Friends in a Vegan World

I was cleaning my bag out yesterday, at a Jerusalem vegetarian/vegan club, careful that no one should see the recipes I had printed out for chicken lo mein with ginger and a variety of other prohibited dishes. My friend whispered to me, while looking at someone wearing a t-shirt with a picture of an angry cow that read 'I'll eat YOU fucker!' - "watch it, they're fascist vegetarians". None of us really knew what the word "fascist" meant, even though she's got a Masters and we laughed about it. We just know it's mostly used to describe people/regimes that hate/are intolerant. One day I'll look the word up in a dictionary.

But the Jerusalem Veggie Society is situated somehow in a luxurious neighborhood, across from the prime minister's house, and I wondered how on earth did this Society afford such digs? While we waited for what my friend called our zen (vegan) pizzas "one with everything", I cried bitterly on her shoulder and laughed hysterically at her "zen pizza" request.

I cried because Hubby lost his job 3 weeks ago and I'm nervous as hell as to how to pay our bills and eat, plus my son is avoiding the army, even though it'll give him the discipline he so desperately needs. I bemoaned the fact that I had bought him a Galaxy II phone and am paying for it dearly, but it was on condition that he serve in the army, which I thought he would do in August. Plus I think he's becoming a gambling addict and this really, really worries me. What little money he makes from waitering he runs to the local shop and buys soccer Toto tickets.

My friend and I find a big airy quiet room where I can cry to her, laugh, and we speak in lines from various Beatle movies, as we have done since we were both 14 years old. It's so comforting to act the same way you did when you were 14 and didn't have such adult worries on your head.

Someone comes into our room and sits down by the big piano and plays Dylan and Leonard Cohen. The chai tea, the surprisingly good vegan food and the quiet guests milling around and sitting on bean bags soothe me. It almost made me want to trash those darn meat recipes hidden deep in my bag.

Holy Moly

Walking around Jerusalem with a bandaid above your upper lip causes so many people to flinch. I don't know why. But after an appointment with a dermatologist to get this ridiculous thing off my skin, which appeared on me around 5 years ago or so, I got all these sympathetic looks from people. But no one gave me their seat, so they must not have been too sympathetic. The skin doc during my first initial visit said it was a cosmetic procedure and was about to charge me 500 NIS for it ($140), which I didn't have, but then my family doctor said - hey! let them do a biopsy on it and it'll change from a cosmetic to a medical procedure. He didn't quite "say" it, but wrote a letter about them 'checking' it at a lab.

My co-workers laughed. "Now it'll cost them a lot more than 500 shekels" one of them chuckled. So it will. And that is how things are done right here in the Middle East for little or no money at all.

And speaking of moles and warts and all sorts of ugly things, tomorrow is election day in Jerusalem and other municipalities. My daughter, with her history of assorted eclectic jobs, has been working night and day, day and night for Jerusalem mayorial candidate, Arkady Gaydamak. The rich Russian oligarch. The owner of Jerusalem's soccer team. The one who's Hebrew is on par with Hubby's. The one who built tent cities for refugees of the Galilee during the Second Lebanon War a couple of years ago. And the one who will most probably not get elected.

Anyway, my daughter offered me a one-day stint at the election booths with pay, monitoring the booths so that people don't sneak in twice or three times to vote. Since it's decent pay at 62 NIS ($18) an hour - sure I'll take it. I promptly took a vacation day so I can pay something to those lousy Visa creditors who called me twice because one payment of theirs bounced two days ago. They had no right getting me into a funk with debt anyhow (of course I'm really to blame - I should just tear up the damn cards). And they'll have to wait until I get paid my just Rubles.

Much to my relief, I won't have to wear the scary old bandaid above my lip tomorrow, while I monitor the polling stations in Jerusalem, although with it on, no one would DARE march into the voting booths twice.

