Introducing: The unique Israeli holiday celebration you’re not going to want to miss! (with video)

Yes, it’s one of my favourite unique Israeli holiday customs: hakafot shniyot! And I can’t believe I haven’t written about it before (or maybe I have?).

Outside of Israel, most people keep 2 days of chag so they're all partied out by the time Simchas Torah ends. But here, it's all one day, so people want to keep right on partying. Not to mention -- if you wait until AFTER the chag, you can have a BETTER party: one with loud music, live or otherwise, stands selling snack foods, bubble blowers, and other kitschy glow-in-the-dark accessories, and much more. PLUS you can record it on your phone. Which I did last night.

Hakafot shniyot - second hakafot - are pretty popular regardless of how religious the community is. They take out the sifrei Torah and announce which hakafa it is, starting each one with a round of "hosha na"s -- very much like the real thing. I don't know if there's any halachic basis to any of it, but basically it's a lot of fun and not a lot of rules.

That said: This year, they WERE enforcing a very strict "tav yarok" (תו ירוק / green tag) which is basically the green passport system. To get into the area in front of the main shul here, you had to show either the COVID passport app or a test from within the past 24 hours (that's how little kids were able to get in). Even with the COVID passport app, they were making you recite your Teudat Zehut by heart while the guards held the tav yarok so you couldn't see it and borrow your friend's. If you passed the test they were giving out wristbands.

Here's what it looked like around here last night...

What every parent must know about youth groups in Israel (with handy vocabulary list!)

If you grew up outside of Israel, you may think you know what a youth group is--but you probably don't, at least not until you've experienced the Israeli variety.

And if you’re too old to experience it yourself, maybe it’s something you can look forward to for your kids.

(For those of us too old to be part of a youth group ourselves, I’ve put together a list of vocabulary below that you might find helpful – if anything’s missing there, let me know and I’ll add it in!)

I personally was a Brownie and then a Girl  Guide, which is the Canadian version of Girl Scouts, with all the same ideas, mainly that it’s kind of military group of kids who are corralled and brought places and taught principles of healthy living and woodsmanship by adults.  Hmm… now that I put it like that, it really doesn’t sound much fun at all.

This is literally what we had to wear to do these activities:

(except I didn’t have nearly so many badges!)

Our weekly meetings were held at a set day and time, following an agenda set by our adult leaders, who in Guides were known as Tawny Owl and Snowy Owl, for whatever reason – again, the woodsy theme, even though we were all actually sitting in my junior high school cafeteria.

During the summer, I went to Girl Guide camp, which was basically like one long Girl Guide meeting, with an emphasis on woodsmanship and a little more singing.  Oh, and we got to wear the “camp uniform,” which was slightly more casual.

So what do kids do in Israel?  And how is it different from what I grew up with?

Here, there have what are called תנועות נוער / tenuot noar, which literally means meaning youth

Israel: Where everybody knows your name (sort of)

There's good news and bad news when it comes to names if you're making aliyah.

The first and very best news of all -- Because Hebrew is a phonetic language, Israelis are utterly awesome at pronouncing obscure last names.  Take mine, for example: MacLeod.

In English, we've gotten every possible pronunciation, from "Mak-Lewd" to "Mick-Clod" and everything in between.  It's actually MA-CLOUD.  That's it.  Very simple, actually.  Some Canadians get it, albeit tentatively, but usually only those of Scottish

What is Yom Yerushalayim, and why do we need it?

What are you up to this week???  Here in Israel, we’re still celebrating.  It’s like one non-stop party at this time of year, which was so bland back when we lived in Canada.  And this time, it’s one of the strangest holidays of all: Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day). 

This is it – the Big 5-0, and the city is all geared up with so many different kinds of celebration.  Every school in the country, pretty much, is organizing tiyulim to the Holy City, and the place is mobbed with the usual tourists plus some.

I was there, with my son’s school.  We had a great time, but it was a heartbreaking time as well, and here is why:  Jerusalem is so far from being perfect it’s not funny.  Jerusalem is so far from being perfect that I could cry.

At the seder each year, we sing, לשנה הבאה בירושלים / leshana haba’ah bi’Yerushalayim – “Next Year in Jerusalem.”  We sing this even if we are lucky enough to be in Jerusalem, because the last word is הבנויה / habnuya – Rebuilt. 

