The 11th Floor

A Perpsective Overlooking Jerusalem, Israeli Life, and Talmud Torah

Sunday, September 23, 2007

He’s behind me, isn’t he? AND He lives next door.

Look, it’s not that bumping into celebrities is uncommon in Israel. It’s the way it happens that is so strange.

After our pre-fast feast, a small number of the diners were walking together from the apartment of the host to the minyan for Kol Nidre. The host’s street in Jerusalem connects directly with “Hanasi” street. Literally “president” street, the street was renamed when the president’s official residence was moved from the elegant British-planned neighborhood of Rechavia to a new compound on the edge of nearby Talbieh.

We have nothing like the Israeli Presidency in the US- some people would say the Surgeon General is close, but even the Surgeon General has more power than the President of the State of Israel. After all, the Surgeon General can address the public and put warnings on things. Plus they get to wear that snazzy retired-Admiral suit. Being President of Israel is kind of like being first lady and trying to help your country, but with the president living in another house and never telling you anything- similar to the Roosevelt Presidency.

Unlike 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, where the main resident doesn’t mind having the whole world know he’s leaving the house, the Shabak staff watching the Israeli president these days takes a very different approach. Which is how the following occurred…

We all crossed onto the street just a few feet past the entrance to the residence. We kept walking down past the edge of the residence with it’s stylized fence.. There were a few dozen guards about, barricades and a receiving line set up opposite the street. One of our party asked what all the barricades were for. I ventured “that’s probably where the president will be davening.” The student at the head of our group, turned around to say to me, “well, why don’t you ask him? He’s right-“ “Behind me, isn’t he?” I turned around, and there was Shimon Peres in a Royal Blue suit, flanked by two of the tallest, best armed Jews in the world. Holding his tallis bag under one arm, a black velvet kippah on his head, and the very weight of the world on his shoulders. It was that expression that stopped me from greeting him- that and the two huge guards.

We must have walked 50 feet before any of us knew he was behind us. And he followed us for two blocks “Right. Well, he’s still behind us,” I mentioned to the group. “Maybe he’s coming to shul with us.” That’s when he crossed the street. You know, he’s shorter than I thought he would be.

Of course, we are still apartment hunting as our current location is just through the holiday season (Sukkot). The last place we saw tonight was a few blocks away from the Jerusalem theatre. As we look for the apartment (which turned out to be a converted garage or workspace), N. mentions that one my favorite teachers says a famous Israeli lives next door. We get to the end of the block, searching for street numbers in the cool of the evening. Of course, there aren’t any. I take a few steps down a lighted pathway to see if there is a number for the house on the side of the building, but there isn’t one. Lots of light and many voices are coming out of the house.

I duck back quickly towards the road. A cab is waiting in front of the home. A voice comes form behind me, warm and curious. “You have something for me?” he asks. I recognize the face of this man and try to explain, stumbling over my own bad Hebrew, that we are looking for an apartment at #4. That’s when my wife takes over, calmly naming the family we are looking for. “This is #4- you just want down at the corner.” Israeli style, he walks us down the block a bit. “Here?” we ask. “no, no a bit further down,” he adds. Having regained my wits, I wish the man a flurry of year-end greetings, and he heads back to his house.

“You know, our teacher said that he will be our neighbor if we get this place. I wonder if we could ever have him over ?” Realizing what didn’t click for her, I tell my wife "um… that was him.” “No, it couldn’t be,” she replies. I ask the cab driver, who has pulled over to make a call. “That was him, right?” He looks at me with a smile. “Yes, yes, he lives right there.” I’m not sure she really believes that it was him. She is still a bit sad that while the landlady was so nice, the apartment was a dump. I feel we did great; after all, how often do you get directions from Natan Sharansky while apartment hunting?

Friday, September 21, 2007

Gmar Chatimah Tovah


In Israel on Yom Kippur, even cable stations go off the air, Russian-language cable stations included. Quite the thing to see- all those stations off the air. Except MTV, but since it's like one long commercial these days, who over the age of 16 would notice if it did go off the air?

To all those I could not call or write, and to all our readers, May you be sealed in the book of life for prosperity, health, security joy and hope.

We hope the coming week will show a start to a new season of blog entires of substance and with lots of funny. Oh, and new photos- if we can find the camera.


Shana Tovah!

Monday, September 17, 2007

No, no! That avocado is traif!

The seven year sabbatical cycle, or Shmitah, has come full circle again. Consequently, one of the most bizarre quirks of Jewish life in the land of our Ancestors comes to the forefront: In modern day Israel, the meat is always kosher, but the vegetables can be traif.

Even Iwo Burger, the Jerusalem chain which serves burgers with bacon and blue cheese proudly lets customers know that only top quality kosher meat is served at their establishment. Of course, to get non-kosher meat in Jerusalem is a sysiphisian feat (yes, I went there), but the leading brands of Israeli cold cuts? Kosher. Army bases? Kosher. Wedding halls? Major café chains? You get the idea; Kosher meat is no big deal. But with the shmitah cycle, the Jewish dietary laws turn a circumlocutious eye towards the evil red bell pepper.

The Torah is explicit about this: every seven years let the land lie fallow. In return, God will give and abundance in the 6th year to see you through, and won’t that 8th year be an agricultural hootenanny (my spouse is forcing me to use that word lest people get confused). What grows on its own can be eaten, but no active cultivation or agricultural commerce is allowed. This has never been an easy mitzvah to observe in a land where rain is sparse, soil is finicky, and between the sun and insect world crops are often not long for this world without a great deal of human help. Even in mishnaic times the limits and loopholes surrounding this commandment were being tested.

