Avital Zemer's Photography: you can call it Zen (if you'd like)

Avital Zemer's Photography: you can call it Zen (if you'd like): "This picture is from Algonquin Park. I took it just as the sun was setting, and the water became still." this is my favourite!

Highlights: Week 6

• Hanging out with my cousin Liran on Chanuka night 2 and sharing music websites - he's a DJ in one of the clubs in Tel Aviv - here's his site: immoral monkeys (he's the guy in the picture on the right)

• Entertaining people for the first time in my house. And cooking! It's awesome to have time to cook and experiment with new recipes!

• Walking along Tel Aviv sderot, these are wide boulevards similar to University Avenue in Toronto. They have an island for walking in the middle, but unlike University, this island is really wide (in some sderot, the island is even wider than the road for cars). They are amazing to walk along: they have bike lanes, lots of huge trees, benches (my biggest beef with Toronto is lack of benches. This is why! Benches are necessary for leisure time), mini playgrounds, monuments, sandwich shops and cafes. In my opinion, sderot are one of the best features of Tel Aviv. I think that they truly raise the quality of life here... some photos:





























• Playing lots of samba :-) :-) :-)

Moments: Week 6

Wed. Dec. 24
I smoked hash from a potato tonight! That's right my friends... I had a hash potato! Leave it to the Israelis to invent this method of smoking hash, and they say that smoking from a carrot is even better... who knew! I tell ya' they gots a lot of time to waste in the desert. I couldn't take a picture, so I drew a model :-)
As most of you know, I don't usually smoke this stuff, but how could I resist a hash potato :-)
Anyway, it's been another great night of pagode with the Brisraelis! We said goodbye to our singer, he's going to Europe tomorrow. We lit the 4th Chanukah candle at the bar and sang a Chanukah song in Samba. Life is real good today!

Week 6: Chanukah

Sunday Dec. 21
This week is Chanukah and this is the first time since we left Israel that I'm here during Chanukah. For the lighting of the first candle on Sunday Dec. 21, I had Laura, Orit, Rafi, Micha, Mickey, Ruthie and Elad over at my place for dinner. I went to the shuk early that day and bought fresh food. I decided to experiment with the spice Safron, it's quite the production, this spice! You get a tiny amount of threads for 30 sheqels (approx $10), but it comes in a beautiful little box that seems more suitable for diamonds than a spice. Nonetheless, I enjoyed cooking with it. For appetizers we had fresh chumus, pitas, olives and marinated mini-eggplants that my cousin Pnina made. I made my famouse lentil soup, which I learned from my mom, with a slight modification to the spices. I also made stuffed zucchinis with dried apricot. Pnina taught me how to make these yesterday and they were a huge hit! The crew said that they were the best zucchinis they've ever tasted, so I will definitely be making those again... yes mom, next time we're together for shabat dinner. For the main course I made couscous with safron and vegetable stew with poached chicken. The chicken was fantastic, and everyone seemed to like the stew, but I wasn't a big fan, so I won't be making the stew again. I tell ya, I don't know how I was able to prepare all of that in a kitchen with 2 hot plates and a toaster oven, but hey anything is possible ;-) For dessert, we had sufganiyot and coffee/tea. What are sufganiyot you say? Well this is a treat that is only served during Chanuka. They are like jelly donuts with powdered sugar on top. However, the dough tastes nothing like North American donuts, it's much tastier. Here is a clip of us lighting the first candle:


For the second candle, I went to my cousins Pnina and Itzik's. My aunt and uncle Batia and Fishel were also there and we had a really nice dinner and Itzik explained to me that the candles must be set up starting from right to left side of the Chanukiya (symbolizing moving towards one's heart) and the new candle is the first one to be lit (as that's the candle that is being blessed)... good to know!


For the third candle, I went to my cousins Menachem and Dalia's sister's house, it was raining hard that day, so there was pandemonium on the roads, so we were a bit late. I don't remember ever meeting Dalia's family, but her father remembers me as a child. They were all really nice people, and their 15 year old son plays guitar, so he played Metallica's Fade to Black for me, and the solo in Hotel California, right on! He is pretty good.
After dinner, I went to my samba rehearsal, but this time we were practicing with some scouts for a gig we have on Saturday. They were really good on their own, but when they had to join us while we played Samba Reggae, it was a disaster, I don't think they could find the one. We'll see how the gig goes.

For the fourth candle, I was invited to hang out with the pagode trio, they were having people over to also celebrate xmas eve. We went to Andre's place, he's the guitar/percussion player, Daniel is also guitar/percussion and Nilson is the singer. They made feijoada and we drank cachaca, it was great. At 9pm we went over to play the gig at the usual bar Mazal Ariye (Zodiac Sign of Leo). We also lit the candles at the bar, which was really cool. Nilson got to light the candles because it's his last night playing with us. He's going to Europe to try getting more work there. We played our hearts out 'til 2am, this was a great night! Here are a couple of videos:




and here are some more photos... the guy with the long hair is Andre, the guy with the glasses and beard is Daniel and Nilson is the guy with the hat. Oh, and the band has a website so you can check it out, Sambadobom.



























For the fifth candle, Micha had a party at his place. His mom made food and it was good vibes all around.

For the sixth candle, I stayed at home in bed, 'cause I had some serious stomach issues, I must have eaten something off. But I heard that I missed a good samba party, damn, oh well next time.

