Busy Bakers

April 16, 2009

Passover ended yesterday at sundown. One of the fascinations of being in Israel where the majority culture is Jewish (ranging, to be sure, from very secular to very Orthodox) is that the transformations are Jewish. Perhaps the best analogy is that in a Christian country like the U.S., on the day after Thanksgiving, the ambience in malls, stores, and public places in general reflects Christmas, and the closer to December 25th, the moreso. In Israel, in public places, the ambience takes on the customs of the Jewish holidays or seasons, so for Passover leavened products like bread, cakes, pizza, and cones in the ubiquitous ice cream shops largely disappeared. Interestingly, this transformation was especially noticeable after the holiday ended. I alighted from the #480 on the lower level of the Jerusalem bus station, moved slowly in the line through the metal detector and the baggage x-ray, and then approached the door to the station, something I have done at least a dozen times over the past three months, but today was different. The potent aroma of freshly baked goods literally caused me to pause: sweet, chocolate, honey, poppy seed, nuts of all kinds, cheeses, to name a few. Later, I wandered through the shuk on Jaffe St. by stalls with piles of cookies, stacks of challah and other breads of countless shapes and sizes, 100 pound sacks of flours that the week before had been sealed. A lot of merchants must have been very busy, when the sun set last night. All of this I had observed in past weeks, but Passover allowed me to have this new experience of seeing.