The promise of blossoming cherry trees

I'm not through with Israel revelations, but first this interruption for...springtime.  The cherry trees lining the quad at the University of Washington campus burst into flower for one week per year, a time that finds it crowded with picnicking families, camera-toting tourists, parents bringing adorably-clad little ones for their portraits in their Sunday best.  Being among the 30 or so old and spreading trees brings exhilaration and promise. And speaks of God's wonder--allowing these boughs to slumber and then create the billions of petals that soon drift downward like pink snow.  I took the photos above over the last week.

Tel Aviv Mix

We arrived for our Israel adventure in Tel Aviv, a sophisticated metropolis of skyscrapers and international trade that burgeoned on the Mediterranean Coast from nothing in the span of exactly 100 years.  It was in 1909 that a group of six families purchased a plot of sand dunes just north of the ancient town of Yaffo, first calling it the "Housing Project" but shortly renaming it Tel Aviv, Spring Hill.

We had a lovely view from our room overlooking the coast on the 15th floor of the Dan Panorama Hotel, and when we arrived, my brother-in-law, a resident of Jerusalem, was awaiting us.  He led us on a walking tour of the neighborhood, which offered some surprises.  There was the modern skyline, curved buildings that reflected the steel-gray sea and the shape of the Bauhaus-style buildings that punctuate a town largely built up in the 1930s by German escapees.  Intersperced with modernity, however, were hovel-esque, run-down buildings, sidewalk cafes, and everywhere, blue-spray-painted graffiti of a Star of David and the Hebrew words for "The People Israel Lives."  A square framed with blossoming orange trees was immaculate.  Some street-gutters, however, were strewn with trash.

I saw picturesque peeling-paint shutters and doors, magnets for any photographer. On a stucco wall, someone had pasted up hand-notated sheet music. Streets were narrow but sub-compact cars freely parked half on the sidewalk.

We found the main drag, Diezengoff Street, named after Meir Dizengoff, city founder and mayor from 1909-1937, in whose living space Israeli independence was declared in 1948.  His thoroughfare is now a trafficky collection of tall apartment buildings, offices and street-level shops, some in need of sprucing.  That's the general impression:  The trendy alongside the frayed, the immaculate cheek-to-jowl with the ill-kempt.  Almost a passive-aggressive air, industrious urgency brushing against the cavalier. Artsy and brash at times, European with its night-clubby exclusivity and at the same time exotic.

As tourists, we strolled through the open-air marketplace adjacent to the tall hotels, inhaling the rich sweetness of freshly-plucked strawberries, observing avocados stacked points-up and bins of brightly-colored spices. Plenty, variety and possibility greeted our every glance--sugar canes, fat artichokes, bags of oranges, shiny purple eggplants, giant grapefruits, pots of cooked corn, open boxes of just-roasted cashews, stalls featuring twenty kinds of olives.

Our first day was a harbinger of the lavish complexity we discovered of Israel.  Stubbornly old-fashioned is honored and accepted as willfully as wildly innovative.  Futuristic combined with ancient.  A panoply of times, peoples and proposals.

We walked past the Bauhaus buildings the next morning to Independence Hall for a re-creation of that nation-forming day in May, 1948 when the United Nations voted in favor of the creation of Israel.  What other nation gained its land, its birth by the concensus of other countries' votes?  Israel was an aberration of history, and the crackly radio broadcast that was played for our group in which each nation's affirmation or negation of the creation of the new state provides ongoing proof that its formation grew from a democratic process, not racial aggession or a war waged by a kingdom-seeking tyrant.

The fact that Tel Aviv is new and vibrant doesn't detract from the timelessness the sand dunes evoke.  The famous 1909 photo (top) of gathered investors surveying the dunes they'd just purchased emphasizes that the land given biblically by God to the Jews is also land with modern deeds and legal titles, developed and cultivated from scratch by people whose own determination switched dead sand into silicon and vacant swamps into the fertile orchards that now yield kiwis, mangos and persimmons; and 200 vinyards that now produce some of the most esteemed wines in the world.

