The Dog Days of Wonder

Well, I am leading quite a cushy life right now - just dealing with minor issues that come up with the Israeli applications, lull with Farber before the storm of the juniors starts in two weeks.  I am on Ulpan hiatus until after Pesach; I could have continued in March but we have so many visitors coming that I felt I needed to take a little break to appreciate the visits.  So going to the gym, doing ulpan homework and prepping for Farber with no pressure.

No one else in my family is so stress free.  Hannah is in the middle of finals, which are nerve wracking and difficult, but she is doing really well.  In Israel, they let you retake your finals so, while that might seem to lighten the burden in the abstract, in reality, you really don’t want to retake them and so don’t think that way.  Hannah is operating in Hebrew and English at Tel Aviv University. She has written a paper in English and has some reading assignments in English depending on the subject.  Lectures and exams are definitely in Hebrew.  She has nine classes.  ONE OF THE HIGHPOINTS OF MY LIFE was helping Hannah study for her Intro to Renaissance Art final.  She aced it.

Seth is really busy with Pardes because he is working on a big project for them so he might be out of communication for a while.  And Zoe is plugging away in school.

And so I am enjoying my time.  Some of the wonderful visitors we have seen over the past two weeks have been LeahAnn Kleinfeldt, the Kornblums and Deb, Dalya and Jacob Apap.  More people in town still and we will try to see them.

And last Sunday was a treat.  There was a Hillel teachers’ trip in town and Seth had arranged for us to go out together on their night off. There were 8 of them -- Cathy Fridson and her husband, Howard, Pam King and her husband, Chris, Marisa Hernandez, Melanie Weber, and Dana Levy with her husband, Bruce -- and we really looked forward to seeing them.  They left the restaurant choice up to us and we chose Crave in the shuk. We figured they would want a very Jerusalem experience and Crave is the hot restaurant in the shuk, if not the city right now.  They don’t take reservations and, like all restaurants in the shuk, it is really small.  So I decided to show up early and camp out at the front door which did help a bit and we got a table for ten just as everything was filling up.

The food at Crave is very fun; very casual street food and the space has great energy with lots of Anglo help.  Supposedly they have the best kosher Reuben sandwich in the world (people who have eaten it have concurred) and great pulled brisket and fish tacos.  Seth and I split two things and we were tivoni (vegan) for the night.  Then we walked around Ben Yehuda for fun.  Here we all are.  Plus there is the very happy picture of me and Dana, the very first employee at Ruby’s Balm, who is now a teacher at Hillel so Seth and I get to share her.  She came with her husband, Bruce and we had a blast catching up.

Some recent cultural highlights.  Went to see a showing of Singin in the Rain (the movie) at AACI (Association for Americans and Canadians in Israel).  Allison was my date and we brought the average age of the room down quite a bit, but it was fun.  They have a movie maven who introduces classic movies that they show there as part of a series.  We ended up liking his intro which had great anecdotes about the making of the movie and the perfectionism of Gene Kelly.  Of course, we had seen the movie.  It was just fun to see it again.  I was reminded of an experience I once had when I was in Paris right after college.  I saw a matinee of Bringing Up Baby (which is one of my favorite movies and also happens to be the source for George’s name) on a rainy day and felt very homesick for the USA.  I did not feel homesick this time but when you are watching Singin in the Rain in a foreign country, you cannot help noticing how American it is.  Is there a country in the world that makes such positive movies as old Hollywood?  A fun time was had by all.

We spent a beautiful Shabbat at the Italian Synagogue.  We met Batsheva Hadar and her husband, Avraham there upon their return from two months of summer in South Africa.  We had arranged this date months ago during a dinner at the Italian Restaurant, Agas V’Tapuach.  The owner is a friend of theirs and had mentioned that he reads Torah every year at his shul on the anniversary of his Bar Mitzvah.  We were all invited to come hear Parshat Yitro and for the Kiddush following, with food provided by the restaurant.  We saved the date because...well, why not?!  It gave us an excuse to go to the Italian Shul without feeling like complete tourists.  After all, we had an invitation.

