skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Israelis apparently call chicken thighs 'triangles'.This is so even if the fillet piece is not separated from the bone piece.Recipes for triangles include some where you wrap the chicken thigh and spices in foil and some (see image) where you take the fillet out of the thigh and cook it separately and some where you make a triangle out of basically a thick chicken stew covered with dough. We had chicken triangles when my daughter (from Israel) was visiting us.
My daughter has a neighbor. She was leaving Israel on a trip to visit us and wanted to give him some potatoes. He said,
"What do I do with these?"
My daughter said,
"Well you could cook them and eat them."
"Too difficult." said the neighbor.
Apparently one reason Israel has so many restaurants is because of people like my daughter's neighbor.
My daughter's blog calls being proudly secular being a heathen (see here and here). She has observed that unlike in the United States, a proudly secular Jew who is invited somewhere for the sabbath will not willingly don a skullcap.
In our house we have a drawer near the dining table and it has a dozen or so skullcaps (aka yarmulke, kipah) and whenever we invite a Jew over for a meal, if they don't have a skullcap on, they ask for one.
Apparently it is not like that in Israel. The secular Jews feel no need to conform to religious normalistic practice.
The image on the upper left is of a fictional character who was with the IDF and a commando and who wanted to be a hairdresser.
Yes, Israelis like multitasking and they like people to know they are multitasking.
The chart at the left shows that engineers are more productive with two tasks than one but then, they get less productive with each additional task (I have no idea if this is correct but its what the chart shows).
Today, I was in the steam room at the Jewish Community Center. There was a fellow there basking in the steam and also shaving (without a mirror). It turns out he is an Israeli and learned to shave without a mirror in the IDF. From what I can tell, Israelis like to have two or more conversations at a time (sometime using two different cell phones), they like to attend more than one synagogue, they have more than one favorite hang out, etc.
Israelis not only complain if food isn't cooked, prepared and displayed to their standards, they will frequently tell you exactly how the problem occurred and how it should be corrected.
Take Couscous for example (as Rodney D might add, "please").
Apparently, many Israelis consider commercial couscous to be improperly made. In their opinion, after the tiny little pasta kernels have been made out of durum wheat, they have to be steamed correctly.
In commercial couscous, the steaming is done in megabatches with the couscous placed several feet above boiling water. In "real" couscous, the steaming is done with the couscous placed several inches above soup or stew or the equivalent. I think the image to the left was of a dish that used commercial couscous.
In addition, in commercial couscous, the tiny pasta is white as the durum flour is bleached, in "real" couscous, the tiny pasta is yellow.
Below is a quote from a couscous snob,"
Considered the national dish of Morocco, I have never failed to indulge on couscous on any of my trips there. Artfully displayed and decoratively presented with pride, it is always a memorable experience. Fluffy, tender, light as a feather and as loose as a bowlful of the tiniest pearls, this pasta steamed over an aromatic-spicy stew of meat and vegetables or just vegetables is suburb. If you have ever experienced real couscous, reaching for the instant stuff on a shop shelf is unthinkable. As inexcusable and unthinkable as using Uncle-whats-his-name plastic pellets called instant rice."
The quote is from here.
Back during the days of nearly weekly suicide bombings (for example in 2002), Americans would make mass calls to Israelis with 'are you OK?' phone calls after each bombing.
This would annoy Israelis, especially those who lived pretty far from the bombings and who resent the implication that Israel is dangerous.
This week, there was a major Metro train wreck in DC with nine people killed and many injured. A lot of us residents of greater Washington D.C. have received phone calls or emails from friends and relatives in Israel asking us, "are you OK?".
A very high percentage of Israelis go into the army or otherwise do some national service. The Israeli army service produces lifetime friendships to an extent greater than that of other countries. This is possibly because of the intensity of the operations (you tend to remember someone who saved you life or got you out of a life threatening situation).
Army friends then do stuff together after the army. One thing they do together is start businesses or business lines within an existing business and then recruit their friends.
Israeli men in the army like younger women (age 18-24) so slightly older women don't generally go in the army. However the women that do go into the army become 'buddies' also. How much intimacy is involved is anyone's guess.
Israelis live in a cafe society and they seem to like it. What does this mean?
Well, what happens is that Israelis see each other on the street and decide to talk and they go to a nearby cafe (and the key here is that there is frequently a nearby cafe) and sit and order stuff and talk. Or they call each other up and decide to meet at a cafe which suits the type of conversation they expect to have. There up upscale cafes. There are downhome cafes. There are cafes in the middle of retail areas. There are cafes in the middle of commercial areas. There are cafes and cafes and cafes. The one in the image is Cafe B'Gini on Bethlehem street in Jerusalem.
There are hundreds of music traditions among Israelis. The ones with the highest number of devotees are probably the western classical tradition and the arabic tradition. But in recent years many streams of western music have made it into the culture (rock, R&B, C&W, Bluegrass, folk-rock, Rap) and of course immigrants from dozens of countries have their own traditions.
This is in a country of only 7 million people.
As a result, when Israelis get together to form a band, it is inevitable that some of the members will have different musical traditions than others. Thus, almost every musical performance you might see in Israel (except for purely Western classical), is a type of fusion.
A few days after this post (May 22), the local Jewish weekly had a story about local fusion music. The implication of the story is that fusion is becoming the latest thing. A particular group ( the Andy Statman Trio) which fuses klezmer and bluegrass was featured. Perhaps the Israelis were the 'early adapters' in this case.
Gaming the system is not just an Israeli passion, not just an Israeli activity but more like an Israeli necessity. This is because prices are out of alignment with salaries.
Of course, the people realize this and, of necessity they relish each triumph over "the system".
