Well, my Hebrew immersion is a little more difficult than I imagined. First of all, I now have the February 1 deadline and so, yes, I am still receiving essays. The good news is that my editing skills rock at this point. The bad news is that being immersed in 650 word English essays all day really cramps the Hebrew side of my brain. Oh, well.
I am really enjoying my ulpan and I am improving VERY slowly. It is a nice group of people. Two older men who are both modern Orthodox, one a doctor from the holy land of Teaneck and the other, an economist from Ottowa. My Canadian friend is very good to me when I complain about having no retention because I am old, he keeps telling me how young I am because he is 75. He and his wife are on their second year here. My New Jersey classmate has 5 kids; three are in the States and two are here. He commutes for work like many American doctors who make Aliyah. I am actually the only person in the class who has not made Aliyah. The lovely Marion, who lives half time in the Bronx and half time in Beit Shemesh, is wonderful and also has half of her kids (and thus her grandchildren) here and half in the States. She is something of a professional compatriot as she used to be the college counselor at New York’s High School for the Performing Arts of movie fame. She is really a trouper and I hope to be as adventurous as her at her age. Four more people including one man who I could tell was not the least bit Jewish when I met him. His route here is a love story -- fell in love with his Israeli wife upon meeting her at the copy machine in his office in London. She was on her traveling year after the army and their fate was sealed. They lived in England where their kids were born and decided to relocate the family to Israel a few years back. He is one of those guys who is just seems up for anything in the most positive way, thus explaining his Israel adventure. And then there is Avi, our instructor, who seems like a native, but recently revealed that he hails from the great city of Philadelphia in another lifetime.
And the end of class we have to break into groups and speak to each other in Hebrew using the vocabulary from the session. This is where we find out about one another. Very fun. And there is homework on the computer. I try and insert Hebrew into my life anytime I can and have really started to be better about putting on the TV. At the gym, I now bring my headphones and watch TV on the treadmill. Cooking shows are good. They are slower paced and repeat many of the words so it is easier, but cooking shows are not that helpful for real life, although I have learned a few Israeli cooking techniques that might make it to my table. This week I saw a cooking show with one of my local heroes, Tomer Blass, who owns Lechem shel Tomer (Tomer’s Bread) a local bakery chain that makes amazing artisanal Breads. What he does with flour and water is art and science on a Velasquez and Einstein level. Anyway, he was cooking with some local chef and making foccacio while his friend made a fish dish. And I would just like to inform you that Tomer and his friend double dipped while cooking on NATIONAL television! And just so you know, the cooks have double dipped on every cooking show I have watched so far. Can you imagine? You get “chopped” on Chopped for that in the States. Do people get sicker here or not? Are there more infections? I am really curious. So I do not think about what goes on in the restaurant kitchens here. The food is delicious and what can I do?
Part of my pledge to immerse myself In Israeli culture was to shop in the shuk because there is nothing more Israeli than that. So I have started to do my grocery shopping in the Machane Yehuda shuk which is the food market located in the central part of the city. It is much more than a food market, however. Over the past years or so it has become a foodie haven with the opening of dozens of specialty food vendors and amazing restaurants and bars. Some would say that the shuk really comes alive after the sun sets and it is a great place to go at night. (And if if you go after everything is closed, you can also see some great graffiti art. See here for a story and a small sample.) The restaurants are usually very small and I think of them more as overgrown food trucks. We have eaten in many restaurants there at this point and it is always really fun.
But back to the shopping. It is an intimidating place. If you have been there you know. If not, it is hard to describe. Rows and winding tunnels of produce vendors and butchers and fishmongers and bakeries. There are specialty stands for cheese, spices (soooo many spices!), halvah, prepared food and who knows what else. There is a lot of yelling. It is shtick; the vendors are yelling about how fabulous their tomatoes are or their cauliflower or their mint, etc. On one trip I bought strawberries from someone yelling that if you buy tootim (strawberries) it will either keep your mother in law alive. (Or not alive. My Hebrew is not that good yet.) So because of the stress factor on my first trip, I enlisted the help of an acquaintance who is a native with a fifteen year sojourn in Memphis, Bilha Finkelstein, the rebbetzin at Nitzanim and, more importantly, Zoe’s friend Edya’s mom. She was a huge help and a very calm presence which is what you need under the circumstances. We shopped in the Iraqi shuk which is cheaper than the open shuk area and very good and took a lunch break at a restaurant called Azura that is a legend here. Azura is only open in the day and the food was delicious. It is not fancy food, more like Kurdish, Iraqi, Mideastern home cooking. The food is kept in big pots on the stove and the owner keeps coming by to make sure you are happy.
