Benji Lovitt

The Jewish Host With the Most

By Benji Lovitt

Hello, readers. This month's theme is "Home and Garden." (pause) OK, what the heck is home and garden? I just spent half an hour looking around my home . . . don't see a garden anywhere. How about home and dirty laundry? Home and empty fridge? No? Hmm … this may be tougher than I thought.

A quick Google search brought me to HomeandGardenTV.com, which offers "ideas and inspiration to transform your space" with a "peek into extraordinary homes around the world and the people who live inside." Uh, that's a little weird. Where I come from, we call these types Peeping Toms.

But seriously, is there anything more depressing than looking into homes that are nicer than yours? My old apartment in New York was the size of a thimble. A piece of advice for Manhattanites: When you visit your friends in Atlanta, bring a box of tissue so you can cry. New Yorkers, you live on an island. My friends in Vinings have an island IN THEIR KITCHEN!

First things first: Where to live? You know what they say: location, location, location. Or, if you're Jewish, Post Briarcliff. Good Lord, could there be more Jewish people in an apartment complex? When the Israeli government talks about their willingness to remove large Jewish settlements outside the Green Line, they're talking about Post Briarcliff.

Ready to shop? Let's go. If you live in Tel Aviv, believe me, nothing here compares to the convenience of the American superstore, the birthplace of one-stop shopping. "Hmmm . . . where can I get mouthwash, a carburetor and the latest Kelly Clarkson album? TARGET!"

In the Middle East, your best bet is the open-air market known as the shuk. Jerusalem's Machaneh Yehudah is a great place to get your home's basic things, and the Old City's Arab market or Daliat El-Carmel's Druze shuk provides a gold mine of beautiful rugs, art and tchotchkes.

It's a wonderful opportunity to practice the ancient art of haggling. Just be firm when you're not interested as these people do not easily take no for an answer.

"Feefty shekel!" "No, thank you." "Fortee shekel!" "Really, no." "Ther-tee!" "I don't want it!" "Twen-tee!" "It's on fire!" "TEN!!!" "IT'S A DEAD YAK!"

"What's that? Five shekels? I'll take three."

Even after your home is properly decorated, you need to clean before welcoming friends. A dirty floor can be embarrassing, so let's start there. In America, we mop by filling a bucket with water, pushing it around the floor, and thereby relocating the filth to a new place in the room. We then return the dirty mop to the original water source to be reused later. Makes sense to everybody? I thought so.

How about in Israel? Our Middle Eastern cousins have invented a system called sponja, which requires you to indiscriminately launch the amount of water found in the Red Sea all over the place before squeegeeing it into a hard-to-reach drain the size of an electron. This drain is usually located eight miles from the floor you are trying to clean. Repeat weekly.

Ready for guests? In Israel, there is nothing more customary than drinking a hot beverage with friends. According to the Israeli legal code, citizens are required to drink no fewer than 452 cups of coffee per day. Heard about the Yom Kippur War? It's not that we didn't see the attack coming. We were just powerless to stop it without first downing 37 lattes. If Hezbollah is smart, they'll redirect their Kassams not at population centers but at the kumkum factory. "What's a kumkum?" some of you are asking. The kumkum is an electric tea kettle and quite possibly the most glaring hole in American domestic life. (Listening, Home and Garden?) This nifty kitchen appliance allows Israelis to offer their guests a drink within 2.7 seconds of entering their home. I'm not kidding — Israelis make you feel at home. You could walk into an Israeli's home wearing a clown suit carrying a machet; the first thing they'd say is "Sometheeng to dreenk?"

At the end of the day, however, a home is not about what you buy to fill it, but the love and warmth you create for those who inhabit it. An Israeli home, while perhaps not as large as what you might find in the States, makes up for it with the incredible hospitality and welcoming nature of its people . . . and then some. The week before Passover, I was touched by the number of Passover invites from those around me, including new co-workers I had barely known for a few weeks. With homes like these, who needs gardens?

Next time you're in Israel, you're welcome to visit me. One sugar or two?

Benji Lovitt is a stand-up comic and writer. While his apartment is in Tel Aviv, part of his heart remains in Atlanta. You can read about his hilarious immigrant perspective of Israel at www.whatwarzone.com and see his stand-up comedy at www.benjilovitt.com.