Free Groceries as Israelis

It seems that there has been a holiday here every week since Pesach... and that's because there has.

We celebrated the last of this season's holidays this week with Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks, called as such because we have been counting the days - 49 days in total - from the beginning of Pesach until now.  On Shavuot we commemorate the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai and we count from Pesach, aka the exodus from Egypt, to Shavuot as an expression of our anticipation and excitement for Matan Torah, the giving of the Torah.  As "excited" as we are, sometimes we need a little help to remember to count every day.  To do this, Matt set a nifty reminder on his phone that beeped at the same time every night.  It was actually a little sad when the phone beeped the evening after Shavuot and we no longer had to perform our little nightly ritual.  I guess there's always next year.

Shavuot also marks the festival of the grain harvest in Biblical times.  During Passover we began the barely harvest and by Shavuot, the 7 week party, known as the grain harvest, comes to a close.  You would think then that the traditional food of Shavuot would be grain based, but then you would be wrong, we still haven't gotten over all the carbs we ate in our post-Pesach binges.  No, on Shavuot, we eat cheese.  Why?  That's complicated (aka I don't really know).

Since we were just having a quiet meal at home with no guests, we decided to make ourselves a big lasagna with homemade noodles (thanks, pasta machine!).  We headed off the day before the holiday to stock up on groceries at our local Yesh.  Yesh is a pretty bare-bones supermarket chain, no fancy frilly things, and it stocks pretty basic items.  So as long as you don't need anything that's even slightly exotic, Yesh is a fine place to shop.  It also helps that it is our closest walk-able supermarket.  

The word "yesh" in Hebrew translates more or less to mean "have" - yesh li = I have.  Colloquially, however, when someone exclaims "yesh!" it is used to mean "Yes! Alright! Got it!"  

Since we frequent the Yesh often enough, I signed up for their credit card a few months back which gets me discounts every now and again.  This time, when we went to go pay for our groceries, comprised mainly of cheese products, the cashier said "you have 100 shekel."  Having no idea what she was talking about I asked "100 shekel for what?"  To which she replied "all card holders are receiving a gift of 100 shekels," therefore making our groceries for the day completely free.  To which Matt replied, "Yesh!" 

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend,

Stef and Matt