Miriam Schwab of Illuminea has a great overview of the non-profit sector in Israel. Taking stats from The Marker business magazine (I’d link to it here, but it’s only in Hebrew), she paints an interesting picture of Israelis’ attitudes to charity and to non-profit organizations.
Link is here, well worth the read.
Tickets go on sale today for Paul McCartney’s September 25 concert in Tel Aviv, but there’s a small catch: Cheap seats are expected to go for about NIS 500, with a price map stretching all the way up to NIS 10,000 for something called a “VIP Pass.” According to the Hebrew-language MSN website, entertainment journalists and music critics will pay full price for the privilege of working the show, which will take place in open-air HaYarkon Park. Ticket revenues are expected to bring producers more than NIS 10 million.
Now, call me soft, but poverty statistics (1.6 million Israelis live under the official poverty line) and unemployment numbers (the number of job seekers in Israel has risen in each of the past three months). Food service NGOs say they are buckling under the triple whammy of a poor international economy, which leads to fewer donations, a weak US dollar, which limits the spending power of the donations non-profits do receive, and increased demand caused by the international financial downturn. And Israelis are expected to shell out thousands of shekels for one concert?
One afterthought: Several years ago, McCartney was forced to cancel a concert in Melbourne, Australia after exorbitant ticket prices led to slow ticket sales. McCartney was able to attribute the cancellation to “a mark of respect” to victims of a terrorist attack in Bali two weeks earlier in which 202 people died, including 88 Australians, but even organizers admitted they’d overstepped the realm of possibility and excluded the bulk of McCartney’s fan base from the concert.
Could the same happen here?
Jonathan Bloom has featured Israel once again on his blog, Wasted Food, this time about water issues and a horrible photo of rotting tomatoes. As usual, Bloom’s thoughts are insightful and the post worth reading.
Israel features prominently in this New York Times story about water issues and the Middle East. Turns out that Israeli farmers lead the world in agricultural production per drop of water, treating sewer water for re-use on farms, desalination and more. The article even says Israel is addressing water issues by cutting down supplies of fresh water to farms.
The real kicker? Israeli expertise in water conservation and food production is now a model to be followed for much of the Arab world. Full article can be read here.
Good news for a change: Overall consumer prices remained close to static in June, with the Consumer Price Index rising just 0.1 percent for the month, far short of the 0.5 percent The strong drop in prices for fresh fruits and vegetables made an important contribution to the overall statistic; if one ignores the price of fresh produce the entire index rose by 0.6 percent over the month of May.
Fresh fruits and vegetables led the index, falling a collective 10.3 percent as summer fruits like grapes, watermelon and apricots came into season, offsetting rises in clothing, gas. Taking fresh produce out of the equation, the CPI would have risen 0.6 percent; tomatoes alone brought the index down by a half-percent. Overall, food prices rose 0.4 percent in June.
Other steep drops in June included:
|
Product |
Percent change |
|
salted cheese |
-5.1 |
|
fresh chicken |
-2.7 |
|
frozen goods |
-2.2 |
|
pasta |
-1.8 |
|
prepared meals |
-1.8 |
|
white flour |
-1.7 |
|
beer |
-1.5 |
|
fresh grains |
-1.3 |
|
cocoa |
-1.1 |
On the other side, the following products recorded sharp price hikes:
|
Product |
Percent Change |
|
Frozen chicken |
9.1 |
|
Margarine |
4.7 |
|
ice Cream |
4.1 |
|
Mayonnaise |
4.0 |
|
red meat |
3.4 |
|
dairy products |
2.4 |
|
tehina |
2.4 |
|
meat products |
2.3 |
|
salt |
2.1 |
|
candy |
1.7 |
|
wine |
1.7 |
|
rice |
1.5 |
|
coffee |
1.2 |
|
meals at work |
1.1 |
In addition, wholesale food prices rose 0.4 percent in June, with only chicken (-3.9 percent), ice cream (-2.4 percent) and mass-production cookies registering price drops over the previous month. Other wholesale goods registered net increases, including red meat (12.9 percent), prepared salads (2.8 percent), margarine (6.7 percent), mayonnaise (3.7 percent), tehina/humus spreads (2.6 ), wheat bran (7.6), pita/bread rolls (5.4), chocolate(1.6), soy oil (3.8), other oils (1.4), frozen goods (1 percent), soup mix (2.4), instant coffee (1.3), tea (8.6) and prepared sauces (1.3).
All of this is not to say that things are completely rosy. Since the beginning of 2008 the CPI has risen 2.3 percent (produce not included), and in the past 12 months the rise has been 4.6 percent. But it always pays to highlight good news when it happens.
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The New York Times has an interesting piece this morning about the brown plant hopper, a miniscule insect that is threatening a significant percentage of the world’s rice crop, and about the failure of Western governments and the World Bank to support agricultural research programs to increase bug-resistant crop production around the world.
Closer to home, Ha’aretz gives a good summary of current trends in the rice industry and what they mean for Israel: soaring prices, tax hikes and reduced supply because Asian countries such as Thailand and India are restricting exports. Bloomberg dissects the impact of the international crisis on the Middle East.
The staggering thing about it all is that worldwide rice production is actually growing, and that 2008 is expected show record yields around the world, from Asia to South America to Europe and more. Seems like a basic market economics, no? Increased supply is supposed to lead to a drop in prices.
Seems not. According to Concepcion Calpe, a rice expert at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, prices for the staple grain are expected to remain at or near current levels for most of 2008, if not beyond.
