Palolem Round 2...

---

As well as hooking up with James again I’ve also met these 3 really cool Israeli girls...there's Maya from Tel Aviv, Dana from Haifa and Tsipora (Tsipi) from Jerusalem and I have been learning all about how it is to live in the Middle East conflicts, especially as national service is compulsory so at the age of 18 they are given their own gun, taught combat and trained to "defend" Israel. None of the girls believe in National Service and it sound extremely difficult to be thrown into it especially when coming from a religious background...

Anyway today was Passover and the girls had very kindly invited myself and James to join them that evening at their Passover dinner but before this we had the hair ceremony! Tsipi had had her long dreadlocks for some time and felt the need to shave them off, when you are in a country where it can be hard to maintain an civilized (by Bournemouth standard) look you suddenly become aware of how much people rely on their looks and Tsipi amongst other reasons wanted to be free of the restraints of appearance. It was a very powerful experience to slowly remove each dreadlock individually to enable her to truely appreciate what she was doing before then shaving off the remnants of her hair.... what amazed me the most was that with losing her hair she appeared to lose her inhibitions and almost immediately appeared more at ease with herself and had the most incredible aura.....

So James and I brought the red wine to the meal (thankfully an important part of Passover as it is used for the blessings and also represents the blood and the restaurant kindly prepared the plate for us. The plate consists of all the blessings that you intend to make so there was lettuce (normally radish) to represent the bitter times, Nuttella (normally a mix of apples, sultanas, oats etc) to represent the sweeter times still to come, the potato to represent the fruit of the land, egg and salt water which is a joke to represent the Red Sea closing in over the balls of the Pharos, Matsut the flat bread where they didn't have time to wait for the yeast to rise, chicken to represent the slaughtered animals.

It was lovely how the girls had taken the time to print off the Hagada to be able to perform the ceremony as well as they could. So the evening started with Tsipi giving the wine blessing and reading/singing from the Hagada. It explains all about their past, about how they had to leave Israel, the 10 plagues and it took 40 years of hardship to return. Passover is ultimately about saying thank you and being grateful for their God helping them and so it is important to remember exactly why they are thankful. I learnt a lot this night not only about Judaism but also about their whole culture and belief system.

It was an amazing night that really wet my appetite for Israel....

---