JoelNothman.com

The last two to three weeks have been pretty trying for Israel. But I happen to want to talk about the two weeks before then, just to give a few highlights (fairly extensive highlights?) from my trip to Israel for my brother’s wedding.

Sunday 10th Feb: the family in Sydney airport, and Dad thought he had an e-ticket. It seems he missed the notice from the travel agent (who we were failing to call) telling him to pick up the paper ticket. So he bought a new return ticket, and he and his partner flew separately to the rest of us.

A day passes, and the calendar doesn’t seem to notice, since we arrive in the morning on

Monday 11th Feb: Simon heads to Jerusalem for the day, and the rest of my immediate family moves into Tel Aviv’s Mercure, shoots off an email to the travel agent, and heads out to wander through the shuk, and then onto a cheap open-air tour bus to get some of the day’s beautiful sun.

In the evening, Dad finally got to meet Shimrit’s parents when they came down from the north to take us out for a Derby Bar experience, full of expensive fish meals (this was before they decided that the Kinneret’s fish were poisoned), featuring sushi and mediterranean hors d’oeuvres.

That was to set a pattern for much of the trip (at least the first week): lots of expensive, yummy (but often too salty) food.

Tuesday 12th Feb: Jeremy spent some good time in the morning practicing the song we were to sing two days later at the chuppah (which we had been arranging for the fortnight before), but our third singer, Shimrit’s brother (Roee) was up north. We also still needed a lot of work. We did eventually get out and do some more wandering around the city, catching a bite on Shenkin.

Evening plans with Yael and Sonia who I first met 8 years ago; on my way out I avoided the lift and took the stairs down. After some squeaky squelchy sounds, I realised the stairs had just been painted. The stairs had even been barricaded off: from the bottom, but not from the top! I returned upstairs (leaving cream footprints in carpet), changed shoes, and decided to take a taxi rather than walk to dinner.

I think my friends thought Thai dinner exotic. But the decor more seemed pan-Asian: the wall had calligraphed Japanese characters; the table had chopsticks and a fork; and the menu was headed “Thai and food” (!). Admittedly, their tom kha gai wasn’t bad (they did have a SE-Asian-looking chef), although covered with a layer of red oil, and lacking some subtlety of flavours, and of course too salty. Most of my company didn’t dare for exotic Thai meals and chose menu items with labels like “Chicken Noodles” (pronounced the same in Hebrew)…

Wednesday 13th Feb, Jeremy and I headed north and dined (at Broadway Bagel) with Roee before finally practising our chuppah tune. Jeremy and Roee then switched parts and we started getting somewhere. We moved into our more expensive Carmel hotel, and while we could sample hot cider for free, WiFi internet was a few $US for half an hour.

Another large and expensive dinner: a banquet for 13 at a restaurant called “Chinese Restaurant”¹ to meet with a few of Dad’s cousins who live in Haifa. The dinner was a lot of fun, with a couple of second and third cousins joining us for the free food, and Dad’s cousin Yossi pulling out a pile of entertaining photos from the 1970s.

And it was evening, and it was morning,

The Wedding Day 14th Feb: after a late and large buffet breakfast, I ironed shirts. The day’s weather was far from ideal: in the afternoon we (three brothers) were taken to some fancy mall that seems to be popular for rainy-day wedding snaps. There were maybe six couples there. Since these photos precede the wedding, Simon and Shimrit were taken separately, and me and Jeremy only made our way into two shots. A little strange…

At the wedding hall, we rehearsed our song till it was almost perfect. And then there was the reception buffet. Wow. In Sydney, we don’t usually have food before the chuppah, but here they have it all: a fantastic array of soups and meats and fish and caviar and pasta and roast vegetables and stir fries (better than two nights of Asian restaurants), and all of it tasting fantastic. Suddenly it was interrupted by the commotion that was Simon entering to enveil the bride—the show was beginning, and so I found my microphone by the chuppah. Things were noisier than I expected, but we sang and made a whole pile of mistakes that most people didn’t notice. That was over, and everyone was standing so close to the chuppah that it was only possible for the cameramen to see the action inside it. A few berachot later, it was all done and the couple ran off to a little room upstairs for some quiet time.

The rest of us met our waiters for the first seated course—I chose a very nice serving of baked salmon on curls of pasta, although attending to people’s greetings meant I didn’t have much opportunity to eat it. My waiter insisted that I sit and eat and stop running around. Just a little bit of Israeli chutzpah. And then when I was ready to sit and eat, Sim and Shim came out for the first long round of dancing. The band was great: very very versatile and enjoyable, and they had me working up a quick sweat. I returned to the table often, though, for another mouthful of salmon, or glass of water, or to say hi to Ilana who watched the dancing from her seat because of a debilitating stomach ache.

The main course was of course as fantastic as the ones that came before it, and though we had a video from Shimrit and a short speech from Simon (both with subtitles), dessert came too soon, and I managed to miss it. I’m used to it coming after another dance, or even after birkat hamazon, but it seems that in Israel it’s normal for the caterers to want to pack up as soon as possible. So when the second long (mixed) dance set came around, the caterers began already to clear and remove tables, which was alright because people began to disappear the moment dessert was over. Those of us that stayed had a great time dancing, though!

