Should Israelis Be Storing Food and Water?

People are talking about war.  Just today when I went to the laundry, a man wearing a kippah stopped me on the street.  He asked me something in Hebrew and I said, "English."  He switched to English and asked me where I was from and wanted to start a conversation.  I wanted a conversation, too.  Unfortunately, his English was very bad and I could only understand a word or two of what he was saying.

He seemed to be proselytizing about Hebron being the burial place of our fathers.  He also seemed to be talking about war, but I couldn't make the connection between war and a burial place.  So I excused myself and continued on with the chore of taking laundry to the laundromat lady.

And it is a chore.  It is a very long walk, which I enjoy.  But the suitcase I'm dragging full of dirty clothes is heavy.  Hot weather makes the suitcase even heavier.  When I get home, I have to pull the suitcase full of clean clothes up three flights of stairs.  Once in the apartment, all I can do is lay listlessly on the floor for about an hour.

I've read that people are readying bomb shelters, and maybe that's true, although I have no idea how one readies a bomb shelter.  I took a walk the other evening and saw that in a nearby apartment building the lights were on in the basement which I presumed to be the bomb shelter.  As far as the bomb shelter goes in our building, it is locked and the entrance is blocked by scrap wood and furniture.  The old couple in Unit 4 safeguard the key.

In response to a potential threat from Syria, the article also stated that gas mask sales are going through the roof.  Even though the other day I saw a man carrying half a dozen boxes of gas masks; I doubt the veracity of the report.  Israeli citizens don't have to purchase a gas mask, they can pick one up for free at the post office.  So why would anyone buy a gas mask they can pick up for free?
Another time, I saw a man bring home a grocery cart full of bottled water.  It took me a few moment to process that he was probably stocking up on water...just in case.  Not a bad idea.  David and I talk about stocking up on food and water, but haven't done so, although I am keeping a large toilet paper supply handy...just in case.

For most Israelis, impending doom is business as usual, and they are cavalier about the whole thing.  The guy who owns the shwarma place where we go for lunch all the time was talking about war. 

"It's going to start after the New Year," he said as casually as talking about the start of football season.

"Israel is going to attack Iran?"

He seemed absolutely certain it will happen, and didn't have too many concerns about it.

"What if the United States, doesn't want or can't help Israel?"

"We can do this without the US."

"What if Russia and China get involved?"

"They won't, they have their own problems.  Syria and Iran mean nothing to them except to buy their weapons, so they welcome war."

Then he stared at me, "But you, you've never been through this before.  You should go back to America for a month or two."

I know an Israeli woman who invites me over for coffee every once in awhile.  She is very old and shriveled and has completely lost her boobs.  Just by looking at her, you can tell she is very tough and strong.  She smokes like a chimney, but seems to be in good health, and climbs about 100 steps back and forth to her apartment every day.

She was born in Palestine before Israel became a nation. She helped build Israel and speaks Arabic, Hebrew, German, Yiddish, English and a teensy bit of French.  I actually may speak more French than she does, but that's not saying much.

Her husband was in the Israeli navy and died about 20 years ago.  He was in a shipwreck in the Bermuda triangle.  I couldn't exactly understand what he was doing in Bermuda rather than the Mediterranean; but according to the woman a huge storm literally tore the ship in half.

I asked her about upcoming war.  She sized me up as a spoiled American who has never seen adversity.  In response to my question, she shrugged.

What could she say?  You live in Israel, this is what it is.

Haircut Israeii Style

Before leaving for Israel, David got his hair cut really, really short.  Seven months later he needed another one.  Well, he needed one earlier than than, but he keeps thinking he's going to let it grow and wear it in a pony tail in back.  However, he's been getting calls for job interviews and most employers don't go for men wearing pony tails, so he decided it was time.

I'm glad, because his hair was at the point where it was too short for a pony tail and so long he was looking kind of like a clown especially when he put on his baseball cap.  His hair would bush out at the sides.  What's so unfair, is he has great hair.  Very little grey, no baldness, and his hair is thick, black and naturally wavy.  My hair is thin and limp and if I stopped dying it -- white as snow.

We're still learning the language, and it will take years to become conversational.  Although, I'm kind of conversational if people will talk really, really slow.  But they don't.  Lately, I've been pretending like I speak Hebrew, which doesn't work so well, because I understand very little and end up looking at whoever is speaking to me with my mouth gaping open and a dazed expression.  At which time they immediately guess I speak English, not Russian, but English.

Well, anyway, there's this shwarma place that David and I visit about once a week.  Shwarma is this wonderful food that I love and David thinks is so-so.  But red meat is expensive here and you have to get it from a butcher and our Hebrew just isn't there yet.  So the only meat available is when we go out either to a real restaurant which runs around 200 shekels or the shwarma place which costs 60 shekels.  Normally shwarma is served with pita bread, but neither of us eats pita, so we get it on a plate.  Shwarma is shaved lamb that has been roasting on a vertical spit, and it comes with hummus and a variety of other vegetables including fried eggplant. Yum!

We frequent a shwarma place walking distance from our apartment.  The owner has a brother who lives in Miami, and lived in the US himself for many years.  He missed Israel too much and came home, but he speaks English very well.  He is very friendly, and every time I come he claims he can tell I'm learning more Hebrew and speaking better.

Well, David asked the shwarma guy where to go for a haircut.  The shwarma guy pointed and said, "Across the street, down the stairs, and on the left is a barber shop.  They're very good. They speak English."

The next day David got up and trekked out for his haircut.  Now you must understand, it was a very hot and humid day.  He was back within half an hour, drenched with sweat, angry and his hair was still attached.  "What is it Israeli's can't do?"  he hollered at me.

Me cowering, "I don't know."


"You know!  We learned this the first day we were here."

Me cowering, "I don't know."

"You know!"

Me no longer cowering.  "I don't know, just tell me."

"Israeli's can't give directions worth a damn."

"Well, did you go down the stairs?"

"Down the stairs?  He didn't say anything about down the stairs."

"Yes he did."

So later, in the afternoon, we set out together in search of the barbershop.  David was correct, even going downstairs, there was no hair cutting place.  The only other place we knew to go was a salon in the mall that would be rather expensive.  We walked in the baking sun to the Grand Canyon Mall.  Some of the prices on the salon services went up to 1700 shekels.  In American dollars that would be $420.  Yikes.  Fortunately, a simple haircut for a guy was only 70 shekels or around $18.

One of the guys took David in the back and washed his hair then I watched while he got sheared.  On our way home David said, "You know how in the United States when they wash your hair it smells really good?  The shampoo they used here smelt like Clorox or something."

Remembering the Israeli brand hair dye I purchased that had a terrible smell, I asked, "Ammonia?  Did it smell like ammonia?"

"Yeah, ammonia.  Can you believe it, they put ammonia in the shampoo here.  That must be to kill some kind of fungus or something."

Israel on High Alert

All you who have been keeping up with the news are aware of what's going on in Syria and the instability there.  When I lived in Colorado and was a member of the Multi-Lingual International Club, I knew a woman named Strasia from Syria.  She was a blond overweight woman who was more interested in her friends from France than me.  She tended to act like nobility and wore really great designer clothes.  You could tell she was moneyed.

One time I asked her about Israel.  I can't remember what she replied, I only remember her normally sweet demeanor changed into sheer hatred.  The last I heard she was back living in Syria.  Now I wonder if she is dead.

Since the bombing in Bulgaria and Syria seems to be falling apart, little things are happening.  Yesterday the Israeli government tested the air raid system.  The alarm went off for a minute, and the siren sounds different than the Shabbat and Memorial Day sirens which are long wails Yrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-for a whole minute-rrrrrrmmm.  The air raid siren is more like a wave or echo YRrrrYRrrrYRrrrYRrrr.  That's good to know.

Maybe they test sirens once a year no matter what.  According to David, for many years in Chicago they tested the air raid sirens every Tuesday at noon.  No on paid attention.  The USSR needed to be sure and attack Chicago on a Tuesday at noon.  In Atlanta they test tornado sirens on a weekly basis.  Since we've been here, the first test of the air raid siren was yesterday.

Other little things are happening.  Like there was no furlough for Israeli soldiers this weekend.  Usually, they get to go home for Shabbat.  El Al the Israeli national airline has tightened their already tight security.  The guard at the grocery store is now has a holstered gun.  Little differences.
Our view of the Mediterranean allows us to see northward toward Syria and Lebanon.  A lot of times we hear fighter pilots overhead but can rarely see the planes.  We figured out most of the planes we hear are patrolling the gas reserves under the sea belonging to Israel and Cyprus.  Today I saw a low flying plane heading north, as in north toward Syria.  Probably just doing reconnaissance...right?

