Tel Aviv, Charles Clore Park: OK, so this is weird. But I think…. and I don’t have any actual proof yet…. but I think someone here might be smoking weed. I don’t want to cast accusations or anything. Because, again, I could be wrong. But the air has this strange smell. It almost smells like the Metallica jean jacket that my older brother wore in high school. Does that even make sense?
Also, you can’t really tell where the smell is coming from. It’s almost as if it’s coming from everywhere. I mean, I just passed a drum circle, and everyone standing around had like really really interesting hair. Maybe it was them. Plus, a bunch of people are on the hill waiting for the sunset. Then there’s these guys who ran a cargo strap from one tree to another and they’re walking on it like a tightrope. But where are their shirts? It’s cold outside.
There’s also a dozen Wolt delivery guys hanging around on their bikes. Maybe they’re on break or something. They probably see a lot of things riding around. I bet they would know the answer.
As we stand together as a nation fighting an unseen menace, let us take a moment tomorrow to salute those on the front lines. I mean, the doctors, nurses, and first-responders have been doing a great job, I guess. But you know who else has? Your weed dealer. Who makes house calls. Who brings you what you need to spend the next couple of months in a confined space, home-schooling your kids, and re-learning each and every habit of your spouse/partner/life-mate that Drives. You. Nuts.
So tomorrow at 4:20, join us as we give thanks to the nation’s Brave Cannabis Salespersons.
Tel Aviv: After being caught with some cannabis and spending close to a year in a Russian jail, Naama Issachar is now happily back in Eretz Yisrael thanks to a personal appeal from Prime Minister Netanyahu. Yet a lot has changed here in Israel since the early days of 2019, and Naama discussed her adjustment process to Israeli life with the Daily Freier.
“Wait, what’s up with Telegrass?” Naama asked us, slightly annoyed. “There’s a Nature Party in the Galil next week and I was hoping, I mean a friend was hoping to touch base with my weed guy, I mean a friend’s weed guy.” Naama paused for a moment and reflected. “The funny thing is that all of Tel Aviv basically smells like a giant spliff, but ‘everyone is out of weed‘. Like is that even scientifically possible?”
Naama continued describing the Big Adjustment. “I have so much to catch up on. Things like who won ‘The Voice’, and who we’re sending to Eurovision…. so is ‘Tudo Bom’ still a thing?”
Before ending the interview, we secured a promise from Ms. Issachar that she would update us with all the stories from her inevitable trip to MidBurn and/or Tzfat later this year.
EPILOGUE: While the Daily Freier has a rich history of shrewdly negotiating with Mr. Putin, nobody from the Government bothered to call us. Next time something like this happens, can someone have Bibi’s office send us a text?
Beitar Illit: “The weirdest things have been happening since I bought this van.” noted Beitar Illit resident and father-of-nine Yitzi P. “We just made Aliyah last month and I got a good deal on a used van from some hippie religious guys…. they were really nice, they even included a CD player and some CDs. It’s funny, but whenever I stop at a red light, people start dancing and the guys in tight jeans and gelled hair run out to give me hugs and call me “achi”…..that means brother, right? People are so friendly here!”
Yitzi continued. “Then, a guy comes up to my window and gives me a little bag and asked me if I “rotzeh samim?” It took me a minute because my Hebrew isn’t so good, but I realized that he was giving me havdala spices! That’s so nice, right? He was doing kiruv like the Chabad ladies who give out candles. After a few days, I ended up with a few extra bags of havdala spices, so I decided to share the mitzvah too…I’ve been giving them out whenever people come over and try to dance with me at traffic lights!”
Yitzi explained that he’s happy in Israel. “I think I totally understand Israelis now. …but hey, that police car looks like it’s been following me all day. Do you think I have a busted tailight or something?”
Tel Aviv: With the result’s from Tuesday’s elections in, there were some real suprises. Likud under-performed, Lieberman got a lot of votes, and the Arab Joint List Party performed better than expected. Yet while some people attribute Joint List’s performance as a negative reaction to Abu Yair Bibi, the Daily Freier has found the real reason: a large bloc of former Zehut voters accidentally voted Joint List.
You see, Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut Party was a real… party. Kinda hardcore on the National Security side, kinda Libertarian on the domestic side: right to bear arms, and lots and lots of weed. Last year, Zehut did an amazing job of stealing the Stoner vote from Meretz. Later, Feiglin joined Netanyahu’s Coalition in exchange for 3 grams of Kush, rolling papers, some krembo, and an apple. Yet somehow the whole thing turned into a Balagan, as the Daily Freier learned when we went to vote and discovered the confusion of the former Zehut voters. In Tel Aviv, there are A LOT of these guys. Trust us.
