If I disappear

it's because I got my Ravelry invite. Oooh, it's all kinds of teh shiney! I'm going to try to be a good girl and not get sucked in: no more than 5 pictures of stash yarn added per day. (OK, at least that's what I'm aiming for.)

And speaking of teh shiney--Dr Who. Was that not just the most... Makes you kind of regret those John Barrowman genes aren't going to go on to another generation. The Middle Teen hates me now for letting her watch a "to be continued" episode; she despises having to wait a week for the next part.

But there has also been dull. Not dull knitting, but a dull black color for my Mystery Stole 3 swatch. This yarn was pulled out of a dumpster years ago, and the needles were given to me by a woman who collected knitting supplies from senior citizens who could no longer see well enough to knit. Recycling at its finest--maybe it is teh shiney after all.

Not the Israel National Trail, still not for the old and enfeebled

Or
What I did on my 42nd birthday

While some people boycotted the march to Chomesh this Tuesday, I went. Why?

(a) Yes, it was organized by Moetzet Resha. Anyone who doesn't know that this means you go, you walk around, you take pictures and you get out of there when told (and come back on your own later, without the snitches) almost deserves to get caught. Come on--our teens know who's unreliable. Still, it was a chance to go to Chomesh.

(b) My daughters were going. Their friends were going. It was my birthday. I'm going to stay home because I don't like the organizers? Screw 'em--I'll go where I want, when I want.

(c) Something very odd was going on during the march. Several times army vehicles pulled up alongside us and shouted encouragement: "Way to go--you're the heroes! Keep going--you're halfway there." "Settlers are great! Settlers are heroes! Welcome back to Chomesh!" It's almost like they went out of their way to send unzerer soldiers. And the shortcuts they allowed us to take on the march were not the same ones which were taken on the last march. One of the kids I climbed the hill with said "It's almost like the army is teaching us new paths up there."

(d) Planning for July, G-d willing, if my father isn't in then and needing my care. 'Nuff said.

While I'm resting my aching legs (it took us over 3 hours to walk up from the junction of Shavei Shomron to Chomesh -- we have got to get back into shape), some pictures:

The start of the march (look--there's still a trail here!)


A scarecrow--if you're following Dr Who in recent weeks, you'll know why that could scare more than crows.


By this time we'd lost The Spouse, who couldn't keep up with the kids (while I was trying valiantly). We waited for him at Sebastia for a while, then gave up when he was till lagging behind.




We continued on, this time thankfully mainly on paved road (though certainly not hobo grade).


Finally The Spouse caught up to us by taking a few short cuts we didn't take (and having some teen boys almost literally drag him along) and calling us to wait for him. Man, was I happy I had thought to bring my spindle along to keep me diverted -- well, that and discussing Peres vs. Rivlin with all the press photographers who staked out the turn-off from the road to the no-trail shortcut.



(See that road in the center of the picture? That's where we'd come from. See the trail we took? No, we didn't either. We just kept going "up" until we found another paved road.)


At last we got to Chomesh (see how nicely the plants are surviving?)


where The Youngest Teen was waiting. She and her friends had come in bus chartered by her school, because they had classes until 1 pm. We said mincha and had my birthday cake, baked by Youngest Teen and somewhat worse for having survived the trip up strapped to The Spouse's back.


The media was out in force up here, too. Well, of course. Didn't Bentzi Lieberman and his crowd need cameras to play to?


We escaped the crowded entrance and went for a quiet walk around the yishuv, just the two of us and 5 teenagers in tow.
Looks pretty much like any other yishuv, doesn't it? Aside from the lack of buildings and electrical wires overhead. It would be so easy to rebuild Chomesh...



The water tower is still up, even, painted in honor of the crowd.


Hurrah for the kids who came ready to clean and plant!

A year of davening slowly

Jewish philosophizing to follow. If you're looking for craft content, skip to the end.