Thursday in Israel is equivalent to Friday in the US.  Thursday is go out and party night, kids walk around the street at midnight laughing and talking loud.  They can do that in Israel because they don't need curfew laws here, because the kids aren't causing a lot of problems and it is safe for kids to be out at night as there is relatively little crime here.  You do have to lock your doors, but only for theft.  Rape and murder are very rare.  So anyway, Thursday nights and Friday mornings are generally quite loud.  Last night and this morning, Haifa was subdued.  Even our Russian girl upstairs who likes to blast American Heavy Metal or as David calls it devil music has been unusually quiet.

We can't listen to Hebrew news, but there has been nothing in the English edition of the Jerusalem Post and other English news outlets about a potential attack:  at least nothing different than the norm.  It's just a sense.

At any rate David told me to be aware, Israel is officially in a heightened state of alert. What he did was make me really scared.  Obviously, I knew something like this could happen even before moving to Israel.  It's one thing to understand something in the abstract and another to experience it first hand.  David said whatever Syria/Lebanon -- possibly spurred on by Hezbollah -- does to Israel, they're going to get it worse.  Small comfort.

Things in Israel not in the US

In Israel many things are very similar to the US, but there are also many differences.  Some of the differences can be startling and some are just really hard to figure out.


Milk in bags.

Although you can purchase milk in a carton, you can also buy milk in bags.  Since I discussed that in another blog, I won't go in detail here.

Unisex bathrooms.

I know I have a bathroom thing.  But usually the only places in the US where men and women share a public toilet is in dirty, filthy gas stations, concerts with porta-potties and really small restaurants in old buildings.  Right?  Where else do women have to go where men go? In Israel, the malls, train and bus stations have sexes peeing separately, but everywhere else it's pretty much share and share alike.  That being the case, I've never seen a urinal here, David says he hasn't seen one either.

While we're on the subject: Children peeing openly in parks and on the sidewalk.

Here's what I've seen in the US, little kids who have to use the bathroom and the mother is saying, "hold it, hold it," and the child is literally dancing around holding it.  They teach their children to use toilets and children learn how to plan accordingly.  In Israel parents just let their kids pee on the sidewalk in public and no one seems to care.  I've even seen grown men opting to use a tree than to be an adult and find a toilet.  We're not in the woods here, we're in civilization.  I don't get it.


Post Office.

In the US you go to the post office to buy stamps and send packages.  Some may have a PO box where they collect mail.  In Israel the post office is so much more.  You go to the post office to buy stamps and send out packages -- sure -- but you also go to the post office to obtain your gas mask
and even pay your bills.  The post office even serves as a bank and you can purchase US dollar or Euro pre-paid cards...sometimes you can even get the mail.  Mail delivery is erratic and seems to come once or twice a week.

Sheets

The reason I know about sheets is because I have to keep buying them for the massage business.  Since we don't have a washing machine that works properly, we have to send out the laundry which takes about a week to get back.  They don't have laundromats here, they have people who do laundry for you and charge about 10 shekels a gram.  We average about 100 shekels a week in laundry.  The massage sheets are only a small portion of that.

The sheets in Israel are weird.  The lower fitted sheet is what you would find in the US except really poorly made and paying about the same price.  The cover sheet is a double thickness.  It's almost like a big pillow case, except without the opening at one end.  There is a small opening, but not big enough to crawl in between the sheets.  What's more, there's these small plastic buttons or snaps at one end of the sheet.  I can't figure out what those are for.  I thought maybe it was to attach to the fitted sheet, but that sheet has no snaps or button holes. 

Since Zach solved the mystery of the milk bags, maybe he will be able to explain about the sheets.

Zona comes pretty close to my name

I learned a new Hebrew word today:  shar-mu-tah.

Currently, and by currently I mean now and forever because work gets done very slowly here, there is some kind of road work going on the street where we live.  They are digging a trench and the mountain is mostly rock so they have a jack-hammer going practically all day.  It's very loud and you can barely think.  The noise starts at 7am, stops for about 30 minutes around noon and continues until 4pm.

I can't have any massage clients over until after 4 when the noise stops.  It's just awful.
One of the workers out there called me about a massage, and I set up a time and he came over looked around, said he would call later and left.  He's the guy we thought at the time was looking for the other kind of massage.

Well, someone keeps calling -- I can't tell if it's the same person or not -- and my Hebrew is so bad, I can't understand what the caller is saying.  I catch ee-su-ee which means massage, and then I am learning to take control of the call by asking in Hebrew do you want a massage yes or no?

When?

What time?

I can do that, but if they start talking and asking questions, I really don't know what they're saying.
So some guy with a private number called and we're making an appointment and he asks something about sha-ma???  It sounded to me like shaman and I wondered if that was a borrowed word that has been included in Hebrew like it has been in English.  Well, I want to be a shaman, which would be so cool, but I think I answered in Hebrew, I don't know.  Or, I'm not sure, I might have said yes, but I'm pretty sure I said I don't know.  Because he wanted to come tomorrow at 10 and David has an interview at the same time and strangers -- especially men -- are not coming into this house unless David is around, we could not set a time and he said he would call later.  We were still uncertain if he wanted a real massage or the other kind.

Well, there's a couple of young girls who live upstairs and sometimes they play their music really loud.  If there's no pounding outside, there's the pounding of the bass from the music they're listening to.  It is so loud it vibrates the floor beneath us and the music is coming from upstairs.  Sometimes this goes on for hours even after the Sabbath horn has sounded and sometimes it starts early in the morning.  Maybe it was out of anger, but I truly was kidding around with David and said if that guy calls back, I can tell him in Hebrew the whores live upstairs.

I looked up the word for whore in my Hebrew/English dictionary and immediately realized that guy wasn't asking if I was a shaman, he was asking if I was a shar-mu-tah, i.e. whore.  Oh no!  And I either answered:  Yes or I don't know.  Either way, it is not good that those guys who are doing road/sewer work right in front of our apartment think I'm a whore.

Oy!

I'm sure this guy is going to call back.  I'm going to say: Ah-nee LO shar-mu-tah!  And I'm practicing how to say: Shame on you in Hebrew.  (Heet-bah-yesh-leh-hkah!)  And bad man, very bad man.  (Eesh rah, eesh rah may-ode, rah may-ode!). 

Hopefully that will end it.

Oh, and there's another word for whore and that is "zona," which is pretty close to my name which was on the signs.  Boy oh boy oh boy.

Massage Therapist in Haifa

When I was in the United States, I studied massage and reflexology at the Colorado School of Reflexology in Denver, and at Harbin in California.  Although I had the training, I never worked professionally as a massage therapist because I wanted to do something more important with my life, but it looks like that's never going to happen.  Moving in Israel and not speaking the language, doing massage therapy would be a perfect way to make an income especially until David found a job.

Also, since I'm older now, and my youthful beauty has been replaced by a big fat stomach the likelihood of getting hired for a "real" job is greatly diminished.

We chose a two bedroom/1 bath apartment, which in Israel is called a three room apartment.  The three rooms are the living room and two bedrooms: the kitchen and bathroom are assumed.  The building is on what deceitfully appears to be a quiet street.  It is quiet in the evenings -- after say midnight -- and all day on Shabbat.  The rest of the time it is pretty noisy with cars, buses and people.  What's weird is the street really isn't that busy, but it is still loud here nonetheless.

We wanted a place with an extra bedroom is so I can do massage.  It is a good room for massage in being away from the street and having a tremendous view of the Mediterranean Sea and the Haifa port.

Purchasing a massage table was another story.  One woman wanted to sell me a table she used for facials.  It was a fine table but not a real massage table, and I wisely decided to keep looking and found a massage table dealer in Tel Aviv.  He made it sound like he had a warehouse full of massage tables and we schlepped to Tel Aviv to purchase to look at it.  His warehouse was a small one-room apartment with about five boxes of new tables.  He demonstrated the table and promised it was sturdy and came with a year guarantee.  The table was made in China so I had my doubts, but we couldn't find a table anywhere else so we bought it.  I've done enough massages to pay for the damn thing and now am in the process of buying sheets and sheets and sheets just in case I actually get busy.  Unfortunately, it creaks and squeaks and gives me concerns about breaking and I really doubt the table has a warranty.

