I'm pretty resigned to the fact that my Hebrew is not going to improve much beyond the smattering of words I picked up in week one (sorry! good night! whole wheat!). Given that even this modest improvement increased my non-religious vocabulary by an astonishing 1000 percent, and that it took me three weeks to memorize "Sorry, I don't speak Hebrew," and that since then I haven't used that phrase once, I'm not only resigned to, but completely at peace with this situation.
My roommate's Israeli boyfriend, however, is not at peace with this situation, and continues to put me in my place by asking me hard questions like "Ma kore?" (how are you?--just learned that one five minutes ago) and then, in response to my look of confusion, following up with, "Haven't you learned any Hebrew yet?" No, but give me a minute and I'll know how to say "fuck off." I find his attitude ironic, as half of my confusion is that I can't tell if he's speaking Hebrew to me or English with his impenetrably thick accent. While I don't throw stones from my glass house at his glass house while our glass houses are in the same room, in part because I'm not wearing shoes, from the comfortable distance of the Interwebs it's bombs-away. In fact, reveling in my awesome English fluency has long been a coping mechanism for me in foreign countries. I may not speak your tricky tongue, but man, I am a beast at English. Henry Higgins could make you his science-fair project, Yuval, and you still wouldn't be as completely, totally, awesomely fluent in English as I am.
Nevertheless, my English-speaking superpower doesn't stop me from losing a few things in translation when talking to English-speaking Israelis, even the ones I can understand. The locals and I may be speaking the same language (well, sometimes), but we are not always saying the same thing. What follows are a few English phrases that, when spoken by Israelis in certain contexts, may not strictly comport with the content of dictionary.com. I have suggested alternative potential translations in parentheses.
The New American-Israeli Lexicon
Are you Jewish? (Do you belong here [at this table/at this government job/in Jerusalem/in this country]?)
Are you religious? (Can we be friends?)
Have you been to Tel Aviv? (Oh good, you're secular. Man, doesn't Jerusalem just blow?)
Are you doing ulpan? (When [are you making/did you make] aliyah? Also, I have ignored what you said about not speaking Hebrew.)
What are your plans for Shabbat? (Come over to my apartment. Bring wine.)
My address is [number + street name] (My apartment building is unplottable, like Hogwarts. Even if you can find it on Google maps, you won't be able to get there, because this city is actually the Labyrinth designed to keep the virgins in until they are devoured by the Minotaur. Even if you manage to find my street, you will not be able to see my building, because you are a Muggle, not an Israeli. My building will be set back deep within a courtyard, hidden by high stone walls, in a maze of other buildings, identical to every other structure on the street. There will be some openings in the walls, but only a random selection of them will be labeled with street numbers, and the one that leads to my building surely will not be. Nor will the building itself be numbered. There will be some staircases, but it will not be clear where they lead, if they are indoors or outdoors, or if they are functional or merely decorative. There may be streetlamps, but they will not save you. No one can save you. See you at 9.)
Jerusalem really shuts down over Shabbat. (Lay in your food stores. If you don't have something to eat that doesn't require heating up, YOU WILL STARVE. Don't let the Minotaur find you in a weakened state.)
Israelis are really blunt. (Israelis are really blunt.)
I don't have your ID card right now, but come back tomorrow, and it will be ready. (I am Lucy. You are Charlie Brown. Your ID card is the football. You will never get an ID card. Each time you return to me I will tell you to come back at another specific time at an even more distant point in the future. Eventually I will call you and demand that you return the ID card that you were never issued, because this office is actually part of the Ministry of Truth. Don't look at me like that. Come back tomorrow, and your transportation reimbursement will be ready.)
This movie has English subtitles. (This movie does not have English subtitles.)
Maybe it's time to start brushing up my Hebrew after all.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
FalafelQuest 2012
Why did I come to Israel? Was for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to clerk at a foreign supreme court (or, most likely, any supreme court)? Was it to enrich my spiritual life in the Holy Land? Was it to de-kosher every kitchen utensil in the greater Jerusalem area?
Ha, no. It was to eat falafel.
If you think I'm being facetious, you did not have a conversation with me in person about my plans for the summer before I left. If you know I'm being serious, it's because we had a conversation that went like this:
You: So, what are you doing this summer?
Me: I'll be clerking at the Supreme Court of Israel. I'm going to eat all the falafel.
You: Wow, that sounds really awesome. How did you get that job?
Me: I'm not really sure, but I can't wait for the falafel.
You: What kind of work will you be doing?
Me: Every moment that I am not physically compelled to do something else I hope to be either lying on a beach or eating falafel. I am an intercontinental falafel seeking missile.
