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Published: January 29th 2010
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Tu Bishvat at Superdeal
All the dried fruit is set out, ready for Tu Bishvat seders. Those of you without 7-year-olds in your lives might not know that Flat Stanley is a paper doll who travels around the world, visiting friends and acquaintances who take him on tours of their city and then send him home with photos and other flat objects. My friend Lisa's son Ian sent Flat Stanley to me. Poor Stanley arrived in the middle of a torrential storm and spent the wet night poking his head out of the mail box. Fortunately, the sun reappeared and I dried him out and have been having fun taking him around.
Living Tonight (Friday) begins Tu Bishvat, the 15th of the month of Shevat. Tu Bishvat is the birthday of the trees and it is a great fruit eating festival. There are traditions of eating all different kinds of fruit - fruit with pits (eg dates, apricots), fruit with peels (eg oranges, bananas) and fruit that can be eaten in entirety (eg figs, strawberries). Some people eat a new fruit or a fruit they haven't eaten in a year. Some people also do ceremonial meals (called seders, just like the Passover seder but with a different liturgy) around the eating of the fruit. So
Red anemonies
The color red was invented for these flowers! all the grocery stores and fruit stands are overflowing with fruit, both the everyday and the exotic. My local fruit stand has starfruit, passion fruit, cherimoya and much more. I spied some loquats and I bought them to save to eat tomorrow on Tu Bishvat.
As I've been taking Flat Stanley around Jerusalem, taking pictures of him, I've had some "only in Jerusalem" experiences:
A young ultra-Orthodox boy was getting his photo taken, presumably to commemorate his Bar Mitzvah. The non-Orthodox photographer posed the boy draped in his tallit and tefillin, with his arms stretched out in appeal and his face turned up to the heavens. Then the boy posed in his long black coat and black hat, which he put on with great care. He was awkward in the way of 13 year old boys and alone with the photographer. I wondered where his parents were.
A group of Israeli adults were on a scavenger hunt around Yemin Moshe and Mishkenot Sha'ananim, two adjoining and incredibly charming neighborhoods just outside the Old City. Stanley and I kept running into them and we came upon a group of them who pulled out water guns and started squirting
Flat Stanley at the Fruit Stand
This is the guy I buy my fruits and veggies from. water at the lion statues around a lovely fountain. Stanley had his picture taken there too.
We went into the Old City today and came up through the market just as crowds of Muslims were hurrying down to the Al Aqsa Mosque for the Friday prayers. I was really swimming against the current, trying to stay to the edge and not knock over displays of fabric, drums, chess sets, ceramics, jewelry. Stanley and I stopped to check out a spice shop. Just outside the Jaffa Gate, there were several stands where they were selling pomegranate juice, where they slice pomegranates in half and squeeze out the juice into plastic cups. It was so cold and refreshing!
Learning I've been participating (mostly as an observer) in a round table discussion group on Jewish values and Israeli policy. The third meeting was this week and began exploring the difficult question of how to define Jewish values and how traditional values can inform contemporary policy. The featured speaker, a philosopher named Meir Buzaglo who teaches at Hebrew University, stated, somewhat controversially, that much of Jewish tradition has really very little to say about public policy, and wondered if tradition is
the answer to Israel's current policy issues or part of the problem. Buzaglo suggested that the most important Jewish value was monotheism, which is also strongly valued by Israel's Muslim neighbors. I have to say that based on the reaction of the group, the most important Jewish value seems to me to be disagreement! (I don't mean that entirely in jest.) In March we will spend a day at the Knesset, speaking with various members of Knesset about ethics and Jewish values.
One of our professors, Moshe Halbertal, mentioned to us that he is one of the co-authors of the code of ethics for the Israeli Defense Forces. He recently wrote a very thoughtful reaction to the Goldstone Report on last year's war in Gaza that was published in the New Republic. The article will give you a sense of the clear and nuanced thinking we get to enjoy in our classes. (Here is a link if anyone is interested: http://www.tnr.com/article/world/the-goldstone-illusion?page=0,0) He told us that he would spend a class with us talking about that process and how the code of ethics is (and isn't) used. I think we are all very excited to hear about this topic from
Me & Flat Stanley
Flat Stanley said something inappropriate - hence my expression. someone both so involved and so wise.
I hope you all get to enjoy some delicious fruit this week in honor of Tu Bishvat!
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anonymous
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Flat stanley reminds me of a the little knome that you sometimes see on postcards. To funny... :)