Passover BBQ תשע״ו/2016

ערב שביעי לפסח תשע״ו

I know this may sound crazy, but i am sitting here on my roof, barbecuing before Yom Tov. Nope. No balcony in my current apartment.

Of course, it is mutar (permissible) to cook on Yom Tov, even for Shabboth, via Eruv Tavshilin. However, after you read this, I believe you will know I chose to doing the על האש/Al HaAish (barbecuing) before Yom Tov.

Pardon the blurriness. It is either due to the smoke, or to the angling of my laptop's
built-in webcam, which wobbled, or both.

First off, I live on the fourth floor, called the fifth floor in the U. S., without an elevator. Since my floor is also the top floor, I thought it would be easier to go up on the roof. I believe I remember seeing it done. Nevertheless, I can see small barbecues like my own on the roofs of neighboring buildings. So, I thought I would give it a shot.

My first mistake was climbing up the ladder to the roof barefoot. At first, I did not mind, but when I starting having to carry things up one-handed, my feet started to hurt. Most of you know that I am not a big fan of shoes, but am willing to tolerate sandals. Although I am not representative of all San Diegeños, this is certainly an artifact from having been born and raised there. Fortunately, we are also no strangers to barbecuing, albeit my friends from Texas may argue about our relative barbecuing skills.

Fellow bloggers Jameel @ The Muqata and Rafi @ Life In Israel may also want to chime in on barbecuing, one of their favor pastimes. Lucky them, they do not have to climb up onto roofs!

But, I digress...

My second mistake was carrying things up, which are going to be a lot harder for me to carry down,...one-handed.

My worries included silly things like the smoke blowing back [down] into the building, disturbing the neighbors, and serious things like falling off the roof and/or burning the building down. The main reason for barbecuing before Yom Tov was safety. I would rather stick around by the coals, and wait for them to burn down, instead of chancing leaving the barbecue on the roof unattended.

The photo also shows pipes running out of a neighbor's dude shemesh (water heater). There are more than a few pieces of equipment up here to avoid damaging.

I was also worried about something falling off the roof, and then being the lucky one to get a citation for littering, something which is not as strange in Israel as you might think. And speaking of life in Israel.

I am not so worried about the time. I am going out tonight, and can just cook everything else tomorrow morning for lunch. Of course, once these hosts of mine read this post, they may regret telling me not to "...worry about bringing anything." (Tee-Hee!)

I am using an particular brand of American charcoal, which is probably even more poisonous, and industrial strength carcinogenic than other brands (...and thus will remain nameless, so that I do not get sued). But, it got started very quickly, saving me some time. Olive wood is recommended.

Now that the grill is starting to cool down, I am going to risk beginning to bring things down from the roof. Before I leave the house, I intend to come back up, and take down the barbecue, just in case.

Needless to say, after the first trip down, I put sandals on.

Oh, and by the way, a bag of mine just fell off the roof. I'll let you know if I get that citation, I mentioned above.

Hag Same'ah and Shabboth Shalom!