Turkey in Turkey

The joke is juvenile, I know, but who hasn't wanted to eat turkey in Turkey? Well, I lived the dream this Thanksgiving thanks to an amazing weeklong sojourn in Istanbul with my college buddies, James, Jesse and Maya. James, having lived in Istanbul for nearly three years now, served as as our better-than-native guide (even looks the part, right?). The trip just happened to coincide with Thanksgiving, which we celebrated in the home of a charming expat and in the company of a very international crowd. James' roommate Kirk performed the extraordinary feat of preparing a turkey in a toaster oven (having dismembered and brined it in advance, he managed to cook the whole thing in three separate batches). I pitched in with my first ever rectangular apple pie!

But the main course and dessert weren't the only unusual elements of this year's festivities. Never before have I attended a Thanksgiving dinner that came to an end with a group of North American female expats dancing with mustached Turkish men to Madonna's "Like a Prayer." I think I can safely call that both a first and a last.

Istanbul has been described ad infinitum as a unique blend of Europe and the Middle East and an amalgam of secular and sacred influences. I don't want to reiterate what's already been said,

but I must say the picture seems fairly accurate. Despite having all the trappings of a typical European metropolis, the continual citywide chanting of the Muezzin is a continuous reminder that Turkey is indeed a Muslim land.

With James as our fearless leader, we ate our share of kebabs,

smoked our share of nargilah, played our share of backgammon, bought our share of pottery and still found time to conquer the old city walls and an ancient fort or two (not to mention the daily conquest of 100+ steps leading up to James' flat...as you can see from Jesse's expression, the view from the terrace made the trek worthwhile). The only adventure I could have done without was the night I spent at Jesse's side in a public hospital thanks to a sudden onslaught of kidney stones. With the help of our new friend and trusty translator, Farouk, we were able to appreciate how very colorful a Turkish hospital can be (one translation went as follows: "Doctor, I'm in pain! My ten-year-old child did my stitches!"). By the following morning—thank Allah—the stones had passed and Jesse was back to guzzling arak and gobbling baklava with the rest of us.

My last morning was certainly the most, uh, eye-opening (to say the least!). It began with a 7:00am outing to the Hamam, which turned out to be opening only at 8:00am that day because of Kurban Bayram (the annual sacrificial holiday). Still half-asleep, we bided our time in a neighboring park situated between two mosques, and, while nibbling on börek and sipping sweet tea, watched the mosque-goers scurry in the direction of the call to prayer. Back at the baths I nervously took leave of my male companions but was lucky to have the women's bath entirely to myself. I stretched out on the hot marble slab and shut my eyes for a few minutes, only to be awoken by a heavy, big-busted woman wearing nothing but black lace underwear and carrying a pumice. Not exactly a calming sight! But it was fantastic. Soaped, scrubbed, soaked and sloughed and I emerged a new woman. On our way back home, and about twenty minutes prior to my departure, the purity of the morning was rudely disrupted by the sight (and smell) of ritual slaughter. In honor of the holiday, a dozen cows were packed into a kind of garage/warehouse, where they were sacrificed and carved up to be divided among families and the poor. Thankfully we missed the actual slaughter, but the butchery was conducted in plain view. How's that for a dramatic farewell to Istanbul?! Needless to say, I needed to recover from the sensory overload with a nap on my flight back to Tel Aviv. I returned home with two beautiful ceramic bowls, a few boxes of Turkish delight and memories to last a lifetime.

SIDE NOTE: Evidently the Turks have come up with a naturopathic alternative to the swine flu vaccine. Forget an apple a day, just try a glass of pomegranate juice!

The White City

Last week was my entree into Tel Aviv University life. I sat in on three classes, two on Yiddish literature (more in line with my research) and one—just for kicks—on the poetry of Tel Aviv. The lecturer, a wiry chap with long gray hair talked very excitedly about the poets of the Second Aliyah, who were committed to the ideals of tilling the soil and being one with the land. Unsurprisingly, they viewed Tel Aviv as cold, barren, anonymous—in a word, the antithesis of the Zionist dream. In an excerpt we read by David Shimoni, one sentence stood out:

מה לי פה ומי לי פה בקרית המלט ההומה

"What is for me and who is for me in this bustling cement settlement?"

Unlike Shimoni, I have found so much spirit in "The White City." But then again, Tel Aviv wasn't known as such when Shimoni penned those lines in the late 1920s. The more recent nomenclature refers to some 4000 Bauhaus or International Style buildings built in the 1930s by German-Jewish architects who immigrated after the rise of the Nazis (my apartment building included). Tel Aviv is row upon row of smooth lines, flat roofs, curved balconies and white plaster... unmistakably urban yet surprisingly serene.

I have lived in the White City for less than a week but have already pounded much of its pavement, and although I admit it bears little resemblance to the forests and fields that poets like Shimoni, Rachel and Uri Zvi Greenberg admired and extolled, I have found tranquility here.

