Israelis know how to party
There are many things I like about living in Israel. Here's a list of the very basic ones: falafel; sunshine; the fact that having faith/religious belief of some sort doesn't make you come across as a borderline sociopath (as it so frequently does back home); Goldstar beer; the beach. Without a doubt, though, one of most awesome things about living here is that Israelis really, really know how to party. Not only do Israelis know how to party but they do it a lot . They do it basically every Thursday or Saturday night, or indeed any other night, especially now that the weather is warm again - I'm reeling from about 3 weekends in a row where things seemed to happen to me, rather unexpectedly, when I had planned on quiet weekends at home (ha!). I sometimes wonder how much this relentless partying is the result of living an existence where you're never entirely sure if you'll be at war by the next weekend; better enjoy life while you can. Anyway, as well as your regular weekly partying, Israelis also party for more official reasons. Some of them are religious and some are national; since February, we've had Purim, Pesach, Independence Day and Lag Ba'Omer and coming up we've got Shavuot, and all these events involve either several days off, religious observance, massive partying, or all three. You'd think the last two are mutually exclusive but it turns out they're not, certainly not in the case of Purim.
Purim is the holiday where Jews celebrate the story of Esther, who was a Jew who was married to the Persian King Xerxes when the Jews were in exile; briefly, Esther was able to save the Jews from a plot by Haman, the King's Vizier, who planned to kill all the Jews in the Persian empire (the story is much, much longer than that). Purim is not a high holiday requiring a day off work, but there are certain things you do: you listen to a reading of the Megilah, the story of Esther, which takes about 45 minutes, though my colleague Jacob has famously got it down to 15 and does it at lunchtime at school; you give charity; you eat hamantaschen, triangular biscuits; you dress up in fancy dress; and you get blind drunk. This last is actually a mitzvah, a commandment, so it's one of the only times in the year you'll see ultra-Orthodox Jews out and about, tipsy as lords. There was a photo in Haaretz this year of three 10-year old Haredim, struggling to sit up straight after drinking who knows what alcohol in observance of the mitzvah.
This Purim I went to Tel Aviv with a group of friends for a night out (partly to say goodbye to one of our gang - we miss you Charlotte!) and it was mental - people in fancy dress everywhere, bars and clubs packed, lots of very drunk people falling over the pavements. (My costume, if you're wondering, involved having my face painted to make me look like a skeleton. I suck at fancy-dress.) Since Jerusalem celebrates Purim on a different day to everywhere else, it felt like Purim went on for about 4 days, culminating in a street party at the end of my road in Nachlaot where I had the privilege of seeing an Orthodox man dressed as a multi-coloured cow dancing on a skip.
Around the same time as Western Christians celebrate Easter, Jews celebrate Pesach, a more serious holiday than Purim, probably the most serious of all the religious holidays, so there was considerably less fancy-dress, though interestingly no less drinking. Pesach commemorates the time when God brought the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, leading them through the Red Sea and on to the Promised Land, and it lasts for 7 days (though only the first and the last are chagim, or holy days of observance. On the first day of Pesach, there is a big, big meal called the Seder and this year I was invited by one of my colleagues to join in her family's Seder. There are various things that are always done - firstly, you have to drink at least four glasses of wine (see what I mean about the drinking?); secondly there are various things you eat that have religious significance - my favourite being charoset, a sort of sweet gunk made of apples and nuts and other goodies, my least favourite being the bit where you eat herbs dipped in salt water - and thirldy you have lots of things to recite/sing from the Haggadah, which I struggled with a little since it was all in Hebrew, and whilst I'm doing swimmingly at ulpan I am not really at the stage where I can read religious texts quickly. It was lovely being with Pauline's family and taking part in something that has so much significance, even if I did have to eat gefilte fish which I did not enjoy.
The other thing about Pesach is that all bread has to be got rid of, in accordance with the bit in the Bible where the children of Israel have to remove all leaven, or chametz, from their homes and this means that all you can buy are matzo crackers (bleurgh) or stuff that's 'kosher for pesach' and takes like sawdust. Hilariously, the Arab bakeries in the Old City and East Jerusalem are always rammed during Pesach with non-observant Jews getting their non-leaven fix. Kosher restaurants stop serving beer too, which was a massive shock for my friend Charlie and I when we went somewhere to watch an England football game - it was on the same night as an Israeli game (World Cup qualifiers, rah rah rah) so the only place in town we could see England play was Mike's Place, a bar which has about a million TV screens but which is also kosher, so no Goldstar. This is also the place where I once saw a bartender making 'kosher Irish cream' - Mike's Place is meat kosher, so no Bailey's on site - and it was perhaps one of the most disturbing things I've seen in my time here.
