My thoughts about the Israel Food Tour I participated on earlier this month were just published on The Jew & The Carrot, Hazon’s blog. You can read the full text on their site or below the jump.

Living in Tel Aviv means that I take a lot of things related to food for granted. I know that when I go to the market, veggies will be much, much cheaper than packaged foods and fresher than most places in America. I know that nearly any time of day or night I can order a latte and sit with my computer for hours, without anyone rushing me to leave. I also know that the season for tomatoes is more similar to the one I grew up with in California than the one I got used to coping with in New York. Those are everyday kinds of things that I’ve learned after more than a year of living in Israel.

But last week I had the pleasure of exploring the food landscape of Israel from a new angle as a participant on the Israel Sustainable Food Tour, sponsored by Hazon and the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership. Jeremy Benstein of the Heschel Center crafted a tasty and interesting itinerary that kept us moving and eating across the country. I was treated to meals in restaurants I never would have found on my own, visited farms where folks are doing incredible work, and met outstanding people who are invested in food issues here in Israel. We explored themes that I spend a lot of time thinking about but less time engaging hands on.

We learned about the links between poverty, nutritional insecurity, and waste in Israel when we gleaned at Leket’s farm. The above photo shows me with Judith Belasco, Director of Hazon programs shlepping clementines we picked there. Inspired by Deuteronomy 24:19 we harvested fruit to be distributed to food-insecure families in Israel. (I’ve long been impressed with the food rescue work of Leket and encourage everyone to do a program with them on your next trip to Israel.)

Visiting the organic dairy at Kibbutz Harduf (and the tasty vegetarian meal that followed!) was a chance for me to think about my values and my wallet. The Kibbutz is one of a handful of places in Israel that follow the teachings of Rudolph Steiner, the man who inspired Waldorf educational methods and biodynamic farming. Love Steiner or hate him, the dairy at Harduf has applied his teachings into two impressive endeavors. Firstly, they invented an innovative manure composting method. They successfully deal with the immense amount of dung produced even in small-scale dairies. Without going into too much detail, let’s just say everyone on the tour was pretty impressed with their stellar management of a major challenge. But the farm itself and its sustainable practices aren’t just environmental — they’re societal as well. The Kibbutz provides therapeutic and residential services for a community of young adults, and part of their therapy is working on the farm and in the dairy. Their work is amazing, their cows happy; yet, I can’t bring myself to pay double the cost of a product that’s already so expensive here in Israel. And, as it turns out, neither can most Israelis. There isn’t enough of a demand in Israel for organic milk, so some of what they produce at Harduf is sold with the rest of the cow’s milk on the market as non-organic.

Our journey took us to the village of Kafar Manda. That was a chance for me to think about our relationship to our non-Jewish neighbors and citizens of Israel. A Muslim Arab farmer named Ali hosted us on his small land. The weather was perfect and we enjoyed sweet minty tea, coffee, and freshly made tabbouli and pita smothered in za’atar. While exploring his crops I enjoyed trying to learn the names for veggies in Arabic (a radish is “فجل” which sounds a bit to me like fujaleh). When I asked if I could buy about $5 worth of vegetables from him to take home to Tel Aviv, his daughter Fatima filled a huge bag with chard, spinach, cilantro, carrots, radishes, and other fresh treats that I shared with friends for the next week. Ali told the group that he likes growing for the CSA type project טפרית מקומי (tafrit m’kumi, or “Local Menu”) because he gets better prices for his vegetables and because he can grow a diversity of things that people in his village don’t eat, like beets, basil, and other treats. I was lucky to take his veggies home and to feel so welcomed by his family, but I wonder if he would have the same reception in the homes of my neighbors in Tel Aviv.

My travels with the Hazon Heschel food tour ended too soon, but it is nice to come back to a normal routine where I can incorporate some of the things I learned into my own shopping and cooking. I continue to struggle with the questions we raised and to think about the amazing people we met.

Mint tea anyone?

"I am also one of the million"

I suppose I have something to say too given that we went to the protests both this week and last. Admittedly, protests aren’t my scene — they’re loud and crowded and a bit overwhelming but it seemed too important not to go.

For those of you who haven’t been following this part of the news from Israel you can learn about it here. I’ve been away for much of the summer and missed a lot of the energy, but I was here for the “biggest protest in Israel’s history.” (A couple more links to the Guardian and the NYTimes.)

The phrase “social justice” is vague in English and Hebrew — but I can’t imagine Americans even asking for it in the public square. But the vagueness reminds me of the Obama “Change” slogan — effective for building a movement, not so clear for implementation.

