Gilad Shalit is your son, too

Aviva and Noam Shalit, parents of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit

Last night, my husband and I watched Israeli news as PM Ehud Olmert announced that negotiations with Hamas over Shalit's release had broken down. Olmert's face, during the announcement, only filled about a third of the streen. The rest of the screen showed the faces of Noam and Aviva Shalit, Gilad's parents, as they listened on headphones. Noam bent forward, his face characteristically stoic-- affable, yet unreadable. Aviva pulled her sweater closer around her body. She glanced up at the camera a bit wearily, as if it were another sympathetic face when she would prefer to be alone. Just another hope dashed.

I cannot pretend to understand what it feels like to know (or at least hope) that your son is alive, imprisoned by captors who had this to say on January 11: ""Shalit may have been wounded [in the recent Gaza operation], and he may not have been. The subject no longer interests us. We are not interested in his well-being at all, and we are not giving him any special guard since he is as good as a cat or less." (Wikipedia)

When I was in America, I knew the name "Gilad Shalit" and thought I understood: a soldier had been kidnapped by Hamas. Let's bring him home! How? I probably would have said something vague like "increase pressure on Hamas," or perhaps I would have imagined an Entebbe-style rescue operation. (Israel has already tried this, carefully--kidnapped soldiers have been killed during botched rescue operations-- and failed. But it's not easy to find a soldier bunkered among millions.) I cared about Shalit's return in the same abstract way that I cared about saving Private Ryan or Jessica Lynch. He seemed fundamentally different from me. I wanted Israeli "strength" to bring him home-- without really thinking about what this "strength" would involve.

Now that cost of "strength" means more to me, I'm hesitant to fly a "Bring Gilad Home" flag. How many other soldiers' lives do we risk to bring Shalit home? Can we hinge a ground invasion on Shalit's return? How many terrorists--many of whom would have received the death penalty in the US-- do we return for this one innocent boy? In even calling for Gilad's return, do we raise the horrible price on his head? Does the trade of terrorists for an innocent soldier mean that more soldiers will be kidnapped in the future? (Hamas has promised this, on a full-color, professionally-designed poster picturing Shalit and promising that there will be more like him.)

But when Israelis watch Gilad Shalit on television, they see something different, something I won't really understand for decades. They see that Gilad could be their son, who also dressed in military green, smiled at the camera, and went off to serve his tour of duty. He could be the little sister who just left for basic training. He's the cousin who just signed up for combat duty. He's the bride who left to fight in Gaza hours after her wedding. "Soldier" is not an abstract profession in Israel, it's a rite of passage. And Noam and Aviva, sitting there fidgeting as they hear more bad news, could be you.

Looking at them, I cannot pretend to know what is the right course of action or whether any price is too high.

Gilad has been gone for 997 days.

May G-d protect Gilad and help us choose the wisest means to bring Gilad home alive.

UPDATE: Shlomo Artzi-- Israel's most enduring rock star-- must read my blog, because he wrote something somewhat similar in his recent editorial about Gilad Shalit in Yediot Ahronot: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3688803,00.html

Be Boycotted!

Hehe... I was trying to figure out how to translate a video entitled "How to Boycott Israel" into a lesson on how to be Israeli. This clever viral video basically says it all, though:



Being boycotted is actually an Israeli way of life. In the world of sports, for example, swimmers in the Olympics refused to enter the same pool as Israeli athletes and Arab judoka refused to fight our black belts. Recently, Israeli tennis players were banned from attending an international competition in Dubai. Contrast this with the Judo competition my husband and I attended in Haifa, in which teenage athletes from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Turkey, Jordan, and other arab nations all competed in a celebration of peace. THAT is how it should be.

We're in Haveil Havalim!

Actually, this blog was mentioned in haveil havalim-- a weekly roundup of Jewish blogs-- LAST week, but I didn't realize that until this week.

Here's a link to last week's roundup: http://therealshliach.blogspot.com/2009/03/haveil-havalim-207-very-trs-hh.html

Here's a link to this week's roundup: http://www.kvetchingeditor.com/2009/03/haveil-havelim-208-lingering-post-purim.html

Enjoy!

P.S. I'm going to start working on brevity. And I'm not obsessed, I promise!

