The UK: Feast!

Hello market!

Despite the title, this isn't a blog post about the food I experienced in the UK. The truth is that the food I experienced in the kosher world was rather limited (we went out for kosher Indian and ordered in kosher Chinese), but being there over Pesach definitely limited the options. No, this blog post is about a market in West Norwood called FEAST!

I know what you're thinking. I've posted about a coffee roasting experience and now am posting about a local hipster market, what about Big Ben and castles and changing of the guard!? Being married to a gent from the UK hopefully means I'll have several trips to England in my future, so I was excited to experience the local flavor where my brother- and sister-in-law live. So after a schlep down from Edgware to South London, we popped out to the market, which spans several blocks and features food, local crafts, antiques, and oodles of other awesome things.

Vintage is cool! There were so many beautiful antiques. 

This was the first place I was exposed to Volcano Coffee Works, not to mention a bounty of unkosher and delicious smelling/looking food that was out of reach. The local flavor here is intense!

This was the kind of place (much like Camden Market) where I could probably easily drop hundreds of dollars on local goodies. I ended up walking away with a cup o' Joe and a beautiful pair of purple coconut shell earrings from a vendor who is incredibly green in all of her jewelry design, focusing on vegetarian ivory, old magazines, coffee beans, and coconut shells. I also stumbled upon African Inyoni artwork by Marika du Plessis, and I seriously struggled to not buy one of the paintings. The colors were so vivid and bright, but how do you schlep a painting back to Israel when you're limited on luggage? Argh!

This pic is funny because the sign says it's an alcohol-free area,
while fresh alcoholic cider is being served in the tent next to it. D'oh!

After walking around the market we walked through an incredibly old cemetery, saw the beautiful Greek structures that were adorned oddly enough with stars of David, and then partook in a picnic lunch at home followed by a trip to a local pub so I could get the true taste of the English pub. The most shocking thing about the pub experience? Babies, children, and pregnant ladies everywhere! Aside from the prevalence of children the smells of the pub reminded me of college days long gone by. Unfortunately the quintessential aspect of pub life (the food) was something we couldn't partake in. 

Maybe that's what Israel needs -- a kosher, British pub! Find more photos from my day on Flickr!

Keep Calm and Be Jewish

Someone had to do it, and that someone was me, evidently. I think I used the wrong font after the Keep Calm and Cholent On ... I should fix that!

Chabad on the Moon!?

While perusing Etsy.com, as I do sometimes when I'm bored, need to refresh my brain, and don't have a graphic novel laying around, I came across some funny comics up for sale. This one gave me a happy giggle. If you'd like to purchase one, just visit this Etsy Shop! (I also like the Rashi on a date one, tee hee.) After all, we have to be able to laugh at ourselves, right?

Shabbat Shalom!

Shabbos approaches, are you ready to kindle the lights and rest? Shabbat Shalom!

Paintings by Elena Flerova.

Parshah B'halotecha on Chabad.

A Bit of the Old, A Bit of the New!

During lunch yesterday I was graced by the presence of the New York Times at my table, so I picked it up and browsed (something I haven't done since I worked at a newspaper), and was lucky enough to happen upon a pretty exciting and possibly groundbreakingly awesome news story: "Find of Ancient City Could Alter Notions of Biblical David." The find?

"Overlooking the verdant Valley of Elah, where the Bible says David toppled Goliath, archeologists are unearthing a 3,000-year-old fortified city ..."

The site is five acres, and only a tiny portion of the area has been unearthed, meaning that there's still boatloads of research and digging to do. So far, there are some olive pits that have been found that have been carbon dated to between 1050 and 970 BCE -- a very controversial period in history during the supposed reign of David. Likewise, the writing on pottery appears in "so-called proto-Canaanite script and appears to be a letter or document in Hebrew." But we can't get too excited, I suppose. There's still a lot of the area that needs to be uncovered, and I'm tempted to book a ticket to go hop on that dig. The fascinating things about these digs is that they're used to sort of "validate" the "historical" evidence that we see in the Hebrew Bible. Can you imagine the potential for history-making finds in this dig?

------------------------------------------------------

On a completely and entirely unrelated note, I just wanted to mention that my favorite new artist -- Shoshannah Brombacher -- has a show opening at The Tea Lounge of her work, and it will run through the month of November. Her work has appeared on A Simple Jew 's blog, Chabad.org, and so many other places on the web. She has a flavor of Chagall, with a very ethereal, dreamy quality to her paintings ranging from music to the great Chassidic masters to modern Jewish celebrations. Can you guess what this painting is alluding to? I'll give you a hint: It's a classic parable involving Hillel and Shammai!

It is with that that I wish all a Shabbat Shalom -- may you have rest, peace, and good times with Torah, friends, family and G-d!

Seder plates inside the wall.

Philadelphi's Magic Garden is probably the most beautiful place I've been -- ever. I can't exactly describe it, but you can see all of my photos on my flickr. There's this beautiful mash-up that struck me, of course. It's a broken seder plate, more or less rearranged with other, colorful pieces of porcelain.

And there's a series of self-portraits through the glass fragments, as well.

But I hope you go look at all the photos -- it's a most beautiful, magical place.

Interesting. Very very intersting.

Now this is interactive art: http://wafaabilal.com/