Mentally out to Galut

April 9, 2009: Our last full day in Israel and we haven't yet left the apartment. We've been napping, lazing, playing games, eating, playing around online. I had to study tomorrow night's in-flight movie options (lots of repeats from the Eastbound flight -- can't they plan that better?), Rosa has movie plans with her friends for Saturday night, I'm trying to plan how I can leave without any shekels and how much kosher for Pesach food we will need for our day-long journey home.

Tanya's plans for where she'll be for the remainder of her Pesach chofesh are still a bit tentative - probably stay with her Israeli friend from camp in Nes Tsiona (greater Tel Aviv) and spend some time at the festival nearby.

Tonight we'll all take a cab to the Malcha Mall (One of the largest malls in the Middle East) as Tanya needs a couple of things and I love to see the Pesadik (separated into Meat and Milk sides) food court where everything is kosher for pesach!

I'm so glad we were here this time of year (although I could have used a little more warm weather!) and had an opportunity to check-in with Jerusalem, Eretz Yisrael, and of course with Tanya and her TRY friends. I'm also ready to head home.

Ghosts of Pesachs Past and Present

<------ Tanya and Rosa recuperating from last night's six-hour seder

Jerusalem 1982-83: It is widely known that if you are a young person with nowhere to go for Shabbat or holiday dinner you hang by the Kotel about an hour before sundown and Baruch Levine will place you with an Orthodox family; he and his assistant, Jeff Seidel, are matchmakers of sorts between secular and/or non-observant Jews and observant families. Several times during this, my initial year of rabbinical school, I use their services to meet and dine with Orthodox families. Baruch or Jeff leads a group of us from the Kotel through the surrounding neighborhoods, and, along our stroll, our leader points to one or two of us in the pack and sends us to the door of an awaiting host family.

Jerusalem 2001: Dan, Tanya, Rosa and I are on sabbatical and, in spite of the fact that we have attended several services at the Reform synagogue here and spoken with several local Reform rabbis, no seder invitation is extended (This would NEVER happen in Boise). Leafing through the Jerusalem Post, I happen upon a small classified notice: "Need somewhere for seder? Call Jeff Seidel at . . . " Wow! Nostalgia-city.
I call the number.

"Allo?" (Israelis, to American ears, can sound both rushed and intimidating when greeting an incoming caller)

I tell him what we need.

"Are you Jewish? Where are you? What do you do? (Completely avoiding the "We're Reform rabbis" deal, I reply, "Teachers.") Where are you from?"

Concurrent with our conversation, he deals with an incoming call on his other cell and partially empties a trunk full of Pesach groceries (and this is pre-Bluetooth).

"I'll call you back in half an hour." Click.

Twenty minutes later I answer a call from Sara Averick-Rosenfeld who lives down the street from our temporary Jerusalem apartment. Sounding both friendly and animated, she tells me that they have three daughters ranging from six to ten (same age range as my girls), in addition to an older boy, 11. Their family had made aliyah from Chicago 11 years earlier.

Sara extends an invitation to get together pre-Pesach to get acquainted and I love her immediately. The Rosenfeld family is warm, funny, enthusiastic, open and curious. We have a meal together and our girls sleep over in their well-appointed, spacious apartment attending classes as their guests at the girls' same-sex religious elementary school. Tanya and Rosa also accompany them to a special day of arts and crafts at the local children's museum.

Their seder is lively and involving and their kids are eager to share their knowledge as they are enthusiastic about Jewish learning and the Bazooka Joes they earn for each insight. Their kids initiate a set of short "plays" related to seder in which Tanya and Rosa have roles. I love seeing Jewish children so intellectually and emotionally engaged by their tradition and excited that my girls are able to see this as well.

Jerusalem 2009: I have exchanged emails with Sara every so often over the past eight years and, when our Israel travel plans are set, I email her to let her know we will once again be in town for Pesach. She offers an enthusiastic invitation to join her family again for the seder.

At 7:30 pm we arrive at their door - their apartment is larger than I remembered: the top floor of one of a row of nearly identical stone blocks in the pleasant Rehavya neighborhood. Sara looks amazing - I think she's aged backwards since earlier in the decade. The girls are now beautiful, unrecognizable teenagers who still retain the personalities I remember from their earlier childhood. None of their kids remember us or our earlier visit but my kids wouldn't have recalled it either had I not given them copies of the blogs I very stubbornly insisted (in the face of whining and angry resistence) they dictate during our previous trip.

