The Levinski market in TLV (photo credit: FreeIsraelPhotos.com)

Seriously, though, a one-day, minor holiday became a four-day celebration in our life and my kids’ gan, beginning Tuesday, into the actual day on Wednesday, and then bringing home the ‘fruits’ of creation today, including ‘potted’ trees made of styrofoam peanuts and the de rigeur plastic cup full of dates, figs and raisins. To complete the season, tomorrow is the gan trip to a citrus fruit orchard at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, where they will sum up a month-long lesson plan on trees, fruits and how things grow.

In truth, unless you’re invited to a Tu B’shvat seder or have a child bringing home the signs and symbols of the day — sometimes the only connection you have to Tu B’shvat is seeing and buying mounds of dried fruit (Ynet reported NIS 200 million in sales of dried fruit over the holiday) from the store. Unless you actually went out and planted a tree, as many do, really. But despite my gentle cynicism, it’s been interesting to note its comings and goings and see how people relate to it.

I noted on Facebook that some of my more religious friends were discussing the issue of eating dried fruit as opposed to fresh fruit on Tu B’shvat. This blogger comments that we eat dried fruit because our ancestors did, given the lack of fresh fruit during the winter, when Tu B’shvat is celebrated. Makes sense, and as I passed a carob tree on the way home, I picked a piece off — it’s not really the season now — and munched on it.

And, in the spirit of the day, I took myself out to our backyard, where I haven’t spent much time lately, and wandered around, appreciating the fresh pink blossoms on the peach tree and the various winter bulbs that are starting to peek out of the ground. The shkedia, the almond tree, that is sung about during Tu B’shvat is in full bloom right now, and there are pink-blossomed trees all over the place.

Finally, I am thinking about making this chicken recipe, or a version of it, for dinner on Friday night, even though it’s days after the actual ‘chag’, it’s still good to celebrate. As the Israelites like to say, ‘siba l’mesiba’, a reason for a party.

From Cookkosher.com via Ha’aretz:

Tu Bishvat dried fruit chicken rollup
Prep time: 20 minutes
Level: Medium
Serving/Yields: 4-6 servings

Ingredients:
4 whole boneless skinless chicken breasts (double)
¾ cup diced assorted dried fruit (apricots, dates, raisins, figs)
4 tbsp pine nuts
2 eggs
½ tsp paprika
1 cup flavored cornflake crumbs
Oil, for frying

Preparation:
1. Pound each double chicken breast thin, and set them aside.
2. Combine diced dried fruit with the pine nuts and set aside.
3. In a bowl, beat the eggs with a fork. Mix in, adding paprika, and set aside.
4. To assemble: Place a pounded chicken cutlet in front of you; position it lengthwise. Place two Tablespoons of dried fruit filling across the middle of the chicken. Roll up the chicken breast tightly and carefully; beginning from the narrower end. Make sure all the filling stays inside.
5. Using both hands, transfer the roll into the beaten egg mixture and then into the cornflake crumbs. Coat it well. Place the roll on a clean surface. You can now secure any ends with 1 or 2 toothpicks if necessary.
6. Repeat with the remaining cutlets.
7. Heat the oil in a frying pan. When the oil is hot, place the rolls seam side down into the pan. Fry them until they are golden brown, turning the rolls so all sides are done. If necessary you can leave the toothpicks in place.
8. Make sure the flame isn’t too high; you want to be sure that the filling is cooked without burning the outside. When the rollups are ready, remove them from the pan and drain them on paper towel.
9. Let them cool slightly, cut them on a diagonal into round slices, and serve.

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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.

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This month, Israel’s nature-lovers will take their annual trek through field and forest in search of their favorite flowers. The Society for the Preservation of Nature (SPNI) is hosting a series of tours in celebration of the season and the upcoming Tu b’Shvat holiday. As always, they will seek out the shy and elusive Persian Cyclamen…

Photo by Sara Gold – Wildflowers of Israel

Fields dotted with blood red Crown Anemones are always a magnificent sight, but their light purple cousins are no less lovely…

Photo by Amikam Shoob – Wildflowers of Israel

The Common Narcissus, whose fragrance is nothing if not controversial…

Photo by Sara Gold – Wildflowers of Israel

The elegant and stately Wild Hyacinth…

Photo by Sara Gold – Wildflowers of Israel

And of course, Tu b’Shvat wouldn’t be complete without the blossoming almond tree!

Photo by Mike Livne – Wildflowers of Israel

Aspiring nature photographers take note: Wildflowers in Israel, in conjunction with Jerusalem Botanical Gardens and FujiFilm, is holding a photo contest and there are still a few days left before the deadline closes on February 8. Information and a list of subjects (in Hebrew) is available here or submissions can be emailed directly.

