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...

Things that are cool in Israel #12: Boureka Laws (with boureka and freezer puff pastry dough vocab lists)

Every once in a while, just when we start feeling Israeli, something new comes along that honestly charms the pants off of me all over again. Something like… the Boureka Law.

Yup, that’s really a thing. Read on to find out.

Tummy rumbles 

For supper tonight, at NR's request, we're making homemade bourekas. We bought the pastry and now we just have to make a bunch of fillings and bake them up. In case you're wondering, there are a million kinds of freezer pastry here. Probably in North America as well, but there, most of them weren't kosher. Usually, we just

To every fruit, there is a season (with helpful seasonal Hebrew vocabulary!)

In Canada, there are seasons. Lots and lots of them. Well, four, but they’re all exciting and distinctly different. You’re probably familiar with them: winter, spring, summer, and fall.

Israel doesn’t have seasons, as such, a fact which has been driven home by this long, warm fall. And been hammered into our skulls with a recent two-week November heatwave חמסין / chamseen (hot wind from the eastern deserts) that’s left us parched and sweating, and left my plants wilting at a time of year when they’re usually starting to soak up the first downpours of the year.

(Interestingly, as this article points out, most Israelis probably call the chamseen by that name because it’s hot, which is חם / cham in Hebrew, in fact it comes from the Arabic word for fifty – meaning fifty days a year of icky sandy hot and dry conditions.)

Spring and fall are often called עונות המעבר / onot hama’avar, the transitional season. Meaning they’re neither here nor there – just seasons that get you from one place to another. (When you sit on the aisle in a movie theatre or airplane, you’re also sitting on the מעבר / ma’avar – exactly the same word.)

The term onot hama’avar usually crops up when we’re talking about health, and other problems, that come up during spring, and especially fall. Colds, allergies, migraines, skin problems – most Israelis are suffering from some combination of all these at the moment, compounded by the current hot, dry wind which has meant I can’t smile or my lips will crack.

Normally, the fall עונת המעבר / onat hama’avar (singular) is also the time to get immunized with this year’s flu vaccine, a fact driven into my head by my ulpan teacher. But this year the vaccines were late (for various international reasons and not due to a conspiracy and/or the fact we have no government!) and we haven’t gotten ours yet.

But however you feel about the weather, that’s actually NOT what a want to talk about. Because there are even more important seasons in Israel: seasons you must be aware of, seasons people argue heatedly about on Facebook, seasons you need to prepare for before you leave the house.

I’m talking about fruit seasons, of course.

I’ve already said many times that we’re huge fans of Israeli fruit. It’s cheap and more delicious than anything I ever

Amharic class: An immersion in ignorance

Do you ever overhear people talking in another language and wonder what they were saying?

When I was in Amsterdam a few weeks ago I was looking around at all the happy Dutch people, eavesdropping on all their conversations I couldn't understand and I was thinking exactly that. What are they talking about?

But in fact I know exactly what they were talking about. The exact same things we do: “Drat, I forgot to buy milk,” “What are you doing Thursday?” and “This new boss is driving me crazy.” Or whatever.

The point is, it’s probably much more mundane than we think it will be. And it’s not at all exotic or foreign, because nobody is once you get to know them close up. They’re not sitting across from me on the tram thinking, “As a Dutch person, I would love to go home and eat… well, maybe pancakes. Because that’s what we Dutch people enjoy.”

Dutch people, mostly, don’t think or talk about being Dutch because being Dutch is for the most part invisible to them. That doesn’t mean they’re not proud, just that on a daily basis, in ordinary conversations, it factors in very little. They think and talk about mundane things because they’re just people. Just like us.

There are two kinds of people I meet when I say I'm learning Amharic. The first kind

Shutting Down, Starting Anew (guest post)

Sometimes, someone else says it better than I ever could.  Leonie Lachamish is a 41-year olah from the UK who lives near Jerusalem.

