Postscript – written after, but placed as an introduction to, today’s post. Today (Tuesday) is Yom Hazikaron, that most painful day in the Israeli calendar when the nation unites to remember its fallen. This year, the nation is also holding its collective breath, to discover whether the social fabric will actually hold over today, and tomorrow, Yom Ha’atzma’ut. In the 20 hours since I wrote the rest of this post, that social fabric, the essential core of the country, as exemplified on two very different WhatsApp groups of which I am a member, has been sorely tested. I have felt compelled to leave one of the groups, and may possibly leave the other. If I were writing this post today, rather than yesterday, the tone I would use would no longer be as light as it is. However, I have decided not to change the post, because the content already belies the lightness of the tone.

I urge you, in the words of Psalm 122: שַׁ֭אֲלוּ שְׁל֣וֹם יְרוּשָׁלָ֑͏ִם – Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

For the benefit of those on whom the reference in the title of this post is lost, the long running BBC domestic radio programme Desert Island Discs each week invites a different celebrity to select which eight recordings they would want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island. At the end of each programme, the presenter traditionally asks them: ‘And if you could only take one recording, which would it be?’

This Wednesday, on Israel’s 75^th Independence Day, Israel’s state broadcaster’s popular music radio station will be announcing which song its listeners have voted to be Israel’s ‘Song of 75’. While I would not claim to be anything of an expert on Israeli popular song, the choice seems to me obvious. So obvious, in fact, that I am going to stick my neck out and go public with my prediction, so convinced am I that this is the only real contender.

In fact, I’ll be very surprised if at least some of you do not react, when I share my selection with you, by saying: ‘Well duh, of course that’s going to win.’  

But just before I do let you know my choice, let me reflect on another, more official, symbol of the last 75 years – Israel’s national flag. The months since the present Government announced its intention of rushing through a far-reaching program of judicial reform have been marked by consistently large mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv and all other major cities, and many minor locations, throughout Israel. There have been several notable features of these protests.

First, the numbers attending did not fall off after the first flush of protest, nor did they fall off in the bad weather of late winter. Instead, the demonstrations have continued to attract consistently large numbers. Second, both the demonstrators and the police have, by and large, maintained a civilised relationship over the past weeks and months. Third, the demonstrations have attracted not only the to-be-expected secular, middle-class, left-wing Tel Avivians, but also a much broader cross-section of Israelis, across the religious, social and political spectrum.

Fourth, the demonstrators seem to have reasserted their identification with the Israeli flag. In recent years (in recent decades), there has been a tendency for the political right to ‘appropriate’ the flag to a certain extent. In the last couple of months, the flag (together with the Declaration of Independence) has been a constant and ubiquitous presence at the demonstrations. It has also been a constant and ubiquitous presence at the counter-demonstrations that have been gathering momentum. It seems to me a sign of national strength that both sides of a dispute that has threatened to rip the country apart should continue to identify so strongly with the national flag.

Indeed, there have even been stories of what has happened when those opposed to the judicial reform programme leaving the demonstration cross the path of those supporting the programme arriving for a counter-demonstration. The latter reportedly asked to use the flags of the former and, according to the reports, the opposers handed their flags to the supporters. (I have no first-hand evidence of the accuracy of these reports, but, even if they are only apocryphal, the fact that the stories are repeated so widely and have gained such traction in itself reflects a very positive aspect of the national mood.)

This embracing of a cultural symbol by opposing sides leads me neatly to my choice of song. There are few, if any, Israeli songwriters more beloved, or better able to capture the national mood, than Ehud Manor. I have mentioned him before as a remarkably skilled translator of English-language musicals into Hebrew (he translated over 600 such works), but he was also, indeed primarily, a chronicler of Israel through over 1200 original song lyrics.

In 1968, Manor’s younger brother was killed while serving in the Israel Defence Forces during the War of Attrition. Manor wrote a song – אחי הצעיר יהודה, My Young Brother, Yehuda – which became very popular, In the mid-1980s, he wrote another song, reportedly also in reaction to the loss of his brother – אין לי ארץ אחרת – I have No Other Country – which was perceived as a protest song by those opposing the First Lebanon War, and has continued to be embraced by those who are unhappy with the direction the country is taking, but who nevertheless fiercely identify with the country.

