Pesach in Israel

Absolutely the best part about Passover in Israel is the fact that it's only 7 days long, rather than the 8 days in the rest of the world. Seriously, it's amazing. My diet this past week has consisted of mainly 4 things: matzo pizza, matzo with peanut butter, mashed potatoes and corn, and matzo ball soup. It gets old.

That said, there's so much more difference between Pesach in Israel and in the US. For one, you really can't get chametz anywhere. Maybe in the Arab neighborhoods you could, but at least in the Jewish parts the supermarkets look sort of like this:

And by that I mean that they're all covered up. Most shelves still have all the non-Pesach food on them (you just can't get to it), but in the case of fresh bread everything's just gone. Ahuva's standing there with the last loaf of bread in the entire store and it was only Sunday--Pesach didn't start until Monday night.

And then there's restaurants. A lot of restaurants just close down for Pesach, but plenty stay open and even have pretty much their normal fare. I was very confused on Thursday when I entered the Central Bus Station and saw what I thought was the normal sandwiches (below), but then when I went back to take a picture I noticed that there was a sign saying that everything was kosher for Pesach (also below). You do not find this kind of thing in the States.

That's not all there is, though. Most places have a lot of salads, but there's also realistic looking pizza and quiches and breaded fish and... everything. Pretty nearly everything, not to mention the potatoes and other things that are always kosher for Passover. My roommate says these things are made mostly out of potato flour and that they actually taste good, but I didn't try most of them. My eating out consisted of a bad potato boureka in Beersheva on Thursday and a potato and spinich "blintz" (really an omelet) and Passover cheesecake at Village Green yesterday. The cheesecake looked good enough (see below), but it had this awful almond macaroon bottom and really wasn't worth the 31NIS I paid for it--typical of Village Green desserts, but I do it over and over again anyway. Besides--cheesecake is one of those pleasures you need to have during such an awful food holiday. (I just miss it being free and made by my father.)

(Picture courtesy of Lynley.)

So maybe Israel is the best place to be for Passover if you're willing and able to eat out all the time, but otherwise I'm actually not so fond. Where are the tins of macaroons? Where's the (mostly) really bad mixes for pancakes and muffins and cakes and things? For that matter, where's the matzo farfel? I'm not one to eat out all the time, and I honestly missed some of the things that you can get in the States during Pesach. There's this one really good apple cinnamon muffin mix that you can get in the States, I think Savion brand, in a brown box that's amazing and definitely not Manischewitz, I miss that a lot. I usually live off muffins during Pesach, but that hasn't happened this year. Call me crazy, but I think I'd actually rather spend Passover in the States--even with the extra day. I'll trade an extra day for some muffins, thank you very much.

Tzfat

I spent this past weekend in Tzfat, one of the four holy cities (the others being Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias). I was there once before, in high school, and I remembered it being beautiful. As someone who goes to Friday night services pretty regularly, I love thinking about the fact that this is where Lecha Dodi was written, and really Kabbalat Shabbat as a whole was formed. The city has a lot of spiritual meaning.

The trip started out on Thursday by discovering that the 982 bus to Tzfat doesn’t actually leave from the Central Bus Station, even though that’s where you buy your tickets. Also, the big “23” on the ticket dosen’t mean “gate 23” but rather a zone. So… Lynley and I missed our bus and had to wait two and a half hours for the next one. Yay. At least I finally got to check out the mall that’s in the Cental Bus Station, and obtained something that you’ll probably only find in Israel—haggadot in a dollar store.

We finally made it to Tzfat around 7pm after a three and a half hour bus ride up and down and around lots of mountains. (It’s Israel.) Guidebooks tend to only spend a page on Tzfat as part of the section on the Galilee, so we got off the bus and had to wander around until we found a sign for our hostel, Ascent. “Go up the stairs and follow the map,” it said—what map? There was no map! Thankfully I remembered that someone at the office had called my phone to confirm our reservation, so the number was in my phone and I was able to call them for directions.

