New Tremping Route

It has been a few months since I began working in Yeshivat Ahavat Chaim in Kochav Hashachar. I've tried all sorts of ways to get there and back, except for one tremping, that's hitchhiking via Shvut Rachel-Kida and the Alon Road. I keep saying that I'm going to take that route on a Monday instead of going via Sha'ar Binyamin or the Junction of the Alon Road and Highway 60, but I end up "chickening out." Yesterday morning, for instance, I made a point to get to Sha'ar Binyamin in time for the 10am #49 bus to Kochav Hashachar, since there are few rides in the morning.

Kida Junction

But when I finished work just and went out for a ride home before 1:30, I ended up tremping northwest though the mountains to the east of my house in Shiloh. Usually I get a ride home (to the Shiloh-Shvut Rachel Junction) from a staff member, but before I saw anyone I know, a car came out of Kochav Hashachar going to Maale Efrayim north of the Kida Junction. I got in and got off there. A few weeks ago a small "army post" was set up there to watch that part of the Alon Road, so it's not "standing in the middle of no place."


Since there are usually a few staff members passing at that hour, I was pretty confident that I wouldn't have to wait long. I was right, but it wasn't a staff member who picked me up; it was a woman from the Shomron visiting her children who live in the area. She dropped me off near the Achiya (or was it the Kida?) Junction. From there I walked to a bus stop and couldn't resist taking lots of pictures.

I was enjoying taking a nice slow look and taking pictures when pretty quickly a ride came out of the Achiya Road on its way to Shiloh. I got in and got out near our supermarket. I started walking up the hill to home until my next door neighbor stopped and invited me in.

I think that the entire trip took less than forty minutes, about double it would take traveling in one vehicle door-to-door. And I enjoyed it.

Chodesh Tov!!!

Yesterday was the perfect day to go to Tel Shiloh, Shiloh Hakeduma. Winter is almost over, the air was warm, and the prayers were inspiring. Please try to join us on Rosh Chodesh Nissan. It will inspired you, no doubt.

Women's Prayers at Shiloh Hakeduma, Tel Shiloh

Rosh Chodesh Nissan, 5777 

Tuesday March 28, 2017 

1st of Nissan, 5777, 8:30am 

Hallel and Musaf for Rosh Chodesh 

Tour of Tel Shiloh 

Dvar Torah, Short Torah Lesson 

Please come and invite family, friends and neighbors. 

תפילת נשים ראש חודש ניסן

בשילה הקדומה, תל שילה

יום ג' 28-3-2017

 ל' שבט, תשע"ז 8:30

הלל ומוסף לראש חודש

יהיה דבר תורה קצר וסיור בתל

כדאי לבוא ולהזמין חברות, משפחה ושכנות

So, take out your Jewish Calendar, 5777, and mark the day. If you have more questions about it, please contact me shilohmuse@gmail.com with "Rosh Chodesh" as subject. Our women's dovening isn't a version of synagogue prayers. We sing Hallel out loud and then doven Musaf individually. 

You can visit Shiloh Hakeduma all weekdays. For more information call 02-994-4019.

The Saga of The Missing Bus Rides

Can this only happen to a Baile Rochel?

For someone who of my generation, knows nothing of computer/internet technology besides how to turn the various newfangled machines on and off, I still haven't a clue how a little card like this is the same as money when I travel here in Israel. I don't know how it usually at least pulls out/credits the right sort of fare and knows how long since I first got on the train or bus.

To me it's still science fiction in action when if you lose one, you can go to an office which has a computer program which can reproduce your account, so you don't lose money. You do have to pay a bit for a new card, though. And a couple of years ago, I discovered that the "paying machine kiosk" by the lightrail can show you how many rides and "packages" of rides the card is "storing."

When I first started using the Rav-Kav, רב-קו, I was always very nervous about being on the lightrail and discovering that it was empty. There's no place to pay on the train, and if an inspector comes on to check before you manage to get off to pay, you're fined a lot of money.

That's why I kept refilling the card with packages of twenty 20 rides long before I had finished a package. The card isn't all that smart. It doesn't finish a package before starting a new one. When I began to check I'd find three or four packages being billed. It would say something like:

6 rides
8 rides
3 rides
20 rides

I quickly got into the habit of checking, and then from one day to the next I was horrified to discover that the full package of "20 rides" had disappeared!!! Nobody had an answer for me as to where they had gone. I figured that some computer geek had hacked my account and stolen them.