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Rather than needing to call the hospital for the results and then have them faxed to me, I was given a website, username and password and told to simply log in a week later, where my MRI information would all be online. I am happy to report that the system worked as promised.

It’s not the first time I’ve been able to handle medical issues via my computer in Israel. I can routinely check the results of blood tests – they’re updated in real time – and I can also request and receive permission for a referral to a specialist and even make appointments without ever picking up the phone.

Sounds like Israel’s HMOs are finally getting their digital act together. Which was why I was rather surprised to open the morning paper and discover that doctors and the Israel Association of Family Physicians were loudly protesting increased use of the Internet for the very functions I’ve found so useful. The reason: it’s likely to “downgrade the professional status” of doctors.

The complaints so far are being directed at the Clalit HMO, probably following a very public advertising campaign to raise awareness among the public of the new services being offered. Clalit is the nation’s largest HMO with 3.9 million insurees.

Listen to what some of the doctors quoted in the article are saying: “You no longer have to go to the doctor – the clerk in the branch will do what you ask via the Internet.” How is that a bad thing? It saves time for both the patient and physician.

And “this campaign and others continue to destroy the image of the expert family doctor, which was created with great effort – the doctor who specialized for years and is a professional in his field and provides good medical care for his patients.” Oh really, how exactly do you spoil the image of the gruff, abrupt Israeli doctor with no observable bedside manners? Sure, the Internet has no bedside manner, but you don’t expect it to.

The physician’s association was more measured. “There is room for online work alongside a family doctor, as well as for the use of various technologies, but… there should be limitations.” That is, “Internet medicine is good when it’s done in moderation.

Look, no one is saying that a website can replace a doctor entirely, heaven forbid! If my Internet service provider says cough or bend over, I’m making sure that I’m still on the Israelity site and not some “other” URL. Still, anyone who has ever waited hours in a cold Israeli HMO clinic fighting with the other patients over who was there first (“I was after him” is as common at the doctor’s office as in the line in the supermarket), increased computerization is the last thing I’d want stifled.

A Clalit spokesperson got it right: “We have to suit the service to a new generation that wants quick answers and quick service. Medicine is no different from other services, such as those of an electric company or a bank….why can you get forms on the Internet today from any government institution, and only in medicine will people have to continue visiting the clinic and waiting in line? In such a situation, the patient will also develop greater responsibility for his health.”

The services offered by Clalit are still rather limited and can always be superseded by a doctor’s request – for example, in many cases you can renew a prescription automatically over the web, but the doctor can insist the patient come in for an appointment first.

The real revolution – and the one the doctors probably fear the most – is when the HMOs start providing complete transparent access to your entire medical records. Imagine the whining that will arise when you or I can actually see what our doctors have written about us – entirely unmediated by the professional judgment of an inflexible stethoscope.

Clalit hopes to launch the new service by the middle of 2012. Physician: heal thyself.

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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!

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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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Maccabee t-shirt for sale on Australian website

Hanukah is probably the most confounding holiday on the Jewish calendar. If we move beyond the toys and the gelt of 20^th century Christmas catch-up, the story itself has been interpreted in so many ways that it’s difficult to get a lock on the pshat (the simplest understanding).

For what is Hanukah? Is it the tale of a miraculous jug of oil that lasted for eight days, which today is commemorated in our lighting the candles on the hanukiah (the Hanukah menorah)? Or is it an historical account of a great military victory reestablishing, however briefly, Jewish sovereignty in our ancient land?

The answer is both…and neither.

It was “parent’s night” at the mechina (the pre-army seminary) where our daughter is spending a year before being drafted; a year of studying, volunteering and learning to get along with a group of forty other 18-year-olds (I wrote about it here). Part of the evening included a parent-child activity where we read selections from the first and second books of Maccabees, the two primary Biblical-era texts that refer to Hanukah (but which did not make it into the Hebrew canon).

The books present very different messages from the holiday. In First Maccabees, written about 40 years after the event itself by someone who presumably participated in one way or another, there is no mention of that universally known jug of oil at all; it’s all about the rebellion against the idolatrous Greeks and their assimilated Hellenistic Jewish wannabes. The second book, written 100 years after the first, downplays the military success and introduces the oil with an emphasis on God and miracles.

Historically, the attempt by the rabbis of the Talmud to sideline the fighting narrative makes sense, explained the head of our daughter’s mechina. There was at the time both a struggle between the rabbinic and priestly leaders for ascendency (the Maccabees were priests), and a desire to caution against military hubris (while the Maccabean revolt was successful, the next Jewish rebellions led to both the destruction of the Temple and the expulsion of the Jews from most of the land of Israel, definitely not events to emulate).

