Say It in Hebrew

“Rega.”
“Wait.”

This is probably the most common word I hear in Hebrew, usually repeated three times, quickly: “Rega, rega, rega!” It’s used to settle disputes (and to start them), to ask for a moment, to ask for more time, and to ask for a clarification. “Rega” and “Slee-KHAH” (“Excuse me”) start most of the sentences I hear while standing in line.

These are the things I have nine more days to wait for–above all, of course, seeing my family.

In no particular order:

Mountains (and not way off in the distance, either), cheddar cheese, a bookstore with titles mainly in English, signs in English, signs in Spanish, snow, honey from a squeeze bottle (which leads to the next entry), sopapillas, wooden floors, Swiss Miss hot chocolate mix with the fake marshmallows, the Beach Boys, a piano, irises (probably under the snow by now), Pagliacci’s, the Tattered Cover, weather that conforms to the actual season at hand, dried chile peppers, Monticello and the Jefferson Memorial, Woody’s pizza, a fire in a fireplace, the Marx Brothers, the Karamazov Brothers’ version of The Comedy of Errors (an argument for video to DVD transfer if there ever was one), the Library of Congress, riding in a car without a meter, NPR, a food processor, my well-loved editions of Contemporary American Poetry, family photos and everything else so related.

(Not to be mistaken as a list of requests!)

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

As with the birthday cake saga back in April, it’s almost midnight, here, and the baking has just commenced.

I was a little peeved to discover, in April, after stewing chopped apples for three hours for a traditional Czech birthday cake, that all I had made was apple mush.

“But that’s how you make it,” said J., right before he went off to bed.

“You can BUY this!” I jammed the wooden spoon in the apple goo. “My people call it applesauce!”

So, Thanksgiving. I designated us as the Bearers of Apple Pie, and then decided to throw in dressing and green beans, for good measure. Although we’re not really having Thanksgiving until Friday night, with Amy and Arieh, I felt compelled to start cooking for it, today, God knows why.

Operation Desert Giblets, Status:

Mocha-pecan balls (hostess gift): done, and drenched in an obscene amount of powdered sugar.
Dressing: done. (Thanks, Mom!)
Beans: thawing.
Pie: still baking.

Like other military maneuvers, and (come to think of it) ones not-so-military as well, Thanksgiving cooking is a headlong affair–at least, for amateurs. Once you enter into it, you just have to keep dashing madly onward. Anyone who is afraid of a few flying celery leaves or knives should make plans to be out of range.

Probably, the pros spread things out over a few days. We nudniks cook everything frantically in the hopes that, if a problem develops, there will still be one day to assess it over lots of wine, strategize, and then flee to the MegaMart.

Since MegaMart does not sell pies, it’s time to pray.

“Lomedet o ovedet?”
“Do you work or study?”

Down the block, next to the Tenure Tower (much to the residents’ chagrin), three new apartment towers are going up. The noise of the work begins each morning around six o’clock, and doesn’t finish until after dark. Most of the workers are from southeast Asia; occasionally, as they sit on the curb, waiting for the van to pick them up after their shift, they give exhausted glances to passerby.

Ha’aretz has an interesting look at a day in the life of one such group of workers…

From the looks on their faces and the white construction dust on their clothes, I suspect that this is a far less cheery existence than the article paints it.

“Ka-MAH meez-va-DOT oo-KHAL la-KA-khat?”
“How many valises may I take?”

Highlights of today:

1) thirteen hours of pouring rain! HaHA! This is what November is supposed to look like!

2) getting travel insurance. The company that issues health insurance to postdocs and their families shows up on campus, in the lobby of the graduate school, for three hours, every Monday, to offer their services. Usually, there’s a cluster of postdocs sitting around a table, waiting to shell out hundreds of dollars for the privilege of sitting in the Clalit clinic and catching the creeping crud, which is a particularly virulent waiting-room strain that has mutated an unthinkable number of times. The Clalit card should come with a face mask and an oxygen tank.

When I joined the small crowd, the insurance representative was talking to a girl from Japan, explaining how to get a refund. The Japanese postdoc left with a look of happiness no doubt inspired by the phrase “the check is in the mail”.