Jewish law has many ways to help people cope with death. Most of them don't apply to me. No new clothes? I buy, on average, one shirt every two years. No music? I have a great memory for music, and mainly "play" it in my head after hearing a recording once or twice. No TV? Haven't watched since our color tube went, leaving us with a 17 year old black-and-pink set. No movies? Last movie I saw in a theater was Shrek 2. Before that--Shrek. No weddings? We live here in Israel, our families in the US, so that's an easy one.

So what's left? I could learn some gemara or read some Tehillim. But I already do that, anyway.

Then there's the biggie: Kaddish. Not exactly the world's least controversial topic given that, last I checked, I'm not my brother. I read up some, checked some sources, spoke to the local rabbi, and have been at minyan three times a day, saying Kaddish, for the past 13 weeks.

Some people say women only want to recite the Kaddish to "be feminists." That we're looking to take over men's roles instead of doing our own. I'd like those people (largely men) to try saying Kaddish as a woman must for a month or two and then let them talk.

Saying Kaddish, at least in the Orthodox minyans in which I have said it and particularly in my home shul, is an exercise in humility and humiliation. I'm not allowed to say the Kaddish alone--I have to arrange for a man to say it with me. Twice my husband was too sick to go with me to shul; I said Kaddish and none of the men answered. (Since then, my husband has arranged back-up kaddish-zuggers, who usually remember they're on. If they forget, I'm not allowed to prompt them--see next point.) I'm not aloud to say Kaddish above a whisper, because some men complained to the rabbi that the sound of my voice saying Kaddish made them think inappropriate thoughts. On the other hand, at least once each day some man walks in to the women's section to get a book, put down his books, put sunflower seeds out for the evening study session, or just to disguise how late he is getting to shul--usually when I'm bowing during Shemoneh Esreh, rear halfway in the air and unable to turn around. (Interesting--my voice behind a curtain is irresistible, my posterior is not. Not so great for the vanity, is that?)

Yes, I've read the responsa on women saying Kaddish, pro and con, and in this case they're irrelevant--the local rabbi's had his say (though his changed his psak in midstream because of community pressure, telling me to whisper the Kaddish, and saying wistfully "If it were 100 years from now..."). What gets me is how little the (male) community thinks of the women's section, with how little sanctity they perceive it compared to the men's section. The men's section is tidied after every prayer. In the morning, after the men have had a study session in the women's section, there are dirty tissues and sunflower seed shells on the floor, candy wrappers, books flung all over chairs, the table, and the floor, chairs tossed about as though they'd been wrestling with each other instead of the text. The curtain between the men's and women's section is consistently flung open all the way across. (I don't close it, aside from the little area in front of where I sit. It's not for my purposes, the curtain; I'm allowed to see the men. They can reach the curtain at least as easily as I can. Let them close it.)

I'm all out of ideas. I've talked to individual men. I've talked to the men officially in charge of the shul. How does one stop men from being pigs in the women's section?

I try to get to shul early and learn some gemara. Today I was learning Megillah 14b, which includes this gem: "While women talk, they use the spindle." In honor of that saying, here's what I've been spinning.

Sock yarn (still in single form) from a rainbow colored batt by Grafton Fibers. (As soon as I bought this, I found out Linda's no longer going to sell retail. Note to self: don't fall in love with this stuff.)
And there's been knitting. Clapotis v.3, out of horrible wool and mohair that my sister-in-law "inherited" from her mother, who is now in a Home, suffering from Alzheimer's. (Don't blame me--it's for my sister, and she spied the yarn in SIL's stash.)

And socks. Sockotta, no pattern, plain simple knit until you throw up. Started in the hospice while Mom was dying, finished here at home. Explain to me why from one side they look like they have nothing in common

and from the other they're a perfect match?


So, who's going to Chomesh tomorrow?

