Dinner with Ygal

This is a report that Lilah requested, so I am thinking of her as I write, but perhaps it might be of interest to other Groissers.

Benjamin and Ygal had agreed that Ygal would drive to Haifa to have dinner with us on Friday, February 27. Ygal had too much to do to try to organize a family dinner with us, which is what he ordinarily would have attempted, but he said that since he is the only English speaker in his house it would be too much of a strain on him to try to manage that right now.  Benjamin has been to the Groiser house several times, and Alissa and Benjamin were there in May -- so that family has already rolled out the welcome mat to second cousins (once removed) on numerous occasions.  Ygal's wife Yaffa (?) is famous for her enormous meals, with many delicious offerings (as Leon and Lilah know from their own visits).

Ygal told Benjamin to choose the restaurant and Lilah asked us to arrange for her to be our long distance host/patron.  We were dubious about this, knowing that it would be Ygal's inclination to be our host, and the first time Jon mentioned it on the phone with Ygal, he adamantly refused the offer, saying that he and Lilah have a good relationship and she would understand.  This gave Jon the idea of how to turn things around in Lilah's favor later.

When Benjamin was taking classes at the ulpan, he walked past this restaurant twice a day and it intrigued him.  I can't quite understand what he was seeing, because it doesn't have any presentation on the street at all. It is just a door.  But maybe there is a place for a menu outside that we didn't see, or perhaps someone stands outside and looks hopefully for customers.  He had inquired and knew that it was known to be one of the best restaurants in Haifa.  As he said, the sign on the building, printed on a real signboard and not just handwritten, says "Fine Dinning."  He made the reservations, speaking Hebrew on the phone, for 7:00.  Afterwards he was a little nervous that they might not have understood each other perfectly and perhaps he had made a mistake, but on Friday afternoon the restaurant called his cell phone to confirm the reservation, so we knew he had got it right.  The restaurant is Hanamal 24, named after the street it is on, and that is the street that Benjamin lived on for those months.

Ygal texted Benjamin a few minutes before 7:00 to say he was there in the restaurant. We were walking the 5 minute walk from our hotel.  Ygal had driven two hours.  

We climbed a steep flight of stairs to the dining room and were greeted by smiling young hostesses dressed in black and white (more formal than any restaurant we had been to on this trip).  Ygal was sitting at the table waiting. He is going to be 55 years old in March, and I guess he looks his age, but he has a youthful face and body.  As he began to talk, Jon immediately noticed that he reminded him of Papa, especially in the way he told stories. The stories were clearly ones that he had told many times before, like Papa, and they had a point he was trying to express -- like what it was like to be a young immigrant in Israel and how he was humbled by the experience. As I watched him speak, I remembered Leon too.

I am nearly certain that Lilah has heard all of these stories before (because Benjamin had and because Alissa told us some of them), but I enjoyed hearing them directly from Ygal. His English is very good, and sometimes he made up words that fit the need, and sometimes he searched for words and let us make suggestions so he could move on.

First he wanted to select the wine. He explained that when he first came here, Israeli wine was not nearly as good as it is now. 25 years later there are many regions growing grapes, many types of wine, and lots of flavors. He doesn't like other wines as much as he likes the wine from Israel now.  So when he looked at the menu and found only Italian and French wines, and one California wine, he was surprised and disappointed.  He asked the waitress and she then showed him a whole page of Israeli wines, which made him much happier.  He chose a red wine with lots of body (? Benj and Jon will have to help me here) and then we selected our dinners.

Jon ordered a Salade Lyonnaise and a lamb burger, medium.  Benjamin had the same salad without bacon and a pasta dish that wasn't just a jumble of noodles, it was sort of stuffed pasta tubes, stacked up elegantly. I had nut-encrusted stuffed mushrooms for a starter and "spring chicken" with potato and sweet potato gratin.  I don't think I can remember what Ygal had, but he was definitely eating the slowest because he was doing most of the talking. He might have ordered fish because he says that is what he usually eats when he goes out, but he doesn't observe kashrut at all. He just likes seafood.  All the food was delicious, but we probably did not give it the attention it deserved as we were talking and listening so much.

The menu was mostly French, or certainly European.  There was no hummus or Israeli salad or any of that.  The restaurant filled up with families and couples. We never felt rushed, the light was quite low, and there were attentive waiters filling our glasses with water and making sure we were fine.

Ygal talked about their early life in Siberia, the lack of food, how complicated it was to move because no one was allowed to sell a house, only trade it. It was possible to find people who were interested in moving to Siberia because the government gave incentives of higher pay so people would move there to work in mining and natural resources. His father moved to their new town (somewhere related to Moscow) a few months earlier to find work and get their housing set up for them.  He talked about how close he felt to his uncle Max (who was most like Leon in looks and temperament) and how Max basically died on his watch -- he called Ygal to tell him that he wasn't feeling well and asked him to come now.  By the time Ygal got to his office, Max had already died of a heart attack at age 50-something -- this was when Ygal was about 30. It was a huge loss.

