Hannukah

• Hannuka (or Channuka, or H.annuka, or other spellings for the Festival of Lights) is said to be an occasion when people who don't look like they bought their clothes there can go into haredi neighborhoods like Meah She'arim in Jerusalem without being harrassed. This is true wherever Jews follow the commandment to publicize the miracle. (No one follows all the commandments and those who violate this one, and the commandment to provide hospitality, do not welcome outsiders at any time.)
• You can see the lights in many other Jerusalem neighborhoods. Try Nahalaot.
• All along the street, oil lamps flicker in glass enclosures. Some buildings have a glass-doored niche built into the wall along the sidewalk. Elsewhere families put the lights on a kitchen chair or small table beside their gate.
• If you are in Jerusalem during Hanuka (minimalist spelling), go out between 5:30 and 6 and stroll around any neighborhood where people put their hanukiot (eight branches plus one candlelabra) outside. Elsewhere you will see the lights in windows and on balconies.
  Ha'Shla St. in the Sha'arei Khesed neighborhood is a good place to start. See eMap (http://www3.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp) for directions. Keep turning corners to see more and more of the lights, tiny but lovely.
• In windows, candles burn in greeting-card "menorahs." (A misnomer. Th menora was the seven branched candelabra in the Temple. But, since the holiday commenmorates the relighting of lights in the Temple, why not call its candlelabra a menora?)
• In the shouk, wait till a batch of soufganiot comes out of the oven. Buy some hot. The traditional red jelly ones are still best. The bakery on Yafo, between Mahaneh Yehuda Street (the widest in the shouk) and Eitz H.ayim (Chaim) (the narrower alley with Bashar's cheese store in the middle) has some of the best. The soofganiot at the more modern bakeries get lower ratings in newspaper polls.
  

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Hannukah

• Hannuka (or Channuka, or H.annuka, or other spellings for the Festival of Lights) is said to be an occasion when people who don't look like they bought their clothes there can go into haredi neighborhoods like Meah She'arim in Jerusalem without being harrassed. This is true wherever Jews follow the commandment to publicize the miracle. (No one follows all the commandments and those who violate this one, and the commandment to provide hospitality, do not welcome outsiders at any time.)
• You can see the lights in many other places. Try Nahalaot.
• All along the street, oil lamps flicker in glass enclosures. Some buildings have a glass-doored niche built into the wall along the sidewalk. Elsewhere families put the lights on a kitchen chair or small table beside their gate.
• If you are in Jerusalem during Hanuka (minimalist spelling), go out between 5:30 and 6 and stroll around any neighborhood where people put their hanukiot (eight branches plus one candlelabra) outside. Elsewhere you will see the lights in windows and on balconies.
• Ha'Shla St. in the Sha'arei Khesed neighborhood is a good place to start. See eMap (http://www3.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp) for directions. Keep turning corners to see more and more of the lights, tiny but lovely.
• In windows, candles burn in greeting-card "menorahs." (A misnomer. Th menora was the seven branched candelabra in the Temple. But, since the holiday commenmorates the relighting of lights in the Temple, why not call its candlelabra a menora?)
• In the shouk, wait till a batch of soufganiot comes out of the oven. Buy some hot. The traditional red jelly ones are still best. The bakery on Yafo, between Mahaneh Yehuda Street (the widest in the shouk) and Eitz H.ayim (Chaim) (the narrower alley with Bashar's cheese store in the middle) has some of the best. The soofganiot at the more modern bakeries get lower ratings in newspaper polls.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Off-beat Jerusalem Food

