When was the last time you spun a carousel?
Probably in the distant childhood, when you played with the representative toy of Hanukkah next to a pancake dripping with oil.
Some of you may have encountered in recent years the simple Chinese-made plastic rolls, the writing on them is phosphorescent and soulless.
But there are dozens of elderly and respectable people in Israel, ranging in age from 40 to 85, for whom the spinning wheel is an object of admiration, a wish of the soul - and sometimes a real addiction, which they themselves are proud to admit.
A whole and happy community of collectors whose lives revolve around the spinning wheel, and for whom every time they come across a rare or unique version of the toy becomes a great miracle was here.
Every member of this organized community, and some will add with a smile that even the spinner in the head, has hundreds and even thousands of spinners in his collection, in which he has invested thousands of shekels over the years.
In addition to physical meetings, they also established groups on WhatsApp and Facebook, whose activity is bustling and crowded.
Don't be mistaken: this is a very serious group that includes engineers, bank managers, teachers, educators, librarians and more, who simply radiate happiness near spinning wheels.
Two weeks ago they held a special meeting at "Beit HaSavibon" in Caesarea, and did not stop spinning and getting excited for a moment.
They brought each other spinning tops as a gift, proudly displayed dozens of spinning tops of all sizes and materials, and even performed the "spinning anthem", written by one of the collectors.
And how could it not: they are now impatiently waiting for Hanukkah, the first candle of which will be lit in two days.
They gathered for the special evening from all over the country.
Bat Sheva came from Be'er Sheva, Noa from the settlement of Efrat in Gush Etzion, Ruthi from Kibbutz Huldah, Aryeh from Haifa.
Every now and then someone kneels down and makes rounds, with an explanation of each round and round.
And they all guard their rings carefully, lest a stranger touch them with too clumsy hands.
Clockwise: Ruthi Kinset (with the collection in her home), Aryeh Margalit and Rachel Barlev.
Everyone keeps their spinners at all times, photo: Efrat Eshel, private album
I'm trying to thread a question, which of those present has the biggest collection.
Miriam Vaniel, 84, the oldest in the group, straightens up and says: "I think I am. I have more than 1,200 spinners."
No one dares to argue with her.
Within minutes the collectors storm the gallery of Eran Grebler, ceramic artist and owner of "Beit HaSavibon", who is also a member of the group.
They buy coveted swirls from him, as if they were juicy donuts full of goodness.
"Listen, this is the most positive thing there is," says Ofra Tiber (65), a resident of Tzur Moshe.
"It wasn't until my 100th spin that I agreed to admit that I was an addict. The so-called spin on the whole head."
"Like loving my children"
Ofra, like many of those present here, is endowed with endless energy ("I am constantly spinning like a spinning top, identifying with them").
She bought her first spinners in installments.
"13 years ago, I visited with my children a dinosaur exhibit at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv," she recalls, "when I entered the museum's store, I saw a very beautiful spinning top. Until that moment, I thought that a spinning top was made of simple wood, cast lead or plastic, like the ones that are made in China and play music 'Sob sob sob'. The swirl there, of designers, seems divine to me.
"I asked and they told me it costs NIS 400. I said, who spends that kind of money on a spinning top? I have classes to pay for and little mouths to feed. I saw it as a luxury. So I asked for payments. I was told that payments are only possible for purchases over NIS 800. So I bought two! And they spread it to me in eight installments.
Today she already has 700 spinning tops in her collection.
"What amazes me every time is how such a small thing changes faces, colors and shapes in an infinite amount. This is not normal. How each carousel has its own beauty and grace. I am fascinated by the people with wild imagination, creativity and thought, who stand behind these small toys and produce them .
"A week ago I was in Evan Yehuda, with a nice and fascinating man named Amnon Caspi. For 30 years he had a factory that designed silver things for the world's greats. Such beautiful decorations, for former US President Bill Clinton, or for former President Haim Herzog.
He advertised on the Internet that he had two spinning tops left for sale, so I came and bought both of them from him."
