Weather: Is it Safe to Eat Sushi in Gush Etzion?

Illustration (Image credit: Wix)

Folks are still complaining about the heat -- and I don't blame them. True, it has been a bit cooler but temperatures are still uncomfortably hot. To make things worse, high pressure will develop over Africa and the clockwise flow around it will combine with weak low pressure over the Mediterranean to bring back the heat again as the week moves towards its end (Shabbat). The heat will arrive on southwest winds, and it will probably turn dusty as well. My wife, who is from Venus, is even complaining about the heat. She doesn't remember a time when the windows were closed so often, and the air conditioner worked so many daylight hours. Even though I am from Mars and I look forward to winter cold (and hopefully snow), I grew up in the "It's not the heat, but the humidity" eastern United States. So I am able to tough it out. Still, being from the cold of Mars never prepared me for marriage. As you all know, men and women first meet on the moon, where its neutral ground allows for a synthesis of bliss to overtake the young couple as they stride happily to the chuppah (marriage canopy). But, they have to live somewhere, and when they do they soon realize that they are quite different, and it is usually the men who have the hardest time adjusting. This evening the Wife said that we should meet at the kanyon (mall) for dinner with the kids. It wasn't too long ago when ‘The Kanyon’ meant the mall in Malcha, Jerusalem. But now, ‘The Kanyon’ means the mall in Gush Etzion which is located southwest of Jerusalem. Gush Etzion was originally comprised of four Jewish villages founded in 1940-47 on property purchased in the 1920s and 1930s. Destroyed by the Arab Legion before the 1948 War of Independence, the area was outside the 1949 armistice lines. The villages, along with new communities, were rebuilt after the 1967 Six-Day War.

Just so you know, until our neighbors the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs started knifing and running people over, the mall and adjacent big supermarkets were a paradigm of coexistence.

Getting back to my story, I assumed that she meant the Malcha mall. In addition to the mall here in Gush Etzion, we have schools, farms and vineyards, two or three pools, soccer (and softball) fields, as well as a performance hall. Gush Etzion is not one big ‘settlement,’ but a place where many Israelis live in different cities -- just like they lived and still do within the pre-armistice borders of Israel.

Thus, there is one more husband who has been reminded it’s better to ask than to think for himself. I had to settle for eating my sushi in the house.