110
MARCH 10, 2022 | The Jewish Home The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015
1
News and Views Around the Five Towns BY TZVI DEAR Israel’s Sunflower Seed Covid Rules Take Effect The Israeli government on Wednesday announced that it’s changing its Covid policy from earlier in the day, that changed the second policy from yesterday, which was a reversal of the policy of the day before. From now on, Israel will be open to everyone, not just glow-in-the-dark people who received all 37 boosters, one for each masechta in Talmud Bavli. Until the policy is changed twice tomorrow, everyone will be let into Israel without restrictions. But, if
your flight into the country lands on an odd-numbered time, you will need to quarantine for seventeen days and then take four Covid tests before you can finally go visit your daughter who is in seminary and who hasn’t had a hot meal since the last twenty-three times she went out to eat this month on your credit card. The policy is subject to change so make sure to check in with Eretz Hakodesh often. According to reports, the ever-changing policy is based on Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s morning routine of spitting garinim. Basically, Bennett wakes up in the morning and sees how far he can spit his sunflower seeds. If they land past four feet (that’s hard…you really need to know the wind patterns), then he will change the policy again. Bennett is actually an expert sunflower speed spitter. That’s about all that he is good at. (Well, he’s also great at photo ops with Putin, but that’s another story for another day.) Recently, he spit a sunflower seed so far that his bottle cap yarmulka flew off. This made him realize that that it was time to stick a new piece of Bazooka gum under his yarmulka to keep it affixed to his shiny skull. Bennett is a big boy version of Zvika, the pesty character of those “really funny” Bazooka gum wrapper jokes. Nothing that Zvika guy ever made any sense. Some people
turn to books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to get their inspiration. It seems like Bennett literally took one of those gum wrappers and used it as his guide to life. “Em, Zvika, I have bubble gum under my yarmulka.” “Wy, wy, you can be prime minister.” Although from a political perspective, Bennett was supposed to only last in the premier’s seat for around 12 sunflower seed spits, it doesn’t help that the head of the opposition is dealing with more charges than You-Know-Who Swindler. But Bibi will definitely be victorious in the end – he bribed the judge! (Just joking! I like Bibi…ever see his speeches from when he was young? If you didn’t, how did you avoid THAT YouTube rabbit hole?) Well, what Israel is lacking in politicians, they have in musicians. Over the past few years, the songs of Israeli artists have come to the Five Towns like a beautiful crushing wave from the Splitting Sea. The Israeli artists have great voices and nice tunes, but they all have such dramatic lives –o they have these deep conversations in their songs about who they are existentially... “Ani Kemoh rose petal floating
in the wind trying to find my way to judge everyone favorably, including myself…” Um, hello? Someone ought to tell them that the Beatles sold over a billion albums with lyrics like, “You say hi, I say low.” How do I know that it’s “hi” and not “high”? I’m a Beatles expert; my Zoom background screen is the crosswalk in Liverpool. OK, not sure that exists, but it should. Maybe the secret society of Zoom background screen creators can work on the Liverpool background. It certainly beats staring at colleagues hovering a hundred feet over the Golden Gate Bridge. Every time that she moves her hand, I’m not sure if my colleague swatting a fly or did the actual Golden Gate Bridge behind her just completely crumple, taking the whole left side of her body with it. Hey, they do have earthquakes in San Francisco? The first time that happened, I called 911: “911, how may we help you?” “Yes, I know that this may sound weird…but, I’m on a Zoom conference and…I think I may have just…seen the Golden Gate Bridge collapse.”
