Masik! (Pt. 1)

    זַיִת רַעֲנָן יְפֵה פְרִי תֹאַר קָרָא ה’ שְׁמֵךְ

נקראו ישראל זית רענן — שהם מאירים לכל (שמות רבה ל״ו

God has named you as a leafy olive tree, gorgeous with beautiful fruit (Jeremiah 11:16).

Yisrael is called an olive tree because they light up the world (Shmot Rabbah 36)

Eretz Yisrael is dripping this week — not with rain, but with oil from a huge collective olive harvest. Presses work round the clock and it’s hard to get a free window to bring your yield, because everyone is doing their masik [olive harvesting and pressing] all during these few weeks. Farmers had held out as long as they could for a good rain to clear the dust off the olives, but nothin’ doin’, so we’re all hard-pressed (yes, pun intended) to rush these olives off the trees before they over-ripen.

Ira has been anticipating this week for many months. This time last year, we took a look at the kerem [olive grove] and decided a masik just wasn’t worth it — there weren’t enough olives on the neglected trees.

October 2018

The kerem needed to be nurtured back to life with massive pruning, fertilizing and watering, which is just what he did.

October 2019

What a difference a year (and a lot of blood, sweat and tears, including a tough round of awful Q-fever) can make! We’re now ready for the First Annual Weissman Family Farm Masik.

STEP 1: Have the mashgiach [rabbinic kashrut overseer] out to inspect the trees (a must so that the beit bahd [olive press] will agree to take your yield). Here the mashgiach is pointing out a problem — chazirim (shoots that are too far from the trunk to be considered part of the tree.  Any fruit that might grow on chazirim would be orlah (fruit that grows on a tree during its first three halachic years, which is forbidden to eat), and therefore off limits for the masik):

 

mashgiach pointing to a chazir. The shoots closer to the trunk aren’t orlah

The mashgiach will then make a couple of spot-checks during the masik to make sure that all is in order.

STEP 2: Line up your crew. Since we’ve never done this before, Ira sought out lots of advice from our experienced neighbors. A great group of bnot sherut organized through Hayogev are helping us with the harvest itself, plus he hired a contractor to load all of the olives into a huge “gondola” and transport that to the beit bahd.

STEP 3: Tell whichever kids are home that it’s harvest time (no school today, Little House on the Prairie style), and bake some pancakes for sustenance. But just this once, we’ll call them flapjacks, because it seems right under these circumstances:

STEP 4: Head out to the grove and get lost in the very simple pleasure of repetitive thrashing. You lay out a large mesh sheet under each tree, take bamboo rods and whack away. I preferred the pick-by-hand method which works nicely for the lower branches.

Around 1/4 of the yield

Tomorrow, 21/11/2019, we hope to be able to offer Masik! Part 2, wherein we do the nikuf (pulling from the tree) on the other half of the kerem, and bring the whole lot to the beit bahd. Stay tuned…

Harvest

To remind us all that Shavuot is really an agricultural festival — Chag HaKatzir (Harvest Festival), or Chag HaBikkurim (Festival of the First Fruits) — kibbutzim and moshavim have traditionally thrown down the Israeli version of a 4-H county fair on the eve of the holiday. On display are the latest agricultural tools and tractors, prize livestock, farm-related athletic competitions, pie contests (in our case, cheesecake contests) and such.

There were activity stands for the kids, like create your own cow:

 

And the crowd favorite, pile into the hay to find the hidden candy:

Here’s me holding some soap that Tziona has hand-crafted:

And here’s a friend explaining to the kids what exactly this merry little hoedown is all about:

But the most precious part is what the end of that short video began to capture: all babies born within the past year were invited up onto the stage as a “display” of our bikkurim — our fruits of this year’s bounty:

“our baby chicks”

For me, at least, this year has thrown the other — dare I say more central? — concepts of Shavuot (wheat harvest, celebration of bounteous fruiting trees, deep communion with the Land and its rhythms) into much sharper focus. As Ira and Ruvi sign up to get their tractor licenses, as warm and slightly misshapen vegetables suddenly appear on my kitchen counter, as weird and obscure words like maftema and blil just suddenly pop up in casual conversation, this Shavuot “heppening” now seems like the most natural thing in the world to a gal who had always spent the week leading up to Chag in feverish preparation of shiurim. What I’m recognizing is that it needn’t be either Zman Matan Torateinu or Hag HaKatzir/Hag HaBikkurim. It really should be both, and I’m just beginning to discover surprisingly delightful ways of incorporating all of the different aspects of this complex day into our new reality.

Order and Chaos: A Love Story

Here are my snapshots of a wheat field in Sde Ilan, from planting through harvest (with Tavor in the background for perspective):

after the first rain
Erev Tu B’Shvat, 5779
Erev Pesach
harvest, early May

Such welcome predictability. Soon we’ll celebrate the harvest, as the Torah has mandated, on Hag HaKatzir (6 Sivan), marking the culmination of the age-old cycle that had started back in October.

Round and round, planting and harvesting, so predictable that we can set our religious calendars by this agricultural cycle of life and death. Our aesthetic sensibilities are gratified by neat fields of planted crops — it all might be tied to mollifying any deeply-rooted evolutionary anxieties left over from an age before supermarkets. We are naturally calmed when we see our food stores organized into anticipated yield. God created us with a compulsion to subdue the earth, and the order that we impose on her fulfills that very basic human need.

 

This is how we generally interact with our world: we’re built to make order, to divide continents into countries, to build fences to keep out predators, to make things neat and pretty and tidy and predictable and controlled. It’s good for the body and soul, utterly human.

In the absence of human interference, though, life thrives in a different way. This second approach of Creation is far more threatening to humans, but it has an aesthetic that is equal to (if not surpassing) the neat rows of corn or carrots. It is the wild chaos of natural growth, as random and unpredictable as life truly can be. If we step back from interfering, from processing, scheming and manipulating, the earth will determinately push forth a riot of its own making, varieties of plants and flowers that compete against each other for survival.

 

It was a submission of to the wisdom of nature — that animals do best when they can eat freely from native and uncultivated vegetation, and we in turn will do best by them and by ourselves by allowing for that process — that led to a weird revolution of sorts that has our fellow moshavnikim scratching their heads. We decided to rejuvenate our field au naturel, a look that’s alarmingly wild and does indeed make me anxious:

(Note: this wouldn’t work if we wanted to grow all of our food from the ground. The aquaponics system will hopefully handle the veg, and the fields will provide for our proteins.)

