My contention is, and has been on many occasions, that chicken shnitzel is the authentic Israeli cuisine because it is the only notable dish invented by Jews in Israel that’s culturally accessible to all of us, from all our different backgrounds. More than just an adaptation of a Mitteleuropan food to Middle Eastern reality (most of us don’t eat pork, and veal was cost prohibitive in this poor country), chicken shnitzel is an innovative and daring use of chicken, bread crumbs and frying oil.

And how we love it! We Israelis so love chicken shnitzel that, somehow through affection or laziness, “skinless, boneless chicken breast” was renamed “shnitzel” in Hebrew. That’s right, if you walk into a butcher or supermarket in Israel and want to buy some boneless, skinless chicken breast, you’ll need to ask for “shnitzels.”

Falafel and hummus are both wonderful foods and I love them, but they are regional Levantine fare that belong to a deeper shared cultural heritage of the entire eastern Mediterranean. By no means are they Arab foods: more accurately, Arabic-speakers today have inherited falafel and hummus by virtue of having lived in this region for a millennium and a half, but we Jews are as much a part of that tradition as anyone else.

Update: the question has been taken up in the Jewish Chronicle, which means another mention for me.

Chicken Shnitzel is a post from Lines Writing Lines.

He might be using a different name now – after all, I am – so if you know him or think you might, please ask him to get in touch with me. Thanks!

Seeking Bruce Smith is a post from Lines Writing Lines.

You might be a redneck if… is a post from Lines Writing Lines.

On the one hand, I had Christians suddenly conscious, all around me, that Jews exist. This was in general contrast to the unspoken Christian-Jewish agreement, in force during 11 months of the year, for Jews to be as invisible as possible in America. Since Jews in America mostly see themselves through Christian American eyes, this has a big impact on our self-perception. I’m sure we can all share stories of great conversations, but here is one of my favorites: once some friends and I were asked during Xmas season (or perhaps by then it was already being called Holiday season), “Are ya’ll Christian or Hanukan?” And of course we replied, “Hanukan – we celebrate beer.” I also used to have people asking me left and right, year after year during December, What does Hanukah celebrate? and the favorite question that I got at least once every December, What’s the difference between Jews and Christians? / What do Jews believe in? / Jews don’t accept J*sus as the Messiah, right? As a child and young adult, if I hadn’t been so downright freaked out by that sort of attention, I would have loved it.

And on the other hand, we Jews had to come up with some sort of narrative about the Hanukah narrative, which is to say that we either had to go all out celebrating it, turning it part and parcel into the Jewish Xmas, or we had to justify not doing so. The explanation that Hanukah is a minor holiday in the Jewish calendar is decidedly weak when it’s one of the few Jewish holidays that most Jewish kids even know about. Besides the oil-miracle story being totally lame and obviously made up, the whole thing (at least the real elements of it) is very un-PC. Look: you’ve got a family that’s part of an hereditary priesthood waging a minority-supported war against the founders of western civilization in order to impose a theocracy over a proto-ethno-national entity. Exilic Judaism despises all of this, every aspect of it, not to mention all the parts about the Temple, which was totally glossed over in Sunday School … because, and I think this should be clear to everyone, if they’d taught us for real in Sunday School about rededicating the Temple, then they’d also have had to teach us about the importance of the Temple in Judaism. And there is no Judaism without the Temple (but I’ll get to that soon).

All of the above is why I stopped with the Hanukah bullshit many years ago. Yes, I still accept gifts on Hanukah, and occasionally give them too, but my sardonic “line” has for more than half a decade been that Hanukah celebrates the birthday of Moses and that it is therefore the holiest day of the Jewish year, because Moses is our Messiah. I was never jealous of Xmas – it annually turns millions of ordinarily good people into raving lunatics – I was just trying to be funny effortlessly and deflect the hassle of having to care.

Since making Aliyah, I’ve come to see it differently. It’s well known that when a Jew chooses to live outside the land of Israel, no matter how religious he pretends to be, it’s as if he has no god. But there are a lot of valuable ideas in Judaism with portability that can be applied to life outside the land of Israel. Hanukah is not one of those things. Jews who attempt to celebrate Hanukah outside of Israel are therefore not only making themselves out to be idolaters, but they’re mocking the rest of us who do live here and who do cherish what Hanukah is really all about.

