Shalom Friends,
Today I want to tell you about the city I love most in Israel
(besides Jerusalem), Tel Aviv.
It’s a wonderful city, but it’s not the capital of Israel,
Jerusalem is the capital.
My first visit to Tel Aviv was in 1959, when I was a young student
from South Africa.
I had come to Israel to undergo a course for leaders in the Habonim
Youth Movement.
Then (at that time)I didn’t know Hebrew, but I knew the word
“falafel” because people had told me that that is what they eat in Israel but
I didn’t know in what kind of shop they sell falafel.
One day I was walking in Allenby Street, one of the main
streets of Tel Aviv and
I wondered where I could buy falafel. I came as far as Bialik
Street and I saw a cake shop (In Israel kondituria is the name for a bakery
that they makes cakes).
This was a very famous cake shop by the name of “Kapulsky”,
one of the most famous cake shops in Israel of those days. I thought that
surely here they would sellfalafel.
I went inside the shop and met a saleslady, a mature lady, a little
on the plum side, dressed in a white coat.
The cakes looked delicious to me, they were coated with white,
whipped cream, surrounded by chocolate and on top there was a cherry.
I very much wanted to buy a cake like that but people had told me
that in Israel people eat falafel.
So I asked the woman for felafel and she gave me a sharp,
little angry, look and explained something to me in Hebrew but I didn't
understand and was embarrassed to say that I didn't understand, I said yes
and she brought me a cake I thought that that is what they call falafel.
Afterwards I learnt Hebrew and also what felafel is today I
know that she told me tlo eat cake and not falafel because decent people don't
eat falafel.
Today I eat lots of Felafel, I don't agree with that woman at
Kapulsky'. But I wouldn’t think of asking
for felafel in a cake shop.