Sadly, Israel’s first 75 years have been characterised as much by such patriotism and dissent as by any other national emotions: from the disdainful and patronising treatment of the immigrants from North Africa and Iraq by the ruling European Jewish ‘aristocracy’, through the ‘occupation’ of Judea and Samaria in the wake of the Six-Day War, through the first and second Lebanon Wars, the first and second Intifadas, the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Remarkably, every successive wave of dissenters and protesters has heard, in Manor’s song, the resonance of their own feelings.

For the benefit of the two or three of my readers who don’t know the song (and for the rest who do), here it is as originally sung by Gali Atari. I’d like you to listen to it first, and then I’d like to reflect on what seem to me the secrets of the song’s enduring success.

Here are the lyrics, with my tweaking of the translation given on the video:

אין לי ארץ אחרת
גם אם אדמתי בוערת
רק מילה בעברית חודרת
אל עורקיי, אל נשמתי
בגוף כואב, בלב רעב
כאן הוא ביתי

לא אשתוק, כי ארצי
שינתה את פניה
לא אוותר לה,
אזכיר לה,
ואשיר כאן באוזניה
עד שתפקח את עיניה

אין לי ארץ אחרת
עד שתחדש ימיה
עד שתפקח את עיניה

אין לי ארץ אחרת
גם אם אדמתי בוערת
רק מילה בעברית חודרת
אל עורקיי, אל נשמתי
בגוף כואב, בלב רעב
כאן הוא ביתי בגוף כואב, בלב רעב
כאן הוא ביתי

I have no other country
Even if my land is on fire.
Only a word in Hebrew can pierce through
To my veins, to my soul
With an aching body, with a hungry heart
Here is my home

I will not be silent, because my country’s
Face has changed.
I will not give up on her,
I will remind her,
And I will sing here in her ear
Until she opens her eyes
I have no other country

Until she renews her days
Until she opens her eyes

I have no other country
Even if my land is on fire
Only a word in Hebrew can pierce through
To my veins, to my soul
With an aching body, with a hungry heart
Here is my home

With an aching body, with a hungry heart
Here is my home

The first thing to say is that the range of both the words and the music is very limited; there is very little variation in the song. It is obsessively focused on the main message: ‘I have no other country’. I have omitted, in the lyrics above, one complete repetition of the opening 12 lines. This means that, in a three-minute song of 35 short lines, the opening line ‘I have no other country’ is sung four times, each time to the same seven notes, in a musical motif that is closely echoed throughout the song, I believe, 28 times. The Hebrew vocabulary is not complex, and the syntax is very straightforward.

When the song is sung these days, it tends to be sung more slowly, with more raw emotion in the voice of the singer. However, there is something in the slightly flat, almost matter-of-fact treatment of the song by Gali Atari that emphasizes that the fact that the songwriter feels he has no option is a given, something to be taken for granted.

Note also what seems to me a deliberate ambiguity in the following lines: ‘I will not be silent, because my country’s / Face has changed.’ Does this mean: ‘The fact that my country’s face has changed is not a reason to be silent’? (If I may be allowed to ‘translate’ this into the situation Israel is in, that can be paraphrased as: ‘The fact that the country has changed is not a reason to move abroad.’) Or does it mean: ‘The reason I will not be silent is that my country’s face has changed’? (‘The fact that the country has changed is the reason why I feel compelled to take action.’)

One further reason for the power of the song is the following. The emotional and physical state of the songwriter is very specifically described in lines 3–5: ‘Only a word in Hebrew can pierce through / To my veins, to my soul / With an aching body, with a hungry heart.’ However, the specifics of the way in which ‘my country’s face has changed’ are not mentioned at all; it is, of course, precisely this which has allowed so many disparate groups over such a long time to hear in the song their own anguish, and their own determination not to give up.

Let me quote from the tribute to Ehud Manor when he was awarded the Israel Prize for Hebrew Song: ‘Ehud Manor never wanted to be a shaliach tzibbur – (in other words, to speak on behalf of others). In his poetry there is usually no place for the phrase “we”. According to his view, no lyricist can speak except for himself. Indeed, he brought to Hebrew song his private voice, an intimate, revealing and sensitive voice, but miraculously his song of the individual became the song of many.’