The Big Fright

I had planned to go to Abed's wedding for a few months, and the time kept getting closer and closer. On Tuesday he called to officially invite me. On Friday, I found out that a close female friend of mine was invited too. I was thrilled because Abed had told me that this was going to be a very traditional Arab wedding. The men and women would be separate. I would not know anyone in the women's section and was happy to have a friend with me.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, the look on my husband's face got drabber and drabber. We discussed this over dinner last night. He was adamant that I should not go. The wedding was going to be in Abu Dis, a Palestinian neighborhood east of Jerusalem, behind the big wall. He told me again over coffee with friends this morning. Our friends told me they'd be frightened to go too.

The fear is so great here of the other that everyone is afraid for their lives. It's unfair. But I can't go by the "talk" of others. Is it true that Arab neighborhoods are dangerous for Jews? Hubby was telling me horrific things that could happen to me over there...I was starting to feel nervous myself.

This is supposed to be a wedding celebration of a close peace associate of mine. I told my husband and children and friends that if it were so dangerous, he'd warn me to stay away because of tensions in the area. This is what had been done in the past when we were supposed to go to Bethlehem one year and there were tensions between our peoples. There are always tensions between our peoples - look at the tension in Acco. But this tension between peoples who more and more I feel are the same is, to me, artificial. It can be zapped away. It's not easy, but I know it can be done.

I was starting to get flutters in my stomach as the time got closer to the wedding because of my family's concerns. It was starting in a couple of hours.

Logistics. How do we get there? Is it safe for Israelis to take their car to Abu Dis? I wrote a few emails to Palestinian friends who live in the area, and my friend wrote some of her friends.

Yes, it's safe to take a car with Israeli license plates. It's Area B in our sectioned-off land which has A,B,C as its sections.

The Israeli man who came with us decided to leave his car in my neighborhood and we took a Palestinian car service recommended by a friend. He said he'll pick us up in 10 minutes. That's 20 minutes in Palestinian time.

We drove up and down a couple of hills until we got to Abu Dis, a large Palestinian university town. We were immediately greeted with smiles, and separated from our male colleague, shown to the women's section. Again. More smiles. We were greeted by Abed's relatives who had never met us before. We were led up to the dancing area by his mother to dance with her. My friend and I seemed to be the only Jewish women there. We noticed Abed's mother could pass for one of our aunts. She looked more Jewish than Arab, we thought, and imagined her cooking up a vat of kreplach soup.

Sitting with all these women, I wondered where does all this fear of the other come from? As different parts of the wedding ceremony were happening, the woman sitting next to me, who treated us like VIPs as soon as we walked in, gave me a running commentary in Arabic, which I understood only a few words. I picked up a couple of new Arabic words from her which I believed were - aris (bride) and aroos (groom). I was quite pleased with myself to have guessed what those words meant.

When the men came in, the women who weren't covered up to begin with, covered up their bare arms and hair. The men lined up to greet the groom and many gave him money. There were necklaces of dollar bills put around the groom and bride. Then the bride and groom cut the many tiered wedding cake with what looked like an antique ceremonial dagger.

My friend commented that this wasn't an Arabic cake. Yeah, it's more Jewish than Arabic, I told her. It was sponge cake with coconut frosting. Kiddush cake. Two wine glasses were filled with Coca Cola for the bride and groom to give a toast to each other.

It could have very well been a Jewish wedding in an ultra-orthodox wedding hall. They also have separate rooms for men and women for dancing.

And I wondered again, where the fear of the other comes from. Are our respective societies feeding each other lies about one another so that we can't become close?

And I thanked God for taking fear out of my heart and so being able to have an opportunity to see a traditional Arab wedding in a Palestinian village and to mingle and dance together with the women guests.

Jerusalem of Concerts and Beer

Late summer ended in Jerusalem with plenty of happenings all over town,including one of my favorite local groups, Habanot Nechama who were playing at Mishkenot Shaananim.


Habanot Nehama

One of the most enjoyable concerts I've been to in years, actually. The sound and voices and three-part harmonies were clear and crisp - and the music quite original and funky.

You can hear some samples of their stuff here:







Later on that week there was the annual Beer Festival.



Nothing like Oktoberfest, but here are some photos which tell the story.


No - no one was prancing around nude at the fest, surpisingly enough. This is one of the interesting aprons this vendor was selling. Hubby was telling the vendor, "don't you think this is on the 'small' side?"



