Apple of Sodom

itzchak went on a school trip with his classmates to Wadi Kelt not long ago and came home with what looked like an apple. But looks are deceptive. Yitzchak popped it open and the fruit was empty saved for an exotic-looking seedpod about the size and approximate shape of a rabbit's foot. Covered with little brown seeds, the pod looked a bit like a puny pine cone. The thing just begged to be touched.

So I touched it. And promptly snatched my hand back. The thing felt ALIVE. Ew. Creepy.

Yitzchak told us that the "fruit" is called "Tapuach Sodom" which translates to Apple of Sodom. The moniker comes from its deceptive looks. The fruit appears to be an apple, but is empty except for the seedpod and a toxic fluid: nothing good can come from the fruit. All this hints at the deceptive nature of those who lived in the evil city of Sodom as depicted in the bible.

Yitzchak, told us that after the pod dried, the fibers attached to the seeds could be used as wicks for lighting the Chanukia, the Chanuka Menorah (candelabra). We thought the idea kind of dubious, but we were willing to see how things played out.

I couldn't help but ask Yitzchak about a seeming contradiction here: the plant is called Apple of Sodom because it is deceptive and nothing good can come of it, yet the fluffy fibers contained within the seedpod can be used for a holy purpose, for the lighting of the menora!

Yitzchak had a good answer at the ready: the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt to the ground. The use of the plant mimics the sad end of those biblical cities.

I Googled the subject and discovered that Josephus mentions the plant in his writings and that it was found near Sodom. Its Latin name is Calotropis Procera. Marilyn Manson wrote a seriously creepy song called Apple of Sodom with the fade out line being: "I've got something you can never eat."





Yitzchak left the seedpod on a shelf in my kitchen next to our collection of cereal boxes. Every time someone took down a box of cereal, the darned seedpod fell and someone would have to PICK IT UP. It felt like touching a dead hand. Seriously creepy.

After a few days, it at last occurred to me that there was no law preventing me from moving the seedpod to a different home. I put it on the tray that holds my Shabbes candlesticks, atop my piano in the living room. By this time, it was clear that the seedpod had undergone a metamorphosis. The seeds were starting to loosen and the fibers were light and silky.

Tonight is the first night of Chanuka and so I told Yitzchak to have at the seedpod and see if he could make some wicks. He just finished up. They look just as good as the wicks I make from cotton every year. I can't wait to see how they burn.

Happy Chanuka!

Phone Phobia

hone phobia. Am I the only one who suffers from this malady?





What is it about me and phones? Well, for one thing, there's that old canard about using a phone with wet hands during a storm and getting struck by lightning. But no. I know that's just an old wives' tale.









It's something else. Something that makes my heart begin to pound when I have to make a phone call. Something that makes me sound awkward and on occasion, say really dumb stuff I'd had no intention of saying. Other times, I just sound low-key to the point of appearing rude and uninterested, though I AM interested, or would be, if I could just get over my stupid fear that I'm going to say something stupid and I'm going to do it any second now.



Not long ago, a cell phone company representative came to the house to sell us on a new plan; one that trumped the plan we have with our current provider. The representative was able to access the number of minutes we spent on our phones during the past month. Dov: 397 minutes, Me: 14 minutes.

Me, I like to TYPE. I am a different creature online than I am in person. But as bad as I am in person, a little shy, a bit awkward and fidgety, on the phone I'm barely human.

One of my kids developed a little routine. He says, "This is Eema (Hebrew for mom) on the phone," and then he paces back and forth manically going, "Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh..." and all my family members laugh because, while I had no idea I paced when I make phone calls, apparently I do and this mimicry is (apparently) an uncanny imitation of my phone call behavior. I began to notice that what the Hell, I DO pace manically (maniacally!) back and forth when I'm on the phone. Freaky.

Still, onward and upward as they say. I aim for self-improvement and I know this phone phobia thing is a bad, bad thing. I need to get over that: get over myself.

So today I picked up the phone and called my friend Leora and asked if I could come by to hang out and shmooze for a bit. As we're arranging time and so forth, in the back of my head, there is this voice saying, "She's probably incredibly busy and the last thing she wanted was drop-in company."

Now I have no idea why my brain does that: fills in blanks that probably aren't even there. But I'm glad it was Leora I called. I called her for a reason. You see, I know Leora really, genuinely likes me. And that helps me not be so afraid to put myself out there with her.

So I walked over to Leora and we chatted for awhile and it was FINE.

