Christmas in the Holy Land...

It is a well-known custom among North American Jews to seek out special little enclaves at Christmas. Those without the rare luck of being invited (as my brother and sister-in-law apparently were) to a "Jews, Losers and Boozers" party resort to the more traditional fallback, Chinese food and a movie, preferably, for those who are really devout, one by Woody Allen. (The latest, starring Larry David, is just out in theaters here, by the way). But a North American Jew in Israel feels obligated to fulfill the opposite task: to find a dash of Christmas cheer in a landscape bereft of goyishe-naches.

The direct train from Tel Aviv to Haifa that I boarded yesterday evening was packed, but not one of my fellow passengers was rushing home for Christmas Eve. Just your average weekend. I was leaning against the back of a seat watching two Ethiopian kids on the floor munching noisily on Bamba, and, on either side of them, exhausted young soldiers with heavy packs filled (I think it's safe to assume) not with stocking stuffers but with dirty laundry to unload on mothers anxiously awaiting their return. One poor kid had konked out so heavily on his gear that he didn't even hear the Ricky Martin ringtone blasting directly into his ear. Another dozed off quietly with Amos Oz's "To Love a Woman" rising and falling rhythmically on his chest. A far cry from the macho image of the Israeli military one finds in the media.

I arrived in Haifa just in time for my mom to serve me a plate of piping hot meatballs and a side of red cabbage (where's the Christmas roast?!) before scurrying out the door to a doctor's appointment. No sipping eggnog by the fireplace, no ring-jing-jingling sleigh bells, no presents under the fragrant tree. Just a little pleasure-reading before retiring early to bed. I must admit, I missed the lights and the kitsch just a teensy-weensy bit.

Today was different. How nice it was to spend a REGULAR lazy Friday here. I had a haircut in the morning, and, on the way home, went with my dad to pick up some nuts in Vadi Nisnas. It seemed quieter than usual. And that's when we realized: Christmas! Of course! This is the Arab Christian part of town. Besides one baklava shop and the spot where we picked up our goods, all the shops and restaurants were shut for the holidays, their unlit windows adorned with mismatched nativity scenes and acrobatic Santa Clauses. At last, the kitsch I'd been longing for! Even the bagel shop was closed. If only someone could explain to me why a place that advertises "bagelakh" (yes, in Yiddish), is owned by Arabs who are spending the day celebrating the birth of baby Jesus.... Well , Jesus may have been born here, but he sure feels a long way away today.

This is one of the first Christmases I've spent not feeling like a minority (and not freezing my ass off!). That's exciting on both counts. But I'm still going to search for Bing Crosby on youtube later. Gotta hear "White Christmas" at least once this time of year. It wouldn't feel right not to.

The miracle of light...er, electricity

In keeping with the theme of Chanukah, this past week involved eight firsts.

#1: It all began with my first power outage. At around 9:00pm on Wednesday, moments before I was to leave my apartment for my second (yes, there were some seconds, too) tango lesson, boof! Lights out! I of course broke the number one rule of Chanukah—i.e. "and we do not have the permission to use them except to look at them"—by lighting every Chanukah candle I could get my hands on...but it made the whole miracle of light business that much more meaningful.

#2: My very first live karaoke performance! No, I didn't perform (there's a fine line between humor and ear-shattering noise). Seriously, people, you have not lived until you have heard M.C. Hammer's "You Can't Touch This" performed in a heavy Israeli accent by a prematurely balding bloke in tapered jeans and a striped polo shirt... the antithesis of Mr. Hammer, and I'm not just talking about the legwear. Breathtaking.