Hanukah is a period to celebrate the beginning of a great dynastic family that ruled this country for over a century, the Hashmonaim. It’s kind of like if the Romanovs or the Tudors had decided to create holidays that celebrated the imposition of their rule, except the Hashmonaim were also priests – high priests after defeating the Seleucid enemies – and so performed the Temple services for the Jewish nation in a time when we didn’t need rabbis to tell us what to believe and how to believe it.

The Hashmonaim dynasty, according to extant texts, started gloriously and ended shamefully. It’s not difficult to list their faults: they practiced forced conversions (viz, the Idumeans); they usurped the title King, which rightfully only belongs to the House of David; they quickly Hellenized and became disconnected from much of the common people; most awfully, they exhausted so much time and effort in succession struggles that they sowed the demise of their own regime and of the practicability of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel (it was a direct result of one such internal conflict that ascendant Rome, a regional power and traditional ally of Hashmonaim-led Judea against the Seleucid Empire, was invited to become a power broker in this country). Despite it all, I choose to celebrate the Hashmonaim during the week of Hanukah (and during the rest of the year) because, taken all together, I believe that their successes outweigh their failures.

In the time of the Hashmonaim, when the Temple functioned daily and kohanim performed sacrifices on behalf of all of us, the Jewish nation had a physical and spiritual center. As disgusting and as rotten to the core as the later Hashmonaim “kings” were, they knew what the mitzvot were and what the concept of mitzvot is all about (hint to Americans of the Mosaic extraction: mitzvah does not mean “good deed”). And although they didn’t follow some of the big ones (eg, don’t murder), they at least didn’t try to add any to the count.

So, people. Hanukah is not about giving and receiving gifts (duh). It’s also not about dreidels. It’s also not about candles or oil. It’s a holiday of rededicating the Temple to serve as a Jewish center and, in the absence of a Temple, it’s a holiday of rededicating ourselves to the cause of restoring Jewish sovereignty to the Temple Mount. Let us all, every single one of us, ask ourselves and each other, on this Hanukah and every Kislev until that goal is attained, what we have done to attain it.

Have a meaningful Hanukah! is a post from Lines Writing Lines.

proof that Trotsky was Jewish is a post from Lines Writing Lines.

My second year in Israel wasn’t an easy one, and may well have been the hardest year of my life.

At the beginning of it, I was out of work, my then-girlfriend and I had recently broken up, the country was marching toward Expulsion 2005, and who knew what was going to happen?

I’m not going to trace here how all of these things developed, but I will say that I spent much of my second year in Israel in a really bad financial situation – really really bad. One of the reasons I spent everything and maxed out beyond belief in April to move to Tel Aviv was so that I could get a decent-paying job and start actually treading water. I have done that now and, though I am still paying bills from whenever and wherever, at least I have a reasonably strong feeling that I will be able to pay them. I will also say that my social life has had its ups and downs. I got back together with that girlfriend in the summer, then we got more serious, then we broke up in the winter. Then I began to feel aware, ever more acutely, that I wasn’t “making it” socially in Jerusalem, wasn’t finding a group and couldn’t really make myself fit in. That’s another reason I moved to Tel Aviv: I wanted to try this city out and see if I’d do better for myself here. With regards to the Expulsion, I can say now only that I was deeply hurt and let down by Jerusalem and by the country’s religious Zionist leadership (the two of which, to some extent, I confound). At the same time in the wake of the Expulsion that I started viewing people with a new suspicion because of the community to which they belonged, I could feel every day that they viewed me the same way – even though they and I were ideologically and politically so close. And I don’t like to be made to feel that way. And so I came to Tel Aviv to experience the exact opposite: people who look like I do, but think very differently.

So, I faced some pretty serious challenges, including many that I didn’t write about, and although I don’t think I met them all, I do know that I did something to break out of a situation that wasn’t working for me. By that standard, I think my second year in Israel was a major success: for the longest time I was unable to shake the feeling that my life was happening to me and that I wasn’t in the driver’s seat.