Yet I know the next time I pick up the phone will be no different. I'll still think I'm imposing myself on someone's busy day. I'd like to pat myself on the back and think it's just because I'm so ultra-considerate of others, but that would be a lie. I don't know why I am afraid of the phone and making calls.

Someday, maybe I'll figure it all out. 

Natalie’s Advice

our and a half years ago, praised be to God (and my friend Natalie), I quit smoking. I had smoked through thick and through thin, through pregnancy and nursing, for 33 years.

And I was a chain smoker.

I know those are sickening facts. But here’s another fact: I was an addict.

I tried so many ways to quit. I tried hypnosis (twice), Smokenders, and cold turkey. I tried wrapping a piece of paper and a pencil around my cigarette pack with a rubber band and writing down the time and reason for each cigarette. I tried deep breathing. I ate carrot sticks when the cravings hit.

My husband and MIL sent me articles outlining the grave (no pun intended) results of smoking and second hand smoke. It made me feel awful, but it didn’t help me quit. I felt horribly guilty about what I was doing to my fetuses, babies, children, and husband but I failed at every attempt to quit.

My mother sent me an article about the deep facial lines caused by smoking and I listened to her talk about how smoking made a woman look “hard.” I looked in the mirror and saw my sweet young face and peaches and cream complexion had become deeply creased and hard.

Ouch.

Yet even this blow to my woman’s vanity didn’t help me quit. I didn’t know how to clarify this for my friends and loved ones, but quitting had never been about finding the motivation. I had ample motivation—motivation in spades. It was only about addiction. 

Everyone knows that nicotine is addictive, but not everyone knows that the cigarette companies hedge their bets and get customers sucked in really deep by adding chemicals that boost the effects of nicotine, such as ammonia. A list of no less than 599 chemicals were approved by the American Department of Health and Human Services in April 1994. 

On Shabbes, it is forbidden to smoke and as a religious Jew, every Shabbes I suffered. I watched the hands of clock and agonized with real physical and emotional discomfort every single week, praying for an end to Shabbes so I could light up. In all those years as a smoker, I never enjoyed Shabbes as the gift it is meant to be, but suffered nonstop for 25 hours once a week.

Go ahead: ask me the question you want to ask. Everyone asks me the same thing, “How did you finally quit??”

Here is what I did.

I googled Nicotine Anonymous and found an online group, since there was, at least at that time, no Nicanon group in my area. I was very lucky to find a sponsor who was thrilled to work with someone in Israel.

Natalie is Jewish and like me, has an interest in Jewish genealogy. We had much in common. It seemed like a match made in heaven.

Natalie gave me an amazing tip that solved my whole problem with quitting. She told me that the cravings only last five minutes, maximum. Natalie told me to feel free to time the cravings.

And so I did. Exactly five minutes. She was right.

The point? You can white-knuckle anything for five minutes. And if you can white-knuckle the hankering for a cigarette for five minutes, you’ve got the addiction licked.

I gave my pack of cigarettes to Dov to throw away, because I wasn’t quite strong enough to throw them away on my own. And I white-knuckled the cravings as they came.

As Natalie had promised, the cravings got farther and farther apart until days went by when I didn’t crave a cigarette even once.

I didn’t stay in Nicanon for the long run, but I am very grateful for what the group and Natalie did for me.

If someone you love is addicted to cigarettes, don’t show them scary articles or nag them. Just offer them Natalie’s advice and your love and support. I wish I’d met her sooner. But I’m lucky to have met her at all.

Thank you, Natalie!

Situation Normal--It's Thursday, Duh

hursday is a hectic day for me as a matter of course. There is baking for Shabbes, shopping, laundry, and writing, too. But today was so hectic it should be written up in the Hectic Thursday Annals.





There was no slow and gentle easing into my day as on most days of the week, or even most Thursdays. It was almost as if when I woke up, someone screamed, "And. She's. OFF!"  (sound of Roadrunner saying, "Meep meep.")

 I know it's going to be a crazy day when I can't even sit and nurse my two cups of coffee over the course of two hours while I test my eyelids here and there to see if they still work (up/down). That's about what it takes these days to get my metabolism going.

But no. Coffee and Facebook newsfeed were not in the stars today. It was coffee dumped unceremoniously into my travel cup, coffee on the run, not the slow satisfying coffee time I depend upon to start my day.

I had big plans for today. Ah well, as Robbie Burns said, "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley."










