Jerusalem Tour

Window, Armenian Quarter

We had a day off from school yesterday for a holiday called Lag B'Omer which at its best is an occasion to have a bonfire and sing songs and roast hot dogs and marshmallows (at its worst its pyromaniacs and thieves wreaking environmental havoc). It celebrates the 33rd day of the Omer, a period of time between Passover, liberation from Egypt, and Shavuot, receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. It's treated as a period of mourning when religious men don't shave and you can't get married etc. Except on the 33rd day, which was yesterday, when you can get married and many people do, including Mr. Rosen's parents (in fact, once we went to three weddings in two days. No joke).

The 33rd day is the day that Jewish mystics say the Kabballah was revealed (apropos Madonna's upcoming concert in Tel Aviv) and also commemorates the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Roman Empire when a bunch of Jews fought for an independent states which lasted two years until they were eventually crushed. Anyway, we light big fires now to remember how Bar Kokhba and his warriors communicated back in the day and kids also make bows and arrows and homemade pita on the taboon. I wrote about it a few years ago here.

So I met up with some friends in Jerusalem for the day and we soaked up the magic. We did our usual walkabout through Jaffa Gate to the Arab market, the Christian quarter, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall, the Armenia quarter and the Tower of David, stopping for lunch at Lina's, my favorite hole in the wall humus restaurant. It was a beautiful day and the kids were only a little bit bored and cranky. They tried to stage their own Bar Kokhba style revolt but we squashed it with ice-cream, Roman army style and order was restored in the land. It got a little tricky explaining about Jesus and the cross as depicted in the gory mosaic inside the church. That's kind of the stuff of nightmares. But the kids took it in and were soon distracted by stuffed camels and belly dancer costumes.


Ceramic dishes at Elie's, the only seller who posts his prices.


Mosaic, Church of the Holy Sepulchre


Prayer beads, Christian Quarter


Seventh Station on the Via Dolorosa


Bedouin textiles, Muslim Quarter


Dome of the Rock, View from the Jewish Quarter


Incription at the Tower of David pointing to Mecca, 16th century


Western Wall prayers, taken by my son.


Ice-cream break, troops replenished.

Home

Home is available as a print on ETSY.

I don't know if it's because my son weaned himself this week after a nasty cold made it so he couldn't breathe and nurse at the same time. Or because we're nearing our six month milestone in Israel. Or because I'm starting to plan our trip to America in the summer and wondering how on earth we will see everyone we want to see and what it will feel like to be there. Or maybe because I keep fast forwarding ten years and my oldest is entering the army. All of it together has me feeling a little vulnerable.  I keep coming back to the idea of home. Where is it? What is home? What will it be for my kids. Is it worth fighting for? Is it worth dying for? Or is it just a place, like any other.

Mr. Rosen and I have spent a lot of time thinking about where we want to make our home and whether or not there is a perfect place for us and our family. We don't have the answer yet but we're getting closer. We might be over thinking it. It might be exactly where we are now. It might not be a place at all, but a connection we have to each other, tethering us to the present.

When your sixty-four

 Flags for Independence Day

We got back yesterday from a long weekend in northern Israel. It was Memorial Day on Thursday and Independence Day on Friday so Mr. Rosen and the kids had a few days off. Memorial Day here is very different than it is in America. There are no door-buster sales, for one. Nor does it mark the season for wearing white pants. It's kind of a serious day. None of the cable television stations broadcast and network TV is all either interviews with high up veterans or patriotic performances. There's even a nationwide moment of silence for two minutes in the morning. An air-raid siren goes off and everyone stops what they're doing. Even cars stop in the middle of traffic (though that's an everyday occurrence also). And then at sundown, the Independence Day fireworks begin and the country is happy once more.

Anyway, we headed up north and spent a few days based in Tiberius exploring the upper Galil and Golan Heights. We hiked up to the top of the Arbel, a beautiful cliff above the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). We had lunch in a banana grove above a cave with open tombs and bats (for real!). We found a great little restaurant at Yehudia junction that's open 24 hours, 365 days a year, even Yom Kipur and serves a tasty roast beef sandwich. We hiked up a stream to a very old water milling station and the kids got soaked. We visited a friend of the family and spent the day swimming at her community pool. The next day we drove home along the eastern border with Jordan and watched the green fields of the North fade to the crispy tan of arid land. We made one final stop for lunch in Abu Ghosh, an Arab town outside of Jerusalem, and enjoyed some grilled chicken skewers and middle eastern salads.