And that’s not to say that moving to Tel Aviv was the greatest idea, either. The best thing I can say about my job is that I am ambivalent about it; after three months I still know practically no one in this city; and even as I meet people I have to be exceedingly careful not to express any beliefs, so as not to be prejudged.

That’s tough, and also unfair, so maybe in a year I will be writing how hard it was for me in Tel Aviv and why I moved to …. but what I do know is that on 25 Tammuz 5767 I will write about my third anniversary of Aliyah because I still continue to feel more and more Israeli – if not every day or every week, then at least every month.

two years down… is a post from Lines Writing Lines.

It’s a very different scenario with regular groups, people who come back week to week, time after time, again and again. They get to know me a little bit as a person and I get to know them. There are topics I’m not supposed to discuss at work (politics, of course), but outside of that frame, a lot of topics are fair game, from the superficial to the really meaningful. Recurring groups, especially the English-speaking groups whom I supervise, become a special and treasured event in my weekly schedule.

One group in particular, which said goodbye today, will be missed by all at the site. They’re a group of 18-19 year old girls (two, I think, are a bit older) who’ve been coming since September (ie, their school year) as part of their volunteering track at Midreshet HaRova’s year program, about three on Mondays and maybe six or seven on Thursdays. They’re a bright group of people in their own right, and I think the amount of dedication and passion they’ve shown in the past nine months is spectacular. It definitely will not be the same without them. I know I’m just one small part of their year-in-Israel experience, but they have been no small part of my work-in-Israel experience.

Of course, of the group, one is making Aliyah in three weeks and will be a student at Hebrew University in the fall, and another is going to return to the Midrasha for a second year (I don’t know if they held her back or what, but how do you fail shana b’aretz?). Talia and Gila are officially my favorites.

Saying goodbye is a post from Lines Writing Lines.

They're transgendered! is a post from Lines Writing Lines.

Scott’s Aliyah is unique because, like me, he is an ideological immigrant, which is to say that the decisive factor in his decision to move to Israel was neither to fulfill the mitzvah of settling the land of Israel, nor because he enjoys Israeli culture (both of which, however, matter to me and probably to Scott as well), nor to reunite with family members who live here. That puts Scott in a tiny category of people who believe in things as they ought to be and then try to effect the necessary changes, both in the world around them and in their own lives, both on a daily basis and in making the big life decisions (such as, in which country to live).

Scott’s next move – what he’ll do once he’s here – probably ought to concern me and everyone whose political views are close to mine. But I am happy for him and for the country, since I know Israel will help him grow as a person as he helps Israel grow as a nation.

Here’s Scott in the Naples Daily News. Fame embraces him.

Scott Dubin, the Newest Israeli is a post from Lines Writing Lines.

I’m leaving Jerusalem in two hours and alternately fainting and bursting with ambivalence. I feel like I really gave a lot to Jerusalem and tried to make this a city that I could live in, or make myself a person who could live in this city, but on this try it didn’t work for me.

Jerusalem to me is Israel in so many ways: this is the place where I spent the most time in Israel before making Aliyah, the place to which it was obvious to me where I would live once I moved to Israel, as obvious indeed as it was that I’d move to Israel.

Jerusalem isn’t just fire and holiness and uniqueness among cities in Israel and the whole world. It has a special charm that I don’t think other cities have. It’s the charm of a poor, dirty city that’s nonetheless overflowing with tourists and never leaves the international headlines. In more than a few ways, Jerusalem is the most important place in the world. It’s the center of the Jewish consciousness and I don’t think anyone who cares about the Jewish people can pretend not to care about Jerusalem.

But there’s only so much I can take of a poor, dirty city. This is a city where the main road (if there is one), Rechov Yafo, is lined with the Israeli equivalent of dollar stores. This is a city of neighborhoods, some of them full of delight, but most dreary and uniform. Neighborhood after distant neighborhood is hard to reach, and what’s the point of reaching them anyway? Most neighborhoods are completely residential with the exception of one or two streets of commerce. Most are slightly shocking to the sight. I really get the idea of building everything out of Jerusalem stone, and I think it’s a cute and intriguing idea, but it has not worked: the end effect of making monotonous pretty buildings is to turn Jerusalem uglier than Tel Aviv, a city where most buildings are made of concrete and objectively nauseating to look at, but most streets tend to have a touch of individuality and even verve.

