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Picture of the week – A green Yom Kippur for all the world

For some it’s a solemn day of fasting, prayer, and asking for forgiveness, for others – specifically children – Yom Kippur is the day they claim the streets.

Ever year, children all over the country hone their cycling skills as the traffic stops and the roads clear. Whether it’s on a bike, roller blades, scooters, bimbas, or even unicycles, the nation takes to the street in what is probably – ironically – one of the most joyous holidays of the year.

Aside from the sheer pleasure of cycling undisturbed down some of Israel’s main arteries – like route 6, or the Ayalon Freeway, the quality of undisturbed silence is unparalleled. There are no buses, no cars, no trains, no airplanes even. The only sound is the whir of bikes, and the calls of children.

And the air quality, well…

I’ve long thought that some form of Yom Kippur actually ought to be adopted by other countries as an environmental measure. This must be the greenest day in Israel.

Every year there are reports in the local press about the dramatic decline in air pollution throughout Israel’s towns and cities. It’s a chance for the country to breathe again. Imagine what would happen if London followed suit, or New York, or Beijing. Perhaps this should be the latest campaign for environmentalists.

Yom Kippur Fashion Footwear Faux Pas

What non-leather footwear did you don this Yom Kippur? Crocs, you say? Oy va voy! You just violated the latest fashion halacha from none other than esteemed Lithuanian leader Rabbi Eliayshiv who banned the popular rubber shoes for being “too comfortable. “

The ruling, according to an article in Ynet, came in response to a question from an apparently misguided yeshiva student in a classic case of what’s known in Hebrew as a “she’alah kitbag.”

The term originates from army lore. A soldier asks his commander before a long training hike if they should be carrying their “kitbags” (or backpacks). The commander responds yes of course. If the soldier hadn’t asked, the answer would most probably have been no.

I remember – in the pre-Crocs days – wearing these very uncomfortable cloth shoes. I’d feel every pebble on the walk to synagogue which, before moving to Israel, was a considerable distance. It was like walking barefoot across hot coals. I thought we were supposed to be celebrating Yom Kippur not the book of Job.

I did a spot check during services this year in my local shul and the Crocs clearly outnumbered any other type of footwear. If Rabbi Elyashiv hasn’t reversed this ridiculous ruling by next year, I say we take up arms…er, feet. Power to the Crocs!

Shake your Gazan lulav

The upcoming holiday of Succot is providing an offbeat oppportunity for some actual mutual benefits between Israelis and Gazans.

During the Succot celebration, three species are wrapped together in a waving ritual: the ‘hadas’ (myrtle), the ‘aravah’ (willow) and the ‘lulav’ (date palm frond), which are held together with the ‘etrog’ (citron).

Because Israel doesn’t grown enough of the lulavim, they’ve regularly imported them from Egypt. However, due to a cartel there, the prices have skyrocketed, and Israel has found an unlikely source of affordable lulavs – Gaza.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has signed orders lifting the Gaza blockade to enable the lulav to be imported for the holiday which begins on Friday. The request to import the branches came from the religious affairs ministry, which fears a local shortage as well as the high Egyptian prices could lead to people being unable to afford them.

However, Nehemia Rappel, head of the religious kibbutz movement, called this week for Israelis to buy only Israeli-made lulavs. According to reports, Israelis are expected to purchase approximately 600,000 lulavs in advance of the holiday; with prices will range from seven to 67 shekels.

The next test is whether we begin importing sufganiyot (jelly donuts) from Gaza on Hannuka.

High holiday woes

I’ve spent the last two weeks alternately pining for and cursing my husband, who like many educated Jewish men with good voices and/or rabbinical ordination, spent Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in the U.S., making some useful U.S. dollars in exchange for — in his case — working as a shliach tzibbur for the high holidays in a small New Jersey congregation.

This year’s gig offer came late in the season, as a friend decided not to take the job because of personal reasons. We also have plenty of personal reasons, including my two stepdaughters and nearly year-old twins, as well as mothers, siblings, nieces and nephews, all of whom benefit when our family unit is intact. But the financial reasons ended up outweighing the personal ones, because it’s hard to argue with an influx of cash during ‘these troubling economic times.’

So I said goodbye to Daniel a few days before Rosh Hashana, and shored up my own preparations. We headed out to my brother’s for Rosh Hashana, loading up the car with a load of gear. When it came to Yom Kippur, I couldn’t face the same kind of trip, and decided to stay home.

But remembering something my mother used to do with me 40-odd years ago, I decided to find a babysitter for the boys on Yom Kippur, so that I could do some of my own praying. And get out of the house. Of course, that’s easier said than done in a city like Jerusalem, where most people are either going to be in shul, or bicycle riding down the empty city streets. Anyway, you can’t really ask a fellow Jew to stay home from shul on Yom Kippur, even if they’re not planning on praying.

