Shana Tovah!

Happy new year! Not many Jews.. or as Eben calls us, "Jewishes"..  in these here parts.  There are no synagogues on the island of Java, and I think there are only two in the whole country.  See http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/synIndonesia.html  Honestly, they aren't too high on the 'vacation destination' list at this point.  There are a few groups of bule that get together for the holidays.  We did own our thing this year, and not surprisingly, we continued our tradition of focusing the holiday on food.  Zeric took the afternoon off from class, and I postponed a squash lesson (let me say that again! I'm not working, I'm not working, I'm not working..) and we cooked.  We had a few friends over to enjoy dinner with us, we said a few prayers about our wishes for the new year, our responsibilities to help others, and--of course--we did those great Jewish blessings for the children.  We ate and ate and laughed.  And then we left all of the dishes for Ibu Sikom.  Or, as we sometimes call her, Ibu Fischer Paykel.

Here is the menu 

We did do the soup.. as the stick blender arrived in our air freight (someone was thinking!).  We did the beets, the chickens (three.. they are small here).  We did the couscous, and roasted baby zucchini replaced the green beans.  Tarte tatin I'm saving for the weekend when Charles and Juan visit (right? right?!?). Couldn't find pomegranates in the market.  What?! Snake fruit, yes.  Dragon fruit, yes.  Not the same.  Did raisin challah (round weave, it was cool but not great.. it's gone. sorry no pic).  Did apples and honey.  Did honey cake (they taste better if you call them 'honey brownies', see pic).  AND... drum roll.. Eben and I did our first batch of ice cream, vanilla of course, in our new ice cream machine.  It was great.  What a perfect way to bring in the new year!  Apple ice cream in the works for tomorrow.  Maybe I can stay here after all.

Today, we kept the Jewishes out of school and I took them to the port. We brought some stale challah from the freezer and threw a bunch into the ocean to wash away the sins of the past year.  We had quite a bit, so don't worry.. we have you all covered. 

The kids reminded me that last year we did it from the Calvert Street bridge, tossing the bread threw the bars, watching it sail down 30 feet before hitting Rock Creek.  This was a step up!

Why the port?  Well, we've been meaning to go and we didn't make it our first weekend as planned (we ended up at a Chinese restaurant instead, see one of my first posts).  And we needed a running body of water.  There were a few closer alternatives, but for those of you who know what 'running water' in third world cities is all about, you know that that wasn't quite the right ambience for a Rosh Hashannah ritual.  

 

The port is at the way north end of the city.  It was founded back in the 1600s by the Dutch East India Company, and it currently docks the traditional large wooden boats that ferry goods between islands.  We saw all kinds of loading and off-loading.  Trucks. Cranes. We saw lots of old buildings.  And we talked about the Dutch.  Or as Eben calls them, "the Dutches".  We need to work on irregular plurals. Right after he nails French.

Though we were invited, we were too chicken to walk up the board to get on the ship.  "Maybe next time", Eben says.  Yeah, or not.

The big thing we missed was having all of you at our Rosh Hashannah dinner table.  Maybe next year.

With hugs and wishing you all sweet things for 5772!