Shavuot without cheese
Award-winning cheesecake from Ben Ami
The just passed Jewish holiday of Shavuot is known by even the most secular Israelis as the festival on which we eat cheese. Sadly, not so any more for my 16-year-old daughter who was just diagnosed with lactose intolerance.
Merav has been getting terrible stomach aches for sometime now. Our doctor sent her to the hospital for testing in which they give patients a glass of concentrated lactose, then have them breathe into a machine every half hour.
It didn’t take long for Merav to know. The familiar pains started nearly immediately and it only took a few blows for the technician to return with the suspected but nevertheless disappointing news.
Still, to be absolutely sure it was lactose causing the stomach aches and not some other ailment (or perhaps an additional disease), the doctor told Merav to go off anything dairy for two weeks, then report back on how she felt.
The problem was that this was just before Shavuot and all those blintzes, quiches and cheese-laden casseroles beckoned. We decided she would start her test regime immediately after the holiday.
Truth be told, Shavuot dinner was relatively lactose free – we had rice, tofu and fish (our religious cheese-eating friends would be scandalized). But we couldn’t resist dessert. And so, in a last hurrah to dairy delights, we ordered a cheesecake.
But not just any cheesecake. This one, from the newly opened Ben Ami bakery and café on Jerusalem’s Emek Refaim Street (the first branch of a small family-run business from Kfar Vitkin) was rated the #1 cheesecake in the entire country by the Maariv NRG website.
At NIS 64 ($16), it was also more than we’d ever spent on dessert. But I am happy to report that it lived up to its reputation. The cheese was the consistency of whipped ice cream; the crumbly crust the polar opposite of an American graham cracker. It was unbelievably delicious.
The irony about Merav’s lactose intolerance is that, up until last summer, she was a staunch vegetarian. Now meat is welcome. It’s the lasagna that’s been excommunicated.
Good guys
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Pop Culture
An Israeli guy, or valley, verdant and planted
In Hebrew, ‘guy’ is defined as a valley or gorge. It’s considered modern and geographical in origins, according to the name blogs, websites and books. It’s pretty popular, and as Hebrew names go, easy to pronounce, unlike ‘Dror’ (drawer) or Hanoch.
It’s been on my mind because there are several Guys in my life right now. A major client, for one, a close acquaintance, for another. There also used to be the Guy Pines from the Israeli TV show, “Erev Tov Im Guy Pines,” a kind of Israeli EW that may be going off the air, according to Ha’aretz.
Pines’ show has been highly popular, and not only because of the way his name is pronounced. During its 13 seasons it won 12 ‘Israeli Emmy’ awards. It was one of the few original shows produced by HOT [cable company] that became real hits, and has been identified with the cable company for years. Pines became known as the go-to entertainment-news guy in Israel.
In fact, the commercials for his show were highly entertaining, as they would feature Hollywood types saying, “Hi, Guy,” clearly thinking that they were saying the American word, ‘guy,’ and clearly amused that this Israeli guy had the name Guy.
Once you’ve been living here for a while, you do get used to the name. But I — as a user of the term ‘guys’ when addressing a group of people — always wonder what the person named Guy feels, knowing that his name in English means, simply, person.
Chances are, he’s not considering it at all. What a guy.
Contemplating Costello’s cancellation
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, coexistence, General, Israeliness, Music, Pop Culture
Elvis Costello’s cancellation of his two shows in Israel in June and July due to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has caused unbridled emotion to surface in blogs, talkbacks and columns.
The dumbest comments claim that Costello is a has been, an anti-semite and a talentless hack – or all three. Obviously we are hurt, dismayed, betrayed, confused and angered at Costello’s decision to renege on his two shows scheduled for June 30 and July 1 at the Caesearea Amphitheater.
It’s especially disheartening because it wasn’t a rash decision and Costello isn’t a vapid pop star – he’s thoughtful, well-read and intelligent. He told me when I talked to him last night on the phone that his dilemma over whether to appear in Israel had been part of a 30-year conundrum from him, and that the issue had come up many times.
