Israel - Pesach 2025. The Fifth Plague. Peanuts.
Monday morning we had our last Orient breakfast.
We'd said we'd meet by 9:30, but of course my mom wasn’t ready in time. Hallie made sure to tip the staff member who had brought her a nut-free dessert plate each night—so sweet and thoughtful of her. Then we packed up, left the hotel, and headed back to the apartment. My parents arrived a little later, and after a bit of settling in, we set off again.
We spent the rest of the day walking down Ben Yehuda and then Yaffo, eventually making our way to Mamilla. We shopped a bit, got Aroma and Roladin, and just enjoyed the walk. From there we walked down through the Artist Colony where we ran into a family from Madeleine’s class. Then we walked up through Mishkenot Sha’ananim, where Tzvi and I did our engagement photo shoot fifteen years ago. A little nostalgic detour. We stopped to take some photos and then stopped a guy walking by to take a family picture for us. As soon as he stopped he was like, “I know you.” It was someone I went to HAFTR and later NYU with.Jerusalem really is one big small town. After that we walked all the way back to the apartment. Shockingly, Hallie was a trooper through the whole walk. No complaints, no meltdowns. Truly a miracle.
Dinner that night was at Super Hamizrah, which is supposed to be a speakeasy-style restaurant. You enter through what looks like a tiny bodega, but it opens up into a trendy, buzzy dining space. Tzvi and my mom were really excited to go—this place had been on their list—except as soon as we sat down Tzvi looked at the menu and was like “wow this place has a lot of peanuts.” I was like, didn’t you look at the menu before you decided to come here? We ordered and they assured us that they would make sure there were no peanuts, although the kitchen “is not sterile for allergies,” which they say at every food establishment in Israel.
Tzvi started with a ceviche dish that he really liked, and we all shared this braised cabbage dish that was incredible. Hallie had salmon and chicken nuggets. Madeleine had some kind of teriyaki rice noodles and an avocado sushi roll which made her really happy (yes, this was a kitniyot restaurant). Really good food.
The cabbage really was incredible and Tzvi tried to pull the last bits of food off the dish, except what he thought was the last bit of cabbage was in fact not cabbage. As he bit into it, it crumbled in his mouth and didn’t taste like anything else that had been on that plate.
“I think that was a peanut.”
Not that he actually knows what a peanut tastes like, but he said throat started to feel tingly and weird, like the skin inside his entire mouth was peeling off. That was enough. He spent about a minute trying to decide what to do and then decided he was going to give himself an Epi Pen, so he took the pack of Epi Pens and headed off to the bathroom. My mother didn’t want him going alone so she sent my father after him, because as you know, I’m useless in situations like these. By the time they came back Tzvi had somehow given himself two Epi Pens. Have you ever heard of someone using two Epi Pens? No, well neither had any of us, or anyone on the internet, or any of the doctors we texted. Tzvi claims that he remembers Doctor Sicklick telling him to use two Epi Pens. We’re pretty sure the advice was to carry two Epi Pens in case the first doesn’t work, but not to actually use two in rapid succession. At this point Hallie was all upset and worried about Tzvi, my mother was upset at my father who let Tzvi use two Epi Pens, Madeleine was in her own little world, and I’m sure Hadar was just looking on in horror. Tzvi was feeling better in his mouth and throat and breathing but now he was worried about the double dose of Epi and frantically checking his heart rate every few seconds. Luckily it was staying pretty low.
Once you use an Epi Pen you’re supposed to go to a hospital because the Epi Pen isn’t a cure and the peanut is still in you and you may need further treatment. So off we went to Terem (because it’s not really a trip to Israel without a visit to urgent care, right?). We left my father and Hadar with the girls. They finished the food, including the beef we had ordered. I will say, everything I ate was delicious. Shame I had to miss dessert.
We got to the urgent care and Tzvi tried to explain to the man at the check-in desk that he was having an allergic reaction and used two Epi Pens. That got them to bring him straight back to a triage room. First a PA named Elon examined Tzvi. Where were you eating, he asked. When Tzvi told him the restaurant he said, “yeah, they have a lot of peanuts.”
Next an Arab Doctor named Qasem came in and told Tzvi he was getting an IV. By the way, does someone want to tell me about the apartheid in this country?
The doctor asked Tzvi if he had ever eaten a peanut before. Tzvi said no, and the doctor asked how he knew he was allergic then. Before Tzvi could give the obvious and simple answer – that he had been tested – my mother started speaking. In Hebrew she said something like:
״כשהוא תינוק, האמא שלו אכלה בותנים והוא שותה את החלב מן השדיים של אמא״
Which loosely translates to, “when he was a baby his mother ate peanuts and he drank the milk from the breasts of his mother.” Thanks.
They gave him IV steroids and told him to stay for observation for four hours. I have to say the care was quick and pretty good, although the place is kind of gross and the standards aren’t quite the same as America. Tzvi said he had to pee so they said go ahead and let him walk to the bathroom with his IV (which was around the corner and down the hall). When he got back there was blood in the line and no one seemed too bothered by that. Then they moved him into another room with other patients where he spent three hours listening to a family with what I can only imagine was whooping cough. My mother ended up looking for masks for them to wear. I stayed for a little while but ended up heading back to put the girls to bed. My mom stayed with him, which was incredibly kind of her—she handled everything: the waiting, the doctors, the prescriptions. Tzvi remarked that the most difficult part of the night was not the peanut or the Epi Pens but the fact that he’s now so indebted to my mother.
Eventually they left. The most incredible thing is that the whole trip – being seen by a nurse, a PA and a doctor, IV steroids, four hours of observation – all cost $600. I think in America an urgent care visit like that would’ve been in the thousands.
Tzvi came back and was still too wired to go to sleep so he sat up doing work and then finally decided to shower at midnight, except there was no hot water because we hadn’t turned on the dud shemesh (yes, even in nice apartments in Israel you need to turn the hot water heater on and off). Even once we turned it on it wasn’t heating up so he decided to wait a while and come back later. When he came back to shower an hour later it still wasn’t heating up so he started texting my mother and she said to let it run. Ten minutes later he realized he was turning the handle the wrong way. Thanks for keeping me up for that.
Another chaotic, memorable, very full day in the books.