There is of course a scale of how people react to this mitzvah in the modern world. On one side there are those for whom Judaism is never difficult enough as it is, and Israeli life is simply not stressful enough. For them, food can never really be kosher enough- especially if someone who does not go to their synagogue will eat it. These folks say that during shmitah there are no loopholes, no leniencies, no exceptions, no exemptions and no common sense. The literal law will be observed with its authority unabated, and there is no growing, buying or selling crops grown in the land. Fasting twice a week and public hangings are badly needed again in the mind of such folks, as for them Torah must be soul-crushingly difficult to observe, or its not the real deal. In their harts I am confident these halachic masochists would love to see people flogged for even looking at a bell pepper this year.

Are there those on the other side who say that if there is no Temple and no divine blessings over crops, the gig is up and for now we should only make symbolic actions and study the mitzvot for future implementation, as we do with sacrifices? Of course. The Rabbis of Provonce, whom we listen to for any number of Chumrot (stringencies) , said that to observe this law is midat chadisut, an act of peity, and not currently in force. As with anyone who says that there is an lenient way in the halakha, they are dismissed like the Reform, reconstructionists, Rav Moshe Finestein (when he ruled meikiel) and the Ringling Brothers, and therefore these rabbis are completely ignored. But we do pay attention to the crazies just mentioned.

Which leaves us in a right middle ground, saying that we only have to observe the law by rabbinic fiat. Every seven years, a loophole in this middle ground that makes growing and harvesting permissible, the Heter Mechirah, is supposed to be evaluated and implemented as needed. Naturally, it is besieged by that first group of “It’s not Torah unless it kills you” people. This year, the chief rabbi of a major city in the north was sued by the attorney general of Israel for refusing to allow people to work under this loophole as they have for the past number of decades.

I’m glossing over the fact that the loophole requires selling the land to a non-Jew for the year, and some people go nuts over that very notion. And there is another loophole called Otzer Biet Din, which is seen as preferable to the heter by many scholars. But the foods grown under heter exemption are still sacred and have some ritual restrictions on them. You can’t just waste them with impunity, use them in an abnormal matter, or dispose of their remains without consideration. So even with the heter, you still have to treat the produce of the land with added respect- and that takes time and money. Without allowing the heter, the economy of modern Israel would shatter. Furthermore, there is always reliance on imported produce from abroad and even more distasteful to some (but not us), buying from local Arab farmers. Without the heter, these two food sources become predominant, and both of these rile people up just as much as the notion of selling the land to a non-Jew.

And since elements within the Rabbinate seemingly wants to be more strict than Torquemada this year, no progress has been made on using the heter, and the markets still do not have signs saying where the vegetables are from, which standard or loophole is being used, and who is keeping an eye on the avocados. So at this time guacamole may be traif.

At least the chicken is still kosher.

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Sunday, September 16, 2007

Now introducing Rule #14

The ad was for a place that was too expensive, but after some delicate negotiations, we were told we might get the price down to a cost we cold almost afford. And the ad listed a number advantages. All that remained was to see the place and the owner.

Before we met, she asked us if we had a TV. We said “No.” “Well of course you don’t need one,” she noted. “You’re newlyweds.” At first, we dismissed this under the experiences that show how many Israelis have no tact, and feel free to comment about your family life with impunity. But then came the follow-up which she dropped on us while we were looking around (and discovered the bedroom was bigger than the rest of the apartment):

“It’s such a beautiful apartment. You must have your first child here." When I said that our parents would kill us if we had a child so far away from them, she said, “No, no, but you should just conceive it here.” So as much as we wanted to finally have a lease for the rest of the year, we knew this was not the place for us, because we just couldn't rent from someone rather kind, but way too interested in our reproductive cycle. Which leads us to our new rule for living in Israel...

RULE #14: Never rent from someone who wants you to conceive children in their bedroom.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

“Go. Bye.”

Greetings 11thfloor readers! Wishing you all a sweet new year and a chatimah tovah, this will be a post-a-day week, we hope.

Our journey back to jerusalem finally began with a Jet Blue flight , which was fun and half an hour early into JFK. I recommend flying with them when you can.
Now the line at JFK had taken us two full hours to finally get to check-in counter- and we were there early. The line had formed at shortly after 7pm --for a flight due to leave at 12:20am. The airline recommends getting there 3 hours early, so naturally people were lined up 5 hours beforehand. Now the line stretched so far away from the check-in desks it seemed hard to believe that there were only 260 passengers on the plane. It doubled back upon itself so many times it cut off access to three other airlines including Kuwaiti Air, who welcome their first class and business passengers with fine rugs in the waiting area.

So after the interview by Israeli security staff, lifting, tagging, retagging, waiting in line and shuffling bags for two hours, we finally had our boarding passes, finished screening, and got ready to have the bags passed through the x-ray. This required standing in another line for 45 minutes. We finally got to the front of the line, and got ready to hoist the bags onto the conveyor for the X-ray. One look at us, and the Israeli security guy (certainly not TSA) takes the bags, gives them a swipe with a magic wand, and just says “Go. Bye.” No interviews, no searches, no question on the bag’s contents. No X-ray. It was almost comical. Other students were quizzed aggressively: “Yeshiva? But you are done with university! You are too old for yeshiva!” or to a young woman: “Girls don’t go to yeshiva!” But for us? “Go. Bye.” It made us wonder if we should have just skipped to the head of the line. Maybe next time…

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Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Once more, with feeling!

More adventures from the 11th floor are soon to come, dear readers! More Jews behaving badly! More essays on Jerusalem life! More.... long essays and entries that make little sense.

We arrive in Jerusalem, with God's help, in just over a day and a half, so stay tuned!