Letters from Israel

The white season

2011-09-27T01:53:00.181+03:00

It was good to get back to the woods this week after a long break. The kids missed all those scrumptious climbable carob trees, the dried fruits in the upper branches still delicious for snacking on. I love the wonderful fresh scent of eucalyptus and pine, and the gentle shade they provide as the little people relax after a busy morning's climbing and playing in the dirt.

Just the other evening we were learning about lizards with David Attenborough's stunning "Life in Cold Blood" series and today in the woods we saw three species of lizard and a skink, as well as what looked like shards of reptile egg shells that had recently hatched. One little lizard was so bold that when the toddler reached out to touch it instead of fleeing it remained calm standing in front of us, it would have allowed itself to be petted had I not steered the toddler's hand away. Loving nature is one thing, making nice to wild reptiles quite another.

(Of course I arranged the whole thing so that our field trip would be directly related to yesterday's study material. I'm that good at predicting where tiny high camoflagued reptiles might be hiding in the big wide woods...)

I love being out in these woods this time of year. The shade of the trees makes the heat comfortable, blocking the worst of the still strong sun. At intervals there is a refreshing light breeze and while that still doesn't really make it autumn, it takes the edge off the oppressiveness of summer.

In many ways this is the white season, and not just because white, the colour of innocence and holiness symbolises the Jewish New Year and High Holy Days we mark during this transitional season. The summer's pure azure skies are broken more and more often with fluffy white clouds, some even bringing a light drizzle. After the long dry months white dust is everywhere, waiting to be cleaned away with the first autumnal downpour.

Almost nothing blooms now save for one hardy flower, the squill, which has made this season its own, dotting hillsides and highway verges like tall white festive candles. Their pallid blooms echo the season's clouds, puffs of purity and freshness sprouting proudly amidst the yellow-brown vegetation shrivelled and crisped by the summer sun.

There is a sweet Hebrew children's book about the squill "Why does the squill flower in autumn?" (it rhymes in Hebrew). It tells of how the simple white squill had trouble attracting bees and pollinating insects during more hospitable flowering seasons, like winter and spring. It just couldn't compete with the the attractive bright red blossoms of the anemone or poppy, the blue-purple lupins, yellow daisies or pink cyclamen. Then a little bird let it in on a secret - if it were to flower at the end of summer and early autumn, it would have all the bees and bugs to itself. And so almost alone among Israel's wildflowers it chose to bloom in the harshest season of the year.

Traditional Jewish symbols of the autumn festivals tend more towards the ripe red pomegranates and apples which also mark this season, the honey golden fresh dates and purple figs. These adorn Rosh Hashanah cards, sukkah decorations and kindergarten wall displays.

It seems a shame to me that these Land of Israel signs of the holidays are so well known and associated with the holidays in Jewish communities around the world while the humble but prolific squill, harbinger of the rain, symbol of fresh beginnings and freedom from sin, should be so unfamiliar outside the Holyland.

Keeping our heads above water

2011-09-13T08:46:00.027+03:00

The wave of "social justice" protests continue to sweep the country with demands for a "socially just" budget, more government spending, higher taxes on the rich, increased state benefits, higher wages for state employees and more.

In principle many of the ideas sound good - more goverment programmes to help the poor and infirm, more government spending on healthcare, better paid state employees - in particular those with vital and difficult jobs like medical professionals and social workers.

Problem is that raising spending to do those things would probably have the effect of plunging Israel into the economic depression plaguing most the western economies.

Things aren't perfect now in Israel but they could be one heck of a lot worse. We are just about the only western country which actually has low unemployment (5.5%, Israel's lowest ever), our international credit rating was actually just upgraded to A+ (by contrast the US credit rating was just downgraded) and responsible fiscal management means we have far less debt than the US or western Europe.

Look at the terrible crises in Greece, Spain, Italy, and for that matter the UK and US, and be warned, that will be Israel if we rock the boat now with increased spending and higher taxes.

In Israel today the top decile (asiron ha-elyon) pay 75% of the total income tax paid, and the top one percent of earners pay about 31% of income tax. Raising taxes and giving them more reason to either evade or leave the country is going to hurt all of us and result in more of the burden shifting to the already overburdened and lower earning middle classes.

So yes, maybe some small things can be changed, there must be wasteful government programmes that could be cut so the budget can be spent on more useful initiatives. Overall though we are currently one of the most stable economies in the world at a time when some of the strongest economies in the world are on the verge of collapse. True, many Israelis are just about holding their heads above water, but increase spending and increase Israel's debt and we'll find ourselves drowning just like our southern European neighbours.

Hoping for some southern comfort

2011-08-21T17:00:00.002+03:00

This morning I had a call from the mother of a friend of my daughter's. She wanted to reschedule our proposed playdate this week. Nothing so unusual about that except for the reason. Their kibbutz isn't too far from Ashdod and since Thursday evening that part of the country has come under massive rocket fire from Gaza, including several direct hits on homes, schools and synagogues. My daughter's friend and her family have spent the weekend in or close to shelters listening out for sirens.

Plan had been that after her day at the kibbutz, we'd collect J and take her to the beach in Ashdod, followed by dinner at the nearby nice little kosher Indian restaurant. That was before a grad rocket injured several people outside an Ashdod yeshiva, while another grad lodged unexploded in the roof of an Ashdod synagogue.

I know this must sound terribly selfish, I'm thinking about my daughter's fun plans for the week while people are sitting in shelters and getting shot at. In a way that is precisely my point. Overseas there is this image of "warzones" places where people's lives are suspended permenantly among ruined buildings as they wait for the next rocket to fall or the next bomb to explode.

These places become divorced from normal life in the eyes of the foreign news (though of course this weekend's rocket attacks have gone largely unreported overseas). Yet this division of the world into neat "warzones" and "normal" just doesn't compute.

The cities and towns and villages of southern Israel are "normal" places, places where people just like you and me live and go to work or school or lounge about during the summer seeking relief from the heat by the beach or in the mall. People go jogging and walk their dogs and go to the movies or take a walk in the relative cool of early morning. There are run down tenements in dodgy neighbourhoods and luxury villas in comfortable suburbs, grim 50s apartment blocks and state of the art modern condo developments. There are farms and beaches and yeshivas and factories and hospitals and UNESCO World Heritage Sites and beautiful nature reserves. Just as elsewhere in Israel late summer is a time for music festivals, weddings and cooling off in waterparks. People try to keep their children busy in the final few weeks of the summer holidays.

And suddenly all that is semi-frozen in the twilight zone uncertainty of a rain of rockets and sirens and government orders to cancel all large public gatherings, sporting events and concerts and for residents to stay close to their shelters or windowless interior rooms.

One friend was caught out by a siren while jogging one evening, spending the next half hour face down in the dirt and shaking from having felt and heard the impact of a rocket closeby. Another described the terror of having just left her cousins' house in Beer Sheva to return home to Jerusalem when the siren went, leaving her with a carload of children on an open road unsure whether to seek cover on the verge or to just keep driving.

In Tel Aviv the "social justice" protesters are still sitting in their tents protesting the rising price of housing and the cost of living. Down south sitting in a tent right now would be plain reckless.

Some would say going south right now was plain reckless but other friends of ours don't have that choice. For them the grievances of the protesters and the recent escalation of attacks from Gaza have come together alarmingly this week. Priced out of the centre of the country they found more affordable housing in Beer Sheva and are scheduled to move this week. School will be starting soon (God Willing in the south too) and they need to get settled in to their new home, rockets or no rockets.

Meanwhile another friend's sister and brother-in-law are in the process of signing on a nice apartment near the sea in Ashkelon. They too would have preferred something more central, closer to Tel Aviv, but Ashkelon is so much more affordable, and with its new housing projects, spruced up seafront promenade, marina and attractive beaches, seemed to offer a pleasant quality of life at a much cheaper price.

I asked whether they weren't concerned about Ashkelon's proximity to Gaza and the continued rocket fire. My friend's response? Once upon a time we were shocked that Gaza rockets could reach as far as Sderot. Then we couldn't believe Ashkelon was being hit. Then we were surprised at Grad strikes as far away as Beer Sheva and Ashdod. Then Yavne and Gadera. How long do I really think it wil be before they can reach Rehovot, Rishon Letzion, Modi'in and even Tel Aviv?

Red black mountains' majesties

2011-08-19T14:53:00.001+03:00

I can understand why people would opt to drive down to Eilat along the scenic and remote Route 12, scene of Thursday's fatal terror attacks, rather than the more popular Arava route, with its many heavy trucks, heavy traffic and just far less evocative views.

Route 12 is the highway we like to take when driving by day. Just a few minutes after leaving the urban sprawl of Eilat and you are out in the untamed wilderness with views into Sinai, dramatic rugged red, black and orange mountains punctuated with dramatic wadis, the occasional ibex wild goats and dashing black and white wheatear perched on every other roadsign. In migration season you can see large numbers of majestic raptors from mountainside overlooks along the route.

By night the highway is positively spooky, shadowy dark mountains looming over the road like giant monsters and black wadis in the gaps between become bottomless voids waiting to swallow hapless motorists. Yet night has its beauty too - endless clear desert skies sparkling like a field of diamonds, the Milky Way a bright shimmering swathe across the heavens, maybe a desert fox or even hyena crossing your path, caught for a brief moment in a cone of headlights.

While this section of the road is usually considered safe for civilian motorists, it has always had its dangers. Bedouin smugglers use this long wild border to bring in illicit firearms, drugs, people and domestic animals. There are military checkpoints along the highway and often very visible military traffic and patrols. We've certainly been stopped along this route often enough and asked for ID. It's certainly always been my impression that the IDF takes the security of this vital road and adjacent border very seriously.

And now it's another dot on the map of terror.

Camp David revisted II

2011-08-18T19:43:00.001+03:00

Time seemed to slide backwards today as Israelis heard the news of today's attacks down south.

For roughly four decades now Israelis have been able to rely on a cold but seemingly durable peace treaty with Egypt to keep the south of the country mostly quiet and safe. Yes, there were occasional attacks here and there, but by and large Egypt had an interest in maintaining the treaty with Israel, and that meant keeping the peace along the border. There was no love lost between Mubarak's regime and the assorted Islamist groups seeking to destabilise Egypt through terror both within its borders and occasionally beyond them.

There was enough mutual mistrust between Mubarak and the Bedouin of Sinai that he didn't mind ruling them with an iron hand while they in turn were often happy to support Mubarak's enemies, including Al-Qaida and affiliated groups seeking to use Sinai as a springboard for attacks on Israel. Most of these were thwarted, mostly because it was in Egypt's interest to do so - attacks on tourists in Sinai harmed one of Egypt's vital cash cows, while the peace treaty with Israel brought in much needed American aid and investment, including a substantial re-arming of the Egyptian military, as well as lucrative gas sales to Israel.

The Arab Spring seems to have turned much of this on its head. No one knows yet quite how the dust will settle, but for now enough is up in the air that Sinai appears to be reverting to a quasi-autonomous lawlessness. Some Bedouin there, never considering themselves to be fully Egyptian, are once again colluding with Islamist terror cells, either out of conviction, monetary gain or simply because it's another way of opposing Cairo. In recent months the gas pipeline to Israel has been sabotaged over and over again, while today's attacks appear to be bear out the repeated terror alerts in Sinai and warnings of increased terrorist activity in the area.

For years now there have been calls for a security fence along Israel's long porous border with the Sinai desert. Smuggling between Bedouin tribes on both sides of the border is rife including human trafficking of women for the sex trade, African migrants and refugees, drugs, arms, vehicles and domestic animals. While Egypt and Israel have tried to clamp down on this trade in recent years, the open vast stretches of open desert are difficult to seal and today's attacks are bringing renewed calls for the completion of solid barrier along the entire length of Israel's southern border.

For younger Israelis today's shootings have brought back memories of the Oslo intifada which began almost eleven years ago featuring many grisly sniping attacks on the roads of Judea and Samaria, as well as near the border with Lebanon. In their minds Eilat was meant to be immue to such things, a sort of safe haven, an escape from dark days in the centre of the country.

More than anything though the shootings today recall the early years of the state when the isolated, poorly defended wild south of the country was the frequent target of Fedayeen terrorists infiltrating from Egypt and Jordan. One of the most infamous of these attacks was the 1954 ambush at Ma'aleh Akrabim of an Egged bus travelling between Eilat and Tel Aviv. Eleven people were killed, including the driver.

With the bus now a stationary target the gunmen boarded it to confirm that everyone had been killed, shooting the wounded and anyone who had thus far escaped. In a recent interview in the Israeli Makor Rishon newspaper survivor Miri Firstenburg described how she had been a 5 year-old girl riding that bus with her family. Both her parents were murdered, her brother so severely brain injured that he never recovered, spending the rest of his life in hospital until his death at age 40. She alone survived the attack physically unharmed. Today she campaigns for the rights of those orphaned by terror attacks, drawing on her own terrible experiences in the early years of the state.

Today terror once again came to the vital roads linking Eilat to central Israel. At the time of writing the media here are reporting on 5-7 Israelis killed and 25-31 injured. Had it not been for the actions of the bus driver, Benny Belevsky, who pressed down on the accelerator when the shooting started, today's attack could have been even worse. Thank God he was able to drive the bus to safety and avoid the fate of that other Egged bus in March of 1954.

Between protest tents and nargillah pipes

2011-08-09T23:36:00.004+03:00

Watching the colourful Ramadan lights in neighbouring villages as we drive by DH mused, wouldn't it be nice if we could just drop by all neighbourly like with a plate of cookies and wish them Ramadan Kareem? They're so close by. Deceptively close.

And maybe it would be OK, we certainly meet enough decent Palestinians from the area working in nearby shops. Or maybe we'd be taking our lives in our hands. Hard to know since some of our neighbours started baying for our blood with chants of "itbah el yahud" (slaughter the Jews) over the mosque loudspeakers during the 2000-2003 intifada. Before that Jews went into our neighbouring Palestinian villages. No more though, not since a few of those Israelis didn't make it out alive.

We're driving home from breaking our Tisha b'Av fast with family in Jerusalem. The previous night, Tisha B'Av eve, we'd gone on the traditional walk around the walls of the Old City, especially interesting this year as Ramadan coincides with the Jewish fast this year, so as Jews were beginning their fast at sunset the city's Muslims were breaking theirs. This evening however, we are all breaking our fast. As DH notes, tonight is iftar (the fast breaking meal each night of Ramadan) for everyone.

The Muslim areas of the Old City and adjoining Arab neighbourhoods are festooned with holiday lights, neon stars and crescents and illuminated "Allah" signs bedeck homes and public buildings. All along the streets young men lounge with nargillah pipes and little boys feast on holiday sweets and corn on the cob purchased from the many festive food vendors. The Damascus Gate is especially busy with stalls and shoppers and just lots of men hanging around relaxing on this Ramadan night.

There don't seem to be many women out, just a few in drab jilbabs and hijabs out with their families. We get a lot of stares, mostly curious, some hostile, telegraphing "what the hell are the Jews doing here tonight?" I figure as it's a custom to walk around the walls of the Old City every Tisha B'Av night, some of them must realise it's Tisha B'Av, but I guess a lot of them just wonder why we're there on Ramadan. I wave and call out "Ramadan Kareem" and get quite a few shocked and bemused stares - and one smile. The kids Junior and I wave to giggle and wave back.

J keeps me very busy. First she asks me for the story of Tisha B'Av. I ask her which one and she says, both, the Babylonians and the Romans. I ask her to tell me what she remembers and she tells me the story of the Babylonian attack on the Kingdom of Judah, the siege of Jerusalem, the capture and forced exile of the Judean king to Babylon along with the Judean aristocracy and upper classes, the rebellion of the Babylonian installed new king, despite the warnings of the prophet Jeremiah not to rebel, and the final destruction of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple. I am impressed. She reminds me that she spend most of the of the public reading of Lamentations reading Yaffa Ganz's well written children's book on the subject. Just as well, the book of Lamentations is far from being a kid friendly read. I get to tell the story of the Roman occupation of Judea and the Jewish revolt which culminated in the destruction of the Second Temple. I try to be concise, but this is a kid who wants all the details.

We study the huge historic stone walls, in places mounted above steep cliffs of bedrock, making them particularly daunting to potential attackers. J tells me that the narrow slits are for the defenders of the city to fight the attackers with arrows, throwing spears and hot liquids. That's why the sieges lasted so long she explains.

She's curious about the Mount of Olives, sad to know that some was built over and destroyed during the Jordanian occupation (didn't they know about all the important history and the hakhamim (sages) and neviim (prophets) buried there?), fascinated by the ornate Russian orthodox church with its golden onion domes and the colourful fresco adorning the Catholic Church of all Nations.

Looking down into the valley she asks about the ornate tombs which stand out from among the more traditional headstones. She doesn't remember who Zakhariah is but enthusiastically regales me with the sad story of Absalom. "It's a tragic tale Ima, so it's OK to talk about it on Tisha B'Av night".

Soon we're passing the City of David, the original site of David's capital, nestled near the base of Mount Moriah, where David's son Solomon would build the Temple. I see a lightbulb go on in J's mind. It may be midnight but she remains alert and curious. "So that's why we talk about going up to the Temple Mount!" She exclaims. "The people lived down here".

Looking down into Silwan she notes all the colourful lights and asks me to tell her the story of Ramadan. I explain to her that Muslims believe that this is when their prophet Mohammed received the Quran. "Oh, so it's their version of Shavu'ot? Why to they celebrate it like Yom Kippur then?" I explain that it's kind of like Yom Kippur and Shavu'ot rolled into one.

J has a book about the gates of Jerusalem and she's very excited to try and spot them all. "That's the Lion's Gate!" She yells at one point "that's where the Israeli soldiers entered to liberate Jerusalem in the Six Day War, it's not too far from the Kotel, Ima, we're almost there!" Well, still a a midnight slog uphill, but yes, we're close to our destination.

I ask her if we could have done this walk in 1966. "Of course not Ima! But I know we could have on Tisha B'Av 1967, Uncle told me he did it then".

It is past midnight but the area around the Kotel is teeming with people, huge family groups, tourists, religious and secular. There are local tour groups for curious secular Israelis to show them what religious Jews do on Tisha B'Av night and foreign guides explaining the strange Jewish practice of mourning for a city and Temple destroyed two millenia ago. Some people have settled in to spend the whole night reciting Kinot lamentations by the Kotel.

In the Davidson Archaeological Park by the Temple Mount some of the original huge scorchmarked stone blocks sit where they fell during the Roman destruction of the city. It makes me shudder ever time we visit the site.

Our car is parked near Independence Park so we pass the this summer's "economic revolution" protest tents pitched there as make our way home. There are far fewer tents than I'd expected judging from the media hype, quite uniform, as though someone distributed the same tent to everyone. Earlier in the evening we'd seen people sitting out in discussion circles on the grass, honouring the solemnity of this most tragic night of the Jewish year. All is quiet now, it is afterall well past midnight.

Breaking the fast with relatives in Jerusalem the next evening our meal is disrupted by a noisy, but quite small, demonstration in the street below, mostly against the rise in electricity prices it seems, "Tzu el hamirpeset, hamedinah koreset" (step out onto your balconies, the state is collapsing) is the cry we hear as we peek curiously outside.

The crowd look mostly like studenty types, a few clean cut in neat jeans and khakis others of the long haired crusty rasta variety, a few kids in Scouts uniforms and a few folks with rather prominent red flags adorned with the hammer and sickle. I wonder if the young people carrying them understand the message and memories these symbols convey to many in Israel. They sound like many more people then they actually are. The couple of large dogs are very quiet and docile.

Communist paraphenalia aside, they do have a point about electricity prices. Somehow though I don't think they're calling for the market to be opened up to more competition though.

Our host tells us that this has been going on almost nightly for weeks, sometimes into the wee hours. Normally the 23:00 cut-off for noisy events is meticulously enfored. At the moment though the police and municipality seem reluctant to clamp down on the noise of the protests. She's had many sleepless nights as a result. It's amazing how much noise a few dozen people can make.

All in all a very curious few days. Keep praying for the peace of Jerusalem.

Never had it so good?

2011-08-05T17:57:00.007+03:00

A wave of rebellion and despair is sweeping across Israel. Tented protest camps in every city and town proclaim that this country is impossible to live in, that Israelis are oppressed by a horrendous economy, brutal capitalism and a tiny wealthy elite robbing the very shirts off the backs of the ordinary middle and working classes. Demostrations bemoan the prohibitive cost of living, sky high housing prices, food and petrol that have risen so much they have become luxuries for ordinary people.

The protests wouldn't be out of place in many parts of Europe, and to see them you would assume that Israel's economy must be suffering the sort of disasterous financial woes afflicting Greece, Italy and Spain. Looking at the protest camps and the angry demonstrations in Israeli cities you would assume that Israel is facing double digit unemployment, failing industries and catastrophic debt.

You would be wrong.

The Israeli economy is actually currently one of the strongest in the world, reporting high levels of growth and a strong Shekel. Unemployment is at its lowest level ever, about 5.8%. Many shops and businesses display help wanted ads but seem unable to fill all the vacant positions.

Israelis are travelling abroad in record numbers. Glitzy new towers are popping up in Tel Aviv and elsewhere along with swank new restaurants and spas and luxury boutique hotels. Unprecedented numbers of A list international performers are gracing Israel's shores with tickets priced in the hundreds of Shekels, up to a thousand or more for the best seats. SUVs are being purchased in record numbers.

It seems hard to believe that these fruits of the boom are being enjoyed only by the tiny wealthy elite, yet many middle class Israelis seem to be struggling to finish the month on two average salaries.

Some among the protesters charge that the rich here are only getting richer by pushing the rest of the country into poverty. It would seem more accurate that many Israelis are being squeezed between Israel's comparitively low salaries and high taxes which includes 16% VAT and a top income tax rate of 57% (including national insurance payments) which kicks in at a relatively low level of pay.

One of the key grievances is the high price of housing in Israel today. Many people have been priced out of the centre of the country where many of the jobs are to be found. Young couples find themselves moving in with parents because rents have shot up to unprecedented levels.

Yet high housing prices are hardly the sign of a poor economy. Yes, the current property market looks unsustainable, a bubble waiting to burst. On the other hand this is a country with a young and growing population and a culture of property ownership, even when the cost of doing so is near bankruptcy. Traditionally it's quite common, even expected, that parents at least partially fund or even buy in advance apartments for their children.

Housing in Israel's densely populated central cities has never been cheap though, why would anyone expect affordable housing in the middle of desirable locations such as north Tel Aviv or central Jerusalem?

In recent years real estate in many of Israel's big cities, in particular the capital, Jerusalem, has also been inflated by foreign buyers. New luxury developments in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Netanya, Jerusalem, Ashdod, Ashkelon and elsewhere are attractive as holiday homes to diaspora Jews, further fueling spiralling housing prices and leaving many Israelis priced out of major cities while these holiday homes sit vacant for most of the year. Entire Jerusalem apartment buildings and even neighbourhoods are virtual ghost towns outside of the popular vacation seasons.

One of the factors keeping prices so high is the insane bureaucratic hoops one has to jump through in order to get a building project off the ground. Prices are rising, demand is high, but in recent years building starts have if anything declined. The system is simply not flexible enough to be able respond quickly to market forces.

The Netanyahu government was trying to push through land reforms that would make it easier to open up land for construction but many of those currently protesting rising housing costs are those opposed to land reform.

