Solid Gold Dancing in the Holy Land: January 2008

bushwhacked January 13, 2008 |

According to my trusty WordWeb computer tool (it's like the online Thesaurus, but in my opinion better) the adjective "Bush" means the following:

Adjective: Bush bûsh
1. Not of the highest quality or sophistication

Now, I thought this was rather amusing and somewhat apt. However, it is rather embarrassing to share your moniker with a rather accurate description of your personality.

As I am sure most of you know, President George "Dubya" Bush was in town last week as part of his Whistle Stop tour of the Middle East. On his third and final day in Israel, the President confidently declared that there would be a peace agreement signed between Israel and the Palestinians before he leaves office at the end of the year.

Well, PHEW for that! I, for one, can sleep a whole lot easier now that Mr Bush has given me his personal guarantee that there will finally be peace in this eretz nehederet (wonderful land) of ours!

I think the only thing Israelis will remember about the President's visit last week was how bloody inconvenienced they were! For the majority of the three day visit, most of Jerusalem's major roads were closed to traffic (including the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway). Public transport did not operate, and most people either had to stay home from work (because they could not physically get there) or for people like me who live reasonably close to their place of work, were forced to go everywhere by foot. This, in itself is not a bad thing, except for the fact that we're in the middle of winter and it is really COLD outside Mr President!

The President and his entourage booked out the entire King David Hotel. Other guests who were booked to stay there at the same time were rather unceremoniously dumped and forced to find alternative accommodation. Bush's cast of thousands (literally) also booked out the nearby Dan Panorama Hotel, bringing a total of 800 rooms that were booked by his accompanying staff.

Security in Jerusalem was, as you can imagine, insane. The streets, emptied of traffic, were instead, filled with police, military, U.S security and secret servicemen and women. The King David Hotel was turned into Fort Knox, with the entire front of the hotel covered up by white plastic sheeting. Even the side of the hotel was covered by giant marquees so as to conceal all comings and goings from the hotel. Snipers adorned the rooftop of the hotel and ropes were secured from the roof to the ground all around the perimeter of the hotel should the need for his security staff to get to him in nanoseconds arise.

Hotel staff were also in lock-down and not permitted to leave the hotel for the duration of the President's visit.

Now, unfortunately for me and Doron, we live about 100 metres from the King David Hotel and so we were subjected to the full brunt of the security measures. Every entrance and exit to our street was cut off to traffic (including the pedestrian variety!) unless your Israeli ID showed your address to be local.

Mr Bush headed off about lunchtime on Friday, thankfully giving us Jerusalemites a little bit of time to run around and do our usual pre-Shabbat preparations. I noticed, with some amusement, that the brand new American flags that had been hoisted above the city streets were being pulled down almost as soon as the last car in the President's motorcade drove off.

Bon Voyage George. I hope you at least got to eat a decent falafel while you were here.

Planning a wedding in Israel 101 January 10, 2008 |

With less than three months to go until the "Big Day", the reality that I will soon be a married woman is dawning on me with increasing regularity.

As a slightly "older" bride (I have just turned 35), I am experiencing an interesting combination of emotions. On the one hand, it is a very strange sensation to realise that the years of just "being me" (or me plus cat!) are soon coming to an end. Even with my past relationships (and like any person of my age, there is a healthy trail of emotional baggage in my wake!) I was still "just me". I don't care what anyone says, marriage IS different. Psychologically, it's on a whole other level.

I think one of the great benefits of marrying a bit later is that I feel so much calmer. Life, in general, doesn't scare me as much now and I know I have dealt with most of my inner demons. I have accomplished a lot on my own and I am proud of what I have achieved. However, I feel I am entering a new phase in my life and my greatest desire is to share it with someone. The "just me" thing just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Who knows what celestial forces were in place when Doron and I met. Just over five months ago, we ended up going to the same live music gig at a local Jerusalem night spot thanks to two Aussie (non-Jewish) friends who had rather randomly met in Israel. It was an oddly fateful meeting. I certainly never thought when I woke up that morning that I was going to meet the love of my life and future husband later that day. In fact it's a miracle he even looked twice at me! The Israeli summers are unbearably hot and my greatest enemy, Mr Humidity, was out in force that day. Doron says he remembers my wild Jewfro hair that night with some amusement. Being an Aussie, I like the occasional beer - especially on a disgustingly hot summer's night - and so I had a couple of Corona's. Doron (a bit of a teetotaler) thought he'd met some borderline alcoholic.

Still, there was magic in the air that night - of that we are certain.
Three months later we were engaged.

Being the somewhat impulsive couple that we are, we decided against a long and drawn out engagement. Why not have the wedding before Pesach, we thought?
And so, before we knew it, we were hurtled into the alternative universe that is "The Israeli Wedding".

We knew that we would have a small wedding - perhaps a hundred people - and so this immediately disqualified us from most of Jerusalem's wedding venues, who cater for a minimum of 200 people. It didn't take us long though to find a wonderful venue, Merkaz Shimshon-Beit Shmuel, which is actually about a 5 minute walk from our apartment. It's a beautiful venue, but without a doubt, the star attraction is the downright stunning panoramic view of the walls of the Old City.

The next few weeks saw us traipsing around Jerusalem meeting with venue people, photographers, DJs, musicians and soon enough we realised that this whole wedding thing is BIG BUSINESS in Israel. All these people talked about "closing the deal" as if Doron and I were buying into some multi-national conglomerate. Eventually we did manage to find excellent people who we really liked and who weren't trying to shove their product down our throats.

Now my dress. This is quite a story.

The vast majority of Israeli girls rent their dresses and pay an absolutely exorbitant amount of money for the privilege. Dresses here, with very few exceptions, also seem to be designed for your average floozie, and personally, not being a prude or anything, I feel a little uncomfortable about the idea of standing under the chuppah wearing my underwear.

Just to give you an idea - here's a typical Israeli wedding dress:

Now, I don't really have any strong feelings either way about renting or buying - but I'll be damned if I am going to pay upwards of 6,000 shekels (about AUD$2,000) for something that makes me look like I should be cruising up and down Kings Cross.

Lucky for me, I have a fabulous mother who works in the fashion biz, and through a couple of her close contacts, I have been able to organise a wonderful dress (although it is still very much a work in progress!)

The fabrics - silk dupioni and hand-embroidered silk netting - is coming all the way from Suzhou in China from a dear friend of my mother's as an incredibly generous wedding gift.

In the next week or so, the fabric will be couriered to Israel and then I will take it to a small moshav near Netanya where my dress will be designed and made by a wonderfully talented Israeli designer, Keren Naftali.

Given I spent the first twenty-odd years of my life in the Far East, growing up in Hong Kong, I find it rather appropriate that my wedding dress is making a similarly trans-continental journey from Asia to Israel.

Although it is somewhat of a dream come true to be getting married here in Jerusalem, it is a little sad that so many of my relatives and friends will not be able to come. It's an excruciatingly long (not to mention expensive) flight from Australia. Still, we are blessed to have so many wonderful friends, and no small number of extended family members who will be here to celebrate with us.

The big hurdle ahead of us now is the Jerusalem Rabbinut. As an olah chadasha (new migrant) I need to bring quite a lot of extra paperwork to prove I am Jewish according to the Halacha. I am hoping that they won't give us too much hassle, but I have been told by friends to expect Israeli bureaucracy par excellence. We'll be heading there to open our "marriage file" next week (providing they end their strike). See here in Israel, even Rabbis go on strike...

Wish us luck!