It was a bit too much for even myself. Too many young people getting shit-faced out of their minds, a few nearly fell on me.


looking to get laid at the beer fest.

Glad I didn't see any vomit anywhere, even though I stayed until it was nearly over. One of the highlights was that I finally got to sample some of Israel's newest beers on the market The Dancing Camel - love the name.


(picture taken from their website)

Empty Nest Syndrome

I spent a wonderful weekend with my second oldest daughter who just got engaged a week ago. She hadn't been home in weeks, only popping in for Friday night dinner with her destined one. Wanting him to do well on his exams without any distraction, she decided to spend the weekend with her long-lost family.

Friday morning her fiancee treated me and my son to an amazing breakfast at Jerusalem's Foccacia restaurant on Rabbi Akiva Street.

"You can't come to this restaurant without ordering focaccia," my daughter warned me, and I thought the focaccia would be another thick piece of bread with a little bit of seasoning here and there, as it is in most restaurants here. I was happily surprised when I saw what the waitress brought to us - the softest, thinnest, biggest foccacia I had ever seen and tasted, drizzled with olive oil and seasoned with fresh garlic cloves and sage leaves. Well worth the extra 9 NIS ($2.50) on the bill.


Foccacia at Foccacia Restaurant

Saturday was peaceful and I happily helped my daughter go through the maze at the US consulate's website so she can apply for a US passport. I thought I'd get AdSense put on this blog and it took me hours to figure out how - and I went around in cyber circles with this thing.

That evening, my daughter went back to her guy and I suddenly felt so sad, so miserable. I'm so happy for her getting a real nice guy who treats her like a queen. But I miss those fun girlie evenings we have over the past few years. I fondly remembered before my oldest daughter got married how we'd watch scary movies on Friday night after dinner. We'd squeeze all together on the couch with popcorn and blankets during the winter months,and laugh and scream simultaneously at the scary and gory parts. And now my house is getting empty.

I wiped away a couple of tears and headed for my special treat that I bought for myself this weekend - blueberries (which I only buy once a year because they are extremely expensive for the tiny box).


Expensive Israeli blueberries

I consoled myself with a nash from my own childhood - blueberries and sour cream - only this time I added ricotta cheese to the treat.

The next morning at my office I just burst into tears as I told my co-workers that I was having an Empty Nest Syndrome Attack.

My friend tells me, "Of course you feel terrible. Because you know that after they're gone, you're just left with HIM," which made me cry even more.

Then the sex-or-no-sex-with-our-husbands conversation began and I told them I had spent the entire afternoon trying to put Google ads on my blog.

"So you'd rather Google than Schmoogle," said one of my friends.

Yeah.

Summer Holiday - photos

Arts and Crafts Festival - Jerusalem



Azrielli Center view



kids playing at the Tel Aviv Port



luxury women's spa - Tel Aviv port



view from the restaurant - Benny Hadayag - Tel Aviv Port



catching my meal?



Arts & Crafts Fair

A gem of a restaurant in Jerusalem

I thought I knew about every restaurant in Jerusalem. But I don't.

A friend had been at me for months to go with her to a "cheap" brunch at "a cafeteria at the Hebrew University." I'm into decent dining, and wasn't interested in going to what I thought was just a self-service student cafeteria. But she called me again on Thursday night and my Friday morning was mysteriously free. I agreed to go.

How surprised I was when I entered the Hebrew University's Lerner Sports Complex's beautiful modern building on Mt. Scopus to see a beautiful little cafe (not a cafeteria) there with lovely outdoor seating. It's called the Chef Cafe. The food was delicious and inexpensive. The most expensive item on the menu was 30 NIS ($10 USD). There was a good assortment of breakfasts, sandwiches, gigantic salads and pastas - all dairy.
Coffee is 5 NIS.



It is Arab-owned and open on Saturdays. The people there were a mix of Arabs and Jews - all ages. What a lovely place to unwind.

the Film Festival

As is tradition with me for the past seven years now, I attended the opening of the Jerusalem Film Festival at Sultan's Pool to see movie Wall-E. For me, the summer has officially begun and with it all the fun the season has to offer.

