Say It in Hebrew

“Neesh-TEH od kos!”
“Let’s have another!”

…holiday, that is. Tomorrow’s Succot–by all appearances, one of the most festive days of Jewish celebration. After I felt well enough to stagger out into town yesterday afternoon (as it was still 95 degrees), I had the bizarre feeling that I’d stumbled into New Orleans on the eve of Mardi Gras. On Herzl Street, people were decorating their balconies with an overhead layer of palm leaves and colored-foil streamers; below, in the street, more foil streamers and banners hung for sale, outside shops, along with the fuzzy-metallic garlands that we hang on Christmas trees in the U.S. On one corner, a boy and his grandfather had set up shop with a card table, and were doing a brisk business in long, leaf-woven cylinders and a strange fruit that looked like a lemon in a funhouse skinny-mirror.

Clearly, I had not been out for some time. Satisfied that town was still as interesting as ever, I wished it well and headed back to the air-conditioned apartment, where I decided I would try to decode what I’d seen (thanks to the “Judaism 101″ site, now listed in this blog’s “Links” section).

Succot, loosely, means tents or booths. On a historical level, the festival commemorates the roughly forty years that the Jews spent wandering nomadically in the desert, living in tents. Technically, it seems that one should strive to live in the sukkah (family-built tent/booth) as much as possible during the festival. The booths I saw emerging on balconies have leaf coverings overhead, three sides covered by decorated cloth, and streamers flashing in the breeze. For the last two days, you could hear hammers tapping and echoing throughout the neighborhood, as families set up their sukkahs.

The boy and his grandfather, it turns out, were selling the Four Species, four plants that have religious and symbolic value, used in Succot blessings. The lemon-looking thing was an etrog, a native Israeli citrus fruit; the woven-leaf cylinder was part of the bound lulav–a palm branch, two willow branches, and three myrtle branches.

It’s riveting to watch the holidays unfold, here–each with its own somber or joyous tone. On the secular side, coming from a culture that celebrates virtually zero late-summer holidays, it’s entertaining. From a religious angle, it’s eye-opening.

Next on our holiday list is Czech Indepdendence Day, followed shortly thereafter by Halloween (otherwise known as the Festival of Sugar). So we have a month to find respectable Czech beer and pumpkins.

“Ha-EEM zeh muh-da-BAYK?”
“Is it contagious?”

The worst day in Israel to come down with a raging cold is Saturday. From dawn until dusk, nothing is open. After dusk, grocery stores open for a while, but none have the standard cough-and-cold-remedy aisle that Americans take for granted; pharmacies have the monopoly on both medications and cough drops.

It’s worth it to drag yourself to the small pharmacy around the corner, once Sunday rolls around, and seems to me to be much more efficient than tracking down an English-speaking doctor: diagnosis, meds, and (for future reference) imported Crabtree and Evelyn soaps. When I crawled into the Hanassi Pharmacy on Sunday, and croaked out an apologetic request in English, the young white-coated pharmacist snapped to attention and inspected me sympathetically, but from a safe distance, as though I were a curious specimen in a petri dish.

“Throat? Nose? Ears?” she asked. I nodded to all three, and sneezed. A pharmaceutical representative, chatting with another pharmacist in the corner, took one look at me, hustled her briefcase closer to her side, and moved away.

The pharmacist narrowed her eyes at the selection of medicines behind the counter.

“Acamol and Limocin,” she prescribed. “One is a painkiller, and one is for local pain in your throat. Ok? Take no more than eight in twenty-four hours.”

I gazed at the boxes as she clarified which were the pills to ration. The packaging was subdued and serious–no raging red-and-yellow Tylenol colors here.

A half hour later, installed in bed, clutching peach tea (Wissotzky brand, issued free to the army) and a library copy of Mansfield Park, I was feeling no pain at all. After an entire day of reading Jane Austen, though, I caused my husband no small degree of consternation.

“I find tea with honey to be vastly superior to ordinary tea,” I beamed at him from my Acamol haze, when he arrived home. “And pray let us add Earl Grey tea to the grocery list.”

“Glad you’re feeling better,” he said. “Now, can I get you something else to read?”

“Ay-FOH oo-KHAL lees-KOR soos va-a-ga-LAH?”
“Where can I rent a horse and carriage?”

From Friday afternoon until sunset on Saturday night, all motorized activity ceases in Israel as the country (and the rest of the Jewish world) celebrates Yom Kippur: traffic vanishes, radios and televisions go silent, and the observant begin to fast. An article in today’s Haaretz notes that bicycle sales experience a sharp spike in the days leading up to Yom Kippur; bikes (and feet) are the only accepted mode of transportation during this time.

As any new bike owner knows, though, to ride is to live. And it would appear that every kid on our block has just come into possession of a bike. It may be quiet in the corridor of our apartment complex, but outside, it’s a frenzy of kids shouting and bicycle-bells going zing-zing-zing.

Our block, as it were, is a usually-quiet sidewalk that stretches the length of six wide apartments; on the other side of the sidewalk runs an expansive lawn—the kind featured in Thanksgiving-family-football-game ads—bordered by a tall bougainvilla hedge. Beyond the hedge lies the street; above it, palm and eucalyptus trees top out far above the satellite dishes of another apartment complex.

On any given weekend, walking along the inner corridor of the apartment complex, you can hear Mandarin, German, Hebrew, French, and English coming from behind the doors; so, too, is it a tour of international home cooking: humid, jasmine-scented rice; something fried, sizzling in a spicy sauce; curry powder, warming in a pan; plums baking in cinnamon and sugar. (That last one’s our apartment; we always seem to be finishing dessert around the time everyone else starts cooking.)

