Beach, bonfires and baba ganoush attract Hebrew-speaking young adults

It could have been Lag B’Omer evening

on a Tel Aviv beach, judging from the

mass quantities of bonfires, Hebrew and

hummus.

But it wasn’t.

It was a clear Saturday night on San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, with the air slightly cooler and windier than the average Mediterranean breeze, and the bonfires and genial atmosphere were not in commemoration of the festive Israeli holiday. But one of the many bonfires lining the beach was a real kumsitz — an Israeli social event, complete with foil-wrapped potatoes, singing and fire.

Small groups of Hebrew-speaking young adults huddled around a long picnic table, filling their paper plates with baba ghanoush and pita bread, catching up with old friends and introducing new ones. Israeli music blared from a stereo.

Ronny Saidian, an Israeli-born, 32-year-old demolition contractor from the East Bay, supplied the evening’s massive quantity of firewood. But he came for “the Israeli atmosphere.”

“It’s hard to explain, but this just feels like home,” he said. “In the East Bay there are Jewish people, but not many Israelis.”

The idea for the San Francisco-based kumsitz took shape three years ago in a Berkeley coffee shop, where Rani Hofman, Dan Rice and Amit Shamis met to discuss the lack of casual, social Israeli events in the Bay Area. They compiled an e-mail list, planned their first event — a picnic — sent invitations and came up with a name for their new organization.

“We called it Café Hafuch because it means a latte or ‘upside-down coffee’ in Hebrew,” Hofman said. “The name just clicked.”

Café Hafuch’s first organized events generated a lot of positive feedback.

“Everyone was asking, ‘When’s the next time?’ said Hofman. “It wasn’t very complicated; it just kept growing.”

Hofman, Rice and Shamis began to organize regularly scheduled events. Now there’s an e-mail list of 350 and a Web site: http://www.cafe-hafuch.org. Typically, an event attracts about 50 people in their early

20s to late 30s, though kids, even dogs, are welcome.

Most at this October kumsitz were Israeli, though French and English were spoken along with the prevailing Hebrew.

“I learned Hebrew in school, and my identification with Israel has always been less variable than my religious beliefs,” said Dean Freedlander, a psychiatrist from Montreal, now living in San Francisco and new to Café Hafuch kumsitz. 

Most of this crowd arrived at Ocean Beach just before sunset, and jumped right into the activities. After the barbecue, several people gathered around a guitar, singing familiar Israeli songs. Others stood by the fire in small groups and talked about everything but Israeli politics until midnight.

“This is Judaism without the distracting frills,” Freedlander said, looking at the crowd gathered around the bonfire, closing in because of the growing cold. “Israelis have a natural flow to living life, perhaps from a history of overcoming challenges. They are more concerned with who you are as a person than in watching sitcoms on television.”

Sabine Sultan, a 28-year-old lawyer from Paris, who had lived in Israel for a year, sat on a makeshift bench by the fire, listening to the guitar and occasionally singing along. “When I think of Israel, I don’t think of bombings,” Sultan said. “I think of singing on the beach, of bonfires and friends, of quality of life. This reminds me of the good Israel. This is Israel.”