Grand Canyon
Saturday night is a popular time to go shopping in Israel since many stores, which are closed during shabbat, re-open after sunset and stay open late. So tonight a couple of friends and I decided to head to the “Grand Canyon” (canyon = mall, in Hebrew), to do some much-needed clothes and food shopping. Although it would be considered mid-size by American standards, the Grand Canyon is the largest mall in Israel, and it is a notable attraction in Haifa. Superficially, the Grand Canyon looks pretty much like any mall anywhere, but spending a couple of hours there on a Saturday night proved to be a distinctly Israeli cultural experience.
Mall outings appear to be whole-family ventures for many Israelis, and while women wander through the stores, wayward husbands can find collective refuge around a huge TV screen that airs Saturday-night soccer games. Soccer is almost pathologically popular in Israel, and Haifa is the proud home-base of Maccabi Haifa (the first-place soccer team in Israel). During a previous trip to the Grand Canyon, I froze in fear when I heard a massively loud roar emanate from one side of the mall, only to realize moments later that Maccabi Haifa had just scored a game-tying goal against Maccabi Tel-Aviv.
I quickly discovered that searching for suitable pants in the Grand Canyon would be a fruitless endeavor on my part. Although many Israeli women are quite slight, apparently even those who aren’t are willing to pretend otherwise for fashion purposes. My friends and I also determined that we are at least one clothing-size larger in Israel than in America, even for sweatshirts and the like. A penchant for tight-fitting clothes and a dearth of obese Israelis have clearly made their marks on the Israeli clothing industry.
The Grand Canyon has an unexcitingly transnational food court (i.e. McDonalds, Sbarros, etc.), so my friends and I went to a sushi bar in the mall instead. There were no English menus, but we successfully navigated the menu in Hebrew! I was quite excited – after all, being able to order food from an entirely Hebrew menu is something of a milestone for me.
Our last stop was the supermarket, which is in the basement of the mall (supermarkets in Haifa are housed in larger commercial complexes; stand-alone supermarkets don’t appear to exist). I wound up standing in line for the registrar behind several young ultra-Orthodox men, who appeared to be shopping for a considerably large number of people. They haggled over the price of nearly every item with an exhausted-looking clerk and then proceeded to pay with a complicated combination of cash, credit cards, and food-stamps. After they finally complete their purchases, they attempted to sell me their left-over food-stamps; I politely declined the offer. I realized that they are probably among the thousands of unemployed yeshiva students in Israel who opt out of army service but, to the frustration of many Israelis, nevertheless depend on government assistance.
Mall outings appear to be whole-family ventures for many Israelis, and while women wander through the stores, wayward husbands can find collective refuge around a huge TV screen that airs Saturday-night soccer games. Soccer is almost pathologically popular in Israel, and Haifa is the proud home-base of Maccabi Haifa (the first-place soccer team in Israel). During a previous trip to the Grand Canyon, I froze in fear when I heard a massively loud roar emanate from one side of the mall, only to realize moments later that Maccabi Haifa had just scored a game-tying goal against Maccabi Tel-Aviv.
I quickly discovered that searching for suitable pants in the Grand Canyon would be a fruitless endeavor on my part. Although many Israeli women are quite slight, apparently even those who aren’t are willing to pretend otherwise for fashion purposes. My friends and I also determined that we are at least one clothing-size larger in Israel than in America, even for sweatshirts and the like. A penchant for tight-fitting clothes and a dearth of obese Israelis have clearly made their marks on the Israeli clothing industry.
The Grand Canyon has an unexcitingly transnational food court (i.e. McDonalds, Sbarros, etc.), so my friends and I went to a sushi bar in the mall instead. There were no English menus, but we successfully navigated the menu in Hebrew! I was quite excited – after all, being able to order food from an entirely Hebrew menu is something of a milestone for me.
Our last stop was the supermarket, which is in the basement of the mall (supermarkets in Haifa are housed in larger commercial complexes; stand-alone supermarkets don’t appear to exist). I wound up standing in line for the registrar behind several young ultra-Orthodox men, who appeared to be shopping for a considerably large number of people. They haggled over the price of nearly every item with an exhausted-looking clerk and then proceeded to pay with a complicated combination of cash, credit cards, and food-stamps. After they finally complete their purchases, they attempted to sell me their left-over food-stamps; I politely declined the offer. I realized that they are probably among the thousands of unemployed yeshiva students in Israel who opt out of army service but, to the frustration of many Israelis, nevertheless depend on government assistance.
posted by Deborah at Saturday, December 10, 2005
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