She stops to relax, then continues: "I want to set up a spinning wheel museum in my yard. I have a simple closet at home, and the spinning wheels are not displayed in a nice and dignified way as they should be. They are crammed into it in a very ugly way."
Is your environment aware of the spinner craze?
"Listen, as far as I'm concerned, there is an entry ban for anyone who doesn't bring me a spinning top from abroad.
Everyone around me is aware of my insanity.
I also shop when I'm abroad. I really like, for example, Greece, and in Athens there is a market in the Plaka district with lots of spinning wheels. Every time I go there, they engrave my spinning wheel. There's no way I'm going abroad and not coming back with fifteen spinners".
Is there a carousel in the collection that you particularly like?
"No. It's like loving my children. I don't have a favorite one."
I appreciate that you have spent a lot of money on the hobby so far.
"Yes. I have, for example, a silver spinning top that I bought for my 60th birthday. It cost me 3,500 shekels. But I don't like it any more than the ones that cost me little. Eight years ago I also bought a spinning top designed by Michal Negrin, in -1,500 shekels.
"I spent, in my estimation, tens of thousands of shekels on my collection, and I believe it is worth a lot today. For me, if I set up a home museum and bequeath it to my four children, it will be a kind of savings plan for them."
Ofra Tiber.
"It was only in the turn of the century that I agreed to admit that I was an addict" (in the photo on the side: rare "account" spinners from 1923, from the Aryeh Margalit collection), photo: Efrat Eshel
"I bought quickly, so he won't regret it"
Naturally, before Hanukkah, the excitement of the collectors reaches its peak.
The same goes for Ofra.
"I built a very large carousel with a young artist, which also rotates. How big? It reaches waist height. I painted a character from stories on each side of it: Snow White, the little prince. A carousel is stunning in its beauty. There is a lid on the top, and I put any simple carousel inside or any A carousel of which I have two. My grandchildren know that there you can pick up, play and spin.
"They know that their grandmother is crazy about spinning wheels. Every spinning wheel they are given in kindergarten - they immediately bring it to me. I talk to you about it and get excited, I love it so much. Before every Hanukkah, my collection also grows. I buy spinning wheels myself and receive from others."
What makes a respectable serious woman like you go so crazy around a children's toy?
"The girl in me. I am very young in spirit, playful, energetic, and the hoops give me the opportunity to connect with the girl that I am, inside. It keeps my soul young, as vibrant as I am. Even when I go with my grandson to the toy store, it's not necessarily for him. I I like it very much myself. It fascinates me."
Do you, members of the group, have collector envy? Discussions Who has a bigger and more beautiful collection?
"No, but there is a desire for you to have a certain spinning wheel that you see in others. You say, 'I wish I had one,' but it is not due to jealousy. For example, me and the collector Bat Sheva from Beer Sheva really bonded. I saw a silver spinning wheel in her collection that plays like a box Playing. I was sure that there was no other turntable like this, and I wanted one badly, and it sat on my heart.
"God must love me, because a few months ago I was at a hair salon and someone who heard that I was a collector introduced me to a website where you can see where to buy spinners. I saw Batsheva's spinner there, one by one. I immediately stormed over and called, and a guy from Rehovot answered. I sent him the son Mine quickly, before he regrets it. It cost me 500 shekels. Although my spinner does not play or spin, it looks exactly like Bat Sheva's."
Miriam and Niel came to the Techa Tikva meeting.
As mentioned, she has a collection of no less than 1,200 pinwheels from 50 countries in the world.
Until the outbreak of the corona virus, she used to open her house every year on Hanukkah, placing her spinning wheels on tables that she borrowed from the neighbors.
Makes her acquaintances, neighbors and family members happy.
"I have spinning wheels from Israel, from China, from Japan, from India, from Thailand, from Russia, from Spain, from France, from Germany, from Italy, from the Netherlands, from Portugal, from Sri Lanka, from Morocco, from Belgium, from Bulgaria, from Greece, in short from where else. Some I bought myself, some were brought to me ".
Arya Margalit.
