5774 & Athens

Shana Tova!

It's a new year in Israel; it's 5774. The High Holy Days commenced on Wednesday evening. I attended two Rosh Hashannah dinners (two nights in a row, as is the custom) followed by a Shabbat dinner because this year they ran together. That's more food than I'd like to see for a while.

Rosh Hashannah dinners are characterized by sweet foods. All the rest of the year the challah is a braided loaf, at Rosh Hashannah it is a braided circle, to symbolize the cycle of the year. All year, challah is sprinkled with salt (alluding to the Temple sacrifices?), but at Rosh Hashannah and during the High Holy Days it is dipped in honey for a sweet new year. Also, apples are dipped in honey, pomegranates are eaten, and a few other foods depending on the table you are at and which blessings are being done.

Then it's on to the fish, the soup, the salads, the meat (chicken and beef and maybe more than 1 dish of each), vegetables, potatoes, and rice. Always followed by dessert, something parve if it's a kosher table, or something dairy if it's not, but it will be sweet! Apple cake is very common (and yummy). I also ate an amazing cheesecake made of millet at a vegan Rosh Hashannah dinner and an apple pavlova at a non kosher dinner. It was an eating weekend!

Daylight Savings or Not?

And today Bug 2013 hit Israel.  Since 2005, daylight savings time in Israel has ended the Sunday between Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur (which follows a week later). This is ridiculous and I don't know the details of this particular political decision (something about orthodox and seculars compromising?). Rosh Hashannah occurs at the earliest on Sept 5 as it did this year; at the latest it will occur on October 5 (because of the lunar calendar). Having daylight savings end in September or early October is punishing. At least, that's how I felt about it last year: Dark evenings way too early in the season and ridiculously bright early mornings. It felt like I'd missed 6 weeks overnight. I guess I wasn't the only one who didn't like it: the secular Israeli population had been complaining since 2010. In November 2012,  the Knesset extended IDT to October 1, but that didn't seem to appease enough people because earlier this summer (July), they extended it to October 27, 2013. Yippee!

Except, it seems no one sent the memo to the tech industry. As Ha'aretz put it: "Israeli smart phones cannot tell time." Sure enough, it seems that most operating systems didn't install a fix for the law that was passed by the Knesset in July. I woke up at 7 this morning and looked at my phone for the time. It said 6 and I thought, "Hmmm, really? It's rather bright out." But, then I dozed off until the jackhammering across the street started and in my fog of grogginess thought: "No, they never start before 730. Wait, what's going on?" Once I made it to my computer and saw the same time as on my phone I was confused for a while. When I found my watch, I discovered there was a problem. The devices in the house that rely on operating systems both thought IDT was over. I did manual resets of time, but I've since learned the recommended fix is to set your timezone to Athens - same time zone, same end date for daylight savings. After 27 October, we can switch back to Israel time. I'm glad I'm not relying on Outlook for my calendar; love my Moleskine! Still, the Athens fix hasn't removed the problem entirely. Gmail seems to think IDT is over too. All of my emails have the time stamp off by an hour. Flux, the lovely screen dimming add-on, also thinks IDT is over and has started darkening my screen at a quarter to six.

Maybe convergence of technology is not all it's cracked up to be. Maybe having a single purpose device like a watch is still worthwhile.