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The white holiday

Shavuot is approaching, and what I like about this holiday in Israel is that you can celebrate it from a variety of approaches. If you’re observant, there’s the standard ‘yontif‘ handling of the holiday, which means food, prayers, something white to wear, and heading to a tikkun on Shavuot eve to learn all or part of the night.

But as one of the three pilgrimage festivals — Sukkot and Passover are the other two — Shavuot ranks up there in Israel, with all kinds of alternative and traditional festivities that appeal to even the most secular of Israeli Jews. There are the kibbutz celebrations, which include small children dressed in white, arms akimbo in order to hold baskets of recently picked fruit and vegetables to mark Shavuot’s stance as an agricultural festival. There are the usual family gatherings, as Israelis so love to do, including tables groaning with all kinds of homemade dairy fare, since this is considered to be the ‘dairy’ holiday. (See this great JTA article about alternatives to dairy on Shavuot.)

And since Israelis also love their dairy — we have more types of yogurt drinks per capita than any other country — one of the local dairy companies, Tnuva, puts out a Shavuot magazine each year, as an insert in the local newspapers, with dairy recipes from the kitchens of their employees. Nicely done, and, I have to say, it has been the source of more than one good recipe that’s come out of my kitchen.

There are also the learning celebrations, given Shavuot’s source as the holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah, and that has led to the traditional tikkun, all-night learning that takes place on the night of the holiday. In my city of Jerusalem, a city of much learning, there are hundreds of tikkunim to choose from, held at every synagogue, yeshiva, school and place of learning. But what I’ve loved in years past is to head to Tel Aviv, where the streets are full of people dressed in white heading to all-night lectures of the more alternative type. Those can include poetry readings, yoga and Torah, discussions about the place of Torah in a secular society, or, for the more party-oriented, all-night clubbing in honor of Shavuot. For that matter, since Tel Aviv is considered the white city for its collection of Bauhaus architecture, you could celebrate Shavuot by doing a midnight tour of Bauhaus structures.

I will be making cheesecake, but I won’t be heading out for some all-night (not that I ever did) learning this year. But if you’re in J-town, I did notice some great options for the Tikkun, including an Israeli singdown and a 12:30 am walk around the Old City, hosted by the Tower of David Museum.

Happy learning and eating.

Foto Friday – Menachem Kahana lifts the haredi veil

The haredi world is one that secular Israelis find alternately fascinating and disturbing, filled with rituals and mystery. Photographer Menahem Kahana, who works for French news agency AFP, has been documenting the ultra-Orthodox community for years.

In a new exhibit, now on at Tel Aviv’s Eretz Israel Museum, Kahana presents a body of work begun in 1995, when he happened upon a spring where some young haredi men were swimming.

Over the years, as he continued his documentation, the community opened up to him: synagogues, celebrations, and rituals both usual, such as weddings…

… and unusual, such as the pidyon ha-ben in which first-born sons are redeemed by their families from service to the High Priests of the Temple…

…and the peter hamor, which which first born donkeys are as well.

And everyday life, too.

Click on this link to learn more about Kahana’s work.

Nostalgia Sunday on Tuesday – Adloyada

Apologies for the delay in posting; this was due to circumstances far beyond my control. Whew. Okay. A moment before the Purim holiday ends, let’s take a look at days gone by, in particular the Adloyada parade.

“Adloyada” is a bastardization of the phrase “ad lo yada” or “unable to differentiate”, referring to the Purim tradition of drinking until one is unable to tell the difference between evil Haman and good Mordechai. The parade was instituted in 1912, in Tel Aviv, the first modern Jewish city, by a teacher at the Herzliya Gymnasium high school and became the stomping ground for Hevre Trask (”the noisy folks”), a band of merrymaking bohemians.

In the 1920s, the event had its profile raised by dancer-choreographer and bon vivant Baruch Agadati. Here he is, the crown prince of of Tel Aviv night life in the 1920s, pictured with Zippora Zabari, winner of the “Queen Esther” beauty contest for 1928.

And another Purim lovely:

And here’s a picture of the parade itself, which was famous for its floats.

It had the support of Mayor Meir Dizengoff. This costume parodied his well-known penchant for riding around town on a horse.

At the end of the 1920s, a committee of artists, poets, architects and theater people was established with the stated goal of giving the Adloyada a higher educational and artistic tone, and it became something of an establishment tool.

Adloyada floats never shied away from politics, such as the 1926 coffin burying the British Mandate, and the 1934 anti-Nazism float. The event ceased activity in 1936 but after it was reestablished in the 1950s, the topical subjects continued. Here’s Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser and David Ben-Gurion, acting out a prime ministerial summit that never happened in reality… as far as we know…

The Adloyada shut down, once again, in the 1970s and was revived, once again in the early 1980s by the Sheinkin avant garde, led by a stellar performance artist, the late Danny Zakheim. This time, the tone was different and probably more like that of the original Adloyada of the 1920s – a punk street fair bacchanal that went on for days. Here’s Mayor Shlomo Lahat venturing into unknown territory.

