It rained this morning. Everyone I spoke to had something to say about it. For starters, it NEVER rains in the summer here. Average rainfall in Jerusalem in July is zero. There is also a drought in Israel. The day I packed my lift to come here was the first dry day after about 30 straight days of rain in Brooklyn. Each day I would think of how we pray for rain from Sukkot to Pesah. Only recently did I realize the rain we pray for is for Eretz Yisroel (of course!). And in the summer months we don’t even ask Hashem for rain. I still can’t believe it rained this morning…
The old Israel…
I was laughing with a friend yesterday about how dated some people’s perceptions of Israel are – dated of course, to when they had their last Israel experience. The Shabbat before we left on aliya my Israeli-born-but-now-so-American-he-can’t-fathom-why-we-would-go-live-in-Israel father-in-law, born in 1936, had us in hysterics with his reenactment of a childhood trip to the dentist. There was no novocaine but there was a peddle the dentist used to run the drill. When the drill got stuck in Saba’s tooth, the dentist kept peddling. The drill started smoking. Ten-year-old Saba started screaming. Take it out! Just take it out already! Was I really lying when I told my kids tonight that here in Israel the dentist does not use any type of novocaine and so they’d better brush their teeth?
Is it #2 or melted chocolate? You have a 50-50 chance here…
When you put your towel bag down on the grassy area by the pool in Israel and then pick it up only to find the bottom smudged with something brown you may be pleasantly surprised to give it a sniff and find that smudge to be chocolate and nothing more.
While chocolate seems to have replaced falafel as the national food of Israel, my kids are all caught up in the gum I always told them wasn’t kosher back in Brooklyn. As a bribe for waiting patiently at the bank and then as a reward for behaving for the babysitter when Bob and I had to return to the bank for three hours (who am I kidding – it was a guilt offering!) they got multiple packages of (kosher) Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape (that’s ‘Six Feet of Fun’) and chewed it for about three days straight (I mean chewing it, saving the chewed pieces on their plates during meals and re-chewing it to make it last, waking up in the morning and chewing new pieces, putting chewed pieces in their mouths after brushing their teeth for bed at night so that my last directive of the night was ‘throw out the gum!’) until it ran out. Becky once kept her gum in her mouth while eating a hard boiled egg – she said the gum tasted like egg after that. EWWWWW! I keep warning them about the dentist here…
Speaking of which I took them to a bouncy fair – that’s what I call it – maybe it’s more officially known as a Kids’ Carnival with Free Inflatable Bouncy Slides, 5 Shekel Cotton Candy and 2 Shekel Regular Candy (probably sponsored by the dentists association of Israel, possibly co-sponsored by the nit-pickers union). Just before I left Brooklyn I took my kids to an indoor bouncy place where I paid $65 for one hour of bouncing but not before I signed away all liability for any injury incurred on the premises. We arrived at the bouncy fair here in one of our local parks so the kids could bounce and slide away, free of charge, free of concern about litigation. There seems to be an unspoken understanding here that you are basically on your own when it comes to staying safe. Large cars and vans make a beeping noise while reversing unapologetically that seems to say (with attitude) ‘I am backing up and if you don’t move, well then that’s your problem’. The floor cleaner comes in a bottle that is brightly colored and eerily identical in shape and size to the bottles of fruity soft drinks. Nobody yells at you for running alongside a pool or jousting with tree branches. I met a boy last Shabbat who’s thumb had to be reattached after a stone-staircase-surfing mishap. In any case, there were “madrichim” watching each bouncy thing – to be fair, they did, from time to time, attempt to limit the amount of children going on at once. Ultimately, however, the average number of kids on each bouncy thing at any given time looked to be about 40. Did I mention that these bouncy fairs occur regularly in Israel – for every occasion and for many made-up occasions (start of summer, middle of summer, end of summer)? It is now my untested hypothesis that lice jump freely from head to head in the over-crowded bouncy mosh pits. Time will surely tell…
there's nothing to distract a 3 year old and a 6 year old from fighting like a neighbor's kitten jumping through the front window.