Every collector keeps his spinning wheels from every shift, photo: Efrat Eshel
Aryeh Margalit (62), a chemical engineer from Haifa, arrives and gives a big hug to host Eran.
Arya is always equipped with spinners, you will never catch him without - even if he is sitting in a restaurant.
"If I got a nice spinning wheel, and that day we go out to hang out, then until the coffee arrives I play a little with the spinning wheel. I check it. But you don't have to get carried away, I don't always do that."
Aryeh also waits all year for the week when Ototo arrives.
"During Hanukkah, I take a week off from work and dedicate myself only to spinners. I am invited to give lectures, and also organize activities with spinners for children, people with special needs and adults, all over the country. I enjoy talking about this miracle and putting it to use. A spinner is a small object. You give Give him a little - he gives you back in a big way. I've been in this business for 20 or so years.
"A year ago, during Hanukkah, I gave two lectures on roundabouts in Jerusalem, voluntarily, for the Paratroopers Fund. After the first lecture, I went to the second lecture, and because of a mistake in Wise, I drove on a public transportation route. I got a NIS 500 bill.
Do you understand?
In the end I paid out of my own pocket for my lectures (laughs)."
Remember your first spin?
"Sure, I bought it 30 years ago. My wife works as a jeweler, and we were in Neve Tzedek. We went into a jeweler's shop there, and suddenly we saw a flower-shaped carousel that some talented jeweler had made. We bought it for 50 shekels, an amount that I thought was quite high. In those days, as part of My previous job, I traveled a lot to Switzerland. There they play spinners all year round, unlike here. I would come back with five or six spinners at a time, and I fell in love. Today I'm really addicted.
"I buy spinners everywhere I go in the world, and also order spinners online. How many do I have? I stopped counting after 750."
How do you even know which turntable is worth buying?
"First of all, I check how the spinning top spins, good or bad, this is very important to me, and of course there is the matter of beauty and character. I was just in Greece and bought spinning tops there. Friends also brought me some from abroad, so I recently added about 16 Spindles".
Arya kneels and spins his spinning wheels on the floor.
"Look what fun!"
He shines.
What are your rarest rolls?
"I have two spinners from 1923, in their original box. They are very rare. Even Ezra (Chairman of the Collectors Association, whom we will get to know immediately, p.n.) said that they are no longer found. I got them on the Internet."
In short, you don't have to worry a lot about what to buy for your birthday.
"That's right, I don't need a flower pot as a gift. On my birthday, my wife buys me swirls, when she's with me, and friends also bring me. To this day, I've been bought swirls from Ecuador, Russia, France, Portugal, the whole lot. That's how it is with us, the collectors."
Collector Ruthie Kinset with her home collection, photo: from the private album
Noa Reichman (65), a librarian at the National Library in Jerusalem, observant of mitzvot, happily made the whole journey from the settlement of Efrat in Gush Etzion to the meeting in Caesarea.
"My late grandmother was born in the Old City of Jerusalem, and she had a box with spinning wheels that she would take out of the closet every Hanukkah," she says. "Then my mother also had a box like that, and I decided that I would continue the tradition.
Little by little I got carried away and got hooked on the spinners, and this is something I've had for more than 40 years.
By the way, all of my children who have married so far have their own carousel, in which the fragments of the cup are embedded under the canopy."
Surely you also have a world-wide story about one of the spinners.
"Yes. Our neighbor's son did a backpacking trip in South America. He bought me a spinning wheel there, at a market stall, pushed it as deep as possible into his backpack - and continued with it the whole trip. When he returned, he gave me the beautiful gift, and I was very excited.
"Now I got another spinner, which is truly unique. When my son got married, he wanted an original wedding ring. He came to an artist who embedded fragments of a meteorite that fell from outer space into the ring. I asked the artist if it was possible to make a spinner with a meteorite inside - and he made one for me."
A roundabout in the tomb of Tut Anah Amon
Among the collectors there are also those who deeply study the history of the spinning wheel, know everything about its various incarnations and its historical rotations all over the world.
And here we come to Ezra Cohen (60), an electronics engineer from Ashdod and who is known by his friends as the "Chairman of the Association of Spinner Collectors in Israel." His burning love for spinners began, according to him, when he enlisted in the army.