I got the best tomatoes of my life there the first week. They were unbelievable. I do not think I have had a decent tomato at home for a decade. Except when Michelle Sider has let me pick from the abundance of her garden. Shuk shopping is a treat and I think will be something that I will forever miss when I am not here. I was thinking about why the shuk is so great and what came to my mind was Eataly. Some of you may be familiar with this food emporium opened by Mario Bitali in NYC’s Flatiron District. On one of my last trips to NYC, my wonderful hostess Chaya took me on a visit to check it out. It is a fabulous space filled with produce and specialty items like cheese and pasta. There are small cafes within the space and it is a hub of Manhattan tourist business. It is outrageously expensive; I cannot imagine what an orange costs there. It is filled with precious things and is aesthetically pleasing to an ultimate degree but it lacks soul. It felt a bit like Disney World. Now, I think it is a lovely place but it is just not my thing.
The shuk is the anti-Eataly. It is one of the cheaper place to shop in the city. The place is dirty (spices in open bags along the main street with bus exhaust, guys smoking over their wares, no one is wearing gloves to serve anything, there are the roaming cats of Jerusalem, puddles of who knows what, etc.). The food is down to earth, more like street food or ethnic home cooking. There are bars the size of your closet with Israeli beers and wines sold so cheaply by the glass or bottle. If I were writing for a travel magazine, I would call it authentic but that is a pretentious word and, if the shuk is anything, it is unpretentious. It is a true reflection of Israeli life even though it too is a tourist trap of sorts. But it was not built for tourists; the tourists come because it just is. To me the shuk does not have a phony bone in its body and, to be honest, neither does Israel. I think you would find it difficult to find much pretension here. The place is just too gritty.
To help a little bit, I am inserting this link to this three minute video just made by Pardes. I wanted to share this for several reasons. First it is partially filmed in the shuk during the day and night so you can see a little of what I am talking about, but, also, it features my mishna teacher, Leah Rosenthal who is Seth’s gemara teacher as well. She is an exceptional teacher and really a highlight of learning for both of us. You get to see her and some of Seth’s classmates at Pardes including the two stars, Jonah Potasznik and Naomi Burke. Naomi is a Brit (you can tell) and had Shabbat lunch with us one week. The video is also a nice highlight on a little of what they do at Pardes so I wanted to share. (For a longer explanation by Leah of the text at the heart of the video, you can listen to this 20 minute podcast.)
And to top off my wonderful trip to the shuk last week, I had a wonderful encounter. As I was schlepping my granny cart up the hill from my bus stop and passing a lovely building overlooking the mesilah (the park train tracks), I heard a voice calling something over and over to get my attention. I peered inside the building’s gate and there stood a man working in his magnificent garden. He pointed to the wall by his gate and there was a pile of freshly cut rosemary. I realized he had been yelling “Rosmarine! Rosemarine!” and inviting me to take some. So I took three sprigs and thanked him and smelled it all the home. I felt like I was in a movie or a children’s book and this was a magical moment. I used it to make a frittata for the Kashuk’s who came on Shabbat for Zoe and Aviva’s birthday lunch. It is striking how so much of our happiness can come from the adventures of food.
And a highlight of the week: Bill Sider did a quick drop into Tel Aviv this week to meet up with his family, and Seth and I and the Pollock’s demanded a bit of his time. It was a treat to meet up in Tel Aviv for sushi.
We four Jerusalemites packed into the Pollock car and made our way to the White City to catch up. Bill returned safely to the States that night.The wind is blowing and the skies are grey. Winter in Jerusalem.
What Happens in Israel...
