The German Jewish community received a bizarre boost to its numbers last month - when Israeli elephant Victor fathered a daughter in the Berlin zoo.

Shaina Pali, the result of the union and Victor and Thai elephant Mama Pang Pah, was born on June 14.

What makes this Israeli’s debut particularly interesting is the fact that she weighed 145 kg and reached one meter in height at birth.

Papa Victor, the bull, came to Berlin from the Ramat Gan Animal Park five years ago. Twelve-year-old Victor replaced Kiba, father of Pang Pah’s first offspring, following his death, due to a virus, in 1998.

Viktor’s odyssey to Germany was itself not void of challenges. In Berlin he needed to get used to the colder climate. Also, in Ramat Gan, he lived in a kind of Safari park – as opposed to a small, fenced off area, in Berlin.

Berlin’s Sweetheart

The Berliner Morgenpost [newspaper] noted that Shaina Pali has become the zoo’s primary attraction – “its sweetheart.”

“On this weekend alone ‘only’ 13,000 people came to see the newborn elephant,” the newspaper reported on 25 June.

Zoo director Jurgen Lange told the German Die Welt newspaper that he chose the elephant’s name based on her origins. “Shaina, in Hebrew means beautiful, and Pali, in Thai means protector,” so Lange.j8ihjoi

The zoo’s deputy director Heiner Klos believes that that number would have been even greater had the Christopher Street Day celebrations not taken place on the same weekend.

According to the zoo’s veterinarian Andreas Ochs, the new-born is coping admirably in her new conditions, even though, the inner city Berlin Zoo has no other calves with whom Shaina Pali could play.

“Shaina Pali is enjoying herself immensely, finding hay to play with, for example,” Ochs. Said.