What's more, the dealer said the table was very light-weight and transportable.  He carried it for me to the bus stop, and then it was my turn.  What was he talking about?  That thing weighs a ton.  I almost fell over getting on and off the train with that thing.  Anyway, it's home now and business is coming in dribs and drabs.

The good thing about having clients come to the apartment is you have to keep it clean.  The bad thing about having clients come to the apartment is you have to keep it clean all the time.  Let's face it, I'm not busy enough to schedule clients at my convenience so I have to give massages at their convenience.  In Israel it is a habit to call and want to show up in the next hour or so.  If the place is dirty, David and I have to scramble to get the room ready and the place presentable.  I have this toilet thing and won't do bathrooms.  Ick.  So that's David's job.

Well anyway  David's nephew, Zack, called and wanted to know what we were doing, we knew that meant he was coming for a few days.  David asked me if I wanted him, and I said okay and a couple of hours later Zack arrived.  In spite of Zack's good upbringing, he has turned Orthodox.  That being the case, he can't eat our food or even use our kitchen supplies.  Actually, this is good because I don't have to cook for him.  We have a couch that folds out into a bed, and we were somewhat set for company.

In repayment for our hospitality Zack made a massage flyer for me to post at different areas in town.  I did, and received two phone calls.  When it comes to advertising, there's one little problem.  I don't speak Hebrew well enough to understand what someone is saying.  The first call was blown.  The second call, however, was from a guy who spoke broken English.  With my broken Hebrew and his English we managed to make an appointment.  It was one of those things where he would be there in an hour.

We hadn't really cleaned the place up since Zack left and scurried to make the place presentable and the client was here before I could put sheets on the massage table.  He looked around and said he would call again in an hour and seemed more curious about the bedroom than the massage room.
Uh-oh.  It's a good thing David was home and he said, "That guy wasn't interested in a therapeutic massage, he wanted the other kind."

Oh boy, I'm a whore now.  Well, not really but apparently some people who are reading my sign think so.

Synagogue Intrique

There are two reform synagogues in Haifa, the one we occasionally go to, and the one we never, ever go to.  The reason we never, ever go to the other synagogue is because we don't have a car and the buses don't run on Friday night and we would never find our way home.  Besides, the one we go to has enough intrigue to keep us entertained for years to come.

Did that sound sacrilegious?

If you are above gossip, you do not need to read any further, but if you are interested in rabbis going down in flames read on.  I exaggerate.

First, everything I am telling you is second-hand information from three different sources.  So take the story with a grain of salt.  Here goes.

The rabbi has been at the shul for many years maybe 10, maybe even 20 years and he has never taken a vacation.  He made aliyah in his early twenties and is an American citizen.  As an American citizen it has been easy for him to make many shnoring visits to the USA to beg for money from supporting synagogues.  When we first started going there, almost every Friday night there would be an American contingent visiting from one of the sponsoring synagogues.  I have noticed that recently American groups are not showing up, and now understand why.

Follow the money.

Right after the Second Lebanon War nearly 6 years ago, US money came pouring in.  Pouring in to the tune of millions, yes millions.  During that time, the synagogue spent money like there was no tomorrow and did not plan for the lean years.  They elected a board president who had a contract for a salary of around $100,000 a year for five years whether he worked the full tern or not.  He may or may not have been dipping into the till, but he really let the synagogue down and they somehow managed to get rid of him. During this time the US economy busted and the money stopped flowing.
Because of the president's questionable activities, and the lack of money since they spent the millions like a game-show shopping spree, the board took a long hard look at the books.  It turns out the rabbi bought himself a car using synagogue funds.  There was nothing wrong with that, his contract allowed him to purchase a car, but he took the money from the wrong fund aka misappropriation of funds, and -- according to many on the board -- he bought himself too nice of a car.

Too nice of a car, is relative.  According to one of the sources, it's a nice car, but if the money was flowing in, the board would have wondered why the rabbi didn't buy himself a nicer car.  So they decided to "fire" the rabbi.  They did it in such a way so the rabbi is taking a year long sabbatical where he is being paid half his salary and at the end of the year, he can re-apply for the position.  In the meantime, they have hired a temporary rabbi fresh out of rabbinic school.

But that's not really the problem.  The problem seems to be a large anti-American feeling about the congregation.  For instance, when the now fired rabbi was leading a service, the American flag was up front along with the Israeli flag.  Seems fair, since the only reason this congregation exists is because of American money.  When the rabbi is gone, the American flag is gone.

In fact, the woman whose husband paid for the building with his own funds to the tune of half a million dollars attended one evening.  She spoke to the congregation and gave a brief history of all that her husband (now dead) had done for the synagogue, and basically said:  get your act together or I'm not giving you another dime.

I don't know what that means exactly.  Does that mean they should bring back the rabbi or simply make sure they do a better job of spending their money?

The fired rabbi has done a lot for the promotion of reform Judaism in Haifa.  From his own pocket, he has helped support people in need, and is helping to bring Palestinian and Israeli children together in sporting events in order to promote peace.  I like him, he's a nice guy.  And he has established the relationship with the American synagogues that support the congregation.

For those of you who question -- why doesn't the congregation support itself? -- the answer is not so simple.  First, unlike many of the reform synagogues in the US, the congregants are not wealthy.  There's just not a lot of wealth in Haifa.  Second, orthodox synagogues in Israel are supported by the state, while reform and conservative are not.  This means that as an orthodox shul-goer, yearly dues are not necessary because Israeli tax dollars are paying for the synagogue.  But if you happen to be reform, struggling to make financial ends meet, and you are asked to pay dues to support the synagogue, the natural inclination is to think: orthodox don't have to pay dues, why should I?  That means, if there is going to be a much needed reform movement in Israel it basically has to come from American dollars.  American dollars pretty much built this country anyway.

So here is this synagogue totally dependent on American money and they're throwing out the rabbi that brings it in.  Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

David predicts that a year from now attendance at Friday night services will be close to zero.  He believes the Americans have already gotten wind of what is going on and will send their financial support elsewhere.  Part of their willingness to give was the knowledge that the rabbi was doing outreach to the Palestinians and needy in the community.  Part of their willingness to give was that they were welcomed when bringing groups into Haifa.  And maybe part of their willingness to give was seeing the American flag next to the Israeli flag.  David predicts the American supporters will go elsewhere.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

Update from Israel

David and I have settled into a routine.  Two or three times a week we go to the grocery store.  One time a week I go to drop off a load of laundry and pick up the clean laundry.

David is rigorously working on his schoolwork, and during his spare time trying to find a job.  He has been on a few interviews, but so far nothing.   He has finished his doctorate classwork with straight A's, and now he's ABD (all but dissertation).

I have been trying to find massage clients and have been going to English speaking events in order to get my name out.  So far the events have been fun but they have not garnered me any business.  I am reluctant to put up flyers because of the language issue and the sharmuta thing.

Almost every evening when we are home, we watch You Tube videos.  Most of the video choices involve subjects like UFO's and conspiracies like 9/11 and stuff like that.  Other video choices are lectures that are interesting to listen to, but boring to watch.  NatGeo and History Channel have some compelling selections along with BBC documentaries.  Lately, I found several American films that we can watch on You Tube.

Why pay TV tax when you can watch You Tube tax-free?  Yes, that's right.  Israel has a TV tax for those who own a television.  If you claim not to own a TV, you don't have to pay but you can expect a surprise visit or two from the tax authority to inspect your house for a hidden television set.
Speaking of American films, we went to see The Dictator, which was very funny if you are an American.  The Israeli  audience didn't get the jokes.  They particularly didn't like the one where the dictator -- an avowed enemy of Israel -- was  laughing while claiming to be building nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes only and not for the destruction of Israel.

I can understand why that joke wouldn't strike Israelis as funny -- a little too close to home. But to appreciate the rest of the jokes, you really have to be familiar with American culture and Sasha Cohen's jokes just flew over the head of the natives in the 51st state.

Have you ever bought a BAG of milk?

What the heck are milk-bags?

They're sealed plastic bags that look like double D's.  They contain milk and you can purchase them in any grocery store in Israel and maybe elsewhere in the Middle East and even Europe.
Yep, that's right, instead of a carton of milk, you can buy a bag of milk.

David and I couldn't figure out why anyone would purchase a bag of milk.  I mean how would you store it?  You would have to use it all at once.  I suggested that maybe it was pre-measured milk handy for some kind of recipe that was often used.