What I take away from the affair is not the desire to burn Elvis’s CDs as so many talkbackers threatened to do just like Christians burned Beatles records in 1966, but the desire to try to understand how Israel’s enemies have managed to present such a convincing argument consisting of half-truths, distortions and lies, that a wordly – albeit liberal – artist like Costello could be convinced to boycott us.
That Costello is letting himself be used by those that would want to see Israel harmed is alarming, indeed. But, that Israel has not successfully been able to sway world opinion that her cause is just is no less alarming.
Divorce and death on Facebook
Edie Ilan
My 16-year-old daughter says there is a rule among teenagers on Facebook: never change your relationship status, especially from “in a relationship” to “single.” The first thing that will happen if you do is an endless torrent of questions: “What happened?” “Are you OK?” “The guy was a jerk anyway.”
Apparently my friend – I’ll call her M, although her identity is well known on Facebook – hadn’t heard this advice as one day I received an update that M’s status had now changed to “divorced.” I immediately messaged her (I was discrete enough not to post my query to her Wall for all to see) and she gave me the inside scoop.
Announcing a divorce on the web is akin to that ultimate act of cellular gauche – breaking up with someone by text message. All the more so if the announcement is broadcast simultaneously to hundreds of friends
A few weeks after M’s divorce debacle, I was visiting a friend’s Facebook profile and came across a “memorial page” set up for Edie Ilan. Edie, I learned, had waged a brave but ultimately unsuccessful two-year battle against cancer
I first met Edie at an introductory session to the Coaches Training Institute in Tel Aviv and had considered hiring her as a personal life and business coach. We never consummated the relationship, however, and fell out of touch.
In Edie’s case, the Internet medium seems entirely appropriate. I would never have known about her death if I hadn’t been surfing. I left a post with my memories of Edie on her page.
As I grow older, I wonder how many other friends and acquaintances will have their passings publicized and nobly memorialized on Facebook? And how many relationship updates I’ll have to endure along the way.
Elvis has left the building before even entering
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, coexistence, General, Life, Music, Politics, Pop Culture
Say it ain’t so Elvis.
Only two weeks after one of the greats of rock & roll, Elvis Costello told me that the only answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is through “dialogue and reconciliation,” he decided to take himself out of the equation by cancelling his two shows scheduled for June 30 and July 1 at the Caesaerea Amphitheater.
Formerly great hip hop poet pioneer Gil Scott-Heron also recently cancelled a Tel Aviv show soon after it was announced saying that he and his band “didn’t like wars.” And Santana, due to pro-Palestinian pressure or some other reason, also nixed a show here in the early stages. But Costello’s blow is the mightiest, because it’s the most- thought out.
Costello posted an announcement over the weekend explaining his decision to join the boycott of Israel. “There are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering of the innocent,” he wrote.
Saying he couldn’t imagine receiving another invitation to perform in Israel, Costello wrote, that since the complex subjects involving the conflict “are actually too grave and complex to be addressed in a concert, then it is also quite impossible to simply look the other way… sometimes a silence in music is better than adding to the static and so an end to it.”
Costello was set to make his Israeli debut with his new folk/bluegrass band The Sugarcanes, and in his engaging phone conversation with me two weeks ago, he eloquently explained that he had given much thought to playing in the country, but decided that he was against efforts to boycott performances.
“I know from the experience of a friend who is from Israel and from people who have worked there that there is a difference of opinion there among Israelis regarding their government’s policies. It seems to me that dialogue is essential. I don’t presume to think that my performance is going to be part of the process,” Costello said.
“The people who call for a boycott of Israel own the narrow view that think performing there must be about profit and endorsing the hawkish policy of the government. It’s like never appearing in the US because you didn’t like Bush’s policies or boycotting England because of Margaret Thatcher.”
It’s unclear whether the announced show by Costello’s wife, vocalist and pianist Diana Krall, will go on as planned on August 9 at the Ra’anana Amphitheater. But for the thousands of Costello fans who sold out the first Caesearea show neccessitating the addition of a second show, listening to “What’s So Funny ’bout Peace, Love and Understanding” will never again sound the same.
***
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