Charedi Chickens

It has been what feels like an infinitely long time since I last blogged.  I have been in mourning over the loss of my computer, Leroy.  He is gone forever.  We had a lovely two years together and it will be hard for me to feel complete without Leroy, at least for a while.  BH, my parents are coming to visit us next week and will bring me a new laptop so I can blog and blog and blog some more.  I guess I could tell you I took this time off from blogging to show my respect for Leroy. But now it is time to return to life as I knew it and resume Lizrael. I may not cover everything I have been up to, but I will try to focus on some particularly interesting things.  Particularly interesting: there has been a common theme of dead animals guiding my past two weeks.  Weird, right?

A couple of weeks ago we had nothing to do on Friday before Shabbat started so we decided to have an adventure in Mea Shearim. 

Mea Shearim (Hebrew: מאה שערים‎ lit. Hundred Gates) is one of the oldest Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Israel populated mainly by Haredi Jews and was built by the original settlers of Yishuv haYashan.  Today, Mea Shearim remains an Old World enclave in the heart of Jerusalem.^[5] With its overwhelmingly Haredi population, the streets retain the flavor of an East European shtetl. Life revolves around strict adherence to Jewish law, prayer and the study of Jewish texts. Traditions in dress may include black frock coats and black or fur-trimmed hats for men (although there are many other clothing styles, depending on the religious sub-group to which they belong), and long-sleeved, modest clothing for women. In some groups, the women wear thick black stockings all year long, including summer. Married women wear a variety of headcoverings, from wigs to headscarves. The men have beards and some grow long sidecurls, called peyyot.

"Modesty" posters in Hebrew and English are hung at every entrance to Mea Shearim. When visiting the neighborhood, women and girls are asked to dress modestly (knee-length skirts or longer, no plunging necklines or midriff tops, no sleeveless blouses or bare shoulders) and tourists are requested not to arrive in large, conspicuous groups.

During Shabbat (from sunset Friday until it is completely dark on Saturday night), visitors should refrain from smoking, photography, driving or use of mobile phones. When entering synagogues, men should cover their heads.^[6]

^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mea_Shearim}

In Mea Shearim, many of the stores have separate entrances for men and women so that they do not accidentally come into contact with one another.  Here is a pizza store in Mea Shearim.  There is a line for men “Geverim” and a line for women “Nashim” (I also realize that if you can in no way read the Hebrew alphabet these transliterations will mean nothing to you since you won’t even to what I’m referring to, but just pretend.)

                                   The sign says "This room is for men only."

I had to have my pre-Shabbos ice cream (my weekly tradition) and found an amazing ice cream store in Mea Shearim.  Ira first told me to caption this photo “They have ice cream in Mea Shearim too.” But then, upon taking a closer look, I realized I was standing under an entrance sign that says “Geverim” in Hebrew which means “Men.” 

Apparently even after all that Ulpan, being able to read the sign doesn’t mean I know how to follow directions because I most definitely entered and exited the “Geverim” door.  Sorry to my Haredi friends…I promise to try harder to come out of my cloud of oblivion on my next visit to Mea Shearim. 

Here are a few more pics from Mea Shearim:

What color shoes would you like to buy?

DELISH popocorn! We got the 6 shekel bag.

                               Time to head back.

We went back to the Poetry Slam and told our Chassidish teenage friends to meet us.  They arrived before we did and they were asked to be judges of the contest. 

One of the contestants was also a teenage buchor

The next day, we took a day trip to Tel Aviv.  Ira lived in Tel Aviv for a while and felt confident he knew where he was going so we left the map in the trunk.  Well, we ended up in Bnei Brak.  This was pretty appropriate considering we had just spent a day in Mea Shearim. 

Bnei Brak (or Bene Beraq) (Hebrew: בְּנֵי בְּרַק‎‎) is a city located on Israel's central Mediterranean coastal plain, just east of Tel Aviv, in the Dan metropolitan region and Tel Aviv District. Bnei Brak is a center of ultra-orthodox Jewish culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnei_Brak

At first I was irritated that we got so lost, but then I realized maybe I should take a self-guided tour of the neighborhood.  Then I sadly came to the realization that I was showing a little too much knee to do that.  I suggested we high tail it out of there before we offended anyone.  Problem was, we couldn’t find anyone who spoke any language besides Yiddish to give us directions.  We needed Kenny there to translate for us.  We finally ended up at a car mechanic garage and found someone who could at least speak Hebrew

and we eventually made it to Telly! Here are some pics:

When we were leaving the shuk in Telly to head back to the car, we passed through the section with all the butchers.  Now, I’m practically a carnivore, but this was just straight up nasty.  There was a freshly skinned carcass hanging on one end, with the skin (FUR STILL ON!) hanging on the other end.  There were bones everywhere.  The smell was glorious.  Also, I’ve been wanting to mention for a while how interesting the system of buying meat is here.  The cow is split into a “color by number” sort of diagram and you tell the butcher which number you want.  It looks like this:

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t really like to picture which part of the cow I am eating.  This is one of the main reason I avoid eating organs all together…it’s just too recognizable.  I like to completely remove myself from the idea that I may be consuming a cow’s arm (#8 on the diagram I believe) when eating at Burgers Bar. 

