Different Slants

Bob in Israel: Crusader Castles and Caraway Seeds (part 2)

By Robert m. Katzman © October 27, 2017

 I thought the problem was Caraway seeds. I mean finding them in the Promised Land because since I’m cooking eggs in my obscure rented space far from English-speaking people in order to spend as little as possible on food, salt and pepper just didn’t cut it this morning. I decided to find a real, or at least larger grocery store where a range of spices might be available.

About Caraway seeds, in case this sounds odd to you or in case everything I write about seems odd to you, when I was a child on the South Side of Chicago there was a Jewish place on 71^st Street and Jeffery Avenue, near Woolworths and I think north of the train. I was five then, in 1955, and I couldn’t drive yet, so my memories of where things were at that time might be influenced from my being three feet tall.

The South Shore Bakery was a wonderful place for Jewish pastries, cakes, Jewish Rye Breads (distinctive because it had Caraway seeds), and a treat my father, Israel, always bought for me: Salt Sticks. These were croissant shaped rolls about six inches long covered with course salt, Caraway seeds and a very crunchy crust. I devoured them in the car on the way home, covering myself with crumbs, salt, Caraway seeds and a great big smile. Addictive and sublime. So, whatever else they were used for in Jewish cuisine, bread was a constant and even though they have no flavor, the tiny crescent-shaped spice is all about aroma.

Also, since if nothing else, you may want to know that 70% of the Caraway seeds come from Finland. Now, easy to think of something silly to say about that, especially if a person knew that out of 5.5 million Finns, only 1,800 of them are Jews. Oh, and the Finnish word for incorporated, or LTD is spelled: Oy.

However, in reality, the history of the Jews in Finland is amazing and you could look it up. They are a terrific nation and a far kinder to us than a lot of larger countries. The distance from Finland to Israel is less than 2,000 miles going straight south. If Finland dropped a stone, it would fall on Israel. Ok, maybe if it bounced once.

But when I left Orly’s place, my landlady’s name, looking for a grocery in Orthodox-Land where English is a real foreign language and rare to hear, but women with their heads covered or wearing wigs with a mob of kids around them, and pregnant, is not so unusual. The endless determination to replace the six million. Still far from achieved compared to world Jewish population figures in 1939, before Hitler. I persevered and found a grocery store next to Super Burgers. Tried one. Won’t make a dent in the States.

After plowing through a bunch of bewildered employees while searching for one, just one, person who both spoke my language and knew what a Caraway seed was, because it might be called something else in Hebrew, I ended up with an amazingly beautiful young woman, maybe twenty, dark eyes, very dark brown hair, thick eye brows, olive skin, big smile, slender, about five feet tall and dressed completely in black pants and blouse like a mini-gunslinger, after a few minutes of our staring at the spice rack, we both gave up. Her parting smile was perfect compensation for that.

Frankly, girls and women like her are pretty much a dime-a-dozen here and it makes me wonder why it took Hollywood a century to go from a Jewish actress who was always the goofy or comical best friend to the female lead, to playing romantic attractions themselves. What’s with the obsession with blonde hair and blue eyes? My parents who died in 2000 and 2001 both lived to see the cultural transition and I remember what a big deal it was for them to see the upgrade in movie parts, because to them it meant acceptance of us as an immigrant group, which was more important than almost anything. Hispanic and East Indian actresses went through, or are going through the same transition in America right now. Think about it.

I personally remember the early exceptions, like Judy Holiday (originally Tuvim), Paulette Goddard (Levy), Hedy Lamarr (Kiesler) and Luise Rainer, but pretty girls like them were tiny drops in the a rain storm compared to Fanny Brice-type (Borach) comedy actresses. My wife Joy loved Judy Holiday, a major talent who died young from breast cancer.

So early this morning, I flawlessly drove from macaroni street-land to Acre, or Akko in Hebrew, to see a place I never had a chance to see when I was with Rick Munden when we were here in May 2000 for nine days, right after my father died. I interviewed Rick extensively on his sailboat in the Marina in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy three days ago, after he agreed it was then or never.

When this book is done, it will begin in 1961 when Rick and I first met in sixth grade and eventually end in the present day in Israel following my wife’s death. His life, his wife Mary, Joy and my life have been intertwined for 56 years and his and Mary’s life stories will be the connective tissue between all the chapters. That I saw him between Reykjavik, Iceland and Israel is not the exception. His effect on my entire life has been the rule. By the way, he hosts our website www.DifferentSlants.com from his sailboat. There ain’t no escaping the guy. More about an example of that later in this story.

