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Going to the zoo

I’ve been waiting for the right moment to introduce my baby boys to the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, and given that their ears perk up every time they hear a dog bark, bird chirp or see a bird cross their path, I figured the time had come. Enough with reading about animals and faking a tiger’s snarl; we had to actually see some live animals.

The wait was well worth it — as is the annual membership which varies for singles, couples, couples with one child, two children, etc. — as they were equally enthusiastic about all the animals we saw, from ducks and flamingos to meerkats and yes, a couple of tigers. They both were slightly flipped out by the goats who swarmed their stroller in the ‘pinat chai’ (petting zoo), one trying to grab the remnant of Lev’s cookie out of his small fist. But once the goats butted out, it was on to bigger thrills, like stroking a sheep and watching turtles crawl around their enclosure.

The choices of animals to visit seems endless on that first trip to the zoo — elephants! zebras! monkeys! And what I also liked is the coexistence effect of the place; on a Thursday morning, the place was pleasantly full with ultra Orthodox boys on a school trip, Arab elementary school children in their red sweater uniforms, also on a school trip, as well as Arab high schoolers and similarly-aged Jewish high school kids. And just to prove the zoo’s coexistence effect, all signs next to the animals’ enclosures are written in Hebrew, Arabic, English and, often, Yiddish.

30seczoo01.MP3We’re [all] going to the zoo…

Bayit banamal

I’m not the first to write about Tel Aviv’s namal, the refurbished port/boardwalk at the northern end of the city. And I must confess a ‘hubati’ (read below) love for strolling along its wooden planks, hillocked in some places to encourage kids on scooters, bikes and skateboards, and with just the right kind of cafes and restaurants along its length. (Although, as my mother pointed out recently, there are not enough benches for just sitting and looking at the sea.)

(’Hubatim’ or a ‘hubati’ — pronounced cho-BA-tim — is someone or those from Holon/Bat Yam. It’s a tongue-in-cheek/somewhat derogatory term for the Tel Aviv version of the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, those who don’t actually live in Tel Aviv, but come in from the outskirts to enjoy ‘the big city.’ Another TLV friend of mine has a kindly term for those of us who don’t live in the Big Orange, ‘ambassadors and diplomats.’)

This isn’t an entry about hubatim, however, rather about a societal development that I noticed at the namal. Sure, it’s got the shopping, the restaurants, the event halls and bars. But during the day, besides the ‘ambassadors and diplomats’ strolling along the boardwalk, as well as the tourists and unexplained working-age people who are hanging out rather than working — btw, they must be freelancers — there are many, many moms with babies, pushing strollers and carrying babes in slings. Sure, it’s a nice place to stroll when you’ve got a kvetchy ankle-biter. And the Israeli commercial network is clearly starting to feed into that trend, with a Steimatzky’s for kids, a Shilav (of course), including a lovely playground outside the store, and Dyada, a kind of club for babies and their parents.

It’s all quite baby-friendly, which is a helpful thing when you’re trying to negotiate the real world from the vantage point of a double stroller loaded with two one-year-olds. Then again, all they really wanted to do was crawl after the seagulls.

Photo credit: Debbie Zimelman

Dead Sea skin

Israel may be bereft of natural resources, a common complaint when talking about water and land — okay, yes, that is a problem — but we do have the Dead Sea…and you can’t beat that combo of minerals.

It seems the Export Institute has realized just how unique our minerals are, and has arranged ‘dozens of meetings’ for a collection of Dead Sea cosmetics companies during a two-day marathon at New York City’s Pennsylvania Hotel. The companies attending include B4U, Biscol, Canaan Chic Cosmetic, InterCosma, Odeyah, Paloma Dead Sea, Sea of Spa – Dead Sea, Spa Cosmetics and Spider Pharm Industries.

The Israel Manufacturers Association has even developed a quality label for genuine Dead Sea products, with the aim of discerning between the original DS cosmetics manufacturers and the frauds, or in more genteel terms, pirate industry. According to sources at the Manufacturers Association, the companies that produce genuine Dead Sea products, such as mud, lotions and creams have to prove that the source of their products is the Dead Sea and not some random body of water…and that it contains the rich combo of minerals that makes the Dead Sea a source of skin rejuvenation and vitality.

If you’re in NYC, check out the Dead Sea folk at the PA Hotel, just through tomorrow. And back home, consider some Dead Sea cream for that dry skin on the heels of your feet. It’ll do the trick.

Accessorize it

There are now so many accessory designers in Israel that they have their own fair. If you’re in need of a new handbag, belt, jewelry, scarf and whatever else qualifies as a clothing item that adds to your overall outfit, head to the ‘Accessories Shuk’ this weekend, Thursday through Shabbat, October 29-31, at Ganei Hataarucha in Tel Aviv.