The synagogue is beautiful and so unique

It was transported from Italy in the 1950’s and reassembled here to be used by the Italian community of Jerusalem. Here is a link with information.  The women sit upstairs behind beautifully painted gold baroque wood work and we pushed out the screens during the Torah service to get a clear picture of everything below.  I was not at all familiar with Italian traditions; Italian Jews are pretty rare and they have their way of doing things.  It is not Sephardic; it is not Ashkenazi; it is Italian.  As Seth explained, the Roman Jewish community is 2000 years old and has not been influenced by outside communities because things were just so good in Italy why would you do things differently?!  In general, the tunes were not anything wonderful (Seth would disagree) except I did like the reading of the Haftorah which does sound substantially different and the Birkat HaKohanim (Priestly Blessing) was definitely different; the pressure is on the kohanim to really sing.  They do Yizkor every Shabbat and read names of the deceased handwritten in a large book designating each Shabbat.  Batsheva told me they actually say Yitzkor everyday but I do not know about that.  As you would expect, they had the best dressed Torah I have ever seen.  It wore the most gorgeous damask velvet covering and it takes a long time to undress it because it is wrapped in a wimpel (something else I have never seen).  The highlight for me was when they opened the ark; it is over 350 years old and stunning.  First there is the fabric covering which is pushed aside to reveal wooden doors that are BEYOND.  

Someone then has to open these doors with a large old-fashioned key and then more fabric is revealed.  This key is actually used during the service.  As Batsheva said, “Very Old School.” The Gabai made the announcements in Hebrew and then Italian where there was much discussion of defibrillators.  Zoe did some sleuthing at Kiddush and found out that someone had choked on lasagna the previous week and was recovering in the hospital.

Yonatan did a splendid job reading Torah (you might remember he has an amazing voice from the Chanukah blog where he lit candles in the restaurant) and an equally good job with the Kiddush: mini pizzas, fresh mini rolls with mozzarella and anchovies, mushroom and spinach quiche, caprese salad and delicious mini tartes of all sorts.  

The Kiddush took place downstairs in a room covered in frescoes which doesn’t look like any synagogue I have ever been to.  I wondered if the people there were really Italian.  The first sign that they were is that when services ended, I heard the echo of “Ciao’s” around the room.  Then we had the opportunity to speak over treats to someone  who was a member of the community.  He was an older gentleman, born in Florence, whose father was killed in the camps and he was a hidden child.  I asked about the size of the community and he said there are about 500 Italians left in Jerusalem and around 10,000 in all of Israel.  He said there are only about 40,000 Jews left in Italy so that puts the world population of Italian Jews at around 50,000.  I felt as if I was talking to a rare African Rhino.  And then I started thinking about how things would be different if Italian Jews had dominated early twentieth century immigration instead of Polish and Russian shteltl Jews.  Think of the food and the architecture and the language!  But, of course, that is ridiculous.  Italian Jews were not leaving because life was good there.  They weren’t stupid.  So here we are with our cholent and gefilte fish.  Sigh.

Guess who went to Bezek (the cable company) to return a router and deal with extraneous charges on our bill?  Me. Ta da! In Hebrew. Ta da! The things that can make you happy on this kind of adventure, huh?

Apropos of nothing, I had my teeth cleaned. Nothing exciting but just as annoying in Israel as the States.   Now I have been to a podiatrist, general practitioner, dentist and walk-in clinic and found all these experiences to be perfectly fine. Just saying.

It has been heating up here but the rains return later this week. Winter is not quite over yet.

Be Happy.  It’s Adar !  /  משנכנס אדר מרבין בשמחה

What Happens in Israel...

Everyday Miracles

Make everything in you an ear, each atom of your being, and you will hear at every moment what the Source is whispering to you...you are -we all are-the beloved of the beloved, and in every moment, in every event of your life , the Beloved is whispering to you exactly what you need to hear and know. Who can ever explain this miracle? It simply is. -Rumi

I love the idea of ‘everyday miracles,’ miracles all around us that we fail to recognize because we’re too distracted.  It’s an idea found from Tanach (for instance here) up to modern Jewish philosophy.