Everyone around me is travelling here and there. Outside the country and inside the country. It's unaffordable for us right now to travel outside Israel and Hubby has his busy season during the summer. The roads, camping sites, water parks, spas, Galilee guest houses, lakes and beaches are packed full. It's not even enjoyable to be in such sardine mode. So I'll wait to travel until October/November - when the weather cools down and the crowds have gone back home, and the rates are cheaper.

So I will stick to Jerusalem this summer because there's enough happening here.

On Saturday I hitchhiked from my town to Jerusalem because there is no bus service that day - the day of rest. However, my idea of a day of rest is to sit in a beautifully renovated air-conditioned movie theater to see films from all over the world during the festival. There was no problem getting a lift. Everyone feels bad for Saturday car-less travelers. I got a ride straight to the cinemateque from someone who thought the empty roads was a speed race track, and I was stupid enough to let him go speeding off to Jerusalem instead of telling him off. I even let him smoke in his car. Disgusting.

The first movie I saw was Mongol, about the early history of Genghis Khan and the second movie I saw was Of Time and the City, a documentary about the city of Liverpool, England. I sat separately from my friend and was surprised to see the theater full. Was everyone as interested in Liverpool as I was? Were they all Beatles' fans? I had the unfortunate experience to have sat next to a "breather." This is the kind of person who exhales profusely and you feel their breath on your arms, as you watch your army hair blow in different directions each time the person exhales. I tried positioning my arms in different directions, but to no avail. Thank God it wasn't a two hour movie, that's all.

The Deal was the next movie I saw. More hilarious than I expected. The movie starred William Macy, who was brilliant in this film, and Meg Ryan. And Israeli moviegoers just love it when actors in Hollywood films - who play, well, Israelis - can say things in Hebrew like "metumtam (idiot) and only they will understand what it means.

After that was a French flick called Naissance des Pieuvres. Gotta see those French flicks about those coming-of-age movies about teens and the agonies in their lives.

Meanwhile, in between films, we saw friends we hadn't seen in years and ate good food in the cinemateque cafeteria whose hostesses always claimed there was no room, but when you swoosh past them you can get a table somewhere... Over Irish coffee and ice coffee we surmised about the men in our lives and in our friends lives, and usually about how awful they are (the men, not our friends). Were there ever any decent men around? Ever? Why don't I know any, except for the ones dating my girls. And we laughed about some of their obsessive compulsiveness and perfectionist traits, as well as coming to the realization now that those wonderfully social, "men about town" usually come with a lot of baggage and dish out a lot of heartache.

I mentioned to my friend that I had been emailing someone with Cerebral Palsey because he had made me laugh on the Jerusalem email list when he was looking for someone to help him do his emails and write for him. He described himself much this way:

"I look retarded but I'm not." Which prompted me to write him back something along the lines of "I don't look retarded but I am..."

We'll probably see a movie together one day this week. I already told him I'll be able to spot him easily in a crowd, so he need not worry about me recognizing him.

So we laughed and cried about all the funny, sad, exciting and awful stuff going on in our lives. There's nothing like having a great friend to share all the things you're going through.

Bush in the 'hood

"They didn't do all this for President Clinton when he came here, did they?" asked my daughter over dinner on Friday night.

"No. I guess because Clinton had less enemies than President Bush."

The security was ridiculous and I felt as if I were in a military zone while the US President was here, tying up traffic for hours and irritating most Jerusalem residents.

I complained to a fellow co-walker, a stranger, while we tried to walk along Jabotinsky Street, which was cordoned off from pedestrians as well as car traffic while the President was going to visit the Israeli President. The policemen barked nervously at us, as we asked to please let us cross to the other side of the street.

"You can't help it. He's the King of the World." said she.

Huh?

And that is exactly what the cab driver who took me home said to me as well. Everyone is calling him "The King of the World."

On Thursday I didn't bother coming in to work and decided to work instead at home, rather than have to walk with a gruesome cold that I had, for 1/2 hour because our office is too close to where the President was staying and for sure there wouldn't be any buses running in that direction for a certain number of hours. It was cold outside, better not take the chance with the way I'm feeling.