Nechemya (the oldest - now 21) is currently on Israel's yeshivah track but, unlike a number of other Orthodox men, is also doing army service. I would have liked to find out more about that but I know the issue is very sensitive for his mom. He has an extremely quick wit and is both knowledgeable and very entertaining. The girls are still sharp, curious and sweet. Avital, the middle girl, still retains the role of the family "character" - she is seated across from me and, for nearly every part of the Haggadah she energetically squeals: "Oh! I have to share just one thing. Just really quick . . . " and then proceeds to talk for five minutes about a commentary she has learned or a current book she is reading.  Of course each "really quick" commentary necessitates another Bazooka Joe - yes, eight years later and they are still the motivational seder item of choice.

Sara's brother and his eight children were supposed to have attended but they were unable, so his family is represented by one of the middle sons who is learning at yeshivah in the Old City. I recall from eight years ago Sara referencing her brother who, she said, "Went kind of overboard with the Chasidic thing." I don't know if she would still make that assessment today but her nephew is, although clearly sweet, intellectually curious and well-meaning, annoying in that Yeshiva-y way. As Tanya sums it up: "Endlessly quoting from Rashbam and Maimonides and Rav Whatever instead of having any of your own thoughts is culty and creepy. It's like they don't have any ideas of their own."

I am thinking that, if the chasids/ultra-Orthodox are too much on the "blind follower/spouter" end of the spectrum, Reform is the mirror opposite. It would behoove us to have our Jewish lives and perspectives rooted in discussions and disagreements of brilliant minds from our tradition's past instead of being planted in nothing but our own personal judgments and opinions (As my Spertus professor Byron Sherwin teaches, quoting from the book "The Jew Within," the modern American Jew's ultimate authority is the Sovereign Self.). Many people (at least in the modern, Western world) want to strive for happy mediums but very few of us ever arrive, much less live, there.

Their dominant seder theme is fairly easy to guess: "In every generation an enemy has risen to destroy us and the Holy One, blessed be He, delivered us from their hands." The promise of a safe, secure and peaceful Jewish homeland is both personal and immediate to Jews living outside the comfortable American dream. And although they feel resentment toward the Arabs, both domestic and in the territories, for their chronically angry, violent words and actions against a Jewish state blamed unfairly for their own economic and political plight, Sara is quick to clarify that this is the fault of only part of the Arab population. I found it touching that Avital shared the four questions in Arabic after the youngest two girls, Yehudit and Rosa, sang them in Hebrew.

There were prayers for Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit (and I had read in Ha-aretz that a seder in support of Shalit was planned for the protest tent outside the Prime Minister's house) and Sara tearfully shared a published letter from an army commander who had written a loving tribute to a young member of his rank recently killed in Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. How enlightening to participate in a seder from the perspective of those who identify with its prayers and themes so personally and emotionally. For us Americans, seder feels as a nostalgic tie to youth and the Jewish past, while seder for Israeli Jews is a vivid expression of the present and a desperate yearning for a hopeful future. And enthusiastic clamoring for Bazooka Joes.

New Frontiers in Crowd Control

Photo (courtesy of www.vosizneias.com) of yesterday morning's Birkat Ha-chamah at the Wall: aren't you sorry you weren't crunched in with that Kotel crowd?? They packed in 50,000 worshippers before blocking it off (Well, at least it was lacking that one vital ingredient that most any American gathering of this magnitude would include: alcohol.)

The Thrice-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity

First sign of pink light

Here comes the Chamah

New day dawning over Jerusalem

The designated Bi'ur Chametz bin

Renegade Chametz-burners in a parking lot

Okay, I am falling way behind on my blogging but I am competing for computer time and how can I argue when Rosa pleads to do her homework (and maybe catch an episode or two of One Tree Hill)? And since the weather's been so great I'd rather be out and about, anyway.However, I do want to point out that this morning was Birkat Ha-Chamah: an every 28 year event in which the daily Shacharit prayers are davvened outside followed by a blessing for the sun. The tradition is that this is the time when the sun is exactly lined up as it was at the time of creation, but pseudo-science notwithstanding it was extremely cool that everyone in the city was out at 5:30 am finding a beautiful outside place to gather to pray and enjoy the dawn. Apparently the Kotel plaza was completely packed (And wouldn't that be a fun crowd to be crunched into?) and was closed off well before 6:00.

