Home is Where the Hearth is

As always, Queen Elizabeth gave her traditional Christmas message, which was televised and broadcast all over the world. Although I don’t usually pay it much attention, this year I happened to catch it live on TV, and watched with greater interest than usual, due in part to my having watched the first two series of ’The Crown’ on Netflix. The dramatized serialization of events concerning England’s royal family interlaced with contemporary British history and politics has been fascinating me in recent weeks (with admirable self-restraint I’ve managed to limit myself to one episode a day, after having first been introduced to it in more intensive dosage while in the USA recently).

The characters and events are presented in an appealing and aesthetic way, with handsome actors, convincing scripts, crystal-clear diction, beautiful interiors and clothes and altogether admirable attention to detail. To watch the way a royal personage holds a tea-cup, spreads jam and cream on a scone, engages in horsey pursuits and even romps in bed (with no explicit sex scenes, though, as no-one wants to be apprehended for lese-majesté) is to get a glimpse of a world that is almost as remote from our mundane lives as is life on Mars.

My special interest in the series derives from my own experience of growing up in England at the time of the events described. I still remember the Coronation and the excitement of going to my parents’ friends to watch it on their TV, the chronicle of Princess Margaret’s unhappy love-affair with Captain Peter Townsend and also, of course, the salacious ramifications of the Profumo Affair.

But all that is a mere aside to my main theme, because in her speech the Queen referred to the importance of home, describing it as a place associated with warmth, family, and shared stories, evoking a ‘timeless simplicity.’ It’s true that at Christmas people tend to return to their homes and families in order to celebrate the festival together. It is somewhat akin to the tendency of Jewish families to assemble for the major festivals of Pesach (Passover) and Rosh Hashana (New Year), which, like Christmas, are marked by sumptuous meals at which special foods are consumed.

Of course, when it comes to homes, the Queen has a goodly supply. She has several of them, and very grand they are, too. We mere mortals, on the other hand, should be happy if we have even one that provides us with a roof over our head and a warm hearth in these bleak winter months.

And that brings me to sad thoughts about people who find themselves without a home. First of all, there are the refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen, to name but a few, who are huddled in the makeshift huts and tents of the refugee camps. As winter comes to the Middle East, it brings further hardship to lives that are already difficult, not to mention the terrible plight of the many thousands of Rohingyha refugees who have fled Myanmar and found shelter of sorts in Bangladesh. There does not seem to be any solution in sight to alleviating those suffering from the various local and regional conflicts, and I’m not referring to the Palestinian ‘refugees’ whose forebears left their homes two, three or even four generations ago and are now being deliberately kept homeless.

When the State of Israel was established, in 1948, the Arab countries where Jews had lived for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, ordered those inhabitants to leave immediately, forcing them to abandon their homes without taking anything of value with them. An immense effort was made by the nascent Jewish State to take in those refugees and provide them first with temporary accommodation, and then with more permanent homes, however basic. Most of the descendants of those refugees have been absorbed into Israeli society and are represented in every profession and occupation. No Jewish refugee from an Arab country is still housed in a so-called refugee camp, and it is a lasting disgrace that this is the case with the Palestinian refugees in Arab lands. It is no secret that this situation is perpetuated for political purposes, with no regard for the dignity or comfort of the individuals concerned.

Like many other Jews living in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, my own parents were refugees and were forced to leave their homes in order to survive. I can’t say that they became prosperous, but they worked hard, raised a family, and built a home, as did most of the Jewish refugees who survived the war somehow, somewhere in the civilized world or in what eventually became the State of Israel.

Today, in affluent Europe, no visitor to any of the major cities can avoid seeing the homeless people who occupy the pavements (sidewalks) or huddle in doorways. Churches, municipalities and charitable organizations try to help these individuals, but in many cases they insist on remaining exposed to the elements for reasons of their own. In London this year the municipality gave two hundred homeless people a meal and a bed for the night at St. Pancras Station. But as the winter weather tightens its grip on Europe there are ever-increasing instances in which homeless people are found lying dead in the open.