The thing about Tzfat is… even with a map, you get lost. It’s one of those places that maps can’t really handle, like the Old City of Jerusalem. For example, this:

That’s a road. There’s no signs and no stores or houses on it to indicate that it’s a road, no street numbers, but it’s very definitely marked on the map as Ma’alot Olei HaCardom. Such is Tzfat.

The first place we tried to go for dinner, Café Bagdad, kicked us out saying that they were only serving coffee, even though they were open for another half hour. (This was 8:30pm.) So we went to the next place the people at Ascent recommended, Café Milano. There we discovered that even though Tzfat is mainly known for kabbalah and art, there’s actually another piece to it: cheese. According to the faulty map there was entirely a whole cheese museum! (In actuality, no such place exists.) Anyway, this meant that there were a lot of cheese dishes at Café Milano. Lynley ended up getting something called “halumi salad,” which was actually pasta in teriyaki sauce with cashews, bell peppers, and halumi cheese. I got a cheese platter with roasted vegetables. Lynley very much got the better deal; her halumi salad was amazing. (I know cause I got to try some.) Take a look:

My cheese platter was okay. I really liked the labane, but of the other two cheeses one was okay and the other I didn’t really like. The veggies were also okay, not wonderful. But Lynley’s halumi salad… wow! Amazing. Just amazing.

After dinner we headed back to Ascent and went to bed. Then on Friday we woke up early and went to explore Tzfat before everything closed for Shabbat. Our first stop was Safed Candle Factory, where they really make art out of candles. Like, for example, the Temple:

or a whole bunch of penguins:

There was also one of David and Goliath and one of Samson tearing down the Philistine temple, but I wasn’t so interested in those. While we were there we also eavesdropped on a tour guide teaching a family a bit about how regular havdallah candles are made, basically by dipping string into melted wax multiple times and then weaving the tapers together while they’re still hot. It’s pretty cool. I actually spent as much money at the candle factory as I did for two nights at Ascent, which either says something about how cheap Ascent is or how impressive the candle factory is. Maybe both. And no, I did not buy a penguin—their faces were too weird.

From the candle factory we poked our heads into the Ari Synagogue (looks like a normal Orthodox synagogue, minus the women’s section) and proceeded to a street lined entirely with galleries of more conventional art—paintings, jewelry, and Judaica. There were some really beautiful things there, all of it expensive. There was even one shop where we got to watch weavers at work, which was really cool although I don’t understand why anyone would spend more than $100 on a really plain-looking matzah cover.

And of course we had to go find the cheese. There are signs all over the place saying “Tzfat cheese à” or “holy Tzfat cheese à” all of which led to another and then yet another sign. Reaching the cheese factory is like going thorough a maze, literally. When we get there it was just a little place—a table covered with different cheeses, a few tables for sitting down, and a room with vats in it that are used to make the cheese. Unfortunately we didn’t get to find out how cheese is made (we’d have to come back on Sunday for that, except that we were leaving Tzfat on Saturday night), but we did get to try every single one of his cheeses. They weren’t expensive, either; I got small pieces of feta and the special Tzfat cheese for only $10. That plus the four rugalach I’d brought from Jerusalem were more than enough for lunch.

Cheese:

So Friday was good. Shabbat… not so much. It’s odd because when I said I wanted to spend a Shabbat in Tzfat, I was warned that Ascent was really, really Orthodox—which is true. However, I’ve spent Shabbat with the Orthodox before, and as long as I know I’m there for Shabbat and not for a long period of time, I even sorta enjoy parts of it. Organizations that reach out to non-Orthodox students tend to be really concerned about how you’re doing and completely willing to talk to you about Orthodoxy. They have this kind of excitement to them. The people at Ascent… didn’t really. There was a shiur before Shabbat, but it didn’t really go anywhere. After that was supposed to be “Candlelighting and orientation,” but in reality it was just lighting on our own and sitting around until time to go to services. Dinner wasn’t with families in Tzfat, as it usually is at Ascent, but all together in a room in the hostel with not so wonderful food. Saturday was more of the same, if not worse; downtime until lunch unless you got up in time to go to 8am services at a synagogue of your choosing, a meal in which there was no vegetarian option (brisket and potatoes that were cooked together with the brisket), more down time until 4:45, an hour-long tour of Tzfat, and then more down time until dinner and even more downtime until havdallah!