“(Prices will) remain extremely firm, at least until the third quarter of 2008, unless restrictions exports are eased in the coming months,” she said. “For prices to fall, favorable weather conditions must prevail in the coming months and governments relax rice export restrictions. Even then, rice prices are unlikely to return to the levels of 2007, as producers have to pay much more for their fertilizers, pesticides and fuel.”
It can sometimes be tough to sort through all the cause-and-effect about rising food prices. Asher Meir has a good piece untangling the sometimes complicated web.
One of the benefits to being the child of a Table to Table staff member is that you get to do cool stuff like strawberry picking while you are on vacation from school. 10-year-old Gilad Friedman spent the day in the fields during our Leket Patuach (Open Gleaning) day during Passover and wrote about it for the T2T blog.
Picking strawberries with my family during Pesach was great. The weather was really hot, and we invited our friends to spend the day outside with us for a matzah picnic and strawberry picking for Table to Table in Hod Hasharon.
The people were really nice. Dalit, a T2T staff member, welcomed us to the tent they’d set up for shade and showed us how to pick the berries. Picking fruit sounds like an easy job, but we soon found out that it is much harder than it sounds. Dalit showed us how to be careful not to pick the green stem off the top of the strawberry, because that would make the fruit go rotten very quickly, and if we put a rotten piece of fruit in the boxes, it would also make the other strawberries go bad very quickly.
At first, it was very hard to get the strawberries off the plant without removing the stem, which meant that there was nothing to do with the berry but eat it. The only problem was, I don’t really like strawberries! I enjoyed the chance to pick them, especially knowing I was helping needy people, but I didn’t really want to eat them. So I gave the first few to my little brothers, and even a few to my mom and dad. Believe me; they were very happy to eat them, but after a few tries I figured out a way to pick them without clipping the stem.
I guess we were out in the fields for about an hour (my dad says it was longer than that, but it didn’t seem like it to me); after that, our whole group sat down in the shade for an icy drink while my dad helped pack the crates of strawberries onto the delivery truck. In total, I picked one box of strawberries, so did my middle brother, Shalev. But first prize, at least from our family, went to my six-year-old brother. He caught on to the task very quickly, and picked two-and-a-half boxes – more than my middle brother and me combined!
Gilad Friedman
The most overwhelming thing spending a morning making deliveries with Serge, Table to Table’s veteran truck driver and delivery guy, is not fighting the traffic in and around Tel Aviv. Heavy traffic, one-way streets and careless drivers can certainly make the experience a harrowing one, but spending time on the road with Serge is a great way to get to know the city and he is a real character, one who keeps his passenger-for-the-day laughing.
No, the frustration of fighting traffic all day pales in comparison to the humbling realization that it is very, very easy to ignore the phenomenon of poverty in Israel.
Looking without seeing
On the face of things, it shouldn’t be so easy to ignore poverty. Poverty statistics periodically make the news, either because the government has released the latest numbers, because there is an election campaign or because a group of Holocaust survivors living in poverty take to extreme measures to pressure the government to increase aid. Since the beginning of 2008 skyrocketing food prices and the worldwide financial crunch has been front page news in Israel. It’s not like nobody knows that many Israelis are struggling to get by.
But somehow, we do ignore it. Poverty is not as in-your-face in Israel as it is in other Western countries. While things are far from perfect in Israel, our inner cities are a far cry from the crime-ridden neighborhoods in the South Bronx, south-central Los Angeles or some underprivileged suburbs of Paris. Thankfully, street crime is very low and there are few homeless people to disturb the illusion that “hakol beseder” (everything is fine and dandy).
Dry numbers
I think the issue is that while sanitized reports about poverty do make the news, squeezed in between reports about the weekend road toll and the latest accusations about the prime minister, they do little to bring the reality of poverty to life for most listeners. It’s not that people don’t care, but for most families fortunate enough to enjoy the fruits of Israel’s economic boom, it is hard to relate to a dry list of numbers.
But the numbers are there, and they are horrible – nearly 1.7 million Israelis currently live under the poverty line (NIS 5,191 per month, or $1,500) for a family of four, according to the National Insurance Institute), including 804,000 children. Enough Holocaust survivors live in below the poverty line that a group of them hit the streets last summer to protest the meager government stipend they receive.
Still, how many people come away from the afternoon news with more than a “tsk tsk”?
Tough reality
Hitting the streets with Serge brought the reality home hard. The physical work wasn’t bad – we managed to pull up close to most of the venues we were serving, so we usually had only a few steps to lug crates of strawberries and frozen goods a few steps from the truck to the kitchen.
But sitting with a group of disadvantaged senior citizens forces you to think about the issues at hand, and to appreciate the good fortune that so many people are lucky enough to enjoy. With barely any encouragement, an old lady will tap you on the shoulder with a cane to strike up a conversation, or a frail gentleman will ask a question, almost begging you to sit down for a chat. Both are thankful for the berries, but may be even more thankful that that at least for the moment, they are no longer invisible. One group even welcomed us with a round of applause.
In addition to the obvious fulfillment these people receive from a simple “shalom, how are you feeling today?”, making time to chat with needy seniors is a fulfillment of the Torah’s command to “honor the face of an old man (Leviticus 19:32).
So that’s a day in the life of T2T: Frustrating and exhilarating and tiring and boring and trafficky and a thousand other things as well, all at the same time. But I guess the most accurate description of a day on the trucks is: fulfilling.