Exhausted from years of modern controlled monoculture farming, with regular crop dusting to keep out any insects and chemical fertilizers to mask the damage done to the soil by growing only one type of crop, our field seemed on the brink of burnout when we first moved in. But such is God’s commitment to this world: life insists on pushing forth, even if you don’t expect it to. We scattered random seeds of wild plants indigenous to this region with no tilling and no water, no chemicals or pesticides, and the plants triumphed. There’s clover, vetch and wild alfafa in them there pastures. This whole luxurious mess will all be mowed down in a few months to sink back into the ground as natural nutrient-filled mulch; the hope is that these perennials will reemerge on their own next year so that our livestock can graze on what the earth naturally provides.

 

Michael Pollan writes often about his garden, and the special corner he keeps “in chaos.” While a garden is a thing of beauty, both aesthetic and functional, so is his unkempt corner — and not just because it serves to throw the straight rows of his peonies into triumphant relief. There is beauty in the randomness, where a lone red poppy might shoot up among the weeds, unexpected and entirely unpredictable, capricious and therefore stunning.

can you spot it?! 

Moving to a totally new context — like making aliyah, or going fully rural like we have — can have you working overtime to retain control and stick to the plan. It is the human way, after all, to try and manage our lives, and to control things, as if life was a machine that I could program and determine the outcome. But if you surrender to the inevitability of randomness in our world, remaining steadfast and true only to yourself, understanding that the one and only thing you can ever control is your own response to the sock-pow (and quieter) surprises that are an inevitable part of life, then you start to see the great beauty in that very randomness that scares us all.

Don’t get me wrong — I love those neat and tidy fields, and I always will — but I also am beginning to understand the importance of letting life just be. It is an awesome and inspiring beauty, life left unfettered and free to express itself. What emerges from that randomness are these surprising opportunities that we could never have even imagined, pushing themselves determinedly into our lives like that random poppy in the spread of wild growth.  

two more — look carefully

So many of us glide back and forth in life between our need to dominate the earth, and our willingness to submit to its mysteries and surprisingly unexpected gifts. Right now, in our lives, our family is deeply living both of these approaches, as they play out before us in the landscape that we’re privileged to call home.

 

Tu b’Shvat Snapshots

Today, on the eve of Tu b’Shvat, we ventured back out to the fields, which have been a swampy, blessed mess for a while now.

The wheatgrass is so much higher than it was just a month ago.

Winter here, for me, has meant sinking. The whole moshav turns swampy and deep. You get stuck in the muck, and as you slosh your way through the mud puddles, it brings you back to any hazy image you might have of yourself as a very young child in galoshes, or at least to the pictures of you wearing the boots lined with plastic bags. There is caked and packed mud everywhere, on every shoe, until you don’t notice it anymore and you just get used to the squishiness of moving around.

I’ve sunk deeply in more than just the mud. My plan this first year was to go around when I can, when there’s ever an opportunity, with people who can teach me what I need to know about my new home. I’ve seen Havat HaShomer with a ninety-five year old woman who hadn’t been back to her original home there for seventy years, toured Sejera with a dear neighbor whose earliest childhood memories were of his grandfather’s home there, learned from the great-granddaughter of the Sobotnikim who founded the moshav that she’s called home her whole life, and tried to understand Kfar Tavor through the eyes of a native son whose family has never left. I’ve hiked the Sanhedrin trail with the visionary who first dreamed of such a shvil, learned about the Druze communities with a Druze guide whose mother had passed away that week but what of it, really, since she is now alive somewhere else, pecked my way through ruins with the archaeologists who have spent years trying to see a wall where most only see a tumble of stones. I’ve spent hours in the living room of my friends Yossi and Yael, experts in the Lower Galil who have too many degrees between them to keep track, trying to line things up in my head, to keep this huge confusing jumble of new information organized and accessible.

That’s when you can start feeling stuck and hopeless, and it’s happened to me before. When you sink with all of your heart and conviction way down deeply into the experience, you lose your stride. You plod along, focusing only on finding solid footing, knowing that you’re helpless at the moment to make sense of (much less express) your newfound knowledge. Second Aliyah tumbles into R’ Meir baal haNes plunges into Byzantine-era synagogues skids into Christian/Moslem relations in Arabe. Like I said, I’ve jumped into enough seemingly-bottomless pools in my  life to know that things work themselves out in time, and the muteness (where I’m helpless at making myself understood in any language) and anxiety do eventually dissipate.

The lower Galil wasn’t conquered in a day, and it will take me many years to fully feel akin to this region. But I suppose it doesn’t hurt that I’ve literally dug in my heels over these last few months, shimmying under barbed-wire fences and falling flat on my face in soggy riverbeds, trying to absorb it all.

Crops are growing thick and strong this year; it’s been a rainy winter, and that’ll do it.

after the first rain
Erev Tu B’Shvat, 5779

We’ve been taking it all in, absorbing all the newness like the earth absorbs the rain — which is to say that a lot is run-off, and will have to be re-absorbed in time. Suddenly, though, it’s Tu b’Shvat: a reminder that shift is afoot, that the deepest rhythms of nature move us all towards new growth and change, even if we can’t ourselves sense it quite yet. Soon, I know, we’ll more readily find ourselves on solid ground.

Tachlis #3 — Fish and Plants: A Love Story (in Experimental Phase)

Disclaimer: We’ve been “farming” for all of five minutes. So nothing in the following post should be misunderstood as indicating that we know what we’re doing, because we don’t.

“So what exactly do you want to grow on the farm?” (a reasonable question to which we have a long and short answer)

 

Short Answer: Everything, really, that we can.

 

Long Answer: We are trying to see if we can grow most of our own food. Our family’s diet habits have shifted over the past few years, and now we eat mostly whole and unprocessed foods: vegetables, fruits, grains, dairy and animal-based proteins (there’s still plenty of junk in the house, and since we can’t grow chocolate, we will still have our account at St. Coby’s Tzarchania of Processed Foods). We’d like to grow all of the “whole foods,” except for the grains. We’re hoping to develop a certain autonomy when it comes to the quality of what we’re consuming, The thinking is that if we grow it ourselves, we know more or less how it was grown (organically, free-range eggs, pastured animals), and how it comes to the table (no packaging, compassionate slaughter).  

Our farm includes a sizable olive grove, so hypothetically that’s our oil supply. (The olive grove had been quite neglected, so we’ve started tending to the trees and hope to fertilize the grove with these giant mounds of cow dung we’ve been gifted by our generous neighbors, plus with the mulch from the pruned trees. Let’s see if that rejuvenates the trees and increases yield next fall.)