"As an 18-year-old soldier, I liked to walk around the alleys of Jerusalem during Hanukkah. I knew that in the Mahane Yehuda market, new spinners were released for the holiday. I would come and buy, it was not expensive. When I turned 30, I went into a store in the city, and there were spinners. I asked how much they cost, and the seller answered '100 dollar'.
"I was young at the time with a mortgage and I told him that it was precious to me. Luckily I liked him, and he called me before I left the store. He said he didn't know many spinner collectors, and asked me to take his spinners for free and donate as many of them as I wanted to the synagogue. Since that day I I define myself as a collector."
What attracted you so much to spinning wheels?
"I was very attracted by the fact that such a small toy connects cultures, countries, and also between children and adults. Everyone loves spinning. I was with my wife in Africa, and we met a tribe of hunters there. I took the children of the tribe and showed them this small piece of wood, I taught them how to spin Within seconds the whole tribe started spinning, they were amused.
"I began to deeply research the history of the spinner. I bought a book by a professor from Holland, who conducted research on spinners. It turns out that the spinner has no territory, and is played all over the world, in all kinds of forms. In Japan, for example, it was made from seashells. In Indonesia - from bamboo. I found out that a spinner was found inside The tomb of Tut Anah Amon from ancient Egypt."
Ezra explains that the spinning wheel came to Israel through Germany, where it was called a dreidel and was used as a substitute for a game cube.
On each of the wigs were affixed letters that are instructions for winning: N - Nicht ("nothing", loss), C - ganz ("everything", winning), H - halab ("half", half winning) and S - sheitl Ain ("one part", the participant adds his own coin to the pot).
Over the years, the letters of the spiral became known as the initials for "a great miracle was there", and after the game came to Israel with Yiddish-speaking German Jews - the initials were adapted to "a great miracle was here".
"The Jewish spirals are four-sided, like a rotating cube. Even among the Americans, not necessarily Jews, you can find four spirals. But most of the spirals in the world are pentagonal, octagonal, and even 12-sided.
"In my research, I'm interested in who builds, collects and spins spinners in different parts of the world, and even flies to them to get an impression of the selection and buy. That's how I came, for example, to a man who lives in Athens, who has a double Porfra launcher, meaning he manages to launch two spinners using one launcher. I told my wife 'Let's order spinning wheels from him,' and she said, 'Wait, he lives in Athens? Let's fly to him.' And so we really did."
I heard you know how to say "spin" in dozens of languages.
"Yes, I know what they say in 60 countries in the world. I actually made a map of the countries with the names. China, Turkey, Hungary, Morocco, Italy, Russia, Poland, USA, Canada, South America, Peru, Brazil, Czech Yela, Argentina, and more and more.
In Iceland, for example, the spinner is called 'Scoparkringla'.
In Burundi, in Africa, it is called 'Akamari'."
Throughout history, countless exciting stories have been put into circulation.
"True. For example, the spinners in the Holocaust. There is also an amazing story about the Israeli Yossi Tor, who was a prisoner in Syria during the Yom Kippur war. Before Hanukkah, he asked his Syrian guards for a piece of soap and carved a spinner out of it. He put a stick into the soap, and from the black soot on the walls he took and wrote: 'A great miracle happened there'.
"He was released from captivity, and later became a well-known artist in the field of wood. We went to him one day, Aryeh Margalit, Rachel Barlev (researcher and collector) and I - and we bought spinning wheels from him.
He is a woodworker and engraver, an amazing artist.
"There is also a story about a mother whose toddler son passed away from an illness when he was two years old. He loved playing with spinners, so every Hanukkah she makes spinners and sells them, and she donates the money to research into the disease her son suffered from. She distributes spinners to hospitals and other daycare centers."
Rachel Barlev.
Wearing a necklace with swirls, photo: Efrat Eshel
According to Ezra, spinning tops also feature in the Guinness Book of Records.