The Jerusalem that we have is a miracle.  It is a beautiful, busy, living, crazy balagan of a city and I love it.   I love the fact that the country just turned 69 years old, and its capital is only 50 – this shows that you can’t take even a capital city for granted here, since we had to do without it for 19 years.

Yes, a miracle indeed. 

(photo credit: IDF via Wikimedia)

The Jerusalem we have today is truly many things… but it is not yet rebuilt.

This year, we’re celebrating 50 years since the liberation of Jerusalem from Jordanian hands, putting it in Jewish control for the first time in thousands of years.  But walking the streets of Jerusalem, the city does not yet feel free.

Driving past the Damascus Gate (Shaar Shechem), the Palestinian Bus Station, the police standing guard across from Givat Hatachmoshet, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa, the scars, mostly invisible, that have been inflicted on this city and its people since it was liberated… well, these things are more than heartbreaking.  They are like a slap in the face when everybody’s coming to celebrate.

But this is the reality.

Top 5 non-touristy things to do with your mother in Israel

My mother left last week after a too-short 2-week visit before which she insisted that all she really wanted to do was “take the grandchildren to school.”  Fair enough.  It can’t have been easy coming back to Israel after the vacation of a lifetime she spent here with my father 9 years ago.  Basically, she didn’t want to do anything touristy… so we didn’t.

Instead, here are five of the activities I enjoyed most during her visit:

1. Haifa – why not?

I think this was the first full day my mother was here, and it was basically a “Why not?” inspiration.

My mother had spent about a week in Haifa on her trip with my father, so she was already familiar with the city, unlike 95% of tourists, and actually liked it… unlike me.  Okay, yes, I technically live in Haifa, but I’m kind of ambivalent about the city.  But we were sitting home one morning, it was a sunny day, and the shuk is literally one bus ride away.

So there was practically nothing to lose.

Oh, the other reason was that I’m crocheting a blanket and I needed a ball of yarn to match one I already had because otherwise I would have run out mid-project.  And there’s a yarn store I go to quite close to the shuk. So off we went, hopping on the bus and paying our 10 shekels or so for the pleasure.

The yarn store was actually a minor hit – nothing like the fancy stuff my mother buys, but it was mundanely familiar and she bought a little stitch-counter accessory for another 10 shekels.  Down the street was a store selling socks that actually go over the knee, which I desperately needed, and we each picked up a couple of pairs. 

(Though I confused my mother by asking the shop lady for “tights,” and she said they didn’t have “tights,” and my mother kept insisting they had tights right over there, until eventually I had to explain that “tights” in Hebrew isn’t the same as tights in English.  In Hebrew, it means leggings or bicycle shorts, depending on the length.)

While downtown, I also introduced her to Cofix and the pleasure of 5-shekel coffee, which we took with us to the shuk. 

And the shuk, as it turned out, was more charming than I’d remembered. 

I hadn’t been in over a year because I avoided it during shemittah – most of the vendors are Arab and I wasn’t sure about the produce there.  Also, all the citrus stuff was in season and every single vendor was offering samples.  I think my mother managed to eat the equivalent of about 5 oranges, just from samples.  I bought some small stuff, including local garlic, because more and more stores are just carrying the stuff in nets that comes from China, for no good reason that I can tell.

The best part was that with a short walk out of the shuk, we were back on the same bus, headed home, and inside of 25 minutes, we were here lounging on the sofa.

Or, perhaps the best part for you reading this, is that there are NO pictures.  I brought my phone, but it remained a phone for the entire time.  In Haifa, I guess, I’m not really a tourist at all.

2. Get your mother lost in Akko

This one was another “why not?”

Definitely not for everybody, but it’s super-close to here, so I figured it would be nice for a sunny-day wander through the Old City.  Unlike Jerusalem’s Old City, it’s easy to get to and on a weekday morning, there was plenty of parking (don’t try that on Shabbat, as I understand that Israelis from all over the country travel up there for hummus and more). 

Sanctity vs Cynicism: Highlights of GZ’s siddur party in Jerusalem

My older kids had siddur parties.  Maybe yours did, too?

It’s very cute. 

Once first graders are reading well enough, they have a big ceremony and make a huge deal about handing over their Very First Siddur.  For my big kids, that took about an hour, with refreshments following.

Here in Kiryat Shmuel, in the boys’ school, at least, things get a little more involved.  Like, “involved” as in a 12-hour shlep to Yerushalayim. 