Seemingly ignoring the historical post-rebellion fall out, modern Zionists have eagerly adopted the holiday as emblematic of the brave fighters who liberated the land in our days. Whether that represents a miracle depends on one’s political and religious orientation. But there is no lack of Maccabean symbolism: many of our sport teams are named Maccabi and, in a striking irony, so is the Israeli version of that greatest representation of Greek culture the Olympics (dubbed the Maccabiah Games).

But there’s a darker side to the Hasmonean era military victory that tends to be whitewashed. The Maccabees were religious extremists; their goal was to rid the country of not only its Greek overloads but to compel the overwhelmingly secular Jewish population to adopt more stringent religious practices. Anshel Pfeffer, in this weekend’s Haaretz cites the late Christopher Hitchens as referring to the Maccabees as “bloodthirsty religious fundamentalists.”

Clearly over the top, but that interpretation seems chillingly appropriate this Hanukah as modern day extremists are once again bent on imposing their rigid agenda on the wider population. Open any Israeli newspaper in the last two weeks and it’s all over the front page:  – from coerced separation between men and women on buses and sidewalks, to the removal of women’s images on outdoor advertising in Jerusalem, to the truly horrendous verbal and spitting attacks on an eight-year-old girl for “lack of modesty” revealed during a weekend TV news show. And don’t even get me started about what’s going on with the “price tag” burning of mosques, unprovoked uprooting of Palestinian olive trees, and now even Jewish attacks on Israeli army bases.

Is this what the pioneers intended when they adopted the symbol of the Maccabees as their own?

Perhaps what we need today is to look at the story truthfully and learn from it with eyes wide open. To quote from Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Religious power without accountability, without compassion and tolerance, necessarily leads to corruption (as happened, by the way, to the original Maccabees once they assumed the throne in ancient Judea).

The time has come to meld the two books of the Maccabees. Let us focus on light – the key symbol from the second book – as a metaphor for clarity; for the kind of clear thinking that can temper the violence of the first book. It’s as critical today as it was then. That would be a true Hanukah miracle for our times.

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But soon after checking in, and returning from a quick walk to the Dead, we returned to the hotel, and found tens of guests in the lobby with hotel staff lighting around 15 different hanukkiyot. We joined them – some observant, some not, some even non-Jewish tourists (and without any separation between men and women) – and then participated in singing a few Hanukkah songs. A hotel worker wheeled out a tray of fresh sufganiyot and passed them out to everyone.

Even though I appreciated the gesture, I’ve already eaten my share of fried dough and jelly for the next few years, so I passed, and headed to the hotel spa. Not a bad way to spend the sixth day of Hanukkah.

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Some years ago, to salvage the industry, dreidel-makers began producing more upscale and eclectic versions for collectors of contemporary Judaica. Styles encompassed everything from modern contemporary to silver and gold filigree and, of course, chocolate. The sevivon, as it’s known in Hebrew, has become less of a children’s game, more of a conversation piece.

In secular Israel, toy stores very often sell round tops at Hanukkah time, which is, of course, a mistake. A true sevivon has four sides, each emblazoned with a letter: nun, gimel, heh and peh — ness gadol hayah poh, a great miracle happened here. This, as opposed to the Diaspora, where the fourth side of the dreidel is marked with a shin for the word sham — a great miracle happened there. Clearly a Hanukkah holiday symbol throughout the generations.

But all that is just spin, if you’ll pardon the pun. The true origins of the dreidel have less to do with Hanukkah and more to do with keeping the children occupied, as is often the case with a week-long holiday. According to an essay (in Hebrew) by Israeli collector Rachel Bar Lev, “We all played sevivon in our childhood… but collectors know that the picture is far more complex: playing with tops is universal and prevalent in all continents of the globe. The top is not Jewish in origin and its connection to Hanukkah is late. In addition, tops appear in a range of shapes, sometimes with accessories to assist.” Bar Lev notes that archeologists have found tops dating back to as early as 2000 BCE.

“The tops most widely known in Israel are those with four sides, but in the world there are also tops with six and eights sides… Tops are also used in gambling. On such tops you can find letters instructing the player to pay the others, take the winnings, etc… So, for example, in Italy, the letters P,O,M,N are on the sides, meaning Pone ‘put’ (pay into the pot); Omne, ‘all’ (you won it all); ‘Medium’ (half, take half the pot); and ‘Nihil’, zero, nothing (you lost).”

