זאת חנוכה?

There's a lot going on in Israel during Hanukkah -- lectures, tours, shows, concerts, plays, etc. -- and we managed to participate in... almost none of it! You can look here or here to see what we could have done.

We had big plans, but two things kept us from carrying them out.  One was that Sheryl had a ton of Israeli students who waited to the last minute to finish up their college applications, and so she had too much work to do.  She was really happy to finish yesterday, though her schedule meant she had little time for anything else this week.

Even cooking, with which she usually graces us.  We had almost nothing but take-out for Shabbes, which hasn’t happened in our little apartment before.  Hannah, Elana Greenbaum, and Talya Kresch were with us.  We tried to get quality take-out (it wasn’t!), but we enjoyed seeing them nonetheless. Hope they don’t mind too much that they didn’t get any of Sheryl’s typical fantastic fare.

A bit surprising from my Euro-centric Jewish background, but there aren't a lot of latkes around Jerusalem.  For those of you who saw the video that Hannah worked on last year at Nefesh B’Nefesh, however, (and starring Detroit’s own Miriam Barth!) you know that Israelis are really into their sufganiyot.  Hannah even told us about something called “The Sufganiyah Challenge” where you eat one sufganiyah on the first night, two on the second night, etc.  We weren’t up for 36 sufganiyot, but you could  find that many places serving amazing, different varieties.

 

 

and, yes, that is a Tiramisu Sufganiyah on the right.

Anyway, while we didn’t get to do as much as we planned, there were a handful of highlights in the week that would like to share with you.

1. Tuesday.  I was sitting doing some work in the apartment and I thought I heard a knock at the door. When I opened it up there was a pizza delivery guy standing there.  “Apartment one?”  Yes, I replied.  “Korelitz family?”  Yes.  “Sher...Shar...Sheerel?”  (Israelis seem to have a hard time with Sheryl’s name.)  I was pretty sure we hadn’t ordered any pizza, but it was indeed for us. Turns out one of Sheryl’s Israeli students was so grateful for her help he had said he was going to get her a pizza, which she said was unnecessary, but she was really touched when she realized what was going on.  We all thought it was pretty cool (and tasty.)

2.  Tuesday night.  Probably the artsiest things I’ve ever done.  A performance piece called “YouMake ReMake” by Israeli choreographer Renana Raz, where dance and YouTube videos commented on one another.  And if that’s not enough, it took place in the galleries of the Israel Museum.  When I see that it print, it sounds kind of pretentious, but it was really good, at points funny and insightful.  One of the closing pieces was quite powerful and haunting; we won’t soon forget it.  I wish I could describe it to you, but there is no way to do it justice.

3. Wed-Sat.  There were two main reasons we didn’t end up doing more this past week.  Besides Sheryl’s work load, Zoe was gone for about half the holiday.  She went away with Bnei Akiva for a leadership training program Wednesday through Saturday night.  I think I mentioned in an earlier post that BA all but ends here in 10th grade, unless you take on a leadership role, which Zoe is doing.  We’ll have to wait 'til later tonight to find out exactly what that means.

4. Thursday. Think we’ve also mentioned before that Thursday night here is like Saturday in the States.  Which means that if you want to go out for dinner on Thursday, you sometimes need a reservation.  All the more so during Hannukah, when a lot of of people are going out.  And even more so when xmas falls at the same time, which (thankfully) brings lots of tourists to Jerusalem.  Unfortunately, when we went out to dinner with Allison and Benjamin Pollock this week, no one thought to do that.  We had wanted to go to Agas and Tapuah (Pear and Apple), which we just went to a couple of weeks ago with Rabbi Hadar’s father Yoram, and his sisters Tali and Bat-Sheva and her husband Wayne, but that evidently wasn’t going to work.  So after being told in no uncertain terms that there was no room at the inn, we were standing outside the restaurant trying to figure a decent place to go to that wouldn’t present the same problem.  After about ten minutes, we hadn’t made any progress when we suddenly had what can only be described as a Kresch moment; someone came outside and said they had just had a cancellation, did we want it?  (OK, doesn’t measure up the Kresch’s Grand Canyon story, but by us it was still a cause for excitement).  We had a great time, including getting to hear the owner (who inherited a love for opera from his Milanese mother) bentsch licht for Hannukah.

Hope your last day of Hannukah is wonderful. Shavua Tov.

What Happens in Israel...