Archives for 2007

No, I have not been sitting idle since I returned from China. I actually have been very busy dealing with a variety of things, one of which was getting a new printer and setting it up.

“Easy” you say! Well, you only say that because you have no clue as to how the universe conspires against me when it comes to new technology. You see, we needed to get a new printer because the HP5550 that we had that did a wonderful job decided to blow its power supply.

“Go buy another power supply!” you urge. Once again, you are clueless. HP purposely makes a different volt/amperage power supply for every printer it puts out. No one on the entire Jerusalem mailing list ( JANGLO ) nor on the Modi’in mailing list had an old one hanging around the house. After about 10,000 telephone calls, I located the supplier in Israel who was willing to sell one to me for only $40. Since that was about half the price of the printer which, by the way, was only a printer and didn’t have scanning or fax capabilities, we decided to buy another printer.

“Easy” you say. Once again you show your ignorance. Not easy. Easy if you have computers that run on an operating system that was produced after 1998. Try to find something that will run on Windows 98… and that is the desktop to which the printer was to be physically connected in order for us to use it on our home LAN. So we found a network printer that we could use directly and the two laptops would be able to print and documents and pictures from the desktop could be “shared” and printed from the laptops. Good? If you are nodding yes, you have once again fallen into a trap.

The man who sold us the printer (an HP Photosmart C6183) assured us that as long as we had someone who knew computers, we’d be fine. When I pointed out that that someone would have to be me, he averted his eyes. So we happily took home our new baby and I proceeded to do what I do with new gizmos… I read the instructions and went step by step through them doing exactly what they told me (in Hebrew, of course). I started at about 7 p.m.

Perhaps my next problem happened because I was not sufficiently Israeli. I should have brought some humous upstairs to make the installation disk feel at home. I should have offered to treat it to a felafel. I should have… but alas, I didn’t. And it got its revenge. I was proceeding through the download, answering the questions when suddenly…NO….NO…NONONO… all of the letters turned into question marks. So I kept hitting the “suggested” responses until I came to a screen where I had to make a choice among three items. I had no idea what any of them were since they were all question marks. I tried one. More question marks. I didn’t know how to get back. I pushed here and there and realized I was in question mark hell and there was no way out. I did what any almost sane person would do…. I called an expert.

The sweet son-in-law I called (not to be confused with the sweet son-in-law who is off in Germany giving a paper and certainly not to be confused with the sweet son who was in another part of Germany giving a seminar and of course not to be confused with the two over-worked sweet sons in Israel) suggested that I download the driver from the internet. His calm voice reassured me that I was on my way to escaping from question mark hell.

So I looked up the driver. Of course there is no 6183 driver. So, I downloaded the 6180. Or tried to. The first time I attempted to download it, I was told it would take 84 hours. I decided that moving the laptop to the area where the router was located, shutting off the desktop and praying might aid the download time. Sure enough, it only predicted a download of about 2.5 hours. I left the laptop downloading, went out, returned, and about 3 hours later, was present when it registered an error and stopped loading and suggested I try again. And try I did. Finally about another 3 hours later, the download was complete.

OK, I thought, now it’s JUST a matter of installing it. HAHAHAHAHA, I heard my computer say. The installation started, failed, had to be removed, started again, and finally was completed at about 2 a.m. I triumphantly printed a page!

But I was only half done. Now I had to do the same thing to my husband’s laptop. At a little after 2 I started downloading the driver and went to sleep. At 6, bleary-eyed, I stumbled into his office to find the download window reporting “99% , one second to go” and over it, an error message. We had to download the driver once again (another unknown amount of time in the 2-3 hour range.) Then we tried to install it. After about 15 minutes, we received an error message “cannot scan.” Then the installation halted. The helpful error report said, “No fix is currently available. Uninstall, reboot, and try again.” Which we did.

It wasn’t until the afternoon that the second laptop was able to print.

And my grandmother thought she had problems!

My anonymous commenter asked whether the person who preferred “mehadrin” meat could have eaten something else. Of course the answer is yes. But in my universe, that answer is no. And I will tell you why:

Because of the way I was brought up, I am very sensitive to the issue of respecting other people’s choices. Unless the other person is causing himself or others HARM, I feel that I must respect his or her choice. After all, all of us have made choices that may be unpopular or inconvenient to others. However, part of being a grownup is to accept that I do not possess perfect wisdom and that others have the right to decide for themselves.

Now as to the turkey. The gentleman in question who prefers a “mehadrin” hechsher is not the type of person to make a big fuss about having things his way. He is gentle and kind and giving and accomodating. Why should I be any less so?

