Summer with a Vengence

I like summer, as I’ve noted before in these pages. I like the heat and the long, bright days. Most of all, I like not having to struggle to stay warm. But even for me there can be too much of a good thing.

This past week has been so hot and humid that I find myself developing a certain, shall we say, glow. This is not like me. I’m cucumber-cool. I do not perspire. Yes, I could turn on the air conditioner. I do have one that I use for heating the house in the winter. But air conditioning quickly becomes too cold for me and then when you turn it off you get hit by that blast wave of hot, humid air which seems extra-oppressive. So I prefer to do without and open up the house to the breeze.

Fortunately I have stumbled on quite an effective heat-buster: frozen grapes. You just wash them and stick them in the freezer and they’re amazing, like Popsicles that you don’t have to feel guilty about because even the Fitness Police approve of fruit. In fact, it’s so comforting that I find myself wondering what else can be eaten frozen. Carrot and cucumber slices? How about pizza? I think I’m on to something.

The Film Industry

Nothing can be more frustrating that wrestling with cling film. You try to pull out a smooth sheet but then it sticks at one end of the roll. You try to coax it free and the loose end bunches up. You tease that out as straight as you can and then the whole roll jumps out of the box and you have to start all over again. This is an engineering problem, I think. A well-designed product would unroll smoothly and stay in the box.

This has daily significance because every food item you buy in Israel has to be in some way repackaged. Everything. This is because nothing, except for excellent infant formula, comes in re-sealable packages. Whether it be frozen peas, breakfast cereal or blue cheese, once you’ve opened it unless you plan to use the whole thing – unlikely if you don’t have a family of 25 – you’re going to have to figure out a way to keep the rest. It’s a daily annoyance, one I don’t remember having in the USA.

Until very recently – listen up, America, this will make you rub your eyes in disbelief – all milk came in plastic bags. That’s right, bags. You needed a special pitcher to put one in, then you snipped off a corner to pour. Of course, re-sealing was out of the question and they often leaked. They are now thankfully pretty much gone, having been replaced by rational cartons.

What this all means is that because of cheesy, poorly-designed packaging, one is forced to use lots and lots of cling film, all of which eventually winds up in the landfill. So you know my next question: where are the Greens when you need them? Why aren’t they lobbying manufacturers for a solution? In the meantime, I’m looking for a way to cash in. I wonder what cling film stock goes for?

Laundry Day

The number of tasks a person has to complete in any given day can be staggering. Brush your teeth, shower, get dressed, feed the animals, make breakfast, wash the dishes, water the plants, make lunch, wash the dishes, dust, make dinner, wash the dishes, and then the day is gone. You get the idea. It takes endless work just to maintain your own existence.

Of course there are labor-saving devices, like washing machines. Probably most people on the kibbutz now have one. I don’t. It’s not that I have anything against them. If I had to choose between a washing machine and taking my clothes down to the river to beat them against a rock, I'd choose the machine every time. And, yes, I could budget the money to buy one.

But where would I put it? There isn’t really a space in my house marked, “Washing machine goes here.” Most people here build separate storerooms and put them in there. I could do this, too, but that would take some real money. And besides, I don’t really want to add all that sorting, washing, drying, folding, ironing to my daily to-do list. I’m much too lazy.

Fortunately, there’s another option: the kibbutz laundry. I drop off my clothes each week and get them back clean, neatly folded and ironed – even the T-shirts. Yes, there is the danger that something will get lost, I guess that should be “lost”, but most of the time it works just fine. I get my clothes, there’s less stuff for me to do every day and I can rest satisfied in the knowledge that I have provided employment to my fellow kibbutzniks. Life just doesn’t get better than this.

Salad Days

Nothing says summer like potato salad. When the weather turns reliably hot I find myself craving its creamy and crunchy pleasures. It’s only a matter of time before I boil and chop enough for a great big bowlful.

Of course, they do make potato salad in the kibbutz. But just between us, it’s pretty awful. No onions, no celery. Instead, they add canned peas and carrots. Ghastly. In fact, there are a number of classic dishes they get horribly wrong: artichokes with mayonnaise instead of garlic butter, potato soup made with chicken soup powder instead of leeks and cream, roast beef that has been boiled until you can mash it with a fork.

You get the picture. I find myself wondering how kibbutz cuisine took this left turn into dreadful. The pioneering generation came from countries with rich culinary traditions – Germany, Hungary, Russia to name a few. So what happened? Did the Old Countries forbid cooks to emigrate? Did you only go to the kibbutz movement if you lacked the cooking gene?