Hot on the heels of Pesach comes Independence Day, Yom HaAtzmaut, the national holiday celebrating the establishment of State of Israel. Yom HaAtzmaut is a big deal here, sort of like a national birthday, and given how proud many Israelis are to be Israeli this holiday has great signficance for them; on the other side of the coin, Palestinians call it Nakba Day after the word they give to the events of 1948, Nakba, which means catastrophe. Yom HaAtzmaut is known as national grill day since everyone hightails it into nature, to the local park or, in my case, to the empty lot behind the Jerusalem Theatre, for a barbecue with friends. Last year I went out in town with Tamar to see the crowds and it was truly mental - people everywhere, live music, kids spraying each other with silly string, lots of Israeli flags and singing and dancing. This year we foresook town in favour of less frantic fun at a mangal (barbecue) with friends. This was a barbecue organised by boys - meat, meat, meat, a little bit of bread and hummus, more meat. At one point I asked where the salad was and people just looked at me and laughed.
Another holiday that recently passed by is Lag BaOmer and I have absolutely no idea why it's celebrated; all I know is that the Orthodox love Lag BaOmer (something to do with a rabbi and some kabbalistic stuff) and that it's the holiday where everyone lights bonfires. Really. There are children everywhere lighting fires and the whole country is covered in a cloud of woodsmoke; last year the kids in the Orthodox school next to the Anglican lit a bonfire and blasted music out of their speakers, just as we were starting an IB exam for Grade 12. I don't think most Israelis even know what Lag BaOmer is about - last year, I asked an Israeli friend to explain what was going on and he couldn't answer my question in a remotely satisfactory manner; he'd cross-examined me about the Easter bunny and I think I did a much better job of explaining a cultural event (if you can call the Easter bunny an event) that no one really understands. This week we've got Shavuot, which remembers the day that God gave Moses and the nation of Israel the Torah at Mount Sinai, another high holy day. Last year I went camping at Shavuot as it conveniently fell on a weekend (you might have read about it on this blog); this year Shavuot falls on a Wednesday and I have to work as there are three kids taking a Geography IB exam at school. So much for my lie-in.
As well as the big holidays, there are plenty of other days in the calendar that are days of remembrance requiring observance as well, though without the all-night bender that some of the other holidays entail. The annual Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah) was about a month ago, along with Soldiers' Day (Yom HaZikaron), both of which involved observing a two-minute silence, the sounding of the national siren and various services of remembrance around the country. We've also just had Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim), which commemorates the day in the 1967 Six-Day War when Israeli forces took the Old City and reunified the city as a whole, East (which had been under Jordanian control) and West. Jerusalem Day is actually pretty controversial here. For starters, the Haredi do not recognise the religious significance of the State of Israel so for them the holidays connected to the State are irrelevant; they've been known to cause trouble both on Yom Yerushalayim and on Yom HaZikaron, when they refuse to observe the siren - when it goes off, most people stop dead wherever they are walking in the street and wait for it to finish, but not the Haredi.
Adding to the controversy, some here feel that Yom Yerushalayim has been hijacked by the religious right for whom it has become a symbol of religious/political Zionism and the right of the Jews to the land of Israel as it is described in the Bible, Eretz Yisrael (though even there, there are different interpretations as to exactly what the boundaries of Eretz Yisrael are). As the controversy regarding the building of settlements rumbles on, and many on the right of both politics and Judaism here proclaim their determination to see the borders of Israel include the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, Yom Yerushalayim represents a step in that direction for them and the day can actually be marked by some pretty nasty anti-Arab rhetoric in some quarters. Some of my Israeli friends here who are observant are deeply saddened by this development - they don't see the day as a marker for Zionism and expansion, but as a day of remembrance for the soldiers who died in the Six-Day War and for the effort it took to regain the right to worship at the Western Wall, the holiest place in Judaism. What people who don't live here don't seem to realise is just how divided Israel as a society can be sometimes; even national holidays create division over how to observe, what to observe, when to observe. It's crazy. Back home, with our 6 Bank Holidays a year, religious holidays and national events don't create such debate or controversy; it's one of the things that makes life here, for me at least, so interesting.
