Blog #6 – A Fourth Week – Summer Vacation Winding Down

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Blog #6 – A Fourth Week – Summer Vacation Winding Down
August 21st - 26th



The focus of Sunday August 21st was Aimee’s primary personal goal for our year in Israel - creating art from glass. Aimee started working with glass a few years back and even put together a studio in our Vancouver basement. But life’s other responsibilities limited her opportunities to do so. And over the last year these responsibilities completely prevented her from doing so, what with home renos and preparations for Israel completely taking over our lives.

In the months leading up to our departure Aimee searched the internet for opportunities to do art glass in or around Jerusalem. What quickly turned up was a couple living in a town 20 minutes drive north-west of Jerusalem called Givat Ze’ev (“hill of the wolf”), Amnon and Robyn Elbaz. As one might guess from the names, Amnon is Israeli born and Robyn is originally from the States. Robyn, being the native English speaker, was the correspondent and encouraged Aimee by email to be in touch when we arrived, and promised to help out as much as they could to get Aimee going with doing glass here. As it turned out, all roads lead to Givat Ze’ev when it comes to doing glass in Israel … Upon arrival in Israel Aimee sent an email to as many Israeli glass artists as should could identify, requesting ideas and assistance in pursuing glass work in Israel. All who responded recommended that Aimee be in touch with a delightful couple in Givat Ze’ev … Amnon and Robyn Elbaz.

So on Sunday morning, August 21st, we set off for Givat Ze’ev. Amnon is “Yerushalmee” (a native Jerusalemite) with Moroccan ancestry, and Robyn is from L.A., having made Aliya 30 years ago in her mid 20s. Their home, and especially their back yard, is a living – constantly changing - art gallery with works created not only from glass, but also from many other media. Every nook and cranny is occupied by some work of art, often hidden. Upon arrival, the boys quickly set about exploring and trying to prod some show of life from the Elbaz’s ancient German Shepard – Mee,soo (as in the soup). And the Elbaz’s were amongst the most welcoming people we’d ever met, and determined to do anything and everything to help Aimee get to work making art glass in Israel.

We ended up spending about three hours hanging out there looking at, and talking about art and glass, and getting to know each other. In the course of the conversations, Amnon mentioned that their youngest son, who just finished army, was working in Capetown as a Habonim Shaliah. Habonim is the Labour Zionist movement which is affiliated with Camp Miriam on Gabriola Island. I mentioned to Amnon that I grew up in Habonim, to which he replied that so had Robyn. Which naturally led us to a delve into Jewish-Habonim Geography. At the get-go I said to Robyn that she had looked familiar from the moment she opened the door. Turns out we know many people in common from L.A. and Vancouver Habonim. And … I had met Robyn herself at a small gathering of Habonim camp directors in June 1989 in upstate New York. That summer Robyn (nee Keller) was the director of Camp Gilboa outside L.A. and I was the director of Camp Miriam. Seems that only in Israel could one travel to an isolated small town surrounded by miles of semi-desert and meet-up – completely unexpectedly and in a completely different context - with someone last encountered in upstate N.Y three decades before.

In the end, it was hard to tear ourselves away, feeling so at home and inspired by our visit with our new-old friends. It looks like Aimee will probably do her glass work in Robyn and Amnon’s studio – they both work in glass but do quite different things with it – and be mentored by both. I told Amnon that I’d be game to try my hand at doing something-anything artistic with him as well. Even to help him with his work and hopefully learn along the way. Their studios appear set up to do art work in pretty much any medium. While we were there the Elbaz’s eldest son Erez was working with wood, careful to keep his gingy (red) dreadlocks clear of the lathe.

Sunday evening we attended the Jerusalem Craft Festival at the Sultan’s Pool, which is located just below the Old City walls, between Jaffa Gate and Zion Gate. It was the kind of crazy crowded event that bombards all one’s senses with colours and sounds. Of course, the boys wanted to buy pretty much everything. An example of the “bargains” to be had were wood and gold hand-made fountain pens selling for over $600 dollars. Ezra ended up buying a ceramic tile depicting “Papa Smurf” – smurfs being his latest passion. And Adin – always careful with his money – bought nothing, since he couldn’t find anything that was worth more to him than the shekels in his pocket. After dining on food from the “Burger’s Bar” kiosk, we joined the boys’ tutor Michal at the outdoor concert featuring “Dag Nachash” (“snake-fish”) which, according to Michal, is one of Israel’s biggest and best contemporary bands. (One of their songs “Here I Come” was featured in the Adam Sandler movie “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.”) Each night the Craft Festival presented a musical act, and it was apparent that many came this night specifically to see Dag Nachash. Sultan’s Pool, an ancient water catchment, is actually now primarily a musical venue which hosts the biggest acts that come to the country including the likes of Matisyahu.

Dag Nachash literally means snake-fish, but apparently is also a take on “Nahag Chadash” - “new driver” - which, like in Canada must appear here on the back windows of cars driven by newly licensed drivers. And as you might guess, as scary as Israeli drivers are, new ones are all the more so. And scariest of all are the cars with a “lah-med” sign sticking up from the car roof like a white rhino-horn. Lah-med is the first letter of the word “low-med” which means “learner.” Which also means give a very very wide berth. Anyway, back to Dag Nachash, which is essentially a rap/hip-hop big band whose members all hail from Jerusalem. And whose lyrics are pretty political and call for all kinds of good stuff like peace, equality and tolerance. Tolerance, however, is one thing that apparently none of us have for rap/hip-hop. After about 3 minutes Adin - pressing his hands firmly down on each ear - yelled through gritted teeth, “I can’t stand this music!” Even Ezra, who had announced just before the performance that he intended to stay to the end, agreed and we snaked our way through the crowd, and headed home.

Tuesday, August 23rd we took out a family “man-oo-ee” (membership) at the Israel Museum. We went to the museum on this particular day to attend the annual kite festival, which included a kite-making workshop the boys participated in. Unfortunately, the wind was a little underpowered for kite flying, which did not stop Adin from running back and forth with his kite on the museum concourse.

We took out a family man-oo-ee at the museum as a way of dealing with the inflated prices for everything in this country. Later that evening we did the same at the Jerusalem Pool. Now we don’t have to fret every time we go swimming and the boys want to leave ten minutes after we just dropped 200 sheckles (around $60) just to swim. Perhaps coincidentally, and perhaps not, the boys have gotten much more into swimming since we got the man-oo-ee. And I mean “mamush” (really) swimming. The other day Ezra did a full kilometer (20 lengths of the 50 meter pool) and Adin did 500 meters – mostly on his back. At this rate they’ll be joining me at the Eilat Triathlon in a few months.

Wednesday August 24th, we saw a film at the Children’s Film Festival (as you might have gathered, this is festival season in Israel) at the Jerusalem Cinematec. We liked it so much we returned for a second film the next day. As with many of Jerusalem’s finest attractions, the Cinematec is a short walk for us, and a short bike ride for the boys. On the way home we popped in to grocery shop at “Super Deal”, which has a remarkable selection of North American products. It’s nice to know they’re there, but at two to three times the price of local products we’ve been avoiding them wherever possible.

Wednesday evening the boys and I went to “Mens Only Swim” at the Jerusalem Pool. Uni-gender swimming is offered at pools in Jerusalem to accommodate very religious people who won’t swim with the opposite sex due to gender modesty. I figured the place would be quiet since the main pool has lanes for swimming, and I guessed there couldn’t be many very-religious types who can swim, let alone swim the 50 meter length of the pool. Boy did I misjudge this one – at least insofar as I predicted a quiet evening at the pool. The water was churning with uber-religious males from all over the city. I can say this with certainty since I have not seen one ultra-religious person in our ‘hood in the 3 1/2 weeks we’ve been here. But I was right about the second half of my prediction, insofar as not one of them was swimming. The floats separating the swim lanes had been removed, and the pool had transformed into a giant wading pool filled with men and boys with “payot” (side curls common to ultra-religious Jewish males) loudly splashing and flopping around like whales trapped in shallow waters, heaving balls of various sizes, flinging Frisbees (badly), and floating around on inflated tubes - none of which is permitted during normal swim times. Many were wearing undershirts - modesty again – which was well-warranted. Many also wore hats and kipot (skull caps) in the water. I didn’t bother getting in the pool since it was impossible to swim in these circumstances, and there was a high likelihood of getting struck on the back of the head by a flailing arm or flying projectile. The boys got into the spirit of things though, while I sat beside the pool playing with my cell phone. … To make up for the wasted evening, I returned Thursday morning at about 6:30 a.m. when the pool reverted back to, well, a pool.

Later on Thursday we went to “Shuk Strause” (Strause’s Market) in the nearby commercial neighborhood of Talpiot to buy the boys their school uniforms. Strause’s Market is the local equivalent of Zeller’s combined with a dollar store hopped up on a brew of hallucinogens and caffeine. The boy’s uniform consists of a T-shirt of any colour with the school logo ironed on the chest in black or white. Each chose five colours including white for assemblies and grey for P.E. (turns out yellow is for P.E. so we’ll have to go back for more) Each shirt with the logo, which the store provided, cost all of 14 shekels – around $4. So it turns out that there actually is something in Israel that is well-priced.

Friday August 26th – my post-graveyard-bakery-shift-morning-sleep was limited to one hour because we were invited to the Bris (circumcision ceremony) of Aimee’s cousin Amy’s newborn son at 10:30 a.m. The Bris was at “Confederation House” next to the neighbourhood of Yemin Moshe, which is just below the walls of the Old City (and right above the Sultan’s Pool where a few days earlier we saw Dag-Nachash – Snake-Fish). Note to self – unlike in Canada where Bris-es, and other life-cycle ceremonies, start precisely on time, in Israel it’s worth asking in advance what time the actual ceremony is. The mohel (the guy who does the circumcision and conducts the ceremony) arrived as “scheduled” at 11:30 a.m. Further note to self – Confederation House is a beautiful old venue, with a spectacular view, excellent service and food, well-suited for a Bar-Mitzah reception. The actual circumcision took seconds, much faster than in Vancouver, no doubt the result of the fact that mohels here get a lot more practice.

From the Bris we returned home to finish packing for our week-end in the old (a redundancy in Israel where much of the country is ancient) Galilee town of Safed with the Goldberg family. But more on that in the next blog …

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