Actress Sharon Fauster emcee'd a Tu B'av fashion show in Jerusalem

Tu B’av – the 15th day of the Jewish month of Av – is the closest Israelis have to a Valentine’s Day: just substitute a bit of ribald wisdom from the rabbis of the Talmud for a martyred Roman saint and a lot of cuddly Cupids. Tu B’av is the number one day for weddings in the Holy Land. It’s also a time for more general frivolity.

This week, the City of Jerusalem pulled out all the stops with a jam-packed evening of joyful Tu B’av events at the German Colony’s Beit Yehudit community and cultural center.

The evening featured a marathon of movies with “love” as a theme; a festive world music dance party put on by the Boogie organization; a provocative lecture entitled “Forbidden Love in the Talmud” by Dr. Micha Friedman; and a special concert of “love songs” by former Friends of Natasha co-founder and front man Micha Shitrit hosted by rocker Erez Lev-Ari.

The most popular event of the evening was the concert. An only-in-Jerusalem mix of secular and religious young adults (my wife Jody joked that we brought the average age of the crowd up by several percent) packed the grass to cheer on Lev-Ari who deftly blends spiritual and physical longing in his atmospheric compositions.

But before the show started, TV star Sharon Fauster, who plays the lovelorn Re’ut in the popular series Srugim about religious singles (in the very neighborhood where the event was taking place), took to the stage to introduce a Tu B’av-inspired “white” fashion show.

According to tradition (and Wikipedia), on Tu B’av, “unmarried girls would dress in simple white clothing (so that rich could not be distinguished from poor) and go out to sing and dance in the vineyards surrounding Jerusalem.” Young men who had not yet married would “go to watch and choose among them wives for themselves.”

Onto an improvised catwalk paraded four models in skimpy miniskirt and strapless ensembles. They preened and strutted, blowing kisses to the crowd and tossing back their heads of ample (and mostly blond) hair.

The audience was less sanguine. Many shifted uncomfortably. You could see some of the religious men (not the women, mind you) look around, avert their eyes and even get up to step out until the show was over. Others lapped it all up – Jerusalem doesn’t see a lot of long legged, high-heeled models strolling the Ben Yehuda Pedestrian Mall (they’d probably get stoned, and not in a Tel Aviv kind of way).

Then a strange thing happened: about half way through, the models started wearing scarves and jackets. The cleavage, which had been so abundant just moments before, was now obscured (although tastefully and still in white, in keeping with the evening’s Tu B’av theme).

Jody and I couldn’t figure it out. Was this part of the show? Or did someone run backstage brandishing fashionable cover-ups? Was this subtle religious coercion, along the lines of the Bridge of Strings debacle, where a pre-teen dance troop was forced to wear sweaters while going through their routines in order not to offend local sensibilities? Or was the point to demonstrate that Jerusalemites could be both sexy and modest at the same time?

Indeed, the scarves and jackets didn’t seem alien – in most cases, they served as nicely matching accessories rather than some hastily improvised capitulation.

We may never know (I’m not on a first name basis with Fauster…yet – I did try to friend her Facebook). So I can only report what I saw from first hand observation – and, oh yes, I stayed firmly in my seat, eyes forward.

I first blogged about this event over at Israelity.

Mugrabi Cinema in its Heyday

When I was hired to record a series of conversations to accompany a course on teaching Hebrew to English speakers, I didn’t know I’d be getting a lesson in Tel Aviv nostalgia.

The project was to edit a 500-page curriculum originally developed to prepare U.S. diplomats posted to Israel. Along with the written text, there were about 200 short snippets of dialogue – ranging from “how are you today?” to “the fish was delicious, may I please have the recipe.”

I brought in nine Israeli men and women to record the voices. That alone was a big part of the overall experience. In my line of work, I don’t meet a lot of native-born young people. Indeed, all of my current clients are Anglos and when I write an article for a publication like Israel 21c, I usually conduct the interview over the phone. So, it was refreshing to get to know the world outside our insular Jerusalem Anglo bubble.