Which translates to the modern day SNAFU



Partway into my day, I realized that I could not possibly do all that I had planned. Some shortcuts were in order. Instead of the 2 marble cakes and 3 layer yellow cake I had been planning to bake, I made a double batch of one-bowl brownies. And instead of the more complicated lunch I had planned, I made TLT sandwiches.

And no. That was not a typo. We don't eat bacon. But we DO eat tofu.

I know the stuff has a bad rep. But that rep is ill-deserved. Like any other food, it can be FRIED, which removes all virtue from the dish whilst leaving the illusion that one is eating something with health-giving properties.

Here is how I make Tofu sandwiches.

Thinly slice a block of firm tofu, sprinkle the slices with soy sauce and granulated garlic and fry the slices in vegetable oil on both sides until crisp. Drain on paper toweling.

Slice a tomato and some purple onion. Spread whole wheat bread with Dijon mustard, cover with lettuce leaves, tomato slices and some onion and top with 2-3 fried tofu slices. Top with another slice of bread and VIOLA: your TLT sandwich is ready to roll.

This is a fast and yummy lunch for a hectic day. Even my kids love this, though some will opt out of the mustard and onion in favor of (you guessed it) ketchup.

 
So some of you, knowing I have a lot of kids, have asked me for kid-friendly quick-to-prepare meals. This is a winner. If your kid doesn't eat whole wheat, let him have it on white bread. Who wants to argue about grains on a hectic Thursday, anyway?

Water, Water, Everywhere But Only Coke to Drink

 couple of weeks ago, an Efrat resident posted the following message to our local elist:

"My daughter is doing a water survey–one quick question–How many families drink only water during the week at meals (as opposed to juices and fizzy drinks – not including milk, tea, coffee)?

Please answer with ‘only water’ or ‘other drinks’."

This question brought out the anti-sugar folk in droves. "Water," they answered, one by one, "Water," "WATER" and even, "water," until one brave soul at last dared to reply as follows:

"Hi my name is [name withheld] and I am an addict. I drink Pepsi Max for breakfast, lunch, dinner and in between and yes I know its unhealthy."

Oh boy, did I ever relate.

After years of drinking heavily iced Coca Cola, my husband had put his foot down just a few weeks earlier and told me I had to go off the stuff and start drinking water. This was a tall order. I hate water.

Yes. That's right. I HATE water. Always have. The only time I can stomach the stuff is right after brushing my teeth and then, only if the glass is mostly filled with ice.

The family joke is that I am ALLERGIC to water. 

But at the time the water survey was posted to the efrat-chat, I had, Glory Be to the Man Upstairs, been off of Coca Cola for several weeks. This was no mean feat. However, I agreed with Dov (reluctantly) that Coca Cola was really bad for me on several levels, bad for our budget, and that substituting water was the only way to go.

Even these many weeks later, weaned from the love of my life: Coca Cola, in my heart of hearts I was still rooting for [name withheld] since I had imbibed the lovely brown brew since I was wee and sweet habits such as these are hard to break.

Blame it on my mother if you like. My kids are fascinated at the idea that when I was a kid, we actually had a Pop Man who delivered cases of the fizzy stuff to our home on demand. Mom just picked up the phone and placed an order. The Pop Man's truck would pull into our driveway and burly men would unload case after case of pop, bringing it in to the house through the garage door and into our basement. 

My mom would send one of us kids down to the basement to bring up a few bottles of pop for dinner and we'd line 'em up on the side bar where my mom would fix us drinks on demand. My personal favorite was a mix of black cherry and cola. The brand of pop the Pop Man brought to our home was Cott and I remember the advertisements: "It's Cott to be good!"

As I child I developed a fondness for cola added to my milk. There was something about the smell, which reminded me of chlorinated swimming pools. I would not drink milk unless coke was added to the brew. 

I also remember that if my mom was pouring two glasses of cola at the same time, one for me and one for my sister, and one glass was even slightly fuller than the other, the sister with the less-full glass would cry foul until my mother managed to correct the cola levels to those deemed fair in our eyes. This is the purest expression of sibling rivalry I can remember from my past.

Much later, I moved to Israel and discovered that Coca Cola in Israel is made according to a different recipe, or perhaps it's different because the water is different. I don't know. But I do know that Coke in America tastes better. It's less sweet and has a greater depth of flavor. 

Still, had it not been for Coca Cola, I doubt I could have made it through my pregnancies. I suffered from hyperemesis all through my 12 pregnancies. I would become dehydrated and malnourished in each successive pregnancy, unable to hold down food or drink. Except: you guessed it. Coke. With lots of ice. 

