In my museum in Old Jaffa, there is a beautiful certificate, which I have framed on the wall. It is an award from the Guinness World Records (GWR) for the world’s largest steel spoon. This creation of mine - bent, of course - sits as a landmark on a plaza outside my museum.
It is something I am very proud of, for myself and for Israel. Tourists from all over the world take great pleasure in posing with it for photographs, and placing their hands where a tiny nano chip containing the entire Hebrew Bible, Christian New Testament, Islamic Quran and Hindu scriptures is encased in the spoon.
The fact that the sculpture is a world record gives it a cache which everyone who sees it can enjoy. The accolade was earned in 2018 - but were it to happen today, my application would be rejected.
Why? Because Guinness World Records - a UK-based company wholly independent of the famous Irish beer brewer - has declared it is boycotting any further entries from Israel or the Palestinian territories.
A message to Guinness: World records are not political
This is unbelievable, and I am shocked and appalled. World records are not political - but in one deplorable move, GWR has joined the cultural boycott of Israel which has swept the world for the past two years. It is regrettable that the Palestinians are also paying the price for this. It is outrageous that the company started this policy in November 2023. Not October 2023, but November - once Israel had scaled up its response to the Hamas massacre and kidnappings.
But, every cloud has a silver lining, as they say, and I believe there are mysterious forces at play which have caused Guinness World Records to unintentionally throw a spotlight on Israel’s world record achievements! There are several dozen Israeli world record holders - probably a disproportionate number, like Israeli Nobel prize laureates. And, in some strange way, I feel my humble spoon has been energized by GWR’s ignoble actions.
You see, it is much more than a large steel sculpture, because when I created it I embedded within it powerful crystals which belonged to Einstein! I also instructed the sculptor to build it 18 meters long (it is 18.5 without the bend) - 18 representing the Hebrew word for “life” (chai) in mystical gematria.
No doubt, God was watching over it as an enormous trailer slowly transported all 11 tons of the spoon from the workshop to Old Jaffa because it missed tearing down a bridge in Tel Aviv by just 3mm on the way! I insisted on a specific weight of 11 tons, by the way, because 11 is a number of special spiritual significance which has been important to me all my life.
But where Guinness brings discord, my record-breaking spoon brings harmony, since it is overlooked by a grapevine and a fig tree which grow outside the front of my museum. The world records company would do well to remember one of the most famous Biblical prophecies of all, that “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation… but they shall all sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no-one shall make them afraid”. This passage appears on an original page from an early 17th-century Venetian Hebrew Bible which, like my record certificate, sits framed on a wall inside the museum.
I am a proud Israeli and Zionist, and I hope Guinness World Records comes to its senses. Until such a time, as far as I am concerned, it has earned itself a world record for disgrace.
The writer is one of the world's most investigated proclaimed psychics, emerging as a pop culture phenomenon in the 1970s. He is known especially for an apparent ability to bend spoons and other metal objects with only the power of his mind, the source of fierce controversy and enduring fascination for decades. Urigellermuseum.com