We tried to hail a cab from about 5:50 to 6:10 before one would pick us up -- we were his 3rd customers of the morning taking this route up to the Goldman Promenade in Southeast Jerusalem overlooking the Peace Forest, the Old City and much of the New. I have some photos on my Picasa album of the morning and I inserted a couple above.

It was very cool how different subgroups davvened shacharit after saying the simple blessing for the viewing of the sun (the same blessing one would say for seeing a variety of natural wonders).  There were Orthodox gatherings and egalitarian minyans and one colorful Jewish Renewal-y group was singing and dancing with instruments.


After people started dispersing, the girls were so overly tired, draggy and whiny that we sent them home in a cab (which I would never do at home, but Israelis of all ages frequently get around this way) while Dan and I walked home through the city -- really, it does not take that long to walk anywhere in this town. On the way back we passed the earliest of the day's "Biur Chametz" ("burning of the chametz"). There were some special metal trays set up along Yaffa Road for this purpose (even saying "biur chametz" on them), but most people just like to set their own bonfires which would keep the fire department extremely busy if not for the convenient fact that every building is constructed of stone. We tossed a piece of bread on the little chametz pile ablaze down our block -- Orthodox boys were enjoying squirting lighter fluid directly on the open flames which makes for great boy fun and a fairly good chance of a pre-Pesach trip to the Emergency Department.
I need to spend my allotted computer time today researching and preparing for tonight's seder: each participant has the assignment of giving a 5 minute d'var Torah on some part of the seder. I chose the teaching near the end: "Rabban Gamliel [a prominent figure among the early sages who helped transition us from a Temple/sacrifice-oriented people to a post-Temple religious tradition] used to say: 'Whoever does not speak of three things at seder -- pesach, matzah, maror -- has not fulfilled his obligation.'" This seems pretty basic but when you start parsing it apart it's actually pretty complicated. What does "speak of" entail? Do you only need these three parts? Which obligation is he talking about? What is the purpose of saying "three things" as if we cannot count them ourselves?

Evidence of rapidly-approaching seder night manifests all around: the smell of charred bread, stores and restaurants closing up, bakeries featuring all their fancy-schmancy Pesadik delicacies, chain-smoking chasids filling up with nicotine before the holiday and everyone wishing you, "Chag Samayach!" It's at Jewish holiday time that this noisy, tense, contentious place becomes not only bearable but beloved.

So no more blogging for today -- a very happy and kosher Pesach to all!! And hooray for the arrival of Spring!
Love, Me

Food, glorious food

<------ Our Israeli kitchen staples
OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER: My kitchen at home would never be fouled by a jar of Skippy (tm)

This is my kind of culinary culture - everything is wholesome and fresh and not "dolled up" too much. A felafel, which is a huge meal in itself - comes with every kind of salad and topping you could dream of - costs 12 shekels (a little less than $3). Schwarma (lamb in a pita) is the same.

The Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox are now very into health food so you can get any possible thing in whole wheat; soy milk abounds. Even the tea and coffee taste better. I've been buying containers of humus and techina that I've been eating by the bowlful (no relation to why I could barely fit into my jeans this morning).

I notice that their fruit isn't quite as sweet - the oranges here (and I've eaten a bunch) are a little more tart than the American varieties. Dan said that was also true in Spain. Bananas have a starchier texture and are more subdued in color. We Americans are not much for subtlety.

Rosa is really enjoying the chocolate yogurt/pudding cups (dairy products here have twice as much fat as at home - my first year of rabbinical school, I gained 10 pounds from the cottage cheese alone) that come with little chocolate shavings. However, most of the different fruits I've brought home (with the exception of the green melons that she wouldn't eat during our last visit) she's declared, "gross."

Adventures in Jerusalem, continued. . .

