A Raisin Celery

Happy New Year! Last night we had family over to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and my mother-in-law brought along a delightful little service to accompany what I can only describe as the most delicious Jewish New Year meal I've ever had. Just like with Passover we had a seder plate filled with the season's offerings: beets, dates, cabbage, pumpkin, carrots, figs, pomegranate, apple, honey, celery and raisins. And each fruit came with it's own blessing for the New Year. The family favorite this year was "lettuce have a raisin celery". Mr. Rosen accompanied on guitar. The kids were squirrely, as with anything new, but it was a lovely way to begin the evening.

And then came the food. Everyone brought their best game and each dish featured some traditional elements. I made a spinach salad with goat cheese and figs, roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes, sweet noodle kugel and cabbage salad with carrots, beets, raisins and apples. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law brought a lentil salad with fresh herbs and pomegranate seeds, baked quinoa stuffed onions, vegetarian gefilte fish on sliced apple with fresh horse radish. Mr. Rosen made his green beans and onions. My mother-in-law brought seven vegie and seven herb soup and her famous plum cake for desert.  It was as much a feast for the eyes as it was for the tongue. It got us talking about whether beautiful food tastes better than unattractive food. The answer is probably yes for reasons both scientific and psychological. Although I had a steak and eggs this summer at a cafe in Tel Aviv that looked like a dead jellyfish (the waitress warned me) and it was unbelievably delicious. I guess there are exceptions. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, said the jellyfish.

Wishing everyone a sweet new year!

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.

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

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

Purim in Israel

My mom and I have been busy touring about the country and spending time with the kids. We survived the week of rain and snow and now we're thawing out to temperatures in the seventies. Feels good to get some vitamin D. The kids have been on vacation the last few days for Purim, our drunken version of April Fools. It's just a one day holiday celebrating the Jewish victory over the Persians circa 400 b.c.e  but I feel like it's been going on for months. It started with pajama day last Friday at school and then make-up day and then dress up like a street sign day and then wear your costume to school day and then three days off of school, only one of which is the actual holiday. We have plenty of eight day holidays, what with Hanukkah and Passover and Sukkot. How about keeping the one day holidays to one day and give all the parents a break. Between the costumes and making the kids' mishloah manot (goodie packages to swap with friends at school) and baking hamentaschen, and the parades and the carnivals, I am wiped out. Because I am the Purim Bitch. That's me in the sign. Just kidding. That's a sign for some rave in Tel Aviv where incredibly stylish people with no kids party all night. No, I was not in attendance.

I will say that I have rather enjoyed seeing everyone dressed up over these last few days. I saw a little religious boy from one sect of Orthodoxy dressed as a grown man from another sect. Pretty funny. Today, in Ein Kerem, coming out of the Church of John the Baptist, I saw a young man dressed as Jesus, cross and all. He was the spitting image. He said he'd been growing his hair for two years for this costume. People go balls out for Purim. The scouts troupe in our town built a carnival that was unbelievable including actual rides they made out of wood and rope. Two-story rides built from scratch! Only in Israel. In America you'd have to sign a waiver to let your kids ride on one of these things. But the kids had a great time and no one died.

And now I shall hang up my pirate costume until next year. Ahoy.

Pay it forward

In these last few weeks I have been especially enamored by the view over here - miles of terraced olive groves with their short stone retaining walls and the picturesque hillside villages they surround. But views here are often colored by the conflict. I try not to think about it too much.

Next week is Tu B'Shvat, a minor Jewish holiday to celebrate the trees and we've been gearing up by eating a lot of dried fruit and reading the Lorax. This new painting, called Fruitful, was inspired by a little passage from the Talmud (that has made its way into the Jewish summer camp storytelling canon. I don't actually read the Talmud regularly. Or ever, come to think of it). Has me thinking about the kind of legacy I want to leave for my own kids. Heavy stuff.

Once, while the sage, Honi, was walking along a road, he saw an old man planting a carob tree. Honi asked him: “How many years will it take for this tree to give forth its fruit?” The man answered that it would require 70 years. Honi asked: “Are you so healthy a man that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?” The man answered: “I found a fruitful world because my ancestors planted it for me. So, too, will I plant for my children.” (Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 23a)

Available here.

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

Am I the only one

Or are there other mothers in the world who want to be alone on Mother's Day? Well not completely alone. I want to sleep in while my thoughtful husband prepares a giant yummy breakfast for me and I want my kids to adorn me with all kinds of noodle necklaces and popsicle stick frames and flowers from our garden. And then I want them to leave me alone for the rest of the day to do whatever I want, which in the case of Mother's Day 2011, was finish up some work, take a nice long shower, go get coffee and then Pinkberry, take a nap and loaf around. And that's how it all went down this year.  Total perfection.

And this beauty of a mid century teak chair in need of re-upholstery was my gift. I found it on Craigslist on Saturday and Mr. Rosen went to pick up for me. It was $25. Here it is with a few swatches from the Outside Oslo collection by Jessica Jones although I might go with a chartreuse naugahyde instead. Something that pops a little. I have to decide soon because I'm redoing my nursing rocker at the same time with the same guy and something tells me that the little gopher who is burrowing a hole to China via my pelvis might be on his way sooner than we think.