Blame the lack of posting on Lolly

Lolly posted about Ancestry.com and I fell into the gaping maws of the time suck. I'll never get as nice a family tree as she has, because my family arrived only in 1898, 1912, and 1947, but I still have found census information on my in-laws, grandparents, and great-grandparents. I've even tried their "find famous ancestors." Um, no. No way am I related to all those famous goyim. Nice try, though.

But at least it's taught me not to complain. Sure, I have 3 teens to feed, but my poor great-grandmother had 19 mouths to feed every single day (see lines 43 to the end below; click to enbiggen). And no tanorexics, either--family and farmhands (yes, a farm in the middle of Queens, NY, bordered by Woodhaven Blvd. and Union Turnpike).

Back with a vengance--or rather, with a meme

The past 12 weeks have been a roller coaster, up one day, down the next, sharp slides and long hard climbs. I miss Mom like crazy, and have to fight the urge to dial her phone number, expecting to hear her voice, half a dozen times a day.

How to go from all this emo back to the mundane of blogging knitting and teen life?

Heatherly was nice enough to ask me some questions for the Interview Meme. I love this one, because no matter how many times you do it, the questions are never the same. If you want to join in, drop me a comment.

So, here are the Yenta's Qs and my As:

1. oh i have missed your blogging! must be hard with all the traveling! not to mention crazy people trying to blow you up! or do you used to that? this is not an official question.:-)
   
   

   The traveling is pretty easy to recuperate from. People trying to blow me up--well, that's really not an issue; I live in a pretty safe area of the world, all things considered, and of the country, for that matter. (It's not like this is Sederot.)




2. my son dreams of being in the IDF, how do mothers in israel prepare their children and themselves for enlisting and the inevitable conflicts that arise?
   
   

   I was lucky. My son is slightly disabled (completely deaf in one ear) so I knew from early on that he would never be a combat soldier. We spent his entire childhood teaching him, contrary to Israeli popular mythology, that combat units weren't the best thing since sliced bread. We regaled him with stories of his paternal grandfather, who was a machinist on the Manhattan Project, and had him think about who did more damage to the enemy -- his grandfather or a foot soldier. That doesn't mean that he didn't develop rifle envy, what with a lot of his friends going into combat units; he solved that by getting a part-time job doing guard duty and armed escort work, so he has a rifle of his own. The one big conflict is what would happen if Israel stages another land giveaway as they did in the summer of 2005, giving away Gaza in exchanged for thousands of Kassam rockets, to be delivered daily over the course of years. What will he do, and how will we help him through that? No clue. We'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

   
   BTW, there's a whole program for foreigners. In fact, when we took The Oldest Teen in on Induction Day, we were speaking English as we approached the fenced-off area where recruits were standing. A group of English speaking boys called him over and told him, "You have to go inside and surrender your passport." We all started panicking a minute: he was supposed to bring his passport? No one told us that! He said he didn't have a passport with him, he had his national ID card. "Oh, you're not an American?" the boys asked. "I am, but also Israeli," said Teen. "Oh, then forget what we said; we thought you were here to volunteer in the overseas program."



3. i know you can grow your own cotton but where do you buy yarn in israel?
   
   

   Well, this year I won't be growing cotton because the time period when I usually started was eaten up taking care of my mom and then taking care of her estate. And next year I won't grow anything because of shmitta, so it's a good thing there are now decent yarn stores in Israel. It used to be, back when I moved here 17 years ago, you could buy all the yarn you wanted -- as long as what you wanted was fuschia acrylic. Now there are two yarn stores I frequent (when I'm not on a yarn diet): Badei Shani in Jerusalem (Martef HaIr, next to HaMashbir, across from the midrachov) and Gourmet Yarn in Raanana.




4. is there a yarn or product you can't get in Israel but are dying to try?
   
   

   I haven't been to Gourmet Yarn in a while, between being busy and being on a yarn diet. Pretty much everything I'd want to try she's got, or is willing to get. One thing I'd like to try, though, and which I didn't find when I was in NY last month, is Tofutsies sock yarn (and all the other cool new sock yarns that aren't 75/25).