Akko, a peaceful town, at least today, with Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, and Baha’is living here together, and continuously occupied for about 4,000 years, is famed for the vast surviving brick and stone harbor-side Crusader War Citadel, a Turkish bath house and many other ancient stone structures concentrated in the ‘old city’ part of this town. There is also an extensive Arab/Jewish market here selling anything edible or for travel. You want spices? You want luggage? You want a two-foot long fresh fish? No problem.

Akko saw successive invasions of various armies from every direction which resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousand of innocents, including the European Crusaders who killed massive amounts of Jews on their way to that area, just because they were passing them on the way to take part in conquering battles. Who else came? But much earlier, the Jews, then Israelites, were combatants.

Saladin, a Kurdish Muslim from Tikrit, Iraq, Napoleon with his French army, Canaanites, Mamluks, Crusaders, Egyptians, Phoenicians, the English, The Romans, Alexander and the Greeks, the Ottomans, Germans, Persians, Assyrians and too much more complex back and forth battles for me to keep up with. Most of them faded away in history. The Citadel, mosques, synagogues and much more remains.

The thing is, after much of a lifetime spent plowing through battered historical structures all over America from Fort Henry in Baltimore where Francis Scott Key was inspired to write the poem “The Star Spangled Banner” after the Brits didn’t capture the place after a night time of endless firing from their battleship cannons offshore, to the Alamo and then to castles all around Europe, it takes a lot to awe me with a building, and I may just be awed-out. But it remained in my box of unfinished business and I wanted to see it even if Rick and I weren’t together, though he was close by.

Saw the Citadel, Bathhouse, Market , Mosques, Middle-Ages stone coastline defensive wall, statues, cannon, giant anchors, a billion tourists, and because of my uncountable allergies plus warnings from guidebooks and scientists not to eat food from outdoor buffets or unwashed fruit and vegetables, I wouldn’t eat a damn thing and I survived on Cokes. And water. But I didn’t refill the water from taps because there were warnings about that, too.

I because very ill from food poisoning in San Antonio at a gift show, and in New York City after eating in one of the most celebrated delis there. I was alone, like now, delirious, fevered, too sick to stand up, and all the other parts you don’t need to read about. And that was in the USA, so not even present day Israel gets a pass from me.

Later, I found a Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge pint and walked all around the area pleased to find something to eat and eventually to drink that tasted wonderful, and was founded by nice Jewish boys from Vermont. I actually met both of them when they were crossing America in a colorful ice cream truck and spreading the word, and little samples about who they were. They happened to park in the park across the street in Evanston from where we then lived at 1632 Sheridan Road, about a mile south of Northwestern University. They were mobbed.

Last time I was in this country, it was May 2000, hotter than any place I’d ever been, and I experienced the weirdness of no matter how much water I drank, I immediately perspired it out and remained drenched, until three days went by and my body chemistry changed to adjust to the alien heat. I was surprised, because in general, I never perspire that anyone could notice. But after that time period passing, no perspiring at all. It was kinda amazing.

This time, its October here, I am not conscious of what temperature it is, but I’m not reacting to it like before. Except that I drink water and Cokes constantly, but don’t need a bathroom for hours and hours. I’m 30% older now than I was then, so I don’t know what’s what.

I carry the water bottles in a virtually weightless black shoulder bag I bought at Target in 2000 and had my tailor sew a small Canadian flag on the front of it, after one of my guidebooks advised it when people were blowing up or kidnapping Americans around the world, because the guidebook stated, nobody doesn’t like the Canadians. You may smile, but it is a silent defensive act when irrational violent acts against Americans are more common now than they were then.

After deciding that I was done being a tourist for the day, I walked all over Akko until I became tired, then called a new friend I’d never met, who called me months ago on a Sunday afternoon in Wisconsin, because he told me he read my stories online and found them touching. We talked for about thirty minutes, he was charming and I told him if I was able to get to Israel I’d be happy to meet with him. His name is Gilad Suffrin, he is a personal guide for small groups to all sorts of places in Israel and Europe, about 70 years old and very easy to talk with. Here is his link in case you want to see pictures of Gilad or read something about what he does. http://www.israel-tour-guide.com

 I was wandering aimlessly about Akko at about 4 PM and mentioned to Gilad that I’d just been by the Or Toro Synagogue at Jehosephat and Kaplan Streets, or the Tunisian Synagogue and found the outside of it to be very cool, but it was locked and I just left it. He told me that since it was a Friday night, it would open in a couple of hours, that the temple was stunning inside and I should not miss it. We talked some more about meeting in Jerusalem later and we said good-bye.

