Israeli brotherhood through soup
When an old friend of my wife’s who was visiting Israel recommended getting together at a Jerusalem soup kitchen where she and her children were volunteering on Friday, we immediately said yes.
With all our good intentions – and despite spending the good part of a year picking up leftover food late at night from weddings and bar mitzvahs for the Leket/Table to Table organization – I hadn’t done much volunteering of late.
On Thursday night, I looked up the address of the soup kitchen and learned that it was in Mekor Baruch, a poor neighborhood not too far from Mea Shearim. I expressed my reservations to my wife later about going the next day.
“I’m not sure I want to volunteer helping haredim, poor or not,” I said, already feeling like a heartless racist as I was saying it. But the last few days had evidently gotten to me. And the whole separation / spitting on eight year old girls issue was just part of the cumulative effect. Having had two daughters serve in very active units during their military service, I’ve grown increasingly bitter about the segments of Israeli society who don’t serve – not to mention the husbands who don’t work and whose families need to live off of welfare which my taxes help subsidize. Did I really need to be serving them lunch on Friday?
My wife listened to my apprehension, and in her wisdom said we should go anyway, see what it was like and reserve judgment. I’m glad I married her.
The Hazon Yeshaya soup kitchen wasn’t anything like I thought it would be. There were haredim there, like Aviad, the chief chef who when not standing over a huge vat of cholent, was welcoming volunteers like us from all over the world. Standing next to us chopping hundreds of vegetables into giant tubs of salads were Christians from Amsterdam, Jews on a bar mitzvah trip from Mexico, Israeli teens who show up every Friday to help, and everyone in between.
On the other side of the kitchen, over a hundred older, mostly Russian speaking Israelis were queuing up to enter the sparse dining room for a lunch, that besides the cholent, included chicken, rice, salad and an orange. According to Aviad, most of the clientele who arrived daily – but more so on Friday – were Holocaust survivors who received their main meal of the day from the soup kitchen.
After about an hour of kitchen detail, we were asked if we wanted to get out of the kitchen and help serve the meals – an offer we accepted immediately. As we took a coffee break before the serving commenced, Aviad motioned to me to come over.
“You have to try my cholent, everyone says it’s the best,” he said, ladeling a small amount into a plastic bowl.
I demurred, saying I couldn’t take away food from the people that needed it, but looking at the gigantic pot it came from, and others like it, I realized that wasn’t a valid argument. And, anyway, it smelled delicious. So I accepted the bowl and within a minute, crowned Aviad the cholent king.
“You know, people get the wrong idea about haredim from the papers. Most of us aren’t like that,” he said.
I looked across the room at women and men standing together, preparing food, cooperating, laughing and schmoozing, and realized how right he was. I know that I’ll be returning to Hazon Yeshaya soon, and bringing my children with me.
Foto Friday – 2011 beginnings to be continued
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Picture of the Week, Politics, Pop Culture, Social Justice
2011 was a year of tentative beginnings. Burgeoning consumer awareness sparked by skyrocketing cottage cheese prices brought Israeli citizens to the streets. They then proceeded to sleep on those same streets for the rest of the summer in protest of the high cost of housing. The peaceful tent city campaign culminated in a really big rally…
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
But for most of the summer, it looked like this…
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Sadly, it still does look like that in Jerusalem’s Sacher Garden, where the truly homeless continue to reside in the cold and wet. The next chapter in the Social Justice movement remains to be written in 2012.
Some chapters were closed in 2011, which marked the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the homecoming and start of a brand new life for Gilad Shalit after over five years of imprisonment by Hamas.
Photo: IDF Spokesman via Wikimedia Commons
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak were present at Shalit’s release — so much so that they were accused of being publicity hounds (does no one know anything about politicians?) — and Netanyahu’s image was used to create the first Israeli photo meme.
There were other beginnings as well. A rare sand cat was born at the Ramat Gan Safari…
Photo: Tibor-Jager
Jerusalem held its first marathon and got its first Light Railway…
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Dead Sea was not selected as one of the New 7 Natural Wonders of the World…
Photo: New7Wonders
On the other hand, the nomination campaign may have served to draw public attention to the salt lake’s plight — just this week, Israel Corporation subsidiary Israel Chemicals reached an agreement with the Ministry of Finance on terms for the Dead Sea’s rehabilitation from excessive salt harvesting. It’ll be interesting to see if this promise, along with many others made in 2011, will be fulfilled in 2012. Here’s to that, and to a hopeful and happy New Year!
Tel Aviv bars get physical
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, education, Entertainment, General, Israeliness, Life, Technology
Will Tel Aviv bars become the next university lecture hall?
According to Ha’aretz, the series of lectures on everything from quantum physics and linguistics to space and high tech is the initiative of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, which is looking for ways to broaden their student base.
