Palm Sunday

Today is Palm Sunday, the day Christians remember Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem, sitting on a donkey colt. People spread palm branches on the ground before them, crying out "Hosanna" - or "Please Save Us."

Living in West Jerusalem, I was never really aware of palm trees. I don't remember seeing any in my neighborhood.

There were none around the school where I taught either.

Did Jerusalem have palm trees 2000 years ago? I often wondered. Is Jerusalem warm enough to have palm trees? I knew that Jericho, an oasis in the Judean desert had palm trees... Jericho is sometimes referred to as the city of palms.

On my trip to Israel in 2008, I stood taking a picture of the historic old city of Jerusalem, in the eastern section of the city... I wanted a picture to contrast the old walled city and modern day traffic.

Then I noticed... next to the outer city wall ... palm trees!

They grew in Jerusalem 2000 years ago and they grow there still!

"Stam"

For ten years, I spoke Hebrew on a daily basis.

For the first three, when I was a full-time student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I rarely spoke English.

So I remember struggling at times, during my first few days and weeks teaching at the Anglican International School, trying to remember certain English words... (Strange, I know, but true...!)

I learned Hebrew by being immersed in the language - hearing it spoken around me. Slowly I'd pick out sounds - from the jumble of sounds I heard daily - then more sounds, and discover what they meant. (So different from the way I studied French in high school here in Canada, where everything came from a book.)

This oral method suited my learning style, though, on the negative side, I never learned to write or spell very well. An added difficulty was that the Hebrew alphabet is entirely different.

I've been away from Israel for over 40 years now, and I'd guess that I've forgotten 40% of my vocabulary.

But when I went to Israel with one of my sons in 2008, I was still able to converse fluently, though at times I had to struggle to find words.

Over time, hearing words spoken around me, I'm sure many more words would resurface. That's the amazing way the brain works!

I've been reading an interesting book on the brain entitled, "The Brain that Changes Itself." In it I read that learning a foreign language is a good way to exercise the brain. So is travel, as it immerses a person in situations where everything is new and different, forcing the brain to work hard.

I don't know if it's because the book is making me think about my experiences in Israel, where I was totally immersed in a new country and language - but suddenly Hebrew words have been resurfacing in my mind... Words like "stam" - which means "for no good reason" or "just because I felt like it."

One might ask: "Why did you do it?" and the other person would simply say: "Stam."

(I love the concept! It suits an impulsive person like me!)

The brain is so amazing: I don't think it's churning up words from my past "stam" (or willy-nilly).

Perhaps reading a  book on how the brain works is another good way of exercising the brain! 

Memories of Crossing Paths...

When I was 21 and first living in Israel, Jerusalem was a divided city, half in Jordan, half in Israel.

Christians in Israel were allowed to cross over to the Jordanian side at Easter and Christmas... In the spring of 1967, a few months before the "Six Day War," I decided to try.

I remember standing in a long queue of people at Mandelbaum Gate, the Jerusalem border crossing between Jordan to Israel. In front of me stood a very pregnant woman with two large suitcases. I kept waiting for someone to join her to help her with her heavy bags. Eventually I realized that no one was coming and she was alone.

We began to chat, as one does when standing in a lineup for hours on end. I told her that I was going over by myself for the first time. I didn't even know where I would spend the night.

She was also by herself, she told me. Why not join her at Christ Church Hospice, where she was planning to stay? When I commented on her two large suitcases, she told me that they were almost empty. She had brought them to fill with purchases and treats like Cadbury chocolate bars that were unavailable in Israel...

Over the course of Easter weekend, I learned that she was a British writer - Christian - married to a Jewish Israeli artist. They lived on a Kibbutz. She was expecting her second child. When I heard her name, I was totally in awe... Lynn Reid Banks, author of the L-Shaped Room, a popular novel that had been made into a film which I had seen.

I spent the weekend with her, as she introduced me to the old city of Jerusalem. We even ended up driving to the archaeological ruin at Jerash, as guests of a Canadian clergyman...

Coming across a photo that reminded me of those ruins turned my thoughts recently to that weekend in 1967. I wonder what she is doing now... I googled her name.

I discovered that her husband, a sculptor, died this past year, at the age of 89. His most famous sculpture is found in a church in London...

She is now 87, and well-known as an author of children's books...

(Among her online photos, I came across this one that most resembles her around the time that our paths crossed...)