#3: My first hexalingual Shabbat dinner. Yes, hexa as in six. I was invited to light the last candle of Chanukah at the home of Jonathan and Helen, close family friends (and my surrogate Jerusalem parents!). Now, I knew I'd be among interesting company, but I didn't expect the United Nations! Seated around the table were: our hosts, the German cultural attaché to Israel, two French cultural representatives, their spouses, one eight-year-old boy (who alone accounted for three languages: French, English and Arabic -- thank goodness my cab driver had just taught me four different ways so say the word "lion" in Arabic so that I had something to show off to the brainy pipsqueak!), Jonathan's mother, who is 93 years old and may not hear well but is still the paragon of British wit and eloquence, and little old me. Between Helen's French-Hebrew-Italian hybrid and Jonathan's multilingual explanations of the food (an array as international as the guests, with everything from herring salad to salmon sashimi to chicken tikka masala), there were, indeed, six languages represented. Oh, I almost forgot, that dinner was responsible for first #4: Vacheron Mont d'Or cheese. OH. MY. LORD. The Frenchies almost wet their pants, they were so excited.

#5. My first Israeli date. The formula? Tango lesson #2 --> date #1. Won't elaborate just yet, except to say that the tapas restaurant we went to was also responsible for #6, my first Israeli mojito, which was delightful.

#7: My first time putting flowers in an empty pickle can. Nothing earth-shattering, but it put a smile on my face.

And finally, just today, #8: My first academic lecture in Hebrew! I met a lovely Israeli professor at a conference in Berlin in October, and he invited me to give my talk before the Yiddish literature department at Bar Ilan University. I didn't think twice about accepting, having assumed, of course, that he simply wanted me to repeat the lecture I gave in Berlin. The formal invitation that I received per email last week, however, informed me otherwise. As the Thai tourist industry puts it: "Same same...but different." Oy vavoy. Talking about Yiddish poetry in Hebrew was a challenge, for sure, but I did it! I highly doubt I'll be winning any awards for my oratorical skills, but I was proud of myself for standing up to the challenge. My audience was very warm and responsive. They numbered 12, so perhaps it's not a full notch on my academic belt, but a little scratch at least.

plain white cheese...yet so much more

A number of years ago, during one of his first visits to Vancouver, my then fourteen-year-old cousin Uri asked me, artlessly, "How do you say gvina levana in English?" I looked at him, somewhat baffled by his loss for such simple words (after all, Uri had by the age of ten developed an exceptionally sophisticated English vocabulary, thanks to countless successive hours spent watching "The Simpsons"), and offered what I thought to be the simplest and most straightforward of answers: "white cheese." He looked dissatisfied.

Little did I realize then that the term gvina levana defies translation. In Israel, it is a way of life. The average Israeli family goes through five 200-gram containers of it per week (I'm totally making up the statistic, but I don't think I could be far off). I have witnessed children under the age of two polish off an entire container in one sitting (again, I'm exaggerating, but not much). Civil wars have been fought over it (okay, that one's a downright lie). Upon entering any grocery store (makolet), convenient store (tsorkhania) or supermarket (wait for the translation...super) one is bound to encounter a vast array of seemingly identical cylindrical tubs filled with it.

Now, I say seemingly identical because, in fact, this vast array presents many tricky choices. First of all: white cheese or cottage cheese (allow me to teach you another sophisticated Hebrew word: kotej)? (I'll spare you the confusion and leave labane and cream cheese out of the picture, let alone feta and Bulgarian cheese from cow or goat, in blocks, strips or cubes...it's exhausting, really.) There's the question of brand: Tnuva or Strauss? Now we come to the matter of milk fat: 9%, 5%, 3% or 1/2%?

I thought I had selected my pick: tnuva brand, white cheese, 5% milkfat. How naive. I soon realized that the matter is infinitely more complicated. Yesterday, I opened the lid of a new package, peeled off the plastic protective layer, spread it on a piece of bread, and -- ack! -- saw flecks of green! What is that?! MOLD?! I picked up the piece of plastic I had just torn off -- oh no! Printed in small letters below the brand name were the words I had so recklessly overlooked: "with OLIVES"! Yes, my friends, that's right, the white cheese industry has expanded to produce FLAVORED cheeses. I must be more careful next time.

NOTE: I forgot to mention gvina levana's equally sly and slippery stepsister: gvina tsehuba (yellow cheese). But that's a whole other adventure in the making.

