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/