And when the end of the wonderful night finally arrived, those of us returning to the hotel hopped into a bus and found our way towards bed, making for another late-ish morning…

Friday 15th Feb: the poppy-seed pastry at breakfast wasn’t as mindblowingly good as the day before, which was a pity. But my brother attended breakfast with his wife, which was a new concept altogether. People split off that morning to do different things. Anna and I descended the Carmel to wander about Arab markets before ascending it again for lunch.

Soon after lunch, Shimrit’s family and friends checked in to their rooms for shabbat. We were to have a day of celebrating the bride and groom, with plenty of food and plenty of singing. I had the opportunity to lead some of the Friday night services, while the women were busy being upset about the makeshift mechitza working much too effectively… And yes we did have much food (yet another buffet or three), and once the singing started, it didn’t stop. Those who think I am a jukebox should see Shimrit’s father. He starts on one niggun and could pass through another 15 in as many minutes before even considering a pause to breathe. It was altogether an exciting opportunity to get to know Shimrit’s family (even as Dad was sick in bed all day), with great ruach.

It more or less was the same for Saturday 16th Feb. We led our own services at the hotel, did our own Torah readings, and had our own private meals full of simcha.

In the evening I joined Simon and Shimrit at a dinner / sheva berachot at Broadway Bagel with a bunch of her friends. In fact, that was the first sheva berachot opportunity that I sang none of them. Oh, and of course, it was another meal.

Sunday 17th Feb, after another big breakfast, I had intended to go visit Haifa’s Google office for lunch (like I’d almost tried in Tel Aviv a few days before), until my family changed my plans by saying we were going to Caesarea. There we paid our fee to see the archaeological sites, and although they were interesting, we still spent most of our time in a restaurant having lunch. Very nice lunch, I might add (Shimrit had a great sweet potato gnocchi with mushroom sauce… yummm). And when those of us that follow the meal with birkat hamazon did so, Dad excused himself to go to the toilet, but instead went to the counter to pay… It seems there was a bit of competition to get this on his bill and not Shimrit’s dad’s.

Although I hear that the next sheva berachot back in Kiryat Ata was an awesome song and dance, I was all sung and partied out. And I wanted to get to Jerusalem before it snowed. Of course, after I arrived that evening (on a bus with Jacqui by coincidence), I was told the snow was delayed by a day. Staying at Ilana’s, being in Jerusalem was a good opportunity to see all sorts of people. (It seemed though that there was more new to do elsewhere in the country.)

Monday 18th Feb I did (in horrible weather) see something new: the new Yad Vashem museum. It has a very original design, and the tunnel of natural light that features in its centre (among other things) distinguishes it from the dark, enclosed Holocaut Museum in Washington DC.

And after a moving time there, I could return to town to sip hot cider with Raf and discuss the world. And while I had thought that keeping away from my family would mean I wouldn’t be eating quite so many big and expensive meals, it turned out they had followed me to Jerusalem, and we were to meet for dinner at La Boca, a South American place that stuffs you with meat. I was more than happy with soup and leftovers…

And the snow finally came overnight…

Tuesday 19th Feb awoke to enough snow to grind the city to a halt, and to have Ilana work from home, although only really a small layer covered the plants and footpaths. The latter was fairly unpleasant, with the snow changing for rain on and off, creating horrible slush to walk through. I had a breakfast date with Tessa, so I did walk through it, to Bet Keneset HaGra, and on to a very quiet, mostly-closed Centre of Town. So Tessa and I went where everyone else seemed to be squishing into a Cafe Hillel (I wanted to introduce her to Tmol Shilshom, but it wasn’t open till later).

The morning ended and my socks had become wet and freezing, so I went to meet the heater at Ilana’s. About then, I got a call from Lior who had been my madrich on Shnat 2002. I don’t think we’d spoken since then, but still he invited me to his wedding in two days’ time! I wasn’t sure. It took some deciding, and some logistics: the wedding was not near Jerusalem where I’d intended to stay.

That afternoon, I (after pizza with Alex and Helena) moved my bags to Harry and Imbar’s place (where Sam was also staying, and where Jeremy was about to leave for the airport). Although they were producing some great-smelling meal (and I hadn’t eaten a single home-cooked meal since I’d arrived in the country), I had arranged to meat a handful of friends for dinner, which turned out very pleasantly.

Wednesday 20th Feb: I decided late the night before that I would join my cousins on a “safari” in Ramat Gan. The Safari is basically a park with a number of large enclosures with various grazing (and gazing) African animals. And the lions, separately. Basically you drive through it and get the thrill of being up close to various animals, even if you’re not meant to open your window or door to greet them properly. They also have a sizeable zoo there which we spent a while in before our return trip to Jerusalem at the end of the day.

And I had thought again that I might be having a meal at Harry’s, when suddenly I was invited to a late-planned Shushan Purim Katan seudah with Yosef and Yael on the other side of town. There I had a fun and interesting time, and an opportunity to catch up with Yosef, among a less familiar crowd than the few Australians I kept meeting up with. It was also my first home-cooked meal!

