It's the little things...

It's been a while since I posted, because I have been busy with other more important things. Like arranging a wedding which is 3 weeks away, in Crown Heights. Like cooking for Pesach, seeing as we will be coming back a week before, and not to mention arranging cleaning for my GIANT house. Like getting Purim together, which was going to be doing the Purim Seudah for about 80 people; my mother-in-law bestowed the honour of the Seudah on me last year, but this year I begged off because of the wedding and other responsibilities, and ended up deeply offending her; so we thrashed that one out in a phone call from Jerusalem a few weeks ago. So now it's just putting together Mishloach Manot, and I can't believe I am writing this, but my husband, He Who Must Be Obeyed, doesn't want me to do cards for Tzedaka, he likes my original and cute gifts. I do it to myself. But thank G-d I don't have to worry about kids' costumes. Or the giant Purim bashes we used to have when my uni-student/graduate girls were home, for 300-500  20-somethings so they could hear Megillah, eat and drink and trash my house and garden. (Such a mitzvah! Yeah, so you do it then.)
So much stuff to do. Newlyweds coming here to stay for a year or so, so I have to find them someplace to live. Every rental I have seen is yuk. After I saw one place I actually berated the agent and told her to tell the landlord that he had an absolute cheek asking the rental fees he did for a place where the kitchen was worse than my mother's, and she's been gone 27 years. Hadn't been touched for 40 years. So he offered to sell it to me, so I could have the joy of renovation. Yeah, right. I'll find something. And furnish it. And hope that my new daughter-in-law will like it!
OK, step back; sure, the wedding is in NY, and it's my son, not my daughter, and thus I will not be doing the lion's share of the work. But here we have the call-up and the kiddush and the family lunch, and then a Le'Chaim when the young couple comes to town.
And I am arranging all this, and lots of other stuff regarding hosting several speakers who are coming for the Feb-March UIA campaign, and this includes house guests who are pretty illustrious - so I decided I needed to buy new beds for the guest room (and the old ones will go to the new couple, ha ha!)- and I did that too.
And then my shvigger asked me, in all pleasantness, whether I had an outfit for Shul for the call-up.
Shit.
No, I didn't.
Well, yes I did, but I've worn it a lot already.
Shit.
I hate this stuff.
So yesterday on a 35C degree day, of course, I took myself off to Malvern Rd to look at 2 boutiques - because forget going to a normal shop for me, nothing ever fits, (and that's why I shop in Bloomingdales whenever I get the chance, with a personal shopper who forced me to change my style from Greek Widow Black to something more stylish)- and found myself in a shop selling clothes of the odd sort of quasi-Japanesey style, with shop assistants looking like they were on their way to a gallery opening, in unstructured monochrome layered clothing and chunky bangles and beads.
I tried stuff on- layer upon layer, like a Sara Lee Danish pastry- and I reflected that, a few years back, I would have been ecstatic to find these clothes! But now, after 30kg weight loss 6 years ago, I was finding it to be a retrograde step to be in all these unstructured floaty bits and pieces, which I explained to the (very helpful!) assistant. In the end I bought 3 pieces- grey skirt, little black summer jacket and in-between sort of long greyish-charcoaly printy layer top so I could maybe eat something and not show it. So not a black shroud. Cost enough but I hope my mother-in-law will be happy.
(She usually does this thing where, on the day, she tells me how nice I look, and then several months or years later, she mentions that the skirt didn't fit so well, or the neckline was wrong or the pantyhose was the wrong colour or something. If I were made of more delicate stuff I would be wounded and wary, but I don't give a crap, in fact, I laugh now when she does it. It has been going on for nearly 33 years after all!) (By the way, my mother-in-law is extremely stylish and always well put-together and she knows a thing or two about clothes, but nothing about being bigger than a size 10.)
Shul outfit. TICK.
NOW I need to make sure that I fit into the gown for the wedding. Oy. Bye bye carbs.

Lessons from The Holocaust

I didn't write this but I want you to read it. I want everyone to read it.  I don't agree with David Finkelstein about the settlements, but that's another argument.