David and I don't drink milk anyway.  We're the lactose intolerant sorts, so we remained merely curious.  Fortunately, Zach came by for a visit and answered our milk-bag question.  Apparently you can purchase a milk-bag jug for a few shekels and put the bag in the jug, puncture a hole and pour yourself a glass of milk kind of like wine in a carton.  Since milk-bags are significantly cheaper than milk in cartons it may be worth it for milk drinkers to buy the jug and purchase their milk in bags.  Mystery solved.

5 Things you can't find in Israel: Part 1

1.  Apple Cider Vinegar

Here's the disconcerting news.  David has high blood sugar, and he's kept it in a normal range for many years by shunning sweets, exercising and drinking a shot-glass of apple cider vinegar everyday.  All was well and good until we arrived in Israel and he got off-track and ran out of vinegar.  The doctors here want to put him on diabetes medication.  He started taking it and it made him sick and he is determined to bring his sugar back down naturally.

There's just one problem.  The brand of apple cider vinegar, Braggs, is not available in all of Israel.  We know this for a fact because David called the company and Israeli policies have made it too expensive for Braggs to send their products here.  So surely, there's other apple cider vinegar brands in Israel.  There is indeed apple cider vinegar available in Israel,  but it is clear and filtered.   Braggs has the "mother."

In apple cider vinegar terms the "mother" is not the first half of a dirty word, it is this slimy, gooey stuff that is purported to give vinegar its healing properties.   After using filtered apple cider vinegar, David can attest that it works but not as effectively as vinegar with the mother.  A good friend of mine kindly shipped us a gallon of the Braggs vinegar and we had to pay over $75 for the product and the shipping.  Oy.  I don't think we had to pay customs. 

I am trying to make apple cider vinegar using organic apple juice with a tablespoon of Braggs as a starter.  The mother has formed in the juice and it looks quite disgusting. The juice seems to be slowly turning into vinegar but is still too sweet, and I'm not sure it will work.

Well, all of this has inspired me to make of list of other things Israel doesn't have.

2.  A closet

No, I'm not kidding.  The apartments are built without closets.  You either have to purchase a wardrobe closet, or as in our case get lucky when the previous tenant leaves theirs behind.  Israeli apartments have kitchen cabinets, but again no closet for brooms and mops, speaking of which...

3.  A mop

You know how in the US you can go to Walmart or practically any supermarket or dollar store and pick up one of those things with a sponge at the end of a long pole used to clean tile and linoleum floors?  And you know how most of them are made so you push this lever down and it squeezes the sponge and you don't have to get your hands wet and icky from the dirty water?  Well, in Israel they don't have that type of mop, except for a really crappily-made Chinese version that can only be used once.  They have a weird looking mop that looks more like a windshield wiper blade than an actual mop, and it doesn't work very well as in not all, and basically only pushes water around.  We wondered if you're supposed to clip a rag on the bottom and then remove the rag and wash it afterwards.  We never figured it out.  Fortunately, we found one of those old-fashioned string mops like what a sailor would use to swab the deck.  You do have to wring it out by hand and touch the icky dirty water that turns black and has hair in it even though we mop every week and sweep more often.

4.  Towel racks.

Maybe the higher end homes come with towel racks, and we saw them at the Israeli version of Ace Hardware which was an anchor store in the mall, and is now out of business.  Our apartment and most others we've seen are without towel racks.  Most of the walls are made of brick and the brick has been tiled in both the kitchen and bathroom.  Instead of towel racks, there are a few ever-so-trendy screws extending an inch or so from the wall that you can hang things on. 

5.  Toilet bowl plungers.

There's two types of toilet bowl plungers, the kind that work and the kind that don't.  The plungers that work are heavy duty and have this additional flap around the rim that can get some really good suction action going.  In America you can get both.  Guess which kind you can purchase in Israel -- that's right the ones that don't work. 

So there you go, five things unavailable is Israel and more to come, along with a blog of things I've seen in Israel that you'd never see in US.

National Holocaust Memorial Day

On National Holocaust Memorial Day, at 10am the sirens go off and everyone in Israel comes to a grinding halt for two minutes.  I had a doctor's appointment at 9:36 that very morning.  Although a national holiday, buses run, stores are open, and the doctors are working.  If the appointment didn't take too long David and I could be outside to stand solemnly while the sirens blared.

In the United States, when you go to a clinic, you sign in at the receptionist then sit and wait until a nurse comes out and calls your name.  Then you'll sit in the examination room for a long time and eventually the doctor will come around and see you.  In Israel, you go right up to the examination room.  On the door is a list of names written in Hebrew,  next to the appointment time.  When it's your turn, you just go in.  The problem is figuring out when it's your turn.  As in the US, doctors are always running late, so you can't go by the scheduled appointment time.

When David and I arrived at the clinic, two men were having a discussion.  They weren't fighting, they were just talking really, really loud.  In the US, they would have been escorted out in handcuffs by uniformed officials while everyone else hid under chairs and desks waiting for gunfire.  That's how loud they were, and they were in each others' face.  No one cared -- lah-dee-dah -- except they were so loud one lady did tell them to be a little more quiet.

I went up to the doctor's door to see if my name was even there, and was wondering how I would be able to figure out who was next.  One of the men who had been yelling -- oops, talking really, really loud -- confronted me and said something in Hebrew.  He spoke only Hebrew and I couldn't understand a word he said, but realized he was explaining that my appointment was right after his.  Another woman who spoke English thought she should be in front of me, but it turned out the yelling man was correct, I would go right after him.  I'm always amazed at how much can be understood in spite of not knowing the language.

The appointment didn't take long, and we were out on the street when the sirens went off.   A female Arab with her head covered drove by and she had no intention of stopping, but she was blocked by other cars further ahead gave her no choice.  People came outside of stores and stood on the street, buses stopped, everyone came to a standstill...and this happened everywhere in Israel.

It was a powerful moment.

Here is a link showing highway traffic coming to a halt: http://www.webpronews.com/holocaust-remembrance-day-moving-highway-tribute-israel-2012-04

Earlier this week we went to Jerusalem and visited the Holocaust Museum,Yad Vashem.  Wow.  What an impact.  Anyone who visits this place cannot leave untouched. 

A link about Yah Vashem: http://www.yadvashem.org/
 

Standing in Line and Peeing Outdoors

Before making aliyah, I was told Israeli's didn't know how to stand in line.  When my fiance and I first arrived in Haifa, we didn't notice the line situation because at the bank and post office you took a number, sat and waited for your turn.  At ulpan, during breaks, people queued up nicely for their turn at the toilet.  We did notice that people tended to crowd onto the bus, and push their way in. I can definitely understand why.  First, is to get a seat.  Second, is to be seated before the driver thrusts forward as if he's driving a race car; so that anyone who has not braced themselves is tossed unceremoniously across the length of the bus. 

At the grocery store, however, it has indeed become apparent Israeli's do NOT have line etiquette or common sense.  Here's an example, we were at the produce market picking up some oranges and corn on the cob.  The store is very crowded, not so much with people, just because it is small and narrow.  The store offers supermarket size shopping carts, but there is not enough room in the aisles for one cart and two people.  When I go there during the day, the customers line up in such a way where the aisles are blocked but the egress is open.  Once customers have finished paying, they can push the buggy outside, take their packages and go.

When my fiance and I were at the store the other evening, the line situation had changed.  Customers  were lined up so the egress was blocked by people standing in line with their buggies meaning no one could get in, and after the customer had paid couldn't get out.  Everyone would have to stand back to make room for the customer to exit the store.  Except they wouldn't do that, they squeezed tighter so the person who just paid had to go around the entire length of the store to another egress which was also blocked by people standing in line.

Stupid me, I didn't realize the line situation had changed and went to stand in line like how they do it during the day, only to be greeted by people staring me down with dirty looks because they assumed I was trying to cut in.  When I figured out where end of the evening line was, my fiance and I were talking about the line situation and how it didn't make sense.  Although I was speaking in English, the guy in front of me must have realized what I was saying was not exactly flattering and he gave me one of those, "I'll kill you with my evil glare," looks.   The whole thing was rather disconcerting.

I tell you, you notice something and then all of a sudden you see it everywhere.  The other day, I had seen a mother allowing her little girl to pee in the park in front of everyone: boys, girls, dirty old men. Well, when we were in Jerusalem, I saw a grown man taking a pee outdoors as casual as if in the privacy of his home.  The thing is, he wasn't peeing in a park, he was peeing by some shrubbery at the mall.  Another time we saw a mother supervising as her little boy sprayed the sidewalk.  That evening, sure enough, as we were walking home through the park there was yet another little girl peeing in the garden, her father helping her pull her pants back up. 

