Month: April 2008

  • Today's word: טקס

    We attended the Yom Hashoah tekes (טקס or ceremony) tonight, organized by the neighborhood Scouts and Bnei Akiva kids. It was very much a small-town tekes. A few things came to mind while I stood and watched: It never occurred to me before how it must have been for the Mizrachi population to get to…

  • The final final.

    I don’t want to make promises, because you just never know over here… But I’m %99.99 sure that I just finished my last ever final at Bar Ilan University… …And I totally rocked it. Take that, Ethical Dilemmas in Mediation! Here’s a portrait of the calm before the final: It’s not the end of my…

  • City feature: Caesarea

    Caesarea is one of those Israeli cities that, when coming up in conversation, everyone nods their heads and says, “Oh yes, beautiful place, I’d like to get back there one of these days.” After hearing that for over three years, I decided it was time. We took a day of our chol hamoed and drove…

  • Ma nishtana ha Pessach ha ze?

    What makes this Passover different from all other Passovers? It’s the first one where I’m making my own seder while combining the traditions I grew up experiencing with someone else and his own traditions. I feel like this is the type of thing we all think about and wonder as kids (ok maybe just those…

  • A little thing about home(land) cooking.

    There is something so completely special – when you can look past the depressing, lonely, sad aspects – about being an olah in Israel, cooking your family’s traditional Passover recipes for your own seder with fellow olim… My grandmother is far far away, but here I am, across the world, continuing her delicious traditions and…

  • Something for all Jews to remember around Pessach.

    There is a lot going on in these days before Passover. Cleaning our houses, shopping for food, cooking that food… and then of course, eating that food as we tell the story of our freedom from the slavery of Egypt. We are catching up on halachot (laws) of keeping kosher during the Pessach holiday. Some…

  • The Computer Engineer's Haggadah.

    Had to share this email I got at work today. Bear with me, I work in the hi tech realm; therefore, I thought this was funny: The Computer Engineer’s Haggadah Release ISRAEL ISRAEL running in slave mode, cannot release Set ISRAEL;mode=master Pharaoh already running in master mode, cannot change ISRAEL Set Pharaoh;mode=slave Command ignored Load…

  • A Passover bonus for everyone.

    This is sweet. My company gave us our usual Passover bonuses in the form of gifts bought via Sderot, so that Sderot vendors make some money off of the deal as opposed to vendors elsewhere. Since the population of Sderot has been suffering for years now, and business has suffered along with it, there has…

  • Ynet's perception of Israeli soldiers on Facebook: Naked.

    I gave away the punch line in the title, but there ain’t much more to say than that. Here’s the headline of a Ynet news article from today: Classified info exposed on Facebook Basically, some members of the Israeli security establishment were caught with photos of classified soldiers and locations exposed on their Facebook accounts.…

  • Israeli Pet Peeve #127: Wrong number.

    I have never experienced this anywhere in my life but here with my Israeli mobile number: *Ring ring* Me: “Hello?” Israeli caller: “Hello?” Me: “…hello?” Israeli caller: “Hila?” Me: “No, must be a wrong number…” (about to hang up) Israeli caller: “Who is this?” Me: “What’s the difference?” Israeli caller: “Hila?” Me: “No. Wrong number.”…

  • Karaoke: The good, the bad, the Jerusalem.

    Spread the word: I am in the market for good karaoke as opposed to Jerusalem karaoke. A friend wanted – uncharacteristically – to get her sing on, so we all ventured out to Capricorn, which is apparently Jerusalem’s only karaoke bar. Actually, it’s more like a portable karaoke machine + arse DJ + bitchy waitress…

  • The plumber just high-fived my husband.

    We’ve been living here for two and a half months and I still can’t get over how freakin’ nice everyone is around Tzur Hadassah. My landlady is a complete doll (read: Polish) and gets everything fixed for us right away. She’s professional, polite and considerate. This is the exact opposite of the experience we had…