Blue Crabs & Friends

Folks in my part of the world used to be described as “a basket of blue crabs.” It’s not a compliment. If you’ve ever gone crabbing, placing your catch in a bushel peach basket (or bucket, what have you), you know that the crabs closer to the top start climbing up the edges to escape, only to be pulled down again by the others whose entrepreneurial abilities seem limited to keeping others from getting ahead. It’s a fairly rich metaphor, going deep into the sardonic psyche of life in the South — at least once upon a time.

My own, more recent experience with the launch of Etzlenu has, if anything, been precisely the opposite: A cluster of friends and family all trying to help launch soul food cuisine in Tel Aviv. The list could sound like a gratuitous thank-you recitation from an Oscar acceptance speech, but it’s not. And I don’t want to bore you, but I have to give a shout out to my daughter’s translation skills, my son’s help with creating marketing events, Miriam’s development of the website, Noam and Irit’s photographic eyes, Yoel’s business guidance, Amalia’s networking acumen. And so on.

This cluster of crabs I’d put in my own peach basket any day.