5. what is your favourite thing(s) about living in israel?
   
   

   Oooh, tough question. I love the pace of life here, I love the freedom my kids have to go where they want, when they want. I love that here I never have to explain why I'm taking time for a religious life. (Go explain to the average American employer that you're taking off half an hour for afternoon prayers.)




6. we are just about to enter life with teenagers, any advice?
   
   

   Fasten your seatbelts. No, seriously--if you've raised them right until now, they'll be fine, with a minor bump or scrape here or there. There's a Yiddish saying--from seven to seventy, a person's essential character remains unchanged.
   When my kids were little, we had a reputation for being very strict. Now that the youngest is 15, we have a reputation for being very lenient. I rarely tel my kids no, but not because I'm indulgent--because they already know what they can do and what they can't, and very rarely ask to do something I wouldn't allow.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE INTERVIEW MEME
1. Leave a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Please make sure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Now that I've broken the ice, maybe I can finish up that post about knitting in the hospice, or knitting since, or saying kaddish...

Baruch Dayan HaEmet

Excuse my prolonged silence--my mother A"H passed away on Purim morning in Florida. I was with her the last week and a half, day and night, was with her when she died until the funeral home took her away, identified the body before the funeral, and helped bury her. We got up from shiva yesterday morning and I am flying back to Florida with my father today to deal with all the financial paperwork, then to Toronto for the weekend and back home on Monday night.

My knitting ate my weekly walk

Last week we didn't get to do any of the Israel National Trail. Blame it on Monkey business.



What is it with me lately, underestimating the amount of sock yarn I'll need? Luckily Tzvi at Badei Shani had one more skein of this yarn in this dyelot. I might even have enough for fingerless mitts, since the third skein is only making toes.

Downsizing January

I don't know whether it's an early midlife crisis, a fit of FLYing, or the Israeli settler's version of the American middle-class woman's fear of ending up a bag lady (i.e., ending up in a charavilla), but I've been trying to downsize. Get rid of things I don't love and won't use, books that don't interest me, VHS tapes I have on DVD or electronic files, turning stash into knitting. January was a productive month. I'm down 22 VHS tapes, 40 books (yes, I do read fast), and 13 skeins of yarn (after the one skein which was bought to finish these):


The four skeins of yarn it took to knit these knee socks aren't amongst the 13 in the count; until I knit the final stitch possible out of a yarn, it doesn't count as done, and I have about 40 grams left. Anyone have any ideas on what to do with such a small but substantial amount? If it were food I'd feed it to the cat, but I doubt she likes Strumpfwolle 6 fach.

Shvil Yisrael -- Rabin Park

Is it just me, or is everything in this country named "Rabin"? I'm surprised we haven't yet become the "State of Rabin."

We had agreed to take The Oldest Teen to his base on Sunday morning. Despite the prohibition on soldiers hitchhiking, every time we go out we load up our car with soldiers, so why not do it once for our own boy? Everything was planned, I had a nice walk planned out near Nitzanim, and then he comes home--he's been assigned, for the week, to the big army base at Tzrifin. Great. Who wants to walk in Rishon LeZion?

The day was beautiful when we left the house, horribly foggy by the time we got to the base. But since we were out, anyway, we decided to continue toward Beit Meir and see if the weather picked up. By the time we got to where we'd left off last the sun had come out, and we set off in the direction we'd meant to go last time, if only The Spouse didn't have a lousy sense of direction.

Israel National Trail markings are few and far between on this route. If you don't have a book with turn-by-turn instructions with you, just remember that you have to pass mishlat (fortified height) 16 and 21 to stay on the Trail.

The views here are very different from those on the beach walks. Hard to believe we're less than an hour away from there. The more I walk this country, the more I realize how much is compressed into this little slice of land.