No lice but yes fleas…
On the way home from the bouncy fair we picked up a straggler – a small but very aggressive kitten. The kids named her Catty and Catty followed us up the 22 side stairs to our house and then jumped and jumped and jumped until she made it into the window frame. Bob blocked her with the inner window and then scurried around to close all the other windows. I kept opening the door to take pictures of Catty the kitten who was holding us hostage and both Bob and the kids kept screaming at me to close the door so she wouldn’t come in!!! Strangely reminiscent of the possum-in-the-garbage-can experience just prior to our move but then so different – that possum wasn’t the least interested in coming inside my house! Even the animals are chutzpanit in Israel!
friday night walking home i hoped (out loud) that we would find a lizard and make it our pet. saturday morning i awoke to much squealing from becky - alas there was a tiny lizard running all around the living room!
little lizard scurrying through my living room, hiding under the couch, welcome! you are not the first but we are still squealing with delight upon seeing you!
in perek shirah does anyone know what a creeping creature is vs. a prolific creeping creature? are any of them lizards? wondering if there's a message being sent here...
it just occurred to me the only reason i close my downstairs windows at night is to keep out lizards and cats. some things only make sense in israel. laila tov!
it was 36 degrees today at the pool in tekoa. boiling hot! (see how fast we became israeli - we talk celcius now!) shabbat shalom from eretz ha kodesh!
There’s a learning curve to most everything…
I was almost giddy when I declared the high temperature had been a boiling hot 36°C outside on Friday. So why didn’t I realize the 95° setting on my washer meant 95°C and that my clothes would be almost boiling for over three hours at 203° F? The clean freak in me assumed hottest was best and 95° sounded nice and hot. With Rosie in her favorite formerly-pink-but-now-grayish elephant bathing suit with 4 out of 6 remaining sparkling stones still attached we made our way to Ramat Rachel at the southeastern tip of Jerusalem. High up (ramat means ‘heights’) we had a magnificent view of Gilo to the southwest, Bethlehem to the south and the Judean Hills which lie between Jerusalem and Tekoa to the southeast. While we swam, ate olives, tomatoes, pita and humus in true Israeli picnicking form, and relaxed in the sun, Bob left for a few hours to pick up our teudat zehuts –our Israeli citizenship cards (any gov’t office visit that seems like it should take 20 minutes takes a few hours – we are getting used to this). Each teudat zehut has a unique number, not unlike a social security number – it’s the number I had to give the shipping company, the obstetrician, the school secretary and I’m imagining the list will grow. From there he had to hand in a form we’d had completed at the bank so that we’d be able to receive some of our aliya benefits. When the secretary looking at the form saw it had been stamped and not signed and told Bob to go back to the bank and have it signed Bob asked to borrow her pen and signed the form himself. Getting the hang of it!
tisha b'av - 3 hours left. taking my kids to the makolet to buy "snacks" - watermelon flavored hubba bubba is the general favorite. did i mention i'm so thin from 22 hours of fasting you can't even see me if i turn sideways. the baby is knocking at my belly demanding today's iced coffee.
me to my kids: step away from the mango. that is my mango. all mine.
i was thinner than an israeli plastic cup but now i've plumped back into shape. looking less like flat stanley and more like my profile pic (miss piggy a la mona lisa).
I took the girls to register them for school. The secretary spoke only Hebrew and, it seemed, only the fast kind. Becky started freaking out – what if her teachers are speaking to her this way? (oh, and they will be!). Lucky for Becky, her principal, Rav Yehuda Eisenberg (yes, Denis’ nephew) speaks perfect soft-spoken gentle English (with a Detroit accent) and patiently sat with her and made sure she was comfortable. He gave her his cell phone number on a piece of paper and told her she could call him whenever she wanted! She asked if she could call in the middle of the school day from class. Only not then, he told her. She made me save the number into my cell phone…
A Shabbos Treat for Me…
Erev Shabbat there are tables set up outside the makolet with kids selling all types of sweets – last week it was a mini bake sale (I bought cupcakes and little chocolate balls rolled in sprinkles), this week it was a candy sale (thankfully my kids were not with me). Next to the kids selling candy was a couple selling freshly pressed rimon (pomegranate) juice and giving tastes in little medicine cups. I had a taste and did not even flinch when they told me the price. In Brooklyn I paid $3.50 for a half-gallon of Tropicana. This erev Shabbat I paid 45 shekels (about $11.25) for one litre of pomegranate juice. It was worth every agarot.
