Two Day Weekend for Israel?



Olim (immigrants) to Israel from Western countries often experience a culture-shock when faced with a foreshortened weekend lasting only from Friday lunchtime until Sunday morning. Sunday is a normal working day here, however this may change sometime soon. Although an increasing number of Israelis do have the whole of Friday off, it remains officially a working half-day with schools, banks and places of business open in the mornings. Then there is the frenetic rush to shop and prepare for the Sabbath, especially in the winter months when it can come in as early as 4pm.

For the observant, Shabbat (Sabbath) is taken up with synagogue services and long family meals leaving little time for (those permitted) leisure activities. For example, gardening, DIY and trips out are a no-no.  For the non-car owning secular population, there is no public transport (Haifa excepted) so they are reliant on taxis or sherutim (an amalgam of bus and taxi services). Additionally many places of entertainment are closed.

Silvan Shalom of the Likud party has proposed that Israel follow the Western World and have Sunday as a non-working day. He cites, among other reasons, the fact that Tel Aviv Stock Exchange only trades with other world markets Monday to Thursday as it is shut on Friday while the others are closed on Sunday. He proposes an extra half-hour on the working day to partly compensate. Two Likud MKs have now introduced such a bill into the Knesset which they feel would benefit the economy and discourage Shabbat desecration by providing a secular day for leisure activities. The Histadrut, Chambers of Commerce, the Manufacturers’ Association and the Hoteliers’ Association are all in favour but there is also opposition.

However as the old saw has it, when in doubt form a committee so a panel, chaired by the head of the National Economic Council, has been formed to look into the matter and developments are awaited. Similar bills have failed in times past but today Israel is a strong and prosperous country. Its healthy economy created by energetic and innovative entrepreneurs and the hard-working population who have driven this nation from the Third to the First World in the span of a human lifetime. I think they deserve their two-day weekend.

The 'Known Benefactor'

Contrary to popular belief, not all members of the legendary House of Rothschild were or are Zionists. Like other members of the wealthy and influential Jewish elite, those opposing were fearful of its jeopardising the full citizenship and often exalted positions of Jews in the supposedly enlightened Western World. Astonishingly, as late as the Second World War, Lord Victor Rothschild opposed the granting of asylum in Britain to Jewish refugees from Nazism.

On the other hand the famous Balfour Declaration of November 1917, in which the British government promised to establish a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine, was addressed to Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild. Alphonse Rothschild, eldest son of the founder of the Paris branch Jakob, was the most active in support of Jewish colonisation in Palestine for the oppressed Jewish masses of Eastern Europe who were fleeing pogrom and persecution. Records show that he was contributing the immense sum of a half million francs a year via the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the Jewish self-help organisation founded in 1860 by Adolphe Cremieux.

Alphonse's brother, Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, was a patron of the First Aliyah settlement of Rishon-le-Zion (First in Zion) buying the land from absent Ottoman landlords. In 1884 he agreed to sponsor the ailing Rosh Pinah settlement and in 1924 laid out near Zichron Ya'akov (Remembrance of Jacob ie the Baron's father) the first vineyards in Palestine since ancient days, utilising rootstock from his French estates. In 1924 founded the Palestine Jewish Colonisation Association buying up large tracts of the future state of Israel.

Twenty years after their deaths in 1934 and in accordance with his will, the Baron and Baroness's remains were removed from France and re-interred in a mausoleum located at Ramat HaNadiv (Hill of the Benefactor) close to charming 'olde-worlde' Zichron Ya'akov in the infant State of Israel. As he had also stated that their final resting place not be one of sadness, landscape artists laid out the most exquisitely beautiful memorial gardens to surround the crypt and the whole set amid a large nature park.

Wandering among the lawns, palms, fountains and flower beds with distant views toward the turquoise Med. it's easy to believe that Eden alone could equal this bijou garden. As they lie ensconced in their tranquil tombs in their beloved Land of Israel, I'm sure the Baron and his wife would approve of the overwhelming beauty and dignity yet not solemnity of their repose. The Baron was one of a very select few people without whom the State may never have come into being. Z"L may their memories be for a blessing.