Say It in Hebrew

“Ma-TOK a-na-VEEM.”
“Sour grapes.”

Sufganiyot, I learned yesterday in ulpan, are not merely sweet symbols of fall and winter in Israel; these jelly doughnuts are actually a symbol (along with latkes) of Hannukah.

Sahar drew a giant sufgania on the board, next to what was supposed to be a latke but really looked like an amoeba. She wagged her finger at the class, and then wrote, “400!” next to the doughnut.

“Ladies! Beware! Each one of those has four hundred calories, they say.” She winked at us, and then grew more serious. “These are symbols of Hannukah, because they’re giant sponges of oil, and the use of oil was key in the story of Hannukah.

As long as I remember her less-than-appetizing description, I’ll be able to resist the pull of these doughnuts.

The first hour of class last night was devoted to the origins of the Hannukah celebration. After occupying seven-year-old Lila with a top, Sahar proceed to give the history of Hannukah from roughly the second century B.C. In Hebrew. “Alexander the Great” sounds weightier as “Alexander hagadol.”

“Hu haya manhig tov,” Sahar said, writing in Hebrew on the board. Everyone dutifully copied this down. “He was a good leader,” she translated. Everyone in my row stopped writing for a moment, raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and then continued, except for the guy sitting next to me, who was astonished.

“Good?!” He tapped his pen in his notebook. “Alexander the Great was a good leader? I guess it depends on your perspective.”

Sahar, not missing a beat, continued to describe Alexander the Great’s aspirations to construct a Hellenistic empire in the Middle East… Most of the attributes of Hellenism (namely, the sacrifices to Zeus) annoyed the religious Jewish population. (Some, though, as Sahar noted, embraced the toga-wearing, grape-eating culture and rallied for Alexander the G.) Their dreams of a Dionysian life were promptly trounced, however, when Antiochus IV’s men held a sacrifice to Zeus…in a Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

I’m not really sure how Antiochus IV got involvd, but I do know that I got lost trying to write “Antiochus ha’arbim” in Hebrew. History marched on without me, and by the time I looked back up at the board, Matthew had already told his followers, “Whoever’s with God, come with me.” Leading his followers into the sinuous canyons of the Negev, Matthew managed to fend off Antiochus IV’s soldiers with the help of the local topography. Long story short, the Jews triumphed, while the soldiers literally bit the dust.

This was all very interesting, but I confess to tuning out at the critical part of the story, where Judea Maccabi lights a menorah with one day’s worth of oil, which actually turns out to last eight days.

Once we started singing Hannukah songs, my ecumenical upbringing and eagerness to understand Israeli-Jewish culture ran head-on into my Catholicism.

I’m happy to learn Hebrew, in order to understand and function (albeit awkwardly) in Israeli society, and to be able to speak an ancient language. I’m interested in the history of Hannukah, and I’d like to understand the religious symbolism invested in the holiday. And while singing Hannukah songs is hardly a breach of one’s faith, for some reason, I couldn’t do it.

Sahar had passed around a pink sheet with four songs on it, pointing out that many of the Hannukah songs’ melodies can be traced to German liturgical tunes. She repeatedly emphasized how the customs of Hannukah grew, in layers, as the Jewish diaspora absorbed styles of celebrating from the cultures around them: songs, from Germany; latkes and sufganiyot, from Poland; a present for each night, from the gift-giving tradition of European Christmas.

“Sevivon, sov, sov, sov,” sang the class. “Spin, spin, spin, little top.” My brother and I used to play with a dreidl from Mom’s vast treasure-chest of teaching materials every December. So why wasn’t I singing?

I live two hours away from Jerusalem, and I have yet to attend Mass anywhere.

In the depiction of the daily spats over the deeply significant religious structures in Jerusalem, the focus always seems to be on the rights of Jewish worshippers versus the rights of Arab worshippers.

The christians, the message seems to be, have enough spots around the world where they can freely practice their faith. They have Rome! Only the guidebooks remind readers that the Holy Land is home to three major religions, not two–three major religions, and all of their various sects.

While Sahar passed around copies of the history of Hannukah on yellow sheets of paper, and reminded us about the Hannukah party next week, hosted by the Rehovot ulpan, I thought about this.

“Ag-o-ROTE.”
“Small change.”

The Belarus Frozen Fruit Company owes me an explanation.

Those aren’t cranberries. They’re currants. But this I should have known: the jam aisle contains a worthy stack of red-currant jams with Cyrillic writing on them. Unless those suckers were harvested before the fall of Lenin, and put in the deep-freeze (hopefully not near Lenin), we’re talking about two different berries.

This is all Highly Educational, I keep telling myself.

Fortunately, the men who run the neighborhood grocery apparently sense my culinary distress. I’m not sure if they’re brothers; both speak Hebrew and Russian (Russian, to their staff of two women), and wear yarmulkes. Both men are about forty or fifty years old; the man who runs the morning shift is brisk and businesslike. He wears rectangular-framed glasses and calls to his staff at the back of the store in a booming baritone. Only occasionally, he addresses me in English. Usually, when there’s a line, he speaks in Hebrew, and I’m glad he doesn’t blow my cover.

His business partner has the easier shift. He’s usually leaned back in his chair at one of the two checkstands, when I come in, sipping a cup of dense, dark coffee, and reading a small Russian newspaper. He has a round face, and the eyes of a boy, wide open. Since he has time, he tends to speak with me more than his partner does. After all, I’m usually the only person in line. Last week, I bought something and didn’t have the small change due besides the bills. I offered him a ten-shekel coin, but he waved it away.

