My Israel Trip – Shuk to Shuk

            The plan for day two of my Israel trip was to go back to Jerusalem, by train this time, and focus on Mahane Yehuda (the big shuk/market in Jerusalem). My friend’s husband helped me figure out how to use the moovit app on my phone to pay for the ticket, and then he drove us to the train station and sent us on our way. It took me a minute to get used to the app, and to having to put my bag (and myself) through airport-style scanners as we entered the train station, but the train ride itself was comfortable and fast, and my friend was in charge of telling me where to go, so I didn’t have to think too hard.

The transition to the light rail from the train just required us to go outside and open the moovit app again, and then wait a few minutes for the train to appear in the middle of the street.  Every seat was filled, even though we were far from rush hour, so we stood by the doors and held on for dear life. I was fascinated by the announcements, written and spoken, in Hebrew, Arabic, and English every time, and the passengers being such a wild mix of people: a girl in a sports bra and sweat pants, next to a man in a black coat and hat, next to a woman with a head covering and long skirt, next to a woman in a hijab; all just getting on with their to-do lists.

When we got off at the stop for Mahane Yehuda, we took a few moments to breathe before diving back into the crowds. I took a picture of a store called “English Cake,” because the sign in Hebrew next to it also sounded out the words “English Cake” in Hebrew letters. There was so much English, everywhere. Once we entered the shuk, there were so many storefronts, and alleyways going in every direction, that it was a bit overwhelming. There were, of course, other tourists like me, but there were also native Jerusalemites, and groups of soldiers in training, and older people rolling shopping baskets through the crowd, and couples doing the family shopping. There was no one type of person in the shuk – people spoke different languages, dressed in every different way, and each one moved at their own unique pace.

            We stopped at one of the fruit stalls to get a smoothie (Mango Tango), because I was low on sugar and already a bit dizzy from the heat of the day (not too hot by Israeli standards, but much warmer than it had been when I’d packed my suitcase in New York). And once I was sufficiently cooled down and sugared up, our first priority was to go to Marzipan bakery. The one thing my brother and nephews had agreed on in their recommendations for where to go in Israel, was that I needed to try the chocolate rugelach at Marzipan bakery; everything else, even the Kotel, was an afterthought. The bakery was relatively small compared to American shops, but big enough to hold an enormous number of cakes and cookies and customers. Along with all of the rugelach, in multiple flavors, there were sufganyiot (donuts for Hanukkah), and cheesecakes, and cookies, and all manner of other wonderful looking things. But I was committed; I needed to try the rugelach or else I wouldn’t be able to return home, so I chose a box with pistachio, chocolate, and chocolate hazelnut varieties, with enough to bring back for my friend’s kids as a bribe, since I was stealing their mom’s attention for days on end.

We found a little park nearby, a few steps away from the shuk, where the cats had already congregated, waiting for us and the rest of the human visitors to stop by with snacks. I had to try a chocolate rugelach first, because that’s the classic, and I discovered that what makes these rugelach so special is that they are incredibly moist, and sweet. The ones I’m used to in New York, which are very good, are made with a soft cookie-like dough and filled with things like chocolate, apricot, or raspberry jam. These, on the other hand, were like a cross between a regular rugelach and baklava, because they are basically marinated in sugar syrup, before and after baking. One was my limit, though, and then I needed to drink a lot of water to chase it down. While I communed with the local cats (I was missing my dog a lot already), my friend volunteered to take a picture for a family on a day trip to Jerusalem. My friend was able to guess which part of Israel they’d come from, just by the way they dressed, but for me it was all still a mystery. She’d told me once that you could tell which town a boy came from by the style of kippah (yarmulke) he wore, but it would take me more than one visit to start to see all of the variations.

Once we were sufficiently rested and hydrated, we headed back into the shuk to find actual lunch-like food. My friend’s older daughter had given us instructions for how to find the best kosher places in the shuk, but we got lost anyway, and wandered through the alleyways, past enormous mangoes, and bright red pomegranates, and every kind of baklava and halva and knafe (another middle eastern dessert), until we found the little storefront for Halaty, where they specialized in chicken schnitzel on a challah roll, plus five or six sauces. We got one sandwich, cut in half, and since neither of us likes spicy food, we only sampled four or five of the sauces. I have no idea what they all were, but they were mostly yummy, except for one sour lemon sauce that was really not my thing.