Anyway, we needed a few more groceries and stopped at the Super-sol we call Emu.  Super-sol is a grocery chain that can be found everywhere in Haifa.  The ones located at the malls are quite large -- and by American standards would be considered a regular size grocery store -- while others like the one near our apartment, are rather small.  We call the Super-sol by our house Emu because we inadvertently bought roast emu thinking it was chicken.  Only after getting it home and seeing the size of the "chicken" wings, did we realize that was no chicken.  Ever since we have been very careful to ascertain that chicken is actually chicken.

At the Super-sol people will try and cut in line.  They'll do that by inching their cart in front of yours.  You really have to stand your ground or lose your place.  Here's the odd thing, though.  Someone will be in line, leave their cart and be gone for a long time, and come back and expect to still have their place.  My fiance and I are nice, we'll let people back in.

Now that we have been here longer, we have noticed that even in places where you take a number instead of standing in line, you have to be careful to hold your place.  When you're number comes up, you better be at the cashier or else somebody else will move in and claim your spot.  That happened to my fiance a couple of times.  The first time he didn't know what was happening, but the second time someone tried that, he demanded his rightful place.  When in Israel...

Passover in the Holy Lands or more specifically Haifa: Part 2

In all other areas outside of Israel, Pesach is celebrated for 8 days, in Israel it is only 7.  For some reason the State of Israel, has declared the last day of Pesach as a national and religious holiday.  Like on the Sabbath, all stores, government offices, banks and other businesses are closed.  Unlike Sabbath in Haifa, the buses do not run.

We knew that everything was going to be shut down on Friday -- and this is kind of my fault -- because on Thursday I wanted one last gluten-free pizza available at the mall.  Well, David hates the Grand Canyon mall -- the old, crappy one we can walk to in about 20 minutes -- so we decided to take the bus to the Haifa mall which is indeed much nicer than the Grand Canyon mall.  For some odd reason, the Haifa mall doesn't have a food court, thus no kosher pizza, all it has is a few rather expensive sit-down restaurants.  I wanted my pizza.  So we got back on the bus and traveled literally across town to the CineMall, where the movie theaters are, and the only place in Haifa that shows American films.

The pizza place wasn't open, so we settled for a deli and I had a potato bread sandwich.  Since we were at the movie mall anyway, we decided to catch a flick and then after the matinee we would go to the grocery store and stock up for two days of food.

We saw Hunger Games, which is quite good and I recommend it.  However, because it is a trilogy, at the end you really don't understand what's going on.  I'm sure in Hunger Games II we'll learn more, and the film will leave us with bated breath for Hunger Games III where all is explained.

At any rate, we timed our arrival perfectly in that the movie would be starting in a few minutes.  When the film was over and we were walking back through the mall, David noticed the stores were closed.  It was only 4:30 in the afternoon.

When we got to the bus stop, no one was waiting for the bus.  Uh-oh.  We completely forgot that holidays officially begin the evening before the actual day.  In Israel, that means everything shuts down in the middle of the afternoon, around 3:00.

When we were leaving some Arabs had asked us in Hebrew if we wanted a cab.  When we realized there was no bus forthcoming, we shuffled back and asked how much it would be to go to Neve Shanaan.  A hundred shekels!  We didn't have much to negotiate with, but bartered it down to 80.  David had a 200 shekel note and I had 100 shekels, so I gave him the 100, so he could deal with the taxi driver and make change.  But the taxi driver got lost and had to backtrack and got mad at us like it was our fault he didn't know the city and insisted we pay the full 100 shekels.  How's that for customer service, you make a mistake and force the customer to pay?

We should have hitchhiked home.  Hitchhiking is actually considered a reasonable mode of transportation in Israel.  There are certain precautions you should take, however.  For instance, if you are going to hitchhike, be sure and  bring water because it can get really hot in the summer.  Bring water?  Not a gun?  Next time, we'll try the hitchhiking instead of the taxi-driver gouging the customer route.   If we had known about hitchhiking we could have gone to the community seder.  Live and learn.

Of course, the grocery stores were closed and we couldn't stock up for the weekend.  There was enough food around the apartment to eat, just not enough food of what you would actually want to eat.  Man cannot live on popcorn and matzah alone.  There was enough food for a big salad for dinner, and I had already decided to start fasting again one day a week maybe until Yom Kippur. 

On Friday I took a little walk.  As I was going through the park at little girl and her mother made a commotion.  I watched as the mother took the little girls pants down and held her up to pee on the grass in front of boys, girls, old men and me.  It was all I could do not to stop and stare. 

On the Sabbath, we went to schul and afterwards found that secular non-kosher restaurants were open for lunch.  We went to Giraffe which is an Asian-fusion restaurant and has the only Thai food in town.  I broke my fast and David had a real meal.  On Sunday morning, we were completely out of food and went to the market.  The grocery store was open, but the shelves were not stocked with staples that were removed as being non-kosher for Pesach.  Someone told me there had been a rush for bread early that morning which could also explain the bare shelves.

And that was our first Passover in the Holy Lands.

Passover in the Holy Lands or more specifically Haifa: Part 1

The bad news is we didn't get to go to a seder.  The synagogues apparently don't do congregational sedars here:  they don't have to, since practically everybody here is Jewish and know how to do their own sedars.  Two families who would have invited us -- at least they said they would -- were going out of town.   We could have gone to a community seder at the Technion, but the buses wouldn't have been running by the time the seder was over and there was no guarantee someone would drive us home.  Trekking home from the Technion would have been a very long walk. Rather than chance it, we didn't go to a seder.  Boo-hoo.

Oh well.  Next year in Jerusalem.

A couple of weeks before Pesach, you could walk around and see that people were doing intensive spring cleaning.  The day before Pesach in several neighborhoods there were men with curls hovering over big tin barrels with smoke coming out.  David explained they were burning chometz, or leavened bread. 

On the first day of Pesach, David noticed that all the insects were out.  He noticed the bugs because he was bit around 15 times.  I maybe got one or two bites and barely noticed.  David was afraid of an allergic reaction, and his arm looks like the beginning of leprosy, it looks horrible.  For some reason bugs of all types like to eat him.

Because of the bug attack, David remarked that the Jewish religion is really meant to be practiced in Israel.  He suspects Pesach and the arrival of bugs is no coincidence.  Perhaps these bugs don't go after unleavened bread, thus the burning of all the chometz, and he things that the bugs will die down when Pesach is over.  In the meantime, David is mad at Haifa for not having any mosquito abatement and thinks it's a wonder we all don't come down with some bizarre or exotic disease like malaria or e-bola. 

For kids, the week of Pesach is like spring break in the US, except I don't think they have "Girls Gone Wild" on any Haifa beaches.  The stores are open and it is business as usual, kind of.  The kosher grocery stores have put plastic sheeting over the foods not kosher for Pesach.   With so many people off this week, the malls were exceptionally crowded.  The mall food courts were open and serving food from McDonalds, Chinese, and pizza -- all kosher for Pesach.  That's right, McDonalds hamburgers are served sans cheese on a potato flour bun that is yellow in color.  Pizza is also made with potato flour and served with cheese but no meat.  For me, the gluten intolerant, Pesach has been heaven.  I've eaten pizza almost every day.  I'm running amok eating foods that normally contain gluten and are unavailable or more expensive the rest of the year.

These restaurants prove that if there is a demand they can serve gluten-free food.  So gluten intolerants need to unite and demand that restaurant chains make available gluten-free breads and pastries at reasonable prices.

Here's the bad thing though, pizza, buns, pastas, etc. made with gluten-free flour looses some of its flavor.  My theory is many of today's foods have been formulated to compliment the flavor of wheat flour.  Potato flour with the same ingredients just doesn't go as well.  Think of it like this:  a baked potato loaded with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese with black olives and mushrooms.  Doesn't sound so good, so potato bread would have a similar effect.  Now think of a potato bread sandwich loaded with roast beef and gravy, sounds good right -- that's what goes with potatoes.  So our culinary delights such as pizza have been concocted to go with wheat flour and wheat flour alone.

Have you ever heard of a hyrax?

Haifa is full of paths and shortcuts for walkers.  We live in a neighborhood called Neve Shaanan, which is handy for catching a bus, but not for walking paths.  At least not yet.  I am in the process of seeking out hidden shortcuts to make it more feasible to walk home from schul and possibly even take stairs down the mountain into Hadar. 