So I went to my car parked by an Akko police station near the beach, sat there with the door open to rest for a while and deciding did I really want to linger in Akko until dark and risk getting lost, again, trying to get home? Then the phone rang and it was my daughter Sarah’s Chicago college advisor calling to discuss something, and who had no idea she was calling Sarah’s Dad in Israel. I thought that was pretty cool, and waited until she was done telling me why she called to tell her where I was and why. She was knocked out.

But, as it happens she was also Jewish, had been to Israel herself and our conversation went in different directions. I explained what Sarah’s concerns were since Sarah and I spoke a couple of days earlier and asked the nice woman to see if she could find a way to help her. She was nice and agreed to do that. But then the phone made a noise and it was Sarah calling me, too. So, I left the first lady and talked to Sarah.

Time was going by, making my decision for me.

Sarah was concerned that she need an important document from me and I had to call this government number to get it and she was all tied up in knots in frustration with all the time the calls were taking and causing her a lot of stress. I was feeling lost in my car on the beach in Akko trying to sort his out, 6,000 miles away from her.

Then I remembered something and changing my sympathetic tone, told her I never would have left America without insuring she had everything she needed from me to help her get whatever aid was available to her and that there was no one I loved more than her and she should assume that and that I wouldn’t just leave without doing whatever I was supposed to do first.

She checked through all her bunch of papers and there, out of place, was exactly what she needed, to her surprise and to her relief. Still, she was concerned that too much time had gone by and that she was too late to get aid.

I told her not to accept any deadlines, to go to the correct office, find a person to help her, demand attention and assistance because her life was upside down with her Mother dead and her father trying to sort out his own life half a world away. I told her she would need gumption to make her life work, to be confident and determined to get others to aid her on her way, that people would help her if she persisted and that in my experience, most people wanted to help a person in distress, but wanted to be asked, first. I told her I couldn’t give her millions but that my life’s worth of experience was worth a hell of a lot and she should listen to me.

She was calmer then, told me she would, was very relieved to learn she had what she needed all along and we said loved each other and said good-bye. It was almost 6 o’ clock and the Tunisian Temple was about to open for Friday night Shabbat prayers.

Forgetting where it was in the gathering gloom, I asked half a dozen people where the famous place was, and either they didn’t understand me or asked me where was my GPS phone, like the thing was issued to everyone at birth. With minutes ticking by, I grabbed a passing cab, he knew where it was, got me there in five minutes and I was relieved. Cost me thirty shekels, or about ten bucks.

I entered the small building and was immediately stunned by the beautiful floor to ceiling artwork, mosaics on the floor, antique lighting fixture, silver Torah doors, old worn woodwork, complex embroidered draperies, so much color everywhere, men only there, in many ages and forms of dress from black suits to orthodox styles to casual. Virtually no one wore a tie. That is Israeli style.

I was just ovewhelmed by the unexpected vista all around me, after walking in and picking a pew to sit in near the front of the synagogue. No one paid me any attention. I sat there twisting in my seat to see all there was to see, and there was too much to see. I didn’t have a prayer book, but I did have a kipah or a head-covering that I brought with me from America. The chanting was constant.

But it was one of those moments, which arrives unannounced in a person’s life.

Transcendent.

Men were standing and then sitting, and I tried to keep up with all of it, except I still didn’t have a prayer book or know where they were, either. I wasn’t feeling much except being awed by the magnificence of the place. The building was built in 1955, but the floors are mosaics from a 2,000-year-old temple in ancient Israel. Then I noticed the old guy a few feet away from me, sitting in a wheel chair with his prayer book perched on a table in front of him and he was trying to follow the service with a large magnifying glass, except the pages kept turning in the slight breeze and he couldn’t keep his place. It was so pathetic, and so sad.

Feeling around in my Canada bag, I knew I had some large paper clips with me because when I was packing, I saw them sitting on my kitchen table and grabbed them, thinking,

 “What the hell, you never know”

 and things went south from there in the Tunisian Synagogue, because sometimes I can’t bear to watch other people suffer, and I enter their lives, unasked.

I walked over the few feet to reach him, took out two paper clips, and slid them over several pages on the left and right side so the wind couldn’t catch the pages and turn them. The man looked up at me through his thick glasses as if to say, ‘Who are you and what are you doing?” except he said nothing, we shook hands and he smiled. I went back to my place, watched him and immediately it was better for him. He quickly figured out how to remove a clip, turn a page and replace the clip in the same manner. Like he’d been doing it for years. I assumed no one noticed the stranger’s becoming involved with a regular worshiper in their temple. It all happened in about a minute. I assumed incorrectly.

