Singled Out: Ben Fisher “The Shell Lottery”

Who: Ben Fisher

From: Seattle, WA

Song: “The Shell Lottery“

Latest Record: Does The Land Remember Me? (out soon)

What about it: “For a long time, for about 30 or 40 years, there were Jewish immigrants from Europe living in Jaffa, which was an ancient port city mostly made up of Muslim Arabs. At some point, things got a little dicey there between those two groups of people. The Jewish immigrants wanted to found their own city, a little bit North of there. They met on the sand dunes in 1909. There were 60 families that were there. Each family picked up shells; there were 120 that they collected. There were 60 dark shells and 60 light shells. Each family wrote their name on one shell and a number on the other. They picked one from each group. They paired those two together, and that was the plot of land each family got in this new city, which went on to become the massive metropolis of Tel Aviv.”