The concept of home is one that is timeless and universal. My wish for the New Year is that no-one should be left without a home to go to.

 

Journey to a Dream; A voyage of discovery from England’s industrial north to Spain’s rural interior, by Craig Briggs

 

Another free download from an indie author, and another quite enjoyable read. Craig Briggs describes in great detail the process whereby he and his wife decamped from the north of England to Spain in order to try to buy a house and establish a business as a bed-and-breakfast (with or without breakfast) in Spain. They did this without knowing much of the Spanish language or culture, on the basis of having taken a liking when on holiday there to the rural countryside and sunny climate of the region of northern Spain known as Galicia.

Having had a similar experience in my search for a house in France, albeit not with the intention of renovating it or establishing any kind of business venture there, I could sympathise with Craig’s quest, and understand what motivated him and his wife, Melanie.

The reader is subjected to the exact specifications of each house or hovel they were taken to view by their somewhat dubious Spanish estate agent, the ins and outs of the Spanish bureaucratic system and the headaches and heartaches that afflicted Craig and Melanie, which sometimes gets to be somewhat tiresome. Ever more stories of similar vicissitudes are getting published on a daily basis, and this one falls into the rather predictable pattern displayed by most of them.

To his credit, it must be said that Craig writes reasonably well, all things considered, though there is too much repetition of certain phrases, such as ‘we thanked him/her/them and went on our way.’ Very polite, very British and rather unnecessary (unless you’re desperate to increase the number of words in your publication).

Although my own book on a similar subject, ‘Chasing Dreams and Flies; a Tragicomedy of Life in France’ (available on Amazon.com), starts pretty much at the point where Craig’s book ends, there are quite a few similarities between what Craig and Melanie go through in Spain in real life and what is experienced by John and Sophie, my fictitious ex-pats in France. The most striking feature of Craig and Melanie’s decampment is their love of wine, search for wineries and extensive wine-tasting forays, which is not the case with John and Sophie. Perhaps I should have thought of some wine-drinking activity for them, but it’s too late for me to go back and write some drinking scenes for them. Sorry, folks. My rather forlorn characters tend to stick to ‘a nice cup of tea.’

Pfefferkuchen

The pungent aroma of baking would often greet me when I came home from school. My mother was an expert baker (and cook) and had a wide range of goodies that she would make in the course of the year, as well as the delicious Challah and rolls she would bake every Friday.

But when Chanuka came round it would be time for her to bake the traditional delicacy known to us solely as Pfefferkuchen. Today I know that it’s called gingerbread or lebkuchen by the rest of the world, but for me and my family (and my sisters and their families) it will always be Pfefferkuchen. In Christian countries the delicacy is associated with Christmas, but for me it is an integral part of Chanuka.

To bake that special delicacy, which is something between a cake and biscuits (i.e., cookies) my mother would turn the whole kitchen into something approaching an industrial unit dedicated to the creation of the end-product. The preparation and baking process involved assembling a wide array of ingredients, spices, flavourings and decorations, and took several hours to achieve.

And the end-result was always a substantial quantity of delicious and delectable objects that we would consume with great enjoyment. Each biscuit would be adorned with icing upon which either multi-coloured hundreds-and-thousands or chocolate sprinkles would be scattered.

One of the treats of those far-off baking days would be the segments of Pfefferkuchen dough that my mother would leave unbaked, and which my sisters and I were allowed to roll out and then apply the gingerbread-man form to create a figure that would be placed on a baking tray and inserted into the oven to be baked. When it was ready, my mother would wield the icing-cone and deftly provide the baked gingerbread man with eyes, nose and mouth, and even buttons down his front. Then our greatest joy would be to eat the little man, biting off his head, arms and legs and eventually consuming all of him. Delicious!

Over the years I have been reluctant to undertake this baking enterprise myself. Yes, I have baked cakes and biscuits of various kinds, but nothing as ambitious and time- and energy-consuming as Pfefferkuchen. My family’s needs for this delicacy have been met by my two sisters, Esther and Ruth, who have kindly presented us with some of their production.  I have gratefully accepted their contribution to our general welfare, but as the years roll by I have started to feel increasingly inadequate in being unable to provide for my family’s requirements.

