Which instant coffee is best in Israel–? (with handy Hebrew coffee vocabulary)

This being Sukkos, or as we say it in Israel, Sukkot, there’s probably one burning question on your mind: which instant coffee is best? Okay, it doesn’t actually have much to do with the holiday, except that I’m home and have a little bit of time on my hands.

The first thing you should know is that if you ask people what the best instant coffee is, people being what they are, you’re going to get a whole bunch who tell you that nothing will compare to REAL coffee. Which, depending on who you ask, is either brewed or cold-brewed or espresso’d or capsuled in a special machine or whatever.

So let’s just get that out of the way first. If you’re looking for REAL coffee, almost any coffee is probably fine as long as it’s fresh. You can go to a special roastery – everyone has one they swear by and I guess I will shout out to  Gabriel Coffee in Kiryat Motzkin for being a cute friendly shop that roasts coffee beans and grinds them nicely to whatever fineness you like (I have a French press, so coarse grind is important).

And if you’re one of those people who say, “Well, if you’re getting instant it’s going to be garbage anyway,” then I honestly wonder what you’re still doing reading this. I’ll give you a second to click away.

Okay, good. Now we’re alone.

But first, a terrible joke

Now that we’ve gotten rid of the drip-coffee and barista purists, let’s move on to a joke my ulpan teacher taught me that I still don’t understand: “When it comes to coffee… it’s either neis, or it’s botz!”

So the first part of this is neis. Which is the generic Israeli term for instant coffee, from Nescafe. Israelis love

Feeling under the WEATHER...? Two things making me happy in the rain!

Feeling under the weather…?

And I do mean that literally, by the way.  I wouldn't blame you if you were.  We've had a LOT of weather to be under this winter so far.  The great news is that water levels in the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) are on their way back up to where they're supposed to be, which is one measure of how relatively water-secure this country is.

[QUICK ASIDE FOR ISRAEL WATER LESSON!]

The Kinneret was once Israel’s main source of fresh water.  Today, thanks to desalination, it is apparently only responsible for 10%.  Still a considerable chunk.  Water level in the Kinneret is measured against 3 lines: 

• UPPER RED = Full.  The level hasn’t reached this point since about 2002.
• LOWER RED = Lowest “normal” level.  Below this point will have environmental consequences.
• BLACK = Serious drought / environmental crisis.  The line dipped down below this round about October following 5 years of drought and insufficient winter rain.

(check a live version of this graph)

Oh, yeah, and because the whole lake is below sea level, the numbers run down – a “bigger,” i.e., more negative, number is WORSE, not better.

As you can see from this graph, we’re back above the black line thanks to this winter’s prodigious rain, but not all the way back up to that slightly more comfy lower red line. 

[END OF LESSON]

But while we're feeling flush (ahem) when it comes to water, we're also being deluged in a desert country that's ill-prepared to deal with an excess of water.  When it’s raining, the streets flood, programs and trips get cancelled, and it can be very dangerous to be out on the roads.

All of which means, it’s a lot better to stay home if you possibly can.  (Even though, without central heating, surrounded by dank concrete walls, it can get pretty miserable inside the house as well…)

So I wanted to share two things that I really

Guest Post: Ordering online in Israel vs ordering online in America

Are online stores here in Israel up to snuff?  Most people will tell you things are getting better… which may be true, but today’s guest post, courtesy of hummus-loving marketing guru Eytan Buchman, begs to differ – slightly.  Things may be better than they were, but as he explains, sometimes you still feel like you’re crossing over into the Twilight Zone...

---

Ordering online in America:

Go to Amazon.
Click Buy
Get it to your door that day.

Ordering online in Israel:

Find a website

They don’t sell things online. Weird.

You find a comparison website. It feels like a scam.

It sends you to

How you know I’m still Canadian after all these (almost 4) years…

How do I know I’m still Canadian, even after almost 4 years in Israel?