There are a few parades today calling themselves Adloyada. Holon – a sleepy suburb with ambitions to become Israel’s new center of the visual arts – has apparently been deemed the location for the national Adloyada. But the real deal has been and always will be Tel Aviv. It’s only a matter of time before the Adloyada comes back home.

Happy Purim to all

It’s Purim tomorrow, and the mayhem has already begun. Kids across the country dressed up this morning ready to take to school in whatever outfits they had dreamed up – anything from male tooth fairies, to hippies, football stars, or dinosaurs.

After a wild weekend of raiding cupboards, empty toy shops, and friends’ homes, we were up at 6am, brushing wigs, combing out beards, and drawing wrinkles with my best eye liner on one child, and nuclear disarmament symbols on another. Ah, I love this holiday.

So in honor of Purim, here’s a video ISRAEL21c took last year, which gives you a flavor of what this whacky holiday is about.

Foto Friday – Paws for Purim

Dogs never demand to be put in a Purim costume. And yet, since dog owners persist in dressing up their four-legged friends, Israeli pet-owner portal Hav-Hav has decided to put them on show. (”Hav-hav”, by the way, is the Hebrew equivalent of “bow-wow”). The fourth annual Hapess Ta’Kelev competition will be held on March 11th, at the Renanim Mall in Ra’anana. That gives Fido a few more days to come up with a costume idea. It’s definitely worthwhile, because the prize is a year’s worth of gear and food from pet store chain Jungle.

But you have to register by submitting photos – and here’s some of the competition. More can be found here.

This royal fellow is a winner from a few years back.

Another winner from previous years… clearly channeling “I Dream of Jeanie”…

Okay, this one may be bordering on the inhumane.

The competition name, by the way, Hapess Ta’Kelev is a play on words with one meaning being something like “dress up yer dog” and the other being “go find yer dog.” Take my word for it – the pun works in Hebrew. And hav-hav a happy Purim, everyone!

Foto Friday – Yuval Nadel

The world of haredi observant Jews is one that most secular Israelis never get a chance to see – and if they do, they find it alien, even threatening. Photographer Yuval Nadel, an Israeli-born Jew with a secular up-bringing, became familiar with and learned to appreciate and respect the people who lead a religious lifestyle.

In a collection of photographs called “Custom, Prayer and Ceremony – The Jews of the Land of Israel”, he documents that meeting between secular and religious without trying to explain the lifestyle or Jewish customs. “As a photographer, it was important for me to show the religious experiences of Israeli Jews from my personal point of view,” he says.

The photographs presented in Nadel’s book were taken over four cycles of holidays and intermittent days between 2004 and 2008. Nadel writes that his journey began at the annual festive Lag B’Omer commemoration at Mount Meron. “I was captivated. Over the next four years, I traveled around the country to the various outposts and locations where Jews perform their mitzvot (commandments), ceremonies and prayers… I arrived to these places as a photographer, as a bystander observer and yet as someone participating in the experience. It was so, because that’s how I was received…”

While most such books “fall prey to the sin of anthropology… based, at worst, on patronizing voyeurism and at best, on intellectual curiosity,” writes Israeli journalist Kobi Arieli, an observant Jew, “Yuval Nadel’s approach arises out of a positive attitude that is nurtured and grows with each image… This book is a story about love and light, which is why it is both good and enjoyable.”

For his part, Nadel says, “If these photographs can contribute even slightly to help unite Jews through exposing a beautiful side of the world of observant Jews in Israel, I will have reaped my reward.”

You Day

The anticipation and excitement began already last week, even while we were celebrating Sukkot – an exciting enough event on its own, if you ask me. But when that letter came, we just started counting down the days – and then the hours – to Sunday.

Why all the excitement? You Day!                 

So what’s You Day, you ask? Only the best day of the year to go shopping! You Day is the reward for us loyal customers who frequent a local “big box” supermarket all year, buying groceries with their You Card branded Diner’s Club debit card. The previous two times the store ran You Day, there were great bargains to be had – so much so that by the time me and my Significant Other arrived, they were out of half the sale items!

Well, this time we weren’t going to lose out – so bright and early on Sunday morning, we shlepped down to the store to take advantage of the bargains. And what bargains they were! Would you believe half-price – on a whole bunch of stuff we actually use! And unlike the usual requirement to get deals at this store, there was no minimum purchase of non-sale items required. Just free and easy shopping for a whole bunch of half price items! The only limitation – you could purchase just two of each item. Fair enough – and for us, not a problem, since my SO had her own You Card. So we were able to get four of each item!

