Etymology

When I picked up FF the other day, Dikla told me he was "mabsut1." I could tell that was a generic positive word, but this was the second or third time I had run across it that week, so I asked what it meant.

Dikla was momentarily floored, "Um, it's Arabic. Like yaala (also Arabic; means a combination of come on, let's go, and OK)..." I know how hard it is to translate slang and idioms, so I decided to be helpful. "And achla (another Arabic word; means great, awesome)?" I grinned.

Dikla laughed, "Wow, there are a lot of words from Arabic!"

"Yeah. Baasa (Arabic; bummer, disappointing, totally uncool), fadicha (embarassing failure, faux pas)--"

"Wait, fadicha is Arabic?"

Now it was my turn to be floored. Of course fadicha is Arabic! Right? I mean, fadicha certainly doesn't sound Hebrew, though I guess it might be Aramaic... But did I have anything to back me up, other than a hunch? Then it hit me. "It can't be Hebrew! It starts with the letter fey, like falafel2!"

You see, I, not being a native Hebrew speaker, know that there are six letters (בג"ד כפ"ת, as it happens) that get a dagesh (emphatic dot) when they start a word3, turning any fricative into its corresponding stop. Thus in Hebrew, "house" (בַּיִת) begins with a בּ rather than a ב, and is pronounced bayeet instead of vayeet. THEREFORE, reasoned I, brain wheels a-spinning, if fadicha were etymologically Hebrew, it would in fact be pronounced padicha. Which it isn't, so it can't be.

Grammarred!

---
1. For the record, it turns out that mabsut means happy, satisfied, gung-ho.

2. Also for the record, I was looking up words on Morfix for this post, and it doesn't actually list the etymologies of either fadicha or falafel as Arabic. But the various English dictionaries do assign an Arabic origin to those words, and that, together with my pontification, is good enough for me.

3. And lastly for the record, before you pull out your Bible to show me all of the words starting with בג"ד כפ"ת that don't have a dagesh, be aware that there are very specific exceptions to this rule. Most notably, the dagesh doesn't show up if the preceding word ends with a heh, aleph, or yud. But don't tell any serious grammarian I said that: it's probably a horribly sloppy definition, since I'm reasonably certain the presence or absence of a dagesh really depends on the preceding vowel, not the preceding consonant.

Nomenclature

According to the dictionary, a moth in Hebrew is an ash (עש). According to BSM, according to his friends, (and confirmed by a Google Image search!) a moth in Hebrew is a parpar laila (פרפר לילה): literally a Butterfly of the Night.

I love it, in all of its wonderful implications.

My Little Reader

To help with menu planning (and Shabbos meal serving), I have a small board with lots of magnets, each with a type of food written on it. Today, as I so often do, I found one of these little magnets on the kitchen floor. "What is this?" I wondered aloud as I bent to pick it up. "Ah, sorbet. Okay." BSM, looking over my shoulder, asked, "Sorbet? What does the t say?"

That's my boy!

Job-Hunting Again

It's not fun, but I'm back at it. After FF was born, I didn't go back to my job in Jerusalem as a technical writer: the combination of a long commute and a full-time position just doesn't make sense right now. I found a fun remote position writing articles on cryptocurrency (my conversational definition of cryptocurrency is "fake money that only exists in computers, like Bitcoin") that lasted for a few months before the company folded. So I'm looking again, and since we're planning on moving over the summer (it'll be somewhere in Israel, but we don't know where yet), I'm only looking at work-from-home stuff, which means staying in the writing field for the time being. Just FYI.

Shaking Out Boots

I live in a desert climate. I shake out my boots before I put them on. Not that I expect to find scorpions (shudder), but I've shaken out many, many Duplos, small cars, and pretzels. Today was the first day I wore my boots in about a year, and I shook out a dead moth.

Accents

BSM has come a long way in figuring out accents in languages. I remember a few years ago when I told him to grab his little prayer book (pronounced SID-der) and come along, he just looked at me in confusion until I clarified with an Israeli accent (seed-OORRRHH).

Recently, he's started correcting in the other direction, so when Husbinator is telling him (in English) about the weekly Torah portion and mentions Mt. Moriah (pronounced all Israeli-like as Har Ha-mor'-ee-YAH), BSM corrects him with the super-American pronunciation, "Oh, you mean, Har' Ha-mor-EE-yuh."

