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Farm land

I did recently mention my brother-in-law, Michael is his name (pronounced Meecha-el in Hebrew by my family, but called Mike by his Israeli brother and friends), in my last post, but he’s popping again in this one.

It’s because of him that my sister and I — not the one he’s married to — recently ended up in Kfar Vitkin, a moshav near Netanya that is essentially adjacent to the small seaside village in which he grew up, Hofit, which I’ve also written about before. Michael spent his childhood in this very bucolic, charming place, running across the sand dunes of what is now the Coastal Highway to the beach, and working on the farms of Kfar Vitkin, taking care of what he calls ‘his cows.’

We were in the area checking out some sites for future articles — to come later — and stopped in at a farmstand that we’d read about in Kfar Vitkin called Emek Hefer Mushrooms, named for the region in which Kfar Vitkin is located. By the way, Kfar Vitkin, or Vitkin Village, was the first Jewish settlement in the Emek Hefer Valley. It was founded in 1930 by a group of 20 people who lived communally in one stone house, and was named after Yosef Vitkin, an educator and leader of the Labor Movement.

Anyway, Kfar Vitkin, Hofit and Beit Herut, another village, all blend into one another, and have this wonderful old-fashioned feeling, if you can ignore some of the mansions that have been built in the area. We called the mushroom farm to get directions, and they gave us fairly vague ones that took us to the town’s cemetery which is right next to the local pool. And there is the farm.

We, city slickers that we appeared to be, called a couple of times to ask where exactly the farmstand was located, and I think I used the term farmer’s market, which must have seemed somewhat grand to the person answering the phone, because she laughed and said, “Sure, you can call us a farmer’s market. We’re farmers.”

Once we realized that the farm really was located right next to the pool, we wandered in, perhaps expecting a wooden cart, the kind that you see on country lanes in the Berkshires, loaded with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and apples. We got all that, but housed in a funny kind of warehouse whose walls are lined with shelves filled with old paintings; dusty and worthless, but quirky. But the bounty was real; all kinds of mushrooms, citrus fruits — pomelos, clementines and grapefruits from their trees, tiny peppers for snacking, all kinds of herbs and lettuces, dried fruit made from their fruit trees and a great display of tree slabs that can be used as trays, trivets, what have you.

We loaded up on the goods – I was thinking ahead to it being pizza night and using oyster mushrooms and fresh arugula (known as ‘rocket’ in Israel), on the some of the ‘zas I’d be making.

The market is open Thursday through the weekend, and the village is worth a visit, as there’s lots to do in the area, including anemone- and strawberry-picking in season, a local winery, the pool and beach in the summer, and the turtles of the Alexander River just down the road.

Chilean miners to get heroes’ welcome in Israel

Israel will be getting some important visitors this week when 31 of the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped for 68 days underground last year are due to arrive for a week-long tour as guests of the Tourism Ministry.

The miners and their families will be given the red carpet treatment, with an emphasis on Christian holy sites and national institutions.
After an official welcome by Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov, the entourage will have a packed itinerary, including visits to the Old City where they’ll see a number of churches and the Kotel, and visits to the Knesset and Yad Vashem. On Saturday they plan to tour Bethlehem, and next week head to Masada and the Dead Sea, Nazareth, Megiddo, the Golan Heights, Tiberias, and the Kinneret.

The visit took a while to get on the books because the miners reportedly insisted that their spouses also get their ticket and expenses paid for by their Israeli hosts. And seeing the tourism and PR advantage, the government finally coughed up the budget for the whole group, numbering 68.

Tourism pros in Israel have been targeting South American tourists more aggressively in recent years, even as South American countries line up to recognize a Palestinian state. According to the Forward’s Nathan Burstein, for several years, GoIsrael.com, the country’s official tourism website, has been available in Spanish and Portuguese, and last month the Tourism Ministry announced the creation of a new pilgrimage itinerary catering to Catholic tourists focusing on the life of the Virgin Mary.

