Ex-Israeli medical practitioner launches new plant nursery, social hub

It occurred to me, while cycling over to meet Yael Stein in an urban seemingly middle-of-nowhere spot, that she has at least a couple of things in common with a certain Nobel Peace Prize laureate. “You both have the title of doctor and both have, or had, a dream,” I suggested, at least a little whimsically. My likening Stein to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was met with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders. 

That is typical of the genial unassuming former anesthetist who, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, made a life-changing decision to opt out of the profession she had worked in for many years and in which she had invested much effort in qualifying for. Instead of putting patients to sleep in operating rooms, she decided that she wanted to help nurture some of Mother Nature’s colorful and leafy offerings. “Working inside, in an operating room, you are closed off from real life,” she says. “I wanted to get back out into the world, to the air. I like sunlight.”

And so Mashtelat HaMifgash – The Plant Meeting Place – venture came to be. If you happen to walk down the right hand side of Keren Hayesod Street in the direction of Liberty Bell Park and get to the corner of Ahad Ha’Am Street, the first thing you’ll notice is a five-story building which has seen better days and appears to be abandoned. That is the now defunct iconic President Hotel which, during its three-decade existence, provided services to a string of diplomats and other high-flier guests. It is now a temporary home to several cultural outlets, including a dance company and an art gallery.

But if you get up close and peer over the low wall that encircles the compound, you will see a couple of very different, far more modest structures – a yurt with a small shed next to it. That, in a nutshell, is what Stein’s long-harbored dream is all about.

When we met up earlier this week, Stein was nearing the home stretch in the run-up to the official launch of the squat circular tent-like construction – scheduled for April 20 – as the pivot of what she hopes will be a pulsating, cooperative, social and cultural hub; that is, in addition to the core bread-and-butter business of running a plant nursery there.

The full name of the project is Mashtelat HaMifgash Leharhavat Hatoda’ah – The Plant Meeting Place for Broadening the Consciousness. The blurb talks of a “low-tech yurt, for encounters, lectures and seminars, surrounded by a plant nursery and a community garden.” The subject matter will span a broad spectrum of wholesome areas such as health, arts & crafts, spiritual and physical well-being, mothers and babies sessions, men’s circles, weekly Torah portion studies and jazz jam sessions.

The accent is clearly on creating a place where people can meet – physically, not virtually via now ubiquitous Zoom sessions and Whatsapp video calls – to learn together, work together and, basically, benefit from interpersonal dynamics. That’s a welcome balm after all these years of social distancing and wearing masks.

The latter proved to be the catalyst for Mashtelat HaMifgash. “As an anesthetist, I had to wear a mask for a few hours a day,” Stein explains. “But during the pandemic, we were required to wear them all day. I had had issues with that before. I actually fainted in the operating room on a few occasions. I discovered I am allergic to masks.”

That helped Stein to make the break from the conventional healthcare sector. Throwing financial security, years of studies and work experience, and general caution to the four winds, she began considering her plant-cultivating idea in tangible terms. Then again, there were certain fundamental hurdles to be navigated before she could start to get the plan off the ground in earnest. “I didn’t have any money,” she laughs. “Then, someone I knew offered me NIS 20,000, as a loan to be paid back at some stage. Just like that! Out of the blue!”

Getting the new project off the ground

THAT WAS a pretty good starter, although the generous offer didn’t even cover the cost of the raw materials for the yurt, let alone the wood for the floor, a storage facility and other infrastructure components. And there were other practicalities to be addressed. Stein had spent 12 years working at Hadassah Hospital as an anesthetist and in cardiology. That, taking care of her kids, and indulging in her love of music – she plays clarinet – did not leave any time for learning about such areas of nuts-and-bolts expertise as carpentry. 

She had to start from scratch, feeling her way through the intricacies of sawing, drilling, hammering and electrical work. She also had to make sure the yurt stood on an even keel, on a concrete slab in a yard at a site that had been exposed to the ravages of the elements for some years. “I came from the public health sector!” she exclaims. “What did I know about construction and all the other stuff you need to know to get something like this going?” 

Her former profession is alluded to in a row of hefty tomes in a small bookcase in the yurt, with such enticing titles as Management of Pain; Essentials of Medicine; and Cardiology Secrets. Gripping stuff for the layman. “I don’t deny my past,” she says. “That is part of me, too.”

She says the plan was always going to be a multi-pronged affair. “I like plants. That’s nice, but it’s not interesting enough. I wanted to have get-togethers and music and all that.” You couldn’t get much farther away from putting patients to sleep in the cloistered sterile environment of an operating room. “I said I’d set up a plant nursery and I’d close off a part of it so I could host live music without disturbing the neighbors.”

