The Upside of Volcanic Ash: Dirt-Cheap Flowers in Israel
In every international crisis, natural or man-made, there are winners. Often they are cynical self-serving business folk who profit from the misery of others, but here in Israel, those benefiting from the recent grounding of flights due to volcanic ash are members of the general public.
You may know that on a daily basis Israel exports large numbers of flowers to Europe, the continent where the volcanic ash was disrupting flights. During the chaos of the ash, flower growers tried taking their flowers to Greece by boat and then looking for onward connections, but failed.
The long and short of it is that there were millions of flowers that didn’t make it for export, and even now that flights have restarted there is a backlog.
Now of course, this is a disaster for flower growers, who estimate losses at $5.3 million and are now asking for compensation from the state. But for members of the general public, it means a domestic market flooded with cheap flowers, and hence sweet-smelling homes and happy partners.
So, my wife has more flowers than she’s ever seen — which kind of makes up for the fact that the ash also meant that her in-laws’ visit from Britain was, let’s just say, rather longer than expected.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.