Well, for one thing, the big Canadian flag in my front window – genuine, no doubt made in China, purchased last week at Dollarama.  (Full disclosure: I bought the JUMBO size, not SUPER JUMBO, so it’s smaller than the Israeli flag we just took down after Yom Yerushalayim…)

(This is my actual flag pictured above – not some cheesy stock photo.  You can tell it’s my flag because it’s held up with a clothespin – see top-left of photo.)

For another thing, the small Canadian flag in one of the front planters.

For a third thing, we’re flying to Canada at some unspecified point this summer, iy”h.  (Or, as everyone says here, be”h.)

For a fourth thing… well, we just are.  It’s just our culture.

In what way?  Well, here are two examples.

Canadian in the mall

Last summer

On a roll (it’s not what you think it’s about)

Have you tried Israeli toilet paper lately?

It's actually quite good – as toilet paper.  Definitely better than it was, I'm told.  Which is good, because good old TP has been re-imagined (or perhaps always was) the National Nose-Wipe.

In fact, the toilet paper here is quite good.  Apparently, it used to be simply awful - crunchy and non-absorbent, I assume, since those are the things it would take to make TP simply awful in my book.

I know what I'm talking about.  In England on my honeymoon, years and years ago, I stayed in the World's Worst Hotel, near Paddington Station, which we thought would be cute - but it wasn't. 

There was no bathroom in the room itself, just a little water closet ("loo") up half a flight of stairs.  And the paper in there was absolutely awful.  It was that folding, single-paper dispensing kind that we'd had in my elementary school.  However, unlike anything I had ever seen before, each "sheet" of this paper was treated with some sort of smelly antiseptic chemical and then - mysteriously - waxed so that it was guaranteed to never absorb a single drop of anything.  It was crispy, it was stinky, plus, it simply did not do the job.

Compared to that, anything is better, and as I said, toilet paper in Israel is way more than halfway decent.  It's soft, it's 2-ply, and there are cute puppies on the brand we buy.  There are even premium 3-ply grades you can buy for extra indulgence.

But I still think it’s gross how everybody uses it to wipe their noses.  Maybe this happens elsewhere, too, but I have only ever observed it on a sweeping scale here.

Sure, actual "facial tissues" (aka Kleenex, but they're called "tissue" here in Hebrew) are available, in various colours, small and big packages.

But forget about all that. 

What should you buy where? Smarter online shopping in Israel

It’s back to school time here in Israel.  And we all know what that means:  online shopping!

I can’t be the only one, right?

In Israel, just like around the world, the hottest shopping site these days is Aliexpress.  There, you can buy directly from China, mostly with free shipping, cutting out the middleman and saving a bundle.

That's the theory, at least. 

In practice, it's not so simple.  The quality is usually low, and it's better in theory to buy Israeli (or local, wherever you happen to be).   Sometimes, though, when buying Chinese is the only option anyway, things do work out much better, price-wise.

But there are many downsides to Aliexpress, including:

• Long shipping time
• Dubious quality merchandise
• No recognizable brand names
• No brands, price comparisons or reviews (sometimes there are reviews, but rarely)
• Merchants don't speak English

The biggest down, however, is that for higher-value items (I think it's over $50), you could get hit with a big tax bill.  The same thing was true in Canada - there, anything worth over about $20 could get opened and dinged for import taxes.  And there are added fees you have to pay as well if you're billed for taxes.  Sometimes, it's just not worth it.

That's why it's nice to know that there are online-shopping alternatives that let you buy "locally" here in Israel.  The goods may still be made elsewhere, but you're dealing with local suppliers who know how to get stuff to your door quickly, and can often save you that big tax bill.

The best place to start is on ZAP - zap.co.il.  There, you can search (in Hebrew, so use Google Translate if you're not strong at it) for whatever you want, and hopefully, you'll get a whole bunch of good results.

Just when you think you miss Walmart...

Here I was going on and on about how much I loved Walmart while we were visiting Canada, but you know what...? School supply shopping here may be even easier.

Everything is laid out in one reasonably sized section, for decent-enough prices...

"Attention, Max Stock shoppers..."

There were literally employees in every aisle.  Not the pestery kind you usually meet in Israeli stores who are just after their commission.  These asked if we were finding everything and then, when I asked where to find calculators, she started to say, "over there in the next aisle," and then said, "wait, I'll take you."

