Israel versus Greece

A colleague at work pulled together a group of 37 people to check out Israel's qualifier match versus Greece.

Israel has not been to the World Cup in 40 years, so it's a bit of a big deal here. As much as I don't enjoy soccer -- scoring chances are severely limited and the fake injuries are borderline disgraceful when compared to how playing through real pain is a badge of honor in hockey -- it tends to be a cultural event in most countries, so I go to check out the locals.

After parking on a nearby sidewalk, we walked a quarter-mile or so to the stadium and took our seats. The crowd was decent, but not quite as boisterous as I had expected. They had their chants, but they were even more repetitive than ours. At least they took the initiative rather than rely on prompting from the organ player as we do in the States. In general, the Israelis were frustrated with some of their players, and with the outcome (they really needed the win to increase their chances of getting into the tournament). It did bring out a chuckle when we'd hear the Israelis say, "ma zeh?" (what's this?) after particularly bad plays.

I give them credit for the following only because English isn't their native language. Otherwise, it's pretty weak.

This being soccer, most of us were lulled to sleep pretty early. Here's the video footage purportedly taken at the game.

Haredi Matzo

I took a trip with some colleagues from work today to visit the Haredi community in Jerusalem. We first went to the Belz Synagogue (click the "Belz" link for an interesting history lesson), which was HUGE. It can accommodate 10,000 worshipers, has nine levels, and has a bunch of chandeliers that weigh 1,900 pounds each and provide acoustics for the hall. Pretty amazing. Oh, and the Rabbi and members of the synagogue helped construct the building.





We also went to a Haredi matzo making outfit in the ultra-religious Mea Shearim neighborhood. Check out the video.

Kitties Had a Bit of Adjusting to do After the Move

Slappy has lived in at least six different places over the last year. Diego has lived in five, and he also drove cross-country twice. They are becoming veterans at this moving thing.

It just takes them some time...

View From New Place (and Old)

Panoramic view from our balcony

To make a panoramic shot, things end up appearing much further away than they actually are. Still, it's pretty nice.

Here's the old place...I actually really liked looking out at the Opera House (especially when they had events in the courtyard) and looking at the Azrieli Complex (the tall, gray buildings in the video). This was taken on my third day here.

Prime Minister Olmert

I'm actually not a huge fan of meeting famous people, but I'm sure I'll look back on it and appreciate having captured the experience in a photo.

This is me with the Israeli Prime Minister. No, I don't just ring him up and talk Middle East peace. Instead, I do (as one part of my job) all of the logistical and administrative prep work for Senators and Members of Congress who visit and I get to sometimes get in the high-profile meetings.

Ramat Gan "Safari" Park

(guest posting)

We went here a couple of weeks ago. We didn't get our hopes up, however, after one of the embassy drivers let us know it wasn't a SAFARI!!!!!; it was more of an "eh, safari."

We thought we were smart by going there on Shabbat, figuring fewer Israelis would be out and about. We were wrong. We realized that we should have taken advantage of our situation in which the Israelis work on Sundays, but we are off. Oh well...it at least gave us some more insight into Israeli culture.

You may be wondering by now, what is a Safari? Is it an adventure? A zoo? Oh, it's so much more!

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Safari were the wild and loose-with-the-law Israelis there. More about that later.

The Safari begins, like most things in Tel Aviv, with a long line of traffic. You inch slowly forward until you reach the front gate where you are supposed to pay, but when you get there the clerk says he'll "be right back" and proceeds to leave you waiting there for the next 10 minutes. As a token for the inconvenience, he offers to give you the "local" price, for residents of Tel Aviv only. But we ARE residents of Tel Aviv, we protest. He laughs in disbelief, giving us the local price, all the while thinking he's giving us some sort of deal we don't deserve.

For a while the Safari continues, much like before, with a line of slowly moving traffic, and people honking and jockeying for position. You know, you just HAVE to be the first one to see the emu or the zebra who is waiting for you by the side of the road! Animals surround your car, mostly looking for handouts. But it is still amazing to see these wild creatures so up close and personal. (click on the pictures for larger versions).