• The shouk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/abundance.html ) is the best place for fruits, vegetables, nuts, olives, baked goods, salads, and more.
• More includes prepared foods for "take-out." Many restaurants will also pack their food to go.
• In a Parisian farmers’ market each pile of pile of produce is so aesthetically arranged it demands some term other than pile. Even string beans are lined up in perfect emerald rows. Customers are forbidden to touch. With practiced precision the stall keeper removes the requested amount of peaches or strawberries, then rearranges the rest. Each table says, "I am an artwork."
• At the shouk, each table says "abundance." Customers pick up sweet carrots to put in a plastic sack (called a "nylon"), weigh the merits of individual cucumbers (small is tastier), choose the pears as if they could tell which will be most flavorful. Abundance has its own beauty, and color is not lacking.
• One of the tiny shouk restaurants offers Indian vegetarian food.I could tell you the exact location, but where's the fun in that? Its sign is in English.
• A p'tilia is like a largish camping stove, except that it runs on kerosene instead of gas. Cooks who know how to use them get exquisite results. On Agrippas Street and in the shouk itself the tastiest food awaits you in pots set on p'tiliot. Coming into Mahaneh Yehuda from Agrippas, you'll see (to your left) the pots of an Iraqi restaurant. Ask what's in each.
• On the next to last cross-street on your right you'll find the tempting kettles of a tiny Persian restaurant. Both have signs in Hebrew only, but you cannot miss them. Don't.
• The shuk is the best place in Jerusalem for seasonal fruits and vegetables. The quality is high, the prices low.
• In the early spring, fo for shesek. You may come across a Jerusalem Post article claiming that a shesek is a "cumquat." Wrong. Shesek, though the same size and shape as kumquats, are not citrus fruits. Shesek have smooth skins that, when ripe, are yellow and imperfect. Their seeds are about the size of small apricot pits, but shesek seeds are smooth, slightly concave, and solid as far as I can tell. The fruit is smooth and sweet.
  I have heard people claim that shesek are medlars. Actually they are loquats, so they would have to be "Japanese medlars," which, authoritative sources assure me, are not medlars at all. Loquats are delicious. In season, they are very cheap. They do not always make it to the supermarket, possibly because markings on their skin make them look imperfect to people used to industrial fruit.
• By July figs abound, and variety follows variety through summer and fall.
• Lychees in season, peaches (the small ones are best), cucumbers year round (likewise), fresh unripe dates followed by fresh ripe one followed by freshly dried -- abundance.
• Several stores specialize in excellent cheese from Israel and around the world. A friend familiar with cheese shops in France and in New York found Bashar's impressive. The staff is very friendly. They press enticing samples on customers.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

White Cheese

• Fage Total: Greek strained yogurt works as a substitute for gvina levana in recipes (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cheesecake.html ) and spread on bread.
• Trader Joe's and Whole Foods sell it.
• It costs much less than Wuark or Fromage Blanc.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Bourekas

• So where do you buy the best (in my opinion) bourekasim?
• The shop is on Mahaneh Yehuda Street, which is the uncovered part of the shouk. It is close to Agrippas Street between two shops selling nuts and dried fruit and across from another.
• Bourekas is what they do -- filled with spinach or mushrooms or various types of white cheese (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/dairy-products.html ). They also bake an unfilled, pritzel-shaped variety. This the will split and spread with fresh white cheese. If you eat there, at the counter along the wall or at one of the small tables out front, they may put a slow-cooked egg and a pickle on your wooden plate. If that's what you want, point at the picture hanging from the ceiling near the cash register.
• The best, I say, but there's a place on Rehov HaNeviim I want to try.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Dairy Products