But that didn’t matter because other things began to happen all at once, within me. The emotion that moved me to help him evolved into remembering my stunning, young, mostly Norwegian blond wife, so beautiful she could freeze a room by walking into it, then forty years later at the end, helpless, swollen and bald in a wheelchair as her cancer consumed her, and I stopped seeing the man and saw Joy instead, and then, oddly, remembered that paperclips were invented by a Norwegian man and the tears that never seemed to appear since she died began to fall and fall and fall, without a sound. It was a shock to me.

But then, men from areas behind me and to the right of me came over one by one to thank me in Hebrew, for helping him, referring with a tilt of their heads toward the man in the wheelchair, and I couldn’t understand them, and there were too many men, and the tears made it hard to see them, and I was wet and my hands were wet from wiping away the unexpected tears and I kept wiping my hands on my shirt so they wouldn’t be wet when these strangers in this old temple wanted to shake my hand. It was so terrible and so sad. Not the man, the girl. My girl.

I didn’t like it, never did, letting people see too much, seeing pain I want hidden, and I put my head down on the wooden railing in front of me, closed my wet eyes and let the prayers and chants just flow through me. Then, after a while, I imagined seeing many colors swirling behind my closed eyelids, and I felt better, peaceful, content.

Then the rabbi came over after noticing the small torn black piece of cloth safety-pinned to my shirt, on the heart side, signifying universally in the Jewish world that a loved one had recently died. He asked me in Hebrew if I wanted to say Kaddish. I said yes, “caine”, in Hebrew, but also said I can’t read Hebrew very fast.

That was the other thing.

The words were flooding into my head from Hebrew School, 1958 to 1963, like a river. Where did they come from, so fast, so soon after arriving in this country? I was using more words and phrases as the day wore on.

So strange to hear them in my memory, to say them out loud, and to have people smile at the old American, speaking their language with his Chicago accent and they responded in Hebrew themselves.

I turned pages in the prayer book one man placed in my hands and after earlier deciding to say Kaddish to myself, I flipped through the pages with no English anywhere, including the table of contents, to see if I could find the prayer for the dead by myself, and after a while, in the 300-page book, I did, slowly sounding out each word, hearing the chant from my American temples in my mind, trying to keep the rhythm right, and mostly, I did. It was such a wonderful thing to be able to do.

I didn’t recognize the style of praying or any of the songs. All of the sounds in their temple were unknown to me. Then, so fast, the service ended. I approached the man in the wheelchair and asked him what his name was, partly in Hebrew. He told me it was David, pronounced: Dah-Veed. Like my son’s name.

We shook hands, again. It was nice. He smiled.

As the temple as emptying out, swiftly, a young man maybe twenty, came up to me and told me in good English to come in the morning service because I need a minion, ten adult Jewish men, to be able to say Kaddish for my wife. I couldn’t say it alone. It was against the rules. I told him I couldn’t be there in the morning and he kept insisting.

Well, in one of those moments of high emotion in my life where I simply didn’t want to put up with yet another Jewish person telling me what the rules were about praying for my dead wife, I stopped him. I stared into his eyes. I put both my hands on his thin shoulders, and said,

“Now you listen to me, kid. I am supposed to be a priest in Judaism, a Cohain, descended from Moses’ brother Aaron and from the Tribe of Levi. Don’t you tell me what I can or cannot do. I’ll be as Jewish as I want to be, the way I want to be, and no one can tell me what the rules are. We have no Pope. No one is in charge, you understand. No one. Now go.”

He stood still, frozen.

It was a compelling moment, feelings rising up within me after the dam seem to break and the tears finally coming. I can imagine that those strongly spoken words coming from a grieving and then angry American visitor to his temple were unexpected by him after years of what the iron-clad rules of how to be Jewish were drilled into him. Him hearing an independent thought from a rebellious Jewish man must have seemed heresy.

I didn’t care.

Everyone was gone. No one witnessed our sudden exchange of views on being Jewish. He was silent, serious, looked slightly disconcerted, then shook my hand, said “Shabbat Shalom” to me and I responded the same. Peace on the Sabbath Eve.

Well, I don’t know.

Not every day I experience sudden artistic and spiritual astonishment, then compassion for a stranger no one seems to have thought to help; then a wave of grief and intense release; maybe, about my love, my wife; then an abrupt rejection of yet another young person who seeks to tell me how to be a better Jew. All in one hour.

And Rick Munden?

I was unexpectedly in a famous Tunisian Synagogue in Downtown Akko, Israel and he knew nothing about my going to Akko today and neither of us knew about the beautiful temple.

But at just about the same time, he was pulling into a North African Tunisian marina where he intends to stay for the next six months. If we both stay alive long enough, maybe I’ll join him there some day.

Coincidence?