I am by no means disinterested in the other great things Israel has to offer. I am, for example, also extremely enthused about green-olive pizza. But the main point is, if I accomplish nothing else this summer but to eat my body weight in delicious falafel, my time will have been well spent. I will admittedly consider it a valuable bonus if I do not also completely cock up the Israeli legal system while I'm at it, but with the amount of brain-space I've devoted to falafel, I just can't worry about that too much.
Here's how FalafelQuest 2012 has gone so far. I can't actually read the names of any of the places I've been (vowels are a right, not a privilege), so I'll do my best with description.
#1: Old City Hole-In-the-Wall
Our first Shabbat in Israel, my friend Gabe and I made the happy discovery that the Arabs in the Old City are more than willing to feed to starving tourists while the rest of Jerusalem takes a nap. The only trick is getting to the Old City in the first place, without the buses running. One day the falafel stands are going to figure out delivery, and they will win capitalism. The point is, I was about halfway to sunstroke by the time I had walked up to this place, which did its part to ensure that I had no idea what was going on the entire time we were there. There's no menu, no signage, and no apparent English-speaking staff. It's one of those establishments where there is, in fact, only one visible staff member who half the time seems to be engaged in activities that have no apparent connection to vending falafel. Gabe and I squeezed into a table and spent the first ten minutes trying to figure out what food everyone else had and how they had gotten it. Eventually, after it became pretty clear that this place served only one meal, Gabe dusted off years of Jewish Day School and sprang into action, pulling from the deep recesses of language memory to query the waiter, "Falafel? Hummus?" Handled like a boss.
Rating: 7. This place rates highly for absurdity of portion size and incomprehensibility of experience. It's a very reasonable 20 shekels, which comes out to a ridiculously reasonable 1 shekel per pound of food, including, not unimportantly, pickles. I'm adding a bonus for the smug feeling of accomplishment that comes with navigating an eatery that seems to operate entirely by significant facial expressions between customers and the waiter, to make up for the fact that the hummus (or, as everyone insists on over-pronouncing it, cccchhoomoss) was kind of bland. It definitely perked up when you mixed in hot sauce, but not enough to earn that classic hacking-up-a-furball noise that seems to begin every Hebrew word.
#1.5: Free Sample on the Street in Tel Aviv
I went up to Tel Aviv for Pride, and managed to snag a free falafel ball right out of the fryer. Didn't manage to snag any more lunch, and it was 3,000 degrees outside, so I think I experienced this falafel morsel in a state of semi-delirium. (A theme is beginning to emerge. I'm sure everyone in D.C. is real sympathetic right now.) The falafel tasted like burning (I probably should have waited for this to cool off before eating it), but only in the best way. I suffer for my art.
Rating: 6. Yes, I will take your free food if offered again.
#2: Improbably Expensive Cafe Across from the Austrian Hospice
This was the result of one of those group situations where nobody wants to make a decision about where to eat and then suddenly you realize it's 9pm and places are closing, so you default to the restaurant across the street with the English-language window display. This is not great strategizing. On the other hand, the clarity of the interaction was a lot higher than at the other place in the Old City: it was very clear that the charming store proprietor would very much like for you to exchange money for food please. He will keep talking to you until this happens. I can't remember the price exactly, but I remember feeling cheated--around 30 or 35 shekels. I think they charged extra for the non-threatening proximity to the Austrian Hospice and the encouraging clarity of the store-front labeling. I hope looking at the nuns across the street makes them feel ashamed.
Rating: 5. I think I might be deducting points because we had a full table to sit down to, real silverware, English-language menus, and I didn't spill any food on myself. This seems counter to the authentic falafel experience.
#3: Birthright Watering Hole at the Shuk
This was the first place that I actually had the classic falafel-pita, and for which I think I actually paid something close to the universally agreed-upon reasonable falafel-pita price--13 shekels. I also had the universal Israeli experience of being cut in line by an endless stream of Taglit Birthrighters, after battling my way through the shuk on a Friday afternoon. A day and money well spent.
Rating: 8. It was messy and way overstuffed and pretty much collapsed at the first bite into a pile of delicious. They also give you the option of stuffing it some more with a few side salads, but neglect to give you a fork with which to eat those salads, so be prepared for your hands to continue tasting delicious for several hours, until you fight your way back through the shuk to get home.
