Wedding in Israel

(I think a lot of post could or do start this way - but sorry for the long lapse.)

We went to our first wedding in Israel!  It wasn't the first we were invited to - but it was the first we could attend.  (And it happened to be the first wedding we'd been to since our own!)  A friend from work married an American - so it wasn't 100% an Israeli wedding, as there were many recognizable American undertones.

The whole event took place in old Jaffa - where Jonah left from before he was swallowed by the whale.  The venue was beautiful!  They started on the ground floor with a reception.  The walls and ceilings were stone arches (very arabesque) and there was a nice size patio on the side.  The chefs were Argentine! and made the best ceviche and salmon I've had since we got here.  Once all the guests were there and the time was right, we went up 3 flights of stairs to the rooftop balcony with great views of the sea and of Tel Aviv.  The sun was setting and the bride looked gorgeous!  The ceremony was half English, half Hebrew and I even knew one of the songs!

When the ceremony finished we went inside to the third floor where a dance floor and dinner tables were set up.  They even had a coffee bar!  The food, again, was delicious and it was really fun to get to dance with some of our colleagues and friends.  There were quite a few Americans so we didn't feel out of place at all.

The two different things about the wedding that I'll tell you about here are:  a.) all wedding halls here are Kosher.  This means they can't serve meat and dairy.  Culturally, to show class, you choose meat for weddings (otherwise you'd have a vegetarian wedding).  I guess this fits in our culture too as Paul and about every American man I know would say it isn't a meal without meat!  This is odd for us because wedding cakes are made with dairy.  Yes...this means that if you have a meat wedding, you don't have a wedding cake.  I have only ever looked forward to the wedding cake at my own wedding (because I knew how ridiculously delicious it was!), but this time I was looking forward to it just to see what they would do instead of cake.  (I thought the same thing...why not have a sponge cake, frosting made without butter, a fruit topping, use soy products instead of dairy....But that is just not done here.  I don't know why.) 

I tried every dessert - I had to taste them!  They were all new! And my favorite was a shot glass with an undercooked brownie.  I'm sure they had some fancy name for it, but that is what it was.  Warm and Gewy...I had 2.

And b.) (the other different thing) was this song that just said "Barbara Streisand."  It was so weird.  Judging from YouTube it is actually a popular song...but we all thought it was just weird.  I wonder what she thinks of it.  She should sue like Rosa Parks.

Purim

This past weekend was Purim – the Jewish Halloween.  I’ll let you look up the story on your own (if you are really interested), but all you really need to know (beyond it being like Halloween) is that it is one of two night (the other being Independence Day) when the police don’t care how late, how loud, or how drunk you are.  In fact – maybe you do need to know one more thing – the point of Purim is to “drink to the point of Adloyada, an Aramaic word meaning “not knowing.”  In the Purim context Adloyada is said to mean drinking to the point of not being able to distinguish between Haman and Mordecai.” (Haman and Mordecai are the good guys and bad guys in the story.)   (My friend wrote that for me.)  Adloyada was also described to me to mean not being able to distinguish between good and evil or between human and demon. 

So on Saturday night after dinner at a friend’s house, we packed into a tiny car and rode over to the hip side of town with friends to see what Purim was all about.  The dinner was really fun as was evidenced by the fact that I agreed to trek across town at 230am.  I honestly thought it was a like 1130, maybe 12.  And, I wasn’t going to drink…I had my camera in hand and I wasn’t going to risk it. 

I got some really great pictures but they aren’t necessarily the thing I want to highlight on the blog.  Let’s just say I have a great picture of a fairy kissing a giant baby, of three ancient Egyptians dancing to techno music, and another of a cow making out with a cowboy.  It was interesting, but not as popular as I’d have though it would’ve been.  We were at the street party in Florentine – which is supposedly the biggest, crazies and world famous!  There just weren’t that many people and not everyone was in costume.  Either way, it was really fun to see and my Israel experience wouldn’t have been complete with out it.