Appropriately, for dinner that night we went to this amazing steakhouse, Goshen.  We both ate meat.

Again here I am with my pre-Shabbos ice cream. This time not in Mea Shearim.

Kenny and Ira have unfortunately added a new all-purpose word to my vocabulary: “fried.”  From the first time I heard them talk to each other, every other word they used to describe people they knew was “fried,” so I naturally inquired what they meant by this.  They looked at each other and laughed and said, “How do we explain ‘fried?’”  Well, I would’ve thought maybe “fried” as in someone who drinks and smokes too much and walks around in a haze.  They said “no.” Then I thought maybe someone who doesn’t really have any direction and doesn’t know what they want out of life.  They said, “no, that’s ‘lost,’ that’s different than ‘fried.’”  Then it finally occurred to me all at once.  You know when you’re singing to yourself on the treadmill in the gym with your iPod and you think you’re the only one in there so you really belt it out and then you turn around and there are three people giving you dirty looks? That’s “fried.”  You know when you think you parked under a sign that says free parking and come back to your car and there’s a parking ticket anyway (Hey Ira!)? That’s “fried.”  You know when you’re eating an awesome steak dinner and your husband says to you “Remember that carcass we saw earlier?” That’s also “fried.”  Now you try. 

Here is Kenny doing what he does best, frying.

His schnitzel was ‘da bomb diggity.  Really, the best I’ve ever had.

Speaking of schnitzel, Ira and I went to an awesome schiur [class] two days ago on chicken shechita (aka slaughtering chickens in a kosher manner).  Now, I didn’t mention this earlier when I spoke about the butchers in the shuk, but my family has been involved in the meat industry for quite sometime.  My grandparents and uncle own a business near all of the slaughter houses in Fort Worth where they sell meat packing supplies all over the world (hope I got this all right my family, let me know.) They also have a small little café/snack bar where a lot of the slaughterhouse employees come to eat lunch.  When I was a little girl I used to go to work with my grandparents on occasion and they would let me work the cash register at the snack bar (and they also let me eat all the Hostess Twinkies and Snowballs I wanted…gross).  I will never forget the way these men looked when they came to get their lunch.  They wore paper coverings on their clothes and hair and were always completely splattered with blood.  I will also never forget the way it smelled.  It is burned into my memory, but I try very hard not to recall such images. Well, this class DID NOT HELP.  There were lots of videos of chickens and turkeys being slaughtered and I just could not turn away.  Only, instead of only having the paper coverings for their clothes and hair, in kosher slaughterhouses, the men have coverings for their beards as well.  Some of these guys had some super long beards! I wish I had pictures. 

Ira was completely unphased by these videos.  Maybe that is because the research he is doing here at Hadassah Hospital looks like this:

Although he is not grossed out by the sight of such research, he did say it is the worst smelling situation he has ever been a part of.  Although he has yet to vomit, he gags constantly. I AM SO PROUD OF YOU BABY!

Anyway, in this class I learned the following:

The basics about the chickens’ lives: chickens receive growth hormones early in life which causes them to grow at unnatural paces.  They gain weight very quickly and often experience breathing complications because of the effects the weight gain has on their lungs.  They never see the light of day.  They are stored in crates on top of each other.  They are slaughtered at 42 days old. 

Kosher slaughterhouse experience in a nutshell:

1.      There are knives moving all over all the time (a knife has to have the perfect amount of sharpness for the animal to be kohser.  If the knife that kills the animal is even a little questionable, the animal is no longer kosher at all.)  Basically, if you are in a slaughterhouse, you move slowly and carefully and you never make quick turns around a corner.  I do not think I would do well in this environment—not recommended for those in clouds of oblivion.

2.      There is blood EVERYWHERE. Usually between 12-18 chickens are slaughtered per minute per shochet [slaughterer] (depending on if  it’s Bedatz or Mehadrin…[I only learned about shechting in Israel…not sure about America]).   

3.      Non-Jews are much better than Jews at salting the shechted chickens because Jews complain too much. 

My favorite quote from the man who taught this schuir in regard to the politics of kashrut: “You live in a certain community and someone sees you buying the wrong chicken and now your son won’t be able to get married.”

Chicken shechita is NO JOKE. 

Last night we went to dinner.  Yup, that’s chicken on my plate.