Is This Butter?

By last week, we had finally used the last of the Irish butter that we had purchased from our local market in January. I needed more butter to bake some cornbread for the potluck lunch that we have at Sheatufim each Sunday. When our local market did not seem to have any butter for a few days, we were successful at the market in the next neighborhood. Successful, that is, until I read the label closely as I pre-heated the oven. Margarine should not have been that hard to read in Hebrew! I substituted olive oil for the butter to great effect. As of today, however, we were still without butter and aside from our usual use, it seems to be a particular staple during Passover.

On our walk back from the “Tel Aviv at 100” opening concert at Rabin Square, we noticed the large market on Pinkas still open at 9:50 so we stopped in. We worked our way to the dairy isle and started to review what looked like butter. We were confident that we would not make the margarine mistake again, but were we looking at salted or unsalted butter? There were no non-Hebrew clues at all. An elderly, slightly stooped man, wearing one of those Russian black peasant/worker caps was examining the yogurt nearby. In fact, I had noticed him parked in that isle, through the large front window as we had approached the store.

“Atah midaber Anglit?” I have become quite fluent with this expression.
Right out of the Yiddish theatre, he gave a barely noticeable shrug of his shoulders and said, “English? A little,” he offered in a moderately accented Israeli/Eastern European English.
“Is this butter?”
After a brief examination, he confirmed that it was butter.
“Is this sweet butter or salted butter?”
This took a little longer, but we all decided that we could tell the difference.
“You can take a smaller one. It’s the same. This is very large. Also it’s kosher for Pesach,” he added.
“I think the large one is b’seder (o.k.),” I reassured him. ”Because we’ll use it for Passover.”
Our business was not finished, however.
“Be sure to check the label,” he advised as he took the package from me and turned it over and around to find the expiration date. “2010,” he laughed, “you can even use it for next Pesach.” And then, as he turned, he paused with the perfect timing of a comedian, to add, “if you can believe anything they say!”

Our friend, it seemed was not finished with us, because when he heard Linda say that we needed chocolate, he guided us to the chocolate isle. “This is good Israeli chocolate.” He rustled through some bars to find a package of two bars, pointing out, “the price is better. You can buy six bars this way. It’s local. Not the other foreign ones.”
After a warm “chag sameach” (Happy Holiday), we headed to find another item, as he went to check out.
Even buying butter at 10 pm on a Saturday night leads to new friendships.