Just about every day we get unsolicited calls falling into three categories: telemarketers, surveys, and charitable organizations. I have found that the best way to get rid of telemarketers is not to give them a chance to talk. One of my children once asked me, “Why do you always say, ‘Lo meunyanim’” (not interested)? After saying those magic words I hang up immediately. I figure I am doing them a favor by not letting them waste their time on a non-sale, although one called me right back to chastise me for being rude. I don’t think she has much of a future as a telemarketer!

On the rare occasion that I agree to answer a survey on the phone, I always regret it. They invariably take about twenty minutes to complete, even though the caller insists that it is a “short” survey, and that he is “almost” fniished. My favorite was the marketing survey about a new type of white cheese. Each of the thirty or so questions included the name of the brand. Clearly this survey was an effective advertisement as I remember the name of the cheese to this day.

When we first came to Israel, the few requests we received from charitable organizations occurred on their “yom hatramah” or annual appeal, which was run by volunteers. Nowadays our phone rings constantly with requests for one organization or another. Lately, every week brings a new organization requesting aid for “mishpechot bimetzukah” (families in distress). How many such organizations do there need to be? There are two or three in my town alone. And the callers are as aggressive as any telemarketer. I know most of them are paid, and they must work on a commission. I don’t have any other way to explain the fact that they call every two or three months or more. When going over our expenses we recently found that my husband and I had donated to an organization twice within the same week.Then there was the caller who tearfully pleaded for funds on behalf of a patient needing an operation in chutz laaretz (outside of Israel). When I mentioned an amount the caller exclaimed, “Oh, that’s not enough!” I am not implying that the request was not genuine, but I had no way of knowing for sure.

More than once I have found an exorbitant charge to a charitable organization on my credit card statement. Fortunately I was able to cancel these donations easily. Are these genuine mistakes or are they intended to beef up a commission? It’s too bad that the reputations of these organizations become sullied by this practice. I don’t want to entrust my credit card number to careless or dishonest representatives.

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Yesterday I went to hear Dr. Jack Newman at the La Leche League Conference for Breastfeeding Professionals at Tel Hashomer hospital. I have summarized some of the more interesting points below.

In the context of discussing the International WHO Code of Marketing Breastmilk Substitutes (Israel is a signatory), he described the attitudes that formula companies try to foster through their marketing.

THE FOLLOWING ARE FALSEHOODS PERPETUATED IN FORMULA ADVERTISING. DR. NEWMAN’S VIEWS ARE IN PARENTHESES.

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Mama o’ the Matrices has been school-shopping:

Too many indifferent teachers, too many classrooms with glossy posters instead of the kids’ work. And when the kids’ stuff was hung up, it was way too uniform.

And the biggest strike? teachers mixing interpretive narrative (midrash) with the biblical text, and making no distinction. Never mind that while I was in the classroom, boys were called on twice as often as girls. Never mind that ‘wiggly kid’ to the principal means ‘ADHD/ADD,’ or that when asked what their goals are, the administration showed nothing beyong ‘Keeping Up With the Kerrys.’ Their communication skills lag, yes, but above all this is a school that is purporting to teach Orthodox Judaism, and they are being sloppy about it. Phaugh.

Our son is going to Kitah Aleph next year, and we just came back from a meeting as well. When I was younger, I used to ask the staff what happened with kids who were bored in class. I stopped because they always said the learning was individualistic and it never was, unless the teacher was exceptional. Now I ask for examples of how they handle behavior problems. Among other things, tonight the principal mentioned that they might ask a child to copy a relevant section of the Shulchan Aruch as a punishment for some infraction. One of my own children once had to do this. Do they really think that a child talks back to a teacher because he doesn’t know the halacha?

I’ll tell you how we are going to choose the school for our son. Forget about bored kids, lack of creativity, sex discrimination (although we don’t have the option of coeducational classes, which is fine with me), and sloppy religious teaching. We will examine our options, see what combination of hashkafic (ideological), sociological, economic, and pedagogical garbage we are best able to stomach, and choose the one that allows us to sleep best at night. It won’t be an easy choice.

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In Israel the post-high school decisions take on a different flavor because of the obligation to serve in the army. There are essentially four options for observant boys.

• Hesder, a five-year program including 1.5 years of army service. Most yeshiva high schools aspire to send the majority of their graduates to hesder.

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I think that West Bank Mama was looking for something a little more positive in honor of her blogoversary feature, “Only in Israel.” I hope she’ll forgive me and post it anyway.

When we bought our apartment in the early 1990’s, we were entitled to a government grant and a reduced-rate mortgage. After submitting the numerous documents and permissions, the bank finally called to say that the check was ready. At around 8 in the morning I strapped my toddler into his stroller and walked to the bank, figuring that I would be back in time for his morning nap. I was seven months pregnant.