And while you’re shlepping, you’d better not just hand over the siddur.  At least not without a ceremony.  And pizza.  And a Chief Rabbi.  And a visit to the Kotel (Western Wall).

Yup, 12 hours.  Fun, fun, fun.

We just got home, and I decided to write down the highlights of the day while they’re still fresh in my memory.

The main celebration (see blurry photo above) was in the Kehillat Bnei Torah synagogue in Har Nof, where last November, two Arabs walked in and started stabbing Jews. 

Why was that a good highlight?  Because we shook the floorboards with laughter, singing and pizza.  Because Jews support Jews and Israelis support Israelis.  Kiryat Shmuel is the same as Har Nof as far as the bad guys are concerned.  And yet our vibrant Jewish lives here go on and children grow up and receive siddurs.

Two other stops on the action-packed agenda were the Machon HaMikdash (the Temple Institute), where we learned all about the Bais (Beit!) HaMikdash, including grinding our own incense, and then on to the Kotel (Western Wall).

So… what were some of the outstanding moments from today’s long, long journey?

• Discovery.  Like the kid behind me on the bus shouting out "Abba, abba, hinei!" (look!) whenever he saw anything.  It doesn't matter what.  Police, hills, trees; this kid has clearly lived in a box his whole life.

Still alien? Passing the one year mark.

I did an experiment this morning.

I woke up, stretched etc as usual.  And then thought to myself, “I’m waking up… in Israel.”

Nothing.

“Here we are… in our apartment… in Israel.”

Nope.  No response.

I guess I was trying to shock myself back into feeling the newness of it… except it really isn’t new anymore.

Last Wednesday was our “aliyahversary.”

If aliyah was a baby, we’d have been blowing out candles, feeding it cake.

It might be taking its first steps by now.

The two saddest things and why

Keep in mind that this was a pretty sad visit.  But there were 2 things people said that stayed with me.

The first one:

On our last day, I got to make an airport run to pick up a close family member.  This is somebody I have picked up at the airport maybe a million times... well, at least once a year.  Anyway, we have a regular routine.  I have a regular parking spot.  So I drove to the airport, parked, went in, waved and met and hugged her.

And as we walked out to the car, she said, "I never thought this would happen again:  you picking me up at the airport in Toronto."

I admit, I thought I'd never have that chance again either.

The second one:

Sitting with a close family member (not the same close family member) at her kitchen table.  Chatting, catching up on each other's lives, with perhaps an unspoken undercurrent of "hurry, this moment won't last forever," but trying not to consciously rush, which would ruin the moment. Mainly, it just felt like a regular thing, like the same thing we have done often over the last very-many years.

And just in the course of catching me up on her life, she said, "While you were away..."

While I was away.

Ouch.  It wasn't like I went to camp... we moved here, started working, sent the kids to school.  To me, that's not away, it's just - being me, somewhere else.  But to her, it absolutely was "away."  A continent away; an ocean away.

Ouch.

The new ordinary

I think these moments were so sad because in both cases, they were just ordinary moments - nothing special at all.

And in their ordinariness, they were a surreal echo of the life I lived there for many, many years.

(I also went out for coffee with somebody I didn't normally socialize with one-on-one, and that didn't feel weird or sad at all.  Because it wasn't ordinary, like these two moments were.)

Despite their tantalizing familiarity, moments like these are the farthest thing from ordinary now.

This is the new ordinary.

Moments like these - glimpses of the half-fantastical Narnia that is the life we left behind in Toronto (or is it Israel that's Narnia in this analogy???) - drive home how strange and new our Israeli life still feels; how cozy and reassuring it can be to sink back into our old lives.

In the end, neither Toronto nor Israel is Narnia.  In the Narnia books, the children could be gone a decade and return home with only a second having passed.  In real life, we're all growing and changing, living and dying.  The Toronto we left behind on Monday is not the Toronto we'll return to, God willing, next summer (for a real vacation, this time).

But how strange it is to leave the people we love behind, missing us, in some sense waiting alone, whether at the airport or at their kitchen table, even as their daily lives move on without us.

Fleeting and precious

Did you notice the picture at the top?  That's YM, 19, playing with the 2 younger kids at the Legoland Discovery Centre where we went last Friday.  Another very ordinary moment - one that probably won't happen again for a while.  And I think we all knew that; last year at this time, he wouldn't have deigned to hang out with his mommy and the kiddies for the day.

