Good Food and Two Weddings

It has been pointed out to me that it has been well over a year since I last wrote, and that I should really stop being so lazy and get back to informing humanity of the inane and vastly unimportant details of our lives. It is pointless to try and update on everything that the Diplomat, Son, and I have been up to during that time – one, it is a lot; second - I can barely remember what I drank with dinner last night, so anything before that would be even hazier. I guess most importantly, for those who have not realized this yet, this is the second consecutive country with 1) an active war 2) that broke out while we were there, that the Diplomat and I have served in. This will be my one and only, clearly self-serving comment regarding the ongoing conflict here.

After several months of utter shock after October 7, Tel Aviv society has more or less returned to “normal life,” which is to say that we once again need reservations for dinner at least a week in advance for even the most basic, hole-in-the wall kind of restaurant. Despite the astronomical prices in every single eating establishment in Israel, restaurants here are always packed and if you are naïve enough to go downtown Tel Aviv on a Thursday night, thinking you will have dinner before 11:30 pm, you are a tourist. Another elusive idiosyncrasy of Israeli nightlife is how many restaurants are actually closed on Friday night in observance of Shabat. As a result, the few that do stay open for those hungry heathens who refuse to cook at home are booked weeks in advance and those lucky diners pour over the pavement, eating at miniscule tables crammed next to each other in order to maximize space. At the least the food is epic, and that is an understatement.

I have eaten all over the world as eminently evidenced by my less than svelte figure, but Israel’s food is on a whole different level. As I have already mentioned, I have never, ever had a bad meal here. I have had expensive meals, I have had meals with bad service, I have had very messy meals, I have had exceptionally expensive meals, but bad food has never been the problem. I don’t know how they do it but it is a stuff of legends. have also developed a falafel/hummus/pita problem, which I now wear comfortably as an added layer around my waist.

This last weekend, the Diplomat and I had the privilege to go to a (somewhat nontraditional) Israeli wedding. It did not have a rabbi or any official ceremony, but rather the family and close friends of the couple gathered under the spacious chuppa (the canopy under which a Jewish couple stands during the wedding ceremony) and everyone told an apparently hysterical anecdote about the pair, of which we understood nothing but thought delightful as everyone around us could not stop laughing. It did have a ton of appetizer food (of insane variety and quality) BEFORE the anecdote ceremony, and then a serious late lunch AFTER it (of crazy variety and unreal quality). All the while we were drinking excellent wine and some other highly spirited drinks that I do not seem to remember well now. And then we danced. And then the Diplomat said we should be going home because he was tired. I think he did not have as many of the highly spirited drinks as I did, because I was of a different opinion. He won.

I should mention here that some months ago, before the war started, we also went to a Christian Palestinian wedding in Jericho, which is located in the West Bank. Here is a side-by-side comparison of both:

Palestinian wedding	Israeli wedding
Copious amounts of excellent food	Copious amounts of excellent food
Many, many dressed to kill guests	Many, many mostly casually dressed guests
Hours of constant dancing by everyone	Some dancing by the young ones
Really, really nice, interesting people	Really, really nice, interesting people
One bottle of scotch whiskey per table, which I took on as a personal challenge (wine and beer on demand)	Open bar, which I took on as a personal challenge (including the random arak shots)
DJ fond of Arab music, all of which sounded like one endless same song to me	DJ fond of 70s music, sprinkled with what sounded like Arab music but in Hebrew (I was told it was Moroccan Jewish)
I had a ton of fun but had to leave because of Embassy curfew on staying in the West Bank, which was unfortunate because by midnight, the wedding was just heating up	I had a ton of fun but had to leave because the Diplomat claimed to be tired

Now all I have left to do is attend a Bedouin and a Druze weddings to complete my local anthropological research of the region. I am open to invitations.