New Year 2012 in Safed

My niece gave birth in Jerusalem and the brit was Friday morning. Thank goodness that I had the opportunity to take off Thursday -- I did all of my Shabbat preparations, even setting the table, and got on the bus on Thursday night to sleep overnight with my daughter who has an apt in Jerusalem.

Having my cousins living downstairs from me is very reassuring in such cases -- my 15-year-old didn't want to sleep at a friend so she asked a friend to sleep with her at home. This didn't' worry me because I knew that there were back-up adults on the premises if needed.

Shabbat was nice. We had Friday night supper on our own, just my daughter and I. It's really important to do that sometimes. It gives us unlimited time to sit and chat which we don't always do during the week. I still make a million side dishes, along with the main dish (we had chili -- ummmmm), even for the 2 of us, and it's a nice atmosphere. We ate leisurely, sang (me), played cards and gave the dogs some extra attention.

My older daughter bought her teen sister an iPhone (used). Great....one more distraction for an already-easily-distracted ADHD kid. But she's pleased and somehow, I have to just trust that it will all be for the best. I can't control everything and it's healthier for all of us if I don't even try. (It does seem a little unfair, though, that now SHE has a camera, on her phone, and MY camera, which she broke, is still unusable...)

Saturday night I went to the local gathering spot for some music and fun. The place is called the "Khan of the White Donkey" and it's a 700 (or more)-year-old building that was renovated as a kind of "alternative" hot spot. They have weekly concerts and rent it out for groups, but this night they had an open mic night for the local musicians.

It was quite a crowd...young ultra-Orthodox guys, still in their Shabbat hats and jackets, mingling with the Nach Nachs crowd, religious, secular, Safed-hippies, and a non-insignificant number of old hippies from the '60s who now live in Tzfat. Israelis and immigrants, high school kids and people in their 60s (at least). The music was fun and lively and it just seemed so....healthy....to be in a mixed crowd where everyone was having a good time.

May it be a foretelling of the new (secular) year. Peace and co-existence. Let's start for co-existence among us Jews and take it from there.

Safed Chanukah

It's been a pleasant week of Chanukah. Very low key but all the kids were home in Safed at some point or another, so I enjoyed the pace and interactions. It always amazes me that after years of living on the edge of WWIII, my children not only get along but actually like each other, as adults/almost adults. We had a restful (and delicious) Shabbat -- I made the Khachpuri which I had been looking forward to -- good thing that I thought that it was good because I've been eating them all week. When we had lunch on Saturday, after the challah, salads (we're totally Israeli now and can't manage without about 10 salads before the main course at a Shabbat meal) and a thick red lentil-sweet potato soup, no one wanted to try the khachpuri which, admittedly, I patchke'd about a bit. So, OK, it didn't go to waste -- I had some great lunches at work.

Soldier-son didn't make it home for Shabbat but he did have leave for the last several days of Chanukah. Those were the days that the 15-year-old was in Jerusalem with her sister so again, it was very quiet. I had given her a chunk of cash for shopping and she came home with some nice sweaters and a very happy disposition -- shopping does that for her. She even helped to rake up the yard with her brother, a first!

Sometimes I simply don't know if I give into her too much, just to diffuse the tension in the house, or if I'm supposed to acknowledge that she is different, with different struggles and needs, and I have to adapt myself to meet her "where she is." I was a pretty strict mother with my older kids but it simply doesn't work with the youngest one -- she's simply a different kettle of fish and I find single-mothering to be very difficult. (My teen even told me once "you don't have any spine" -- sigh. She may be right.)

I was talking with another Safed mother today who also has an adolescent who's going through teen issues. She gave me a good idea -- write positive, building notes. It wouldn't have to be "cheesy" but may have the effect of, not only developing more positive interactions than constantly reminding her of what the kid needs to do, hasn't' done, etc, but also allowing me to express myself before she tunes me out.