Can't win with this kid. But it's amusing to watch him reinvent Yeshivish.

Curmudgeon

Here's the well-worn adage I know and love (last panel in the middle row):

And here's today's Google Doodle (note the alt-text in the lower-right corner):

What is this world coming to???

Finger Song

Did you know each finger has its own name in Hebrew? How crazy is that??? Granted, they each have their own name in English, too, but I know those without having to think really hard.

Anyway, BSM was recently singing a fun little child's ditty naming each finger, and I thought it was as good a thing to pop in here as anything. Now that I'm writing it up, however, I see that the last line absolutely required its internal rhyme and forced pause, and translating stuff that makes me giggle is really difficult.

אגודל נפל לתוך המים

אצבע הרים אותו

אמה הביאה לו מגבת

קמיצה ניגבה אותו

זרת השובבה היפילה אותו בחזרה

Thumb fell into the water
Pointer lifted him out
Middle finger brought him a towel
Ring finger dried him off
Little pinky, full of sin, went and pushed him right back in

Slam!

Many of the doors in our house swell during the summer. Current heat wave notwithstanding (seriously? 90s in September?), our doors have abruptly gone back to normal. It's been so long, I'd forgotten you don't have to yank them shut every time.

Communication

I'll tell you what: to make up for not posting all summer, one day maybe I'll make a page or two about all the places we've visited in Israel, complete with very mildly amusing commentary. One day. Like, in 15 years or so.

In the meantime, I'll tell you what happened when BSM had a friend and his sister over today. The kids decided they wanted to color, so I got out my ever-popular "Here are 5 Basic Shapes I Drew in Word; I'll Print it Out; You Color Them in and Cut Them out". This is a tried and true crowd pleaser for the 4-year-old set, and sure enough BSM and his friend were quite excited.

BSM's friend's 9-year-old sister, on the other hand, was less thrilled. Not shocking. I told her I'd print her a different picture: just tell me what she wanted. (Oh, the magic of the internet!) It took some figuring out before she realized that she could name any subject and I'd give her a relevant coloring sheet, but she got there in the end. "Elokiti," she declared. אלוקיתי? I wondered, taken off guard. Of, like, or pertaining to Elokim, a.k.a. G-d??? At a loss, I reverted to my usual strategy: keep talking, using other words. "Um... like something from the Torah? You want a picture from the weekly parsha or something?" Friend's sister gave me an odd look. "No..." She took care to enunciate really well this time, "Ello. Keety." Well, duh. She was quite pleased with Google's selection, and chose a picture of a swing-set with Hello Kitty.

Another Milestone

Today, we visited the school BSM will be attending next year. The teacher spoke with BSM, essentially giving him a really cute farher (oral entrance exam), and decided that he belongs in the 4-5 year-old class, rather than the 3-4 year-old class).

At the end of the meeting, the teacher checked that BSM was on his list for the coming year. He was not. "Not to worry," said the teacher, "BSM's registration form probably just got filed with the younger class. As long as you're here, just fill out a new one right quick, and everything will be in order."

So I did. And it was.

It wasn't until I got home that I remembered that I can't just take a few seconds to "fill out Hebrew forms as long as I'm already there." Hebrew forms are hard, and require close reading, occasionally trips to the dictionary, and a thorough proofreading once I think I'm done. Apparently that is no longer always true.

Cool.

Avodah

The Three Weeks are generally a lousy time for me. Granted, the Three Weeks are generally a lousy time for the entire Jewish People across millennia (most famously, they mark the interval from when Jerusalem's walls were breached on Tammuz 17th until the Temple was destroyed three weeks later on Av 9th, but the Three Weeks also include historic events such as the Golden Calf and the breaking of the Tablets, the 1492 Spanish expulsion, the beginning of WWI, and much, much more). However, this blog is about me, and I don't like them, either. I'm tense and anxious the whole time, waiting for the other shoe to drop, obsessively checking the news, trying to bull through the Three Weeks without actually doing anything, to just get it over with.

Last night, I finally acknowledged that this is ridiculous. Judaism doesn't encourage pointless behavior, so clearly there's something useful I should be doing, rather than snapping at everyone and being too anxious to sleep. Granted, yelling at G-d seems to get solid short-term results, but along with being unhealthy, I assume that yelling at Him is pretty sketchy religiously, too.