Lessons from the Holocaust? Try these two

(An article by Daniel Finkelstein that appeared in The (London) Times on 30 January 2013)

The Jews have learnt all about Man’s inhumanity to Man. But also that you cannot rely on others to keep you safe.

 
By the time my grandmother boarded the train from Belsen she was close to death. For a year she had given every scrap of food she had to her little girls, to my mother and her two sisters. Now starvation meant that she could scarcely stand. But somehow she managed to hold herself upright and stumble on board.

She had to, for this train was the only chance of liberty. A prisoner exchange had been arranged and somehow, using false passports, my family was on it. But the Nazis were excluding anyone whose illness might disclose to the Allies the hunger and disease in the camps. My grandmother knew that, starved though she was, she would have to walk to freedom. If she did not, her girls would die, as so many, many more had died and were still to die.

On board she collapsed as the train made its winter way through frozen countryside to safety in Switzerland. And then, stranded in the middle of nowhere, the train stopped. A guard appeared. He waved his hands at my family and told them that there were too many people on the train. They would have to get off. They would be left to die in the snow.

My aunt, the eldest child, protested. My grandmother was too ill to be moved, she said. The Nazi guard looked. He shrugged. OK, he said. And he moved on.

My grandmother lived just long enough to see her little girls through their ordeal, to deliver them from the camps to safety. She crossed the border to Switzerland and before the day was done, she died.

Last week, in anticipation of Holocaust Memorial Day, David Ward, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bradford East, said that the Jews — my Mum, perhaps, her sisters — hadn’t learnt the lesson of the Holocaust. “It appears that the suffering by the Jews has not transformed their views on how others should be treated.” I’ll give my Mum a call when I have a moment and pass on his complaint.

The comparison the MP made, between Jews and the Nazis, is a distressingly commonplace one. It pops up all the time in the anti-Semitic mail that I receive on a regular enough basis that I have developed a standard reply (“Dear Sir, Thank you for your note. It is kind of you to warn me about the Jews. I will certainly keep an eye out for them. They sound terrible. Daniel”). But in public, most people are subtle enough to use the word Zionist when they mean Jew.

Even in this more socially acceptable form, the charge is outrageous. It suggests a complete failure to understand the sheer scale and intent of the Holocaust. As it happens, I am very critical of the Israeli settlements policy. I regard it as both wrong and strategically disastrous. I am critical, angry, about its human consequences. But to compare Binyamin Netanyahu’s policy to that of the gas chambers of Auschwitz is shameful. Nauseating, actually. Which is not a word I am given to employing often in political debate.

Gerald Scarfe’s deeply misconceived drawing in The Sunday Times was, at least, not guilty of this error. But I hope I can be excused if I found his explanation that he hadn’t remembered that he was supposed to be remembering the Holocaust more darkly amusing than I usually find his cartoons.

While lecturing the survivors of the concentration camps and their children on the lessons they would have learnt if only they had been good people like him, David Ward did not only show a lack of proportion. He also showed a lack of insight.

It is true, as Mr Ward says, that what happened to my grandmother shows the dangers of Man’s inhumanity to Man and the need to avoid it. But that is not the only lesson it teaches. And not the only lesson Jews have learnt.

When the Nazis invaded Holland, and arrested my family in their home, and stole their property, and killed their friends, and destroyed their community, and put them on trains to go to death camps, they were able to do it because they had the army and the soldiers and the guns. They were able to do it because the Jews were defenceless. They were able to do it because speeches and books and ideas about liberty, for all their great truth and power, weren’t enough.

How could the Jews not have learnt that lesson? How could they not have learnt it, David Ward, when they went home to the East of Europe and found they couldn’t live in their houses or reclaim their property or be safe with their neighbours? How could they not have learnt it sailing round and round the harbour because no country wanted to take them?

The Jews have learnt the same lesson as everyone else about humanity and compassion, and been as good and as fallible as anyone else when trying to show it. But we have also understood a harder, harsher truth. That we cannot rely on others to keep us safe. And Israel exists precisely because of this.

On New Year’s Day, the artist Yoko Ono paid for a full-page advertisement in The New York Times. She then left it blank save for two words. In the middle of the page it read “Imagine Peace”.

