Russian Roulette on the roads

August 9, 2010 - 11:15 AM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Israeliness, Life, Travel 

Whenever a horrible accident takes place on the roads here, we tsk tsk, say how horrible it is, and then go back to our daily death-defying adventures on the road.

The latest tragedy took place on Thursday when a minibus driver plowed through a train barrier into an oncoming locomotive near Kiryat Gat. Seven members of the Bernstein-Gotstein family from Beitar Illit were killed – Aryeh Bernstein, 43, and his wife Rivkah, 41, together with four of their children – their 21 year-old daughter, Malki Gotstein, who was pregnant, along with Mordechai, 9, Chaya 14, and Yochanan 16. Malki Gotstein’s one-and-a-half-year-old son, Mordechai, was also killed in the collision.

The driver of the minibus, Yashar Yeshurun, was injured in the crash
and was arrested while still hospitalized

“I have no explanation for this, I drive carefully,” he told police officers, as he reenacted the accident on Sunday.

“This will haunt me for the rest of my life, but people must know the truth is that I saw the train barrier only in the last seconds [before the crash] and could barely do anything, even press the brake pedal,” Yeshurun said.

According to police, however, Yeshurun was speeding as he approached the barrier, and was talking to one of the passengers – a deadly combination as it turned out.

A riveting account of the accident from the the point of view of a passenger on the train was published in The Jerusalem Post today, written by my friend Faye Bittker, a former colleague and currently a senior official at Ben-Gurion University. Her essay provides a harrowing look at the the grotesque and the mundane, and how the driving habits on our roads are affecting each one of us.

Like a scene from “The Poseidon Adventure,” confused passengers were left to figure out what had happened when their train from Tel Aviv to Beersheba came to an abrupt stop at 7:05 pm.

Outside, rescue crews had to deal with horrific wreckage and the death of a whole family. Inside, a full cast of clueless characters spent much of their time running up and down the aisles, though there was nowhere to go and very little we could do.

The train driver performed admirably in an otherwise impossible and tragic situation. He could not avoid hitting the minibus stuck on the tracks, but he did manage to slow the train and avoid injuries among the train’s passengers. Silence filled the air as the train lost power and stopped following impact. And then came a deafening organizational silence that left us all to our own devices – in this case, smart phones, digital radios and mobile computers – to figure out what was happening.

For two hours, from the moment of impact until we boarded another train, there was no official announcement or explanation about what had happened. No statement that there had been an accident.

It only gets worse the more you read, and leaves you wanting to scream out over the senseless loss of life.

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Wheat and dairy

May 16, 2010 - 8:36 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Food, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life 

As Rachel wrote, Shavuot is around the corner, which means I have to start thinking about what I’m going to cook for this dairy-heavy holiday. Why all the dairy? A few possibilities: Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah, which includes the laws for keeping kosher, including the prohibition of eating milk with meat and slaughtering animals according to a certain method. So, when the Israelites received the Torah, they didn’t know how to prepare kosher meat and therefore ate a dairy meal to celebrate their receiving of the Torah. Another possibility is that the Torah, like milk, sustains the Jews. And, finally, the Israelites received the Torah after the miseries of Egypt, while on their way to the land of milk and honey. Eating dairy commemorates the sweetness of freedom and the promise of their new life ahead. And, perhaps, the whiteness of dairy symbolizes purity, like the Torah.

At the same time, we are a lactose-intolerant people. In fact, 75% of us are supposedly lactose intolerant and I am one of them. So while I don’t have a problem with all the dairy, I tend to stay away from all things cow-related and eat more sheep and goat milk products. And yet, and yet, what to serve for this festival holiday that celebrates cheesecake? In a country where the supermarket dairy shelves are simply groaning with dairy products? And where Strauss, one of the largest dairy concerns, puts out a Shavuot recipe collection in one of the weekend newspapers, in which each recipe contains at least three dairy products?

In brief, I’m not looking for a blintz souffle recipe, or even a cheesecake. I’ve got friends coming who will take care of that, as well as a chilled yogurt and cucumber soup and, the required blintzes, but savory, with mushrooms, not sweet with sugar and fruit. And, we’re going to make ice cream, even though I saw a flyer advertising Ben and Jerry’s ice cream at wholesale prices. It made me curious, but not enough to order any.

So you can imagine my relief when Weekend the Jerusalem Post Thursday magazine that is delivered to subscribers only, had an article from Phyllis Glazer extolling the virtues of eating grains on Shavuot, which is, after all, a harvest festival. The Shavuot season was also the time of the annual grain harvest, of barley, wheat and first fruits, and she was pushing grain recipes, in particular, a recipe for bulgur ‘kubbeh’ stuffed with raisins and onions.

2 cups fine bulgur
4 cups water
1 T olive oil
1 t salt
2 t cumin
1/4 t cardamom
1-1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1-1.5 cups raisins
1 medium onion, finely chopped
yogurt for serving

Pour bulgur, water, olive oil and salt into a pot and bring to a boil, removing any foam. Lower heat to medium and cook until water is absorbed, about five minutes. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat and add 1 tsp. cumin. Let cool slightly. Slowly add a cup of flour and knead with wet hands, adding more flour only if necessary to create a dough that stays together. Using damp hands, form 24 oval shapes and place in an oiled-and-parchment-paper-lined baking pan. Cover ovals while preparing filling.

Filling: Saute onion in frying pan until onion begins to brown. Add raisins and cook another minute, then add rest of cumin and cardamom.

Take one of the ovals in the palm of one hand and use your finger to create a deep furrow the length of the kubbeh. Add a teaspoon of the filling and pinch along the line to enclose it, then roll the oval between your palms to return it to oval shape. (Phyllis says you can make patties as well.)