Brother, can you spare an agora?

Know what's nice about being in Canada?

Stepping out of a nationwide cash-coinage crisis, that's what.  In Israel, for whatever reason, you'd swear there was a shortage of coins.  Maybe there is, for all I know.

You know you're not in Israel anymore when you shuffle through your wallet to find the 15¢ (for the overpriced $4.15 iced coffee), and the cashier is mystified, and not particularly grateful that you're giving her your pocket change.

(pocket change in Canada)

For whatever reason, that same pocket change in Israel is precious.

Maybe the mentality started back in 1948, when the government recalled all British Mandate small bills and refused to issue new ones.  At the time, stores in the new nation had to resort to issuing "chits" (like a raincheck?) instead of giving change.

Whatever the reason, you must hold onto every single agora (though you won't find anything less than ten agorot in circulation these days; the single-agora coin shown here, my mother’s, is more of a metaphor now). 

Pre-Aliyah Stress: A Guest Poem by Yehudit Batya Shrager

Yehudit posted this to the Nefesh b’Nefesh Making Aliyah 2015 group (if you’re not on there yet, you should be), and I couldn’t wait to share it with you, with her permission.

Zip-lock bags?
Put it on the list.
Whose list is this?
Is this my list?

Everyone has one.
The list of things
That you cannot find
Or have to overpay for.

So the pressure is on
To get it while you can.
The things
You want to have.

Electronics
Medicine
Cozy Coupe
Tinfoil

Target
Old Navy
Kohl’s
IKEA

What is that?
Can I find it there?
No?
Put it on the list!

Ahhhhh…
Here is everything
That I need.

Now I will put it on a boat
That will sail across the ocean.
I hope it does not
fall
off.

Tzivia / צִיבְיָה

Free weekly aliyah tips and more:

[stress photo © Firesam! via flickr]

Seven things you MUST know before renting an apartment in Israel: an essential guide for new olim.

Before you think about signing a lease for your first apartment in Israel, here are seven essential questions you MUST ask.  Make sure you know the answers before you put pen to paper.

1. Can a realtor help me?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  In some areas, a realtor for rentals may be hard (like outside the centre of the country).  If you do find one, they generally charge a fee of one month’s rent.  We couldn’t find a realtor, but in the end, I found our place easily on “Yad Shtayim,” one big website for secondhand goods and real estate.   I used Google Translate for terms and descriptions I didn’t understand and Google Maps to help me understand where each apartment was.
2. Who owns the apartment?  Unlike in the U.S. and Canada, buildings aren't usually centrally owned, so each apartment in a building has a different owner.  Most buildings have a "Vaad HaBayit" (Building Committee) to make sure central expenses get paid and central issues (like painting and cleaning) are dealt with.  Ask, because this is extra on top of your rent.
3. Are appliances included?  Usually not.  Unfurnished apartments don't include appliances like washer, fridge, stove.  You will probably need to buy these when you move into your first apartment in Israel (measure first!!!).

Gift ideas for friends and family in Israel? Look no further!

How dumb is this post topic?  Who writes about gift-giving in January?

Right.  Yay!  Can you see my hand up, waving proudly, from all the way over here?

If I was a better, smarter blogger, more interested in dollar signs (and shekel symbols), I would have posted this in December.  Hmm… guess not.

And I could save it for December 2015, but really…?  The way my brain works, it’ll never happen if I put it off.

Anyway, I’m reminded of gifts today because our winter-holiday-seasonal gift arrived from Akiva’s sister in Canada. 

She mailed it on November 24th, and today it is January 27, so that’s a little over 2 months.  And I’m not saying what it cost to mail.  We’ll open it when the kids are home from school, and I can’t wait to see what’s inside.

So that’s one kind of gift.  Don’t get me wrong.  One of the highlights of living here is GETTING STUFF.  I love receiving packages.  Our local post office knows us well and I’m sure they have our number on speed-dial.

But there are other ways to send something special that feel just as “gifty” without breaking the bank on postage charges.

