Summer is here and up the street in Bustan Brodi the
ripening pomegranates hang covered with bakery bags for protection, like
some sort of bizarre cheese danish tree.
How
did it get to be summer so fast? Spring was a blur of apartment
hunting activities, days bookended with internet searches, peppered with
realtors and punctuated with architects and building engineers. I
barely remember Pesach and spent lots of time looking up while walking
down streets - for the perfect mirpesset to buy, an inviting building, a
peaceful setting. After ten weeks of intensity, a deal was made but
fell through at the last minute. Now wiser and far more educated about
the whole process, I look forward to resuming the search in the fall.
It's a whole new way to tour the neighborhood - from the inside out.
It was our fourth year of aliyah, but a year of many
firsts. My first time appearing in billboard advertisements on Emek
Refa'im, a total surprise after the August photo shoot with fellow
teachers and Studio 6 students. What a surprise to cross Tzomet Oranim
one day a few weeks later and look up to see myself smiling down at me,
character shoes and all.
 |
| Michelle is the second from the left, holding a sign. |
Our first election, voting for the 19th Israeli
Knesset; our first European vacation together - to the south of France.
Our first succah in Israel, purchased on Rehov Palmach and slung over
our shoulders like giant skis for the three minute trek home. We
managed to nab the prime garden spot in front of our building, just
below our mirpesset.
Oh yes, our first gas masks.
One message of Succot is G-d's ever-present
protection, but attending a lecture from the Home Front Command couldn't
hurt either. The "Pikud HaOref" - literally "the command for the back
of the neck" - instructed us on staying safe during a missile attack.
We learned more than we ever cared to know about the physics of shock
waves and shrapnel. A few weeks later there were a two air raid sirens
in Jerusalem. During one we got to meet neighbors from the next
building in our shared bomb shelter; the second siren was mid-day,
mid-week and I never heard it through the thick walls of my modern
office building where our physical therapy practice is located. Marty,
out on a bike ride, got prone on the ground until ten seconds after the
siren ended as we had been instructed to do if out in a place where
there is no shelter. Fortunately no damage was done by the missiles,
may they be the last ones.
All of this was quickly forgotten when my attention
turned back to the myriad choreography and dance projects of the year.
"Anything Goes", the Jerusalem Speakeasies Cabaret, the One Billion
Rising flash mob. I studied ballet and tap and I found myself teaching
up to five classes a week, including a Pilates Dance Lab, a private
class of bereaved mothers and ninth graders at the Hartman Girls School.
Teaching in a mirror-less temporary classroom, with
dusty floors and walls lined with posters of Chemistry Nobel Prize
winners from the Technion, I push aside the desks and chumashim and
spread out my Broadway Jazz CDs. The girls come bouncing in and together
we became "One Singular Sensation". Fourty-five minutes later they are
singing their way to their next class. The burly school guard bids me
shabbat shalom even though it's only Thursday and I step out onto bougainvillea-lined Rehov Elroi.
A passer-by might be surprised to hear "Hot Honey
Rag" coming from that temporary classroom. Jerusalem is full of
surprises. Was it my imagination or did I hear a cat meow "Oy", a baby
babble "Dayenu"?
You don't have to get drunk to become confused on
Purim, reality is confusing enough. From the Arab children getting
their faces painted at the Mamilla Purim festival, to the "grogger"
smart phone application one woman used at Shir Chadash's megilla
reading.
In early spring we munched our way down
Mount Gilboa dotted with its famous purple irises and red calaniot,
tasting white garlic flowers and hyssop, wild sage and sugar flowers.
Another time we plucked ripe figs from a grand old tree. Yum.
We cycle on the new bike path through the
village of Beit Safafa exchanging "boker tov"s with Arab women in hijabs
and Nikes, mutually admiring each other's six-in-the-morning
determination. The new path is a welcome improvement in the urban
landscape.
Le'at, le'at. To my amazement, the Jerusalem Light
Rail has actually hired workers to instruct the populace in the correct
way to get on and off a train. Standing at the train doors, handing out
brochures and little candies with a simple picture and a simple
message, "Kodem yotzim, v'achar cach nichnasim". "First people get off,
then you get on." Yes, it is pathetic that this kind of education needs
to be done, but it really has made a difference.
They say that Israelis are like sabra fruit -
prickly on the outside, soft on the inside. Strangers look out for one
another and acts of kindness are everywhere. I watched one woman get up
from lunch with her family at a shopping mall eatery to carry packages
to the parking garage for another mother struggling with a tantrum-y
toddler. My own good samaritan efforts on-the-street: alerting novice
cyclists when their bike seats are too low and gesturing wildly to
motorists who forget to turn their headlights on at dusk. Tikkun olam,
bit by bit.
As we end this year of firsts Marty is already
embarking on an unlikely repeat. For the second time he is riding in
Bike 4 Friendship http://sponsor.
from San Diego to New York City with a bunch of cyclists at least forty years younger than he. Kol Hakovod Marty!
Doves coo and flutter outside my kitchen window. They splay their
russet and gray feathers and alight. My senses are filled with
Jerusalem and my soul is at home. Soon I will alight and fly to my
first homeland. Hope to see you there.
Wishing you abundance and sweetness.
From my mirpesset with love,
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