So my choice to do what I did wasn’t at all about him. It was about me and the way I like to treat people. And although it was a saga, it was an adventure and I believe it was the right thing to do.

In our family, we have had a tradition of eating turkey on the holidays. In addition to Thanksgiving, Rosh HaShana and Passover wouldn’t feel right without the traditional turkey. Purchasing kosher food in Israel is not difficult. In fact, all but one of the large supermarket chains are fully kosher, under rabbinical supervision all year round. However, in Israel, virtually no one who is not a former American cooks a whole turkey. In fact, the small European ovens that most of us have make it quite a challenge. However, in certain areas in Jerusalem and other places where there is a concentration of American immigrants and finally in Modi’in, the meat department of the supermarket has gotten used to odd requests around holiday and non-holiday (Thanksgiving) time. So, each year, I order my turkey a few days in advance of each holiday and each year, we have our turkey. Our local butcher is used to ordering for me and it is a fairly simple process.

But a year and some ago our daughter married a man who prefers to eat “mehadrin” turkey. For anyone who doesn’t know what that means, suffice it to say that it requires a special type of religious supervision and it is not sold in all supermarkets. Since they will be with us for seder, we need a mehadrin turkey.

Last year I bought it in a place not far from here. It was a large store with no customers. Now it is a large empty building.

For Thanksgiving, I ordered a turkey in Har Nof (a neighborhood of Jerusalem where I teach) and when I went to pick it up on the appointed day, it hadn’t come in. After many calls on the part of the friendly butcher, starting at 3 in the afternoon and ending at 11 at night, a suitable turkey was found in a supermarket in a suburb of Jerusalem. That did not seem to be a good option for this Passover.

So I trekked over to Kiryat Sefer which is the chareidi (ultra-Orthodox) town not far from here. It’s a particularly good place to shop before Passover as they cater to people who like us are “Ashkenazim” (of Eastern European descent) and don’t eat beans and corn and rice on Passover unlike the “Sefardim” who are of Middle Eastern/ North African/ Spanish/ Dutch origin. Many of the Passover foods sold in Israel are made with those as ingredients and are not consumed by people who follow the “Ashkenazi” customs.

The supermarket was filled with food, but there was nary a whole turkey in sight. I went to the front desk. The woman there called the person in charge. He didn’t answer. She tried his cell phone. He didn’t answer. She announced his name. He didn’t respond. She told me to come back to the desk after I finished shopping and perhaps she would find him by then. I checked back a few times and finally, he was there. He was a very nice person and he was very helpful. He made a number of telephone calls and determined that the best thing for me to do was to show up the next day at 1 p.m. when the turkey supplier was scheduled to visit.

I thought that was a bit odd since it was clear he wouldn’t have the turkey on him at the time and I didn’t quite understand why I had to show up in person when I could more easily call him on the telephone, but I agreed since I didn’t want to embark on another wild turkey chase.

Later in the day my daughter-in-law called to find out where I was getting my turkey since she needed one for the 24 people she is having to seder (her whole side of the family!). I told her my story and suggested that she call the store and perhaps she could get more cooperation than I could since she was born in Israel and doesn’t have that tell-tale American “R” (that should be my only problem!)

She called me back and told me that she was told to call “Yoram” (not his real name, although he turned out to be such a nice guy that I probably should use his real name) between 9 and 10 in the morning. I told her that since I would be the one to go and pick up the turkeys, it made more sense for me to call and she was happy to allow me to do that.

So at 9 I began calling the supermarket. The phone rang for a very long time and finally changed to a busy signal. I redialed. The same thing happened. Again and again. Until 9:40. Finally someone picked up the phone and I asked for “Yoram.” The woman said she would find him. She hung up the phone. I began calling again. Finally 10 minutes later, someone answered. He told me Yoram was busy– I should call back in 20 minutes. Twenty minutes later I began calling again. After another 10 minutes of ringing, a woman answered the phone. She said Yoram wasn’t anywhere around. I asked her if perhaps he was somewhere else in the store. She told me that she couldn’t see him. I should call back. I told her my story and she said, “How is that my problem? Am I supposed to go wandering through the store calling for him?” I suggested she make an announcement asking him to call. She did. He called. Finally he came onto the phone and told me that no, there is no possibility for me to get a turkey at that store, but that he was a supplier to a number of stores and there is another one in Kiryat Sefer that he will call while I hold. He got back on the phone and told me the name of the store that would have the two turkeys.

