Say It in Hebrew

“Shlo-SHEEM.”
“Thirty.”

Ok, thirty, minus an afternoon party!

(But I still feel only sixteen–and that’s beseder gamu with me!)

Thanks for all the goodies; you people are spoiling me!

“Ha-EEM zeh ko-LEL et duh-MAY ha-shay-ROOT?”
“Is the service charge included?”

A couple of weeks ago, our kitchen saw the first version (and probably the only version it will ever see) of Iron Chef: Kosher Battle.

Guests we’d invited requested that we not mix meat and milk. We wanted to make them as comfortable as possible, so I pondered this request for days, until I began to lose my mind.

Not mix them in the same dish? In the same meal? Within two hours? Is butter milk? Is chicken meat? Does pasta include butter?

It quickly became an existential problem, which squawking madly did not alleviate. The logic of kashrut, for a Catholic, became rather knotty and dogmatic: if one does not use meat, then one can use milk; however, any use of meat means that no dairy must be present in the entire meal.

It was Iron Chef, in reverse: the Battle of No Dairy. Or cooking algebra; for the uninitiated, the various factors were daunting.

DAY 1
Commentator Hattori: Fukui-san, it looks like our contestant is stymied by the restrictions. What’s going on, down there?

Kitchen Reporter Fukui: Hattori-san, our contestant is presently flipping through cookbooks and wailing like an impaled eel.

Hattori: I see. Well, can you get any idea of what’s on the menu?

Fukui: From what I can gather, Chicken Cacciatore is the main option, at the moment.

Hattori: Ok, clearly appealing to the old standards.

Fukui: Excuse me, Hattori-san, but our contestant begs your pardon, and says she’s only made it twice before, for guests, so don’t get too technical.

Hattori: Duly noted. But surely Chicken Cacciatore involves butter, so that’s out.

Fukui: Hattori-san, if looks could kill…

DAY 2
Hattori: It’s Thursday, here, and our contestant really needs to settle on a menu. Let’s find out if there’s been any progress.

Fukui: Hattori-san! A very interesting development, here. Our contestant has taken meat off the menu, entirely.

Hattori: Oh, my. Isn’t that throwing the baby–or the cow–out with the bathwater?

Fukui: The contestant is really playing it safe, here, and going with fish, instead, which will let her use dairy in any aspect of the dinner.

Hattori: Ok, a practical choice. What else is on the menu?

Fukui: Well, there’s a big baguette and a tub of torta cheese, in one bag–

Hattori: No doubt, for appetizers…

Fukui: Little potatoes and frozen green beans–

Hattori: Classic, but boring.

Fukui: Excuse me, Hattori-san, but watch out for the flying–

Hattori: Lemons. Thank you.

Fukui: There’s fish wrapped in newspaper in a black plastic bag.

Hattori (sotto voce): An ominous sign.

Fukui: And last on the counter is a long strip of cheesecake, which will go with strawberries, balsamic vinegar, and sugar.

Hattori: Ok, store-bought. Well, you can’t do everything.

Fukui: Excuse me, Hattori-san, I forgot to report that there’s a big slab of butternut squash going into the oven to roast.

Hattori: For soup, probably.

Fukui: Our contestant says to tell you that it’s sure not for decorating.

DAY 3
Hattori: Well, here we are, the afternoon of the Kosher Battle. Fukui, can you give us an idea of how the battlefield looks?

Fukui: It’s a mess. I can’t see the sink. Any other questions?

Hattori: Can you elaborate?

Fukui: Everything’s set to go. The fish are marinating in lemon juice and lemon zest. Our contestant is marinating in white wine.

Hattori: It’s only two o’clock!

Fukui: L’chaim!

Hattori: Can you tell us what’s happening with the butternut squash?

Fukui: Yes, our contestant has chopped it into little cubes and is sauteeing onions in butter. Looks like the cubes will go in there for soup. Oh–this is odd… Our contestant has taken out the chicken bouillon container.

Hattori: She’s going to sautee the squash and onions in butter and chicken broth? This is disastrous. That’s not kosher!

Fukui: Yes, the contestant’s husband has just appeared in the kitchen and pointed that out. I’m sorry I can’t give you more details, but I’ve had to move to avoid the flying utensils.

Hattori: Oh, black-flagged on the last lap. Well, that’s the end of it, then. Kosher Battle Over due to non-Kosherness!

Fukui: Excuse me, Hattori-san! Our contestant fiercely insists that it isn’t over, and that no one saw the chicken broth.

Hattori: Is that a fifty-shekel bill she’s waving at us, or a hundred-shekel one?

KOSHER BATTLE OVER

No one told the guests about the soup. Guests didn’t notice. Or were far too well-mannered and forgiving to mention it. Or we stuffed them so much that they would have nodded and smiled at anything, to escape.

All right, I admit, it was kind of a fun challenge!

“Lo po.”
“Not here.”

And now for something completely different!

From Tierra Wools, Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico.

Thanks, Dad! Lovely photos!

(All copyrights reserved.)

“Ha-too-KHAL luh-hash-EEL lee may-NEEF?”
“Can you lend me a jack?”

Israelis love nothing so much as a good car alarm, unless it’s a good car alarm going off incessantly. Make it a loud one that sounds like a hyena on helium, and which can be armed (and set off) from a block away, install it in everything from BMWs to ‘82 Datsuns, and you have a nation on edge.

A car alarm is a status symbol, here. Even if you own no more than a banana peel on wheels, and a jalopy no self-respecting car thief would touch, you can still puff out your chest, aim your keys at the car while the alarm hiccups at high pitch, and feel far superior to those poor slobs, pedestrians.

Ideally, you would live in a soundproof apartment complex on the fifteenth floor, and be sound asleep, while your alarm abuses the ears of people who actually live near ground level and gnash their teeth while your alarm goes through all five of its annoying verses whose wholly atonal qualities are more likely to summon a troop of elderly piano-tuners than the police.

No, I did not get any sleep last night.

And it’s cold, here. It’s not supposed to be cold here, in late April.

The truth about Rehovot? It’s really lovely on a Friday morning, with everyone rushing around with bags of shiny vegetables from the market, bags of burekas and pastries from bakeries, flower stands tucked in alleyways, and violin trios playing a waltz.

It is not so lovely, late on the last Passover evening, when you’re hiking to what you hope is the 24-hour-No-Holidays-Off pharmacy inside the mall, which is an hour’s walk, round trip, and everyone else is inside their apartments with family, celebrating and warm. No one is on the streets, a neon “MONEY CHANGE” sign blinks feebly over an alleyway, and the Passover streamers droop over the intersections. Moreover, the pharmacy is closed. The Russian security guards in the mall give you a bemused look when you ask in English when it will open.

A cranky expat is a sad sight.

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

Nothing Ever Happens, Part II

“Oh, you got it,” said K. with a great lack of enthusiasm, when I came back triumphantly from the evil receptionist with still more bar codes.

“Listen, you don’t know what I went through to get these,” I kidded her. The nurse looked at me suspiciously, but as soon as I consciously controlled my flaring nostrils, she showed us into another small room.

“First, a few questions,” she said, and then she proceeded to go through all of K’s history and the whole pregnancy, as well as an exam. It’s a bit awkward to serve as moral support when you really know all your friend wants is some privacy.

It was around this time that I came up with my great sex-ed concept: an entire day in the maternity wing is enough to make most people swear off (for life) anything that might lead to reproduction, such as necking, dating, merlot, and Barry White. Ideally, whole eighth-grade classes should spend a day holding the hand of a woman in labor. I could probably get a grant for this! Plus, a brainchild does not need its nose wiped. Bonus!

Finally, another nurse collected us and led us to a section of the maternity wing where really pregnant women were walking slowly up and down the halls, steadying themselves on their husbands’ arms. Most of them did not look at their husbands. Each of the husbands looked away quickly from any woman who looked at him, as though he feared the sisterhood would string him up at the slightest provocation.

Two nurses, one red-haired Russian nurse and one Ethiopian nurse, looked up as K. walked in.

”Anglit? Russit?” asked K. in a tired voice. The Ethiopian nurse looked at the red-haired one. “You speak Russian, don’t you?” she asked her in Hebrew. The red-haired nurse sniffed, looked at K., shook her head and turned away with her phone. I gave a disgusted snort. Spasiba for nothing, lady.

The Ethiopian nurse added K’s name to the board at the nursing station, and motioned us down the hall. K’s room was at the end, with two other women, who were turned to the wall and sleeping. One woman’s toes poked up at the end of the bed, from beneath the thin duvet. The nurse handed K. a hospital gown and a towel.

“Sleep,” she told K. in English, smiling, and left.

We looked at the gown in bewilderment. It had six holes of the same size, like a t-shirt for an octopus: top, bottom, sleeves, and….ohhhhhh. I get it. For nursing mothers. How practical.

“I’m really fine,” K. said angrily, dropping the gown on the bed. “I feel great. My blood pressure is fine! There’s nothing wrong with me! I should go home.”

A steamed pregnant woman is not someone you want to cross. “More pretzels?” I demurred.

While K. resigned herself to staying, and thrashed around with the gown behind the curtain, I backtracked to the mini-market. At the door out of the wing, however, the security guard was not letting people in. So I went back to the nurses’ station.

“I’m just going to get some dinner for my friend,” I said. “Can I get back in?”

The nurses looked up from their own dinner of chicken, vegetables, pita, and hummus. They nodded. My stomach growled; I hadn’t eaten since before lunch, and it was nearly six o’clock. I didn’t think K. had eaten lunch, either. Where was the nurse with the plastic water pitcher and tray of lousy hospital food?

At the mini-market, I picked up more juice, and an anemic-looking pizza slice, then returned and convinced the guard to let me in. K. was sitting up in bed, and nurses had added her chart to the clipboard at the foot of the bed. I didn’t tell K. that there were actually three days, not one, listed; I had a feeling that this indicated she’d be there longer than the twenty-four hours her doctors advertised. She munched on the pizza with a distant look.

“The nurses came in after you left, and told me that they had forgotten to tell me about dinner,” my friend said sadly.

“What? No little bedside table on wheels? No jello?” I was horrified.

“No, and I missed it,” K. replied. “They serve it down the hall. You have to get up to go get it.”

I mused. “That’s terrible.” We had more pretzels.

The women in the other beds eventually got up, and later emerged from the bathroom in new lounging clothes, evidently regarding the hospital gown as the most unfashionable piece of cloth on the planet, which was probably a valid conclusion. (Since one woman’s sweat suit spelled out “Maintenance”, in English, across the rear, though, I had my doubts.) But these women had no more than small bumps near their stomachs, as opposed to my friend, who could balance a dessert plate on hers. How pregnant could they be? And what were they doing here? Their families showed up later in the evening; they had two children each, already.

One woman’s two girls had long, dark hair and doe eyes, and they clustered around their mother on the bed, shading her with their hair. When their grandmother produced two chocolate bars for the girls from her seat at the foot of the bed, they solemnly thanked her and then leaped back on the bed, shedding chocolate wrappers and jackets. The girls, too, were dressed in sweat suits—lounge gear for kids. The other woman’s family arrived later, with the rent-a-tv technician, who had a small tv, attached to a giant spring arm, slung over his shoulder.

He worked around her children, one small boy and a girl who was probably eleven, to connect the tv to the power strip over the head of the bed. The girl unfurled a poster of a boy band, and jumped with excitement when her mother giggled appreciatively. The family then sat watching a quiz show in Hebrew, applauding the mother, who seemed to guess everything correctly. The kids curled up next to her on the bed, and her husband propped his feet up and leaned his chair back, almost into the curtain of the patient next to K.

I was worn out, just watching all of this.

Later, K’s husband blew in from Eilat, bearing a list of things she had called and asked him to bring (once he recovered from the initial shock of hearing that she was in the hospital). She rifled through the backpack he’d brought, searching for the most necessary item (next to chocolate) for a hospitalized patient: a thick book. She clasped the book (art criticism of Goya) to her and looked happier than I’d seen her all day.

K., Goya, and the little heartbeats spent the night at Asaf HaRofe, and headed back to Rehovot, a day and a half later.

I wish to retract what I said previously about life in Rehovot being boring.