Well to quote Proverbs 16:1, לְאָדָם מַעַרְכֵי לֵב; וּמֵה' מַעֲנֵה לָשׁוֹן. (And to translate Metzudat David there, "A person can arrange the things in his heart in a pleasing manner, but it takes Divine help to arrange his words so he doesn't trip over them.") It turns out the question I need to ask is "What is the avodah of the Three Weeks?" (Avodah is tricky to translate. Spiritual Labor? Work? Divine Service?)

Anyhow, that is a very good question to ask, because it gives a very productive answer. Mourn. The Three Weeks are marked by customs of mourning (e.g., refraining from haircuts, music, and weddings). I know that. This is a period of mourning. I know that, too. So it's pretty safe to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the avodah of the Three Weeks is to mourn. 

Mourning in and of itself can be definitely be productive. (I never blogged about how long it took me to get over my first miscarriage, before I realized that "allowing myself to feel sad" was not the same as "deliberately pausing to grieve or mourn," and that was something I had to do, even though it had been an early miscarriage years before.) Still, this article I found about the Three Weeks doesn't say to just mourn. It also says to want.

[The] avodah during the Three Weeks...is the sadness, the longing that grows out of our having been separated from the immediate Presence of our Creator.

That is productive. That is healthy. Allowing myself to feel that I miss G-d (which I do! Why were Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur so long ago?) enhances my relationship with Him. That is useful avodah rather than an unhealthy descent into stress and anxiety and anger.

Such a Mom

I'm so over being a teenager.

A friend of mine is lending me her Ergo baby carrier, and I love it. Wearing FF on my back finally gives me the independence and mobility I want: no schlepping strollers up and down steps and on and off buses, no arms getting tired, no having to reach around the baby strapped to my front, no having to be home by a certain time to nurse. Just pop the kid on my back and do my thing, taking breaks to nurse as needed.

The only downside is that the baby gets kind of warm with his whole body touching mine. And when it's shmoiling and sunny in the Middle East, that changes from "kind of warm" to "how do I know he isn't getting heat stroke?" I tried tying a hat on him, but it fell off. (And how much did it help, anyway?) I tried putting up the carrier's hood, but essentially covering him with a blanket doesn't really alleviate my heat stroke concern. (And his little legs are still sticking out the sides.)

So I did some research about babywearing in hot climates, found lots of nice tips that weren't quite helpful enough, and then struck gold: use a parasol. Of course! So I dug out my folding umbrella (hot pink covered in yellow flowers) and am happy as a clam. Do we look ridiculous? Yup. Do I feel self conscious? Not at all.

Intelligence

Husbinator recently taught BSM to play the card game War. BSM likes the idea of it, because he thinks it must be a grown-up game, but he gets bored with it very quickly.

I taught BSM to play Go Fish today (per his request, per what Husbinator said he'd teach him next). He liked it well enough to finish the game, but he finds Go Fish pretty dull stuff, too.

Nevertheless, I maintain that BSM has to really master the basics before moving on to bigger and better games. Also, I need to relearn how to play such classics as Pisha Pesha.

This actually bodes well for me: I want to start playing board games with BSM, but I have a pretty low tolerance for Chutes and Ladders. Hopefully we'll only need a couple of games of that before graduating to backgammon!

Plastic Bags

In January, Israel passed a law requiring major grocery chains law to charge 10 agorot per plastic bag. I was Not Happy when this law was announced. We actually use plastic bags, y'know! Carrying stuff around, lining small garbage cans, and relevant once again just as the law took effect: bagging dirty diapers. C'mon, gumment. C'mon.

Well, over half a year later, I have to admit I was wrong on this one. We continue to use plastic bags, and we continue to get those plastic bags for free. Bags from the hardware store, from the convenience store, from the overstock store. Produce bags, it turns out, are the perfect size for our garbage cans. I used to throw out all of these bags as soon as they came in the house, because otherwise we'd collect more bags than we used up. I just never realized how many of these non-grocery-store bags we were throwing out.

Even in this post-reusable-grocery-bag world, I think the plastic bags are still coming in slightly faster than they are getting used up, Diapered Addition and all. So... "Sorry for complaining, Government? Good call?" Weird.

Also.

Also, I hate filing FBARs.
Also, FBARs aren't so bad when you can copy and paste a lot of the information from last year.
Also, I still hate filing FBARs.

But now we're much closer to being ready to file taxes. Yeah, they'll be late. But they'll get done. Blah.