With discounts of 20%-30% on the current season, and 60%-80% on previous seasons, deals are clearly to be had. And while I don’t know all the designers who will be present, I can tell you that Or Forbin, whose line of jewelry, Eva Teffner — named for her grandmother — will be there, and she offers some extremely clever and affordable costume jewels. She uses elements of collage, printing on metal and then incorporating that into the earrings, pendants and pins that are part of her inventory.

Cooperative ceramics

The Israeli concept of cooperative kibbutz living may have been dealt a death knell, or, at the very least, signs of retirement over the last ten years, but the artist cooperative is alive, well and thriving.

For the uninitiated, the artist cooperative, often materialized in Israel as a ceramicists’ cooperative, is a group of artists who join together to rent a storefront and sell their creations. From what I’ve gleaned from my internet research — namely, not a whole lot — there are such cooperatives all over the world, although Israel seems to possess a large number of them. I like to think that’s because of our communal way of thinking, in which the thought is that it’s always better to work together than apart.

In any case, I stumbled upon yet another ceramists’ cooperative in Machane Yehuda the other week, Pri HaAdama (Fruit of the Earth), which features the work of 14, yes, 14, different ceramicists. The collection is wonderful, with many pieces to choose from and at surprisingly low prices.

While I’m at it, I’ll mention two other favorite ceramic cooperatives, Shmone B’Yachad, or Eight Altogether, at 8 Yoel Solomon Street in Jerusalem’s Nachalat Shiva neighborhood, downtown. The other fave is Shlush Shloshim in Neve Tzedek, Tel Aviv, on 30 Shlush Street (You can find Marcelle Klein’s work there).

Spontaneous Thriller

So, have you seen that video of Oprah opening her 24th season with a ’spontaneous dance’/'flash mob dance’ along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile? If you haven’t,

Story is that her staff — and 20,000 people — pulled off the surprise, for Oprah, of performing a choreographed piece to the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.” And now this kind of spontaneous dance is becoming a worldwide trend, one which, natch, is making its way to Israel.

Several production companies and the City of Tel Aviv-Yafo are putting on their own spontaneous dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” scheduled for next Friday, October 30, at 12:30 in Dizengoff Square (the one with the Agam fountain at the middle).

If you want to participate, however, you gotta learn the dance, and by that I mean the dance steps to ‘Thriller,’ those danced by the moondancing maniac Michael Jackson. You have just one week:

The Mohawk Returns to TA

As the recent owner of an old-but-new-for-me haircut — a modified mushroom, last seen on my head in 1983-1984 — I’ve been getting many comments about my newly shorn locks, probably because they’re shorter than they’ve been for some time. One friend told me, “You look ten years younger.” Which could mean just that, that I look ten years younger, but I sort of felt that it implied that I had a solid ten years to rid myself of, and now that I’d done just that, what have I been looking like for the last few years??

But given the centrality of hair in my life for the last week, I paid special attention to a Haaretz Gallery article this week about the increase of Mohawk haircuts on the streets of the Big Orange. It’s a look that attracts attention, as pointed out by Haaretz writer Tahel Frosh — whether it’s a modified, messed up or done up Mohawk. And given the recent harkening back to the 80s in the fashion world, it’s not a big surprise that this particular Punk style — and my mushroom head — is back.

According to stylist Maayan Goldman, the fashion statement being made by the current Israeli variation says, “I am not radical in any way, but I am here. I have fashion sense, but I’m not going to die for it.”

I mean, after all, it is just hair. It grows back.

The Israeli Newman

The Israeli mail carrier hasn’t received the same kind of media attention as postal workers in other countries, particularly the U.S. That could be because of the lack of drama attached to the job. As far as I know, no Israeli postal worker has ever ‘gone postal’, although I wouldn’t blame them if they did, given the myriad tasks they have to do in the typical postal bank, which can include anything from supplying stamps and changing currency to acting as a bank teller for customers paying their household and business bills. And given that the post office is always open during the oddest hours, hours which you are never fully aware of, they are generally full of disgruntled people.

But one thing they can’t complain about is that they get to work in their own clothing — often jeans or shorts and a tee-shirt — carrying the mail in regulation Israel Postal Service backpacks, a more casual look than the typical American postal carrier bag. Now it is true that the American mail carrier bag has become a long-time trendy accessory, known as the messenger bag. Yet it cannot be argued that the American postal carrier ever appears to be trendy, particularly not when you’re channeling Seinfeld’s Newman as the typical mailman.

These were some of my thoughts the other day as I was watching a mailman go from apartment building to apartment building along Katznelson Street in Jerusalem’s Rasko neighborhood. He would deliver the mail to a few buildings, crossing back and forth on the street, and then replenish his bag from an locked olive green box on the street. And dressed as he was in shorts, tee-shirt, baseball hat and backpack, one wouldn’t necessarily guess that he was the mailman unless noting the Postal Service logo on his bag.