After it appeared, The Guardian conducted an online poll, asking readers: “Will Yoko Ono’s advertisement help bring world peace?” A third of respondents, hundreds of people, reviewed the white space of the ad, then considered the massacres in Syria and Algeria, the murders in the Sudan, the conflicts of the Middle East, before responding that yes, in their carefully considered opinion, Ms Ono’s commercial would help world peace.

Wouldn’t it be marvelous to really think that? To really believe that the cause of peace can be advanced by imagining it? Wouldn’t it be good if no one ever had to die to allow others to live, and freedom didn’t need to protect itself with a rifle, and little girls could go to school in Pakistan without being shot? I want that world as fervently as anyone else.

But one of the lessons of the Holocaust is that wanting it is not enough. Israel is deep in a struggle to defend the Jews who live there against more death and confiscation and terror. Because the Jews have had enough of that, thank you very much.
It’s right to be critical when Israel gets it wrong. It is creditable to make the human rights of Palestinians a cause. But to forget that after genocide and destruction the Jews wanted a home they could defend? Never again.

IMPRESSIONS OF ISRAEL

I'm home again after the usual 24+ hours travel, and I think it's safe to write again, now that my brain is working. As always, on returning from anytime overseas, I find that all that has happened has this dream-like quality to it; I feel as if I never really went away at all. Writing about stuff helps to fix it into time I guess, and makes it seem real.
So Israel is as awesome as ever, and the people are generally as crazy as ever, especially in Jerusalem, and I had a great time as ever, and I ate too much, as ever. In 3+ weeks I attended, in no particular order, an engagement, a Brit Milah, a wedding, an Opsheiren and a bar mitzvah; ate out at least once a day, and, on one memorable day, 3 times; met a long-lost relative; visited elderly relatives; hung out with 2 married kids trying to have D&M discussions about stuff; visited various institutions who either wanted to show us what our donations had achieved or would achieve, because they want more money to achieve even more; and spoke to about 20 other people representing 20 other organizations who wanted to meet us/show us their worthy efforts and how our donations would help them do even more worthy things. In other words, a typical visit to Israel. Is this a holiday? Yes. A vacation? In the sense of the word 'vacate', ie, time to do nothing? Nope.
Anyway, in this blur of activity a few things stick out.
Yad Vashem is amazing. Take a tour, whoever you are.
There are a lot of beggars in Jerusalem. Some wear tatters and shake a cup at you, some busk in the streets and some - most - wear suits and make appointments.
There are a lot of crazy people in Jerusalem. It either attracts crazy people or makes people crazy, probably both.
Snow in Jerusalem is remarkable  (but as with all urban snow, awful when it turns into dirty slush).
Taxi drivers are all philosophers and experts on politics.
There is no such thing as an Israeli without a political opinion.
For a largely tourist-based economy, the quality of service everywhere is terrible. Even in the fanciest hotels, the cluelessness of even the concierges makes me wonder what the hell they teach them in hospitality school. Coffee shops and restaurants 'kal vechomer'. I think that the Israelis can learn one or two things from the Arabs, and hospitality would have to be one. If there is ever a great Arab tradition, that's it. My mother used to tell me that her father (born and raised in Tzefat)  told her that when you were in the home of an Arab, he would treat you like a king. Never mind that once you left his tent, he might kill you, or you were a sworn enemy; in his home, you would be honoured. That's what they need to teach in hospitality school! (Not the killing bit, the honouring bit.)
Jerusalem is for everyone. Even in the days of the Beit HaMikdash the goyim (literally, the 'nations') were welcome to make sacrifices to HaShem and worship. And today, it is unbelievable who comes and tours. I guess they are all monotheists, pilgrims, whatever.
Groups of Africans in matching bright fabrics printed with the face of Jesus. (If you are going to print the face of Jesus on your clothes, you would think that whoever sewed the clothes would make sure that Jesus wouldn't be on the butt, but it seems in Nigeria etc they don't worry about that. Strange placements of the face of Jesus are pretty funny.)
A group of ecstatic Chinese dancing a hora with 2 soldiers, and singing 'Shabbat Shalom' last Friday night at the Kotel. I asked one young man where they were from: Beijing, Shenzan, other mainland China places. Then he put his hands over his heart, closed his eyes for a second, beamed a huge smile, and said 'Jerusalem...I love!'
Many years ago I was on Ben Yehuda St when a parade went by; Japanese pilgrims, the women all dressed up in kimono, playing piano accordions and drums and singing 'Shalom Aleichem', on their way to the Kotel to pray and dance. (Actually, and I'm not making this up, they were singing 'Heivenu sharom areichem'.) It was surreal. But stuff like that happens every day there.
Jerusalem...I love!