A few months after that I began to get suspicious about the fact that rides seemed to get used up too quickly. Then I discovered that sometimes instead of getting the free within 90 minute transfer, the bus or train had billed another "package." After that I made a point of getting to absolute zero before buying a new ride package of 10 or 20 depending on how much cash I had to pay the driver. Yes, I had stopped trusting the machine by the train.

Last week I knew that I had reached zero on my previous bus ride, so when I got on a bus I was ready to pay. The driver was nasty and told me to put my card on one of the machines in the bus, since he didn't want to waste time. But I insisted that there was a good chance that I'd have to give him cash for a new "package." I put my card on the magic surface expecting a red light to flash indicating "empty."

Imagine my great surprise when it was green, and a receipt popped out saying I had 19 trips left. Yes, that package of twenty 20 had been there in my account all this time. Whew... I hadn't been robbed!!!

In The Nick of Time

That old Havdalah Candle is very special

Havdalah Candle

This week, I added a new Havdalah Candle to the shopping list. For the past few weeks during the Havdalah ceremony that separates the Holy Shabbat from the rest of the week, we'd been noticing that the candle was getting very dangerously close to the end of its usefulness. It would have had been nice to get a special one, like that was, but neither of us had found the opportunity.

So I had him pick up a simple one from the local grocery shop. It's really nothing all that special and even more difficult to use since it needs a holder or to be held. We put it away not knowing when we'd need it, but relieved that we wouldn't have to think of getting one for at least a few months or even a year or so.

A few minutes after Havdalah, when I was already settled in the den working on the computer my husband called me back into the dining room to see something:

 After the candle had cooled, and my husband was putting it away, he discovered that it had burnt through. So it was a good thing we already have a new one.

Chodesh Adar Tov

May This Month on Adar Be 

Full of Joy, Good News and Good Health!!

Baile Rochel Going "Modern"

That's in centigrade

Toasting the toasty room, even before
the pictures were rehung. 

OK, maybe for some of you, this is very 20th century deja vu, but here we are in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century and this family, OK more accurately an alte kakker couple, just got its very first modern "airconditioner," which unlike the ones of the mid-20th century heats as well as cools.

When we planned and built this house over thirty years ago, we tried to be as modern and clever as possible. I had read of "passive solar heating" and hoped that our large eastern and southern windows, plus specially constructed double walls, would make expensive heating almost unnecessary. The idea was that the free solar-from the sun- heat would enter the house and stay on sunny days. Even though our winters are the only season it rains, and even snows some years, most winter days are sunny. Of course, clever me ignored the simple reality that the summer sun would bake us...

Somehow we did survive those early winters by using a simple kerosene heater in the winter, a few small blow-heaters and the heat a large family plus guests add to a house. In the summer, we'd leave the windows open and pretend that it wasn't all that hot. But as these magic heat/cool airconditioners became more and more common, our bodies just wouldn't cooperate with the "con." Having a fan blowing the hot air in the summer just made the house like a giant convection oven. And in the winter I went around in half my sweater wardrobe and multiple socks each day.

Finally, after muttering for years that "we must get an airconditioner," I assigned the job of choosing a technician to my savvy son-in-law. We ended up hiring a young man who had been a student of mine. I wasn't all that happy about having a former student see the mess my bedroom is, but I was tired of needing to sleep with a hot water bottle, dressed heavy pajamas, socks and gloves most winter nights. And one of the reasons why our room stays a mess is that it is too cold to enter to clean. It was more like a giant walk-in freezer, and it's impossible to straighten up wearing heavy thermal gloves made for arctic winters.

For years I'd been saying that I only function a few weeks a year, spring and fall, since it's generally either too hot or too cold.

Well, my student was happy for the business and sent a couple of young neighbors, his cheerful technicians, to do the job. I had tutored one of them a number of years ago, too.


My husband was home that day and had the chore of clearing out things from our room and the living room near where the airconditioners would be. I still have lots of things to put back in place. Though I'm mulling over the idea of actually getting rid of many... Yes, I know that the trick to a clean and orderly house is to "purge" or "declutter" unneeded THINGS. The big problem is the definition of "unneeded."

The mess and the big decision of what can really be thrown out must wait until after Shabbat...

And of course you want to know how much better we feel now that there are airconditioners here in the house to keep us warm. I think for that answer, we'll have to wait until next winter, since Israel is now experiencing an "early spring." That's no surprise, since Ol' Murphy rules...

