Preparing for the blintzkrieg

A gazillion paper-thin crepes await fulfillment.

My mother made the world’s best blintzes. She was a wonderful cook and baker (which was why I was an overweight teenager and didn’t drop the excess until I moved to Israel and had to survive on my own cooking).

I did bring my mother’s blintz recipe with me, and I followed it faithfully. But one year, for reasons I no longer remember, I used the recipe of my late next-door neighbor Hillela Narkiss, who was also a fabulous cook. It was from Hillela that I learned that blintzes don’t have to be sweet, and every year after, for the holiday meal on Shavuot—the Jewish holiday on which it is traditional to eat dairy foods—I made savory blintzes for the main course and sweet ones for dessert.

Hillela’s recipe for the crepes (6 eggs, 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 2 cups milk, and 6 tablespoons melted sweet butter) is a cholesterol bomb, but I salve my conscience by using skim milk. Also, the crepes are paper thin—each batch makes about 30 to 40—and the cheese used for the filling is relatively low fat. As you get to the bottom of the batter, it gets thicker and you dilute it with more skim milk. And after the initial greasing of the (nonstick) pans, there’s no need to grease them again. All that dilutes the cholesterol to a tolerable level.

For years and years I fried the crepes (on one side only) in two pans that were not exactly the same size, one of which was left over from my college days. Finally, about ten years ago, I splurged and bought two identical frying pans. That was the last year I made blintzes (kids moved away, they didn’t really like blintzes anyway), until today.

We’re invited to a huge family dinner at our son’s in-laws’ tomorrow night, and the blintzes will be one of my contributions. When I mentioned this to my daughter-in-law, she told me she’d heard you can buy decent frozen blintzes at Rami Levy, the supermarket where we shop. She wasn’t being nasty; she merely wanted to spare me the effort. I just turned up my nose.

I prepared the batter (double the recipe) last night and put it in the fridge, because it has to rest at least an hour before being used. Making one crepe takes just a couple of minutes; making two batches’ worth takes at least two hours, even with two pans going at the same time.

But…there are things you can do while the crepes are cooking. Clean the kitchen cabinets, for example. Listen to the Brahms marathon, which is part of the Israel Festival that just opened. Get a loaf going in the bread machine. Fold a load of laundry. Take some pictures of the crepe operation. Write this blog post. All of which I did this morning.

I’ll fill the crepes later (they need to be completely cool). That can be done without breaks, and it can also be done sitting down, which is wonderful. You lay the crepe with its cooked (brown) side up, so that the brown is not visible after the blintz is rolled. You can brush the blintzes with melted butter before putting them in the oven to bake, but this is not really necessary. And it reminds me of something that happened to my mother one year that she made a lot of blintzes.

She belonged to Pioneer Women, an organization founded in Palestine (under the British Mandate) in 1921, that worked toward equality for women and for the welfare of women and children; the American branches raised funds to support the organization’s activities. One of their fund-raising events of my mother’s group was a luncheon around the time of Shavuot.

My mother prepared a large platter stacked with unbaked blintzes and brought it to the event hall. The idea was to lay them out in pans, bake them, and serve them fresh out of the oven. But that was someone else’s job.

When the oven was opened half an hour later, to my mother’s horror, instead of the blintzes being a nice tan shade and slightly crisp, they were a pale, soggy mess. One of the other women, who obviously didn’t know a thing about baking, had left them piled up and had dumped a huge slab of butter on top.

It is the only culinary disaster involving my mother that I remember. And that is a blessing to savor on Shavuot.

Photo and text copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the photo or text may be used without written permission of the author.

Art that probes and recreates the past

Memory is the most baffling aspect of being. It is often visual and physical, and yet fluid, elusive, and deceptive. Memory and its uses is the thematic link between two European artists, one Polish and the other German, whose works went on display this week at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. It is the first time they have been exhibited together and the first time that many of these works have been loaned by the institutions that commissioned them, Israel Museum director James Snyder said during a preview of the show.