To be honest, when we got home I was wrecked. For the obvious reasons - kids fighting in the car, baby up at 5:00 am, packing and unpacking and daypacking and repacking. But also I think my brain is just completely saturated. It's so much to absorb! And more than just the sites. It's the constant juxtaposition of old and new. Glittery and gritty. Orchards and desert. New construction and demolition. Poverty and wealth. Sea and sand. It's one minute we're mourning and then next we're celebrating. It's our own brand of extremism and it's exhausting.

But never mind all that. Happy 64th birthday Israel, you crazy spring chicken. I hope I'm as feisty as you are when I'm your age. Something tells me you won't be retiring next year...


 Memorial Day wreaths


 View of Lower Galilee from the Arbel


 Banana blossom


 Secret cave under banana grove with tombs and bats


 Water mill hike in the Golan


 Pretty weeds in the Golan


 Garden gnomes near the Dead Sea


 Camel in finery

 
Graffiti in Abu Ghosh

The kindness of strangers

The Gefilte Fish aisle at Rami Levy's

The other day I took the baby to a supermarket in a neighboring town. We'd never been there before. In fact, we'd been there the day before, with all three kids, and my daughter remembered as we were about to park that she wanted to go home and put on her tap shoes. She could not go on. Plus, even if she had agreed to go into the supermarket, her recent string of unpredictable lash outs make her a wild card in public places. I opted to cut my losses and head home.

So late morning the next day I take Stringbean McToothy Face to the very same supermarket, cautiously optimistic that we can get in and get out without too much disaster. You see, this is no ordinary supermarket. This is a Rami Levy supermarket in an ultra-religious city in the West Bank. But I am dressed modestly (though wearing pants which is frowned upon) and it is Wednesday (as opposed to Thursday which I know means a mad rush for sabbath prep). Turns out Wednesday is also a mad rush and I should have just turned around when I saw the parking lot. But then I'd have to admit defeat twice in two days which I just couldn't swallow. So I park and we charge ahead, the baby as my shield.

The allure of Rami Levy is that it's cheap. I'd say 30% cheaper than other supermarket chains, especially the one in our town, Mister Zol, which means Mr. Cheap. In fact it's Mr. Expensive, even more expensive than "Half Free Warehouse" in Beit Shemesh which should be called "Twice as Much Warehouse". Who comes up with these names?

We hustle our way through a sea of black hats and modestly dressed religious men and women and after a little less than an hour we are ready to check out. This is when I start to sweat. There are lines three and four people deep at every check-out and these folks are not here to pick up a carton of milk and a loaf of bread. These carts are meant to feed a family of ten for a week so they are spilling over into the aisles. That's when my copilot decides he'd had enough. Now I am caught with a screaming baby in a half hour check out line with a full cart of food. I am just about to abandon my groceries when a lovely Yemenite looking guy in front of me with a knitted kippah asks if I could use some help. He suggests I take the baby to my car and feed him and he would watch my cart and call me when it was time to come back. So without thinking twice we exchange phone numbers and I leave my cart including my diaper bag and my wallet, grab my keys and take Starving McChompers to the car for some lunch.

Twenty minutes later I come back and my friend is nearly finished checking out. Perfect timing. I strap the baby back on, thank him profusely and load up my groceries. Seeing that I am encumbered with a giant baby on my chest, the checker (religious Jew of Middle Eastern descent) calls over a bagger (likely Muslim Arab) to help me get on my way. They exchange a few friendly words in Arabic and have a few laughs (they're probably laughing at me come to think of it) and I'm left to wonder why it is again that we all hate each other? I mean if the Yemenite religious Zionist Jew can help out the American Ashkenazi Progressive New Immigrant Jew while the religious Moroccan Jew makes jokes with the Palestinian, then can't we just all be friends?*


* I realize just the fact that Arabs don't shop here though they work here points to a wider, more systemic segregation issue. But I can't ignore these brief, friendly interactions. They're happening all around me. Everyday. 

This year in Jerusalem

Religious Jews hoarding Passover staples

Psst. I'm still alive over here. We are coming off a nearly three week Passover school holiday break and I have been remiss about posting blog entries. I have however been posting lots of pics on Instagram and I invite you to follow my meanderings over there. I'll follow you right back. It's quite fun! A billion dollars worth of fun, so says Facebook.

I wasn't prepared for such a long break in the middle of the year. But we threw together a pretty fun itinerary packed with visits with friends, travels north, south, east  and west, a trip to some enchanted caves, a fantastic seder, a surprise and mysterious visit from Elijah the Prophet and camping in the desert. We even had lunch one day with Mr. Rosen at his work in Jerusalem.