After the shopping trip to Machaneh Yehudah, I exited through an unfamiliar alleyway and ended up taking a longer, scenic route home. After a few blocks I noticed that I was the only non-Chasid on the street. A bit nervous as I was wearing Gap khakis and Rosa's short-sleeved American Eagle top, I nonetheless plowed ahead. "It's my city, too!" I mentally pep-talked myself.

No worries, however. Nobody seemed to mind my strange Western garb (If I had been wearing shorts and a tank top I might have received a different response.) and my uncovered, natural head of hair (such as it is). One would not, however, want to attempt a stroll through Mea She'arim (enclosed Chasidic/Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood) in such a getup.

Travel tip: You know you're nearly out of a religious neighborhood when you look in the dry cleaner windows and there's something hanging up that's not black and/or white.

This is, in general, a very child-oriented society. Guess the 12-kids-per-Chasid thing tends to bring a family friendly spirit to a place. But a difference between this and other socially conservative cultures is the full involvement of the men in parenting -- maybe the up side to the non-employed status of many of the Ultra-Orthodox men is that they spend their days pushing strollers and doing playground duty. There are just as many little children clinging to the men as to the women. Even the secular dads sport baby slings and carriers. And people just seem to enjoy children: last time we were here we would be constantly be accosted by Israelis looking at 6-year-old Rosa with a smile, declaring "Eyzeh Chamudah!" ("What a cutie!") And she is a Chamudah still!

The weather changed about every 35 seconds as I wandered through the northern neighborhoods of the city but the wind was pretty persistent. On several occasions I caught young men attempting to recurl their sidelocks with their fingers or at least hold them together with their hands. Yes - a place where only the men have bad hair days!

Next up . . . back to the Old City . . .

Getting the hang of it: Good morning, Jerusalem!

Yesterday was actually a really great day in the City of Gold. The lack of personal space and constant melodic hum of "Sonata in G for Auto Horn, Yelling Israeli, and Car Alarm," notwithstanding, I was able to open myself to this colorful, historical, paradoxical place.

I dropped Rosa off at Dan's as they were off to Tel Aviv for the day. I and my little wheely grocery cart then headed back toward Machaneh Yehudah (the major Jerusalem outdoor marketplace only several blocks from our apartment) with the mission of replacing all the things I have already destroyed in our rental unit: hot water kettle, pair of scissors (victim of flower stem cutting) and glass. (I've not yet killed the two plants!! Stay tuned!!) I also needed some miscellaneous groceries.

Think pre-Thanksgiving Albertsons times 3.

Travel Alert: Machaneh Yehudah, two days before Pesach, should be avoided by those with the following conditions: claustrophobia, sensitivity to loud noise or strong smells, general misanthrophy.

But, you know, if you're in the right spirit (and your blood sugar is stabilized at the right level) it's still a pretty cool place to be. People representing a range of religiosity, cultures and ages cram through the crowded alley of humanity picking up bags of oranges, tomatoes, melons, cheeses and baked goods along the way.

Reasons the Shuk beats the Park Center Albertsons:

• Vendors chant and sing about the cheapness ("zol") and freshness ("t'ree") of their products
• Fish in bins still moving
• Store keeper, having just opened a new kosher for Pesach cake product for himself to eat, tears off a chunk and hands it to me to try
• Offers every kosher for Pesach food item imaginable
• In between food vendors, there's clothing boutiques, art stands, a myriad of delicious-smelling restaurant/cafes, colorful arrays of burlap sacked-spices, Judaica shops
• Incredible baked breads right out of the oven & freshly packed humus, techina and salads
• Gives you a chance to use (and mangle) basic Hebrew vocabulary
• All products handed to you in a pretty assortment of pastel colored bags making your little wheely cart look like a colorful baby's room!

I noticed that the bread bakery stands were mainly pushing rolls and individual pitas instead of whole loaves -- I guess customers want to purchase only small portions of chametz several days before Pesach. What kind of carb loaders are these? Amateurs! I've singlehandedly polished off an entire loaf of whole wheat walnut bread since Sunday.

Still to come . . . my photo-seeking journey through town, my visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (or, "Christians can also be dysfunctional - but not nearly as loudly"), and more . . .

"Beach baby, beach baby, there on the Muddy Sinkhole. . ."

Needing a trip out of town, Rosa chose an outing to the Dead Sea -- eight years ago she had a very brief encounter with this national treasure: and the treasure kicked her butt. Salt water splashed in her face, screaming ensued, and she refused to go near the Sea again.