It is one of the conundrums of the recent demonstrations is that many of the same groups protesting the lack of cheap housing are those who campaigned against new building starts on the grounds of protecting the environment. Protecting Israel's rich archaeology and beautiful nature is important, but a growing population also needs somewhere to live. Something has to give.

At the moment there seem to be few people trying to come up with creative solutions to all these problems, prefering instead to go head to head with "evil" developers seeking to make a profit, while accusing them of destroying Israel's ecology and not providing affordable housing.

While housing prices eat up greater percentages of an average family's income, the day to day cost of living has shot up too. Global prices rises in basic commodities such as fuel, grains and cotton have of course affected Israel. Electricity prices are set to rise by 20% this month, with a 17% increase retroactively charged for the first half of 2011. Government taxes and levies have only compounded these increases. High taxes on petrol, cars and many imported goods keeps their cost artificially high.

Israel aims for self-sufficiency in many things but it is still a small country in a region where politics allows little to no trade with our immediate neighbours, Israel must import from further afield, in particular from Europe, another reason why the hike in global fuels costs has hit hard.

Years of drought and a national water authority and government which have been slow to implement plans to conserve water and construct desalinisation plants has resulted in huge rises in water tarriffs in Israel, greatly increasing the average family's water bill as well as the cost of produce.

Yet the malls are full, cafes and restaurants do good business, hotels are booked. Yes, many Israelis are doing so on overdrafts and deferrred payments, but many are not.

The Israeli economy has never had it so good, and yet, many feel that they've never had it so bad.

And this does seem to be the key uniting issue among the disparate protestors - what don't we feel? We don't feel good! From the genuinely poor protesting the backsliding ineffeciency of the Amidar public housing offices to the comfortable middle class students griping that they can't afford to live in affluent north Tel Aviv, close to the university campus, a general feeling of discontent is sweeping the country.

In the tented protest camps and demonstrations people are calling for a return to socialism, an expansion of the welfare state, more public housing, free government sponsored childcare, pay increases for public sector workers, free college tuition, a rise in the top income tax bracket, more taxes on the wealthy and cheaper food.

Meanwhile possible solutions, such as opening the country's protectionist dairy market to increased foreign imports to lower prices, are met with protests at the damage such a move could cause to Israeli farmers, who are already facing losses from the decrease in cottage cheese prices brought on by the recent cheese boycott.

It seems that Israelis want to have it all. Higher incomes with lower taxes but increased state spending and a generous welfare state. Looking across the Mediterranean to the ailing debt ridden economies of our neighbours in Greece, Italy and Spain should give us pause for thought, as should this week's down grading of US credit-ratings. Solutions need to be found to Israel's pressing housing problem and rising food costs, but doing so at the expense of destroying our economy will only lead in the long run to even greater financial woes in Israel. So far we've managed to ride out the worst of the global financial crisis. I pray that our government and parliament will have the wisdom to continue to do so.

Camp David revisited?

2011-07-26T17:30:00.005+03:00

The two cute little girls in pink and flowers in my living room are playing war, prisoners, ransoms, great escapes, spying and peace negotiations. All set in ancient Egypt. Well, aside from a few scenes in ancient Israel.

Tiny plastic snakes, lizards and scorpions are getting in on the action, plus a few dinosaurs, paleontologists, a motorbike, the Egyptian royal family and Moses and family too.

At one point A announces that she doesn't like this game anymore. "I don't get the point!"

J patiently explains "It's a game about trying to make peace between countries"

A looks unconvinced.

"It's bad to hurt people and be mean to people, so it's good to try to make peace between people"

This satisfies A, and the negotiations between the Egyptian royal family, the Israelites led by Moses and various other factions resume.

Feeling Groovy in Jerusalem

2011-07-14T23:59:00.002+03:00

The mood was definitely groovy down in Jerusalem's American Football stadium tonight.

Groovy, but a bit gevaltik too. I have a hunch there was way more Barukh Hasheming (thank God) going on than at most other Woodstock revival events.

That, and at least half, maybe more, of the audience was wearing some kind of religious headgear. The hippie thing really can mesh wonderfully with modest clothing, long floaty Indian skirts topped off with vibrant tie-dye headscarves was just meant to be, and I've always thought there was something a little counter culture about otherwise straight laced guys wearing ethnically patterned handcrocheted skullcaps.

Somewhere between covers of Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" and Joe Cocker's "With a Little Help from my Friends" local act Libi and the Flash included their version of Psalm 121 (in Hebrew), itself a cover of Israeli world music sensation Sheva's hit song.

So yes, you could certainly feel the Jerusalem in the Woodstock, and maybe that detracted a bit from the "authenticity" of the event (that and there was astroturf instead of mud) but if you ask me that was the beauty of it. As a religious Jewish mother no way would I have taken my kids to any other Woodstock type event. Just no. Not part of my lifestyle or my family's lifestyle, no matter how much my mother loved the music and the fun clothing.

There were some wonderful local acts performing the songs of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cream and Jefferson Airplane. If I shut my eyes I could have been listening to my mother's record collection, or these days, my iPod playlist.

The standout performance was the tribute to Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin by up and coming young Israeli singer Yael Deckelbaum. What a voice. What perfect channelling of her musical mentors. It will be interesting to see what she does on her upcoming Hebrew language album.

There was a small crowd of folks dancing up by the stage, and there was beer for sale, courtesy of Jem, one of Israel's highly praised new boutique breweries, a co-sponsor of the event. It was all remarkably civilised though. I didn't see anyone drunk or lewd or just acting in a way I wouldn't want my little kids to see. As one lady I chatted to said "it's Woodstock made almost kosher". Even Led Zeppelin's "Gonna Give you my Love".

The crowd were warm, enthusiastic, friendly and just overwhelmingly happy. My little guy wandered merrily around dancing and smiling at folks, introducing himself, spinning, stomping, waving and clapping energetically to the music.

At the small assortment of craft and knick knack stalls a purveyor of juggling equipment had set up a table of second hand equipment festival goers were invited to borrow and play with during the event - hula hoops, juggling batons, flower sticks, poi balls and more.

It was a brilliant idea. Kids and grown-ups alike were happily twirling batons and playing catch with the balls all evening. There were some incredibly impressive hula hoop displays too. And at concert's end all the items had been returned to the table.

Groovy evening in Jerusalem. Could a Woodstock revival be anything but?

Not arachnophobia

2011-07-03T18:33:00.020+03:00

How to entertain the kids for an afternoon - spot a large spider trapped between the screen door and the glass door (ie where they can clearly see it but can't touch it or get dangerously close).

Point it out to them.

See them sit cross legged by the doors watching it on and off for most of the next few hours while Baby excitedly points and yells happily "akhavish" (Hebrew for spider), or, when it hides behind the window frame, dissapointedly "akhavish? akhavish?"

Big sister keeps herself entertained making up stories about the spider and its extended family and web spinning antics. She names it Charlotte.

Charlotte hangs around the space between the screen door and the glass door for a few days. The kids look for her excitedly in the morning when they rise, wish her night night in the evening when she scurries into a crevice in the frame.

On the fourth day Abba steps out onto the balcony and Charlotte escapes behind the aloe planter.

Baby keeps searching the glass hopefully looking for the spider. "Akhavish? Where?"

Jerusalem Illuminated

2011-06-20T21:36:00.008+03:00

I'm not sure my favourite (leather) walking sandals will ever quite recover from the soaking they had last night, but it was worth it. I should have thought to remove them before wading, sorry - "walking on water" - through the giant geodesic egg exhibit in Jerusalem's Old City, but J was standing next to me hopping from one foot to the other in excitement as the bizarre sculpture changed colours from muted magenta to blue to two tone red and purple and an ethereal mist wafted out from its apex (do eggs have an apex?), lending the whole scene an almost supernatural quality.

She couldn't wait to walk through and see the egg from inside. So I tossed caution to the winds, believed the guide that claimed visitors would "walk on the water" (I assumed some kind of stepping stones) and waded in with her on what turned out to be slightly raised rubber mats that weren't quite raised enough to keep our feet out of the water.

It was worth it though for the heady joy it gave J. She revelled in the sheer oddness of the whole thing, being bathed in gently changing jewel toned lights while walking through a wooden cut out egg perched on an artificial pool on a platform in the Southern Kotel archaeological park within sight of some of the most sacred and contentious places in the world.

She insisted on walking throught the exhibit three times and would have gone back a fourth only it was midnight by then and they were closing the gates of the archaeological park.

It was the perfect end to a curious night time adventure following the "orange trail" through the maze of old Jerusalem, one of several possible routes through the walled city, each leading visitors on a light themed treasure hunt of sculptures and installations adorning the historic buildings, courtyards and the ancient walls themselves.

The variety of ideas and media within the rubric of light was fascinating. We saw a short film expertly screened onto the arches of the Rothschild building, perfectly aligned so that the character appeared to be walking from arch to arch. Some alleys were lined with quirky illuminated shapes or light filled flowers.

One structure was decorated with brightly coloured neon letters in at least four scripts meant to symbolise the need for dialogue and listening to one another. Junior commented that it made her think more of the Tower of Babel. Perhaps that was the point.

Then there was a rainbow hued " light cake" made of over 200 drums, filled with pingpong and LED balls which every 15 minutes or so erupted from the "cake" in what was meant to represent a shower of coloured sweets transporting the viewer back to his or her childhood. Or just delighting the many visitors who still were children, judging from the crowds of youngsters.

For the past few years though the late June/early July light festival has become a city fixture drawing crowds of thousands to pack into the Old City's narrow streets to marvel at all manner of beautiful, bold and some just plain weird light creations and installations among the the ancient stones.

We had arrived just after dark and were met with a glorious giant tree of light just outside the Jaffa Gate. All around the gate futuristic looking "light palms" mimicked the more traditional date palms that line the promenade.

The whole area was teeming with people, locals, tourists and pilgrims. Once we entered within the walls though it wasn't so crowded that you couldn't enjoy the exhibits, as people split up to follow the different trails, each marked by a different coloured row of neon lights.

J loved the idea of the different routes: "Just like the Yellow Brick Road, only in lights" said she.

The only problem was there was so much to see and way too little night to see it in. No way could we have managed to see the orange, blue, yellow and red trails in four short hours, even without two little kids in tow. Eight to midnight just isn't enough time. And it isn't even that easy to come back another night - the festival is only on for a week.

I guess late June seems like an odd time for a Jerusalem light festival. It isn't as if there is anything light related in the calendar this time of year, well, other than the shortest nights of the year. Would seem to make an after dark event rather counter-intuitive as a June event, would it not?

The problem is that Hannukah is (drought years excepted) during the rainy season, the big Jerusalem pilgrim festivals and the High Holy Days already draw huge crowds to the city, as do Jerusalem Day and Independence Day. The period of mourning leading up to the black fast of the 9th of Av is not an appropriate time period for such an exhibit and the relatively quiet period between Hannukah and Purim is usually right in the peak of the rainy season.

What's left? Some of the shortest nights of the year. And some of the most pleasant Jerusalem evening weather.

Not a bad way to spend a summer night. Not bad at all.

If you go down to the woods today...

2011-06-13T16:36:00.004+03:00

Woke up this morning, looked out the window and could not believe it was June in Israel. Thick grey overcast clouds blotted out the sun and a brisk breeze had trees and flags dancing a samba.

If I didn't know it was June I would have been expecting rain. And you know how much I adore a good rain storm. Well any rain actually. Only rain+June+Israel = incredibly remote possibility. Remote, but not completely impossible.

As of 15:00 this afternoon though there is no sign of rain - one can but yearn. It has been an absolutely gorgeous day for being out in the woods - cool, cloudy, breezy - what an unexpected gift during the usually searing month of June.

I've come to relish these regular get-togethers under the trees. Not that my hometown isn't pleasant enough, but it is so invigorating to have a regular escape from cookie cutter concrete and asphalt.

It's lovely for the kids to have the chance to just play in and with nature, climbing trees, digging in the sandy soil with sticks and carobs, building with stones, collecting seeds and leaves and the odd snail shell. There's a good bunch of folks who come too and it creates a pleasant and safe environment in which to allow the young kids some freedom to wander and explore a bit.

Contrary to popular opinion though (you know who you are) I'm not all starry eyed earth mother about these days out. There are no loos out in the woods. No running water. I often come home sporting the odd bug bite. The sandy soil, leaf litter and pine needles do seem to get everywhere, falling out of the darndest of places when I get the kids (and sometimes myself) changed into PJs come evening.

So yes, a day out in nature does come with some organisational challenges for the parent of small kids. Certain trees do seem to get well irrigated even in the dry season. It feels as though we schlep with enough food and water for an army and enough toys for a few neighbourhood preschools. Many of the other families just bring with huge witch's cauldrons and cook fresh food over the fire while the kids play. Brings a whole new meaning to outdoor kitchen.

Then there is the usual fight over sunhats. Big girl is by now a well drilled Israeli child. Outdoors means hat, water and comfortable walking shoes. Baby is still coming to terms with the hat part. Sometimes also the shoe part.

Trees do offer shade but it isn't total and on a more typical June day you can fry while taking a midday walk on the path down to the spring or sitting for too long on the swing at the playground where the tree canopy parts just enough to let the strong sun in. So the rule is sunhats or be sorry.

Today was overcast though and Baby was having none of it. At least until he was sitting in the dirt happily minding his own business rooting around for interesting leaves when something small and hard bopped him on the head. A few minutes later the same thing happened to me, only instead of jumping up with a yelp, I calmly noticed that it didn't actually hit my head but landed safely in the brim of my wide Australian bush hat.

We were sitting in the shade of a eucalyptus tree and the wind was blowing in great gusts. Bop, bop, bop went the tree, jettisoning its version of acorns on us. Baby reached for my hat and smiled as it caught the offending pods. Wish I could say the same for his sunhat. Boy has a big head for a toddler but it is still nowhere near adult size and it was pretty useless perched on my head like a book at a finishing school. Bop, bop, bop went the tree on my head. Bop, bop, bop.

So the lesson of the day is this - Australian bush hats are way more useful than just as a sunshade (its usual purpose). They come in really handy for catching the "rain" of eucalyptus seed pod thingies that came flying off the trees and bashing unsuspecting folks on the head. So useful that one should really own at least one per family member, regardless of age. Need an Australian hat to protect against an Australian hazard, right?

My dahl recipe (more or less) by popular demand

2011-06-10T11:16:00.001+03:00

First off, I don't usually exactly cook by recipes for stews, soups etc, it just sort of comes together. Well, that isn't to say that I never follow recipes, but there are those faithful staples that I just throw together by instinct and eye and then someone says what's your recipe and I have to think how on earth I'm going to right this down because frankly I can't remember whether I use a teaspoon of something or a tablespoon or maybe half a cup?

Dahl is one of those recipes I make again and again. As a child I learnt it from my Indian and Pakistani neighbours, (though I make no claims as to the authenticity of my version), and it has been a favourite comfort food ever since, something I could quite easily live on if I had to. It's one of those recipes that friends and guests often ask for, so with the above caveat, I've tried to reconstruct my dahl recipe on paper, you may need to tweak it:

About 1.5-2 cups red/orange lentils

4-5 bay leaves or curry leaves

2 tsp dried turmeric or preferably about a "thumb" of grated fresh turmeric

1 tsp dried ginger or about a half "thumb" of grated fresh ginger

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

1/2-1 tsp black pepper (if you want it spicier use cayenne or ground chilli instead, I tone this down for family who prefer milder tastes)

2 tsp cumin

@ 1/2 litre onion soup/onion stock -( You are best using homemade, though I guess it would work with a bought stock, I once made this fleishig with leftover chicken soup, better using onion soup as the stock, or another clear veg soup)

5-6 cups water (or more if it looks too dry)

Salt to taste

Juice of @ lemon or lime (maybe a bit less) - I prefer lime but they are incredibly hard to find in Israel, and in season only briefly.

Olive oil

Generous handful (or two, depending on your taste) cumin seeds

2-5 finely minced garlic cloves

Fresh coriander, finely chopped

1. Measure out the lentils into a sieve and wash cold water over them, thoroughly soaking them for a minute or so.

2. Add to a pot with the soup/stock, ground cumin, ginger, turmeric, curry/bay leaves and black pepper.

3. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer and cook until the lentils start to become mushy and soup like - probably around half and hour to 45 minutes.

4. When the lentils are starting to look suitably mushy give them a little help by stirring up the ingredients, mashing a bit with a wooden spoon to help them along.

5. In a separate pan heat the olive oil and then saute the cumin seeds with the minced farlic for a few minutes until toasted. Meanwhile let the dahl keep simmering on low.

6. Add the toasted garlic and seeds to the dahl, mix well and leave on the heat.

7. Add small amounts of lemon/lime juice in small increments, to taste. The lemon juice shouldn't be a dominant flavour, it should just help to bring out the other flavours, so you don't want to drown the dahl in lemon juice.

Serve piping hot or cold with the finely chopped coriander sprinkled generously on top (unless of course you are one of those folks who hates coriander, in which case, you might want to substitute finely chopped fresh mint instead). I like it as a soup or as a main or side dish spooned over brown bastmati or jasmine rice, with or without a dollop of plain, natural yoghurt, with a simple fresh chopped Israeli style cucumber and tomato salad on the side.

Oh, and I find that sometimes when I have guests who really can't stand anything with much spice, I make this with some coconut milk added or a few tablespoons of natural yoghurt stirred in and my guests who profess to hate all things Indian/spiced etc, usually come away asking for the recipe and saying that they didn't realise Indian type foods could taste so nice without being "spicey" (ie fiery hot)

Still crazy after all these years?

2011-06-06T09:10:00.082+03:00

About 16 years ago I was a young undergraduate attending a lecture by a visiting professor, a respected expert on the Middle East. I forget the exact details of the talk, but I do remember going up to the lecturer at the end and asking him whether he thought it likely that Israel's enemies might use civilian Palestinian refugees to overwhelm Israel's borders, for example if Lebanon decided to push its large Palestinian population into what was then Israel's defensive perimeter in southern Lebanon, or, following an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, into northern Israel.

I wondered how Israel would, should or could respond to hundreds or even thousands of civilians trying to storm her borders.

He responded that such an event wouldn't happen, that such a suggestion was fantastical. His face radiated the contemptuous ridicule he clearly felt at my overactive imagination. I could see him mentally ticking the "nutter" box. I didn't entirely blame him, this field does seem to attract way more than its fair share of wackjobs, each with their own hysterical doomsday theories for the Middle East, especially Israel.

Feeling thoroughly chastened and a touch humiliated, I left the lecture hall resolving to keep my crazy ideas to myself.

Then this May Syria did just that, massing groups of Palestinians to push over the Israeli border, maybe as a desperate distraction from Syria's own internal chaos, maybe just to make it clear to Israel what the consequences of regime change might be in Syria. I'm sure Assad could come up with plenty of reasons.

Israel reacted in shock, military included. If there is one things that Israelis fear, it is being faced with hordes of apparently unarmed civilians who nevertheless are presenting a very real security threat. Israel cannot stand for hostiles - civilian, military, or something vague in between - storming her borders. Israelis are horrified at being put in position where the only option is to shoot to prevent such a mob from over-running Israeli positions.

Watching the news footage from the north and listening to the assorted academic experts being interviewed for their learned opinions I found myself curious whether the illustrious professor remembered my apparently ludicrous question from all those years ago. Would he agree that I wasn't such a ridiculously imaginative undergrad afterall? This is one case when I would have preferred to be wrong.

Lag Ba'Omer Grinch

2011-05-22T02:48:00.002+03:00

It's Israeli bonfire season again, time to batten down the hatches, seal the windows and hide indoors until the air clears.

I associate many of our holidays with the smell of burning, but now that I think of it there seem to be many variations of that smell.

Hannukah and Friday night come with the warm, sweet smell of olive oil, mostly odourless as it burns, then pleasantly pungent as the oil burns down and the wick putters out.

Purim in Israel reeks of cordite from the firecrackers. Kind of like the Chinese New Year. Funny they often come out around the same time, I've often wondered if the Israeli firecracker tradition is in someway connected, maybe we get the surplus from the Chinese celebrations.

Pesah eve comes with the whiff of burning bread. Or rather the smell of people trying in vain to get fires going with the remains of their leaven. Hopefully without any plastic packaging, but there is always someone who thinks that will help.

On Yom Ha'atzmaut the whole country smells like a giant grill restaurant. I imagine this must have been what seder night was like at the time of the ancient Temple, a whole nation barbequeing in unison.

Then there is Lag Ba'Omer, holiday of burning, or so it seems. Weeks in advance the children of Israel (note the small c) start gathering wood. And I don't mean firewood, I mean anything that could be considered wood or woodlike, be it packing crates, mdf closet doors or even chipboard and formica old furniture. What's that you say, those things can give of fumes when burnt? Really?

Sad to say that the yearning for kindling of any kind seems to be so keen that some kids will even rip the wooden planks off park benches (in our area many of the benches are metal or stone for this reason) or bits of scaffolding from building sites.

There just aren't that many spare logs and twigs in these parts where our local trees tend towards puny rather than mighty, and belong to either private individuals or the state.

The aim is to gather the greatest pile of flammable stuff you can and then, on the great night itself (give or take a couple of days) to set it alight into a mighty torch, while you stand around and wonder what to do next. It isn't even as if the nights are usually that chilly this time of year, so it's often uncomfortably warm around the flames.

It's a curious thing, this juvenile attraction to pyromania. Schools, synagogues and youth groups organise their own bonfires with legally obtained fireworthy lumber, roast potatoes, marshmallows and corn on the cob, maybe a nice singalong too.

They usually have the good sense to hold their event in the week before Lag Ba'Omer, while the air is still breathable and there are still plenty of open areas uncluttered by competing fires.

As you may have gathered I'm not a big fan of this holiday. Whose brilliant idea was it to set the whole country alight davka at the beginning of the warm dry season, just when the rain has usually come to a halt and there is no way to cleanse the air from all this ash, soot and smoke?

The pall of Lag Ba'Omer hangs over Israel for days to come, a toxic miasma keeping the elderly, the sick, asthmatic and the allergy prone indoors, and the rest of us wishing we could legally open our emergency gas masks to escape from the noxious air.

Most irksome of all though is that all the stories associated with this holiday, from Rabbi Akiva to Bar Kokhva to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai, are largely forgotten in the single minded pursuit of fire.

I mean come on, why couldn't we have celebrated by eating carobs or remembering the need to be nice to one's fellow human being as per the story of Rabbi Akiva's students? We could have started by not trying to burn down the neighbourhood.

Blue and white forever

2011-05-10T09:33:00.001+03:00

No birds have come to our balcony this week.

Not our regular jays and bulbuls, our sometime visitors the blackcaps, great tits, sunbirds and graceful prinias, or our uncommon avian guests the ring-necked parakeets, laughing doves and blackbirds.

The feeders are forlorn, their seeds and fruit waiting in vain.

I think we have scared them away.

It's all my daughter's fault.

Last week at the craft store she used her pocket money to stock up on long strands of Israeli flags and blue and white bunting, declaring "This year we are going to decorate properly for Yom Ha'atzmaut!"

So early Sunday morning found vertically challanged me teetering on a stool and trying to keep the baby from getting tangled in lengths of patriotism as I struggled to bedeck our balcony in honour of the impending holiday.

An hour later and our porch was festooned with fluttering blue and white flapping delightedly in the breeze.

