Celebrity Shavuot

June 2, 2011 - 3:10 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Movies, Music, Sports 

Shavuot partying in Tel Aviv

In researching a certain Shavuot article that then got killed, as sometimes happens in the professional writing world, I researched some somewhat interesting info about what Israeli celebrities think of Shavuot, the holiday that often gets ignored. Here’s what they — and I — had to say:

Despite being yet another three-day school vacation right before Chofesh Hagadol, the big school break, Shavuot is a very Israeli kind of chag, and even Sabra celebrities, including those not currently living in the land, endeavor to celebrate. Take former Miss Israel Gal Gadot – who currently holds her own as an ex-Mossad agent with Vin Diesel in the latest “Fast Five” movie – and is planning on making her specialty cheese lasagna for her family’s big Shavuot feast. “The reason why I like this holiday is the food,” admits Gadot.

Tennis player Shahar Peer says she always anticipates her family’s festive Shavuot dinner with its plethora of fruit and dairy dishes.” “That’s the food that I love,” adds the tennis player, who often tweets about what she’s about to eat, whether its Belgian waffles and chocolate in Brussels or her plan to “eat the entire fridge” whenever she’s home.

Besides the dairy emphasis, Shavuot in Israel is still fairly agricultural in nature, with plenty of opportunities to celebrate the summer harvest. Peer remembers donning a wreath of flowers when she was in the third grade and participating in a school play, a fairly common scene around this time of year. Some cities have tractor parades in the days leading up to Shavuot, marking the farming contribution of the country’s moshavim and kibbutzim, with tractors making their way from the farms outside the city.

Model and actress Gadot reminisces about going with her family as a child to a moshav or kibbutz to watch the cows being milked. She also remembers having water fights with her friends, while Sha’anan Streett, lead singer of hip hop/funk band Hadag Nachash, has a vivid memory of dumping an entire pail of water on his synagogue rabbi, who only grimaced and went on with his sermon.

Water fights a while back

Streett was only following tradition. Shavuot has always been Israel’s water festival, as kids swarm the streets with water guns and balloons, celebrating an early-in-the-season water day. Some claim it’s a custom from North Africa, where Jews equated Torah with water – both life-giving sources. It could also be because Shavuot falls in the late spring/early summer, when the weather starts heating up.

For psychic Uri Geller, Shavuot is very special, particularly the learning aspect of the holiday, which he says he tries to do from his home in London. “What’s interesting to me about Shavuot is its spiritual angle and the aura and the energy that emanates fro this holiday,” he says. “It is the holy holiday of the achievement of spirituality and you count back from Passover, it’s 50 days, it’s like going up a ladder that counts 50 steps and 50 in the Kabbalah is the number of infinity, so it has significant ritualistic meaning to me of spirituality.”

Whatever your angle, enjoy your celebrations.

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Shavuot without cheese

May 20, 2010 - 5:54 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Food, health, Holidays 
Award-winning cheesecake from Ben Ami

Award-winning cheesecake from Ben Ami

The just passed Jewish holiday of Shavuot is known by even the most secular Israelis as the festival on which we eat cheese. Sadly, not so any more for my 16-year-old daughter who was just diagnosed with lactose intolerance.

Merav has been getting terrible stomach aches for sometime now. Our doctor sent her to the hospital for testing in which they give patients a glass of concentrated lactose, then have them breathe into a machine every half hour.

It didn’t take long for Merav to know. The familiar pains started nearly immediately and it only took a few blows for the technician to return with the suspected but nevertheless disappointing news.

Still, to be absolutely sure it was lactose causing the stomach aches and not some other ailment (or perhaps an additional disease), the doctor told Merav to go off anything dairy for two weeks, then report back on how she felt.

The problem was that this was just before Shavuot and all those blintzes, quiches and cheese-laden casseroles beckoned. We decided she would start her test regime immediately after the holiday.

Truth be told, Shavuot dinner was relatively lactose free – we had rice, tofu and fish (our religious cheese-eating friends would be scandalized). But we couldn’t resist dessert. And so, in a last hurrah to dairy delights, we ordered a cheesecake.

But not just any cheesecake. This one, from the newly opened Ben Ami bakery and café on Jerusalem’s Emek Refaim Street (the first branch of a small family-run business from Kfar Vitkin) was rated the #1 cheesecake in the entire country by the Maariv NRG website.

At NIS 64 ($16), it was also more than we’d ever spent on dessert. But I am happy to report that it lived up to its reputation. The cheese was the consistency of whipped ice cream; the crumbly crust the polar opposite of an American graham cracker. It was unbelievably delicious.

The irony about Merav’s lactose intolerance is that, up until last summer, she was a staunch vegetarian. Now meat is welcome. It’s the lasagna that’s been excommunicated.

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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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Nostalgia Sunday – Shavuot Spring Harvest

May 16, 2010 - 10:43 AM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Religion 

Shavuot – the Feast of Weeks, is a harvest holiday. And over the past century, nowhere was this fact better celebrated than on the kibbutzim. Although these cooperative agricultural settlements were (and are) for the most part, non-religious, this holiday, like its autumn counterpart Sukkot – the Feast of Tabernacles, was a chance to show off their best crops.

Kibbutzim traditionally marked Shavuot with a parade and a pageant. In olden days, these were preceded by wagons loaded with produce.

Later on, more modern methods of transport took their place.

And of course, no self-respecting Shavuot celebration would be complete with out the dance of the tractors!

More lovely holiday images from various kibbutz archives are available to view at Wikimedia Commons. Happy holiday, everyone — and don’t overdo the dairy!

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Going eco

May 5, 2010 - 1:12 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, Business, design, Environment, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life 

The outdoor porch of the main building

Here’s a cool place to head to for a meaningful Shavuot, whether you celebrate with water fights, cheesecake or all-night learning.

Take yourself to Vertigo Eco-Art Village, a working experiment in ecological and artistic living, founded by members of dance troupe Vertigo. The main members of the village are three of four sisters and their families who are also the backbone of this very Israeli contemporary dance troupe, considered the Batsheva of Jerusalem, the city which has always been its home base. But a village of their own was always a dream of this troupe, and they finally found a home on Kibbutz Netiv Halamed Hei, in the heart of the Haela Valley of the Yoav Yehuda region.

The outdoor showers

In between their performances in Israel and abroad, and work with children, adults with physical disabilities and potential dancers, Vertigo has turned the kibbutz’s defunct chicken coop into an ecological arts center, complete with dance studio, communal kitchen, guestrooms, outdoor showers and a water system that relies primarily on recycled rain and gray water. And, it’s all housed in a renovated structure that includes ‘green’ walls made of mud bricks.

A lighting element from the mudbrick guestrooms

The mud bricks come from ‘Adamahee’, the play on words that means ‘She is the earth,’ which is Vertigo’s mud brick venture, and Adamahee has created small but quaint mud wall guestrooms with everything that you need for a short Shavuot stay. There will be yoga, picnics, learning, jam music and dance sessions, tai chai, and other suitably eco-art activities. Prices range from NIS 120-NIS 240, depending on whether you pre-register and sign up for one day or both days. Overnight accommodations are additional, and it probably makes sense to contact Vertigo for more information.

I was charmed by the place, and would love to try a night there myself. Let me know if you make it out there.

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