I don’t want to think about something like that. It seems to me this journey is going to take me to unexpected places, day after day.

Lastly, I drove home with slightly reckless abandon, if not slowly on Israel’s little Interstates, where a guy like me must seem like a curse from God to the drivers behind me. Another plague. Too bad. We guys from Aaron’s Tribe of Levi have a little trouble reading road signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

I got all the way to the Ha‘aim Fish Alley part of Kiryat, Haifa and then at the end lost my way in the labyrinth of skinny streets.

As I drove along, hunting for landmarks, a bunch of people were leaving a local temple, so I pulled my car over and asked for directions. But in a very short time, they waved goodbye to me, only speaking Hebrew. I was a little dismayed to be so close—that I did know—but not how close, exactly. Then they walked away, leaving me standing in the light in the front of their temple.

Now what?

A sort of skinny disheveled character wearing different shades of blue, with white whiskers sprinkled lightly around his cheeks and chin walked over to me, out of the dark shadows behind me. He spoke up in English in a thin reedy voice heavily accented with Hebrew, asking me where I was going. He did not look like someone I would stop to talk to if I was driving by. But here I am, in Israel, and nothing is as it seems. I said to him,

“Ha‘aim Fish Alley, near here.”

He walked closer to me, a foot away, looked at me, then in a different direction, pointing, saying,

“I know this place. I will take you there. Where are you from?”

 I replied, Chicago, giving up completely on telling random Israelis that I was from Racine, Wisconsin. After numerous attempts, I realized that Chicago was known everywhere for its gangsters. Wisconsin may as well have been Siberia. He said,

 “Oh, I was there once, for a few hours.”

 I cleaned off my passenger seat of random papers, empty Coke bottles and a long blue wire to charge my cell phone and threw them into the back seat. Skinny Blue guy got in.

We drove as he told me, quite a ways farther than I thought, telling me he had retired but then decided to start a business again. He made this—something, he couldn’t think of the word in English—telling me it was a liquid that cured pain, made people feel better, was good for their hair, and I was thinking about the white-bearded charlatan driving the horse-drawn wagon filled with bottles like those at the beginning of the Wizard of Oz. That same actor later played the Wizard and other parts in the movie, too.

“Tonic”, I told the Skinny Blue guy.

“Tonic?” he repeated. “What is that?”

I said,

“It is a liquid that comes in little brown glass bottles and cures everything, from baldness to bad sex.”

Skinny Blue’s face lit up and he said,

“Yes! That’s it. Tonic. Tonic.”

Repeating the word like he was trying out a new flavor on his tongue.

I was thinking, silently, that maybe he had a couple of bottles on him, but managed to suppress the impulse. I had this thought flash threw my mind that if I somehow managed to have bad sex with an Israeli woman, she might kill me and eat me. I drove on, my blood chilled.

Skinny Blue told me where to stop and pull in, on Mordicai Street and I was home.

We got out of the car and shook hands. I wished him success with his, uh, tonic. He said his friend lived near my street and he would walk there. I didn’t believe him, decided that he wasn’t really human, but then asked him a question:

“So, please tell me your name. I want to write about you in my story tonight. Spell it so I get it right, will you? Thank you for being so kind to me tonight.”

 Skinny Blue replied,

“Ya-il Burg.”

 He had to spell it a few times for me to get it correct. His accent became stronger when saying his name.

We smiled at each other, this confluence of strangers in a strange place. He walked away, disappearing in the complete darkness.

I said to his fading blue shirt,

“Leetra-ote, Lylah Tov and Shabbat Shalom, Ya-il,”

 Using up my entire arsenal of saying goodbye in Hebrew. “See you again, good night” and you probably already have heard the last one, right?

So, Shabbat Shalom to all of you out there.

Peace be with you, too.

(To be continued…)

Driving in the Dark: Lost in Israel (part 1) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3736

Bob in Israel: Crusader Castle and Caraway Seeds (part 2) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3748

Marsha Michael, Who Solved My Problems in Israel (part 4) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3771

Tel Aviv, israeli radio and Unexpected Art (part 5) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3796

Vad Yashem: Killing Millions of Children (part 6) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3811

Chicago man Watches Death of Samurais in Israel (part 7)//www.differentslants.com/?p=3846

Traveling Alone, Traveling Together (part 8) //www.differentslants.co/?p=3865

An American Jew’s Bold New Plan for a Sane, Peaceful and Prosperous State of Palestine (part 9) //www.differentslants.co/?p=3887

David’s Star in Israel (part 10) //www.differentslants.co/?p=3907

Sleeping With the Bedouins (part 11-a) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3962

Pleading with Fate in Jerusalem (part 12) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3980