These and Those

Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem

[Jerusalem Medley] Odalia

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Candace Mittel

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About Jerusalem Medley

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Odalia

I am from Beit Shemesh.  Twenty minutes away from Jerusalem.  You are invited to come and see.  She is very nice city.  The people there… very, very… heart persons.  Lovely.  I come to Jerusalem a lot.  I love this place because when I was teenager I was here a lot with my friends.  So it remember me all the time.  And it’s holy place.  The view here—you understand?  The atmosphere here, it’s very good to me.  Kever Rachel (Rachel’s Tomb), Shmuel Hanavi (Tomb of Samuel the Prophet), and the feeling—the feeling here!  It’s very different.  Everybody lives together.  I think everybody is trying to get a piece of it.  So they are splitting.  But I think everybody is… want to believe in peace, so they do their own choices, and also working together.

My parents live in a Moshav next to Beit Shemesh.  You know what’s a Moshav?  My parents are from Yemen.  Born in Yemen.  I love the Yemen food, of course, Lachuch, very, very good. Tasty.  I like it.  We make Jachnun and kubana, and I make it all, of course.  But Lachuch, I don’t know how. But I want to know.  My mom makes it.

I have five children.  She, here with me, is eleven.  And the smallest one is almost two. For the summer, we want to go to hotel, but it is very, very expensive.  So we are taking them to the beach, to the pool.  To the Gan HaChayot Hatanachi (The Jerusalem Biblical Zoo.) Very beautiful place.  You must to go there!

I was nineteen when I got married.  I have a friend, and she was my husband’s friend, and I meet him like that.  He come to my house, with my parents, and he saw me, and we start to talk and have the connection.  So we date, like two years.  And after that we got married.  I think it was early age, even in Beit Shemesh.  But since the beginning, it was very seriously.  We know like after month that we dated that we are going to get married.  But we were very young.  I was seventeen.  But dating, it’s like everybody… we are dating. We can touch, yes.  Everybody does it different.  But after a month, I knew I was going to marry with this man.  Did he know too?  He knew too,  but he was like, “ahhhh!”  He is five years older.  But he is very sweet.

My husband, he is an engineer.  Construction engineer.  I don’t work.  Just with the kids.  It’s very fun.  Because I think our kids is how we are staying in this world.  We are going up, and they are staying here.  And if they are good children, they will bring good children also.  And all the world going to be good.

Tov, we must to go.