Secrets of Successful Bargaining

I'm convinced that this chasid outside a shop in Netanya used to have a red suit and a sleigh.

I will humbly say that I'm a pretty good bargainer. Better, in fact, than my Israeli husband. :) Ok, so I have those occasional slipups when I bargain and end up buying something that I don't want, but generally I can get WHAT I want at a reduced price. My secrets:

1. Depression. I'm not actually depressed, but acting depressed is a great bargaining chip. I learned this not in Israel but in Brazil on a college trip. At first, I would go into Brazilian stores and "ooooh" and "aaah" over everything-- what a beautiful pot! Wow, I love this hammock! The store owners figured if I liked the pot so much, I could pay full price. So instead I started to look downcast as I admired something-- "What a beautiful pot. It's too bad I can't afford to buy it at this price. Oh well, it will probably break anyway when I travel back home." Maybe the store owners just felt badly for me, but I started hearing lower prices. So when you're in a shuk or a small shop, try not to smile. Imagine your long-suffering Jewish grandmother. Observe wares with wistful sadness... if only prices were lower, perhaps you could afford to bring a few of them home.

2. Speak Hebrew. I know some "Anglos" who speak English to store owners because they feel they get better service this way, but I find that if I'm shopping in a touristy area, speaking Hebrew and demonstrating that I live here helps immensely. Part of this is that, as I said in my last post, Israelis know that all Americans are as rich. After all, they see Americans on TV-- you know, on The Hills, True Hollywood Story, Sex in the City, Oprah. So if you're an American tourist, it's only fair for you to pay a little extra. (I'd have to agree, actually.) They have far greater sympathy for Americans foolish enough to move permanently to Israel-- then they assume you are probably telling the truth when you say you only have 35 shekels to your name. Of course, if you want to speak Hebrew to bargain, you must have a good grasp of Hebrew numbers-- see Lesson #16.

3. Decide your price and be willing to walk away. This is very basic bargaining advice, but key. Decide the price at which you will accept the product, and then offer a price somewhat lower. If you really think you're being overcharged, be prepared to walk away. Often shopowners will agree to the price you offered as you walk out the door, but often they don't. And if they don't, keep walking. Remember: bargaining is an act of fighting for justice. If you are not being offered what you see as a fair price, do not pay more.

4. Ramp up your bargaining by appearing to grow more and more indecisive. If a shopowner knows you are determined to buy, they'll wrangle with you until you meet them in the middle or pay full price. But if they see you starting to waver-- for example, wondering if this food processor is actually going to hold up, or if you could just continue to chop vegetables by hand, or if this brand is good after all-- they'll try to close the deal quickly before you talk yourself out of it.

5. Point out flaws in the product (noncombatively). When I was shopping in Jerusalem, I found a beautiful embroidered shawl that had a huge stain on it. The shop owner assured me that it would wash out, no problem, so why should he give me a discount? I helpfully suggested that the shop owners themselves wash the shawl, because then they would undoubtedly get full price; after all, it would be such a pity to get less for such excellent work. In other words, I called their bluff in the sweetest possible way. I got the shawl for a third the stated price. (I did wash it and the colors ran, but it's still very pretty.)

6. Get the seller on your team. Just as shop owners try to connect with customers to get higher prices ("You from Pennsylvania? Ok, 15 shekel!"), you can connect with the seller to get a lower price. Never be combative with a seller; say "Lo, lo, lo" with a smile when you're offered a price too high, clicking your tongue, and giving the seller a look letting him know you're in on the joke. Don't bully the seller, but rather cajole him-- sadly and sweetly say, "Oy, that's a little too much for me. Can't you give me a good price?" I never outright disagree with a seller when they point out, for example, the beautiful etching on a kiddush cup. Rather, I say "Yes, that's really beautiful. Oh, well, I wish I could afford it."

7. Don't show a lot of money, and pay in exact change. Definitely don't hold out a 200-shekel note if you still have hopes of paying less. If you've already agreed to a bargained price, it's usually ok to pay with a bigger bill. But in a flea market in Tel Aviv, I once bargained a seller down on a second-hand belt. But then, when I counted my change (which she suspiciously handed to me almost entirely in 50 cent pieces), I found out she hadn't given me enough. She insisted that she didn't have enough change, and ultimately (after making a little bit of a scene) I decided to get the belt anyway-- the change she gave me already put the price below the price I was willing to pay. But in the future, it always pays to have small bills when you try to bargain.