 

Those dark piles in front of the grove? Special gift from a special neighbor…

We hope to raise pastured livestock for protein and dairy — mainly sheep, a few cows, and chickens.  To do that, we need to plant grasses and plants that the animals can graze on. The field had traditionally been planted with a cash crop, like wheat:

A neighbor’s wheat sprouting after the first rain, Mt. Tavor in the background

Instead, Ira planted wild grasses indigenous to this region in the hopes that we can “re-grass” the soil and then successfully pasture the animals. We’d like to plant a few fruit and nut trees around the perimeter as well. But what about the bulk of the produce — the vegetables and most fruits? Are we tilling, sowing, planting, reaping?

First, the problems with the whole “Farmer Joe” model of doing things:

  1. Soils in Israel have been degraded by farming. Farmers haven’t necessarily kept to an annual rotational cycle of planting, and monoculture (raising a single crop) has depleted the soil of its vibrancy. Growing in the soil is unpredictable because the soil isn’t currently up to par.
  2. Conditions (climate, elevation, unpredictable rainfall) do not allow for growing a huge variety of foods in one particular area. There is only so much you can do with zucchini and eggplant — we want the whole rainbow of foods available.
  3. Water is very expensive, and traditional farming methods are not at all efficient. If there is sufficient rainfall, most of the water seeps back down into the aquifer and does not get absorbed by the plants. And that’s only IF there’s sufficient rain — plus, the rainy season is limited to the winter here. (Fun fact: did you know that it’s currently illegal to collect rainwater here for your own personal use? The rain, LEGALLY, belongs to the Land of Israel, and you can’t steal it away from her…)
  4. Pests and disease are far more rampant in a traditional soil-based farming model. It’s crushing to invest so much money, time and energy into planting, only to see your produce and trees decimated by the red spider mite (not to mention kashrut issues involving bugs and produce — it is forbidden to eat insects, so halachically-observant Jews must carefully clean away all insects from any produce they consume. This is a time-and-energy sucker, I can tell you from much first-hand experience!)

 

Solutions include resigning yourself to growing just a few crops that do well in this region (olives and almonds), and to spraying pesticides and chemical fertilizers over your crop to keep ravaging insects away and the soil properly nitrated. Since we want to eat everything, and since we want our produce to be organically-grown with no chemicals in the soil or pesticides on the crop, we’re exploring an old/new idea called aquaponics.

an aquaponics greenhouse — Ira’s dream

Since I was introduced to the whole idea quite recently, I’ll rely on a seasoned expert to define the concept: “Aquaponics is the cultivation of fish and plants together in a constructed, recirculating ecosystem utilizing natural bacterial cycles to convert fish waste to plant nutrients. This is an environmentally friendly, natural food-growing method that harnesses the best attributes of aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (growing plants in water) without the need to discard any water or filtrate or add chemical fertilizers.” (Sylvia Bernstein, Aquaponic Gardening)

 

Basically, what this means is that the fish poop is great fertilizer for the plants, and the plants in turn filter out all of the ammonia from the fish tank, so the fish thrive. This whole symbiotic system can be as big or as small as you wish (Ira’s envisioning a greenhouse so that the conditions can be controlled and many different crops can be raised, plus there are far fewer rodents and insects in that environment. Currently, though, he’s experimenting with a tiny scaled-down system to figure out the kinks. He’s built himself a small tank, figured out how to construct a syphon/pump system and is testing out a few different types of grow beds, as you can see in the pictures).

Ira and Shalva standing over the fish tank; in the forefront are two different types of grow beds to grow produce

Hypothetically, you can raise a huge number of fish annually, plus a ridiculous surplus of vegetables in a small space, on very little water (since the water is constantly pumped between the fish tank and the grow beds). Lots of protein, lots of veg, extremely sparing use of water, no chemical fertilizer, avoiding pests — Eureka! I do believe we’ve got ourselves a potential solution.

40 happy tilapia and 10 happy goldfish in their new home

Time will tell, though. Here’s what I asked Ira (who took a course in aquaponics, so he knows much more than I do — but insists that yet again I add the disclaimer that he’s very new to this):

  • What kind of fish can we grow?

Tilapia, mainly, though perhaps some kinds of bass — no salmon. But you don’t have to harvest the fish. They can just live out their happy lives in the tank.

  • We can grow ANYTHING? As in…(eyes closed, hands clasped)…blueberries? (holding breath)

Well, pretty much anything. But blueberries are very tricky, so that might not work out. You can grow fruiting trees in the grow beds, though. All herbs, green leafies, pretty much every veg you can think of including roots and tubers (these need a specific type of grow bed called a “wicking” bed) grow spectacularly well in this system. 

  • How much upkeep is necessary?

Not a whole lot, but you do need to test the water on a somewhat regular basis to make sure that the (natural) filtering system is working, and troubleshoot if it’s not. Plus the pumps need to be in good working condition. I can follow all of this on an app.

Here’s hoping that his experiment is fruitful (literally), and that he can move on to more large-scale production. Meanwhile, we have to start tackling the halachic implications of growing produce this way, plus eventually think about the halachic issues involved in raising animals for dairy/eggs/meat. Though Ira has started learning hilchot shchita, there’s so much more that we need to learn. But as the mishna says: “He who learns in order to do, is granted the means to learn, teach, observe and practice” (Avot 4:6)  Let’s hope we manage to learn and to put into practice before Shmitta year arrives, when things will get a whole lot trickier down on the farm!

Tachlis #2: Adventures in Composting

Composting, recycling, cutting down on disposables — to quote my gif spirit animal:

aint nobody got time for that GIF

And yet, here we are, composting like a BOSS. What happened to my could-care-less approach that had worked for us for nearly twenty years of homemaking?

 

This push towards caring about the bigger picture is definitely fueled by our concern for our own little piece of E”Y. I had never given serious thought to the damage that my family was doing to the environment until moving to the moshav (I felt that issue was so far down my priority list as to barely merit any consideration.) Frankly, I’ve only just begun shifting a little in giving this matter passing attention because I’m starting to notice the soil on its own terms. I’m walking it daily, noticing its cracks and colors, feeling more akin to it all. I’m realizing that if I want to move towards a deeper, more profound relationship with the land, I can’t just focus on the land’s history — I have to take my eyes off the books and start paying closer attention to the very ground under my feet, the parcel that we’ve chosen to nurture and care for.  I’ve committed to examine and understand what’s going on (this basically means absorbing what Ira’s been learning over the past year or so), so that I can help do my small part in rejuvenating our fields.

 

As for Ira, his all-in approach to our new life has him committed to learning about and implementing some new behaviors regarding how we dispose of our trash. Basically, I’m along for the ride, so long as I don’t have to do much.  