A stroll in old Jaffa, just a few minutes from our hotel, however, offers less of the present and more history. Jonah's whale spit him up there and winding stone alleys of artist's studios and galleries remind that you're a tourist in a very old foreign land.

But Tel Aviv is but the first stop on our trip, and soon we board our buses heading for the north.

(all photos except the historic one are by me.)

Back from Israel and ready for Shakshuka

Jet lag is still a problem, but culture-lag not so much.  Israel is a modern, hip country that happens to be set in an ancient hot-spot.  Where high tech, rock-'n-roll and skyscrapers converge, more complex and deeply-held insistences clash.  You can't compromise when you're convinced your way is God's.

Beneath the daily commute, the entrepreneural one-upmanship documented in George Gilder's The Israel Test, and Saul Singer/Dan Senor (who addressed our group)'s Start-Up Nation is justifiable caution.  I didn't see the machine-gun-toting guards perched at the entrances of restaurants, like I observed in my most recent several visits, but still, as cars entered parking structures, trunks were inspected and auto undersides perused. When your neighbors publicly insist you need to be "driven to the sea" while, at the same time, seeking to emulate you, there's heightened awareness carrying on the interchanges and embraces commerce commands.

That was the backdrop, the meme, but not my moment-to-moment experience, which mixed immediacy and miracles, wariness and wonder.

Each of the nine days of this visit had its highlights and surprises.  I hope to write more about them later, but first, the mundane:  Shakshuka.

I first saw it at breakfast, which in Israel is the granddaddy of meals, and our hotels offered lavish buffets.  Tables of smoked fish, cheeses, fresh fruits and vegetables; baskets of baked goods, made-to-order lattes and espresso, chefs creating omelettes.  Rows of chafing dishes not only offering porridge and quiches and pancakes but on this trip, always Shakshuka.

Saute onion, garlic, fresh tomatoes and their juice with herbs, a little sugar, sometimes peppers. Let it simmer down into a dense tomato melange in the frying pan.  Then, crack whole eggs into it, cover and cook until the eggs set, nestled into the sauce.  Easy and ubiquitous.  But I wasn't ready for its popularity.

Our family came from the graveside ceremony marking a year since my father-in-law's passing.  We gathered afterwards in the private room of a quaint restaurant.  The morning had been remarkable, walking in pelting rain at the cemetery to the newly-placed monument, a beautiful orange-red marbled stone that we could could not accept covered our beloved Dad and Zayde. As soon as we arrived, the deluge, which was so strong it flooded the streets and caused small rivers gushing down the ravines, let up. Not a drop fell as we said traditional prayers, offered recollections, read psalms. When we were finished, and placed small rocks on the newly-carved slab, we turned to go--and the heavens opened again, resuming their tears and torrents.

At the restaurant, we filled our stomachs and fed our conversations on Shakshuka.  There's something earthy and elemental about this simple combination.

Every breakfast in Israel included Shakshuka.  Then, when I came home, a supplement to our newspaper happened to have a feature on it.  I opened a cookbook that I've had on my shelf for a few years, The Foods of Israel Today, by Joan Nathan, and found this version. A sensual souvenir of this particular visit to Israel; an easy way to recapture intense feelings of many types.

Shakshuka a la Doktor Shakshuka (a restaurant in Old Jaffa that features the dish)

The Foods of Israel Today

by Joan Nathan

Yield: 6 servings
2 pounds fresh tomatoes, unpeeled and cut in quarters, or one 28-ounce can tomatoes

6 cloves garlic, roughly diced

2 teaspoons salt, or to taste
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
2 teaspoons tomato paste

1/4 cup vegetable oil

6 large eggs

1. Place the tomatoes, garlic, salt, paprika, tomato paste, and vegetable oil in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer and cook, uncovered, over low heat until thick, for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

2. Ladle the tomato sauce into a greased 12-inch frying pan. Bring to a simmer and break the eggs over the tomatoes. Gently break the yolks with a fork. Cover and continue to cook for about 3 to 4 minutes, until the eggs are set. Bring the frying pan directly to the table. Set it on a trivet and spoon out the shakshuka.