"I don't want to have just bad memories," she declared yesterday and so we shoved our way onto the #486 Egged bus (A young, very good-humored Chasidic woman visiting from New York amusedly posed the question: "A line -- why can't there be one line? Why six lines?" "Because we're in Israel," I responded, causing a small smile to form on her squashed husband's face.) and rode the 40 minutes due East to Kaliya Beach.

The driver and passengers around us (mostly teenaged soldiers: talking, eating and answering cell phones with ringtones entirely comprised of American pop songs) were very nice and accommodating and helped us get off at the right place which was on a barren desert road.

We walked past long-abandoned Jordanian bunkers until we spotted the entrance to the Beach's parking lot. Many beachgoers were Israeli (predominantly Russians), but most of the cars speeding past us into the lot bore Palestinian Territory license plates (And although we were in the West Bank, our bus carried no Arabs). Otherwise, various ethnic groups with matching hats and neck badges flowed from tour buses (Beach fun: The Identify-the-tour-groups'-country-of-origin Game).

Rosa did triumph over the Sea this go around. She floated without incident and did the requisite "cover your body with mud" deal (see photos). I had no desire to engulf myself in oily salt water, but I did, at Rosa's urging, do a little wading around in the magical, healing, mineral-dense mud (Today I can tell that my legs, from the calves down, are healthier than they have ever been!!!). A couple of times I took a step and my leg fell in up to my knee before I maneuvered my way out (today I read online that sinkholes around the retreating sea shore have swallowed some people up and thank God I had not read that earlier!!!).

Mainly we just lay by the beach on lounge chairs, happily surveying the sand, the blue sea, the Jordan coastline on the other side and the haze of uncontrolled air pollution. It was a very pleasant and relaxing afternoon.

Of course there was also the persistent sound of digging/construction right behind us. Half the Arab workers' time was spent attempting to drag one of two large earth-mover trucks out of the muddy hole into which it had sunk. Rosa couldn't decide where she should look for entertainment: the repeated futile attempts to free the sunken construction equipment behind us? Or the Asian women's tour group that had timidly and anxiously entered the water, sending into a panic a handful of the group's squealing members? It was one of life's truly confounding dilemmas.

An extremely nice family from Los Angeles, the Gleichers, shared our little shady beach tarp and we became acquainted. They have an apartment in Jerusalem as their older son lives here with their two very young grandchildren. Their younger son was at the beach with them - he lives in California but owns/manages the crocs (TM) airport stores around the world, including the one at Ben Gurion (I was extremely glad neither of us was wearing the knock-off Payless Airwalks.). They very generously offered to drive us back to our apartment and we had an enjoyable ride.

On the way back we passed the "other Wall" -- the one they're building to shield Israel from Palestinian infiltration. If I hadn't been on the wrong side of a moving car with my camera in my purse in the trunk I would have taken a picture for you! (well -- it's the thought that counts) Let's just say it looks like a concrete wall. Like the ones they put along the highway as noise blockage. And it's worked tremendously. The weekly bombings that characterized our last visit have all but ceased (not to do a "k'ayinhara" on myself or anything), although apparently an Arab man axed a teenage Israeli boy to death the other day (according to our automobile hosts).

Well -- that same thing happened to a Philadelphia bus passenger while I was at Penn so I suppose we have our non-political crazies (this explains why, throughout my 20's, I would never sit totally facing forward on city transportation -- always had one eye scouting out the person behind me, ready to leap into the aisle if any sudden move around a large bag might indicate axe-removal).

And, just so we didn't feel too removed from Israeli society during our beach trip: there were only two moving vehicles on the beach - the two earth-movers - a situation which still necessitated very frequent horn-honking. Would one vehicle alone require honking as well?? A philisophical question that will have to be addressed another day.

Fun with Domesticity (or) The Jewish Martha Stewart!

Genius move of the day: Putting electric water heater on gas stove
instead of on heating stand (on left)
Hey - at least our building's not burnt down!

Every Israeli toilet has two flush modes - little and big. Cool ecological feature: maybe someday they will also place used food wrappers (and food) into trash receptacles?

Great evening entertainment: watch laundry suds and spin. Better than cable!