Giving or getting gifts to and from Israel can be a huge challenge, which calls for a little creativity.

Try an “intangible” gift that won’t take up space

If you’re in Israel and want to send gifts back to North America… (if you’re sending the other way, read on anyway)

Instead of buying something bulky and overpriced in Israel and paying more than you spent on the gift to ship it to North America or Europe, think about "intangibles" you can buy and ship for nearly free.

Some good ideas:

Things that are cool in Israel #5: School Uniforms

I used to not believe in uniforms.

I mean, come on, a pure-white horse with a horn sticking out of its forehead?  How the heck could that be conducive to a peaceful, productive learning environment?

Over and over, my children explained, very patiently, that I had misheard.  That what they had to wear to school every single day was a uniform.  Not a unicorn.

(I say “patiently,” but they said it in the exasperated way that they always used to explain that the boat to the Toronto Islands really does exist, even though I told them I don’t believe in ferries.)

So for years, we pulled together various uniforms.  A tunic thing in elementary school.  Various colours of collared shirts and blouses, tops, bottoms.  Kilts, kilt pins.  Tights, socks, shoes.

(I have never understood – as a Jew who is just a wee bit Scottish by marriage – why Jewish girls’ schools are so drawn to kilts.)

The last year we bought uniforms in Canada (last year), we paid something like $60 each for 3/4 sleeve blouses.  More or less.  Skirts were probably around the same.  Perhaps a bit more.  My daughter literally never had enough uniforms; who can afford that kind of hit right before Rosh Hashanah, every single year.

And we only had one girl in uniforms at any given time – imagine if you had two, or three, or seven.

(Her school had a used-uniforms gemach, to give them out free, but we only managed to get anything worthwhile from it once.)

Israel has a slightly different take on school uniforms.

Haifa’s Sinyon: all it’s cracked up to be?

Israelis love the Far East:  they travel to Asia in huge numbers and it stands to reason that they’d like to bring a little of that Asian exoticism back home with them.

This winter, to great self-conducted fanfare, the “Sinyon” (this seems to be the official English spelling) opened in Haifa, proclaiming itself Israel’s first “Chinese mall experience.”  The word “kenyon” (קַנְיוֹן) means mall, and “Seen” (סִין) means China, so, with their love of portmanteau words, the creators of the Sinyon stuck the two together:  Chinamall = Seen-ee-yon.  Whoopee!

According to the company’s website, “it” (they don’t say what; Chinese people?) has had “huge success in Las Vegas, Johannesburg and Bangkok.”  It boasts a great location near Hof HaKarmel train station and 2000 free parking spaces.

I doubt they’ll need all 2000.  More like 20… but then, to be fair, we went in the middle of a working weekday afternoon.

My short summary of the experience might go as follows:  the best thing about the Sinyon is that it’s just one short bridge-crossing away from the REAL Azrieli Haifa mall, where you can find real stores, as opposed to cheesy little rip-off kiosks.

Some attempt has been made (see the picture at the top) to create a nice Asian ambience.

There is also a restaurant, offering greasy typical-Israeli Chinese food, served by an Asian-looking woman who speaks great English.

 

More Asian “ambience”:

I’ll be honest… we hope eventually to host friends and family members here in the area around Haifa… so I’m always on the lookout for interesting things to do nearby.

This will not be one of them.

Having been to (and eaten in) excellent Chinatowns in Montreal, San Francisco, Toronto; heck, even Washington, D.C., I’d be embarrassed to even suggest to somebody that they might have even a remotely Chinese experience in the Sinyon.

One big plus:  It was certainly easy enough to get there – it’s one ten-minute bus ride through the mountain from the Merkazit HaMifratz central bus station (Haifa has 2 central bus stations, one on either side of the mountain, with an awesome tunnel connecting them).  The bus ride was a real highlight of our trip to the Sinyon.  Sadly, the Sinyon itself was not.

