This Normal Life is taking a two week break. The Blum family is heading off on a trip of a lifetime: 12 days of safari in Tanzania! I'll write about it when we return, so keep checking the blog, your RSS feed or email inbox.

-- Brian

The week didn’t go at all as I expected. When Jody made plans for her and Amir to go to Cleveland for Jody’s grandmother’s 90th birthday at the same time as Merav and Aviv were to be in sleep away camp, I thought: this is great. I get the house all to myself. Peace and quiet to work without interruption.

Plus I can do whatever I want, whenever I want with no responsibilities. I can make a mess and no one will nag me to clean it up. With no kids around to throw dirty clothes on the floor, their rooms will remain spotless. I can take long showers (without worrying that the hot water will run out), leave all the lights on and eat junk food every night.

Sure I would miss my wife and family. But as friends expressed their jealousy - and even envy - at this opportunity I had to watch as much TV as I wanted (in between work of course), I began to relish the thought. On Saturday night I drove Jody and Amir to the airport and then came home to begin my two weeks of serious fun.

Instead, I found myself strangely floundering. I kept to a routine. I got up every morning and went for a run. I ate breakfast, took a shower, then sat down at my computer as usual. But I couldn’t get going. All that time to be productive and I found myself perusing the Internet for way too much time.

I had hoped to finally check a few items off my to do list, but the list just grew. I had a bunch of movies to watch from our DVR. Didn’t get to them. A pile of newspapers and magazines to read through. They’re still stacked in the corner of my room. I wanted to update my podcast but the task seemed too daunting.

Instead I found myself obsessed with Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, an Internet musical written and produced by Joss Whedon, the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. The story of a singing mad scientist, Dr. Horrible is a kind of Rocky Horror Show for Generation X. The tunes are pretty good too. I’ve watched it about 10 times already.

I had my own horrible plan: to eat my way across Jerusalem. I made a list of all the fast food places in the neighborhood: Burger’s Bar, Falafel Oved, Shnizi, New Deli, Tal Bagels, Sushi Bar Rehavia, Soya, the shwarma place on Yohanan Ben Zachai Street.  Every night a different treat served in under 3 minutes. Salad? That was for wimps.

But then I couldn’t do it. All that grease and frying made my stomach queasy. Friends asked me to come over to dinner and I gladly accepted. I brought them grapes and cake.

Why was I so scattered, I wondered. The silence, no distractions - shouldn’t I be having the time of my life? But it’s exactly because there were no interruptions that I think I was so unproductive. In some bizarre, counter-intuitive way, I seem to need to be pulled in different directions in order to work – and play - efficiently.

I need my kids to barge into my office with stories of their days. I need to exchange emails and instant messages with Jody about bills and plans. Having to stop when someone else decides dinner is ready (rather than me ordering in when I feel like it) somehow frames my day so I can do what I need to.

It’s like what the parenting books say about children: they need boundaries, structure to thrive. That’s me too.

Most of all, I need my loving wife who pushes me to be my best. 30 years ago, when I was a teenager, I was kind of geeky. OK, very geeky. I thought that I would be alone all my life. I couldn’t imagine anyone loving me, let alone getting married and raising a family. Rather, I imagined spending all my time working. Excelling in my profession. Eating at fancy restaurants in exotic countries – but always alone.

Now I know that’s not true. Without Jody and my kids surrounding me with boundless love, I would never have achieved anything. I would have floundered like I did this week.

My experience has also taught me a lesson about Judaism. Jewish law propounds the value of boundaries. Not being able to eat everything we want or having restrictions on what we do on Shabbat and holidays is said to actually give us more freedom, not less. I believe it.

Jody and the kids come back in a few days. The homecoming will be filled with kisses and tales of everyone’s exciting days in the U.S. and at camp. I can’t wait.

And maybe with all the hubbub and commotion, I can finally get some work done!

A new TV show that debuted earlier this month on the Israeli satellite company YES is the talk of the town across certain sectors of southern Jerusalem. “Srugim” (in English: “knitted kippas”) is an extraordinarily accurate depiction of the religious singles scene in Jerusalem.

Set in our own neighborhood (Katamon and the German Colony in particular), the show chronicles the trials and tribulations of trying to find one’s place in the grueling “swamp” that represents the modern Orthodox world in Jerusalem.

Though the show is about Israel singles, Anglos in the city will easily recognize their own lives, between coffee dates at local cafes, shul hopping and the ubiquitous plastic bags containing quiches, humus and drinks that singles carry around on Shabbat as they head to a group meal with other like minded young people.

Srugim is peppered with location shots of local hangouts. And the dumpy apartments with their tiny kitchens will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who’s ever been single in Jerusalem.

The show has caught on not just with religious residents of the capital. The Muqata blog reports that the series has received rave reviews from publications across the religious/secular divide including Achbar Ha'ir, Maariv, NRG, and others.

That’s because the acting and writing is uniformly excellent. While the show is essentially a soap opera, it’s certainly not as trashy as hop in and out of bed programs such as the infamous Ramat Aviv Gimel. Imagine Melrose Place…with yarmulkes.

Director Laizey Shapiro has gone to great lengths to make sure even the finest details are reliable. “Every time religious people are presented on the screen, the kippa is in the wrong angle or the text doesn’t make sense,” Shapira told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper. All the more important given that all of the actors in the show are secular.

Shapira is a 32-year-old religious bachelor. He attended the Ma'ale School of Television, Film and the Arts, the only religious film program in the country. The series was originally titled “Sex and the Holy City” because, as Shapira says, “I couldn’t ignore the sex issue because I would be ignoring reality. (Nevertheless) there is something pretty special in the fact that you can see such things in a series on religious people.”

So far the show has focused more on dates than sex. Srugim revolves around five main characters. Hodaya and Yifat are roommates. Yifat has a crush on Nati, the cute 30-something but immature doctor who keeps standing her up. Amir likes Re’ut but she wants to keep it as just friends. Hodaya is going out with a non-religious professor at Hebrew University.

Some of the best situations concern the clash between tradition and modernity. In perhaps the show’s most infamous scene to date, Hodaya brings a date home after midnight. He’s drunk and he lives out of the city, so he sleeps in her room (we assume nothing else happened).

In the morning when he crawls out of bed (to Yifat’s horror – “we have rules here, Hodaya”), he asks the roommates if they have a pair of tefillin. They don’t but they knock on the door of their next-door neighbor, a heavily accented American woman who offers her tefillin to him. Hodaya’s date rejects the offer dismissively. He’s not about to use a "Reform lesbian’s tefillin," he huffs, his religious sleep over hypocrisy notwithstanding.

Nati is asked to join a minha minyan at the hospital where he works. He bristles at the request – he’d prefer to spend his free time napping. However, when he notices that the kashrut license for the lobby sandwich vendor’s kiosk is suspicious, he’s not so meek. He reports it to the Rabbinate, which quickly results in the kiosk proprietor’s sacking.

Yifat meets a cute guy with a kippa and asks him out. He tells her he’s not for her – he’s not religious. “Do you keep Shabbat,” she asks. “Yes,” he responds. “Do you keep kashrut?” Yes. “So how are you not religious?” “In ways you wouldn’t like.” As he’s leaving, he tries to give Yifat a peck on the cheek. She recoils. “Now you get it,” he says.

Perhaps the most conflicted of the bunch is Hodaya who starts dating a non-religious professor. She can’t bring herself to tell him she’s religious. He asks her out to a movie on Friday night. “Shabbat?” she asks, then adds hastily that she has “other plans,” not that she doesn’t go to movies on Friday night. In a later scene, her beau cooks her up a plate of his special spaghetti with meatballs. He sprinkles cheese on top and urges her to try it. Will she eat it or not? We found ourselves screaming at the screen – "don’t do it, Hodaya!" She takes a tiny bite and promptly runs to the bathroom to retch.

Director Shapira was asked in his Yediot interview about his own personal dating do’s and don’ts as a religious single. He responds honestly. “With us everything is much more dissolvable in terms of keeping a distance. It also looks very ridiculous – even though this is Jewish law. People are beginning to cut corners. Many more people are saying out loud that they cannot go out with a girl and not touch her. I'm not talking about sex, although there are those who go there as well. Several years ago I would say this is absolutely impossible, but things change."

If you missed an episode, you’re not in Israel or you don’t have YES, you can catch Srugim online: http://yes.walla.co.il/srugim (the show is in Hebrew, no English subtitles).

It was supposed to be a simple process. 16-year-old Amir had lost his teudat zehut – his identity card – when it fell out of his pocket on a bus a few months back. By Israeli law, once you turn 16, you’re supposed to carry your ID with you at all times.

Getting a replacement card meant a trip to the dreaded office of the Interior Ministry. Actually it’s not so bad…anymore. But when I first got to Israel 20 years ago and I needed to renew my student visa, it was a nightmare. A crowded room full of hundreds of people, all smoking, waiting to meet with the surliest of Israeli clerks. Nothing was computerized back then. The process could take hours.

Nowadays, smoking is forbidden, people wait their turn, and the clerks…well, if you’re really nice, they may almost smile.

Armed with two photos and his Israeli passport, Amir headed downtown. He walked up to the information booth and told the woman behind the desk that he needed to replace his ID. “Did you bring a parent?” she asked. “No,” he said. “I didn’t know I needed to.” He was, after all, 16 now and this was a replacement ID.

That was on Monday. On Tuesday, I accompanied Amir back to the Interior Ministry. We arrived at 1:30 PM and the door was shut. We knocked. A man poked his head out and, just like the guard in the Wizard of Oz, told us abruptly “We’re closed,” and pointed at a sign clearly stating that opening hours were from 8:00 AM until 12:00 PM.

“But I checked on the Internet,” Amir said. The Interior Ministry’s website reported that the office was open until 4:00 PM non-stop. The sign on the door, however, clearly hadn’t been updated in the 20 years since I first visited. “The Internet lies,” Amir muttered as we trudged away.

We went to a nearby coffee shop and ordered two mocha ice coffee blends as consolation.

Two days later we were back, this time well before 12:00 PM. We got in and took a number. As we sat in the waiting room, I studied the people. There is probably no better cross section of the Israeli public than a government office. The room was a hodge podge of different communities: ultra Orthodox, ultra secular, Russian and American immigrants, Arab residents of East Jerusalem. A majority of the women seemed pregnant, or so it appeared from a quick sampling.  

After about an hour we got called up the station 4. “Good afternoon,” I said in my best Hebrew with a sprig in my verbal step. Yardena, whose nametag indicated she was the head of the division, managed a wan upturn of a lip.

Yardena asked Amir some questions, took his papers and pictures and asked to see his passport. All the while other clerks were asking her questions or thrusting applicants’ papers in her face.

Although chaotic, everything seemed in order. She busily stamped and signed this document and that. And then she cried: “Oy! I cancelled your passport by mistake.”

Horror spread across our faces. “But he’s traveling overseas in two days!” I said.

Cancelling a passport is not an error that can easily be rectified. Yardena in her confusion had gone so far as to cut the corners of his passport to make it invalid. Even though Amir has dual Israeli and American citizenship, an Israeli citizen needs to leave and enter the country on his Israeli passport.

Yardena thrust a yellow paper in front of us. It was an application for a new passport. “Do you have two more photos?” she asked. Fortunately Amir did. We quickly filled in the form. Yardena meanwhile was working the phone. She dialed then hung up and redialed the number of an official in the passport department at least 50 times, all the while avoiding eye contact with us.

Finally, Yardena got up, took our paperwork and hustled out of the room. My mind began to imagine the worst. Amir would miss his flight. The airline would rebook him and charge us double. The passport would take weeks to arrive in the mail.

Yardena didn’t come back for a quarter of an hour while we sat alone at her desk stewing as the office of the Interior Ministry closed and the waiting room began to clear out.

Finally, Yardena returned. This time she was smiling. “It’s all taken care of,” she said. Go to room 207 and wait there. You’ll get your passport today.”

We breathed a sigh of relief and thanked her, although I’m not exactly sure what for. 10 minutes later we walked out with Amir’s new passport, “hot off the press,” Amir remarked. I thought of bagels.

Instead we went back to the coffee shop and ordered another round of ice coffees (I had vanilla, Amir had white chocolate, we both asked for extra whipped cream to celebrate). It was a semi-sweet reward for several days of dealing with the worst of Israeli bureaucracy. Coming up next: Amir gets his driver’s license. I shudder even thinking about visiting the local DMV.

If you missed my other post this week on the bulldozer terror attack, please click here or visit: http://www.thisnormallife.com/blog/_archives/2008/7/22/3804787.html

Amir and I were downtown when the police cars and ambulances started zooming past us, their sirens blaring. We had just finished an ice coffee at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and were waiting at a bus stop to go home.

One after another, the police sped down Jaffa Road. There must have been at least 100 vehicles in just a few minutes. The reason was clear: there had been a terror attack. But we didn’t know what or where.

I called Jody to see if she had any information. She had been with a client and hadn’t listened to the news. Next I called home to make sure the kids were safe. They were. I asked Merav to check the web. There was nothing. All the while the sirens continued to whiz past. We began to speculate on what had happened.

Was it a suicide bomber on a bus? An explosion at a cafe? The police all seemed to be heading in the direction of the King David Hotel. Wasn’t British Prime Minister Gordon Brown staying there? Had U.S. Democratic candidate Barack Obama already arrived. About that time, my cell phone died, leaving us incommunicado.

The bus came and we got on. The driver had the radio turned up loud and every alighting passenger asked if he’d heard anything. He hadn’t. The news reported everything was as usual (as usual as things can be in Israel).

At the corner of King David and Agron Streets, the police had blocked off the road. We were directed into a monumental traffic jam heading up the hill. We thought we’d turn left onto Keren Hayesod at the summit, but instead we were forced to turn right, back to where we’d come from. We got out and decided to walk.

As we approached Liberty Bell Park, the streets were beginning to fill up. Photographers toting cameras with telescopic lenses, reporters with microphones, a video crew all raced past us on foot. A helicopter hovered overhead.

Traffic was blocked, but pedestrians were getting through. At the foot of King David Street, opposite the King Solomon Hotel, a large crowd had gathered. Police were everywhere. Hundreds of onlookers were sneaking under the police tape to get closer. The atmosphere was like a rock concert, only somber. And still we didn’t know anything.

We pushed our way through the crowd. Finally, a glimpse of destruction. Two crushed cars and a gargantuan yellow tractor. An apparent copy cat attack of the one three weeks ago where a Jerusalem Arab plowed a tractor into a bus downtown killing 3. There were rumors in the crowd that a bus had been flipped here too, but we didn’t see it.

We stayed for a while, craning our necks, trying to learn more, then finally we headed back home. I checked Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, YNET. The story was now up. The similarities to the previous attack were chilling. Bulldozer on the rampage. Driver shot dead by a civilian, followed by a policeman. 16 wounded, one in serious condition.

The bulldozer driver had apparently been working just around the corner in nearby Yemin Moshe, one of Jerusalem’s most fashionable and expensive neighborhoods. Two accomplices fled and the police were sealing off any possible escape routes.

Immediately after the attack, politicians began calling for a ban in the employment of East Jerusalem Arabs as construction workers in the city. But how? Jerusalem these days is one big construction zone. Bulldozers abound. Do we need to fear walking past a new building going up like we once avoided cafes and buses? What means will the terrorists use next?

Amir went down to his room to continue researching his options for when he joins the army. He has his placement interview and examination in just over two weeks. Then he’ll be part of the force protecting the rest of us from such heinous attacks. Merav and Aviv were watching TV, oblivious to what was going on just a few minutes away from our house.

In another hour we have guests coming from overseas for a pizza party. Tonight I have a conference call with the States. Just another day in Jerusalem. Life goes on. But a normal life? Never.

For the last several months, I’ve been seeing a lovely Chilean woman named Anchela. Now before you get all up in arms, it’s purely platonic. Anchela is my Alexander Technique therapist.

As part of the tikkun for my new office chair (see my previous post here), I’ve started a regimen to address my aching back. Developed by Frederick Matthias Alexander at the end of the 19th Century, the technique aims to improve posture and relieve back pain by recognizing and overcoming “reactive, habitual limitations in movement and thinking.”

Alexander was a Shakespearean orator who developed problems with losing his voice. After doctors told him there was no physical cause, he observed himself in the mirror where he realized he was needlessly stiffening his whole body in preparation to recite or speak. He noted that other individuals experiencing voice problems would tighten the muscles of the upper torso, especially the neck; he suggested that this pattern of tensing would rotate the head backwards and downwards in relationship to the spine and disrupt efficient overall body alignment. It took 8 years for Alexander to solve his own voice problems. He then applied his technique to a variety of posture and back related problems.

Alexander was as interested in changes in perception as he was in physical treatment. My sessions with Anchela include both bodywork done while lying on a table and instructions on how to stand up and sit down.

My Alexander Technique lessons come under the umbrella of Maccabi Tivi, the alternative health care branch of our local HMO. Set in a dank downtown Jerusalem mall, the Macabi Tivi office is a sanctuary, a breath of incense-scented air, flickering candles and soft Windham Hills-tinged music piped in through the ubiquitous stereo that permeates the entire space. The center offers acupuncture, chiropractic treatment, herbs, nutrition consulting and more. And it’s cheap. 10 sessions with Anchela cost me a little over $200.

The Alexander Technique stresses “lengthening” the body. The exercises and treatment are all about stretching and developing better posture. Lying on the table, Anchela pulls at my feet, dangles my arms and swivels my neck. It’s like a massage but gentler. And all the while we talk.

I have learned over the months that Anchela met her Israeli husband while he was backpacking in South America and followed him here. She doesn’t have the kindest words for post-army Israelis on tiyul. “They don’t stop and see the scenery,” Anchela told me one time. “It’s like they’re always rushing to get to the top of a mountain so they can plant the Israeli flag there and then rush back down again.”

I also learned that Anchela lives in the suburb of Modi’in, has a 17 year old son who studies at the Omaniyot arts school in Jerusalem, a 12 year old daughter who just celebrated her bat mitzvah, and that she doesn’t like snow (now there’s something we have in common). And that Anchela is Spanish for Angela.

That’s what’s great about going to the doctor in Israel. It’s so casual, much more so than in North America. In addition to our personal chats, Anchela comes dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. The waiting area is scattered with chairs in no particular order. Anastasia, the Russian-born staffer at the front desk has a caustic wit and heaven forbid you should be late.

There’s also something about the medical experience in Israel that emphasizes how much of a melting pot this part of the world is. A Chilean therapist treating an immigrant from California taking direction from a tough Russian, that’s got to account for something.

Anchela and I speak in English – her Hebrew is fluent, mine not so (but getting there). Even so, I don’t always understand what she’s saying. “Keep your hips loose. Don’t fall into your chest. Keep your neck back and your head up,” she says encouragingly. How do you keep your neck back and your head up at the same time? It’s like walking and chewing gum. Chevy Chase used to make fun of Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live that way. I nod and pretend I understand what she’s talking about.

During our last visit, I was distracted by some issues at work. I had to think up a response for a software development problem we were having at the company. Lying on the table, I was more taciturn than usual when Anchela burst out, “You’re doing great. Better than ever!”

I told her my mind was elsewhere. “Maybe that’s what you need,” she said. “Now let your arms be free, no resistance, just let them hang.” I complied with a little more gusto, having received such high praise.

Next week will be my last session with Anchela. I’ve used up the annual allotment of treatments that the HMO provides. Am I cured? Not quite, though my back no longer aches and my chair has become more friend than foe.

I’ll miss Anchela. I’ll miss our chats and her soft voice, but most of all I’ll miss my new friend.

Some have called it a monstrosity. To others it’s a thing of beauty. One thing’s for sure: the new Bridge of Strings at the entrance to Jerusalem, which was formally dedicated two weeks ago in a multi-million dollar ceremony, has generated a huge amount of controversy both online and with the general public at large.

One thing everyone can agree on, though: it is a striking piece of architecture. The NIS 246 million bridge, designed by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, was built to provide an uninterrupted overpass for the city's new light rail line, slated to start running in 2010. The white bridge is held up in the air along the entire length of its 360 meters by 66 iron strings that descend gracefully from a 188-meter high tall spire that towers over its surroundings.

Calatrava is no stranger to bridge building – he has built more than 40 around the world, including, most recently, a bridge nearing completion over the Grand Canal in Venice. The bridge in Jerusalem, he said, is his unquestionable favorite, reminding him of a harp or a tent in the desert.

The design of the bridge is not the problem, say local architects; it’s the location. “It’s impossible to see the bridge in its full glory,” explained architect Hillel Schocken to the Haaretz newspaper.

“The bridge has no room to breathe,” added architect Saadia Mandel. It “needs a giant living space so that we’ll be able to sense it.”

Mandel and Schocken are quite right. The bridge is boxed in by some truly ugly apartment buildings, the kind where laundry hangs down from the balconies. From the main entrance to the city, all you can is the bridge’s tall white spire; its delicate strings only come into view when you are nearly upon them.

Possibly realizing that its surroundings might not do it justice, Jerusalem City Hall handed out a colorful pamphlet at the inauguration ceremony with a computer-simulated image of the bridge in the future, surrounded by two modern high-rises that do not yet exist.

Jerusalem architect and historian David Kroyanker, while liking the bridge in general, nevertheless wondered why Jerusalem needs a new landmark “in order to brand itself. (Jerusalem) is a historical city thanks to its walls, the Dome of the Rock and its churches.”

Local pundit and comedian Jackie Levy also appreciates the bridge, calling it “a spectacular and interesting creation in and of itself.” However, he went on in an article in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, “this bridge is the kind of luxury that is given as a gift to someone who already has everything.” Jerusalem, he explained, is lacking in so many things that a bridge of this magnitude, whose price tag tripled over the course of its construction, is “pretentious and wasteful.”

However, not all the opinions were negative. Architect Kroyanker hopes the bridge will contribute to the city’s modernist image. “This doleful city deserves some secular symbolism,” he said. And he is relieved that “nothing worse” was done. “In Jerusalem, there has been a tendency over the last few years to integrate elements that I call 'ultra-Orthodox aesthetics,' like the menorah, the Star of David," he said. "The bridge is the least of all evils."

My own opinion on the bridge is positive. I agree that it is out of character in its bleak surroundings, but the entrance to Jerusalem has always struck me as pitifully uninspiring with its narrow winding road ending in a profusion of plebeian traffic lights and pedestrian traffic.

The northern entrance to San Francisco, where I grew up, is flanked by the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. The New York skyline never fails to draw gasps from visitors approaching it from all sides. Even our own little Tel Aviv has its share of skyscrapers and a wide highway flowing into its bowels (not to mention a huge billboard from Chabad proclaiming the Lubavitcher Rebbe as the messiah – only in Israel!).

If the Bridge of Strings can add a little grandeur to Jerusalem, it may be able to restore some of the pride that we have lost as the city gets poorer and dirtier. A simpler, more traditional bridge might have saved money, but it’s not the sort of statement that would proclaim to the world that we are about more than ancient relics, that we are a modern metropolis full of verve and creativity.

That’s a tall task for a bridge but it should be pointed out that Paris’ venerable Eiffel Tower was also derided as a “monstrous and purposeless installation in the heart of our capital city." It is my hope that, in time, Jerusalem’s Bridge of Strings may become similarly beloved.

Here’s a Friday morning outing you’ve probably never considered: A trip to the dump. But not just any dump. The Hiria dump – an 80-meter high blight on the landscape that no commuter traveling on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway could miss.

Now Hiria is being transformed from its formerly stinky state into the Ariel Sharon National Park (alternatively known as the Ayalon Park). A group of 20 of us recently trekked out to Hiria on an organized excursion. What we learned was a fascinating insight into Israeli history and ecological renewal.

Opened in 1952, the Hiria dump represents over 50 years of Israeli garbage, everything from plastic bottles and organic refuse to the leftovers from countless home renovations – tables, chairs, chunks of walls – plus bicycle tires, electrical cables, old baby carriages, and  much more, all of which have been tastefully fashioned into artistic “found object” mobiles dangling from the roof of Hiria’s funky yet functional visitor’s center (which itself was once a huge compost shed).

The trash kept on piling up until Hiria was finally closed in 1998, after birds flying overhead in search of choice tidbits threatened planes at nearby Ben Gurion Airport. The garbage still flows through Hiria, but now it’s just a transit station. Small trucks dump their contents into a vast sea of refuge where it’s sorted and loaded into larger trucks which ship it all to a new dump located near the southern Israeli city of Beersheva.

Hiria, nevertheless, remains an imposing site. At 2000 acres, the dump is three times the size of New York’s Central Park. The garbage that created the Hiria hill now sports green grass and low shrubs, hiding its more tawdry past. Our tour took us to the top of that hill which no longer stinks but does sink. Years of decomposing organic waste have created methane gas which makes the entire grounds unstable. That gas is now being pumped out and sold to a nearby textile factory.

We drove in our mini-bus to the top of Hiria from where our group was treated to what must be the best view in town: a 360-degree panorama of the entire Gush Dan region. That lookout point is at the center of Hiria’s ambitious reclamation plans which envisions a network of bike trails (10 kilometers of which already exist), shaded picnic areas, a small zoo and recreational pond, and a country club with a swimming pool and theater situated at the peak of the soon to be former dump.

Hiria’s planners call the Sharon Park “Israel’s green future” and boast with pride that the site will “prove that an environmental hazard can be turned into a national treasure – one that will radiate to the world Israel’s new green face.”

The park will include recycling plants for tires and building materials and an environmental education center, in addition to the meandering Ayalon and Shapirim streams which wind their way around the outskirts of Hiria before flushing out into the Mediterranean Sea. The new Tel Aviv light rail, currently in the planning stages, will reach the western edge of the park.

Even the carefully tended flower garden near the visitor’s center is part of the reclamation process: a self-sustaining system that treats sewage with the help of bacteria from the roots of the plants and breaks down toxins so that the resulting water can be used for irrigation.

The park is named after former prime minister Ariel Sharon who approved creation of the park in 2003. Thousands of students have already toured the facility; a hike through the park in 2005 attracted 8,000 participants. Hiria’s planners hope that 50,000 visitors a year will visit the park for educational and leisure purposes.

Despite the positive plans, Israel still lags behind the U.S. and Europe in terms of recycling options. Except for bottles, paper and batteries, everything else gets collected into the same bins and is ultimately dumped together.

Construction of Park Sharon is expected to be completed in 2020 although portions are already open.

For more details visit: http://www.tourism.gov.il/Tourism_Euk/Articles/Attractions/The+Hiria+Recycling+Park.htm

To organize your own guided tour of the Hiria dump, visit: http://www.ayalon-park.org.il/Eng/ or call +972-3-739-6633

Jody and I will be married 20 years this summer. We decided to take an early anniversary trip last week. Originally we thought of going to a spa hotel, but all the spas we liked were booked. We opted instead of a day in Tel Aviv. It turned out to be both eye opening and fabulous.

For Jerusalemites, Tel Aviv is truly another world. It is laid back, sophisticated and most of all fun, unlike Jerusalem with its claustrophobic architecture, bubbling religious tensions and pot holed streets.

That’s not to say that I don’t love Jerusalem. Israel’s capital retains a small town feel, it’s filled with archaeological gems, and there is an international sense of pluralism with spiritual and educational opportunities that are unique among the world’s great cities. Still, a trip to Tel Aviv is like a breath of fresh sea air. Maybe it’s the beach or maybe it’s proximity to culture in the most surprising places.

We started our day at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, a modern structure with stark architectural lines and a world-class collection of modern art. The impressionist and post impressionist selection contains numerous works from Matisse, Renoir, Cezanne, Pissaro and Chagall. Other departments focus on everything from German Expressionism, Russian Constructivism, Fauvism and Cubism. There is a healthy sprinkling of Picasso and Van Gogh. We particularly enjoyed a retrospective of portraits from Jan Rauchwerger.

The Museum is in a complex that also includes the Tel Aviv Opera and The Cameri Theater, both of which we explored briefly before moving on to our next stop: the old Tel Aviv Port.

What once was a working seaport has been transformed into an engaging shopping and entertainment complex. A large wooden boardwalk affords stunning views of the waves below; all along its expanse are restaurants and bars, many with comfy sofas facing the water to chill out and have a late afternoon drink. The effect is very European – right in the heart of the Middle East. The port has everything from chi-chi designer shops, major chain outlets and even a high-end sex shop for women called "Sisters.”

At night, the Port comes alive with nightclubs and dance facilities. When I went to the Sean Lennon concert, it was at Hanger 11 here at the port.

In the middle of the port is a temporary structure – a unique dance theater built and sponsored by the Batsheva dance troupe. The idea was to bring dance to the masses at a reasonable price. A single piece, called Furo, runs in a continuous loop with the actors swapping in and out every 45 minutes. The audience is free to come and go throughout the evening.

Furo (which means “bathhouse” in Japanese) combines modern dance with Japanese animation by the artist Tabaimo which is projected on three giant screens. The music ranges from electronic blips and beeps to raucous punk rock. Seating is on bleachers rather than formal chairs. The dancers have a relatively limited area to dance, positioned on top of two large speakers on the sides of the hall so as not to interfere with the animation.

We found the dance intriguing but the animation a bit repetitive. But at only NIS 60 ($18) a ticket, it was well worth the cultural diversion. Furo is only playing until mid July (daily 6:00 PM – 11:00 PM), so if you’re interested in attending and you’re in town, act fast.

People dress up to see and be seen at the Tel Aviv Port. I felt a little out of place in my Jerusalem jeans and t-shirt. Not so at our next stop: the Ta’am Ha’Ir food extravaganza.  Billed as the second largest outdoor food festival in the world (after the Windy City’s “Taste of Chicago”), Ta’am Ha’Ir (“Taste of the City”) – now in its 13th year at Ganei Yehoshua near the Tel Aviv Exhibition Grounds - features hundreds of booths from some of Tel Aviv’s trendiest eateries offering small samplings of their wares for low prices - NIS 20-25 ($6-7) for most dishes.

We expected a genteel environment similar to the Jerusalem Wine Festival at the Israel Museum which also features food booths. But with 800,000 visitors projected over 4 days, the festival is more like a circus sideshow. Each booth has its own barkers who scream out increasingly insistent entreaties on megaphones, like at the shuk on a Friday afternoon. Pulsating trance music from several large stages (dairy manufacturer Tnuva, pop radio station Galgalatz and the state lottery system were all represented) plus crowds jostling elbow to elbow give the surroundings the feel of a mega dance club. This is a high energy event.

This being Tel Aviv, the vast majority of the stands were not kosher. We saw lots of shrimp, pork and cheeseburgers being consumed.

Participating restaurants include Manta Ray, Minna Tomei, The Red Chinese, Pasta Mia, Papagaio, Odeon, White Hall, Poyke, Brewhouse, La Goffre, Andre Ice-cream, Yogo, Dim Sum, Maya Taco Bar, Sheinkin Juices and Binyamina Winery.

We split a delicious gnocchi soaked in oil and pesto sauce from a dairy pasta restaurant and a vegetarian samosa from an Indian establishment. We finished our meal with a Belgian waffle covered in whip cream, maple sauce and – to our horror – Nutella chocolate sauce. Israelis do love their chocolate sauce. We were stuffed and not a little bit queasy as we stumbled back to the car.

As we drove back up the hill to Jerusalem after a satisfying anniversary date, we felt a tinge of sadness to be leaving the buzz of Israel’s lively metropolis. We still prefer Jerusalem – it’s a great place to raise a family and the sense of community can’t be beat. The good news: Tel Aviv is only an hour away. We can visit as often as we like. And we plan to do so.

Fight the establishment. That was the implicit message my wife Jody and I gleaned this Shavuot from our attendance at a fiery lecture and our participation in a controversial minyan.

First the lecture. Shavuot is the holiday that commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. The emphasis on the Torah as the central motif of the yom tov has led to a custom of studying all night. Jerusalem probably has more learning opportunities than any other city in the world, in every language imaginable.

For the past few years, we have attended David Hartman’s class at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a pluralistic research and training school in Jerusalem (which also happens to be where our 16-year-old son Amir goes to high school). David Hartman, who is Orthodox, typically spends the first half of his lecture railing against iniquities and injustice he perceives in modern Israeli society, with the brunt of his criticism aimed squarely at the religious world of which he is a member.

This year, he chose to expound on the famous Talmudic story of Tanur shel Achnai (Achnai’s oven) that includes the phrase lo b’shamayim hi – translated as “it is not in heaven” - found in the Babylonian Talmud Baba Metzia 59b and based on a biblical verse in Deuteronomy 30:12. The story is long and involved but the upshot is that there is a disagreement between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Gamliel over a particular interpretation of the Torah.

Rabbi Eliezer calls for several miracles to appear if the heavens agree with him. A tree magically jumps 100 cubits, a river runs backwards, and ultimately a voice booms out of heaven to declare that Rabbi Eliezer is correct. Rabbi Gamliel responds: never mind all that, the Torah is “no longer in heaven.” Rather, it is up to the learned men and women in this world to which it was entrusted to rule on issues of halacha.

That principle led Rabbi Hartman to declare in his lecture that not only is decision making on religious law no longer dictated from heaven, but history itself is not and cannot be controlled by God.

Hartman recounted how, after the 1967 Six Day War, many of his peers saw “God’s finger” in Israel’s striking defeat of its enemies. One Rabbi put it this way: in a crucial battle against Egypt, Elijah the Prophet appeared in the midst of the Israeli army dressed in white with a long beard and blowing a shofar. The result: the Egyptians recognized that God was with the Israelis and simply “ran away.”

But how could it be that the same God who was allegedly so omnipresent in 1967 was cruelly absent during the years of the Holocaust and many other incidences of Jewish hardship? Is our God really so capricious, Hartman asked. A man who’s had a life of plenty may remark that “God has been good to me.” Does that mean that God is “less good” to a family suffering in poverty? History winds its own past, based on the actions of man not God, Hartman emphasized.

Yet, the idea that God actively takes a part in history has taken root across Orthodoxy today, strangling rabbinic innovation, Hartman said. If God is dictating events, the thinking goes, then what right do we as humans have to change Jewish law even when it is clearly unjust? Hartman cited several pressing problems - recalcitrant husbands who refuse to give their wives a get, a divorce degree, and agunot, literally “chained women,” who cannot remarry according to Jewish law because their husbands have gone missing.

Hartman saved his most stinging vitriol for the controversy du jure where in recent weeks an ultra-Orthodox Rabbinic court has retroactively annulled hundreds of thousands of conversions to Judaism going back as far as 1999, insensitive to the suffering caused.

The implicit message: we must continue to fight the establishment. We cannot cede control over such important matters to those who do not interpret lo b’shamayim hi and God’s role in history as Hartman says we must.

After such a combative lecture, it’s not surprising that our evening ended with another example of fighting the establishment.

A further custom of Shavuot is to pray at the Kotel, the Western Wall, as the sun rises. At 4:00 AM, the streets are filled with thousands of people of all religious stripes and colors making their way towards the Old City. It’s exhilarating to participate in the march. However Jody and I overslept by half an hour and there were only women, children and tourists on the streets as we made our way, bleary eyed, towards our destination: the egalitarian minyan which comprises Conservative, Reform and liberal-leaning Orthodox Jews.

This minyan, where men and women pray together and where women lead the tefiilah, has been no stranger to controversy. The group tried for years to pray at the Western Wall, indiscreetly in the back of the plaza. The keepers of the Kotel were not pleased, however, and tried to scare off the minyan’s participants.

I was amongst the group one year and saw first hand the baseless hatred between Jews. Dirty diapers, garbage and bags of chocolate milk were hurled at us indiscriminately. The police were called in to create a separation barrier before we were whisked away for our own protection.

The minyan eventually settled for a government-sponsored compromise to be relocated outside the main Kotel area to the southern extension of the wall known as Robinson’s Arch. The new location is quite picturesque, located amidst archaeological excavations and the nearby Davidson Center, and actually offers a more fulfilling prayer experience than the overcrowded central plaza.
 
I commend the egalitarian minyan for sticking to its guns and fighting the religious establishment as bravely as it did for so many years. As I see it, the Western Wall should belong to all of the Jewish people, and the egalitarian minyan’s strive to change the status quo is a welcome modern extension of the concept of lo b’shamayim hi.

There is still much to be done. There are times when modern Jews seem to be losing the battle. That’s why we must do our part with steadfast conviction. Jody and I will continue to attend both the Hartman Institute for late evening learning and the egalitarian minyan for early morning prayers, as we fight the establishment in our own quiet way.

We were walking home from a friend’s house after lunch on Shavuot a couple of years back. It had been a blazingly hot day, a real Jerusalem sharav, but at one point we were sure we felt a slight drizzle. As we entered the courtyard to our apartment complex, we felt it again.

Then we noticed them: a group of 9 to 12-years olds huddled together in what I can only describe as a “scheming posture.” In the center was one child with an enormous water pistol.

That’s when we remembered. The holiday of Shavuot as it’s observed in Israel is also known as “Yom HaMayim” – Water Day.

“Run for it!” I yelled as we scampered towards our apartment before a stream of water headed our way.

We avoided any serious soaking….this time. But the battle had only just begun.

The doorbell rang. Two of then eight-year-old Aviv’s friends were outside. “Can we use your terrace?” one of them asked.

Before I could think if this was a good or a bad thing for the Jews, Aviv had already ushered them inside.

Now, we live in an upstairs apartment that has several inside levels; the sought-after terrace is actually three stories above ground level, giving anyone standing on it an unparalleled strategic advantage over enemies in the courtyard below. It truly is the high ground in the battle for Yom HaMayim supremacy.

Aviv and his friends surveyed the scene from the terrace, then headed downstairs to our kitchen where they raided our collection of plastic water bottles that were waiting for recycling. They filled up three then resumed their positions. When the first volley of water was launched, the hapless soldiers below didn’t know what hit them.

What are the origins for this uniquely Israeli holiday custom? No one I asked could give me a definitive answer and the Internet wasn’t much help either.

Perhaps it has something to do with the parting of the waters of the Red Sea as the Jews left Egypt in preparation for receiving the Torah, the main event which Shavuot commemorates.

Or maybe it’s more related to the symbolism surrounding Moses, who was rescued from the waters of the Nile and raised in Pharaoh’s palace.

My friend Yuval claims it’s originally a North African custom that was elevated in importance when the country’s secular founders were trying to emphasize the agricultural nature of the holiday.

Or maybe it’s because Shavuot usually falls at the beginning of the summer and it’s just plain hot.

It wasn’t long before there was another knock on the door. This time it was Merav’s friends. More recruits for the Blum brigade. They too headed for the kitchen, but they were more interested in our supply of small plastic sandwich bags.

“Can you tie this for me?” asked Daniella, one of the youngsters, holding a filled bag. She and her friend Dara were building a not insignificant stockpile of water bombs. After the tenth bag, I told them to hold off, there might be other kids coming who’d want.

Which there were…in droves.

Over the course of the next half hour, no fewer than two dozen pre-teens, most part of a loose collection of friends of Merav and Aviv but others complete strangers, entered our kitchen, refilled their bottles and guns or built their own bombs, and headed for the terrace.

At one point, I don’t think there was anyone even left in the courtyard.

Naturally, all of this created no small amount of mess. Puddles of water formed around the kitchen sink and the water tap in the entry-level guest bathroom. A small river of mud and twigs snaked from the front door to the terrace.

My wife Jody pulled me aside. “I think that’s enough,” she said.

But the kid inside of me had other ideas. “Why don’t we just let them have fun?” I asked Jody. ‘Yom HaMayim is only once a year.”

Jody’s eyes surveyed the accumulating devastation that was taking over our living room.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be responsible for cleaning up. Just sit back and enjoy.”

“I think I’ll enjoy it more if I don’t look,” Jody said with a smile and promptly closed herself off in a secure room while the Yom HaMayim battle continued unabated outside.

For the next hour, I helped the combatants keep the supply lines open. I made sure no one slipped or got hurt. We provided drinks and cut up watermelon.

Eventually the battle wore down. The plastic bag supply ran out. Several girls were wrapped in towels as they shivered. I actually managed to get a few kids – led by Aviv, Merav, Dara and Daniella – to help clean up the garbage below.

As I squeegee-d the water towards the terrace drain, one of the kids asked me, her eyes glazed with drops of water and appreciation, “Is your house open like this every year?”

“It is now,” I replied.

As Jody emerged from her room, I said “next year, we have to be better prepared. We need to stock up on plastic bags and save up the recycling for several weeks.

“Or maybe,” Jody said, as she surveyed the damage, “We’ll just lock the doors and pretend to not be home.”

-------------------------

From the entire Blum family, we wish you a joyous - and dry - Shavuot.

From its humble beginnings 32 years ago as a modest folk music festival geared primarily to the English speaking community in Israel, Jacob’s Ladder has evolved into a 3 day bluegrass, country, blues and world music extravaganza that appeals to thousands of both Anglos and Israelis, from teenagers to 60+ old timers.

The latest edition of Jacob’s Ladder was held two weeks ago at its permanent home of Kibbutz Nof Ginosar along the Sea of Galilee just north of Tiberias. The musical line up featured a number of international acts including last year’s headliners The Abrams Brothers, one of the country music scene’s preeminent banjo and fiddle-playing bluegrass acts. The Canadian-born Abrams Brothers – consisting of dad, two brothers, a cousin and two world-class banjo players from the U.S. – had the younger set swooning. As my 14-year-old daughter put it, they were all “hot.”

Other star performers who came from overseas to perform at this year’s festival included Pete Morton, an British ex-punk rocker who turned to raucous guitar driven folk after hearing a Buffy Sainte-Marie record some 30 years ago; North Carolina-based “quirky folk singer and poet” Utah Greene; singer songwriter Sonia Rutstein, who goes by the stage name of SONiA (yes, correct spelling) and blends world music, folk, pop and Middle Eastern rhythms in English, Spanish, Arabic and Hebrew; and TRiAD (what’s with these lower case i’s?), a rather weak three piece who performed oddly arranged interpretations of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Locally grown talent at Jacob’s Ladder included Avital Raz who studied Indian classical music in Varanasi for 5 years and performs an eclectic mix of folk pop with Indian undertones; Sandy Cash, whose humorous ditties always make us smile (the song about a truck that accidentally dumps a load of Viagra in the local water supply is an all-time classic); Tal Korenberg’s Bodhran band, perhaps Israel’s only double bagpipe jammers playing Irish, Celtic and Scottish folk tunes; and my personal favorite, Iyam who got the crowd dancing to a mix of Hebrew and English reggae and rap.

Jacob’s Ladder is more than just music. There are tai chi sessions, a clown workshop for the kids, a chai zula for the cool set to chill out; and lots of country, line and square dancing. My wife Jody has been going to a monthly “contra” dancing in Jerusalem to which I’ve steadfastly refused to attend, on the grounds that I “don’t like anything with steps.” Jody dragged me into the first session at Jacob’s Ladder and before long I was hooked. What fun!

Despite a crowd in the thousands, Jacob’s Ladder never feels oppressive. There are 3 main stages and, other than Friday night when everyone spreads a sheet on the grass and grooves to the main acts, activities are pretty loose. Some people take a dip in the pool. Others browse the arts and crafts area. The lobby of the hotel is always happening with impromptu jam sessions into the wee hours of the night.

Politeness and honesty are an unspoken rule of thumb. You can leave your stuff anywhere and no one will take it. If someone sits in your chair, there are no arguments when you return. Smoking is the exception rather than the rule. There is a laid back, free flowing feeling to the whole event that serves as an antidote, however brief, to the stresses of day to day living in Israel. In short, we love it.

Over the years, Jacob’s Ladder has become less Anglo and more Israeli. That’s in part due to the Israeli-born children of the original attendees who have grown up at Jacob’s Ladder and seem to know all the Israeli and Irish dances by heart (the mosh pit to the side of the main stage was grooving big time Friday night – even I plunged into the midst of the “scene”). There is also a fair representation of Israeli adults who enjoy the music and casual scene.

For Anglos, it’s a chance to catch up with old friends from around the country. It is also a testament to the strong presence of non-religious English-speakers in Israel, a phenomenon you’d be hard pressed to see from the demographics of Jerusalem’s southern neighborhoods where we live.

The overwhelming secular nature of Jacob’s Ladder has also changed in recent years. An increasing number of Orthodox families now attend the festival. The kippa-wearing crowd has its own minyan by the lake Friday night and seems to find no contradiction between Shabbat observance and listening to great music.

Attendees can buy “scrip” in advance so that food purchases can be made without spending real shekels over the weekend. We ate a “proper” Shabbat dinner in the Nof Ginosar dining hall which has one of the better buffets I’ve eaten at a kibbutz hotel.

Our friends call us a bit spoiled. While nearly everyone camps – the grounds of the kibbutz guest house are covered by a sea of tents – we booked a simple but functional room in the pundak, a country style inn with nice pinewood furniture, where we could sleep on a real bed and take a real shower. Despite several derisive comments on our refusal to rough it, that didn’t stop our friends from using our bathroom and fridge.

At the end of the weekend, as the music died down and the afternoon sun began to wane, we wandered down to the Kinneret, pulled a couple of plastic chairs down to the rocky beach and dangled our feet in the cool water. It was a perfect end to a fabulous weekend.

Will we be back? Undoubtedly. We’ve already booked our room for 2009…

----------------------

Interested in attending Jacob’s Ladder? Check out the website at www.jlfestival.com where you can buy discount tickets online. Next year’s festival will be held May 7-9. A smaller and more intimate winter version will be December 5-6. Tickets for just the two days we attended were NIS 230 ($66) for adults, NIS 140 ($40) for kids up to age 12 if ordered on the Internet in advance.

-----------------------

This article originally appeared on Israel21c.

I’ve been eating out a lot lately. For some reason, I wound up ordering ravioli at both restaurants I visited recently. Here, then, are two reviews of landmark Jerusalem restaurants which include elegant pasta on their menus.

Caffit

Jerusalem’s Caffit is the quintessential Israeli café. The oldest establishment on Jerusalem’s trendy Emek Refaim Street – now packed with close to 50 restaurants from elegant dining to “entrecote on a roll” – the vegetarian Caffit serves up fresh pasta, fish and veggie burgers in an upscale urban environment.

The glassed in city street café is hip and modern with lots of dark wood, a large plasma TV playing the latest sports, and a full bar. An outdoor patio is perfect for enjoying a warm summer evening (and a smoke, as the indoor area is, as is now the law in Israel, smoke-free). When we visited, the café was already packed (we got the last table); by the time we left around 9:00 PM, there was a long line waiting to get in.

I ordered a sweet potato ravioli which was generously dusted with pine nuts – it was delicious, the ravioli was just the right tenderness for home made pasta and the sweet potato was offset nicely by the light cream sauce.

My companion ordered the baked salmon with chopped peanuts on a bed of spinach and a cream sauce. The salmon was a little dry, but the creamy sauce and spinach worked well together and the result was mostly delightful.

The portions at Caffit are generous and we weren’t sure if we had room for dessert but when the waiter brought over the dessert tray, it was hard to resist. Various home made chocolate confections were on display; we chose to split an artistic creation called the Gaya which consisted of a layer of sponge cake, chocolate mouse and white chocolate with a dark chocolate crust. It melted in our mouths.

The wait staff at Caffit is attentive but seemed a little overwhelmed by the throng of patrons. Unlike in some restaurants where diners are often handed the check too early and pushed out the door, at Caffit you can linger as long as you want; indeed, getting our bill took a bit of aggressive hand waving.

The bill for two, including a couple of glasses of wine, came to 197 shekels ($56). If you’re looking for an authentic Israeli café with a modern décor and rich menu, you can’t go wrong at this long-standing establishment.

1868 Dairy Café

1868 is the name of one of Jerusalem’s top (and most expensive) eating establishments.  There are actually two restaurants – a meat restaurant located at 10 King David Street (opposite the David Citadel hotel), and a newer dairy restaurant at 34 Bet Lechem Road, opposite the Paz Gas Station. We ate at the latter.

At 1868, there are two seating options – an elegant chef restaurant inside which features white cloth tablecloths, fine cutlery and lovely large wine glasses, and the outside café which is much plainer but has prices about half those of the restaurant. We chose to save a few shekels and eat outside which turned out to be an excellent choice – the food is still exquisitely prepared and the imaginative placement of translucent screens shuts out the somewhat shabby surroundings and noise from the busy street and adjacent petrol station.

Before we’d even ordered, our waitress brought us a basked of home baked bread with a garlic butter and a smoked eggplant sauce. We’re big fans of bread – especially when it’s fresh and hot – and we ultimately had to ask for a second basket – it was that yummy.

We started with an appetizer of baked Camembert with caramelized endive. The Camembert was a whole wedge, not just a few slices. The sweet endive nicely contrasted with the soft salty cheese, all of which was eaten on a triangle of crusty toast (yes, more bread!)

For our main courses, my companion ordered a drum fish in a mustard sauce with pureed potatoes. She was in heaven. It was even better than the fish we ate at Dag al Ha Dan (see my mention here during our recent trip to the North).

As I mentioned before, I went with my favorite pasta – ravioli. At 1868, the dish was stuffed with pesto and enveloped by a butternut squash sauce. My first reaction was that it wasn’t as flavorful than the (less expensive) ravioli I had at Caffit, nor was it cooked quite as al dente, but it slowly grew on me, turning spicier with each bite. A dollop of sour cream on the top added to the variety of tastes.

Unlike Caffit, the portions at 1868 are much smaller and this time we didn’t have to fight back the urge to order dessert. We were rewarded with two hot brownies with a peanut butter mousse and homemade vanilla ice cream. It was the elegant restaurant version of a Reese’s peanut butter cup, albeit with a swirl of raspberry sauce on the side. Now we were satisfied.

The bill came to NIS 220 ($63), slightly more than at Caffit which also included two glasses of wine. Was it worth the extra amount? The pasta was equivalent, but the fish excelled. Next time, maybe I’ll opt for something other than ravioli!

1868, by the way, gets its name from the building where the meat restaurant is located – it was built in 1868.

Ever since I started going out for my falafel with my friend Bob, there’s been one unspoken rule: neither of us will patronize Falafel Oved without the other. It’s OK to go to another falafel stand, just not the one where we have our weekly date.

That hasn’t been hard to follow. In general, I’m not in the mood for more than one filling falafel a week anyway, despite my abiding appreciation of Falafel Oved’s compelling concoction of fresh onions, garlic sauce and spicy schug all wrapped up in a warm fresh laffa and served with fresh balls of deep fried humous (I’m getting hungry just writing this).

But when my wife Jody recently needed a night off from cooking, we started to look at our options. We could go out to eat, but that was expensive. For a family of five, it’s hard to get away for under 300 shekels even if we forego the soft drinks and appetizers.

Take out food can get pricy too. Our favorite, the Chinese noodles with beef and chicken from Soya, tops out at over 100 shekels. Even pizza comes in at 75 shekels depending on the topping.

The cheapest alternative by far is falafel. At 11 shekels for a pita sandwich, we can feed our whole family for 55 shekels. That’s how Thursday evening got to be Falafel Night in the Blum household.

But where to go? Falafel Oved was off limits. We tried Falafel Bis which I wrote about before. Despite the multi-colored flavored falafel balls and fried garlic sticks, the overall experience is still mostly muddled and not on the same level as Falafel Oved.

Next we tried Melech Ha Falafel (the Falafel King) – the balls were pretty tasty but the establishment was a car schlep away and the pita sandwiches topped out at an expensive 17 shekels each.

After trying the competition and assiduously avoiding Oved, we finally gave in. Why not go for the best? Jody sent me up the street to break with tradition.

It was after 6:00 PM when I got to Falafel Oved. There were several people already ahead of me in the line. A solitary worker was trying to man several stations – making up sandwiches, refilling the salad and pickle bins, and boiling up fresh falafel balls, all the while cradling an endlessly ringing cell phone under his ear. He also didn’t seem in much of a rush to serve.

The line behind me grew. The man at the front of the counter had ordered 5 pitas for his work. The next man did the same. A woman who I hadn’t noticed suddenly appeared and announced that she was “after him,” a typical Israeli behavior that still drives me nuts. How is it fair that I have to wait in line while the other person simply saves her place and then is free to run errands, confident that the system will not exile her to the end of the line when she returns?

Another woman tried to cut in front of me. “There’s a line,” I hissed at her. Nevertheless, when I had nearly reached the front, the falafel man served her before me. Was that another unspoken Israeli rule? Ladies first? If so, I never heard of it.

The falafel man continued to move at a snail’s pace. By this time I had been standing in the line nearly 45 minutes.

“I’ve never waited so long for falafel,” a man behind me complained. I nodded in silent agreement. This falafel had better be good.

Finally it was my turn. I looked down at the counter. The pita bag was empty. “More’s on the way,” the falafel man assured me. “I just don’t know when.”

My frustration reaching a crescendo, I turned and stormed away, falafel-less and miserable. As I began the short walk home, I called Jody and told her of my experience.

“Maybe you can buy bagels?” she suggested.

“No,” I practically yelled into the phone. “I’m done standing in lines. I’m coming home.”

And then I hung up on her. I truly didn’t know what to expect when I arrived at our apartment. A room full of grumpy children? A quick omelet cooked up in the microwave? Fortunately, 17-year-old Amir was more resourceful than I’d given my family credit for. What do you want on your pizza, he asked in a cheery voice.

The pizza was fine, good even. I had onions and Bulgarian cheese. No one went hungry. But I couldn’t help feeling that I had just been subjected to the Curse of Bob. We had agreed never to eat at Falafel Oved without the other. The one time I try, they run out of pitas before I can fill up for my family. Never again, I vowed.

The next week, Bob and I went out for our weekly pilgrimage to the god of fried humous. The falafel was great as always. On the following Thursday, we bought fried chicken from the nearby “Shnitzi.”

I haven’t gone back to Falafel Oved without Bob. I doubt that I ever will. When it comes to falafel and friends, loyalty comes first.

The one drawback to traveling in Israel during hol ha moed – the intermediary days of the Pesach holiday that ended two weeks ago – is the traffic. Everyone is on the roads and you have to anticipate long delays. Trying to figure out the fastest, least congested route is a national sport in which we dutifully engaged during our recent trip to the north of the country. The same is true of Yom Ha'atzmaut - Israel Independence Day (today).

Getting out of Jerusalem was our first challenge. We headed out of Baka where we live past Liberty Bell Park to take King David Street. But when we got there, the road was closed. Police were directing travelers through the center of town which is jammed even on a good day. Some dignitary was staying at the King David Hotel – was it Jimmy Carter or Condoleezza Rice? We never found out.

Half an hour later we finally made it out of the city and headed towards the Dead Sea to high tail it up the Jordan Valley road where we knew traffic would be sparse. On the way up, we stopped at Gan Garoo, a lovely little zoo featuring kangaroos and koala bears. We somehow hoped that by delaying our travels by an hour we’d beat some of the mid-day throngs on the road.

When we got to the Zemach junction just past the city of Bet Shean, we had a decision to make – should we go left toward Tiberius or right along the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee? We’d already heard on the news that there were 45 minute delays getting into Tiberius so we decided to try what we hoped was the lesser traveled way.

And for a while we were right.

The traffic flowed normally for the first 30 minutes and we congratulated ourselves on a decision well made. And then, around Kibbutz Ein Gev, traffic slowed to a crawl. The 45 minutes we had avoided had been transferred to the other side of the lake.

Finally we cleared the jam and continued on our unimpeded way until – bam – we were stuck for another 45 minutes trying to make a left turn towards the Golan Heights at the T-Junction at the north end of the lake.

By now we had been delayed for an hour and a half and my patience was wearing thin. We had decided to take some back roads to our destination, hoping to avoid even more jams on the main road from Tiberius to Kyriat Shemona. But when we came to our turn off, a large sign proclaimed that the “bridge was out” on the road we wanted.

I finally lost it. Complaints spewed out of me like a water balloon unleashed on an unwitting bystander.

“Why did we take this way?” And: “This is a nightmare!” There were other choice expressions I won’t print in this family-oriented column.

“Are you sure you want to go there?” my wife Jody asked, attempting to temper my temper.

“We’re already there,” I sputtered in reply.

It was at that moment that Jody, with the impromptu wherewithal of a true tzadik, turned it all around.

“What would be the worst thing that could happen?” she asked the captive audience in our car. The kids immediately jumped in with responses.

Aviv: “that we would run out of gas.”

Merav: “that someone would have puked”

Me: “that I would have hit that car when I was trying to pass the truck.”

We all laughed. That’s all it took, a little reality check, and the heavy mood lifted as quickly as it had come crashing down

It took us 5 and a half hours for what should have been a 3.5 hour drive. But we got there, minutes before dinner. We settled into our rooms and hung out on the grass as the hot day faded. You can read about our next days in my previous post. All in all it turned out to be a fabulous vacation.

But the next time…I’m staying put at home until after hol ha moed.