Remembering brings together the works in various mediums of Tadeusz Kantor (1915–1990) and Joseph Beuys (1921–1986).
The exhibits are arranged so that the point at which the space of one artist flows into that of the other refers “to the glory and the horror of the twentieth century,” said guest curator Jaromir Jedlinski, of Warsaw, whose idea it was to show the two artists together.
At the meeting point, on Kantor’s side is a cross on wheels and a photo from a late performance (1988) titled “I Shall Never Return,” in which objects and figures are covered by a shroud-like black cloth. On Beuys’s side is “The End of the 20th Century,” 31 basalt slabs suggesting dead bodies; here memory is also personal, Jedlinski’s co-curator, the museum’s Suzanne Landau, said.

Kantor turned to performance early in his career; during World War II he founded an experimental, underground theater group that performed through 1944. During that war Beuys served in the Luftwaffe as a rear-gunner in a Stuka bomber and was shot down in March 1943 on the Crimean Front. Beuys constantly created and reinvented himself, and also recycled parts of earlier works, Landau said. The story he told of how he was saved—that Tatars found him in the snow and covered him with animal fat and felt and nursed him back to health—was probably one of those reinventions.

The story is reflected in one of his most powerful works, an installation titled “Palazzo Regale, 1985” which evokes an elaborate mausoleum. Seven large framed brass panels covered with gold dust hang on the walls of the room containing two casket-like display cases. The case in the center suggests a body: At the upper end of a fur coat is a black sculpted head, its larynx marked with an X, as if to indicate that the person had been permanently silenced. The other case contains what appears to be a slab of animal fat and various kinds of bandaged limbs and prostheses.

The most haunting of Kantor’s works one which also deals with memory and death, is “The Dead Class,” which was performed more than 2,000 times starting in the 1970s. The characters, who are dead, confront their younger selves—lifeless figures of children seated in rows at battered wooden desks. Kantor plays the teacher in the performance, seeming to direct the action with tiny hand gestures. In a documentary that is part of the exhibition the artist talks about his interest in the desks—the “wrecks” that are the bearers of memory. The physical objects from this performance that are exhibited are the children sitting at their desks and the figure of a dead child lying on an old-fashioned bicycle. How they were used in the performance can be seen in a version filmed by Polish director Andrzej Wajda.

A third exhibition, Drawing in the Margins, opened last week and is adjacent to those of Kantor and Beuys. It shows works spanning 45 years by Joshua Neustein, who, according to curator Meira Perry-Lehmann, “subverts the conventions of drawing.” Born in Poland and educated in the United States, Neustein has lived and worked in Israel and in the US. One work, “Taped Map of Israel, 2006” consists of an outline of Israel created with cheap masking tape that pulls away from the surface, changing the boundaries, and an additional outline that increases the territory but also suggests the temporary nature of the geographic borders.

This work, as well as the videos Neustein has created, “show how you demarcate territory, which is what all artists do,” he said.
Some of the works were made by erasing square or oval parts of graphite scribbles, then putting the erasures in a see-through envelope and attaching them to the scribbled-on paper. The erased parts are not really erased, Neustein contended, but rather created.
One two-hour video shows water dripping into a glass of Bordeaux wine, causing the wine to gradually lose its color until it takes on the color of champagne and then is completely transparent, that is, pure water. Perry-Lehmann described it as “a meditative work about identity.”

All three exhibitions are to continue through October 27, 2012.

Text copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text may be used without written permission of the author. All images courtesy of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

The colon monologues: How I learned to love my insides

The proper placement of the two-dot punctuation sign known as the colon causes no end of perplexity, but the consequences of misplacing it are usually not fatal. Not so the consequences of ignoring the part of the body with the same name.

My mother died of colon cancer at the age of 56. That puts my brother and me at higher risk for this form of cancer, which is the third most common type for both men and women (when each sex is considered separately) in the United States. Studies have also shown that its incidence is on the rise in many countries.

But it is also one of the most preventable cancers. Smoking, obesity and lack of exercise are among the risk factors, but a relatively simple procedure can prevent the disease in the majority of cases simply by, literally, nipping it in the bud.

I had a colonoscopy last Friday. I it was my fourth or fifth. In the procedure, usually performed under some form of anesthesia, the gastroenterologist takes a guided tour of your intestines, stopping to examine anything that looks suspicious. What arouses suspicion? Polyps: small growths that can be the precursors of colon cancer. The doctor snares and removes each polyp and sends it to a pathology lab.