Whether the miners’ visit will open up the floodgates of tourists from Chile and neighboring countries or not, their visit will likely be a heartfelt and unforgettable experience for those who suffered such a huge trauma not so long ago. So if you see them on the street, give them a hug.

Nostalgia Sunday – The French School

Walking down Cremieux Street in Jerusalem yesterday, I was suddenly struck by its connection to the current implosion of the Arab world. Adolphe Cremieux, was the president of first Alliance Israélite Universelle, the Paris-based international Jewish organization founded in 1860 to arm Jews with self-defense and self-sufficiency through education and professional development.

The organization took as its motto the rabbinic injunction Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh (“All Jews bear responsibility for one another”).

According to the organization’s Kol Israel Haverim online history, “The 1860 founders recommended the integration of ideas from the revolution of 1789 – equality, justice and human rights, together with the principals of Judaism…” It also embarked on a mission to educate the Jews of the Middle East through French education and culture. A mere two years later, the first Lycee Alliance opened in Tetouan, Morocco. “It was a cornerstone that in time became a widespread network of schools from Morocco to Iran”.

But AIU’s struggle for equal rights extended to other minorities as well. For instance, “in 1860, [it] acted on behalf of Lebanese Christians, victims of a popular uprising, and in 1863 the organization interceded at the Spanish Ministry of Justice on behalf of imprisoned Protestants who were prohibited from spreading their religion.”

In 1870, founding member Charles Netter, received a tract of land from the Ottoman Empire as a gift and opened the Mikveh Israel agricultural school, the first of a network of Jewish schools in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel.

By 1900, Alliance Israelite Universelle was operating 100 schools with a combined student population of 26,000. Its greatest efforts were concentrated in Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey, but there were schools throughout the Middle East.

In an essay about the Jews of Egypt, Denise Douek Telio writes, “Alliance Israelite Schools were free and open to all religious denominations… My classmates were Jewish, Muslim and Christians girls. We went to each other homes to do our homework and to socialize.”

According to Encyclopedia Iranica, “[in l898] the Alliance finally succeeded in opening its first school for boys in Tehran. Joseph Cazès was appointed as the head teacher of its 350 pupils. Cazès also opened a school for girls with 150 pupils. The Alliance was warmly received by Persian authorities…On the eve of the 1979 revolution, the Alliance operated 7 schools in Tehran with 1,800 pupils and 4 schools [in other cities] with 1,286 pupils.”

Today, thousands of students are still being educated at around 50 Alliance Israélite Universelle institutes and schools — but Morocco is only Arab country still with an AIU school.

The historic schools in Israel still exist: the Alliance High School in Tel Aviv, Alliance Israélite Universelle High School in Haifa, Rene Cassin High School and the Braunshweig Conservative High School in Jerusalem.

There are three schools within the Mikve Israel Youth Village: a state high school and a religious state high school specializing in life and natural sciences, environmental sciences, and biotechnology; and the Raymond Lauwan French-Israeli high school established in 2007 as a joint initiative of the Israeli and French governments.

The AIU network also includes the School for the Deaf in Jerusalem where deaf students, Jewish and Arab, with various mental and physical disabilities study together in a unique model of coexistence.

You can read a lot more about the development of AIU’s school network throughout the Jewish communities in the Middle East, (including the education and modernization of women), in the book The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times. More images from the Egyptian Jewish community that was can be found at the Historical Society of Jews From Egypt site.

It’s also worth watching films like The Last Jews of Libya, From Babylon to Beverly Hills and The David Project’s excellent The Forgotten Refugees.

Nostalgia Sunday – End of an Era

The events in Egypt over the past two weeks, which culminated in the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, are being watched with no little trepidation in Israel. The media, both international and local, have focused on Mubarak to the exclusion of anything that came before, as if there was no Sadat, no Nasser, no King Farouk, no British Mandate, no Ottoman Empire… in short, reportage without historical context.

Before history is forgotten completely, this would be a good time to dig into the Israel National Photo Archive for a glimpse at relations between Israel and Egypt over the years.