Big day out

Well, this day actually started the night before, a la Jewish custom.
Last night we attended a wedding in Ramat Rachel, a kibbutz in The Jerusalem area. But this is not your regular kibbutz like back in the day; no Gan Yerek, no Refet, no Lool. This is a hospitality kibbutz! There's a hotel with conference facilities and function rooms including a nice wedding hall. And that's how the kibbutz makes a living.
Anyway, the daughter of a friend married a boy, both Israelis, both what you would call Dati Leumi, pretty mixed bunch but overall religious types, about 500 guests, and many many young people and young couples and expectant mothers and little children. Lots of head wraps and big knitted yarmulkes and tzitzis down to there, where getting dressed up means wearing a clean pair of chinos and a crumpled white shirt, or a long cotton print skirt and multiple headscarves twined together into a turban, and dangly bead earrings. You get the picture.
The bride's younger brother is a young man with special needs, and although his verbal skills aren't great, his absolute joy in dancing at his sister's wedding was palpable. And overall, what with the young couples and kids etc, this would have been one of the most joyous weddings I have ever witnessed.
So this was before and after the chuppah. The ceremony itself was much as one would expect. There was solemnity at the bedecking -veiling- of the bride, with songs and prayers, just generally asking Hashem to hear our prayers. Then more dancing the groom to the chuppah. Then the bride circled the groom to the tune of the Alter Rebbe's Niggun. That surprised me because I thought that was Chabad turf, but no; it was very moving. You have to know the tune and hear it to get it. It was full of yearning, even with the band's bluegrass sort of take on it.
And then we sang as we do, Im Eshkochech et Yerushalayim; if I forget thee O Jerusalem. And after the chuppah everyone just went nuts and the dancing went on and on.
And I looked around the room at the mothers and babies and the other special needs kids who came, friends of the bride's brother, at the happy shining faces of family and friends, and I thought: we will live forever. We Jews will live forever, in Israel, in Yerushalayim. We love our life and our land and our G-d too much to give it up, no matter what the threats, no matter what the Romans and the Nazis and the Iranians did or do or say, no matter what the pundits in Tel Aviv say about the demographic and Yehuda-shomron, no matter what stance Obama might take. No matter what the anti-Semites and the self-hating Jews say or think: Am Yisrael Chai.
Then today, I visited Yad Vashem.
I hadn't seen the new museum although I had recently been to the art museum- yes, there is one there at Yad Vashem- and to the archives. And the old museum, years ago. So it was time to go. We had a brilliant guide who knew her stuff. Not surprising to learn that she is a child of survivors as are my husband and myself. Well, if you haven't been, you should go. We were there about 3+ hours and I can't say that I learned anything new, as I have certainly read and heard a lot about the Shoa and WW2. But the uniqueness of Yad Vashem is that it personalizes the Shoa. It isn't just an unimaginable number of 6 million Jews; it brings home just how each individual is a world. What might have been if Israel was around in 1938; it doesn't bear thinking about. 1.5 million Jewish children; what a different world we could have had if only they had been rescued.
There is also truly amazing footage taken mostly by the Nazis- how incredible that they documented their crimes so well for posterity- showing mass shootings of Jews in various places, among other outrages. And testimonies of survivors, one after another, constantly screening. Every f****ing holocaust denier in the world from Ahmadinejad down, needs to be dragged to Yad Vashem and forced to take the tour.
Anyway, it was pretty intense. And to top it all off, we then went to Har Herzl to visit the grave of my brother who was killed in the Yom Kippur war. By then it was dark but we found our way to the right place and said Tehillim by flashlight.
I should have started this post with Yad Vashem, then Har Herzl, then finished with the wedding; kind of like Yom HaShoa followed by Yom HaZikaron followed by Yom HaAtzmaut. But that's not how it happened.
So yes, it was a big 24 hours. And oddly, or maybe not so oddly, the first thing I thought on leaving Har Herzl was that I was STARVING. Then we went to a niece's place for a BBQ.
'They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!'?
Life wins.