Instead, I asked our two Sri Lankan cleaning ladies, Renuka and Hindu, if they’d be interested in helping me out for a few hours. Given that they play with my boys each week when they’re at our house, as well as have some five children between them, I knew they’d be fine babysitters. And they were.

The moment that gave me pause was when Renuka asked me where my husband was, given that it’s the holiday season. I explained that he was working in the States, making some extra money. As I was speaking, I thought to myself that Renuka must think we’re crazy, to want extra money when we clearly live comfortably, in a lovely home, and affording babysitters and cleaners. And then, I thought again, and realized that no, she absolutely gets it, given that as foreign workers, she and Hindu have both left children, husbands and parents in Sri Lanka for more than three years. They know what it is to separate in order to make a living. Albeit, of a different standard.

So instead of feeling put upon when Daniel finally does return, I’ll try not to. Can’t promise, but given that he’s only been gone two weeks, and not two years, I can grin and bear it for one more day.

A Yom Kippur reflection

As we enter Yom Kippur, here’s a little anecdote to help us remember that we aren’t islands, and not only do we all need help, but we also need to give help.

A Package From Home, a grassroots organization based in Jerusalem that has been providing care packages for IDF soldiers for many years, also organized Respite Weekends for soldiers who had been severely wounded during their service to the country. Here’s the organization’s founder and director Barbara Silverman describing a recent weekend at Jerusalem’s Inbal Hotel for 15 soldiers.

“[The soldiers] were directed to their rooms where they were greeted with a welcoming basket of fresh fruit. Later that evening, they left for a banquet dinner at the
beautiful Papagaio restaurant, a short distance away.

At the restaurant, I was, once again, struck to see how young these soldiers were. I noticed a young man who was painfully thin and asked our liaison at the hospital about him. He explained that his wounds were not visible but rather he had suffered extensive internal surgeries and was now just beginning to be able to enjoy normal food.

Some of the soldiers were wearing artificial limbs and they were in the process of receiving
rehabilitation treatments to teach them to how use these aids properly. Each soldier had his own story to tell. After being in the hospital for so many months, the group was delighted to be able to share this weekend together. Several other diners at the hotel reported that a wonderful time was had by all.

They spent Friday afternoon visiting the nearby Sataf Cheese Farm, where they learned how different cheeses were made. The farm was wheel chair accessible and extremely enjoyable. Later that day, they enjoyed hanging out and swimming at the hotel pool before getting ready for Shabbat. That evening they shared a festive Friday night dinner and on Saturday, they enjoyed the famous Israeli breakfast and the incredible Shabbat buffet lunch. That evening, they left the hotel, rested, relaxed and feeling ready to face the next round of operations and rehabilitation treatments.

When the soldiers take their oath of allegiance to the IDF, they hold a Bible in one hand and their weapon in the other hand. They promise to protect the Land of Israel and the People of Israel. When they say the People of Israel, they mean all of us, where ever we live and not only those of us living inside of Israel. These soldiers have fulfilled their obligation and they have paid a heavy price. When they complete their treatments they will be living with the memory of that heavy price. Those memories will last a life time.

Following the weekend, Silverman received the following letter from the soldiers.

We thank you for your warm hospitality and that you gave us a place in your hearts. Because of people like you it is possible to believe in the realization of dreams.

With great appreciation….

The severely wounded from Tzahal and the volunteers from the Rehabilitation Center in Tel Hashomer Hospital.

“In order to fulfill an old dream
There is a need for one million dreamers who don’t blink their eyes…
And are willing to come close to their dream
Those who still remember how to ease the pain…”
Words by Ehud Manor – from the song Little Dream.

G’mar Hatima Tova.

Hallelujah!

You just haven’t lived until you’re in a stadium with 49,999 other people, all of whom are singing along with Leonard Cohen as he performs “Hallelujah.”

This was just one of the countless transcendent, goose bump-invoking moments in Cohen’s concert Thursday night in Ramat Gan Stadium. It was one of those shows where you enter some kind of suspended time zone in which for three hours, somehow all seems to be right on the planet.

Full of joy, hope, great musicianship, and excrutiatingly beautiful moments, the show was perfectly placed only a few days before Yom Kippur, a time of reflection and self examination. Seeing and hearing Cohen sing his songs like in some long-carved-in-stone prayers transformed the stadium into the world’s biggest, yet most intimate synagogue. And when the singer offered a dramatic rendering of the Bikat Kohanim (the Priestly blessing) late in the show, it only added to that feeling.

The audience, consisting of ages from teen to Cohen-era 70s, hung on his every lyric and delivery. A few times when he kneeled, there were a few gasps from people fearful of a repeat of the fainting incident that occurred in Spain last week, but Cohen was only making the moves for dramatic effect.