So that the doctor can see the intestines clearly, they must be whistle clean. This means one has to prep by taking strong laxatives. The first time I had a colonoscopy, I had to swallow two gallons of vile-tasting liquid that made me gag with every sip. Now the system has been refined. This time I took two tiny pills, and then two additional installments, each consisting of one cup of a fruit-flavored solution plus six glasses of water.

I also canceled all appointments for 24 hours, because I knew I would be making frequent trips to the toilet before the procedure and that I would be groggy afterwards.

Today it is also possible to have a virtual colonoscopy, which is noninvasive. But the prep is the same, and if anything suspicious is found, a regular colonoscopy is necessary to remove it.

In a previous colonoscopy, my doctor found and removed three polyps. This time he found and removed two.

It’s not fun and it’s not something people like to discuss. But each of those five polyps, left to its own devices, could have turned into a killer.

That’s why I consider a colonoscopy an investment in life.

Text copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text may be used without written permission of the author.

 

A front-row seat on history

Workers pull the cover over the framework of the mourners' tent in Yoni Square.

Whatever you think of Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu as prime minister, you have to give him credit for one thing: his devotion as a son. He would come at least once a week to visit his aged father, and over the past two weeks or so, as his father’s health declined, Bibi visited every single day.

This morning, historian Ben-Zion Netanyahu died at home at the age of 102. Until recently he could still be seen walking down the steps in front of his house to a waiting taxi. It’s hard to believe that this neighbor is no longer with us. He outlived his wife, Tzila, and his son Yoni, who was killed in 1976 while leading the rescue of hostages held in Entebbe by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Ben-Zion Netanyahu was the editor-in-chief of the Hebrew Encyclopedia for more than a decade and the founding editor of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. His magnum opus, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain, was completed after Yoni was killed.

As I write these words, Ben-Zion Netanyahu is being interred. Soon the shiva, the seven-day mourning period, will begin. It is customary to hold the shiva in the home of the deceased. And so, since early morning, preparations have been under way outside the window of my study.

The large garden surrounding his house has been trimmed and the debris carted away. Street cleaners have scrubbed the intersection in front of it. Truck after truck has disgorged equipment: bright yellow barriers, the metal supports and plastic cover of an enormous white tent, hundreds of stacked plastic chairs. The street leading to the house has been closed; the huge tent fills much of the intersection named, fittingly, after Yoni Netanyahu. Everything has moved with the precision of a well-oiled machine.

It’s not every day that a prime minister sits shiva. Shiva is, by its very nature, both a private and a public event. But the shiva of a prime minister is unlike that of any other person. Nevertheless, the prime minister, always dressed to the nines, will have to wear a garment that has been torn, as part of the ritual of mourning.

All this is happening on the same day that the newspapers announced early elections, perhaps as soon as August. But for the next seven days, some things will just have to wait.

Text and photograph copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text or photograph may be used without written permission of the author.

A month of orgies, but no sex

April is the cruelest month, but not for the reasons T.S. Eliot may have had in mind. It is cruel because it is a month of orgies, and not one of them has anything to do with sex.

It begins with the orgy of spring cleaning, inspired by the ritual cleaning required before Passover but now dissociated from it. This is followed by an orgy of shopping, cooking, and eating. Passover is gift-giving time, as well as a festival of feasts with vast numbers of guests. It is a celebration of freedom, except for the women enslaved in the kitchen.

No sooner has Passover passed than we begin the orgy of mourning. In the background is the nearly month-long period of mourning, commemorating persecutions almost two millennia ago, during which Orthodox men do not shave. Holocaust-related programs on TV and articles in the newspapers begin the day after Passover and continue for the entire week leading up to Holocaust Day. Don’t get me wrong. It is only by the grace of God, the help of British Quakers, and the assistance of an American cousin who provided an affidavit for my parents and older brother that I am alive today. My father lost his entire family, with the exception of three nephews who came to Palestine as young Zionists in the early 1930s. But our leaders feed on the Holocaust, using it for political ends that turn this period of national mourning into a perverted orgy.

