Food for Thought

It took me a little bit to come up with a title for today’s post but I'm sure you will see why I chose this title... 

Since we’re at the beginning of the workweek there is a new crop of volunteer dentists working at the clinic.  We have 3 root canal specialists (endodontists) from Mexico City, an endodontist from Finland, a general dentist from London, and me.  The Mexican guys are pretty cool and speak English well. One of them went to Tufts Dental School in Boston for his Endo program and he & his 12 year old son love football.  The 3 amigos have never been here before so I offered to show them around a little bit tomorrow. 

Considering there were only 2 general dentists today I was a little busier doing basic restorative work and I had an assistant that never worked in the clinic before.  Jana, my assistant, also does not speak English.

Jana is a Russian immigrant.  When the former Soviet Union was dismantled many Jews living in Russia emigrated to Israel.  One third of all the Russian speaking Jews in the world went to Israel (about a million) putting an immense strain on available housing and social services.  Mini villages were erected to house them and ulpans, or educational programs, were added for the Russians.  These ulpans were basically crash courses in Hebrew lasting a couple months.  Jana came to Israel with her husband and 13 year old daughter from Moscow back in 1992 and settled in an area called Pisgat Ze’ev which is outside Jerusalem.

I saw 12 kids today……..  Nataniel…Esther…Odelia…Sapir…Goitum…Sholom…Jacob…Bahar…Matisyahu…Rheem...Chaya… and Hannan

Odelia & Sapir are sisters whose father looks and sounds like Tevya from the movie “Fiddler on the Roof”.  Odelia had minor heart surgery when she was 3 months old but is doing great now. 

Goitum is a first generation Israeli whose parents were airlifted here from Sudan during Operation Moses in 1984. He is an Ethiopian Jew or a “Beta Israel”.

Matisyahu is a pudgy 17 year old Haredi (Ultra Orthodox Jew) with sandy hair and who inexplicably had ants crawling on his black suit.  I would much rather have ants than lice!

Rheem is an Arab from East Jerusalem who came with to the clinic with her mother and younger sister.  They watched me like I was doing heart surgery and afterwards her sister proclaimed that she wanted me to treat her from now on. I thought that was cool but I told her that she can’t wait that long between my visits.  They let me take a photo which I have posted with my other photos.

Quite a melting pot in this part of the world and each one makes you stop and think about what they went through or what their parents went through to be here.  Now you can understand more about when people pick on Israel why they fight back like there is no tomorrow.  Food for thought.

Now time for some real food for thought.  I drove over to one of the most spectacular and entertaining open air markets in the world… the Mehane Yehuda market.

This place has the most incredible sights and smells.  Displays of spices, fruits, vegetables, candy, fish, and meat are everywhere. I ended up going to my favorite pita stand for pita, got my supply of zatar (a mixture of sweet marjoram and other spices) for the next year, and a fresh squeezed orange juice and that was my lunch.  I walked around and found some fresh blueberry sourdough bread and bing cherries and started munching on all that also.  This place gets absolutely packed on Friday mornings and is  100% empty on Saturdays.  

All in all, quite a bit food for thought today.