 

I feel pretty confident in saying that we had an abysmal track record when it came to doing anything about the environment. Sure, we always wanted to do right by God’s green-how-much-longer earth, but honestly, it was just too much work. Mea Culpa on just about every violation you can think of. We were the reigning family in the Kingdom of Use n’ Toss. The lady at the chad peami store saved her widest smile for us, the Duke and Duchess of Disposables. We were all like: let them eat cake, so long as we can throw away the pan afterwards, along with the plastic plates and cutlery.

 

Then we bought a farm.

 

While I don’t think we’re on Green Peace’s short list for their most-radically-changed lifestyle award, I will say that the move to the country has changed how we consume products and dispose of packaging. I’m pretty sure being surrounded by gorgeous stretches of fields contributes to our current gung-ho sense that we, too, can recycle rather than toss. That and the fact that Ira has built his first experimental aquaponics system, which will eventually require some rich soil for his wicking beds, has caused us all to rethink our kitchen routines. How can our cooking and eating habits be altered to present an alternative to chemical fertilizers? Can our own consumption help supply the conditions necessary for plant growth in his contained system and, thinking larger, eventually help naturally rejuvenate our fifty dunam of farmland (which has been sprayed with chemical fertilizer for decades now)?

 

Going green is a slow process, but one tangible and fairly easy shift we made was the compost bin. Composting is super simple, and there are abundant resources online to learn more. Basically, you’re building a nutrient-rich material and getting rid of all of your organic garbage at the same time. Composting requires a combo of brown (carbon) and green (nitrogen) matter. “Brown” includes things like dried leaves, ground up wood, paper, cardboard — the smaller pieces of all of these materials, the better. “Green” are things like food scraps (everything, basically, except for meat/poultry/dairy), vegetable/food peelings, manure, grass clippings.

 

Firstly, Ira bought four metal posts and wrapped them with chicken wire. There’s no bottom to this “bin.” Secondly, he and the kids went around the moshav and collected hay, leaves, and grass — grass itself contains the right balance of “green” to “brown,” so that’s a great ingredient to add to the brew. He bought a wood chipper to process the larger tree and plant trimmings that they had collected. Additionally, he was gifted with two bags of sheep manure from our landlord.

Once he built the bin (10 min), and the kids collected the debris/organic matter (20 min), we spent a few minutes more layering in the stuff. You layer brown green brown green, sprinkle the gantze zakh with some water, and voila! The magic happens.

Bacteria is decomposing the material and turning the whole brew into a rich soil-like material. You turn it over every week or two to keep it aerated. What’s amazing right off the bat (after a few days) is if you dig around just a bit, you’ll feel the pretty intense heat of the cook. The interior of the compost bin can reach between 135-150F.

As the mix breaks down, it shrinks quite substantially. Every Sunday, Ira adds two huge garbage bags of grass clippings, plus all the rotten produce benevolently donated to the cause by St. Coby of the Freezerburned Tzarchania. This stuff shrinks like sauteed spinach. We’ve only been at it for about a month and a half, and already have some real compost to transfer to Ira’s aquaponics grow beds (more on that experimental venture in a future post!)

 

It’s always helpful to give your compost bin some extra oomph to get it steamy. Ira was tipped off by a moshav friend that there’s a worm guru in Kiryat Tivon, and he went off one day to get himself some worms. (The sentences that come out of my mouth sometimes give me pause.) The dude gives away his worms to people like us for the sheer joy of spreading the compost gospel. The worms (like the bacteria) consume the scraps, and their worm casings are like “fertilizer on crack.”

 

Where does our kitchen routine fit into all of this? We have a small tin on the counter — in go all fruit/vegetable peelings, all produce that is past prime and can’t be salvaged in a soup, half-eaten sandwiches, stale carbs of all sorts, eggshells, torn up paper and cardboard wrapping. Even toilet paper tubes and newspapers can be composted. This gets emptied into the compost bin every other day or so. What ends up now in our (much-reduced) garbage can are past-due dairy and meat, plastic, and glossy food packaging. Our garbage can fills much more slowly than it used to.

Ain’t she a beauty? Bet it brings you back to shmittah year…

(Secret confession: getting rid of stuff in general gives me serious satisfaction, but getting rid of stuff by making it useful? That scratches a DEEP tetris itch. Like the mini triumph of putting together that pre-Pesach meal with a quarter pkg of phyllo dough and a can of black beans — that’s what composting is like, and I guess that’s why I don’t see that little bin as a nuisance.)

 

For the first time, we realized just how much kitchen waste is being wasted. Most of what is stocking our fridges and pantries is organic and really shouldn’t be thrown in the trash can, where it will just end up in a landfill. (What’s so wrong with that? The organic matter in a landfill is deprived of oxygen, and the anaerobic decomp produces high levels of methane. Composting exposes organic waste to oxygen, so carbon dioxide is produced instead of methane. Even a non-scientist like me knows that Co2 is far more beneficial for the environment than methane.)Landfill

I grew up in a recycling house. My mother has always been committed to recycling plastic, paper and glass — woe to whichever child would throw away the cottage cheese cup, or the comics section! I’ve always admired her dedication, but I could never really adapt any of her habits into our crazy hectic life. Convenience is critical to managing a large household, as are disposables. I don’t think I’ll ever be as committed to recycling as my mother, though I am willing to take on measures that are nuisance-free and don’t take up too much additional space in our already-tight kitchen. So as far as recycling goes, we have started recycling plastic bottles and glass containers — we have a large cardboard box unobtrusively by the back door for plastic drink bottles and glass containers. We bring large bags to the grocery store (most of the time, when we remember). We’re definitely using fewer disposables, though we may be offsetting that gain with the increase in water used for washing dishes. Don’t think of asking me to ever give up my Kirkland paper towels from Osher Ad or my seudah shelishit paper plates — it’s not gonna happen. But as I watch the garbage turn into gold for the soil, and as I watch more and read up more on just how much damage humanity has done to the environment in just the last fifty years, I’m starting to think maybe we all should be paying more attention, or there might not be much ground to bury our heads in in the near future.

 

Who are 45% of the People in Your Neighborhood?

How many Jewish Israelis, much less Jewish immigrant Israelis, have ever spent time in an Arab town or city? We might casually (or nervously) encounter Arabs in our daily lives, or even meet them more intensively in a professional capacity, but what about on their turf: in their schools, cafes and streets?  