And no sooner has Holocaust Day passed in Israel than we continue the orgy of mourning, this time for our fallen soldiers. My family did its patriotic duty: My first cousin Shlomo Avni was a fighter pilot who was shot down in 1967. My first cousin Nuel Bar-Ziv’s son Levi was a pilot who was shot down in 1973 and whose body was not recovered until long after. My first cousin Naomi Miller’s son Avi was a paratrooper who was killed in Lebanon in 1982. And my second cousin Naftali Kraus’s son Ziv died while on active duty. We are no different from many families in Israel. But what meaning do we as a nation derive from these deaths? Shall we just go on increasing the military budget at the expense of health, education, and welfare, or shall we strive harder for peace?

And finally, we come to the ultimate orgy on Independence Day, the festival of the mangal (barbecue in Turkish). We celebrate our independence by bending slavishly over grills, flapping bits of cardboard to fan the flames until our arms are weary, and eating ourselves to oblivion.

These are thy festivals, O Israel.

AND YET, A RAY OF HOPE
Last night, on the eve of Independence Day, while torches were being lit on Mt. Herzl, I attended the annual alternative torch-lighting ceremony, held in front of the Prime Minister’s Office.

True, the speeches were too long and the crowd, no more than 300 people, was restless, but each of the speakers represented a group of brave, dedicated people who strive for social justice.

Some are struggling to keep individuals, both Jews and Arabs, from being evicted from their homes. Some are teachers who oppose the education minister’s new initiative of bringing youngsters to Hebron to find their “Jewish roots.” The teachers have no objection to their students’ visiting places like the Machpela Cave, where tradition says our revered Matriarchs and Patriarchs are buried. But they want their students to see the Palestinian parts of Hebron too, to understand what life is like under occupation and curfew.

These groups, each one a David struggling against a Goliath of obtuseness and inhumanity, are the still-living soul of Israel.

Text copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text may be used without written permission of the author.

Two for Israel’s Independence Day

Four silver birds flew over our house this afternoon. They flew in a diamond formation, swooping and soaring and glistening in the sun. They were so graceful and fascinating I could forget for a moment that they are fighter planes and that they were just taking time off from their normal pursuits to practice for the Independence Day air show.

My younger son, too, was fascinated by planes. Our house is still filled with the massive picture books of planes I brought back for him from my travels abroad. He knew all the planes, their engine size and maximum speed and everything else there was to know. And he dreamed of becoming a pilot.

He almost succeeded, too; he was chosen to participate in the highly selective Air Force pilot-training course and was considered a model cadet. But then he understood that Air Force pilots don’t just swoop and soar inside silver birds to entertain the crowds on Independence Day and to feel the freedom of the open skies. And that realization made it impossible for him to continue.

This is the terrible paradox we live with. We like to think that we are ethical, peace-seeking human beings who would not knowingly harm another. And yet, in the absence of peace, we force our children, in the name of defense, to train to be fighters…and to fight.

That is part of what Independence Day means.

THE FLAG, THE OATH, AND THE ANTHEM
I fly the flag on Independence Day. I put it up on the eve of the holiday and take it down 24 hours later. I believe that there must be a homeland for the Jews (not a “Jewish state”) and I celebrate the fact of its existence.

But at the same time, I want this state I live in to be fully democratic. And that means not requiring loyalty oaths and not persecuting non-Jewish citizens who do not sing the national anthem because it expresses the hopes and yearnings of a “Jewish soul.”

Yes, after Supreme Court Justice Salim Jubran stood but did not join in the singing of the national anthem at the ceremony marking the appointment of the Supreme Court’s new president, some overzealous MKs proposed that he be removed from his position. They also proposed that a law be passed to the effect that only individuals who serve in the IDF or do nonmilitary national service be allowed to sit on that bench.

Perhaps one had to have grown up in the United States in the McCarthy era to understand how horrible and sick-minded such proposals are, and they are made all too frequently here.

Merav Michaeli reported in yesterday’s Ha’aretz that in 2004 MK Mohammad Barakeh, deputy speaker of the Knesset, proposed a substitute for the anthem, Shaul Tchernichovsky’s poem whose translated title is “Creed.” The following translation, whose author’s name I have not been able to find, is not literal, but it conveys the sense of what might be an acceptable anthem for both Jews and non-Jews.