It feels, in these days, as though the lyric of this wonderfully simple, simply wonderful song has never rung truer. However, I know that it has felt like that in each successive social challenge that the country has faced. Like all great art, the song speaks to each generation in its own voice. That is why it is my choice as the song of the 75^th anniversary. I’ll let you know next week whether the great Israeli public has got it right!

Meanwhile, Tao and Ollie are enjoying the comforts of the tipee (including sofa with integral oven), while Raphael also went camping last weekend.

It all started with recorded sound, as produced by Edison’s tin foil phonograph, invented some time in 1877.

Incidentally, if you happen to be looking for proof of Edison’s visionary powers, just peruse this list he offered in North American Review in June 1878 of the following possible future uses of his invention:

1. Letter writing and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a stenographer.
2. Phonographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort on their part.
3. The teaching of elocution.
4. Reproduction of music.
5. The “Family Record” – a registry of sayings, reminiscences, etc., by members of a family in their own voices, and of the last words of dying persons.
6. Music-boxes and toys.
7. Clocks that should announce in articulate speech the time for going home, going to meals, etc.
8. The preservation of languages by exact reproduction of the manner of pronouncing.
9. Educational purposes; such as preserving the explanations made by a teacher, so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment, and spelling or other lessons placed upon the phonograph for convenience in committing to memory.
10. Connection with the telephone, so as to make that instrument an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and invaluable records, instead of being the recipient of momentary and fleeting communication.

Of that impressive list, the item we will be looking at today is, you will not be surprised to hear, Item 4 – reproduction of music. In the early years of the phonograph, it is fair to say that piano rolls played on a reproducing piano offered a listening experience that was at least as faithful to the original live performance as, and certainly far more pleasurable than, the distorting, crackling, tinny phonograph discs of the time. From the last years of the 19^th Century until 1930, a very impressive list of composers and pianists had their interpretations captured on roll: among them Mahler, Saint-Saens, Grieg, Debussy, de Falla, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Scriabin,

By 1927, phonograph technology had become increasingly sophisticated, and from then on the gramophone record dominated. While most classical musicians were enthusiastic, one, perhaps the greatest pianist of the age, Artur Schnabel, steadfastly refused to record, until eventually, in 1932, he reluctantly allowed himself to be persuaded to record all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. His opposition was basically on two grounds. First, technical limitations of the new medium meant that the longest possible recording was four minutes and, in addition, post-recording editing was impossible. Any recording had to be of a series of short, single takes. As he wrote to his wife, in the middle of this mammoth recording project, which was, for him, a living nightmare:

“You can only play for 4 minutes. In those 4 minutes, you sometimes have to strike around 2000 keys or more. If 2 of them are unsatisfactory, you have to repeat all 2000. And when you do that, the original mistakes are corrected but you make another 2, so then it’s another 2000 to do over. This goes on 10 times, always with a sword of Damocles hanging over your head. Finally, you give up and now leave in 20 mistakes.”

For Schnabel, even worse than the physical and mental strain of this striving for an unattainable perfection was the underlying philosophical point that a recording is unavoidably viewed as a definitive performance:

“…from now on I shall rightly and constantly be condemned because I took it upon myself to declare something finished that wasn’t, because I released something to be used that was not fit for purpose, which means I lied. Because I released as definitive something that is essentially always unfinished as long as it breathes, which means I lied.

“I asked a music and record enthusiast (a peculiar talent) whether it bothered him if a musician makes small or even big mistakes in a concert. He replied with a smile, ‘No, not in the least, that doesn’t bother me at all.’ What about if it happens on a recording, I asked. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘I’m quite strict about that and won’t accept any blunders, I’m critical in a different way.’”

I have quoted Schnabel at such length both because he was a deep-thinking and articulate commentator and because he reflects one extreme of the debate about the virtues of music recording. He also displays the scepticism with which technical innovation is almost always regarded by at least some.