When J finally roused herself she was beside herself with delight.

"All my flags are up Ima!"

"Look how they flap in the wind Ima!"

"The sky even matches our flag Ima!"

And indeed it did. Grand azure expanses dotted liberally with storybook large white fluffy clouds.

"Ima, we finally look Yom Ha'atzmautdig!"

Israeli flags and streamers in the garden below echo our loving decorations, as do most of the balconies and windows in the buildings across the street and on the lamposts all down the main boulevard below us.

I started getting that warm fuzzy feeling.

Suddenly J stopped her enthusiastic outburts and looked perturbed.

"We don't have lights Ima."

"Ima, our neighbours have Stars of David made out of lights!"

" Ima, the house on the corner has blue and white lights all along their railing that flash on and off like the blue is chasing the white or the white is chasing the blue."

"Ima, why don't we have lights?"

I guess there is always next year.

Have a little gratitude

2011-05-09T23:42:00.000+03:00

There is a fashion amongst some Jews, here and abroad, to sneer at Yom Ha'atzmaut, to pooh pooh the celebration of this imperfect realisation of their highly idealised image of what the Jewish state should be.

Others accept that there is something to celebrate on Yom Ha'atzmaut, but deride what they see as the crass and populist way it is celebrated, the throngs of Am Yisrael with their barbecues, gaudy coloured lights, Israeli flags, low brow entertainment and pathos-laden songs.

Finally there are the folks, mostly in the diaspora, who are kind of glad that Israel is there, but please don't expect them to get too excited about it. Perish the thought that they should take even a minute or two on Yom Hazikaron to say thank you to the thousands who died so that Israel could live. So that they could be safe in the knowledge that there was a bolt hole for them should things ever get really bad in the diaspora, or if they fancy visiting the Kotel some time.

For crying out loud folks, I know it sounds Pollyanish, but play the glad game, be thankful for what you have. Stop focusing on what you haven't, on what there isn't, on what isn't good enough.

Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean you can't recognise the good in it, can't thank Hashem for granting us this modern miracle, this privilege to be of a generation that merits to be part of the rebuilding of the Jewish homeland.

Just because a mode of celebration isn't to your taste, or is beneath your taste, doesn't mean you can't appreciate the wonder of the Jewish people in the Jewish homeland joyously thronging the streets in their tens of thousands in honour of Israel's birthday.

Open your eyes, get some perspective, look. Just look. Roughly seventy years after Hitler decreed our people as fit only for extinction, murdered a third of our nation and left the Jewish world in tatters, a mere handful of decades after we reached the brink of total destruction, and look at the vibrancy, the creativity, the enthusiasm for life that are at the core of this phoenix that is the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty in Israel.

How can you see that and not see a reason to dance in the streets? How can you see the only place in the world with a growing Jewish population, a growing young Jewish population, and not rejoice in this victory over Hitler? How can you see the thousands of dedicated young men and women who pledge their lives to protecting our people and not feel gratitude? How can you look the bereaved parents in the eye and tell them their child's sacrifice wasn't good enough for you?

The honey and the sting

2011-05-08T23:52:00.015+03:00

There wasn't a dry eye in the hall tonight as the short video about Jerusalemite Noam Cohen was screened. Images of a bright eyed lively young man filled the screen but we all knew the inevitable end of the story.

Noam had spent most of his adult life in the murky world of counter-terrorism. In February 1994 one of his Palestinian informants set an ambush for him and Noam was killed. I remember it well, the news stories of this vibrant young man, the eloquence of his family, the visceral feeling of someone so alive being extinguished just like that.

Tonight his sister helped keep his memory alive by addressing tonight's memorial gathering, telling us about her brother, but also about the many young Noams today who bear his name. She reminded us of the many thousands of young religious Israelis who may never have heard of her brother, but who each day honour his legacy by blending a devoutly religious way of life with serving their country and participating in Israel's mainstream culture and workforce, as Noam had. Knowing that so many people had, knowingly or not, drawn inspiration from Noam's brief life was the greatest memorial to him.

Only a few months before Noam Cohen was shot in the line of duty, father and son Moredekhai and Shalom Lapid were murdered in Kiryat Arba, one of several fatal terror attacks in the months after the Oslo Peace accords were announced. I remember that it was around Hannukah time and the deaths of father and son Lapid, a name meaning torch, a symbol of the Hannukah story, is lodged in my memory. Lapid senior was a Soviet Jewish dissident who had made it to Israel and become involved in the settlement movement, one of the pioneers of the renewal of Hebron's Jewish community, his son a brilliant young Torah scholar.

Today two of Mordekhai's grandchildren bear his and his son's names. Their other grandfather, prominent Hebrew linguist Avshalom Kor, spoke movingly of how vividly his two young grandsons remember the relatives they never met, how naming them after the murdered Mordekhai and Shalom has created an almost mystical bond between the generations. Kor recounted how young Mordekhai upon seeing a portrait of his late grandfather pointed and said "Grandpa". His younger brother saw the portrait of Shalom hanging next to it and said simply "me".

It was not an easy evening, too many difficult memories, chilling stories and raw emotion. There were cathartic songs in between, the lyrics from Psalms and the liturgy, and of course, at the end Hatikva, the Israeli national anthem whose central theme is hope and continuity.

This is what Memorial Day is in Israel, something deeply personal, painful and tangible.

As I sat in that auditorium this evening I was reminded of a couple from Florida I met earlier today.

I was hastily finishing up some errands with the kids at the local mall. Near the fountain two large Israeli flags had been placed at either end of a black table where two men were setting up memorial candles in the shape of a Magen David.

At around 17:50 an announcement came over the tannoy announcing that all the shops would be closing early at 18:00 sharp to mark the start of Memorial Day that evening. An elderly man and woman approached me and asked if I could explain to them in English what had been said.

When I translated they looked a little puzzled.

Memorial Day wasn't like Shabbat said the wife, why did the shops have to close?

It was my turn to look puzzled. At first I didn't understand the connection. Then it hit, she thought perhaps there was some religious injunction forbidding work on Memorial Day. I explained that is wasn't anything religious, rather the country shut down out of respect for those who had died, and to make sure that everyone was able to get to the evening's memorial services.

The woman still looked perplexed. But in America Memorial Day is a busy shopping day she said. There are lots of sales. She looked disappointed.

It turned out they were visitors to Israel from Florida. They'd been told that this was a fun time of year to visit because of Israel Independence Day. They were looking forward to the promised festivities, but hadn't bargained for the mourning that comes first in this country, something that just seems like the most natural order of events for Israelis.

I tried to explain again, but they just didn't seem to grasp why there was mourning and only then festivities when in the US July Fourth has no connection to Memorial Day, and in any case, they'd never heard of a whole country shutting down for Memorial Day. It seemed a bit extreme to them.

Is Israel really that unusual in linking the two concepts? I haven't done an academic study of the subject, but it seems so. From an Israeli perspective it seems cliche to even mention it, how we can't free ourselves to celebrate fully on Yom Ha'atzmaut without first remembering the price of that hard won independence by paying our respects to those who paid that price.

The radio is full of sombre soft songs tonight, several penned by the late and sorely missed Naomi Shemer, whose gift it was to so beautifully convey the national mood. "The honey and the sting", she wrote "the bitter and the sweet...protect these things". It might sound trite, but that bittersweetness is I think a very Israeli perspective on life in this difficult neck of the woods. We accept this country with love, both its honey and its sting, Memorial Day and Independence Day, and if you don't take the time to truly experience the former than all the festivities of the latter are hollow.

יהי זכרו ברוך In memory

2011-05-08T20:55:00.006+03:00

Tonight is the beginning of Yom Hazikaron, Israel's Memorial Day for all the 22,867 soldiers who fell creating and defending the State of Israel, and for the 2,443 civilians murdered in terrorist attacks.

As the siren sounds tonight at 20:00 and tomorrow morning at 11:00 a grateful nation will remember the friends we have lost, the lives snuffed out, the potential lost and the new lives that will not be created.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all the breaved families and to the many tens of thousands injured in both body and mind during the many wars and terror attacks our young country has suffered.

Fourteen years ago Gidon Posner, a highschool classmate, joined the list of the fallen when the helicopter he was aboard collided with another en route to active duty in Lebanon in what is the worst military accident in Israeli history. He was amongst the 73 soldiers and airmen who perished.

I post this news clip in his memory so that others might know even a fraction of the special person he was and the wonderful potential the Jewish people lost with his death. May his memory be blessed.
(video is in a mixture of Hebrew and English)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNxG1V8eGVI

http://www.izkor.gov.il/HalalKorot.aspx?id=514858

I found an orchid!

2011-04-26T04:08:00.002+03:00

I was walking along the road in a nearby moshav when I spotted this, a Holy Orchid (orchis sancta) סחלב קדוש, first time I've seen one of these in my area. Not the most brilliant pics, granted, but I was in a rush, so here is my local orchid find:

This in turn has made me curious to learn more about our native orchids as it has been quite some time since I saw one in the wild, probably not since I used to regularly spend time in and around the Jerusalem Forest and in the Jerusalem suburbs, which would make it a few years. I'd would certainly be curious to go on one of the orchid walks organised by the Israeli Orchid Society I guess there is always next winter/spring, because as far as I know "my" orchid is the last one to bloom until the next rainy season.

Settled Nomads

2011-04-11T01:11:00.044+03:00

On Sukkot we leave our permanent dwellings and camp out for the week in a Sukkah. The link to our nomadic and agricultural heritage seems clear enough.

Pesah isn't usually a holiday associated with those themes though. Slavery, spring, cleaning, those are things we think of when we think Pesah.

Unlike on Sukkot we don't actually leave our homes, but we turn them upside down and inside out in our thorough banishing of every last crumb of hametz. We transform the familiar by hiding our everyday utensils out of sight and bringing out the special Pesach dishes and linens, items we see only one week a year. Familiar bread is replaced with matzah, and in many families we have recipes saved for just this one festival. Many Jews have the custom of repainting their homes.

It's almost like an extreme take on Purim with our routine and household wearing the masks, rather than ourselves.

Like Sukkot though, Pesah is about reminding ourselves that however settled or comfortable we've become, it means nothing without understanding where we come from. Cliched you might say, but a point oh so easy to forget in the day to day life of modern Western man.

So we moan and groan but we take our homes apart. In our campaign against leaven we symbolically reanact our ancestors slavery in Egypt, frantically working against the clock to complete the gargantuan task of Pesah preparations. I know that many people say they hate Pesah for this, but I think the vast amount of labour involved in Pesah cleaning is part and parcel of understanding what it meant to be slaves in Egypt, the only way to even come close to that feeling of relief at being free, at finally having reached the seder night after all those weeks of gruelling work.

I find that seeing the hoardes of Israel on the move for Pesah also takes me back to our roots. The families and friends who band together in extended groups to celebrate seder together as our ancestors would have gathered shared the Pascal lamb sacrifice. The throngs crowding Jerusalem as the Jewish people would have in the times of the ancient Temple. The masses filling every park and forest with their barbecues and bonfires and shades and awnings, reminscent of our nomadic Israelite forbears camping in the Sinai desert en route to the promised land.

A wise relative of my husband's (he has the long white beard to prove it) once said that it is no coincidence that Judaism's biggest festivals occur in the autumn and the spring, the most pleasant times of year in the Land of Israel. What better time to be out and about in the Land remembering where we come from and how our ancestors lived.

Perhaps I read too much into these things, but I think it's all part of the message.

Zoo day

2011-04-07T23:20:00.000+03:00

I was travelling home from an exhausting but pleasant visit to Jerusalem's Biblical Zoo when I heard the news on radio about an Israeli schoolbus hit by an anti-tank missile fired across the Gaza border into Israel. The driver escaped with light injuries but a a 16 year-old boy was critically injured. Please pray for the recovery of Daniel ben Tamar.

For those outside Israel it was reported as another non-news event, mostly after Israel responded by attacking terror suspects in Gaza, garnering headlines along the lines of "Israel knocks the @#$%! out of Gaza again, (and by the way, they might have been responding to folks in Gaza trying to kill Israelis)"

Nothing new there I guess even though this was an escalation on the part of Hamas and their buddies. Until now most of the fire coming from Gaza has been rockets and mortars, not particularly accurate weapons, not that they aren't plenty lethal, but still, not something you can use for a targetted strike. An anti-tank missile is different. It isn't something one just shoots into the air and hopes it lands somewhere it can do the enemy some damage.

An anti-tank missile is something to be fired when you have your specific enemy target in your sights, some guy was sitting on the Palestinian side of the Gaza fence and watching that school bus and choosing to fire his missile directly at that bus hoping specifically to harm that specific civilian target. Had the bus been more crowded the outcome would have been far worse than today's tragedy.

I couldn't help but contrast events near the Gaza border with my morning in Jerusalem. While an Arab gunman was taking aim at an Israeli schoolbus, scores of Arab schoolchildren were happily strolling along the lush paths of Jerusalem's zoo, giggling and carefree.

My toddler was so taken with one group that he followed them along for a while, quite taken by the cute kids in their red tracksuit uniforms and the friendly children and teachers who very sweetly waved back to him. If my rudimentary Arabic is correct, I think the three little girls at the back wanted to take him home with them.

A lot of people talk about how Israel's hospitals show the country's pluralism and co-existence at work, and that's true, every race, creed and ethnicity can be found among both Israel's hospital patients and the medical staff who care for them.

The zoo though, the zoo is where you can see all these people relaxing together rather than stressing together, or being forced together out of medical need. Jerusalem's zoo is a great place to meet the city's diverse population and multitudinous children. Yiddish speaking Hassidish families, Arabic speaking school groups accompanied by teachers in jilbabs and hijab or clad in neat uniforms and shepherded by nuns, religious Zionist children with their long skirts or oversized bightly coloured skullcaps and tourists from around the world - all walk around side by side enjoying this beautifully landscaped modern zoo.

It isn't just the visitors either. The staff may all wear the same green zoo uniform t-shirt, but it may be worn with jeans or a long skirt, an Islamic or Jewish headscarf, a bare shaved head, a kippa covered head or one crowned with long flowing locks. People every bit as diverse as the zoo's visitors.

While visitors may just stand side by side at an exhibit, these people are working together day in day out. You can see it in the cameraderie as a group walks by or sits down to lunch together. It's a working model of Israeli coexistance in action, down to the sign explaining that a collared peccary is not really a pig, so as not to offend the zoo's mostly Jewish and Muslim clientele.

Every time I hear about "Israel apartheid week" on foreign university campuses I wish I could take those students and transport them here to spend a few days with the staff and volunteers at this wonderful zoo.

Then I'd take them shopping in my local mall or riding a bus in Tel Aviv or strolling on the beach in Haifa. I don't claim that Israel is perfect, sure we have our societal problems and our warts. Sure there is a lot of work to be done. But the reality of living here is also the reality of seeing people who can get along.

There may be Arabs shooting at Jews over the border from Gaza, but there are also Arabs and Jews cooking together at a restaurant in Tel Aviv, shopping together at the mall in Modi'in, giving birth together at the hospital in Afula, feeding the carp together at the Jerusalem Zoo and strolling the beach together in Haifa.

Sadly I've rarely seen the foreign press pick up on this, even though this is a crucial part of understanding the complexity of life in Israel and in the region in general.

I've had some people ask me why my blog is such a jumble, politics and terrorism and childrearing and recipes and arts and nature all jumbled together and my answer is simple - this is life and living in Israel I find that means that a trip to the zoo isn't just a trip to the zoo simply to learn about the animals.

Urban Safari

2011-04-03T22:50:00.004+03:00

Junior's tally while walking to and from a neighbourhood on the opposite side of town: crested lark, graceful warblers, alpine swifts, male kestrel, swallow, way too many myna birds, jay, hooded crows, one porcupine quill, rosemary, lavender, hibiscus, citrus blossoms (I want to bottle the smell said she), poppies, wild mustard, crown daisies, pomegranate blossoms, bats, fox, wild wheat, wild barley, wild poppies, wild mustard and the highlight - a road resurfacing crew with a steam roller.

It was one of those really yucky spring days, sort of shravi - think threatening looking heavily overcast skies with hot, dry sticky weather and warm winds. I say sort of shravi though because on truly shravi days it is so hazy that the sun is blotted out and sometimes you can't even see across the road.

Today it was weirdly both intensely bright and sunny (I wore my sunhat and sunglasses and worried about sunburn) and very grey and overcast - it actually rained a few times during our walk, resulting in the following conversation:

Junior: Ima, remember to tell Abba we went walking in the maklosh!
Ima: The what?
Junior: The last of the spring rain, the maklosh
Ima: You mean malkosh?
Junior: Yes, Ima, that's what I said!
Ima: And how do you know about the malkosh?
Junior: Ima, it's in Shema, remember?

This my friends is one of the many wonderful things I love about raising children in Israel - it brings Scripture to life. The Shema prayer is taken from the Bible. It is a prayer every Jew is meant to recite twice daily, something every young child is taught and every observant Jew knows by heart from a young age.

The second paragraph talks about how if the Jewish people observe the Biblical commandments then God will ensure that the rains will fall at their appointed times so that the crops will grow and the people will enjoy plentiful harvests.

For folks living in countries where it rains all year round this may sound trivial, not to mention a bit curious, what does it mean for the rain to fall at its appointed time, and why does the Bible have so many different words for rain - matar, yoreh, malkosh, to name just the ones that appear in this paragraph?

Israel is a country where rain comes for roughly only half the year, if we're lucky, less, if like this year we're in the middle of a prolonged period of drought. For half the year rain is a distant memory. We have no mighty rivers, only one significant natural freshwater lake, those few months of rain are our lifeline.

When rain is that rare and that crucial, a people can get pretty fixated on when and how it falls, hence all the different names for the many different types of rain*. Yoreh is the rain you throw a party for - the first really big downpour of the season that falls between autumn and the start of winter, and just keeps coming for a while, working its miracle on the parched land. Malkosh** is the rain you wave a tearful goodbye to because it comes in late spring when you know you and the rain will be parting company for quite some time.

In my experience this is the sort of thing kids in the diaspora (and most diaspora adults I know) just aren't taught. At least I've rarely met any who have a clue what those funny words mean, besides hopefully knowing that it's rain. Now maybe my sample isn't exaclty a scientific survey and I'm not trying to disparage or offend my dear friends in the diaspora, my point is simply that this is such a central topic in Judaism that we're meant to recall it twice a day, and one which is so intrinsically tied to the Land of Israel that it doesn't make sense in many other regions of the world, yet it just tends to fall by the wayside in the diaspora because it isn't real and immediate and meaningful if you're in New York or London or Paris.

Not that every Israeli kid knows these terms either, not by a longshot, but most do know what the yoreh is, not just because they experience that wonderful excitement first hand, but because it's usually in the news and taught in kindergarten, or as with my little girl, as soon as they are old enough for parents to say the Shema with them at bedtime.

It makes the Torah come alive and relevant in a whole new way when you can see it come alive outside your window.

I so hope that today's malkosh wasn't its last hurrah for the season.

*The really detailed answer appears in the Talmud in Masekhet Ta'anit which tells you all you ever wanted to know about precipitation in the Holyland, which types are best for which kinds of crops, how late the seasonal rains have to be before you need to start worrying and praying extra hard. That sort of thing.

**"The Malkosh - Last Rains" by Rabbi Uzi Kalchaim z"l I was privileged to briefly be a student of Rav Kalchaim many years ago when he taught a course at the women's college I attended.

Recipes for using up the contents of my freezer

2011-04-03T01:11:00.002+03:00

It's that time of year again, counting down to Pesah, so my Shabbat menu ended up being a multicultural hodgepodge something like this: roast veggie couscous, sweet and sour fish, Thai style squash soup, berry tzimmes, cheesey spinach and cauliflower kugels, Dundee cake and mince pie. Also known as finishing up the hametz and Tu B'Shvat dried fruit so that I can empty out the freezer and clean it. Or something like that. And yes, I keep my flour, assorted grains and dried fruits in the freezer. Keeps the ants at bay.

A few folks have asked me for the recipes, so here goes, just remember that these are kind of throw it together recipes (except for the Dundee) so amounts are estimates, well, guestimates, some entirely my own, some my attempts at reconstructing things my mother and grandmother used to make, with some help from the internet and cookbooks:

Berry Tzimmes - an old family recipe which I picked up from watching my Mum and Gran, so amounts here are very approx, never really measured anything for this, just do it by instinct. YMMV

4 large punnets of whatever berries or plums are in season (this time of year strawberries are cheap and plentiful, so that's what I used)

@ 600 gr of frozen blueberries, rasberries or blackberries (in the right season I use all fresh, but right now there are only strawberries, so I add some frozen berries for variety)

1 oz/29 ml vanilla extract

Water

To serve:

sweet pouring cream or sour cream (optional)

1. Thoroughly wash the berries and inspect for bugs.

2. Place all the berries in a large soup pot.

3. Add water until berries are just covered.

4. Bring to the boil, then turn down the flame and cook covered for about an hour.

5. Add the vanilla and stir well.

6. Simmer for a few minutes while stirring, then turn down the heat and allow to cook for another 1-3 hours, or until the berries are quite mushy and disintegrating into the soup.

7. Chill overnight in the fridge

8. Serve either by itself or with a little sweet cream drizzled in it or a swirl of sour cream.

9. Store in the freezer, the day before serving allow to thaw partially in the fridge until it turns to slush rather than liquid. Very refreshing on a hot day!

NB I make this without sugar, some people prefer to add sugar either in the cooking process or when serving.

Cauliflower cheese kugel type thing

1 large head cauliflower

1/4 cup wholewheat flour

1/2 pack salted butter or olive oil

400ml sour cream or soft white cheese (gvina levana)

1-2 tsp black pepper (depending on how peppery you like things)

1/2 tsp mustard powder

1-2 tsp granular mustard

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

200gr crumbled cheddar, pecorino or kashkeval

100gr grated parmesan

Preheat oven to 180C

1. Carefully wash cauliflower and inspect for bugs. Pat dry. Chop into smallish florets and set aside.

2. In a med-large pot melt butter or heat oil. Gradually blend in flour.

3. Gradually add the sour cream/white cheese stirring constantly

4. Add the pepper, Worcestshire sauce and mustards until the sauce has thickened.

5.Add grated parmesan and stir in.

6. Add crumbled cheddar/pecorino or kashkeval and stir until it starts to melt and is well mixed into the sauce.

7. Add cauliflower florets and mix well. Turn off the heat.

8. Lightly grease an ovenproof casserole dish and pour in the cauliflower mixture. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the top is golden and the cauliflower is starting to soften.

Dundee Cake - my grandmother used to love this, one of the few British recipes she made, apologise it isn't in metric, this is me trying to reconstruct what she did.

10 oz flour (I usually use all wholewheat or a mix of whole and white)

1 tsp baking powder

1-2 tsp mixed spice (mostly cinnamon, ginger and allspice with a pinch of cloves and nutmeg)

6 oz butter

6 oz sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

5 eggs

2 tbsp whiskey (if you can, use the good stuff)

8 oz sultanas (golden raisins)

8 oz raisins (or just 16 oz raisins if you don't have sultanas)

2 oz chopped mixed peel (or a mix of grated lemon and orange peels, dried candied peels is the way my gran made it)

2-3 oz chopped glace cherries (I've tried it with frozen fresh too)

Preheat oven to 170C (I think this is about 330 or 350 F, my oven is metric, can't remember what temp exactly in F)

1) Sift flour, baking powder and spices together

2) Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy

3) Beat in the flour mixture, eggs and vanilla.