You pass by rhinos and hippos, flamingos and gazelles. You see zebras and ostriches, and a pen full of deer. And just when you start to think, wow, that was worth the price of admission, you enter a parking area for the "real" zoo, where they have animals more traditionally in enclosures. I have to say the enclosures were quite nice and spacious (except for the bears), and overall the zoo beats the National Zoo, but not the San Diego Zoo, hands down.

Despite the myriad signs instructing otherwise, most Israelis packed with them a variety of fruits and vegetables to give the animals. Parents encouraged their children to climb over security fences and hand over oranges and carrots with no regard for their diets (see pic below). I nearly went ballistic when I saw a young mother give her child a bag of potato chips to give to a monkey. It was horrifying. I do admit (albeit with a considerable amount of guilt) that the sight of a macaque peeling a Jaffa orange was incredibly adorable. For a time, I took solace in the fact that most guests were feeding the zoo inhabitants healthy fresh fruits and vegetables; however, when Michael later struck up a conversation with a zookeeper, he pointed out that too much food is too much food, no matter how healthy it is. The animals don't know when to say when.

notice how the boy has been placed over
the barrier separating people from the cages

Hard to see from this pic, but here are two little ones begging for food that was being thrown to them from across a moat.

This rooster was chilling out near and peering into the bear enclosure.

The Safari even had a petting zoo!

Sleeping baby goats are adorable!

So, after the zoo, you get back in your car for more wild safari action. You're supposed to keep your windows rolled up and stay in your car, but since no one else was following the rules, we decided to break the window rule. We did stay in our car, particularly after hearing a story I won't repeat here involving not a lion but a hippo.

Talk about tame...

Um, tickets please?

The last great thing to see at the Safari are the lions. You drive right near them, separated only by an electrified fence, which appeared from our vantage point to have a rather large gap on the side. It's times like these that you remember you're not in Kansas anymore. The lion in the picture here caught a whiff of the gazelle's that had mistakenly entered this area. A park employee in a Subaru positioned his car between the lion and the general direction of the gazelles. I don't think it would have helped much had the lion been sufficiently hungry to test the fence.

All in all, the Safari was a great Saturday outing. However, all zoos tend to make me a little sad. I remind myself that these animals are teaching the zookeepers about how to protect their species in their natural habitat, and that helps a little. I'm also really curious and love animals myself, so the opportunity to see them up close is hard to pass up. I just really wish that someone would enforce the rules at the Safari to keep the animals healthy. I find it frustrating that Israelis don't seem to see a bigger picture in their actions, not just at the zoo but in general. It's like how they'll just stop in the middle of a one-lane, one-way road, like you have nothing better to do than wait till they figure out where they want to go next. I honestly don't believe there's any ill intent...just plain obliviousness. I could go on, of course, but this is about the Safari.

So, please, enjoy the primate video!

How Many Camels Can You Fit in a Subaru?

Click here to find out...

Pearlstein Street

CODELs

One of the tasks of a US Foreign Service Officer is to help arrange and see through visits by VIPs. When a Senator or member of the House of Representatives visits, it's called a CODEL (COngressional DELegation). A lot of the work, frankly, is pretty tedious -- putting together meetings, arranging rides, etc. At least for the first few I've done, though, there are some redeeming elements, which include sitting in on meetings with the highest-level folks and waiting out on the airport tarmac for their fancy planes to arrive. I just hosted a group of seven House members and I got to meet the Prime Minister (for a second time, but this time I got my picture taken with him and I will post it as soon as they send it to me) and the person who is likely to be the next Israeli leader in about 4 weeks (Benjamin Netanyahu).

Another interesting thing is to go pick them up at the airport. Okay, it's really only interesting the first time you do it. Anyhow, you get to go on the tarmac at the airport as their military jet lands and they exit the plane straight into our awaiting vehicles. Here are a couple of pics (some El Al jets in the first, then the 737 my last CODEL flew in on).