Judaism is a religion of remembrance; in the Bible (what I would call the Old Testament, since I also read a New Testament), God tells his people to remember 148 times. I like how Israelis remember so much; for them, many of the holidays are a testament to the power and work of God in the lives of the Jews for many millennia. Some of the events they remember are deeply tragic; some of them are joyous; some of them are divisive; and some of them, to me at least, seem like a spurious excuse to get down on it. My faith is rooted in the life of a first-century Jew who, from the Christian perspective, was the ultimate Passover sacrifice and understanding the significance of Pesach for the Jews gives a fresh light to my own understanding of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Apart from the religious meaning involved in many of these holidays I like how people get together to celebrate, how families come together at a meal and take part in traditions that have been observed for centuries. I like how Israelis seem to take hold of life and shake it around a bit; I like the feeling that you need to really chew on life to get the full flavour of it. I think sometimes as Christians we could do a bit more celebrating of our God, who delivers us time and time again.
Purim is the holiday where Jews celebrate the story of Esther, who was a Jew who was married to the Persian King Xerxes when the Jews were in exile; briefly, Esther was able to save the Jews from a plot by Haman, the King's Vizier, who planned to kill all the Jews in the Persian empire (the story is much, much longer than that). Purim is not a high holiday requiring a day off work, but there are certain things you do: you listen to a reading of the Megilah, the story of Esther, which takes about 45 minutes, though my colleague Jacob has famously got it down to 15 and does it at lunchtime at school; you give charity; you eat hamantaschen, triangular biscuits; you dress up in fancy dress; and you get blind drunk. This last is actually a mitzvah, a commandment, so it's one of the only times in the year you'll see ultra-Orthodox Jews out and about, tipsy as lords. There was a photo in Haaretz this year of three 10-year old Haredim, struggling to sit up straight after drinking who knows what alcohol in observance of the mitzvah.
This Purim I went to Tel Aviv with a group of friends for a night out (partly to say goodbye to one of our gang - we miss you Charlotte!) and it was mental - people in fancy dress everywhere, bars and clubs packed, lots of very drunk people falling over the pavements. (My costume, if you're wondering, involved having my face painted to make me look like a skeleton. I suck at fancy-dress.) Since Jerusalem celebrates Purim on a different day to everywhere else, it felt like Purim went on for about 4 days, culminating in a street party at the end of my road in Nachlaot where I had the privilege of seeing an Orthodox man dressed as a multi-coloured cow dancing on a skip.
 |
| Charlie got a lot more chat for his toga than I did for my skull-face. |
.jpg) |
| Only in Jerusalem on Purim |
Around the same time as Western Christians celebrate Easter, Jews celebrate Pesach, a more serious holiday than Purim, probably the most serious of all the religious holidays, so there was considerably less fancy-dress, though interestingly no less drinking. Pesach commemorates the time when God brought the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, leading them through the Red Sea and on to the Promised Land, and it lasts for 7 days (though only the first and the last are chagim, or holy days of observance. On the first day of Pesach, there is a big, big meal called the Seder and this year I was invited by one of my colleagues to join in her family's Seder. There are various things that are always done - firstly, you have to drink at least four glasses of wine (see what I mean about the drinking?); secondly there are various things you eat that have religious significance - my favourite being charoset, a sort of sweet gunk made of apples and nuts and other goodies, my least favourite being the bit where you eat herbs dipped in salt water - and thirldy you have lots of things to recite/sing from the Haggadah, which I struggled with a little since it was all in Hebrew, and whilst I'm doing swimmingly at ulpan I am not really at the stage where I can read religious texts quickly. It was lovely being with Pauline's family and taking part in something that has so much significance, even if I did have to eat gefilte fish which I did not enjoy.
.jpg) |
| Gefilte fish. Don't ask how it's made and, ideally, don't eat it. |
Hot on the heels of Pesach comes Independence Day, Yom HaAtzmaut, the national holiday celebrating the establishment of State of Israel. Yom HaAtzmaut is a big deal here, sort of like a national birthday, and given how proud many Israelis are to be Israeli this holiday has great signficance for them; on the other side of the coin, Palestinians call it Nakba Day after the word they give to the events of 1948, Nakba, which means catastrophe. Yom HaAtzmaut is known as national grill day since everyone hightails it into nature, to the local park or, in my case, to the empty lot behind the Jerusalem Theatre, for a barbecue with friends. Last year I went out in town with Tamar to see the crowds and it was truly mental - people everywhere, live music, kids spraying each other with silly string, lots of Israeli flags and singing and dancing. This year we foresook town in favour of less frantic fun at a mangal (barbecue) with friends. This was a barbecue organised by boys - meat, meat, meat, a little bit of bread and hummus, more meat. At one point I asked where the salad was and people just looked at me and laughed.
