alte sachen

Alte Sachen, Alte Sachen

By David Verveer

The mid morning silence was abruptly disturbed by the cry of the Palestinian waste collector touring our city's streets with an old truck or a donkey towed wagon.
His cry for Alte Sachen (old stuff) is a tradition from the old days, more than 80 years ago, when traders were buying old furniture and utensils, which they cleaned, repaired and sold to the new Jewish immigrants, who had just arrived and did not possess any furniture, pans or pots, as they had fled with only the clothes on their backs, from all places in the Diaspora, in order to find a new life in Palestine (a British mandate) and later on (1948) in the young country Israel.

In historic days, these collectors / sellers were a blessing; they were the only available option for a kitchen table, a bed, an old wireless radio, frames for pictures, cupboards or a toilet bowl or anything else you needed.

The collector would not sell anything on the street, but if you were searching for something special, he would say that he might know somebody who could help you, and after a few days he would bring you the requested article, cleaned and polished, in perfect working conditions, just like new. Another place to look for second hand equipment would be the flee market, were you could (and still can) find anything you need.

But why the Palestinian waste collector calls out his cry in Yiddish, is due to the fact that he, the peddler doesn't speak Hebrew or Yiddish, and he simply continues the traditional peddler cry, like the Jewish peddlers of the old days. I don't know, if he realizes at all that his cry is in Yiddish and not in Hebrew.

These Palestinians do live on the other side of the green border, between Israel and the Palestinian authority. There, the families are big, generally more than ten children per family, and the relative poverty (in comparison with the Israelis), makes the second hand merchandise with attractive prices, a flowering business. To get rid of your old bed, furniture, Frigidaire or TV set in Israel will cost you disposal money, while selling it to the Alte Sachen, you might get paid, based on your capability of arguing about the price, but remember, they are professionals and you a simple amateur.

But for some, the cry of Alte Sachen sounds an insult, reminding them of their age, but they shouldn't be worried, nobody will be paying, to have them.