#4: Back to Tel Aviv
Another falafel-pita experience, but this time it brought friends: a buffet of pickled and stewed things that you could take as a side. There was also a very nice man who wanted to make sure we got our money's worth who pointed out that they would give me free fries. He did not mention that the fries would be roughly the consistency of wet marshmallows, but that pretty much goes without saying in Israel. The art of a properly fried french fry has completely escaped the Israeli restaurant industry, which is doubly odd when you consider that a substantial portion of the country's economy is based on locating a deep-fryer every 20 yards and sticking falafel in it. Yet I could wring my fries like dishtowel. Someone sic Paula Deen on this, stat.
Rating: 5. Fry quality aside, saltiness was the falafel's real Achilles heel. Having just come from the beach and sweated out all liquid reserves, salt was not for me, at that moment in time, in particularly high demand.
In conclusion, still searching for suitably messy, crunchy, inexpensive, absurdly portioned, confusing falafel with a worthy side of cccchhoomoss. I've started humming Brave Sir Robin to myself, which I think means either that I need to hire some minstrels for my quest (a questor should never do her own humming) or stop rambling on and go to bed.
Ha, no. It was to eat falafel.
If you think I'm being facetious, you did not have a conversation with me in person about my plans for the summer before I left. If you know I'm being serious, it's because we had a conversation that went like this:
You: So, what are you doing this summer?
Me: I'll be clerking at the Supreme Court of Israel. I'm going to eat all the falafel.
You: Wow, that sounds really awesome. How did you get that job?
Me: I'm not really sure, but I can't wait for the falafel.
You: What kind of work will you be doing?
Me: Every moment that I am not physically compelled to do something else I hope to be either lying on a beach or eating falafel. I am an intercontinental falafel seeking missile.
I am by no means disinterested in the other great things Israel has to offer. I am, for example, also extremely enthused about green-olive pizza. But the main point is, if I accomplish nothing else this summer but to eat my body weight in delicious falafel, my time will have been well spent. I will admittedly consider it a valuable bonus if I do not also completely cock up the Israeli legal system while I'm at it, but with the amount of brain-space I've devoted to falafel, I just can't worry about that too much.
Here's how FalafelQuest 2012 has gone so far. I can't actually read the names of any of the places I've been (vowels are a right, not a privilege), so I'll do my best with description.
#1: Old City Hole-In-the-Wall
Our first Shabbat in Israel, my friend Gabe and I made the happy discovery that the Arabs in the Old City are more than willing to feed to starving tourists while the rest of Jerusalem takes a nap. The only trick is getting to the Old City in the first place, without the buses running. One day the falafel stands are going to figure out delivery, and they will win capitalism. The point is, I was about halfway to sunstroke by the time I had walked up to this place, which did its part to ensure that I had no idea what was going on the entire time we were there. There's no menu, no signage, and no apparent English-speaking staff. It's one of those establishments where there is, in fact, only one visible staff member who half the time seems to be engaged in activities that have no apparent connection to vending falafel. Gabe and I squeezed into a table and spent the first ten minutes trying to figure out what food everyone else had and how they had gotten it. Eventually, after it became pretty clear that this place served only one meal, Gabe dusted off years of Jewish Day School and sprang into action, pulling from the deep recesses of language memory to query the waiter, "Falafel? Hummus?" Handled like a boss.
Rating: 7. This place rates highly for absurdity of portion size and incomprehensibility of experience. It's a very reasonable 20 shekels, which comes out to a ridiculously reasonable 1 shekel per pound of food, including, not unimportantly, pickles. I'm adding a bonus for the smug feeling of accomplishment that comes with navigating an eatery that seems to operate entirely by significant facial expressions between customers and the waiter, to make up for the fact that the hummus (or, as everyone insists on over-pronouncing it, cccchhoomoss) was kind of bland. It definitely perked up when you mixed in hot sauce, but not enough to earn that classic hacking-up-a-furball noise that seems to begin every Hebrew word.
#1.5: Free Sample on the Street in Tel Aviv
I went up to Tel Aviv for Pride, and managed to snag a free falafel ball right out of the fryer. Didn't manage to snag any more lunch, and it was 3,000 degrees outside, so I think I experienced this falafel morsel in a state of semi-delirium. (A theme is beginning to emerge. I'm sure everyone in D.C. is real sympathetic right now.) The falafel tasted like burning (I probably should have waited for this to cool off before eating it), but only in the best way. I suffer for my art.
Rating: 6. Yes, I will take your free food if offered again.