(He actually got out of bed before noon!)

If there is a plus, that is probably it - that we all acknowledge and appreciate the fleeting preciousness of the time we have together.

Sure, people talk about this a lot, but when you're close together, it's tough to remember that no matter what you do, no matter where you live, your moments together are numbered.  When that number is a big number,  or seems that way, I guess it doesn't matter so much.

So that's the payoff, if you look for it.  Living each conversation, each airport pickup, each play centre, each carefree morning in Starbucks or Value Village, each barbecue, hanging out around the wading pool in the grassy backyard of the parental home base, as if it were your last.

Even as you hope, of course, that there are many more to come.

Going south: thoughts on a bus from Eilat

    

Christians have an easy mnemonic to remember Israel’s four seas:  “the Red, the Med, the Dead and the Bread.”  To some Jews, that last one’s a little obscure… it refers to the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), near where they believe JC performed the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes.  Thus, “the Bread.”

Three of them are easy enough to get to, but the first one, the Red, involves a trek to what seems like the ends of the earth… Eilat.

Here’s an interesting point of Jew-trivia a friend passed along a couple of months ago:  Eilat is technically not in Israel.  Though that depends how you define Israel.  If you’re talking Biblical boundaries, it’s out.  (Nonetheless, you’ll be happy to know that people who live there still keep one day of yom tov.)

Certainly, it still feels like Israel – or at least, like some weird, remote outpost of Israel.  The presence of an airport smack-dab in the middle of the city (getting in the way whenever you want to walk anywhere) is an irritating reminder that Haifa is basically just an hour away, for anyone who has the means to fly instead of taking the 6-hour bus trip.

We went by bus.  Thus, four hours of THIS out the windows:

The goal of the trip was Togetherness, with a capital-T, and spending time relaxing with the Big Boy, who is on his way to Thailand to be swallowed up by the rebellion that has apparently just erupted there and have big-boy Adventures.

As you can tell, Togetherness was achieved, in the sense that he posed for Naomi Rivka’s many pictures, like this one.

We spent just a little over 24 hours in Eilat, which isn’t really enough.  Not because it’s such a great city, but because of the tremendous effort it takes to get there if you don’t have the wherewithal (ie money) to fly down.  I’ve heard the same thing about Australia, only more so:  unless you have a month to spend there, at least, it’s just not worth the crushingly long travel time and adjustment to not just a time but a seasonal difference.

Things to do in Eilat if you have only 24 hours:

Coral reef observatory!  Way cool.  Way overpriced.  Admission is good for 3 days, which is awesome, but it’s so far out of town that you have to either pay 40nis for a cab or memorize the bus schedule (after one cab ride, we did the latter), because they only come once an hour.

Dip in the red sea!  We did!  I did!  See picture, above.  This is a huge accomplishment… my first time getting completely all-over wet in one of Israel’s seas.  Yeah, I know: we’ve lived ten minutes away from the Med… and I still haven’t gone in, after nearly 10 months.

Dry off in a lounge chair!  This being Eilat, with 40 degree temperatures and dry, dry air, this only took about 20 minutes.

Eat a nice meal!  Yum… steak house.  Not the most mindblowing steak ever, and it cost a fortune.  Not a great reason to go to Eilat; there are better kosher steakhouses all over the country.  But Naomi Rivka was very, very impressed.

     

Sleep!

Pose!

Leave!  Here’s the bus station, where everybody is hanging around doing just that – waiting to catch buses to almost impossibly far-off cities.  It’s funny to imagine how far apart these places feel, like Eilat and Tel Aviv, when a 5-hour car ride was our standard way of visiting my in-laws up until last summer.  Somehow, here, the distances feel greater.

And now, as I “type” this message on my little tablet, we’re in a bus on our way home… in the middle of nowhere.  Here’s where the tablet’s built-in GPS says we are:

At last, after nearly 10 months in Israel, the landscape feels truly foreign, in a way that northern Israel never has.  Down here, at the ends of the earth, or so it looks through the bus window, it’s desperately dry and hot hot hot.

Definitely the dry heat everybody promises won't kill you like the muggy slap of the steamy Krayot heat last summer.  Even at 40 degrees in Eilat, with a gentle breeze and a dip in the ocean, it didn't feel a bit over 30, and we were very comfortable walking uphill to the bus terminal.