Hadar is the central neighborhood in Haifa, is quite crowded and busy, and would be considered a high-crime neighborhood.  High-crime in that you need to lock your doors when you leave your house:  not high-crime in terms of drugs, murder, and gangs.  It is generally considered safe to walk alone at night even if you are female.  Going to Hadar is kind of like going to Tijuana, Mexico or Chinatown in San Francisco: there's a lot of shops hawking the same type of goods from store to store.  But Hadar is kind of a neat area and has some interesting coffee shops and cheap street food.


So I'm looking for stairs down the mountain hoping to reach Hadar and found some steep narrow stairs that wind down the mountain.  I followed them down around a 100 feet or so, only to have them dead-end and I huffed and puffed my way back up telling myself stair-climbing is very good exercise.  Once back on the street, instead of going back home, I continued my shortcut search and shortly came upon some more steps and down I went.  A few cats stared at me like I was crazy, apparently humans don't use these steps and low and behold another dead end. 

Did I learn my lesson?  Nope, I found yet another stairway and went down those coming to another dead end mid-way down the mountain.  Someone had thrown out a old couch on the side of the hill, and I saw several animals huddled together.  All but two scattered when they saw me.

They were about the size of cats, but their ears were too little and their faces more rat-like.  In fact, I wondered if I had stumbled upon huge Israeli rats.  From what I could tell, they didn't have much of a tail, and their fur seemed soft.  I stared and they stared, then one ran away and the other just hung around. 

Back up the stairs, I had to stop and rest and admire a tree in bloom with bright red flowers that looked like little feathers clumped together.  Once home I described to David the animal I saw.  We researched it on-line and at first thought it was a hedgehog.  But hedgehogs have spines rather than soft fur and I could have sworn the animals I saw were furry rather than spiny.  What's more the animals scattered and hedgehogs, rather than run, tend to curl up in tight balls.  Then I found a description and photograph of the animals I saw, and they are called hyraxes.   You can check them out for yourself at http://www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/hyrax. 

Almost every night as I try to go to sleep, I hear a really loud whistle, like somebody is whistling for their dog or something.   In my imagination it is bad guys whistling an all-clear for whatever clandestine activity they might be up to.  But then it happens three or four times.  Well, apparently hyraxes make whistle noises and that's what I've been hearing.  How cool is that?

Jerusalem, Oh Jerusalem

After being in Israel for nearly three months, we finally left Haifa and took a day-trip to Jerusalem.  David's nephew -- heretofore called Zach since he didn't give me permission to use his real name -- is studying at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem for six months.  It is always a delight to spend time with Zach and he gave us a walking tour of Jerusalem.

First of all, there are two Jerusalem's, sort of.  Modern Jerusalem is equivalent to cities in the United States, complete with malls of grandeur and a tribute to marketing and capitalism.  The Jerusalem mall where we met Zach could have been Any Mall USA and was not like the functional, drably-lit indoor shopping centers found in Haifa.  Many of the houses, apartments and other buildings are built on and along the hills and the city is quite beautiful.  In fact, Jerusalem is one of the most beautiful cities I have been to.  Zach asked me just how many major cities I've visited.  That's hard to say exactly, most are in the US, and I would gage the number to be around 30.  

En route, the train was delayed for about 30 minutes.  We had to back up and wait at the station in the town where the Haredi were spitting on Jewish girls for not dressing modestly enough.  Although my arms and legs were covered, I was a bit nervous.  Fortunately, no one spit on me.

When we arrived in J. it was well past lunch time.  We met Zach at the mall, and instead of partaking in some of Jerusalem's better food offerings, we ate in the food court in the mall.  Zach opted for MacDonald's since it was one of the 30% that are kosher.  While we were eating, a nice old woman came by with a plastic cup.  I didn't understand what she wanted, but Zach gave her a few shekels and she went away.  

Zach said he was helping the needy, i.e. tzadakah, David called the old woman a schnorer, although he admitted she was nice about it.  Then, or as they say in Hebrew, ah-har-chok (I'm not going to tell you how I remember that word) another schnorer came by wanting money.  She even had a little brochure.  When we didn't give her any money, she took her brochure back with a huff.

The night before going to Jerusalem I was kind of worried about riding the city bus -- with the potential for bombings, etc. Nevertheless, once there, I got onto buses and trains without a second thought.  Two days later, David read me a news story about how a female Israeli soldier was stabbed by a Palestinian on the same train-line we rode.  

In Haifa, we have a bus pass that is good for buses within the city.  In other words, we wouldn't be able to use the pass to take a bus from Haifa to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, we can only ride around in Haifa.  Well, the same bus system is used throughout Israel, and so we tried our pass on the Jerusalem city bus and it worked.  We were given a transfer, and on the city-train a transit official was checking for passes.  

Well, maybe he saw something on the transfer that indicated Haifa instead of Jerusalem, and he demanded to see David's ID.  He took the ID and kept it for almost the entire ride. While he had the ID, it was kind of scary because we had no idea what was going on or even why he wanted it in the first place. Were we going to be kicked off the train? Arrested?  Forced to pay 6.60 shekels (around $1.75) for the fare?   The trip took maybe 15 minutes, and the security official held onto the ID almost the entire time.  After making several phone calls, presumably to verify David's veracity, the ID was returned and we proceeded toward Old Jerusalem.  

Old Jerusalem is a walled city, a citadel.  The outer wall was destroyed and later rebuilt by the Ottomans so is only 500 years old, young compared to many of the inner walls of which might be 2000 years or older.  There are parts of Old J. that are drivable, as in one-way only and be prepared to go about 5mph.  Most of Old J. must be walked as the streets are too narrow and since Jerusalem is built on hills, steps to go up and down.  All the roads in Old J. are paved with rectangular tiles, the same off-white/light-tan materials of which the buildings are constructed.  The tiled streets are smooth and well-worn:  a lot of traffic goes through Old J.  Throughout Old J. are plenty of shops, street venders, and small food markets.

There are four quarters to Old J:  Armenian, Jewish, Arab and Christian, although Armenians are Christians too (Eastern Orthodox).

As we entered the archway of Old J., there were a couple of people begging or schnoring. We found ourselves in the Armenian sector, and I was amazed at how much of a tourist trap Old J. really is.  I mean it is tourist trap to the max.  We wandered through the Armenian sector down alleyways and side streets into the Jewish Quarter and went to the Western Wall.  Where else?

Going down the steps to the Wall we came upon even more schnorers.  One guy came up to David and started praying in his ear, all in Hebrew of course.  I watched the guy as he was whispering his prayer to David, and it seemed to me it was all a big joke to rip-off tourists.  For all we know instead of prayers, the guy was hurling insults and saying vulgarities.  Finished with the prayer, he expected payment.  David gave him a few shekels and the guy was not pleased, but didn't kick him or anything like that.  

Having seen pictures of the Wall, it looked pretty much like the photographs.  We had to go through a security check and found ourselves in a huge courtyard.  I went to the female side and David and Zach went to the male side.  The female side was really crowded and there were hundreds of orthodox women praying and reading at the Wall.  

I'm sorry to say, the Wall didn't feel like a Holy Place to me, it felt like a tourist spot.  When I was at the wall, I looked up hoping to see G-d, and saw a beautiful blue sky.  I didn't feel closer to G-d at the wall, of course, feeling close or connected to G-d is something I never feel and have never felt.  I'm so jealous of those people who have that connection, but having never felt it am a bit skeptical about whatever it is they claim to be feeling.  

Never mind.

So after leaving the wall, we walked around Old J.  This ancient city is so cool.  There's tunnels and interesting paths...it's hard to describe, but it is really neat.  Individual quarters are not marked, so you don't know when you're leaving the Armenian Quarter and entered the Jewish.  Nevertheless, we hit all the Quarters, even the Arab.

When we were in the Arab Quarter a little boy saw Zach and ran up to him and went, "R-rr-ow!"  I thought he was being a cute, a rambunctious kid.  Neither Zach nor the boy's father thought it was cute.  Then I realized the reason the boy did that is because he is Palestinian and being taught Jews are bad, evil, and need to be killed.  David told me that same kid threw a rock at us but missed.  I was so entranced with Old J.,  I didn't notice any tensions at all in the Arab section.  But David said he did and was uncomfortable there.

Here's what David didn't like about Jerusalem:  the schnoring.

Here's what I didn't like about Jerusalem:  nothing.  Okay, it does snow and get really cold in Jerusalem, and I don't like that, but the weather was fine the day we came.  I liked everything about the city. The city has it all!  If Israel is the center of religious/political controversy and global unrest, Jerusalem is the hub.  