At the other end of the scale, and at the other end of the development of editing of recorded music, sits Glenn Gould. (I would distinguish, here, between editing and more intrusive manipulation, of which more later.) Gould’s creative process, most notable, probably, in his second recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in the early 1970s, was very much a two-part process. The first stage was the capturing on tape of multiple live (studio) renditions. The second stage was cutting and splicing together from those multiple renditions a ‘version’ whose every bar consisted of a segment of one of those renditions that best represented Gould’s understanding of the piece.

The end result was, essentially, a piece of absolute artifice, representing an ideal. (This was, incidentally, an ideal that Schnabel always rejected. He wrote: “I don’t want to play that well; I want to have something in front of me, not just behind me. Man’s constantly changing nature cannot be reconciled with the eternally unfeeling machine.”)

With Gould, we reach a point where the technology is sufficiently sophisticated to make a ‘performance’ that was artificially constructed in the editing room sound indistinguishable from a continuous live performance. If you feel this is cheating, then you should ask yourself why you accept it every time you see a feature film, and do not complain that this is cheating, and a live theatre performance is the only authentic acting experience. Is it because we are all aware of the role of editing in film? If so, then Gould’s complete openness about his editing technique should earn him the same tolerance on the part of his audience, which it largely has done.

These days, of course, digital editing allows for the correction of a singer’s or instrumentalist’s errors of pitch, adjusting the balance between individual instruments, or sections, in an orchestra, adjustments of tempo and so on. The recording studio can now give us a level of perfection that could never be sustained in the concert hall for the duration of an entire piece.

At this point, I leave the world of classical music, and move, with extreme caution, into the, for me, uncharted waters of popular music. In the pop music world, intense editing, and other manipulation of the recorded sound, is omnipresent and universally accepted, so much so that there have been groups that cannot perform live, because the recorded sound that is their trademark cannot even be approximated in a live concert.

Let me offer you some further food for thought, in the form of a number of real-life scenarios and the questions they raise. Frank Sinatra’s last project was a series of duets with artists whom he never, actually, shared a recording studio with. His contribution, and their contributions, were recorded separately and brought together only in the editing room. Is a song recorded in this way, in which there can be no chemistry between the artists, genuinely a duet?

Celine Dion, coincidentally, has ‘performed with’ Frank Sinatra. Interestingly, that was in 2007, nine years after he died. Is that a duet? A perhaps more interesting question is whether it seems as though Celine Dion is seeking to enhance her status by association with Frank Sinatra, an association that he is not in a position to bless or refuse. Is this homage or exploitation?

Our final, and arguably most bizarre, scenario this week is a new recording of a song featuring a duet by two iconic Israeli popular singers. The song was written this year. The singers, Zohar Argov and Ofra Haza, have been dead for a combined total of 59 years. The song was produced in honour of Israel’s 75^th Independence Day next week at the initiative of the Israel Broadcasting Corporation.

Before we get on to the question of how this record was produced, a little background. While Ofra Haza enjoyed the status of an establishment performer, Argov was never, in his lifetime, embraced by the establishment. He was a convicted rapist and drug addict who committed suicide in his prison cell the day after being arrested on another charge of attempted rape. Some might argue that this makes him an odd choice to bring honour to the state on its 75^th birthday.

The record was produced by an Israeli company, using artificial intelligence technology to analyse the recordings of the two legendary artists from the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation’s archive and other recordings, and produce a simulation of their voices. If this is beginning to sound like a cheap commercial gimmick on the part of the Israel Broadcasting Corporation, let me fail to set your mind at rest by pointing out that the title of the song is Here Forever, or, in Hebrew, Kan l’Olam, and the fact that the name of the IBC television network is Kan is, you might choose to believe, purely coincidental.

I have heard differing comments on the accuracy of the impersonation. I have a suspicion that those who claim that it is a poor approximation are influenced by the fact that they know it is a simulation. If they didn’t know, I suspect they wouldn’t detect it. I watched a video recently where a professional pop drummer and a performing classical pianist competed to see which of them could better distinguish between recordings of actual instrumentalists and AI simulations. Neither of the experts scored highly.

So, is Here Forever tribute or exploitation? If the object of the exercise is not to reinterpret the work of the artists, but to produce something indistinguishable from the work of the artist, should the artist, even after death, be protected by copyright laws? Or should we rejoice in the fact that artists’ creativity may soon be able to live forever.