8. Have a mean spouse. I actually have a very nice spouse, but one key to bargaining is the old good cop/bad cop routine, and both my husband and I have played Mean Spouse when we're trying to bargain. In fact, all of the above strategies can be amplified by a Mean Spouse. A mean spouse can splash negative thinking on a nice spouse's enthusiasm. If one spouse appears to be trying to talk the other out of the purchase, the seller will quickly try to close the sale. One key: develop code language to indicate when your spouse is playing mean spouse and when he actually doesn't think you should buy something. Trust me.

9. Say thank you! If you establish a relationship with a store owner-- even one who sells light bulbs and paint-- you can continue to get great deals from him for years to come. Plus he might come help you when you can't fix your dripping toilet or when your sewage overflows.

Important Hebrew phrase: "Ul-eye atah yechol laasot li mechir?" = "Perhaps you can make me a price" (i.e. cut me a deal).

Any strategies I've missed?

When NOT to Bargain

My successful bargaining attempt in Israel was with a taxi driver in Karmiel, about seven years ago. I had heard (like most tourists) that you can bargain in Israel, so I was determined to drive down the 15 shekel taxi fare that was clearly listed on the meter by the driver. I'll tell him fifteen is too much and ask for thirteen shekels, I thought, feeling smug that I would not pay retail like all those other tourists and that I was about to put my semester of college hebrew to good use.

"Lo! Lo chamesh-esrei yoter!" I said. "Shmonah-esrei! Shmonah-esrei!"

18 shekels? thought the Taxi driver, and took me up on it.

Moral of the story: don't try to bargain if Hebrew numbers confuse you. And thirteen is shlosh-esrei... let's all say that together slowly. On the other hand, I may be the only person I know to have successfully bargained with a taxi driver! (For the record, those little meters are pretty good indication that prices are non-negotiable. As are the posted fares in train stations, busses, and group taxis. You will not look all cool and Israeli if you try to bargain in these places.)

If you want to be Israeli, knowing when not to bargain is just as important as knowning when to bargain.

Case in point: our good friends went to Akko and bought fresh-squeezed orange juice from a vendor. When they were told the price, though, they felt it was too high. As they tried to bargain the guy down ("Lo! Lo twelve shekels!") the guy decided to intimidate the tourists and started shouting at them in a mix of Arabic and English. A crowd of giggling children gathered, and the drama heightened as the orange-juice guy started to pour the fresh-squeezed juice out onto the ground, possibly invoking the way foreign Jews have spilled Arab blood for decades. Our friends finally threw eight shekels at him and took half a cup of juice.

The reality is that they probably were over-charged, but it's not a good idea to try to complain after someone prepares food for you, because then you have already demonstrated your willingness to buy at the stated price. It's not generally a good idea to bargain when you buy food at all-- the check-out ladies at the supermarket don't care enough to charge you less, and prices are listed on pieces of cardboard at the yarkan (fresh fruits and veggies store) for a reason. Similarly, restaurants do tend to mean it when they list the price of falofel or Israeli salad. (If prices aren't posted, listen carefully to the price that the store owner gives to an Israeli before you ask for anything. I paid literally double for the jam in the picture on the right sidebar... but then I made myself feel better by going into the gift shop next door and driving the price of soap down by two shekels. :)

You should also not bargain at the drug store, the department store, or any stores in which bored teenagers work behind the counter rather than the store owner. The exception, of course, is if you know someone high up in the store-- but that's protectzia, not bargaining. If you attempt to bargain in one of these places as a tourist with no chance of building a lasting relationship with a store owner, you will most likely come across as annoying and stingy, because every Israeli knows Americans are all very rich.

The most important time not to bargain, though, is when you don't actually want what you're bargaining for. I've fallen into this trap several times, especially when I go some place with a lot of shiny objects like Jerusalem. I'll vaguely like something, and then get caught up in the battle for shopping justice that is bargaining, insisting that the vase should be only fifty shekels, not 100-- and then when the store owner actually offers me 55, I suddenly realize that I didn't want the vase in the first place. But by that point, I feel obligated to buy and I usually do.

