Like my sisters and brothers around the world I am busy getting ready for the upcoming Rosh Hashana holiday. This year the New Year begins on Wednesday night and on Thursday and Friday we gather in our synagogues to hear the shofar blown. Then without any further ado we go right into Shabbat. All this heralds a marathon of eats and on Rosh Hashana we go all out with symbolic foods signifying all the good things we wish for ourselves and our community in the coming year. For a thoughtful discussion of these symbolic foods you should read this post by The Rebbitzin's Husband . You might also be interested in this post of Leora's about the symbolic foods.
While we're on the subject of cooking for this amazing holiday let me remind you to take a look at the Tishrei edition of the Kosher Cooking Carnival at Cooking Outside the Box a delightful blog with lots of interesting ideas while the Elul edition of the Kosher Cooking Carnival is up over at Me-ander .
Batya Medad
Rabbanit Yemima intoduced by Tzofia Dorot
And speaking of Batya, my favorite Shilo resident, I had a lovely experience at Tel Shilo where both she and I attended the Tfilat Hannah and heard the inspirational Rabbanit Yemima Mizrahi. I hope to write separately about this moving experience. She was followed by concert given by Leah Shabbat and Tal Bril.
The event was organized by Ancient Shilo which runs tours of the archaeological dig at the site where the Tabernacle stood. Besides Batya I also ran into a very good looking reservist who was called up especially to guard us and the approximately two thousand other women and young girls who attended this event. This particular reservist also worked as a guide at this site when he lived in the nearby settlement Eli. He also happens to be my son. How thoughtful of the army.
Yesterday I traveled to Tel Shiloh for the the Rosh Chodesh visit to the site where the Mishkan (tabernacle) stood for 369 years and where Channa prayed to God to grant her a child. She become the model on which our sages based the halachot (rules) for prayer, until this very day. The tel overlooks the road which goes from the Shiloh settlement to Eli and onwards to Ariel.
Once again we witnessed an 'only in Israel' moment!
At the tel we met a group of soldiers fully equipped who were passing through. One of them took out tfillin and put them on. As they were leaving I asked them how they happened to be in the area and they explained that they were on patrol. The Hebrew word for patrol is si'ur (סיור) which is also the word for touring around and so it could also mean just passing by and looking at the sights. So we joked with them that they were protecting us with their prayers as well as their guns.
I had a wonderful time having spent the rest of the day with f2f with Batya eating a healthy lunch and redecorating her blogs.
Chodesh Tov!
From May to say the end of October the weather 'forecasts' here in Israel are pretty boring. Creative weather reporting consists of 'hot', 'temperatures hotter than normal for the season', 'seasonably hot', 'a small drop in temperature' and these last few weeks we have been hearing the phrase 'extreme heat'. Now certain parts of the country, like our hometown of Rehovot, can have 80% humidity and on an 'extreme heat' day just walking across the street can produce the sensation of walking through a hot mist. On days like those Rehovot folk dream of being the hilly areas like Jerusalem and the Gallil where we think it's better because the humidity is lower.
To escape the humidity and because we love the views and the music we booked a zimmer in Tzfat (or Safed, if you prefer). A zimmer (from the German word for room) is a room or small apartment, usually attached to a home which can be equipped with a bath or shower and sometimes a fancy 'jacuzzi' and some kind of kitchen corner usually with a fridge. Fortunately ours was air conditioned because humidity or no, it was HOT.
In recent years, Tzfat has become famous for hosting a Klezmer Festival where over three evenings there are over 100 performances in eight spots in the historic section of the city. Thousands of people sit on plastic chairs or the stone steps of amphitheaters and enjoy traditional Jewish music.Besides the festival itself, Giora Feidman (who has done more than anyone to popularize and revitalize the genre) has been organizing master classes in clarinet. He invites master musicians from around the world and students come and learn from them. In the evenings there are free concerts which are open to the public. These are less formal and include performances by the master virtuosos as well as the students. This year we visited Tzfat when the master classes were being held.
On Friday afternoon there was a 'Kabalat Shabbat' (welcoming the sabbath) concert in the Abuhav Synagogue. The synagogue is named afterRabbi Yitzchak Abuhav, a 15th century Spanish rabbi. and was built to resemble Spanish synagogues incorporating kabbalistic symbols into the design. It was recently refurbished. It was an amazing experience. The musicians played lovely traditional shabbat music in various arrangements. At one point some of the women musicians came up to the balcony where I was sitting and continued playing along with the musicians playing downstairs. It gave new meaning to music-in-the-round! After having spent the morning exploring the old Jewish quarter and visiting the city's first cheese factory this concert was the perfect way to prepare for a really restful Shabbat in this beautiful city. Below is a clip of Chanan Bar-Sela who is one of the moving forces behind the Klezmer Festival and the master classes and concerts. The man getting his picture taken with the talented musician is the mayor of Tzfat.