Just Blog!

To Aunt Lady, who is unusually good at encouraging without nudging.

Tons of cool backlog that I may or may not ever post, but I just got another email that I meant to share last time it came around. Therefore, here is today's quick post, which will actually be published, instead of sitting in my drafts folder for months and months and months.

As you may have gathered by now, I live in the West Bank. The regional administration (Mateh Binyamin, whose English website is totally different than their Hebrew site) recently sent out an email reminding people that hitchhiking can be dangerous, and attached a letter with tips to keep everyone safe.

Tip #1 for staying safe: residents are asked to please pick up teenagers who are hitchhiking.

As an American, this sounds hysterically funny, but as someone who's lived here for three years, it makes perfect sense. I'm not aware of any incidents in this country wherein hitchhikers have harmed their drivers/other passengers, but there have definitely been tragedies when hitchhiking kids ended up in the wrong car. No one is going to stop hitchhiking any time soon (the letter doesn't even consider that possibility), so do your part to improve safety: invite strangers into your car.

He's on to Me

BSM: What's in this bin?
Me: Just some shmutz. It's fine.
BSM: But why?
Me: It's fine. It doesn't bother us.
BSM: It bothers me!
Me: (And thus the free ride ends.)

Chicken Cooking: A Photo Essay

Aw, look! The roasting chicken comes pre-trussed. It's almost a shame that I'm spatchcocking it...

No, wait. Back up. Not a shame. That isn't butcher's twine: it's a rubber band. Who does that???

***

For reference purposes, here's what my spatchcocked chicken looked like before going into the oven. Spatchcocked chickens cook more evenly and much more quickly than those sent into the oven looking like a bowling ball.

Lag B'Omer

BSM may have had school on Israeli Independence Day, but he had off on Lag B'Omer. Since it fell out on a Sunday this year, we decided to make a family day of it. We opted to do something enjoyable that wouldn't encroach on anyone's sleep, so nighttime bonfires were out. Instead, we went to the Truck and Transport Museum. A great time was had by all.

However, when we went to school the next day, I reconsidered that decision. You see, I thought that since BSM's preschool had a bonfire on Friday (yes, you read that correctly: the preschool had a bonfire in honor of Lag B'Omer, and BSM tells me that the children threw wood in, but no touching!) it was okay for him to skip the big kids' bonfires at night.

But when we got to school, the teacher had just arrived and was asking the children what they had done for Lag B'Omer.

"A bonfire!"
"A bonfire!"
"A huge bonfire!"
"A bonfire!"
"Bonfire!"
"A bonfire so big you could burn Haman in it!" (I'm not making that up, the kid totally said that.)
"Really tall bonfire!"
She turns to BSM.
"Truck Museum!"

Immigrants. They're just weird.

Tasting

I vastly prefer the Israeli method of starting babies on solid food over the American method for the same.

Basically, if it ain't baking, I don't like preparing food. So making special meals for one family member -- who doesn't even eat a full tablespoon of the stuff -- isn't really my cup of tea.

Boiling water! Mixing it with cereal powder! Getting it to the right consistency without making too much! Opening a jar of overpriced mush that the baby won't finish before I have to get rid of it! Uuuuugh. Life is so haaaaard. Then there's the setting up of the high chair and bib and the cajoling (much more accurate description than "feeding"), which is followed by way too much additional clean up. Not my favorite.

Luckily, none of that is required by FF's health care provider. Yes, he has to start on solids at four months of age, but it only takes about two minutes a day.

Look at my food. Is there something reasonably squishy and unseasoned? Use a baby spoon to scrape some up poke it into the child. The goal is about a teaspoon a day, with a new food every three days.

Avocado. Tomato seeds. Ripe pear. I even sliced and boiled a carrot one day when I was cooking anyway. Put a bib on FF, put him in my lap (or the lap of whomever is already holding him), play a cute game briefly, and done. I love it.

I hope I didn't misunderstand the nurse, because this is easy.

Colors

Our boxes for our Pesach dishes are wearing out, so Husbinator collected a bunch of new boxes to replace them.  This one (from plastic cups) is my favorite.

(For the record, all of the colors are translated accurately. And "Bordeaux" is such a popular color here that BSM has already learned it in preschool.)