Next, the representative, an Israeli woman with a bright smile and wavy brown hair, beckoned an Indian postdoc to her desk, and began explaining the variety of insurance options. “For example, the highest quality is Prestige, which pays for all costs associated with pregnancy and birth.” The representative looked at the Indian girl. “Are you planning on getting pregnant?” The Indian girl gasped, but the representative blithely went on. “There are a number of choices; this one costs a dollar a day, basic coverage….” The Indian postdoc’s preexisting condition was now shock.

Eventually, the representative waved me over, after the second postdoc vanished with her dignity.

My request for travel insurance produced a flurry of paperwork. “When do you want to travel? What’s your name? Date of birth? Shoe size? I.Q.? Do you like your falafel with tehina or hummus? For how long will you travel? To your home country?”

Home country! Cue the flags and the violins and the Sousa march!

Wrong holiday. Cue the snow, and the tinkly music-box Christmas album!

The insurance representative seemed oddly delighted to read my application.

“Where are you from?” she asked. The U.S., I replied.

“Where?” Her brow wrinkled. America, I said. Le autsod habrit?

“What country?” she exclaimed. I racked my brains to see if there was some other name for the U.S. than the ones I’d trotted out. Then the representative laughed, and sat back in her seat.

“I mean, what state are you from?” She shook her head. “State, not country.”

I told her.

She sat up. “It should be beautiful this time of year…all that snow!” The representative shuffled my papers happily and expedited the whole process so it took about five minutes. An angry mob of postdocs began to gather behind me, though, when she asked me where I thought the skiing was best. I stammered an excuse and fled with my umbrella.

Holy good gravy! An Israeli quoting from A White Christmas! I grinned. What an unusual day.

“Ka-MAH ze o-LEH ma-KOM bah-oo-LAM?”
“How much is an orchestra seat?”

One should not go to a concert featuring Beethoven and come back humming “Copacabana.”

Or, at least, one should not admit it. But in a program featuring the world premiere of a modern piece sandwiched in between works by Stravinsky and Beethoven, all bets are off. Why must modern music sound like someone tuning a radio at high speed, or like rush hour? It plays havoc with the musical parts of my brain.

Thursday night’s free concert featured a young orchestra from Jerusalem. Before the modern piece commenced, a girl with an accordion walked onstage, and sat down in the prestigious soloist seat to the conductor’s left. As someone with a soft spot for accordions, I waited for an Italian melody or a tango.

It never arrived. The girl with the accordion had been drafted into a modern (?) or postmodern (?) display of noise. J. and I would have gnashed our teeth, along with a majority of the audience, perhaps, except for the fact that Israelis have impeccable Concert Manners. No one ever accidentally applauds between movements. No one’s cell phone goes off. Everyone who is not a teenager is dressed to the nines. And most audiences give standing ovations–not once, but twice.

So the thought of even grimacing at the whirl of discordant noises (which made Schoenberg sound like Bach) was out of the question. Like the others, we watched and listened, and then applauded wildly. Then we went home and turned on an Astor Piazzola tango album as an antidote.

However, I am not entirely against music that leaps out of the mainstream. Walking down the alley between Ahad Ha’am and Herzl Street on Thursday afternoon, I heard something I’ve never heard, here. It sounded like wind chimes, but then I saw people gathered around a man wearing sunglasses, who appeared to be playing a Weber barbeque lid. He was sitting on the edge of a concrete planter, and in front of him were his wares: cds and brochures identifying him as the “PANTAMAN.”

Despite the ideas for a new comic-book hero that his name inspired, Pantaman was playing some seriously good music.

Pantaman’s instrument really did look like two Weber lids fused together, though, creating two concave surfaces with a ring of dimples (without the wooden Weber handles). The instrument sat in Pantaman’s lap, and he played it like a drum, with his hands. It sounded like a softer version of steel drums.

Pantaman, as far as I can tell, represents a new face in Rehovot’s street music, which is usually limited to Friday morning’s street-corner musicians: two pairs of elderly gentlemen who play the accordion and violin, and the trumpet and the accordion, respectively. These musicians anchor Herzl Street with a variety of all traditional tunes from Eastern Europe; Pantaman, with his vaguely Carribean sound, is off in a breezy sidestreet.

Live and let live.