Admittedly reading signs in Hebrew as I walked past people is hard for me, but the themes were varied — from the anarchist to the more standard leftist. Lots of anti-Bibi messages, the protest about the price of cottage cheese, some signs referencing bible quotes, giant puppets of Herzl and Ben Gurion, people for legalization of marijuana and a couple of signs against the occupation. But the general feeling on the street was that you should be there – you should be taking part. We got home close to 1:30 am and it felt like 10 pm. Tel Aviv is a late night city, but last night it felt like everyone was outside and happy to be together.

Well, not everyone. I would be interested in seeing photos from some of the other cities. I didn’t see many kippot, certainly no one dressed ultra-orthodox, saw one small group of Ethiopians and felt like most of the people out looked like me: 20-35 year olds. there were some families with young kids and some “pensioners.” Maybe those demographics are because we were in Tel Aviv, but it did not feel like the TLV that I see in the shuk when old ladies and their Phillapina helpers shop and African men stock the veggies…this is a middle class, Ashkenzai movement that may not be ready to deal with its foreign-worker-sojourners and the demands they’re placing on this society. I didn’t see Arabs last night either, but I did see one sign in Hebrew and Arabic – not sure what it said.

Anyway. I’m glad we went. I’ll be interested, like everyone, to see what’s next.

That damn slogan is stuck in my head:
העם דורש צדק חברתי
(the people demand social justice)

Tuesday was our last day of volunteering with the Yaakov Maimon program at the absorption center just outside of Jerusalem. Each week, a vanful of Pardes students went to be big brothers and big sisters to groups of children on the periphery of Israeli society. The people living in Mevasseret are the most recent and the final olim (immigrants) from Ethiopia. The story of this aliya (immigration) is fascinating and worth learning about. Our work involved lots of activities for the children – blowing bubbles, playing ball, making masks for purim, doing homework…the experience was hugely challenging for our group in – what does it mean to be role models for children? How do we communicate with kids with whom we barely have a common language? How are we supposed to welcome them into “Israeli society” when we’re the sojourners and they’re the immigrants? What happens to them after we disappear from their lives? Obviously these are important questions that will remain relevant and I was lucky to have Pardes’ support with time and transportation and other logistical needs that enabled me to do this work. I certainly will miss it.

Too busy living these last few months to be good at putting my thoughts down on the blog – but I just wrote this piece for Pardes about why I decided to learn Talmud as a grown up. Enjoy – and if you’re considering doing some adult Jewish learning Pardes is a place worth considering. I’m happy to answer any questions, obviously!

Read the post here. Photo credit goes to Ilana HaCohen.

I have lots to learn about the Ethiopian immigration to Israel – and will likely start by reading this wikipedia article. But it is especially relevant as I spend every Tuesday afternoon as a “big sister” hanging out in an absorption center just outside of Jerusalem. The family I’m assigned to is a mother about my age, a father I’ve never met and 4 kids (ages 12, 9, 6 and 1.5). I spend most of my time with Mom, the 6 year old and the baby. Mom and I communicate in poor Hebrew (hers is sadly, poorer than mine) and the kids and I make do in Hebrew as well. There’s a lot to say about race and class in Israeli society – but what I’ve observed (in the simplest and most micro terms possible) is that 1) mom doesn’t have a lot of extra food in the pantry; 2) mom is illiterate in Hebrew and Amharic; 3) the playground we play in is covered in broken glass and has no play structures in it. It would be nice if by the end of the year of volunteering I knew a bit more about the experience of Ethiopians in Israel and the process of making Aliyah as a non-Anglo. You can see a couple of photos from my experience here (mostly of my photogenic and charming 6 year-old friend).

The long weekend I spent in Cairo hardly does justice to understanding the city of more than 7 million people, established over a thousand years ago which serves as the “capital” of the Arab world. We traveled as a gang of 5 — 2 men (one of whom spoke good Arabic from having lived in Egypt for nearly a year, the other who could say just enough to get a big grin and a pat on the back for being so cute) and 3 women. Various friends of mine have spent a bit of time living in Cairo – and so with warnings from them not to travel alone as a woman, I was particularly glad to go with this gang.

• Drinking LOTS of sweet mint tea and Turkish coffee.
• Seeing Tutankhamun’s burial mask.
• Eating Kosheri – which isn’t what it sounds like. It’s basically pasta with lentils and onions and tomato sauce – twas yummy.

I’ll have more photos and (hopefully) reflections to share later — but for now, that’s Cairo on one foot (’cause the longer I wait to share my thoughts the less likely it is that I’ll do it!).

These last few weeks I’ve been based in Haifa, spending a lot of my time at the University attending ulpan. I’m in ‘כתה ג which means I’m basically an advanced beginner and our classes are conducted entirely in Hebrew — though spoken clearly and slowly by our teacher Devorah. The class is a huge mix of people. About half of us are American Jews ranging in age from 20 to 30. There’s one “new” oleh who’s lived in Israel for 7 years and came here from Sibera. There’s a set of Moroccan brothers who live in Paris and who are working towards making alyiah and a retired doctor who lives in Angers, France. There are 2 Poles, both of whom study Jewish history in Krakow, one of whom sings in Yiddish beautifully and neither of whom are Jewish. We also have the only student from Azerbajan to ever attend ulpan at the University and 3 people who live in Germany, one of Spanish origin and one of Aramaic origin (if anyone can explain to me what she means by this, please let me know. She’s Christian, but I can’t quite sort out what it means to be ethnically Aramaic). Not everyone is pictured above, but many of us are.