I will say that spending Passover in Israel is a very rich experience. Between the meticulous nation-wide spring cleaning (removal of all bread and crumbs from the home), hoarding of eggs, potatoes, onions and matzah, and the throngs of Israelis hiking about the country, it's really a lot to absorb. Never mind that we personally experienced no less than five out of the ten plagues (blood, lice, boils, hail, and darkness). Let's just say it's enough blog material to last forty years wandering in the desert, if only I'd had the energy to write it all down. Dayenu. Maybe I'll be more on the (matzah) ball next year.

For now's here's a smattering of pics from those three weeks. Enjoy!


Dead sea and view of Jordan


Saba grating the bitter herb with traditional protective eyewear.


Seder table including rice cake "matzah" cover for our glutton free guests


Elder carrying small Israelite during the exodus.


Obeying the voice of God, Moses and Miriam put their arms around each other.


Biblical ride


Enchanted stalactite cave


Not bear proof, but hyena proof.


The oompa loompa I found on top of Tzin Wilderness


Descent to Gov River Valley


Respite from heat.


Desert in bloom


At Kibbutz Sde Boker

The New Normal

Five shiny new gas masks hanging off my stroller.

Some nights I'll be sitting on our couch watching reruns of Seinfeld and eating a bowl of Fruity Pebbles and it feels like I'm back in California. We live in a nice house. I drive a Mazda 5. My kids have playdates. Organic free range eggs are a fortune. It's all the same as it was. And then I remember that my daughter goes to ballet lessons in a bomb shelter. Someone checks my bag whenever I enter a large building, like the mall. My kids have lice. My housekeeper is a Jewish man. I buy my fruits and vegetables in the West Bank. My seven year old has a cell phone. And I pay $8 a gallon for gas.

Not normal.

Last week I met a friend and her three kids in Ramle, a town outside of Tel Aviv known for its poverty and excellent kabob restaurants, to exchange our old gas masks for new ones. It was the first day of Passover vacation so I packed all the kids in the car and we drove to an elementary school downtown where a squadron of adorable soldiers took my two outdated masks and issued five shiny new ones. Everyone was friendly and professional and efficient. Someone from the BBC even interviewed me. When asked how I felt as a newcomer getting gas masks for my children, I was honest. I told the guy I had no intention of using these things. They will go into a closet until the next recall, a decade from now. And then we hustled our six kids back into our cars, drove to a nearby playground, worked up an appetite and then drove downtown to Halil where we snarfed down two plates of kabobs, a plate of fries, hummus, pita, pickles and malabi for dessert. Mmmmmm.

And so it goes. I shift back and forth between there and here, feeling used to it all and feeling shocked by it all, letting go of what I knew as normal and embracing what is now the new normal.



Gas mask tutorial


Playground in Ramle


My daughter stepped out into this parking lot and asked, are we in India?


Cutest ten month old ever

Homies

A few cozy homies at a ceramics co-op on Yoel Salomon Street, Jerusalem

It has been a festive few weeks with visitors and celebrations. Right now we're especially delirious to have GRANDMA visiting all the way from California during what is possibly the rainiest week ever in the history of Israel dating back to the time of King Herrod. Sorry Grandma. But we managed to get in a few jaunts to favorite nearby cafes, ceramic co-ops and jewelry shops before the real deluge began. Grandma is here for another two weeks so my presence here will be sporadic, not to be confused with the presence of spores in our bathroom from all of the rain. Nice. Love rentals.

But before I go I have a favor to ask. My old friend and Inner Toddler enthusiast Mona has nominated me in the Best Family Blog category of the Homies on Apartment Therapy. I love Apartment Therapy and would love a Homie to go next to my Tony and my Oscar. Here's the catch: voting ends March 2 EST (Ack! That's tomorrow!) and you have to sign in to vote. Bummer. But don't let that discourage you!  It only takes a minute. Maybe less. Okay homies? Tell everyone you know! Let's start a revolution!

Animal stack

 

They were all waiting to see if Yertle would show up. 

The suspense was killing them.

We have a bin full of plastic animals that my son used to play with but instead of having them roar at each other and flying them around the house making monkey noises like most kids, he used to try to stack them like blocks. Except they don't exactly stack. He'd have to balance each one on top of the other very carefully.  He figured out that he always had to start with the lion and then the hippo and then it was enough support to hold the cow, a kangaroo and sometimes the lamb on top. It was pretty incredible to watch.