In terms of the merchandise, there is no “theme” and the stuff is all over the place.  Mostly poor quality, cheap and cheesy.  Bracelets, underwear, backpacks, and a low-quality off-brand-name toy store selling “Barbara” dolls with the word “Barbara” written in Barbie script.  I wouldn’t even really call it a mall; more like a triangular strip of stores.  We didn’t find anything there that we couldn’t buy cheaper in any local "shekel-o-Rama."

Welcome to China, the website proclaims!

It also brags that, “The Sinyon mall targets all family members… [with] diversified activities for the whole family, drawing its inspiration from the colorful Chinese culture.” 

It may well be that we didn’t see it at its best, but these only-slightly-flawed posters that greeted us just inside the door (most likely printed in China!  yay, Asia!), seemed to be about it in terms of expressing the “colorful Chinese culture.” (as opposed to the black-and-white Israeli one?)  The posters read, “Family this main and the best in life,” and “Time to drink champagne and dance one the table.”

 

Like I said, the Sinyon’s best feature may be its proximity to the real mall.  But by the time we got there, I was tuckered out from looking for real Chinese culture and annoyed that I was fleishik and over-full from the substandard overpriced sticky-starchy Chinese-food lunch that would have taken second place to most food court Chinese (though I should note the presence of dumplings, hot & sour soup, and chicken-corn soup on the menu; I got a dumpling and Elisheva had the soup.  Both were reasonably good, unlike the sticky glop that is most of their food items).

I’ve heard rumours that more Sinyonim / Chinamalls are coming soon to other Israeli locations… at least, their website hints that this is the start of a trend.  If one opens near you, you might want to visit once out of curiosity… but if your experience is anything like ours was, I’m fairly certain you’ll want to stay away after that.

Is there anywhere in this country to find real Asian culture???  I really would love to know…

Big Bad Corporations? Bring it on.

It feels like the sort of thing I should have strong feelings about, like “Get your #$!% hands off my Israel!”  But I don’t.  Somehow, I’m happy as anything that Ikea is here, and would be thrilled to see more big chains like it moving in.

WalMart?  Maybe not.  Not much chance of that happening, but I do wonder where we draw the line.

I’m no economist, but as I understand it, there are a few arguments against big companies coming in and staking a claim here or in any small, threatened economy:

• Destroys local industry.   I hope you’re not talking about furniture manufacturing here.  There IS no furniture manufacturing here, or hardly any.  Nothing to make it out of.(palm trees?)
• Crushes local retailers.  I don’t think that’s a big risk in this country.  It costs a lot of money to bring stuff in, even if you’re Ikea.  I priced out some of the furniture at Ikea before we went… and we bought our shelves and bedroom aronot (closets) at our local HomeCenter instead.
• Disrespects local culture. If you’ve ever been to Kiryat Ata, you’ll know it’s a factory town without much culture to begin with.  I think Ikea probably improves the ambience.  Plus, they sell 5-shekel falafel at the hot dog stand by the exit – something I don’t think they offer at their Canadian, U.S. or Swedish stores.
• Channels money out of the local economy.  True, but if I buy a shirt at an Israeli chain, much of the money for the shirt is probably going to manufacturers in China or abroad anyway. 

True, buying “kacholavan” should be a priority (although do I really want more and more and more plastic products manufactured half an hour away in the Galil where our veggies are grown???).  But it’s not always possible.

Here are my arguments FOR our local Ikea store, in Kiryat Ata:

• It’s an island of sanity for olim.  Seriously, nice to walk around in a store this BIG, with such a huge selection.  The entire selection; everything I could have bought in my Toronto Ikea store is here.  Even after seven months (not a long time!), life in Israel is a nonstop daily assault of foreignness.  A little touch of familiarity… not a problem.
• They’re supporting Torah study.  Really!  I just found this article while looking for pictures I could use with my post.  It says they’re looking to hire guys in kollel to work in their off hours – a win-win (+win for klal Yisrael!).
• Convenience isn’t a sin.  Sure, our puritanical nature tells us that if something is too easy or too fun, it shouldn’t be allowed.  But the truth is that if Israeli stores don’t know how to create a great shopping experience – or don’t care whether they do or not, perhaps they will lose out to the competition.  Thanks, Darwin!