The original intention was to have the plants inside, and the multifarious social and other activities outside. Seasonal facts on the ground quickly intervened. “I signed the contract in November with a nonprofit called Merchavim Lepe’ilut Chevratit (Social Activities Spaces), and then winter arrived,” Stein recalls. “I thought I should have things the other way round – the sessions and gatherings inside, and the plants will be outside.” 

By the by, Merchavim Lepe’ilut Chevratit has been doing sterling and rewarding work for some years now, taking disused buildings awaiting renovation or demolition and pressing them into good beneficial human and cultural service for one and all. Alliance House, a now dilapidated late-19th-century edifice near Mahaneh Yehuda, is a prominent example. Sadly, the chop is finally coming down on Alliance House, which is due to close later this month to get a boutique hotel makeover. 

WE STEP out through the back door of the cozy yurt to take a look at a largish rectangular space bound by a low wall. In truth, the sparse earth doesn’t look too promising, mixed with all sorts of junk that has accumulated over the years of neglect. 

“Yes, but it is soil,” Stein points out in her uncompromisingly optimistic way. It is indeed, and she intends to make the most of a seemingly bad job. There were some plastic jerry cans and old tires dotted around the diminutive plot. “They will be used to hold earth and plants,” the social entrepreneur-cum-businesswoman explains. “You can cut the jerry cans in half, and they become plant holders. This is the community garden,” she states. 

That, for Stein, means accommodating as wide a cross-section of the public as possible, regardless of religious, personal, cultural, political leanings, or physical or other attributes. “Here, there will be a row of raised window boxes,” she says. “There are quite a few older people living around here. Raising the boxes will make it easier for them to get to the plants and soil.” Now that’s what I call good, healthy, inclusive thinking.

There’s more. “Here we will have a small community greenhouse. People will be able to grow tomatoes and all sorts of things,” she explains. 

You get caught up in Stein’s quietly dogged enthusiasm. She started with nothing – no dough, no knowledge of management, no practical skill set – just a burning desire to get out there and do something she could enjoy herself and which might be beneficial to the community at large. 

She did, however, hold one indispensable ace in her pack. She seems to have the knack for finding the requisite what, and who, she needs just when and where she needs it. In addition to the aforementioned generous soul who provided the initial funding for the venture, a friend came up with another NIS 5,000. There were also offers of basic raw materials, such as metal shelving parts which Stein schlepped over from Tel Aviv. 

And, since she first set foot in earnest in the President’s Hotel backyard, a motley gallery of friends, acquaintances, and other folk who were caught up in Stein’s enthused bonhomie wake, have lent a hand or two. Some helped with transporting stuff; others – yours truly included – freed up a couple of hours to do some sawing and drilling or scoot up and down ladders. This has, fittingly, been a communal cohesive affair, with Stein smiling at the helm and putting in the majority of the elbow grease herself. 

LEGENDARY BRITISH psychedelic folk-rock band The Incredible String Band, which featured in a mostly unnoticed Woodstock Festival slot in 1969, once sang simply, and to the spiritual existential point, “live ‘til you die.” That appears to be Stein’s motto as well.

She may have given up a steady job, but she is not exactly – to borrow from another Sixties act – turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. She is going the whole ambitious, nourishing inclusive hog. “You’ve got to live now,” she declares. “I just left Hadassah [Hospital]. Now I can access my pension fund, and I am using that to repay the loans. What else could I do?”

If Stein is having any second thoughts, she isn’t showing it. Three days before the grand opening, the place on the corner of Ahad Ha’Am Street did not exactly look spick and span; but somehow, that suits. This is no bling-bling superficial commercially oriented exercise. It is very much about down and dirty, street level, human interaction intent.

“This is a social business,” Stein enthuses. “See those metal shelving bits? That’s for the plants. There will be netting, shading, so the plants don’t die.” Presumably, that goes for prospective customers, too. “Here’s a space for fairs – arts and crafts and that sort of thing, agricultural produce, secondhand stuff. And I’ve got gravel, and I’m going to set up something like a Japanese garden. And I’ve got to get the stairs sorted out so no one trips up on their way down here,” she chuckles.

So, if you’re feeling a little down in the dumps and a mite desperate about the way the world is going right now, a visit to Mashtelat HaMifgash could be just what the (former) doctor ordered. ❖

The yurt will also be available for hire for individual outdoor events. 

For more information: 050-331-0121.