Everybody compares Eilat to beach towns and resorts:  Venice, Coney Island, Miami Beach. To me, it has a real element of Niagara Falls to it. Not quite as tacky, but a few more haunted houses and 3d ride simulators will take care of that.

There’s the same strip of attractions leading away from the beach and away from the desirable hotels - many of which, like the Hilton and Herod's, are truly fabulous (or at least look that way from the outside).  Incidentally, just as in Niagara Falls, that uphill trek leads to the only kind of hotel / hostel we can afford to stay in – the weird kind. 

Don’t worry:  it was weird but GOOD, a creepy little collection of teeny-tiny cabins…

Interspersed with papier-mache figures, so every time you go outside, you feel like dozens of people are watching you.

   

There are lots of the same  vendors of cheap trinkets and fast food... a key difference being that much of the fast food is kosher (while in Niagara Falls, you're lucky if there's one fly-by-night pizza place).

Between the tackiness and the off-the-beaten-path motel, it felt very familiar indeed.

But now, as I write this, I'm somewhere in the desert, a Biblically big desert, on the way from the Red Sea to Beersheva, where Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov had their main stomping grounds. 

So strange to think that this awful, bleak desert, too, is part of my heritage.  Even safely and sure-footedly within the Biblical Land, this terrain is  unconquerably alien and unfamiliar.

And yet!  And yet!  Here in Beersheva, the “capital of the Negev,” I found this outpost of sanity in an otherwise gusty, bleak, hot, dry world:  Mr. Corn!

I was heading somewhere else for dinner, so I didn’t stop to see if it was kosher (I thought I saw a Pesach teudah – indicating that they had sold their chametz – as I walked past).  But what a wonder!  This is a concept that the world is MORE than ready for:  corn, in all its wonderful forms.  Boiled corn, popcorn, together at last!

 

Corn! 

(For anyone who isn’t part of my immediate family… corn is easily my favourite food, and quite possibly, my favourite substance in the entire universe.)

I had to actually go back – to the irritation of my kids – to get a picture of this sign, which says, “Corn or potatoes?  Now you don’t have to choose anymore.”  I think it’s saying you can get both, maybe even mushed into the soup shown in the picture.  Not exactly sure… they were both in a hurry to get going and wouldn’t let me gaze at the sign.

Here’s the mediocre Asian-inspired supper I was rushing to get during our one-hour stopover in Beersheva.

And here’s the train that took us, in comfort and style, all the way home to Kiryat Motzkin, from where we had a comfy 7-minute walk home (it’s usually 5, but we were tired and loaded down).

Forget buses… train is definitely the way to get around this country in comfort and style – not to mention the ability to stretch your legs a little and use the washroom whenever you like.

I don’t think I’ll be heading back south anytime soon.  But dreams of (Mr.) Corn are flitting through my mind, teasing, tantalizing me still, even as the twinkly lights of Haifa’s green mountain welcomed me back to an area that is feeling  more and more normal, more and more like home, with every passing month.

I may be a stranger in a strange land (a very strange land), but with wonders like Mr. Corn lurking out there, who knows what other awesome experiences there are, still waiting to be discovered in this (huge) and holy place.

Ten favourite selfies in Israel! (#4 blew me away!)

According to Definition #7 at Urban Dictionary, a selfie is “An over used word meaning taking a picture of your self. This is mainly used by people who are too lazy to say "take a picture of myself."”

So that’s what these are – my ten favourite selfies since we arrived here in Israel.  If you’re interested in seeing the egg-shaped top of my head, you, my friend, are in for a treat!

Here they are in order… starting with #10:

#10:  Family bus trip to Nahariya (full story here)

 

Kind of a lousy picture, actually (I look like I’m kind of squashed back into my seat and / or about to leap up and eat the camera) but I had to get the obligatory “Egged bus” shot in this list somewhere.

#9:  Entering the Carmelit with Elisheva (full story here)

The world’s wonkiest subway, captured perfectly in this shot of two homemade crocheted hats.  Hard to think way back now and remember this cold December weather… and it’s only March now.  Sheesh.

#8:  The Bay at Old Yaffo (full story of my sister’s visit here)

I like how I pretended I was taking a picture of her but managed to sneak in my own big, egg-shaped head.  Urban Dictionary says this is called photo bombing, “Intentionally posing in other people's photos, for a later surprise.”  She’s known me for a long time, though, so I don’t think she was really surprised.