Every Erev Yom Kippur, while we were bringing up young children, I'd make sure the radio was on for the 2pm news so we could all hear the announcement that Israel's National Airport, Ben Gurion Airport (that functions 24/7) was closing down until after Yom Kippur (around 30 hours later) and then that all the radio stations were ceasing their broadcasts until

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: It’s for the birds (and for you)

When I met my first husband, I told him about our family's annual camping trips to provincial parks where we'd drive in, park on the site, pitch the tent, and head to the beach or river or forest or whatever to enjoy nature.  Sometimes, those campsites would have running water, other times, you had to walk somewhere else to get water.  My father's strategy was sending the kids to wash dishes in the bathroom -- strictly forbidden according to all provincial campground rules, but you know.  Someone has to be an exception to the rules.

So that was camping.

But my first husband quickly declared, "It doesn't count if you can get to it with a car."

He would have had a hard time with Israel.

Here, camping sometimes means that your tent is just a few feet away from the next person's…

(© Tiberias municipality via Wikimedia)

… and hiking usually means taking one of quite a few well-used routes, like the Israel Trail, a 1025 km. (look it up!) route – nothing to sneeze at, really, given that National Geographic has called one of the world's 20 most "epic trails."  But there certainly isn’t the variety, and from what I’ve heard, you’re very likely, in most stretches and hiking-friendly seasons, to bump into a number of fellow travellers.

(It’s also perhaps the only one that apparently features a lending library so you can pick up reading material along the way -- People of the Book, indeed.)

(photo credit © royisoko via Wikimedia)

Finding a nature getaway definitely isn't hard in Israel.  But as with so many things when you make aliyah, you may have to (slightly) redefine what you mean by the term. 

Since almost every spot is within half an hour's drive of a big city, and there are factories and processing plants of all kinds everywhere from north to south, you're probably not going to get total solitude and silence to commune with nature unless you take to the deep south.

But that has its upside, too, like the fact that you can hop in a bus in Nahariya and within not very long, be standing in the middle of one of the world's most extraordinary bird sanctuaries -- the Hula Valley.  A crucial migration spot between Europe and Africa (and back), the Hula Valley hosts about 500 million migrating birds every single year, and an incredible range of birds as well.

And it happens to be crane season RIGHT NOW.  Well, okay, as our guide explained, these days, it's crane season all winter long, at least until March.

That's because of the Strange History of the Hula Valley, which I'll sum up here very briefly.
Maybe in Hebrew school you learned how

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

Do you know how to protect yourself on Jerusalem’s sidewalks?

This is actually more of a public service announcement than a blog post.  Know what the biggest threat is to pedestrians in Jerusalem?  From what I’ve learned this week it definitely isn’t terrorism… it’s slippery sidewalks.

Yup, those fabulous shining stone walkways that make Jerusalem look so lovely for so much of the year… are apparently (almost literally) deadly.

If you’ve ever walked through the Old City at night in the rain, you probably figured that already.  But maybe, like me, you thought you were the only one.  Nope, nope, nope.  If you’ve ever stopped yourself from running for a bus in our nation’s capital because you were scared you’d slip and fall and break your neck… it turns out you’re not alone.

Except some people aren’t just afraid of falling.  They’ve actually fallen, and maybe not suffered

Ordinary bad things

You never think about the ordinary bad things when it comes to living in Israel.

Years before we came here, I read about a family who made aliyah, and then one of their sons was killed riding a bike.

It really made me stop and think.  These kinds of things happen in Israel?  Ordinary, bad stuff, like bike accidents, car accidents, slipping, falling, all the normal terrifying things that can happen to anybody, anywhere in the world?

Yes, sadly, it’s true.

It’s the extraordinary tragedies that people expect here, and then the everyday, ordinary bad things kind of sneak up instead.

When we first made aliyah, I slept with a tichel (head scarf) handy every night, in case I had to get up and make a run for the shelter in the middle of the night.  True, things were “hotter” then in the north, with Syria making all kinds of threats, and Israel getting in the way as it does. 

But also, I just expected it.  This was Israel, after all.

Gradually, I let down my defenses.  The extraordinary bad things that one expects from watching too much news simply weren’t happening.

Now, our gas masks are

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). 

Welcome to Chu”l, and have a nice stay!

