What do you tell your children?

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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.