Chometz

I went to buy noodles on Wednesday so I could bake the last Yerushalmi kugel before Pesach. Instead of going to my Rami Levy, I decided to change things up a little and go to an Osher Ad in Yerushalayim. In addition to shaking up my routine, that would also give me a chance to buy a few more things for Pesach that we haven't found at Rami Levy.

I arrived at Osher Ad at 9:58 and was pleased to find a reasonable (though not great) parking spot with minimal trouble. I got a cart, walked toward the entrance, and... stood in line. Right, Osher Ad doesn't open until 10, so they unlock their doors  at 10. Luckily, I was closer to the exit than the entrance when the doors opened, so I missed the traffic jam at their first aisle, where the seasonal sale items are.

I got my handful of Pesach items, but the store had been rearranged to the point that I couldn't find the regular noodles, although I saw many varieties of Pesachdik noodles. So I found an employee and asked, full of polite confidence and wry humor, "Excuse me, do you have any chometzdik noodles?" The man looked at me with a combination of horror and amusement. "No lady, this store is kosher for Pesach!"

Well, it's a good thing I hadn't waited till Thursday. I went to another store and grabbed three of the last five bags of kugel noodles that had been thrown in aisle 7 with the rest of the miscellaneous Chometz. Sheesh.

It Begins

Husbinator did the first round of Pesach shopping today, buying all disposables and most of the dry goods. He said it was great: being a Monday over two weeks before Pesach, the store was relatively empty and there was no one ahead of him in the checkout line. "Everyone who was there had an overflowing cart, though. We were all doing the same thing."

Newsletter

The ladies in my shul started a periodical, and the first edition came out a week or two before Purim. Having turned into a community-spirited person at some unknown time, I made sure both to contribute a recipe (Ema II's Kahlua recipe, which I painstakingly translated to Hebrew) and actually read the thing.

To my recollection, this is the first community publication that I have ever really enjoyed. I guessed that since it's published entirely in Hebrew, I can't get snobby over grammatical errors and inelegant sentence structure. Husbinator opined that I like it because it's entirely devoid of pretense. Both are likely true, but it also turns out that this is not, in fact, a wholly amateur publication: Mrs. Barzilai's mother is a professional editor, and she goes over all of the articles before printing.

So American

One of our friends in the Yishuv gave us ideal mishloach manot this Purim: cute, easy, and delicious. She filled cute little straw cups filled with milk and taped on three Lotus cookies. Like I said: cute, easy, and delicious.

Another one of my friends, Gila, saw the cup and exclaimed over its cuteness, so I told her just how great it is really was. Gila responded, "The people who gave this out are American, aren't they?"
"Yes, how did you kn--. Oh, my Gosh. Milk and cookies is an American thing, isn't it? Yes, it is. An Israeli friend gave out a tea and cookies package."

Gila nodded, trying to be nice, but her body language clearly indicated just how weird she finds the milk and cookie pairing.

This is in direct contrast to my manager, who had no qualms about letting me know how gross peanut butter and jelly are together. Which was fair, since I was busy telling her she clearly ate it wrong the one time she tried it, because only crazy people don't like peanut butter and jelly. I mean, they're made for each other! (For the record, she didn't eat it wrong. I convinced her to try it again, and she just doesn't like PB&J. She likes peanut butter, and she likes jelly. Just not together. I'm having trouble processing this.)

New Skill

The other day, BSM came home from preschool with a treat: a drink in a foil pouch. These are a staple of Israeli childhood, so I wasn't overly surprised to see it. I was, however, slightly stymied. These drinks seem to be the equivalent of Capri Sun drinks, which we never had growing up. Presumably they weren't kosher. 

In any event, I was lacking critical experience in opening this thing. It doesn't exactly seem trivial to stab a liquid-filled foil pouch with a cheap plastic straw and succeed in both piercing the pouch and not having the drink explode everywhere. 

I recall seeing this done by stabbing the bottom of the pouch, as opposed to its side, but I had foolishly convinced BSM to drink this thing during dinner. Thus, I had the added constraint of the opened pouch having to be able to balance on the table. And foolish I may be, but I am not so foolish as to even suggest that BSM drink his sugar water from a cup. 

After thinking about it during the first half of BSM's dinner, I finally solved this little riddle. It may be cheating, it may be lame, but I don't care. By using a toothpick, you can easily create a controlled opening exactly where you want, and then pop the straw right in. Ha. 

Radio Silence?