Diplomatic Get Out of Jail Free Card

We were headed to Jerusalem today to witness a political party rally prior to the February 10 elections. We got a late start because of a long day of work and then I wasn't paying attention and headed north on the highway instead of south. I righted the ship, but had to pull a quick u-turn at a stop light when I got off the Ayalon Freeway. As soon as I made the turn, a cop in the street ordered me to pull over. I played dumb American hoping he would just wave me through. He switched to English and told me to park up ahead. When I did, a woman came up and told me that I was pulled over for the u-turn. Again, I played dumb. She asked for my license and I handed it to her...along with my diplomatic ID card. She looked at it and gave this look like, "well, I'm powerless to do anything against you if you have this card" and she told me to just not do it again. Turns out, she was totally within her rights to issue me a ticket.

Dodged one.

Israeli Elections

Israel's parliamentary elections take place on 10 February. I don't have much to compare this year's elections to, but it seems pretty muted. The conflict that ended last month in Gaza probably had something to do with it. Right now it seems Likud is poised to win a plurality in a very fractured Knesset (the name of the Israeli legislature). That means former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu probably will return to that role in about a month after he forms his coalition government. The big question will be -- who will be in the government. That's what we'll all be waiting to find out.

In the meantime, I've posted some election campaign posters. Take a look. Ask me any questions you have.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mpearl055/2009ElectionsInIsrael#

Pilgrimage to IKEA

Most people think that in Israel people make pilgrimages to the holy sites of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, I discovered this evening that Israelis also visit Swedish "holy" sites, namely IKEA.

We were on our way to do some grocery shopping at the non-kosher Tiv Taam in Netanya when we decided we'd get a bite to eat at IKEA (fancy, we know). We realized it would be opening around that time because the sun had just gone down, meaning Shabbat was over. We arrived in the rapidly filling parking lot and made our way to the door while holding our noses (for holy sites, this one has the most "stank" we've ever encountered; we think there's a sewage treatment plant nearby). As we approached, we saw a long line waiting to get in to the store, with people queuing up for the metal detectors. I thought I was heading into a concert or something.


Once inside, it was more madness. IKEA, with it's we're-gonna-force-you-to-keep-looking-at-stuff-to-buy crazy maze system, is already somewhat stressful to shop in. Add to it stairways and aisles teeming with Israelis and...well...it was bizarre. The strangest thing about it was that tonight is the equivalent of a Sunday night in the States. The work week starts tomorrow. Is IKEA where I would choose to spend the waning hours of my weekend? Probably not.

This doesn't begin to capture how crowded it was.
(Note: I always wanted to work at IKEA. And,
check out the look that kid is giving me.)

Grocery Stores: From Disappointing to Sufficient

When I first arrived here in Tel Aviv, I found that pretty much all the grocery stores in the city were wildly overpriced and were tiny. I had to go through some trial and error to figure things out. My biggest debacle was taking a store's name at face value. "Meatland" had a glorious advertisement in the local paper and it prompted me to make the special trip out to Ranaana to visit this apparent Mecca for meatlovers. When I arrived after our 20 minute car ride out there, my first question from the outside was..."can this be it?" It was tiny. I ventured in and learned that, yes, that was it. It was the size of maybe a studio apartment. Tiny. And, it was Kosher. Not exactly the land of all meats that I had expected. Anyhow, as you can imagine...big disappointment.

I learned from my mistakes, headed out to some other 'burbs, and finally found some good-sized, clean grocery stores. I have now settled into my shopping groove, which is to go to Tiv Taam (a Russian-Israel owned chain that is NON-kosher) and Supersol. Tiv Taam is a little fancier than Supersol, is open on Fridays and Saturdays, and it has a larger meat selection. It's in some ways like Whole Foods compared to Safeway, I guess. Tiv Taam has a whole area dedicated to fresh spices and grains, a flower section, a booze section...in all, it's pretty nice, as you can see below.