Trick to Speed Up Perked Coffee

As many of you probably know, I've been making my morning coffee in a French Press of late. I have a stock of American coffee, which brews great in it. The French Press doesn't give you a really hot cup of coffee, which doesn't bother me all that much, since I don't drink or eat anything super hot. But I really think, there should be thermal or even electric French Presses to provide nice hot coffee, especially for those of us who make a double or triple batch to get our inner motors functioning in the morning.

My old fashioned classic stove top percolator makes a really steamy cup/mug of coffee and can even be covered to keep hot or just leave it on the stove over a low maintenance heat. But the downside for me now is that I'm using an old electric hotplate type of stove which takes ages to heat up and bring the water to a boil.

So, today I decided to try a trick. I turned on the stove and also boiled up water in my electric kettle. While it was boiling, I put the body of the percolator on the stove with a bit of water. In the meantime I put the Turkish Coffee into the percolator, so it would be ready to quickly be assembled. Once I had boiling water,  I poured it into the percolator, assembled all the parts and left it to perk. When the absolutely delicious and invigorating coffee aroma reached the den, I returned to the kitchen and poured myself some coffee. Then I left what remained for mug-full #2  on the stove to keep warm. Electric stoves stay hot for quite a while.

I sure enjoyed my coffee this morning.

Eeks, Just Over a Month Left to Get the Freezer Chametz-Free

Here's my freezer. I have to finish all that chametz in just over a month. It seems like an impossible task. On the bottom there are bags of challah I made just last week.

In a week it's already Adar, then two weeks later, it's Purim, and a month after that it's Pesach, Passover. I kept pretending to myself that there was a n "extra Adar" like in some years. This year isn't one of those. 

Some people keep gorgeous immaculate homes. I'm not one of those. Even "cleaned for Pesach," my house doesn't get close to the pristine beauty those other houses radiate all year long.

But, thank Gd, we all know that dirt isn't chametz!!!  Still that's no excuse not to clean well at least once a year.

What a Difference a Week Makes

When I walked out after my "senior citizens" fun activities in the shelter nearby I noticed that the almond tree had lots more flowers than last week. 

As you can see, the tree still isn't full, but no other nearby tree can compete. This is the earliest blooming almond tree in the neighborhood. Generally there are almond blossoms in the middle of the Jewish Month of Shvat which was last week.  And last week it took a lot of imagination to imagine a flower-filled shekaidiah, almond tree. Nearby trees don't even seem as full as this one was last week.  I'll keep you posted.

When we lived in Bayit Vegan, there was a big old almond tree right next to our building. We could see it from our apartment. Every year the preschools would come and gather underneath to sing:
השקדיה פורחת
Hashkediya Porachat
The Almond Tree is Blooming

What if....

Whenever I walk through Jerusalem's Old City to the Kotel, Western Wall, my eyes are drawn to this "sports field," of sorts.

I wonder when it was set up. If we had made the decision to live in the Old City, where we started our life in Israel, would our kids have been able to play there?

We made aliyah in 1970. Our boat docked on September 5th of that year. We lived in the Maon Betar on the corner of Rechov Hayehudim and Rechov Plugat Hakotel. Now the building is being used by "Netiv Aryeh."

There was no "Rova Yehudi," Jewish Quarter then. There were a few, barely a handful of Jewish institutions, primarily Yeshivat Hakotel, Nachal Moriah and the Betar House when we moved in. There were also just a couple of dozen, at most, Jewish families living there.

In the Moriah Book and Judaica Store, which was the first to open in the Old City after its liberation in 1967.

There were no proper sidewalks, as the paths were being dug up to make way for modern infrastructure. Even though we were interested in staying, the logistics of bringing up a young family there were just too daunting for us. Remember that we were a very young, inexperienced couple with no family and few friends at the time. And in all honesty, there weren't yet many (if any) easy to purchase housing options there.

So, we bought an apartment in the Bayit Vegan neighborhood. And that's where we moved when our eldest was born that following summer. We literally went straight from the maternity ward to our apartment, even a day after the hospital had wanted to release us. I told them that I had no place, yet, to go and needed just one more day.

Every decision, large or small, creates a different reality.

Sweet Sugarless Dessert

This is the dessert, all the ingredients, just what you see here. Since we weren't too many for dinner I used:

• 4 small apples
• 1/2 medium orange

slices of apple, slices of orange and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon 

I didn't even add any water. I just covered the Corningware pan, which can be baked or on the stove top, and put it in the oven. I knew that the juices from the fruit would provide concentrated sweet liquid. If I had been making on the stove top, I'd need to add a bit of water, barely enough to cover.