Zach, if you're reading this, here are some of the cities I've been in:  Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, London, Edinburgh, New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, New Orleans, Denver, Phoenix, Washington DC, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Tijuana, Belize City, Matamoros, Dallas, Houston, Amarillo, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City, Portland, San Jose, Oakland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Mazatlan, Nashville, Cleveland, Vancouver, Baltimore, and your home town of Louisville to name a few.  

 

Is there humor in the Middle East?

Maybe there's nothing to laugh about here, after all, last night a terrorist group located in the Gaza strip fired several bombs at Israel.  Fortunately, nothing hit.

Okay, little secret, I have dream of being a stand-up comic.  There's just one problem:  I'm not funny.

But I try to be, and so I figured out how to say in Hebrew, "I understand zero Hebrew. " Not funny, but kind-of creative right?  I made that statement to a man who was asking where I was from blah, blah, blah and he looked at me like he didn't understand what the hell I was talking about.  Okay, so that line is not going to work.

It is common to explain to native Hebrew speakers that we are "olim hadasheem," i.e. new immigrants.  Once explained, Israelis become very kind and understanding.  Well, David and I are blundering through this new culture with very little help.  We are figuring things out by trial and error, mostly error.

So we've started calling ourselves in a humorous way, stupid olim.  I learned how to say, "we are stupid olim," in Hebrew and tried that line out on a lady.  She didn't even crack a smile, just furrowed her brow and looked confused.  I guess she didn't understand the idea of self-deprecation as humor.

My question is, what is funny to Israelis?

The other day we had the internet service installer come over, and he spoke English quite well.  For the record, except in certain areas, DSL is the only method available to get online.  I asked him, "Do Israelis have a sense of humor?  Do they tell jokes and laugh."

He said, "Yes absolutely."

I said, "I rarely even see Israelis smile, and I've never heard a laugh."

And he said, "Well, they're all depressed."

"Because of the situation with their neighbors?"

"No, not just that, because they're in Israel."

Now see that was funny.

Nothing is Free

We were given a free washing machine through the conservative synagogue, and were elated as we are currently paying around 100-shekels a week to have our laundry done.  Self-service laundromats where you put quarters into machines to wash and dry your clothes are either completely unavailable here or very rare.  Instead, the laundromat is a person who runs a shop with a washing machine and dryer and she does the laundry for you and gives it back three or four days later smelling wonderful and professionally folded.

My laundromat lady is really nice.  She is from Russia and doesn't speak a word of English.  Somehow with my 10 words of Hebrew, we've figured out how to complete laundry transactions.  She knows me as Gana.  I love having my clothes professionally laundered, but it is expensive, and I can't afford to have the sheets and blankets cleaned as often as I would prefer.

So the washing machine was a G-d-send.  Except nothing is free.

Our apartment has a little nook for a washing machine.  There is a one-hose attachment  for the incoming water, and a hole in the wall leading to the bathroom so the water can drain out into the bathtub.  Ahhh, modern conveniences.

I had concerns about the washing machine working.  It does work.  In fact, it works, and works, and works and never stops.  We did a trial load of sheets, knowing I could hang them on the clothesline and they would dry in a few hours.  I started the machine at 9am and at 11am, it was still going through a wash cycle.  We manually made it go into the spin cycle and finally it stopped.

After two hours of being washed, the sheets came out really clean.  I hung them on the clothesline outside the bedroom window to dry.  For the record, when you're on the ground hanging clothes on a clothesline it is a rather pleasant activity.  When you're leaning out of a 3rd floor window of a building built alongside a mountain so the drop is even greater than three stories, hanging out clothes is really hard...and kind of scary.  I'm rather short and really had to reach out there.

When we originally plugged in the washing machine -- and that's all we did, we didn't turn it on, we didn't do anything else, we just plugged in the washing machine -- the electricity in the apartment went off.  The act of plugging in the washing machine blew the circuit breaker.  Then after doing the sheets and finally making the machine stop, we left it plugged in.  Later that day we started having electrical surges.  So we unplugged the washing machine and the electrical surges have stopped.

How could this even be happening??  This doesn't seem possible in terms of physics to have an appliance plugged in the appropriate outlet, not even in use, and yet it causes electrical surges.  Is this Israeli appliance engineering at its worst or crappy wiring?

The Conservative Synagogue

There is a conservative synagogue in Haifa that really reaches out to help the English-speaking olim. Russian olim have all kinds of help but everyone else -- not so much.  David figured out why the Russians are spoiled over all other olim and that is because many of the Russians coming over have technical expertise which Israel wants to take advantage of.  Israel already benefits from US technology, but it is always good to know about the technology from countries that support your enemy.  Thus Russians get the royal treatment.

Olim like David and I, have to rely on people like Rabbi Dubi, as in the Doobie Brothers, as in Scooby-Doo Where are You.  That's really his name.  He is the Rabbi at a American-style conservative synagogue where women are equal and play a role in the 3-hour Saturday morning service.  He has really helped us a lot and now we're obligated to become members of the synagogue and when we start making money, donate to the cause -- and we hope to do that someday.  

Here's some things Rabbi Dooby and his secretary have helped with:  translating our phone bill, translating the lease, translating other things, helping get us a washing machine and bed.  Stuff like that.

We have learned that you do not call and set an appointment to see the rabbi, like you would in an American synagogue.  You just show up.  If someone is there, they will help.  If they're not there, come again some other time.

We were hunting down Rabbi Dubi the other day and he wasn't around.  What we thought was a bus ride for nothing turned out to be serendipity.  We met a woman who moved to Israel 62 years ago.  She was from France and said after helping build the nation was still considered olim.  She said when she arrived, Haifa was all forest.  She also had nothing good to say about Arabs or Obama.

There was a black guy who was working on a computer and he spoke English perfectly.  Like an idiot I said, "Oh, are you Ethiopian?"  He took it in stride and was very kind, but turned out to be American olim and 3-years in Israel with a Obama-like background his mother being Jewish.

I asked if he was Ethiopian because I am fascinated with their story and want to talk to them about their experiences in Ethiopia and moving to Israel.  In Ethiopia, of all places, they discovered blacks practicing the religion very similar to how it is practiced everywhere else.  They did DNA and found Jewish genes, and the Israeli government began the process of bringing them out of 3rd-world poverty into 2nd-world poverty which must seem like science fiction and immense wealth to people who were without electricity and running water.  They seem to be adapting nicely.

Here's the weird thing, the Ethiopian Jews look more Jewish than the Russian Jews.  David and I were walking and passed by an Ethiopian Jew kvetching at his wife.  Who needs DNA, the kvetching said it all.

Then we met a man who has the same first name as I do, except the J is pronounced with a Y-sound.  His wife is from the Philippines and they have a 15-year old daughter.  They used to live in California and moved to Israel 5-months ago.  Their experiences mirrored ours.  In fact, they stayed in the same temporary housing we did!  The exact same unit and all she could remember was the bad smell coming out of the toilet.  Yeah, I guess I forgot to blog about that, but I kept sprinkling Ajax down there and that helped with the odor. 

They had the same project coordinator as we did, and she pulled the same thing with them as she did us.  When we first arrived, she was like don't worry about finding a place, then it was hurry up and move.  Rabbi Dubi found them a place and is helping them get furniture too.  The wife is cleaning houses, Rabbi Dubi being one of her clients.  

Here's the weird thing.  The cat that I fed, they fed too.  And just like what happened to me, two little girls came over and claimed the cat belonged to them.

Like everyone else who has gone to Ulpan, they still don't know much Hebrew and are one month from graduating.  After Level 1 of Pimsleur, we are about as comfortable as they are in speaking.  David and I are seriously debating whether or not to do Ulpan or simply learn Hebrew ourselves.  We met an English speaking immigrant who works at the grocery store and she speaks Hebrew fluently and she never went to Ulpan.  

However, Ulpan is free to olim and it seems a shame to pass on an educational opportunity.  Since we have a year to enroll, we're going to continue with Pimsleur and see how well we are doing with the language in May or June.  At that time, if we think Ulpan will enhance what we already know we'll start it then.

Correct Change or Else!

Here's what you see in the United States every now and then, a penny or a quarter on the ground.  Here's what you see in Israel, a lot of litter for the Ethiopian Jews to clean up but never a shekel or even a argot.

United States bills and coins are pretty straight forward:  you have your bills with the smallest being one dollar, and you have your coinage the smallest component being the penny.  Easy.