Pomegranate Memory

I don't know when I ate my first pomegranate - but I do remember standing at a rural bus stop near Kibbutz Hazorea in Israel during my summer on the kibbutz and noticing a tree nearby with fruit resembling pomegranates on it. The tree was growing at the edge of the road, so I went over and picked a red fruit, ate it - and LOVED it!














There is nothing like eating fruit fresh off the tree!

Now, whenever I see pomegranates in grocery stores, I can't resist buying one... And when I eat it, I always think of that summer so many years ago, and that delicious discovery one hot, dusty day.

The Kids Are OK

In many jobs, people work with the same individuals year after year. In teaching, the majority of those you work with - your students - move on after five or ten months, making way for a new wave of faces and personalities. (And the combination of those twenty-five or thirty personalities in one room day after day creates an interesting classroom "stew"!)

So it isn't surprising that, after many years of teaching, I sometimes look back and wonder how the hundreds - if not thousands - of students that I taught are doing, especially the younger ones I taught in my early years, who may have suffered from my lack of experience. (Or perhaps gained from my youthful energy!) What did I really teach them? - those energetic adolescents? Hopefully to get along with others and to believe in themselves.














So it has been gratifying to discover, recently, that THOSE KIDS ARE OK!

Although they now live in different parts of the globe, the Internet - especially Facebook - has allowed a large group of my early students to reconnect. This past summer, a mutual friend informed me that one young man I taught 40 years ago in a school over 5500 miles (or almost 9000 kilometers) away lives in the same city as I do!

This young man is active in this online "reunion" of former classmates and colleagues sharing pictures and memories. As a result, I am now - amazingly - in touch with some of students I taught in my early teaching years!

It's hard to believe! And exciting!... But most gratifying of all is to see that - all these years later - THE KIDS ARE OK!

Because inside the teacher, there is a surrogate parent who wants them to succeed and be happy!

A Hanukkah Song

Hannukah is a Jewish feast celebrated more elaborately in North America than in Israel, where - for me - it slipped by barely noticed as there were no days off work or school...

There were jelly donuts (called sufganiot in Hebrew) and potato pancakes (latkes) to eat... (food fried in oil - as this is the celebration of the miracle of a day's supply of oil in the temple miraculously lasting 8 days.) This occurred when Jerusalem was under siege, about 100 years before the birth of Jesus.

Hannukah is not mentioned in the New Testament - at least, not by that name - so Christians normally don't know a lot about it. However there is a reference to Hannukah in the New Testament - in John 10:22 it is referred to as the Feast of Dedication - another name for Hannukah. Jesus observed it. (Thanks, RM, for that bit of information.)

This year, Hannukah ends on December 9 - the holiday follows the Jewish calendar... But before it ends, I thought I'd pass on this new Hannukah song... Its catchy tune keeps going around in my head!

(The singers are an a cappella group from Yeshiva University in New York City.)

Spinach Pies

Sometimes I see food that takes me back in memory. I recently saw (and couldn't resist buying) some small Arab-style spinach pies... partly because I like them, but mostly because of the memory of the first one I ever ate.














I was living in Jerusalem and had met a fellow Canadian who was back-packing around Europe and Israel. I don't remember his name, but I remember his comment that it was easy to find good, inexpensive food in the Old City of Jerusalem...














Where? I wanted to know.

He told me about a certain restaurant - then added: But I've also discovered an amazing bakery where people who live in the Old City take their food to be baked. They have a large stone wood-burning oven. Families bring in trays of bread and other things to be baked there. But they also sell their own bread and you can buy it, drizzled with olive oil and some spices like oregano, or with an egg. It's always fresh out of the oven and tastes amazing.

I asked him to show me where it was.














He led me though a maze of streets in a residential area, not the shopping area I usually visited. A group of people were standing outside the doorway, waiting. Inside a darkish room, a man was working at a large rectangular hole in the wall, putting in trays of baked goods - and taking them out - using a large wooden paddle. The oven was full of trays of different shapes and sizes.

I watched him in amazement: Nothing ever tipped over or burned.

He took out a large round tray of triangular pastries... Noticing my stare, he turned to me and asked: Do you want to taste?

Sure, I replied, surprised at his offer...

He deftly removed one of the pastries before handing the tray to a little boy to take home.

It was filled with spinach, but had the aroma of lemon. Delicious!

I have loved these pastries ever since - even though I've never tasted any that have matched the flavor of the one taken fresh from the oven.

I wondered if the housewife who had sent the pastries to be baked noticed that one was gone!