When it began smelling "good," I took it out of the oven, put it on a heat-safe surface and covered it to finish the cooking process without burning.

It was absolutely delicious, as sweet as can be.

More Coffee Mugs #morningcoffeehaiku

family Chanuka gift for females, preteens and older

I've been drinking from different coffee mugs of late. It may be hard to believe, but the coffee does have a different taste depending on the mug. Each mug also has different meaning and memories for me.

And of course I'm still writing and posting my daily #morningcoffeehaiku. If you're on facebook, you can see them on your own.

Sunrise and coffee
I love to savor them both.
Fantastic day, y'all

Shiloh anniversary gift

Shiloh anniversary gift

Powerful sunrise
Super giant coffee mug
It's Friday morning

I bought this in New York, maybe for soup...

It's raining again
rain or shine, coffee's perfect
makes waking up great


Giant coffee mug
rescued from depths of closet
on a rainy day

Coffee always good
From all angles up and down
While watching sunrise

I bought this in New York, maybe for soup...

I need coffee now!
Got up too early today
and now it's raining

Super powerful winter sunrise shining through wet window

Powerful Apology

Add this to the many stories in my, and others', tremping sagas. Yes, this is how we survive, get around without a car, even when having to travel routes not served by public transportation.

Rainy day. Remember that even when it looks the stormiest,
the sun is actually shining, just hidden by the clouds, thunder
and lightening. 

Thank Gd this week it has been raining. Here in the HolyLand, rain in the winter is a blessing, meaning that a day like the one pictured here is a beautiful day in Shvat/February. Without rain, the land will revert to desert. Desalination is not a full substitute for rain.

Granted rain can be even more daunting than simple discomfort or inconvenience, especially when you don't have the use of a car and are dependent on siyata d'Shmaya and the goodness of others.

Yesterday, when I finished work in Kochav Hashachar I had a ride in my direction from some other teachers who make a point of helping me out. The only way I was able to accept my job in Yeshiva High School Ahavat Chaim was because the staff offers rides, and there are enough who live nearby or pass Shiloh. Without that, the twenty minute ride through Shvut Rachel to the Alon Road would be a minimum hour with totally miraculous bus connections at Sha'ar Binyamin.

Frequently the teachers bring me either home or by the local supermarket, but yesterday when the engine was started it was discovered that the gas tank was almost empty. It was obvious that we were at risk of getting stuck on the way to the closest gas station between Shiloh and Eli, so I knew that they would just drop me off at the junction of Shiloh and Shvut Rachel. As close as it is to home, it's sometimes the most ignored by drivers. But I answered "perfectly understood," when they apologized for having to leave me there.

As I got out of the car, another pulled up immediately. I didn't recognize the driver, but she said that she's going "up the hill" in Shiloh and named a family that lives right near me. All I could think of was that the apology I had received from my fellow teachers was powerful enough for Gd to arrange this ride on that chilly, rainy evening.

GD IS TRULY GREAT!!

Brought "Coney Island" Quiches for Pot Luck Dinner

Some friends and I decided to get together for an impromptu "potluck" dinner the other night in Jerusalem. I wanted to contribute, even though I couldn't bring anything from home. So I decided to call the Coney Island Bakery on Jaffa Road and order a quiche. Since I couldn't decide between the irresistible sounding spinach and dried tomato ones, I ended up with both. Since they were baked to order, I had them hold the cheese, because I had remembered that some of my friends have been avoiding dairy.

When I got to the bakery, it took all of my self-control to resist buying some of their beautifully decorated baked goods. These, too, can be baked and decorated to order.

Actually, they do catering and also have a meat kitchen at a different location. Call them at 029400008 for more information and orders. They deliver, too.

You must be wondering how the quiches were, since I ordered without having tasted them. They were delicious, and as you can see from the pictures above, we all started serving ourselves before I managed to take my camera out and shoot.

Spinach and Dried Tomato Quiches from Coney Island, plus one of their "signature" knishes. The coleslaw is from a friend's kitchen. 

I'm glad I decided to order the quiches. Everyone loved them and the knish, too.

Pepper Mushroom Omelet

Most every vegetable can be added to an omelet. In this omelet, I had:

• onion
• orange pepper
• garlic
• ginger

As usual I sauteed the vegetables with some oil in a covered frying pan, and when they were almost fully cooked I added my eggs. And when the eggs were almost hard, I turned off the flame. That way they finish on their own "steam." Yes, literally.

Add your usual/favorite seasonings and enjoy!