14/9/99

Fuji of the Galilee

    To get to Taiko from where I live, you drive past a teeming haredi neighborhood, through the broiling desert, glance at the squalid Beduin encampments, bypass glowering Palestinians, nod at the stagnating Sephardi towns and struggling Ashkenazi kibbutzim, ramble on through clamorous Moslem and Christian Arab areas and finally make a left at the churning Karmiel industrial region. You reach a mountain and drive up it, all the way to the clouds, until you find yourself in ... Japan.
    Taiko is a sanctuary of tranquility. It's other-worldly, a jolt to the senses, absurdly incongruous. It's like climbing Fuji and finding, at the summit, Mea Shearim.
    Taiko is the name of this Japanese tea house, and of the woman who left Tokyo to live above this mad, mad country.
    She never really left. Here she is, surrounded by gorgeous gardens, attuned to a tiny gurgling stream and the plucked twangs and woohs of Japanese music, serenely ensconced in a domain of silk art, bamboo ceiling and opaque shoji wall.
    Her mother sends seaweed by airmail -- a perfect, oxymoronic symbol of this person and her place.
    Mixed in with her shoji, sushi and Shinto is Shlomo, which sounds like a ceremonial Japanese butter-knife or something, but -- here's where Israel intrudes on the scene -- that's her husband.
    Shlomo Eliyash and Taiko Koshida met in Philadelphia, astonished their families by getting married, and 16 years ago, came to live here. But where?, they wondered. Shlomo's hometown, Ramat Gan, is no place for a shy Japanese bride. Sharm el Sheikh, where he later settled, is no place for either of them.
    They found their haven on a cliff, on a remote mitzpe in Western Galilee called Michmanim.
    Outside the window, beyond the purple bulrushes swaying in the wind, is a spectacular vista from the Golan to the Mediterranean.
    Taiko is far from the roiling masses, but not aloof from them. Considering the utterly uncompromising cultural differences, her adjustment to Israeli life is amazing.
    "There are many things good in Aretz, better than in Japan," she says softly in lilting Hebrew, weighing her words carefully. "Yes, I can shout now, I can get angry. I can even say no to someone's face," she admits, almost shocked at herself. In Japan, that's practically criminal.
    Israelis and Japanese are as opposite as exists in the universe, so it has been a mammoth effort to adapt. As modesty demands, Taiko cannot easily talk about herself, so Shlomo explains:
    "The Japanese observe tiny details; in Israel, you look at the 'overall': 'let's go, yalla, yalla, no matter, who cares, kadima hevre, kadima!' The finishing touch takes up too much time and energy, who can be bothered?
    "Israelis are curious; the Japanese never ask. Israelis, I like to say, are all journalists: they always ask questions: explain this, tell us that, Taiko is amazed at it. In Japan, people don't talk a lot, because of the danger of boasting. It's forbidden to be a shvitzer [showoff]. You can talk to Taiko for hours, she'll never say a good thing about herself, that's severely taboo.
    "Even small children know they must observe silently -- they learn from their mothers, who don't talk.
    "We had a problem with that. Our son Yonatan went to kindergarten. The teacher told Taiko, 'I think you have a big problem, you need a psychologist. He doesn't speak much, he just looks, never asks anything.' Taiko came home, upset, and said to me, 'I don't understand what they want from him, I always taught him to observe, not to speak.' "
    Taiko began the Judaism conversion process, but it was all so bewildering to her -- and she didn't know Hebrew -- so Shlomo told her to stop. Frankly, her religion is far more bewildering.
    "Officially she's Buddhist, but in Japan, there's no religion. They're atheists. They're born into a Shinto ceremony -- it's paganism, with their gods of the moon, the sun, the sea. They marry in a Christian ceremony, because it's nice, dressing in white, and playing 'Here Comes the Bride'. And they die as Buddhists, also because it's nice."
    What, nothing Jewish?
    Shlomo chafens, and expresses Taiko's only outspoken criticism. "She's so upset about the haredim. 'What are they doing to God?!' she asks. 'They're making a smartut (rag) of Him. Don't call Him God, call Him something else!' To Taiko, God is something pure."

SHLOMO AND Taiko appreciate the humor of their oddness.
    "When we first moved here we lived in a karavan. A woman spotted Taiko and said to another woman, 'look at that, they're living in a karavan and they have a Filipino maid!' "
    Irony abounds in their life. "We got land from the Jewish National Fund to create a Japanese garden. Taiko has a Beduin helping with the work. Oh, she's great with the Beduin, she makes them Turkish coffee." 
    The tea house is as authentically Japanese as possible, but I point out that it's built from Jerusalem stone, and Shlomo laughingly concedes that it's not very Japanese. "Stone in Japan?!" he whistles. "Very expensive. Japan is all earth, no rock. But in a garden, it's an important symbol, so they bring stone from Korea. The bigger the stone in your garden, the richer you are.
    "But here -- it's all stone! Stones, rocks, boulders~! We sent pictures to the family in Japan, and they thought we're millionaires. Her brother said, 'We'll send you a Subaru, you send us rocks!' "
    Stone is one of the three symbolic elements of a Japanese garden, together with water and fire (lighting). Before entering Taiko's tea house, you pass through a lovely atrium, carpeted with clover-like Japanese grass. Ducking the bamboo, you step along flat stones to cross over the tiny brook (replete with goldfish), which is reminiscent of rural Japan, where such streams run through the house.
    "Israelis come in here, and they feel the different atmosphere, they relax, they sense they should behave quietly. And they do. Sometimes they complain 'it's too quiet for us.' "
    As a tea house, there's enough room for a busload. Taiko performs (and describes) the tea ceremony at a special table, with all the traditional implements.
    As a restaurant, it's not like Japanese eateries you've been to. Meals take days to prepare, and Taiko does it all herself. "No Thai cooks here," Shlomo cracks. They only serve on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons, at specific times, by prior arrangement, for a maximum of 24 guests. Friday suppers are followed by a description of Taiko's art, especially kimono-making, and Japanese traditions; Saturday lunches include the highly-detailed, codified tea ceremony -- the only time she wears a kimono.
     "It's not a sushi bar here," Shlomo explains. "It's a total Japanese experience."
    Well, not totally total:
    "The tea ceremony in Japan takes three hours, and you don't talk. Here, you want tea, you want tea NOW! Israelis don't have the patience for it, so we do a short ceremony, five minutes; I tell people, 'try to sit quietly for five minutes, don't get up, don't walk around.' It's hard for us. So for half an hour Taiko explains the ceremony, and then for five minutes she actually performs it."
    Meals are five or six courses, and if you try to kill the subtly-flavored, delicately-textured food with zhlocks of soya sauce, Shlomo will stop you. "Soya sauce is important but it's not like in the West: gimme soya, pour on the soya, soya on everything. Or 'wassabe' (he laughs derisively). Anyone who wants to show they know Japanese food calls for wassabe, wassabe, (he hammers the table) how come there's no wassabe here?!
    "Taiko used to tell me, 'give them what they want!' I say no, no, no, t