No great community event ever happens without mountains of work being done behind the scene. The recent Israel Fest was certainly no exception.
Norfolk’s Temple Israel offered festivalgoers a tasty—and healthy!—reprieve from the heat of the day in the form of cool, refreshing fruit kabobs. And while the Temple’s kabob booth was a nice, quiet place to take a break from all the events and activities going on all around during Israel Fest, the scene in the TI kitchen just a few hours earlier was anything but.
Beginning well before 7 am that morning, a group of temple members gathered around a long table to begin assembling the honeydew melon, green and red grapes, cantaloupe, pineapple and strawberries that comprised the treat. But first, of course, those melons had to be balled, grapes separated from their stalks, pineapples sliced, strawberries relieved of their leafy tops, and all washed and drained.
The kabob assembly team, some of whom were meeting each other for the first time, walked around the table, adding one piece of fruit at a time, piercing each with precision, and adding the strawberry topper before handing the finished product off to the wrapping team.
The booth was a success—of the more than 250 kabobs, there were but a very few left at the end of the festival. But Team Kabob agreed that the success started long before Israel Fest began: with a wonderful morning of camaraderie.
Bobbie Fisher