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.
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