“Bring it by sometime,” he said in English. I try to speak Hebrew, as though I were still on the Hollins Abroad must-speak-local-language contract, but he persists in English. “It’s only fifty agorot. You will remember to pay.” He grinned at me. “I won’t remember, but you will.”

The next day, I brought the change by, and handed it to him. As usual, he was sipping coffee and glancing both at the paper and the doughnut display at the end of his checkout lane.

“Oh, very good,” he said, taking the change. “Now I can sleep easy at night.”

One day, I tried asking him how he was, but accidentally used the wrong form of address. He corrected me, moving my odds and ends toward the plastic bags.

“No, it’s ma shlomcha for men,” he said, leaning his elbows on the edge of the checkout stand. “In Hebrew, you see, men and women are different.” I knew what he was trying to say: when addressing a man, you use a different ending for the verb, than you would to address a woman. “There are differences between them,” he said, frowning, but I nodded.

An elderly woman behind me set down her carton of milk. “Yes, they’re different,” she added in English. “The men are much more difficult!”

“A-va-KAYSH et maz-LAYG.”
“Please bring me a fork.”

Does it violate the rules of civilized dining to ask one’s guests to bring silverware? Can we execute the following with less than 30 utensils?

Turkey cutlets with cranberry-orange glaze (Must transform turkey breast into cutlets. Hmmm.)
Mushroom strudel for the vegetarian (Fleetingly thought of making squash ravioli, then came to my senses.)
Sweet potato and apple scallop
Green beans with orange, rosemary, garlic, and parsely
Ginger-glazed carrots
Cornbread stuffing
Cranberry-orange cake
Potatoes?

This isn’t designed to induce gastric distress, but I hope no one intends to actually lie down, at home, until around 1:00 am.

“Yesh la-khem av-KAT SO-da?”
“Do you have bicarbonate of soda?”

I keep trying not to think about how we will be sitting down to eat at around 9:00 pm on Thanksgiving. Perhaps we should send our guests home with Tums.

Have: turkey, sweet potatoes (in their shocking natural form), apples, raisins, garlic, parsely, rosemary, oranges, lemons, mushrooms, green onions, carrots, ginger, cranberry juice, cranberries, pecans, more raisins, vegetable stock, cornmeal, flour and the other basics.

Don’t have: potatoes, orange juice, celery, sour cream, wine.

In the store last Friday, picking up wine for the weekend, an Israeli man who looked like Mel Brooks’s long-lost Middle-Eastern brother walked up to the line of customers with a tin box of chocolates. He clutched the chocolates and peered ahead at the line. I had one bottle of wine tucked under my arm, and juice and a baguette in the other, but I stood back and motioned for him to go ahead. He looked embarassed, and said, “Lo, lo, lo!” No, no, no!

“Bevakasha,” I offered. Please.

He shook his head and said something about the wine in my arms. Finally, I had to confess I didn’t speak much Hebrew. (A concession to my ego, after four weeks of class.)

“Good Israeli wine!” He perked up, and looked at me more closely. “You are American. A tourist?”

No, I explained; my husband is at the “machon.” The Institute.

His eyebrows went up with the respect that Israelis accord the Weizmann. “He likes it.” This was a statement.

“Medsuyan,” I assured him. Excellent. The line inched closer to the register, where the checker was scanning loaf number twelve of an older woman’s fifteen loaves of bread.

The man ducked into line behind me, and set his chocolates down behind my bottles. He nudged me, and I thought he was going to joke about the woman’s pile of bread, but all he said was, “Peace,” and gestured around him. “We need peace in the Middle East.”

I had no idea how to respond to this but nod. “Ken, ken,” I agreed, wanting to ask him, Will Sharon deal with the PA, now? What did the man think about the disengagement? What did he think about the U.S. elections? How long did he think it would take to have peace in the region?

But Friday morning in the checkout line was no place to have that conversation. The checker wearily rang up my wine and juice, and I said, “Shabbat shalom,” and left. Mel Brooks’s brother wished me the same (Have a good weekend), handed the checkout lady the chocolates, and winked at her.

If I could find him, I’d invite him for Thanksgiving.

Guest list: 1 Czech, 2 Americans (one vegetarian), 1 Serbian, 1 Hungarian. Medsuyan!

“Tarn-eh-GOL ho-DU.”
“Turkey.”

Since I managed to locate cranberries (thank you, Belarus Frozen Fruit Company), Thanksgiving is a go. Now I just have to figure out what to do, turkey-wise. After sifting through about 200 turkey recipes, I’m inclined to toss a coin over Turkey Enchiladas and Turkey Nachos.

No, just kidding. Turkey Cutlets with Cranberry-Orange something seem to split the difference between Fundamentally Traditional and Wildly, Locally Eccentric. The good thing about doing Thanksgiving here is that it’s bound to be–pardon the pun–unorthodox for two reasons: 1) Can’t Find It / Doesn’t Exist Here (cornbread, bread cubes, pumpkin, mincemeat), and 2) Don’t Have the Equipment (no blender, no whisk, oven the size of a shoebox).

Mind you, I’m not complaining; I’d rather leave the full-blown Thanksgiving to the pros (namely, Mom). Solving the puzzle of how to attempt some kind of celebration, given the local offerings, is sort of fun.

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Memo to self: avoid all fried-chicken sales this week.

From Haaretz’s “Flash News Bulletin”: “07:55 am. Lightning strikes, sets ablaze chicken house at Kibbutz Yifat, incinerating the chickens inside.”