Instead of the dollar, Israel uses the shekel.  Like the dollar, the shekel will break down into smaller components.  You have the half shekel and the argot.  An argot is 1/10th of a shekel.  In other words 10 argot make up one shekel.  There's a small problem with this.

Israel has a 16% value-add or sales tax on all merchandise.  However, unlike in the US, the tax is not tagged on at the point of sale the tax is included in the price.  So if something is 50-shekels, that's how much you will pay, not 50 plus 16%.  Like in the US, instead of pricing something at an even $10, it will be priced at $9.99.  Fresh produce in particular will be priced at something like 4.99 per pound and then you have a pound an some ounces so the prices comes to 5.78.  Well, there is no coinage to give exact change for odd amounts.  If I hand over 6 shekels the cashier would only give back two argot, and I short 2/100's of a shekel.  Not a big deal, but over time it adds up in favor of the stores.  

Unlike the US dollar bill, the shekel itself is a coin about the size of a dime.  The worthless half-shekel and argot are bigger coins than the shekel.  The smallest bill is worth 20-shekels and other bills come in denominations of 50, 100, and 200.  Other coins are the 2, 5 and 10-shekel coins.  

Cashiers, for some reason hate to give change.  They hate it.  At the grocery some they get really irritated when he presents a bill and he doesn't have correct change.  So David always gives them bills so they have to make change.

What's the big deal about making change?  When we went to Tel Aviv, the round-trip ticket cost 110-shekels.  He handed the cashier a 200, and she wanted something else, and he shook his head.  She pulled out the 90-shekels in change, saw that he had a 20-shekel bill.  Made him give her the 20 so she could put the 90-shekels back and give him a 100-shekel bill and a 10-shekel coin.  

Go figure.

Police, Water, Shabbat,

Our new home is wonderful, sort-of.  It's on the third floor, but in Israel they call it the second floor because the first floor is not counted as a floor.  In the US it would be called a 2bed/1bath.  In Israel it's called a 3-room apartment.  The bathroom consists of a bathtub with shower and a sink, and the toilet is in its own private room -- hence the term "water closet."  

From the second bedroom and the kitchen we have a view of the Mediterranean and the Haifa port.  As much as I love water, David actually enjoys looking out the window more.  He keeps track of everything going on at the dock: how many ships are in, if they are unloading, which direction they come in and leave... Oy.  When we first moved in David commented we would be able to watch the bombs coming in from both Hamas and Hezbollah.  I was like, "Cool!  Oh wait, not cool."

The apartment does have its problems, they're called really bad leaks.  These are not small drip-at-the-sink leaks, these are seep-through-the-wall leaks.   Every time we take a shower a huge pond forms in the bathroom and we cannot find where the water is coming from.  Another leak is in the kitchen.  Whenever we turn on the kitchen faucet, water somehow seeps onto the counter.  Then today, the drain under the sink came undone and we have to capture the waste water in a bucket.  

Here's the other thing, most Israel windows don't have screens in the American sense.  They have black-out screens that are nice when in comes to sleeping in pitch black.  But they don't have open-the-window-and-keep-the-bugs-and-birds-out screens.  I asked the landlord about opening windows in the summer and he said open the windows.  I questioned him further about birds and bugs flying in, and he said Israeli birds know not to fly in the apartments.  We'll see about that.  I've heard from other sources that opening windows lets in mosquitos and it is terrible.  

So what we did -- which was stupid and we immediately regretted it -- instead of taking the bucket full of water that drained through the broken pipe in the sink and pouring it down the toilet or tub, we threw it out the window.  We forgot that people hang their freshly-washed clothes on clotheslines outside the screeen-less windows and realized we dumped dirty waste water on the laundry of the people who live below us.  If they come storming up the stairs and pounding on our door, we're denying everything.

With the problem of the broken drain in the sink, I happened to notice that the water line to the house is causally draped along the outside wall below our kitchen window.  It is black plastic tubing that vibrates every time you turn on the faucet.

At our temporary quarters at regular intervals during the day, we heard some kind of tune being played.  We eventually realized instead of a buzzer or yelling, it was a call to the boys at the Haredi school to come in from recess.   Although we are in the same neighborhood, we are far away from the Haredi and don't see them so much.  Now, however, on Friday evenings we can hear something that sounds like a combination of a shofar and siren that apparently reminds everyone that Shabbat has started.  It could also be a Muslim call for prayer, but since it only sounds on Friday at sunset, we're pretty sure its the signal to light the candles.

David keeps telling me I need to blog about the police.  In the United States, when a cop flashes their lights it means to pull over.  The Israeli police drive around with their lights consistently flashing.  People just ignore it.  I don't know what cops do when they want you to pull over.  I did see a cop behind a motor vehicle that had stopped in the street to let someone out at the mall -- the someone had difficulty walking.  The cop had a megaphone or something and was shouting at the car to move.  

Language Barriers and Peace in the Middle East

Haifa hosts two reform synagogues:  there's the one we go to and the one we don't.  Orthodox synagogues are supported by the Israeli tax dollar, but reform and conservative synagogues have to make their own way.  The reform synagogue, Or-Hadash, is supported almost entirely upon American donations, and there are several olim who are members, though not necessarily from the US.

The synagogue does not have heat.  Since energy is very costly in Israel -- and by Russian, Colorado, Canadian, and Arctic standards, Haifa never gets cold -- a heating system would be an expensive non-necessity.  During services, I sit and freeze and wonder if they could collect some of this cold and use it to cool the building in the summer.  Other than that, it is a beautiful building and a tribute to American dollars.

Unlike many reform shuls in the US, the people there are very friendly.  Many of them, including the rabbi, are olim from all over the globe:  Chili, Brazil, Argentina, Norway and the USA.  The shul even has congregants who were born and bred in Israel.  One such lady named, Katrina (not her real name), is a former ballerina and current teaches ballet.  She is very outgoing and speaks English quite well.  She might be the synagogue's yenta as she claims to have successfully matched a single female from England with another friend of hers.

Katrina has been nothing but kind, however, she does have a bias against the English language.  Bias toward one's own native tongue is natural; however, Katrina is quick to point out that English doesn't have a words for many things she wants to say.  I found her statement rather surprising since all anyone has to do is pick up a English/Hebrew dictionary and see that the English side is about three times the size as the Hebrew side.

For an example, Katrina told us English does not have a word to say before eating.  She gave us the term one usedsin Hebrew before eating, and said, " In English all one can say is eat."  I offered the word, enjoy, and she looked at me funny.  Later, we found the Hebrew word you say before eating translates into enjoy.

Later Katrina brought up another word that English doesn't have.  I can't remember the word, but it means:  A mother who has lost her son.  It's a tragic sort of word, and I  listened without defending the English language.  Afterwards, of course, I thought of some questions I could have asked her:

Why is there a word for a mother who lost her son?
Why not a word for a mother who lost her daughter?
Is losing a son more tragic than losing a daughter?
How about a father who has a lost a child -- does not a father grieve over such a loss?

My thinking is that Katrina doesn't know enough of the English language to effectively express what she can naturally say in Hebrew.

David and I have found the Hebrew language is very vague and limiting.  One word is used for a variety of things.  For instance, b'-vah-ka-shaw means please.  Before we arrived in Israel, David was saying, "you're not going to be hearing that word very much Israel" -- but we hear it all the time.  B'vah-ka-shaw means much more than please.  It is used as: you're welcome, my pleasure, or take it.  The term is also a polite way to say: hurry up, come on, and get the hell out of my way.

The Hebrew word pronounced "comma," means how much/how many and it also means some/a few.  Olay means cost and also means immigrant -- what are the implications of that especially considering Israel is a nation of immigrants.  The "l-" which can sound like "leh" or "lay" means to, per, for, etc.  Of course, the to-be verbs are implied.

English:  I am hungry
Hebrew:  I hungry

English:  Are you hungry?
Hebrew:  You hungry?

Some claim Hebrew is a divine language.  First, if Hebrew is a divine language, it shouldn't be used in mundane conversation but set aside for holy purposes only.  Second, how could something that sounds like baby-talk be divine?

David brought up the idea that peace in the Middle East may be a concept that the people here will never understand.  Look at the word Shalom.  It means peace, and it means hello and goodbye.  The idea being: I greet you in peace, Leave in peace.  However, if peace is taken in the context of hello/goodbye then what does peace actually mean?  It is my understanding the Arabic word salaam, also means peace and is used as hello and goodbye.  Does peace mean something different to people who speak Hebrew and Arabic than to people who speak English, German, French -- simply because of the way the word is used?