Now, I’m no fool; I know how sales work (in Israel, the U.S., or anywhere). Loyalty program or not, nobody is giving away anything for half price. So you expect a little pre-sale price inflation, where the store raises the price on items and puts them back “on sale” – so you end up saving less than you expect. And You Day prices were no different, although I have to say some of them were genuine bargains (except for the instant coffee, where they basically doubled the price, so you would end up paying the “normal” price in the deal).

And so we shopped. And shopped some more. And when it was all over, we took our purchases up to the cash register, and watched with great satisfaction as the printout listed an item, a price – and a 50% discount!

There’s a theory about grocery shopping that says how sales and bargains, no matter how good they are, are basically a consumerist ripoff. Just walking into the big supermarket with the bargains means you’re going to end up spending more than you planned; far better to do your shopping at the not so cheap and much more limited neighborhood makolet (grocery store). The bigger the bargains, the more you end up spending, buying stuff you don’t really need.

But does that theory really apply when almost all the items in your shopping cart are half price? Did we buy items we didn’t need? I’ll admit it; we bought four of almost all the sale items, including things we didn’t buy on a usual basis (because they’re usually too expensive!). So, in one sense, it was a good day for bargains – but on the other hand, the makolet would have helped keep spending down. I guess the strategy works – even with all the bargains, we still spent nearly 1,000 shekels between the two of us, the second highest amount we have ever spent in any “walk down the aisle” at a supermarket!

I heart Sukkot.

Sukkot is by far my favorite holiday. Within an hour of Yom Kippur ending the incessant sounds of banging envelop my neighborhood as nearly everyone, secular and religious erect their sukkot in their backyards and all too often quite precariously on their porches. There are sukkot as far as the eye can see. I bought a small pre-fab sukkah a few years ago that goes up in about 15 minutes with minimal effort – though I haven’t put it up yet – I’m a last minute type of guy.

I cherish this part of the year. We usually get our first rain during Sukkot (though we were trumped by Rosh Hashana this year) and then winter quickly comes rather quickly though there is always a random hot day in November. It’s the closest we have to a spring-like season though it only lasts for a couple of weeks. I took full advantage over the weekend and did a lot of much needed gardening for the first time since June. My lemongrass and lemon tree is out of control so I harvested much of it and gave generously to friends. On Friday night I stuffed about a dozen stalks in the tuchus of a chicken. I highly recommend this in in lieu of using lemon. You get the delicious lemon flavor without the acidity. My lemons are better suited for lemonade.

I am far from a religious man but I for some reason I can’t explain I feel very connected to this holiday. Perhaps it is my love of the land married with the cultural observance of this holiday. Perhaps it is the vision of unity. The Israeli people (or should I say Jewish) experience unity in both tragedy and celebrations and unfortunately not too not much in between. But that’s ok, because on Sukkot it all comes together – at least for me.

Holiday transitions

Hard to believe, but we are already in the middle of the chagim period, the month-long period of holidays that falls every autumn. We’re past Yom Kippur, a.k.a., the Festival of Bicycles, when a good chunk of the country spends the evening and following day in synagogue, while many kids take over the empty streets of all cities on the eve and day of Yom Kippur with bicycles – as well as skateboards, roller blades, skates and scooters. In fact, bicycle sales rise in the weeks prior to YK, with companies advertising Yom Kippur specials.

Then, it was straight into another Shabbat, as Yom Kippur ended on Thursday night, which meant a rush for the supermarket and butcher counter on Friday morning. Unlike the week before, when Rosh Hashanah ended and we went into another Shabbat, there wasn’t quite as much of a fresh chicken shortage, because the week before also coincided with the end of Ramadan, which meant a lot of chickens being eaten out there.

But the end of Shabbat this week brought the annual put-up-the-sukkah evening, when you gather your forces to snap together metal poles and string up the canvas walls. With Sukkot beginning Monday night, it’s another rush into the third holiday of the season, and the longest, at a full seven days. So now we’re thinking sukkah decorations of paper chains, plastic fruits and blinking lights, and one-dish meals that are easier to serve to the crowd.

I’ll let you know what I decide to make, as soon as I get started on the paper chains…

Calendar year

We’re pretty much at the end of the shay l’chag phase of the holiday season, when one gives and receives presents from a wide range of people — including hairdressers, accountants, cleaning help, travel agents, etc. But I’ve discovered a great gift that I’ve actually been sending to friends abroad, the kind of folks who appreciate the more Israeli gifts, not just the typical tourist doodads.

It’s the right time of year to send a 2008-2009 calendar by Israeli illustrator and graphic artist Rutu Modan, a very retro-looking work that features her always humorous take on all things Israeli. Modan has been written up recently for her first full-length graphic novel, Exit Wounds, which tells the story of a young cab driver in Tel Aviv. Definitely a worthy read, and the calendar is a good one for the bulletin board.

While you’re at it, buy one for yourself. Granted, you may have to set foot in a Steimatzky’s to purchase it, and I’m not a huge fan of this particular bookstore monopoly, but I have to say, they often have a fun array of gift items, besides an only decent selection of books.

 

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