Another thing stood out during the Shimoni discussion. Apparently, he was one of the most important poets of his day, but is barely read today...or as the lecturer quipped, "He's read neither here nor there...I don't even know where 'THERE' is, but if he isn't read HERE, you can bet he isn't read THERE!" How lucky I am to be in an environment where random Israeli poets—though perhaps infrequently read—never fade into obscurity.

Speaking of "random" and "obscure," those are the perfect descriptors for the tour I co-conducted Thursday evening for my friend James, who is visiting this week from Istanbul (we met in school in California but now find it more convenient to rendezvous on the other side of the globe!). Actually, I was just along for the ride (after all, I barely know Tel Aviv myself!). It began in the north Tel Aviv home of James' friend Yochai, who cooked a terrific dinner ("Yemmenite schnitzel" — what could be a better introduction to the sephardi-ashkenazi nexus?!) and then trotted us out to his favorite night spots, including a bar that serves nothing but champagne and salami and a cafe with mouthwatering, chocolate-infused, ice cream-laden waffles. We were heading north along the beach at about 1:00am when Yochai made a sudden b-line for what looked to me like a crummy roadside eatery. It turned out to be an Ethiopian restaurant that has live traditional music after 11:00pm. Our ivory-white faces were warmly welcomed by the regulars, one of whom kept coming over to us to say, "tehenu, tehenu!" (enjoy, enjoy!). By 1:45 we were up from our seats dancing with him. The Ethiopians have this amazing style of dance that involves nothing but shoulders. The one wearing a yarmulke was particularly skilled... though I should also give a shout out to the guy next to him because he bought me a rose. Sweet. James was amazed, and I'm not surprised. When you picture a country full of Jews, you don't usually imagine them with black faces, long legs and shimmying shoulders! One thing's for sure: "The White City" refers to the architecture alone. So what's next?! A 24-hour Yemmenite karaoke bar? In Tel Aviv, anything's possible!

Balebostes

"Baleboste" is a Yiddish word formed from the Hebrew words "baal" (master) and "bayit" (house), with a slavic ending and Yiddish pronunciation that pretty well disguise its etymology. Some people translate "baleboste" as "housewife," but that's not quite right. You've gotta imagine an insanely-efficient, multi-tasking, aggressively affectionate, occasionally nagging, highly prone to guilt-tripping JEWISH housewife. I'm not quite there yet.... Today was my first solo morning in my new pad and I had the matriarchs of my family in mind. After a glorious run on the beach, I washed some clothes old-school style in my terrific laundry sink and made a delicious breakfast

of melon, veggies and--you guessed it--bread with zaatar (and "gvina levana," white cheese, which is sort of halfway between yogurt and cream cheese. I can't understand why this delightful schmear is nowhere to be found in North America).

Cleaning up provided several lovely reminders of both my grandmothers, Grandma Pearl (my mom's mom), whose Yahrzeit candle is still burning bright, and Savta Fanny (my dad's mom), whose electric kettle and glass dishes have found a new home in my cozy Tel Aviv flat.

And of course I'm still thinking of my own industrious Baleboste of a mother, who tirelessly shopped, scrubbed, washed, folded and organized with me yesterday to help me settle in. Thanks, Ima.

The apartment is, as my Savta would say, "sehr gemütlich," very homey and cozy, and I'm so glad I live on a relatively quiet street so that I can work from home.

My landlady seems nice enough, except for the fact that she tried to scam me on the internet (which I won't elaborate on) and neglected to fix the cooktop, as she promised to do, which is perched precariously on a pile of spare tiles (she didn't seem to think this is unusual). According to her mystical calculations, however, Sunday was an ideal day to move in, so all will be well. I actually love the fact that she's into Kabbalah because she left behind all 23 volumes of the Zohar to "watch over me" (her words, not mine). Of course, I think the closest I'll come to studying Kabbalah in this apartment will be listening to Madonna MP3s.

I still have a fair amount of neighborhood research to do. High up on the list of priorities is a butcher (for schnitzel and meatballs, which is about all I'll be making on my little cooktop!) and a green grocer (Jamil on Dizengoff and Ben Gurion was very nice, but a friendly welcome doesn't really make up for overripe plums, don't you agree?).

Yesterday I went to Tel Aviv University to meet with someone at the Goldreich Institute for Yiddish. (If the fact that a Yiddish department exists in Israel and is run by a Berlin-born Jew isn't a sign of progress, I don't know what is.) I was welcomed very warmly and had the opportunity to sit in on a class on Yiddish literature in America, but is of course conducted in Hebrew (again, I think this all screams brave new world!). I struggled to follow the Hebrew translation of Sholem Aleichem's "Mottel the Cantor's Son" but had no trouble understanding the lecture...a good challenge anyway.