#2: Improbably Expensive Cafe Across from the Austrian Hospice
This was the result of one of those group situations where nobody wants to make a decision about where to eat and then suddenly you realize it's 9pm and places are closing, so you default to the restaurant across the street with the English-language window display. This is not great strategizing. On the other hand, the clarity of the interaction was a lot higher than at the other place in the Old City: it was very clear that the charming store proprietor would very much like for you to exchange money for food please. He will keep talking to you until this happens. I can't remember the price exactly, but I remember feeling cheated--around 30 or 35 shekels. I think they charged extra for the non-threatening proximity to the Austrian Hospice and the encouraging clarity of the store-front labeling. I hope looking at the nuns across the street makes them feel ashamed.
Rating: 5. I think I might be deducting points because we had a full table to sit down to, real silverware, English-language menus, and I didn't spill any food on myself. This seems counter to the authentic falafel experience.
#3: Birthright Watering Hole at the Shuk
This was the first place that I actually had the classic falafel-pita, and for which I think I actually paid something close to the universally agreed-upon reasonable falafel-pita price--13 shekels. I also had the universal Israeli experience of being cut in line by an endless stream of Taglit Birthrighters, after battling my way through the shuk on a Friday afternoon. A day and money well spent.
Rating: 8. It was messy and way overstuffed and pretty much collapsed at the first bite into a pile of delicious. They also give you the option of stuffing it some more with a few side salads, but neglect to give you a fork with which to eat those salads, so be prepared for your hands to continue tasting delicious for several hours, until you fight your way back through the shuk to get home.
#4: Back to Tel Aviv
Another falafel-pita experience, but this time it brought friends: a buffet of pickled and stewed things that you could take as a side. There was also a very nice man who wanted to make sure we got our money's worth who pointed out that they would give me free fries. He did not mention that the fries would be roughly the consistency of wet marshmallows, but that pretty much goes without saying in Israel. The art of a properly fried french fry has completely escaped the Israeli restaurant industry, which is doubly odd when you consider that a substantial portion of the country's economy is based on locating a deep-fryer every 20 yards and sticking falafel in it. Yet I could wring my fries like dishtowel. Someone sic Paula Deen on this, stat.
Rating: 5. Fry quality aside, saltiness was the falafel's real Achilles heel. Having just come from the beach and sweated out all liquid reserves, salt was not for me, at that moment in time, in particularly high demand.
In conclusion, still searching for suitably messy, crunchy, inexpensive, absurdly portioned, confusing falafel with a worthy side of cccchhoomoss. I've started humming Brave Sir Robin to myself, which I think means either that I need to hire some minstrels for my quest (a questor should never do her own humming) or stop rambling on and go to bed.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
There's a frood who really knows where his towel is
The first rule of intergalactic travel, according to Douglas Adams, is "don't panic." This is undoubtedly good, but hopelessly impossible advice for life abroad, so we're just going to move right along to the second rule: always know where your towel is. A towel is the interstellar hitchhiker's universal passport. A good metaphor comes to mind for international travelers, which is your actual, um, passport. But for most countries I've been to, the towel is infinitely more useful. According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, not only is the towel your ticket to space rides in spacecraft in SPACE--already pulling a lot more weight than my passport--I can use it for warmth as I " bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta"; I can "sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon"; or if I am especially enterprising, "use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth or wet it for use in hand‐to‐hand‐combat." These are just a few of the myriad possibilities of life with a towel.
My passport, in contrast, allows me to cross some imaginary lines without being shot by some very non-imaginary guns--but not always! (Hello to our North Korean friends.) To be fair, it also occasionally gets me preferential treatment at currency exchanges--but not always! (Hello to our British nemeses.) In Russia, the requirement that you carry your passport around at all times is a critical driver of economic growth, because it allows the police to extort bribes when they catch you without it. Woo. Compared to the towel, my passport is looking mighty underachieving.
That was, until I came to Israel.
My passport, in contrast, allows me to cross some imaginary lines without being shot by some very non-imaginary guns--but not always! (Hello to our North Korean friends.) To be fair, it also occasionally gets me preferential treatment at currency exchanges--but not always! (Hello to our British nemeses.) In Russia, the requirement that you carry your passport around at all times is a critical driver of economic growth, because it allows the police to extort bribes when they catch you without it. Woo. Compared to the towel, my passport is looking mighty underachieving.
That was, until I came to Israel.
Some things you need your passport to do in Israel:
-Enter the country
-Exit the country
-Get a visa to work for no money
-Pick up a package from the post office
-Join the gym
-Acquire a discount card from the grocery store
-Purchase a public transportation card
Your towel will help you do none of these things. Moreover, your towel isn't even that useful for normal, towel-like functions. This is currently my favorite part of the Internet:
Drying off is not a goal with which Israelis regularly encounter difficulties.