Laugh, laugh at all my dreams!
What I dream shall yet come true!
Laugh at my belief in man,
At my belief in you.

Freedom still my soul demands,
Unbartered for a calf of gold.
For still I do believe in man,
And in his spirit, strong and bold.

And in the future I still believe
Though it be distant, come it will
When nations shall each other bless,
And peace at last the earth shall fill.

Text, with the exception of the translation of the poem titled “Creed,” copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text may be used without written permission of the author.

A chicken in every pot, a doctor for every egg

Shakshouka, the specialty of Dr. Shakshouka in Jaffa, consists of sunny-side-up eggs in a tangy tomato sauce.

There was a time when every Jewish mother wanted to be able to brag about “My son, the doctor.” Even now, according to a report in the daily Ha’aretz, the profession most desired for their children by Israeli parents is medicine. In a recent survey by Israel’s Science and Technology Ministry, which included 528 subjects, 24 percent chose medicine and only 2 percent chose teaching.

Israel has found a clever way to satisfy the 24 percent without their having to put their children through medical school. Every specialist, especially outside the field of medicine, is a doctor. Many are associated with the culinary arts. Thus, we have in Jaffa (Tel Aviv’s southern half) the restaurant called Dr. Shakshouka, which specializes in Tripolitanian cuisine, and Dr. Lek (“lick”), an ice cream chain. There’s also a Dr. Hatzil (“eggplant”) not far away.

Elsewhere, there’s Dr. Baby, which sells “sophisticated” equipment for infants, and Dr. Gav (“back”), one of whose designs I’m using to support my vertebrae at this very moment. There’s also Dr. Or (“skin”), which, as you guessed, sells cosmetics, and Dr. Polish, which sells cleaning agents. There’s even a Dr. iPhone.

Now I do not have a son who is a doctor, but since one of my sons started teaching in a university I’ve been able to brag about “My son, the professor.”

Jerusalem Marathon ends; hail the spring-cleaning marathon

The 15,000 runners who took part in the second annual Jerusalem Marathon last week had to endure cold, rain, and even hail—in addition to the hilly terrain. But their ordeal is as nothing compared to the annual spring marathon in which almost the entire country participates.

Purim is the last hurrah for freedom. No sooner does that holiday end than the slavery of cleaning for Passover—the holiday marking our liberation from slavery—begins. In Israel, Passover cleaning goes far beyond the ritual removal of leavened bread (hametz, in Hebrew).

Every nook and cranny is vacuumed, scrubbed, and polished. Closets are emptied and cleaned, pockets turned out, shoes dusted. No speck is safe. And that’s not mentioning the people who go after their ovens with a blowtorch.

It’s the time of year when companies like Dr. Polish make a killing. So do newspapers, which carry pages and pages of ads for miracle cleaners (though none of them relieves the need for elbow grease).

A woman I know who has three little children and is expecting a fourth any minute asked me to recommend someone who could watch her children after the baby is born, while she and her husband clean for Passover.

My accountant, who has eight children, revealed her secret to me yesterday. Her children do the cleaning. But the trick, she informed me, is to train the young ones to do it, because the older ones marry and move out and have their own homes to clean.

Not having eight children, or even four, I restrict my efforts mainly to clearing the cobwebs out of my brain and the spam out of my laptop. That’s about as much hametz as I can handle.

Text and photo copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text or photo may be used without written permission of the author.

Requiem for an idea in Jaffa

Fishing boats lie at anchor in Jaffa's port, which claims to be the oldest fishing port in the world that is still in use.

Jaffa (the biblical Joppa from which Jonah set sail before ending up in the belly of the whale) claims to have the oldest fishing port in the world. Some things just don’t change; fishing boats still bob in the harbor and fishermen sit on the pier untangling and repairing their nets.

For centuries Jaffa was the Holy Land’s bustling portal through which every pilgrim and immigrant passed and where many decided to stay.
On the eve of the 1948 War of Independence, it was the largest Arab city in Palestine, with some 100,000 residents, only 30,000 of whom were Jews. Now it has about 40,000 residents, only about 17,000 of whom are Arabs. Since 1949 it has been joined administratively to Tel Aviv.

