Yekev fun

April 20, 2009 - 9:48 PM by Jessica

kobi-at-andrews-party It’s great to be reminded of certain, extremely Israeli cultural phenomenons. I headed straight into one of those last week for a friend’s 40th birthday party, which was held at a yekev in Holon. Technically, a yekev is a winery, and in these days of Israeli boutique wineries, one might think that they’re heading to an evening of wine tastings, with a side of smelly goat cheeses.

Uh uh. This yekev, like others of its kind, is a completely different animal. It’s the yekev of yore, a wine club of sorts, where diners sit at long wooden tables, drinking cheap wine and eating family-style platters of bread, spreads and fried fish. There’s one in nearly every Israeli city. But the real entertainment begins when the MC takes the stage, a guy in a leather cowboy hat takes the floor, and Israeli songs of yore are played, their words displayed on huge screens on either side of the room, visible to everyone in the place.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, sings along, and the dance floor quickly fills with people of all ages, types and sizes. They’re dancing in circles, in lines, as couples, slow and fast, pretty much oblivious to the others around them. And some diners stick to their tables, standing on the chairs and the tables, an act that’s absolutely encouraged. Fun, as you can imagine, is had by all.

Our evening didn’t end with Andrew’s birthday. We headed home, directions clutched in our hands, the map book open on my lap. We knew how easy it is to get lost in these parts, as we’d gotten lost on the way, asking a string of taxi drivers and Holonites how to get to where we were going. But the streets were empty by the time we headed out of there, and at one point we sat at an empty traffic light, trying to figure out if we should be turning right or left. I finally turned my head to the right, to ask the driver next to us how to get to the highway, and found myself looking into the grinning face of a policeman, who rolled down his window and said, “I saw you sitting here through three green lights, and I figured you’d realize sooner or later that we were sitting next to you.” And, shockingly, he actually knew how to send us on our way.

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