Honey, I've Shrunk the Dead Sea!

The million dollar question: How will Israel meet its end?
1. Destroyed by Arab neighbors
2. Destroyed by unceasing internal conflict (between . . well, . . everyone)
3. Environmental catastrophe

Okay, kids: time to put your money down! I'm not really a gamblin' woman but I wouldn't be surprised to see this place go up in metaphorical ecological flames. Is it part of the global meltdown or is it domestic irresponsibility? I don't know enough to conjecture.

Suffice it to say, among severe air pollution, trash multiplying faster than Chasids and loss of open space, domestic bodies of water are drying up -- and fast. Over the past 50 years, the Dead Sea, the world's saltiest body of water and lowest point on earth, has seen its surface area shrink by a third. It is to this now diminutive natural wonder that Buppy and I took our very pleasant Sunday outing.

Shabbat in Jerusalem

This is the coolest museum piece EVER (puts the two-headed calf to shame)

Rosa in front of the only open section of the Israel Museum:
the Ruth Youth Wing

"Ahavah" ("Love" for those who do not recognize this configuration and/or were not yet alive in the 70's)

Lots of kippah- and tzitzit-garbed American boys fighting over football rules

My attempt to depict litter-strewn park grounds

Blew off Shabbat services altogether. Political reasons? Theological grounds? No.
Too lazy to get up.
(Note to self: come up with better reason and go back and edit blog posting)

Rosa and Dan and I took the short stroll to the Israel Museum through Sachar Park, carefully avoiding junk food wrappers, water bottles, coke cans, assorted plastic bags, garbage cans into which a few Israelis actually inserted their trash, little running chasids, children on mini-ATV's, Asians on tricycles (okay - there was only one of those), Orthodox boys playing (American) football, Israelis playing (American) football, hippy neo-Chasids playing (American) football, and Israelis playing actual football (soccer).

Most of the Israel Museum is closed for some huge renovation which made Rosa a very happy girl. She enjoyed interacting with the large art pieces on the grounds (which included a couple of concrete blocks -- each, I think, named, "block"). There was one exhibit on indoor display: "Bizarre Perfection." I cannot even describe how cool this exhibit was so you need to get on a plane as soon as you can to check it out. One piece was an entire kitchen with every square millimeter covered in shiny beads -- there was a table and cereal boxes and a sink full of water and dishes and an open oven with pies and an open cookbook and windows with curtains and every single thing was beaded. Worth the plane ticket. (I just found an online photo which I've inserted above)

There was a large blanket/quilt on the wall but when you came close you saw it was actually flattened metal bottle tops held together with tiny wires. There was a bale of hay that, when you walked up, turned out to be made out of toothpicks. The weirdest was probably the profile of Pope John Paul that, when viewed from up close, was actually an aerial photograph of Middle Eastern men -- the shirtless ones were his face and the white-shirted ones were his hair. Whoa.

Gotta go and bring up our little laundry drying rack from the downstairs courtyard - you can tell we're not in Boise anymore. It takes 4 days for towels to dry (not kidding) and my bra is still dripping from last night. Isn't this supposed to be the desert?

The Requisite Old City Photos

Prayer notes spilling out of the Kotel cracks

The Kotel: the women's side (Yay, team!)

Dome of the Rock

The Requisite Israeli Meltdown

At some point in a trip to Israel, one reaches one's breaking point: this is a culture without proper boundaries, basic etiquette and personal space. You must expect to spend your time in public being pushed, stepped on, cut in front of, spoken to curtly and rudely, beeped at. Wherever you turn there's yelling, gesturing. Arguments here, arguments there. Israelis are either completely unphased by all this or they are in chronic internal psychological turmoil - it's hard to tell. Who needs Arabs? Just living daily life in this city is war.

So - one day you're tired, your blood sugar's low, and some unlucky Israeli pushes at the wrong time. BLAM! It's American gone ballistic time!

In my case, the chosen Israeli was an older Orthodox gentleman who was behind me at the vegetarian buffet restaurant by downtown Zion Square. I was very tired and my blood sugar was at negative 10 and I had just finished navigating through the Alley of Hell (okay - that's my own personal name for it, but what else do you call the endlessly long, oppressively narrow street through the Old City where both Arabs and Israelis get in your face hawking their wares throughout the entire 10 minutes it takes to get out the other end?).

