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The Israeli Shmear Campaign
Dead Sea cosmetics make it big in the American market.
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
AppleTree Editor
W
hen actress Halle Berry
wants to look beautiful, she
gets up, goes to her mirror
and — there she is, beautiful.
But even a glamorous movie star
needs a little help now and then. So
after a big night out, Berry turns to
her favorite beauty treatment: the
Peeling Cream from Dinur, an Israeli-
based skin-care line.
"I can't_liVe without it," Berry told
Star magazine.
For so many years,
Israel's most famous
export was the small
and sweet Jaffa
orange. Then came all those chatchkes
from the Old City, brightly painted
pieces of wood bearing messages like
"Shalom, Y'All" and "Home of the
Cohen Family."
Recently, Israeli-made jewelry came
of spots, QVC,
to that most
the cable-TV shopping channel, where
you also can find made-in-Israel paja-
mas from the Kathie Lee Gifford col-
.
lection.
Perhaps most impressive, however, is
Israel's big jump into one of the most
lucrative industries in the world: cos-
metics.
By now; Ahava ("love" in Hebrew) is
a well-known commodity among
beauty mavens throughout the world.
Locally, it's sold everywhere from
drugstores to Sephora, the very hip
cosmetics store in Novi's Twelve Oaks
Mall and Troy's Somerset Collection.
Ahava includes a vast range of skin-
care, anti-aging products and an
extremely popular, and not inexpen-
sive, hand cream.
But Ahava is just the beginning.
Today, new Israeli cosmetic companies
are moving by leaps and bounds-into
the United States and they are selling,
often thanks to salt.
A key ingredient in most Israeli cos-
metics comes, not unexpectedly, from
the Dead Sea. Companies focus on the
"miraculous qualities" of something
(often salt or mud) they have "extract-
ed from the Dead Sea" to use in the
products.
Among the lines touting use of
Dead Sea salt and mud, along with
other extracts, are Dinur, Shira and
Ahava, all available in the United
States and around for some time.
Within Israel, even more cosmetic
companies exist and are increasing
seemingly as quickly as the lines on
the faces of all those women who have
neglected to apply Dead Sea minerals
to their skin. These include the
Belmon Nurit Mineral Care line,
Crystalline-Health & Beauty from the
Dead Sea Ltd., Aromatics from
Minerals Health and Nature, Paloma
Dead Sea Ltd., Blue
Line Cosmetics Ltd.,
and Dead Sea
Premier Cosmetic
Laboratories Ltd.,
among many, many others. Still other
Israeli companies have connections
with other major international lines,
like L'Oreal.
Seven years ago, Israeli cosmetics
even made it to the Cayman Islands
when a Dr. David Melumad appeared
there with his new products (not yet
available in the United States). Much
of this line featured ingredients from
the Dead Sea, along with "aloe vera gel
from the Jordan Valley."
The skeptic, or just a basically
thoughtful person, might wonder why
on earth anyone would pay a lot of
money for two ingredients she could
get for pennies (in the case of salt) or
free (the mud). But, of course, advo-
cates say Dead Sea salt and Dead Sea
mud aren't just your average salt arld
mud.
Unlike most seas, the Dead Sea is
amazingly salty — more than 32 per-
cent salt, in fact, compared to the typ-
ical 3 percent for most seas.
But isn't it still just salt, after all, you
may ask.
For thousands of years, visitors to
Israel have insisted that the Dead Sea
salt is not like any other salt. In
fact, to this day, tourists
come from around the
world just to immerse
themselves in the
Dead Sea, where they
say they find relief for numer-
ous skin disorders, including
psoriasis and eczema.
The Dead Sea was formed when a
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mountain range rose from the depths
of the earth and the Dead Sea basin
dropped 400 meters (almost a quarter
mile) below sea level, making it the
lowest place on earth. Over time, the
water of the Dead Sea evaporated with
amazing speed, leaving behind all that
salt in not that much water.
But it's not just extra salt you get in
the Dead Sea. There's higher quanti-
ties of potassium, calcium, magnesium
and bromine, found both in the water
and in Dead Sea mud.
The ancient Egyptians — those peo-
ple who seem to have thought of
everything!— were quick to pick up
on the wonders of the Dead Sea.
Cleopatra was said to import Dead
Sea cosmetics for her skin care, and
asked Marc Antony to conquer the
land so she could have all the Dead
Sea creams she wanted. Alas, though
Antony was successful in his cam-
paign, the makers of the Dead Sea
products refused to turn over their
until Cleopatra agreed to
secrets
"lease" the land back to King Herod.
Even the Torah speaks of the Dead
Sea delights: King
Solomon gave Dead Sea
salts to the Queen of
Sheba when she popped
in for a visit.
Then, for thousands of
years, Dead Sea cos-
metics went into
obscurity until the
Bedouins — and an
astute Israeli anthro-
pologist and politi-
cian — 'rediscovered
the Sea's powers.
In the 1950s,
Yitzhak
Ben-Zvi
— later
Israel's
second president — was suffering
from eczema. According to legend, he
caught sight of Bedouins soaking in
the Dead Sea and wondered what the
salty water might do for his own dis-
ease-inflicted hands. Apparently, the
Dead Sea salts completely cured the
eczema, and Ben-Zvi went on to
advance the benefits of the sea — and
dramatically increase tourism to the
area.
Among the first to pick up on the
idea of re-igniting the Dead Sea cos-
metics industry were kibbutzim. In
1984, kibbutzim Mitzpe Shalem and
Ein Gedi united to form Dead Sea
Health Products (DSHP), which
became the first business with rights to
mine Dead Sea mud. DSHP later
went on to expand its line from solely
mud products to other cosmetics,
many with Dead Sea salt, and was
renamed Ahava.
What Oprah Loves
One of the newest Israeli lines — its
New York City store just celebrated its
first- anniversary — offer-
ing products with Dead
Sea salt is Sabon (which
translates from the Hebrew
to the decidedly unglam-
orous "soap
Sabon, which is not yet
available in metro Detroit,
boasts such treats as the rose-
petal bath ball and the orange-
").