Seriously, Dude?

This is another great topic for a winter blog post, as it turns out, because for about ten months of the year, we don't have to think about the dude.

Who is the dude?  Well, actually, the dude is a WHAT, as I’m sure you already know if you've spent any serious time in Israel.

First of all, the technical definition:

Dude = דוּד / dude = boiler, pot, kettle, tank, vat…

In other words, what many people in North America at least refer to redundantly as a “hot-water heater.”

Except that, while in North America our house had a big huge water heater in the basement, powered by natural gas, that kept the water at a nice cozy high temperature 24/7/365 (unless we went on vacation and left just the pilot light on), Israelis (and some others) have figured out that that doesn’t make much sense, because for 20-some-odd hours of the day we simply don’t need hot water.

Therefore, most homes in Israel have a switch for the dude, somewhere near the bathroom, so you plan ahead and turn on the dude, which is electric, about 15-20 minutes before you need hot water.  It heats up, you take your shower, end of story.  It can be a hassle to remember this ahead of time, but lots of things in life are the exact same kind of hassle.  Most of us don’t keep a kettle full of boiling water on the counter in case we want tea or coffee, we fill up the kettle and plug it in and cool our heels while we wait patiently for our drink.

Now, I mentioned that the dude is electric, but I also said that for about ten months of the year, we don’t have to think about turning

It’s winter–are you taking a Donut Shower?

Do you shower differently in the wintertime?

Here in Israel, it’s officially Winter.  And in Kiryat Shmuel, where we're always the last to hear about such things, it's actually kind of cold these days, blessedly so.

In the next couple of weeks, we have an oddity coming up:  the one Jewish observance that's keyed to the secular calendar.  From now until the year 2100, in regular years on the night of December 4, and in leap years (2019, 2023, 2027, 2031, 2035), on the night of December 5, we start adding the words ותן תל ומטר לברכה / v’sen tal umatar livracha (Sephardi pronunciation uses v’ten instead of v’sen; both are correct), “and send dew and rain for blessing,”  to the Shemoneh Esrei.

UPDATE:
A reader has pointed out that in Israel, we start saying Tal u'Matar on the 7th of Cheshvan, which was a few weeks ago already.  Which just goes to show ya... don't trust everything you read on the internet, even if it was written with the loveliest of intentions.

And also the very commonsensical rule that halacha from chu"l doesn't always apply here in Israel.

This isn’t the first seasonal change to the Shemoneh Esrei.  You probably already noticed that we started saying משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם / Mashiv haruach umorid hageshem, “You cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall,” all the way back on Shemini Atzeres.

But December 5th is when we get serious and really dig in (click here to find out why).  At that point, we’re not just asking for geshem, rain, we’re also asking for tal and matar – two other types of precipitation.  Why?

Because every single drop counts.  Not a single drop of dew can be taken for granted here.

There was an ad in the newspaper yesterday driving home this point. 

It basically says, “Yeah, we know it’s raining, but

Reading your bills, paying your bills: three simple steps for staying afloat in Israel.

Want to have a fun Monday evening? 

Curl up with a great big pile of bills.  Well, not curl up exactly, but when Nefesh b'Nefesh offered a workshop called “How to Read Your Bills,” I figured I should probably head into town for it.

This workshop should be standard issue for all new olim.  But if you pay attention in Ulpan and learn as much Hebrew as you can, you’ll be arming yourself with the most important tool for staying ahead of your bills.

Three simple steps

According to the speaker (a lawyer and longtime olah), the top three priorities for olim when receiving a bill are figuring out:

Things that are cool in Israel #4: The Dude and the Drainer

Yom HaAtzmaut is coming – Israel’s Independence Day!  So it’s time to sing her praises.  Tra, la, la… here I go!!!

Praise #1:  Going Solar

In terms of natural resources, one thing Israel’s got plenty of is sunlight.  In the summer, probably TOO much, but that’s not entirely a bad thing.  Israel got into the solar water-heating thing very early on, and now you can’t go up and down a city block without seeing water heaters bristling on the roof of just about every building.