I was trying to figure out how to get the dish I wanted at the buffet line, cognizant of the fact that a line of Israelis was behind me and would probably trample me for taking 10 more seconds than necessary. At that point, the man next to me, trying to get to the salad he wanted to serve himself, bumped my tray down with his tray. "Big deal," I hear you think. Well- you spend several days being bumped, shoved and stepped on and let's see how long it takes before you blow your top. In my case: 4 days before MTT (major temper tantrum)
I gave him the angry look of death and whipped my tray out of the line, grazing him in the process.
How well did that go over?

Gentleman: "Is this your daughter? God forbid she should end up looking like you and acting like you -- like a beast. You should be ashamed . . . . . . . blablabla.. . "
Me (blood pressure about 200/150): I have spent this whole week being shoved and pushed by Israelis and I am sick of it!!!
Gentleman: "Well, go. Leave immediately. We don't want you here."
Me: "I'm out of here."
Huffily exit me and Rosa (who is only marginally aware of what is going on), stage right.
Curtain down.

If you ask Israelis about their culture, they say: "We are open with our feelings. We are real, genuine. Americans are repressed and stuff down all their feelings."

If so, I'm happy to live in the land of stuffing.

You can kind of go home again

The girls (particularly Rosa) really wanted to return to our old haunts: Karmiel (where we lived from April to July 2001), up in the Galil, and Nahariya, our favorite beach town/day trip throughout that period.

Karmiel is still a very pretty town - city parks, public art, beautiful setting in the high desert foothills of the North. The whole downtown shop-lined (Russian and Israeli) pedestrian mall is being dug up for, presumably, urban renewal purposes.

Tanya remembered more than Rosa (who lived there through the end of her 1st grade year) but Rosa said: "Show me the playgrounds - I'll remember."
(The novelty ice cream bars, too: that was the magical time that was - when Mommy allowed "lunch dessert" AND "dinner dessert.")

We had to revisit our apartment complex (photo would be inserted here but my camera was too low on battery-juice): a Stalinist era-looking series of tunnel-shaped blocks, the "Lev" (the mall just blocks away), and the city's cultural hall. We were too hot to trek to the city pool, the library, and the bowling alley (where they would set little Rosa up with bowling bumpers and a "ball chute" for easy aiming)

Highlights of our pilgrimage:

• The 'Matnas' (community center) where the girls took dance classes twice a week and where Rosa would sit glued to the set watching Little Lulu cartoons and a Spanish kids' soap opera with Hebrew subtitles which she could not possibly understand (the TV has been replaced with a larger, flatter screen model)
• The market across the street where I would shop while the girls were in dance
• The site of "the melon incident" (story below)
• The bridge where Mommy first sang the Cat Alphabet song for the girls' immense amusement (no comment on that one)
• The overpass under which we would walk and enjoy the Hebrew graffiti in spray-painted tribute to singer "Snopp Doogie Doog."
• The infamous spinning playground toy on which Rosa did a flip and slightly split the back of her head, uttering the now famous family catchphrase that annoys the hell out of her and I would not recommend repeating in her presence, "I cracked my head open and now I'll never be the same!" (Her concern, of course, stemmed from a lifetime of hearing the traditional Jewish parental warning passed down over generations: 'Stop that or you'll crack your head open!!')

Interestingly, as we were about to drive out of town, Rosa requested not to return to Jerusalem but instead wished we could just stay in Karmiel which was familiar, less crowded, contained fewer ugly buildings and had fewer "weird" people. True, and sad. But how could Jerusalem be something other than it is? The "Center of the World" can't be anything but fully, intensely, dramatically, insanely human -- and, truthfully, how pleasant can that be?