My main voice talent was a genial twenty-something named Dov, recently out of university and unfortunately out of a job, having been downsized when the economy went south. With a deep, rich baritone and superb diction, he was considering a career change to radio.

Our team also included Hallel, a playwriting student with a mostly shaved head whose father once served as the security guard at our son’s kindergarten; a musician named Daniel who heads up a band called Moshe and the Refugees that sounds a little like a mashup between the Doors and Leonard Cohen; Maya, who’s pursuing an M.A. in criminology at Bar Ilan University; Rachel, a professional translator, Hebrew/English editor and hazanit (a female cantor); and Avital who is active in the Gush Etzion “Raise Your Spirits” musical theater ensemble that performs exclusively for women.

Even more fun: the curriculum took us on a trip down memory lane (or perhaps a stroll on our parent’s alleyway of antiquities).

At a key point in the course, Mr. Williams, a U.S. diplomat, is looking for the government tourist office. He is told to head in the direction of the Mugrabi Cinema. None of us had ever heard of the Mugrabi and, despite our all being Jerusalemites, we were pretty sure there was no such theater with that name in Tel Aviv today.

Thank goodness for Google. A quick search and we discovered that the Mugrabi was in fact a key cultural icon. Built in the 1920s, the building served as the home for the Palestine Folk Opera in the 1940s and later became the cinema for which it was most famed. It was designed in a classic Bauhaus style. If you wanted to locate yourself in Tel Aviv, it was always in relation to the Mugrabi.

The theater was, sadly, bulldozed to put up a parking lot in the 1980s (Israeli shades of the Joni Mitchell classic).

There was another reference in the dialogues that was less well known. Adjacent to the Mugrabi was a restaurant called the “Brooklyn Bar” which, according to the text, served banana splits “just like in America.”

I’m sure that – if the course saw fit to put what sounded like a glorified ice cream parlor in the same conversation as its more famous street-mate – it must have been popular with the locals at some point in the recent past. We found one short mention of the Brooklyn Bar online but, unfortunately, no pictures.

Banana splits have been replaced these days by immigrants from Brooklyn as Israel’s main import. But for a few minutes, it was a trip to indulge in this nostalgic blast from the past.

Let’s just hope our Mr. Williams arrived at his destination safely. And that the ice cream lived up to its cross-culturally elevated reputation.

A version of this story originally appeared earlier this year on the Israelity blog.

Must-have knafe

I’ve never eaten it, but I’ve just got to have it. Kanafeh, that is. It’s an Arab pastry somewhat like baklava, but with the addition of soft goats cheese, an orange coating and sprinkled pistachio nuts.

I first learned about kanafeh from a friend who was guiding us through East Jerusalem. He pointed out a bakery near Damascus Gate called Eiffel that he says serves the best kanafeh in town. We were on a tight timetable and weren’t able to stop, but since then I’ve been hankering for a taste.

Our next opportunity came as we were heading up north from Jerusalem for a hike in the Carmel Mountains (see this post on Israelity that I wrote about that tiyul). Our route took us through the Druze village of Daliat el-Carmel and there, on the right side of the street, was a restaurant advertising fresh kanafeh, My taste buds fired up.

But this was a Friday and, unbeknownst to us, that’s prime shopping time and the traffic at noon in Daliat el-Carmel was bumper to bumper. There was no way to pull over, let alone anywhere to park. As we nudged forward, my kanafeh receded sadly into the background.

My search for kanafeh reminded me of another dessert obsessively sought. Back at the height of the mid-2000s donut craze in the U.S., I was traveling on the East Coast with the family. My goal: to find a Krispy Kreme store with the red “hot now” light on, indicating that original glazed donuts were rolling fresh out of the oven.

On highways from Toronto to Cleveland and Chicago, past rest stops and strip malls, the Krispy Kreme proved elusive until the last day of our road trip. Unlike with the kanafeh, my love for Mr. Krispy was ultimately requited. And it was worth it.