I also find myself wondering about other, non-artistic scenarios. I have long felt that it is a great pity that Ian Botham flourished before the era of T20. It would be wonderful to watch him in a simulated match. Or, again, imagine seeing Rod Laver go head-to-head against whichever of the Big Three you think is the GOAT. It seems very likely that all of this, and much, much more that I (not being a Thomas Edison) cannot even imagine, may be just around the corner.

Editor’s Note: In keeping with the theme that I wanted to explore this week, I thought it would be interesting to ask ChatGPT to write 1500 words, in the style of my blog. The post you have just read is the result that ChatGPT came up with.

Editor’s Second Note: Just kidding! But did I have you wondering for a split-second there?…In a year or two, this may not be a joke…and then I’ll be able to enjoy my Sundays!

No picture of Tao this week, I’m afraid. I’m not sure he stands still long enough. But the two younger grandsons are both clearly enjoying their Sundays, and Mondays, and Tuesdays…

First this week, a bit of housekeeping (actual, genuine, housekeeping, as it happens):

Following my description of Pesach baking last week, I had feedback (boom! boom!) from a couple of people, asking for recipes . Ever ready to oblige, I offer you not only a PDF of the recipes, which you can access here, but also, at no additional charge, a bonus. Since, by the time you access the Pesach recipes, I can’t imagine anyone will want to do any Pesach baking, you will have to keep the recipes until next year. (I have been told that the recipes work during the rest of the year as well, but I’m not sure I really believe it, and I have absolutely no intention of finding out.)

By the time you get around to reading this week’s blog post, Pesach may even be over already, in which case what you will be looking for is a good bread recipe. Unfortunately, sourdough starter is almost certainly what the Torah calls se’or, which is the one thing above all others that we are not allowed to possess during Pesach. This means that this year, as every year, just before Pesach, I poured away the last of my starter. The first thing I plan to do after we have changed back after Pesach is mix flour and water in a jar, place it on our kitchen windowsill (or, if the weather is cool, on top of our water machine) and place a large sign next to it that will read:

DEAR BACTERIA.

PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR MOVING YOU TO THE DUSTBIN LAST WEEK. I HOPE YOU WERE ABLE TO FIND ANOTHER FOOD SOURCE THERE.

I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT WE ARE BACK TO BUSINESS AS USUAL AND I HAVE SET UP THE ADJACENT HOTEL JUST FOR YOU.

PLEASE CONTACT OUR STAFF IF THERE IS ANYTHING ELSE YOU NEED TO MAKE YOUR STAY COMFORTABLE.

If past experience is anything to go by, the local bacteria will be very quick on the uptake, but, even with the best will in the world, the starter won’t be robust enough to perform its magic in bread dough for four or five days. Meanwhile, of course, Bernice and I will be longing for some real bread.

Fortunately, I have a couple of recipes that produce a fairly hearty loaf even though they use only baker’s yeast, and not sourdough starter. This means that the second thing I plan to do after we have changed back is to make a batch of rye bread with caraway seeds (heimishe brown bread). If you can bear to wait just over two-and-a-half hours, you can enjoy a tasty loaf with very little effort.

You can access the fairly quick and simple rye bread recipe here.

Ed Note: It’s just struck me: if someone had told me, twenty years ago, that I would, at some point in the future, be writing a weekly blog in which, among other things, I shared recipes with my readers, I would have laughed in their face. But life sometimes contrives to manoeuvre you into an unexpected corner.

So, here we are, a third of the way into this week’s post, and the question, as ever, is: Where do we go from here?

Let me reference first a thought-provoking haggada produced this year to a commendably high standard in a very short time. It is a conventional haggada, illustrated with very striking photographs taken at the protests against the Government’s planned programme of judicial reform. To the text have been added a range of commentaries on Pesach and the Seder’s relevance to this struggle, contributed by a range of Israeli people of letters. Click the title to view the הגדת החירות – סיפור של מאבק ותקווה, also available with the commentaries translated into English as The Freedom Haggada – A Story of Protest and Hope.