And speaking of which, there are only three days left until my ETSY shop closes for the summer. Maternity leave starts at midnight on Friday May 13th. You can still find plenty of goodies in the shop for 20% off when you use the code MATERNITY at checkout.

From my tabernacle to yours

In the middle of all of our house and life chaos I was asked to create the artwork for the To Life Festival. The one I participated in for the first time last October. The one where my husband built a TABERNACLE in the middle of California Avenue in Palo Alto. That one. They had seen this piece in process (the second one) on the blog and wanted something similar that REEKED of Jewish life, music, culture and celebration. They didn't specifically say they wanted a ram at the top of the tree, but what's a Jewish celebration without a sacrificial ram? Am I right?

Admittedly, there's a lot going on here. Maybe too much. Perhaps a reflection of my own current state. Hopefully they will love it and it will draw people from all over the world to Palo Alto on September 18, 2011 to eat falafel, hear klezmer music and buy Jewish art. And now that we're staying in town a while longer, they can even buy my Jewish art. Straight from my tabernacle.

Purim Shpiel

We're celebrating Purim this week, a Jewish holiday filled with storytelling, masquerade and drunken antics. It celebrates the story of Queen Esther, a Jewish girl in Persia who was chosen to be Queen and single-handedly saved the Jews by telling King Ahashverosh that his Prime Minister, Haman, was planning to kill them all. There's a lot more to the story but it shares a similar plot to most all Jewish festivals.

1. They tried to kill us. 
2. We won. 
3. Let's eat a lot of food. 

Customs include making hamantaschen - three cornered cookies to symbolize the bad prime minister's hat (or his Spock-like ears) - making a lot of noise every time his name is mentioned in the ritual reading of the story, dressing up as a character from the story or as anything you like and giving baskets of treats and goodies. And adults are commanded to get so drunk they cannot tell the difference between King Ahashverosh and Haman. That's pretty friggin drunk.

Purim was never my favorite holiday for many of the same reasons that I never liked Halloween. I was embarrassed to dress up. I worried that other kids would laugh at me. I never liked my home-made costumes. And having to do this twice a year instead of just on Halloween made it all the more painful. Mr. Rosen felt exactly the same way growing up in Israel, though he was spared the extra torture of Halloween.

And that is why I was especially proud of my son yesterday because yesterday morning, last minute and possibly against my better judgment, I signed him up to go to a Purim workshop at an Israeli woman's house in the next town over where they would hear the story of Purim, make hamantaschen and goody parcels, play games, sing songs, all while parading around in costume. And mostly with kids he doesn't know. And no parents. And all in Hebrew, which he doesn't always understand. When I told him after school that he and his friend were going to this party and that he could dress up, he was nervous. What if the other kids laugh at me? You see, he was having second thoughts about his costume, one he'd been planning since Halloween. He wanted to dress up as Miss Viola Swamp from the book Miss Nelson is Missing.

Miss Viola Swamp is the alter ego of Miss Nelson, a school teacher who can't command the respect of her students. One day she comes to school dressed as her own substitute, Miss Viola Swamp, an ugly, mean witch who is so terrifying that the kids will do anything, even behave, to get Miss Nelson back. Excellent book. The costume is a big black wig and a giant nose and black fingernails and striped tights and a black dress. Yesterday we bought all of those things, except for the dress. Instead we belted one of Mr. Rosen's black tee-shirts. My son was delighted with his costume but he was concerned (his word) about how other kids would react. He asked me what I would do if I were him.

This is where I lied because if I were him I would have just worn the lion costume from Halloween. But instead I told him straight up that I would be Miss Viola Swamp if that's who I really wanted to be and as long as I was happy with that decision, then no one else would care. And that's what he did. Amidst a sea of pirates, Iron Men, Bat Men, Skeletors and Buzz Light Years was my son, Miss Viola Swamp, dressed in yellow and black striped tights and a belted black tee-shirt. And either no one said a word or he was too happy to notice. Either way, despite a genetic predisposition for hating costume holidays, we might just have a kid who loves Purim. And himself.

Winter Merry Making

Chingaderas at Jackalope

Hi folks. It's been a while. We're back from a long and winding winter vacation and it's taken some time to get my groove back. Obviously my new year's resolution was not to blog everyday. Thank goodness. To be honest I don't have any New Year's resolutions because I think they suck. And past experience dictates that I will fail/give up by week two. Who needs that kind of disappointment? I did however make a Daily Schedule for myself which now hangs in my office. I've been meaning to do this for, I don't know, TWO YEARS. So if feels good to have it and will feel even better to use it. I hope. I am thinking about goals for this year and my life coach was awesome enough to send out a worksheet to help me do that.

I have some more big news to share soon, because that's the kind of year it's going to be, but before all that here's a little recap of the last three weeks. Good times. Great memories.

Dress up at Bowers Museum in Orange County.

Crafting with Grandma

Quality time with Mr. Rosen

The historic whale at the Newport Beach Bay Bay where I used to play as a kid.

Sun and surf in San Diego

Mini skis for mini people

Rosy cheeked cousins

Newest niece with her aba

Riding out the snow storm with some indoor crafting

Crash and burn sledding with my sister in law

Kitchen chemistry with Saba

Snowy pottery at my favorite store in Santa Fe