Cooking and quacking

Terrific spontaneous Hebrew lesson at the supermarket tonight. I was in search of rolled oats to make a pear crumble for Shabbat dinner but could not for the life of me think of the word in Hebrew (I just consulted my dictionary: "shibolet shual," literally "fox wheat"... huh?). I stalked the aisles and finally came upon a bag of something resembling the desired product. I checked the label. Emblazoned across it were Hebrew letters spelling out "kveker organi," and underneath, in English, "Organic Quacker." Aha! I hope it comes from free-range ducks.

The vocab lesson reminded me of my nephew Shai's stuffed animal, a little fellow with the rather literal name "Soft Duck," who generally appreciates this kind of humor. This one's for you, Soft Duck!

Here in Israel one could easily think that all names actually originate in Hebrew and are only later translated into other languages, never the other way around. For example, it turns out that the tickets I just purchased for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (I came all the way from Chicago to Haifa to see them!) are in fact—according to the English portion of the ad—for "Havad Street" (the Hebrew letter "bet" makes either a "b" or a "v" sound). This of course made me think of both the classic Bostonian saying, "Pahk the cah in havahd yahd," and my friend Eugena's mother, who, in her thick Korean accent, scolded Eugena for choosing a little college known as Stanford over the world-renowned "Ha-bah-deh." Then there are all the mistakes resulting from the mixup of "p" and "f" (the letter "peh" serving for both), including my mother's confusion over a Hebrew automotive ad for the Ford Pocus ("Ford has a new model?").

Then there's the newspaper! When I'm really struggling to understand a word in Ha'aretz, that's usually a sign that it's actually English, and most likely has something to do with technology or the blogosphere... yesterday it was "talkback" that had me totally stumped, as well as the verb "le-sames" ("to SMS," of course!). And let's not forget about television. I'm not even gonna start with news interviews, in which the interviewer generally does more talking than the interviewee, whom he consistently interrupts, or the "Meet the Press" type programs, in which a minimum of six pundits yell at each other in unison. I'm talking about scripted television. I recently got hooked on the TV show "be-tipul," the model for the HBO series "In Treatment." At one point I had to stop the DVD and put on the subtitles (also in Hebrew, which didn't help in this case) to decipher Na'ama's troubles with her boyfriend. "What the #&%$* could 'onanof' mean?!" Turns out she was sick and tired of the "on-and-off." Oy vey. Gotta love globalization.

Here, even the weather's aggressive!

I believe credit is due to my cousin Dana for coining the maxim, "In Israel everything's aggressive, including the weather!" The belligerent weather of the past 48 hours is a case in point -- flooding that would make even Noah shake in his sandals! First thing this morning I jaunted off to a tennis lesson with Sharon (for the Americans reading, Sharon is also a masculine name in Hebrew), only to have the skies open up about three minutes in. I was rather disappointed, especially because I haven't held a racket in over two years ("Since your last lesson with me, you mean?" asked Sharon, to which I sheepishly nodded in agreement).

Needless to say, today's activities were exclusively indoor. The highlight was a stop at the "Grand Canyon" shopping center...actually, the correct pronunciation is "grend kenyon," which is a clever play on the Hebrew word for mall, "kenyon" (from the verb liknot, meaning to buy). My mom and I were on a mission for the following necessities to furnish my new pad: bed sheets and a solid frying pan. We did a little comparison shopping before settling on some kitchenware from "The Cook Store."

Not one but two saleswomen became intimately involved in the purchase, which somehow evolved into a lesson on how to prepare "ktsitsot" (which are much more than "meatballs"; here in Israel they're a food group of their own). When I express some uncertainty about the large size of the pot, saleswoman #1 exclaims:

"It's the best! I use it! The nonstick surface is great for browning the meatballs, then, since the pot is wide enough, I can easily add the tomatoes--I use only fresh tomatoes, by the way--then a little parsley" (elaborate gestures accompany her instructions)

--"And soda!" interjects saleswoman #2.

--"Soda?" Asks my mother, completely confounded...

--"Yes, yes, you can't use regular water."

--"Just like you can't use regular breadcrumbs," saleswoman #1 chimes in again. "I learned it from my mother. Only matzoh meal."

So there you have it! I emerged from the store with a fry pan and matching pot (50% off the second item! My mom has passed on to me her appreciation of a "vilde metsiye") and the secret to preparing the perfect meatball. What could be better?

Somehow every activity in Israel seems to involve "audience participation." Setting up a new cell phone number is another classic example. Again, I'm speaking from recent experience. Nevermind the fact that I was already being helped by a perfectly capable agent, a soft-spoken Arab man who patiently took me through the entire process. When we reached the stage where I select a phone number, another agent suddenly bounds over, puts his arm around his colleague and, leaning right into the computer screen, says gleefully, "This is my favorite part! Wait, wait! Go back, I saw a good one. No...no...yes! There it is! Take that one. That's the best number." So I did. Did I even have a choice in the matter?