Bebe in Israel
Filed under: education, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
Baby in Bamba
Her sidebar of French lessons includes:
Children should say hello, goodbye, thank you and please. It helps them to learn that they aren’t the only ones with feelings and needs.
When they misbehave, give them the “big eyes”—a stern look of admonishment.
Allow only one snack a day. In France, it’s at 4 or 4:30.
Remind them (and yourself) who’s the boss. French parents say, “It’s me who decides.”
Don’t be afraid to say “no.” Kids have to learn how to cope with some frustration.
I chuckled as I read this, because as an American mother in a foreignish land — Druckerman is an American living in Paris — I think about this all the time, wondering if my kids will turn out differently than their American counterparts, or if they’re already different, which they probably are. And if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing.
So if I were to look at that list and the general tendencies of Israeli kids, I’d say the following:
1) They know to say hello, not so great at goodbye, thank you when prompted and please, well, it depends.
2) Big eyes on misbehaving? Interesting idea, but I am Jewish, and, now, Israeli. Yelling comes naturally.
3) One snack a day? Lol. This is Israel, where snacks are built-in to the educational system. Moreover, parents think nothing of putting raspberry-flavored water in their bottles, chocolate spread sandwiches for lunch and Bamba for snacks.
4) Who’s the boss? Oh, they know. I think.
5) Saying no. That, I agree with. Just gotta be brave.
So, I would venture to say that the French rules of thumb make sense, but you know, so much depends on where you live and what’s going on around you. This is a land that worships children, where every kind of restaurant has highchairs and people schlep their kids everywhere. Do Israelis spoil their children because they know they’ll be going into the army in 18 years? I’m not quite sure, but I’d be happy to hear from anyone out here.
Comment away.
Icecream for breakfast
Filed under: Blogging, Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Life
Ben and Jerry's Israel ad for their ice cream club
In fact, when I typed ice cream for breakfast into the search bar of Facebook, dozens of posts popped up for celebrants around the globe, from Mexico, Seattle, Louisiana and Philly to Maine, Albany and Shanghai.
According to Serious Eats, all you need to do is eat ice cream, for breakfast, and on the first Saturday in February.
We’ve always celebrated on Saturday, Shabbat in our house, which is the only day that we’re all around, fairly calm and relaxed, and have the time to enjoy the wonders of ice cream for one’s first food of the day. Usually it’s a good selection of Ben & Jerry’s, sometimes with homemade ice cream as well, thanks to my nephew Natan, the artisanal ice cream connoisseur. Toppings? Not always, but it does add to the experience.
Serious Eats also adds that “the holiday was started in the 1960s in Rochester, New York by Florence Rappaport, who let her kids eat ice cream for breakfast on the first Saturday of February to make winter more bearable for them. Now this custom is done all over the world, from Minnesota to Israel to Australia.”
Turns out, there’s an official IEICFBD blog, where you can list your own celebration — there are four in Israel, including one in my own neighborhood of Talpiot (I think that one is hosted by other neighbors of ours) and one down at Kibbutz Ketura, where given the hot weather nearly year-round and a surfeit of American-born kibbutzniks, they’ve been celebrating for some 30 years.
It comes down to the fact that you just need to celebrate sometimes, and even with the upcoming holiday of Tu B’shvat, which, lord knows, offers ample opportunity for celebration, February can be a bleak month. So, if you missed it today, go for it next week. We won’t tell.
RIMBY
Filed under: education, Environment, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life
In all its glory...my local recycling cage.
That’s meant schlepping bottles in the car, on the stroller, on the way to this or that, and having a stockpile of them in the house at all times. And I can finally get rid of the batteries that have been piling up in my front closet for months because I can never find battery recycling anywhere.
In fact, I’ve been so frustrated about the state of recycling in my neighborhood that I recently wrote a piece about it for JTA, which was just published the other day. You can read it here, and one interesting fact is the following:
“According to Chagit Hoshen, the marketing manager of ELA Recycling, the nonprofit organization that handles recycling collection countrywide, an average of 41 percent of plastic bottles were recycled in 2011. Once the recycling rate reaches 50 percent, the organization says it will build a factory for the production of plastic bottles containing 40 percent recycled raw materials.”
At the same time, at least in my city of Jerusalem, many people still don’t recycle, and I often see neighbors simply throwing out their plastic bottles with the trash, just like they think nothing of tossing garbage out their car windows or sweeping the dirty water gathered from washing the floor out their front door. Of course, that’s not everyone, and there are many Israelis, both native-born and immigrants who take their recycling seriously and will gather their bottles, their cardboard and their tin cans and compost and deposit it in community gardens, community bins and other recycling centers.
In any case, it’s a start and one that I’m excited to begin using.
The sandwich generation
From Julie Winokur's documentary, The Sandwich Generation
Using responses from a questionnaire, the researchers found significant differences in burnout type, gender and country. That is, job burnout was higher than couple burnout — happy to hear that, women were more burned out than men (not surprising, given that women tend to carry the home and children burden more heavily), and Americans were more burned out than Israelis (that could be due to the fact that families live closer to one another around here, offering more support across siblings than in the U.S.).
The study also found that if jobs are more stressful, couple burnout is more aggravated and vice versa. And the researchers were surprised to find that job and couple burnout among sandwiched couples was relatively low compared to the general population. Meaning that the sandwich element was not as significant a factor as expected, probably because couples — in their focus group meetings — found that while there was a significant emotional factor in caring for aging parents, it still brought them closer together, working together to help care for both children and parents.
“I arrived at an age that I define as midlife. I am 49, and I think that the difficulty with parents is that you are at the point, how to say it…that the best part is behind us…and the future that awaits us, especially when you look at parents, well, it’s not too heartening…When you see this insulting old age, it is actually very difficult.”
Couples’ caring for aging parents together has had a positive effect on their marriage and therefore reduced couple burnout: “I think that it strengthens the marriage when both partners support each other and go to visit the parents together…It gives me a good feeling when I go with my wife to visit her parents, and she feels good when she comes with me to visit my parents.”
It all seems to make sense, and helps to know that even if you’re in that situation, you may be doing better than you think you are. Does that make sense?
Shoe shopping
Filed under: design, General, Israeliness, Life
Need shoes? Then again, does one ever, really, need shoes?
After years of not enough shoes in Israel, unattractive imported shoes or too-familiar, Teva Naot, Nimrod and other sandal-focused shoes — Israeli shoe designers have been multiplying at a welcome rate, joined by their brethren in spirit and style, accessories designers.
In fact, there are so many shoemakers, so to speak, that shoe and accessories man Jonathan Proim — whose wife Michal Miller is one of the designers — is hosting the second Zugot (Pairs) shoe fair this coming weekend.
Held at Beitan 10 of the Tel Aviv fairgrounds — Ganei Hataarucha — there will be 40 brands, 30 of them shoes, selling their wares at end-of-year prices. Most of the designers are local, but there are some imported brands, such as Fly London, which carries a certain Israeli sensibility, says Proim.
Last fair, some 8,000 people attended over the course of two days, and he says the designers have learned to up their inventory before setting up for the fair, and will have enough shoes to meet demand.
The fair will also include accessories, bags, socks and tights, and shoes for men, women and children. But no Crocs.
Friday, January 27-Saturday, January 28
10-7 Friday
10-10 Saturday
NIS 10 entrance fee
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