And store owners know this-- they use bargaining as a way to guilt tourists into purchases. My parents and I went to into what appeared to be a consignment shop in a Druze village on the Carmel mountain. With mild curiosity, we asked how much, say, a pair of moccasin-style slippers cost. "Fifty shekel!" he replied. "Real sheepskin! Very warm!" I muttered to my dad that the plasticy fabric on the inside of the slippers was probably an indication they weren't skinned off the owner's own herd of sheep. "Ok, ok, forty shekel!" the owner said huffily, with an air of giving in, of acknowledging that these shoppers were clever. "Forty shekel! My sheep! I pack for you!" He hustled my father over to the cash register, packing the slippers into plastic bags, banging open the register tray. "They're very good! Very warm! You like them very much! Thirty shekel! Just Thirty shekel! You from America? Ok, ok, twenty! I give you two for twenty! Because I like you! Ok, we agree to fifteen. " By this point my father was under the dazed impression that he had been locked in long negotiations with the store owner. I guess I wanted to buy slippers, he thought, or I wouldn't have bargained so hard. And it would be rude to back out now after getting him to push the price down. At least I'm not paying retail like those other tourists! This is how my father ended up with a souveneir of polyester slippers made in China from his trip to Israel. What my father didn't realize was that the store owner was actually bargaining him down-- building a sense of obligation and trying to figure out what price my father would accept simply to be able to leave.

I'll post about when and how TO bargain soon! Any advice on where you can and cannot bargain? (Am I wrong, and can you bargain at the supermarket? :)

Carrot Sticks do NOT belong in Mishloach Manot

My origami-boxed mishloach manot

Just one more Purim-related post, for all my friends in Shiloh and Jerusalem who are celebrating Shushan Purim. :)

When I was trying to decide what to put in the mishloach manot (traditional gifts of food) that I would send on Purim, my first thoughts were to go for things like fresh fruit and crackers. This made sense based on what I'd experienced in America. My husband explained to me that this is NOT how things are done in Israel. Here, mishloach manot should contain nothing with more nutritional content than Bamba (which, for the uninitiated, are a lot like Cheese Whizzes only flavored with peanut butter). Ideally, mishloach manot contain chocolate, hamentaschen, hard candies, and more chocolate. Maybe a small bottle of wine, but the antioxidants in red wine might make it just a bit too healthy to include.

Therefore, I went nuts on Monday baking cookies. I also found an amazing recipe for hamentaschen in an Israeli cookbook. I've never seen a recipe like it in the US. Here's my best translation!

From the book Chagim (Holiday Entertaining), by Shai Li Lipa Angel. Apparently you can order it in the US through the Israeli bookstore chain Steimatzky-- http://www.stmus.com/prod/product_info.php?products_id=2595&language=en

This cookbook contains creative recipes for every holiday (including Israeli specialties for Independence Day), and the Hebrew in the recipes is quite easy to understand. I've only made a few recipes from this book so far, but they have all been fresh and delicious. (I love the simple recipe for goat cheese-stuffed dates!)

Disclaimer: this is my best translation of the recipe. And even if I misinterpreted parts, my version tasted better than any other hamentaschen I've made!

Oznei Haman (Hamentaschen-- although the Hebrew literally tranlates to "Haman's Ears")
Makes 25

Ingredients:
320 grams (2 1/4 cups) flour
200 grams butter, softened
100 grams powdered sugar
1 egg
1 tablespoon smooth jam

Filling:
2/3 cup jam (or neutella or chocolate spread, carob butter, or more-- I used date spread!)

For decoration:
Powdered sugar

Jam in the dough? Yes. It's true that it's just one tablespoon, but it makes all the difference. You get a pastry that is crunchy and melts in the mouth. Oznei Haman with the taste of "paam" (yesteryear, essentially), in the best sense of the word.

Click on the image to enlarge:

1. Preparing the dough: Mix together all the ingredients in a big bowl with your hands until it comes together into a ball. If the dough is sticky (mine was), add some flour. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap (nylon) and chill in the refridgerator for an hour.

2. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (about 360 degrees F)

3. Fill and bake: Roll out the dough until it is about a half centimeter thin. (I think I made mine a bit thinner.) Using the rim of a class or a cookie cutter, form circles about 8 cm across. Place a flat teaspoon of the filling in the center of each circle, close each "ear" (i.e., fold in the sides of the circles), and place on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper.

4. Bake 15-20 minutes, until the pastry browns slightly. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Keep in a closed container for up to a week.

~

Did I mention that Israeli recipes use odd measurements like grams, centimeters and celsius? Believe me, I'm still confused about how many grams of butter make a half cup. This is why the first half of the oatmeal cookies that I made from an American recipe spread to a crispy, lacy film on the cookie sheets... I think they were a little butter-enriched. If anyone can tell me how many cups are in one of our sticks of butter here, I'll be eternally grateful. The hamentaschen, on the other hand, turned out beautifully-- exactly like the picture in the recipe, just a little more brown than golden. I'm not so good at the whole "not burning food" side of baking. But it was nothing that a generous amount of powdered sugar at the end couldn't cover up...

If you're looking to entertain on the holidays like an Israeli, buy this cookbook! :) And remember, the more calories you can fit into your mishloach manot, the better. Feel free to treat yourself to your very own shushan purim hamentaschen feast... I know I'm still enjoying all those butter-enriched cookies. :)

Happy Purim!! (Now go to the mall.)

On Israeli TV in October, I heard Halloween described as the "American Purim." I thought that was a refreshing reversal of that old (equally inaccurate) line that Hannukah is the Jewish Christmas. But now that I've experienced Purim in Israel, I can say that it's actually much more!

First, Purim is celebrated here at so many levels. There was the Purim parade down the main street of our town on Friday, full of school children in matching costumes (see post below) and straggling teenagers who were too cool to dress up. There were clowns on stilts and Carnival-style dancers with feather tails. Kindergarten classes chorused by on the sidewalks a bit after the main parade, in pairs organized by their watchful teachers.

The teenagers themselves celebrated in malls. We went to the mall on Sunday to buy supplies for our mishloach manot baskets, and discovered this (click on the image to see a larger version):
What you can't see well in the picture is just how many of the teenagers are in costume. We saw countless brides, "punks," clowns. And in true American Halloween fashion, there were countless teenage girls who use this day as an excuse to dress, well, in less. We saw sexy angels, sexy policewomen, sexy cats, sexy ladybugs, sexy princesses, sexy soccer players, even sexy Santa Clause girls. And the mall was FULL. Parents took little kids (more often dressed as cowboys, princesses or muscle men) to the mall when they weren't sure what to do with a day off from school and kids eager to show off their costumes.

Even secular Israelis fulfill many of the mitzvot of Purim. Every grocery store is full of cellophane-wrapped packages of mishloach manot, sales on candy, boxes of hamentashen. At our megilla reading, costumed kids and adults drowned our Haman's name with headache-inducing enthusiasm, while a possibly senile old woman in front of me lazily shook her grogger through the whole thing. We stayed up last night getting our own mishloach manot ready-- we're about to go on a delivery. And of course, the rabbi reminded us of that other important mitzvah of Purim, giving to the poor.

I'm struck by the extent to which you feel Jewish holidays in Israel. To be a secular Jew in the US means that you barely know Tu b'Shvat or Purim happens. But here dried fruit goes on sale at Tu b'Shvat, and almond trees actually start to bloom. (Calling Tu b'Shvat the new year of trees always felt like a nasty joke in Pennsylvania, as snow and ice covered black tree branches.) For Purim, television ads show rock stars dancing in costume at parties, grocery stores sell plastic breastplates for little knights, and kids have off school. For better or worse, Jewish holidays are as commercialized and ubiquitous in Israel as Christian holidays are in America, and personally I'd say it's for better. I like that Purim isn't just a Hebrew school activity here; it's owned by those teenagers in the mall and the little princesses with groggers and the adults trading gifts of food. I look forward to someday explaining to my kids that Halloween is a kind of American Purim, but not as fun.

Happy Purim!