One sweltering Friday morning in August I accompanied a few young members of our family on an outing to Tel Aviv. Our destination was the open air arts and crafts fair held every Tuesday and Friday at the Nachlat Binyamin pedestrian mall which is right next to the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv. Unfortunately the fair itself has no English website (that I could find) but there is a photo gallery here on the Hebrew site.
Tel Aviv got it's start in the area when the first homes outside Jaffa were built by the "Ahuzat Bayit" group which got started in 1909.(Tel Aviv just finished celebrating it's 100th anniversary.) The Nachlat Binyamin neighborhood was founded just after that (1911) and the homes there were less expensive than the Ahuzat Bayit ones. It seems that the source of the name Nachlat Binyamin is disputed. One story is that that the founders applied for financial help from both the JNF (Jewish National Fund, an organization which collected money from Jews in the diaspora to fund land and forestation projects in what became the State of Israel) and from Baron Rothschild. They said that if the JNF gives the money we"ll say it's named for Binyamin Ze'ev (Theodore) Herzl and if Baron Rothschild come through then it will be for Binyamin (Edmond) Rothschild.
The neighborhood has long since lost its lost its original character and now has Tel Aviv's unique mixture of 100 years of architecture. Some of the buildings are better preserved than others but you can still see the old grandeur.
The fair it self is colorful, crowded and lots of fun. There is even some street entertainment. Below are some photos of the craftspeople and their wares. By the way, to participants have to be selling their own wares (so that you actually meet the artists themselves).
L'chaim!
It's no secret that it's been a very hot summer here (and it appears elsewhere too) but still this is the time we traditionally spend discovering 4 new 'amot' in the Land of Israel.
An amah (pl. amot) is a measurement used in the Tora and the Talmud and is generally accepted to mean the distance from your elbow to your finger-tip or about 1/2 a yard. Four amot is a phrase used to denote the space around you. For instance 4 amot is considered personal space so going 4 new amot is going somewhere you've never been before. I took David to the Tel Aviv Port. The port was set up as an alternative to Jaffa port when the Arab workers in the Jaffa port went on strike in 1936. That gave the Zionists an opportunity to build their own port and they did. It served the country during those years leading up to the statehood and especially in the War of Independence. It fell into disuse in the 1960's with the building of the brand new Ashdod port. For many years it was the home of warehouses and building supply companies and not very pretty.
That's all changed now as the area has undergone a major makeover and become a major shopping and entertainment center. There is a lovely boardwalk which is also part of Tel Aviv's bike path. The boardwalk is home to dozens of restaurants and cafes and the warehouses have been taken over by shops and galleries. There is often some kind of event on the boardwalk like the twice weekly Farmer's Market or the children's games festival. There are two kosher cafes on the boardwalk. One is Cafe Cafe and the other is Badolina.
We chose Badolina, which is the second branch of a cafe-restaurant in Gedara (just south of Rehovot) where we have eaten several times. We had fish dinners which did not disappoint us. The food was well made and artfully presented. It was early and still too hot to sit outside but the view from inside was lovely.
We have been living a 25 minute train ride from Tel Aviv for almost 15 years and this is the first time we went there together on a 'date'. We decided that we really should do this more often and put Tel Aviv back on our map!
Batya has the Kosher Cooking Carnival which is aptly named the Pre-Holiday Edition. We have a lot of eating coming up over the next two months so now is the time to begin preparing.
Last week's Haveil Havalim can be found over at Ima on (and off) the Bima. There should be a new one up soon, but if you've been vacationing (like me) you probably still have to read last week's posts to catch up. Soccer Dad, who is the founding father of Haveil Havalim, hosted this 280th edition. Yasher Koach!
We've been having a great time travelling around Israel. We visited the Israel Museum which was just re-opened after a major renovation. It was built at a time when everyone must have been young and healthy and didn't mind walking long distances in the hot sun. Joe Settler was there with his kids and has some nice pictures. (The guards warned me not to take any more pictures, so here's my only one.) So now you buy your tickets inside, in the air-conditioned entrance and walk up through a covered tunnel.
The children's museum is close to the entrance. Joe's kids enjoyed their time there. I am partial to museums that set aside special areas for children since I have very fond memories of the children's wing at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. They don't have a dedicated children's wing there anymore, they have activities for kids in groups but not just a place where your mom can take you and you can touch things and learn.
David and I spent a lot of time in the archaeology section and promised ourselves that we would come back soon to see the rest. We did come back in the evening for a lovely concert in the sculpture garden.
Rehovot is just a short ride from Jerusalem so we will be going back again.
Like my sisters and brothers around the world I am busy getting ready for the upcoming Rosh Hashana holiday. This year the New Year begins on Wednesday night and on Thursday and Friday we gather in our synagogues to hear the shofar blown. Then without any further ado we go right into Shabbat. All this heralds a marathon of eats and on Rosh Hashana we go all out with symbolic foods signifying all the good things we wish for ourselves and our community in the coming year. For a thoughtful discussion of these symbolic foods you should read this post by The Rebbitzin's Husband . You might also be interested in this post of Leora's about the symbolic foods. 