My daughter called me at 9:30 am. She was stuck outside a tunnel for 1 1/2 hours because Bush was going to Ramallah that morning and the roads were closed. I chose right to work at home.

My friends told me that the city (or country?) shelled out 9 million shekels (about over $2 M) to clean up some of Jerusalem's streets where the President would pass by.

9 million shekels????

Heck, I would have taken my mop and broom and taken my kids and cleaned it up for President George W. Bush for a mere 1 million shekels. OK, maybe 1 1/2 million shekels. It still would have been a bargain.

New Years in Jerusalem

It's such a non-event, this secular New Year here in J-town. First of all, I had to wake up today at 5:30 am to get to my class in Kfar Saba. We all have work and school today. That is everyone who doesn't work for the US Embassy or Consulate or some other foreign entity. Last night the local tv station counted down to midnight in the TV studio. When it turned 12:00, confetti fell from the ceiling in the tv studio and the 50 or so people in the audience clapped and cheered. No fireworks display, no big street festivals - nothing really. Some restaurants in Jerusalem offered special "end of year" meals with champagne at midnight. They can't say they're serving up a "New Years" dinner because then the local Rabbi squad will get mad and take away their kosher licenses. I had the choice of going to a friend for a get-together with other friends and a midnight champagne toast, but I was feeling fatigued by 9:30 pm and did homework instead. How pathetic is that?

I met my friend on the bus yesterday who was discussing his former life in Sweden and his Christmas celebrations there. He seemed happy to be away from all that stuff now being that Christmas has nothing much to do with Jesus and is more of a commercial, capitalist holiday. He even told me that Santa was Turkish, which was a total surprise for me. I had always thought Santa was just this big fat German, when in fact Saint Nicholas was a 4th century Turk. A Jolly Fat Turk at that.

And my co-workers were telling me yesterday that President Bush will be coming soon to visit Israel. He'll be in Jerusalem. Whoop de doo. With his visit comes traffic tie-ups in the city, up to an hour or so. Something to look forward to in the New Year.

Peace Festival at Tantur

This Palestinian Hip Hop band was cute. Don't remember the name of the band. But it was great to hear their music....

And now for the weekend update

It was a harrowing weekend. We have to move on Wednesday into a temporary house for a few months and then God-knows-where-to, which has put everyone in our household in a funk. One nice thing was that we were invited to a dinner at our Messianic Jewish friends' home and I overlooked the fact that Mrs. Messianic Jew is a super-duper housekeeper. Daughter and I glanced at each other while she was cooking and something or other from the pot fell on the floor. It was immediately scooped up and thrown in the trash.

"If that happened in our house, we'd just leave it on the floor."

We giggled like female versions of Beavis and Butthead.

Her place was spotless even though she was cooking for 20 people with nary a dirty pot in sight, and the counters gleaming. I should hate her but I cannot hate anyone that feeds me and lets me take home tupperware-full of leftovers.

But the rest of the weekend should have gone in the trash together with the chicken bones.

Hubby went on and on how "this country fucks you up" and the kids were at war with one another the way teens do.

The 20 year old told on her 18 year old sister -
"MOM! She's using the dryer for only ONE SHIRT!!"

I was livid. It costs a fortune here to use the clothes drier and it is only used when it rains for 3 days straight and the indoor drying rack isn't fast enough.

18 year old took revenge by rushing down to the family computer and deleting everything in the 20-year old's file which included her resume and reference letters.

I was upstairs trying to watch Desperate Housewives and she was downstairs screaming and crying. They don't stop at 20 years of age. I yelled at the 18 year old to get out of the house immediately because an act of damage/destruction to another person's property is the most taboo you can get with me. Of course, she didn't listen and trudged up to her room only to come down later that evening in an outfit that made her look like a cheap hooker. And I really dislike my daughters looking cheap - at least look like an expensive one, dammit. But I knew she put on that outfit just to piss me off because she came down, smirked at me and admired herself in the mirror while I shook my head.