BSM. FF. Debatable colic. Difficulty finding time to sit at computer. Dislike of typing with one hand. Refusal to type long missives on my phone.

BSM currently at school. FF sleeping in baby carrier. FF woke up as soon as I typed that. Really should be finishing up FF's US citizenship paperwork if on computer anyway.

Miss blogging.

Baby

Falafel Face (FF) joined our family a little over three weeks ago. Yay! For the record, FF is a male child, and since his brit, we no longer call him Falafel Face.

Highlights of the Birth Experience include:

• Taking public transit to the hospital 
• After lots of regular contractions all night shortly after the doctor's office refusing to let me do the 40-week fetal monitor at 39 weeks and 6 days (really?!), I decided to back for my 40-week fetal monitor on a workday, after all. It's not like I was awake enough to go to work. The combination of exhaustion and the occasional contraction meant that I took the bus to the doctor's office instead of driving. Thus, when the doctor sent me to the hospital because he didn't like the fetal monitor results, I happily took the train. I wanted to go to the hospital, because I didn't know whether or not I was in labor. I didn't want to drive, because I was tired. And I love trains. Riding trains, especially not during rush hour, is very relaxing. And I didn't have to worry about the weird monitor result, because the doctor said there was nothing to worry about. And with so little sleep the night before, it was hours later before I realized that being told, "I'm sending you to the hospital, but don't worry," means it's definitely time to worry. Luckily, by then the hospital staff had long-since repeated the fetal monitoring and assured me that there really wasn't anything to worry about. Then again, this is the same hospital staff that told me not to worry my little head about the epidural machine beeping... Ha! About that, I really should have worried. (They fixed it very quickly once we realized it wasn't working, but that little interlude was not fun at all.)
• One triage nurse
• Seriously. When I got to intake at the maternity ward, I had to wait for three other people to see the triage nurse before it was my turn. Each new couple that came in after me looked just as taken aback as I had when they realized that yes, there was totally a line to get triaged.
• Being asked if I was in the mood to give birth
• Granted, she was being cute (I'm reasonably certain she would have strongly encouraged me to reconsider had I answered in the negative), but when I finally got my first physical exam of the day (after having told at least 4-5 medical professionals that I'd had regular contractions all night), the admitting midwife gave me the results by asking, "?בא לך ללדת היום" ["Do you feel like giving birth today?"]
• Davening/Shmiras Shabbos!
• As a religious Jew, I really enjoyed giving birth in a religious Jewish hospital. When I gave birth to BSM in America, my nurse and doctor were both religious Jews, but there's something really special in being with complete strangers during an intense time and realizing that you share a huge set of assumptions. The midwives didn't just tolerate my spontaneous prayer during labor, they chimed in. I didn't have to explain that I couldn't really leave on Saturday: the hospital doesn't do discharges on Shabbos. They also put the lights on a timer for Shabbos. And have someone make kiddush and havdala. And explain about the specially-designed call button (a.k.a. "gramma switch") that makes it totally okay for patients to call the nurse. Suddenly, I understand all of those awkward Christian-y moments in America very differently: I always felt like someone else was foisting their religious beliefs on me, but now I think they were just communicating on what they thought was a shared wavelength. Which is beautiful when it works out.
• New ID papers
• Living in the West Bank has its perks (namely affordable housing and gorgeous views), but the perk that people don't talk about nearly enough is the local branch for the Ministry of the Interior. This is supposed to be the Office to end all Offices, the peak of the hell that is Israeli Bureaucracy. Not in the West Bank, it isn't! Having forgotten to check the hours before I left the house, I arrived at the local branch two minutes before closing. Not only did the ladies working there let me in, but they let me in with a smile. I gave the lady the temporary birth certificate from the hospital (speaking of which, Israel assumes that babies aren't named immediately, so the hospital-issued birth certificate has a line for the kid's name that parents fill in all by themselves: no mess, no fuss) and the addenda from our ID papers, and the lady took them and told me the permanent birth certificate and new addenda will show up in the mail. Oh, and would we like new holders for our ID cards? Dude, I did not know that you could just get new little holders instead of wrapping the old ones with duct tape. What a great baby gift! Funnily enough, you have to surrender your old dinky plastic holder to get a new one, though. Hopefully this is not to deter counterfeiting: presumably the Israeli government knows that one can order dinky plastic card holders from China without too much trouble...