“Jews for Cheeses”: Shavuot in Jerusalem, part 1

We celebrated Shavuout (our final holiday here in Israel!) in Jerusalem and it was a more sober and studious experience than the previous night’s urban circus in Tel Aviv. Shavuot is dual purpose holiday: on the religious side we celebrate receiving the Torah at Sinai while on the secular side we mark the end of the counting of the omer (seven weeks after Pesach) when the first fruits of the harvest were brought to the Temple. On the secular side schoolchildren make flower garlands and, at least in one surviving kibbutz, there is a parade of children, farm equipment, animals and harvest bounty. Religious observance entails Tikkun Leil, an all night study marathon to repair, correct, or set things right. Everyone, secular and religious, eats dairy (cheesecake and blintzes!). The dairy association has many explanations, mystical and biblical, but the one that my ulpan teacher favors is this: Before we received the laws or commandments written in the Torah there weren’t any rules for preparing food. As soon as we received the Torah we had to learn the kosher rules in a hurry. Since it was easier to prepare dairy in a kosher way, as opposed to the more time consuming effort that is required to properly slaughter and prepare kosher meat, we began our new lives as people of the law with a cheesefest (as one letter writer to the newspaper put it, on Shavuot we become “Jews for Cheeses”). The cheese eating often goes along with the donning of white clothing, more likely to represent aspirations to purity rather than identification with dairy products. The white clothing sticks around as the temperatures rise and I noticed a surplus of cheesecake at the supermarket—post-Shavuout leftovers.

This year the holiday began on a Thursday night and segued into Erev Shabbat on Friday night. Since the busses wouldn’t be running for our trip hone until Saturday night we needed to find a place to stay for two nights in Jerusalem. All the affordable hotels and guest houses were booked weeks in advance so we were lucky to be invited to stay with Noam and Marcella Zion in the Arnona neighborhood of Jerusalem.  I was a little nervous the taxi driver would misunderstand my directions and take us to the Dead Sea rather than to Rechov Yam HaMelach (Dead Sea Street) but my fears were unfounded. Our driver, an entertaining and knowledgeable young Arab man regaled us on the way with an account of his plans to buy a “new” used car for his wife who is completing her drivers’ training.

Despite construction of massive new apartment complexes, this area still feels peaceful and somewhat remote from the intensity of the city center and Old City. From the balcony of their apartment on Dead Sea Street we could see a blue strip of the Dead Sea with the brown hills of Jordan rising above. From 1948 to 1967 this was the edge of “no man’s land” which lay beyond a barbed wire fence across the street. Not too far away is the hilltop U.N. outpost where the Jordanian forces began their attack in 1967.  Now incorporated into the Israeli controlled Jerusalem metropolis, the view highlights the city’s contrasts—the modern high rise complexes of the Jewish neighborhood of East Talpiyot dominate the sliced off the tops of the nearby hilltops while further away the small enclaves of Arab neighborhoods, each punctuated by a tall, florescent green lighted minaret, nestle into and conform to the shape of the hills that roll to the Dead Sea. Tall date palms, cypress and pines, vivid purple, bright pink or orange bougainvelia and sweet-scented flowering jasmine abruptly give way to the browns, tans and ochres of the desert where the rain line stops. Just down the hill to the south the former Diplomat hotel complex once housed thousands of Ethiopian immigrants brought to Israel in the massive airlifts. Many Arnona neighbors walked to the hotel on Shabbat to bring gifts of food and clothing to the new citizens who recreated the atmosphere of a traditional village in the halls of the hotel.  Further away to the south rises a massive new school complex built to serve the children of the Arab villages. As you may remember from a previous post, there is a serious lack of classrooms for these children.

Once the holiday began, walking became the operant mode of transportation. Given our somewhat remote location from the city center, we put a lot of mileage (or, more appropriate to Israel, I should say kilometers) on our shoes. Shavuot eve our observant hosts walked us to a community center in the German Colony that houses Shira Hadasha, a somewhat more egalitarian, though still orthodox, congregation that features lovely singing.  This popular, pioneering congregation incorporates somewhat more progressive  practices into their worship and strives to build community among the members, both novel ideas in the Israeli context. Though a high gauzy curtain separates the men’s and women’s sections, the podium (bima) extends to both sides and the curtain is opened during the more didactic portions of the service. Women participate as service leaders  and read from the Torah. We had actually visited this congregation on our visit two years ago and shared a Shabbat dinner in the home of a couple that belongs to the community. This time, with a gazillion adorable kids running around and a not overly interesting dvar (teaching) in Hebrew, our prayer experience was not riveting and we didn’t stay too long.  Mainly we were here to connect with Marion Robboy(visiting from Chapel Hill), daughter Tanya (who lives in Jerusalem) and her friend Liora, a South African transplant now working for Nefesh b’Nefesh (an organization that assists new immigrants).  The four of us walked to the King David Hotel, their Jerusalem base, where Stan awaited our arrival for our prearranged dinner date. 

At the King David a mix-up led to our being seated in the “meat” dining room rather than the “milk” dining room. During Shavuout the hotel offers discounted rates so the place is absolutely packed with religious families who come for this pilgrimage holiday. The demands on the kitchen are intense so they offered a set menu that consisted of numerous small courses served in succession—tuna tartare, pate, fish, duck breast, steak, lychee sorbet with fruit, chocolates. Amidst the hullabaloo we had a grand time catching up with Marion and Stan who came to visit Tanya and attend events related to their service on the board of the Israel Museum.