 

No one will give me a clear number (and I’ve asked around the experts of this region), but Arabs comprise an extraordinarily large percentage of the population of the Lower Galil. The current number bandied about (minus the largest Jewish, Arab, and mixed population centers) is a whopping 45%. I could go my whole life sidestepping Sachnin and Arabe, two large villages in the Lower Galil, but then how could I honestly claim intimate familiarity with this region? My deeper interest is in the ancient Jewish roots of these places (Sachnin was the home of R’ Chanina ben Tradyon, and R’ Chanina ben Dosa is buried in Arabe, where R’ Yochanan ben Zakai spent 18 years studying), but it’s also important to talk about their current iterations as significant Arab centers.

 

Sachnin alone is much more “city” than “village,” with a population of 31 thousand people, a scrappy but very popular football team and a trendy coffee shop sandwiched between Renuar and Golbary. Neighboring Arabe has 21k residents, and growing. Both have taken a new turn, as younger Arabs are drawn away from traditional rural life to the bustle of the city. These places are quickly developing into urban sprawl, and have started to rival other popular hubs like Acco and Haifa in providing Arabs a more upscale, modern lifestyle. Check out some of the newer villas in Sachnin:

Villa at right, nestled deeply in the woods on slope overlooking “downtown” Sachnin. Seriously jealous!!!

What’s missing in both places is any real urban planning that we take for granted in Jewish Israeli villages and cities. There are no public spaces, no parks or benches, no trees or shrubbery. This is a cultural phenomenon rather than a matter of insufficient funds, argues Adnan, our guide; Arabs have traditionally been far more concerned with investment in their private homes than the appearance of public spaces. He’s hoping that with more and more Arabs entering Jewish communities and enjoying their green spaces, Sachnin might allocate more resources to build a park or throw up some trees.

 

There’s a very small Christian minority here (900 strong) who are lovingly tolerated by their Moslem brethren (this was reiterated around ten times in as many minutes by the beaming Father Salah Choury, the leader of the Syrian Orthodox Church, who “invites all people to come visit Sachnin, City of Love and Brotherhood” [his words]).

The Father is very, very fond of St. George, who appears to residents in visions astride his galloping horse. There was also recently a dove who entered the new Cathedral (largest Orthodox cathedral in the Middle East, actually — and it was enormous), flew over to a patch of wet cement, and daintily stepped out the image of…a dove! They are covering it with glass and will venerate the miracle alongside the many other icons.

 

But enough about the Christians, since they make up such a tiny percent of the combined populations of Sachnin and Arabe. What did I gather about the Moslem population? Here are some observations and snapshots:

  • There’s a rather dilapidated ethnographic museum in Sachnin, described in its brochure as the “Urban Museum for Arab Palestinian Heritage and Culture.” We heard a nice shpiel on the history of Sachnin by the Museum’s director (who did not neglect to mention Sachnin’s Jewish roots), but most of the visit was devoted to the post-639 CE history of Moslem conquest/claim of Sachnin and the surrounding areas. Fun Fact: the mihbaj (coffee grinder/allover percussion instrument) was/is also employed as “message bearer” of sorts. Depending on how rapidly and earnestly the grinder is banging away, others are aware that there has just been news of a joyous event (a birth, an engagement) or impending danger. These people take their coffee extremely seriously.
  • They take their coffee so seriously, in fact, that I was offered coffee and refreshment everywhere I went. Father Choury was handing out CrissCross chocolate bars; I’ll forever wonder if his candy choice was intentional (I didn’t have the guts to ask him). 
  • Arab homes traditionally have a portrait of one’s ancestors, to give proper homage to roots. Also, the host will always sit closest to the door, seating his guest more deeply in the interior, an arrangement which conveys respect and protection for the guest.
  • I asked about the near-ubiquitous long pinkie nail sported by nearly every Arab man that I’ve seen. (I can’t be the only one who has ever wondered about this!) I was told there’s no religious or cultural significance, but a vestige of the 60’s coke craze. In fact, Moslems who pray five times a day must wash their hands before prayer, and long nails (and nail polish!) is considered a chatziza (a barrier that impedes ritual purity).
  • The signage around the streets here is in Hebrew as well as Arabic, but the street and institution names are naturally of Arab leaders and heroes. There’s no “Kikar Ben Gurion” in Arabe, not surprisingly. There is a statue of Gamal Abdel Nasser, paid for by the Israeli government.

 

Now to the highlight of my day, a visit to meet with the charismatic principal (Hamad Sayeed Ahmad) of the Almutanabi School, a mamlachati (government-sponsored) primary school with 400 students. He spoke plainly about the elephant in the room. I appreciated his frankness, and judge it especially important to share his assessment with others, as he is a top educator within the city and is conveying these values to the next generation. He describes himself as “a proud Moslem Arab Palestinian who is also a citizen of Israel”. From what I gathered from Adnan, most residents of Sachnin and Arabe would describe themselves thusly. They are happy as citizens of Israel, but they do not self-identify as Israeli, rather “Arab Palestinians.” This seems an important distinction for them to make as they understand their own identities, and definitely for Jewish Israelis to understand, absorb and not ignore.

 

While it is illegal to observe Nakba Day in an Israeli school, there is a city-wide observance, and so most students don’t even show up to studies. What is built into the very fabric of Sachnin far more profoundly than the rather-abstract Nakba is observance of al-Ard (Land Day), as well as commemoration of the events of October 2000. When the Israeli government tried to appropriate dunamage in that area in 1976 for army training land (and for development of Jewish villages), they were met with violent opposition that resulted in six local deaths, an event commemorated annually as “Land Day.” (If you’re going to read through any link in this post, let this be the one!)

Fast forward to October 2000, when local tensions between Arabs and Israeli police boiled over into violent demonstrations, exacerbated by footage of the (now-debunked) shooting of Muhammed el-Dura in Gaza, and Ariel Sharon’s ascent of the Temple Mount. Thirteen local Arab demonstrators were killed by police. October 2000 still beats loudly in the memory and rhetoric of the people of Sachnin, and they have a difficult time when a local decides to join the police force (few to no Sachninites serve in the Israeli army, and just a scattering do any sort of sherut leumi service). It’s of note that mosques built in Israel after the conflict in 2000 resemble el-Aqsa and don’t sport the traditional green domes, in solidarity and as homage to the al-Aqsa intifada

 

Local Arab possessiveness over their lands (the entire Sachnin valley, in this case, stretching from Sachnin to Deir Hana) is deep and fierce, and growing in intensity and confidence as time passes. They don’t feature של״ח (the multi-disciplinary approach to Land of Israel studies) in their curricula; why should they expose their students to the Jewish connections to the land? While I am strongly opposed to the legitimacy of allowing other “narratives” a place in determining land and resource allocation in modern Israel, pretending like over a million and a half Israeli citizens can’t possibly self-identify as Palestinian or champion the Palestinian cause is the very definition of burying our heads in the sand. (I understand their grievances, and am happy to have heard them, but I obviously believe in Jewish sovereignty over the entire land of Israel, and expect the government to act in the best interests of the Jewish majority. I know that my American-accented hebrew was particularly grating on Principal Ahmad’s ears [though he was very pleasant about it], precisely because to him, I am the very symbol of newcomer-usurper of his land. I am not going to apologize for my Zionism or my determination to promote a strong Zionist ethos throughout all of Israel, even though I’m doing so with an American accent. I think like-minded people should not be afraid to state that position plainly, as the Arabs I met certainly weren’t afraid to state their position plainly.)