PS All this on the background of Election Day! It's not often the Israelis get a Sunday. That's what it was, a Sunday on a Tuesday. The line to the Zoo was miles long, the parks were full of families complete with portable grills and the air was redolent with the fragrance of charred meat. They're still counting votes, it's very close and who knows what will be. But boy did Israel enjoy a day off.
Life always wins.
Am Yisrael Chai.

Oh, boobs.

Am I supposed to comment on David Koch's comment about breastfeeding in public, after some mum fed her baby by the side of a public swimming pool? How he is 'for breastfeeding' but that women should be 'classy' about it, ie. go away and cover up. I guess. Although he had no trouble judging bikini girl fashion on his TV show. Oh, what's there to say, the guy is a dick. That's my comment.
I can't stand the way this stuff throws breastfeeding in to the public consciousness. WHO CARES. In Australia, anyway, this fight has been already fought and won; women are legally entitled to feed their babies wherever they want. And no women I have ever seen or known show as much as a flash of flesh anyway. They don't hoick out a giant boob and wave it around. And even if they did, so what.
I am also much peeved at people who say things like 'oh, if it's so natural then why don't I just take a dump in public, that's natural too.' Yes, in 2013 there are people who actually argue this. To these Neanderthal ignoramuses I say, fools, breast milk is a secretion, not an excretion. Milk is a nutrient, not a waste product. Milk smells and tastes sweet and pleasant. So shut up. The end.
Back to Kochie. He may be a financial whiz but beyond that he is an ignorant schmuck. It's almost traditional to be outraged by him or to feel the need to mock him several times a year, if one could be bothered watching his drivelous morning show. The last time I had the misfortune to hear his opinions was during Cast Lead where he opined that Israel was using 'disproportionate' force in defending herself and in his irritating nasal drone said something like 'some of my best friends are Jews but come on!' What a dick, I repeat.
So that's my opinion.
Ladies, feed on. You are doing the best thing for your babies. Everyone else, be supportive or shut up. The problem is in your head.
Thank you.

Service with a smile, sort of.