Most of this walk is along the path used to gain the hills around Jerusalem. The historical aspect (the Palmach's fight to gain control of the fortified high ground, in Operation Maccabi, May 1948) is well-signed. The trail--less well signed.

Here's why a guidebook is so important. See any National Trail markings here? (Those would be blue, white, and orange.)

Overlook to the right, 4x4 path to the left. The overlook is probably on the trail, right? Wrong. When you get to this sign, you'll start to follow the green and white 4x4 trail. Occasionally there will be National Trail markings, but not often. As long as you're on track towards 16 & 21, you're in the right place, not that anyone will tell you.
After a nice little nature hike you'll reach mishlat 16, where you'll find a nice example of our national product--a memorial to the fallen, in this case, Palmach fighters.

It felt odd, a year and a half after the expulsions from Gush Katif, to see a marker memorializing (among others) 10 Palmach fighters who died trying to defend Kfar Darom in the fight for independence, and it made me think how different history would have been had they managed to hold on to the village back then.
We thought this was the difficult part of the trail--there were some somewhat steep uphills. The Spouse and I joke that we're doing "National Trail for the old and enfeebled," but this section is not for that demographic; we certainly couldn't see bringing his 86 year old mother here, for example.

Continue up the path, following the green and white markings, until mishlat 21.

Here the trail gets more complicated, because instead of following the signs to more historical markers, you have to go behind the memorial area, behind the firing stand (for some reason, exceptionally well marked)

and down between some rocks on what barely looks like a path. How a 4x4 is supposed to manage this part is beyond me.
For the next hour or so I only took pictures looking uphill after we'd scrambled down. If I'd had to look all the way down from where we were at the top of the mountain, I'd have been too chicken to go on.

Do you really think a 4x4 could do this path?
Finally an Israel National Trail marking, telling you to continue on the green path. We were getting hot and tired, so we decided to cut across the blue path, back to the red, which would circle around to where our car was parked.

No one, not even the guidebook, bothered to inform us that if green and white meant "barely passable for a 4x4," blue and white meant "barely passable by a mountain goat."

(See that vaguely light brown dirt path? That's the path to take. It's very well marked, which is good, because the trail itself is very poor, and tends to become slippery rock at the least provocation.)
The red trail! A Jeep trail! Probably passable! Yay!



The specs: From the Beit Meir hen houses to mishlat 21
Parking: Free parking at KKL's Rabin Park (space for 4-5 cars or 3 buses)
Return: Foot, baby. Bring a walking stick.
Difficulty Level: The trail itself is a bit steep in places, but manageable. The shortcut to make the walk circular is not recommended for anyone with a fear of heights or problems with balance. Wear good walking shoes.
Potential hazards: Steep rocky paths, poor signage, loose rocks.

Shvil Yisrael -- Tel Aviv to Arena Mall

So, it looks like all I do is walk, knit, and work? Um--yeah, and your point is?

Last Thursday we finished off the Tel Aviv section of the trail. We had started it, as a family, back in April of 2005, but since the kids are all over the place now (the Oldest Teen in the army, the Middle Teen in Hadera, the Youngest Teen sometimes agreeing to come home), we decided to finish it off by ourselves.

Warning: This is going to be picture heavy, because the trail signage sucks, and not in a good way, in Tel Aviv.

We took up where we left off last, in the Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv.

Based on the marking, you'd think you should go over the bridge, right? Well, the bridge was pretty, with all its cut out shapes, so it was a nice detour.

But if you're doing the trail, take the path *under* the bridge to continue. Go along the path until you get to the memorial for fallen Tel Aviv residents (this country specializes in memorials).

Here's another example of bad signage. The path, you'll notice, runs on the extreme left of the picture. The sign to turn is on the right.