The three and a half hour concert (including a 25-minute break in the middle), included a slew of encores, with Cohen seemingly unwilling to leave the stage on his last show of a huge European tour. In fact, he brought out all the crew members on stage, introduced them and thanked them at the end.

Even though there were definitely some Palestinians and Israeli Arabs in attendance, some involved in the Fund for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace, which was launched earlier in the evening with proceeds that Cohen donated from the show, I kept thinking how nice it would have been if the crowd had been half Jewish, half Arab.

If only Cohen’s message of hope, peace and reconciliation had been allowed to be heard in Ramallah as well, and not been banned by angry Palestinians who refused to let a planned concert take place there. Witnessing 50,000 Palestinians singing “Hallelujah” and applauding efforts for reconciliation would have been a real New Year gift for all of us.

Foto Friday – Viviana Tagar views Tel Aviv

“Tel Aviv is the city of light and shadows,” says photographer Viviana Tagar. “I decided to focus on the light.” Tagar, whose new book “Tel Aviv One” was recently published, wanted to redress the imbalance in how Tel Aviv is perceived abroad. “People see Tel Aviv as a city of war and despair… it was important to me to portray and present another Tel Aviv for them.” Tagar, a psychotherapist by trade, says that in her daily work she’s encountered many of the painful sides of life in Israel’s major city. “Tel Aviv has many dark aspects. It could be that because I worked with terror attack survivors and other people who lived in shadow, it was important for me to show the sides that are illuminated.”

Tagar’s book, Tel Aviv One, is available at Steimatzky and Tzomet Sfarim bookstores.

Ptitim

I’m having a love affair with ptitim. I’m calling it orzo, actually, the Italian name for this rice-shaped pasta, but given that I live in Israel, no one’s letting me get away with that term. You see, orzo, or ptitim, is a staple of the Israeli school lunch menu, the steady side dish to the chicken schnitzel, served with a generous dollop of ketchup. So even when I serve it up with roasted peppers and zucchini and a grating of parmesan, the kids — and, usually, the adults — say, “Oh, ptitim…” But then they eat it up.

According to Janna Gur in ‘The Book of New Israeli Food,’ this Israeli toasted pasta now comes in many shapes, including stars, loops and hearts, but originally was shaped like grains of rice. It first came on the market in the fifties and was dubbed ‘Ben-Gurion rice’ after Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. It seems that Ben-Gurion was the one to come up with the idea to manufacture a substitute for rice, which was in major demand but short supply during those years of rationing. Another version of that same story is that immigrants from the East dubbed the rice-shaped pasta after Ben-Gurion because they were unhappy with their rice rationing.

In any case, ptitim are now known as Israeli couscous — not Israeli orzo — and this lunchroom fave has since been rediscovered as a versatile carb that can be boiled like pasta or first fried with onions and then cooked in boiling water or stock.

Here’s how I’m cooking them:
1. Roast a few of your favorite vegetables; I like a combo of colorful peppers and zucchini. For me, roasting involves slicing up said veggies into strips, tossing them with a few tablespoons of olive oil and kosher salt, and baking at 400 degrees for 30-45 minutes.
2. In the meantime, cook your ptitim/orzo as you would pasta.
3. Toss your cooked ptitim and veggies together; grate some parmesan on top for some extra flavor.

And here’s a similar orzo recipe from writer Barbara Kingsolver, who has to come up with many ways to use up her bumper crop of zucchini, as written in ‘Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:’

Disappearing Zucchini Orzo
3/4 lb. pkg orzo pasta
1 chopped onion, garlic to taste
3 large zucchini
olive oil for saute
thyme
oregano
1/4 cup grated parmesan or any hard yellow cheese

Bring 6 cups of water or chicken stock to a boil and add pasta. Cook 8 to 12 minutes. Drain. Use a cheese grater to shred zucchini, saute briefly with chopped onion and garlic until lightly golden. Add spices to zucchini mixture, stir thoroughly, and then remove mixture from heat. Combine with cheese and cooked orzo, salt to taste, serve cool or at room temperature.

B’teavon. Enjoy your orzo.

Will we live in a Flat world?

With one in eight women likely to get breast cancer at one time or another in their lives, it’s a topic that makes an awful lot of women extremely nervous. Israeli film maker and breast cancer survivor Nitsana Bellehsen decided to take a different approach – humor.

Her film, Flat, which has been selected as the only Israeli finalist in the Breast Fest Film Festival in Toronto, tackles the subject of the rising rates of breast cancer with a sense of black absurdity that leaves you both concerned and amused at the same time.

In her short four minute film, Nitsana – who does many of ISRAEL21c’s video features on YouTube – leaps ahead to 2050 to see what the world will look like. It’s not pretty.