            As we ate our sandwiches, a tour group came by, with the leader wearing a microphone and speaking in rapid, incomprehensible Hebrew while sandwiches were handed out across the group. I was relieved to be sitting at one of the few tables, chewing at my own pace, instead of having to rush along with a tour group, trying to hear the tour guide over the crowd. I was also starting to wonder if my Hebrew really wasn’t that good after all, since I couldn’t make out a word the tour guide was saying, but my friend said that she was having trouble hearing anything over the noise of the shuk too, so at least we were in it together.

            We continued on our way, past Moroccan sweets in every color, and breads and cheeses and fruits and vegetables. When we had finally hit our limit, on walking and noise and choices, we found a place to sit at an outdoor café, with umbrellas for shade over each table. No one seemed to mind that we were taking up space without ordering anything, so we were able to relax and focus on all of the people bustling around us.

            A couple passed by wearing their rifles like forgotten guitars bouncing against their backs. I’d been warned ahead of time that I would see a lot of soldiers carrying guns, but I hadn’t realized that so many of them would be out of uniform. It turned out that they had to carry their rifles with them, even on leave, because they weren’t allowed to leave their guns home unattended. We also saw girls dressed in sweaters and long pleated skirts, despite the heat, and my friend told me they were seminary girls, studying for the year in Jerusalem before starting national service. And then there was a young mom carrying her baby in her arms, while her husband (I assumed) pushed the baby carriage, filled with plants.

In the middle of all this, two police officers arrived on motorcycles. They stopped by the side of the café and almost immediately they were deep in conversation with a group of young men in t-shirts and shorts, also carrying rifles over their shoulders. It looked like the young men were getting a ticket for some reason, and I was fascinated by the idea that these young men with guns, were casually accepting tickets from police officers, with no sign of danger. But after a while we saw another group of young people arrive to talk to the police officers, and we realized that they were all participating in some kind of scavenger hunt. They seemed to need a paper signed by an officer in order to move on to the next challenge on their list, and the police officers seemed to be happy to play along.

The streets in Jerusalem are so skinny that most people were walking, or riding bikes or scooters, or motorcycles like the police, or taking the light rail like us, rather than driving cars. And there was something magical about the whole scene; like we were outside of time and the normal parameters of modern city life, with young men flying by on their scooters, their tzitzit waving behind them.

As the light started to fade, we made our way back to the light rail, and then to the train back to Modiin. For some reason, I hadn’t realized that the days would be just as short in Israel as they are in New York at this time of year. Somehow, I’d thought the heat would make the days longer, but as we reached Modiin, we caught one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen.

Our chauffeur (my friend’s husband) picked us up from the train station, in between pickups and drops offs of the kids, and we started to make our plan for the next day: Tel Aviv and the Carmel Market (Shuk HaCarmel), to compare and contrast one shuk with another. My next big accomplishment was taking a shower, and then we had dinner and rugelach, and my friend and I stayed up late talking, even though we’d been talking all day long.

            Of course, overnight my self-consciousness/anxiety came roaring back, and I was critiquing the clothes I’d brought with me (too plain, too shapeless, too warm, etc.), and I was worried about Shabbat coming up (I hadn’t spent a Shabbat at a religious person’s house in a very long time, and I was sure I’d forgotten some of the rules along the way and would do something stupid or offensive without meaning to). But I shook it off the best I could, and let my friend’s husband make me breakfast (I’m so generous!), and then we headed into Tel Aviv, driving this time instead of taking the train. We passed so many McDonald’s signs along the way that it was hard to believe we weren’t in New York, but the road signs were in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, so we were clearly still in Israel. After a few trips around the neighborhood, my friend was able to find a tiny parking lot around the corner from the shuk, and we headed off on our next adventure.

            Shuk HaCarmel/Carmel Market felt less crowded than Mahane Yehuda, if only because the alleyways were wider, so there was more room to move. There was yet another scavenger hunt going on, and this time we got to see it from the beginning as a large group of youngish people were divided into three teams. They seemed more like a work group this time, since there were no obvious guns, but I didn’t have the nerve to ask.

There were more clothing and tchotchke stalls at Shuk HaCarmel than I’d seen in Mahane Yehuda (though it’s possible I’d missed some of the meandering alleyways in Jerusalem the day before), and I was surprised by how few places in the shuk were kosher enough for my Modern Orthodox friend to eat at. I’d always thought one of the reasons to live in Israel was to make it easier to be Jewish overall, and it certainly is a lot easier, but in a country where 20 percent of the population isn’t Jewish, and even among the Jewish population at least half are not religious at all, and the rest have multiple/conflicting ideas for the right way to be Jewish, I should have known it would be more complicated.