But do you know where they do encounter difficulties? Getting anything else in life the fuck done because you have to have your passport on you for everything. Why does my grocery store need it to give me discounts? Why does the gym care if I've been to Cuba? Of what possible use can my visa be to my bus driver? This isn't just a rant, I actually know the answers to these questions.
You see, when these places take your passport, they never just glance at it and give it back to you. They give you forms to fill out with all of your personal information, then they take your passport and forms to a mysterious back room for several minutes before returning it to you, with no explanation of what they have done with it in the meantime. Possibly because I don't have the language skills to ask. The point is, as Princess Leia once astutely observed, they're tracking us.
No doubt the Israeli government would dispute the notion that they're following my bus transfers in the hopes that I'll lead them to the rebel base. I've had some experience with how the Israeli government justifies the tabs they keep on the population, because I had to go through a rigorous background check to get my security clearance to work at the Supreme Court. Yes, the court officer asked me a series of very rigorous questions, all of which could be basically paraphrased as, "Have you ever talked to an Arab person ever?" and the penetrating follow up, "Good God, why?" Then she checked the box for alcohol use without bothering to ask me about it, made me waive my medical confidentiality, and sent me on my way.
Let's back up to the part where she made me waive my medical confidentiality. I made a bit of a stink about this, which surprised the security officer almost as much as encountering a Jewish person with no family or friends in Israel, not to mention one who had talked to Arabs ever. After failing to soothe my ruffled feathers with the ol' classic "If you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't mind if we comb through the results of your last pap smear" line (note: if I had anything to hide, I certainly wouldn't be hiding it there), she assured me, in a pretty legit display of quick thinking, that they would never look at these records unless I had a medical emergency at the Court and they needed to know how to treat it. I suppose because having the security guards access my medical records themselves in this situation would somehow, in an amazing feat of efficiency and competency by the intelligence bureaucracy, be more useful than calling an ambulance?
Uh-huh. And the bus service is tracking my movements in case I'm on a bus that gets blown up and they need to identify the victims. No, I'm pretty sure the buses are recording my whereabouts in case I am, in fact, the terrorist, and the security officers who want a peek at my medical history are about equally concerned with my personal well-being. But with the crack team of grocery store cashiers, bus drivers, and postmen on the case, they know I'd be a fool to try anything. Next time someone in Israel asks me for my passport, I'm handing them a towel.
Mossad, this one's for you:
Note: I sat on this post for a several days, until I found out that I did, in fact, pass my security check. I may be indignant, and as my friend Miguel has helpfully noted, functionally illiterate, but I'm not stupid.
-Enter the country
-Exit the country
-Get a visa to work for no money
-Pick up a package from the post office
-Join the gym
-Acquire a discount card from the grocery store
-Purchase a public transportation card
Your towel will help you do none of these things. Moreover, your towel isn't even that useful for normal, towel-like functions. This is currently my favorite part of the Internet:
Drying off is not a goal with which Israelis regularly encounter difficulties.
But do you know where they do encounter difficulties? Getting anything else in life the fuck done because you have to have your passport on you for everything. Why does my grocery store need it to give me discounts? Why does the gym care if I've been to Cuba? Of what possible use can my visa be to my bus driver? This isn't just a rant, I actually know the answers to these questions.
You see, when these places take your passport, they never just glance at it and give it back to you. They give you forms to fill out with all of your personal information, then they take your passport and forms to a mysterious back room for several minutes before returning it to you, with no explanation of what they have done with it in the meantime. Possibly because I don't have the language skills to ask. The point is, as Princess Leia once astutely observed, they're tracking us.
No doubt the Israeli government would dispute the notion that they're following my bus transfers in the hopes that I'll lead them to the rebel base. I've had some experience with how the Israeli government justifies the tabs they keep on the population, because I had to go through a rigorous background check to get my security clearance to work at the Supreme Court. Yes, the court officer asked me a series of very rigorous questions, all of which could be basically paraphrased as, "Have you ever talked to an Arab person ever?" and the penetrating follow up, "Good God, why?" Then she checked the box for alcohol use without bothering to ask me about it, made me waive my medical confidentiality, and sent me on my way.
Let's back up to the part where she made me waive my medical confidentiality. I made a bit of a stink about this, which surprised the security officer almost as much as encountering a Jewish person with no family or friends in Israel, not to mention one who had talked to Arabs ever. After failing to soothe my ruffled feathers with the ol' classic "If you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't mind if we comb through the results of your last pap smear" line (note: if I had anything to hide, I certainly wouldn't be hiding it there), she assured me, in a pretty legit display of quick thinking, that they would never look at these records unless I had a medical emergency at the Court and they needed to know how to treat it. I suppose because having the security guards access my medical records themselves in this situation would somehow, in an amazing feat of efficiency and competency by the intelligence bureaucracy, be more useful than calling an ambulance?