If you ask an Israeli, there are two places in the world:  Israel… and chu”l.

Chu”l, like every Hebrew word with a “choopchik” (double-quote) in it, is an abbreviation.  In this case, it stands for חוץ לארץ / chutz la’aretz, or “outside of Israel.”  (Sounds like “chooool.”  Rhymes with “rule,” like the Golden Rule.)

And yup… that means, “every place in the world besides Israel.”

Because, you know, Israel is just so very, very big.  Kind of dwarfs the rest of the world by comparison, don’t you think?

Well, okay.  We know Israel is not very big.  But Israel is a tiny country with a HUGE ego.  A big sense of itself and its footprint in the world.  Not utterly unjustified, given its continuing prominence on the world stage, but still… sometimes, Israelis do push it a little.

This happened in ulpan once.  My teacher handed out a list of celebrities and we had to decide if they were “famous” or “famous only in Israel.”  Some were obvious, like Madonna and okay, Benjamin Netanyahu.  That was about it for famous Israelis.

I was trying to be honest, but I didn’t want to break her heart by telling her that for the most part, all the “famous” Israelis she’d listed  would be persona non grata if they showed up in Canada or the U.S.

A few prickly questions– the lie of the sabra

Do you know what a sabra is?

It’s the fruit of the prickly-pear (Opuntia) cactus.  It looks a little like the picture up above.

Ironically, the sabra, the very fruit that Jews around the world identify with Israel is actually not a native here.  It was imported from the Western U.S.

By the way, the word and concept “sabra” are not pronounced “sabra” in Hebrew.  Another of those Big Lies of Hebrew school.  The Hebrew word for this North American transplant, this “oleh,” so to speak, is  צַבָּר / tzabar.

According to Wikipedia, a “Sabra” is an “informal slang term that refers to Israeli Jews born in Israel.”

A few weeks ago, someone I knew decided to make trouble, and at a mixed gathering of Arabs and Jews in Haifa, asked an Arab woman if she considered herself a sabra.  She said, “of course.”  (I love getting to know troublemakers.)

5 surprises when you go to shul in Israel (with a helpful vocabulary list!)

Considering it’s called the Holy Land, and considering that so many of us move here for religious reasons, I guess it’s strange that I haven’t said anything about going to shul before now.

When my sister was here visiting last year, she also mentioned that she’d been all over the place but hadn’t set foot in a shul.

Life in Israel is like that.

Are you wondering what shul will be like when you make aliyah?  Here are 5 things that may surprise you when you finally get there:

1.  It’s not called shul.

This may be obvious to you, but then, you’re probably smarter than me.  Smart enough to put two and two together and realize that Ashkenazim like me, and our quaint Yiddish expressions, are not in the majority here.  (Us Ashkenazim tend to see the world through Ashkenaz-coloured lenses.)

Shul here is known as בית כנסת / beit knesset.  Everybody calls it that – even Ashkenazim.

Which is another thing, by the way:  in Canada, I grew up thinking of the Jewish world as divided into Ashkenaz and Sefardi.  It turns out we’re the only ones who call them Sefardim.  Here in Israel, these “eastern” / southern Jews are better known as “eidot hamizrach,” or “mizrachi” (which means eastern, go figure).

But within that “Sefardi” realm, there are so many different types of – uh-oh – shuls.  Just within a couple of blocks of here are Moroccan, Tunisian and Yemenite shuls.  Whereas, since we’re a minority, Ashkenazim tend to have the local “Ashkenaz” shul, and not have as much of a choice.  We’re black and white; they’re a whole entire rainbow.

And the truth is, if you accidentally say shul, everybody will know what you’re talking about.  I don’t even think you’ll offend anybody.  But that’s not what they call it.

Things that are cool in Israel #7: Ads around the Jewish holidays

Spotted this trio of IKEA ads while shlepping into Haifa the other day. 

I was so charmed that I found myself wishing immediately that they were more of them. 

When was the last time you wished to be inundated with MORE advertising messages?  In Israel, it happens.