4) Beat in the fruit. If the mixture is a bit stiff add 1-2 tbsp milk

5) Add 2 tbsp whiskey and stir in

6) Line an 8 inch baking tin with greaseproof paper

7) Pour batter in to the tin

8) Place in preheated oven and bake for about 2 hours or until a knife in the centre comes out clean. Check after 1.5 hours to make sure cake isn't too dry.

9) Serve at room temp with a nice cup of milky tea (unless you are like me and hate milky tea)

NB Some people "feed" the cake by making holes in it after it has baked and pouring in a little more whiskey which is absorbed by the cake. Gran only did this for Purim :-)

Roasted cous-cous veg

1 aubergine, chunked

1 large red pepper, in eighths

1 large wedge of pumpkin, chunked

1 small butternut squash, chunked

2 red onions, in narrow wedges

3-5 celery stalks, chunked

1 small head garlic, in peeled cloves

2 courgettes, sliced

Olive oil

Black pepper

Salt

350 gr wholewheat couscous

1/4 pack butter or equivalent olive oil

generous handful fresh chopped coriander or mint (optional)

Optional: 1 cup or 1 can chickpeas

1)Preheat oven to 200C

2) Arrange all the veg (including garlic cloves) in a large roasting pan (I often need two!)

3) Season well with black pepper, sprinkle on a little salt and drizzle with olive oil.

4) Roast for 1-1.5 hours depending on how soft or charred you like your veg. Check periodically and mix the veg to make sure it roasts evenly.

5)While the veg is roasting, take a large and deep ovenproof dish and empty the couscous into it and cover in @500ml of boilding water. Cover and leave to steep for 5-7 minutes.

6) Fork through and gradually mix in the butter/olive oil (option, add the fresh chopped herbs), and a little black pepper to taste.

7) Place in a broad, deep serving dish (if you're lucky your deep ovenproof dish will serve this purpose too)

8) Drizzle juices from the roasted veg onto the couscous (mix in the chickpeas with the veg if using) and pile the veg on top of the couscous. Serve like this or mix in, whatever you like.

(If making for Shabbat don't heat the couscous right on the plata, as it may burn, put an upside down ceramic dish under your ovenproof serving dish to buffer from the direct heat of the plata)

Spinach cheese kugel

1 large pack fresh spinach, finely chopped (or a bag frozen chopped spinach)

1/3 cup wholewheat flour

1 tin crushed tomatoes

1 finely chopped onion

olive oil

200gr grated cheddar, Emek or other yellow cheese

100 gr parmesan (optional)

3 eggs

1. Preheat oven to 180C

2. Saute onion in a little olive oil

3. Transfer to heatproof mixing bowl (eg pyrex) and mix well with spinach and crushed tomatoes

4. Mix in flour until well blended with the wet mixture

5. Mix in cheese

6. Beat eggs and add to mixture, mixing well.

7. Pour into ovenproof dish and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the kugel starts to set a bit.

(I make this for Pesah with a little matza meal, or gluten-free with a little potato flour, if you make it with more eggs or add a little mayo it also works well without any flour)

Simple baked fish

4-5 filets nesikha (Nile Perch, or other firmish white fish)

Juice of a lemon

Paprika

Black Pepper

Olive oil

1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced

4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

1) Preheat oven to 180C.

2) Place fish in an ovenproof dish

3) Pour lemon juice over fish

4) Sprinkle generously with paprika and less generously with black pepper

5) Arrange the thin slices of garlic and fennel on and all around the fish

6) Drizzle with olive oil

7) Bake for 30-45 minutes, depending on how thick your fish slices are

Mincemeat (fruit) pie - another childhood memory which I've been trying to reconstruct. The key to this is not eating it fresh, works best if you leave it in the freezer for a few months, or if when you make the mincemeat/fruit filling, you leave that in an airtight jar for weeks and weeks and weeks. Flavour definitely improves with time. I just happened to have one in my freezer that I made in December and meant to serve on Purim, hence this comes under contents of my freezer to use before Pesah.

Filling:

1-2 finely chopped granny smith apples (optional)

400 gr raisins (or 200gr raisins and 200gr sultanas)

200gr currants (or 200 gr raisins if you don't have any)

200 gr mixed candied citrus peel

100 gr demarara (light brown) sugar

100 gr brown sugar

3 tbsp golden syrup

150 ml whiskey or brandy, or a blend of both

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp mixed spice (or a mix of allspice and ginger and a pinch of ground cloves OR a cheesecloth bag with a couple of allspice balls and two spikes of cloves)

1 large lemon, zest and juice

1 large orange, zest and juice

Mix together, chopping fruits, stir thoroughly and leave to soak under cling film for a week, stirring regularly. If storing long term, seal in a sealed pickling jar.

Some people make this into cute individual mince pies (like the kind you can I think still get at Grodzinski's), but when made it home it usually ends up as one big pie.

Pie crust

225 gr cold butter, diced

salt

350 gr wholewheat flour

100 gr demarar (light brown) sugar

@300 gr mincepie filling

1 small egg beaten

1) Rub butter into flour, mix in sugar, pinch salt. Combine into a ball and knead, dough should be firm.

2) Preheat oven to 200C

3) Grease pie tin. Pour filling in to tin. Roll out dough and stretch over the top, alternately crumble over the top like a crumble topping (that's how my Mum used to make it). Brush top with beaten egg. Bake for about 30 minutes until golden.

Option:

To make individual pies instead take a muffin tin and grease each hole. Press walnut sized balls of dough into each hole. Spoon in filling. Take smaller balls of dough and flatten into lids to seal the pies. Brush tops with beaten egg. Bake for about 20 mins. Should be enough for almost two muffin pans. This is the more traditional English way to make mince pies.

Remain calm, it's just a drill

2011-03-29T10:30:00.073+02:00

In case you haven't heard, practice sirens this morning around 11am, don't panic!

This morning's activity: we are learning about emergency drills children around the world learn, earthquake drills in Japan and California, tornado sirens and storm cellars in the central US, tsunami warnings around the Pacific and my mother's childhood memories of nights sleeping in the shelter in World War II London.

From time to time throughout the year we play the siren game. I do my best wooOOOooo impression of a siren, and then time how fast it takes my 5 year-old to reach the secure room from different parts of the apartment while the toddler runs around after us giggling and excited at the noisy, busy game.

The kids have a great time, it's a useful way to burn off energy when it's too hot or rainy to play outdoors and while I don't want them to obsess about potential dangers, I think it's better to know what to do just in case, to be familiar with these emergency scenarios as part of a fun game.

My oldest is a kid who really gets engrossed whatever she is doing, the kind of kid who can be so deep in a book that a live marching band could march through the living room accompanied by dancing elephants and a herd of gnu and she wouldn't even notice. There are two exceptions though: she's learnt that if she feels the flat shaking or she hears a warning siren she should rush to the secure room or dash under our sturdy dining table.

I guess my mother's stories are my main influence here. She was around my daughter's age when the Germans attacked London with "doodlebugs" towards the end of WWII and her parents, not wanting to frighten her, turned the experience into a game - nights sleeping in the shelter were midnight sleepovers, tea-parties and other such adventures. They made their custom built shelter feel more like a playhouse with extra blankets and fun pictures cut from magazines.

God Willing we'll never have to go through what my mother and her family did, but the idea of how to convey something so awful but so necessary made a big impression on me. I used to ask my mother for those stories over and over again, and what stuck with me were not the memories of fear or disruption, but the fond coziness her parents created in the shelter, the fun of the games they played and the stories told and how to such young children it was more than anything some kind of role-playing adventure than a night terror.

I don't want to scare my kids, but we do live in a region where unpredictability is the only thing you can rely on, so it seems irresponsible to me to completely shelter them from what is happening a mere hour or so drive from our home.

Air raid drill as mini-Olympic sport. It seems to work.

Hope we only ever need to do this as a game.

Migraine day

2011-03-27T23:26:00.034+02:00

It began with an early morning feed which put the baby to sleep but left me exhausted and yet somehow unable to sleep.

So I got up, made myself a herbal tea, then went out onto the balcony to put some over ripe fruit out for the birds to eat. Noted that some fallen sunflower seeds from the feeder have started to sprout in the window box.

Sleep remained elusive.

Checked the on-line papers right in time to see the flashing headlines of air raid sirens in Beer Sheva, followed soon by rocket hits Beer Sheva, after which I really really couldn't go back to sleep until baby woke up again for part two of the morning nursathon, which finally clocked me out again just as it was really time to wake up. Go figure.

Rising for the second time and this time for good, I again quickly perused the headlines, e-mails and messages. A bunch of friends down south woken early by the sirens. They are home, close to their shelters, kids are off school in the towns of Ashdod and Beer Sheva where rockets have hit.

Several feedings, diapers and ABC books later, plus a battle to convince the 5 y-o and the baby that yes they really can share the multitudinous Duplo blocks scattered everywhere, I check my messages again and see this from a friend in Beer Sheva:

Air raid at 5:30am, rocket lands a few blocks from my house. It's LOUD, we're in our bomb shelter in my house. Another siren 4 hours later, missile lands further away. Later I call my salon to get a haircut long overdue. The salon has a bomb shelter, so I have a nice haircut now. Drive home passed news crews and onlookers at the damaged house where the rocket hit. Going for a massage a bit later. Ain't life surreal?

It's around then that the familiar sinking feeling starts to push itself to the fore. The nagging Han Soloesque "I've got a bad feeling about this", the Hashem Yishmor, please, not again, but yes again because a rocket attack on Ashdod followed by two on Beer Sheva all close on the heels of this week's massive mortar barrage of Israeli border communities near Gaza just cannot be anything other than bad, bad, bad.

Those sweet folks in Gaza have itchy trigger fingers again and it does seem to be escalating.

There can be a myriad reasons why. Attacking Israel is always a good way for Palestinian and other Arab leaders to deflect their public away from internal Palestinian or Arab problems by refocusing public outrage on the evil Israelis.

Part of me wonders at the timing in the Gaza escalation coinciding with increasing dissent in Syria, one of the few neighbourhood dictatorships which until recent weeks had appeared to be remaining steady amidst the wave of upheaval sweeping the region. Syria which coincidentally is one of Iran's few close buddies in the Arab world. Syria which is an import conduit for Iranian support for Hizballah, and hence Iranian influence in Lebanon, and also a player in backing Hamas.

Or it could just be coincidence. This is the Middle East and odds are even if we enjoy a few months or years of relative quiet, things tend to go boom sooner or later.

That "oh no not again" feeling though isn't about regional politics and players, it's about the more selfish personal hurt on behalf of my friends down south having to go through another round of this. Of them thinking up shelter games to calm panicked kids. Of them putting on brave faces for the benefit of people living beyond rocket range, because even though most people do get into a kind of "routine" in how they deal with regular daily rocket bombardment, it isn't "normal". It should never be normal.

The niggling in my head began to worsen, harbingers of a migraine.

The patter of raindrops outside was welcome, I opened some windows and let the rich scent of damp earth cleanse the stuffy apartment. I find the rain soothing. Soon the dry summer will be upon us and I'm determined to enjoy every bit of precipitation.

My migraine began to retreat.

Baby finally went down for his nap. Big kid decided to stage a toy animal play.

I decided it was time to finish up my last bag of flour and make a batch of berry muffins to keep the kids happy in the run-up to Pesah. Sometimes the sweet smells of vanilla and berries help to stave off the worst of the migraine.

I don't like to have radio news stations on during the day, I don't want to impose that on my little kids, but I compromise on Reshet Gimmel, an all music station with occasional news and traffic updates. And in this country you can learn a lot just from what music is playing - the softer, quieter and more pleasant, the greater the odds something awful has happened.

It's like a national code for the initiated telling you to make sure to catch the next news broadcast, making your ears prick up when the music fades straight into the pips announcing the news instead of breaking for jarringly loud adverts.

I was just measuring out my muffin ingredients and defrosting the berries when the phone rang. A friend of a friend was visiting Israel for the first time, was just near the Jerusalem central bus station after a museum visit, thinking about hopping on an intercity bus and coming to see our town, would this afternoon be convenient?

I was about to say no when I heard the boom, shouting and panic and then the call was cut off.

An hour later I received a very shaky call back from the woman, now back at her hotel trying to digest the horror she had just witnessed, albeit from far enough away that she was physically unhurt and spared the close-up sights of the explosion, near enough that she had felt the blast and the ensuing sirens and terror.

That sinking feeling from the morning was starting to feel like a premonition.

As we say here in Israel, we've been in this movie before. It isn't a sappy feelgood flick.

The music on the radio didn't change though. As far as I could tell the usual programming continued, including the jarringly loud adverts before the news. I don't know if this is because thank God we've gotten out of the routine of regular terror attacks, or that this one wasn't as terrible as it could have been (they were initially reporting no fatalities), or maybe that we've experienced so many that the powers that be thought it best for the station to continue business as usual.

I didn't switch to a news station though because the 5 year-old was back to playing in the living room and baby was just waking up. Besides, sometimes you learn as much about events from the traffic reports as from the news itself. Main Jerusalem highway and the entrance to the city were closed.

My migraine ratcheted up a few levels, not quite to the level of incapacitating though. The familiar aching sinking sensation was firmly entrenched by now. Not thoughts of politics and statements and will they or won't they, just the forboding of finding oneself once again in familiarly painful territory, a place you prayed never again to be revisiting but which deep down you always knew you'd probably have to see again.

Anyone who was here in the early 2000s remembers it well, some more personally than others, but all of us deeply familiar with the feeling of taking a gamble every time we rode a bus or lingered in a public place. Israeli roulette a friend of mine called it then, black humour of a people living with the knowledge that each one of us, man, woman, child and baby, was walking around with a price on our heads and a target over our hearts simply because we were Israelis.

I hope and pray that this was a one off. Sometimes there are brief flare-ups of terrorism and then things quiet down again.

Adding up the recent pattern of attacks though, things are starting to feel eerily familiar, echoes of a decade ago. Hope that I'm wrong.

Jerusalem Purim

2011-03-23T02:06:00.001+02:00

We did Purim at home, we did Purim se'udah with family in Rehovot and then we did Purim again with family in Jerusalem. And a good time was had by all.

Here are some photos I took from the car while negotiating our way through Jerusalem city centre traffic on Purim (and no I was not taking photos while driving, I was in the passenger seat) Apologies for the poor photographic quality, snapping away through the window while the car is moving is an art I need to work on...

Never more

2011-03-15T16:15:00.001+02:00

Spring has arrived. Perfect weather for going out into the woods with the kids to play and explore, splash in the big puddles left by the weekend's rain and snack on warm pita straight from the saj seasoned with freshly prepared wild zaatar in olive oil.

Everything is coloured yellow and pink from the carpets of wild mustard and cyclamen that bloom in every woodland clearing, hillside and roadside.

The air is heady and sweet with the scent of citrus blossoms, bubbling with birdsong.

And one family will never again be able to go out and enjoy all this because of men so consumed with hatred, so fixated on this conflict being an all or nothing zero sum game, that their eyes were closed to everything but their desire to kill and destroy in this land they claim to love.

What do you tell your children?

2011-03-13T13:34:00.000+02:00

Saturday night a friend in the US asked on her Facebook page for advice on how to explain the tragedy in Japan to her four year old son. He was curious about the pictures, what to do?

Funny, on Friday I was thinking the same thing. I took out my daughter's earthquake book and we looked at it a bit and talked. Is it scary? Yes. Do we have some idea of what to do in case? I hope so. Can I promise her we will never face a big quake here? No. Can I reassure her that quakes in this region usually aren't quite as powerful as those along the Pacific rim? I think so.

Saturday night, and I hoped that she wouldn't catch on to the horror of the Itamar murders. We don't have the TV on in our house, and we usually don't listen to the radio news around the kids. I know we can't shelter them forever, especially in this part of the world, but the news is often so graphic that I want to try to filter it for as long as I can.

It's hard to hide anything from my precocious and perceptive five year old. She looks over shoulders as Abba sneaks a peek at his Android or Ima glances at the newspaper. She listens, watches, picks up on what's happening without needing to have it all spelled out.

So what do I say when she asks what happened? How do I explain without glossing over or simplifying?

She has already asked why we have to be searched and go through a metal detector whenever we go to the mall or take the train or go to the central bus station. Why our buses go through checkpoints when we go to Jerusalem. Why soldiers or police sometimes get on and inspect the bus.

Why when we travelled to the UK and the US we only had to be searched at the airports and museums but nowhere else.

I've told her that our neighbours have a dispute with us over whose land this is. I've told her that some of our Palestinian neighbours have been taught that it's OK to hurt and kill people if you are angry with them, rather than talking to them. I've told her we have to be careful of toys or packages left in the street because sometimes bad people put bombs in them.

I don't think such parev, simplistic explanations will hold her for long.

I don't know how to tell her that it isn't just in the street or in the shops or on the buses, but that sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, the bad people even come into Israeli homes and slit the throats of babies in their beds.

I made extra sure to hide the newspaper today.

In our part of the world concerns about terrorism are every bit as real as those about potential earthquakes, but there are no simple kids' books to explain the how and why.

Evil

2011-03-12T21:28:00.001+02:00

Just after Havdalah my husband whispered to me that there had been a pigua (terror attack) in Itamar, home invasion. Very bad he said.

That's all he said, sotto voce, so as not to alert the kids.

When I found out the details myself all I could do was just watch my little ones safe in front of me and wonder how, how anyone, however angry or desparate or anything could take it upon themselves to deliberately murder tiny children in their beds, how someone could end the life of a tiny three month old baby for any reason under the sun.

This wasn't a bomb or a rocket or even a firearm, weapons which provide some modicum of distance, even of anonymity, from the victims. This was the up close and personal intimacy of a knife attack, of the killers hands on his victims, their lifeblood on his, as messy and involved as a murderer can get.

I look at the face of little 4 year-old Elad Fogel and I see my own little boy and my mind simply cannot comprehend how a person can hate an enemy so much that they could kill a tender child. I couldn't conceive of doing that to my worst enemy, but apparently my worst enemy has no problem doing that to me.

It is a small comfort that attacks like this are mercifully rare, with a lone Palestinian killer breaking and entering Israeli homes and murdering Israeli families asleep in their beds just because they are Israelis. It seems that even most terrorists balk at getting this intimate with their victims.

I don't care what grievances Palestinians may have, I don't care if they feel like they need to take up arms to achieve independence, that they feel like settlements are an affront which can't be tolerated, there is nothing that can rationalise, justify or explain this act, nothing. It is an act of pure evil.

Israelis want peace, yes, and most Israelis have been willing to go pretty far beyond their ideals in compromising for peace. Many Israelis believe that even if a deal can't be reached it is important to keep the channels open just on the principle that it's good to keep talking. There are some people though who you can't talk to though, and those Palestinians who have opted to support and celebrate the barabaric attack on the Fogel family are not people Israel can make peace with. I pray that they are not the majority. I pray that there are decent Palestinian people who are horrified by this atrocity.

Twenty years on

2011-03-09T02:16:00.004+02:00

Signs that your mall experience is an Israeli mall experience -
1)there are neo-pseudo Breslev hassidim doing an impromptu frenzied hora outside the supermarket
2)all the stores have specials for International Women's Day
3) those that don't are packed with costume accessories for Purim
4)but the single most popular item most people seemed to be taking home with them is a gas mask. (Or at least a cardboard box on a shoulder strap claiming to contain a gas mask.)

Don't panic, well not yet anyway. Israel distributed gas masks during the 1991 Gulf War, and then again when the US invaded Iraq in 2003. It's just a routine precaution. What, they don't do that where you live?

You know the way folks in big cities have eleventy billion locks on their doors just in case? We get issued gas masks, just in case one of our sweet peaceful neighbouring despots looses it one day and decides to let off steam by going postal against Israel with a non-conventional payload.

Back in 2003 everyone was so convinced that Saddam might decide to go out with a bang that Pikud Ha'Oref (Home Front Command) broadcast continuous instructional videos on Israeli television urging people to familiarise themselves with their masks by trying them on.

Very reassuring except that it meant that within a short time the masks were no longer effective because the filters were now unsealed and said filters had a limited lifespan once unsealed.

So is it a coincidence that Pikud Ha'Oref is redistributing gas masks just as the stores are full of Purim costumes? Perhaps it's in honour of the end of the First Gulf War? Special twentieth anniversary edition gas masks?

A few good men

2011-02-25T00:00:00.004+02:00

It was one of those days when despite nothing coming together somehow everything did. One kid sick, one kid wanting to play with sick kid who wanted time by herself. Cue superkvetchiness all round.

Upside was that after a whole morning plus of bickering with each other baby tired himself out so much that he needed a three hour nap and big sister took the opportunity to hole up in her room with a stack of books which left me to do the Shabbat cooking in peace, and find time to get a casserole going for dinner and straighten up the flat.

By the time DH came home all I was missing was a 1950s Mad Menesque skirt and frilly apron. Dinner dear?

Only what actually happened was that DH walked in the door looking beat, announced that he didn't feel up to going out tonight as per our plans and instead suggested I take myself out tonight. So I did.

A Few Good Men is one of my favourite films, to the point, ethical dilemmas, courtroom drama, my kind of thing, so when I saw that the Israeli Beit Lessin theatre company was staging an Israeli production of the play I had to go see it.

I was very curious to see how an American military drama would translate over here and I have to say I thought it was tremendously well done in pretty much everyway from the top notch acting to the creative, evocative sets. Most of the time I didn't even notice it was in Hebrew, I was focused on the story, the hallmark of one well told I think.

The local theatre's promotional ad advertised well known Israeli film actor Lior Ashkenazi "in the role of Tom Cruise" which didn't make sense to me as Ashkenazi is too old to be playing the young rookie JAG. Well, they were mistaken, Ashkenazi reprised Jack Nicholson's role as the Marine colonel, and I thought he suited it well.

There was fine acting all round but the stand out was Mordy Gershon playing the lead as Lt Caffee, (Tom Cruise in the film) Gershon sparkled in the role, he felt real and natural, superbly conveying his character's journey from a deal making cog just trying to get by until his law school debt is covered to passionate defence attorney pulling out every stop for the sake of justice.

The play itself was I think of special interest to Israeli audiences precisely because it is a military legal drama with themes very relevant to so many in a country with a draft and volatile borders to guard. Seeing what could in many ways be an original Israeli drama portrayed through the lense of the US military was a fascinating exercise, sparking a lot of interesting debate among the audience during the interval.

The set featured mutli-layered platforms gave the stage depth and allowed for smooth merging and switching of scenes, such as between Guantanamo sketched out with institutional looking metal stairs in the background and with a foreground of polished wooden desks for the JAG offices. It sounds convoluted, but combined with subtle but spot on lighting, the effect was a perfect, understated compliment to the fine acting.

The only times I was painfully aware that this was an Israeli production were when I noticed glaring errors in translation, like the way a bunch of Marines and US Naval officers had lines about how proud they were to serve in the US Army. US Army? Hello, translator, there is a perfectly good Hebrew word for navy (tzi), not to mention that while I understand that when talking of the US military one can just say "Marines" in Hebrew, there is also a perfectly good (and used) Hebrew translation for Marines - nahatim.

