Orly Castel-Bloom - Textile

TEXTILE

ORLY CASTEL-BLOOM

The Reuben/Rifkin

Jewish Women Writers Series

A joint project of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Feminist Press

Series editors: Elaine Reuben,
Shulamit Reinharz, Gloria Jacobs

The Reuben/Rifkin Jewish Women Writers Series, established in 2006 by Elaine Reuben, honors her parents, Albert G. and Sara I. Reuben. It remembers her grandparents, Susie Green and Harry Reuben, Bessie Goldberg and David Rifkin, known to their parents by Yiddish names, and recalls family on several continents, many of whose names and particular stories are now lost. Literary works in this series, embodying and connecting varieties of Jewish experiences, will speak for them, as well, in the years to come.

Founded in 1997, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI), whose generous grants also sponsor this series, develops fresh ways of thinking about Jews and gender worldwide by producing and promoting scholarly research and artistic projects. Brandeis professors Shulamit Reinharz and Sylvia Barack Fishman are the founding director and codirector, respectively, of HBI.

OTHER BOOKS IN THE REUBEN/RIFKIN SERIES

Whatever Is Contained Must Be Released:

My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist
by Helne Aylon

Shalom India Housing Society
by Esther David

Hold On to the Sun
by Michal Govrin

Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love
by Judith Katzir

And the Bridge Is Love
by Faye Moskowitz

If a Tree Falls:

A Familys Quest to Hear and Be Heard
by Jennifer Rosner

Arguing with the Storm:

Stories by Yiddish Women Writers
edited by Rhea Tregbov

Dream Homes:

From Cairo to Katrina, an Exiles Journey
by Joyce Zonana

Published in 2013 by the Feminist Press

at the City University of New York

The Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

New York, NY 10016

feministpress.org

Translation copyright 2013 by the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature

Originally published in Hebrew as Textile by Hakibbutz Hameuchad/Siman Kriah in 2006 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First printing July 2013

Cover design by Faith Hutchinson

Text design by Drew Stevens

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Castel-Bloom, Orly, 1960

[Tekstil. English]

Textile / Orly Castel-Bloom ; translated by Dalya Bilu.

pages cm

eISBN 978-1-55861-826-8

I. Bilu, Dalya, translator. II. Title.

PJ5054.C37T4513 2013

892.4'36dc23

2013004429

The Law of Shatnetz:

You shall keep my statutes...

You shall not sow your field

with two kinds of seed,

nor shall you wear a garment of cloth

made of two kinds of material.

Leviticus 19:19

The laws of shatnez are considered so important that one who sees another person wearing shatnez is supposed to strip the offending garment from the wearer, even in public and even if the wearer is ones rabbi. Some legal authorities, however, softened this stipulation, saying that if the person wearing shatnez is doing so unintentionally then one should wait to speak to this person privately (Shulhan Arukh 303:1 and comment of Moshe Isserles). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/practices/Ethics/Our_Bodies/Clothing/Shatnez.shtml

CONTENTS

A TAXI STOOD ON THE CORNER OF YOCHEVED BAT-MIRIAM and Alexander Penn Street with its lights on and its engine off. On the back window was a message in big, white handwritten letters which said: I DRIVE ON GAS, NOT GASOLINE. AND YOU?

The light from the decorative street lamps joined the soft beams shining from amid the vegetation of the flourishing front gardens, which were all the same: three lemon cypresses, another three or five Thai ficuses, and one strange and unfamiliar tree that had shed its leaves and whose trunk was covered by thick, short thorny growths with hard, menacing points.

Taller and more prominent than these plants was a kind of slender palm whose large, feathery fronds looked as if they were bursting from a fountain with a low-pressure jet. This palmwhich had been imported at the end of the nineties, was called a coconut palm (Syagrus romanzoffiania) even though it bore no relation to the edible coconut fruitrequired very little water, while its rapid and imperious growth produced results of a cunning and historically helpful nature: it gave rise to the impression that the suburb of Tel Baruch North had not been established yesterday or the day before, but had been there for years. As the tall, flourishing coconut palms proved.

The suburb of Tel Baruch North was special, very different from the undistinguished sister suburbs surrounding it, and although it had been set up in the blink of an eye and was completely newit proclaimed seniority and permanence, even if life itself was fleeting. An impressive achievement that explained the high price of the apartments.

GEOGRAPHICALLY SPEAKING, Tel Baruch North is situated to the north of the old Tel Baruch, but also to the south of the old established Kiryat Shaul, famous for its two vast cemeteries: one for the fallen in the wars of Israel, and the other for the ordinary dead, who are hardly ever buried there at public expense anymore, since it is over capacity and plots are hard to come by and cost a fortune.

Despite its proximity to Kiryat Shaul, it never occurred to any of the planners of the suburb, which arose as if overnight, to call the new suburb Kiryat Shaul South. And rightly so. The word south gives rise to horror among the many denizens, or would-be denizens, of the affluent north, and to call a North Tel Aviv suburb Kiryat Shaul South would mean financial suicide as well as being socially insensitive. But the founders of Tel Baruch North (Telba-N.) were no fools. They drilled to the depths of human thought and took into account both the differences between North and South, and the difference between