I was thinking about everyday miracles a few times last week.  A couple of times were on Shabbat.  During last week’s Torah reading, we stood to recount crossing the Red (Reed) Sea.  In Judaism this is the classic example of a miracle, but the midrash has a take on the event that puts it an entirely different perspective:   two Jews during the crossing looked down at the muck of the still muddy sea bed.  “In Egypt,” they said to one another, “we were immersed in mortar and at the Reed Sea we are immersed in mortar. In Egypt we had the mortar that accompanied the bricks and here at Yam Suf we have the mud caused by the splitting waters.”   They were so busy looking down, the midrash records, they couldn’t even recognize the greatest miracle of all time, which they were participating in! If it were possible then, how much more today do we have to be on guard to look up at the miraculous world around us.

Thursday I was speaking with one of my teachers and she mentioned that she and her husband had just bought an apartment here.  Just think about that.  She and and her husband signed some papers that listed ‘Jerusalem’ as their address!  A couple of generations ago that would have been an outstanding statement, a couple of centuries ago an almost impossible statement.  How blessed we are to live in this age!  There are some who say that we shouldn’t say Hallel on Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) because we’re not celebrating a miracle like Passover or Hanukkah. Without getting into the halachic arguments here, it’s hard not to see Gd’s hand in the creation of the Jewish State after centuries of exile and powerlessness.  

Tuesday night Sheryl was meeting Michelle Sider so Zoe and I went to Pizza Hut.

Is it the best pizza in Jerusalem?  No.  
Did we know it’s not the best pizza in Jerusalem.  We suspected.
So why?  Just because we can!

 

OK, it’s ridiculous to think about a restaurant at the same time as crossing the Red Sea.  It’s laughable to even consider comparing to Israeli independence.  It’s not even in the ballpark of buying a home. But sometimes I am awed -- and I always try to be grateful -- that I can do things here that I can’t do anywhere else.  

People are always asking us what we think about our experiences this year.  I might talk about having half a dozen synagogues (and even more bakeries!) within five minutes of our apartment, what a luxury it is. But to me, there is something intangible about the experience that anecdotes can’t convey.  I struggle to put it into words because even the mundane feels special here.   It’s like a miracle every day.

מִן הַמֵּצַר, קָרָאתִי יָּ-הּ; עָנָנִי בַמֶּרְחָב יָ-הּ

What happens in Israel...

Live Like a Tourist

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.

Authentic Israel

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...

כִּי רָאִינוּ אֶת-הָאָרֶץ וְהִנֵּה טוֹבָה מְאֹד / Seen in Israel

We’ve been pretty busy this past week.  Right now we’re in the middle of a busy tourist season: I got to meet up for lunch with Amy Bigman, who was in town for a rabbinical program, Sheryl got to see her childhood friend Erit Gill (who actually lives here in Israel), Michelle Sider is finishing up her sojourn, Ilana Sherizen was in town and we got to see her briefly (see below), and we got to spend some time with a couple of Hannah’s old Nishmat classmates Tova Perlman and Arianne Schwartz who were in Israel for a wedding.  A bunch more people are expected over the next few weeks, and hopefully we’ll be able to give them all at least a shout out.  So, we’ve been too busy having fun to write; just a short post this week, sharing with you a few things we’ve seen out and about recently.

Not that you see so many stretch limos at home -- they're rare enough that one tends to stop and gawk a bit when you do -- but somehow seeing one here seems even more unusual.  Saw this couple in front of our building about a week ago. We actually live next door to a wedding planner of sorts, so every once and a while we see a beautiful bride getting ready to celebrate, but this stretch was definitely a first.  (More on Autos in Israel in an upcoming post!)

Speaking of firsts, I had my first sighting of the year for hamentaschen. Snapped this photo at one of our local grocery stores last week.  If you are keeping track, that’s about two months before Purim.  To put this in perspective, (though "להבדיל" works better here than "in perspective") that would be like seeing xmas decorations in the States at Halloween.  I’m more of a hamentaschen fan than a sufganiyah fan (and also more of a Purim fan than a Hanukkah fan (Related?) so I’m looking forward to this extended season.

