My new favorite holiday

After seven long days of observing the Heebs in action, I think it's safe to say that I'm pretty much an expert on the holiday of Pessach, also known as the Pestival of Matzo. In order to enlighten my non-Jewish and other unworldly readers, I will provide you with some of my most significant discoveries of the last week.

1. Bread vs. Matzo.
During Passover, it is customary to give up bread in favor of everything unleavened - egg noodles, matzo pizza, yeast-less cereal, cardboard cakes/cookies/brownies/muffins, basically every carbohydrate you can think of but made with enough artificial ingredients and a shorter preparation time than it takes for the bad guys to drive us out of Egypt.

Fortunately, in Eretz Yisrael there is no need to prove your Jewishness to anyone (for obvious reasons), so you can trust me when I say that not one piece of matzo has made its crumbly way into my stomach! Instead, I've taken the anti-establishment approach and eaten as much yeast-filled cuisine as possible: pretzels, rice cakes, granola bars, pita (of both the traditional and Druzi varieties), even good old-fashioned bread. Mmm mmmm, carbs.

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Socialism 101

I recently relocated to Kibbutz Ketura, a small agricultural compound in the heart of the Arava. I live with three of my fellow Otzma volunteers in Gimel-3, a sheirut-sized apartment in the dilapidated volunteer housing neighborhood. There are two bedrooms between the four of us, and we share one grimy bathroom and an ant-infested kitchenette.

My first task upon arrival was to write my laundry number (664) into all of my clothes, thereby branding myself as a communist until I have enough money to replace my current wardrobe. I then set out to unpack all my belongings, which was a relatively straightforward procedure with only three shelves and the black hole under my bed as storage space. Next I was informed of my job assignment of Lunch Lady in the cheder ochel, my first food service job since scooping ice cream part time in high school.

Fast forward a week.

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Purim is my favorite

You might say that I'm not the biggest fan of organized religion. However, I've recently discovered that synagogue is an untapped goldmine of hotties! The whole praying thing is totally my new favorite thing.

I reached this state of enlightenment while spending Purim with my uncle in Metar, a suburb of Be'er Sheva. I'm finding that one of the great things about Israel is that they have all these random made-up rules about holidays, like how Purim is observed a day late in cities surrounded by a wall; evidently, Jerusalem is encircled by some kind of structure, so I was able to have my hamentaschen and eat it too by celebrating day one with my family and day two at my current "home" in Yay-Ru. Side note - rather than calling the triangle-shaped cookies "hamentaschen," an Americanized PC term which means "Haman's hat," I've recently learned Israelis call them "ozneh-haman," or, "Haman's ear." I can't figure out why the label hasn't caught on in the States.

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V-Day in the Holy Land

As usual, it took me like six hours to get through the grocery store checkout line today, and in that span of time I couldn't help but notice the pathetic Valentine's Day arrangement near the entrance. Pathetic, because it paled in comparison to the variety of chocolates, mini wine bottles, and costume accessories of the Purim display; but in addition, because I'm not quite sure if Israel thoroughly understands the horrible concept of V-Day.

I've found that Jews don't usually observe Valentine's Day to its full extent because Satan isn't actually part of our religion. Nevertheless, SuperSol is trying to make a few shekels off of the holiday by offering such romantic items as magenta bear-shaped candles, red gift baskets of Dead Sea bath products and potpourri, and bags of pink and white (kosher) marshmallows, all situated between Yarden champagne, Grant's Finest Scotch Whiskey, and sale-priced wine glasses. No fabulously expensive desserts, no gaudy stuffed animals, no stomach-churning Hallmark cards, no nothing. I did, however, catch sight of numerous Israelis curiously poking at the disfigured lumps of wax and exclaiming, "ya-feh!" which is supposed to mean "pretty," but now I'm not so sure.

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Spiritual eccentricity

It's track 2.5 of OTZMA, and for that reason I am currently "homeless" (by the technical definition) for a three-week period and squatting at a volunteer guesthouse in Jerusalem, whose name I will omit to protect the anonymity of those involved. It is my (quite possibly misinformed) understanding that the guesthouse serves as somewhat of a long-term hostel for volunteers from abroad, or a safe haven for young adult migrants to work, sleep, and eat together in religious communism. The permanent residents call us "chevre", which I'm pretty sure means "group of comrades" in Hebrew, and we take turns participating in "toranut," or "breakfast preparation for the chevre duty." That's right, everyone gets a chance to wake up at 6:45AM to make giant buckets of oatmeal and scrambled eggs.

In addition, our comrade leaders are very big on guitar-playing hippies with masculine names like "Pesach" and "Ariel" accompanying our kitchen labor with repetitive songs about liberal selflessness and Mother Earth. We even drove two hours into the Dead Sea region for a midnight stroll in the desert and ten minutes of solitary meditation while munching on fire-roasted potatoes and onions. It's all quite endearing, but there are times when I'd like to welcome the Sabbath bride without being smothered by spiritual eccentricity, which is why I hope to be kilometers away by noon on Friday.

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A catalogue of my favorite Israeli goods

Israel does a lot of things right. Take, for example, the shower situation. Many years ago some ingenious team of Israeli engineers eliminated the bathtub entirely and simply placed a faucet over a drain in the middle of a room with a toilet on one side. No useless ceramic fixture, no slippery floor, and no tangled up shower curtain all up in my grill. I mean seriously, who even takes baths anymore? I haven't used a bathtub since I was practically a zygote. You just do your business, squeezie the floor, and pat yourself on the back for washing yourself in the most efficient fashion known to mankind.

Exhibit B: the amazingly productive public school system. The national unions of students and teachers have developed their own method of generating attention for their complaints and demands: the students and/or staff go on strike and organize a region-wide walkout at least once every few weeks. No joke, nothing says "we want longer school days" like a news headline that reads "all students in Kiryat Shmonah on strike tomorrow." Works for me, 'cuz then I get extra time to catch up on my medical studies, namely Scrubs and Grey's Anatomy.

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Passports, Part II

So you may remember from my last post that I've been on an incredibly exasperating, seemingly endless journey to obtain paperwork for my Israeli citizenship from the Ministry of the Interior. The whole process has been slightly complicated due to language barriers, which I must admit is a little surprising considering that in a country where thousands of Anglos make Aliyah every year, English proficiency is apparently not a requirement for working in the main office of immigration - despite being a prerequisite for most jobs in the service industry in Tel Aviv.

My initial attempt to get a passport ended with me retreating in shameful defeat as the intolerable misrad hap'nim clerks turned me away empty handed due to a lack of proper documentation. Momma Dorfman sure was pleased to receive a hysterical long distance phone call that night, requesting that she dig up my birth certificate from the safe deposit box and priority mail it to the Middle East.

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Passports and other mishaps, part I

There are unquantifiable benefits to coming to Israel through a group program, as opposed to on your own: for example, the knowledge that someone else would take care of the bureaucratic hassles of renewing my volunteer visa after the first three months, thus relieving me from having to do the dirty work myself. You can imagine my disappointment when my madricha pulled me aside one day and explained that she was unable to obtain an extension of my visa for me.

"It seems that you're Israeli," she informed me.

"No that's not possible", I explained.

Turns out I was mistaken.

You see, my mom lived in Israel for several years when she was around my age, before returning to the Land of Opportunity in 1978. 

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Passports and other mishaps, part I

And with that, I ripped up the paperwork and threw the shreds at her - or at least that's how the conversation should have gone...

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