Uh-huh. And the bus service is tracking my movements in case I'm on a bus that gets blown up and they need to identify the victims. No, I'm pretty sure the buses are recording my whereabouts in case I am, in fact, the terrorist, and the security officers who want a peek at my medical history are about equally concerned with my personal well-being. But with the crack team of grocery store cashiers, bus drivers, and postmen on the case, they know I'd be a fool to try anything. Next time someone in Israel asks me for my passport, I'm handing them a towel.
Mossad, this one's for you:
Note: I sat on this post for a several days, until I found out that I did, in fact, pass my security check. I may be indignant, and as my friend Miguel has helpfully noted, functionally illiterate, but I'm not stupid.
Monday, June 4, 2012
Better than Birthright
A conversation at the grocery store:
Clerk: Blachdy blach blach blachdy blach.*
Me: I'm sorry, I don't speak Hebrew.
Clerk: Ah, English...Please consider making purchase of excellent store credit card, receive 5% discount off all store brand items! Card is free, excellent discounts!
Me: Do you need an Israeli passport to get the credit card?
Clerk: Ah, yes.
Me: Sorry, I'm an American citizen.
Clerk: Oh...Well, please make Aliyah, and then receive store credit card for all discounts!
This is by far the most convincing argument for making Aliyah that I've ever heard.
*("Blach" is Hebrew for "blah.")
Clerk: Blachdy blach blach blachdy blach.*
Me: I'm sorry, I don't speak Hebrew.
Clerk: Ah, English...Please consider making purchase of excellent store credit card, receive 5% discount off all store brand items! Card is free, excellent discounts!
Me: Do you need an Israeli passport to get the credit card?
Clerk: Ah, yes.
Me: Sorry, I'm an American citizen.
Clerk: Oh...Well, please make Aliyah, and then receive store credit card for all discounts!
This is by far the most convincing argument for making Aliyah that I've ever heard.
*("Blach" is Hebrew for "blah.")
My kitchen is Hogwarts
My roommates are studying to be Jewish school teachers, so the apartment is kosher and the common areas are Shomer Shabbat (i.e., no electricity on Saturdays). I knew this going in, but there's a difference between intellectually acknowledging a radical lifestyle change and actually arriving in a country after 18 hours of physical travel and 7 hours of time travel and realizing that you can't make some toast right now because God says "no." (I unintentionally scheduled my arrival for a Jewish holiday, many of which are celebrated without the benefits of electricity. Or carrying. Or stringed instruments. If you're a time traveler for whom these things are important, plan accordingly.)
Like I said, I did have advance warning, and like any true member of the Scooby-Doo generation, I had a plan. My plan was to basically go vegetarian for the summer. This would allow me to handle with ease the main rule of the kosher kitchen, which is not to mix meat and dairy. Actually, since my arrival, I've incidentally eaten entirely vegan, so all I've cooked is pareve (food that is neither meat, dairy, nor tref), which is universally kosher.
I arrived on Sunday. By Tuesday, I had managed to de-kosher the dishes. How did this happen? Let me explain.
The Jewish kitchen is governed by the laws of kashrut, or, as I have come to think of it, magic. This magic is a magic of transfiguration. Not only must meat and dairy foods be kept separate, but so must meat and dairy cookware, because vegetables that are prepared in a dairy pot become dairy, and vegetables prepared in a meat pot become meat. Hence, one can, as I have done, prepare pareve stir-fry that de-koshers, or as the Jews say, confuses, or as I say, magics my dishes. How? Prepare part of the stir-fry in a dairy frying pan and the other part in a meat wok, and then combine in the same pot. Boom, baby! Your pot is no longer a simple kosher pot, but something altogether more sinister and alarming, in no small part because it's also apparently developed the ability to feel. If mixing green beans from a meat pot and peppers from a dairy pot can confuse a dish, if you put shrimp in it, does the pot level up to outright hostility? The sages don't say. This is how one performs kosher magic.
This magic is way more powerful than that boasted by other religions. To give you some perspective, Jesus turned water into wine. Child's play. I can turn water into hot dogs, just by boiling it in the wrong pot. I can turn quinoa into alfredo sauce and chickpeas into cheese balls, all with the power of my bewitched cutlery. It's like a superpower that I can only use for evil, since the only apparent use of this magic is to de-sanctify my dishes, the re-kashering of which requires an entirely new magic ritual of its very own.