You can watch the movie here, and don’t forget to vote. Voting closes on October 15.

A teaser follows.

Another Cohen in Israel

After all the months (years?) of speculation, rumors, false starts, boycott calls and health scares, Leonard Cohen will finally be performing on Thursday night before 50,000 fans in Ramat Gan Stadium.

It was almost as if someone – or something – didn’t want this show to take place. As Ethan Bronner wrote in The New York Times, “Leonard Cohen’s path to his sold-out concert here Thursday night has been strewn with obstacles. Those seeking to ostracize Israel through an international boycott demanded that he call it off. When he offered instead a matching concert in the West Bank, Palestinians said no thanks. Amnesty International agreed to help him distribute the concert’s proceeds to peace groups; Amnesty International withdrew. Then last Friday, three days before turning 75, Mr. Cohen collapsed onstage in Valencia, Spain, in the middle of his classic “Bird on a Wire” and was rushed to the hospital.”

Thankfully, Cohen has recovered, performed in Barcelona on Monday, and arrived in Israel on Tuesday looking dapper as ever. He’s “in great shape,” Cohen’s manager Robert Kory told The Times. And indeed, last night, Cohen was seen onstage at the stadium testing out the sound system and getting his bearings for the show, which is being billed as “A Concert for Reconciliation, Tolerance and Peace.”

Cohen is giving the expected profits of $1.5 million to $2 million to a new charity he has created of the same name, run by a board of Israelis and Palestinians, which will distribute money to groups focused on coexistence here – particularly organizations composed of people who have paid a great personal price because of the dispute and yet are working for peace, like the Parents Circle — Families Forum, made up of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost close family members to the conflict.

Why has the Cohen concert, which sold out in record time, generated so much controversy and coverage? My colleague Ben Jacobson, one of the country’s foremost Cohen fans and scholars, had some interesting insights in a recent essay in The Jerusalem Post.

Why is everyone so up in arms over a folk singer from the ’60s entertaining some civilians with large wallets? Perhaps Cohen’s appearance in Israel was taken to be a potentially partisan threat because of the perception that he is “one of ours,” having grown up in the upscale Montreal neighborhood of Westmount, where he attended Herzliah High School and Camp Mishmar in his teens and played in the Hillel Band at McGill University.

But Cohen’s world view is hardly oriented towards taking sides in any given conflict – it is, rather, strictly a vehicle for expressing his artistic ideas. Cohen’s oft-uniformed “Field Commander Cohen” persona, which has informed several works and inspired the title of a 1979 concert tour, grew out of his posturing as a guerrilla of verse, a rogue revolutionary who champions the cause of the underdog.

“Field Commander Cohen” only came into his own in the fall of 1973, when Cohen, facing crises in his career and family life, dropped everything to participate in the Yom Kippur War. Arriving in Tel Aviv from his habitual haven in Hydra, he announced to the press that he had come “to make my atonement” – and to entertain the troops.

He also noted that while he had once advocated an unconditional return to the 1967 borders, recent events had inspired a change of heart. Cohen joined a group of local musicians that included Ilana Rovina and Matti Caspi on an informal performance tour of bases close to the front in Sinai, at one point even pocketing a firearm so that he could feel like he was ready to participate in the battles.

In his unpublished memoir, The Final Revision of My Life in Art, Cohen reflected on having shared a bottle of cognac with General Ariel Sharon at a makeshift desert wilderness fort. “I want his job,” he wrote of the 1973 meeting, in a sentiment more significant for its self-conscious romanticism of military strength than for its political alignment. After all, the trip to Israel was possibly more about personal redemption for the artist than anything else. In Cohen’s mind, Israel was “a place where you may begin again,” he would write.

To this end, he was determined to perform a pilgrimage from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on foot before his return to Hydra; he ended up wandering back to the cafes of Dizengoff Square after a few hours, of course.

Later, he would be known for having played impromptu sets for IDF troops during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Eleven years later, Cohen’s public Middle Eastern anti-politics surfaced once again, this time in the context of his compilation of personal psalm-like essays, The Book of Mercy. The work includes several references to the nation of “Ishmael,” and in one passage, Cohen tears down all of the region’s constructs of alignment: “Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation – none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy… Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the borders do not hold, the Law will never serve the lawless.”

For the perpetual Canadian-American-Jewish-Zen-Greek exile, traditional trappings of nationalism and alignments are to be scoffed at and simply employed as tools for conveying one’s own artistic statements.

As Cohen wrote in “Democracy,” a 1993 song, which, based on recent set-lists, he’s likely to perform on Thursday, “I love the country but I can’t stand the scene / And I’m neither left or right / I’m just staying home tonight / getting lost in that hopeless little screen.”

 

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