And a tiny bit of research would have yielded the fact that there is a separate Dept of Navy responsible for both, and no Marine or naval officer that I know of would say they were serving in the US Army.

I know these details probably didn't matter to anyone else in the audience (DH would have told me to stop spoiling a good play with procedural nitpicking) but what can I say, I get pedantic about these things and it really bugged me that most of the Marines on stage weren't holding themselves in the manner that on duty Marines that I've seen would. Like the way the Lt JAG crossexamines his witness while slouching with his hands in his dress blues pockets or Lt Cmdr Galloway had her hair in a very un-regulation-like long dyed red plait hanging down her back with a puffed up quiff at the front while wearing her dress uniform to court or all the officers (except when they wore dress whites) appeared to have the same ranks - all had lieutenants' bars, even Colonel Jessop. Oops. You'd think that now JAG is off the air it might be easy to track down some surplus USN and Marines uniforms...

Those are just my nitpicks though, and while I do think they detracted somewhat from the atmosphere on stage, I'm pretty sure that for 99.99% of the audience these little errors made no difference to what was first class Israeli theatre. Bravo.

Toast

2011-02-23T14:40:00.001+02:00

Toast has never really been my thing, but a few months ago I just felt the need to buy a toaster. Nothing rational you understand, just the feeling that somehow it was missing from my life.

At least a decade and a half of a toaster-free existence and there I was, eyeing up the toasters in the store and walking home with a shiny new compact ultra-modern minimalist little number to add a touch of chic to my oh so not modern cluttered sort of rustic traditionalist kind of kitchen on whose counter it sat for quite a while looking totally out of place until one day I girded my loins and plucked up the courage to use the thing.

I set it on a cowardly number 2 setting, gingerly pressed down the trigger and waited.

Low and behold a few seconds later very faintly toasted bread popped out. No smoke. No charred edges.

Didn't quite feel right, but I served it to the kids with baked beans with mushrooms and sunny side up eggs, experiencing this vague feeling of playing at being mummy while I did so. Kids were thrilled. I felt a faint whiff of nostalgia for childhood tea times.

A few days later I tried again. This time I boldly set the toaster to 5, yielding surprisingly satisfyingly charrred edges to the toast, but not so much as to render it actual charcoal. I felt the stirrings of memory intensify, the scent of childhood breakfasts.

It wasn't quite what had drawn me to the toaster though. Something was missing

Two weeks later I found myself buying butter and marmalade. Butter I get from time to time, mostly to bake with or to make mac n'cheese. Marmalade though. I can't remember when I last bought marmalade. I don't even like marmalade. I don't even really like jam of any kind.

There it was though, an elegant little jar in my basket.

Once home I tried out my toaster again. Dark rye bread toasted to within an inch of its life on 6. Then I spread a thin layer of salted butter, topped with a heap teaspoon of marmalade.

I felt a twinge of something at the mere smell, but I was totally unprepared at the surge of emotion that washed over me at the first bite. Bittersweet like the marmalade, crisp and clear like the crunch of well toasted bread.

Oh Mum, how I've missed you.

No particular anniversary or memory, just the simple fact of being a mother myself I think, of wanting them to know the wonderful grandmother they'll never meet in real life.

Little things, like the smell and taste of her favourite breakfast, the way she liked her toast, her fondness for things crisp, bitter and tangy over sweet or plain.

My mother always joked that her madeleines really were madeleines. I joked that she just read too many French books.

I've just discovered that my madeleines are apparently burnt toast and marmalade.

Rainy days and Mondays (are good for you)

2011-02-08T08:01:00.000+02:00

I think one of my favourite things in the world must be coming home wet and muddy from a walk in the woods in the middle of a verdant Israeli winter. If my clothes reek of damp earth and woodsmoke from sitting around a campfire, so much the better.

The folks who organised my kid's morning in the forest certainly knew what they were talking about when they refused to allow rain to stop play, at least until at lunchtime it turned into a real downpour complete with hail. By then though everyone had enjoyed several hours of stories, crafts and running around and was about ready to scramble into their vehicles and head for home anyway.

Our outings to the woods have become a regular activity this year. J scampers off with her group and madrikha (youth leader) doing a good impression of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys climbing trees and making things from the forest floor's raw materials, while the toddler makes nature his playground with dry carob pod rattles to shake and twigs for scratching the dirt. Little wonder I guess that "tree" was amongst his first few clearly distinct words.

Today in the rain the madrikh taught the children how to safely and responsibly build a campfire, how to keep it burning in the drizzle, what kind of kindling works best to start a fire, which to maintain it, how damp wood would make it smoke and crucially, how to put it out. The tragedy of the Carmel fire is still in everyone's thoughts and with bonfires so much a part of the local culture teaching fire safetly to such young children is more prudent than ever. Only you can prevent forest fires. Indeed.

As the kids and a few parents gathered around the crackling fire the madrikh donned a silly hat and spun ever more complex yarns featuring animal folk tales from around the world. The children interjected comments or corrections now and then, my budding little story teller volunteering one of her original creations.

The rain beat down from time to time, some folks huddled under umbrellas or in their hooded anoraks, other just enjoyed the sensation, keeping warm by the fire as the rain soaked into their hair and clothes.

Even during the unseaonally warm days of dry drought, the green carobs and eucalyptus offered respite from the yellow browness of a landscape which should have been greened by winter weeks (and later months) earlier.

Using the miracle word here is to be sure a cliche, but that's just what it feels like now that winter has finally arrived, watching the land come to life again, finding freshly grown grass and shoots sprouting from the dust. Today we found carpets of pink cyclamen, clumps of tall white asphodels, covered in raindrops as though adorned by diamonds. All kinds of unfurling leaves promise even more delights on our next visit.

The long and the short of it

2011-01-28T07:02:00.000+02:00

It's Tu B'Shvat time again so of course I had to plan a nature walk up on our little wilderness hill to see if despite the late rain and extended drought some of the seasonal flowers are in bloom, and most importantly, to check out the almond trees.

This is the first time I've had two walking children to take on the annual family Tu B'Shvatish ramble. OK, so one still has a distinctly toddlerish gait to him and as far as I can tell no concept of Tu B'Shvat or even what day of the week it is, but thank God, he has two very keen eyes and is incredibly observant, so maybe he got more out of the walk than I thought he would.

J is an aspiring botanist and naturalist among other things. She confidently led the way pointing out things she recognised and in between getting carried away and running ahead she also made time to take the little guy's hand and teach him a little about the local flora, inviting him to rub his fingers on the leaves of sage and za'atar plants and then to sniff them while intoning breathless mini-lectures to him along the lines of "Baby, this is sage, it tastes good in cooking, Ima puts it on potatoes and you can make tea with it to make a tummy ache feel better and I think Abba puts it in the meat when he makes it for the Seder and in another few weeks maybe it will have little white crescent shaped flowers".

Baby smiled, laughed, pleased at the attention, but before she was finished had already noticed something else, maybe an ant highway or a beetle. I sometimes think that his fondness for ants in particular is simply that he can say their name so easily. Or maybe it's just an affinity for creatures so small and low to the ground. Regardless, he loves them. Perhaps it's just that a fascination with creeping things runs in the family. We tend to get strange looks when as a family we all stop in our tracks and stoop to study a passing beetle or millipede.

A few metres on and J excitedly left the path to investigate a huge clump of leaves, proclaiming it to be a "child sized forest". It was actually a clump of giant asphodel leaves, some with tall sticks of buds, a scant two or three already with flowers. "Ah yes, asphodels, these are commonly found around the Mediterranean" she announced confidently. "I learnt that from David Attenborough".

Further along her excited shouts announced great clumps of cyclamen leaves, followed by a shrill whoop when she found two actually in flower, and even greater excitement ensued when she finally found Eretz Israel irises, a low ground-hugging white and yellow iris, among the first flowers to bloom during the rainy season.

The bright red crown anemones are always a treat, only a handful were out, late by usual standards, but considering the lack of rain, that was no surprise. What did surprise me though was J's insistence that some were in fact nuriot (buttercups). I patiently explained that I thought it was too early for nuriot, and anyway, these all looked like anemones to me, but she adamantly studied each one of the few flowers on the hillside and insisted that she'd counted the petals on each and that one had the wrong number of petals for an anemone so it must be a nurit. Her brother chose this moment to tire of toddling, so it was back to the buggy on the path and no chance for me to check her findings in the field.

While the kids focused on the ground my sights were set on higher things. From my (comparatively) lofty height, it was my job to scan the hillside for almond blossom. I saw a paltry few blooms here and there, but mostly the almond trees were disappointingly bare.

All that is, except for one on a west facing slope overlooking the town. There in all it's glory was an almond tree in full bloom, a huge cloud of delicate white-pink blossoms like a giant cotton candy fluff on the hillside. Couldn't have asked for better. J ran excitedly down the rocky path to get a closer look. I tried to draw her brother's attention to it but at that moment a jay flew by and enthusiastic birdwatcher that he is all he could see was the "Bir! Bir! Bir!". Chacun a son gout as my grandmother used to say.

Shore leave

2010-12-13T09:09:00.000+02:00

Really and truly had a date night, how cool is that ?! It's been, well, I really don't know, but a LOOOONG time since DH and I got some downtime all to ourselves to go out and pretend to be carefree newlyweds again. Does that make me sound really old? Hmm.

We found a real babysitter complete with teenage angst, boundless energy and an impressive variety of bodypiercings (and an excellent rapport with the household little people). I only called her twice while we were out and when we got home the kids were asleep and the next morning Junior reported that she'd had a great time and could we go out again and have G come to stay with them?

So what to do with all this freedom? Continue with DH's musical education I guess.

John Lee Hooker Jr, yes, the son of, was in Tel Aviv as part of a European tour and it sounded like a fun way to spend a grown-ups' night out, and boy was it ever. The sheer energy of the man is unbelievable, his dance moves, showmanship, never mind the funky music. Way to make an old married couple of 30something feel young? Watch an almost 60something prance around on stage like he's 21. Very inspiring. I want to have dance moves like John Lee Hooker Jr when I'm nearly 60.

A friend of mine said you can't do R&B (and I mean old time R&B) without a smoky bar and a few pints of beer in front of you, so I guess I couldn't convey the complete experience to DH because a)it was a nightclub outfitted to look vaguely 1930ish with red crystal chandeliers and seating at neat little tables b) however it was still 2010 so no smoking c) DH was driving, so no booze for him and I was so darn knackered that if I'd drunk anything alchoholic I would have facepalmed right into the table raucous electric blues or no raucous electric blues. We made do with lemonade. Hardly authentic, but we're realists.

He sang a lot of original material, catchy in a funky, electric sort of way, some funny wry lyrics which were as much fun as the music. I think the crowd responded even more warmly though to the covers of his father's stuff, not surprising, they are just so well known. Truth be told though TA responds warmly to pretty much any act that comes from abroad, this is a coastal city with its eyes to the world. Bunch of the audience were a typical young crowd there for a night out, whatever the act. There were quite a few expats and tourists consuming far more copious amounts of alcohol than the locals from what I could see, quite scary to watch the sheer extent of the beer guzzling at the next table. Noticed a fair number of oldtimers too though, fans of Hooker Sr, every bit as enthusiastic as the "kids". I thought it was kind of cool to see that mixed an audience, and I don't think anyone was disappointed, it was music to get you up and moving whatever your age or nationality.

Overall though it was fun, energising and just plain liberating to go out as adults for once. And the warm up act, a local R&B/Blues outfit called Sobo, were pretty cool too.

Would I do it again? I already have a list of concerts I'd love to get to and another list of possible babysitters lined up. 'Bout time.

Hannukah miracles and silver linings

2010-12-05T13:07:00.000+02:00

This Hannukah we've certainly had an unwanted kind of light shining in the darkness, a raging, blazing fire right in the middle of the Festival of Light. Instead of lighting candles the country is busy dousing flames.

I would say there was a silver lining in this Hannukah's tragedy, only there really aren't any grey clouds to be seen unless you count plumes of smoke.

The lights of the Hannukiya though are there to remind us of the great Hannukah miracle all those millennia ago, how a foreign power came and tried to extinguish Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael, snuff out all observance of the Torah and enforce Hellenisation of the Jews. It didn't work though because we fought back and succeeded in restoring our religious and cultural autonomy, even if Judea remained a vassal state to the mighty Seleucids. You can't always have it all, but you should be gratetful for what you do have.

There was a Rasputin clone (if Rasputin wore ragged jeans and t-shirts) in the post office on Thursday ranting about how the burning of the Carmel, site of Elijah's famous showdown with the false prophets of Ba'al, was a message from God, a sign that the end is nigh. Bunch of folks there, religious and secular alike, were quick to point out that he was seeing things that weren't, that there is no prophecy in our age and would he kindly just shut up and let folks get on with doing post officey things.

Well maybe there are still prophets among us and maybe not, but it doesn't mean God isn't active in the world and doesn't mean we can't learn from events. Question is what are we meant to learn?

Maybe that we're better off than we often think. On this holiday when we celebrate the survival of our nation and culture and faith in the face of Antiochus' decrees which tried to force us to assimilate into the Hellenic world, isn't there something wonderful about a modern independent Jewish state receiving aid from those very Hellenic nations?

It's sad that we need it, sad that maybe the shortsightedness of our leaders required us to have to call in favours from friend and not so much friend alike, but fact is they came running to our aid, treating us like an equal, a fellow sovereign state among the nations. And what's more, many came while expressing their gratitude for the aid we have offered over the years to so many nations in their time of need. It's never easy to ask for help, but how incredible when so many gladly heed the call.

I'm not suggesting this is any great comfort to the 41 who lost their lives, to the many more who lost their homes, their livestock, their life's work. But it is a comfort to a nation which increasingly has to battle hateful lies and attempts at total delegitimisation as part of an ongiong propaganda war against the Jewish state.

It's a war of attrition our enemies have been waging for decades now, rewriting history, denying our right to this land, to our holiest shrines. Even respectable, educated people get taken in by it as we saw with the recent UNESCO decisions denying Judaism's link to the cradles of Jewish history, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron (whose exactly? Um, I wonder) and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem. Who in their right minds would think that biblical figures like Abraham and Rachel might have anything to do with the Jews?!

The sweet folks behind the assorted anti-Israel delegitimisation campaigns are trying to make us despondent, make us believe that their campaign has made us a pariah state. Their constant harping about divestment and sanctions and boycotts is designed not just to hurt us economically, but to demoralise, make us doubt our survival and purpose and ability to survive. They want us scared of what the future will bring. They want us isolated from the world, cut off from the rest of civilisation.

They want us to think that we have no one to rely on, no friends, no allies.

This weekend's crisis was a massive slap in the face to those enemies. I'm not deluding myself into thinking that suddenly the world loves us, because, well, they have their own interests and we are still just a small country and there are lots of bigger or richer countries who really don't like us and the nations of the world don't think it's in their interest to alienate them by being too friendly with us. I get that. But still, even Jordan and Egypt, despite domestic opposition, sent us aid. Even Turkey with whom we really haven't been getting on well of late. Even Russia which is kind of buddy buddy with some of our worst enemies.

I don't pretend they did it from love, but I hope perhaps they did it in the knowledge that Israel has extended assistance again and again, whether it was the Armenian earthquake in '88 or the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey and Greece, or in '97 when Israel sent firefighting helicopters to Turkey to put out a massive out of control blaze or the 2005 relief efforts to southern Asia after the tsunami, to name just a few.

Many in the world may choose to hate us, but they do know that Israel has and will come through for them over and over again to offer humanitarian aid in time of crisis. Surely as a Jewish nation founded on the notion of being Or Lagoyim, a Light Unto the Nations, that is part of our purpose, to set an example for how decent people the world over should behave. It's a principle laid down in our most sacred texts - even if you see the ox or the donkey of your enemy collapsing under its burden you are required to help. If we've helped to spread that concept around, then we're fulfilling at least part of our mission.

This Hannukah's miracle is very much bittersweet, there's no denying it, and yes, maybe we imagine a miracle as Hashem opening the heavens at exactly the right time and dousing the flames with rain, but we need to open our eyes wider and appreciate the miracle of civilised peoples helping one another. In a crazy fickle world that isn't something to be taken for granted.

Seoul Music and Ping Pong Diplomacy

2010-11-30T10:46:00.000+02:00

Went for the cultural jackpot today - with Junior to the opera for kids' series in the afternoon, followed by an evening of cool jazz in Jerusalem. Truth be told I'm totally amazed that it all worked out, what with working out babysitting for the baby, then promptly rushing of to Jerusalem, dropping off the kids for an evening of auntie fun and then making it to the theatre in time for the jazz. Very well coordinated, especially for me.

I guess Korea isn't the first country that comes to mind when you think of jazz acts. For most people it's the country of LG and Hyundai rather than music and the arts. Well this week I suppose we're all thinking of Korea as the flashpoint for a potential armagedon thanks to the lunatic in charge in Pyongyang, but anyway.

We arrived at the theatre expecting a relaxing evening of jazz, so you'll forgive our inward groans and eye rolls when a guy gets up on stage before the show and announces that actually there will be a little awards ceremony first with a member of the Jerusalem Municipality and an MK and the Korean Ambassador, and you know what? I came to see a show, not for some political posturing, thank you.

Imagine my surprise when no other than Yuli Edelstein, minister for diaspora affairs and one of my all time favourite political leaders (and I don't have many of those) and childhood heroes, gets up looking rather sheepish, and explains that actually he also came this evening for the jazz but the organisers saw him in the audience and twisted his arm into saying a few words. Poor man, kept his cool and his charm but I think he was just as miffed about being drafted as we felt initially at hearing about said ceremony.

Being Yuli Edelstein he kept it short and brilliantly beautifully to the point. Who better than he to point out that Israel has often stood in the dark place that South Korea now finds herself, facing unprovoked rocket attacks on her civilians by a tyrannical neighbour. He expressed Israel's sympathy and solidarity with South Korea with such warmth and sincerity that I wanted to hug him on behalf of my very dear South Korean friends.

Hilik Bar from the Jerusalem city council spoke about warm ties with Korea and the recent boost in Korean tourism to Israel's capital. And his mangling of the Korean language was cute, even if I didn't understand what he said, I could make out the Israeli accent.

Turns out Israel's ambassador to Seoul heard Korean jazz singer Malo and harmonic player Jeon Jeduk perform in the Korean capital and was so taken by them that he decided to try and set up an Israel tour for the duo and their backing band. So far they'ed played Tel Aviv, Haifa and elsewhere, finishing up right here in Jerusalem. Cue little handwave to said ambassador, his wife, his daughter, her boyfriend, all sitting in the audience tonight.

South Korea's ambassador stole the show though, all humble charm, sweetly accented English and wry humour. He was he explained, used to spending time with Minister Edelstein, his regular ping pong partner. Who knew?

Finally he tried his hand at some Hebrew and mispronounced it as beautifully as Hilik Bar had Korean, but he'd won the hearts of his Israeli audience who enthusiastically clapped and cheered his initiative. I think he single handedly boosted Israeli tourism to Korea. That man has talent.

And so to the music. Jeon Jeduk was on first with the band. Blind almost from birth, he was escorted on stage and seated front centre, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses. When he took out his harmonic though you forgot all that, he made it sing like a clarinet, a sax, all kinds of things that definitely did not sound like a harmonica, his face scrunched in concentration, lost in the music. DH, a fan of the clarinet, was truly blown away. I was pretty impressed too.

I thought Malo, stage name of singer Soowol Cheong, was the highlight of the show though. Her scatting was a joy to listen to, playful and vibrant. She had the audience eating out of her hand. I loved the gentle sound of her native tongue in her jazzy versions of Korean pop tunes (including one that sounded like Hatikva!) while her English singing was almost unaccented.

What can I say, it was fun, it was spirited, and it most definitely had soul.

Make that Seoul.

For more information check out: http://koreajazz.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/malo/ and http://www.jpost.com/home/article.aspx?id=195939

Ten years on, in case anyone has forgotten

2010-10-20T06:23:00.001+02:00

Happened to be going through some old files of mine and came across journal entries I'ed written almost exactly a decade ago. No sweet nostalgia though because they were chilling notes about the early weeks of the Oslo War or Second Intifada, grisly descriptions of the daily bombings, riots, shootings and lynchings with which our dear Palestinian Authority peace partners ripped up the supposed peace accords and unleashed some of the worst and most consistent campaign of terror Israel has seen.

It's amazing what time will do, how far removed I feel today from that fear and confusion and disorientation as day to day life was turned upside down and ordinary citizens felt like they were taking their lives in their hands just by travelling to work or going down to the shops.

I hope that Obama or some of his advisors remember what happened here in October 2000. I hope they realise why ordinary pro-peace Israelis feel nervous, cautious, even fearful about new concessions and a new peace process considering the horrific way in which Oslo quite literally exploded in our faces, mere weeks after the dovish pro-Oslo Barak administration offered PLO chairman Arafat the most drastic concessions ever proposed by an Israeli government.

Barak's government was determined to reach peace that summer. He went out on a limb with a deal which included concessions most Israeli citizens would have found hard to swallow, but which Barak was determined to go through with anyway. Arafat, rather than building on this unprecedented Israeli flexibility walked away from the talks and shortly after initiated an all our terror campaign against Israel which cost the lives of over 1000 Israelis, wounded thousands more, around 70% of those casualties Israeli civilians.

So despite how the foreign press likes to prattle on about Israeli "intransigence" "belligerence" and other sweet little epithets that paint our nation, or at least our leadership as little better than the Mongol hordes, the actual reason Joe Israeli feels nothing but trepidation in the face of renewed American and European and general international pressure for more concessions, more relaxing of security, is none of these, just simple self-preservation from a people who were so badly burned the last time they went out on a limb for peace.

It's the same reason all the campaigns to boycott, scream at, delegitamise and otherwise blacklist the Jewish state are mostly met with indifference and nose thumbing by Israelis. Better than any American or European "peace" activist, we know what the horrors of war are, we know what it means to leave the house for work in the morning without knowing whether we'll return home in one piece, if at all.

We've been there and done that and we know that the only thing that stopped it in the end was military action and the construction of the security fence. Not talks, not concessions not fairweather ceasefires that leaked attacks like sieves. Nothing worked to stop the daily Palestinian perpetrated carnage on Israeli streets until Israel's military finally was given the green light to aggressively go after the terror networks and infrastructure riddling Gaza and the West Bank. Would that all those visits by Zinni, Powell, Mitchell and their buddies had yielded results, but at the end of the day they produced nothing but hot air and empty platitudes.

Increasingly many Israelis have come to the realisation that perhaps there is no solution to be had right now, that all we can do is try to muddle through as best we can. It's not a pleasant thought, and it doesn't mean there won't be attempts to make things easier for all the peoples living in this troubled little corner of the world, but it does mean that people are more cautious about grand peace talks and grand concessions which open us up to more Oslo era terror.

Some people look at all this and dismiss us as a PTSD nation, and maybe there is some truth to that. I don't think anyone lives through such an extended period of life threatening daily terror without experiencing some kind of long term trauma. But that isn't at the root of our present day caution or our increased resolve not to bend to international will. No, I'd say it was common sense.

Doesn't mean that when push comes to shove the Israeli leadership will hold firm, but for the sake of all Israel's citizens, I pray that they do.

Peace is nice, but only if you are alive to enjoy it.

Starry starry night...

