Where does cultural exchange between American Jews and Israelis take place? On the federation or agency tour of Israel? Can you believe in a California kitchen while cooking shakshuka?
 
Shakshuka is the Israeli breakfast concoction of North African origins we had for dinner recently at our home in Los Angeles. It was so filling that I am still digesting its meaning.
 
With the dinner being held by happenstance the night news broke that terrorists had attacked near Eilat killing eight, fear and anger could have been the night's main ingredients.
 
Balancing the meal though was the evening's chef, Or Raudanski, a young Israeli, our houseguest on his first visit to California.
 
While our son Benzi visited Israel last summer as part of the Taglit/Birthright program, he had met Or, who at the time was an Israeli solider. When the official trip was over, Benzi stayed a few extra days with Or's family.
 
This summer, when Or needed a place to stay in LA for a few days, he gave Benzi a call.
 After a few days of staying with us, Or approached me with a surprising offer. "I want to cook dinner for you. Make shakshuka, and schnitzel," he said.
 
"When was the last time anyone offered to make us dinner?" Asked my wife Brenda as she enthusiastically endorsed the plan.
 
The preparations, which commenced immediately, were international in scope.
 
For recipes, Or quickly realized that he would need a little help from the home front.
It was when he called his mother, Shosh, in Tel Aviv on the day of the attack, that she told him, after talking ingredients to "watch the news."
 
While Or was preparing the salad, I had a chance to talk to him about his response to the day's sad events.
 
"I was not surprised," he said. "I am feeling very bad it had to happen. Nobody likes war," he said, crushing some garlic.
 
While watching him adjust the burners on the stove, I wondered if the day's events had him want to go home or be in the army again.
 
"It made me feel a little of both," he answered, frying in a skillet some walnuts he was going to use in the salad dressing. "But I don't think my going back to Israel would make any difference," he continued.
 
I wondered too if each time Or heard news of deaths, especially soldiers did he think it might be someone he knew.
 
"Not really, my friends are done with their service too," he said shrugging it off.
Though from the speed of his response I wondered if that shrug was a cover.
 
Next he poured some tahini into a bowl.
 
"I brought it from home. It's the Tahor brand, it means pure," he explained.
 
Throughout our exchange there was not much lost in translation, only once when Or had asked for a "hammer" to crush the walnuts.
 
"Not a hammer," he said, laughing at the tool I had proudly retrieved from my toolbox. "I need, how do you say? A......"
 
"A mallet," suggested Benzi who opened a kitchen drawer and found the required wooden implement.
 
Additionally, one of my other sons, Elan appeared, introducing Dorien, a visiting Israeli he had met while working this summer at a Jewish sleepaway camp.
 
With four twentysomethings now in the kitchen things really began to cook. Here was the real recipe for cultural exchange: one part Taglit, two parts serendipity, stirred by the news.
 
Under Or's direction, they pounded, chopped, and mixed. Dorien even helped me to decipher the ingredients written in Hebrew that Or's mom had sent via smart phone.
 
 The schnitzel was breaded, and put in the oven. The tomatoes for the shakshuka diced and put on to simmer. As Or skillfully cracked the eggs, dropping the unbroken yolks into the simmering red shakshuka, there was a new scent in the kitchen that I came to recognize as home cooking.
 
Soon we sat around an outdoor table, said a blessing and had a feast. There we were, a couple of young Israeli's and a family of American Jews, each a little shaken by the day's events, sitting down to what I think was comfort food for all.