I took a good look through this haggada before our Seder, which we celebrated with Esther, Maayan, and even Raphael, who managed to stay engaged until after he had performed his Ma Nishtana dance. While I do not agree with every sentiment of every reflection in the collection, I was delighted to be able to find enough material that I could bring to the Seder, confident that it reflected the common ground that we and the girls stand on. I know that not all of you will agree with the content, but I hope we can all celebrate the fact that it is, at the very least, an illustration of the continuing relevance to the Jewish people of our reliving the story of the Exodus.

End of lecture. Rapid change of subject.

Walking repeatedly through our front garden in the last couple of weeks, on my way from the house to the rubbish bins as we cleared out our cupboards, from the house to the front hedge as I put the disassembled and scrubbed kitchen drawers out to dry, and then on my way from the house to shul and back again, I could not fail to notice that Pesach is not called Hag He’Aviv – the spring festival – for nothing. Bernice and I were very late in saying the once-a-year blessing on seeing fruit blossom on trees for the first time, and by the time we got around to it our nectarine tree had barely any blossom left. Indeed, I was surprised to see, it already had fruit – and, in comparison with previous years – lots of it.

So, yesterday, I decided the time had come to protect the nectarines from the birds. This was a job that I undertook fairly early in the morning, before Bernice was up and about. Let me explain why that is necessary.

Among the television programmes Bernice ‘enjoys’ watching are programmes that follow the stories of patients who arrive at the A&E/emergency/casualty departments of hospitals. It appears that almost all of these patients are men in their 70s who fail to realise that they can no longer zip up and down on ladders: arthritic knees, sudden spells of dizziness, wasting leg muscles, impaired inner-ear balance mechanisms, all conspire to make going up on a ladder a very stupid thing for a man in his 70s to do. All of this means, of course, that I have to do it when Bernice isn’t looking.

I am, naturally, tremendously careful, and all the time I am balanced up there I take tree-hugging to new heights, but nevertheless I do realise that it is a very stupid thing to do and, if it makes you feel any better, I promise I won’t do it next year and will, instead, wait for either my daughter (or, more probably, my acrobatic daughter-in-law) to arrive from Zichron, or for one of our neighbours’ strapping sons in their twenties, stamping their alpha male-dom all over my deflated ego, to breeze in from next door, and attach the netting in 10 minutes, doubtless while balancing on a slender branch on one leg.

The fact is that I spent 70 minutes yesterday wrestling with a nectarine tree that has undergone an adolescent growth spurt in the last year and could now play basketball for The Summer Fruits in the Israel tree league. After all that time, I was sweating heavily, I had managed to dislodge about 30 immature nectarines (which is arguably more than the birds would have eaten), and the tree still looked barely protected, even to the untrained eye.

I plan to tackle the shesek (loquat) tree tomorrow (now today – Tuesday), which is much more straightforward. I have a deal with the birds that I cover this tree only up to a height where I can safely reach. Anything above that is theirs. Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure all of the birds understand the small print of this agreement.

As for the much smaller and more manageable peach tree, with its very modest harvest, I won’t have any netting left over, so I may have to play a game of chicken with the birds, and see if I can manage to pick each individual fruit just before the birds get to it.

When our gardener suggested several years ago that he plant three small nurslings – peach, nectarine and lemon – it seemed a charming idea. Nobody explained to me the expenditure of physical effort and mental strain that this would entail. Where the prophet Micah writes that “each man shall sit under his grapevine or fig tree with no one to disturb him”, I always thought that the vision of the Messianic age was one free of war and strife between man and his fellow-man. I never realised it also encompassed freedom from the war between man and birds, and, indeed, between man and gravity. I think I must be acquiring the wisdom of age, or something.

Meanwhile, if our three grandsons continue to explore the world around them with the same curiosity and enthusiasm they are all showing now, they will probably, on their way up, meet me, on my way down, somewhere on the slopes of the mountain-range of human wisdom, some time frighteningly soon.

In a normal week, Sunday morning sees this week’s blog post as my number one priority. In a normal week. This is not a normal week.

In a normal week, by Sunday evening, the post is done and dusted. It’s been written, reviewed by me, read and approved by Bernice, revised by me, set up in WordPress and scheduled to go live on Tuesday morning. In a normal week. This is not a normal week.