Of our neighbors, though, I’ve only met a few. Most of the women I’ve met are working mothers, busy with kids and jobs, and I only see them in transit. The one time neighbors actually showed up on our door was when I tracked down the vacuum (shared by the entire complex of eighteen apartments) and fired it up. Seconds later, mid-roar, the doorbell rang, and a curly-haired woman with an American accent asked if she could borrow it next. As my husband answered the door, I held up the attachment in surprise and nearly sucked the curtains off the rod. A few minutes later, an Indian woman appeared and asked if she could borrow the vacuum. I felt like a Victorian lady with too many names on her dance card. “I’m so sorry,” I said grandly, wielding the hose away from the drapery this time, “but I have already promised it to Apartment 12.”

There ought to be a block party just for the opportunity for everyone to pick each others’ brains, as neighbors: is there really a supermarket down the road, to the east? How did they get around the Institute’s three-hundred-shekel fine (per hole) for putting holes in the walls? (In one apartment, where every square inch of wall is covered with art, pottery, and copper bowls, one couple, we’ve concluded, solved this problem by buying the apartment.) What’s the best cooking time for penne pasta? What radio stations do they listen to? Where can one find tortillas in this town? What’s the issue of the moment in their home country?

Really, where are the tortillas?

“Nah loh leeg-ZOZ shoom da-VAHR luh-MAH-a-la.”
“Do not cut any off the top.”

After dark, on Bograshov Street, in Tel Aviv, it’s the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

Hair salons in Tel Aviv, apparently, spring to life after eight o’clock. Bograshov Street, which runs east-west through town (or from the beach to the train station, in my frame of reference), boasts a handful of hyper-stylish salons. On any given evening, they’re blazing with light and color: clients perch on neon-blue leather chairs under red walls; sleek, black-clad stylists snip and twirl in front of chrome-edged mirrors. No one inside appears to be over thirty.

What would a haircut run, in this kind of place? Do I know enough Hebrew to shriek, “Too short!”? These are questions I try not to think about, but the closest salon in Rehovot seems to offer equal follicle-risk. Nestled between a pharmacy and a travel agency, the neighborhood salon has the usual spotless glass windows and leather chairs. And, bizarrely, a gilded, knee-high statue of an elephant, at the door. Inside, it’s dark. Frequently, I’ve seen clients–older women who look like they know what hard work really is–wandering around on the street, smoking, their heads shingled with foil, and their makeup running. Is it a salon or a refuge for the deranged?

“Ha-EEM a-NEE ho-LEH-khet ba-kee-VOON ha-na-KHON?”
“Am I going in the right direction?”

After endlessly trudging uphill without any shade, the first couple of times we vistited Tel Aviv, we’ve figured out a pretty good route from the central train station to the downtown area. Dafna Street, about a block past the main intersection outside the station, is quiet, shady, and residential; it leads in the direction of the art museum. At first, we mistook the striking “Asia House” building for the museum: its curved walls, similar to the Guggenheim’s, and its polished ground-level cafe, have probably fooled more than a few tourists. (At least, those tourists who don’t notice the massive Japanese flag flying out front.) Slightly north of the art museum is a long park, donated by a Canadian family, and we cut through here to head for Ibn Gvirol Street.

Yesterday, our destination on Ibn Gvirol was Ilan Cafe, home of what the online Fodor’s Mini-Guide to Tel Aviv claims is the best coffee “on the continent.” (“It’s imported from Italy,” one comment on the Fodor’s site said sourly, “and I ought to know, because I worked there.”) Nevertheless, after trekking past numerous falafel stands, and at least one incongruous French oyster bar, Ilan Cafe took shape under Ibn Gvirol’s cavernous arcade, about three blocks past Yitzhak Rabin Square, and offered the best coffee we’d tasted, so far.

Ilan Cafe offered a good three rows of outdoor seating under the arcade, but practically in traffic; we perched on stools at a high table inside the cafe, where a baseball-capped girl was trying to figure out whether to buy a French-press-style coffeemaker. An assistant who might have been Ethiopian parked the girl in front of the bulk-coffee wall, and began to explain the virtues of French-press coffee. Meanwhile, two other girls showed up and waited to get to the coffee; the taller, older-looking one, with about five inches of skin between the point where her shirt ended and her jeans began, looked peeved. The shorter, younger-looking one hung back and waited. Finally, the assistant disappeared and the girl with the cap moved to a table, oblivious to the other girls. The tall one swooped in and began talking a mile a minute to the shorter one, whose eyebrows rose gradually and then stayed up, as she kept nodding anxiously, with an expression of, “You want me to remember all of this?” The assistant reappeared with a mug of coffee, and the girl with the cap sipped it tentatively. Finally, she grinned. Then she bought a giant, Rosh-Hashanah-style gift basket, plus two pounds of coffee, and a French press. Then the assistant grinned. The coffee apprentice watched the girl leave while the coffee master droned on.

Parts of Ibn Gvirol look like a post-apocalyptic Rue de Rivoli. Instead of polished marble sidewalks under the arcade, it has pitted asphalt and air-conditioning vents that drip on unsuspecting passers-by. Unlike Dizengoff Street, which seems to be lined entirely with boutiques, Ibn Gvirol has trendy cafes next to hardware stores. To be fair, Tel Aviv is not renowned for its elegance. Bauhaus architecture is interesting, but it isn’t pretty—at least from the outside. Inside, however, must be a different matter. Just by glancing up, from street level, in Rehovot and Tel Aviv, it’s possible to glimpse the elegance you can’t see from an apartment building’s dusty exterior: virtually every family-room window has delicate scalloped or pointed lace curtains hanging about a foot below the top, and every family room has framed art hanging on the walls.