With pregnancy behind me, and weight gain in front of me *gulp* I have been forced to take extreme measures. Dov was right. It was time to go off of coke.

But I never saw my mother drink anything other than weak tea or diet cola until today. Well into her 80's she seems to thrive on these non-nutritive substances and has the most beautiful skin I've ever seen in a senior. Drinking water seems almost a betrayal of her teachings. *sigh*

70's Nostalgia

oday I took a little walk down Memory Lane, which for me is a place stuck somewhere in the 1970’s. It began with clackers, glass orbs connected by a string that really hurt if you accidentally hit yourself (or someone else) in the head.

Clackers were very pretty. They came in all different colors and some of them were sparkly. Clackers were something like a cross between nunchaku and yo-yos, but bigger and more attractive than either, if less useful in the greater scheme of things.

Clackers were the big thing when I was 12 or 13. But by the time I was in my mid-teens, all the boys were showing off their nunchaku skills. They called them “nunchuks,” and how well they were wielded seemed to have a direct relationship to supposed male virility/testosterone levels. Something like that. But I remember making the connection even back then: nunchuks were boy clackers without balls. Hmmmm.
Remember puka beads? I remember buying a choker made out of puka beads for a boy I really liked when I was 14 or so. He put them on and my logical brain thought: “They make his neck look really pimply and fat,” while my emotional brain thought: “He likes them! He thinks I’m cool!”

I’m not really sure what made those beads become so popular. Maybe it was the thought that they came from Hawaii. Associations with Hawaii: Hawaii Five-O, Don Ho (my aren’t we in good rhyming form today), resorts, exotic drinks with umbrellas, and um, marijuana? The beads themselves were boring and almost colorless.

First there was Cracker Jacks, then there was Poppycock (still the best of the bunch if you ask me, and Kosher to boot!), then Fiddle Faddle, but how many of you remember Screaming Yellow Zonkers? They weren’t that good, but they sure were brightly-colored. Wonder what additive got them that way? Luckily they weren’t around long enough for us to ingest much of them.
Screaming Yellow Zonkers were all about the Peter Max rip-off box design. The box just screamed “COOL” and you felt forced to buy them just for the packaging. A lot of the 70’s products were like that.

Mood rings were popular a bit earlier, I think. I never felt very comfortable wearing my mood ring. I was afraid I’d betray an embarrassing emotion in public. Which is why those rings were a stupid idea: they were all about betraying embarrassing emotions in public. Why would someone pay for that particular privilege? But we did. Everyone did.

Now leisure suits, there’s a little bit of Americana that should have been terminated before becoming a viable entity. Ugly. Just ugly. This was not a look for a guy with no chest hair. Here my friend Bernie Newman shows the look.

Bernie Newman with long time best friend, Robin Bergstein Berman

Rumor has it Bernie’s powder blue leisure suit is still hanging in his closet waiting to be flaunted at high school reunions.

Who remembers the gum wars? Double Yum, Hubba Bubba, and Bubblicious were the names of the game. Green Apple, Grape, and Watermelon were the big three flavors. I confess I never much liked chewing gum or blowing bubbles. But I did admire my girlfriends who could blow super-sized bubbles without having them explode all over their long, straight (ironed) tresses. Hint: peanut butter is useful for removing chewing gum from hair.

We were Baby Boomers and we drank in TV with our mother’s milk, though lactation was not in vogue back when my bottle-fed generation came into existence. Our sexual and other mores were predicated on the images that paraded in front of our passive faces for more hours than I care to remember. Imagine my shock then, at seeing this old commercial for Love’s Baby Soft products which seems to be peddling, er, pedophilia.

Is that not creepy or what?

But this was a successful ad campaign. My girlfriends bought this stuff in droves. There was a huge line of products and a girl's popularity at that time was dependent upon what percentage of that product line you owned. My God. How did our parents let us buy this stuff??

Before Love’s Baby Soft shattered our innocence, there was Shake-A-Pudd'n. The commercials were shameless in targeting children. Moms could not go to the grocery store with children in tow without purchasing this product. Their kids would give them no peace until said product had been loaded into the grocery cart and purchased.

I remember making this with my sister and it was fun shaking the stuff. However, I also remember feeling perturbed that the finished product had a taste inferior to our family’s usual brand of instant pudding. I don’t recall that my mother purchased Shake-A-Pudd'n more than three times, at most.

Did you have a Frosty the Snowman? I did. He lived in the basement and I didn’t use him too often. Frosty was kind of a pain to use. I needed my mother’s help too much and she was too busy playing bridge and getting her hair done to load a plastic snowman with ice. I think we also ran out of the flavoring syrups and my mother used that as an excuse to put old Frosty in the basement cabinet for the duration of my childhood. I do remember taking him out and using him as a character in my playtime with friends.

What 70’s products do you remember?

Dov was Right

y son Natan is very proud of having been a very early user of Facebook. He saw Facebook’s potential way before most people caught on to the addictive social networking site. Four years ago, I caved in to Natan and let him set up my Facebook account.

At 21, Natan is too young to appreciate what it meant for me to find friends I hadn’t seen in over two decades. The early days of my Facebooking were heady indeed and life seemed fuller for having allowed social networking into my life. Every once in a while, I still find someone I cared about and had lost touch with, via Facebook, but those occasions are now rare, the heady early days long past.

Facebook has become part of the fabric of my life. I read my newsfeed two or three times a day, catching up with friends, the news, and the newest video clips to go viral. I play word games and Bejeweled Blitz to wake up in the morning, take a break from work, or to wind down at night.

Sometime after I became active on Facebook, my husband did, too. He wanted to see what the fuss was all about. That’s when we discovered that there seems to be a generational cut-off point for Facebook. Dov is eight years older than I and his buddies, it seems, just don’t appreciate or understand Facebook to the same extent as my own generation.

Feeling wiser than Dov in this one particular arena, I didn’t hesitate to express my annoyance at his insistence on posting links to articles echoing his right-wing Middle East political sentiments. Since we were Facebook friends, I was embarrassed by this inappropriate use of a social networking site. Dov and I didn’t agree on what was and was not an appropriate use of prime Facebook real estate. He stuck out his chin in that pugnacious way of his and I just rolled my eyes, continuing to cringe whenever he posted one of THOSE links.

Then there was the incident with the Mavi Marmara. It happened the day after my 49th birthday. Israel was forced to board this flotilla for flouting Israel’s Gaza blockade. The blockade was meant to prevent weapons from flowing into hostile territory and was a legal blockade according to international maritime law.


The Israelis who boarded the flotilla were armed with paintballs. The Mavi Marmara people lay in wait for the Israelis, beating them with iron bars and attacking them with knives. There was footage! But the mainstream media suppressed the truth and made the Israelis sound like brutal barbarians while painting the Mavi Marmara participants as saintly martyrs.

Having previously lambasted my husband for posting pro-Israel articles I was forced overnight to take up my fork and eat humble pie. I was so distressed by the slanted media reports of the Mavi Marmara incident that I was unable to rest or sleep. I realized that as a patriotic Israeli, I had no choice but to exploit Facebook as a platform for combating the rampant universal delegitimization of Israel.

Dov was right to have been posting those political articles. I had been very, very wrong.

Since that time, a year and a half ago, I have become a member of an unofficial Facebook group. The members of this group spend their days at their computers, posting every pro-Israel link they can find and countering the lies said in the mainstream media about the Jewish State.

I know that a lot of people find us very annoying. They think we abuse social networking for our political cause, just like I thought my husband was misusing Facebook for this purpose. I know that some of my friends, even those who share my politics, have stopped following my newsfeeds and some have unfriended me altogether over my insistent and constant politicization of the social networking site.

I care. It wounds me. But I care about Israel more.

I felt vindicated when members of the Israeli Knesset encouraged Israelis to keep on posting pro-Israel articles on Facebook. It seems that we are an important asset in combating the PR war against Israel’s enemies. We tell the real story when the media is quiet. We report the daily missiles emanating from Gaza and targeting our civilian population when the media will not. We expose the false propaganda spread by the other side by citing the facts, when the media would rather print the falsehoods for the sake of higher ratings.

And that’s because we don’t live by ratings or even by how many people send us friend requests on Facebook. We live only by our consciences and our strong moral sensitivity for right and wrong.

Maybe you think I have an inflated sense of self—that I fancy myself a sort of true-life, contemporary superhero? Maybe you think that some things shouldn’t be discussed in public: religion and politics. I don’t, CANNOT worry about that anymore.

As far as I’m concerned, the truth must out lest my people and my country perish. More than that, I believe that the world has failed to identify the enemy in its midst. I fear for world order. It’s a life and death situation. And like it or not, no one is safe. It’s coming to a theater near you.