********************************************

As promised: The Melon Incident

Time: Spring 2001
Background/Context: Rosa (aka Buppy), among her many extremely charming and delightful traits, was gifted with a great talent for falling, whacking herself into things and others, losing and dropping a variety of objects and possessions.
Setting: We are leaving the market across from the Matnas and heading for home. Among our produce is a melon of unknown type - It's intended for Rosa, who will only eat orange, cantaloupe-type melon, and I still can't differentiate Israeli melon varieties and their interior colors. Tanya and I are carrying groceries and Buppy requests to carry home the melon.
Story: I look at her skeptically: "No, Bup, I don't think so." "Please! I won't drop it!" Famous last words. I know what will inevitably happen and I won't let her hold it. She becomes offended, and I finally, skeptically, relent.
"Hold it very tight, Buppy - do not drop it!"
She embraces it in her little arms and we walk down the steep hill toward our apartment.
Two minutes? Three? Can't be more than 4 minutes when the melon tumbles out of her arms and starts rolling.
"Buppy!"
"I couldn't help it!"
We start to run after the melon and it finally goes off the curb and stops. We run toward it and just as we near, it starts rolling again. It goes into the middle of the street -- cars are racing by (this is Israel, after all) - it goes under cars - we cringe -- it's surely about to be flattened -- it keeps going -- it stops, amazingly, by the curb again. We can't believe it -- we run to pick it up -- it starts rolling again - again under cars, again against the curb. The couple of times it stops we get within feet of it before it randomly takes off again. Then - a large truck -- SPLAT. It's finished. I am extremely displeased. We run up to it and stare at it from the sidewalk. We are all completely quiet - we just stand there - staring at the smashed fruit.
"Well," Rosa finally says, "at least it was a green one!"

Signs you're driving in Israel

• Required utterances (after finishing list, begin again at the top):

1. "Whoa!!"
2. "What the hell?"
3. "Hey!"
4. "Yeah, and your mother."
5. "Oh my God, Buddy!"

• And the understatement of the month award goes to . . . . Fodor's Israel!!! For the following published observation (p. F33): "Driving in Israel can be unnerving at times."

• Remember, above all, the motto of Israeli Drivers' Education School: "Horn over Brakes"

Black and White

As Tanya taught us: the Arab villages (easy to identify anyway: Arabic signage, lots of unfinished concrete structures, taller vertical houses, mosque in the middle) use the Arab water tank company (black tanks on roofs) and the Jews use the Jewish company (white tanks on roofs). As you drive through the Galilee, black-hatted houses sit on one side and white-hatted houses dot the other. Hollywood cliche, anyone?

The Gilad Shalit debate

As Tanya has been sharing with us, the controversy around Gilad Shalit is a constant and heated one across this country: Is Israel, in accordance with Hamas' demands, to turn over hundreds of Palestinian terrorists/murderers in exchange for one 22-year-old Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas in summer of 06? (see related bumper stickers and banner above) The debate highlights the challenge of being a country that advocates a strict policy of: "no soldier left behind: protect each of our children at all costs" fighting a number of enemies in which the value is: "kill at all costs." I found a translation of an op-ed in Ha-Aretz a week ago in which an Israeli foundation director involved with psychiatric rehab (as well as the mother of a son currently doing his army service) agonizes over which she would prefer: her son killed or her son kidnapped and tortured. It represents one side of an impossible dilemma. Here's the conclusion:

It is not natural for parents to send their child to war. Given a choice, they would never do it. But since they find themselves in a situation where there is no choice, they must be sure that the Government and IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will act like any parent would have acted. Therefore, the Government and IDF have to do everything in their power to bring back a soldier who has been taken captive. The question of price is irrelevant. Calculations of cost-benefit are irrelevant. If these were to determine our decisions, we would not have gone to war in Gaza in the first place. We knew that we would pay a high price. We were willing to pay even a higher price than in the end was demanded of us.

Releasing terrorists who have "blood on their hands" may lead to additional cost of lives. But life is not an equation of numbers only. In the complicated and difficult reality we live in, we need to do everything to preserve and strengthen the values that are the very basis of our existence: sanctifying life and humanity that characterize the Israeli society. We must bring back captive soldiers because we can not allow ourselves to become a society in which a mother prefers the death of her son upon his being taken into captivity.

This is incomprehensible, but it’s the situation in the State of Israel. It is incomprehensible and mostly inhuman. And if we are not human, we will not be who we are – Israel with all its complexities, all its problems, but also all its beauty, and especially all its deep-rooted and fully established humanity. And if we are not who we are and what we are, why are we sending our sons to war?

April 1st Report

Went all day in Israel and no April Fool's pranks. I thought they were serious about observing holidays in this place.