These animals were inspired by our recent trip to the Jerusalem Zoo. It threatened to be a rainy and disgusting day so no one was there. Just us. Really. Maybe one other family. In the whole friggin zoo. The guy at the front let us in for half price explaining that half the animals would be inside because of the rain. In fact, it didn't rain. It was a gorgeous day. Most of the animals were out. And some of them were even stacked. OK, only the mosaic sculpture ones in the children's petting area. But pretty impressive nonetheless.

The Cross Sell

Israelis are masterful at the up sell and the cross sell. It seems like with everything you buy there is the option to get something along with it for really cheap. Or not so cheap. This goes for the regular stuff like health insurance add-ons or services you don't need from the phone company. I even got suckered into buying some fancy conditioner from the guy at the hair salon to help keep the salt and stone that is apparently in the water from wrecking my hair. The supermarket is especially notorious for the up sell.  The checkers always offer you one of the specials sitting right there. Would you like some mushrooms for ten shekels? A jar of jam? Gum? Two for three shekels? Or if you spend a certain amount they'll sell you a toaster or a set of glass cups or a towel. I'm usually so flabbergasted by the end of my grocery shopping, what with Screaming Jeepers McSpongey Butt strapped onto me making me sweat like it's the middle of summer, I always pass.

The other day I was at the gas station and saw that for a mere 24 shekels I could get a pastrami sandwich, a bottle of water and a pack of mint Mentos to go! I don't know why but that cracked me up. Maybe because it made me think of those Mentos commercials that are so obviously made in Europe or who knows where and dubbed in English.

In fact the gas station offers a world of cross selling opportunities. Marketers take heed! Mr. Rosen came home a few weeks ago from the gas station with an espresso machine! Here we go... We were on the market for one after having a delicious coffee at our friends house not long ago. But instead of buying the one they had which would have been the smart way to go, Mr. Rosen went with the model at the gas station. Only 500 shekels ($150) which unfortunately is quite cheap here. Except it took Mr Rosen about half an hour to make a cup of coffee and it made so much noise the baby woke up and the coffee tasted like diesel fuel which is what you get when you buy an espresso maker at the gas station. Not true. The coffee tasted fine but did not seem worth the effort. We figured we'd just add that to the account we've set aside for newcomer miscalculations. Sunk cost. But after cleaning it up and repackaging it, and with my encouragement and a very believable story (it was such a good deal my parents bought us the same one in white and my wife prefers the white one), he was actually able to return it a week later.

I'm hoping the cross sell applies to house cleaning services too. I'm actually hoping to hire someone to clean my house twice a month one of these days. And I'm hoping that in addition to the usual kitchen/bathrooms/floors/dusting regimen, s/he'll try to cross sell me on windows, laundry and childcare. It won't be a hard sell.

Date night in Ein Kerem

Mr. Rosen and I celebrated New Years last night instead of tonight because last night we had free babysitting. Anyway, tonight is a regular school night. It's not a national holiday. No one has off. They don't even call it New Years here since the Jewish New Year is in September. They call it Sylvester. Or was it Putty Tat...What was I talking about?

Yes, New Years. Well our second shipment finally did arrive on Thursday so our house was once again inundated by boxes and hunkin pieces of furniture. Mr. Rosen's parents came up on Friday morning to help build things and watch the kids and then they actually took the kids with them back to Beer Sheva to spend the night leaving us an unprecedented 24 hours in our house to GET. SHIT. DONE. We still had the baby but he's manageable.

But instead of trudging ahead when they left we decided to take a break and treat ourselves to a date in a beautiful neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem and only about a 15 minute drive from where we live called Ein Kerem which means "Spring of the Vineyard" and yes, it's as charming as its name would imply. It has a long history which is why many of the homes feature Arab style architecture and many of the landmarks are Christian. John the Baptist was born there. But now there's a giant hospital on the next hill over so lots of people can make that claim too. Sorry John.  These days it's home to a lot of artisans and funky little restaurants and cafes and galleries. And there's a bunch of stuff open on Shabbat too which is nice.

We parked the car and walked toward the main street to see that a ceramic tile gallery was open so we popped in since the tiles on our coffee table (built by Mr. Rosen) broke in the container. We ogled for a few minutes over the gorgeous tiles and then walked up a side street and noticed this little shop full of beautiful goodies. I plan to go back when it's open and buy one of everything. Finally we decided on a place to eat - a small cafe where we dined on focaccia, warm wild mushroom salad, haloumi cheese sandwich and kabobs. Each dish was better than the one before. It might have only been December 30th, but it was New Years in my mouth.

And then we spent the last day of this unbelievably crazy year finally unpacking all of our things into our new house. We're not there yet, but we're getting close. And it feels good. Look out for a home tour in the coming weeks.

Happy 2012! xoxo