(While looking online for a recipe, I came across this one, in video! Enjoy!)

Haman Cookies

I was wandering around the supermarket, when I spied a once-a-year Jewish treat:














Haman cookies. (In Israel, they are called Ears of Haman. In Yiddish, Haman Taschen or Haman pockets.)

They are made only at the feast of Purim... a Jewish celebration dating back about 2500 years, commemorating how God brought salvation and victory when there was a threat of annihilation. All this is recounted in the book of Esther (found in the Bible).

I had to get some... I mean, they are only sold once a year!














I really didn't need two boxes, but I wanted to try the chocolate filling as well as the prune filling. (I seem to recall that they had ones with poppy seed filling in Israel as well.)

Good-bye diet! Hello memories!

Maybe next year, I should try making my own. I noticed a recipe on the Purim link I posted above. The recipe calls for part wholewheat flour! (So maybe they aren't all that bad for me!)

Here is the recipe, copied from the Judiasm 101 webpage, for anyone wanting to make their own...

Recipe for Hamentaschen

• 2/3 cup butter or margarine
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup orange juice (the smooth kind, not the pulpy)
• 1 cup white flour
• 1 cup wheat flour (DO NOT substitute white flour! The wheat flour is necessary to achieve the right texture!)
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• Various preserves, fruit butters and/or pie fillings.

Blend butter and sugar thoroughly. Add the egg and blend thoroughly. Add OJ and blend thoroughly. Add flour, 1/2 cup at a time, alternating white and wheat, blending thoroughly between each. Add the baking powder and cinnamon with the last half cup of flour. Refrigerate batter overnight or at least a few hours. Roll as thin as you can without getting holes in the batter (roll it between two sheets of wax paper lightly dusted with flour for best results). Cut out 3 or 4 inch circles.

Put a dollop of filling in the middle of each circle. Fold up the sides to make a triangle, folding the last corner under the starting point, so that each side has corner that folds over and a corner that folds under (see picture at right). Folding in this "pinwheel" style will reduce the likelihood that the last side will fall open while cooking, spilling out the filling. It also tends to make a better triangle shape.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes, until golden brown but before the filling boils over!

Traditional fillings are poppy seed and prune, ... Apricot, apple butter, pineapple preserves, and cherry pie filling all work quite well.

My Favorite Cake - recipe to follow ... next Friday

Certain traditions from my 10 years in Israel remain with me still. One of them is the "need" for a Sabbath cake or Ugat Shabat ("u-GAT sha-BAT" in Hebrew). In Jerusalem, when shops shut down for the Sabbath day of rest, life takes on a different pace. What do you do when stores are closed and there are no buses? You visit friends, of course. And because no observant Jew would use the telephone on the Sabbath, you can just drop in on friends, unannounced, as my younger son and I did on a recent trip to Israel. And the food you will be offered (as we were offered), as you sit and chat, is Ugat Shabat. Although my weekends are not the same here, they don't seem complete without a simple Sabbath cake.














There is no set recipe for Ugat Shabat. Often it is a sponge cake or honey cake.

My favorite is a marble cake my family loves. Baked in a bundt pan, it tastes good uniced, with a cup of tea or coffee. A scoop of ice cream can be served with it if desired. It was given to me by my friend Pearl, from Kibbutz Hazorea. Perhaps I'll write about Pearl sometime. I have been thinking about her today, as I often do when I take out her recipe...

Maybe that is reason enough for friends to share recipes with each other more often!

Prayer for 2 Husbands

On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the Western Wall - formerly called the Wailing Wall - a sacred Jewish prayer site.

It was Rosh Ha-Shana, the Jewish New Year, so the place was bustling.

When I looked at the people praying beside the wall, I thought of Aliza, my next door neighbor when I lived in Jerusalem. She was not a conventionally religious person - she did not keep a kosher kitchen, for example - but she had a very deep faith in God.

One Friday evening, the eve of the Sabbath, she told me, I went to the Wall to pray that my daughter will find a good husband - and I prayed that you will, too.

She added: I put my prayers on a piece of paper and stuck them in the cracks between the rocks.
This last part in Hebrew was "Samti petek" - (literally, I put a note.)

For weeks, if not months, she continued this practice. Again and again, she would tell me: Samti petek... and I would smile.

Eventually her daughter moved to New York City, and I returned to Canada.

Was it co-incidence that both she and I met our husbands not long afterward?