On the way out of the Carmel, we skipped the Daliat traffic, but also our opportunity to pick up some kanafeh for the ride home. Still, it’s only a matter of time before I find the time to head back to the Old City. I just hope that after all the anticipation, I actually like it!

My search for knafeh in print began on the Israelity blog.

Map to the festival. Take the green route

Run, no sprint to the Light in Jerusalem festival, which is closing tonight – in just a few hours! – after a successful seven day run. The event consists of tens of creative, playful and often awe inspiring light installations from internationally renowned “light artists,” displayed and often tightly integrated into the fabric of Jerusalem Old City – walls, windows sometimes entire sides of synagogues.

Last year, some 250,000 visitors from all over Israel attended, as did our family. While there were small klatches of overseas tourists, most of the participants wandering the Old City this week seemed to be part of large boisterous tour guide-led groups of Hebrew-speakers for whom, by the looks on their faces, this was their first time in the Old City perhaps since childhood.

Indeed, the winding alleyways of the Old City seemed even more packed than last year. Particularly in the Jewish Quarter, you often had to queue up just to pass through a particularly narrow arch.

We got a tip from a friend on Facebook – thanks Arlene! – which I want to pass on to you here. Avoid the crowds and take the green route which starts Kikar Zahal (the intersection of the Old City and Jaffa Street) and meanders into East Jerusalem. There are far fewer visitors and the installations are truly fabulous.

Two in particular stood out. In “What do trees do at night?” by artist Joseph Meir Jimmy, a large oak tree set against the Old City walls comes to life via clever projections of images, animation and an accompanying soundtrack. The tree, with wonderfully expressive cartoon eyes, was beset upon by birds, children and scorpions, while transitioning through rain and snow. When the lights went off, it was hard to believe we were looking at just a plain tree and a wall.

Zedekiah’s Cave (Solomon’s Quarry) is an enormous underground cavern, where rocks were mined to build the First Temple. For the festival, it was turned into a aquarium-like environment created by Eran Klein and Eli Kochavi. Phosphorescent blue lights lit the way through the cave towards a light installation simulating fish swimming through water while soothing new age music played. It was truly magical.

What was particularly unique was the fact that many of the light shows were built specifically for the locations. The images projected on Damascus Gate, for example, used the shapes and turrets of the gate to weave its tale. It wouldn’t have worked anywhere else.

There’s lots more to see – tall illuminated rods depciting green grass at Jaffa Gate; a history of the Old City projected onto the newly reconstructed Hurva Synagogue.

The festival runs tonight from sunset until midnight. There’s inexpensive parking in the City Hall (Kikar Safra) parking lot (that’s the closest to the green route). as well as the Mamilla and Karta lots with free buses from the farther flung Ammunition Hill and Old Train Station parking locations. Or take the bus. Just don’t miss it.  More information from the festival’s website.

This review of the show appeared earlier in the day on the Israelity website.

Outside the Jelly Belly factory

I have to confess up front: I have never been a fan of jelly beans. But after a visit last summer to the very center of jelly bean heaven – the Jelly Belly factory in California, where I saw how the pint-sized multicolored candies are concocted – now I’m totally disgusted.

Ironically, if we hadn’t been Israeli, the whole travesty might never even have happened.

We were visiting my mom in Northern California. Google Maps said that it should take us an hour and 15 minutes to drive to the factory. But Google didn’t count on Friday afternoon traffic. About 10 minutes before our destination, the road slowed to a near standstill.

We still had 45 minutes left until the factory closed. How bad could this jam be? Pretty bad, it turned out.

When we finally got to the Jelly Belly factory, it was half an hour after the last tour left.

My wife, Jody, jumped out of the car and raced straight inside, while I looked for a parking space. She told the man at the desk our story and asked if we could join the last tour in progress.

“No, that’s not possible,” John, the floor manager, told Jody. “But I can give you a hat!” It was little consolation for a two-and-a-half-hour drive. Never one to give up, Jody tried a different tactic.

“We’ve just come 27 hours from Israel,” she said, stretching the chronology a bit. “I’m sure you can find a guide free now who could give us a private tour.”

Such chutzpa. It was akin to cutting into a line in the supermarket and announcing, “I was after her.” After 15 years in the Middle East, we must have integrated into Israeli society!

John, however, looked quite flustered. This wasn’t the way the locals talk. He turned to his assistant nervously. “Is Arthur around?” he asked. He was. “OK, run them through. But fast.”

That was good enough for us. We donned our complementary Jelly Belly hats, looking like a troop of confectionery Popeyes. Walking at breakneck speed, Arthur pointed out the sorting machines, the polishing devices, the enormous dryers and the robots that reject the duds and stamp the ubiquitous Jelly Belly label on freshly minted beans.

We learned that Jelly Belly was started in 1976 and that the company produces some 34 million pounds of product a year. Former US president Ronald Reagan was a fan and Jelly Bellies even found their way into outer space, stowing away on the 1983 Challenger shuttle as an astro-surprise.

All good fun. But there was a dark side. Arthur proudly gestured to several large vats of chemicals containing languid pools of artificial coloring and sweeteners. I recoiled.

I know that the fast-food industry is riddled with less-than-edible additives, but seeing barrels of the stuff before our very eyes made me loath to even touch a chemically altered treat. They look so innocent. What a cynical bait and switch.

Jelly Belly positions itself as a maker of “gourmet” jelly beans. Downstairs in the store, 50 “official” flavors beckoned with their cheerful monikers: Marshmallow, Dr. Pepper, Bubble Gum, Cantaloupe, Very Cherry, Chocolate Pudding and many more.

Jelly Belly also offers some truly atrocious flavors – clearly intended to gross out even your five-year-old neighbors. The offending flavors were all tricked up – perhaps in homage to “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans” in the Harry Potter books – to look exactly like the legitimate Belly variety.

• “Barf” looked like peach.
• “Booger” was the same color as juicy pear.
• Caramel corn corresponded with “moldy cheese.”
• And last on the list: “rotten egg” masquerading as buttered popcorn.

Despite my consternation, Jelly Belly continues to expand its global reach. Last year, the company opened its first “concept store” in Israel in Herzliya’s Cinema City mall. And for those of you concerned about kashrut, Jelly Belly recently upgraded its rabbinical supervision.

That’s right, vomit flavored beans are now officially OU. Ingest at your own risk.

This article originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post.

My wife Jody and I ran the 10K in the Jerusalem Half Marathon last week. I’ve been running 3-4 times a week for over a decade already, but never in a competitive race. We didn’t come in first, but we were satisfied with a respectable time of an hour and six minutes.

We arrived at the athletic stadium at Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus at 9:00 AM, picked up our number plates (see my picture), our plastic shoe dongles (to electronically read our finishing time) and a couple of free granola bars, before sitting back to survey the scene.

There must have been close to 3,000 participants for both the 10K and the full half marathon (26 kilometers). Some were practicing loops around the track, others milling around in their spandex shorts and tops. There was a preponderance of good looks and buffed bodies.

I imagine this must be what the pre-race environment looks like at any competition around the world. But there were a few uniquely Israeli elements, too.

The first was a group of runners for charity, raising money for Shalva, the Association for Mentally and Physically Challenged Children in Israel. The fundraisers, decked out in white t-shirts with the Shalva insignia, were surrounded by kids from the program, some of whom played percussion in a small band crooning Israeli pop songs.

Music was another reminder of where we were. It seems that every event or ceremony in Israel is infused by Shlomo Artzi classics. At our son’s swearing in ceremony for the army last year, it was “Uf Gozal” – “Fly Little One” (see my post here). Today, “Kmo Az (“Like Then” – lyrics here).

Then there were the soldiers: hundreds of them, many decked out in full uniform which they peeled off prior to running, laying their rifles carefully next to their kitbags on the bleachers.

At just before 10:00 AM, we lined up at the starting line, adrenaline pumping. I had been warned not to run too fast at the start, despite the excitement of the crowd. Jody and I were about two-thirds of the way back and, when the countdown reached one, we were quickly overtaken by speedier competitors from behind.

I kept to the recommendation though, gliding down the hill towards Nayot without overexerting myself. As the route neared the Gan Sacher park, I heard a loud whooping noise coming from behind me. A sea of red was approaching.

It was a group of hundreds of army paratroopers running, playing, kibitzing. They had bottles of water, which they rained on their compatriots. I had no choice but to stand aside and let them pass. As they did, I saw the words on the backs of their t’s – “Achrei” – “Follow Me.”

At about the halfway mark I decided this slow and steady approach was not serving me well. Jody was already way ahead. We were headed up a hill from the park to the Israel Museum. I do particularly well on hills. I ratcheted up my speed and started passing runners who were temporarily walking as they trudged along. It felt good.

Before long, I could see Jody up ahead. I ran faster, reaching her, giving her a grin before sprinting forward. But my energy wasn’t endless, and we eventually ran side-by-side, actually holding hands as we crossed the finish line some 20 minutes later.

Sweat dripping on this warm spring morning, we felt a profound sense of accomplishment as we picked up our complementary popsicles and commemorative medals. Nearby, the parachutists were on the ground, doing push ups, still whooping and having a grand time.

For me, the marathon has a special significance. A year ago, I was in California for my father’s funeral while the race was taking place back home. He had died very quickly after being diagnosed with lymphoma less than three weeks earlier. I had still been training for the race only days before I hopped on the plane.

My father had polio as a child and was confined to a wheelchair in his later years. As I ran the 10K, I imagined he would have been proud of me for taking on such a challenge. It was nevertheless a bittersweet triumph, a sad reminder of a painful milestone.

Will we be back at the Jerusalem marathon next year? We certainly hope so. Or maybe even before that. The Tel Aviv Marathon is coming up May 14. See you there?

(I posted about the marathon first last week on the Israelity blog.)

Have you ever tried to go off chocolate? I can tell you from first hand experience, it’s no mean feat.

My banning of chocolate has to do with a book I’m reading called Insomniac by Gayle Green. The author, like me, suffers from chronic insomnia and, as with anyone who is sleep starved, she has researched every angle and suggestion for ways to relieve her nightly distress.

One of those potential remedies is eliminating caffeine entirely from your body. Some people, Green writes, are so sensitive to caffeine that even a small hit in the morning can keep you up at bedtime. That’s in part because it takes up to 12 hours for caffeine to get out of the body. So if you have something with caffeine at 10:00 AM, it’s still with you before retiring.

Now, I’m not a coffee drinker but I do love my chocolate and the latter contains caffeine (although not in the same dosage as a cup of java). Throughout the day, you can catch me sneaking a piece at, both as a pick me up and as a way to satisfy my sweet tooth.

Could chocolate be contributing to my insomnia, I wondered?

Avoiding chocolate in our sugarcoated society is tough. The kids prefer chocolate in their cookies, ice cream and even pancakes (a monstrous defamation of the pure butter and syrup goodness I grew up with). Visit the local bakery and it’s chocolate this and chocolate that. And don’t even get me started about the predilection for chocolate filling in hamantaschen at Purim (whatever happened to old fashioned poppy seed?)

The irony of going cold turkey on chocolate is not lost on me: as an insomniac, a frothy ice coffee at Aroma or Café Hillel serves as a great pick me up on a particularly groggy day. And what’s Shabbat without rugelach from Marzipan?

Still, I’m doing pretty well, all things considered. I managed to get through this past Shabbat dessert by buying my own baklava, which is intensely sweet, drenched in syrup and stuffed with nuts…but no chocolate. For snacks during the week, I’ve taken to popping granola bars and dried fruit. Guests this weekend even brought almond cookies (delicious and gluten free to boot).

The bottom line, though, is: is it helping? For the first couple of weeks, I saw no noticeable difference in my sleep. By the third week, my sleep seemed slightly improved. I got through several nights without a second sleeping pill – that doesn’t make me meds-free, but perhaps it’s a start.

I’m going to keep at it. I look at it as a kind of challenge – like keeping kosher in California (where we lived before moving to Israel 15 years ago). And if it helps me sleep even an hour more, that would be an achievement worth sacrificing for. Chocoholics – I am no longer a member of your tribe.

I first shared my chocolate withdrawal tale on the Israelity blog.

During last week’s Purim celebrations, I began to feel my age. Not the Megillah reading – you can appreciate that no matter how old you are (especially if you’re hard of hearing…helps drown out the din of the groggers). No, it was the party afterward.

Every year, my wife Jody and I go dancing at the massive Boogie Purim Party at Jerusalem’s Binyamei Hauma. Boogie is a twice-monthly free form, world music dance extravaganza held at the ICCC in the capital’s German Colony. It’s notable for its eclectic mix of music from around the world. In any given set, the DJ is likely to verve from Motown to Egyptian pop to psychedelic Israeli trance. I’ve written about Boogie several times before here on the blog.

The crowd is equally non-conformist, with all ages grooving to the alternative beat, whirling around without any whiff of the performance anxiety one might have at a trendy Tel Aviv disco.

On Purim, Boogie attracts several thousand revelers from all over the country and books well-known world music bands. This year, the evening’s highlight was the Madboojah Project, a ethnic electronic ensemble formed by Shlomi Avratz and Udi Ben Knaan, the latter of whom is a member of the popular “Sheva” group. The band’s trademark tune, with bagpipe and didgeridoo, sounds a little like a Scottish brogue hopped up on Ecstasy and laced with Hebrew rap.

Unfortunately, Madboojah wasn’t scheduled to perform until 2:00 AM, a time when I’m usually well into a much demanded round of REM sleep. But still, it was Boogie. And it was Purim.

Maybe if we could convince some friends to join us, we could justify the late hour, I thought. Renee was game, but her husband’s back had gone out. Other friends were concerned about waking up in time for the next morning’s second Megillah reading. Party poopers.

The thing is, I still feel like a teenager inside. My body may be pushing 50, but I see no reason to act any older than 16 (although my teenager daughter will emphatically insist that I was never 16 like her).

In the end, we nixed going out dancing this year and instead nestled in front of the TV and watched a double-header of the Israeli series Srugim (no spoilers, but Nati is still a pig). As for Madboojah – I’m sure they’ll be back in town, playing a local club sometime soon. Maybe even at a reasonable hour for us old fogies who still like to boogie.

This article also appeared on the Israelity blog.

I really hate the rain. And these past few days have been tough ones for the anti-rain parade. Oh, I know it’s good for us and the country desperately needs to refill its reservoirs. I just wish we could get all our rainfall at night, when I’m sleeping.

Getting caught in a daytime downpour is one of my most dreaded activities. It’s cold, my glasses get pelted so I can barely see, and I’m always afraid that sloshing through puddles will ruin my shoes.

Now, my wife Jody and I are regular exercisers. Our main workout is running – we head to the streets 3-4 times a week, on several different circuits in southern Jerusalem. Our favorite is along the Sherover and Goldman Promenades, overlooking the Old City. We also run up to the Ramat Rachel kibbutz and back, and through the German Colony.

Sunday morning, the skies looked ominous, but at 9:00 AM, the ground was dry. We decided to chance it. Strapping on our iPods, we headed out on the closest route to home towards the Old Katamon neighborhood.

About five minutes into our run, we felt a few drops from above but not enough to turn back. I can deal with a light drizzle as long as it stops and starts. Which is exactly what it was doing. So far so good.

10 minutes into the run, the rain started coming down harder. We were in San Simon Park and ducked under a tree until the rain lightened up. Then we were off again.

As we turned back onto Kovshei Katamon Street, the skies opened up big time. There was a bus stop across the street. We dashed between oncoming vehicles where we took shelter to wait it out.

Only this time, the rain didn’t abate – it intensified. The streets began to fill up. It’s amazing how quickly water can come cascading down a slight hill in the midst of Israeli city. It was easy to imagine how a flash flood could appear out of nowhere in the desert.

As the gullies deepened, the splashes from nearby cars loomed closer. When a truck rumbled by, it soaked us from head to toe. We knew it was time to head home…regardless of the weather.

For the next five minutes, we sprinted through the streets as if wading in a freezing swimming pool. We were up to our ankles in a gray and brown Jerusalem liquid mix. Since I was running blind (the glasses thing, remember?), if there had been a pothole, I would have been a goner.

We made it home and our teenager daughter laid out large beach towels at the door to mop up our mess.

All I wanted at that point was a nice hot shower. I threw myself under the water, only to realize too late that there had not been enough sun that morning to power the solar heater and we had neglected to turn on the electric timer.

Sitting in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea, Jody tried to lighten the mood, pushing a more optimistic agenda. After today, she said, it couldn’t possibly get any worse.

That’s when we heard the drip-drop of the rain again. We looked up. It was coming through the roof.

Did I mention I hate the rain?

My wife left me this week. Don’t worry – it’s nothing serious. Jody is participating in a week long meditation retreat at Kibbutz Hanaton in the Galilee. That means I’m home alone with the kids (not a problem) but also alone in the kitchen (bigger problem).

I have never been much of a whiz as a cook. I can stick a sandwich in the “toast” machine and I’ve been known to whip up an omelet under distress. My saving grace is my Shabbat cholent, which is reputed to be the best in Baka.

So Jody had lovingly bought exactly the right ingredients for the list of meals she’d prepared in advance. Nice wife, huh?

But for our first meal alone, when I opened up the fridge, it was nearly bare. Jody believes in the Japanese model of “just in time” delivery. If she’d specified one salad for the week, then there was only enough lettuce, cucumber and tomato for that.

This model is great for saving cash (Jody’s specialty in her work as a financial coach: why stock your pantry to the brim like some kind of second supermarket, she advises her clients, when you could leave that money in the bank where it can keep working for you).

But the kids wanted more than one day’s salad, no broccoli, plus we were already out of bananas.

I decided to call Jody on her cell phone. She could advise me on where to find the freshest vegetables that wouldn’t take too substantial a bite out of my wallet (note to self: not Super Moshava on Emek Refaim) or she could recommend an alternative recipe from our food bible Kosher by Design: Short on Time. But it was to no avail.

You see, Jody was on a silent meditation retreat. Seven days of no talking. She had showed me the schedule. The wake up gong sounds at 5:30 AM. First sitting is at 6:00 AM, followed by morning prayers and a meal eaten in complete silence – you’re not even supposed to look your dining partner in the eye.

Then more meditation, more meals, more prayer until 9:30 PM when it’s lights out and the whole process starts over again.

The silent part also applies to cell phones. Fine, I could always SMS, right? Wrong. The retreat leader had advised participants to turn of their phones completely for the duration of their time away.

That seemed a bit obsessive to me. Even when Jody and I have gone away to far-flung places like India and Egypt, our cell phones have always been on for emergencies. This was like going back to the 1970s when using a payphone was considered a extreme sport.

But I suppose it will be a good experience. Kind of like one of those wilderness challenges where you hike for a month and have to fend on your own, eating berries and hunting bunnies. The kids and I will tough it out. Learn how to cook soup. Even follow recipes with more than three steps.

Or we could forget about the missing cucumbers and order a week’s worth of falafel and pizza. You know, that actually sounds pretty good…just don’t tell Jody!

A slightly shorter version of this article originally appeared on the Israelity blog.