A shtikl o' Yiddish

Who says Yiddish is dead in Israel?! I got up bright and early on Thursday to catch a bus to Jerusalem for a conference celebrating "A Century of Yiddish," the centennial anniversary of the Czernowitz Conference. From August 30 to September 3, 1908, a bunch of brenendike Yiddishists (including H.D. Nomberg, Haim Zhitlovsky, Sholem Asch, and I.L Peretz, the big machers appearing from left to right) got together in the cultural capital of the former Austrian Bukovina to proclaim Yiddish "a national language of the Jews." This year's centennial was only 15 months behind... not bad for Jewish time! Lectures were offered in Yiddish and in Hebrew, with frequent funny fusion moments during the Q&A, which was really just a function of the seniority of the more vocal audience members. (I think it's safe to assume that most of them have been lingering in a kind of linguistic limbo for the past 80+ years.) Topics ranged from Soviet Yiddish travel literature of the interwar period to Elie Wiesel's unknown career in Yiddish journalism to the history of Yiddish lexicography to teaching Yiddish to children in the 21st century. In short, a gantse megile!

There were two highlights. First, an incredible monologue by Aaron Zeitlin spoken in a kind of mongrelized Yiddish-English hybrid by a Jewish-American immigrant who speaks English now "vegn di kinder, ya know?" Hard to summarize here, but it was quite moving. The other highlight was suddenly, from across the room, hearing a familiar voice ask a question in flawless Yiddish with a heavy Canadian accent -- it was my former Yiddish teacher, Sheva Zucker! I hopped over and was greeted with a hearty "Sholem aleichem!" and a big hug. At lunchtime, while patiently listening to (and occasionally correcting) my very rusty Yiddish, Sheva accompanied me to the cafeteria, where we battled the shtupenish of senior citizens in "line" (if you can call it that) for chicken soup, meatballs and other delicacies from the OldCountry. My Canadian politeness was hard to maintain in the face of a bunch of squat Jewish men with hearing aids shoving in front of me for seconds. But hey, I love the alte kakers just the same.

Now my eyes keep darting for remnants/revivals of mame-loshn in the holy land... and guess what? There's one right on my corner. An ice cream store called zisele (sweety). I'll have to try it out. I wonder whether they've got any special flavors from der alter heym. To invoke my sister-in-law's late bubbe: scoop of whitefish, anyone?

It's just so Russian!

Tonight I scored two free tickets to the "premiera" of Chekhov's "Hadod Vanya" (need I translate?). Let's just say it pays to have cultured parents who leave town periodically. I invited my friend, Reut, who was particularly helpful in pointing out all the "semi-celebs" having their photos snapped in the lobby of the theater. I wouldn't have lifted my eyes from all the fabulously eccentric footwear in our midst had Reut not nudged me periodically to point out members of Knesset, anchormen and anorexic escorts. We had dinner at the theater restaurant, where I managed to embarrass myself by intruding on a conversation with one such "big macher." Spotting my parents' friend a few yards from our table, I shot up and tapped her on the shoulder, only to realize she was having a serious discussion with Dalia Rabin, daughter of the late Yitzhak Rabin and member of Knesset. She was nice enough to introduce me, but I felt a little sheepish at having bounded in as I did.

So... Chekhov in Hebrew. All that dialogue about boredom and mediocrity didn't really seem to jibe with the Israeli character. I think the comment of the gentleman to my left, which he uttered five minutes into Act I in a not-so-hushed manner to his wife, summed things up well: "It's just so RUSSIAN, all this TALKING!" Somehow Chekhov can both move you and bore you to tears. But it was a great treat to see two of my favorite Israeli actors on stage: Vanya was played by Sasson Gabai (terrific!!), whom you might now from the recent film "The Band's Visit" (in which he plays the conductor of the Egyptian police band, in flawless Arabic!), and the doctor was played by Lior Ashkenazi, whom I loved in "Walk on Water" and "A Late Marriage." So you see? You don't need Hollywood for celebrity-sightings!