#7:  Harem in Old Akko

This was our Nefesh b’Nefesh Chanukah tiyul… Akko was kind of boring, though there were some highlights, like this nice dappled treed area.

#6:  Food Court in the Yerushalayim Merkazit with Abigail & Elisheva

This was nice.  My sister, my daughter.  Fleeting moment captured perfectly over a delicious fast-food lunch.  Well, fast food for me.  Salads for them… they’re both always eating salads.

#5:  Kotel with Abigail (once again, read the full story of her visit here)

Me n’ my sister n’ the holiest place n’ the world.

#4:  Waiting for Yerachmiel in the Airport

 

It was a Friday, very rushed, very crazy.  But since he would only be in Israel for 8 days, we figured it was worth it to drive down and meet his plane.  Crazy how excited you can get about seeing your own kid.

(If you came straight from the headline, sorry.  This picture is not actually likely to blow anyone away, but apparently, when creating a “viral-type” list headline, the Thing to Do Nowadays is choose one to get your readers hooked and scrolling.  Since you’re here anyway, keep on scrolling!  You’re nearly at the bottom… and #1 is worth it, I promise!)

#3:  New Ikea Store with Elisheva (full story here)

Fun, fun, fun, ‘till the cows come home (or in this case, two really cute stuffed toy mice for about 6 shekels each).

#2:  The Knesset (full story here)

Playing at Cub Reporter – having fun, getting paid.  This is the real reason I’m here!

And finally…

#1:  My most-favourite selfie since we came to Israel.

Well, I didn’t say they had to be of ME, right???

Like food photography (the amateur kind), selfies are a quintessentially modern preoccupation.  In the old days, film used to be way too expensive to waste on potentially-lousy pictures of oneself. 

Still – I think it’s a great way of getting a shot of yourself at times and places when nobody else is there to do it for you.  You just remember stuff better when you’re in the picture yourself!

Do you take selfies?   Do you usually share them, or keep them hidden in some metaphorical “drawer” on your hard drive?

Purim, not purim, and my not costume

To celebrate Purim outside of Israel (or, as people here say – “in chul”), you have to wade through a whole lot of not-Purim to get there. 

Maybe you're lucky, and live in a Jewish neighbourhood, so you don't have so much wading to do. 

(Probably not luck; you probably chose to live around other Jews, and good for you.)

But either way, you've got some wading to do. 

I use that word deliberately. Wading isn't easy ; it's not swimming, it's not walking... It's kind of like the worst of both worlds. 

It's not something fish do. It's something we gawky humans do when we're out of our element. 

Hmmm.

Purim outside of Israel can be a fun bubble, unlike, say, Yom Kippur in chul.  If you see someone in costume - and I always made a point of wearing a costume - you wave, shout greetings… it's tons of fun. 

Me in costumes past:

This year, I didn’t care so much whether I wore a costume, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. 

Okay, partly it’s because I’m a bit blue, or blah, or whatever you want to call it.  I’m away from everyone I love (except 4 important people I love!) and don’t always feel that festive.

But also – here, you don’t need the costume to feel like it’s Purim.  It just is.

A Conservative rabbi once tried to convince our conversion class – and it took some doing – that there was no such thing, really, as “having a bar mitzvah.”  All you have to do to is wake up on your thirteenth birthday (or the day after; I forget) and you are bar mitzvah.  You can’t make it happen, and neither can you stop it.

Sure, you can get all dressed up, have an aliyah (great!), have a party if you like.  But none of those things make you bar mitzvah… you either are or you aren’t.

It’s either Purim or it isn’t.  Here, it is.

I feel like, all those years outside of Israel, every year we’d get dressed up and pretend it was Purim.  Now that we’re here, we don’t have to pretend.  No more wading – here, we’re in our element.  It’s all around us… Purim is in the air.

Even if you do nothing at all, it really is Purim.

I felt the same way on Yom Kippur, when the thousands of Jews around here who aren’t shomer mitzvos (observant) brought their lives to a standstill.  For 25 hours (give or take), they didn’t go to the beach, didn’t drive their cars, didn’t open their stores.  Because whatever they personally happen to believe, it really WAS Yom Kippur.  You can’t argue with it, it just is.

So we did the mitzvos of the day, and celebrated with friends (KShmu BBQ!), and it really was kind of great, despite my semi-funk.