Olympics, Fashion Week and Westminster Dog Show: What they Have in Common

It's the convergence of contests, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show (a Scottish Terrier named Sadie was Best in Show), the Vancouver Olympics (Evan Lysacek took figure skating), and Fashion Week in New York (yesterday was Calvin Klein and Isaac Mizrahi).  Reading about these diverse but equally publicized events brings several thoughts.

First, the people, like Judy Davis, profiled in the Wall Street Journal for her devotion to her line of Samoyed show dogs, mesmerized by the politics and competition of breeds and handlers, are unlikely to be the same crowd jockeying for seats in the front row of designers' runways, perched next to Lady Gaga or Sandra Bullock. Fans at the frigid winter Olympics are a completely separate group, valuing speed, agility and endurance...of a very different sort.

Personally, I'm not much for sports, and you couldn't say our household is on the sartorial cutting-edge.  We also don't have a dog at the moment, though that doesn't keep me from being captivated by the astounding tenacity of owners, breeders and handlers investing hundreds of thousands of dollars with no payback just to see their breed or pet win.  A story in the NY Times Business section Sunday detailed the "campaigns" run by champion pooches' deep-pockets owners, including magazine ads, hiring famous handlers, and extravagant indulgences, all of which brings to mind one of my favorite movies of all time, "Best in Show."

This gem, written by Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, who both also star in the film, is the source of many running gags in our home.  I can't recommend it too highly; each time you watch it, you'll see new sources of hilarity.  (Guest, by the way, played Nigel Tufnel in the classic "This Is Spinal Tap," the only film that could lift me out of pain and distress as I suffered with pneumonia during my pregnancy with my son in 1992.)  Guest does it again in "Best in Show" as Harlan Pepper, drawling owner of champion bloodhound Hubert, but he's just one of an ensemble of wildly diverse and unique contestants in the show.  Movie moments memorialized in our family lore include the shrewish, braces-clad owner of a Weimaraner who demands from a petshop clerk an exact replica of a lost squeaky bee, and the misstep of Norwich terrier-owner/handler Cookie Fleck moments before the big entrance.  Her two-left-footed spouse fills the breach--and "color" announcer Fred Willard (who I've loved since "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman") exclaims his notice.  Rent this if you haven't guffawed lately.

And that's what these three cultural events share--they're each the climax of complex plots, of winnowing out losers and revealing winners. It's the same fascination that draws viewers to the Oscars.  It's the way life imitates literary art--the denouement is riveting, the process and struggles only as fascinating as their personalities.  But the people who choose to put themselves in these singular spotlights, to strive to separate themselves above all others, share a drive and industriousness that makes them inherently compelling.

They're also a reminder that we humans are social creatures; we crave the validation and inspiration of like-minded others.  Also, Darwinians aside, we are not animals, who, by and large, spend their time exactly the same as others of their species, seldom in any kind of creative endeavor.  We humans, made in the image of God, have the Godly spark to excel, to push toward something new and different, and we cheer each other on as we're striving.

Finally, we are reminded how blessed we are to have the leisure to choose dog-grooming, figure skating and dress-designing, rather than searching for potable water and our next meal.  It's our communal enterprise, the essence of business, that not only fuels these contests, but allows us to take for granted all the basics we rely upon--from the beds in which we sleep to the airplanes that carry us across nations and oceans to come together in these most diverse and amazing competitions.

In Defense of Valentine's Day

I had to defend Valentine's Day, after guests at my Chinese-New Year-themed Shabbat table looked incredulous when I distributed heart-decorated paper napkins with dessert.  I'm used to defending Halloween, but Valentine's Day is so innocuous, so American and so un-religious, I've never before been called to its defense.

