First, some small doings.
Remember the Castros on the fourth floor? Remember how they were interested in doing shiputzim (renovations?) Well, Mr. Castro brought his contractor down to our apartment about two weeks ago to look at our place and they seemed to still be in the planning phase. Then on Tuesday I came home from ulpan and the gym only to be met with some very loud noises from what sounded like the apartment above us. I decided to explore and followed the noise all the way up to the fourth floor (we are on the first) and found the Castro’s apartment in complete disarray. They were destroying the apartment, gutting it down to the bones. I talked to the worker a bit and when I saw him taking out debris the next day, I asked how long the shiputzim would take and he said about a month. Can you believe? A complete gut and redo – new kitchen, bathrooms, walls, etc.—all in a month. Construction here is a whole topic that I do not think can ever really translate to the page. You really have to see some of what goes on here to believe it. I can tell you that all of those permits and inspections in Huntington Woods can really hold up a job but they are probably a good thing. It is a little like the Wild West when it comes to building here – I am constantly shocked by the lack of safety equipment and health concerns. Quality issues are a really frustrating challenge to those who buy, sell, rent, etc. I will let you know how things are for the Castros in a month.
Here is a close up of the “best pickles in the world.
Went shopping at my Derech Bet Lechem produce store this week. They are so nice there and I like to practice my Hebrew with them. There were about three choices of cucumbers and I asked my guy which were the best and he asked what I was going to do with them. I told him I was making salads and he pointed to the ones I should get, but then I thought about it and asked what else was there to do with them. He said you could also eat them plain or make pickles and then he pointed to a top shelf over the refrigerator case with large soda bottles filled with pickles. I had never noticed them before. He said they were the best pickles in the world and that people come there from all over to get his pickles and take them home out of the country. Well, I felt I needed to take home some soda bottle pickles because my guy has never lied to me and often tells me not to buy things that he thinks aren’t their best. So why not? We had them this Shabbat and they were really good. The challenge was getting them out of the narrow necked bottle but I think that the bottle is the key to their success.
Here is picture of the dog walker I observed walking on Yehuda the other day. I did not get all thirteen dogs into the picture. 
Yes, he was walking thirteen dogs. He wears a crazy belt where he attaches the leashes and somehow he makes it work. I asked him how he manages with so many dogs and he said, it takes a strong leader to get others to follow. So there you go. I see him around now. It seems Baka is his hood.
The other day I saw this beautiful display of dried fruit and nuts at the mall.
The colors were so gorgeous I had to take a picture. I was wondering what it was about but I was lucky enough to be with the wise Jill Greenbaum, who reminded me that Tu BeShevat was coming up next (now this) week. A really beautiful feast for the eyes. I could not figure out what the pink and beige fruit in the close up in the first picture was but then we saw it was watermelon. It never occurred to me that you could dry watermelon. Didn’t buy anything but admired it all the same.
I have been saying that I wanted to read S.Y. Agnon since arriving. It seemed like the kind of thing one should do on their sabbatical year in Israel. I suppose if I lived in Paris for the year, I would finally read Proust. Or maybe I would actually read Ulysses if I spend the year in Dublin. I would have kept talking about it as I am wont to do, but Seth, who loves nothing more than to gift books to his Korelitz Women, found a used copy of Only Yesterday by S.Y. Agnon and brought it home for me. In Hebrew this book is called, Tmol Shilshom, or the day before yesterday; many of you might recognize this as the name of a well-known restaurant in downtown Jerusalem that has been a fixture forever and, yes, it was named for the book. So this is a new commitment. Of course, I am reading it in English. Agnon’s Hebrew is considered beyond difficult for Israelis and, even in translation, it is incredibly beautiful. Over 700 pages of the great Israeli novel. I will let you know how it goes.