There are some people so afraid of this awesome responsibility, that they keep THREE SEPARATE KITCHENS (meat, dairy, Passover) in order to accidentally avoid triggering their wizardry. My roommate vouches for having been in one of these houses. This cannot possibly be necessary, or else my roommate's acquaintances would be the only actually kosher people. Bear in mind that most of the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are on welfare and probably keep it to a modest number of kitchens, unless the Orthodox Jews live in apartments that are actually only kitchen. I have not heard that this is the case.
I'm pretty sure I've managed to control my powers since the Miracle of the Stir-Fry, but there's just no telling when they'll next escape my grasp. I'll never understand why magic in the Potter-verse is so hard. The kids have to bring every ounce of concentration to bear just to transfigure a simple potato into steak, and most of them suck at it. I have to concentrate that hard just not to engage in spectacular displays of sorcery every time I turn on the stove. Where's my acceptance to Hogwarts?
Like I said, I did have advance warning, and like any true member of the Scooby-Doo generation, I had a plan. My plan was to basically go vegetarian for the summer. This would allow me to handle with ease the main rule of the kosher kitchen, which is not to mix meat and dairy. Actually, since my arrival, I've incidentally eaten entirely vegan, so all I've cooked is pareve (food that is neither meat, dairy, nor tref), which is universally kosher.
I arrived on Sunday. By Tuesday, I had managed to de-kosher the dishes. How did this happen? Let me explain.
The Jewish kitchen is governed by the laws of kashrut, or, as I have come to think of it, magic. This magic is a magic of transfiguration. Not only must meat and dairy foods be kept separate, but so must meat and dairy cookware, because vegetables that are prepared in a dairy pot become dairy, and vegetables prepared in a meat pot become meat. Hence, one can, as I have done, prepare pareve stir-fry that de-koshers, or as the Jews say, confuses, or as I say, magics my dishes. How? Prepare part of the stir-fry in a dairy frying pan and the other part in a meat wok, and then combine in the same pot. Boom, baby! Your pot is no longer a simple kosher pot, but something altogether more sinister and alarming, in no small part because it's also apparently developed the ability to feel. If mixing green beans from a meat pot and peppers from a dairy pot can confuse a dish, if you put shrimp in it, does the pot level up to outright hostility? The sages don't say. This is how one performs kosher magic.
This magic is way more powerful than that boasted by other religions. To give you some perspective, Jesus turned water into wine. Child's play. I can turn water into hot dogs, just by boiling it in the wrong pot. I can turn quinoa into alfredo sauce and chickpeas into cheese balls, all with the power of my bewitched cutlery. It's like a superpower that I can only use for evil, since the only apparent use of this magic is to de-sanctify my dishes, the re-kashering of which requires an entirely new magic ritual of its very own.
There are some people so afraid of this awesome responsibility, that they keep THREE SEPARATE KITCHENS (meat, dairy, Passover) in order to accidentally avoid triggering their wizardry. My roommate vouches for having been in one of these houses. This cannot possibly be necessary, or else my roommate's acquaintances would be the only actually kosher people. Bear in mind that most of the ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel are on welfare and probably keep it to a modest number of kitchens, unless the Orthodox Jews live in apartments that are actually only kitchen. I have not heard that this is the case.
I'm pretty sure I've managed to control my powers since the Miracle of the Stir-Fry, but there's just no telling when they'll next escape my grasp. I'll never understand why magic in the Potter-verse is so hard. The kids have to bring every ounce of concentration to bear just to transfigure a simple potato into steak, and most of them suck at it. I have to concentrate that hard just not to engage in spectacular displays of sorcery every time I turn on the stove. Where's my acceptance to Hogwarts?
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Kids, pay attention in Hebrew school, or you will end up eating wax paper
I've decided to keep this blog and start updating it from my current location in Jerusalem, Israel, rather than start a new one, mostly because I've already got five defunct blogs in my Blogger account, and I felt like my Internet was getting cluttered. Jerusalem doesn't exactly get any white nights, but then again, neither did Russia in December 2008, when I started this blog. Please direct all complaints to Rupert Murdoch. About anything, not just this.