 

Back to the delightful Almutanabi School. Almutanabi is a “Green School,” with a focus on creative ecology and environmental studies.  It is modern and clean, with resources far beyond any my children have experienced in their local schools: twenty students and two teachers per class, a robust computer center, lab and music room, impeccably designed public spaces and a luxury teachers’ room. Can you tell I was jealous? (I wonder if my kids’ crowded school, roughly double the size in population but smaller in physical plant, has been allocated the same budget as Almutanabi).

school’s entrance
general lounging area, as seen from second floor hallway

Arab literary giants such as Naguib Mahfouz, Tawfiq al-Hakim and Taha Hussein grace the walls of the school. In contrast, my kids’ school has pictures of Jewish women like Miriam Peretz and Nehama Leibowitz on the staircase. Different worlds, different heroes

One thing the school didn’t have was an Israeli flag.

 

The north (excepting the activities of Raeed Salah and his inflammatory Northern Moslem Movement, based in Umm el-Fahm) is often touted as the exemplary model of friendly neighborly relations between Arabs and Jews. Though my day continued on with further meetings, lots of kumbaya-peace tents and more of that fine coffee — the absence of the flag at the school lingered on as a symbol of the very complicated identity that my new neighbors have developed for themselves as “Arab Palestinians” who enjoy the benefits of also being citizens of Israel. In the north, at least, the Arab population see their primary identity as “Palestinian,” the Israeli classification as purely incidental. I hope that friendly relations can continue, but let’s not pretend that the Israeli flag will soon fly in Almutanabi School.  

Round and Round We Go

 

 

The great dissonance of Sukkot has us going around in circles

 

A great deal of my formative education involved memorizing bits of general knowledge about Judaism and its practices: mishnayot in Pirkei Avot, blessings of all sorts, dates and the ordering of the parshiyot. One critical piece of the “yediyot klaliyot” curriculum in elementary school was learning the different names for the holidays. Sukkot is also Hag HaAsif, Zman Simkhateinu and “he’Hag.” These I knew by the age of six, but the deep stirah (internal contradiction) inherent in these names only dawned on me in my adulthood.

 

Sukkot is heHagthe paradigmatic, prototypical “chag.” It is repeatedly assigned that shortened handle: “he’Hag” in the Torah inevitably refers to Sukkot. In some essential way, the holiday embodies “hag-ness” more than the other hagim. No wonder, really, since the ritual, liturgy and theme of this holiday is all about circles, the very meaning of the word “hag.”

 

Implied in this general name for “holiday” are the iterative cycles of time that we encounter with every mo’ed (a complimentary term for holiday, which literally means an “appointment” or, more specifically, an “appointment with time”). Every Pesach, for example, we revisit the concept of herut (freedom); every Hanukah, the concept of hinuch-dedication. But the ultimate hag, the one known simply as “Hag,” takes the concept of circuits to an extreme.

 

Consider that Sukkot is the only hag defined as “tekufat hashana,” (Exodus 34:22), the turning of the year. That turning is played out symbolically by the hakafot of the hoshanot, the daily circuits around the bimah with the four species, culminating in the hakafot with the sifrei Torah on Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah. The very mitzvah of the four species is performed in the round. To bolster the cyclical nature of hag, the rabbis fixed the annual cycle of Torah reading to this holiday, creating endless possibility for further “appointments with time.” Sukkot definitely has us going around in circles!

 

Our liturgy alludes to completeness, a full roundness of experience — matters that will only come full-circle at the end of days. “May God re-establish the fallen Sukkah of David.” “May God find merit enough in us to seat us in the (celestial) sukkah made of the Leviathan’s skin.” Eschatological and mysterious allusions to restoring the dead, hints of the World to Come, weave in and out of the Sukkot liturgy as easily as the many references to bounty and blessing in this world. The meta-structure of Creation, this world and the End of Days are a definite subtext running through our observance of this holi

 

That Hag is also called “Asif” indicates yet another aspect of things coming full-circle. “A-s-f” means an ingathering, to be sure, but it also implies a conclusion — a final gathering. Va’yei’asef el amav/avotav is the biblical expression for death: “And he was gathered in to his people/fathers.” Sukkot marks the agricultural end of year: fields are emptying of their viable produce, grass-turned-hay is dry and dead, ready for baling. The schach which covers the sukkah must be of dead stuff — the refuse of the harvest.  The cycle of growth is completed as the world around us turns dark and cold, a fact marked by other death festivals observed universally in this season.

 

If all the death and contemplating-of-ends that surrounds this holiday wasn’t enough, Kohelet serves as the ultimate buzzkill for this erstwhile Zman Simhateinu, our very Hag of Happiness. Kohelet, the Debbie Downer of the Bible, is the centerpiece reading for this holiday, recited in dirge tune on Shabbat Hol HaMoed. Kohelet’s driving message is that it’s nigh impossible to make any real difference in this world of endless circles, where we are all destined for death and eventual oblivion. Everything is repetitive, and far larger than any one person, and the world will outlive your brief time here; where can you find your meaning within these perpetual, unalterable cycles?

 

A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and to its place it yearns and rises there. It goes to the south and goes around to the north; the wind goes round and round, and returns to its circuits….All things are wearisome, no one can utter it; the eye shall not be sated from seeing, nor shall the ear be filled from hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done. There is nothing new under the sun. (Kohelet, Chapter 1)

 

The marked emphasis on cycles, on death, on endings, and the concomitant sense of despair that often marks contemplation of the futility in finding any real meaning or purpose within these continuous patterns, seems absolutely antithetical to the essential characterization of this hag as “Zman Simhateinu,” the ultimate annual appointment with happiness. For how can one really be happy amidst all of this decay and death, where bright and hopeful beginnings mean little when reminded that they, too, will eventually end and be forgotten?

 

Beyond that, consider that the happiest moment of the entire year took place during Sukkot, at a celebration headlined by a reenactment of one of the foundational cycles in nature: the water cycle.