“Hey, I just voted for the new Zehut Party.” exclaimed a guy named Udi who we recognized from Midburn. “Their name is the best: ‘Joint List!’ ….That’s almost as good as ‘Spliff List’, right?”
“More votes means cheaper weed!” cackled Danny from the coffee shop. “Also, Mamash love the new name!”
After meeting four more of our confused Zehut friends at the polling station, the Daily Freier finally broke the news: that ‘Joint List’ is a party consisting of Communists, Islamists, and Arab Nationalists…. and we became a giant buzzkill. The reactions were immediate:
“Nobody told us.”
“We thought that maybe Feiglin and the guy with the Mohawk wanted to get a better domain name for their website.”
“Maybe that’s why we didn’t get enough votes last time.”
UPDATE: The Times of Israel reports that Joint List would have received 15 seats, but half of Zehut’s voters think that the Election is tomorrow.
The Yafo Flea Market: Meretz is striking back forcefully against a recently re-visited Government Ethics Panel from 4 years ago forbidding their Knesset Members from smoking cannabis. The Jerusalem Post reported that Tamar Zandberg, a MK for Israel’s In-No-Way-Out-In-Left-Field Meretz Party, was admonished that she could not smoke weed because:
a) it’s against the law
b) she’s like a lawmaker and stuff
But if you think our friends at Meretz were going to simply roll over and give up, well, you’re wrong. The Party issued a stern rebuttal to the Ethics Committee, signed by all of their MK’s, and delivered at a Press Conference this afternoon at the Yafo Flea Market.
“This so-called ruling by the Quote Unquote Ethics Committee is totally unjust.” admonished Meretz spokesperson Danny C. “This ruling deprives our party of some of our best idea generating sessions. I mean, just last night we were only one or two bong-hits away from truly solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Danny continued. “Also, after a marathon 12 spliff session on Tuesday, we came up with a solution to Greater Tel Aviv’s sky-high rental costs which was just brilliant! ….The trouble is, the next morning was “Group Cleanup Day” at our communal apartment on Sheinkin, and now we can’t find the pizza box where we drew the diagrams for all the geodesic domes, houseboats, and rooftop yurts. Wait, do you know what day the Garbageman comes? We might be able to find it in the Green bins next to the curb.”
The Daily Freier asked Danny just how long Meretz has been doing…. ummm…. ‘enhanced brainstorming”, and he replied that it’s been “like years and years” since this has been the case. “In 2014, the Party drafted a 5-Point Resolution to better integrate Israel’s Arab minority, but by the time we got back from Midburn, we realized that we’d left the manifesto at the campsite in the blue IKEA bag that also held our bamba and glow-sticks.”
Danny then reached under the podium to get the Party’s latest press release on increasing voter participation, only to find that he’d misplaced it. But he was positive that it contained the following phrases: “It worked in Holland“, “commune in the Arava“, “windmill“, and “hemp seeds“.
Tel Aviv, Florentin: The State of Israel is currently losing patience with the fact that you still haven’t given them a complete synopsis of your Midburn experience, starting with your Camp’s months of preparation and ending with you driving your filthy car home to Tel Aviv. Midburn is Israel’s answer to Burning Man, and attendees are normally about as reluctant to overshare as a Vegan who does Cross-Fit. Anyhoo, The Daily Freier spoke with several of your friends, neighbors, acquaintances, co-workers, relatives, and exes to get their feelings about your critical failure to tell them everything about your Midburn Camp already.
“Wow, I am DYING to hear about his trip.” exclaimed alert local Ronit S. “I mean, everyone from his camp spent the past 2 months hanging out on our apartment building’s communal roof twice a week. It turns out they were building a bunch of structures for their Camp.” Ronit took a drag from her cigarette. “You know, for a while I wasn’t sure, because it all just looked like the regular garbage on our roof.”
The Daily Freier also caught up with your ex, who shared her theories on what happened at Midburn. “I’m going to make a crazy guess…. but they did some drugs….. And then they did some more drugs.”
“Did they listen to electronic dance music?” inquired your cousin Avner. “How about glow sticks. Because I really can’t get enough stories about glow sticks.”
“Wait, did the sand end up EVERYWHERE?” asked your Boss at the Startup. “That’s just CRAZY!” Later, your boss confided that you showed him fake tickets to Berlin for a fake Tech Expo because you didn’t want him to know that you were just going to go hang out in the desert and hallucinate/blow bubbles/wear a costume that looked like something from Return of the Jedi.
Meanwhile, this year’s inaugural Nefesh B’Nefesh camp at MidBurn was met with controversy after 7 Americans who had extended their Taglit trip to attend MidBurn woke up from 8 hours on mushrooms only to find out that they had signed Aliyah paperwork and were about to start Ulpan in Afula as part of the organization’s “Go North Program“.
Finally, the women who work in the next cubicle from you had questions of their own. “So we’ve been discussing this all morning….and it’s still just a concept….but did he have a romantic encounter there? And was he not sure if it was a ‘real life’ romantic encounter or ‘just a Midburn thing’? Because we might have to cancel morning staff meeting and just discuss this instead.”
Yet not everyone in town was even aware that Midburn occurred this week. “So you’re saying that Midburn already happened?” wondered the guy who works at your corner coffee shop. “I guess that explains why I couldn’t get anything on Telegrass last week.“
*Special thanks to alert citizen-journalist Eric Narrow who contributed to this story.
“What we are looking at is a possibly limitless source of renewable energy.” explained Alex. “If the matter in question, i.e. loosely rolled cigarettes containing a mix of tobacco and cannabis, can simply exist outside of the realm of matter being created or destroyed, then we may be on the cusp of something amazing. It would be like discovering a perpetual motion machine. Only cooler.”
Gideon agreed with Alex, but with an interesting theological twist. “One can be committed to science and reason, yet also believe that our Universe was created with Intelligent Design. Specifically, the concept that spliffs continue to materialize in Tel Aviv despite the universal absence of cannabis begs the question: Is this a modern miracle in the same venue as the miraculous Chanukah oil that lasted 8 Days?Like, Nes Gadol Haya Po?” Gideon was quick to mention that this theory is not confined to the Jewish Community. “I was just speaking to a priest in Jerusalem, and he likened the current state of affairs in Tel Aviv to the Wedding Feast of Cana where Christians believe that Jesus turned water into wine…. Except this must be bamba into cannabis. Or something like that.”
When the Daily Freier pressed the scientists for a possible alternate theory, they insisted that their hypothesis would stand up to peer review. “Our data is sound. Something incredible is happening in Tel Aviv….. either that or everyone is just full of crap and secretly hoarding their weed stashes for themselves.“
(Note: This story is published in today’s print edition in Scratch ‘N’ Sniff format)
By Aaron Pomerantz and Gabby Shuster
Last Updated 3/8/2017 at 4:20
Tel Aviv: With the recent ruling decriminalizing cannabis in the State of Israel, Tel Aviv residents are concerned that they may start smelling marijuana smoke on the streets. Like, In Tel Aviv. Marijuana smoke. We mean, out in the open and stuff. The Daily Freier set out to get all the facts before we started to make things up.
“I’m just concerned that when I walk down Florentin Street I may encounter marijuana smoke.” explained local musician Tomer G. “And that would not be OK.”
“This sets a very bad precedent.” noted Avner B., an artisanal cheese maker out of Yafo. “Soon people won’t need to mix cannabis into tobacco to mask a cigarette’s true nature. They may not even need to smoke their cannabis in ceramic pipes that are painted to look like a filtered cigarette.” Avner’s eyes darted around the room nervously for a moment. “I mean, if that’s the way other people smoke cannabis now. I mean, people who definitely aren’t me.”
North Tel Aviv resident Yoni K. also shared his fears. “Next thing you know, people will be smoking spliffs at a Tuesday night rooftop party, one of those bars on Dizengoff with the long tables and benches, or at a bus stop in broad daylight on Ibn Gvirol.” (Note to the satirically impaired: This is already happening).
“I am curious what this ‘cannabis’ thing smells like.” observed alert local Ronit S. as she sat outside of a pub near the Carmel Market. “Does it smell like that cigarette that those guys over there are smoking? Because that cigarette smells like my older brother’s Metallica jean jacket smelled like back in High School.”
“Wait. Cannabis is decriminalized now?” enthused Sarit B., a hostess at a pub on Allenby Street. “I’m a little excited. Maybe now cannabis use will be readily observed in Tel Aviv’s pubs, bars, and clubs.”
By Emily Goldstein