At the bank, I waited a few minutes before the clerk called me. She handed me the check, gave me a form to sign, and asked to see my “teudat oleh.” A look of indignation crossed her face as she examined it. “But this document is butal!” she exclaimed. She reached out and retrieved the check.

The teudat oleh is a passport-sized booklet, used to document all of the financial benefits that are allocated to olim chadashim (new immigrants). When we received ours at the airport, several of the pages had been stamped “butal,” or void, with large black letters. The stamp appeared on pages referring to oleh rights that were no longer in force. Unfortunately, the hand of the individual who had stamped our teudat oleh had slipped, and the marking appeared diagonally in the bottom margin of one of the valid pages, and partially on one or two of the other pages. This is what the clerk had noticed. We had already presented the teudah to various officials without anyone commenting on it. I tried to explain this but she would have none of it. She made a phone call. “You need to go to the absorption ministry and get a letter saying why your teudat oleh says “butal” on it,” she instructed me.

I saw there was no arguing with her so I packed up my toddler and my belly and walked the few blocks to the address she had given me. The sun was hot. The ministry was no longer there! By this point I was in tears. Fortunately someone was able to tell me where the ministry had moved to, and I shlepped to the bus. At the absorption ministry they were sympathetic and ushered me past the dozens of waiting Russian speakers straight into the director’s office. The director wrote me a letter on official ministry stationery, stating that I was entitled to all of the rights of an oleh. I examined the letter. “But the clerk said that the letter needs to say why the teudah was stamped “butal.” “Don’t worry,” was her comforting reply. “If I write that you are entitled to all these rights, you are also entitled to the mortgage. If the teudah were really void, it would have been marked in a much more obvious way.” Logical, right?

Leaving the ministry, I had another stroke of luck. Even though I only knew about ten people in my town, one of them drove by and offered us a ride. She even had a(n ancient) carseat. She apologized for not being able to wait and take us home from the bank. I showed the letter to the clerk. Predictably the clerk said, “The letter doesn’t say why the teudah is butal.” Another phone call. Waiting. I really don’t remember how I managed to keep my toddler occupied all this time, but by now he was going crazy. I went to a supermarket to get something for us to eat. Thus fortified, I tried approaching another clerk. The first clerk saw me and said, “Don’t ask her; she won’t be able to help you.” It was 12:00 and the bank was closing soon.

Finally, I had an idea. I took my toddler to the nearest payphone and called my husband at work (he recalls that I was not in good shape at that point). I suggested he call the bank official we had dealt with while negotiating the bank’s portion of the mortgage. He called the central office of the (small) bank and berated the clerk who answered the phone. They put him through to the CEO! In another ten minutes, the check was in my pocket.

It seems that neither the branch clerk nor her boss (who both happened to be female) was willing to risk giving me the check on the chance that the bank wouldn’t be reimbursed by the government for its portion of the mortgage. Only the more senior, male official was willing to authorize the transfer. Lessons learned: 1. Start at the top. 2. Sometimes a woman needs help from a man.

I also participated when WBM asked for posts relating aliyah stories. They were among my first posts!

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In the park today, I was discussing the sleep habits of a particular todder with his caretaker. One of the other babysitters said that toddlers gradually move from a morning to an afternoon nap. I pointed out that my daughter, age two and a half, still sleeps in the morning. The babysitter replied, “That’s because she’s not in a misgeret.”

Misgeret is a frame, or in this case framework–in other words childcare or gan (preschool). I pointed out that she slept when she was naturally tired and her sleep habits weren’t dependent on other people’s schedules. The babysitter said it depends on your perspective.

Here are some “truths” known to all Israelis about children.

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Mazal tov to my friend and dedicated commenter, Sephardi Lady of Orthonomics, on the birth of her new baby girl!

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Well!! One of the commenters thought my recipe for fake lasagna was “unappetizing.” So I’m hoping to redeem myself with this mushroom-barley soup seasoned with rosemary and parsley and spinach-tomato pizza with mushrooms, onions, olives, peppers, cheese and fresh tomatoes.The picture is before baking..

Soup: Saute onions and mushrooms, add barley and cook for 10 minutes in a pressure cooker or half an hour in a conventional pot. Add sliced carrots, celery, parsley, rosemary and tamari sauce and cook again for the same amount of time. If not using a pressure cooker add the parsley closer to the end. Sorry, I’m not good at quantities.