I'm going to try it. Another friend once suggested that when I have something difficult to tell my older kids, that I write a letter. Then I wouldn't find myself in the back-and-forth of trying to say what I want to say, having to explain, go on the defensive, etc. I did on a few occasions and it really works. In fact, we never opened the conversation again -- it was simply presented, in the letter, and finished with.

Chanukah, o' Chanukah, come Light my Menorah

For a relatively minor holiday, Chanukah always sparks (pun intended) something in me. I get a kick out of watching the glow of the candles (oil wicks don't work well for me) and imagining all of the mushy phrases, like "a single candle can light up the world."

One of the nicest events of the holiday is walking around Tzfat after candle-lighting and seeing everyone's candles burning outside their homes. Lighting the candles isn't the end of the "mitzva' -- an additional important part of the candle-lighting is to "spread the miracle" by letting the candles be seen publicly. It's a point of Jewish pride that, I guess, is a lot easier to do in Israel, where you don't have to worry about being targeted by anti-semites (or having your menorah stolen). But it's very moving to walk around and see everyone's menorah shining brightly.

Family Shabbat this week. Everyone is expected to gather at the homestead, including my Tel Aviv daughter who doesn't come too often. The slow pace of Tzfat, not to mention the religiosity, makes her itch. But she promised that she'd make it up this week so I am preparing a yummy dairy meal to make my two vegetarian daughters happy for Saturday lunch. I found a recipe for Khachpuri on Israeli Kitchen which looks like exactly what I want. I don't know that I'll have all the right ingredients (one cheese looks like another to me) but I think that I have it right. I just walked down to the Tzfat Kadosh cheeses (goat's and sheep's milk cheese -- yum!) to get some of the ingredients. I do hope that the carton that I bought in the supermarket that I think is buttermilk really is buttermilk.

I have lived in Israel for 28 years and am still not "Israeli." Most of the time, I don't notice it much, but a few days ago, I saw, once again, clearly, that my credentials as an "Israeli" are sorely lacking.

I was heading up to town, dragging my pushcart (for shopping) behind me. I wanted to head up the stairs to the next street but the stairway was under construction and there was only one small lane open. As I looked up a group of 40+ people was starting to head down.

I stood there, waiting for them to finish coming down, when a young woman came up behind me and took my cart. "Com'mon" she said and just started up with the cart, forcing the people coming down to hug the wall and let us walk up.

We were very polite and said "excuse me" a bunch of times but darned if we didn't get up the stairs quickly! Of course, the fact that they were American tourists, so they were as polite as me, worked in my favor.

Last night my 15-year-old went to Kiryat Shmoneh with her friends for a birthday/Chanukah party. She warned me that they'd be coming back "between 2:00a.m. and 3:00a.m." because they'd ordered a van which was set to bring them back at that time. Since she was coming home with a friend, I didn't worry, but when I woke up at 3:30a.m. and they still weren't home, I started to fret.

Of course, by 3:40, they walked in -- the van itself had come late, but since my daughter doesn't have a cell phone, I couldn't find out what had happened. And of course, by 3:40, my sleep was pretty much disrupted for the night -- I got maybe another two hours of sleep.

Funny, people sometimes ask me if I worry about my son in the army, but frankly, when he's on base, I know where he is. It's my wandering daughter who turns my hairs white.

Chocolate for the Dogs

If my neighbor's dogs, whom he let out at 5:30a.m. this morning to run around barking throughout the neighborhood, die because some dog-hater left some big bars of chocolate sitting outside their gate.....well, i will have known nothing about it.

'nuff said

Hetro, Homo, Single, Double.....

Someone posted this on FB today.....evidently this young man was raised by two lesbian parents and turned out to be the kind of young man that any parent would be proud of.

Now I'm not exactly what you'd describe as "liberal." But it's pretty much escaped me as to why anyone would care what other people do in their bed. If they have issues about religion or any other theoretical or philosophical questions about their sexuality, that's between them and their God. I have enough of my own issues to improve...I don't need anybody else's.