For example, teachers get a deep, deep discount in purchasing software as part of their 'benefits'. This 'benefit' justifies rather low salaries. The teachers thus have an incentive to find people other than themselves who need software, then buy the software at the discount price and resell it to other people at about the average of the discount and retail (plus tax) price.
How many people do this? Well, its best to take a 'don't ask, don't tell' take on this.
During the end of the week there is a scramble nationwide as people invite each other to Sabbath meals - generally you don't have to go to synagogue to get invited and you don't have to be observant or even be a believer. If you were single in Israel and were reasonably sociable, you could count on being invited out to two meals every single week (of course you would be expected to occasionally bring dessert or wine). This makes Israel similar to a Baptist's idea of Heaven (a Baptist told me once that to get into Baptist heaven you don't have to believe in anything but you can't get in without bringing a covered dish).
The last supper (note the Leonardo da Vinci painting by that name) may have been a Sabbath dinner (or may have been a Passover dinner).
Israelis may not say they like living on overdraft but many of them do. So many in fact that I'm going to assume they actually like it. My daughter had to go to the bank one day for something and noticed that some people in the bank that day seemed to be doing something related to overdrafting or at least talking about it (if they were doing something it would be either modifying an overdraft agreement or making payment under overdraft terms, etc.)
Obviously people in other countries live on overdraft also. There are things that make Israelis a bit more prone to this.
1. Disincentives to save. There are a few of these, for example the very high down payment needed to buy a house discourages young people from aspiring to this and thus discourages savings.
2. Loss leader overdraft protection fees. Most countries have high penalties for use of overdraft. I think that in Israel, some banks may have low introductory rates for overdraft protection and this keeps the initial rates low (this is a confusing issue because there are many steps in the overdraft system and I don't understand very much of it - and I don't intend to make a study of it either).
3. Easy access to moderate loans. Although it is very hard to get a loan big enough to buy a house, it is easy to get a loan large enough to go on a shopping spree.
4. Fun Stuff to Do. Israel has a lot of fun stuff to do that costs a lot relative to incomes
Israelis celebrate their Independence day in the Hebrew month of Iyar. This is usually in late April or early May.
They have sung the national anthem for about 60 years as part of this celebration. However, for the past 10 years or so a new tradition has arose. That new tradition is firing silly string at people to celebrate during the fireworks part of the event.
A 2009 post remembering a 1998 celebration documents this event that year. A 2009 webpost anticipates it this year.
Incidentally, Israeli Synagogues have a variety of different liturgical customs for independence day. Some recite the Hallel (Psalms 113-118). Of the ones that do this, some precede the Hallel with the blessing (Blessed is...who commanded us to say the Hallel) and some don't. Most congregations do not say Tachanan (the self-admonition and confessional). One Rabbi of a synagogue which says neither the Hallel nor the tachanan was asked why that congregation had that custom. The Rabbi responded that they adopt the practice of one of the founders of Israel, David Ben Gurion who said neither Hallel nor Tachanan (D B-Gurion was secular).
Israel has an enormous population of feral and quasi-feral cats (there are also indigenous species of felines in the uninhabited areas of the country).
Israelis complain about the problem. They have the govt issue reports and form task forces which issue guidelines and regulations that almost nobody follows.
Israelis also prevent solutions. A 1999 law makes poisoning cats illegal. People feed feral cats (some of the feeders of cats are tourists so its not all the fault of Israelis). My daughter had a friend who was offered a job killing cats who had been captured by the animal control force. She quit it after a few days. It may be because cats as so cute.
An article on the problem by the Israel Minister of the Environment is here.
The image is from that site.
According to the blogger Israelity who has a "Stuff Israeli people like" blog post, Israelis like honking before the light gets green, pondering traffic circles and magenta hair.
http://israelity.com/2008/04/17/stuff-israeli-people-like/
Many American self help books (how to be interviewed, how to sell yourself, how to make a positive image, etc.), suggest name dropping as a technique. Someone who hopes to impress the interviewer will say something like, "as X said to me last week when we were at X's house for..." or "I recently was talking with X and I mentioned my idea and X said that he had heard that my idea is very good." (where X is an important, rich and/or famous person).
Israelis modify this technique. They will say, "well Y met with X recently and they agreed that..." (where, in this case, X is known to be an infamous person or will in a subsequent part of the conversation will be shown to be a bad person.
Amazingly, there will be two or three or more salads available for breakfast in Israel (in restaurants). At breakfast in an Israel Hotel, for example, they will have a buffet which typically includes salads (a salad with small pieces of tomatos, cukes, onions and spices is sometimes called an "Israeli Salad" - that's what the image is on the left). If they have a buffet for lunch and dinner, the salad choices may even increase to 7, 8 or more types of salads. Lots of Israeli salads have tomatoes as a component. This may be because the tomatoes are pretty good. One person I know said he had a friend that emigrated to Israel because of the tomatoes.
One of my son's teachers hypothesized that Israelis make salad as a type of therapy - something like the role that gardening has amongst the English.
We (my wife and I) were once looking for a restaurant and asked someone if they knew where it was (not the restaurant in the image which is from Elunakosher blog).
The young man whom we asked used the opportunity to criticize not only the restaurant about which we asked but also the general quality of the restaurants in that neighborhood (they all had bad service, bad food, bad prices and a few other negatives).
Once when we were on the train near Jerusalem (according to the map the train doesn't go to Jerusalem which is strange because it does), I was looking at a schematic map of the system that was on one of the walls of the train car. A woman came over and explained to me that I should not pay much attention to the map since it was out of scale and obsolete (and I also noticed it wasn't even directionally true - that is north wasn't north). Of course she was correct.
