Rosh HaShana Foods

I'm convinced that Israelis aren't trained properly in wordplay. I can't remember each incident, but on the rare occasion that I pun in Hebrew, Israelis seem to be impressed rather than chagrined. This has happened often enough that I don't think they're just being nice, either.

There was that time we were making clay lamps, and one of the women complained that her project looked more like an elephant (pil) than a lamp. Being a good little member of my punning family, I kindly told her to just add the letter tav, and then she'd have a wick (p'til). Ba-dum, chick! Correct response fro the crowd would have been appreciative (or pained) groans. Instead, I got a resounding "Pssshhhhh!" (Yeshivish noise for being duly impressed.)

Since incidents like these keep happening, I'm less and less sure that people are just being nice, or even that they're actually impressed by my surprising (and erratic) grasp of Hebrew. I honestly think Israelis don't pun.

Take Rosh HaShana simanim (auspicious foods). OK, we eat apples and honey for sweetness, and fish head to be like the head and not like the tail, but many special foods are straight-up puns. Black-eyed peas are rubiya, which is punning distance from "many", so we eat black-eyed peas for many merits. Gourds are kara in Aramaic, which sounds like the Hebrew "tearing", so we eat gourds for evil decrees against us to be torn up. Jewish tradition encourages people to make up their own Rosh HaShana auspicious foods, and my parents aren't the only one who serve "lettuce, half a raisin, celery."

Olives came up as a topic of conversation at our Israeli hosts, and the father asked, "But what would the prayer associated with an olive (zayit) be? It took me a few seconds, but I got there reasonably quickly, "Play with Yiddish, and do something with zees (sweet)." That's when I discovered that he wasn't actually expecting an answer to such a difficult question.

Thus, when someone at the table suggested eating horseradish (chazeret) with bananas (banana), I wasn't surprised that no one even tried to think of a fitting prayer. Granted, it's a ridiculous combination, and I'm not sure how it came up, but you can't keep a good (or bad) punster down. So I scratched my punny bone and said "שנחזור לבנין שלם". Why don't Israelis do this? I am confused.