Apparently, 90% of Israeli homes have a solar water heater – or, in Hebrew, a “dude shemesh” (דוּד שֶׁמֶשׁ).  And now, so do we!

(The plain old word for water heater is “dude” / דוּד – you pronounce it just like he English word “dude” – phonetically, dood, to rhyme with “interrupting the post like this was very rude.”)

In the Merkaz Klitah, our electric dude was right in the apartment, and if we wanted hot water, we’d have to turn it on and wait 10-15 minutes.  It took me a few days to figure this out – when we first arrived, it was WAY too hot to think about heating up water, even for a shower (it wasn’t freezing cold out of the taps, anyway).

Here, we have a switch.  In the winter, like when we moved in, there isn’t quite enough sunlight for a steady supply of hot water.  These days, we don’t have to think about the switch… which means we’re saving a ton of money.

I love being part of a country where something like this – which would be revolutionary in Canada – is just a mundane feature of even the most junky, run-down apartments.

(Granted, in Canada, there’s not as much sunlight, so it would probably be silly to rely on it to heat a family’s entire water supply… for oh, about ten months of the year.)

Praise #2:  What’s this about Drainers?

Because so many people have raved about their dudes in past, and thus it has become kind of cliché, I thought I’d throw in a “bonus” rave, and here it is:  two-level dish drainers!

I bought a new one yesterday, having grown tired of our one-level drainer and wanting to move up in the world:

 

(excuse our post-Pesach kitchen “balagan”!)

This one is a sturdy plastic model; there are also metal ones available, but to me, the idea of metal and dripping water don’t mix.  No matter how “stainless” it is, I know at some point, there will be rust.

(Weird Word o’ the Week:  stainless steel in Hebrew = nee-rosta / נִירוֹסְטָה, a word I just figured out a few days ago is actually a non-Hebrew word combining the Latin-ish parts, “nee” (no) and “rosta” (rust).  Blah.)

Yeah, it’s kind of a yucky brown/beige colour.   I don’t know exactly why I think this is so cool, except for the fact that I’ve spent my entire life trying to fit stuff into a measly single-layer dish drainer, creating an effect my family refers to as the “Jenga” when anyone tries to get any one item out.

With this one, the layers are switchable, so if I decide I want cutlery and plates on the bottom, and pots / glasses on the top – la-bri’ut (“to your health” / לִברִיאוּת), as they say here when you sneeze.

Draining the Drainer

The only thing about this that is not cool is that it’s nearly impossible to buy a dish drainer that actually drains.  Unlike just about every model I ever saw in Canada, most come with a “tray” that sits underneath and catches the water.  Ew!  Why would you want to leave the water sitting to go moldy and make your cutlery stinky???

(I understand the utility of it if you’re drying dishes, say, on your bed or on a bookshelf… but in a kitchen, there’s almost always access to a sink, right?)

So if you peek underneath this new drainer, you’ll see that I have replaced the tray with one that actually drains, into the sink.  It’s not quite the right size, but given how long and hard I had to search for it, it will do for now.

Wow!  Usually, I only share ONE thing that’s cool in Israel… but this time, you’ve gotten not one (the dude), not two (the drainer), but THREE (the little language lesson about stainless steel).

To show your appreciation for this tremendous generosity, please Like, Share, Comment… let me know I’m not alone in my admiration for this great land of ours!

On Stink

It’s true, I’m getting used to it.  But it still bears saying:  stinky smells jump out at you here on every corner.

Like you’ll be walking along and all of a sudden, you will be surrounded by an odour, overwhelmed, buried alive with a stink the likes of which you have perhaps never experienced before in your life.  Then if you keep walking (which you must, in self-preservation!) it’s gone a second later.

To be fair, I’ve decided this is mainly because of the heat, because it wasn’t so bad in the areas where we were last winter on our pilot trip, and because I don’t notice it as much now that the weather has cooled off by a few degrees.  (a few!  not a lot!)

