As usual the bulk of the feedback to my blog comes in synagogue. Considering that it is 2010 and all of my friends own any number of high-tech communications devices, you would think that they could find a way to comment ON MY BLOG. But, no. Despite my best efforts to get them to do that, all conversations concerning my blog begin something like this: "I was going to post my comments, but..." or "I tried to post my comments, but..."
Whatever the reason, almost without fail, I get those comments in the middle of the rabbi's Friday night speech. Since it is in Hebrew I usually lose the thread somewhere in his third or fourth sentence, so as it turns out, I have time to talk anyway. However, I do worry that some Friday night, he is actually going to stop his speech mid-sentence to ask me what is so important that I cannot sit quietly and just let him do his thing. And then, it is going to be even more embarassing when I have to admit that we are discussing my blog.
Which brings me to last night -- Friday night -- when the comments portion of the blog conversation took place during the rabbi's speech. Fortunately it wasn't our rabbi speaking so I managed to stay under the radar.
After reading my penultimate (I promised one of my other friends that I would use that word in my blog this week) post, my friend was indignant that Jews living outside of Israel could convince themselves that living in Ra'anana was not living in Israel. Of course, when I wrote that piece I knew that all my friends in Israel would react the same way. I was preaching to the converted.
So we sat in synagogue listing all the ways that Ra'anana was not like chool (the hebrew slang for the diaspora derived from the words chootz l'aretz which means outside The Land). Needless to say, we were in complete agreement.
I thought we had created a very comprehensive list until this morning.
When I arrived in synagogue there was a bar mitzvah underway. It was a bar mitzvah for a local boy who was secular and not a member of our synagogue. I had met the family before and they are very nice people -- real Israelis, for lack of a better term. However, they stuck out like a giant sore thumb because none of the women in their little group covered their heads in synagogue and they were all wearing pants. (I mean the women. Of course, the men were wearing pants. This isn't Saudi Arabia.)
In and of itself, this is no big deal. Although religious Jewish women both cover their heads in synagogue and do not wear pants there, I think most people in our community would say that it is better people should come to synagogue in pants rather than not come at all. In some communities they would be apoplectic, but not in Ra'anana.
But the pants weren't the issue. If anyone noticed it, no one mentioned it. But what was noticeable -- and is something that you would never see in chool -- was the 70 year old woman who was a guest of the bar mitzvah boy's family, sitting there in her black pantsuit with her uncovered purple hair.
Now, I don't mean, gray hair tinted purplish. I mean dark purple haze, purple rain, royal purple. (And for my Toronto PR friends out there -- I mean Pantone 266C purple.) It was the most purple, spiked hair I have ever seen -- particularly on a 70+ year old woman who was anything but fashionable. It made my daughter Yael look fashion-laid-back.
As an aside, strange colours like this are not infrequent on the streets of Israel. I have never seen more women's heads dyed unnatural colours in one place in my life. Israeli women seem to have a hankering for bright red hair colour, and various shades of maroon that are not found in nature outside of flowers. Frankly, I would have sworn that they were colours created by Crayola or Pantone for commercial use only. I am no longer caught off guard when I meet a "mature" woman with a shaggy head of unnatural orange. Those women are everywhere here.
I turned to my friend with whom I had been making the list last night, and I said to her: "Purple hair like that. THAT is a very good way to know that you are living in Israel."
She had no choice but to burst into laughter and agree.
Who the hell says we don't live in Israel?
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