I'm staying at a hotel right near Mamilla mall, which is an open-air shopping mall where Jordanian no-man's-land was before 1967. It provides a short cut from the Old City to Rehavia and thence the city centre. Mamilla (sometimes called 'mammeleh' because of the many well-heeled young matrons who frequent the many coffee shops in the warmer weather, with their babes enthroned in their Bugaboos (Boogaboos, as they say here) and other fancier European strollers) is a popular destination. In the warmer months it is packed almost around the clock. The demographic of the shoppers is roughly 60% tourists, of whom about a quarter are non Jews, and about 40% Arab Muslims. Yes, in mean old apartheid Israel, shops and restaurants are full of Jews and Arabs shopping and eating side by side. Nobody cares and everybody gets on. I will be honest and say that I haven't seem any (obvious) Arab shopkeepers or any shopgirls in hijabs but whatever. Plenty of be-hijabbed Arab girls in groups chatting and texting on their iPhones, and some with boyfriends, strolling along. Shmapartheid.
Anyway, since Mamilla is a few minutes away, it's not a big deal to brave the elements in order to find a cosy coffee shop, which is what Hubs and I did earlier today. He's jonesing for a bike ride but weather is too wet and cold so this would have to do.
Now anyone who has ever been in Israel knows that the Israelis are not service-oriented. They don't get it. Like the El Al flight attendant who offered a passenger dinner; when he asked her what was the choice, she answered 'Yes or No!'. Well hardeharhar, but things have improved some.
The shop is sort of annexed to a Steimatzky bookstore. We entered and browsed the shop and bought some books (for our grandson of course) and then nodded to the cafe guard who let us into the cafe. There was a waitress engrossed in something on the computer so we waited politely, like good Anglos, until the guard told us to just go in and sit down anywhere. The waitress then looked up and waved us to a table and we almost went to sit there until we noted that that whole section of the cafe had a few cms of water on the floor. These cafes in Mamilla have sort of tent annexes and the stone floors are contiguous with the actual pedestrian mall. And part of the tent had failed in the heavy rain. So we sat in a different- dry- part. There was heating and it was all warm and cosy so we took off our coats and scarves and hats and gloves and sat down. We ordered lunch. I wanted a cold drink. It took a while to come so we snagged a waitress and she all but rolled her eyes at us and counselled patience. It came. We ate. Then we ordered coffee and cake. Husband: Large latte, skim milk, VERY HOT. What sort of cake? Waitress: hot apple pie and ice cream, cheesecake etc etc. H: Does the apple pie have raisins in it? Me:(helpful) Tzimookim? Chashuv meod shezeh bli Tzimookim! (I was quite proud that I remembered the Hebrew word for raisins, you see.) It is vital that there are no raisins in the pie!
For my Other has this thing about raisins which I just don't get, but it is what it is. When he finds a raisin in anything you would think he had found a fly.
The waitress assured us, no raisins, just apples. So we ordered it to share and upon forking opening the fragrant steaming delectable pie, there it was. A plump golden raisin, nestled amongst the apple bits. Call back waitress. Point accusing fork at raisin. Waitress takes away plate and then returns with same plate and reassurances that chef said it was not a raisin but an apple piece which resembled a raisin. Camouflage. So we took it back and of course, on further exposure of pie contents, there were more raisins. We exchanged looks. What I would really have liked to do is call back the waitress and say in a no-nonsense sort of tone something like 'Anachnu lo freierim! Ken yesh Tzimookim!' We aren't suckers! there are indeed raisins here! But we, Anglos forever, just shrugged and shared the scoop of ice cream. Suddenly all the waitstaff kind of disappeared. Or maybe we became invisible. We were chatting about stuff and didn't really care anymore, but were interested in how this would end. We agreed we would pay for it anyway and leave a tip and not be 'principled' about it. When our waitress eventually returned she looked a bit sadly at the dissected pie with the exposed 6 raisins. I softly murmured 'ken haya tzimookim' and she nodded. 'No charge, sorry.' And offered another type of cake. But we were over it now and smiled our thanks and left a tip. Then I noticed that coffeehound spouse had left half his coffee. 'It wasn't hot'. Of course he had said nothing.
So they're getting there! Maybe next visit they won't argue about camouflaged raisins. And the coffee will be hot as requested.

Graupel with chance of snow

Well, Jerusalem ain't so sunny right now. Heavy rains have also flooded the Modiin mall and the main highway in Tel Aviv. But- every cloud has a silver lining!- the Kinneret has risen about a half meter in the last 24 hours. This is good news.
And it turns out that there is no word for 'sleet' in Hebrew. 'Barad'- hail- well that's Biblical. Geshem, sheleg, ruach, seorah- like that old song- got all that covered. But what is this 'graupel' they keep going on about? No Israeli I asked could explain it. So I Wiki'd it, and it means 'soft hail or snow pellets'. So not exactly like sleet, which I experienced being blown into my face a couple weeks ago in NY; not the little needles, more like little pebbles being thrown into your face. Soft gravel. Graupel. It's a good word but I hope I never have to use it, or experience it, again.
It will snow later today and tomorrow and everyone's excited because basically it's Chofesh. The whole city shuts down. The buses stop, the schools shut, workers can't get to work. There is no infrastructure in place to deal with snow so cars skitter and skid across roads on an inch of it. It's comical to the Canadians and Russians, but serious stuff for the Jerusalemites! And whole families stay home and frolic in the 4 inches of snow, build snowmen and have snowball fights. Then I guess they go inside and drink Shoko Cham. So everyone loves snow here!
Provided there's no graupel. Then they still have to go to work.