2010-08-15T21:59:00.000+03:00

If we didn't have to choose a place of residence based on mundane considerations like jobs and work and stuff like that I think our family would long ago have moved to somewhere in the boonies, probably out in the desert.

I think it each time we visit some desert boiberik community, feast my eyes on those bleak vistas and feel the cool chill of an evening desert breeze and my soul just screams to me that this is where I should be, not cooling my heels in the Middle Eastern equivalent of white picket fence country. Oh, but practicality rules and darn if we don't have to consider things like commuting distance and job markets.

I got a double dose of desert fixes last week, Judean and Negev deserts in one week, both as enchanting and soul searing as ever. Truly, it hurt to leave, however much I like my home, and really, I do, well, most of the time.

Mitzpe Ramon perched on the rim of the dramatic Ramon Crater (Makhtesh Ramon) really takes the soul food cake for me though. As towns go it's a tiny, neglected one-horse affair of a place (well, maybe 2 or 3 horses, but it doesn't look big enough for that). But look out beyond that aging low-rise tenements and the old concrete prefab houses and your heart gets caught in your throat as the red cliffs drop away to the vast Makhtesh in all its multi-hued rough and ready glory.

I finally fulfilled a long-time dream this week and went out there to view the Perseid meteor shower. The town is home to Israel's biggest telescope and a team of astronomers taking advantage of the high elevation and clear desert skies. And the town takes advantage of them, promoting events like the Perseids to bring visitors in, though I think most of the folks who crowded in to the town's sad little football stadium (think scrubby field with a fence and a few rows of bleachers against one wall) were locals or at least other southerners.

The municipality turned off all the town's lights for the event and the effect was just incredible, so many stars and so many constellations and a bevy of astronomers with telescopes to show you delights like the bands on Jupiter or a binary star system (I will never doubt SF writers again, well, maybe at least a little less).

Sure, early on in the evening there were annoying crowds of noisy families waving their torches (flashlights) around and screwing with my night vision, but then there were also fascinating lectures and for the grand finale, before the astonomers went of somewhere even darker, there was a guided tour of the desert sky with laser to point out the constellations usually washed out by the pollution of urban glow.

Then the astronomers left and we common folk were left to just enjoy the show.The pose of girls behind me were musically inclined and kept bursting into song. Fortunately they were all blessed with beautiful, melodious voices. Seemed to be into Israeli oldies, which was kind of surprising for a bunch of late-teens and 20-somethings, but that was kind of cool, seeing as I kind of dig that sort of thing myself. Even found myself singing along some of the time.

The middle-aged guys camping out to the left spent most of the time yakking about their army days in the 70s, who served when, where and how, occasionally lapsing into arguments over which remembered buddy had done what when. It was kind of like listening to some classic Israeli comedy from 30 years ago. Then they lapsed into car buying talk and I zoned out because, well, minivan versus small truck comparisons in the wee hours just doesn't do it for me.

It was actually kind of nice to lie back on my blanket at around 02:00, the kids finally asleep snuggled up next to me against the desert chill, watching the lazy streak of meteorites across the sky. And yeah, I've seen more spectacular meteor displays, truly I have, but I still enjoyed this one, some incredibly bright ones, clearly flaming, red taking many seconds for their trails to fade from the sky.

Beautiful or not it was damn cold.

That was a real treat for Israel in August.

By the Perseid peak at 03:00 most other folks had either left or gone to sleep, and it was so wonderfully peaceful and the vast starry sky was so achingly mind blowing that it felt like a religious experience, the secrets of creation just spread out like a treasure map for me to puzzle out.

I guess when all is said and done I really am kind of sappy at heart.

And yes, I will confess that Don Maclean did briefly flit through my mind, but Matti Caspi gave him a firm shove, followed by, well, Psalms. And Led Zeppelin. No, I don't know why, it just seemed fitting.

Origin of Satan

2010-05-31T04:38:00.032+03:00

Nothing like taking some sick time to finally get around to some reading. Or should I say, nothing like being forced to take some sick time, because I have spent most of the last week or so in bed or coughing myself silly in an armchair because when I was coughing myself silly in bed I kept waking up the baby.

While I was visiting the US I got caught up with the recent seasons of Supernatural, the drama/horror series currently dabbling in apocalyptic themes. Made me decide to read the New Testament again, well, that and ODing on so much Johnny Cash while Stateside, so many Christian themes in his music, made me want to go back and research the source, which in turn reminded me that I never finished Elaine Pagels fascinating book "The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics".

No, this is not a study of the occult nor a book that particularly deals with anything particularly Satanic, rather it's a fascinating look at early Christian history and how early Christianity portrayed its opponents in terms of the demonic or satanic.

Rereading the New Testament after many years was quite an eye opener. I don't think I'd ever really noticed just how much emphasis there is on exorcisms and Satan, how many references that pop up in everyday English and American discourse have their origins in the Christian text itself. Certainly that disconnect between how Judaism traditionally tends to view Satan and the much greater emphasis Christianity seems to place on Satan has always piqued my curiosity, especially the way it impacts popular culture and frames of reference.

I would be the first to admit that I don't know much about Christianity, I am an observant Jew after all, but religion has always been a favourite interest of mine. I first picked up Pagels' book when taking a course about the European witchcraze at college. I think that's probably also the last time I read the New Testament, trying to understand where it all came from, get into the heads of the European clerics at the time, trying to understand how they came to the conclusions they did. I don't remember noticing how many stories of possessions and exorcisms there were that time around, but I should have, seeing as that was very much an issue during the tail end of the witchcraze. Strange to say, but to the best of my knowledge actually reading the New Testament, or at least the passages relating to possession and exorcism, and how these might have, must have, directly influenced those events, wasn't on the course reading list. How could they have even taught such a course without that kind of a primary source? For that matter, I don't remember whether Pagels' book had come out yet, but it should be required reading for such a course too.

I guess to an extent I'm sucked in to Pagels' book as much by the history as by the theology and exegesis, such a critical period in determining both the fate of Judaism and Christianity, indeed the identity of what was to become the Western world, getting into the voice of Josephus and trying to imagine the turbulence and chaos of the period, the uncertainty, the doubts that must have plagued to many faithful, the destruction of so much of the Jewish people, the insanity of taking on the might of Rome. It really is quite terrifying. And the signs of so much of it are still visible in the landscape of this region to this day.

Oh, how I've missed you...

2010-05-09T13:13:00.000+03:00

I guess this is lame, but I really, really missed vegetables while I was in the US.

I mean, I understand why say in Iceland or Norway or elsewhere in northern Europe they didn't seem to be big on salads and veg, I think Iceland had the most expensive fresh veggies I've ever come across in my life. I get that, those aren't countries really suited to growing a lot of the stuff locally so it kind of breaks the bank. Make up for it with great fish though.

The US though, they have a huge country with plenty of areas where the climate is perfect for growing veggies. There was even some pretty good produce in the stores (not usually on par with the UK, certainly not with Israel, but then I guess I am a little spoiled), but hardly anyone seems to use it.

Am I missing something?

Here no meal is complete without salad, and by salad I mean finely chopped cukes and tomatoes, probably red pepper, maybe parsley or coriander or onions. And any nice meal ideally comes with a whole bunch of salads, some raw, some cooked. In short, vegetables are a big staple.

Just about everywhere we went in the US folks thought a few lettuce leaves maybe with a berry and a shredded carrot for decoration was a salad. Most meals seemed to be some kind of protein and a grain, plus the aforementioned scrappy lettuce leaves. If we were lucky there might be a cooked vegetable, maybe a sweet potato or if we were really lucky, some kind of squash, twice we got really really lucky and there was asparagus.

That was main meals. I thought breakfast was even stranger (and Americans mostly thought my tastes were bizarre), I mean, is it that peculiar to have veggies and salad at breakfast? Apparently. And yes, I have travelled before, quite a bit over the years, but I'ed forgotten this lack of veggies in America, it has been a few years.

It drove me nuts. Weeks and weeks of veggie deprivation, and I started to get real hungry.

What gives?

And what do people do with the bounty of produce in the stores? OK, so when I broke and went out and bought some myself and managed to find sometime between visits and baby to cook it, I discovered that much of it tasted kind of weird. Blandest galangal I have ever had (didn't even smell much of anything, for a second I wondered if I had accidentally bought Jerusalem artichoke, but no, it really was flavourless galangal). The basil was all kind of sweet, like licorice, not richly flavoured the way it is at home. Coriander also felt odd. Cucumber had no flavour. Onions were much milder.

So yeah, it is good to be home among the veggies again. Made a huge pot of tomato-coriander soup, just hit the spot. And dined on lots of chopped up Israeli salad almost every day I've been home. Veggies, oh how I've missed you.

A foreign city without soldiers

2010-04-12T05:09:00.000+03:00

So the strangest thing about the US, well, kind of felt like this a bit in the UK too, but it feels more pronounced here, the strangest thing is the way people just live here, a nation a supposedly at war, and it feels like nothing, because the wars are so far away that unless you are yourself in the armed forces or a relative or close friend of someone who is, you just forget about it, except maybe for worrying about your tax dollars or something and it is all just so weird.

There is no Thursday evening crush of soldiers home on weekend passes, no uniforms at every turn, no draft, as in the Israeli song, this is a foreign city without soldiers, and it is just so true, even in DC or Norfolk or Groton, the vibe is just different. All those quirky little things in Israel, like the way folks with gun permits casually go armed, friends who come to tea with a sidearm in their belts, because, that is life, and folks living in dangerous areas go openly armed, they way the guard at the mall asks if you are carrying a weapon or the tannoy at the airport reminds people that weapons are not allowed there, in the same voice she uses to remind you that smoking is only permitted in designated areas.

It isn't that back home I notice these things so much, they just are, but here in the US I notice their absence, like something is missing, and I know I've written about this before, but each time I visit the US it hits me all over again, especially visiting the US at a time when that country is at war.

Because (as far as I know) you can't get a 24 hour (let alone a 12 hour) pass to come home to the US from Iraq or Afghanistan - it can take that long just to make the journey back. So for most people the wars their country is fighting become academic, arguments about morals and resources and politics, not, well, either we fight or the guys who have homes an hour away from our homes will get even bigger missiles and target our homes too. I mean, no, I don't have that though in the back of my mind all the time or even most of the time, but it's there. I know its a real threat.

It isn't in the US though and I can't decide whether that makes me jealous of this sense of peace, or worried that these folks don't really understand what's out there, especially the guy sitting the White House screwing over my country because (I think) he believes that sacrificing us will bring world peace. And yeah, that is kind of upsetting, but nothing new there, enough people have believed that for enough years, even a few presidents, though nothing quite as extreme as this I think.

But leaving personal fears for my country aside, I feel like the people here just dont get what's out there, hating them, wanting to hurt them, because its so far away, and maybe that's good, because it means that the perpetrators of 9-11 didn't win, didn't get to break America, but it's bad because it means that the people here don't understand that there are hate filled people around the world just waiting for another chance to make the US hurt, and they'll take any chance they can get.

I can't quite get my mind around the idea of a front so far away that, well, it's quite genuinely out of sight out of mind. Not that in Israel life didn't go on more or less as usual with a front an hour or so away from home, and perhaps that is even crazier than the way things are in the US with it half a world away, but still, I think that we all know back home that normalcy, however much we live it on a daily basis, is a fragile, precious thing, because every security check and every kid in uniform reminds us of the price we pay. And maybe I have a bee in my bonnet, but even post 9-11, Americans just seem to take that freedom and security for granted, save perhaps for friends and family in NY who saw and felt that fateful day's events up close and personal, whose lives were forever changed by it the way Lebanon and Oslo and Gaza changed ours, but maybe not even them. 9-11 was a one time thing, not continuous, wave after wave of there but for the grace of God like we live with every few years.

More than anything though is this feeling of either blithe false security or plain ignorance or maybe real safety, I don't know, the way there are no security checks when you go into the mall or a sporting event, hundreds, maybe thousands of people, and it's all just wide open, because hey, they security check like wackos at the airport, so nothing can get in, right? (And of course without profiling, they can't screen effectively.) It all just feels so vulnerable, so open, so unprotected.

It was weird hearing a lecture about Mid East events given by an American to Americans, just being an Israeli fly on the wall and listening to people's views and ideas. Really weird. And a bit creepy, seeing as this is the country trying to save the world, well, I think it is, maybe it's just trying to protect its own interests, but it's nice to think that the US still has the idealism to protect freedom and democracy worldwide. Maybe.

So after this talk, some people are chatting in the lobby, and someone is self-righteously going on about how Israel should just smash Gaza and kick out its residents (well, its not as if her sons or husband are going to have to to the fighting or expelling, so who cares if someone else is going to do the dirty work), and how crazy it is that Israelis have lived with missiles for so long (and yes, it is, and they still are) and my kid, not yet 5, pipes up and says, well, you don't really need to worry about the missiles, it's OK, when you hear the siren you just get under a heavy table or run for your shelter, and the woman just gapes, and my daughter adds, it's the same as the earthquake drill, rooms without windows are good too.

And yeah, I did teach my kid what to do, and yes, I pray with all my heart she never needs to, and no, it isn't what I planned on having to teach my toddler, but I would rather she know and be prepared than for God forbid that siren come and she doesn't know what to do. Well, this American woman looks at me in shock, and I explain that I believe my kid needs to know, and that in Israel, Memorial Day is something real and palpable and we explain it to the little kids, as generally and obliquely as possible, but they get the idea, they know why there is a memorial siren on Memorial Day and Holocaust Memorial Day, because that is life, and we don't dwell on it (subject matter of this post aside, I really try not to go into it with my kids), but they need to know, so they know. Does it harm their childish innocence, maybe, means they know a little more about the real world that I hope to God I didn't need to explain to them, sadly, yes, I think so, but it's not like I explain the details.

So I guess that is what is bugging me, a mix of feeling plain insecure because of the lack of a security presence here, but also just a disconnect with how people feel in their world, a lack of realism, a feeling of fantasy, and that's not the cliched critique of American materialism and consumption, I think that goes on in much of the world, though the scale of it here is staggering, no, it's more the mindset, the way people are so removed from a lot of what their country is doing, or just the way life is elsewhere in the world. Like my standard critique of all the sci-fi shows where the American explorers tell the aliens what life is like on Earth, and they basically mean what life is like in America, because if John Crichton had been from Israel he would have landed on his feet much sooner in the Uncharted Territories.

At long last

2010-02-05T11:17:00.000+02:00

It does me good it does to see such a wet, stormy winter. Not wet and stormy enough, but I will be thankful for what is. Won't help our severely depleted water supply, decimated by years of drought, but rain means hope, and winter isn't over yet.

I happened to be in the UK this winter, for the first time, in, well, I don't quite remember, but a long time. It never ceases to amaze me how different rain feels there. Yes, rain is a big deal here and it rains all year round there, granted, but that's not it.

It's the light, the way the grey, dark buildings there just seem so oppressive in the grey, wet weather. Here, even with the storm clouds clamping down darkening even the usually bright Mid Eastern noon, there seems to be a glimmer, a luminosity, something in the light Jerusalem stone and whitewashed stucco that brightens the gloom.

Then there is the smell. The rain just smells different here, don't know why, but it does. Wonderfully fresh, vibrant, envigorating. There it just seems to smell of wet overcoats and petrol laced puddles.

More than anything though is the excitement. The way kids long to make use of their umbrellas and wellies, only useful for a few short months a year. I guess it's the way kids in England hope for snow. The anticipation of the first rains of the season is one thing, but each and every rainful during the short wet season is welcomed for the miracle of life that it brings.

Yes, this is the land of uncertainty, the slope of the volcano where anything can happen, where the fragile balance of the natural world feels more palpable than in many other places, but that is also why I think we feel more accutely God's presence on this earth, where the difference between life and death is dependent on a few paltry months of rain

Saint-Exupery

2009-12-01T05:25:00.000+02:00

Absolutely thrilled to come across the new Hebrew translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Pilote de guerre and Lettre a un otage.

When I was a kid my mother figured out that the way to bridge the gap between my love of all things aviation related and her love of French literature was to introduce me to St-Exupery's writing, and boy did she hit the nail on the head.

Once upon a time I would have read this in the original French, but sadly it's become so rusty over the last decade that I can't even really enjoy Le Petit Prince in the original anymore, which is a crying shame, but I just haven't had much reason to use my French in such a long time.

I think it's a generational thing, parents and family who went through WWII, all their stories so vivid in my mind, I think that's why I seem to read so much about WWII. I just heard so much about the Battle of Britain and the Blitz growing up. Maybe that's why I read so many aviation related WWII books. Maybe I was just born old too, would explain a lot as well.

Saint-Exupery just does it so well, so painfully, tragically, heart-breakingly well.

Finding this book is like holding treasure in my hands.

A blurring of lines?

2009-11-13T03:21:00.000+02:00

Only in Israel story 683:

You randomly find yourself watching Channel 24, Israel's version of MTV.

The country's leading music critic, a secular and openly gay man, is interviewing a "born again" Breslov Hassid, clad in full hassidic garb, about his new album, the style of which is clearly influenced by the Hebrew version of Bob Dylan.

These two men represent in many ways opposite poles of Israeli society, Jerusalem versus Tel Aviv, but their conversation is polite, warm, about the interviewee's 7 kids, grandchildren, pilgrimage to Uman, musical inspiration, current movie project...

I think it's happening more, this meeting across the chasm, people who've crossed the line in either direction from religious to secular, from secular to religious. Look at journalist Dov Elboim who left the Haredi lifestyle but has focused his work on bringing a Jewish religion and culture to mass media. Likewise the many popular musicians who've become closer to their Jewish roots and in so doing have brought about the current trend for recording albums based in some way on traditional Jewish sources, be it Bari Sakharov's rock songs whose lyrics are taken from religious poetry or Ehud Banai's full on lovingly recreated recordings of authentic Jewish liturgy.

I don't entirely know what this all means, how deep it all is, how much is simply a Jewish veneer to pop culture or a trendy veneer layered over traditional practices. I'm not sure it really matters. I believe though that it's good, a correction of sorts for the anti-religious, in many ways anti-Jewish, atmosphere of the '50s and '60s, or even the fashion for corny pseudo-parody of Hassidic music and stories in the '70s.

Where will it lead? I never claimed to be a prophet, but anything that is making even a limited percentage of young Israelis look again at their rich heritage is good in my book.

Childhood Heroes

2009-11-08T16:55:00.000+02:00

I was sitting and nursing Junior Junior this afternoon when his big sister snuggled up to me.

She has restless hands and restless eyes, everything must be read, touched, learnt. She picked up the newspaper lying on the sofa and eyed the colourful ad for the Herzog College, advertising BA courses in various subjects, Bible, Hebrew Literature, Jewish Philosophy and the like.

5,4,3,2,1 wait for it...

Right on cue:

"What is this about Ima?"

So I explained, maybe, one day, when she is a big girl, well, a teenager, well probably after National Service or The Army, she could go to college and perhaps choose one of the listed subjects for study.

"But Ima, I want to study all of them! Children have more interests than grown-ups, we want to learn everything."

OK, well, that's my girl, boundless thirst for knowledge in one high energy package.

"But what if you could only choose one?" I say, curious if she'll pin down one subject, most of which I'm pretty sure she doesn't understand.

The Little Person runs her finger down the list, pauses at Tanakh, slips down to Jewish Philosophy and settles on Hebrew Literature.

I ask her why she chose that. I'll like it, says she confidentally, and patently hasn't a clue what subject she's chosen. "What is it?"

So I explained, which led to her grabbing a poetry book from the shelf, which turned out actually to be a Hebrew song book, which had a line "and if in Moscow the gates are locked" and that led to me explaining what Moscow was and why the gates might be locked.

And before I knew it, I had spent the evening trying to explain the story of the Soviet Jewish Refuseniks to my almost 4.5 year-old.

"So you told the Soviets שלח את עמי(let me people go) just like Moshe said to Paro'?" Well not me personally...

"So Uncle is a hero?" Well, I guess so.

Amazing that today almost no one seems to remember or talk about it, one of the greatest stories in modern Jewish history, well, I think, in history in general. It's been boiled down to an Israeli foreign minister with a Russian accent.

When I was my daughter's age though the Campaign for Soviet Jewry was without doubt one of the greatest influences on my life.

No, I'm not Russian, but the plight of my Jewish brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union was as much part of growing up in the 70s and 80s as Star Wars and Maggie Thatcher.

I thought that all families spent weekends and afternoons demonstrating outside Soviet missions, making non-stop phone calls to Aeroflot offices and shouting out during performances of the Bolshoi Ballet all with the message "Let My People Go שלח את עמי".

I thought joining a pro-Soviet Jewry rally outside the UN while visiting New York was a standard tourist thing to do.

I thought all children were concerned with the fate of their Soviet Jewish peers, writing them letters and drawing them pictures, when they were older trying to penpal with them, while teachers and parents carefully coached us what to avoid so as not to attract the attention of the Soviet censor.

I thought that it was normal for friends and relatives to go off to the Soviet Union with Hebrew books smuggled between the covers of popular best sellers, tallitot hidden in coat linings and audio Hebrew lessons disguised as classical music recordings.

I thought everyone had family and friends who met with Soviet dissidents, writing down incriminating information in invisible ink for fear of "outing" more potential contacts to the KGB.

It seemed like the most natural thing in the world: my uncle went, friends' parents went, shul rabbis went, teachers and neighbours went.

Looking back I remember so many sermons relating to the topic at shul on Shabbat. Our rabbi, or a guest rabbi, giving a talk about his experiences secretly minstering to Soviet Jews while on a visit behind the Iron Curtain.

My heroes had names like Sharansky, Volvovsky and Gurevich. And Andrei Sakharov too, even though he wasn't Jewish, but he wanted freedom for the Soviet people too.

And my uncle.

He was my hero too, going of to Brezhnev's USSR with his innocent boyish smile and stash of Hebrew books and tzitzit, returning like a dutiful tourist with armloads of cheaply produced Soviet propaganda books about Lenin and Communism, matrioshka dolls, a big fur hat (he did visit Moscow in January!) and for me, a big doll in Russian national costume made from a flimsy, brittle plastic.

Didn't everyone have an uncle who ran a hardware store in his ordinary life, but secretly played at being a Cold War spy to procure freedom for Soviet Jews?

The day in February 1986 when Natan, or as he was then Anatoly, Shcharansky, went free is engraved on my mind as if it were now. The entire school gathered in the gym and one of the teachers turned on the television while we watched breathless as the great man himself crossed over from the Iron Curtain to freedom. Some of the grown-ups had tears in their eyes and even the littlest children who didn't quite understand what was happening got caught up in the excitement and emotion of the event.

How many kids today have even heard of him, let alone know who he is, his incredible story?

My daughter will though, if I have anything to do with it.

This evening I pulled down the self-published book a friend of my uncle's about the exploits of London Jewry to help Soviet Jews, full of photos of the ordinary people who went on missions to the USSR, so many familiar faces, so many stories I remember hearing around the family dinner table.

Flipping through it with my daughter helped to make the story of the Refuseniks seem real. She was amazed to see her great uncle looking so young (so much hair, such funny frames on his glasses, she commented), but most of all she was fascinated by the photos of Soviet Jewish children, especially in the secret Jewish kindergartens.

"Is that what children looked like then?" She asked, "You all wore such different clothes, did you look like that then too?"

"Why didn't you go with Uncle to visit the children?"

Well...

Israel didn't have diplomatic relations with the USSR then (I should say it was really the Soviets who didn't have diplomatic relations with Israel), so much of the practical campaign went on in the diaspora, where Jews could use their foreign passports to travel to Russia, and where there actually were Soviet missions to demonstrate in front of.

I wonder if in part that's why the Campaign for Soviet Jewry seems to forgotten in Israel, or whether it's just been eclipsed by some of the more troubling problems elements of the mass Soviet aliyah seem to have brought with them.

The recent horrific murder of a Russian immigrant family in Rishon Letzion by a Russian former employee settling scores has only added to the already severely tarnished image of the emigre community here. As a friend remarked recently, "is this what we fought for?"

So nothing in life is ever simple, but just because nothing comes without problems, doesn't mean that the struggle to help the Refuseniks was pointless.

I was thinking how a few years back we spent Simhat Torah with cousins in Gush Etzion, and there dancing with the Sefer Torah in their shul was an older Russian man. I heard someone call out his name and realised that he was one of the Refuseniks my uncle visited in Moscow, now living a vibrant Jewish life in Israel with his family.

A couple of years later I literally ran into him while again visiting my cousin. This time by chance my uncle was with me and the beaming former Refusenik grabbed him in a bear hug.

Then there is the guard at my kid's school, sweet older guy from Uzbekistan. One day I happened to have a visiting friend with me at pick-up time and we got chatting with the guard while waiting at the gate. When he mentioned he had grown up in Bukhara my friend's eyes went wide and she started reminiscing about her journey behind the Iron Curtain back in the 70s in aid of Soviet Jewry, including a stop in Bukhara.

The guard's eyes lit up. "We never gave up hope, at every meal my grandfather concluded grace by telling us that one day we would merit living in the Holy Land." He grinned at us "And here we all are."

I'm pretty sure that's what we did it for.

Thai-style pumpkin veg soup

2009-10-28T16:23:00.000+02:00

We never really ate pumpkin when I was a kid and this food just wasn't really on my cooking radar until we attended a bat mitzva this week at which pumpkin soup was served.

The Little Person announced that pumpkin appears in her "Kef Le-ekhol Bari" (it's fun to eat healthy) book, and that the book suggests making it into soup.

She much enjoyed her bat-mitzva party pumpkin soup and the next day at the supermarket asked to buy ingredients to make our own pumpkin soup and when we got home she dutifully researched pumpkin soup recipes in my various cookery books and on-line, finally settling on a Thai recipe, for which fortunately we happened to have all the ingredients.

In the end Junior gobbled up about a third of the pumpkin I roasted for the soup before it could get into the soup, so I ended up adding other veggies to the recipe due to the sudden dearth of pumpkin.

Now that you know the story, please find my improvised soup recipe below, I think this is what I did, it is, as I said, slightly improvised. I'm pretty sure this would work nicely with any selection of squash veggies. I tend to measure by eye, so amounts are approximate, ymmv.

Enjoy - we did!

P.S. She says that the roasted pumpkin was a yummacious snack.

Ingredients:

1.5-2kg pumpkin (approx), chunked
1 medium-small aubergine (eggplant) - we used the stripey kind, chunked
salt
black pepper
olive oil
Thai green curry paste
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 head garlic, finely chopped or minced
1 "thumb" fresh ginger, finely chopped, minced or grated
1 parsley root, chunked1 carrot, chunked
Generous bunch fresh coriander, finely chopped
Generous bunch fresh basil, finely chopped
Water (about a cup)
1 can coconut milk or coconut cream(optional)
1 can chopped tomato (or a few fresh chopped tomatoes if you have)
Lemon or lime juice

1) Preheat oven to 180 C. Arrange chunked pumpkin and aubergine on a large baking tray. Sprinkle liberally with black pepper and a little salt. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake for about half an hour, or until it starts to soften.

2) In a largish pot heat about a little olive oil. Gradually mix in about a teaspoon of Thai curry paste. (This paste can be quite strong, so best to start off with a small amount, you can always add more later if it isn't firey enough for you.) Add chopped onion and saute for a few minutes until onion starts to soften.

3) Add chopped/minced garlic and ginger. Cover pot and allow to "sweat" for a few minutes, stir well, add chunked parsley root and carrot and "sweat" a few more minutes.

4) Add baked pumpkin and aubergine to the pot. Simmer with half cup-cup of water (water should just cover veggies) until all the veggies are soft.

5) Add the finely chopped coriander and basil and mix thoroughly into veggies. If you're using chopped tomatoes, add them now too.

6) Using an electric blender wand puree the soup until it reaches the desired consistency, ours came out smooth and creamy.

7) Add the coconut milk/cream and mix thoroughly.

8) Add some lemon or lime juice to taste. If the soup isn't firey enough for you, add more Thai curry paste.

9) Serve hot or cold.

Bake, bake, bake in the baking weather

2009-08-21T06:10:00.000+03:00

I don't know if it's being pregnant, the hot weather outdoors or just following Junior's natural curiosity, but we seem to be experiencing a baking frenzy this summer.

On the practical side it is something I can do with the Little Person which can be done (mostly) while sitting down in the airconditioning (albeit with the oven on, so maybe it doesn't really help with the issue of being pregnant in August).

What with being due, please God, just before Rosh Hashanah and expecting assorted family over the holidays, I'm trying to stock my freezer so we'll be ready with homecooked stuff we like when I'm God Willing busy with a newborn.

On the fun side, Junior has picked out a slew of recipes she wants to try, and this is a great opportunity.

On the unexpected side, Junior has developed an interest in maths, in particular fractions, measuring and counting, so doing recipes together is a great hands on way for her to learn to put into practice what she has read in Jerry Pallotta's wonderful "Apple Fractions" book.

All in all a good plan for a very pregnant mother of a very curious and active 4 year-old.

To date we have made rhubarb loaf, plum honey cake, assorted wholewheat muffins with various fruits, saffron chestnut lamb stew, saffron rhubarb beef stew, courgette soup, a ton of hallot, turkey soup, tomato coriander soup, carrot kugel and these oatmeal fig biscuits.

So far so good.

I adapted this from a recipe a friend gave me, we are a fresh fig loving family!

Oatmeal Fig and Almond Biscuits

Ingredients:

1 cup finely chopped fresh figs(if you don't have any, you can try dried figs that have soaked for a bit in warm water so that they plump up, the taste will be different though)
2 cups wholewheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice (mace)
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 cup olive or canola oil (or a blend)
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
8 tablespoons water
2 cups quick cooking oats, preferably whole oats
1/2 cup flaked almond

1) Preheat oven to 200 C (I think this is 400 F for Americans and imperial Brits?)
2) Sift flour with baking powder, salt and spices
3) Add oats, figs and almonds
4) In a separate bowl, cream together oil with sugar.
5) Beat the eggs well, then add to sugar/oil mixture and cream together.
6) Add alternately sall amounts of the dry mixture and water to the oil/sugar mixture to make a dough.
7) Drop teaspoons of dough on to a greased biscuit sheet and bake at 200 C for 10 minutes.

A pickling caper

2009-08-01T03:02:00.000+03:00

This is what happens when the Junior Gourmand asks a question.

The Little Person is a caper addict.

I always knew that capers grew wild in Israel (very pretty flowers).

I always knew that they could be pickled.

All said and done I've always loved eating capers. (yeah, I know, the kid has picked up some of my stranger tastes in food, like blue cheese ravioli and pink grapefruit juice)

Having never had my own garden though and being reluctant to pick wild plants, I never quite tried my hand at making my own pickled capers.

Well, guess who wants to try? So I did some research:

http://food.lizsteinberg.com/2009/06/21/do-it-yourself-capers/#more-2289

Anyone have some caper bushes in their yard that we could pick?

15 Books

2009-07-21T19:49:00.000+03:00

OK, so I don't usually do these things because they are usually about pop stars or movies or stuff that just doesn't do it for me, but books, well, you got me there, I mean, I certainly live with enough of them.

"Don't take too long to think about it. List 15 books you've read that will always stick with you. They should be the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends. "

So, off the top of my head, here goes:

1.Watership Down, Richard Adams
2. Only Yesterday (Tmol Shilshom), S.Y.Agnon
3. Adjustment of Sights, Haim Sabbato
4.The First Circle, Alexander Sozhenitsyn
5. Night, Eli Wiesel
6. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
7. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
8. If This is a Man-The Truth, Primo Levi
9. 1984, George Orwell
10. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
11. The Little Prince, Antoine St Exupery
12. Yoni's Letters, Yonatan Netanyahu
13. Fear No Evil, Natan Sharansky
14. Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
15. My Beloved, My Friend (Dodi Vere'i), Naomi Frankel

When you hear them cuckoos hollerin'

2009-07-02T03:46:00.000+03:00

The cuckoos in the tree by my balcony took me straight to Leah Goldberg. I've always loved her poetry and I guess this one just got right under my skin:

(my rough, lousy translation from Hebrew)

Here I will not hear the voice of the cuckoo
Here the trees will not adorn themselves in a turban of snow
But in the shade of these pines
All my childhood relived

...

Maybe only migratory birds know
When they are suspended between land and sky
This pain of having two homelands

With you I have twice been planted
With you I grew, pines
And my roots are in two landscapes

Goldberg was born in Konigsberg, East Prussia, and came to Tel Aviv as a young woman. From this poem it seems she never found any cuckoos in Israel. But then Tel Aviv was never really known for its rich flora and fauna, even in the 1930s.

Well, I knew she was wrong about the cuckoos, had known for some time. I guess she was no birder. Or perhaps with much less reforestation in her day, there really weren't so many cuckoos around. Either way, kind of weird to have one over on one of our national poetesses when it comes to knowing the Land of Israel.

Then again, the species of cuckoo in my tree doesn't actually say cuckoo.

Go figure.

Which brought me to Ahinoam Nini (Noa) and her adaptation of Goldberg's binational angst to fit the modern torn identity of so many Israelis growing up in other countries:

I remember those snow-capped mountains
And a song on F.M. 93
Oh my darlin', I have grown with you
But my roots are on both sides of the sea

Which brought me to myself.

I've called three countries home in my life and while I may think of words like affection, loyalty, pride and happiness in conjunction with the other two, only Israel gives me that bone deep, soul searing love for her landscape and language.

The other two are good places to live, countries I admire, care for, care about, but my connections to them are accidents of history, politics and economics.

When I am away from them I don't ache for them like a piece of me is missing.

They are not my destiny, spreading back through the ages, through countless generations of my ancestors, praying, yearning, dreaming, burning the memory of her nature and views into the hearts of our nation wherever we wandered.

My other two mother countries are places of nostalgia, memory, fond reminiscences of pebble beaches in autumn, red brick houses illuminated in the short, dark days of a north European winter, clapboard ranch houses full of small children at birthday parties and windswept rolling green mountains and lakes.

But still, they don't radiate home the way Israel does. Their beauty and my love for them pales beside rugged rocky hillsides covered in thistles and almond trees, olives groves and vineyards planted in terra rosa soil, rocky red, yellow, white deserts and neglected old Jerusalem stone fronted houses.

I can't swear that circumstances may, against my will, lead me to wander again.

I can't swear that there is only one place I'll ever call home.

Truth be told, I don't think I will ever truly have one place I think of as home.

Maybe it's the fate of a wandering Jewish ancestry, maybe it's just that the landscape of my life is scattered over three continents, but part of me will always feel fragmented, spread too thin, not quite completely at home in any one country, always something of a stranger wherever I am.

But given a choice, I know which one feels most like home.

I know which vistas scroll through my dreams.

Weather Channel Obsession?

2009-02-02T11:53:00.000+02:00

Yes, I admit it, I have an obsession with rain. I can't stop writing about it, longing for it, hoping for it, and I swear I'm not this bad when we actually have enough of it (well, I can never have enough of it), but I go nuts with longing for rain when it's in short supply, and believe me, this year it is in majorly short supply.

I struggle through the dry season counting down to autumn the way Junior counts down to her birthday, dreaming, hoping. And then to be disappointed like this.

Don't get me wrong, it's great to have all those clear blue skies to go walking under, but my soul yearns for clouds, for rain, for that tantalising smell of damp earth and quite frankly I just haven't had my fill this season, and there are only a maximum of 3 months, 4 months tops, of rainy season to go.

And for the record, we don't have a weather channel in this country (nothing to report for half the year except for heat and sunshine...)

Thunder, Lightening, Oh My!

2009-02-02T09:46:00.000+02:00

Well I know it's been a long time when I had to think twice to register that it was indeed thunder. Really.

Last weekend the meteorological powers that be promised rain.

Oh yeah, we got wind, lots of it, gales of it, violent, howling and shrieking, but bone dry all the same. A real tease.

So this Shabbat I'm thinking more of the same, and yeah, it was more of the same, just not quite as blustery, but a tease all the same. All wind and no rain.

Last night I was finally sitting down with Junior with her latest fascination, The Jabberwocky (we didn't realise she could reach the shelf until I caught her reading the book to herself, really don't think that's quite what I would have thought of as 3 year-old appropriate reading, but then it's getting hard to vet what she reads, I think we may have to cancel the daily newspaper).

Where was I? Yes, the Jabberwocky. Well, I can't remember which poem we were reading in the collection, but suddenly I heard a distant rumble, wasn't quite sure what it was.

Then there it was again, and as I looked up, sure enough a bright flash over the valley. Hmmm, I had to blink and shake myself that I wasn't hallucinating.

Real live thunder and lighting. I can hardly remember experiencing any this winter.

By this time Junior had noticed my distraction and ran off to get her brakha cards to look up the blessings for thunder and lightning. Told her the story about how when I was a kid my mother made sure I was never scared of these natural phenomena by teaching me the blessings to say.

Junior looks at me quizzically and explains matter of factly that she's never been scared of them, but it's important to say the right brakha, because that way Ima isn't scared.

Anyway, turns out this is the driest January on record in Israel. So it isn't just me feeling like I can't remember what a thunder storm is.

Now what was that book called?!

2009-01-21T09:03:00.000+02:00

A generous relative gave me a generous book token for my birthday a while back and after a good few years of not venturing out of the house without my short person escort it took me a while to register that with Junior now in kindergarten part-time I have the freedom to browse bookshops alone, not to mention the opportunity to grab more reading time to myself. Bliss.

So what to do with that book token? Just one problem, every Friday night I devour the book reviews in the weekend papers. Of course I'm not intelligent enough to save the ones I'm interested in and what can I say, my post childbirth memory has never quite recovered even to my previous absent minded state, so, there I am, a whole shopping mall, complete with two reasonably large bookshops, all to myself and my mind is a blank.

All around the tables piled high with recent publications and monthly specials are a blur of colour and text. The bookshelf crammed walls make me practically dizzy with anticipation, but when I dig around in my brain for those elusive titles I draw a total and utter blank.

My kid in a candystore demeanor turns to utter frustration, as I scan frantically for something that looks familiar from all those wonderful newspaper reviews. Every so often I think I see something, a name, a title, but I can't for the life of me place it, and most of the time looking at the cover blurb I replace the book in disappointment or realise that it's something that I've read already.

In the end I scoop up some vaguely familiar titles that are almost all on special, hope that I've scored on most of them, and walk over to the cash register, nervous but pleased to be buying grown-up books all by myself for myself for the first time in I can't remember how long.

Anyhow, this is how I find myself with my book token used up and a considerable stack of recent novels I'm not quite sure why I own, though at least the blurbs do look interesting, even if I still can't remember whether more than one of them appeared in any of those reviews I was salivating over months and years ago.

At least one of the new authors I've tried out seems to be worth the effort, Michael Scheinfeld, up and coming young writer being hailed as the next Haim Sabbato. Well, I'm half way through his double novella "Ba MiLevanon" (I always seem to end up with war stories), and Haim Sabbato he ain't , but I do like his writing all the same.

Junior Archaeologist

2009-01-15T09:35:00.000+02:00

Still hardly anything on the rain front, its so damn dry it feels like spring not midwinter, except that it's still too darn brown for that. Not that we aren't lacking in wildflowers, but not on the usual scale. Not by a long shot I think.

Still it's nice weather for walks and Junior is really getting into the whole tiyul thing, complete with collecting snail shells and practically jumping up and down for joy when we come across pottery shards (this is the Holyland afterall - archaeology is all around us).

She really loves archaeology, just as well we have a whole slew of relics near our home, Byzantine mosaics and Crusader ruins just ripe for kids to scramble over and play make believe in. I'm not letting her explore the Bar Kokhba tunnels just yet though...

I'm the mother of a 3.5 year-old Indiana Jones (and yes, she is into archaeology, kid went to her first dig while she was in my tummy, loves climbing over ruins, and we certainly have plenty over here).

It's really one of the things I love most about living here, this proximity to the past in the "City of the Future". My kid thinks that having ancient ruins round the corner from her home is the most natural thing in the world, and has already paticipated in her first "community dig" an ongoing project which gives local residents of all ages hands on experience excavating a nearby archaeological site, under the very close supervision of professional archaeologists.

Further afield she loves trips to grander sites, like the ruins of ancient Tzippori in the Galil, the Afek fortress near Rosh Ha'Ayin or the Nabetean relics which dot the Negev desert. It's simply part of her experience, like the wildflowers and climbing trees.

Her latest career choice is astronaut and archaeologist - when DH asked her why she explained that she wanted to learn about old buildings on other planets. I swear I haven't said a word to her about Stargate, she came up with that all on her lonesome. The 3.5 year-old brain is an incredible thing. Maybe it's just osmosis from her geeky parents, maybe it's just living in a house that is way too full of books about science, sci-fi and history. I guess her conclusions are only natural.

International law expert Gary Grant, interviewed on English Al-Jazeera

2009-01-04T12:02:00.000+02:00

Quote from international law expert Gary Grant, interviewed on English Al-Jazeera:

"Any country's first duty is to protect its citizens, it's called self-defence. The question is, is that self-defence proportionate.

"Under international law, two things need to be satisfied for Israel's actions to be considered lawful. One is that they are aiming at legitimate military objects. Israel would say that they are striking at legitimate infrastructure. And of course Hamas is an organisation intent on the destruction of Israel and the Jews in Israel as part of its covenant.

"Secondly, is it proportional? ... It's not simply a case of calculating the number of Israelis that have been killed by rockets, to the number of Palestinians killed in these attacks.

"The question is, are these attacks proportionate to the military objective trying to be achieved? Israel would argue with some force that what they are trying to achieve is to prevent Hamas, an organisation set up to destroy Israel, from strockpiling the weapons, and it's doing that by destroying the infrastructure.

"If someone were to run at me, a knife-wielding lunatic, I don't have to wait for that knife to enter my heart, before I'm about to respond. I'm allowed to take pre-emptive action, in order to stop it.

"Killing civilians is tragic, but it is not against international law. It is accepted in international law, that even if you target military sites, you are going to kill civilians. If you fire rockets and missiles, that is what is going to happen.

"But in this case, it is not the deliberate targeting of civilians, it is the targeting of infrastructure and military targets. Civilians tragically do get caught up in it. It needs to be contrasted with Hamas, where every single target is at a civilian population."

I would also recommend that folks who want to learn more about how one actually has to think about ethics and laws of war have a read of Michael Walzer's "Just and Unjust Wars", as well as perusing the Geneva Convention on such things. Lawrence Freeman's "War" is also interesting reading.

The apologetic Jew?

2009-01-04T11:49:00.001+02:00

I don't know what's gotten into me lately, usually I just read and groan when I read breast beating foreign Jews crying out about how much Israel is embarrassing them by acting in self-defence. Folks who it seems care more about how much the world loves Jews instead of how much Jewish lives are being endangered. Personally I'd rather be alive with the criticism of the enlightened elites of Europe and the US and the UN Secretary General, than dead with all those folks' adoration.

Newsflash, this isn't about winning a popularity contest, this is about saving Israeli, and hopefully in the long run, Palestinian lives too.

Those rockets are falling half an hour's drive from my home, and if Hamas upgrades its lovely little arsenal to weapons that can hit 55-60km from Gaza, then my family will be in rocket range too, not to mention several of the country's largest population centres. Right now those poor Hamas guys can only hit cities and villages about 42 km from Gaza.

I'm so sorry that in trying to save the lives of Israeli civilians Israel has embarrassed Jews abroad, if it would make you feel better I could ask some of my friends in Ashkelon or Beer Sheva to ignore the air raid sirens and stand in the path of oncoming rockets instead of taking shelter, it seems that many folks abroad feel far more comfortable with seeing dead Israelis then live ones defending themselves.

You think that Israelis don't know that war sucks? For crying out loud, every person in this country has lost people to wars and terrorism here, and far too many of us, soldiers and civilians alike, have seen it up close and personal. It isn't as though we don't know the human cost to both sides, it isn't as if this is something anyone here takes lightly. Americans can fight a war across the world and the folks back home don't have to know the hell of it, here the front is right near our homes and many soldiers' families are in just as much danger as they are themselves.

Israel has spent several years trying every non-lethal method available to persuade Hamas to stop it with the rockets already. The only reason Israel had to impose border restrictions on Gaza was because of Hamas weapons smuggling, weapons like the explosive warheads and parts used to construct the rockets fired into Israel.

Yes this situation is sad, Israelis do not like going to war, Israelis do not want to have to kill anyone, but Israeli civilians living near the Gaza border have been taking rocket and mortar fire for about 8 years now, and after Israel pulled out all its troops and civilians from Gaza in 2005 as a goodwill gesture designed to hopefully restart negotiations, the result was the rocket fire increased dramatically following the Israeli pullout. Over 6000 rockets have fallen on Israel in that time, about 3000 of them in 2008 alone - and part of that year there was supposed to be a ceasefire in effect.

The ceasefire ended a few weeks ago and Israel and Egypt did their utmost to renew it, but Hamas refused, escalating rocket fire into Israeli civilian centres. Israel had no choice but to respond militarily, not because it wants to, not because it wants to harm Palestinian civilians, but because it was out of options and any responsible government must defend its civilians.

Hamas isn't going to give up, Hamas has stated repeatedly that it wants the destruction of the State of Israel. If they wanted to run their own Fundamentalist state side by side with Israel, hey, most Israelis would say do what you want in Gaza, but Hamas doesn't just want Gaza, and they don't just want to topple Fatah in the West Bank, they want to destabilise and destroy their Israeli neighbour and that just isn't on.

Maps

2009-01-04T00:23:00.000+02:00

Just to give an idea of which areas are in rocket range, kind of makes my gut twist just to look at these:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=109382424764287956980.00045f68d068335d353d7&ie=UTF8&hl=iw&ll=31.538749,34.82254&spn=0.753758,1.425476&z=10

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=109382424764287956980.00045f68d068335d353d7&ie=UTF8&hl=en&ll=31.538749,34.82254&spn=0.753758,1.425476&z=10

Gaza musings

2009-01-04T00:12:00.000+02:00

So this evening, following reports of a rocket salvo, oh, say about half an hour's drive from my home, I went out to a concert with my visiting British tourist, and when I arrived home I found out that just over an hour's drive from my home Israeli soldiers were going in to Gaza.

And I and a few hundred other folks were experiencing a couple of hours of escapism in a cosy modern concert hall, seemingly a world away from the war raging in commuting distance from us.

During a brief break in the performance my tourist turned to me and whispered, shocked realisation on his face, "we're enjoying ourselves while people are dying so close by." Welcome to my world.

