Hello Everyone,
It is now just past 11pm and Leah has hit the roof. Well, she’s
gone to the roof. In fact, lots of people have gone to the roof. Our
upstairs neighbour is hosting a “Gra” Shule function.
The Gra is putting on an evening for all of the new people in town.
Actually, most shules are doing something to welcome the new people.
It’s rather nice. But I am here looking after the kids. Well,
they’re actually mucking around in bed and I’m pretending
not to notice. They all had a really long shluf this afternoon so
I’m not surprised that they are still up. They’ll drop
off in a few minutes, I hope!
This Shabbos was spent at home and, oh, what a machaye - we were able
to cook food properly in our new oven! Yes, it arrived. Sort of. I
threatened to tell you the story, so here it is...You go to a shop
and order an oven. OK, so it’s from Turkey so you expect a little
delay. A few weeks later you are notified that the oven is in the
factory in Turkey being assembled. Subsequent updates had the oven
en-route to Israel, in Ashkelon (or was it Ashdod?), en-route to Jerusalem,
in a warehouse somewhere in or around Jerusalem - and then I got the
phone call from the shop, “Would you like the oven on Monday
or Tuesday?” Mmm, this is interesting, I get a choice. So I
chose Monday. “OK. It will arrive some time on Monday”.
Do they know approximately when, morning or afternoon, I wonder. “No.
Just Monday”. OK so Leah is home anyway and it will probably
come in the afternoon, by the time they drive it here from Jerusalem.
So Sunday comes and I get a phone call from the delivery guy. “I’m
going to deliver your oven on Tuesday”. So much for the choice.
At this point I am amused because I sort of expected something like
this. “Morning of afternoon?” I ask. He doesn’t
know. Again I figure afternoon. He tells me that he’ll call
an hour before on my mobile to let me know that he is on his way so
that I can make sure that someone’s home. B’seder.
Tuesday arrives and so does the delivery guy at around 1pm. No phone
call. No warning. We paid him and he left. Yippee. We can cook. Of
course the delivery guy doesn’t even take the thing out of it’s
box. He is the delivery guy. If you want it installed, you have to
order a special installation guy (who is probably the same guy as
the delivery guy, with a different badge). So I open the instructions
to see how to plug this thing in. I was pleasantly surprised that
the instructions were in Hebrew. I was sort of hoping that they’d
be in Turkish because it then would have been funnier.
So I plug in the power-cord to the power-point. I’ve done stuff
like this before, piece of cake. Right? Mmm. It looks like they forgot
to include the hose to attach the gas. There are fourteen “help”
numbers listed on the instruction manual. I pick one that says “Jerusalem”
next to it, although it has a Tel Aviv area code. No, they don’t
include a gas hose. Imagine that. A gas oven all the way from Turkey
and they don’t even include a hose to attach it to the gas pipe.
So no hot food until tomorrow. It’s the nine days anyway so
we weren’t eating meat so it really made little difference.
The next day I pick up a gas hose from the hardware store and attached
it. Beautiful.
Now we’re cooking with gas. Ahh, the simple pleasures of roast
chicken on Shabbos...The best thing about this oven is that it has
a built in Shabbos blech. You flick a switch and the floor of the
lower oven heats at a constant temperature, just like a blech. But
how do you get it going? The instructions don’t say (maybe they
left it off the Hebrew instructions and they are only on the Turkish
version?) So we get our neighbour across the hall to come and fiddle
with it. She goes back to her place to call a friend who has this
type of oven and while she is gone I figure it out. No problem. Hot
food all Shabbos long - like a dream come true. If we could only figure
out the self-cleaning function...(if only!)
I was also going to tell you about Tisha B’Av. I fasted exceptionally
well. Maybe it was because I was in shule for the first half of the
day and Leah made a brilliant kid-swapping arrangement with our upstairs
neighbours so that we could all rest at some point during the day.
The shule wasn’t set up at all, like they do at the Torah Center.
No low benches or anything. Everyone just brought their own low stool,
pillow or cushion. One guy brought a fancy shmancy looking Ottoman.
I wonder if his wife knew that he was taking it to a car-park shule?!
Another guy brought a reclining beach chair. I sat on a step. I have
a low stool that Leah and the kids use as a step to reach higher cupboards.
I forgot to bring it in the morning, but my good wife delivered it
personally to me, just as I was loosing feeling in the lower half
of my body. What a difference a piece of molded plastic can make!
The kinnos in the morning were recited in a similar fashion to Merkaz
HaTorah. The Rabbi begun by explaining the first kinnah before we
recited it. Then other members of the kehilla stood up to give quite
detailed descriptions and explanations of each kinnah before we recited
them. I was taken aback by the level of knowledge in the shule. Most
people in the shule are working people, rather than learning people,
but they seem to know so much. It was great. I learned a lot and got
a lot out of the kinnos. And it was air-conditioned. Unfortunately
there was no kiddush following Tisha B'’v to break the fast,
but home wasn’t too far away. Leah and I ate cinnamon cake (bought)
and drank ice-cold milk. Divine. We wouldn’t let the kids have
any cake - why should they eat it? They ate all day! Leah survived
Tisha B’Av well and I rang Leah S after the fast and she and
Ben also were OK.
Anton just left. He was here for Shabbos, making use of the spare
room (Rafi, I hope you don’t mind that Anton used your room!)
He is well and happy and zipping all over the country from Jerusalem
to Tzefat, Meron and everywhere in between. The kids love having him
over and the zemiros on Shabbos were great. Anton found a chassidishe
shule down the road from us (one of these “shules in a basement”
- I daven in a car-park, so who am I to talk?!)