I quickly got ready and left the house worried that someone would snatch up the turkeys. Well, actually, that was not the problem. The problem is that no one buys whole turkeys and what butchers do when times are slow is to cut up the whole turkeys in anticipation of the customers to come, and I wanted to save my turkeys from that fate.

So I arrived at the supermarket, put my 5 sheqel coin in the cart and immediately realized that one of the 4 wheels was about to fall off as the cart lunged forward and to the right. The security man fished my coin out of the cart and I went and got another one. With hope in my eyes, I went to the meat counter.

Behind the counter were three jovial men. I asked for my whole turkeys. Their eyes glazed. It was as if I had asked for a side of unicorn. They looked at each other with the look usually reserved for “does anyone here speak Navajo?” Finally, I could see them beginning to focus as I said, “One of you just spoke to Yoram and told him that you have whole turkeys.” One said to the others, “Hmm, yes, I think we might have one.” The others just stood there. Finally he located the one whole turkey. I said I was told there would be two. He said they were expecting a shipment any minute. I asked if they thought it would arrive within the next hour. He said that it was supposed to have arrived at 8 a.m. (by now it was about 11.) They weighed the one turkey, put it in their fridge and I went wandering through the nearby stores for about 40 minutes. When I got back, they told me there was good news. The truck had left supermarket 1 and was on its way. It should be here any minute. The three men were actually rather jovial and friendly. I got updates every 5 minutes or so. “Should be soon.” “He’s about to turn into the parking lot.” “He’s at the back door.” “He’s unloading.” I felt like I was giving birth. How many centimeters am I dilated?

Finally finally turkey 2 arrived. I won’t describe the awkwardness that accompanied the older butcher as he attempted to put the 18 pound turkey into a plastic bag “this thing is HEAVY!!!” But after an mere half hour wait in the checkout line, I was free! I returned from the turkey hunt successful.

First let me give you some background. This past week, among all of the other things I have been doing, I have been corresponding with a young woman who had some questions about how to comply with advice given to her by a rabbi who is a “healer” that would result in hurting other people. I have been talking to her about the fact that I don’t believe in healers. I don’t think that anyone has supernatural powers that enable them to tell you that you have a 35% of something good happening to you if you remain in your current city and a 95% chance if you move to another named city. I don’t think that there are prophets among us. I don’t think that there are people who have a special line to the Almighty. It worries me that in Israel we have a lot of people who believe in people who read palms, tea leaves, coffee grinds, and people who do numerology and graphology– not to mention the famous rabbi healers. I think, and, unfortunately have seen for myself, that many of those who hold themselves out to be healers are actually people who prey on the innocent and naive and extract from them their money and their dignity. I feel very strongly about this. Once, in the US, I had a client who was in crisis because she had been at a party the night before and a “psychic” told her that her husband was having an affair!

Call me a skeptic. Call me a killjoy. I just don’t believe in healers.

But then yesterday, I found out that I was one.

A long time ago I had worked with a family that had multiple problems. You name it, it wasn’t working: marriage, kids, finances, relationships with people and settings outside the family– nothing was the way it should have been. I saw this and that part of the family- a parent, one child, two children, the couple, a number of times (perhaps 8 times total) over a period of a couple of years. I got occasional calls, maybe once in a year or so with additional information about issues the family was grappling with, but they seemed to be functioning.

On Friday, I was out shopping and suddenly I heard someone call my name. It was one of the parents of the family. I was told that the family is doing not just well, but very well and “thank you”. And the best part was I was told, “It was because you were with us all the way.”

It isn’t the first time something like this has happened, but it was just as magnificent a feeling as if it had been.

Of course, I know that I am not really the healer… this family had all of the elements of its own healing inside. I just helped them access them. And that is why years later, the work we did together was still effective.

Oh, and I still don’t believe in healers.

Spring isn’t a season. It’s a state of mind. I don’t know how to make it appear, but suddenly on a day like today with the sun shining and my garden newly planted with summer annuals and the trees in bud and the birds singing, my heart lifts and the feeling of clean, fresh renewal fills me with happiness.

This hasn’t beeen a good week. Someone we knew and appreciated was killed in a car accident. Someone else we knew died suddenly. We found out about the serious illness of yet another acquaintance. It has been, in short, a sad week.

But then, after the rain comes the sunshine once again, and it was a week when I accompanied my youngest to the doctor for a pregnancy checkup and a week when the details of the China trip are being firmed up and a week when my own Chinese-style garden is taking on that springlike look as the lemon blossoms are ready to pop open.

It was a week like every other as I move through life and realize that there is sadness and joy and both are legitimate parts of the experience of being human.