So imagine my surprise when, after asking him if he would mind if I took a picture of him for my blog, he answered in English — having heard my American-accented Hebrew. Turns out that this particular postman, Eric Lemel, wearing an L.A. Clippers baseball hat, has been delivering mail in Jerusalem for 13 years, and loves it. I think that may an ultimate aliyah professional story. Because how many Jewish mailmen do you know? (Besides Newman.)

Happy 1st birthday, Ziv and Lev

Hard to believe, but yesterday was my twin sons’ first birthday. I’m realizing that I probably didn’t write this yesterday because I was, in a sense, too overwhelmed to even think about contemplating the passage of this year. But now that they’re one year and one day, I can get sentimental. So, here goes:

Ziv and Lev are a year old, and 365 days have passed since they were born, at 2 and 1.2 kilos each, respectively. We’ve gone through learning about the Hadassah NICU, how to nurse (me and them), bath and feed. We’ve figured out the tag-teaming that is twin-care, from lifting two at at time and feeding with one spoon (it’s a lot simpler) to figuring out who really needs you when both are crying and not worrying so much about favoritism issues.

We’ve become friends with our Tipat Chalav nurse, Nira; have become accustomed to the grins, smiles, stares and well-meaning strangers who constantly stop to ask if the two similar-looking boys sitting side by side in the stroller are twins; and now know that in Israel, red is considered a color for baby girls, not boys. We’re into the park and playground circuit, and despite our ‘advanced’ age as parents (and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins), it’s kinda fun to hang out with all sorts of people at the playground. Turns out that when you have kids, you have a lot in common with anyone else who is or has ever been a parent.

Which means that if you can hack it, there’s a lot of good advice out there, which I’ve been wise enough about taking so far, and hopefully will continue to do so. If it wasn’t for my sisters and a good friend, I never would have sleep trained my boys, and consequently, wouldn’t be getting good nights of sleep for the last four months. And almost everyone, when you’re the parent of twins, has something to tell you. It can be the guy at Aroma the other day, who showed me the video on his cellphone of his 15-month-old twin girls, and he also has an older daughter, similar to our blended family situation. Or the friend who’s also a mother of 19-year-old triplets, who gave us a photo album for each boy, with a designated page for each month of their first year. Better get working on that. (Thank god for Mac and iPhoto, which separates your pics into months.) Or the neighbor who has six-year-old twins and told me — when I’d had a particularly harrowing day around five months — that things get much easier after they’re six months old. She was right.

But all in all, it’s been a fantastic year. And we’re looking forward to many, many more. Happy birthday, Ziv and Lev.

Pomegranate economics

As we say goodbye to the ‘chagim’ period, the month-long span of Jewish holidays, a piece of news about pomegranates, a major fruit in the Rosh Hashana new fruit ritual. The pomegranate has also become a major component of the health food trade, given its antioxidants that lower blood pressure and reduce risk factors for heart disease. As a result, Israeli farmers have doubled the size of their pomegranate orchards over the past five years to 20,000 dunam from the previous 10,000 dunam, or 2,500 acres. Them’s a lot of pomegranate seeds. As a result, an oversupply of the red-seeded fruit has led to a 30% drop in prices over the last few weeks, and at the height of pomegranate season, according to a recent item in Ha’aretz.

That’s great for the Israeli consumer, who’s now buying pomegranates at the supermarket for NIS 10 a kilogram, down from NIS 14 at this time last year. So if you’re so inclined, and live in this pomegranate-heavy region, here’re are some recipes from Haim Cohen and Eli Landau, the current recipe-testers and writers for the Ha’aretz weekend magazine. They also offer the same advice as my sister for getting the seeds out of the pomegranate: Fill about half of a good-sized bowl with water; cut the pomegranate in half and place the cut side down in the water. Then just peel off the seeds in the water, which will prevent you, the peeler, from getting sprayed with ruby red pomegranate juice. It’s a a great ‘patent‘, as we say in these parts.

As for the recipes, this is the one I’m thinking about trying this week:

Pomegranate risotto

A slightly sour and wonderful-tasting dish.

half kg. rice for risotto

1.5 liters hot vegetable stock

1.5 cups pomegranate juice

seeds from 1 pomegranate

1 medium-sized onion, finely chopped

100 gm. butter

olive oil

4-5 tbsp. grated Parmesan

salt and pepper

In a heavy, medium-sized pot, melt 50 gr. butter with 2 tbsp. olive oil. Add the onion; saute over medium heat until it becomes transparent. Add the rice and saute for another minute or two, while stirring. Add half a cup pomegranate juice and cook until it evaporates almost completely. Add one ladle full of vegetable stock. Add salt and pepper; stir until the liquids are absorbed. Gradually add one ladle full at a time, while stirring. After about 15 minutes of cooking, when the rice is still hard, add the pomegranate seeds and continue to cook until the rice softens. The risotto should be well cooked, not al dente.

Turn off the flame and add 50 gr. butter; stir until it melts. Add the Parmesan, mix well and serve.

 

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