Jerusalem has no city center, and this comes from someone who actually spent the last 13 months living in the very center of activity in Jerusalem. It’s not that there aren’t things to do here or that there isn’t activity and a vibe and a feeling that things are happening – it’s that there is no local culture, or at least none that appeals to me. Jerusalem sees itself through the eyes of different groups – Haredim, Arabs, Christian pilgrims, American tourists of the Jewish faith, one-year yeshiva students – and the things to do, the activity, the vibe, the feeling, what’s happening, are all for those groups, by them and about them. In the year I spent living in downtown Jerusalem, I can’t even count the number of shops that were sold and turned into Judaica stores. Does downtown Jerusalem really need another Judaica store, let alone five more? I don’t mean to criticize tourists or the tourism industry, because I also came to Israel as a tourist five times, but for crying out loud, why is tourism basically the only growth industry in Jerusalem?

I feel compelled to mention another Jerusalem industry, in point of fact a sub-industry of tourism: begging. I knew and perhaps respected some of the beggars in New York, gave them food and money and sometimes genuinely wondered if they were doing all right. But I have a hard time developing feelings for the beggars here, who tend to be shockingly aggressive, crass, mean, bitter, and worst of all, cynical. Maybe I would be the same way if I were driven to beg for money because my city invested its future in the tourism industry, causing a decline in opportunities for ordinary citizens to engage in productive labor, but I can’t forgive some of the behavior I’ve seen from beggars since I’ve lived here. I won’t recount it all except for one relatively minor incident at the beginning of my time as a Jerusalemite. I was still residing in Baka, a residential neighborhood in southern-central Jerusalem, and was spending an evening on Ben Yehuda Street. A beggar approached and, since I don’t like to say no to them, I gave him a ten agorot coin (roughly 2.5 cents), and assumed he’d move on to harass someone else. But he didn’t move, and instead continued standing right in front of me with his hand out, mumbling, while I went on talking to my friend. After a minute I realized he wasn’t leaving, and listened to him: he was telling me that ten agorot wasn’t enough. Well, I was fairly shocked – the expression “beggars can’t be choosers” didn’t do the situation justice for audacity – and that was the last time I gave money to street beggars in Jerusalem.

A few final words about the people of the city I’m leaving behind. Jerusalem is world class in terms of diversity, comparable with New York in that sense, and I think there are more languages spoken on a local bus in Jerusalem than in any enclosed space on the planet. But what good is diversity when people tend to live in their own neighborhoods and make outsiders feel suspect for entering? Ok, the Arabs hate us, so of course we feel their hatred when we go into an area that they populate. But among the Jewish population of Jerusalem I have been made to feel, time and again, invisible or worse. I have no idea how many times I walked down the street, passed a Jerusalemite, said “shalom” or “Shabbat shalom” and got no response, or a forced and hurried response. I tend to doubt that unfriendliness is directed toward me because of my appearance (I don’t wear any specific “uniform”). This is an inward-looking city full of introverts (including me), a fanatic city full of fanatics practicing their fanaticism, a weary city that doesn’t know if it will make it through the week to Shabbat, a city constantly building building building more hotels to house more tourists to give money to more beggars, tour guides, travel agents and Judaica store proprietors (including Arabs) – so it’s no wonder that I never really felt embraced here.

The things I’ve written about Jerusalem aren’t meant to indicate that I didn’t like living here. I loved every minute of it (except for a few). Jerusalem is the kind of city where hitchhiking to outlying towns is not only common, but ordinary, where if you try, you can actually look at the skyline and see a city of gold. Jerusalem, not Gush Dan, is “the center.” And by no means am I leaving Jerusalem because of Jerusalem: though I do feel a little bit as if I’m being driven away, I’m mainly leaving because there are more employment, academic and social opportunities right now for me in Tel Aviv. Despite it all, I consider the 21 months I lived in Jerusalem to have been a success for me, and I have every intention of living again in Jerusalem later in my life.

In any case, though I hope a part of me will forever be “Yerushalmi,” in a short time, for better or worse (and it’s really hard to say which), I will be “Tel Avivi.”

Tel Aviv Tuesday is a post from Lines Writing Lines.