• At the large grocery stores (Sentry and Copps) in Wisconsin ("TheDairy State") the dairy shelves stock the usual varieties of milk (various flavors and levels of fat), cream, yogurt, and cheese. Very few of the products are from Wisconsin.
• At the tiny grocery near here(http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ), the refrigerator case offers all the "white" (as opposed to yellow cheese) and blue products I get in a large WI grocery. These are all produced in Israel and very fresh. In addition they sell local, fresh
• leben (the texture of yogurt, but a different culture and flavor)
• eshel (Kefir is sort of like eshel, but is that Wisconsin?)
• labaneh (sold at Trader Joe’s, not from Wisconsin) cows, goats, sheep and buffalo milk varieties; with olive oil and zatar or without; also sold as small (melon-ball sized) balls
• “white cheese”(http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cheesecake.html ) in 3, 5, and 9 percent (like the Vermont Cheese and Butter Company’s Fromage Blanc and their Quark)
• really fresh cottage cheese in 1.5, 3, 5, and 9 percent (I can get one kind of fresh local cottage cheese at distant speicalty stores)
• solid Bulgarian cheese - cow’s, goats, sheep, and buffalo milk varieties in 0, 5, and 9 percent
• spreadable Bulgararian, 0, 5, and 9 percent fat, plain or with zatar and olive oil
• buffalo-milk yogurt (also goats and sheep, but I have seen that in WI)
• “salt cheese” in various forms (looks like farmer’s cheese but taste is milder).
• Jerusalem supermarkets offer a greater selection.
• Although the selection of local yellow cheese is limited, cheese stores like Bashar's in the shouk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/abundance.html ) sell hundreds of varieties of imported yellow cheeses -- more than I have ever seen in Wisconsin specialty stores.
• I've written the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture to give them ideas for products new to them. No answer.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Brunch

• Brunch (pronounced brahnsh) is a buffet in the style of an Israeli hotel breakfast served, on Fridays, in restaurants and hotels. Anyone who has stayed at an Israeli hotel (except the most basic) knows how good that is.
• The cheap-hotel version includes two or more kinds of yellow cheese, two kinds of white cheese (usually salt and bulgarian), spreadable white cheese, two kinds of olives, cucumber and tomato salad (with bell peppers and green onions) , sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, sliced peppers, leben, fruit juice, breakfast cereal, omelets, fruit salad, fresh fruit, pickled fish, fresh bread and rolls with butter and jam, juice, coffee, and tea.
• The best and most expansive breakfast I've had was at the King David. It added more cheeses, various quiches, fried potatoes, various smoked fish, several additional salads, roasted eggplant, a table of luscious pastries, waffles, and more -- every single item (over three days I tried to sample everything but the cereal) delicious.
• The Inbal hotel opens its dining room to nonguests at 10 am on Friday. For 79 NIS (about 18 dollars) you get a first-class hotel brunch including several hot dishes. It is not up to King David standards. The juice is not fresh-squeezed and the pastires are ordinary.
• At the Cafe Rimon, for 49 NIS (about $11.50), you get a better brunch, including roasted zucchini, roasted eggplant, several kinds of fish, an excellent brocolli quiche, mizrakhi savory pastries (sort of like various sorts of vegetarian eggroll), and many items I could not manage to even taste. I'll go back.
• Do not eat breakfast first.
• I didn't want anything more until a late dinner.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