I have a feeling this will remain a mystery. If you try to ask people they get all defensive – “What’s wrong with the food? It’s wonderful food! Be grateful you have something to eat!” – so I‘m not going there. Tonight I will be welcoming summer with my traditional steak and potato salad feast, convinced it will be delicious. The rest of my comrades don’t know what they’re missing.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

I guess this qualifies as old-home week. My ulpan roommate has been visiting from England. Last night as we sat in the lounge after Shabbat dinner, who breezes over but Bernard, an unforgettable Scot who had also been in the ulpan with us a hundred years ago and had not been seen since. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I mean, what are the odds?

Merle has, I think, often regretted that she didn’t stay in Israel and so she arranged this little trip to investigate the possibility of rectifying the mistake. It’s impossible not to like her. She’s mad, outgoing and says exactly what’s on her mind. The precise opposite of me. So I did what I could to help her with her mission. I got her into the kibbutz guest room – I think there’s only one or two of them, so this took a bit of luck – and tried to be encouraging about the prospects of finding work and a place to live. But the whole project quickly tanked: Merle cannot take the heat.

I suppose if you live in a perpetually chilly place like Liverpool you can forget the sultry challenges of an Israeli summer. Still, in true British fashion she spends her time walking all over central Israel in the heat of the day. There is something splendid about the British can-do attitude and refusal to surrender to tropical torpor. All of which brings me to Noel Coward.

I’ve been humming his song all week. “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” Associating Merle with this immortal send-up of British colonial behavior is not quite fair to her (Sorry, sweetie!) because the poor woman is melting and will soon make her escape to cool, green England. But I couldn’t resist. Anyone who has two and a half minutes to spare can catch the great man himself singing his song on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdEnxNog56E

A Pretty Picture

Isn't this a pretty painting? More about this later. Building a house anywhere is a monumental undertaking. But when you build in a kibbutz, or to be more precise, on a kibbutznik’s budget, the task is awesomely overwhelming. So when my turn came four years ago I put every shekel I could scrape together into the structure – windows, floors, cabinetry – those things that could not be easily changed and put off buying furniture until I had amassed some more money.

I like wood, solid wood. But because I am a humble kibbutznik there is no way I could afford the solid oak furniture of my dreams. Instead I had to settle for mahogany and rosewood. Yes, that’s right, in this upside down world the luxury woods of the past are now imported cheaply from the Far East, which is how I could buy a French-style solid mahogany sleigh bed last year. This completed the bedroom except for one galling thing: the great, big empty space over the bed.

This brings me to the painting. It’s a reproduction of a screen by the Japanese artist, Ogata Korin, offered by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s beautifully serene, perfect for the lilac bedroom. Last month I finally pried open my wallet and ordered it, only to be disappointed when I got a message from Customer Service saying because the piece is so large – about a meter long – there would be an extra $174 shipping charge and offering the option to cancel. I did. However, when I got my credit card statement this month I found I had been charged for the painting at the original amount.

My very polite question to the Customer Service lady resulted in a very apologetic reply, saying that the cancellation had been duly sent to the warehouse who shipped the painting anyway and cancelled the extra shipping charge. She said if I don’t want it I can refuse to accept it and they will credit my account when they get it back. But I do want it. And now I have a dilemma. I don’t want to stiff the museum for the extra charges, but the mistake was not mine, I have behaved quite properly, and I can’t afford the extra money. If I return it they’ll have to pay the extra charges twice. So assuming it doesn’t come postage-due, it looks like I’ll be getting the painting after all. And I can kiss the great, big empty space good-bye.

Cheesy

We have just celebrated Shavuot, the cheese holiday. I find this Holy Day to be something of an enigma. My step-daughter says it’s beautiful, just think of the whole of Israel walking to Jerusalem to pay their tithes to the Temple, celebrating receiving the Torah. All well and good, but what’s the connection with cheese?

Were the tithes paid in cheese, two wheels of cheddar and a ball of mozzarella per family? Did they eat cheese on the way?
“We’re walking to the Temple please
Will you pass the mac and cheese?”
I don’t know how this was excluded from the Psalms. Maybe cheese was all they had left after they paid what they owed.

The connection between cheese and religion is not an obvious one but apparently it exists. I heard on the news recently that someone found a Cheeto shaped like Jesus Christ. Someone dubbed it “Cheesus”. Be that as it may, on Shavuot we are commanded to eat cheese and I happily comply. My only reservation is the blandness of the local product. Producers considerately grace the market with a few different varieties at this time, but none of them are sharp or tangy.

This strikes me as odd. Israelis won’t eat anything unless it’s heavily seasoned. They say olives are tasteless unless they’re loaded with garlic and lemon. And yet the whole nation prefers low-taste cheese. Like I said, this holiday is an enigma.