Honestly, if I wanted to stay in my room and read and eat crappy found, I could have stayed in Jerusalem. I wasn’t too pleased with Ascent Shabbat. Usually they pay attention to us. Usually there’s singing and words of Torah and decent food when Orthodox organizations try to draw people in (and presumably the rest of the year, too), and that’s what I was expecting. That’s what I paid for. I feel like it would have been different if we’d gone to families for meals, but the website made no mention of the fact that Shabbat HaGadol isn’t a Shabbat where we get hosted. If it had, we probably would have come another weekend.

It all just seems very odd to me. They asked us twice if we were vegetarian—once on the registration form, and once when they called to confirm our registration. There was at least one other girl in our boat, too. If you know more than 48 hours in advance that 3 out of your 10 English-speaking guests are vegetarians, how in the world do you justify ignoring it? Apparently they expected us to just eat the salads, with no warning that we wouldn’t be able to eat the main dish. Thank you very much for your consideration. I really appreciate it.

I think, in the end, I’m still glad I went to Tzfat for Shabbat. As much of a let-down as it was, as much as it was so not worth the 200NIS we paid for it, if I hadn’t done it I would have wished I had. I would have just continued to have this fantasy of Shabbat in Tzfat and regretted never experiencing it. And there were some good parts to it. I discovered that while no one drives on Yom Kippur, the Shabbat of Shabbats, in Jerusalem, no one drives on Shabbat in Tzfat, period. Not a car moving that I could see, at least not on HaAri Street or Jerusalem Street, the only two streets we walked on where cars can actually go. I also discovered that there are basically no cats it Tzfat. The entire time we were there, we only saw two—as opposed to the rest of Israel, where they’re everywhere. These things are interesting to me. They’re unique, the same way the history is unique. I just wish all of Shabbat was like that.

The value of money

I owe this blog a long entry about the ending of the semester, but that entry is still to come. Right now, I would like to talk about the concept of money.

I have been spending money on food, transportation, and other daily necessities for five months now, all in shekels. As I travel around Boston now, I'm really not doing anything I haven't done before. Yet, somehow, it feels different. While I balked at a $2 bottle of water at the airport, once I converted it into shekels I realized that I'd bought a $2 (8NIS) bottle of water in Israel before, quite willingly, if not an experience I repeated again once I realized how much I'd spent. $1.80 in subway fare sounded high when I looked at how much I'd be traveling until I realized that it's not that different from Egged's $1.25 (5.9NIS) fare for those who can't pass as a youth. $4 on pizza and $8 on lo mein also seem extreme when I'm looking at buying all my meals, until I remember those $7 (26NIS) calzones I splurged on a few times. Similarly, the $3.25 (12NIS) falafels I got in Israel felt really cheap there, but really aren't when compared to that pizza.

I always knew that I don't really have any real concept of the shekel. I've been judging my purchases based on whether the number seems large, knowing that you really can't get anything for 1NIS. But it took me until this trip home to realize that I've been thinking about it in the same way I think of dining points at Brandeis: I have a fixed number of them, and as long as I don't go over I'm good. Shekels don't look like dollars, and it's not like I can earn any anyway. But in the States, where I'm used to money as something that's earned and spent and saved, it's a completely different matter. The money guilt that has evaded me in Israel comes flooding back.

I have not yet figured out the solution to this problem, or what it is I need to solve here. The lack of money guilt is very nice, though being left to spend whatever I please is probably not a good idea. Perhaps leaving my money in dollars in a US bank will solve this one.

Rosh Chodesh Kislev

If you've spent any time around religious Jews, you know that there's a whole ton of holidays around September/October and then nothing until December. It's the longest stretch in the Jewish year, and it's especially visible in Israel, where the entire country goes from Rosh-Hashanah-Yom-Kippur-Sukkot-Simchat-Torah insanity to two months without a single break. It's so bad that, here at Hebrew University, the Jeff Seidel Student Center had their "Hanukkah" event 25 days early, on Rosh Chodesh Kislev.