My response is that any day that encourages expressions of love and appreciation is fine by me.  Scoffers who disdain commercialization, and lonely hearts who find the day a reminder of their sad status choose to use the occasion to reinforce their existant negativity.  They could hand-write a loving note rather than make purchases, or spend the time cheering up ill or infirm neighbors, or ignore the holiday altogether, rather than wallow in glass-half-empty dourness.

My husband romantically brings me a daily bouquet from the grocery store that he picks out on his way home, and I didn't expect or want any special gift Sunday.  But I see nothing wrong with "constructive guilt" if it spurs husbands (and wives) normally remiss to take a few minutes and spend a few bucks on a token of love.  I consider it a good thing that our sorry economy can receive a temporary boost from balloons, flowers and even jewelry selected to please--or even placate--someone important.

It's a Jewish concept to repair negative feelings by investing in the object of your displeasure.  So the little effort made to select and deliver any kind of Valentine works to improve relationships.  Choosing and giving bring people closer. Very simple. No downside.

My Jewish friends don't like the day's association to Catholic Saint Valentine.  Though he was added to a list of saints in 496 for being a martyr, even at that time it was noted that nobody knew exactly who he was or what he'd done. Geoffrey Chaucer apparently came up with the association of Valentine with love in a long love poem he wrote in the late 1300s, "Parliament of Fowls:"  "And there was not any bird that is created through procreation that was not ready in her presence to hear her and receive her judgment. For this was Saint Valentine’s day, when every bird of every kind that men can imagine comes to this place to choose his mate."  Yes, it's a poem about birds.  I find this an unconvincing reason to assume all the elementary teachers festooning their classrooms with red hearts are performing religious service.

Now, I can see why curmudgeons eschew the power of dreaded social authority to dictate when or how they will express their love.  On the other hand, curmudgeons are by definition crusty, ill-tempered and disagreeable. Fat chance they're demonstrative the rest of the year, either.

On the other hand, I personally consider it a bit unseemly to make frouffy home displays for the holiday, even if Valentine decor is the only thing in stores since Dec. 26. I make hand-made cards for my children and a few select others, and consider it a luxury to spend my limited time creating something specially for each of them.

What's wrong with celebrating love? We could all use more of it.

(above: St. Valentine receives a Rosary from the Virgin, by David Teniers III.)

ObamaCare and the Return to Marcus Welby

Obama's urgent need to confiscate tax money to cover everybody's health care is an indicator of how far medicine has come since I was a kid.  His pressing insistence has a basis in the same technology that brings you this blog, and the apps on your iphone, and your music and photos and games and Kindle--and there's no way we'll ever retreat.

Way back in the far reaches of my memory was chicken pox.  It was a disease your mom made sure you got, by sending you to play with some spotted friend, because you needed to "get it over with" lest it strike with greater force once you became an adult.  Kids don't get chicken pox any more. They get MMRV shots as babies, ending the social delight of intentionally exposing youngsters to "childhood diseases" that are no more.

But when my siblings and I were in the midst of "getting it over with," the pediatrician, as part of his normal duties, showed up at our front door.  I vividly remember him--a stranger to me, really--coming into the bedroom I shared with my similarly-stricken sister, his leather black "doctor's bag" in hand; his cold stethoscope on my chest.  They used to call those visits "house calls."  They didn't cost extra.

In those days, families paid for just about everything outright.  You got a bill from the doctor; if you couldn't pay it all at once, you worked out a payment plan. Yes, there was insurance, but it was private (Blue Cross), not very expensive, usually only for really catastrophic situations, and most people didn't have it.  Certainly no employers paid for it.

Until the 60s, when governments and unions used coverage for bargaining and as perks for employees.

Then, in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson, in a fit of liberal largesse, sought to provide retirees with government-sponsored health coverage.  At that time, most people retired at age 65 and looked forward to rapid decline, surviving at most another decade, as US life expectancy was only 70 years.  Medical care was just starting to get technical; pharmaceuticals were becoming more sophisticated and proprietary.