So this year I spent an evening as my sister’s apprentice, watching her prepare a batch (the first of several) of Pfefferkuchen. I came away clutching a box of delicious biscuits and a photocopy of the recipe that had been passed on to her by our mother.

After making sure I had all the ingredients, I decided to screw my courage to the sticking-post, as dear Lady Macbeth would have it, and embark on the enterprise myself. And believe me, it did take a lot of courage. The process begins with one whole kilogram of flour. That’s a lot of dough.

But it seems that having put everything together, mixed and rolled out the dough, and done my best to cut it into the requisite diamond shapes (but no gingerbread men), the end-result was passable, even edible, although I grant that there is still room for improvement. I presented each of my sisters with a (small) box of my first effort, and both pronounced it satisfactory. My own taste buds seem to find the result adequate, and those few souls who have been kind enough to try my first-fruits have given me positive feedback. In fact, within a week most of the initial production had been consumed by family and friends.

Thus encouraged, I felt ready to try and produce another batch. The second time, I’m happy to say, the process took less time and effort. And hopefully by next Chanuka I’ll be up to repeating the experiment.

The Undoing Project; a Friendship that Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis

 

In this book Michael Lewis sets out to describe the way two Israeli psychologists worked together over the course of several years to develop a theory about the process of decision-making and the way this affects and is affected by the inner workings of the human mind.

Michael Lewis begins his account of the long and convoluted road taken by Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky, leading to the award to the former of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics (Amos Tversky died previously, and the Nobel Prize is awarded to living persons only), with an exceedingly long and detailed description of the way professional basketball players are selected for teams throughout the USA. The thought processes influencing the way trainers and coaches decide whom to accept or reject involve the consideration of large amounts of data, though the eventual decision may well be based on something other than the mere analysis of data, such as body image, racial preconceptions and ‘gut feeling.’

As an experienced journalist, Michael Lewis brings a personal angle into his writing about a subject that is essentially abstract and obscure, and embarks on a detailed depiction of the childhood and youth of Danny Kahneman, starting in Nazi-occupied Paris, continuing with the family’s flight into the French countryside and eventual emigration to Israel. Amos Tversky grew up in Israel, served in combat in the IDF, and participated in the Six Day War.

After military service both Danny and Amos were among the first students of psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Fascinated by the field of human decision-making already then, Danny Kahneman was tasked with assessing the psychological suitability of newly-inducted soldiers for the various units as well as for being sent to be trained as officers. He developed a relatively simple test that proved far more successful than other ways of identifying suitable officer material.

Both Kahneman and Tversky pursued academic careers with considerable success, working alongside one another in Jerusalem for many years, developing their ideas, theories and experiments as well as publishing papers and books. Michael Lewis stresses the close ties between the two men, more or less to the exclusion of almost any other academic or personal relations, though both got married and had children.

In later years, however, it seems that some kind of rift developed between them. Both moved to universities in the north American continent, but Tversky appeared to attract greater attention and obtain better posts at more prestigious universities than Kahneman. Nonetheless, their academic productivity continued to blossom, and their development of the decision-making processes that take place in the human mind was taken up by other disciplines, e.g., medicine, economics, and even the legal profession.

Michael Lewis presents just some of the approaches adopted by the duo in order to assess, measure and gauge the ways in which individuals process information in order to reach a decision, and they are indeed many and varied. In their work the methods of behaviorist psychology are combined with features from Gestalt theory, thus forming a completely new school of testing and analysis, yielding findings that have been found to be significant for a myriad of disciplines.

Lewis has worked hard to present this complex subject in a way that is interesting for the general reader, as is indicated by the list of sources and acknowledgements given at the end of the book. The workings of the mind continue to fascinate students of human behaviour, and it is thanks to the work of Kahneman and Tversky that some more light has been shed on this intriguing sphere.