I put Hanukkah in quotation marks up there because while the event was advertised as a Hanukkah event, we never really got to the Hanukkah part. Instead, Rebbitzen Tsipora Dahan cooked up a storm and had the best meal ever at her house. I'm not kidding: homemade bread (including rolls with an onion filling!), soup, kugels, eggplant parmesan, sweet potatoes, pecan pie, cheesecake, sufganiyot, peanut butter balls covered in chocolate, lots of other small chocolate things - all made by Tsipora, except the soup. It was amazing, seriously the best food I've had in a really long time. I asked Tsipora afterwards if she was going to become a chef when her kids grew up, and she just laughed and said that it's a hobby.

We were supposed to do Hanukkah crafts after dinner, but we didn't finish eating until 10pm--after starting around 8:15. During dinner, however, we had the obligatory Jeff Seidel Orthodox idealism. Stacy and Tsipora brought in a musician, 12th grader Hadassah Haller from Ramat Beit Shemesh, who sang what must be the Jewish version of Christian music - not religious songs, per say, in that they weren't prayers, but songs that are focused on Hashem and religious life. One that really struck me was Chanale's "My Business":

Is the way to happiness the path to success?
Can I be satisfied if I'm something less
Than the doctor, the lawyer, they hoped I would be
So what if I'm happy, just to be me?

Each day, every hour, on me they depend
To be mother, a sister, plus a wife and a friend
I have a profession, though no PHD
Yet today I am happy just to be me!

Chorus: I don't need a license, don't need a degree
For I'm in the business, of a woman, you see
My life's full of meaning and my home's full of light
I don't need all that money to be doing all right

I don't need a mansion with riches inside
My children are diamonds, and my family's my pride
Why should I travel, I'm where I want to be
Can you find me a woman who's got more than me?

There's not much vacation, get no time to rest
My house is my office, and my kitchen's my desk
I work for Hashem, yes, the Torah's my trade
Maybe I'm overworked but I'm not underpaid

Chorus

I really don't know what to think about it. On one hand I'm all for going after what you want and not what people expect from you and I completely agree with not needing to be rich to be happy, but I have a problem with the rest of it. "I don't need a degree... I'm in the business of a woman, you see"--are you saying women don't need an education? Are you saying that the purpose of a woman's life is to take care of the house and the children? If that's what you want to do, fine, but... the business of being a woman, really? I feel like the song "Just A Housewife" from Working conveys the same thing but in a much better way. Otherwise it just feels like they're shoving the wonders of Orthodox living down your throat--which, I guess in a way, is the purpose of Jeff Seidel.

Overall, though, I had a really good time at the Rosh Chodesh event. Hadassah's voice and music was really beautiful, even if I had to take the songs themselves with a grain of salt, and I still can't get over Tsipora's cooking. You know, I could really get to like Rosh Chodesh this way.

Drag queens and swing dancing

This week was a very busy one for me at the Jerusalem Open House. Not only did I spend most of Sunday at the community center, working on the newsletter and the database with Dalit and the other interns/volunteers; I also attended two big events, the opening of the Hakafot café on Tuesday and my own event, the English Speaker’s Group swing dance night (“Swinging Queerly”), on Saturday.

While the café’s grand opening was advertised as an English-friendly event, I was disappointed to see the only English-speakers there were Ahuva and myself. This made the first hour or so rather boring, since we were isolated among a bunch of Hebrew-speakers who already knew each other. I did, however, get to consume some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (Cookies & Cream, 7NIS) and pie (apple, 10NIS). I would have just gone for the pie, but it wasn’t out at first so I didn’t know about it.

And then the drag monarchs came out—two drag kings and two drag queens, regular performers at HaKatze. I am happy to say that my videos from Open House came out much better than the ones I took at HaKatze, and now you can actually see the drag:

The event was also advertised as an open mic night, but there was no open mic about it. Once the drag monarchs (yes, I know I’m making up this phrase), the night was basically over. I don’t know how much café-related items JOH actually sold, but the drag drew a nice crowd.

Between Tuesday night and Saturday night I had my longest stretch of time away from the Open House in a long time—or maybe it just seems that way because I was there almost every other day for a week and a half prior. Saturday night, however, was our first English Speakers Group event of November, “Swinging Queerly,” in which we invited Shirley of the Tel Aviv Swing Club to teach a lesson in East Coast. It was really interesting to watch her teach because she didn’t teach it as East Coast, she taught it as six-count Lindy Hop, which actually makes a difference. I didn’t even realize before now that East Coast starts on a step-step, whereas Lindy (six-count or eight-count, whatever) starts on a rock-step. The moves also had different names; the inside-turn was a “window,” for some odd reason. I have no idea.

I spent a lot of the event running around—figuring out how to turn on the fan, finding tape so someone could tape her flip-flops to her shoes, helping Shirley, etc. I guess that’s why I lost track of time and the lesson went an hour and a half before Shirley realized people were getting tired and it was time to stop. We were supposed to have open dancing after the lesson, but that failed. People were just too tired. I think they had fun, though. They look like they were having fun:

Note that the people in the second video, Ahuva and Alexis, learned Swing at AHA, which is why, as Chelsie put it, "they look so good." Yes, I also spent a decent amount of time taking video--and stealing follows when Shirley was working with their leads (or vice versa). That's how I got to dance once we had an odd number. (Before the last person came, I was just in the line.)

And that was that. When things ended I went to get malawach for the first time with Ahuva and Alexis, and then I went home. Game over.

The art of toveling

Today I discovered the art of toveling. Or rather, my roommate needed to tovel her utensils, so I figured I might as well do mine too. Why not? I'm in religious housing, after all. Besides, I never managed to ask whether it was a problem with the sponges if I didn't.

It's actually a beautiful ritual. The point of kashrut is that eating is an act of worship, one of many that we compare to worship in the Temple. Thus, we treat dishware the way we would have treated articles of sacrafice preparation in the Temple times: we dunk them in the mikveh to make them holy. It's not something that I would particularly care about normally--I don't pay attention to the kashrut of dishware, period, nor do I really concentrate on the meaning of what I eat--but that doesn't mean it isn't a beautiful analogy.

Estie and I took the trip to the mikveh this afternoon. It was a nice walk, since it's actually not overly hot in Jerusalem for once. And there are so many mikvehs here! The shul we went to--right down the street from Kfar HaStudentim--had three of them: one for men, one for women, and one for dishes. (Estie said that at her shul in America they only have one that's used for all three purposes.) The one for dishes is a little structure in the middle of a courtyard, with two steps leading up to it and a metal lid. It wasn't very deep, but sitting on the side and looking into it reminded me of our foremothers drawing water from their wells. In a way, we were drawing water from this mikveh, as holy water dripped off our utensils and pots when we brought them out of the mikveh.

The process is simple. Open the lid, say the blessing, submerse the spoon/fork/pot/whatever into the water, let go for a second, take it out. Repeat until everything is done. Then you close the lid, gather your dishes, and leave. That's it. And yet, walking away in the sun with a plastic bag full of toveled items felt really, really nice--even if I know that the feeling will completely the first time I go to make pasta and burn myself on that newly holy pot. Oh well.

Village Green

Yesterday I discovered a really cool restaurant: Village Green. Really, this place is cool because it reminds me a bit of the US. While I can easily find falafel and pizza and pasta places in Jerusalem, I've been mourning the lack of pie and muffins in my life. They just don't seem to exist in most places (other than a 32NIS piece of pie at a couple places - way too expensive!), and it's sad. I love pie, and I mill my normal Brandeis breakfast of yogurt and a carrot or corn muffin. I walked into Village Green yesterday to give them a flyer for our next JOH event and there they were, among other things, right near the register: carrot muffins and apple pie. Pie! Muffins! And cheesecake (which is a pie), and a bunch of other kinds of muffins. Heaven. Pie and muffin heaven.

I will gladly pay 18NIS for a piece of cheesecake. I miss it that much.