The pizza recipe is from Craig Claiborne’s no-salt cookbook:

3 cups flour (I use what’s known here as 70% whole-wheat flour–it’s coarser than white but not as heavy as whole-wheat)
1.5 tbsp yeast (I use instant dry yeast that can be mixed straight with the flour and not “proofed”)
1 c. lukewarm water (water leftover from cooking potatoes is best)
2 tbsp olive or corn oil (I use canola)

Here I deviate from Craig because I use dry yeast. Mix up the flour and yeast together, then add the water and oil. Otherwise mix the yeast, a cup of flour and 1/3 cup of water together first and then add the other ingredients. It can be done in a food processor but since I make about 3-4 times the quantity I knead it by hand. The dough should be sticky. Cover it and let it rest for half an hour. Split it and make two 13-inch circular pizzas. Let them rise for another half an hour, brush with olive oil, add the toppings, and bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Then increase the temperature to 425 and place on the bottom of the oven for another 5 minutes.

Read more on Redeeming my culinary honor: Mushroom-barley soup and pizza…

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Vacations in Europe and to more exotic destinations are fashionable in Israel these days. Even when both parents work at demanding full-time jobs, they use their precious vacation days to travel abroad without the children.

So who is watching the children? Besides their regular child-care arrangement, a combination of various grandparents, relatives, paid babysitters, and whatever can be cobbled together. I already wrote about one incident. I also heard about a child who was up with severe diarrhea for several nights, while the elderly grandmother slept over and cared for him. The parents were abroad for over a week. The grandmother hadn’t wanted the responsibility, but the parents assured her that the onus would be on the paid babysitter. That’s not how it turned out. How can a babysitter take the child to a doctor and decide whether he is ready to go back to gan? Parents just assume that “yihyeh beseder” (it will be okay) and the child will stay healthy, there won’t be a school strike, and the babysitter won’t have a family emergency during the parents’ trip. Then there was the couple who went to Thailand for three weeks, while their children went to a different relative every day. In this case the mother didn’t want to go, yet had made a social commitment to travel with other couples.

Young children, even if they stay healthy, are unpredictable about their reactions to a change in routine. By the time the parents realize that their child was not ready for such a long separation the damage has been done.

Even one Shabbat can be too long, but there is no way of contacting the parents if they are observant.

I also have to ask myself how this attitude fits with a couple choosing a two-career lifestyle “because they need the money.” If they really regret leaving their children for work, they would make the extra effort to spend their leisure time with them. I have a friend who didn’t go out in the evenings for several years, because she worked during the day. I find that attitude so rare here. Most parents with busy careers get babysitters several times a week or send the kids to the grandparents at every opportunity. Even young babies stay in their “misgeret” (daycare or literally framework) when the parents are off, on Fridays for example. I know that working parents are stressed and that there is never enough time for all the errands and housework and couple time. But such vacations show where the parents’ true priorities lie. I am afraid that our children are absorbing the message.

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Warning: Don’t read this if you thought my diaper advice was unhygenic.

I would say this afternoon was typical for our house if you could apply such a word to anything in our family. . . At about five o’clock I told the kids they could make smoothies with the bananas that had been sitting in the refrigerator for about a month. In the meantime I was ambitiously removing the bottom glass shelf and drawers of said refrigerator because I couldn’t remember the last time it was so empty. . .at that point our electrician and his assistant walked into the house about an hour earlier than expected. They said the door was open (entirely possible) and mentioned the “tizmoret” (orchestra), probably referring to the 2yo at the baking tins and possibly to my son’s bass guitar (was he playing then? I can’t remember). When I went to help them (they were fixing a light fixture in a bedroom) one of the kids making the smoothies spilled the mixture all over the counter. Back in the kitchen, I scraped the spilled batter into a bowl and let the kids eat it (first unhygenic reference). I nixed the idea of offering some to the electrician, and instead paid him with my last shekel (he forgave the NIS 10 I lacked) and then managed to put the refrigerator back together (still empty unfortunately) while the kids assembled supper (recipe below). In the meantime my 5yo was straightening up the living room when he became distressed by the food on the bottom of his sandal from a few days before. The 2yo insisted on examining it (we don’t quash curiosity around here!) and the next thing I know she is tasting it and saying yum (second and final unhygenic reference); at any rate she left off pretty quickly without any intervention.

Frugal Lowfat Dairy Fake Lasagna
(Lasagna noodles in Israel are about five times the price of regular pasta)

Layer tomato sauce,* cooked noodles (I usually have spirals available) and cheese mixture** two or three times in a microwave casserole dish, ending with tomato sauce. I use enough noodles in each layer so that it is hard to see the sauce underneath. Smush the cheese into the noodles as you go so that the mixture is compact. Cook on high till solid in the center. Cooking time depends on the size and shape of the dish as well as the quantity; a large oval casserole takes about 20 minutes. Of course you could put it in the oven as well.

*Mine is homemade in advance but you could use bottled marinara sauce.
**I use Tenuva “gevina le-afiya” (white cheese for cheese cake), eggs, and thyme. I use about one egg for 350 grams of cheese but this recipe is very forgiving.

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