For those of you brought up on the notion that hamentaschen were connected to Haman’s three-cornered hat (anyone remember this song from Hebrew school?!) you might be interested to know that in Israel they are not called hamantaschen but oznei haman/Haman’s ears.  For those who care to know more about which is the “correct” terminology, you can read a fun little article here.  And for those who want to know way more than you ever thought possibly could be written about a pastry, you can read this piece.

OK, no visuals; you’re going to have to use your imagination for this one. Hannah was coming into Jerusalem on Wednesday.  She’s settling in and sees this kid board the train, carrying a lulav case. “OK, a little strange for this time of year,” she thought, but she felt to had to give him props for a really serious commitment to the mitzvah.  Then she saw he was using it to carry his light saber.  Nice!

(On the topic of Star Wars, Hannah and I finally saw Rogue One on Thursday, and we were both blown away.  Great job, Disney!)

And for those of you who didn’t know, Zoe turned sixteen this week. On Shabbat we are celebrating her Jewish birthday with the Kashuks.  (Can pretty much guarantee there won’t be any photographs there.)  Her secular birthday was on Wednesday and we went out to Tzidkiyahu Steak House with the Pollocks, Ilana Sherizen, and Michelle Sider.  

A great evening made even more fun by the guy at the next table who made to sure to sweep us into the simha his family was there celebrating, his daughter entering the army the next day.

What happens in Israel...

(Outside of Israel, and outside our immediate lives, there is this cause you might want to get involved in.  It will take you three minutes, if you are interested.  Hope you don’t mind my sharing.)

Down with "all work and no play"!

I am back.  What a couple of weeks.  The last week before January 1 was a doozy.  I had essays coming at me 24 hours a day.  I was not happy about it either because it was Chanukah and I would have liked to enjoy it more but we did get some fun in (refer to the previous blog.)  So it has taken me a whole week to decompress.  I still have four Israeli students left but the work load with them is much smaller and I really just have to finish up with them, not start at the beginning.  Now we wait and see how they do.  I have no idea how these Israelis will fare.  I had one student who I helped with his application but not his essays who called to thank me after the Early Decisions came out for Stanford because he got in;  so that is a first for me, to work with someone who got into Stanford.  He is crazy smart and I think he got 800 on the math section of the SAT or, at least on the Math Subject test.  I have three students right now who have 800 scores (two math and one physics) and I have a female student who has 790 on the math and wants to take it again because that is not good enough.  I told her "you Israelis are crazy good at math."  

But the highlight for me of this past week was starting my ulpan.  It meets three days a week and I don’t think intense enough to make a huge difference but I have decided to do a Hebrew immersion of my own.  We have hooked up the TV for basic channels and I am starting to watch the news stations.  I watched them while cooking for Shabbat last week and did get some of what was going on.  It was a politics station all day that also shows highlights from Knesset sessions.  The toughest shows were the opinion round tables where four people basically yell at each other for half an hour and I understood nothing because they were always taking over each other.  There is lots going on in this country.  We will see what I can figure out.  I am also going to try and read the newspaper.  They hand out a couple of papers for free on the street on Fridays which I have grabbed on my way to spinning, and I don’t really understand much.  But I am going to!  So I have this one copy of כל העיר (which means All City but I think maybe is a pun for Voice of the City even though it spelled differently?) with a cover story on who might run in the upcoming mayoral elections in Jerusalem in two years and I promise to translate this article by the time of the election.  I just keep reading it over breakfast every morning and I am convinced I will understand it one day.

I went to a really nice lecture at Pardes last Monday night by Dr. Leon Kass who has so many degrees after his name that I am not sure how to describe him except as a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago who specializes in bioethics among other things and, happily, happens to dabble in Torah.  He spoke on the Ten Commandments as a universal model for ethics and it was a really interesting talk because he approaches the topic from a very unique and informed perspective.  He has many books but only one on Torah, The Beginning of Wisdom:  Reading Genesis, which I might check out.   Anyway, it was another thought provoking night at Pardes.