All Together Now

• If you can only come to Israel once, come to Jerusalem during Succot.
• In the morning, dispatcher to taxi drivers, "More taxis to the train station, more, come as many of you as can."
• Where Shlomtsion HaMalka meets King David, families, couples, individuals – waiting for the walk sign, surging across the street, along Agron’s shaded sidewalk to merge with the stream along the Jaffa Road, they walk faster than the cars, the taxis, the buses, stuck in gridlock, all headed in one direction.
• Happy people, dads pushing kids in strollers, big sisters herding younger siblings, black coated men in belted silk coats and wearing shiny brown fur hats, women in their best long skirts and fine-tailored jackets, men in jeans holding their children’s hands, women in hip huggers, long-haired little girls in pinafores, others in sun dresses or shorts, boys running ahead, reined in with a shout, fai-skinned red heads, dark-skinned Ethiopeans, pesionairs, teenagers, cellphones, "We’re near Sha’ar Yafo," "We took the train," "We left the car in Rehavia, "I see you; we’re over here."
• Crowds and crowds, splitting to go down through the souk or round through the Armenian quarter, the religious holding long celluloid carriers with palm fronds and myrtle and willow, boxes protecting chosen citrons; the secular Jews surprised in their company, all towards the Kotel.
• Then masses go out the nearest Gate to the City of David, below the Old City walls, lining up for tours, numbers beyond expectations, beyond the guides’ capacity. "Come back tomorrow. Early." Good nature prevails. There’s plenty to see, walking round the excavations.
• At six, beside the Ottoman Railway station, ten shekels to enter where 30 restaurants, or 40, cook out. Eat in the Shouk sells "Persian Goulash," Yehezkeli" offers fried haloumi cheese, Pisces does things with salmon, there’s tamarind juice and limonana, a wine bar, shwaarma, felafel, kebabs and kubeh, dim sum, empanadas, gefilte fish, crepes, Belgian waffles, brownies, cotton candy. Booths sell crafts. Bands play.
• From 4 PM, families stream through the security checkpoints into Liberty Bell Park, met by jugglers and stilt walkers, a comic ballet duo on a small stage, Irish dancers from Ra’nana on a larger one.
• Hand-crafted glass for sale, and jewelry, and toys, and pottery, and drawings, and books. Hotdogs and hamburgers, juice and soda, and beer with few takers.
• A drummer has brought a dozen giant tablas for kids to sit on and help make joyous rhythms. In a circle o a large mat kids come and learn, and switch, and parents sometimes drum, and for four hours the white-robed man keeps drumming, sometimes singing, and the energy builds and ebbs and builds higher.
• In a tent a circus. In the "amphi," puppets.
• We stopped by the best Irish band I’ve ever heard. The leader played the Irish pipes sweetly but with vigor. A compelling percussionist. A woman fiddling with quick skill. Two guitarists. The leader switches to a long recorder. Back to the pipes. Familiar tunes with newer beats. We crowd around the barrier. They take a break. We pull up chairs from scattered tables.
• The band returns and shares its energy. Behind them teenage girls appear and disappear. Oblivious to all but music, they jump and dance.
• The band moves from tune to tune. Two girls, three or four years old, slip through the barriers onto the platform in front of the band, left hand in left they turn and turn the way kids can, around and around without out falling down. A toddler runs up and runs around them, and three more little girls, dancing like iron filing when a magnet is moved beneath a table.
• Then a man comes around the bandstand in khakis and a t-shirt, shod in proper Irish dancing shies. Still on the tarmac, his feet begin to tap. Up he goes onto the platform and does the Irish steps quick and riveting, and the children whirl, and he taps and clogs and leaps across the stage, always in the space where the children are not.
• Walking home, we pass the banners whereby the Inbal Hotel welcomes three tourist groups. How lucky they are to be in this city in these days! "I hope," I say, "that they got away from the package tour and went down into the park."
• From the hotel, they must have heard the music. "The entire universe is a very narrow bridge, and the essence, the essential principle, is not to be afraid, at all."
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/red-rock.html http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/06/prtforming-arts-in-jerusalem.html http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/20/succa.html

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Cheesecake

• Put water on to boil in a small pot. Put a large pot over the first pot and in it melt one chocolate bar -- dark, milk or 70%). (I expect a double boiler would be fine, but I don't have one.)
• Add a small container (about a cup) of gvina lvana (white cheese -- similar to fromage blanc). Stir until color is uniform.
• Spoon into turkish-coffee cups.
• Chill.
• Possible additions are chopped mint (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/mint.html ) or crushed ripe figs (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/lychees-figs-peaches.html).
• For cheesecake, spread on a crushed-cookie crust or a thin round of sponge cake from a bakery before chilling.
• In the US, "Fromage Blanc" and "Quark" from Vermont Butter & Cheese Company are possible, but expensive, substitutes for gvina lvana. They are usually almost as fresh as white cheese is in Israel.
• This tastes and feels a lot richer than it is. A turkish-coffee or espresso cup holds a satisfying serving.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox