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Rehovot Purim 2006
"Last Sunday, we awoke at 8:15 am to music blaring from the school a half-block away. (Pity our friends, and all the retired profs in Tenure Tower, who live next door to the school.) This continued for fifteen minutes.
I'm a big fan of music in school (and especially over the PA during passing periods), but this was egregious. I don't do forced merriment; not before 10 am, anyway.
"It must be Purim," J. mumbled.
Sure enough, a stroll around Rehovot, later, proved him right. On campus, proud babushkas jockeyed for prime sidewalk positions to show off their costumed grandchildren: I stepped into the grass to let a tiger in a striped daysuit pad by with a three-year-old mermaid who was shuffling along slowly, glancing dolefully at her tail, which wagged behind her Keds.
Americans have Halloween and Mardi Gras; Brazilians and Italians have the Carnival/Carnevale. Israelis have Purim and Adloyada parades.
Near Pinsker Gate, I stopped to stare at a highschooler walking home from school for lunch in the most ingenious costume I've ever seen, here. From the waist down, she was a Hawaiian hula dancer, with palm-frond skirt and flip-flops with plastic hibiscus flowers.
Waist up, she wore a suit coat, collared shirt, beard, round glasses, and a hat. She looked like the most reformed rabbi in town.
I met J. for lunch at Hummus Weizmann, to whose hummus and falafel we have become addicted. (Never again will we have to eat industrial hummus, now that we know they sell hummus by 100 grams, for takeout.) We sat outside and watched more highschoolers trickle home from school, dressed outrageously and devouring the attention their costumes earned them on Herzl. The most shocking costumes involved some combination of a miniskirt, wings, tiara, and teetery shoes.
Purim itself was on Monday, and stretched far into the night, for some: the emphasis on drinking, on this holiday (and the cautions against it), rival the traditions surrounding New Year's, in the U.S.
This afternoon, the main street of town was much more quiet: Benny's Cafe, which is usually packed during the day with old men only, was open but empty; the gelato place was just beginning to put out its tables; and next door, at the blue-collar cafe, two guys filled out a Lotto card, while a girl with an absent look stared at the bus stop and munched on a bureka.
The fertility festival on the grassy space outside Cafe Mada'a is really the only action of any kind in Rehovot on a Saturday afternoon. Dozens of young couples with babies and kids are scattered across the lawns, playing catch, running around, or relaxing on blankets. There are so many different makes and models of strollers that it looks like a dealers' convention.
If you're between the ages of 21 and 35, and you walk by without evidence of children or children in the near future, you get looks of pity. Every woman I know here who is my age is pregnant.
To say this is strange would be a gross understatement.
With one exception, none of my friends from college, grad school, or teaching is pregnant or has kids. There was no cultural pressure to have kids. Here, the cultural pressure (including secular culture) is huge, comparatively.
Is it just Israel? Is it not being in a group of like-minded, feminist women? Is it being outside the U.S., where--say what you will--feminism isn't regarded as the territory of far-left-wing bluestockings?
Don't get me wrong: I like kids. But this place is obsessed with them, in a weird fairy-taleish sort of way that eventually casts its spell on nearly every woman of childbearing age who lands in the country.
Except me. The only use I would have for a stroller, at the moment, is if I wanted to cart a manuscript from one part of town to another.
Cootchy-cootchy-coo!
Hmph."
Source: Erin Israel. Say It in Hebrew! #1255. "Ha-ma-kha-LAYTS." "The corkscrew." Rehovot.blogspot.com (17 March 2006) [FullText]
I'm a big fan of music in school (and especially over the PA during passing periods), but this was egregious. I don't do forced merriment; not before 10 am, anyway.
"It must be Purim," J. mumbled.
Sure enough, a stroll around Rehovot, later, proved him right. On campus, proud babushkas jockeyed for prime sidewalk positions to show off their costumed grandchildren: I stepped into the grass to let a tiger in a striped daysuit pad by with a three-year-old mermaid who was shuffling along slowly, glancing dolefully at her tail, which wagged behind her Keds.
Americans have Halloween and Mardi Gras; Brazilians and Italians have the Carnival/Carnevale. Israelis have Purim and Adloyada parades.
Near Pinsker Gate, I stopped to stare at a highschooler walking home from school for lunch in the most ingenious costume I've ever seen, here. From the waist down, she was a Hawaiian hula dancer, with palm-frond skirt and flip-flops with plastic hibiscus flowers.
Waist up, she wore a suit coat, collared shirt, beard, round glasses, and a hat. She looked like the most reformed rabbi in town.
I met J. for lunch at Hummus Weizmann, to whose hummus and falafel we have become addicted. (Never again will we have to eat industrial hummus, now that we know they sell hummus by 100 grams, for takeout.) We sat outside and watched more highschoolers trickle home from school, dressed outrageously and devouring the attention their costumes earned them on Herzl. The most shocking costumes involved some combination of a miniskirt, wings, tiara, and teetery shoes.
Purim itself was on Monday, and stretched far into the night, for some: the emphasis on drinking, on this holiday (and the cautions against it), rival the traditions surrounding New Year's, in the U.S.
This afternoon, the main street of town was much more quiet: Benny's Cafe, which is usually packed during the day with old men only, was open but empty; the gelato place was just beginning to put out its tables; and next door, at the blue-collar cafe, two guys filled out a Lotto card, while a girl with an absent look stared at the bus stop and munched on a bureka.
The fertility festival on the grassy space outside Cafe Mada'a is really the only action of any kind in Rehovot on a Saturday afternoon. Dozens of young couples with babies and kids are scattered across the lawns, playing catch, running around, or relaxing on blankets. There are so many different makes and models of strollers that it looks like a dealers' convention.
If you're between the ages of 21 and 35, and you walk by without evidence of children or children in the near future, you get looks of pity. Every woman I know here who is my age is pregnant.
To say this is strange would be a gross understatement.
With one exception, none of my friends from college, grad school, or teaching is pregnant or has kids. There was no cultural pressure to have kids. Here, the cultural pressure (including secular culture) is huge, comparatively.
Is it just Israel? Is it not being in a group of like-minded, feminist women? Is it being outside the U.S., where--say what you will--feminism isn't regarded as the territory of far-left-wing bluestockings?
Don't get me wrong: I like kids. But this place is obsessed with them, in a weird fairy-taleish sort of way that eventually casts its spell on nearly every woman of childbearing age who lands in the country.
Except me. The only use I would have for a stroller, at the moment, is if I wanted to cart a manuscript from one part of town to another.
Cootchy-cootchy-coo!
Hmph."
Source: Erin Israel. Say It in Hebrew! #1255. "Ha-ma-kha-LAYTS." "The corkscrew." Rehovot.blogspot.com (17 March 2006) [FullText]
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