I am writing this at 8:30 on Monday evening. Despite the lateness of the hour (Go Live minus 12:30 hours), I have no idea what I am going to write about and, to be honest, I feel more asleep than awake. But my public (such as it is) awaits me; the show must go on. So here we go.

This is not a normal week since, as you will hardly need me to remind you, Pesach begins on Wednesday night. All religious holidays obviously require a certain amount of spiritual preparation; for me this usually involves study, in the form of reading a book or some articles or shiurim or listening to recorded or live talks and shiurim. However, on no other holiday am I, are we, so thoroughly tested on our degree of preparation. On Pesach, we are expected to provide stimulating questions, discussion points and observations. No pressure, then.

Pesach is also unusual in that it involves physical preparation. Not uniquely, of course: before sukkot there is a lot of physical preparation: flimsy temporary structures that are liable to collapse don’t, after all, build themselves. However, building a sukkah pales into insignificance beside the logistic challenge of cleaning a house for Pesach while, at the same time, living and cooking and eating in it.

Of course, I realise how lucky we are. We no longer have six-year-olds who post wafers into their money-boxes and don’t think to mention it to anyone. (In fairness we never did have a six-year-old like that.) We no longer have twelve-year-olds who leave a sandwich in their schoolbag at the beginning of the year and forget about it, only for it to be discovered in late March. (In fairness, we did have a twelve-year-old exactly like that. I leave you to guess whether it was Esther or Micha’el.)

I also realise how lucky I am. I have never played my part in preparing meals, so the waves of chag, shabbat, chag, shabbat have never struck terror into my heart as they do into Bernice’s.

But Pesach is something else. First of all, to make up for all those years when I was out clubbing sabre-tooth tigers while Bernice was scrubbing cupboards, I strive to play my part in Pesach cleaning. We start what one ex-colleague of mine regarded as ludicrously late: he and his wife started cleaning for Pesach every year immediately after Hannukah. Others might regard it as early. I tackle each of the kitchen drawer units in turn, giving them a really thorough clean so that the final clean can be much quicker. These days, I feel I can only tackle one unit per day, so I spread that over two weeks.

Meanwhile, we confine eating to the kitchen and dining room, so that Bernice’s pre-Shabbat house cleaning can, over two weeks, be even more thorough than usual.

This year, we moved on to Phase 2 towards the end of last week: getting rid of, or putting aside for pre-Pesach eating, our odd bits of hametz in the freezer and the cupboards; cleaning the overflow fridge and freezer in the utility room, ready to move over all the non-Pesach perishables; doing our big Pesach Rami Levi shop; condensing the non-Pesach food into half of the kitchen drawers.

Yesterday (Sunday) morning, we were up early for our big push. We teamed up to tackle the kitchen fridge-freezer; Bernice took on the oven and hob, while I got the microwave, wine-fridge. (I know this sounds as though I’m not pulling my weight, but ever since the year when I cleaned the oven really thoroughly and couldn’t quite put it back together again, Bernice has declared it off-limits for me.) Finally, I condensed the non-Pesach dishes and cutlery into half of the kitchen drawers.

These days, I seem to pack ever more efficiently, so that finding drawer space for all the bits and pieces that normally live on the worktop – the mixer, peanut jars (yes, two jars, since you ask: one for raw peanuts in their husks and one for home-roasted – this is a serious peanut-eating household), coffee machine, condiment set, butter dish – seemed ridiculously easy.

By the time we collapsed into bed last night, we were all set for a post-breakfast switch-over today, which went more smoothly than ever. Having cleared away after breakfast, we took a moment to admire the stark elegance of an uncluttered kitchen, and agreed that, despite the fact that this was the way our interior designer urged us to live, it seemed completely lifeless. (Personally, I would be happiest with something halfway between unlived in and cluttered, but there you are.) Then Bernice swept and washed the floors, while I attacked the work surfaces. In no time at all, I was ready to retrieve, from the cupboard under the stairs, the polygal (corrugated plastic) sheets with which we cover the work surface, and the plastic sink inserts.