Just Cruising

Aboard a cruise ship called ‘Carnival Dream,’ a veritable floating city, we shared the fourteen storeys or decks with some four thousand other passengers Our route took us from New Orleans, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico and several Caribbean islands. From conversations with some of our fellow-passengers we learned that many were veterans of several cruises – fifteen or even twenty in some cases. We were among the few for whom this was their first cruise, and I must say that I can understand how one can become addicted to cruising. Every luxury is available, from non-stop dining to round-the-clock boozing, gambling, swimming, room service and entertainment of every kind. For us the highlights were the shore excursions and a very English-style tea-time, with triangular cucumber sandwiches and other delicacies, accompanied by a string trio playing a selection of light classics (and requests). I was tempted to ask for ‘Teddy Bear’s Picnic,’ as I used to in my childhood when my parents took me to Lyon’s Corner House, but feared the players (all from Buenos Aires) might not have known it.

Apart from enjoying the ship’s amenities, the fine dining in the evening and the ministrations of our cabin steward during the day, the shore excursions to Montego Bay in Jamaica, Grand Cayman Island and Xcaret Park in Mexico enabled us to experience, however briefly, different cultures and ways of life. Unfortunately, we also had to do our best to avoid the various shopping centres to which we were taken. The visit to the tropical park at Xcaret was unique in this respect, with a minimum of commerce and the opportunity to engage directly with Mexicao’s heritage as well as gorgeous flora and fauna, including tropical birds, animals and butterflies, and even the chance to swim in an underground river.

But most of all, the cruise experience enabled us to see what makes America (and Americans) tick. The answer is Fun, and that is what the ship provided, in spades. It was apparent that not all the passengers on board were wealthy or even prosperous, but had scrimped and saved to be able to enjoy a week of unbridled eating, dancing, gambling and entertainment, and were determined to enjoy every minute. The ship’s large casino was invariably full of people of all ages, sizes, ethnicities and means. Quite a large number of those on board were greatly overweight, even obese. But not to worry, medical services were also available, though I didn’t hear of any emergencies (though that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any). The entertainment provided – the printed schedule was distributed to all passengers daily – ran a dizzying gamut from stand-up comedy to Broadway shows, karaoke sessions, special meetings for singles and LGBTs, competitions and quizzes.

The atmosphere on board was cheerful in the extreme. In fact, the general air of bonhomie engendered by the incessant smiling and greeting dutifully undertaken by every single member of the (considerable) staff quickly rubbed off onto the passengers. Thus, every time one entered an elevator one was greeted with enthusiasm by the other passengers. Eventually we came to behave in the same way, and upon returning to land it was hard to get used to the idea of not welcoming people into every elevator or greeting every passing stranger.

Throughout the day food of every kind was provided on the deck devoted to this sphere, with some dishes being prepared on the spot. These ranged from the station known as Mongolian Wok – where the diner chooses from an array of vegetables which ones the (genuine Mongolian) chef should prepare for him or her – to a selection of Italian and other national dishes, as well as a burger bar (where there was always a queue) and salads, side dishes and desserts of every imaginable kind. Naturally, tea and coffee were available throughout the day and night.

Dinner in the evening was a more formal affair, where one had an assigned table and seating time, a menu that was different every day and a bevy of waiters who attended to one’s every need. On some evenings music was broadcast in between the courses and the waiters promptly took up their positions and danced to it. Some of the waiters were excellent dancers, but even those who weren’t made an admirable attempt to put on something of a show for us bemused diners. On the last night of the cruise the master of ceremonies introduced the various head chefs to the enthusiastic audience, and each one got a round of applause, after which all the dozens of kitchen staff appeared and together all sang the John Denver song ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane,’ which makes me smile now whenever I think of it (it doesn’t get played much on the classical music radio stations I listen to).

Cruising provides a vacation that combines relaxation with the chance to go and see different cultures while being pampered and cosseted in every possible way. And if one doesn’t feel like getting out and about to go ashore, there’s always one of the swimming pools or lounges, the casino, the spa, or even the library, where one can go and relax.

Or just go up to the food deck and get something to eat.