Leora Lerner gave her when she came to pick up Wendy’s cat and care for him for the year. Leora had spent time studying in Jerusalem before college, and visited relatives here frequently.
Leora had cautioned her, “Do not adopt a cat from the streets of Jerusalem. Once they’ve lived wild, they can’t be tamed. They don’t change.”
Wendy remembered asking curiously, “Why can’t they change? People do. Or say they do—that’s the whole point of my study.”
Leora had planted her hands firmly on her hips. Wendy recalled the gesture and intonation, as Leora opined, “Animals don’t.”
Wendy moved away from the cat noises to see Rail’s Felafel across the street. She turned left, following the directions from her landlady how to exchange her American dollars for shekalim. She saw the money-exchange kiosk and entered a space with enough room for three or possibly four people to stand sideways and a window with a teller in front of her. Behind the teller was a blackboard with flags for different countries and the exchange rate for each currency posted. Wendy felt like she was engaging in some kind of illegal activity when she slid her hundred dollars in cash under the glass window. She felt furtive, pulling the cash out, glancing around, not wanting anyone to know where it came from or how much she had. She thought of the Off Track Betting windows she passed when she went through the George Washington Bridge bus terminal on the way from visiting her brother Joel and his family in New Jersey back to college at Columbia. At OTB, people slid things back and forth under the glass, hoping for profit and gain. As she took her four hundred shekel notes and some assorted change, she hoped she was not being cheated because it seemed like there were fewer shekalim than she’d thought there would be. Of course, she could look at the rate and do the math, but her concern was more that she didn’t quite know how things work in a new country.
Walking out the door, she decided the OTB analogy wasn’t completely farfetched; this year was a bet. If she stayed here, hung around with religious people, listened, took notes, wrote it all up, she’d get material for a dissertation. Then she could get some articles out of it, get published and on conference panels, and get a job. But maybe not. She could be stuck in a series of one-year visiting positions—or none at all. Or, become so mired in the research that she’d never begin to actually write the thing. Or, worst of all, get so frustrated by the enormity and scope of the project that she’d just give up, and run straight to law school, screaming at the stupidity of having wasted four years as a graduate student with nothing to show for herself.
For now, she would just enjoy getting to know a new place, discovering the small things that pleased her in the neighborhood. There was a movie theater on nearby Lloyd Cremieux Street, and bars and cafés lining Emek Refaim, the main drag. Every other store seemed to be either a hair salon or a store offering some kind of arty accessory: clothing or jewelry or housewares. There was a grocery store, a video store, and quite a few felafel and pizza places. At all times, there were people on the street, going to the stores, hanging out at cafés and restaurants. More than either New Bay or Princeton, there was street life. At all hours, people strolled the main boulevard, sat in outdoor cafés, and enjoyed being on the street.
She noticed the street sign, Rahel Emainu, Rachel our mother. Streets named for biblical characters were so different from those in her parents’ neighborhood in New York, where streets were named for cities in North Carolina: Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, Wilmington, Greensboro, Goldsboro, Asheville, Fayetteville. Wendy had always felt vaguely dislocated by living in a place that was planned to evoke vistas of elsewhere.
She found the bus stop for Mahane Yehuda, the open-air market on Jaffa Road. She asked the driver to indicate to her where she should get off. The other passengers overheard. At her stop, Jewish grandmothers were gesturing to her in Hebrew, Russian, French, Spanish, and English that it was time for her to descend. She followed the others off the bus and watched as they fanned out through both the narrow covered stalls entirely full of shoppers and the wider outdoor area separating the two sections. She smelled fresh bread and saw a young Arab boy carrying stacks of pita on a wooden tray on his head, selling them ten in a plastic bag, which had condensation on it from the warmth of their freshness. She saw a booth that sold only spices, all with gorgeous colors: the deep rust of paprika, the bright yellow of turmeric, the fragrant green of basil and oregano, arrayed in large conical piles which the merchant scooped and weighed. There was one kiosk with just halvah, a sesame seed candy that came in a dazzling assortment of flavors: espresso, peanut butter, pistachio, and chocolate. She saw every kind of kosher fish available in Israel, arranged carefully on ice to keep it fresh. Other stalls had dried rice and beans, or all kinds of teas, salads, and meats.
Everywhere she could hear vendors hawking their wares, screaming loudly, “Avatiach, hamesh shekel! Avatiach le’kvod shabbat.” She paused to look around, and one of the merchants beckoned to her and offered a taste of watermelon, avatiach. She bought half a melon to satisfy him, placed it in her backpack, and immediately regretted having bought the heaviest item first. She passed a store with delicious-looking salads of all kinds in a freestanding refrigerated display case and ordered a number of them. When she finished ordering, she handed over her money, holding up fingers for the number of bills the vendor requested. Walking away, she did the monetary conversion and realized she had spent almost forty bucks, a large sum for her student budget. She turned to the right to one of the many alleyways inside the shuk and found a group of stores all selling housewares. She purchased a spaghetti pot, a soup pot, a frying pan, and two plates, two cups, and silverware for less money than she paid for the salads.
She went back outside, somehow finding the way through the winding alleys of the narrow shuk, all leading to the wide area between the two sides of the market, and looked for a bakery to get something to bring to dinner tonight with the cousin of her friend Leora from Princeton. She spotted the bakery with the longest line and figured it must be the best. She was usually impatient waiting in line, but somehow the smells emanating from inside the store, and the anticipation she felt seeing customers exit with looks of pronounced satisfaction on their faces, relaxed her. Her usual frustration with waiting in line was her feeling that she was doing nothing; now she was listening to the Hebrew around her, absorbing the atmosphere. On her turn to order, she chose entirely by visual cues, pointing at the items she wanted and holding up her fingers to indicate the amount.
Walking back to the bus stop on Rehov Yaffo, Wendy reflected on how much more satisfying this experience was than a trip to an ordinary American grocery store. At the shuk, all the food is on display; there is no layer of artificiality, plastic wrap or anything else, between seller and consumer. She remembered her grandmother Essie saying that when the A and P supermarket first opened, she was positive it would be a huge financial flop because no one would be willing to pay more for lettuce with plastic on it. Maybe that was the difference between America and Israel—people were willing to pay for barriers between themselves and their food, to obstruct their encounter with sources of nourishment.
At Mahane Yehuda, the smells of the fresh pita and spices and the alluring look of all the fresh foods enticed Wendy to spend much more than she had planned. Would this too be a metaphor for the rest of her year, becoming sucked in to something she hadn’t known about, released from her usual level of detachment from ordinary things of life like food? Would she be pulled in unexpected ways to things she hadn’t anticipated?
She liked the lack of pretense in the market, the obviousness of vendors yelling for customers, the pushing and shoving of the crowds of Friday morning shoppers trying to get the best bargains. Even if she didn’t celebrate Sabbath, it was her Jewish culture, not Sunday, emphasized as a day of rest here. She’d never thought about being excluded by Sunday, but now that she was here, she liked this activity filled, errand-doing Friday. Wendy found her bus stop and successfully navigated her bags and bundles aboard the bus for the return trip, excited that she was able to recognize the corner stop of Rahel Emeinu and Emek Refaim.
Wendy now had a bit of time before she
