Halloween, Israeli-Style

Last night at ulpan (my registration for and participation in which is another story entirely) I was sitting next to my study partner for the night, David, and during a break in the action he passed me his digital camera. "Want to see the world's worst Halloween costume?" he whispered.

David and his wife Rina got here to Jerusalem the day before I did, exactly three weeks ago, also from San Francisco. She is an attorney at the office of the United States consulate and he is a house-husband as he says and they are here for two years, but not like me--here for real. They shipped their household goods and their car (with California license plates!) and they are living in the house provided for them as a benefit of her position. Such grown-ups. Although while they might be here for real, with all their own bedsheets and books and board games and bathroom stuff I do feel more local and savvy than they are in one way: they are Not Allowed To Take The Bus, while I take it all the time. Yes.

All that aside, there is one more person in their family who is here with them--their seventeen-month-old son, who spent his second Halloween trick-or-treating from office to office at the consulate dressed as...well...

"He looks like a member of the KKK," Anne who was sitting on the other side of David remarked under her breath. "What kind of get-up is that, what is he supposed to be?"

As anyone who knows me--me who has been kicked out of yoga class for laughing too loudly--at all might guess, that was enough to get me started and our cover of discussing verb conjugations was blown by the teacher insisting everyone get to see the photo. Yes, the teacher echoed, what is that outfit anyway?

"We kind of forgot it was Halloween at all without the pumpkins for sale at the gas station and the selection of shlocky costumes available at the grocery store," David confessed sheepishly, "so we put a pillowcase over his head and pinned the corners together, then cut holes so he could see and breathe."

"Oh! He's supposed to be a ghost, not a Klansman!" Seth exclaimed proudly. "Did you guys get some good candy, at least?"