Most exciting of all is the Tiv Taam branch out in Ramat Gan (or thereabouts), which has an awesome grocery cart escalator that makes it worth the trip out there. You roll the cart onto the flat conveyor and magnets keep it in place is it makes its way up/down from the parking lot or store. I rode it several times just for kicks.

Exciting Developments on the Housing Front...

The 3-month housing saga might be over. I think there's a place for me at the Lev Ha'ir -- "Heart of the City" -- housing complex.

Stay tuned...for early February (when the new place will be ready) ...

:)

"Fixed"

Our internet has been pretty spotty and slow and we were advised to switch from ADSL to cable...so, the technicians were supposed to come over today. Kudos to the company for texting a reminder yesterday, for calling to let me know of their impending arrival, and for them actually arriving on time.

The guys came in and did an "85% installation." They got it done, and got most things done well...there were just those little parts that weren't quite right. For example, when the were ready to install the coaxial cable, the were going to run it straight from the outlet (about 3 feet off the ground) into the modem. The would have had the wire basically hanging in mid-air, cutting off part of the room. I asked them instead to tack it to the wall, which they agreed to. Another example of why this install was typically Israeli was when one of the techs went to his truck to get the additional wire they needed, he got 3 feet instead of the 6 that were needed, so they had to splice two short pieces together. Not sure why he couldn't just get one piece that was the right size. And, finally, when he finished and had checked the specs, I asked if it was all good. He said, "it's fixed." I asked, "it's working well, or it's fixed?" He repeated that it was fixed, and then said that in Israel this was like 100% perfect. His colleague interpreted for me by saying, "eh, it's pretty good." So, in short...he was admitting that it was just ok. Great.

I will say, though, that it did mark an improvement...I don't think it was a coincidence that once the internet was working (fast!), we saw this outside the window:

Shabbat Dinner With the Family

I have some family who live about 20 minutes north of here in a small town called Bnei Tzion and they invited me over for Shabbat dinner. I arrived a little after 6:30 and met the extended family. Bilah is my father's cousin. Her husband, Benny, was there as well as his sister (Danielle?) and her husband, Haim. Bilah and Benny have three kids, and two of them--Chen and Eyal--were there with their wives and two kids apiece (Eyal's family actually lives in the house with Bilah and Benny). It made for a very welcoming and very full dinner table.

Before dinner we sat down and had some tea with fresh herbs from the garden--mint, sage, and an herb they kept calling 'luisa' which (when my sinuses cleared following the cold I had been developing) I discovered was what I would call lemon verbena. They offered us cakes, which at first made me think that I may have misunderstood the dinner invitation and were only having dessert. However, soon the table was being set by various family members while Benny, the chef, put the final touches on the meal. We had no idea the culinary delights that awaited us!

First there were Shabbat prayers including passing around challah, dipped in course salt, and wine. I wore the yarmulke, but I passed on the wine so as to not spread my cold. The meal itself began with a course of fish called Princess of the Nile. It was absolutely delicious...light and flaky and swimming in a delightfully savory sauce. Then we had soup, and vegetables and potatoes and salad and paprika chicken, and just when I thought I couldn't eat another bite Benny brought out an enormous bowl of fruit salad, a very refreshing end to the meal. The amount of food Benny prepared for this meal was staggering. Even with 14 people eating, there was enough left over to feed us all again. If we all would have let him, he would have done it, too!

After dinner Benny showed me his artwork, both throughout the house and in the gallery he has downstairs (he maintains a more complete gallery and workshop at Bilah's mother's house). He is a prolific painter, but also makes beautiful metal sculpture--he made the metal bannisters and tables and bathroom vanity in their house. They really were amazing. I have to say that one of the most remarkable pieces of artwork he showed me was a model of Noah's ark that he made with one of his grandsons for a school project. It was a multilevel affair with a retracting ladder, windows, and rooms for people, animals, and supplies. The handiwork was so intricate and detailed, it really blew me away. It could have been in a museum.