It’s funny.  I’ve received two very similar objections to posts and emails lamenting the incursion of “American” culture into Israel:  once when I ate at McDonald’s (“I’d rather have falafel!”) and once when I shopped at Ikea.

Both were from non-Jewish relatives, one of whom hasn’t even been here, let alone lived here.  They’re entitled to opinions, but you’ve got to weigh that against the feelings of people who live here. 

Judging by the numbers of Israelis in the Ikea store the day we went – many are quite strongly pro-incursion.

Now, you may be wondering… did I buy anything???

Nope. 

Well, hardly anything.

(tee hee)

Two herb plants for 6 shekels each.  Some drinking glasses for Pesach.  A cute toy for Elisheva in the bargain-basement damaged-goods “metzion” section near the exit.

Oh, and we ate in the restaurant!  All-kosher, with two sections, one a dairy espresso bar and one a meat/fish family cafeteria-style restaurant.  Not amazing prices, but very tasty food.

They do serve tasty meatballs, but they don't call them Swedish, and, disappointingly, don’t offer lingonberry jam on the side – even though it is depicted on their website.

Ikea has now become Elisheva's top  "thing to do in Haifa, " displacing the Bahai gardens, which she didn't really like anyway.

Maybe somebody should make a rule that these big conglomerates should ONLY be allowed to expand outside of North America in the future. 

That way, North Americans can be self-righteously rid of them for good… while those of us in the rest of the world can be grateful and thrilled that somebody is paying attention to us, and giving us the chance at a fun shopping trip even if we don’t end up buying a thing.

The new Ikea store (they pronounce it “ee-kay-ah”) in Kiryat Ata is only about 10 minutes away by a very convenient city bus, by the way.  Doesn’t mean I’ll be there all the time, but it feels nice to be at the centre of things for a change. 

Next stop… and no, I’m not joking.  Pizza Hut in the Malha Mall in Jerusalem, tomorrow.  I have to be in the area on an errand – it’s not a special trip, I promise!!!

Maybe someday I’ll get this junk food / junk culture thing out of my system… until then, bring on the Big Bad Corporations!

Okay, I will open it up, since I know mine isn’t the only opinion… What do you think of all these foreign interlopers?  Are they Good for Israel???  Leave a comment and let me know!

Only in Chutz la’Aretz, you say? Pity!

There was a tea commercial a while back – for some Canadian brand (okay, I googled it, and it was apparently Red Rose Tea) – in which a Britishy voice tasted the tea and proclaimed, “Only in Canada, you say?  Pity!”

So you probably already know that there are a bunch of food things you can’t get here – or, if you can get them, they are a) so expensive and b) so inferior that it’s barely worthwhile.

That said, I want to jump in (thus interrupting my own post) to say there are far FEWER of those things than there used to be.  Used to be you couldn’t get decent toilet paper (not a food product, but bear with me), chocolate chips, tinned tuna, vanilla extract (okay, still no vanilla extract) and more.  Those are all easily available now, albeit sometimes at a slight premium.

Still – when it comes to one of our favourite sorta-healthy snacks it is pretty tough to assemble all the necessary ingredients… but not impossible, as the delicious smell from the toaster oven is proving as I type this.

Making nachos the way I like them requires three special ingredients:  nacho (corn) chips, salsa and cheddar cheese.  All of these are hard to come by, to different extents – but again, not totally impossible.

In this case, I found the cheddar at the shuk in Yerushalayim on Friday (yay!).   We served it sliced on Shabbos and Elisheva proclaimed it not wonderful, because she’s been spoiled by the sharp cheddar we got in Toronto.  I find it subtle but tasty.

Ted found the salsa (kind of expensive) in the “ethnic” section of a grocery store not too far away (yay!), and the chips were actually pretty much the normal price (three smaller-than-our-usual bags for ₪10, making it about $3-4 for the equivalent of a regular-sized bag) in a different grocery store (yay!).  They were hard to find, though, in case you want to feel sorry for us.

