On the hunt for a gan

January 20, 2010 - 2:30 PM by · 7 Comments
Filed under: General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life 

I’ve been on a gan hunt. For the last two months, okay, maybe more like six weeks, I’ve been searching for the right day care options for my boys, who will be 23 months old in September.

I had no idea that finding a gan — or mishpachton, nursery school, or any other kind of day care center — would be such an ordeal. I mean, this is Israel, land that loves children, land that is always last minute about everything. It just never occurred to me that I’d have to start looking for the appropriate childcare situation for my boys in December, for September.

But when you have twins, people told me, you want to be sure you get the right place with space for two kids, not just one. You want to be sure there’s the right ratio of ganenet — the gan teacher — to kids. As in 6 or 7 kids to one adult, as opposed to 12 or 15 to one adult (although I’ve never seen that on any of my gan visits.) You want to make sure that the food served for lunch is freshly cooked, not microwaved schnitzel. That they offer plenty of outdoor playtime, fun arts and crafts, and the right kind of space for naps.

This all made sense to me. After all, I’ve got enough reservations about putting my kids into an institutionalized setting at the tender age of two. If I’m really doing this, I want to make sure it’s in the right kind of place, with the right kind of teacher.

But something about the search made me feel like a New Yorker fighting for space for my kid in a top-notch private school, to ensure them the right path in life. As in, if they go to the Kol Haneshama gan, will that automatically send them on the Reform schooling route? Will a mishpachton in someone’s home not offer the same kind of finger painting options that they’d have in a more formal setting? And should it be an English-speaking setting as opposed to Hebrew-speaking, creating a bi-lingual option in their developing brains?

Yes, all these and more, were the questions floating around in my brain, knowing all the while that none of it, really, makes a tremendous difference at age two. I finally did what I usually do in these life-altering situations — as in profession, relationships, health — and went with my gut.

That led me to Gaby, a lovely South American ganenet who leads seven small people in her home-based mishpachton, just over the busy corner makolet owned by her husband and brother-in-law, where we often stop in for milk and bread. True, you sort of have to walk through the makolet to get to the staircase that leads to her apartment. And you pass crates of soda, boxes of cereal and the cups of Turkish coffee being drunk by the makolet workers from an overturned crate. But Gaby just calls down to Sasson, her husband, if she’s run out of Multi Cheerios for breakfast, and someone runs it up to her. And if she’s taking the toddlers down to the backyard for some outdoor play, her husband or brother-in-law come up to help everyone down.

You know how it is. It’s the Israeli way.

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When’s the right time for a rite of passage?

October 15, 2009 - 12:32 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, health, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion, Travel 

It’s generally accepted that the Israeli perspective on the bar/bat mitzvah ceremony is different from its counterpart in the US.
I remember when Susie and three of her closest friends decided to celebrate their bat mitzvahs together – they were all around 40-years-old at the time.
They had been studying Torah as a group in Jerusalem for a year and a half. It all started when Boston-born Susie, who had already been in Israel for more than 20 years, started to feel that while her Jewish identity was her primary identity, which is why she had moved here, it was time for her to confront her “awe of the Torah.”
Sally, Ruti and Janet had also been in Israel for a couple of decades and for various reasons, none of the four had had a bat mitzvah back in the States. In fact, the first bat mitzvah was held by American rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, a major figure in Jewish thought and the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, for his daughter Judith in 1922.
So the culmination of 18 months of study and learning to read from the holy book was a ceremony at Jerusalem’s Kol Haneshama .
Now the idea didn’t resonate with everybody, but at that June ceremony 12 years ago no one could fail to be moved by the four women’s obvious quiet joy and pride in their achievements.
The bat mitzvahs of those forty-somethings inevitably came to mind when I received an e-mail recently, telling me about another group of delayed bar/bat mitzvah celebrants, en route to Israel.
Some of the participants at the upcoming celebration will be using walkers. Oxygen and wheelchairs will be available for emergencies. Five nurses will be traveling with the group. The average age of the participants in this particular version of the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony? Eighty-five.
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Cops and robbers on Shabbat in Jerusalem

March 15, 2009 - 5:12 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: coexistence, Crime, General, Israeliness, Life 

The scene of the crime.

The scene of the crime.

It was a strange scene on our way to a bat mitzvah yesterday morning in Jerusalem. We were driving down Emek Refaim St. on the way to Kol Haneshama, and passed the Rendezvous women’s fashion store with the front plate glass window smashed to smithereens, and mannequins strewn around the sidewalk.

Two policemen were sitting on the side guarding the store against looters, we thought. Even though it looked like vandals had been at work over Shabbat, never a laughing matter, the way the mannequins were askew was actually quite comical. My wife remarked that it looked like they had been nabbed attempting a breakout, which cracked up the kids in the car.

It was only this morning that we opened the paper and saw that the shop had been the target of a robbery, and that the police had shot and killed one of the burglars. According to The Jerusalem Post, an Arab man and a Jewish woman reversed their Mazda 3 vehicle into the display window at the clothing store.

They then started filling the car with merchandise, when police arrived on the scene. The crooks ran into the car and attempted run over the cops, who opened fire in return. A car chase ensued, until a few blocks later the getaway car stopped and the driver, Salah Salaima, 30, tried to flee on foot. However, the police had succeeded in wouding him and he collapsed after a few yards and died of his wounds. The female suspect, in her 20s, was taken into custody.

Man, it was a good thing we didn’t know any of that while we sat in the synagogue. After that cops and robbers scene, the intrigue and excitement of the Parshat Shavua, Ki Tissei, and the saga of the Golden Calf, would have paled in comparison.

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