The fishermen are still a presence, but Jaffa is again changing rapidly. This is due partly to the city’s recent investment in infrastructure, after decades of neglect. Over the past ten years it has poured in some NIS 1 billion (about $250 million), according to Ami Katz, of the Governance of Jaffa, an administrative arm of the city.

Once a crime-ridden, forbidding area, Jaffa has become Tel Aviv’s southern playground. New restaurants and cafes have opened in several neighborhoods, but especially in the flea market, where the city had to limit the percentage of new businesses to preserve its character as a funky place for bargain-hunters.

Other new ventures include exhibition spaces for art and design. One of these was the Jaffa Salon of Palestinian Art, which opened early in 2010 in an old hangar in the port. Two Israelis, Amir Neuman Ahuvia and Yair Rothman undertook the ambitious project of showing the work of Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza. And in March 2011 the New York Times reported that Palestinian art was the up-and-coming thing on Israel’s art scene.

The Jaffa Salon of Palestinian Art was meant to give Palestinian artists in the periphery a chance to exhibit in the center of the country.

The Jaffa salon “was something I thought would be unique,” Neuman Ahuvia explained yesterday. Most Palestinian artists “don’t have a fair chance to exhibit in the center of the country,” he said. “They live in the periphery and don’t have connections.”

I visited the salon twice. I found the works to be of very uneven quality, but there were some I liked very much, such as small the iron-and-wood sculpture by Ahmad Canaan, curator of the exhibition, titled “Refugees”: an ancient boat whose sails are house keys.

The theme is simultaneously specific to the Palestinians and universal. The sculpture touched me especially because my parents were refugees from Nazi Europe, and because it reminded me of what Jews had told me in Thessaloniki (Salonika):

When King Juan Carlos of Spain came to visit Salonika’s Jewish community in May 1998—thus becoming the first Spanish monarch to do so since the Jews’ expulsion from Spain more than 500 years before—community head Andreas Sefiha gave him a silver box engraved with an old key. It was a reminder that Jewish families had kept the keys to their homes in Spain, handing them down from generation to generation, in the secret hope that they would return someday.

Even Borges wrote about the keys of Spanish Jews: “Abarbanel, Faris, or Pinedo, exiled from Spain—unholy persecution—still keep the key of the house they … had in Toledo. Free now from hope or fear, they stare at the key, as the day slowly fades; the bronze contains the yesterdays, that remained there, a tired gleam and a silent suffering.” (translated by Nikos Kondos)

It almost seemed that if you had that understanding about your own people, you could understand the pain of others who had undergone similar suffering.

But despite the sanguine report in the New York Times on the flowering of Palestinian art, and although the salon was successful in bringing the memories and dreams of Palestinians to the attention of Israelis who aren’t necessarily museum-goers or art-lovers, it turned out not to be commercially viable, Neuman Ahuvia said. Now it is called simply the Jaffa Salon of Art, and it shows the work of twenty-five young local artists, only five of whom are Palestinians.

I’m sorry the old salon did not survive, but I wish the new one luck.

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text or photos may be used without written permission of the author.

What Odysseus and the Nile god said

While many Israelis took advantage of the beautiful weather to see wildflowers (and clog the roads), I took myself to the Israel Museum, a 25-minute dawdle from my house.

The shortest route passes the fortress-like Monastery of the Cross, built on the site of the tree that, according to tradition, served as the cross. The Greek Orthodox monastery is surrounded by olive trees, and today the ground was covered by a profusion of red poppies, lavender cyclamen, and assorted yellow flowers. A couple sat under a tree playing chess; others picnicked or just strolled, some leashed to their pets.

The Israel Museum, the country’s largest, sits on a hill above the monastery and across from the Knesset (our parliament). The land on which the museum and the Knesset stand, like much of the land in central Jerusalem, belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church, which has leased it to Israel.

I came to the museum with the intention of seeing just one smallish exhibition, a didactic history of design, and indeed I did see it, but long before I got to it my attention was caught by other things at the entrance. The museum reopened in 2010 after a three-year makeover and expansion, designed by James Carpenter with Tel Aviv-based Efrat-Kowalsky Architects. When I reported on the reopening, I wrote that some people thought the new enclosed entry passage was more suited to an airport.