Brush the tops of the kubbeh with olive oil and bake in a preheated, 350-degree oven for 35-40 minutes until golden, turning once or twice during baking. Serve with a yogurt sauce.

I haven’t made them yet, but I’m planning on it. I’ll let you know how they turned out.

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Supermarket scavenging

March 27, 2009 - 8:36 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, Food, General, Israeliness 

shopping_cart_2Just back from a food shopping trip, which is an unusual event for me, as I generally dislike supermarket experiences. (Not counting Eden Teva Market.) It’s not just that food shopping in Jerusalem can be a third world experience, but the supermarket on Thursday nights offers a sensation of the world coming to an end, or at the very least, the sense of impending war with Iran, as all shoppers fill their carts to overflowing and checkout lines are long, very long. And that’s without mentioning — although I will — the search for a shopping cart, and then seeing if you have one of the plastic tzuptziks that you need to ‘rent’ the cart, unless you keep a supply of five-shekel coins.

But what is fun about food shopping in Israel, and particularly in the chain stores, is the search for unusual products, ones that you wouldn’t expect to see in your neighborhood Supersol Deal, Rami Levy or Mega Bool. I’m talking about the excitement in sighting ShopRite Brown Rice Crispy Rice cereal, a new Ben & Jerry’s flavor, or a package of Aspen Products Cool Shades paper plates in “4 assorted colors.” It’s finding the Czech beer you like amid all the Goldstar and Tuborg bottles, discovering that scallions can be purple, spotting decent-looking tuna steaks in the frozen foods section and — this is a major one — seeing that American-style brown paper lunch bags are now available.

To those of you from the real western world, these kinds of discoveries are ho-hum, and happen all the time in the local supermarket. But for those of us here, on the Middle Eastern front, it can often be a wondrous occasion, and not one to pass off flippantly. It explains why so many local Israeli papers have a consumer products section, briefing readers about food news. Consider Greer Fay Cashman’s Market Wise column in the Jerusalem Post business section, as well as Eva Ben-David in other sections of the paper. It’s always sort of funny to read those columns, because does one really care if Strauss has a new ice cream flavor? Then again, I always make sure to skim those columns.

It’s not that there aren’t great offerings from the local manufacturing industry. There are. I’d say it’s more about the thrill of the scavenger hunt, finding those unexpected treats during what is often a mundane chore. Happy hunting.

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IBA’s Close Up feeds news jones

January 16, 2009 - 1:13 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, Politics, Pop Culture, War 

Steve Leibowitz and Leah ZinderEarlier this week, the relatively new free daily nationalist tabloid Yisrael Hayom (Hebrew-only informational website viewable here) reported that mainstream Israeli news websites have been experiencing around a 30% spike in traffic since the start of the current Gaza conflict – hardly a surprise, and hardly a trend relegated to the video-heavy, Hebrew-language outlets cited in their stats.

With the thirst for Zionist-friendly war-related information peaking even among English speakers, the Israel Broadcasting Authority has been wise to initiate the launch of a new English news program called Close Up. Airing Wednesdays at 5:25 PM on the IBA’s Channel 33, the live in-depth weekly analysis magazine Close Up premiered this week with a half hour’s worth of content headed by IBA talking heads Steve Leibowitz and Leah Zinder.

The program joins the growing stable of English-language IBA news reports, which includes the ten-minute weekday News Bulletin and the 20-minute daily IBA News, all of which streams over the web on-demand at the IBA’s video mini-site (like most Israeli websites, works best in the Explorer browser).

For the inaugural episode, Zinder and Leibowitz were joined at the news desk by panelists Effi Eitam, a controversial MK from the hawkish religious National Union, and left-of-center David Horovitz, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. Eitam remarked on the high levels of motivation among IDF, proclaiming that “The spirit of confidence will prevail amongst the soldiers, and, I might add, amongst the citizens.” Horovitz commented on pragmatic goals for ceasefire arrangements.

In other segments, Hebrew University’s Dr. Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, spoke about the ethical issues of the war, reporter Leah Stern gave over a timeline for how diplomacy breakdown led to the current battles, and a visit to opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s office yielded a predictably “I told you so”-style statement.

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Jpost McCartney coverage is pretty McAwesome

September 25, 2008 - 9:17 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Music 

Paul is not DeadSo as I write this over 50,000 people have decent upon HaYarkon Park to hear Paul McCartney perform. I love the Beatles as much as the next guy, I really wish I was there, but alas, I could not justify the absurdly high ticket price. Am I regretting the decision? Yeah, a bit. The 490 NIS (roughly $150) won’t mean anything a year from now but there are still lighting fixtures that need to be installed in our apartment, a mini-fake kitchen I need to build for my daughter, a garden that needs to be tended, etc. You get the idea. There won’t ever be another band like the Beatles, and I won’t be able to tell my kids one day that I saw one of the Beatles perform. Though I did see Brian Wilson perform Pet Sounds in London a few years ago and that was pretty spectacular. So at least I got to see one music legend in my life.

Coverage of this show has been out of control. I think McCartney is getting more coverage than the Pope’s visit to Israel back in 2000.

The Jerusalem Post’s coverage has been enjoyable. It’s had a real giddy tone to it. Editor in chief David Horowitz interview with McCartney was obviously a personal career highlight for him and his uber-excited tone and enthusiasm jumps right off the page. A few of the recent headlines:

• Speaking words of wisdom

• Analyze This: How McCartney could rock Ahmadinejad’s world (actually an excellent opinion piece)

• Good Day Sunshine!

• McCartney’s concert kicks off in TA

My fellow Israelity blogger David even dared to bring up the old myth of Paul McCartney’s death and replacement with an impostor (Paul rebuffed this in yesterday’s press conference, which certainly made David’s day).

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