The one thing that’s still lacking is sour cream.  We have shamenet in the fridge, but it’s not exactly the same thing:  it has a bitter edge that I don’t really love yet.  Tasty enough when mixed into things, but it just isn’t sour cream, so for now, I’ll eat my nachos “naked” (except for the cheese and salsa), thanks.

B’tayavon!!!

Colon Cleanse? Brand-name blooper

Really???  In a country with however-many English speakers, where English is pretty much mandatory for every student over Grade Three, an entire corporation decided that a good name for their detergent line was… Colon!

I wonder if anybody told them it means kishke?  Or if the first thing that comes to mind is not purity and shiny-brightness of dishes, clothing or anything else.

I didn’t buy these, but not because of the name.  Other brand names of detergent are almost equally weird:  Sod, Hepi, Fairy, Persil (these last two are British brands I’d already heard of).

A few old favourites are here, but generally, North American brands are way more expensive.  I have, however, stuck with our old favourite detergent, פלמוליב (Palmolive), since I have found it for reasonably comparable prices to the unknowns.

And then, of course, what could be better - after a shopping trek through the holy land – than a ride home on a bus driven by a guy who looks just like Tevye the Dairyman, from Fiddler on the Roof???

Tradition!!!

The happy couple

In Toronto, there are so many beautiful pictures to have wedding pictures taken:  parks, indoor conservatories, historic buildings.  Especially at picturesque times of year (which, in Toronto, is anytime there isn’t snow all over the place), you can see couples having their pictures taken in all these spots.

Here, some couples seem to prefer a more prosaic, down-to-earth style, like this happy pair I spotted yesterday in Machane Yehuda, a busy, crowded, pushy, shove-y, noisy shuk (middle-eastern market) in the most traditional sense.

I wonder if they deliberately picked late on a Thursday afternoon, knowing it would be the busiest and thus most atmospheric time to have their pictures taken.  In any event, the shuk-sellers, regular shoppers and legions of tourists like me were very friendly and accommodating, most smiling as they watched what was going on.

Here they are a bit later on and farther down the road, enjoying a quick (kosher) Re:Bar break, as their photographer and crew run around snapping bazillions of photos:

 

Looking at these pictures after the fact, I was startled to realize that most of the people in the crowd weren’t religious; I don’t know why, but because everything (or almost everything, I haven’t checked every single stall) is kosher, I tended to assume the shuk had a more frum clientele.  Weird.  Not bad, just interesting.

Home now after extensive U-shaped travels around this marvellous new land of mine.  Good Shabbos!!!

Fresh & local!

So you are probably going to get sick of me bragging about the mind-blowingly delicious produce here.  I promise, I’ll keep it to a minimum and not praise every pomegranate we see growing freely in people’s backyards.  (Also, to be honest, the cucumbers are cheap and plentiful but are teeny weeny and don’t taste fantastic.)

But I just have to mention – pineapple!

If you have never had one of these fresh, local teeny-weeny little palm-sized pineapples, you are in for a REAL treat. 

First of all, if you are used to super-sweet imported North American supermarket pineapples, as we are, you will not be disappointed by the sugar level in these sweeties.  They may look pint-sized, but they pack a huge wallop of sugar.  But the first thing that hits you isn’t the sweetness, it’s the fragrance – you can easily smell them across the room, if not farther. 

But beyond sweet, there is another flavour element that’s completely missing in import pineapples.  These ones are almost salty, definitely a savoury layer that explains a lot about why pineapples are so often found in meat dishes (they probably have a marinating/tenderizing effect as well, like papaya does).

And the third important thing about this cutie is that it is SOFT, almost mushy.  Not as mushy as the mango we ate yesterday (well, the kids ate it; I am still a fruit xenophobe and cannot eat any fruit I was not served as a 3-year-old), but definitely not firm enough to stand up to the rigours of being tossed in a crate and shipped across an ocean, then via rail, to Canadian supermarkets.  Which is probably why, if you’re not here, you’ve never tasted a pineapple quite like this before.