But on Thursday 21st Feb, I woke up with the lurgee that had been going around my family, and stayed in bed. This wasn’t to plan: I had finally got excited about Lior’s wedding, but was suddenly not feeling up to it. I meant to hit Mea Shearim to wander through bookstores; I did go replace a book that I had bought in July not knowing its pages were bound out of order, but I didn’t get to do much else. I also decided that I would go to the wedding despite being sick.

In fact, the groom was also afflicted by a cold, but he had less choice to stay in bed. Their chuppah was outdoors where I stood next to a man who, when I introduced myself as an Australian who’d come for his brother’s wedding to a girl from Kiryat Ata, turned to his neighbour and said, “He’s the brother of the Australian who married Levi Chibotaro’s (sic) daughter!” A smaller world than I thought.

Even if the food was nowhere near the standard of Simon and Shimrit’s wedding, Lior’s involved less running around: I was able to enjoy seeing people I hadn’t been around much for the prior five years (four other shnatties also attended); of course I danced; and, like the others, we left after dessert.

The trip up to the wedding near Kfar Saba actually became quite convenient. Moria gave me a lift there from Jerusalem, during which I received an SMS from my brother exclaiming that “Moria and Uria are engaged!” which made some sense because they’d returned from Rome the day before, but made no sense because I was sitting next to her, she didn’t mention it, and was wearing no ring. “Uhhhm, Moria… Simon sent me a message saying Shimrit was on the phone with Uria… Is there something you’re not telling me?” It turns out she’s against rings and had already had enough mazal tovs for a day.

Anyway, going to the wedding fit quite neatly. It meant I could stay in Raanana with the Moddels, see Maya from McGill there in the morning, see Tamar in Tel Aviv for lunch, and make it back to Jerusalem again with Moria!

Friday 22nd Feb: Maya left for the gym right when I’d hoped to meet her, delaying things a little. But we did meet, and I knew we didn’t have much time before I would need to bus down to TA. Still, I felt like an Ice Aroma (my token one for the trip). But the queue at Aroma was too long, and it was the wrong side of the road if the bus were to come. We crossed to other side and considered buying some persimmons for a snack, but it turned out that that fruit shop line was too long too, when a bus came roaring down: I left the persimmons with Maya and ran to catch it. Things fell from my bag. I picked them up. Things fell from my bag. Someone else picked them up. I grabbed them and run. Things fell out of what I was carrying… I wasn’t too far off, but I certainly missed the bus. I phoned Maya: “How about that Ice Aroma?”

I still made it to TA with enough time, and spent a while in the markets there, some of it with Tamar (buying a sign for Sim and Shim’s door), before we walked off to the jazz festival where I’d hopefully find Moria and Uria. On stage was a band that I’d already seen perform in Jerusalem, but then as now a lot of fun.

Moria and Uria were hiding somewhere in the crowds, and their car was hiding somewhere in a nearby carpark. We returned to Jerusalem, and I to Harry and Imbar’s for my second home-cooked meal of the trip! Stupidly, we followed dinner by beginning a game of Risk that didn’t end till 3am.

Neither Harry nor I made it to shul the next morning (Saturday 23rd Feb). I did manage to get to lunch, at the apartment of Sarah who I had met in May (at a party of a friend of Ilana’s at that same apartment), which had an unfamiliar but interesting mix of people from various backgrounds.

My motzaei shabbat plans with McGillers fell through, and I met up with Shani (whose other name has confusingly changed) and her family. We went out for yet another hot cider.

And then it was almost over:

Sunday 24th Feb, I only really had time (other than a visit to the Old City and its surrounds, and lunch with Dani) to spend in bookstores, making sure I stocked up. More importantly, Alex had given me belated money for Sim and Shim’s wedding, to use on books, so Simon had me find some. I did discover, though, that while Manny’s stocks a good selection of all the normative, popular books, Lichtenstein on Strauss had a much more exciting and interesting and esoteric collection. It was there that I bought an English volume of Maimonides’ treatises on poisons, hemorrhoids and cohabitation! In addition, the shopkeeper expressed regret when I asked if he had Sa’adia Gaon’s translation of the bible into Judeo-Arabic. To contrast, at Manny’s they asked, “Why would you want that?”

I was late to return to Harry and Imbar’s: I wanted to shower, to eat, and to pack, in a short period that was shortened just as I stepped into the shower by the taxi driver calling to say he’d be early. I did shower (quickly), didn’t eat, and only packed in the sense that all my things were in bags when I left. Five bags, I think. I repacked at the airport and landed up with only two. There we had an amusing interrogation with two security guards, one training the other by detaining us for a while with silly questions to which we gave long responses about our family tree / history and everything else.

And then Shim, Sim, Mum and I farewelled Shimrit’s parents before spending another day in flight…

And of course, the trip was packed, but still too short.

Notes:

1. We figure they couldn’t call it Wong’s because that would be too difficult to spell in Hebrew: ווונגז [↩]