On the road again in Israel
Filed under: General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life
Here we are in ‘hol hamoed’ – the intermediate days of Pessah – when most of the country is on vacation and competiting for the plethora of recreational activities and events available for such a small country.
We weren’t sure what to do this year – with a number of options open to us. Last year, we had a great time going to the Hermon Field School near Kiryat Shmona in the North with a big group of families. They’re going back for a few days beginning on Sunday. And even though the price is reasonable for the accomodations and food, an Israelity salary just doesn’t go that far anymore so we regretfully had to decline a return trip.
Another group of families is going camping at Dugit Beach along the eastern shore of the Kinneret. We joined them a couple years ago and had a great time, despite the trance party that took place one night beginning at midnight on the adjacent beach which gathered steam until about 6 am.
We considered that, but something that we hope will be even more fun came along. Friends of ours from Jerusalem are doing a house swap with a family from Zichron Yaakov, the delightful coastal town a bit south of Haifa. The house is evidently huge, large enough for two families, so they invited us to join them.
Zichron is a perfect location – close to the beach, a multitude of great hikes, the artist colony of Ein Harod, and Haifa itself, which is a great city to explore. But in reality, you never even have to leave Zichron – full of quaint shops, cafes and wineries, it’s one of Israel’s jewels.
Nothing like leaning back in a lounge chair in the patio of our palatial mansion with a good book, and cracking open a beer… oops, scratch that, forgot that it’s Pessah.
See you on the road with the rest of Am Yisrael.
Burn baby burn – getting ready for Pessah
Filed under: History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Religion
The aftermath of the purging of the hametz (Photo: Matan Brinn)
Beginning before 8 am and continuing through to mid-morning, people start bringing their left-over hametz – bread, cookies and anything made with leavening that are deemed to be off limits for Pessah – and start building bonfires.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re religiously observant or not – seems like the whole neighborhood comes out for the prayer for the burning of the hametz. It basically says that if we didn’t find every last drop of hametz in our homes in the cleaning leading up to Pessah, we won’t be struck by divine lightning.
But the main thing for the neighborhood kids is the fire – there’s another one every few feet in the undeveloped path behind our home. And those that are unsupervised by parents attempt to throw every possible item onto the blaze, including plastic bags, bottles and items that have been discarded during the pre-Pessas cleaning blitz, like Persian carpets and other environmentally unsound items that weren’t meant for burning.
Once the purge is over, Pessah afternoon takes on a tranquil quality, as families around the country get ready for their Seder. It’s the Thanksgiving of Israel, a staunch family time with extended families travelling for reunions at their parents’ homes. According to surveys, an overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis attend a Seder – way more than the percentage of Israelis that consider themselves observant.
Most Seders last well into the night, often into the next day, with the melodies of “Echad Mi Yodaya” and “Had Gadya” wafting out of the windows. It’s times like that when the feeling exists that Israelis are really ‘am echad’ – one people.
Israeli wine buying season – even on a budget
The weeks leading up to Passover represent the lion’s share of the kosher wine industry’s annual sales. Just like December is the peak season for general retail revenues every year, post-Purim early spring is where it’s at for kosher wine transaction volume. Young wines from the fall harvest are starting to be bottled and marketed at this time, and those handling the wine buying for a Seder must procure enough for the proverbial four cups consumed by each participant as part of the Haggadah’s rituals, meaning around one full bottle per person – plus whatever’s consumed separately during the meal.
And just as consumer retail columnists formulated analyses and advice columns this past December, focusing on how to make solstice holiday purchases where one garners maximum bang for one’s buck in today’s tough economic climate, Ha’aretz’s renowned wine critic Daniel Rogov recently released a highly practical guide to affordable spring 2009 kosher Israeli wines:
For several years, knowledgeable wine drinkers have known that the best buys in the country were the Tabor, Galil Mountain and Dalton wineries as well as in the Gamla series of the Golan Heights Winery. Those wines are now being joined by wines from the Zion winery and, while those may not make for the most sophisticated drinking, they do offer excellent value.
He goes on to rate nine kosher Zion winery (their Hebrew-only official site) products, all of which falling well within his “good to very good” stratum of scoring.
Rogov is getting out there more and more nowadays, serving as a formidable advocate of Israeli oenophilia. I’ve written about Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV before, and the enthusiastic eccentric personality also seemingly has Passover fever nowadays, having welcomed Rogov himself recently on the program (check out the fascinating 38-minute episode here). The banter-laden rapport between the two alone makes the video worth watching.
To Israeli wine lovers like you and me, this is not all big news (the fact that kosher wine no longer exclusively resembles cough syrup, and the fact that great Israeli wine is not exclusively kosher – we’ve known these things for years), but it’s great to see more and more mainstream wine-oriented media channels recognizing the quality coming out of this part of the world.
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