For the seventh candle, I was at Gadi's house for his birthday party. Gadi is a guy we met at the pagode bar. He is a bassoon player in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, so he had all his fellow musician friends at his place and we jammed all night. He had notes for some great bossa nova tunes and these guys played this stuff like it was nothing, and there were some really complicated lines. We had a trumpet, upright bass, 2 flute players, Daniel on accoustic guitar, Andre on pandeiro, me on rebola, and a bunch of other people on random percussion instruments. It was fantastic. We're going to try to get some of these guys to join us at the bar Mazal Ariye on Fridays. That would be so amazing.
Oh yeah, earlier that day (Saturday Dec. 27), I had a gig with the Batucada group (Samba Guarana) with the scouts, it went well, it was very low key mainly for the community. But the gig was in Yafo and as you probably heard there was a big attack on Gaza that day, so the event was cut short. Yafo has a big arab population , so on my way back, I had to take another route home as there were a bunch of demonstrations on the main street. I kinda wanted to go and see the demonstrations, but I was told it's not wise for safety reasons. So I took their advice.
Side note: I know this is really strange for most of you reading this blog, but please don't worry too much, I'm pretty safe in Tel Aviv, it's not that close to Gaza or the West Bank and most of the retalliations happen in the cities closer to the borders. Besides, I usually travel by foot or taxi and I will stay away from any compromising situations. Thank you to all of you that are checking up on me :-)

Highlights: Week 5

• Even in the old city of Jerusalem, one can find a Capoeira group!

• a 300 year old olive tree



















• My fingers nails are growing in quite nicely - I'm not playing as much, so my hands are recovering

Moments: Week 5

To the Movies:
I went to see the Coen brothers movie Burn After Reading on Wednesday Dec. 17, with Laura, Sefi and Sam. Great film by the way. But I don't think Israelis get the North American dry sense of humour because Laura, Sam and I were the only ones in the theatre laughing throughout the movie. I think it's a cultural difference

Moti:
Moti told us about the anti semitism he had experienced daily in Latvia and how proud and happy he was to come to Israel. He told us that his late wife, Mila, wanted to move to the US at one point and he said to her that there was no where in the world that they would ever feel at home like they do in Israel. This is where they belonged as Jews.
Moti shared a story about his experience in February 1972 on an electric bus, one week before they left Riga for Israel. He said the bus was packed and people were bumping into each other, but one guy was pushing him in a way that was obviously on purpose. So, Moti, knowing that he was leaving the country in one week, decided he was going to get off the bus a stop early to avoid a confrontation. He got off the bus and the man got off at the same stop, followed him and tapped Moti on his shoulder and said, "why do you Jews always have to hang around the rest of us like leaches?" Moti, shocked, as he had never been confronted by a stranger like this before, took a step back and mustard up all the energy inside of him and threw a big punch at the man. The man fell back and Moti ran away and escaped.

Quiet!
Laura and I were walking on the street one evening and there was a dog barking non-stop from one of the apartments, all of a sudden a man shouted from another apartment across the street QUIET! And the dog stopped barking. It was hilarious!

Week 5: Jerusalem

Saturday Dec. 20, 2008

I woke up early today because my aunt and cousins Batia, Itzik and Pnina were taking me to Jerusalem. They picked me up at 9:30am and we drove to one of the oldest cities in the world. On our way we stopped for breakfast at an all chumus place. This is a middle-eastern phenomenon... there are these places that only serve chumus. Now we're not talking no Summer Fresh Hummus in a box. No, no, my friends, these places serve the best home made chumus you can dream of. And they take their chumus quite seriously. Chumus is no side dish or dip, oh no! Chumus is your main course served warm in a bowl. The falafel, salad, poached eggs, pita, and onion... those are your side dishes. You eat the chumus with a spoon, you don't even need the pita. Now what about the onion you ask? well, believe it or not, you use a layer of fresh onion to dip into the chumus... as my friend Rafi would put it, onion is the new pita!
After chumus, we went to another little shop that my cousin Itzik knows well and picked out some fresh home made treats for later - apple and date filled pastries and some other turkish sweets.
We finally got to Jerusalem and the moment we arrived, I instantly felt that I was in a really special place. You can't not feel this way here, it surrounds you as you walk on 2000 year old pavements, listening to church bells, the muezzin call for prayer, watching the religious kids rushing to synagogue, and seeing other people just going about their business. For those of you who have never been to Jerusalem, I strongly recommend that if there is one city you must visit in your lifetime, this is it!
The government passed a law in 1971, that all structures built in Jerusalem shall be build from Jerusalem stone, so the entire city has a very unique character.
It's Saturday today so all the Jewish shops are closed and only the Arabic shops are open. We walked around the old city and Itzik gave me the coles notes version of some of the events that took place here. We walked by buildings from the Turkish era, through the Armenian quarter, and a street remaining from the Roman empire. It was fascinating.

We walked through the shuk and shopped in some really cool shops. This shuk is quite different from the one in Tel Aviv. It's much bigger, much older and there's a lot more stuff! Itzik spoke in Arabic to the shop owners and got us really good deals on random stuff.



























Above is a beautiful cafe in the shuk.

Once we got through the shuk, we reached the Kotel (western/wailing wall). This is considered one of the holiest places for Judaism because the first 7 layers of the wall are the remains of the 2nd Temple built by Herod the Great in 19BCE, the next 4 layers were added in the 7th century, the next 14 layers are from the Ottoman period in 1866 and the top 3 layers were added before 1967.


There were tons of people there praying. I stood in front of the Kotel, put my hand on the 3000 year old wall and had a moment to myself. I did what most people do when they go to the Kotel and wrote my prayer on a small piece of paper and put it inside a crack in the wall.
















On our way out of Jerusalem, we stopped at a camp site to have a coffee with the lovely treats we bought early that morning and enjoyed the incredible view of Jerusalem. This was an awesome day. I got to spend really nice quality time with my family and I felt really satisfied.