Shavu'ot at the Kibbutz

We planned for a good while for me to spend Shavuot at the kibbutz so it was all quite exciting when I came. Actually a lot more was going on besides my presence. The Ravids have finally moved into their permanent house that they lived in before moving to the States for several years. It's much bigger and more comfortable than their temporary home so all of us were very happy. They were nearly done with the move when I came so a lot of things were finding their places.

First, let me explain why I'm at a kibbutz for Shavuot, not in Jerusalem. Shavuot is a holiday that is celebrated 6-7 weeks after Pesach. It is the first cut of the harvest so kibbutzim are the center of the attention and they throw big parties. Also, people are supposed to eat dairy during this time so Jerusalem was filled, filled with advertisements for cheesecake orders. I definitely wished that I had Mom's cheesecake!!! In Jerusalem, Shavuot is celebrated allllllll night with the celebration in the Old City at like 5 AM or something. I couldn't do that- I'm glad that I got this invite instead!

Not only the move created a bit of chaos, their oldest daughter, Anat, came down also. We got to meet her boyfriend and he joined us for dinner, which was nice. I spent a lot of time hanging out with Anat and Yismin since they were hanging out and Maa'yan was off dealing with moving out of her apartment into the house, her birthday stuff, and rehearsing for the Shavuot event on the kibbutz. Yismin is going off to the States and then traveling down to Central America on Friday and won't be back until September so it was my last time seeing her and I wanted to spend as much time as I could. Anat and I got to know each other better and now we're more comfortable hanging out so we'll make an effort to do more often in Jerusalem.

We went out for a fish dinner at a restuarant in Herzilya and it was delicious. Actually, eating with the whole family and the boyfriend was a bit of an experience- we really ate Israeli style. It means taking your fork and jabbing in food from the little plates of appeitizers and from other people's entree plates. Estentially, Israelis don't use serving spoons or forks to serve themselves food. They also break off bread and just swish them around the hummus or tahini- no knife necessary. I almost felt like scratching my head, trying to decide if I liked this way or the "proper" American way better. Maybe I'm just too possessive of my food. That's probably it. Well, okay, I am possessive of my food and that's basically coming from living with my family where sometimes people eat things that I wanted to have but didn't get a chance to help myself to a serving... especially my "garbage disposal" brother (though he is very good enough to leave me enough of desserts that I really, really like).

Anyway, from that dinner until the following night, we celebrate Maa'yan's 21st birthday... of course being half-American, we teased her about being legal in both countries at last. Shlomi joked about how she has never been drunk...

Then on Wednesday, most of us kids just slept in until 11 or so. We had "breakfast" (brunch by my standards) of crepes, cheeses, tomatoes, cucumbers, bread, and toppings. Yummy!!! I just love crepes- I probably could've asked if I could make some eggs to put in the crepes with cheese... oh well, that's a dinner idea for me.

While they working on their moving, I spent the whole time just studying away for my Hebrew. They were at a stage that it would not make sense for me to help since they were just arranging things and deciding where they would go. I saw some of their little treasures including a photo album of Linda and Anat's trip in Italy and a "dollar bill" that they had gotten at a protest against the Bush administration- it's so hilarious.

Then we had a quick dinner of pasta with chicken and mushrooms and a salad (and mac n cheese for vegetarian Yismin) before going off to the wheat field to see the festivities.

The festivities was a lot of fun... see the following pictures.... pictures are worth a thousand words....

Anat, Me, Maa'yan Me and Yismin
Throwing candy!
Drill Team Performance (really brought back memories of my riding camp!)
Tractor Show
People clammoring for candy
Drill Team again

Collecting wheat- Shavuot is all about the first cut of wheat harvest

More candy...what else?

Oh, I also recorded Maa'yan's dance performance and tried to upload it on YouTube... it was too big or something so I'll edit it later so you all can see what a typical Israeli dance performance is like. :) It was beautiful.