The old Israel…
I was laughing with a friend yesterday about how dated some people’s perceptions of Israel are – dated of course, to when they had their last Israel experience. The Shabbat before we left on aliya my Israeli-born-but-now-so-American-he-can’t-fathom-why-we-would-go-live-in-Israel father-in-law, born in 1936, had us in hysterics with his reenactment of a childhood trip to the dentist. There was no novocaine but there was a peddle the dentist used to run the drill. When the drill got stuck in Saba’s tooth, the dentist kept peddling. The drill started smoking. Ten-year-old Saba started screaming. Take it out! Just take it out already! Was I really lying when I told my kids tonight that here in Israel the dentist does not use any type of novocaine and so they’d better brush their teeth?
Is it #2 or melted chocolate? You have a 50-50 chance here…
When you put your towel bag down on the grassy area by the pool in Israel and then pick it up only to find the bottom smudged with something brown you may be pleasantly surprised to give it a sniff and find that smudge to be chocolate and nothing more.
While chocolate seems to have replaced falafel as the national food of Israel, my kids are all caught up in the gum I always told them wasn’t kosher back in Brooklyn. As a bribe for waiting patiently at the bank and then as a reward for behaving for the babysitter when Bob and I had to return to the bank for three hours (who am I kidding – it was a guilt offering!) they got multiple packages of (kosher) Hubba Bubba Bubble Tape (that’s ‘Six Feet of Fun’) and chewed it for about three days straight (I mean chewing it, saving the chewed pieces on their plates during meals and re-chewing it to make it last, waking up in the morning and chewing new pieces, putting chewed pieces in their mouths after brushing their teeth for bed at night so that my last directive of the night was ‘throw out the gum!’) until it ran out. Becky once kept her gum in her mouth while eating a hard boiled egg – she said the gum tasted like egg after that. EWWWWW! I keep warning them about the dentist here…
Speaking of which I took them to a bouncy fair – that’s what I call it – maybe it’s more officially known as a Kids’ Carnival with Free Inflatable Bouncy Slides, 5 Shekel Cotton Candy and 2 Shekel Regular Candy (probably sponsored by the dentists association of Israel, possibly co-sponsored by the nit-pickers union). Just before I left Brooklyn I took my kids to an indoor bouncy place where I paid $65 for one hour of bouncing but not before I signed away all liability for any injury incurred on the premises. We arrived at the bouncy fair here in one of our local parks so the kids could bounce and slide away, free of charge, free of concern about litigation. There seems to be an unspoken understanding here that you are basically on your own when it comes to staying safe. Large cars and vans make a beeping noise while reversing unapologetically that seems to say (with attitude) ‘I am backing up and if you don’t move, well then that’s your problem’. The floor cleaner comes in a bottle that is brightly colored and eerily identical in shape and size to the bottles of fruity soft drinks. Nobody yells at you for running alongside a pool or jousting with tree branches. I met a boy last Shabbat who’s thumb had to be reattached after a stone-staircase-surfing mishap. In any case, there were “madrichim” watching each bouncy thing – to be fair, they did, from time to time, attempt to limit the amount of children going on at once. Ultimately, however, the average number of kids on each bouncy thing at any given time looked to be about 40. Did I mention that these bouncy fairs occur regularly in Israel – for every occasion and for many made-up occasions (start of summer, middle of summer, end of summer)? It is now my untested hypothesis that lice jump freely from head to head in the over-crowded bouncy mosh pits. Time will surely tell…
there's nothing to distract a 3 year old and a 6 year old from fighting like a neighbor's kitten jumping through the front window.