 

He who has never witnessed the festival of the water drawing (Simhat Bet HaShoeva) has never experienced true happiness in life. (Sukkah 5:1)

 

The ritual involves drawing water from the deep — from the Mei HaShiloach at the base of ancient Jerusalem — carrying it up to the Temple altar, and pouring it onto the altar, where it will cycle back to its source. One can almost imagine participants murmuring the following verse from Kohelet as they witness this rite:

 

All of the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is not full. To the place where the rivers go, there they repeatedly go. (Kohelet 1:7)

 

What a gorgeous dissonance the mishna presents here: the climax of joy set against the paradigmatic symbol of natural cycles that must outlive us, forever. This dissonance is sublimely instructive, and cuts to the very heart of why the holiday of joy is also the holiday of death. Truly, happiness can only really be found in our grasping of a moment, fully aware of its transience. I treasure my baby’s cuddle precisely because I know now, as an older parent, that I might never have a moment like this again. (Younger parents, may not find these moments as remarkable — younger people in general aren’t thinking about endings or missed opportunities to seize a moment. I know I wasn’t, and I didn’t.) We transcend our mortality and join in the unceasing hora dance by living our moments deeply, knowing they are fleeting.

 

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise

Eternity, William Blake

Old Kohelet knew that it is precisely the passing of time, the contemplation of death’s inevitability, that brings one to complete joy. There truly is nothing new under the sun: parents have looked upon their babies with shining eyes since the beginning of time, and will always continue to do so. But our greatest joy is when we sit in our sukkot, sinking deeply into the moment and making it uniquely ours — our sukkah, our baby, our joy — transforming the instant into eternity.

 

How very special are we

For just a moment to be

Part of life’s eternal rhyme.

— Charlotte’s Web, “Mother Earth and Father Time”

(These musings on inyana d’yoma based on the shiurim of R’ Matis Weinberg)

45 Years Since Tel Saki

Meet Yaya.

Yaya (full name: Yoram Yair, but don’t know if anyone ever called him that) is a four star retired general. Doesn’t he look like one? But when we met him last week on Motzei Yom Kippur (11 Tishrei), he was just “one of the guys,” a soldier among comrades come together to remember their brothers who fell 45 years ago at Tel Saki.

 

We were there at the behest of Meir and Esti Fultheim, our new neighbors. Meir lost his brother and Esti, her brother-in-law, at Tel Saki, one of the legendary battles of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Avner Fultheim was all of nineteen years old when he was killed during the infamous battle. 

Avner Fultheim, hy”d

 

Most anglo olim have made aliyah within the last thirty years. The intifadas and the wars over the last three decades, the terror attacks and kidnappings and short-range projectiles and lethal kites take up whatever headspace we can safely devote to our nation’s losses. For younger adults, it is hard to relate to the earlier wars: sepia photographs of teenagers who would have been in the same high school class as our parents, the dated haircuts and moustaches in the pictures, things that went south on a distant northern border we rarely visit.

A conscious element of our move to Sde Ilan was the anticipation of new experiences that would deepen and broaden our familiarity with “old Israel” — the founders, the (original) builders. Meir and Esti are the very definition of “Old Israel” — Meir was born in Sejera/Ilaniah, moving right across the road to Sde Ilan with his parents upon its founding in ‘49. The pictures on his wall are of his grandfather, Aryeh Fabrikant (one of the pillars of early Sejera back in the early 20th century) with David Ben Gurion and Yitzchak Ben-Zvi (his great-grandfather on the other side was Yerachmiel Halperin, one of the founders of Zamarin, later Zikhron Yaakov). Esti was born to Holocaust survivors in a detention camp in Cyprus. Her parents, survivors of Auschwitz, were waiting for permission from the British to enter Israel.

The Fultheims are founders. Here they were born, here their children were born. They know every corner of the north as well as anyone could ever know it. They know it the way that only kids know their neighborhoods: where the rut is where your bike will definitely get stuck, where there is a hidden patch of perfect grass that even the adults don’t know about. That’s how well they know the north, from memories of exactly where the Syrians would shoot at their family cars on holiday. During the hour-long drive to Tel Saki, we were treated to dozens of stories, tidbits, virtual snapshots, all in such gorgeously measured and exacting hebrew (Esti was an elementary school teacher for forty years) that we could follow every turn of their words as we wound our way up the Golan Heights.  

 

The tekes (ceremony) began with the flag lowered to half-mast. Some observations from the ceremony:

  • A group of soldiers still in tironut (basic training) were in attendance. All of the soldiers were told in advance to roll down their sleeves and put on their kumta’ot (caps).

  • As the flag was being attached to the pole, everyone kept screaming good-naturedly to each other to make sure it didn’t touch the ground.

  • The commander who was addressing his troops was 20 — maybe 21. He introduced  Yaya by repeatedly addressing him as “Aluf Yaya.” Generals and politicians can be so attached to their nicknames that their given names become all but irrelevant.
  • Yaya got up and told all of the soldiers to sit down, because he was going to be a while and had what to say. They all sat Indian-style on the ground.
  • The original soldiers were all in their 60s, yet at Tel Safi, you could see in their faces what they must have looked like as boys.
  • One of the people present was in a black hat, kapote, full-on Chassidish garb. He apparently lives in Tzfat and attends every year, Esti told me. She doesn’t know who he is, but he doesn’t have any personal connection to the battle. He is there to honor the fallen.
  • The details of this battle are astounding. 5 soldiers holed up in a bunker, facing down eleven thousand Syrians. Their friends who died during a rescue attempt — “no man left behind” — deserve a place of honor in our collective memory. Take it from Ya-Ya:

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

Here’s a warning to anyone impatient to hurry up and reach my central theme here: I am taking my time with this one. I am DELIBERATELY meandering around with this post, because A) August is endless and it’s making me sluggish; and B) the speedbumps here in Sde Ilan are unmarked, which has taught me (and my poor car) the hard way that sometimes, you just MUST slow down.

 

Everyone asks how we’re adjusting, and my stock answer is: as best as can be expected, given the circumstances. Circumstances are these: a seriously hot summer, nine excited people of varying levels of maturity who have all upended their lives on multiple fronts, a very large and exceptionally morose bullmastiff — all of us all feeling our way through our tighter new quarters.

 

How are we managing, given a rather massive downsize? Are we making friends? Let’s just say the word “gingerly” has never really applied to our style of doing things — we’re bumblers, lumberers, staggerers. We’re bursters into places, but well-meaning and kind in our bursting, like a family of friendly neighborhood drunks. We’re forward and smiley, so we’re easily tolerated. (This regards the moshav. Within the house, as each of us learns the rhythms of our new lives, we are definitely less tolerant with each other. Plus — the heat! We bravely venture outdoors to regain some civility for five minutes, only to scuttle back inside, preferring the jostling and stepping on each other in tight air-conditioned quarters to the peaceful calmness of large open scorching spaces.)  

