Opinion: Million-Dollar Mattress Story Another Sign Israel Lost its Mind

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mattress-moneyBy Shai Golden
Back in the 1990s, when the term “urban legend” was in vogue, a silly rumor made the rounds. Israel was divided into two kinds of people: Those who swore they personally knew the family of the person involved, and those who knew people who knew the family. That division repeated itself when a new rumor spread. Half the country claimed they were there, the other half knew someone who was.As it tends to do, history repeated itself and another story has surfaced to divide Israel in two: Those who know the family that mistakenly threw away a mattress containing their $1 million life’s savings, and those who know someone who knows them.

There’s nothing to say, really; things like this happen once in a hundred years. A story tailor-made for the newspapers’ back pages. A story so fantastic, so grandiose, so “funny and amusing” that it almost seems made up, like it were written for the screen: an urban legend with a twist. Or perhaps, the biggest practical joke in the nation’s history.

The mattress story has managed to take first place on the list of “salon talk.” Consider this: Our nation’s discourse is not focused on the fatefully approaching address by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University; the elections today in Iran, or even the shooting at the Holocaust museum in Washington. Rather, a lousy mattress with $1 million inside (in hundreds? in quarters? Maybe in monopoly money?)

Now the masses are excavating the Hiriya landfill, where the mattress is said to have been dumped. It is just another sign of the growing detachment between the public in Israel and reality; its disconnect with its surroundings and, particularly, its loss of mind. Good luck searching. Wherever the mattress lies, whether it is found or not, the story already stinks.

{Haaretz Service/Matzav.com Newscenter}


4 COMMENTS

  1. This is not so unusual in the life of senior citizens. Growing up I remember several grandparents, elderly aunts who hid large sums of money in mattresses. They would cut out a spot with a knife, covered it with two sheets and they banked on their ‘home security system’.

  2. This is not so unusual in the life of senior citizens. Growing up I remember several grandparents, elderly aunts who hid large sums of money in mattresses. They would cut out a spot with a knife, covered it with two sheets and they banked on their ‘home security system’.
    Oops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.

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