The best thing about the dinner, however, was the people. They were so warm and friendly to me. They speak English really well, but sometimes it was cute when they'd say a whole sentence and then look to someone else for that one last word. I can only hope to someday be a tenth that proficient in Hebrew, so it was really nice that we can communicate with them. They also had a knack for humor, keeping most of the room in stitches. The funniest line of the evening was when I asked Eyal about the possibility of him being called up in the army. He said he has some health problems and so he serves in a "disabled" unit. So, he said while he pantomimed wheeling himself in a wheelchair, "if they call me up, it must be very bad for Israel."

I left with bags full of lemons, cumquats, and herbs for tea from their garden....way too generous, but greatly appreciated. I almost forgot to mention the kitties. Their cats were really funny! I'm not entirely certain how many total cats they had, but I interacted mostly with Shmuelech and Fishka, tall skinny tabby siblings (grey and orange, respectively) who tolerate just about everything and are very cute and cuddly. Shmuelech even tried to come home with me by jumping in the car as I was leaving.

I'll be visiting them again soon and will post pics...

Jerusalem again!

The weekend between Christmas and New Year's found me in Jerusalem again. I had to work on a visit from a senior US official, so the Embassy put me up in the David Citadel hotel (where Condoleeza stays when she's in town), just outside the Old City. After spending much of the day in preparations for the Senator's visit, the hotel's well-stocked executive lounge was a welcome dining spot just down the hall from my room.

A few strokes of luck got us on a very exclusive tour the following morning. First, I more or less got off the hook in terms of work for Saturday and second I happened to contact a friend who works at the Consulate in Jerusalem who happened to be taking some people on this tour and some of the intended participants happened to cancel since the tour was originally scheduled for Sunday and had been moved at the last minute to Saturday. So, just like that I had a plan to visit the Temple Mount, Dome of the Rock, and Al Aqsa Mosque which are typically closed to non-Muslims.

The Dome of the Rock marks the place of the tip of Mount Moriah, the place that Genesis proclaims that Abraham prepared Isaac for sacrifice. And, like all places of great historical interest, it was under major renovations inside at the time of our visit. Instead of Abraham and Isaac, we found buckets and scaffolding atop the famed mountain. The interior was still breathtaking and highly recommended. The mosque was also beautiful, with high ceilings and tall white columns and windows allowing rays of sunlight to brighten the expansive space.

After this tour we visited the Western Wall again. It was much more animated this time since it was Shabbat. The men's section was positively filled with devotees visiting the wall. The women's section was about equally filled as the previous visit. The men had various factions separated (by outward appearances) according to manner of dress: there were those in the typical black suits with hats and curls, there were those with the suits and large furry Russian looking hats, those in more modern dress wearing yarmulkes or berets, and those in various long robes and headcoverings. Each group had its own set of songs and ways of worship, and at times it seemed one group would try to outdo the rest by singing louder and more emphatically than the next. One guy in a long robe, seemingly on his own, stood at this makeshift pulpit and was seriously getting down. I mean, this guy had rhythm! And he was letting everyone know about it. We might have a photo of this scene, but it's strictly verboten, so I'm really not sure how it got on our memory card.

After the Old City, I headed over to the Israel Museum and Shrine of the Book to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was really neat to see these ancient remnants. They also have a model of the Old City during the Second Temple Period (when the Jewish temple sat on the Temple Mount instead of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque...destroyed by the Romans on August 4, 70 A.D.--Not sure how they have the exact date, but whatever...)

On our way back to the hotel, I got a text message that the IDF had invaded Gaza. It marked the beginning of daily uncertainty about the war's future as well as the second time war broke out during a stay in Israel, causing my family here to later remark (jokingly) that it is my fault.

A friend in "modest dress" outside the dome.

The tip of the mighty Mount Moriah...

Inside the Dome (the part that isn't being renovated).

Inside Al Aqsa Mosque.

Western Wall on Shabbat (and during Chanukkah).

Oddly enough, the Israel Museum did not have a coat check, but it DID have a weapons check!


Model of the Old City with the Second Temple on top of the Temple Mount.