Without universal retirement plans, a new class of oldsters who weren't being taken care of by newly mobile children got attention in Johnson's "War on Poverty" after exposes about their subsisting on dog food.  Medicare filled in where Social Security left off, followed by Medicaid, the national program for non-elderly poor. But the key there is that it's not federally-managed--each state controls its administration locally. 

Really, it's only been in the last 20 years that HMOs and employer-subsidized health plans became de rigueur, severing all direct connections to local doctors and inserting middlemen at faraway desks, insulated from customers by powerless phone personnel.  Ask a kid what a doctor's bag looks like--he'll shrug.

Do we customers like dealing with huge corporations who determine our premiums, our co-pays, our deductibles?  Do health care providers like that their fees are negotiated and set by the same corporations?  Ever get an "EOB" (explanation of benefits) from a health insurance company that lists a doctor's charge, and then the "adjustment" he makes because the insurance company decided his fee was more than they've decided to pay?  What is this game?

It's the stuff of consumer backlash.  Because if taxpayers know one thing, it's that adding layer upon layer of government bureaucracy onto a system that's already rife enough with regulations, strategies and middlemen isn't going to streamline anything. Instead, it will complicate and worse, cost much more.

By the way, I'm incredulous that thousands of American citizens die each year due to inability to afford health insurance.  Emergency rooms do not turn away indigents.  Medicare, Medicaid and local governmental programs do exist. And private charitable institutions do a tireless job. College and university students have campus resources. And 1,200 free clinics, staffed by generous physicians, exist in every metropolitan area.

Can we ever go back to the friendly Dr. Welby of the olden days? Of course not. We now demand medical science provide magic pills and room-size equipment that hardly fits in the traditional physician's bag.  We seek specialists for second opinions, and form our own analyses by scouring the internet, sometimes spurring expensive lawsuits, served by eager lawyers.  Health care is increasingly complicated, and we now expect to live a lot longer than before. Into our 90's, actually. 

The US spends 16% of its GDP on health care; more than any other modern country.  It's not going to drop--either with feds controlling potential profit or with the status quo, because free enterprise is already so tamped down by government regulations and laws that shape the structure of the insurance industry. What's the answer? I'm not in a position to speculate, but getting back to catastrophic insurance coverage, with individual management of relationships with doctors would be much better than the interminable phone waits and impersonal rulings on payments that we all now face--which would be much, much worse controlled by the biggest bureaucracy of all, the federal government.

Groundhog Day Redeux

It's overcast here. Punxsutawney Phil would not have seen his shadow today, and we would have delighted in the prospect of an early spring.  Yesterday, however, we got some sun, and apparently, so did the groundhog in Pennsylvania, portending more chill.

The 1993 Bill Murray film "Groundhog Day" is one of my all-time faves, because  of its novelty and its message.  Murray plays Phil Collins, a narcissistic TV announcer sent with his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) to cover the official result of the animal's appearance. Stuck in town due to a blizzard, Phil finds himself in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over until he gets it right.  Even suicide attempts fail as he again awakens in his hotel bed to the strains of Cher singing "I Got You, Babe" on the clock-radio.

During the course of the film, Phil transforms from self-centered to altruistic, from viewing time as his own to seeing his place on earth filled with possibilities.  In the most miserable of weather, in the most mundane of locations, Phil realizes that the six weeks of winter the rodent portended was his means of emerging from hibernation into the sunshine of experience.

I often wish I could repeat days and get them right.  When, like today, a gray sheet of damp, dismal clouds encloses my view, I have to force myself toward gratitude and accomplishment.  Sunny days, on the other hand, energize and uplift me, pulling me outside in exuberance.

So I wasn't thrilled when I heard that we're in for a typical winter, six more weeks of dreary chill.  Time for some attitude revision on my part.  It may be Groundhog Day, but it's also a new opportunity, if I just step out of my narcissistic stupor.