Singing for the new year
Filed under: General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life
The Jewish New Year ( ??? ???? /rosh hashanah) has always been one of my favourite holidays – a time when we celebrate renewal and continuity, when we wish one another a sweet and peaceful new year. This year the wish for a peaceful year seems particularly apt, given recent events. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that I just want to sink into this month of short workweeks, introspection and quiet, to stop thinking about politics and wars for a little while and focus on personal stuff and happy stuff.
I celebrated the eve of the holiday at the home of Diana, my oldest friend, and her family (I wrote about them and posted photos here). Kim and Lynn, Diana’s twin daughters, just started high school this year. Given that I have known them since they were unfertilized eggs, the sense of time-a-passing was pretty strong. They’ve been taking guitar lessons lately and before we sat down for dinner they performed the late Ehud Manor’s (bio of Manor here) song, “In the Next Year.” (Hebrew lyrics here). I filmed them without their knowledge (they thought I was taking still photos) and am posting the video of us all warbling out of key below. Maybe they’ll discover the video when they’re 16 and tell me that I positively humiliated them. ;) Or not.
Scroll down to the bottom for the video.
Kim and Lynn (click to big)
Roughtly translated, the lyrics of the song go like this:
In the next year
Next year we’ll sit on the porch
And we’ll count migrating birds
Children on holiday will play catch
Between the house and the fields
Chorus:
Wait and see, wait and see
How good it’s going to be
Next year
Red grapes will become ripe by evening
And will be served chilled at the table
And gentle breezes will carry with them
Old newspapers and a cloud
Wait and see, wait and see…
Next year we’ll spread open the palms of our hands
In front of the flowing white light
A white heron will spread its wings in the light
And the sun will shine into them
Wait and see, wait and see…
div>
Kim and Lynne sing b’shana haba’a
Uploaded by Lisang
He gives good story
Attention, English speakers residing in, or within easy driving distance of, Tel Aviv!
Etgar Keret, Israel’s most famous young author, is going to give a reading in Tel Aviv this week. The event will be held at the Dizengoff Centre branch of Tzomet Sfarim on Tuesday, September 19, at 7.30. (to find the shop easily, enter at gate 6)
Starting at 8 p.m., journalist Viva Press will interview Etgar about his most recently translated book, The Nimrod Flip Out.
For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of hearing Etgar speak, this is your opportunity to be charmed, amused, touched and challenged; Etgar is one of those rare writers who tells stories as well as he writes them. You will definitely laugh, you will certainly think and you might even cry a bit. It’ll definitely be better than Cats.
For more information about Etgar, this is one of the best interviews I’ve read.
Etgar also wrote this beautiful exchange of letters with Palestinian author Samir El Youssef during the first week of our most recent war.
I’ll be there – anyone want to go for coffee afterward?
Crossposted at ontheface.
Come as you are
One of the cultural stumbling blocks over which I find myself constantly, well… stumbling (that whirring sound you hear is my High School English teacher spinning merrily in her grave), is the tricky decision of what to wear to an Israeli wedding.
In the U.S. I had a much better handle on the social niceties, and in many cases the hosts would gently guide you by indicating on the invitation how formal (or informal) the affair was going to be.
But here in Israel there seems to be no reliable guide one can use to judge what to wear to a wedding. You just sort of make a wild guess based on what you know about your hosts and dress accordingly.
This method has let me down on more than a few occasions.
I’ve shown up at weddings here wearing a suit and tie, only to find half the men wearing casual slacks and open-necked shirts… and the rest in jeans and t-shirts. I’ve also shown up wearing a white shirt and slacks only to find most of the men walking around in jackets and ties.
It’s gotten to the point where I sometimes bring a few extra items of clothing in the car as a hedge against the inevitability embarrassment of guessing wrong. (For the record, my wife somehow always manages to be dressed impeccably and appropriate to the occasion. That I don’t ‘accidentally’ spill something on her is a testament to what a good sport I am. :-)
Last night Zahava and I attended the wedding of a friend from our town. The bride was one of my regular trempisti’ot (hitchhikers) to Beer Sheva over the past year, and we have become quite friendly during the hours together in the car. She is a very low key, down-to-earth person… so while I surveyed the possibilities for humiliation hanging in my closet, I hazarded a guess that the attire would be more towards the casual end of the scale. The fact that the wedding was to take place at a small rural Moshav (sort of a collective farm) helped cement my decision. Slacks and an open-necked shirt it was.
When we showed up, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was to be an outdoor affair, and that several men were walking in dressed at about the same level of studied slovenliness as I was. But when we got inside I got a big surprise that has changed the way I will view the issue of wedding attire forever.
It seems the groom is an officer in the elite Magallan Paratrooper unit of the IDF. I hadn’t really given it much thought until we walked into the place, but obviously he and most of his friends had been fighting for their lives in Lebanon for the past month… and the wedding was taking place only two days after the cease-fire took effect.
How do you plan a wedding under such circumstances?!?
Well, it turns out that the two families had gone ahead with the final preparations for the wedding in hopes that the fighting would end in time. Israelis are incredible optimists that way.
When I was talking with the Bride’s mother before the ceremony, she told me that the army had offered to let the groom leave Lebanon early for his wedding, but he refused to leave his men while the war was still raging. His rationale was that his men were already operating under extremely dangerous conditions in enemy territory… and to have a new, unfamiliar officer take over his command would further endanger everyone. So he made the decision to stay.
Looking around the reception it was easy to spot the groom’s friends. They fell into three groups:
1. Those that had returned from Lebanon two days ago. These were the guys whose sunburns had mostly faded to tans and who had been able to shower, shave and change into mostly clean uniforms.
2. Those who had returned from Lebanon the previous night. While they had shaved and had managed to buy or borrow clean white t-shirts during the day (and had tossed aside their sweat-stained olive-colored uniform shirts), they still wore filthy army pants.
3. Those who had come directly from Lebanon to the wedding that day. These were the guys who hadn’t had a chance to even wash their faces or find a clean t-shirt. They had several days worth of stubble on their cheeks and still wore their dirty army uniforms stained with the soil of Lebanon.
What all of these young men shared in common was the inevitable M-16 casually slung over a well-muscled shoulder, and an impossible level of enthusiasm and energy… broad toothy smiles and friendly shouts that gave hint to the simple, unimaginable pleasure they were experiencing at being safe and alive.
As Zahava and I wandered around the place we watched as groups of these young soldiers hugged each-other with joy, asked after friends who had ‘only’ been wounded… and occasionally paused to quietly mention the name of a friend/comrade who was conspicuously absent.
Walking around with many of these active duty and reserve soldiers were girlfriends, and the occasional wife. Maybe it was my imagination, but the women seemed to absolutely drink in the men with their eyes as if to constantly confirm that they were really standing there beside them.
Nowhere was this deep, penetrating gaze more apparent than under the chuppah (the marriage canopy). As silence fell over the gathered crowd sitting under the open sky and the ceremony began, all eyes were on the bride… and her eyes never left the strong, smiling face of her groom for even an instant.
Zahava leaned over and whispered to me that she couldn’t imagine how the bride had managed remain sane knowing that terrorists had been trying desperately to kill her soon-to-be husband in a foreign country only days before they were to start their life together. While I understood and admired the groom’s loyalty to his men, I couldn’t help agreeing with her on that point. This beaming, beautiful bride was made of stronger stuff than I could imagine.
I’ve been to hundreds of weddings in my life and am loath to compare one to another. Each is special and each is the holy union of two people. But I have never seen the likes of the dancing that ensued once the couple were officially married last night.
The men, who should have been too exhausted to move, flew around in wild circles lifting the groom (and each-other) high into the warm night air. I stopped trying to keep up after 10 or 15 minutes. The women matched (and maybe even exceeded) the men for sheer output of energy… and the two groups sang so loud that the highly amplified band seemed only a background afterthought by comparison.
As we ate the courses of the festive meal together under the starry night sky, I couldn’t help but notice that all the happy celebrants seemed to exist entirely in the present. No talk of yesterday’s events. No thought of what the morning might bring. And most of all, nobody seemed to notice that some people were wearing dresses or jackets… others were dressed in the equivalent of rumpled, dirty, olive green pajamas… and the rest fell somewhere in between.
It was then and there that I resolved never again to worry about anything so meaningless as what to wear to a wedding.
I realize now that to be Israeli is to just show up to share your friend’s happiest occasions… and occasionally their grief. Nobody is interested that you are a snappy dresser or that you know what people are wearing this season in Paris or Milan. They want you there to help celebrate and commemorate an important event in their lives. You, not your wardrobe.
If an Israeli host bothered to take note, they would notice that this person came dressed in a jacket and tie… and that other person joined the celebration in their very best jeans and t-shirt. And they would conclude that both were dressed exactly appropriate to the occasion.
But no Israeli host would ever notice such things. Because the height of Israeliness is that people honestly expect you to simply come as you are.
Cross Posted on Treppenwitz
Why I’ll Go Back
We’ve been travelling through the northeastern U.S. this July. Ever since the war back home started, we’ve been advised by friends and family to simply extend our vacation, hang out in America (where it’s safe?) until things calm down. Can’t do it.
In fact, our vacation lost any semblance of a pleasure trip once the war began. All any of us can think of is getting back home. Touring American historical sites, viewing the stunning coastal scenery or the awesome urban canyons of Manhattan, even shopping has lost its appeal. These things seem meaningless now. There is only one reality for us: Israel is in crisis and we need to be there.
We’re certainly not the only people to have ever felt this way. Over the decades of Israel’s existence, so many people have rushed, literally, to her aid. Many of those volunteers ended up staying. There is something about Israel that calls to so many of us on a molecular level. The urge to return is physical as well mental and emotional. Perhaps even more so when Israel is already our home, and has been for more than eleven years.
That doesn’t mean we don’t get tired of the way things sometimes are, or that we see our home as perfect. But Israel is, especially in times of trouble, the place we were meant to be.
Tongue Twisters
Like English, Hebrew has its fair share of tongue twisters. Probably the best known goes like this: Sarah shara shir samayach (Sarah sings a happy song). I haven’t yet heard if there are also Israeli Spoonerisms but I imagine there are. But sometimes, we make up our own plays on words, puns, and Spoonerisms (though the latter might not always be done on purpose).
This morning my 8 year old was telling me about a project she has coming due in school. She told me she needs to bring in a plant that is “b’rashoot ha adam”. I was a bit puzzled as to what it meant for a plant to be under the authority of man. “Do you mean a cultivated plant, as opposed to something that grows wild?” I asked her. No, that wasn’t it.
Then it dawned on me. She had meant to say “b’sheroot ha adam” (at the service of man). Okay, that’s easy! We talked about aloe and other plants that can be used as medicine. We discussed cotton, and the use of plants for dyes. She pointed out that plants produce the oxygen we breathe, and that without plants to eat, many of the animals we eat would die. She even suggested that flowers and plants add color and beauty to our lives which, while not necessary for survival, certainly add something important to our lives.
It was a one of those fabulous moments in a parent’s life, the kind of opportunity that comes up in those moments when we’re doing something routine, like brushing hair or driving to school. I’m just glad my Hebrew was up to decyphering her Spoonerism.
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