I had a realization the other day. Many of you know that our year in Israel is partially made possible by the Sulkes-Wilcox Family. These are the wonderful people renting our house and taking care of George. Some of you have even had the pleasure of meeting them. It would not be an understatement to say that when they came into the picture, our year in Israel became a reality. We know they were a gift from above. They are having their “sabbatical” year in suburban Detroit so their daughters can have an American experience and be near family. So we like to catch up and exchange info at regular intervals and my last exchange with Gail, the mom, got me thinking. Gail grew up in Oak Park so knows Detroit and she was telling me how wonderful it has been to have people visit them; she then gets to play tour guide and show them the sites. She listed all of the wonderful things in Detroit she has been doing, from the DIA and the Eastern Market to music venues, etc. She sent me this perfect moment picture she caught of the sunset on Belle Isle. 
And I started thinking how if this year has taught me anything, it is that we all should learn to live a little like tourists, seeking out the special and unique in where we live that make it worth visiting. I feel I am really taking advantage of Jerusalem and hope I will not feel that I missed too much on our return. And I have vowed to take more advantage of Detroit when I get back and see those things that I kept saying I should go see, including a return to Belle Isle, since I have not been there since my childhood. Being a tourist also involves having a certain attitude; you tend to put aside the details you don’t want to know in order to appreciate the shine on the surface that you want to know a little. Tourists don’t usually get bogged down in the morning news or the behind the scenes that keep things happening for you throughout your day. So suspend disbelief for 24 hours and “discover” your city anew.
The Korelitz Family is living like tourists to a point.
When Michelle Sider was in Jerusalem for her two weeks of art workshops, she invited me to join her for a lecture one night that, unfortunately, I could not attend. She went to hear Andi Arnovitz, a Jerusalem-based artist, talk about her work. Arnovitz is actually a family friend of the Pollocks going back to the Atlanta days and her early artwork from the States before Aliyah is very pretty and fairly conventional. But her work now is controversial, thought provoking and intense dealing with many issues that women face in contemporary Israeli society. Michelle told me about the lecture and said that Arnovitz said when she first got to Israel her work was filled with archways and pomegranates but slowly things changed. When she started to feel like Israel was her country, she found this voice for her art because when something is yours and you have a sense of ownership, you want to change it to make it better.
Daniel Gordis said something similar when Seth and I went to hear him speak at Pardes a couple of weeks ago. He has written a new book which is a “concise” history of Israel and just won the National Jewish Book Award. (I bought this one for myself.) In his talk he mentioned how he came with his family for what was supposed to be a year visit to Israel and wound up staying for good but, for that first year, he said there is just this magic that Israel has, especially if you are observant. The holidays just bring such a happiness and richness to your life that have you saying, “only in Israel,” all of the time and we can attest to this. But he says things start to change pretty quickly and he ended up writing a blog that year which evolved into his book: Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel. I have not read it but it is also on my list.
So Seth, Zoe and I were walking to dinner on Zoe’s birthday and I asked them if they felt we were still in our “pomegranate phase,” as described by Andi Arnovitz. We decided that in many ways we were because we had the luxury of not dealing with the realities on the ground here but in other ways we are not. I don’t think that the “pomegranate phase” lasts long here; there would just be too much to ignore. Since we have been here we have dealt with two bus strikes, countless school strikes, and last week’s garbage strike (fortunately, I learned the word for garbage “zevel” the day before in ulpan so I could figure out what they were talking about on the news.) I watch the Knesset goings on and, while understanding little, see the depth of the difficulties that Israel faces on so many issues: there are so many divides and so many constituencies. Sometimes, I don’t know how everyone gets up in the morning. But they do.
Agnon’s book is the perfect accompaniment for this journey. The main character, Isaac Kumer, is an idealistic Zionist who leaves Galicia for Palestine in the early years of the 20th century only to face the realities in the land of Israel that differ greatly from the Israel of his imagination. His “pomegranate phase” does not last long either and I am excited to see how things go.
And lest we forget, pomegranates are pretty complex fruit. With biblical heritage and Jewish symbolic meaning, they are not just pretty on the outside. When you cut one open there is an awful lot going on inside. And all metaphors aside, this year I really have learned to eat the seeds.
