Even with the fire hopefully ceasing between Israel and Hamas, the crisis leaves me with a nagging question: How can I help Israel?
I could write my congressman, attend a rally for Israel, or read "54 Ways You Can Help Israel," which suggests one way to help out is to buy Israeli products.
My congresswoman already seems supportive of Israel, and I am not much a rally guy; but I do like shopping. Especially with Chanukah less than three weeks away, I am thinking that it's an opportune time to support Israel manufactures by making a purchase.
A good place to start is a website called "Buy Israel Goods" that takes you city by city to lists of merchants that sell products produced by Israeli companies.
Though I did have some shopping to do, I wondered: Could retail therapy really work for Israel?
In answer, the website explained: "Collectively, the frequent purchase of Israeli products will have a broad and significant impact on the Israeli economy and its citizens."
OK. But did they have anything I would want to buy? I'm already full up on seder plates, and I can only wear one tallit at a time.
To my surprise, through the site I found that in Los Angeles I could buy hardware and items for the home manufactured by Israeli companies at Lowes, Osh, Sears, and Home Depot. These stores carry items such as toolboxes by Zag, bathroom décor items from Lotemplast, and cabinets and fishing organizers by Keter.
At other nearby stores like Walmart, Target, Pottery Barn, Costco and Bloomingdales, among others, I could also find household goods like pillowcases, sheets and quilts by Beat of Knit, swiveling wall mounts for TV's by Barkan, and rugs by Caesarea Creations.
But it's hard to give bathroom décor or TV wall mounts as a gift. What if I wanted something less mass market, more designerish?
Representing a more individualistic Israeli design sense are a growing number off small and middle size design businesses, often based around the work of a single Israeli artist or artist couple, which are also now available either in retail outlets or online.
Such a company is Kakadu Design: a Jerusalem based company created by husband and wife artist team Aharon and Reut Shahar that sells wooden furniture and accessories.
Since we already have one of their quirky and colorful floor mats, and a pomegranate framed mirror that greets people who visit our home, I can relate that their work is a wonderful way keep underfoot and in mind's eye Israel's creativity.
Two other designers who live and work in Israel, whose work recently caught my attention at a local museum store, are Mey and Boaz Kahn of Studio Kahn. The couple has created a line of ceramic products that they call, "Fragile," that are designed and manufactured as a one piece unit that the user breaks apart to create a finished piece.
One item in the line, for example, is a ceramic set of salt and pepper shakers that come connected and you snap apart. They also have a kind of build- it-yourself menorah, designed so that each night of the holiday, the user breaks off one of the candle holders and places it in the base. They also sell a necklace whose connected parts first look like wings--which when snapped apart, turned and reconnected, form a heart.
The products have a whimsical feel to them, and by design seem to represent the fragility of not only of what surrounds us in our daily lives, but of rituals and relationships.
Looking up from my shopping, they reminded me that Israel can be a fragile thing too.
Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate.In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."
the crisis leaves me with a nagging question: How can I help Israel?
