Golders Green

Took a bus ride up to Golders Green,  it is the same Jewish neighborhood I saw in Oak Park Michigan or Wheaton/Silver Spring Maryland.  It’s the place with the Kosher butcher and the bakery with the Pareve and "the buttery" side of the store.  There is the Falafel house and the other Kosher restaurants with the distinctive word (כָּשֵׁר) plastered on the door. 

These towns are recognizable regardless of city or country.  There is an energy, a hustle to them especially in preparation for a big holiday.

There is of course the bookstore with the prayer books to the left, the Tallit, yarmulke and other Jewish paraphernalia in the middle and the good stuff to the right.  Just like your grandmother’s house the silver is off in a separate room where children playing is frowned upon.

On a Sunday afternoon it’s bustling with black hats and tsit tsits blowing in the wind.  Everyone running, the high holidays are coming, a mix of Hebrew, British and Scottish accents fill the main street.

At Solly’s Restaurant I experience the exorbitant prices (since when do you get a Falafel sandwich with everything sold separately?  Do I want pita?  Hummus? So what exactly do I get for my 13 pounds?)

And the service I will simply call, rude Israeli.

But it was delicious and the atmosphere was pure Middle East.  On the telly there was a constant loop of Israel-UN-Iran- Palestinian Statehood.  And while the discussion at most tables was animated, amid all the chaos “back home” in Israel, you wonder how the inter-country animosity lasts all these years.  Because on the ground here is what I heard:  A grandfather who was grateful to have Sunday brunch with his family, although the chicken soup wasn’t hot enough; a man from Glasgow who needs a new prayer-book for his adult son; a 15 year old boy who grew out of his Bar Mitzvah tallis and needs, as his mother says, “A tallis that will stick to his bony shoulders.”