My favorite thing is meeting people who’d rather speak in Hebrew than English because English is also not their mother-tongue. Some days I ride the bus with a Japanese girl who is more comfortable in Hebrew than English, so we speak in Hebrew together (she’s actually a class or 2 ahead of me!).

Last week we watched a film called Gey-Oni in ulpan and heard from Israeli filmmaker Dan Wolman speak about his adaptation of Shulamit Lapid‘s novel by the same name about the establishment of the community we now call Rosh Pinna. When the film is actually released (this was the second screening ever) go see it! The story is about a new olah in the 1st aliyah from Russia and her marriage to a Jew who was raised in Jaffa – among many other things. I found it quite powerful, and I loved the use of languages in the first quarter of the film. In order to show the disorientation of a new immigrant to the country Wolman made use of Russian, Yiddish, Turkish in addition to Hebrew, all of which had subtitles in Hebrew and English, but do change the feeling of the film. Of course, it was extra fun because I sat next to our Azerbijani student who would help me distinguish Russian from Turkish – and I was surprised by how much of the gist of the Yiddish I was able to catch.

This week I also did two things entirely in Hebrew that were fun adventures — dance salsa and practice yoga. There are lots of words connected to the body and movement that I still don’t really know well, but I was impressed that I was able to get through both of those events without hurting myself or someone else or falling down. I have just a week left in Haifa, but I’m optimistic that there will be other all-Hebrew adventures to come while I’m still in the North.

This weekend I got invited to join old friends of mine, Annie and Shimron at their friend’s home in Akko. I was excited to see them, especially because the last time I saw them together they came to stay with me in NY on their way to Israel 2 years ago. They have a friend, Anna, who lives in Akko and studies in Haifa — and so we stayed with her for shabbat. Besides the wonderful food (I’ve got to get the recipe for the fish stew she made for us) her apartment was amazing. We had views of the ocean from the spacious living room, which had tall ceilings with amazing details and bright colors. We watched the sun set into the sea on Friday night from Anna’s rooftop, and then again on Saturday night from the top of the walls of the old city.

Anna is not just an amazing hostess and cook, she also is a tour guide to the Old City of Akko which means that Shabbat morning she took us on a private walking tour of Akko. She told us stories about the time Napoleon failed to capture the city because the Ottomans took to rearranging the city walls overnight to stump enemy troops (who, btw, had dysentery). We didn’t go into the Templar tunnels because there’s a charge — but we did have the key to the synagogue of the Ramchal. The major highlights there included 1) a Torah made of deerhide parchment and pomegranate-seed ink and 2) seeing the ancient bima (stage) which was one flight down. Anna explained one historical reason for this (and a couple of theological reasons). One theory goes that in the time that Jews lived under Muslim rule, though the Muslims were accepting of other religions, they still wouldn’t allow anyone else’s buildings to be higher than theirs. So, the synagogue gets built down, into the basement.

The old city of Akko is presently 95% Arab and we did see very few other (identifiable) Jews while we were out and about. Anna took us down a narrow street where a local man lives, telling us we could get to see the work of one of the old city’s artists. This man worked as a contractor and has lived in the old city for 75 years. He’s taken to decorating the walls of the alley where he lives with lively paintings, inspired by traffic signals. He let us into his house and showed us how he’d decorated his walls with mosaics. Then he took us into a building across the street from his house that has been unoccupied for at least 10+ years that a French Jew bought and is going to refurbish. The place needs tons of work (it seems to have no wiring, no glass and no water) – but is incredible – with huge ceilings and amazing mosaics. He told us that the building is the tallest in the old city, and from the third floor we did get a chance to look out over everyone’s rooftops.

After the sun began to go down we walked out to see the sunset. Just outside of Anna’s door and the fig tree which is busy dropping ripe figs, sat a big group of Arab women, picking leaves off a plant and getting it ready to cook with chicken. I couldn’t keep the name of the plant in my head in arabic it is something like “nchml.” They took one look at my friend Annie who’s 36 weeks pregnant and started guessing the sex of the baby based on how she was carrying. We all had a good chat and wished each other a shavuah tov.

Annie and Shimron drove me back to Haifa, and on our way out after shabbat and we bought discounted juices (OJ and pomegranate) from the guy who makes fresh juices downstairs. He even threw in a piece of cold watermelon, just to be extra sweet.

