Residents of 28 towns recently found a telephone directory delivered to their door. With sledgehammer subtlety, the new publication was titled “The Top Ten Percent.” The tasteless glorification of nouveau riche culture coincides with the magically rising shekel, the diminishing inflation rate and the announcement that a “business capital” is being erected near Ben-Gurion Airport.
Well, the Jews made a stab at socialism. More than a stab, really, if we remember Engels and Marx and Trotsky. Today only historians and high school students know the names of those who envisioned Israel as an egalitarian utopia: Tabenkin, Katzenelson, Sneh.
At cooperative farms everyone was addressed as comrade and people sat at long tables eating hard-boiled eggs with tin cutlery from plastic plates.
Now plastic is likely to mean Tupperware; the sky’s the limit for restaurants offering Maine lobster and caviar; and Tel Aviv shops sells Limoges, Rosenthal and Wedgwood. Approximately 1,000 Israeli families own assets in excess of $50 million each.
Business reigns as absolute monarch. The kibbutz movement has been marginalized to the precipice of oblivion. At some, up to 70 percent of members are employed on the outside. Many kibbutzim run guest houses swept clean by Slavic women and commercial swimming pools scrubbed by Asian houseboys.
The Kibbutz has been reborn as Management.
At moshavim selling “antiques” and Italian garden furniture, a moshavnik these days is just as likely to be marketing dune buggies as riding on a tractor.
Hardly a week goes by without a new Israeli company offering its shares on an American stock exchange. Israel has become the hot spot for smart international investment, most notoriously a $4.5 billion high-tech purchase in June.
Every major newspaper has a daily economics supplement, a financial newspaper is printed daily and the Jerusalem Post excerpts the Wall Street Journal.
If you maintain about $87,500 in your account, Bank Hapoalim (“The Workers’ Bank”) will inscribe your checks with “Private Banking” in embossed letters. Credit cards come in gold and platinum.
Everyone has had the experience of suddenly overhearing Hebrew while abroad. Nine times out of 10, the conversation revolves around the price of something.
Only the dimensions have changed. Whereas before, the discussion centered on where Shimon could find the cheapest deals in brand-name sneakers and 220-volt blenders, now the focus is on where Reuven can obtain the best goose liver, or how Aviva can get on-the-spot orchestra seats for her twins to see “Lion King.”
An Israeli labor law professor teaching in the United States flattered an American student by inviting her out for coffee. Once seated at the cafe, the professor leaned over and asked in sotto voce: “Now tell me, how much did you pay for your house?”
The Israeli press is full of real estate investment opportunities — in Manhattan. Not a few sabras have pieds-à-terre in European capitals. The next Israeli travel book might be entitled “A Weekend in Umbria” or “Yachting the Aegean.” Whereas riches were once looked down upon, the hottest degree in today’s Israel is an MBA. Before engaging in “pure” research, scientists seek legal advice to ensure themselves a share in the profits of what they may discover.
Privatization is the name of the game. Public hospitals have joined the race, renting space to private clinics within their doors bearing snob-appeal names like “Class Clinic.”
National health coverage? Sure, but the insurance companies compete in a big-guns advertising blitz, luring consumers to sign up for costly supplementary policies. “It may not seem important now,” they coo seductively, “but think about the day you will have children.” Which young couple would dare refuse?
The early socialists considered money to be the root of all evil. Their grandchildren are busily scrambling to become millionaires. But pendulums have a way of swinging back. Perhaps the offspring of the new industrialists and entrepreneurs will become scholars and poets and philosophers.
Maybe their grandchildren will turn into flower children. Or kibbutzniks.