In 1956, for example, this float at the annual Purim Adloyada parade featured paper mache figures of Israel’s David Ben Gurion shaking hands with Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser above a banner emblazoned with the ironic, “Prophecy of the End of Days”.

Photo by Moshe Pridan

And yet, peace with Egypt did come. In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his historic visit to Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin then visited Egypt.

Photo by Yaacov Saar

In 1979, peace talks were held at Beer Sheva, led by Begin and Sadat, who was accompanied by his then-Vice President Hosni Mubarak.

Photo courtesy of Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Begin and Mubarak met again at the funeral of Sadat who was assassinated in 1981.

Photo by Chanania Herman

Mubarak became president and continued to maintain Egypt’s commitment to peace with Israel. Together with Jordan’s King Hussein and US President Bill Clinton, he oversaw the signing of the Oslo Accords by Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat.

Photo by Avi Ohayon

Mubarak’s only other visit to Israel was in 1995, to attend the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. (He is shown here with interim Prime Minister Shimon Peres).

Photo by Tsvika Israeli

It is too early to tell whether the current days mark a watershed in our relations with Egypt. But as the age of Mubarak comes to a close, we can look back fondly to the time when the impossible suddenly became possible; the day in 1979, for example, when the Israeli-Egyptian air corridor was inaugurated, Sadat, Mubarak and Begin took to the skies and the smiles — at least for that moment — were real.

Photo by Yaacov Saar

Israeli Anti Chef Super Bowl meal

On the post-eve of the Super Bowl XLV, I came across this Ynet (website for Israeli tabloid newspaper Yediot Achronot) video of the Israeli Anti Chef Super Bowl meal. Admittedly, this was my first time coming across the Anti Chef — who seems to have been created for the occasion of the Super Bowl — and I tip my proverbial hat to the clever, tongue-in-cheekiness of this, which both pokes fun at Israeli junk food and the chef world creating many a Super Bowl menu.

Here’s the video, and a glossary that further defines the food products used in the Super Bowl meal:

Boureka: The Sephardic version of a Turkish pastry, this often-tasty treat is made of phyllo dough filled with potato, feta cheese, sometimes olives or mushrooms, and then fried in butter or margarine, which is what makes it oh so tasty. It’s worth avoiding the bourekasim (Hebrew plural for many bourekas) served at government agency meetings, and waiting for the ones sold at open markets or good bakeries. The right kind of boureka kiosk will offer one with sliced egg and pickle, and that’s a tasty treat.
Mayonnaise: Israelis love it, and spread it on many, many kinds of sandwiches, although I’ve never seen it spread on a boureka.
Sliced cheese: Israelis also love their cheeses, and forget the gourmet goat and sheep versions, give ‘em sliced from the cow. The one featured in this video, sliced yellow cheese, is very popular in all kinds of sandwiches, particularly the kind that are wrapped in plastic wrap and sold by the dozen at kiosks, gas stations and corner stores.
Pickles: Not sour, but closer to half-sour and taken from the can, sliced and stuck in just about everything you can think of, from falafels and schwarma to boureka and yellow cheese sandwiches.
Marshmallows:Yes, often found in bags of mixed pink-and-white, marshmallows are available more than you would expect, as an after-school snack, and, as I witnessed the other day, served by a mother to her daughter as breakfast while walking to school.
Chocolate spread: You must buy the Hashachar brand, and NOT Elite; it’s often available two for one at the supermarket, and it’s far superior than most other brands. Chocolate spread is Israel’s version of peanut butter, but lacks the protein of pb&j.
Bisli: Considered the second-favorite Israeli nosh (to Bamba, that is), Bisli is essentially fried pasta in a variety of flavors.
Bamba: This peanut-flavored puffed corn is essentially Cheese Doodles with peanut butter instead of cheese. Little kids love it and so do adults.
Klik:Newer to the Israeli market, Klik are addictive chocolate balls filled with crunchy nougat, although one description I just read describes the filling as sesame paste. Can’t verify this, as I try to stay away from these little guys.

 

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