Well, what else to do? Half an hour's drive away they've cancelled schools, turned on the air raid siren and Home Front Command is giving people instructions on where to seek shelter, but here life goes on as usual, except for the folks who've had emergency call up papers and the many many people who've opened their hearts and their homes to offer respite to families under attack in the south.

No reason however not to take a couple of hours out to go to the theatre which after all is only around the corner from me and I did promise my guest that I would take him to a classical concert during his visit, and he is leaving this week so I figured it was about time I followed through. DH babysat (Junior, bless her actually fell asleep at a normal hour) and off I went, all 5 minutes walk up the hill to the theatre.

Israel kibbutz Camaretta is OK, pleasant enough, but what made the evening really worth while was Keren Hadar, and up and coming soprano with a vibrant stage presence and versatile voice. She sang a mixture of popular arias from assorted operas, using a number from Carmen Jones (not, note, Carmen itself) as a transition to the second half which consisted of classical arrangements for Israeli folk songs and oldies. I thought she held these disparate segments together beautifully and she certainly will have me coming back for more I think. What can I say, my mother brought me up going to musicals, opera and singing a ton of Israeli folk and pop at home, and this apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Left the apartment to news that the IDF was shelling northern Gaza, arrived home to discover that our forces have gone in on the ground and there is a massive call up of even more reserve soldiers. Zapped through all the Israeli news broadcasts (Channels 1, 2 and 10), then Fox and Sky, along with Egypt and Morocco for good measure, not that my Arabic is so hot, but I could get the bare gist of their reporting. (We have the cheap basic cable package, so not much more in the way of English language news networks, no more BBC or CNN for us).

I believe it needs to be done, Israel needs to defeat Hamas here, has to stand up to all the years of rocket terror once and for all. I believe its the only way we're going to have any kind of peace, but , as the cliche goes, war is hell, and I'm pretty sure that Hamas will fight, and this is going to be a tough fight for us I think. Hamas have had years to build defences, hunker down and make an IDF incursion as difficult as possible, try to draw our soldiers into built up areas where Hamas feels it has the upper hand, and I remember enough of what I've heard from soldiers who were in Lebanon and in Jenin and similar battles.

I'm sad for the innocents in Gaza, the folks who have suffered all these years under Hamas and the various gangs and militias there, and are now suffering from being caught in the middle of Hamas' war and Israel's response. In the days before the Oslo War, before Yasser Arafat reneged on peace negotiations in September 2000 and all hell broke loose, well, there were decent relations between the ordinary people of Gaza and their Israeli neighbours, people did work together, especially in agriculture, in factories, as truck drivers, as doctors and nurses in Israeli hospitals and more, so it isn't as if the people of Gaza are an unknown "other" - plenty of Israelis, especially among those in the line of fire, know civilians on the Gaza side of the border, worry about people they know, or more likely, knew there, as since the Israeli pullout and Hamas take over there has been far less contact. The other day one of the Israeli news stations interviewed a guy from Jebaliya in Gaza, and he told of how upset he was at the rocket fire, how he wanted to go back to the way things were in the good old days, how he hoped for peace with his Israeli neighbours.

That's the part that breaks my heart, I believe we have no option other than military action to fight Hamas, but the fact that there is no way of fighting this thing without harming civilians because Hamas cynically bases its operations in the midst of its own people, knowing that the only way Israel can protect Israeli civilians is to endanger Palestinian civilians, that is chilling, and Hamas knows that, and has been using it against us for years. Does that make us weak? I don't think so, but it has on many occasions endangered both our soldiers and civilians, because Hamas knows that we will think twice, and three times and more, before mounting a defensive operation that puts Palestinian civilians in harms way.

I have my Tehillim (Psalms) book to hand and have made liberal use of it this evening. God keep our guys safe and grant them success.

Winter by the Mediterranean (within rocket range)

2008-12-30T19:18:00.000+02:00

Just thinking of more peaceful, happier times in this part of the world. Before anyone gets antsy, I took these photos last winter at a favourite spot which at the time wasn't within rocket range (though I guess close to it) and today is firmly within range.

Just thinking of me and my kid looking for shells and crabs, watching the fishermen, and the families with kids playing on the beach, the oblivious lovers. All just enjoying the serenity, the crash of the waves almost drowning out the faint bubble of children's laughter reaching us from down the beach, eyes fixed on the stunning beauty of a Mediterranean sunset.

Well they aren't there now, and it isn't because of the weather, it's because there is no where to take cover out in the open here, save for a wooden lifeguard's hut and a few thatched parasol thingies. And it is so damn sad, because life shouldn't be like this, shouldn't be thinking of rockets falling from the skies instead of watching them for migrating birds or kingfishers.

And maybe that sounds selfish, to be thinking of this while people are dying and getting hurt, and living in terror, but I don't think so. I want those kids to once again be running along that beach and building sand castles.

These thoughts were running though my mind as I caught odd snippets of tv today, a few minutes here and there while folding laundry or sorting out some cupboards, really samples of programming throughout the day I guess.

Israel Channel 1 and Israel Education TV were having a special "open studio" children's programming (sorry, can't think of the exact English translation) because of the "situation" - all over the south-west schools are closed for the safety of the children, as large gatherings of people make for more casualties in the event of a rocket strike. That and many schools lack adequate shelters. (In theory perhaps all the kids and teachers could squeeze in to their school shelters, but only if nobody breathes...)

So there sat Hanni Nahmias, legendery Israeli children's tv host, and in between cartoon clips and chatting with some youngsters talking about fun with do it yourself science projects, she was talking to children living in communities currently under fire, trying to give them an outlet for their fears and concerns.

Later I caught yet another children's programme, also speaking to a young girl from a kibbutz over the border from Gaza, a young girl calmly and matter of factly talking about things which shouldn't be in any child's vocabulary.

About rockets, and what they do when and if the alert sounds and how they've lived with this situation for so many years.

About fear, and seeking shelter, and huddling with older siblings at night for comfort.

About differentiating between the sounds of incoming rockets from Gaza and IDF return fire.

About how they sympathised with the children in Gaza caught up in the fighting, about how they were sure that just like them, the children of Gaza dreamed of peace and coexistence. About how they were sure that the kids in Gaza were innocents just like them, and they knew that it was Hamas, not the ordinary Gazans, who were to blame. They spoke of sorrow at knowing that kids were getting hurt there too.

Earlier that morning there were psychologists given advice on some breakfast show, telling worried parents how to explain the situation to their children, how to deal with their fears and uncertainty. Try to stay calm. Don't try to pretty up the situation by saying the booms are thunder, not rockets, because children can tell when their parents are covering up. If Heaven forbid someone you know is hurt or killed, don't lie to your kids, tell them what happened if they ask, maintain their trust by being as honest as you can, but don't volunteer the information if they don't ask right away. And so on and so on, advice from parents up north who suffered through Hizballah's rockets during the 2006 Lebanon War and advice from child psychologists sadly expert with child trauma in wartime.

And then at some point I happened upon an interview with a young woman from a kibbutz near Sderot talking about her life, but what really got me was her nephew, a boy of about 3, same age as my child, a little boy whose entire life has been lived in the shadow of rockets and sirens - it's all he's ever known.

Random rockets?

2008-12-29T00:47:00.000+02:00

So being an Israeli you have to have something of a thick skin, otherwise you spend your entire life with raised bloodpressure from the deluge of offensive and often just plain stupid comments friend and foe alike make about life in this neck of the woods. I could spend my entire life responding to this stuff, but, then I wouldn't have any other life, so mostly I swallow hard, laugh, cringe, roll my eyes or engage in all three, and move on.

The following comment from a usually intelligent pro-Palestinian friend of mine just made me see red though: Random rocket firing at people living safely in bomb-proof shelters does not equate to this crap (referring to Israel's current military operation in Gaza)

Excuse me?!

Random rocket firing is a weapon of pure terror. You never know when and where it will strike, when you're taking your kids to school, making dinner in the evening, driving to work, ploughing a field or shopping for food - you are at risk 24/7 with no warning, other than the brief 15 second alert (if you're lucky) of the Red Dawn "early" warning system. If you're caught in the open, forget it, there is no time to reach shelter, you just lie down on the ground and pray.

Israeli civilians living within rocket range of Gaza have been living with this reality for years, and it just keeps getting worse, as the numbers of rockets fired each week grows, and their range increases.

Israeli roulette is going about your daily life and wondering whether today a rocket will land in an empty lot or score a direct hit on your home while you're asleep in your bed. Whether today is the day that a rocket hits the playground seconds after the kids have gone back to class or whether it will hit in the middle of recess, and it won't just be the tangled wreckage of swings and monkey bars, but the mangled bodies of flesh and blood too.

Because both happen, and the luck that by a miracle most of the time the rockets have missed hitting people doesn't negate the shattered homes, kindergartens, playgrounds, synagogues and shops, the stark reminders that there but for the grace of God go those who live within rocket range of Gaza, the reminders of the really bad days when the rockets hit a crowded Ashkelon mall (I was in Ashkelon that day, I remember it well), or a cluster of mothers and kids outside a kindergarten, or workshop or hapless folks caught walking down the street.

Plenty of Israelis living near Gaza still don't have adequate shelters, there are many older buildings, farm buildings (Israeli refugees from Israel's evacaution of Gaza living in thinwalled trailers for example).

You can't turn every single structure into a rocket proof shelter, you reenforce what you can, say a shielded roof over vulnerable schools, concrete barricades to provide a modicum of protection while waiting for a bus, but it's a physical impossibility to say, cram the whole of Ashkelon's major regional hospital into a shelter or to reenforce every public building and private home.

The hell of a lot of use a shelter is when you are walking in the street, going to school, buying food at the market, waiting for the train, working in your field or driving to hospital.

And a shelter won't save you from a direct hit.

Have you ever lived in a shelter? The shelter in my home is typical, tiny, just enough room for two small camp beds to be squeezed in. Just about adequare for my small family, but if we had more children, no one would even be able to lie down, we'd all have to hunch up on the floor just to fit everyone in. Even sleeping the night like that would be claustrophobic, having to stay in there for days at a time with no sanitary facilities, no windows, just a narrow confined cell like space would drive most families to insanity. And at some point you have to get out to get food, relieve yourself, etc.

Israelis have been more than patient. No one should have to live with the daily threat of rockets, and the civilians of south-west Israel have been living with rockets and mortars for years. Israel pulled out of Gaza, uprooted Israeli civilians living there for decades, pulled out its soldiers, and still, the rockets just kept coming.

The Israeli government has tried non-military methods to put pressure on the Hamas government of Gaza to stop the rocket attacks, but it hasn't made a difference. Israel agreed to a ceasefire which wasn't really a ceasefire - Hamas just reduced (but did not actually stop) the number of rockets fired into Israel each month.

And then the ceasefire ran out and Hamas didn't renew it, instead increasing the rocket fire to dozens. Israelis have had enough, and no government can sit idly by and allow its citizens to be targetted this way, day after day, year after year, while the intensity of the rocket fire only increases and along with their range, casting more and more Israeli civilians in the net of rocket terror.

Unlike the Palestinian rocket launchers who randomly aim their weapons at civilians, the Israeli army is doing its utmost to only strike at military targets in Gaza, pinpointing Hamas and other guerilla groups military infrastracture - training bases, military headquarters, weapons depots, rocket launchers and the like. Most of those killed have been members of Hamas or other armed militias.

And at the end of the day the seemingly random rockets do have a wider strategic purpose for the Palestinian militias: eroding Israel's sovereignty, forcing Israeli to flee, and so weakening Israel, in the hope that eventually this will lead to the ceding of more territory to the Palestinians. Make no mistake, random rocket fire is effective terror, and terror is just another way of fighting a war.

Ashkelon joins Sderot

2008-03-02T21:38:00.001+02:00

Ashkelon is an Israeli city close to my heart. I love the beach there and the antiquities. I have friends I like to visit there. I like the simple, slightly laid back sleepy feel of the place.

Ashkelon is one of Israel's larger cities, population about 120,000 I think. Its southern outskirts are just about in range of Kassam rockets from Gaza, but most of the city has until recently not been within range.

In recent months Palestinian militias in Gaza have successfully used longer range Grad rockets which can hit all of Ashkelon, recently hitting a residential neighbourhood and causing alarm in the city. Over the last few days many more longer range Grad rockets have hit the city, falling in residential areas of the fairly densely populated city.

I last visited in late December, and I wanted to post some photos I took there of happier times in the city, before the air raid sirens and Grad rockets.

This bakery in the old town centre serves the most wonderful simple, and cheap local specialties. It also has a palm tree growing through the roof!

Kids adore this whale!

I love walks on the long beach and marina

Rosh Hashanah musings in the middle of the night

2007-09-12T02:37:00.000+03:00

I don't know what it is about Rosh Hashanah eve, but it seems that all this reflection and awe of the annual Day of Judgement and Remembrance puts me in the mood to write, and seems to give me a little more clarity than usual, well, at least it seems that way at 2am.

I put it down to all the extra time in the kitchen - just me and my thoughts, and a routine of traditional dishes to cook surrounded by sweet spices and honey. My hands do the work while my mind wanders off in a cloud of cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and cumin.

A lot of folks and a lot of cultures relate to the New Year more as a time of partying and celebration, and I guess there is something of that tension in Rosh Hashanah. Yes. it is a festival with special delicious sweet foods, a time for family to be together, a time to welcome the New Year with joy and special treats.

More than that though it is a time for stock taking of the soul, for reflection and sincere soul searching. Not for nothing we blow the shofar, the ram's horn, during the long, extended Rosh Hashanah synagogue services. It's stirring, jarring sound is meant to shake us from the reverie of routine, to remind us that the time is now, Rosh Hashanah is already here, wake up, look within you, make the change, seize the day for new beginnings, for being a better person, for repairing the error of your ways.

This is also a time for forgiveness with no questions asked, a time when we are commanded to go to our friends and family and sincerely apologise for the hurt that each one of us has caused, whether unintentionally or in a rash moment of anger or thoughtlessness. For old friends to renew neglected contacts and those who have feuded or grown apart to seek reconciliation and restore friendships.

Not for nothing is this time in the Jewish year called the Days of Awe (Yamim Noraim). Jewish tradition holds that the world was born on Rosh Hashanah. In the Rosh Hashanah prayer service there is the phrase "Today is the birthday of the world, today all the creatures of the world stand in judgement".

Another traditional Rosh Hashanah prayer describes how all the world is judged by God on this day, passing before Him like sheep, one by one. We pray that all will be inscribed in the book of life, that our good deeds will be found to be as numerous as the seeds of a pomegranate, and yet we know, that as people, we are imperfect, we are not good at suppressing that evil inclination which makes us, even the best and holiest of us, do wrong. And so we also pray that if our merits are in short supply, at least we can fall upon divine mercy.

True repentence, prayer and tzedakah (charity and justice, depending on how one translates it) can help. It is not that they pacify God, it is that they make us better people, make us refocus our lives to fulfill the divine commandments to emulate God's mercy and kindness. That, after all is Rosh Hashanah. To make us take a step back from the humdrum routine and improve ourselves, so that we might do our part to make this troubled world a better place.

God judges us, but the free will that He gave us also means that it is up to us as well, and whether we take the experience of Rosh Hashanah and use it to truly start afresh and make a positive difference in the coming year.

Look back over the last year, cast your gaze around the troubled globe and tremble at how much can happen in 12 months. Look forward and tremble for what may yet come.

There is nothing like living in the Middle East to add extra sincerity and dedication in one's prayers, I imagine that living on the slopes of a volcano might induce a similar degree of piety. A glance at the headlines from the last week of the year is enough to focus anyone's prayers.

Hard to believe that a year has gone by since last summer's war and aftermath. For Israelis, more than ever, it was a year of soul searching, of the Winograd inquiry into the how the war was conducted, of questioning whether we have lost our way, or whether Israeli has lost that spark that has saved our nation time and time again.

A year has passed an still on a national level it seems that things have stood still. The same government is still in office, despite Winograd, despite protests. Kassams continue to rain down on Sderot and the north-west Negev and the government continues to make uncertain noises in response. Tension with Syria remains, a little heightened, but last summer wasn't exactly calm. The tension over Iran's intentions remains. Lebanon still teeters on the brink of more civil unrest. Yes sir, the synagogues should be extra full this year.

And yet, and yet, somehow living on the slopes of the volcano we take all this in our stride. We have faith that somehow we'll work our way out, muddle through, however incompetent our government seems, however much the odds seem to be stacked against us.

May we all be inscribed in the book of life, for health, for happiness and for peace.

Shana tova.

The rains are here - Yippee!!!

2006-10-16T08:52:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was the Jewish festival of Shmini Atzeret, the culmination of this month's festive season and the day on which Jews begin praying for rain in the Land of Israel

It was actually rather of striking that the last few days had been a searing sharav, also known as a hamsin, fiercely dry hot weather, characterised by overcast, hazy skies and hot dry winds which bring choking sand and dust in from the southern and eastern deserts. That kind of weather is enough to stir anyone to pray fervently for rain...

As I was walking to synagogue in the early morning that thick heat was still in the air. It was incredibly hot, the dusty air caught in everyone's throats, I couldn't talk or sing without breaking into a coughing fit.

By around midday though, just as the prayers for rain were about to begin a refreshing breeze began to blow and fluffy little white clouds began to drift in, replacing the smokelike stratus clouds of the sharav.

It was quite uncanny, as the prayers for rain got underway the sky clouded over more with each solemn hymn the shaliah tzibur (cantor) intoned, beseeching God for water "Cause the winds to blow and the rain to fall!"

By the time we were walking home you could almost smell the impending rain in the air. As soon as the festival ended that night my husband went and took down our sukkah.

By the early hours of the morning, when I got up to give my baby her next feed I could hear the pitter patter of rain against the windows.This morning (Sunday) we already had some puddles to splash in during a morning walk, squeezed between a medium rain shower and a massively heavy downpour, complete with thunder. On the news this evening the meteorological office announced that the yoreh, the first autumnal rains of the wet season, have officially arrived. Yippee! This is what "Singing in the Rain" was really written about.

In the language of the prayer I would like to wish all the peoples of this region a good rainy season:
For a blessing and not for a curse
For life and not for death
For sustenance and satisfaction and not for starvation and scarcity.
לברכה ולא לקללה
לחיים ולא למוות
לשובע ולא לרזון

Amen!

Onwards to the next muckup

2006-09-14T07:03:00.000+03:00

Nothing stands still here even if it seems as though nothing changes.

The writing has been on the wall for some time now, any pocket of instability in the region from Iraq to Somalia, is going to attract Al-Qaeda and Co, and the chaos, porous borders and feuding factions that have characterised Gaza since Israel pulled out last summer are an ideal recruiting ground for the worst kinds of bloodthirsty extremism.

There is no vacum in the Mid East, either the Israeli government tries to initiate some kind of negotiations with the Hamas led government or someone else will intervene with some new hairbrained scheme that will destablise the region even further.

Meanwhile Kassam rockets still fly over the border from Gaza into Israel, and Israel sort of tries to fight terror from Gaza with a government that is scared of further escalation and an army treading on egg shells to avoid civilian casualties in densely populated areas while fighting an enemy who revels in them.

In other words, same old, same old, and if we're really lucky Olmert will go ahead with unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank too, ignoring the chaos that ensued from the Gaza withdrawal and us folks in central Israel will get kassam rockets coming our way as well.

Sometimes you just got to love being an Israeli civilian.

Did I mention how highly I regard our political leadership? If I wasn't caring for my baby girl I would have spent this summer with the demonstrators camped outside the government in Jerusalem's hot sun demanding that someone take responsibility for this summer's Lebanon debacle before they race on to the next snafu.

Our reserves

2006-08-11T09:43:00.000+03:00

Thursday, August 10 2006

I continue to get worried phone calls and e-mails from friends and family overseas wondering what it’s like to have a war going on a few hours drive from home.

Some seemed to have the impression that something must be happening where I live, after all a war couldn’t be going on near Haifa and life be going on almost as normal a few dozen miles south of there. I apologise to those whom I tersely told to get a map, I wasn’t being rude, just making the point that to date the southernmost Katyusha struck Hadera, about an hour’s drive north of Tel Aviv, and I live south of Tel Aviv. There is no telling what tomorrow may bring – ceasefire or missile – but I can of course only comment on what is going on today.

However far away one is from Lebanon, the emergency “tzav shmoneh” draft notices have touched every part of the country. Reservists from every walk of life and every part of Israel have been called up to fight and in just about every workplace someone is away, serving at the front.

You can usually tell them apart from the regular army, the long hair and extra scruffy uniforms are usually a clear give away. These men are not young boys fresh out of school doing their national service, but mostly married, late twenty, thirty and even forty somethings, with families and jobs, putting their ordinary lives on hold to defend their country.

In normal times these men do a few weeks reserve duty a year, right now they’ve been whipped away for who knows how long – sometimes the draft notice has arrived in the middle of the night, leaving little time for contingency plans at work or home.

The huge number of reservists currently serving up north is reflected in almost every aspect of daily life, from casual conversations with shop assistants to finding out that your doctor or plumber has been called up to empty desks at the office and mounting backlogs as other workers are left to take up the slack.

Today for example I was working on an article about native animals. Calling a local zoologist I was surprised that as he answered his cellphone I could hear the radio chatter of an army patrol in the background. I had reached him on reserve duty.

My neighbour had planned renovations this summer. A couple of days after the builders began work her husband was whisked away by the army, leaving her home alone with a bunch of kids on school vacation to look after, a house being torn apart by workmen and no idea when her husband would be back.

A few of the women I met at my daughter’s jamboree playgroup told similar stories – suddenly alone, some pregnant, others “just” with a bunch of young children, trying to hold their lives together while their husbands go off to war.

Several people from my husband’s workplace have been drafted, including some he works with on a daily basis.

One of them, a 36-year-old father of two, was among the fifteen soldiers killed during Wednesday’s fighting.

The office chartered a bus to take everyone to the funeral. The driver himself felt as though he was on reserve duty. He spent much of the week ferrying firemen around the north, part of the effort to control the forest and brush fires sparked by Hizballah rockets and mortars. The other day as he drove around the corner a Katyusha flew over and landed only metres in front of him, gouging a deep hole in the ground as it planted itself in the pavement.

This evening, after putting the baby to bed I finally caught up with the day’s news. Yet another soldier lost from my town, and a few more from villages in the surrounding area.

Maps aside, the war certainly does touch us all however physically distant we think we are from it.

Video of rocket damage and forest fires in northern Israel

2006-08-09T17:57:00.000+03:00

I'm subscribed to a local JNF (KKL in Hebrew) mailing list which sends me hiking suggestions in different forests every week, in north, south and central Israel.

This week instead of their usual recommendations for northern Israel, they sent a video showing some of the forest fires and destruction caused by Hizballah rockets in northern Israel.

I thought that this video gives some perspectives on the scale of the damage up north. Every time there is a report that a rocket "fell in an open area", this is what it means - in a forest or someone's field or orchard, still causing massive damage. Katyushas fulling in "open areas" have proved lethal to anyone unlucky enough to be caught outdoors when the rockets struck.

This is one of the most scenic parts of Israel, with tourism and agriculture two of the main sources of income, so every forest, field and nature reserve burnt is someone's livelihood gone.

The interviews and commentary are only in Hebrew, but I figured some of the footage might be of interest even to those who don't understand:

http://tinyurl.com/fdvgz

Also see this article in the Jerusalem Post:

http://tinyurl.com/mvt29