In certain areas, there’s not only the heat to contend with but also the fact that the air isn’t moving around much; without a breeze, a smell can linger noxiously just about forever in one spot.

But it’s also because of the garbage.  Depending on where you go in the country, it’s everywhere.  This picture is in no way representative, in fact, because it shows a garbage bin with the garbage placed nicely inside, no debris casually tossed on the ground nearby and there’s a mattress propped up neatly nearby.  (This wasn’t even meant to be a picture of garbage; it was just a random shot snapped from the top of a double-decker tour bus last week in Yerushalayim.)

Ah, but if I actually wanted a picture of garbage, I’m sure I could find a great one.  Here in the krayot (burbs of Haifa), things are actually pretty neat – depending on what area you end up; I’m not counting the dead cat I saw on the way to GZ’s gan this morning.  Here, street sweepers putter around and men trim grass and bushes and pick up litter seemingly all the time.

(Even with all that, it’s nowhere near as clean as Toronto, or anywhere else in Canada that I’ve ever visited – okay, maybe Montreal, which I love, but is an older and grittier-feeling city than Toronto.)

But certain parts of Yerushalayim are absolutely awful.  Soda bottles and cans and laundry detergent bags and diapers and discarded whatever that somebody didn’t want anymore.  And then once seven people have used a yard to dump their stuff in, there’s very little to stop the next seven, and the next seven, and… well, everybody.

But this post really isn’t about garbage, I promise, and it’s not about the spiritual tragedy that  is a few ratty diapers cluttering up Yerushalayim.  I’m sure others have ranted more capably about that.  (and I don’t actually believe it IS a spiritual tragedy; so there)

It’s about smells.  And how they jump out at you.  It takes getting used to, and so far, they have predominently been BAD smells.  Rancid smells; manure smells; rotting vegetation smells and many others that probably cannot or should not be named. 

Part of it is dog owners.  Despite signs warning them that they will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law, they never seem to notice what their dogs are up to when they’re off the leash (aka always). 

Probably a thousand times in the last couple of decades (usually when my children beg for a dog), I have told myself that I am above stooping to pick up a dog’s disgusting waste, and so have never bought a dog.  Israelis, on the other hand, seem to tell themselves they are above stooping to pick up a dog’s disgusting waste – so they look the other way and then keep right on walking.

But dog messes are not what this is about either; just smells.  And how they pounce and take you by surprise, stealing your breath like a cat might do to an unsuspecting infant if that legend were indeed true.

The good thing is that if you keep walking, the smell is gone quickly.  The bad thing is that if you walk the same route day after day, sometimes the same smells are waiting there to jump out at you, day after day.

As I write this, I’m standing in my window overlooking the Mediterranean, a slightly-salty sea breeze making my skin cool but a little sticky (as it usually is here).  And there is a bit of a garbage-truck smell wafting in, lightly, hidden away like it’s been tucked in lovingly by the sea.  Just the slightest hint of eau de garbage.  Creepily enough, I don’t mind it all that much.

With the weather changing, there are some good smells creeping in, too.  I find that I can smell the bakery from farther away, or maybe it’s my imagination.  When we were here in February, I remember thinking (did I blog it?) that the whole country smelled like a good bakery, yeasty and floury-sweet.  And I can smell a little of that now, even over the faint nastiness of the breeze.

As in other areas, perhaps it’s just that this crazy country is not shy, cannot be shy, is incapable of being shy or coy about anything.  If there’s garbage, it’s gonna stink; if there’s a bakery, it’s gonna make you drool.  And yes, even both happening at once, the bitter and the sweet, or Naomi Shemer’s poetic dvash, the sweet honey, along with the oketz, the painful sting…

…or is that stink?