Back in Canada, I used to marvel at all the people who’d buy raspberries when we had the most amazing, bursting-ripe berries free in our backyard.  Raspberries simply cannot be shipped and sold when they are ripe – they’re too fragile.  So, by definition, raspberries in stores (and to some extent, at farmers’ markets) are not in prime eating condition.

I always thought pineapples were almost like coconuts:  rock hard and willing to travel anywhere.  Now I realize that they probably shouldn’t go more than a couple of hours if you’re going to experience them at their best.

(Did I mention the produce is often ridiculously cheap?  Two of these little pineapples cost 10 shekels, about $2.75 or $3 Canadian!!!   Almost but not quite makes up for the high prices of everything else…)

Like I said, I promise I won’t write about every bite of Israeli produce I consume (and some produce, like garlic, still is imported, often from China). 

But I’ll probably reserve some future space here for rhapsodizing about my first local grapefruit, in the wintertime.  And I do believe that if we have to live in a tiny besieged little country, a nice side effect is the equation that makes it ridiculous to import – perhaps impossibly or at great expense – produce that will more than happily grow in a field somewhere in the Galil…

Ted’s Aliyah, Day 6

Again, this is not MY writing, it is the only-slightly-deranged musings of my very talented husband, Teddy (Akiva) MacLeod.  If you like his writing, check out his art (sort of!).

    Day Six – Fanning the Flames of Anger
“ATTENTION ALL SWIMMERS!!!” said the Hebrew speaking lifeguard over his bullhorn, ”the black flags we put on the beach means it’s too dangerous to swim in the water!! Don’t any of you idiots get it?? TOO DANGEROUS!!!!! Aww, forget it…” (At least that is how I translate what they are saying)
Yeah, I just read this pamphlet about swimming in Israel and how there are white, red and black flags indicating various levels of danger. All this time, the kids and I were swimming between the red and black flags because we thought that is where the lifeguards were most intently watching us.
So we took the kids down to the Camp they run here in the building for all the kids. For today’s project, they were making a large six foot sailboat out of a wire frame, newspapers and paint. A little ambitious, I thought, but you know what? The kids were really into it and I started to see how this could be an ALL DAY activity that would keep the Ethiopian Jewish kids busy. (Tzivia reminded me that they are not just Ethiopian kids, they are also Jewish. Good point.) The Russian Jewish teacher started to nickname Gavriel “Gavi”, which he didn’t seem to mind and Naomi really enjoyed the focused, non-verbal group activity with the other little girls.
After lunch, we took the 59 bus over to a nearby plaza where Tzivia had ordered a fancy, new fan from one of the many electrical stores there. I think the store was called “Big Electricity”. Anyway, Tzivia got all excited when she spotted an IKEA sign nearby, which we found out later, would open in another six months. We got the fan and had to leave quickly, to avoid a toy store the kids wanted to stop at. As a result, the kids also missed out on getting a treat from the store that we promised them.
I took Gavi home while Tzivia and Naomi got off the bus to do a little grocery shopping. Once home I thought I would be awesome by starting to put together the fan together before my dear wife got home. I actually had most of it together when she arrived. The grand moment was when I turned on the fan and it rattled a strange thin whirring sound from the motor.
“Are you telling me you didn’t test the motor before putting it all together?” I admit that I still had that North America faith in consumer products that actually work when you bring them home. Oh, I have so much to learn. I didn’t realize this, but you can’t return items to the store you bought them back in Israel. They won’t take them. You have to go to a specific company service center to get it fixed, which I have to do tomorrow. Ugh! You can say this little situation caused some testiness this afternoon!
At six-thirty, I took the kids for our ritual, before supper swim, this time staying on the safe side of the red flags. The kids had asked their mother if I would buy them a Popsicle after swimming and I was surprised that she agreed. (They missed out on a treat at the plaza…) So after a bouncy swim, (Were the waves a little higher tonight or am I now paranoid?), we stopped at the beach bar where they serve food, booze and a crazy array of Nestle popsicles and ice-cream bars. The kids picked a Popsicle that comes with a toy inside and we raced home for supper, followed by a Popsicle dessert.
And now I sit here waiting for the kids to stop whispering in their bedroom and go to sleep.