Here’s the first one (translation beneath):

Hebrew text:  סירים מעוצבים דיינו / sirim me’utzvim dayeinu
Translation:  “Designer pots, Dayeinu!”  (from the Haggadah song, Dayeinu)

This one is #2 (Like my kids, I don’t know which one of these I love more…)

Have you told your kids about shemittah?

You might know already that here in Israel, this is a shemittah year.

Shemittah is the 7th year of a 7-year cycle found in the Torah, and all year long, Torah-observant farmers aren't working their crops in the usual way.  Yet thanks to a few modern loopholes, many of us, even here, are just buying fruits and vegetables the normal way.

I've been studying shemittah for the last couple of months with a wonderful group of KShmu ladies, using a book called (surprisingly enough!) Shemitah, by Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Rimon.  (There are lots of ways to spell Shemittah!)

If you live in Israel, your kids may find out about shemittah in school if they’re old enough.  But for younger kids, there’s not really any way to find out what it’s all about (at least, not that I could find). 

When I lived outside of Israel, I knew nothing about it… let alone knowing enough to share some of the main ideas with my kids.  We read about it when we read the weekly parsha, and that was that.

The laws of modern shemittah observance can be complicated and daunting for adults, but it really does boil down to a few simple principles.  And my favourite thing to do once I’ve learned something, is to turn around and find a way to transform it into a kids’ book.

So I’ve taken some of what I’ve learned, from Rabbi Rimon’s book and other sources, and turned it into a short, sweet rhyming song. 

(think, "This is the way we wash our hands..." but with a few fun poetic twists and turns)

Here’s the result… a little book called Sharing Shmittah, a “learn-along” song for the whole family.

Black crocheted kippah, on judgment.

Black crocheted kippah.

The guy across from me on the train, here in the reserved car, is davening.  He holds a big siddur, mouths the words under his breath, with passion.  Expertly, the way Israelis do.

He doesn’t have to daven, of course.  There are dozens of people on the train, all around him, who aren’t davening.  Turning on their laptops, listening to music.  Even with the kippah, they might just assume he davened earlier, at home or at shul. 

Still, no big deal.  He has a ring in his nose, a little silver loop.  A heavy silver-and-onyx ring on the middle finger of his left hand, and an ostentatiously chunky men’s watch on his left hand.  Another fine silvery ring pierces the cartilage of his left ear. 

Two songs you will hear in Israel before Rosh Hashanah.

It’s beginning to sound a lot like…

Tishrei!

If you’re the sort of person who feels bombarded by Xmas carols round about December 5th in North America, you have some sense of what goes on here before the Tishrei festivals (ie, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Simchat Torah).

Some songs are holier than others.  The “secular” ones deal with the passing of seasons and years, while the holy ones are drawn from the Torah, Tanach, Siddur, Machzor, etc.  Both are heard almost everywhere, regardless of whether it’s a religious or secular setting.

And if you are ever out in public when either of these is sung or performed,

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.

Haveil Havalim, a way-late but not waylaid blog carnival for Parshat Devarim

I signed up to do this… and then things got busy.

Good-busy.  But busy. 

So I’m going to slap this thing together and hope nobody notices it’s slapped together.

What is HH, anyway?

This is a weekly roundup of what’s new and great in the Jewish / Israel blogging world.  If you haven’t checked out these great blogs yet, you really should. 

• Last week’s was hosted by Batya over at Shiloh Musings.
• Next week’s carnival will be hosted by Ya’aqov at Esser Agoroth.
• For more details and a complete schedule, please join the HH facebook group.

As usual, I have split the links up into arbitrary categories, different from the arbitrary category names I made up last time.  Enjoy!

NOTE:  If your post(s) of yours are included here, be friendly and visit 2-3 other blogs listed here.  I’ve done my best to make them all sound tempting and fun.  Leave a comment to let them know you were there.

 

Literally awesome ancient historical places

Some say that Shiloh is the second-holiest place in Judaism, based on the fact that the mishkan (tabernacle) rested there longer than in any other place in our history.  Tons of participants got together there for the 3rd annual Kenes Shiloh, and Batya of Shiloh Musings was there reporting on it.