Tuesday night was a hoot.  The Vaad Bayit (if you remember, this is like the condo association here or building management committee) had their annual meeting in the Castro’s apartment.  You might also remember that the Castro’s are French and live on the fourth floor. Our landlords asked if it was possible for one of us to go to fill them in and so up I went.  Well, only 7 out of 16 apartments had representation which is part of the problem because not all residents are as committed as they should be, but that is another story.  The main thing for me that night was sitting back and listening to the conversation in multiple languages.  There are many French in the building and they are the most active participants in the maintenance.  Three French men led the discussion and it was a thing of beauty. Speaking at the speed of light, these three men spoke three languages simultaneously:  English, French and Hebrew.   I did not think it possible that someone could speak three languages at once, but they really did.  As usual, I got the gist and only some of the details.  So glad I got out of my sweatpants to experience that.  Man, French is gorgeous.  

Wednesday night was one of the highpoints of Seth’s and my life:  Parent-Teacher Conferences at Horev, Zoe’s school.  There is no way I can give you many details of the evening because that would not make Zoe happy, but I can tell you that Seth and I are just full of respect and a little awe for Zoe Elisheva Korelitz.  She is amazing.  It was also nice to see the parents and get a feel for the backgrounds of the student body.  Before we came here, so many people who had heard of Horev said that the school was too far to the right religiously.  We had learned of Horev mostly through our friends the Kashuk’s whose daughter, Nechama is in Zoe’s class there.  She assured us that the students cover the spectrum and plenty are Modern Orthodox.  We also knew that about 40 % of the students are Anglo and that the school likes to accommodate Olim (immigrants.)  Well, it was just as we thought and really appropriate for us and Zoe.  It was also nice that, while there were circles of American parents talking to each other, the majority of the parents were speaking Hebrew.  Overall, we found Zoe’s teachers very pleasant, especially her mechanechet, which is like her homeroom teacher.  And if we cannot devote too much time to Zoe, let me give a shoutout to her parents.  Upon arrival by Gett (a taxi app) to campus, we were handed an extremely complicated looking chart in Hebrew with the teachers and room assignments for the night and, yes, we figured it out.  Okay, maybe I am being a little needy.

I just want to mention that Jerusalem feels like a very small town to me already.  I see people on the street from our shul and Pardes and the gym all the time.  I went to a podiatrist this week because my de-bunioned foot still plagues me, and he lives in the same building as the Canadian couple who I always see at Pardes lectures and the husband just started ulpan with me.  And when I'm out with Allison she seems to know everyone and their parents.

Last Shabbat morning we tried a new shul which is a satellite congregation of Shir Chadash (not to be confused with Shir Chadashah) in Katamon.  This Shir Chadash is located in one of two beautiful old houses on Emek Refaim.  One of the houses is a nursing home and if you know Emek they are both located right across from Sushi Rehavia.  Anyway, just mentioning this because the building itself is a spectacular space that is in just the right amount of decay to make it a romantic wonder.  It seems to be under construction but we did not stick around for kiddish to get the story.

And Michelle Sider has arrived in town for her 5 week art filled adventure.  We are so excited to have her here; she will be busy and only spending part of her time in Yerushalayim.  So we started as quickly as possible and had a girls’ night out motzei Shabbat.  Michelle, Allison Pollock, Aviva Cohen and I all went to a wonderful and secretive spot that Allison knew about called Gatsby’s.  We all put on our best Zelda Fitzgerald and found the place behind nondescript doors on Hillel Street.  After being greeted in the entrance library, the hostess slid open the library shelves to reveal a perfectly designed speakeasy.  The bartenders were the spitting image of Brooklyn hipsters and set glasses on fire and shook the drinks with abandon.  

It was wonderful place for our little table of Huntington Woods to unite in the heart of Jerusalem.  We hope to fit in as much time together as we can.

Just so you know, we think Hannah has been to 6 weddings since the last blog.  I exaggerate only slightly.  She had two more this Thursday night.