In previous years, I have struggled to work out exactly how the various pieces of polygal (which I cut, several years ago, with cunning skill, from only five sheets we bought) fit together round the kitchen. This year, it all fell into place. Even manoeuvring the water machine to fit the polygal under it produced no disasters, and in no time at all I was up on the stepladder, handing down to Bernice all the Pesach dishes and glassware and kitchen equipment. 

By 11:30, we were able to enjoy a cup of tea, which in my case was Chai Masala, which I thought I liked, but now discover I do not. If anyone would like a box of Adanim Chai Masala, with only one bag missing, you’re invited to come and collect it.

Perceptive readers will be wondering what I was doing between 11:30 and now, that prevented me writing my post during the afternoon. Funny you should ask.

My father, alav hashalom, once he retired, always loved to bake for Pesach. He would make almond macaroons, cinnamon balls, and a French chocolate cake that, even though it was in Evelyn Rose’s kosher cookery book, and even though it used potato flour, was not, unaccountably, listed in the Pesach section of the book. It was, however, obviously, ideal for Pesach.

After we moved to Israel, my parents visited us from England over Pesach, and Dad continued to bake, wonderfully, every year. After he died, I felt I had to take up the mantle, and so I continued the tradition. Bernice generously agreed to give me first dibs at the kitchen every year after we change over, so I traditionally take the rest of changeover day.

I soon added to my repertoire coconut pyramids, originally simply because they use yolks only, and I was easily able to bake quantities that meant using equal numbers of egg whites (four each for macaroons and cinnamon balls) and yolks (eight for coconut pyramids). The French chocolate cake, very efficiently, uses equal numbers of yolks and whites.

Unfortunately (purely from the aspect of egg efficiency), a colleague at work shared a recipe for florentines that is so ludicrously simple, and so delicious, that I readily adopted it for Pesach. (Bung egg whites, sugar, chocolate chips, chopped dried fruit and chopped almonds in a bowl, stir, and dollop onto a baking tray.) So now I have to make a heavily yolky omelette on the day I bake.

Over the years, I have, in theory, perfected this baking day. I tackle the recipes in order, so that the baking time of item x is a little longer than the preparation time for item x+1. Fortunately, all of the recipes call for an oven at 170^o-180^oC, so oven use is efficient. The instruction manual that I have written for this entire enterprise gives total kitchen time as 3.5 hours. This, of course, assumes that everything goes according to plan, and every baton change, as it were, is effortless.

Today, it didn’t, and it wasn’t. First of all, I finished mixing the ingredients for pyramids, carefully shaped 20 of them, using my favourite eggcup, and only then realised that the reason the mixture seemed a little wet was that, although the number of eggs I had used was correct for the double batch I always make, I had followed the original recipe for single quantities of coconut, sugar and lemon, so that I now had to dump my 20 perfectly formed pyramids back into the mixing bowl, weigh and mix more coconut, sugar and lemon, and start shaping again.

A little put off my stride by this setback, I plunged into more confusion with quantities of ground almonds for the cinnamon balls. I normally grind my own almonds. However, this year Bernice found that the ground almonds were cheaper than the whole almonds, and so she bought enough for my recipes. It was only as I was setting up that I remembered that I had discovered years previously why commercial cinnamon balls are so dark inside, whereas home-baked ones are usually much lighter. The secret is not the cinnamon, nor kiddush wine, as I used to think, but rather the almonds. Commercial cinnamon balls are made with almonds that have not been blanched.

So, I decided to use home-ground, unblanched almonds for a third of the mixture, to give the colour I wanted. However, when I came to weigh and mix together the two kinds of ground almond, I unaccountably ended up with 250 grams more of mixture than I needed. Fortunately, I had, at that stage, not mixed the two kinds of almond together thoroughly, and so I spent a few exhilarating minutes carefully scooping blanched ground almond out of the mixture.

All of this helps to explain why the three-and-a-half hours expanded to just over five! Bernice was kind enough to remind me that I had a set of similar, but, of course, not identical, hiccoughs last year before Pesach. I am beginning to suspect that several days of intensive cleaning and a feeling of terminal exhaustion are not the best preparation for a smooth afternoon of baking, but what can you do?

So, now you understand why I have no idea what to write about this week. Sorry! You’ll just have to make do with some pictures.