No lice but yes fleas…
On the way home from the bouncy fair we picked up a straggler – a small but very aggressive kitten. The kids named her Catty and Catty followed us up the 22 side stairs to our house and then jumped and jumped and jumped until she made it into the window frame. Bob blocked her with the inner window and then scurried around to close all the other windows. I kept opening the door to take pictures of Catty the kitten who was holding us hostage and both Bob and the kids kept screaming at me to close the door so she wouldn’t come in!!! Strangely reminiscent of the possum-in-the-garbage-can experience just prior to our move but then so different – that possum wasn’t the least interested in coming inside my house! Even the animals are chutzpanit in Israel!
friday night walking home i hoped (out loud) that we would find a lizard and make it our pet. saturday morning i awoke to much squealing from becky - alas there was a tiny lizard running all around the living room!
little lizard scurrying through my living room, hiding under the couch, welcome! you are not the first but we are still squealing with delight upon seeing you!
in perek shirah does anyone know what a creeping creature is vs. a prolific creeping creature? are any of them lizards? wondering if there's a message being sent here...
it just occurred to me the only reason i close my downstairs windows at night is to keep out lizards and cats. some things only make sense in israel. laila tov!
it was 36 degrees today at the pool in tekoa. boiling hot! (see how fast we became israeli - we talk celcius now!) shabbat shalom from eretz ha kodesh!
There’s a learning curve to most everything…
I was almost giddy when I declared the high temperature had been a boiling hot 36°C outside on Friday. So why didn’t I realize the 95° setting on my washer meant 95°C and that my clothes would be almost boiling for over three hours at 203° F? The clean freak in me assumed hottest was best and 95° sounded nice and hot. With Rosie in her favorite formerly-pink-but-now-grayish elephant bathing suit with 4 out of 6 remaining sparkling stones still attached we made our way to Ramat Rachel at the southeastern tip of Jerusalem. High up (ramat means ‘heights’) we had a magnificent view of Gilo to the southwest, Bethlehem to the south and the Judean Hills which lie between Jerusalem and Tekoa to the southeast. While we swam, ate olives, tomatoes, pita and humus in true Israeli picnicking form, and relaxed in the sun, Bob left for a few hours to pick up our teudat zehuts –our Israeli citizenship cards (any gov’t office visit that seems like it should take 20 minutes takes a few hours – we are getting used to this). Each teudat zehut has a unique number, not unlike a social security number – it’s the number I had to give the shipping company, the obstetrician, the school secretary and I’m imagining the list will grow. From there he had to hand in a form we’d had completed at the bank so that we’d be able to receive some of our aliya benefits. When the secretary looking at the form saw it had been stamped and not signed and told Bob to go back to the bank and have it signed Bob asked to borrow her pen and signed the form himself. Getting the hang of it!
tisha b'av - 3 hours left. taking my kids to the makolet to buy "snacks" - watermelon flavored hubba bubba is the general favorite. did i mention i'm so thin from 22 hours of fasting you can't even see me if i turn sideways. the baby is knocking at my belly demanding today's iced coffee.
me to my kids: step away from the mango. that is my mango. all mine.
i was thinner than an israeli plastic cup but now i've plumped back into shape. looking less like flat stanley and more like my profile pic (miss piggy a la mona lisa).
I took the girls to register them for school. The secretary spoke only Hebrew and, it seemed, only the fast kind. Becky started freaking out – what if her teachers are speaking to her this way? (oh, and they will be!). Lucky for Becky, her principal, Rav Yehuda Eisenberg (yes, Denis’ nephew) speaks perfect soft-spoken gentle English (with a Detroit accent) and patiently sat with her and made sure she was comfortable. He gave her his cell phone number on a piece of paper and told her she could call him whenever she wanted! She asked if she could call in the middle of the school day from class. Only not then, he told her. She made me save the number into my cell phone…
A Shabbos Treat for Me…
Erev Shabbat there are tables set up outside the makolet with kids selling all types of sweets – last week it was a mini bake sale (I bought cupcakes and little chocolate balls rolled in sprinkles), this week it was a candy sale (thankfully my kids were not with me). Next to the kids selling candy was a couple selling freshly pressed rimon (pomegranate) juice and giving tastes in little medicine cups. I had a taste and did not even flinch when they told me the price. In Brooklyn I paid $3.50 for a half-gallon of Tropicana. This erev Shabbat I paid 45 shekels (about $11.25) for one litre of pomegranate juice. It was worth every agarot.
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