"For example, who spins a spinning top for the longest time. Or a wind spinner that was operated for the longest time by blowing. There is also a spinning top with batteries, how long does it spin. My friend, Nimrod Beck, broke this Guinness record, and he has a certificate: his spinning top reached - 72 hours without a break."
A normal spinning top spins for a few seconds, then falls on its side, doesn't it?
Ezra screams: "What? Why! There are spinning wheels that are so precise and balanced, that they can spin ten minutes or even fifteen minutes after turning them by hand."
Someone told me that there is also a "Ben Gurion Circle".
"That's right. A Ben-Gurion spinning top is a spinning top that, as soon as you spin it, its center of gravity reverses. It got its name because of David Ben-Gurion, who used to stand on his head during the Feldenkrais exercises (remember a famous photo of him in this position on Tel Aviv Beach, PN)" .
Do you also have original and rare spinning wheels?
"A lot. My daughter brought me a spinner made of a special stone found in South America. She searched and found an artist to engrave the spinner for me for Hanukkah. I was in Italy myself, so I have a spinner made of Venetian glass and a spinner made of Italian marble, and many more good ones."
What do your kids say, by the way, about the spinning wheel craze?
"I have three children, who are well aware of my intense love. The spinners are in my living room, I have two cabinets for that purpose."
"Searching the internet all day"
Rachel Barlev (72) arrived in Caesarea armed with a book she wrote about the spinoffs.
For decades she worked at a large financial institution, and now she is a certified spinner researcher and is considered a sought-after lecturer in the field.
She testifies that she is researching the "essence and history" of the saboni, and sometimes heated debates erupt between her and Ezra about this or that fact concerning the beloved toy.
"The beginning of the modern spinning wheel in Roman culture: when Rome conquered countries and became an empire, the game spread further. In every human culture, from Africa to North America, among Eskimos, in the Far East - spinning wheels are played."
To date, she has presented five spinning wheel exhibitions, including things related to them, but according to her, she does not only collect physical spinning wheels.
"I have four albums from all over the world, full of stamps with pictures of spinning wheels. I collect napkins with pictures of spinning wheels, songs that mention spinning wheels, stories, fairy tales, cartoons, art paintings. A novel has been published in which it is written that 'something spins like a porphyra'? The novel is found At my library. I have neither one nor two of these. I collect every word that comes out on a spinning wheel, I even wear a necklace that has spinning wheels on it. I search the Internet about it almost every day."
Some will say that you are just before crossing the border into real madness.
"I admit and confess, and that's why I'm so enthusiastic. There are times when I'm in the company of people, friends, and I say to myself, 'What a beauty, I managed not to talk about spinning wheels.' I'm proud of myself."
By the way, do you also have clothes with a swivel?
"You can find everything in the market: pants, sweaters, shirts."
Well, did you buy one for yourself?
"No. I'm crazy, but with a limit."
The gathering of the spinner collectors in Caesarea.
"This is the most positive thing there is,"
"The most twisted grandmother in the world"
Ruthi Kinset (64), a special education teacher, came to the meeting from Kibbutz Hula.
She too, how could she not, has hundreds of spinning tops from all over the world, and in the kindergartens where she works, she usually conducts sessions and games accompanied by her beautiful spinning tops.
She also really likes to sing in singing groups, and that's why she especially wrote the "Anthem of the Spinners", based on the theme tune of the mythological children's program "Nice Butterfly".
At the meeting in Caesarea, when the evening has already fallen on the port, she bursts into song, and the members of the group of collectors join her:
"Spinning wheels of all kinds/ I have collected over the years/ big, small and chubby/ all made of different materials/ and also from a far away land// so a spinning top sub sub sub/ what is pleasant and how good/ to play and love".
Just before they part ways, Aria has one last spin on the floor.
Rachel volunteers more research information she collected.
Ezra is replete with spinning wheel stories, and Ofra lovingly collects the large and small spinning wheels she brought.
And only Miriam, the oldest in the group, has the last word: "I'm the most spindly grandmother in the world. It's fun that the holiday is coming soon. It's an opportunity to add a few more beautiful and wonderful spinners to my collection."
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