“The Hanukkah sevivon, whose identifying characteristics are four sides, spindle and point, came to us from Germany. On Christmas in December, German children would play with tops to win nuts.” The tradition spread to the neighboring Jewish communities; Bar Lev says that it was the Jews of Poland who brought the dreidel game to the pre-State Land of Israel. “We find the German influence on our sevivon in the letters engraved on it – N,G,H,S – which encapsulate the instructions in German for playing the game.”

“As part of the ‘conversion’ process, the sevivon’s acronym was Hebracized to nun, gimel, heh, shin and received a new meaning: ness gadol hayah sham… intended to mask the game’s non-Jewish origins… As the years have gone by, it turns out that this creation of a link between Hannuka and the spinning top has been so successful that many tend to believe that the sevivon has always been a Jewish game.”

A note about the word “sevivon”. The root word is “svv” (“to turn”) and, according to Wikipedia and other sources, it was invented by a 5-year old Itamar Ben-Avi, the son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the man who was the driving spirit behind modern Hebrew. However, the first usage of the word in print was on December 24, 1897, by journalist David Isaiah Silberbusch, who credited himself with the new term.

The poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik created a different word, “kirkar” (from the root “krkr” – “to spin”) and author Mendele Mocher Sforim created the word “hazarzar” (from the root “hzr” – “to return”) but neither of these were adopted.

Dreidel, by the way, comes from the Yiddish word “dreyen” (“to turn”). This is similar to German word “drehen”, which means same thing.

Dreidels have become so identified with Hanukkah, they appear in all things Hanukkah-related, including the American-Israeli Hanukkah stamp, the first stamp ever issued jointly by Israel and the United States.

Referring to the joint Israeli-US stamps, Bar Lev writes, “We can see the dilemma of which acronym to use in the First Day Issue envelopes. We find sevivons with the letters N,G,H. But the side that is supposed to have the letter P (for stamps issued in Israel) or S (for stamps issued in the US) — is hidden. Thus is created a philatelic item familiar to children in Israel and the Diaspora as one.”

A lovely PowerPoint presentation about spinning tops — Jewish, Israeli and non — is available for download here, courtesy of the wonderful Nostal.co.il site.

Proving that kids today do still play the game: just today, 15 children from New York, accompanied by their parents on the UJA-Federation of New York’s Winter Family Mission to Israel, met with 20 Ethiopian children at the Mevasseret Zion Absorption Center near Jerusalem to eat sufganiot and make glitter glue dreidels together.

Photo: Ilan Halperin, courtesy of UJA-Federation of New York.

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Panoramic photography, states Wikipedia, “is a technique of photography, using specialized equipment or software, that captures images with elongated fields of view. It is sometimes known as wide format photography.” (Click here for more about the methods used to create 360 images). Panoramic photo images have been around since the mid 1800s; this one of Jerusalem was taken in the early 20th century.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

As with everything else photographic, clearly, the technology has evolved. Take, for example, this amazing 360 degree panoramic photo of the Galilee.

Tel Yodfat, Galilee, Israel in Israel

The Church of All Nations is located on Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, next to the Garden of Gethsemane. Click on this photo — the link will take you to a panoramic view of the Church, the Garden and the walls of the Old City, courtesy of 3D Israel.

Israeli company Simply Live has developed a highly technologically advanced 360 degree video camera (only last week presented at the Bezeq Expo innovation showcase). Click on this photo of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — the link takes you to their site where you can view an interactive video that allows you to enter and move through the Church interior.

A fascinating if politically charged panoramic view of Israel’s coastline as viewed from the West Bank is available at MyIsrael.com. The site owners are very blunt about the purpose of the wide-angle shot: they wish to show how vulnerable Israel would be to an attack were pre-1967 borders to be reinstated. It takes only one look to see why the situation here is complicated.

Even on its own, the image is complex: a very wide-angle view (MyIsrael.com say it is the largest publicly available) with interactive controls so that viewers can zoom in on highly detailed close ups. Photographer Yaal Herman provides several pages of explanation on how the photo (really hundreds of photos stitched together) was accomplished. Click on this thumbnail to see the full version.

Whatever the political future holds, we can still hope for stability, quiet and — dare I say it? — peace. A few weeks ago, I was in Bethlehem once again for the annual Papal Peace Run. Instead of a highly secured, quick in-and-out, I would like to be able to return one day at my leisure to visit the Church of the Nativity. Till then, I will visit this way — and invite you to do so, too. Happy holidays to all.

Church Nativity Bethlehem in Israel

Grotto of the Nativity – Church of the Nativity, Betlehem in Israel

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