 

The first week was a blur of setting up house with lots of well-meaning kids who understandably wanted a lazy summer with friends. I am indebted to my kids for bearing with chaos with as much grace as the Weissman genes allow for (again, see above re: the lumbering and bursting forth. I’d say imagine bulls in a china shop, but that idiom is overused — though it is an entirely accurate description of our general family condition.) The reorganizing of all of these lives into temporary digs has unfolded haltingly, in bursts, all progress meekly taking place in the shadow of the ever-present “what is there to eat” refrain. “What is there to eat” and the same fifteen Barney songs have been this summer’s anthem: Barney is the ever-present background loop, tolerated only because it is the sole measure which keeps the toddler entranced enough to stay out of trouble. As for our diets: sorry, but I refuse to divulge the exact type and quantity of junk that we’ve been feeding our kids and ourselves to keep the “what is there to eat” cry spaced at acceptable intervals. I will not be shamed.

 

It’s been three weeks — anything else going on? Well, there was a summer camp for a week there for our six year old, but that seems to be a distant memory. The oldest was here for a hot second before he escaped to his new digs. The sixteen year old stops in occasionally, but this has more to do with the fact that she’s an Israeli teen than it does to the move. Teens here are always camping on the kinneret in the summer — am I right, fellow parents? Large groups of them then come crashing here seeking creature comforts, then beat a quick retreat when they see what currently passes for “creature comforts.” Let’s just say that our young guests come with certain well-deserved expectations. Years of hosting hundreds of our kids’ friends have given us a reputation for a seriously laid back brand of “mi casa su casa” hospitality, with ample space for sustained “hanging out,” a tolerable smell, and lots of unhealthy food choices available to feed the ravenous young hoards. Now, though, the keter cupboards are regularly stripped bare (search above for the words “What. Is. There. To. Eat” as to why this is so). What’s more, the moshav is a odoriferous place (but it’s a charming reek!), and there are not enough beds for even the core nine of us. Plus, heavens! There is no dishwasher. So our young visitors, polite and lovely each and every one, are not currently chomping at the bit to spend sustained time in our rental, because it means doing dishes in a stinky place with no snacks as a reward.

 

An aside, and a very truthful one at that: We are thrilled when our dear family and friends come by to spend time. In the three weeks since our move, we have “entertained” six families and assorted visitors, all of them very good-naturedly accepting our apologies for a severely compromised hosting style. Thankfully, people who come visit are committed to the long-haul along with us, as I’ve made each one promise that they’ll continue to come out and share in our lives, as we share in theirs, and that eventually we’ll be able to host with a full cupboard and enlarged space to take it all in. We treasure each visit — keep it up, everyone! We’re in this together.

 

What has August amounted to? Organizing the home, endless laundry, cooking and dishes, you all know the drill. Thinking back over the last three weeks, I realize that a good chunk of our time seems to have been taken up with fostering a close and intimate relationship with the owner of the Keter outlet in Afula (our purchases have basically covered his mortgage), as well as St. Coby of the Freezerburned Tzarchania, Master of Endless Patience. In him we confide all sorrows as he beatifically points us in the correct direction of the pasta (logically placed next to the laundry detergent and pool floaties).

 

Both of these new friends, and so many of the other people we’ve met on the moshav and throughout the north, seem to be cut from a very different cloth than what we’re used to. For one thing, they talk more slowly and more measuredly. There’s not very much into rushing around. Even government offices and municipal services aren’t pushy and demanding. An example: I’ve been conditioned over a decade and a half in the merkaz to submit the paperwork required to enroll kids in schools/ganim by February latest, or risk “missing deadlines,” but here it’s more like “well, you can’t really do much until you actually officially change your address, so just swing by sometime in August and we’ll take care of it. Better yet, just send a kid.”

 

As I noted at the outset, the speedbumps placed haphazardly (maybe craftily — I’m not sure about this yet) around the moshav aren’t marked, as if to say “what’s your rush? Slow it down, fella.” Come to think of it, there’s not much by way of fastidiousness on the moshav. It’s not as much carelessness or laziness, as it is a sense of why sweat the small stuff? (Though I’d argue that curb appeal isn’t small stuff, and it would be nice to have well-kept properties; that’s the yekke in me, and my Aunt Judy a”h would be proud. But lots of others aren’t bothered by the trailer park aesthetic, and I think it’s due to the less-frenetic, more easy-going personality that the super-slow pace of life here fosters). There are lots of golf carts rolling slowly along, as well as kids of all ages on bikes, and interesting souped-up tractors (#lifegoal: pimping up some farm vehicle and giving rides to ecstatic little people. This is for the future.) People take it easy here.

 

Admission: this is not easy for me! I’m used to driving at breakneck speed, at timing things just so, at running and rushing through a busy life. I talk fast, I think fast, I used to move fast (turning forty changed that last bit). I’m of the “ok, what’s next?” style of life, finding it tough to be content sitting for long stretches not doing much. My closest friends always make fun of how much I loathe the summer: the late risings, the long hours of nothing planned, the general loafing about, the lack of schedules and expectations. These friends are blessed with “summer personalities” — they’re people who know how to enjoy themselves without needing to be doing something per-se. One dear friend, who works way too hard, just took a well-deserved vacation and told me she was going to sit by the pool. Are you bringing your phone? No way. A book?! Nope, nada. I will just sit. I kept on bugging her about this, because I couldn’t wrap my mind around Taking. It. Slow. (I’ve never really sat by the pool. Or on the beach. But you can bet that if I did, I’d be irritating myself and others around me with my general impatience to do something. I’m a real hoot to be around!)  

 

I can’t be certain that the slower pace here isn’t entirely due to the fact that we’re still in August. The entire country slows down in the summer for Chofesh haGadol. But my gut tells me that these unmarked speedbumps, the languid “ah-lan mah nish” coming at me from the father holding his newborn as he steers his golf cart down the road slower than my stroll, the tiny dog who graciously escorted me around on my Shabbat walk since we were the only two out and about at that ungodly afternoon hour, and the magnificent, understandable diction of the older folk as they all welcome me to come over at any time to hear their stories — all of these tell my gut to untie itself a bit. That my best work might come if I stop barreling through life, and that my best chance of feelin groovy and making the moment last might be in a place like this. So though I’m glad summer vacation is finally over, and thrilled that school is starting on Sunday, I’m not so sure I’ll be rushing back to the furious pace that I had always thought was my duty in this world. The speedbumps here, I think, will do good things for me, and for us all.