So, the first thing I notice about living in Israel is that living in foreign country when you can't read the alphabet is tricky. Well, to be specific, living in a foreign country where you can technically read the alphabet, but not easily, and you can't sound out (and therefore easily recognize or memorize) any of the words, because they aren't written with vowels, is tricky. Nowhere was this more apparent to me than at the grocery store. There, I was forcefully reminded of a book from my childhood called "The Man Who Couldn't Read," which was, intuitively, about a man who couldn't read, who depends on his wife for all of the shopping. One day, she leaves for a trip, and he has to go to the store himself, where he figures out what items to buy based on the shape of their packaging. Thus he ends up with wax paper instead of spaghetti, and all other kinds of inedibles. My first thought when reflecting on this book is, what kind of grocery store is this, where the wax paper and spaghetti are indistinguishable? I mean, spaghetti mostly comes in containers that have a see-through panel, or at least a picture of wheat. Wax paper containers come with a tin-foil saw blade. Saw v. wheat. Why didn't he go for the wheat? Fool.
My second thought is, holy shit, shopping for groceries when all you can do is rely on pictures and see-through panels is really effing hard. Okay, I found the spaghetti, but I can't tell which brand cost what without painstakingly, letter by letter (or as far as I'm concerned, squiggle by squiggle), comparing the price sticky to the labels, and I still don't know what the sales mean. More importantly, the pictures only get you so far. This can I am holding, with the tomatoes on the front: is it whole tomatoes? Diced tomatoes? Tomato puree? Tomato paste? Rat poison for your tomatoes? Only time, a can-opener, and daring will tell. This brown-looking bread: is it whole wheat? Honey wheat? Multigrain? White bread in brown-tinted packaging? I don't even know what is happening in the dairy aisle. There are tubs of stuff, some of which I cannot digest, some of which I don't want to digest, and some of which are precious food items that I do want to digest, but all in utterly indistinguishable packaging. Thank God (so much easier here!) soymilk is imported from some foreign brand that doesn't label their products in hieroglyphics.
Sidenote: For some reason, the grocery store sells only tiny jars of critical foods like spaghetti sauce and only jumbo bottles of shampoo and body wash. This is aggravating now, but after the End Times come (and let's face it, the chances are higher here than anywhere else), and we have only our pre-existing stock to rely on, the Israelis are going to smell the nicest the longest.
Anyways, new plan: go to a firm next summer, make all of the money, call Pat Sajak, and buy some vowels to donate to Israel. If I never update again, you know what was in the tomato can.
So, the first thing I notice about living in Israel is that living in foreign country when you can't read the alphabet is tricky. Well, to be specific, living in a foreign country where you can technically read the alphabet, but not easily, and you can't sound out (and therefore easily recognize or memorize) any of the words, because they aren't written with vowels, is tricky. Nowhere was this more apparent to me than at the grocery store. There, I was forcefully reminded of a book from my childhood called "The Man Who Couldn't Read," which was, intuitively, about a man who couldn't read, who depends on his wife for all of the shopping. One day, she leaves for a trip, and he has to go to the store himself, where he figures out what items to buy based on the shape of their packaging. Thus he ends up with wax paper instead of spaghetti, and all other kinds of inedibles. My first thought when reflecting on this book is, what kind of grocery store is this, where the wax paper and spaghetti are indistinguishable? I mean, spaghetti mostly comes in containers that have a see-through panel, or at least a picture of wheat. Wax paper containers come with a tin-foil saw blade. Saw v. wheat. Why didn't he go for the wheat? Fool.
My second thought is, holy shit, shopping for groceries when all you can do is rely on pictures and see-through panels is really effing hard. Okay, I found the spaghetti, but I can't tell which brand cost what without painstakingly, letter by letter (or as far as I'm concerned, squiggle by squiggle), comparing the price sticky to the labels, and I still don't know what the sales mean. More importantly, the pictures only get you so far. This can I am holding, with the tomatoes on the front: is it whole tomatoes? Diced tomatoes? Tomato puree? Tomato paste? Rat poison for your tomatoes? Only time, a can-opener, and daring will tell. This brown-looking bread: is it whole wheat? Honey wheat? Multigrain? White bread in brown-tinted packaging? I don't even know what is happening in the dairy aisle. There are tubs of stuff, some of which I cannot digest, some of which I don't want to digest, and some of which are precious food items that I do want to digest, but all in utterly indistinguishable packaging. Thank God (so much easier here!) soymilk is imported from some foreign brand that doesn't label their products in hieroglyphics.
Sidenote: For some reason, the grocery store sells only tiny jars of critical foods like spaghetti sauce and only jumbo bottles of shampoo and body wash. This is aggravating now, but after the End Times come (and let's face it, the chances are higher here than anywhere else), and we have only our pre-existing stock to rely on, the Israelis are going to smell the nicest the longest.
Anyways, new plan: go to a firm next summer, make all of the money, call Pat Sajak, and buy some vowels to donate to Israel. If I never update again, you know what was in the tomato can.
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