Now, however, a few pieces of sculpture and mosaics enliven (somewhat) that gray passage. The three mosaics are parts of a large carpet mosaic from a sixth-century CE Jewish public building in Beth She’an, in the north of the country. One part depicts Odysseus bound to the mast to save him from the Sirens, and another depicts the god of the Nile River. The third part has an inscription in Greek.

The explanatory note states that “the use of pagan figurative images and mythological stories to decorate a Jewish public building reflects the persistence of the Hellenistic culture in Beth She’an, even during periods in which most of its inhabitants were already Christian, Jewish or Samaritan.”

It’s an important point, because today we often hear claims that in the past “all Jews did X” or “all Jews believed Y,” and especially that Jews eschewed figurative art. In fact, such unanimity never existed, and Jews did use figurative art, even in synagogues, and that is apparent from the rich trove of mosaics found in the Holy Land, which I wrote about in detail in Hadassah magazine last year.

At the end of the entry passage is Olafur Eliasson’s “Whenever the Rainbow Appears,” a 44-foot-wide rainbow of narrow painted panels representing the progression of colors in the spectrum visible to the human eye. It is one of two works commissioned for the reopening. When I first saw it, I didn’t find it very exciting, but today I noticed what I hadn’t seen before. The painting is reflected on the burnished floor in front of it, but that reflection recedes as you approach, just as real rainbows do. Suddenly the brilliance of this site-specific work was revealed to me. Click here to see it.

And on my way to the design exhibition, I stopped to see a new acquisition, a three-screen video by Hiraki Sawa, “Going Places Sitting Down,” which takes viewers on an enchanted trip of the imagination. Indeed one can go many places sitting down.

As I again passed all the wildflowers and relaxed people on my way home, my face hurt. I had been smiling for two hours straight.

Text copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text may be used without written permission of the author.

Spring is a quick-change artist

The fearsome critters made menacing faces and brandished swords.

The knock on the door didn’t sound threatening. But when I opened it, in stomped two fearsome creatures armed to the teeth. One was a Mutant Ninja Turtle and the other was a garden-variety warrior, and both were making menacing faces (as much as I could see behind their armor).

Officially, Purim hasn’t begun yet, but in Israel it is a week-long celebration. After all, how will the nursery schools, kindergartens, and schools celebrate the holiday unless they start early? The kids are on vacation on the holiday itself.

Most years, the kids are disappointed on Purim, because the weather is uncooperative. It usually rains; sometimes it even snows. But this year the sun has come back to us in full force, providing perfect light for outdoor photos.

The Purim story, clearly cribbed from a Persian source (after all, there was no Hebrew word for satraps before the Scroll of Esther was added to the canon), is full of sex, lies, and reversals. It’s a perfect story for heralding the coming of spring, a time of sudden changes. Just two days ago it seemed as though it would never stop raining and the sun would never shine again.

Now instead of using all my brain cells to figure out how to keep warm, I can think about the costume I’ll wear to the reading of the Scroll of Esther. Something with seven veils, perhaps.

WINTER HAS SOME JOYS

An almond tree had snowed petals on our friends' lawn.

Wild mustard grows above the Valley of Elah, where David slew Goliath.

No sooner is there a sunny day in February than Israelis go out in droves to see the wildflowers, especially the poppies that color the fields red. But because most people go out on Saturday, the roads are clogged and the outings are not much fun.

My husband and I are not tied to regular school or work schedules, so we’ve made Sunday (a work day here) our day for outings. And we go with another couple who, like us, are happy just to get out of the house.

Before we left our friends’ house last week (they live about one hour southwest of Jerusalem), I took a picture of the almond tree that was snowing petals in their garden. Then we headed for the Valley of Elah, half the way back to Jerusalem, where David slew Goliath. Though it was a gray day, the sight was amazing, partly because of its biblical significance, but mainly because of the profusion of greenery and wildflowers, mainly wild mustard. It was so different from the sere and parched fields we are used to seeing throughout the long summer months.

Spring that brings the joy and hope of renewal, also heralds the coming of our hot summer. We escape being trapped in the cycle only by savoring its best moments.

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Esther Hecht. No part of the text or photos may be used without written permission of the author.