He talked about his first years as an immigrant in Israel and how impossible it felt to learn the language. He was in the very first wave of Russian immigrants so there weren't even very many people to speak Russian with. He told the story of how he met his wife when he needed to go to the clinic, and she was the only Russian speaking receptionist, very pretty and nice, he asked for her number... He talked about how hard he had to work, and how he learned to stay ahead of the crowd through working so hard. After a six month stint as a dishwasher (with an engineering degree), he decided he needed to practice speaking Hebrew more so he got a job pumping gas.  Then after getting better at Hebrew he started to knock on doors in search of a job that would use his degree. The first factory he worked at, he got a job making some part of a Venetian blind, using an extremely ancient piece of machinery. He was bored silly and had lots of time to examine the workings of his particular machine.  He had been told that he would have to work hard to make 10 of these things a day, and he did that.  But after a while he realized there were some pieces that were not functioning correctly and he took it apart and found a machinist who spoke Russian and he told him what he wanted and he put his ancient machine back together and produced 25 widgets in a day.  And thus began his upward trek.

His oldest daughter Karin is just about to finish her army service. Ygal was quite worried about her before she started her stint because she had only been a sheltered girl at home, with no experience working hard. But it turned out that she loved the challenges of the army, she excelled at her work, and she chose the harder jobs. He is very impressed and proud of her.  When we asked what she will do next (most kids take a gap year and travel in India or South America), he answered that she is a very serious kid and she wants to go to university immediately. So she will study for the big test that determines where she is eligible, and she will take the test in June.  She hopes to go to Tel Aviv University.  He says that she has no talent in math, despite lots of private tutoring, and he is not sure she will be able to go to that prestigious school but he is encouraging her to aim high.  For sure she will be able to go to some school in the fall, but everything depends on this test.  Benjamin says that people often take a year to prepare for it.

Throughout the conversation, Ygal expressed his respect and appreciation and love for Leon. He said that he felt that they could talk about anything, and that as his own English improved, their conversations got better.  The first visit with Leon and Lilah was torturous because he had to have a translator and that helped him to realize that he really needed to learn English, so he doubled his efforts on that.  As Alissa reported earlier, Ygal felt so deeply for Leon that he could barely express it.  Leon would analyze things with him, ask really good questions, give his opinion without any requirement that his advice be taken, and support Ygal in whatever choices he made. It was a deeply meaningful relationship to Ygal, and he had conversations with Leon that he never had with his father.  

Of course the story of Ygal's quest to learn English -- and painstakingly translating newspaper stories, coincidentally finding the reference to a professor named Groisser in the U.S. -- was told in great detail. But he said that it should not have taken a newspaper article to get them to look for their American cousins, it's just that they were busy and distracted and trying to survive.

He also talked about his travels in China and what he has learned as a businessman/general manager of his company.  He said at first he could not figure them out, but little by little he learned that Chinese businessmen cannot concentrate if they are hungry, and they can think only about how hungry they are.  So, knowing this, Ygal learned to bring a packet of almonds for himself that he could nibble on when he went to take a break, and then resume negotiations in a much more robust frame of mind than his counterparts.  He loves all types of Chinese food, eats everything happily, and appreciates the diversity of the cuisine. He says in China the top value is money, and they will kill each other for it. And that no country will ever be able to do what China has done in the last generation or so, in its quest for economic strength. So he thinks that it is wise for his company to continue to manufacture its product (air conditioners?) in Israel -- it is the last factory of its kind in the country -- because there is no guarantee that there will ever be a customer like China again and anything can happen...it's better to have your production in a reliable place.  

He would love to retire in about 5 years but he still has two daughters to provide for and so he thinks he will probably work longer than that.  The retirement age in Israel is 67 and that seems stupidly long to Ygal.

This is undoubtedly more than you were expecting, so maybe this is enough for now.  The next time we see you, we can fill in more gaps if there are some.  In the end, when it came time to pay the bill, Jon pointed out that if Ygal wanted to preserve his good relationship with you, he should honor your wishes, and allow you to buy us our dinner. He gave in, but insisted on paying the tip (and told us not to tell you).  

It was a lovely evening -- we stayed at the table until 10:30.  And then we went outside to take some pictures and say goodbye.  We encouraged him to come to the U.S. and visit and he says they will, but first they have to put an addition on their house, and the price is horrifying.  One more room will cost something like $100,000, unless it is $200,000.  In any case, it is a huge project, bigger than he ever thought, and that is what is on his mind right now. His house has four rooms and they need another one with Karin coming home for a while.

He sends his love to you, and gave us a package to deliver to you.