Ted’s Aliyah, Day 4

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 Four of the Israel Initiative
Okay, there you go! Our first Shabbos in Kiryat Yam, what an… interesting experience! Last night I was sent out to find a shul (synagogue) that someone told Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod was just down the street at number 25. Only problem is that none of the apartments or houses or whatever has an address written on it! It’s like no-one wants anyone to know where they live. So I walked up the street looking for a shul among a group of dingy apartments. (This really isn’t the richest part of town. Compared to Haifa next door, with its amazing architecture and quaint shops, Kiryat Yam is a bit ghetto)
Suddenly, boom! Like somebody plopped this beautiful building down from heaven, there was this grand, menorah topped entranceway to a clean, spacious courtyard leading into a stately entrance of a shul. “This must be the place” I thought, “that, or a great movie set for some probably tragic, Jewish movie.”
I went in with my little English translated siddur (prayer book), sat down and scanned through my book to see if I could find out where the congregation was in the davening (prayer service). And so I’m scanning and scanning, still waiting to see if I can pick up any key Hebrew words that will indicate where they are. And I was scanning for a really long time before I finally heard the beginning of the Shabbot night prayers. There was like 20 minutes of stuff that I’ve never heard before. What kind of a place had I stumbled into???
I went home to tell Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod about how this crazy place added about 30 to 40 minutes of material that was in MY book. “Are they Ashkenazi?” Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod asked. I wasn’t sure, but I said I would go back the next morning and look a little closer to see there were any clues to indicate that the heck was going on.
The next morning I sat there again and yes, right away they were adding more material. One guy came up to me out of the blue with a basket of little velvet pouches and said “take one” in Hebrew. I gave him the international expression of “what-is-this-for”? “Bar mitzvah” he said and walked away. The pouch was filled with candies, so maybe you are supposed to throw them at the bar mitzvah boy, as is traditionally done? But then I saw that all the men were putting the pouches away for later. When things started to get going, the women began to throw more candies, which maybe because there weren’t too many kids around, the men picked them up and also kept them for themselves. Crazy!
So I noticed the following things. Not too many kids around. Weird. The men there all looked like burly construction workers. It actually reminded me of the movie Goodfellas with all those mafia hitmen. Then there were a bunch of guys doing sign-language all over the place. Was it the Deaf Guy Construction Workers Shul? Or something far sinister???
The good thing about it all was the Kiddush (lunch after the services). They had a large table full of all sort of amazing treats and delicacies that I have never seen before. THEE freshest, light rolls and little sweet buns and cakes and small mini-bowls full of some creamy delight and… so MUCH STUFF that you don’t see in Canada!
Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod and the kids came just as the food was being served, “good timing” I thought. Oh yeah, the davening ended at 10:00 AM, so the whole day was still ahead of us!!! The kids split this giant, fluffy cupcake and fought briefly over the cherry on top, but they were quite content. I myself tried about five different pastries and downed it with about a litre of water in one gulp.
Which reminds me… How can I drink two litres of water on average, every day now and never really have to go to the bathroom? It is quite the mystery. I know that I wrote about arriving here and sweating like a stuck pig, but after that first day, I don’t really sweat like that anymore. Sure, I will start perspiring if I put on more than two shirts at a time, but thankfully, I’m pretty dry except for the occasional moist upper lip if I am in a room without a fan.
We spent the rest of the day walking around, locating various playgrounds for the kiddies and just enjoying the cooling, ocean breeze on a hot day. At one park, Naomi was suddenly surrounded by a dozen girls who wanted to play with her. They tried to explain the rules of some complicated game of Tag with her, using Tzivia Jennifer MacLeod as their Hebrew interpreter, but I think that overwhelmed Naomi and she went all shy on them.
After Shabbos, we were completely out of bottled water, (we haven’t worked up the courage to drink the tap water yet. I’m holding out until we can get a Brita water filter deal), so I walked up to the local corner store to pick 3 two litre bottles. On the way back I saw this pizza place buzzing with people so I went in and brought home a large, double cheese pizza for Tzivia and I to share. (Double cheese, kosher and very delicious for only $12, not bad!)
So that’s it. Judge my life as you see fit.