GZ really really really wanted to dress up as a pirate, so he dressed up as a pirate and had a wonderful time. 

Naomi Rivka had a couple of costume options, but really really really didn’t want to get dressed up, so she simply… didn’t.  She wore the same clothes she wears to school every day.

(Believe it or not, she really is having a wonderful time in this picture – she’s just rapt, surrounded by English-speaking teenagers, which, for a displaced 9-year-old, is as close as you can get to heaven in Israel.)

Slightly dishevelled pirate after a few minutes of partying hard with strawberries:

(Yeah, these people really do have a beautiful backyard.  They’ve been here many years and own a private villa (house) in the nice part of KShmu.)

Ted/Akiva got dressed up, of course.  There’s a Superman shirt underneath the suit, which is itself the “Clark Kent” part of the costume, so the whole thing really IS a costume… he didn’t actually WEAR a suit to bike to an Israeli BBQ on a hot sunny day!

And I didn’t have strong feelings one way or another – and didn’t wear a costume… sort of. 

Akiva bought me a clown nose, and at first, I was just going to pin it (still in the packaging that says “clown nose”) in a half-hearted way to my regular clothing.  But at the last minute, I pinned it in a half-hearted way and added a toy stethoscope, becoming, in the process, a medical clown.

It turned out, I was not the only medical clown there.  It’s a popular profession here in Israel, and one of the aforementioned teenaged girls dressed up as one as well.  Her costume was better than mine - her father works at the med school at the Technion and she had a real lab coat, as well as a colourful clown wig (scroll up and you’ll see it in the picture of Naomi Rivka).

Mine was a costume, but low-key; it wasn’t really a costume.  And I was okay with that.

Here’s the thing:  my secret Purim shame.

Growing up, we dressed up every year… for Hallowe’en.  And it was great!  We could dress as anything we wanted, the sky’s the limit.  Trick or treating, UNICEF boxes, the works.  I loved it.

Then, a few months later, along would roll Purim.  Which wasn’t a “real” holiday, because nobody outside of our family and Hebrew school had ever heard of it.

It also wasn’t a real dress-up holiday because… my mother’s rule… you could ONLY dress up as someone from the Purim story. 

As a mom, I think I can understand her reasoning now:  why not take advantage of this “duplicate” costume opportunity to strengthen and reinforce our Jewish education?

Even better:  why not take a real stand against the non-Jewish majority culture, emulating Esther, even, by being super-Jewish in your story-of-Purim costume?

But there are only so many characters in the story, especially for a little kid who’s never actually read the whole megillah.  Not so many characters, and I think I was all of them at one time or another:  Haman, Esther, Mordechai, the king, Vashti.  Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Booooooooooorrrrrrrring!!!

(Oops – I guess my Terrible Purim Secret is not so secret anymore!)

It wasn’t until I became religious, as an adult, that I realized this wasn’t an actual rule.  I learned the rules, and not only were costumes not even IN the rules, but among frum families I met, I discovered that the kids could dress up as anything they wanted. 

Barring tznius concerns and what Elisheva likes to say in a thick chareidi accent, “tarbus hagoyim” (non-Jewish culture), the sky’s the limit.

Not just because they don’t get to celebrate Hallowe’en (poor frum kids), but because they probably aren’t so concerned that their Jewish education will be watered down or threatened by a non-megillah-related costume.

And I guess it’s the same thing here.  My wearing a costume or not wearing a costume wouldn’t have changed anything about the nature of the day.  I could wear one, if I wanted to, but there was no pressure. 

So I sort of did, and sort of didn’t.

I can’t say what I’ll do next year.  We’re living minute to minute here, so I really can’t even say what I’ll be doing next week, let alone twelve months from now.  Will I wear a costume?  Maybe, maybe not. 

But whether or not I join in, it will be Purim, in a way that I’ve honestly never experienced before. 

I suppose it helps also that if you do wear a costume, you can actually WEAR it, rather than toss a parka on over it so you can slip and slide across the ice to shul to huddle in the warmth as you hear the megillah.

The one constant of Purim, wherever you may find yourself, is the theme of “venahafoch hu” – “and it was turned around.”  The “fate” of the Jews turned from bad to good, while the “fate” of Haman went “from bat to verse,” as the terrible vampire poet joke goes.

Whatever we may be wearing a year from now, I’m excited to see what next Purim in Israel will bring… and may there be many more to come.