Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

There is a devil in me. Preparing to bake a Rosh Hashana cake for my very traditional friend, I couldn’t bring myself to make another honey cake, and will be presenting a devil’s food instead. And having worn white all day I yearn for an antithetical color. Red? Black?

Will my friend see this as “ifcha mistabra” where you take the opposite point of view to prove the point? Or will she, more likely, see my perversion as a threat to her beliefs?

This kind of question has been coming up a lot lately in my neighborhood. From the other point of view, though. Haredi institutions and a large population of religious people have moved in. Is this a problem? There was a rally the other day to raise awareness of this and I am beginning to understand what the non-religious community is upset about. It is not the presence of religious people, but the sense of the imposition of the religion experience on others. When a group of religious people pass out ice cream to the children and ask that they say a blessing over the food, it calls something into question.

The first thing the board of the Yiddish Writers’ Association says to me when I walk into the meeting room this morning was, “Have you made your fish already?” This was a greeting that I remember from my youth – what you say to a woman who isn’t home on the morning of the eve of a Jewish holiday. Dare I admit to him I got my fish out of a glass bottle? No, I lied. “The same fish that were swimming in my bath tub on Wednesday were in the pot yesterday and are now cooling in my fridge.” I doubt whether he believed me about the fish, or the kreplach either for that matter, but it was fun to reminisce.

According to the latest census there are 75% Jews and 20% Arabs in Israel, but I would like to wish all of Israel a good and a peaceful year. Id Sa’id

As a departure from my usual spontaneity, I am enclosing a little piece I did for the momenti journal about 10 minutes, from 5:50 – 6:00 p.m. yesterday:

Dog Day: Ten Minutes on the Streets of Tel Aviv
Karen Alkalay-Gut
At her advanced age of fourteen Shusha the terrier can manage one square block in the posh and quiet neighborhood of Afeka in Tel Aviv where there are few cars to scare her. With no leash so I can take pictures if I want, she is the one who decides which way to go, and I follow. The beat is standard and the time is regular. We cross one street and pass the house that hasn’t been changed since the fifties, then the bare-blocked frame that hasn’t gotten a license to finish building for at least two years. Shusha pees there. She doesn’t stop at the new villa with the enormous shaded windows and the security cameras, but squats to finish her business as soon as we pass it. I have a little problem manipulating the doggie bag to pick up her product without getting my little digital camera involved, and erase the architectural documentation by mistake. Now she is walking more lightly and turns the corner at a slightly faster pace. Some dogs are barking but they’re locked inside the fortress-like walls so we pay no attention. She breaks into a run rounding the last quarter because she is suddenly reminded there is something interesting ahead.

The little hidden grocery is where she likes to stop to see if anyone dropped something she can eat on the way out. The cats like this place too, for the same reason, but even though the weather is beginning to cool and become even pleasant, most of them are not out yet.

The pickings are very slim anyway – the crows have probably been there before them. For sure there haven’t been any street cleaners around lately, but it doesn’t take all that long to examine this little square of sidewalk to see that most of the dirt is not edible.

Once past the grocery we visit a little grove of fichus trees, where extra garbage is sometimes dumped and sometimes one can find the remains of a picnic someone left for the cats, but the few broken plastic chairs and some cut branches don’t impress her, and she’s ready to leave. We’re on our way home now, and except for the cats and Nachman the grocer, all of whom have ignored Shusha because she has a tendency to shriek when approached, we haven’t seen a soul.

This ancient mixed-breed dog, followed by her faithful valet – me, owns the street.

I’ve been trying to revive the defunct PEN organization in Israel, and although I’ve been working on it for months, and there were hundreds of members less than a decade ago, the sense of unity seems to have vanished. Or perhaps it never existed but people gathered around money. When I first became interested in writers organizations in Israel there was government support of all of them – a sense that writers enriched the language and therefore the culture. Many of the writers didn’t really respect the other writers and had fearful arguments with each other, often on ideological grounds, but there was a home, the writers’ house, for almost all of them. That’s gone. There were two women sitting in the hallway of the shabby neglected building in the heart of tel aviv when i came by today, and nothing going on. The archives was unmanned and open, the offices were empty. This has to change.

My plan of getting through the holiday preparations is to eat out at much as possible. Oh, sure, the sweet chicken, the tsimmes, the roast, the vegetable pie, maybe a kugel, maybe taiglach. But for those days when i’m not hosting, I’m off to Pappas.

Here’s the chicken i’m considering:

CHICKEN WITH FIGS

2 (3 lb.) chickens cut into 8 pieces each
6 cloves of garlic, minced fine
2 tbsp. dried thyme
1/2 c. red wine vinegar
4 tsp. green peppercorns, drained
1 1/2 c. dried apricots
1 c. dried sm. figs or lg. fig pieces
1/4 c. packed brown sugar
1 tbsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. salt
1/2 c. olive oil
1 c. black olives
1/2 c. Madeira wine
Grated zest of 2 lemons
1 c. lg. pecan pieces
Day before serving, combine chicken, garlic, thyme, cumin, ginger, salt, vinegar, oil, peppercorns, olives, apricots and figs in a large bowl. Marinate, covered, overnight in refrigerator. Remove from the refrigerator 1 hour before cooking.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange chicken in a single layer in a large shallow baking pan. Spoon the marinade mixture evenly over the chicken. Sprinkle with the sugar and pour the Madeira between the pieces. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake, basting frequently with the pan juices, until the juices run clear when a thigh is pierced with a skewer, 40 to 50 minutes. Using a fork and slotted spoon, transfer the chicken, olives and fruit to a large serving platter. Drizzle with a few large spoonfuls of the pan juices and sprinkle with the pecans. Sprinkle the grated zest of the lemons over all. Pass the remaining pan juices in a sauceboat. Serves 6

Oh, yes, and if you can’t invite some strangers to your table, give one of the local charities a few food baskets.