them screaming out at you from the pages of history???

 

Here’s a motley group of mainly rubber dollies…

I guess it’s not fair to single out this one because she’s a puppet and her mouth is weird cuz it has to open and close.  Tough; I did it anyway.    

Kiss, kiss?  Just a little bit psycho dollies…   

 

 

 

 

Very busy dollies – yo-yo’ing…

Hosting a tea party…

Or just hanging out with a very similar but shorter friend… 

 

  

 

 

This doll didn’t look like she could be trusted with her scissors, quite…

“Hey, I’d better get off these train tracks before someone runs me down!!!”

“To infinity and beyond!”

And one final deeply flawed attempt at dollie winsomeness: 

Mainly, I think we all left the exhibit convinced that despite random moments of coolness in the past and despite how that meddlesome Internet spoils the fun and innocence of children’s play, most toys today (except for the very cheapest, which includes many of the lower- and medium-end ones sold here in Israel) are better – cuter, better-working, longer-lasting and funner – than toys a long time ago.

(Note:  if you are making aliyah OR spending large amounts of time in Israel, check for deals like this because FREE!! is a great price!  This membership is still good until December and also gets us into the Weizmann museum which is a shlep away in Rehovot but apparently includes some great stuff including dinosaurs.  I will also here point out that my friend Shira mentioned this long before we made aliyah and I totally forgot, then thought of it “all on my own”!)

Even if you have no membership from outside of Israel, entrance to Madatech, all of these dolls included!, is a deeply discounted ₪20 for new olim within the first year of aliyah!