Frankly, I wouldn't have minded having a second adult around to help me raise my kids. There's still time.....one 15-year-old in the middle of adolescence left to go. Different bedrooms though.....

Housework pays

Swept out Hagai's room today and I found my lost gold chain! I'm the world's worse housekeeper but sometimes, cleaning a bit is worthwhile.

Hagai had his ceremony today for the end-of-year-one-in-the-army. He's in the Israeli Army Corps of Engineers which, in any conflict, is the first group of soldiers over the border, as they are the ones responsible for dismantling minefields, roadside bombs and other goodies.

I took my New Zealand cousins (or rather, they rented a car and took me and Gal) and I think that they were touched by the ceremony too. You can't help it -- these young boys ready to do whatever needs to be done to take care of their country.

Anyway, my cousins had a camera so I can share the photos.

Livnot is having a big shabbaton for all the bnot sherut ever who were at Livnot (32 years worth). some of the guests are staying at my house. Luckily, no kids coming home this weekend so there's plenty of room. I did remind the people who were organizing it, a million times, that the guests had to be OK with dogs. So, I guess I did my part.

Fire and Jealousy

In addition to the regular round of requests for people who are going through horrible life situations (a father of a large family who can't work because he has to stay at home due to his wife's chemotherapy treatments -- how old could a mother of babies be?; a family of 12 kids that's always begging for money for the basics, etc)we've had two incidents of fires in Safed in the last two weeks which have impacted on people who really can't afford to replace their belongings.

One was a family that lives 2 minutes from my front door -- the mother happened to wander outside one night at 11;30p.m. and saw that the outside of their house was on fire -- where they have their washing machine and dryer, all their firewood for the winter, etc. The Tzfat fire department came in a timely manner....someone said that it took close to half an hour. So they're struggling to replace their necessities (7 kids -- you need a washing machine)

The second was even more frightening. Due to a local mobster war, some people splashed kerosene over a shoe shop on the main street and set it ablaze, burning down the apartment of the woman who lives above. It was a rented apt but it held all of her worldly possessions (luckily she wasn't there at the time).

One of our local deep-thinkers evidently said that fires were a kabbalistic sign of jealousy -- not necessarily pointing to the person that it happened to, but jealousy in the community.

I need to check my smoke alarms.

No more pictures for awhile -- to no one's great surprise, letting my daughter take the camera to school to take pictures of her classmates wasn't a wise idea. The lens needs fixing. A mere few hundred shekels.

Lazy Days

I'm taking a few days off this week, mostly to work on articles that I'm writing for web-content freelance work. Some of it is dry but I'm creating content for a new site now that's basically history, and it's very interesting. I spend, probably, more time that I should doing the research -- probably why I'd starve if I relied on freelance work long-term. But it's kind of fun. What's even more fun is sitting at home on a freezing rainy day and just pottering around my house. Some people go away for vacations, but frankly, I put so much effort into my house....plus, it's a travel location anyway. People pay a lot of money to come to Safed! So I stay at home, save a ton of money, have everything that I need at my fingertips...(am I as boring as I sound?). Anyway, if anyone asks me where I was, I can just say "having a Safed vacation." Yesterday I went to the butchershop to get some chicken bones for the dogs. I was waiting, and waiting, and waiting...while the old couple in front of me stocked up. Anyway, just as the elderly man was paying the butcher and I thought "OK, my turn" he started to bless the butcher. Long life, nachas from the children, good health....and then he went on, naming each child by name, the butcher's mother and father, wife, in-laws..... Ah, only in Israel. Another "only in Israel" though was that, after they finished and left, a woman who had called in her order came in to collect and so SHE became the next in line. And, only in Israel -- I wanted to leave, but was afraid of offending the butcher and his mother (who also works in the store...woman must be 80 if she's a day).