            We stopped at one stall to watch the process of spiral cutting a baking potato, and then deep frying it, like one long curly French fry, and then we gawked at all kinds of touristy stalls, filled with t-shirts and jewelry and other kitschy things. The crowd in Tel Aviv seemed to be more homogeneous than in Jerusalem: mostly young to middle-aged, mostly wearing t-shirts and jeans or shorts, with fewer overtly religious people, and fewer older people. Somewhere along the way, I also realized that I wasn’t seeing all of the beggars I’d seen in Jerusalem, but there were still a ton of babies. It’s one of the things you notice right away in Israel, after the stray cats: babies are everywhere. There’s a lot of encouragement to have children in Israel, with socialized medicine, and free public schools, and healthcare that covers fertility treatments, etc., but it’s more than that: children are welcomed almost everywhere, at any age, and no matter how independent they become as they grow up, they are always expected home for Shabbat.

            I was enjoying the window shopping, and the people watching, and then we arrived at the Malawach stand my friend’s daughter had recommended, situated at a little intersection in the shuk. Israeli music was playing from the speakers, and when a popular old Israeli dance song came on (Od Lo Ahavti Dai), the whole crowd started to sing along, and a group of women automatically created a circle to do the dance, as if their bodies couldn’t help it. The circle dissolved just as quickly as it had formed, but that moment, when everyone just stopped to sing and dance together, was magical. The Malawach guy refused to cut one sandwich in half for us to share this time, so I had to take a whole one for myself. Malawach is a layered, fluffy, Yemeni bread, filled with much more oil than your standard pita, and rolled up in each Malawach there were hardboiled eggs and tomatoes and chummus, and maybe some other things I don’t remember, and it was possibly the best thing I’ve ever eaten.

            Eventually, we left the shuk and walked over to Rothschild Blvd., a wide-open street with space to sit and relax, or ride a bike or a scooter, down the middle of the divider. My friend had looked up the address for my online Hebrew language school for me, because I’d said that I might want to see it in person, but I was dragging my feet. My social anxiety is no joke, and I was trying to come up with as many excuses as possible not to visit the school, and potentially have to make a fool of myself, but my friend dragged me into the building, and up to the right floor, where the offices for the school were located in a shared workspace (they look so much bigger in the pictures!). Luckily, no one was in the offices at the time, so I didn’t have to come up with anything brilliant to say, and yet I could still say that I went there and did that. Check!

After that accomplishment, we headed back to the car, and then spent the next hour and a half in the famous Tel Aviv traffic. Traffic has become one of the enduring topics of the sentences they teach us in Hebrew class (Pkok, in Hebrew. It’s also really fun to say), so, I got to check yet another important Israel experience off my list. Though, lesson learned, if we decided to go back to Tel Aviv, we’d take the train.

            But honestly, I didn’t mind the long drive. One, because I didn’t have to do the driving, and two, because it gave us more time to talk. It’s been a long time since my friend and I have been able to spend an extended period of time together, the way we used to do in high school. On her visits to the states, we tend to get a couple of hours to chat, which barely scratches the surface, but spending all of this time together let us get to all of the conversations we’d missed out on over the years: the deeper truths, the background information, the assumptions we’d made about each other, and the questions we’d never asked. And somewhere along the way, I started to realize that even though visiting Israel was my stated goal, seeing my friend and getting to know her again was the real joy of the trip.

            When we got back to Modiin, I was introduced to yet another Israeli staple: Krembo. Except, the store where my friend’s husband had been shopping didn’t have the real Strauss brand Krembo in stock, they only had something called Membo. Krembo is iconic in Israel: with a cookie base, a ton of soft meringue filling, and covered with a thin layer of chocolate. It’s what a Mallomar might be like, if it were three times the size and much much fluffier. Even the Membos were impressive, though I was assured that the real Krembo was even better.

            We were still finishing the rugelach, to go with the Membos, and then we had hamburgers and French fries for dinner, which the kids actually ate on their way to and from different activities, and as I failed to stuff one more French fry into my mouth, it was a relief to know that Shabbat was coming, which meant we had an excuse to stay close to home for the next two days. There was still so much to see and do, but I was ready for a break from all of the walking and traveling and sight-seeing. The weather was also starting to shift into their version of winter (the rainy season), and I was looking forward to some cooler air, and the rain, and the chance to rest and start to process everything I’d seen so far.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?