Another holiday that recently passed by is Lag BaOmer and I have absolutely no idea why it's celebrated; all I know is that the Orthodox love Lag BaOmer (something to do with a rabbi and some kabbalistic stuff) and that it's the holiday where everyone lights bonfires. Really. There are children everywhere lighting fires and the whole country is covered in a cloud of woodsmoke; last year the kids in the Orthodox school next to the Anglican lit a bonfire and blasted music out of their speakers, just as we were starting an IB exam for Grade 12. I don't think most Israelis even know what Lag BaOmer is about - last year, I asked an Israeli friend to explain what was going on and he couldn't answer my question in a remotely satisfactory manner; he'd cross-examined me about the Easter bunny and I think I did a much better job of explaining a cultural event (if you can call the Easter bunny an event) that no one really understands. This week we've got Shavuot, which remembers the day that God gave Moses and the nation of Israel the Torah at Mount Sinai, another high holy day. Last year I went camping at Shavuot as it conveniently fell on a weekend (you might have read about it on this blog); this year Shavuot falls on a Wednesday and I have to work as there are three kids taking a Geography IB exam at school. So much for my lie-in.
As well as the big holidays, there are plenty of other days in the calendar that are days of remembrance requiring observance as well, though without the all-night bender that some of the other holidays entail. The annual Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah) was about a month ago, along with Soldiers' Day (Yom HaZikaron), both of which involved observing a two-minute silence, the sounding of the national siren and various services of remembrance around the country. We've also just had Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim), which commemorates the day in the 1967 Six-Day War when Israeli forces took the Old City and reunified the city as a whole, East (which had been under Jordanian control) and West. Jerusalem Day is actually pretty controversial here. For starters, the Haredi do not recognise the religious significance of the State of Israel so for them the holidays connected to the State are irrelevant; they've been known to cause trouble both on Yom Yerushalayim and on Yom HaZikaron, when they refuse to observe the siren - when it goes off, most people stop dead wherever they are walking in the street and wait for it to finish, but not the Haredi.
Adding to the controversy, some here feel that Yom Yerushalayim has been hijacked by the religious right for whom it has become a symbol of religious/political Zionism and the right of the Jews to the land of Israel as it is described in the Bible, Eretz Yisrael (though even there, there are different interpretations as to exactly what the boundaries of Eretz Yisrael are). As the controversy regarding the building of settlements rumbles on, and many on the right of both politics and Judaism here proclaim their determination to see the borders of Israel include the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, Yom Yerushalayim represents a step in that direction for them and the day can actually be marked by some pretty nasty anti-Arab rhetoric in some quarters. Some of my Israeli friends here who are observant are deeply saddened by this development - they don't see the day as a marker for Zionism and expansion, but as a day of remembrance for the soldiers who died in the Six-Day War and for the effort it took to regain the right to worship at the Western Wall, the holiest place in Judaism. What people who don't live here don't seem to realise is just how divided Israel as a society can be sometimes; even national holidays create division over how to observe, what to observe, when to observe. It's crazy. Back home, with our 6 Bank Holidays a year, religious holidays and national events don't create such debate or controversy; it's one of the things that makes life here, for me at least, so interesting.
Judaism is a religion of remembrance; in the Bible (what I would call the Old Testament, since I also read a New Testament), God tells his people to remember 148 times. I like how Israelis remember so much; for them, many of the holidays are a testament to the power and work of God in the lives of the Jews for many millennia. Some of the events they remember are deeply tragic; some of them are joyous; some of them are divisive; and some of them, to me at least, seem like a spurious excuse to get down on it. My faith is rooted in the life of a first-century Jew who, from the Christian perspective, was the ultimate Passover sacrifice and understanding the significance of Pesach for the Jews gives a fresh light to my own understanding of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Apart from the religious meaning involved in many of these holidays I like how people get together to celebrate, how families come together at a meal and take part in traditions that have been observed for centuries. I like how Israelis seem to take hold of life and shake it around a bit; I like the feeling that you need to really chew on life to get the full flavour of it. I think sometimes as Christians we could do a bit more celebrating of our God, who delivers us time and time again.
nice post
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