Most travelers to Israel bring back a souvenir from the Holy Land. Most souvenirs, however, don’t outweigh a pickup truck.
At this time last year, the concrete lion roughly the size of a carousel horse now guarding Dr. Stanley Wulf’s backyard high in the Berkeley hills was one of 81 esoterically decorated lions scattered throughout Jerusalem.
Before its voyage across the sea, the lion raised the spirits of a beleaguered city and served as an impromptu play structure for countless Jewish and Arab children.
Wulf, an obstetrician and gynecologist, was in Israel with his wife, Linda, and young sons, Avi and Yoni, during Passover last year, and the boys made a game out of climbing onto as many Jerusalem lions as they could (they managed to scale 26 of them).
“It was just after the Netanya hotel bombing and, in the midst of all this gloom and doom, you couldn’t help but smile when you saw the kids play. [The lions] brought children of all persuasions and leanings within Israel together joyfully during a very, very difficult time,” said Wulf, whose family attends Berkeley’s Orthodox Congregation Beth Israel.
The lion is smooth as velour in areas rubbed by the posteriors of thousands of climbing children, and it still bears the mark of being grabbed by untold numbers of unwashed young hands.
But that’s fine by the Wulfs.
“The more wear there is, the more the imagery of children playing” comes through. “When I put my hand on this spot, I feel linked to an innocent expression of joy within that difficult time.”
Adds Linda, a writer and editor, “I didn’t want a perfectly painted, exquisite sculpture. It’s been used and loved and played with.”
The memory of a “blissful oasis” where parents could let their collective guards down and just take pleasure in watching their children play left its mark on the Wulf family.
When Stanley and Linda — who met in Jerusalem after emigrating from South Africa and have lived in the Bay Area for a dozen years — noticed a Bulletin article last year announcing the lions were to be sold off in a charity auction, they jumped at the chance.
Yet shipping a concrete statue the size of a small cow halfway around the world isn’t as easy as it sounds.
“The movers thought it weighed 500 pounds,” said Linda Wulf with a smile. “It turned out that it weighed 500 kilos.”
That’s 1,102 pounds, heavier than a small Toyota truck, or all of *NSYNC. And that’s just the start of it.
After the Wulfs bought the lion in late September, it was trucked to Tel Aviv and shipped through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles by January.
It sat in a warehouse for six weeks, however, when several successive shipping companies offered to move it, took one look at it, and then replied they’d rather move a real lion.
Finally, in March, a mover agreed to take on the job. When the lion finally came out of his crate in the family driveway, “then we basically reverted to Egyptian days,” said Stanley Wulf with a hearty laugh.
A team of eight movers and Wulf pushed the lion on tank-like log-rollers through the garage, around the yard, down a set of stairs, and into its current site gazing out over the Golden Gate. A trip of perhaps 100 yards took at least four hours.
“None of [the movers] understood what the hell I was doing. ‘What is this?’ they said. I said, ‘It’s a lion, from Israel.’ ‘Well,’ they said, ‘Couldn’t you just go and see it there rather than bringing it here?”
“But it’s rather hard to explain,” said Wulf. “It’s the emotional content. This is a piece of concrete, and all that heaviness they had to deal with then wore them down. [But] to have something in our home that was in central Jerusalem and tens of thousands of people touched and smiled at, that’s very significant to us.”
The lion is now treated to an awe-inspiring Bay view from up toward the summit of the North Berkeley hills, and sits among dry grasses and beneath an acacia tree — a nostalgic touch for Stanley and Linda Wulf, as the acacia grows prodigiously in their native South Africa.
The Wulfs’ statue — Lion No. 23, aka “Now, These are the Names” — stood guard at the intersection of Ben Yehuda and King George streets, near the Ha-Mashbir Mall. Decorated by both amateurs and some of Israel’s top artists, the lions range from breathtaking to worthy of decorating Graceland. Photos of all 81 lions can be found at www.jerusalem.muni.il/jer_sys/lion/ eng/Welcome_eng.html
Most of the auctioned lions fetched between $1,000 and $5,000, with one going for $22,000. Wulf believes his family’s lion was obtained for less than the average bid — before shipping costs, that is.
The big cat’s distinctive moniker emanates from his multicolored coat. While, from a distance, he appears to be bathed in Day-Glo swaths, upon closer inspection the lion is instead tattooed with thousands upon thousands of colorful Hebrew names.
Many of the names are friends and family of Israeli artists Yoram Fogel and his 18-year-old son, Maayan, but others are giants of Jewish history — or not-so-Jewish history. “Marlon Brando,” for one, peeks out from the lion’s forehead, while “Madonna” peeks out from — well, let us say, elsewhere.
And, in addition to serving as a tangible connection to Jerusalem (and a backyard Hebrew lesson), the lion is still climbed on daily.
Ami, 10, and Yoni, 7, are still at the age where mounting the lion is a full-body effort reminiscent of slithering up a counter to liberate a cookie jar, and no fewer than six young boys rode the lion at Yoni’s recent birthday party.
“Only kids can do this — you jump as high as you can and you need kind of moist hands so you can grab onto it,” said Yoni, demonstrating his technique for ascending the lion.
“Then I turn my body, open my legs, lean backwards and I’m on.”