Visiting Akko was a wonderful window into the Western Galilee. I’ll be so focused on the life of the center of Israel while living in Jerusalem that it was very special to get a chance to see a tiny bit of the rest of the country.

At the request of my uncle, I sit down now to pen a few more thoughts about Cambodia.

Most of the second week I spent in Cambodia I was in Siem Reap (defeat of Siam/Thailand – classy name for a city, eh?). Ever since tourists have traveled to Cambodia, as far back as the French at the turn of the last century, they’ve gone to check out the Temples at Ankor. The airport was the nicest I’d traveled through in Asia and the city itself certianly makes itself a comfortable destination for tourists from around the world with lots of yummy food and fish massages.

Sarah and I trapsed around a lot of temples. We spent a total of 3 days climbing around, shvitzing and taking photos with cool old stuff in Ankor. Apparently, I find out now that I’m no longer there, tourists like us may be the cause of some serious destruction to the sandstone buildings — but we didn’t really give it a thought while we were scrambling over tumbled down temples.

Some highlights from the temples we saw:

• Banteay Srei - red sandstone and amazingly intricate, well preserved carvings. Srei means “women” and people say that the place could only have been carved by women because of the finely detailed work. Sarah and I had a debate later on about gender essentalism, which was fun.
• Kbal Spean - not a temple exactly, more like a bizillion phalluses carved into a riverbed (for fertility, of course). And a lovely waterfall where we cooled down for a moment before the hordes of school children came to play.
• Bayon – we saw the iconic faces (over 200) of the heavenly realm after exploring the narratives of the inner and outer galleries

and many more. Some important words and images to know when touring temples in Cambodia:

• naga – a serpent, often guarding gods or the buddha
• apsara – a “celestial nymph,” basically a pretty lady who dances on the walls of temples
• balustrade - I had NO idea what this was until I just looked it up. All  the tour guides talked about it like, “duh, I can’t believe you’ve never heard of this.” Well, it seems to be a fancy word for handrail. In temples in Cambodia, they are often decorated with a naga.

And as for mythology, there’s a lot that I don’t know. The churning of the ocean of milk was a popular story that kept coming up. And, there was a time when “Vishu defeats the devils” on one of the bas reliefs at Ankor Wat.  I, of course, heard Sarah say “gerbils” and then couldn’t stop laughing, both at that image and at my easy confusion.

If there was any doubt in your mind, GO see the temples at Ankor. The place is amazing. As I’ve said before and I’ll continue to say again, “old shit is cool” and it may not be around forever.

The night before the wedding I asked a couple of the guys at the front desk “what should we wear? anything special” and in the course of the conversation, we figured we should wear our long skirts and cover our shoulders. We were advised to wear makeup — alas, neither of us had any. But even if we had what we might normally wear at home, it wouldn’t be enough for us to look like we were supposed to be at the wedding. So, we wore our best (dirty) clothes and waited for our ride Sunday morning. There was some kind of miscommunication about exactly when we were getting picked up, so we waited a long time. When our ride finally arrived there were lots of jokes about how our male driver took too long to do his hair and makeup. Could be, though, the woman in the front seat had put a lot of time into getting dressed. In fact, all of the women at the wedding were amazingly coiffed, wearing 80s-style dresses and fake eyelashes. One of the men also wore spikey, gelled hair with glitter in it (and eyeliner). We were underdressed, without question.

I’d seen a couple of wedding parties in Cambodia – there’s generally a big tented area, filled with colored chairs and tables overflowing with food and drink. The entrance is marked by two columns decorated with fruit (bananas and coconuts) spray painted silver and gold. This wedding was no different. As we walked in, we each got handed a gold pen, decorated with tulle. Thanks!

We missed the official ceremony, but did get enjoy the reception. After a short while it came clear that Sarah and I were each being treated as “one of the boys.” We were expected to drink and dance with the men, while the women (all of whom were dressed more appropriately, I suppose) chatted quietly. There was a lot of “cheers!-ing” and we were expected to keep our glasses full of light beer and ice. Then, at some point it was time to dance. We were lucky we’d had so much practice from looking at all the temples – the men danced a bit like apsara dancers. Sarah describes Khmer dancing as standing around looking bored, and turning pages in invisible books. I wish I had a video to share, but you’ll have to imagine the two Jewish girls and the 10+ Khmer men walking around in a slow circle, turning pages in invisible books….

After most of the eating (each dish had at least 1, some up to 3 kinds of treyf) someone passed out envelopes. Then, you used the pen that you got handed when you came in to put your name on an envelope and give the happy couple a bit of cash. Sarah and I already brought a note and a gift, but it soon became clear that we’d gotten our pens from the bride herself. Woops! Her role at the wedding seemed to be to 1) hand out pens 2) change clothes about every hour 3) to pose for pictures with the folks attending the wedding.

All in all, it was a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon!