What Feast of the Tabernacles?

We have arrived once again to the week-long holiday of Succot when we celebrate 40 years of wandering in the desert. As I’ve mentioned before in this space, I find it the most perplexing of Jewish holidays. I don’t know about you, but if I had been lost in the desert for all that time with no way to shower and nothing to eat but the same old manna every day, I would want to forget the experience as quickly as possible, not commemorate it.

But commemorate it we do. The main task involves building a tabernacle. When you get an instruction like this you know you’re in trouble. “Tabernacle” is a huge, substantial word for something so flimsy. Besides, some of us are, shall we say, mechanically-challenged and consideration ought to be given. Not only could I not build a tabernacle to save my life, I was the only kid in my kindergarten to flunk Tinker Toys.

Once you have the tabernacle you’re supposed to decorate it with the four species: palm, willow, myrtle and a citron. These aren’t the kinds of things you find laying around so you either have to shlep to a market to buy them at hefty prices or else raid a neighbor’s garden or national park, all of which is pretty unsavory.

Like I said, this holiday is nothing but trouble. The neighbors and Park Service wardens can rest peacefully and the emergency services can stand down: I will not build the tabernacle. In fact, I think I’ll just ignore the whole thing until it goes away. Wishing everyone a happy holiday, just please wake me when it’s over.

Pining for a Tree

This Saturday Israel will celebrate Tu Bishvat, the Jewish Arbor Day, signaling the beginning of spring. It’s one of the nicer holidays, symbolized by blooming almond trees. Its main activities involve eating dried fruit and planting trees. Nice.

In the spirit of the day I’ve been negotiating with the gardener to replace a dead tree near the curb with a laburnum. The laburnum is a beautiful tree with spectacular clusters of yellow flowers. While yellow is not one of my colors I’m willing to overlook this because of its sheer gorgeousness. I’m even willing to pay for it even though strictly speaking the area in question is not part of my garden.

The problem – and there always is one – is the resistance of the garden guy. For some reason I cannot seem to convince him of the beauty of my vision. We’re even having trouble agreeing on the facts. When I first raised this issue a year ago, he tried to convince me that the tree isn’t dead it’s just dormant. The conversation continued in the spirit of Monty Python’s parrot sketch (if it’s been a while since you’ve laughed at the comedy classic, it’s on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj8RIEQH7zA) and I was only waiting for him to tell me it’s pining for the fjords. A year later the tree just keeps getting more and more dormant.

Now we cannot seem to agree on exactly which tree we’re talking about. I’m saying the tree is at the end of a line of trees and so can be replaced with a different type. The garden guy says it’s in the middle and must be the same type to preserve the unity. Thus we arrive to the crux of the matter: the tree species. This is important because the trees that are there, and I have no clue what kind they are, are definitely unlovely. They’re spindly with little foliage – the ugly stepsisters of the tree kingdom. In fact, now that I think of it, they could easily be mistaken for dead. Maybe I should re-check my facts. Tell me, where do you find a tree’s pulse?

Hanukkah Guilt

Now that Hanukkah is finally over – ok, it’s been over for quite a few days – it is time to confront the elephant in the room. Hanukkah guilt. And no, I’m not talking about the jelly donuts.

Eight days is a long holiday. 2000 years ago life had a more leisurely pace, unless of course you were busy running for your life from the Roman Legion. But most of the time things were kind of slow. You’d get up in the morning, milk the goat, tend the wheat field maybe, bake a bit of bread, but that was pretty much it. Lighting candles every night was no big deal because you had to do it anyway if you wanted to see anything.

But in the 21st century life is more hectic. With all the things that each day contains it’s hard to remember to light the candles every night, the candles that come thoughtfully packaged 44 to a box, the exact number you will need. This is especially true if you don’t have children around to tug at you and nag. So after Hanukkah is over, you’re stuck with the box that still has anywhere from 4 to 15 left in it.

What are you supposed to do with them? They’re too small to use in regular candle holders and too big to use on birthday cakes. And they’re multi-colored so they don’t fit in with any kind of décor. So the box hangs around in a kitchen drawer, reminding you of the simple ritual that should not have been too much to ask and still you forgot. Guilt. When I moved out of my old house I found a total of seven boxes stashed in various drawers. Guilt x7.

I can’t help but think that there are other people that this happens to. I can’t be the only one.

The Bread of Affliction

As of this writing, we are well into the king of the Jewish marathon holidays. After the Seder, the gefilte fish and the Had Gadya, the week of Pesach is all about not eating bread. Some people find this difficult. Some even keep a secret stash of buns in the freezer.

I can be sympathetic to this. I also love bread. Have you ever noticed that bread is the one thing you can eat three times a day – breakfast, lunch and dinner – every day and not get sick of it? Still, I have no problem with Pesach because I just adore matzot. Not plain, of course, because that way it tastes like a piece of bread that someone stomped on with a dirty boot. But with the right topping it is really quite tasty.

Chopped liver, chicken, tuna or egg salad all do well as does a thin smear of butter. Of course the traditional spread is schmaltz which is something I have never tried. In fact, I find just the idea of it – rendered chicken fat – a little off-putting. But my very favorite topping is … drum roll, please … spaghetti sauce.

I love spaghetti sauce and have been know to eat it out of the jar on a spoon. Pasta for me is just an excuse to eat more sauce. Imagine my delight some years ago when I dared to put some on a piece of matza and found the result to be entirely palatable. At one time I might have been more circumspect in recommending this. But here in the Middle East they put a variety of sauces and spreads in little bowls in front of you and call them salads.

Bagel Bagel

Back home in America there was no nicer way to spend a lazy Sunday morning than by reading the paper while munching freshly baked bagels bought from the neighborhood bakery. Bagels are the quintessential Jewish food and one of oddest things about Israel is how rare they are here in the Jewish homeland. It’s counter-intuitive.

Of course, there’s no end of round bread. But dense, chewy bagels are as rare as water in a desert. I’ve heard that there are a couple of places in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where they can be had, but that’s too far to shlep. Once upon a time a local baker delivered lots of them to the kibbutz shop. These were golden days for me. There were plain bagels, onion bagels, garlic bagels, raisin bagels and – my personal favorite – blueberry bagels. But they stopped making them, no demand. I’ve been bereft since.

Then along came “The Jerusalem Post” with a bagel recipe which of course I had to try. I spent most of this afternoon kneading, shaping, boiling, glazing, baking and hoping for the best. Shaping them was the hardest part. After bagel number 8 I started getting the hang of it. 9 through 12 are ok, but the others are the ugliest things ever baked by man. How do they taste? Reasonable, but still not chewy enough. Maybe I’ll try again, but intensity of the labor is a little off-putting. Laziness after all is my weekend objective. I think I’ll go lie down.

Turkey Day

Sometimes I really miss the US, especially on the forth Thursday in November. There's no point in trying to celebrate Thanksgiving on the kibbutz because it's so specifically tied to the settling of America. Besides, where would you find a whole turkey? In Israel only the legs and wings are grown.

Thanksgiving is the one American holiday a Jew can enjoy guilt-free. At Christmas time you can see the lights and decorations, hear the carols and sip the eggnog and pretend not to like it. Those Christians are so over-the-top. "What about your freakish fondness for fruitcake," you ask? You mean a Jew can't have a sweet tooth? But Thanksgiving has no particular religious component other than the thanking G-d thing. It's just an excuse for families to gather and fabulously over-eat.

My mother would always make the bird with her chestnut stuffing. It was her mother's recipe, she said, and it was the normal bread stuffing flavored with onions and sage plus the heavenly addition of cinnamon and lots of chestnuts. I loved it not only because it smelled and tasted great, but because it was a tangible connection to the grandmother I never knew, she having died before I was born.

When chestnuts arrive at the kibbutz shop, as they should do in a few weeks, I'll try to recreate the stuffing, but in a chicken not a turkey. It won't be the same of course. But at least a chicken will fit in the oven.

Succot, Oddly

This is the oddest holiday in the Jewish calendar. I thought this as I sat in a succa looking at the stars through the palm fronds. Succot, of course, has just ended. I had a nice time, sitting in some friends' succa with a few other people from the kibbutz, eating, drinking and talking about nothing special.

Still, the holiday is odd. It's another of those marathon holidays, the kind that test your endurance until the timer runs out. Christians don't have these, unless you count Lent which is a Catholic invention. We're supposed to build these huts out of nothing substantial, decorate them with species of the plant kingdom, and sleep or at least eat in them for a week. I have a problem with this from the get-go.

I'm not a builder. As a kid, Lincoln Logs were a mystery to me. As an adult, Ikea fills me with fear and trembling and is pretty much out of the question. So no hut will be built. But if I had a hut I wouldn't want to decorate it with fruits and greenery that have to be perfect to be acceptable. This is simply insulting and if I were a vegetable I would howl in protest. Wildly imperfect human beings demanding plant perfection – it's laughable. Perfection is not for this world, certainly not for anything that lives.

By now all the huts have been taken down and thrown on the compost pile. Succot is over and there are no more holidays until the next marathon one in December. Hanukkah at least features jelly donuts.

Blessed Quiet

One day a year everything is blessedly quiet. No street noise, no loud music, no shouting. Just glorious peace and twittering birds. I'm speaking, of course, about Yom Kippur.

This is a secular kibbutz, aggressively so. It's part of a movement that is so left wing that in the early days adoring pictures of Stalin were hung in the children's classrooms, a bit of information I would file under "What the hell were you thinking?" When we got married so many years ago it was forbidden to have a huppa in the public areas – rabbis were forbidden. You could have it at your house, but not at the dining hall. While this rule has since changed, the attitude has not. So it's fair to assume that most people here don't fast.

Still, the day is treated quite respectfully. Why this is, I don't really know. Maybe because it's tradition, or part of Jewish identity, or because the rest of the country has shut down and there's nothing else to do. For whatever reason there are no barbecues and no kayak races on the fish ponds. One day a year, those precious hours of silence. It's marvelous.