“”We were thinking about how to get to the general public, who might find science lectures interesting but just doesn’t know it. If we arrived at where they were, they might listen,” Weizmann Institute spokesman Yivsam Azgad told Haaretz. Especially if there’s some really good dark beer on tap, he might have added.
At first, the idea was met with skepticism by the hip, Tel Aviv night club establishment.
“Bar owners were reluctant to give away their establishment on Thursday nights. There were those who told me ‘you don’t know bars in Tel Aviv, they’re loud, people drink and make out, how would the lecturer feel?’”
Only that it turned out that the skeptics were in the minority, with the project now taking place in 40 bars, including some of the biggest and most successful in the city, with another 50-venue project in the works.
Some offshoots to the project include “User Interface on a Beer,” a series of lectures taking place in bars and geared at programmers and Internet professionals. Another is Wize, which hosts bar lectures on a weekly basis. The upshot is that the science geeks and the beautiful night lifers are finding out they’re often one and the same. And, if nothing else, there are surely some very original pick up lines coming out of the lectures. Did you hear the one about the wave function who couldn’t walk straight?
Donut guy is at it again – raises $10,000 for charity by eating sufganiyot
Elie Klein the donut guy
Elie Klein is at it again. Last year, the 31-year-old Anglo public relations account executive chowed down 70 sufganiyot (Hanukah donuts) for charity, raising over $9,000 for 44 causes around the world. This year, he set a goal of eating 100 donuts and, in the process, has raised over $10,000. As of this morning – with still a day of donut eating left to go, he’s reached the 101 mark.
To put that in perspective, if each sufganiya contains approximately 400 calories, that’s over 40,000 calories consumed for charity. We sure hope his arteries aren’t already flowing with Krispy Kreme.
Klein’s adventures in edible oil began two years ago as a “gentleman’s bet” between friends over who could eat more sufganiyot during the Hanukah season. Klein quickly realized that he could line up financial “pledges” from friends and family for each donut eaten, much like charity races raise money per kilometer run or pedaled.
Klein has run most of his “Dough for Donuts” campaign via Facebook – regular status posts update supporters on what he’s eaten and where the money is going. Yesterday, for example, funds went to two groups: Ramot for the Environment and Ahavas Yisrael of Baltimore.
Other organizations Klein has backed – this year the tally reached 47 groups - include well known charities such as Zaka, Melabev, Meir Panim, and a variety of “Yad’s” – Yad Binyamin, Yad Eliezer, Yad L’Achim, Yad Sarah, and more. A full list can be found on Klein’s Facebook “event.”
One thing copiously absent from Klein’s postings: which sufganiyot he’s eating. Is he going for super gourmet award winners like those from the English Cake and Roladin bakeries (with its vodka double espresso “chaser”), or the more humble supermarket variety? The price difference is not insignificant: the over the top donuts can reach 8 shekels each, while a plain blob of fried dough and artificial jelly can be had for as low as 1-2 shekels.
Although I’d like to think that, if he’s going to be scarfing up all those sufganiyot, he at least ought to please his taste buds along the way, I hate to think of him eating up all the profits. Either way, Klein has shown that an individual really can make a difference – the charities he’s supported can attest to that. Perhaps they’ll throw him a party to celebrate. But please, serve carrots for dessert!
A very merry Christmas
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Religion
It’s always a little shocking how Christmas can just come and go around here with little awareness that it’s been and gone. Sure, there are the Christmas decorations on the southern end of Hebron Road, heading toward Bethlehem. And there are the occasional articles or public service announcements about where to pick up one’s KKL Christmas trees, or storefronts decorated with Christmas-like ornaments. There’s also my upstairs neighbor who decorated his window box plants with Christmas lights that twinkle from 6 pm to 10 pm most nights. I’m not sure where he got the idea — he’s a fairly born-and-bred Israeli — but the awareness is out there.
I had an interesting conversation with a local minister about Christmas in Israel, and how it characterizes itself in this land of many Jews, whether identified or not. Reverend David Neuhaus, the Latin Patriarchal Vicar at the Saint James Vicariate for Hebrew Speaking Catholics in Israel, said the following in Expeditions:
“It’s really more meaningful in Israel,” says Neuhaus. “Christmas is ultimately religious here because there’s nothing commercial or social going on, and there’s so much of that elsewhere. And then you’re celebrating it here, where everything happened.”
These days, it’s a diverse crowd celebrating Jesus’ birth. You’ve got foreign workers from all over the world, Christian Arabs, missionary types, pilgrims, and the smattering of Israelis who just like to attend Christmas Mass, which smacks of ‘chul‘ — the world out there — for them. Indu, a Sri Lankan woman I know, lit up when I asked her today about her Christmas. While it was bittersweet because she wasn’t with her four kids and family, she got to go to Bethlehem twice, on a van chartered by her and her friends.
“It was mobbed,” she told me. “So many people celebrating together.”
A different kind of Christmas, which is hopefully a good thing.
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