Usually signs, especially ones so important, are just on the side of the trail, not hidden. Again--if you're doing the trail, the turn onto the streets of Tel Aviv is just past the tennis courts, *before* the boating and rowing center. *Before,* I said--not after. But having missed the turn, we did get to see some pretty sights:


Once we realized we were lost and found our way back to the trail, we exited onto Rokach Blvd. On the other side of the memorial are two computer kiosks, one to Tel Aviv residents killed in terrorist actions, back to before the establishment of the state:

The kiosk on the other side of the park is for Tel Aviv residents who fell in battle. Despite the fact that The Spouse used to collect obits of people with the same name as his, he wouldn't let me take a picture of the screen devoted to the soldier with his name who was killed in Khan Yunis on June 5, 1967.

When you get to the corner of Rokach and Ibn Gavirol, you won't find another missing marking, but make a left turn onto Ibn Gavirol. Just across Rokach you'll see a marking telling you to continue up Ibn Gavirol, so you know you're on the Trail.

Continue up Ibn Gavirol to Agnon. Here there is a marking telling you to turn right, but since it's on a traffic isle, you might not notice it.

You'll pass a municipal "protected animal area" -- I'm not sure what it is, but from the sounds coming past the fence, there are a lot of dogs there. Isolation? Municipal kennels? Bueller?
Then you'll walk past a lot of fancy apartment buildings. Why does the Israeli "good life" involve living near so many other people, in so little space, with nature being something you look out your window at?
Make a left turn off Agnon onto Levi Eskol. The marking is on the bottom of the electrical box to your left. For once, it's close enough to be easily seen.

You pass the Sde Dov airport. (You could fly to the other end of the trail in a little less than an hour, if you were in a hurry).

Another reason for poor signage.

Did the municipality take down this pole, or was it someone looking to make mischief? Or maybe metal thieves, preparing for a night-time pick-up? In any case, where do we go from here? Good thing we brought along the book, because the maps are useless when the turns are so sharp.
On the corner of Levi Eshkol and Tzvi Propes, make a left.

Here's a hint: If you think you should have seen a marking and didn't, try looking in the opposite direction. There was no marking for the left turn, but once we made it, there was a marking on Propes instructing us to make a right onto Eshkol, so we knew we had made the correct turn, considering we were going in the opposite direction. (Did that make any sense?)
Continue past some construction and you'll get to the Tel Baruch parking lot.

In the summer it's full of cars. In the winter, it's full of evidence that Tel Aviv prostitutes practice safe sex. Wear closed shoes.
You're finally off the streets (as are the women who work in the parking lot...).

A few meters on we met a fisherman. He had a net and would stand on the rocks, peering out at the waves, and when he saw what he wanted, throw out his net, gather it up, and bring a catch of fish back to the sand. He'd dump out his catch, throw back the small ones, and his partner would gather the rest into a plastic basket, washing them off in the sea.





Then they moved down the beach a little to start again.




WARNING: The section of beach from Tel Baruch to Cliff Beach is, I gather, an unofficial nude beach. Luckily, we only passed two men taking advantage of the freedom, and The Spouse warned in time about each. Isn't the sea lovely? Shmirat Einayim, enforcing modesty by being careful what you look at: it's a great alternative to forcing your own values on others.

At Cliff Beach we met more fishermen, this time using a more conventional method.


Good-bye, Tel Aviv. Good-bye Herzeliya.


Next stop, Jerusalem!

The specs: Park HaYarkon (Tel Aviv) to Arena Mall (Herzeliya), approximately 10 km
Parking: Free street parking on Ibn Gavirol off Rokach
Return: Dan 90 bus from outside Arena to Alozoroff, just past Ibn Gavirol. Then take the Dan 26 outside Ibn Gavirol 120 to the corner of Ibn Gavirol and Rokach.
Difficulty Level: Very easy. Only potential problem is walking along the beach, for those who have trouble walking on sand.
Potential hazards: Prostitution at Tel Baruch parking lot, nude beach between Tel Baruch and Cliff Beach, jellyfish along the water's edge.