FROM OUR ARCHIVES

65 YEARS AGO

Every fifth person in Israel was receiving additional food rations, according to the Rationing Department. These included the sick, expectant mothers and new immigrants. The Commerce and Industry Ministry intended to curtail the number of physical laborers receiving additional rations by establishing canteens in factories where hot nourishing meals would be served. At the time, 10,000 to 15,000 workers enjoyed such meals, each supplying 600 calories.

The Commerce and Industry Ministry also announced that people buying shoes were not required to buy empty shoe boxes with each purchase. A number of consumers had complained that they were told they had to buy empty shoe boxes at 100 prutot each with every pair of new shoes.

Chaim Alexandrovski was fined IL 10 after he swam out to an Italian ship off the coast of Tel Aviv and pleaded with the captain to take him aboad. He told the court that he had served in the pre-state illegal immigration organization, in the British Army and in the Hagana, and then “got fed up with living here and decided to leave by whatever means possible.”

50 YEARS AGO

According to Meron Benvenisti, in charge of east Jerusalem affairs, the citizens and former officials of east Jerusalem had given the Jerusalem Municipality all the cooperation that it had requested of them. The majority of east Jerusalem’s former municipal workers continued coming to work, and a great number of new initiatives would be implemented over time. There were no social welfare programs to speak of in east Jerusalem, though there were thousands of social cases in the area. It was planned to put Israeli social welfare law into operation there by stages. New sanitation equipment had been bought, for example 5,000 garbage bins. Before, the garbage was collected and disposed of by hand and transported to the dump by mules. “We just don’t work by these methods anymore,” Benvenisti said. Other projects included completing roads to connect the two parts of Jerusalem; installing additional street lights; putting numbers on the houses; repairing the sewage system; constructing gardens and parks; and tripling east Jerusalem’s water supply so that there would be water in the taps constantly instead of only one week’s supply at a time, which was the case up until then. The municipality also began adding Hebrew street plates to the existing English and Arabic ones. The Hebrew names were translations of the existing names and there was no intention of changing any names, Benvenisti said.

25 YEARS AGO

It was learned that the gold-colored dome of the rock was to be replaced the following year with real, 24-carat gold. The existing dome was golden in color, but was in fact made of anodized aluminum. About 80 kilograms of gold were expected to be used as a thin outer layer on the new dome, whose main element would be brass. Additionally, discolored marble on the exterior of the shrine would be replaced with Italian marble, and a new fire detection system would be installed. The dome of that time was installed in 1964 and replaced a dark lead dome that had existed since antiquity. However the aluminum dome had failed to keep out the rain. – Daniel Kra